The Max Brand Megapack (216 page)

“Who started that fire?”

“My idea,” confessed Baldy. “Matter of fact, we both had the same idea. Didn’t seem anything wrong about starting a fire and getting warm and dry.”

“I seen that fire a mile away,” said the leader gloomily. “It was a fool idea.”

“But they’s nobody else within miles.”

“Ain’t there? Have you searched all through the barn?”

“Why—no.”

“How d’you know somebody didn’t come here?”

“But who’d be apt to come this way?”

“Look at those cinders over there. That shows that somebody lately has been here and started a fire. If they come here once, why not again?”

“I didn’t notice that place,” said Baldy regretfully. “Sure looks like I’ve been careless. But I’ll give the barn a search now.”

“Only one place to look,” said Jack Moon, “and that’s behind that chunk of the roof where it’s fallen down yonder.”

“All right!” The other nodded and started straight for the hiding place of Ronicky Doone.

The latter reached behind him and patted the nose of the mare, Lou, in sign that she must still preserve the utmost silence. Then he drew his revolver. There was no question about what would happen if he were discovered. He had been in a position to overhear too many incriminating things. Unlucky Baldy, to be sure, would be an easy prey. But the other three? Three to one were large odds in any case, and every one of these men was formidable.

Straight to the opening came Baldy and he peered in, though he remained at a distance of five or six paces. Ronicky Doone poised his gun, delayed the shot, and then frowned in wonder. Baldy had turned and was sauntering slowly back toward his companions.

“Nothing there,” he said to the chief, as he approached.

Ronicky hardly believed his ears, but a moment of thought explained the mystery. It was pitch dark behind that screening wall, and the darkness was rendered doubly thick by Baldy’s probable conviction that there must be nothing to see behind the fallen roof section. He had come there prepared to find nothing, and he had found the sum of his expectations and no more.

“Sure there ain’t?” and Jack Moon nodded. “Which don’t mean that you wasn’t a fool to light a fire and give somebody a light to shoot you by in case they was somebody lying around. Now, into the saddle both of you. We got a hard ride ahead.”

“Something big on hand?” asked Marty Lang.

“There’s a lesson for yaller-livered sneaks on hand,” said Jack Moon, his deep bass voice floating smoothly back to the ear of Ronicky. “Hugh Dawn has come back to Trainor. We’re going to drop in and call on him and ask him what he’s been doing all these ten years.”

The low, growling murmur of the other three rolled away in the rush of rain beyond the door of the barn. The four horsemen disappeared, and Ronicky stepped out into the light of the dying fire. He had hardly taken a step forward when he shrank back against the wall.

Straight into the door came Jack Moon, who peered uneasily about the barn. Then he whirled his horse away and disappeared into the thick downpour. He had seen nothing, and yet the true and suspicious instinct of the man had brought him back to take a final glance into the barn to make sure that no one had spied on the gathering of his little band.

CHAPTER THREE

The Dawn House

Small things are often more suggestive, more illuminating, than large events. All that Ronicky had heard Baldy say about Jack Moon and his twenty years’ career of crime had not been so impressive as that sudden reappearance of the leader with all the implications of his hair-trigger sensitiveness. Ronicky Doone was by no means a foolish dreamer apt to be frightened away from danger by the mere face of it, but now he paused.

Plainly, Hugh Dawn was a former member of the band, and this trip of Moon’s was undertaken for the purpose, perhaps the sole purpose, of killing the offender who had left his ranks. Ronicky Doone considered. If Hugh Dawn had belonged to this crew ten years before, he had probably committed crimes as terrible as any in the band. If so, sympathy was wasted on him, for never in his life had Ronicky seen such an aggregation of dangerous men. It scarcely needed the conversation of Lang and Baldy to reveal the nature of the organization. Should he waste time and labor in attempting to warn Hugh Dawn of the coming trouble?

Trainor, he knew, was a little crossroads village some twenty miles to the north. He might outdistance the criminal band and reach the town before them, but was it wise to intervene between such a man as Jack Moon and his destined victim? Distinctly it was not wise. It might call down the danger on his own head without saving Dawn. Moreover, it was a case of thief against thief, murderer against murderer, no doubt. If Dawn were put out of the way, probably no more would be done than was just.

And still, knowing that the four bloodhounds were on the trail of one unwarned man, the spirit of Ronicky leaped with eagerness to be up and doing. Judgment was one thing, impulse was another, and all his life Ronicky Doone had been the creature of impulse. One man was in danger of four. All his love of fair play spurred him on to action.

In a moment more the saddle was on the back of the mare, he had swung up into his place, flung the slicker over his shoulders, and cantered through the door of the barn.

He turned well east of the trail which wound along the center of the valley. This, beyond question, the band would follow, but inside of half an hour Ronicky estimated that his mount, refreshed by her food and rest, would outfoot them sufficiently to make it safe to drop back into the better road without being in danger of meeting the four.

Such, accordingly, was the plan he adopted. He struck out a long semicircle of half a dozen miles, which carried him down into the central trail again; then he headed straight north toward Trainor. The rain had fallen off to a mere misting by this time, and the wind was milder and came out of the dead west, so that there was nothing to impede their progress. The mountains began to lift gloomily into view, the walls of the valley drew steadily nearer on either side, and at length, at the head of the valley, he rode into the town of Trainor.

With the houses dripping and the street a river of mud under the hoofs of Lou, the town looked like a perfect stage for a murder. Ronicky Doone dismounted in front of the hotel.

There was no one in the narrow hallway which served as clerk’s office and lobby. He beat with the butt of his gun against the wall and shouted, for there was no time to delay. At the most he could not have outdistanced Jack Moon by more than half an hour, and that was a meager margin in which to reach the victim, warn him, and see him started in his flight.

Presently an old fellow with a goat beard stumbled down the stairs, rubbing his eyes.

“And what might you want this late, partner?” he inquired.

“Hugh Dawn,” said Ronicky. “Where does Hugh Dawn live?”

“Hugh Dawn?” said the other, his eyes blank with the effort of thought. Then he shook his head. “Dunno as I ever heard about any Hugh Dawn. Might be you got to the wrong town, son.”

It was partly disappointment, partly relief that made Ronicky Doone sigh. After all, tie had done his best; and, since his best was not good enough, Hugh Dawn must even die. However, he would still try.

“You’re sure there’s no Dawn family living in these parts?”

“Dawn family? Sure there is. But there ain’t no Hugh Dawn ever I heard of.”

“How long you been around here?”

“Eight years come next May Day.”

‘Very well,” said Ronicky brusquely, recalling that it was ten years before that Hugh Dawn, according to Jack Moon, had disappeared. “Where is the Dawn house?”

“Old Grandpa Dawn,” said the proprietor, “used to live out there, but he died a couple of years back. Now they ain’t nobody but Jerry Dawn.”

“The son?”

“It ain’t a son. She’s a girl. Geraldine is her name. Most always she’s called Jerry, though. She teaches the school and makes out pretty good and lives in that big house all by herself.”

“And Where’s the house, man?” cried Ronicky, wild with impatience.

“Out the east road about a couple of miles. Can’t help knowing it, it’s so big. Stands in the middle of a bunch of pines and—”

The rest of his words trailed away into silence. Ronicky Doone had whipped out of the door and down the steps. Once in the saddle of Lou again, he sent her headlong down the east road. Would he be too late, after this delay at the hotel and the talk with the dim-minded old hotel proprietor?

The house, as he had been told, was unmistakable. Dense foresting of pines swept up to it on a knoll well back from the road, and over the tops of the trees, through the misting rain and the night, he made out the dim triangle of the roof of the building. In a moment the hoofs of the mare were scattering the gravel of the winding road which twisted among the trees, and presently he drew up before the house.

The face of it, as was to be expected at this hour of the night, was utterly blank, utterly black. Only the windows, here and there, glimmered faintly with whatever light they reflected from the stormy night, the panes having been polished by the rain water. As he had expected, it was built in the fashion of thirty or forty years before. There were little decorative turrets at the four comers of the structure and another and larger turret springing from the center of the room. He had no doubt that daylight would reveal much carved work of the gingerbread variety.

A huge and gloomy place it was for one girl to occupy! He sprang from the saddle and ran up the steps and knocked heavily on the front door. Inside, he heard the long echo wander faintly down the hall and then up the stairs, like a ghost with swiftly lightening footfall. There was no other reply. So he knocked again, more heavily, and, trying the knob of the door, he found it locked fast. When he shook it there was the rattle of a chain on the inside. The door had been securely fastened, to be sure. This was not the rule in this country of wide-doored hospitality.

Presently there was the sound of a window being opened in the story of the house just above him. He looked up, but he could not locate it, since no lamp had been lighted inside.

“Who’s there?” called a girl’s voice.

It thrilled Ronicky Doone. He had come so far to warn a man that his life was in danger. He was met by this calm voice of a girl.

“Who I am doesn’t matter,” said Ronicky Doone. “I’ve come to find Hugh Dawn. Is he here?”

There was a slight pause, a very slight pause, and one which might have been interpreted as meaning any of a dozen things. Then: “No, Hugh Dawn is not here.”

“Lady,” said Ronicky Doone, “are you Geraldine Dawn?”

“Yes,” said the voice. “I am she.”

“I’ve heard of you,” said Ronicky; “and I’ve heard of Hugh Dawn. I know that he’s in this house. What I want to do is—”

“Whatever you want to do,” broke in that amazingly mild voice, “you will have to wait till morning. I am alone in this house. I do not intend to have it entered before daylight comes. Hugh Dawn a not here. If you know anything about him, you also know that he hasn’t been here for ten years.”

And there was the sound of a window being closed with violence.

To persist in efforts at persuasion in the face of such a calm determination was perfect folly. Besides, there were many explanations. Perhaps Jack Moon had heard simply that Hugh Dawn was coming back to his home, and the traitor to the band had not yet arrived at his destination. Perhaps at that moment the leader was heading straight for a distant point on the road to lay an ambush. “Dawn is in Trainor,” he had said, but that might be a metaphorical statement. It might simply mean that he was on the way toward the town. Or perhaps the fugitive had received a warning and had already fled. At any rate, Ronicky Doone felt that he had done more than enough to free his conscience.

But there was one thing that upset this conviction as Ronicky swung back into his saddle and turned the head of weary Lou back down the road through the pines. This was the memory of the voice of the girl. There is no index of character so perfect and suggestive as the voice, and that of Jerry Dawn was soft, quiet, steady. It had neither trembled with fear nor shrilled with indignation. If any of the blood of Hugh Dawn ran in her veins, then surely the man could not be altogether bad.

Of course, this was wild guesswork at best, but it carried a conviction to Ronicky, and when, halfway down to the main road, he remembered how Jack Moon had returned to the door of the barn to investigate a suspicion which was based on nothing but the most shadowy material—when, above all, he recalled how justified that suspicion was—Ronicky Doone determined to imitate the maneuver. For were there not reasons why the girl should refuse to admit that this man Hugh Dawn—her father, perhaps—had returned to his house?

No sooner had the determination come to Doone than he turned the head of his horse and swerved back toward the house for a second time. He now rode off the noisy gravel, walking Lou in the silent mold beneath the trees; and so he came back again to the edge of the clearing. Here he tethered the mare, skirted under shelter of the trees halfway around the house, and then ran swiftly out of the forest and up to the steep shelter of the wall of the dwelling. Here he paused to take breath and consider again what he had done and the possibilities that lay before him.

He could have laughed at the absurdity of what he had done. He was, in reality, stalking a big house which contained no more than one poor girl, badly frightened already, no doubt, in spite of that steady and brave voice. What he was actually doing was spying on the possibility of Hugh Dawn—trying to force himself on the man in order to save his life!

Very well. He would be a sane and thinking man once more. The devil might now fly away with Hugh Dawn for all of him. Let there be an end of this foolishness, Ronicky Doone would turn his back on Dawn and all connected with him. His own path led otherwhere.

He had made up his mind to this point and was turning away, when he heard that within the house which made him stop short and flatten his ear against the wall.

It has already been said that sound and echoes traveled easily in that frame building, with its time-dried wood. And now what Ronicky Doone heard was a slow repetition of creaking sounds one after another, moving through the second story of the building. He recognized the intervals; he recognized the nature of the squeaking and straining. Some very heavy person was moving by stealth, slowly, down one of the upper halls.