by Max Brand
The word was instantly taken up by a burly chap who roared, “If you want money, why don’t you work for it?” And he began shouldering his way through the front ranks toward Tom, delivering a steady volley of curses as he came. He, also, had spent overmuch time in the saloon, and his liquor urged him to find action. And so he came toward Tom, a redheaded fellow, hair on end.
By this time, disgusted at the profanity of the man of the red hair, the women had sifted quickly out of the little mob and Tom saw his entire audience about to fall to pieces. His course of action was swiftly determined. He swung his leg into the saddle, twitched Major around, and, as the people scattered with shouts of alarm from his path, he bolted straight at Red Head, scooped him up from the ground, bore him cursing and raving to the water trough by the saloon, and quenched his oaths with a gurgle in the unsavory waters. Holding him by the boots, Tom soused the drunkard up and down while the crowd yelled with joy. Their sense of humor was not pitched many notes above this in the scale, and their yell rose to a wail of hysterical joy as Tom completed the lesson by tumbling Red Head into the dust.
He rose, clotted with mud, but, when he reached for his revolver, it was torn from his hands by a dozen willing townsmen.
“If you can’t handle him without a gun, you sure ain’t going to get a look in with a gun, Red,” they assured him. “Give him a chance to talk, boys.”
Every soul who had turned away was swept closer than ever around the speaker.
“I sure got to apologize for raising such a dust,” Tom Keene panted out. “But, you see, boys, Red plumb forgot that they was ladies present, and he had to be gagged.”
It brought another laugh from the onlookers. They were willing to laugh at well-nigh anything, now. And in another moment Tom was deep in the heart of his talk.
“Boys,” he said, “I’m a gent that reads the Bible, but I ain’t up here to talk about God Almighty. I figure that He can get along tolerably well without. What I got to say is to you ladies and to you gents about a way of living happier. I’m up here talking for charity. I’m up here to show you folks that you got to help others. Lemme see one man in the crowd that ain’t had help. Lemme see one man that don’t owe something to the world.”
The announcement of his subject cast a chill upon the interest and the enthusiasm of the crowd. There was to be no more ducking of individuals into troughs. They began to turn their minds back toward the matter of the waiting suppers. And Tom, quick to see the wavering attention, and that those on the outskirts of the crowd were again beginning to move away and thin out, at once picked upon a victim. He selected the most prosperous-looking man he could find. He was one of those persons who, being very large in front, are forced to rock back onto their heels. This gives them a seemingly bold and honest carriage. His dress was that of any cowpuncher. But he had on a necktie instead of a bandanna, and the necktie gave him an opportunity to display a huge diamond that glittered and gleamed even in the faint light of the evening and caught the eye of Tom Keene. He pointed directly at this imposing citizen of Porterville.
“You, there, partner,” he said. “How much do you owe the world?”
“Not a cent,” said the plump cattleman readily, slapping his fat palms together with a great noise. “But, on the other hand, there’s quite a handy pile owing to me. If you’re going around doing justice, friend, you might stay here for a while and help me collect some of the bills that are owing!”
This ready retort brought a laugh from the crowd. They favored the big man with a glance of approval, and then they turned with a new challenge to Tom, daring him to find a just answer to this complaint. He regarded the complacency of the fat man with the most profound disgust, cast about in his mind for a counterblow, and then demanded sharply, “Name one of them bills, partner.”
“Well, sir,” said the fat man, “I don’t mind naming one that won’t hurt nobody’s feelings to be named. Jack Harper owes me two hundred dollars. Get that coin from Jack, will you?”
There was a peculiar smile on the faces of every man in the crowd, and yet the women were shaking their heads solemnly.
“Is Harper here?” asked Tom.
“In spirit, maybe,” said the other. “You got to raise the dead to get that money for me, son.”
This levity on such a grim subject caused a shade to pass over the faces of the crowd. Plainly they did not take any too kindly these references by the fat individual to the debts that were owing to him from a dead man.
Tom instantly bore in on his opponent. “Didn’t you have no security for your money?” he asked.
“Nary a cent,” said the rancher.
“You gave him two hundred without nothing to show for it?”
“I sure did.”
“Well, sir, what made you give it to him?”
“Because I was sorry for him. I wanted him to get along.”
“D’you give two hundred to every man you’re sorry for and want to see get on? Don’t you ask any questions? D’you let every worthless beggar …?”
“Worthless beggar!” shouted the fat man. “Who calls Jack Harper a worthless beggar? Why, he saved my brother Paul’s life two years ago! That’s how much of a worthless beggar he was!”
“Ah,” said Tom. “He saved your brother’s life?”
“He did. Everybody here knows it.”
“Partner,” Tom said, “is your brother’s life worth two hundred dollars?”
There was an indignant snort from the fat man, but he fell silent while all attention focused with renewed vigor upon Tom, since he had cornered his enemy and given this happy turn to the argument in his favor.
“And if you go back over the other debts that are owing to you,” Tom continued, “you’ll most generally find that you gave away money because you got security, or else you gave away money because you owed a debt of another kind to somebody. But I tell you what, friend, that two hundred dollars won’t ever be begrudged by you to Jack Harper. No sir. I know the kind of gent you are. I’m simply putting this to you in another light, and, when you see what I’m driving at, you’ll be the first one to dig down in your wallet and give to the poor in the town. What I say, boys, is that every man jack of us owes a lot. We’ve all had friends that have helped us. We’ve all been in tight pinches. And we’d ought to remember those times when other folks come along asking for charity. The reason you’re happy is because others want you to be happy.”
“Wait a minute!” called a sharp voice. “Nobody never done any kindnesses to me … not that I recall particular. I’ve fought my own way. You ain’t talking to me, stranger!”
It was a cripple, a slumping, wry-faced, bitter man.
“Don’t you owe nothing,” Tom asked fiercely, “to the mother that brought you into the world and that loved you and raised you and kept you strong enough to live? Don’t you owe nothing to her? Didn’t she give you no helping hand?”
The cripple lowered his head as though striving to avoid a great light that had been shone in his face. He winced away out of sight.
Tom turned back to the others. He found that their attitude had changed. At first he had amused them, then he had impressed them with his physical strength, and then he had overawed them by his rough and ready methods of argument, and they were more or less afraid that, if they spoke, he would fall upon them and expose weaknesses of which they did not think.
“Look here, friends,” said Tom. “Out here, west of the Rockies, we don’t keep our coin locked up because we feel plumb hostile to other folks. It’s just that we don’t know where we can help. Them that are poor don’t go around telling us what we could do for ’em. That’s my job, boys. I’m going through to tell you what a lot happier you’d all be if you gave a hand to them that ain’t as strong as you are. If you make another man happy, you’re going to make yourself happy. And there ain’t a man on earth, I guess, that ain’t worth help. You
can’t make a mistake. If the rain comes out of the sky, it ain’t wasted. The sand drinks it up, the sand feeds the mesquite, and the mesquite is what makes life on the desert possible. Same way with kindness, boys. Even if it don’t show no results … it helps in the long run. I want you to open your hearts. That’s the main thing. Usually I don’t ask no more. But tonight I got to ask for money to help them that won’t and can’t help themselves, simply because they are just too proud to beg. Boys, it ain’t often that I ask for money to help folks. I most generally want nothing but a hearing. And if I’m asking tonight, it’s because there’s a reason.”
He swung down from the saddle, drew from his pocket an old crownless hat, and, fixing this in the teeth of Major, he started the horse through the crowd. It was an original manner of passing the hat and the crowd responded to it well. Nickels and dimes and quarters and even dollars jingled musically, and the hat was sagging limply with the weight when Major brought it back to Tom Keene. He counted it swiftly—seven dollars gained for the Carvers. It was not a great deal, but it would buy the woman raw provisions for a week.
In the meantime, a dozen men had clapped him on the shoulder and asked him into the saloon for a drink. Plainly they considered his talk simply an ingenious manner of begging for his own purse. It was this spirit and a wholly cynical tone that Will Jackson, leaning in the door of his gaming house, called, “You got it on me, partner! I risk cash to get cash, but all you put up is words.”
Tom turned and walked directly to the gambler, with Major following close at his shoulder, as always. “Friend,” Tom said, smiling, “is that praise, or d’you aim to get this seven dollars that Porterville has just turned over to me?”
Will Jackson sneered again. He was not, in fact, a cheerful sort. Besides, he did not have to be pleasant in order to make money. He ran a square game until he saw big prizes in the offing. Then, to be sure, he showed his dexterity of fingers in forcing the goddess of chance to take his side. But, in case anyone cared to challenge his methods, the same nimbleness of finger and wrist, used in a slightly different fashion, conjured a gun out and directed a stream of lead at the antagonist. He leaned in the doorway now, with his arms folded, calmly looking up and down the bulky form of Tom Keene.
“Maybe,” he said, “when you ain’t picking up the easy money with your jaw work, you fill out here and there with a turn at the cards. Is that your style, Bill?”
“My style,” Tom said gravely, “is something that I guess you wouldn’t care to listen to. But if you want to play for the seven dollars I have here, I’ll take the chance.”
“Suppose I win?” Will Jackson said. “That’ll be charity used right at home, eh?”
“You can’t win,” Tom said. “They ain’t a chance in the world of that. Don’t go arguing yourself into thinking that you can.”
“I can’t?” said Jackson.”
“You got something on the cards?”
“Yes,” said Tom, “the Lord is on my side. He won’t let me lose.”
Will Jackson stared and then snorted with disgust and surprise. Such talk as this he had never heard before. “Come in,” he said.
An old man laid his hand on the shoulder of Tom as the latter advanced toward the door. “D’you know,” he said, “that the sheriff might be sort of interested in you, son, if he knowed that you was getting money for charity and then spending it at a gambling table?”
“Spending it?” Tom laughed. “Why, man, I haven’t the slightest idea of spending it. Come in and watch me win. And every cent I win goes to the poor.” He turned to the gambler. “What’s your name?”
“Will Jackson,” said the latter.
“It’s a black day for you, Jackson,” Tom stated. “Name your game.”
Chapter Nine
Of all the occupants of chairs in the gaming house of Will Jackson, those who played at only one table did not break up their game at the summons of the black stallion. At this table sat three men, one obviously a cowhand, one rather too pale to have led a life in the open, and another who was some years younger than the other two in appearance.
All three were haggard, but the eyes of the cowpuncher and the professional gambler were alight with victory, and the eyes of Jerry Swain were dark with despair. Ever since the night before he had sat at this table in this identical chair and fought for fortune.
In the beginning she had favored him with smiles. By midnight he had won a full fifteen hundred dollars without exhausting the purses of the other two, and then, feeling that his great time had come, Jerry Swain had started to recoup all his losses of the past. Those losses had been many, with short intervals between. Only the pocketbook of a man as rich as Jerry Swain Sr., his father, could have floated him through crisis after crisis in which he found himself involved as result of his passion for the cards and desperate adventures with them. But a year before, his father had warned him that he would never again pay an IOU signed by his son at a card table. As a result, Jerry had been forced to stop playing at the very time when he was certain that the luck was about to turn. It had run too long against him, and now there was sure to be a break.
But he must have capital available with which to nurse his winning streak through lean places when he next sat in. So, for a whole year, he had raked and scraped and begged, until he gathered a handsome purse together. Last night he determined that the time had come. In his pocket was a solid bank of greenbacks—nearly a thousand dollars with which to plunge—more, indeed, than he had ever possessed before. And, as has been said, he saw that capital more than doubled by midnight. By dawn, every cent of his winnings was gone.
Still he struggled on. By midafternoon his money was cut to one hundred dollars. By late afternoon he had signed an IOU for two hundred dollars. Why be a piker as long as he was in at all? And by evening he had signed away three hundred dollars more.
He owed five hundred dollars in paper, and then he began one of those reckless, blind plunges that even the best gamblers will sometimes start upon when they feel that things must begin to turn their way. But matters would not change. The money slipped away. The $500 melted gradually and at length, as Tom Keene entered the house, with a crowd of the curious about him, the last cent of Jerry Swain’s money floated into the pockets of the professional.
He pushed back his chair and leaned his sagging shoulder against the wall, staring in sullen hatred at the other two. He was not a good loser, this millionaire’s son. Few of them are. He had encountered too little resistance in his youth to be able to endure it now. And he glared with malice in his eyes at the gamblers who had won. They were profuse in their regrets that he should have to leave the game when his luck was certainly on the verge of turning.
“Never seen such a bad run of luck in my life,” they said to each other.
That was poor salve for the grim mood of Jerry Swain. He knew that his run had been bad. He also knew that his tactics in the past few hours had been extremely stupid. Worst of all, he was beginning to feel that, no matter what he did with the cards, he would have been helpless in the hands of these two. Oddly enough their winnings were almost equally divided. Or was it altogether odd? Had they not agreed to pluck the goose in equal shares?
The thought brought such a fury storming up into his brain that he could not endure to sit at the table and face them. He stamped across the room, thereby giving the pair a chance to wink at each other.
“Fifteen hundred!” said the pseudo cowpuncher.
“Seven hundred and fifty seeds apiece,” said his pale-faced companion. “And lucky that we got away with it, at that. You sure drew it pretty wide last night, Shorty.”
“When I let him get a thousand ahead? Why, I know the boob. He was dreaming of millions when he seen the coin begin to come in. He was born to be a loser, because he ain’t got the nerve to win like a man or to lose like a man.”
“What about the five hundred in pa
per? Will it mean anything, d’you think?”
“Will it mean anything? Are you nutty? Ain’t his old man the gent that owns most of this here county?”
“And ain’t his old man the gent that said he wouldn’t pay another IOU that his son signed at a card table?”
“The devil he did!”
“The devil he didn’t!”
“What’ll we do, then?”
“I dunno. But I figure that if we put on the screws we can make the hound dig up. There must be a pile of coin around that house, and young Swain ought to be able to get his hands on five hundred iron men.”
“He’s got to!” snarled the other. “We’ll show him up in front of the whole town if he don’t.”
The same thought was spinning busily through the head of Jerry Swain as he joined the circle of spectators around the table where Will Jackson in person was sitting down to relieve the prophet of good will of his seven dollars of charity money.
“Mind you, boys,” Will said, “if I win this stuff, I’ll give twice seven bones to some gent that’s off his feed in the town. But it just peeves me a little to see anybody get so chesty. It sure peeves me.” He drawled the words. In moments of emotion his mouth twisted far to one side, and his voice issued solely through his nose, which gave it a rich violin quality. Now he fixed his baleful, pale-blue eyes upon Tom Keene and dealt, his slender fingers flashing like magic over the pack.
But, thought Jerry Swain, what could these fellows know of the terror of defeat? Neither of these had a father waiting to question him. Neither of these had to make an accounting or wait for the signature of another before his check could be honored. And in the big ranch house, Jerry Swain Sr. would be waiting even now, for his son was not home for dinner on the second consecutive night.
The five hundred dollars had seemed little enough when he signed those treacherous slips of paper, but now the sum grew in importance momently. It became greater and greater—five hundred dollars! A cowpuncher would have to work for a year to make that much. And he must have that sum before he went home.
