by Max Brand
“What’s the main lead, old-timer?”
“Come along with me. You ain’t the only one that’s got to hear it. The rest of the boys figure in pretty strong on it. Come along, low life, and get ready to listen in.”
Chapter Forty-Three
When they reached the rude lobby of the hotel below, they found that new arrivals had come in, for the tidings that a woman had arrived in Munson had gone far abroad.
“All right, old sons,” said Barclay darkly. “There is a considerable crowd here, but there ain’t enough. I am missing some faces that should hear the news that I’m gonna spill in a minute.”
“First, you poor old drunk,” said a gentle voice, “will you lemme know what right you got to let live, after bringin’ in your ma to a place like Munson?”
“If she is my mother, I am a pie-eyed pinto with no saddle on my back. You boys run out and collect in the rest of the bunch, because I feel that there is a speech coming over me. I got pains inside of me and words are sure to come forth. Go ramble and bring in the boys.”
Moved by these injunctions, they hastened out from the hotel to spread the story through the town that Barclay had arrived with a story worth the telling. So presently auditors began to troop into the hotel and after a time that lobby was packed from wall to wall and all eyes were fixed upon Barclay.
The latter sat with his head sadly bowed and one hand clasping a half-filled whiskey bottle with which, from time to time, he moistened his lips and raised his spirits.
At length Jack Lorrain said gravely: “It looks like most all of the boys is in. So when might you be uncorkin’ this here story that you got up your sleeve?”
Barclay looked darkly around him. “This here ain’t no joke,” he said. “This here is a sad day for me and it’s gonna be a sad day for the rest of Munson. I’m gonna start right in by telling you that the real name of the gent that you got in this here hotel, under guard, ain’t Furness at all. Back in his home town, the skunk is called Chester Ormonde Fountain.” He paused, rolling his gloomy eye and allowing this news to sink into the minds of his hearers. “Now that you got that idea put away in your head, I would like to have these here things percolate. That this here Fountain-Furness gent has come out here and that he has made a pile of money in . . . farming. That he has made so much money out here in farming that he couldn’t think of nothing to do. So he sat down and built himself a little fifteen-room house, so’s he could have a couple of decent rooms to live in, and so’s the prairie dogs and the tree squirrels would have some place to go when they was tired of Nature.” He paused and rubbed a languid hand across his brow.
There was a deadly silence in the room, but a great grin wrinkled every face.
“All right,” Barclay said. “But that ain’t all that I got to tell you. This here Chester Fountain-Furness was raised up plumb kind and gentle with a minister holding him by one hand and his ma holding him by the other. And this here Fountain, when he comes out West, he brung his gentle ways along with him.”
He made another pause and the grins intensified. And the eyes shone brighter. But there was not a sound from that audience.
“And when he come out here,” continued Barclay, “he decided that he would show folks in the rest of the world that there wasn’t no real need, at all, for all the rough ways that some people had in the West, and that most of the roughness was caused by liquor and such. And so he made up his mind that while he was here in Munson and the neighborhood, he would never pull a knife or a gun.”
The audience leaned forward in the same silence.
“And he never done it,” Barclay said.
The audience leaned back again. And a groan of delight rumbled in their throats.
“It’s funny, is it?” Barclay said harshly. “Well, gents, I am about to wipe that there grin off of your faces so hard that it won’t never come back again . . . and don’t you forget it. What I got to say next is that this here Fountain-Furness, he has been sending a pile of money back home to his folks, and he has been the single and sole support of his old mother.”
The smile, indeed, had disappeared. In its place appeared a look of bewilderment.
“No, friends, I got to have you know that I’m talking to you from the heart, and, if I tell you a lie, you call me what I am. But I want you gents to recollect that I am not joking. And I tell you that the old lady that I put into this here hotel tonight is the one that give me the news about Fountain-Furness. It was from her that I heard all the news.”
The gloom and the alarm in the face of Barclay was reflected, now, upon the faces of his auditors, and Jack Lorrain was heard to murmur faintly: “Old son, tell me the all of it mighty quick, will you? Tell me if this here old lady ain’t some relation of his?”
“Gentlemen,” Barclay said, “I can’t tell you a lie. She is a relation of his. She is a relation of this here gent that you got locked up here in the hotel, guarding him with gents and six-shooters. And she has come out here to live for a while in the fifteen-room house that Fountain-Furness built out there on his ranch out of the money that he made from farming.”
He waved a solemn hand. “Her and me sat at a window of the train and we strained our eyes through the dark tryin’ to make out the outlines of her son’s big house. And there was once that I thought I seen it. But the night was too dark, and I couldn’t quite be sure. So I persuaded her a lot that the best way would be for her to spend one night at the hotel and the next day just to drive out with me in my buckboard and make a call on Fountain-Furness.”
Lorrain said harshly: “Barclay, I don’t like to say it about no friend of mine, but it looks to me like you have been encouraging that old lady to think that she was gonna live in a fifteen-story house out here. Almost like that there house was really built of stone?”
“It was built of stone, mostly,” Barclay said gravely. “And it had marble fountains in the gardens, too.”
The audience groaned.
“And now,” Barclay claimed, “I aim to state that I have about finished up with my part of this here job.”
“Son,” said Lorrain, “you ain’t even started with the explanation of why in the devil you didn’t take part of the time that you was on the train with that there lady and tell her that she was wrong . . . and tell her that the reason you was on that train with her was because you was coming out here to try to help hang her son?”
There was a hoarse rumbling of assent.
“Well,” said Barclay, “I am willing to tell you the reason why I couldn’t very well talk too much to her about that. The reason, old-timers, was that I couldn’t very well tell her that this gent was the world’s greatest liar . . . him being her son.” Here, upon his grand point, he made a long pause and ran a sardonic eye over the little crowd, as one who would say: This is the poison. What can be done with it?
And there was a long-drawn groan from the crowd, a groan from the very bottom of its heart.
“I dunno,” Barclay went on, “how you gents may figure out these here things. I know that I came all the way from the East pretty much bent on finishing up with Furness for a dirty trick that he done to me a long time back. But I know that I’m not gonna bother with giving my testimony now. I’d rather that somebody else did the talking while that little old lady is sitting there in the courtroom listening.”
Amazement and sorrow sat on every face.
“Howsomever,” Barclay continued, “I guess that there won’t be much trouble as far along as that, for by the time tomorrow morning comes and you gents have pointed out to her that there never was a fifteen-room house around here that her son built, I guess it will finish her pretty quick. And when you let her know that the money she’s been living on has been stole from the poor suckers that live around these parts . . . I guess that won’t be any more worse than kicking her in the face . . . but you gents is like me . . . rough and willing to say the worst you can. Only . . . don’t ask me for no help. I aim to guess that they is enough able-bodied men
in this here room to rope and tie and cut the throat of one old lady, if need be, without my hand being called for. Gents, I say . . . so long.”
He slipped off the counter and wedged his way into the mass of men. But there was no further attention taken of what he had said by many of the crowd, who started eagerly for the doors. Then a loud roaring voice from the rear stopped them.
“You yaller-livered welchers and quitters! You ain’t men! You’re pigs! Would you turn away and leave a dirty mess on the hands of them that has to live in this here town?”
Shame, and the thunder of that voice made them turn around. It was Rendell, the storekeeper, who had checked their flight. And they turned back one by one, sullenly, sulkily.
“Yes,” Rendell said with a sneer, “you are brave enough to come in here and shoot up the guards that is taking care of that reptile, Furness. You are brave enough to handle him and to take him out and hang him up by the neck in a pretty gay lynching party. Don’t shake your heads and look at the other feller, because I know what was in your heads, and I’ve heard the talk that was going around. And I could name names, too, and darn my heart if I won’t repeat ’em, unless there are a lot of orders showed around here. You could hang this here Furness mighty slick and smooth and manly, but you ain’t got the common manliness to stand up to one little old woman. But I tell you that you’re gonna stay right here with me until we get an idea of how we’re gonna handle this here mess. And you’re all gonna help.” He paused and looked around for suggestions.
Lorrain said: “Boys, it looks to me like one of the best brains in the mountains is going to waste right here in this hotel. I mean Sammy Gregg . . . which by a manner of speaking, Sammy got us all into this mess, I guess.”
Here no less a person than big Cumnor spoke—Cumnor recuperated from all of his wounds. “Boys,” he said, “nobody has got more respect than I have for the brains of Sammy Gregg, but right now I sort of have an idea that he’s got worries of his own.” He said this with a gesture of his thumb over his shoulder toward the back room of the saloon where Anne Cosden was nursing old Durfee back to health and happiness. And by the sudden grin that spread over the faces of the men in the room, it was plain that they understood what Cumnor meant. “But,” went on Cumnor, “there is another that we could ask for a few suggestions, and that is Fountain-Furness himself.”
Chapter Forty-Four
This idea, as the saying goes, struck them all where they lived. Instantly the mutter of assent went around and in another moment Rendell and Cumnor had been selected to go and confer on the matter with Furness.
So they passed the guards and entered the chamber to find the big fellow stretched upon his bed, smoking a cigarette. He looked up from his ten-day-old newspaper and smiled at them. “Well, boys,” he said, “you look so solemn that I suppose you have come to lynch me?”
“And what have you got to say,” Cumnor said, “ag’in’ that?”
“I have nothing to say against it.”
“Furness, you’re a cool gent, and a sort of brave one, in your own rascally way. But will you be telling me, now, if there is any message that you would like to send to your folks . . . maybe in the part of the country that you come from when you left for the West?”
“Why, gentlemen,” said Furness, alias Fountain, “you are very kind, really. I think if I had known how extremely decent most of you fellows are, I would never have given you such a good cause for wanting me hung. But as the matter stands I can assure you that I have been forethoughted enough to prepare for that matter. In the hands of a certain lawyer there is now lying a letter, and, if he does not hear from me within a certain number of days, he simply communicates that letter to the people most concerned, and they know that I have made my exit from this vale of tears, so to speak. Now, if the necktie party is all arranged, I’ll be only too happy to walk out with you boys.”
“Fine and handsome,” Rendell said. “Well, Furness, all I say is that it is a shame that you wasn’t born honest. But I wonder as to why none of your folks ever come out here to visit you, seeing how well you’ve done.”
“Naturally not,” said Fountain, “when they don’t really know where . . .”
“Oh,” Cumnor interrupted, taking up the idea from the storekeeper, “they might have heard about a gent that made as much out of farming as you’ve done.”
“And built a fifteen-room house out of a part of the profits,” put in Rendell.
Fountain turned perfectly white with emotion as he started to his feet. “Friends,” he said, “will you tell me what this means?”
“She’s here,” said Rendell. “She’s here in this hotel.”
Fountain sank slowly back upon the bed. “I never thought there would be a way to hurt me like this,” he said at last. “But this is it. Are you going to bring her in here to see me like this?”
“What else d’you deserve?” Rendell asked in a terrible voice.
“Nothing,” Fountain admitted. “I deserve nothing. But for heaven’s sake, men, take me out and put a bullet through me. Don’t make me face her like this.”
Cumnor found it necessary to turn away. And the guard at the door assumed a sick look. Because it is not a pleasant thing to hear such a man as big Fountain beg, as he was begging then—with a drawn face and with tremulous voice.
So Rendell cut the torture short. “We’re not gonna do it, man,” he said. “Heaven knows that we ought to do anything that we can to make you suffer. But we ain’t got it in us. All we want out of you is to suggest a way out . . . so start thinking. She’s right here in the hotel, and in the morning she wants to be taken out to see your fifteen-room house that can be seen from the station.”
The outlaw thanked them with a single eloquent glance. Then he was lost in thought.
“The house was burned down,” he announced suddenly. “It caught fire a week ago . . .”
“But there would have to be a lot of ruins for a stone house . . .”
“The stonework was sold to the railroad to build a station farther down the line.”
“Even the marble fountains?”
The bandit smiled faintly and nodded.
“But there was your farm,” Rendell reminded. “What are we going to show her in the way of a farm? We can show her the place where the stacks burned down out on the edge of town and say that was where your house stood. But what are we going to do by way of a farm?”
Fountain buried his face in his hands, lost in thought, but it was Cumnor who had the next good idea.
“There is only one farm around these parts that deserves to go by the name. That is my place. This here house of yours was just your town house. And besides that, you had your ranch house up on the farm in the hills. My place has got to do for your place tomorrow when we show the old lady around.”
“Cumnor,” Fountain said, “you’re a gentleman. And I’d like to thank you.”
“Leave the thanks be. One time or another, all of us has some sort of an experience with a mother, I guess.”
Then the face of big Chester Furness became illumined. “I have it, boys,” he said. “Take me out in the woods, here, and put a bullet through my head. That will simply shorthand what the law would have done to me. Put a bullet through my head. And then let on to her that I had an accident, and that while I was shooting . . . you know what I mean. There is always an accident handy. People don’t seem to realize how really hard it is to turn a gun around in your hand and shoot yourself in the face with it, even if you want to do it. Tell her there was an accident. She’ll be happy and have a chance to take me back home and bury me. And the law will be satisfied . . . is that fair?”
“It sounds fair to me,” Rendell said to Cumnor. “What more could be asked out of him?”
“All right,” said Cumnor, “but at the trial a lot of things would be proved about the crooked things he did. And if they had a chance to get a confession out of him . . .”
“Boys,” Fountain said, “I’ll be glad to wr
ite out a full confession.”
“A true one?”
“Yes.”
“Then start now. There’s the ink and paper on that table. You got from now until sunrise to finish it off.”
With those words, Cumnor herded his companion out of the room and they went gravely down to the room below. Not a man had left it. All were waiting calmly there in expectation of the return of their committee.
“It is all decided,” Cumnor announced, looking steadily at them. “We got the suggestions from Furness himself. In the morning we’ll take the old lady out and show her the place where the stacks burned down a few weeks ago, and we’ll tell her that is the place where the fifteen-room house stood. Y’understand? Then we’ll drive her out to my farm in the hills and show her that, telling her that it belongs to her son . . . who is away on a trip. And when we come back to the town, we’ll get the sad news that her boy has been accidentally killed by his own hand while riding through the woods just outside of town. And then she’ll have, as Furness says, the pleasure of taking him back East and burying him.”
This recital was received with a slight stir.
Then Jack Lorrain asked gravely: “Did Furness himself suggest that we take him out in the woods and shoot him?”
“He did that,” Cumnor answered without comment.
“H-m-m,” said Lorrain. “I would say, speaking personal, that was sort of abrupt . . . on his own suggestion.”
But the rest of the crowd maintained the same stricken, depressed look that it had worn before. And in that humor they broke up and started for their bunks.
Some of them, wandering through the streets, met a small man skulking in from a ride through the country—a little man riding slumped in the saddle, with a hanging head. They looked sharply askance at him, and when they spoke, they heard a voice of one who had recently become very familiar to the men of Munson.
It was Sammy Gregg, who had taken his troubles off to the dark of the night, to commune with them in silence. He made no rejoinder to the hails that he received beyond a single terse word, and so he passed on down the street, a lonely form. And he entered the hotel and passed wearily by a big hulk of a man—Rendell.