The Max Brand Megapack (335 page)

“Me? Well, yes, for a minute. But out at the necktie party, Whitey, I kept watching him. Thinks a lot more’n he says, and gents like that is always dangerous.”

“Always,” replied Whitey.

“But it’s the last time Sinclair’ll show his face in Sour Creek—alive,” said Sandersen.

“If he does show his face alive, it’ll be a dead face pronto. You can lay to that.”

Sandersen seemed to turn this fact over and over in his mind, with immense satisfaction.

“And yet,” pursued the storekeeper, “think of a full-grown man breaking the law to save such a skinny little shrimp of a gent as Jig? Eh? More like a pretty girl than a boy, Jig is.”

Cartwright exclaimed, and both of the others turned toward him.

“Here’s the gun for me,” he said huskily, “and that gun belt—filled—and this holster. They’ll all do.”

“And a handy outfit,” said Whitey. “That gun’ll be a friend in need!”

“What makes you think they’ll be a need?” asked Cartwright, with such unnecessary violence that the others both stared. He went on more smoothly: “What was you saying about a girl-faced gent?”

“The schoolteacher—he plugged a feller named Quade. Sinclair got him clean away from Sheriff Kern.”

“And what sort of a looking gent is Sinclair? Long, brown, and pretty husky-looking, with a mean eye?”

“You’ve named him! Where’d you meet up with him?”

“Over in the hills yonder, just where the north trail comes over the rise. They was sitting down under a tree resting their hosses when I come along. I got into an argument with this Sinclair—Long Riley, he called himself.”

“Riley’s his first name.”

“We passed some words. Pretty soon I give him the lie! He made a reach for his gun. I told him I wasn’t armed and dared him to try his fists. He takes off his belt, and we went at it. A strong man, but he don’t know nothing about hand fighting. I had him about ready to give up and begging me to quit when this Jig, this girl-faced man you talk about—he pulls a gun and slugs me in the back of the head with it.”

Removing his sombrero he showed on the back of his head the great welt which had been made when he struck the ground with the weight of Sinclair on top of him. It was examined with intense interest by the other two.

“Dirty work!” said Sandersen sympathetically.

The storekeeper said nothing at all, but began to fold up a bolt of cloth which lay half unrolled on the counter.

“It knocked me cold,” continued Cartwright, “and when I come to, they wasn’t no sign nor trace of ’em.”

Buckling on the belt, he shoved the revolver viciously home in the holster.

“I’ll land that pair before the posse gets to ’em, and when I land ’em I won’t do no arguing with fists!”

“Say, I call that nerve,” put in the storekeeper, with patent admiration in his eyes, while he smoothed a fold of the cloth. “Running agin’ one gent like Sinclair is bad enough—let alone tackling two at once. But you’d ought to take out a big insurance on your life, friend, before you take that trail. It’s liable to be all out-trail and no coming back.”

A great deal of enthusiasm faded from Cartwright’s face.

“How come?” he asked briefly.

“Nothing much. But they say this Sinclair is quite a gunfighter, my friend. Up in his home town they scare the babies by talking about Sinclair.”

“H’m,” murmured Cartwright. “He can’t win always, and maybe I’ll be the lucky man.”

But he went out of the store with his head thoughtfully inclined.

“Think of meeting up with them two all alone and not knowing what they was!” sighed Sandersen. “He’s lucky to be alive, I’ll tell a man.”

Whitey grinned.

“Plenty of nerve in a gent like that,” went on Sandersen, his pale blue eyes becoming dreamy. “Get your gat out, will you, Bill?”

Bill Sandersen obliged.

“Look at the butt. D’you see any point on it?”

“Nope.”

“Did you look at that welt on the stranger’s head?”

“Sure.”

“Did you see a little cut in the middle of the welt?”

“Come to think of it, I sure did.”

“Well, Sandersen, how d’you make out that a gun butt would make a cut like that?”

“What are you driving at, Whitey?”

“I’m just discounting the stranger,” said Whitey. “I dunno what other talents he’s got, but he’s sure a fine nacheral liar.”

CHAPTER 20

It was some time before Riley Sinclair interrupted his pacing and, turning, strode over to the dim outlines of the sleeping girl. She did not speak, and, leaning close above her, he heard her regular breathing.

Waiting until he was satisfied that she slept, he began to move rapidly. First, with long, soft steps he went to his saddle, which was perched on a ridge of rock. This he raised with infinite care, gathering up the stirrups and the cinches so that nothing might drag or strike. With this bundle secured, he once more went close to the figure of the sleeper and this time dropped on one knee beside her. He could see nothing distinctly by the starlight, but her forehead gleamed with one faint highlight, and there was the pale glimmer of one hand above the blankets.

For the moment he almost abandoned the plan on which he had resolved, which was no less than to attempt to ride into Sour Creek and return to the girl before she wakened in the dawn. But suppose that he failed, and that she wakened to find herself alone in the mountain wilderness? He shuddered at the idea, yet he saw no other issue for her than to attempt the execution of his plan.

He rose hastily and walked off, letting his weight fall on his toes altogether, so that the spurs might not jingle.

Even that brief rest had so far refreshed his mustang that he was greeted with flattened ears and flying heels. These efforts Sinclair met with a smile and terrible whispered curses, whose familiar sound seemed to soothe the horse. He saddled at once, still using care to avoid noise, and swung steeply down the side of the mountain. On the descending trail, he could cut by one half the miles they had traversed winding up the slope.

Recklessly he rode, giving the wise pony its head most of the time, and only seeing that it did not exceed a certain speed, for when a horse passes a certain rate of going it becomes as reckless as a drunken man. Once or twice they floundered onto sheer gravel slides which the broncho took by flinging back on its haunches and going down with stiffly braced forelegs. But on the whole the mustang took care of itself admirably.

In an amazingly short time they struck the more placid footing of the valley, and Sinclair, looking up, could not believe that he had been so short a time ago at the top of the flat-crested mountain.

He gave little time to wondering, however, but cut across the valley floor at a steady lope. From the top of the mountain the lights of Sour Creek were a close-gathered patch, from the level they appeared as a scattering line. Sinclair held straight toward them, keeping away to the left so as to come onto the well-beaten trail which he knew ran in that direction. He found it and let the mustang drop back to a steady dogtrot; for, if the journey to Sour Creek was now a short distance, there would be a hard ride back to the flat-topped mountain if he wished to accomplish his business and return before the full dawn. He must be there by that time, for who could tell what the girl might do when she found herself alone. Therefore he saved the cattle pony as much as possible.

He was fairly close to Sour Creek, the lights fanning out broader and broader as he approached. Suddenly two figures loomed up before him in the night. He came near and made out a barelegged boy, riding without a saddle and driving a cow before him. He was a very angry herdsman, this boy. He kept up a continual monologue directed at the cow and his horse, and so he did not hear the approach of Riley Sinclair until the outlaw was close upon him. Then he hitched himself around, with his hand on the hip of his old horse, swaying violently with the jerk of the gait. He was glad of the company, it seemed.

“Evening, mister. You ain’t Hi Corson, are you?”

“Nope, I ain’t Hi. Kind of late driving that cow, ain’t you?”

The boy swore with shrill fluency.

“We bought old Spot over at the Apwell place, and the darned old fool keeps breaking down fences and running back every time she gets a chance. Ain’t nothing so foolish as a cow.”

“Why don’t your dad sell her for beef?”

“Beef?” The boy laughed. “Say, mister, I’d as soon try to chew leather. They ain’t nothing but bones and skin and meanness to old Spot. But she’s a good milker. When she comes in fresh she gives pretty nigh onto four gallons a milking.”

“Is that so!”

“Sure is! Hard to milk, though. Kick the hat right off’n your head if you don’t watch her. Never see such a fool cow as old Spot! Hey!”

Taking advantage of this diversion in the attention of her guardian, Spot had ambled off to the side of the road. The boy darted his horse after her and sent her trotting down the trail, with clicking hoofs and long, sweeping steps that scuffed up a stifling dust.

“Ain’t very good to heat a milker up by running ’em, son,” reproved Sinclair.

“I know it ain’t. But it wouldn’t make me sorry if old Spot just nacherally dropped down dead—she gives me that much trouble. Look at her now, doggone her!”

Spot had turned broadside to them and waited for the boy to catch up before she would take another forward step.

“You just coming in to Sour Creek?”

“Yep, I’m strange to this town.”

“Well, you sure couldn’t have picked a more fussed-up time.”

“How come?”

“Well, you hear about the killing of Quade, I reckon?”

“Not a word.”

“You ain’t? Where you been these days?”

“Oh, yonder in the hills.”

“Chipping rocks, eh? Well, Quade was a gent that lived out the norm trail, and he had a fuss with the schoolteacher over Sally Bent, and the schoolteacher up and murders Quade, and they raise a posse and go out to hang Gaspar, the teacher, and they’re kept from it by a stranger called Sinclair; when the sheriff comes to get Gaspar and hang him legal and all, that Sinclair sticks up the sheriff and takes Gaspar away, and now they’re both outlawed, I hear tell, and they’s a price on their heads.”

The lad brought it out in one huge sentence, sputtering over the words in his haste.

“How much of a price?”

“I dunno. It keeps growing. Everybody around Woodville and Sour Creek is chipping in to raise that price. They sure want to get Gaspar and Sinclair bad. Gaspar ain’t much. He’s a kind of sissy, but Sinclair is a killer—and then some.”

Sinclair raised his head to the black, solemn mountains. Then he looked back to his companion.

“Why, has he killed anybody lately?”

“He left one for dead right today!”

“You don’t mean it! He sure must be bad.”

“Oh, he’s bad, right enough. They was a gent named Cartwright come into town today with his head all banged up. He’d met up with Gaspar and Sinclair in the hills, not knowing nothing about them. Got into an argument with Sinclair, and, not being armed, he had it out with fists. He was beating up Sinclair pretty bad—him being a good deal of a man—when Gaspar sneaks up and whangs him on the back of the head with the butt of his Colt. They rode off and left him for dead. But pretty soon he wakes up. He comes on into Sour Creek, rarin’ and tearin’ and huntin’ for revenge. Sure will be a bad mess if he meets up with Sinclair ag’in!”

“Reckon it had ought to be,” replied Sinclair. “Like to see this gent that waded into two outlaws with his bare fists.”

“He’s a man, right enough. Got a room up in the hotel. Must have a pile of money, because he took the big room onto the north end of the hotel, the room that’s as big as a house. Nothin’ else suited him at all. Dad told me.”

“I ain’t got nothing particular on hand,” murmured Sinclair. “Maybe I can get in on this manhunt—if they ain’t started already.”

The boy laughed. “Everybody in town has been trying to get in on that manhunt, but it ain’t any use. Sheriff Kern has got a handpicked posse—every one a fightin’ fool, Dad says. Wish you luck, though. They ain’t starting till the morning. Well, here’s where I branch off. S’long! Hey, Spot, you old fool, git along, will you?”

Sinclair watched the youngster fade into the gloom behind the ambling cow, then he struck on toward Sour Creek; but, before he reached the main street, he wound off to the left and let his horse drift slowly beyond the outlying houses.

His problem had become greatly complicated by the information from the boy. He had a double purpose, which was to see Cartwright in the first place, and then Sandersen, for these were the separate stumbling blocks for Jig and for himself. For Cartwright he saw a solution, through which he could avoid a killing, but Sandersen must die.

He skirted behind the most northerly outlying shed of the hotel, dismounted there, and threw the reins. Then he slipped back into the shadow of the main building. Directly above him he saw three dark windows bunched together. This must be Cartwright’s room.

CHAPTER 21

It seemed patent to Bill Sandersen, earlier that afternoon, that fate had stacked the cards against Riley Sinclair. Bill Sandersen indeed, believed in fate. He felt that great hidden forces had always controlled his life, moving him hither and yon according to their pleasure.

To the dreamy mind of the mystic, men are accidents, and all they perform are the dictates of the power and the brain of the other world.

Sandersen could tell at what definite moments hunches had seized him. He had looked at the side of the mountain and suddenly felt, without any reason or volition on his part, that he was impelled to search that mountainside for gold-bearing ore. He had never fallen into the habit of using his reason. He was a wonderful gambler, playing with singular abandon, and usually winning. It mattered not what he held in his hand.

If the urge came to him, and the surety that he was going to bet, he would wager everything in his wallet, all that he could borrow, on a pair of treys. And when such a fit was on him, the overwhelming confidence that shone in his face usually overpowered the other men sitting in at the game. More than once a full house had been laid down to his wretched pair. There were other occasions when he had lost the very boots he wore, but the times of winning naturally overbalanced the losses in the mind of Bill. It was not he who won, and it was not he who lost. It was fate which ruled him. And that fate, he felt at present, had sided against Riley Sinclair.