by Max Brand
“What do you mean, Lou?”
“I mean that if anything should happen to you, I’d never be happy again.”
“Lou!”
“Hush, Jerry … but … I mean it. Oh, how ashamed I am to tell you. But I’ve got to keep you from going.”
“Lou, after this one time …”
“That’s a promise you’d be sure to break. Don’t make it.”
“It’s a promise I’d be sure to keep. Lou, on my word of honor, after this one chase I’ll never ride again with the rest of ’em when they take a man trail. But this is the Black Muldoon … this is Bill Muldoon himself. Don’t you see that I’d be shamed if I didn’t go, just when I may be of use … ?”
Suddenly she turned and fled into the house. Just inside the screen door she paused, but she did not turn again, and he knew it was because she would not show her weeping face.
He turned to the waiting group of riders. Every man had a faint smile of concern and envy at the corners of his lips. It is the concern of all men, whether young or old, when a beautiful girl gives her heart away. Those smiles of understanding went out as Jerry sprang down from the porch and leaped into the saddle of his horse. In a close cluster, shouting with triumph now that they had Achilles in their midst, they raced off down the road.
IV
It was the old trail after the Muldoons. As always, they had taken to the ways leading to the rocky crests of the mountains. Above timberline the Muldoons seemed at home.
Also, they were always sure to be equipped with exactly the right sort of horses for traveling across the dangerous land where no trees grow. What their ponies lacked in speed over the level, they more than made up in ability to get about among the slippery rocks and crags of the summits. The men out of old Custis gained rapidly enough, so long as they had tolerably even ground for the running of their horses, but, when they got off the easy trails of the lower hills and entered into the precarious ways of the loftier mountains, they began to lose again. And when they came to the timberline, Sheriff Tom Smythe, old and reliable trailer that he was, gave up the battle.
“There they go yonder,” he said, after he had gathered his men into a knot. “I know where they go almost as well as if I seen ’em with the eye. They’re cutting around the side of the mountain, in between Custis Mountain and Mount Black. They know doggone well that before night there’ll be a storm busting across the pass, and if we foller them, they get through dead easy, and we’ll get caught right in the pass. And that wind would blow the life right out of us, eh?”
The others agreed. It seemed to Jerry that for sometime past they had been willing and even eager to quit the trail. Far to the north and west, a thin rift of storm clouds had been growing steadily. The prospect of being caught for a night above timberline in a wild storm was not alluring to the sheriff and his men.
“The way I figure it,” suggested Jerry mildly, “is that what a Muldoon can stand the rest of us can stand, whether it’s above timberline or by the seashore.”
“That’s the way you figure it, son,” said the sheriff, and he adjusted his bandanna around his bronzed and sharply wrinkled neck. “That’s the way you figure, but when you’re a mite older, maybe you’ll figure different again. I been following the Muldoons, off and on, about thirty years. And I ought to know their ways, pretty near, by this time.”
It occurred to Jerry to suggest that thirty years of failure were fairly conclusive proof that the worthy sheriff did not know the ways of the Muldoons, but Jerry was enough of a diplomat to understand that such a challenge would destroy the favorable attitude of the sheriff and gain no desirable end.
But when the sheriff continued to say that he intended to make a detour, cross the mountains at Ball Pass, and then skirt up and down at timberline, or just below, on the chance of meeting the Black Muldoon and his gang as the latter went through to the farther side, the patience of Jerry gave out. He gritted his teeth in silence. When the sheriff actually turned to the side to start the detour, Jerry announced that, since the outright pursuit of the desperadoes had stopped, he intended to leave the party. It was in vain that the sheriff stormed and threatened that he would never again include Jerry in a posse. It was in vain that all of his fellows in the party of horsemen pleaded with him to stay. He was adamant, and at length they wound down the mountainside, growling and scowling at one another. Jerry remained behind.
He knew that he had dealt his prestige a heavy blow by this desertion, but the stupidity of the sheriff’s conduct had angered him, and he decided that he would make the most of a lone hand. Had he not promised beautiful Lou Donnell that he would never again ride into the perils of a manhunt? What he could do single-handed against five desperate fighters and known villains such as Muldoon and his four companions did not enter into the calculations of Jerry. He only knew that he must get within striking range of the five, and after that he would let circumstances direct his own course of action.
But as to crossing with the sheriff to the far side of the mountains, that, of course, was absurd. There was just as great a chance that Muldoon would not cross the mountains at all, but, having ridden to an upper height, he would watch through powerful binoculars while the sheriff and his followers rode down the wrong way, and then he would double out like a fox from his lair and return by the same way he had come, to carry ruin into some mountain village. But if he did double back in that manner, he would stumble against one obstacle—Jerry, with ready guns in his hands.
He got off his mustang and led the animal to the shade of a tree. There he threw the reins and rolled a cigarette, knowing, like every good range rider, that there is nothing like tobacco to clear the head and make the brain function smoothly. While he inhaled the first draft of the smoke deeply, he looked down toward the lower hills out of which they had labored this day. They were masked in a gathering haze of heat waves. He seemed to be looking into a vast well, in the bottom of which appeared dim forms of smaller mountains. Above him rose the barren sweep of the region over the timberline, with the timberline itself swerving in and out among the hillsides like the edge of dark water. An unseen bird swooped above him, singing out of the wind as it passed. Jerry raised his head to try and mark the minstrel, and he saw, with that upward glance, a file of horsemen twisting around a boulder on the side of Custis Mountain high above him.
He clamped his binoculars to his eyes. First rode a big man who had sweeping, gray mustaches. That must be the Black Muldoon, just as he had been described when he plunged on his horse through the streets of New Custis with a revolver poised in either hand, guiding his horse with the pressure of his knees. Behind him was a flicker of red. That was Lefty, no doubt, who had been sighted in a red shirt. And behind came three more, winding into view, one by one, as they rounded the boulder, then dropping out of sight again at once.
The heart of Jerry bounded. There they came—there came five men, the capture of any one of whom meant fame to the captor. Evidently they had watched from the security of the mountainside, and hardly had they seen the sheriff lead his men to the side than they started their descent. It was plain that they were familiar from of old with the workings of the mind of the worthy sheriff.
It was hardly too late to summon back the sheriff and his men. Indeed, they could not be more than two or three miles away. But the noise that would summon them would also warn Muldoon and his followers back to safety. Jerry gripped his rifle at the balance and set his teeth.
High rocks near the tree sheltered both him and his horse from any but the most particular observation. The minutes spun out. The sun came hot and steady upon him. It seemed to press down on him with an actual and burning weight, as mountain suns will do. Perspiration streamed down his face. What if some of it ran into his eyes at the last instant? How many cool fighters had been ruined by such accidents as these? Perhaps all killers of men, in the end, were beaten by such chances as these. But his own coolness was gone. The thought of the Black Muldoon shook him as the wind shakes a
dead leaf.
Another idea came to him. Would he possess the cruelty, even if he had the nerve, to shoot upon the five men from ambush? That would be murder that the law sanctioned, but it was murder no less.
The long interval drew toward an end. He heard the clink of a rock under the iron-shod hoof of a horse, and then the leader of the procession drew into sight, the Black Muldoon, to be sure, exactly as he had been described, a great body of a man, seen near at hand, active and powerful in spite of his middle age. He came with his hat pushed back on his head. His rifle was carried at a balance across the pommel of his saddle, and all his manner was one of easy command and self-assurance. And, to be sure, had he ever once been cornered? Had he ever once been beaten?
Jerry tossed the butt of his own gun into the hollow of his shoulder and drew a bead. Instantly, as the sights lined up with the head of the outlaw, his hand steadied to a rock-like firmness. Bill Muldoon was no better than a dead man. Moreover, Jerry had now a practical assurance that his nerve would by no means fail him in a pinch. All that he needed to do was to press with his trigger finger, and the notorious long rider would have been no more.
But the instant he was sure of one, he desired a greater prey. There were five men there. If he started shooting from covert, the swift action of the repeater would probably account for them all while the marksman remained uninjured. But could he shoot from covert? It was the sense that such a thing would be no better than murder that had kept him from shooting the Black Muldoon. Now all five horses were in plain view, with their heads nodding in a ragged rhythm.
Jerry leaped sidewise from his shelter among the rocks, and he fired an opening shot above the head of the last rider of the five. That was his last concession to sportsmanship. Even as he fired into the air, he was dropping prone along the ground so that he would offer a smaller target to his enemies. They had seized their guns, one and all, and reined their horses wildly back. But before they had located him, his rifle spoke again, and the last man of the five slumped in the saddle. It exploded again and knocked the fourth rider, a tall, lean man, cleanly out of his saddle.
At the same time, the three leaders found the marksman and sent a volley crashing at him, but surprise had affected their control, and every shot flew high while Jerry, in quick succession, cool as ice and wondering at his coolness, sent two more bullets home and saw the third rider and the second, he of the red shirt, struck headlong from their saddles. All the time used in the firing of those four shots had been hardly a breathing space.
There was a new explanation of why Jerry had lived to complete that string of four, however. He saw the first man, the great Muldoon himself, swing the rifle around his head with a tremendous curse and hurl it at the head of Jerry, then whip out a revolver and leap from his saddle at the same instant. The larger weapon had clogged in some manner, so that it was no longer useful. He should have opened fire with the smaller from the saddle, but a blind rage seemed to have overcome him, and he plunged in the end to combat, hand to hand.
Jerry had risen to meet him. In the flurry of that wild rush, they both fired and missed, and then they fell into each other’s straining arms, dropped the revolvers, and strove for wrestling grips.
Well was it for Jerry, then, that he had youth on his side. The Black Muldoon was within a year or two of fifty, but he carried his sinewy bulk with the agility of a boy. Moreover, all the Herculean power of that great frame was used according to the methods of a trained wrestler. Opposed to that skill, Jerry had only a novice’s conception of the grips. But he had tireless strength, the grip of a coiling boa constrictor, and enough lifting force to have riven up a young oak by the roots.
Even so, he found himself caught, twisted, and flung headlong onto the rocks. Only a cat-like agility in whirling over and over and throwing himself to his feet in a single effort saved him.
He dodged the next rush of the big man and, avoiding the deadly pressure of those thick arms, crashed both fists against the head of the Black Muldoon. This brought forth a terrifying roar from the giant. In he came again. Half a dozen pile-driver blows glanced uselessly from his lowered head. Again he caught Jerry, and again Jerry went down, and this time in such a manner that he could not work loose.
He labored in the moments that followed as he had never labored before and would never labor again. Had the big man followed any single plan of attack, he would have crushed Jerry infallibly in that assault, but he clung to no one plan. There was only a half-blind and consuming fury to dictate his courses. He no sooner did one thing than he saw another tempting opportunity. He quitted a grip that threatened to crack the ribs of Jerry in order to tear at his throat, and he left the throat hold for one by which he strove to crack the bone of Jerry’s right arm.
But his hurrying ferocity defeated its own end. Grip after grip was changed, purposely, or else Jerry managed to writhe away from it, although the fingers of Muldoon tore his flesh like hot irons. Those terrible efforts, however, had taken the first flush of the older man’s strength. Incomparably powerful though he was, his apogee of might endured only through one ecstasy of action. A hoarse and gasping breath warned Jerry that he had less to fear. With a great effort he managed to break loose, and when the Black Muldoon charged again, a well-directed blow, whipped in with all of the younger man’s strength, stopped Bill Muldoon in full career and sent him staggering back. That was the turning point.
The moment big Muldoon’s fighting impetus was gone, Jerry showed him the same mercy that a tiger shows to a wounded bull buffalo after a fierce battle in which both have bled. He would not at once close, for he still dreaded the bone-breaking power in the arms of the older man. But gliding around Muldoon, he slashed at him with terrible blows. Solid as was the bulk of Muldoon, it needed only that one of these blows lodge squarely on his chin to down him. And he, realizing this, held his head down, and, glaring up from under bushy, black eyebrows, he waited with a species of savage patience for a time when he might get his opponent at a new advantage.
But that time never came. A bone-crushing left hand drove against his ribs. He gasped, and instinctively his head came up as he struck hard and short in return. The raising of that head was what Jerry had been waiting for. At the same instant, his big right fist, brown as a berry and hard as a rock, slugged the Black Muldoon across the jaw and dropped him with a grunt. Yet such was the marvelous vitality of the man that, before he had well struck the ground, he was writhing to regain his feet once more.
But Jerry had had enough. He had met the huge outlaw with the latter’s own weapons. He had beaten him hand-to-hand. Now that this was accomplished, he could not find it in his heart to beat the older man further with his fists. And it would have been brutally ludicrous to ask that heart of oak to surrender.
So, as the Black Muldoon came staggering and half blind to his feet, Jerry scooped up his own fallen revolver and thrust it into the giant’s stomach.
“Stick up your hands,” panted Jerry.
“Shoot and be damned to you,” gasped Bill Muldoon, and as he spoke, a crimson stream trickled across his lips and stained his gray mustaches. “Shoot, you prancing hound … you skunk … you yaller dancer! If you’d’ve stopped still for five seconds, I’d’ve smashed you like a bad egg!”
Jerry waited patiently. Words could not harm him. Even the working hands of the outlaw, hovering perilously near his throat, could really do him no injury while the cold nose of his Colt was shoved against the stomach of his foeman. Moreover, he knew that it was the first time in Muldoon’s life that the latter had surrendered to any foe.
“Now that you’ve finished talking,” said Jerry, “get them hands up.”
“I’ll see you to the devil sideways, endways, or anyways you please,” said the outlaw. “I’ve told you to shoot!”
“That was just your way of letting off steam,” said Jerry. “Why, you murdering dog, d’you think I’ll think twice before I blow you in two? You’re worth as much to me, or any man, dead as you a
re alive. Get up them hands!”
The outward thrust of his jaw, and the admonitory jab of the Colt, caused the other to sag, as though his spirit were broken. His hands came halfway to his shoulders. Then his eyes rolled to the side.
“Lemme have a look at the boys,” he said. “And then I’ll get up my hands as high as ever you please. Will you lemme have a look at them?”
It was, in a way, a giving or parole, and although Jerry accepted it as such, he nonetheless kept his revolver in his hand all during the time when the leader was bending over his followers.
“I’ll give you my word, if you want,” said the Black Muldoon.
“I want no promise from you,” said the youth. “If you can get away from me, why, then you’re well and welcome to get away.”
V
Muldoon went at a run first to the red-shirted man, scooped him up in his arms, and then lowered him with a breathless oath.
“Lefty’s done!” he gasped out. “Lord a’mighty, after all of these days, Lefty’s luck run out on him, and here’s the end of him, and the end of the trails that him and me rode together.”
That epitaph must suffice, perforce, for poor Lefty. The giant leader had hurried on to the next man, and there he shouted with triumph as the latter opened his eyes and feebly asked for water. The third man lived also, but the fourth, who Jerry had first aimed at, was shot cleanly through the head and had never known the end that struck him down. Big Bill Muldoon, nervous with haste, panting with the labors of his battle and with his wounds dripping unheeded where the hard fists of Jerry had slashed the skin, picked up the third man, who he called Bud, and placed him beside the second, who had been previously addressed as Hank. There, where he could listen to both and work over both to the best advantage, he labored first to quench their thirst from their own canteens and the canteens of those who would never again need water. Next he examined their wounds and jerked his terrible face around to speak to Jerry.