Mountain Riders

by Brand, Max

  It was a special domain, he could see. The rough of the mountains had been mysteriously smoothed out here, and a private park established. Perhaps a glacier in another age had ploughed the surface flat inside that circle of cliffs.

  He descended the cliff. In a crevice of the rocks, he thrust his wallet with the money of the bribe inside it. Then he went on across the level ground toward the Cary house. He was walking in tall grass. There was plenty enough forage here to accommodate ten times the number of cattle that “Old Man” Cary grazed. But Rainey had explained that beforehand. Old Man Cary refused to make provisions of shelter and food to carry the stock through the bitter winters that occasionally struck the herd, and, therefore, it was decimated from time to time. Perhaps, said Rainey, it was the will of the old savage to keep his sons and grandsons from becoming soft with wealth. Money sounds many entrancing horns, and they all blow from distant horizons. Five years of wealth would probably disperse the tribe that still grew and held together in poverty.

  By the time Derry came near the grove in which the house of Cary stood, smoke was rising from the many chimneys of it, and he heard the banging noises of doors closing, and the shrill babble of children. Dogs began to bark, and those rising sounds of life depressed him. They spoke too clearly of overwhelming numbers, and like most fighting men, Tom Derry was always seeing every question answered by an appeal to arms.

  He came out now into the central clearing that surrounded a long house. Rather, it was a succession of many log cabins, each shouldering against the other and making a line like one side of the street in a little English village, where one house helps to support its neighbour.

  He had hardly appeared, when a number of big, wolfish dogs ran up to him, some howling, some growling. He knew enough to keep on walking steadily. If he paused, he had a feeling that the brutes would put their teeth into him without any further ado.

  Then a swarm of children came at him, whooping. Not one of them had more than a single garment, half covering its body. They were as brown as Mexicans. They had long, black hair, and eyes of a sparkling black, too. They were beautiful children, he thought, but there was something that promised grossness in all their faces.

  That swarm of youngsters set up a yelling that brought three men into doorways. When they spotted a stranger, each picked up a rifle that seemed to be at hand at every door, leaning against the wall, and they stepped out with the weapons.

  Derry kept right on walking until a man whose face was one great shag of black beard called out to him to stand. Then he halted. The fellow of the black beard approached him slowly from the front. The other two closed in on him from the sides.

  “Who are you?” asked the bearded man.

  Derry paused a moment before answering, because every tradition of Western hospitality was being blasted by this reception.

  “Tom Derry is my name,” he answered. “I want to see the old man.”

  “You want to see the old man?” asked the bearded fellow in surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “Does the old man want to see you?”

  “He’ll be glad to see me after I’ve had a chance to talk to him for a time.”

  “Fan him, Dick,” said the bearded Cary.

  The other two stepped in close. Each took Tom Derry by an arm, and they searched him thoroughly.

  He could be glad, now, that he had not brought the money with him. It would have been seized before it had accomplished any purpose whatever. They got the gun which Rainey had given him, and his big jack-knife. Those were his only weapons and they were all that interested the Carys.

  “Ask the old man if he wants to see this hombre,” said the bearded man, and the fellow called Dick disappeared into the house.

  Others of the tribe were appearing now. Women stood with their arms akimbo in the doorways — big women with flashing eyes. Men lounged at the entrances, pretending to take small heed of the stranger. And the little tide of children kept right up around Tom Derry.

  Dick now reappeared, and with him there was a slender girl, bare-footed, bare-legged, with the white of a recent thorn scratch over one calf. She was both slender and round. She might have been anything from fifteen to eighteen. The flash of her black eyes ignited something in the heart of Tom Derry.

  She came up close to him and stood with one hand on her hip, staring right into his eyes.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Tom Derry.”

  “That’s just a name,” said the girl. “What do you want?”

  “A chance to talk to the old man.”

  “The old man sent me out to find what you are.”

  “I’m an ordinary hombre,” said Derry, “with two feet, and two hands, and all that.”

  “Two pretty good hands, I’m thinking,” said the girl.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You didn’t smash that knuckle on a stone, I guess.”

  He looked down at the flattened knuckle and remembered the day he had swung his weight behind that hand and against the jaw of a certain wide-faced German in a forecastle brawl.

  “Anyway,” said Derry, “I’m not going to talk to the old man with my hands.”

  The girl kept staring into his eyes, as though his words meant very little compared with the meaning she got out of his looks.

  “Well,” she said at last, “he’s on a grouch this morning, but if you want to chance him, come ahead. Bring him in, boys.”

  She walked ahead of them, and Tom Derry watched the rhythm that played through her from the light-stepping feet to the toss of her head. She was as bold and free as a man, but there were unknown treasures of femininity in her. He felt a queer, giddy lifting of the heart as he wondered what man would be able to stir her.

  He was taken into a cabin as poverty-stricken as anything he had ever seen. The logs had not been hewn flat on the inner surfaces. The floor was beaten earth, and not very well beaten down, at that. All the furniture he saw — there was little of it — was axe-and-knife made, a home product. He saw, as he passed through the rooms, ponderous tables of split logs laid over sawbucks, a few chairs with straight backs, but chiefly stools and benches. He saw some Indian beds of willow slats rolled up in corners, the bedding piled in ugly heaps on top. The stale smell of the sleepers was still in the air, and other odours, of cookery, could not waken his appetite.

  In this way Derry was brought into a small back room where a bit of a fire wavered under a big black pot that hung from a crane over the hearth. Near the hearth sat a man so old that his face had shrunk to boyish dimensions. It was oddly unmatched compared with his big dome of a skull. He wore, like an Indian, trousers and moccasins only, and Tom Derry saw how time had parched that great body, leaving only parchment skin, and the pull of great tendons showing through the meagreness of dried-up muscles. Once he must have been a giant, but now his strength was limited to the cleaning of guns, perhaps — a whole rack of them was near him — or his present labour of sharpening knives. He had an oilstone on his knee, and he worked a great bowie knife over the whetstone, keeping the blade instinctively at the perfect bevel.

  He said, without looking up: “What you find out, M’ria?”

  “I found a man,” said Maria.

  “Think you’d find a dog, maybe?” asked the old man.

  “Sometimes I do,” said Maria. “Here he is, Grandpa.”

  The grandfather looked slowly up. His eyes were almost veiled by the excessively drooping folds of the eyelids, but the spark of life was bright and active under those hollow brows.

  He stared at Tom Derry. Like utter barbarians, none of these people were contented by glances, but had to bear down with full weight on whatever they regarded.

  “His name’s Tom Derry,” said the girl. “He’s been around a lot. He’s a good man with his hands. He had sense enough to come into the valley without taking one of the creeks to show him the way. He wants to talk to you.”

  This brief summing up was so to the
point that Tom Derry felt more than a bit uneasy. If the girl were a type of the clan, then the grown men would be able to see through him like a plate of glass.

  The old man said: “Come over here.”

  Derry stepped closer, and halted for the inspection.

  “Yeah, you been around,” said the old man, nodding. “It’s gettin’ so that I can trust M’ria’s eyes to see a few little things. Wait a minute. What makes you think he’s been around such a lot, M’ria?”

  “There’s a queer knot in that hat cord,” said the girl. “It would take a sailor to tie that knot. And he walks loose in the knees, like a sailor.”

  “Yeah, you got a pair of eyes, and some sense behind ’em. Stranger, how’d you want to talk to me?”

  “Alone,” said Derry.

  “Clear ’em out,” said the old man. “I’m goin’ to have trouble with this hombre, but he can start it his own way!”

  7

  THE BARGAIN

  IT was to Tom Derry as though he were in an alien land, in a fortress, where the armed men were capable of treating him like a spy. The old man regarded him for a moment after the room was cleared of the others, except the girl.

  “I’d better talk to you alone,” said Derry, nodding toward Maria.

  “Leave her here,” said the old man. “She’s all right. She can keep her jaws locked over little things, and big things she wouldn’t understand, anyway.”

  The girl laughed.

  “Shut up your laughin’,” said the old man. “Look at that soup and give it a stir, and shut up your laughin’. It’s time for me to have something to eat.”

  She said: “The soup’s all right, but it’s not time for you to have it.”

  “I’ll have what I want when I want it,” said he.

  “You’ll have what’s good for you,” answered Maria.

  “You brat!” he cried in his husky, bubbling voice. “Are you goin’ to try to set yourself again’ me?”

  “D’you think it’s any fun for me to take care of you and your temper?” asked the girl.

  “M’ria!” cried the old man, angrily, sorrowfully.

  “Be quiet,” said Maria. “I’m not going to leave you, but sometimes I’m half minded to. Ask him what he wants.”

  “What did you say your name is?” asked the old man.

  “Tom Derry.”

  “Tom Derry, you been a sailor. What are you doin’ this far into dry land?”

  “I’m bringing some good news to you.”

  “Yeah? Good news never comes before sun-up. Speak out and lemme see what you got in your head.”

  “Money,” said Derry.

  “How much?”

  “Enough for you and your tribe,” said Derry.

  “I kind of like to hear you talk. You talk like you had sense. Maybe you have. So tell me how we’re goin’ to make money.”

  “By cracking the jail in Blue Water.”

  “Yeah, that jail could be cracked. Not that we’d do it. We’re law-abidin’ people, Derry.”

  “Sure you are,” said Derry. “You abide by the law if you can find it. But law is a long way off, up here in the Blue Waters.”

  The old man chuckled.

  “Some friend of yours in the jail?”

  “I never saw him. I’m only the messenger. His name is Barry Christian. Do you know him?”

  The old man leaned back in his chair.

  “M’ria,” he said, “gimme a drink of corn liquor and then call the boys and tell ’em to see how far they can throw this hombre out of the valley. I don’t care if he lands on a hard spot, neither.”

  The girl picked up a heavy earthenware jug that might have held five gallons or more. She handled it easily, and poured some into a tin cup. She tasted it, taking a good swallow, and the fire of the stuff could not take the thoughtful look out of her eyes. She gave what was left in the cup to the old man. She poured some more into another tin. It was not a cup but a cooking tin. This she proffered to Derry.

  He took it, very much surprised. The liquid was not colourless. It had a faint stain of yellow in it. It was very pungent, but went down pleasantly.

  “Hey!” yelled the old man. “I didn’t tell you to give him a drink. I told you to throw him out of the house. I told you to call the boys and throw him out.”

  “Let him talk. He ain’t poisoned you just by naming a name, has he?” said the girl.

  The old man glowered at her. Then he kicked a gong that was beside his chair. It brought a rush of footfalls. Two doors were thrown open, and the armed men began to pour into the room.

  “Take M’ria!” shouted the old man. “I’m goin’ to teach her. Take M’ria and take the stranger, and throw ’em both — ”

  He choked and coughed. Big, capable hands seized on Tom Derry and the girl.

  She said to one of the ruffians who had gripped her: “Stop smashing my bones, Joe. I’ll make you wish your hands had rotted off before you laid ’em on me!”

  “I’m goin’ to teach the brat what I can do in Cary Valley!” roared the old man. “I’m goin’ to show her!”

  “Yeah. We’ll do what you say,” said the man of the black beard.

  The old man hesitated.

  “Go on!” cried Maria fiercely. “Don’t dodder like an old fool. Tell them what to do with us.”

  “You hear what she called me?” shouted the old man, heaving himself up from his chair.

  But when he reached his feet, he wavered a little. He was immensely old. Surely he had seen a hundred years if he had seen a day.

  “Maybe I’ve given her lesson enough. Leave her be. Get out of here!” he said to the men.

  “Yeah, and what about the stranger?” asked one of the men.

  “Grandpa hasn’t finished talking to him,” said the girl.

  The old man glared at her, opened his lips to shout another command, and then wound up weakly with:

  “You boys get out and stay where I can call you. I may be needin’ you soon, and not for no false alarm.”

  The Carys trooped out of the room and slammed the doors. Their muttering voices receded.

  “Smoke your pipe, Grandpa,” said the girl. “That soothes you down a good deal when you get all on edge this way.”

  He had settled back in the chair and reached for a pipe and a pouch filled with shredded tobacco.

  “You try to make a fool out of me!” he declared to Maria.

  “I try to keep you from making a fool out of yourself,” said the girl. “Ease off your high horse and be comfortable. Nobody’s trying to steal your shoes.”

  “Christian! That crook comes and tries to talk to me about Barry Christian!” said the old man.

  The girl held a light for the pipe; the old man began to smack his lips as he pulled on it. Presently he was squinting through a cloud of smoke. There was a big twist of dirty string around the stem of the pipe to keep it more easily inside his gums. From the uncertain, loose corners of his mouth, a dribble worked out, now and then, and the girl, with a quick hand and not much reverence in her touch, wiped his chin dry.

  “The whisky’ll work on you pretty soon, and then you’ll feel a lot better,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me how I’ll feel,” said the old man. “I’ve had enough of your lip. One of these here days you’re goin’ to get me real mad, and I’m goin’ to put my foot down. You give a hand and a drink to this gent that comes up here talkin’ about Christian, do you?”

  “Why not?” asked Maria. “He can name the devil if he wants to, can’t he? I’ve heard you do it, and put him in hell, too.”

  “Nobody can name Barry Christian up here,” said the old man. “The skunk that got us into trouble with Jim Silver and turned everybody agin’ us. Except that folks now know that we hate Christian, I dunno what they’d likely do to us.”

  “It would take a whole lot of folks to bother you up here in this valley,” suggested Derry.

  “He’s getting old and scary,” remarked Maria.

&nbs
p; “Who? What?” shouted the old man. “I’ll slap your face for you, you young rat!”

  “Be honest, Grandpa,” she persisted. “You’re scared about everything that may happen.”

  He puffed at his pipe, choked with fury and smoke.

  “It’s got so people can’t even talk to you,” Maria went on. “Pretty soon, you’ll be babbling to yourself all day long, making no sense, just like a baby that’s crawling around. Here’s a man who’s never seen Christian, but he’s got money to pay you to help Christian. Ain’t messengers got a right to a good reception, no matter how you damn the gents that send them?”

  “I got half of a mind,” said the old man, “to have you hosswhipped, M’ria, right up close where I could hear you holler. You wouldn’t be the first gal in this valley that’s had to eat the whip. But doggone me, if you don’t spit fire and sense mixed in together. Lemme hear what this hombre has to say.”

  The girl turned to Derry with an eloquent gesture, as much as to point out that she had opened the way for him, and that at least he could speak to the point.

  He said: “You fellows have a good set, in Blue Water. People think you hate Christian. The whole gang of you could get right up close to the jail and nobody would ever suspect you. Isn’t that right?”

  “Mostly that’s right.”

  “They take Barry Christian out to hang him, tomorrow.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “They’ll hang him right up to a tree, I’ve heard. They want people to see the execution. They want to set an example by it. Is that right?”

  “A good thing for the world, when Barry Christian chokes on a rope,” said the old man.

  “That may be. But what should keep you and the rest of the Cary men from being in that crowd and making a rush at the right time?”

  “Nothin’ could keep us, much, except that we’d be strung up later on, one by one,” said the old man.

  “Who would string you up?” asked Derry.

  “There’s maybe more folks in the world than you think on,” said the old man.

  “It takes hard men to ride this far and get over the wall into this place. And the law doesn’t care. It’s too high in the mountains for the law to care. You’re above the law here.”