by Max Brand
“I’ve been blunt...too fast...too straight to the point...and I gotta give you time...a kid like you, as though you could make up your mind about a gent like me so quick. I see I’m a fool, but only after I’ve made myself into one. Marian, you take your time, but in turning me over in your mind, treat me easy, remember that I ain’t learned much about the way of putting my best foot forward with the ladies, and remember that here I am talking to you right after that gent Duval has been in here, slick as a kitten, quick and soft as a cat’s foot. So, how’ll I be bound to appear except mean and rough and ornery?” He retreated a little as he spoke, then came suddenly forward to her. “There’s one thing else that I better say to you now.”
He took from his coat pocket a chamois bag, drawn tight at the mouth with leather strings.
“We started to know each other because of Duval,” said the marshal, “and it’s only right that I should tell you now that I figure that I have a lot concerning him here in this. What’s more, he knows that I have it, and there ain’t gonna be a minute of my life, until he’s dead or gone, that’ll find me safe and easy so long as he knows that. I still got this. Poison, or bullets, or hired knives, he’d sure try anything to get this here back.” He paused, then he went on: “You dunno what’s in it. I’d like to have you tell me that you won’t look.”
She nodded intensely, feverishly curious and excited.
“The reason that I give it to you is just what I say...that I dunno whether I’ll get to the end of the day, or not. If I don’t...and if you get the word that I’ve been snagged somewhere, and killed, nobody knows by whom...you’ll take this here bag to the sheriff. He’s kind of two-thirds a fool, but he’s mighty honest, and he’s got a good deal of experience. He’ll know how to use what’s in there, and maybe it’ll be from old Nat Adare that you’ll hear the truth about this here Duval.” He ended uneasily, and mopped his wet face with a colored handkerchief. “I reckon that that’s about all, Marian.”
“I’ll keep it as safe...as my eyes,” said the girl earnestly.
“Aye. I guess you will. I’d trust you, Marian. Tonight, I’ll come for you right after sundown, and we’ll go up the hill together, the way that you said.”
He was gone, and Marian Lane, the instant he disappeared, turned from the window and snatched up the chamois bag. Despite her promise, her fingers were about to tear open the mouth of the bag, when a shadow, as it seemed to her, moved across the rear window of the store. A shadow like a man’s head.
She sank back against the wall, half fainting, for she knew by an extra sense that he who had looked in from the rear window was none other than Duval!
Chapter Thirty-Eight
With a reddened face, Duval was intently at work above his stove. He had on half a dozen little tins in which he was stewing various ingredients to make a sauce. It was delicate work, each of the tins requiring a watchful eye, and he gave to them their due share of attention, only pausing once to add a little wood to the fire.
It was after he had straightened from this occupation that he heard a throat cleared outside his door.
“Hello?” Duval called, without turning.
“You forgot the salad,” said the voice of Henry, entering the cabin, his hands filled with greens.
Duval stiffened, but did not look around from his cookery. “Well, Henry,” he said, “did the horse break a leg?”
“No, he didn’t break a leg. He’s a return horse, though.”
“How did you find that out?”
“I was driftin’ along through the hills,” Henry said, “and let the reins hang loose, so’s I could think a little better, because I’ve always noticed that a man can think better when he has both hands free....”
“True,” observed Duval.
“And pretty soon I come to out of my thoughts....”
“What were your thoughts, Henry?”
“That I was gettin’ old...that I was gettin’ mighty old.”
“Not too old to use a can-opener on old-fashioned safes, Henry.”
“But too old to cover my tracks.”
“Yes, you made a fairly clumsy job of it.”
“Too old to keep out of jail.”
“Kinkaid’s the sort who might land any fish. Don’t be down-hearted about that.”
“Too old to hang onto the coin that I steal.”
“That’s my fault, of course.”
“So old,” went on Henry, “that I had to take charity money to live on.”
“Not charity money, Henry. Friendship money, which I was glad to lend you, or give you, whichever way you’ll take it.”
“Charity money,” Henry insisted, “from the same man that I came out here to blackmail, that took me in, treated me white, and then got me out of jail after I’d spoiled his game and made a fool of myself.”
“Well,” said Duval, “if you’re having an attack of conscience, go ahead and talk, Henry. It does a person a lot of good to talk out things like this.”
“So old,” Henry continued, “that for the first time in my life, I’ve learned what it is to be homesick.”
“That’s a compliment to me, I take it?”
“No. It’s only that I’m old, old, old, and ready for a halter and blinders, and a stall in a dark stable...jail or not.”
Duval whistled. “You have the blues badly. You were saying that you’d waked out of these thoughts of yours....”
“And found out that the horse had turned and was wanderin’ back in the direction we’d come from, so I simply let him come, and he wound up here.”
“Hello! That’s interesting.”
“Seemed to me that it meant I should stay where I was,” said Henry. “That’s as much as to say, with you.”
“And so here you are?”
“Yes.”
“When did you come?”
“A good while before dark.”
“Picking salad ever since along the creek?”
“Partly that, and partly watchin’ Jude.”
“Our good old friend Jude. I’d almost forgotten him.”
“If you do, he’ll bite you in the heel one of these days.”
“I suppose he will, so I’ll try to remember. What was he doing?”
“Sneakin’ around.”
“You followed him?”
“It was a pretty good game,” chuckled Henry. “I followed him around, well enough, and slipped along like a snake, until he began to get nervous, feelin’ my eyes. A couple of times, he tried to slip around behind me. But I was too foxy for that. Seemed as though he couldn’t be sure that I was there, but just kept on suspectin’, and gettin’ chills up his spine. It wasn’t bad sport, me bein’ the nightmare and him doin’ the dreamin’.”
“What did he do at last?”
“Got up and run right back at me, blind, cursin’ in a mutter, with a gun just glintin’ in his hand. He might’ve run right over me, but he missed me by a foot, and after that, I heard him go rustlin’ on through the bushes, and I knew that he’d never stop until he was a long way off from this here cabin. You couldn’t hire him to come back into these woods tonight, not with a guard of a hundred men around him, because he knows that the spooks are after him. When you got through with him down there at Pete’s Place, you sure left only a shell of him put together, old-timer.”
“Some diseases leave a man pretty weak and liable to a new attack,” admitted Duval. “Take a hand here and baste the roast, will you?” Then he gathered up the dishes in which he had been cooking the sauce, and put them far back on the stove, where they would only simmer very slowly.
Henry was basting the roast, and singing softly despite the steam that rolled out into his face.
Duval began to prepare the salad, breaking off the tough portions of the greens and shaking the chosen pieces in water to cleanse them thoroughly, t
hen flicking all water from them and waving them through the warm air above the stove to dry.
“There’s still Kinkaid,” observed Duval.
“Yeah?” the old man drawled as though without any interest in this remark.
“He’s quite alive,” said Duval, “and he’s coming here tonight.”
“Be glad to see him again,” said Henry. “In a sort of a social way, as you might say.”
Duval began to laugh, still working at the salad. “Henry,” he said, “whenever I feel myself growing old, you say something that makes me young again. Henry, without you, life would soon become intolerably dull. You’re intending to stay here and face the marshal, are you?”
“They’ve got that law of hospitality out here in the West,” remarked Henry, “and I suppose that he wouldn’t be breakin’ that and gettin’ himself a bad name all over the range?”
“Is that what you trust to?”
“There’s another law that I trust to,” admitted Henry.
“What’s that?”
“The law of Duval.”
At this, the younger man turned toward him with a broad smile. “You’re a diplomat, old fellow,” he said. “You can turn me around your finger without the slightest effort. There’s no one in the world like you, Henry. Very well. Stay on, then. As a matter of fact, I begin to see that you can be of help to me. There’s someone coming up the lane...see who it is.”
Henry went to the door and instantly said over his shoulder: “Not Kinkaid.”
“It’s Charlie Nash, then.”
“Nash, too?”
“Aye, and Marian Lane.”
Henry whistled, then said: “No wonder you want me, then, to keep yourself from being talked down. Nash is walkin’ pretty slow. You’d think that he was carryin’ a load.”
“He is,” said Duval. “His brain is loaded so deep that you couldn’t see the Plimsoll line. Be kind to Charlie, because he’s young, and means better than he can do.”
“Aye,” Henry said. “He’s one of them that nearly win every race but trip on their own heels at the finish. He’d be a champion if he wasn’t a dub. Here he is.”
An instant later the voice of Charlie Nash sounded at the door.
“Come in!” Henry said. “Come right in and make yourself at home, will you?”
“Sure,” Charlie said, a little uncertain. He stepped in through the door and exclaimed: “Henry! You still here?”
“The chief wanted me to help him serve up this dinner,” Henry said in careful explanation. “So I stayed a while, not thinkin’ that the marshal would miss a meal like this to keep ridin’ after me.”
Charlie Nash looked around, bewildered. He saw the table laid for four, and his bewilderment increased greatly at the sight of it.
“Duval,” he said, “is Kinkaid coming here?”
“We hope he won’t be rushed by too much business to let him come,” Duval said hopefully.
Nash threw himself into a chair and drew a great breath.
“Tired?” asked Duval.
“No, happy!”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I been saying good bye to the world all the way up the hill.”
“Good bye?”
“Why, Duval, don’t blink at me as if you didn’t understand. You know what I came up here for tonight.”
“Supper, of course.”
“Aye,” Charlie growled, “as much supper as the marshal is coming for, but if he’s gonna be in the center of the stage, I won’t have to be bothered.”
“Right,” Duval said pleasantly. “You’re to be the spectator, this evening, Charlie.”
“And the fourth place is for Henry?”
“No, sir,” said Henry. “I’m the butler tonight, because the gents are goin’ to eat in style, with a lady.”
“Lady?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” Nash said with a great gasp. “Duval, don’t tell me that I’m right when I say that it’s gonna be Marian Lane.”
“Yes, she’s promised to let Kinkaid bring her up the hill.”
“Great guns,” breathed Charlie Nash, and sat silently for a moment. “I might have guessed that everything would be over my head,” he said at last.
“Not over your head,” Duval said reassuringly. “I want you here as a neutral, to look on. Besides, you may reap a fine harvest out of this here.”
“Harvest?”
“Why, if the marshal and me kill each other, it leaves you pretty clear in possession of the field, don’t it?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
When Henry had disappeared to fetch a fresh bucket of water, and both Nash and Duval were busy at odd jobs about the cookery, Marian Lane stepped across the threshold of the cabin, with the great shadow of the marshal behind her.
The house was very gay. Some late-blossoming shrubs had been ravished to secure decorations, and the wind that passed through the door stirred the scent of the flowers gently through the room. This mingled with the smell of the cookery, and wild wisps of steam whirled continually upward from the stove and made the beams overhead begin to sweat.
Marian would have begun helping at once, and even the marshal gloomily offered to contribute his assistance, but Duval refused all aid.
“My old man used to say,” quoted Duval, “that them that worked on a meal wasn’t guests, they was hosts, and I aim to be the host here, tonight. Set down and rest your feet, Marian. You, too, Kinkaid. If you want a bracer to stir up your appetite, here’s some honest bourbon that’s old enough to be your brother.”
The marshal refused the proffered drink with a slight sneer. It seemed too palpable a plant, to him — first to drug his senses with liquor, and then to cause trouble to begin. Yet he observed that Marian Lane seemed a trifle upset by the manner in which he made his refusal, and he qualified it at once.
“I never hardly touch nothing, except after hard riding in winter,” Kinkaid said.
“All right,” nodded Duval. “You, Marian?”
She shook her head, and so they were ushered to their chairs. She had the one upright chair. The marshal was favored with a stool that had no back, and Duval and Charlie Nash had empty boxes that needed some attention to keep them from slumping to one side or to the other.
Soup began the meal, a soup with a most unctuous flavor, and they fell to it. Their manners were each worth attention, the girl in the first place being all smiles, turning from one to another with the most cheerful remarks. These were answered by Charlie Nash in an embarrassed manner. Charlie was on his dignity, as one unwilling to give away a trick, no matter in what formidable company he found himself, and he was so earnestly devoted to keeping his chin in and his back straight, and his brows slightly bent, that he could hardly speak.
The marshal made little pretense of hearing anything, for he was all eyes. In the first place, before sitting down, he had looked all around him and made sure that the wall was at his back. Next, he attacked the soup with care, as though he suspected that poison might be in it. And he was continually looking up from it sharply, as though he expected to surprise Duval in the midst of a telltale gesture or glance. At the same time, he was terribly ill at ease, for he felt that he was not appearing to the best advantage in the presence of the girl. Certainly, he was at his worst compared with the smiling ease of Duval, who had a word for everyone, and single-handedly sustained the conversation with Marian.
The soup was ended for the marshal, who now rested his big elbows on the edge of the table and was sullenly on his guard, when the tall, meager form of Henry appeared in the doorway. A totally irresistible instinct at once ruled the marshal. He could not help snapping out his revolver and covering the man he wanted so badly. It was one of the worst blows of his career that Henry had slipped away from him, and although he could blame the loss on the carelessness and gul
libility of the sheriff, still that was a cold comfort for him, and his eyes glittered with joy as he drew down on the thief.
“Hello, Marshal Kinkaid,” Henry said, smiling broadly. “I’m glad to see you here, sir. Are you seein’ a bear behind me?” He glanced over his shoulder, as though he imagined that the other must have taken aim at an enemy behind him.
Charlie Nash had sprung up and almost upset the table at the first flash of the Colt, but Duval raised a deprecatory hand.
“Kinkaid, Kinkaid,” he said reprovingly. “It ain’t hardly right, is it, to scare the lady before she’s finished her soup?”
The marshal was slowly rising.
“I want him. He belongs to me!” Kinkaid said with much conviction. “I’ve had him once, and now I’ll have him again, and he’ll have the stripes on before I ever let him out of my sight again.”
“Suppose, Kinkaid,” Duval said, “that Henry had wanted to work out his grudge against you. He had a pretty good target through the door, eh?”
The marshal grunted. Then, baffled, his glance wavered as far as the face of the girl.
“This night, Dick,” she said persuasively, “there’s not to be any trouble, is there? And Henry’s such an old, old man?”
“You’ve brought him here and shoved him under my nose!” Kinkaid said explosively to Duval. “What’s the meaning of that, I’d like to know?”
“My old man...,” began Duval
“Damn your old man!” said the marshal fiercely. He glared at Duval, but the latter smiled back at him genially.
“My old man,” he insisted, “always used to say that a gent that had to wait on himself never had no appetite for what he had before him, and I figured out that Henry would be right useful here to hand the things around. And Henry don’t mind.”
