The False Rider

by Max Brand

  Christian took off his hat.

  “Miss Wilbur,” he said, “doggone me if it ain’t the meanest moment in my life. Not this here moment, but having seen Jim Silver act like that. I wanta say something to you, and I hope you believe it.”

  She raised her head, but still she seemed to be seeing her own ideas more than the face of Christian.

  “I simply don’t believe it,” she said. “I don’t believe that it was Jim Silver.”

  “What?” cried Christian, thoroughly knocked off balance. “You don’t believe that it’s really Jim Silver?”

  “He’s not the man I’ve been hearing about for all these years,” said the girl. “The man I’ve heard about couldn’t act like that.”

  “It’s because he don’t know how to deal with a girl,” said Christian. “You know how it is. He ain’t the sort that ever has to do with women. He never pays no attention to them. I might ’a’ knowed the other day that he was clean out of his head about you, because he talked for hours. He talked, and he said that he’d never seen anybody like you. He talked like you were an angel out of heaven. He’s out of his head about you, that’s what the matter is. Ma’am, you’d do him a pile of harm if you talk about this.”

  “Harm him?” she said, throwing up her head in a fine way. “I’d rather cut off my hand. Perhaps you’re right, and it’s simply that he doesn’t understand. But to turn into a brute—”

  She checked herself sharply and added: “It would be a pitiful sort of a world if Jim Silver couldn’t be forgiven. He’s done enough glorious things for a few bad ones to be forgotten. Will you tell him that I won’t speak a single word about this to my father, or to anybody else?”

  “Ma’am,” said Barry Christian, really moved, “I suppose that I should ’a’ sort of expected this kind of talk from the daughter of a man like Henry Wilbur. It’d be the ruin of Silver if people got an idea that he was out of his head about women. Ma’am, he’s the sort of a man that’s never done wrong, and if once folks find out that he ain’t perfect, they’ll never forgive themselves for ever praising him.”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell him that I won’t talk,” she said. “It’s nothing so dreadful—the kissing of a girl.” Her lip curled. “I hope that I’ll never have to see his face again; if I do I’ll manage to endure it. That’s all.”

  “I want to say,” said Christian, “that poor Jim Silver—”

  She lifted a hand.

  “You can’t say a thing about Jim Silver that I haven’t thought all by myself,” she told him. “I’ve lain awake at night and wondered how there could be such a man in the world. Well—now I’m a little sick and I don’t want to think about him any more. Good evening, Mr. Bennett.”

  That was the best that Barry Christian could do, and he left the banker’s place and went straight across Crow’s Nest to the shack. There was still a little time before he went on duty, and after the end of his partner’s daytime régime.

  The shack stood on the edge of a gully that split across the face of the mountain town. Sometimes, after a rain, there was a great racket of water dashing among the big stones in the bottom of the ravine, but as a rule the gulch was empty, and the little shack stood on the verge of its crumbling slope. It was not worth moving, and it was, after almost any heavy storm, apt to slide down to ruin in the bottom of the canyon.

  In the house Christian found Duff Gregor walking up and down with long strides. The sun was resting its rim on the edge of the world and pouring flame across the mountains, and Barry Christian wished that real fire might rush out on Gregor and consume him. But he said nothing. He simply stood in the doorway and watched the promenade of Gregor, until the latter whirled about.

  “All right! Go ahead and shout it out!” said Gregor. “Tell me I’m a fool.”

  Christian said nothing.

  “How could I know that she was that way?” demanded Gregor. “I can’t understand a girl like that. Had her arm in mine. She put her arm in mine. Laughin’ like a fool, she was, most of the time. Laughin’, and turnin’ her eyes up to mine and shinin’ them at me. How could I tell what she was like? A girl that acts like that—that’s different!”

  Still Christian was silent, until Gregor broke down and begged:

  “What did she say?”

  “After you turned around and ran like a kicked dog?” said Christian. “Why, I talked to her and made a good many excuses. I said that you weren’t used to women. I said a good many other things. Finally, she told me that you were just a brute.”

  “Brute?” shouted Gregor, rising to his toes with wrath.

  “Just a low brute,” said Christian, “not worthy of a thought.”

  “She said that about Jim Silver, did she?” roared Gregor. “After the things that I’ve done for the world and—”

  “What have you done for the world, Gregor?” asked Christian.

  Gregor cleared his throat.

  “I got sort of tangled up just then,” he admitted. “I mean, for all she knows, I’m Jim Silver, and yet she’d throw me out of the door like that. Just for kissing her, eh? That shows what she’s made of. That shows she ain’t no good. I wouldn’t have a gross of her for a gift. She ain’t worth a—”

  “Shut up,” said Christian.

  “I won’t shut up,” cried Gregor. “I’m goin’ to—”

  “Shut up or I’ll shut you up,” said Christian. “I’ve half a mind to cut the heart out of you, and partly because you have the crust to talk like that about Ruth Wilbur. Why, Gregor, it soils the mind of a girl like that to so much as think down to you. But as a matter of fact, she’s not going to say a word to her father—and so you’ve still got the job. Be thankful for that!”

  “She told you she wouldn’t speak to him?” exclaimed Gregor.

  “Yes.”

  Gregor fell into a chair and mopped his face.

  “I thought it was the finish of everything!” he gasped at last. “I thought the big chance was queered. I thought it was the end.”

  “It is the end,” answered the other.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “This is the night, Duff.”

  “You mean for crackin’ the safe?”

  “This is the night.”

  Gregor came bounding to his feet again.

  “Don’t talk like a fool, Barry!” he argued. “Every day they’re bringin’ in money by the carload. The little one-horse banks all through the mountains are being cleaned out, and the depositors are sendin’ us their money. They must be gettin’ in thousands of dollars every day over there in Wilbur’s bank. The old man smiles like a risin’ sun every day. Barry, if we make our clean-up and jump now, we’re missin’ a lot of cream.”

  Christian nodded. “I intended to wait for another week,” he declared, “in the hope that we would be safe that long—before Jim Silver hears that there’s an alias of his down here in Crow’s Nest. But after you’ve made this break, I’m on edge to get the job finished and over with.”

  “Why?” asked Gregor. “As long as she’ll keep her mouth shut, why shouldn’t we wait? Another week might bring in a lot more cash into that little bank. It’s bulgin’ now. Barry, it’s goin’ to be sweet pickin’s! The sweetest pickin’s you ever knew, and I’m not foolin’!”

  He threw up his hands. He was trembling like flame with his excitement.

  “We can quit the game. I’m goin’ to Europe and settle down and have a rest. I’m goin’ to taste some life!” cried Duff Gregor. “And every day we wait before we pull the job, the better for us. Besides, we ain’t got the combination, yet.”

  He waited, panting, resting much on the last remark he had made.

  “I think I have that combination,” said Christian. “The other day I found a chance to be alone with that safe and I took off the dial knob of the lock and put a bit of steel wire—no use explaining the details—on the inside surface of the dial. I replaced the knob, and I think that bit of wire may be able to tell me the right com
bination.”

  “You’re a fox!” exclaimed Gregor in great admiration. Then he added: “But it’s all the more reason why we ought to wait till the last minute—”

  Something in the face of Christian stopped him, and he asked: “What’s the matter, Barry? You look gray as a stone.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” answered Christian. “In a woman you’d call it premonition, or instinct. I don’t know what it is in me, but it’s a thing that tells me we haven’t much time to spare. Tonight’s the night. You start cooking the dynamite now and make the soup.”

  “Soup?” said Gregor nervously. “But what’s the matter? I thought you said that you would be able to read the combination?”

  “Perhaps I will. If we had time to leave the wire inside the lock for another day, I’m sure I could. But if I fail, we’ll have to try to blow the safe.”

  The other closed his eyes and groaned.

  Christian came up to him and took him by the lapels of his coat.

  “Listen to me!” he said.

  “I’m listenin’,” groaned Duff Gregor.

  “If you lose your nerve like a dog, I’ll have one bit of satisfaction before I leave this town. I’ll cut your throat for you, Gregor!”

  Gregor, staring at him, knew there was nothing that Barry Christian could have said that he could have meant more thoroughly.

  “You think I’d welsh on you?” said Gregor. “Wait till the pinch comes before you start yowlin’ about me. Do your own job as well as I do mine, and we’ll walk off with the inside linin’ of that safe, I tell you!”

  “All right,” said Christian. “Be a man. That’s all I ask of you. Get the soup ready and work up some of that yellow laundry soap till it’s the right consistency for the running of a mold. You know how to do that?”

  “I know,” Gregor nodded. “Only—it’s bad business in a place like this. In a business district in a big town, where everybody’s asleep in the middle of the night, it’s not so bad. But the noise of shooting a safe will get a hundred people on horseback, in a place like this!”

  Christian turned in the doorway, regarded his companion silently for a moment, and then, without another word, walked off in the direction of the bank, for it was time for him to take up his duties as night watchman.

  CHAPTER 10

  Gregor’s Preparations

  There is a certain amount of care necessary when dynamite is converted into “soup,” because when the sediment has settled to the bottom of the pot, there remains a rather muddy liquid which can be strained off, and this is almost pure nitroglycerin. And nitroglycerin has to be handled with awe, because if it is bottled up under too tight a stopper, it is likely to oppress itself with its own evaporation, and explode. And if it grows too cold, it is likely to explode, also. Of course, sudden jerks and jars are apt to be fatal too. And when Duff Gregor had finished making the soup, he was in a sweat.

  For one thing, he had locked the doors of the shack, and the night was warmer than usual. But he could not permit his usual audience of admiring small boys and youths of the town to assemble and watch this extraordinary cookery of his. When they came, and knocked and called to him, he simply had to tell them that he was out of sorts. They went off reluctantly and left him to his work.

  He got the laundry soap prepared also, mashing it up and moistening it just enough to give it the consistency of a very strong, tough, and sticky mortar. He had a length of fine wire, too, which could be used in running the mold just over the meager crack which outlined the door of the safe.

  When he had finished these preparations, he paused in some doubt. He was so accustomed to working according to the direct orders of Christian that he was hardly prepared to use his own initiative. But he knew that the contemptuous silence of Christian’s departure had been a direct challenge to him and his efficiency. Therefore, he remembered that they must have their horses ready. They had the chestnut stallion, of course. Every evening he had been in the habit of riding the frisky horse out for exercise, taking ways where he would not be observed, because it was certain that he could not control the chestnut in an emergency in the same way that the real Parade was handled by Jim Silver.

  He got the stallion ready and he also saddled the plain-looking mare which Christian had provided for himself. This animal had prominent hip bones, carried its head low, and had a very ugly head. But the mare was in reality a good piece of running machinery and in a pinch would probably give as good an account of itself as the more showy stallion.

  Then Gregor cleaned a pair of Winchester rifles and prepared in two saddlebags sufficient provisions to keep a man alive for a week if he were careful in his diet. A blanket and a slicker were all the additional weight that he dared to incorporate in each pack, because if they had to blow the safe and the noise were heard, they’d have to travel fast.

  Last of all, he got two canvas bags, the mouths of which could be closed with drawstrings. They had been prepared long before, and they were to hold the “inside lining” of the Merchants & Miners Bank. When these had been folded under his arm, he looked at his clock and saw that it was getting on toward midnight. It was too early, he decided. It was not the time of night when Christian would want to make the attempt, because there were still too many people about the town.

  He lay down, intending to count the minutes, but he awakened with a terribly guilty start to find it was two-thirty, and the flame flickering in the lamp, as the oil was nearly exhausted.

  That reminded him of the dark lantern. He filled it from the oil can with kerosene, made sure that the shutter was well greased so that it would make no sound no matter how quickly it was opened and shut, and then he set out.

  If midnight had been too early, he felt that this hour was too late. Dawn came early at this season of the year—extra early, he always felt, among the mountains, and it would be nearly three o’clock before he arrived at the bank!

  In the meantime, what if the girl’s emotions had got the better of her promise and induced her to speak to her father about his conduct? What if his suspicions had been aroused? What if he had come to doubt the integrity of his two watchmen? What if he had decided to post a second and secret guard for the watching of the bank, this night? It seemed possible, it seemed probable. It grew to a near certainty in the brain of Gregor before he finally had finished leading the horses up the gulch and had taken them from the edge of it to a group of young saplings that stood behind the bank.

  It was an excellent line of retreat to leave the bank, get the horses, and then depart from town by riding up the gulch. It was an excellent line unless they were pursued. In that case, they would have to take the straightest line, right through the main streets. The hair prickled on the head of Gregor as he thought of that possibility.

  He finished tethering the horses and stepped out into the open night. The bank was right before him, looking squat and strong as a fort. He had never realized that it was so large. He scanned the ground on all sides of it and saw nothing. There was a vacant lot on one side of it, and beyond the lot stood a boarding house, now silent and with unlighted windows. But the stars glimmered faintly on the black panes. The boarding house was as dangerous as could be; it was filled with young workingmen and was sure to have plenty of guns of all sorts in it. Young men sleep like wildcats. The least sound is enough to rouse them.

  Duff Gregor himself felt twice as old as his twenty-eight years.

  On the other side of the bank there was a drygoods shop. The man and woman who ran it lived in a back room of the shop, but they would be fairly harmless, Gregor thought. “Dutch Charlie,” the proprietor, was a red-faced, fat old man with a waddling step. He had not the look of a fighter, but in the West one cannot tell. The mildest “worm” may bite like a rattlesnake.

  Gregor, when he had finished this quick survey, went slowly on, stepping softly. He wished, now, that he had the quiet, natural stride of a fellow like Christian, to say nothing of that ghostly footfall of Taxi. There was Taxi
to be thought of, in the immediate future, because he knew that when the bank job had ended, Christian would not fail to call in at the shack of Taxi and try to put him out of the way.

  Sometimes, when Gregor heard Christian talk, it seemed to him that the great criminal hated Taxi more than he hated Jim Silver himself. And for a good reason. Taxi was an out-and-out crook who had learned to go “straight,” owing to the influence of Silver. And there is nothing that a criminal forgives less easily than virtue in one of his own kind.

  Down the eastern side of the bank, Gregor saw nothing, but when he was halfway along the wall, he was aware of something stealing up behind him. His brain spun. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach, and then, as he whirled with a gun in his hand, he saw, dimly against the starlight, the welcome and familiar outline of the head and shoulders of big Barry Christian.

  Christian came up to him and said:

  “All right, Duff. It’s only me. You can be thankful that you didn’t pull the gun on a stranger.”

  Gregor felt mutely rebellious, but this was not a time for argument. With a clear foresight, he understood that, if he lived a thousand years in league with Christian, he would never be able to be entirely in the right. Something in him was lacking. Or did Christian merely carp?

  They paused at the side door of the bank. Christian took out his bunch of keys, opened the door, and led the way inside, saying casually:

  “It’ll have to be the soup, brother. I’ve tried to work the combination already, but the wire trick hasn’t worked. It hasn’t been in the lock long enough to register the numbers for me.”

  He spoke, it seemed to Duff Gregor, loudly enough to call the attention of everyone in the town. And already, in imagination, Gregor saw the streets filled with people hurrying toward the noise in the bank.

  CHAPTER 11

  Safe Cracking

  The greatest difficulty to be faced, once they started to work, was that a night lamp burned constantly inside the bank, and through the plate glass windows any passer-by along the street could see nearly every detail of what happened inside the big room. As a matter of fact, people who returned home late at night were very apt to pause and glance through the windows at the forest of bronze-gilt bars which were all that guarded the door of the safe. Even honest men may contemplate theft to which they would never put their hands.