Valley of Outlaws

by Max Brand

  “What has broken loose up there?” asked Thomas again.

  “It’s winter,” answered Shawn. “That’s the first storm. We may have a white valley here before many hours.”

  “I hope things don’t break loose in any other place,” remarked Hack Thomas with sudden meaning.

  “What other place do you mean?”

  “Here in this valley.”

  “I don’t know that I follow you, Hack,” said Shawn.

  “Kid,” said the older man, “I know you, and I know when you mean trouble. If you haven’t got trouble in your eye right now, I’ll eat my hat. Who is it for? Berry?”

  “I’ve said nothing about Berry,” returned Shawn darkly.

  “‘I’ve said nothing about Berry,’” mimicked the other. “You don’t have to say . . . you look the part. You’re goin’ to bust loose, roaring like the wind up yonder . . . listen.”

  As they paused and raised their heads, they could hear it plainly enough. It seemed at first to come from the trees, then out of the very ground at their feet the noise appeared to rise. It was a deep note like thunder, but unbroken, and with a weird, high, complaining falsetto note running through it, as though something tender were being crushed under the hands of a roaring giant. Both of the men had heard that noise before, although never quite so clearly as in the sounding box of this ravine. It was the sound of the storm, which was shooting through the upper regions of the air, and sending the echo of its bellowing along the mountainside.

  “Look yonder, kid,” said Thomas in awed tones. “There are the ghosts, rising as the magician calls to them.” He pointed.

  Toward the south, the white and low-lying mists that had been crawling thicker and thicker into the woods, now began to stream upward, rising like long, white draped arms toward the upper sky. Presently they seemed to touch the invisible force that flew through the middle air, and were snatched away bodily. Other arms rose, more and more rapidly; in a trice the whole body of the clinging mist had been snatched away, and the woods lay sullenly revealed down the whole slope of the mountain.

  “Something is goin’ to happen,” said Hack Thomas grimly. “I can feel it. These are signs. And it looks like he was the gent that sent them.”

  He indicated old Shannon, who was striding from the edge of the woods with the carcass of a young deer slung across his shoulders. He came with great strides, and, whether it was the gray-bearded majesty of his presence, or the infernal commotion in the sky above them, reacting upon their awed minds, it did seem, for the moment, that the hermit was larger and more formidable than a human being. The two regarded him with awe.

  “Now, kid,” said Hack Thomas, reverting to his former subject, “I see that we’re all fixed up. You’ve got your horse just about in hand . . . and there’s the job waiting for us down yonder in the plains. Do we start tomorrow morning, or this evening? Or are you goin’ to insist on raising a row with Jim Berry?”

  The other looked curiously at him. “What makes you think that I want to have trouble with Jim Berry?” he asked. “You started in by warning me about him . . . now you talk small about him. What’s the idea?”

  “He’s had his lesson,” said Thomas eagerly. “He’s scared to death, old son. He knows what he’s headed for, now.”

  “He’s had his lesson?” repeated the other with a burst of white anger. “His lesson ain’t started, even.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  This touch of temper made Hack Thomas, in turn, grow very grave. He came close to Terry Shawn and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Listen to me, kid,” he murmured. “You feel kind of hard against Jim.”

  “Never mind what I feel.”

  “Let me tell you something,” went on Hack. “Jim is scared to death. He sees what he’s done, and he hopes that it’s not too late. Matter of fact, kid, I’ve had a hard job to keep him from clearing out of the camp.”

  “Why did he want to go?” asked Shawn.

  “Because of you. Berry’s game enough, but he doesn’t want to commit suicide.”

  “I don’t get what you’re driving at!” exclaimed Shawn with a burst of impatience. “First you steer me at Berry, and point out that he’s apt to turn the head of a girl. Afterward, you come around and tell me that Berry’s sorry. Well, Thomas, I don’t know that that’s much good to me. Suppose that somebody picks your pocket and throws your purse away. Are you going to let him say that he’s sorry, and call it quits? Or are you going to jail him?”

  “Of course I see what you mean,” replied Hack Thomas. “I see what you’re driving at. You think that Jim Berry has made a great head with the girl. You think that they’re pretty thick, eh? Let me tell you, kid, he means nothin’ in her young life. Nothin’ at all. He was handy and useful . . . he stood around smilin’, and she just smiled back a little. That’s all.”

  “Did she send you over here to give me this line of chatter?” asked the gunman, lowering his head a little and looking grimly at the other.

  “She sent me nowhere at all,” Hack assured him. “It’s just because I like you, Terry, that I’m tryin’ to stave off any trouble. I like you, and I like Berry. So will you, when you get a better chance to know him.”

  “Study your horse when he’s tired, and your man when you’re in a pinch,” said Shawn. “I guess that I know him fairly well.”

  “Not a mite. But whether you know him or not, whether you hate him or not, you need money, and you need big money, old son.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Can you settle down with a girl like that without a stake?” inquired the other.

  Terry Shawn’s face blackened. “We’re not settling down,” he said savagely. “Besides, I’ve talked enough.”

  Hack Thomas saw the youth stride past him, and, furious at himself for touching on the wrong topic, he gritted his teeth and drove his sharp heel into the turf. Then he hurried after Shawn and laid a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Kid,” he said, “will you listen to this? Is it better to kill Jim Berry now, and lose about fifty thousand beans, or is it better to wait till you’ve got the money in your pocket? Answer me that, will you?”

  Shawn hesitated, growing sullen. “I don’t know,” he muttered at last. Then he flung out, rather in agony than in rage: “I don’t know much about anything, Hack. All I know is that I’m in wrong all around. I’ve lost everything . . . I’ve got nothing left. I used to have a thousand friends, like old Joe. Well, I chucked them for the sake of a girl. And now I’ve lost the girl . . . had her taken out of my hands. I don’t ask for sympathy . . . only I say that there isn’t anything straight before me that’s worth looking at except the chestnut. Look at him. He’s all that I’ve got. And what’s he good for? Simply to take me into one patch of trouble and out again, faster than the eye can follow. That’s all he’s good for.”

  His manner, however, denied these words, for, as he spoke, he dropped his head against the muscular cheek of the stallion, and Sky Pilot pricked his ears and stood like a rock.

  Hack Thomas, really moved, saw that it was a time to waste few words, and he merely said: “I leave it with you to act like a sensible fellow, old-timer. I’ll only say that you’re wrong in what you think about the girl . . . she’s for you as much as ever. But she’s gay . . . she likes to have a jolly time . . . she wants to chatter a bit . . . and Jim Berry has been playin’ up to her. I only ask you this . . . watch him tonight, and see how he acts. If he wastes much time around her, then call me a liar. Son, he’s going to keep hands off.”

  “Because he doesn’t want her,” suggested the bitter Shawn. “Because he’s tired of her already.”

  He writhed at the thought, while Hack Thomas, seeing that words of no sort would now avail him, walked slowly ahead. He passed Shannon, coming in with the deer, and, for lack of anything better to do, or perhaps to show his respect for that grave-faced hunter, he took the burden from the strong old shoulders and carried it on toward the fire.

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p; Shannon turned off and went toward Shawn, and the chestnut whirled away from its new friend and raced joyously toward the old one. The hermit waved it aside, and, pausing in front of Terry Shawn, he nodded to the horse and then smiled with the utmost cheerfulness and kindness on the outlaw. After that, he did not stay, but this brief instant of meeting impressed Shawn more than the longest of speeches would have done, for it seemed to say: Welcome, my friend, into the companionship of the chestnut. You and I are now of one world. Good luck be with you. All this did the smile of Shannon seem to say, at the very moment when Shawn would have expected jealousy and hatred for the sharing of the affection and the trust of Sky Pilot.

  So Terry Shawn, almost forgetting the girl and Jim Berry, lingered by himself and communed with a portion of his nature that had never before been revealed to him. Call it the higher self, or the inner mind, or the voice of conscience, whatever it was, that instant of meeting with Shannon had revealed it, and altered life for Terry Shawn.

  He remained alone with the new idea—although it was hardly an idea, but rather a form as vague as the mist that lately had lifted from the trees. Thinking of that, he raised his face to the cloud masses that were streaming through the upper sky. Less high, they seemed now, and ever sweeping lower and lower, brushing down toward the earth while the booming echo of the storm rolled faintly and terribly through the cañon. The head of Mount Shannon was quite lost in the storm, now, except for an occasional glimpse, as the very fury of the wind lifted the cloud screen for an instant, and the solemn face of the peak looked forth again.

  And it seemed to Shawn that so it was with the man he had just met. Silence and gentleness ruled his life, but in his breast there were mighty emotions, cast on a greater scale than those of most men, just as the form and the features of Mount Shannon were vaster than those of all of the surrounding summits. Here in this cañon, living in this little shack, was a truly regal and extraordinary presence, and Terry Shawn was overwhelmed by it.

  If the recognition of this presence brought more solemnly beautiful ideas of life to Shawn, also it brought a sense of fear and of loss. For one thing, his own strength that always had seemed so great, now seemed a petty matter, and he no longer felt that he could claim possession of the horse. Whatever the coin that Shannon had paid for Sky Pilot, the youth felt that he could never duplicate the price.

  The present, however, was not the time for such reflections. Shawn went on toward the house, slowly, his head hanging a little. At least one thing had been gained by this awakening of his soul, for, whereas a moment before all his thoughts had been turning toward big Jim Berry and a crushing vengeance, now Berry and vengeance seemed paltry things—so even did Kitty Bowen—so certainly did Terry Shawn. Such had been the flash of divine light and kindness that had shone on the gunfighter from the hermit’s eyes that he began to understand, although dimly, the possibilities of a greater life and a broader comprehension. He breathed uneasily. So great became the commotion in his mind that all the turbulence of the upper sky was unnoticed by his downcast eyes.

  In the lee of the house he sat down, cross-legged, and looked down the ravine with eyes that saw nothing of the coming of the storm; neither did he regard Kitty Bowen close by him, nor Jim Berry, quietly at work in the repair of his bridle, nor Hack Thomas, singing in the horse shed, nor old Shannon, cleaning a pelt.

  But all work was suspended, from time to time, and all eyes turned up to the sky, for it was now plain that the storm would never stop until it had swept the cañon clean through. Just above their heads the clouds were pouring, rolling wildly, heaving and leaping like animate creatures, and now and again the smoky arm of the storm reached down to the shack and shook it, and made the very ground tremble.

  In the same manner, those arms of fury reached down into the woods, and, whenever that happened, the listeners would hear crashings and batterings, and sometimes the loud screech of boughs, ground crushingly, against one another. All the leaves that had been hanging to the trees, in bright autumnal splashes of russet, and gold, and purple, and yellow, and red—all of these leaves were now stripped away wherever the storm wind reached. Whereas the ravine had been a flowing tide of color, now there were spots that had suddenly been harvested of all richness and left barren and brown.

  Even Kitty Bowen paid some attention to this vast battle. In all the world there were few more literal-minded and serenely practical persons than Kitty, but now she left her household task, and, standing by the corner of the shack, she faced the downward torrent of the storm.

  “That’s the way that life is,” said Kitty, the philosopher. “If you’re the tallest tree, you’re stripped first, and you’re stripped the cleanest, and you’re left the most naked for the winter.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The storm wind, which had been raging just above the top of the house, now rose, shunted higher, perhaps, by some twisting of the wind currents as they gushed through the mountain passes. As streams of water from two fire hoses meet and make a vast white flower of spray blossom in mid-air, so now, as the counter currents of the storm came rushing together around Mount Shannon, the sky began to boil. Clouds were born and dissolved momentarily, and a vast riot raged over Shannon’s peak.

  However, this was a thing to be seen rather than heard, for the small group of people in the shack, or around it, were aware only occasionally now, of far-away screamings and moanings, indescribably terrible and sad. But for these echoes of the storm, however, they were relieved from the main burden of noise and could speak again.

  So Terence Shawn left his broodings about life and Nature and himself, and turned suddenly to the grim facts that had filled his mind before. There was Kitty Bowen who once had loved him—there was Jim Berry who, he felt, had stolen her away—and here sat Terence Shawn with idle hands.

  He looked down at those bony, strong hands in amazement, as though they were capable of answering his question about their idleness, then he began to scrutinize the girl and Berry more carefully.

  So darkly hooded was the sky that, even in the full day, there was as much light from the fire as from the heavens, and Kitty Bowen worked in a rosy glow. She seemed permanently stained, for, when she turned from the fire, there still was color on her face and hands. She appeared to be totally absorbed in her cooking, but now and again, cautiously, she cast a side glance toward Shawn, a clever, measuring look, he thought, as though she were coolly appraising him. It angered Shawn intensely; he felt like springing to his feet and crying: You don’t know me! You’ve never seen me in action, but you’re going to, soon! What was in her mind? Cold dislike, no doubt, because he would not raise his hand against Jim Berry.

  As for Berry, he sedulously avoided the eye of young Terry Shawn. It was true that he did not pour his offers of assistance upon the girl now, and, in this respect, it might seem that he was striving to avoid giving further offense to Shawn. Still, there is no use insulting a loser, and it was plain in Shawn’s mind that the tall and handsome Jim already had won, and was merely ignoring him, his former rival. And anger rose darkly in the mind of Terry Shawn.

  In the meantime, Hack Thomas was making a little idle conversation. “We’re going to get it pretty quick,” he declared. “The wind has done a little retreat, but pretty soon it’ll come again and swamp the whole dog-gone’ valley. It’s goin’ to be full of snow when it comes, too. You mark what I say, things are going to break loose around here pretty soon.”

  And he looked anxiously up to the over-massed heavens above them.

  Suddenly Shawn stood up, stretched himself with care as though to make sure that every muscle was in smoothest working order, and then turned to Jim Berry.

  “Jim, I want to talk to you.”

  Jim Berry nodded, without glancing back. “All right. Go ahead,” he said.

  “It’s private talk,” said Shawn. “Just come away from the shack with me, will you?”

  He saw Berry stiffen a little; he saw Kitty Bowen catch her hands sudden
ly together, almost as though she had burned herself at the fire. And that maddened him, but he told himself that this was a plain token that she was wild with anxiety about the welfare of her new lover.

  “I don’t see any reason,” said Jim Berry, speaking slowly and thereby retaining control of his voice, “why you can’t talk right here, Shawn.”

  “I’ll tell you the reasons, later on,” Shawn assured him.

  But Berry would not move. “We’ll have the wind smashing around the shack in another minute or two,” he said. “Why not keep here, under cover?”

  “Berry,” said the other solemnly, “what I’ve got to say isn’t the sort of thing that a woman should hear. You understand what I mean?”

  Berry, before he answered, cast one eager glance at Hack Thomas, asking a volume of questions in that brief instant, and, in return, he had a sullen nod from Thomas, who was observing matters in the background.

  Kitty Bowen sprang to her feet. “Jim,” she said, “don’t you go a step away with him. I know what he wants.”

  “You’re a mind-reader, maybe,” said Shawn with bitterness. “What do I want?”

  “You want trouble,” she answered. “You want to fight because you think . . . well, we all know what you think.”

  He was badgered to the last limit of indiscretion. “Since you all know,” he said, “I’ll say it out loud. Berry has cut the ground from under my feet . . . he’s made his set at me, and he’s won out. Well, that’s all right. He can have you . . . I don’t want a girl who changes quicker than the wind. But because he’s played low with a partner and played the sneak with me when I trusted him, him and me have got to settle our little account. Berry, will you come out here with me?”