Curry

by Max Brand

  II

  The sheriff was not above doing duty as keeper also in the Hampton jail. It cut down expenses when there was no one inside the bars, which happened 50 percent of the time, and, when a prisoner was lodged there, anyone could be entrusted with the task of guarding him. The up-to-date steel and concrete of the Hampton jail was its own best security. Now Sheriff Nance went with the jingling keys and unlocked the door of the only cell that was occupied. He gestured to a tall, gaunt man sitting disconsolately on a cot with his skinny arms wrapped about his skinnier knees.

  “Well,” asked the prisoner without looking up, “ain’t you going to get out and leave me be, if I can’t get no justice done in this town?”

  “Stand up,” said the sheriff, by whose voice it might be guessed that he was not on the best of terms with the tall man. “Come on out here. I’m through with you.”

  “I sure wish you was, son.”

  “I am, Lang. Come on out. We’re all through with you. That fool out at Henry Mark’s place ain’t going to prosecute you none, and I ain’t going to bother hounding you for a while for breaking the peace. Crimes like that … I mostly don’t bother none with. Anyway, he’s turning you loose, and you can thank your lucky stars for it. I rode out to see him yesterday. ‘Jim,’ says I, ‘what you going to do? When you going to lay the charge, now that you’re all healed up? I can’t hold him no more for vagrancy.’

  “‘Let him go,’ says Jim to me. ‘Let him just go. Him being in jail ain’t going to put no fat on my ribs, I guess.’”

  “He’s afraid that, if I hang around these parts, in jail or out, the truth will get circulated about him,” asserted Lang. “That’s what’s biting him.”

  The sheriff laughed scornfully, but so great was his indignation that the scorn presently changed to anger and the laughter to a growl.

  “You still keeping up that fool talk about Jim being the Red Devil?” he asked.

  “I’m sure doing it,” persisted Lang through his teeth.

  “That’s the most out-beatingest fool talk I ever heard,” said the sheriff. “Don’t you know that the Red Devil has been hoofing it around promiscuous and worse’n ever since you was locked up and this Jim gent lying flat on his back?”

  “I dunno nothing about that,” declared Lang, shaking his bullet head with irritating firmness of purpose. “All I know is that the voice and the eyes behind the gun that held up the stage the other day was the voice and the eyes of this gent that calls himself plain Jim. By the way, ain’t nobody curious to find out what his other name might be?”

  “Better men than you or me,” said the sheriff solemnly, “have gone about and lived plumb comfortable in this part of the country, and done it all packing around only one name with ’em. I guess this Jim can do the same. They say that the Mark family likes him fine.”

  “He’s turned the girl’s head,” said Lang, scowling. “The skunk is handsome enough to do that, and I ain’t denying it.”

  The sheriff exploded. “You’ve said about enough,” he declared. “Here’s a gent that you say you seen behind a mask. He ain’t got red hair, and yet you say that, with different hair and in spite of the mask, you recognize him by his voice and his eyes. Well, Lang, that can’t be done. And I tell you what I and all the rest of the folks in this neck of the woods think … they think that you’re lucky not to be sent up by Jim for what you done … shooting him down without giving him … no chance to make a play. Why, even a snake wouldn’t act that way.”

  Lang made no audible protest against this outburst of abuse, but his upper lip writhed silently back from long, dog-sharp teeth, and his eyes glinted at the sheriff from the corner of the sockets. Truly it was an evil look, and the sheriff felt a chill chase up and down his spine.

  “You go your way, and I’ll go my way,” said Lang. “But the time’s going to come, and you mark my word for it, when I’ll prove that it was this gent you call Jim that held up the stage and got my twenty-one thousand dollars, and then come straight on into Hampton and trusted that he wouldn’t be recognized because of his mask.”

  “And how come the Red Devil still to be riding around the country killing gents and taking their coin?” said the sheriff, forcing himself to be calm of voice.

  “I dunno,” muttered Lang, bending his head while his face darkened with thought. “Maybe they was always two of ’em, and the taking of one wouldn’t stop the other.”

  “Two with red hair … two white Megs for ’em to ride on?”

  This piling up of the impossibilities made Lang shake his head and desist from argument. “Keep right on your own way,” he said gloomily. “You’ll sure cuss yourself for it someday. You’ll sure cuss yourself.”

  The sheriff had led the way into his office in the front of the jail. Now he strode to the wall and jerked down a small, framed photograph, three inches by four. He thrust it into the hand of Lang.

  “Take this along with you,” he said fiercely. “When you first got to talking with me, I went out to the Mark place with my Kodak, and I took a snapshot of Jim and brought it back and developed it and hung it up here. And ever since then I’ve been asking gents if they ever heard of him or anything bad about him. And not one of them can say that they have. Now you take the picture, son, and go along and see how many bad things they’ll say about Jim.”

  “And didn’t it strike you queer,” muttered Lang, “that none of the gents you talked to had ever seen him? Where’d he come from, then? Did he drop down out of the clouds?”

  This phase of the matter had apparently not come to the attention of the worthy sheriff. Now he stared uneasily at Lang for a moment, and even seemed on the verge of asking that the photograph be restored to him for further official inquiry about the original. But Lang, feeling that he had turned the tide of the conversation and planted a strong doubt in the mind of the sheriff, turned on his heel and left the jail before another word could be spoken to him.

  He turned down the street to the hotel, and there he took a chair on the veranda, tilted it back against the wall of the building, and cast a casual observation over those who were coming in and filing out. He was amazed to find that he had no real resentment against the sheriff and the other people of the town for his long confinement. His brain was wholly occupied with the problem of how he could prove the guilt of the man he had shot down under suspicion of being the terrible Red Devil who had taken over $21,000 from him. It mattered not that that large sum of money had been obtained by Lang by criminal methods. It had once been his. He had been robbed of it and shot through the arm when he resisted robbery. And his whole soul rose into a rage when he remembered.

  At least his actions in the town of Hampton had not gained him any very great popularity among the townsfolk. They came by him one after another without so much as a nod. A blank, cold stare was the utmost attention he drew, and he made up his mind that the practice of shooting men on sight and suspicion of unproved identity was by no means approved of. However, if they had been able to look into his past, they would have found more than this to frown at, and Lang let them go with a shrug of the shoulders. Their approval meant nothing in his young life.

  He drew out the picture of Jim eventually, and fell into a brown study over the lean, handsome features, the rather overbright eyes, the stern line of the mouth. So great was his preoccupation that he did not notice a stranger who sat down by his side until the latter uttered an exclamation.

  “Partner, can I have a look at that?”

  Lang jerked up his head and found beside him a squat-shouldered, gray-headed man who was staring at the picture in intense interest.

  “Help yourself,” answered Lang. “Look as long as you like. Know the gent?”

  The other took the photograph eagerly and turned it so that the light fell from differing angles upon it.

  “Know him?” he said at last. “I dunno, partner. Time changes a gent.
And they’s some folks that can hardly be told from others, even when they’re standing shoulder to shoulder. But …”

  “Well …?” urged Lang.

  “Well, sir, why are you interested in that picture?”

  Lang found two gray, steady eyes peering into his own. He hesitated, and then decided on frankness. “That’s a gent,” he said, “that I think has got a past that is as black as the ace of spades. I’m just packing his picture around trying to find out something about him.”

  “Hmm,” answered the stranger, melted into telling what he knew by this giving of a confidence. “Then I can tell you what I remember. Down south about six years ago we had a mix-up in my town with a family named Curry. It was kind of a hard thing for us, and it was sure a bad thing for the Curry family. Happened this way. Old Jim Curry was a shiftless sort. No harm in him, we thought, except that he liked fighting on general principles, and such as that ain’t particular comfortable ones to have around in a town.

  “One day we got word, sudden, that he’d murdered Dad Jackson, an old-timer everybody was pretty fond of, and then he had cleaned up the sheriff when the sheriff tried to put him in jail. Well, we had a posse on the road in fifteen minutes, found Jackson’s dead body in ten minutes more, and wound up at the shack where Jim Curry and his son by the same name lived. We tried to get in. They wouldn’t let us. We was masked, you see, and meant business … and the end of it was we forgot that the boy hadn’t done nothing wrong, opened fire on the shack, and killed Jim Curry … as we found out later. Young Jim broke out, got to one of our hosses, and rode off … but he turned in the saddle and shot down a couple of gents.

  “He got plumb away. But he figured that he’d killed two men, I guess, and he rode to beat fire through the mountains, stealing a new hoss when he tired out the one he was riding. Well, after he’d disappeared, we figured he was a killer and a hoss thief, but it turned out that both the gents that he dropped lived. And as for the hosses, the Curry place had enough stock on it to pay all claims, and more besides. But Jim Curry ain’t never showed up down yonder. I guess he figures that he’s wanted. And, at that, he is. The whole Ridgeley family would be after him because he broke Chet’s leg, and Chet ain’t been able to sit in a saddle since.” Here the stranger paused.

  “But it sounds to me,” said Lang, “that a pile more was done ag’in’ young Curry than he done ag’in’ others.”

  “Maybe,” agreed the other. “But I figure that the family was no good. His father was shiftless before him, and he was starting out the same way, concentrating mostly on gunplay. You know? And this picture sure looks like a ringer for Jim Curry … the way he might look right today.”

  Lang sighed with pleasure as he put up the photograph. “Are you working around these parts?” he asked.

  “Out to the Clark outfit.”

  “Good,” murmured Lang. “That’s handy. And suppose you don’t say nothing about Jim Curry being in town.”

  “Sure I won’t,” answered the stranger, “because I ain’t sure. I’d know if I seen his face … that’s all.

  “Maybe you’ll see it one of these days,” said Lang. “But not yet. I need more proof … a pile more proof. But I think, partner, that Jim Curry … if that’s his name … is going to wish that you and me had never met up.”

  Lang rose from his chair and passed thoughtfully down the steps. In his heart there was something akin to a savage song of triumph. He had won in his first step, he felt. Other victories would follow, for by instinct he was certain—utterly certain—that the man at the Mark place was Jim Curry, and that Jim Curry was the Red Devil.

  III

  It was only by chance that Jim and Little Billy saw him. They had walked farther than Jim intended, seeing that this was the first extended exercise he had taken since his wound had been received. And as a result the muscles of the left leg, which had received the bullet, had grown weak and lame, and he had come haltingly toward the Mark house with his left hand bearing heavily down on the shoulder of Little Billy. Little Billy winced more than once under the pressure, but he never complained verbally; he was weak with weariness as they came up the last rise and saw the house through the trees.

  Under the shadow of those trees he halted abruptly, so abruptly that Jim nearly stumbled forward on his hands and knees.

  “What’s that yonder?” whispered Little Billy.

  And he pointed straight up the side of the house and at the window of what had been the room of Charlie Mark, although it was now converted for the use of Jim. There, framed dimly in the window, was what appeared to be the form of a man, although very faintly sketched against the deeper blackness of the interior of the room by the hazy light of a thin young moon.

  “Well?” asked Jim.

  “D’you see him?” breathed the boy.

  “No. I thought I did a minute ago, though.”

  “He’s just stepped back into the room, and that’s why you can’t see him,” asserted the boy.

  “It’s Henry Mark,” suggested Jim. “He’s been grieving a pile about Charlie, eh? Maybe he’s up there sitting and thinking about Charlie.”

  “Listen,” answered Little Billy. “Ain’t that the governor singing downstairs?”

  Large and true the voice of the governor floated out of a lower window of the house, a window across which the silhouette of Ruth Mark drifted a moment later.

  “It’s somebody, right enough,” muttered Jim. “Who the devil could it be?”

  “It sure is,” said the boy, his voice quivering, and, in an impulse of fear, he clung suddenly to his companion’s hand. In a moment he had mastered his fear, however, and he continued pointing to the left.

  “Look yonder. Jim … Jim … it’s the Red Devil that’s come.”

  Barely distinguishable in the moon haze was the outline of a white horse standing among the trees.

  “The Red Devil,” repeated the child. “And that’s his hoss … white Meg!”

  There was a convulsive start in his companion. “Lord,” muttered Jim. “I half believe it is. What’s the fool come down here for?”

  “What for? Murder,” said the trembling boy. “Ain’t that why he goes other places? Ain’t that why he lives … just to kill gents and take their money?”

  “Hush,” said Jim. “Don’t talk, Little Billy. I got to think.”

  And Little Billy was still as a mouse watched by a cat. His heart was hammering in fear for the safety of Ruth Mark and her father, alone in the house with the murderer—with nothing to protect them save two old Chinese servants who would not know one end of a gun from the other. It seemed obvious to Little Billy that the only thing to do was, first of all, to secure white Meg, the matchless horse, and then rush to the front of the house and call Henry Mark and his daughter out. But Jim had other ideas, and Jim could not be wrong. Billy worshiped his newfound hero with all his heart.

  “You stay here,” said Jim. “Stay right here and don’t move. No, you better sit down here in the grass under the trees … and once you’re there, don’t budge, I tell you.”

  “You ain’t going up there into the house alone?” pleaded the boy in a terrified whisper. “You ain’t going up there all alone to kill the Red Devil, Jim? Not even you could do that … please!”

  But Jim brushed him away. “Don’t talk,” he commanded.

  “Well,” said the boy, making the best of what seemed a very bad proposition, “what am I to do? Ain’t I going to get a chance even to get white Meg?”

  Jim hesitated, his breath coming hard and fast. Then he shook his head. “Not a hand on her,” he said sadly. “She might raise the devil, if you come near her, son. She’s a man-killer for fair.”

  With this last dreadful warning, which made Little Billy shrink against the trunk of the nearest tree, Jim vanished to the right, appeared again crossing the clearing of the house, and then was gone around the c
orner of the building.

  He came in through the rear entrance of the house and stealthily mounted toward his room—which had formerly been the room of Charlie Mark. In the upper hall he crouched—almost flattened himself against the floor, where the ear catches most readily all the sounds of moving feet. But there was not a whisper.

  He’s learned his lessons fast, mused Jim to himself. But then he was just nacherally born to the trade.

  He slipped on down the hall to the door of the room, his own movement, despite the hampering weakness of his wounded leg, as noiseless as the stalking of a cat. At the door he raised his hand, and, after listening again for a moment, he rapped twice or thrice very softly.

  Still there was no sound from the room, and now he pushed the door an inch ajar. At that, there was a faint whispering sound in the darkness, a strange, light sound, although Jim recognized it perfectly. It was the hiss of a gun drawn rapidly out of the holster.

  “It’s me,” whispered Jim loudly. “It’s Jim Curry. Are you there, Charlie?”

  There was a pause. Then came the light creak of a board.

  “Well,” said a voice that apparently despised whispering, because it ventured at once on a soft speaking tone, “what d’you want, Jim Curry?”

  “I want to tell you, you three-ply fool, that the kid is downstairs under the trees, and that he’s seen white Meg. What in thunder are you doing back here?”

  The door was here swung softly back in the gloom. Through the darkness he vaguely made out the form of a man.

  “I came back to look around,” said the other. “I’m just amusing myself. Anything wrong with that?”

  “Everything’s wrong with it. If you got a thimbleful of brains, you’d ought to know it.”