by Max Brand
“Son,” Rendell said, “did you ever hear of the old proverb . . . Nothing ventured, nothing gained?”
Little Sammy Gregg turned around upon his heel. “Now what do you mean by that?” he barked out.
“I mean what I say,” Rendell said.
“But why should you say it to me?”
“Think it over, son, and you’ll see. You ain’t so darned mysterious as maybe you would like to think you are.” And with this, he hobbled out of the hotel and left Sammy standing, blinking, behind him, with his thin hands hanging helplessly at his sides.
And then, turning a bright crimson, Sammy hastened out of the hotel and rushed to the back of the saloon and tapped softly at the door that opened upon the room where the injured Durfee was still kept.
In answer to his tap, the door was opened at once, and tall Anne Cosden towered above him. The red in his face became more fiery still.
“Anne,” he whispered. “I just came to see . . . how . . . how Hobo Durfee might be this evening.”
Anne Cosden, who had seemed to stand there quite expectant a moment before, now sagged wearily against the side of the door. “Oh, he’s all right, I suppose,” she said. “I wish that somebody would ask how I felt once in a while.
“But, Anne . . . how do you feel!”
“Tired,” groaned Anne.
“I expect you are,” Sammy said.
“Tired of all the men in the world,” groaned Anne Cosden. “They’re all such fools.”
Sammy sighed before blurting out: “Anne, I love you! Will you marry me?”
“I’ve been an idiot,” Anne said. And then there was nothing more said just then. Sammy looked foolishly happy, and Anne was radiant.
Chapter Forty-Five
On the next morning, Cumnor and Rendell were the official guides. Jack Lorrain went along with the party. But the nice young man who had known dear Chester so well and who had traveled with Mrs. Fountain all the way from the East—he was not anywhere to be seen.
But the three chosen worthies were seen bundling the good old lady into a buckboard. And a hundred pairs of awe-stricken eyes watched her settle herself.
They heard her say: “You are all so kind to me. But I knew that it was sure to be this way. Chester has never gone any place without making himself loved by everyone.”
Then they drove away.
Afterward, they were seen by covert scouts who sneaked in the rear and made observations where the buckboard paused in front of the charred remains of the old straw stacks that had burned down recently on the edge of the town. They made their observations and they saw Rendell, walking with a limp that in nowise interfered with his eloquence, striding about the plot and making large gestures to indicate the handsome structure that had once stood there. But most of all he distinguished himself when he came to a small hollow in the ground.
“And here was one of the fountain pools,” big Rendell announced. “It was lined all around with marble that must’ve cost a mighty lot of money. And there was a bronze lion a-standing up.”
“A bronze lion!” Mrs. Fountain cried. “Why, how extravagant my dear boy has become!”
“Money don’t mean nothing to a gent like him that picks money right out of the ground, you might say. There was the bronze lion up there, lolling out its tongue and lolling water out, too, and the water it run down into the pool where there was a whole lot of goldfish swimming around, as sassy as ever you seen.”
“All destroyed by that frightful fire.” Mrs. Fountain sighed.
Then they went on out to see the farm, and the country house of Mr. Fountain.
They spent most of the day out there. Cumnor pointing out the possibilities of the farm until the eyes of the good old lady glistened.
“You seem to know almost as much about it as Chester could,” she said.
“I’m only his foreman,” said Cumnor. “But he says that I know enough to run the place while he’s away.”
And so, in the late afternoon, they started on the road back and were encountered, miles from town, by a dusty rider who communicated to them the terrible news.
“There has been a tragic accident.” the messenger said. “And Chester Ormonde Fountain has killed himself.”
Of course the poor old lady fainted, but when she came to and was told the whole story, she took it all bravely enough. Not that she was told what actually happened, for she will never know that her son deliberately took his own life to save her from a great misery. She believed that it was all an accident that he was killed in the manner that they had so minutely described to her.
But the truth of the matter was that Furness was not shot by the boys who took him out in the woods, according to his own suggestion, but that they gave him a gun and he brought about his own end.
Later, they found that Furness had left a number of checks that were drawn on different bank accounts that he had. By one of the checks he left $20,000 to old Durfee to take care of the poor old codger the rest of his life. And old Durfee said that the price was the money that he lost and a little over $12,000 more. He hired a Negro to work for him and went back to his shack in the hollow and started in making strawberry preserves. He said he never would have known how many friends he had if it all hadn’t happened, and so he’s pretty happy.
There was about $80,000 more that Furness left behind to go to pay back the bank the rest of the money that it had lost. All of which goes to show how much Furness appreciated what the men of Munson did for him in the end.
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of five hundred thirty ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways. Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles. Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His Website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.