Daring Duval

by Max Brand

  Pete, without a word, served him with his foaming glass.

  But Jude turned on the old fellow like a snarling dog.

  “Tell Henry, too,” he said. “He knows enough already, but I reckon that even Henry don’t know about the girl and Duval, their spoonin’ in the woods together, their sneakin’, lyin’ way of livin’, and turnin’ their backs on each other when there’s another person in hearin’ of ’em! D’you know that, Henry?”

  He waited, but Henry, without turning, continued his attention to his beer.

  “And tell Duval,” went on Jude, “that once he hypnotized me, but, the next time, they ain’t gonna be time for him to get in his dirty work. I’m waitin’ for him to show his face!”

  With that, he left the saloon.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Having finished his beer, old Henry walked without hurry back up the hill and came to the house of Duval. He found the latter still making the rounds of the narrowing land, with the team at the harrow, and walked down to meet him. He waited until the team had turned the corner and then held up his hand.

  “What’s wrong, Henry?” asked Duval. “You look pleased, and that’s a sure sign that you’re full of bad news.”

  “Is it?” asked Henry.

  “It is! A shipwreck makes you feel years younger, and good, honest murder sets you up for a day. What is it, Henry?”

  “Why, a lot better than either of those. They say that you’re philanderin’ with Marian Lane, and her with you. The town won’t be talkin’ of nothin’ else by tomorrow, unless you put on the brakes and keep from rolling downhill.”

  “Who has told that?” Duval asked, unmoved.

  “Why, Larry Jude.”

  “Jude?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In Pete’s Place.”

  “And the boys stood around...all those excellent friends of mine, all those old cronies of Marian Lane...and listened to that talk?”

  “It don’t cost a thing to use your ears, sir.”

  “Pete, too?”

  “I think Pete tried to stop him, but couldn’t. Jude says that he wants to meet you again, but I think that was just to make the rest of the boys feel good and hopeful. He didn’t mean it. His eye wavered when he said it.”

  “What does it amount to?” asked Duval.

  “I stayed and gathered up a few seeds of the story after Jude left the place. Only that Jude had seen her in your arms, sir, out in the woods by the creek.”

  “Is that all? Is that enough to stand Moose Creek on its head?”

  “Her being what she is, you being what you are,” said Henry, “it’ll make considerable commotion, I should say. Better than a long shot winnin’ a stake race. A lot better than that.”

  “Take the team,” said Duval. “I’ll be busy for a while. Put up the horse and the mule, and then you’d better wander downtown again and listen to what is being said.”

  He himself went straight to the corral and saddled the mare.

  As he was, with the dust and the grime of the day’s work on him, he buckled a gun belt around his hips. swung into the saddle, and cantered Cherry down to the town.

  He went to the store, first of all, and as he dismounted, he saw two old women of Moose Creek go by. They turned as though he were a pestilence, and looked bitterly askance at him.

  Luckily, in the store itself there were no customers, only Marian Lane at work behind the counter, tidying up her place and refilling the flour bin. She greeted him with the pleasantest and most impersonal of smiles.

  “I came down,” he said, “to find out how everything goes along with you, Marian.”

  “Perfectly well,” she said.

  “Our friend Jude has been at Pete’s Place telling his little story, it seems.”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “You know about it already?”

  “Oh, bad news needs only one jump to go across Moose Creek.”

  “What’s so bad about it, Marian? What sort of a place is this if a girl’s painted black because she...er...?”

  “Kisses a man?”

  “Yes. It was hardly that, you know.”

  “No. We were interrupted. The secrecy...the woods...and the greatness of Duval, and his contempt for women. All those things helped to make it worth talking about.”

  “Did they?”

  “Naturally. Best of all, it shows that I’m a hypocrite.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “Yes, I think you do. You explained it pretty fully this afternoon, for me.”

  “I was feeling a bit edgy and said too much.”

  “You were simply feeling a bit frank, and said what you thought. I don’t bear any ill will.”

  “Will it make any difference to you?”

  “To me? Not much.”

  “But a little?”

  “Why, it will cut my business in half, make people talk behind my back, and make the boys sneer in my face. Aside from cheapening me, it doesn’t matter a great deal.”

  He drummed his fingers on the counter. She glanced behind her toward her uncompleted work, as though she were anxious to be back at it, but her smile never varied, nor the soft, wide blue of her eyes.

  “Marian, you’re really eating your heart out about this.”

  She looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling, abandoning her smile for the moment.

  “No, I don’t think I am. At least, I won’t for very long. I don’t really regret it very much.”

  “I’ve come to tell you that I’ll do anything you say.”

  “About what? About Jude and his story?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean that you’ll hunt him down and kill him? Is that why Cherry is standing in the street?”

  “Perhaps so.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be angry, David,” she said. “You’re keeping perfectly cool and cold. It really would be better if you swore a little to let off steam. As a matter of fact, you’re ready to kill now, and that’s why I like to watch you so closely. To see that the polite self-control is rubbed so thin, so transparent, that even a child would see enough of David to be frightened to death of him. Don’t do anything rash, David. Go over to the saloon and tell them that Jude is a puppy, if you wish. But don’t, don’t, use a gun to help out your words.”

  “Will you be serious?”

  “I am already.”

  “If you wish, Marian, we’ll announce an engagement. We’ll let them know that we’re going to be married.”

  “Married? Oh, then they’d be sure that we really had something important to conceal. Even as it is, I’ll have to take a few years to live this down.”

  “You don’t think it’s a good solution?”

  “Marian Lane, engaged to whom?”

  “To me, of course!”

  “To David Duval, or to David Castle? Or is it really David Smith, or David Jones?”

  “You still stick on that point?”

  “I’m afraid I do. I still want to know who is Duval.”

  He stepped back from the counter.

  “Oh, but you’ve done your duty,” said the girl. “You’ve done it beautifully, and I appreciate that.”

  He bowed to her, and went slowly out of the store.

  The wide street that wound through the village was as quiet as ever, except, just visible around the next curve, a little boy and a small dog playing in the dust, and squealing in voices that were almost identical.

  Duval looked up and down the way gloomily. The peace that had been here in Moose Creek like a gold mine for him had not disappeared. But he crossed the street to Pete’s Place and went in, to find only Tom Main and Pete himself present.

  The saloon was very dim in the dusk of the day, but Pete showed no inclination to
light his two big lamps. He was standing there, leaning against the bar opposite Tom Main, and the pair were talking together slowly, softly. By the guilty way they glanced up and then straightened, Duval could guess what had been the subject of their conversation.

  He felt also, and instantly, that there was very little use in trying words, so he merely leaned against the bar and took a small whiskey with the two. It was Tom Main who treated.

  “Jude has been down here with some ugly talk,” said Duval. “Is that correct?”

  Pete nodded uneasily.

  “I’m not angry, except for Marian Lane,” Duval said.

  “Sure,” Pete said, and bit his lip in anxiety.

  It was plain that he wanted to believe whatever Duval would say. It was also plain that he would have a hard time doing so.

  “If Jude comes along again,” Duval said, “I’d like to see him. My old man used to say there was no way to stop a grass fire except back-firing against it. If he should drop in, and you’d send me word, Pete, I’d take it mighty kindly.”

  “Why...sure,” Pete said. “I’d do that, only I reckon that Jude won’t be comin’ in again. He’s done his job.”

  Both he and Tom Main began to look up anxiously toward the ceiling, as though they hoped to find there some new topic for conversation. But in spite of all the seams and cracks that ran along the ceiling, they could not find words. Silence fell heavily over the old barroom, and finally Duval left.

  At the door he paused again, looking back toward the others, and they, anxiously, toward him.

  “Look here, boys,” he said, “because I was fool enough to try to kiss Marian Lane, and because my friend, Larry Jude, says I did kiss her, is there any reason why he’s to be believed above me? If there is, say so!”

  They both waved deprecatory hands.

  “There ain’t any reason in the world, Duval,” Main assured him. “Jude’s a skunk and he’s got it in for you. It’s my opinion that nobody’ll pay no attention to him.”

  But the words rang flat as a counterfeit coin, and Duval knew that he had lost this trick in the game as he went out onto the street again.

  Ordinarily, it would have been of no importance, for it was only a bit of gossip, and that of the lightest kind. Yet he knew that his position in Moose Creek was imperiled. His strength there had been the friendship of the men of the town and the community around it. That friendship was now endangered, and as he walked back up the hill, Duval made up his mind to leave Moose Creek and start for another region.

  Where he would go, he was unsure, and his uncertainty weighed heavily on his mind. Something had been subtracted from the world — some touch of spice and joy was gone from it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Jude left the saloon, he did not tarry. He knew that imminent danger was close at his heels, and, therefore, he went with rapidity straight for the place where he knew he would find Kinkaid. This was back among the hills at a small shanty, long deserted and staggering now to the ground. And he found Kinkaid seated inside on a sagging box, his back against the wall and his arms folded across his chest.

  There was no greeting between them. Each was equally distasteful to the other, and through the darkening of the day they looked gloomily at one another.

  “Duval is on the skids,” Jude began abruptly.

  “Duval?” growled the marshal, as though the name were new to him.

  “It works out like a card trick,” Jude said. He leaned against the side of the door, and as one who has done good work and can afford to relax, he rolled a cigarette, lighted it, inhaled deeply. “It was kind of hard to get at him. He had too many friends. It ain’t hard now.”

  “Go on!” Kinkaid said as gruffly as before.

  “They liked Duval. Most of those young gents liked something else a little better.”

  “What was that?”

  “Why, the grocery store girl...Marian Lane. She’s all they could see at one look.”

  “Jude,” the marshal said, “we’re working together on one job...Duval. Other folks don’t count. We’ll leave out the girl, for a beginning, I reckon.”

  “You can’t leave her out, because she’s in the town and in the game of Duval.”

  “She is? Talk straight and talk slow, Jude!”

  The latter shrugged his shoulders at the warning in the tone of Kinkaid. “Suppose,” went on Jude, “that a gent rolled into Moose Creek and mopped up all the attention of Marian Lane. Would the other young gents have much use for him? Would he be popular, I mean, around the town and along the range?”

  Kinkaid leaned forward, then settled back again. “Has Duval done that?” he asked briefly. But there was a change in his voice, and Jude grinned with a sour delight.

  “He couldn’t get past her baby face. He stopped and looked twice, and the second look was better than the first one.”

  The marshal said nothing. His silence was a sufficient reproof.

  “I trailed him, as I said I would. I watched him all day, and it wasn’t no easy job. He was harrowin’, but every time there was a stir of the bushes in the wind, he’d whirl around and have a look at it, and his gun is only a hundredth part of a second behind his look, if he means business.”

  “Go on,” the marshal said wearily. “Tell how brave you were, lying on the ground on your stomach and watching Duval. Want me to praise you for that, Jude?”

  Jude shrugged. “What you think ain’t of no importance to me, but if you ain’t watched that cat, you might take a few minutes off someday and have a look at him. He’s worthwhile.”

  “Thanks,” said Kinkaid. “I know enough about him.”

  “Enough to keep clear of him, eh?”

  Kinkaid stood up, but then controlled himself and sat down again, as though he realized that it was useless to express his mind to such a man as his present companion.

  “Go on, Jude,” he ordered calmly.

  “Anyway, I trailed him like his shadow, and in the afternoon I seen him meet Marian Lane in the woods.”

  The marshal briefly exclaimed. “Where?”

  “Along the creek. He went over and sat down on a stone. Pretty soon she came along and met him.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Talked...and walked along.”

  “When they met?”

  “Nothin’ but talk. I was too far away to get hold of that, mostly, and what I did hear was kind of hard to understand. But I found out one thing.”

  “Go on. You take a year to say nothing.”

  “You’ll think it’s something. The lingo that he slings around as if he was fresh off the range ain’t his nacheral lingo at all.”

  “What’s the proof of that?”

  “He talked like a book to the girl.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I don’t remember, except that no schoolteacher could’ve talked closer to a book.”

  “Good,” said the marshal slowly. “I thought that he...but I didn’t figure on this....”

  He controlled himself, but Jude went on: “You thought he was a crook. You hoped that he was a crook. But you didn’t guess how big a crook he was. Well, he’s that kind. Can use both sides of his tongue as fair as any man in the world. I listened to the talk as much as I could.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Up the creek a way, and then they turned around and they come back together.”

  “What’s there in that?”

  “When they quit each other, they didn’t go out onto the road. They said good bye under the trees, where the shadows was thick over ’em.”

  “Yes?” queried the marshal, with a rising emotion.

  “Duval, he steps up and holds out his arms, and she walked right into ’em as if they was home for her....”

  The marshal was suddenly erect, and, striding to Jude, he
gripped him by both arms, and forced him back into the open, where, by the last of the daylight, he could dimly read the face of the other.

  “Jude, if you’re lying to me,” he said, “I’ll have your hide off you for saddle leather!”

  “Leave go your hold of me!” Jude said in angry answer. “I’ll not be manhandled by no marshal, even if his name is Kinkaid! Leave go your hands from me, d’you hear?”

  The marshal obeyed, because already he was sure of the man’s truth in his recital.

  “I gotta mind...,” began Jude. But he controlled himself, as the marshal had done not long before. “I’m gonna try to keep pullin’ in double harness with you,” he declared, “but don’t you make the job too hard for me.”

  “I’m listening,” the marshal said, and waited again.

  “She steps into his arms, and he folds her up in ’em, like a storekeeper wrappin’ up a Christmas toy. He folds her up in ’em and leans over, and what does she do?”

  “Get done with this, will you?” demanded Kinkaid, his voice harsh with anger.

  “Aye, it don’t please you none, I can see,” said Jude, the expert in pain. “It don’t please you none, and it didn’t much more please me, neither. But I see when he leaned over her, that she willingly lifted up her face for him to kiss....”

  “By gravy!” burst out Kinkaid. “The sneaking, hypocritical, worthless woman!”

  Jude broke into a jeering laughter. “That puts the whip on the raw, I reckon,” he said. “That’ll make you pull a load uphill, eh? Well, I seen what it would do, and when I found out....”

  “What did you do?”

  “Went to Pete’s Place, because it was the same as goin’ to a newspaper. Went to Pete’s Place and I told ’em what I seen.”

  “You went back to Pete’s Place?” Kinkaid drew in his breath through his teeth with an audible whistle.

  “I went back there, where he made a cur out of me, where he busted me down almost to cryin’...where he kicked me out onto the street! I went back there, and I faced the boys in Pete’s. I told ’em what I’d seen.” His teeth clicked like a dog’s that has snapped up a choice morsel. “They took it hard,” Jude continued, “though most of ’em hung onto themselves better than you done. But they was all galled by it a little bit, I can tell you. It hurt. It hurt ’em bad.”