Red Fire

by Max Brand

  Young Tom Farnsworth approached this formidable Russian with a good deal of trepidation and a good deal of disgust. He arrived just before noon, and he found a few Mexican cowpunchers sitting about the door of the adobe hut where Harrwitz lived. They rolled their cigarettes and jerked a thumb to indicate that Harrwitz was inside. Tom Farnsworth entered and was staggered by the incredible filth of the room that was kitchen, living room, and dining room. It was odd that the Mexicans would accept such surroundings, but it was known that only the lowest of the low refugees from justice, brutes of a thousand crimes, came to Harrwitz who asked from them only hard work, and who gave them high pay and no questions. Tom pushed his way to an inner door, thrust it open, and found himself in a small, stuffy compartment, the one window of which was closed tight, so that the temperature of the air in the room had raised to almost blood heat. There was an old-fashioned four-poster bed, so big that it occupied nearly two thirds of the floor space of the dirty room. A few rags of faded cloth hung from the upper frame, all that remained of its canopy. The paint and the varnish had peeled away in the heat and had been worn away by the scraping of spurred heels and the scratching of matches. Harrwitz lay prone on the bed, face downward, his face muffled in a mass of ragged old quilts whose colors were long since covered with dirt. He lay like a dead man, and Tom Farnsworth half suspected he had been murdered, until he saw the back of the man stir with deep, regular breathing. He was sleeping, exhausted. For Harrwitz had been up for three days and three nights, caring for sick cows. He was worn out by his work, but he had saved lives, which meant dollars, and now he slept the sleep of deep contentment. He was satisfied.

  He wakened with a shudder of anguish and turned to Tom Farnsworth a haggard face, unshaven for a fortnight, with the result that long, black bristles thrust out sparsely here and there over his leathery countenance. He staggered to a corner of the room, lifting up a dipper of lukewarm water from a bucket, swallowed some, and poured the rest over the back of his neck and head, letting it drip and soak into his shirt and underclothes of thick red flannel. A shake of his head finished the work of clearing his senses, and he asked Tom what brought him here.

  “My man, Bobbie,” said young Tom, “stole a horse of yours. I’ve come to pay you for him.”

  “Ah?” said Harrwitz, and his face brightened at the mention of that welcome word, pay. He led the way to the outside. He did not make the Mexicans get up to give them stools, but he dragged out two staggering boxes in which groceries had been recently delivered.

  “That gray horse,” said Harrwitz, “that gray horse was one of the chosen and the choice ones, Mister Farnsworth. You might say I knowed the insides of the mind of that there colt.”

  “No doubt,” said Farnsworth, too disgusted with the face and the smell of the man to prolong the conversation. “No doubt that the horse was an intimate friend, and that you have felt his loss very keenly. Perhaps he will one of these days be returned to you. In the meantime I wish to pay you for his full value, even for the loss of his companionship.”

  One would have said that Harrwitz accepted this sarcasm in all seriousness, for he began to nod, screwing the center of his mouth up and the sides of it down, while he turned out the palms of his hands with one of those eloquent gestures of his race. “But, Mister Farnsworth . . .”

  “Well?” asked Tom sharply. “Put the price high, if you wish to. Anything in reason, Harrwitz, or even a little more than reason.”

  “What you want is that I don’t catch him for a thief.”

  “That’s it,” said Tom.

  “Ah, ah,” said Harrwitz, sucking in his breath. “But what good is that? If they catch him, they hang him for killing Pattison . . . no?”

  “Pattison isn’t dead,” said Tom. “He’s still living. He’s delirious. Has brain fever or something like that. May never speak sense again . . . chances are that he’ll die . . . but, if he doesn’t die”—Tom ended somewhat dubiously—“he’ll live to clear Bobbie, perhaps . . .”

  Harrwitz grinned. “You make it funny, Mister Farnsworth. Why don’t you laugh?” He looked up at Tom, boring him with little keen eyes that, it was said, had looked their way into many an important secret.

  Tom trembled momentarily at his own secret. Yet, as he reflected, Bobbie had so perfectly covered the trail by taking all suspicion on his own shoulders that Tom presently regained his self-possession. He began to argue his point, even with this low fellow. “Consider this, Harrwitz . . . they were milling about in the place of Kinkaid. Someone saw Bobbie ride along the hedge. They shouted at him. He probably looked across the hedge and saw twenty men, walking about in the grounds. He may have become frightened. Sometimes Negroes get shabby justice from a crowd. Instead of waiting and answering, he rode away. Then the whole crowd of ’em took after him. He lost his head and rode like a mad man through Daggett. He knew he was innocent, perhaps, but he also knew that they were after him. He rode for his life. Reached your place, found his horse failing, stole another, and rode on. Then he may have reflected that he was a criminal, after stealing a horse, so the poor simple fellow has kept on running and fighting in order to get clear. If I can settle this horse theft, perhaps we can bring Bobbie back to us, while we locate the real criminal. What had Bobbie against Pattison? What would he gain by killing such a man?” His voice rose at the end.

  Harrwitz considered this harangue soberly. “He stole a horse,” he said at last. “He stole my horse. He’ll have to pay for it . . . not you. I want his money, not yours.” That was his way of seeing justice done.

  “What was the price of the gray horse?” asked Tom, seeing that he could not talk of abstractions to a man with so much malice in him.

  “Oh, maybe two hundred dollars.”

  That was about double a fair price, as Tom knew, but he pulled out his wallet at once. “I have two hundred dollars for you, Harrwitz.”

  “Is it Bobbie’s money?”

  “Yes, because I’m using it for him.”

  “Let him come to pay it to me then. I want to talk with him.” As he spoke, he fondled the butt of his Colt absently.

  “I’ll make it a shade more, Harrwitz, considering how much the gray meant to you. I’ll make it two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Right quick . . . spot cash?”

  “Yes.”

  Harrwitz ran the red tip of his tongue across his greasy lips. “I guess that I don’t want your money. It ain’t right,” he said finally.

  “Three hundred dollars, Harrwitz!”

  The Russian stared at him. Then he pointed down the valley. “You see by the river bottom a hundred acres . . . that’s worth two hundred an acre. Well, Mister Farnsworth, if you give me another hundred acres just like that for the gray horse, I take the horse and leave you the acres.”

  “What do you want?”

  “My rights,” said the other.

  Tom, meeting the glittering eyes for another moment, saw that there was nothing but wasted time in such a conversation.

  He rode back to Daggett and through Daggett to his father’s ranch which he reached, with a staggering horse, at sunset. The old grandfather of Bobbie came out of the stable to take his young master’s horse. Age had withered him without bowing his body. The lids were puckered around eyes that were still intelligent and bright. His step was short, but light and steady.

  “Uncle,” said Tom, “has any news come in?”

  “There ain’t goin’ to be no news, Master Tom,” said the Negro. “There ain’t goin’ to be no news till we hear that they’ve caught Bobbie and strung him up to a tree.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “Books ain’t for niggers,” said the old dark man. “Bobbie read too much. He could talk too much. And the same bad streak in his daddy was a streak in Bobbie. I know.”

  “But suppose that he didn’t do the shooting?”

  The old Negro started at this suggestion. It seemed to bewilder more than please him. “If he didn’t do nothi
n’, but run just the same, then he’s a fool. And a fool is pretty near as bad as a murderer, Master Tom.”

  Young Farnsworth went to the house. He had barely entered when his father came hurrying out to him with a note in his hand.

  “Here’s a letter from town . . . it’s from old Pattison. He’s sent for you, Tom. His boy isn’t any better, but his head has cleared up some, and he’s asking for you.”

  VI

  It was a thunderstroke for Tom. At first he put the simplest possible interpretation upon it, which was that young Pattison, recovering his senses, had denounced Tom as his destroyer and called upon his father to avenge him. Pattison, Sr. had sent for him and would have the sheriff waiting when he came. To face a murder charge, as he now saw, would be a simple thing compared with the shame of having to confess that he had allowed his manservant to take the deadly burden of the suspicion on his shoulders and draw the vengeance of the law after him. He hesitated for ten seconds, revolving that thought in his brain. Then he determined that he would have to face Pattison, no matter what the consequences. If he did not come, and they indeed suspected him, they could apprehend him in his home. The only question in his mind was whether he would flee to the mountains and embrace outlawry, or else go to Pattison and meet whatever lay in wait for him there. To give up all that was pleasant to him in life for the sake of a roving existence in the wilderness was more than he was prepared to do. Hanging itself would not be much more bitter. So at length he had a fresh horse saddled, changed to fresh clothes after a bath, and in the dark of the evening, with his head high and the sweet aroma of an Egyptian cigarette in his nostrils, he rode for the Pattison house in Daggett.

  It was the most gloomy and mysterious time of the evening. Across the fields a low-flying hoot owl pursued him, unseen, but with melancholy voice rolling about him now and again. He passed an old buggy, wheeling softly through the dust, with all the figures in it turned to shapeless blotches in the night. A man’s voice and a girl’s were singing and, as he passed into the acrid dust cloud on their back trail, the song floated dimly behind him. It stopped. The wheels of the rig rattled over a bump, then the horse pounded with hollow tread over a distant wooden culvert, and Tom was left alone on his path again. He went on with an empty heart, for that happy singing suggested to him such a picture of innocent contentment that his own crime seemed blacker than before. Being so sad of mind, he hurried on his way more quickly than ever. He reached Daggett and passed to the house of Pattison.

  Old Pattison met him in the hall. “My dear Tom,” he said, “I had no idea that you and my boy were such good friends. But he’s been asking for no one else for hours.”

  “Poor Jack,” murmured the hypocrite. “How is he now?”

  “Very low . . . very low, indeed. God alone knows what will come to him. We pray, Tom, but we fear that the worst is about to come to us. The bullet passed through his head.”

  “I’ll go in to him,” said Tom hastily, and, leaving the father behind him, he went to Jack Pattison.

  He found Jack’s face very pale, looking thinner and older by many years. The youngster’s eyes were almost closed, and they were surrounded by great blue-black circles. Someone in white rose from a chair beside the bed. Tom had never seen her before, but the nurse apparently knew who he was. She leaned over the sufferer and took his arm gently.

  “Mister Pattison, here is Mister Farnsworth to see you. You may talk with him if you will promise not to stir so much as a hand . . . and not to speak above a whisper.” She stepped back, turning to Tom. “You may have one minute with him,” she told Tom, and, moving toward the wall of the room, she began to study the face of her watch, counting off the quick seconds.

  “It’s I, Jack,” whispered Tom.

  “Tom,” murmured the wounded man faintly. “I wanted to tell you that I’ll not let a soul know who did this thing. I’ve closed the door on it. In exchange for that promise I want you to tell me the thing you know I want to learn.”

  “I’ll tell you frankly, Jack,” said the other, immensely relieved, and now beginning to pity the wounded man. “I merely forced my way into her room the other night . . . or, rather, to her window, because I had to try to reinstate myself. She had cut me dead only a little while before, as you know. I was desperate, Jack, and I didn’t dare to face her before other people, because I was fairly sure that she would cut me again.”

  There was a sigh of happiness from Jack. “I’ve been lying here in a fire of doubt,” he confessed. “But now I know that you’ve told me the truth, and I think that it gives me almost enough strength to cure me. Tom . . .”

  “There is no more time,” said the nurse, stepping up to the bedside. “The doctor’s order was very strict.”

  Tom stepped away. He could have sung with happiness as he reached the door, and beyond it, in the hall, he talked for a moment with the father, who had been waiting anxiously for him. It was not hard to explain the interview.

  “Sick people get queer longings,” said Tom to the father. “When I was a youngster, I had scarlet fever. I remember that the thing that haunted me was the desire for raw roast beef. Queer, eh? That’s the way with Jack. He happened to fix his mind on me. And he kept it fixed for so long a time that he finally had to see me.”

  The nurse came out from the sick room with an excited, happy face.

  “He’s asleep,” she said. “Send the message to the doctor, Mister Pattison. The moment Mister Farnsworth left the room he fell asleep. His pulse is steady . . . his nerves are better . . . his temperature is falling. Mister Farnsworth must have brought him good news.”

  Pattison, frantic with happiness, hastened off to find the doctor, and Tom rode back to call on the lady of his heart. He was brought into the library of the old house and sat down to wait for her, feeling decidedly stiff and uncomfortable. The room was furnished after the pattern of thirty years before. The chairs were covered in glossy horsehair. There was a couch upholstered in the same material with a little round cushion on it. The carpet was blue, strewn with great roses. Gothic bookcases went around the walls. Behind the glass of the doors stood long sets whose glimmering backs betrayed that the volumes had never been frayed and worn by handling. Some of the doors, in fact, were closed tighter than with a lock because, being undisturbed for months at a time, the varnish had sweated and held like a stout glue. He had seen those same familiar faces in every library of the ranch houses of any pretension in the county.

  The desk of Mr. Kinkaid was in a corner of the room with a swivel chair before it. It had a great broad blotter on the top, a rack of pens at hand, and a calendar in sight. But it was well known that Mr. Kinkaid never sat here. He carried his business in his head. He could tell you at any time just how many cows and calves were on his ranches, and what condition they were in, and how the market stood, and how the grass was looking in every corner of his places. His office was his saddle, and his office force consisted of his own strong, swiftly moving, accurate brain.

  Such was the man, and such was the room in which Tom presently slid off the glossy seat of a chair and came to his feet, for Deborah stood in the doorway. She went straight to him, but, instead of shaking hands, she dropped into a chair and faced him, beckoning him to take an opposite seat.

  “What have you come to tell me, Tom?”

  “That Pattison is immensely better. I went to see him tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “Why not? I’ve always liked Jack.”

  “Of course,” murmured Deborah. “Everyone has always liked poor Jack.”

  “He sent for me, as a matter of fact.”

  “I didn’t know you were such friends.”

  “Just a sick man’s freak. I talked to him one minute, about nothing. Then I came away . . . but, before I left the house, we learned from the nurse that he had fallen in a sound, even sleep, and that his nerves were quieter . . . that he would awaken much stronger and better able to make a fight for his life.”

  “Good!
Good! I’m so happy . . . so very happy, Tom! And now, what’s the news of Bobbie?”

  “The last we heard he was doubling into the Kiever Mountains. The Kiever men are wild over the hunt.”

  “And they’re terrible people, aren’t they?”

  “They’re supposed to be, but I’ve an idea that Bobbie will prove a match for them.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t?”

  “Well, a man has to take his punishment when he commits a crime like murder, Deborah.”

  She stirred in her chair, as though the thought pricked her to the quick. And Tom, staring hard at her, saw that her pallor had given way to a bright flush of excitement.

  “Perhaps you’re right, Tom. Murder will out, as people say.”