by Max Brand
Dear Harry,
It’s a sad thing to shake hands with a man I may never see again. I couldn’t have the heart to stay here and say good-by. Take Fiddle with you. I saw in your eye what you thought of her, and I want you to take with you something that’ll remind you that I’m your friend.
Chet.
Chapter Thirteen
Chester Bent did not write one note only, that morning, but as soon as he had hurried down to his office, he scribbled rapidly:
Dear Clyde,
This is haste. Destry has come to see me. He’s not satisfied with Clarence Ogden dead, and Jud Ogden a cripple for life. It makes no difference that Jerry Wendell has been disgraced and made a laughing stock. He’s determined to keep on the trail until he’s killed or ruined every man of the twelve of you.
You know that I’m the friend of Harry. I suppose you also can guess that I’m yours. I’ve tried to dissuade him, but he’s adamant. I couldn’t budge him a whit.
He’s off now, and on a fast horse. But I’m sending this message on to you, in the hope that you’ll get it in time. I don’t know how to tell you to guard yourself. It may be your life he’s after. It may be only some other scalp that he’ll try to lift, but this thing is sure—that if he has his way with you, you’ll wish for death before the end!
I don’t need to point out to you that I run a most frightful danger in sending you this letter. If it, or any knowledge of it, should come to the hands of Destry, I suppose he’d turn on his trail and come back to murder me, friendly though we are.
However, I can’t resist the chance of warning you that the sword is hanging directly over your head, old fellow, and not even a thread to keep it from falling. Take care of yourself. Remember me to your good wife.
Adios,
CHESTER BENT.
When he had written this letter, he rang a bell, and when his secretary came, he said to her: “Send for that scar-faced Mexican who was in here the other day.”
“Do you mean Jose Vedres?” she asked.
“I mean Jose.”
She hesitated, looking rather shocked, but she was a discreet women who had reached the age of forty, guarded against all scandal by a face like a hatchet and a voice like a whining cat. She was attached to Bent by more than a personal devotion, and that was a slight sharing in his secrets. She knew ten per cent inside the margin, and that was more than any other human had mastered of the ways and the wiles of Chester. She knew enough, in fact, to wish to know more, and Bent was aware that she never would leave him so long as the hope of one day having him at her mercy was shining before her eyes. For that very reason he let her look around the corner now and then, just far enough to be able to guess at the direction he was going to take.
She sent for the Mexican at once, and the man came in a few moments, a venomous looking specimen of his race, slinking, yellow-eyed, with nicotine ingrained to his very soul.
Bent gave him the letter.
His directions were short and simple; he merely added at the end:
“If that letter gets to any hands other than those of Clyde Orrin, I’m a dead man, Jose. And if I die——”
He made a slight but significant gesture to conclude, and Jose nodded. He understood very well that his own life was so neatly poised in a balance that it would not take more than the fall of his friend to undo him.
He bowed himself, accordingly, through the door, and, from the window above, Bent watched him as he pitched gracefully up into the saddle, and sent the mustang scurrying down the street.
“Life insurance,” said Chester Bent, and striking all of this affair from his mind, he turned back to his business of the day.
Jose, in the meantime, took a short cut from the town, crossed the fields beyond, and soon was headed up the valley.
He did not follow the river road, for, though it was far better graded, it wound too much to suit him. Instead, he chose to take a straighter though more rugged way which skirted along among the trees and through ground that rose and fell gently, like small waves of the sea.
In the first copse he paused, drew off a riding boot with some difficulty—for his boots were the one pride of his life in their fineness and tight fit— and, cutting threads at the top, he divided the outer leather from the lining. In this space he inserted the letter which had been intrusted to him. Afterward, with a fine needle and waxed thread, he closed the seam which he had opened. His precautions did not end here, for he actually threw away the needle and the thread remaining before he remounted and continued his ride.
No animal on dangerous ground could have traveled with a keener and a quicker eye than Jose. It searched every tuft of brush before. It scanned the shadows thrown from the patches of rocks that outcropped. It probed the groups of trees before he was near them. And yet all precaution cannot gain utter safety.
As he shot the mustang down a grade, he heard the easy rhythm of a long striding horse behind him, and, looking back, he saw a long-legged bay swinging down the hill, and in the saddle rode Harrison Destry.
Jose did not spur ahead. One glance at the gait of the horse behind him convinced him that flight was folly. Besides, no one but a fool would present a broad target, such as a back, to Destry. The Mexican drew rein, and was merely jogging as the other came alongside at a similar gait—a soft, smooth gait in the mare, the fetlock joints giving so freely that Destry hardly stirred in the saddle with the shock of the trot.
“Hullo, Jose,” said he. “You’re makin’ good time for a hot day.”
“You, too,” said Jose, countering.
“Not for this mare,” replied Destry. “She don’t run; she flies. A flap of the reins sends her thirty mile an hour and she takes a hill from the top to the bottom with one beat of the wings. The buzzards and the eagles have been blowin’ behind me in the wind of her gallop. Doggone me if I ain’t been pityin’ them. Where you bound, Jose?”
“Up the valley,” said Jose, with a courteous smile.
He had another manner for most, but Destry was on a special list with him.
“Likely it’s the heat comin’ on in the flat,” suggested Destry. “When the summer comes along, I reckon that you wanta get up to the high pines, Jose. It’s a mighty savin’ on the complexion, eh?”
This irony apparently missed the head of Jose entirely, for he answered:
“There’s nothing to do in Wham. No jobs for Jose! I go up over the range and try to change my luck!”
“I tell you the trouble with your luck,” said Destry. “You try too many things. Runnin’ up a pack with two crimps in it is a fine art, Jose, and you oughta be satisfied with one. It works on the suckers, and the wise ones will spot your game, anyway. You aimin’ at a range-ridin’ job?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you left your pack behind?”
Jose’s eyelids fluttered down, but instantly he looked up again with his smile.
“You know poker is no man’s friend, señor. It left me a naked man, this mornin’!”
“What color is your hide, Jose?” asked the other.
“Señor?”
“Stop your hoss, drop your gun-belt, and strip. I wanta look at you!”
“Señor Destry——” began the other.
“Jose, Jose,” protested Destry, as one shocked, “you ain’t gunna stop and argue, are you, when you see I’m so hurried? And when the sun is so hot? Jus’ you climb down off that hoss, and drop your gun, and strip for me! It’ll cool you, no end.”
Jose made a pause that lasted only a half second. In that half second he had taken count of his chances and figured them accurately as one in five. He was a good gambler, a brave gambler, but he was not a fool. So he dismounted at once and undressed after he had obediently unbuckled his cartridge belt and allowed it to fall, together with the holstered gun which it supported.
Then he stood in the glare of the sunshine, looking sufficiently ridiculous in his nakedness, but with the great Mexican sombrero still on his head.
Destry went over the clothes with care. He found two packs of cards, which he examined card by card. He found a pair of knives, one long handled, one short, as for throwing. He found a bandana, Bull Durham and papers, a box of matches, a travel stained envelope with the name of Señor Jose Vedres inscribed upon it in feminine writing, childishly clumsy.
This he opened and scanned for a line or two.
“She loves you, Jose,” said he. “Then she’s like the rest of ’em. Optimists before marriage, and hard thinkers afterwards! Nothin’ but a profit in girls, and nothin’ but a debit in wives. I guess you ain’t ever married, Jose?”
“No, señor. Are you ended?”
“Before I’ve had a look at the gun, and the boots? Not me, son! Something was blowin’ you up the valley away from the town too fast for my good. Everything that runs out of Wham, just now, is likely to have something to do with me, and why shouldn’t I take a look?”
He began to thumb and probe the coat, lingering for a time over the shoulder padding; then he picked up the gun, which he took to pieces with lightning speed, and left unassembled again on the fallen coat.
“So’s you won’t begin target practice at my back till I’m a half mile away, anyway,” said Destry.
He took up the boots, next, removed the inner lining, and then with consummate care and attention tapped on the high heels, listening with his ear close to them.
“It’s a mighty delicate business,” said Destry. “Maybe they’s a hollow in here, but I reckon not. Besides, I’ve wasted enough time. I’m gunna make a short cut, Jose!”
His voice roared suddenly; his Colt leaped from its scabbard and leveled at the Mexican.
“What sent you out of Wham, and who was it that started you on your way?”
“Myself, señor, and no other!”
“Then get down on your damned wo’thless knees and say your last prayers. I’m gunna have the truth out of you, or stop this trip!”
Jose shrugged his lean, crooked shoulders.
“The saints have stopped their ears to the prayers of poor Jose, señor,” said he. “In heaven it is not as on this sad earth of ours; good deeds are better than good words; so I have stopped praying!”
Destry put up his gun in one flashing gesture.
“You’re dead game, old son,” said he. “You’re straight enough to follow a snake’s track, I reckon. So long. And don’t hurry along too fast, because it might be that I’ll meet you where you’re goin’.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mrs. Clyde Orrin agreed with her husband perfectly in the major issue. That is to say, she felt that a “diplomatic” attitude was all the world deserved to see, but whereas Clyde Orrin brought home his official manner to the supper table, Mrs. Orrin felt that there was a time when one should be oneself.
“What great big thought has my boy tonight?” asked Mrs. Orrin at the table, noting a slight vacancy in the eye of her husband.
“Nothing—nothing at all,” said Clyde Orrin. “Nothing of any importance.”
“Don’t come that stuff,” said Mrs. Orrin, who had risen from the chorus to be the bride of this rising young politician; she enjoyed letting a little of the old times appear on her tongue when they were alone. “What’s eating you, Clyde?”
“Children,” said he.
“Children? Oh, rot! There’s tons of time for them.”
“I don’t know. One has to form a habit pretty young.”
“I see what you mean,” she said. “You think I can run this house, and put up a front with your vote-getting friends, and go gadding to teas and such, picking up alliances for darling Clyde, and then I’m to tear home and stay up all night rocking the cradle of Clyde junior. Is that the idea? It ain’t as catching as mumps, honey, if that’s what you mean!”
He drummed his pink, soft fingers against the top of the table, and did not answer.
“Look here, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Orrin. “Don’t be such a great big strong silent man when you come home here to me. Let the office be your Rock of Gibraltar, darling; but when you get in here climb down off yourself.”
“Why, dear,” he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“I don’t mean baby-talk, either,” declared Mrs. Orrin. “But if it’s a young Clyde that you want squalling around the house, just say so. I’m perfectly willing. There’s nothing I’d like so well as to chuck all of this political rot and start a real home. You know it, too! But you have to pasture this girl on the long green, honey, if you expect her to start raising a family. I’m not cook, sweeper, window-washer, bell-ringer, duster, marketer, tea-pourer, handshaker all at the same time even for Darling. D’you follow me, or do I just seem to be saying one of those things?”
Her husband looked down at his plate, and knew that his face was softly, gently thoughtful, though there was almost murder in his heart. Still, he was rather fond of his wife; he knew that she was endlessly useful; twice she had saved his scalp from the tomahawk of a furious political boss, and numberless times she had saved him from time and trouble by being gracious on the street and off it. Moreover, the sharp definition of her character was a relief to him. After the haze of political diplomacy, small and great, in which he lived and breathed all the day, it was a great rest to see the naked truth inside the doors of his house. However, he was convinced that he had married beneath him, and this conviction he knew that his wife secretly shared. Because of that, he guessed shrewdly that his domestic happiness was founded upon sand.
“Suppose that we drop the talk about children, then? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Only someday——”
“Sure,” said she. “Someday is the time, in the Sweet Sometime on Someplace street. It’s not children, though, that’s occupying your mind tonight. What is it that’s eating you, my great big brave, noble boy?”
“Don’t you think,” he suggested, “that we could at least try to be polite to one another, even when there’s no one listening?”
“I am polite,” said she. “I’m telling you how big and strong and wonderful you are. Pass me the celery, Clyde, and put the official manner in your inside coat pocket, will you?”
Her husband considered her with the gravity of the fabled basilisk, but his wife answered his gaze with the most ironical of sweet smiles. They understood each other so extremely well that it was doubtful if they could ever remain friends very long. Suddenly he put the thought in words.
“No matter what I may be outside; at home, I’m only a fool and a worm!”
“No matter how I may get by away from here,” she retorted, “the minute you come home I’m back on the stage and showing my knees. If I lived with you a thousand years, you’d never stop being afraid that I’ll some day make a bad break.”
“Come, come,” said he, “you know that’s not true! I know what I owe you!”
“Not love, though?” said she.
He got up from his chair hastily and went around the table to her, but she held out her hand and warded him away.
“I don’t want any perfunctory pecks, and I hate reconciliation scenes because they’re so sticky,” she said. “Being reconciled always makes a girl cry; I suppose because it’s better to cry over a husband than to laugh at him. Go back and sit down, Clyde, and I’ll try to take you seriously.”
He returned to his chair, very pink and haughty, but Mrs. Orrin, who felt that she had gone far enough and who really thought that she might be able to drive even this somewhat flabby carriage to some political height, now softened her eyes and her smile.
He regarded her dubiously.
“You know how to pull in your claws and give the velvet touch,” he told her. “Now get ready to put the claws out again. Listen to this! It’s a letter from William R. Rock about the T. & O. business.”
“Go on,” she said. “I knew there was something for mama to hear.”
He took the letter from his pocket, unfolded it, looked darkly at his wife, and read slowly, aloud:
Dear Orrin,
I’ve just read a copy of your last speech, the one of the seventh. It made me smile, but not on the side of the face you think. You want to get this in your head, young fellow. You’re not in there to make the legislature laugh at us but to make it laugh with us. We’ve retained you for something more than an after-dinner speech. Ten thousand a year is higher than we’ve gone in this state for some time, and we want returns on our money. You know what we expect. We want a tax reduction and a fat one. You’ve been fiddling around for a long time and drawing pretty pictures, but now we want to hear from you in headlines. We want you to chuck the funny business and work up a little public sympathy for the T. & O. We want you to make the people feel that we’re done for and will have to get out of business unless we’re given a helping hand. The state needs us more than we need the state. That’s your line, as I laid it down for you months ago.
Now, then, Orrin, come to life and wake up that legislature. We’ve made enough alliances for you; all you need to do is to start pulling a few of the strings that we’ve placed in your hands, and the thing will go through. Besides, if you father a really big piece of legislation like that, it’ll bring you before your public and double your strength with the voters.
Don’t make any mistake. Keep in our saddle and we’ll ride you a long way. A governorship, perhaps, or the U.S. Senate. But only if you play our game. The Old Man was down here yesterday and he’s not satisfied with you. This is a friendly tip. Get back into harness and help us pull our load and we’ll not forget when we get to the top of the hill. You’ve been paid what you’re worth in advance, but if the tax cut goes through, there’ll be a bonus, anyway. I don’t know just what. Ten thousand more, at least. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and I think you’ll enjoy the flavor of the weed.
Now, boy, this is straight from the shoulder. Personally, I believe in you! I’m with you and behind you every minute that you play our game with us. But when you chuck us and start going for yourself, we’re going to plow the ground from under your feet as sure as God made little apples.