Gunman's Rendezvous

by Max Brand

  “They say that Harry Brett has been killed,” said Torridon.

  “He’s been raided. That was news to you, maybe?”

  “It was,” answered Torridon calmly.

  The peril was too great to be feared. In the den of the snakes, one forgets the fear of death. So Torridon was surrounded with malice and rage.

  “No,” said John Brett ironically, “it’s more likely that one of the Bretts themselves sent on word to those hounds of Torridons beyond the mountains. That’s a pile more likely.”

  Torridon was silent. He was determined not to speak until words had a chance of benefiting him.

  “It was one of the Bretts,” went on the leader, “that must’ve let the Torridons know that the three men was away from the house and that there was no one but boys and women there.”

  “Did they . . . did they hurt . . . the women?” asked Paul Torridon, horror stricken.

  John Brett leaned forward in his chair.

  “You didn’t aim on that, eh?” he said. “You only wanted to have the men wiped out?”

  “Uncle John,” said Torridon earnestly, “will you tell me what I have to gain by an attack on the house of Harry Brett?”

  “What has any Torridon to gain?” asked John Brett. “What have the snakes in the field to gain by sneaking up and biting a man that’s sleeping?”

  Torridon was silenced.

  “They’ve come before you was ready, and I can believe that,” said John Brett. “You figured that tomorrow, maybe, would be better. Then you’d slip away on Ashur. Was that the plan?”

  Still Torridon did not speak, and Charlie Brett stepped in from the side and struck him heavily in the face. The blow knocked him with a crash against the wall. He staggered back onto the floor, his head spinning. The hard knuckles of Charlie had split the skin over his cheek bone and a trickle of blood ran down rapidly.

  Then, as his brain cleared, he looked to John Brett to hear some correction of that brutality, but there was no change in the expression of the chief.

  “Answer when he speaks to you, you dog!” Charlie had said as he struck the blow.

  “He’s gonna play Injun on us and keep his mouth shut,” suggested Will Brett.

  “Shut up!” John Brett commanded his younger men. “I’ll do the talking here, please. You, Torridon”—he spoke the name as though it were cinders and ashes in his mouth—“you speak up and tell me where the band of murderin’ sneaks will be hiding now.”

  Torridon sighed. “Is it likely that I know?” he asked.

  “You dunno nothing, maybe?” asked the chief with heavy irony.

  “I’ve never spoken to a Torridon in my life . . . that I can remember,” said the boy.

  “You didn’t put it into a letter?”

  “I’ve never written to one of them, either.”

  “It’s a lie!” broke in Charlie Brett, unable to control himself. “Is it likely, I ask you now, that any skunk of a Torridon would spend twelve years without getting in touch with his people?”

  John Brett accepted that suggestion with a nod of agreement. “It ain’t likely. It ain’t possible,” he stated. “You see, Paul, there ain’t any use in trying to fool with us. It’ll be easier for you to come straight out with the truth. And if you can get us to the place where we’ll find your murdering crew, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll turn you free, Paul. I’ll turn you free and see you safe and livin’ out of the valley. No man could offer you more than that.”

  “Uncle John,” said the boy in a trembling voice, “I swear . . .”

  “My name is John Brett,” corrected the patriarch sternly, “and the oaths of the Torridons never was worth the breath that was needed for the speaking of them. Talk on, and leave out the swearing.”

  Paul Torridon sighed again. “I don’t even know what’s actually happened,” he said. “And you want to kill me because I can’t talk.”

  “You dunno?” said John Brett. “I’ll tell you, then. I’ll tell you that there was four boys in the house of Harry Brett. The oldest was fourteen. The youngest was nine. There was a girl of seventeen and there was Elizabeth Brett, who’s forty. That house was rushed this afternoon. One of the boys got away to tell us what happened. He saw two of his brothers murdered. He saw Elizabeth Brett shot through the head . . .”

  “Stop, stop,” whispered Torridon, and grew sick and dizzy with horror.

  “You don’t like it?” John Brett sneered. “There’s many a cook that don’t relish the dish of his own makin’. But you’re gonna help to pay us back for this here, Torridon. You’re going to help to pay us back.”

  “Listen,” said Torridon, arguing for his life. “If the Torridons came to find some Bretts, as they came through the mountains, isn’t the house of Harry Brett the first one they’d come to? Isn’t that the reason that they attacked the house?”

  “Then how did they know that Harry and his two brothers wasn’t at the place?”

  “They scouted about it, first.”

  “He’s got an answer for everything,” said Will Brett. “Ain’t he a professional word user? Ain’t he a schoolteacher? Let’s listen to him no more. By grab, Uncle John, it’s time that we tied him to a tree and built a fire under his feet . . . so’s we could see to do our shooting.”

  John Brett smiled. It was plain that the horrible suggestion was exactly after his own heart. “You hear him, Torridon?” he asked.

  “I hear him,” answered the boy.

  “That’s what’ll be done to you unless you talk up.”

  “There’s nothing I can say.”

  Charlie Brett seized his shoulder viciously. “Is that all, Uncle John?” he asked. “Can we have him?”

  John Brett had lurched from his chair. The savagery of a barbarian was working in his features, and yet he controlled himself.

  “Joe Brett has been taken away by the Torridons. It may be that we’ll have to keep this rat to trade in for Joe. Throw him into the cellar. And keep a watch at the cellar door. Tie him hand and foot and keep a watch. If he gets away, I’ll skin you and hang up your hide to show the Bretts what happens to fools.”

  They carried poor Torridon away with them, wrenching and dragging him along.

  The creaking cellar door was heaved open and big Charlie said: “Lemme put him down there. Tie his legs with that rope, Will.”

  It was done. The legs of Torridon were lashed securely together.

  “Now stand him up,” directed Charlie Brett.

  They stood up Torridon like a ninepin. And Charlie Brett drove at him with all his might.

  Excess of malice spoiled his aim. Instead of landing fully in the center of the face, the blow glanced on the side of Torridon’s head, but nevertheless it was enough to hurl him backward down the steps.

  He felt himself going, and purposely made his limbs and body limp. He landed at the bottom of the steps on the damp floor, rolled over and over, and crashed against a big box. There he lay.

  He was too overwhelmed with woe to think clearly, but he was able to say to himself that after bright day comes the black night. Now Nancy was at her house. She, too, was hearing the tale of the raid upon the house of Harry Brett. Would she believe that he had conspired against the slaughtered family?

  Then he tried to work out the matter in his mind—tried to conceive how people who bore his name, in whose veins his blood flowed, could have contemplated such a horrible massacre—far less, actually to have done the thing.

  And after that he lay still without even a thought. He heard feet stamp on the floor above him. He heard loud voices, once or twice. Faintly he could hear the murmur of ordinary conversation. And after a long time there was a rattle of hoofs.

  The first division of hunters for the marauding Torridons were coming back, no doubt. And what sort of a report would they make? Had they found their quarry? Had they shot them down like dogs? Or were the destroyers safely away through the woods and into the throat of the mountain pass?

  No one came ne
ar him for several hours. Then the cellar door was lifted and a glimmer of lantern light broke into the pitchy darkness.

  Charlie Brett, with old Aunt Ellen behind him, came down into the improvised dungeon. He kicked the prisoner roughly in the side. “Wake up,” he commanded, although he could see by his lantern that the eyes of the boy were wide open.

  “Leave him be,” said Aunt Ellen. “Leave him be. I’m gonna just sit down here and comfort him a little. You go on up and leave the lantern down here with me.”

  Charlie merely paused to leer at Torridon. “Things has changed a little, eh?” he said. “You ain’t so much the cock of the walk now. I’ll show you who’s on top, you hound!”

  He left them, and Aunt Ellen sat down on a broken box beside the boy and uncovered a steaming dish.

  “You gotta eat, dear Paul,” she said. “You gotta eat and save your strength, because maybe you’ll be needing all of it one of these days.”

  XIV

  It was good roast beef, cut in large chunks. And Torridon, wriggling until he could prop his back against a musty barrel’s side, ate heartily, and then drank the coffee that she had brought with her, also.

  She looked like a witch, crouched over an evil deed. But as he ate, she patted him. She brushed the mold and the damp of the cellar from his face and hair. Then she smiled and nodded at him.

  “Aunt Ellen,” he could not help bursting out, “I always thought that you hated me, and here you are taking care of me. The only one who cares at all.”

  “It’s little that I can do for you, lad,” she said.

  “You can go to Uncle John and tell him that I’ve sworn to you that I never was in touch with the Torridons. And heaven knows, if I had been there, I would have fought to keep the poor children safe from those brutes. Aunt Ellen, it’s not possible that he or you believe that I could have helped at such a thing.”

  “I wouldn’t dare to go near to Uncle John this night,” said the crone. “He’s as black as the raven and as cold as steel, since the boys come home and said that they couldn’t get no trace of the killers.”

  “No trace,” murmured the prisoner.

  “It’s a weary, weary night,” said Aunt Ellen. “There ain’t been the like of it in the mountains since the night when Hugh Torridon and his people was killed.”

  “Who was Hugh Torridon?” asked the boy.

  “Now, now, now,” she said. “Would you be wantin’ me to believe that you never heard tell of Hugh Torridon?”

  “Never,” he assured her earnestly.

  “Ah, but that’s a story,” she said. “And if I stay here to tell it to you . . .”

  “Do stay, Aunt Ellen,” he pleaded. “Do stay, because, after you go, I’ll have all the long, black, cold night ahead of me. I’ll be half dead before morning with the damp and the chill, and the horrible smell of the rats, Aunt Ellen.”

  “Will you, now?” she said, running her hand gently over his head again. “But what if I stay so long down here comfortin’ you that John Brett raises his voice after me? He’s got a voice that has to be heard.”

  She did not wait for an answer, but went on: “Hugh Torridon . . . Hugh Torridon . . . And you never heard of him?”

  “I always was afraid to ask about the Torridons,” said the boy. “It always made the Bretts angry to be reminded that there were more people of my name in the world.”

  “D’you know why there’s any Torridons alive today?” she asked curiously.

  “Tell me, Aunt Ellen.”

  “Because of Hugh Torridon. It was him that brought the Torridons up from nothing. They was beaten. Their backs was against the wall when I was a girl. They didn’t have nothin’. They was so poor you wouldn’t believe it. And then Hugh come.

  “He was young, but he could talk. He persuaded the whole pack of them to move across the mountains and start farmin’ there. The climate was better and the ground was richer, and pretty soon the Torridons on that side of the mountains was a lot better off than ever they had been on this side. It was a surprisin’ thing how quick they began to make money and get respectable lookin’ again. Pretty soon they was about as rich as the Bretts.” She paused and waggled her head at this important thought.

  Then she went on: “After they was strong enough, with all good horses and with all the best kind of pistols and rifles and knives, and everything that men kill deer and each other with, they begun to march in back through the mountains, and, when they found a Brett here and there, they just nacherally shot him.

  “Hugh Torridon had the leadin’ of them. He was an iron man. Bullets would bounce off of him, the young men here used to say. Uncle John was a young man, then.” She chuckled with the idea. “The Torridons, they kept walkin’ deeper and deeper into our valleys. I remember when they swept all the cattle off my pa’s place.”

  Then she went on: “This man died, and he left a young son, also called Hugh . . . and the young son, he was raised to remember how his father died and to try to get even for it.”

  “And how did the first Hugh Torridon die, Aunt Ellen?”

  “As he was ridin’ down the riverside,” she said, “there was a couple of clever young Bretts lyin’ in the brush, and they shot him after he’d gone by.”

  “Through the back?” said the boy, writhing.

  “One bullet was under the shoulder blade and another was right in the middle of the spine. He didn’t make no noise. He just died and dropped out of the saddle.

  “Now then, his son, the second Hugh, he come up to his manhood as big and as brave as his father, but he didn’t have the brain. Brains is what wins for everybody. You got brains, poor Paul. That’s why you been amountin’ to something. But anyways, I gotta tell you about this second Hugh, he couldn’t have no pleasure in stayin’ on the far side of the mountains, and so he built him a house of strong logs right over our heads on this slope. We always could see the smoke goin’ up from his place. And he done a lot of harm to us, until finally Uncle John thought it would be a good idea to make a truce. So a truce was made between the Torridons and the Bretts.

  “And after that a couple of years went by, peaceful and quiet, but all the while Uncle John was plannin’ and waitin’. And finally he went down with ten good men . . . only ten, because more might’ve made too much noise. He took those men and went to the house of Hugh Torridon and he pried the front door off its hinges, very quiet.

  “‘Who’s there?’ sings Hugh Torridon from the darkness.

  “But already they was inside. They got into the first room where there was Hugh Torridon’s wife and baby. And Hugh Torridon, when he heard them two screamin’ . . . he sort of lost his wits.”

  “Don’t! Don’t!” Paul cried. “You don’t mean that they murdered a woman with a baby beside her?”

  “A Torridon is a Torridon, young or old, male or female. Uncle John is the one who knows that. But I was tellin’ you that Hugh Torridon come smashin’ along down the hall and got at that room, where there was two of his family dead, and where there was ten armed men waitin’ for him . . . and, when he come along, the ten got a little mite afraid, because he was so brave. They locked and bolted the door of that room, and then they waited, and Hugh Torridon busted down that door the way a bull would bust down a pasture gate.

  “He come in and they let off all their rifles, and they shot Torridon with six bullets through the body and the legs. But he went on and got hold on one of them, and that was Jim Brett, and he strangled Jim Brett as he died.”

  “What a glorious man he must have been!” cried the boy.

  “He was a great Torridon”—nodding, she agreed—“only that he didn’t have the brains of his pa. But after he’d killed Jim, the rest of the Bretts got a little mite angry, and they went through the house and they killed everyone. There was only one boy left that had been knocked on the head and fell like dead.

  “When they had cooled off a little and counted the eight dead bodies, then they begun to think of startin’ home, and just then the
boy that had seemed to be senseless, he got up on his feet and began staggerin’ around. They’d cooled off, as I was sayin’, so that they didn’t have the heart to finish him. They just let him live, and Uncle John, he had a pretty good idea, because he said . . . ‘I’ll take him home and raise him up, and we’ll make a man of him, in Jim’s place.’”

  She paused.

  “Took him home,” echoed poor Torridon. “Took him here. Aunt Ellen, have you been telling me the story of my grandfather, and my father and mother?”

  “I been,” she said. She added: “And your baby brother, and your two sisters, and your cousin who . . .”

  “Don’t,” whispered the boy. “It hurts me terribly. Ah, Aunt Ellen, but I had to know.”

  “Of course you did, honey.” She raised the lantern so that it shone into the eyes of the captive, but, in so doing, she allowed it to fall, unawares, upon her own eyes, and Torridon was amazed to see that she was grinning with toothless, wicked malice.

  Then he could understand. It was all a device of her ancient hatred. She had wanted to sit by his side and watch him while she opened wounds of which he never had dreamed. This was her fiendish pleasure, and now she stood up.

  “I dunno what else I can do for you, sonny. My stories don’t seem to rest you none.”

  “Only leave me,” he said.

  “Then lie and think,” she said, thrusting her wicked face closer to his. “You lie and think about the good day that’s comin’ before you, and you eat plenty of good meat and keep yourself fat and strong, because you’ll need all of your strength when they take you out and tie you to a tree, my son.”

  She turned from him, shuffling away with the lantern. It cast vast shadows that swung up against the ceiling and then down and out before her. It made the room seem awash.

  Then she was gone, and the cellar door was closed with a heavy, smashing sound.

  The ears of the captive must have been attuned by sorrow, for he could hear the voice of Will Brett saying calmly: “You spent a long time down there.”

  “My business couldn’t be done quick,” she replied. “Gimme your arm into the house, Billy dear.”