The Max Brand Megapack (447 page)

And here, incredibly devilish though it was, he actually had delivered his blow against Milman through the mouth of Milman’s own daughter.

She had been a mere tool, a foolish, incredible tool, but one with an edge sharp enough to cut her father to the heart.

CHAPTER 32

Milman Rides

When Georgia turned back to her mother, she was met with a cold, keen glance that startled her.

“That boy has been telling you a good deal, Georgia,” said Elinore Milman.

“He told me because I asked,” said the girl.

“About your father?”

“No, but about what he had done and what he had been.”

“You’re interested in him, Georgia?”

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

“I think we’d better talk about father,” she said.

“Do you?” asked the mother, and lifted her brows a little.

It was a danger sign with which Georgia had been familiar for years.

“What does he matter,” said Georgia, “except that he’s a danger to father?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” said Mrs. Milman. “I want to find out what the Kid matters to you.”

“To me? Why, I’ve barely seen him.”

“That doesn’t matter very much—to him, I imagine. He’s been making love to you, of course?”

“Of course not!” said Georgia.

Then she turned a bright crimson.

“Well?” said her mother, waiting.

“I suppose he did,” said the girl. “But not the way you’d think.”

“I don’t suppose that he asked you to marry him the first moment, if that’s what you mean,” said Mrs. Milman, in the same quick, hard voice. “But he’s been looking for you a long time, I suppose?”

Georgia, if possible, blushed still deeper. She began to feel that probably even in this matter she had been made a fool of by the Kid. A cold, deep pang of hatred for him slid through her.

“He’d seen me years ago,” said Georgia.

“Where?”

“Here. Through that window. One night when you were playing and I was singing, and father was asleep.”

“And the Kid was looking about for whatever he could pick up?”

“He was looking for a mule with a barbed-wire scar across its chest. He’d found Blister, Mother, and he’d followed Blister to our house.”

Mrs. Milman gripped hard on the arms of her chair. “That was a stolen mule then.”

“Yes. According to the Kid.”

“I wish that we had some other name for him. Did he give you one?”

“No.”

“Georgia, what is this fellow to you?”

“I don’t know,” said Georgia, “except that I hate him more than any one I’ve ever seen.”

“You like him better, too, don’t you?” asked the mother.

“Yes, I do.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“He told me how he had hunted down each one of the other four.”

“That must have been a pretty story.”

“He never touched one of them. He simply broke their hearts, one after another.”

“Using other people for it—as he’s used you today?”

The girl lost her color at a stroke, but she answered steadily: “I see that now.”

“How do you like him, Georgia?”

“I don’t know how to tell you.”

“It’s the great, romantic thrill, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, the big, handsome stranger with the strange life, and the rather dark past. Isn’t that the thing? The Byronic touch, perhaps?”

“There isn’t much bunk about him,” said Georgia carefully.

She began to think, then she added: “No, there isn’t much pretense, so far as I could see.”

“And how far do you think that you could see?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps not very far. I’m not pretending that I could look through him.”

“The mystery is the attractive part, I suppose?”

“Perhaps that’s a part of it.”

“A good deal of pity, too, for the poor boy and his dead mother and father?”

“I don’t think you really have a right to talk about that!” declared Georgia.

Mrs. Milman suddenly closed her eyes.

“No,” she said, “I want to be fair. I’m simply trying to get at your mind, Georgia.”

“I’ll try to tell you everything,” said Georgia.

She stood up like a soldier at attention. They had always been very close friends.

“You know a good deal about the Kid, Georgia?”

“I know what he’s told me.”

“You believe it?” She pondered again.

“Yes,” she said. “Just now, at least, I believe every syllable of it.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“The rumors and the gossip, of course, not in much detail.”

“Such as what?”

“That he’s a gambler and a gunman.”

“Two easy words to repeat. But do you realize what they mean?”

“I think so. Not altogether, perhaps. I’m not a baby, though, Mother.”

“No,” said Mrs. Milman. “You’re not a baby, and you’ve reached the age when you think you know, and think you think. Just try to remember that a professional gambler is a fellow who matches his sleight of hand against the honest chance which other players are trusting. And a gunman is a man who takes advantage of his professional skill, his natural talent, to pick quarrels with less-gifted men, and men who have something other than murder to think about. What chance has the ordinary man against a skilled gambler, or a trained gun fighter?”

The girl nodded.

“I’ve thought of those things. But I—”

“Well, but—”

“But I don’t believe that the Kid ever took an advantage.” Elinore Milman made an impatient movement, but she controlled her voice as well as she could.

“You seriously don’t, my dear?”

“I don’t,” said the girl. “It may be partly because he trusts himself so perfectly. But I think that if he gambles, it’s against professional gamblers, like himself. And if he fights, it’s with professional fighters, like himself.”

A line of pain appeared between the eyes of the mother.

“I’ve had the same idea myself,” said she, “though I suppose I want to make his case as black as possible.”

“Oh, Mother,” said the girl, “I hope I can be as honest as you are!”

“Then honestly face what a life with him would mean—no home, no children. You wouldn’t dare to trust children to the care of such a wild man. You know that?”

The girl was silent. Then she nodded.

“I suppose he told you how much you mean to him?”

“Not one word!”

“Ah, but a look, a gesture can fill up a big page, of course!”

“Not a look, not a gesture. Only that some things leaked through—or I thought they did.”

“He’s cleverer, even, than I suspected!”

“Perhaps. I don’t think so. I think that he’s pulled two ways. He hates father. He likes me. And he’s determined to break up Dixon’s crowd.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes. Animals mean something to him more than they do to us. I saw his face when he heard the lowing of the cattle at Hurry Creek.”

“What are you going to do, Georgia?”

“Wait,” said Georgia, “and pray that I never see him again.” Mrs. Milman, staring at the girl like one who hopes against hope, said simply: “I think that you’re right, Georgia.”

Then she added. “And what about your father?”

“I’ve thought of that.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go to him and tell him—”

“Think it over. You’ll have to have the right words.”

“I’m simply going to tell him that it doesn’t matter, whatever he’s done in the past. Not to me. Not to you and me, Mother! Am I right?”

Elinore Milman caught a quick breath.

“We can’t let it matter. There has to be such a thing as a blind faith and a blind loyalty, doesn’t there?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “That’s just what I feel.”

The mother stood up and put her arms around Georgia.

“We’re all standing on the brink of ruin,” she said. “Yesterday we were rich and happy and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Today, there’s every chance that we’ll go downhill and never rise again. Your father’s life is in horrible danger from that boy. There’s a shame in his past that is never going to take its shadow off our lives, no matter how the affair comes out. All of our wealth seems in danger of being snatched away. And I have you to tremble about and pray for, Georgia. There’s only the way to face these things, and that’s together, shoulder to shoulder.”

“Yes,” said Georgia.

She began to tremble violently and suddenly her mother whispered: “I think that you’re having the hardest time of all. But now go and tell your father what you’ve told me, will you?”

“I’ll go at once,” said Georgia.

She turned to the door and waited there for a moment, breathing deeply to drive away a faintness which was growing upon her. Then, composing herself with a great effort, she went out of the house toward the barn.

She met little, one-legged Harry Sams, with a manure fork in his hand coming from behind the barn. The stem of his corncob pipe had had a new mouthpiece whittled and rewhittled in it. It was now hardly two inches long, and the fumes from the bowl of the pipe kept him constantly blinking. But he was faithful to old pipes, as to old friends.

“Harry,” she said, “have you seen Father?”

“Aye,” said Harry, “he’s gone and got him that white-faced fool of a chestnut gelding, and he’s gone off toward Hurry Creek as though there was guns behind him, instead of in front.”

The words struck her like bullets. All the sunset blurred and darkened before her face, for she knew that her father had gone off in hope of finding his death.

CHAPTER 33

Danger Ahead

The Kid, when he got to the bottom of the long lariat, still found that his feet dangled well above either water or ground. He looked down, but all that he could see was the white dashing of the water—not white, really, but a dusky gray in that half light. He could not tell whether the water ran directly beneath him or if there were a small ledge of rock at the side of the canyon bed.

Hanging by one strong hand, with the other, he took out a match and scratched it. It was only a single spluttering of dim light before a dash of spray put it out, but that glimpse was enough to reveal to the Kid a raging inferno of waters. And, beneath him, a narrow, slippery ledge of rock, hardly a single foot wide.

To the ledge he dropped.

By daylight it would have been a simple matter, perhaps, to get along the place. And he cursed himself because he had not thought of exploring here while the sun was still shining.

He tried matches again and again. But the wind of the water or the flying spray itself instantly snatched away the flame. He had to explore by touch alone. Light there was almost none. Though when he looked up, he could see stars sprinkled across the narrow road which the canyon walls fenced through the high heavens; and there was among them one broad-faced planet—its name he did not know.

The thunder of the creek now pounded steadily, like the continual roar of guns; the solid rocks trembled slightly beneath his hands; and the absence of light gave him only vague and illusive hints of what was around him.

Therefore he closed his eyes altogether for the purpose of shutting out the few, faint rays which merely helped to confuse him, and he began to fumble along the wall of the ravine.

It swung to the left for a little distance. He tried to remember just how the creek had been seen to curve from above, but even this point he carelessly had overlooked. However, that did not matter now. He was committed to that bare, slippery wall of rock, and if he fell from it, he was done forever.

That was not the only danger.

He had hardly made three steps’ progress when something crashed behind him, and then a great black form shot by him, low down on the face of the water.

It missed his feet in inches, grinding on the ledge of rock on which he stood. Hurtling onward, it struck on the corner of the next big rock with a staggering shock, then was whirled around the edge.

Vaguely he had seen this, after opening his eyes when the blow came behind him. He knew that it was a tree trunk, torn down from the banks higher up the stream, and now sent like a javelin, flying down toward the lower waters. A second of these might very well strike him and dash him to a pulp, or else flick him off from the wall like a caterpillar from a tree, to be ground up by the teeth of the rocks.

Yet he went on. In fact, there was no return, but the grim steadiness of his purpose never left him.

With closed eyes, and still fumbling, he worked out to a place where the rock ledge shelved away to nothing beneath the grip of his feet. He reached down, pulled off his boots, and prepared to see what naked hands and feet could do with the treacherous surface of that canyon face in the dark, with the spray whipping continually around him.

He found a handhold. His feet, reaching at the rock below, helped him a good deal. He was working his way out and out to the left, where the creek turned its corner, and now he turned the point of it.

It was grisly, hard work, for his weight was hanging almost entirely from his hands. Only now and then did he get any purchase for his feet. And the handholds were hard to find also. He had to hold by one hand and with the other fumble before him, vaguely, up and down, until he found some small projection, or some crevice into which even the tips of his fingers could be fitted.

Sometimes he was swaying up. Once he descended until his feet thrust into the water.

The current jerked at him like a hand. He almost lost his hold. For one breathless moment he thought that he was gone.

But his hands were strong, and his hold remained true.

In this manner he found that he had turned the corner. But now his position was not much better. There was still no foothold beneath him, and his arms were now aching to the pits of the shoulders. They were so extremely tired that they shook with a violence which of itself threatened to shake him loose from the wet rock.

And there was no light!

He opened his eyes.

Yes, far away to the left there was a red star shining toward him. It glared at him like an eye, threateningly. But suddenly, his eyes opening more clearly, he saw that it was the flame of the Dixon camp fire.