Bad Man's Gulch

by Max Brand

  “Then you ain’t so anxious to have folks know that you been takin’ care of a murderer all these days.”

  “Ah, coward!” she cried. “Do you count on my shame and take advantage of that?”

  “I take advantage of anything,” he said, watching her without emotion. “The third thing is that you’ve sort of a kindly feeling to me, in spite of what you say.”

  She was paralyzed with fury. It is odd that one should guard the emotions as such sacred things. It is pleasant to reveal them oneself; it is hideous sacrilege to have them revealed by another. That he should have discovered her weakness for him immediately wiped out any virtue that he might have. She told herself in a white rage that she hated him and everything about him. So, staring at him for an instant, wide-eyed, she hesitated, trying to find words. Words would not do, she decided. She whirled to the door, but, as she reached it, a long arm, thick with muscle stretched before it. Her rush carried her against it. It was like striking against a wall. In some mysterious manner he had managed to slip from the bed and reach the door in a single leap. A noiseless movement, like a cat’s.

  “Let me go!” she cried.

  He brushed her back, gently, irresistibly. He closed the door behind him, locked it, and took out the key, which he dropped in his pocket.

  “I’ll shout out the window,” she assured him, her voice low and earnest with her passion.

  “Would they hear you through the rain?” he asked her.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  “Well?”

  That terse, unsympathetic word broke down all of her strength, for like a rush of light it revealed to her perfectly her own impotence. She broke into tears and leaned against the wall with her face cupped in her hands.

  “All right,” he said. “I was sort of worried for a moment.”

  She heard a jingle on the floor. Then he recrossed the room and, reaching the bed, lay down on it. She discovered that he had thrown the key at her feet. It bewildered her. Why he should have thrust her back from the door one instant, and the next presented to her the means of leaving the room at her will, was most strange. It was as though he had dared to look into her heart once more and had seen that there was nothing remaining to be feared in her.

  And she, looking inward into her soul of souls, saw that he was right. Her fury had changed to sorrow that any man could so repay good with evil as he had repaid her. That the very friend she had pointed out to him should have been selected as the next prey, and that then he should have had the effrontery to return to her very room for shelter!

  She had no longer the sharp fury at her command that could make her betray even this evildoer. He had seen it. Perhaps her very tears had been enough to reveal to him all that he cared to know. She looked across at him as he lay stretched on the bed. Wonder and hatred and awe and grief were mingled so inextricably in her mind that she could only snatch up the key and flee from the room. Before she went down, she stood at a window and let the cold, wet air blow in upon her face. Then she went down.

  Of course, Billy Angel had not been found, and the trail that had been picked up from the shack of Steven Carney had merely led back into the town, a strange thing that dumbfounded everyone. For, with only five minutes to escape before the alarm was raised, certainly it seemed that every minute was very precious to him and he would try to put a mile between him and the pursuit in that interval. However, as Steve Carney himself suggested, that move back into the village was a mere feint. The instant he was out of sight he had doubled back for the hills. Yet there were some incredulous ones who swore that someone in the village must be playing the friend to Billy Angel and shielding him from discovery.

  The sheriff was a desperate man. Never before in his reign had the law been so openly defied. He made the lunchroom of pretty Sue Markham the center. Beginning there, he searched every house in the town for the person of the ruffian. Through every nook they passed, and through every cellar, every garret, and every closet, and every shed, barn, and lean-to. But there was not a sign of big Billy Angel. They came back wet with the rain, chilled with wet and wind, utterly downhearted.

  “Well,” said the sheriff, and he stood steaming in front of Sue Markham’s stove, “he ain’t in Derby. That’s pretty clear, I guess.”

  “Have you searched every house?” asked someone.

  “Every house in town.”

  Jack Hopper stood out from a corner, where he had stood gloomily silent. He raised his head. “Every house except this one,” he suggested.

  The sheriff merely tilted his head and laughed.

  Never in the world was there such music to the ears of Sue as in that laughter.

  “If Sue,” the sheriff said, “wants to keep a man-killer hid, I guess that we’ll let her do it. She’d have better reasons for it than we’d have for hangin’ him.”

  He grinned at Sue to give a point to his jest. Half an hour later, he and the others were working through the country around the town, having ridden off with such a terrible zest and eagerness that she almost feared that on the broad, wild breast of the mountain they might find their man—as though he could exist both there and in her room at the same time.

  All the rest of the day they labored. And when the evening came, they were still working in the distance when Steve Carney himself came into the lunch counter.

  “Steve!” she gasped out at him. “They’ve found Billy Angel, then?”

  “Found Angel? Found the devil, and a black, wet one! Nope, they ain’t found Billy Angel.”

  “But why are you back?”

  “Something sort of told me that there wasn’t any use keeping it up. A man has to work by hunches half of the time, you know. That’s the way I do, at least. So I turned around and came home. No use riding through mud and wind when they’s a fire in town with an empty chair beside it, eh?”

  He smiled at her so cheerfully that her heart went out to him with a rush.

  “Oh, Steve,” she said to him, “there’s not a mite of malice in you for all that he’s done to you.”

  He shook his head. “When a gent stands up and fights fair for a thing, I aim to say that he’s won it and deserves to keep it . . . unless it can be took away from him by force. I wouldn’t’ve called in the law to help me, except that I didn’t want to waste a lot more years tearin’ around to get together another stock of coin. Well,” he added, “I don’t know that the money would make any difference, though, to a girl like you, Sue.”

  She stamped her foot a little, in the strength of her affirmation. “Not a mite in the world!”

  At this, he shook his head, watching her still in his half-smiling, half-derisive manner. “Ah, well, Sue, I’d feel a lot more hopeful if you’d only blushed and said nothing. If you come right down to it, I guess there ain’t much hope for me with you, Sue.”

  “There is!” she said stormily. “I like you more’n I like anybody, Steve!”

  He shook his head again. “That doesn’t fool me,” he said. “It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t come with waiting. I fool myself thinking that if I stay around a while, maybe you’ll get to know me well enough to marry me. But doggone it, Sue, that sort of knowing ain’t what counts. The sort of knowing that makes love is rigged up with lightning. That’s the way I learned to love you. I seen you a couple of years back, polishing up the top of that counter with a rag in your hand and listening to some lumberman flirting with you, and trying to keep from laughing at him, and only letting the smiles get as far as your eyes. Well, it didn’t strike me at the time. But, a year later, when I was off by myself, holding the wheel of a little sloop that was smashing through a crazy head sea and near washing me off my feet every other jump, with a lee shore looking as tall as Derby Mountain and all rigged up with white teeth at its feet, and with one scared nigger to work the ropes for me . . . when I was out there, watching the clouds sashaying across the face of the moon, all at once I remembered the picture of how you’d stood back of the counter, here. And it
was lightning, Sue. That let the picture of you into my heart, and it’ll never get out again. If that sort of lightning had ever struck you, you couldn’t help but talk right back to me when I told you that I love you. You wouldn’t have to talk, because I’d feel it before you spoke.”

  She could not speak. He stood up and went to the window. That window was crusted with mist and framed with sheerest, thickest black of the night. He had not gone there to look out but to cover emotion of which he was ashamed, she knew.

  “However,” he said, without turning his head, “I s’pose that I’ll stay around for a while, and wait to see what my luck might bring. If I can’t get you to marry me out of love, maybe I’ll get you to marry me out of pity, eh?” He looked at her with a mirthless, twisted smile. Then he went hastily out into the night.

  Although she tried with all of her might, she was not able to say a word to him. It was a wretched evening that followed. When the last of the posse came in, at midnight, she had to rake up enthusiasm and interest and shakings of the head over the tales that they had to tell her. They had not found Billy Angel. That mysterious fellow seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. She listened with an aching heart. How happy, she told herself, she would be if she had never seen that man. And in the first place of all, if she had never seen Billy Angel, she would have promised to marry Steve Carney. She was sure of it now.

  She pondered it at the end of the dreary day’s work, when she sat in her room with her chin in her hand and her eyes sightless with thought. Not that she loved Billy Angel, instead. Indeed, what she felt for him was the strangest mixture of loathing, dread, horror, awe, scorn, and actual sharp-edged hatred. But the very strength of the emotion that stirred her when she thought of Billy Angel made her understand that the thrill that Steve Carney brought into her life was not real love. It was a pleasant feeling. It was compounded of various elements, not the least of which was pride that Steve, after all of his travels and his voyaging around the world, should have come back to her and offered her his heart.

  But there was something else, something stronger, she told herself. If she could be so moved with hatred and all the rest toward Billy Angel, there must be the converse of those feelings tied together in one soul-stirring harmony—and that thing could be called love. If there were a man as pleasantly conversational as Billy Angel was blunt and terse, if there were a man as open-hearted as Billy Angel was secretive, if there were a man as genial and kind and generous as Billy Angel was cold and self-centered, then, added to these things, if there were a man as truly lion-hearted and indomitable as Billy was, she knew that she would feel for him a true love that would sweep her off her feet.

  There, after all, she had been able to put her finger upon the one attractive feature in the character of Angel—and that was his giant will, his giant courage that enabled him to go out, sick as he was, and strike down such a practiced fighter as Steve Carney. This was all.

  But the moment she had come to this decision, she shook her head. There was something else in him—but what it was she could not tell.

  X

  SPYING IN THE DARKNESS

  Steve Carney did not wait for his fortune to be recovered from the hands of the mysterious Billy Angel. Instead, he disappeared from the town of Derby for thirty-six hours and came back again, affluent. Sue Markham blushed with shame when she heard of his success. Only the cards could explain it. No doubt, the cards had also explained the money that he brought back from overseas, for no matter in what land he worked, his tools were sure to be the same, always. The gold that he dug was brought to the surface in the same manner, at some silent table circled by grim-faced men watching the fall of the cards. But it seemed more honorable to have brought back his money from strange lands that were filled, perhaps, with strange crimes.

  Only the sheriff still retained a hope that Billy Angel would be caught. He had worked himself to exhaustion and become a thin-faced, tight-lipped man. If he met Billy Angel, there would be no attempt to arrest a live man; it would be a swift and bitter battle to the death, and everyone knew it.

  In the meantime, the girl watched a constant and very rapid change in Billy Angel. She had not spoken of the time of departure. Neither had he ever referred to it. But each of them knew that the mind of the other was full of it. It seemed as though, by putting forth an extra effort of the mind, he was able to control the healing of his body, which went on apace. His color changed. His face filled a little. The strain was going from his expression. The wound on his arm had closed and was healing with amazing rapidity. A little longer and he would be himself.

  The weather had changed again, for the tenth time in as many weeks. South winds prevailed. It seemed that the last wild rainstorm had drained every bit of moisture from the air. Every morning dawned crystal clear with the pale, blue mountain sky arched impalpably above the head of Derby. The wind was warm and dry, the surface of the ground drained. The riders down the street of Derby raised a little cloud of dust behind the heels of their horses.

  It was on account of this still weather that she knew of the next move of Billy Angel. For, in the middle of the night, wakening suddenly, she was aware that someone was stirring in the house. Some noise had sounded. Some noise was sounding now, something felt rather than actually heard. But the faintest of tremors shook this upper floor of the house, as the effect of a soft but weighty footfall.

  She waited only an instant. Instinct was working fast in her, not reason. She slipped from bed and dressed like lightning—dressed in time to hear the same sound go steadily down the stairs. Then a creak announced the footfall passing down the kitchen steps to the outdoors. She went to the window and craned her neck out to look down. There, below her, clearly in the starlight, she could see the broad back and the lofty form of Billy Angel. He went straight back to the barn. Then she saw him go into the corral.

  There were two horses there, the one that had belonged to her father and the dainty little mare that Tom Kitchin had given her from his uncle’s ranch the year before, a thing all spirit and speed and no strength. If the criminal wanted a horse, there was no choice left to him. The mare would not sustain his bulk. He had to take the big, strong, slow gelding.

  She went down the stairs in haste, and yet softly. From the back door she spied on him and saw him catch and saddle the gelding. No doubt he was merely stealing the horse as a sort of grace note after the selfishness and thanklessness of his treatment of her.

  Anger burned with a quiet, deep warmth in her heart. There was no time to call for help. Presently the great bulk of horse and man swept out past the barn and went up the northern trail out of Derby.

  She did not pause to consider. She ran out blindly, tossed a saddle onto the back of the mare, and instantly pursued him. If he clung to the northern trail, she would catch him, to be sure. For the mare could run all day at the rate of two to one, compared with the gelding. But she had no hope that he would remain on that trail. He was far too clever for that. Deep in her heart, there was planted a conviction that, no matter how she tried, she could never succeed in overreaching him in anything on which his heart was set.

  Yet, a scant mile out of the town, with the wind blowing hard into her face with the speed of the mare’s galloping, she saw on the rise just before her the great form of Billy Angel on the tall brown gelding. She drew rein with a gasp of astonishment. Now that she had caught up with him, what would she do about it? What could she accomplish by accosting him? He would simply fail to answer, and, if she chose to rail at him, his calm silence would turn her biting words like the merest water from a stone.

  However, she could at least see in what direction he traveled. It would be into the higher mountains, of course, there to seek for a secure cover until the hunt for him should have grown less intense, and she vowed to herself that, if she could follow him far enough and securely enough to make sure he intended to hide, she would ride straight back to Derby and send the sheriff on his trail.

  He
did not hold on for the upper mountains, however, but turned presently down out of the hills toward the flat of the valley, and there he directed his course straight toward the far-off lights of Three Rivers.

  It was wonderful to her; unless, indeed, he possessed in Three Rivers some friend who would give him shelter, just as she had done before. It was not hard to keep behind him with little likelihood of being discovered. The wind blew constantly and briskly from him to her, and, while it would strongly stifle the sound of the hoofs of her horse, it carried the sound of the gelding’s hoofs clearly back to her.

  He did not go straight on to Three Rivers, but turned off toward a farmhouse on the right of the road. That byroad twisted through a grove of young poplars, all trembling and sparkling faintly in the starlight, and brought the fugitive under the side of a broad, low-built house.

  From the edge of the copse, the girl saw him dismount, pick up something, and make a gesture to throw toward one of the windows that gaped open above him. There was a moment of pause. She had been chilled by the ride through the sharp wind, and now, in this sheltered place, her blood began to stir with a grateful activity again. She felt herself growing more and more curious.

  Presently a light glimmered through a window above Billy Angel. A head showed for a moment with the light dimly behind it, so dimly that she could not make out the outline. There was a soft-spoken interchange of words, a gasp from above, and the head was withdrawn.

  But that gasp had been in the voice of a woman, and the blood of the girl ran cold with disgust and with anger. It was from women then that this great, hulking, handsome brute found shelter wherever he went.

  Billy Angel now tied his horse to a young sapling and went around to the back of the house. At the same time another light showed in a lower window. It was enough to tell the girl that the woman in the house and the man outside of it expected to meet one another where that light was shining. She dismounted in turn and went close to the window, ashamed of the impulse that drove her, but overcome with an intense curiosity to see the face of the girl to whom Billy Angel had entrusted his safety.