Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  His gun exploded; a yell from the edge of the trees answered him; and then a chorus of shouts and a score of bullets in swift succession smashed against the logs, Through the silence that followed they heard a distant, faint moaning.

  Black Jim, running with his body close to the floor, crossed the room to the window on the other side. Almost instantly his gun spoke again, and a man screamed in the night of the trees.

  “Too high!” she heard Jim saying. “I meant it lower.”

  “They’re beaten, Jim!” she called softly. “They don’t dare try to rush the cabin. They’re beaten!”

  “Not yet!” he answered. “Unless they’re plumb crazy they’ll tackle us from the blind side. There ain’t any window in the shed, Jerry!”

  CHAPTER XI. BACK TO THE LAW

  FROM THREE SIDES of the house he could command the approaches through the door and the two slits in the wall which answered in place of windows. On the side of the shed where the roan was stabled, there was not the smallest chink through which he could fire. Jerry sat twisting her hands in despair.

  “Take the ax, Jim,” she said at last, “and chop away a hole in the logs. They’re all light and thin. You could make a place to shoot from in a minute!”

  “Jerry, girl,” he said; “you’ve a heart of gold!”

  He started to fumble about in the dark for the ax. But the weak side of the cabin was too apparent to be overlooked by the besiegers. Before the ax was found, a great crackling of fire commenced outside the shed and a cry of triumph rose from the men without. The sound of the fire rose; the roan whinnied with terror. Black Jim slipped his revolver back into his holster, and turned with folded arms to Jerry.

  “So this is the finale,” she said with white lips. “Where’s our soft music and the curtain, Jim?”

  “Let the girl out!” shouted the voice of Montgomery. “We won’t hurt her! Come out, Jerry!”

  “Go on out, honey,” said Black Jim.

  She went to him and drew his arm about her.

  “Do you think I’d go out to them, Jim?”

  “I don’t think,” he said; “I know. There’s nothin’ but death in here!”

  A gust of wind puffed the flames to a roar up the side of the shed outside, and they heard the stamping of the roan in an agony of panic.

  “There’s only two ways left to me,” she said, “and dying with you is a lot the easiest, Jim. Give back my gun!”

  “Honey,” he said, and she wondered at the gentleness of his voice, “you’re jest a girl — a bit of a slip of a girl — an’ I can’t no-ways let you stay in here. Go out the door. They won’t shoot.”

  “Give back my gun!” she said.

  She felt the arm about her tremble, and then the butt of a revolver was placed in her hand. The fire hissed and muttered now on the roof of the cabin. Red glimmers of light showed before the windows and filled the interior with grim dance of shadows.

  “I never knew it could be this way, Jerry,” he said.

  “Nor I, either,” she answered, “and the day I make my final exit is the day I really began to live. Jim, it’s worth it!”

  Through another pause they listened to the fire. Outside Montgomery was imploring the girl to leave the house, and as the fire mounted, an occasional yell from the crowd applauded its progress.

  “Seein’ we’re goin’ out on the long trail together,” said Black Jim, “ain’t there some way we can hitch up so’s we can be together on the other side of the river?”

  She did not understand.

  “I mean, supposin’ we were married—”

  She pressed her race against his body to keep back a sob.

  “Seems to me,” he went on, “that I can remember some of a marriage I fence read. Do you suppose, Jerry, that if me an’ you said it over now, bein’ about to die, that it would mean anything?”

  “Yes, yes!” she cried eagerly. “We’re above the law, Jim, and what we do is either sacred or damned.”

  “The part I remember,” he said calmly, though the room was hot now with the rising fire, “begins something like this, an’ it ain’t very long Is Jerry your real name, honey?”

  “My real name is Annie Kerrigan. And yours, Jim?”

  “I was never called nothin’ but Black Jim. Shall I begin?”

  “Yes!”

  “I, Black Jim, take thee, Annie—”

  “I, Annie, take thee, Black Jim,” she repeated.

  “To have and to hold—”

  “To have and to hold.”

  “For better or worse—”

  “For better or worse.”

  “Till death do us part—”

  “Jim, dear Jim, can that part us?”

  “Nothin’ between heaven an’ hell can, honey! Annie, there was the ring, too, but I ain’t got a ring.”

  The room was bright with the firelight now. She raised her left hand and kissed the third finger.

  “Jim, dear, this is a new kind of marriage. We don’t really need a ring, do we?”

  “We’ll jest suppose that part.”

  The roan made the whole cabin tremble with his frantic efforts to break from his halter.

  “An’ old Roan Bill goes with us,” said Black Jim; “everything I wanted comes with me in the end of things, honey. But he ought to die easier than by fire!”

  He drew his revolver again and stepped through the doorway into the shed, Jerry followed him and saw Roan Bill standing crouched and shuddering against the wall, his eyes green with fear. Black Jim stepped to him and stroked the broad forehead. For a moment Bill kept his terrified eyes askance upon the burning wall of the shed. Then he turned his head and pressed against Jim, as if to shut out the sight. With his left hand stroking the horse gently along the neck, Jim raised his revolver and touched it to the temple of Roan Bill. Another cry broke from the crowd without as if they could look through the burning walls and witness the coming tragedy and glory in it.

  “Old pal,” said Black Jim, “we’ve seen a mighty pile of things together, an’ if hosses get on the other side of the river, I got an idea I’ll find you there. So-long!”

  “Wait!” called Jerry. “Don’t shoot, Jim?”

  He turned toward her with a frown as she ran to him.

  “The wall, Jim’ Look at the wall of the shed!”

  The thin wall had burned through in many places and the wood was charred deeply. In several parts the burning logs had fallen away, leaving an aperture edged with flames.

  “I see it,” said Black Jim. “It’s about to fall. Get back in the cabin.”

  “Yes,” she answered, fairly trembling with excitement, even a strong puff of wind would blow it in! Listen! I see the ghost of a chance for us! Blindfold Roan Bill so that the fire won’t make him mad. We’ll both get in the saddle. Then you can beat half of that wall down at a single blow. We’ll ride for the woods. They won’t be watching very closely from this side. We may — we may — there’s one chance in a thousand.”

  He stared at her a single instant. Then by way of answer jerked the saddle from a peg on the wall of the cabin and threw it on the roan’s back. Jerry darted into the cabin and came out with the long scarf, which she tied firmly around the horse’s eyes. In two minutes their entire preparations were completed and a money-belt dropped into a saddlebag. Jerry in the saddle with the roan trembling beneath her, and the reins clutched tight in one hand, a revolver in the other. Black Jim caught up a loose log-end, fallen from the wall.

  “There in the center,” she called. “It’s thinnest there!”

  “The minute it falls start the roan,” he said; “I’ll swing on behind as you pass!” With that he swung the stick around his head and drove it against the wall. A great section fell. He struck again. A yell came from without as another width crushed down, and Jerry loosened the reins.

  At the very moment that Black Jim caught the back of the saddle, the roan stepped on a red-hot coal and reared away, but Jim kept his hold and was safe behind the saddle as t
he horse made his first leap beyond the burning timbers.

  “They’re out! This way!” shouted a voice from the trees, and two shots in quick succession hummed close to them.

  Fifty yards away lay the trees and safety. The roan lengthened into a racing stride. A chorus of yells broke out around the house and Jerry saw a man jump from behind a tree, and the flash of a revolver in his hand. The long arm of Black Jim darted out and his gun spoke once and again. The man tossed up his arms and pitched forward to the ground. Still another revolver barked directly before them and she saw, by the light of the flaming house, the great figure of Porky Martin, half-hidden by a tree-trunk. A bullet tore through the horn of the saddle.

  The woods were only a fraction of a second away from them. Martin stood in their path. Once more the revolver of Black Jim belched, and as they plunged into the saving shadow of the trees, she saw the outlaw stagger and clutch at his throat with both hands.

  “To the left! To the left!” said Black Jim, “and straight down the valley for the gap!”

  * * * *

  A WEEK later a golden-haired girl rode down a broken trail on the side of one of the lower Sierras. By her side walked a tall man with quick, keen eyes. When they broke from the edge of the forest, she checked her horse and they stood looking down on the upper valley of the Feather River.

  Far away the water burned jewel-bright under the sun, and almost directly below them were the green and red roofs of a small village. Here the trail forked, one branch winding west along the mountainside and the other dropping straight down toward the village.

  “Which way shall it be?” she asked. “I don’t know where the west trail leads, but this straight one takes us down to the village, and that means the law.”

  “Jerry,” he answered, “I’ve been thinkin’ it over, an’ it seems to me that it’d be almighty hard to raise kids right above the law. Let’s take the trail for the village!”

  THE END

  Harrigan! (1918)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 1

  “THAT FELLOW WITH the red hair,” said the police captain as he pointed.

  “I’ll watch him,” the sergeant answered.

  The captain had raided two opium dens the day before, and the pride of accomplishment puffed his chest. He would have given advice to the sheriff of Oahu that evening.

  He went on: “I can pick some men out of the crowd by the way they walk, and others by their eyes. That fellow has it written all over him.”

  The red-headed man came nearer through the crowd. Because of the warmth, he had stuffed his soft hat into a back pocket, and now the light from a window shone steadily on his hair and made a fire of it, a danger signal. He encountered the searching glances of the two officers and answered with cold, measuring eyes, like the gaze of a prize fighter who waits for a blow. The sergeant turned to his superior with a grunt.

  “You’re right,” he nodded.

  “Trail him,” said the captain, “and take a man with you. If that fellow gets into trouble, you may need help.”

  He stepped into his automobile and the sergeant beckoned to a nearby policeman.

  “Akana,” he said, “we have a man-sized job tonight. Are you feeling fit?”

  The Kanaka smiled without enthusiasm.

  “The man of the red hair?”

  The sergeant nodded, and Akana tightened his belt. He had eaten fish baked in ti leaves that evening.

  He suggested: “Morley has little to do. His beat is quiet. Shall I tell him to come with us?”

  “No,” grinned the sergeant, and then looked up and watched the broad shoulders of the red-haired man, who advanced through the crowd as the prow of a ship lunges through the waves. “Go get Morley,” he said abruptly.

  But Harrigan went on his way without misgivings, not that he forgot the policeman, but he was accustomed to stand under the suspicious eye of the law. In all the course of his wanderings it had been upon him. His coming was to the men in uniform like the sound of the battle trumpet to the cavalry horse. This, however, was Harrigan’s first night in Honolulu, and there was much to see, much to do. He had rambled through the streets; now he was headed for the Ivilei district. Instinct brought him there, the still, small voice which had guided him from trouble to trouble all his life.

  At a corner he stopped to watch a group of Kanakas who passed him, wreathed with leis and thrumming their ukuleles. They sang in their soft, many-voweled language and the sound was to Harrigan like the rush and lapse of water on a beach, infinitely soothing and as lazy as the atmosphere of Honolulu. All things are subdued in the strange city where East and West meet in the middle of the Pacific. The gayest crowds cannot quite disturb the brooding peace which is like the promise of sleep and rest at sunset. It was not pleasing to Harrigan. He frowned and drew a quick, impatient breath, muttering: “I’m not long for this joint. I gotta be moving.”

  He joined a crowd which eddied toward the center of Ivilei. In there it was better. Negro soldiers, marines from the Maryland, Kanakas, Chinamen, Japanese, Portuguese, Americans; a score of nationalities and complexions rubbed shoulders as they wandered aimlessly among the many bright-painted cottages.

  Yet even in that careless throng of pleasure-seekers no one rubbed shoulders with Harrigan. The flame of his hair was like a red lamp which warned them away. Or perhaps it was his eye, which seemed to linger for a cold, incurious instant on every face that approached. He picked out the prettiest of the girls who sat at the windows chatting with all who passed. He did not have to shoulder to win a way through the crowd of her admirers.

  She was a hap haoli, with the fine features of the Caucasian and the black of hair and eye which shows the islander. A rounded elbow rested on the sill of the window; her chin was cupped in her hand.

  “Send these away,” said Harrigan, and leaned an elbow beside hers.

  “Oh,” she murmured; then: “And if I send them away?”

  “I’ll reward you.”

  “Reward?”

  For answer he dragged a crimson carnation from the buttonhole of a tall man who stood at his side.

  “What in hell—” began the victim, but Harrigan smiled and the other drew slowly back through the crowd.

  “Now send them away.”

  She looked at him an instant longer with a light coming slowly up behind her eyes. Then she leaned out and waved to the chuckling semicircle.

  “Run away for a while,” she said; “I want to talk to my brother.”

  She patted the thick red hair to emphasize the relationship, and the little crowd departed, laughing uproariously. Harrigan slipped the carnation into the jetty hair. His hand lingered a moment against the soft masses, and she drew it down, grown suddenly serious.

  “There are three policemen in the shadow of that cottage over there.

  They’re watching you.”

  “Ah-h!”

  The sound was so soft that it was almost a sigh, but she shivered pe
rceptibly.

  “What have you been doing?”

  He answered regretfully: “Nothing.”

  “They’re coming this way. The man who had the carnation is with them.

  You better beat it.”

  “Nope. I like it here.”

  She shook her head, but the flame was blowing high now in her eyes. A hand fell on Harrigan’s shoulder.

  “Hey!” said the sergeant in a loud voice.

  Harrigan turned slowly and the sergeant’s hand fell away. The man of the carnation was far in the background.

  “Well?”

  “That flower. You can’t get away with little tricks like that. You better be starting on. Move along.”

  Harrigan glanced slowly from face to face. The three policemen drew closer together as if for mutual protection.

  “Please — honey!” urged the whisper of the girl.

  The hand of Harrigan resting on the window sill had gathered to a hard-bunched fist, white at the knuckles, but he nodded across the open space between the cottages.

  “If you’re looking for work,” he said, “seems as though you’d find a handful over there.”

  A clatter of sharp, quick voices rose from a group of Negro soldiers gathering around a white man. No one could tell the cause of the quarrel. It might have been anything from an oath to a blow.

  “Watch him,” said Harrigan. “He looks like a man.” He added plaintively: “But looks are deceivin’.”

  The center of the disturbance appeared to be a man indeed. He was even taller than Harrigan and broader of shoulder, and, like the latter, there was a suggestion of strength in him which could not be defined by his size alone. At the distance they could guess his smile as he faced the clamoring mob.

  “Break in there!” ordered the sergeant to his companions, and started toward the angry circle.

  As he spoke, they heard one of the Negroes curse and the fist of the tall man darted at the face of a soldier and drove him toppling back among his comrades. They closed on the white man with a yell; a passing group of their compatriots joined the affray; the whole mass surged in around the tall fellow. Harrigan’s head went back and his eyes half closed like a critic listening to an exquisite symphony.