by Max Brand
Did she remember those days now? He looked up and saw that her eye, as she watched him eat, had grown larger and softer, but the moment her glance crossed his, her face hardened again. Plainly his cause was lost, so far as she was concerned, forever. And it hurt him more that he cared to admit, even to himself. He looked quickly away, and his eyes found a resting place on the delighted face of Henry Mark. Truly he could not have been more pleased if a son of his own had returned.
The rest of that evening passed in a blur for Charlie Mark. He knew afterward that a stream of questions had been poured on him, and that he had parried them as fast as he could, promising full replies on the morrow, until he escaped with a plea of weariness, also that old Henry Mark himself helped him up the stairs to his room. When the door closed and he was left alone, he sank down on the side of the bed and brooded bitterly on himself and his situation.
He had been moving so rapidly through the wild scenes of the past weeks that he had had small time to think them over. Now, in his old home, with memories of a former life, an innocent and harmless life, stirring around him, the sense of guilt came heavily upon him. So the moments ran like running sand, one into the other, and extended to hours; still he sat there although the lamp, running low in oil, was beginning to sputter. Indistinctly he had heard the sounds of people climbing the stairs and going to bed—that was long before—and voices had called to him wishing him a sound sleep. But now came a single stealthy tap at the door.
He knew at once that Jim Curry was waiting for him in the hall. First he looked to his revolver. Then he opened the door. He found the outlaw there, as negligent in attitude as ever, and as careless in his manner, although Charlie Mark knew that every moment he was being watched as a cat watches the mouse nearing its hole and safety.
“Well?” queried Charlie Mark.
“Seems to me,” answered Jim Curry, “that the questions ought to come from my side and the answers from yours. You’re living … and yet I’ve thought you were planted permanent up yonder in the cave.
“Sure you did,” snarled Charlie Mark, “and you’re sorry that I’m not there.”
“I am,” answered Jim Curry, “except that I don’t like to have a killing on my hands … even if it is the killing of a rat like you.”
Charlie Mark nodded slowly in the darkness. “You’re trying to start something like a fight, Jim, even here in my own house?”
“Your own house?” Jim Curry sneered. “It’s more mine than yours, by right.”
“I knew you’d be figuring it that way before long.”
“Charlie, tell me straight … have you got a spark of affection for a single person in this house?”
“Bah,” muttered Charlie Mark. “This kind o’ talk makes me sick. What do you want with me, Curry?”
“I want to tell you this … either you or I have to leave this here house, and have to leave pronto. Understand?”
“Of course I understand. But do you ever imagine that Henry Mark will let me go?”
“That’s the trouble,” admitted Jim Curry. “But the girl and I both figure he’d be happier …”
“You’ve told the girl?” whispered Charlie in fury. “You’ve been filling her ears with talk about me?”
“I don’t need to,” said Jim Curry. “She knows every angle of your nasty soul like a book.”
“Well,” said Charlie, “I’ve played a lone hand more than once before, and I can play it again and do fairly well, I think, at that.”
There was a pause. It seemed that Jim Curry was debating in his mind whether or not it might be worth his while to continue the argument. Eventually he said only, “I follow your drift, son. You want to make it a fight from the start. Well, that suits me. But I’m going to give you one piece of advice … not for your own sake, but because I hate to have the old man’s heart broke by finding out what sort of a skunk you are. My advice is for you to take off that fob you’re wearing and throw it away.”
“Thanks,” said Charlie Mark. “You want me to throw it your way, I guess?”
The fob to which Jim had called attention was solid gold.
“You probably stole it, Charlie. And if you did, you’re a fool for wearing stolen goods.”
“Am I? Why?”
“You never can tell when somebody will come along … somebody that’ll recognize what you have.”
“You talk like a fool, Curry. This fob is the same as a million others. It’s just a nugget beat out flat and round. Nothing queer about it. Besides, the fellow who owned it is not at all likely to come around and ask questions about the fob.”
“One of those you killed, eh?”
“Never mind about that. You make me sick inside and out and all the way through, Curry, with your talk … as if you never shot a man.”
“Never to kill … except when I shot at you. And luck saved you that time … worse luck for me. Maybe there’ll be another time, though, Charlie. And you can lay to this … if you start any cussedness around here and disgrace your father and Ruth, I’m coming after you, son, and I’ll give you a worse hunting than any sheriff and his posse would do. Don’t forget it.”
“Thanks,” answered Charlie Mark, grinding his teeth with anger. “And take this in exchange. You can’t steal the girl, Jim. It can’t be done. You can’t get Ruth.”
“You fool,” breathed Curry. “Do you think I am as high as Ruth?”
“Keep it under your hat,” said Charlie Mark, chuckling. “If you’re half as good a man as you pretend, you’ll never dream of asking her to marry you. Because after you were married, what if someone popped up with the right dope on what you used to be? What would become of your family … what would become of Ruth, Jim?”
Jim Curry leaped for his tormentor, but the door was slammed heavily in his face, and he recoiled with a groan into the darkness of the hallway.
V
It would not have been hard to tell which of the two had gained the victory in that first wordy encounter. Charlie Mark turned back into his room, chuckling through his set teeth—with a strange mixture of rage and satisfaction as he recalled the insults he had been forced to countenance, and the poisonous thrust that he had at length managed to deal to his enemy.
Jim Curry, on the other hand, did not close his eyes for half the night, but sat with his head in his hands on the side of his bed, recalling the last words Charlie Mark had spoken.
Were they true? At least they had acted as a sharp check to him. They brought him up short and made him think suddenly of all phases of the question. Where was he drifting with Ruth Mark? What was the meaning underneath all of the happy hours that they were spending together more and more as the days drew on? Why was he staying at the Mark place, above all? What right had he there, or what claim had he upon Henry Mark, except his honest affection for the old man, for the girl, and for Little Billy, not the least of all? But here he was idly drifting and waiting, it seemed, for something to happen.
Had Charlie Mark been right? Was he indeed heading straight toward a love affair with Ruth? Was it already so obvious that a new arrival, like Charlie Mark, could tell at the first glance how matters stood? It shamed him, and yet it thrilled him. If this were true, then at least it meant that she was not showing indifference, to say the least.
But, after all, was not Charlie right? To let matters drift on would be the height of dishonesty, would be the truest way, indeed, of inviting disaster later on—disaster that would involve not only himself, but the girl, also.
He thought back to his past, just as Charlie Mark had done the night before, but with how different an emotion. Outlaw and bandit he had been, but he had been forced from the pale of law in the first place through no fault of his own, but by the exigencies of chance, and, if he had lived by plunder, at least he had never plundered the poor or the helpless. And he had embraced the first chance to slip out of his role and ba
ck into the ways of law-abiding men. That was the great step forward. He had been able to establish himself only as a separate identity from the Red Devil because Charlie Mark, at that time, was spreading havoc in the known mask and on the famous white mare. But now that Charlie Mark no longer rode as the Red Devil, might not suspicion once again close in on him? And should his identity ever be divulged, not even the faith of Ruth Mark could withstand the shock of that revelation.
At length he fell asleep without taking off his clothes, and appeared downstairs the next morning haggard of face, only to find that Charlie Mark had outstripped him and was already on the way to the town of Hampton.
* * * * *
The sleep of Charlie Mark had been sound enough, saving for a single nightmare induced by the warning of Jim Curry the evening before. He dreamed that his life had ended; he stood in heaven to be judged, and one by one the witnesses against him filed past and looked him in the face—all those who had fallen under his gun in the terrible two months of his masquerade as the outlaw. One by one they went past and searched his face with eager eyes, but each was baffled. They had never seen the face beneath the mask when he killed them; they could not brand him now.
But at length a square-bearded man halted in the very act of passing, turned, and grasped the watch fob that dangled outside of his watch pocket. “It is he,” said the man in the vision, and a voice asked, “Are you the man?” And in spite of his agony of resistance, Charlie Mark felt an answering voice gather in his throat and burst from his lips, damning himself with the sound of it: “Yes, I am the Red Devil.”
He had wakened from this hideous nightmare wet with cold sweat; sitting up in the bed, he vowed that the first act of the next day should be to get rid of the wretched fob. Accordingly when he rose in the morning, he found the fob, stood at the window, and hurled the little bright piece of gold as far as he could fling it into the trees beyond the house.
That accomplished, he went about his dressing with an easier conscience until, going downstairs a little later, he thought that fob might well be found under the trees at the next plowing, and that then it would be instantly recalled that he had worn it. It would be doubly suspicious if the little trinket were found in that manner. People would instantly suspect him of wishing to get rid of it for guilty reasons.
Accordingly he hurried out under the trees. There followed an anxious search of ten or fifteen minutes until he discovered what he wanted glimmering in the shade of a bunch of dead grass. He scooped it up eagerly, and hurried toward the barn to get a shovel to bury it, but he stopped halfway there.
People were already astir in the big house and in the bunkhouse, although he had risen very early, indeed. And might he not be seen if he dug a hole? Better, far better, that he should not do so, even at night, for there would be traces of such digging. So far as he could remember, there were many tales of cunningly buried treasure, but there was never a tale in which it was not discovered in the end. Always it rejoiced the discoverer and brought endless shame and guilt upon the man who had buried the treasure, if that man were alive. Of course, there was only a small similarity between a treasure and a single watch fob, but the similarity was great enough to make it weigh heavily on the mind and the soul of the guilty youth.
He must not bury it; he must not even hide it. It was impossible to hide things, even in the broad desert. Then, if he did not hide it, would it not be well boldly and frankly to avow his ownership of the trinket in some such way as would establish his innocence?
The moment the idea came to him he welcomed it, so to speak, with open arms. That was the very thing he must do. Regardless of the early hour, feverishly eager to have this matter accomplished, he went to the barn and saddled the first horse he found in a stall and spurred toward Hampton.
* * * * *
The window of Josiah Watkins’ loan office and pawnshop had not greatly changed since Charlie last saw it. Neither had Josiah. He was just in the act of opening his office for the day, shoving into the window tray after tray of cheap trinkets and jewelry, a very small portion of which was real. When Charlie Mark entered, the withered little proprietor tucked under the pit of his arm the feather duster with which he had been raising a cloud, and bent his head so that he could view Charlie over his glasses.
“My, my,” he said. “You sure been hurrying.”
“Hurrying? Not at all,” said Charlie, for this idea of hurry by no means fitted in with his plans. “I’ve just dropped into town to see some of my friends. I let the horse have his way … that’s all.”
“Hmm,” muttered Watkins. “Well, it sure flatters me, Charlie, to have you put me one of the first on the list.”
There was such a mixture of dry sarcasm and buried humor in this remark that Charlie looked coldly on the little old man, and then produced his wallet without a direct answer. From the wallet he drew out the fob.
“I picked this up on the road the other day,” he said. “Somebody dropped it, and somebody may miss it. I thought I’d leave it here. Do you mind? The owner may happen by and claim it.”
“Sure,” Watkins said with a nod, “you can leave it here. But where do I come in? Maybe I spend my time here for nothing? Or maybe the room in that window ain’t worth nothing at all?”
Charlie Mark smiled. “All right,” he said. “I’ll pay you for your space and your time. How’ll a dollar do?”
“Fair to middling,” said Watkins without enthusiasm. “Although it plumb mixes things up for me to start a lost and found bureau this way. But gimme the fob and a dollar. I’ll put a sign up in the window. But say, how am I to know who the owner is when he comes in and claims it? Shall I tell him to go out and talk to you?”
“Talk to me?” exclaimed Charlie Mark. “I should say not. Why … why should I waste time on every stranger who comes along and thinks he can talk me into believing that he is the owner of the fob?”
“Well,” said Watkins, “how’m I to tell?”
Into the mind of Charlie Mark flashed the face of the man who had died wearing this fob, and from whose watch it had been cut. It was a square-bearded handsome face, heavily covered with whiskers save for patches beneath the eyes where the skin showed a deep brown. This was the man who had died. But might not some friend of his know the trinket?
“Use your judgment,” he said hastily.
“Where’ll I say you found it?”
“Why, out on the road.”
“Near your pa’s place?”
Charlie was hurrying toward the door. The last thing he wanted was to be plied with questions about the finding of this infernal watch fob.
“Yes … that was it … I believe,” he stammered as he backed through the door. “Do as you please about it, Watkins. I don’t want to be bothered with it.”
In his heart of hearts he profoundly hoped that Watkins would appropriate the fob for his own use. But little did he know the pawnbroker. The old man juggled the piece of gold for a moment in his hand, and then emitted a long, low whistle that might have meant any one of a number of things. Then he made out a large card—a card strangely large for one who valued the space in his window so highly. A moment later the curious could read as follows:
Found! Nugget watch fob. Owner make claim!
He was so interested that he even went outside of his shop and viewed the advertisement from the street; as though he were pleased by what he saw, he went back into his shop rubbing his withered old hands.
VI
That was the beginning of two weeks and more of trouble for Josiah Watkins, familiarly known in Hampton as either Jo or Josh according to the humor of the friend who addressed him. Never in his life had he displayed in his window an attraction that called forth so much notice as the fob.
But then, never before had he made such a display. Men approached the window with sparkling eyes, expecting to find at least a few diamonds set into the fob, but
they were astonished and disappointed to find that it was plain gold, and almost invariably they would go inside the shop and ask Josiah about it.
How did it come there? How could the owner prove his identity to the satisfaction of Josh?
“Leave that to me,” Watkins would answer rather loftily. “I can tell when a gent’s talking honest by instinct. I ain’t no fence, and I’ve saved myself from taking stolen goods by knowing the gents that I deal with. And when the right man comes along, I’ll be able to tell him.”
Of course, more than once men came in and claimed the trinket.
“That looks considerable like a fob that I had a couple of years back,” they would say. “Lemme have another look at it, will you?”
“Sure,” the pawnbroker would answer with unfailing good humor. “All you got to do is to tell me if they’s any initials scratched on the side of it that’s turned to the card just now.”
No one was able to answer that small but important question until, on a morning some sixteen days after Charlie Mark brought the fob into the shop, there appeared in the doorway a man of middle height and of more than average girth of shoulder and chest. His face was densely covered with a beard that began close to the eyes and flowed down to a square-trimmed end. He advanced to the glass counter behind which Josiah Watkins officiated, and slapped his brown hand on the case.
“I’ve come to take a look at that fob out there in the window,” he said. “Lemme see it, will you?”