by Max Brand
He smiled at them both, and buttered another slice of corn bread.
“This is something like!” said Destry. “I hope I ain’t keepin’ you from nothin’, Colonel?”
The Colonel did not answer; neither did the girl speak, and Destry went on: “Nerves, d’you see, they ain’t so pleasant as you might think. I thought jail wouldn’t be so bad, and for six months I just sort of relaxed and took it easy, and slept, and never bothered about nothin’. ‘It’ll get you’ says the others at the rock pile. ‘Pretty soon it’ll get you in a heap!’ Well, I used to laugh at ’em. But all at once I woke up out of a dream, one night.
“In that dream, where d’you think that I was? Why, I was at the party in the old Minniver house, and there was all the faces as real as lamplight ever had made ’em, and there was sweet Charlie Dangerfield, with her hair hangin’ down her back—and her face half scared, and half mad, and half happy, too, like it was when I kissed her for luck.
“There I lay, wrigglin’ my toes again the sheet, and smilin’ at the blackness and sort of feelin’ around for the stars, as you might say, when all at once I realized that there was nine layers of concrete and steel cells between me and them stars, and in every cot there was a poor crook lyin’ awake and hungerin’, and sweatin’. Why, just then it seemed to me like death was nothin’ at all. I’ll tell you a funny thing. I got out of my cot right then and went over to the knob of the door and figgered how I could tie a pillow case onto it and around my neck and then hang myself on that.”
“Harry, Harry!” cried the girl. “It’s not true! You’re making it up to torture me!”
He looked at her; he smiled his way through her.
“I didn’t do it, even then when I figgered on nine years and six months more of the prison smell. I didn’t do it, honey, even when I seen then that death is only one pulse of life, even if it’s the last one. Even when I seen then that every other pulse of life can be as almighty great as the second we die in—and here I was cut off from livin’—but I didn’t hang myself, Charlie—not because I hadn’t the nerve, but because I still seen you on the Minniver veranda, slappin’ my face!”
He laughed, with his teeth close together.
“I laid there for five and a half years more, thinkin’, and that’s why I didn’t kill Jerry Wendell, seein’ that death is only a touch, but shame is a thing that’ll lie like a lump of ice under your ribs all the days of your life. So Jerry’s alive! You wanted to know, and now I’ve told you. Could I have another shot of that coffee, Colonel? You got the out-cookingest nigger in that kitchen of yours that I ever ate after!”
It was Charlotte, however, who went to the coffee pot and poured his cup steaming full.
“Ah,” said Dangerfield, “you had a long wait, there. What busted into you to rob that mail, son?”
Destry laughed again.
“There’s the joke, Colonel. It would of been pretty easy to lie close in jail, thinkin’ of the good time I’d of had with stolen money the rest of my days, when I got out; but the joke was that I didn’t steal the money. I was only framed!”
The Colonel suddenly believed, and, believing, he swore violently and terribly.
“All at once, I know you mean it!” said he.
“Thanks,” said Destry, “but there was twelve peers, d’you understand, that wouldn’t believe. They wouldn’t believe, because they didn’t want to. Twelve peers of what? Chinamen?”
The humor had died out of his eyes; they blazed at Dangerfield until the latter actually pushed back his chair with a nervous gesture.
“It’s all over now. Harry,” he said in consolation. “You’re able to forget it, now!”
“I’ll tell you,” answered Destry. “You know how they say a gent with his arm cut off still feels the arm? Gets twinges in the hand that’s dead, and pains in the buried elbows, like you might say! And it’s the same way with me; I got five dead years, but a nervous system that’s still spread all through ’em!”
“Are you fixed and final on that?” asked the Colonel.
“Fixed as them hills,” said Destry. “You gunna leave us, Charlie?”
“I reckon that I better had,” said she, standing up. He rose with her.
“You gotta headache, Charlie,” said her father. “Maybe you better lie down.”
At this, she broke out: “I ain’t gunna be dignified, Harry. I’m not gunna put on a sweet smile and go out soft and slow, like funeral music. I’m gunna fight!”
“All right,” said Destry. “You’re the fightin’ kind. But what you gunna fight about, and who with?”
“I’m gunna fight with you!”
“We’ve had a lot of practice,” said Destry, grinning. “Fact is, we’ve had so much practice that we know how to block most of the punches that the other fellow starts heavin’ at us!”
“Oh, Harry,” said she, with a subtle change of voice, “I can’t block this! It hurts me a powerful lot.”
“Look at her!” said the Colonel. “Why, doggone me if she ain’t about cryin’! Kiss her, Harry, and make a fuss over her, because if she’s cryin’ over you, I’ll have to use the riot gun on you, after all!”
She waved that suggestion aside.
“What are you gunna do, Harry? Are you gunna take after them all, the way you promised them in the courtroom?”
“Look what they done?” he argued with her. “All the days of six years, one by one, they loaded onto my shoulders, and as the days dropped off, the load got heavier! I tell you what day was the worst—the last day, from noon to noon. That day was made up of sixty seconds in every minute, and sixty minutes in every hour, and the hours, they started each one like spring and ended each one like winter. I was a tolerable young man, up to that last day!”
He added hastily:
“Speakin’ of time, I better be goin’ along! I got a lot of riding to do today. I better be goin’ along.”
He turned to the host.
“Good-by, Colonel.”
“Wait a minute, Harry! They’s a lot of things to talk about——”
“I can’t stay now. Some other time. So long, Charlie. You be takin’ care of yourself, will you?”
He leaned and touched her forehead with his lips.
“So long again, Colonel!”
He was through the door at once, and instantly they heard a chorus of voices from the negroes hailing him, for he was a prime favorite among them. His own laughing voice was clearly distinguishable.
“Is that a way,” said the Colonel, “for a young gent to kiss a girl good-by, when it’s a girl like you, and he loves her, like he does you? He pecked at you like a chicken at a grain that turns out to be sand and not corn! Hey, Charlie! God a’mighty, what’s possessin’ you?”
“Leave me be!” said she, as he overtook her at the door.
He held her shoulders firmly.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” asked the Colonel.
“You’ll make me cry in about a half a minute,” said she. “Will you lemme go, dad?”
“Hold on,” said the Colonel, his eyes brooding upon her with a real and deep pain. “Has he got something to do with this all? If he has——”
“Hush up,” said the girl.
“But there ain’t any call for carryin’ on the way you are, Charlie. Everything’s all right. He’s busy. He’s got his mind on the road. Everything’s all right; ain’t he come and started where you and him left off?”
“What makes you think so?” she asked.
“Why, he wouldn’t of showed up here at all, except that he wanted to show you that he didn’t keep your letter in his mind.”
“He came here for Jerry Wendell, and that’s all,” said the girl.
“But he kissed you, Charlie. He wouldn’t of done that!”
“Oh, don’t you see?” said she. “He was only kissing me good-by.”
Chapter Twelve
It was not yet prime of the day when Destry jogged his tired mustang down the main
street of Wham again. He rode with his eyes fixed straight before him, but from their corners, he was able to feel the attention which followed him. The little, light rumor, which rises faster than dead leaves on the wind, which is more penetrating than desert dust, had whispered before him so rapidly that he was aware of faces at windows, at doors, always glimpsed and then disappearing.
Already they knew him thoroughly, and this made him sigh. For, if he could have gone about his work secretly enough, he might have struck them all, one by one, in this same town. But three were gone, in a breath, and nine remained. He looked forward to their trails with a drowsy, almost a dull content, like a wolf that trots on the track of a tiring moose, and knows that there is no hurry.
Sheriff Ding Slater came up to him at a gallop, turning a corner in the fine old slanting style, and raising a huge cloud of dust, like a gunpowder explosion, when he jerked his mustang to a halt. That dust, settling, powdered the moustaches of the sheriff a fine white. He shook his gauntleted hand at Destry.
“Young man,” he said, “you been at it fine and early! You clear out of Wham. You ride right on through, and I’ll see you out of town!”
“Come along, sheriff,” said Destry. “It’s a long time since last night, when I talked to you last!”
The sheriff fell in at his side.
“It’s a dead man and a mighty sick man besides, since last night,” said Ding Slater. “Six years ain’t taught you nothin’, Harry, and I ain’t gunna expose my town no more to you. You’re worse’n smallpox!”
“Thanks,” said Destry, “because I can feel the compliment behind what you say. Thanks a lot, old timer. Have the makin’s?”
“A dead man! Clarence Ogden dead!” said the sheriff. “And here I ride alongside of the killer! What would they think in the East about that?”
“Eastern thinkin’ never raised Western crops,” observed Destry. “But about the Ogdens, you know them that live by the gun shall die by the gun. That’s Bible, or oughta be!”
“You sashay right on outa Wham,” said the sheriff.
“Not me,” answered Destry, “except that my game ain’t here any longer, I guess. All the birds have seen the hunter, and they all have flown, I reckon?”
The sheriff looked grimly at him.
“D’you mean to take ’em all?” he said. “One by one?”
“I mean it!”
“I can use that agin you, young feller, if this comes up in court, as it’s sure gunna do!”
“The law’ll never get to the wind of me again,” replied Destry. “I’m like a good dog. I’ve had the whip on my back, and I don’t need two thrashin’s to make me remember the feel of doin’ wrong!”
“Of doin’ wrong!” cried the sheriff. “Is it doin’ right to shoot men down?”
“Self-defense ain’t a crime, even in a Sunday School,” said Destry.
“Ay,” growled Ding Slater. “I can’t answer back to that, especial when it was two to one——”
“And they’d hunted me down!”
“They was huntin’ a calf. They didn’t know that a wild cat was under the skin. But leave the Ogdens out of the picture. What about the rest? Are they likely to come at you?”
“Them and their hired men,” said Destry. “But let’s not get down to particulars. Everything that I do, it’s gunna be inside the law—plumb inside of the laws. You’ll be helpin’ me out, before long. You’ll——”
“You got plenty of brass in you,” complained the sheriff. “Help you out? I’ll be hanged first!”
“I’m a sort of a special investigatin’ agent,” said Destry. “I’m gunna open locked doors and let in the light, like the parson said one Sunday in the prison. I’m gunna unlock a lot of private doors and let in the light, sheriff.”
“Now, whacha mean by that?”
“There ain’t a man on earth,” said Destry, “that don’t need to wear clothes. They’s some part of his life that’s a naked shame, and I’m gunna find that part. I’m gunna punish them the way that I was punished, only worse.”
“You kinda interest me,” said the sheriff thoughtfully.
“I bet I do,” replied Destry. “If they was a finetoothed comb run through your past, what would come of you, son?”
“There ain’t a thing for me to cover up, hardly,” said the sheriff. “But every man’s a fool some time or other. But to get back to the others——”
“Sure,” said Destry, smiling.
“I always wished you well, Harry.”
“I guess you did.”
“But whacha mean about punishing the others the way that you were punished?”
“Why, I was shut off from life behind bars. I’m gunna shut off the rest of ’em, but not behind the bars. They’ll have life in the hand, but it’ll taste like sand and cactus thorns when they try to eat it.”
“You’re talkin’ right in the middle of the street,” noted the sheriff.
“I figger on you tellin’ them,” replied Destry. “Murder is all that they’re lookin’ for now, though the case of Jerry Wendell might show ’em different. You go tell ’em all, Ding. The more doors they gotta watch and guard, the worse they’ll be able to guard ’em. So long. You’ll be wantin’ to get to work sendin’ out letters. You know the names! I gotta turn in here to see Chester Bent.”
He halted his horse and looked fondly at the house.
“He’s stood by you fine,” agreed the sheriff.
“I wish that his house was ten times as big,” said Destry with emotion. “I wish that they was marble columns walkin’ down the front, and a hundred niggers waitin’ for the bell to ring, and a hundred hosses standin’ in his stable, and a hundred towns like Wham in his pocketbook. God never made no finer man than him!”
The sheriff went back down the street, and Destry turned down the short drive that led to the barn behind the house. There, with two other men in a green field behind the house, was Chester Bent, looking at a tall bay mare which one of the others was leading up and down. Bent came hurrying to meet his friend, and wrung his hand.
“I’ve heard about Jerry!” he said. “Ah, Harry, you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes, as well as over the eyes of the rest of the town. Wendell’s come in, and gone again, looking like a ghost.”
“If I’d told you,” answered Destry, embarrassed, which was a strange mood in him, “you would have started to talk me out of it!”
He laid his hand on the other’s shoulder.
“I know you, man! Good for evil is what you’d say, and turn the other cheek, and all that kind of thing. But it ain’t in my nacher. God didn’t make me that way, and you could give me a bad time, but you couldn’t change me. Not even you!”
“What is it now?” asked Bent, overlooking both the apology and the praise.
“They’ve scattered like birds. I’m gunna follow down one trail.”
“You’re set on that?”
“Out yonder I can spot one of ’em. That’s Clyde Orrin, the great politician, the risin’ man in the state, the honest young legislator, the maker of clean laws—him with the soft hands that are never more’n a half hour away from soap and water! I’m gunna call on Clyde’s dark closet and look for spooks. Are you buyin’ that mare?”
“I think so. Come and look at her. But about my friend Orrin—a perfectly harmless fellow, and a good man, you know——”
“Listen to me,” said Destry. “A man can’t live on bread alone. He’s gotta have words, too. I can talk to you, old timer, but I don’t wanta listen. Understand?”
Chester Bent took a handkerchief from his upper coat pocket and passed it gingerly over his face. Then he nodded.
“I’ll stop thinking about you, Harry,” said he, “and only remember that whatever my friend does must be right! Now come look at the mare for me. They want nine hundred dollars. And of course that’s too much.”
“Lemme try her,” said Destry.
He took her from the hands of the dealers and swung into the saddle with
out a glance at her points. Down the pasture he galloped her, jumped a ditch, turned, took a wire fence, jumped back over it, and cantered her back to the group.
He dismounted with an unchanged face.
“You tried her over wire!” exclaimed Bent. “You might have ruined her, man!”
“Look at the old cuts,” said Destry calmly. “If she ain’t been able to learn wire from that much trouble, she ain’t worth her looks!”
Bent drew him aside.
“What you say? Not nine hundred, Harry!”
“Listen,” said Destry. “What would you pay for a pair of wings?”
“Is she as good as that?”
“Better! You can’t talk to wings, and you can talk to her. She’s a sweetheart, Chet, I wouldn’t wish you on no other hoss than her!”
Which was how Fiddle came into the hands of Chester Bent; for his check was written in another moment, and she was taken to the stable by a waiting negro.
Then Bent walked back to the house and up to the room of his guest to watch Destry pack his roll. He pressed him very little to stay.
“I see it in your eye, man,” he said. “I almost envy you, Harry. You’re free. You have the open country, and ride your own way; I’m tied here to my business like a horse to a post; and I’ll take no more of it with me in the end than the horse takes of the post. I feel like a tame duck in the barnyard, when it sees the wild flock driving a wedge across the morning, and letting the music come rattling down. I’m still young enough to understand that music, but after a while I’ll get used to clipped wings and not even dream of better things at night. Harry, is there one last thing I can do for you?”
“Lend me a fresh mustang—you keep a string of ’em—and take mine in change. It’s a hand picked one, and I haven’t ridden the velvet off it, yet!”
Bent went out to give directions for the saddling of the new mount, and Destry, finishing his packing, swung his pack over his shoulder and went down the stairs to the front door. He found the stable boy and note waiting for him beside the new mare, Fiddle:
