by Max Brand
“Now look here, cutie,” I said, “you can save that talk for Sunday, but every day of the week is Monday so far as I’m concerned. Don’t try any of the bunk on me. I remember how you had old man Foote standing around at your door and making a fool of himself for the whole village to see when …”
“Hey, Tommy!” busted in Maybelle. “Leave it be, will you?”
“Sure,” I said, “only when you talk proud, smile, kid, smile!”
“The old goat,” sniffed Maybelle. “He was an exception, anyway, and he didn’t count. You got to give a poor girl some leeway.”
“Sure,” I said, “and that’s what I want you to take right now. All the leeway in the world, honey. I want you to start in on planning out a campaign for taming down this here young outlaw.”
She shook her head.
“Listen, Maybelle …” I began, but she cut me off.
“Even when you put the Y in my name, you can’t persuade me on this. I’m adamant, you understand?”
“All right,” I said, pretty disgusted. “You lean back in your chair and give yourself time, will you? Have a smoke.”
“Yes,” Maybelle said, and she takes the makings and turns out her smoke very slick and fast. I lighted it and watched her puffing and blowing rings very deliberate, as if a dozen people up and down the street weren’t watching her all the time and going on to gossip about that shameless woman. But public opinion never weighed very heavy in the opinion of Maybelle Crofter.
“Now you try it in words of one syllable,” I said.
“Try what?” she asked.
“Try to explain why you won’t tackle this job for me?”
“Old son,” Maybelle said, “you hear me talk. When I get in my work on a man like that, it isn’t any joke. I don’t just pop into his head and out again. I stay there for a long while. The pikers and the tinhorn sports may forget me quick enough, but the
hundred-percent men are different. This kid is a ham, of course. But he’s a man. And suppose that he should really tumble head over heels in love with me?”
“He won’t be such a fathead,” I said. “You’re not such a bright light as that, Maybelle.”
She just grinned at me. Then she turned the grin into a smile—which is a lot different thing, if you know what I mean. She reached out and dropped a hand on my arm and looked straight into my eyes.
“Dear old silly Tommy,” she said, “don’t you think that even you could love me if you tried a little?”
I could only blink a little. Then I shook off her hand and took a deep breath.
“Leave me be, Maybelle,” I said. “I never done you no harm.”
“All right,” Maybelle said, “I never hit a man that’s down.”
I explained: “I understand what you mean. To get ahold on the kid, you’ve got to pretend that he’s knocked your eye right out. You’ve got to pretend to be pretty woozy about him, and that may make him fall into something a couple of pegs deeper than calf-love. But we’ve got to risk that. You understand what I mean? It’s this or a hangman to make his future.”
“Why,” Maybelle said, “he seems to have been doing pretty well for himself, thank you very much. I don’t notice that he’s crowding the jails much.”
“You don’t follow my drift,” I explained to her. “Sooner or later he’ll have his back against the wall, and then when he fights, he’ll have to shoot to kill. And when that happens, there’ll be a slaughter. You understand, Maybelle? We got to plan on saving himself from his future.”
She saw that point at last. “All right,” said Maybelle, “but what am I to do first? Ride out into the mountains and lasso this young rip?”
“Leave me to corral him,” I said. “He’s too much of a friend of mine not to try to drop in on me at the ranch, now that he’s working this section of the country again. And when I lay hands on him, I’ll try to get him interested in you.”
“That’s easy,” said Maybelle, and she opened her purse and took out her photograph. “I pack some of these around with me all the time. You never can tell when they’ll come in handy, you see? Hand the kid one of these. Wait a minute. Here’s one that makes me look younger. That was last year.”
You would say that she had a lot of brass, that girl. Well, she did have brass. But part of it was just frankness. She knew what her bad spots were, and she was willing to confess to them. She knew what her good points were, and she was just as ready to talk about them. She was just different from other people, if you know what I mean.
I looked this photograph over. She was dressed up in a
girlish-looking thing with a sailor collar on it and a broad hat with the brim furled up a mite, like her nose.
“What deviltry were you up to when this here picture was taken last year?” I asked.
“That was when Sammy Marvin … no, I mean that was when Jack Roxburgh was paying attention to me. The old idiot should have married somebody forty years old, at least, but what he wanted was sweet sixteen, you see? So I thought … why shouldn’t a man have what he wants, if it makes him happy? Anyway, it’s a good picture, isn’t it? My mouth doesn’t look big in it.”
“No,” I agreed, “it doesn’t. You look kind of sad and sweet?”
“That’s the devil of a big mouth,” says Maybelle. “You got to smile sad and sweet or else not smile at all. However, maybe the kid won’t mind sadness?”
I said: “Now, you get this wrote down in red and don’t you never forget it while you’re on this case.”
“After all, Tom Reynard,” she said, “I’m a woman and not a doctor.”
“You are a devil,” I said, “but let’s get down to business. While you’re working on this kid …”
“Remember,” Maybelle said, “I haven’t got my alimony … not yet.”
It took me up sort of short, but I set my teeth and decided to weather it.
“I’ll mail you fifty dollars to start with,” I said.
“All right,” Maybelle said. “It sounds like chicken feed, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
She didn’t even blush, though she certainly knew that I was only an ordinary cowpuncher with no big pay to fall back on and not very many savings. She was a hard one, in her own way, was Maybelle.
“You mail me fifty,” she said, “and then what? I start dressing like that picture … real girlish? Matter of fact, I’m togged out sort of young today.”
“How does it happen?” I asked.
“One of my neighbors came in the other day. A sour-faced old dame. She happened to see a pretty young-looking hat lying around, and she says … ‘I really don’t see, Mrs. Wayne, how a person of your age can wear a hat like that.’ Real catty, you see? So I say … ‘Keep your eyes open tomorrow, and you’ll see for yourself.’ So here I am. And not so bad at that, Tommy! Not so bad at that!”
Doggone me if she didn’t have a little mirror out, studying herself and nodding and smiling, agreeing with herself every minute.
You couldn’t beat Maybelle!
“Very well,” I said. “I suppose that you might dress young for this part you’re going to play … if I can ever get him to you. But look here, Maybelle, I want you to understand that the face won’t make much difference to the kid. You got to work by hypnosis on him. He can get blinder than anybody in the world. So doggoned blind that he lived with me for weeks and still would be thinking that I was a hero, if I hadn’t turned loose and got him out of the trance myself. That’s what you got to do. Rock him into a sweet dream, and then everything will be easy. He’ll never see the solid earth again. He’ll be miles above the clouds.”
“Well,” said Maybelle, “I’ll think it over. But right offhand, it seems to me that the best thing that I can do will be to be a wronged woman … that sort of stuff usually goes over pretty big with the youngsters.”
And she let her head fall bac
k and laughed just as free and hearty as any man.
My, but she was a rascal, and a pretty one, too.
Chapter Nineteen
On the whole, I felt a good deal better after talking with Maybelle that way. It gave me more heart, and I went around town and did my chores. I decided that I had ought to have more chats with Maybelle before I left New Nineveh. But when I went to see her, she was away, and her neighbor to the left told me without being asked that young Mrs. Wayne had gone gadding off with a strange man that afternoon.
I don’t know why it is that good women hate the bad ones so much. I don’t pretend to be any great judge, you understand, but it does always seem to me that their malice has a shading of envy in it. However, I ask the pardon of every lady for saying a thing like that.
Anyway, I knew as I went back down the street that it wouldn’t be the fault of the other women in the town if the admirers of Maybelle didn’t learn too much about her for her own good. When I got to the hotel again, I intended to start right back for the ranch, but I didn’t.
There was a man blew in from Montana that said he owned most of the silver mines in that part of the world, and besides that he said that he had corralled about all the luck that there was, and he added that in his spare time, he had invented a little game with cards, by the name of poker.
I allowed that I had heard of that game and would like to learn a little more about it. Three more of the boys of New Nineveh said that they were always willing to learn, and so we all sat in, smiling at each other as he “taught” us. Doggone me if he didn’t know every trick there was. There was a time that night when my watch and my hunting knife and my Colt were all lying on top of that table. But after a while I got them back into my pockets, and then luck turned my way a little. Particular when I suggested that we hire a gent for a dealer, because after that the gent from Montana wasn’t so doggoned sure about his invention, and his silver mines didn’t seem to be worth half so much.
Anyway, about two o’clock we got him parted from the last of his wad, and, though only about thirty dollars come to my share, it looked pretty fair to me for one day’s work.
I went up to my room singing, with the gents that I waked up on the way cussing me hearty on either side of the hall. But when I opened the door and stepped into my room, the first thing that I seen was a shadow against the stars beyond my window. That was nothing much to make a fuss over, I agree, but this shadow happened to wear the shape of a man.
“Who is it?” I said, but I was so scared that my voice wasn’t any louder than a whisper. I looked closer, and I could see that his head was lying on his arms where he sat at my table, and then I could hear the breathing of the sleeper.
Of course, I just thought that it was some drunk who had got into the wrong room and had fallen asleep before he could get into bed. I lighted a match, but the minute that the flame flared, I dropped that match and stepped on it, for fear somebody else might see what I was looking at.
Because the face that was turned sideways toward me on those folded arms was the face of the bandit, the outlaw, the stickup artist that the whole range was howling to get at, and New Nineveh was howling the loudest of all. It was Jigger Bunts.
“Jigger!” I gasped at his ear.
He woke up and stretched and yawned. Then he jumped up and shook hands with me and started saying how glad he was to see me again.
“Except that I’m not seeing you!” said Jigger. And he scratched a match and lighted a lamp. It drove me wild.
“Suppose that someone looks in?” I said.
“Not much chance of that,” he said. “It’s a pretty far climb to get up to that window. I know, because I’ve tried it myself, this evening.”
“But if they catch you here, they’ve got you trapped and helpless, sure.”
“Maybe not,” said Jigger.
“What could you do, if they get under that window, and watched you there?”
“I might try to force the back door, or rush right out the front way. Or I might go up to the top of the house and jump for the next roof … that’s not more than fifteen feet away, you know.”
Fifteen feet across a regular ravine, with hard rocks underneath if you missed your foothold on the far side.
“Do you even know how to get onto the roof?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” said the kid. “I haven’t overlooked all the lessons that you gave me about Louis Dalfieri, you know!”
“What lessons?” I asked.
“You remember telling me how Dalfieri never went anyplace without looking over the ways of escape. I haven’t forgotten that, and when I found that you weren’t in your room here, I looked the hotel over to get acquainted with it.”
“How did you know that I was here?” I barked at him.
“I stuck up a farmer driving a buckboard out of town, and I was asking him about what had been happening in town. He told me pretty freely. The idiot seemed to have an idea that I’d murder him at the first slip he made. Good heavens, Reynard, Louis Dalfieri never gave an impression like that, did he? He never seemed such a blood-curdling ruffian.”
How was I to remember exactly the colors in which all of us in the bunkhouse had painted the picture of Louis Dalfieri in the old days, those long months and months before?
I admitted that I suppose Dalfieri would not.
“But you held up a fighting man for the sake of getting news out of him?” I asked the kid, sort of sick and weak.
“He wasn’t a fighting man,” he said.
“They all pack guns … they all can use them … these gents in New Nineveh,” I told him. “And it’s time for you to know that, if you haven’t gathered it already.”
He only shook his head before replying.
“There’s a difference between a dangerous man and a weak one,” said Jigger Bunts. “You can tell them by something in their eyes … the way that they look at you, and the way that they carry their heads. Dalfieri could always tell the bad ones … you remember, Tom?”
Dalfieri again, damn the brain that invented him!
He went on: “I heard about the poker game you were sitting in on. And then that you were staying at the hotel. So I came in after dark and drifted through the rooms until I found the one that had your things in it. It was like seeing a friend’s face when I laid eyes on them, Tom.”
And he laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. But all I could think of was the incredible daring of this young fool, wandering from room to room in a hotel where he might run into danger at any time, and where every exit could be barred against him in no time.
“Then you sat down and went to sleep,” I said.
“Well,” Jigger began, “you see there was only about one chance in five that anybody would come into the room before you did. I needed sleep … haven’t had any in two days. And you remember what Dalfieri used to say about chances?”
“Damn Dalfieri!” I said.
He was shocked. Plain shocked and staggered by hearing language that was a sort of a blasphemy to him.
He said with a crooked smile: “Of course, that’s a joke, but it doesn’t sound like a good joke to me, Tom, if you’ll let me say so. However, you remember that Dalfieri says that four chances out of five is as good as a sure thing … to a man who’s living in danger of the law. So I had to take it. And I’ve won out, you see? I’ve had … let me see … why, four whole hours of sleep. It bucks me up no end.”
He straightened himself a little and shook back his shoulders. You would never say that that young dandy had gone forty-eight hours without sleep. He was the thing that Louis Dalfieri, the moving-picture actor, had tried to be like, but had missed out on.
Everything was perfect. And the Lord knows how much it would have cost a man to go right into a store and try to buy all that stuff. He had the flowing tie of black silk under his chin, and he wore a silk shirt w
ith gold buttons, big gold buttons on it. Queer-looking buttons they were, but when I looked closer I could recognize them. Now and then a very flashy Mexican caballero will put a little plate of gold, like a coin, on the peak of his sombrero. And that was what the seven buttons of Jigger Bunts’ shirt were.
I wondered how Jigger had got those seven little plates that had once finished off the gaudy sombreros of seven bucks. I could make a guess that he hadn’t bought them in any curio shop. Because Jigger was not that kind of a man. For instance, Dalfieri in the picture had a sash around his waist. And now so did Jigger Bunts. But the sash of Jigger was made of thin yellow Chinese silk, all brocaded with fine gold figurings that hardly showed. They looked like little metal casings. Lord knows what that wonderful scarf had been intended for originally by the hands that had put in the years at this embroidery—an altar cloth, perhaps.
No, nothing was too good in the line of clothes once Jigger started to dress for the part of Louis Dalfieri, the outlaw that probably never rode a horse outside of the bunkhouse where the boys and I invented him! From his shining boots to his neat little waxed and pointed mustaches, Jigger looked like something off the stage, not like a real, hundred-percent bandit. Poor kid!
He said: “Tom, you look downhearted. What’s wrong?”
“Forget me, Jigger,” I said, “and tell me about yourself.”
A shadow came across his eyes.
“I haven’t found him yet,” said Jigger. “I’ve ridden hundreds of miles on horseback, and I’ve ridden thousands of miles on the blind baggage or the rods or on top of boxcars. I’ve pried into every nook and cranny that I could find, but I haven’t found Dalfieri.”
Maybe some people would have laughed. But I felt just the other way. It was no laughing matter when this kid set his fool heart on something.
“And what’s strangest of all,” Jigger said, “is that I haven’t found anyone who knows about him. Of course, I remember you always said that he worked very quietly. Not very many men knew him. Still, it seems odd … mighty odd!”
I hoped, for a minute, that the truth might be dawning in that brain of his—or the first doubt, at least. And if there was just the beginning of a doubt, then I could confess the whole hoax that we had played on him, though of course it would make him loathe me like a snake.
