Mountain Storms

by Max Brand

  “Walker is only one you’ll answer for,” said the sheriff sternly. “There’s the killing of old man Wetherby you’ll have to answer for, Bill. They’ve got the proofs of that. Come out here and face Parks, and we’ll hear your story, both of you. Two in one day. And two like these. My luck has sure come in a lump. Sam, you’ve got a pair of bracelets. Clamp ’em on him. That’s right. Now cut those ropes away from his feet. Walk out, McKenzie. There’s been a man-size fight in here.”

  The crowd poured into the open. Huge McKenzie confronted his conqueror with the crimson clots still on his beard.

  “Tell your story, Bill,” said the sheriff.

  “I was sitting in there peaceful . . . ,” began McKenzie.

  “You lie,” snarled a voice in the crowd. “There never was a minute in your rotten life when you were peaceful.”

  “Shut up, Harry,” said the sheriff mildly. “Shut up and let him talk. Go on, Bill.”

  “There ain’t no use talking here,” said Bill. “They ain’t aiming to believe me.”

  “I’ll keep ’em quiet till you’re through,” said the sheriff, “no matter what they believe. Go on, Bill. Tell it to the face of Parks.”

  “I was sitting in there all peaceful and quiet,” Bill began again, “when this skunk came and threw a rope over me. I didn’t have no chance. Then he told me he was going to make me write on the table that I’d killed Walker. He told me that he’d done that killing himself, and that you was after him and was sure to get him. I told him that I’d see him hanged before I wrote that lie down. He started in to beat me up. You see what he done to me? Finally he got tired swinging his fists, and started with a stick of wood. But I wouldn’t give up till he knocked me out. When I come to, he tried a different gag. He got the poker red hot and said he’d jab it into my eyes unless I done what he wanted me to do. And that’s what happened. I had to write, Sheriff, that’s the truth and no mistake. I never done nothing about the killing of Dick Walker.”

  There was a deep growl of anger from the crowd. They turned savage faces of hatred upon Tom. Fair play is the first thing that a Westerner demands.

  “Well, Parks,” said the sheriff, “it’s your turn to talk up and talk up loud, or I can’t be holding these boys. Something tells me that they’re getting a hankering for hanging you up to a branch. Turn loose and let’s hear what you got to say for yourself.”

  Tom looked quietly round on the circle of malignant faces. But in his heart there was a strange riot of emotions. If these men were infuriated, it was simply because they felt he had unjustly treated another man. If there were such justice in them, it was something surely worth knowing about human nature.

  So he began his recital slowly with what Gloria Themis had told him—that there was nothing between him and freedom except the killing of Dick Walker.

  “All the rest,” said Tom, “she thought could be paid for. I took a man’s horse, but I took that horse because he was going to kill Peter. I paid him for that horse afterward. And I’ve paid for everything else I took. If I haven’t paid enough, I’ll pay more. I want everyone to see that I’m honest. But when she told me that I could be free if I found the real murderer of Dick Walker, I started out to find him. It was a hard thing to do. Rains had fallen since the killing. But I worked around the place until I found a shell for a revolver a mile away in the brush. . . .”

  “A mile away! In brush!” exclaimed someone in the group.

  “Shut up!” ordered the intent sheriff, whose honest eyes were fixed on the face of Tom.

  “I came on the line from that shell to Walker’s grave. I found soot on a stone on top of the next mountain and thought that the killer must have made his campfire there. Then I went on. Jerry . . . that’s the bear, you see . . . helped me find the trail. He’s very good at that sort of thing.”

  There was a murmur of interest and wonder from the others.

  “Finally I came to this house. I found Bill McKenzie and started talking to him. While we were talking, he admitted he had killed Walker. He told me that, I think, because he understood that I was trying to escape from your posse. But afterward he became suspicious again. When my back was turned, he tried to break my head with the butt of his revolver. I dodged that. His dog caught me by the leg.” He turned with a limp and pointed to the crimson-stained rent in the back of his buckskin trousers.

  “I knocked down the dog with a stick of wood, and then I fought McKenzie. He nearly choked me to death. You see?” He pointed to the torn throat. “But I broke away. Finally I knocked him down. He could not get up. Then I tied him and heated the poker and made him write that confession. All of this is the truth.”

  He paused, and a silence of deep wonder fell on the crowd until Hank Jeffries snarled.

  “Sheriff,” he said, “does it sound reasonable and nacheral that a gent the size of Parks could beat Bill McKenzie? Look at the two of ’em side by side.”

  Truly it was a comparison that dwarfed Tom.

  “There is a way of proving what has happened,” said Tom. “Free our hands and let Bill McKenzie fight me again . . . here where the walls of the room don’t hem us in . . . where I have room enough to move around. Will you do that, Sheriff?” He was on fire at the thought. The old joy of battle that had thrilled him in the conflict with Bill McKenzie returned.

  “I’ll do that,” said the sheriff slowly. “I’ll do that, and, if you can beat him fair and square, it sure will look like you been telling the truth. And if you been telling the truth in one part, the whole yarn will sound pretty much like the real thing. We know that Walker and McKenzie used to be enemies. We know he ain’t the first gent that McKenzie has finished.”

  Here he turned point-blank upon Bill. “McKenzie,” he said, “talk out. Here you got a chance to prove that he’s a liar. What do you say? Shall we turn the two of you loose and the rest of us stand off and give you room and let you fight it out . . . unless you try to bolt for it?”

  Bill McKenzie stared fixedly at Tom, and he saw the whole body of the smaller man quivering with eagerness. A smaller man, to be sure, but one strong enough to have broken a common man to bits. His eyes dwelt on the perfect proportions, the thick shoulders, the long and sinewy arms. The conviction came to him that, fighting in the free open, he would be simply cut to pieces as a wolf eats a dog.

  His head drooped. “I’ll see you dead first,” he said. “I ain’t going to fight to give you the fun of watching. Damn the whole lot of you!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  TOM’S ENTRY INTO TURNBULL

  A premonition of disaster came to John Hampton Themis when he heard the uproar pouring through the street of Turnbull. Why his heart should have fallen so suddenly, he could not tell. But his first thought was one of relief that Gloria was out of town visiting the daughter of a rancher who had taken her to the ranch that morning. Themis put on his hat and ran out to the front of the house in time to see the procession pass through the light of the late evening. Apparently a murmur had run before it and informed the town of Turnbull that something worth seeing was about to enter the street, for the entire population had assembled on front porches and in the street itself.

  What they saw, and what Turnbull saw, was, first of all, a stream of lean-ribbed dogs running in tumult. Behind them came half a dozen cowpunchers that had ridden out with the sheriff days before on the trail of Tom Parks. Behind them came the sheriff himself, and at the side of the sheriff was a big man with long hair, dressed in buckskin trousers and a tattered buckskin shirt. He sat the saddle on a magnificent stallion that danced along to the noise of the shouts of the men of Turnbull.

  It was Tom Parks. Themis could not fail to recognize at any distance the face of the man who had surprised and attacked him on the bank of the river. It was Tom Parks. But how did it happen that he was returning in the guise, almost, of a conqueror? His hands were free, and he was sitting the saddle on the famous horse he had stolen from Hank Jeffries. There was even a rifle in its case sl
ung under one of his knees, and a revolver was at his hip. Certainly this was not the manner in which a man-killer was brought back to town.

  There was another man who better filled the role of a prisoner. This was a huge fellow who came behind Parks with his hands imprisoned in steel cuffs before him. He rode on a broad-hipped, powerful chunk of a horse, and all around him were clustered the rest of the posse. His name was flashed up to Themis by a dozen voices: “Bill McKenzie! It’s Bill McKenzie!”

  But who Bill McKenzie might be remained a mystery to Themis. He waited until the procession had filed past, and then, filled with gloomy apprehension, he trailed in the rear toward the jail, where the procession ended.

  Parks and the sheriff and Bill McKenzie and some of the posse had gone inside. But a score of men remained in the street. Around each a cluster of the townsfolk formed and heard the recital of the adventure. Themis joined one of these groups and heard the tale.

  It was vigorously told. Nothing was left out of the long and arduous trail that the posse had followed, and how they had been led astray time and again by the deft maneuvers of Tom Parks. Yet they had clung indefatigably to the work, although half a dozen of their number had fallen behind on lamed or exhausted horses. The rest of the party had pushed ahead, hopeless, to be sure, but determined to do their best against this invincible phantom of the mountains.

  So, at the last, they had ridden into the clearing and seen the half-naked giant standing beside the wall of the cabin. That scene of the capture was painted with vivid, rough words, and then came the exposé of Bill McKenzie as the real murderer of Dick Walker.

  “But when we started on back,” said the narrator to his breathless audience, “we kept an eye on Tom Parks all the time. The sheriff wasn’t taking no chances, and you couldn’t blame him. He had half a dozen of us do nothing but keep around Tom all the time. But before we’d been with him long, we began to see what sort of a gent he was.

  “And I’ll tell you, boys, that we sort of expected to find him a man-eater. What he turned out to be was white all the way through. No growling or snarling. He talked man and he acted man all the way. Never put up no complaints about the irons. Never done no sulking with his head down. He kept his chin up and looked us in the eye. That’s the sort of a gent he is. When a gent spoke to him, he spoke right up and answered back plumb cheerful. He didn’t make no secrets out of nothing. Inside a couple of hours we got out the whole story.

  “Seems that when he was twelve years old he come across the mountains in a storm with his father and a burro. He got played out walking in the snow and the wind. His father picked him up and carried him down below timberline, and doing that he run himself to death, got pneumonia, and that night, getting delirious, he walked over the edge of the river and was drowned. That kid was left there. He tried to move on down the river, but a lion killed the burro. Then he had to stay there. And he stayed there till he growed up. Only man he seen was a brother of McKenzie that came along and beat the kid up and killed a couple of bears that he’d found and tamed. Tom shot McKenzie and saved the last of the cubs. And that cub is the bear that’s been trailing him around ever since. But it sure threw a scare into Parks. He begun to figure that there weren’t any good men in the world except that father of his that had died. He figured it was better to live by himself, and he done it. That’s the short of his story. But wait till you get a chance to hear him tell it.

  “The sheriff believes every word, and he says that no white man in the valley will prosecute a case against Parks for stealing what he always paid for, anyway. I’ll tell you one thing . . . no friend of mine is going to prosecute any such case. This Parks is clean all the way through. I don’t ask no better man’s hand to shake and call friend.”

  Such was the explosion of the fairy tale of the “wild man of Turnbull valley.” The Indian had turned into a white man. The reckless marauder had been revealed as a man who knew nothing of property rights.

  “He even got Peter back,” said the narrator. “He took Hank Jeffries and the rest of us to the place where he’d left Peter. He’d covered their trail complete. Why, it would’ve made you open your eyes and blink to see the way that hoss acted. The rest of us scared him stiff. He run for Tom and crowded up ag’in’ him like he was asking Tom for help.

  “We all looked to Hank Jeffries to see what he’d do. Hank seen it was up to him to act sort of generous. He told Tom that he’d try to ride Peter, and, if he couldn’t manage it, he’d give the hoss to Tom free and easy. And that’s what he done. He climbed onto the saddle on old Peter, and he started to ride him. Didn’t look like there was going to be nothing to it. Peter was scared, right enough, but he answered the bridle like he was thinking the same thoughts with his rider. Tom begun to look sick. But pretty soon Hank made a wrong step. He got so plumb confident that the hoss was broke for him that he touched Peter up with the spurs. It was sure a fool move. Peter seemed to take that as orders for doing a cake-walk up the sky and kicking out a star or two. He raised Cain in seven languages, and inside of thirty seconds he pitched Hank on his head and come running over to Tom, like a dog, and shoved his head down against Tom’s chest.

  “Well, Hank got up, staggering and raging. He wanted that hoss quick, so’s he could blow its fool head off, because he said it was a nacheral born man-killer. But there stood the hoss asking Tom for help, you might say. And there was Tom talking to Peter like Peter was a man. It was sure something to remember, that picture. Then the sheriff he ups and tells Hank that his hand has all been played out, and that he ain’t got a trick left for taking Peter. He’d give Peter to Tom by not being able to ride him, and the whole gang of us was there as witnesses to the bargain.

  “There wasn’t nothing for Hank to do but buckle under, no matter how he hated it, so Tom rode back right on his own hoss, and it was sure a circus to watch them two together. About the end of the second day the sheriff talked things over with us, and then he took a chance. He got hold of Tom and said if Tom would give his word not to try to escape, he’d let him ride with his hands free and do what he liked. After Tom agreed, I’ll tell a man that we sure lived on the fat of the land. If we wanted fish, he’d sneak off and drop a hook into a pond, and it looked like the fish came running to get caught. If we hankered after venison, Tom would snoop off through the hills and come back in no time with a deer. It wasn’t no starvation party that we rode on, I’ll tell a man.”

  There was more talk like this, but John Hampton Themis had heard enough to confirm his suspicion. When Gloria came back to the town, she would find the praises of the wild man on the lips of everyone. Not only would he no longer be dreaded, but every pretty girl in the town would have a wildly beating heart at the mere thought of meeting this handsome giant who even the men were praising. In that romantic atmosphere, how could Gloria be expected to keep her head about her?

  Themis went on into the jail and found it all buzzing with excitement. The happy sheriff came up to shake hands with him.

  “Well, Mister Themis,” he said, “if the luck had been with you, your party might have done just what mine did. I give you credit for stirring up the valley for the hunt, at any rate. We profited by the lessons that you taught us. When you come right down to it, he never could have been caught if he hadn’t wanted us to take him.”

  Themis brushed the praise away. “He gets off scot-free, then?” he said.

  The sheriff shook his head with a frown. “I thought he would,” he said. “But that fellow whose dogs were killed by Parks insists on getting damages. He’s worked up a bill for a thousand dollars, nearly. Everybody else has agreed to withdraw their charges. But that gent won’t budge. If it wasn’t for him, Tom would walk free out of jail. But where can a boy like him find a thousand dollars?”

  The mind of Themis was never slow. Now it worked like lightning, reaching far ahead to the future.

  “Suppose I sit down and write a check . . . I have my checkbook with me . . . do you think that would set Tom free?
”

  “Of course,” said the sheriff. “We know you, Mister Themis. Your check is the same as gold. But would you do a fine thing like that?”

  It was done in half a minute. The check was scrawled, torn from the book, and placed in the astonished sheriff’s hands.

  “Now,” said Themis, “can you so arrange it that I may talk with Parks? Talk with him alone, I mean.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  FOR THE HAPPINESS OF GLORIA

  It was no easy thing to manage, but eventually the crowd was cleared from the sheriff’s office, and Tom was brought in. He stood, tall and silent, in one corner, his quiet, keen eyes fixed upon the face of the millionaire.

  “Tom,” said the sheriff, laying his hand affectionately on the shoulder of his prisoner, “I’m mighty glad to tell you that we’ve brought you into town just to turn you loose and set you free again. I was afraid for a while that it wouldn’t come out just that way. But Mister Themis, here . . . I guess you’ve met before”—here the sheriff grinned, but Tom’s face retained its gravity—“Mister Themis, as I was saying, has made out a check for a thousand dollars to pay off the only gent that’s going to press a charge against you. Well, Tom, I guess you don’t know much about what money means. But after you’ve worked for some of it you will. You’ll see that a thousand iron men come slow when a gent tries to save ’em. It’s a pretty fine thing that Mister Themis has done. I’m going to leave you in here to talk with him because he wants you to. Afterward, you can walk out of this jail just when you please. If you got no better place to go tonight, I got a bed at my house that ain’t working, and I’d sure be honored if you come and put up with us. My wife would make you plumb to home.”

  It was quite a speech for the sheriff. Moreover, it was a speech that obviously came from the heart. Themis watched with a keen curiosity to see what Tom would say.

  “You are a kind man,” he said to the sheriff, “but tonight Jerry is wandering back in the hills. He is waiting for me. Peter and I must go to find him. But when I come up to Turnbull again, I shall come to you first . . . to thank you again.”