Don't Look Behind You

by Brown Frederic

I had to hunt hardest for their money, but I found it finally. It was sixty dollars.

And I took the knife, after I had sharpened it. It isn’t fancy; just a bone-handled carving knife, but it’s good steel. I’ll show it to you, pretty soon now. It’s had a lot of use.

Then we left and it was Harley who told me to stay away from the roads, and find railroad tracks. That was easy because we heard a train whistle far off in the night and knew which direction the tracks lay. From then on, with Harley helping, it’s been easy.

You won’t need the details from here. I mean, about the brakeman, and about the tramp we found asleep in the empty reefer, and about the near thing I had with the police in Richmond. I learned from that; I learned I mustn’t talk to Harley when anybody else was around to hear. He hides himself from them; he’s got a trick and they don’t know he’s there, and they think I’m funny in the head if I talk to him. But in Richmond I bought better clothes and got a haircut and a man I killed in an alley had forty dollars on him, so I had money again. I’ve done a lot of traveling since then. If you stop to think you’ll know where I am right now.

I’m looking for Bull Mallon and the two men who helped him. Their names are Harry and Carl. I’m going to kill them when I find them. Harley keeps telling me that those fellows are big time and that I’m not ready for them yet. But I can be looking while I’m getting ready so I keep moving around. Sometimes I stay in one place long enough to hold a job as a printer for a while. I’ve learned a lot of things. I can hold a job and people don’t think I’m too strange; they don’t get scared when I look at them like they sometimes did a few months ago. And I’ve learned not to talk to Harley except in our own room and then only very quietly so people in the next room won’t think I’m talking to myself.

And I’ve kept in practice with the knife. I’ve killed lots of people with it, mostly on the streets at night. Sometimes because they look like they might have money on them, but mostly just for practice and because I’ve come to like doing it. I’m really good with the knife by now. You’ll hardly feel it.

But Harley tells me that kind of killing is easy and that it’s something else to kill a person who’s on guard, as Bull and Harry and Carl will be.

And that’s the conversation that led to the bet I mentioned. I told Harley that I’d bet him that, right now, I could warn a man I was going to use the knife on him and even tell him why and approximately when, and that I could still kill him. And he bet me that I couldn’t and he’s going to lose that bet.

He’s going to lose it because I’m warning you right now and you’re not going to believe me. I’m betting that you’re going to believe that this is just another story in a book. That you won’t believe that this is the only copy of this book that contains this story and that this story is true. Even when I tell you how it was done, I don’t think you’ll really believe me.

You see I’m putting it over on Harley, winning the bet, by putting it over on you. He never thought, and you won’t realize how easy it is for a good printer, who’s been a counterfeiter too, to counterfeit one story in a book. Nothing like as hard as counterfeiting a five dollar bill.