by Max Brand
“You’re a gent with four crooks on your heels,” said Ronicky calmly. “I heard them talk. I couldn’t let a murder be done if I could keep you from it. That’s why I’m here.”
The other shook his head. But the girl cried: “Don’t you see, dad? He’s simply — white! For Heaven’s sake, believe him — trust in my trust. Get your things together. I’ll saddle the gray and—”
The storm of her excited belief swept the other off his feet. He flashed one glance at Ronicky Doone, then turned on his heel and ran for his room.
The girl raced the other way, clattering down the stairs. Perhaps when she sprang outside into the night Jack Moon and his men would already be there. But she had never a thought for danger.
Ronicky Doone only delayed to run into the front room on that floor — the room from which the girl had spoken to him when he tried the front door — and there he lighted the lamp and placed it on the table near the window. After that he sped down the stairs, untethered Lou from her tree at the side of the house, and hurried with her to the back of the house and the old, tumble-down horseshed which stood there.
Lantern light showed there, where the girl was saddling a tall, gray gelding. She was working the cinch knots tight as Ronicky appeared, so fast had been her work, and now her father came from the house at a run, huddling himself into his slicker.
“How could they find out that I come here?” he asked. “After ten years!”
“No time for questions,” his daughter said, panting. “Oh, dad, for Heaven’s sake use the spurs tonight. Go back. Never return!”
“And leave you here alone?” asked Ronicky sternly. “Not when Moon and his gang are on the way. I seen their faces, lady, and they ain’t a pretty lot! Leave you to be found by them? Not in a thousand years.”
She grew a little pale at that, but she still kept her head high. “I’ve nothing to fear,” she said. “They wouldn’t dare harm me.”
“I’ll trust ’em dead, not living,” said Ronicky. “You’re going to ride with your father and on that hoss yonder!”
There was a companion to the gray, hardly so tall, but even better formed.
“He’s right,” said Hugh Dawn. As he spoke he caught saddle and bridle from their hooks and slapped them onto the horse. “I ain’t thinking right tonight. I ain’t understanding things. Doone, you put shame on me! Of course I ain’t going to leave her alone!”
Ronicky heard these remarks with only half an ear.
He called from the door of the shed, where he had taken his stand: “Now put out the lantern! No use calling them this way with a light!”
He was hastily obeyed. Through the darkness they led out the two grays beside Lou.
“And you, Doone,” said Hugh Dawn, who seemed to have been recovering his poise rapidly during the past seconds, “ride down the east road. We’ll go over the hills. Tomorrow Jerry can come back, when it’s safe. And — Doone, shake hands! I forgive that punch that knocked me cold. Some day we—”
“Shut up,” whispered Ronicky Doone impolitely and with savage force. “There they come!”
Four ghostly, silent figures, stooping low, advancing with stealthy stride, came out of the pines and slid toward the house. They could not be distinguished individually. They were simply blurs in the mist of rainfall, but for some reason their very obscurity made them more significant, more formidable. Ronicky Doone heard a queer, choked sound — Hugh Dawn swallowing a horror that would not down.
“And — and I near stayed there in the house and waited — for this!” he breathed.
Ronicky Doone jerked up a threatening fist. Not that there was a real danger that they might be overheard at that distance, but because he had odd superstitions tucked away in him here and there, and one of those superstitions was that words were more than mere sounds. They were thoughts that went abroad in an electric medium and possessed a life of their own. They might dart across a great space, these things called words. They might enter the minds and souls of men to whom they were not addressed. The idea had grown up in Ronicky Doone during long periods of silence in the mountains, in the desert where silence itself is a voice.
That raised fist brought the hunted man’s teeth together with a snap. Then the gesture of Ronicky commanded them to go forward, on foot, leading their horses. He himself went last and acted as the rear guard while they trudged out past the horse-shed — blessing the double night of its shadow! — and up the grade, then swerving around among the trees on the narrow uptrail which would eventually take them over the hills. They came even with the side of the house.
“Good Lord!” breathed Dawn. “They sure ain’t got up that high already — but — they’s a light in the front room — your room, Jerry!”
“I left that lamp,” Ronicky Doone told them, grinning. “I thought it’d keep ’em nice and quiet for a while and make ’em sneak up to that door slow and easy, slow and easy — then pop! wide goes the door, and they run in and find — nothing!”
He laughed fiercely, silently — no sound coming save the light catching of his breath.
“You got a brain,” said the rescued man.
“Heaven bless you!” whispered his daughter.
“We can climb the hosses now,” said Ronicky, who seemed to have been admitted into the post of commander. “No danger of being seen. But ride slow. Things that move fast are seen a pile quicker than things that stand still. Now!”
He gave the example of swinging into the saddle on Lou. The girl, as she imitated, went up lightly as a feather, but Hugh Dawn’s great bulk brought a loud grunt from the gray he bestrode, and the three sat a moment, straining in fear. But there was no sound. The four shadows had melted into the greater shadow of the house.
They began at a walk. They climbed higher on the swinging trail among the trees until they were above another eminence and looked down. The house seemed as near as ever, the trail had zigzagged so much to make the altitude. They could see the front of the building clearly, and suddenly the light wobbled, flashed to the side, and almost went out; then it grew dimmer in the center of the apartment.
“They’ve found out the trick,” said Ronicky Doone, speaking in a natural voice and chuckling.
“Hush!” panted the girl.
“We can talk out now, long’s we don’t do no shouting. They’ve sprung the trap, and they’ve got nothing! Not a thing!” He laughed again.
“Thanks to you, partner,” said Hugh Dawn. “Thanks to you, lad!” There was a ring to his low voice.
The girl added a pleasant grace note to what her father had said: “To think,” she said, “that when you spoke from the door — such a little time ago! — I was paralyzed with fear. I thought you were they. I thought they had come for dad! And — well, every day that he lives from now on, is a day due to you, Mr. Doone; and he will never forget. I will never forget.”
For some reason that assurance that she would never forget meant more to Ronicky Doone than any assurance from the grown man.
“Look here,” he said, “you don’t owe nothing to me. It’s Lou that done it. It’s Lou that outfooted their hosses and give me the half hour’s head start. She piled that up inside of twenty miles’ running, too, and after she’d gone a weary way yesterday. Yep, if you got anything to thank, it’s Lou. Me, I just done what anybody’d do. I’ll leave you folks here,” he added, as he got to the top of the crest of the hills with them.
“Leave us? Oh, no!” cried the girl and added hastily: “But of course. You see, I forget, Mr. Doone. It seems that so many things have happened to the three of us tonight that we are all bound together.”
“I wish we were,” said Hugh Dawn. “But you got your business, lad. Besides, I bring bad luck. Stay clear of me, or you’ll have the back luck, too!”
Ronicky’s esteem of the man rose up the scale.
“Folks,” he said kindly, “I’m one of them with nothing on my hands but a considerable lot of time and an itch for action. Seems to me that there may be some mor
e action before this game’s done and over, and I’d sort of like to horn in and have my say along with you, Dawn — if you want me and need me, I mean!”
Dawn answered: “It’s on your own head, if you do. Doone, I’m in fear of death. But — need you? Why, man, I have the greatest thing in the world to do, and I’m single-handed in the doing of it. That’s all. But if you’ll take the chance, why, I’ll trust you, and I’ll let you in on the ground floor. But if you come with me, lad, you’ll be taking the chances. You’ll be playing for millions of dollars. But you’ll be putting up your life in the gamble. How does that sound to you? But remember that if you come along with me, you get Jack Moon and his tribe of bloodhounds on your trail, and if they ever come up with you, you’re dead. Understand?”
“Dad,” cried the girl, “I’m burning with shame to hear you talk—”
“It’s his concern!” declared her father. “Let him talk out. D’you know what I’m talking about? Millions, girl, millions — not just mere thousands! Millions in bullion!”
“Millions of fun,” and Ronicky Doone laughed. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Then,” said the older man eagerly, “suppose we shake on it!”
“No, no!” cried Jerry Dawn. She even rode in between them.
“What d’you mean, Jerry?” asked her father impatiently.
“Oh,” she said, “every one has tried the cursed thing, and every one has gone down; and now you take in the one generous and kind and pure-hearted man who has ever come into our lives. You take him, and you begin to drag him down in the net. Oh, Dad, is this a reward for him? Is this a reward for him?”
There was almost a sob in her voice.
“Lady,” said Ronicky Doone, “you’re sure kind, but I’ve made up my mind. Remember that story about Bluebeard’s wife? She had all the keys but one, and she plumb busted her heart because she couldn’t get that one key and see inside that one room. Well, lady, the same’s true with me. Suppose I had the key to everything else in the world and just this one thing was left that I could get at; well, I’d turn down all the other things in the world that I know about and take to this one thing that I don’t know anything about, just because I don’t know it. Danger? Well, lady, danger is the finest bait in the world for any gent like me that’s fond of action and ain’t never been fed full on it. That’s the straight of it.”
“Then,” said the girl sadly, “Heaven forgive us for bringing this down on your generous heart!” And she drew her horse back.
The two men reached through the dark night and the rain. Their wet, cold hands fumbled, met, and closed in a hard grasp. It was like a flash of light, that gripping of the hands. It showed them each other’s minds as a glint of light would have shown their faces.
VI. A PAUSE FOR REST
AS THE TRIO plodded on steadily through the night, many things about the father and daughter impressed Ronicky Doone favorably.
There was something so fine, sat naturally well-bred about their whole attitude, that he felt his heart warming to both; and yet there were reasons enough for him to maintain an attitude of suspicion and caution so far as the pair was concerned. He was calling the girl “Jerry” before the ride was ended; both father and daughter were calling him “Ronicky.” Those were the chief conversational results of the night.
The ride lasted all the night and well on into the morning. Lou, great- heart that she was, bore up wonderfully. She had the endurance of an Arab horse, and indeed she resembled an Arab in her staunch and tapering build. The big grays struck a hard pace and kept to it, but Lou matched them with her smooth-flowing gait. Her head went down a little as time passed, but when the dawn came, gray and cold under a rainless sky, it showed her still with an ample reserve of strength, while the grays were well-nigh as fagged as though they had covered all her distance of miles in the past twenty-four hours.
For the sake of Ronicky’s horse, knowing the distance the mare had covered, the Dawns would have stopped the journey for rest, but Ronicky would not hear of it. As he pointed out, Jack Moon could not attempt to pick up the trail until the morning; and then he probably would only be able to locate it by striking out in a great circle with the house as the center of his sweeping radius. If they pushed straight ahead, stopping only when they had put a solid day’s march behind them, they would doubtless pass well beyond the reach of that radius, particularly since the outlaws would be looking for the signs of two horses instead of three. These reasons were so patent that they were accepted, and so the party held on its way.
By midmorning they came in sight of a village among the hills to their left. Ronicky — because he would not be recognized by Moon’s scouts in case they inquired after Dawn in that place — rode down into the town and bought supplies; then he rejoined the group on the trail four miles out from the village, and they pressed on for another hour. The sight of a little ruined shack here proved too strong a temptation for them, and they determined to make their day’s halt. They were too tired to prepare a meal. Canned beans, crackers, and coffee were their portion. They slept wrapped in their blankets.
At four in the afternoon Ronicky wakened to find that Hugh Dawn was already up. He had kindled a fire in the wrecked stove which, without a chimney, stood in one corner of the shack; and now he sat beside it, his hands wrapped about his knees, a big black pipe clenched between his teeth, and his eyes fixed, through the doorway, upon the south trail. The broad shoulders, which could not be pulled forward even by the draw of the arms in this position; the forward thrust of the heavy head and the powerful neck; the solemn and alert expression of the face — all of these things went to convince Ronicky, as he lay unstirring for a moment in his blankets, that his new-found companion was by no means a soft variety of adventurer. The night before he had shown himself in the most unfavorable, and almost a cowardly, light. But no doubt that was explained as a result of a long hounding — explained by the fact that he was returning from safety into a region where his life would constantly be in danger.
Ronicky could not help admiring the quiet with which the man had been able to light the fire and break up wood and handle the noisy plates of the stove without making sufficient disturbance to waken either him — a remarkably light sleeper at all times — or the girl.
She lay in the position she had taken when she first wrapped herself in the blankets, her face turned up and pillowed in the tumbled masses of her hair. But on her lips, strangely enough, there was the smile of complete happiness and joyous dreams. Ronicky saw the face of the father, as it turned for an instant to the girl, soften wonderfully and lose every stern line. Again his heart warmed to the man.
He sat up in his blankets, was greeted by a smile and a silent raising of the hand, and, after folding his blanket, went outside to find water. He discovered a place a hundred yards away, where a little freshet had pooled its waters in a small lake, and that tempted him to a swim. He came back from his bath and shave, and saw that the father had not changed his position. Only iron muscles and a mind wrapped in the profoundest meditations could have kept him in that cramping posture.
At sight of Ronicky he rose, and, crossing the rotted boards of the floor with marvelous softness, considering his bulk, he came out to greet his new friend.
“What I been thinking,” he said, after he had drawn Ronicky far enough away to be out of earshot of the girl, “is that we better get ready for a start and go on, leaving Jerry a note to say that she’s better at the house than she is with us. What do you think of that?”
“Only one thing,” said Ronicky Doone, after a moment of consideration. “Does Jerry know where you’re bound?”
“In a general way she does.”
“Then,” said Ronicky, “if she knows in a general way, she’s apt to follow on and try to find us. Or, if she doesn’t do that, she’ll go back to the big house and die of loneliness, wondering what’s happening to you. And at the house, who knows if Moon won’t drop in on her, and take some means of find
ing out from her where you’ve gone — eh?”
“It’d take torture to get that out of her.”
“That’s just what I mean.”
Hugh Dawn started.
Ronicky explained: “I only saw his face once. You must know him a pile better than I do. But I got this to say, that if ever I saw a cold-blooded devil in the form of a man, Jack Moon is him. Am I right?”
“A thousand times right!” and Hugh Dawn sighed. “But I’ve been so long away — I’ve looked back on the West as a place where women at least are sacred — that I plumb forgot what a fiend Moon is. Ronicky, you’re correct. We can’t leave the girl. But if we take her with us, won’t she run into the same danger?”
“No, because if she’s with us she’ll not have any information to give Moon — nothing to be browbeaten about or hurt. I take it that if he finds us where we’re going, he’ll know everything.”
“I guess so,” said the older man, knotting his brows anxiously.
“Unless,” suggested Ronicky, “you can afford to send her back and get the protection of the law for her; but I gather that you don’t want to bring yourself to the notice of the law much more than you want to bring yourself to the notice of Jack Moon.”
“Right!” The big man nodded sadly. “That’s just the place I stand in. Poor Jerry! Ronicky, they’s a curse on this treasure we’re after. Maybe Jerry’s right. I was all wrong to bring you in on it. But, playing my lone hand, I was pretty sure I could never beat Moon. With you I figured that we’d all have a chance — of being rich!”
Ronicky nodded.
“And I suppose you want to know something, Ronicky, about me and the treasure and Moon and all?”
“I want to know just as much as comes easy for you to tell me, Dawn.”
“To begin with, what d’you know already?”
“Only bits that I gathered, which round up to something like this: That once you belonged to Moon’s crowd. That you broke away from the crowd ten years ago. That in Moon’s crew the punishment for desertion is death. That you ran out of the country to keep clear of him. That he worked hard to get on your trail all the time. That the minute you got back, he learned about it. That he’s trying to kill you now. That you came back here partly because you wanted to see the girl. That another thing brought you back, which was this treasure you talk about. That’s much as I know, or think I know. Am I right? Mind you, I ain’t asking for a thing that comes hard for you to tell. Every gent has shadowy places in his life. I have ’em. Everybody has ’em.” The other man drank in the words hungrily.