Destry Rides Again (6 page)

Shame, after all, is a human invention; the animals know no touch of it. The elephant feels no shame when it flees from the
mouse, and the lion runs from the rhinoceros without a twinge of conscience, for shame was unknown until man created it out
of the whole cloth of his desire to be godlike, though the gods themselves were divorced from such small scruples on sunny
Olympus. Poor Jerry Wendell in his paroxysm quite forgot the thing that he should be; fifty thousand years of inherited dignity
were shaken out of him and he acted as a caveman might have done if a bear were tearing down the barricade at the mouth of
the dwelling, and the points of all the spears inside were broken.

Every moment he was starting, his pupils distending as he looked at the doors or the windows. He was oblivious of the scorn
of the Dangerfields, which they were covering as well as they could under an air of kind concern.

“Have you got a man at that door?” asked Jerry. “And that?”

“Yes.”

“And that?”

“That leads down into the cellar. He won’t try to come that way.”

“No matter what you do, he’ll be here!” said Wendell, wringing his hands. “
I
thought I could stop him, too. I had the message from the saloon in time; I had three good men posted; I was telephoning
across the way for more help, and then I heard a step on the stairs—a step on the stairs——”

The memory strangled him.

“I ran for the back steps and jumped down ’em. I locked the kitchen door as I went out. I tore across the garden and vaulted
the street fence, and as I jumped, I looked back and saw a shadow slide through the kitchen window.

“Then I found a horse on the street. I didn’t stop to ask whose it was. I jumped into the saddle, thanking God, and started
for the lights in the middle of the town.

“But he gained on me. I had to cut down a side alley. He was hard after me on a runt of a mustang.

“I got out of the town. Luckily my horse would jump. I put it over fences and got into fields. There was no sight of him behind
me then, and at last I decided to circle back into Wham.

“Then I saw him again, coming over a hill—just a glance of the outline of him against the stars—and he’s been on my heels
ever since—ever since! He’ll——”

“Sit down to breakfast,” urged Dangerfield. “The corn bread’s still warm. You look—hungry!”

“Breakfast?” said the other. And he laughed hysterically. “Breakfast!” he repeated. “At a time like this! Well, why not?”

He allowed himself to be put into a chair, but his hands shook horribly when he tried to eat. His soul and nerves were in
as great disarray as his clothes; his hair stood wildly on end; his necktie was jerked about beneath one ear; in a word, no
one would have taken him for that Handsome Jerry who had broken hearts in Wham for many a day.

He spilled half his coffee on his coat and on the tablecloth, but the rest he managed to get down his throat, and his eye
became a little less wild. Instantly
the buried conscience came to life again. He clutched at his tie and straightened it; he made a pass at his hair, and then
noticed for the first time the downward glance of the girl.

He could read in that many a thing which had been scourged out of his frightened brain all during his flight. Ostracism, ridicule
would follow him to the ends of his days, unless he actually met Harrison Destry, gun in hand. And that he knew that he dared
not do. The cruel cowpunchers and the wags of the town would never be at the end of this tale; they would tell of the mad
ride of Jerry Wendell to the end of time!

He said, faltering as he spoke: “I would have stopped and faced him, but what chance would I have against that jailbird? And
why should a law-abiding man dirty his hands with such a fellow? It’s the sheriff’s duty to take charge of such people. Ought
to keep an eye on them. I said at the time, I always said that Destry was only shamming. He drew us all back, and then he
clicked the trap! He clicked the trap! And——”

Here he was interrupted by another voice inside the room, saying: “Hullo, Colonel! Morning, Charlie. I was afraid that I’d
be too late for breakfast, but I’m glad to see that they’s still some steam comin’ out of that corn bread. Can I sit down
with you-all?”

It was Destry, coming towards them with a smile from the cellar door, which he had opened and shut behind him silently before
saying a word.

The three reacted very differently to this entrance. The Colonel caught up the sawed-off shotgun that had been brought to
him; his daughter started up from her chair, and then instantly steadied herself; while Jerry Wendell was frozen in his place.
He
could not even face about toward the danger behind him, but remained fixed shivering violently.

Charlotte Dangerfield was the first to find her voice, saying with a good deal of calmness:

“Sit down over here. I’ll get in some eggs and some hot ham. I guess the coffee’s still warm enough.”

“Thanks,” said Destry. “Don’t you go puttin’ yourself out. I been trying to get up with Jerry, here, and give him a watch
that he dropped along the road. But he’s been schoolin’ his hoss across country so mighty fast that I couldn’t catch him.
How are you, Jerry?”

He laid the watch on the table in front of the other, and Jerry accepted it with a stir of lips which brought forth no sound.
Destry sat down opposite him. The host and hostess were likewise in place in a cold silence, which Destry presently filled
by saying: “You remember how the water used to flood in the cellar when a rainy winter come along? I had an idea about fixin’
of that, Colonel, so I stopped in and looked at the cellar on the way in, but they wasn’t quite enough light this early in
the day to see anything. You didn’t mind me comin’ up from the cellar door that way?”

Dangerfield swore softly, beneath his breath.

“You’re gunna come to a bad end, boy,” he said. “You leave your talkin’ be, and eat your breakfast. Why you been gallivantin’
around the hills all night?”

“Why,” said Destry, “you take a mighty fine gold watch like that, and I guess a man wouldn’t like to think that he’d lost
it, but the harder I tried to catch up with Jerry, there, the harder he rode away from me. He must of thought that he was
havin’ a race with big stakes up, but I’m mighty sure that I didn’t have money on my mind!”

His smile faded a little as he spoke, and there was a glint in his eyes which turned Jerry Wendell from the crimson of sudden
shame, to blanched white.

“What you-all been doin’ this while I been away?” Destry asked politely of Wendell.

“Me?” said Wendell. “Why, nothing much. The same things.”

“Ah?” said Destry. “You alluz found Wham a pretty interestin’ sort of a town. I was kind of surprised when I heard that you
was gunna leave it.”

“Leave it?” asked Wendell, blank with surprise. “Leave Wham? What would I do, leaving Wham?”

“That’s what I said to myself, when I heard it,” said Destry gently. “Here you are, with a house, and a business, and money
in the mines and in lumber. Jiminy! How could Jerry leave Wham where everybody knows him, and he knows everybody? But him
that told me said he reckoned you got tired of a lot of things in Wham, like all the dances that you gotta go to, and the
dust from the street in summer blowin’ plumb into your office, and all such!”

Wendell, confident that something was hidden behind this casual conversation, said not a word, but moistened his purplish
lips and never budged his eyes from the terrible right hand of the gunman.

“Him that told me,” went on Destry, “said that you’d got so you preferred a quiet life. Here where everybody knows you, you’re
always bein’ called upon for something or other. They work you even on juries, he says, and that’s enough to make any man
hot.”

Wendell shrank lower in his chair, but Destry, buttering a large slice of corn bread, did not appear to see. He put away at
least half the slice and talked with some difficulty around the edge of the mouthful.

“Because them that work on a jury,” he explained to his own satisfaction, “they gotta decide a case on the up and up and not
let any of their own feelin’ take control. Take a gent like you, you’d have an opinion about pretty nigh everybody in town
even before the trial come off. And you might make a mistake!”

“There’s twelve men on a jury!” said Jerry Wendell hoarsely.

“Sure there is,” nodded Destry. “You seem to know all about juries—numbers and everything! There’s twelve men, but any single
one of ’em is able to hang the rest! One man could stop a decision from comin’ through!”

Wendell pushed back his chair a little. He was incapable, at the moment, of retorting to the subtle tortures of Destry.

At last he said:

“I’d better be goin’ back.”

“To Wham?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well,” said Destry, “that’s up to you. Go ahead. I think they might be somebody waiting for you along the road, though. But
a gent of your kind, old feller, he wouldn’t pay no attention to such things.”

Wendell stood up.

“I’m leaving now,” he replied, with a question and an appeal in his voice that made the girl look up at him as at a new man.

“Good trip to you,” said Destry.

“But first I’d like to see you alone, for a minute.”

“Don’t you do it,” said Destry. “I know just what it must be like to cut loose from an old home, the way that Wham has been
to you. Well, good luck to you!”

“I’ll never come back,” said the other, unnerved at the prospect.

“Likely you won’t—till the talk dies down a mite.”

“Destry!” shouted the tormented man suddenly. “Will you tell me why you’ve grounds to hate me the way that you do?”

“No hate, old fellow. No hate at all. Don’t mix that up in the job. But suppose that we let it drop there? You have your watch
back, I have a cigarette in this hand and a forkful of ham in that and a lot of information that I would like to use, one
day.”

Wendell left that room like a man entranced, and behind him he would have left a silence, if it had not been for the cheerful
talk of Destry.

“I come by the Minniver place, last night, lyin’ snug under its trees, with the moon standin’ like a half face just over the
gully, where it splits the hills behind, and doggone me if it wasn’t strange to see the old house all lit up, and, off of
the veranda, I could hear the whangin’ of the banjos, soft and easy, and the tinkle of a girl laughin’, like moonshine fingerin’
its way across a lake. But we had to go on past that, though it looked like Jerry would of wanted me to stay there, he seemed
so bent on turnin’ in. But I edged him away from it. Only, when we went by, I recalled that that was the first time that I
see you, Charlie. You was fifteen, and your dad, he’d let you go out to that dance. D’you recollect?”

She looked at him, her lips twisting a little with pain and with pleasure.

“I remember, perfectly,” said she.

“You can remember the party,” said Destry, “but you can’t remember——”

“Harry!” she cried at him. “Will you talk on like this about just nothing, when there’s poor Jerry Wendell being driven out
from Wham and cut away from everything that he ever was? Wouldn’t it be more merciful to murder him, than to do that?”

“Why, look at you, Charlie!” said Destry, pleased and surprised. “How you talk up right out of a school book, when you ain’t
thinkin’!”

“Sure,” said Dangerfield. “If Charlie wasn’t always
watchin’ herself, the boys would think that she was tryin’ to have a good influence on ’em, and educate ’em, or something.
Now and then I pick up a little grammar from her myself!”

“You can both make light of it,” said the girl, too troubled to smile at their words, “but I really think that killing would
be more merciful to Jerry!”

“So do I,” answered Destry.

It shocked the others to a full pause, but Destry went on: “There ain’t much pain in a forty-five calibre bullet tappin’ on
your forehead and askin’ your life to come outdoors and play. I used often to figger how easy dyin’ was, when I was in prison.
Ten years is a long time!”

They listened to him, grimly enchanted.

“It was only six,” said the Colonel.

“Time has a taste to it,” said Destry. “Like the ozone that comes from electricity, sometimes, and sometimes like the ozone
that the pine trees make. But time has a taste, and it was flavored with iron for me. What good was the six years? I thought
it’d be ten, of course. I’ve seen seconds, Charlie, that didn’t tick on a watch, but that was counted off by pickin’ at my
nerves—thrum, thrum!—like a banjo, d’you see?”

He smiled at them both, and buttered another slice of corn bread.

“This is something like!” said Destry. “I hope I ain’t keepin’ you from nothin’, Colonel?”

The Colonel did not answer; neither did the girl speak, and Destry went on: “Nerves, d’you see, they ain’t so pleasant as
you might think. I thought jail wouldn’t be so bad, and for six months I just sort of relaxed and took it easy, and slept,
and never bothered about nothin’. ‘It’ll get you’ says the others at
the rock pile. ‘Pretty soon it’ll get you in a heap!’ Well, I used to laugh at ’em. But all at once I woke up out of a dream,
one night.

“In that dream, where d’you think that I was? Why, I was at the party in the old Minniver house, and there was all the faces
as real as lamplight ever had made ’em, and there was sweet Charlie Dangerfield, with her hair hangin’ down her back—and her
face half scared, and half mad, and half happy, too, like it was when I kissed her for luck.

“There I lay, wrigglin’ my toes again the sheet, and smilin’ at the blackness and sort of feelin’ around for the stars, as
you might say, when all at once I realized that there was nine layers of concrete and steel cells between me and them stars,
and in every cot there was a poor crook lyin’ awake and hungerin’, and sweatin’. Why, just then it seemed to me like death
was nothin’ at all. I’ll tell you a funny thing. I got out of my cot right then and went over to the knob of the door and
figgered how I could tie a pillow case onto it and around my neck and then hang myself on that.”

“Harry, Harry!” cried the girl. “It’s not true! You’re making it up to torture me!”

He looked at her; he smiled his way through her.

“I didn’t do it, even then when I figgered on nine years and six months more of the prison smell. I didn’t do it, honey, even
when I seen then that death is only one pulse of life, even if it’s the last one. Even when I seen then that every other pulse
of life can be as almighty great as the second we die in—and here I was cut off from livin’—but I didn’t hang myself, Charlie—not
because I hadn’t the nerve, but because I still seen you on the Minniver veranda, slappin’ my face!”

He laughed, with his teeth close together.

“I laid there for five and a half years more, thinkin’, and that’s why I didn’t kill Jerry Wendell, seein’ that death is only
a touch, but shame is a thing that’ll lie like a lump of ice under your ribs all the days of your life. So Jerry’s alive!
You wanted to know, and now I’ve told you. Could I have another shot of that coffee, Colonel? You got the out-cookingest nigger
in that kitchen of yours that I ever ate after!”

It was Charlotte, however, who went to the coffee pot and poured his cup steaming full.

“Ah,” said Dangerfield, “you had a long wait, there. What busted into you to rob that mail, son?”

Destry laughed again.

“There’s the joke, Colonel. It would of been pretty easy to lie close in jail, thinkin’ of the good time I’d of had with stolen
money the rest of my days, when I got out; but the joke was that I didn’t steal the money. I was only framed!”

The Colonel suddenly believed, and, believing, he swore violently and terribly.

“All at once, I know you mean it!” said he.

“Thanks,” said Destry, “but there was twelve peers, d’you understand, that wouldn’t believe. They wouldn’t believe, because
they didn’t want to. Twelve peers of what? Chinamen?”

The humor had died out of his eyes; they blazed at Dangerfield until the latter actually pushed back his chair with a nervous
gesture.

“It’s all over now. Harry,” he said in consolation. “You’re able to forget it, now!”

“I’ll tell you,” answered Destry. “You know how they say a gent with his arm cut off still feels the arm? Gets twinges in
the hand that’s dead, and pains
in the buried elbows, like you might say! And it’s the same way with me; I got five dead years, but a nervous system that’s
still spread all through ’em!”

“Are you fixed and final on that?” asked the Colonel.

“Fixed as them hills,” said Destry. “You gunna leave us, Charlie?”

“I reckon that I better had,” said she, standing up. He rose with her.

“You gotta headache, Charlie,” said her father. “Maybe you better lie down.”

At this, she broke out: “I ain’t gunna be dignified, Harry. I’m not gunna put on a sweet smile and go out soft and slow, like
funeral music. I’m gunna fight!”

“All right,” said Destry. “You’re the fightin’ kind. But what you gunna fight about, and who with?”

“I’m gunna fight with you!”

“We’ve had a lot of practice,” said Destry, grinning. “Fact is, we’ve had so much practice that we know how to block most
of the punches that the other fellow starts heavin’ at us!”

“Oh, Harry,” said she, with a subtle change of voice, “I can’t block this! It hurts me a powerful lot.”

“Look at her!” said the Colonel. “Why, doggone me if she ain’t about cryin’! Kiss her, Harry, and make a fuss over her, because
if she’s cryin’ over you, I’ll have to use the riot gun on you, after all!”

She waved that suggestion aside.

“What are you gunna do, Harry? Are you gunna take after them all, the way you promised them in the courtroom?”

“Look what they done?” he argued with her. “All the days of six years, one by one, they loaded onto my shoulders, and as the
days dropped off, the load
got heavier! I tell you what day was the worst—the last day, from noon to noon. That day was made up of sixty seconds in
every minute, and sixty minutes in every hour, and the hours, they started each one like spring and ended each one like winter.
I was a tolerable young man, up to that last day!”

He added hastily:

“Speakin’ of time, I better be goin’ along! I got a lot of riding to do today. I better be goin’ along.”

He turned to the host.

“Good-by, Colonel.”

“Wait a minute, Harry! They’s a lot of things to talk about——”

“I can’t stay now. Some other time. So long, Charlie. You be takin’ care of yourself, will you?”

He leaned and touched her forehead with his lips.

“So long again, Colonel!”

He was through the door at once, and instantly they heard a chorus of voices from the negroes hailing him, for he was a prime
favorite among them. His own laughing voice was clearly distinguishable.

“Is that a way,” said the Colonel, “for a young gent to kiss a girl good-by, when it’s a girl like you, and he loves her,
like he does you? He pecked at you like a chicken at a grain that turns out to be sand and not corn! Hey, Charlie! God a’mighty,
what’s possessin’ you?”

“Leave me be!” said she, as he overtook her at the door.

He held her shoulders firmly.

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” asked the Colonel.

“You’ll make me cry in about a half a minute,” said she. “Will you lemme go, dad?”

“Hold on,” said the Colonel, his eyes brooding
upon her with a real and deep pain. “Has
he
got something to do with this all? If he has——”

“Hush up,” said the girl.

“But there ain’t any call for carryin’ on the way you are, Charlie. Everything’s all right. He’s busy. He’s got his mind on
the road. Everything’s all right; ain’t he come and started where you and him left off?”

“What makes you think so?” she asked.

“Why, he wouldn’t of showed up here at all, except that he wanted to show you that he didn’t keep your letter in his mind.”

“He came here for Jerry Wendell, and that’s all,” said the girl.

“But he kissed you, Charlie. He wouldn’t of done that!”

“Oh, don’t you see?” said she. “He was only kissing me good-by.”