Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “No,” she said faintly. “I won’t raise a hand.”

  Jess Dreer groaned, for the sheriff, the gun falling from his hand, lurched suddenly sidewise and lay on the floor. There was a hoarse cry of satisfaction from Mary. She ran to Jess, whipping out and opening her pocketknife as she came.

  He stopped her with a shout.

  “Keep off! If you touch the ropes, Mary, I swear I won’t stir after my hands are free. I won’t stir. He has my word, Mary, and my word stays good, whether he lives or dies!”

  “You’re mad, Jess. It’s your chance. Our chance together. Oh, Jess, is your word worth more to you than I am?”

  She was on her knees, imploring him, wet-eyed. And the face of Jess Dreer turned gray with pain.

  “Aye,” he said slowly, at length. “Worth more to me than all the men in the world and all the women. I’ve got myself the name of a murderer and a robber, girl. What have I got left except my own honor?”

  “Who knows it? Who gives you credit for it? Who in the wide world would believe what you’re doing now?”

  “Me and God know it,” said the outlaw quietly.

  She changed her tactics swiftly.

  “Are you going to give up like a woman, Jess? Aren’t you going to make one try for your life? Aren’t you going to fight? Aren’t you going to use your own strength, even if you won’t let me help?”

  “Tear off the old bandage and put a new one on Caswell and I shall.”

  “What if he comes back to life? What if he comes out of his faint?”

  “We’ll risk it.”

  She obeyed him, then, with frantic haste, first casting one glance through the door, and seeing no sign of horsemen sweeping down the long hillsides. Seconds were worth hours now. The old bandage was ripped away under her knife. She tore off her own outer shirt; and, after tearing it to strips and knotting them together, she managed to make the bandage strong and firm, and the welling of the flow ceased. The sheriff still breathed, though faintly.

  “Jess, now yourself!”

  But he was already at work. He had planned it swiftly while she worked over the sheriff. Had there been a single cutting instrument in the cabin, so much as a blunt-edged mud scraper at the door, he could have in time frayed the ropes that held him. But there was nothing he could use. His own knife was in his pocket — but how could he reach it without the use of Mary’s hands?

  If there was no steel to cut the ropes, there was at least the fire. But how to reach it? He had no use of his hands to get out the coals, even if the few sticks in the flimsy old stove had not already burned away to ashes.

  He reached his decision at last. Squirming across the floor, he planted his shoulders, swung up his legs, and with one strong thrust of his feet brought down the old stove in a clattering ruin.

  A faint smoke went up from the fragments.

  He scattered the iron parts, still using his bound feet, for his hands were tied together before him and the elbows were made fast against his sides. The iron was knocked away, but now there was not a trace of a coal. He swayed to his knees and searched, with Mary leaning beside him, desperately questioning him as to his purpose, and getting no answer. And then he found it — two small, swiftly darkening bits of wood coal. He blew on them, and the red returned.

  Yet this alone was not enough. He must have fuel. With terrible labor he worked across to the sheriff, tore open his coat, and drew out a packet of letters and loose papers with his teeth. Then, with this prize in his mouth, back to the coals. Over them he piled the papers, and then began to blow.

  But it seemed that the contact with the cold paper had completely taken the life from the coals. He blew, but there was no answering upward trickle of smoke. He blew again, and now a faint, pungent odor came to his nostrils. He blessed it with a cry, and in a moment the paper blackened, curled back and a tongue of flame went up. Over the papers, now, he scraped with his feet the remnant of the wood. The loose ends, in turn, took the blaze and crackled.

  That done, he got again to his knees and held his bound hands over the point of the flame. If the ropes had held them farther apart, it would have been a simple matter to burn the ropes away, but the wrists were hardly an inch apart, and to ignite the cords he had to sear his own flesh.

  And there was Mary Valentine, on her knees beside him; her teeth were set when his teeth set; her head went back in agony when he groaned, and a horrible, sickening odor of burned flesh rose to them. And then — the cords caught fire! Slowly — very slowly. It was maddening to see them blacken, char, before they caught the yellow flame. But at length they were afire. He strained his wrists. One cord parted with a faint snap.

  Mary Valentine cried out hysterically with joy.

  Then a voice called from the corner of the cabin.

  “Dreer! Jess Dreer!”

  They turned. The sheriff had regained his senses. He sat with his back braced crookedly against the wall, an expression of half-drunken determination and agony on his face, and the revolver in his hand.

  “I’ve seen you, Dreer, and I can’t stop you. But the law says — alive or dead — and dead you shall be!”

  He raised the gun, grinned with effort as he deliberately sighted it, and then crumpled again on the floor.

  The last of the cords parted, and Jess Dreer shook away the smoking fragments.

  “But they’re coming, Jess!” cried the girl at the door. “They’re coming fast. Look!”

  Far off, streaming down the hillside, he saw the cavalcade. But they came leisurely; what call was there for hurry?

  “First, Caswell.”

  He took the sheriff under his arms — he could feel the slow heartbeat as he did it — and bore him through the door. Then he swung into the saddle at the same time that the spreading fire in the shack ran up the wall with a great crackling. The smoke and the flame had been a signal to the posse. It came now on the dead run. He could tell even at a distance of a mile and a half.

  “Is your horse good for anything?”

  “A little. He was played out, but he’s tough as leather.”

  “Then ride on first; I’ll drop behind a little and keep ’em off if they should press us.”

  “Not in a thousand years, Jess. Besides, the cowards won’t dare to press Jess Dreer on an open trail. I know them!”

  He answered her with a smile.

  “How far do you go on this trail, lady?”

  “How far do you think, Jess Dreer?”

  “To the end of the world, I reckon.”

  “We won’t argue the point,” said Mary.

  And they cut up the slope at a sharp gallop and dipped over the rim, side by side.

  THE END

  Sheriff Larrabee’s Prisoner (1921)

  CONTENTS

  I. NO HANG-OUT

  II. THE HOSTS OF THE HOUSE

  III. LARRABEE LISTENS

  IV. LARRABEE WINS HIS BET

  V. LEFT IN THE RAIN

  VI. ALL ABOARD!

  VII. PUBLIC OPINION

  VIII. LAVIGNE LEARNS A LESSON

  IX. UNFORESEEN SUCCOR

  X. THE KEY TO THE DOOR

  XI. THE WHOLE STORY

  I. NO HANG-OUT

  THE RAIN HAD been falling steadily, with a northwester to drive it aslant. Now the wind leaped suddenly at Jack Montagne, and, as if its former pace had been maintained only to lure him into a false security, it now drove the rain in level volleys that crashed against his slicker and stung his face. Even his weather-hardened hands resented the fury of the storm. The blast stopped the trot of his pony that remained for the moment leaning into the storm. Presently it again gathered headway, urged on by the tickling spur of the rider. When the anger of the wind and rain had spent itself, Montagne screened his eyes and peered anxiously up the valley.

  It was then he made out the two lights — one a mere yellow ray which, passing through the mist of rain, was split into a thousand shivering portions as Montagne squinted at it, and the other merely a dim red blur
. They were welcome sights to the rider on this black night, and yet he hesitated before going straight toward them.

  Eventually he decided that the news about him could not have preceded him to this desolate valley, and he touched the pony with the spurs again. This time the weary beast broke into a lope, cupping the muddy water on the trail in the hollows of his forehoofs, and sending it up in spurts and showers to drench the rider. But against such physical discomforts Jack Montagne was proof. When the possessions of a man have shrunk to his bridle and saddle and horse and the old gun, sagging at his hip, when, moreover, fear and dread ride at his side, the elements are negligible factors. In truth, the storm fitted in with the mood of Montagne, and his temper rose in fierce bursts of revolt against the world, just as the wind occasionally struck at him with redoubled force, and like the night his mind was filled with a steady, black gloom.

  The red light on his right now grew rapidly. The rain streaked down against it, and above the light he made out the outlines of a tree. Someone was sitting by a campfire to the lee of a tree, and that was his only shelter against this furious storm. There was no other conclusion to come to, and Montagne shook his head in wonder. Perhaps the fellow had not seen that light down the road, that light which evidently came from a house. It was partly with a kindly determination to tell the camper that there was a better shelter in sight, and partly with the hope of learning a little about this valley in which he found himself, that Montagne turned to the right and came squarely upon the fire.

  It was a miserable and uncertain blaze, fizzing and hissing constantly, as drops of water filtered down from the boughs of the tree above. And yet the broad trunk made a rather good shelter, for the steady wind kept driving the rain at an angle, and the man, whose back was against the tree, was in no danger of getting wet by the direct fall of water. Only the drops, that trickled through the foliage above, came splashing about him. He had been stirring weakly at the fire, and it was not until the pony came within a yard of the blaze, snorting in disgust as the smoke filled its nostrils, that the camper lifted to the view of Montagne a white, rat-like face, out of which little bright black eyes glittered.

  “Get your own fire, bo,” said the camper, without waiting to learn definitely the purpose of the new arrival. “I ain’t got any more’n enough room for myself, and I ain’t going to let you in. Get on your way and hustle your own fire?”

  He enforced this suggestion with an ugly lifting of his upper lip, very much after the manner of a terrier guarding a bone. But Jack Montagne did not immediately answer. He waited until his observations had taken in all the details of the battered hat, the coat of nameless age and patches, the shoes through the ends of which the toes were thrusting, and the whole atmosphere of unclean suspicion that dwelt about the tramp like a garment.

  “You dirty rat,” said Jack Montagne, when he broke silence. “I ought to twist your neck into two pieces!”

  “What?” demanded the tramp, starting, as he shaded his eyes with his hands and peered half viciously and half curiously up through the darkness, as if he wished with all his heart to attack the man who had insulted him, but must first make sure that such an attack would be an expedient proceeding.

  That which he saw was apparently extremely discouraging, for he settled back against the tree and changed his open defiance to a sullen scowl.

  “But,” went on Jack Montagne, smiling in spite of himself at this change of front, “I’m going to do you a good turn, instead of kicking you away from that fire and out into the mud. I’m going to tell you that there is a house down the road about a mile. You don’t have to stay here. You can go down there and sleep in the barn, anyway.”

  “Can I?” asked the tramp. “All right, you go and try it. That’s all I got to say... you go and try it!” He wrapped his arms about him, shivering, as the wind grew fresher out of the north, and he grinned in mockery at the rider.

  “Did you try it?” asked the rider, with a sudden sternness that was not, however, directed at the tramp. “Did you try it and get turned out into a night like this?”

  “Maybe,” replied the tramp.

  The rider set his teeth in one of those convulsions of anger which seemed to be characteristic; and the tramp, peering at him by the dim firelight, shrank from what he saw.

  “But are there no other houses around here?” asked Montagne.

  “Find out for yourself,” said the tramp. He had been emboldened by the generous indignation of the night rider, as if this were proof that the larger man would not take advantage of his superior size, or the revolver that was faintly outlined under the skirt of his slicker. “Find out for yourself... that’s what I had to do.”

  Jack Montagne considered that lean, pointed face with a thoughtful contempt.

  “No,” he decided at length, “I won’t look any farther. I’ll go to that house yonder, and I’ll get supper and a bed there, whether they want to give it to me or not. If they’d turn even a dog out into this sort of weather, they don’t deserve no consideration, and I ain’t going to give it to ’em. If you want to come along with me, I’ll see that they put you up, too.”

  But the tramp merely laughed. “I ain’t a fool,” he declared. “I ain’t going to walk that far for nothing. Besides, I’m doing fine right here.”

  “S’long, then,” said Montagne.

  The tramp returned no answer, but he followed the stranger with a bright glance of his little eyes, as Montagne swerved out into the storm again.

  Through the crashing of the rain Jack kept steadily for the house. Presently he saw the light in the window grow brighter, and he made out the shadowy form of a big ranch house, one of those long and ragged roof lines that attest many additions built onto the original and central structure. Turn a stranger away from such a place, where there must be room to put up twenty extra men? His anger grew with every stride of his pony; when at length he drew rein, his jaw was set.

  It was the rear of the house he had approached, and the light came from a projecting wing that was evidently the kitchen. As Montagne swung out of the saddle, he stepped from the blast of the storm into the quiet shelter of the building. Pausing at the door, he heard two voices, both raised — one the harsh voice of a woman, and one a man’s voice.

  “If he don’t get the money out of that chest,” said the man, “where does he get it? Anyway, I’m going to find out if....”

  “Shut up!” exclaimed the woman. “Let me tell you....” Here she lowered her voice until it became unintelligible to Montagne, and he rapped heavily on the door.

  The voices ceased, then there was a shuffling of feet, the turning of the doorknob, as someone called out to him: “Who’s there?”

  It was the same growling voice of the man whom he had heard speaking inside the kitchen.

  “A stranger, partner,” said Montagne pleasantly, “held up in this rain, and I’d like to get a place to sleep and a bite to eat.”

  “This ain’t no hang-out for bums,” answered the other fiercely. “Get out and stay out!”

  And the door was slammed in the face of Montagne. But in that moment he flung himself forward, leaning low, his shoulder and its cushion of hardened muscle presented for the shock, after the fashion of a football player. The door had been slammed, but the latch had not yet clicked home, and the lunging body of Montagne knocked the door wide. The burly fellow was sent spinning across the floor of the kitchen and crashed into the wall, and Montagne, crouched low and staggering, entered.

  When he straightened himself, he saw the man of the house scrambling to his feet, uttering a profusion of terrific curses. Then the big-shouldered, loose-jointed fellow sprang to the wall and caught a shotgun off the nails where it was supported. He did not, however, level the gun at Montagne. Something in the face of the stranger arrested the motion. His close-set, bulging eyes dwelt in a sort of daze on the newcomer, and Montagne thought he had never seen features so animal-like, save in the woman. She also had reached for the nearest weapon, s
weeping up a great butcher knife in her work-reddened hand, but, like her son — the relationship was proclaimed in their faces — her motion to strike was arrested.

  For they saw in the newcomer a man well over middle height, so strong and sinewy that even the loose-flapping folds of the slicker could not entirely disguise his power. More than this, he was in a tremendous passion which his silence made more terrible than a profusion of curses. In relaxation he must have been a handsome man, but now his features expressed nothing but consuming rage. His brows were black above his glaring eyes, his nostrils quivered, his mouth was a straight, white-edged line, and the tendons of his neck stood forth. Moreover, point was given to his anger by the fact that his right hand was under his slicker. Beyond a doubt it was grasping the butt of a revolver.

  II. THE HOSTS OF THE HOUSE

  THE SON HAD no cunning with which to adapt himself to this terrible stranger; the woman possessed more adroitness. She cast at her son one flaming glance and shook her head; clearly she admonished him to give over the thought of violent resistance to violence. Then she slipped the knife back onto the table and turned to Montagne, with complaints instead of fury.

  “What sort of a business is this?” she demanded. “Busting down doors and breaking in on honest folk? Is that a way to act, I say? Is that a way?” She put a whine into her voice, to be sure, but her eyes were still sparkling with rage, although she told her son, with a curse at his stupidity, to put down the shotgun. “I ain’t going to have no murder on your head,” she declared, “not even if the law wouldn’t lay no hand on you for defending your own house and home! Now, you, what d’you want?”

  The anger had been gradually departing from Jack Montagne. Like most men liable to fits of murderous temper, his rage passed away almost as swiftly as it had come over him, but his face was still ominous as he replied to the woman’s demands.