The Max Brand Megapack (346 page)

“Sure! But what of that? Expect me to lead an attack on a jail, eh? Throw my life away? By guns, I think you’d like that!”

“You don’t have to lead. Just give them the money they need and then spread the word around that Riley Sinclair is really an honorable man who killed Quade in a fair fight. I know what they thought of Quade. He was a bully. No one liked him. Tell them it’s a shame that a man like Sinclair should die because he killed a big, hulking cur such as Quade. They’ll listen—particularly if they have your money. I know these men, Jude. If they think an injustice is being done, they’ll risk their necks to right it! And if you work on them in the right way, you can have twenty men who’ll risk everything to get Riley out. But there won’t be a risk. If twenty men rush the jail, the guards will simply throw down their guns and give up.”

“Well, I wonder!” muttered Cartwright.

“I’m sure of it, Jude. Do you think a deputy will let himself be killed simply to keep a prisoner safely? They won’t do it!”

“You don’t know this Kern!”

“I
do
know him, and I know that he’s human. I’ve seen him beaten once already.”

“By Sinclair! You keep coming back to him!”

“Jude, if you do this thing for me,” she said steadily, “I’ll go back with you. I don’t love you, but if I go back I’ll keep you from a great deal of shameful talk. I’m sorry, truly, that I left. I couldn’t help it. It was an impulse that—took me by the throat. And if I go back I’ll honestly try to make you a good wife.”

She faltered a little before that last word, and her voice fell. But Jude Cartwright was wholly fascinated by the color in her face, and the softness of her voice he mistook for a sudden rise of tenderness.

“They’s only one thing I got to ask—you and Sinclair—have you ever—I mean—have you ever told him you’re pretty fond of him—that you love him?” He blurted it out, stammering.

Certainly she knew that her answer was a lie, though it was true in the letter.

“I have never told him so,” she said firmly. “But I owe him a great debt—he must not die because he’s a gentleman, Jude.”

All the time she was speaking, he watched her with ferret sharpness, thinking busily. Before she ended he had reached his decision.

“I’m going to raise that mob.”

“Jude!”

What a ring in her voice! If he had been in doubt he would have known then. No matter what she said, she loved Riley Sinclair. He smiled sourly down on her.

“Keep your thanks. You’ll hear news of Sinclair before morning.” And he stalked out of the room.

CHAPTER 33

Cartwright went downstairs in the highest good humor. He had been convinced of two things in the interview with his wife: The first was that she could be induced to return to him; the second was that she loved Riley Sinclair. He did not hate her for such fickleness. He merely despised her for her lack of brains. No thinking woman could hesitate a moment between the ranches and the lumber tracts of Cartwright and the empty purse of Riley Sinclair.

As for hatred, that he concentrated on the head of Sinclair himself. He had already excellent reasons for hating the rangy cowpuncher. Those reasons were now intensified and given weight by what he had recently learned. He determined to raise a mob, but not to accomplish his wife’s desires. What she had said about the weakness of jails, the strength of Sinclair, and the probability that once out he would take the trail of the rancher, appealed vigorously to his imagination. He did not dream that such a man as Sinclair would hesitate at a killing. And, loving the girl, the first thing Sinclair would do would be to remove the obstacle through the simple expedient of a well-placed bullet.

But the girl had not only convinced him in this direction, she had taught him where his strength lay, and she had pointed a novel use for that strength. He went to work instantly when he entered the big back room of the hotel which was used for cards and surreptitious drinking. A little, patient-faced man in a corner, who had been sucking a pipe all evening and watching the crap game hungrily, was the first object of his charity. Ten dollars slipped into the pocket of the little cowpuncher brought him out of his chair, with a grin of gratitude and bewilderment. A moment later he was on his knees calling to the dice in a cackling voice.

Crossing the room, Cartwright picked out two more obviously stalled gamblers and gave them a new start. Returning to the table, he found that the game was lagging. In the first place he had from the start supplied most of the sinews of war to that game. Also, two disgruntled members had gone broke in his absence, through trying to plunge for the spoils of the evening. They sat back, with black faces, and watched him come.

“We’re getting down to a small game,” said the gray-headed man who was dealing.

But Cartwright had other ideas. “A friend’s a friend,” he said jovially. “And a gent that’s been playing beside me all evening I figure for a friend. Sit in, boys. I’ll stake you to a couple of rounds, eh?”

Gladly they came, astonished and exchanging glances.

Cartwright had made a sour loser all the game. This sudden generosity took them off balance. It let in a merciful light upon the cruel criticism which they had been leveling at him in private. The pale man, with the blond eyelashes and the faded blue eyes, who had been dexterously stacking the cards all through the game, decided at that moment that he would not only stop cheating, but he would even lose some of his ill-gotten gains back into the game; only a sudden rush of unbelievable luck kept him from executing his generous and silent promise.

This pale-faced man was named Whitey, from the excessive blondness of his hair and his pallor. He was not popular in Sour Creek, but he was much respected. A proof of his ingenuity was that he had cheated at cards in that community for five years, and still he had never been caught at his work. He was not a bold-talking man. In fact he never started arguments or trouble of any kind; but he was a most dexterous and thoroughgoing fighter when he was cornered. In fact he was what is widely known as a “finisher.” And it was Whitey whom Cartwright had chosen as the leader of the mob which he intended raising. He waited until the first shuffle was in progress after the hand, then he began his theme.

“Understand the sheriff is pretty strong for this Sinclair that murdered Quade,” he said carelessly.

“‘Murder’ is a tolerable strong word,” came back the unfriendly answer. “Maybe it was a fair fight.”

Cartwright laughed. “Maybe it was,” he said.

Whitey interrupted himself in the act of shoving the pack across to be cut. He raised his pale eyes to the face of the rancher. “What makes you laugh, Cartwright?”

“Nothing,” said Jude hastily. “Nothing at all. If you gents don’t know Sinclair, it ain’t up to me to give you light. Let him go.”

Nothing more was said during that hand which Whitey won. Jude, apparently bluffing shamelessly, bucked him up to fifty dollars, and then he allowed himself to be called with a pair of tens against a full house. Not only did he lose, but he started a laugh against himself, and he joined in cheerfully. He was aware of Whitey frowning curiously at him and smiling faintly, which was the nearest that Whitey ever came to laughter. And, indeed, the laugh cost Cartwright more than money, but it was a price—the price he was paying for the adherence of Whitey.

“What about this Sinclair?” asked the man with the great, red, blotchy freckles across his face and the back of his neck, so that the skin between looked red and raw. “You come from up north, which is his direction, too. Know anything about him? He looks like pretty much of a man to me, and the sheriff says he’s a square shooter from the word go.”

“Maybe he is,” said Cartwright. “But I don’t want to go around digging the ground away from nobody’s reputation.”

“Whatever he’s got, he won’t last long,” said Whitey definitely. “He’ll swing sure.”

It was Cartwright’s opening. He took advantage of it dexterously, without too much haste. He even yawned to show his lack of interest.

“Well, I got a hundred that says he don’t hang,” he observed quietly and looked full at Whitey across the table. It was a challenge which the gambling spirit of the latter could not afford to overlook.

“Money talks,” began Whitey, then he checked himself. “Do you
know
anything, Cartwright?”

“Sure I don’t,” said Jude in the manner of one who has abundant knowledge in reserve. “But they say that the sheriff and Sinclair have become regular bunkies. Don’t do nothing hardly but sit and chin with each other over in the jail. Ever know Kern to do that before?”

They shook their heads.

“Which is a sign that Sinclair may be all right,” said the sober Whitey.

“Which is a sign that he might have something on the sheriff,” said Jude Cartwright. “I don’t say that he
has
, mind you, but it looks kind of queer. He yanked a prisoner away from the sheriff one day, and the next day he’s took for murder. Did the sheriff have much to do with his taking? No, he didn’t. By all accounts it was Arizona that done the taking, planning and everything. And after Sinclair is took, what does the sheriff do? He gets on the trail of Arizona and has him checked in for murder of another gent. Maybe Arizona is guilty, maybe he ain’t. But it kind of looks as if they was something between Sinclair and Kern, don’t it?”

At this bold exposition of possibilities they paused.

“Kern is figured tolerable straight,” declared Whitey.

“Sure he is. That’s because he don’t talk none and does his work. Besides, he’s a killer. That’s his job. So is Sinclair a killer. Maybe he did fight Quade square, but Quade ain’t the only one. Why, boys, this Sinclair has got a record as long as my arm.”

In silence they sat around the table, each man thinking hard. The professional gunman gets scant sympathy from ordinary cowpunchers.

“Now I dropped in at the jail,” said the man of the great freckles, “and come to think about it, I heard Sinclair singing, and I seen him polishing his spurs.”

“Sure, he’s getting ready for a ride,” put in Cartwright.

There was a growl from the others. They were slowly turning their interest from the game to Cartwright.

“What d’you mean a ride?”

“Got another hundred,” said Cartwright calmly, “that when the morning comes it won’t find Sinclair in the jail.”

At once they were absolutely silenced, for money talks in an eloquent voice. Deliberately Cartwright counted out the two stacks of shimmering twenty-dollar gold pieces, five to a stack.

“One hundred that he don’t hang; another hundred that he ain’t in the jail when the morning comes. Any takers, boys? It had ought to be easy money—if everything’s square.”

Whitey made a move, but finally merely raised his hand and rubbed his chin. He was watching that gold on the table with catlike interest. A man
must
know something to be so sure.

“I’d like to know,” murmured the man of the freckles disconnectedly.

“Well,” said Cartwright, “they ain’t much of a mystery about it. For one thing, if the sheriff was plumb set on keeping them two, why didn’t he take ’em over to Woodville today, where they’s a jail they couldn’t bust out of, eh?”

Again they were silenced, and in an argument, when a man falls silent, it simply means that he is thinking hard on the other side.

“But as far as I’m concerned,” went on Cartwright, yawning again, “it don’t make no difference one way or another. Sour Creek ain’t my town, and I don’t care if it gets the ha-ha for having its jail busted open. Of course, after the birds have flown, the sheriff will ride hard after ’em—on the wrong trail!”

Whitey raised his slender, agile, efficient hand.

“Gents,” he said, “something has got to be done. This man Cartwright is giving us the truth! He’s got his hunch, and hunches is mostly always right.”

“Speak out, Whitey,” said the man with the freckles encouragingly. “I like your style of thinking.”

Nodding his acknowledgments, Whitey said:

“The main thing seems to be that Sinclair and Arizona is old hands at killing. And they had ought to be hung. Well, if the sheriff ain’t got the rope, maybe we could help him out, eh?”

CHAPTER 34

The moment her husband was gone, Jig dropped back in her chair and buried her face in her arms, weeping. But there is a sort of sad happiness in making sacrifices for those we love, and presently Jig was laughing through her tears and trembling as she wiped the tears away. After a time she was able to make herself ready for another appearance in the street of Sour Creek. She practiced back and forth in her room that exaggerated swagger, jerked her sombrero rakishly over one eye, cocked up her cartridge belt at one side, and swung down the stairs.

She went straight to the jail and met the sheriff at the door, where he sat, smoking a stub of a pipe. He gaped widely at the sight of her, smoke streaming up past his eyes. Then he rose and shook hands violently.

“All I got to say, Jig,” he remarked, “is that the others was the ones that made the big mistake. When I went and arrested you, I was just following in line. But I’m sorry, and I’m mighty glad that you been found to be O.K.”

Wanly she smiled and thanked him fox his good wishes.

“I’d like to see Sinclair,” she said.

Kern’s amiability increased.

“The best thing I know about you, Jig, is that you ain’t turning Sinclair down, now that he’s in trouble. Go right back in the jail. Him and Arizona is chinning. Wait a minute. I guess I got to keep an eye on you to see you don’t pass nothing through the bars. Keep clean back from them bars, Jig, and then you can talk all you want. I’ll stay here where I can watch you but can’t hear. Is that square?”

“Nothing squarer in the world,” said Jig and went in.

She left the sheriff grinning vacantly into the dark. There was a peculiar something in Jig’s smile that softened men.

But when she stepped into the sphere of the lantern light that spread faintly through the cell, she was astonished to see Arizona and Sinclair kneeling opposite each other, shooting dice with abandon and snapping of the fingers. They rose, laughing at the sight of her, and came to the bars.