Max Brand

“ There was more strength in that one arm than in any two that Patricia had ever felt, and when she looked up, somewhat breathless, she surprised a smile on the lips of the Amazon. It was like a warm surprise of sunshine on a cloudy day—there was something generously enveloping about it. And Patricia smiled back. After all, there is only one smile for all women when they are kindly moved and genuine. Patricia and “Mother” Martha cast an arm about each other and wandered into the house, completely forgetful of Ugly Joe. ”

“ Poor Harry Yale. He's done for. To-morrow he'll take water from a Chinaman. That's the way of the Whisperer. If he don't kill the body of a man, he kills the heart, which is worse, a lot.”
“I won't give it up!” said Patricia. “I daren't give it up!”
“Why not, honey? Who elected you a man-hunter?”
“It's the first thing I've tried by myself—the first real work. I've got to win! and I will win, because he can't beat me until I release St. Gore from his parole with my own lips.”
“Patty,” said Mother Martha, “I've seen stranger things than that happen on the mountain-desert.” ”

“ It was the pride of Ugly Joe. The stiff hairs descended like a host of simitar-shaped bristles far-past his lower lip and at either side the mustache jagged down in points which swept far below his chin. He was like a man in a perpetual mask. If he had shaved not even his wife would have known him. Patricia, however, was undismayed. She advanced with her suit-case and claimed relationship.
Ugly Joe parted his mustache, spat over the forward wheel of the buckboard, considered her a silent moment, and then touched the brim of his sombrero by way of salutation. ”

“ To men who ride alone in the mountain-desert, the very name “woman” is synonymous of purity, beauty, and grace; in the presence of Patricia they stood awed, and their admiration, and their grunt of assent, thrilled her more than any tribute from her cultured friends of the East.
“Wait a minute,” said Ugly Joe, “while I horn in a bit. What she wants is for you to get the Whisperer. I thought that would change you a bit!”
The effect of the name had been magical. Bob Riddle leaped back to the door and peered out into the night. ”

“ In the first wild burst of speed Harry Yale, better mounted than the others, and riding without caution, had outstripped the others, and they had lost him in the windings of the hills. All the rest of the day they stalked him, but could never get his trail again. They told this tale to Ugly Joe. To Patricia they would not speak at all. She had been the general, and she had failed her army in time of need. For her own part, a sense of guilt oppressed her. Somewhere out there in the gathering dark the tall form of Harry Yale must lie motionless. ”

“ Gore now, she looked upon him as men look upon some ingenious mechanism which does the work of a man—and yet is not a man. She felt almost as impersonally as this about St. Gore.
Apparently he had the most complete trust in the protection of the Whisperer. For instance, when he sat opposite the four gun-fighters at the table that night, he looked at them rather with curiosity than with fear, and studied them with such an intent look that Patricia wished for the tenth time that he would lay aside those absurd, owl-like spectacles. ”

“ Neither should it be understood that Patricia disliked men. On the contrary, she frankly preferred them to her own sex. Her whole struggle, in fact, was to be accepted by men as a friend, and it cut her to the heart to watch the antics of fellows who had courage enough to woo her. She noted that men among men were frank, open of hand and heart and eye, generous, brave, good-humored; she noted that the same men among women became simpering, smirking fantastic fools. ”

“ Gore timidly, as if he feared that she would snap at him in the middle of his question—“I wonder how you will attack the Whisperer. He has never killed a woman—but I suppose he would—he's such a terrible fellow. Quite uncontrollable, you know.”
“Perhaps,” said Patricia, “you have heard of Chic Woods, Harry Yale, Jack Tucker, and Bob Riddle?”
“Oh, yes,” murmured Goggles, “and I don't think you could have named four rougher men. Really, you know, they are the sort one doesn't mention—in certain places.” ”

“ It followed, quite naturally, that Patricia should go West. For she had heard sundry tales of a breed of men who inhabit the mountain-desert, men stronger than adversity and hard of hard and of heart, men too bitterly trained in the battle of existence to pay any heed to the silken side of life. ”

“ Everybody knew that Mort was a harmless, noisy sort of gent. Maybe he done wrong in making Goggles drink, but there wasn't no call for any gun-play. That was what the district attorney kept pumping into the jury all through the trial and they were all set to hang Goggles. Everybody knew that. But when the last day of the trial came along, right when the district attorney was making his last big spiel, a little piece of paper comes fluttering like a white bird through the window right behind Goggles, and over his shoulder, and into the lap of one of the gents in the jury-box. ”

“ Sometimes the very desperation, of her efforts to do strong things in a strong way made her as stern and hard as any man, and for this reason quite a few misjudged her—in fact, she misjudged herself. To me there was always something plaintive in the quest of Patricia for herself. At the moment when Ugly Joe ceased speaking, for instance, Patricia was really not thinking of the avenging of Mortimer Lauriston's death. She was merely working out a way in which she could prove to Ugly Joe that there was in her a profound difference from that of his talkative wife. ”

“ She had never been so happy in her life, for she knew that she was meeting a test from which the strongest of brave men might have shrunk. She was about to meet the Whisperer face to face.
It must be understood, in order to follow what Patricia did next, that the little table rose almost a foot above the level of the bed. When the lamp on it was lighted, therefore, a thick shadow fell directly on the bed, though the rest of the room and particularly the ceiling, was well lighted. First she flattened herself on the bed—next she trained the revolver on the gray shadow of the corner. ”

“ The point of all this is that Patricia did not, certainly, miss Steve as a husband, but she regretted him mightily as a friend. She went abroad among the world of men, thereafter, and tried to make other friends to take the place of Steve, but she discovered that after friendship had progressed to a certain point the finest of men began to grow silent and thoughtful and a certain hungry look came in their eyes. The bitter truth came home to Patricia that she was too beautiful to have a single friend ”

“ Wait for the Whisperer to come to you?”
“He will,” answered Patricia. “Will you have the four men at the house to-morrow?”
Ugly Joe made no reply, but sighed heavily as he rolled another cigarette. He had heard about this type of Eastern woman, as aggressive as a man, but he hardly knew what to make of her now that she sat at his side. A Westerner is singularly helpless in the presence of a woman. He is accustomed to making his way through a purely physical prowess. Against the peculiar strength of a woman which is fleshly and yet not of the flesh, he has nothing to pit. ”

“ The Whisperer may be an outlaw, but he's a man. This Goggles is merely a cowardly little sneak who hides in the terror of the name of the Whisperer. That's why he had the courage to face Mortimer Lauriston. He knew that he could send his man-killer after my cousin. But I'm going to set a trap for the Whisperer, bait it with Goggles, and catch your man for you.”
“Going to do which?” gasped Ugly Joe.
“Wait!” murmured Patricia, and smiled into the contented distance. ”

“ Once Chic Woods, speaking in an aside like a mutter of thunder to Bob Riddle, stretched out his fingers and then closed them slowly—a suggestive gesture, as if he were crushing some fragile object filled with life. Yet for some time no one directly addressed Goggles ”

“ Just like Martha. I can get you four gunmen who'd do any murder for a price. There's Chic Wood. He climbed a tree with a shotgun over at Tomanac and shot a man for fifty dollars. But he'd maybe want fifty thousand for killing the Whisperer. I could get some more like Chic. D'you want to work with men like him, Pat?”
“The end,” said Patricia, “justifies the means. Yes, I want any four men—as long as they are dangerous.”
“Then I guess I can get 'em. None of the crooks have any special liking for the Whisperer. He's run most of them out of range of Eagles. ”

“ Gore, I wish that I could de to you what I am going to do to the Whisperer.”
He was frankly, guilelessly interested at once.
“Oh, are you going to do something to the Whisperer?”
“I am going to see him captured,” said Patricia smoothly, “and either shot down or else hanged from the highest cottonwood-tree on the ranch.”
“Dear me!” cried Goggles, distressed, “you're such a violent person, aren't you?”
“And I'm almost sorry to have it done,” went on Patricia, “because something in me admires the man in spite of his crimes. At least he has strength and courage and power of action. ”

“ He's a sort of a ghost, the Whisperer is. He rides a white horse that can go like the wind, and he wears light gray clothes, and a white handkerchief all over his face like a mask. Nobody has ever seen his face, but when he shows up he's known by his voice. ”

“ Patricia was only sixteen at the time, but she knew what was coming; a girl of sixteen is at least equal to a man of twenty-six, plus certain instinctive knowledge which has never left the blood of woman since that sunshiny day in the garden when Eve ate the apple and whispered with the serpent. ”

“ You can number on your two hands the few to whom certain poets have deigned to give immortality. No, your practical man, your man of action, rots away into oblivion as rapidly as his Name rots away on the headstone of his grave. ”

“ Goggles popular? Not around here, Pat. Nope, he's just a plain, damned dude, that's what he is. Out here for a couple of years for his health. Little, skinny feller who goes around in fancy, shined-up riding-boots and trousers baggy above the knees. Lives over to Widow Morgan's house, where he got a piano moved in and he just sits around and tickles the keys, or mosies out and rides a fine, foreign, high-steppin' hoss around. Never talks much to anybody. He forgets everybody as quick as he's introduced to 'em. Popular? Hell, no! Excuse me.”
The description was a distant shock to Patricia. ”

“ They don't come that way. That ain't their brand. It's this way, Patty: Lots of men can shoot straight at anything but another man. It takes something more than a marksman to shoot down a man; it takes a natural killer, and a natural killer ain't often honest.”
Patricia sat stiffly erect in her place, but she said firmly: “Then if I have to get a gang of cutthroats—well, the end justifies the means! Get me the gunmen, Cousin Joe, and I'll ask no questions about their honesty. Can you get me four men who won't be afraid to fight with the Whisperer?”
Ugly Joe meditated. ”

“ A man among men tried to be himself; a man among women dreaded nothing so much as the exposure of his own innate simplicity and manhood. All this Patricia had discovered by long and patient experiment.
There was the case of Steven Worth, for instance. Steve was the best friend of her brother, Hal Lauriston, and Steve was almost another member of the family. Until, on a day, Patricia came home from school in long skirts. Instead of picking her up by the elbows and throwing her ceilingwards, as had been his custom in the past, Steve shook hands, blushed, and suggested a walk in the garden. ”

“ For when she passed through the door with Mother Martha, Patricia was extremely glad that she had taken her trip to the mountain-desert, and, as I have said, her arm was about the waist of the Amazon.
And that evening Patricia borrowed one of Mother Martha's gingham dresses, which flapped about her more loosely than a Kanaka woman's Holoku, and went into the kitchen to assist Martha. For the good wife would not keep a cook. No one, it seemed, could cook to please Ugly Joe except herself. ”

“ Not a comforting thought for Patricia to carry away to her bed. She lay awake long considering it. For how, after all, could the Whisperer force her against her will to retract the parole of St. Gore? Perhaps at the point of his revolver; perhaps by striking down Ugly Joe—and even Mother Martha. Yes, to the Whisperer neither man nor woman made a difference. ”

“ ODDLY enough that interview increased her respect for the Whisperer rather than for St. Gore. She saw another reason now why the outlaw should cling to this dapper little fop and extend over him the dark cloak of his protection. It was because the outlaw had been a man of culture and had been ostracized from the paths of civilized men. All that he saved from the wreckage was the friendship and occasional meetings with this St. Gore, this absurd little dude with his cold, keen mind. ”