by Max Brand
“I don’t know,” said Sherry at last. “But I suppose everybody makes mistakes now and then.”
“Not Herb Moon,” said the mountaineer. “He lives to do what’s right, and he always does it. He don’t live for nothin’ else.”
“But suppose he should be mistaken this one time . . . and the girl gets hanged?”
“Serve her right,” said the other. “These rich folks, they’re all crooked. Never knowed one that wasn’t. What’s she? Why’s a woman to be favored over a man? Murder’s murder, ain’t it?”
“I suppose it is. That doesn’t prove her guilty.”
“Young feller,” said the old man, flushing with anger, “don’t set yourself up to be better and wiser than Herb Moon. There’s others that have tried to do it, and they’ve always had a fall.”
“I don’t set myself up to be better and wiser. I say that the girl ought to have a fair chance.”
“She’ll get as fair a chance as she deserves. But look at the way that she’s been carryin’ on . . . hirin’ a bully to run her enemies out of town. Makin’ sure that nobody would be in the jury that would dare to vote ag’in’ her!”
“Who do you mean?”
“I mean the great gunfighter, Sherry. If she’d hire a killer like that, what wouldn’t she do? Murder? Murder ain’t nothin’ to rich people.”
“I don’t see that Sherry has been hired to run her enemies out of town.”
“Ain’t he for her?”
“I’ve heard that he is.”
“Ain’t he a gunfighter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so! Young feller, your thinkin’ is all crooked. Didn’t Sherry take a showdown out of Fannie Slade and make him take water? Could anythin’ less than a clever one have done that, I ask you?”
“And the girl’s guilty because she has Sherry for a friend?” asked the big man bitterly.
“The sheriff’s against her, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I suppose he is. He’s refused her the legal rights that belong to her.”
“Legal be damned,” declared the other with heat. “What’s right in the eye of the sheriff is right enough to suit me. And who he thinks guilty, I’m willin’ to think guilty. If he makes a mistake, I’ll make one, too. There ain’t a wiser or a finer man on earth than Herb Moon. That’s what I’m here to state.”
He had worked himself up into a fine frenzy, at this point, when a bystander took him by the arm and drew him away. What the newcomer said in a whisper could easily be guessed, for the old man, with a gasp, started off hastily down the street, glancing now and again back over his shoulder, as though he feared that Sherry, like some form out of a nightmare, might pursue him.
There was no such thought in Sherry’s mind, however. He had proved amply that Beatrice Wilton was right, and that the attitude of the sheriff had so thoroughly poisoned all minds in the county that an impartial jury could not very well be picked. Beatrice Wilton was lost.
Sherry went back to lunch at the hotel and found himself regarded gloomily and askance. He could understand why he was considered to be the hired retainer of a losing cause, and the more formidable he was, the more unpopular. But he learned at the luncheon table that in one morning’s work the jury had been selected, and that very afternoon testimony would begin to be taken.
He went toward the courtroom, down-headed, filled with thought. He had prepared his tools days before. He had prepared his scheme, also. Immediately adjoining the jail, so close to it that a man could hardly walk down the path that separated the two buildings, was an empty house, and if there were a cellar of any size in the place, he should be able to dig through and beneath the foundations of the jail, and cut a tunnel upward. That done, he still would have to force a way through the floor of the jail, and to do this in silence would probably be impossible.
He had determined on using blunt force. A charge of dynamite would open the floor. Once in the jail, another blast of dynamite would shatter the lock on the girl’s cell. And, if she stubbornly refused to come with him, he could take her by force. Lang would be waiting with three horses of the best in the rear of the vacant house. And once in the saddle, heaven send good luck to them and bad luck to Sheriff Herbert Moon.
Sherry by no means looked upon the task as a simple one. And he knew perfectly well that that grim-faced jailer would be the very man to fight to the death to retain the prisoners who were under his charge. Furthermore, the people of Clayrock were a hardy lot. Once embarked on his task, it would mean a pair of well-oiled Colts in action from the first, but Sherry, gloomily adding up the result, determined on the work.
He diverged from the straight course toward the court in order to pass the jail and, doing so, to see again the vacant house. There it was, weather-beaten, dilapidated, with the TO RENT shingle projecting from its front. But as Sherry came by, he saw a man seated in the wide-open doorway with a rifle leaning against the doorjamb beside him.
“Hello,” said Sherry. “House rented at last?”
“Not rented. Occupied,” said the rifleman. And he patted his gun with a fond hand, and grinned at Sherry with a great deal of meaning.
The big man went on with a slower step. It was, somehow, the most signal proof he had run across of the omniscient brain of the sheriff. For he had no doubt that Herbert Moon had taken possession of the house for the very purpose of securing the last approach to the jail itself. And, going on past the wall of the jail, he noted its solidity, its depth, as signified by the frowning depths of the dark windows. It looked like a veritable fortress of the law. And he, single-handed, would have a wretched task in storming it.
He knew that Lang would follow him far, but he also knew that the cowpuncher never would commit himself to such a desperate act for the sake of a woman who he already believed to be deeply implicated in the murder. Whatever was to be done, must be done by Sherry in person.
So, marching slowly past the front of the jail, he regarded the door itself. It was ponderous, iron-clasped, and iron-bolted within, as he had observed on the preceding day. Yet a powerful charge of powder would doubtless smash it in, and once inside . . . Well, it seemed more desperate than the plan of attack from beneath the building, but, after all, the most desperate measures sometimes meet with the greatest success.
Little Herbert Moon came down the steps of the jail at that moment and nodded cheerfully at Sherry. “You had your interview?” he asked.
“I did,” said Sherry sadly.
“There’s spirit in that girl,” declared the sheriff. “A confounded lot of spirit, of course. And I admire her for it. But, at the same time, the law has to take its way. At the worst, it won’t be the rope, Sherry, and ten or fifteen years of model conduct in the prison ought to give her a fair chance of a pardon from the governor. Western men are fair enough to women, you know.”
“Except you, Moon!” exclaimed Sherry in wrath. “Except you, man. You hate her as if she were a fiend. Will you tell me that I’m wrong?”
“If she murdered Wilton,” said the sheriff, “does she deserve anything but hate?” Then he added smoothly: “If you want to see me again, one of these days, you’ll always find me down here at the jail.”
“Nearly living here?”
“Living here in fact . . . day and night. When I have a prisoner as beautiful as Beatrice Wilton . . . why, of course I have to take the best and most special care of her. You’ll understand that, my lad.”
And Sherry turned away toward the court with despair. The last hope had been stripped from his mind. For he knew that he never could force his way into the jail while the sheriff remained there on guard.
XXXIII
To Sherry all that passed in the next few days had the unreality and the horror of a nightmare, for he saw Beatrice Wilton being pressed irresistibly toward condemnation by judge and jury. And in the meantime it appeared to Sherry as though the entire country were licking its lips with horrid pleasure. Clayrock literally was filled wit
h the clicking of cameras, and in the hot, stuffy courtroom, day by day, scores of eyes stared in morbid interest at the prisoner.
She bore herself very well in one respect and very badly in another. She was as calm and cool as stone. On the stand, her voice had no tremors. She looked at the other witnesses for and against her without a frown or a smile, and she never appeared perturbed by anything that was put forward in evidence. This bearing of hers gave a good deal of dignity and importance to her case, but it practically destroyed her.
Two young lawyers worked out her side of the argument, and against them was the hard-headed district attorney. He had ways of violence, almost instinctively, because he was accustomed to deal with male criminals of the worst sort. To the bludgeoning of his rough assaults, the counsel of Beatrice Wilton begged her to oppose a feminine delicacy. If she would only be overcome, or appear to be overcome, by the brutality of the opposition, it might well be that she could win the sympathy of the jury. But she refused to make concessions of any kind. She remained erect in her chair, unflinching, calm, while the district attorney heaped upon her all the abuse of implication that declared her to be a cold-minded murderess, relentless, cruel, stern as a man. And, while he made these points in cross-examination, he seemed to be pointing to her, again and again, as though saying to the jury: “Notice this. She never flinches. The woman is a perfect monster.”
As for the defense, there was only one hope, and that was to establish Fennel as a sinister figure, a man who obviously intended to work some harm to Wilton from the moment he came to Clayrock, and who eventually succeeded in murdering his man.
To do that, they called upon Sherry and worked up his testimony as brightly as possible. It appeared through him that Fennel was an obvious sham. That his pretended drunkenness had been assumed for some ulterior purpose. That he was probably not a sailor at all. And certainly this man with the sinister intention had come to Wilton, had been walking with him at the moment of the murder. What folly, then, to imagine that such a woman as Beatrice Wilton deserved any share of the guilt when Fennel was not as yet detected or trailed? Why should the law seize upon the lamb instead of the wolf, simply because the lamb was nearest at hand?
But the cross-examination of the district attorney was terribly damaging. If Sherry was the star witness for the defense, he also turned out to be the star witness for the prosecution. He had to relate in detail how he had run in pursuit, had found Beatrice cowering, had been forced to carry her back to the place of the crime. And all this evidence had to be wrung from a most manifestly reluctant witness, who stood with his great fists balled, and a glare in his eyes, and perspiration streaking down his face.
“Look!” said the district attorney, with inexcusable brutality. “The man sees what his words are doing. He cannot help but understand that he is destroying the case of the woman he would give his life to assist. There, gentlemen of the jury, is a picture of misery and of . . .”
Here the judge stopped the peroration but it had had its effect. Sherry stood down from the witness stand, at last, perfectly confident that he had beaten to the ground the last hope of Beatrice Wilton, and he fixed upon her an eye of agony as he went out.
She, for her part, turned in her chair and nodded and smiled toward him with such sweetness that it stopped him like a blow. He went on unsteadily.
He heard voices on either side of him, muttering. He could not help but hear one woman say: “Poor fellow. He loves her, you see. I’m sorry for him, but not for that cold-blooded little minx.”
Sherry went out into the open air; Dr. Eustace Layman came out and stood beside him. The doctor was always present at every moment of the trial. He had a chair comparatively close to the two young lawyers who were defending Beatrice, and from time to time, as thoughts for the conduct of the case occurred to him, he scribbled notes and passed them across to the legal hands.
As the trial continued, Sherry’s respect for the doctor increased enormously. For one thing, there was no pretense or sham about him. He never paraded his feelings. He never obtruded upon anyone the knowledge that this girl was his betrothed. But, keeping as cool and as quiet as Beatrice Wilton herself, he gave his whole energy of mind to helping where he could.
“I think I’ve sent her to prison for life,” said Sherry bluntly.
And suddenly the other astonished him by saying: “And suppose the sheriff is right, after all, and you and I are wrong, Sherry?”
The big man turned to him in bewilderment.
“You and I are the only people in the entire world who think she’s innocent,” added the doctor. And then he concluded: “But it never makes any real difference to a man. He believes what he wants to believe, and that’s true of you and of me, eh?”
Sherry went off up the street; the doctor went the other way. The court had adjourned, and Sherry relieved his feelings by taking his horse and riding furiously off into the country, never turning back for the Wilton house until his animal was wet with sweat. Then, with creaking saddle leather, he climbed the clay rock and put up his mustang in the stable.
When he came to the front of the house, he stopped, shocked. Up the steps to Wilton’s entrance went a thin streak of crimson. Before the door, it widened to a little pool.
Blood!
He went in hurriedly, and followed that same trail, with growing horror, to his own room. He found the door locked, and, in answer to the wrangling of his hand upon the knob, a voice that he barely recognized as that of Lang called to him: “Sherry?”
“Yes,” he answered.
Then: “Wait . . . I’ll unlock the door.”
There was a faint sound of fumbling, then the lock turned, and Sherry pushed into the chamber. Lang had collapsed upon a bunk. He was stripped to the waist, and a great bandage made of a sheet was wound around his middle. It was much stained with blood, as was everything in the room.
“Great Scott!” cried Sherry. “What’s happened, man?”
“Fennel,” said Lang faintly. “I’m cooked, and Fennel did it.” He lay flat on the bunk, breathing with difficulty. The sheet had been drawn so tight that his chest heaved with every inspiration.
“Let me have a look at that . . . he shot you!” exclaimed Sherry.
“There’s no good looking,” said Lang faintly. “I’m about done, old man. I think I always had an idea that I’d get my finish in this dirty work. You wanted it . . . Sherry.”
The big man groaned.
“Let me talk,” said Lang. “You know the drawing that I found in the room of Wilton? I guessed that it was the plan for the hiding place where he’d put the pearls. I missed it when I went out with you. Today I looked it over again and finally I had my inspiration. I went out to the same clearing, and worked everything by reverse. The very first whack of the pick, it clinked on metal. I dragged up a little copper box. Opened it up. It was filled to the brim with pearls, man. And while I was looking, I got this through the back.” He paused, breathing again with difficulty. “I fell on my face,” he went on, “but I pulled my gun as I was going down. I managed to twist around, and I had a glimpse of Fennel getting ready to shoot again . . . and his face looked like . . . like a man that had been living like a beast out here in the woods. Why, he’s been hiding in these here bad lands all the time.”
“Waiting for someone to begin a hunt for the stuff that he couldn’t find?” suggested Sherry.
“That’s it. I’m getting wobbly in the head. Like a new-born calf, old son. Listen hard. I swung my gun around on Fennel, and, instead of risking another shot, he slipped away through the trees. Then I took the box and started back for home. I had to crawl most of the way. Once I fainted. Thank heaven, he didn’t follow me close enough to find me then. I got here. Since then, I’ve been waiting for you, praying for you . . . and dying like a dog, old man.”
“You’ve talked enough,” declared Sherry. “Keep the rest of your wind. I’m going to have you out of this, Pete. I dragged you into it. You never liked the business.
And now . . .”
“Steady, steady,” said Pete Lang. “I’m not going to last many more minutes. I wanted to last long enough to tell you who Fennel most likely is. It’ll give even you a shock. This here gent that played a drunken sailor and all the rest is nobody but . . .”
He had raised himself a little upon one elbow, in his excitement, and now he interrupted himself with a faint gasp, and his staring eyes went past Sherry to the open doorway. There was a puffing, hissing sound, and then a heavy spat of a bullet piercing bone. Pete Lang sank back on the bunk, dead.
Sherry had whirled the instant he heard the sound, and, whirling, he had both guns in his hands.
In the distance, close to the front door of the house, he had a glimpse of that never-to-be-forgotten face of Fennel, shrouded almost to the eyes with matted hair.
The front door was jerked open. Sherry fired as Fennel sprang through. Then, as he leaped in pursuit, he heard the lock turn. He threw his whole weight against the door. It was perfectly solid and threw him back, half stunned.
A light, quick step struck the steps and then crunched on the gravel of the path, and he knew that Fennel was gone once more from his ken.
He went back slowly, sick at heart, to the death room, and there he leaned gloomily above the body of his dead friend.
Who was Fennel? That question could not be answered by the calmly smiling lips of Pete Lang, who lay with a certain air of triumph, as it seemed to Sherry, one hand spread out over the copper box beside him, for which he had given his life.
XXXIV
Pete Lang was gone, and the last testimony of the work he had done lay under the dead man’s hand. Sherry took up the box and opened it with a sense of loathing. But that loathing disappeared at the first glance. The little box was filled to the brim with creamy light. He sifted it through his fingers, and it showered back in a beautiful rain into the box. Was it not for the sake of this box that three men already had died—Wilton, Capper, Pete Lang?