by Max Brand
“A touch of luck,” said the sheriff. “And a touch of luck beat me.”
“We’ll call it luck”—Shawn nodded with great good nature—“after you’ve missed two shots. Now what’ll I do with you?”
“Doesn’t it look like a good place for a shooting?” inquired the sheriff.
“What am I to do?” answered the other. “Drop you in cold blood?”
“You’d hang back on account of that, I suppose,” taunted Lank Heney.
Mr. Shawn grew pink. “I’m a skunk, then . . . it seems,” he said.
The sheriff regarded him with bright, cold, hostile eyes. Being about to die, he was frank. “You are,” he said.
“And that’s why you’ve been hunting me so extra hard?”
“To get you out of the way,” declared Lank Heney, “I would have given a leg or an arm . . . my right arm.”
“How did I ever harm you?” asked the younger man, turning his head curiously to one side.
“How did you ever harm me?” gasped the sheriff. “Haven’t you been making trouble in this county time out of mind?”
“I never took a penny from your pocket,” protested Shawn.
“You’ve been defyin’ the law,” said the sheriff.
“You never made those laws . . . what’s the law to you?” asked the boy.
“What it is to everybody,” answered Lank Heney. “The law’s what gives every kid a chance to grow into a man, and every man a chance to keep what he makes. What’s the law to me? Why, kid, the law’s my uncle, and father, and brother, the same as it is to everybody except the poison-hearted wolves like you. And it’s the law that’ll get you, Shawn, and hang you up with a rope.”
“Thanks,” said Terence Shawn. “Dog-gone if I don’t think you mean what you say. But look here, Lank . . . who made you the grandpa of the law this way? You ain’t making an election speech now, you know.”
The sheriff flushed. “I never made an election speech in my life,” he said. “For the rest of it, you’re a murderin’ thief, Shawn. Drop your gun and finish me.”
“Turn your face to that tree,” said Terence Shawn.
“Not while I’m alive,” said Lank Heney. “I’ll take mine in front.”
“All right,” said the boy. “You’re a nervy fellow, Sheriff. Maybe I could take some sort of a message to your folks for you, eh?”
“I’ve got no folks,” said Lank.
“Not even a cousin?”
“Not even a cousin.”
“Well, then, you’d want to remember some friend?” suggested Shawn.
“I’ve got no friend,” said the homely sheriff.
“No folks, no friend?” said the outlaw. “Nobody to leave your guns to?”
The sheriff pondered this. “I would sort of like,” he said, “to have my guns nailed up in the sheriff’s office in Lister and to have it written under them that dying didn’t bother me none.”
Shawn narrowed his keen eyes and waited for a moment.
“You ain’t going to break me down!” shouted the sheriff angrily. “Go ahead and finish, will you?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said the outlaw in a curious voice, “that you’re one of the kind of folks that I used to read about in school. One of those people that are sorry that they’ve got only one life to lay down for their country.”
“You’re a skunk, Shawn,” said the sheriff fiercely. “But what you say don’t bother me none.”
“You start thinking on this,” said the outlaw. “When you’re dead and buried, nobody’ll ever think twice about what you were or what you’ve done. You’ve got no family . . . you’ve got no friends . . . you’ve got no one to grieve for you or remember you, Sheriff.”
“I don’t need any!” cried poor Lank Heney desperately. “I know that I’ve done my duty and ridden hard and played fair, and worked for the law. I’ve done my job the best that I could . . . and heaven have mercy on my soul. Shoot and have done with it, Shawn.”
Terence Shawn began to rein back his horse.
“I’ll take you at long range,” he said. “The trouble with you, Sheriff, is that you never learned how to shoot. If you was to get another chance at life, you’d ought to settle down and practice a couple of hours a day. Your first shot missed my knee, and your second one shaved my right ear, and I wasn’t twenty yards away. That’s pretty careless shooting, Sheriff, even if it was a moving target. You might do for a barroom fight, Lank, but out in the open, with a Colt, you ain’t much good. You should have stuck to a Winchester . . . it’s slower but surer. I tell you what, Lank, don’t you go around trying to look like a hare when you was meant to be a tortoise. ‘Slow and sure’ ought to have been your motto. Steady now.”
The sheriff made a single step forward and raised himself to his full height. He saw the glimmer of light on the short barrel of the revolver, a steady, shining streak that would let immortality into his soul. Then he closed his eyes and thought of the sweet face of Kitty Bowen. Never had it seemed lovelier, more appealing.
He steadied himself; his nerves were as taut as the strings of a violin. Yet no shot came. Then fury seized the sheriff. This man was playing with him, taunting him, and waiting for his strength of will to break down.
“You yellow-hearted scoundrel!” cried the sheriff, and he opened his eyes. He looked around him then and he saw with utter amazement that there was no rider before him, and no threatening revolver leveled. He stared wildly about him—and saw that he was alone in the woods. Then, out of the distance, he thought that he heard laughter. He dropped on one knee and listened, and he made out, with certainty, the soft pounding of departing hoofs. After that he stood up slowly. His head was whirling. In his heart there was rooted a fixed and immovable measure of reverence, but now the sheriff could not decide whether heaven or Terence Shawn were most to be thanked for the life that had not been taken from him on this day.
Chapter Seventeen
There was a day to be idled away, and the first part of it the outlaw spent in drifting slowly across country until he came to the shack of his friend, Joe. That amiable and shiftless cowpuncher should have been at work, riding herd on his small band of cattle, for they needed his attention, but, when Shawn looked in upon him, the man was employed in garnishing a saddle with some intricate carved designs.
When the shadow of Shawn fell upon him, Joe did not look up.
“Where did you learn to do that work?” asked Shawn.
“Stand out of my light,” said Joe. “You know little about me, kid, and what I can do. I ain’t spent all my life on the range.”
“It ain’t a true thing they tell of you, either,” suggested Shawn.
“What ain’t true?” asked the artist, bending more closely over his work.
“That you were a tout on a racetrack down at New Orleans?”
“Will you back up and give me air?” cried the angry artist.
“Or that you sailed before the mast,” went on Shawn innocently, “and used to live on hardtack and kicks all the way around the Horn?”
“It’s a lie!” yelled Joe, now looking up.
“I see that your arm’s tattooed, though,” said the observer. “Why did you have it done?”
“Why would you think?” asked the other dryly.
“I can’t tell,” said Shawn, “whether it would be so that other people could know you, or so that you could know yourself.”
“You’re kind of full of yourself this mornin’, kid,” declared Joe. “You need work, I’d say. You’ve been stall-fed too long, and nobody’s been ridin’ you. Now leave that saddle alone.” For his guest was bending over the carving.
“What might this be, Joe?” asked Shawn, pointing.
“What would you take it for?”
“A fat woman out of a circus, running through fire,” was Terry’s guess.
“You’ve got no eye,” said Joe scornfully. “You fellows spend your time lookin’ at cows and rocks until you don’t see nothin’ worthwhile. That’s
a Fiji belle doin’ a dance.”
“Over here,” said Shawn, examining the saddle further, “is an ostrich, eating a rattlesnake.”
“Terry, you’re a blockhead,” said Joe irritably. “That’s a lark that’s found a worm.”
“I never knew that larks went in so heavy for legs, Joe.” Shawn shook his head sadly as he regarded the picture.
“You never knew nothing except guns and horses,” retorted Joe.
“It’s got an enlarged hock, this here lark,” remarked the outlaw.
“Let me see,” said the anxious artist. “Oh, I see what you mean. Nobody but a mean-hearted buzzard like you would ever take notice of a little thing like that. Well, a man’s knife will slip once in a while.”
“Over here on this side,” said Shawn, “I see that you’ve got a . . .”
“Never mind what I’ve got,” interrupted Joe hotly. “I never met the mate of you, Terry, for spoilin’ things with fool talk. Get out now. I’m busy.”
Instead, the outlaw sat down in a corner. “Turn up some chuck, Joe,” he said. “I’m hungry. And let’s hear the news.”
Joe, grumbling but obedient, fell to work rousing a fire and preparing food. “There ain’t much news,” he said, “except about one man.”
“Who is that?”
“The orneriest, lowest-down snake that ever bothered folks in this part of the world,” answered the other.
“I don’t know who you mean,” said the outlaw.
“He came into town the other night and made eyes at pretty Kitty Bowen,” said Joe. “The sheriff took pity on him and let him dance around with Kitty, but he expected that this here Shawn would stand and fight like a man after the dance was ended. Instead, what do you think this Shawn done? He jumped out a window and sneaked away like a low hound.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to spoil the dance floor,” suggested Terry with a yawn.
“And now Lister is risin’,” continued Joe.
“Lister is always rising,” remarked Shawn, “and then sitting down again. How d’you know it’s rising?”
“The Patrick boys came riding by . . . they’d had a telephone message from town. It seems this here Shawn had ridden Bowen pretty rough, and Bowen’s just out and offered twenty-five hundred spot cash on top of the reward.”
Shawn sat up, his eyes bright and narrowed with attention. “And why’s that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But it seems that Shawn has been gallivantin’ around the Bowen house . . . still after Kitty. And folks are tired of Shawn. They say,” explained Joe, “that they don’t mind him lifting the cash out of a bank safe or holding up a train once in a while. They don’t mind him killing greasers or dropping a thug once in a while, because it gives the boys something to talk about when the winter nights get long and the magazines give out in the bunkhouse. But what they do mind terrible much, kid, is having you fool around with the prettiest girl in the county.”
“They want her?” asked Shawn scornfully. “Then why don’t they take her?”
“D’you want her?” asked Joe suddenly.
“What if I do? Whose business is it?” asked Shawn.
“Your business. It’s your business if you want her. It’s her pa’s business, too,” Joe told him.
“I don’t know that I follow that.”
“Her old man would be askin’ what would you do with her?”
“Suppose that I was to shake the old game and turn straight for her, Joe?” said Shawn suddenly.
“When did you start on your own?” parried Joe.
“I was thirteen.”
“That’s ten years ago?”
“It is,” said Terry.
“How many days’ work have you done in them ten years?”
“I suppose . . . oh, I don’t know, if you come down to that,” said Terry, turning sullen.
“It’s what it does come down to,” replied Joe. “You’ve floated along for ten years and now you say that you want to turn and swim back upstream. Kid, you never could even get back to where you started from.”
“I hear you croaking,” said Shawn in a rising temper, “but it don’t mean nothing to me.”
“You couldn’t live without a gun in your hand,” said Joe thoughtfully.
“Me? I couldn’t?” asked Shawn belligerently. “Joe, you don’t know nothing about me. I could settle down and work twenty hours a day for twenty years. Guns? I could leave ’em off forever. I’m tired of the weight of packing them around.”
“You couldn’t even sleep without a gun beside you,” said Joe, laughing.
“Joe, there ain’t a man in the world that’s got the makings of a peaceable gent more than I. Fighting? I could quit it. I will quit it. I tell you right now, I’ll never pull another gun. You wait and see if I ever do.”
“Never pull another gun?” asked Joe.
“Never,” was Terry’s firm reply.
“Not even on a rabbit?”
“Don’t be foolish . . . I mean on a man, of course. No, I’m through with all that.”
“Kid, will you let me tell you something?”
“I hear you,” said Shawn.
“You’ll never change,” Joe told him gravely. “It’s in the blood of you. It’s in your bones. Hitch wings to a bird and it’ll fly, won’t it? Same way with you. You’ve got to have a little hellfire around you once in a while or you’d curl up and die.”
“Hellfire? Hellfire?” repeated Shawn with a growing irritation. “I don’t know that I like the way you put that, Joe.”
“I put it again . . . you’ve got a taste for meanness and fighting.”
“Joe,” said the other sternly, “you’ve said about enough.”
“Work? The kind of work that you’d do would be reaching into the pockets of other folks.”
“Joe, you’re stepping over the line!” cried Shawn. He turned white with rage. “You low rat,” he added, “you wear a gun! Go for it before you try to talk to me like that!”
Instead of reaching for his gun, Joe relaxed, with a broad smile. “You see for yourself,” he said. “You were just promising that you would never pull a gun again. In half a minute I got you right up to the murder stage. Trust you? Why, kid, you can see that you can’t trust yourself.”
Shawn listened and bit his lip. He turned toward the door, then turned back again. “Joe,” he said in a broken voice.
“Leave out the rest of it,” said Joe cheerfully. “Sit down and rest your feet, and eat something. We’ll tie to some sort of an idea out of all of this.”
But Terry Shawn sat disconsolate, his elbows on his knees, staring with great eyes into space. The future had been to him like a land of gold and glory but a few minutes ago, and now it had shrunk to a flat plain of gray despair.
“We’ll talk about this girl,” said Joe. “We’ll see what right you’ve got to her.”
Chapter Eighteen
For all of an hour they talked, therefore, about young Terry Shawn’s right to Kitty Bowen, and by the time Joe had finished his careful analysis of the situation, it was plain to them both that Terry had no right at all. For that very day he had given proof that he could not control his temper in a pinch, and so long as he could not depend upon himself, how could a woman hope to depend upon him? Gloomily Shawn stood up and went to his horse. He saddled and bridled it with savage gestures, while Joe watched from the doorway, deeming it wise to come no nearer. He saw that his speeches had cut deep, and he wanted to assuage the outlaw’s despair, but he found few words to use on this occasion.
“Where you going, Terry?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Shawn dully.
“Wait a minute. I’ll toss a saddle onto the pinto and come along,” said Joe.
“You’ve got some artist work waiting for you,” said Shawn. “Maybe you can put another curb on the hock of that ostrich . . . lark, I mean. You stay here . . . I’ll go alone.”
This last was uttered in a peremptory tone, and Joe shrank under it.
But when his friend was out of sight across the hill, he nevertheless saddled the pinto and flew in pursuit, taking a short cut. He had barely rounded the side of the second hill when a rider moved out from the edge of the towering boulders and confronted him. It was Terry Shawn.
“Will you go back and stay at home?” he demanded.
“I’m worried about you,” explained Joe. “You’ve got a bad look in your eye, like a gent who’s about to chuck his last penny on the table and shoot the dice for it. Now, old-timer, no matter what you’ve got in mind, I’ll ride with you and stick with you to the finish.”
“I’ve ridden alone all of my life,” said Terry Shawn. “I’ve fought alone, robbed alone, played alone, and I’m not going to start working double now. Joe, go back home and don’t come after me again. I ask you special.”
He whirled his horse around when he had said this, and jogged it straight on across the hills. After that encounter Joe dared not pursue, but he sat his saddle for a long time, marking the outlaw’s course in the distance as he dipped up and down from sight on his hilly path.
That course led to Lister, as Joe well knew, and nothing but some desperate scheme should be carrying famous Terry Shawn toward the town in broad daylight. What scheme it could be Joe could not guess, but he felt that it must have been suggested by their last gloomy talk together. Bitterly did Joe repent his admonitions now. Kitty Bowen was a very pretty, girl, a very kind girl, but, after all, what was her welfare compared with the welfare of such a man as Terence Shawn? However, he turned back sadly toward his shack, for he dreaded the wrath of Shawn as he dreaded fire.
* * * * *
He had not been wrong. Straight across the hills rode Terence Shawn, toward the little town of Lister. The afternoon sun was in its fullest power, and the vegetation of the earth seemed to bake and wither under the blast of that oven heat. No wind stirred. The perspiration rolled down his face, there was a salt taste upon his lips, and his eyes were stinging. The very cattle, which could defy the terrible cold and the biting winds of winter, could scarcely endure this fiery heat, and they had gathered in motionless, dejected groups under the trees here and there, or in the shadows of the taller rocks, or wherever they could find temporary relief from the sun. Now and again, however, some old veteran of many seasons was seen standing fully exposed, as though age had thinned and chilled its blood so that it dared to absorb this white radiance.