Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Now he rolled down his blanket beside the fire, which he had built for the sake of warmth and good cheer rather than for cooking. His fare consisted of hard crackers and was finished off with a draft of cold water from his canteen; then he was ready for sleep.

  He found shelter at the north end of the mow. Here a great section of the disintegrating roof had fallen and stood end up, walling away a little room half a dozen paces in length and something more than half of that in width. By the vague light cast from the fire, which was rapidly blackening under the downpour of the rain, he took up his new abode for the night, and Lou followed him into it, unbidden.

  He was wakened, after how long an interval he could not guess, by the sound of Lou getting to her feet, and a moment later he heard voices sounding in the big mow of the barn. Other travelers had taken refuge from the storm, it seemed. Ronicky Doone, glad of a chance to exchange words with men, rose hastily and walked to the entrance his quarters.

  As he did so, a match was lighted, revealing two men standing beside their horses in the center of the great inclosure.

  “A fine place for a meeting,” said he who held the match. “How come we got to ride out here to the end of the world?”

  His companion answered: “Maybe you’d have us meet up in a hotel or something, where the sheriff could scoop the whole bunch of us in. Is that your idea, Marty?”

  Ronicky Doone had already advanced a step toward the newcomers, but as he heard these speeches he slipped back again, and, putting his hand over the nose of Lou, he hissed a caution into her ear. And glad he was that he had taught her this signal for silence. She remained at his back, not daring to stir or make a sound, and Ronicky, with a beating heart, crouched behind his barrier to spy on these strangers.

  II. THE PLOT

  “ALL I SAY, ‘Baldy’ McNair,” said Marty, “Is that the old man is sure stepping out long and hard to make things seem as mysterious as he can. Which they ain’t no real need to come clean out here. This makes fifty miles I’ve rode, and you’ve come nigher onto eighty. What sense is in that, Baldy?”

  The match burned out. Baldy spoke in the dark.

  “Maybe the work he’s got planned out lies ahead — lies north.”

  “Maybe. But it sure grinds in on me the way he works. Never no reasons. Just orders. ‘Meet here today after sunset.’ That’s all he says. I up and asks him: “Why after sunset, Jack? Afraid they’ll be somebody to see us out there — a coyote or something, maybe?’ But he wouldn’t answer me nothing. ‘You do what I say, ‘ says he, ‘and figure out your reasons for yourself.’ That’s the way he talks. I say: Is it fit and proper to talk to a gent like he was a slave?”

  “Let’s start a fire,” said his companion. “Talk a pile better when we get some light on the subject.”

  In a minute or two they had collected a great pile of dry stuff; a little later the flames were leaping up in great bodies toward the roof and puffing out into the darkness.

  The firelight showed Ronicky two men who had thrown their dripping slickers back from their shoulders. Marty was a scowling fellow with a black leather patch over his right eye. His companion justified his nickname by taking off his hat and revealing a head entirely and astonishingly free from hair. From the nape of his neck to his eyebrows there was not a vestige or a haze of hair. It gave him a look strangely infantile, which was increased by cheeks as rosy as autumn apples.

  “Now,” went on Baldy McNair, “let me put something in your ear, Lang. A lot of the boys have heard you knock the chief. Which maybe the chief himself has heard.”

  “He’s give no sign,” muttered Marty.

  “Son,” said Baldy, who was obviously much younger than the man of the patched eye, but who apparently gained dignity by the baldness of his head, “when Jack Moon gives a sign, it’s the first sign and the last sign all rolled into one. First you’ll hear of it will be Moon asking you to step out and talk to him. And Moon’ll come back from that talk alone and say that you started out sudden on a long trip. You wouldn’t be the first. There was my old pal ‘Lefty’ and ‘Gunner’ Matthews. There was more, besides. Always that way! If they start getting sore at the way he runs things, he just takes them out walking, and they all go on that long journey that you’ll be taking one of these days if you don’t mind your talk, son! I’m telling you because I’m your friend, and you can lay to that!”

  “What I don’t see,” answered Marty Lang, “is why the chief wants to hang on to a gent forever. You make it out? Once in the band, always in the band. That ain’t no sense. A gent don’t want to stick to this game forever.”

  “Oh, ho!” chuckled Baldy. “Is that the way of it? Well, son, don’t ever let the chief hear you say that! Sure we get tired of having to ride wherever he tells us to ride, and we want to settle down now and then — or we think that we want to — and lead a quiet life and have a wife and a house and a family and all that. For that matter, there’s nothing to keep us from it. The chief don’t object.”

  “Don’t object? How can a gent settle down at anything when he’s apt to get a call from the chief any minute?”

  “Wrong again. Not more’n once every six months. That’s about the average. And then it’s always something worth while. How long you been with us?”

  “Four years.”

  “Ever gone hungry for four years?”

  “No.”

  “When you was sick, two years back, were you took care of?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you have when the chief picked you up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “All right. You were down to zero. He picked you up. He gave you a chance to live on the fat. All you got to do in return is to ride with him once in six months and to promise never to leave the band. Why? Because he knows that if ever a gent shakes clear of it he’ll be tempted to start talking some day, and a mighty little talk would settle the hash of all of us. That’s the why of it! He’s a genius, Moon is. How long d’you think most long riders last?”

  “I dunno. They get bumped off before long.”

  “Sure they do. Know why? Because the leaders have always kept their men together in a bunch most of the time. Moon seen that. What does he do? He gets a picked lot together. He gets a big money scheme all planned. Then he calls in his men. Some of ’em come fifty miles. Some of ’em live a hundred miles away. They all come. They make a dash and do the work. Soon’s it’s done they scatter again. And the posse that takes the tracks has five or six different trails to follow instead of one. Result? They get all tangled up. Jack Moon has been working twenty years and never been caught once! And he’ll work twenty years more, son, and never be caught. Because why? Because he’s a genius! Steady up! Who’s that?”

  Straight through the entrance to the mow came two riders.

  “Silas Treat and the chief himself,” said Lang.

  What Ronicky Doone saw were two formidable fellows. One, mounted on a great roan horse, was a broad-shouldered man with a square-cut black beard which rolled halfway down his chest. The other was well-nigh as large, and when he came into the inner circle of the firelight Ronicky saw one of those handsome, passionless faces which never reveal the passage of years. Jack Moon, according to Baldy, had been a leader in crime for twenty years, and according to that estimate he must be at least forty years old; but a casual glance would have placed him closer to thirty-three or four. He and his companion now reined their horses beside the fire and raised their hands in silent greeting. The black-bearded man did not speak. The leader, however, said:

  “Who started that fire?”

  “My idea,” confessed Baldy. “Matter of fact, we both had the same idea. Didn’t seem anything wrong about starting a fire and getting warm and dry.”

  “I seen that fire a mile away,” said the leader gloomily. “It was a fool idea.”

  “But they’s nobody else within miles.”

  “Ain’t there? Have you searched all through the barn?”

  “Why
— no.”

  “How d’you know somebody didn’t come here?”

  “But who’d be apt to come this way?”

  “Look at those cinders over there. That shows that somebody lately has been here and started a fire. If they come here once, why not again?”

  “I didn’t notice that place,” said Baldy regretfully. “Sure looks like I’ve been careless. But I’ll give the barn a search now.”

  “Only one place to look,” said Jack Moon, “and that’s behind that chunk of the roof where it’s fallen down yonder.”

  “All right!” The other nodded and started straight for the hiding place of Ronicky Doone.

  The latter reached behind him and patted the nose of the mare, Lou, in sign that she must still preserve the utmost silence. Then he drew his revolver. There was no question about what would happen if he were discovered. He had been in a position to overhear too many incriminating things. Unlucky Baldy, to be sure, would be an easy prey. But the other three? Three to one were large odds in any case, and every one of these men was formidable.

  Straight to the opening came Baldy and he peered in, though he remained at a distance of five or six paces. Ronicky Doone poised his gun, delayed the shot, and then frowned in wonder. Baldy had turned and was sauntering slowly back toward his companions.

  “Nothing there,” he said to the chief, as he approached.

  Ronicky hardly believed his ears, but a moment of thought explained the mystery. It was pitch dark behind that screening wall, and the darkness was rendered doubly thick by Baldy’s probable conviction that there must be nothing to see behind the fallen roof section. He had come there prepared to find nothing, and he had found the sum of his expectations and no more.

  “Sure there ain’t?” and Jack Moon nodded. “Which don’t mean that you wasn’t a fool to light a fire and give somebody a light to shoot you by in case they was somebody lying around. Now, into the saddle both of you. We got a hard ride ahead.”

  “Something big on hand?” asked Marty Lang.

  “There’s a lesson for yaller-livered sneaks on hand,” said Jack Moon, his deep bass voice floating smoothly back to the ear of Ronicky. “Hugh Dawn has come back to Trainor. We’re going to drop in and call on him and ask him what he’s been doing all these ten years.”

  The low, growling murmur of the other three rolled away in the rush of rain beyond the door of the barn. The four horsemen disappeared, and Ronicky stepped out into the light of the dying fire. He had hardly taken a step forward when he shrank back against the wall.

  Straight into the door came Jack Moon, who peered uneasily about the barn. Then he whirled his horse away and disappeared into the thick downpour. He had seen nothing, and yet the true and suspicious instinct of the man had brought him back to take a final glance into the barn to make sure that no one had spied on the gathering of his little band.

  III. THE DAWN HOUSE

  SMALL THINGS ARE often more suggestive, more illuminating, than large events. All that Ronicky had heard Baldy say about Jack Moon and his twenty years’ career of crime had not been so impressive as that sudden reappearance of the leader with all the implications of his hair-trigger sensitiveness. Ronicky Doone was by no means a foolish dreamer apt to be frightened away from danger by the mere face of it, but now he paused.

  Plainly, Hugh Dawn was a former member of the band, and this trip of Moon’s was undertaken for the purpose, perhaps the sole purpose, of killing the offender who had left his ranks. Ronicky Doone considered. If Hugh Dawn had belonged to this crew ten years before, he had probably committed crimes as terrible as any in the band. If so, sympathy was wasted on him, for never in his life had Ronicky seen such an aggregation of dangerous men. It scarcely needed the conversation of Lang and Baldy to reveal the nature of the organization. Should he waste time and labor in attempting to warn Hugh Dawn of the coming trouble?

  Trainor, he knew, was a little crossroads village some twenty miles to the north. He might outdistance the criminal band and reach the town before them, but was it wise to intervene between such a man as Jack Moon and his destined victim? Distinctly it was not wise. It might call down the danger on his own head without saving Dawn. Moreover, it was a case of thief against thief, murderer against murderer, no doubt. If Dawn were put out of the way, probably no more would be done than was just.

  And still, knowing that the four bloodhounds were on the trail of one unwarned man, the spirit of Ronicky leaped with eagerness to be up and doing. Judgment was one thing, impulse was another, and all his life Ronicky Doone had been the creature of impulse. One man was in danger of four. All his love of fair play spurred him on to action.

  In a moment more the saddle was on the back of the mare, he had swung up into his place, flung the slicker over his shoulders, and cantered through the door of the barn.

  He turned well east of the trail which wound along the center of the valley. This, beyond question, the band would follow, but inside of half an hour Ronicky estimated that his mount, refreshed by her food and rest, would outfoot them sufficiently to make it safe to drop back into the better road without being in danger of meeting the four.

  Such, accordingly, was the plan he adopted. He struck out a long semicircle of half a dozen miles, which carried him down into the central trail again; then he headed straight north toward Trainor. The rain had fallen off to a mere misting by this time, and the wind was milder and came out of the dead west, so that there was nothing to impede their progress. The mountains began to lift gloomily into view, the walls of the valley drew steadily nearer on either side, and at length, at the head of the valley, he rode into the town of Trainor.

  With the houses dripping and the street a river of mud under the hoofs of Lou, the town looked like a perfect stage for a murder. Ronicky Doone dismounted in front of the hotel.

  There was no one in the narrow hallway which served as clerk’s office and lobby. He beat with the butt of his gun against the wall and shouted, for there was no time to delay. At the most he could not have outdistanced Jack Moon by more than half an hour, and that was a meager margin in which to reach the victim, warn him, and see him started in his flight.

  Presently an old fellow with a goat beard stumbled down the stairs, rubbing his eyes.

  “And what might you want this late, partner?” he inquired.

  “Hugh Dawn,” said Ronicky. “Where does Hugh Dawn live?”

  “Hugh Dawn?” said the other, his eyes blank with the effort of thought. Then he shook his head. “Dunno as I ever heard about any Hugh Dawn. Might be you got to the wrong town, son.”

  It was partly disappointment, partly relief that made Ronicky Doone sigh. After all, tie had done his best; and, since his best was not good enough, Hugh Dawn must even die. However, he would still try.

  “You’re sure there’s no Dawn family living in these parts?”

  “Dawn family? Sure there is. But there ain’t no Hugh Dawn ever I heard of.”

  “How long you been around here?”

  “Eight years come next May Day.”

  ‘Very well,” said Ronicky brusquely, recalling that it was ten years before that Hugh Dawn, according to Jack Moon, had disappeared. “Where is the Dawn house?”

  “Old Grandpa Dawn,” said the proprietor, “used to live out there, but he died a couple of years back. Now they ain’t nobody but Jerry Dawn.”

  “The son?”

  “It ain’t a son. She’s a girl. Geraldine is her name. Most always she’s called Jerry, though. She teaches the school and makes out pretty good and lives in that big house all by herself.”

  “And Where’s the house, man?” cried Ronicky, wild with impatience.

  “Out the east road about a couple of miles. Can’t help knowing it, it’s so big. Stands in the middle of a bunch of pines and—”

  The rest of his words trailed away into silence. Ronicky Doone had whipped out of the door and down the steps. Once in the saddle of Lou again, he sent her headlong down the east road.
Would he be too late, after this delay at the hotel and the talk with the dim-minded old hotel proprietor?

  The house, as he had been told, was unmistakable. Dense foresting of pines swept up to it on a knoll well back from the road, and over the tops of the trees, through the misting rain and the night, he made out the dim triangle of the roof of the building. In a moment the hoofs of the mare were scattering the gravel of the winding road which twisted among the trees, and presently he drew up before the house.

  The face of it, as was to be expected at this hour of the night, was utterly blank, utterly black. Only the windows, here and there, glimmered faintly with whatever light they reflected from the stormy night, the panes having been polished by the rain water. As he had expected, it was built in the fashion of thirty or forty years before. There were little decorative turrets at the four comers of the structure and another and larger turret springing from the center of the room. He had no doubt that daylight would reveal much carved work of the gingerbread variety.

  A huge and gloomy place it was for one girl to occupy! He sprang from the saddle and ran up the steps and knocked heavily on the front door. Inside, he heard the long echo wander faintly down the hall and then up the stairs, like a ghost with swiftly lightening footfall. There was no other reply. So he knocked again, more heavily, and, trying the knob of the door, he found it locked fast. When he shook it there was the rattle of a chain on the inside. The door had been securely fastened, to be sure. This was not the rule in this country of wide-doored hospitality.

  Presently there was the sound of a window being opened in the story of the house just above him. He looked up, but he could not locate it, since no lamp had been lighted inside.

  “Who’s there?” called a girl’s voice.

  It thrilled Ronicky Doone. He had come so far to warn a man that his life was in danger. He was met by this calm voice of a girl.

  “Who I am doesn’t matter,” said Ronicky Doone. “I’ve come to find Hugh Dawn. Is he here?”