by Max Brand
Jig Carter hoped so, especially as he saw men with guns run to other windows overlooking the creek. Jig wanted nothing so much as to see the finish of Sandy Lane at that moment—except that he kept somewhere in his heart a vague hope of luck for the underdog.
Then he saw the big young man rise to his feet, run like a deer to the edge of the high bank of the stream, and take off in a long leap. The water whipped up over him. Slugs of lead from the roaring guns cut the stream about him as he ducked under the surface and disappeared from view.
A moment later, the dripping figure emerged from the brush beside the farther bank and stepped among the trees.
“Hey!” called Jig Carter.
He could hear, in the distance, the rumbling of hoofs up and down the main street of Three Rivers. He could hear the yelling of angry men who were sure to sweep across the bridge and start in pursuit of the fugitive. And Jig looked down from the saddle on a young man who was calmly emptying the water from the boots that he had carried around his neck. Beside the youth, on the same wide tree stump, lay a pair of good Colt revolvers. In them, two things were of interest: they had no triggers—they had no sights.
Jig Carter understood as well as any horse trader ever understood good horses. That was why he did not follow his first impulse of drawing his guns and finishing the task before the trail was old. In that case there would be no need of giving half of the reward—two-thirds of it, in fact—to Tom Dexter.
Instead of making the gun play, Jig rode into the open of the small clearing. “I knew you’d be wantin’ a horse,” he said. “How does this look to you?”
“Price?” asked the blue-eyed youth, looking up calmly.
“Five hundred bucks,” said Jig.
“I’ll be paying you, someday,” said Sandy Lane. He finished drawing on his boots and stood up. He was tall, not weighty, all his bulk put where it would be most useful—about the arms and shoulders. The wet clothes flowed close to his body. He looked what Barnes had said of him—a wild mustang not yet broken to service of man. And yet his eyes were as blue, as mild as the eyes of a child.
Sandy Lane looked the gelding in the eye, then he mounted.
“I’ll be seeing you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Jig Carter.”
“I’m obliged to you, Jig. Five hundred dollars is cheap for this kind of a horse . . . at a time like this. I don’t owe you five hundred. I owe you a thousand. And I’ll pay.”
He held out his hand, and Jig Carter suddenly gripped it. The cool fingers that he grasped were as strong as steel.
“Is there anything you want more than money?” asked Sandy.
“Yeah. One thing. A message taken to Tom Dexter.”
“The outlaw?”
“That’s why I can’t take it myself. I’m too old to go sashayin’ around the hills after a gent that might plaster me full of lead before I had a chance to tell him that my meanin’ was good.”
“Give me the message,” said Sandy.
Jig sighed with relief. He had not expected the thing to be as easy as this. “Here you are,” he said, holding out a well-sealed envelope. “Just give that to old Tom Dexter for me, will you?”
“Where do I find him?” asked Sandy, unperturbed by the noise of hoofs that swept steadily closer through the trees.
“Somewhere up in the Cherrill Mountains,” said Jig, waving his hand toward the peaks that loomed blue in the northern sky.
“I’ll find him,” said Sandy cheerfully.
“If you give him that, forget about payin’ me for the horse,” said Jig in a burst of odd generosity.
“Why?” asked Sandy, sitting a little straighter in the saddle and delaying his departure in spite of the rapid coming of the searchers through the woods.
“Because its word that he needs to know,” answered Jig, truthfully enough.
Sandy laughed. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be crooked for once in my life.”
He waved his hand to Jig Carter and sent the horse away. The gelding started pitching furiously and Carter pulled a gun halfway out. He changed his mind about shooting. For if he missed, that young devil might find a way to his throat even as he had found a way out of Three Rivers in spite of the men of the town.
He saw Sandy master the horse and disappear at a furious gallop among the more distant trees. And at the same moment a flood of riders bore down on Jig, breaking out with a crash from the woods.
Well, this was a card that might be played to end the game without any using of the great Tom Dexter. Jig Carter yelled: “Hey! That way! Robbed me of my new hoss! Sneaked it away from me . . . and two hundred cash along with it! Go after him, boys! Get him! If you get him, I’ll give the hoss free to the gent that drops Sandy Lane!” He swung his hat and cheered them on.
They raced past him, their horses stretching like greyhounds under the spur. They were gone—and Jig Carter began to roll a cigarette with the free conscience of one who had started a hard job very well indeed.
If the mob did not overtake and murder the fugitive, Tom Dexter would find sealed orders to kill the messenger on his arrival.
IV
The hotel stood high in the mountains on the edge of the little village of Cherrill. There were not two hundred inhabitants in the town, but no prouder place was more worthy to take to itself the name of the entire range. The Cherrill Mountains produced enough pine timber to clog the market, and the only places where cattle or horses could graze were small natural clearings in the woods. Where the forest had no root, there were naked rocks, as a rule. The Cherrills, which looked like the bluest part of heaven, from a distance, close up became a flinty region of hell.
But the town of Cherrill itself was a pleasant, rambling little group of buildings that included a government post office, which served a district of a thousand square miles and more. The hotel was distinguished for the quantity of the game it served at table—since game cost no more than the cartridges required for the killing.
At the table this evening, Sandy Lane dined heartily and opened cheerful talk with his companions. They were long-haired mountain men who talked in low voices. Perhaps, out of the roar of the wind and the rushing of waterfalls to which they were accustomed, the sound of their own voices overawed them within a closed room like this.
“I’ve heard that Tom Dexter hangs out somewhere up here,” said Lane to the man on his right, a fellow whose hair, half grease-colored and half gray, tumbled down to his shoulders.
He squinted his eyes, seemed trying hard to remember, and then shook his head. “Tom Dexter?” he said. “There’s no Tom Dexter up here. But I sorta remember the name . . . read something about a Tom Dexter in the newspaper, last year.”
“How about you?” Lane asked across the table. “Any of you heard of Tom Dexter?”
The men looked down at their plates and said nothing.
Sandy Lane laughed. “All afraid of his name even?” he asked. “If I were in your boots, I’d speak the name of the devil himself if a stranger asked me.”
Here a huge, raw-boned man looked up suddenly from the end of the table. “Seems like to me,” he declared in a rumbling voice, “that the manners of the gents around here don’t please you none, kid.”
The last word, certainly, did not please Sandy Lane. He laughed again, but the deep blue of his eyes had turned pale with light.
“I was raised in a part of the world where people were not afraid to talk out,” he said. “I’m not saying anything about your manners. I haven’t seen any manners here to talk about.”
There was a little grunting noise, made by a number of throats. Two or three chairs pushed back; two or three wild, savage heads lifted toward the stranger.
Sandy Lane smiled cheerfully about him, and met eye after eye. “You heard me, brothers,” he said. “I said that I hadn’t found any manners up here to talk about. That means you . . . mister, down there at the end of the table. If you think I’m wrong, step up and show me.”
; The huge fellow started to rise. And then a girl’s voice sang out: “Sit down, Sid. Sit right back down in that chair.”
She was the waitress, slim as a blue jay and fully as gay and impudent. She paused with an armload of empty platters and added: “The poor boy doesn’t know any better. He hasn’t been around among men long enough to know them when he sees them.”
At this, there was a good, hearty guffaw. Sandy Lane had come to his coffee—the third cup at the end of the meal—and he tilted back in his chair a little, rolled a cigarette, and lighted it. He, too, joined in the mirth.
“The girls know how to talk out in the Cherrill Mountains,” he commented. “That’s a damned sight more than the men do. I asked about Tom Dexter. He’s somewhere near. What’s the matter? Are you all hired men? Do you all live on his dirty money?”
He finished his coffee. His last remark had stopped the laughter of the others. And now he rose slowly. “I’m sitting out on the verandah,” he remarked, “if anybody wants to find me for anything.” And turning, he walked without haste from the room. He could hear the deep voice of Sid beginning to curse—but no one followed.
On the verandah, he found the blue and golden evening settling in over the mountains. The air was sweet and every breath of it drew to the bottom of his lungs. His mind seemed clearer than ever. And for a moment he reflected a little.
There had not been many moments for reflection in his life. From the time he was fifteen, when he interrupted a vacation with that little exploit of the one gun and the two Mexicans, he had left school and drifted. Nature took care of him—Nature and a certain amount of mother wit. Time was of no moment to him. He had spent seven years as carelessly as though they had been seven days. He would spend seven years more in the same way unless death or bad luck overtook him, or some strange thing happened that might make him realize that life is for something more important than wasting.
In the meanwhile, he was perfectly happy and content, the more content because, just now, he knew that he had offended a large part of the male population in the town, insulted the entire manhood of the men of the Cherrill range, and in general paved the way for a number of splendid fights.
He liked fighting. He liked music, pretty girls, cold beer on a hot day, a fine horse, a good view—he liked most of these things equally, but for battle he had a genuine passion.
He had liked it when he was a youngster at school. When he had thrashed the boys of his own age, he looked up toward the bigger lads and made himself larger by the sheer excess of spirits. When fighting determination would not counterbalance the weight of heavier fists, he had taken up boxing with a vast enthusiasm and began to learn that skill begins where brute force leaves off.
Guns were the same. Knives are only mysterious because most men will not study the use of them with the same devotion that Mexicans show to this art. But Sandy Lane had taken up knife play as though it were rapier work. His hand was as fast as his eye, and his eye was as fast as three-bolted lightning. Therefore he learned rapidly.
He had spent plenty of time with guns but although he was certainly a master of them, they did not call forth his profoundest emotion. With guns, one stood at a distance, and the fellow who was tagged stayed it—perhaps forever. Hand-to-hand conflict was the delight of Sandy. He was against killing. The challenge, the chance, the struggle—for these things he lived.
And he was hoping with all his heart that the men of Cherrill might not fail him when the voice of the waitress sounded again, on his left: “Hello, youngster.”
She sprang up to the edge of the verandah and stood there, surveying him with a downward glance. She had brown hair with a stain of red in it, like sunset in a dusky west. She had eyes distinctly green—green as sea water—and deep.
“Hello, old girl,” he said. “Sit down.”
“I’ll keep standing,” she said, “in case one of the men comes out and wipes you up. I don’t want to get brushed away.”
“Where are the men” asked Sandy cheerfully. “Any of ’em in this town?”
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Sandy,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Sally,” she answered.
“It’s too much like mine. But they go together,” he commented. “Sit down and try to make yourself at home. None of those fellows in there will bother us. They’ll talk all their fight into a whiskey glass.”
“You don’t know the gang around here,” she said. “They get mad slowly, but when they start fighting, they never stop . . . not till they’re dead.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll remember what to do to them.”
“Talking about Tom Dexter,” said the girl, “why should you want to go shouting around about him?”
“I have something to give him,” he said. “That’s the only reason.”
“What d’you want to give him?” she asked. “Hard talk, eh? Listen, Sandy. You know about the grizzlies?”
“I want to hear,” he answered, smiling up to her.
“In the old days they weren’t afraid of anybody . . . that was before they met up with a lot of hunting men.” She seemed to be telling a story from a book. “Then a lot of hunting men came into the Cherrill Mountains. They are still here.” She smiled, too. “But the bears stay in the brush. And if you’re bright, you’ll write that down in your copybook.”
“I’m not a bear,” he said. “I can’t hide in the brush. Will you tell me where to meet Dexter?”
“Are you hunting for a chance to get famous?” she asked.
“I told you I wanted to give him something. That’s all.”
“If you keep on trying to find him the way you started, you’ll collect nothing but some big-size lead.” She came back. “Tom Dexter hates curious people.”
“You know him?”
“I’m going to marry him someday, I suppose,” she answered.
“No,” said Sandy.
“Why d’you say that?”
“Girls never do what they suppose they’ll do,” he told her.
“I’ll marry him, all right. I’ve told him I shall.”
“You’ll change your mind,” Sandy insisted.
“D’you know much about Tom?” she asked. She went on without waiting for his answer. “When you’ve promised him anything, you don’t change your mind. Never.”
He stared at her. She was new. The freshness about her was her complete difference from other women. She was casual with the perfect nonchalance of those who are really indifferent. He had faced nearly everything, in one form or another, during his active life. But never before had he encountered bland indifference. She looked on him as though he were a child—the child of another woman.
It was not a pleasant experience, but it was a thrilling one. “All right,” he said. “You’re going to marry the big shot, Tom Dexter. Then maybe you’ll help me to find him?”
She sighed, a little wearily. “You’re not the first young hombre that’s come up here into the mountains trying to get famous by dropping Tom Dexter. They all fail. You’ll fail, too. You’re too young.”
“Is he such an old man?” Sandy asked.
“Yes. He’s twenty-eight.”
“I can count higher than that,” said Sandy.
“You have a lot of nerve,” she decided, unmoved. “But you don’t know enough . . . about guns and things. Tom is only twenty-eight . . . but you can add a hundred years to that. Men that are hunted live pretty fast.”
“You know something?” he asked suddenly. “You can’t marry him.”
“Can’t I? Why not?”
“Because you don’t love him.”
“I’ve told you what a promise means to him.”
“A marriage without love is dirty. You can’t be dirty. You’re clean,” he said.
She started to answer him quickly, but something—a reechoing of his words through her mind, perhaps—stopped her from speaking. She seemed to consider. “I’m sorry you said that,” she said at last.<
br />
“I’m not,” he answered.
“No. You wouldn’t care. You don’t mind how much pain you give, do you?”
“You’re a queer girl,” he said. “You’re a damned honest girl, too. You know that?”
“Then take some honest advice. Get out of Cherrill. Some of the boys will be telling Tom that you’re here. And he’s killed men before this . . . but I don’t want him to do his first murder.”
“You mean that I wouldn’t have a chance against him?”
“No,” she shook her head. “Not a ghost . . . of a chance.”
“Thanks.” He nodded. “I’m staying on.”
She sighed again, deeply. “There’s no use trying to change you,” she said. “So we might as well get the thing over with. I’ll tell you where to find Tom. Now.” He could hardly believe in this luck. He knew that men had hunted for years with never a sight of that famous outlaw. She was pointing toward the west. “Three miles . . . it’s tough going . . . straight toward the peak with the forked top. There’ll be moonlight in that pass when you get there. And you’ll find Tom Dexter somewhere around.”
“Thanks,” he said, and rose.
“And God forgive me,” she said. “But if it has to be . . . it might as well be quick.”
“You’re counting me for lost?” he asked. “Not even knowing whether I’m going there to fight him or not?”
“You can’t help fighting,” she said, “any more than the wind can keep from blowing.”
“And what makes it sure that I’ll lose this fight?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Maybe . . . it’s because you care so much about the winning.”
V
He rode, as she had bidden him, straight west toward the forked mountain. And, as she had declared, the way turned out to be very rough. The thick of the twilight covered the ground with watery dimness. And then the moon’s light shone and gave safer footing to him and to the buckskin gelding. They came into the pass of the forked mountain with the moon at their backs and their long shadows wavering grotesquely before them over the rocks.
There was no wind, for a wonder at that altitude. The air was perfectly still and yet the breath of the pines rolled out on it and filled the very soul of big Sandy Lane with resinous sweetness. He had a feeling that he was on a summit of surpassing happiness and beauty—and yet there was a shadow in his heart.