Max Brand

The Tenderfoot

Warsaw 2017

Contents

1. A WEAKLING?

2. NATURAL MUSCLE

3. THUNDER IN BOTH FISTS

4. ALLAN WINS MUSTARD

5. THE COMPANION

6. JIM JONES IS WANTED

7. ALLAN’S GREAT BLUNDER

8. THE RESCUE

9. ALLAN GETS GUN PRACTICE

10. ON THE BACK OF MUSTARD

11. JIM’S STORY

12. “YOU’RE AN ACE”

13. SLOW ALLAN MEETS CHRISTOPHER

14. TRUE SPORTSMANSHIP

15. THE LETTERS FROM AL

16. CHRISTOPHER HOLDS A GRUDGE

17. AL DARES DANGER

18. HANDCUFFS ARE NEAR

19. THE HOLDUP STAGED

20. PURSUIT

21. AL’S STUNT

22. THE KID IS RIGHT

23. A TRUMP CARD

24. MURDER NOT AN ADVENTURE

25. OUTLAWS AFTER OUTLAWS’ GOLD

26. TO SACRIFICE ALLAN

27. SLOW AL ENTERS THE RACE

28. TO THE STARVING

29. DANGEROUS DECISION

30. ON THE TRAIL OF ALLAN

31. “DO YOU SURRENDER?”

32. A FIRST-CLASS FOOL

33. COMPLETELY REFORMED

1. A WEAKLING?

He was a sleek young man, not flabby, but with that same smooth-surfaced effect which a seal gives as it swishes around in a pool. He had a round neck which filled out a sixteen-inch collar with perfect plumpness, a round chest, and a pair of long arms. He had pale, mild blue eyes, and a little smile of diffidence played about the corners of his mouth. Yet that gentle smile brought to him only troubles, for sometimes when men saw it they thought that Vincent Allan was deriding them with quietly controlled contempt. The president was one who made that mistake.

He was not the president of the little uptown branch bank where Vincent Allan for five years had inscribed swift, delicately made figures in big ledgers or worked an adding machine with patient deftness. That branch bank was only a tiny little link in the chain of financial institutions of which the great man was the chief, but nothing in his organization was too small for the personal attention of the president. His favorite maxim–and he was a man of many maxims–was: There is plenty of time for everything that one really wishes to do! He not only applied his maxims to himself, but to everyone else, and because he could get along with four hours of sleep per day, he felt that all other men should be able to do the same. He even begrudged the four hours of unconsciousness. He considered sleep a habit, and a most pernicious one.

On this day he had time to attend a luncheon at which the people of his little branch bank were present. After lunch, he made them a speech. He had several speeches which he could use. He had one on honesty, and where it leads! He had another on he who saves. He had another on faithfulness, the golden virtue. He could talk also on the topic: Conscience, the master of us all! But to-day he chose quite a different topic. Usually he was moral, but he liked to surprise people, and on this occasion he chose to speak of the body.

“We are given by God two great things,” said he. “We have a mind which we cannot help using if we wish to survive. We are given a body also, almost equally divine. But how many of you young ladies and young gentlemen use your bodies as they should be used?”

He stabbed a rapid forefinger at them all, one by one, driving home the bitter point of his remark so that the weak knees of those city dwellers quaked; and the president himself quivered with his intensity–every bit of his hundred and twelve pounds trembled.

“Find a gymnasium,” he said. “In this machine-driven age, there are few practical uses for bodily strength. But find a gymnasium. Be brave to admit your weaknesses. Out of such admissions comes strength. It is the strength of the weak–humility! Humility of body, humility of mind, and a devout resolution to make the best of what we have by the careful culture of it–”

He broke off suddenly, flaring red.

“You, young man, may smile. But the scoffers are damned, and the reverent spirits go on to great victories!”

This blast was delivered against poor young Vincent Allan. It wiped the fluttering smile completely off his lips.

Seeing that one among them was being martyred, the other clerks grinned behind their hands. Only the manager of the branch bank grew a little hot of face. He knew the true worth, the shrinking modesty of young Vincent Allan; however, he did not quite dare to speak up to the great man before all these people. He might draw a counter blast upon his own head and be shamed before those whom he employed.

“Stand up!” went on the president. “Stand up that we may see what manner of man dares to mock me when I speak of the culture of the body!”

Vincent Allan rose. His face was flame. Any other would have looked miserably down at the table, but Vincent Allan had this peculiarity–that when he was most shamed and most afraid, he always looked straight into the eyes of that which shamed or that which frightened him.

“How old are you?” asked the president.

“Twenty-three, sir,” murmured Vincent Allan.

It was the meekest, softest voice that ever issued from the throat of a man. The president knew instantly that he had made a mistake and that instead of a hardy cynic there stood before him only a lamb. However, he could not break off so suddenly from the purpose on which he had started. He had prepared the fire, and now he must complete the sacrifice.

“Twenty-three,” sneered the president, frowning at that answer as though it were an admission of the greatest guilt. “Twenty-three years old. And how tall are you, young man?”

“Five feet nine inches, sir.”

“Five feet nine inches? And what do you weigh?”

“A hundred and seventy-five pounds, sir.”

“Fat!” thundered the president. “You are fat. You have twenty-five pounds of fat on you, at least. Perhaps you have forty pounds of fat upon you. Do you know what fat is? It is a sin. It is to the body what idle hours are to the day, what sin is to the soul! You must strip that fat off. You must show your true self. Be yourself. Don’t sit back and scoff. That earnest young man sitting beside you who seems to listen to my words, may very well outstrip you in the race. He may very well do it!”

The earnest young man grew crimson with joy. It was the greatest moment of his young life. It was the greatest moment that he was ever to have in all the long vista of future years.

“Leave idleness and mockery to fools!” thundered the president. “Go to the gymnasium. Learn to know your bodies as you know your brains! You, young man–how many games can you play?”

“None, sir,” murmured the miserable Vincent Allan.

“None! What? Have you never played catch?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you an invalid in your boyhood?” asked the president, relenting a little.

“I–I was working my way through school,” said Vincent Allan faintly. “I–I didn’t have much time, sir, to play.”

“No time to play! No time! Young man, young man, there is time enough for everything that men really want to do. What were you doing at recesses? Why couldn’t you play then?”

“I stayed in the schoolroom, sir.”

“In the schoolroom. The teacher was pretty, I suppose?”

At this feeble jest there was a great uproar of laughter.

“No, sir,” said Vincent Allan, blinking. “But my lessons were always very hard for me. I was slow, sir.”

The president bit his lip. Here was a young man whom he would much rather have held up as an example than as a failure. But he had gone so far that to retreat would be difficult and awkward.

“For the sake of shame, my young friend,” he concluded, “strip the fat off your body and the sleep out of your mind. Be awake. Be alive. Be humble but never stop endeavoring. There is a great goal ahead. A great goal for endeavor! Find a goal. Cleave to it. Now sit down!”

He passed on to his main topic, but Vincent Allan heard only a blur of words. He felt that he had been found out in the commission of the cardinal sin. Just where his great guilt lay he could not be sure, but guilt there was. He felt the burning shame of it hot upon his face and like fire in his heart. He wanted to shrink away from the table, but, as always, he could do nothing but sit and look steadily, expressionlessly, into the face of the president across the long table.

After the luncheon ended he went back to his high stool in the bank. He tried to work, but only an automatic part of his brain was fixed upon his labor. The rest of his consciousness was filled with the certainty that, in some mysterious manner, his existence was for nothing, his life had been thrown away.

Even the back of his neck was still pink with his shame. The other clerks, passing back and forth, saw that color and pointed it out to one another with subtle chucklings. He knew that they were laughing at him. Perhaps they had wanted to laugh all the time. They had seen that he was flabby and fat. No doubt he was a weakling, but if God gave him life, he would make himself as strong as his frame permitted. He would, as the president said, strip the fat from him and leave the reality. So, looking down at his rather small, compact hand and at the feminine roundness of his wrist, he sighed. It seemed plain that there were small possibilities in his physique.

For that matter, there were small possibilities in his brain, either. He was a dull fellow; he had been dull from his birth. His memory of school was a long nightmare. Hardly had one difficulty been overcome before another was to be mastered, and from the brutal struggle with short division he had passed into the intricate mysteries of long–of numerators, denominators, divisors; grammar school had been bad enough, but high school was a long four years of slavery. The very name of algebra still made him shudder. Chemistry was a haunting demon. He always was at the foot of the class until examinations. But when examinations came he did very well. For, slavery though it was, he never shrank from a labor until it was overcome. What he learned was his forever. So it had been in the bank. For the first six months the manager had been on the verge of dismissing him every pay day, but somehow he could not look into the gentle blue eyes of Vincent Allan and speak unkindly. Against his conscience he retained poor Vincent. But at the end of the sixth month he found that Vincent was doing better–astonishingly better. To use a forced simile, he was like a rock which grew. He was only a pebble at first, but that pebble could be built upon. Little by little it became more important. Others might make mistakes, but after Vincent Allan had mastered the intricacies of a job, it seemed almost impossible for him to make a mistake. Of these things the manager thought when he returned to the bank after lunch.

“I was a little hard on that young man,” said the president on parting.

“You were,” said the manager. Then he added: “As a matter of fact, he is the surest, soundest person in the bank!”

He was astonished at himself when he said this, but emotion had forced him to discover the truth even to his own mind. On the way to the bank, he thought it over, but his reflection simply made him more certain. Vincent Allan was the best man on his staff!

So he paused behind the lofty stool of the young clerk in the middle of the afternoon.

To-morrow, he told himself as he went on, he would give that youth a promotion which would astonish him, and dumfound some of the sleek-haired college boys who were in the institution. But his kindly message brought no cheer to Allan. The latter only said to himself: “He pities me. It’s almost better to be tongue lashed than to be pitied!”

And as soon as he had finished his work, he headed straight for the gymnasium.

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