Free Destry Rides Again by Max Brand Page B

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 alwayswatchin’ 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 atthe 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