Daring Duval

by Max Brand

  “Saloon?” Duval said in polite inquiry.

  “What did you do to young Nash in Pete’s Place?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Duval, recalling himself. “When I sashayed in there, I expected to have a handful of trouble, but the fact is there wasn’t any at all.”

  “Humph!” said the sheriff. “Duval, was Nash there?”

  “Perhaps he was,” said Duval. “I dunno, exactly. I was sort of flustered and nervy just then.”

  “Guns went bangin’ after you entered,” observed Adare.

  “Yes, they did,” Duval said. “The fact is that I wanted to know that I was coming along, and if he had any idea of getting out by the back door, that would be a good signal for him.”

  “Who wrote the note that Charlie left behind him?” demanded the sheriff.

  “That’s a thing that I dunno as I could say,” replied the host. “Sit down, Sheriff. I dunno that any man gets very far by just standing around!”

  The point of this remark made Adare grin broadly. “There ain’t anybody else in this house, I s’pose?” he asked.

  “It was a rule of my old man,” said Duval, “never to lock no doors and windows. Locked doors keep the air out and the smoke in, he used to say. Maybe you’ve heard that saying, Sheriff?”

  “I dunno that I have. Your old man must have been a rare one, eh?”

  “The finest in the world,” Duval responded. “Horses was his main hold, but he wasn’t so bad with them, neither. He was full of ideas, but mostly he said that them that wanted to get along in the world had better keep their own floor swept and not mind about the neighbors’.”

  The sheriff winced a little, but then broke out into frank laughter. “Son,” he said, “I like the way that you go about things. Who are you, Duval?”

  “Me? Why, just an ordinary cowhand, Sheriff. Got a little stake and come along through the hills looking for a place to set up farming.”

  “Bein’ off the main high road don’t depress you none, I guess,” said Adare.

  “The old man always said,” was the answer, “that a mite of solitude done a lot for a man’s nerves.”

  “You don’t look nervous, Duval.”

  “Don’t I? I’m mighty glad of that. But I’ve been reckoned a tolerable nervous man, Adare. Off here by myself is the way that I like to live. The sound of the water, Adare, is a mighty soothing sound. Being off the road don’t bother me none. The old man used to say that fast travel wasn’t no good, except to them that had some place to go.”

  The sheriff smiled again. “Duval,” he said, “where’ve you been?”

  “Me? Up at the T Bar talking to the cows, walking in the mud, and going to get it at about four thirty in the mornings.”

  “What made you quit? Or was you fired?”

  “I quit because God don’t make a long enough day to suit the boss of the T Bar, and he has to piece out with lantern light.”

  “I seen them kind of bosses,” agreed the sheriff with enthusiasm. “Dog-gone their ornery hides. No other reason for quittin’?”

  “Between you and me, speaking personal,” said Duval seriously, “they got some pretty tough hombres up there on the T Bar, and a peaceful gent like me is always nervous around a place like that. The old man used to say that you don’t need to light no fuse to set off a mean hombre.”

  The sheriff threw his hat in the corner and suddenly sat down.

  “Call in Charlie Nash,” he said. “Call in Charlie and be danged, you lyin’, four-flushin’, two-legged maverick.”

  The host accepted these strong names with a smile of perfect complacence. “It’s all right, Charlie!” he called out.

  And the rear door of the shack opening, Charlie Nash appeared with a wash basin in his hands. “Why, hello, Nat,” he said. “When I get some hot water into this basin, it’ll be about right for you to rub some of the harness blacking off your hands. How are you, old-timer?”

  The sheriff looked without malice on the youth. A handsome lad was Charlie Nash and looked the part for which he was given credit around the town of Moose Creek, and over all the broad county thereabouts. For it was said that Charlie Nash could drink more, fight harder, and lift a bigger weight than any man on the range. Supple, thick-chested, straight-eyed, he was one to have raced for a prize, or fought for it. He was marred in one place, however, for the keen eye of the sheriff found a slightly purple swelling just to the side of the square point of Charlie’s jaw. It was, in fact, exactly on the place that prize fighters call the button, because even a tap there is apt to bring darkness.

  Charlie Nash, unabashed, noted the direction of the sheriff’s glance, and nodded as he put down the basin. “Sure,” he said. “That’s the place where he turned out the lights. Step up, Nat. There’s the soap, and here’s a towel.”

  The sheriff rose, and while he bent over the basin and liberally soaped his hands, his face until the bristling eyebrows were a fluff of snow, his neck until the suds filled the seams that checked it, he talked explosively between rubs.

  “Now, boys,” he said, “I’m in your hands. You’ve been and made a fool of yourself, Charlie. And maybe I’m makin’ a fool of myself up here.”

  Here the host broke in quietly: “I reckon that you’re wrong about that, Sheriff.”

  “Why, it’s kind of likely that I am,” replied Nat Adare. “The way that I figger it, you’re sorry for that fracas, Charlie. Besides, I know what started it.” He turned from the basin, dripping water on the floor and glaring at Charlie.

  Charlie merely grinned. “You can talk right out,” said Charlie. “He knows what started it, too.”

  “Dang,” said the sheriff. “I’ve got soap in my eyes.” And he raised double handfuls of water to his face and blew noisily into them. At last he turned, the water leaking from his face over his shirt front. “I reckon, Charlie,” Adare said, “that you’ll go back with me, and while I sit on my horse with my guns buckled on, lookin’ plumb wild, you’ll make a speech to the boys and tell ’em how sorry you are that you been a jackass, but the sheriff is gonna give you another chance after you’ve paid for the harm you done to Pete. And then you’ll buy a drink all around.”

  “Make a talk like that...,” began Charlie Nash in great excitement, “I’d rather....”

  “Sure you’d rather,” the host said gently. “The old man used to say that the first speech was the first step up the ladder in politics, and it never made any difference what the speech was about.”

  Chapter Five

  In this history of Duval, it would be of interest to maintain a daily chronicle, except that that would take too long. But, as all the people of Moose Creek maintain to this day, it was impossible to conceive of Duval without conceiving at the same time of his background. For, as they say, it was impossible to make a picture of the man by merely repeating his words and speaking of his deeds. Something was left over, some superior strength that, for a great while, seemed too big a thing ever to find labor that would seriously tax it. That labor was eventually found — but the story of that comes later.

  Sooner or later all the chief men of Moose Creek went up to call on Duval. The more daring spirits among the boys used to venture there, also, and they found him plowing with a team made up of his saddle horse and an old brown mule he had bought from Wilbur, or else he was installing the second-hand furniture he bought out of the vacated Gresham house, or he was repairing the roof. Sometimes they found him gathering greens for a salad, or sowing flower seeds in small, femininely neat beds around the borders of his house. Of the evenings, it was known that he kept Monday for laundry work, and for the repairing of his clothes, but the other nights of the week he was glad to have visitors. They would come and find him beside a circular, burned lamp with a green shade, reading, and whoever arrived was certain of a welcome. Yes, day or night Duval was a cordial host. He never was at any labor so importan
t that he would not pause from it and invite the guests to sit on his verandah, if the day were fine, and drink some of Pete’s best beer — which was constantly kept cooling in the icy water of the creek — with sausage sliced delicately thin, or cheese of a quality unheard of before in Moose Creek. These repasts were talked of long afterward.

  Sometimes late callers in the afternoon were asked to stay on for supper, which Duval prepared like a chef. He could make a man at home in one moment. His pale face was so full of courteous attention, and his gray eyes dwelled so carefully on every word, that each man felt he had been selected from many and placed high in the consideration of the new resident. There were two extra beds, also, which frequently were filled, and it might be said that no man in Moose Creek lived with less real privacy than Duval.

  It became known that he was a thoroughly good fellow. He would go down to Pete’s Place and drink his beer or his red-eye, up to a certain point, with any man. If the other fellow’s pocket were emptied, Duval never permitted a scarcity of drink for all that. Cowpunchers who came in from the range and spent their month’s savings in one grand party could be sure of a little present from Duval to pay for their lodging and buy their morning’s drink that gave the world another color. Within ten days it would have been safe to say that he had become the most popular man in the district.

  Yet, no one knew much about him. He talked freely of his garden, his farm, his work, his house, but he never chatted of his past, beyond his days on the T Bar Ranch, where the boss thought Providence had not furnished our earthly laborers with enough hours of daylight for their work. Beyond that, his life did not appear to be of sufficient interest to keep his attention. He preferred to listen, at any rate, and, of course, that is the greatest of all talents in the world. No matter how bent a visitor might be on extracting from Duval the story of his life, before long he found himself put off onto the tale of his own experiences, and who can resist the listener who seems to understand?

  No one, however, could persist with the questioning of Duval past a certain point. It was not that his exploit in the saloon with Charlie Nash had given him a formidable reputation, for he was always the soul of good nature and gentleness, but behind the good nature, there appeared that quality of secret strength that Moose Creek saw and appreciated, but could not define.

  His peculiarities of behavior were few, but they were pointed. He kept close to his work, rarely going out, except to Pete’s Place for an hour of an evening, now and then. He no longer came down to do shopping, because old Wilbur came by every day on his way to the stores. Whatever Duval needed was written down on a list, and this the old man carried from store to store, and brought back the needed articles in the evening. Neither did Duval ever go to the post office, for no mail ever arrived for him, a fact upon which the post-mistress commented at some length. Women, too, it was known that he despised. He could be lured out to visit a bachelor’s house if only men were there. He would take a hand in poker and hold it until the cock crowed. He would play the piano for the boys, and sing the songs in a deep baritone that, like his laughter, was more profound than one would have expected from his speaking voice. But if there were women included, he was gone at once. No female footfall passed inside the gate of Duval’s place, and no girl’s voice sounded within the door of his house.

  However, men do not object to a companion whose interest is not in the other sex. The peculiarities of Duval were to his honor. They increased his dignity and fortified his position in the community.

  It was not from Duval that they learned the first bit about his unknown past. It was from chance.

  In that chance, as in the first instance when he arrived in Moose Creek, there appeared Marian Lane, and Charlie Nash, and Pete’s Place. There also appeared a stranger.

  The latter had come into the Lane store. Most strangers who passed casually through the town generally did enter that store because of the freshness of the window, and the gleaming “city” brightness of the interior, the colorful rows of cans and glass jars, and, most of all, the flower-like face of Marian Lane in her fluffy dress of crisp petals, as it were. Men at a gallop of thirty miles an hour, as they passed that store for the first time, seemed able to look back into the remote shadows of the room and find the beauty of the storekeeper. They could not help reining up, then, and, turning back to enter, buy, stare, and buy some more. To attempt a little conversation, too, that generally froze as they faced the smile that strove to encourage them, but did not seem to understand.

  Now, on this evening, the stranger came into the store and, like Duval on the first occasion, he found the girl talking with tall Charlie Nash. His fine fury, of course, had died long ago, and he had come humbly back with apologies and regained as much of a place with her as he ever had attained.

  “Dear Charlie,” she said to him this evening, “why do you waste so much time on me?”

  “Because someday,” said Charlie Nash, “you’re gonna light up, and I want to be on hand to see the fire. Ain’t that a good reason?”

  This he said as the door opened, and the stranger came in. It was a very dark evening the sky being covered with low clouds that shut away the last light of the sun and made a lamp necessary in the store.

  The lamp hung by three chains from the ceiling, and Marian Lane, squinting a little beneath it, watched the tall stranger come in, with his shadow stretching like a flat, awkward giant behind him.

  “Gimme some canned tomatoes,” he said, “and make it pronto. I’m rushed.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Marian Lane. “For mulligan?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him with that bright, childish smile that no man could understand, and that no man could resist. He watched with new interest as her small hands took down the can he required. He watched the faint pucker of her smile as she looked from the smallness of the can to the bigness of the purchaser.

  “Yes,” he said. “Mulligan. The danged hotel is filled up! There ain’t any other place in the town where a white man can stay. But it ain’t the first time that I’ve made home in a jungle.”

  Charlie Nash stood up from his counter chair and regarded the new man carefully. One does not use rough language in the presence of a girl in the West — certainly not of a stranger.

  But this fellow was one who apparently made his own rules of conduct, wherever he went. His skin looked like brown leather, a little red-tinted over the bridge of the nose and across the cheek bones. He had a lipless mouth with a hook at one side of it, and eyes so filled with evil that they were unashamed of showing it.

  He stared at Marian Lane, and she smiled dauntlessly back at him. It was for this cause that Charlie Nash often accused her of preferring the obviously bad ones to the best lads of the range.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” she said. “We have a very hospitable fellow who lives just out of town. He might take you in.”

  “I don’t go battering doors for a bed,” said the other ungratefully. “A horse blanket, and a swiped chicken, and a can of tomatoes will make me a supper anywhere, and a bed after it.”

  “Oh, but you wouldn’t have to beg,” she informed him. “Mister Duval....”

  The other reached a gloved hand across the counter with no hurry, but with inescapable speed. It settled on her arm and held her as though he feared that she would escape.

  Charlie Nash doubled his fist and came cautiously nearer. He was famous for the strength of his punch, and he rarely had wanted more to use it than on this occasion. But down the right thigh of this traveler there was buckled a long holster out of the top of which blossomed the handle of a full-grown Colt .45. And Charlie was not carrying a gun. It was an act of penance to which Duval had persuaded him after the almost fatal incident in Pete’s Place. So Charlie hesitated.

  “Duval?” the fellow was saying. “You mean Duval?”

  “Do you know him?” Marian asked.

  “Know him
? Him with the pale face and the gray eyes?”

  “Ah, that’s the man,” she admitted. “You do know him?”

  “Do I know him?” he said, releasing her arm, almost flinging it from him. “I know he’s lower than a hound. I know he’s a sneak and a yellow skunk. I know enough to tell you about him. Where’s his house? Know him? Ain’t I been lookin’ and prayin’ for months that I’d meet up with him again? Where’s his house, I ask you?”

  “Stranger,” said Nash, “that there is a friend of mine. I don’t allow no....”

  He almost ran his nose into the end of a leveled gun. It appeared so suddenly that Charlie hardly had time to realize the seriousness of his position. Rolling his eyes in amazement, he saw Marian Lane exhibiting neither fear nor horror, but merely watching with a rather critical curiosity. That was for Charlie Nash almost as great a shock as the gun in his face.

  “Fill your hand and then talk to me about your friends!” snarled the big man.

  “I ain’t heeled,” declared Charlie, “or you wouldn’t have caught me cold.”

  “You lie,” the tall man said. “You’re a sneak and a liar like your friend, Duval, that murders and then sneaks away out of the trouble that he’s got comin’ to him. I know you, boy!”

  “Yonder,” Charlie said with quiet fierceness, as though he could keep his words from reaching the ear of the girl on the other side of the counter, “is the only good saloon in Moose Creek. It’s Pete’s Place. You go in there and tell Pete that I sent you. He’ll feed you the best in the place.”

  “And you?” asked the other, gradually lowering the gun, and finally dropping it into a holster.

  “I’ll pay the bill,” said Charlie Nash, “after I’ve gone home for my gun and come back and laid you out. I’ll pay for your drinks, and they’ll be the last that you’ll lap up around here, old son.”

  The other patted the butt of his Colt and nodded with an ugly smile that was almost approval. “I like to hear ’em talk up,” he declared. “How long will you be gone?”