The Fugitive (30 page)

There was even time for Speedy to see Wilson, also, as he stood just inside the swinging doors of the saloon, with his head thrown up and back, his face deadly pale. Such was the strife of emotion within his spirit, but there was an overriding gleam in his eyes that, it seemed to Speedy, had been born back there in the hotel room when he leaned above him as he was stretched on the floor.

He had a mere half second to see these things. Then, as big Slade Bennett turned and fired, John Wilson, calmly, deliberately, as it seemed, drew his own gun and shot Slade Bennett down.

Twice had Slade fired, so much greater was his speed of hand than Wilson's, but twice he had missed, and the first fire of Wilson brought down his man.

Speedy went across the floor in an instant and was on his knees beside the fallen man. He tore open coat and shirt, and found the purple spot out of which the blood was oozing gradually, a mere drop at a time, and, with that glance, and by a look at the purple-white band that was forming around the mouth of Bennett, he knew that the end had come for the gunman. Slade Bennett did not open his eyes, but in his breathing he groaned and there was a bubbling in his throat.

Other men came up. A hard, ringing voice, just over the head of Speedy, said: “I'm sorry for this. And I'd like to help. What can I do for him?”

Speedy looked up and saw John Wilson, a man transformed. The color was back in his face; his eyes flamed; a sort of swelling and transcendent power was quivering in his voice and in his eyes, like an overcharge of light or electricity.

Speedy said coldly: “The thing for you to do, and all the rest, is to take off your hats. Slade Bennett's dying. Where's a doctor?”

There was always at least one doctor present in such a crowd in those days, and now the man of science came forward to do what he could.

But Speedy did not leave the fallen man. He said: “Slade, Slade. They've found out about everything. They've found out that you murdered Dodson. What are we going to do about it?”

The eyes of Slade Bennett flashed open and closed again; his mouth sneered. “Dodson had to get it,” he said. “You know why I killed him, Jerry. After I stabbed him, I made it look as though that fool, that Oliver Fenton, had turned the trick. Honest people are all jackasses. The sheriffs have been hunting Fenton, and I've walked about the streets. Jerry, open the window, open the door, I'm choking.” He raised himself on his hands with his eyes wide, but frightfully unseeing. On his hands and his heels, his body stiffened an instant, then he collapsed.

Speedy, reaching past the doctor, closed the eyelids as faithfully as that Jerry for whom his voice had been mistaken. And he murmured, not without emotion: “ ‘And all the king's horses, and all the king's men, can never put Humpty Dumpty together again.' ”

Slade Bennett lay dead on the floor, and the men who had gathered close for an instant to look down into the dead face were now scattering to find their drinks in another saloon.

Speedy heard a voice that said: “Wilson, that was the coolest trick and the best gunplay that I ever seen. I wish that you'd come and have a drink with me. My name's Thompson.”

Speedy listened to the voices depart; for his own part, he remained fixed and still beside the dead man, looking steadily down into his face, watching the dawning of the death smile and feeling once again, as he had so often felt in the past, that something out of his own bright spirit had fallen and lay like a dissolving shadow there, before his own eyes.

 

Then, in the saloon across the street, he found John Wilson celebrating in the midst of a circle of newfound friends who, only the moment before, were so ready to howl like wolfish ghouls over his downfall before that hero, Slade Bennett.

He touched the arm of the young man and, looking up, he saw Wilson turn and look down at him with eyes of liquid fire. The icy barrier of half a lifetime of restraint and discontent had fallen, and John Wilson was just beginning to enjoy himself as the thing he had never dreamed of being. But when he saw Speedy, he stepped through the crowd at the bar and laid his hand on the shoulder of the smaller man.

“I know part of what you've done for me, Speedy,” he said. “I can guess at the rest. You let me hit you back there in the hotel room. Nobody can manhandle you, if you don't want 'em to, but you let me slug you. Speedy, is that right?”

Speedy made a brief gesture to disclaim the suggestion. Then he muttered: “Wilson, you've done part of the great job. Now go over and collect on it.”

“Collect on what?” asked Wilson.

“On the killing of Slade Bennett.”

“I've got an idea,” said Wilson, suddenly frowning, “that I never could have done anything with him, except that the bluff that you'd put up for me unnerved him a little when he heard me rush into the saloon and bawl out the words that you wanted me to shout. There's nothing for me to collect out of the killing of Slade Bennett, except a chance to pay his funeral expenses, and I'm glad to do that.”

Speedy nodded rather grimly as he surveyed the other. “You're a good fellow, and a white man, Wilson,” he said. “And I'm mighty glad of that. But I'll tell you what you're to collect. That's the girl . . . Jessica Fenton. Come down with me to the jail this moment . . . no, they won't have moved Fenton, yet. He'll still be in the hotel. And we'll go and take Fenton away from the sheriff.”

Wilson frowned. “I don't know what you mean, Speedy,” he said. “If the law . . .”

“The law has nothing to do with Oliver Fenton,” said Speedy. “Slade Bennett has barely finished confessing that he killed Dodson. That's enough to suit the law. Oliver Fenton is free, and you can stand in on the party as the hero of the hour.”

“You're laughing at me,” Wilson said gloomily.

“I'm not laughing,” answered Speedy. “I mean what I say. Now, you come along with me.” He took the big hand of Wilson and drew him out of the saloon.

As they came under the open stars, in the fresh air of the night, Wilson halted suddenly.

“Speedy,” he said, “I seem to be seeing the face of the world for the first time. And I've you to thank for that and I do thank you. Will you believe me?”

“Of course, I'll believe you,” said Speedy.

“I've never come so close to happiness before . . . I've never felt happiness before,” said the other. “And I'm only beginning to know what to thank you for. But I can see more and more clearly, Speedy, that you played on me. You led me on . . . you made yourself the victim, and let me knock my first spark of fire out of you. Isn't that true? You let me manhandle you, just to raise my spirits, and get me started?”

“Nonsense,” Speedy dismissed carelessly. “I don't let people manhandle me, if I can help it, as a rule. Come on, man, come on. You strike while the iron's hot. Jessica Fenton's up there. She's the one that would like to hear from you.”

“Did you know,” said John Wilson, still immovable in the street, “that I confessed everything to her about . . . about what I've been in the past?”

“No,” said Speedy.

“I did, though,” answered Wilson. “And she told me that she had faith in me. You know what she based her faith on?”

“What?” murmured Speedy.

“On what you'd said to me back there in the station house at Council Flat . . . that there was the fear of danger in me, but that I was stronger than I thought.”

“Go see her now,” said Speedy, “and see if she's glad to know that you found yourself for her sake.”

“But it wasn't exactly for her sake,” admitted Wilson. “I was just a shaking cur, thinking only about myself and wanting to die, if I could find the courage to meet death. Then you put the spark in me. You set me on fire and I still seem to burn, Speedy. The cold demon is gone out of me. Perhaps it'll come back into me, later on.”

“You've talked enough,” Speedy said not unpleasantly. “Now go up there in the hotel. Step along. See Jessica Fenton and talk to her. You've started in the right direction tonight, man, but you'll need a woman like that to keep you there.”

John Wilson, with a start, straightened and then hurried across the street. Speedy followed more slowly, and came into the lobby of the hotel a sufficient distance behind the new-made hero to appreciate the silence that came over the buzzing room as Wilson entered.

All eyes were turned toward the stairs up which Wilson had disappeared at a run, and Speedy followed, smiling faintly. It seemed that his work was drawing rapidly to a close, that there was little more for him to do, in this case, except to look on at the fruition of his work.

He got to the upper hall in time to see Wilson knock at the door of the room in which the wounded man was lying. The door opened, and he heard the outcry of a happy girl's voice and saw the sheen of her hands in the lamplight as she put her hands on the hands of Wilson and drew him into the room.

Well, the news had come before him to the hotel, and the Fentons knew that Oliver Fenton was free.

Speedy nodded and sighed. He stepped closer. Voices boiled up within the room like water in a teakettle. The door opened again, and the sheriff came out with a wide grin on his face.

Speedy was near enough to hear, as the door closed, the voice of big John Wilson saying: “It's nothing, Jessica. I didn't come here to be thanked. I only came here to say that, for your sake, I wish that I could have faced down a dozen like Slade Bennett. And . . .”

The closing of the door shut off the voice of the man, and the girl's voice cut in with words that could not be distinguished. Yet there was no need for words. The music of the miracle of happiness was rising like a bright fountain from the throat of the girl.

The sheriff laid his hand on the arm of Speedy. “There it goes, Speedy,” said Sam Hollis. “You've spoke some hard words to me, lately, but I'm ready to forget 'em. Now that Fenton has turned out innocent, and Slade Bennett was the guilty man, why, it looks as though I was pretty mean to Fenton. But I had nothing against him . . . it was only the law, not me, that wanted him.”

“Where's Ben Thomas?” asked Speedy.

“Ben Thomas won't be seen around these parts for quite a spell,” said the sheriff soberly. “He showed up to ask his share of the blood money when he heard that Fenton was caught, and I told him that he could have all the blood money, when it was paid, and, in the meantime, he could have my opinion of him. When I got through talking . . . and I talked in front of the whole crowd . . . he sneaked out. There was some talk of tar and feathers, but I guess all that the boys did was to give him a mighty fast ride out of town.”

“It would be a lot better for him if he had had a bullet through the brain,” said Speedy. “When I first saw him with the girl, I smelled blood as surely as any hungry cat, Sheriff, but he's still breathing, yet he'll never be able to look a decent man in the face from now on. And the blood I smelled was Slade Bennett's.”

“Yes,” said Sam Hollis, “heaven help him and every other man that lives by knife and gun, like me, Speedy, or like you, though the only tools you use are your bare hands. Come and have a drink with me, will you?”

“Yes, a drink is what I need,” Speedy concurred. “But wait a minute.” He paused, raising his hand in the dimness of the hall and canting his head to listen.

“Aye,” said the sheriff, “they're all contented enough now. There was a rope around the neck of Fenton ten minutes or so ago . . . and the girl was breaking her heart for him . . . and John Wilson was thought as yellow-livered as a Chinaman. And now listen to the three of 'em laughing together.”

“They're laughing,” Speedy agreed as he moved down the hall again, hooking his arm through the sheriff's. “I only hope that they're not laughing too soon.”

“Now, whacha mean by that?” asked Sam Hollis.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Speedy hurriedly. “Let's get to that drink.”

Max Brand®
is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.

Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles.

Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in
The Max Brand Companion
(Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.