The Fugitive (20 page)

But the sheriff greeted him with a distant eye, as though he were a stranger.

“Sheriff,” said Chris, “what'll happen to Merchant?”

The sheriff turned that cold eye upon him, and then looked away again. “About ten years, maybe,” he said. “Maybe more.”

“Mightn't he wriggle off?”

“Sure. Anything's possible. If you wasn't to appear against him to press the charge . . . if the sun was to stop shining . . . sure, he might get off.” And the sheriff smiled, without mirth.

“Well,” said Chris tentatively, “he'll learn something in jail, that kid.”

“He'll learn to be a bad one,” answered the sheriff. “I know the makings of men. Willie had the getup of a man-killer, Chris. He's high-strung. And he thinks too much. A hard worker will make a hard fighter . . . pretty near every time.”

“He'll be still young,” said Chris. “He'll be young enough to make another start.”

“A gent like you,” said the sheriff, “can make a new start any time. But this here setback has made Willie an old man.”

Old Chris took his way back to the street and to his team. He had enough to think over. Willie as an old man. Jen would be happy with no other for a husband. What was to be done? After all, the whole problem ceased to be a problem. It became exceedingly simple as he put it to himself in short words.

If he stayed in that country, he could not live unless he were known as Chris Martin, the ruler of men. If he surrendered his case against Willie, he would be broken. The old halo of terror that surrounded him like a mystery would be vanished. He would be a common creature like a hundred other men. And he could not face that end to a long career. But there was another possibility. As the sheriff had said, a man like Chris could never be too old to make a new start. And there were new countries, too; far north among the snows of Alaska there were immigrants conquering a new country. Suppose that he were to surrender here, but go North to make himself as strong and as terrible there as he had been in the southland?

He went back to his own town; he retired to his own office, and there he wrote a letter in his wide, sweeping hand.

 

Dear Jen:
I'm pulling out for the north. Things have got sort of stale and tame here in the south. This is to say good-bye.

Merchant will come off clear. I won't be here to press the charge. When he's free, go to my lawyer, Benedict. He'll have something to tell you. Good luck.

Uncle Chris

Martin mailed that letter. Then he wrote another to Benedict, which would make that iron lawyer stare, and then swear with astonishment. But when that was mailed in turn, he felt that he could breathe again for the first time since Jen had left him.

He took for himself $5,000 in cash. He had not had $50 with which to make his first start in the West. Then he went down to the buckboard, gave the team the whip, and whirled out of the town—his town no more—and north and north.

They heard of him no more. Not even Jen could get trace of him. For the northland and a new name had swallowed him. Although they continued to hope for news, none ever came.

As a matter of fact, according to his own maxim, time took care of that. He grew into a legend long before his death, and the children of Willie Merchant and Jen, on the old Martin Ranch, listened to tales of Chris as they listened to tales of fairies, strangely evil, and strangely good.

Frederick Faust's saga of the youthful hero Speedy began with “Tramp Magic,” a six-part serial in
Western Story Magazine
, which appeared in the issues dated November 21, 1931 through December 26, 1932. As most of Faust's continuing characters, Speedy is a loner, little more than a youngster, able to outwit and outmaneuver even the deadliest of men without the use of a gun. He appeared in a total of nine stories. The serial has been reprinted by Leisure Books under the title
Speedy
. The first short story, “Speedy—Deputy,” can be found in
Jokers Extra Wild
, “Seven-Day Lawman” can be found in
Flaming Fortune
, and “Speedy's Mare” appears in Peter Blue. “The Crystal Game” was originally published in
Western Story Magazine
in the issue dated April 2, 1932.

 

Council Flat was one of those railway stops in the West where it seems that the planners of the road had grown tired of stretching the steel rails straight across league after league of desert and had marked with a cross the place where a little station house covered with brown paint should be. It was merely to please their fancy, and not out of any necessity or possible use it appeared, they built the place, and there it stood, to make a brief blur before the eyes of transcontinental passengers, shooting past.

No road led down to the station house of Council Flat; there were only three winding trails that, uniting a short distance from the station, led up to it, still winding slightly and without reason over the perfectly level surface. Beyond the point of junction, still meandering as though over rough and smooth ground, the trails separated and wound away into a distant horizon, which was still blurred by the aftereffect of a recent sandstorm.

Inside the station, there were three people who had already waited an hour for a train that was two hours late, and therefore they had come to know one another, at least, by name. The middle-aged man was one Benjamin Thomas, and the girl who accompanied him was Jessica Fenton. The big young man, with the rather stylish clothes and fastidious, supercilious manner, was John Wilson. The three had a common destination in the mountains that were turning from brown to blue in the milder light of the late afternoon.

That destination was Trout Lake, in the middle of those brown-blue mountains. Since they were all bound for the place, the talk turned chiefly on the tales that had come down out of the hills about the gold strikes and of the $300 pans that had been washed at the side of Trout Lake itself, and all around the creeks that wandered down into it through the forest.

They were in the midst of this talk when they heard the thunder of a train. It could not be their own, which was not due to come for another hour, but they went out and stared hopelessly toward the small spot that was swelling out of the horizon, seeming to grow larger without actually drawing nearer. It was a way of killing a few brief minutes, at least, to watch that train come and go, and it would be a melancholy pleasure to see it dwindling down the tracks where they should have been speeding an hour ago. All the time that they had waited, they had a sense of time rushing past them at a frightful rate, time hurtling toward glorious possibilities in the future, and they, in the meantime, were caught and held in wretched stagnation.

So with irritation, with amusement, with sympathy, they saw the train approach. It grew so slowly before the eye that it was apparent almost at once that it was merely a freight train that was coming. This, however, was very much better than nothing at all. They would try the sharpness of their eyes in reading the signs along the sides of the boxcars. They would try to recognize the initials and names that might represent lines as far away as Florida and Maine, and they would guess at the contents.

The passing of the train, in fact, was accomplished at not more than twenty or thirty miles an hour, because of a grade, scarcely noticeable, but a factor to be reckoned with in hauling forty loaded cars. Swaying and snorting, casting out fire at its feet and a mist of blowing steam from its head, the engine went roaring by finally, and their eyes still followed the caboose as it hitched along at the end of the train. It grew smaller. Its flag dwindled out of sight; the whole train was enveloped and lost within the thin cloud of dust that whirled up behind it. Then it appeared again, as a small black spot. Finally it was gone.

The three had watched the passing of the train with their eyes squinted, their ears assailed by the roar of the monster. Now they began to look at one another and shake their heads, so that it was hard to say whether they wished they were on that train, pursuing their way, or thanking heaven that they remained behind where peace and quiet reigned.

It was about this time that the girl, whose eye was quicker than the others, saw an odd fellow come out of the bush on the farther side of the track. He vaulted lightly over the two fences that railed in the track. He was enough to set people staring in any community, because he was dressed in a long robe of silk, striped with red and yellow, and he had on his head a red and yellow turban-shaped cap of the same material, and there were red and yellow slippers on his feet. This attire gave him the appearance of an Oriental. His face, too, and his eyes were dark. One immediately placed him among more ancient races. Furthermore, his face was so delicately cut it looked less like flesh and blood than a statue chiseled out of marble. Yet, with all this, it was a face not lacking in decision.

This fellow, as he came up to the station platform, saluted the others by crossing both hands on his breast and bowing low, so that the tassel of his silken cap fell forward. The manner of the others in answering the greeting was characteristic. Young John Wilson started to part his lips, started to raise his hand, but, instead of doing either, simply nodded curtly without uttering a sound. The other man, Benjamin Thomas, was so surprised at the bow that he actually put his hand up to the brim of his hat to lift it, but recovered himself in time to turn the gesture into a salute. The girl looked at the dark-faced stranger with a smile and gave him a pleasant good afternoon.

He straightened from his bow and went on through the door of the station house. He had the look of one who does not wish or dare to look on the faces of strangers; although he went with his head erect, his eyes were so lowered that it seemed impossible that he could see beyond the tasseled toes of his slippers. The lids were so far down that the black lashes made a semicircle of shadows under each eye, like a painted line.

After he had gone into the station house, the other three looked at one another. Mr. Thomas shrugged his shoulders and winked one eye expressively, as though this were a question that he knew all about, although he was holding his tongue. John Wilson had a faint glimmer in his eyes, but immediately afterward relapsed into his high-headed, supercilious attitude. But the girl said: “That's a wonderful face. Let's go look at him, if we can manage it without being too rude.”

She was first through the door of the station house, followed by the others. They found that the stranger was seated, cross-legged, on a bench on the opposite side of the room, his feet being drawn up under him like a Turk. The light came in over each of his shoulders and showed him engaged in an occupation that was even stranger than his appearance. He had a small crystal, about two inches across, spinning on the upright tip of the forefinger of his left hand, and, while it spun, the finger never wavered to one side or the other, yet the crystal kept its balance as though it were fastened by a rod through the center of the finger bone.

The length of time that the ball continued to spin was one of the most remarkable points of the matter. If it were resting upon flesh, no matter how smooth, the friction would presently cause it to slow down and stop, but it whirled and whirled until one felt that the very breathing of the stranger must be the cause of its rotation. Perhaps it was balanced, with really marvelous exactness, upon the very tip of the fingernail. At any rate, it continued to spin almost as though it were revolving in a vacuum.

While it whirled and flashed, the stranger kept his downward look upon it with the look of a Hindu devotee—that is to say, with an expression of stony but breathless absorption. One might have said that this odd ceremony was some sort of religious pantomime.

Ben Thomas crinkled his eyes, critically, as though he were looking straight through the performance. Then he shrugged his thick, athletic shoulders, and leaned back in his place.

John Wilson stared, lost his supercilious look, resumed it again, and also leaned back.

But the girl crossed the room and stood before the stranger. “We're terribly curious about that spinning crystal,” she said. “I wonder if you don't expect us to be?”

 

The beauty of a cat lies half in its movements. Your dog is full of effort, tug, and strain when it is jumping about. But a cat will get up out of a sound sleep, slope from the branch of a tree to the ground, and nail a squirrel as it comes out of its hole all in a half second. The cat always seems to be folded up in utter repose, but it unfolds with wonderful ease. It is always loaded for trouble; it sleeps no more than a gun does. There is always a trigger finger ready to exert pressure.

As a cat slides from sleep into waking, so the man in red and yellow rose from the bench and the crystal ball disappeared in a flash from the tip of his finger. He was gravely attentive to the girl before him. “That is my business,” he said. “I am a crystal-gazer, and I make my living by looking into glass.”

“Oh, you're a fortune-teller?” she said.

“Fortune-teller?” he said in a voice whose silken gentleness matched the beauty of his face. “Well, I am rather a reader of the past than of the future, but I see something of the future, also. But shadows of light are harder to decipher than shadows of darkness.”

“I don't understand that,” said Ben Thomas. “That kind of beats me, Jessica,” he added, drawing nearer.

John Wilson also drifted toward them, maintaining his aloof air, as though his feet were bearing him forward without the intervention of his will.

“Why,” said the girl, “I suppose he means that he looks at the future as that part which has the light, and the past is the part which throws the shadow.”

“Eh? Maybe, maybe,” said Ben Thomas. “What's your country, stranger?”

“I come from the country of Kush,” said the other, “from above the Fifth Cataract and the Oasis of El Badir.”