by Max Brand
Scarcely a hundred miles away, he found an opportunity to lift a wallet from a cowpuncher in a village street, and with that wallet he was able to buy enough articles to make up a bundle, and so he arrived again at the hometown of Hampton. Avoiding the town proper, he struck out across country for the house of his adopted father.
In that last stretch he summed up his position accurately. First of all, he must get Jim Curry out of the household of the Mark family. He looked upon that formidable individual with a mixture of hatred, fear, and admiration. And in justice to himself, it must be admitted that the fear had nothing to do with the prowess of Jim Curry with a gun. It was based entirely upon a superstitious sense that told Charlie Mark that fate was at work on his destiny, and against fate it did not avail to use every scruple of his wit and cunning.
Look at it as he would, it seemed that it was fate that had determined to reclaim the outlaw, Jim Curry, who had terrorized the mountain desert under the name of the Red Devil, and for five of six years had escaped retribution through his own prowess and the speed of his white mare, Meg. Fate had determined to reclaim him, and therefore Charlie Mark had been tempted, picked up like a pawn, and thrust into the place that the removal of Curry left vacant. And to make the exchange perfect and polished in every respect, the first resting place that Curry had found, after he gave up his lawless life and attempted to fit into the ways of civilized man, was in the former home of Charlie Mark.
Look at it as he might, there was no manner in which the phenomenal could be removed from these events. A strange force was pushing Charlie Mark in one direction and Jim Curry in the other. And a dim perception that his soul was being damned while the soul of Curry was being saved enraged Charlie Mark to the core of his heart.
How else had his flight toward the East been stopped by those two simple, and simply crafty, criminals who went under the names of Warner and J. C. Butler, of plowing fame?
Revolving these thoughts in a gloomy mind, Charlie Mark approached the house of Henry Mark. He did not go directly to the door. Since his brief career as the Red Devil, it had become impossible for him to approach any house directly without first skirting about it and trying, if possible, to examine into the number and nature of the men within its walls.
He slipped to the side of the rambling old house, walked noiselessly along the side of the veranda—keeping very close to the wall by instinct, so that he would make no sound—and came at length to the windows that overlooked the front room, the parlor.
There, as he had expected, he found them. And there was enough food for thought in what he saw to keep him crouched, long, at the window, examining them face by face and gesture by gesture.
First of all, there was his adopted father, that good old man who in all the length of a life among hard men and in hard times had never been known to do an ungenerous thing or take an unfair advantage or to act in any manner other than as a benevolent well-wisher to all around him. And like many a kindly man was as grim as his heart was gentle. Beetling white brows covered his eyes, and the cut of his jaw was the square type that from time immemorial has designated the fighter. And fighter, indeed, he was, as all knew who met him in fair battle.
He was lying on a couch now in a corner of the room with his back and shoulders supported and partly propped up by a mass of pillows, while his work and time-hardened hands were folded behind his head. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep. Instead, his lips parted from time to time, and, although Charlie Mark heard nothing because of the humming of the wind about his ears and the thickness of the wall between, he made out that the old man was answering the puzzled queries of young Billy, that nameless and homeless little vagrant who had been included in the home circle by the far-reaching arm of Henry Mark.
Little Billy sat now at a table by the side of the room and near the couch of the master of the house. Here he puzzled over his book, preparing lessons for the next day’s school. Lessons were hard for Little Billy, as Charlie Mark remembered from the old days, but in those times the youngster had been compelled to do his studying in the loneliness of his own room. Since that time, two short months ago, some softening influence had entered the house and broken down the bars.
That influence was not far to be sought. The sound of the piano, rising clear as the wind fell away in its whining, now died out altogether, and Charlie Mark was able, by moving a little at the window, to see the piano itself at the far end of the big room—also the group at it. There were only two in that group—his sister, by adoption, Ruth Mark, she who had ever seen through his pleasant exterior and into the hardness and the cruel cunning of his inner heart, and beside her was the man of men—Jim Curry now, the Red Devil of old.
Upon these two Charlie Mark stared, forgetting time and forgetting caution, pressing his face close to the windowpane. It was not difficult to see that Ruth and Jim were profoundly interested in each other. He was leaning close to her, talking earnestly, his lean face suffused with color, his eyes lighted. Perhaps he was praising the music she had finished playing. But now she raised a hand in protest and laughed. He could only see her in profile, but that was enough. There was a moist light in her eye, an uncertainty about her smile that spoke eloquent volumes.
Was he in love with her? Perhaps so, and perhaps not. He was the one man who Charlie Mark would not pretend to read at a glance. Was she in love with him? To that question there was only one answer—she was profoundly in love. And Charlie, remembering the many men who had come courting in the past, and remembering how they had always been received with a careless lightness, was now the more impressed.
But one thing stood out firmly in his mind: Jim Curry, the former outlaw, was embedded in the family circle of the Marks like a rock in its natural foundation. And it must be his work to uproot him and throw him out of his place of pleasant security. Why? Because he dared not and would not live with, facing under the same roof, a man who knew the truth about him, and such a man was Jim Curry.
That conviction was hardening in his heart, and he was already casting about for the first hint of a plan on which he could afterward act, when, behind him, a small, quiet voice said, “You’ve come sneaking back at last, eh?”
III
He started up, flushing with shame and anger to be caught in this wretched position as a spy on the quiet household, and the eyes that his eyes met were those of Little Billy. Doubtless, he had pressed so close to the glass of the window that he had made some noise and had attracted the furtive attention of the child. He could only be grateful that Little Billy had not, as most spiteful children would have done, called the attention of the entire family to the presence of the spy at the window.
“Hello, Little Billy,” said Charlie Mark, smoothing over the unfriendly greeting of the child. “I’m mighty glad to see you again.”
“Glad nothing,” snorted Little Billy.
There was so much maturity in the brief scorn of this answer that Charlie Mark blinked in amazement.
“Look here,” he said, “how do you come to talk like this to me?”
“I saw you there,” said Little Billy, and pointed toward the window in front of which Charlie had been kneeling.
“I was taking a look at the folks. I wanted to see what they looked like when I came back. So I stole a look through the window, Little Billy. That’s all.”
There was another grunt from Little Billy. “I seen the side of your face,” he said.
“What d’you mean by that?” asked Charlie, increasingly angered by this continued attack.
“Well,” exclaimed Little Billy by implication, “once I seen the side of a coyote’s head when it came sneaking around the chicken yard in the moonlight! You looked the same way … only worse. And I’ll bet my new rifle that you’ve come back for the same reason … you want to steal something away!”
“You little brat!” cried Charlie Mark.
To his speechless
astonishment, Little Billy, who had always hated him, but who had at least had the grace to shrink from his path and give him the right of way—this same child now refused to budge an inch. Stare for stare he repaid Charlie Mark. And the hand of Charlie dropped to his side. He could not speak for a moment.
“What devil is in you?” he asked when his breath had returned. “You little dirty-faced …”
“Shut up,” broke in Little Billy. You can’t cuss me, and you can’t beat me up. It can’t be done by nobody the size of you.”
“No?” Charlie Mark sneered. “I see that you’ve been running amok since I left. It’s time that you were taken in hand, Little Billy, and by the gods I’m the man to do it.”
“Are you?” said the astonishing Little Billy, still refusing to give way a single pace. “I tell you what, Charlie … if you hit me, even with your open hand, you’ll be sorry for it as long as you live.”
Curiosity was greater than rage in Charlie Mark. He mastered the latter long enough to inquire, “How do you make that out, son?”
“If you seen what happened last week, you’d know why,” said Billy. “You remember big Tucker … Jerry Tucker?”
“Of course I do.”
“I give his kid brother a good licking at school, and Joe Tucker went right home and told Jerry that I’d licked him with a club instead of fighting fair. So Jerry came out, got me, and sure polished me off.” Little Billy chuckled as he touched his still discolored eye. “He cleaned me up,” continued the boy, “and, when I came inside the house, the first one to see me was Jim. He didn’t wait. He asked about two questions. Then he started.” Little Billy stopped, breathing hard.
“Go on,” said Charlie Mark, and called up the memory of Jerry Tucker, vast of shoulder, proved in courage.
“I seen it through the window!” cried Little Billy. “My eyes was swelling shut, but I held ’em open so’s I could watch. My, Jim was like a … a tiger. He just ate Jerry Tucker up … beat him till it made me sick to see it … and finally I ran out and begged him to stop. Jerry got up then, and staggered away. But his face was like a slice of beefsteak.”
“And I’ll get the same if I touch you, eh?”
“Jim told me to mind my business,” said Little Billy. “But if anybody bigger’n me hurts me, I’m to come tell him. And you better watch out, Charlie. I ain’t going to take a single step back for you … or ten like you … not while I got a real, honest Injun man like Jim around to back me up.”
Charlie Mark regarded the child for a sober moment. This was far unlike the cringing fear of the Little Billy he remembered. Truly a sweeping change had come over the household, and Billy’s attitude was significant of it.
“Jim put you up to this, eh? Well, I’ll settle that with Jim. He told you to get ready for me the minute I came back, and then start in on me? He told you to talk like this?”
“Jim don’t have to tell me what to say,” said the boy proudly. “Neither do you. But I’ll tell you one thing, Charlie. You keep shy of Jim, or he’ll run over you like a tornado. I’ve seen him at work, and I know.”
He turned and sauntered toward the front door from which he had come, and Charlie Mark followed. But first, in the shadow of the veranda roof, he furtively and instinctively raised his right hand and touched the scar on his forehead. It was true, he reflected. Jim Curry was a tiger. His claws must be trimmed before he was ejected from the house.
In the meantime, was this talk of Little Billy’s a specimen of how he was to be received in the household? Little Billy and Ruth, he knew, had always seen or guessed at the truth about his sinister and hidden nature. Had they spread the poison to Henry Mark, or did that stanch anchor still hold?
They were through the door. They crossed the hall. They entered the parlor, with Little Billy saying curtly, “Look what I found peeking through the window.”
And instantly the doubts of Charlie were dissolved. Henry Mark came from the couch at the first sound of the voice of his adopted son. He whirled, his long arms flew out, and he caught Charlie in a great embrace.
Very strange was that exhibit of emotion from Henry Mark. Never in his life had Charlie seen the equal of it, but the explanation was quickly forthcoming.
“I’ve been thinking of you, Charlie,” cried the older man, “as though you was a goner … as though you was as plumb gone as if a ship had been sunk and you’d gone down with her. I’ve given you up, Son. And now that you come … why, doggone me if it don’t strike me all of a heap.”
His color, indeed, had changed as he spoke. Charlie Mark felt that body, gaunt with age, grow weak and tremble in every limb. Carefully he lowered the other back to the couch, while Ruth Mark came with a cry.
There was fire in her eye as she struck away his hands.
“Always to do some harm!” she cried at him. “That’s always why you come. And the minute you enter the house, trouble enters with you. Oh, I wish that you’d stayed where you were!”
“Hush up, child,” whispered her father faintly. “I’m feeling better already. It was just that … just that my breath was sort of took short, Ruth … you know?”
In the meantime, Charlie Mark employed an infinitesimal fraction of a second to glance at Jim Curry. That glance was all he needed. A strange mixture of scorn, disgust, hatred, and fighting rage showed in the eye of the ex-outlaw as he looked at Charlie, but in an instant his eye turned with alarm and concern on the face of Henry Mark.
It was enough to give Charlie insight into an unsuspected strength—Jim Curry was devoted to the man who had taken him in. And the strength of that devotion would secure him, Charlie Mark, from the dangerous anger of the gunfighter.
He had no chance to explain further. The old man was himself again, sitting up and pouring forth a volley of questions. He answered them as well as he could. It was desire to see the mountains that had induced him to postpone his return home. And now he had seen them to his heart’s content. Where had he been in them? Well, that was a long story. He would tell it by degrees—stories of everything from mountain climbing to hunting.
And he meant what he said. He needed only time in which to invent the details. Then he would talk of everything, except the truth of his time spent as a bandit. And as he spoke, he raised his eyes and exchanged glances with Jim Curry.
He saw that the girl had gone back to Jim as to a natural shelter in a time of storm. Close beside him, she looked anxiously back at her father and the adopted son.
“But what are you standing there for, girl?” cried her father at length. “Are you blind? Don’t you see who it is? Don’t you see that it’s our Charlie come back to us? Eh? And come back to stay, lad … tell me that … that you’ve come back to stay!”
“Heaven willing,” answered the hypocrite. “The one thing I want to do, Father, is to spend the rest of my life here with you.”
“You hear, Ruth?” cried the old man. “You hear what he says? Why I’m glad that he’s stayed away so long, if it needed that stay to teach him this. But now stir into the kitchen, girl, and bring out something … a snack for our Charlie. Lord, it’ll do my heart good to see you eating my food under my roof once more, lad.”
And he struck Charlie on the shoulder again and again in an ecstasy of pleasure. Certainly it was a strange manner in which to greet a youth not of his own kin, but, adopted before a child was born in the house of Henry Mark, Charlie had always been treated like an actual son, and even with greater affection than Ruth herself received.
She hurried out of the room to execute the mission in the kitchen, and the old man now took the arm of Charlie through his own and advanced smilingly toward Jim Curry, who had by this time mastered his scowl of distaste and had even forced a faint smile upon his clean-cut features.
“Here,” said Henry Mark, “is a man I want you to know and learn to understand like he was your brother, Charlie. This is Jim. What his oth
er name is, I dunno. But names don’t count. But I want you boys to get to know each other, Charlie. I’m counting on Jim to teach you to love the West.”
They came closer. They shook hands in silence. And both of them knew that the great battle for mastery had commenced.
IV
While their hands closed one over the other, the bitter realization grew in Charlie Mark that the former outlaw, Jim Curry, or plain Jim as he called himself here, was a better man than he. And his soul shrank with that knowledge and grew hard with hatred. Yes, the greeting that he had received from Little Billy had been, after all, significant of a change in the household. Three enemies were now housed under that roof, and his only friend was old Henry Mark himself. But would not the other three succeed in poisoning the old man against him? Little Billy stood off in a corner, glancing from time to time at Jim as though asking for directions, and then again scowling at Charlie Mark and chewing his nether lip like a much larger and older man filled full of bewilderment and anger.
After a short time Ruth returned carrying a tray that, in her eagerness to get back to the scene of the fray, she had filled with food at lightning speed. The small, round table in the center of the room was covered with the articles she brought—thick-grained, homemade bread cut in even slices for all her haste, as Charlie noted, slabs of cold roast beef, and marmalade dense with crowded half-moons of orange peel. Besides, there were numerous little dishes taken out of the cooler. The very sight of them recalled to Charlie Mark the memory of that cooler—the old frame under the fig tree, covered with thick sacking, and on top of it a tub that by means of wet clothes dripped constantly over the sacking all the day. He recalled that cooler, and many a hot day when he and Ruth had come in from the sunshine, all overheated with play, and how often he had pillaged that cooler of its store of cool milk and cider, and shared that pillage with the little girl.