The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

“The next was a sheriff,” said the Kid. “I’ve had a good deal of experience with sheriffs, but, take them by the large, I’ve found them an honest lot—very! But there are exceptions. And Chicago Oliver was one of them. He wasn’t calling himself Chicago Oliver any more, when I found him. No, he had a brand-new name, and it was a good one in the county where he was living. They swore by their sheriff; he was the greatest man catcher that they’d ever had. Of course he was, because he loved that sort of business. Particularly when he had the law to help him.

  “I met the sheriff on the street one day. He’d just come up for re-election. Every one knew that he’d get the job, but every one was campaigning for him and making speeches just to show him how much they appreciated his good work. Oliver was a solemn, sad-looking man, with eyes that were always traveling around, quietly anxious to pick up even the smallest crumb of admiration. I stopped him on the street and told him who I was.

  “It seemed to upset him a good deal. In fact, I went off down the street and left him leaning on a fence post, trying the best he knew not to drop on the sidewalk.

  “The next time I met him, he asked me what I wanted. He was running a lot of cows on a fine bit of range, and he could afford to pay high, but I had to tell him that money was no object to me. He explained that he had never wanted to strip us, that night so many years before, and that he’d resisted the idea, and that the others had forced him on. But I reminded him how he had told my mother that a girl with such a pretty face would never miss such a thing as a few steers and a mule or so. She carried a fortune with her, he had said.

  “That stoppcd Oliver’s explanation.

  “There was a robbery in town a day later, and he tried to frame me. He made the arrest all right, but on the way to jail, with me in the middle of his posse, I began to tell some stories about Chicago Oliver, and, after I had told a few of them, the sheriff decided that he must have made a mistake. He asked me a few questions and then he told his posse men that he was all wrong, and would have to let me go.

  “The day before the election, I met him in a barroom, and in a corner of that place he sat down with me, and offered me everything that he owned in the world. He said that his good name meant more to him than anything. I told him that I understood his type preferred newspaper space to a place in heaven hut that I still was merely making up my mind what I’d do to him. The same evening, he gave up and headed south, and that county lost its sheriff. He simply left a note behind, saying that he had had to leave on account of his health. That was reasonably true, too, because he’d lost thirty pounds since I came to town. That was the finish of him!”

  “Ah, that was one who didn’t die!” said the girl.

  “Die? Oh, yes! The crooks found out that his nerve was gone. They began to hunt him just as enthusiastically as he ever had hunted them in his palmy days. A half-breed got to him in Vera Cruz one evening and killed him with a knife. I didn’t envy the half-breed though. I never have liked to get my hands dirty.”

  And he laughed, suddenly, through his teeth. The girl, shocked by the sound, jumped up, but sat down again at once.

  “Are you getting nervous?” asked the Kid.

  “No,” she gasped. “I can stand it, I think. There’s only one more horror to hear. I suppose!”

  “You look.” said the Kid coldly, “as though you had been watching an operation on a dear friend.”

  She waved a hand and mutely invited him to continue.

  “All right.” he said. “I’ll go ahead and show you what a Gila monster I really am. The next and the last of the four was Mickie Munroe. He was the only one of the lot who hadn’t reformed—on the surface, at least Mickie had been the youngest of those five baby killers. He was still not thirty when I came up to him. He was riding the range, for this outfit or that, most of the year. But when he ran short of funds—faro was his pet lay—Mickie did better things than punching cows. He still knew how to rustle. And with a running iron, Mickie was one of the best artists that I ever saw. The hide of a cow was to Mickie Munroe like the canvas of an artist.

  “This Mickie, I’m telling you about, was a jolly, happy-go-lucky chap. He was always smiling. He was always the life of any party. Everybody liked him pretty well, except a few who had an idea about his cattle rustling, and a few others who had seen the ugly side of Mickie’s face. I spent a good deal of time wondering what I could do to Mickie. Finally I hit on the right thing.

  “There were two things that Mickie was crazy about, when I caught up with him. One was faro, and one was a Mexican girl who pretended to wait on the table in the hotel. But really she was just there to cover up the bad cooking and the high prices in that place. She was so infernally pretty that men were willing to eat shoe leather, if they had the pleasure of looking at her face while they chewed. She made the crook who owned that hotel a pretty well-to-do-man, and she broke about every heart in the country, until Mickie came over the edge of her horizon.

  “Mickie was almost as good-looking as she was. He was as free and easy. And he had a way with the girls. Well, to cut the story short, they fell in love with one another, and Mickie forgot even faro, for a while. He was working like mad to make a stake, and as soon as that stake was made, he was going to marry the girl. Not that Carmelita bothered much about money. She said that she was willing to live in a tent, so long as it was with him. It was a strange thing to see ’em together. She was as hard as nails, and so was Mickie. They were both professional flirts, but they were mad about each other. Not so many people went to the hotel dining room, in those days, and the ones who did get inside had a melancholy time of it, watching the calf looks that went back and forth between the pair of ’em.

  “However, I judged that Carmelita was able to change her mind, and in case she did, I thought that I’d try to put myself on the map, where she could see me. So I broke into some flowing Mexican duds—you know—gold, silver, even spangles, and lace at my wrists. I put on a new high sombrero, and a new Spanish name that took two minutes just to sign. Then I dropped into that town and let Carmelita know that I had arrived.

  “She seemed to notice me right away, too. Girls are apt to like noisy colors, if they haven’t been brought up well. Then some of the boys took offense at me and thought that I was more of a sissy than a high Spanish Don. They started to kick me out of town the day after I arrived. But the kicking business was right in my line, and by the time that afternoon ended, Carmelita was not only sure that I was beautiful, but that I was a warrior and a hero.”

  The Kid paused to roll a cigarette, and he lighted it with a reminiscent air.

  “I’m talking a good deal about myself,” he remarked.

  “I’ve asked for it,” said the girl, suddenly husky. “And what happened with Carmelita? Did you break her heart?”

  “That kind of a heart doesn’t break,” said the Kid. “Not if you dropped it out of a tenth-story window. You could break India rubber as easily as you could break a heart like Carmelita’s. But she was a lovely picture. And she danced in a way that made me dizzy. Now and then I had to catch hold of myself and give myself a shake, as it were, to keep from getting really off my balance about her.

  “Well, Mickie Munroe was taking all of this very hard, I can tell you. In the first place, he went to the girl, and she told him that he gave her a headache when he shouted so loud. In the second place, he came to me. Mickie was a fighting man, but I had had so much luck that afternoon when they started to kick me out of the town that he didn’t quite make up his mind to run me out on his own account. But he had a talk with me, and tried to convince me that I had no serious intentions so far as Carme-lita was concerned. I told him that he was wrong. And then I told him some more about myself, and a bit about his own affairs that interested him a good deal.

  “Mickie was up against a bad job.

  “He wanted to cut my throat. He was sure that with me dead and gone, Carmelita would not remember me very long. And he was right. Carmelita’s memory for men was merely a
thread, a spider thread, you might say. Any wind was able to blow it away.

  “When Mickie decided that he had to murder me, he went about it methodically.

  “Now that he couldn’t have Carmelita—at least, not right away—of course he was madder for her than ever. I was three weeks in that town, waiting, and I give you my word that in that short time poor Mickie turned gray and grew thin, and appeared to be a tired, old man. I don’t think that he ever slept more than ten minutes at a time all those weeks. He was like a scared cat; a wild cat, mind you.

  “He tried me with poison, a little home-made bomb with a time fuse, a riot gun fired around the corner of a building, and a knife thrust in the dark. But he had no luck, though with that bomb he laid out four other men, and two of them nearly died.

  “I let their friends into the secret as to who it was that had made the bomb, and then things began to hum for poor Mickie.

  “He could only sneak into he town at night. He was hunted like a mad dog. Carmelita, when she saw him, laughed in his face and snapped her fingers, because she’d entirely made up her mind that he was a waste of time.

  “Well, the end of it was a dull affair, in the talking. But really I think that Mickie suffered more than all the rest put together. There was enough decency in him, d’you see, really to love a woman. I’d say that his heart was broken, and that he died of that. One night I heard him moaning and sobbing like a baby under her window, and I heard her open that window and tell Mickie that if he didn’t get away, she’d call me to go down and horsewhip him out of the town. And Mickie left. His spirit was gone, you understand? His nerve had broken down—”

  “Like the others!” said the girl, her voice rasping.

  “Yes,” said the Kid thoughtfully, as he inhaled a deep breath of cigarette smoke. “The doctor said that it was an overdose of whisky—he’d emptied a whole bottle in a single evening—but I imagine that it was the broken heart that killed Mickie.”

  “And the girl? The Carmelita?” asked Georgia.

  “She? Oh, I used to remember the names of her first two husbands, but I’ve forgotten them, now.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The Fifth Man

  After this fourth narrative had ended, Georgia got up from the log and hastily crossed the clearing. She walked back and forth for a moment, breathing deeply. And the Kid, watching her through half-closed eyes, continued to smoke, letting the cigarette fume between his fingers, most of the time, but now and then lifting it in leisurely fashion to his lips.

  “You don’t really care what I think?” she demanded stopping suddenly in front of him.

  He seemed to rouse himself from a dream, starting violently. “Care?” he echoed. “Of course I care.”

  “Ah, not a rap!” said she.

  “More,” answered the Kid, “than I care about the opinion of any other person in the world.”

  He said it so seriously that she stepped back a little. She put up her head, but her face was pale, and the color would not come back into it.

  “I’m not Carmelita,” said she.

  “No,” answered the Kid, with perfect calm. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to flirt with you.”

  She watched him closely.

  “I’m trying to get words together,” she said.

  “Take your time,” said the Kid. “I know you’re going to hit hard, but I’m ready to take the punch.”

  At last she said. “I’ve never heard, and I’ve never dreamed of anything like the four stories you’ve told me. I don’t want to believe them. I won’t believe them. You’ve made up four horrible things—the most horrible that you could conceive, and you’ve strung them together for the sake of giving me a shock!”

  “My dear,” said the Kid, “there’s nothing but the gospel truth in what I’ve told you. Not a word but the exact truth.”

  Staring at him fixedly, she knew that he meant what he said. “Then—” she cried out.

  She stopped the words; and the Kid, with his faint smile, watched her and waited.

  “You be the judge and the jury, now,” said he. “You can find me guilty and hang me, too.”

  “Why have you told me all this?” she asked him, almost passionately.

  “Because you asked me to,” said the Kid.

  “No,” she replied firmly. “That’s not it, I think. Merely asking wouldn’t make you do it, I know!”

  “I wanted you to know about me,” said the Kid. “That’s why I told you.”

  “You wanted me to know?” she cried. “That’s it.”

  “Will you tell me one thing more?”

  “I probably will.”

  “Did you take a pleasure out of what you did to each of those four men?”

  He answered instantly: “When I started with each one, I would have enjoyed feeding him into a fire, inch by inch. I would have enjoyed hearing him howl like a fiend. But before the end, I admit that I was sick of it, each time.”

  “Then why did you keep on?”

  “Because each time the business was done so thoroughly that at the end it didn’t matter what I put my hand to. The thing always got outside of my control. Turk Reming’s reputation that he loved and was proud of was gone completely before he was killed. Harry Dill’s business was ruined, and his happiness with it. Oliver’s self-confidence which he’d always been able to trust like bed rock, was knocked to pieces under his feet. And finally, Mickie Munroe had turned into an old man. Toward the end I pitied each one of them. But I pitied them too late.”

  “Suppose,” said the girl, “that you’re judged, one day, just as you’ve judged them?”

  He nodded frankly.

  “I understand perfectly what you mean,” said the Kid. He looked up to where a woodpecker was chiseling busily at the trunk of a tree, the rapping of his incredible beak making a purr like that of a riveter. Down fell a little thin shower of chips as the tree surgeon drilled for the grub.

  “Some day I’ll be judged,” said the Kid. “It’ll be a black day for me. Mind you, I haven’t tried to excuse what I’ve done. And yet, if I had to do it over again, I’d do it. I’d go through the same steps in the same way.”

  “What would drive you?” asked the girl. “There’s no real remorse in you for what you’ve done, then? What would drive you on? Pity for your mother’s death?”

  “No,” said the Kid, after a moment of consideration. “Not that. She’s in my mind, now and then, of course. So’s my father, and the pain in his face. But what haunted me always was the memory of those two old milk cows swaying and heaving under the yoke, and finally dying for us. Well, not for us. It was the death of my mother; and my father would have been better dead, I suppose. But those poor beasts did their work for me. I used to think of them, I tell you, and the heat of that desert, and the way old Red wobbled and staggered under me—I used to think of that when I was working on those four in the final stages.”

  “And there’ll be a fifth man?” said the girl. “As sure as I’m alive to deal with him.”

  “It’s Billy Shay!” she broke out suddenly.

  “No,” said he.

  “You’re not going to tell me, of course.”

  “I am, though. It’s because I have to tell you that, that I told you all the rest that went before.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “His name is John Milman,” said the Kid.

  He rose as she rose. Then, with a quick step forward, he caught her under the arms, steadied her, and lowered her back to the log.

  “I’m not going to faint!” she said through her teeth.

  Her head fell. There was no trace of color in her face. “I won’t cave in,” she repeated fiercely, faintly.

  In a rush, then, the blood came back to her, and her head seemed to clear.

  “That’s a ghastly way to joke!” she said to him.

  He took his hands gingerly from her, as though still not sure that she was strong enough to sit upright, unsupported.

  “If it were a joke,
it would be ghastly,” he admitted. “It’s bad enough even when it’s taken seriously.”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” said the girl, “that my own father—my John Milman—my mother’s husband—that he—was one of the five men that night?”

  As she spoke, the wind changed, grew a little in force, and brought to them a vaguely melancholy sound from the horizon.

  “Your father, your mother’s husband, your John Milman, he was one of the five,” said the Kid.

  “You’ve heard it, but it’s not true!” said the girl. “Why, it would have been after I was born—after we were settled down here—after—why, you think that you can make me believe that?”

  “I think I can,” said he. “I’ve made myself believe it.”

  “A hard job, that!” she said fiercely. “You wanted to believe. You’ve simply wanted to find subjects to torture, and you hardly cared who’ But this time—” She altered her voice and exclaimed: “Will you tell me what makes you think it could possibly be he?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said the Kid. “It was night, as I said. And I was sick, so that you’d think that I couldn’t have seen very well. But the fact is that they were quite free and easy. The law was a pretty dull affair, those years ago. Blind, mostly, and no memory at all. So they didn’t bother to wear masks, and they didn’t trouble about turning away when they lighted cigarettes. I remember those faces, the way pictures slip into the brain of a sick child and stay there for reference. I remember Turk Reming laughing and showing his white teeth, while he held a match to light the cigarette of another man—a middle-sized fellow, with a good forehead, and good features altogether. That one had a cleft chin, and halfway down the right side of his jaw there was a small, reddish spot, like the mark of a bullet, or a birthmark, perhaps—”

  He stopped and the girl, moistening her white lips, watched him. She was breathing hard. The laboring of her heart choked her.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the Kid. “That’s why I was glad to talk things over with you.”

  “You actually mean murder!” said the girl.