by Max Brand
They went into the kitchen, and there Mrs. Harper, looking grim and hard as an image of stone, poured out a cup of black coffee for the gunman. He thanked her pleasantly, and sipped it, warming his hands alternately above the stove in order to get the chill of the cellar from his bones.
Presently he said: “I’d better be steppin’ on. So long for a minute or two, folks.”
The others looked fixedly at him, but said not a word in reply as little Lynn Tucker slipped through the doorway and went very softly up the stairs.
He moved very slowly, but with infinite care, walking always close to the wall where there is less chance of a footfall making the boarding creak. So he came to the door of the sleeper. Here he paused, and listened contentedly to deep, regular snoring. After that he tried the door and was delighted when he found that it had not been locked. This reduced everything to the utmost simplicity. Already he knew every detail of the room. He had paced it off, also, and his accurate brain knew how many steps and a half to the foot or the head of the bed from the door, and the exact direction, and how many steps to the window opposite, and where the chairs generally stood. A blind man hardly could have been more at home in the darkness than he was when he pushed the door open and stepped into the room, with the snoring resounding, soft and deep, about him.
He paused, once beside the door. There was only one thing that bothered him, and that was an odd feeling about the floor on which he stood, as though it were covered with something softer than carpet. So he shifted his gun to his left hand and with the right hand he touched the floor. To his amazement, it was very sticky. And at this moment he was aware that the snoring had ceased. Something fanned him with a gust of wind, and the door crashed behind his back, while a broad flood of light snapped into his face. Lynn Tucker, thoroughly trapped, did not give up. He lurched to the floor, and, as he fell, he transferred the revolver to his shooting hand.
Falling, too, he noted several other things with the rapidity of a wild animal. One was that there was a quantity of gleaming liquid on the floor about his feet—another was that every article of furniture had been altered in position to exactly the opposite of where it had been before—and the third was that a shadowy form was rising from a bed in the rear corner of the room. At that form he fired, but his sticky fingers could not work easily on the gun, and the next moment a hulky shadow sailed through the air and fell upon him.
He fought out from beneath the featherbed, and, as he did so, the cold muzzle of a revolver pressed upon the nape of his neck. He knew that he was lost; he knew that he was dead.
A very pleasant voice said above him: “Well, well, partner, you must’ve been walkin’ in your sleep, eh, what? You might lay aside that gun, because it looks like it had a habit of explodin’ sort of careless.”
“Stand up, stranger,” came the next gentle invitation, as Tucker tossed the Colt away.
He rose with some difficulty. By the feel and the smell, he now knew what he had fallen into. It smudged his hands and knees, and for the gripping of any weapons, those hands of his were now altogether useless. So he stood dismayed, bewildered even in his rat-like, active mind, and looked at the mildly smiling face of Carrick Dunmore.
“That’s a pity,” said Dunmore. “That glue spilled on me, and I was gonna clean it up tonight, but I got plumb sleepy. A mighty pity. It’ll take you a lot of cleanin’ to fix those clothes.”
Lynn Tucker said nothing, but took note of a string that ran from the bed to the door. By that string it had been jerked shut and he had been securely trapped. It was something like the snaring of a wild beast. He waited for his doom, but Dunmore went on: “Must’ve scared you, sort of, when you found yourself in the wrong room, and I sure don’t blame you for pullin’ a gun when you stepped into that and tripped. I won’t keep you from gettin’ cleaned up. But I’d like to know your name, stranger?”
The other did not hesitate. There was a slight ring of meaning in that last question, and he said instantly: “I’m Lynn Tucker.”
“Well, well,” said Dunmore, “I’m mighty glad to meet you. Tell your boss that I’m still hopin’ to see him down this way some time soon, will you?”
TWELVE
It was nearly another week before another emissary came to Harpersville from Jim Tankerton. This time it was a man with a reverend’s white beard and a serene face, as white and pink as the face of a baby. He was tall and heavy, but he was mounted upon a small mountain pony with a potbelly and a powerful set of limbs that carried him along actively.
As he entered the street of the village, two women saw him first. He took off his hat, and, as he bowed to them, the wind of his gallop blew out the white hair across his shoulders. They made their faces bright as they saw him, and bowed and waved in answer to his greeting, but the instant he was gone by, they scowled darkly to one another.
“Heaven help us,” said one of them, “if Doctor Legges has come down here to take one of our men.”
“It’ll be that lout of a Morgan, that went to the band and would not stay in it. Legges has come for him, and mark my word on it.”
But it was not the lout, Morgan, that had brought Legges down to Harpersville. Instead, he went straight to the hotel, and there he found Harper himself wielding a great axe and chopping up wood for the stove. He swung an axe of double the usual size, and his strokes were so great that they rang through the thin mountain air like the explosions of a rifle in the near distance.
Legges dismounted, and the pony, like one familiar with the place, trotted off at once to the stable.
Harper himself, at sight of the visitor, cast off all his usual sluggish discourtesy, and hastened up, tipping his hat.
“Man, man,” said Legges to him, in mild disapproval, “do not raise your hat to me. That is a salutation which the devout leave for their Creator, and the fond for women as they meet. Give me your hand, Brother Harper, and I praise heaven that I see your honest face again.”
This greeting he spoke in an unctuous tone and a still more impressive manner. He talked like a revivalist in a less fiery moment. His voice had the ring and the resonance of a public speaker, and it was said that Legges had, in fact, saved more than one erring soul before his practices were found out and he was hunted out of society by a sheriff’s posse.
The good Legges wrung the hand of Harper in a powerful grip as he gave him this greeting, and so much was Harper impressed by the coming of this famous evildoer that his eyes actually sought the ground. He begged Legges to come inside for a cup of coffee or a bite of food, but he refused.
Instead, he whistled, and a lean-sided hound came running up to him and played about his feet. The hound had run down from the higher mountains at the heels of Legges, and now the old man leaned and patted his head.
“Danny’s feet are all muddied,” said Legges, “and I wouldn’t be putting your good wife out of temper by letting such a muddy dog into the house.”
“As you please, Doctor Legges,” said Harper. “Would you’ve come down here to talk to me about young Dunmore, sir?”
“Dunmore? Dunmore?” said Legges, in affected absentness of mind. “Ah, is that the name of the youth? But first of all I want to ask you about our dear friend and good brother, Lynn Tucker. We haven’t heard from him since he came down here.”
“No,” grunted Harper. “You won’t hear from him for a while, because he’ll be off in the woods, waitin’ until his shame has settled down in his boots a little out of his heart.”
“Shame is a good Christian feeling, brother,” said Legges. “But how was Lynn Tucker shamed? By this same young Dunmore?”
“Aye, by him,” said Chuck. “And may trouble overtake him. Because when Lynn went up to his room with a gun that night, Dunmore was ready for him. He caught him with glue on the floor, the way that you might catch a bird with a limed twig.”
“How did he know that Tucker was here?” asked Legges with a touch of sharpness.
“How can I tell? Unless he read the minds of
my wife and me as we sat at the supper table. Who knows how he finds out what he knows? But know it he did, and got ready a trap.”
“What did he do with Tucker?”
“Talked soft to him, the way that he always talks, and said nothing at all to him.”
“Where is he now?”
“Layin’ up in his room, sayin’ that he’s tired, and that he’s gonna rest there, and wants his supper carried up to him. . . . Givin’ orders like he was a lord.”
“He wants his supper carried up to him, does he?” said Legges, again leaning and patting the head of the dog. “And do you wait on him like that?”
“I would see him starve first,” said Harper, “but the wife has come into a strange sort of fear of that man. She says that he’s no man at all, but a rank demon, and I’m half thinking that she might be right. So we work for him and we wait on him hand and foot, and we never get a penny for it.”
“He doesn’t pay?”
“Never a penny.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” said Legges, “I’m greatly afraid that he’s a bold and bad young man. But this night let everything be done as he wishes it to be done. Give way to the wicked, my friend. When a man bids you walk with him a mile or two, walk with him two, and pray for his soul. Let your good wife cook him an excellent dinner, but before it is carried up to him, let me see it. I may wish that it should carry a peculiar blessing. Hark, man . . . can he see me from his window now?”
“He may not see you now,” said Chuck Harper, “but he’s apt to know that you or someone’s here. He can see through walls, my wife says, and I’m kinda thinkin’ the same way with her.”
They finally went for a walk into the woods, and it was dusk when they returned. Harper went in first and learned from his wife that the stranger was in his room still, and had not come out. After this, Legges was brought in, and the cooking of the supper was quickly concluded. There were two thick venison steaks, and fried potatoes, bread, syrup, and a pot of coffee for the guest of the hotel. Mrs. Harper glowered as she set out the food.
But Legges smiled on the big tray. “What will he relish most?” he asked.
“The meat, the meat!” said Mrs. Harper. “He can eat half a cow a day. He’s got a winter famine in his stomach all the day long. He’s a pig, and not a man.”
“Gluttony is one of the deadly sins,” said Legges. “Now heaven forgive him for it, but, after all, the sinful must have their lessons and their privations . . . spare the whip and spoil the soul of the wrongful man.” He spread his hands above the meat, and, as he did so, a little shower of white powder descended upon it.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Harper. “What’ve ye done to the meat, Legges? Chuck, Chuck, I won’t carry the tray up. Now that this is done to it.”
“I’ll carry it to him myself,” said Chuck. “What do I care? This’ll stop him hungerin’, maybe.”
So, with a set face, he started to leave the kitchen, but Legges cautioned him: “Smile, smile, smile! There’s more to be done with a smile in this world than with a cocked gun or a sharp knife.”
So big Chuck Harper went up the stairs, with the hound, Danny, scampering behind him after the smell of the meat. Presently Chuck came down again, grinning in very fact with a true malice in his face.
“He rubbed his hands when he seen that venison,” he said, “and I last seen him dabbin’ the salt onto it, and slicin’ off a hunk . . . Doctor, what’ll we hear? What’ll he do?”
“You’ll hear nothing but the sound of a fall. The wicked are up, but they must be put down,” said Legges. “That’s a lesson to be learned from this, Chuck, my young friend. The wicked are up, but they must descend again, and heaven have mercy on their souls.” He turned to Mrs. Harper. “Now, my dear,” he said, “let us have a little more of that same steak, but this time we’ll let salt be the single blessing on it. Where’s the dog, Chuck?”
“I dunno,” said Chuck. “I didn’t see. He went up with me. I had something more’n dogs to think about,” he added significantly. “Tell me, Doctor, will it kill a man quick . . . like a bullet?”
“Quick . . . like a bullet! As much of it as the head of a pin on the tongue of a horse would kill him instantly.”
New venison steaks were now hissing and steaming in the pan as Legges went on cheerfully: “What did this foolish young man want? How was he trying to establish himself? Ah, well, that will be a thing to be determined later on, when. . . .”
The door opened from the dining room side, and Carrick Dunmore came in and struck a white silence upon every face. “Go on talking, folks,” he said, while Legges noted that the footfall of this man made no sound upon the floor as he crossed to the stove. “Go right on talking and don’t let me upset you any.”
From the nerveless hand of Mrs. Harper, he took the big fork and with it turned the venison steaks; and Legges, as the man’s back was turned, glanced sharply, inquiringly, at Harper, as much as to say: This is the time to strike.
However, he did not have to look twice at Harper to understand that Chuck was sick with awe and fear, and incapable of raising a hand. The good Legges even slid a hand covertly inside his coat, for although he was old, he was not much slower than an aged cat.
But just as the burning thought entered his mind, and his hand had crept into the breast of his coat, Carrick Dunmore turned about from the stove and waved the big fork toward them. “Nothing in the world like fryin’ meat for a hungry man,” he said. “The smell of this here, it came up to me sweeter than incense. You won’t mind if a hungry man takes this turn, will you, Missus Harper?”
Even in her fear, her hatred mastered her and wrinkled her face as she answered: “You got your steak already . . . a three-man piece of meat, too!”
“Ah, and beautifully cooked, and it sure was seasoned to the queen’s taste,” said Carrick Dunmore with continued good cheer. “Only,” he went on, “it wasn’t me that ate it.”
“Not you?” cried Mrs. Harper indignantly.
“You see, there was that little Chilton boy that had got into the house, and he come runnin’ down the hall. . . .”
“Ah . . . heaven!” exclaimed Mrs. Harper with a sick face.
Carrick Dunmore paused, and for one instant his eyes centered upon the woman’s face and burned her to the soul. “And when I went to speak to the little boy,” he concluded slowly, “the dog, Danny, got at the meat. It killed him . . . like a bullet through the brain.”
THIRTEEN
The hand of Legges froze upon the butt of the revolver within his coat, and there it remained, for the glance of Carrick Dunmore had now turned upon him and rested brightly, but steadily, on his face.
“You’re a newcomer, I guess?”
“Yes,” said Legges.
“When I heard someone calling for the dog by the name of Danny, was that you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t own him, then?”
“Yes, I owned him.”
“Well, sir,” said Dunmore, “I’m mighty sorry that he died that way. It’ll cut you up a good deal. That’s why you’re so silent right now, I suppose.” He continued looking with a softened eye upon Legges. “I guess if one comes right down to it, they’s a lot of men that you’d rather see dead than that dog, eh?”
Although he said it in ever so casual and sympathetic a manner, the eyes of Legges gleamed with fear, and then were blank again. But he merely nodded, and did not speak. He could not help noticing that, in spite of his very careless manner, this young man had the big fork always in his left hand, the right remaining free for emergencies.
“I don’t know what could have happened to him. Choked on too big a bite, maybe? But choking takes a little time, eh? What would you say could’ve killed him?”
“Heart disease, no doubt,” said Legges calmly.
“Heart disease?” said the other. “Why, sure! That must’ve been it. Got himself all weakened from running around in this here thin mountain air. Maybe he run up the stairs too fast, just
now, and then he had the excitement of pitchin’ into that meat. . . .” He paused. Having made the picture as ridiculous as possible, he kept a mildly pleased eye upon Legges and added: “You must be a doctor, to’ve thought of that. And they’s only one doctor around here, I understand, and that’s Doctor Legges.” He crossed the room and held out his hand—his right hand. “I’m mighty glad to meet you, Doctor,” he said.
Legges, glancing over the shoulder of Dunmore, looked straight into the eyes of Harper, for the man’s back was once more turned upon his host, and this surely was the time to strike. But, as he looked, he saw Harper’s jaw sag down and he drew the back of his hand across the loose lips. Suddenly Legges knew that Harper, against this curious guest of his, would be of no more help than a figure of wood. The woman, too, was frightened. Therefore, the doctor held out his hand and took that of the younger man.
“Glad to know you. You’re Carrick Dunmore, that Harper has been telling me about.”
“Harper’s been mighty good to me,” said Dunmore. “So’s Missus Harper.” He went toward the stove again—once more turning his back upon Legges, and again the latter gripped his gun, but somehow could not use it. It was as though an icy breath struck him, and the fear that possessed the Harpers also seemed to be stealing into his veins.
“Nothing that they won’t do for me,” said Dunmore, turning the steaks in the frying pan again. “They ain’t happy unless they’re doing some little thing. Missus Harper, here, she sews on my buttons, and brushes up my clothes, and keeps my boots a-shinin’. And Chuck Harper, he’s always searchin’ for something to do for me. The boss hotelkeepers of the world, I’d call ’em. Look at Missus Harper, here, insistin’ on me taking these steaks that she was cookin’ for all of you. That’s kindness, ain’t it? She’s got a big heart for a hungry man, has Missus Harper.”
He smiled on her, and she, attempting to smile back, made a horrible grimace.
“A great cook, too,” went on Dunmore smoothly. “And fine at seasoning. Look at the way she’d fixed that steak . . . so’s it broke Danny’s heart with joy when he tasted it. That’s what I call a cook, Doctor Legges.”