Valley of Outlaws

by Max Brand

  They had jogged their horses past the thicket, when Shawn, having dismounted, stepped from the shrubbery onto the trail behind them, a revolver balanced in either hand. José remained in cover, his rifle at his shoulder, prepared for emergencies. But the last stern word from Shawn was: “This is my game. Hands off!”

  Then the outlaw shouted: “Hack!”

  Hack Thomas and his companion whirled their horses about with exclamations of astonishment; they found themselves under the cover of Shawn’s two steady guns.

  “Hey, Terry!” cried Thomas. “We’ve been looking for you!”

  “Sure you have,” said Shawn. “I could see that. Maybe you wanted to give me a cup of tea, or something. Or you just rode up here behind me to pass the time of day. Is that it?”

  “He thinks that we’ve been after him,” said Hack grimly. “How’re you going to persuade him, Jim?”

  Mr. Berry bit his lip. “Why, Shawn,” he said, “you know me, old-timer.”

  “I ain’t drunk,” declared Shawn. “Neither are you. If you were, it’d make it easier for you to take what’s coming.”

  “And what’s coming?” asked Berry with more curiosity than fear.

  “I’ll give you both an even break, one after the other,” answered Shawn. “But I’m going to have this out with you here and now. You hear me talk?”

  “I hear you talk right foolish,” broke in Hack Thomas. “Do you think that we’re after the reward?”

  “You’d be above it, I guess?” sneered Terry Shawn. “What’s five thousand to a pair of high-minded gents like the two of you?”

  “What’s five thousand compared to fifty thousand?” returned Jim Berry, still calm of eye.

  “You can’t make a fool out of me,” declared Shawn.

  “We can’t,” said Berry. “You’ve done that before for yourself. What’s eating you? If we did drop you, how could we collect? Do you think that they don’t know us? Do you think that we’re not wanted, kid, near as bad as you?”

  “Only,” admitted Thomas, “we didn’t ever make a play like yours, kid. We never sneaked girls away from their homes. What’s come over you lately? That ain’t your old style.”

  Shawn, in doubt as he listened, drew back a little, watching them with a hawk-like sharpness, and neither of them stirred hand or muscle under that scrutiny. To have moved so much as a finger would have meant death, and they seemed to know it perfectly well.

  “I want to believe you,” said Shawn gloomily. “I want to believe that you boys didn’t come up here to get me.”

  “Go ahead and believe it, then.” Thomas grinned. “We won’t hold you back. And just shove those Colts away, kid. They make me feel terrible sick to look at ’em.”

  “José,” said Shawn, “keep a sharp watch.” And suddenly he put away his guns.

  “The greaser is in the brush, is he?” asked Jim Berry, nodding in the correct direction.

  “He is,” said Shawn, “and he’s covering you. I want to trust you fellows, but I can’t, just yet. They’ve been riding me from wall to wall, boys, and they’ve got me a little nervous.”

  “We’ve heard about it,” admitted Thomas. “That was how we guessed where we’d find you.”

  “This ravine, you mean?”

  “Yes, because it’s the shortest cut to the tall timber. Terry, we need you bad. We’ve got a little proposition to put up to you. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “You want us to talk with José listening?”

  “Aye, fire away.”

  “It’s bank stuff, Terry.”

  “I’ve quit teaming,” said Shawn. “I do my stuff alone. You ought to know that.”

  “Sure, you work alone. But this deal is different. How about fifty thousand, kid?”

  “As much as that?”

  “That’s the least it can be. It ought to pan out to a hundred and fifty. Now, kid, does that sound big enough for you to have a share in it?”

  “Oh, never mind the money,” answered Shawn gloomily. “But if there’s any excitement to be had out of it . . . I dunno, Hack. It might tempt me a little.”

  “Excitement?” murmured Hack Thomas. “Well, all you’ve got to do is to ride into a certain town with us in broad daylight and help us stick up the bank. How does that sound to you?”

  “Where?” asked Terry Shawn.

  “Kline River.”

  “You mean the new bank?”

  “That’s it.”

  Terry sighed. “They’re loaded with cash,” he said, “if you can only make the cashier toss out what’s in the safe.”

  “That shouldn’t bother you, Shawn. Haven’t lost the old knack, have you? Besides, what’s one cashier against three old hands like us? Kid, throw your leg over your horse and come along with us now.”

  Temptation made the eyes of Terry Shawn glitter, but suddenly he answered: “It sounds good to me, boys. But I’ve got another job on now. Come up the mountain with me, spend a couple of days there, and then maybe I’ll ride down with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  So they became a party of four. They established a point ahead, with one man riding at it; they established a point behind, for a rear guard, and in the center journeyed two. Now let Sheriff Lank Heney and his men beware. For in the first place they would hardly be able to surprise a party riding in this circumspect fashion, and in the second place they had numbers sufficient to hold off the challenge of a large body of armed men. José was given the rear guard, the post of honor; Hack Thomas journeyed ahead, and in the center were Jim Berry and Shawn. They could afford to be off their guard, and to center their attention on talk.

  There was much useful information to be had from Berry. His first advice to Shawn was to clear out of that section of the country as quickly as possible.

  “Why?” asked Shawn. “I’ve done my work around here. I’ve made my friends around here. Why should I clear out?”

  “Up to yesterday,” said Berry, who was a crisp-spoken fellow, “you had as many friends as any long rider in the world, but today there aren’t three men outside of the profession that would stand up for you.”

  “Go on,” murmured Shawn, frowning.

  “It’s the girl,” said Jim Berry. “People won’t stand for that. Rob ten banks, if you please, and shoot up a couple of dozen ’punchers of all kinds. But you ought to leave the women alone, kid. How come that you didn’t know that, anyway?”

  Terry Shawn turned a dark crimson, and his temples throbbed with rage, but there was something about the cold, steady eye of Jim Berry that discouraged a tirade. Besides, he was baffled and bewildered by these continual charges that he had removed Kitty Bowen from her home. He decided to use calm reason and try to get to the bottom of the matter.

  “Kitty Bowen’s left her home?” he began.

  Berry nodded, with a quick side glance at his companion. It was very plain that, had it not been for the use which Thomas had for the expert assistance of this gunman and robber, he would have been hardly more kindly to Shawn than the others who ranged on his trail.

  “She’s gone,” said Berry. “Well?”

  “Look here, Jim. Was I ever a girl chaser?”

  Berry shrugged his shoulders, like a man who makes no admissions.

  “Matter of fact,” said Shawn eagerly, “did you ever know me to have hardly anything to do with ’em?”

  “Maybe not,” said the other grudgingly.

  “Now, I ask you, would I be fool enough to bother a girl like Kitty Bowen, that has a thousand admirers . . . that’s known everywhere?”

  Berry grunted.

  “Would I throw myself into danger like that?” said Shawn with increasing vehemence.

  “She’s gone,” said the other with significant emphasis.

  “But what has that got to do with me?” cried Shawn. “Have I got her with me? Is she in my pocket? Did I hide her in a hole in the ground?” />
  “Go on and jump me,” said Jim Berry. “I’m not turning you down. I’ve come up here to get you in on a big job where I need you. The point is, you go to Lister and make a dead set at Kitty Bowen. Go out and see her at her house. Ride in under her old man’s rifle to have ten words with her. And the next morning she’s gone. Well, kid, what are folks going to think, unless they’ve got no brains in their heads? If you didn’t steal her, who did?”

  This evidence the outlaw considered with gloomy silence, for he saw that he could make no retort. It would be merely folly for him to bare his heart and show what woe and pain there was in it for the disappearance of pretty Kitty Bowen. He would be considered a mere hypocrite, and no more.

  At that point there was a call from José in the rear, and that keen horseman came flying up and announced that he had spotted a horseman following them in the distance.

  Either they would have to turn aside and let the rider pass, or they must increase their pace, or else drive him away.

  “Try a scare,” suggested Jim Berry. “Throw a bullet between the front legs of his horse. Is there only one rider?”

  “Only one.”

  They went back to a point of vantage, all three, and they saw, presently, the rider of whom José had spoken. He seemed, in the distance, a small man, narrow shouldered like a cowpuncher who had spent his life in the saddle, and with a disproportionately huge gray sombrero of the cone-shaped Mexican fashion.

  Shawn, being the most accurate shot in the group, was chosen to do the shooting. He dropped on one knee behind a rock and delivered his bullet exactly where Berry had suggested—at the very feet of the stranger’s horse. The mustang pitched up high in the air, but, instead of bolting for cover or turning tail and retreating at full speed, the stranger took off his hat and waved it sweepingly about his head.

  “Mocking us!” said Berry with heat. “There’s a cool one for you.”

  Another bullet in the same place made the mustang pitch more violently and took him out of sight behind a great boulder, but to the last the rider’s hat was violently waved in defiance.

  The three fugitives looked gravely at one another, and then proceeded up the trail again. They discussed the event seriously. The stranger was a mere boy. So much José, whose eyes were like the eyes of a buzzard, was willing to swear. But a mere boy could be more dangerous than any grown man, as Billy the Kid had demonstrated for all time. A grown man possessed an element of reason that prevented him from taking certain risks, but a boy could be a mad creature who would hold headlong on his course, no matter what the obstacles that arose. You never could guess what a boy would do next.

  Therefore, in view of the fact that the young daredevil had defied them so boldly, they determined that they would put a quick stop to his career if he showed near them again.

  They had not gone another two miles up the cañon when José brought swift word that the same pursuer was dodging them in the rear.

  Terry Shawn flushed a little. “It’s only one man, boys,” he said. “I’ll just drop back and argue with him a minute. You wait for me up here.”

  Jim Berry chuckled with mirth. “You’ll go back and kill that gent or get yourself shot up,” he said. “You’re only a kid yourself, Shawn . . . no real sense. No, sir, we’ll stop the kid, and we’ll do it without blowing his head off. José, can you put a slug through

  his horse?”

  José grinned in appreciation, and the three drew back to the edge of a little covert of lodgepole pine to watch the performance of this ceremony.

  Once more they saw the indomitable small rider come twisting into view near the flashing river, his mustang black and glistening with perspiration as it climbed up the difficult trail.

  José took careful aim.

  “Shoot when I whistle,” said Berry. “We’ve got to warn the kid before we shoot.” So he put his two forefingers in his mouth and emitted a blast that shrieked loudly down the cañon, sounding even above the roar of the torrent.

  The pursuer stopped his horse and jerked up his head so that the broad brim of the sombrero flared up around his face. That instant the rifle of José clanged, and the mustang dropped, lifeless, with sprawling legs.

  The youth was out of the saddle instantly. His hat fell from his head. Long, blond, womanish hair streamed down over his shoulders. Even under this rifle fire he did not turn to shelter, but, snatching up a rifle from the holster of his fallen horse, he dropped to one knee and poured a rapid stream of bullets straight up among the pines, the very first of his shots cutting a twig beside the head of no less a hero than Terry Shawn himself, and sending the whole trio scampering back through the woods to a safer distance.

  “You see?” Jim Berry grinned. “Young enough to be crazy. Oh, I know the type. Jump off a thousand-foot cliff for a bet. Eat fire. Fight a hundred men. I don’t know but it would have been wiser to send a bullet through him, instead of through the horse.”

  Shawn answered with some dryness: “That may be your idea of a game, Berry, but I make it a practice never to shoot at a man out of cover, and I guess that’s the rule that we’ll all follow so long as I’m with this party.”

  Jim Berry turned a grimly challenging eye upon Shawn at this remark, and his look was met by a glance as cold as ice. Sudden silence fell upon the three, but Berry said no more, and José, as he fell back to the rear once more, was smiling faintly and unpleasantly.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The question of superiority between Berry and Shawn had been tacitly settled by this little exchange of views. A difference between the two had been inevitable from the beginning, and now it had occurred. For that reason José smiled wisely and a little cruelly as he fell back to his post of rear guard. Silence dropped down between the two riders in the center. It could be taken for granted that all good feelings in Berry toward Shawn had been killed by the silence to which he had been forced, and young Mr. Shawn could have testified of old experience that no good could come of this attitude between them.

  However, he could hardly go back upon the position that he had taken, namely, that there was to be no firing from ambush upon men in the open. It was true that hardly another long rider in the cattle country would have insisted upon so stern an edict, but that was the very difference between Shawn and the rest. Men in the West were not apt to question what was done in a man’s life so much as how it was accomplished, and if the way was decent, the thing itself could pass muster with all except the overcurious. There was this matter of the girl, of course, to harm him. But the truth must come out, his innocence be known when Kitty Bowen showed up somewhere to explain her disappearance, and then once more he would he spoken of and looked upon rather as a gentleman adventurer than as a murdering bandit. For, from the beginning, every man who rode on his trail knew that no secret danger would come from their quarry, but that he would fight with fair warning and man to man, with equal weapons.

  So the repute of young Shawn had been established in the beginning, and now he would not tarnish his fame himself nor give his companions a chance to blacken his name. As for the anger of Jim Berry, he shrugged his shoulders and told himself that he had endured the wrath of much greater men.

  Hack Thomas at last came back from the front, and Berry went out to the lead. However, Shawn refrained purposely from mentioning the difference that had occurred between him and Berry; he would let the story come out with all the prejudice that Jim Berry would lend it. He did, of course, tell the story of the long-haired boy who followed them and had been unhorsed. Thomas grinned and then grew sober.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve heard about ’em, and I’ve seen ’em . . . these girlie kids. All they want to do is to get famous. They don’t much care how. Just a chance to find danger somewhere and eat it. Think of that young fool dropping on one knee and opening fire on a whole forest. Well, you’ll hear from that kid again, and take it from me you’ll hear hard. He ain’t going to be shuffled off the trail by the loss of one horse. Shawn, I tell
you that this trip into the hills is a silly trick. Let’s turn right around and slant straight for the town where we have our job staked out.”

  For answer young Shawn turned in the saddle and glanced back. The Mexican was just coming into view, Sky Pilot beside him.

  “You see that horse?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “What would you give for it?”

  Hack Thomas turned and looked at the flashing beauty. Although, of course, the distance was too great for the distinguishing of points, far off as he was, the greatness of Sky Pilot was clearly revealed to him.

  “I’d give two thousand cold, and I’ve got the cash with me,” he announced.

  “Would you? That’s a tall price.”

  “I know the value of a horse . . . to me.”

  “Well, Hack, suppose that you couldn’t get it with money?”

  “In that case . . . well, I ain’t particular about my methods, kid.”

  “Now,” said the other, “when we get to the end of our march, I may have a chance to own that horse. So you see why it’s no good to talk to me about anybody else or anything else.”

  Hack Thomas took this answer as final and discreetly turned the talk into other channels. “Where are we going?” he inquired.

  “To the end of the trail,” answered Shawn curtly, and he fell deeply into his own profound thoughts.

  For his own part, he would have been very glad to know whether the man on the mountainside was a saint, a criminal, or a devil. He would have suspected him of all three inspirations. For one thing was manifest—his power—and power is often attributed to some extra-human source.

  They had no further sight or sound of the precocious young fighting boy who had been driving up behind them. That same evening they came to the foot of the rugged pass that led up to the brow of Mount Shannon, and pushed up a gorge dripping with water that trickled from the sides, welled from every crack, and seemed to creep up from the very rock underfoot.