Speedy E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

They called him Speedy because he could outsmart bankers, outfox barkeeps, and outwit bounty hunters faster than any man alive. He arrived on an iron horse. The day he rode into Durfee, he was more than ready to use his skills to make a killing. To Speedy, Durfee didn’t look any different from a hundred other towns he’d seen before. There were fat bankers waiting for his smooth talk, and lovely young ladies ready to swoon over his smile and his guitar playing. But this time the charming trickster was about to meet his match – in a girl out to steal his heart! Every page of this western is full of action and situations that you can’t wait to find out how Speedy is going to get out of alive.

Leseprobe

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 XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER I

WHEN John Pierson had a dog and a gun, he felt as though he owned the entire range of the Rocky Mountains from head to heel. And he had the gun and the dog with him, and there were still two days of clear vacationing before the moment when he had to turn back towards his home. He loved his home and he had made it worth living. He loved his work, and he had made it worth loving. But still his heart was half the time running out the window of his office and plunging off among the blue peaks that he could see.

It was not often that he got there in person. A week end here, and a fortnight in the slack season of the year were about all that he could afford. But he took what he could in the way of mountain days.

He was on foot. He had been raised on a horse, but when his time was so short, he generally felt that one got closer to the heart of things by walking. And so he walked now, with a good, free, powerful stride, in spite of his closeness to fifty years of age. He went uphill with a strong drive; he went downhill on springs. He was a big fellow, built like a rock, bull-necked, brown-faced. The tan on the back of his neck had been built up layer by layer since the days when he was a tow-headed boy riding range on a Texas ranch.

He was given a slightly professional touch, perhaps, by the short cropped mustache that he wore; it was still jet black, and glistening, though his hair was very gray. And in the keen, straight-looking blue eyes was the soul of the acquisitive man. Even the glance with which he surveyed the mountains he loved was almost that of one estimating their acreage, regretting that sheep were not browsing on the difficult patches of upland grass, or that cattle were not dotting the lower valleys.

In one of those lower valleys he paused so long that the dog lay down in the grass and began to roll and play with itself, as though confident that the day’s work and sport were over. For the master was lost in delight.

It was not much of a valley. It was a little broken ravine with a twisting, singing line of silver water thrown along the length of it. But it had groves along the banks, or single big trees thrusting out at a slant, holding green sunshades, as it were, over picnic grounds. And there were thickets of blooming shrubbery, and here a patch of rocks thrust up through the soil, glistening, the bony knees of Mother Earth breaking through a threadbare place. But mostly the water was enchanting. For sometimes it roared over a little cataract and multiplied itself with shadows, and in all ways tried to imitate a real river. And again it shot down a steep flume with a hissing sound of speed; but finally, it paused entirely in a large pool.

The very soul of John Pierson had paused there, also, and while the dog rolled in the grass, he was probing the mirrored mountains, the sky, the white blowing clouds that were quickly lost in the shrubbery along the banks, like sheep; and then the quick shadow of a soaring hawk skimmed across the water.

Down there below, where the water broke down from the pool and began to wrinkle as it gathered speed–there ought to be fish in that spot, among the rocks–good brook trout, basking there, loving their shadows and scornful of man! He saw exactly where he could stand, first here and then there, doing his casting. It was not long before lunch. He had shot nothing. And he determined that he would eat fish this day! It was one of his boasts that when he adventured into the mountains, he never took with him more than his rifle and his fishing rod and salt. Nature had to provide for all his needs–nature and his ability to harvest her gifts.

He screwed the pieces of the rod together and then tried the balance and whip of it with an expert hand. He was proud of that hand; the wrist was steel-strong, even now, when he was deep in middle age. And his touch was delicate, and his eye was sure. He would be able to fish that stream as no one had fished it before, as no one might fish it again. The trout that escaped from him would die of old age, he assured himself, as he selected his fly.

He whipped out a sufficient length of line, smiling with delight as he listened to the sharp, small whistling of the thread cutting the air. In the canon above, he could hear in the distance the talking of the little river, a musical, excited conversation. Farther down the stream, there was the harsh crashing of the water as it tripped over a ledge of rock and smashed itself into foam and spray on a base fifty or sixty feet below.

But though this sound was both steady and ominous, it was not loud. It needs only a little distance of the thin air of the mountains to muffle noise. Indeed, to the ear of the lawyer, there was just enough sound to make him conscious of the voice of the mountains; there was enough sound to make him dream in the upland quiet into which he would be plunging, before long. He would lift above the valleys before the midafternoon. He would be shouldering among the peaks, where only the wind talks, and the insects sing and whisper in small hushing waves of sound.

He was content. He was mightily content, and now he made his first cast–the line flew far, and flicked the water as straight as though its length had been ruled.

He admired that cast, the accuracy of it. Like the true fisherman, the fish were only in a corner of his mind, and his way of catching them was all that mattered.

He had dropped the fly just on the verge of the shadow that sloped down beside a big rock, and he had half finished reeling in his line, when the strumming of a guitar, nearby, smote his ear like the roar of trains, the disputing of voices, the whole angry noise of civilized, hurrying, foolish man.

And then a voice, pleasant enough, a man’s baritone voice, rang through the glade, singing:

“Julia, you are peculiar, Julia, you are queer; Truly, you are unruly, As a wild, western steer. Sweetheart, when we marry, Dear one, you and I, Julia, You little mule you, I’m gunna rule you, Or die!”

The lawyer finished reeling in his line and then put the rod, for a moment, over his shoulder. He looked for the singer with an air of personal insult. He had been snatched back too suddenly into the follies and vanities and idiocies of the youth of the world.

And now he found the musician, just finishing, his mouth wide on the last note. He was lying on a grassy ledge not twenty feet from the fisherman; the guitar was in his lap, his coat was rolled to support his head comfortably against the bank at his back.

The wrath of the older man overflowed. For he could see worthlessness in the tattered clothes of this boy, and in his too-handsome face. Good looks, when they pass a certain point, always appear a trifle effeminate, a weakening of the true male character. And this lad was made with the scrupulous care that should better have been bestowed on the making of a reigning beauty. He was slim, delicate, dainty. He had big, brown, sleepy, indifferent eyes. His rather swarthy skin bloomed with color. And he was set off, with the vanity of one who knew his good point, by a necktie of flaring yellow and blue.

The lip of John Pierson curled with wrath and scorn.

“Young man,” he said, hotly, “d’you know that these mountains are not the place for young ragtime fools?”

He wanted to thrash the boy. He wanted to make him jump and howl. There was in him a great possibility of the family tyrant, though as a matter of fact his only child was a daughter who ruled him with an easy and impertinent adroitness. He knew that she was the monarch of the house, and yet he loved her all the more. But his sense of failure with her, made him a little more absolute in his dealings with others in the world.

The musician, pushing himself languidly up on one elbow, first plucked a blade of grass and began to bite at it absently, studying the stranger.

“Is this a reservation for tired lawyers, sir?” said he.

And as though to point the insolence of his remark, he raised his hat and bowed a very little to John Pierson.

The wrath of the latter flamed higher.

He could hardly say what irritated him most in this speech–the air with which it was delivered, the goodness of the English and the enunciation, or the happy guess which it contained as to his profession. Everything combined with the place and what had gone before to madden Pierson.

He said, “Your kind of nonsense ought to be kept for Mexican cafés. Are you a Mexican, young man?”

“No such luck,” said the boy.

He resettled the coat under his head, so that he could regard Pierson more comfortably, without quite sitting up.

“No such luck,” snapped Pierson. “You rather be one, eh?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” said the other, yawning a little, and covering his mouth with a graceful, slender hand. “You know how it is, Mr. Lawyer; one grows a little tired of hearing the eagle scream, because it’s usually yipping about work. ‘Work, work, young man. In work is salvation. The kingdom of God is in the muscles!’ And that sort of thing.”

It was the most offensive statement that Pierson had ever heard. He guessed that a philosophy of indolence lay behind it, and vice is never so damnable as when the vicious justify their actions.

“You, I take it,” said he, “are a fellow who doesn’t care what the eagle screams?”

“Not a bit,” said the other, “except when it turns me out of bed. I came up here to rest a little, but I see that the eagle has spotted me. He’s screaming in my ear, again.”

At this not too subtle reference to himself, the heat of Pierson increased.

“If we were a little nearer my home town,” said he, “I’d find a more secure place for you to rest, my friend. Where you wouldn’t spoil a landscape. They’d find something for you to work at, for about thirty days.”

“No, no,” said the youngster.

He showed his hands, smiling.

“For here,” said he, “you see hands which have never yet been stained by work or fee!”

CHAPTER II

NEVER in his life had John Pierson met with a human being who so thoroughly irritated him in every way as did this lad.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-two, sir,” said the boy, with a false humility.

“College, eh?”

“Part way, sir.”

“Stop calling me ‘sir!’”

“Very well, sir.”

Now, in his own town, throughout his community, and in many ways it was a large one, Pierson was a man of great influence and power. His word was respected, his advice followed. Throughout this same mountain district, there were few people, no matter what their position, who would not gladly have bowed to him. Here was the exception, and a most unpleasant one it proved. He was even angry with himself because a worthless waif moved him so much.

“My boy,” said he, “I will make a bargain with you. This place happens to suit me. There must be a thousand others where you can lie on grass just as soft as that. I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll stir along.”

The boy nodded, not as one assenting, but one considering.

“That’s a matter,” he declared at last, “that needs a lot of considering. In the first place, there’s the question of the way this bank fits my back. Nature isn’t such a handy cabinet maker, you know.”

“Humph!” said the lawyer.

“Then there’s the fish to consider,” said the boy.

“The fish?”

“I’ve been seeing the glint of ’em down there in the water for some time. I’d hate to disturb ’em as long as the sun is shining like this.”

“But after it stops shining?” suggested the lawyer.

“Oh, then I’d eat a dozen of ’em with a lot of pleasure, thank you.”

“A very good speech for the perfect opportunist,” said the man of the law.

“Finally, and the thing that seems to close the question,” went on the handsome tramp, “there’s the matter of my profession.”

“Ah-ha,” said the lawyer. “And what might your profession be?”

“Acting,” said this brazen-faced lad.

“You’re an actor, are you? What parts do you play?” demanded Pierson.

“Sometimes,” said the boy, “I’m a son who’s been disinherited by a cruel father. Sometimes, I’ve been robbed by greedy lawyers.”

“Stuff!” said Pierson. “You mean that these are the tales you tell to credulous fools?”

“Sometimes,” went on the boy, “I’m about to go to work to earn enough money to finish my school course. Sometimes I’m recovering from an attack of the great white plague.”

“Consumption, my foot,” said Pierson. “You’re as healthy a specimen as I ever saw.”

“When one plays many roles, one needs makeup,” said the boy.

He seemed pleased as he related his roguery; whatever annoyed the older man seemed delectable to him.

“Then again,” said the boy, “I’ve been the son of a rich American owner of mines in Mexico. He and the whole family murdered, myself knifed and shot almost to pieces by Mexican brigands, I have fled north out of the country, and so I find myself destitute, but determined, one day, to return to the land where I have been wronged, and revenge my dead father and brothers and sisters upon the murderers!”

The lawyer nodded.

“In fact,” said he, “You’re a professional beggar.”

“If you heard one of my yarns,” said the boy, yawning, “you’d give it a more complimentary name. I ought, in fact, to be a writer; but even writing, in short, is a form of labor.”

“I suppose it is,” said the lawyer. “Tell me, my young friend, do the dolts to whom you tell the Mexican story ever ask to see your scars?”

“I have even stripped to the waist,” said the boy. “It’s something that I don’t like to do, but if I find, say a Texan who doesn’t like greasers, I’ve stripped to the waist to show where the bullets struck and the knives cut. That is generally worth several hundred dollars.”

“You’re a thorough rascal,” said the lawyer.

“It’s my profession,” answered the boy. “You can’t blame a man for what he does inside his profession.”

“Profession? Stuff! You make up the scars that the idiots think they see on your body?”

“You know how it is,” said the youngster. “When one is shouldering his way around the world, one bumps into various obstacles that are capable of making wounds.”

“Such as the toss of hobnailed boots,” suggested the lawyer.

“Yes,” answered the boy, without appearing to take offense, “or it may be the iron-framed lantern of a shack.”

“You work the railways a good deal, I suppose?” said Pierson.

“Horses are usually too slow for me,” said the boy.

“Yes,” nodded Pierson. “I dare say that when you leave a place you usually have to leave fast.”

“And go far,” remarked the lad.

“Now and then,” said the lawyer, “you will meet up with a dupe of a former day, too?”

“Now and then,” agreed the boy, cheerfully. “But on the whole, this is an amazingly large world.”

“You’re young,” said the lawyer. “As you get older, you may find more thorns on the bush.”

“As I grow older, I grow more expert,” said the lad.

“Tell me,” said the lawyer, “what you call yourself?”

“An entertainer,” said the boy.

In spite of himself, Pierson was forced to chuckle.

“And what name do you work under?”

“I’ve been called a good many names,” answered the tramp, “some of them long, and some of them short. I’ve been called more one-syllable names than almost anyone in the world, I suppose. But the one I prefer is Speedy.”

“Speedy?”

“You will see how it is,” answered the tramp. “I sometimes give people a fast ride, and they generally have quite a bill to pay at the end of it.”

“If you come into my community,” said Pierson, “you won’t take many for more than a short ride.”

“No?”

“No,” said Pierson.

“What’s your town, if you please?”

“Durfee.”

“I’ve heard of that place. How many people?”

“About ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand? That’s plenty. Ten thousand is a whole world of opportunity, to me. When do you go home?”

“In about three days.”

“Very well,” said Speedy, “I’ll guarantee to be there. I’ll guarantee to call on you at once, and let you know where I am, and whom I’m working on. And in spite of you, I’ll promise that I’ll come away with a good slice of coin.”

“Impossible, you impertinent young rat,” said Pierson, swelling more and more with his anger.

“Well,” said Speedy, “I’ll make you a bet.”

“Very well. I’ll take the bet.”

“You give me odds, of course?”

“I give you odds? Why should I give you odds?”

“Because I hope that you’re a fair sport. Here I am putting my cards on the table. I’m the mouse entering the lion’s den. I’m going to go to your home town, where the celebrated legal power and brain, Mr. John W. Smith, is like the very blood brother of God Almighty, and there–”

“My name is John Pierson,” said the lawyer, coldly. “I’ll bet you three hundred dollars to one hundred that you don’t make enough in Durfee to pay your end of the bet.”

“Good,” said the boy. “That’s only an evening’s work for me. The day I tell you on whom I’m intending to work, I’ll guarantee that I get the money in hard cash. I’ll collect from you the next morning.”

“The next morning you’ll be in jail for vagabondage,” said the lawyer.

“I’ll accept another bet at evens, on that account,” said the boy.

“Perhaps you’ve never even been in jail, my lad?” suggested Pierson.

“I’ve been there,” said the boy. “Once I even rested for a week, but that was because an unlucky Mexican had put a knife through my leg.”

“Through the leg?” asked the lawyer, doubtfully. “Mexicans don’t stab people in the leg!”

“This one started his knife for my heart,” admitted the boy, nonchalantly, “but I kicked him in the face, and that rather spoiled his aim.”

“I suppose,” said the lawyer, frowning, “that you’re an expert gunman, yourself?”

He maintained his scowl for a time. After all, there was a light in the boy’s eyes that might not be altogether effeminacy.

“I never carried a weapon in my life,” said Speedy. “It’s not my way. Guns? Horrible things. They shoot men into prison. No, no, I never carry weapons.”

“You carry the weight of a good many beatings, then,” said the other.

“Now and then I’ve had a stick broken over my shoulders,” admitted Speedy. “Now and then a bullet grazes me. Now and then a knife is stuck in me. But you know how it is–this is a world of sweets and sours, and–”

“You worthless, hypocritical–” began the lawyer.

And then he checked himself.

“I apologize,” he said, ironically. “I forget that you simply are one who works inside his profession.”

“Exactly so,” said the boy, “and also–”

He also stopped.

For this time an interruption came from the little brown and black mongrel, whose wits and nose served Pierson.

It had started up a rabbit among the rocks. The rabbit had jumped the stream, and the brave little puppy had unwisely attempted the same feat. The result was that it fell plump into the middle of the stream, and was now whirling round and round, barking a call for help, as the water swept it rapidly down towards the brink of the waterfall.

CHAPTER III

THE lawyer loved all animals, but above all he loved this little brown and black mongrel. He had used thoroughbred pointers, before, and now he had been amazed by the ability of the cur to do as much as any of the others. It was, perhaps, a little overeager. That was its only fault, and it is the best of all demerits in a young dog. For the rest, it was picking up the right education to a surprising degree; and it loved hunting as much as its master did.

Now, when he saw it spinning on the brink of destruction, he uttered a great cry, that choked short off in the middle, so furiously was he running to the rescue. But he knew, before he had taken ten strides, that he would be too late. It was a bitter moment for John Pierson, and the more so when he saw, or thought he saw, the appealing glance of the dog fixed specially upon him as it was carried down to destruction.

Then a slim form went by him, the tramp, the lazy and worthless sponger, Speedy. He ran like a deer, with a sprinter’s high action, with a sprinter’s long and powerfully reaching stride. It seemed that his toes barely tipped the earth as he fled towards the danger point.

The lawyer shouted hoarse and short in appreciation and amazement. For how had the boy managed to get down from his higher perch so suddenly and appear in this fashion in front of the race?

Even the tramp would be too late, however. That appeared clear. But, reaching the bank of the little stream, he threw himself headlong in, with a long, beautiful, flat dive.

He struck the water below the dog, well beneath it down the course. The power of the current jerked at him, and yet he found his feet with a wonderful dexterity, and instantly scooped the puppy out of the current and flung it well to the shore.

In that effort, he overbalanced. The smooth, powerful sheet of the current was striking him above the knees, and curling to his waist. Now, as he staggered, it seemed to rise in a wave and strike him with a renewed power. Over he went, fighting with his arms to regain his poise, but fighting in vain. Over he went, and though he turned in the water like a snake in the effort to regain his feet, the force of the water had him at too great a disadvantage, and he shot over the brink of the cliff.

The lawyer stood stock still. The moment, the dreadful picture, was burning into his brain, never to be eradicated. And he remembered one thing that would never leave his mind. It was the fact that the boy had not cried out. Silently, like a hero, he had left this life, and left behind him, his wretched trickeries, the thousand deceits of his profession. But his heart was great. John Pierson swore that, from that moment, his heart would be enlarged to look upon rogues with a tenderer understanding.

Then he saw the mongrel standing on the verge of the bank, below the rim of the fall, and barking furiously.

“He has seen the body!” thought Pierson, grimly, and strode forward to see.

What he saw made him cry out like a madman with joy.

For there was Speedy hanging by his hands from a projection of rock just under the lip of the waterfall. He kicked his feet above fifty feet of empty space which lay between him and the cruel teeth of stone on which the stream was shattering.

But even now, the boy swung his body like a pendulum and shifted his grip to another jutting bit of the stone.

What a handhold to swing by over the lip of destruction! The spray from the falls had covered the stone with moss and with green slime. And one slip of the fingers would be the last slip on this earth for Speedy!

Yet, as he swung there, he deliberately turned his head and smiled and nodded at the lawyer.

It swelled the heart of John Pierson to the bursting point.

How could he help? He got out farther towards the ledge, lay flat, and stretched out his hand. But there was still a good distance between him and the place where the boy was working slowly, from point to point.

Now one hand gave way. The boy hung by the grip of the other, only, and at that moment, inspired by the devil, a contrary gust of wind curled a sheet of the falling water aslant and struck it heavily against the body of the boy.

“The end!” said Pierson.

But it was not the end. With a desperate effort, his body convulsed by it, Speedy managed to reach out to a fresh hold with his left hand, and now behold him under the very hand of the lawyer.

“Here!” shouted Pierson.

His arm was strong, his wrist was steel, his body was anchored by a very solid and substantial weight. In a moment he had both of the boy’s wet hands in his. And what a grip they gave him! He was amazed at the strength in Speedy, the idler.

Then, heaving up with all his might, he swayed the boy high as the armpits up to the edge of the rock.

Speedy was in a moment lying on his back on the grass. He lay with his arms thrown out to the side. He lay like a cross upon the green. There was no working of the face, no exaggeration. Only the flare of the nostrils, the stern straightness of the upper lip, the heaving of the breast in long breaths, told Pierson of the strain through which Speedy had been passing.

For his own part, he was shaking from head to foot. He sat down by the boy and pulled out his feet and watched a thing that oddly pleased him, but that oddly touched him in a raw spot.

It was the little mongrel, Brownie, making his demonstration of joy and of gladness of living, and of gratitude, not to his master but, rightly enough, to his deliverer from danger. And now, sopping wet as he was, he lay curled on the not less soaking breast of Speedy’s coat and licked his face, and beat his tail frantically, whining.

Yes, it was very right that he should make a fuss over the boy. He certainly had earned Brownie’s devotion. And yet the heart of John Pierson was a little sore. He was ashamed of this secondary emotion. It made him feel smaller than ever.

At last the boy sat up, held himself there on the stiff of both arms for a moment, and then rose to his feet. The lawyer watched him, but said not a word, for there was not a word to say.

And, calmly, deliberately, Speedy peeled off his soaked clothes, wrung them out, and laid them on shrubs to dry. Pierson noted, with interest, that if the outer clothes were shabby, the underclothes were scrupulously clean. Moreover, the body underneath them was clean, and brown as if from long seasons on beaches–the rather scrawny body of a young boy, but outfitted with stringy muscles that explained at a glance how the athletic feats under the brink of the waterfall had been accomplished.

Well, many an idler might be an athlete as well, trained by swimming, by tennis, by dancing and riding until he was as tautly stringed with power and muscle as any football player or day laborer.

These things occurred to the somber eye of Pierson, as he considered the boy.

He had filled his pipe, and now he was smoking and thinking of many things–and, for the first time in a good many years, not of himself.

Said Speedy:

“That’s the coldest water that I’ve seen in a long time.”

He turned his back to the sun, that it might dry that part of him more quickly.

“That’s snow water,” said Pierson.

He thought it odd that these should be the first words interchanged between them, after the boy’s heroism. But, the more the event receded in time, the more impossible it was to speak of the thing. What made it perfect was that the cause for the courage was so small. If it had been a child say–well, it would not have been half so admirable.

He looked back at the spot of the bank where the toes of Speedy had gouged deeply into the ground as he took his header into the stream.

It seemed to be at the very edge of the falls. And he, Pierson, would never have been able to attempt such a feat. Furthermore, if he had, by this time he would be a pulpy, smashed and broken corpse, pounding to pieces among the rocks where the water shattered itself in volley after volley.

“Speedy,” he said, “I want to say something to you.”

“I’ll tell you something first,” said Speedy. “Don’t you say it. Let it be, please. You’re going to give me some good advice and wind up with calling me a lot of pleasant names; you’re going to apologize for telling me a few home truths, just before this, and you’ll probably offer me a place in your sun. But don’t you do it.”

Even now the lawyer could be a little vexed by the cool insight of the boy.

But he said: “I wish you’d listen to me, Speedy.”

“I won’t though,” said the boy. “It’s happened a couple of times before that people have got a wrong idea about me. Hell, I know that I’m not all bad. But I know that I’m a damned long ways from all good, too. I don’t get away from that, Mr. Pierson. And it makes me sick to cash in on a foolish impression, unless I’ve worked to make it, professionally. And just now,” he added, with a smile, “I wasn’t being professional.”

“No,” burst out the lawyer, “you were being–”

He checked himself before the extravagant word. It had been well enough earned, but something told him that it was not wanted. He could see the relief spread on the face of the youngster as he made the pause.

“What do you call making a fool professionally?” he asked, at last.

“I’ll tell you,” said the boy. “We’re all men, we all have a share of brains, we all want money, we all want an easy time. Well, your dollars are your treasure; your wits are the soldiers that guard it. If I can put your soldiers to sleep, I take your money. That’s my game, and it’s a good game. It beats chess all hollow.”

“You hate to make a false impression,” grinned Pierson, “unless you’ve intended exactly that thing. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” said the boy. “That’s part of it. Now, you and I understand each other a good deal better. Brownie and I are friends. And I warn you–if I take that three hundred–no, it’s four hundred dollars–off you in Durfee, I’ll dance on your front porch and laugh in your face, Mr. John Pierson!”

CHAPTER IV

THE house of John Pierson in Durfee was not pretentious. His wife and daughter were often at him to build a much finer place because, as they pointed out, his income and his fortune both warranted such an outlay. But he continually refused.

“If I build a big house,” said he, “people will be afraid to come to me. They’ll know that the fees they pay are what support me. They’ll begin to figure out my income. As it is, they can’t tell. I take a good many charity cases. They never know just what I rake in. Believe me, my dears, there is nothing that makes a man unpopular in a small Western town so quickly as a large income which they know he bleeds out of the town without producing anything.”

“Producing!” said his wife, on this evening of his return from the mountains. “Producing indeed! I should like to know what man in Durfee produces more hard work than you do!”

“That’s very well,” said Pierson, who was at heart a very fair man, “but you must understand that after all, what I produce is only words. I don’t raise grain or cattle, or dig minerals out of the ground, or turn trees into lumber, or make cloth, or do anything else that has a concrete value in the eyes of the world.”

“Stuff!” said his wife. “You keep the affairs of people straight!”

“There is nothing,” said Pierson, “that men hate so much as paying for advice.”

“There’s no use talking any more, Mother,” said Charlotte Pierson, the daughter of the family. “Father is beginning to philosophize, and you know that when that happens neither of us can argue with him.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Pierson, “and it’s tiresome. I’m going into the house and let you sit out here with your philosophy and your thoughts about that tramp in the mountains. I should like to see that boy, though.”

“You probably will,” said Pierson, “when he comes to try to win his bet.”

“I never heard of such nonsense as that bet,” said Charlotte. “Of course he can’t do that. Because you’ll even have a chance to warn the proposed victim.”

At this point, a slender man walked down the street, paused, and then turned in up the path towards the Pierson veranda. He walked with a leisurely step, and when he came to the foot of the steps, he said: “Is this the house of Mr. John Pierson?”

“It’s Speedy!” said Pierson, springing up in excitement. “Charlotte, call Brownie, will you? Come up here, Speedy. I’m glad to see you. Mary, this is Speedy, about whom I was talking to you.”

The boy paused again, a step from the top, and bowed to Mrs. Pierson. Charlotte could be heard calling Brownie from the back porch of the house; and presently there was a scampering of the dog’s feet as it tore through the house, barking with excitement.

“He’ll know you, Speedy,” said Pierson, half kindly, half jealously. “The little rascal–”

Here Brownie knocked the screen door wide open with a blow of his forefeet, and sprang up straight at the stranger and then began to leap and whine and bark as though his real master had just come back.

“There you are,” said Pierson. “I told you so. Brownie, let him alone, now. Down, sir, down!”

There was some impatience in his voice. He could not be altogether pleased when he saw his favorite hunting dog making such a demonstration over another man.

Then Charlotte Pierson came out on the porch. The lamplight caught in her blonde hair and set it shining about her face. She was twenty, straight as a string, brown as leather and pert as an unbroken mustang, running wild.

“Charlotte,” said the lawyer, “this is Speedy. I told you that he’d turn up!”

Charlotte did not hesitate. She went forward and thanked the stranger.

She even let her hand linger in his, while she looked more closely into his face; for he was so dark that, in this light, it was hard to see him with any accuracy.

Her father was somewhat angered. He did not see why his girl should be so familiar with a tramp, no matter what good qualities that tramp might have.

So he broke in: “How did you get here so soon, Speedy?”

“Why not?” asked the boy. “I came on the same train that brought you.”

“The deuce you did,” said Pierson. “You couldn’t have done that, Speedy!”

“That’s the train I came on,” persisted the tramp.

“I had an idea that you might try that trick,” said Pierson, “and so I warned the conductor, and he warned the brakeman. I know that both of them watched for you every minute.”

“It wasn’t an altogether easy trip for me,” admitted the boy. “I started on the coal tender, and then I had to shift to blind baggage. They chased me off that, and it was the rods for a while, and then the top of the last coach, and, finally, I got pretty tired, so I came down and sat in a seat, and finished the ride on the cushions.”

“What!” exclaimed Pierson. “Didn’t they see you?”

“Sure they saw me–with my coat off, and a smudge of soot across one eye and the bridge of my nose–that’s as good as a complete mask, you know. And I had my sleeves rolled up, and a plumbing wrench in my hand. The conductor just thought that I was going back to Durfee from a railroad repair job down the line.”

Pierson lay back in his chair and laughed heartily. So did Charlotte. But Mrs. Pierson said that she could not understand what it was all about.

“It means that he beat me,” said Pierson, frankly. “And now, my lad, what’s your next step in Durfee?”

“My next step is to win the bet,” said the boy.