by Max Brand
The Graneys had seen the trio. The girl’s cry came needle-sharp, and she reined suddenly back beside the sheriff.
“It’s Dirk van Wey and two of his men!” she exclaimed. “Take the chestnut for yourself. Give Pringle to Jimmy Bristol. You’ll have a fair chance to get into town ahead of them then. And as for father and me, they won’t harm us. We’re not afraid!”
“It’s the one way!” cried Joe Graney. “Dirk van Wey will have the blood of both of you unless you take the best horses and ride like mad for it!”
“And he’s likely to have the blood of you two if we leave you behind,” said the sheriff. “Heaven knows what’s best to do. We’re no faster than the slowest horse in the lot.”
“You can do one thing,” said Bristol. “Take my word of honor to ride into town freely and give myself up after this brawl is over … and let me have my parole and my free hands for tonight.”
The sheriff groaned. “Graney,” he said, “can you handle a rifle?”
“I’ve lost a thumb from my right hand,” said Graney. “I can shoot a rifle, but I only hit a target now and then.”
“Ride on. Ride like the devil,” said the sheriff. “I’ll try to think. The devil’s behind this. I never saw worse luck. The devil’s in it all.” He groaned again as he said it and lashed the mule that carried Bristol.
They topped the hill and swung recklessly down into the small swale beyond it. Again they reached a crest, and looking back, they saw that the three pursuers were near and gaining with a bewildering speed at every moment.
“Make your choice, Sheriff!” shouted Graney. “Make a choice now, or you’ll be the death of all of us … and free hands for Jimmy Bristol could save us, maybe.”
But the sheriff was totally bewildered. He looked at Jimmy Bristol and saw in him a prisoner of price, a captive who would give him fame. He looked behind and saw ruin sweeping up on them.
Finally, with a shout of despair, he drew a key from his pocket and leaned toward Bristol. “What your word of honor’s worth, heaven knows, not me,” said Tom Denton. “But I’ll take it.”
“I give you my word,” said Bristol. “Fast, man! They’re walking up on us.”
The sheriff had barely turned the key that gave Bristol the freedom of his hands when they had terrible proof of the nearness of the pursuers. It could not have been more than a snap shot, a long chance taken, but a rifle bullet clipped through the head of Tom Denton’s horse. The poor brute dropped and pitched down the slope, throwing its rider from the saddle. Far ahead of the mustang, the sheriff hit the ground and lay like a stone.
XI
“He’s sure dead!” shouted Joe Graney. “Bristol, you ride with us! D’you hear me, Bristol?”
Jimmy Bristol had leaped to the ground while the mule was still cantering, and he raced forward to the spot where the sheriff lay.
If Tom Denton were dead, there was no harm in leaving him there on the ground behind them as they fled. But when he pressed his ear to the breast of the stunned body, he heard the faint beating of the heart. It was like a death warrant to Bristol.
“He’s living!” he said, without rising from his knees.
“Then we’ve got to stay by him!” exclaimed Graney, jumping to the ground in turn. “Look yonder, Jimmy! There’s a nest of rocks where we can hold ’em off. I’ll help you carry him. Margie, slide onto Pringle and burn your way to town as fast as he can gallop!”
What girl, thought Bristol, could have failed to appeal wildly to her father to join her and ride for freedom, leaving the sheriff and the outlawed man to fight it out alone? But no such thought seemed to enter her mind.
Like an athletic boy, she was instantly off the chestnut and onto the rangy form of Pringle. There was no time for her even to touch their hands. She could only cry out a farewell to her father. But to Jimmy Bristol she suddenly threw out her hand, calling: “Jimmy … if we never meet again …!” Then the sweeping gallop of Pringle carried her away, riding for her own life and for theirs.
If they never met again, what was he to understand by that impulsive gesture? He knew what meaning he would put upon it, and a grim joy began to surge in his heart as he helped Graney lift the body of the senseless sheriff.
The rocks were not far away, an irregular outcropping of small boulders and large that had been exposed by the wash of water down the hollow during the heavy rains. In hard clay and gravel those big stones were embedded, and as the two got their burden to the center of this meager screen, they saw the three riders come over the top of the next hill and plunge at them.
Bristol, on his knees behind a rock, found Graney’s rifle thrust into his hands. He fired at the central rider, for it had the great shoulders, the unhuman bulk of Dirk van Wey.
The bullet missed. The instinct of the true marksman told Bristol that he had fired a trifle high and to the right—that commonest of all faults. The second shot would not miss, however, he promised himself as he drew another bead for the same target.
Dirk van Wey and the others, at that first shot, had split their charge and were swerving off to the sides, yet Bristol caught the big outlaw fully in his sights, swung the gun with the target until he knew that the life of Dirk was in the crook of his forefinger, and pulled the trigger.
There was a muffled explosion. The gun jumped like a wounded thing in his hands, and he knew that that good Winchester was hopelessly jammed.
From under his eyes, the three riders swept off to present security and left him there with the injured man and poor Graney, half helpless with that mutilated hand.
He considered the condition of their shelter. There were enough big rocks scattered about to shield them fairly well from any fire directed at them from the level, but high over them towered the head of the hill, where even a child could take control of them, firing sharply angled shots until they were killed, one by one.
“The gun’s gone, eh?” asked Graney.
“It’s gone,” said Bristol curtly. “And you could be off there on the edge of the horizon, riding safe and fast for town.”
“Well,” said Graney, deliberately taking out a pipe and beginning to load it, “I wouldn’t mind living a while longer as a man, but I don’t hanker to crawl around the face of the earth as a yellow dog. Taking things the way that they’ve come, I’d rather be here with you, Jimmy, than sitting on top of a throne with a crown on my head, kicking a couple of prime ministers in the face and ordering up champagne for supper.”
Bristol looked at him with that involuntary smile of his that meant well-being of mind and of body.
“All right,” he said. “All right.” He meant more, far more, than the words said. He saw, in the small speech of Joe Graney, more of the character of the rancher than ten years of other acquaintanceship would have shown to him. That was why he smiled, for he saw that the whole soul of the man was clean, selfless, and sound to the core. He was a proper father of such a girl as Margaret Graney.
If we never meet again! she had cried, as the stallion swept her away to hunt for help in the town. Well, he would extract the best meaning possible from those words, since it was very highly probable that they never would meet again.
He kneeled by the body of the sheriff.
“If he comes to and gets to his feet again,” said Bristol, “that will make two and a half of us, Joe Graney. And we can give Dirk van Wey some sort of a fight.”
“He won’t be getting on his feet again any too soon,” said Joe Graney. “There’s not much chance of that. Listen to his breathing. Listen to …”
The hurt man groaned out at this moment: “Put more wood on the fire, you lazy hounds. You want us all to freeze and … Where am I? Where are we, boys? Where … ?”
“You’re flat on your back. They snicked a bullet through the head of your horse just after you set my hands free,” said Jimmy Bristol to him. “We carried you in here among the rocks. Dirk van Wey and two of his thugs are somewhere out there trying to get a shooting position at us. How
are you? Can you sit up?”
The sheriff tried to do so, propping himself with his hands until he was supported halfway from the ground. Then he gasped and fell back. “My back’s gone,” he said.
“His back’s gone,” said Bristol calmly to Graney, as though the rancher might not have heard. Then he added: “Sheriff, if you can lie on your face and use a rifle that way, you may help to save yourself and the rest of us. Can you manage it?”
“I can try anything,” said the sheriff huskily, “as soon as the fireworks stop in front of my eyes.” He began to edge himself over, but when he was lying on his side, he fainted and dropped back to his first, inert position.
“He’s no more than a bag of sawdust now,” said Jimmy Bristol.
“You and me will be the same before long,” answered Joe Graney. “Look!” He had his pipe going by this time, and as he puffed at it, he pointed toward the brow of the hill that almost overhung the rocks among which they lay. Utterly black it rose against the brightness of that moonlit sky. And Jimmy Bristol saw a figure scurry from one bush to another.
A silence followed.
“No,” said Bristol. “This is about the finish. Except for the sheriff, we might make a break for it and try to run down the hollow to those trees.”
“Yes. Except for the sheriff, we might do that,” said Graney, with an emphasis that Bristol did not miss.
“We’re goners, then,” remarked Bristol. He sat down beside the older man and made a cigarette. He felt a certainty that he was about to die, and he was more than sure that he could not die in better company.
“Margie … she’s what I wonder about,” said Joe Graney.
“She’ll be all right,” said Bristol.
“You think so?”
“I know so. A girl like that couldn’t do the wrong thing. And any man with a brain in his head would want to marry her. She’ll have the whole land to pick from.”
“The pick of the land’ll have to wait a while, then,” said Graney. “You made a kind of an impression on her. She knows that you’re back here with me, because you wouldn’t ride on through the gap about your own business on the back of Pringle, with a thousand dollars in your pocket. And she’s not a girl to forget. You saw her wave to you when she rode away?”
Bristol nodded.
“Well, she meant something by that. This is going to be a black night for us, Bristol. But it’s a black night for her, too. She’s going to lose a father she’s fond of. She’s going to lose a man that maybe she’s fonder of still.”
A rifle cracked above them, sounding strangely far away. At the same instant a bullet kicked up the dirt at their feet. Neither of them moved.
“No, there’s no getting away,” said Graney calmly.
“If I could get a fair crack at just one of ’em … if one of ’em would come inside revolver range,” muttered Jimmy Bristol. He reached out and pulled a revolver from the holster at the thigh of the sheriff, and as at a signal, the sheriff roused himself again, groaning once more.
“They won’t come in range,” said Graney, “unless they keep in cover of those bushes. Instead of being whittled away, maybe it’s better to stand up and let them clip us off quick.”
“Maybe that’s the best way,” said Jimmy Bristol.
Another rifle bullet beat the ground.
“That’s in the same place,” said Graney. “I should think they could shoot a whole lot straighter than that.”
“Oh, they can,” agreed Bristol. “They mean something by it.”
The meaning was announced suddenly from a point not far away and in the huge voice of Dirk van Wey.
“Hey, Jimmy Bristol!” that voice called.
“Here!” called Bristol instantly.
“I guess we got you bozos … all of you!” cried van Wey.
“You’ve got us, van Wey,” agreed Bristol.
“Stand up, then.”
Bristol rose slowly to his feet. He reached out his hand. Joe Graney mutely gripped it in farewell.
“Where you die don’t matter, Bristol,” said van Wey. “But if you come over here, I’ll give you a favor before you kick out.”
“What sort of a favor?”
“The life of either of those fellows that are with you. Either of ’em!”
“He lies,” said Graney eagerly. “Don’t do it, Jimmy. He wants to torture you before he finishes you. There’s more devil in him than in any red Indian.”
“Don’t go, boy,” said the sheriff faintly. “Graney’s right. They’ll devil you to death if you go there.”
Bristol hesitated. If torture were in the mind of Dirk van Wey, there was no doubt that the man would be a consummate artist in his practice of the evil work. Merely to remember the gross, unhuman face of van Wey was enough to curdle his blood.
“You hear me?” shouted van Wey.
He was about halfway up the hill, hidden in deep brush.
“I hear you,” said Bristol, still hesitant. “How am I to know that you’ll let one of these fellows live?”
“Why, son,” answered van Wey, “the fact is that you don’t know. The fact is that all you can do is just to take the word of Dirk van Wey. If he don’t feel like keeping his word, he ain’t going to keep it. Understand?”
“I’m going up to you!” called Bristol.
“Good boy!” said van Wey. “I’ve got a kind of a reception committee waiting here, all ready for you.” And he laughed, a brazen peal that thundered through the still air of the night.
Somewhere out of the distance, a cow began to low mournfully. It was like a ridiculous echo, at which Bristol could have laughed at any other time.
“Don’t go, Jimmy,” said the sheriff. “Stay here, and we’ll both take our medicine with you. Besides, what he promises he won’t keep. I know him.”
But Bristol shook his head. “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “Any kind of a chance is better than no chance at all. Graney … Denton … so long, and good luck to you.”
With that he stepped straight forward among the rocks and began to ascend the hill.
XII
The brush was taller than it appeared from the rocks below. He was soon swallowed up by bushes that rose as high as his head. And as he climbed, he was aware of a great form that stalked him from behind.
At the top of the hill he came out on a small platform that was so level it looked as though it had been shaved off by human masons. It was solid rock, except for a little sifting of soil that appeared here and there, scarcely deep enough to afford rootage for the grass. At one side of this little plateau rose a great tree, a single plume of the head of the hill. From where Bristol stood, the moon appeared exactly behind the tree, turning its leaves into black shadow and a silver luster.
Under that tree sat two forms, and he was able to recognize them presently as Dan Miller and that terrible, young fellow of the golden hair and the dark-blue eyes—Harry Weston.
And now, behind him, strode Dirk van Wey up the slope of the hill.
“I told you I’d get him, boys,” said Dirk van Wey.
“I’ve got him covered,” said Dan Miller from behind his rifle. “None of the rest of you have to worry none. I’ve got him ready to plant.”
“We’re going to take some time for that planting,” said Harry Weston. “How does he come to be a big enough fool to come up here when you ask him, though? That’s what I don’t make out.”
“Sit down or make yourself easy, son,” said Dirk van Wey. “Smoke a cigarette, Jimmy Bristol. I’m kind of glad to see you ag’in.”
“Thanks,” said Bristol.
He was panting from the climb, but he noticed that the slow labor of the great chest of van Wey had hardly been increased in rhythm. There was no possibility of exhausting the brute, it appeared. His endurance was like his actual strength—extra-human.
“Who’s down there behind you?” asked van Wey. He added: “I mean, besides old Joe Graney.”
There was no point in hiding the truth.
“The sheriff is down there,” said Bristol.
He expected a great outburst of rage. Instead, Dirk van Wey merely nodded his head.
“He’s kind of a decent fellow, that Tom Denton is. Got plenty of nerve, too. Three more like him would run me out of the gap. How come you and him didn’t join forces ag’in me, Bristol?”
“Because,” said Jimmy Bristol, “he had handcuffs on me.”
There was a deep shout from Dirk van Wey. It sounded almost like a yell of joy.
“Had ’em on you?”
“Yes,” said Bristol.
“Wait a minute. Lemme get at something. He had the braces on you and …”
“I told you he shot too straight to be honest,” said Harry Weston, approaching.
“What they want you for?” asked Dirk van Wey, his face working to an extra hideousness as he asked the question.
“Murder. Shooting a fellow in Tombstone three months ago.”
“Good,” said Dirk van Wey. “Doggone me, but that’s pretty good, all right. I kind of guessed that there was something to you the minute that I laid eyes on you, and that’s why I give you a chance to try out the four boys I had along with me. Men, they’d always seemed, to listen to their talk and their bragging. Men, and hard-boiled, was what they wanted to seem. But a lot of fresh-water clams was all that they turned out. Fresh-water clams!” He laughed, and his laughter was a snarl. Then he made a brief, ugly gesture toward the two.
“I banked on ’em … I left four of ’em, counting the cook, to trim you to the quick. And you went through ’em like nothing at all. It took Dirk van Wey to run you down. It took Dirk to handle you.” He laughed again. The snarl was one of triumph now.
“How’s Lefty Parr?” asked Bristol.