by Max Brand
She listened to this brief narrative with certain murmurs which were much akin to grunts. Then she came in again, bearing a great tray. How much she had done in how short a space! There were quantities of muffins piping hot. There were two kinds of jam, strawberry and red currant, there was tea and cream and sugar and butter yellow as gold. Holden ate and ate and ate, while the witch sat crookedly in her chair with her great long head thrust out on her great skinny neck, and her little birdlike eyes blinking at him with intense deliberation. And she ate nothing, but sipped her tea in continual rapid little swallows which did not in the slightest diminish the amount of tea in her cup.
As for Tom Holden, the more he saw of this little house, the more comfortable he observed it to be. The rug in the floor of this room was a brilliant riot of blues and red and deep old golds. There were chairs with odd bits of needlework and tapestry for upholstery. Outside the three windows were three window boxes which carried a bright bit of the garden into the very room, as it were; and since the windows were open, the breeze kept up a continual rustling and whispering through the house and stirred the gay yellow and crimson chintz curtains which framed the windows.
All of these things, these bright and cheerful things, Tom Holden observed while he ate. And at length he could not help asking: “I suppose that your husband is a—”
Then he stopped short and grew very red and stared at the lady hard. For how could he be sure that the witch was married? She did not leave him in doubt.
“I am a single woman,” said she, stirring her cup of tea round and round, very fast.
“I’m sorry,” said Holden, feeling ridiculously ill at ease.
The frown on the brows of the witch dissolved a little.
“All young men are without tact,” she announced gravely. She continued to hold the spoon with three fingers and liberated a long forefinger to point at him. It was an excessively hard and bony finger. And it made the eyes of Holden start a little wider.
“Do you know that that ugly person, Crogan, will be here after you?” she said.
“Who,” asked Holden absently, “is Crogan?”
“The boy with the gun—”
“Oh!” said Holden. “Is the father like the son?”
“More,” said she with a sort of gloomy joy. “And how will you handle him, young man?”
It began to seem to Holden that the witch had invited him into her house as into a spider’s web, to keep him there until Crogan came to execute a vengeance.
“What can he come for?” asked Holden faintly.
“For the gun, for one thing! Of course, you took his revolver away from the boy!”
Holden uneasily shifted in his chair, and so shifting his glance passed through the next open doorway into a little morning room, done in delicate shades which now were all in shadow since the sun had passed to the western side of the house; but a leveled ray of brilliance slipped through the doorway and fell fairly upon the picture of a girl which hung upon the opposite wall, and her blue eyes found Holden and her soft mouth smiled at him. He was transfixed.
Perhaps the witch took his stiffened attitude as a tribute to the dreadful sentence which she had now pronounced, and with a wicked joy she leaned closer toward him above the teacup, leering, and stirring the cup with infinite rapidity, her gaunt forefinger pointing at him all the while. She went on to complete her work: “That’s not all, young Mr. Holden. Crogan is a gun fighter. He’s a killer. I don’t know how fast you can—”
Here she was amazed to see the cripple raise a hand to stop her talk and then rise slowly to his feet where he supported himself on the back of the chair. The great wolf dog rose beside him, and the other fragile hand of Holden was dropped upon the shaggy head of the beast.
“No more of Crogan,” he said abruptly. “But who is that?”
“Who is what?” asked the witch, scowling at him, but it was plain by a certain light in her eye that she knew what he was seeing.
“Who is that beauty?” breathed Holden. “Who is that sweet girl?”
He went a little closer, drawn unconsciously forward. Now he went without a staff, even, and his hobbling was a pitiful thing to watch. The big dog, Sneak, walked anxiously beside him.
“Ah,” said Holden, as he saw how the shoulders of the picture were dressed. “I understand. This is a picture of some great-aunt of yours, or some grandmother, painted years ago before some wooden-headed lackey with a title married her, and moved to—the colonies! That is it!”
He slunk back to his chair with a fallen head and sank into it.
“Well, well,” murmured the witch, “I do believe that you have been looking at my Alexa!”
She did not want to say a pleasant thing, perhaps, to this fellow who was to be destroyed in her presence by Crogan; but it was so pat and so quick on the tongue that it popped out before she was aware.
“I do believe that you have been looking at my Alexa!”
“Your Alexa?” cried Holden with an emphasis that made her flush and wince.
“I was her governess for sixteen years,” said she.
“But you left?” asked Holden.
“What could I do? Rather than see her married to an old fool of a millionaire, I raised my voice for the first time in that house. I told Mr. Oliphant Larramee what I thought of him and his ideas. After that it was impossible, of course, for me to live in the house.”
She dropped her squared shoulders back in the chair.
“She’s married, then?” asked Holden softly.
“No matter how much poor Alexa loved me and missed me!” said the witch.
Holden grasped his staff from beside his chair and dashed the point of it against the floor, where it dented out a cruelly deep groove.
“She’s married, then?” he thundered.
“God bless me!” gasped out the witch, and stared at the dent in the floor. “Of course she’s not married. What I said in her father’s presence had an effect on her. She was wakened, I thanked God. That very day, after I left the house at the order of her father—and according to my own inclination—Alexa stood before Oliphant Larramee and used my words to his face.” The witch closed her eyes and repeated with infinite joy: “To his very face!”
Something broke in Holden. Joy flooded his face. “You are a very good woman,” said he.
“Tush!” said the witch.
“And a very wise woman,” said he.
At this she raised her eyebrows, and then squinted at him. “To hear you talk, Mr. Holden, one would think that I had saved her for you.” She broke into fierce, sharp laughter. “For you!” she repeated with such a thrust of sarcasm that Holden sat up straighter.
“Well, well!” said he, and gave the wolf dog half a muffin at a bite. That poor brute swallowed the morsel and then looked up in the face of the man with moist eyes of hunger and affection and dumb gratitude.
“I think the dog loves you!” snapped out the witch. She leaned forward to observe more closely. “Dogs are unreasonable beasts!” said she in conclusion. “Now,” she added, briskly, “tell me what you meant by adventuring among all those young wolves—I mean, among all those young boys in the street?”
“I?” murmured Holden, fencing for time and much surprised.
“Exactly what I say. Answer me!”
“A mere scattering of youngsters,” said Holden with a magnificent gesture.
“Humph!” grunted the witch. “That scattering might have torn you to bits. Wolves—that’s what they are. They’ve killed two of my cats. They ran my poodle to death with a can tied to its tail. They would have slaughtered you without an afterthought. Without a single one!” She added, glaring at him: “And you know it!”
Holden surrendered at once. “I know it,” said he.
She struck a bony hand upon a bony knee. “Then why did you do it?”
“The dog, you know—” said Holden faintly.
“Bah!” cried the witch. “They might have torn you limb from limb. They came mig
hty close to it as it was.”
“I suppose they did,” sighed Holden.
“You didn’t know the dog!”
“Ah—in fact, I suppose that I didn’t.”
“And you had no weapon with you.”
“The staff, you see.”
“Rot! They could have stoned you to death from a distance and run away when you tried to catch them.”
He flushed and sat straight again. “Perhaps,” said Holden coldly.
“Do you mean to tell me that you actually had no gun?”
“Of course I didn’t have one. I don’t know how to use a gun, anyway, you know. They aren’t the slightest use to me for that reason.”
“By heavens!” cried the witch. “You did this for the sake of a dog?”
“What else? Of course it was for the poor dog. Eh, boy?”
Sneak licked his hand fondly, in recognition of that tender lowering of the voice which flowed like exquisite music over the brute soul of the dog.
“Nonsense!” shrilled the witch. “It was because you wanted to play the hero! It was because—”
Here a bold knock fell upon the front door and she stopped talking, adding immediately: “Who dares to rap at my front door as loudly as that?”
Deadly premonition rose big and shadowy in the mind of Holden.
“Crogan!” he breathed.
The witch jumped from her chair and the teacup shattered from her hand.
“It must be Crogan,” she whispered. “Oh, what can we do? Poor boy! Poor, crippled, motherless boy!”
CHAPTER 7
Such a burst of tenderness seemed to Holden like a mockery of reality. He looked at the witch and he looked at her again, and he saw once more the flush of light in her eyes which he had seen there once before as she was thinking of her Alexa. The sun had set. The red afterglow filled up the sky from horizon to horizon; but that light hung like the color of a picture outside the window and very little of it entered the room. There was only the dusk, the beating silence, and the tears in the eyes of Aunt Carrie. She came to him and took his hands.
“I can hide you!” she whispered.
By the fear in her face he knew more exactly just how terrible a creature this Crogan must be. He knew, furthermore, that it was useless to flee to a hiding place. Crogan would hunt for him and find him, and draw him forth by the nape of the neck and carry him forth to the street and beat him in the presence of young Crogan and all the other boys. Holden could hear them now as they gathered thick in the street with a murmuring of voices, some deep and obscure, some bright and high like the talking of birds in the morning. There was no refuge in flight.
Here the great hand of the man at the door beat again, and the house trembled and the floor quivered under the feet of Holden. He grew sick. The face before him was dim with more than the dusk, and something like a prayer formed in his heart.
But the rat must go to face the danger from which running will not carry it away. Holden withdrew himself from the hands of the witch.
“Sit down in the next room,” said he.
“Ah,” gasped out the witch, “you are going to let him kill you? Child, child, you don’t understand! This great beast of a man will crush you, grind you under his feet. He is the king of brutes. There is no man in him.”
“Hush!” said Holden, putting his hand on the butt of the heavy revolver. “Women don’t understand these matters.”
With this, he went to the door and flung it open. Before him, emblazoned by the sunset, was the monster Crogan. He was very huge. He was even larger than Chris Venner had appeared, though this could be merely guessed. The mounds of his shoulder flesh rolled up almost equal to the base of his jaw in height. He had immense long arms like the arms of Blinky Wickson, and the arms of Crogan were like the thighs of a strong man in thickness. He knocked back his hat as Holden appeared. He knocked back his hat so that the hideousness of his face would be apparent and crush the soul of a smaller man.
“You,” said Crogan, “are the gent that thrashed my boy Jud, maybe?”
He added, for fear that he had been unfair to one of his own flesh and blood: “You’re the gent that hit Jud when he wasn’t lookin’?”
The answer of Holden was a miracle of gentleness. “I am the man,” said he.
There was a little choked gasp from the dark of the room behind Holden, but Crogan did not hear it. A spasm of rage wrinkled the fleshy face of Crogan. He reached for the butts of his guns. He changed his mind and fingered the haft of a knife. He changed it yet again and balled his great fists, fringed all about with thick red hair.
“You’re the one that stole my gun from him, eh?” he remarked.
“I took the gun away from him,” said Holden.
“I’ve licked him,” said the father, “for gettin’ licked. Now I’ve come to let him see me get the gun back!”
“You will have it, Mr. Crogan,” said Holden.
This mildness brought a green devil into the eyes of Crogan; he saw his prey delivered voluntarily into his grip.
“That’ll be one thing,” said Crogan. “After I got the gun, they’s other things to talk about, and we’ll sashay along to them later on. Now lemme have this here gun.”
The boys had swarmed to the fence to watch. One and then another jumped the fence and strode recklessly over the sacred garden of Aunt Carrie to be nearer to the great scene.
“By all means,” they heard the gentle voice of the cripple say, “as soon as I understand that you should have it.”
“You mean,” said Crogan, controlling his wrath, “when I prove that it’s mine? I can do that by the notches on the—”
“Not at all,” said Holden. “I can let you have the gun just as soon as you prove to me that you know how it should be handled—just so soon as I am convinced that you are not a murdering brute, Crogan!”
No one believed what they heard. Certainly the boys by the fence could not give credence to their ears. Certainly the woman cowering in the dark of the room behind could not believe. As for Crogan, he was staggered and even gave back half a pace. But Holden, striking simply because he knew that his nerve could not hold out much longer under this strain, saw the big man waver back close to him and saw him swell with fury.
“I’m to explain, eh?” said Crogan. “The explainin’ that I’ll do to you, you—”
Here his voice faltered. Something shoved past the thigh of Holden, and he looked down to the dusty, terrible head of Sneak; all in silence the beast stood there, its lips writhed back from the great fangs, the hate in its eyes, as though it recognized the cruel son in the cruel father. Crogan drew in his breath with a gasp.
“You got a wolf in there with you,” said he.
He shrank back to the edge of the steps. Sneak glided two silent strides in pursuit; Crogan leaped backward to the ground. He was too frightened to have sense, even, to lay a hand on a revolver, for the moment.
As for Holden, he saw himself saved by a miracle from destruction, but like most men, he forgot to be grateful to Providence the moment the height of the peril was over. Yet he felt greater mastery, greater content in himself.
He spoke to Sneak, and at his voice the great dog sank on its belly, though it still slavered horribly as it stared up at the fat throat of Crogan. Now the latter regained self-possession enough to jerk out both his Colts, a shimmering long pair of guns, and a gasp of joy and terror ran down the lines of the waiting boys by the fence. They huddled closer to one another, and they grew white, but not one could take his eyes from the exquisite torment of the scene.
“Don’t shoot,” advised Holden.
“I’ll blow the wolf to pieces,” said Crogan, “and then I’ll fix you, you rat.”
He shrank back a little, fascinated by the eyes of the dog. Nothing is so terrible as a dog turned enemy. Crogan tasted in forethought the white teeth sinking through his flesh and grating on his bones.
“If you fire at the dog,” said Holden, “you’ll probably miss. And even
if you wound him, he’ll put his teeth in your throat. And even if he missed you, Mr. Crogan, I’ll undoubtedly kill you. Do you hear me? I have no desire to murder you, Crogan. In your present condition, with your hands shaking, it would be nothing less than murder to fight with you. Do you see your hands, Crogan?”
This was brutal. Crogan, looking down against his will, saw his big hands trembling and the light shaking along the barrels of the Colts.
“A dog to back you up—a wolf to help you,” he gasped out. “What—what—”
Beyond the monster, Holden glimpsed the awestricken faces of the boys, already beginning to read the writing on the wall, already seeing that Crogan, the Terrible, was about to fail. But Holden saw even more. He saw that Crogan had been shocked out of all self-control.
“A dog to back me up? Crogan, do you realize who I am? Do you know me?”
He stepped out upon the little porch. That step revealed his crippled leg. But it revealed, also, a commanding frown upon his forehead and his right hand clasped upon the butt of the big revolver. Crogan’s own gun!
“Come back, boy!” commanded Holden.
The wolf dog shrank back, glided behind its new master, and then crouched in the throat of the darkness at the doorway, where its two eyes were bits of phosphorescent light.
“There,” said Holden, “I have sent the dog away. You and I are alone.”
This was very untrue. The dog from the doorway was even more terrible to poor Crogan’s excited imagination than the dog had been when it stood in the full light of the evening. Moreover, he was growing more and more uneasy. He had heard with astonishment how one crippled youth had scattered the ferocious boys of the town before him. Now he began to see reasons why that strange thing had been accomplished. The slender hands, the large, weighty forehead above the slender face, the great, round glasses, the patient eyes—these things which had excited his bitterest scorn at first now wakened in his breast a deep and unreasoning awe. He had been shocked into fear, first, by the nightmare apparition of the wolf dog. But now he was in the condition of one who has already turned his head and begun to flee—even a child could have frightened him away.
