The Red Well

by Max Brand

  The sheriff blinked several times and rubbed the end of his long nose to a brighter red. “Why, Georgia,” he said, “it looks to me like you would’ve got enough satisfaction out of what’s happened already. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth . . . most folks would be satisfied when they got that.”

  She raised her head like a young Amazon, full of battle. “Suppose a whole regiment of scoundrels and murderers were wiped out . . . would they make up for the death of such a man as my father? Oh, Danny,” she cried to him, “I don’t wear black, and I don’t go about in tears, but I’ll never rest until I’ve found the second man and made him suffer!”

  The sheriff looked at the floor. The sheriff’s wife looked up to the ceiling. Neither of them dared to cast so much as a glance at Garlan. And he watched the girl curiously, steadily with a growing coldness in his heart, as he understood that she meant all that she had said.

  “But,” she added suddenly, “that isn’t what I’ve come to talk to you about, Danny. I want to know if you can tell me where to find an honest man to live out on the ranch among the thieves and the rustlers there?”

  “But what good would one man do, Georgia?” asked the sheriff. “They’re a rough lot, those cowpunchers that you got out there. They’d be apt to eat any one man, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “They would, of course. I gotta have a man that’s a man, Danny. One that’ll go sashayin’ out into that bunkhouse and range up and down it, and kick Doc Ruhlan out the doors, and make the rest of them behave. I want a man that can be the boss of the show. Where can I find a man like that?”

  The eyes of Tilly grew dim with thought.

  “You were that sort of a fellow,” Georgia continued, nodding at the sheriff. “You are now, too. But you can’t give up your work here to tackle such a job for me.”

  “You want a fellow that’ll burn ’em to a black crisp, don’t you?” asked Tilly.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well,” he said at last, “as long as he won’t speak up and make the offer, I gotta offer him to you myself. There’s the man for you. Gannon, stand up and make a pretty bow to the lady.”

  Garlan had indeed risen with the shock of that surprise, and the girl also had started from her chair. She walked across to Garlan in the manner of an aggressive boy looking for trouble in the schoolyard. She stood before him and looked him coolly in the eye, and then swept him up and down, insolently.

  “Do you mean it, Danny?” she asked.

  “Where’d you learn your manners, Georgia?” asked the sheriff. “Don’t be so dog-gone’ sassy, or I’ll never be able to get him to go out to the ranch.”

  “Would you go?” she asked Jerry Garlan, still standing close to him, frowning as she searched his face, and searched in vain for any token of ferocity or cold courage. “Would you go out there,” she repeated, “and try to handle a dozen ruffians for me?”

  “I never could manage it,” said Garlan. “Of course I never could. The sheriff is kind to offer me for such a place. But I couldn’t tackle such a job.”

  She turned her back on him, very rudely indeed, and went back to Daniel Tilly. “You see how it is,” she said scornfully.

  The sheriff blinked at her; he blinked at Jerry Garlan, and then shook his head. “Did you ask him why he can’t tackle a job like that?” suggested Tilly.

  “Is there any need?” asked Georgia haughtily.

  “Seems to stand out like a plain reason, right enough,” admitted the sheriff. “But just ask the question, will you?”

  “Can you tell me why you wouldn’t like to tackle the job, Mister Gannon?” said the girl.

  “You see,” explained Garlan, growing red as he saw the implication in her voice, “you see, I wouldn’t know what to do on a ranch. I’ve never handled a rope. I’m not a very expert rider. I know nothing about cows or calves. So how could I fit into a number of working men like that?”

  She began to answer with a scornful lift of her lip. But then she changed her mind again. She said roughly to the sheriff: “Is that right?”

  “Ask him yourself,” said the sheriff with a grumble. “I ain’t gonna help you with him no further. I’ve showed you a man . . . you treat him like a polecat. You’d oughta be ashamed of yourself, Georgia.”

  “Perhaps I should,” she said. “Of course I’m ashamed if I’ve been rude.” She went back to Garlan. “Have I been impolite?” she asked him directly.

  “Enough to take the varnish off of this here table,” commented the sheriff.

  “Danny, be still,” said the girl. She went on to Garlan: “You understand? I’ve been going almost mad. I can’t get anyone to handle those scoundrels. If . . . if . . . if I were a man, I’d almost tackle them myself. With a whip! I’d slash them into shape!” She made a fierce gesture as though she were swinging the lash upon human flesh at that moment.

  “I’m not insulted,” said Garlan. “But . . .” He looked woefully around the room; there was no help from anyone.

  The sheriff even said tersely: “You said that you wanted to get a job . . . any sort of a job. Well, here’s your chance. Will you take it or turn it down?”

  “You know what the work would be,” broke in the girl. “Doc Ruhlan runs the whole crew of them with a hand of iron. What can I do? Fire Ruhlan? He’d take away every one of the men with him, and, as they went, they’d sweep the cows along. In two days that range would be as bare as the flat of my hand.” She stamped in a passion. “And as it is,” she said, “they take a little pity on me because I’m a woman. They simply run off the cows in small groups, according as they need money and . . .” Her fury mastered her. She struck her clenched hands together. “Well,” she said, “there you are. Would you try such a thing as that? Would you try to beat them all? Why, you would have to burn among them like a fire among sticks.”

  From the fiery picture of danger and battle that she painted for him, Jerry Garlan drew back a little and stared above her head, as though already he saw confusion and disaster forming in the air.

  “I don’t know.” He sighed.

  “Does it frighten you just to think of it?” asked the girl, pressing him hard.

  “It frightens me terribly,” admitted Garlan. “It makes me shake . . . and I . . . er . . . I don’t want to do that work . . . thank you very much.”

  “That settles it,” said the girl. But she turned slowly away as though reluctant to leave even this faint hope that the sheriff had proffered to her. “Well,” she said, “if you can’t make any other suggestions, I’ll have to be starting back.”

  “This time of night?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Not alone, Georgia?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “I carry a chaperon, I guess.”

  “Of course you do,” said the sheriff, “but even at that, Georgia. Why . . .” He stopped.

  “Good night,” said Georgia.

  She stood at the door and flashed her last glance at Jerry Garlan. “Good night, Mister Gannon.”

  And then she went hurrying through and out into the night.

  The sheriff pointed a long, clumsy forefinger at Garlan. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “there ain’t any cause for you to give yourself a cheer. You turned down the best opening that any man ever had in this here young world.”

  “A fine chance of being shot in the back,” Garlan broke out. “Did you hear what she said? She wants justice on me.”

  “She’s had justice on you,” said the sheriff. “And she’ll see that, later on.”

  Garlan writhed in his chair, into which he had sunk.

  “Sassy, ain’t she?” murmured the sheriff.

  “What you tryin’ to do, Danny?” exclaimed Mrs. Tilly. “Leave the boy alone, will you? Can’t you see that he’s like a worm on a hook?”

  “What way?” asked the sheriff.

  “I’ll have to drift along,” said young Garlan. He stood up, suddenly restless, his eyes flashing from side to side.
/>   “Hey, hold on,” began the sheriff.

  “Aw, let him alone,” said the wife.

  So Garlan shook hands with them both, and slipped away.

  “Now, why did you let him go?” complained Tilly.

  “Because I seen what he wanted to do,” said Mrs. Tilly, nodding her head wisely.

  “And what was it that you seen that he wanted to do, then?” demanded the sheriff.

  “He wanted to get away and foller the girl, of course. I told you that he was like a lively fish on a hook,” she said.

  X

  In fact, when he was once through the door of the house, Garlan went down the front steps at a bound and in another leap reached the garden gate. Not pausing to unlatch and swing it open, he cleared it in his stride.

  From the sidewalk, looking down the street, he saw a rider dwindling beneath the stars. He took his own horse from the hitching rack. It was running already as he dropped into the saddle, and then he straightened it after the diminishing figure.

  This presently disappeared, turning to the left, and Garlan, with a beating heart, spurred on to that point.

  He was enormously relieved to see an open road winding before him, leading from the one street of the town straight out into the country. There was more than starlight in the sky. In the east the haze of moonrise was beginning, and beneath this growing radiance the road loomed white between the bordering trees.

  He could see the girl plainly as she mounted the first hill, and so he swerved his pony down the road in pursuit.

  When he topped the first hill, she was lost to him. No, there he saw her cantering through the shadows of the hollow beneath, and he drove straight down at her.

  Up the farther slope, and now he had good light to see her, for the moon was up, shouldering a cloud aside, and streaming a silver brightness across the world.

  On the knoll beyond, she drew rein and let the flying hoofs approach her. So Garlan came beside her, sliding his horse to a stop. The dust he raised billowed before them, pale in the moonshine. Garlan raised his hat.

  “You’re Gannon?” she asked him. “What do you want?”

  Her terseness angered him. He said with equal shortness: “I want the job.”

  “You want the job?” She swung her horse about. She sat her saddle close to him, facing him as she had done in the room, very near, and studying him by moonlight in the same aggressive, half-bullying manner. “You want the job,” she repeated. “What would you do with it, once you had it?”

  “Are you trying to talk me down, or do you want me to work for you?” he asked her bluntly.

  “Humph,” muttered Georgia Dixon as she pulled her horse back to a slightly greater distance. “They’re a pack of man-eaters,” she told him.

  “But perhaps they’ll find it hard to get their teeth in me,” said Garlan.

  “You’ve got a lot of confidence,” replied Georgia Dixon.

  “I’m not boasting. I don’t say that I can turn the trick. At least I know they can’t bribe me . . . I know that they can’t bully me.”

  “Do you know that?” she asked, her voice still cold with doubt.

  “I know that,” he said with assurance.

  “Well,” said the girl, “they’ll try to run you out. You don’t look very hard to me. You’ll look like pie to them.”

  “Will I?” said Garlan.

  “You ever hear of Doc Ruhlan?”

  “I heard you speak about him tonight.”

  “Doc’s a bad one.”

  “Well?”

  “I mean, he’s as big as a tower, and he’s all made of steel. D’you understand?”

  “I understand. Towers fall, if there’s an earthquake, and the bigger the tower, the farther from its head to the ground, as you may have heard.”

  “I wonder,” said Georgia. “Will you really tackle this work for me?”

  “I’m offering myself.”

  She waited, still staring at him. And then she sighed. “I don’t want to steal anybody’s boy and throw him into the fire,” she declared.

  “I’m by myself,” answered Garlan. “Will that do for you?”

  “That’s a good deal better,” she answered. “What sort of a stake will you work for?”

  “I don’t know. Ordinary wages, I suppose, will do for me, pretty well.

  “You mean you’ll take this on for the same rates as punching cows?”

  “I’ll be no good with the cows,” he reminded her.

  “You’ve been reading books,” she said. “A man doesn’t have to be a whirlwind of a genius to ride range. We need hands . . . we don’t need philosophers. A couple of heady old ’punchers can do the thinking for a whole outfit. Where do you come from?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Are you straight?”

  “I can’t answer that, either. You’ll have to take me as you find me, or else not at all.”

  “That’s frank enough,” said she. “Well, we might as well ride on home.”

  He fell in beside her. They began to jog across the hills, which waved up and down before them. Uphill and down the horses trotted; in the levels between, they stepped regularly into a canter. The night turned colder. The thin, sharp mountain air was blowing toward them from the upper snows, and Garlan found himself shivering, but the girl, in spite of the open throat of her blouse, seemed totally undisturbed. He took it that her mind was too filled with mental anxieties to permit her to waste energy upon such small things as weather.

  They reached a long upgrade that lasted through two miles. The horses had to walk most of the way.

  “Doc Ruhlan gallops all the way home from town,” she observed as they went on to the summit.

  “He rides good horses, then,” said Garlan.

  “He does.”

  “And kills them, too,” suggested Garlan.

  “He does that, also.”

  “Who pays for them?”

  “He’s the foreman,” said the girl bitterly.

  “The foreman,” murmured Garlan. They neared the summit.

  “You’ve done a lot of shooting? You’re pretty accurate, of course?” she asked.

  “I’m not good at long range,” he replied with perfect frankness.

  “Not good! Not with a rifle?”

  “I couldn’t hit that mountain with a rifle.”

  “What do you expect to do out here, if you’re crowded?” she asked.

  “I expect to have it out at close range.”

  “You don’t mean with a whole bunkhouse crowded with men,” she said.

  “I don’t know what I mean,” said Garlan. “Except that I won’t back down. I’ve promised you that.”

  She pulled her horse a little closer to him. “You’re doing this for the fun of it, I see,” she said. “I might have known that the sheriff would send me somebody like that, at last.”

  “Not altogether for the fun,” answered Garlan.

  “No?”

  “Partly it’s because I have to lie low, for a time,” he told her. “And partly because . . .”

  “Well?” she said.

  “Oh, nothing,” answered Garlan.

  She was just between him and the moon. She wore its broad, golden orb like a halo that tinted her face, her throat. It gave radiance and life to the hair that fluffed beneath the brim of her hat likewise. And Garlan’s heart swelled, and gave one great beat, like the striking of a gong. For something like the sound of music ran tingling through his whole body.

  “Well I don’t mind mysteries,” said the girl. “I rather like ’em, in fact. And there’s the ranch, yonder.”

  They had reached the summit of the long climb. Garlan found that he was looking into a great natural amphitheater. Northeast, east, south, and southwest it was nearly shut in with long rows of hills, rising one above the other. Such a ranging of seats as the gods might come to crouch on and watch some monstrous spectacle. Only to the north there was a defile through which they were now riding. Before them, and i
n what could be called the orchestra of the theater, was a big open plain that seemed to have hardly a line of rise along all its surface. It was spotted with big trees, hither and yon, however, and in the center a mass of trees with roofs breaking through them appeared, glistening under the light of the moon.

  “That’s the ranch,” said the girl. “That’s the place that my father made. You know about John Dixon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, he came out here when he was beaten in the East. Crooks had beaten him there. Wall Street. You understand? He came out here. He was a wreck. He had a young wife. And his wife had a baby girl with her. The wife died of a broken heart when she saw this big, gloomy, naked country. There weren’t so many trees in the valley then, you see.

  “John Dixon had to be rancher, farmer, cowboy, dairy hand, cook, laundress, and baby’s nurse. He did all those things. He was still doing them when I came to the age of memory. But he was beginning to grow. He made himself learn the business. He crowded this big ranch with cows. He built a fine house, Spanish sort of a thing, you’ll see. And then he branched out into banking. He’s called Dixon, the banker. But the bank was just an aside with him. The ranch was what he loved, and that was what he lived for. Well, he’s dead now. And I’m going to live for the ranch now . . . or else I’ll die for it.”

  XI

  They rode down into the valley. For three miles they journeyed over a course as straight as a ruled line. The floor of the amphitheater was as flat as though specially leveled, or else very gently rolling.

  “Couldn’t this land be farmed?” asked Garlan.

  “Bah!” said the girl. “Who wants to walk behind a plow?”

  He asked no more questions but contented himself with looking over all the features of this little kingdom. Now that he was actually inside, it was not quite so imposing, but still it was a big tract, and he could see that it ought to flourish, if given the least opportunity.

  The dangers of the place were equally obvious. There was a perfect exit from the valley in half a dozen directions through clefts among the hills, and the most clumsy of rustlers could have taken advantage of such excellent opportunities.