The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition. Max Brand
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can use them in getting out of the house—I’ll show you a way—or you can use them to tell me just why you’ve come.”
In spite of himself Ronicky smiled. “Lady,” he said, “if a rat was in a trap d’you think he’d stop very long between a chance of getting clear and a chance to tell how he come to get into the place?”
“I have a perfectly good reason for asking,” she answered. “Even if you now get out of the house safely you’ll try to come back later on.”
“Lady,” said Ronicky, “do I look as plumb foolish as that?”
“You’re from the West,” she said in answer to his slang.
“Yes.”
She considered the straight-looking honesty of his eyes. “Out West,” she said, “I know you men are different. Not one of the men I know here would take another chance as risky as this, once they were out of it. But out there in the mountains you follow long trails, trails that haven’t anything but a hope to lead you along them? Isn’t that so?”
“Maybe,” admitted Ronicky. “It’s the fever out of the gold days, lady. You start out chipping rocks to find the right color; maybe you never find the right color; maybe you never find a streak of pay stuff, but you keep on trying. You’re always just sort of around the corner from making a big strike.”
She nodded, smiling again, and the smiles changed her pleasantly, it seemed to Ronicky Doone. At first she had impressed him almost as a man, with her cold, steady eyes, but now she was all woman, indeed.
“That’s why I say that you’ll come back. You won’t give up with one failure. Am I right?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. If the trail fever hits me again —maybe I would come back.”
“You started to tell me. It’s because of Caroline Smith?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to talk to me,” said the girl. “As a matter of fact I shouldn’t be here listening to you. But, I don’t know why, I want to help you. You—you are in love with Caroline?”
“No,” said Ronicky.
Her expression grew grave and cold again. “Then why are you here hunting for her? What do you want with her?”
“Lady,” said Ronicky, “I’m going to show you the whole layout of the cards. Maybe you’ll take what I say right to headquarters—the man that smiles—and block my game.”
“You know him?” she asked sharply.
Apparently that phrase, “the man who smiles,” was enough to identify him.
“I’ve seen him. I dunno what he is, I dunno what you are, lady, but I figure that you and Caroline Smith and everybody else in this house is under the thumb of the gent that smiles.”
Her eyes darkened with a shadow of alarm. “Go on,” she said curtly.
“I’m not going on to guess about what you all are. All I know is what I’m here trying to do. I’m not working for myself. I’m working for a partner.”
She started. “That’s the second man, the one who stopped her on the street today?”
“You’re pretty well posted,” replied Ronicky. “Yes, that’s the one. He started after Caroline Smith, not even knowing her name—with just a picture of her. We found out that she lived in sight of the East River, and pretty soon we located her here.”
“And what are you hoping to do?”
“To find her and talk to her straight from the shoulder and tell her what a pile Bill has done to get to her—and a lot of other things.”
“Can’t he find her and tell her those things for himself?”
“He can’t talk,” said Ronicky. “Not that I’m a pile better, but I could talk better for a friend than he could talk for himself, I figure. If things don’t go right then I’ll know that the trouble is with the gent with the smile.”
“And then?” asked the girl, very excited and grave.
“I’ll find him,” said Ronicky Doone.
“And—”
“Lady,” he replied obliquely, “because I couldn’t use a gun on a girl ain’t no sign that I can’t use it on a gent!”
“I’ve one thing to tell you,” she said, breaking in swiftly on him. “Do what you want—take all the chances you care to—but, if you value your life and the life of your friend, keep away from the man who smiles.”
“I’ll have a fighting chance, I guess,” said Ronicky quietly.”
“You’ll have no chance at all. The moment he knows your hand is against him, I don’t care how brave or how clever you are, you’re doomed!”
She spoke with such a passion of conviction that she flushed, and a moment later she was shivering. It might have been the draft from the window which made her gather the hazy-green mantle closer about her and glance over her shoulder; but a grim feeling came to Ronicky Doone that the reason why the girl trembled and her eyes grew wide, was that the mention of “the man who smiles” had brought the thought of him into the room like a breath of cold wind.
“Don’t you see,” she went on gently, “that I like you? It’s the first and the last time that I’m going to see you, so I can talk. I know you’re honest, and I know you’re brave. Why, I can see your whole character in the way you’ve stayed by your friend; and, if there’s a possible way of helping you, I’ll do it. But you must promise me first that you’ll never cross the man with the sneer, as you call him.”
“There’s a sort of a fate in it,” said Ronicky slowly. “I don’t think I could promise. There’s a chill in my bones that tells me I’m going to meet up with him one of these days.”
She gasped at that, and, stepping back from him, she appeared to be searching her mind to discover something which would finally and completely convince him. At length she found it.
“Do I look to you like a coward?” she said. “Do I seem to be weak- kneed?”
He shook his head.
“And what will a woman fight hardest for?”
“For the youngsters she’s got,” said Ronicky after a moment’s thought. “And, outside of that, I suppose a girl will fight the hardest to marry the gent she loves.”
“And to keep from marrying a man she doesn’t love, as she’d try to keep from death?”
“Sure,” said Ronicky. “But these days a girl don’t have to marry that way.”
“I am going to marry the man with the sneer,” she said simply enough, and with dull, patient eyes she watched the face of Ronicky wrinkle and grow pale, as if a heavy fist had struck him.
“You?” he asked. “You marry him?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you hate the thought of him!”
“I—I don’t know. He’s kind—”
“You hate him,” insisted Ronicky. “And he’s to have you, that cold-eyed snake, that devil of a man?” He moved a little, and she turned toward him, smiling faintly and allowing the light to come more clearly and fully on her face. “You’re meant for a king o’ men, lady; you got the queen in you— it’s in the lift of your head. When you find the gent you can love, why, lady, he’ll be pretty near the richest man in the world!”
The ghost of a flush bloomed in her cheeks, but her faint smile did not alter, and she seemed to be hearing him from far away. “The man with the sneer,” she said at length, “will never talk to me like