by Max Brand
“Mister Duval!” gasped Broom. “But suppose after Henry is delivered, something happened...something that made you change your mind about paying back....”
Duval smiled. “That’s a chance you gotta take, Broom. You got my word for it. If you wanna gamble on that, all right. If you don’t, I’ll step along my way.”
Mr. Broom twisted violently two or three times in his chair. “Dear me! Dear me! Dear me!” he repeated rapidly. “I’ll have to have a little time. I’ll have to think...I’ll have to see my partner.”
“There ain’t time for that,” replied Duval. “Henry comes out of that jail tonight, or the deal’s off.”
“What?” screamed Broom. He suddenly leaped from his chair and shouted: “You come here pretending to be an honest man, and you...!” He remembered himself, the recovery shocking him back almost prostrate in his chair again. “Duval,” he said tremulously, when he had recovered some measure of his self-composure, “I didn’t mean that. I’ll do what I can...but a jail...a guarded jail. Kinkaid. Oh, my goodness! My goodness!”
He began to wring his hands. But, even in this dilemma, his keen eyes jerked from side to side as he searched for a new expedient. There was none. Eventually his gaze came blankly to rest upon the composed face of Duval.
“You!” he shouted suddenly. “You would do it, Duval! You could do anything. They all say so. You can get him out!”
“You can’t get rain every day,” said Duval, “even if there’s clouds in the sky, my old man used to say. They ain’t nothing they’re watching for so close, there around the jail, as Duval. I can’t do a thing for Henry. It’s up to you, Mister Broom.”
Broom, in despair, threw both arms stiffly above his head and kept them there, the hands trembling violently in his excess of emotion.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“You can go to see Henry. They’ll let you see him.”
“And then what?”
“Suppose I could find a way for you to turn him loose...you’d have to show your nerve, Broom. Have you got it on tap tonight?”
Mr. Broom laughed through his teeth. “I’ve got a hundred and eighty thousand dollars’ worth of nerve,” he said. “Is that enough? I’ve got all of that. If there’s that much blood in my body, I’ll spend it drop by drop. D’you hear me?”
“I hear you,” answered Duval, “and it sounds tolerable fine to me. There ought to be just about enough nerve in that to get you through and land Henry out of jail. And then you collect what you’ve invested, Broom. Is it a go?”
The other stretched out his hand, and Duval, after an instant of hesitation, accepted it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
For not more than a quarter of an hour, Duval was in the house of Broom, talking rapidly, earnestly, with the little man. Then he left, mounted the waiting mare, and galloped rapidly back to his own shack.
He did not approach it with any caution, though he was sure that the little house was being watched by some agent of the marshal, but instead, he galloped through the open gate and straight up to his door.
There he dismounted, and passed inside the cabin, lighted the lamp, and with it examined the room with a sweeping glance. Now he seemed to be considering every possibility of any importance that the place contained, and finally, as though making up his mind that nothing remained of any significance except in one place, he went to his row of books and opened several of them in rapid succession, taking out a few papers that had been lodged among the pages of each.
That done, he went to the corner logs, removed the false half that the marshal had already taken out, and looked with a nod of understanding into the cavity. He replaced the covering wood, and now fastened over his left shoulder a strap that was reënforced by another girded loosely around his breast. Under his armpit, depending from the first strap, he secured a strong clip, and into this he passed the long Colt revolver. Then, picking up a big, loosely fitting coat, he shrugged it over his shoulders.
Wearing it open in front, he walked a few times up and down the room, practicing the draw. To nearly all others the art of the draw was in snatching a revolver from a leather holster on the hip. Their skill was employed in shooting the instant the muzzle was clear of the sheath. An expert would raise the dust, perhaps, with his first shot, but the second one was apt to be in the target. The spring beneath the armpit offered two advantages. In the first place, it was easier to whip the hand to the butt of the weapon; in the second place, as it came out in the grip of the shooter, the gun was more nearly in line with the man’s eye, so that from the first bullet he could be firing aimed shots.
Duval, having made sure that his hand was well in practice for this work, next busied himself for a moment in the care of his gun, over which he went patiently, cautiously, as though it were a living thing that required affectionate attention before it could be expected to do its best.
When all was at last in readiness to please him, he extinguished the lamp, and, standing at his door for a moment, he listened, with ear canted down, to every small sound that stirred among the trees, whether of the leaves rustling in the wind, or the boughs softly moaning as they rubbed one another.
He seemed at last content, so went on back to the horse shed, where he saddled that same animal on which he had first ridden into Moose Creek. This horse he led back to the cabin, from which he carried out bacon, coffee, sugar, salt, and flour, some baking powder, and some raisins, and loaded all these provisions into the saddlebags. Behind the saddle, he tied a roll of blankets, wrapped in a big slicker. Into the saddle holster he thrust the long barrel of a Winchester repeating rifle, and over the horn of the saddle he suspended a loaded cartridge belt.
He now appeared content, yet not entirely, until he had stood for a moment in thought. He remembered matches, which were duly added and dropped into his own pocket. A couple of cooking utensils also joined the pack, and at last Duval swung onto the back of the mare, took up the lead rope, and jogged softly down the path to the gate.
This he rode through, turned, and closed behind him.
One might have guessed, from the moment in which he remained at ease, staring back toward the house, that he was prepared to sacrifice it and all that it contained, in his eagerness to leave Moose Creek behind him.
However, he did not turn away from the town but directly toward it, and skirting toward the rear of the village, very much as the marshal had done not so long before him, he came up back of the jail where Henry was a prisoner.
Here he halted, dismounted where the shrubbery stood thick and high as a horse’s head, and threw the reins of both animals. Just before him was the office of the jail, and as he stood there a light flickered dimly behind the windows, as though a match were being lighted. Then the illumination waned, steadied, and grew until full lamplight was flooding both the apertures.
Inside, at that moment, the sheriff was saying to Mr. Broom, of Broom & Carson: “You set yourself here and wait a while. I don’t like to do it, though, because this here is the marshal’s prisoner, and if anything happened to him, I’d never hear the last of it.”
“Look here, look here!” snapped Broom. “Am I likely to let the man go free? Answer me that! Am I likely to set him free?”
“It ain’t likelihoods,” the sheriff said, “that I’m talkin’ about. It’s the possibilities.”
“Is it possible, then?” shouted Broom. “Tell me that, Sheriff Adare! Is it possible? How could I turn him loose?”
“Well, I dunno,” Adare answered frankly, “and if I did, no matter how much I thought of you, Mister Broom, I wouldn’t let him come in here and stay alone with you.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Broom. “That’s only natural. But as it is....”
“I dunno that I can do it, anyway,” said the other. “Fact is, Mister Broom, the marshal expects to learn somethin’ out of that man, and Henry’s prom
ised that if he ain’t free before tomorrow noon, he’s gonna open up and talk and say some things that the marshal is a pile more interested in than he is in Henry himself and your lost money, too.”
“More than a hundred and eighty thousand dollars!” exclaimed the other. “Mind that, Sheriff! Things come to a pretty pass when a federal officer lets a hundred and eighty thousand dollars slide for the sake of what a scoundrel can tell him...about what?”
“Aye, Mister Broom, there you are. I ain’t one of the deep ones, and I dunno. But Dick Kinkaid, he is deep. He’s clean over my head, and I dunno what he’s drivin’ at. But he’s mighty smart, and he ain’t often wrong in the last count of things. You gotta say that for him, eh?”
“Perhaps, perhaps,” said Mr. Broom. “However, let’s have your friend Henry in here.”
“You think you can do something with him, eh?”
“I think that I can.”
“But still...it ain’t likely that you could persuade him, when Kinkaid himself has such a hard time about it.”
Mr. Broom’s face twisted in a sudden frenzy of anxiety, and, starting up from his chair, he pointed dramatically out of the nearest window.
“Listen, will you?” Broom said.
“Aye, and what is it?” demanded the sheriff, cocking his ear.
“Rain, rain, rain!” burst out Broom.
Nat Adare, blinking at him, shook his head, unable to make a connection between this violent speech and the preceding conversation.
“Rain, rain!” yelled Broom. “And most likely the money is lying out. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars that’s washing and rotting away, because you won’t let me have a word with your prisoner....”
“Hold on, hold on,” said the good-natured sheriff. “I don’t want to do you no wrong, man. Hold on, and I’ll come and bring him in here. He’ll have to be in irons, though.”
“Irons?” Broom said blankly. “Irons? Well, let him be in irons, then, if he has to be, but bring him quickly.”
And he turned and looked anxiously toward the windows, past which the rain was seen swiftly coursing down in dim pencil strokes through the lamplight.
The rattle of chains began as the sheriff, disappearing through the door, took a set off the wall. Then a steel door closed with a jangle, and Mr. Broom, approaching the window still closer, leaned out until he felt the rain soaking through his hair.
He ducked back inside again as the noise of the chains approached the door of the office once more, and in came the sheriff, with Henry herded before him. The wrists of Henry were locked together by handcuffs, and his ankles were imprisoned by other fetters, while he carried in his hands the heavy leaden ball that was his anchor.
At the sight of him, Broom lost all diplomacy and all discretion. He flew at the tall old man and shook his bony little fist under the nose of the captive.
“What did I ever do to you that you should do this to me?” he shouted. “What fiend was inside of you that you should come to me like this, I want to know?”
Henry, blinking at the unaccustomed brightness of the lamp, did not answer, only smiled a little with the patience of one who is nerved to meet even greater misfortunes than he finds.
And Broom, recoiling before that smile, puffing and stammering, stood away, confused, and with lightning still in his vicious face. The sheriff regarded them for a moment with a broad grin.
“I hope you get on together all right,” he said. “I’m gonna leave you alone for a minute. I reckon that was a rap at the front door of the jail.”
He withdrew, and as he left, Broom hung suspended for an instant between his desire for immediate action and his fear lest the sheriff should still be within hearing, for the partition was paper thin. However, the withdrawing steps of the official were now audible, and Broom lunged forward at Henry.
“Henry,” he gasped, “if you’re set free, you’ll turn back the money to me? You scoundrel! You thief! You’ll turn it back...every penny? You’ll be an honest man, Henry? Will you give me your promise?”
“Why,” Henry drawled slowly, “what the word of a crook and a thief might be worth, I dunno.”
“I want your promise. I don’t ask anything else. D’you hear me, man?”
“I hear you,” said Henry, “though I dunno how you’re to get me loose from this unless you’ve got the keys to the chains.”
“You hear me...will you promise?”
“Why, then,” Henry said, “I might promise. I will promise, if that does you any good.”
“You’ll swear, man?”
“I’ll swear, then, if that makes you rest any easier.”
“Then...,” began Broom.
But Henry broke in softly: “Here comes your key, eh?”
Through the window swiftly came the head, the shoulders, of Duval. Lightly he swung in and dropped to the floor. He shook himself, and a light spray fell from his wet clothes to the floor.
“You’ve got your gun, have you?” he said to Broom.
“I’ve got it.”
Broom pulled out a stub-nosed revolver as he spoke. He handled it cautiously, keeping it at arm’s length.
“Keep your finger off the trigger,” Duval said, dropping to his knees before Henry, and beginning to work deftly on the ankle lock. “Mind when you shoot through the window that you point the muzzle up.”
“I’ll mind!” said Broom. “Faster, faster, man! My goodness, I think he’s coming back now....”
“So,” Duval said, and the clips sprang loose from the legs of Henry with a soft click. Then Duval stood up, and transferred his attention to the handcuffs of the prisoner. Scarcely a touch seemed needed, when they sprang open. Duval, locking them shut again, laid them noiselessly on the floor.
“Mind you,” he cautioned in a low voice to Broom, “Henry must have slipped the handcuffs, while you were pulling down that first window to shut out the rain. Pull it down now, Henry.”
The prisoner obeyed. He had not spoken since Duval entered, but his appearance had changed. There was light in his dead eyes, and color glowed in his cheeks.
Down dragged the window, screeching as it came.
“And getting the handcuffs off, he must have had some watch spring or other to work on the ankle lock. See! There it is on the floor.” He threw down a little glittering piece of steel as he spoke. “Now, Henry, out through the window with you.”
He set the example as he spoke, slithering through the window and dropping to the ground outside. Henry, more slowly, followed him, and as he hung by his hands, there was a tremendous yell from Broom, who sprang to the window and rapidly fired three shots into the air, screeching: “Help! He’s away! Help! He’s gone! Sheriff Adare! Marshal Kinkaid...!”
The door burst open, and the sheriff ran in, white with fear and excitement. He saw Mr. Broom in a state of frenzy.
“He must have slipped his handcuffs while I was pulling down that danged window against the rain...then a watch spring, maybe, for the ankle lock. Good heavens, do something, man! A hundred and eighty thousand dollars gone forever! Do something! Do something! Are you going to stand there and let him go?”
“What in the name of heaven did you do?” gasped the sheriff. “Stood and watched him go?”
“He slugged me from behind,” Broom said, wringing his hands and dropping his revolver. “I rolled over on the floor and shot after him. I think I hit him. I must have hit him. See if there’s any blood on the window sill. I’m sure that I put one bullet right into his breast....”
The sheriff leaned out the window for one look into the blinding mist of the rain, then he turned on his heel with a groan and ran back and through the office, tearing down his hat from a peg as he went, and calling loudly over his shoulder: “You’ve ruined my name for me! I’ll never hear the end of this!”
“Your name, your name,” Broom said to h
imself as the sheriff disappeared. “Is it worth a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, more or less honestly made? Is it worth that, you poor sniveling creature?” He laughed, in a fierce ecstasy, then clapped a hand over his mouth and looked around him with haunted eyes, for fear lest someone might have seen him.
After that, Mr. Broom left the jail as rapidly as possible. He went out into the open with no hat upon his head, but a hat was an unnecessary luxury to Broom at that moment, for his heart within him was so strangely warm that he could have laughed in the face of an Antarctic blizzard.
He went with almost a dancing step to where his horse waited for him, and galloped that patient animal into the rain as wildly as any young cowpuncher just in from the range.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Nothing was simpler than the escape of Duval and Henry. They retired to the place where the two good horses were waiting, and Henry, as he swung his leg over the cantle of his saddle, made the cooking utensils clang softly together.
“Hey,” he called warily, “does it mean that I’m away?”
“Away...yes.”
“And you...with me?”
“We’re heading for the stuff that you buried. What’s the right way?”
“It’s not fifty yards from the house. Come along! I thought...for a while, that you were goin’ to be fool enough to turn it back to Broom, if you could.”
“Well, could I?” demanded Duval.
“I’d’ve seen you dead first! A hundred and eighty thousand dollars for that ferret?” Henry chuckled as he spoke, then leaned against the cut of the rain in issuing from the woods.
And there was no more talk as they cantered easily along through the woods and the brush, showers of wet knocking up into their faces as they went on, every time they touched a projecting branch.
So they went up the side of Moose Creek on the now familiar trail, and as they came nearer to the house, Henry stopped his horse and swung down from it. He worked only for a few moments under the bushes, and emerged again, carrying a mud-caked satchel.
