by Max Brand
But the man of the beard, standing in the shadow of danger, was aware of the movement. He merely said: “You don’t want a murder on your hands, Al. Not a dead man, Al. It would spoil everything, and marry the girl to an outlaw.”
Paradise Al slid gracefully from the red stallion to the ground, and that famous horse, Sullivan, began to lower his head and crop at the grasses, occasionally jerking his head up and staring about him, as all horses that have run wild are likely to do.
The young man was saying: “You’re Rory Pendleton, you say?”
“I’m not bluffing.” The other smiled. “I’m Rory Pendleton, and you’re supposed to be my dear son. Isn’t that the idea?”
Paradise Al drew in a quick breath, and, looking hard under the wide brim of the black felt hat, he examined the eyes and the soul of the other man. He could make nothing of the whimsical glitter in his eyes. “What’s the game, Pendleton?” he asked.
“A friendly game, if I can work it that way,” said the other. “And we have to talk fast. You haven’t shaken hands yet. And Molly Drayton is watching.”
Paradise Al gritted his teeth, then suddenly he thrust forward his slender, brown hand and gripped the stranger’s. An odd grip it was, the forefinger finding a nerve in the back of the hand of Pendleton and temporarily paralyzing it.
But Pendleton merely smiled. “Full of tricks, Al, aren’t you?” he said. “But you don’t have to be afraid of me, I think.”
“You don’t think so?” said the young fellow grimly.
“No, I don’t think so. We can play a game together out here.”
“What sort of a game. Your own son, your real son, is alive somewhere.”
“No, poor Al is dead. He got tired of poverty and went to sea. A Malay dagger was the end of him, I understand. No, no, Al . . . the real Al, the real Al Pendleton is dead, I believe, and I lead a lonely life in this world. That’s why I’m so ready to talk business with you.”
“Business?” said the boy. “What sort of business can you do with me?”
“You know, Al, that even in ordinary trade and business, a name has a value,” said the big man. “When you buy out another firm’s name, you want his goodwill and all taken together. You’ve simply grabbed off my name. You’ve called yourself the son of Rory Pendleton, but you wouldn’t want to take that name for nothing, would you?”
“Are you asking for hard cash?” asked Paradise Al.
“Look here, Al,” replied the big man, “you knew when you swiped the name and stayed on this range that sooner or later your bluff would be called. You knew that, didn’t you?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “I knew it,” he affirmed. “I’ve been expecting you, or the real Al Pendleton, to turn up here at any minute.”
“And therefore?” suggested Pendleton.
“Therefore I’ve waited and played my cards high, wide, and handsome. I had something on the table.”
“You mean the girl?”
“‘Well, perhaps we’ll call it that.”
“You mean other things,” said Pendleton a little grimly. “You’ve been a gutter rat all your life until you graduated and became a gunman extraordinary and a safe-cracker. There are places in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, as well as some of the other big cities, where a few of the fellows in the know are pretty familiar with that face of yours. Isn’t that true?”
Slowly Paradise Al nodded. A thoughtful and very cold look was in his eyes.
“And,” went on the other, “the fact is you switched everything when you came out here. You’ve built up for yourself a new kind of reputation. You’re the hero of the range. You’re the leader of all the youngsters who punch cows, roll dice, and drink whiskey at the end of the month. You’ve been able to stop the worst feud on the range. You’ve engaged yourself to the prettiest girl in the part of the mountains. You’re on top.”
Paradise made a little gesture. “Everything you say is more or less true,” he said.
The big man smiled, and there was a sort of kindness in his eyes, as kindness may appear even in the eyes of an old lion. “Now, then,” he continued, “you’re in a position to do something worthwhile, and I want to share in the profits. That’s all. I want a cut. You get the lion’s share. I get the leavings. Just enough to live on, is all I want.”
“Only enough to live on the rest of your life, eh?” inquired the young fellow.
“That’s all,” said Rory Pendleton. “I hate to shock you,” he explained as he saw a change in the expression of the young man. “But as you know, I’m the black sheep of the Pendletons. I never did very well out here, and I haven’t made much money putting paint on canvas, either. Now I’m getting old enough to realize that I’m never going to make a great success. What do I want to do? Why, I want to get away from this neck of the woods and go off to another place where I’ll be more at home.
“I’d take a couple of rooms some place on the Italian Riviera, say, or a little peasant’s hut, and live there with one servant to cook and do everything else for me. I’m a fellow of simple tastes. I don’t need the best Burgundies on my table. A little red Italian ink is good enough for me. After that I’ll get on with pasta and fruit. Oh, I’m the simplest man in the world to take care of . . . very few luxuries, just the price of paper and oil paints, and such trifles. Then I’ll amuse myself. You could do it easily on a hundred dollars a month, say. What about it, Paradise Al?”
Steadily the young fellow looked at the crafty old man. “Unless I come across with the money,” he said, “what happens?”
“If you don’t pay me, if you don’t buy me off,” said Rory Pendleton gravely, “then I’m forced to appear at the place of the revered Thomas J. Pendleton, the head of our clan, and show him that you’re an impostor. And I’d really hate to do that, you know. You’re reforming out here on the range, and you’re actually reforming the range, as well. Paradise Al has become a reformer.” He laughed a little.
“You know a good deal about me, do you?” asked the young fellow.
“A very great deal indeed,” said Pendleton. “I didn’t take the trip clear out here until I’d made sure of you. When I finally managed to get hold of your picture in a Western newspaper, you and the stallion at a rodeo, with the name and picture to go on, I soon was able to strike a few veins of information. Oh, they will talk and say a great deal about you in certain sections of the East, Al. Paradise Al was a great figure back there in certain sections and among certain sets of people. I know police detectives and private detectives that would give ten years of their lives to get their hands on you. Ten years!”
“There’s nothing outstanding against me,” said the young man.
“If they could find you, they’d make something stand out against you,” replied the other. “They’d frame you, and you know it, and the chief reason you left the East and came West was because the ground was getting too hot under your feet.”
Paradise Al nodded. “You’re a clever fellow,” he said. “Nearly every blackmailer is clever.”
“Right you are,” said the big man. “I don’t mind being called names. I repeat, I demand very little of life indeed. I’m glad to furnish my own amusement by daubing my paints on canvas. All that I ask of you is that you put the bread in my mouth. You won’t find me a waster.”
“Man, man, I’m just starting life out here!” exclaimed Al impatiently. “How could I afford to spend a hundred dollars a month on you? Will you tell me that?”
“Out of your ranch work?”
“Yes.”
“But ranch work is your poorest resource. You can do other things,” declared Pendleton.
“Such as what, please?”
“You don’t want me to turn over the pages and tell you what you used to do, do you?” asked Pendleton.
Paradise frowned. “You don’t want me to remind you, I’m sure,” said the older man, “that once you were able to lose twenty-five thousand dollars in a day on the race track at Belmont Park?”
“And?” said Al.
“Why, the income of twenty thousand dollars would be quite enough for me,” said the other airily, waving his hand. “I’m not a pig, Al.”
“And how am I to get twenty thousand dollars?”
“How? My dear fellow, I appeal to your sense of humor. Here you are on a cattle range, established as the most honest man in the mountains, the first citizen. All about you there are little towns that have big, fat, rich banks in ‘em, banks that have to be prepared to take care of the needs of the great ranchers in call. Why, you can tap any of those banks and crack open the safe, take out the lining, and there you are! Even suppose that the hick detectives and sheriffs and their posses finally should come on your trail, they’d never believe their eyes. And I, in the meantime, quietly slide back East, out of the picture and out of your life, never to bother you again.”
III
There was no answer from Paradise Al, and the other went on: “In the meantime, if you give me your word that you’ll go through with the scheme, we can walk back together and I’ll tell your girl that I’m your father.”
“You’ll tell her?” said the young fellow. “Why, she’s seen us meet like strangers almost.”
“We’ve been estranged, that’s all,” replied Rory Pendleton. “We’ve been estranged, but now we’re hand in glove again. Isn’t that clear?”
“I’m to promise to rob a bank and give you twenty thousand dollars. Is that it?”
“I don’t care where you get the money, Al. I’m not urging you toward robbery, my dear fellow,” said the other, stroking his white beard and smiling very gently. “Perhaps you’ll be able to crack open one of these golden mountains and take out its yellow kernel. I hope you can do that. Honest money has a better taste.”
“You talk of honest money, do you?” asked Paradise Al. “And in the meantime you collect a blackmailer’s capital. How am I to be sure that you won’t come again and again to get the coin out of me?”
“How are you to be sure?” asked Rory Pendleton. “Why, very simply. This is a business deal between us. The first time I give you a base of rock to stand on . . . I tell the whole range that you are my son. I assure to you the Pendleton name forever. And that’s what you want. That’s the only way in which you can bury your past forever. Isn’t that clear? After I’ve endorsed you, there is nothing I can do to harm you. If I go back to the cabin this moment and tell Molly that I’m your father, I can’t unsay the thing afterward, because everybody would simply call me a lying fool. I’ll give you that endorsement, now, that makes you a Pendleton forever in the eyes of the world. And then I’ll have to trust to your word of honor to put through the deal that I want. Isn’t that fair on both sides?”
“It’s to be honor among thieves. Is that it?” asked Al.
“And where else is honor so binding?” said Rory Pendleton. “Shall we go back to her now?”
A groan came from the throat of Paradise Al. “I’ve always thought that I’d tell her the truth one day,” he said.
“You never would,” answered Pendleton. “You’d put the thing off and put it off, until after your marriage. And after that you never would dare, so long as you lived. Would you have the courage to tell her before the marriage?”
Paradise Al groaned again.
“Face facts and shame the devil,” said the other.
“We’ll go back to the cabin, then,” said Paradise Al. “And I’m to introduce you as my father, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said the young fellow, “I hope that I don’t murder you one day for this trick of yours.”
“Steady, Al, steady. We go back affectionately,” said the other. “It’s a great and happy surprise for her, you know. Don’t forget that.”
They went on together. The stallion followed behind willingly, unled. As they walked, the big hand of Pendleton rested affectionately on the shoulder of the young man.
“Molly,” cried Paradise Al, “I want you to meet . . . to meet . . . !” The word stuck in his throat. He could not speak the lie to her, and a flood of color came up in his face.
But Rory Pendleton said in a deep, rich, ringing voice: “His father, Molly! I’m Rory Pendleton!”
She was still amazed when he took her and held her in his arms and kissed her with unction. Joy and doubt, hope and fear were in her face.
Rory Pendleton put it quickly at rest, saying: “After years, my dear girl . . . after years, I’m reunited with my son. After years of estrangement. Ah, well, there were times when I thought that he would never speak to me again. Because I was very remiss as a father, Molly . . . very casual, very careless about my sacred obligations. However, I think that I have been forgiven. Tell me again, my son . . . you really forgive me?”
And he looked with an expectant smile toward Paradise Al.
The latter managed to smile, also. Then, looking at Molly Drayton, a strange mixture of fear for her and fear of her overcame him, with scorn for himself and the fear of staining her life by his very presence. It was that look that filled his eyes as the girl turned to him, but she, naturally enough, thought that it was for the old man, not for herself. If there were any doubt lingering in her mind after seeing the cold distance of their first meeting, the doubt now left her. After all, Paradise Al was not an effusive fellow, and that one look that she found in his eyes was enough proof for her. She glanced up at the face of Rory Pendleton and accepted him instantly and forever as the father of the man she loved.
But the day was wearing out, and it was time for her to go. There was the meal, such as it was, waiting for Rory Pendleton inside the cabin, and he was seated in front of it, while she bustled happily about to add what more she could to the food already on the table. There was some talk about the great rocks that stood before the house.
“I’ve got to get some dynamite and blast ‘em out,” said Paradise Al. “They’re too big. Maybe we could have some sort of a garden if the rocks were blasted out.”
Rory Pendleton smiled very faintly. It was not for the rocks that dynamite was intended, he knew. But somewhere in a town on the range there was a bank whose safe would have to stand the force of the nitroglycerin that would be cooked out of the sticks of powder.
She was gone, at last, down the hillside to her mustang. Mounting, she waved and was gone, cantering down the road, turning to wave again and again, while Paradise Al, from the front of the cabin, waved in turn.
“Lucky fellow, Paradise,” said Rory Pendleton. “She’s a charming girl . . . you couldn’t have picked a better one.”
“I wonder,” murmured the young fellow, “if I’ll ever see her again?”
“Ever see her again?” exclaimed Rory Pendleton. “Why, man, this coming of mine, that seems a disaster to you, is really the foundation stone of your happiness. The news goes over the range at once that Rory Pendleton’s back and is staying out here with his son. If ever any of the ‘punchers have doubted that you’re a Pendleton, because you lack some necessary inches, you know, to measure up to the Pendleton standard, the doubts will be gone.”
The other simply sighed.
Rory finished his eating, and, slapping the broad flat of his hand upon the table, he went on: “There’s one thing that you must do first of all.”
“Well, tell me what that’s to be?” said the young man.
“As simple as the nose on your face. You’ve got to pick out a bank that you’ll enjoy robbing.”
“Enjoy?” said Paradise Al gloomily. He sat bowed over in a chair, his chin resting on a brown fist, his frown directed toward the floor.
“That’s what I said,” replied the other. “There are banks and banks. Some of ‘em are good . . . they help the poor devil who needs help. They fill in the gaps and take the hungry ranchers through the starving times. On the other hand, there are always banks and bankers who suck blood, by heaven. Lend money to a man only to corner him, if they can, and cut his throat when he’s in their power. Don’t you know an
y banks and bankers like that?”
Young Paradise Al looked sadly before him, striving to think, but finding no images whatever in his mind.
“There used to be a perfect picture of what I mean over in Jumping Creek itself,” Pendleton went on. “When I was younger, there was a mean, lean, hard-tempered, cross-grained devil of a money-lender who was just commencing to make a fortune by cutting out the hearts of the fellows who took his money. He never loaned money to people who were sure to pay it back. He preferred to pick out some young rancher who’d make a fine start and built a solid house, worked up a good herd of cows, and ran some strong fence lines, built tanks, and got everything about the ranch in readiness. Then, if the young fellow struck a bad season, that man-eater in Jumping Creek foreclosed and gobbled the place up.”
“What was his name?” asked Al. “Seems to me that I’ve heard of somebody like that in the town now. He runs a private bank, and his name is Wallace Taggert.”
“Why, Taggert’s the very fellow,” said Pendleton. “Made of iron, he used to be, and I dare say he still is. Now, between you and me, Paradise, would it break your heart to rob his safe for him?”
“Taggert?” murmured Al. “Taggert’s not a man. He’s a wild beast. What he does is murder, not banking.”
“Exactly . . . worse than murder. Why, my dear fellow, you’d be conferring a benefaction on the whole town if you wiped out Taggert. You see?”
Paradise Al sat up straight and looked before him with a set face and an intent eye. He said nothing, but Rory Pendleton smiled with a quiet content, because he knew that his idea was taking hold, strong and fast.
IV
The bank of Wallace Taggert was a very small affair indeed. He was the president and everything else official. The rest of the staff consisted of two clerks who did long lists of figures all day long, two day porters armed with rifles, and four night watchmen armed with double-barreled shotguns.
