Larramee's Ranch

by Max Brand

  “I dunno. I guess so.”

  “Have you got plans?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t do much talkin’ these days, Gus?”

  “What the devil good is it to talk to you, you old sap!” snarled out Gus.

  He got up from his chair, yanked his hat deep over his eyes, and went to the door. There he stole a look back at his father, who had not moved from his place in front of the fire. And the upper lips of Gus curled away from his teeth more wolfishly than ever, so that the breath of the watcher in the night was taken.

  After Gus went out and stamped down the board walk toward the horse corral, Holden still remained for a moment watching the form of the big man seated before the fire. He could not get over the marvel of it.

  For, in another time, Gus would far rather have leaped into naked flames than to have encountered the wrath of his father by so much as an insolent glance. But here was rebellious talk, insolent talk, such talk as a man would not give to a dog. And yet big, proud fierce Joe Curtis endured it!

  How could this thing be explained?

  He went back to the kitchen window again. But he did not look in. Another thought had come over him. What would Miss Alexa Larramee, she of the millions, she of the proud friends, think when she came face to face with Mrs. Holden, if that day should ever come.

  This was a whip stroke of exquisite torment. It made him flinch away into the darkness.

  What would she think? How would she smile? If she smiled, he would hate her forever.

  But how would he feel toward his mother?

  He climbed up the lofty side of Clancy and rode away.

  CHAPTER 27

  What Holden wanted, he found, exactly to his taste. It was a wide hill shoulder, flat-topped, without a tree upon it, though with a great skirting of giant pines at the edges of the open space. In the center of the open space, among a scattering of boulders of various sizes, he built his fire and cooked his supper. Then he turned Clancy forth to graze. And he patted the big stallion and used him tenderly; for who could tell whether or not he would ever mount the beautiful red body again?

  As for Sneak, he had left the great gray dog behind him. On this occasion, it was his cue to be absolutely unprotected—to invite the blow, as it were. And such a creature of lightning suspicions and stealthy foot as Sneak was more apt by far to hunt than to be hunted.

  But here was Holden in the trap, exactly as he had foreseen, with the chances some two in twenty that he would ever come out of the trap alive. For, after big Chris Venner scattered the tidings of the false theft through the town that day, there could be no doubt but that Mr. Murderer and Robber of Larramee would swiftly take horse for the trail of the pseudo-plunderer.

  The late afternoon wore to the sunset. Holden put his back to a rock and faced the color in the west, calmly. And he heard varying sounds out of the big trees, but chiefly the triumphant singing of a squirrel in the top of a sapling. The little fellow clutched the very topmost twig of the lithe young tree, which doubled over under the burden of his weight. There he swayed back and forth, tilted by a slight breeze, and chattered and raged his joy and his defiance to the world, and flaunted his plumy tail above his back. Holden picked up a pebble and flung it at the little gray braggart. It whirred sufficiently close to the target to make the squirrel utter one last bark of rage and scorn before it launched itself into the air. Down it sailed with the great tail spread out behind it, like a man under a parachute, gliding. It fell fast toward the ground at first, as Holden noticed, but then it seemed to flatten the arc of the fall and swooped off into the branches of a neighboring monster among which it instantly disappeared.

  When Holden looked up from this event he found that the night was already closing fast over the hollow. The upper sky was still bright. The smoke from his camp fire, which was dying to red embers, passed upward invisible among the shadows of the trees, but when it reached the clearer region above, it was plainly to be seen, rising and melting like a ghost, until the sightless hand of the wind struck it, from time to time, and banished it to nothingness.

  He was in the bottom of a great black well, he felt at times, looking up to a distant heaven. At last the color began to be smoked over by night; and at the same time the stars grew into the sky—little yellow points of flame.

  Here was night upon him, and somewhere among the brush, somewhere in one of those twenty black-mouthed gaps in the trees, lurked the slayer, greedy for the gain which he foresaw, cruel-eyed, stealthy, already gripping his gun. And somewhere behind the killer, perhaps at that instant stealing near to him, was big Chris Venner, hunting the hunter.

  Holden marveled at himself. For he had no fear. He searched through the soul which swelled and grew great in his starved body. No, there was no fear in him. He stood up and looked calmly around him. Yet he knew, in that time, that if he had had anything to which he could look and cling with any hope, he should have been filled with coldest terror. But there was nothing before him. It seemed to him that his life revolved around the thought of Alexa; and since the last hope of her was removed, he might as well end his existence. It was a dark blank before him.

  He turned his back upon the black woods. And stepping to the fire he threw upon it half a dozen dry branches which he had prepared. Here was the light to brighten the target if the murderer wished to kill. Here was something which he could not fail to see. The branches crackled, the flames gathered noisily, and then leaped up through the topmost twigs with a loud rush. At once the arena bounded by the pines was illumined. Every face of every tree glistened in the burst of radiance, and yonder on the ground a skulking figure of a man rose to his knees and pitched a rifle to his shoulder.

  The mind of Holden moved like the lightning flash. It seemed to him, so smoothly and precisely was he thinking, that he could draw his revolver and kill that fellow even before the gun exploded. Then he saw, at the same instant, another phenomenon behind the first form. Behind the first man a bulky form rose, and his shadow leaped up behind him across the trees. He descended like a huge beast of prey. He struck the rifleman and, as the gun exploded, the murderer was crushed to the ground.

  As for the bullet, it sang wickedly near to the ear of Holden, but since it had missed, he waved the thought of it away. He was more interested in a brief struggle which occurred in the dark, two men whirling around and around. Neither, it seemed, had any advantage.

  So Holden drew his revolver and advanced. He found them knitted together, writhing, gasping, feeling for a finishing hold. So he kneeled and thrust the muzzle of the gun under the chin of Venner’s opponent.

  There was a snarl of venom from the other. Then he relaxed his body in a token of surrender.

  “Take him in to the fire,” said Holden, and pushed himself up to his feet by the use of his staff.

  In the inner circle, among the boulders, he turned and watched the killer, bundled before Venner, who kept a grip on one of the villain’s arms, twisted behind his back, and had the mouth of a revolver pressed into the small of the man’s back.

  So they came into the bright neighborhood of the fire and Holden, with an exclamation, recognized Gus Curtis. And Gus, with a snarl, faced this injured relative—relative indeed, no matter how distant and how thin were the tie of the blood.

  “Envy is a devilish vice, Gus,” said Holden. “You couldn’t endure that I should steal sixty thousand dollars and take it away to enjoy by myself. You wanted to have my life, and that stolen money afterward.”

  Gus merely scowled. Then, looking around him to make sure that only these two could overhear him, he muttered: “Boys, let’s not be foolish. I’ve got a pretty good chunk of coin laid away not seven miles from here. Take me into town and that money rots. Gimme a chance, and you get that coin. We’ll split it three ways.”

  “How did you make so much money, Gus?” asked Holden quietly.

  “Farmin’,” snapped out the other. “How else would I be makin’ it?”

  “Some
people,” said Holden, “are so very lucky that they don’t have to work, really, for their money. They simply ride out—at night, you might say. And when they come home their pockets are full.”

  “That’s smart,” said Gus, shrinking a little, and drawing his long frame down onto a stone beside the fire. “That’s mighty smart, but it don’t mean much—not to me!”

  Holden smiled down on him. “You’re a brave man, Gus,” said he.

  “Sure,” sighed Gus. “I guess that I got my share. But—”

  “Well?”

  “What d’you mean to be doin’ with me, Cousin Tom?”

  “Chris!” said the cripple sharply.

  “Yes?”

  “Tie this murderer and coward hand and foot!”

  At that, Venner leaned above the wretch, but from the throat of Gus there rose suddenly a long, wavering yell of terror and shame.

  “Tom,” he said, “for heaven’s sake don’t go bearin’ malice agin’ me for what I might of done to you in the old days. I never knowed what sort of a man you might be.”

  “But when you found out, you took a gun and came trailing me to—”

  “I was gunna shoot it into the air, just to give you a start—because you was campin’ out in the open, sort of.”

  “I heard the noise of that bullet you fired, into the air,” said Holden. “You can say what you please, Gus. But remember that everything you say will come to the ear of the judge before many days.”

  “The judge?” breathed Gus. “Tom, Tom! You ain’t carryin’ it as far as that?”

  “I am,” said Holden.

  “For why?”

  “Not for my own sake, even though that counts. But I remember the way your father and you have treated my mother. If I could sweat you in purgatory for that, I’d do it.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ much agin’ me,” said Gus. “Not much. I say I was tryin’ to play a joke on you. You say that this here was a try to kill you. Well, let the judge decide. Leastwise, they wasn’t no harm done—except to me!”

  Holden shook his head. “It won’t do, Gus,” said he.

  “Why won’t it do?”

  “I know the whole truth.”

  “You lie!” screamed Gus.

  “I don’t lie. Ask Venner if I know. This is Chris Venner. Maybe you’ve heard of him. I imagine that he wouldn’t lie about a thing like this. Ask him!”

  “Well?” whined Gus to Venner.

  “He knows enough to hang most any man,” said Venner darkly. “I guess he’ll do what he likes with you or most anybody else. What I mean to say, Curtis, is that I’d rather be in hell safe and sound already than have this here Tom Holden take after me.”

  “Eh?” asked Gus. And he surveyed the stalwart form of Venner, whose mighty hands he had so recently felt. He looked in turn at the slender body of the cripple. It was a mystery, and like all mysteries, it loomed mountain high before the ignorant fellow.

  “What d’you want me to do?” said Gus suddenly. “What you got me here for?”

  There was no answer. Venner, in pity, as the silence endured, opened his lips to speak, but Holden raised a hand which silenced him.

  That deadly silence continued. And what has such a mortal sting as sheer silence, when an answer is needed?

  There was not a word, not a sound. Only the fire kept up a subdued, murmuring conversation, dying branch to branch, and now and again the wind sighed heavily from the upper trees. The air had grown cold on their backs; the fire was hot in their faces; and big Gus, looking wildly into the flames, was working aimlessly at the ropes which bound him.

  “Tom,” he whispered at last.

  His spirit was broken. Venner, in shame to see a human so subdued, started up and strode away from the fireside. But Holden did not stir. He himself had suffered too much. And all pity had grown small in his soul.

  “Tom,” repeated Gus, “you don’ mean that you’d stand by and see ’em—hang me?”

  “Why not?” said Holden coldly. “Why not? I’d see them break your neck, and I’d smile while I watched it! Why else did I set the trap for you here?”

  CHAPTER 28

  After this, for some time, poor Gus Curtis remained passively by the fire, trembling or perspiring, as different thoughts swept through his wretched soul.

  He said at last, tentatively, like a frightened child: “Tom!”

  Holden turned to him, and taking off his glasses, his clear, cold eyes looked through and through the other.

  “Tom, tell me what to do. You was always smarter than me—at school work.”

  “You were always smarter than I—at fist work, Gus,” said Tom.

  Gus put up a hasty hand, as though to shield himself from that accusing thought. “I been a skunk,” he whined.

  “You knew,” said Holden, “that everything you did while you were murdering and robbing near Larramee has been laid on my shoulders?”

  “I heard something. I wasn’t quite sure—”

  “You lie!” said Holden.

  That whip stroke turned the other white and silent.

  “You hoped that you could keep it up and in the end have all the blame for it smash me, Gus.”

  Gus shook his head. He dared not speak. And he turned his eyes vaguely into the dark, as though searching for big Chris Venner. Any company was to be preferred to that of this cold devil of a cripple.

  “But finally,” said Holden, “when you heard that I had stolen a great sum of money from Venner, you were taken in and you decided that it was better to have my cash than to have me alive as a scapegoat. So you took up my trail—”

  “Tom, I swear to heaven—”

  “Be quiet,” said Holden slowly. “I see your black heart, Gus. I’ve always seen it. I’ve always despised you as much as you’ve hated me. You’ve been a poisonous snake all your life. You’ll be one until they stretch your neck in a noose. Do you understand that?”

  For an instant, blind malice wrinkled the long face of Gus; then he remembered his helpless position. He said not a word.

  “However,” said Holden, “all that you’ve done for yourself is to win, in the end, the reputation of a despicable coward—a skulking rat, killing secretly—”

  “That’s a lie!” shouted Gus. “I fought ’em fair and square a lot of the time. I stood right up to Marshall and his kid. Old Marshall, he had the first shot at me. And I finished ’em both—” He paused, staring, pale, realizing how much this confession meant. Holden, scanning the darkness behind, made out the bulky figure of Chris Venner.

  “Did you hear, Chris?” he asked.

  “I heard,” said Chris calmly. “I heard how he fought square, as he calls it, with an old gent of seventy years. I guess I heard as much as a judge would want to know!”

  The head of Gus fell on his chest. He was seeing the hangman’s noose already dangling before his eyes.

  Afterward, Holden spoke apart to Venner.

  “Partner,” said he, “it seems to me that you and I together have nothing but good luck.”

  “My luck,” said big Venner mildly, “is follerin’ you and doin’ what you say, Holden. Did I tell you that I spoke to Julie?”

  “Did she send you away? Did she tell you never to come near her again, Chris?”

  “It was just the way that you said it would be. She didn’t do nothin’ but get tears in her eyes about me while I was tellin’ her how I raised the devil with other gents. D’you mind that?”

  “Ah,” said Holden, “one never knows what to expect from them. But usually, Chris, they go by opposites. If you know exactly what a man would think and do, then you can often come pretty close to what a woman will do by finding just the opposite. She cried over you, then, because you had rough-housed other people?”

  Venner grinned sheepishly. “It was a mighty funny thing to watch,” he declared. “I couldn’t believe what I was seein’. I told her how I’d croaked one gent and stuck up another. What d’you think she said?”

  “I don’t
know,” said Holden, sighing. “What did she say?”

  “ ‘You poor boy!’ says she, and throws her arms around my neck.

  “ ‘Wait a minute,’ says I. ‘I got worse to tell you, about how I up and robbed a bank, Julie—’

  “ ‘Hush!’ says she, ‘somebody might hear!’

  “ ‘It was a terrible crime,’ says I.

  “ ‘Nonsense,’ says she, ‘no doubt they was all rich people that had money in that bank. They deserved to lose it.’

  “Holden, how could she come to talk to me like that, and her one that never broke the law in her life?”

  “I thought she would be that way,” said Holden. “Most good women would make very excellent crooks—for the sake of their families.”

  “Tom,” burst forth big Venner, “how come you to know all about this? And the other things—where did you learn it all?”

  Such was his attitude that if Tom Holden had declared a fiery angel dropped from heaven and whispered revelations in his ear, Chris Venner would have believed without question.

  “I learned,” said Holden, smiling, “by sitting and watching so long and so quietly that people forgot I was there.”

  At this, Venner scratched his head and then shook it. He could not understand.

  “What are you gonna do with that rat, yonder?” he asked.

  “You’ll take him along for me.”

  “I’ll be mighty glad to do it.”

  “Take him to Larramee. Take him to Mr. Oliphant Larramee himself.”

  “You don’t know the rich man, do you, Tom?”

  “I know him,” said Tom, smiling again, “better than he knows me. Will you take Gus Curtis there?”

  “I’ll take him to hell gate and back, if you want,” said Venner. “Will I find you there?”

  “I’m coming to the town later. I’ll have some one with me who’ll need slow riding. Will you take care of Gus?”

  A spasm of darkness crossed the face of the big fellow. “I’ll take care of that square fighter,” he said. “I’ll bring him in. Maybe livin’. Maybe dead. But I’ll fetch him to Larramee.”