by Max Brand
“The old boy’s gone mad,” one of the punchers observed.
“Nope, he’s just woke up and come to his senses,” insisted a second. “This is the way he would’ve growed to be if the kid hadn’t walked off in the old days. Now he’s making up for lost time. What do you think of the kid?”
“Why, I figure he’d be a tolerable good partner, and a tolerable bad one to have for an enemy. You seen old Chip step on his toe a while back?”
“Nope. What about it?”
“Nothing happened. But just for a second Johnny Neilan give Chip a bad look. And he sure swings an ugly eye, I’ll tell a man. Like a bull terrier that just walks up and sinks a tooth into your leg without letting out a growl. Look there! The kid may have wandered around a lot, but I think he’s found a home, eh?”
This last remark was caused by an earnest, head-to-head conversation which was taking place between Happy Jack and Mary Thomas. Certainly the wanderer evinced a great and growing interest in the girl. As for Mary Thomas, her color had risen. She was talking with animation and laughter, and a rather grim smile of appreciation played around the lips of Happy Jack.
The dinner for the cowboys was now breaking up. They were comparing the gifts which the old man had brought out for them. They were exchanging yarns and slaps on the back and guffawing hugely at nothing in particular. Someone had brought in an armful of fir boughs and scattered them here and there at random, so that the air breathed with the resinous scent that means Christmas.
“Hey, Chip Flinders!” called one of the two whose comments have just been noticed. “Hey, Chip!”
An oldish fellow with hair dull gray at the temples and a weather-worn face paused near them. “What’s biting you?” he asked, without a smile.
“There ain’t any cloud in the sky except you, Chip. What’s wrong?”
Chip Flinders regarded his questioner without pleasure. “Don’t you see nothing wrong?” he asked at last.
“Nope.”
“Have you took a look at Johnny Neilan?”
“A pile of ’em, and he looks like something that’s all right to me.”
“Does he? Maybe he is. I dunno. But he reminds me powerful of somebody that ain’t all right.”
“Who?”
“I dunno. That’s what I’m figuring on and trying to remember … where I seen him before with a gun in each hand and …” He wandered on, his head down, his face thoughtful.
“Huh,” grunted one of the pair who had asked the questions. “What if the kid has done some fighting. Is that ag’in’ him? If fighting is so plumb bad, old Chip himself had ought to watch out. He’s done his share in the south, they say.”
“Yep, and he bears the marks of it. I’ve seen him stripped. All chawed up like as if a mountain lion had wrestled with him.”
But there was no other blot on the good cheer of the occasion. Only the frown of Chip darkened the affair until the hour of midnight was turned and Christmas Day itself was ushered in with a ringing carol.
After that they broke up quickly, and, while the people of the house went to their rooms, the cowpunchers returned to the bunkhouse with broad grins of content, each man with the warmth of sherry in his blood and Christmas in his mind and a gift in his hand. Only Chip Flinders stared gloomily down at the snow over which he was striding.
From the window of the room to which John Neilan had led him, Happy Jack looked down at the procession of the cowpunchers with a frown as dark as the frown of Chip. For he, too, was striving with all his might to remember where he had seen that face with the tufts of gray hair above the temples and the solemn, worn expression. But he could not remember. The harder he concentrated the more his mind went adrift from the past, and when he felt that he had discovery under his mental fingertips, an image from this gay and crowded evening would flit across his eyes and obscure the past.
At length Happy Jack turned away, as the last of the cowpunchers disappeared through the door of the bunkhouse and looked about the room. It needed only a glance to make sure that this was the only room where Johnny Neilan had slept in the old days. From the wall a huge, dim enlargement of a photograph looked down at him, showing a youth with faintly smiling lips and a twinkle of mischief in the eyes. Even in the picture of the boy there was a startling resemblance to Happy Jack. No doubt if Johnny Neilan had lived to maturity, he would have been sufficiently different, but in his childhood he possessed the promise of all the features of Happy Jack. It was not strange that the sharp eye of Sandy Crisp had marked the resemblance and taken advantage of it.
Sandy Crisp! What a devil incarnate he was!
Thinking of the outlaw, Happy Jack moved about the room making what discoveries he could. And there were plenty of things to interest him. He found in the bureau drawers heaps of undergarments, and dozens of socks, some worn and neatly darned, some fresh—the equipment of Johnny Neilan, no doubt. In a big closet, large as a little room by itself, he found a great assortment of guns and fishing tackle on one side and articles for riding on the other side—bridles and spurs and saddle blankets. Truly, the boy had been given enough things to amuse himself. What had caused the discontent that eventually drove him from the house?
As though to answer him, at the moment his hand brushed aside the curtain from a little row of bookshelves, and there he found row on row of textbooks. There was a Latin grammar and a tattered commentaries. There was a copy of Classic Myths and a translation of the Iliad. And so, on and on, Happy Jack picked up book after book, all unfamiliar to him as strange faces in a strange land. Had poor young Johnny Neilan been forced to struggle through all these?
He opened them. The interiors presented page after page filled with crude drawings of bucking horses and guns. These had formed the occupation of young Neilan when he was supposed to be imbibing knowledge. And beyond a doubt this was the nightmare that had driven him away from the ranch and north on the endless trail of adventure until he died there on the log jam, laughing and waving his hat. No doubt he had been a wild youth. But perhaps there had been little harm in his wildness. Had he grown up, he might have done things as fine and brave as his death scene, and far more useful.
Happy Jack was hard enough. For there are few, unfortunately, who acquire such calluses of labor on their hands without getting similar calluses about the heart. But, sitting in this room, the presence of the dead boy was around him like a ghost, rattling at the fishing tackle in the closet or handling the guns or humming in the wind that now curled around the corner of the house in a steady gale.
A foolish insistence on the study of books had driven young Neilan away from his home. And did not the father deserve the pains which had come to him? He was a hard man. There was no doubt of that. Sandy Crisp had said so with profound conviction. And had not Happy himself watched the painful intentness with which the rancher followed the raising of each glass of his precious sherry? One large and kindly impulse had induced that sacrifice of good liquor, but it seemed that the old fellow sighed at once because of his own generosity. Hard he certainly was, and though the return of his son, as if from the grave, had loosened his spirit, might it not be a kindliness of the moment only and no permanent change? And, indeed, even in that happiness there was a selfish motive. John Neilan had acquired someone to whom he could leave his property. Hence he rejoiced.
In the meantime, Happy Jack held the key to the safe.
He drew out the key and then the plan of the house with which Sandy Crisp had furnished him. He glanced over it to make sure that he had every winding of hall and stairway in mind. Yes, it would be perfectly simple to steal down the back stairs and into the basement and return the same way, then make his exit through the window of his room and over the roof of the veranda to the freedom of the snow beyond. To slip out to the stables with his loot, saddle his horse, and then ride to the rendezvous in the neighboring woods where Crisp waited—that would be a simple thin
g.
Happy Jack stood up, resolved to act. So doing, his glance fell full on the eye of the boy in the photograph, and Happy shrank back with a curse.
For a moment he wavered, the good and the evil fighting in him for mastery. But it has been said that Happy had elements of hardness in his nature, and he showed it now. On the one hand he was betraying a trust for the first time in his life. On the other hand he was securing a stake—for young Jackson’s family even more than himself, it’s true—for the first time in his life. He made a rough accounting between right and wrong, as he stood there scowling at the image of the true Johnny Neilan.
To be sure, this was a scoundrelly thing to do. But had not other men done scoundrelly things to him? How many hundreds—aye, thousands—of dollars had he not loaned to friends? And how many cents on the dollar had been returned to him?
He had gone through life giving with both hands, not only of money but of his personal services. He had not pried into the right and wrong of the requests that were made of him. Out of a whole heart he had done his best to meet every demand. The result was that he found himself past twenty-five without a cent in the world—with no possessions except his horse and gun.
What was the result of all of this reasoning? Why, simply that the world owed him something for what he had given the world. He wanted both principal and interest back and, if he got it from Neilan, what was wrong? It was only a fair exchange, taking from a man who really had not a need for his money.
It was certainly a tortuous course of reasoning such as has led to many a crime being committed. But when he concluded the silent argument, it must be said in favor of Happy that his forehead was cold and wet with perspiration, so that he growled: “Maybe I’m losing my nerve.”
That decided him. He tightened his belt, looked to his gun, and saw that it came easily from the holster under his touch, then he advanced to the door of his room, opened it an inch or more, and listened.
VI
There was a hall light burning, a pendent lamp which, with the wick turned low, cast a dim, yellowish haze up and down the corridor, only bright where it fell on the red carpet in a circle around the black shadow of the bowl. The walls advanced and receded in faintly glowing yellow-gray, and every doorway, sunk into the thick, old walls of the house, was a gaping depth of black. Happy Jack peered up and down this gloomy tunnel and then listened to the faint thudding of his heart against his ribs.
He had read in stories and he had heard in tales about the campfire of men hearing the beating of the heart in moments of fear, but in all the battles which had marked his stormy life he had never known it before. Danger, to him, had been something to be greeted as a friend rather than an enemy, a thing to rush at with extended arms, even if those arms ended in clenched fists. But this new emotion, this fear, was a stranger to him, and he wondered at himself.
He was continually compressing his lips to swallow, but his dry throat refused to obey. And his fingers trembled on the doorknob, in sign of the tremor of the nerves all through his big body. He hardly knew himself in this great, shaken hulk of flesh.
The thought came to him that his crime would be discovered as soon as the morning came. He closed the door to the hall and leaned heavily against it, panting. His thoughts wrestled him to and fro, the perspiration still streaming down his face. If only this money were to be gained by facing some actual danger. But no, there was no one in the house to fight. An old woman and a young one, and a man well past his fighting days. They were the only ones to face him. His enemy was shame, fierce and biting shame. Suppose that fresh-faced, clear-eyed girl, Mary Thomas, should spy him out, should look in on him as, with guilty hands, he opened the door of the safe and took out the greenbacks.
He found himself staring at the wall like one stricken with the sight of a ghost. But this was all perfectly childish. He must go down at once. At once! The world owed the money to him.
Suddenly he was through the door and out in the hall. He advanced now very steadily, finding his progress much easier after he took the first step. The start was the hard part. In the meantime, the boards of the flooring creaked terribly under his feet. Strange that they had been so silent when he came upstairs to his bed just a few minutes before. But dread and horror of the thing which he was about to do sharpened his perceptions, and a murmur of board rubbing against board that could hardly have been heard a yard away seemed to Happy Jack loud enough to waken every person in the house.
And had they not been wakened? Was not that the sound of someone sitting up in bed, the springs creaking under the shifted weight? And was not that the thudding of a guarded footfall approaching a door nearby? And was not that the rattle of a lock on which a hand had fallen?
No, it was only a straying draft that had shaken the door, but for a moment he paused, frozen with fear. When he went on again, he was shaking like a leaf—he, Happy Jack, famous through the southland as the hero of the Morgan Run fight. But now he was unnerved.
The creaking of the boards in the upper hall was nothing compared with the noises that accompanied him down the stairs. They literally swayed and reeled beneath him. They groaned from end to end under his descending weight. It seemed as though the dead timber of the house were living and attempting to warn the inhabitants of the dastardly crime about to be committed by this trusted guest, this false son of the family.
Such fancies made play in the brain of Happy Jack, and each one of them was almost a real possibility. He gave each a serious consideration until he felt, before he reached the bottom of the steps, that he should go mad.
But there he was in the great open rooms of the lower floor. In a far corner, barely visible against the dim square of a window, stood the Christmas tree, like a gaunt ghost holding out arms. Happy Jack caught up a hand against his eyes and shut out the reproachful vision.
He returned down the hall to the rear of the house, opened the door which, on his plan, was jotted down as the entrance to the cellar, and found himself staring down into utter darkness. He took out the little electric lantern with which Sandy Crisp had thoughtfully provided him and snapped a small torrent of light that tumbled down the damp steps and showed brown-black dirt below.
Then he went down, cursing the squeaking boards with each step, next blessing the muffling dirt under his heels. He found the safe room easily. Certainly Sandy Crisp must have studied the house in the most minute detail, just as he had said.
“Go in blindfold,” he had declared, “and I’ll give you a plan so good that you can feel your way around and come to the right place.”
The safe was kept in a room walled off by itself. The walls were of foundation stones, each one of huge dimensions and solidly mortared together; the great door was adorned with a tremendous padlock, a device such as Happy had never seen before. Double-fold idiot that he was. Sandy had warned him to get the key to the padlock as well as the key to the safe.
Suddenly he breathed a sigh of relief. He could not get that key tonight. He would go out and tell Sandy that the deal was off, and that he wanted to have no more to do with it. No, that would send Sandy abroad with a huge tale about the weak nerve of Happy Jack—how he started out to do a robbery and lacked the courage to carry it through.
As a matter of fact, a crime once started was as good as completed, so far as one’s own conscience went. So argued unhappy Jack as he stood staring at the padlock. Automatically, not with a hope, he tried the safe key in the padlock. At the first turn something yielded. Astonished, he turned it again, and behold, the lock was sprung!
Happy Jack blinked. But, after all, it was perfectly clear. The rancher had simply ordered a padlock that would duplicate the lock of his safe.
The door now began to swing open without the pressure of his hand, and presently Happy sent the shaft of light from his torch straight into the face of a big, squat safe, older than three generations of men. The lock on the door and the lock o
n the safe had been too implicitly trusted by the old man for, once an expert cracksman got at the safe, with even a can opener, the safe would be gutted of its money.
To Jack, of course, it was a very simple affair. In half a minute the door of the safe was open, and he was pulling out drawer after drawer. The one was piled with documents, another was crammed with account books, and in the third he found the money. When his fingers closed over it, he waited for the exultant leap of his pulses, but it did not come. He did not pause to count but, glancing at the denominations of a few of the bills and then estimating the thickness of the pile, he figured it to be between $30,000 and $40.000.
Why did the rancher keep so much money on the ranch? Was it because, miser-like, he loved to sun himself in the presence of hard cash?
A door slammed heavily. Happy Jack whirled with the speed of guilt, which is swifter by far than the speed of a striking snake, and his gun was in his hand as he whirled. But in a moment he knew that the door had banged somewhere in an upper story of the house. He was safe, unobserved as yet.
He felt a sudden panic, a blind, strange thing spring on him out of the thin air and cling to him like a writhing, living object. Danger was all about him. It was grinning at him from the shadows. It was lurking beyond the door!
Not stopping to close and relock the door to the safe, Happy pocketed the cash, and sneaked out to the door of the little room and crouched there, shooting flashes of light from side to side and combing the cellar to make sure that no one was watching and waiting.
Then he cursed himself for his stupidity. What was so likely as the light itself to attract attention? He snapped it out and started at a run for the stairway leading to the floor above. As though in key with his emotions, a terrific gale at the same time smashed against the house and howled about the corners, wailing and shaking doors and windows. And in that wild uproar, springing through the darkness, Happy Jack reached the staircase and flew to the top.
