by Max Brand
Charlotte Dangerfield was out of the carriage in a flash and had her arms around him.
“Harry, Harry, Harry!” she cried, her voice rising from a whisper to a moan. “What have they-all been doin’ to you? What have they done to you, Harry?”
She kissed his white face, luminous in the shadows, and cold to the touch of her warm lips.
He did not stir in her arms, nor raise a hand to her.
“It’s been six years of pretty much trouble, Charlotte,” he told her.
And she thought that even his voice was changed, lowered to keep any other ear from hearing what he had to say.
At this, she fell into a bustle of activity, making plans, managing a good deal of excited laughter, as she turned him over to the hands of Chester Bent. He was to come out in the morning to the Dangerfield ranch; her father was wild to see him; in the meantime, he heeded a good night’s sleep.
But before she left, Chester Bent had one opportunity to look into her eyes and see the horror there. It was no effort for Chester to be cheerful on the drive home to his house!
Chapter Six
He was anxious to have Destry under the steady light of a lamp when he got to the house, but it was not easy to get Destry into the light. In the dining room, he managed to turn his chair a little, apparently to give more attention to his host, but really so that he threw a shadow over his features, and with repeated and humble bowings of his head, he listened to all that Chester Bent had to say.
For his own part, Destry spoke little, and generally preluded every remark with an apology: “If you don’t mind me sayin’ ”—or “Excuse me, Chet, but”—or “Of course what I say don’t count—” And Chester Bent saw more and more literally how the heavy hand of the law had broken and hammered what had seemed such unmalleable metal.
They were in the library after dinner, that library which was the latest crown upon the life of Chester Bent, where dark ranges of volumes mounted in tier on tier toward the shadowy ceiling, where two or three large tomes generally could be seen opened face downward, as though the student had just been called from their perusal, and where the face of the desk was littered with papers, the token of the busy man. Enthroned against such a background, Chester Bent drew out his guest a little more, but it was difficult to go far. It was ten o’clock before the truth came out.
Destry wished to leave Wham!
There had once been a happy hunting ground for him in this village, but now he dreaded the familiar field. He sat with his head slightly canted to the side, listening to the booming chorus of the bullfrogs that saddened the marsh like the drone of bass viols. The longer he listened, the more uneasy Destry appeared.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said to Bent. “I dunno why you should be so extra kind to me, Chet. But I couldn’t stay here. I got piles of enemies in this here town!”
“You have friends, too, old timer!”
“I got friends. But friends, they don’t catch bullets out of the air! They can’t do that, Chet! I’m gunna go on. I wanta be a peaceful man; I don’t want no trouble in the world, no more!”
He shivered as he said it, and Chester Bent had to glance slyly down to the floor to keep the flame of exultation in his eyes from being seen. Immediately afterward he allowed Destry to go to bed, but the big chamber which had been prepared for his accommodation was totally unsatisfactory to the new guest. In place of that, he preferred a little attic room, with one small window hardly a foot square.
He called the attention of Bent to it cautiously.
“What would you say, Chet? That a man could squirm through that in the middle of the night?”
“A man? Hardly a frog could get through there, a frog-sized frog, I mean to say!”
Destry sighed with relief, and went straightaway to bed; Bent returned to the library and there wrote the following letter to Jerry Wendell:
Dear Jerry,
Harry Destry is back, but so changed that you wouldn’t know him! He has just gone to bed in an attic room, because it has a window so small that a man couldn’t climb through it in the middle of the night.
His eyes are sunk in his head, and he has the look of a dog that’s been over-disciplined. He’s white and thin, and seems to have lost a few inches in height, which I suppose is simply another way of saying that he’s not the man he used to be!
I don’t think that you need be afraid of coming back to town, you and the rest; though perhaps you’d better send back a couple of the roughest of you to break the ground and make sure that he’s really as harmless as he seems.
You can observe from this that I am trying to be your friend and a friend to all the rest, while I’m also trying to make poor Destry happy.
He hasn’t said much about his prison life, but I gathered up a few references to dark cells, etc. I presume that he was pretty roughly handled at first, and it’s broken his spirit.
I pity him from my heart, and so will you, when you see him.
Yours cordially,
CHET BENT.
He left the house to mail this letter at once, and, walking slowly home beneath the stars, he looked up to them and thought they burned more bright and beautiful on this night than ever before. When he opened the door of his house again, he stood for a moment staring into the dark, and conjuring up in it the picture of Charlie Dangerfield’s lovely smile, and Ben Dangerfield’s still more lovely millions! Then he went back to his library.
He curled up on the couch and went to sleep, but he kept the light burning, for it did well for the inhabitants of Wham, returning late at night, to see the lighted study windows of that rising young man. They then could tell one another that Chester Bent was a genius, but that genius was nine-tenths work! It increased their respect for him, but it diminished their envy!
It was after one before he put out the light, stumbled sleepily up the stairs to his room, and there fell at once into a profounder slumber, and into the arms of yet happier dreams.
In the morning, he took Destry out to see Benjamin Dangerfield. He walked with Charlie under the trees while Destry talked to his prospective father-in-law; all they heard of the interview was the loud voice of Ben Dangerfield exclaiming: “Whacha lookin’ behind the doors for, Harry? Dust?”
Charlotte wanted to talk about Destry continually, but Bent dexterously shied at that subject and finally managed to keep it out of sight. In half an hour they heard Dangerfield shouting for them, and went back to find Destry standing with lowered head, tracing invisible patterns on the floor with the toe of his shoe. Bent heard the caught breath of Charlie, but even he dared not look at her.
Dangerfield himself was gritting his teeth, and he said in the presence of his daughter and Bent: “My daughter’s old enough to run her own business. If she wants you, she’ll take you, I reckon, and let her have you; it ain’t no more affair of mine!”
Chester Bent did not need to look far back to a time when not even Dangerfield, no matter what his years or his millions, would have dared to speak in such a manner to Destry.
But that time was gone. He took Harry Destry back to the town, and the latter bit his lip continually, looking down into the heat haze that obscured the distant vistas of the roadway. Not one word passed between them until they came to the edge of the town, and there Destry asked to be let out, because he wished to saunter through Wham. His wish was obeyed, and Bent drove on back to his office.
All was well with him. He plunged into his affairs for that day, but as he worked, he dreamed, and his dreams were all of Charlotte Dangerfield.
A slice of gingerbread and a glass or two of milk made his lunch, so that he had not left his office since morning, when Charlotte herself came to see him late that afternoon, bursting impetuously into his office.
She had ridden at high speed all the way from the ranch. The flush of the gallop was high in her brown cheeks and the dust was in her hair as she stood before him, kneading the handle of her quirt in her gloved hands. But her eyes were desperate and sick, as they
had been the night before at the station.
“I can’t go on, Chet!” she told him. “I’m mighty miserable; I’m fair done up about it; but I can’t go on after this day!”
He asked her what had happened.
“You don’t know?” she cried. “The whole of Wham knows! Everybody’s shrugging shoulders! Don’t try to make me tell over again what’s happened!”
He could guess; a prophetic foresight had told him everything when he let his companion out of the buggy that morning and drove softly on through the velvet dust of the main street; but he told her now that he had not left the office.
She had to take a turn up and down the room before she could speak again; and then she faced half away from him, looking out the window.
“He went into the Second Chance,” she said, speaking rapidly to get through the thing. “He asked for a lemon sour——”
“I’m glad he’s stopped drinking, if that’s what it means,” said Bent.
She risked one glance at him over her shoulder.
“Oh, Chet,” said she, “it means something else; you must know that it does, in spite of all this mighty fine loyalty of yours! Dud Cross came in. You know that wo’thless boy of Dikkon Cross? And Dud was full of redeye. He bumped against Harry, and when he saw who he’d nudged, he jumped half way across the barroom, they say. Then he saw that Harry didn’t resent it; just stood there smilin’, lookin’ a little white and sick——”
She stopped here, but getting a fresher grip on her quirt she went on with a savage determination.
“That Dud Cross seemed to guess everything at one glance. He came back and—and damned Harry for running into him! Damned him! And—Harry— took it!”
She gasped in a breath.
“Dud Cross said he wasn’t fit to drink with white men, real men, and told him to get out. And Harry went and—”
It was much even for Bent to hear, and he wiped his face with his handkerchief.
“Cross kicked him into the street. Kicked him! And Harry picked himself up and went home to your house. I suppose that he’s there now! Chet, I want to do the right thing; but what is the right thing?”
It had come so swiftly that Bent could hardly believe in his good fortune, but he had sense enough not to appear to jump at the opening.
“I suppose I understand everything,” he said slowly. “It won’t do, of course. You’ll have to see him and tell him that it can’t go on!”
“How can I see him and strike him in the face— a—a thing like that?”
“You don’t have to see him. I think he knows, too. He expects it, surely, if he has any speck of manhood left in him. No, Charlie, you just sit down there at my desk and write him a letter. It will do perfectly. I’ll tell you what. I’ll take the letter along to him, and do any necessary explaining.”
“Will you do that?” she asked.
She swung about and dropped her quirt and caught at his hands. “When I see what a noble way you have about you, Chet, standing by him, true to him—out of the whole town the only one that’s standing by him, I feel pretty small and low. It’s beautiful, the way you’re acting! But oh, Chet, tell him very gentle and careful about how things stand. I wouldn’t of let him down—only—only—he’s not a man!”
Chapter Seven
Chester Bent took home this letter in the evening and gave it to Destry to puzzle out in the dusk of the library.
Dear old Harry,
It just can’t go on. I would have crossed the ocean for you, for the old Harry Destry, but I guess you can see that you’ve changed a good bit. I don’t blame you. Six terrible years have gone by for you. You’ll be your old self one day, after you’ve ridden on the range again for a while; and when you are, come back to see me. If you don’t hate me too much, try to think of me as a friend. That’s what I want to be, always.
CHARLIE DANGERFIELD.
Bent waited on the opposite side of the table. “She didn’t know what to do. She was afraid to see you, Harry. So she gave me this letter to take to you. I’m mighty sorry, because I can guess what it’s all about!”
Destry, carefully thumbing the creases of the letter after refolding it, fell into a brown study, out of which he spoke, surprisingly, not of Charlotte Dangerfield at all. He merely said in a worried, depressed voice:
“The Ogden boys are in town, now, Chet. And I hear that Sam Warren and Clyde Orrin are back from the hills, too. You remember? They was all on the jury! They might think that I would do them some harm, and—and try to get at me first! Chet, I guess I better leave town!”
It was of course the wish which of all others lay closest to the heart of Bent; for now that the girl had broken with Destry, it was by all means best to get him away from the range of her impulsive pity, which might undo all that already had been accomplished.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Bent. “Perhaps Wham is a bit dangerous for you. You know in the old days your gun was fitted into a mighty loose holster, Harry, and people don’t forget that. You’d better go; I’ll handle all the financing. I tell you what, old fellow, I’m not going to let you down, no matter what the rest of the world may do and say!”
He was not even thanked! Destry, as one stunned, fumbled still with his thoughts.
“Somebody said that more of them were coming back. I mean, Bud Williams, and Jerry Wendell. Eight of them, all together. Eight that used to be on the jury that sent me away to prison!”
“It might be a bad climate for you here,” admitted Bent again. “Look here, old son. Leave right now, if you want. I have a bang-up good horse in my stable this moment. I’ll fix you up with a pack, and you can be out and away—with a full wallet, mind you—and fifty miles over the hills before the day breaks!”
At this, Destry groaned aloud.
“Oh, Chet,” he said, “what’d I be doin’ outside in the open, where so many of ’em could be followin’ me? What would I be doin’ away in the hills, I’d ask you? They can read trail. They’d run me down. I’d be alone! Oh, God! Think of ridin’ the hills and seein’ the same buzzards circlin’ in the sky that’ll eat the eyes out of your head, before long!”
Even Chester Bent was a little aroused with pity.
He said sharply: “What in hell did they do to you in the penitentiary, man?”
“I’d rather not to talk!” said he, and Bent wisely did not press him to speak, for he felt that a hysterical outburst was close at hand.
In his own room, he scratched another note to dapper Jerry Wendell.
Destry is badly broken up, and shaken. You fellows will handle him with gloves, I’m sure. He’s helpless and harmless, and you’d pity him if you saw him. Charlie Dangerfield has broken her engagement with him—that’s a secret that you’re sure to find out by tomorrow—and he hasn’t the spirit even to regret the loss of her! He can only think about his personal danger from you and the rest of the boys who served on the jury. I think it may be months before he becomes his old self again!
CHET.
He added that last line after much deliberation, for it woud not fit in with his plans to allow Destry to be considered permanently harmless. Harmless he never could be, in the eye of Bent. Not that the latter feared that Destry ever could become his old self, but because he once had read that women truly love once, and once only, and the line had sunk into his heart. At this moment, Bent felt that he was closer than ever to Charlie Dangerfield, simply because she admired the manner in which he stood by the fallen man. If his dream was realized, and she became his wife, what would happen in her heart of hearts if she again met a partially recovered Destry on some future day? The mind of Bent was logical and sure. There must be no future for his guest!
He sent a house mozo to carry the message; then he went down to find Destry and take him to the dinner table.
Destry was not there. He had gone out, Bent was told, to take a little air; but he was not in the back garden, nor in the front.
He had gone into the town, perhaps, tormented by
fear, tormented even more by the fascination of lights under which other men were drinking and enjoying themselves. No doubt he wanted to see careless faces, and therein strive to forget his mental burden!
Whatever the reason, Harry Destry had gone down the main street, avoiding the lighted places, slipping from one dark side of the way to the other, until he came to the region of the saloons, and into the Last Chance he started to make his way when fate, which works with a cruel insistence in our lives, placed Dud Cross once more in his path, for Dud came reeling out as Destry approached the swinging door.
“The yaller dog’s out and around agin!” shouted Cross. “Get back home and ask your boss to tie you up! Or you’re likely to get et up here in Wham!”
He acted as he spoke. The wide-swinging palm of his hand cracked against the cheek of Destry and sent him staggering back against a hitching post. There he leaned, one side of his white face turning crimson, his eyes staring vacantly at his persecutor, and drunken Dud Cross lurched forward to rout his victim.
It was only luck that brought the sheriff there. Ding Slater stepped before Cross and pointed a forefinger like a gun in the face of the bully.
“You get yourse’f home!” said he, and Dud Cross disappeared like a bubble into the night.
The sheriff turned back to Destry with compassion and disgust equally troubling him.
“Harry,” he said, “don’t you go bein’ a fool and showin’ your face around the streets. You take my advice. You better go home. You hear me?”
“Yeah,” said Destry faintly. “Yeah, I hear you.”
And he looked into the face of the sheriff with eyes so blank, so wide, so helpless, that Ding Slater could not endure the weight of them. He turned without pressing his point and hurried down the street damning impartially the stars in the sky and the penal system of that sovereign state.
Destry, as one drawn by powers beyond him, slowly went forward, pushed open the doors of the saloon, and entered.
