by Max Brand
The stranger said that he had a pretty good horse, which he had left in the corral, and he had taken in exchange for it a horse which he had found there. Green said that it was the best horse in the bunch he owned, and I don’t doubt that it was, because the kid had a pretty good eye for horseflesh. Green started raising quite a holler and even waved his gun a little, but the kid told him to put the gun down, and said that he had hurt enough men for one night and didn’t want to have anything more on his conscience. Green didn’t make any bones about saying that he was afraid to tackle the kid single-handed. And I don’t blame him. Fighting power just breathes out of some men like the smell out of a flower. The kid admitted that he was getting the best of the trade, and he said that he would come back and give the stranger all the money that was coming to him for boot in the trade. In the meantime, he didn’t have any cash, and he would have to make Green trust him.
Green was not feeling trusting, though. And now he had the second best of his string saddled and his Winchester oiled up and ready for use, when the gang from New Nineveh came along. Green dismounted and led the men into his house to have coffee and cold bread while he told them what had happened. Then they hit the saddle and went on.
Two of the men turned back though, at this point, and it was from them that the town had been able to get all the news that had circulated about the trail as far as Greens’ house.
This was the story that the old goat with the whiskers told me in the hotel there at New Nineveh, and you can imagine that, while he told me, I was not feeling none too happy, because any fool with half an eye could have told that it was my dirty work which was ruining things. Being Dalfieri so hard had cost the kid four wounded men, even if they weren’t kin of Crandall.
And every one of those four wounded men had friends.
In those days it was almost better to kill a man than to wound him. If you killed a man, his friends put him under the ground, and after he was buried, they were usually too much bothered with troubles of their own to trouble much about trying to do anything for him.
But if a man was just wounded, say, he never let his partners forget the other fellow who had been on the lucky end of that shooting party. So you might say that the kid had worked himself up four sets of trouble that were sure to last him for quite a while. That was not counting the three that he had scalded and the one that he had knocked down.
But if there is any difference between a bullet wound and being scalded, I should say that it is all in favor of the bullet.
Being shot is sort of honorable, but being knocked down or scalded is just foolish and makes everybody laugh at you.
There was plenty more talk in New Nineveh, but I had heard enough, and I knew what I had to do.
Chapter Fifteen
When I said that New Nineveh was full of nothing but crooks and such, I forgot one man. And I remembered him right at this point, when I heard the old goat finish up with his story. There was Judge Henry Dahlgren in town. He was a real judge back East someplace. I mean, he was still on the bench, but he was taking a vacation here where he could shoot deer and such and have a fine rough time. Some men get a funny sort of pleasure out of making themselves uncomfortable. But anyway, the judge was a white man. He was extra white.
I got out of that hotel and buzzed straight for the judge and got there just in time to head him off as he was starting on a hunting trip.
I started right in begging him to give me some advice, because I was in a lot of trouble, and I told him that I wanted to find some way of helping the kid.
“Young Bunts,” said the judge, “is the man who shot up the town last night. Is he not?”
I said that he was, but I started to explain when the judge, he cut in on me and said: “Is the boy really all right?”
I started to explain again, but the judge just said: “Tell me yes or no. It’s your opinion that I want, and not your evidence.”
So I said yes.
“Well,” said the judge, “you may have noticed that this boy has not actually killed anyone?”
I said, of course, that I was glad that that was the case.
“But,” said the judge, “that would not keep him from a pretty severe sentence in the East. And I suppose the rascal should get a severe sentence in any part of the civilized world. However, this part of the world is not yet civilized. Selfishly, I am glad of it. And I think that if he were to stop his wildness for a while, and live quietly, this affair would blow over.”
He went on to say that when the wounds of the hurt men had been healed and a little time had passed, what the kid had done would not seem so very wild and people wouldn’t call him a badman unless he went right on letting blood.
That was logical. There was no doubt about that. The judge said the thing for me to do was to get the kid to leave the area, and to get enough money to him so that he could pay for what he needed to live on. I swore to the judge that I would like nothing better than a chance to help the kid. Also, I said that the kid was the most honest man that I had ever known.
The judge didn’t smile. He was not that sort of a man. He looked you in the eye as serious as you please, and he never seemed to make up his mind by guesswork. You could see how wonderful square he was. I made up my mind that if I ever got into a scrape and if I was on the right side of the law, it would be worth traveling three thousand miles just to be judged by him, and if I was in the wrong, it was worth traveling thirty thousand miles to keep away from him.
He told me in concluding: “You paint a very rosy picture of this boy. But perhaps you’re right. He’s simply enthusiastic … not a criminal. Well, if he’s as honest as you say that he is, he will probably try to live up to his word and he will do his best to get honest money, if he has any in the world, and use it to pay for that roll of blankets he stole from the hotel and that horse which he took from the rancher, Green. But, sir, has he such a thing as money of his own? And where would he get it?”
It let in a very welcome ray of light upon my wits. Of course there was money owing to him. He had at least wages for three months due to him. And if that was not enough, I knew that, among us, my men and I could take care of him, and be very glad to do it. And as for where he would go to get that money, why, there was not a bit of doubt of that. He would ride straight back to the ranch and there he would ask for what was due to him.
I could have cursed myself for not thinking of that before. But that’s the way of it when a man is in a bit of trouble—his brain seems to get all filled with rust, if you know what I mean.
I got on my horse and started for the ranch again. But I was fagged out. I had missed a night’s sleep, and I had traveled more than a hundred and forty miles without closing my eyes and with all sorts of trouble hounding me every step of the way. So that I found that I simply could not sit in the saddle. I would find that my head was on my chest every minute or two, and then I would wake up with a start, half slid out of the saddle and that pinto starting to buck.
I got down and made myself a bed with my big rubber poncho and my blankets. I threw the reins of the horse, and I rolled up in the blankets and hoped that that bronco might be somewhere in sight when I opened my eyes again.
I could not keep up any longer. No, sir, I was so beat that I had to get that sleep.
I was somewhere around thirty miles from the Bar L outfit’s place when I lay down. And that must have been about noon in the day. It was around four or five when I started up out of that sleep with my heart beating like mad.
There was nothing to be afraid of near me, and my horse was fairly handy. In five minutes I was in the saddle again, but something told me that I should have no luck out of the trip.
I rode right on at a good stiff pace. That pinto was mean and had a gait all full of jars and jolts, but, just the same, he was a steady traveler, and he had the toughness of his breed. I headed on for the ranch. I landed there about
an hour after dusk had turned into the full dark of the night.
I got down from the pinto, knowing that he would never be worth a pinch of salt after that day’s ride, but I hardly cared. I was too full of gloom, because with the wind singing in my ears and freezing in my face, I was surer than ever that I had ridden out to the ranch on a fool’s chase.
But it wasn’t a fool’s chase. It was only because I had had that sleep that I had missed out. If I had been like the kid, made up of nothing but nerve and iron, I would have been able to do my work well enough. But I was never made out of such stuff. I never would pretend to imitate Dalfieri, not even for a minute.
When I came into the old ranch house, I saw Chick Murphy and old Parkhurst sitting by the kitchen stove. I gave them one look, and then I knew that nothing but bad news was in the place for me.
I didn’t even speak to them but started on through for the dining room, where I could hear somebody shuffling around.
I had my hand on the door when one of the boys sang out softly that I had better not go in there.
I turned around and came back to the stove and spread out my hands over the top of it. But it was not that kind of warmth that I needed. And the two of them sat there like owls, hugging their knees and staring at me.
Then I yelled at them all at once: “Damn your necks, why don’t you blat it out and get it done with?”
They weren’t the best-tempered pair in the world, but they just turned their heads and looked at one another and started staring at me again. And I saw what was worse than anything—that there was pity in their eyes. I turned around and started for the door again.
And then Chick said: “Don’t go in, boss. Old Wong is in there, trying to lay out the body more natural and make it look more like it’s alive.”
It knocked me all galley west. I grabbed at the wall and held myself up, and I managed to ask them if it was the kid that was lying dead in there.
That brightened them up a little bit. They said that it wasn’t the kid.
“It’s only a dead man that he’s left there,” said Parkhurst.
Yes, I was too late by more than an hour and a half. The kid had killed his man, at last, and I knew that there wasn’t much hope for him. Not with his spirit. The boys told me that a man they didn’t know had ridden up to the ranch house along about suppertime, and they had let him in, and he had told them about all the hell that the kid had raised in New Nineveh that night before.
They were about through supper when the door opened, and there stood the kid, laughing and happy to be back, and singing out: “Hello, fellows!”
When the stranger heard that voice, he turned around in his chair, snaking out a gun as he turned, and he tried to sink a bullet in the kid, but he only split the door. And the kid’s gun snapped out very pretty, and the stranger rolled over on the floor with a slug of lead in his brains. The kid stood there, looking at this dead face on the floor for a minute, and then he backed out the door without saying another word. When they got their wits about them, they ran out to call him. But there was no sight or sound of him again!
They knew what I knew as they told me, that it was the kid’s last try to come back to an honest living. After that, there was nothing left for him except what lay outside of the law, which is a pretty wild and cold country for an eighteen-year-old boy. Oh, the three of us were a sick and sad group thinking of it, and of the kid, and of all the good times we had had that winter, laughing at his poor, fool, innocent ways.
I went into the dining room.
It was Steve Harper! He must have had a bright thought earlier in the day and figured things out just the way that the judge had figured them out for me—except that Steve only wanted to get his chance to drive a bullet through the innards of Jigger Bunts.
Well, that was the end of Steve, and, in a way, it was the end of the kid. And we would never again see a body so brave and gentle and willing and kind and foolish. Even old Wong knew it.
Wong was still fussing around. He had made that dead man look mighty natural. I guess he must have worked pretty hard getting the ache out of his heart and trying to undo what the kid had done. Like a child trying to fix a toy that somebody else has put his heel right on.
When he saw me, as though he knew that him and me had been special fond of the kid, he shoved his hands inside of his coat sleeves and stood there, looking down at the floor, and crying.
And I said: “Damn your hide, what good can that do?”
Then I sneaked off into the night, where the air was fresher.
Part Two
Maybelle
Chapter Sixteen
Months had passed. I was sitting with my head in my hands. I was feeling so low that I could have stood up and walked under a snake without scratching its stomach. I was feeling so small that I could have used the shell of a hickory nut for house and barn.
Sam Mitchell came in from the bunkhouse.
“How’s things, chief?” he asked.
“Damn your hide,” I said. “Don’t talk to me!”
He picked up the paper where it had fallen on the floor and he read the article out loud, spelling the words to himself before he pronounced them. Because Mitchell never had no educational advantages, like me.
This was what he read out loud to me, and every word made me sicker and sicker.
Famous outlaw holds up new nineveh stage
Outfaces three guards and escapes with loot
Last night, under a full moon, the celebrated bandit Jigger Bunts waited in a gap of the Nineveh Mountains until the New Nineveh coach came through and then stepped out with a rifle to …
“Shut up!” I yelled at Mitchell.
He went on running his eyes through the column as fast as he could, bringing out important words, here and there.
“Three guards … a sawed-off shotgun … lady fainted … when last seen riding west … Doggone me, Tom, it looks like he might be heading for us. Might be coming back to pay us a visit. That would be pretty good, eh?”
“Shut up,” I said. “I’ve been thinking too much for my peace of mind!”
Just then the cook, came in.
“Hey, Wong,” says Mitchell, “Jigger is drifting back this way. You savvy? The kid … maybe he’s coming back to pay us a visit!”
“Kid come? By golly!” Wong exclaimed, and he looked at us with eyes as big as saucers and a grin that tickled both ears. The kid was still the favorite with Wong. He’d always managed to shy the best chuck onto the kid’s plate, back when Jigger was working with us on the ranch.
But it didn’t cheer me up much to see Wong’s face. I could only groan as I said to Mitchell: “Maybe Jigger is coming, and if he does, I want you to tell me how we’re going to be able to do something for him … how we’re gonna be able to stop him, Sam, before he goes on with this bandit work of his long enough to jam his head right into a hangman’s noose.”
“He’s killed nobody yet,” Bud responded, very cheerful.
I didn’t remind him about Steve Harper. Instead, I told Sam what I thought of him in language that can’t be repeated here, incidentally pointing out that Jigger was smart enough to be able to shoot for a leg or a shoulder instead of for a head or a heart, but someday the killings would come in flocks and bunches if things kept up the way they were. Of course, Sam had to admit that that was sense, and he went outside right away, which was his way of showing that the puzzle was a bit too hard for him.
It was all left to me, and that was right and proper, in a way, because, of course, the fool joke that started the kid on the wrong course had been allowed to grow while I was the boss of the ranch. But just because it was justice that I should be miserable about this thing, it didn’t make it any easier. I’ve never noticed that the hat of justice failed to be a size too small when you had to put it on your own head.
But when I went outside and lo
oked the landscape over, it was a blue day—oh, what a blue day it was! Nothing but high gray clouds across the face of the sky. The cows had their backs to the wind that was blowing their tails between their hind legs, and the yearlings were roaching up their backs and dropping their heads real miserable, as though the winter had come already. Somehow the sight of those miserable cows was too much for me. I had to get away from the ranch, and it was easy for me to remember a lot of things that ought to be done in town.
So I had a tough pair of buckskins hitched to the buckboard, and I started out on the long trail.
I’ll tell you how mean I was feeling. All of the errands that I had to do would be better done in Marion Crossing, of course. But New Nineveh had the call over the good town this morning. I think that the lowness and the orneriness and the meanness of New Nineveh just fitted into my own mind like clockwork that day, and I busted off down the trail, popping the buckskins with the whip one minute and sawing on their mouths with the reins the next, the way that a man will do when he’s too down to be decent.
I got into New Nineveh at dark, with two horses pretty near too tired to step. I shoved them into the livery stable and got me a room at the hotel.
Of course, I had what you’d half expect in New Nineveh—a room right over another where some gents were playing poker and arguing a lot over their cards and their liquor. I listened to them yapping for a long time, and then I went stamping down the stairs, and I kicked open the door of their room. I leaned in the doorway and used up a few minutes passing bad language while they sat pretty dumbstruck and scared, thinking that I must be nothing less than a deputy sheriff or a celebrated gunfighter, by the proud talk that I was using.
