Curry

by Max Brand

  He had wandered East, drifted halfway through several preparatory schools, which fitted him for nothing in particular, and finally, having gone into one business after another, he had abandoned the paths of toil and entered those of ease. In a word, he had become a gambler, a cardsharp of the first water, as he thought. And, indeed, with a little more practice, a little more dexterity gained through patience, he might have made himself into an eminent cheat. Industry, however, was by no means a part of young Mark’s natural endowment, and he saw no need of cultivating it. His father, in the West, would come to his aid when he was pinched. But that father had been worn out by the long succession of appeals for aid, and finally he balked at the most embarrassing moment possible for Charlie. There had been a game of infinite possibilities. Charlie was among youngsters who were blessed with more money than they knew how to spend and a seeming desire that Charles Mark should show them how to get rid of it.

  Nothing stood in his way but time. They were willing to play high, but they did not wish to play long, and Charlie, working with desperate energy to reap the golden harvest, made one ruinous step, misread a card that he himself had distinctly daubed, and, while holding a full house himself, had called what he believed to be a bluff flush in the hand of a young millionaire. Unfortunately the flush proved to be as good as gold and Charles was thoroughly trimmed.

  This undeserved blow smashed his financial position to small bits. He sent a volley of telegrams to the old man and received in return a curt message that the bottom of the gold mine had been reached. Before he got more money, Charles would have to come home and work for it. Driven by the desperate predicament in which he found himself, Charlie obeyed, and he was even now in the last stage of the journey. But so grim was the reception that he knew would await him when he confessed that he needed the money to pay a gambling debt, that, slow though the horses trudged, they went as fast as a bird to the mind of Charlie Mark. Yet he must go on. Those debts must be met. They were contracted in a circle where, if he were once exposed, he could never raise his head again among those who played for high stakes in the games of gentlemen.

  A dozen times he had turned this horrible predicament back and forward in his mind. $20,000 would save him, and $20,000 to Charlie Mark seemed a small thing. But, if he asked his father for that sum, there would be a howl that would split the heavens. And how could he explain to the old-fashioned man that he was on the verge of a gold mine that was better than a gold mine in the hills? The $20,000 was simply the can opener with which he could help himself to a big fortune. Certainly after this experience he would never again make a mistake with his daubs.

  So bitter was the struggle that was going on inside his mind that he barely heard the words of the tall man who had climbed onto the driver’s seat. He asked negligently, “Who’s the Red Devil?”

  The stage driver looked at the tall man, and the tall man looked at the stage driver. Obviously they were incredulous. It did not seem possible that they could have the good luck to find one who had not heard the stories of the Red Devil.

  “The Red Devil,” said the driver at length, “is the real article of outlaw, gunfighter, murderer, and …”

  “Oh,” exclaimed one of the teachers, “are you sure about him being a murderer?”

  “Am I sure my name’s Jake Trowbridge?” asked the driver, angered by the interruption. “Who killed the Twombly boys, all three of ’em? Who killed Jud Perkins? Who waited all night in the house of Judge Ross and shot his head off when he came home? Who done them things and a hundred more like ’em?”

  “I don’t know,” said the girl who had first spoken. “I don’t think that anyone knows. Those dead men were found, and no one knew who the murderer was. They laid the crime to the Red Devil. For my part, I think …”

  “Trouble with you young folks is that you think too much!” exclaimed the angered Mr. Trowbridge. “Or else you think you think. You know more’n growed-up men, you do … about things that womenfolks ain’t supposed to know nothing about. Who else killed ’em, and a pile more besides them, if the Red Devil didn’t?

  “I know, said the girl’s companion, flushing with the warmth of her emotion, “that when Christmas came down at …”

  “Oh, say,” exclaimed the driver, “I’m sure plumb tired of them stories about the Red Devil and what he does for the poor! A gent would think that he took to robbing like a sort of saint. That it? He’s too good to live like other folks and work for his money. He takes the coin away from other gents and gives it to them that need it. That what you was going to say?”

  “Exactly,” said the girl, flushing because she knew that her position was absurd, but, with feminine obstinacy, ready to grit her teeth and stick to the first thing she had maintained. “Isn’t it true that the only people he ever robs are miners who have dug their money out of claims they jumped, or ranchers who got their start by rustling cows, or sharpers who win at cards through crooked tricks?”

  At the last item in the catalog it seemed to Charlie Mark, who was a trifle sensitive on the subject, that the tall man on the driver’s seat started a little and made an involuntary motion toward the inner pocket of his coat. He recovered himself at once, however, and swiftly scanned the faces below him to see if his confusion had been noted. But Charlie Mark was sufficiently adept in the game of chance to make his face a blank and stare blandly up at the driver.

  “Maybe that’s partly true,” Jake was confessing. “Leastwise I’ve heard considerable about it. But I put it down for a yarn that ain’t got no bottom to it. Lemme see a hold-up gent, a safe blower, a stage robber like the Red Devil that’ll turn down any kind of money once he has a chance to put his hands on it.”

  “Just because he has never been in this exact part of the country,” said the girl, “you can say that, and no one will be able to dispute you, but …”

  “Bah!” replied Jake, putting an end to a conversation in which he was not maintaining the upper hand. The long lash of his whip curled over the backs of his team while he released the brake with a slam.

  The well-trained team leaned with a single impulse into the collar, took the back roll of the heavy wagon, and then sent it lurching up the grade, with a smooth and even effort.

  During the conversation the old rancher had seemed to sleep. But now he opened his eyes slightly and regarded the two girls, who were murmuring indignantly together, with a tolerant and kindly smile.

  “Them are the kind,” he remarked suddenly, “that make the world go ’round.”

  Charlie Mark gazed in lazy tolerance at the girls, who flushed furiously under this encomium.

  “Maybe,” said Charlie, “you’re right.” And he yawned.

  V

  The yawn caused the old rancher to bring his toothless jaws together with such force and suddenness that, had the teeth been present, they would have clicked together with ominous loudness. Little points of light gleamed in his eyes, and for a long moment he stared steadily into the face of Charlie Mark without saying a word. Then, very much in the manner of one who feels that further words are useless, he closed his wrinkled old eyelids and slept or seemed to sleep. Still, perhaps, thoughts were running dreamily through his brain, and it was a comfortable thing for Charlie Mark that he could not read the mind of his traveling companion.

  “Anyways,” the tall man on the driver’s seat was saying to Jake, “he can’t really be up here. It was only a couple of days ago that he was down to Chalmerston, and that must be nigh onto two hundred miles away from here.”

  “That was exactly four days ago come tonight,” said the stage driver firmly. “I’d ought to know because I got a brother down there, and he wrote to me all about what the Red Devil done.”

  “Well,” persisted the tall man, “who could make two hundred miles in four days through these mountains, on roads like this? Can you tell me that?”

  “Sure I can tell you that. The Red
Devil is his name.”

  “Eh?”

  “You asked me a question, and I told you. The Red Devil on his white hoss, Meg, can sure travel as fast as that.”

  “He can, eh?”

  “Sure he can. That Meg hoss is as fast as the wind, and they ain’t no wear out to her.”

  “Then,” said the tall man in a sudden fury of exasperation, “why don’t you get your team along the road? Want ’em to rest between steps?”

  The driver regarded his companion with dull eyes, and then looked carefully over the tall wheel before he answered. “These hosses will go just as fast as is good for ’em and not faster.”

  “Your company ain’t got a right to advertise certain times, and then not make ’em. You’d get fired pronto, Jake, if they knew the way you just lazied along the road.”

  “Maybe I would,” said the other, “but you ain’t the company, and you can’t fire me. You lay onto that, and don’t forget it. In the meantime, these hosses ain’t going to be killed to get you safe into town, you and your …”

  The suddenly raised forefinger of the tall man cut this last part of the sentence into a mutter that cannot be divided into intelligible words. But the unspoken words seemed to contain a threat that effectually reduced the tall man to silence, and, although he frequently stirred uneasily in his place and many times glanced up into the darkening sky of the evening, he did not again venture on an audible protest.

  They should have reached the end of this stage of the journey by sundown, but, as a matter of fact, it was between sunset and dusk before they sighted the little village in the distance. At this time they were swaying through a tall-sided gulch, where the road turned over the shoulder of the mountain. It was a short cut, seldom used even by such a skillful driver as Jake, for the trees jutted far out from the banks of the little gorge, and falling limbs, from time to time, were apt to block the way when the wild storms came over the mountaintop.

  “Now,” said Jake over his shoulder, glancing back to his passengers, as he whirled the whip, “we’re going to go down this here mountainside a pile faster than we’ve traveled any other part of this trip.”

  He followed this with a whoop, and the stage lurched forward at a dizzy pace, while the brakes suddenly jumped into place and made sure, with much screeching of leather pads against the iron tires, that the burden of the stage would not roll down and overmaster the horses. In this manner they swung over the crest of the shoulder of the mountain and were shooting at high and increasing speed under an overhanging scrub oak, when a man’s body dropped out of the branches and, with the agility and surety of a panther, landed in the driver’s seat.

  He had so calculated his fall that his knees struck the shoulders of the tall man and sent him catapulting into the body of the stage, while the newcomer himself retained his balance most precariously and was barely in time to shove a revolver against the throat of Jake, as the latter veteran made a valiant effort to reach his gun. A second revolver was directed into the coach, where the tall man of the gay attire lay gasping and groaning from his fall, and the two girls were moaning their terror. Only the old rancher and Charlie Mark were fairly unperturbed. The former sat quietly erect, with his patient eyes directed calmly into the distance, paying no heed to the armed intruder who had so suddenly plunged down on them and taken control. As for Charlie Mark, there was no fear in his nature.

  “He just nacherally lives on excitement,” his father had always said, “and he’s got to have his share of it, or shrivel up and die like a flower without water. That’s the kind Charlie is.”

  He sat erect now, his eyes bright with happiness, and finally he looked down at the writhing tall man and laughed aloud. “Get up, you fool,” he said. “You aren’t killed.”

  The stage in the meantime had been brought to a halt at the command of the newcomer, and Charlie Mark for the first time had a chance to scrutinize him carefully. There was no doubt about his identity. His face was covered entirely by a black mask, but neither mask nor hat entirely covered the flaming red hair that thrust out here and there. This, of course, was the Red Devil, about whom their conversation of that afternoon had so opportunely turned.

  As far as could be made out by his voice and by his carriage and build, he was a young man, not much older than Charlie Mark himself. He had sprung down from the driver’s seat to the ground, as soon as the vehicle was halted, and from this position he addressed the members of the company and ordered all weapons to be thrown down to him at once. The command was obeyed by the driver, who promptly threw down two huge, old-style Colts, and by the tall man, who cast down the revolver that was hanging at his right thigh.

  But the Red Devil was not satisfied. “Look here, Lang,” he said, “you can’t fool me. I want that other gat. Do I get it?”

  “What other gat?” asked the tall man, who the Red Devil knew as Lang. “I ain’t got another gun.”

  The robber shrugged his shoulders. He stood so negligently graceful, resting his weight more on the right leg than on the left, that, had it not been for the long pair of guns in his hands, he would have seemed a casual gossip, exchanging news by the way. The guns, however, gave him significance.

  “I ain’t got time to talk,” he said. “Shell out, Lang.”

  “How can I shell out when I ain’t got a gun?” demanded the tall man.

  “You dog!” exclaimed the other with sudden heat. “Why I waste so much time on you … why I don’t turn you into buzzard meat right off, I dunno. Throw that gun out, or I’ll turn you into a sieve!”

  “All right,” said Lang. “I see you got pretty sharp eyes, partner. Here you are.”

  As he spoke, he produced another weapon from his clothes and made as if to toss it to the ground. The gesture, however, terminated in bringing the little automatic whirling around in his fingertips, and fire spurted from the muzzle. It was a neat shot, swiftly executed, and Charlie Mark saw the sombrero jerk up and then down on the head of the bandit. From the latter’s bigger gun, drowning with its report the screaming of the two girls, came a bullet that caused the gun to drop from the right hand of the tall man, and he bowed over, cursing with pain. The little automatic clattered to the ground.

  “You’re lucky, and I’m lucky,” said the Red Devil. “You’re lucky that I ain’t going to kill you for a treacherous hound, Lang, and I’m lucky that snap shot didn’t tear the top of my hat off. I guess I won’t need to put any air holes in this here sombrero, eh?”

  He changed his cold tone. “Ladies,” he said, “will you fix up Lang’s arm? He ain’t going to die. He’s just got a clip through the upper arm, about a couple of inches above the elbow. Be as well as ever he was in a couple of weeks. Can you turn a bandage around it for me? Thanks. You got nothing to be afraid of.”

  They obediently stripped the coat from Lang, while the Red Devil turned some of his attention to the old rancher.

  “Well, pop,” he said, “here you are again. Seems like you and me are bound to keep meeting up, eh? You still got that old gat of yours?”

  “Sure I got it, son,” said the rancher. “I got it stowed away where it’ll stay put, less’n you start bothering me, boy.”

  “I ain’t going to bother you, pop,” said the outlaw. “Not a bit. You got about eight thousand on your hip, I happen to know, along with that gun, but you’d give me eight-thousand-dollars’ worth of trouble before I got through with you, if I took it.”

  At the mention of this large sum the eyes of the rancher suddenly widened and as suddenly contracted. But at length, breathing hard, he nodded.

  “I guess you know the facts, son,” he said. “All I got to say is that it ain’t fear that keeps you from taking it, but because you know it’s honest money, lad. Well, the time may come …”

  “Sure it may,” said the outlaw, interrupting good-naturedly. “And when it does come, I’ll drop around and let you know what yo
u can do to help me. Will you throw me that coat of Lang’s, ladies?”

  They obeyed, tossing the coat so that it fell at the feet of the outlaw. He kicked it into the air with the toe of his boot and caught it in his left hand.

  Lang in the meantime raised a shrill complaint. “There’ll be two families starving this winter if you take what’s in there,” he declared. “That represents the money I got by slaving and …”

  “You yaller hound,” said the outlaw through his set teeth. “I got a mind to tell these folks how you come by that money, and, if you yap again, I will.”

  The threat caused the mouth of the miserable Lang to close, as if the jaws were glued. Trembling with sorrow and anxious care, like a wet dog in a cold wind, he watched the outlaw toss the coat over his arm.

  “I got some attention to pay to the lining,” explained the Red Devil. “You’ll have to ride cold the next stage of your trip, Lang. I want the other ten thousand.”

  So saying, he stepped back and whistled. The answer was most surprising. Down the precipitous slope of the gulch, like a mountain sheep, came a white horse, a dazzling vision in the dimness. It paused at the side of the Red Devil, and the latter, vaulting into the saddle, turned to flee.

  VI

  “Shoot!” cried Lang, turning eagerly to the rancher. “If you got a gun, let’s see you use it. Shoot and shoot to kill. That’s the Red Devil! Twenty thousand to you, if you get him … dead or alive. That’s the reward they’ve offered.”