The Max Brand Megapack (339 page)

“Now, the tables is turned, eh? I’ll take the high hand from now on, Sinclair!”

“It’s no good,” said Sinclair dryly. “The gent that shot out the light had a chance to see something before he done the shooting. And what he seen must have showed that you’re yaller, Cartwright—yaller as a yaller dog!”

Cartwright flung his fist with a curse into the face of the cowpuncher. The weight of the blow jarred him back against the wall, but he met the glare of Cartwright with a steady eye, a thin trickle of crimson running down his cut lips. The sheriff rushed in between and mastered Cartwright’s arms.

“One more little trick like that, stranger, and I’ll turn you over to the boys. They got ways of teaching gents manners. How was you raised, anyway?”

Suddenly sobered, Cartwright drew back from dark glances on every side.

“Fellows,” he said, in a shaken voice, “I forgot his hands was tied. But I’m kind of wrought up. He tried to murder me!”

“It’s all right, partner,” drawled Red Chalmers, and he laid a strong hand on the shoulder of Cartwright. “It’s all right. We all allow for one break. But don’t do something like that twice—not in these parts!”

Sinclair walked beside the sheriff, while the crowd poured past him and down the hall. When they reached the head of the stairs they found the lighted room below filled with excited, upturned faces; at the sight of the sheriff and his prisoner they roared their applause. The faces were blotted and blurred by a veil of rapidly, widely waving sombreros.

The sheriff paused halfway down the stairs and held up his hand. Sinclair halted beside him looking disdainfully over the crowd. Instantly noise and movement ceased. It was a spectacular picture, the stubby little sheriff and the tall, lean, wolflike man he had captured. It seemed a vivid illustration of the power of the law over the lawbreaker. Sinclair glanced down in wonder at Kern. It was in character for the sheriff to make a speech. A moment later the sheriff’s own words had explained his reason for the impromptu address.

“Boys,” he said, “I figure some of you has got an almighty big wish to see Sinclair on the end of a rope, eh?”

A deep growl answered him.

“Speaking personal,” went on the sheriff smoothly, “I don’t see how he’s done a thing worth hanging. He took a prisoner away from me, and he’s resisted arrest. That’s all. Sinclair has got a name as a killer. Maybe he is. But I know he ain’t done no killing around these parts that’s come to light yet. I’ll tell you another thing. A minute ago he could have sent three men to death and maybe come off with a free skin. But he chose to take his chance without shooting to kill. He tried to fight his way out with his hands sooner’n blow the heads off of gents that never done him no harm except to get in his way. Well, boys, that’s something you don’t often see. And I tell you this right now: If they’s any lynch talk around this here town, you can lay to it that you’ll have to shoot your way to Sinclair through me. And I’ll be a dead one before you reach to him.”

He paused. Someone hissed from the back of the crowd, but the majority murmured in appreciation.

“One more thing,” went on the sheriff. “Some of you may think it was great guns to take Sinclair. It
was
a pretty good job, but they ain’t no credit coming to me. I’m up here saying that all the praise goes to a fat friend of mine by name Arizona. If you got any free drinks, let ’em drift the way of Arizona. Hey, Arizona, step out and make a bow, will you?”

But no Arizona appeared. The crowd cheered him, and then cheered the generous sheriff. Kern had won more by his frankness than he could possibly have won in half a dozen spectacular exploits with a gun.

CHAPTER 25

The crowd swirled out of the hotel before the sheriff and his prisoner, and then swirled back again. No use following the sheriff if they hoped for details. They knew his silence of old. Instead they picked off the members who had taken part in some phase of the fight, and drew them aside. As Sinclair went on down the street, the populace of Sour Creek was left pooled behind him. Various orators were giving accounts of how the whole thing had happened.

Sinclair had neither eye nor ear for them. But he looked back and up to the western sky, with a flat-topped mountain clearly outlined against it. There was his country, and in his country he had left Jig alone and helpless. A feeling of utter desolation and failure came over him. He had started with a double-goal—Sandersen or Cartwright, or both. He had failed lamentably of reaching either one. He looked back to the sheriff, squat, insignificant, gray-headed. What a man to have blocked him!

“But who’s this Arizona?” he asked.

“I dunno. Seems to have known you somewhere. Maybe a friend of yours, Sinclair?”

“H’m,” said the cowpuncher. “Maybe! Tell me: Was it him that was outside the window and trimmed the light on me?”

“You got him right, Sinclair. That was the gent. Nice play he made, eh?”

“Very pretty, sheriff. I thought I knowed his voice.”

“He seems to have made himself pretty infrequent. Didn’t know Arizona was so darned modest.”

“Maybe he’s got other reasons,” said Sinclair. “What’s his full name?”

“Ain’t that curious! I ain’t heard of anybody else that knows it. He’s a cool head, this Arizona. Seemed to read your mind and know jest how you’d jump, Sinclair. I would have been off combing the trails, but he seemed to know that you’d come into town.”

“I’ll sure keep him in mind if I ever meet up with him,” murmured Sinclair. “Is this where I bunk?”

The sheriff had paused before a squat, dumpy building and was working noisily at the lock with a big key. Now that his back was necessarily toward his prisoner, two of the posse stepped up close beside Sinclair. They had none of the sheriff’s nonchalance. One of them was the man whose head had made the acquaintance of Sinclair’s knee, and both were ready for instant action of any description.

“I’m Rhinehart,” said one softly. “Keep me in mind, Sinclair. I’m him that you smashed with your knee. Dirty work! I’ll see you when you get out of the lockup—if that ever happens!”

The voice of Sinclair was not so soft. “I’ll meet you in jail or out,” he answered, “on foot or on horseback, with fists or knife or gun. And you can lay to this, Rhinehart: I’ll remember you a pile better’n you’ll remember me!”

All the repressed savagery of his nature came quivering into his voice as he spoke, and the other shrank instinctively a pace. In the meantime the sheriff had succeeded in turning the rusted lock, which squeaked back. The door grumbled on its heavy hinges. Sinclair stepped into the musty, close atmosphere within.

“Don’t look like you had much use for this here outfit,” he said to the sheriff.

The latter lighted a lantern.

“Nope,” he said. “It sure beats all how the luck runs, Sinclair. We’d had a pretty bad time with crooks around these parts, and them that was nabbed in Sour Creek got away; about two out of three, before they was brought to me at Woodville. So the boys got together and ponied up for this little jail, and it’s as neat a pile of mud and steel as ever you see. Look at them bars. Kind of rusty, they look, but inside they’re toolproof. Oh, it’s an up-to-date outfit, this jail. It’s been a comfort to me, and it’s a credit to Sour Creek. But the trouble is that since it was built they ain’t been more’n one or two to put in it. Maybe you can make out here for the night. Have you over to Woodville in a couple of days, Sinclair.”

He brought his prisoner into a cagelike cell, heavily guarded with bars on all sides. The adobe walls had been trusted in no direction. The steel lining was the strength of the Sour Creek jail. The sheriff himself set about shaking out the blankets. When this was done, he bade his two companions draw their guns and stand guard at the steel door to the cell.

“Not that I don’t trust you a good deal, Sinclair,” he said, “but I know that a gent sometimes takes big chances.”

So saying, he cut the bonds of his prisoner, but instead of making a plunge at the door, Sinclair merely stretched his long arms luxuriously above his head. The sheriff slipped out of the door and closed it after him. A heavy and prolonged clangor followed, as steel jarred home against steel.

“Don’t go sheriff,” said Sinclair. “I need a chat with you.”

“I’m in no hurry. And here’s the gent we was talking about. Here’s Arizona!”

The sheriff had waved his two companions out of the jail, as soon as the prisoner was securely lodged, and no sooner was this done, and they had departed through the doorway, than the heavy figure of Arizona himself appeared. He came slowly into the circle of the lantern light, an oddly changed man.

His swaggering gait, with heels that pounded heavily, was gone. He slunk forward, soft-footed. His head, usually so buoyantly erect, was now sunk lower and forward. His high color had faded to a drab olive. In fact, from a free-swinging, jovial, somewhat overbearing demeanor, Arizona had changed to a mien of malicious and rather frightened cunning. In this wise he advanced, heedless of the curious and astonished sheriff, until his face was literally pressed against the bars. He peered steadily at Sinclair.

On the face of the latter there had been at first blank surprise, then a gradually dawning recognition. Finally he walked slowly to the bars. As Sinclair approached, the fat cowpuncher drew back, with lingering catlike steps, as if he grudged every inch of his retreat and yet dared not remain to meet Sinclair.

“By the Eternal,” said Sinclair, “it’s Dago!”

Arizona halted, quivering with emotions which the sheriff could not identify, save for a blind, intense malice. The tall man turned to the sheriff, smiling: “Dago Lansing, eh?”

“Never heard that name,” said the sheriff.

“Maybe not,” replied Sinclair, “but that’s the man I—”

“You lie!” cried Arizona huskily, and his fat, swift hand fluttered nervously around the butt of the revolver. “Sheriff, they ain’t nothing but lies stocked up in him. Don’t believe nothing he says!”

“Huh!” chuckled Sinclair. “Why, Kern, he’s a man about eight years ago that I—”

Pausing, he looked into the convulsed face of Arizona, who was apparently tortured with apprehension.

“I won’t go on, Dago,” said Sinclair mildly. “But—so you’ve carried this grudge all these days, eh?”

Arizona tossed up his head. For a moment he was the Arizona the sheriff had known, but his laughter was too strident, and it was easy to see that he was at a point of hysterically high tension.

“Well, I’d have carried it eighty years as easy as eight,” declared Arizona. “I been waiting all this time, and now I got you, Sinclair. You’ll rot behind the bars the best part of the life that’s left to you. And when you come out—I’ll meet you ag’in!”

Sinclair smiled in a singular fashion. “Sorry to disappoint you, Dago. But I’m not coming out. I’m going to stay put. I’m through.” The other blinked. “How come?”

“It’s something you couldn’t figure,” said Sinclair calmly, and he eyed the fat man as if from a great distance.

Sinclair was remembering the day, eight years ago, in a lumber camp to the north when a shivering, meager, shifty-eyed youngster had come among them asking for work. They had taken pity on him, those big lumberjacks, put him up, given him money, kept him at the bunk house.

Then articles began to disappear, watches, money. It was Sinclair who had caught the friendless stripling in the act of sleight of hand in the middle of the night when the laborers, tired out, slept as if stunned. And when the others would have let the cringing, weeping youth go with a lecture and the return of his illicit spoils, it was the stern Sinclair who had insisted on driving home the lesson. He forced them to strip Dago to the waist. Two stalwarts held his hands, and Sinclair laid on the whip. And Dago, the moment the lash fell, ceased his wailing and begging, and stood quivering, with his head bent, his teeth set and gritting, until the punishment was ended.

It was Sinclair, also, when the thing was ended, and the others would have thrust the boy out penniless, who split the contents of his wallet with Dago. He remembered the words he had spoken to the stripling that day eight years before.

“You ain’t had much luck out here in the West, kid, but stay around. Go south. Learn to ride a hoss. They’s nothing that puts heart and honesty in a man like a good hoss. Don’t go back to your city. You’ll turn into a snake there. Stay out here and practice being a man, will you? Get the feel of a Colt. Fight your way. Keep your mouth shut and work with your hands. And don’t brag about what you know or what you’ve done. That’s the way to get on. You got the markings in you, son. You got grit. I seen it when you was under the whip, and I wish I had the doing of that over again. I made a mistake with you, kid. But do what I’ve told you to do, and one of these days you’ll meet up with me and beat me to the draw and take everything you got as a grudge out on me. But you can’t do it unless you turn into a man.”

Dago had listened in the most profound silence, accepted the money without thanks, and disappeared, never to be heard from again. In the sleek-faced man before him, Sinclair could hardly recognize that slender fellow of the lumber camp. Only the bright and agile eyes were the same; that, and a certain telltale nervousness of hand. The color was coming back into his face.

“I guess I’ve done it,” Arizona was saying. “I guess we’re squared up, Sinclair.”

“Yep, and a balance on your side.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I’ve followed your advice, Long Riley. I’ve never forgot a word of it. It was printed into me!”

He made a significant, short gesture, as if he were snapping a whip, and a snarl of undying malice curled his lips.

“As long as you live, Sinclair,” he added. “As long as you live, I’ll remember.”

Even the sheriff shuddered at that glimpse into the black soul of a man; Sinclair alone was unmoved.

“I reckon you’ve barked enough, Arizona,” he suggested. “S’pose you trot along. I got to have words with my friend, the sheriff.”

Arizona waved his fat hand. He was recovering his ordinary poise, and with a smiling good night to the sheriff, he turned away through the door.