Bad Man's Gulch

by Max Brand

  “A little job that needs doin’, that’s all.”

  “Billy, are you crazy? You . . . you can hardly walk!”

  “I can walk fine,” he told her calmly.

  “Let me see you, then.”

  “Proof, eh?”

  “Yes. I dare you to walk across the room . . . without staggering. I dare you to walk straight across the room!”

  He shook his head, smiling, and then a little shadow of perversity crossed his face. “Why,” he said, “I’ll do it, then.” He paused for a moment, serious, almost abstracted, and she could almost feel the effort by which he gathered his will, and with that will controlled and summoned the strength of his body. After that, he stood up from the chair, walked with a light step across the room, and stood above her. She was amazed. It was, indeed, like a work of enchantment.

  “Now,” he said, “what’s been worryin’ you?”

  “Nothing, Billy.”

  “Speak out true,” he commanded. When she turned from him, shaking her head, he took her by the shoulder and made her confront him again. Once again, her anger flamed furiously, and once again, and as always, the anger turned cold in fear. “You come here to say something. You busted in like you had something on your mind.”

  “I wondered, after I came in, how you happened to find Dad’s razor.”

  “I seen his box . . . I opened it, and I got what I needed. But that ain’t what I asked.”

  “Why . . . there was only a bit of news, I thought you might like to know.”

  “What’s that? Has anything been found out?”

  “About you?”

  “No, no! Not about me. God knows that I don’t matter. But about . . . well, nothing.”

  Here was a new sidelight thrown upon his mind, and it fairly dazzled her by all of its connotations. There was something, then, in spite of his nature that seemed so purely self-centered that had actually responded to the troubles of another. There was something in this world that he valued more than he valued the safety and the comfort of himself. She would not have believed it from any other lips.

  “There’s no news about you,” she said slowly, and wondering at him.

  “Well, well,” he said, sighing. “About what, then?” He lowered himself into the chair beside the window. The power in his legs seemed to have gone, first of all. He had gripped the back of the chair with his large hand, and so, the floor creaking under his weight, he had lowered himself to the seat.

  She could realize, now, by exactly what an immense effort of the will he had been able to bring himself to do this thing. By such an effort did men rise from the cockpit and rush to work the guns of a sinking battleship. By such an effort the dying avoided death!

  “Why,” said the girl, with a thrill of admiration and of disarming pity creeping through her, “I only thought that you’d be glad to know that Steve Carney is back. But maybe you don’t even know him.”

  “I know him. Yes, I’ve heard of Steve Carney.”

  “He’s come back rich, they say.”

  “Ah?”

  “D’you know him well enough to really care?”

  “They’s money in cards,” said the big man grimly. “More money than there is in dynamite . . . or in guns, I guess. How much did he get this time? Do you know?”

  “Enough to buy a ranch and fix it up in style. Enough to marry and settle down . . . they say.”

  “Enough to marry?” said Billy Angel. “Well, for a gent like Steve Carney I s’pose that’s quite a lot.”

  “His poor dad,” she said, hastily turning the question, “it’s a good thing that he’s not alive to see what Steve has become. I remember how he used to stand there . . .”

  “Is that little shack . . . the Carney cottage?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well,” said the other, and, turning his back on her, he rose, struggled feebly across the room, and lay down on the bed—rather, he fell along with the crash.

  She ran to him, filled with terror. “Billy Angel!”

  He did not answer her. His face was perfectly white. Utter exhaustion had taken all the blood from it and left him a deadly mask to look upon.

  “Billy, do you hear me?”

  He made a little gesture with his hand, as though to signify that he heard her, but that he did not wish to be disturbed at this moment.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  He shook his head a little. “I’m comin’ through fine. Only . . . don’t bother me now. Lemme be alone in peace.”

  Such an answer for her kindness. She flung out of the room, but at the door she paused again. No, no matter what happened to him, she would not waste further time and further thought upon such a brute. But when she was downstairs again, her soul melted suddenly. She filled a cup of hot black coffee—it was the dregs of the pot—the sort of coffee that he liked—a brew that would have taken the lining from the throat of an ordinary man. Up the stairs she scurried with the cup until she reached the door of her room, and tried the knob. It was locked!

  “Billy!” she called guardedly.

  But there was not a sound from the room.

  VIII

  STRANGE PROCEEDINGS

  In the first moment of panic, she felt sure that he had collapsed along the floor—after locking the door. Perhaps at that very moment he was dead, for he was very weak—terribly weak. Nothing but the most dauntless strength of mind had enabled him to rise from the bed and do such a simple thing as shave himself. The blood he had lost from the wound in his arm had been a far more vital drain than she had dreamed.

  Yet, as she stood there, balancing in her mind pity for him and fear, there was almost an equal fire of anger in her. How had he dared to treat her as he had done, as though she were simply an unnecessary encumbrance upon him. She reviewed, little by little, his actions since she had entered his room that morning, and she found them all equally intolerable. A devil either of impudence or of brutality possessed the man. Only one genial recollection remained of him, and that was the manner in which he had vigorously protested and even resisted with all of his dying strength, when she had first told him that he must stay with her until he was healed. What he had said then, however, seemed like a voice from the grave. The living reality of him spoke in far other terms.

  In the meantime, there was nothing to do but let him have his own way. If he chose to remain there with the door locked, through some idiotic notion of the brain, she would let him be. Hunger, before long, would make him set wide the door.

  Several hours, however, passed, and there was no sign from him. Then she went up to the door again and pounded upon it. There was no answer. Or if there were one, it was so faint that it was lost in the steady roaring of the rain. A southeast wind had brought the rain in the mid-morning, and since that time it had increased momently, falling as only mountain rains can fall. That is to say, it came bucketing down in headlong torrents, one moment; the next, the wind seemed to have eddied to another and opposite point of the compass from which it threw a spray, driving and stinging.

  Or, again, the rain rushed down in immense, horizontal drifts, each smashing against the roofs of the town with thunder, then walking away and leaving a moment of comparative silence before the next crashing downpour. The girl listened for a time to the steady progress of this walking storm. But still there was not a murmur from the room. She even squinted through the keyhole, but all she could see, at the farther side of the room, was a flashing bit of the mirror, with nothing before it. She put her ear to the rather deep crack at the bottom of the door. She could hear nothing except the strange and ghostly echoes that the rain sent to and fro in the chamber within, like wandering, senseless steps.

  She went down to the main floor of the building, again, full of trouble. This convinced her that, in spite of herself, she cared a great deal for this Billy Angel. For the sake of the work and the care that she had invested in him, if for no other reason—and she vowed to herself that there could be no other reason—she c
ould not see him cast away without a pang. And the two images had never left her from the early morning. She saw the faces sharply contrasted—the gambler and the alleged murderer. Although all her reason told her that there was no comparison between Steve Carney and this wild man out of the mountains, yet she knew that he had as great a grip upon her as Carney himself. The more she strove to argue herself out of this emotion, the deeper it settled in her.

  There was no pause in the rain. Instead, it actually increased, dropping in thick torrents that penciled the air with even lines of gray and turned midday into deepest twilight. When the mist was rubbed from the windows, she looked out upon mountains from which every vestige of the snow was gone. From the windows of the nearest house, she saw the yellow shining of the lamps.

  There were half a dozen people in the room, not lunchers, but gossips gathered around the stove—and then the next crash struck Derby. Trouble was about this month. The announcer of this stroke of misfortune was none other than Steven Carney. He came quietly into the lunchroom. One hand was wrapped in his handkerchief. He had a faint little smile on his lips. But his eyes were brilliant with a threatening light.

  “Partners,” he said in his quiet way, but with his glance going over them swiftly and steadily, “is there anybody here that knows a tall fellow . . . about six feet three . . . with shoulders big enough for two . . . a fast man with a gun . . . with a very pale face and a sort of a sick look about him?”

  “Billy Angel!” cried Sue Markham, the words bursting from her lips of their own force.

  “Ah,” said Steve. “You know him, Sue?”

  “Billy Angel!” cried the others, getting their breath again.

  “What about him?” asked Steve Carney.

  “He’s the man who murdered Charlie Ormond!”

  “Murdered?” repeated Carney, lifting his brows a little.

  “Stabbed him in the back!”

  “It’s not the same man, then. This gent don’t have to stab in the back. He stood up to me and beat me to the draw . . . and, when he might’ve sent a slug of lead through my head, he simply shot the gun out of my hand!” He raised his bandaged hand, spotted with significant red. “Then,” he added, “he cleaned me out. What I want to know is . . . where can I find him? I want another word with him. My hand ain’t hurt too bad to handle a gun right now.”

  “He robbed you, Steve?” cried the girl.

  “Clean as a whistle,” said Steve Carney. He set his teeth, but still he forced himself to smile at her.

  “The sheriff will be a wild man when he hears about this,” said someone. “Get Tom Kitchin now. Tom will nab him . . . he can’t get far away through all of this mud.”

  Three or four hurried out to find Tom Kitchin. The rest drew in a close group around Steve Carney to inquire after more details of the affair. He told them smoothly, without undue excitement.

  “I was trying to fix a lamp so’s I could read by it . . . the morning was so dark. Something stepped into my doorway. I looked up and seen this big fellow that you call Billy Angel. A fine-looking man, I’ll tell you! He nodded to me.

  “‘You’re Steve Carney?’ he says to me.

  “‘I’m Carney,’ says I. ‘Who might you be, stranger?’

  “‘The rest of ’em,’ says he, ‘will tell you my name afterward, if there’s any afterwards for you, Carney. I rather doubt it.’

  “‘You’ve got a grudge ag’in’ me?’ says I.

  “‘Ag’in’ your pocketbook,’ says he. ‘I hear it’s pretty fat.’

  “‘Robbery, then?’ says I, and I looked across the room where my gun was hanging on the wall . . . no more use to me than if it had been a hoe. He seen where I’d looked.

  “‘This’ll be a fair break for you, Carney,’ says he. ‘You’ve got your money by crooked cards.’

  “‘That’s a lie,’ says I, making a jump for him.

  “‘Maybe so,’ says he, flashing a weapon on me. ‘I’m here to let my gun do the talkin’ for me. Not to argue a point with you. This is a fairer break than you ever give anybody with your cards. Go get your gun. We’ll fight fair.’

  “He says this with the chimin’ of the clock in the McGoortys’ house just bustin’ in once to say the half hour. I went over to the wall and got my gun out of the holster. I figgered on what my chance would be in makin’ a quick turn and tryin’ a snap shot at him. But somehow I figgered out that it wouldn’t be no use. He looked like the kind that ain’t took by surprise easy. I turned around to him.

  “‘Are you ready?’ says I.

  “‘We heard that clock strike pretty clear,’ says he. ‘We’ll wait till it strikes the hour. At the first noise of it, you’re free to blaze away, son.’

  “He says that, and then he slides down into a chair and lets his head fall back against the wall. His eyes was half closed. He looked pretty sick, just then. His face got whiter, too. I wouldn’t’ve been surprised if he’d fainted. I sat down opposite him. So long as he wanted to fight fair, when he could’ve sent a bullet through my back plumb easy a little while back, there wasn’t anything for me to do except to stand pat and give him his second chance at me, with an even break.

  “That half hour took as long in rolling by as though it had been half a year. Ten times I thought it was strikin’, and ten times I made a pass for my gun, but Billy Angel, if that’s his name, he didn’t pay no attention. He just lay there in his chair, watchin’ me with a sick sort of a smile, not sayin’ a word, with his eyes only a slit open. Mighty weak and flabby was how he looked just then.

  “Then the clock struck, and the sound of it sort of gave me a shock, I can tell you. I jerked out my gun. I’m not slow on a draw. I spend my time practicing the same as most of you boys do, and I’ve never left off that practice no matter where in the world I might be. But I had no choice ag’in’ him. I might as well tell you plain and frank . . . he beat me to the draw as easy as I’d snap my fingers. And when he shot, he shot at the gun in my hand, not at me. It knocked the gun clean across the room.

  “‘I certainly do hope I ain’t smashed up your hand,’ he says as cool as the devil.

  “I looked down and seen that there was only a small cut between the thumb and the forefinger.

  “‘I’m all right,’ says I.

  “‘You can hand over your wallet, then,’ says he.

  “I gave it to him.

  “‘Now,’ says he, ‘there’s two things left for me to do. One is that I can tie you hand and foot so’s you can’t move, and the other is for you to give me your word that you won’t make a move out of this shack for five minutes.’

  “It sort of took me back, hearin’ him talk about trusting me.

  “‘Do you mean that?’ I says.

  “‘I mean it,’ says he.

  “‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘I don’t hanker to be tied up like a chicken for market. I’ll give you my word.’

  “I took out a watch and laid it on the table.

  “‘All right,’ says he. ‘In five minutes you can raise a noise. That’s all I need for fadin’ away.’

  “And that was the way he left me. Except that, when he started away through the mud, it seemed to me that he sort of wobbled a mite, as though he found the goin’ pretty hard for him. If that’s Billy Angel, I’ll lay you a hundred dollars to a nickel that he’s been sick pretty recent.”

  Such was the narrative of the gambler, concluded just as the sheriff rushed into the room. He went straight to Carney. “Is this true, Steve?” he asked. “Is this true, that that devil, Billy Angel, went in and cleaned you out?”

  “As true as I’m standing here.”

  “We’ll have him in half an hour!” cried the sheriff. “He can’t have gotten far. Boys, are you with me?”

  They were already in their slickers. Now they stormed out of the room behind the sheriff. In the street they were joined by other voices. The whole town was up to apprehend the criminal. And the girl remained alone, listening, again, to the rain. It would not h
ave been difficult, after all, she decided. Angel had simply climbed out of the window and then down the roof over the kitchen until he could drop from the lower edge of it to the ground. She must get into the room and make sure. She took a hammer and ran up the stairs, determined to batter in the lock to her door, but when she laid her hand upon the knob, it yielded at once, and, stepping into the room, she found Billy Angel in person stretched upon her bed.

  IX

  IMPOTENT FURY

  Impulses of rage and of scorn rushed through her brain so fast that she could not act upon one of them. First she decided to denounce him to his face. Then she was of a mind to run down the stairs and call back the men of Derby to come at once and capture the fellow. After that, she decided to get only one man, Steven Carney himself, to come to the room and destroy the villain.

  No, for one man could not do it. She realized, looking down on him, that even limp and weak as he was, he was dangerous, and the steady black eyes looked up to her now without a trace of emotion. He showed neither shame nor remorse. His color, which was a very sick white, did not alter in the least. At this, something of awe came over her.

  “Billy Angel,” she said to him, “you’ve robbed my friend, Steve Carney.”

  He nodded.

  “You’ve robbed him because I told you that he had money!”

  He nodded again, and his complaisance infuriated her.

  “Why don’t I call them up here to take you? I shall call them in.” She turned toward the door.

  “Nope,” he said, “I guess that you won’t call ’em in.”

  She turned back to hear his reasons. “Why not? I’ve treated you like a brother. And now you turn on me like a . . . like a traitor! What keeps me from turning you over to the law?”

  “About three things, I figger,” he said.

  “Really? What three, if you please!”

  “First, because it would mean a lot of shootin’ and bloodshed, and this here furniture would get pretty badly spoiled . . . that’s the reason.”

  “It’s no reason at all!”