Man From Mustang

by Brand, Max

  He opened the lower door to the ash pan and pulled the pan out. As he had expected, several of the small bits of paper had dropped through. He picked them up. It was contemptible to read them, but the girl was no longer fit to be treated as a decent human being. She was a criminal, and she had committed her crime in the most detestable fashion, against the most helpless of men.

  So he stared at the few words which he found. Several of the scraps were covered with words written in the more smoothly flowing and smaller hand of a man. None were in her own writing. But of them all there was only one out of which he could make any sense. It contained the words:

  out fail in Kirby Cr

  That could be pieced out a little. “Without fail in Kirby Creek,” was perhaps the true sense of it. Suppose one went back a little and filled in: “Meet without fail in Kirby Creek.”

  If that referred to the past, it was nothing. If it referred to the future, it might be everything.

  “Maybe you better read it,” said Kenyon. He was holding out a letter toward Silver. Then he drew back his hand, murmuring: “I dunno, Silver. Seems to me maybe it wouldn’t be fair to her, hardly, if I was to show her letter to another man?”

  “Fair to — her?” asked Silver hoarsely.

  “Ah, but don’t be too hard on her,” said Kenyon. “She ain’t very old, Jim. And she ain’t very used to the world, and you’ll see that the world’s been hard on her, poor girl.”

  “Well,” said Silver, in a voice of iron, “do you want me to read the letter, or not?”

  “Not if you talk like that,” said Kenyon, drawing back his hand.

  Silver laughed, in a sort of despair.

  “Give me the letter,” he said. “I need to read it. I have to read it.”

  “Well,” said Kenyon, “I don’t think that she’d mind. Only this morning she said to me that I must always stick to you, because there was no other friend that I’d find like you, in the whole world.”

  “Did she say that?” asked Silver sharply.

  “She did, and she had her heart in her voice, and a kind of a pity and a kindness for me in her eyes. Jim. So I guess she wouldn’t mind you seeing what she wrote to me. Here it is.”

  Silver, taking the letter, for a moment could not look at it. His mental preoccupation was too great, as he pondered over what the girl had said. For she could not have been in doubt that he was her enemy, heartily and forever.

  He went back to the window and saw, first of all, pinned to the top sheet of the letter, a check made out to Edward Kenyon for ten thousand dollars and signed Edith Alton Kenyon.

  Ten thousand dollars!

  Some of his walls of reservations were knocked flat as he saw the sum. If she had done Kenyon harm, she had intended to do him good, also.

  The letter ran:

  Dear Ned: Tomorrow I expect that we shall be married, unless your friend Arizona Jim finds a way to prevent the ceremony; because he loves you, Ned, and he guessed from the first moment when he saw me that I was not honest.

  And I’m not. If you’re reading this letter, it is because I have married you, and left you, and this is the farewell message.

  I suppose that it’s human nature to wish to defend ourselves. That’s why I’m going to say that I don’t think another woman in the world could have stood out against the terrible necessity that was pressing on me. It was a question of life or death. Not my life or death, but that of another person, infinitely of more importance to the world than I am.

  I can’t even explain farther than this. I only knew that I had to be married, at once. I knew that I had to be married to a kind and honest man who might never forgive me for having wronged him, but who would not pursue me.

  That was why I knew I had found some one who could be of help to me when I found you. I thought of even telling you what I wanted and of asking you to marry me, and then forget me, and divorce me. But I couldn’t risk that. You might say no, and then there would be no time to find another man. I had to talk with you, persuade you into asking me to marry you, and then go through with the ceremony.

  Then it seemed to me that you were really growing fond of me. And my heart ached to think of it. But I’ve rushed through with everything, hoping that God would understand that I meant what is right, even if kind, honest, gentle Ned Kenyon would not be able to understand, ever.

  I’m leaving a check with you. It isn’t hush money. It’s simply that I want with all my heart to help you to the thing you wish to have — a small ranch and a chance to lead your chosen life. I would make it five or ten times as much, but I know that you would never take the money.

  Forgive me, forgive me.

  EDITH.

  Chapter 8

  Silver, as he finished the second reading of that letter, ground his teeth together in a helpless rage. There was a certain ring of honesty to the words. But he would believe nothing. Her troubles were unknown, distant. The grief of Ned Kenyon was a present and immediate thing. Behind her there was certainly a power of wealth. Ten thousand dollars -which she could have made fifty thousand, she said, if she had dreamed that Ned Kenyon would accept it! It argued piled treasures somewhere in her background.

  He gave back the letter to Kenyon.

  “What do you think, Jim?” asked Kenyon.

  “I think,” said Silver, “that you’re the straightest fellow I ever met. I think, Ned, that I could cut her heart out, and enjoy the job. As for the letter — man, it’s easy to write words! Dead easy, I tell you!”

  “You won’t believe that she’s honest?” asked Kenyon.

  “Never in the world,” said Silver. “She knew that you loved her. A woman can never go wrong about that. And still she went ahead.”

  “There was a matter of life or death,” argued Kenyon.

  “Bah!” said Silver. “You’d believe that a frog croaks in a marsh!”

  Kenyon shook his head, picked up the letter, detached the check, and put the letter itself into his pocket. The check he tore into small pieces, and threw into the stove.

  “She knew you’d do that, too,” said Silver bitterly. “She knew that you’d never take the dirty money. Ah, Ned, you’re going with me to find her, if we have to travel around the world. You understand? I’m staying with you until we find her, if it takes the rest of my life!”

  “Follow her?” said Kenyon, with a look of mild surprise. “No, no, Jim. I can’t follow her. She doesn’t want me, and I can’t bother her. I can’t go after her.”

  “Are you going to sit down and take your licking — from a pretty little female crook?” demanded Silver.

  Kenyon turned slowly toward him.

  “You’re bigger, stronger, and faster than I am, Jim. But if I ever hear you say a word against her again, I’m going to try to knock your head off! I’m sorry to say that, but it’s what I mean.”

  Silver groaned. “What are you going to do, then?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Kenyon. “Back to driving the stage, I guess, and take up where I left off. The boys will guy me a little, when this marriage is known. But I come from the part of the world where they grow good hickory, Jim!”

  He smiled, as he said this, and tears suddenly stung the eyes of Silver.

  He took the hand of Kenyon and gripped it hard.

  “You’re a better sort than I am,” said Silver. “I’m getting out of Mustang. One of these days I’ll see you again. I’m going on a trip and — so long, old-timer!”

  He walked out of the room quickly. When he reached the head of the stairs, he could hear the voice of Kenyon calling after him, but he ran down rapidly. His trail was outward. There were many things to fill his mind, from that man who had hired Buck, whose name began with “Nel,” to that light-stepping friend of the girl, and there was the girl herself, and that matter of life and death about which she was so wrought up.

  He paid his bill, went out to the stable, and saddled Parade. He was outside the barn before he heard the voice of Kenyon raised high in t
he distance, calling: “Arizona! Oh, Arizona!” But he put Parade into a hard gallop.

  He cut back into the main street of the village, after a short distance, and stopped in front of the blacksmith shop to make his inquiry, for blacksmiths, next to bartenders, know more news than any one else in the West.

  The blacksmith came out, busily tying a bandage about a bleeding finger.

  “Where’s Kirby Creek?” asked Silver.

  “Kirby Creek?” said the blacksmith. “Never heard of it.”

  “There’s a place of that name,” said Silver.

  “Kirby Creek? Never heard of it.”

  “Anything else that sounds like Kirby Cr — ”

  The blacksmith grunted with the profundity of his mental effort. Then he said: “There’s Kirby Crossing, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “I do want to know,” said Silver. “Where is it?”

  “Fifty mile back into the hills. Yeah, right back into the mountains. You take the northwest road, You follow along it for twenty mile, and then you come to a trail that branches off to the left and—”

  Silver listened to the directions, carefully. He repeated them after his informer and was pronounced letter-perfect. After that, he would never forget. The words would stick like glue in his memory.

  So he took the northwest road, keeping Parade along the edge of it where there was no dust and the footing was therefore firmer. Gradually the hills rolled up about him in greater and greater dimensions. He was climbing into the mountains when a rider with a pack mule tethered to the pommel of his saddle came down a cross trail toward the main way on which Silver was traveling.

  He was a very big man, with a shag of beard covering his face almost to the eyes. And one of those eyes was covered with a great black leather patch. The size of that horseman made the mustang he rode look hardly bigger than a goat.

  Silver, seeing that he was noticed, drew rein, and waited. He had reason to wait, he felt, unless he wanted a bullet through his back, for he had recognized “one-eyed Harry” Bench, from whom, not so very long before, he had taken two good riding horses by dint of not so much of the cash he paid down for them as of a bullet through the soft of One-eyed Harrys’ shoulder.

  So Silver waited at the crossing, in doubt.

  Those doubts were scattered in a moment, as big Harry Bench let out a whoop and spurred his mustang to a canter, the mule dangling back grimly on the end of the lead rope. Pulling his tough pony to a halt, One-eyed Harry reached far forward and caught the good right hand of Silver in a grip that threatened to break bones.

  “Silver!” he shouted. “Curse me black and white if I ever thought I’d lay an eye on you ag’in. How come, you old rattler, that you’re in this part of the range? I thought you was away far north, or away far south. What brings you around here?”

  “Just drifting, Harry; just drifting. How are things with you?”

  “Better’n ever before,” said Harry Bench. “The grouch I had at the world was all let out with the blood that run when you slid that chunk of lead through me, Silver. I done some hating of you, for a spell. But when the news got around to me, and I found out that it was Jim Silver himself that had nicked me -why, there ain’t no shame in being put down by Silver himself, is there? Not to my way of thinkin’. The day has been, since then, that gents have seen me stripped and wanted to know where I got the scar on the shoulder, and when they hear that it was a bullet out of Silver’s gun, I get a considerable pile of attention, Jim. And the boys, they most generally tell me that I’m lucky not to be wearin’ that scar right through the heart, and make no mistake about it. Where are you bound?”

  He poured out the words in a hearty torrent, and in a thundering voice that plainly had been rarely confined to the echoing walls of a room.

  “I’m bound for Kirby Crossing,” said Silver.

  “Kirby Crossing?” exclaimed the giant. “And what would a gent of your size be doing in a place like Kirby Crossing, I’d like to know?”

  “I’m a lot smaller than you are, Harry,” said Silver.

  “Across the shoulder, maybe, but not across the brain,” said the big man cheerfully. “It would sprain Kirby Crossing in the small of the back and both ankles, to have a gent of your size of name inside of it, man!”

  “I’m not wearing the same name,” answered Silver. “I’m a Mexican, when I go in there.”

  “Hold on!” cried One-eyed Harry. “You mean that you’re a bare-footed greaser in rags, like you were when I first seen you, Silver?”

  “That’s it. Something like that.”

  Harry grinned. “What’s the little game in the wind now?” he asked.

  “Would you help me?” asked Silver curiously.

  “Me? And why not? Sure I’d help you. And how?”

  “By being my boss,” said Silver, “and letting me drive that mule into town for you, as though it were my job.”

  The mirth of One-eyed Harry thundered through the air like a roaring cataract in a narrow valley. “Me with a servant?” he said. “Me with Silver for a servant? And why not? But hold on, Jim Silver!”

  “Well?” said Silver.

  “There’s another way of lookin’ at these things. What kind of hurricane are you goin’ to raise when you get into Kirby Crossing? And after you raise it, how you goin’ to ride it? Have I gotta sit on top of the same kind of a wind that you like?”

  Silver smiled. “I don’t know what’s ahead of me,” he declared.

  “Something like Barry Christian and his thugs?” asked One-eyed Harry.

  “I hope not.”

  “No,” said the big man, “it ain’t likely that you’ll ever crash into anything as tough as Barry Christian, if you live to be a thousand. They ain’t hung Barry yet. You know that?”

  The face of Silver darkened. “I know that,” he agreed.

  “And it doesn’t seem likely to me,” added One-eyed Harry Bench, “that they ever will hang him, because it don’t seem likely that the rope was ever braided or wove that’ll hang a neck like his. But about the things you’re after in Kirby Crossing — tell me, Jim Silver — ain’t it a blood trail?”

  “Why do you ask that?” said Silver, frowning.

  “Because,” answered Bench, “I’ve heard more’n one gent say that you never ride on no trail at all unless it’s a blood trail? Is that true?”

  “I hope not,” answered Silver. “I hope I’m not such a devil as that, Harry.”

  “Well,” answered Bench, “there’s a good many men have seen you at work here and there, and they all say that they never hear of a trail of yours that wasn’t spotted with red before the end of it. Is there a killing in your mind, in Kirby Crossing?”

  “There is!” said Silver, suddenly and grimly. “And you can count yourself out of the party, Harry. It may be more than you’ll want to swallow.”

  “A mean gent that you’re after?” said Bench wistfully.

  “A man whose face I wouldn’t know,” said Silver.

  “Not know,” cried Bench. He groaned with curiosity. Then he exclaimed: “Ah, well, I can’t live forever. I’m goin’ to be a fool for once more in my life. Count me in, Jim. I’ll stay as long as I can!”

  Chapter 9

  They expected to get into the town that night, but when they reached the place they found that Kirby Crossing was no crossing at all, for the bridge had gone down in the flood that was still roaring through the ravine. Disappointed teamsters were piling up on the two sides of the stream, waiting until the bridge could be built again, and helping earnestly in its construction. It would be another week before the flimsy structure could span the creek, though the big stone foundation for the central pier was still in place and undamaged, and though the biggest trees were being felled and dragged down to build the under-structure of the bridge.

  The only other way of getting over Kirby Creek was to go nearly another fifty miles up Kirby Run, and then come down it on the farther side of the stream, after reaching the fo
rd. However, that ford was only practical for men and horses, and active men and horses at that.

  Silver and big One-eyed Harry camped for the night opposite the little mining town, and then went upstream the next morning. It was nearly sunset of the third day before they got into the place. A strange outfit they were, and no one had a glance for anything other than One-eyed Harry. His picturesqueness took all glances away from the big-shouldered, long-shanked Mexican who trotted along bareheaded, a mop of shaggy black hair falling down over his forehead, as he led on a shambling mule and a chestnut stallion that looked fit for riding, but which carried nothing but a big pack saddle.

  The big horse had the legs and the look of speed, if one cared to examine closely; but it was covered with dust and had a very sad limp in a foreleg. Not a man in all of Kirby Crossing but would have laughed if he were told that this was that famous outlaw stallion, Parade, which had defied capture so long and caused such a wastage of money in the hunt for him that at last he became known as the hundred-thousand dollar horse. It was too incredible.

  The little group paused in Kirby Crossing only long enough to buy flour, bacon, a few canned goods, and get the latest papers. But the newspapers were far less important than the word that ran from lip to lip.

  The State penitentiary, hardly eighty miles away, had been the scene of a cunning escape. One David Holman, then lodged in the death house, had cut through the bars of his cell, gained the prison yard, and climbed over the guard wall by the aid of a ladder of silk equipped with fine aluminium grapples at one end. Finally he either had drowned in the lake in the middle of which the penitentiary stood, or else had swum the long distance to the shore on a night when a veritable hurricane was blowing. Only one thing was certain -that some of the guards must have been bribed to look the other way. But so far the investigation had convicted no one of guilt.

  It was One-eyed Harry who spent an hour or more buying the food and getting the gossip. Silver, in the meantime was slipping along securely in his Mexican disguise from group to group and from window to window, until at last he had peeked into every saloon, and examined the people in the dining room of the hotel, and in the restaurant. He was searching for a man with a peculiar birdlike alertness of head and manner, and a singular lightness of step. Or if the man could not be found he hoped to get a glimpse, perhaps, of Edith Alton Kenyon.