by Max Brand
Going to the window in his stocking feet, he listened again. There were more voices murmuring on the veranda of the hotel now, but within a few moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she could have desired. And Terry went to bed and to sleep.
He wakened with the first touch of dawn along the wall beside his bed and tumbled out to dress. It was early, even for a mountain town. The rattling at the kitchen stove commenced while he was on the way downstairs. And he had to waste time with a visit to El Sangre in the stable before his breakfast was ready.
Craterville was in the hollow behind him when the sun rose, and El Sangre was taking up the miles with the tireless rhythm of his pace. He had intended searching for work of some sort near Craterville, but now he realized that it could not be. He must go farther. He must go where his name was not known.
For two days he held on through the broken country, climbing more than he dropped. Twice he came above the ragged timber line, with its wind-shaped army of stunted trees, and over the tiny flowers of the summit lands. At the end of the second day he came out on the edge of a precipitous descent to a prosperous grazing country below. There would be his goal.
A big mountain sheep rounded a corner with a little flock behind him. Terry dropped the leader with a snapshot and watched the flock scamper down what was almost the sheer face of a cliff — a beautiful bit of acrobatics. They found foothold on ridges a couple of inches deep, hardly visible to the eye from above. Plunging down a straight drop without a sign of a ledge for fifty feet below them, they broke the force of the fall and slowed themselves constantly by striking their hoofs from side to side against the face of the cliff. And so they landed, with bunched feet, on the first broad terrace below and again bounced over the ledge and so out of sight.
He dined on wild mutton that evening. In the morning he hunted along the edge of the cliffs until he came to a difficult route down to the valley. An ordinary horse would never have made it, but El Sangre was in his glory. If he had not the agility of the mountain sheep, he was well-nigh as level-headed in the face of tremendous heights. He knew how to pitch ten feet down to a terrace and strike on his bunched hoofs so that the force of the fall would not break his legs or unseat his rider. Again he understood how to drive in the toes of his hoofs and go up safely through loose gravel where most horses, even mustangs, would have skidded to the bottom of the slope. And he was wise in trails. Twice he rejected the courses which Terry picked, and the rider very wisely let him have his way. The result was that they took a more winding, but a far safer course, and arrived before midmorning in the bottomlands.
The first ranch house he applied to accepted him. And there he took up his work.
It was the ordinary outfit — the sun- and wind-racked shack for a house, the stumbling outlying barns and sheds, and the maze of corral fences. They asked Terry no questions, accepted his first name without an addition, and let him go his way.
He was happy enough. He had not the leisure for thought or for remembering better times. If he had leisure here and there, he used it industriously in teaching El Sangre the “cow” business. The stallion learned swiftly. He began to take a joy in sitting down on a rope.
At the end of a week Terry won a bet when a team of draught horses hitched onto his line could not pull El Sangre over his mark, and broke the rope instead. There was much work, too, in teaching him to turn in the cow-pony fashion, dropping his head almost to the ground and bunching his feet altogether. For nothing of its size that lives is so deft in dodging as the cow-pony. That part of El Sangre’s education was not completed, however, for only the actual work of a round-up could give him the faultless surety of a good cow-pony. And, indeed, the ranchman declared him useless for real roundup work.
“A no-good, high-headed fool,” he termed El Sangre, having sprained his bank account with an attempt to buy the stallion from Terry the day before.
At the end of a fortnight the first stranger passed, and ill-luck made it a man from Craterville. He knew Terry at a glance, and the next morning the rancher called Terry aside.
The work of that season, he declared, was going to be lighter than he had expected. Much as he regretted it, he would have to let his new hand go. Terry taxed him at once to get at the truth.
“You’ve found out my name. That’s why you’re turning me off. Is that the straight of it?”
The sudden pallor of the other was a confession.
“What’s names to me?” he declared. “Nothing, partner. I take a man the way I find him. And I’ve found you all right. The reason I got to let you go is what I said.”
But Terry grinned mirthlessly.
“You know I’m the son of Black Jack Hollis,” he insisted. “You think that if you keep me you’ll wake up some morning to find your son’s throat cut and your cattle gone. Am I right?”
“Listen to me,” the rancher said uncertainly. “I know how you feel about losing a job so suddenly when you figured it for a whole season. Suppose I give you a whole month’s pay and—”
“Damn your money!” said Terry savagely. “I don’t deny that Black Jack was my father. I’m proud of it. But listen to me, my friend. I’m living straight. I’m working hard. I don’t object to losing this job. It’s the attitude behind it that I object to. You’ll not only send me away, but you’ll spread the news around — Black Jack’s son is here! Am I a plague because of that name?”
“Mr. Hollis,” insisted the rancher in a trembling voice, “I don’t mean to get you all excited. Far as your name goes, I’ll keep your secret. I give you my word on it. Trust me, I’ll do what’s right by you.”
He was in a panic. His glance wavered from Terry’s eyes to the revolver at his side.
“Do you think so?” said Terry. “Here’s one thing that you may not have thought of. If you and the rest like you refuse to give me honest work, there’s only one thing left for me — and that’s dishonest work. You turn me off because I’m the son of Black Jack; and that’s the very thing that will make me the son of Black Jack in more than name. Did you ever stop to realize that?”
“Mr. Hollis,” quavered the rancher, “I guess you’re right. If you want to stay on here, stay and welcome, I’m sure.”
And his eye hunted for help past the shoulder of Terry and toward the shed, where his eldest son was whistling. Terry turned away in mute disgust. By the time he came out of the bunkhouse with his blanket roll, there was neither father nor son in sight. The door of the shack was closed, and through the window he caught a glimpse of a rifle. Ten minutes later El Sangre was stepping away across the range at a pace that no mount in the cattle country could follow for ten miles.
CHAPTER 20
THERE WAS AN astonishing deal of life in the town, however. A large company had reopened some old diggings across the range to the north of Calkins, and some small fragments of business drifted the way of the little cattle town. Terry found a long line of a dozen horses waiting to be shod before the blacksmith shop. One great wagon was lumbering out at the farther end of the street, with the shrill yells of the teamster calling back as he picked up his horses one by one with his voice. Another freight-wagon stood at one side, blocking half the street. And a stir of busy life was everywhere in the town. The hotel and store combined was flooded with sound, and the gambling hall across the street was alive even at midday.
It was noon, and Terry found that the dining room was packed to the last chair. The sweating waiter improvised a table for him in the corner of the hall and kept him waiting twenty minutes before he was served with ham and eggs. He had barely worked his fork into the ham when a familiar voice hailed him.
“Got room for another at that table?”
He looked up into the grinning face of Denver. For some reason it was a shock to Terry. Of course, the second meeting was entirely coincidental, but a still small voice kept whispering to him that there was fate in it. He was so sur
prised that he could only nod. Denver at once appropriated a chair and seated himself in his usual noiseless way.
When he rearranged the silver which the waiter placed before him, there was not the faintest click of the metal. And Terry noted, too, a certain nice justness in every one of Denver’s motions. He was never fiddling about with his hands; when they stirred, it was to do something, and when the thing was done, the hands became motionless again.
His eyes did not rove; they remained fixed for appreciable periods wherever they fell, as though Denver were finding something worth remembering in the wall, or in a spot on the table. When his glance touched on a face, it hung there in the same manner. After a moment one would forget all the rest of his face, brutal, muscular, shapeless, and see only the keen eyes.
Terry found it difficult to face the man. There was need to be excited about something, to talk with passion, in order to hold one’s own in the presence of Denver, even when the chunky man was silent. He was not silent now; he seemed in a highly cheerful, amiable mood.
“Here’s luck,” he said. “I didn’t know this God-forsaken country could raise as much luck as this!”
“Luck?” echoed Terry.
“Why not? D’you think I been trailing you?”
He chuckled in his noiseless way. It gave Terry a feeling of expectation. He kept waiting for the sound to come into that laughter, but it never did. Suddenly he was frank, because it seemed utterly futile to attempt to mask one’s real thoughts from this fellow.
“I don’t know,” he said, “that it would surprise me if you had been tailing me. I imagine you’re apt to do queer things, Denver.”
Denver hissed, very softly and with such a cutting whistle to his breath that Terry’s lips remained open over his last word.
“Forget that name!” Denver said in a half-articulate tone of voice.
He froze in his place, staring straight before him; but Terry gathered an impression of the most intense watchfulness — as though, while he stared straight before him, he had sent other and mysterious senses exploring for him. He seemed suddenly satisfied that all was well, and as he relaxed, Terry became aware of a faint gleam of perspiration on the brow of his companion.
“Why the devil did you tell me the name if you didn’t want me to use it?” he asked.
“I thought you’d have some savvy; I thought you’d have some of your dad’s horse sense,” said Denver.
“No offense,” answered Terry, with the utmost good nature.
“Call me Shorty if you want,” said Denver. In the meantime he was regarding Terry more and more closely.
“Your old man would of made a fight out of it if I’d said as much to him as I’ve done to you,” he remarked at length.
“Really?” murmured Terry.
And the portrait of his father swept back on him — the lean, imperious, handsome face, the boldness of the eyes. Surely a man all fire and powder, ready to explode. He probed his own nature. He had never been particularly quick of temper — until lately. But he began to wonder if his equable disposition might not rise from the fact that his life in Bear Valley had been so sheltered. He had been crossed rarely. In the outer world it was different. That very morning he had been tempted wickedly to take the tall rancher by the throat and grind his face into the sand.
“But maybe you’re different,” went on Denver. “Your old man used to flare up and be over it in a minute. Maybe you remember things and pack a grudge with you.”
“Perhaps,” said Terry, grown strangely meek. “I hardly know.”
Indeed, he thought, how little he really knew of himself. Suddenly he said: “So you simply happened over this way, Shorty?”
“Sure. Why not? I got a right to trail around where I want. Besides, what would there be in it for me — following you?”
“I don’t know,” said Terry gravely. “But I expect to find out sooner or later. What else are you up to over here?”
“I have a little job in mind at the mine,” said Denver. “Something that may give the sheriff a bit of trouble.” He grinned.
“Isn’t it a little — unprofessional,” said Terry dryly, “for you to tell me these things?”
“Sure it is, bo — sure it is! Worst in the world. But I can always tell a gent that can keep his mouth shut. By the way, how many jobs you been fired from already?”
Terry started. “How do you know that?”
“I just guess at things.”
“I started working for an infernal idiot,” sighed Terry. “When he learned my name, he seemed to be afraid I’d start shooting up his place one of these days.”
“Well, he was a wise gent. You ain’t cut out for working, son. Not a bit. It’d be a shame to let you go to waste simply raising calluses on your hands.”
“You talk well,” sighed Terry, “but you can’t convince me.”
“Convince you? Hell, I ain’t trying to convince your father’s son. You’re like Black Jack. You got to find out yourself. We was with a Mick, once. Red-headed devil, he was. I says to Black Jack: ‘Don’t crack no jokes about the Irish around this guy!’
“‘Why not?’ says your dad.
“‘Because there’d be an explosion,’ says I.
“‘H’m,’ says Black Jack, and lifts his eyebrows in a way he had of doing.
“And the first thing he does is to try a joke on the Irish right in front of the Mick. Well, there was an explosion, well enough.”
“What happened?” asked Terry, carried away with curiosity.
“What generally happened, kid, when somebody acted up in front of your dad?” From the air he secured an imaginary morsel between stubby thumb and forefinger and then blew the imaginary particle into empty space.
“He killed him?” asked Terry hoarsely.
“No,” said Denver, “he didn’t do that. He just broke his heart for him. Kicked the gat out of the hand of the poor stiff and wrestled with him. Black Jack was a wildcat when it come to fighting with his hands. When he got through with the Irishman, there wasn’t a sound place on the fool. Black Jack climbed back on his horse and threw the gun back at the guy on the ground and rode off. Next we heard, the guy was working for a Chinaman that run a restaurant. Black Jack had taken all the fight out of him.”
That scene out of the past drifted vividly back before Terry’s eyes. He saw the sneer on the lips of Black Jack; saw the Irishman go for his gun; saw the clash, with his father leaping in with tigerish speed; felt the shock of the two strong bodies, and saw the other turn to pulp under the grip of Black Jack.
By the time he had finished visualizing the scene, his jaw was set hard. It had been easy, very easy, to throw himself into the fierceness of his dead father’s mood. During this moment of brooding he had been looking down, and he did not notice the glance of Denver fasten upon him with an almost hypnotic fervor, as though he were striving to reach to the very soul of the younger man and read what was written there. When Terry looked up, the face of his companion was as calm as ever.
“And you’re like the old boy,” declared Denver. “You got to find out for yourself. It’ll be that way with this work idea of yours. You’ve lost one job. You’ll lose the next one. But — I ain’t advising you no more!”
CHAPTER 21
TERRY LEFT THE hotel more gloomy than he had been even when he departed from the ranch that morning. The certainty of Denver that he would find it impossible to stay by his program of honest work had made a strong impression upon his imaginative mind, as though the little safecracker really had the power to look into the future and into the minds of men. Where he should look for work next, he had no idea. And he balanced between a desire to stay near the town and work out his destiny there, or else drift far away. Distance, however, seemed to have no barrier against rumor. After two days of hard riding, he had placed a broad gap between himself and the Cornish ranch, yet in a short time rumor had overtaken him, casually, inevitably, and the force of his name was strong enough to take away his job.
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Standing in the middle of the street he looked darkly over the squat roofs of the town to the ragged mountains that marched away against the horizon — a bleak outlook. Which way should he ride?
A loud outburst of curses roared behind him, a whip snapped above him, he stepped aside and barely from under the feet of the leaders as a long team wound by with the freight wagon creaking and swaying and rumbling behind it. The driver leaned from his seat in passing and volleyed a few crackling remarks in the very ear of Terry. It was strange that he did not resent it. Ordinarily he would have wanted to, climb onto that seat and roll the driver down in the dust, but today he lacked ambition. Pain numbed him, a peculiar mental pain. And, with the world free before him to roam in, he felt imprisoned.
He turned. Someone was laughing at him from the veranda of the hotel and pointing him out to another, who laughed raucously in turn. Terry knew what was in their minds. A man who allowed himself to be cursed by a passing teamster was not worthy of the gun strapped at his thigh. He watched their faces as through a cloud, turned again, saw the door of the gambling hall open to allow someone to come out, and was invited by the cool, dim interior. He crossed the street and passed through the door.
He was glad, instantly. Inside there was a blanket of silence; beyond the window the sun was a white rain of heat, blinding and appalling. But inside his shoes took hold on a floor moist from a recent scrubbing and soft with the wear of rough boots; and all was dim, quiet, hushed.
There was not a great deal of business in the place, naturally, at this hour of the day. And the room seemed so large, the tables were so numerous, that Terry wondered how so small a town could support it. Then he remembered the mine and everything was explained. People who dug gold like dirt spent it in the same spirit. Half a dozen men were here and there, playing in what seemed a listless manner, save when you looked close.