Max Brand (9 page)

Suddenly he felt that he had the clue to the mystery of Cold Feet. As a
matter of fact John Gaspar had never grown up. He was still a weak,
dreamy boy.

The posse had hardly thrown its masks to the wind and galloped down the
road when Sally Bent came running from the house.

"I knew they couldn't," she cried to John Gaspar. "I knew they wouldn't
dare. The cowards! I'll remember every one of them!"

"Hush!" murmured Gaspar. His faint smile was for Riley Sinclair. "One
of them is still here, you see!"

With wrath flushing her face, the girl looked at Riley.

"How do you dare to stay here and face me—after the things you said!"

"Lady," replied Sinclair, "you mean after the things I made you say."

"Just wait till Jerry comes," exclaimed Sally.

At this Sinclair grew more sober.

"Honey," he said dryly, "when your brother drops in, you just calm him
down, will you? Because if him and Gaspar together was to start in
raising trouble—well, they'd be more action than you ever seen in that
cabin before. And, after it was all over, they'd have a dead Gaspar to
cart over to Woodville. You can lay to that!"

It took Sally somewhat aback, this confident ferociousness.

"Them that brag ain't always the ones that do things," she declared.
"But why are you staying here?"

"To keep Gaspar till the sheriff comes for him."

Sally grew white.

"Don't you see that there's nothing to be afraid of?" asked John
Gaspar. "See how close I came to death, and yet I was saved. Why, God
doesn't let innocent men be killed, Sally."

For a moment the girl stared at the schoolteacher with tears in her
eyes; then she flashed at Riley a glance of utter scorn, as if inviting
him to see what an angel upon the earth he was persecuting. But
Sinclair remained unmoved.

He informed them of the conditions of his stay. He must be allowed to
keep John Gaspar in sight at all times. Only suspicious moves he would
resent with violence. Sally Bent heard all of this with openly
expressed hatred and contempt. John Gaspar showed no emotion whatever.

"By heaven," declared Sinclair, when the girl had gone about some
housework, "I'd actually think you believed that God was on your side.
You talk about Him so familiar—like you and Him was partners."

John Gaspar smiled one of his rare smiles. He had a way of looking for
a long moment at another before he spoke. All that he was about to say
was first registered in his face. It was easy to understand how Sally
Bent had been entrapped by the classic regularity of those features and
the strange manner of the schoolteacher. She lived in a country where
masculine men were a drug on the market. John Gaspar was the pleasant
exception.

"You see," explained Gaspar, "I had to cheer Sally by saying something
like that. Women like to have such things said. She'll be absolutely
confident now, because she thinks I'm not disturbed. Very odd, but very
true."

"And it seems to me," said Sinclair, frowning, "that you're not much
disturbed, Gaspar. How does that come?"

"What can I do?"

"Maybe you'd be man enough to try to break away."

"From you? Tush! I know it is impossible. I'd as soon try to hide
myself in an open field from that hawk. No, no! I'll give you my
parole, my word of honor that I'll make no escape."

But Sinclair struck in with: "I don't want your parole. Hang it, man,
just do your best, and I'll do mine. You try to give me the slip, and
I'll try to keep you from it. That's square all around."

Gaspar observed him with what seemed to be a characteristic air of
judicious reserve, very much as if he suspected a trap. A great many
words came up into the throat of Riley Sinclair, but he refrained from
speech.

In a way he was beginning to detest John Gaspar as he had never
detested any human being before or since. To him no sin was so great as
the sin of weakness in a man, and certainly Gaspar was superlatively
weak. He had something in place of courage, but just what that thing
was, Sinclair could not tell.

Curiosity drew him toward the fellow; and these weaknesses repulsed
him. No wonder that he stared at him now in a quandary. One certainty
was growing upon him. He wished Gaspar to escape. It would bring him
shame in Sour Creek, but for the opinion of these men he had not the
slightest respect. Let them think as they pleased.

It came home to Riley that this was a man whose like he had never known
before, and whom he must not, therefore, judge as if he knew him. He
softened his voice. "Gaspar," he said, "keep your head up. Make up
your mind that you'll fight to the last gasp. Why, it makes me plumb
sick to see a grown man give up like you do!"

His scorn rang in his voice, and Gaspar looked at him in wonder.

"You'd ought to be packing yourself full of courage," went on Sinclair.
"Here's your pal, Jerry Bent, coming back. Two agin' one, you'll be.
Ain't that a chance, I ask you?"

But Gaspar shook his head. He seemed even a little amused.

"Not against a man like you, Sinclair. You love fighting, you see.
You're made for fighting. You make me think of that hawk. All beak and
talons, made to tear, remorseless, crafty."

"That's overrating me a pile," muttered Riley, greatly pleased by this
tribute, as he felt it to be. "If you tried, maybe you could do a lot
yourself. You're full of nerves, and a gent that's full of nerves makes
a first-class fighting man, once he finds out what he can do. With them
fingers of yours you could learn to handle a gun like a flash. Start in
and learn to be a man, Gaspar!"

Sinclair stretched a friendly hand toward the shoulder of the smaller
man. The hand passed through thin air. Gaspar had slipped away. He
stood at a greater distance. On his face there was a strong expression
of displeasure.

Sinclair scowled darkly. "Now what d'you mean by that?"

"I mean that I don't envy you," said Gaspar steadily. "I'd rather have
the other thing."

"What other thing, Jig?"

Gaspar overlooked the contemptuous nickname, doubly contemptuous on the
lips of a stranger.

"You go into the world and take what you want. I'm stronger than that."

"How are you stronger?" asked Riley.

"Because I sit in my room, and I can make the world come to me."

"Jig, I was never smart at riddles. Go ahead and clear yourself up with
a few more words."

The other hesitated—not for words, but as if he wondered if it might
be worth while for him to explain. Never in Riley Sinclair's life had
he been taken so lightly.

"Will you follow me into the house?" asked Gaspar at length.

"I'll follow you, right enough," said Sinclair. "That's my job. Lead
on."

He was brought through the living room of the cabin and into a smaller
room to the side.

Comfort seemed to fill this smaller room. Bookcases ranged along one
wall were packed with books. The couch before the window was heaped
with cushions. There was an easy chair with an adjustable back, so that
one could either sit or lie in it. There was a lamp with a big
greenish-yellow shade.

"This is what I mean," murmured Jig.

Riley Sinclair's bold eye roved swiftly, contemptuously. "Well, you got
this place fixed up pretty stuffy," he answered. "Outside of that, hang
me if I see what you mean."

Cold Feet slipped into a chair and, interlacing those fingers whose
delicacy baffled and disturbed Sinclair, stared over them at his
companion.

"I really shouldn't expect you to understand, my friend."

"Friend!" Sinclair exploded. "You're a queer bird, Jig. What do you
mean by 'friend'?"

"Why not?" asked this amazing youth, and the quiet of his face
brightened into a smile. "I'd be swinging from the end of a rope if it
weren't for you, you know."

Sinclair shrugged away this rejoinder. He trod heavily to the
bookshelves, took up two or three random volumes, and tossed them
heedlessly back into place.

"Well, kid, you're going to be yanked out of this little imitation
world of yours pretty pronto."

"Ah, but perhaps not!"

"Eh?"

"Something may happen."

"What can happen?"

"Just something like you, my friend."

The insistence on that word irritated Riley Sandersen.

"Don't call me that," he replied in his most brutal manner. "Jig, d'you
know what a friend means?" he asked. "How d'you figure that word out?"

Jig considered. "A friend is somebody you know and like and are glad to
have around."

Contempt spread on the face of Sinclair. "That's just about what I knew
you'd say."

"Am I wrong?"

"Son, they ain't anything right about you, as far as I can make out.
Wrong? You're as wrong as a yearling in a blizzard. Wrong? I should
tell a man you're wrong! Lemme tell you what a friend is. He's the
bunkie that guards your back in a fight; he's the man that can ask for
your hoss or your gun or your life, no matter how bad you want 'em;
he's the gent that trusts you when the world calls you a liar; he's the
one that don't grin when you're in trouble, who gives a cheer when
you're going good. With a friend you let down the bars and turn your
mind loose like wild hosses. I take out my soul like a gun and show it
to my friend in the palm of my hand. It's sure full of holes and
stains, this life of mine, but my friend checks off the good agin' the
bad, and when you're through he says: 'Partner, now I like you better
because I know you better.'

"Son, I don't know what God means very well, and I ain't any bunkie of
the law, but I'm tolerable well acquainted with what the word 'friend'
means. When you use it, you want to look sharp."

"I really believe," Jig said, "that you would be a friend like that. I
think I understand."

"You don't, though. To a friend you give yourself away, and you get
yourself back bigger and stronger."

"I didn't know," said Jig softly, "that friendship could mean all that.
How many friends have you had?"

The big cowpuncher paused. Then he said gently at length, "One friend."

"In all your life?"

"Sure! I was lucky and had one friend."

Cold Feet leaned forward, eagerness in his eyes. "Tell me about him!"

"I don't know you well enough, son."

That jarring speech thrust Jig back into his chair, as if with a
physical hand. There, as though in covert, he continued to study
Sinclair. Presently he began to nod.

"I knew it from the first, in spite of appearances."

"Knew what?"

"Knew that we'd get along."

"And are we getting along, Jig?"

"I think so."

"Glad of that," muttered the cowpuncher dryly.

"Ah," cried John Gaspar, "you're not as hard as you seem. One of these
days I'll prove it. Besides, you won't forget me."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

Jig rose from his chair and stood leaning against it, his hands dropped
lightly into the pockets of his dressing gown. He looked
extraordinarily boyish at that moment, and he seemed to have the
fearlessness of a child which knows that the world has no real account
against it. Riley Sinclair set his teeth to keep back a flood of pity
that rose in him.

"You wait and see," said Jig. He raised a finger at Sinclair. "I'll
keep coming back into your mind a long time after you leave me; and
you'll keep coming back into my mind. Oh, I know it!"

"How in thunder do you?"

"I don't know. Just because—well, how did I understand at the trial
that you knew I was innocent, and that you would let no harm come to
me?"

"Did you know that?" asked Sinclair.

Instead of answering, Jig broke into his soft, pleasant laughter.

"Laugh and be hanged," declared Sinclair. "I'm going outside. And don't
try no funny breaks while I'm gone," he said. "I'll be watching and
waiting when you ain't expecting." With that he was gone.

At the door of the house a gust of hot wind struck him, for the day was
verging on noon, and there seemed more heat than light in the sun. Even
to that hot gust Sinclair jerked his bandanna knot aside and opened his
throat gratefully. He felt as if he had been under a hard nervous
strain for some time past. Cold Feet, the craven, the weak of hand and
the frail of spirit, had tested him in a new way. He had been
confronting a novel and unaccountable thing. He felt very oddly as if
someone had been prodding into corners of his nature yet unknown even
to himself. He tingled from the rapier touches of that last laughter.

Now his eyes roamed with relief across the valley. Heat waves blurred
the hollow and pushed Sour Creek away until it seemed a river of
mist—yellow mist. He raised his attention out of that sweltering
hollow to the cool, blue, mighty mountains—his country!

Presently he had forgotten all this. He settled his hat on the back of
his head and began to kick a stone before him, following it aimlessly.

Someone was humming close to him, and he turned sharply to see Sally
Bent go by, carrying a bucket. She smiled generously, and though he
knew that she doubtless hated him in her heart and smiled for a
purpose, he had to reply with a perfunctory grin. He stalked after her
to the little leaping creek and dipped out a full bucket.

"Thanks," said Sally, wantonly meeting his eye.

As well try to soften a sphinx. Sinclair carried the dripping bucket on
the side nearest the girl and thereby gained valuable distance. "I'm
mighty glad it's you and not one of the rest," confided Sally, still
smiling firmly up to him.

He avoided that appeal with a grunt.

"Like Sandersen, say," went on the girl.

"Why not him?"

"He's a bad hombre," said the girl. "Hate to have Jig in his hands.
With you it's different."

Sinclair waited until he had put down the bucket in the kitchen. Then
he faced Sally thoughtfully.