Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Not if he’s gone. Which way?”

  “He took that road. You ought to catch him in the mountains.”

  “How’s your hoss, Caswell?”

  “Played out.”

  “So’s mine, pretty nigh.”

  “Well, then, come in, Sheriff.”

  For she knew perfectly that this bulldog would not leave the trail. She leaned against the side of the door and laughed at him.

  “I think that for a moment you suspected that we were sheltering him. But what’s he done?”

  “What’s he done?” Caswell said explosively. “What ain’t he done? He’s done enough to bring me a thousand miles on the trail. What’s he done? Why, that’s Jess Dreer; they scare their kids with that name down south!”

  One might have thought that Mary Valentine would shrink in horror at this news. She did not. No, a fire came in her eyes.

  “Is he as bad as all that? Oh, I hope you get him, Mr. Caswell!”

  “Right down that road!” She ran to the front of the veranda. “Hurry! I’ll go back and tell Dad about it. He’ll be after you in five minutes with fresh horses. He’ll take along a couple of fresh mounts for you.”

  “Come on, Caswell!”

  But Caswell, with his foot on the verge of taking the first step down, paused.

  “What I don’t figure,” he said, “is why Dreer left his own saddle behind? It’s hard enough to figure why he left the hoss.”

  “Because he knew you were on his heels, Caswell,” cried Claney. “Hurry up, man. He’s gaining miles on us.”

  “How’d he know I was on his heels? Nobody else has give him a run — not for five years. He’s always give the others too hot a reception at the end of the trail — them that ever come up with him.”

  “Facts is facts. Come on.”

  “I’m thinkin’.”

  And he rubbed his chin and stared hard at Mary Valentine.

  “Don’t you see that he’s getting away?” she cried in an apparent frenzy.

  “Seems to me, ma’am, that you’re in a considerable trouble to have him caught. Most of the womenfolk I know most generally hopes he gets away.”

  “Caswell, I’m going on without you.”

  “Wait a minute. Claney, it won’t do.”

  The latter turned and hurried back up the steps.

  “I’ll tell you why,” explained the man from the south. “That hoss has been with Dreer for eight years. Ten times he could of changed her for a fresh hoss when he was being trailed, but he never wouldn’t do it. And why does he do it now? Even if he knowed I was after him, that mare could of kept on going and run down a fresh hoss. She ain’t common hossflesh. She’s all leather inside and out. I know her.”

  “Well, where are you aiming?”

  Claney turned on Mary.

  “I’m aiming to search this house, and I don’t think I’ll have far to go.”

  She stared at him an instant.

  “You’re a little insulting,” said Mary, drawing herself up. And then, seeing that he would persist in his purpose, she slipped before him and opened the door.

  “Come in, then,” said Mary.

  But when he made a step forward, she slammed the door in his face, and the astonished sheriffs heard the heavy bolt click home.

  CHAPTER 11

  IN THE LIVING room there had grown up a slight suspense.

  “What keeps Mary so long?” asked her uncle at length.

  “I’ll go to find out,” suggested Elizabeth.

  And then, to the astonishment of the others, big Jess Dreer was seen to slip from his chair. The fire cast a gigantic shadow behind him against the wall.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said gently, “I think I’ll step out and see.”

  But at that moment the front door crashed; there was the metallic ring of the bolt driven home, and then Mary whipped into the room. A beautiful picture. A wisp of hair had blown down across her cheek. Her eyes were alight with excitement. And yet there was something akin to a laugh on her lips.

  “Jess Dreer,” she cried, “follow me!”

  And before one of the others could so much as rise from a chair, she had raced across the room and out through the farther door with Dreer gliding at her heels; even then he appeared unhurried.

  “This way!” commanded the girl, and ran up the brief flight of steps that joined one stretch of the back hall with another at a higher level. They went down the passage at full speed, and then, at the foot of it, she cast open another door and beckoned him into the room. Once inside, she bolted the door behind her.

  From the front of the house there was a thunder against the door, and the voice of Morgan Valentine was calling: “Mary, what’s this all about?”

  Jess Dreer took quick stock of the room. The moonlight struck in a broad shaft through one of the windows, and the rest of the apartment was filled with a dim, dim light. It was a girl’s room. That indescribable fragrance lived in it, like a spirit. And there were splashes of bright color made faint by the night.

  “They’re after you,” cried the girl softly. “Sheriff Clancy and a man named Caswell, who has followed you from the south.”

  She was shocked to see him leaning idly against the wall.

  “Now, think of that,” murmured Jess Dreer. “I figured that Caswell was a sensible sort of gent, and here he is trying to make a reputation by catching me. Well, well, they ain’t any way of judging a man when he starts out to try to get famous.”

  She gasped away her surprise.

  “No matter what he is. He may be a fool, but Sheriff Clancy is a dangerous man. He’s well known. Too well known.”

  “Mighty good of you to let me know about him.”

  “Come here. Quick! It isn’t far to drop to the ground from this window. You see how the hill slopes away up just underneath?”

  “Dear me, now! But they’s one great trouble. I have to get out to my hoss and saddle her before I can start on.”

  “You’ll never ride that horse again. They found her in the corral, and they’ve saddled her to take you away on her.”

  “I knowed Caswell was a terrible considerate man.”

  She paid no attention.

  “You see that hill? Strike for that. Just beyond there’s broken country. No horse can follow you over it. You have a gun?”

  “A sort of a one.”

  “Then go!”

  “Lady,” said Jess Dreer, “I’d a pile rather go on Angelina as a prisoner than go on foot a free man.”

  She stared at him.

  There was the unmistakable sound of the splintering of wood.

  “Quick!” she pleaded, almost sobbing in her frenzy of excitement.

  “They’s one or two things that sort of holds me back,” murmured the bandit.

  “What? What?”

  “Look out yonder!”

  She saw to one side — fifty yards away — two men sitting motionless on their horses.

  “Then you’re lost!”

  “I’m squeezed, anyways. And yonder is Angelina, I see.”

  And following the direction in which he pointed, she saw another pair of men on their horses, with a spare horse held between them.

  “There’s no hope? Tell me how to help you!”

  “Lady, I sure appreciate all the interest you’re showing.”

  And with this, he sank down upon a chair and crossed his legs.

  She stood back from him at that.

  “Are you going to give up without a struggle?”

  “I’m going to have a little think,” said the outlaw. “I’d rather start a fight after I’ve thought it out than I would to have a pardner to help me. Two minutes of getting ready is worth an hour of hard riding sometimes.”

  “I see. You don’t really care if they do catch you? You haven’t done anything very wrong? It doesn’t mean that—”

  “A busted neck. That’s all it means.”

  “Then what he said is true?”

  “Most probable it
is. Lady, I ain’t one of them parlor bad men that wears a bad look and a nervous hand. You got a lot of questions to ask me. Am I a downtrodden man that’s tried to right my wrongs and got tangled with the law? No, I ain’t. Am I a wild but nacherally noble heart that’s persecuted by the miserable world that don’t understand me? No, I ain’t. I’m plain Jess Dreer. Too lazy to work with my hands and just able to get a good living with my gun. That’s all. Now take my advice. Get out of this room and wash your hands of me.”

  “I don’t care what you are,” cried the girl. “I believe in you. There never was a scoundrel yet that was a truly brave man. Jess Dreer, I believe in you. But quick, quick, quick. Do something! There’s no time. They’ve broken in the door.”

  “That’s what I been waiting for,” said the bandit, and he raised his great length from the chair and stretched himself. “Now that I got part of ’em inside the house, they’re divided. That’s the way old Napoleon did, I guess.”

  “But they’re coming. I can do something. Raise a false alarm on the other side?”

  He broke out with a strange heartiness: “You’re the salt of the earth. No, don’t raise your hand. The fools have give me a chance, and I’ll take it.”

  A heavy rush of feet in the hall. A body smashed against the door and the room quivered.

  “Open, Mary!”

  The surprise had brought a revolver in the hand of Jess Dreer, and even in that dim light the girl saw his face change. But he instantly put up the gun when he saw the door would hold.

  “Now wouldn’t you think that wise gents like them would look before they leap? However, I won’t wait for ’em.”

  The door groaned under a new shock, and then Jess Dreer slipped his long body feet-first through the window and dropped to the ground. She looked out. He had sunk into the shadow at the base of the wall and had not yet been seen, and now she heard a brief, shrill whistle, twice repeated.

  It was answered by a snort of a horse, and instantly Angelina burst from the men who held her and plunged toward the house with flying bridle reins. Out from the shadow leaped Jess Dreer to meet her. He had covered half the distance before he was seen and before the others could start their horses toward him, he was in the saddle with a catlike bound. The four men converged on him, and straight toward the middle of the gap he sent the flying Angelina.

  He lay flat on the back of the mustang; he had not even drawn his revolver, so far as she could see. But the others galloped with naked weapons. One of these flashed, and on the heels of the report there was a shriek from one of the posse who had been closing in on the other side. The bullet had missed the enemy and struck a friend.

  It gave Jess Dreer a winking moment of a chance. For the shout of the hurt man and the plunge of his body to the ground threw the rest of the posse into confusion. Three horses were reined in three directions; Angelina rushed through the narrow gap between, and then Mary Valentine saw the fugitive strike out toward the nearest hill with three pursuers laboring behind him.

  Each of them had a gun unlimbered; each of them was pumping a hail of bullets after Jess Dreer; but they doubly defeated themselves by that very eagerness. For the racking gallop ruined their chances to shoot true, and, sitting straight to fire, they could not get the best speed out of their horses. And in the meantime Jess Dreer was jockeying the cat-footed Angelina through the rough ground at the base of the hill. She veered and dodged like a dancing will-o’- the-wisp and presently darted around the hill into oblivion.

  The fusillade of shots had drawn the two sheriffs from the door of Mary Valentine’s room. She heard them plunging through the house, leaving a trail of crackling oaths behind them in lieu of musketry.

  Afterward she waited in her room, terrified by what she had done, and, though her aunt and then Elizabeth came and called her, she would not come out.

  She was spending that hour in profound thoughtfulness, and her thoughts were turning on that thing she had cried to Jess Dreer in her excitement: “There never was a scoundrel yet that was a truly brave man!”

  Had she not spoken the truth by inspiration?

  She heard the wounded man groaning as he was carried past her door. That was one result of her work, no doubt. Then she heard the posse returning from a fruitless chase. At this, Mary breathed freely for the first time.

  CHAPTER 12

  WHEN SHE WENT out at last, she carried her head with a high stubbornness and walked bravely into the living room. Elizabeth was not there; she was tending the wounded man. And the rest of the posse was either gone home or had found quarters in the house. But the two sheriffs sat opposite each other. They scowled at Mary when she came in; only from Morgan Valentine did she receive the faint glimmer of a smile. As for Mrs. Valentine, she turned upon her niece a somber glance that betided no good.

  “A pretty night’s work for you, Mary Valentine,” she said. “Turning your uncle’s house into a refuge for outlaws — and getting a man shot. All your work, too, Mary. And I’d like to know what you got to say to Sheriff Claney — and Sheriff Caswell, that’s come so far all to be fooled by your doings.”

  “Hush, Mother,” said Morgan Valentine. “That’s a little too much.”

  “Don’t bother about me,” said Sheriff Caswell gloomily. “I don’t hold no spite agin’ the young lady — which I never knew womenfolk yet that didn’t take the side of the underdog.”

  “More power to the women!” muttered Morgan Valentine.

  “Right!” observed Sheriff Caswell with surprising calmness. “I wouldn’t wish my own girl to help corner a man. No, sir. And I don’t hold no grudge, young lady, though you did lie most amazing for that fox Dreer.”

  Mary Valentine stood where the firelight could play full on her face — and there is nothing like firelight to bring out the luminous tenderness of a woman’s eyes. She cast out her hands toward the two men she had disappointed.

  “How could I help it?” she said. “There were so many of you. And he was alone!”

  They would have been more than men if they had not melted to some degree. Indeed, Mary would have done well on the stage.

  “And yet I suppose,” she said, slipping into a chair, “that he’s a scoundrel; a worthless rascal!”

  Mary was not very old, and, I suppose, she was not very wise; but she understood that the way to guide a man is to oppose him.

  “Really,” she said, “the moment I looked at Jess Dreer I knew that he was worthless.”

  It caused Sheriff Caswell to take fire immediately, and inwardly she rejoiced.

  “Then you know more’n I do,” he muttered.

  “But haven’t you chased him a thousand miles?”

  “I had to. I dunno just how many thousand they is on his head. It ain’t the money I want, but if I can get rid of Jess Dreer — why, they ain’t much chance of another bad one ever crossing my trail. They’d keep clear of my country if they knowed that I’d run Jess Dreer to the ground.”

  Mary Valentine shivered. She gazed with open admiration on the sheriff.

  “It must take courage,” she murmured, “to follow a cold-blooded murderer!”

  The sheriff looked at her. He was not displeased by her admiration, but he felt that he must put this very absolute young woman in her place.

  “If you call him cool,” he said, “why, I call him that, too. But murder is a pretty strong word. Man-killer he is. They ain’t any doubt about that. But murder, I ain’t ever heard of his doing.”

  “Isn’t that a close distinction?” she said. “Is there much difference between a murderer and a man-killer?”

  “To you, maybe not,” said the sheriff deliberately. “To me, they’re just about the world apart. A murderer is a snake that strikes for the sake of striking. A man-killer is one that fights when he has to. But Jess Dreer — why, he’ll almost take water before he’ll fight. That’s how mild he is.”

  She had to lower her eyes, such a warm happiness had come in her blood that she feared it would shine out in her glan
ce.

  “For my part,” she said, “I think his mildness is just a sham. It looked snaky enough to me.”

  “Then,” said the sheriff, “you and me see with different eyes. What chance did Jess Dreer have, I ask you? Jud Linsey’s hoss is stole. It looks bad for Pete Dreer. Jud gets a crowd together. They put on masks and go to Dreer’s house. They take Pete out, and when he says he’s innocent, they laugh at him, the case was so black agin’ him. They take him out, string him up, and let him swing. Along comes Jess Dreer and sees his father dead before the door of the house. He busts around town and finds out that Linsey done it.

  “Along about that time the real hoss thief is found with the goods. They bring him in. They ain’t any doubt that old Pete Dreer was innocent when he was lynched, but he was such a queer, silent old cuss that nobody would of believed it — considering how black the case was agin’ him.

  “Well, Jess Dreer buries his father and then he goes to the sheriff and asks for justice on Jud Linsey. Did he get it? No! Partly because they wasn’t anybody that seen the lynching except them that was in the mob, and everybody in the mob was just as guilty as Jud Linsey in the eyes of the law. So would they talk? Would they accuse Jud and accuse themselves at the same time? No, they wasn’t any chance of that.

  “Besides, the sheriff was pretty thick with Jud Linsey, Jud having married his daughter. So he tells Jess Dreer to get out of his office and stop talking like a fool.

  “You see, he didn’t suspect that they was anything very hard about Jess. Nobody did. He’d been quiet as a lamb all his life.

  “So Jess Dreer leaves the sheriff and goes out to the saloon where Jud Linsey was. I was there at the bar, and I seen everything that happened. Jess walks in and stands there with his hands on his hips.

  “‘Jud Linsey,’ he sings out, ‘I’ve been to the sheriff and asked for the law on you. But the sheriff has cussed me out and told me I couldn’t come at you through the law. So I’m going to use my own hands. Linsey, I’m going to kill you.’

  “Well, Linsey turns on his heel and has two guns out before you could wink, and he hits the floor without shooting either of them guns off. The reason why was because a slug out of Dreer’s gun had gone through his heart.