by Max Brand
Beside the excellent Julius Maybeck, that benefactor of the city, there were heaps of bricks which had been worked out of the floor, and it was plain from the worn and even bleeding fingers of Mr. Maybeck that he had been forced to join the robber in the work of tearing up the flooring. Perhaps under the point of that villain’s gun he had been compelled to labor and at the same time to keep up that noisy conversation which was constantly audible to those outside the chamber as a confused blur of sound. No doubt it had been confused indeed in every fact, had they been able to make out the words which were obscurely jumbled together.
The bricks had been lifted from a considerable hole; beneath that circumference the boards had been cut through or pried up, and in this fashion Mr. Thomas Holden had gained access to the cellar of the bank after first binding and gagging the president of the institution so that there was nothing to fear from any alarm which he might raise.
In the meantime, Thomas Holden was gone; and the men of Maybeck felt that they had joined the great company of those whom the resolute villain had made ridiculous.
They were doing their best to circulate among the hills and come upon some traces of the direction of his flight; while he, at that moment, sat his horse under the window of big Chris Venner in the dusk of the evening.
“Chris,” he said, “everything is settled. Old Maybeck is certain that I stole the money and now I have given it back to him to buy his good influence. And so, Chris, no human being can ever bring the shadow of that theft against you so long as you live.”
“You’ve taken it on yourself, Holden?” murmured Venner. “Can I stand for that?”
“They’ve chalked up murder against me now,” said Holden. “A little thing like stealing really doesn’t matter. Now, Chris, I’ve come to tell you what you can do for me to pay back everything.”
“Old-timer, I been waitin’ to hear you talk.”
“They’ve accused me of murdering old Alec Marshall and his son in Timber Valley. Chris, do you know that country?”
“I know it, and I know everybody in it.”
“Do you know the crooks who hang around there?”
“I learned the game while I was there, man!”
“Go up to Timber Valley, Chris. As sure as there’s a God in heaven, the same devil who murdered Alec Marshall is the same devil who had been killing and robbing near Larramee, the one whose work they’ve charged up to me. Chris, you have to find that man and you have to turn him over to me.”
“I?”
“You can do it, I think. I’ve worked out a plan.”
“Look here, Holden, that fellow, if he ain’t you—is the—”
“Listen to me, Chris, no matter what I’ve done in my life, I’ve never murdered in cold blood.” He could have laughed aloud at the mere thought. He who had never had it in his power to injure anything, man or beast, that had power enough to stand and fight, or speed enough to turn and run. And yet here was big Chris Venner grown pale and troubled, and studying him out of frowning eyes.
“By heavens, Chris,” Holden said, “you have believed all of these things that the idiots have been saying about me. Is that right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know that I understand what—”
“Hush, Chris. Believe me when I tell you that I am not a devil and that I’m not a man eater.”
Venner smiled faintly. It was very plain that his doubts concerning his companion were most grave.
“In one word,” said Holden, “I shall show you that there is another who had done all of the things—all of them—that have been charged against me around the town of Larramee.”
“I’ll be the gladdest man in the world when that’s done, partner.”
“I am the baited trap, Chris,” said the cripple. “You are the trapper. And the fur-bearing animal that we want is the cur who has been raving through the night like a mad dog without a bark—full of poison and silence.”
“I’m tryin’ real patient to foller what you mean, Holden.”
“It is this. I start for the mountains now. I aim for old Sugar Loaf there in the north. I travel very slowly. In the morning you announce that you were held up by Tom Holden and that I took sixty thousand dollars in hard cash away from you. You understand?”
“Suppose that I say that—what of old Maybeck? He’ll start talkin’ about the sixty thousand that he got; pretty soon, I’ll get connected up with him and then—the whole dog-gone yarn will spill out!”
“Not a bit. I’ve bought Maybeck and tied up his mouth with money. He won’t dare to talk about anything. I bought his soul, Chris. The fat-faced idiot would risk his right arm to help me or to do what I ask him to do in any respect. Very well, tomorrow morning you will start in for town and on the way through you’ll lodge a complaint. You understand? Everybody must hear you! You’ll talk loud and you’ll talk long about the inefficiency of the law, about the way in which the sheriff of the counties and of the State allow criminals to override the entire country. You’ll demand a change and swear that the country has become impossible to live in. You’ll talk of sixty thousand dollars. You’ll talk of ruin. You’ll make it as black as possible!”
“Well?” asked Venner. “Tell me how that gives me a chance to help you to catch the gent that’s been doin’ the murderin’?”
“I’ll explain that very quickly. The moment you are convinced that the entire town feels you have actually lost sixty thousand dollars, you must head back from the town and go straight to your own house. There you must pick up my trail.”
“For the Sugar Loaf?”
“Yes. It will be marked so clearly that a child could read it. I’ll leave an unmistakable trail, my friend. Follow along until the evening. By that time when the sun goes down, you can be sure that you will be within striking distance, for I intend to pick out a spot to camp in the middle of the afternoon and to remain there, preparing a comfortable camp. So, when you get toward the sunset time, you must be very cautious. I shall try to find a place in a hollow. In the center of some big clearing, with the trees all around the edge of it, I’ll build my fire.
“Now, Venner, you must start stalking that fire. But the game you will be looking for will not be for me, but for the murderer!”
“What?”
“The murderer will be there, on the edge of that same clearing.”
“My heavens, Holden!” breathed the big man.
He had changed color. Every whit of blood was gone from his face.
The explanation was simple enough, from the viewpoint of Holden. Having it noised abroad that sixty thousand dollars had been stolen from big Venner, that rumor, traveling with the usual speed of bad news, would be sure to reach the hearing of the archcriminal whose robberies and whose killings had reached such awful proportions near Larramee, and whose crimes had been saddled upon Holden’s own shoulders. When the tidings reached the ears of that devil incarnate, he was sure to go to the house of Venner for the sake of picking up the trail of the successful reported robber.
Once on that trail, he would find his work very easy—made easy on purpose by the false-fugitive Holden himself, who would break off twigs, and ride through spots of soft dirt, and leave fallen cigarettes in the way, until the murderer, whoever he might be, was close to the camp which Holden would pitch in some readily accessible place.
But he would not act in the daytime. Everything went to prove that the destroyer loved the darkness of the night. All of his crimes had been committed at that hour. All of his successful robberies had been the fruit of the hours of dusk or full night. Therefore, no matter how near he came to Holden, the probability was that he would wait before he struck at his prey.
In the meantime, according to the directions which Holden left behind him, big Chris Venner, secret, swift, and strong, would be following along the same trail, looking for the hunter. And there was at least one chance in two that, while the murderer lurked in the brush, Chris Venner might come upon him and strike him down, as he had struck
down Blinky Wickson.
All of this reasoning was clear enough to him. But big Venner, who naturally could not follow all of these mental processes off hand and who was inclined, from past experience, to attribute to Holden a sort of divine and mysterious foreknowledge and power of miraculous action, merely gaped at little Tom Holden, who was regarding him calmly from behind his glasses.
“What will the murderer be doin’ there?” asked Venner.
“He’ll be trying to murder me, Chris.”
Venner moaned. “And you’ll be sittin’ there in a clearin’ waitin’ for him to do it?”
“He won’t succeed, Chris. Take my word for that.”
“Mr. Holden, I’ve heard you talk before—”
“One moment, Chris. Have you ever known me to be wrong?”
“Only—”
“And you think that I’d endanger my own life, Chris?”
Venner was half convinced by that blow. He drew in a long breath and regarded his smaller companion with unspeakable awe.
“Partner,” he said, “it ain’t no use for me to even try to understand you. You’re too deep. You’re a whole pile too deep!”
“One thing more,” said Holden. “After you and I have caught the crook, you drop out of the picture.”
“Eh?”
“I don’t like to ask it, Chris. But after you’ve done that, you deny all knowledge of the thing. I want it to appear as my work and as my work only!”
Venner nodded, “The devil, man,” said he modestly, “don’t I know that you could do this all by yourself, and handle this here crook and me, too, all at the same time if you wanted to? Why, partner, you ain’t doin’ any more than tryin’ me out with this. I’ll show you that I’ll do my job right.”
“One thing more. Before you go, see Julie and tell her everything.”
“Holden!”
“Tell her everything that ever happened in your life.”
“D’you want to ruin me?”
“Take my advice. That’s all I’ll say!”
CHAPTER 26
So ended what was to big Chris Venner the strangest talk in his life. Afterward he pondered upon the matter carefully, solemnly, his chin in his hand, his brow knit.
It was not that he believed that the little man could be right. But it was because he felt in young Tom Holden the presence of a power of brains which he himself could never aspire toward. This controlling mystery he decided must be followed. He was told by the oracle to go to the lady and to confess. And as a pagan would obey a voice from the clouds, so he, with dread, against his will, against his reason, mounted his horse and rode to the house of handsome Julie Hendricks.
It was late. There was only one light burning in the house. And when he went around to it, there he found Julie in the kitchen, pressing a dress, working happily, busily over it, the heat from the work and the stove making her face rosy. He admired for some time the plumpness of her arm and the supple smoothness with which her wrist worked the heavy iron back and forth. What a wife she would be!
So he tapped at the back door, and when she opened it, he did not go inside, but took off his hat, and dropped it on the ground beside him, and held both her hands, and told her everything from the beginning, talking straight, talking fast, speaking through his teeth as though to an enemy, and then feeling her begin to tremble, and cursing Tom Holden for ever giving him any such advice as this had been.
But when he was ended, she dropped into his arms and wept. Not with sorrow and despair, but with utter joy.
Then, at last, she told him that rumors and that whispers came up to her from time to time. Too much was known about his past for her to remain in utter ignorance of the truth that he had been a wild young fool in his time. That wildness she could forgive, but not the concealment of it from herself.
An hour later, big Chris Venner rode slowly home through the evening with a chastened heart and a mind in which there were two conflicting ideas. The first was an all-possessing love for Julie, the tender and the true. The second was an equally deep awe for the wisdom of little Tom Holden, to which all the hidden things of the world and of the hearts of men and of women were revealed.
There was only one remaining mystery, and that was why such a man as he could ever need the help of a miserable, stupid creature such as Chris Venner.
So pondered Christopher. But, in the deep gratitude of his heart, he swore to himself that he would work for Holden the rest of his life, and particularly in this one affair, so that the little man could know that there was as much loyalty in him as there was generosity in Tom Holden himself.
Such were the thoughts of Chris Venner as he jogged back to his house. And in the meantime, the mysterious hero of his dreams, riding in another direction across the hills, found himself drifting, out of the sheerest loneliness to the house where his mother lived with the brawny brute called Cousin Joe Curtis, and his wolfish son, Gus.
For he had never felt so alone in the world. He had before him the dimmest of dim hopes, based upon the most intangible of intangible ideas. If he caught the murderer, by that prize he would have gained for himself two things. The first was the freedom from any actual criminal charge, no matter how thick suspicion might still be against him. The second and, in his eyes the greatest, was the opportunity to be near lovely Alexa Larramee, even for one evening of his life, though he might never see her again.
And yet all of these hopes were very cold, very small, as the night closed more thickly around him. His crippled leg grew numb with the pain of utter weariness. His heart was sore. And he would have thrown away his life for the sake of a single moment of full-hearted joy.
But there was no joy in the world. Only two sparks hovered with him along the way, like fireflies in the world of blackness—Clancy and Sneak—Sneak like a dim gray ghost running before, and Clancy beneath him, resolutely stepping away through the night. They were a consolation. Without them he felt as though he would die.
It was the sheerest instinct which guided him, and no definite thought or volition. He rode down the trail into the upper valley without thinking where it might lead him.
He rode out of the upper valley into the foothills only vaguely aware that there was a sense of familiar things about him. And so, on a sudden, like a miracle rising before his eyes, he found himself in front of the house of Joe Curtis, with the light in the kitchen telling where his poor mother was slaving.
He left the red stallion in the dark among the trees before the house. He had hardly dismounted before Doc, the cur dog, came scurrying, whining with fury and with curiosity to bark at the strangers, as all cur dogs from the beginning of time have longed to do. But Doc was running upon his fate. As he neared the trees, a dim gray shadow hopped forth to meet him in one long bound. There was a flash and a click of teeth. Poor Doc, his throat torn wide, made not a sound. He turned to flee back to the house, and died after a few staggering steps.
Above him stood Holden who wondered over the poor brute. He was filled with pity. He was filled with a strange sadness such as he had never felt before. But he was also cold and strong with a new knowledge. For he could remember a time when old Doc had been the only friend of Tom Holden. In those old days the dog had seemed brave enough and strong enough to suit him—to be even quite a hero in the eyes of that other Tom Holden. That Tom Holden had wakened in the morning to wonder what new pain, what new humiliation the day would bring him to.
But here was a new man with new friends. Here was the red shadow of Clancy among the trees. What other horse was there in all the world to match with Clancy, and where was there another man to ride the great stallion? And here was Doc slain by the teeth of his other servant, his new dog, Sneak. It was significant of the new soul which inhabited the body of the cripple.
He took the glasses from his nose and dropped them into his pocket. Here in the dark, where no one could see him, there was no need for him to keep up that foolish farce.
He went to the kitchen window first.
There he saw her at once. She had not changed an iota, except for a little deepening of the shadow of sadness which was upon her face.
She was as old, she was as bent, she was as patient. And in her face there was that beautiful resignation which, in other days, had seemed so detestable to him. He could understand it now. She had always bowed to the will of others—to the will of the men who were about her. She was a soldier obeying an officer. She was a slave obeying a master. And there was never a thought of revolt in her gentle eyes.
She had courage, too. She had will power. She had been able to educate him and make him fine and gentle in a way that no other man of the family had ever been. That was all her work. He could see, as he looked back now, how she had done it by long hours of the most loving and patient work. All of that had escaped him then. Because she had not known about the very books she urged him toward, he had despised her. Now he wanted to fall on his knees and kiss her hands.
She was making bread for tomorrow, greasing the tins, testing the heat of the ovens, putting in the fresh loaves. They would bake on and on until late in the night. Once he remembered, when he asked her if she did not dread baking nights and its long vigils, that she had answered that she loved it better than anything in the week. Because on other nights she had to go to bed early. But on this night she could stay up late and think her own thoughts.
That pure soul, that worn and tortured body! He marveled over her with tears; he saw her for the first time.
Then he went to the windows which looked in on the living room. Both Cousin Joe and his son were there, Joe looking as huge as ever, and Gus as long, as lean, as wolfish. And he had the same old and well-remembered habit of smiling silently to himself, his eyes secretly upon the floor, his long fingers caressing his mouth, his chin.
Cousin Joe seemed less monstrous than in the old times. But Gus seemed a little more awful than ever.
“Are you goin’ out?” Joe was saying.
