Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 536
There was a little murmur of taken breaths such as men draw when they have seen a shameful and a wonderful thing. To more than one that picture was like a prophecy, for how many of them had blustered a way among their fellows? And each rough-handed man saw a time coming when he should be mastered by some fiery and fearless spirit.
How could they tell that the most astonished man in Crawford’s Place was Lee Garrison, and that it was the numbness of slowly departing fear that made him walk so slowly toward the door and slowly into the street?
XV. THE CHARLATAN
“I SUPPOSE,” SAID a voice behind Lee as he went down the street, dazed, “that you wish to be alone to get the relish of that situation in retrospect. But I hope you’ll pardon me, if I walk a step or two with you?”
It was the doctor, overhauling Lee with the long and rhythmic stride of a fine walker. He seemed flushed both by the exercise and with emotion as he drew up to Garrison. “I’m Doctor McLeod,” he said in introduction. “You may not have noticed me in the saloon a moment ago, but you would hear of me if you stay long enough in Crooked Creek. They’ve been snapping at my heels ever since I began to take care of the Guttorm brat, which is time thrown away, medically speaking, but financially — well, one must live, you know. In the meantime, I can’t tell you how it tickled me to the very midriff to see that fellow Peters handled. He browbeat me only yesterday in Lefhvre’s.”
He laughed and whirled his cane with such dexterity that it flashed in the sun like a shining disk, and Lee noted the tapering slenderness of his fingers. But more than any physical attribute, it seemed to him that he had never seen a man who exuded such an aroma, as it were, of perfect rascality. He apparently had no care to conceal his nature from Lee.
“I should like to take your hand,” ran on McLeod, “to thank you for that lesson to King Peters, but even the thick head of Olie Guttorm would turn suspicious if he heard that I had shaken hands with an enemy of his.”
“And what will he think when he hears you took a stroll with me?”
“He will think what I tell him to think, as usual,” said the doctor, “which is that I took this opportunity to advise you to leave town at your earliest opportunity because in going against the power of Olie Guttorm in this town you are going against a stone wall.”
“Look here — I’m not trying to bust Guttorm.”
“No? Old friend of his, perhaps?”
“I’ll tell you the straight of it, Doctor. It was I who came across the outcropping of rose quartz up.—”
He was interrupted by the suddenness with which the doctor turned upon him and by the bright-eyed gravity with which the professional man examined him.
“Really?” said McLeod. “You are the man who found the ore, and the cunning villain, Olie Guttorm, has beaten you out of your just half of the profits while you lay sick of a cold in the head!” Here he broke into pleasantly modulated laughter.
“By heavens, Garrison,” he said, “I am not surprised to hear that you are such a wonder with cards. You have the face for the master poker player of the world. And if you possess the technique as well — tra-la-la!” He whistled a thrilling little strain of music and concluded by smiling benevolently upon Lee.
It was easy to understand why he opened his heart so quickly and so completely. He felt that they belonged to the brotherhood of knaves.
“That the hand that rocks the deck shall rule the world,” paraphrased McLeod. “I sit in at a game occasionally myself, and I know a thing or two about the eloquence with which a pack may be taught to speak, but my great handicap is that I began too late in life. In cards, as in music, those who hope to be masters must start early and continue long.”
It would simply amuse the doctor to pretend to be innocent. The story which the jockey had told of that game by the campfire must have been eloquent, indeed.
“Doctor,” said Lee sullenly, “that little rat of a jockey has been telling lies about me, and you’ve believed him.”
McLeod chuckled with the utmost good humor. “My dear fellow,” he said, “I have simply used my eyes. Someone was saying that you showed up in town, looking as wild as a wolf. Well, my friend, the wolf look doesn’t lie in long hair alone. You have had your hair cut, I see, but you have not taken the wolf out of your step. You walk like a man about to run a race — or like a man just out of prison and infernally eager not to get caught and sent back.” Here he probed Lee with a side glance, although he continued without interruption. “Although, of course, no prison could give a man a skin as brown as tanned leather and apparently as tough. But more than all this, you have a hungry eye, Garrison, as though you were questing for something — money — fame — a woman.—”
Lee started. He fumbled in his pocket the soft leather of the glove.
“Well?” McLeod was asking. “A pain from an old wound, or an idea?”
“Both,” answered Lee.
McLeod sighed. “You’re a lucky dog with your youth and your flying start. You’ll walk on smooth lawns the rest of your days.”
Lee Garrison heard him out of a mist. He would lose that money he had won by playing cards the night before. He would go into Monsieur Lefhvre’s gaming house and throw away every cent of it. Then he would start out to work in the mines until he had laid up a handsome stake, and with it in his pocket — oh, comforting thought of money cleanly won — he would go again adventuring on the trail that had started from the ruins of the little hut under the cliff.
“Tush,” murmured McLeod, “you are as secretive as a very mole, man, but—”
“Is that youngster, Charlie — is he Guttorm’s boy?”
“He’s Guttorm’s boy. But there’s none of Guttorm in him. He’s all his mother’s son, and, like most of that ilk, he’s a whining, over-pampered little puppy. I have practiced facial expression most of my life, but, by heavens, I have nearly lost control of myself a dozen times. Every day I wonder if my tongue is about to stumble into ten words of the truth, and so kill the goose who lays the golden eggs.”
McLeod spun his cane and whistled another refrain as though to drive the melancholy thought from his mind.
“Not really sick, then?” said Lee Garrison, relieved for, in spite of his anger, he had pitied the man for the sick boy he loved so well.
“Sick?” repeated the doctor, and scuffed his heels jauntily. “Tut — he’s dying!”
“The devil!”
“He is a devil in his own small way, and he’d grow up to wring the heart of poor Olie. He has another six weeks or so to linger along, or again, a bit of a shock, a cold, or almost anything might burn him out in thirty minutes.” He made a gesture as though snuffing a candle.
“Poor Guttorm,” sighed Lee. “It’ll about break his heart, I suppose.”
“Hearts don’t break these days,” said the doctor. “That sort of thing is out of fashion.”
“Does Olie know there’s no hope?”
“Of course not. That’s why he employed me — the idiot! A dozen experts told him the truth. I heard about it, looked him up, and promised the boy long life and happiness — barring accidents.”
Lee caught his breath.
“That surprises you, eh?” said the doctor, chuckling. “You know the tricks of your own trade — you’d clean out a parish priest of his last cent of charity money, but you cluck like a hen when you hear about my little game. Well, it’s a neat one, at that.”
“When you become a doctor,” said Lee, “don’t you have to swear to — ?”
“In heaven’s name, lad,” cried McLeod, “do you think I’m a real doctor? Practicing in Crooked Creek? Come, come, use your imagination. I’m no more a doctor than you, but I’m doing as good a job as the best doctor in the world, for I’m keeping the eyes of poor Guttorm closed on the truth, and that gives him happiness. Every day the youngster lives is a golden day for Olie Guttorm. Could the finest doctor under heaven improve on that? No, by the heavens, I’m his benefactor!” He threw out his hands. “It’s pure benevolence, Garrison. And now I’m afraid we must walk no longer together, for, if I have simply been urging you to leave town because of the danger of Olie Guttorm, I could have crowded a very considerable expostulation into the space of our stroll, eh?”
McLeod laughed so softly that a person ten yards away would not have heard him. Withal it seemed a hearty laugh — of a sort.
“And you are going to stay, Garrison? You’re not going to let public disapproval run you out of town?”
“I guess not,” said Lee, waiting for the hidden thing in the mind of the pseudo-doctor.
“Good!” exclaimed the other. “As a matter of fact, while we sauntered along, an idea has been growing in me. Of course, I understand why you want to work Crooked Creek. There’s oceans of gold here. Oceans of it!” His lips trembled over the words, and his eyes shone. “They’re drunk with wealth, Garrison,” he went on. “And why should they have it? The yokels! They know nothing but labor and boozing, whereas.—” Here he stopped short, glanced at Lee, and snapped his fingers.
“The point is this,” he said. “When you are making your harvest, I happen to know that it is easier for two to work together than one. You raise your eyebrows, eh? You are saying that is only true when the two are tried friends and can trust one another. True again, Garrison, but, if you decide to take a gambler’s chance with me, it will pay you well — very well, on my honor. You are going to reap a great harvest — a great harvest! When I heard, in the saloon, about your skill with the cards, and then had a glimpse of your nerve in facing down the crowd — by Jove, I said to myself, Napoleon! But Napoleon needed marshals, Garrison. And you need a helper if you wish to make a quick reaping of the grain, and quick your work must be if you wish to escape from Crooked Creek before your past overtakes you in a tidal wave, or before some dozen of these gunfighters take the tidy thought of a murder into their hearts!”
How completely the clever man was making himself a fool, thought Lee Garrison, and on the spot he made a wise resolve.
“And now, Garrison, what d’you say? No reflection — quick, on the spur of the moment, speak your mind for or against and never mind my feelings. Is it yes or no?”
Irritation, disgust with the false doctor, distress at his own strange situation in the mining camp were all overwhelmed in a wave of mirth that began to rise in Lee. He managed to keep back the laughter, but he could not prevent the smile.
“Partner?” he said, “you’re sure welcome to sit with me at any little game I’m in.”
“Ha,” said McLeod softly, and his cane quivered in his grip. “That’s good — that’s damned good! The beauty of it is that they’ll never suspect an underground wire between us two, not while I’m taking care of Guttorm’s brat. But when do we get together and run over our signals? Or when can you let me know your system of daubing? I suppose you daub them, Garrison?”
Lee, who had not the slightest idea what daubing might be, coughed. “I’ll be at Lefhvre’s tonight,” he said. “You won’t need signals, if you play with me.”
The doctor parted his lips to speak, changed his mind, and coughed in turn.
“When you arrive at Lefhvre’s, you’ll find me in sight. Bonjour.”
XVI. THE LADY IN THE WINDOW
TO HAVE BUILT in five minutes the reputation of a crooked gambler and a fighter was a bewildering thing to Lee. But when one has roused a nest of hornets, it is wise to run, and he looked beyond the roofs of Crooked Creek to the mountains. Before night was thick, he would be among them. He went straight for Moonshine. Rumor had already gone before him; a whisper spread on either side as he passed; he felt men behind him, pausing and turning. But at last he was away from them all, and behind Mrs. Samuels’s house he had sight of Moonshine, waiting for him in the rose of the sunset light. What a glad reunion it was from the instant the stallion caught sight of him and began plunging around the corral, until he came to a stop before his companion and knocked off the unfamiliar sombrero.
Lee Garrison, in an outburst of melancholy joy, threw his arms around the neck of the horse and bowed his head against the shining mane. “Oh, Moonshine,” he groaned, “I’ve been a terrible fool — I’ve been ten kinds of a fool. But we’re going to get out of here. We’re going to slide up them hills yonder and drop over on the other side into some place where we can be alone. Wasn’t I the fool to have been hankering after the sight of men? I got on tolerable well with just books, once, and now I have you, besides. And I’ll try again—”
Here his voice, which had been trailing away, sank to nothingness, but behind his blank eyes his thoughts were speeding on to the conclusion that Malory and all the other books in the world would be a hollow comfort. The joy he had found in them was a ghostly thing remembered, and all his past life was a host of shadowy days.
A whistle ran into his thoughts like the first thread of morning light into a room. He looked about, saw nothing, and wondered why his heart had leaped when he first surmised that the call might be for him. But who was there who could have cared to call him, after all? At the repetition of the whistle, therefore, he turned with greater indifference, and this time something moved in an upper window of the hotel, the only two-story structure in the town. The evening shadow had fallen so thick along that wall of the building that at first he made out only a misty form beyond the window, but that form now leaned into the light, and Lee Garrison was looking up into the face of a pretty, bright-haired girl.
“Hello,” called the vision.
“Well,” said Lee stupidly, “I’ll be damned.”
She settled herself on the window sill, leaning at what seemed to Lee a dangerous angle.
“You took off your hat to the horse,” she continued, laughing, “and I think you might at least do as well by me.”
The flash of the white teeth and the twinkling of her eyes had been pleasant, even in the distance. Automatically he dragged off his hat, so intent on her that he was heedless of his disordered hair that the wind instantly blew erect on the top of his head.
“You’ve been watching me, then?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, pal,” said the lady, with an airy wave of her hand so that the lace of her dressing jacket fluttered behind the gesture. “A man hugging a horse is enough to draw a crowd even up here, where there ain’t much but mountains to draw.”
And she laughed again, and suddenly he knew that the trail which had started with the glove had ended with the face of this girl in the window. He wandered closer.
“You aren’t going to leave, if I stop looking, are you?” he asked.
Her laughter went out. She ended by shading her eyes and peering earnestly down at him.
“Where did you blow in from?” she asked. “What’s your name?”
“Lee Garrison, ma’am.”
She started to her feet at this. “You’re him?”
“Have you heard of me?” he asked wretchedly.
She placed a hand over her mouth to shunt her voice in a new direction without turning her head from Lee. “Hey, Gertie. Come here quick, will you?”
Gertie’s head presently appeared at the window, and, seeing Lee, she gasped and huddled her negligee higher about her shoulders.
“Hello,” she said to her companion rather than to Lee. “Found a friend?”
“I hope so,” said Lee earnestly.
This threw the first lady into a gale of laughter. “He hopes so! Gertie, I want to present Mister Lee Garrison!”
There was a squeal from Gertie. “Alice, you don’t mean it.”
She dropped both hands on the window sill and leaned far out, a dark beauty who, having entered the late thirties used her make-up with more resolution than art, but in the dim light and the distance the effect was not altogether unpleasant.
“Tickled to meet you, Mister Garrison,” she called, fluttering her hand at him. “We’ve heard about your little party over at Crawford’s. When are you going to look us up?”
“I’d like to drop around and call any time I may,” said Lee.
They laughed again. They had the strangest habit, he thought, of laughing at everything.
“Come into Lefhvre’s tonight,” said Alice. “I suppose you’ll be making that headquarters, anyway. The Frenchy runs the only decent tables in town. When you’re tired of talking to the cards, come in and talk to us, will you?”
“Will I?” cried Lee, thrilling. “I’ll tell a man I will! How soon are you going?”
“We’ll be there, when things start stirring, and they start stirring early in Crooked Creek. Lefhvre’s is going strong by seven-thirty. We’ll be there by eight. What time d’you expect to break up your own game?”
“My game?” Then he comprehended. They had heard of Buddy Slocum’s tale. He was glad of the deepening shadows. “I’ll see you at eight,” he managed to say, and waved to them as he turned away.
They shouted farewell in musical chorus, and then he was around the corner and mercifully alone. A crooked gambler! He dug his fingernails into his palms in the bite and sting of his shame. But they had liked him, it seemed, in spite of his profession — how thick they had showered their kindness upon him. He would prove himself worthy of their esteem, he vowed. Before he met them he would throw away his money at Lefhvre’s tables, and then meet them at eight o’clock with clean hands.
Behind him, as he left, Moonshine neighed frantic protest at this new desertion, but Lee Garrison hardly heard the sound. His mind was crowded with memories of music of quite another nature. But when he was close to her, what could he find to say to so lovely and brilliant a creature? He drank deeply of the chill cup of humility; truly fortune had been blindly kind to him. He had found her in the very moment when he was about to desert the trail. He killed what time he could eating supper in the restaurant, and, as he stepped from the door, a man touched his arm.
