Max Brand

Speedys Bargain

Warsaw 2019

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER I

CORT swept in his winnings and collected the cards to deal again, when his companion shook his head, pushed back his chair, and stood up with a jingle of spurs.

“I’m busted,” he said.

The concern that William Cort showed was entirely professional in its smoothness, but, like many experienced gamblers in the West, although he had not the slightest scruple in palming cards or running up a pack, he made it a practice to return some of the feathers whenever he had stripped a victim bare.

“Flat broke?” asked Cort. “Well then, take a twenty for luck,” said Cort, pushing the money across the table.

His victim picked up the money, hesitated, and then put it down again. “My luck’s out at cards,” he explained, “and twenty dollars’ worth of whiskey won’t be good for my liver. Keep the coin, brother. I don’t mind losing it, but the game was kind of short. That’s the only trouble.”

Cort picked up the money again with a graceful gesture of regret and glanced over the faces of those who were lingering in the corner of the saloon to watch the game.

“Anybody take a hand?” he asked. “Plenty of you to make up a game of poker,” he added.

But Cort’s manner was too calm and his hands were too long-fingered and well kept; the air of the professional gambler was clearly stamped upon him, and the men of San Lorenzo, Mexican and white, hesitated and then held back, although most people west of the Mississippi seem to regard an invitation to a card game like an invitation to a fight, something that must necessarily be accepted out of sheer manhood.

However, there was one fellow who accepted now. He was a slender youngster with dark, almost femininely expressive eyes, and he said: “I’ll take a hand with you, stranger.”

Cort looked up at him with a welcoming smile that turned almost at once into a look that was almost fear. Then he pushed back his own chair. “Matter of fact,” he said, “I forgot that I haven’t time to tackle a new game. But I’ll buy you a drink, stranger, and play with you some other time.”

The other went with him to the bar and asked for beer, a small one.

“Still the same old Speedy, eh?” said Cort. “Nothing strong enough to make the head dizzy, eh?”

Speedy did not start. He merely said: “You remember me, Cort, do you?”

“Remember you?” said Cort. “I’d be a fool to forget the hand you dealt yourself and a few more of us in Denver, that time. Oh, I know. You were wearing a slightly different face, Speedy, that evening, but enough of you was showing through. After that night, I don’t play with you, Speedy. I make my living out of cards. I don’t aim to lose it.”

Speedy raised his glass of beer and gravely regarded his companion over its foam. “Happy days,” he said.

“And plenty of ‘em,” replied Cort.

They drank, and Cort went on: “How does it come that everybody in town doesn’t follow you around, Speedy, on a day like this, when your man is going to be sentenced to death right here in San Lorenzo? They ought to be making a hero out of you.”

“I’m not a hero,” said Speedy calmly. “Besides, they’ve never seen me wearing a white skin, in San Lorenzo. I’ve always been a peon, when I was here before.”

“I remember,” remarked Cort. “I remember the whole yarn. You went up disguised with a scar on your face and got into the camp of Dupray and kidnapped that murdering scoundrel. I remember it all. It was a cool play, Speedy. A mighty cool play.” From his own superior height, he looked over the smaller man with an air partly of pleasure and partly of admiration. “The judge will be sentencing Dupray in an hour or so, Speedy,” he added. “Is that why you came to town?”

“That’s one reason,” said Speedy. “Not that I want to hear Dupray sentenced to be hanged by the neck until he’s dead, dead, dead, but I want to see what happens afterward.”

“What will happen?”

“I don’t know. I’m just here to look on. It’s not my show, now.” He shrugged his shoulders. “How have things been using you, Bill?” he asked.

“I’ve been getting along fairly well,” said Cort. “I haven’t run into any young Speedy lately. That’s one reason why I’ve had some success.” He smiled a wry smile and squinted as he tried to probe the dim, calm shadows in the eyes of the other. “You never play cards except when you find an expert, Speedy. Even then, you never play until you’re broke. But how does it happen that you’re broke now?”

“Why shouldn’t I be broke?” asked Speedy mildly.

“How could you be?” asked Cort. “You collected nearly two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of loot out of Dupray, people say. And you let the same chunk of money go to the fellow who was with you. Wilson was his name, wasn’t it? You don’t mean to say that you’ve run through that much coin in a month?”

Speedy sighed and shook his head. “Every penny, Bill,” he said. “And that’s bad luck, isn’t it?”

“Bad luck? It’s the wildest luck that I’ve ever heard of, except at a gambling table. And you can’t lose at cards and dice. You know how to make them talk French for you.”

“Well,” Speedy said, sighing again, “I must say, I thought that I’d never have to work again, when I collected that stake. But I was wrong. The luck was against me.”

“What happened? Break into the stock market?” asked the gambler, his eyes twinkling with surprise and with an eager curiosity.

“No, not that. But I dropped half of it through a scheme a fellow had to buy up the dumps of some of the old mines and work them with a new process. It had to be done fast... buying up the old dumps, I mean to say. There was somebody else in the field, I was told, and we had to grab the best dumps quickly. So there was a lot of money to be advanced before the new process was put to work. After I’d put in a hundred thousand dollars... well, my man with the great ideas simply disappeared.”

“The devil he did!” exclaimed Bill Cort. “And you on his trail, eh?”

“I didn’t trail him,” Speedy answered with a troubled frown. “After all, it was only money that I lost,” he added.

“Only one hundred thousand dollars!” gasped Bill Cort. He hastily refilled his glass with whiskey and tossed off the stiff dram. Still he was blinking as he considered what had just been told him. There were other tales in the air, to be sure, and he had heard them many times–tales of how Speedy had been cheated over and over again by cunning charlatans with all sorts of schemes. But it did not seem credible that the man would let the cheats go free–this youngster who could follow a trail across the face of the world as easily as a hawk in the sky can follow the small birds far down closer to the ground.

“Well,” said Bill Cort, “that accounts for half your money, but what became of the last half of it? Another get-rich-quick scheme?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Just a straight business proposition that would pay five or six percent only,” Speedy replied. “It would have done some good, too. It was to put up a good hotel in the mountains, back there, where the air is the purest in the whole world, I guess. Then we’d put in a skilled physician and take only consumptives who were too poor to pay big rates. We’d just charge ’em actual expenses and five or six percent over to keep us running. It sounded like a good idea. There are plenty of sick people in towns who’d like to go to a place like that. And we had a good site in mind. My friend was to put in half, and I put in half, but I made my payment first.” He paused and shook his head, adding: “You see, we had gone into partnership and either of us could sign checks. So after I’d made my deposit, he signed a check, drew out the whole shooting match, and disappeared. That was only the day before yesterday.”

“The day before yesterday, eh?” murmured the gambler. “And you’re not burning up the trail behind that hound?”

“Well,” said Speedy, “I don’t know. It would be a hard job to locate him, the yellow hound. Somehow, I didn’t feel like starting out to rush all over the world after him. I might catch him some time.”

“Otherwise, he gets off scot-free?”

“I suppose so.”

“You beat me, Speedy,” said the larger man, pushing his hat back on his head and then wiping his brow. “You beat me complete and entire. Here you are, a fellow who’ll ride a thousand miles to get into a brawl of some sort or fight for somebody else, and yet you won’t lift a finger to take care of your own affairs?”

“Well, there’s a law in the country, isn’t there?” asked Speedy. “It’s supposed to take care of a man’s private affairs, isn’t it, Bill?”

There was something plaintive in his voice and the other grunted as though struck by the idea for the first time.

“You have me stopped, Speedy,” he said. “I don’t understand at all. I should think that you’d be on those slimy cheats like a hawk. You hound other fellows who get on the shady side of the law, now and then. A fellow like me who makes his living out of the cards... we have to watch you, Speedy. It cost me personally ten thousand dollars and more. Yes, more than ten grand for the privilege of sitting in at a game with you for one evening.” He groaned. “But where your own business comes in, you let the first fly-by-night little crook get away with it, bag and baggage.”

Speedy looked puzzled in turn. “I don’t know, Bill,” he said. “I simply didn’t seem to have any spirit about it... about following the thugs, I mean. I’m going out into the street opposite the courthouse. Coming that way?”

“Sure,” said Bill Cort. He paid and went at once down the street with his companion, adding as they went along: “Here you are in San Lorenzo, and everybody in the town would turn out and give you a cheer if they only knew that you’re the man who...”

“Listen to me,” said Speedy.

“Well?”

“Forget it, will you?” pleaded Speedy.

CHAPTER II

IF Cort found it hard to forget what he had just been talking about, he was at least able to keep silent on the point, although only at the cost of continually shaking his head. To him, it was as though he had just heard of a lion being struck by a lamb, and submitting to the blow!

When they came near the courthouse, Cort said: “Why don’t you go inside, Speedy? Why not step in there and see Dupray take it?”

“And hear the judge sentence him to hang?” Speedy asked with a shudder. “I couldn’t do that, Bill. I haven’t the nerve to stand it.”

“You haven’t the nerve?” exclaimed his companion. “But, great Scott, Speedy, there isn’t anything in you but nerve... tons of it!”

“I couldn’t stand it,” repeated Speedy firmly. “To hear one man, in a black cap, say to another... ‘I condemn you to be hanged by the neck till you are dead, dead.’ No, no, Bill, I couldn’t stand that.”

“But there was never anybody in the history of the world that needed killing as badly as Dupray does,” urged the other. “Why, that devil and his gang have killed scores and scores. You know that, Speedy. You must know all about it.”

“I know a good deal about what Dupray and his people have done,” said Speedy. “But it makes me sick when I think of one man standing up in cold blood and sentencing another man to be killed. It seems to me like murder, like vicious murder. Let’s stand over here and see if anything happens after the sentence is pronounced.”

Cort took his place beside Speedy, across the street from the little courthouse of the town. “D’you think that some of Dupray’s gang may come down here and try to shoot up the crowd to get their boss away?”

“I don’t know,” Speedy said, his eyes absently wandering over the steady stream of men and women who were hurrying up the steps of the building.

“I don’t think,” said the other, “that the gang of Dupray will ever lift a finger for him. Most of ’em are probably glad to be rid of that Gila monster, that frog-faced devil.”

“You’ve seen him, eh?” asked Speedy with interest.

“No, but I’ve heard how he looks. Like a nightmare, eh?”

“He looks like something not human,” Speedy said dreamily. “He looks like something wrong in the brain, something wrong in the soul... or with no soul at all, perhaps, would be the best way to say it.”

He shook his head because of the ugly thought, and again William Cort was amazed, for he felt that he was being privileged, on this day, to see a side of Speedy that was rarely, if ever, shown to the world. If he tried to repeat what Speedy had said to him, other men would not believe the tale. It did not fit into the usual conception of that nerveless, keen hawk of a man, who hovered over this world looking for trouble and loving adventure for the sake of the peril that was in it, and for no other reason.

It would appear from his conversation today that he was peculiarly gullible, in fact, easy prey for the first green goods salesman, the first clumsy confidence man. It would appear that his nerves were so finely attuned that he could not endure a brutal speech.

The whole town of San Lorenzo seemed to have emptied itself up the steps of the courthouse and through its double doors. No one appeared in the street except a twelve-mule team that now entered the foot of the street and came slowly onwards, hauling a wagon with wheels as high as the head of a man. A real old-time freighter was that.

In the meantime, a hush settled over that little white town, and the quiet became so intense that finally Cort could hear out of the distance the wavering, shrill sound of a baby, crying. As the silence grew, so did the volume of that complaining sound appear to grow.

The long wait lengthened. They could hear the distant creak and rattle of the big freighter as it drew nearer. They could watch the tall man who walked beside the near wheeler, with a blacksnake draped over his neck and one hand on the jerk-line. He was becoming an important item in the landscape, and William Cort watched with an eye fascinated, like that of a small child on a drowsy, weary afternoon. Then he was aware that Speedy had started suddenly, and, looking down, he saw that the smaller man had actually put his hands over his ears. His head was bowed; there was a wrinkle of pain across his forehead, and it was plain that he was suffering.

What troubled him? Only now did Cort hear, from across the street and through the wide-open double doors of the courthouse, a droning voice that came faintly to his ears, smaller than the humming of a bee, so was it shrunk by distance. He understood suddenly that it was the voice of the judge, pronouncing sentence.

Speedy had drawn back a little, so that he was resting his shoulders against the wall behind him. Still his head was bowed and his shoulders raised. He was for all the world just like a man facing a bitterly cold wind.

“It’s over,” said Cort, looking curiously at his companion with a little touch of contempt in his eyes. “And right now Dupray can start getting ready to die. He’ll have a lot more time to prepare for death than he’s given some of his victims. What’s the story about what he tried to do to you, Speedy? You and Wilson? Making you hit a half-inch line with a knife at twenty feet, eh? Otherwise, he’d cut your throats? Wasn’t that the story?”

Speedy lifted his head with an impatient light in his eyes. “Bill,” he said, “do you hold it against a mountain lion when it slaughters a calf?”

“That’s the nature of the beast,” said Cort. “Of course, that’s different.”

“Well,” said Speedy, “Dupray’s a beast, and that’s his nature.”

“Then he surely ought to die,” said Cort.

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