by Max Brand
“They’re about ready to pass out. Four shots to end four men the like of them. By heaven, I wouldn’t believe it even if I had seen it. No smooth-faced kid like you done that work.” He dropped upon his knees in the rocks before them. “Boys,” he said, “buck up. Get your chins offen your chests. You’re about to die.”
The man named Hank lifted his lolling head, raised a tremulous hand, and smoothed back his long, tow-colored hair. His languid eyes turned from his leader to Jerry and back again. And then a faint light of satisfaction settled upon his face.
“It sort of appears to me, old-timer …” he said to the Black Muldoon, “it sort of appears to me that you ain’t going to be terrible backward about following us down to the devil, after leading us most of the ways to him.”
Bill Muldoon shrugged his shoulders at the thrust. But through the dirt and the red stains, Jerry saw that the face of the leader was flaming with shame.
“I done my best,” said Muldoon. “But … but … I was beat by a gent, here, that took me at a disadvantage.”
“You lie,” said Bud, gasping forth the words. “You lie, Bill. I was enough alive to see that fight … and I seen my money’s worth. The kid beat you fair and square.”
The Black Muldoon ground his teeth, and all of his great bulk of a body shook with his passion.
“No matter about me,” he said, “it’s you boys that I’m thinking about now.”
“And I’m thinking about you, chief,” said Bud, “and how you used to say that nobody but a Muldoon could ever beat a Muldoon. Was that a lie?”
“If it’ll make you happier, Bud, I’ll call it a lie. But now, old son, you just start in thinking about what’s lying ahead for you.”
Bud sneered, but the muscles of his face had grown flaccid, and the expression of defiant contempt changed to one of dismay on the instant. He reached out a fumbling hand that big Bill Muldoon received in his own.
“Steady, Bud,” he said with amazing heartiness. “Steady, old-timer. It ain’t more’n one twist, and then you go to sleep.”
“I don’t mind the pain,” said Bud, a very feeble voice through his panting. “I don’t mind the pain, but the kink in the mule’s tail for me is that, after I’m dead, somebody else is going to ride the pinto. Come here, you fool hoss.”
It was a sturdy, little, brown mare with a great white patch on her side. She came to the voice of her master and shoved her nose under his chin, with ears that quivered back and forth.
“You old fool!” gasped out Bud, passing an arm around her neck. “You old good-for-nothing, you. Lord, Bill, it sure is hard to leave a hoss like this in the middle of a trail.”
“Bud,” began the Black Muldoon, and then stopped short, his voice choking. And Jerry looked upon them in utter amazement. “Bud,” said the Black Muldoon when he could at last speak, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do when you’ve gone along. I’ll take the pinto and take the saddle offen her and turn her loose to run wild. I’ll send her back to the kind that she came from.”
“Good old Bill,” said Bud, his voice now weakened to a horrible whisper. “Good old Bill. I sure always knew that you’d be my friend in the last pinch. You won’t sell her? You won’t let no other gent take the saddle on her?”
“Nary a one, Bud.”
Here Bud started up, raising himself by a terrible effort upon his elbow. “But you ain’t got the say no more. What about him?”
He pointed a shaking finger at Jerry, and the Black Muldoon turned with a gesture to his captor, a gesture imploring him to tell a pleasant lie.
“I’ll see that the horse is turned out wild,” said Jerry.
With a glance, the Black Muldoon thanked him.
And Bud stretched out his hand. Jerry took it. It was limp. There was barely enough strength in the dying man to give one pressure to that handshake, and then he dropped back, dead.
Muldoon closed his eyes, and no sooner was that duty done than he turned to the other victim of Jerry’s rifle. With trembling hands, Hank had managed to roll a ragged cigarette and had lighted it, although he had barely power to lift his hand to his lips. Not a murmur escaped him, although his pallor was more from the mortal anguish he endured than from the loss of blood.
“I took a look to Bud first,” explained Muldoon as he went to Hank. “I done that, because he was the weakest … he was the kid. I knew that he couldn’t hold out so long as an ornery old critter like you, Hank.”
A faint smile of gratified vanity stirred the lips of Hank, although he banished it at once.
“Yep,” he said, “you can’t expect much out of a kid like Bud was. Still, take him by and large, he done noble, that kid done.”
Jerry looked again at the face of dead Bud, and by that second examination he saw, to his vast surprise, that Bud had really been only a youth in his twenties, a slender fellow no older than himself, although he was wrinkled and scarred by too much experience too soon acquired. And now he looked more closely at Hank himself, and he began to see that the latter, veteran though he considered himself, could not have been more than a year or two older than poor Bud. Yet, with a half smile and a half sneer, he regarded the body of his dead companion, raised a shaking hand to his lips, and blew forth another cloud of cigarette smoke. But now death was coming upon him fast. His face was gray. His lips were a light purple. The smile was a stiff caricature of mirth upon his lips.
“Sure he done noble,” said Bill Muldoon heartily. “He done his best. He wasn’t quite the man that you are, Hank, but, for a kid, he done pretty well. But if all the gents that rode with me had been as hard as you, Hank, we never would’ve run into a mess like this one. I ain’t forgetting that you was for going straight on to the far side of the mountain, or else turning back and laying an ambush for the whole posse. I ain’t forgetting what you advised, Hank.”
The dying face of the boy brightened.
“Well,” he said, “if we’d’ve done that we’d’ve blowed about twenty fools clean to inferno instead of getting stopped, all of us, by one blamed tenderfoot … one …” He rolled his eyes up to Jerry. Inexpressible disdain curled his lip.
“That’s done and over with,” said Muldoon hastily. “And you can take this for a comfort for you, son … that the fight that finished you is the fight that finished the last of the Muldoons. Don’t that please you, Hank?”
“Well, Bill, could a Muldoon have fought for you any better than I fought?”
“No, sir, they couldn’t,” said the Black Muldoon heartily. “You’ve come second to none.”
“Though Lefty wouldn’t’ve heard to that.”
“Lefty was a fathead. He didn’t know nothing that was really worth knowing, I guess.”
“I’d like to’ve had him hear you say that,” said Hank.
“He was about to hear it, too,” said Muldoon. “I was going to let you handle the Murphysville job all by yourself and have Lefty working under you.”
“The devil you were, Bill,” whispered the dying marauder.
“I sure mean it.”
“Well … I wished I might’ve lived to do that job.”
“You can do a better job than that, partner. You can make your mind easy. You can give me any messages that you want to send down to the folks in your old hometown.”
“The devil with the old hometown,” said Hank. “I got no use for it or the folks that’re in it.”
“What about your old dad? He’d like it if he thought you remembered him when you come along toward the end.”
“Would he? Well, it was little that he ever done for me, and why should I want to be thinking about him now? Let him go.”
“And there’s your girl, Flossie. What about her?”
The face of Hank contorted with savage pain and anger. “She’ll marry that Perkins gent, and to the devil with her and him both. I hope that ranch raises more salt than cows for ’em. Yep, she’ll marry him and forget about me, quick enough.”
A touch of hardness came into the eyes
of Bill Muldoon, but he only said: “That’s a way folks have. They forget us plumb easy. But now we’ve got our medicine, and I guess we ain’t the ones to whine about it. We’ll take what’s coming to us, Hank, eh?”
“Sure. You ain’t heard me whining.”
“Tell me what I can do to make you easy, Hank? Want me to roll you another cigarette?”
“No. Can’t I roll my own? But … Bill … let’s talk about the day we rode down and cleaned up Jerneytown.”
“Aye, that was a day, Hank.”
“D’you recollect the big, fat barber coming to the door and throwing up his hands with a yell when he seen us?”
“I recollect him like I was seeing him now.”
“I shot him plumb in the belly. My Lord, how it tickled me to see him flop. What come of him, Bill?”
“He got well, by-and-by.”
“The devil he did. But I remember that I was using some old shells that day. They didn’t do much good. And d’you remember how the cashier … ?”
“Steady, Hank.”
The robber’s head had fallen suddenly back with a strangling sound. But now he dragged his head up again and stared at Bill Muldoon with tortured eyes.
“I’m steady enough. And … I got my boots on, Bill, eh?”
“You sure have, Hank. And you’re the last man of the gang, too.”
“Well,” Hank said, breathing hard, “when you come to think of it, I am the last. And … and … Bill … ?”
The leader leaned low over the other.
“Bill,” came the raucous whisper.
“Well, Hank? I’m right here listening.”
“I guess I ain’t showed any white feather, eh?”
“Nary a bit. You show the white feather? I should say not.”
“Well, then, I guess there ain’t nothing more for me to wish for. Bill, s’long …”
All his limbs contorted wildly. He started up to his knees. But to the very last he kept the cry of agony between his locked teeth. And when he slumped sidewise into the arms of Bill Muldoon, he was dead.
VI
Bill Muldoon closed the eyes of Hank as he had done those of Bud and then arose, stretched himself, and rolled a cigarette. “Well,” he said, “so that’s done.” His forehead gleamed with perspiration, and when he had lighted the cigarette, he drew great breaths of smoke down to the bottom of his lungs. He had the appearance of one who had just completed some strenuous physical labor. “Hank was a fool,” commented Muldoon to Jerry. “But he was a brave fool, right?”
“He was,” said Jerry.
“About the pinto … I guess you ain’t aiming to really turn the mare loose?”
“You heard me tell him that I would.”
“That was to make him pass out plumb peaceable, I supposed.”
“He was dying,” said Jerry, “and I promised. There ain’t no good comes out of a broken promise that’s been given to a dying man.”
“Suppose I was to take that saddle off of the pinto now?”
“Go ahead.”
Haltingly, as though he expected a counter command at any moment, the outlaw stripped the saddle from it and sent it flying away with a stroke of the bridle reins. That done, the big man turned with a grin of satisfaction to Jerry. “I guess you didn’t know what hoss that was?” he said.
“I know all about that horse,” said Jerry, smiling. “That’s the horse that Sheriff Galbraith and his posse followed for a whole week down south and couldn’t catch up to.”
“And you turned her loose?” said Bill Muldoon in great wonder. Suddenly he shrugged his shoulders, as though determined to pay no further attention to that which mystified him. “Now, partner, suppose that we get down to business.”
“It’s about time,” said Jerry. “We got a long ride ahead of us.”
“A long ride?”
Jerry smiled at the apparent misunderstanding. “We’re going to get back to Custis as fast as we can move,” he said.
Bill Muldoon shook his head. “I been thinking from the first that you didn’t know me.”
“I know you well enough, Muldoon.”
“Aye, but I’m Bill Muldoon.”
“What of that?”
“Why, look here, friend, I could see how a whole gang might want to take in Bill Muldoon, if they ever caught up with him, but I’m dead sure that no one man, not one as intelligent as you, partner, would ever do it.”
“No?” said Jerry noncommittally.
“I say no, and the reason why is that there’s too much money tied up in the taking of me.”
“Money?”
“Such a pile of it, partner, that it’ll make your mouth water when I tell you how much you’ll get on the split.”
“Half to each of us?”
“That’s right. Now, what would you think I had laid up, stranger?”
“Not much, I should think,” said Jerry.
“No? You ain’t followed my doings, then?”
“I have.”
“And you figure I ain’t made enough to do any saving?”
“I figure that a gent that would rob and murder when he ain’t starving for the lack of money is a hound too bad to live,” Jerry said fiercely.
The big man winced suddenly, as though he had been shaken by a blow. And, staring fixedly at Jerry, he passed the tip of his tongue over his bruised lips. “It’s the second time,” he said slowly, “that you’ve laid murder at my door, friend.”
“Look here, Muldoon,” said Jerry, “if I stay here and listen to you, it don’t mean that I’m believing what you say. Not a bit of it. I’m simply listening to a pile of interesting lies. But the facts about you, Muldoon … why, you’re a fool if you suppose that every man jack in the mountains don’t know ’em.”
“I’m talking about murder,” said Bill Muldoon. “First I ask you … write down the name of one man I’ve murdered?”
“Well, there’s the Gaffney boys.”
“They came manhunting on my trail down in the Pecos country. I met ’em both at the same time. They got the drop on me. They had me helpless. I surrendered and put my hands over my head, but them dirty yaller hounds shot me down, and while I was lying on the ground, I got out my Colt and finished the two of ’em … but I was laid up three months getting over the wounds that they give me.”
Jerry gaped. It was impossible to doubt the veracity of this tale. How many almost-mortal wounds had cut and broken the body of this giant during his life of pillage?
“And Jud Harlan?” he asked. “I suppose that he got the drop on you?”
“He didn’t,” said Muldoon calmly. “There was a gentleman, was Jud Harlan. When they made him sheriff, he just sat down and wrote out a nice, polite letter that he sent to some friends of mine, and he tells them to let me know that he’s about to start out on my trail, and that, when him and me sights each other, we’d better start clawing for guns. And that’s exactly what he done. We met up, head on, coming around a mountain. I beat Jud by the least mite of a second and filled him full of lead, and he dropped down the mountainside, and I even rode into the next town and told them where they’d find their sheriff. And when it come to building a monument for old Jud Harlan, didn’t I send in one thousand dollars in cold cash?”
Again Jerry was stunned. But how much of all this was the truth? Or had the Black Muldoon been fiercely maligned all of his life?
“You mean to stand up there and be telling me,” he said at last, “that you never killed a man just for the sake of killing him?”
“So help me, partner,” said the Black Muldoon, “that’s just what I do mean to tell you. And if I could get them that started the lying, I’d break their backs. Why, friend, yarns like that are the things that a lot of yaller-livered cowards make up about a man they’re plumb afraid to face. They ain’t the stories that an honest-to-God man like you should be believing.”
The flattery warmed the very soul of Jerry.
“Matter of fact,” said Bill Muldoon, “what
you and me are going to do is to be partners. I been waiting all my life to find just one good man, instead of a gang of bums. And you’re the man for me, I can see that.”
“Am I?” Jerry said, reserving his judgment.
“Sure. You had the nerve to jump out from behind the rocks and take a sporting chance when you could have killed us all dead easy from there. And then when I rushed you, instead of drilling me easy with your rifle, like you sure could’ve done, you met me at my own game and … and …”—he spoke through his teeth—“and you had the luck of it.” He could not speak again for an instant, but then he continued more cheerfully: “The trouble with a gang is that so many men can always be followed and always be found. But a gent like you and a gent like me … why, we’d be as good as twenty such as them that lie back yonder.”
What a consummate hypocrite the man, thought Jerry, but he said not a word. Silence more than once had undone a clever man, and it seemed about to undo the Black Muldoon, likewise. He was led on.
“To begin with,” he said, “we’d split up fifty thousand dollars that I’ve got laid away, and you could take your share and go have a party.”
“And what sort of a story should I be telling folks about how you got away?”
“They’d never know that you ever took me. But you’d be down yonder with twenty-five thousand dollars to spend, and more coming to follow it up with. And with you working free at that end of the line, we could pull off some jobs that would make the sheriffs of six states go plumb raving crazy.”
“Bill,” said Jerry, “it’s no good. If you had two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to offer, it wouldn’t be near enough. If you had two million and a half, it still wouldn’t be half enough. What I say is, to the devil with you and your lies. You go to town with me and hang for what you’ve done. Money can’t buy back them that you’ve killed, and money can’t save you.”
The outlaw answered nothing. Instead, he spent a moment looking fixedly at Jerry and then asked abruptly: “What’s your name?”
“Jerry.”