by Max Brand
David shrugged his shoulders. “Do you remember,” he asked, “how he headed for that big passenger ship as it came down the East River?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Well, I’ve an idea that he’ll get Comanche before he’s through with the game. But what a rat he is, Andy. We fish him out of the river and save his hide. Then he turns around and tries to steal from you.”
They talked no more of Single Jack Deems, but they let the word go forth that the man who was attempting to get the wolf dog was the famous outlaw. And that was sufficient to surround Comanche with trebled attention.
In the meantime, the train was streaking steadily west and south. Finally they drew up at their last stop. The Apperleys no longer were looking through the window of the train at the brown desert, partially obscured by swirls of dust. They were standing under that same hot sky, pale and blue-white above them. Into the waiting buckboard they climbed. Their luggage was piled into another and larger wagon, and, with Comanche secured behind the seat, they started the drive toward the Apperley Ranch.
A bronzed cowpuncher cantered his pinto alongside.
“Is there any news worth telling, Joe?” asked Andrew Apperley.
“It depends,” returned the cowboy. “What kind of thing makes news?”
“Bad news first. What about Shodress?”
“Shodress? He’s been pretty quiet, except about three weeks ago. His boys lifted eleven hundred head off the Dingle place.”
“Eleven hundred head!”
“Sure. They came down in a mob. They killed Christy Barr and old Lewes. They shot up Lefty and Smith. And after that there was nobody even to trail ’em. They got clean away. A lot of us tried to pick up their trail. But they were gone. We couldn’t locate a hoof of the whole bunch except one old cow that had been cut off by lobos and part of her ate. Shodress is still riding high and pretty.”
The rancher listened to this story with an emotionless face. But his brother inquired anxiously: “Wait a moment, Andrew. Eleven hundred head at twenty dollars a head . . .”
“At thirty-five dollars a head, if you please.”
“Why, Andy, that’s close to forty thousand dollars snapped away . . .”
“Gone right up in smoke, of course.”
“And nothing done about it?”
“What can be done?”
“Why, you know that Shodress did it!”
“Don’t we. But how can we prove it? And if we bring the case to trial, it will have to be before Shodress’s pet judge. And it will be a jury of his hired men who listen to the case. We tried once or twice before. But the law has only one leg, out in this direction, and Shodress possesses the only crutch that enables it to walk.”
He spoke with a good humor and self-control that amazed his younger brother.
“How have you learned to stand this stuff?” asked David.
“Poker, Dave,” said the other, good-naturedly. “Poker taught me how to keep my face . . . and how to wait for my turn at the cards. One of these days I’ll run up a stacked deck and hand the Shodress gang a deal that will finish them off, I hope.”
“Comanche don’t look no thinner,” sang Joe the cowpuncher, pointing to the big bound and muzzled brute.
“He’s found a friend,” said Andrew Apperley.
“Hold on! You mean that?”
“Yes. Ever hear of Single Jack Deems?”
“No hombre by that name ever been heard of around here,” Joe replied.
“Well, you may hear of him before long,” said Andrew Apperley, and he added to his brother: “That’s fame, for you, Dave. There’s the most spectacular criminal in the country, and he isn’t known. I tell you, there’s a border line between the East and the West, and no news comes across it that’s of any importance out here.”
“Then what is of importance?”
“Why . . . how much water is in the tanks, in the summer? How much snow there is in the winter? What diseases are bothering the cows? Whether the screw worm is bad? Who’s been shooting up any of the towns, recently? What is the name of the buckaroo from Montana that rode the outlaw horse in the Jennings outfit, and are they giving a dance tomorrow night at the crossroads? That’s the sort of thing that makes up the news out here.”
“No papers? No magazines?”
“Oh, a few. But we don’t believe what we read in them. They’re all fiction, to us. If we believed them, we might grow lonely, and it’s better not to do that. Look ahead, Dave.”
“Well?”
“As we go over the top of that hill, sight down the valley.”
They swayed up the hill, and, as they lurched into a trot at the crest, David had a glimpse far off of a great green blur of ground, at the head of the valley and in the middle of that rolling greenery, fenced in with lines of splendid young trees, there was a wide-armed house, sprawling wide across the ground.
“That’s the Casa Apperley, Dave.”
Chapter Seven
The dining room opened on the patio at one end, and at the other on the front garden.
“So that the guests will never be hurt in a stampede,” Andrew Apperley explained with a smile.
There was almost room to believe in such an explanation, for that night, on each side of that long table fifteen men sat down to eat, and one man sat at each end. David, Andrew, and the foreman were the only members of that party who could be said to belong to the family. The rest were strangers. They spoke a cheerful word of greeting to Andrew, and they acknowledged the introduction to David with a silent glance of interest and criticism. But after that small ceremony, matters went ahead quite as though each man were sitting at his own board.
In the middle of the meal, while roast pork and fried potatoes and cabbage and flapjacks and hominy and buttermilk and coffee flowed by the hundredweight and the gallon, a thirty-third guest entered that room, a slow-moving, dark-faced man who hung a saddle and a bridle on one of the many pegs at the farther end of the room and then advanced with long strides. He stood with his back against the wall, his hands dropped on his hips.
“I was sort of pressed for time. I thought you wouldn’t mind if I dropped in?”
“Certainly not, Whaley. Did you put up your horse?”
“I left her at the corral.”
“I’ve finished my supper. Take my place, because the rest of the table is filled. I’ll see that your mare is fed and grained.”
“That’s kind of you, Apperley.”
David withdrew with his brother. “Some old friend of yours?” he asked, amazed at the nonchalant manner in which the stranger had taken the place of the host at the table.
“That’s Whaley, the murderer. He killed four men in Tucson not long ago. I didn’t know that he was in this part of the country.”
“Good heavens, Andy. Killed four! Are you afraid to tackle him?”
“Afraid? I have enough men on this place to blow twenty Whaleys to the devil and back again. But this man came in and hung his bridle and his saddle on the peg in my house. He asked for shelter and hospitality, Dave. And that request is irresistible in this part of the world. When he leaves the house, the moment he’s off my land I can follow him and stop him, if I wish to. And I can shoot him to death if I’m clever enough and fast enough. But once he passes my threshold, he has a claim on me to do everything that I can to make him comfortable . . . except that it’s not considered good form for an outlaw to ask for ammunition or a change of horses.”
David, fresh from the law courts of the East, turned and looked back at the noisy table, for the conversation had not been in the least depressed by the arrival of this famous criminal. Instead, the merriment seemed to have increased. Hard cider was going the rounds, borne in enormous pitchers by the busy waiters. And the joy at the board of Apperley increased every moment—with a murderer sitting at the head of the table!
So David went outdoors with his brother, with many of his former ideas of men and events in this world spinning around in his brai
n.
He watched Andrew while the latter, with the greatest care, took from the corral the sweating, trembling, down-headed mare from which the outlaw had just dismounted. Her flanks, David saw, were reddened by frequent visitations of the spur. Andrew conducted her to the stable, threw in a pitchfork full of choice hay, and placed grain in her manger. Then he called a stable boy and bade him rub down the mare while she ate. He returned to the open air with his brother.
“What do you gain by it?” asked David.
“I don’t know. Nothing, perhaps. Or again, if I’m ever an outlaw myself, I think that people will be kind to me. Or if that never happens, at least, I sleep sound at nights.”
“You’ve been doing this for years?”
“Yes, ever since I made my big stake and built this place.”
“And yet with all your liberality, you can’t win a chance at even-handed justice? That speaks hard for the men who you entertain here.”
“Hospitality is one thing, and a law court is another. These men don’t like the law. Many of them have good reasons . . . the very best of reasons . . . for not liking it. But at the same time, they give me great privileges. Decency is never wasted out here. I can ride through the wildest parts of the range without a gun, and never be in the slightest danger. I like these people, and I think they like me. That mutual liking is a sufficient reward to me for this money I spend in running a sort of free hotel, as you might call it. Shodress and his crew help themselves to my cattle when they can, and they know that I am biding my time to get them in trouble for it. Nevertheless, I can ride right into the town of Yeoville, where Shodress is lord and master, and be in no more danger, hardly, than I am at the present moment on my own place. I’ve worked hard to get a reputation that means as much as this, and it’s worth money and effort to maintain the good name. It makes it possible, for instance, for me to trust your own life in Yeoville, if you really are hardy enough to plan on going through with your idea. But if you were not my brother, Dave, you wouldn’t last five minutes in that place after the first time that you showed them your hand.”
To this speech David listened with the greatest attention. It was still another proof that he was in a world that was entirely new.
“Now tell me, frankly,” he said, “what I should do if I want to get on in this part of the States?”
“I can tell you in a nutshell. Forget manners . . . remember to be simple and honest. I don’t mean that you’re affected or conceited, now. But in our own part of the world, perhaps, it amounts to a little something to be an Apperley. We’re fairly rich . . . our family is rather old . . . we move among the best sort of people. All those things make most people we meet take us for granted. But out here you’ll find affairs are different. A man is exactly what he proves himself to be. To be rich and of an old family is rather against him, than otherwise. They will take nothing for granted. The first touch of conceit and manners makes their lips curl. Do you understand me? Be simple, straightforward, direct. Talk to every man as though he were your brother, but a brother without the slightest interest in your past greatness or your future success. If you can say something important or entertaining, then talk. Otherwise, shut up and stay silent until you can think of something that’s worth listening to. And remember that the fellow you’re talking to didn’t know your name five minutes before, and that he’ll forget it five minutes hence. The greatest thing that can be said about any man in the cattle country is that he’s square. That means honest, but it means more than honest. A great many square men, I have no doubt, may sometimes have played rather a shady game at poker, and may occasionally lift a cow or two for amusement or for beef. But they’re fellows who are known to stick by their friends in a pinch . . . they’re men who don’t gossip about men who can’t defend their own good names . . . they’re fellows who give you half of their last dollar and half of their last drink of whiskey not because you’re a friend to them, but because you’re in need. Now, Dave, I hope and pray that I’ve been able to make myself known in this section of the world as a square man, and, before you leave me, I want them to call you by the same name. And when one of these cowpunchers who works for me says that my brother is sure a square-shooter, then I’ll know that you’ve passed muster and received the accolade.”
“I’ll remember all this carefully,” said David quietly. “Why, Andy, this game is going to be harder than any tiger hunting, and just about as dangerous.” He added: “There’s Comanche yelling at the moon again, or is he calling for his pack?”
“He never had a pack. He’s always been a lone wolf.”
“Too infernally mean to get on with even a mate, I suppose?”
“He’s one of those queer mixtures that can’t find a place,” said the elder brother thoughtfully. “He’s too much of a wolf to get on with dogs, and too much of a dog to get on with wolves. He’s too wild to be tamed, and, perhaps, for all we know, he may be too tame to be thoroughly at home in the wilderness.”
“You’re making a problem out of him,” David said with a smile.
“Why not? I’ll tell you, Dave, that I never see a strong man gone wrong that I don’t feel what a cracking good man has gone to waste in the rub of things.”
“Tush,” said David, who was far the more hard-headed of the two. “There’s nothing to that. No matter what’s in a man, life brings it out, either good or bad, and so there’s no use in shedding tears over a wolf dog. A savage brute, mark you my words, that’ll never have anything to do with any man except to put teeth in him.”
“And yet, Dave, you yourself saw him act to Single Jack Deems like a mother to a child.”
David fell silent, but still he smiled, and then went off to the room that had been assigned to him. He completed his unpacking, while the rancher went to his office that stood with a door open upon a little private verandah. That open door was a sign that all the world could come freely in to talk business with Mister Andrew Apperley.
He was no sooner seated at his desk than a flood of work poured in upon him. He forgot time. The afternoon slipped into the evening. Coffee and sandwiches were brought to him at suppertime, which was always the rule unless he came out for the meal, and still into the night he went on with his work and picking up the many reins that had been dropped even by his efficient foreman. From the outside he heard a noise that made him lift his head from his work and listen in amazement, for it was the voice of the wolf, Comanche, not baying at the moon with the melancholy wolf yell, but first howling, then growling, and then breaking into a harsh barking.
If Andrew needed any positive proof as to the dog blood in this animal, that sound of barking was enough.
Chapter Eight
All the noises that a wolf makes are business-like and have a meaning. His growl, his snarl, his whimper, his howl, and all the ringing cries of the chase have definite meanings, and any wise old trapper can tell you exactly what words stand for most of them. But barking is usually a mere noise. It may have fury in it—it may have happiness—it may be mere noise for the sake of noise. Comanche never before had been guilty of such a folly.
Instantly other dogs around the place took up the chorus, far and near. They had been silent in awe while the terrible wolf voice rang through the air and shrilled at the moon. But now they took sudden heart. They barked savagely. The rancher could not help smiling as he listened.
He looked out the open doorway, and, after his head had been turned from his lamp, for a moment, he could see the dim stars sprinkled low along the edge of the sky, like gold dust sprinkling velvet of the darkest blue. The sharp taste of alkali was in the wind that puffed lazily through the entrance, and he closed his eyes and smiled again. For it was a good world, in the eyes of Andrew Apperley. He only hoped that his idle younger brother might find in this new region some sort of challenge that would make a man of him. Then he turned back to his work and kept busily at it until he felt that the distant eyes of the stars, behind him, were replaced by others, watching him coldly
, and closer at hand.
He raised his head and waited, and felt his blood turn cold. Then, whirling about in a sudden panic, he saw, just on the verge of the shadows at his door, where the weak lamplight met the black heart of the night, two eyes filled with green, terrible fire, watching him intently. After that, he distinguished the whole mighty form of Comanche.
He laid his hand upon the revolver in his holster, but he hesitated to draw it, for the instant that he made such a movement, he knew that the monster would fly at him. And though his bullet might plow straight through the body of the wolf dog, still, unless it reached the heart, Comanche would be at him for a few dying slashes. Andrew Apperley knew beforehand what even one of those white sword strokes could mean.
He grew tenser. He thought of calling out. But he felt that a call, or anything more than a move of the hand, would bring terrible danger flying at his throat.
So he endured through a few terrible seconds until a man’s voice said gently from the black of the night: “I came down to get Comanche. But I thought that perhaps I’d better see you first, about the price.”
Into the glimmering verge of the circle of light stepped the form of Single Jack.
“Deems! Deems!” exclaimed the rancher. “Come in, man!”
The criminal stepped into the doorway and out of it, with a movement swift as a boxer’s. Having removed himself from the glow that framed him in the doorway as an excellent target for any marksman, he took up his position against the wall, at an angle from which he could watch both the rancher and the open door, with all of the perils that might lurk beyond it.
Comanche, still snarling silently, with a lifted lip, slunk in with his master and planted himself in front of him, his mane bristling as he faced Apperley.
“Sit down,” said the rancher, “and tell me how in the name of all that is wonderful, you managed to get across the open range to this place. Didn’t you know that they were looking for you all up and down the line of the railroad?”