by Max Brand
“Well?”
“That’s the money I got out of the lining of Lang’s coat. It’s going back to the gent that has the best right to it … old Vincent, who worked his heart out getting what I have here in my hand.”
“Great guns,” said Charlie Mark, “and I could have had it just by picking it up. How much is in it?”
“Twenty-one thousand nine hundred and eighty-five. I counted it pretty careful, but I didn’t think that the old man had as much as this.”
“Twenty-one thousand!” Charlie Mark whistled. “That’s a neat haul. You won’t have to work much for a few months, eh?”
“You don’t think I’ll send it back?”
Charlie Mark grinned sardonically, and Curry, eyeing him with pity and contempt, bestowed the package in an inner pocket and made no answer. That silence was more convincing to Charlie Mark than a thousand hours of talk. All at once he felt strangely inferior to the outlaw, and the sense of inferiority goaded him sharply.
“What’s up now?” he asked.
“You’ve messed things up for me now,” said Curry gloomily. “I’ve been pretty snug here, but, now that you’ve found the place out, I’ve got to leave.”
“You’re going to turn me loose, I suppose,” answered Charlie Mark. “You’re going to turn me loose in spite of what I said I was going to do to you?” But in spite of his sneer, he was white-lipped with fear and hope.
Jim Curry gave vent to a burst of uncontrollable disgust. “D’you think I can kill you out of hand? A minute ago, when I turned my back on you, I admit that I was sort of hoping that you’d tackle me, and then I’d’ve finished you … maybe. It was sure a temptation.” He sighed. “But that’s over. And now … but let’s get back to what you we’re talking about. D’you know, Mark, that, if you were to put on that red wig and ride that white horse, you could play my part about as well as I play it?”
“What of that?”
“Suppose I was to step out and let you step in?”
“You’re laughing at me!”
“Laughing at you? You fool, I’m simply seeing if you’d really throw yourself away.”
“Throw myself away?” Charlie Mark laughed comfortably. “Don’t worry about that, son. As soon as I had a fat wallet, I’d be away where you dig your gold with a pack of cards.”
The Red Devil snapped his fingers suddenly. “Gambler,” he muttered. “I should have guessed it. I’m losing my eyes. You’d take the place, then?”
“Try me!”
“And let me get out from under? You’d show yourself on the white horse somewhere in the next couple of days, so that I could show up a couple of hundred miles away and you’d be my alibi?”
“I’d be acting quick, once I got into your shoes. I wouldn’t let any grass grow under my feet, I can tell you.”
The outlaw rolled a cigarette and smoked it with huge, lung-filling, meditative puffs. “I guess you wouldn’t,” he muttered. “If I simply walk out, and nobody takes up the part, I’ll be nabbed. Too many folks have seen me … too many of ’em have heard me talk. But if somebody else was cavorting around on the white horse while I …” He stopped short, drawing a great breath. “Mark,” he said, “you can have the outfit, if you want it. Maybe I’m wrong for letting you throw yourself away, but I figure that you’re the kind that would do it sooner or later, anyhow.”
Charlie Mark shrugged his shoulder, studying the face of his companion with the most intense interest.
Then Curry stepped back and whistled softly, a sound that brought the white mare instantly from the depths of the darkness in the cave.
She was a most exquisite creature. Never in his life had Charlie Mark seen such a horse. She was not entirely white, but finished off with dark points on each foot and at the muzzle, and between her eyes, exactly in the center of the broad, intelligent forehead, there was a black splotch. This was that famous Meg, whose speed had never yet been matched in the mountains.
“Honey,” the tall outlaw was saying softly to the mare, “it sure goes hard for you and me to take a split trail, with you going one way, me going another way. But there ain’t anything else to do, I guess.” He turned suddenly upon Charlie Mark. “Friend,” he said, “if I was ever to hear about you mistreating this horse, they ain’t space enough in these here mountains for you to run away in.”
“D’you mean,” exclaimed Charlie Mark, “that you’re going to give me a flier at this game?”
“Yep,” said Curry gravely. “If you think it’s a game, I give you a chance at it, and you’re sure welcome.”
A great deal may pass in a short time through the mind of a man who is accustomed to make decisions concerning life and death in the space of time it takes him to draw his revolver out of its holster.
“Only one thing I ask of you,” Curry said after a moment of further consideration. “How are you with horseflesh?”
“My worst enemy has to admit that I deal kindly with them,” said Charlie Mark. “I suppose you worry about the mare. I’ll be good to her.”
“Will, you?” murmured the outlaw wistfully. “Honest? But if you ain’t, friend, and, if I get sight of it or word of it, I’ll come calling on you, and kill you, Mark, with no more on my soul than if I killed a mad dog. Her and me? Why, we’ve been through life and death together.”
X
It was hardly an hour later that Charlie Mark sat on the back of the white mare for the first time and jogged her out of the cave and onto the hillside. He had obeyed all the final instructions of Curry for placing the great stone across the entrance to the cave, a thing that was easily done by the use of some thick sticks by way of levers, and now he rode Meg across the hills and rejoiced in the manner of her going. For she was finer than anything he had ever bestrode. She had not the dazzling speed in a straightaway that characterizes the Thoroughbred. Charlie Mark had ridden clean-bred horses in plenty in the East. But Meg had an easy grace of movement such as he had never known. Soon he discovered that her gait was not only frictionless in seeming, but apparently untiring to her. Uphill and downhill she maintained the same steady pace.
It was not hard to discover that this was the road pace taught her by her last master. Charlie Mark marveled at this average speed. If she had not the dazzling foot for a single burst, she certainly more than made up for it by her endurance. What hunter could have kept up with her in a twenty-mile test across all manner of mountain land? She had the surety of a cat. She seemed to have eyes in her feet, reading the nature of the soil or rock beneath her, never so much as starting a pebble rolling when she careered down a steep mountainside. No wonder that the Red Devil had parted from his mare with bitterness of heart.
As for Charlie Mark, he finally drew rein on the crest of a hill that overlooked two towns in the plain below. Both were unknown to him, and both, from the place where he sat the saddle, were merely so many dots of light against the darkness. And yet those dots of light meant the dwellings of men, and where the dwellings of men were, were the fortunes of men, dollars and cents. Charlie Mark rubbed his hands and settled his hat more firmly on his head, for it was loose on the mass of hair in the red wig. Horse, wig, mask, he had taken the outfit of the Red Devil to himself entirely. It was almost like taking a guarantee against punishment for sin. Below him lay the world. Let him do what he chose; he could never be found out.
He touched Meg with his heel. She was away at once and down the slope, heading by her own choice for the village on the right. So be it. Hers was the volition, felt Charlie Mark, that was launching the avalanche of destruction on the heads below.
If he had been an old hand, he would never have dreamed of taking that course, or, indeed, any other that led to plunder so near the home cave. But Charlie Mark was in no mood to observe caution. He was on a horse that, according to the Red Devil and the passengers in the stagecoach, could not be overtaken by any animal in the mounta
ins. And, besides, before leaving the cave, Charlie had tried the revolver and found that his hand had by no means lost all of its old cunning. That skill, reinforced by the paralyzing effect of the reputation of the Red Devil, ought surely to make him invincible. And Charlie Mark threw back his head and broke into a song.
Stopping that song only when the lights grew large before him, he skirted down the back of the town and brought Meg to a halt and considered the work before him, while the mare turned her head in perfect silence, as if she understood that it would be fatal to betray their presence by any stir of foot or voice.
Charlie Mark studied the backs of the houses. They were dark and blank to him. What meaning, after all, had they? Was he not a fool to have come down here, without first laying out a map for the campaign of looting? For instance, where was the post office, and where in the post office was the safe? And, even if he knew where the safe was, where was his soup for blowing the door off the safe?
Reflection told him that he had been very foolish indeed to make this night excursion. But, in the meantime, it would do no harm to have a look into one or two of the lighted windows, which peered back at him through screening trees.
Dismounting, he left Meg standing and went off to investigate. The first window into which he glanced showed him a kitchen scene, with the woman of the house busily engaged in scouring pans. The second window exposed a child’s bedroom, with a freckle-faced youngster digging his knuckles into his forehead in the intensity of his efforts to get at the heart of the arithmetic problem for next day’s school. But the third window showed at least an early glimpse of promise. It gave to his view, as he slipped up onto the rear of the veranda and came to the window, a room filled with blue mist and curling wisps of smoke. In the center was a round table, and about the table sat five men in their shirt sleeves, in the very act of leaning forward to view the results of a call. The winner of the hand drew in a formidable stack of chips, and the loser, who had apparently bucked up the game very high, shoved a $20 bill at the banker for more chips. The latter opened to the curious and interested eye of Charlie Mark a drawer literally filled with a tangle and drift of greenbacks. He deposited the $20, drew out a little stack of chips, and closed the treasure again. Charlie Mark moistened his dry lips with his tongue.
Here was a haul of indefinite size. There might be $10,000 in that drawer, but probably there was not $1,000. Should he risk his life to take $1,000? Certainly not, if he had been in the East. But here in the West, armed with a name, a role, and a past that were worth ten armed men obeying his orders, he could afford to risk himself cheaply.
The open window was close to the porch and he had only to draw his gun, duck his head, and step in. At once he was in the bluish mist of smoke, covering the company with his Colt. And yet they were so intent on their game that not a head had turned.
For an instant a great impulse rose in him to sweep off his mask before he had been observed, shove his revolver back in the holster, and simply ask to sit in at the game. Before he could obey that last-minute impulse, however, an eye flashed up at him, there was a grunt of horror, and, without the necessity of speaking a single word, he suddenly found himself confronted by five tall men, each one with his quivering hands above his head.
Someone muttered, “The Red Devil.”
That whisper was exceedingly pleasant to Charlie Mark.
“Get back against the wall!” he commanded harshly.
Instantly they obeyed and faded back through the mist, until their shoulders came flat against the wall. Charlie Mark stepped to the table, jerked out the drawer, dumped the contents on the table, and then transferred them into his coat pocket, sweeping in the wrinkled bills, by sense of touch rather than sight, and noting all the time that terror froze the others, so that they dared not even express regret with a glance. Certainly the repute of the Red Devil was strong in Peterville.
While he backed toward the window, a feeling that was almost kindness arose in Charlie Mark. It had been all so easy, so ridiculously easy. The great marvel was that more men had not taken to this or a similar game. And then, as he continued his backward motion, it seemed to Charlie that a peculiar meaning came in the eyes that were staring at him. They seemed suddenly interested in something behind and beyond him, and a tense suspense drew their lips to straight lines.
Like a flash the meaning dawned in the mind of Charlie Mark. He did not pause to question. He whirled in his tracks and bolted not for the window behind him, but for the door just to one side of it. There was a roar of two guns from the window, and from the corner of his eye he saw the two men who had stolen up to the window from the outside on the veranda. From the other corner he saw the five men who he had held up jump into action and reach for guns.
He was through the door before he could see more. He whirled down a narrow hall and, turning to the right, dashed the door open into the very face of one of the two men who had come up on the veranda behind him. The impact knocked the fellow back, but Charlie Mark, frightened to the point of desperation, did not trust that shock. He fired point-blank, saw the man crumple like a wet rag, and then leaped across the veranda to the ground beyond.
A gun roared to his right so close that the flash leaped at him like the dart of a snake’s tongue. Charlie Mark whirled and shot almost carelessly before he was completely turned. The second man lurched sidewise and fell with a crash.
The house, at that moment, belched guns and men from every door and window, it seemed to the robber, and he sprinted desperately into the friendly darkness, with a rain of bullets following after him.
In another moment he was beside the mare. As he sprang into the saddle, a yell ran and echoed through the town of Peterville: “The Red Devil’s come! You can’t foller his hoss. Wait and get together! Wait and get together!”
A sudden courage came hot in throat of Charlie Mark. Behind him lay two dead men. The double murderer threw back his head and sent a ringing shout of defiance into the darkness. Then Meg bore him away, as on the wings of the wind.
XI
In the town of Hampton, old Henry Mark seated himself in the chair outside the post office, which was also the veranda of the general store, the social and business and political center both of the town and the entire county. On this veranda he settled down, rubbing his fingers through his long white beard, very much in the manner of a man so intensely interested in what he read that he was unaware of the fact that his daughter was waiting for him. She held a fretting team of horses that danced in front of the buckboard, although soothed by her quiet voice and checked by her deft manipulation of the reins.
She saw his white eyebrows go up, then draw together in a tremendous frown. Truly it must be strange news and bad news, and Ruth Mark sighed, for her father, in his times of petulance, could be a very trying man indeed for his family.
At length, when he had finished, he sat for some time with the letter gripped in both hands, his eyes staring far away, with such an expression of helpless grief that her heart went out to him strongly. Then he rose, and, whereas his step was usually brisk, and his carriage erect, he now went with bowed head and trailing feet.
“It’s Charlie,” murmured the girl, recognizing the symptoms. “News from nobody else could affect him in that manner.”
And she was not really surprised when he announced, as he came beside the rig, “It’s Charlie, Ruth. It’s Charlie, again.”
“What’s he done?”
Her father groaned as he answered, “He’s changed his mind about coming out.”
There was a faint exclamation of indignation from Ruth. She had never had any great patience with her adopted brother. For such was the position of Charlie in the Mark family. Henry Mark and his wife, vainly awaiting the birth of a child, had finally adopted a homeless child, only to have a daughter born to them five years later. Yet a child of their own could have been no more dear to them than was Charlie. And
especially was this true with the father. Ruth herself meant less to him than did the boy. And she, resenting this a little, had grown to detest Charlie for his utterly mercenary and heartless character. He showed sufficient affection to win a large quantity of spending money from Henry Mark, but there his love for his family ended, and, as for Ruth, she well knew that he hated and suspected her for the insight that had read through the meanness of his nature.
“But you told him, I thought,” exclaimed the girl, “that you wanted him definitely to help take charge on the ranch?”
“I told him all of that and a pile more, besides. He’s spending too much money out there in the East, Ruth. Not that I grudge him what he needs, but too much money for a young man is like too much candy for babies. They don’t grow healthy on it. And Charlie has to walk straight from now on.”
“Does he know that is what you intend?”
“He ought to guess it from the last letter I wrote to him.”
A storm of angry accusation rose to her lips, a storm that she held back as well as she could, knowing by old experience that it did not pay to speak against her adopted brother.
“He says he’s changed his mind,” went on her father. “He’s going to go up north and take a vacation.”
“What has he been doing ever since he went East except take a vacation?”
“You’re too hard on him, Ruth. He means well. I’m sure of that. But he has queer, flighty ways, that’s all. I guess he wants to take one more fling at being a free man, as he calls it, before he comes out and settles down on the ranch. Well, let him go, only it’s a bit hard on me.” Slowly he continued, “We’ll hitch up the team and sit down in the dining room for a while. I want to sort of get my wind after being hit by surprise this way.”
She assented with a nod and, letting the horses trot to the hitching rack, swung with agile ease out of the seat and down to the road, carrying two halters. With these she tethered the horses and turned back to her father. Arm in arm they went back toward the conglomerate store hotel, and she knew, by the manner in which her father walked, that, had she been a man, he would have leaned heavily on her for support. Indeed that was the great, the crying regret of her life—that she was not a man. She could ride and shoot and throw a rope as well as the next one. She could have taken the place of a cowpuncher and ridden range or herd with any man. But she was only a girl, and therefore was a thing that men would rather pet and pamper because of her pretty face than treat as an equal.