by Max Brand
The heart of Paradise Al turned to stone. However, a full hour of this work continued, and then Taggert stood back and stared at the stack with a grim face, leaning on a pitchfork. Finally he turned away, shaking his head, and the heart of the young man began to beat normally again.
He called down through a gap in the roofing: “Hello, there!”
“Hello?” said Rory Pendleton, looking up from the preparation of the lunch for that day.
“Slice some more bacon into the pan. Slice in all we’ve got. Clean out the big kettle and start some coffee, a couple of gallons of it, because we’re going to give these hounds a bit to eat before they go home.”
The face of Rory Pendleton darkened. “Feed ‘em?” he said. “I’d see ‘em damned first!”
“Because they have the nerve to suspect me of breaking the law. Is that why you’d damn ‘em, Father?” said Al, smiling as he looked down.
Pendleton at last grinned in turn. He set to work enlarging the scope of his preparations at once.
So they cooked and offered a meal to the last half of that sleepless, weary, grumbling posse. At the sight of the meal, and above all when they sniffed at the fragrance of the strong black coffee, such a change came over the spirits of the men of Jumping Creek that they looked upon the sheriff and Wallace Taggert as though the latter had been a pair of snakes.
The oldest man in the party was Jim Wade, and he gripped the hand of the young fellow in parting, as he said: “Paradise, we were a lot of fools ever to come, and we were a lot of hounds to stay.”
“Why, Jim,” said the young man with an air of surprise, “any fellow will stand around a while if there’s a chance to make five thousand dollars in half a day’s work.”
“That’s it, son,” said Jim Wade. “That’s it. But the next time that anybody tries to ring me into helping in a hunt for you, I turn my back and start the other way.”
The sheriff, also, had something to say. “Al,” he began, “I suppose that Molly will be over here before long. She’s a pretty high-spirited girl, and, when she hears about what I’ve done, she’s going to be cross with me. I’m sorry that I came at all, because it looks as though Taggert must have been wrong.”
It was some distance toward an apology, but Paradise Al, guttersnipe and foundling, who never had possessed a family name, stared at the sheriff with eyes of the true Pendleton brown, saying: “I’ve heard what you’ve got to offer, and it doesn’t sound to me. No good ever came to a Pendleton out of a Drayton up to now, and I don’t expect that any good ever will come. So long.”
He would have said more. There was a passion in him. Then he realized, with a shock of surprise, that he had no right to indulge in that passion. He, Paradise Al, was no Pendleton at all. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away as the sheriff started off.
That left Wallace Taggert alone in the cabin with Rory Pendleton and the supposed son of that rascal.
It was in character with the makeup of Taggert that he should have come into the house with the rest of the posse, and that he should have tasted the food and drink offered to him by the man he was trying to hunt down. He seemed perfectly at home now as the other two glowered at him. Seated slumped far down in a chair, his legs crossed, and the top foot wagging back and forth, he regarded his hosts with a comfortable air.
When he was assured that the rest of the posse was gone, he remarked: “You two are working this in cahoots, are you?”
“Working what?” demanded Rory Pendleton with dignity.
Taggert eyed him with care, smiling sourly. “You’re working the game together,” he decided aloud at last, “and you’re doing a pretty good job of it. But tell me one thing. Do you expect to go on winning out against me all the time?”
“This thug,” said Rory Pendleton to Paradise Al, “seems to think that you really are guilty of something.”
“And you,” said Taggert, “seem to think that your son was safely home all evening. You didn’t know that he rode all the way into Jumping Creek. Oh, no, you didn’t understand that, I guess.”
“Father,” said Paradise Al, “suppose you step out and leave me alone with this thug for a while, will you?”
“I’m glad to have the open air,” said the grave Rory Pendleton. “This atmosphere of accusation and suspicion is stifling to any honorable man.”
It was spoken magnificently and with an air, but there was just a shade too much magnificence and air, and, as Rory Pendleton walked out of the cabin, the banker followed him with a sarcastic smile.
He turned to the young man with that smile and lifted his brow.
But Paradise Al merely shrugged his shoulders. “Now what’s on your mind, Taggert?” he asked.
“Congratulations, first,” replied Taggert, and held out his hand.
Paradise Al shook his head. “Not that,” he said.
Taggert nodded, insisting. “You shake hands, brother,” he said, “and call it a day. You did a good job, and you trimmed me. I’ll tell you something else. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever been trimmed that close.”
His hand was still extended. Paradise Al crossed the room, and after a light touch abandoned his grasp again.
“You seem game, Taggert,” he said. “I’m sorry that I had to touch you so far.”
“Tell me this. Would you really have come down to twenty thousand when you first walked into the bank to talk to me?” said Taggert.
“Yes.”
“I was a fool, then,” said the banker. “What did you want twenty thousand dollars for?”
“Cows.”
Taggert shook his head. “Not cows,” he declared. “I know the look of men that are going to buy cows, and I know the look of men that are going in for other things. You had the look of somebody . . . well, somebody with a wife and kids at home, with the winter long and cold, the larder empty, and no money in the wallet. What was the pinch?”
Al shrugged his shoulders. “You can talk your head off,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“Was that the main call? Is that the fellow who put on the pressure?” asked Taggert, jerking a thumb toward the door to indicate Rory Pendleton in the great outdoors.
“What would he have to do with it?” asked the young man.
“Let him go, then,” said the banker. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have the twenty thousand and a chance to pay it back honestly and squarely, and never have a blot against your fair name, young man.”
“Thanks,” answered Al. “You mean what by that?”
“You can sign a note for twenty thousand dollars with interest. I’ll charge you a low rate of interest, Paradise. Four percent, say. That’s practically making you a gift of the money. And I’ll let the note run for three years. What can you ask fairer than that?”
“And anything above twenty thousand?” asked Paradise, smiling. “Anything above I may have?”
Said the other surprisingly: “Every penny you’ve stolen above the twenty thousand you give back to me as fast as you can.”
XI
Al smiled a little. “I like to hear you talk, Taggert,” he said. “You’re so plausible and easy about it. Go on, now, and tell me why I’m to give you back the coin. You know how much coin there is above the twenty thousand?”
“No, I don’t know. Not exactly. I saw the packages that you took. There’s between a hundred and fifteen and a hundred and eighteen thousand dollars altogether, isn’t there?”
“Great Scott, man,” said the young man, “how can I tell? You fellows didn’t give me a chance to stop and count the loot, did you?”
“You don’t even know yet how much you grabbed?” The banker sighed.
“Not yet, but I judged that it was a handful.”
“It was,” said Taggert with an odd admiration in his eyes. “The way you went through the insides of that safe, I thought that you had X-ray eyes in your fingers.”
“It rounds up,” suggested Paradise Al, “that I take twenty tho
usand and give you a note at four percent for three years . . . and you take the hundred thousand or so that’s left to put back in your bank. I don’t see how you get on in business, Taggert. You don’t expect people to be as simple as that, do you?”
“You call it simplicity,” said the other, “but I call it necessary common sense.”
“Necessary for you . . . I can understand that. But why is it necessary for me?” asked Paradise Al.
“Well, what would you do with the money in the first place?” asked the banker. And he laid his long, lean, dry hand under his long, lean bony jaw and stared at the young man.
“I wouldn’t eat the coin, I can tell you,” said Paradise, “if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
The other grinned at him. “You think it over, Paradise,” he said. “They say that you’ve stepped around the corner of the law before this, but now you’re trying to lead a different life. You’re trying to go straight. When you were leading the free and easy, that was very different, my son. You could pick up the money wherever you pleased, and spend it as you liked. It’s easy to throw money away, but if you begin to sink it into the ground or in the making of a house, you start talk. Understand?”
“You mean that people will ask where I got the money?” asked Al.
“That’s it, and you couldn’t stand the questioning.”
“Couldn’t I?” said Paradise Al with a ghost of a smile.
“Not now,” insisted Taggert. “Not with a wife in your house who might hear the question asked of you. You can’t take chances any longer. You’ll be having children. You can’t let them so much as hear the question asked. Am I wrong?”
The young fellow grinned. “I’ll rush right out and get all the money for you, Taggert,” he said. “I’ll rush right out and bring it in, you’re so persuasive.”
The dusty wrinkles suddenly chopped up the face of Taggert. He, too, was smiling. “Perhaps we’ll get to understand one another,” said Taggert.
“Someday we may,” agreed Al. “But I don’t know what you’re driving at just now.”
“You want to be an honest man. I’m opening the corral gate to let you into the honest pasture,” suggested Taggert.
“Go on and explain some more.”
“You don’t want dirty hands for the life you’re to lead out here.”
“Who talks about dirty hands?” asked Paradise Al sternly, and leaning forward in his chair.
The brows of Taggert clouded, but he answered with a certain dignity: “Saints are not the only good teachers, Paradise.”
Al nodded. “That’s true,” he said. Lifting his head, he looked at Taggert as though the latter suddenly had receded to a great distance. But it was not the face of the banker but his own new thoughts that Paradise Al was seeing. Then he said: “Suppose you give me some advice then, Taggert? What d’you want me to do?”
“Go straight,” said Taggert. His eyes were suddenly burning. “Go straight,” he repeated, “and then you’ll beat the game. Money will never make you happy. But a good reputation will. I don’t care about reputation. Money is all that matters to me, but you’re different. You’re entirely different. If you can’t be honest and turn back everything that you’ve stolen, turn back a part of it.”
There was a feverish pleading in the eyes of the banker, and the young fellow sneered openly at him.
“Like a woman pleading for her baby,” said Paradise Al.
“Turn it back and I’ll give it to charity,” said Taggert, glaring.
“What’s the matter with you, man?” demanded Al. “What’s in your head, eh?”
“Listen to me,” said the banker. “The money’s gone. I know that. I’ve lost it, and you have it. Well, if you use it, you’re a goner, my son. Crime doesn’t succeed this far west. It may give you a start in life, but it will give you a finish, too. Will you believe that?”
“I can believe that,” muttered Paradise Al. “But what difference does it make to you, Taggert, what becomes of me, unless you can get me into a jail?”
“I’m asking myself the same question,” said Taggert, “and I don’t find any quick answer. I’ve lost the money. I know that well enough, but I don’t want it to poison you. You think I’m lying. I’m not. I’m telling you the truth. Why should I care what happens to you? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because you’re the one man who’s managed to beat me at any game, Paradise. Perhaps it’s because, if you’d been a lower cut of a fellow, you would have given me the heel of your gun between the eyes, or a bullet through the same spot. But you let me go, even after I’d made a noise that put you in a corner. You robbed the bank, my son, but you didn’t do a murder that almost any other thug in the world would have done.”
The same far-off look that had been in his face before was in the eyes of the young man again as he said: “I’m going to believe it. You’re coming clean with me, and I’ll come clean with you. I’m a crook, and I was cornered, so I went back to an old trade. Taggert, I was cornered for twenty thousand dollars. Let me have that and I’ll give you back every penny of the rest. I’ll even give you a note for the twenty thousand. I’ll pay it off when I get a chance. I’ll work myself to the bone . . . it’ll take years, but I’ll manage to pay it off. I don’t believe my ears when I hear myself saying this . . . but I’ll do it.”
“We’re getting kind of sentimental, we’re both so good,” said the banker, sneering. “But d’you mean what you say?”
“Yes.”
“What cornered you for twenty thousand?” asked Taggert.
“I can’t talk about that.”
“Was it . . . ?” said Taggert, and, breaking off, he made another gesture with his thumb toward the outdoors to indicate Pendleton.
Al waved the suggestion away.
“How could you be cornered except by . . . well, a pinch out of the old life, son?” asked Taggert.
“I’m not talking,” said Paradise Al, and he set his jaw like a rock. He stood up.
“Stay here, will you? And I’ll go out and bring you the money.”
“Not now,” answered Taggert. He was pale, and his face was drawn as he stared at the youth. He added: “Think it over. You’re impulsive now, and excited. But think it over. Wait till tonight, say, and if you’re still ready to pay the coin back, you come into Jumping Creek and I’ll be waiting for you. Not at the bank, but at my house on the edge of town. You know where it is?”
“Yes, up on the hill. I know.”
“Think this over, Paradise. I’ll be sitting up for a while tonight. I won’t be expecting you. But if you come . . . well, I’ll be glad to see you.”
With that he started up from his chair and hurried out of the cabin like a man who fears to be detained by one spoken word that would be irresistible.
He mounted, and, leaning over the pommel of his saddle, he spurred his horse furiously away.
It seemed to Paradise Al that he could understand. Taggert was fleeing from a new and strange soul that had entered his body. And he, Paradise Al, felt very much the same sensation as he realized that he had agreed to take back almost $100,000 in hard cash.
He watched the banker out of sight, then he went to the haystack and found Pendleton sitting on a stump beside it, nursing his knee between both hands.
“All right,” said the young fellow. “Let’s have the money, Pendleton.”
“How much of it is there?” asked Rory Pendleton, rising and approaching the place at which he had thrust the loot into the hay.
“I didn’t have a chance to count,” said Al. “There’s more than sixty or seventy thousand, I suppose.”
“That leaves you a good big margin,” said Pendleton. “Plenty for your night’s work . . . and I’m glad you have it, Paradise. Because you’ve been a life-saver to me.” He reached into the proper place and brought out the saddlebag that contained the stolen money.
“I’ll meet you inside in a moment,” said Al. “You count out the money, will you, and we’ll go over it agai
n when I come in.”
He went to the shed, whistled Sullivan in from the pasture, and gave him a feed of oats. As he watched the greedy horse grinding teeth against the feed box, he smiled faintly. He might have need for the strength of the red stallion this day, for never had murder been so close to the surface of his mind.
XII
He might need Sullivan and he might need a gun. He watched the horse eat for a moment, and then he walked slowly back toward the cabin.
Molly Drayton should have arrived by this time. What was holding her back? Was she waiting to hear from her father, the sheriff, that nothing had been proved against the man she was engaged to marry? He was savage with jealous suspicion at once. The greater his love for her, the more easily he could be wounded, of course, by the least of her actions.
Still, from the front of the house he scanned the hills in vain to see the bobbing of a rider coming out of the horizon.
He went inside and found Pendleton busily counting money.
“More than you think, brother!” cried Rory Pendleton. “A whole lot more! Ninety-one . . . no, wait, ninety-two thousand dollars!”
“Much as that?” asked the young fellow.
“Yeah. Ninety-two thousand dollars! That leaves you more than seventy thousand up after you’ve given me my little spot.” He leaned back in his chair and entangled the fingers of his right hand in his white beard, smiling upon Paradise Al, his eyes benevolently soft and gentle.
“You’re a winner, Paradise,” he said. “You’re the sort of a fellow who can’t be put down. Now tell me, my son, aren’t you glad that I came to you in my time of need? How else would you ever have had the inspiration? Seventy-two thousand dollars to sweeten life just when life needs sweetening. That’s what I call the proper start. You can make your wife happy now, my son. You can use this cabin for your servants or cowpunchers and build yourself a proper place, eh?” He beamed upon the young fellow as he sketched this coming happiness.
