by Max Brand
“Because you jumped me,” said Sherry, “and you well know that you did, Jack.”
“I jumped you,” admitted the other. “And why did I jump you?”
“Ah . . . that’s what you’re driving at, is it?” asked Sherry.
“It is. Why did I jump you?”
“Because . . .” began Sherry.
“Listen to this!” exclaimed the other.
“Because,” said Sherry in repetition, “I killed one of your cousins, and shot up another pair of them.”
An exclamation greeted this statement.
“You hear him?” asked Jack.
“It was fair fight,” protested Sherry.
“Mind you, gents,” said Jack, “the four of them was in one shack. They’d been felling some timber above the rest of the gang. In that there shack they had the fight. He claims that he killed one of the three and laid out the other two. They wasn’t babies, any of those three. I ask you, does it seem nacherel and to reason that he could do it by fighting fair . . . this gent, mind you, that’s just plugged a drunk through the head?”
Sherry looked swiftly around the encircling faces, and all that he saw appeared grim reading indeed to him.
“I got no grouch against this here bird,” said the bartender, “but it looks like sense in what Jack says. When a dog bites twice . . . it shows a habit.”
Sherry searched his mind for an answer, but he found none.
Then the quiet voice of Wilton broke in: “It seems to me, men, that you might ask what happened after this shooting scrape at the lumber camp. Did this man bolt?”
“There’s a question,” said Sherry. “You can answer that, Jack. Did I run for it?”
“You come into camp and bragged about what you’d done,” said Jack. “You come in with a cock-and-bull yarn.”
“Did I take care of the two boys that were laid out but not dead?” asked Sherry. “Or did I leave ’em to bleed to death, as I might’ve done?”
“You come in an’ bragged!” repeated Jack, furious at the memory. “I ask you boys to use your common sense. And here you got this gent red-handed. It ain’t the first killing. And the one I tell you wasn’t the first, either. Here’s his gun.” He snatched Sherry’s gun and held it high. “There’s four notches filed in this here. Tell me, was they filed for fun, Sherry?” He waited, then he answered himself with: “And there’ll be five notches in there tomorrow.”
At this, a decidedly stern rumble of anger ran through the listeners. It was after the palmy days of outlawry when gunmen were rather more admired than condemned. Law had entered the West, and the gunman was an unpopular character.
At last Sherry said loudly: “Gents, you’re on the wrong trail. This Jack, here, is trying to run me up a tree. I’ll tell you the honest truth. There’s not a notch there that isn’t for the finish of a white man in a fair fight. And that’s straight, so help me.”
This speech made an obvious impression, and Sherry could see the effect as he looked about over the faces of the listeners. He noted that Wilton stood a little apart from the others—or rather, out of an apparent respect for him, the rest would not rub elbows too closely with their superior. As for Wilton himself, he seemed to be watching this scene as he would have watched something on a stage, in which he had very little concern. There was even a faint smile on his lips, from time to time, as he followed the different arguments.
Jack was not to be downed. “White men?” he exclaimed. “And what else have you accounted for?”
Sherry saw that he had led himself into a corner, but he added quietly, in reply: “I’ve been in Mexico, boys. And I’ve had to live in Louisiana among some unpeaceable gents. That’s all that I got to say about that.”
“It looks sort of black for you, Sherry,” said the bartender. “Though I’ve got nothing against you.”
“It’s gonna look blacker for him,” insisted Jack. “It’s gonna look black as choking for him, before we get through with him. This ain’t a jay town that’s to be buffaloed and talked down by a slicker like this Sherry. He’s an educated gent, too. Reads a lot. Knows a lot. How did he ever have to leave home, I’d like to ask? I tell you, if you knew the inside of this one, you’d find it hotter’n cayenne pepper.”
Jack had piled up his points with some adroitness and there was no mistaking the hostile air of the crowd when Wilton interrupted the proceedings again to ask: “If he came into camp, how did he happen to get off, up there, without trouble?”
“There was trouble,” said Jack. “But he was the pet of the boss of the show. And that got him off. There was a lot of trouble, but this Sherry is one of those sneaks that always aims to play in with the straw boss, damn him and all his kind.”
This stroke produced another thunder, more thunderous than the rest.
“But suppose,” said Wilton, “we find out just what story was told by both sides when they came into the camp that day?”
“The kids told a straight yarn,” said Jack. “They told how they’d been sitting around having a little poker game in the evening. Sherry lost. Like the yaller quitter that he is, he grouched. They shut him up. He scooped for the money with one hand and begun shooting with the other before any of them could reach for their guns.”
“Well,” said Wilton, “but isn’t it odd that a straight story like that could be disbelieved?”
“Because the boss ran the show and ran it crooked, to help Sherry,” declared Jack. “There ain’t much difference between the speed of anybody’s draw . . . hardly a fraction of a second. How could one man do that work against three, and come off hardly scratched?”
The patience of Sherry, which had been fairly well maintained up to this point, now was ended, and he flared forth: “Jack, if you think there’s very little difference in the speed of a draw, I invite you . . . and any friend of yours . . . to stand up to me inside of ten paces, and we’ll start the draw with an even break.”
Jack was so staggered by this proposal that he actually took a backward step.
“One of the three did no shooting at all,” said Sherry grimly. “He died while he was lugging out his gun. The second feller got in one shot as he dropped, and the third got in two. And here’s the proof of it. Here’s the first one.” He touched a white scar that clipped the side of his cheek. “Here’s the second one.” He pulled up his left sleeve and exposed a forearm white as the skin of a baby. He doubled his hand, and beneath the skin appeared enormous, ropy muscles, bulging so that they threatened to leap through the skin. Against that setting, turned still whiter by the contraction of the great muscles that stopped the flow of the blood, appeared a large purple patch. “That was the second shot that plugged me,” said Sherry. “And as for the third, it’s along the ribs of my left side, and it left a mark you all can see.”
Silence followed. Eyes turned slowly to Jack, who protested eagerly: “He could have picked up those marks in any fight. He admits that he had plenty of them, all over the world.”
The voice of Sherry was low and bitter: “You yellow dog,” he said. “You know that I was dripping blood when I got to camp. And that was why you jumped me. You never would have dared, otherwise. You forgot that my right hand was still ready for you.”
Jack bit his lip, and his keen eyes flashed from side to side, seeking for a new idea, but, before he could find it, the big man continued quietly: “I told the true story, when I came into camp. We were playing poker. I’d had my share of the luck. It’s a lie that says I hadn’t. Matter of fact, I was the winner, and a big winner, as things went in that camp. So big a winner that straight poker wasn’t good enough for the rest of them. I’d discarded an ace of clubs before the draw. And after the draw I called a hand of four aces. I wanted to argue the point. But the winner went for a gun. I had to beat him to it. And I did. You’ve heard this mangy coyote yelping at my heels. But I’ve told you the absolute truth.”
Again silence weighed upon the room, and again Jack took a backward step. He had changed color, n
ow.
“He’d be glad enough to see me hanged,” said Sherry. “That sort never drops malice. That sort of man hunts in packs, getting others to take the risks that he hasn’t the nerve to take for himself. As for this job here, it’s a bad one. I’m sorry for it. I’ll tell you straight that I had nothing against Capper. I never saw him before today. I don’t know exactly what happened. My brain was slugged. I woke up when the gun went off. Then I saw my own gat at my feet, still smoking. And yonder by the wall where you found him lay Capper. Well . . . it looked black for me, and that was why I tried to run. I’ve put my cards on the table, boys. There’s truth and nothing else in every word that I’ve spoken. Now, make up your minds.”
It was not certain how the crowd would decide, until the bartender stepped forward and confronted Jack. He was not a big man, that bartender, but he was a fighter by nature.
“You,” he said. “This town is kind of cramped and small for your style, I reckon. You’d better blow.”
And Jack blew.
IV
The strain of that impromptu trial had been so great that everyone sighed with relief as the tension relaxed. And now, after having accused Sherry so bitterly, the crowd milled around him in unfeigned good will.
One big fellow slapped him heartily on the back. “Sherry,” he said, “if that’s your name, I’ve got to say that I weigh within a few pounds of you, and yet I’ve got a chestnut mare at the hitching rack outside that can carry me. If you need that horse to help you on your way, don’t let me stop you from trying to catch up with Jack . . . the poison skunk . . . the hydrophobic rat!”
But Sherry waved his big hand. “That’s finished,” he said. “I never hunted trouble in my life, and I never will. I never went half a mile after another man with a gun in my hand. And I never will.”
A cheerful current of humanity curled closer about him to sweep him down toward the barroom, but he pushed them away with a good-natured might. Then he strode through them, and, at the outer door of the hotel, he caught up with Wilton. Him he touched upon the shoulder.
“I want ten seconds,” he said, “to tell you something. I want to tell you that if it hadn’t been for you singing out, I might have hung today.”
Wilton smiled and nodded. “I actually believe that you might,” he said. “Our fellows in Clayrock are a rough set. They act first and think afterward.”
“That’s why I thank you,” went on Sherry in his quiet bass voice that, however, no matter how softly it was controlled, had a rumble in it like the echo of a far-off peal of thunder. “A few words are just as good as a thousand, I suppose. But you saved my hide. And there’s a lot of that hide to be grateful for.”
“By the way,” said Wilton, “what was your college?”
Ever so slightly, Sherry started. “What?” he said. And then he paused, and deliberately looked Wilton in the eye. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
Wilton chuckled. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “I should have known beforehand that you wouldn’t understand what I meant.”
“And now that I’ve thanked you,” went on Sherry, “will you let me ask you what you put in that glass?”
Wilton started in turn. “What I put in the glass?” he echoed.
“Mister Wilton,” said Sherry, “the point is this. I’m no hero at whiskey. But I can hold my share of it. And tonight I seem to have passed out cold in two drinks. That’s why I ask you what you put in that whiskey!”
Wilton sighed. His eyes half closed. “Suppose,” he said suddenly, “that you walk up to my house with me?”
“I’d like it fine,” said Sherry. “But I can’t. For the reason that my bunkie is riding herd for two, just now, and he expects me back.”
Wilton answered, with much quiet point: “Nevertheless, I think you should come along with me and I think that you will. Between you and me, Sherry, I confess that you appear to me a fairly reasonable and honest fellow . . . and, if you are, you’ll agree that you owe me something.”
“I owe you,” said Sherry carefully, “for some very opportune remarks during that impromptu trial of me a few moments ago.”
“Impromptu?” said the other. “Is that your word for what I said?”
Sherry turned full upon his companion. It was a very bright night of stars, and the lights of the town were now few and dim, for most people had gone to bed, and altogether there was not nearly enough illumination to enable him to see the face of his companion.
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Sherry said with a good deal of bluntness.
“You don’t?” Wilton hesitated for an instant, as though many answers were rushing to the tip of his tongue, though he said finally, in a controlled voice: “That surprises me. But I go back to the doped drink. Of course, it was drugged. But what on earth, my dear young friend, could make you think that I would drug the liquor?”
“Because,” said Sherry with his usual openness, “you seemed upset because I had taken the glass that you intended for Capper . . . poor wretch.”
“The glass that I intended for Capper, and that he intended for me.”
“What?”
“That’s it, exactly. As I put down the drinks, I saw Capper’s hand flash over the top of one of them and I thought . . . I couldn’t be sure . . . that his hand dropped a film of something white into the liquor. What I did definitely see was that Capper deftly exchanged glasses with me. Naturally I couldn’t stand for that. The fellow was half mad, and capable of anything. Between you and me, I should not have been very sorry if he had poisoned himself with his own hand . . . while intending it for another.” The voice of Wilton turned hard and grim.
“It sounds a mixed-up business,” commented Sherry. “I got the wrong glass as you were slipping it back to him?”
“Exactly.”
“It seems odd,” said Sherry. “I don’t see what point there was in his poisoning you. He acted to me more like a fellow who would be apt to blackmail you . . . who was holding his knowledge, say, over your head.”
“Knowledge?” cried Wilton with a sudden burst of extreme fury. “That gutter rat . . . that sneaking, paltry, vicious little cur . . . knowledge of me!”
Sherry was amazed. It was actually the first time that Wilton had so much as raised his voice, during all these singular scenes in which Sherry had watched him, but once the flood broke through, it raged in a torrent.
It was over at once.
“I don’t know whether he had anything on you or not,” said Sherry. His tone implied that he did not care, either. “I saw him rubbing your nose in the dirt . . . I watched you taking water from him. Maybe he had nothing on you . . . anyway, it was damned queer to my way of thinking.”
“Yes, yes,” answered Wilton rather hurriedly. “I suppose it was. It was almost as queer an action, say, as that of a man who draws a gun on a drugged and helpless companion and shoots out his brains.”
V
To this startling retort, Sherry listened with wonder and horror.
“We’d better walk up the hill to my house,” repeated Wilton.
And Sherry went with him, his brain suddenly benumbed, almost as it had been when he was completely under the authority of the drug that had been dropped into his whiskey. What hand had dropped it there? The hand of Wilton or Capper? And for what purpose? And now he himself was accused by the very man who had saved his neck from a mob execution.
“You say that I deliberately pulled my gun and shot down a helpless fellow?”
“I tell you what I saw with my own eyes,” said the other. “Capper was shot exactly where he lay. He hardly stirred a muscle.”
“Great Scott!” gasped Sherry. “Could I have done that, I ask you? What had I against Capper? What had I to gain by his death?”
“A man under the influence of a drug doesn’t think along very straight lines,” replied the other. “You were in a haze. You still suffer from some of the effects.”
“Shot him where he lay . . . hel
pless?” groaned Sherry.
“Exactly. There was blood on the wall behind his head, when they picked him up.”
“The blood was splashed against the wall in his fall,” urged Sherry.
“In the midst of that blood there is a bullet hole,” said Wilton. “I think that’s fairly conclusive.”
He had led the way up a steep incline from the heart of Clayrock, and now as they came before an open iron gate that gave upon a winding driveway, Sherry halted and laid his great hand upon one of the iron pillars that supported the weight of the gate panels.
“I murdered that man while he was lying there?” muttered Sherry.
Wilton did not answer this. Apparently he thought that he had made the case conclusive enough beforehand.
“I don’t understand it,” said Sherry. “Great Scott, I don’t understand it. Man, man, all my life what I’ve avoided, as other people avoid death, is any accusation of bullying another person. I’ve never taken an advantage. I’ve never fired when a man’s head was turned. Heaven knows that I’ve been low . . . I’ve been in the muck . . . but one thing at least I’ve always done . . . I’ve fought fair.”
At this, Wilton laid a hand upon the shoulders of the other and patted it kindly. “I believe every word you say,” he said. “But a drugged man is an insane man. Particularly people put under by some of those tricky Oriental poisons. And those are exactly what Capper would have used, as a matter of course. And, driven out of his head for a moment, what a man does then is exactly what he would never dream of doing when he is normal.”
“That’s clear enough,” said Sherry huskily. “That’s clear enough and that’s bad enough.”
“It is, isn’t it?” murmured the other. “I’m sorry for you, Sherry. I hated to tell you the truth about this, as a matter of fact. But I had to, and for very selfish reasons.”
“Will you tell me what those reasons are?” asked Sherry.
“I’ve never told a soul in this world,” said Wilton. “But the fact is that I’m going to tell you the whole story.” He began to walk up the long driveway.
