by Max Brand
Eight men, therefore, were working daily for Wallace Taggert, and it seemed miraculous to observers from the street that this should be the case, for very few, very few indeed, were the customers who entered the door of the bank. And these, furthermore, generally seemed to enter not with the gladness of men going to get spending money, but with the desperation of men about to venture life and soul.
Sometimes days would go by while Wallace Taggert, lean, brown, and dangerously cold of eye, sat brooding on the dismal affairs of his heart, and not a single visitor to entice him to business. Finally someone would enter, and those who entered the bank of Wallace Taggert entered, indeed, as deep as the roots of life and happiness.
Often a year went by in which he concluded hardly more than a dozen business deals, merely one a month. For who would go to Wallace Taggert so long as there remained another possible court of appeal?
For desperate men, desperate measures; on the range it was a commonplace to say to a fellow who was down on his luck: “Cheer up, brother. You don’t have to go to Wallace Taggert yet.”
The name of Taggert began to take on a sort of legendary character. Likewise a mythical horror gathered about it. He himself was aware of this reputation he had acquired, and he was proud of it. Furthermore, it paid him, for he was advertised far and wide by the detestation with which men looked upon him. Men who were states and states away from him would come, out of despair, to talk about money.
It was true that once he had made a $10,000 loan to an unknown man on the strength of a few photographs. And that deal, when he foreclosed, made him $100,000 of clear profit. The very years during which he consulted no more than a dozen clients were often his best years.
He had piled up millions of dollars, and he kept a considerable sum in the safe in his offices.
On this morning, into the office of Taggert, came Paradise Al Pendleton. The banker looked him up and down, nodded to him, half rose from his chair, gave him a hand as dry as paper and as cold as earth, and sat down again. He spent a moment looking over his client, bending outward the sharp, high points of his collar. At the base of the collar, at the bottom of his long, skinny neck, there was tied a black bowtie, so narrow and so loosely put on that the glistening white head of the collar button always showed.
“What can I do for you this morning, Mister Pendleton?” said the banker. “And this, I suppose, is a very happy time for you. I understand that your father has returned to the West and is staying with you?”
His speech was full of pauses, during which he cleared his throat with a sound very like that of dead leaves being crushed under foot. As he spoke, he smiled a little, and the lines of his face, which seemed to be filled with dried soap or dust, wrinkled without in the slightest increasing his appearance of cheer.
“My father is back,” said the young man, “but he’s spending most of his time at his old home. I’ve only got an uncompleted cabin out in the hills, you see.”
“Well,” said the banker, clasping his lanky hands together, “that is the way that fortunes are founded. Young men start at the bottom and work up. And what can I do for you, Mister Pendleton?”
“I want money,” said Paradise Al. His glance flickered to the farther end of the room, where stood an old-fashioned safe with the name of the maker painted in gilded letters at the top: Wesselmann and Hyde, Troy, N.Y.
It was like the face of an old friend, for Paradise Al had encountered Wesselmann and Hyde safes before. He knew all about them. In imagination his nervous fingers were already running the mold of soft, yellow laundry soap around the rim of the door; in imagination already he was pouring the soup into the mold. The door of that safe would lift off as simply as the cover of a box of candy.
Robbery? No, it would be no robbery to take money from this walking skeleton of a man, who employed his wealth only to accumulate more, and to spread misery through the world. His business was simply a trap with which he caught living creatures for the sake of draining out their blood.
“You want money,” said the banker. “I’ve never met a man who didn’t. So many men, Mister Pendleton, that my own resources are now severely overtaxed. I am overextended, and the times are hard. However, for the sake of accommodating a rising young man, if the security is good . . . But just why do you want money, Mister Pendleton? What is your particular need, if I may ask?”
“My particular need,” said the young fellow, “is that I have to expand in order to get on.”
“Expand? I thought you were only beginning, and yet already you are talking of expanding.” He shook his head and put on, like a mask, his exceedingly mirthless smile.
“The way of it is this. I have the land out there,” replied Al. “All I need is the cattle to fill up the grazing acres. Plenty of woods to give the cows shelter from the heat in the summer and from the cold in the winter, you understand. Plenty of good big trees that will make fine lumber one of these days. There must be a quarter or half a million dollars in timber out there, if only I can get the stuff to a market.”
“That’s it! How often that is true,” said the banker. “If only we could get the goods to the market. If such things as rivers and railroads were not really necessary, why, then life in this world would be like life in a paradise, I’m sure.” He gripped his hands together harder than ever, and wagged his head at the young man.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s an old problem,” said Paradise Al, “but I want to go into the thing in a big way. Not the timber . . . let that wait. It would simply make your security better and better as time goes on.”
“Time goes on slowly,” said the other, “when a man has lent money. And death is always coming nearer. But how far would you go, Mister Pendleton? How much credit would you like to have?”
“Hard cash to go into the market and buy cattle,” said Paradise Al. “I know where they can be got cheap.”
“Ah, do you? And where?”
“Mexico!”
“That would mean a long drive.”
“I can make the drive, all right,” said Al.
“And what happens to your place while you’re away?”
“I can get one of my cousins to take charge. That’s easily managed.”
“No managers like a man’s own self,” said the banker.
“I want to go in deep,” said Paradise Al, putting into his voice an energy and a hope that he by no means felt.
“How deep, then?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
The banker whistled. “Fifty thousand dollars? Whew! That’s a great sum of money.”
“Nothing less would do me,” replied the young fellow. “With that amount I’ll fill the whole valley with cheap Mexican beef. This next spring the price is going to be high. I know it. And I can winter cows in great style up where I am.”
“What makes you think that the prices will be high?” asked Taggert.
“Why, look at the number of states that have suffered from summer droughts,” said Paradise.
“It’s a great, wide country, you must remember,” remarked Taggert. “Inside of its ribs are three million square miles filled with intelligent, strong, hard-working people, always using their wits, just as you and I are. And millions of those people have cattle. Perhaps no more than a family cow, say, but, if the beef prices go up high enough, there’ll be the family cow thrown into the breach. It’s always that way. You may think that this country has its back to the wall, but beware, because the wall may turn into thin air. I’ve seen it happen too many times. You can’t beat the United States of America, my dear young man, with a little scattering drought here and there.”
Paradise Al leaned forward in his chair. “Mister Taggert,” he said, “I’ve got a lot more to say about my idea. I think that I could turn cows into money mighty fast up there in my valley. I want fifty thousand dollars. What do you say . . . yes or no?”
Taggert shook his head, closed his eyes, and smiled until the dust in the wrinkles of his face quite disap
peared. Then, his eyes still closed, the smile still there, he said: “Five thousand, perhaps, but not fifty. Young men always look too high.” He opened his eyes, and, so doing, he was just in time to notice a burning glance that Paradise Al cast at the safe.
The younger man rose to his feet as he said: “That’s short and sweet. It’s better to get the answer without the waste of time. Good bye, Mister Taggert.” And he turned and left the office.
V
That night Wallace Taggert wakened from a nightmare in which he had seen again the sudden, burning glance of Paradise Al as he glanced toward his safe. The banker sat up in bed, choking and trembling—not that there was enough money in the safe vitally to affect his holdings. In fact, he could have weathered the loss of ten times as much out of his millions. But thought of any loss whatever made him sick at heart.
He remembered that he had hired four men with shotguns to guard the premises every night, and at this memory he sighed and leaned back against his pillow. After a moment he recalled the fact that Paradise Al had the reputation of being to other men as a wildcat is to tame house pets. He had stood up to three expert gunmen all in one group, had he not, and faced their charge and brought down every one of the lot?
As for those four—well, there were strange whispers circulating about Paradise Al’s past. He might be a fine upstanding Pendleton just now, but there were plenty of rumors about him in those other days before he came to the West.
This thought got the banker out of his bed. He stood at the window and looked out. His house stood on a hill, and the outlines of the other houses in the town seemed to him like darkly crouching figures, full of danger. How much malicious envy there was in the world. The night wind struck him and made him tremble. And there was that fellow, Paradise Al, likely to be prowling around through the town, bent on mischief.
$50,000! A great sum of money for a young man even to conceive. Wallace Taggert shuddered. Then he turned back quickly, looked at his bed, clenched a fist, and then cursed audibly in the darkness. Oh, the wicked youth of the world, ever hunting the wealth that wisdom and long labor have piled up, envious, devilish youth, trying to steal what it is too lazy to work for.
He lighted a lamp and got back into bed with a book of accounts that was to him a Bible. But tonight it was no comfort to him. His mind could not find a starting point. Names were merely names, and figures were simply so many numbers, grouped together.
At last he put the book gently aside and sat up once more, leaning upon one hand, gathering his thoughts, frowning. Nothing would do. He could not shut from his wits the memory of that burning glance that he had surprised upon the face of Paradise Al.
Whatever might come of it or fail to come of it, there was no doubt at that particular moment that the young man had reached with the hands of desire toward the treasures locked up within the safe. There was, in fact, cash amounting to more than $200,000 dollars waiting there.
As Taggert thought of this, his heart turned to stone, sinking through the shadowy regions of his spirit as into a cold abyss. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. He tried to tell himself that he was suffering from a foolish fancy, but presently he remembered many another occasion when sheer instinct had guided him.
Straightway he got up and began to dress. As he did so, he remembered the four night guards, one by one. They were all handsomely paid—$100 a week altogether for night safety, to say nothing of almost half as much more for safety during the day.
A cold sweat ran out on his face, and his upper lip curled with disdain and disgust. However, he could not solace himself just now with the memory of the little business affair with Widow Perkins that he was just concluding. If, when he foreclosed, no one bid in, he would have her three hundred acres for a song, and then, unless he were quite distraught, he would prove that what was regarded as simply good pasture was really excellent soil well worthy of being put under the plow.
When he had got as far along in his thoughts as this, he was already putting his black hat on his head. Now he pulled from beneath his pillow on the bed an old-fashioned single-action Colt .44. He examined it with a glance, then he blew out the lamp, left the room with his long stride, and went down the dark hall and the stairs outside to the street.
It occurred to him that perhaps he was a little foolish in living so alone. Nobody loved him. And someday a man hunting for vengeance, or a woman, might penetrate to his room and try murder to even some old account.
But he was a man of courage. He did not fear death any more than losing his money, and sometimes he told himself that his love of it was so great that surely he would be able to take the bright, golden ghost of it into the hereafter with him.
Now he stood in the street, still shivering a little in the wind, and, after a glance up and down, he turned toward the center of Jumping Creek.
Sometimes his footfall resounded hollowly upon a board walk—sometimes his heels crunched through sand or gravel—but finally he came into the vicinity of the bank. The familiar front of it was to his eye as welcome as the face of a dear friend— far dearer, in fact.
But the guards? Well, there was one of them now, walking up and down the street, and in an upper window another form moved steadily backward and forward, coming into the lamplight, its shadow sweeping across the window, then disappearing. There would be two more men toward the rear of the building, and all the beats were changed every forty minutes.
When he had assured himself that the posts were occupied, his hatred of these expensive guards lessened somewhat. Other men in the town pointed a mocking finger at him because he supported this army of protectors. But he could retort with pride and with joy that he never had lost a single penny of money in his life, neither his own nor that entrusted to him by another man. That was a record worth having. Somehow it was far better to spend $5,000 a year for defense than it was to lose even so much as $500 to thieves!
He went around to the rear of the bank, going down the adjacent alley. There he paused. He heard voices, heard his own name.
“He eats people like some eat bones,” said one voice.
“Yeah, I know that,” said another. “Who’s he eating now?”
“Aw, the Perkins woman, the widow of old Perkins.”
“Is he gonna take her over the jumps?”
“He’s foreclosing, I hear.”
“The dirty dog!”
“Yeah, he’s a dog. He’s got starvation under his ribs, is what he’s got, and all the money in the world would never fatten him, curse him.”
“I’ll curse him with you. You know what’s a wonder to me?”
“What?”
“That the four of us don’t get together some night and, instead of protecting his joint, rob it.”
“I’ve had the same idea.”
The heart of Taggert stood still, then bounded wildly with rage.
The first speaker went on: “I dunno that I’d have the nerve. If Taggert ever lost five cents to a thief, he’d spend millions getting it back.”
“Yeah. You know something?”
“What?”
“That devil, he’s never given a penny in his life to anything or anybody.”
“Sure?”
“Yep.”
“Seems like he’d have to give something sometime to a feller that’s down on his luck or a crippled beggar.”
The other agreed, saying: “Yeah, I forgot about the cripples. Even a skunk like Taggert, he’d have to give away money to a cripple, I guess.”
In the darkness Taggert smiled to himself. That was the beauty of his character, he felt. It was so astoundingly simple and true to itself. He never deviated from his principles. This thing that rumor said was the actual truth. He never in his life had given a penny to any charity. And he never would. He did not believe in giving. He never had asked so much as a cigarette. Then why should he offer anything to others out of the folly of his heart?
He moved on now, well pleased. As for the curses he had heard directed
against him, they were as nothing compared with a reputation that made men fear to steal from him as from a pursuing devil!
VI
So, guarded as this building was, could any human being possibly enter? He, perhaps, could do so, because he carried with him a passkey that would turn the lock of the door at the side of the building. He went back down the alley, fitted the key into the lock, opened the door, and slipped inside just as the figure of one of the guards turned the corner and started down the alley.
Had he been seen? For once in his life the fear that comes upon breakers of the law came upon the banker, also. He leaned a hand against the wall and listened. But the step of the guard came down the alley, seemed to slow and pause by the door, then went on again.
Anger swept over the mind of Wallace Taggert. He wished that he had been able to recognize that guard so that the fellow might be discharged the next day. He wanted no one so slow of eye to guard the contents of that building.
His anger deepened, and then gave place to a sense of pleasure. He had gained entrance into the place unseen. That pleasure vanished suddenly. If he could do it, others might be able to manage it, and once inside—well, it was not a very new and not a burglar-proof safe that he had in his own office with the money inside.
He went to that office.
There should be a new safe, he had felt for some time, but the expense was large, and the news of its installation was something that he wished to avoid—large, new safes mean money, and attract the attention of burglars.
From his key ring he took the key to his office door, opened it, and walked in. What he first saw was a blur of darkness, of course. Then, through the darkness, a ray of light plunged straight into his eyes, and through that ray darted a clenched fist that landed on the bony point of his chin.
Taggert slumped toward the floor, tried to shout for help, failed owing to a numbness of all his nerves, and found himself caught in sinewy arms that carried him to a chair.
Said a quiet voice in his ear: “If you whisper, I’ll give you the heel of the gun between the eyes.”
