The Max Brand Megapack (54 page)

“Do you know what I kept sayin’ to myself when I found you was gone?”

“Well?”

“Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!”

She had said it so often to herself that now some of the original emotion crept into her voice. His arm went out; they shook hands across their breakfast pans.

She went on: “The next thing is Drew?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no changing you.” She did not wait for his answer. “I know that. I won’t ask questions. If it has to be done we’ll do it quickly; and afterward I can find a way out for us both.”

Something like a foreknowledge came to him, telling him that the thing would never be done—that he had surrendered his last chance of Drew when he turned back to go to Sally. It was as if he took a choice between the killing of the man and the love of the woman. But he said nothing of his forebodings and helped her quietly to rearrange the small pack. They saddled and took the trail which pointed up over the mountains—the same trail which they had ridden in an opposite direction the night before.

He rode with his head turned, taking his last look at the old house of Drew, with its blackened, crumbling sides, when the girl cried softly: “What’s that? Look!”

He stared in the direction of her pointing arm. They were almost directly under the shoulder of rocks which loomed above the trail along the edge of the lake. Anthony saw nothing.

“What was it?”

He checked his horse beside hers.

“I thought I saw something move. I’m not sure. And there—back, Anthony!”

And she whirled her horse. He caught it this time clearly, the unmistakable glint of the morning light on steel, and he turned the grey sharply. At the same time a rattling blast of revolver shots crackled above them; the grey reared and pitched back.

By inches he escaped the fall of the horse, slipping from the saddle in the nick of time. A bullet whipped his hat from his head. Then the hand of the girl clutched his shoulder.

“Stirrup and saddle, Anthony!”

He seized the pommel of the saddle, hooked his foot into the stirrup which she abandoned to him, and she spurred back toward the old house.

A shout followed them, a roar that ended in a harsh rattle of curses; they heard the spat of bullets several times on the trees past which they whirled. But it was only a second before they were once more in the shelter of the house. He stood in the centre of the room, stunned, staring stupidly around him. It was not fear of death that benumbed him, but a rising horror that he should be so trapped—like a wild beast cornered and about to be worried to death by dogs.

As for escape, there was simply no chance—it was impossible. On three sides the lake, still beautiful, though the colour was fading from it, effectively blocked their way. On the fourth and narrowest side there was the shoulder of rocks, not only blocking them, but affording a perfect shelter for Nash and his men, for they did not doubt that it was he.

“They think they’ve got us,” said a fiercely exultant voice beside him, “but we ain’t started to make all the trouble we’re goin’ to make.”

Life came back to him as he looked at her. She was trembling with excitement, but it was the tremor of eagerness, not the unmistakable sick palsy of fear. He drew out a large handkerchief of fine, white linen and tied it to a long splinter of wood which he tore away from one of the rotten boards.

“Go out with this,” he said. “They aren’t after you, Sally. This is west of the Rockies, thank God, and a woman is safe with the worst man that ever committed murder.”

She said: “D’you mean this, Anthony?”

“I’m trying to mean it.”

She snatched the stick and snapped it into small pieces.

“Does that look final, Anthony?”

He could not answer for a moment. At last he said: “What a woman you would have made for a wife, Sally Fortune; what a fine pal!”

But she laughed, a mirth not forced and harsh, but clear and ringing.

“Anthony, ain’t this better’n marriage?”

“By God,” he answered, “I almost think you’re right.”

For answer a bullet ripped through the right-hand wall and buried itself in a beam on the opposite side of the room.

“Listen!” she said.

There was a fresh crackle of guns, the reports louder and longer drawn.

“Rifles,” said Sally Fortune. “I knew no bullet from a six-gun could carry like that one.”

The little, sharp sounds of splintering and crunching began everywhere. A cloud of soot spilled down the chimney and across the hearth. A furrow ploughed across the floor, lifting a splinter as long and even as if it had been grooved out by a machine.

“Look!” said Sally, “they’re firin’ breast high to catch us standing, and on the level of the floor to get us if we lie down. That’s Nash. I know his trademark.”

“From the back of the house we can answer them,” said Bard. “Let’s try it.”

“Pepper for their salt, eh?” answered Sally, and they ran back through the old shack to the last room.

CHAPTER XXXIX

LEGAL MURDER

As Drew entered his bedroom he found the doctor in the act of restoring the thermometer to its case. His coat was off and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow; he looked more like a man preparing to chop wood than a physician engaging in a struggle with death; but Dr. Young had the fighting strain. Otherwise he would never have persisted in Eldara.

Already the subtle atmosphere of sickness had come upon the room. The shades of the windows were drawn evenly, and low down, so that the increasing brightness of the morning could only temper, not wholly dismiss the shadows. Night is the only reality of the sick-bed; the day is only a long evening, a waiting for the utter dark. The doctor’s little square satchel of instruments, vials, and bandages lay open on the table; he had changed the apartment as utterly as he had changed his face by putting on great, horn-rimmed spectacles. They gave an owl-like look to him, an air of omniscience. It seemed as if no mortal ailment could persist in the face of such wisdom.

“Well?” whispered Drew.

“You can speak out, but not loudly,” said the doctor calmly. “He’s delirious; the fever is getting its hold.”

“What do you think?”

“Nothing. The time hasn’t come for thinking.”

He bent his emotionless eye closer on the big rancher.

“You,” he said, “ought to be in bed this moment.”

Drew waved the suggestion aside.

“Let me give you a sedative,” added Young.

“Nonsense. I’m going to stay here.”

The doctor gave up the effort; dismissed Drew from his mind, and focused his glance on the patient once more. Calamity Ben was moving his head restlessly from side to side, keeping up a gibbering mutter. It rose now to words.

“Joe, a mule is to a hoss what a woman is to a man. Ever notice? The difference ain’t so much in what they do as what they don’t do. Me speakin’ personal, I’ll take a lot from any hoss and lay it to jest plain spirit; but a mule can make me mad by standin’ still and doin’ nothing but wablin’ them long ears as if it understood things it wasn’t goin’ to speak about. Y’ always feel around a mule as if it knew somethin’ about you—had somethin’ on you—and was laughin’ soft and deep inside. Damn a mule! I remember—”

But here he sank into the steady, voiceless whisper again, the shadow of a sound rather than the reality. It was ghostly to hear, even by daylight.

“Will it keep up long?” asked Drew.

“Maybe until he dies.”

“I’ve told you before; it’s impossible for him to die.”

The doctor made a gesture of resignation.

He explained: “As long as this fever grows our man will steadily weaken; it shows that he’s on the downward path. If it breaks—why, that means that he will have a chance—more than a chance—to get well. It will mean that he has enough reserve strength to fight off the shock of the wound and survive the loss of the blood.”

“It will mean,” said Drew, apparently thinking aloud, “that the guilt of murder does not fall on Anthony.”

“Who is Anthony?”

The wounded man broke in; his voice rose high and sharp: “Halt!”

He went on, in a sighing mumble: “Shorty—help—I’m done for!”

“The shooting,” said the doctor, who had kept his fingers on the wrist of his patient; “I could feel his pulse leap and stop when he said that.”

“He said ‘halt!’ first; a very clear sign that he tried to stop Bard before Bard shot. Doctor, you’re witness to that?”

He had grown deeply excited.

“I’m witness to nothing. I never dreamed that you could be so interested in any human being.”

He nodded to himself.

“Do you know how I explained your greyness to myself? As that of a man ennuied with life—tired of living because he had nothing in the world to occupy his affections. And here I find you so far from being ennuied that you are using your whole strength to keep the guilt of murder away from another man. It’s amazing. The boys will never believe it.”

He continued: “A man who raised a riot in your own house, almost burned down your place, shot your man, stole a horse—gad, Drew, you are sublime!”

But if he expected an explanatory answer from the rancher he was disappointed. The latter pulled up a chair beside the bed and bent his stern eyes on the patient as if he were concentrating all of a great will on bringing Calamity Ben back to health.

He worked with the doctor. Every half hour a temperature was taken, and it was going up steadily. Drew heard the report each time with a tightening of the muscles about his jaws. He helped pack the wounded man with wet cloths. He ran out and stopped a wrangling noise of the cowpunchers several times. But mostly he sat without motion beside the bed, trying to will the sufferer back to life.

And in the middle of the morning, after taking a temperature, the doctor looked to the rancher with a sort of dull wonder.

“It’s dropping?” whispered Drew.

“It’s lower. I don’t think it’s dropping. It can’t be going down so soon. Wait till the next time I register it. If it’s still lower then, he’ll get well.”

The grey man sagged forward from his chair to his knees and took the hands of Calamity, long-fingered, bony, cold hands they were. There he remained, moveless, his keen eyes close to the wandering stare of the delirious man. Out of the exhaustless reservoir of his will he seemed to be injecting an electric strength into the other, a steadying and even flow of power that passed from his hands and into the body of Calamity.

When the time came, and Young stood looking down at the thermometer, Drew lifted haggard eyes, waiting.

“It’s lower!”

The great arms of the rancher were thrown above his head; he rose, changed, triumphant, as if he had torn his happiness from the heart of the heavens, and went hastily from the room, silent.

At the stable he took his great bay, saddled him, and swung out on the trail for Eldara, a short, rough trail which led across the Saverack—the same course which Nash and Bard had taken the day before.

But the river had greatly fallen—the water hardly washed above the knees of the horse except in the centre of the stream; by noon he reached the town and went straight for the office of Glendin. The deputy was not there, and the rancher was referred to Murphy’s saloon.

There he found Glendin, seated at a corner table with a glass of beer in front of him, and considering the sun-whitened landscape lazily through the window. At the sound of the heavy footfall of Drew he turned, rose, his shoulders flattened against the wall behind him like a cornered man prepared for a desperate stand.

“It’s all right,” cried Drew. “It’s all over, Glendin. Duffy won’t press any charges against Bard; he says that he’s given the horse away. And Calamity Ben is going to live.”

“Who says he will?”

“I’ve just ridden in from his bedside. Dr. Young says the crisis is past. And so—thank God—there’s no danger to Bard; he’s free from the law!”

“Too late,” said the deputy.

It did not seem that Drew heard him. He stepped closer and turned his head.

“What’s that?”

“Too late. I’ve sent out men to—to apprehend Bard.”

“Apprehend him?” repeated Drew. “Is it possible? To murder him, you mean!”

He had not made a threatening move, but the deputy had his grip on the butt of his gun.

“It was that devil Nash. He persuaded me to send out a posse with him in charge.”

“And you sent him?”

“What could I do? Ain’t it legal?”

“Murder is legal—sometimes. It has been in the past. I’ve an idea that it’s going to be again.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

“You’ll learn later. Where did they go for Bard?”

He did not seem disappointed. He was rather like a man who had already heard bad news and now only finds it confirmed. He knew before. Now the fact was simply clinched.

“They went out to your old place on the other side of the range. Drew, listen to me—”

“How many went after him?”

“Nash, Butch Conklin, and five more. Butch’s gang.”

“Conklin!”

“I was in a hole; I needed men.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“Since last night.”

“Then,” said Drew, “he’s already dead. He doesn’t know the mountains.”

“I give Nash strict orders not to do nothin’ but apprehend Bard.”

“Don’t talk, Glendin. It disgusts me—makes my flesh crawl. He’s alone, with seven cutthroats against him.”

“Not alone. Sally Fortune’s better’n two common men.”

“The girl? God bless her! She’s with him; she knows the country. There may be a hope; Glendin, if you’re wise, start praying now that I find Bard alive. If I don’t—”

The swinging doors closed behind him as he rushed through toward his horse. Glendin stood dazed, his face mottled with a sick pallor. Then he moved automatically toward the bar. Murphy hobbled down the length of the room on his wooden leg and placed bottle and glass before the deputy.

“Well?” he queried.

Glendin poured his drink with a shaking hand, spilling much liquor across the varnished wood. He drained his glass at a gulp.

“I dunno; what d’you think, Murphy?”

“You heard him talk, Glendin. You ought to know what’s best.”

“Let’s hear you say it.”