by Max Brand
It was a busy evening. A dozen men were lined up at the bar, and there was a gleam of eyes, a flash of faces as they looked toward the door and the newcomer. Then all backs became rigid and were turned squarely upon him!
He did not seem to understand but, taking his place at the farthest end of the long bar, he half cowered against the wall, ordered a drink, and then forgot to taste it, but looked aimlessly into nothing, while the subdued talk along the bar was picked up again, and carried on in its former tone.
Half of those men had drunk and roistered with him in the old days; their pity and their self-respect kept them from noticing the fallen hero now. Religiously their eyes dodged when they chanced to fall upon the face of Destry in the midst of laughter or in the midst of narrative.
The gay minutes went on; but shortly a pair of them departed. And then another pair, and another. There were other places to drink in Wham, where the depressing influence of Destry would not be felt, and the horror to which a brave man could descend be witnessed!
The bartender was not a callous man, but he was naturally irritated when he saw an evening fairly blasted before it had begun to blossom. He took the first occasion to say behind his hand to Destry: “You better finish your drink and move on!”
“Sure,” said Destry, and looked at him with the same humble, but uncomprehending stare.
A man at the far end of the bar growled to the saloon keeper: “Leave him be, will you? He ain’t right in the head!”
“He makes me sick,” said the bartender, with more ferocity than he felt, and took three fingers for himself, and paid for it with a vicious punch at the cash register. However, the big man at the farther end resolutely moved down beside Destry and found himself at once embarked in conversation.
“I hear that Wendell’s in town?” said Destry. “Where might he be livin’, now?”
“Down two blocks, in the big house with the fir hedge in front.”
“Yeah? Orrin’s place is just opposite, ain’t it?”
“No. Orrin’s moved. He’s down by the river, just left of the bridge. Cleeves has the opposite house.”
“Yeah? Cleeves was a great pal of Williams.”
“They used to be thick.”
“Is Williams in town, too? Still here?”
“Still here. He’s got a room in the Darlington Hotel where——”
He paused with his glass at his lips.
Destry turned to follow the direction of his companion’s glance, and he saw just passing through the swinging door as dark a picture as he could have wished to see. For the Ogden brothers were at that moment kicking the door wide and stalking into the place, and the object on which their eyes fell and stayed was the face of Destry himself.
Some things are obvious as day. When the moose is bogged down in snow, and the wolves sit in a circle with red, lolling tongues, it does not need a prophet to tell that they will soon eat red meat. And it was perfectly apparent from the solemn entrance of the Ogden brothers that they had come for Destry and meant to have his life!
Chapter Eight
After that first glance, they paid no heed to Destry, but strode to the bar and ordered whiskey, and Destry remained in the corner, silent, looking at his dreams with open, empty eyes. The bartender, who had been through many phases of this mortal coil, observed him with the eye of a physician who sees symptoms of a fatal disease, against the progress of which there is no remedy. There were still five men in the room, and these drew back from the bar, not hastily, but by slow degrees, conversing with one another, as though their business required greater privacy than could be found under the bright light of the two kerosene lamps which flooded the bar and its vicinity.
Out of the chatter of conversation which had preceded the entry of the Ogden brothers, an approximate silence fell upon the room, as when, before a prizefight, the voices of the spectators are gradually hushed, and there remains a dead moment in which even the most casual murmur is audible, surprisingly, over several rows and the speakers grow embarrassed and glance about in the hope that no one has overheard their profanity.
So it was now in the barroom after the Ogden brothers had come in. They were two of a kind. That kind originates somewhere in the middle West, instantly understood by all who have been in that region, and understood by no others.
They were tall, but they were not awkwardly built. Their shoulders were broad, but their chests were not shallow. They stood straight, and their heads were high, and yet there was a trail of the eternal slime upon them. It appeared in their greasy complexions, their overbright eyes, wrinkled too much at the corners, as though by continual laughter, though the practiced observer knew that laughter had nothing to do with those lines. They had a way of smiling secretly, one to the other, conscious of a jest which was not apparent to the rest of the world, and they fortified themselves with this laughter; for laughter is a two-edged sword, and all of those who do not understand it are bound in the course of nature to be ill at ease.
At this very moment, they were smiling sourly at each other as they raised their glasses. They did not pledge the bartender with the accustomed nod and tilt of the glass; they did not turn the usual good-natured grin towards the others at the bar, but, instead, they raised their liquor swiftly, and swiftly they disposed of it. Then they put down the glasses with a clink upon the varnished wood of the bar and considered the thing that was before them.
They had come to kill Harrison Destry. That much was plain to themselves and to all observers; but they needed a bridge by which to pass from the commonplace to the greatly desired event. It would hardly do to turn on their heels and lay the new born coward dead!
With secrecy, with some shame, with great embarrassment, indeed, they looked slyly at each other and considered the means by which they would approach this fatal climax of the evening’s work.
And still Destry gave them no excuse, no finger’s hold, no faintest sham of a pretense to attack him. He stood with the same considerate gaze steadily upon vacancy, and spoke not a word, invited no comment, asked for no opinion. At last he said, timidly: “I’ll take another.”
The bartender noted with a real amaze that the glass of Destry was empty. He spun out the bottle, and when Destry had poured a moderate measure, the saloon keeper filled a glass for himself to the brim, for once more he needed a stimulant.
There was no conversation at all. One man had slipped noiselessly through the swinging door; the remainder stayed for the obvious purpose of seeing the killing of Harry Destry. Not that he was important now, but that he once had been a man of note.
Suddenly Jud Ogden said: “Destry?”
The latter raised his head with a faint smile.
“Yes?” he said.
No one could see his face, at that moment, except the bartender, and he underwent a strange convulsion that caused the liquor to tilt in his raised glass and to spill upon the floor half of the contents. Still under the influence of the same shock, whatever it could have been, he replaced his glass upon the bar, then changed his mind and tossed off the contents with a single gesture.
He coughed hard, but he did not take a chaser. With both hands gripping the edge of the bar, he remained frozen in place, looking not at the Ogden brothers, but at Destry, as though from him the important act was now to come.
“Destry,” said Clarence Ogden, taking up the speech where his brother had left off, “they was a time when you done us wrong, you—Destry!”
“I done you wrong?” said Destry, as contemplative as ever. “I done you wrong?”
“You done us wrong,” broke in Jud Ogden brutally.
Silence once more fell over the barroom, and the spectators, secure within their shadow, looked at one another, knowing that the time had almost come.
“Well,” said Destry, “I’d be powerful sorry to think that I’d made anybody in this town unhappy! I’d sure hate to think of that!”
He turned from the bar as he spoke, a shrill laughter forced and unconvinced,
breaking from his lips.
The bystanders winced, and their lips curled. As for the Ogdens, they looked secretly at each other, as much as to say that they had expected this. Then Clarence Ogden turned bodily upon Destry.
“You lousy rat!” he said.
But Destry did nothing, neither did he stir a hand!
“That’s a hard name,” he said.
But, as he spoke, it became suddenly apparent to all who listened that he was not afraid! He, the coward, the nameless thing, turned a little from the bar so that he faced the Ogdens, and as he spoke, his voice was like a caress.
“That’s a hard name,” said Destry.
And his voice was unafraid!
It was as though a masked battery had broken out from a screen of shrubbery. The greasy faces of the Ogdens lost color; the spectators by instinct drew closer together, shoulder to shoulder, and stood wedged in a row.
And Destry went on: “What for d’you call me that, boys?”
The Ogdens in their turn were silenced.
They had come expecting to find a wild cat whose teeth and claws were drawn. It appeared that beyond all belief they might be wrong!
“I hear a mighty bad word from the pair of you,” said Destry. “It sure hurts my feelings. Here I come in, askin’ for a little quiet drink, and along comes the Ogdens. Brave men. Big men. Pretty well known. They call me a yaller skunk, as you might say, for why?”
He smiled at the pair, and the pair did not smile back.
“It ain’t possible,” said Destry, continuing in the same subdued manner, “that you come here lookin’ for a whipped pup and found a real dog in his place?”
His smile grew broader, and as he smiled, it appeared that the stature of Destry grew taller, that his chest expanded, his eye grew brighter.
“It ain’t possible,” said he, “that the Ogdens are gunna prove themselves to be a pair of mangy rats that wouldn’t live up to what they said?”
He made a single light step toward them, and they drew back instinctively before him.
“It ain’t possible that they’re a pair of lousy fakers,” said Destry. “It ain’t possible,” he added, in a louder tone, “that they’re walkin’ up and down the town in the attitude of great men and great killers without the heart to back up what they wanta seem to be?”
Fear? In this man?
The white face was lighted; the nostrils flared; the eyes of Destry gleamed with fire, and the audience shrank closer against the wall. If there was sympathy now, it was not for the one man but for the pair.
So action hung suspended until Clarence Ogden yelled, with a voice like that of a screeching old woman: “I’ll take you, you——”
He yanked at his gun as he cried; he was dead in the middle of a curse; for out of the flap of his coat Destry had drawn a revolver, long barreled, gleaming blue; a fire spat from its mouth.
Clarence Ogden made a blundering step forward.
“I’d—” he began in a subdued tone, as though about to make an explanation, then sank slowly to the floor, a lifeless heap.
No one noticed his word at the end. His brother had reached for a weapon at the same instant, and fired. Only by a breath was he too late. By less time than it takes for an eye to wink, the second shot of Destry beat the bullet from his own weapon, and Jud Ogden spun in a circle and fell with a crash against the wall. Still he struggled to regain the weapon which he had let drop, sprawling forward like a frog on dry land.
Destry struck him across the head with the barrel of his Colt and leaned above him. Jud lay still. His great hand was fixed on the floor, seeming to grip at it as though anxious to rip up a board and reveal a secret. But all his powerful body lay helpless and unnerved upon the floor.
Destry stood up above his victim.
He said to the gaping row of witnesses along the wall: “I guess you boys all seen that I couldn’t do anything to stop this here. I was tolerable helpless. They jus’ nacherally insisted on havin’ my scalp, as you might say! Terrible sorry!”
He stepped to the end man of the row, nearest to the door.
“Wendell, Jerry Wendell, you know him?”
“Yes,” gasped the man.
“Where does he live? Tell me that! I’ve heard before, and forgot!”
He was told in a stammer, and started for the door.
When he reached it, he turned again toward the others and surveyed the two motionless forms upon the floor; and he laughed! Never to their death day would they forget the sound of that laughter. Then Destry was gone into the night.
It was the bartender who roused himself before any of the others, and running to the telephone, which stood at the end of the bar, he jerked off the receiver.
“One—nine—eight, quick, for God’s sake!”
No man stirred among the frozen audience.
Then, finally the saloon keeper was crying:
“Is that you, Wendell? This is the Last Chance Saloon. You hear? The Ogden boys both jumped Destry in my place. They’re both dead, I think, or dying! He’s started for your house! Get out of town! Get out of town! He’s been shammin’. It ain’t the old Destry that’s back here with us, but a devil that’s ten times worse! Wendell, get yourself out of town!”
Chapter Nine
There was one habit of industry which Benjamin Dangerfield had clung to all his life, and that was rising at an early hour. To him the entire day was sick unless he saw the night turn gray and the pink of the dawn begin to blossom in the east. It was still not sun-up when he sat at his breakfast table with his daughter.
“I ain’t showed you my new coat,” said he, and rose and turned before her, a piece of ham poised at his lips on the end of a fork. “How does it look?”
“Mighty grand,” said Charlotte. “Down to the knees you look pretty near as fine as a gambler.”
For he had on common blue jeans beneath the coat, and the overall legs were stuffed into heavy riding boots, which never had seen a touch of polish or of other care than a liberal greasing in the winter of the year.
Mr. Dangerfield sat down again.
“How I look below the table don’t matter; what I look above it is the thing that counts.”
He patted his necktie as he spoke and brushed his moustache with his finger tips, sensitively.
“Sure,” said the girl. “Anything that’s comfortable is right, I guess. The dogs under the table wouldn’t be comfortable if they had to go sashayin’ around among broadcloth trousers. Neither would the cats.”
“Suppose,” said the father, “that you wanted to go and set on the corral fence and look at a hoss— would fancy trousers be any good for that?”
“They wouldn’t,” she answered. “They’s just get all full of splinters.”
“Or suppose that you got tired of walkin’ and wanted to rest, would you go and set down on the ground in fancy pants?”
“No, sir, you most certainly wouldn’t.”
“Which you’re laughin’ at me the same,” said he. “Speakin’ of dogs, where’s that brindle hound? I ain’t seen him yet this mornin’.”
“He’s on the foot of your bed, most like,” she answered. “You must of throwed the covers over him when you got up.”
“I reckon I did,” said he. “Mose, go upstairs and see if you can find me that wo’thless Major dog, will you?”
Mose disappeared.
“You look fair to middlin’ miserable,” observed Mr. Dangerfield. “Help yourself to some of that corn bread and pass it to me. It’s cold! I’m gunna kill me a nigger out yonder in the kitchen, one of these days, if you don’t bring ’em to time pretty quick!”
“How can I bring ’em to time?” asked the girl. “I’ve fired that good-for-nothin’ Elijah six times, and you always take him back again!”
“In this family,” said Dangerfield, “niggers ain’t fired, I thank God!”
“Then don’t you raise a ruction because you got indigestion. You can thank God for that, too!”
“It ai
n’t the men in the kitchen, it’s the women there that makes the trouble. I’ve fired that useless Maria, too,” declared Charlotte, “but bless my soul if she don’t start howlin’ like a dog at the moon. Last time, she set outside my door three hours and give me nightmares with her carryin’s on.”
“You oughta cut down their pay,” said Dangerfield. “I never seen anything like the way you throw money away on them niggers, the wo’thless good-for-nothin’s!”
“Why, how you carry on!” said his daughter. “What diff’ence does it make to them, the money? Didn’t they all keep on workin’ all them years when they didn’t get nothin’ at all for pay?”
“Money is no good for niggers,” said Dangerfield. “Money and votes ain’t no good for them. Pass me some of that fish. They ain’t hardly a thing on this table fit to pass a man’s lips!”
“You’ve got a sight particular,” said she, “since you’ve blundered into a few pennies; I seen the day many a time when we was glad to have just the corn bread on the breakfast table, without no eggs, nor ham, nor fish, nor milk, nor coffee neither.”
“It ain’t true!” said the father. “They never was a time, even when my fortune ebbed its lowest, when I didn’t have coffee on my table.”
“Yeah,” drawled Charlotte. “But it was second and third boilin’ most of the time, and I had to flavor it up with molasses to make it taste like something at all!”
“You gotta disposition,” said her father, “like a handful of tacks. You got the nacheral sweetness of a tangle of barbed wire, Charlie. I ain’t gunna talk to you no more this mornin’.”
“Which I never asked you to,” said she.
“Why don’t you run along and leave me to finish my breakfast, then?”
“Because then I wouldn’t have nothin’ but niggers to bother,” she replied, her chin in her hand.
“Charlie, if you’re gunna be so downhearted about it, why don’t you go and take him back, then?”
“There ain’t anything to take back,” said she. “He’s only a handful of bubbles.”
