Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 671
“What the devil is the matter with you!” I cried. “Why do you treat me like a dog?”
I expected a stinging return that would crumple me up. But instead, she replied in the gentlest voice you can imagine: “Leon Porfilo, you’re so big, and so silly, and so funny, and so young — I could cry over you!”
“Good heavens,” said I, drawing myself up higher than before, “I hope that the time hasn’t come when a little sawed-off sixteen-year-old kid can begin pitying me.”
I saw her start in the darkness. “Am I sawed-off?” gasped she.
“The smallest I ever saw for your age,” said I, rejoicing wickedly that I had found her weak spot.
“That’s not true,” said she, in a voice that trembled with emotion.
“Seventeen,” said I, “and not even five feet tall!”
“Leon Porfilo, you’re telling a lie and you know it! I’m one inch more than five feet, and I’m only sixteen!”
“Five feet tall with high heels”
“I never wore high heels in my life!”
“A sawed-off little runt,” said I, “taking on airs! Talking big!”
She jumped up in front of me. Then — I suppose because my bigness so near to her did make her seem small, she stepped back from me.
“I’m growing every day,” said Mike. “What’s more, do you think that I ever want to grow up to be a great hulking lummox like you?”
I felt that I had gained the upper hand, and so unexpectedly, so delightfully, by such small means, that I was able to laugh, loudly and long.
All at once she flung away from me and started running toward the house as I had seen her run once before — as swiftly, as gracefully as any boy. It sent a tingle of excitement up my back and into my throat. Three bounds of my long legs put me up with her, and then I scooped her off the ground.
She began to kick and struggle. It was perfectly useless. She struck at my face. I laughed louder than ever. I had formed such a huge respect for the youngster that it was astonishing to find her so small, so light.
Then an odd choking sound turned into a burst of noisy weeping, like the crying of a child. It was such a wild paroxysm that she lay helpless against my breast, moaning when she could take half a breath:
“If I could of — got to — the house — you’d never — never — have known! Let me go!”
I carried her back under the trees. I felt immensely pleased with myself and not at all inclined to pity her because she was crying. I felt, in fact, absurdly as though I had snapped my fingers under the beard of a lion and frightened the great beast into a corner of his cage! I sat down on the stump and held Mike on my knee.
It was really an astonishing thing to see the passion of her grief and anger. She cried with a stifled wailing — exactly like a child that is broken-hearted but afraid that it will be overheard. All the time she leaned against my shoulder and clung to me.
At last the sobbing began to stop. Eventually it ended altogether. What did she say, as she slipped away from me?
“I suppose I’ve made a perfect puddle on your shoulder, Leon?”
She had, in fact. The tears had soaked through my coat.
“How the devil was I to know that it would upset you like this?” I asked her rather mildly.
But she could still see through me. “You’re mightily pleased with yourself because you’ve made me cry, Leon Porfilo!”
I declared that I was not, but it was perfectly useless to perjure myself about the matter. She merely sniffed and wiped away the last of her tears.
“Well,” said she, in a voice of great relief, “it’s a long time since I’ve made such a fool of myself as this. But it makes me feel a tremendous lot better. You’ve no idea!”
She sighed, and then she added: “Ever bump your crazy bone?”
“Yes,” said I.
“Well, it’s like that,” said she. “When people mention my size, it’s just like hitting your crazy bone. It makes me feel queer, and I cry like an idiot. But it’s the last time you’ll ever see a tear in my eye, Leon Porfilo — even if I’m not a great hippopotamus like you!”
I declared that I was grieved to the heart because I had hurt her feelings.
“You’re not,” said she. “You’re tickled to death. You’re disgusting the way you act, Leon Porfilo.”
“As a matter of fact,” said I, “I didn’t suppose that you had any feelings, by the way you talked.”
“How have I talked to you? I dare you to show me one thing!”
“As if I were a ruffian.”
“Leon,” said she, with a sigh, “I’ve been lying awake at night — swearing at myself because I cared enough about you to lie awake and worry. They’ve told us frightful things. They’ve told us that you must have been lost in trying to ford one of the rivers — because no green mountaineer could ever get away from a man like Lawton and his man hunters. I believed it, half. Now you come back to me with stolen money!”
“Not stolen,” said I.
“Well,” said she, “where did the man who gave it to you get it?”
“How should I know?” I said feebly.
I looked toward her miserably; and she looked toward me.
XVII. STEVE LUCAS
FROM MIKE O’ROURKE I traveled back to the main valley and rode on a good eight miles, until I had twisted out among the foothills beyond and saw in a hollow the scattered lights of a town. There was the end of my journey if I could find my man. However, the directions of my friend Tex Cummins seemed infallible.
I located on the outskirts of the town, staggeringly supported between two trees, an old shack with a rusty length of stovepipe cocked over its roof. It was utterly dark, but I did as Cummins directed me to do. I went to the door and rapped in a particular manner which he had prescribed.
I heard no approaching step, but presently a voice spoke close behind me:
“Well, where did you drop from?”
I turned and saw an armed man leaning against the trunk of a young aspen.
“A friend of mine thought that I could be put up here,” said I.
“What’s his name?”
“Tex Cummins,” said I.
At that, he came closer to me and scratched a match. He held it dexterously in the cup of his hands, so that the light flickered across my hands, leaving him in darkness blacker than before.
“The devil,” said he. “I didn’t know that Tex knew anybody as young as this! What’s your name?”
I was not angered. There was too much fear in me — of the work that lay ahead — to allow much room for personal pride.
“My name is Porfilo,” said I. “What’s yours?”
“You’re Porfilo, are you? Well, that sounds better. You’re the one that passed up Lawton and his boys the other day, eh?”
He shouldered past me and invited me to follow him into the house. There he lighted a lantern which he put on the floor and further screened with a heavy fold of newspaper. Not a great deal of light escaped, and what light there was filtered vaguely toward the ceiling. I had to guess at the face and the expression of my companion rather than see it clearly. He sat down on a broken box in the doorway, and most of the time his eyes were working restlessly down the slope toward the heart of the town; or sometimes he would rise abruptly and step to the back of the shack for a searching glance among the trees on that side of the shack. A caged tiger could not have been more alert.
“You dropped a pair of Lawton’s pets, I hear,” said this man.
“That was all that saved me,” said I.
“From what?” said he.
“From Lawton. Lawton couldn’t keep after me while I had two of his men helpless — able to bump them off at any time.”
“Do you think that Lawton could have got you — when there was just the two of you left?” asked the stranger.
“The chances would have been five to one against me,” I admitted. “He’s a much better shot, and he’s a lot smarter.”
“By the heavens,” said the other, “you’re queer! Maybe it was just luck that you dropped the other pair? Maybe it was just luck that you put a slug through the shoulder of Dan Tucker?”
Here he reached out his hand.
“I’m Steve Lucas,” said he. “Maybe Tex didn’t tell you my name?”
“No.”
“I’m glad to know you. I’m glad that Tex has picked up a bird like you that’ll be a help to all of us. The only trouble is, they’ve plastered descriptions of you everywhere, and it ain’t so hard to recognize you by the description. You won’t be able to show your face by day. You’ll have to be living by night!”
There was not a great deal of doubt of that.
“However,” I suggested, “I suppose most of the work is done at night?”
“Not at all!” said he. “All the preparing, mostly, is done by the day. Speaking personal, I wouldn’t follow no line of work that kept me up the night all the time. I ain’t a sleeper. It’s hard for me to get my rest even in the night. I can’t bat an eye in the day after sunup!”
It was not hard to believe him. He could not remain quiet for an instant, but was continually fidgeting from one side to the other and glancing first at me, then at the lantern, then swinging about to shoot a glance at the rear window, then whirling again to scan the slope which led down through the town. There was nothing peculiar about his appearance — only the occasional glint of a golden tooth as he talked.
“I think that I can stand the night work,” said I, “because I can sleep anywhere.”
“Can you? Can you?” sighed Steve Lucas. “Well, you’re lucky. They’ve slapped a price on your head.”
He had changed the subject with a jarring suddenness, but I answered:
“Twenty-five hundred.”
“Three thousand,” said Mr. Lucas. “Three thousand even. Old man Castro brought in the coin this evening and put it in the bank to add to the reward. Three thousand dollars if they can nab you, Porfilo. Dead or alive! All that a gent has to do is to come up and sink a slug through the small of your back. That’s the end.
“He drags you to town and gets the reward. Three thousand ain’t so bad — considering that all a gent would invest would be the price of a lead slug! Even Wall Street couldn’t beat that game for profit!”
“Thanks!” said I. “That makes me pretty comfortable.”
“Aw, the devil,” said he. “They got worse than that stuck on me. Six thousand iron men — six thousand juicy berries is all the luck bird collects that sinks me! Six thousand spondulics to the sucker that plants a bit of poison in my soup!”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“They hung the Walton job on me. After I bumped off Rickets, they gave me a rise and put up a twenty-five-hundred-dollar reward for me. But then I went along for a long time with just that reward on me and nothing more. Folks had sort of forgot about me. Then ‘Whitey’ Nichols the cur, he talked when they caught him. He laid the whole of the killing of Walton onto me. They believed his yarn, and so that got them excited. Yes, sir, six thousand bones is all they value this baby at!”
He seemed quite pleased with this dangerous honor. I told him that if he liked it, I wished they would transfer the three thousand from me to him, too.
“Aw,” said he, “cut out the kidding. You know as well as I do that you’re tickled to death because you made a fool out of Sheriff Lawton. How many of us wouldn’t take a chance of having our heads blowed off for the sake of a reward offered, if we could have the name of havin’ made a fool out of Lawton?”
“I didn’t make a fool out of him,” I insisted.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Have it your own way! Have it your own way! I don’t give a tinker’s darn what you think!”
He remained silent for a time, smoking a cigarette in a jerky way and flashing uneasy side glances at me from time to time. I didn’t like Mr. Lucas. There was nothing about him that I cared for.
“Well,” said he at last, in a better tone, “when they stacked the six thousand on my head, they made me!”
“How?”
“That was what brought me to the notice of Tex. Maybe that was what brought you to his eye.”
I shrank from that unsavory suggestion.
“Since I went with Tex I’ve been making big money, for the first time.”
“I thought he got a pretty big cut,” said I.
“Sure. He gets his fifty. Which is pretty high. But then, he keeps you busy. And when you’re broke, Tex will always float you through the shallows. He’s white about that! What do you come in for on this job, kid?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!” cried Lucas.
His ordinary voice was a sort of snarling whisper from the side of his mouth, and even when he exclaimed in this fashion there was more breath than sound. A sort of gasp.
“I didn’t talk terms with him,” said I. “He’ll treat me well enough.”
“All I know,” said Lucas, “is that I get fifty. He can fix you up to suit himself, I suppose.”
I said nothing. I liked Mr. Lucas less and less with the passing of every moment.
He fell into a dream.
“Maybe we’ll make quite a haul. They’s been some big deposits lately, I guess. Otherwise Tex wouldn’t be going after the bank right now.”
“A bank?” said I.
“Didn’t you even know that?”
“I know nothing. I’m to learn from you.”
He chuckled. “I’ll show you plenty,” said he. Then he added: “I guess that he wanted to break you in easy. This ain’t much more than a one-man job. You know what I think?”
“Well?”
“This here may be a twenty-thousand-dollar job, kid!”
His voice trembled a little as he said it. He was as keen for money as a fox is for the blood of the goose.
Presently he jumped up.
“Are you ready, kid?”
“I’m ready.”
“Then we’ll start along. By the way the lights are going out, it looks as though most of those birds are roosting.”
The town was as quiet as we could have wished when we went down toward it. Like most small Western places, it was strung out long and narrow, grouped chiefly along the one main street. We rode around behind it and tethered our horses under the shadow of some cottonwoods near the bank of a creek.
Lucas said: “This is straight behind the bank. When we’ve got the stuff, we can beat it straight back here and then ride across the creek. It’s fordable here. I’ve looked over the whole place. I’ve spent a week fixing up everything. We can ford here — ride down between those two willows, and straight across. There’s a deep place on each side, so be sure to ride straight. Then when we get across, there’s clear sailing to the Custer house up yonder in the hills. Do you know Custer?”
I said that I didn’t. He told me that the only thing I would have to think about was to keep close to him.
“That might be a good idea,” said I, “but Tex Cummins told me that as soon as the job was done I had better take half of the stuff and leave you and ride straight back for him.”
He had started walking away from the horses. Now he stopped short and seemed about to speak, but he apparently changed his mind, and we went on together. Again a wave of dislike for Mr. Lucas swelled through me.
We went through the back yard of a house, and a big dog came sneaking out and growled at us. Lucas threw it something which it gobbled at once, and then began to gag and moan.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“I had that dog in mind,” chuckled Lucas. “It’ll never growl at anybody else!”
I knew that he had poisoned the poor beast.
We crossed that yard and came out behind a low-built, thick-walled building of stone. I knew that it must be the bank. Lucas went up to the back entrance and took a key from his pocket which he fitted into the lock.
“How the devil did you get the key?” I asked him.
“Cummins attends to little things like this,” whispered Lucas.
The lock turned with a well-oiled click, and the door opened. Inside, there was a whisper and stir of paper like a whisper and stir of human beings waiting for us in the black of the dark. But Lucas stepped boldly on and flashed an electric torch along the floor.
So he guided me to the front of the building. He posted me at the big plate-glass window. The broad shade was drawn, but I could look out through a crevice and see the watchman pacing up and down.
I sneaked back to Lucas and found that he had opened the door to the safe room and was kneeling in front of the safe. I touched his shoulder, and he turned with a frightened gasp.
“There’s a fellow walking up and down in front of the building,” said I. “Make no noise or he’ll be in at us!”
“The devil, kid,” said Lucas. “The watchman is fixed, if that’s what you mean!”
I went back to my place of lookout. Perhaps it was from the watchman, also, that the necessary keys had been secured. Altogether, this was reducing the dangers of robbery to the minimum, and I wondered how few hundreds had been needed to corrupt this man who paced up and down the walk in front.
Once he stopped short just in front of me. Then he tapped on the window, and I tapped back. He made a reassuring gesture and went off to resume his beat.
I cannot tell you what a wave of disgust and contempt for that man went through me. It was as though a watchdog should lick the hand of a stealthy murderer. My wave of disgust embraced Lucas, Tex Cummins, and myself.
Robbery, on the face of it, had always seemed to me such a frightfully dangerous matter that I had always rather admired the talented and courageous criminals. But now that I could observe at first hand the treachery and the sneaking meanness which underlay this crime and, I had no doubt, most others of the same sort, it fairly turned my stomach.
I had a savage desire to jump up and tell my companion, as he worked away on the safe, that I would have nothing more to do with this affair. But I controlled myself. I had committed myself too far to turn back at this point in the game.
