Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 290
It is very bad for a man to think of himself during any prolonged time. It is exceedingly evil for a man to set his heart on one desire, while his body is helpless to advance him toward his wish. A prisoner goes mad longing for green leaves. Yet the green may be on the other side of the wall, and half an hour in the sun would make him sick of the open day. Perhaps it is not the green of the leaves nor the yellow of the sun so much as the very thickness of the wall that torments the prisoner. Under ordinary conditions Lou would no doubt have cast the thought of the girl away or have pushed the memory of her into an obscure pain, recurring now and then.
Yet, perhaps, what a man once feels truly, he can never forget. Lou Alp was truly in love. Somewhere in that small, mean soul was fuel which fed the flame until it burned as brightly, as intensely as any noble passion in the heart of a noble man. The flame was too much for Lou. It crumbled that shell of a man. It tormented him. If he had been a poet, he could have translated his suffering into song and found relief. Or if he had been strong in manhood, he could have poured the truth frankly before the girl, and then roused himself with a muscular effort.
There was not a strong muscle in the body of Lou Alp. There was not a strong thought in his brain. She became to him what the drug is to the famished dope addict. He was in a fever, and the sight of her face was snow on his brow; his mind was filled with noises, and the sound of her voice brought him blessed peace. She fed the fire and she stacked it. If at times he blessed her as a devotee blesses his patron saint, at other times he writhed on his bed and cursed her with equal fervor.
There were not two possibilities. In the end there was only one result, and that result was a consuming, a devout hatred for Jack Chapel. Not that he really looked forward to winning the girl for himself if he could push Jack out of the way, but every time the girl smiled on Jack it cost Lou a pang, which he swore his companion should repay. Every time he heard them singing, every time the girl laughed in a high-hearted happiness, then Lou turned his face to the wall and begged God for a chance to blast this man, body and soul.
He did not reason on to final results. He only knew that Jack Chapel caused him pain, and therefore he wished to destroy the man. If it could be viewed abstractly, this devilish passion of Lou Alp’s, was it not strange that such a girl as Katherine Moore, who had never in her life done as much evil as would give shading to a single day of an average man, was it not strange that she should have been the cause of such black viciousness?
She did not guess it, and Jack Chapel did not guess it. Once the sneak thief had determined that in some way or another he would destroy his former friend, he masked his purpose with truly fiendish cunning. At the very moment when he was closing his mind and his heart to all gentleness, he appeared to open his whole life to Jack. He told him stories of his childhood, and the dark, vicious days in the streets of Manhattan. He told him of adventures, some mean and all exciting. He told him things which would have caused an average man to turn away in loathing, but Jack was not average. He had on occasion called this fellow “partner,” and in his Western eyes that was a sacred word, no more capable of recall than the fire of heaven. Moreover, a confession always subtly implies a reform and a change. Indeed, it is this hope of making the world believe him a better man or a man capable of better things, if he has the chance, that makes the suspected murderer make a clean breast of his past and sign his own death warrant. He will sign the paper that sends him to the gallows in the hope that his confession will draw one word of regret, one word of sympathy.
In this case the sneak thief was correct in his deductions. Jack answered the confidences of Lou with confessions of his own, and the two men seemed drawing close toward a true friendship. There was one bitterly sweet result of that. The more Lou wormed himself close to Jack, the more often the girl was with Lou. And to the man who is hungry, both the alms of charity and the alms of scorn are welcome. Lou accepted her presence with a deep joy and, knowing that her presence was due to Jack, he cursed Jack for it.
In the end, if he could have thought of no better way, Lou Alp would have stuck a knife into the back of Jack Chapel while his friend slept. But it did not turn out so. There was a better way, and Lou found it.
He had been searching his mind for days and days, hunting for some weapon which would strike down the larger man. One thing had repeatedly come home to him. The past of Jack, if it were known, would come like a wave and snatch him away to the prison as it withdrew. But if his prison record were known, the same danger that threatened one of them would threaten the other. Lou Alp was wanted, hardly less than Jack Chapel. He must find something that would overwhelm Chapel without scratching so much as a finger of the hand of he who struck him. Otherwise where was the satisfaction? Where would be the deep after-joy of seeing the girl in her despair, and remember her happiness of the past and all the pain which she had poured into his brain?
And then it came to him. It was the robbery. In that, at least, he had had no hand. Why could not that be worked? There was the lightning which he could direct at Chapel without singeing his own skin.
Suppose, therefore, that someone were to search the house for evidence of that crime. He would find thirty-five hundred dollars in the bedroom which Chapel now occupied, for Alp had insisted that he keep all the money until they were both well clear of the house. Also, the searcher would find the two revolvers which Jack had taken from the guards. Was not that proof enough?
But suppose that they then asked if he, Lou Alp, were not mixed up in this crime? Very easily answered! He had been through the mountains with Jack Chapel. He had met the man accidentally and they had struck up a friendship without asking about the past. On the trip they had stopped at a village. There they had heard about the coming of the payroll. The next day Jack had disappeared. Lou waited for his return. Late in the afternoon he had come, showing signs of having covered a long distance in a short time. They had gone on together in the storm. Then the accidental shooting occurred.
Or make it even stronger. After the return of his companion, Lou protested against the robbery in the first place and against keeping the money in the second. He argued violently. Jack Chapel flew into a rage, offered him part of the money for his silence, was refused, and then deliberately drew his revolver and shot down the unoffending Lou whose passion for law and order had drawn him to this dangerous pass. Thinking of this portion of the story, Alp felt tears of self-sympathy rise in his eyes. There he was on the ground, bleeding. Compassion seized the murderous robber as he saw his companion and late friend lying there in the snow. He felt remorse. He lifted the inert body. He carried his friend to the house of Moore and for a long time, filled with gratitude for that last act of grace, Lou refused to give the information. But at last the truth must be told, and he tells it. Surely that story would be smooth enough. Besides he would perfect it before it became necessary to tell it to the officer of the law.
To whom should he send the information? Not to Marshal Gaines, but rather to Sheriff Jesse Meigs who was the known rival of the marshal in that district, and who would consider it a choice morsel if he could take the man who had escaped the hands of the celebrated marshal. The plan had more and more good points which gradually unrolled themselves before the calm eyes of Lou Alp. There would not even be a whispered reproach from Jack Chapel until Jack was helpless in the hands of the law. He would make a bargain with the sheriff that his evidence should not be used against Jack until the last moment. In the meantime he would slip away and disappear, leaving behind him the money and the guns, sufficient evidence in itself to send Jack to prison for highway robbery, if not to bring out a lynching party to hang him up by the neck. The malice of Alp went even as far as this. Necessarily so, for if Jack survived, the day of reckoning sooner or later would come.
Yet for several reasons he decided to tell the marshal only enough to hint at the crime, only enough to bring the dogs of the law on the traces of Chapel. He wrote briefly:
If you want to find the dope on the holdup that fooled Marshal Gaines, come to Moore’s house and look in the room where Jack Chandler sleeps. You’ll find thirty-five hundred bucks and two guns.
He addressed the envelope, writing the address as he had done the note with his left hand, for Jack Chapel knew his writing. Using the cane which Kate Moore had given him, he hobbled slowly down the stairs and then out the front door and into the wilderness of shining snow outside. It was only fifty feet to the road, and by the road was the mail box. He lifted the iron flap and dropped in the letter.
IX. LEADEN SOLDIER
THE REST OF that day passed smoothly. There was only one real task for Lou Alp, and that was to exaggerate his limp. For, of course, when his leg was entirely healed, he and Jack Chapel must go on together. Now it was above all things necessary that he keep Jack in the house until that letter reached the sheriff and brought the man of the law to the house of Roger Moore. How long it would require for that he had not been able exactly to deduce, but he imagined that at least two full days would be required, unless the sheriff left the town as soon as the letter reached him and rode at full speed with his men.
That thought gave Lou another qualm. He should have warned the sheriff that Jack Chapel was a dangerous man, that there might be more than one man’s handful of work in taking him. He had prepared to submit meekly enough to the marshal, but that was because he knew Gaines. Driven to the wall, and particularly now that he had so much to hope from life, Jack Chapel would probably fight like a devil incarnate.
The worry of it held on into the night for Lou Alp. In the afternoon he had retired to his room, pretending a feverish aching in his leg. In reality his mind was on fire with doubts, and he sat before the fire which Jack Chapel had built for him and kept rubbing his hands. The rest of his body was warm, but his hands were moist and cold always these days. A continual tremor possessed them. This afternoon he heard much noise and bustling in the house. There was, to Lou, an appearance of stealth about the noise, but he laid that feeling to his uneasy nerves. Everyone in the house was smiling. Everyone seemed to have bright and misty eyes. Everyone had a loud voice and a gay manner. There was a sort of reckless happiness, so strong that it pervaded the atmosphere as keenly as the cold.
Lou Alp canted an ear toward these sounds and regarded them with keen suspicion. It even occurred to him that all the rejoicing was because the girl and Jack Chapel had let the others know of their engagement, and the rest of the house had kept the secret well from him. Why? Did they guess how he felt about Kate Moore? Had they penetrated beneath his bright, shifting glances? Was that the reason for their singular gentleness this day, and the kindliness of their eyes? The thought put a whip upon him and made him writhe.
Supper that night was a trial indeed. The merriment, which had gone ringing up and down the halls all day and which had seemed to cover itself stealthily, now burst out full-fledged. Roger Moore dug out his oldest and most musty stories. Mrs. Moore wore a flush in either cheek which made her seem ten years younger and turned her white hair into a mockery. Jack Chapel was continually laughing with everybody, at everybody. Once he slapped Lou on the back with a force that made the teeth of the sneak thief rattle. Joy was closed upon the world, and Lou Alp shuddered in its presence.
In some manner he got through that nightmare meal and was in his room again. He stirred the embers of his fire and roused it with fresh wood. There he sat, nodding over his plans until very late. Just after supper everyone downstairs had gathered in the big front room and Jack Chapel and Kate Moore came up to plead with him and bring him down.
“Don’t you know what day it is?” they asked in one voice.
He stared at them with blank eyes.
“He doesn’t know!” murmured Kate Moore to Jack Chapel, and then they laughed together musically, idiotically.
It seemed to Lou Alp that they were flaunting their joy in his face to torture him with it. Finally they gave up their pleading, cast him a word of commiseration for his leg like alms thrown to a dog, and were gone off down the hall. Hardly had the door closed on them when he caught the muffled peal of their laughter.
Fools!
Later still, while the fire was dying down, he thought that steps went up and down the hall and paused at his door. He thought he heard guarded whispers. His mind was still clear enough and strong enough to dismiss such absurd conjectures, and finally, quite late at night, he went to bed and was instantly asleep.
Dreams haunted him. People seemed to come to him. Once his eyes snapped open and he could have sworn that there had been someone leaning over him. He could almost have sworn, from the jumping of his heart and the tingling of his skin, that there was someone in the room at that very instant. He dismissed the illusion. What earthly reason could there be for stalking him?
When he wakened naturally after such a disturbed sleep, it was quite late. He lay looking up to the lofty ceiling. There was a fresh scent in the room, as if the window had been left wide open and the odor of evergreens had blown into the chamber. Lou Alp was no passionate lover of fresh air, and he certainly was never guilty of leaving the window open in winter. Then he was aware that he was hungry, and he hunched himself up in the bed, preparatory to getting up. Yet he did not slip from beneath the covers. He remained there with his elbows propping him and blinking.
For this was what he saw. On either side of the tall window leaned a great fir branch. From the mantelpiece over the fireplace dangled a long woman’s stocking, bulged out of shape by its contents. On the table beside the bed there was a scattering of parcels large and small, wrapped in red paper and tied with gaudy green ribbon.
Lou Alp sat slowly erect in the bed. Then, like a sleepwalker, he got carefully out of bed and walked across the floor, in bare feet which did not feel the cold. He took the long stocking from its hook. He opened it and drew forth the contents, one by one. A bag of sugar candies, red, green, yellow, purple, blue; a necktie of gaudy stripe; some animal cakes, gilded with the colors of life; and on and on, his hand reached down the bag until he found a card and drew it out.
A happy, happy Christmas to the man who forgot.
The card fluttered from his hand, and falling into the fireplace began to blacken with the heat of the dying embers. And yet he turned again to the stocking and continued to draw out the silly knickknacks. A jumping jack which squawked foolishly when one pressed the button.
They had given him the gifts they would give a child in the house. Why? Because he did not know? Yet he seemed to expect something different, something more, and finally, at the very bottom of the stocking, his reaching fingers closed over the last thing. He knew it before he drew it out, and the form of Lou Alp shook, and his face whitened.
At length he let the stocking fall to the floor and there in his hand was a leaden soldier with red coat and stiff back, a painted musket at his side. Upon this Lou Alp gazed with a sort of horror, and raising his hand slowly he brushed numb fingers across his forehead. He had forgotten, but now it came back to him, so many things out of the past. But how had they known about the lead soldiers which in the brief time of his child life at home had been an inevitable part of every Christmas stocking? For some reason it humbled him.
He went with the lead soldier still clutched in his hand and opened the packages on the table, the largest first. It was a fleece-lined leather coat with a card scrawled upon in a great, rough hand: “To Lou from Roger Moore. Good luck.”
Then a bundle of home-knitted socks so soft and woolly that they crunched up in his hand and warmed his numb finger tips. “To Lou from Mary Moore.”
Then a big box of cigarettes, his own favorite brand of tailor-mades. “To Lou from Kate.”
Then a heavy little package, the smallest of them all. The heavy leather tore its own way out of the flimsy wrappings of its own accord. Lou took out of the holster a neat little automatic, such a gun as he had often praised to Jack Chapel as the king of weapons, rather than one of these clumsy, wrist-breaking .45s. It came apart under his deft fingers, and was assembled again. A perfect weapon!
Then the card: “To my partner, Lou.”
No name to that. It came suddenly home to him that no name was needed, for probably Jack Chapel had never applied the term “partner” to any other man. Lou Alp, dry-throated, laid the weapon carefully down on the table. He took up the little case of cartridges and loaded the gun with familiar swiftness.
There is a personality in weapons. The little automatic was particularly fitted for the sneak thief. One would expect to find it on him, and certainly he had skill in its use. Many a dick in Manhattan could have testified that Lou, in spite of his cowardice, when pressed to the wall could fight with tigerish ferocity. For there is nothing quite so terrible as the cornered coward. Under the surface lay the claws, under the velvet touch the steel.
Laying aside the loaded weapon, he sank down on the side of the bed. The chilly wind, prying through the crevices of the room, set him shuddering as though with an ague, but Lou Alp paid no heed to it. His face was buried in his hands, and in one hand was the leaden soldier.
