Curry

by Max Brand

  “I don’t like that sort of talk,” said the other savagely. “Keep your face shut if you can’t talk decently to me.”

  There was a groan from Jim. “I’ll talk anyway you want, only … get out of the house.”

  “Why?” persisted the other. “Isn’t this my home? Haven’t I a right to stay here?”

  Jim groaned again. “Come across the hall,” he said. “We can talk in that little room, there, without anyone overhearing what we have to say. Besides, we can show a light without catching the eye of that sharp fiend, Little Billy.”

  “That little nuisance, eh?” muttered the other, and, following Jim across the hall, he closed the door as soon as both were in the room. Then he switched on a pocket electric torch and laid it on the table between them. The shaft of light blared out against the wall at the end of the room in a crisply defined circle, but it illumined the faces of the two men only dimly. It showed Charlie wearing the bushy red hair that curled under the brim of his sombrero—the red hair that was the distinctive mark, along with the white horse in the trees below—of the Red Devil, that most elusive, most unmerciful outlaw.

  He seemed particularly contented with himself now; taking a chair without too much caution, he leaned back in it.

  “Well, my friend,” he said, “what do you think of the way I’ve played your role? Did you ever make as much money in six weeks as I’ve made?”

  “I don’t know how much money you’ve made,” said Jim, “but I’ll tell you this … you’ve acted like a mad dog.”

  “Look out. You can’t talk like that to me.”

  There was a sudden explosion in Jim. It did not show in a loud voice or a violent gesture or stamp of his foot, but it could be felt as distinctly as though he had done all of these things. He leaned across the table, and in the moment of hush the sound of his hard breathing was audible. Charlie shrank from him. Even in his role of the Red Devil, he dared not confront the passion of the man across the table, leaning there veiled in the semidarkness.

  “You hound,” said Jim at last. “In all my life I’ve never taken a penny from a gent that hadn’t first got that penny by crooked work of some sort. In all the years that I’ve rode the mountains, I’ve never killed a man. And you … you’ve played the game for money and death the minute you got on Meg. You’ve run through the mountains like a mad dog. I said it before. I say it again. Talk up to me, Charlie Mark. Talk up to me. Put a hand on your gun. Cuss me. I’m waiting.”

  Charlie Mark was not a coward. But he did not choose to answer at that particular instant. He would as soon have twitched a tiger’s beard at that moment as to have raised voice or hand against Jim Curry.

  “I ought to take that mask. I ought to take Meg,” said Jim. “I ought to get out of this honest home and stay out. I ought to keep you from going back to work as the Red Devil, as they call it. But you’ve run amok. You’ve tasted killing. And you can’t be kept at home now. You’ve gone bad once, and you’re the kind that’ll stay bad. I know. I’ve done wrong in ever changing parts with you. I never should’ve let you take my horse and my mask. But how could I tell then what was inside of you?”

  “What made you give the mask to anybody?” queried Charlie Mark, recovering his breath and at last a part of his courage when he saw that Jim Curry did not intend to translate his anger into gunplay. “Why didn’t you just burn the mask?”

  “And what would I do with Meg?”

  “Burn her … dig a grave for her and shoot her on the edge of it. You could have done that.”

  There was a strangling sound in the throat of Jim. “You’re a devil,” he muttered at last. “A plain devil. But I tell you this, Charlie Mark, if ever you do that for Meg, make sure that I’m dead first. Otherwise I’d be on your trail pronto.” He paused, and then continued with a sudden softening: “How is Meg?”

  “Clean as a whip and fit as a fiddle. She’s outside. Want to see her?”

  “I don’t dare. I couldn’t keep off her back once I saw her, and, once on her back, I’d be out raising the old deviltry again, I guess.”

  “You’ll be back at it, anyway, one of these days,” said Charlie Mark.

  “Will I? Well, I dunno, Charlie. I got to confess that it’s a temptation that I never get far away from. If it wasn’t for this kid, Little Billy, and …”

  “And Ruth, I suppose?” Charlie’s voice held a sneer.

  “Well? You hate her, I guess, because she hates you. But I’ll tell you the truth … it’s for her and Little Billy that I’m keeping straight.”

  “Wait till your leg’s well. You’ll be off like a rocket.”

  “I hope not. And what about you, Charlie? Don’t you ever wish that you could get back here?”

  “Sure. So I came down and looked the old place over. And now I’m through with it.”

  “And you’re not particular keen to see Henry Mark, the gent that adopted you?”

  “Why should I see him? He’s nothing in my young life now, my friend. He took me into his family without asking my permission. Well, I’m stepping out again without asking his. What could be fairer than that?”

  Jim could not speak. He had met heartless men in his own wild career as an outlaw, the originator of that semifabulous character, the Red Devil, but he had never yet met with such utter callousness of mind.

  “You’re going back now?” he asked at length.

  “I’m going back.”

  “Then go out on the far side of the house and whistle for Meg … the same whistle that I taught you. Call her over. You’d better not come close to Little Billy. He’s out there, under the trees, near to Meg.”

  “I’m going … I’m going,” said the other irritably. “Don’t rush me. I looked about my room tonight, and I see that it’s where you’re sleeping.”

  “They’ve given me a bed there.”

  “And books, and everything like that. I see Ruth’s hand in it.”

  “She’s been kind to me.”

  Charlie chuckled. “Do me good,” he said, “if she were to grow fond of the Red Devil. Well, Jim, goodbye. Anything you want? Anything you need?”

  “Only one thing. I want you to try to get shut of that red mask and lay your plans for jumping the country, Charlie.”

  “And come back here? Bah! Another month of this sort of work, and I’ll have a fortune to retire on. Besides, I don’t want to retire. You couldn’t hire me to give up my work for a thousand dollars a day. There’s too much fun in it. So long!”

  He slipped through the door and ran, careless of the noise he made, down the back stairs up which Jim Curry had mounted. A few moments later Jim heard a whistle. Then he saw, from the window, a streak of pale gray as Meg raced to her new master. The shouting of Bill was high and shrill in the distance as the Red Devil darted away into the dusk of the night.

  Jim leaned out the window to watch, and, so leaning, his left hand slipped and a sharp, projecting nail slashed him across the wrist. He covered the wounded place with an exclamation, and still he watched the disappearing fugitive. And he could scarcely help shouting encouragement after gallant Meg.

  In the meantime, the house was waking to noisy life. But Jim sank in his chair. Let them ride their heads off in pursuit, if they wished. He knew too much about Meg and her rider to wish to capture them.

  IV

  The shouting of Little Billy roused the household of Henry Mark, but Charlie Mark, vanishing into the moon haze on Meg, laughed back at the diminishing sounds of tumult. What did the excitement or the wrath of man mean so long as he had the matchless speed of Meg under him? He could ride in circles around the fastest horses in the corrals of Mark, he knew. Therefore he made no particular effort to put distance between him and the house.

  As a matter of fact, he knew that there was little need of hurry. Men were so accustomed to consider the speed of Meg as invincible that they rare
ly, if ever, made a determined attempt to overtake her. To that, in the first place, he had owed the immunity that he enjoyed when he was committing his first crimes and depredations in the new role of the Red Devil. They had resisted him in only a half-hearted manner, and they had pursued him with little energy. Why strike back at the Red Devil when to do so was simply to call down further disaster on one’s head? They were beginning to treat him as savages treat a sinister deity, to be feared but not to be thwarted for dread of greater vengeance.

  These facts were running lazily through the mind of Charlie Mark as the young fellow swept down the valley on Meg, casting about in his mind for some manner in which he might amuse himself. The house of his adopted father was out of sight, and therefore out of mind. He cared not a snap of his fingers for what might come behind him in the shape of pursuit. But he must have excitement to occupy him before morning.

  It had grown to be a necessity, just as alcohol is necessary to the drunkard and drugs to the drug addict; within the compass of every two or three days Charlie Mark had to tempt fortune in some manner. Otherwise, he felt that his precious time was wasted. The world was getting out of touch with the Red Devil, and that would never do.

  What attracted him this night was the glimmer of the lights of the town just before him, a low, broken line of lights among the trees just down the valley from the house of his adopted father. And toward it, accordingly, Charlie Mark directed Meg. What he would do when he got inside the town, he had not the slightest idea, but something, he was sure, would come to his mind. Something always did.

  In this careless mood, then, he swung the mare to the left, made a brief detour, and then left Meg standing among the trees. He advanced from this point on foot, secure from observation in the dimness of the light of the young moon, and tingling to his fingertips with expectation.

  As he walked, he made up his mind that something new must be tried. He had never yet shown himself as the Red Devil, secured from recognition only by the mask. Better still, he had never yet heard of the Red Devil venturing among the habitations of man with nothing over his face to hide his identity. Charlie Mark tucked the handkerchief back under the edge of his hat. Making a second detour, he entered fairly upon the head of the street and walked down through the town. There was nothing now to disguise him save the darkness, which there was sufficient moonlight to thin treacherously. Besides, now and again he had to walk through a bright shaft of lamplight.

  He would not be recognized as the Red Devil, to be sure, but he was among men every one of whom knew him as the adopted son of Henry Mark. They knew his voice and all his ways—strange indeed that they did not pay attention to him. However, as a matter of fact, not an eye glanced after him even in suspicion. A group of young men shouldered him out of their way, and he submitted simply because he was thinking, with a grin, of how terrible would be their fear if they so much as dreamed that he was the Red Devil. He paused at another corner to listen to the sound of a piano and a girl’s voice singing. How marvelously clear the lightest sound became in the quiet atmosphere of the town. He could pick up the noise of a dozen different voices at various angles as he stood there. In the pause of a song there was the clatter of pans from a kitchen nearby, and then the crying of a child far off, and a deep man’s voice, thunderously low, speaking from a front porch.

  Charlie Mark allowed those sounds to sink slowly into his mind. They created there a strange calm, which he had almost forgotten could exist in the world. But presently he was walking on again. Calm was not what he wanted. He could find plenty of that among the mountains, to be sure, but here in town he wanted other things. Grown men were around him, and grown men meant a chance for action.

  To the left, for instance, he could find action in plenty, for that was the sheriff’s house. Suddenly Charlie halted. In all the tales he had heard, there was no description of a sheriff being held up in his own house in his own town. The heart of Charlie Mark leaped. Perhaps he could make history once more. At least he would try.

  He walked down the street a short distance, turned to his left, cut in behind the long row of back yards with their wood sheds and horse sheds, and so came to the ampler barn of the sheriff. How well he remembered it, even out of his childhood, and how greatly he had admired in those days the gilded weathercock on the top of the barn.

  Those days were long since past. Charlie Mark turned in toward the back of the sheriff’s house, slipped up the stairs to the porch, and listened. He heard a faint murmur of voices, but he could not distinguish the words. Two men were talking. And two men might be rather difficult to handle.

  He opened the door. At once the closer, warmer atmosphere of the house rolled out about him, and there was a faint scent of sweets. There had been much baking of spiced cake in the house this day, perhaps.

  Then he stepped in, closing the door behind him with the instinctive skill of the robber and worker by night. Now he could make out the voices far more distinctly. They were in the parlor, and one of them was the sheriff himself. No, they were not in the parlor, but in the little library just behind the parlor. The door to the library was open, which allowed the voices to swell down the hall to him. But the parlor itself held different company.

  He could make out the jangle of three or four women’s voices, always at least two of them in action, and the sounds crossing and jarring and harmonizing. He shivered. He remembered the horror of that jargon when he had been dragged along by his mother in his boyhood when she went calling. It had been a terrific effort to keep from being lulled to sleep, aside from the prickling, sweating agony of having all eyes and voices focus on him as his mother commented on his “points.” Something of the old emotion came back to Charlie Mark, and then he chuckled. What a rare joke it would be to hold-up the sheriff in one room while his wife continued to talk on in the next room.

  Still smiling at this idea, Charlie continued his advance down the hall until a sudden gust of wind struck his back. Instantly he side-stepped behind a curtain and draped its folds about him, knowing that his boots would be showing beneath, but praying that they might not be discovered, if, as he surmised, the draft meant the opening of a door and the entrance of someone into the hall.

  He was right, for now he heard the swishing of skirts—at least it was only a woman, the Lord be praised—and then a light gleamed faintly through the fabric of the curtain, shone close at hand, and went on. If she had seen the boots below the curtain, she had made no sign, either by crying out or quickening or retarding her pace. And such self-control was incredible. Another door opened and closed. The light went out. The woman obviously had gone into the parlor, perhaps carrying refreshments.

  Charlie Mark, breathing more easily, stepped out from his wretched place of concealment into the hall and again approached the door of the library.

  “But what,” the voice of the sheriff was saying distinctly, “was behind your wanting to see me tonight, eh?”

  “More facts about the gent that calls himself Jim and stays out to the Mark place.”

  “Bah! You’re crazy on that subject, Lang.”

  Charlie Mark started. Was this the Lang who had been in the stage with him when Jim Curry committed his last crime in the role and disguise of the Red Devil and held up the coach? Venturing to the corner of the door, he peered within and saw that it was indeed Lang, now sitting bolt upright, flushed with interest, and facing a frowning, dubious host in the sheriff.

  “Am I crazy?” said Lang. “I tell you, Sheriff, I’ve met a man that’s plumb sure that this fellow is a gent that used to be called by name of Jim Curry down south. I forget the name of the town it happened in. Anyway, this Curry … which is the last name of Jim, according to the stranger … left town pronto and in a big hurry, because his dad had been killed for murder and he was wanted for stealing horses the same day.”

  “By the Lord!” exclaimed the sheriff. He added, “But don’t you see, Lang, that
he can’t be the Red Devil? Why, the Red Devil must be middle-aged from the list of the things he’s done.”

  “I’ve traced him back,” said Lang soberly. “He ain’t been working more’n six years. And it was just six years ago that Jim Curry was run out of his hometown for the reasons I been telling you. I tell you, Sheriff, it’s plumb certain that he’s the man … and the gent that’s been running around and raising the devil is simply a gent that’s borrowed his horse. It’s his partner. That would explain how the Red Devil was always able to make such long jumps between jobs. Work here one day, stick up somebody else eighty miles away tomorrow, and work seventy miles farther on the day after that.”

  “Hmm,” said the sheriff. “I got to admit that this is worth looking into. It don’t sound possible, but queer things will happen now and then, especially when you’re hunting somebody like the Red Devil.”

  “You’re right,” said a voice from the door.

  They turned of one accord. In the doorway stood the familiar figure of the Red Devil. The handkerchief clothed his face save for the eyeholes. The red, bushy hair thrust out beneath his hat. In his hand was a long, black revolver held with convincing steadiness and directed toward them.

  V

  The amazement of valiant Sheriff Nance at this sight was so great as to be well nigh painful. The worthy man of the law gaped twice like a fish newly taken out of water. Then a motion of the muzzle of Charlie Mark’s revolver jerked him out of the water as though an invisible line were indeed attached to him. He rose from his chair and with a gesture persuaded Lang to uncoil his lengthy form and imitate the good example. And when the arms of Lang were extended to the full above his head, his hands nearly touched the ceiling. He looked like one about to strike a smaller opponent into the earth.

  “Now,” said Charlie Mark, “take the key out of your right-hand vest pocket and throw it down on the carpet near the safe.”