Mountain Riders

by Brand, Max

  The old man actually smiled.

  “Young feller,” he said, “you rode up here and got in. Are you a hard man?”

  “Try me,” said Tom Derry, grinning in turn.

  “Ay,” said the old man. “Fists has changed your face. Fists and other things. Maybe there’s a right tidy bit of man in him, M’ria.”

  “Maybe he’s so-so,” said the girl, eyeing Derry with perfect calm. “His weight’s in the right place.”

  “We’re wastin’ time, though,” said the old man. “You can’t hire this gang to lift a hand for Barry Christian.”

  “I’ve got a price to offer you,” went on Derry. “Name a price for the job yourself.”

  “There ain’t any money that would hire me to send my family into that job. Not for fifty thousand dollars.”

  “How about ten thousand spot cash?” asked Derry.

  “I told you he meant something,” said Maria, confidently nodding. “He’s not here just to talk and blow. Money is better than a kick in the face.”

  “Ten thousand? I wouldn’t budge the boys for ten thousand,” said the grandfather. “Besides, I ain’t goin’ to budge ’em, anyway, for Barry Christian.”

  “I could get the job done cheaper,” declared Derry. “I could buy up plenty of men right down there in Blue Water — men that aren’t so afraid of the law. But the thing might get noised around before the deal went through. That’s the only reason I’m up here, and I’ll make you a flat, and final, offer of fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “I wouldn’t budge for thirty thousand,” said the old man, with determination.

  “Why not talk business instead of making jokes?” asked Derry.

  “I don’t want to talk business. I’ve got enough to keep me busy now.”

  The old man resumed his work on the sharpening of the bowie knife.

  “All right,” said Derry. “I’ve done my best and offered you my limit. So long.”

  “So long,” said the old man. “I’m glad to see your back.”

  “Wait a minute, Grandpa,” put in the girl. “You wanta think it over a bit. Turn twenty thousand dollars into horseflesh, and saddles, and gunpowder, and guns. Then what d’you think?”

  “I didn’t offer twenty thousand,” said Derry.

  “You will, though,” said the girl. “You’ve got a good heart and you’ll peg the bet up a little. Twenty thousand is a lot of money.”

  “Twenty-five thousand is a lot more,” answered the old man.

  “Sure it is. And a million is better still,” said Derry carelessly, determined that they should not extract the ultimate penny from him.

  “Twenty-five thousand is a good round sum,” said Cary. “A man could out and do something for twenty-five thousand. It sounds like something and it is something.”

  “What makes you think that anybody’s scalp is worth twenty-five thousand?” asked Derry.

  “Some is worth more. Some a lot more. There’s Jim Silver. Ain’t Christian spent fortunes and fortunes tryin’ to get the throat of Silver cut? Twenty-five thousand is cheap to get a man saved by folks that hate his innards.”

  “Anything might be cheap, if a man had it,” said Derry. “You might as well ask me for fifty thousand.”

  “Don’t stand around in my light, then,” answered Cary. “Get out of here and stop botherin’ me.”

  Tom Derry answered hotly: “You people that want the world with a fence around it — you make me sick. Good-bye! I’ll take my money where people have brains enough to know what it’s worth.”

  “Go along with you,” said Maria. “You’ll be back again.”

  He turned on her with a rather childish fury.

  “What makes you think that I’ve got twenty-five thousand?” he demanded.

  “By the way it hit you in the eye when Grandpa named the price. I could see you read the dollar sign and the figures after it.”

  “The whole Cary tribe isn’t worth that much money,” Derry said fiercely.

  “Say that to a Cary man, and he’ll show you some new ways of tying knots,” said Maria. “He’ll tie them in you.”

  “Shut up and get out!” commanded the old man.

  “I’ll get out,” said Derry. “Twenty-five thousand? I laugh at you! I could buy your whole valley for half the price.”

  “Grandpa would throw in some boot,” said Maria.

  “What sort of boot?” asked the old man.

  “Me, for instance,” said Maria. “The stranger likes me pretty well. Don’t you, Tom?”

  “He’s got more sense than to look at a spindlin’, long-legged heifer with no meat on the bones, like you,” said the old man. “What makes you set your cap for this mug of a Tom Derry, anyway, M’ria?”

  “Oh, I dunno,” said the girl. “It’s just by way of bargaining.”

  Tom Derry was still staring at her. He could not speak for a time. Then he said:

  “Well, I’ll pay twenty-five thousand.”

  “All right, all right,” said the old man. “Shut up the yappin’ and get the money, then.”

  “How would I know that you’ll go through with the deal after I give you the cash?”

  “You’ll take my word for it,” said Old Man Cary.

  Derry smiled. “I thought we were talking business,” he suggested.

  “All right, go fetch me a Bible, M’ria,” said the old man, “and I’ll swear on it like a regular lawyer.”

  “That’s no good,” the girl told Derry. “Make him shake hands on it, and he’ll never quit the bargain.”

  “Shut your fool face!” shouted Old Man Cary.

  “Here’s my hand,” offered Derry, grinning.

  “I hope it rots!” cried the old man. “M’ria, you throw-in’ in with strangers agin’ your own kind?”

  “He’s paying the price, and I’m thrown in for boot,” said Maria carelessly.

  “Twenty-five thousand it is,” said Derry.

  The old man reached up tentatively, then, with a sudden and surprising grip, he took the hand of Derry.

  “It’s done!” he said, “and the more fool I am. If I lose M’ria, I gotta break another half-witted gal to my ways.”

  8

  SPEEDING TROUBLE

  THE old man kicked the gong once more. There was the same instant appearance of the armed clansmen. To them the grandfather said: “Take and treat this gent well. Leave your guns be still. Where he wants to go, leave him go. Where he wants to come, leave him come. He’s had my hand, and I’ve had his hand. Now, all of you clear out. Tom Derry, bring me that money.”

  Derry went out from the house. As he stood in the open, he saw the girl beside him. Her face was perfectly calm, but her eyes were bright and uneasy.

  “How old are you, Maria?” he asked.

  “I’m twenty,” said the girl.

  “You’re nearer to fourteen,” he told her.

  “I was seventeen last week,” she said.

  “You’d start right off with lying?” he asked her.

  “Of course I would,” answered Maria. “I mean, until a man marries me, why should I tell the truth? It’s all bargaining. How old are you?”

  “Me? I’m only twenty-seven.”

  “Minus five,” said Maria.

  “All right,” Tom Derry grinned. “Twenty-two is easy to write and easy to remember. Will you listen to me?”

  “Yes, if it don’t take too long.”

  “Get a pair of horses, and we can talk while I go for the money.”

  “I’ll get ’em. Come along.”

  She took him to a big corral behind the house, and brought out a pair of ropes. One she gave him. The other she took herself.

  “Snag the cayuse you want for yourself,” said the girl, and vaulted over the fence with the ease of a man.

  He was fairly good with a rope, but these mustangs fled like quicksilver before Derry. When he cornered the group that contained the fine grey he wanted, the whole lot turned and charged at him like so many devils. As
they went by, he saw through the whirling dust clouds that the rope of the girl was already on the neck of an active little roan. She saddled her horse and sat on the top rail of the fence.

  She wore overalls of a faded blue. They were much too big for her and had evidently been handed down by one of the Cary men. She patched them with half a dozen fragments of different colours across the knees and the seat. She had battered old moccasins on her feet, and she wore a shirt of checked flannel. She wore no hat. In the house her hair was down her back; now it was twisted about her head. She sat there with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette, watching. She looked more like an Indian than ever, immobile, full of thoughts which Tom Derry could not fathom.

  He tried and tried the wicked little devil of a grey, over and over again. Dust blinded him. Sweat stung his eyes. He finally nailed the dodging ghost more by luck than by skill and brought it out of the corral and saddled it. The girl said nothing. She simply kept smoking and watching.

  Such anger grew up in him as he had never known before. It was fury, but there was an ache in his heart, also. He said to the girl:

  “You ought not to smoke, Maria.”

  “No?” said the girl.

  And she blew a long, slow breath of smoke full in his face.

  “You took a drink in there, too,” said he. “You want to quit booze and smoking.”

  “Yeah?” said the girl, and blew more smoke in his face.

  He took the cigarette out of her hand and threw it into the dust. She struck him with the flat of her hand. It moved faster than the jerk of a cat’s paw. The weight of the blow knocked the hat off his head; the sting of it brought tears into his eyes, and out of the distance he heard a loud, bawling chorus of male laughter, and the squealing delight of children.

  He picked up the hat and resettled it on his head. The laughter continued from the house. Maria was twisting up another cigarette, her fingers seeing their own way about the business, while she gave her eyes to a calm survey of him. With half-dreamy amusement she smiled at him. Then, taking a pack of matches out of a pocket of her shirt, she scratched one and lighted the smoke. He picked the cigarette from between her lips.

  There was the same flash of her hand. He tried to parry it, but it was inescapably swift. As well try to ward the thrust of a snake’s head. The hard fingers whipped home across his mouth, bruising his lips. There was a taste of blood in his mouth; the yelling laughter grew louder still But suddenly he smiled at the girl.

  “All right,” he said. “Get on your horse.”

  She slipped from the fence. He mounted; the grey started to pitch, but the first grip of Derry’s long, iron-hard legs told the mustang that bucking would be a poor amusement this day. It relaxed to a dog-trot, and he rode straight off from the corral, heading away among the trees. Behind him, he was aware that the laughter had stopped. The blood was roaring in his ears like a waterfall. Or was it the noise of a wind pouring through the branches of the trees?

  He came out into the open, with the brightness of the grassy plain spread out before him in the softest of undulations. As he jogged on, he was aware that another horse was cantering behind him. One of the Cary men, perhaps, had followed to plague him. Then the head of a roan horse worked up beside the grey. Out of the tail of his eye he could see the girl and her smile.

  A harder beat of hoofs rushed at him. He turned his head not a whit, but he knew that trouble was speeding toward him on the back of that third mustang.

  9

  THE RIDE

  AS that unseen rider came up, something shot out from his hand. Like the force of a watching eye, Derry felt the danger and doubled over in his saddle. The noose of a rope slithered over his shoulder.

  He caught it out of the air and, giving it a half-hitch around the horn of his saddle, he made his mustang sit down against the coming jerk. The pony braced itself like a good cattle horse, and across the eyes of Derry raced a young man with the shoulders of an Atlas. The Cary youth was pulling vainly at the rope as he went by on a black horse. Then the lariat snapped taut, the strain taking the black horse from a sidelong angle, and it was jerked flat on the ground. The rider sailed on into the air, landed in a somersault, came staggering to his feet.

  He had a knife in his belt and a revolver in a holster worn well down his thigh. If he started using weapons, he would cross Derry off the map, and Derry knew it. So he hit the ground almost as soon as the Cary youth. He went in with a headlong rush.

  He had been right. The Colt that the fellow drew looked to Tom Derry as long as a rifle, and it flashed like a sword in his eyes. With all the weight of his charge behind the blow, Derry hammered a long, overhand punch on the very button of the jaw. The Cary youth did not fall backwards. He wavered, and then slumped on his face.

  Tom Derry took the black horse, because it was bigger and better than the grey. He recoiled the rope on the pommel of the saddle as he cantered forward again. Behind him, he knew that the fallen man was rising. He knew that the girl was coming, also, on her roan. He wondered, with a cold shuddering in his spinal marrow, if a bullet was about to crash into him. But he rode on without turning his head.

  And no gun sounded behind him!

  Presently the girl came up beside him. He would not look squarely at her, but he could see that she was smiling at distance in perfect content.

  They paused on the bank of a shallow creek, half crystal and half white riffle. They would have to cross that. But as they sat their horses side by side, Derry reached over and pulled from the pocket of the checked shirt her sack of tobacco and the wheat-straw papers. He stowed them in his own pocket, and then rode down to the edge of the water. He let the black have a swallow or two of the pure stream. They waded on across. The water came up almost to the stirrups; the force of the current made the horses slip and stagger. He saw the girl lean to dip a handkerchief in the water.

  When they had climbed the farther slope, she said: “There’s blood on your face, Tom.”

  He knew it was there.

  “It’s the blood you drew. No Cary man drew it,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” said Maria. With the wet handkerchief she rubbed away the dried blood carefully. “Your mouth’s a little swollen. I’m sorry, Tom.”

  But she kept smiling. She was not sorry. He was baffled by the odd mixture of submission and wolfish revolt in her.

  They rode on toward the wall of the valley, where he had left the money.

  All the time his heart was lifting, giddily. The sky was bluer than he had ever seen it. The clouds were a most dazzling white. He wanted to laugh aloud and look frankly at the girl, but every time he glanced at her, he saw the curiously brooding smile that he could not decipher.

  “Maria,” he said, “I don’t like your name.”

  She said nothing. She simply turned her half-smile on him and waited.

  “I’m calling you Mary from now on,” said Derry. “I like Molly better still. Make a choice between them.”

  “Molly,” said the girl.

  More than ever he wanted to laugh. He had to keep his teeth gripped hard together. A hawk slid on wide, transparent wings out of a treetop close beside them. He snatched out his revolver and fired. The big bird dodged away at redoubled speed. Another gun spoke from the hand of Molly, and the hawk shot down to earth and landed with a thud.

  The girl rode up to it. At a canter she passed the spot, leaned swiftly from the saddle, and brought up the dead bird by the legs. Its wings fanned out as in life as she cut back to the cantering black mustang. She offered the prize to Derry.

  “I don’t want it,” he told her.

  “Didn’t you have no want for it? Just foolishness?” she asked him.

  “You watch your way of speaking,” said Tom Derry. “You talk like a half-breed that’s never been in school.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “When I come back for you, one of these days, I hope you’ll be talking as straight as a book.”

  “All right.�
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  He frowned at her, and she began to laugh. The laughter went out.

  “You’re not taking me away with you?” she asked. “Not when you go?”

  “No. I’m coming back for you, one day. Will you be here?”

  She said nothing. Somehow, he felt that it would be both foolish and dangerous to repeat the question. She was as moody as spring weather, as changeable, and there was always danger in her.

  When they got to the wall of the valley, he found the crevice and the wallet in it As he lifted the money and pocketed it, he saw the girl watching him with savage eyes.

  “I dunno,” she said. “I might up and fill you full of lead and take all that kale and be rich. Why shouldn’t I do it?”

  “Because you’re just a fool girl,” said Derry. “That’s the only reason you don’t do it.”

  “I’ve chucked myself at your head, and you don’t give a rap for me,” she said.

  “How many times have you chucked yourself at a man?” he asked.

  “Only once before. There was a big hombre up here named Clonmel. He was the biggest thing I ever saw. He’d make two of you. He had looks, too. I tried to chuck myself at him, but his head was all full of a gal called Julie and there wasn’t room in his eyes to see a mug like me.”

  “You’re not a mug. You’re a fine-looking girl,” said Derry. “This Clonmel was a dummy.”

  “You’d never say that to his face.”

  “I’d say it to his face any day,” declared Derry.

  “Would you? He could throw the Carys around like nothing, so what would he do to you?”

  “The Carys are not so tough,” said Derry.

  “No? You’re one of the few tough ones, eh?”

  “I don’t say that. I aim to get along without trouble.”

  “Nope. You pride yourself on being hard. You’re hard enough to be a partner of Barry Christian. That’s how tough you are.”

  “Christian isn’t tough,” said Derry.

  “No, poison isn’t tough,” she answered.

  “He’s just a man that isn’t understood,” said Derry.

  “Say, what are you trying to give me?” asked Maria Cary. “Are you trying to talk to me about Barry Christian?”