Valley of Outlaws

by Max Brand

  It was odd to see the change that came over Shawn as he spoke. Up to this time, he had appeared the least significant person in that camp, not to be matched, certainly, against the mysterious grandeur of old Shannon, or against the lofty stature and good looks of Hack Thomas and Berry, but now he had altered, and, just as some down-headed undersize pony that has passed unregarded in the pasture, steps on the track with sudden fire in its eye and the manner of an emperor, so Shawn stood before them, now, burning with anger, and terrible as flame.

  Had he been totally unknown to them, still he would have commanded their attention and inspired fear in them, but he was known well to them all, and the record of his wild achievements stood sternly behind him. Both Thomas and Berry were frozen in their places, but Kitty Bowen stepped straight before Shawn and caught him by the sleeves of his coat.

  “Terry, dear,” she said, “are you going to listen to reason for a minute?”

  “‘Terry . . . dear!’” he mocked her furiously. “‘Terry . . . dear.’ I know that I’m nothing to you, girl, and I wish that you were nothing to me, but whatever you are, you can’t make me blind and twist me around your finger. Will you stand back? Will you keep out of this?”

  “I won’t move,” said Kitty, trembling and breathing deeply. “I’m going to make you see what a . . .”

  She could get no further, for Shawn picked her up suddenly and lightly and placed her inside the shack. He slammed the door and thrust home the bolt on the outside. There was a cry, and then a scream from inside.

  “Terry, Terry! Let me out! You’ve been all wrong. I love you, Terry! Don’t hurt Jim Berry . . . he’s done no wrong!” She could not have spoken more foolishly, for her words seemed a direct appeal to him to save Berry.

  Shawn turned on his two companions, and a cold and terrible smile curved his lips. “You, Berry,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” said Jim Berry grimly. “Mind you, you’re wrong. But I won’t back down. You’ve gone a long ways, kid, and you’ve raised your share of trouble, but you’ve come to the end of your rope. Go for your gun.”

  “Me go for my gun?” sneered Terence Shawn. “I’m going to kill you, Berry, and I’d kill you if I started with my back turned to you. I give you a flying start. Begin it, Berry.”

  The glance of Jim Berry flickered ever so slightly toward Hack Thomas, and there was an imperceptible nod from that grim-faced man. Matters were not going as Hack had wished to have them go, but he was not foolish enough to try protests at a time like this. The game had gone too far for retreat, and he knew it. There was only one choice, as it appeared to him, and that was between the two who were about to fight: should Berry or Shawn live? That question he had answered for himself long before.

  “I’ll never begin it,” said Jim Berry sullenly. A little, nervous convulsion twisted his mouth into a grimace, and he flushed hot with shame at this betrayal of his state of mind. “I’ll finish, but I won’t start.”

  “Stand over there, Hack,” commanded Terry Shawn. “Stand over there and drop your handkerchief for us, will you? That’ll do as a signal.”

  A great noise of battering began inside the shack. Doubtless it was old Shannon trying to smash down the door, and the wild, sobbing voice of the girl went shrilling out to them. That voice was lost completely, a moment later, and the battering against the door was made to seem small and far off, by the final attack of the storm. It had piled its mountains of clouds all around Mount Shannon and had filled the northern skies with towers that now began to topple and pour down the southern face of the great peak. Roarings and shoutings filled the ravine; the last words of Shawn were lost as the tumult of sound washed over them.

  The blast of the wind struck Terry Shawn so violently that he was sent staggering before it, and that stagger saved his life. For Jim Berry, persisting in his non-aggressive attitude, had not touched his weapons, but Hack Thomas had made a quick draw, seeing that the final moment had come. The bullet was well aimed, but, as he pulled the trigger, the storm had knocked Shawn before it—his foot caught in a root that arched above the surface of the grass—and he pitched forward on his face.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  There is a saying, not wholely authenticated, unfortunately, that when Wild Bill the Great was shot through the brain from behind, and fell forward on the card table dead, he made his draw while he was falling. Certainly he was dead the instant the bullet touched him, and his hands were empty, then, except for his cards, yet, when they picked him up, they found a heavy revolver clutched in either hand. The last contraction of muscles, the last instinctive message that quivered down the nerves, had made the dead man draw and prepare for battle.

  It was less miraculous, then, that Terence Shawn was able to equip himself with two Colts in the very instant when he was dropping to the ground, but it was wonderful indeed that, before his body actually struck the ground, his guns had spoken. One bullet went wild past the ear of Jim Berry, but the shot from his left hand struck Hack Thomas in the thigh, and he collapsed suddenly upon the ground.

  Jim Berry had made his draw. He stood like a duelist, his left hand behind the small of his back, his side turned to the foe, and a barking revolver in his right hand. His first shot kicked a shower of dirt into the face of Shawn, half blinding him; his second surely would have ended the days of Shawn, but the impetus of the outlaw’s fall was not ended at once, and he tumbled twice over on his side, still pumping bullets from both guns as he rolled.

  A man lying on the ground, as soldiers know, makes an ugly and difficult target. Poor Jim Berry had a prone and rolling figure and he did very well with it. He chipped the toe of Shawn’s left boot, and he split the face of his coat, just over the heart, but luck was against him.

  Shawn, coming at last to rest on the ground, steadied himself to drive home his last bullets, only to find that both his enemies were now down. Both had lost their guns, and both were groaning and cursing savagely.

  With cautious guns balanced in his hands, Shawn rose, just as the door of the cabin burst open and Kitty slipped out before old Shannon. She ran at Terry like a fury, and crying—“Give me those guns, you murderer!”—she wrenched the weapons out of his nerveless hands and ran to where Jim Berry lay.

  That, said Shawn to himself, was certain proof that she loved the fellow. She was holding his head in her arms and calling out to him, although the mad surging of the storm cut away her voice at her lips.

  Old Shannon was with them, however, and, with his aid, Terry carried both his victims into the shack. There, the howling of the wind was kept away behind the stout log walls, and it was at least possible to attempt conversation.

  Thomas had been hit only once, but Jim Berry was fairly peppered. A bullet had clipped through the calf of his left leg; another had grooved his right arm from wrist to elbow, a deep and dangerous wound; the third was the most dangerous, for the slug had passed through both legs above the knees, and on the left leg there was a cut artery.

  As for Thomas, the bullet, flying on an upward course, had entered the thigh just above the knee, struck the bone, and come out through the back of the hip. He lay stiff with pain, but making no complaint.

  When Shannon went to him, he knocked the hand of the hermit aside and pointed imperiously toward Jim Berry. When Kitty Bowen hurried over to him, he shook his head. “Save Jim,” he said. “I’ve only got what’s coming to me.”

  Kitty merely fell to work on him, silently, her face white and tense, her hands sure as steel. She cut the leg of the trouser to the entrance wound, and she gripped the thick muscles above it to cut off the flow.

  “Quick, Terry! We’ve got to have a tourniquet, here!”

  “I can’t leave Jim,” answered the outlaw. “If only the old man could help with Hack . . .”

  It was literally as though Shannon understood what was said. He turned back to Thomas again, and fell to making, with perfect calm and efficiency, two powerful tourniquets for the weakened Hack.
/>
  They worked fiercely, and, as they toiled, the storm freshened and rose from one crescendo to another, until the wild, bellowing voices roared back and forth across the echoing valley with a continual booming.

  For two long hours, patiently and carefully they worked, and at the end of that time the wounded men lay in some comfort, still tight-lipped with pain but braced with some heavy drams from brandy flasks.

  “Terry,” said Hack Thomas at last, “heaven knows that I’ve got no right to speak to you or any other honest man, but the fact is that Jim and me are partners. I couldn’t see him tackle you alone. And even with the two of us fighting, and me taking the jump on you, this is the way that it turned out.”

  “I don’t blame you much,” replied Shawn gently. “I know that some men figure different from others . . . he was your partner and you had to stand by him. Well, you had your own way of doing that. And here’s the end of this game for me, boys. I’m saying good bye. Jim, there’s my hand . . . and I wish you better luck with her than I’ve had. So long.”

  He shook hands with Berry, wrung the hand of old Shannon, and then stepped to the door. There was no word from him to the girl, not so much as a glance at her, and she stood with downcast head in the corner. The force of the wind was falling rapidly, but still it howled wildly enough to give much point to Berry’s admonition: “Man, you’ll be frozen in one hour, if you go out into that storm.”

  “I’ve seen as bad before,” said Shawn. “It doesn’t worry me, Jim. So long!”

  He jerked the door open. A long sighing draft ran through the cabin, and before him lay a blinding mist of flying snow. It was cleft for an instant, and those within could see, now, that the entire ravine was cloaked with shining white. Into that whiteness stepped Shawn, and closed the door heavily behind him. A long silence held the people in the cabin.

  “I didn’t speak, Kitty,” said Jim Berry, “because it didn’t seem any use. If I told him that I meant nothing to you, what difference would it have made? He would only have laughed at me. How I wish that you could forgive the harm I’ve done you with him.”

  She merely shrugged her shoulders.

  And then old Shannon went to her, took her by the arm, and led her to the door. He raised his head, and the lips that had not spoken a human word for those many long months now said in a strangely hollow voice:

  “Child, you love him. Go after him and bring him back. Or go after him and follow him where he rides.”

  Thomas and Berry, their hair fairly lifting on their heads, raised themselves on their elbows and stared in mortal wonder, and Kitty Bowen looked up at the hermit as if at a ghost.

  “Do you understand?” repeated Shannon. “Go after him . . . fall on your knees before him . . . beg him to take you back. Are you afraid? I’ll take you to him.”

  And he led her, stunned and unresisting, out of the house and into the open. A great whirl of wind, filled with snow particles, formed around them, and the cold gripped them with a numbing power. Still he strode straight forward, threw open the door of the horse shed, and entered, leading Kitty Bowen like a captive behind him.

  There they saw Shawn in the act of drawing up the cinches on a horse.

  “Go to him now,” said the hermit. “Fall on your knees. Tell him that you have been a foolish girl, but that you love him!”

  The outlaw, more agape at Shannon than at the girl, stood back from the mustang. Kitty, like one hypnotized, did exactly as Shannon had directed. She fell on her knees before Terry Shawn.

  “Oh, Terry, Terry,” said the girl. “I’ve been a silly child, but I didn’t mean harm. Will you forgive me? Will you take me back?”

  Terry Shawn caught her from the floor and held her close in his arms. He had no time to speak a word, for Shannon’s voice broke in on them again.

  “Go back to the house, child. Take your coat, because you’ll need all the warmth you can get. Come back here quickly. You must start away at once.”

  She went, never dreaming of disobeying, but, as she hurried through the door of the shed, Shawn protested: “It’s not right to drive a girl like that into this sort of weather.”

  “This is her last chance to get away,” he replied. “Otherwise she’ll be frozen in with the rest. You wouldn’t want that.”

  “Then I’ll stay here with them,” said Shawn.

  “And be trapped? I know the sheriff of this county, and, if he rides slowly on a trail, he rides forever. Boy, I have broken a great vow for your sake today . . . don’t let me break it in vain. Do as I tell you, and begin by saddling Sky Pilot.”

  “Are you riding with us?” asked Terry Shawn.

  “I am riding with you to show you some short cuts through the lower ravines, so that you can escape the danger of a snow blockade. But I don’t ride Sky Pilot. Put your own saddle on him.”

  “Hold on!” cried Shawn.

  “He is your horse,” said the hermit. “I give my part in him freely to you, and no man has a greater right to him than I have. He is yours.”

  Chapter Forty

  You who love diamonds, suppose that the crown jewel, Kohinoor, were put in your hands? Still it was nothing compared with the joy that filled the heart of Terence Shawn as he heard this speech. But he sobered instantly, and exclaimed: “I never could ride him!”

  “Get into the saddle while I hold his head,” said the hermit, “and he will never trouble you . . . he will be a good servant to you the rest of your life.”

  “He is like a child to you,” said Terry Shawn. “How can you give him away?”

  “Like should go to like,” said the old man, his face nevertheless touched with a momentary pain. “What is he to me except a plaything? To you, he’s the other half of a soul.”

  “Partner,” said Terry Shawn slowly, “you’re a white man to do this, but, if I let you, I’m a snake. I thought that you knew me, but you don’t. I thought that you figured me for what I am, but I see that you think I’m some honest ’puncher or farmer, maybe. Let me tell you the truth. If you never heard of Terence Shawn before, I’ll tell you what he is . . . he’s a robber, a waster, a no-good gent. And I can’t take more from you than I’ve taken already.”

  The hermit smiled. “Those two inside my house,” he said, pointing, “are much worse than they think. They have not been outlawed, and therefore they still think that they are worthy of living like honest men. You, my friend, have been outlawed, and you despise yourself because a sentence has been passed on you. Yet you are better than you think.”

  “Ten states would like to have the hanging of me,” admitted Shawn gravely.

  “A wise man,” said the other, “once said that there are only two great sins . . . cruelty and cowardice. You never have been cruel, my young friend, and you never have been cowardly. If you have fought, it has been the fighting of tiger with tiger . . . you have not taken advantage of helpless men. You are better than you dream, Terence Shawn, and, for the sake of this girl, you will settle down to a useful, steady life.”

  “Who are you?” asked the outlaw, filled with wonder and awe. “Heaven knows I hope that what you say about me may be right. Whether right or not, I’m going to give it a chance. But who are you? What brought you here?”

  “Sin,” said the hermit gravely. “Terrible, mortal sin brought me here, sin for which no repentance is complete enough. Silence and misery and cold and pain are not enough.”

  The outlaw listened, struck dumb. To attempt to persuade or comfort this man never occurred to him, no more than it would have occurred to him to attempt to persuade Mount Shannon’s granite cliffs and yawning cañons. His own affairs seemed suddenly to shrink; his own troubles were as nothing; such matters as wind and weather were not to be regarded.

  Kitty Bowen came hurrying back, bundled with wraps to face the long ride. For himself, the hermit flung over his shoulders a ragged sheepskin cloak of home manufacture, and gave another to Shawn. So they emerged from the shed with the three horses, and the whole white world lay
before them.

  “Which way do you wish to ride?” asked the hermit.

  “North,” said Terry Shawn eagerly. “Out of this range as fast as I can go. But first I’m taking Kitty home.”

  “I’d never go,” said the girl. “Terry, what are you asking of me?” And her eyes grew big with tears.

  “Do you think that I’d ride you over the mountains in weather like this?” asked Terry Shawn. “Back you go.”

  “Young man,” said the hermit, “opportunity comes only once. Heaven has given her to you . . . therefore take her and keep her. You will find a minister in the first small village, no doubt. Be married there, then ride on . . . your home is where you two are found together . . . and before long, you will find a way of settling peacefully. From the moment you have her, you will never be tempted to commit any crime.”

  “Listen to him,” said the girl. “Oh, Terry, I think that we can believe him.”

  “He’s the law and the gospel to me,” answered the boy solemnly. “What he asks, I’ll do. Sir, would you lead the way?”

  “I’ll hold Sky Pilot while you mount him. Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready. He’ll heave me at the sky, though.”

  “Watch, then.”

  Standing at the head of the chestnut, Shannon soothed it with a word and laid his hand on the reins when Shawn approached and put his foot in the stirrup, but Sky Pilot showed not the slightest concern, and, when Shawn swung into the saddle, the horse merely shook himself a little and then pricked cheerful ears.

  Terry Shawn stared at Shannon in amazement. “I think you’re right. He’s not going to pitch. What in the world did you do to him?”

  “You did it yourself yesterday,” said Shannon, smiling.

  “I only got him so that he would let me walk beside him,” protested the outlaw.