Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “I’ll tell you why you hate me,” said Dreer. “You’re one of them small-souled skunks that hate a man they’re afraid of.”

  The sheriff burst into a torrent of curses.

  “I’ll find ways of making this up to you, Dreer!”

  But the big man did not hear him. He said at length: “Well, good-by, Angelina. And Heaven help you, Claney, if I ever get clear of the jail!”

  The sheriff smiled again. He had a most evil smile.

  “It’ll be over behind Carrol’s place in the corral,” he said as he went out. “If you listen sharp, maybe you’ll hear the shot. It’ll be in about half an hour.” And he was gone.

  The guards for a moment muttered together, but their commiseration of Dreer was interrupted by a clangor of tin in the outer office of the jail, and then a cheery voice calling: “Chuck, boys. Leave one of you gents to keep watch, and the others tumble out here and have doughnuts and coffee.”

  It brought a shout from the three, but Joe Chalmers shook his head.

  “I ain’t hungry,” he said. “This is meat and drink for me!” he gestured at the prisoner in the cage.

  So the three went out. They left the door wide. One of them came back and stood in the lighted opening, tempting their companion with the steaming cup and a handful of doughnuts. But Joe Chalmers shook his head doggedly and went on.

  “What if something happens?” he said. “Who’ll get the blame? You gents have your lunch. I don’t need none.”

  He took a tug at his belt and continued the pacing, grumbling in his deep voice. He vented his anger by pausing at the bars and glaring at the prisoner. Then he resumed his pacing, but the moment he was on his way, a change began to take place in Jess Dreer’s position. He did not wait now for the guard to have his back turned before he began to move. He had not time. For his plan was formed, and in that plan the saving of every available second was essential.

  He began to move, but very slowly, gradually, steadily. He drew his hands back, he straightened by fractions of inches, he pushed himself forward on the bed so that his weight fell more and more on his feet.

  Then, when he had gone as far as he dared, he began to gather himself for the attempt. If it failed, there would be either instant death, or else a certain death in the future. But he was ready for the chance. He began to gather his muscles under him as the football linesman crouches and grows tense as he hears his quarterback calling the signal and knows that the next play is coming his way. His way, and the goal inches ahead!

  Down the passage swung the bulky form of Joe Chalmers. He paused halfway. Had he seen? No, he went on again; he turned at the end, and the moment his eyes had swung away, Dreer sprang.

  One leap swept him out of the shaft of light, across the cell, and up to the bars. The back of Joe Chalmers was squarely turned, but as though he had eyes in the back of his head — perhaps some play of shadows had startled him — he whirled.

  It was too late for the outlaw to swing the handcuffs with which he had intended to strike down the guard. In midair literally he saw the big man swerve and changed his plan. His feet struck the stone floor; he bounded forward again, and just as Chalmers swung fairly about, the fist of Dreer drove out the length of his sinewy arm with two hundred pounds of plunging weight behind it.

  The blow struck Chalmers fairly on the point of the chin and flung him back against the wall. Back against the wall. That was the thing that broke the heart of Dreer, for if he fell there, Chalmers’ body would be out of reach.

  And it was even doubtful if he would fall. The brutal jaw might have absorbed the shock without transmitting enough of it to daze that brutal mind. Now Chalmers stood with sagging mouth, his shoulders against the wall, his eyes utterly senseless.

  His knees buckled; he sank gradually, and then rolled on the floor.

  “Heh, Joe, fall down?”

  Dreer waited, his heart knocked at his teeth. But the question was not repeated. Looking through the open door he saw big, shapeless shadows brushing across the farther wall. He could make out the caricature of a head.

  Then he dropped to his knees and stretched out his arm. His fingers fell short of the senseless body. He tried again, grinding the flesh of his shoulder against the iron, and this time his fingertips reached the shirt. He gathered it into a handful, cautiously, and when his grip was sound, tugged the big body slowly toward the bars. The shirt began to give way under the strain, and before it should tear with a loud noise, he shifted his hold, and this time he barely was able to reach the belt. Now the body came easily enough, the legs and the head trailing back. It was near; it was close to the bars. One moment of fumbling and the key was in the hand of the outlaw.

  Now a door opened into the outer office. There was a tumult of shadows on the wall as Jess ran silently to the door.

  “Chalmers! Booze!”

  That call could not go without an answer.

  “To the devil with the booze,” Jess Dreer answered, deepening his voice as close as possible to the tone of the guard.

  And in the excitement of the moment in the office they did not note the difference.

  Now the lock gave under the key silently, for it was well oiled and new. A moment later Jess Dreer stood with the belt of Chalmers buckled around his waist and a gun in his hand.

  Well for the guards in the outer room that one of them did not look in on the prisoner at that moment!

  Yet he was still far from liberty. Far, indeed, for the only two exits lay either through the office itself or through the skylight and out onto the roof. He turned the chances swiftly in his mind. He might rush through that outer office and escape without being shot in the flurry of excitement, but the chances were large against him. On the other hand, if he gained the roof, there were the four men who walked their posts, one for each side of the prison. Yet the dull light of the dawn would make for bad shooting.

  He made up his mind, and drew back for a run and a jump at the edge of the trapdoor.

  CHAPTER 29

  IT WAS A big jump, and the great danger was that, in missing, his impact on the floor would surely alarm the men in the office, so he gathered himself, ran swiftly on his toes, and sprang. His hands slapped on the edge of the framing, the fingers slipped — and held.

  He was swinging like a pendulum from the impetus of the leap, and taking advantage of the backward sway, he drew himself with a lunge through the skylight, and his knee rested on the roof.

  Only now did he realize what freedom would mean. The gallows which had been his familiar thought, the death which he had been nerving himself to die, became dim, misted ghosts behind his conscious mind. And he saw, to the east, a long streak of white light, and the black hills tumbled away under it. There was his freedom!

  He skirted across the flat roof, and at an angle looked down. Beneath him paced two men, meeting at the corner on each beat, and then turning their backs, like soldiers, and swinging off in opposite directions. Within three paces they were out of sight of each other, so Dreer drew back along one side and crouched to wait.

  They were calling inside, thunderously loud: “Chalmers, Chalmers!”

  Seconds would tell the story now, and how slow that fellow dragged along his beat, met his companion at the corner, and turned back. Half a dozen steps — a yell tore up from the inside of the prison, and the guard halted abruptly and looked behind him.

  At that instant, like a black panther from an overhanging bough, Dreer dropped. His knees struck the fellow at the nape of the neck, and the blow stunned him. He was pitched upon his face, and Jess rolled half a dozen steps away, and came to his feet again, running low and fast across the clearing toward the nearest house, his revolver in his hand.

  But not a shot followed him. The yell from the prison had dissolved into a shouting of many voices, and no doubt the other outer guards had hurried inside the jail at the very moment when they were needed on the outside. A moment later Jess was in the black shadow behind the first house.

  I
t was his right direction, luckily, and he cut straight ahead at full speed, running as he had never run before. And how the absence of those irons gave wings to his heels! Behind him the uproar burst out of the jail and crashed through the open air. Doors began to slam open down the street; windows were smashed up. Other voices were calling here and there.

  He had never dreamed that an entire town could be alarmed so quickly. It seemed to him that the noise spelled one syllable to the town: “Dreer!”

  He whirled in at the saloon, vaulted the bars of the corral, and raced through the barn. His saddle was hanging on the very peg where he had left it. He reached Angelina, standing with her sleepy head hanging far down, and cast the creaking burden on her back.

  Angelina did not even raise her head; she did not even stir an ear. Such scenes as this were old indeed to her.

  Jess Dreer could have burst into song. His own saddle, his own horse. Angelina of all others. With her stubborn sides between his knees he felt that he could mock the world. There was only one thing lacking, and that was the old revolver which hung on the wall of the office of Sheriff Clancy in the jail. For that matter, he had two better guns hanging now from his belt.

  But he would not have traded the original revolver for a thousand of the newest. It belonged to him, and he felt his luck was inextricably wrapped up in it. For a moment, sitting in the saddle, he hesitated; then he determined on the venture. Instead of cutting out of the corral of Carrol’s place and heading for the hills, he jogged up the alley and swung onto the main street of Salt Springs. Almost instantly a volley of a dozen horses thundered down at him. Two of them swung off with a yell as he came into the road.

  “Go it, boys! I’m with you!” yelled Jess Dreer, and waved his hat at the diminishing line of riders.

  But now the gray dawn was growing every moment, and in a short time people would be able to recognize him. Up the street he went at the same slow trot, feeling Angelina unlimber beneath him and begin to come up on the bit, for the unaccustomed rest of the last few days had filled her full of running.

  Straight to the jail went Jess Dreer again.

  From a distance he could see single horsemen and horsemen in groups radiating from the open door of the sheriff like rays of light from a lantern, and he knew that the sheriff, the master mind, was directing the pursuit. Why did the sheriff himself abstain from taking part? Like a wise general, perhaps, he preferred by far to remain behind the lines of action and view his troops at a distance, measuring chances and results.

  There was a dwindling group of saddled horses in front of the jail, and now and again out burst a man, flung himself on his mount, and rushed headlong off.

  Jess Dreer reined in Angelina and waited a little uneasily. For now the daylight was increasing with every moment, and his stay in Salt Springs became with each second doubly perilous. But it seemed to him that to the very tips of his fingers his hands ached for the familiar touch of his old revolver.

  Still he delayed. A secondary purpose was beginning to form in his mind, a sort of delicate mental dessert, and he rolled the anticipation of it over the roots of his tongue, and grinned to himself in the dim dawn. Far away, he heard the pursuit splashing through the hills around Salt Springs, voices, even gunshots.

  Yet he remained there at the center of his danger until there was left, before the jail, only a single horse. The moment he saw this, he sent Angelina into full gallop with a touch of his knees. Sheriff Clancy came and stood in the doorway.

  “Who’s there? Down to the old fort, pardner, and ride mighty fast! But who are you?”

  This as, instead of obeying, the new horseman flung himself out of the saddle.

  “An old friend,” said Jess Dreer, and thrust a gun under the chin of Clancy.

  The sheriff stiffened, as if suddenly petrified.

  “Dreer!” he whispered.

  “Don’t beg,” said the big man. “I got a sneaking idea that maybe you’ll be on your knees in a minute, begging for your life. It gives me the creeps to see the yaller come out in a gent, Sheriff. So I’ll tell you beforehand that I ain’t going to send a slug through you. Got two reasons for letting you off. First, because a shot would bring some callers, most like. Second, because I can do worse’n kill you, Claney. I can shame you so’s you’ll be the laughingstock of the ranges. And that’s what I’ll do. Now turn your back.”

  The sheriff obeyed without a word.

  “Step inside.”

  Inside went the sheriff. When the light struck him, one could see that he was quaking. His head and shoulders were sinking. Indeed, he seemed to be wilting away, as slugs will when salt is sprinkled on them.

  “I had an idea you was a skunk,” said Dreer, making a face as though he were swallowing a bitter pill. “But I didn’t know the yaller streak was so wide.”

  The sheriff seemed tongue-tied. Dreer took from the wall of the room a long rope and spun it dexterously around Claney, weaving him, hand, foot, and body to the neck, in a tight coil of horsehair.

  The sheriff’s own wadded handkerchief made the gag, and it was wedged deep into his throat.

  After this, Dreer looked around the room. It was in the wildest confusion. Chairs, overturned, lay here and there, even including the sheriff’s own priceless leather-seated throne. And in his mind’s eye the outlaw pictured the excitement when the yell of the first discoverer sent the guards rushing into the jail.

  It was perfectly quiet in Salt Springs; but a ring of noise rolled farther and farther away around it. Dreer stepped to the door, looked out, and then came back and poured himself a drink from the uncorked bottle. He found his own revolver — already by the industry of the sheriff enclosed in a glass case with an inscription burned into the wood below it.

  “Taken from the celebrated desperado, Jess Dreer, by Sheriff Claney.”

  “The dead come back to life,” and Dreer grinned as he threw aside the two guns, unstrapped one useless holster, and slipped his ancient weapon into the other.

  Instantly he felt a double reliance.

  Going out, he paused by the sheriff, smiled contemptuously into the man’s face, and seeing the eyes widen with fear, he turned on his heel and went out.

  He was climbing into the saddle when three men plunged up to the jail.

  “What’s orders?” they called, still from a distance.

  “Down to the Six-Bar Ranch,” directed Jess.

  “Are you going that way? Show us down!”

  “What’s the matter? Strangers?”

  “Yep.”

  “Never seen Dreer?”

  “Just got in last night. Heard about him, but never seen him. What’s he look like, before we start?”

  “I’ll tell you as we go along. I’ll be your guide, boys, and when I see him, I’ll tell you what’s what. Take him all in all, he looks a good deal like me.”

  “Thought he was a pile bigger.”

  “Come to think of it, I reckon he is. Let’s start!”

  And the four comrades raced off into the early daylight.

  CHAPTER 30

  SALT SPRINGS WAS quick to rise to an occasion. It was equally quick to settle down after the crisis. For a week or so every man over fifteen years of age rode his horse to gauntness on the trail of Jess Dreer and then, as though by a sudden mutual agreement, every man returned to his habitual occupation. Jess Dreer, in a single day, was relegated to the past along with the raid of the Brown brothers, the fire of ten years back, and a few other upheavals which had wrecked the mental peace of Salt Springs for a fortnight.

  Indeed, though each man would have given half of his life to gain the honor of capturing the outlaw, there was no personal bitterness to keep them on the trail; and as for the price on the head of Dreer, such money is not esteemed in the mountain desert.

  Yet in spite of the numbers who had ridden their horses to a staggering condition during the past ten days, no one had been so busy as Morgan Valentine. Sheriff Caswell, seeing him come down the main street of t
he town this day, went out from the veranda of the hotel and stopped him. Purple pouches lay beneath the eyes of the rancher, and beside his mouth were deep grooves, and his cheeks were flattened.

  The sheriff remarked these things aloud, and concluded: “Didn’t know you’d been sick, Valentine.”

  “Not sick; busy,” said the other. He added, looking closely at the sheriff: “You’re staying with the old theory, Caswell? You’re not following Dreer? You’re waiting for him to travel in a circle and come back here?”

  The sheriff shook his head.

  “Takes nerve for a gent to change his mind,” and he smiled. “I’ve got nerve. After the last little party, Jess won’t come back to Salt Springs. His face is too well known.”

  “You’re taking your time about following him.”

  “I’ve been hunting around for a new hoss, and I’ve got a beauty at last. Look yonder.”

  He pointed to a pony chestnut with ratty mane and tail.

  “Don’t look particular like a picture hoss,” said Valentine, controlling a smile. “But they’s a nice set of legs and plenty of size around the girth.”

  “Yep; it ain’t a picture hoss, but it’s the nearest thing to Angelina that I could find. I tried him out a couple of days back, and he done fine.”

  He added: “But sounds like you’re set on having me catch Dreer, pardner?”

  He was surprised to find that this question did not bring an indignant denial from the rancher. The latter merely rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his fist.

  “Maybe I am,” he admitted openly.

  “That don’t sound nacheral, Valentine.”

  “After what he’s done for my boy, Charlie?”

  “Yep. And then, him being the sort of a gent he is all around. I didn’t figure you’d be hot on his trail.”

  “I’ll tell you,” said the rancher. “If he was square in the eyes of the law, he’s the sort of a gent that I’d work my hands to the bone for. I’d set him up in life and ask no questions, and he could have what he wanted for the asking. Maybe you think I’m talking extravagant?”