by Max Brand
It was seized with a pressure that turned his arm numb to the elbow and made him into a helpless child.
V
He was aware that the two who rolled dice had turned their heads to watch him.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that they were grinning and knew at once that the grip of the giant must be a famous thing among them.
“How d’you know my face? I never saw you before,” said the man at the table.
Jimmy Bristol maintained his smile. The quality of it had changed a little, but it was still a smile.
“When you see the cubs and the father together,” said Jimmy Bristol, “it’s very easy to pick out the old bear.”
The mouth of van Wey widened on either side of the pipe stem, but the grimace was not a smile. He did not relax, but freshened his grip, and although Bristol strove with all his might, until his arm shook with the effort, he could not make an impression on the iron grasp. Yet he managed to continue his smile and keep his face unexpressive of pain.
“You can pick out bears, eh?” said van Wey. “Well, to know that is a lot better than to know nothing. You know a Colt, too, do you?”
“I know it partly.”
“Lemme see how well you know a gun,” said van Wey. “There’s a fool of a squirrel over there at the edge of the pool. Pick it off for me.” He relaxed his grip.
The right hand of Jimmy Bristol was as white as a stone and his wrist crimson. It was his left hand, however, that flicked out the shining length of a revolver and fired. The red squirrel, which had been sitting up on a small stone at the edge of the glowing water, disappeared. A splash of blood remained on the stone for a sign of the life that had been there the moment before.
Dirk van Wey puffed on his pipe and let a stream of smoke squirt out from each corner of his mouth.
“You’re a two-handed man,” he said. “Or are you a lefty?”
“I have two hands,” agreed Jimmy Bristol, putting up the gun.
“Two hands are better’n one,” reasoned Dirk van Wey. “Sit down.”
There were immovable stools of stone or wood driven into the ground around the table. Jimmy Bristol sat down on the nearest one and faced van Wey. He saw the golden-haired youth leave the dice game, step to the edge of the standing water, and pick up from the margin a pitiful little rag of bloodstained fur. He looked at it, then tossed it toward his gambling companion. Last, he turned and stared steadily at Jimmy Bristol, as a cat stares at a bird.
“What brought you up here?” asked Dirk van Wey.
“I was sashaying through the country,” said Jimmy Bristol, “and I ran into a ranch down the valley that’s owned by Joe Graney.”
“Yeah. He’s an old friend of mine. He’s my landlord. I got no complaints about him for a landlord, neither.” A flash came in his eyes.
Dan Miller began to chuckle.
“Shut up, Dan,” said Dirk van Wey. “Ain’t Joe Graney a fine landlord?”
“Sure he is,” said Miller.
“Then shut up, and lemme talk to this two-handed man. Bristol, go on. What happened at the Graney place?”
“My horse went lame,” said Jimmy Bristol. “And when Graney heard that I was aiming for the Kennisaw Gap, he told me that he’d keep my horse and let me have a fresh one if I’d do him a favor.”
“Aye,” said Dirk van Wey, “and what was that favor?”
“Just to drop by up here and ask Dirk van Wey for the rent he owed and to bring back with me a bay stallion called Pringle, which is on pasture with you here.”
“How much is the rent?” asked Dirk van Wey.
“A thousand dollars for the year.”
“And how many years?”
“One year’s rent is enough for me to take away.”
Dirk van Wey puffed steadily at his pipe and, by the trick of his mouth, still squirted out the smoke in two separate streams. Around the stem of the pipe he spoke, as before: “How’ll you have the money? Gold or bills?”
“I’ll have it the easiest way,” said Jimmy Bristol.
“All right,” said Dirk van Wey. “Take it in greenbacks.” He pulled out a wallet, thumbed some bills in it, and then rapidly counted out a stack of ten hundreds. “There’s a year’s rent. Times are kind of hard, Bristol. You tell Joe Graney that.”
Bristol fingered the money for an instant. “It’s a fair joke, but bad money,” he said.
“Why is it bad?”
“The stuff is all queer.”
Dirk van Wey stared, then snatched up the money and held one of the bills toward the western light. He grunted suddenly, balled the apparent greenbacks in his hand, and hurled them at the head of Dan Miller.
“That’s what you bring in … counterfeit?” said van Wey.
“It ain’t possible,” groaned Miller. “Nobody could make a sucker out of me like that.” He had put up one of the bills to the light in his turn by this time, and now he broke off his talking and began to curse in a subdued rumble.
Van Wey silently unbuckled a money belt. In the pause, Jimmy Bristol heard the golden-haired young man saying: “I’m tired of this dice business, Lefty.”
“All right, Harry,” said the man of the broken nose. “Anything you please.”
“I’ll bet you there ain’t a bill in this lot of the queer that Dan Miller is swearing at that has a corner torn off.”
“That’s a fool bet. There’s always a corner torn off.”
“If I’m a fool, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks on it.”
“All right. Or two hundred.”
“Make it five hundred and be danged!” exclaimed Harry heartily.
“Five hundred it is. Dan, come let us look at that stuff.”
“Take it and eat it, for all I care. I’m going to have the hide of the gent that shoved that queer on me!” exclaimed Miller, balling the paper into a wad again and tossing it to the pair on the blanket.
Dirk van Wey had stacked up fifty $20 gold pieces in two piles. “Here’s the money,” he said.
There was something electric in the air, and Jimmy Bristol felt the prickling of it down his spine. He took up the money, counted it with a rapid chinking of the coins, and pocketed the gold. Only now was the circulation returning to his right hand.
“About the horse,” said Dirk. “Come along.”
He led the way into a wide shed where half a dozen horses were tied to the mangers, on either side of a mow in which the hay had sunk lower than breast-high. Van Wey pointed at the animals on the farther side of the mow.
“Pringle is over there. Pick him out,” he said.
And again that sense of electric suspense swept through Jimmy Bristol. Something very important depended on the correctness of his judgment, something more than the mere possession of the stallion.
The light was dull, also. The sun was down, and although both the western doors of the shed were open, only a reddish haze was flowing into the shed. Big Jimmy Bristol shaded his eyes and stared.
Of the six horses, three were bays that faced him. The high mangers shut them off at the breast. One was a big, noble creature, with the gloss of polished bronze. That could hardly be Pringle, the stallion, which had been described as a lean and ugly horse. There were two of the bays, in fact, which looked from the head, like long-eared, long-legged rambleshacks. The temples of one were rather sunken, as though by many years.
Jimmy Bristol hissed suddenly like a snake, and every horse in the shed jumped and threw up its head. All, that is, except the bay with the sunken temples.
“I’ll take that fellow to be Pringle,” said Bristol.
Dirk van Wey grunted. “All right,” he said. “You picked him. And you picked a good one. He can carry a ton all day long, and I need a horse that can pack a ton.”
He did, in fact. He was hardly taller than Jimmy Bristol, but he was a square chunk of power from head to heels. When he moved his arms, his muscles filled his shirtsleeves.
“It’s a pile better for you to pick out Pringle than to
pick out … bad luck,” said Dirk van Wey suddenly. “Know that?” He clapped his hand on the shoulder of Bristol and let the grip of it remain there, bruising the flesh against the bone.
“I know something else,” said Jimmy Bristol, “that if you don’t take your hand off my shoulder, I’ll split your wishbone for you. And if you ever put a hand on me again, I’ll do the same thing.”
“Will you?” said Dirk van Wey. And he kept his grip intact.
VI
In the pause they stared solemnly at one another. Fear leaped like a cold snake up the back of Jimmy Bristol, as he saw the eyes of Dirk van Wey apparently draw nearer to him. But suddenly the hand that gripped his shoulder was withdrawn.
“It’s all right, brother,” said van Wey. “I won’t lean on you ag’in unless I have to. There goes the dinner bell. Let’s go.”
It was the roar of the cook, bellowing—“Come and get it! Come and get it!”—and banging on a tin pan.
Van Wey led the way back to the table, where a fellow with a ship tattooed on one arm and the rather blurred face of a pretty girl on the other forearm was shoveling fried steaks onto the plates. In the center of the table, on a platter, rose a great mound of potatoes, fried to a golden brown. That and pone and black coffee were all of supper.
As they settled themselves around the table, the cook began to pour coffee into the cups, and golden-haired Harry said: “I want two hundred bucks, chief. I’ve just lost a bet.”
“I ain’t got two hundred bucks,” said van Wey. “Dan paid me with some queer … and Bristol, here, has just collected the rent for the landlord. I’m pretty near cleaned out. You had better go fishing for that two hundred bucks if you want it, Weston.”
Harry Weston nodded. And his blue eyes flashed once toward Jimmy Bristol.
“And me pulling out in the morning,” said the man with the broken nose, “it kind of rushed Harry a little to raise that money.”
“You pulling out in the morning, Parr?” asked van Wey.
“Yeah. You know I got an engagement over the hills and far away.”
Dan Miller said nothing. He lowered his head until his sharp nose was almost touching his food and ate in a thoughtful silence. But for some reason Jimmy Bristol felt that the thoughts of Dan Miller were fixed firmly upon him.
“It’s a darkish sort of night for a ride through the gap,” said van Wey to Bristol. “You better put up here tonight.”
“Got an extra blanket?”
“Yeah. And an extra bed. And an extra room,” said van Wey. “There’s a lot of space in the old shack. It was built by a man that had a big family. What’s his name, Dan?”
“Gresham,” said Dan Miller. “Oliver Gresham built it. He had three thousand head of cows running here in the gap and down in the valley. He done pretty well for a long while.”
“Yeah,” said van Wey. “He done pretty well. He kind of went to pieces before the end, though.” And as he finished speaking, his mouth stretched.
Bristol at last recognized the grimace as a smile, or the nearest that van Wey could come to an expression of mirth.
“What happened to him?” asked Bristol.
“His girl married Joe Graney. The cows still grew fat. But then the rustlers, they sort of edged in and skimmed the cream off the pan. There’s been a terrible lot of rustlers around these parts,” said Dan Miller solemnly.
Lefty Parr rubbed his broken nose. His eyes shone. At last his mirth grew greater than his self-control, and he burst into hearty laughter.
“Whatcha laughing at?” demanded van Wey.
“Nothing. I just thought of a joke. Nothing much to tell,” said Lefty Parr, and concealed his face behind the upward tipping of his tin coffee cup.
The cook came to the table and took a place, reaching his greasy hands for what he wanted. They called him Rance. He looked like a low-grade Scandinavian with a great, flat slab of a face, a mouth that was a brother to the mouth of van Wey, and a pair of faded-blue eyes. He never looked a man in the face, but always askance. When he talked, he kept turning his head from side to side, as though he were searching for a hidden thing in the background.
Van Wey filled and emptied his plate three times, poured a fourth cup of steaming coffee down his throat, filled and lighted his pipe, and rose from the table.
“Where you going, chief?” asked Harry Weston.
“For a walk,” said van Wey.
“Far?”
“Far enough,” answered the chief, and turning his back on them, he strode away, letting the rumble of his voice come back over his shoulder. “The three of you and Rance can take care of Bristol. Make him mighty comfortable, I hope.”
There was an odd accent on the last words, and Bristol heard it. He did not need to see the glances that were covertly exchanged between Harry Weston and broken-nosed Lefty Parr in order to understand that the mode of their entertaining might be distinctly original.
“What about a game?” asked Weston gently, at the end of supper.
“I’m flat broke,” said Jimmy Bristol. “I haven’t a penny on me.”
“I told you he was a high-stepper,” said Lefty Parr dryly. “He don’t call a thousand bucks a penny. He’s one of these gents that picks his teeth with diamonds maybe, and washes his hands in rose water, eh?”
He leered across the table at Jimmy Bristol, and the quiet, steady smile of Jimmy Bristol answered him.
“We’ll play for fun,” said Harry Weston. “I’m broke, too. We’ll play for matches. Poker, eh?”
“I’m tired,” answered Jimmy Bristol. “One of you fellows tell me where to find a blanket and a spare bed?”
They looked at one another.
“I’ll show you,” said Rance, the cook, who was shoveling the last of the fried potatoes into his vast mouth. He rose, took a swallow of coffee standing, and led the way to the house. And behind him, Bristol felt three pairs of sharp eyes, following and probing.
By the door hung a lantern, which the cook lighted and then led the way through the open door and across a big room with a low ceiling. The flooring was broken. Some of the masonry of the fireplace at the farther end of the room had fallen down on the hearth. And it was plain that, for van Wey and his followers, the house was no more than a strongly covered camp, a place to sleep in rather than a place to live in.
Rance led the way up creaking stairs, humming a song in the guttural depths of his throat. Down the upper hall, he turned until he came to the end of it, and kicked open a door.
“How does this sound to you, brother?” he asked.
It was a good-size room, with a single cot stowed in a corner and a tousled blanket heaped on the foot of that bed. There was no other furniture, not a washstand or a chair or any rag of a rug.
“Regular palace hotel,” said Jimmy Bristol with his smile. “Bath with every room, telephone, hot and cold running water. A regular home, eh?”
Rance held up the lantern and slowly turned around. “It’s better than a forecastle on an old hooker off the Horn, laying her nose ag’in the westerlies for six weeks, like I’ve seen,” he said.
“It’ll do for me,” agreed Bristol. “Can you leave me that lantern?”
“Sure,” said the cook. “I can find my way around by dark in this place.”
“Makings?” asked Bristol, holding out a battered, little sack of tobacco and wheat-straw papers.
The cook hesitated. Then, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, he accepted the makings, tore off a paper with his greasy fingers, and built a smoke. He returned the makings to Jimmy Bristol and was fumbling for a match when Bristol held a lighted one before him. The faded-blue eyes of Rance shifted up uncomfortably toward Bristol’s face. He nodded a little apologetically as he used the proffered flame.
And then, standing back with a worried frown on his fleshy forehead, he puffed on the cigarette, turned toward the door, and now turned back again.
“What’s the matter, Rance?” asked Bristol. “Anything on yo
ur mind?”
“No,” muttered the cook. He came a stride nearer to Bristol and looked earnestly into his face, as though seeing him for the first time. “Well,” said Rance, “what I was just wondering was … er … I dunno … It’s all right, I guess.”
He went back toward the door. His baffled eyes stared again at Bristol, but in another moment he had stepped out and closed the door with a grunted: “Good night.”
Bristol listened to the muffled tread of the footfalls going down the hall. He heard the squeaking of the stairs as the cook descended. A lonely feeling came over him, as though a friend had just departed.
“Murder,” whispered Bristol to himself. “Murder is what it all means.”
VII
The heart of Rance had been touched by the small courtesies that Jimmy Bristol had showed him. Rance had been stirred to the very verge of speech—yet he had not spoken. He had gone as from a death chamber.
It seemed to Jimmy Bristol that he had been the greatest fool in the world to allow himself to be herded into the house, when all the while he had known that the money that Dirk van Wey had given him was not intended to be kept in his pocket for long. It was simply a jest on the part of that man, van Wey, a brutal jest, to appear to give merely for the sake of taking away again. He said that he had gone for a walk and did not know when he would return. In the meantime, his inference was perfectly clear. He had four men there. If they were worth their salt, they would handle Jimmy Bristol in a manner that he would never forget and either bury him or send him packing as fast as he could go. To a brute like Dirk van Wey, such a scheme would be a very clever way of testing his men, keeping them up on their metal.
Bristol went to the window of the room and looked out. The wall of the house dropped sheerly down without a break. And below the foundations, a steep bank continued the fall. It was a full sixty feet from the sill of his window to the level. Suppose that he made a rope out of the blanket and his own clothes, still he would never be able to get to the ground without broken bones.
As for going out the door, not even a ghost could walk down that hallway or those stairs without making the warped boards creak like an empty wagon on a rough road.