by Max Brand
“He wanted to be free from his bargain. He knew my boy had had trouble with his father because he ran through his allowance too quick. And Billy Angel had brought down coin for my son to run away on, if he didn’t want to stay and face the music. But first he wanted my boy to talk up and take the blame for the killing of Charlie Ormond. Whatever blame there was . . . and my lawyer is gonna show that there was damned little! Well, sir, that’s the story. I’ve told it brief. But if there was ever a romantic young fool, it’s this here Billy Angel. I want to see him. You might have thought that he was in love with my daughter? The devil, no! He was in love with trouble, and that was all that there was to it. A trouble lover! Love of danger for the sake of danger. Well, all I can say is that he got it. But my boy ain’t runnin’. He’s standin’ his ground. He’s told all the story to me. Now, what I want is Billy Angel out of your hands, Sheriff!”
It could not be done at once. But it suddenly appeared that there were no charges to be pressed against Billy Angel. The state had nothing to say against him. Indeed, the state was very glad to shut its mouth tight, for Billy Angel had suddenly been borne aloft on an immense wave of notorious popularity.
The wild and improbable tale of what he had done was on the tongue of every man, a story that men could appreciate because of the danger in it, and that women could understand because of Sue.
And Sue?
She did not rush to the sheriff’s house with all the others to congratulate Billy Angel on his deliverance. She remained behind in the lunch counter, sick-hearted, crushed. It only remained for Billy, as a free man, to come to her, and pour forth his scorn upon her! But now, as she looked back over all the days he had been in love with her, she could understand. It had been love. Indeed, that chained his tongue and kept him silent. It was more an agony of sorrow than of rage that had burned in his eyes when he had discovered her betrayal. But love, at last, had been killed by her own hand.
There were only two days before the meeting. Two dreary eternities they were to poor Sue Markham.
And then he stood in the doorway, and filled it up from side to side. There were half a dozen other men in the room. Instantly they picked up their hats. They grinned at one another and at Sue. And they walked out.
Oh, fools! Fools! Little they knew the terror and the sorrow with which she looked forward to this meeting with him! Now he was coming straight toward her. She shrank behind the counter. He followed her and loomed, enormous, above her. He took one of her hands and held her fast. She closed her eyes and said through her teeth:
“You bought the right to say what you want . . . you can scorn me and hate me and rage at me, Billy. I got to listen!”
He said: “What I got to say won’t take long. I’ve come to say that I love you, Sue. And I’ve come to say that you love me, or else you’d never have sent the sheriff for me.”
She had no strength to deny it even for a single moment. She let him take both hands and all of her.
BAD MAN’S GULCH
“Bad Man’s Gulch” made its first and only appearance in Western Story Magazine in the issue dated July 17, 1926, under Faust’s George Owen Baxter pseudonym. It was one of twelve short novels published that year, all in Western Story. “Bad Man’s Gulch” is a powerful story about a reformed gunman, Pedro Emmanuel Melendez, who arrives in the lawless mining town of Slosson’s Gulch armed with the philosophy that “the right thing is just to drift, and you’ll land lucky or unlucky, just the way that everything was wrote down for you when you was born, or maybe before that.” But can he just drift when he meets up with Louise Berenger who, along with her father, has discovered gold and fallen prey to the desperate and predatory miners of the gulch?
I
LAW AND ORDER
If William Berenger had, in the first place, known anything about gold mining and gold miners, he would never have brought his daughter along with him when he joined the rush for Slosson’s Gulch. What he knew about mining was connected almost entirely with the works on geology that he had read and mastered. As an amateur geologist he was a very well-informed man; certainly he made a greater picture of a successful man when he was out with a party of admiring friends, chipping fragments off bits of rock, here and there, and telling the story revealed there, than when he went downtown to his office where a sign on a clouded-glass door informed all who cared to look that William Berenger was a lawyer. But as time went on, very few cared to look at that sign. For when a case came the way of Mr. Berenger, he never allowed business to interfere with geology, and he never allowed fact to interfere with theory. Mr. Berenger held a confirmed theory that every man, in his heart of hearts, was perfectly honest, and nothing could wean him away from this belief. When he cross-examined a recalcitrant witness, it was in the fashion of a saddened uncle pleading with a misguided child to be charitable to the truth and his better self. The result was that no lawyer ever succeeded in making men and women feel more at home on the witness stand—which is exactly what a lawyer does not want, of course.
Obviously the proper attitude is that all of one’s own witnesses are scholarly gentlemen, and all of the opposition’s witnesses are scoundrels, liars, and thieves, if they can get a chance. But Mr. Berenger could not help treating the entire world, not only as though it were his equal, but even a little bit more. He could not so much as tip a waiter without asking the pardon of that gentleman in disguise.
When a jovial and heartless friend of Mr. Berenger suggested that he close a law office that was simply a useless item in rent, and apply some of his geological knowledge by joining the gold rush, Mr. Berenger took the matter instantly to heart. He called in his daughter to help him make up his mind, and she poked her walking stick at the potted geraniums in his library window and listened thoughtfully. She put no faith in the ability of her father to be anything but the kindest of fathers and the worst of businessmen, but she was certain that nothing could be more disastrous than to keep on as they were doing. Knowing that the family fortune had diminished dangerously close to the vanishing point, she felt that, at least, this might be a cheap way of taking a summer’s vacation in the Western mountains.
So William Berenger was encouraged to make up his pack as a prospector, and in that pack, of course, his geology books formed the greatest item. He would have thought it absurd to advance upon the practical problem of locating gold-bearing ore with-out equipping himself with references, page, and paragraph, for every one of his steps. His legal training forced him into this attitude. But, in due time, they dismounted from the train, bought two pack mules and a pair of riding horses, built up two towering miracles of packs, and advanced on the mountains like two children on another crusade.
When they came to Slosson’s Gulch, they halted on the overhanging shoulder of a hill and looked down upon the long, narrow town of shacks and tents and lean-tos that straggled along both banks of the creek. Even at that distance, through the thin air, they could hear faintly the noise of the mining camp. While they waited in the rosy dusk of the day, they heard from different portions of the gulch three shots. It sounded to Louise Berenger like three signal guns, warning the newcomers away.
Her father was not dismayed. For a week he mixed in the wild crowd of the camp in the evenings, and spent his days with Louise in tramping along the hill slopes, where thousands of others had already wandered before him. They learned now what they could have read in the papers before they started—no more strikes were being made in Slos-son’s Gulch. The vein seemed to have been traced as far as it ran, and as for the throngs that still rushed to the mining camp, some were simply blind sheep like the Berengers, and others were the exploiters of the miners. That is always the case in such a town; there are 500 hangers-on for every 100 honest laborers. But there is always a wild, vague hope of fortune lingering about a new-found ledge of gold ore. Mr. Berenger still tramped the hills farther up and down the valley, from day to day, talked with the adventurers in the evening, and then burned his lantern beside his heavy
tomes of geological lore.
One day Louise came to him, with her eyes glittering and her face on fire. “I don’t think that this is a place for you, Father,” she said, “and certainly it is not a place for me!”
“What in the world has happened?” asked William Berenger, looking up over his glasses.
“Nothing,” said Louise, setting her teeth like a man about to strike or be struck.
She would say no more, but her father could gather that something disturbing had happened, and, since it was almost impossible for him to resist any suggestion, he agreed at once that they should give up the adventure. He only wanted a single day to try out a little theory that he had just found out.
That extra day was spent in roving far up the valley, leaving the noise of Slosson’s Creek behind them. They turned the complete flank of the great mountain and marched up a narrow ravine that, in those days, bore no name whatever.
As the town dipped out of view behind them, the girl asked: “Do you think that there will ever be law and order in that town?”
“Law and order,” said William Berenger. “My dear, wherever there are more than two civilized white men together, there is sure to be law and order!”
His daughter stared at him. “There have been five known killings since we arrived,” she reminded him.
“The dregs of society! The dregs of society!” Mr. Berenger explained easily. “They have to be disposed of in one way or another. Drones must be thrown out of the hive, my dear child. Wine is not good until the lees have settled.”
Louise sighed, helpless and hopeless. She murmured finally: “Metaphors are not arguments, Father, except in poems.”
“And what could be more of a poem than this spot?” Mr. Berenger said, waving his hand toward a blue giant of a mountain in the distance, for a turn of the ravine had just brought them into view of its sparkling head and white shoulders. “And what could be more of a poem . . . a living, breathing poem . . . than the strong men who have gathered in Slosson’s Gulch to hunt for fortune in the ribs of old Mother Earth herself?”
“Or . . . the earth failing them . . . in the first handy pocketbook,” suggested Louise.
“Ah, child,”—her father sighed—“a rough face does not make a rough heart. You must learn to look beneath surfaces . . . of men and of mountains! Age brings a gentler insight.”
She knew that it was foolish to argue. If she mentioned the fact that one sheriff and two deputy sheriffs had already disappeared from the ken of men in Slosson’s Gulch, and that the same fate had been promised for the next upholders of the established law that dared to show their heads near the camp, she knew that William Berenger would have some handy explanation. To dispute the goodness of mankind with him was like condemning the faith of an ardent priest. He felt that his hands were soiled even by opposing such mundane theories.
They rested at noon on the upper waters of the little creek that ran through that nameless ravine. As the western shadows began to come kindly out across the slope, Mr. Berenger advanced to make his exploration. He had not worked for an hour before he paused to consult the pages of his book again.
Louise, weary of idleness, seized the pick and struck it into an eroded ledge of rock. It struck so fast that she could hardly work it out. A bit of rock stuck on the end of the steel when at last it was free. She broke that fragment off in her hand—and found that sparkling threads of gold were shining back at her through the mountain shadows.
Even her silence seemed to send an electric warning to her father. He came hastily and saw what she held. Together they attacked the ledge. In half an hour they had no doubt. It was a strike and a wonderfully rich one, if only this were not a surface color that would soon disappear. They hastily staked out the claim and put up monuments.
Then they sat down in the shadow and made their plans. To Louise, it seemed that the whole world had instantly become an enemy, wolfishly eager to snatch their prize out of their hands. But her father had no such fears. When they finally turned down the valley, he, with a rich lump of the ore in his pocket, was already building hospitals and universities, and bringing Rembrandts across the Atlantic.
At their little lean-to on the lower edge of the town, Louise stopped to prepare supper. Her father went on into Slosson’s Gulch to file his claim.
She waited until the dark with no sign of him, and then she knew that it would be worse than foolish for her to go unescorted through the streets of the gulch.
In the morning she made her hunt—a frantic search. She made wild inquiries here and there; searched at the claim, everywhere, knowing in her heart that his body lay at the bottom of some abandoned prospector’s hole, or perhaps, weighted down with rocks, it was being rolled slowly down the bed of the creek.
II
THE FURY OF NATURE
She went back to her little lean-to and sat down to think. The obvious thing was to find out first whether the claim had been filed in Slosson’s Gulch, then to discover a man in whom she could place implicit confidence, and entrust him with working the claim on a partnership basis. But in whom could she place implicit confidence?
She counted her friends, one by one, upon the slender tips of her fingers—a dozen boys and men, all fine fellows, as far as she knew them. But who could tell what they would do when a temptation the size of this was placed in their hands?
With her eyes closed, she tried to weigh them, one by one. In every one, she felt that she had discovered a strain of weakness. Gold supplied an acid test. The men in the gulch were law-abiding like others, when they were at home, but here they became wild beasts!
She heard a clamor of voices and looked out on a group of half a dozen stalwarts, not thirty paces from the door of her own lean-to. They were breaking ground with a wild, jovial enthusiasm, as though they knew beforehand that gold must be there. She scanned those men one by one—a giant Negro, a tall, pale-eyed Scandinavian with a bared forearm as huge as another man’s thigh, a gaunt Yankee, a red-faced German grinning with effort as he swung the double jack—all young. But, in addition, there was a middle-aged pair who looked enough alike to be brothers, men uselessly well dressed, with pale, savage faces, cursing their own flabby muscles loudly as they toiled. She felt that a cross-section of the gulch had been presented to her.
But she must find an honest man. That was the first requisite. If there were the slightest flaw in his integrity, he would not fail to rob her of her share. Might was right in Slosson’s Gulch. In the second place, he must be brave and strong enough to withstand the dangers from others—from six, say, such as yonder group across the way.
Where was she to find such a man? She turned that problem slowly. Never for an instant did she think of flinching from the work. Not that the gold lured her on, but she felt that to abandon the claim would be to abandon her father himself and the one great thing that he had ever accomplished with those theories at which she had smiled so often. So she set her teeth and determined to struggle ahead with her search, feeling that the instant she weakened, tears would be stinging her eyes and dimming them. Loving her father too much to sit and weep for him, she decided to work out her sorrow, not sit and weep it away.
So thought Louise, saddling her horse straightway, and riding down through the gulch. At the claim office she found that her father had left no record of the holding. In despair she turned her horse toward the ravine.
Certainly she was neither a fool nor a sentimentalist, and, if every man she looked at on this day appeared more than half a villain to her, it was simply because each face that she saw was involuntarily contrasted with the image of William Berenger, half wise man, half saint, and perhaps a little of the fool, as well. But, as he was, he had spoiled her for other men.
She passed through the gulch without having made a choice, and rode out of it, filled with a disgust for the whole race of men. Down the valley she rode, with the alkali dust whipping up into her face and stinging her eyes, her jaws clenched, and fury in her heart.
> If she had been a queen, she would have ordered her army into the field on this day—bound anywhere, so long as it were for destruction of other men. But she was not a queen; she was simply a twenty-year-old girl with nothing at her disposal but 135 pounds of wiry strength. And this was a man’s country in which she was riding.
Passing out of the gulch, at last, she spurred her mustang unmercifully up the last long slope. Here she found herself in a hinterland of ragged lands, neither mountains nor plains, but chopped, wretched badlands, where the spring watercourses ripped and tore for a month or two; where the sun burned or the ice gathered through all the rest of the year. It was just such a place as suited the humor of Louise Berenger, at that moment.
The trail led upwards again, crossed a ridge, and dipped into a great, silent valley beyond. She paused here, for it was peace to the spirit and rest to the vision to let her eye plunge across to the white-topped mountains of the other side, and down the river that twisted and shone through the center. Nothing stirred; nothing lived here except trees, scant, hardy grasses, and a few cacti. There were no men, at least, and she thanked God for the absence of them.
But at the very moment of her thanksgiving, she had sight of a rider coming slowly down from the farther side. Louise bent a gloomy eye upon him. He was no more than a black silhouette, at that distance—even with this limpid mountain air to help the vision. Only, on the white forehead of his horse, the sun glinted now and again. The man was like the rest in the gulch, no doubt. Or, if he were decent enough before he went there, he would be defiled and brutalized like the rest in a day or two, for so she thought of all the men in the gulch.
The whole valley was poisoned for her by the presence of that one rider, and therefore she looked up toward the sky, and so, where the white ridges joined the blue, she made out a little column of smoke rising. It seemed very strange that a fire should be built on the snows themselves. Then she saw that it was no fire, but a rapidly traveling column. It dipped out of view and came into sight again much lower down the slope, traveling twice as fast.