by Max Brand
“They have,” answered Shawn. “There’s no doubt about it. The cleverest man in the world may be killed with poison or a shot in the back. That’s the way that you’ll go, for instance, Blackie. Poison . . . or a knife in your throat.”
Blackie swore with a sudden fury and malice. “Say what you want, Shawn, I’ve got you in my pocket, now, and you’ll pay to get out of that place.”
“Pay what, Blackie?”
“You and the greaser lifted fifteen hundred from the three of us this evening. We want that money passed under the door,” said Blackie.
“And then we’re free to go?”
“Maybe you are, then.”
“What will be our surety, Blackie?”
“My word of honor,” said Blackie.
“Your word?” echoed Shawn.
“Yes.”
“Your honor?” said Shawn tauntingly.
“Then stay there and rot!” shouted the gambler. “I’ll do no more for you. Let Lank Heney take charge of you. Unless you’re lynched on your way to jail, you’ll spend the rest of your life wearing stripes, and I’m glad of it.”
He departed.
The bartender, at the same moment, recovered a little and crawled to his knees.
Shawn, jerking a thumb at him, said quietly: “Look at that worm, José. Go through him and see if he has any other weapons.”
José obeyed, but his procedure with the little man was strange. He stood him against the wall and sat in a chair behind him, with the point of a great Bowie knife resting against the small of the bartender’s spine. Then José went leisurely over the clothes of his captive and began to produce a most interesting collection of weapons. He took out a second knife, the twin brother of the first weapon with which the little fellow had attacked Shawn. Then he took a short-nosed, two-barreled pistol, very small, but throwing a large bullet—one of those guns that kill effectively enough at ten paces and yet make hardly enough noise to be heard above the sound of conversation and laughter in a room. There was, also, a very small automatic of minute bore; it would make a wound hardly larger than the thrust of a needle, but would penetrate flesh and bone to the very center of life.
“Murder,” said José gravely. “This is a murderer, señor. Do you know what we used to do with such men in Mexico?”
“Tell me, José.”
“We stripped them and threw them into an ocotillo . . . the thorns killed them in one way and the sun killed them in another. They were spitted and roasted. And this devil would die well like that.”
“A good idea,” said the outlaw, “but we can’t spare him now. We’re inside the can, José, and we have to use him as the can opener. Blackie and the rest probably have sent for the sheriff by this time.”
José grew a pale yellow.
“Listen to me, Shorty,” said Shawn to the bartender. “There’s a way out of this room, I suspect. Suppose that you show me how, and we’ll call it square between you and me.”
Shorty sat down in a corner and folded his arms and closed his eyes.
“Stubborn,” said Shawn briefly, and began to clean his guns, although already they were polished brightly.
José strode swiftly and restlessly about the room. “We could smash the lock of one of those doors and rush it,” he suggested.
“It works in books but never in fact,” answered Shawn. “All they want is a chance to turn loose on us if we try to break away. No, no, José, they’ve got all these doors watched.”
José shuddered, and his fingers worked in and out. “Do we do nothing, señor?”
“We only wait for Shorty, here. He’ll change his mind pretty soon. You understand, Shorty? The minute that the sheriff arrives, you die.”
At this the eyes of Shorty opened as far as they were able and stared at the outlaw.
“Otherwise,” said Shawn, “you show us the way out and go safe yourself.”
Shorty smiled.
“You don’t doubt my word, Shorty?” asked the outlaw. “It’s better, my son, than gold in the wallet.”
At the same moment there was a sound of many feet in the outer hall, and then the well-known nasal voice of the sheriff: “Where are they? Back here? Loftus, this is a good day’s work for you. You’ll have half the reward, if I land him. Have you got the doors watched?”
Apparently the answer was satisfactory; there was the sound of scattering footsteps.
Shawn produced a Colt and leveled it.
“How will you take it, Shorty?” he asked. “Sitting down or standing? The sheriff has come . . . understand?”
“It’s murder,” said Shorty, leaning forward and gripping the edge of his chair.
“Better than poison,” said Shawn. “A good deal better than that, old-timer.”
“Nothin’ but a knock-out drop,” declared Shorty, beginning to tremble.
“Sure,” said Shawn, “and a cut-throat would finish the work after the dope started working on me. No malice, Shorty. But I’ve told you what to expect.”
Shorty threw up a hand. “Will you give me one chance?”
“Of course.”
“Then wait a minute.” The bartender stepped to a corner of the room and there dropped to his knees. He fumbled for a moment, and presently lifted up a board three feet long and six inches wide. Another and another came away in his active hand, and, leaning beside him, Shawn looked down into a deep, dark pit.
A hand beat on the door.
“You inside!” said the voice of Lank Heney. “We’ve blocked every way out. Will you be sensible and surrender, Shawn, or will we have to smoke you out?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Kneeling beside the gaping hole in the floor, Shawn turned his head to the side and listened. “Do you hear, José? The old sheriff is drawling away like he was talking about the weather. Mind you, if ever we have trouble with any man, it’s apt to be old man Heney, though he goes about a manhunt the way most folks would go about making a cup of tea.”
“Merciful heaven!” exclaimed the Mexican. “They will break through the door in another moment.”
Shawn shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll go first,” said the bartender. “I’ll show you the way.”
The hard hand of the outlaw caught Shorty by the shoulder and spun him halfway across the room, and then Shawn dropped a lighted match into the cavity beneath him. It showed a short drop to a platform, and beneath this a flight of steps. To the platform, therefore, he dropped, and, scratching a match, he lighted the way for José to follow him.
Above, there was a sudden screeching voice: “Lou! Pete! He’s got into the underground! He’s working out! Lou, get ’im!”
“Are you ready, José?” asked Shawn.
“I go mad waiting, señor!”
They sprang down the narrow little rounded tunnel, the Mexican close to the shoulder of Terry Shawn. In a few leaps they reached the end of the passage. There, by thrusting up at the ceiling, they jerked open a section of it and issued into the cool and quiet evening.
From the house of the gamblers, just behind them, issued the sound of battering and splintering, as though doors were being broken down, and above all was the screeching of Shorty, who seemed to have turned mad with fury. The fugitives stood in a patch of shrubbery that shielded them, shoulder high, and, looking over or through the brush, they could see people hurrying to the saloon to discover the cause of the disturbance. Around the place were the sheriff’s men, naked guns in their hands, and the determination to use them in their faces.
“This way, this way!” said José eagerly. “We can get into the backyard of that house.”
“Teddy Morgan has joined the manhunt,” said the outlaw, interrupting his companion. “Teddy Morgan wants the blood money, too. And there’s his pride and joy . . . his bay mare, José. I’ve a mind to ride out of Lister on Teddy’s bay.”
“Señor Shawn, I tell you . . .” José started to protest.
“Go the back way, if you wish. I’m going down the main
street of Lister. If they get me, they’re welcome to me, but I’ve got to have a touch of fun, José. I’ll meet you at your shack, if you can break through. Go ahead . . . I’ll pick my time.”
José cast one earnest look at his companion, then he turned without further question and vanished silently through the brush.
Shawn, watching him, thought to himself: He that steps like a cat may act like a cat. The greaser has claws. Then he turned his attention again to the saloon.
The crowd about it was growing every moment, for Lister had finished its day’s work, and now it thronged to take in this show. It was as if a magic circle were drawn fifty yards from the house, but outside of that line the crowd gathered and packed together, men, women, and children. They swarmed even to the verge of the shrubbery, and, as they began to pour about his hiding place, Terry Shawn simply stepped out and mingled with them.
Their eyes were all forward. He slipped among them without drawing so much as a glance in his direction, and so he came to the inner edge of the throng, just in front of the saloon, at the same time that there was an outbreak of loud voices behind the place, and there came the nasal, ringing cry of the sheriff: “This way, boys! They’ve come out of the ground here!”
So at last they had worked their way down the tunnel and come out in the patch of shrubbery.
Shawn could hear the voice of Shorty as he yelled hysterically: “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you what they was doing? They’re gone! They’re gone clean!”
His voice was abruptly subdued to a strange spluttering, as though a hard fist had landed on his mouth. In the meantime, there stood Teddy Morgan’s fine bay mare, the reins thrown, near the hitching rack. Teddy was an upcountry lad who farmed in a small way and ran a few cattle and hired himself out from time to time. He was a thrifty fellow, and he had taken the money of the outlaw more than once in return for a night’s lodging. To have loaned his hand to the state in a manhunt for the sake of blood money was, in the eyes of Shawn, rank treason—it was against the code and the unwritten laws of honor.
Straight out of the throng stepped Shawn, therefore, and, tossing the reins over the neck of the mare once more, he leaped into the saddle.
On foot he had managed to pass unnoticed, but the instant his feet were in the stirrups and the keen mare was prancing beneath him, some woman in the crowd screamed: “There’s Terry Shawn! There!”
The crowd fell into confusion. Shake iron filings on a sheet of white paper and you will see them scatter wildly here, pile into tiny heaps there, run toward the edges in another place. So that heap of humanity ran wild, some driving toward the outlaw, but most of them rushing away. Some were pitched to the ground in their haste; others tumbled over the prostrate, but what chiefly concerned Terry was a narrow little lane that opened up through the thick of the press, and through that lane he galloped the mare.
She was a trained cutting horse; he could guide her with the grip of his knees and the sway of his body, which left his hands free to manage two heavy Colts, and, as the good bay picked her way daintily through the crowd, swerving lightly to avoid the press, he turned in the saddle and watched for the pursuit.
Behind the house he saw Lank Heney leaping into his saddle, and he brought down a gun to cover him. But at the last minute he could not fire. For the second time that day he had the man at his mercy, and for the second time he hesitated and turned away. Behind him he heard the wild cry of Morgan as the latter came for his favorite cow pony and found it gone, and Shawn laughed in savage glee as he turned the mare into the open and let her race away down the street at last.
Bullets began to sing. He looked back and saw that three or four men on the verge of the crowd were opening fire on him. He pitched forward in the saddle and jerked the bay sharply around the next corner of the street.
He was safe, and, if the mare were fresh, he would laugh at Lank Heney again on this day. Whether fresh or no, she lengthened her stride beautifully and rushed down the street, and, with his guns, Terry Shawn made game on either side. As he rode he shouted like a wild Indian, and his guns exploded rapidly—at an upper windowpane, at the sign of Lucas, the blacksmith, at a weathervane over the little bakery. Then he shot at the wooden Indian that for so many years had stood defiant in front of Bowen’s General Merchandise Store. Looking back at it as he flew along, he saw that the big nose had disappeared, and Terry Shawn laughed joyously.
The last house of the village was left behind him. The hoofs of the mare rang hollow on the bridge that arched a tributary creek of the river, and now he had open country, with only a scattering of little houses before him.
He was well away, and the mare running like quicksilver, when, looking back, he saw the head of the sheriff’s procession just beginning to turn out from Lister, rocking from side to side like the front of a speeding locomotive, and with a steam of white dust spouting high above the riders.
He saw the beating arms that urged on the horses. He saw, also, that they gained not at all. He would have preferred to turn straight to the left and into the mouth of the first little ravine, but he had promised the Mexican to meet him at his house, and therefore he hugged the bank of the river where the ground was high and the footing was of soft, deep turf.
So he made good time until he saw the shack of José before him. Surely the Mexican never could have got there so soon—but there, beyond all expectation, was certainly José, riding out on a roan mustang and leading, at the end of a long rope, Sky Pilot.
He waved to the oncoming outlaw, and at that gesture the stallion pitched sharply back, jerking the rope through the hand of his master and flinging the end of the lariat high into the air.
But as it came snakily down, and as the chestnut pitched forward, ready to run, Shawn came under like a bolt from the blue and caught the dropping rope in mid-air. He handed it to José.
“Well done, my brother!” cried José as they straightened down the trail together, the led horse galloping lightly at the end of the rope. “I should have killed him before I left him behind for the others to take. Well done, Don Terry. We have our wings with us, and who knows? We may learn how they may be used before the end of our ride!”
“Let the roan run,” commanded Shawn tersely. “That’s the important thing.”
The roan could run. Freshly stolen by wise José as he slipped behind the houses to make his escape, he had not picked the worst horse in Lister, and now, matching strides with the bay mare, they saw the smoking train of riders behind them slow, and then at last turn back.
“It only takes a small crowd to kill off the best horse in the world,” observed José, looking back in turn. “They are in our hands, señor. Which way shall we ride?”
“Straight up the valley.”
“That goes to the place of Bowen . . . he is not a friend to you,” José warned.
“It goes to the place of Bowen, and that’s where I want to go. Keep on!” ordered Terry Shawn.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Soon they left the open. The trees began to rise about them, and the trail wound in and out among the trunks, while the noise of the hoof beats behind came to them in pulses—loudly in the open, veiled and muffled as they entered the woods again.
“The roan?” asked Terry Shawn. “Is he equal to the race?”
The Mexican threw his hands out in a wide gesture. “The roan says that I am nothing on his back, señor. I am a feather and he is a bird. He laughs at such a burden. He is happy, and his back muscles are bunching as though he thought of bucking with every jump. He will run to the end of the world and there is no barrier that he will not jump. Never fear for him, señor.” He added: “And the mare?”
“She feels as strong as a rock,” answered the outlaw. “But,” he added, looking down at her dripping flanks, “she is a little soft. Confound men who won’t grain their best horses. They’re not worth stealing, José. However, I think we have that lot beaten.”
A long gap opened before them. They were well acros
s it and entering the woodland on the farther side before Lank Heney appeared at the head of his posse, riding like a jockey, with his long frame doubled to the work.
José marked him specially. “Shall I persuade him to turn back?” he asked, touching the rifle that was holstered beneath his knee.
“Let him be,” said the outlaw briefly. “This isn’t his day to die. Keep straight on, José. Here’s the lead rope. Don’t turn, even if I turn. Keep straight up the valley.”
They had issued from the trees again, and before them, to the left, was the wide front of the Bowen house, with the brightly colored pattern of its garden spread out in front. But what the keen eye of the outlaw marked was a woman in sunbonnet and apron, on her knees, trowel in hand.
It might be Mrs. Bowen; it might be a servant of the house. But no. Now she started to her feet, and he told himself that only one creature in the whole world could move like that. It was Kitty Bowen, he could swear.
He cast one glance behind as he galloped for the Bowen house.
José rode on hard and fast up the valley, but, as one man, the entire posse had swept to the left and followed Terry Shawn. He was the prize in their eyes; there was no blood money on the head of the Mexican. And still Lank Heney rode in the front, jockeying his tough little horse along, and never slackening his pace. However, there was a broad gap between him and his goal, and that gap might enable Shawn to do what he wished to do.
Shawn saw Kitty Bowen—plainly it was she, now—turn and run toward the house. But she hesitated and turned back as he shouted. He saw Bowen himself run for the house onto the front porch, with a rifle in his hand. The screen door slammed loudly behind him, and the merchant raised the weapon to his shoulder. He had left his store on this one day, it seemed, breaking the habit of long years to guard his girl from such another encounter as Heney warned him she had had that same morning.
“Keep off! Keep off!” Shawn heard the man cry.