The Second Western Megapack

by Various Writers

  Perhaps through these books she could gain the clue to the inner nature of Black Jim. If these were his only books he might be molded by the thoughts he found in them. Therefore, through them, she might gain a power over him which, in the end, would avail to bring her safely from the valley. With this purpose before her, Jerry formulated a plan of campaign.

  She must in the first place win the liking of the bandit. When this was done all things would be possible, but she also knew that there was much work before her until this end could be accomplished. His gentleness had not deceived her. It was the velvet touch of the panther’s foot with the steel-sharp claws concealed.

  Those claws would be out and at her throat the moment she attempted an escape, or even a rash movement. In the mean time she must work carefully, patiently, to win first his respect, and then, perhaps, his affection. It was dangerous to attempt this. Yet it was necessary, and once this was done much might be accomplished. Possibly she could persuade him to attempt flight with her. If so, there was a ghost of a chance that he might be able to fight off the rest of the bandits and take her away from the valley.

  The eyes of Jerry brightened again with even this faint hope to urge her on; and all that day she did what she could, with her one hand, to clean and arrange the rooms. By nightfall she was utterly weary but expectant. The expectancy was vain.

  Black Jim arrived long after dark, and she heard him moving about in the shed as he put up his roan. It was her signal to commence the cooking of supper. She waited with bated breath for his entrance and his shout of surprise when he saw the changes she had worked in a single day, but when he did come it was in silence. He gave no more heed either to her or her work than an Indian gives to his squaw.

  Jerry fumed in quiet as long as she could. Then her plans and resolutions gave way before anger. She dropped a big pan, clattering to the floor. Black Jim, who sat near a lantern at a table, reading and calmly waiting for his meal, did not raise his head from his book.

  “Say, Lord Algernon,” she cried, “wake up and slide your eye over this room! Am I your hired cook, maybe? Am I the scrubwoman at eight per?”

  He let a vague and unseeing eye rove toward her, and was immediately lost in his book again. She repressed a slight desire to pick up the pan from the floor and hurl it at him.

  “All right, deary,” she said, “go on dreaming this is a play, but the finale is going to take you off your feet. The silent treatment is okay for some, cutie, but if you keep it up on me, this show will turn out wilder than a night of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ down in New Orleans.”

  She resumed her cooking in silence. Black Jim had not favored her with even a glance during this oration. That evening was a symbol of the days to come. He ate in silence, without thanks or regard to her. Apparently now that her wound was no longer troubling her greatly, his attitude was changed. She felt it was not that he was indifferent; she had simply vanished from his mind. He had cared for her hurt; he had warned her of the dangers she might find in the valley; he had armed her against them. Thereafter she ceased to exist in his mind, for his code was fulfilled.

  She fumed and fretted under this treatment at first, and still attempted to follow out her original campaign of winning Black Jim to her side. In all respects she failed miserably. She attempted to read his books; the verse wearied her; the vulgarity of “Gil Blas” stopped her in twenty pages; she could not wade through the opening exchange of letters in “Redgauntlet.” Her mind turned back to Montgomery many times during the first ten days, but he never appeared and she quickly forgot him.

  Black Jim was never at home during the day. He either rode out on the roan or else he went off on foot and returned at night with game, so that they never lacked meat. Cooking, short walks through the trees, endless silences, these things occupied the mind of Annie Kerrigan.

  Yet she was not unhappy. She was of the nature which loves extremes, and to her own astonishment, growing every day, she discovered that the hush of the mountains filled her life even more than the clattering gaiety of the stage. Slight, murmuring sounds which would scarcely have reached her ear a month before, now came to her with meaning—the thousand faint stirs which never cease in the forest.

  Heretofore she had never had a thought which she did not speak. Now she learned the most profound wisdom of all when the mind speaks to itself and the voice is still.

  Whatever of the old restless activity remained in her found a vent in the ceaseless study of the bandit. She picked up a thousand clues little by little, but they all led in different directions. At the end of a month she felt that she was farther away from the truth than she had been at the first.

  All that she really knew was what he had told her. He lived above the law. She knew him well enough to see that he was not a criminal because of hate for other men, or even because he loved the thrill of his night riding. He simply avoided that other world of men because it was a world where life was constrained by a thousand rules.

  To her mind he was like a powerful and sinisterly beautiful beast of prey which hunts where it will through the forest, and when it is pressed in its haunts by man turns and strikes him down. She carried the animal metaphor still farther.

  She saw it in his singular silence, which was not reticence, but the speechlessness of a man to whom words are of no use. She saw it most of all in the singularly fathomless eyes. They never mocked her. They were simply veils through which she could not look.

  The face changes expression only because man lives among fellows, whom he wishes to read his emotions, his anger, his pleasure, his contempt. Therefore his features grow mobile.

  Black Jim lived alone. When he was with men and wished to express an emotion he did not pause to express his will in anything save action. At first, when the endless chatter of La Belle Geraldine disturbed him of an evening, he simply rose and left the cabin to walk (through the woods. It was long before she understood why.

  The clock which ticks out our lives in the cities of men had no place in his house. He rose in the morning early, because, like an animal again, he could not sleep after the light came. He felt no measuring of time by which to check and control his actions. He ate at any hour, now and then, once a day, often four times. Jerry fell into his habits through the strong force of a near example; the ticking of the clock no longer entered her consciousness, and in its place flowed the broad and tideless river of life.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Sign of the Beast

  The deadline which Black Jim said he had drawn around his cabin certainly had its effect, for never after the first day did she see one of the bandits. Now and again she caught the sound of distant firing when they practiced with their guns. Three or four times she heard drunken singing through the night as they held high festival. Otherwise she knew naught of them or their actions, though her mind retained the grim gallery of their portraits. The day would surely be when Black Jim should fail to return from one of his expeditions, and then—

  That day came. She waited till late at night, but he did not come. She could scarcely sleep, and when the morning came she sat in the cabin guessing at a thousand, horrors.

  A voice took up a song in the distance, and then came closer and closer. Jerry stood up and felt for her revolver with a nervous hand. The voice rose clearer and clearer. She could make out the words:

  “Julia, you are peculiar;

  Julia, you are queer.”

  Jerry dropped her hands on her hips and drew a long breath, partly of vexation and partly of relief.

  “It’s Freddie,” she muttered.

  “Truly, you are unruly,

  As a wild Western steer.

  Some day, when we marry,

  Dear one, you and I;

  Julia, you little mule, you,

  I’m going to rule you,

  Or die.”

  The song ended as the singer approached the edge of the open space before Black Jim’s cabin. Jerry stepped through the door to see Montgomery standing in t
he shadow of the trees.

  “Yea, Jerry!” he yelled. “Is the gunman around?”

  “He’s not here,” she answered. “You don’t have to be afraid of anything, Freddie.”

  “Oh, don’t I?” came the reply. “Didn’t he make this a deadline, La Belle? Suppose he should come back and find me on the other side of it? Not me, Jerry; I like life too well!”

  “Where’ve you been?” said Jerry, approaching him—“and what in the world have you been doing, Freddie?”

  For as she drew closer she found herself looking upon a Frederick Montgomery who, in voice alone, remained the man she had known. A vast stubble of black beard and whiskers, unshaven for full two weeks or more, obscured the fine outline of his features. His broad hat, pushed back from his forehead, allowed a mop of tangled hair to fall down almost to his eyes. Overalls, soiled and marred with wrinkles, a shirt torn savagely across the side, muddy boots, and the heavy revolver completed his equipment. Jerry was aghast!

  “What’s the matter, Jerry?” asked Montgomery. “Some hit, this costume; eh? It isn’t make-up, kid. It’s the real thing.”

  “And I suppose you’re the real thing under it?” said Jerry in deep disgust.

  “Sure,” said he, easily. “Stack all your chips and put ’em on me, kid. I’m the real stuff!”

  “Why haven’t you been around?” asked Jerry sharply, and bitter anger took her breath, “You knew I was left here at the mercy of Black Jim. And you haven’t done a thing to help me! Why?”

  “Why?” repeated the other, but not peculiarly embarrassed. “There’s a reason, kid. I’ve been too busy living.”

  “Too busy getting dirty, you mean,” snorted La Belle Geraldine. “Go make yourself decent and then come back if you want to talk with me! But if you’ve got dirt in your mind, Freddie, water won’t help you.”

  He growled deep in his throat and she stepped back a pace. She had never heard such an ominous sound from him before: now she scanned him more closely. It seemed to her that his eyes were sunken and shadowed significantly.

  “Don’t try that line on me any more, Jerry,” he answered, “You could get by in the old days, but it won’t do up here.”

  “Won’t it, deary?” asked Jerry, with a rather dangerous sweetness.

  “Not a hope, kid,” answered he, “I’m through with all that stuff. Down in the States a jane could pull that line now and then and get by with it, but up here, it’s a man’s country, and it’s up to you to sidestep when anything in pants comes along.”

  “As a man,” returned Jerry, yet for some reason she did not feel as brave as her words, “as a man, cutie, you come about as close to the real article as a makeup will let you. But I’m behind the scenes and it won’t quite do, Mr. Montgomery, it won’t quite do.”

  He scowled but he softened his tone as he answered.

  “Look here, Jerry,” he said, “I didn’t come here looking for a fight. Am I your friend or am I not?”

  “Do you remember how you backed out of the room when Black Jim simply looked at you, Freddie?” she asked gently.

  “Sure I do,” he growled, “but you can’t hold that up against me, Jerry. There isn’t a man of the bunch that would take a chance face to face with Black Jim. He ain’t human, you ought to know that. The only difference between him and a tiger is that he uses a gun. He’s just—”

  “Cut it out, Freddie,” she broke in. “I’m tired of you already. Ring off. Hang up. You’re on the wrong wire.”

  “Say, kid,” he said with gravity, “Do I gather that you stand for that man-eater?”

  “Take it any way you like,” she said coldly.

  He laughed disagreeably.

  “Of course you don’t,” he went on, “You’re simply kidding me along. What if I could show you the way out of the valley tonight, Jerry?”

  She caught her breath.

  “The way out? Freddie! Are you playing me straight?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, with a trace of sullenness, “but this is my night on duty at the gap.”

  “Then I’m free!” she cried, “I’ll start as soon as it’s pitch dark and—”

  “Wait a minute,” he interrupted, “don’t run away with yourself. If you disappeared Black Jim would know I let you pass and when he found out that his—”

  “Stop there,” she said. “Freddie, what do you mean—do you think—”

  “Lay off on that, Jerry,” returned Montgomery. “You’re a swell dancer, but you can’t get away with heavy stuff like this. You’ve been all alone with him here, haven’t you?”

  She touched her hand to her forehead and wondered at its coldness in a vague way.

  “Why should I care?” she murmured, “Let him think what he will.”

  “But I’m still strong for you,” Montgomery was saying. “Don’t get white and scared, kid. I don’t hold it against you, much. What I say is, why not get rid of Black Jim? You can take him off his guard. Say the word and I’ll hang around at night and you can signal me when he’s asleep. Then I’ll come and do the work. It’d be a risky job, but for your sake, kid, I’d—”

  “You’ve said enough,” she answered, and then summoning her courage and fighting back her disgust, for here was her one chance to gain freedom. “If you’re afraid of him, why not go with me? What’s your idea? Do you really intend to stay here. Freddie, you haven’t become one of those swine!”

  He laughed heavily.

  “Swine?” he repeated; “Say, kid, did you ever see swine with this stuff hanging around in their hides?”

  He slid a hand into his hip pocket and brought it out again full of gold pieces of three denominations. He poured it deftly back and forth.

  “Take a slant at it, Jerry,” he said. “Listen to ’em click! One little job I pulled last week brought me this and about twice as much more. Easy? say, it’s a shame to take the coin. It’s like robbing the cradle. Do you think I’d leave this game even to go off with you, Jerry? Not till I’m blind, kid! Get wise! Say the word and we can pull a stunt on Black Jim that’ll give us the cabin and all the loot that’s stacked up in it.”

  His eyes glittered.

  “How much has he got stowed away in there, kid?”

  She retreated another pace. He was half a dozen yards away now.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. Fear was growing in her, and horror with it. In a sudden desperation she held out her hand to him and cried: “Freddie what is it? You were pretty clean when you first came up here. What has changed you? What’s happened?”

  “What’s happened?” he asked, dully, as if he could not follow her meaning.

  “Yes, yes! Open your lungs—taste this air. Isn’t that enough in itself to make a man of you? And the scent of the evergreen, Freddie—and the nearness of the sky—and the whiteness of the stars—”

  “And the absence of the law, kid,” he broke in. “Don’t forget that. A man makes his own law up here, which means no law at all. We’re above it, that’s what we are. Stay here a little longer and you’ll get it, too!”

  She stared at him with great eyes while her mind moved quickly. She was beginning to understand, not the gross-minded brute which Frederick Montgomery had become, but the singular influence of the wild, free life. Of those other twelve and of Montgomery, the open license made animals. There was a difference between them and Black Jim. She had felt the touch of the animal in him, too, but in another manner. The others were like feeders on carrion; he was truly a great and fearless beast of prey. The solemn silences of the mountains imparted to him some of their own dignity. The mystery and the terror of the wilderness were his.

  “Above the law?” she said. “No, you’re beneath it. I wish—I wish I were a man for half a minute—to rid the world of you all!”

  She turned and fled back to the cabin.

  “Jerry! Oh, Jerry!” he shouted from the edge of the clearing where the deadline of Black Jim still held him.

  She turned at the door.

&nbs
p; “Have you made up your mind about it finally?”

  She shuddered so that she could not answer.

  “Then, by God, I’ll have you, if I have to get Black Jim first, and I’ll get his other loot when I get you!”

  He disappeared among the trees and she went back into the cabin, weak at heart, and filled now with a strange yearning for the return of Black Jim. The vultures, she felt, circled above the valley, waiting for her. He was the strong eagle which would put them to flight.

  Evening drew on. He did not come. Night settled black over the valley and the white stars brushed the great trees that fringed the cliffs. Still he did not come. The hearth fire remained unlighted. The damp cold of darkness numbed her hands and her heart. She waited, bowed and miserable. He was delayed, but delay to Black Jim could mean only death. No other force could take all this time for his return. This grew more certain in her mind as the hours passed. In that gloom every minute meant more than whole hours during the day.

  At last she made up her mind. Montgomery—not the light-hearted man she had known, but a hot-eyed beast—threatened her. Not he alone, but perhaps all of the other twelve were so many dangers. Now that Black Jim was gone she was helpless in their hands.

  By the next day they would know of his long absence and come for her—for her and for the rest of the loot, as Montgomery had said. She must get away from the valley that night. The sentinel was there, to be sure, but that sentinel was Montgomery and she felt that there was a fighting chance that she could pass him safely in the gap. If necessary she could fight, and perhaps she could handle a revolver as well as he. Perhaps she could surprise him. He would not look for the attempt and if she could get him under the aim of her revolver, she knew that he was not a hero.

  Once out of the gap there was an even chance for life. She might wander through the mountains until she starved to death. On the other hand she might find a road and follow it to town.

  She weighed the chances in her own practical way; rose from the stool; saw that her cartridge belt was well filled; strapped a canvas bag full of food on the other hip, and left the cabin.