The Max Brand Megapack (121 page)

Out of these thoughts he glanced again at the man in the shadow, half expecting to find his host swollen to giant size. Instead, he found the same meager form, the same old suggestion of youth which would not age, the same pale hands, of almost feminine litheness. Lee Haines talked on—about a porphyry dyke somewhere to the north—a ledge to be found in the space of ten thousand square miles—a list of vague clues—an appeal for Barry to help them find it—and Barry was held listening though ever seeming to drift, or about to drift, towards the door. Black Bart lay facing his master, and his snaky head followed every movement. Kate sat where the firelight barely touched on her, and in her arms she held Joan, whose face and great bright eyes were turned towards Daddy Dan. All things in the room centered on the place where the man sat by the wall, and the sense of something impending swept over Gregg; then a wild fear—did they know the danger outside? He must make conversation; he turned to Kate, but at the same moment the voice of Buck Daniels beside him, close.

“I know how you feel, old man. I remember an old bay hoss of mine, a Morgan hoss, and when he died I grieved for near onto a year, mostly. He wasn’t much of a hoss to look at, too long coupled, you’d say, and his legs was short, but he got about like a coyote and when he sat down on a rope you couldn’t budge him with a team of Percherons. That’s how good he was! When he was a four year old I was cutting out yearlin’s with him, and how—”

The loud, cheerful tone fell away to a confidential murmur, Daniels leaned closer, with a smile of prospective humor, but the words which came to Gregg were: “Partner, if I was you I’d get up and git and I wouldn’t stop till I put a hell of a long ways between me and this cabin!”

It spoke well of Vic’s nerve that no start betrayed him. He bowed his head a little, as though to catch the trend of the jolly story better, nodding.

“What’s wrong?” he muttered back.

“Barry’s watchin’ you out of the shadow.”

Then: “You fool, don’t look!”

But there was method in Vic’s raising his head. He threw it back and broke into laughter, but while he laughed he searched the shadow by the wall where Dan sat, and he felt glimmering eyes fixed steadily upon him. He dropped his head again, as if to hear more.

“What’s it mean, Daniels?”

“You ought to know. I don’t. But he don’t mean you no good. He’s lookin’ at you too steady. If I was you—”

Through the whisper of Buck, through the loud, steady talk of Lee Haines, cut the voice of Barry.

“Vic!”

The latter looked up and found that Barry was standing just within the glow of the hearth-light and something about him made Gregg’s heart shrink.

“Vic, how much did they pay you?”

He tried to answer; he would have given ten years of life to have his voice under control for an instant; but his tongue froze. He knew that every one had turned toward him and he tried to smile, look unconcerned, but in spite of himself his eyes were wide, fixed, and he felt that they could stare into the bottom of his soul and see the guilt.

“How much?”

Then his voice came, but he could have groaned when he heard its crazily shaken, shrill sound.

“What d’you mean, Dan?”

The other smiled and Gregg added hastily: “If you want me to be movin’ along, Dan, of course you’re the doctor.”

“How much did they pay?” repeated the quiet, inexorable voice.

He could have stood that, even without much fear, for no matter how terrible the man might be in action his hands were tied in his own house; but now Kate spoke: “Vic, what have you done?”

Then it came, in a flood. Hot shame rolled through him and the words burst out:

“I’m a yaller houn’-dog, a sneakin’ no-good cur! Dan, you’re right. I’ve sold you. They’re out there, all of ’em, waitin’ in the rocks. For God’s sake take my gun and pump me full of lead!”

He threw his arms out, clear of his holster and turned that Barry might draw his revolver. Vaguely he knew that Haines and Buck had drawn swiftly close to him from either side; vaguely he heard the cry of Kate; but all that he clearly understood was the merciless, unmoved face of Barry. It was pretense; with all his being he wanted to die, but when Barry made no move to strike he turned desperately to the others.

“Do the job for him. He saved my life and then I used it to sell him. Daniels, Haines, I got no use for livin’.”

“Vic,” he said, “take—this!—and march to your friends outside; and when you get through them, plant a forty-five slug in your own dirty heart and then rot.” Haines held out his gun with a gesture of contempt.

But Kate slipped in front of him, white and anguish.

“It was the girl you told me about, Vic?” she said. “You did it to get back to her?”

He dropped his head.

“Dan, let him go!”

“I got no thought of usin’ him.”

“Why not?” cried Vic suddenly. “I’ll do the way Haines said. Or else let me stay here and fight ’em off with you. Dan, for God’s sake give me one chance to make good.”

It was like talking to a face of stone.

“The door’s open for you, and waitin’. One thing before you go. That’s the same gang you told me about before? Ronicky Joe, Harry Fisher, Gus Reeve, Mat Henshaw, Sliver Waldron and Pete Glass?”

“Harry Fisher’s dead, Dan, if you’ll give me one fightin’ chance to play square now—”

“Tell ’em that I know ’em. Tell ’em one thing more. I thought Grey Molly was worth only one man. But I was wrong. They’ve done me dirt and played crooked. They come huntin’ me—with a decoy. Now tell ’em from me that Grey Molly is worth seven men, and she’s goin’ to be paid for in full.”

He stepped to the wall and took down the bridle which Vic had hung there.

“I guess you’ll be needin’ this?”

It ended all talk; it even seemed to Gregg that as soon as he received the bridle from the hand of Barry the truce ended with a sudden period and war began. He turned slowly away.

CHAPTER XVI

Man-Hunting

As Vic Gregg left
the house, the new moon peered at him over a black mountain-top, a sickle of white with a half imaginary line rounding the rest of the circle, and to the shaken mind of Vic it seemed as if a ghostly spectator had come out to watch the tragedy among the peaks. At the line of the rocks the sheriff spoke.

“Gregg, you’ve busted your contract. You didn’t bring him out.”

Vic threw his revolver on the ground.

“I bust the rest of it here and now. I’m through. Put on your irons and take me back. Hang me and be damned to you, but I’ll do no more to double-cross him.”

Sliver Waldron drew from his pocket something which jangled faintly, but the sheriff stopped him with a word. He sat up behind his rock.

“I got an idea, Gregg, that you’ve finished up your job and double-crossed us! Does he know that I’m out here? Sit down there out of sight.”

“I’ll do that,” said Gregg, obeying, “because you got the right to make me, but you ain’t got the right to make me talk, and nothin’ this side of hell can pry a word out of me!”

The sheriff drew down his brows until his eyes were merely cavities of blackness. Very tenderly he fondled the rifle-butt which lay across his knees, and never in the mountain-desert had there been a more humbly unpretentious figure of a man.

He said: “Vic, I been thinkin’ that you had the man-sized makin’s of a skunk, but I’m considerable glad to see I’ve judged you wrong. Sit quiet here. I ain’t goin’ to put no irons on you if you give me your parole.”

“I’ll see you in hell before I give you nothin’. I was a man, or a partways man, till I met up with you tonight, and now I’m a houn’-dog that’s done my partner dirt! God amighty, what made me do it?”

He beat his knuckles against his forehead.

“What you’ve done you can’t undo,” answered the sheriff. “Vic, I’ve seen gents do considerable worse than you’ve done and come clean afterwards. You’re goin’ to get off for what you’ve done to Blondy, and you’re goin’ to live straight afterwards. You’re goin’ to get married and you’re goin’ to play white. Why, man, I had to use you as far as I could. But you think I wanted you to bring me out Barry? You couldn’t look Betty square in the face if you’d done what you set out to do. Now, I ain’t pressin’ you, but I done some scouting while you was away, and I heard four men’s voices in the house. Can you tell me who’s there?”

“You’ve played square, Pete,” answered Vic hoarsely, “and I’ll do my part. Go down and get on your hosses and ride like hell; because in ten minutes you’re goin’ to have three bad ones around your necks.”

A mutter came from the rest of the posse, for this was rather more than they had planned ahead. The sheriff, however, only sighed, and as the moonlight increased Vic could see that he was deeply, childishly contented, for in the heart of the little dusty man there was that inextinguishable spark, the love of battle. Chance had thrown him on the side of the law, but sooner or later dull times were sure to come and then Pete Glass would cut out work of his own making go bad. The love of the man-trail is a passion that works in two ways, and they who begin by hunting will in the end be the hunted; the mountain-desert is filled with such histories.

“Three to five,” said the sheriff, “sounds more interestin’, Vic.”

A sudden passion to destroy that assured calm rose in Gregg.

“Three common men might make you a game,” he said, glowering, “but them ain’t common ones. One of ’em I don’t know, but he has a damned nervous hand. Another is Lee Haines!”

He had succeeded in part, at least. The sheriff sat bolt erect; he seemed to be hearing distant music.

“Lee Haines!” he murmured. “That was Jim Silent’s man. They say he was as fast with a gun as Jim himself.” He sighed again. “They’s nothing like a big man, Vic, to fill your sights.”

“Daniels and Haines, suppose you count them off agin’ the rest of your gang, Pete. That leaves Barry for you.” He grinned maliciously. “D’you know what Barry it is?”

“It’s a kind of common name, Vic.”

“Pete, have you heard of Whistlin’ Dan?”

No doubt about it, he had burst the confidence of the sheriff into fragments. The little man began to pant and even in the dim light Vic could see that his face was working.

“Him!” he said at length. And then: “I might of knowed! Him!” He leaned closer. “Keep it to yourself, Vic, or you’ll have the rest of the boys runnin’ for cover before the fun begins.”

He snuggled a little closer to his rock and turned his head towards the house.

“Him!” he said again.

Columbus, when he saw the land of his dream wavering blue in the distance, might have hailed it with such a heart-filling whisper, and Vic knew that when these two met, these two slender, small men—with the uneasy hands, there would be a battle whose fame would ring from range to range.

“If they was only a bit more light,” muttered the sheriff. “My God, Vic, why ain’t the moon jest a mite nearer the full!”

After that, not a word for a long time until the lights in the house were suddenly extinguished.

“So they won’t show up agin no background when they make their run,” murmured the sheriff. He pushed up his hat brim so that it covered his eyes more perfectly. “Boys, get ready. They’re comin’ now!”

Mat Henshaw took up the word, and repeated it, and the whisper ran down the line of men who lay irregularly among the rocks, until at last Sliver Waldron brought it to a stop with a deep murmur. Not even a whisper could altogether disguise his booming bass. It seemed to Vic Gregg that the air about him grew more tense; his arm muscles commenced to ache from the gripping of his hands. Then a door creaked—they could tell the indubitable sound as if there were a light to see it swing cautiously wide.

“They’re goin’ out the back way,” interpreted the sheriff, “but they’ll come around in front. They ain’t any other way they can get out of here. Pass that down the line, Mat.”

Before the whisper had trailed out half its course, a woman screamed in the house. It sent a jag of lightning through the brain of Vic Gregg; he started up.

“Get down,” commanded the sheriff curtly. “Or they’ll plant you.”

“For God’s sake, Pete, he’s killin’ his wife—an’—he’s gone mad—I seen it comin’ in his eyes!”

“Shut up,” muttered Glass, “an’ listen.”

A pulse of sound floated out to them, and stopped the breath of Gregg; it was a deep, stifled sobbing.

“She’s begged him to stay with her; he’s gone,” said the sheriff. “Now it’ll come quick.”

But the sheriff was wrong. There was not a sound, not a sign of a rush.

Presently: “What sort of a lass is she, Gregg?”

“All yaller hair, Pete, and the softes’ blue eyes you ever see.”

The sheriff made no answer, but Vic saw the little bony hand tense about the barrel of the rifle. Still that utter quiet, with the pulse of the sobbing lying like a weight upon the air, and the horror of the waiting mounted and grew, like peak upon peak before the eyes of the climber.

“Watch for ’em sneakin’ up on us through the rocks. Watch for ’em close, lads. It ain’t goin’ to be a rush.”

Once more the sibilant murmur ran down the line, and the voice of Sliver Waldron brought it faintly to a period.

“Three of ’em,” continued the sheriff, “and most likely they’ll come at us three ways.”

Through the shadow Vic watched the lips of Glass work and caught the end of his soft murmur to himself: “…all three!”

He understood; the sheriff had offered up a deep prayer that all three might fall by his gun.

Up from the farther end of the line the whisper ran lightly, swiftly, with a stammer of haste in it: “To the right!”

Ay, there to the right, gliding from the corner of the house, went a dark form, and then another, and disappeared among the rocks. They had offered not enough target for even chance shooting.

“Hold for close range,” ordered the sheriff, and the order was repeated. However much he might wish to win all the glory of the fray, the sheriff took no chances—threw none of his odds away. He was a methodical man.

A slight patter caught the ear of Vic, like the running of many small children over a heavy carpet, and then two shades blew around the side of the house, one small and scudding close to the ground, the other vastly larger—a man on horseback. It seemed a naked horse at first, so close to the back did the rider lean, and before Vic could see clearly the vision burst on them all. Several things kept shots from being fired earlier.