by Max Brand
In this manner he walked straight through the heat of the day, and in the early evening, when the sun was beginning to bulge its red cheeks in the west, he came up to Cumber Pass. Through it lay the way to Wham, split cleanly between two lofty mountains, and on the outer lip of the pass was a small hostelry. It had been a shambling little ranch house until the Pass was reopened. Now by the addition of a few shambling lean-tos it had been converted into a hotel, and even a second story had been built, looking like a straw hat on an oversized head on a windy day.
Destry paused here and spoke to a small boy who was seated on the top rail of the corral fence. On his head was a hat brim, without a hat He wore a shirt with one sleeve off at the elbow and the other off at the shoulder; his father’s trousers were upon him, not cut off, but worn off at the knees. But this loose and shapeless attire nevertheless appeared to accent a degree of freedom and grace in the boy. He looked past a liberal crop of freckles and eyed Destry with as firm a blue glance as ever said: “Beware! I am a man!”
“The top of the evenin’ to you,” said Destry.
“How’s yourself?” answered the boy.
“Kind of bogged down with a tired hoss. Is this a hotel?”
“You can see the sign,” suggested the boy.
His eyes wrinkled a little as if he would have liked to ask some acrid question, such as whether or not the stranger could read, but he restrained himself.
“You ain’t full up?”
“Full up with air. We got nobody yet for tonight,” said the boy.
“Then I reckon I’ll put my hoss up. Is that the stable?”
“It’s the only one.”
He slid down from the rail and accompanied Destry.
“She kind of runs to legs, I reckon,” he observed.
“Kind of,” agreed Destry.
“Them kind don’t hold up very good,” said the boy, “unless you get the kind that Destry rides.”
“What kind has he got?” asked Destry.
“I’ll tell you what kind. She cost nineteen hundred dollars, and she was cheap at that. A rich feller down at Wham gives her to Destry. Nineteen hundred dollars!” he repeated slowly. “That’s a sight of money.”
“It is,” agreed Destry.
“Take thirty dollars a month and save it all—how many months——”
The eyes of the boy grew vague with admiration.
“Some people are pretty nigh made of money,” he concluded.
“I reckon they are. Who was the rich man? One of them miners?”
“It was that big bug—that Chester Bent He’s one of them that everything they touch turns to money, Pop says. He’s got sense enough to want Destry for a friend, you better believe!”
“Why, I wonder?” said Destry. “I thought that Destry was in prison.”
“Him? Ain’t you heard that he’s out?”
“I been up country.”
“You been up pretty far!” said the boy, with a touch of suspicion. “You mean to say that you ain’t heard?”
“No. About what?”
“Why, Destry’s loose!”
“Is he?”
“Sure he is.”
“Did he escape?”
“I’ll tell you how it happened. He gets tired lyin’ around that jail and he sends for the governor.”
“Did the governor come?”
“You better believe! Would you come, if Destry sent for you? Well, I suppose that nobody’d be fool enough to want Destry to come and fetch him! You bet the governor come a hoppin’. Destry says: ‘You look here, I’m tired of this here life.’
“ ‘What’s the matter?’ says the governor. ‘Ain’t they treat-in’ you pretty good?’
“ ‘They can’t make corn bread here fit for a pig,’ says Destry, ‘it’s that soggy.’
“ ‘I’ll have that fixed right away,’ says the governor.
“ ‘Besides,’ says Destry, ‘they’re a pile too early with breakfast, I tell you.’
“ ‘I’ll give ’em word to let you sleep,’ says the governor.
“ ‘They’s only one thing you can do for me,’ says Destry. ‘I’ve tried your old prison, and it ain’t no good. I want a pardon.’
“ ‘If they ain’t anything else I can do to please you,’ says the governor, ‘here’s your pardon. I wrote out a brand new fresh one before I come down. I suspected maybe that was what you’d want!’
“So Destry and him shakes hands, and Destry comes home, and then whacha think that he done?”
“I ain’t got an idea.”
“Plays scared-cat Even lets folks slap his face, some says! People begins to laugh. The jury that scattered out of town when they heard he was comin’, they drift in back; and then bang! He’s got ’em!”
“All of ’em?”
“Three of ’em, quick. He kills one, and he cripples another, and he chases another out of the country, and now he’s gone over and showed that another one of ’em was just a low crook, all the time, and the police are lookin’ for him. Pretty soon he’ll have all twelve of ’em! That’s the kind that Destry is! You don’t seem to know much about him!”
“No, not much. He always kind of puzzled me a good deal.”
“Well, Pop says it’s like lookin’ down a double-barreled gun to look at Destry’s eyes. That’s the kind he is. He could pretty nigh kill you with a look, if he wanted to!”
“Could he?”
“Pop says the same as a bird does with a snake, that’s the way of Destry with a man he don’t like. Just charms ’em helpless, and then he swallers ’em!”
The boy spoke with great gusto.
“That’s a funny thing,” said Destry.
“Sure it is, for them that ain’t swallered.”
“How can he do it?” said Destry.
“Pop says that it’s practice. Teach yourself to look straight at things, and pretty soon you bear ’em down. I been tryin’ it out at school.”
“Have you swallered plenty of the other boys?”
“No, but I’ve had plenty of fights tryin’ it and practicin’ it out, and now it begins to work better, if I only had more boys my own size to use it on; but I’ve licked all of them in the school! Here’s the barn. You snake off the saddle, and I’ll throw her down a feed of hay.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Pop” turned out to be a chinless, weary man, with a little work-starved wife as active as a squirrel. It was she who placed ham and eggs and country-fried potatoes before Destry, while Pop drew up his chair opposite and conversed with the new guest.
“You look plenty tired,” said Destry. “Been puttin’ in a hard day?”
“Me? I ben tired for years and years,” said Pop. “I was took tired all of a sudden, once, and I ain’t ben the same man since.”
“I could tell you the year and the day,” snapped the wife. “It was when we got married and you found out——”
“Ma,” said her husband, “I dunno what possesses you that you keep comin’ out with that, when it ain’t a fact at all. I’ve argued you out of that twenty times, but you keep right on comin’ back.
“Fact is,” he said to Destry, “that a woman can make a pile of words, but not much sense. You know how it is! But it takes a man like Destry to come along and make ’em hop into their right place.”
“Can Destry do that?”
“Him? Look what everybody says! That rich Dangerfield’s girl, her that was gunna wait till Destry got out of prison, when he come back and pretended to be a yaller dog, she turned him down, and what did he do? When he showed himself and kicked the town in the face she was mighty anxious to be noticed agin. Did he do it? He didn’t. He wouldn’t give her the dust off his boots. Pride is what they like. You take a reasonable man like me, that likes to argue out a point, and they just wipe their boots on him; but when a Destry comes along and slaps their faces, they plumb like it. The snappin’ of a black snake is the only kind of music that really makes them step. They’s a lot of ways that a w
oman is like a mule!”
The wife turned back to her stove, merely shrugging her shoulders at this drawling harangue.
“Get me some wood, Pop,” she said drily, at the end of it, “or if you won’t, let Willie go out and fetch some in.”
“Willie, you hear your ma askin’ for wood,” said Pop irately. “What you standin’ around for?”
“Don’t you tell nothin’ about Destry,” said Willie, “till I come back.”
And as Willie vanished, with a great slam of the kitchen screen door, Destry asked: “You a friend of Destry?”
“One of the best in the world,” said Pop with conviction. “Him and me always took to each other.”
“Lazy men and thieves is always matched pretty good,” said the wife, without turning around from her stove.
Her husband raised his head and stared at her back with dignified rebuke. Then he went on: “Destry and me, we been like twin brothers, pretty nigh.”
“That’s mighty interesting. I been hearin’ that he didn’t have many friends.”
“And no more he don’t. What would he be doin’ with a lot of friends? He wouldn’t be bothered. But now and then he goes and picks him out a gent and cottons to him, and that feller’s his friend for life, like me. It ain’t often that he does it But when he does, it’s for life!”
“That’s a strange thing,” said Destry.
“I don’t think he ever seen Destry in his life,” said the woman at the stove.
Her husband laughed with a fierce scorn. “
Listen at her!” he suggested. “You’d think that I sat here and actually made up the things that I’ve heard Destry say, and the things that I’ve seen Destry do! That’s what you’d think! You’d think that I was a liar, you would, to hear her carry on!”
“They is some things,” said the wife, “that a body can be sure about, and don’t have to stop with thinkin’.”
Pop half rose from his chair.
“Woman,” said he, “if shame can’t shut you up, my hand’ll pretty pronto do it!”
“Your hand!” she said. “Your hand!”
And this, or the connotations which the word suggested to her, sent her into a fit of subdued laughter which continued for some time; it was indeed against a background of laughter that Pop continued talking. He first winked at Destry and tapped his forehead, then hooked a thumb over his shoulder as though to indicate that his better half was slightly, but helplessly addled.
“He seems to be makin’ a good deal of talk,” said Destry. “What sort of a looking man might Destry be?”
“Him? He ain’t so big,” said the other. “Tallish, sort of. Might be three or four inches taller than you. That’s all. Biggish in the shoulders. Run about thirty pound more than you, I’d say. But it ain’t the size of him that counts.”
“No?”
“I’ll tell a man that it ain’t! It ain’t the size at all, that counts, but just the style of him. You see him settin’ still, he don’t look like nothin’ much, but you see him rise up and walk—then you see something, man!”
“Like what?”
“Well, ever see a cat sleepin’ by the fire?”
“Sure. Many a time.”
“It don’t look much, does it?”
“Nope. It don’t. Only sort of slab-sided and all fell in togethers.”
“But along late when it opens its eyes and the eyes is green and it goes and sharpens its claws on the leg of the table—it’s kind of different, ain’t it?”
“Yes. Now you come to put it that way, it is!”
“And ornery, and dangerous?”
“Yes, that’s true, too.”
“And all at once you’re kind of glad that it don’t weigh twenty pound instead of six?”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that, watchin’ a cat get ready to go out huntin’ at night. I’ve even dreamed about it afterwards—me bein’ the size of a rat, and the cat stretchin’ a paw in after me, with the claws stickin’ out like big sickles, and every one sharp as a needle!”
“Well, then, I don’t need to tell you nothin’ about Destry, because he’s just that way, and when he comes around, the brave men, and the rough handers, and the gun slingers, and the knife throwers, they curl up small, and get into a corner, and hope that he won’t reach out for them. And when he stands up and slips across the floor, slow and silky, you can see what kind of a machine he is!”
“Yeah?” said Destry, entranced.
“You bet! Snap off a man’s head quicker’n a wink.”
“You don’t say!”
“Don’t I? I do, though! Tiger, that’s all.”
“Aw, rot!” said the wife, with a sigh. “You gunna carry on all evenin’?”
The boy, who had brought in the armful of wood and had been standing by listening, agape with interest, now glanced out the window and called out: “Hey! Look see! They’s that light winkin’ off by the Cumber River! That one we seen a coupla times, lately!”
“What light? Oh, that? That’s jest the sun hittin’ on a rock face, as the sun goes down,” said the father of the family. “I disremember when it was,” he resumed his narrative, “when I first seen Destry——”
“It was one night when you was dreamin’,” said the wife.
His face contorted into a ball, but gradually the anger relaxed a little.
“Like a pin bein’ jabbed into you, the talk of a woman,” said he, bitterly.
“But this here Destry, I guess he ain’t done much damage to other folks,” said Destry, suggestively.
“Ain’t he though? Oh, no he ain’t!” said Pop in soft derision. “I guess he ain’t wors’n Billy the Kid and Wild Bill throwed into one. I guess he ain’t!”
“I guess he ain’t twice as poison as both of them throwed together!” crowed the boy, chiming in with a face brilliant with exultation at so much bloodshed.
“Why,” said Destry, “appears like Billy the Kid killed twenty-one men, and Wild Bill done up about fifty, in his time.”
“Sure, and what about Destry? He don’t do it in front of reporters. He don’t advertise none. He just slips up and says to a gent: ‘You and me’ll take a walk, tonight.’ The gent don’t think nothin’. Destry goes out with him, and they walk by the river, and Destry comes back alone. Yes, sir! That’s the way it happens!”
“Murder?” said Destry, appalled.
“Murder? Why for would he murder? He don’t have to. Is there any fun in murder? No, there ain’t nothin’ but dirty hands. It’s the fun that Destry wants, not the killin’. If he kills, it’s so they won’t talk about him afterwards. But fast as a cat can snap off the heads of mice, that’s the way with Destry. I know him like a brother.”
“Must be kind of dangerous to have him around, ain’t it?”
“Him? Not for me. I know how to handle him. Suppose I sent him word, he’d be up here in a jiffy. The gents around here, they talk pretty careful around me. They wouldn’t want Destry to come up and look ’em in the eye. They wouldn’t want that, I can tell you.”
“No, I reckon that they wouldn’t,” said the wife. “But if they was only to say boo! at you, you’d start runnin’ and never stop! G’wan and gimme a hand with the wipin’ of the dishes, will you?”
“Son, you hear you ma talkin’, don’t you?” asked the father. “G’wan and do what she wants. You can hear me just as good from over there, I reckon?”
“Only,” said the wife, “I’d like to know why that light off yonder winks so fast? That ain’t like the way that the sun would be off of a rock!”
“What light?” asked Destry, rising suddenly from the table.
He went over to the window and looked out.
“Over yonder,” said she, pointing to the range of hills.
“There?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see anything just now.”
“I reckon maybe it’s stopped. Yeah. I guess it’s stopped.”
“Because the sun’s gone down!” said Pop
triumphantly. “They ain’t no logic in a woman, partner. Logic will always put ’em down, I tell you what! And they got nothin’ to do but little things, so’s they’re always tryin’ to rig up little things into mysteries and they shake their heads and start wonderin’ about nothin’——”
But Destry looked fixedly from the window across the darkening landscape and toward the blue of the eastern hills on which the light had winked. He would have given much to have seen the flashing of the light, for there was such a thing as a heliograph which could send messages jumping a score of miles as accurately as any telegraph.
The drawling voice of Pop began again, however, and lulled all his senses into a sleepy security.
Chapter Eighteen
Destry went to bed at once. He was a little particular in his selection of a chamber, taking a corner one in the second story, where the roof of the first floor jutted out beneath the window, but, having locked his door, he threw himself on the bed without undressing and was instantly asleep.
Pop, having heard the key turned in the lock, returned to the kitchen to his wife.
“Well,” said he, “it sort of opened that young feller’s eyes, didn’t it, when I talked about Destry? I thought that they’d pop right out of his head.”
“They sure did,” joined in Willie. “I never seen nothin’ like it.”
The wife put down a pan she was washing, and with such recklessness that greasy dishwater spurted from the sink over her apron and far out on the floor.
Then she turned on her two menfolk. She was one of those excitable creatures whose emotions appear in their physical actions; now she gripped her wet hands and shook her head at Pop.
“You know who that there is?”
“Who? The stranger?”
“Yes—stranger!”
“Why, and who might he be, bright eyes?” sneered her husband.
“Destry!”
