The Red Well

by Max Brand

The big men grouped closely around Jimmy, staring down at him with curious eyes.

  “He’s a tough mug, all right,” agreed one. “What makes you think that we ain’t gonna finish you off, Jimmy? After all the hell you been tryin’ to raise for us, what makes you think that we won’t give you some hell of our own?”

  “Because Saturday morning is coming,” answered Jimmy, “and the paper will print the news about the murder of Charlie Denham. There’s only one way to stop it, and that’s to make a deal with me.”

  “You hear him talk?” demanded Harry. “Boys, it sort of riles me when I look at him. Jones, your jabbering won’t save you. You’re a dead man, old son.”

  “Am I?” said Jimmy Jones. “I don’t think so. Besides, you’re not the only judge. There are twelve of you, and every one of them has as good a right as you, Harry, to cast a vote, because every one of them has as much right to the Burwell mine as you have.”

  “As much of a right . . . as I have? Are you crazy?” asked Harry.

  A stir passed through the group. “What sort of a claim have we got on the mine, Jones?” asked one.

  “Yeah, let’s hear him explain that,” said Harry.

  “Why, Harry,” said Jimmy Jones, “you know that I’m telling them the truth. You and your father did a murder to get the mine, and now these fellows are doing another murder and holding me up. That gives them an equal claim on the mine. You shouldn’t be a hog, Harry.”

  Harry Burwell, grunting with rage, made a lunge at his prisoner, but several of his clan intervened.

  “Leave him be for a minute, Harry, will you?” asked one. “Let’s see if there ain’t something in what he says.”

  “Of course there’s something in what I say. It’s only justice, and that’s what makes Harry so hot.”

  “I’m going to bash your face in, Jones!” shouted Harry.

  Jimmy looked away through the moonlight and saw the two trailers approaching the woods where Joe Parson might still be waiting.

  “The fact is,” said Jimmy Jones, “that the only honest way for you to treat these men of yours is to make a regular company and give them all a share in the mine. That’s why they have a right to cast equal votes about what’s to be done with me.”

  “I’ll equal them . . . I’ll show them . . .,” began Harry Burwell.

  “The kid talks good sense,” said one of the clan. “But, outside of that, suppose you do polish him off tonight, won’t the paper publish everything on Saturday?”

  “If the paper knew everything, why would Jones come up here and pay five hundred dollars to Wharton?” demanded Harry.

  There was obvious point to this remark.

  “The fact is,” said Jimmy Jones, “that I just wanted to get double testimony, Harry. But the Saturday paper will drive every Burwell out of this country . . . as fast as your fine sheriff had to run yesterday.”

  “That paper’ll never be published!” exclaimed Harry. “Now that Jones is out of the way, boys, a couple of sticks of dynamite will shut the mouth of his printing press.”

  Here there was a sudden outbreak of shooting from the direction of the woods, and then came the ringing, dying hoof beats of a horse that raced away at full speed.

  VIII

  Joe Parson, when he heard the uproar of guns all around his friend, and when he saw the fall of the two men and the spitting fire from the guns of Jimmy Jones, was on the verge of rushing his horse down the slope to get into the battle. But he remembered in time that he was a lucky man to hit as much as the side of a barn with a gun. He could not help Jimmy by dying beside him, but he might be able to do him some other service.

  He thought of rushing his horse at once for the town, but surely they would have Jimmy Jones dead and done for if he waited that long. There might be some unknown chance of aiding Jimmy if he remained nearby. It was a little after this that Parson saw the two men back-trailing toward the wood that sheltered him. It was plainly time, now, to move. So he pulled his horse about and shifted away toward the farther side of the little grove. He had not yet reached the open; the moon was thrusting bright fingers toward him from the outer edge of the trees, and then a voice called behind him, followed immediately by a rifle shot.

  Joe Parson’s horse burst into a gallop. More shots followed, and the mustang raced out of the trees and swiftly away on the trail toward the town of Jasper. Parson himself did not grasp the reins. Instead, he swayed in the saddle, helpless as a sack loosely filled with grain and poorly tied in place. For a bullet had ripped in through the shoulder blade of Joe and, angling upward, had torn its way out through the tough muscles of the shoulder, sliding down the bone. The impact had been so heavy above the spinal column that Parson was stunned. There remained some blind wit in his hands, only, and they clung to the pommel of the saddle as the horse rushed away. Every moment he seemed about to fall, and yet he kept his place.

  The bullet had struck no vital spot, but blood was gushing from the wound. That was why, when the brain of Parson rallied a little, another wave of darkness began to descend upon him. He was losing blood and strength with a frightful speed. He needed a doctor, but his thought was not of his own need. It was of his partner, left alone in the hands of killers.

  What could he do? If he roused the town and brought out a flood of rescuers, the noise they made in coming—even if they arrived before Jimmy Jones had been done to death—would warn the killers, and they would dispose of Jimmy quickly before they made off to save their own skins. Who could he find, then, with power to stop the course of the Burwells?

  He thought, then, of the blue eyes of Ruth Denham. She would have power over Harry Burwell if any human being had it. And that was why, when Parson got to the town, he drove his horse straight for the Denham home. He knew where the house was, well enough, and yet on this night neither starlight nor moonlight seemed to be reaching his eyes. He was traveling through a mist that made the lighted windows he passed seem blurred over by massed pencilings of rain.

  When he reached the Denham house, at last, there were a number of young people sitting on the front porch. He could hear the foolish bubble and flow of their voices, and he wondered how there could be so much excess vitality in the world.

  When he got off his horse, he slid to his knees and heard a voice call out: “Let him alone! Somebody just boiled, that’s all.”

  But then, as he struggled vainly to regain his feet, he heard rapid footfalls coming toward him, and the voice of a girl exclaiming: “I don’t think it’s that . . . !” Then the girl was bending over him, exclaiming in startled words.

  “Are you Ruth Denham?” he asked with his last strength.

  “Yes. Billy . . . Pat . . . get Doctor Lewis . . . bring me . . .”

  “Jimmy Jones!” he gasped. Then he fell on his face.

  She had him turned over with her strong young hands in a moment.

  “What about Jimmy Jones?” she was shrieking. “What about Jimmy?”

  He never knew that he said the words out of the darkness of his mind, but they came out somehow. “Jimmy . . . partner . . . Burwell . . . murder . . .” Then he went out like a doused light.

  She had nothing else to go on. Jimmy . . . partner . . . Burwell . . .

  murder . . . Jimmy Jones was the partner of this wounded man who might die; she understood that. And if Jimmy were in the hands of the Burwells, murder might, indeed, take place. Unless Harry were there to save him. Harry had explained all about that other night. It had simply been to throw a salutary scare into the vigorous new editor of the Jasper Journal. They had never intended to lynch him. Of course not! And they had simply allowed him to get away, laughing at his frantic haste down the hillside.

  So if Harry were along, all would be well. But the rest of those Burwells were a clan so brutally violent that they might be capable of anything. Sometimes her blood chilled a little when she thought of her engagement to Harry himself. Suppose, after all, that the blood proved too strong for his excellent self-control one day
? But then she remembered that her father, dying, had commended her to the care of the young giant. Her father, as Harry heroically bore the dying man toward help.

  She never could get that picture out of her mind—the darkness, the big man striding swiftly through it, crushed and staggered by his burden but still enduring. She never had been able to see Harry Burwell clearly. It was always, simply, the image of his heroism.

  Jimmy Jones was in the hands of the Burwells—and no one could tell what might happen, then. What to do? Give the alarm? No, for a score of noisy horsemen would go roaring out and give warning long before they were near enough to intervene between Jimmy Jones and danger.

  Well, if Jimmy Jones were facing death, he would do it with a laugh, she was sure. She never had seen another man like him. She never could tell when he was serious and when he was about to smile. Only once or twice he had looked at her with such a sudden gravity that it seemed to her she was seeing his soul. Perhaps as no human being ever had seen it before. He had come laughing into the town of Jasper; he had raised a laughing devil all through the place, also. And now were they murdering him?

  She ran back past her house, without a word to her guests, and in the little barn behind the bit of pasture she got her favorite bay mare and saddled in haste. She should have remained for farewells, but if she said good bye and dashed away on a horse, there would be no end of comment. They would try to detain her. Besides, she could not even say where she was apt to find Jimmy Jones. First of all, she would try the Burwell house where Harry lived, near the mine.

  It was three miles, and she flew the good bay mare every step of the way until she was beating at the kitchen door and old Mrs. Cracken, the cook, came with her hands greasy-bright from the dish water and peered up through the screen door.

  “Well, Ruth Denham!” cried Mrs. Cracken. “And what are you doing here to . . . ?”

  “Where’s Harry?” exclaimed the girl. “I’ve got to find Harry!”

  “You have to find Harry? What’s the matter? Come in and have a cup of good hot coffee and a snack and . . .”

  “Missus Cracken, you’ll drive me crazy. Tell me where to find Harry.”

  “I don’t know, child. I’m sorry, but I don’t know. Where the rest of ’em are I don’t know, neither.”

  Ruth Denham turned away from the house with a sudden pull at the bridle reins. The hills rolled up before her as vast as the clouds of heaven and as lonely. Armies might be hidden within the range of her sweeping eye, and she never able to find them, let alone discover a single group of people.

  Mrs. Cracken stepped out behind her. “What is it, Ruth?” she begged. “What’s wrong that only Harry can set right?”

  Now, like an answer, Ruth Denham heard a faint pop-pop out of the far distance. It might have been almost anything—a cowpuncher riding up the old trail through Taylor Gulch and taking a crack at something with a revolver; a prospector with hunger under his ribs and a chance shot at a rabbit; a pair of boys romantically out hunting by night. It might have been anything, almost, but the sound of the gun meant to Ruth Denham an answer, and she dashed straight for the source of the sound.

  Sound traveled far up the valley. She had gone a considerable distance before she saw the mouth of Taylor Gulch expanding, its throat bristling with great rocks and trees, silvered by the moon.

  If there were a crowd, it was best to go on with some caution. With care, therefore, she went, slowing her horse to a dog-trot until she saw, shadowy and small far before her, the figures of a number of men. At that, she dropped from the saddle and went on, leading the bay mare, which came somewhat reluctantly, throwing up its head as though the good horse suspected danger in the offing.

  She could come closer undiscovered, stealing from tree to tree and from boulder to boulder; so she came so near that the murmur of the voices dissolved into occasional words, and then into speech that she could follow. It was the loud, ringing voice of Harry Burwell that she heard. His accent she had always thought of as one of command; now she found it almost unrecognizable with unrestrained brutality.

  “Tie him up first, and we’ll let him talk afterward. He’s talked too damned much already.”

  That was Harry Burwell, and the answer came in the pleasant, cheerful voice of Jimmy Jones, saying: “Good old Harry, he hasn’t had his drink of blood today, and his stomach is empty. He’s got to sing his song like a mosquito and have his blood.”

  She peered around a big boulder and found herself on the very edge of such a scene as she had never dreamed of witnessing.

  IX

  The moon made everything perfectly clear, perfectly unreal. Harry Burwell and a dozen of his clan were tying Jimmy Jones to the straight, narrow trunk of a pine tree. They tied him in the simplest and most secure of all ways, merely drawing his arms straight back and tying the wrists together behind the trunk of the tree. His feet were free. One twist of rope was holding him. On the ground, stretched out flat, lay a gaunt figure of a man groaning with every breath he drew.

  “Shut up, Vinnie,” said one of the Burwells. “You know that you ain’t hurt so bad as all of that. The bullet ain’t gone through you at all. It’s only scraped along your dog-gone’ ribs and maybe knocked a few splinters loose.”

  “It ain’t me that I’m sorrowing over,” said Vinnie. “It’s that poor young gent, there. Boys, you oughta give him a better chance.”

  “Stop sorrowin’ about him and do some thinkin’ about yourself, you’d better,” said Burwell. “We ain’t through with you yet.”

  Another man said: “You ain’t figured it out all the way through, Harry. Even if we got him planted underground, his paper will be published on Saturday just the same.”

  That was Sigmund Burwell, the father of Harry, who had just spoken. She knew him by the rounded shoulders and the ragged, long beard that he wore. It always had been terrible to her to realize that at some time she would have to call him “father” in her home.

  Harry Burwell answered: “You talk crazy, all of you. You’re forgetting that the only thing that makes it hard to get at the office of the Jasper Journal is this same fellow we’re getting rid of now. With Jimmy Jones out of the way, we can plant as much dynamite as we want in the building and blow it and its whole damned story into the sky. There won’t be any printing of that story, because there won’t be any Jasper Journal to print it in.”

  “That sounds to me,” said one of the Burwells, and then laughed.

  “Do any of you fellows know the whole story?” asked Jimmy Jones. “I mean, any of you except Harry and Sigmund, here? No, none of you do. But why don’t you learn it? There’s Vinnie Wharton there . . . he can tell you what happened to Charlie Denham. And when you know that, you’ll all be equal partners of Sigmund and Harry, instead of being their hired men.”

  There was instantly a loud exclamation of approval of this idea. Sigmund began to shout angrily. Big Harry Burwell actually pulled a gun and tried to shoot Vinnie Wharton as he lay helplessly on the ground, holding up his vain hands to ward off the bullets. But the others, seizing Harry’s gun, forced him, cursing wildly, to give up his intention.

  “Harry’ll murder me if I talk!” wailed Vinnie Wharton.

  “We’ll murder you if you don’t,” said one of the Burwells.

  The girl, slipping to one knee, laid her face against the cold of the rock. Already she was guessing the truth, and it stunned her brain.

  “It was like this,” said Vinnie Wharton. “Charlie Denham hired me to go along as cook. He let it be known that he was gonna go off on a hunting trip, but really it was because he wanted to do some prospecting. He had a bit of ore, and he knew where that ore came from, he thought. But he wanted to make sure. There’d be some hard work to do, so he hired Sigmund Burwell and Harry to go along.”

  “You lie!” roared Harry. “We went along as regular partners. You flannel-mouthed old fool, I’m going to burn you alive!”

  “Harry,” said Vinnie Wharton with a touch of dignity
, “the fact is that, now that I’ve started to tell the thing, I’m gonna tell the whole truth, straight out.”

  “It’s a plot! It’s an outrage!” yelled Sigmund Burwell.

  But the others of the clan listened hungrily, and Vinnie Wharton went on.

  “I’ll prove that Sig and Harry weren’t partners. It was let out that they were just going along to enjoy the hunting. But why would hunters carry so much powder and fuse? Why would they have so many drills and double jacks? I’m asking you that. No, sir, that was a regular trip to prospect, and Denham paid for every damned thing that was taken along, except the mules. He only hired those mules.”

  “You lie!” called Harry. “I contributed those mules.”

  “Don’t you tell me that I lie,” said Vinnie Wharton. “Dog-gone me, I’m breathing easier already just from starting to tell the truth. I say that I seen Denham count out the money and put it in your hands. Your own hands, Harry Burwell. And I know that he paid for everything else, and he was to pay three dollars a day to each of the three of us so long as the work lasted. And dog-gone’ glad you were to get that much money. You thought that Denham was kind of a fool to pay that much cash. Anyway, it was Denham that had the idea where the lode could be found, and on the second day of working around through the hills, you know that he found it. The two of you . . . and me was lolling under the shade after lunch time, and Denham was out ahead of us, when all at once we heard a shouting and we picked up and hurried to him. There he was standing, waving both his arms over his head and singing out. And he laughed with happiness, and told us that every man jack of us would get five thousand dollars as a bonus, if the mine turned out as good as he thought it would. Because there wasn’t any need, much, to use the tools we’d brought along and open up the vein. It was a regular mother lode. Well, and there stood Charlie Denham, laughing, and not knowing that what he’d found wasn’t a gold mine at all, but just his death. Because when that night came . . .”

  “Vinnie, you fool! You fool!” screamed old Sigmund Burwell. “If you tell that, I’m gonna have the chokin’ of you with my own hands.”