by Max Brand
“Come here a minute.” He drew the angry detective to the door of the cell.
“You can’t get me out of here. I’m gonna kill him,” said Tucker.
The other caught him by the shoulder and whispered in his ear: “Listen, you fool. I know why he’s so cocky. I see it in his face.”
“What?” muttered Tucker.
“Look at him again. He’s a Pendleton, is what he is. And you’re going to catch hell in this town for roughing a Pendleton.”
“Him a Pendleton?” muttered Harry Tucker. His wrath was cast off like a garment. He turned and gaped at the tramp. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Why didn’t you see that before, you fool? Why didn’t you . . . ?”
He backed up to the door of the cell, glared again at the young man, more in fear than in rage, now, and suddenly both he and his fellow detective were hurrying down the passage between the cells.
“Suppose that he’s a Pendleton?” said Tucker gloomily as they stood in the jailer’s office.
“Yeah, suppose,” muttered the other.
The jailer exclaimed: “Suppose that who’s a Pendleton?”
“Aw, nobody,” replied Harry Tucker roughly. And he turned his broad, heavy face toward the jailer, his features wrinkled with disgust, fear, and suspicion.
He and Jay Winchell left the room, and the jailer remained there, apparently quiet, but gripping the edges of his desk. There were two names to conjure with in Jumping Creek. One was that of the old Pendleton family, which for three generations had been spreading its name and its acres over the range. The other was that of the rival clan, the Draytons. Although the Draytons were now on top and had, in fact, supplied Jumping Creek with both a mayor and a sheriff, at the next election this situation might easily be reversed.
At any time, no matter which faction was in power, it was very bad business, indeed, to tamper with the men of the Pendleton faction. They were people capable of action, and, when they acted, it was all as one body.
There was need, therefore, that the jailer should grip the edges of his desk and wonder what unlucky devil had prompted the two railroad detectives to pick up this man. The jailer, scanning the features of the prisoner with his mind’s eye, readily remembered the face. And it was true that he seemed a Pendleton in every detail. He was much smaller than the majority of the clan, to be sure. He was not only smaller, but he appeared more finely made. He had the same cast of face, however, and his dark-olive skin and deep brown eyes were the same, also.
A Pendleton?
Yes, it must be so, and what would the town say? Why, that the sheriff was using the powers of his office to persecute the opposing faction. Whatever happened, he must find the sheriff at once. He put on his coat, hurried out of the building, and left eleven prisoners to take care of themselves while he strode off, bent on discovering the whereabouts of Timothy Drayton, present sheriff of Jumping Creek.
Rumor already had preceded him. Whispers had been passing up and down the street until they came to a great giant of a man with silvered hair, but with a swarthy skin and deep-brown eyes. He had been standing in front of the post office, about to climb into his buckboard, but, when he heard the whisper, he turned suddenly about and faced toward the jail.
His face darkened—his brows beetled—suddenly he strode forward with a long and ponderous step. His left hand was gripped into a fist, his right hand worked nervously at his side. He was Thomas J. Pendleton, the senior member of the clan, and the most influential member of the entire body.
III
When Thomas J. Pendleton reached the jail he found Gresham, the jailer, just returned and panting from his excursion into the town. Gresham, in the meantime, had encountered one of the Drayton cowpunchers on the loose in Jumping Creek and had promptly commissioned him to find Timothy Drayton, the sheriff. For his own part, Gresham would have been very glad to have turned loose from the jail, at once, any member of the distinguished Pendleton family, but he had to wait for authorization from the head of the Drayton clan.
He was a saddened man when he saw the tall form of Thomas J. Pendleton standing in the door of the jail, frowning. Pendleton’s long, silvery hair was worn in the fashion that was familiar in the days when this range had been part of the great frontier. He had shaggy gray eyebrows, also, and a commanding presence. His voice was low and his manner had about it a grim gentility that frightened lesser spirits like Gresham.
“There is in this place a prisoner arrested for vagrancy, or some such charge,” said Pendleton, “and the name under which he passes is Paradise Al, I believe. May I see the man?”
The jailer would rather have lost a pair of his eyeteeth than permit the interview, but he felt helpless before the great man. Therefore, he submitted and guided the visitor to the cell.
There Pendleton saw a slender form, lying flat on his face on the cot. Instantly Thomas J. Pendleton sighed with relief and shook his head, for no member of his family or clan, of the male sex, had ever been as small as five feet and eight inches.
“Hey, Paradise,” said Jailer Gresham. “Wake up. Here’s a visitor for you.”
Paradise Al stretched and yawned while he was still lying flat on his face, and Thomas J. Pendleton shook his head disapprovingly, but with relief, again. No member of the Pendleton family ever had been guilty of such lack of dignity, to say nothing of bad manners.
Then Paradise turned as a cat might turn and sat up.
Thomas J. Pendleton was taken aback. There was the swarthy skin and the deep-brown eyes of his people. If the features were chiseled a little more carefully, well, that would go with the generally small scale on which the man was built. Close to the bars stood Pendleton, and stared down at the prisoner.
“My name,” he said, “is Thomas Pendleton.”
He waited. Nothing happened. The brown eyes stared calmly at him.
Again he sighed with relief. The name, it appeared, meant nothing to the young fellow, who steadily, nervelessly regarded the visitor.
“District attorney, eh?” said Paradise Al.
Pendleton shrugged his shoulders. Gresham, even more relieved than his guest, grinned broadly. “I can leave him alone with you here, Mister Pendleton?” he said.
“I suppose you can safely do that,” said Pendleton dryly.
Gresham withdrew, and Paradise Al was saying: “Not the district attorney, eh? You sort of had the look.”
Pendleton smiled. He felt that it was safe for him to withdraw at once, but, having been introduced, he was obliged to make some few remarks before going.
The quiet, calm glance of the prisoner was traveling steadily over the other. He noted the tall body, the large head; he also noted the silver hair and eyebrows, but, most of all, his attention was attracted to the swarthy skin and to the deep-brown eyes. An air of interest began to pervade the scrutiny of Paradise Al.
“I am simply a citizen of the town,” said the visitor, “and naturally I take an interest in the doings of the police department. We wish to treat strangers well in Jumping Creek, you see.”
“Do you?” murmured the tramp. He stood up, stretched, yawned, and sat down again. He said nothing, but watched and waited.
“You understand,” said the guest, a little embarrassed, “that we in Jumping Creek are interested in seeing that everybody secures a square deal. Have you anything to complain about.”
“I’ve nothing to complain about,” said the tramp. “I came in on the bum, jumped off a train, and they copped me. That’s all. They slammed me a couple of times, took my money away, and dumped me in here.”
“They . . . er . . . they struck you, eh?” said Pendleton, the blood of a freeborn Westerner mantling in his face.
“That’s nothing,” said the tramp. “Nothing at all.”
“If you have nothing to complain about,” said Pendleton, “then I suppose that I may as well leave you.”
“You didn’t come here to ask about my complaints,” said Paradise Al.
The other started. “Then why did I
come?” asked Pendleton.
The tramp paused. Something, very distinctly, was on the mind of his visitor. What? The mind of Paradise Al turned over several thousand times a minute, in times of need, and it began to turn with some such liveliness just now. But he could arrive at nothing. What had brought this imposing-looking man to the jail to speak to him? He decided that he would begin to throw cards on the table and see which one registered some shock in the eyes of this Thomas J. Pendleton.
“Why did you come?” said Paradise Al, feeling his way. “Well, I suppose this isn’t the best place to talk about it.”
Pendleton took a long stride forward that brought him against the bars of the cell. He gripped one of those bars with a big, brown hand. Then, lowering his voice, he said: “Why isn’t this a proper place?”
Paradise Al threw another card into the dark. “If you don’t know that, you don’t want to know anything,” he said. And he pretended to be about to turn away.
“Wait a moment!” exclaimed Pendleton, and there was much emotion in his voice. “Who are you?”
“Paradise Al,” said the tramp promptly, but he allowed a faint smile to appear and disappear on his lips.
Pendleton frowned. “Why can’t you talk frankly to me?” he said.
“Why can’t you talk frankly to me?” asked Paradise Al, thus casting out another card.
He was greatly rewarded by seeing another convulsive start move the big man.
Pendleton retained and freshened his grip upon the bar of the cell. “Do you think,” he said, “that you have any claim on me?”
A thrill passed through the young fellow. What claim could this stranger possibly think that he, Paradise Al, citizen of the underworld of many nations, could possibly have upon him? He made another vague gesture, saying coldly: “There’s one thing you have to admit. I haven’t asked you for anything, have I?”
“No,” said Pendleton. “That’s perfectly true. And why . . . ?”
He was about to ask what right the young man would have had to ask for help, when the tramp continued, with an air of disdain: “I didn’t even let you know that I’d come to town.”
All the while he was wondering eagerly to himself what possible claim he might have on the tall man, for it was now sufficiently clear that the other suspected that such a claim might exist. What was he, Paradise Al, to Thomas J. Pendleton? He knew that something was wrong in the mind of the other; he must play delicately to take advantage of every fall of the cards.
“You didn’t let me know,” said Pendleton. “But why should you have let me know?”
Paradise Al adopted an air of lofty superiority and pride. “That’s for you to decide,” he said very shortly. He moved again, as though to turn away, although he now expected the voice that eagerly called him back.
“Young man,” said Pendleton, “I want to be of help to you. What should you be to any Pendleton?”
It was a straight question, a facer, and the tramp saw that he would have to make some sort of a decisive play at this point. He remembered the mutterings of the two detectives and exclaimed suddenly: “What should I be? Use your eyes for yourself, and see!”
It was very effective, that remark. It was as effective as an exploding bomb.
“Albert,” said Pendleton, “if that’s your name, are you one of us?”
“I’m claiming nothing,” replied Paradise Al. But he watched like a cat from his lowered eyes. One of them? One of whom? Of the Pendletons? The mere suggestion was enough to start his heart hammering. So far as he knew, he belonged to no family at all. He was simply a waif, who had cut a path through the difficult jungle of the world by the keenly tempered steel edge of his wit. A Pendleton? Was that what the big man meant?
“You claim nothing,” said Thomas J. Pendleton. “It’s not a matter wherein you need to make any claims. We are all willing to take you for whatever you may be. I’m asking you to tell me, frankly, if you belong to the Pendleton family.”
Again it was a facer, and the young fellow, cornered, played another card, one of his highest aces. He stood up, straight and tall. He folded his manacled arms as well as he could and replied in quiet tones: “No Pendleton talks about himself in jail.”
Thomas J. of that name went backward a full step. “That’s the true spirit, the real spirit, or my name is not what it is,” he muttered. Suddenly the visitor exclaimed very loudly: “You must be Rory Pendleton’s son! You are the image of Rory in the small!”
The brown eyes of the tramp never wavered. “Remember this one thing,” he said solemnly, meeting the burning glance of the big man steadily. “I never claimed to be his son.”
“Claimed it?” cried the big man. “What do you think Pendleton blood is made of? Water? You don’t need to claim it. I see the spirit of poor Rory shining in your eyes!”
IV
Things began to happen with wonderful speed. Big Thomas Pendleton in a stride was upon the jailer, Gresham. Before Gresham was able to speak, however, Timothy Drayton came in, sweating with haste. Like all the Draytons, he was built rather close to the ground, very wide and massive in his proportions. Like all the Draytons, he was a man of less grace than the Pendletons, but of more muscle. They were Greeks to the Roman of the Draytons, so to speak.
Timothy Drayton was not silver, like Thomas Pendleton. He was rather a beaver-gray; he looked not old, but hardened, and now he was perspiring with haste and with fear. He was in fear because he dreaded lest an actual Pendleton had been thrown into the jail. It was not that he feared the Pendletons. He hated them heartily, like all of his clan, without fearing them at all. But he dreaded, like all Americans, the weight of public opinion, and it now seemed certain that he, Timothy Drayton, would be accused of having taken cowardly advantage of his position as sheriff to prosecute his private enemies. At that moment, he sincerely wished that the two railroad detectives were in the bottomless pit. He was ready to throw them there.
When he saw Pendleton, he flushed to the roots of his hair. Drawing himself up with a clumsy dignity far different from that of the Pendletons, with their natural grace, he said: “Good day, Thomas. I’m glad to see you. I heard there was some kind of a mistake. I came along here to put it right.”
“Mistake?” said Pendleton. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“About a Pendleton being jailed for vagrancy,” said Drayton, flushing again.
Thomas J. Pendleton smiled coldly. “The law is the law,” he said.
“The law be damned,” said the sheriff, not altogether convincingly. “I hope you won’t think that I’ve been behind this, Pendleton?”
“I dare say not,” said Thomas Pendleton. “I know nothing about it, except that my nephew is lying in the town jail.” It was his turn to flush, a slow color that gradually spread over his face.
“Your nephew?” exclaimed the other. “You mean that that’s Rory’s son? Did Rory have a son? Is that fellow his son?”
Pendleton cleared his throat. He merely repeated: “My nephew is still in the jail for vagrancy.”
“Vagrancy be damned. I got nothin’ but fools workin’ for me!” exclaimed the sheriff. “We’ll have him out right now. Gresham!”
Gresham, pale as sun-faded grass, came in, trembling.
“You gone and arrested a tramp by the name of Pendleton,” said Drayton, his voice quivering. “Mind going now and turning him loose? No . . . I’ll go and do it myself.”
He grabbed the keys from the jailer and strode before the others toward the indicated cell, while Pendleton followed next, grimly gratified by this turn of affairs.
The sheriff himself unlocked the door. The sheriff himself grasped the steel handcuffs that bound together the arms of the young man and exclaimed to the shrinking jailer: “Irons, too, eh?”
“You see, Mister Drayton,” said Gresham, “he was considered kind of dangerous and . . . ”
Drayton unlocked the manacles, exclaiming: “Dangerous? Wasn’t that a proof that he’s a Pendleton? Was there
ever a Pendleton that wasn’t dangerous? Damn it, Gresham, you gone and got me into a lot of trouble.” Perspiration poured down the face of the sheriff. His color was changing from red to purple.
Now he leaned forward and stared at the face of the young man who was before him. “Where’d you get the welts on your face?” he demanded, looking along the finely made jaw of the prisoner.
“Accident,” said Paradise Al, speaking for the first time.
At the soft, the almost feminine sound of his voice, the sheriff started. All of the Pendletons were educated, all of them spoke rather quietly for such a community as Jumping Creek.
“Accident, eh?” repeated the sheriff. He turned sharply on the frightened jailer and stretched out his arm. “You do that?” he demanded.
Gresham turned to water, to icy water. “You know, Sheriff,” he whined, “a railroad detective is kind of hard. It was a pair of them that turned up this fellow. They kind of handled him rough, I guess.”
Drayton could not speak. He dared not glance toward the great leader of the rival clan. He dared only to say: “Young man, how’d they handle you?”
“They were all right,” said Paradise Al.
“All right?” exclaimed the sheriff. “Did they beat you up?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Paradise Al.
“You don’t know anything about it?”
“No,” he said. “I only know that I have their names.”
An expression of singular satisfaction spread across the face of Thomas J. Pendleton, as though he had received, at that moment, a benediction of peculiar grace and power.
Timothy Drayton, also, suddenly stiffened his back a little and a faint smile came over his face. “You’re all right, son,” he said. “I reckon you know that the Draytons and the Pendletons, they don’t set down peaceful in the same room together, but I’ve always said . . . and I always will say . . . a Pendleton is a Pendleton, and I’m glad to meet one of the true breed. Son, I’m glad to get you out of this, and I’m sorry that I’ve got a flock of fools working around this town. Jumping Creek, it’s gone and growed too much to be watched by any one man. You’re free, young man. I didn’t get your name correctly?”
