by Max Brand
They were married late on the evening of the ninth, and, after the minister had left, the family sat a long while on the verandah, silent for the most part, listening to the vague noises of the night with the stir and rustle of the warm June air about them. The old folks went off to bed in time, and Lazy Purdue sat with Marion, talking little and thinking deeply.
He knew that this was the crisis of his life. As he looked at the pale profile of his wife’s face and to the vague smile that altered her lips, he commenced to wish profoundly that he had gathered the Conovers around him to fight this last battle in the night. But in a moment the thought left him. Blood ties are strong in the backwoods, and they lay strong in the heart of Lazy Purdue.
A clatter of hoofs came up the path, a horseman halted on sliding hoofs before the verandah. The horseman leaned far to one side and peered into the face of Lazy Purdue in the clear moonlight.
“You’re the man what calls himself George Conover?”
“I am.”
“Then here’s a note from Tom McLane.” He tossed a little white pellet to Purdue and galloped off, clattering into the night.
Purdue unfolded the note and read:
This’ll reach you about midnight. We’re down in Willoughby Hollow an’ we start for the Conover house when the tenth begins. Is this a warning?
Lazy Purdue pulled out his watch. It was five minutes before twelve. He rose and stretched himself and yawned. “Marion,” he said, “I’m goin’ into the house for a minute, an’ then I’m goin’ to leave you for a little while.”
She made no answer as he went into the house, but, when he returned onto the verandah, he found her standing and waiting for him, and saw her eyes calmly noting his two holsters and the double belt of cartridges that ran about his waist.
“You’re goin’ down to fight them in the night?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he said, “I reckon it won’t get to fightin’. I’m merely goin’ down to talk to ’em. I got something to say that ought to end this here feud. If they won’t listen, then we’ll have some gun play . . . something of a kind they never dreamed of before.”
She remained passive while he kissed her. “Honey,” she said, “I reckon I know what you’re going to tell them. Can’t you . . . can’t you jus’ send ’em a messenger to tell ’em what you’ve got to say?”
He laughed shortly. “No,” he said. “You don’t even dream what I’ve got to say, an’ I’ve got to take this here message myself.”
“They’ll be twenty to one,” she said slowly, “if it comes to fightin’.”
“Twenty rabbits don’t scare one dog,” he stated, and laughed gaily back to her as he strode down the path.
Willoughby Hollow lay nearly a mile away from the house, and he commenced to run as soon as he was out of hearing of the house. He feared that he was too late and that the McLanes would start their move on the house before he could reach them to parley.
But when he reached the Hollow, he heard not a sound. In the middle of the Hollow, there was a long and narrow clearing between the wooded slopes that ran up on either side, and Purdue paused at his side of the clearing to watch. It was not long before he noticed a shadowy figure behind a tree, and then another, and another farther away. The McLanes had evidently delayed their advance, perhaps because some of their clan had arrived late on the scene.
“Tom McLane!” shouted Lazy Purdue, “a truce! I got something to say to you.”
“There ain’t no more truce!” called the voice of Tom McLane. “Have you got your men behind you, George Conover?”
“Aye,” said Lazy Purdue, “I’ve got my men behind me, an’ they’re enough to wipe all the McLanes that ever were off the map. But listen to me. Tom McLane, I got something to say which you an’ all the McLanes ought to hear. There won’t be any more feud when you hear it.”
“Damn you an’ your words!” shouted Tom McLane. “I’ve heard too many of ’em before. The time has come for rifles to talk. I’ve got a bead on you now, George Conover, an’ I’ll give you twenty seconds to get back into cover with your men!”
Purdue realized the significance of McLane’s tone. They were out for blood, and they meant to taste it. He leaped back into the shelter of the tree trunks, and in a moment more than half a dozen rifles exploded in swift succession and a volley of singing messengers of death whirred around him or splintered against the branches.
They were not long unanswered. Lazy Purdue commenced to fall back up the hillside, but in long and slow zigzags from side to side. The McLanes, believing that the Conovers were out in force, advanced slowly, firing at every shadow. Purdue, picking his shots, landed man after man.
The odds were not so much against him as would have seemed. The riflemen required a long time, comparatively, to get their sights set and draw their bead on their target. Moreover, they could not secure a fair aim at the shadowy figure that fled softly from tree to tree. The light of the moon, never very good for rifle shooting, was almost impossible in the patchy and uncertain light of the woods.
But it hardly bothered Lazy Purdue. As he moved rapidly from tree to tree, he fired at every flash of steel and at every exposure of a figure. Quite accustomed to firing by simply pointing his revolver and without any effort at drawing a bead through the sights, the dimness of the woods hardly bothered him. By the time one of the McLanes had drawn a bead on his moving figure, he was already in shelter behind a tree trunk and taking pot shots at the flashes of rifle fire.
Such was the rapidity of his lateral movement and so slowly did he draw back up the hillside that it must have seemed to the McLanes that they were opposed by an almost equal number of fighters, and every one a dead shot.
Purdue was not shooting to kill. He fired at the flash of reflected light from the weapons themselves, or at the exposed legs or arms, and that he scored frequently many a brief outcry and following burst of sincere cursing attested.
As he drew farther up the slope, the pursuit behind him grew slower and the fire less intense. Two shots had nipped the sleeve of his left arm, but, otherwise, he was unharmed.
VIII
THE END OF THE FEUD
At that moment he heard someone crashing through the brush behind him. He thought at first that it must be some of the McLanes in a flanking movement, and, whirling where he crouched, he poised his revolver ready to fire. At the same instant a dark figure blundered out of the shadows higher up the slope and ran toward him.
“George!” called the figure.
Lazy lowered his revolver hastily, for it was the voice of old Conover.
“Get down and crawl!” he ordered. “The McLanes are here . . . thick.”
The old man came rapidly toward him. “George,” he said, “there’s no use fighting any longer. Life an’ death don’t matter much now. Marion’s gone. I seen it from the window, but I couldn’t do a thing. By the time I ran and got my rifle, they was gone.”
“Talk slow,” said Lazy Purdue, taking Conover hard by the arm. “Who went with her?”
“Henry McLane,” breathed Conover tremulously, “an’ he carried the sun o’ my life away with her. She was on the hillside down by the house as plain as day in the moonlight. She was listening to sounds we heard from here. And then I saw big Henry McLane ride on her out of the shadow of the trees and pick her up as a hawk picks up a chicken. I saw her struggle and strike at his face. I heard him laugh and saw him kiss her. Then he spurred out of sight. It seemed to me he headed for the river. God knows where he has taken her now. It may be too late for pursuit!”
“But not too late to find him,” Lazy said through his teeth. He raised his voice to a shout. “Tom McLane,” he called, “if you’re a man of honor come out and talk to me like a man! Here stand I, George Conover, with my guns on the ground beside me, and my hands in the air. I want a truce to talk.”
He tossed his revolvers to the ground as he spoke and stepped out into the open. A rifle barked, but the voice of Tom McLane followed the sound
swiftly as the hum of the bullet went close by Lazy’s head.
“Stop firing,” he ordered, “or I’ll account for the next one who shoots with my own gun.” He stepped out from the shadows, a great patriarchal figure. “What do you want with me, George Conover?”
“It’s I that wants something of you,” cried old Conover. “How long have the McLanes taken to warring on women, Tom?”
“They never will,” answered Tom McLane.
“But they have!” cried Conover. “Tom McLane, your own son Henry has carried my daughter away.”
“And my wife,” said Lazy Purdue. “There’s an end to this feud while I go to bring her back, is there not, McLane?”
Tom McLane went up to Lazy and caught his hand. “Boy,” he said, “I’ll ride with you on the way, if you want me to. He’s no son of mine . . . and the feud’s done till you come back.”
Lazy Purdue was already halfway to the shadows, running for his life up the hillside. When he reached the Conover house, he raced to the stable and saddled a horse. It seemed to him that all his fingers were thumbs before he had drawn the girths and filled his cartridge belt again, but in a moment he was in the saddle and thundering down the road.
He cut across the fields at the first opening. There was but one shallow place in the river where Henry McLane could have crossed the ford. Otherwise, he must have ridden around by the bridge, and Lazy knew he would not waste time to do this. He headed straight for the river, and, on the sand by the edge, he saw deep hoof prints. They stirred him on with a sudden warmth of hatred, and he sent his horse splashing into the water.
It was a steep grade up the other side, and his horse went slowly. He did not urge him, for he knew that a desperate ride lay ahead of him that night and he wished to save strength for the final race. McLane’s horse carried two, and the burden must tell before long. So he worked his way up the hillside until he came again to the road where it topped the very crest.
Below him the road wound whitely in the moonlight down the other side of the ridge, and, as he looked, breathing his laboring horse for a moment, he saw a black speck swing out onto one of the lower stretches of the road.
It must be McLane.
He crushed one hand over his eyes and thought quickly. He could not possibly overtake McLane by following down the road. At the foot of the ridge it branched into several forks. It would be a matter of guesswork as to which one Henry would take, and the chances were seven to one that Lazy would follow the wrong trail.
There was a chance, however, that he could cut down to the foot of the graded road by going straight down the mountainside and avoiding the long curves.
Yet it was desperate work. The mountainside was thick with second-growth saplings and underbrush, and in several places the mountain dropped almost perpendicularly. Still it was the one possible chance, and Lazy dismounted to tighten the girths again. Then he started the wild ride downward.
He never stopped. He could not. The impetus that the horse gained in the first few moments carried him resistlessly onward, whinnying with terror. Half a dozen times Lazy thought they must inevitably crash into some large tree or rock that jutted up suddenly before them, but each time he managed to swerve the horse sufficiently to one side.
It was a sure-footed mountain horse. Otherwise, they would both have been crushed to death within the first 100 yards of the swift descent. As it was, the horse laid back on his haunches and they slid crashing on through brush and over pebbles, many times near death but always averting it.
It seemed a century to Lazy Purdue; in reality, it was only a few desperate moments before they slid out into the road at the foot of the mountain. Before him rattled hoofs, and he saw a dark figure whirl around a curve.
Lazy shouted aloud for exultation, for the road that McLane had taken was a blind. It had once been a private way leading to a house that had long ago been burned down. No paths branched from it. It led straight to the side of the house, and there it was effectually stopped by the drop of a sheer precipice.
Lazy drove his spurs into his mount and rode hard. The rattle of hoofs before him drew closer and closer, and at last, in an open stretch, he saw McLane clearly. The fugitive was riding desperately, but Lazy could tell by the sway of the horse that it could not maintain its speed for long. He shouted with triumph and fired his revolver into the air. At the sound, McLane whirled in the saddle and shook his fist back at the pursuer.
While they were riding on the last rise before the house, Lazy drew closer and closer. Again he fired in the air. They swung onto the open space where the burned house had stood. One hundred yards away was the edge of the cliff.
Suddenly McLane flung the limp body of Marion from his horse. Lazy cried out in horror, and, as McLane swung his rifle to his shoulder and fired, Lazy spurred on his mount and blazed away in return. But the motion of his horse disturbed his aim and the bullet struck the mount of Henry McLane. The horse sprang suddenly forward, throwing McLane back in the saddle and racing straight toward the precipice.
Too late for action, McLane saw his destination. He tugged desperately at the bridle reins, pulling his horse’s head sidewise, then his despairing shout rang back, and horse and rider plunged outward into the night.
But Lazy Purdue had no time to examine the certain results of that fall.
In a moment he was kneeling by the side of Marion Conover, and at the same time she opened her eyes. She could not speak, but clung to him with eloquent force.
“Where . . . where has he gone?” she whispered at last.
“No man in all the world can tell,” Lazy said gravely. He lifted her into the saddle, and then walked to the edge of the cliff. Far below he saw two figures lying on the rocks with the moonlight white upon them. He walked back to his horse with his hat in his hand.
They rode back slowly toward the Conover place, speaking little, and beneath them they could feel the horse still trembling like a human being from the effects of that grim ride. Up the hill they went, and then down to the river, and up again toward the wooded hillside that led to the Conover house. They had no fear now of the McLanes or of any man.
So when a score of voices hailed them on the spot where Lazy Purdue not long before had defied the banded McLanes, they dismounted without fear and awaited results. They came in the form first of old Conover, who ran to Marion and caught her in his arms, speaking broken phrases like a child who has newly learned to talk.
Afterward Tom McLane and his clan strode through the shadows and fronted them. “Two of you have come back,” he said, “an’ I shan’t ask where Henry McLane is now.”
“You are right,” said Purdue, “for I cannot tell you.”
McLane removed his hat. “At least,” he said, “he fell by a real man’s hand.”
“You are wrong,” answered Lazy Purdue, “he fell by a surer hand than that of any man. And now, Tom McLane, I want to say what I have tried to say before and couldn’t. The feud between the McLanes and the Conovers is at an end.”
“That’s a lie,” said McLane with a slight return of heat. “I’m tired of bloodshed, but this thing has got to be fought out sometime, and it might as well be fought out now. The McLanes and the Conovers will never rest in peace.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Lazy Purdue, “for they’re linked together now with blood. There is a McLane that’s a Conover and a Conover that’s a McLane as far as the laws of God and man can make them. I’m the McLane that’s become a Conover.”
“How in the name o’ God are you a McLane?” breathed Tom.
“Do you remember when Henry McLane, that was your brother, was driven out of the country for killing two Conovers away back years ago?”
“I do.”
“An’ do ye remember that he took a wee bit of a son along with him when he left?”
“By God, an’ you’re the boy!” cried Tom McLane. He raised his hand to his lips and gave the long, owl-like cry that had been the rallying call of the McLanes fo
r generations past. “Boys,” he shouted, “this here feud is ended! Here’s a McLane come home to us an’ became a Conover, an’ the feud has done run itself into the ground at last!”
Late that night, a little before the dawn commenced, Lazy Purdue sat by the bed of Marion and told a long, long story. When he ended, he was astonished to see that she was laughing lightly up to him.
“Honey,” she said, “I knew you was a McLane the minute I looked at you that first night when you stood there with the blood of poor George on your forehead an’ over your heart!”
BILLY ANGEL,
TROUBLE LOVER
By the 1920s Faust’s output was prodigious and would continue to be so through the 1930s. “Billy Angel, Trouble Lover” was one of twenty-three short novels and stories and thirteen serials to appear in 1924. It was published in the Western Story Magazine issue dated November 22nd under the George Owen Baxter byline. What makes the short novel rather unusual is Faust’s use of the heroine, Sue Markham, as the point of view character. It is through her eyes that we meet Billy Angel, the rascally hero who finds refuge in Sue’s café when he is wounded.
I
SUE TO THE RESCUE
On an October night, Sue Markham saw him first. October nights in the mountains are not the October nights of the plains. In the lowlands the air is crisp, but the frost is not yet in it; in the mountains winter has already come, and on this night the cold was given teeth by a howling wind.
She preferred these windy, biting nights. For, when the trains reached that little station of Derby and paused to put on the extra engine that would tug them up the long grade and over the shoulder of Derby Mountain, the crews darted in for a piece of pie and a cup of hot coffee. For five minutes, she would be kept busy serving like lightning, and the cash drawer was constantly banging open and shut. Sometimes a passenger hurried in to swallow a morsel of food, listening with a haunted look in his eyes for the cry of “All aboard!” She had glimpses of ladies and gentlemen, in this way. She saw their fine clothes, their train-weary faces. And, usually, they left tips.