by Max Brand
“With the hoofs or otherwise,” said Shawn, grinning, as he rose.
“How long do you stay here, José?” he asked.
“How can I tell?” answered José in a wild and gloomy voice. “I am but clay, and God or Satan molds me. I stay here until a voice comes, and I know that I shall hear one.” He said that with that firm conviction with which a fanatic pronounces his favorite doctrine.
“Wait only a few days,” said the outlaw. “I’m coming back again. I’ll ride Sky Pilot, or he’ll ride me. Adiós, José!”
There was no answer from José. He had seated himself in the doorway of the shack and had fallen, apparently, into a brown study, so the outlaw moved away and went back to his horse, which he found grazing contentedly on the steep bank of the stream. It tossed its head and pricked its ears to welcome its rider. So Shawn mounted, and, as he walked the horse away, he heard again the jangling of a guitar made soft in the distance, and faintly he could make out the singing of José.
He told himself that surely the Mexican must be mad, but, nevertheless, that explanation did not entirely satisfy him. He had his own share of superstitions, picked up along the range, and the solemn narrative of José had turned his blood a little cold.
In the meantime, however, he told himself that he had a more important mission, even, than the discharge of his debt to Shannon, or the acquisition of Sky Pilot, and that was the meeting with the girl the following morning.
It was late, now. His bones were growing sore from the two heavy falls that he had received; therefore he turned aside into the woods, and, in the first convenient little clearing, he made a soft bed of pine boughs and rolled himself in his blanket.
He could not sleep at once, however, but lay on his back, listening to the crunching jaws of the horse as it grazed on the long, rich grass, and to the whisperings and sighings of the wind through the trees. Now and again a breeze of added force touched one of the pines, and, far away or near, a bough rubbed against another with a mournful, groaning sound. Above him, the stars shone white and still; he looked up through the strange spaces and through the dark and empty holes where no stars at all were shining, and the mind of Terence Shawn began to grapple with new ideas that troubled him—with thoughts of old Shannon on the mountain, of that madman, José, and of Kitty Bowen, last of all, who was no less wonderful to him than the brightest of those stars in the sky. At last, he turned upon his face, to shut out these disturbing ideas, and he fell into a sound sleep.
When he wakened, it was the first of the dawn. A thin fog had risen during the night. His face and hands were wet, the blanket was damp, and all the trees were dripping softly in the silver gloom. The horse, having found a thick bed of pine needles, still lay asleep, and its breath rose in white puffs that melted instantly into the fog.
When he sat up, his bones ached sadly from his falls of the preceding evening. This world seemed a gloomy place and hard to understand, but at least the mysteries of the Mexican’s belief now appeared merest moonshine and nonsense. It was a workaday world once more, made up of men, women, horses, guns, and hard, substantial realities. As for that realm of spirits that obtruded itself upon the Mexican, it was the fancy of a madman.
So thought Terence Shawn, and mechanically he went about the building of a fire and the preparation of his breakfast. Food was tasteless to him, however. For, with a growing excitement, he looked forward to the possible meeting with the girl. He began, like all who are hopeful of great happiness, to discount what she had promised. Certainly girls make promises easily and break them with equal unconcern, so he told himself that there was hardly a chance that she would be there.
The evening before, she had been excited, no doubt, to see him at the dance, defying all the powers of the law so blandly, but now it would be very different, and, when she wakened and saw the world turned gray with this disheartening mist, she would forget the glamour of the night before.
After his morning meal, he looked over his horse with his usual care. The work of the day before had been very exacting, but, nevertheless, the horse had stood up under it well, and, now, with a kindly eye, it sniffed at the bridle and saddle that its master brought toward it. About his mount’s condition, therefore, Shawn felt reassured, and he swung into the damp saddle, at last, certain that, if danger came near, he could show it a clean pair of heels, on that day.
He took his bearings, after that, as well as he was able. The fog had not lifted. The weird, pale mist still tangled in the woods and breathed dankly down the draws, but at length he located himself, and he took his way toward that cañon, leading out from Lister, where he had promised that he would meet the girl.
It was well after 8:00 when he entered the cañon. He cursed the haste that had brought him there so much before the time. The long delay would try all his nerves.
He had barely made up his mind to that fact, when he made out the dim outline of a rider traveling just before him, up the valley. He checked his horse to a trot and stole closer, and suddenly he knew that it was no man, but a woman who was showing him the way up the cañon.
Chapter Thirteen
It was Kitty Bowen. She turned her horse when she heard him, and came, smiling toward him through the mist.
“How did you guess,” asked Kitty, “that I’d be an hour early?”
“I didn’t,” he confessed. “I didn’t guess that you’d come at all. But I’m terrible glad you did.”
“I had to tell them that I was starting for town to see Jenny Moran,” she said, “so of course I had to start early. They suspect me, you know . . . they watch me every minute, now.”
“They watch you?” repeated the outlaw. “And who are ‘they’, would you be telling me?”
She paused a moment and watched his lean and handsome face hardening, and his keen eyes narrowing. “Since you danced with me,” said Kitty Bowen, “they think that you may come to see me again. They think that I may be the bait, Terry, with which they’ll catch the fish.”
“It’s the sheriff?” asked Shawn.
“Of course.”
“It’s a low thing to do,” observed Shawn bitterly. “And what do your mother and father say?”
“They’re worried, too,” she answered frankly.
“Aye,” said Shawn. “They wouldn’t be having you run about with a man like me . . . a robber, Kitty, and a murderer, and a man of no faith. They’ve told you that, I’ve no doubt?”
“Well,” said Kitty, “how good are you, Terry, and how bad?” Then she added: “We’d better be drifting up the canon . . . I think the sun’s coming out, Terry.”
They turned their horses up the ravine, accordingly, and, glancing to the east, Shawn saw that the pale disk of the sun was looking more and more brightly through the fog, making one quarter of the heavens a glowing, translucent, pearly white. Still the mist did not clear away, and the black, wet trees dripped mournfully beside them and over them, as they went up the narrowing ravine. It seemed to Shawn that he could not have chosen a more unlucky moment to see the girl. In a time of bright sun and cool winds, say, the life of an outlawed man might seem joyful enough, but now his existence must appear to the girl very like that of a drowned rat.
“That’s a hard thing to be asking a man,” said Terry. “You’d better ask the others. I’d rather you did.”
“I’ve asked both kinds,” she said.
“What kinds?”
“Those that hate you, and those that love you.”
“Those that love me?” exclaimed Shawn.
“Old Joe, for instance,” said the girl, smiling a little.
“Him?” cried Terry Shawn. “I’ve never had a good word out of him in all my life! Nothing but hard cracks and meanness, confound him. He was joking with you, if he said a good word about me, Kitty.”
Instead of answering, she looked straight up the valley and smiled a little.
“According to Joe,” she said at last, “you’re a saint, and a prince without a princedom, Terry. You�
�ve never done any wrong to anyone, but you’ve been forced to the wall, a few times.”
“Humph,” he said.
“The reason you’re poor, is that you give your money away. The reason that you have to keep running, is that you’ve taken money from one man to give it to another. And, after all, Terry, you aren’t very rich, I suppose.”
He was silent.
It seemed to Shawn that this girl was bantering him mercilessly, making rather a fool of him, for, all the while she spoke, she turned a faint smile upon him, sometimes a smile of the lips, more often, simply of the eyes. Indeed, she impressed him rather as a keen-minded man than as a woman. He was thrust away at arm’s length, and he felt a bit of nervousness mastering him.
“Then,” she continued, as he remained silent and stared at the wet rocks over which they were passing, “there are the others. They say different things.”
“The sheriff?”
“Yes, and most of the rest.”
“Things such as what?” he urged.
“That you’re a thief.”
“Ah,” murmured Shawn.
“And a bank breaker.”
He flinched.
“A horse stealer,” she went on mercilessly.
“I’ve paid double for every horse I ever took!” he cried.
“After taking them by force,” she answered, looking so straight at him that his head dropped again. “And,” she went on, “they tell me that you’re a remorseless enemy, and that you never forgive an evil turn.”
“I don’t know,” muttered Shawn. “An eye for an eye . . .”
“That’s Old Testament,” she interrupted. “But they say, too, that you’ve killed men . . . that you always will keep on killing them . . . that you like to kill . . . that you’re a murderer, Terry Shawn.”
Now, as she brought out this indictment, he began to speak in answer at each pause, but, when she had concluded, he sat stiffly in the saddle, pale, lips pressed, hard, together, perspiration beaded on his forehead.
“Is it true?” she asked him.
He tried to answer. At last he found his voice and shouted: “No, no! I swear it’s a lie!”
It was as though he were shouting the words for the whole world to hear. The girl turned her head to one side, and still he thought that there was a faint smile in her eyes as she listened.
“I’ve never fired at any man,” he said, “except when I was cornered, except . . .” He paused and looked at her desperately.
“I could understand a lot,” she said with a sudden warmth. “You go ahead and talk right out to me, Terry, just as if I were a man.” So saying, she let her horse drift a little closer to him.
“Heaven bless you,” said Shawn. “You’re the right stuff. I can talk to you, Kitty, I think. Only it’s hard to know where to begin. About the thieving . . . suppose that we begin there.”
“Begin at the end, and not at the beginning,” she suggested. “I know, somehow, that you never took from a poor fellow who couldn’t afford a loss. And I’ve heard about the Bunyan bank, for instance . . . how you sent back half of what you took, when you heard that they were having to close down because of the loss. It isn’t that I’m thinking about. Of course it’s bad, but somehow it doesn’t bother me much. I suppose you did it more for the fun than for the money, because, as Joe says, you’re not rich today. However, the other thing is different, isn’t it? How many men, actually, have you killed, Terry?”
He counted them up slowly in his mind. “Sloan . . .” he said, “Justis . . . Morgantal . . . Devine . . . Ross . . . Perkins . . . and Chicago Jim.” He made a pause between each name.
“That’s seven,” she said.
“That’s seven,” he said, and he moistened his dry lips and looked sidewise at her for judgment.
“But there are all sorts of people,” said the girl, nodding and frowning. “Even Dad says that there are some men who need killing.”
He reined his horse closer, and he said fervently: “Do you mean that, Kitty? Would you listen?”
“Just wouldn’t I, though!” exclaimed Kitty Bowen heartily.
“Take Sloan,” he went on, reassured. “He was a bully from the mines. I was only a kid. Sloan tried to bully me at the Dickins Bar in Phoenix. You know, Kitty, I was afraid. I’d never pulled a gun on anything but rabbit. I had to fight or show yellow. I . . . well, I killed him, Kitty, you see.”
She nodded.
“Justis was a top-lofty Englishman, and a scoundrel . . . he tried to run off with my sister. When I stopped him, he tried to shoot me down, but he was just a mite slow.
“Then there was Morgantal, the gambler. He tried to shoot me from behind. There’s the scar across the back of my neck to prove it. But, as I fell, I twisted over backward and shot him over my shoulder, you see.”
Her interruption seemed to him perfectly without reason or sense. “How old were you then, Terry?”
“Then? Oh, eighteen, I suppose.”
“That was three at eighteen,” said Kitty with her sweetest smile. “But go on, Terry. It’s terribly interesting.”
“You see that it wasn’t my fault those three times?” he asked anxiously.
“Of course I see that.”
“Devine was a hired man. He came down from Montana with five hundred dollars in his pocket and another thousand promised if he managed to get me. Well, he missed, and I spent the five hundred on his funeral, which was only the fair thing to do.
“There was Ross and Perkins. Ross came after me because I’d killed Devine. He caught up with me in the Sierras near the edge of a little town. We had it out, hand to hand. He didn’t die for a week. Perkins was a great pal of Ross. He took my trail because I’d killed Ross. Two years later we met. It was a fair fight and a fair draw. He had me through the hip and the stomach. He was fast as lightning, but my shot hit him between the eyes. I was six months getting on my feet.”
Kitty had turned very white.
“Chicago Jim was the last. There wasn’t any cause for that. There was nothing between us, but he wanted to get a reputation. He was a good game one, and I only wanted to nail him through the hip, but I slipped and it hit him in the body. Well, that makes seven, Kitty.”
“Only seven?” said Kitty, with an odd smile. “Only seven, Terry?”
He rubbed his hard knuckles across his chin. “I wasn’t counting Mexicans.” said Terry timidly.
Chapter Fourteen
He felt, as he said it, that something was wrong—that it would have been just as well for him if he had avoided making that last statement.
Miss Kitty Bowen looked down at the ground for a time, thoughtful and still, then she drew her horse to a halt.
They had come to a sharp turn in the ravine, where it spread out in a broad, level floor before them, not overshadowed with lofty trees, but broken rather here and there with tufts and patches of foliage. The wind came up this open valley and bore in its arms rapid and thick drifts of the fog that had been growing more and more translucent.
Now the damp wind made the face of Kitty shine, and the wisps of her curling hair were pressed close against her pink cheeks, so that she became a very wet beauty, indeed, as she sat there before the outlaw, tapping the butt of her riding whip nervously against her boot.
She turned and looked straight at Shawn, and he wished that she were looking almost any other place in the world. “I’d like to know,” said Kitty.
“Well?” murmured Terry Shawn.
“How many Mexicans were there, Terry?”
Woe fell on Terence. He stared at her aghast.
“You wouldn’t be counting them, Kitty?” he asked in dismay.
“They’re human beings,” declared Kitty, tipping up her chin.
“Maybe they are,” he admitted.
“They’ve got souls just the same as you or I,” said Kitty.
He was silent, trying to fathom this thought, trying to establish its reality and substance, but he found it a hard task.
“Of course,” she said, “you don’t have to tell me, Terry Shawn. I haven’t really any right to know.”
At this danger signal, he started. “Now that I look at you, Kitty,” he said, “dog-gone me if you haven’t a right to ask me anything that you please. I never saw you look so fine, Kitty, as with the wind in your face and the clear, bright look in your eyes.” He stopped again. Something told him that he had said the wrong thing again. “But after all,” he went on more soberly, “is it worthwhile for me to tell you any more, Kitty? You can see the sort of a fellow that I am. I’ve told you pretty freely. I suppose that you wouldn’t be wanting to know me any better after this?”
“Did I say that?” asked Kitty.
“No, you didn’t,” Shawn admitted.
“Then tell me. Terry . . . how many Mexicans were there?”
“I don’t rightly know,” he said.
“Just try to rough ’em in,” suggested the girl dryly. “Count ’em by tens, Terry.”
He regarded her reproachfully. “It’s not as bad as that,” said Terence Shawn, watching her face with the utmost anxiety. “You’re terribly hard, Kitty. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you. There were only nine, altogether.”
“That makes sixteen dead men to your credit,” said the girl. “I’d like to see the notches, Terry.”
“I gave away my old pair of guns,” he answered gravely, “but if . . .” He paused. He began to suspect that there was something behind her apparent cheerfulness.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-three,” he said.
“You killed your first man at fifteen?”
“Yes,” he faltered.
“That’s eight years. Only two men a year. Why, Terry, you don’t kill a man more than once every six months. That’s not so bad, is it?”
He protested eagerly: “It’s been more than a year, now. I give you my word!”
“But you’re sure that’s all?”
“I think so,” he said.
“And you’ve only shot sixteen men?”