by Max Brand
“Who are you?” asked the other.
“By name of Henry Barnes.”
“Whatcha want?”
“I want to talk to you. I have a proposition to make to you. About a man . . . about a . . .”
“Go on and say it. You want somebody killed?”
There seemed no way to avoid the terrible eye and the terrible mind of the little brown-faced man. “I want somebody killed,” agreed Barnes suddenly. He took a good, big breath and his nostrils flared. When he had spoken the words, he felt better, much better. He felt as though Sandy Lane were nearer to death.
“Why don’t you kill him yourself?” asked Jig Carter.
“And hang for it?”
“Rather have me hang instead?” asked Jig.
“Let’s go inside and talk it over,” suggested Barnes.
“I keep the inside of my shack clean,” answered Jig. “We’ll do our dirty talkin’ out here. How much’ll you pay?”
“A thousand dollars,” said Barnes.
“A thousand dollars won’t buy many hosses.”
“A thousand dollars is a lot of money, and it’s all I can spend,” Barnes said.
“What kind of hombre is this one? What’s his name? Where’s he live?” Carter piled up his questions.
Barnes hesitated—then: “You going to have the job done for me?” he asked.
“I dunno till you tell me the facts,” Carter answered. “And what makes you think I could have it worked for you?”
“I’ve heard that you’re pretty close to Tom Dexter,” Barnes hinted.
“Tom’s a busy man. I wouldn’t want to pass him any spare murders to do.” Carter was becoming impatient. “Speak out, young feller!”
“I can’t talk till we make a deal,” Barnes fenced.
“Go to hell, then,” said Jig, and, turning his back, he walked into his shack.
“Wait a minute,” said Barnes. He pinched his straight, wide mouth together until it was a sharp line. “Wait a minute. Don’t let’s break up like this.”
He started through the door of the shack. Carter stepped in his way.
“Keep out,” said Jig Carter. “I don’t want no murder in the air in my place.”
Barnes backed away from the threshold. For Jig Carter had a reputation a little more poisonous than that of a rattlesnake.
Jig filled a pipe and walked out from his door. He pointed to the rotten stump of a tree. “Sit down,” he directed. Barnes sat down. Jig stood in front of his guest, his legs spread a little. “Now let’s have it,” he directed, “if you’re ready to talk.”
“His name is Sandy Lane,” said Barnes, knowing that the old man would not talk terms until he had the whole story. “Alexander Lane is his real name. He never stays long enough in one place to get well known . . . not under one name.”
“What’s he look like?” Carter asked.
“Like a mustang that’s never been broke. Like a mustang stallion that’s run wild.”
“Got a herd around him?” asked Jig, showing his first real interest.
“Nobody can keep up with him. He travels alone. He’s a big feller . . . lives on luck. His eyes are blue as a baby’s. Always smiling and laughing like a baby in a cradle, a baby with a full belly.”
“Done you any harm?” Carter broke in.
Barnes absently lifted a hand to his cheek where a small white scar showed through the tan. “Not much,” he said. “But he’s going to.”
“This Sandy Lane . . . good with guns?”
“Too good. Too good for me, anyway. So I came up to see you . . . because you know Tom Dexter,” said Barnes.
“What’s Sandy Lane going to do to you? I gotta know everything or I don’t want to know anything.”
“How do I know,” said Barnes, getting angry at the insistent questioning, “that you won’t go to Lane and sell him the news that I give you?”
“You don’t know,” said Jig Carter. “You just take a chance.” Barnes brooded on this statement. “If you don’t like the chance,” Carter went on, “take another kind of a risk . . . go and shoot it out with Sandy Lane.”
Barnes shuddered slightly. Then he said: “You know Oliver Lane?”
“The rich man? Yeah.”
“He’s dying. Dying slow but sure.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Jig Carter. “He jammed me into a jail, once.”
“He’s drawn up a will. By that will, if Sandy Lane turns up sober inside of ten days, he inherits all the property. Sandy is his grand-nephew.”
“Where do you come in?”
“If Sandy gets the property, I don’t come in anywhere. If Sandy doesn’t show up, I’m the next heir.”
“That’s a real story,” said Jig Carter, softening to a new interest. “And you want to pay a thousand dollars for the job of holding Sandy for ten days, do you?”
“I want him dead. You can’t hold him. He’d burn through any ropes you put on him.”
“All right,” said Jig Carter. “It’s a job for killing. And killing costs money.”
“I’m offering you a clean thousand.”
“A dirty thousand,” said Carter. Then: “How much you make out of the Lane Ranch?”
“I don’t know. Land don’t pay very well, these days.”
“Oliver Lane is worth a coupla millions.” Carter smiled enigmatically. “We’ll do this job for a cheap price. A hundred thousand.”
Barnes couldn’t speak at first. Then he blurted: “My God! But . . .”
“It’s only a little commission. About five percent,” Carter said.
Barnes threw up his hands. A gun flashed into Carter’s fist. Slowly it disappeared again into the holster. “Don’t make no quick moves like that,” said Jig Carter. “Sort of nerves me up.”
“A hundred thousand . . .” groaned Barnes. “I can’t do it. Nowhere near.”
“I’ll make you a cut rate. Fifty thousand.”
“I never heard of such a price!” shouted Barnes. “For killing one man . . . fifty thousand dollars?”
“No. The killing is only a thousand dollars. There’s twenty-four thousand because Sandy Lane sounds like the right kind of a lad. There’s twenty-five thousand added because you’re a low skunk.”
A dull red glowed on Barnes’s face. He said nothing, but his eyes narrowed. “You know I haven’t got fifty thousand in cash,” he said.
“You’ve got money saved. That’s what you live for . . . to save coin,” said Jig Carter. “I’ll take the five thousand that you brought with you.”
“How do you know . . .?” exclaimed Barnes.
“I just guessed that you’d go well-heeled for this kind of a job. I’ll take your promise for the last forty-five thousand after we’ve done the job.”
“Wait a minute,” Barnes broke in. “Suppose I pay you the five thousand, how’ll I be sure that you’ll have the work done for me?”
“You won’t be sure. You’ll have to risk it.”
“The way you’ll risk me paying the last forty-five thousand?”
“No.” Carter had the confidence of strength. “If we do the job, we won’t be risking anything. You’ll pay right on the nail.”
Barnes licked his dry lips and coughed. “Well . . .” he said. And drawing out a wallet, he pulled a thick sheaf of bills from it. Without counting the money, he passed it to Jig Carter. And, without counting, Jig Carter pushed the wad into a hip pocket of his overalls.
“You’ve got to hump,” directed Barnes. “Old Oliver Lane is sending out word to catch his grand-nephew. You’ve got to get to him ahead of the messages.”
“Where do we find this here Sandy Lane?”
“He was headed west out of Crocker, three days ago. Likely close to Three Rivers, by this time.”
“That’s two hundred miles.”
“That’s the way Sandy travels.”
“All right.” Jig Carter nodded. “I’ll sure look up Sandy. So long.”
“So long,” said Barnes, and held out his hand.
Barnes jerked the hand back and glared. Then, turning, he mounted the mustang that had been waiting patiently for him and rode off through the brush without turning once to look back.
II
Three rivers foamed from the mountains and crashed together in the heart of a great ravine. There the ravine widened in a big valley and in the valley lay the town of Three Rivers. It was a good sort of a town, big and flourishing. It had not burned down for nearly ten years and therefore it was beginning to show signs of age. The sun blistered the paint; the roofs were beginning to grow ragged; the stovepipes leaned at crazy angles.
But the beer was always good and the whiskey was better than could be found for many miles. Also, for those who came to the town on business, there were lumber and cattle yards—and there were huge stores that supplied, by freight teams, the mines in the higher mountains.
Just as the rivers came down from the heights, so men descended now and again, about the end of each month, on the town of Three Rivers. Then there was a great noise. Sometimes there would be a death or two at the height of the fun-making—and the cemetery and the reputation of Three Rivers kept on growing together.
Into that town Jig Carter rode his mule. He looked like a harmless old fellow. His pair of Colts was hidden under his coat and his rifle was buried under the pack behind his saddle, and no one could see the long-bladed hunting knife that fitted inside the leg of his right boot.
At the blacksmith shop he halted. There were a dozen horses waiting their turn to be shod. A sooty lad worked the bellows in the corner behind a veil of blue smoke. The blacksmith himself, a burley fellow with a soiled cloth over one eye and knotted like a crooked turban at the back of his head, was paring the ragged hoof of a pony, holding it well-clamped between his knees.
“’Mornin’,” said Jig. “Heard tell of a man by name of Sandy Lane anywheres around these parts?”
The lad at the bellows ceased his stroking; the blacksmith dropped the hoof he was working on and straightened with a start.
“Sandy Lane?” he growled. “Friend of yours?”
“Never seen him. Heard he might be around this part of the world.”
The blacksmith considered Jig’s wizened frame for a moment. Then he extended a muscular arm and pointed across the street. “Go ask Morrissey,” he said.
Jig Carter went across the street toward the saloon marked: MORRISSEY’S. Behind him all work in the blacksmith’s shop had ceased.
When he pushed through the swing doors of the saloon, he was aware of dim light, and a confusion of objects. Then he saw that a heap of tables and chairs, badly smashed, had been gathered in one corner. Bits of glass still sparkled on the floor. Of the long mirror that once had graced the back of the bar only a few triangular sections remained, and even the draft set up by the swinging of the doors caused one of these sections to fall with a crash.
It was unheeded by the bartender, who was bigger, even, than the blacksmith. He had the look of one who had weathered many battles in the past, decorated long ago with a pair of cauliflower ears, he had been freshly painted for war, and by a liberal hand. His mouth at one side was greatly swelled—the opposite side of his face puffed out and his eye was a mere slit in a purple ball.
“Whiskey,” said Jig as he stepped to the bar. He noticed at the same time that three of the four windows had been bashed out and that there were large gaps in the rows of bottles along the shelf behind the bar.
The big man silently set forth glass and bottle. Jig poured a good shot and downed it. It was the kind of whiskey he knew and loved—alcohol, prune juice, a liberal touch of Tabasco sauce. It burned from his teeth to his stomach, and, as Jig’s eyes watered, he said: “Damned good stuff. I’ll have another. Take one yourself?”
The bartender filled two glasses to the top. But that was his only courtesy. Without speech, without the usual salute of the glass in hand, without as much as a—“Here’s to you.”—he swallowed the drink, filled his own glass again, and put that portion away, also. Then he leaned his hands against the edge of the bar and continued the profound contemplation that Jig’s entrance had interrupted. “There’s the money,” said Jig.
The bartender’s big hand swallowed the money. He forgot to make change—his thoughts were too deeply lost.
“I was gonna ask you, did you know of a gent by name of Sandy Lane?” asked Jig Carter.
“Huh?” grunted the bartender. He seemed to reach for something under the bar. “Lane a friend of yours?”
“Never seen him,” said Jig promptly. “Don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Yeah, but maybe he’s the friend of a friend of yours,” suggested Morrissey, clutching some object beneath the bar top.
“No,” said Jig. “He’s a plumb stranger to me.”
The bartender’s single burning eye regretfully relaxed its hold upon Carter. Morrissey lifted a hand and tenderly wiped his bruised mouth. Still he was curious. “What you ever heard about this Sandy Lane?” he asked.
“Meaning, like what?”
“Meaning how many places do the sheriffs want him for murder? How many times have gangs tried to string him up and busted their ropes on the iron of his neck? How many gents spend their lives ridin’ his trail?”
“I dunno,” said Jig Carter. “I just heard him mentioned being around these parts.”
Morrissey rolled his eye over the wreck of his saloon. “Yeah. He’s been around, all right,” he said.
“He make all this ruction?” asked Jig Carter.
“Him? Damn his heart to hellfire,” said Morrissey. “A couple of the boys was just havin’ a little fun with a tenderfoot, throwin’ him around a bit . . . just bein’ boys together and shootin’ a hole or two in the floor, now and then, which I didn’t mind none, because I know that boys will be boys. And, by God, if that blue-eyed lump of dynamite, that long-drawed-out piece of lightning don’t begin to explode. And because he didn’t like the way that damned tenderfoot was bein’ handled, he throws a couple of my best customers out through the window and kicks some more through the door . . .” Morrissey paused. His voice took on a quality of dreamy reminiscence. “And then he got warmed up and really started,” said Morrissey.
“Is he resting in the jail, now, or did they plant him in Boothill?” asked Jig hopefully.
“Strike me blind,” said Morrissey, “if he ain’t asleep in the hotel this same damn’ minute. But when he wakes up . . . when he walks out of that room of his . . . I’m gonna be called. I got men posted to watch his window and his door. And there’s others takin’ a kind of professional interest in him, too.”
Jig Carter had another drink with the bartender, and then walked down the street to the hotel. He found, in the lobby, a group of perhaps a dozen men. A man whose front teeth were missing was making a speech. The new lack of the teeth caused him to lisp childishly, but the council he was giving was one of bullets and ropes. A necktie party was his suggestion.
He was strongly seconded by a man with a swollen nose—while another with a cut cheek, and one more with a red-stained bandage around his head, urged an immediate attack by force of numbers to break down the door.
Every one of the dozen in that consultation was marked with visible bruises or with hidden troubles that caused them pain when they moved.
“The sheriff’s upstairs waitin’ in the hall,” said one. “He won’t let no necktie party start.”
“The hell he won’t,” declared another. “All he wants is to be the one that ties the rope.”
So Jig Carter went up the stairs. In the hall, he found a group of another half dozen men, some standing, some sitting, cross-legged, on the floor. Two of them rested naked guns on their knees. Another had equipped himself with a broad-bladed axe. The sheriff, seated in a chair, held a sawed-off shotgun across his knees.
The badge on his flannel shirt showed his dignity of office. And his long, lean grave
face was such as belonged to a fighting man. It was somewhat marred in expression by a broad, white patch of plaster that extended across his nose and far out onto both cheeks. All of these men were grouped so as to face the door that was numbered 11.
“Gents,” said Jig Carter, “why don’t we bust down that door?”
“Brother,” said the sheriff gently, when only stares from all the rest had answered Jig, “would you pick off a hornet’s nest with your bare hands?”
III
Three Rivers wanted Sandy Lane’s scalp. Three Rivers would have it. The sheriff was there to lead on the mob with the authority of the law—and the mob wanted a rope and a tree and Sandy to complete one final picture. They wanted Sandy and they would have him.
The rear of the hotel dropped three stories to the bank of a rushing stream. Only a bird or a flying squirrel could escape that way. And in front of the room sat men with guns in their hands, and more men waiting in the street below. There could not have been a more perfect trap.
But Jig Carter was not greatly deceived. He wanted to see Sandy Lane dead because he wanted to get the money from Barnes, but he doubted, somehow, the efficiency of all these numbers in handling one wild mustang, as Barnes had described Sandy.
So Jig bought a good horse, a really upstanding buckskin gelding with four good legs and a pair of fiery eyes. It cost him $400 and a great deal of argument. He put a saddle and bridle on the gelding, crossed the river at the bridge, and went down the opposite bank until he could look through a screen of saplings at the rear wall of the hotel.
He waited there two hours. The day wore on. The shadows shifted under the trees—and then something happened.
The patience of Jig Carter, like the patience of a hunting cat, was inexhaustible. It showed him, at last, a long strip of rope that fell from a window of the building. A moment later, a man slid over the window sill and began to slide down the rope.
And instantly a chorus rose from some man who sprang to view, here and there. They had been posted—by Morrissey and others—to watch the rear of the fort. Now they were betraying the escape.
The fugitive reached the end of the rope, dangled at arm’s length, his feet at least five yards from the ground, and dropped. A moment later, he was rolling headlong—with broken bones, no doubt.