by Max Brand
“A gent can’t live on beef forever,” Duval said, considering. “Lemme see. Between shifts some anchovies ain’t so bad. Got any?”
“I can get anything you want...in a few days,” she said, and looked up anxiously. Anxiously — for her business.
“All right,” nodded Duval. “Vermont maple syrup will be the thing for hot cakes, and sardines with crackers would make any man a meal. A couple of hams, too, eh? Lemme think....” Duval raised his lean, pale face and looked through the window at the sky. Happy thoughts could be traced in his eyes. “Tarragon vinegar. Is that in your stock, ma’am?”
“I’ll order that, too.” She was writing rapidly on a pad.
“And what about oil for salad. Real olive oil. Italian olive oil, please....”
He was conscious that she had stopped writing and was looking up from her pad at him with ever so slight a puckering of her eyes.
“And English mustard?” she asked. “And a few cloves of garlic?”
He met her eyes fully, and at once they opened wide, guileless as the glance of a child. But Duval had heard enough to make him rise at once from the chair and curse the moment he had entered that store.
“Yes,” he said. “If you’ll fill out that order, I’ll drop in for it later.”
“Certainly,” she said. “In twenty minutes, Mister...?”
“Duval,” he responded.
“Yes, Mister Duval. As you go out, do notice our new line of brooms and mops. Brown and Hardy’s line, and the very best. Anything in which I can serve you.... In twenty minutes, Mister Duval....”
She opened the door for him and smiled him out, a small, mechanical trade smile. And Duval found himself on the sidewalk. He turned up the street with long, slow steps, as one whose mind is profoundly occupied. He was heedless of the next two stores, but he turned in at the hardware shop, and then he sought the blacksmith’s, where in the rear yard he wandered among rusty second-hand plows, “better than new, because you can see what’s the matter with ’em.”
When he came onto the street again, the mind of Duval was more composed. The blacksmith followed him to the big sliding doors of the shop, for Duval’s order had been comprehensive, from old pitchforks to be remounted on new handles, to plows and harrows, hammers, spikes. plowshares, and a score of odds and ends. The junk yard had been turned into a gold mine on a modest scale.
“You’re here to stay?” suggested the blacksmith.
“Unless they drive me out,” Duval said, with the faintest of smiles, and sauntered easily down the street.
He was himself again, but he had arrived at one ardent conclusion. After this day, he would never again enter the grocery store and submit to the examination of the big, childish eyes of the girl in white.
This determination completed his gathering peace of mind, and a lighted cigarette made him the old master of himself. He could look out now at the village and smile contentedly at the dark heads of the trees that rose behind it, along the bank of the creek, and at the first touches of green that were appearing in the front gardens.
So he went down to reclaim his groceries at the store, found them gathered near the door, paid the bill, bore them out to the waiting buckboard, and all without once meeting the blue eyes of the young girl.
He had heaped his purchases into the tail of the wagon when the explosion occurred in Pete’s Place across the street.
It was like an explosion in more ways than one. It was a series of reports accompanied by wild howls, crashings of glass, splinterings of wood, and then through the battered door of the saloon poured half a dozen men, with the bartender last of all, his long, white apron blown up by the wind of his running and streaming across his shoulder.
And as the bartender ran, he was yelling: “Help! Help! Help! Get the sheriff! Help! Charlie Nash is loose ag’in!”
Chapter Three
It was apparently a well-known name in Moose Creek. An echo of it ran up the street and down: “Charlie Nash!”
Doors slammed, feet rattled down steps, a crowd was rapidly pooled in a broad semicircle around the front of the saloon. No one occupied the center of the street, but the fringes were well filled. Men, women, children came out to listen to the blind show. For inside the saloon, glass still occasionally crashed, a revolver exploded, and some yet-unbroken piece of furniture smashed.
“Poor Pete,” said a man near Duval. “He’ll be ruined.”
“Where is he now?” asked Duval.
The answer came at once, for a bottle flew through the gaping, broken windowpanes in front of the saloon and was dashed to pieces in the road.
“He’s busted into the cellar!” yelled the voice of Pete. “Ain’t anybody gonna stop him? My gosh, I’m a ruined man! Ain’t there any law? Ain’t there any sheriff in this here county?”
“He ought to be stopped,” Duval remarked to his neighbor.
“Sure, he ought to,” said the other dryly. “Ideas is cheap, but they’s a premium on bulletproof men in this here town.”
“He’s most likely drunk,” said Duval, “and couldn’t shoot straight.”
“That ain’t the Nash way,” said the other. “The more red-eye, the more they hit the bull’s-eye.”
“Do they?” Duval muttered, and straightaway turned and looked through the window of the grocery store.
He saw the girl within, not with hands clasped in terror and in horror, but mounted on a sliding ladder, stowing new jars in the dapper rows upon the shelves!
Duval smiled, but not with pleasure. He glanced around him at the gaping, uncertain faces of the crowd, then walked around its outskirts and straight up to the swinging door. Here he hesitated to pull his hat on more firmly.
“He’s going in,” gasped someone, and a murmur repeated the phrase. “Follow him up. Come on, Buck, you and me.”
But no one stirred, and though Duval did not glance behind, he seemed to know that there was no help for him. He pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
Those who waited in the street heard what they had expected — a rapid tattoo of gunshots, and after that, a thudding and crashing — then silence.
“He’s dead, the poor chap,” said the blacksmith. “And I’ve lost the biggest bill that was ever ordered out of my shop. The poor sucker’s been drilled in about twenty places.”
“I told him,” said another. “But he knew too much. Here’s the sheriff. Hey, here comes the sheriff!”
The sheriff came on a running horse. He looked an impossible figure, with long sun-faded hair blown back over his shoulders, and the brim of his felt hat furled by the wind of the gallop. But the moment he dismounted, throwing his reins at the same instant, he was revealed as a little bandy-legged man. He went forward at a waddling run, firing questions as he proceeded.
The blacksmith became the spokesman.
“Charlie Nash gets on a rampage, shoots up Pete’s Place, smashes things a good bit, I guess. Along comes a stranger by name of Duval and walks in on him. I reckon you’ll find Duval a dead man inside and Charlie gone off the back way, or else dead drunk.”
The sheriff ran straight on toward the door of the saloon, but as he came closer the impetus of his resolution or of his sheer motion wasted away, so that he was walking only slowly when he came to his goal. There, however, he did not stop, but, drawing a revolver from the holster on his thigh, he threw the swinging door wide, crouching to receive a shock.
What he saw made him straighten and run on into the place.
“I told you,” said the blacksmith. “This Duval is laid out cold and the sheriff can start a long trail after poor Charlie Nash. Bad blood is sure to come to the top, in the long run, and Charlie’s full of it.”
The sheriff appeared suddenly at the door again, with an odd expression of bewilderment and disbelief.
“Who’s this Duval?” he asked. “Who is Duval?”
At this invitation, the entire crowd swayed in closer.
“A gent you won’t forget once you’ve seen him,” said the blacksmith. “The right kind of a lookin’ man, Sheriff. Ain’t he on the floor, in there?”
The sheriff stepped back. “Come in and look,” he said.
They poured in willingly. The entire street was emptied into Pete’s Place, where they found plenty to look at in the shape of shattered mirrors, smashed chairs and tables, bullet furrows in the ceiling and along the floor, but not a sign of the dead body of Duval.
They spread eagerly. To the cellar they extended their search, shouting advice, opening every door, staring under beds, but still they found nothing, and gradually they flooded back into the main room of the saloon, where Pete now stood again, considering a little heap of seven $100 bills, together with a brief note, which said:
Sorry, Pete. If this ain’t enough, let me know what else you want.
Charlie
The sheriff read this note and looked at the money, also. His bewilderment seemed to grow.
“I know Charlie and what Charlie can do,” he said. “I’ve seen enough examples of that. Didn’t he gut this place and the seven men inside of it? But Charlie’s gone. What did you hear when Duval came in?”
“Heard guns, then a crashing. Then nothin’ at all.”
The sheriff closed his eyes and furrowed his brow with the most intense thought. “Duval comes in through the door...Charlie lets go at him. Duval dodges in close and takes the gun away from him....”
“Takes a gun away from Charlie Nash?” echoed Pete, aghast.
“Shut up,” said the sheriff. “I know it ain’t possible. But I’m sayin’ what must’ve happened. Takes the gun away from Charlie, and lays Charlie out cold on the floor. Then jerks him up to his feet, half sober. Shows him what he’s done. Gets the money out of him. Writes the note for him...you see the writin’ ain’t the same as the signature, don’t you? Then shoves him out through the back door and gets him away.” He paused and opened his eyes, looking around the saloon dizzily. “Where’s Duval’s horse?”
“He come in with Dad Wilbur’s buckboard.”
The sheriff went to the door, saying: “That’ll be gone by this time, and nobody’ll know where it went.”
He was right, for when he cast the door open and stepped into the street, the buckboard had vanished. He went across to the grocery store and touched the brim of his hat to Marian Lane.
“You didn’t see this stranger start, Marian?” he asked.
“I was busy in the store when he drove off,” she said.
“When he drove off? Then you did see him?”
The long lashes that made a violet shadow on her cheek now rose slowly up and she looked at the sheriff gravely. “I’ve an idea,” she said, “that it wouldn’t pay one to know too much about Mister Duval.”
“Humph!” he grunted. “Marian, if that gent’s come to stay, I want to get some information, and I know that you can get what you want out of a man. You start him talkin’ the next time he comes in and I’ll give you something to remember me by.”
“Of course,” she said, “I’ll try to remember if I hear him talk, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll never have a chance to talk with him again.”
“Hey?” he barked at her. “Now whatcha mean by that, Marian?”
“Well,” she answered thoughtfully, “the fact is that I don’t think he likes women very well.”
“Is he as young as that?” grunted the sheriff, frowning.
“No, he’s as old as that,” she corrected. “What’s happened to Charlie?”
“Been pulled out of the fire, thank goodness, by this Duval, from what I can make of it. But he ain’t out of trouble yet. I’m gonna make this a lesson for him. It’s jail for young Charlie for the disturbin’ of the peace. Thirty days would do him a mighty lot of good.”
He watched the look of the girl wander askance toward a corner of the ceiling.
“You...Marian Lane,” he said sternly.
“Yes, Uncle Nat,” she said.
“Will you wipe that baby look off your face,” he demanded, “and tell me out and out what you had to do with this here affair?”
“I? What could I have to do with it?”
“You, you!” he insisted. “What did you have to do with it?”
“I only know that Charlie was in here just before.”
“What was Charlie tryin’ to buy? You?”
She nodded, and the sheriff grunted with indignation. “Takes his busted heart over to the saloon and smashes the furniture, eh? But I don’t hardly blame him. If I was ten years younger, I suppose that you’d make me raise heck, too. Maybe thirty days is too long. Maybe a week would do, or just a talk from the judge.” He concluded solemnly: “Honey, what a terrible lot you got to answer for.”
“Dear Uncle Nat,” she said, “what have I to answer for?”
“Who sent Sam Barker downhill to drink?” he demanded. “Who made Josh Newman start for Australia? Why did little Carl Justin leave town? Both of the Wayne boys left the next month. And old Perry Booth got into such a way that he divorced his wife....”
“Do you blame all of that on me?” she asked.
“I do,” said the sheriff. “I would rather have you out of town than Pete’s saloon. And I mean what I say.” Then he strode with his odd waddle to the door, but lingered there and finally turned back toward her again.
She stood with her hands clasped and her head hanging.
“You little wo’thless puss,” said the sheriff. “You knew that I’d turn around, and you wanted me to see a picture, didn’t you? Anyway, honey, you ain’t quite as bad as what I make out, maybe. Come over pretty pronto and pick yourself out a puppy. The brown has a new litter.”
He hurried out into the street, swung into the saddle, and was stopped by Pete, who ran hastily out to him.
“If you give Charlie a runnin’ for this job,” said Pete, “he’ll sure murder me. Leave him be, won’t you?”
“I never lay no whip on a free puller,” the sheriff said, grinning. “Don’t you worry too much about what I’ll do to Charlie, but think a mite about what he’s likely to do to me. Howsomever, I can’t lay down and let such things as this happen in the town, can I? Get up, Buck!”
He spoke to the horse, touched it with the spur, and instantly was at full speed out of the town and up the hill that led toward the old house of Simon Wilbur.
Chapter Four
Up through the spring rode Sheriff Nat Adare, following the dim old trail by the bank of the creek, and as he went, he took note of all that lay around him, but not with the eye of a lover of beauty, rather that of a hunter.
He came to the lower meadows of the old Simon Wilbur place, and, riding across these, he came to the front door of the cabin. A fragrance of cooking meat blew out to him, and the sheriff found himself a very hungry man. He dismounted, tethered the horse, and knocked at the door.
It was opened to him at once by the stranger. He never had seen the man before, never had heard the pale face described, and yet he knew with a perfect surety that this was Duval. Someone had said that, once seen, he never could be forgotten, or words to that effect, and the sheriff knew that it was true.
“You’re Duval?” he said at once.
“And you’re Sheriff Adare?”
“D’you know me, young feller?”
“As well, I reckon, as you know me, Sheriff. Will you come in?”
“I figgered on doin’ that,” nodded the sheriff.
“Bring your hat along with you,” Duval said, failing to move from the doorway, “but we got a rule here that visitors hang their guns outside.” He pointed to half a dozen new, large nails that had been driven recently into the logs beside the door.
The sheriff considered them for a moment as
though he were reading a page of print. “Most generally,” he observed, “I aim to carry my guns with me. It’s kind of a rule in my business.”
“Why,” said Duval, “likely it is...but it never does a gun no harm to get a lot of fresh air.”
Nat Adare hesitated an instant longer, then obediently unbuckled his gun belt and hung it on the first nail.
“Come in,” his host said genially. “You’re in time to have chow with me, Sheriff.”
“Thanks,” said Adare. “I don’t mind if I do. Am I smellin’ venison or dreamin’ by day?”
“This here?” Duval said innocently. “Why no. This here is something that I bought at the butcher’s.”
“Humph!” said the sheriff, and stepped through the door.
He saw that the place suddenly had become habitable. Two or three old, broken chairs had been revamped. The little table no longer staggered on three legs, and in the corner of the room the old stove that the Wilburs had abandoned as past all use had been made to support a roaring fire.
“Why, partner,” said the sheriff, “you must have somebody already with you.” He pointed at the two places that were set on the table.
“It’s an old rule in my family,” said Duval, “never to sit down without laying an extra plate. It’s more sort of companionable, Sheriff.”
“The same gent in your family fixed that rule, the one about guns and fresh air, I s’pose?”
“The same one. Dad was a great hand for rules, and mostly I find they come in handy. Gimme your hat. That’s the best chair over yonder. I’ll fix you a basin of hot water if you’ll wash your hands. And can I put up your horse and give him a feed of oats?”
“Thanks,” Adare said, sniffing again the fragrance of the cookery, and scanning the simmering coffee pot, the frying pan from which the rankness of cooking onions steamed forth, and other bubbling pots that made music, all in varying keys. “Thanks, Duval, but I don’t take off my hat in no man’s house until I’ve had a chance to speak my business. I don’t eat salt and meat unless....” He paused and looked straight at his host. “Duval, what happened down there in the saloon?”
