by Max Brand
“You’re wrong, Henry,” Duval said. “He’s not the great danger.”
“Not him. Who, then?”
“The pretty girl with the doll’s face...the beauty of the grocery store...she’s the tanglefoot that is most apt to catch us.” Henry waited for further light, but Duval merely added: “Not with her own hands, but she knows how to use the hands of other people. I would rather have three Kinkaids to deal with than one Marian Lane. How can she be handled? I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
He began to pace the floor. “Here’s the marshal,” he said, holding up the celebrated Colt with its notches. “I have him in my hand. I suppose he’ll say that his gun is in the repairer’s hands. But suppose I should put this gun on the bar of Pete’s Place...why, the reputation of Dick Kinkaid would burn up like a match in no time. And he understands that.” He paused before going on more slowly: “The sheriff is a good-natured old fellow. He may have a few doubts about me, but he’s willing to put his doubts in his pocket. He doesn’t need to be counted in, unless fighting should begin, and then he’s as dangerous as the next man. That leaves only the girl with her eternal question...who is Duval?” He broke off shortly, saying: “How the deuce is one to handle a woman like that, Henry?”
“Money...,” began Henry.
“Don’t be a fool!” said the other tersely.
“I dunno,” Henry said. “When I was a youngster I never found any way of getting’ along with a woman unless she happened to be in love with me. And when she was, then she was a dog-goned nuisance.”
Duval stopped in his pacing and raised his pale face in thought. Henry, watching him keenly, began to grin on one side of his mouth, his keen old eyes sharpening to points.
“That dog has found something,” Henry murmured aloud. “And pretty soon he’s gonna point to the bird.”
“Love!” Duval announced. “I hadn’t thought about that. Love!” He laughed as he spoke, but he was filled with excitement. “Suppose, Henry, that I can keep the sheriff quiet, the great Kinkaid muzzled, and put the girl in my pocket, so to speak. That would be the hardest thing I ever tried to do. Three balls all in the air at the same time, and never falling. What do you say, Henry?”
“Hello!” exclaimed the other. “You mean to make her think....”
“That I can’t keep away from her. That she’s upset me completely. That I lie awake at night thinking of Marian Lane. That Marian Lane is closer to my heart than my left elbow.”
“Well?”
“Why, nothing, except that it may get me what I’ve wanted to have...a quiet summer here.”
“All right,” said Henry. “You’re the boss, but I’d rather try to be quiet with a live coal in my hand than a woman on my mind.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
His left hand in his coat pocket and his right hand carrying an envelope, old Henry entered the grocery store in the sleepy quiet of the midafternoon, to find Marian Lane asleep in a chair behind the counter.
She tipped forward to her feet, shook the sleep out of her pretty eyes, and accepted the envelope with a smile.
The letter it contained read:
Dear Miss Lane:
I’d like to talk to you, and the place I’d pick wouldn’t have even walls to listen. Will you give me the chance and say where? Henry will bring back your answer.
David Duval
Beneath this, she scribbled instantly:
I’m going for a walk up the creek in about ten minutes, and since it goes past your door, I suppose we could meet on the way.
This she returned to Henry, and watched him out of the store. Then she hurried up the stairs to change.
She never dressed more rapidly, and never with more care. It was to be an outdoors meeting, and, therefore, she put on a short khaki skirt and tan woolen stockings, a white blouse with a broad collar that would be ruffling up against her face in the wind and making her color seem a shade higher than it was. She boxed up her feet in broad-nosed, heavy shoes, because, as all women know, a dainty foot never appears more feminine and small than when it is furnished with masculine boots. She took a hat with a big, flexible brim, which was very useful in keeping her face from the sun and from unnecessary observation. At her throat, she pinned a tuft of blue wildflowers with soft yellow eyes. Lastly, she pulled on gloves of thin yellow chamois and took a heavy walking stick, much scratched and marred by beating about in the brush and being stubbed against rocks, for she was a lover of walking through the hills.
When she was equipped in this manner, she went through a little performance that ten thousand eyes would have been glad to oversee, for she stood before her mirror smiling at her own image, then critically studious, and smiling again. She bowed to herself. She looked up at her own eyes from beneath the bare verge of the hat brim. She turned to view herself, and, without shame, pulled the skirt down a little more snugly about her hips. She stepped back from the mirror and approached it with a light, quick step, and a beaming smile. She repeated the process languidly, with her head drooped a little to one side, picking at the imaginary twigs along the path. Then, close to the mirror, she rolled up her eyes in childish innocence. She gasped with astonishment and clasped her hands together at her breast, and lastly retreated, laughing a little over her shoulder.
When she had ended this little performance, she stood for another moment in profound thought, rubbing her fingers a little deeper into the tight fingers of the gloves. She seemed to be reviewing the weapons with which she was going afield, and finding at last that they were in fair order and of a sufficient number, she passed the tip of a finger across her forehead to make all lines of reflection vanish and went lightly down the stairs and out to the street.
Young Sam Hewitt was across the street from her and gaped at her with such a wide grin of confused joy that he forgot to take his hat from his tousled, sandy head.
Sam was not important, but she felt that she could reasonably count coup one, and she went on more confidently, if that were possible.
Mrs. Clarkson and Mrs. Bill Witter encountered her at the next corner and paused to talk about the unseasonable heat, “though weather never seems to bother you, darling.”
Marian Lane went on, and heard distinctly behind her: “The sweet innocent. Little she knows of the world, heaven help her.”
At this the faintest of smiles appeared upon the lips of the girl, and she quietly counted coup two with all the satisfaction of an Indian brave. She began to feel that this was her day, and this confidence added, if possible, to the blue of her eyes, and to the dainty color in her cheeks.
She entered the woodland trail and walked along it none too briskly. By this time, she reasoned that Duval must have been waiting for her fifteen or twenty minutes, so that he must have been brought to a desirable state of mind. A little more waiting, however, would do him no harm, and above all she wished to be composed when she met him, for she felt that a duel was to take place in which she must present her sharpest wits.
She came up the path with many pauses to admire the creaming ripples on the surface of the creek, and the dark swift flow of it over half-visible rocks. Sometimes she stopped an instant to breathe of the pines, and sometimes of the flowers, or to touch the long arm of a vine and set it swinging and trembling, or to listen to the scolding chatter of a squirrel on a branch far above her.
But all the while her mind was flying before her to the encounter that was to come. What was of the utmost importance was that the mare had been returned to Duval by the marshal. He had said that the horse could not stand up under his weight, but she, having seen Cherry flaunt down the street with Kinkaid in the saddle, felt that she knew better. She could not be sure, but something told her that there had been an occurrence between Duval and the marshal in which the former came out the victor. If he could handle Kinkaid, it seemed probable that he could handle any man. As for the women — ah, that was
a different matter.
Here the path turned with the bank of the creek, and she saw Duval sitting on a rock, with one knee embraced by his hands, as he stared at the water.
“Hello!” she said.
“Hello!” Duval said, standing up. “I’m delighted that you came.”
Her head tilted a little to one side, and she laughed at him. “You’ve left the cowboy talk behind, I see?”
“I’ve left Duval over yonder in the cabin,” he said. “I’m David...Castle.”
“It’s a nice name,” she said.
“I hoped you’d like it better. Shall we walk or sit?”
“I’d rather walk, I think, David...Castle.” She made a pause before the last word, smiling a little at him as though she accepted the new name only tentatively.
They went up the path together at a pleasant pace, she apparently only attentive to the trees about them, the bright shrubs, and the lantern rays of sunlight that twinkled on the ground before them or glittered in the upper foliage. In fact, she knew each time he touched her with his eyes, and where the touch had fallen, as distinctly as though his hand had gone out to her dusty shoes, or her swinging stick, or the flowers at her throat, or the red of her lips. So, divinely aware and unaware, she walked on, somehow glorying in her strength.
Duval, in the meantime, was in no haste to begin. But after a time, he said: “How long can you be away?”
“An hour, I suppose. Then I’ll have to get back to the store.”
At that, he answered: “Then I’ll have to start. It will take me the better part of an hour, I should say.”
“For what?” she asked.
“Confession,” he said.
She stopped short and faced him, with all her airs and mannerisms forgotten. “If you mean that, there’s no time limit.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ve asked you to come out to hear me surrender.”
She did not speak. Her eyes were too busy scanning him, searching, searching.
“The going is too deep for me,” he said. “I used to think that I was a horse for all sorts of tracks, but I begin to see that I’m only a fair-weather performer. When the rain comes down, I can’t win.” He smiled at her. “To begin with,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I intended to do. I was going to tell you a cock-and-bull yarn about my past, and try to win your sympathy so that you’d send me no more Larry Judes and Dick Kinkaids to look me up. Jude was enough. Kinkaid was a bad one to handle, though.”
“Was?” she said.
“For the time being,” he said cautiously, “I think that Kinkaid won’t trouble me again. I suppose that you’ve guessed that much?”
She nodded.
“But when I saw you today,” he said, “all dressed for the innocent country-girl part, so simple, so excessively sweet, turning up your eyes at me...why, then, I lost heart at once. I saw that you’re too clever to be fooled, Marian. I have to tell you the whole truth, and trust everything to your mercy.”
“You make me out a bad sort of a person,” she remarked.
“I make you out a dangerous one to poor fellows like myself who are made of penetrable stuff. I’ll even go one step further, Marian, and tell you that I was going to play the fool and the cad wholesale by trying to make love to you.” He chuckled. “But, of course, the first glimpse of you put that out of my head. You know entirely too much to be fooled by acting. That’s why I’m desperately going to tell you the truth.”
“The whole truth?”
“And nothing but the truth.”
“Of course, I haven’t any real right to hear it.”
“You haven’t. But you’ve decided that this fish must be shared and taken out of the water so that you can see its actual colors. Well, the fish has doubled and dodged and safely escaped from two of the fishermen. But the fish is badly frightened. It is afraid that the third fisherman will be entirely too much for it. Therefore, it jumps out of the water of its own accord, Marian. It lies on the bank at your feet and lets you judge for yourself whether you’re going to put the gaff into it, or else let the poor thing flop back into the creek.”
“You make me feel like an executioner,” she said.
“You are,” he answered calmly.
“Well,” she said, “of course I’m curious. I’d like to hear anything you have to say.”
“It will take a lot of time.”
“When I’m in the middle of a good story, I can always forget time.”
“Mind you, this is no story.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll guarantee that I’ll keep everything I learn a secret.”
“No, you’d better not promise that.”
“You’re right. I can’t promise that.”
“You’re ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then prepare yourself. It’s police court stuff. I’m going to start at the beginning, as they do in books.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They walked on again, more slowly, Marian sometimes stopping as Duval made a point of interest, he with his hands usually clasped behind his back, while he talked in his soft, quiet voice.
“It was all horses, country life, riding, jumping, hunting for me,” he said. “School was a necessary nuisance, that was all. In the summers, my father generally took me West for hunting, and fishing, and bronco riding. ‘To rough up my hair,’ as he used to say, because a fellow whose stomach had never been tucked up for lack of food will never make a man. He used to start off with me across country with rifle, ammunition, and salt. We killed our food, and if we didn’t kill it, we went hungry. We’ve been so hungry that we had to dig roots and eat them. An Indian had taught him which ones were good...but none are very good.”
“Your father...he must have been a man,” she said.
“He was a man,” admitted Duval.
“You learned guns that way?”
“What I know about them I learned that way. You have to shoot straight when you feel that your first dinner in three days is inside the barrel of your rifle, you know. Single-shot rifles were what we carried. Father never believed in a second chance.”
“I suppose he’s right,” she said.
“Do you act on the same principle?” asked Duval.
“I?”
“In your hunting, I mean,” he clarified.
The gray eyes met the blue, seriously, soberly. Then they both smiled a little, and he went on.
“I was out of college when the break came. Father died. We expected to cut up a fat melon, but instead we found that we had a house, some books, and some horses. That was about all. I’d been the leading spender, and now I had to be the leading provider.”
The girl stopped and slashed deftly at some tall weeds, slicing off their pale, flowered heads.
“That’s it,” Duval observed. “I had to cut off heads to make a living.”
“How did you go about it?”
“Father’s banking was not a business at all, we discovered. He sat in an office and did what other people told him to do. His real work was riding and hunting anything from a fox to a bear...but there’s no money in that. And that was all that I was qualified to do. However, he had one other interest...a hobby for the evenings.”
“What was that?”
“He used to fiddle about as a locksmith.”
“Did you learn that trade, too, from him?”
“Inside out. That was why he loved me. He used to say that I could open any door in the world, and, after his death, I remembered that speech of his and decided that I’d turn it into a legacy. Do you follow my drift?”
She whirled the cane and nodded. “I suppose you decided to open doors that had money behind them?”
“That’s it. And there’s my story, Marian.”
“That’s only the beginning.”
“Do you want me
to go on?”
“Of course!”
“Well, perhaps you want to know how I excused myself?”
“Yes. I’d like to know that.”
“I was a little younger then. Not quite so able to face the facts. So, I told myself that Robin Hood had done things as bad. He took from the rich and evil. He gave to the poor and good. If I included myself in the latter class, I might be excused for vanity. So, I decided to begin, and I did.”
“The first time...that must have been rather hard.”
“You’ve picked the one. It was Arthur Burchell that I decided on. He was a member of a mortgage ring...the fellows who make a business of throat-cutting, and he’d cut enough throats to fill his pockets with blood money. His third wife was a gold-digger and she was the one creature in the world who knew how to extract coin painlessly from him. Diamonds were her hobby. She used to wear half a million dollars’ worth of them, and very little else when she went out in public in the evening. I saw her, decided that this was fair meat, and went to rob the house that same night.”
“By yourself?” she asked.
“By myself. I never believed in partners. Do you?”
“I don’t see the point of comparison,” she said.
“Tools...I believed in a few humans as tools and agents, but not as accomplices. Haven’t you the same idea?”
“In what way?”
“There was Jude, Kinkaid. They were only errand boys, weren’t they?”
She smiled, but did not answer directly. “Do go on,” she said.
“It doesn’t bore you?”
“I’d like to know how you got at the diamonds that night.”
“I didn’t. I got to the room where they were kept. It was cold November. There was frost on the roofs. Once I skidded thirty feet into an eaves gutter. The gutter broke the force of my fall, but the fall broke the gutter.”
“Did you go clear to the ground, or land in a haystack?”
“The only stacks were chimneys. It was eleven stories to the ground. No, I didn’t fall. I hung on by my hands and swung myself back to an unbroken section of the gutter. Then I climbed up the roof and got in at a skylight. I found my way down through the hotel and got to the door of the Burchells’ suite. That was the worst moment...I mean, standing there on the plush carpet of the hall breathing the warm air with a taint of perfume in it, as though a woman had just gone by. Every instant I expected a maid or a guest to heave in sight. But no one came. I got the lock open fairly soundlessly, and into the room where the diamonds were in their pet safe.”
