Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  So saying, he slipped his weapon into its holster.

  “I think I follow your meaning,” said Valentine. “Which I’m tolerable quick to do when men talk sense.”

  He added: “Here’s the coin.” And he kicked the canvas sack so that it jingled at the touch. “I have some in my wallet if that ain’t enough to satisfy you.”

  At this the stranger smiled gently upon him.

  “They’s one part of my heart that’s an aching void sure enough,” he declared, “and that’s the part where a plumb reasonable man fits in. Pardner, you seem to be it. Nope, I don’t want your wallet, I guess. That is” — and here he lifted the canvas sack and weighted it in his hand— “that is, if this here talk is gold talk.”

  Now, when he lifted the sack and held it lightly at arm’s length, Valentine had seen a rippling of muscle under the shirt sleeve that fascinated him. So he murmured absently:

  “Yes, it’s all gold.”

  “Maybe it’s the price of a few hosses you’ve just took into town, now—” went on the other thoughtfully.

  “Maybe it ain’t,” replied Valentine.

  “Yes, and maybe it ain’t. Maybe it’s the cash from some little claim you been working for some time—”

  “Maybe.”

  “To cut it short,” said the bandit a little sharply, “is this going to bust you or not?”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars is quite a bit,” observed Morgan Valentine. “Took me three years to lake that much.”

  “Three years’ work in this bag?”

  “Yes.”

  The gray eyes puckered and gathered, and a gleam went out of them, but Valentine withstood the stare. At this, the outlaw stepped back and glanced over the equipage swiftly.

  “Judging by that harness and the way them hosses is set up, I reckon I can put that down safe as the grand-daddy of all the lies I’ve heard lately.”

  “You forget,” said Valentine, “that I didn’t say what three years they were — recent ones or a long time back.”

  The other grinned. There was something remarkably contagious in his smile; in spite of himself Morgan Valentine found his face wrinkling.

  “I dunno why it is,” declared the bandit, “but I take to you uncommon strong.”

  “And I think I can begin to say the same about you, my friend.”

  “Dear me,” said the outlaw, and the feminine expression did not seem at all out of place for some reason, “we’re getting real friendly, ain’t we?”

  “Seems that way. You’re the first holdup gent that’s ever troubled to ask whether or not what he took would bust me.”

  “Judging by that maybe I could say that sticking you up is one of the favorite sports around these parts?”

  “Maybe you could; it used to be.”

  “How many times have you been entertained?”

  “Eight times,” said the rancher.

  “Dear, dear! Who’d of thought you was that rich?”

  “The other eight,” said the rancher, “lived in these parts and knew the size of my bank account.”

  “Eight times you’ve left your roll behind you?”

  “Two of them,” replied Valentine, with a glittering eye, “I shot and buried. Two more I carried back to town after I’d bandaged them. Two more were killed by the posses, and the other two gave up before they were salted away.”

  “You don’t tell me!” exclaimed the other, with all the happiness of one who hears the ending of a pleasant tale. “And maybe this little job will gimme more fun than I was looking for.”

  The rancher examined him for a time.

  “No,” he said, “I guess the ninth man will be the lucky one.”

  “How comes that guess?”

  “As I said, the others lived in these parts, but you’ve come a long way, and you’ll probably go on a long ways still.”

  “You talk better’n a riddle,” declared the bandit with open admiration. “How d’you know I’ve come a long ways?”

  “By the way your hoss is gaunted up; by the knot in your handkerchief; and by the look of your eyes.”

  “Eyes?”

  “As if you’d been riding into the sun for a good many days.”

  “Them are all good signs. But I never heard of that last one before now.”

  “Besides,” said the rancher, “you’ve got a professional air; I wouldn’t even waste time sending the posse after you.”

  “Now, that’s what I call real friendly. You wouldn’t even put the sheriff out about me?”

  “Certainly not. Suppose he caught you? He’d probably get two or three men knocked in the head doing it; and fifteen hundred ain’t worth all that bloodshed.”

  “I see you got a kind heart,” said the other carelessly.

  “Also, I’ve noticed that every real professional along your line has a pile of pals. Suppose I get you; the word is passed along. One of your friends comes and tries his hand with me just to get even. You see I ain’t bluffing?”

  “I see you ain’t bluffing,” said the other. He flushed and straightened a little. “But if you come from my part of the country, you wouldn’t say that I hunted with any gang, I play a lone hand, pardner. I’ve never seen the crook yet that you could trust as a friend.”

  There was in this speech such naive and direct comment upon the bandit himself that the rancher could not forbear a smile. The other replied with instant good nature.

  “Which you’ve already said I’m a professional.”

  He dropped the money bag into the saddle pouch.

  “You really work alone?”

  “Why, you can call it that. But I got my gang. I got a hoss and a gun, which makes three of us. And they’s both been well tried out and not found wanting.”

  “No? But that hoss of yours don’t look particular like a prize, Mr.—”

  “Dreer,” replied the other quietly, “Jess Dreer.”

  Valentine looked back into his memory. It presented a blank to him.

  “It’s the right name,” said the other, “but you won’t remember it. I’m a quiet man, sir, and I got quiet ways.”

  CHAPTER 5

  AT THIS VALENTINE looked him in the eye; after a moment a faint smile came in the eyes of the rancher, and the same smile was reflected in the eye of the bandit. It was an expression of infinite understanding.

  “I am Morgan Valentine,” said the older man at length.

  “Mr. Valentine, it’s a pleasure to know you.” The rancher extended his hand but the other, appearing to be in the act of bowing very lightly in a most courtly manner, was apparently unaware of the proffered hand, which Valentine presently dropped back upon his knee. This time his smile broadened, deepened, and struck the corners of his mouth full of wrinkles.

  “My hoss, as you say,” went on the bandit, “ain’t a blue-ribbon winner in a beauty show. But she has her points. Step up, Angelina!”

  At this, the mustang lifted a weary head, flattened both ears against her neck, and came at once to her master.

  “Why, she comes to you like a dog,” said the rancher in admiring surprise.

  “Sure, and she’d sink her teeth in me like a dog, if she got a chance. Get back, you she-devil! The outsneakingest hoss I ever see, Angelina is, Mr. Valentine.”

  The mustang had, indeed, slipped around to the back of Jess Dreer, and her great yellow teeth were bared as her upper lip twitched up. And at the same time her eyes gleamed with a malevolence that made the rancher shiver. He even started up a little, but at the threat of Jess Dreer the roan shrank away.

  In the meantime her master stood back; always keeping an eye upon his holdup victim, he expatiated upon the fine points of his mount.

  “She’s got a lumpish head,” he admitted. “And her neck ain’t particular full. But look at those quarters. And look at those well-set down hocks and the way her high withers turns; and see how deep-girted she is, though she’s a bit tucked up now, as you say. Give me a hoss with plenty of bone, and she’s sure got it. Yes
, sir, eight years Angelina and me has been pals.”

  “Eight years with a man-killer,” said the rancher, his interest still growing. “You ought to do very well as a lion tamer, Mr. Dreer.”

  “Lions,” declared the outlaw genially, “has nothing on Angelina. She’s ripped up my forearm with her teeth” — he pointed to part of a white scar which ran down beneath the cuff of his shirt almost to the palm of his hand— “and she’s nicked me with her heels.” He indicated a white scar which began at the top of his forehead and furrowed its way into his hair. “If she can’t kick she’ll strike, and if she can’t strike she’ll bite; and if she’s fooled one day she’ll be a lamb for a month and then try to murder you in ten ways in ten seconds.”

  He paused and smiled upon the mare with an open-hearted affection.

  “Why the devil do you keep her, then?”

  “Partly because, though they’s plenty that can out-sprint her, I ain’t ever seen anything that can keep up with her after the first ten miles. And, my work is chiefly long-distance stuff.”

  He confided the last remark to the rancher with perfect calm.

  “Personally,” said Valentine, shuddering, “I’ve never seen a hoss with so much devil in its face. I’d rather have three men with guns behind me than that hoss under me.”

  “The chances is about even for me to kill her or for her to kill me. Either way, it’s been a good fight, and I’ve had a ringside seat.”

  “You’re a queer creature,” the rancher smiled, clashing his hands about one knee and rocking back in his seat as though he wished to get a more distant and complete perspective of his new acquaintance. “If I had that mare, the first thing I’d do would be to fill her full of lead. I wouldn’t sell her any more than I’d sell a man his own death warrant.”

  “Sir, she’s a genius; she got her brains from the devil. For eight years we’ve been studying each other, and we’ve both still got a lot to learn.”

  As he said this, his lower jaw jutted out a little and the muscles stood out in hard knots below the ears. Morgan Valentine blinked. He had had a glimpse of a face of such demoniac cruelty, such murderous hatred, that he was shaken to the core.

  When he looked again, he saw that the bandit had smoothed his expression again. It was the former calm, sad face.

  “I begin to see,” the rancher nodded. “Even a nightmare may be interesting. Has no one else ever ridden her?”

  A shade crossed the face of the outlaw.

  “If anyone else ever did,” he said, “I’d give her away — or shoot her and leave her for the buzzards. A thing that’s mine has got to belong to me. Got to be all mine. The reason I can ride Angelina and nobody else can, is because I go at her in the right way. I get her scared; she don’t never know what’s coming next — what I’ve got up my sleeve — and so we get along tolerable well. But if she ever finds out that I’ve been bluffing her, they won’t be enough of me left to put in a box.”

  And so saying, he smiled again genially upon the roan; and her ears flattened against her neck. “Well, much obliged for the coin and the friendly chat,” the outlaw remarked in tones of finality.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Morgan Valentine was rubbing his chin with his knuckles.

  “Well?” said the bandit a trifle impatiently.

  “Which way might you be going?”

  The other looked sharply at Valentine and then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Over yonder,” he said.

  “That’s the way I’m going, Dreer. Suppose you rest your hoss for a spell and come along with me.”

  A gleam of suspicion flashed into the face of the bandit, and once again Valentine glimpsed that fathomless, cruel strength of will and insight. Then he thought of a way to tempt the big man.

  “They ain’t much to be afraid of,” he said. “My gun is in the back of the wagon.”

  “Why,” and Jess Dreer grinned, “this sounds to me like a real party.”

  And he sprang instantly into the wagon and sat down beside the rancher.

  CHAPTER 6

  MORGAN VALENTINE CONCEALED his triumph, or sought to do so, by busying himself with taking up the reins and fastening them between his fingers.

  “But will your horse follow?”

  “It took me two years off and on to teach Angelina to follow. And I figure that if she lives to be two hundred, she won’t forget what she’s learned,” the outlaw replied.

  Valentine spoke to the two geldings, and they struck their collars at the same instant in answer to his voice; but at once they settled down to their time- honored pace. In the meantime he was adjusting himself to his companion. It was plain to see that the other had accepted the invitation to ride with his victim simply in the light of a dare. Morgan had put himself side by side with a man who had already admitted to several killings, and he had allowed that man to choose his time and place for an attack. Yet the bandit, scorning to sit far to one side or to keep his head turned toward Valentine, sat perfectly erect in the seat with his eyes fixed far down the road. It was not until Valentine, jerking his hand up swiftly to his cigarette, had made a definite move that could be construed as hostile that his companion showed the slightest sign of being on the alert. Even then he did not turn his head, but Valentine was aware of a flash of those gray eyes to the side and a tint of yellow in them. And all at once he knew that Jess Dreer was fairly a-tremble with an electric watchfulness; that he was concentrating a tremendous energy in keeping aware of his companion, and that in the space of a split second he could have whirled in his seat and got at the throat of the rancher.

  It was not altogether a comfortable feeling for Valentine, but in his day he had had to do with many a hard man and had even possessed a certain name for hardness himself. There were few men in that part of the mountain desert who would have cared to risk their lives on the speed and certainty of their gun play as opposed to the speed and certainty of Morgan Valentine. For he was a cold-headed man, a cold-blooded man, and he fought with the same nerveless accuracy with which he lived, with which he had married, with which he had raised his children. The death of his brother — the coming departure of his brother’s child — these were the emotional landmarks of his life.

  Indeed, it was a sense of loneliness, of lack of food to fill his mind and his heart that had made him ask the bandit to ride with him. There was also a lingering hope that he might be able to turn the tables upon his antagonist. For there was never a man born — at least none worthy of the name of man — who did not have somewhere in the bottom of his heart love for an honest fight. Yet he had sense enough to guess that whatever his prowess might be with weapons, it would be as nothing compared to the man in the seat beside him. For Jess Dreer was his antithesis. If he was without nerves, Jess Dreer was full of little else. And the calm exterior of Dreer was a disguise maintained by an almost muscular effort; beneath the disguise there was a mind of wolfish alertness. It suddenly occurred to Valentine that this man might be many years younger than he seemed, for he was of the kind who age rapidly.

  And the interest of Valentine was by no means entirely malicious, as has been hinted. In Jess Dreer he crossed a new type of man, and he was curious to read beneath the surface.

  “You’ve had your horse for eight years,” said the rancher, and he looked down to the holster at the hip of his companion, “but I’ll chance a guess that you’ve had the gun a good deal longer.”

  “This gun?”

  With a gesture so smooth that the eye failed to appreciate its speed, the bandit reached back, and with the tips of his fingers — so it seemed — flicked the revolver out. It lay in the palm of his hand under the eye of Morgan Valentine.

  Suppose he were to strike up, would he knock that weapon out of the open hand and send it spinning? Something told him that swift as his blow might be, the long brown fingers would move with vastly more speed to curl around the gun. The very thought of what might happen perceptibly lowered the temperature of the rancher’
s blood.

  He saw that it was, as he had guessed, a very old weapon. It bore evidence of the most meticulous care, but in spite of that an expert could see at a glance that it had passed its palmy days as an engine of destruction.

  “Now, there’s a gun that ain’t much to look at,” said the bandit, and his singularly winning smile softened his face for a moment. “And between you and me, it ain’t much better’n it looks. It bucks like a wild colt. It’s got funny ways. It shoots the way a one-eyed hoss runs. It keeps veerin’ off to one side. Well, it’s a hard shooter — if you know its ways.”

  He paused, then added: “I seen it thrown out of the door into the ash can one day, and I picked it up.”

  “Just like this?”

  “All the parts was there, but it was considerable chewed up with rust. You can see where it’s eat away in places. It was on a Friday that I seen that gun throwed away.”

  “Unlucky day?”

  “Unlucky for most, but I run by opposites. And when I seen it fall, I says: ‘There goes somebody’s bad luck. Maybe it’ll be my good luck.’ So I took out the gun and spent the off time for the next couple of days oiling it up. Then I went out and tried her. Lordy, lordy! I shot a circle around a knot. She had twenty queer tricks, that gun had. But after a while I got to know the tricks. And now she does pretty smooth, neat work. You see?”

  The gun flipped up in the long fingers, and without raising his hand off his knees, the bandit fired. Twenty yards away a squirrel, standing up like a peg beside its hole, was blown to bits.