by Max Brand
It was entirely a forced laugh, and from the corner of his eye he was studying the effect of his talk upon Tommy Vance. He was studying him as the scientist studies the insect and its wriggling under the prick of the needle and the acid. And certainly Tommy Vance was hard hit. By his scowl and the outthrust of his lower jaw, Gerald gathered that his companion would have fought sooner than submit to such observations as these had they been made in other than the most casual and good-natured manner.
“You sort of figure,” said Tommy Vance, “that women are pretty apt to … pretty apt to …” He was stuck for words.
“I hate to generalize on such a subject,” said Gerald. “Every idiot talks wisely about women. But a man in love is a blind man. He wakens sometimes in a short period. Sometimes he stays blind until he dies. But I never see a pretty girl that I don’t think of the spider, so full of wiles … and such instinctive wiles. She can’t help smiling in a certain way which you and I both know. And that smile is like dynamite. It’s a destructive force. Am I not right, Vance?”
So saying, he clapped his companion lightly on the shoulder, and Vance turned a wan smile upon him. It was delightful to be treated so familiarly by one who had so lately made himself a hero in the town. But still the brow of Tommy was clouded.
“Maybe there’s something in what you say,” he admitted. “But still, as far as Kate Maddern is concerned, I’d swear …” His voice stumbled away to nothing.
“Your lady?” said Gerald gaily, forcing his casual tone with the most perfect artistry. “Of course she’s the exception. She would be true to you if there were an ocean and ten years between you.”
But here Tommy Vance came to an abrupt halt and faced Gerald, and the latter knew, with a leaping heart, that he was succeeding better than he had ever dreamed he could.
IV
“Look here” said Vance, “of course I know you’re talking about womenfolk in general, but every time you speak like that I keep seeing Kate’s face, and it’s uncomfortable.”
Oh, jealous heart of a lover! Masked by the black of night, Gerald smiled with satisfaction. How fast the fish was rising to the bait!
“As I said before,” said Gerald, “I haven’t her in mind at all. She’s all that you dream of her, of course.”
“That’s just talk … just words,” said Tommy Vance. “Between you and me, you think she’s most apt to be like the rest.”
“If you wish to pin me down …”
“Kern,” Vance said, “if I was to go away tonight and never come back for twenty years, she’d still be waiting for me.”
“My dear fellow.”
“Well?”
“If you actually failed to keep your appointment with her?”
“Actually that.”
“Well,” said Gerald carelessly, “putting all due respect to your lady to the side so that we may speak freely …”
“Go ahead,” said Tommy Vance.
“Well, then, speaking on the basis of what I’ve seen and heard, I’d venture that if you go away tonight and don’t come back for ten days …”
“Well?” exclaimed Tommy.
“When you came back, you’d find a cold reception, Tommy.”
“I could explain everything in five seconds.”
“Suppose she’d grown lonely in the meantime? If she’s a pretty girl and the town’s full of young fellows with nothing to do in the evening … you understand, Vance?”
There was a groan from Vance as the iron of doubt entered his spirit. “It makes me sort of sick,” he murmured. “How do I know what she’d do? But no, she’d never look at another gent!”
“How long have you been engaged?” asked Gerald.
“Oh, about a month.”
“Have you been away from her for more than twelve hours during that time?
“No,” Tommy admitted reluctantly.
“My dear fellow, then you know that you’re talking simply from guesswork.”
Tommy was quiet, breathing hard. At length he said, “If she was to draw away from me simply because I missed seeing her one night and was away for ten days, why, I’d never speak to her again. I’d never want to see her again!”
But Gerald laughed. “That’s what they usually say,” he declared. “But after the smoke has cleared away, they settle back to happiness again. They wear a scar, but they try to forget. They wish themselves back into a blind state. And so they marry. Ten years later they begin to remember. They hearken back to the old wounds, and then comes the crash. That’s what wrecks a home …” He broke off and changed his tone before he went on. “But of course no man dares to test a woman before he makes her his wife. He tests a horse before he buys it … he tests gold before he mines for it … but he doesn’t get a proof in the most important question of all. Pure blindness, Tom Vance!”
“Suppose …” groaned Tommy Vance, his head lowered.
He did not finish his sentence. He did not need to, for Gerald could tell the wretched suspicion that was beginning to grow in his companion.
“But you see there’s never a chance for it,” said Gerald. “There’s a small, prophetic voice in a man that tells him that he dare not make the try. He knows well enough that, if the girl is ready to marry, she’ll marry someone else, if she doesn’t marry him. It’s the homemaking instinct in her that’s forcing her ahead. That’s all as clear as daylight, I think.”
“Good Lord!” groaned Tommy. “Suppose I should be wrong.”
“Come, come,” Gerald said. “I didn’t mean that you should take me seriously. I was merely talking about girls in general.”
“I wish I’d never heard you speak,” said Tommy bitterly.
“You’ll forget what I’ve said by tomorrow … by the time she’s smiled at you twice,” said Gerald.
“Not if I live a hundred years,” Tommy said. “And why not do it? As you say we test gold before we dig for it … and only ten days.” He rubbed his hand across his forehead.
“You won’t do it,” said Gerald. “When it comes to the pinch, you won’t be able to get away.”
“What makes you so sure?” Tommy asked in anger.
He was boy enough to be furious at the thought that anyone could see through him.
“Why, as I said before,” went on Gerald, fighting hard to retain his calmness and keep his voice from showing unmistakable signs of his excitement, “there’s something inside of you that keeps whispering that I’m right.”
“By the Lord,” groaned Tommy, “I won’t admit it.”
“No, like the rest you’ll close your eyes to it.”
“But if at the end of ten days …”
“That’s the point. If at the end of ten days, you came back and found her dancing with another man, smiling for him, laughing for him, working hard to make him happy, why …”
“I’d kill him,” breathed Tommy Vance.
“Of course you would,” said Gerald. “And that’s another reason you must not go away. It might lead to manslaughter.”
Tommy tore open his shirt at the throat as though he were strangling, and yet the wind was humming down the valley, and the night air was chill and piercing. It was late November, and winter was already on the upper mountains, covering them with white hoods.
“You’re so cussed sure …” said Tommy Vance.
“Of course.”
“What gives you the right to talk so free and easy?”
“I’d wager a thousand dollars on it,” said Gerald.
“The devil you would!”
“I’m not asking you to take up the bet,” tempted Gerald.
“I could cover that amount.”
“But a thousand dollars and a girl is a good deal to put up.”
“Kern, I’ll make the bet.”
“Have you lost your wits, Tom Vance?”
It was too wonderfully good to be true, but now he must drive the young fellow so far that he could not draw back.
“I mean every word of it,” Tom said.
“I don’t believe it. Think of what will go on in the girl’s head, Tom. She’s waiting for you now. She’d worry a good deal if she didn’t hear from you till the morning, and then got only a little bit of a note … ‘Dear Kate, have to be away on business. No time to explain. Back in ten days.’ A note like that, my boy, would make her wild with anger. A girl doesn’t like to be treated lightly.”
“But,” Tommy Vance insisted, “I am going to send her just such a note.”
“Tush! That’s mere bravado even from you.”
“Kern, is my word good for my money?”
“Good as gold.”
“Then I’m gone tonight, and when I come back in ten days if she’s … she’s as much as cold to me, you win one thousand dollars!”
He turned away. Gerald caught him by the shoulder.
“Tom,” he said, “I’m not going to let you do this. I’d feel the burden of the responsibility. And mind you, my friend, if the girl is not as strong as you think she is, and as constant, it is simply the working of Mother Nature in her. Will you try to see that?”
“I’ve come to my conclusion, Kern, let me go!”
“It’s final?”
“Absolutely!”
“Ten whole days?”
“Ten whole days!”
“With never a word to her during all that time?”
“With never a word to her during all that time!”
The hand of Gerald dropped away. He stepped back with an almost solemn feeling of wonder passing over that crafty brain of his. How mysterious was the power of words that could enter the brain and so pervert the good sense of a man as the sense of Tommy Vance had been changed by his subtle suggestions.
“Well,” he said when he could control his voice, “you’re a brave fellow, Tom Vance.”
“Good night!” snapped Tommy over his shoulder.
“And good luck!” sang out Gerald.
He watched his late companion melt into the shadows, and then Gerald turned to saunter on his way. It was all like the working of a miracle. Without the lifting of his hand, he had driven from Culver City the only man who stood between him and a pleasant visit with lovely Kate Maddern.
No matter if she were already engaged to another man. One curt note, and then ten days of silence could do much. Oh, it could do very much. Wounded pride was an excellent sedative for the most vital pangs of love. And silence and the leaden passing of time would help. Ten days to a lover were the ten eternities of another person.
Would it be very odd if she came to pay some attention to a stranger who was not altogether ungracious, whose manners were easy, whose voice was gentle, who could tell her many tales of many lands, and the story of whose manhood was even now ringing through Culver Valley—if such a man as this were near while Kate Maddern struggled with grief and pride and angry pique, would there not be a chance to win $1,000 from Tom Vance—and something more?
V
He went lazily on up the slope of the mountain. Behind him the town was wakening to a wilder life. And, staring back, he could see a thickening stream that poured in under the great light in front of Canton Douglas’ place.
Yes, it would be very pleasant to sit at one of those tables and mine the gold out of the pockets of the men who were there with their wealth. But a game even more exciting was ahead of him. He turned up the hill again, walking lightly and swiftly now. Yonder was the cabin, with the door open and a spurt of yellow lamplight over the threshold and dripping down half a dozen stone steps.
He arrived at the path and turned up it, and in a moment she came whipping through the door and down the steps with a cloak flying behind her shoulders.
“Tommy, Tommy dear!” she was calling as she came dancing to him. Her arms flashed around his neck. She had kissed him twice before she realized her mistake. And then horror made her too numb to flee. She merely gasped and shrank away from him.
“I beg your pardon,” said Gerald. “This is the second time I’ve been mistaken for ‘Tommy dear.’ Do I look so much like him in the darkness?”
“What have I done,” breathed poor Kate.
She went up the steps backward, keeping her face to him as though she feared that he would spring in pursuit the moment she turned her back. But at the top step, near the door of the cabin, she paused.
“Who are you?” she queried from this post of vantage.
“My name is Gerald Kern,” he said.
“Have you come to see Dad?”
“No.”
“Are you one of the men from the next cabin?”
“No.”
“Well?” inquired Kate tentatively.
“I came to see you,” said Gerald.
“You came to see me? I don’t remember …”
“Ever meeting me?”
“Have I?”
“Never! So here I am, if you don’t mind.”
She hesitated. It was plain that she was interested. It was also plain that she was a little alarmed.
“I came down the hill this afternoon,” he went on. “Rather, it was in the dark of the twilight, and someone called from the door of the cabin to ‘Tommy dear.’”
“I’m so ashamed,” said Kate Maddern.
“You needn’t be. It was very pleasant. It brought me back up this mortal hill in the hope that you might let me talk to you for five minutes. To you and your father, you know.”
“Oh, to me and to Dad.”
There was a hint of laughter in her voice that told him that she understood well enough.
“I didn’t know anyone who’d introduce me, you see.”
“I think you manage very nicely all by yourself,” said Kate Maddern.
“Thank you.”
“You are just new to Culver City?”
“Yes. All new this evening.”
“But you haven’t come to dig gold … in such clothes as those.”
“I’m only looking at the country, you know.”
“And you don’t know a single man here?”
“Only one I met at Canton Douglas’ place.”
“That terrible place! Who was it?”
“His name was Vance.”
“Why, that’s Tommy!”
“Your Tommy?”
“Of course!”
“Lord bless us,” said Gerald. “If I had known that it was he, I should never have let him go.”
“Go where?”
“He’s off to find a mine … or prospect a new ledge, I think.”
“He left tonight?” There was bewilderment and grief in her voice.
“Yes. I’m so sorry that I bring bad news. Shall I go back to find him?”
“Will you?”
“Of course. If I had guessed that he was your Tommy, I should have tried to dissuade him.” He turned away.
“Come back!” she called.
He faced her again.
“Don’t go another step. I … I mustn’t pursue him, you know.”
“Just as you wish,” he answered.
“But what a strange thing for Tommy Vance to do.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“And to start prospecting in the middle of night …”
“Very odd, of course. But all prospectors are apt to do queer things, aren’t they?”
“Without saying a word to me about it,” she said, and stamped her foot.
“Hello?” called a voice beyond the cabin, and then a man turned the corner of the shack.
“Dad!”
“Well, honey?”
“What do you think of Tommy?”
“The same as ever. What do you think?
”
“I think he’s queer … very queer.”
“Trouble with him?”
“Dad, he was to come to see me tonight. It was extra specially important.”
“And he didn’t come?”
“He left town!”
“Terrible,” murmured her father, and laughed.
“Dad, he’s gone prospecting. Without a word to me.”
“Leave Tom alone. He’s a good boy. Hello, there.”
He had come gradually forward, and now he caught sight of Gerald, a dim form among the shadows.
“That’s the man who has just told me about Tom.”
“Hmm,” growled Maddern. “Did Tommy ask you to bring us the news?” he asked of Gerald.
“No, Mister Maddern.”
“You know me, do you?”
“I know your name.”
“Well, sir, you might have let Tom talk for himself.”
“It was quite by accident that I told your daughter,” he said.
“I don’t believe it,” said Maddern. “A pretty girl hears more bad news about young men from other young men than an editor of a paper. Oh, I was young, and I know how it goes. It was by accident you told her, eh?”
“Dad, you mustn’t talk like that.”
“You don’t need to steer me, honey. I’ll talk my own way along. I’ve got along unhelped for fifty years. It was accident, eh?”
“It was,” Gerald said.
“And that’s a lie, young man.”
“You are fifty, are you not?”
“And what of it?”
“You are old enough to know better than to talk to a stranger as you talk to me.”
Maddern came swooping down the steps. There was no shadow of doubt that he was of a fighting stock and full of blood royal that hungered for battle.
“Dad!” cried the girl from above.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Gerald. “Nothing will happen.”
