Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  He thought, too, of the lean face and the peculiar, set eye of Dozier. The man had no fear, he had no nerves; he was a machine, and death was his business.

  And was he, Andrew Lanning, unknown until the past few months, now going down to face destruction, as full of fear as a girl trembling at the dark? What was it that drew them together, so unfairly matched?

  He could still see only the white haze of the moonshine before him, but now there was the clicking of hoofs on the rock. Dozier was coming. Andrew walked squarely out into the middle of the ravine and waited. He had set his teeth. The nerves on the bottom of his feet were twitching. Something freezing cold was beginning at the tips of his fingers. How long would it take Dozier to come?

  An interminable time. The hoofbeats actually seemed to fade out and draw away at one time. Then they began again very near him, and now they stopped. Had Dozier seen him around the elbow curve? That heartbreaking instant passed, and the clicking began again. Then the rider came slowly in view. First there was the nodding head of the cow pony, then the foot in the stirrup, then Hal Dozier riding a little twisted in the saddle — a famous characteristic of his.

  He came on closer and closer. He began to seem huge on the horse. Was he blind not to see the figure that waited for him?

  A voice that was not his, that he did not recognize, leaped out from between his teeth and tore his throat: “Dozier!”

  The cow pony halted with a start; the rider jerked straight in his saddle; the echo of the call barked back from some angling cliff face down the ravine. All that before Dozier made his move. He had dropped the reins, and Andrew, with a mad intention of proving that he himself did not make the first move toward his weapon, had folded his arms.

  He did not move through the freezing instant that followed. Not until there was a convulsive jerk of Dozier’s elbow did he stir his folded arms. Then his right arm loosened, and the hand flashed down to his holster.

  Was Dozier moving with clogged slowness, or was it that he had ceased to be a body, that he was all brain and hair-trigger nerves making every thousandth part of a second seem a unit of time? It seemed to Andrew that the marshal’s hand dragged through its work; to those who watched from the sides of the ravine, there was a flash of fire from his gun before they saw even the flash of the steel out of the holster. The gun spat in the hand of Dozier, and something jerked at the shirt of Andrew beside his neck. He himself had fired only once, and he knew that the shot had been too high and to the right of his central target; yet he did not fire again. Something strange was happening to Hal Dozier. His head had nodded forward as though in mockery of the bullet; his extended right hand fell slowly, slowly; his whole body began to sway and lean toward the right. Not until that moment did Andrew know that he had shot the marshal through the body.

  He raced to the side of the cattle pony, and, as the horse veered away, Hal Dozier dropped limply into his arms. He lay with his limbs sprawling at odd angles beside him. His muscles seemed paralyzed, but his eyes were bright and wide, and his face perfectly composed.

  “There’s luck for you,” said Hal Dozier calmly. “I pulled it two inches to the right, or I would have broken your neck with the slug — anyway, I spoiled your shirt.”

  The cold was gone from Andrew, and he felt his heart thundering and shaking his body. He was repeating like a frightened child, “For God’s sake, Hal, don’t die — don’t die.”

  The paralyzed body did not move, but the calm voice answered him: “You fool! Finish me before your gang comes and does it for you!”

  CHAPTER 38

  THERE WAS A rush of footsteps behind and around him, a jangle of voices, and there were the four huddled over Hal Dozier. Andrew had risen and stepped back, silently thanking God that it was not a death. He heard the voices of the four like voices in a dream.

  “A clean one.” “A nice bit of work.” “Dozier, are you thinkin’ of Allister, curse you?” “D’you remember Hugh Wiley now?” “D’you maybe recollect my pal, Bud Swain? Think about ’em, Dozier, while you’re dyin’!” The calm eyes traveled without hurry from face to face. And curiosity came to Andrew, a cool, deadly curiosity. He stepped among the gang.

  “He’s not fatally hurt,” he said. “What d’you intend to do with him?”

  “You’re all wrong, chief,” said Larry la Roche, and he grinned at Andrew. His submission now was perfect and complete. There was even a sort of worship in the bright eyes that looked at the new leader. “I hate to say it, but right as you mos’ gener’ly are, you’re wrong this time. He’s done. He don’t need no more lookin’ to. Leave him be for an hour and he’ll be finished. Also, that’ll give him a chance to think. He needs a chance. Old Curley had a chance to think — took him four hours to kick out after Dozier plugged him. I heard what he had to say, and it wasn’t pretty. I think maybe it’d be sort of interestin’ to hear what Dozier has to say. Long about the time he gets thirsty. Eh, boys?”

  There was a snarl from the other three as they looked down at the wounded man, who did not speak a word. And Andrew knew that he was indeed alone with that crew, for the man whom he had just shot down was nearer to him than the members of Allister’s gang.

  He spoke suddenly: “Jeff, take his head; Clune, take his feet. Carry him up to the cabin.”

  They only stared at him.

  “Look here, captain,” said Scottie in a soft voice, just a trifle thickened by whiskey, “are you thinking of taking him up there and tying him up so that he’ll live through this?”

  And again the other three snarled softly.

  “You murdering hounds!” said Andrew.

  That was all. They looked at each other; they looked at the new leader. And the sight of his white face and his nervous right hand was too much for them. They took up the marshal and carried him to the cabin, his pony following like a dog behind. They brought him, without asking for directions, straight into the little rear room — Andrew’s room. It was a sufficiently intelligible way of saying that this was his work and none of theirs. And not a hand lifted to aid him while he went to work with the bandaging. He knew little about such work, but the marshal himself, in a rather faint, but perfectly steady voice, gave directions. And in the painful cleaning of the wound he did not murmur once. Neither did he express the slightest gratitude. He kept following Andrew about the room with coldly curious eyes.

  In the next room the voices of the four were a steady, rumbling murmur. Now and then the glance of the marshal wandered to the door. When the bandaging was completed, he asked, “Do you know you’ve started a job you can’t finish?”

  “Ah?” murmured Andrew.

  “Those four,” said the marshal, “won’t let you.”

  Andrew smiled.

  “Are you easier now?”

  “Don’t bother about me. I’ll tell you what — I wish you’d get me a drink of water.”

  “I’ll send one of the boys.”

  “No, get it yourself. I want to say something to them while you’re gone.”

  Andrew had risen up from his knees. He now studied the face of the marshal steadily.

  “You want ’em to come in here and drill you, eh?” he said. “Why?”

  The other nodded.

  “I’ve given up hope once; I’ve gone through the hardest part of dying; let them finish the job now.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll feel differently.”

  “Will I?” asked the marshal. All at once his eyes went yellow with hate. “I go back to the desert — I go to Martindale — people I pass on the street whisper as I go by. They’ll tell over and over how I went down. And a kid did it — a raw kid!”

  He closed his eyes in silent agony. Then he looked up more keenly than before. “How’ll they know that it was luck — that my gun stuck in the holster — and that you jumped me on the draw?”

  “You lie,” said Andrew calmly. “Your gun came out clean as a whistle, and I waited for you, Dozier. You know I did.”

  The pain in the marshal’s
face became a ghastly thing to see. At last he could speak.

  “A sneak always lies well,” he replied, as he sneered at Lanning.

  He went on, while Andrew sat shivering with passion. “And any fool can get in a lucky shot now and then. But, when I’m out of this, I’ll hunt you down again and I’ll plant you full of lead, my son! You can lay to that!”

  The hard breathing of Andrew gradually subsided.

  “It won’t work, Dozier,” he said quietly. “You can’t make me mad enough to shoot a man who’s down. You can’t make me murder you.”

  The marshal closed his eyes again, while his breathing was beginning to grow fainter, and there was an unpleasant rattle in the hollow of his throat. Andrew went into the next room.

  “Scottie,” he said, “will you let me have your flask?”

  Scottie smiled at him.

  “Not for what you’d use it for, Lanning,” he said.

  Andrew picked up a cup and shoved it across the table.

  “Pour a little whisky in that, please,” he said.

  Scottie looked up and studied him. Then he tipped his flask and poured a thin stream into the cup until it was half full. Andrew went back toward the door, the cup in his left hand. He backed up, keeping his face steadily toward the four, and kicked open the door behind him.

  War, he knew, had been declared. Then he raised the marshal’s head and gave him a sip of the fiery stuff. It cleared the face of the wounded man.

  Then Andrew rolled down his blankets before the door, braced a small stick against it, so that the sound would be sure to waken him if anyone tried to enter, and laid down for the night. He was almost asleep when the marshal said: “Are you really going to stick it out, Andy?”

  “Yes.”

  “In spite of what I’ve said?”

  “I suppose you meant it all? You’d hunt me down and kill me like a dog after you get back on your feet?”

  “Like a dog.”

  “If you think it over and see things clearly,” replied Andrew, “you’ll see that what I’ve done I’ve done for my own sake, and not for yours.”

  “How do you make that out — with four men in the next room ready to stick a knife in your back — if I know anything about ’em?”

  “I’ll tell you: I owe nothing to you, but a man owes a lot to himself, and I’m going to pay myself in full.”

  CHAPTER 39

  HE CLOSED HIS eyes and tried to sleep, but, though he came to the verge of oblivion, the voices from the other room finally waked him. They had been changing subtly during the past hours and now they rose, and there was a ring to them that troubled Andrew.

  He could make out their talk part of the time; and then again they lowered their voices to rumbling growls. At such times he knew that they were speaking of him, and the hum of the undertone was more ominous than open threats. When they talked aloud there was a confused clamor; when they were more hushed there was always the oily murmur of Scottie’s voice, taking the lead and directing the current of the talk.

  The liquor was going the rounds fast, now. Before they left for the Murchison Pass they had laid in a comfortable supply, but apparently Allister had cached a quantity of the stuff at the Twin Eagles shack. Of one thing Andrew was certain, that four such practiced whisky drinkers would never let their party degenerate into a drunken rout; and another thing was even more sure — that Scottie Macdougal would keep his head better than the best of the others. But what the alcohol would do would be to cut the leash of constraint and dig up every strong passion among them. For instance, Jeff Rankin was by far the most equable of the lot, but, given a little whisky, Jeff became a conscienceless devil.

  He knew his own weakness, and Andrew, crawling to the door and putting his ear to the crack under it, found that the sounds of the voices became instantly clearer; the others were plying Jeff with the liquor, and Jeff, knowing that he had had enough, was persistently refusing, but with less and less energy.

  There must be a very definite reason for this urging of Rankin toward the whisky, and Andrew was not hard pressed to find out that reason. The big, rather good-natured giant was leaning toward the side of the new leader, just as steadily as the others were leaning away from him. Whisky alone would stop his scruples. Larry la Roche, his voice a guarded, hissing whisper, was speaking to Jeff as Andrew began listening from his new position.

  “What I ask you,” said La Roche, “is this: Have we had any luck since the kid joined us?” “We’ve got a pile of the coin,” said Jeff obstinately.

  “D’you stack a little coin against the loss of Allister?” asked Larry la Roche.

  “Easy,” cautioned Scottie. “Not so loud, Larry.”

  “He’s asleep,” said Larry la Roche. “I heard him lie down after he’d put something agin’ the door. No fear of him.”

  “Don’t be so sure. He might make a noise lying down and make not a sound getting up. And, even when he’s asleep, he’s got one eye open like a wolf.”

  “Well,” repeated Larry insistently, and now his voice was so faint that Andrew had to guess at half the syllables, “answer my question, Jeff: Have we had good luck or bad luck, takin’ it all in all, since he joined us?”

  “How do I know it’s his fault?” asked Jeff. “We all knew it would be a close pinch if Allister ever jumped Hal Dozier. We thought Allister was a little bit faster than Dozier. Everybody else said that Dozier was the best man that ever pulled a gun out of leather. It wasn’t luck that beat Allister — it was a better man.”

  There was a thud as his fist hit the rickety, squeaking table in the center of the room.

  “I say, let’s play fair and square. How do I know that the kid won’t make a good leader?”

  Scottie broke in smoothly: “Makes me grin when you say that, Jeff. Tell you what the trouble is with you, old man: you’re too modest. A fellow that’s done what you’ve done, following a kid that ain’t twenty-five!”

  There was a bearlike grunt from Jeff. He was not altogether displeased by this gracious tribute. But he answered: “You’re too slippery with your tongue, Scottie. I never know when you mean what you say!”

  It must have been a bitter pill for Scottie to swallow, but he was not particularly formidable with his weapons, compared with straight-eyed Jeff Rankin, and he answered: “Maybe there’s some I jolly along a bit, but, when I talk to old Jeff Rankin, I talk straight. Look at me now, Jeff. Do I look as if I was joking with you?”

  “I ain’t any hand at readin’ minds,” grumbled Jeff.

  He added suddenly: “I say it was the finest thing I ever see, the way young Lanning stood out there in the valley. Did you watch? Did you see him let Dozier get the jump on his gun? Pretty, pretty, pretty! And then his own gat was out like a flash — one wink, and there was Hal Dozier drilled clean! I tell you, boys, you got this young Lanning wrong. I sort of cotton to the kid. I always did. I liked him the first time I ever laid eyes on him. So did you all, except Larry, yonder. And it was Larry that turned you agin’ him after he come and joined us. Who asked him to join us? We did!”

  “Who asked him to be captain?” said Scottie.

  It seemed to stagger Jeff Rankin.

  “Allister used him for a sort of second man; seemed like he meant him to lead us in case anything happened to him.”

  “While Allister was living,” said Scottie, “you know I would of followed him anywhere. Wasn’t I his advance agent? Didn’t I do his planning with him? But now Allister’s dead — worse luck — but dead he is.”

  He paused here cunningly, and, no doubt, during that pause each of the outlaws conjured up a picture of the scar-faced man with the bright, steady eyes, who had led them so long and quelled them so often and held them together through thick and thin.

  “Allister’s dead,” repeated Scottie, “and what he did while he was alive don’t hold us now. We chose him for captain out of our own free will. Now that he’s dead we have the right to elect another captain. What’s Lanning done that he has a
right to fill Allister’s place with us? What job did he have at the holdup? When we stuck up the train didn’t he have the easiest job? Did he give one good piece of advice while we were plannin’ the job? Did he show any ability to lead us, then?”

  The answer came unhesitatingly from Rankin: “It wasn’t his place to lead while Allister was with us. And I’ll tell you what he done after Allister died. When I seen Dozier comin’, who was it that stepped out to meet him? Was it you, Scottie? No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t you, La Roche, neither, nor you, Clune, and it wasn’t me. Made me sick inside, the thought of facin’ Dozier. Why? Because I knew he’d never been beat. Because I knew he was a better man than Allister, and that Allister had been a better man than me. And it ain’t no braggin’ to say I’m a handier gent with my guns than any of you. Well, I was sick, and you all were sick. I seen your faces. But who steps out and takes the lead? It was the kid you grin at, Scottie; it was Andy Lanning, and I say it was a fine thing to do!”

  It was undoubtedly a facer; but Scottie came back in his usual calm manner.

  “I know it was Lanning, and it was a fine thing. I don’t deny, either, that he’s a fine gent in lots of ways — and in his place — but is his place at the head of the gang? Are we going to be bullied into having him there?”

  “Then let him follow, and somebody else lead.”

  “You make me laugh, Jeff. He’s not the sort that will follow anybody.”

  Plainly Scottie was working on Jeff from a distance. He would bring him slowly around to the place where he would agree to the attack on Andrew for the sake of getting at the wounded marshal.

  “Have another drink, Jeff, and then let’s get back to the main point, and that has nothin’ to do with Andy. It is: Is Hal Dozier going to live or die?”

  The time had come, Andrew saw, to make his final play. A little more of this talk and the big, good-hearted, strong-handed Rankin would be completely on the side of the others. And that meant the impossible odds of four to one. Andrew knew it. He would attack any two of them without fear. But three became a desperate, a grim battle; and four to one made the thing suicide.