Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “It’s just driftin’ into my head, sort of misty,” murmured Andrew, “that you’ve been thinkin’ about double-crossin’ me.”

  “Suppose,” said the marshal, “I was to ride into Martindale with you in front of me. That’d make a pretty good picture, Andy. Allister dead, and you taken alive. Not to speak of ten thousand I dollars as a background. That would sort of round off my work. I could retire and live happy ever after, eh?”

  Andrew peered into the grim face of the older man; there was not a flicker of a smile in it.

  “Go on,” he said, “but think twice, Hal. If I was you, I’d think ten times!”

  The marshal met those terrible, blazing eyes without a quiver of his own.

  “I began with thinking about that picture,” he said. “Later on I had some other thoughts — about you. Andy, d’you see that you don’t fit around here? You’re neither a man-killer nor a law-abidin’ citizen. You wouldn’t fit in Martindale any more, and you certainly won’t fit with any gang of crooks that ever wore guns. Look at the way you split with Allister’s outfit! Same thing would happen again. So, as far as I can see, it doesn’t make much difference whether I trot you into town and collect the ten thousand, or whether some of the crooks who hate you run you down — or some posse corners you one of these days and does its job. How do you see it?”

  Andrew said nothing, but his face spoke for him.

  “How d’you see the future yourself?” said the marshal. His voice changed suddenly: “Talk to me, Andy.”

  Andrew looked carefully at him; then he spoke.

  “I’ll tell you short and quick, Hal. I want action. That’s all. I want something to keep my mind and my hands busy. Doing nothing is the thing I’m afraid of.”

  “I gather you’re not very happy, Andy?”

  Lanning smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile to see.

  “I’m empty, Hal,” he answered. “Does that answer you? The crooks are against me, the law is against me. Well, they’ll work together to keep me busy. I don’t want any man’s help. I’m a bad man, Hal. I know it. I don’t deny it. I don’t ask any quarter.”

  It was rather a desperate speech — rather a boyish one. At any rate the marshal smiled, and a curious flush came in Andrew’s face.

  “Will you let me tell you a story, Andrew? It’s a story about yourself.”

  He went on: “You were a kid in Martindale. Husky, good-natured, a little sleepy, with touchy nerves, not very confident in yourself. I’ve known other kids like you, but none just the same type.

  “You weren’t waked up. You see? The pinch was bound to come in a town where every man wore his gun. You were bound to face a show-down. There were equal chances. Either you’d back down or else you’d give the man a beating. If the first thing happened, you’d have been a coward the rest of your life. But the other thing was what happened, and it gave you a touch of the iron that a man needs in his blood. Iron dust, Andy, iron dust!

  “You had bad luck, you think. You thought you’d killed a man; it made you think you were a born murderer. You began to look back to the old stories about the Lannings — a wild crew of men. You thought that blood was what was a-showing in you.

  “Partly you were right, partly you were wrong. There was a new strength in you. You thought it was the strength of a desperado. Do you know what the change was? It was the change from boyhood to manhood. That was all — a sort of chemical change, Andy.

  “See what happened: You had your first fight and you saw your first girl, all about the same time. But here’s what puzzles me: according to the way I figure it, you must have seen the girl first. But it seems that you didn’t. Will you tell me?”

  “We won’t talk about the girl,” said Andrew in a heavy voice.

  “Tut, tut! Won’t we? Boy, we’re going to do more talking about her than about anything else. Well, anyway, you saw the girl, fell in love with her, went away. Met up with a posse which my brother happened to lead. Killed your man. Went on. Rode like the wind. Went through about a hundred adventures in as many days. And little by little you were fixing in your ways. You were changing from boyhood into manhood, and you were changing without any authority over you. Most youngsters have their fathers over them when that change comes. All of ’em have the law. But you didn’t have either. And the result was that you changed from a boy into a man, and a free man. You hear me? You found that you could do what you wanted to do; nothing could hold you back except one thing — the girl!”

  Andrew caught his breath, but the marshal would not let him speak.

  “I’ve seen other free men — most people called them desperadoes. What’s a desperado in the real sense? A man who won’t submit to the law. That’s all he is. But, because he won’t submit, he usually runs foul of other men. He kills one. Then he kills another. Finally he gets the blood lust. Well, Andy, that’s what you never got. You killed one man — he brought it on himself. But look back over the rest of your career. Most people think you’ve killed twenty. That’s because they’ve heard a pack of lies. You’re a desperado — a free man — but you’re not a man-killer. And there’s the whole point.

  “And this was what turned you loose as a criminal — you thought the girl had cut loose from you. Otherwise to this day you’d have been trying to get away across the mountains and be a good, quiet member of society. But you thought the girl had cut loose from you, and it hurt you. Man-killer? Bah! You’re simply lovesick, my boy!”

  “Talk slow,” whispered Andrew. “My — my head’s whirling.”

  “It’ll whirl more, pretty soon. Andy, do you know that the girl never married Charles Merchant?”

  There was a wild yell; Andrew was stopped in mid-air by a rifle thrust into his stomach.

  “She broke off her engagement. She came to me because she knew I was running the manhunt. She begged me to let you have a chance. She tried to buy me. She told me everything that had gone between you. Andy, she put her head on my desk and cried while she was begging for you!”

  “Stop!” whispered Andrew.

  “But I wouldn’t lay off your trail, Andy. Why? Because I’m as proud as a devil. I’d started to get you and I’d lost Gray Peter trying. And even after you saved me from Allister’s men I was still figuring how I could get you. And then, little by little, I saw that the girl had seen the truth. You weren’t really a crook. You weren’t really a man-killer. You were simply a kid that turned into a man in a day — and turned into a free man! You were too strong for the law.

  “Now, Andrew, here’s my point: As long as you stay here in the mountain desert you’ve no chance. You’ll be among men who know you. Even if the governor pardons you — as he might do if a certain deputy marshal were to start pulling strings — you’d run some day into a man who had an old grudge against you, and there’d be another explosion. Because there’s nitroglycerin inside you, son!

  “Well, the thing for you to do is to get where men don’t wear guns. The thing for you to do is to find a girl you love a lot more than you do your freedom, even. If that’s possible—”

  “Where is she?” broke in Andy. “Hal, for pity’s sake, tell me where she is!”

  “I’ve got her address all written out. She forgot nothing. She left it with me, she said, so she could keep in touch with me.”

  “It’s no good,” said Andy suddenly. “I could never get through the mountains. People know me too well. They know Sally too well.”

  “Of course they do. So you’re not going to go with Sally. You’re not going to ride a horse. You’re going in another way. Everybody’s seen your picture. But who’d recognize the dashing young man-killer, the original wild Andrew Lanning, in the shape of a greasy, dirty tramp, with a ten-days-old beard on his face, with a dirty felt hat pulled over one eye, and riding the brake beams on the way East? And before you got off the beams, Andrew, the governor of this State will have signed a pardon for you. Well, lad, what do you say?”

  But Andrew, walking like one dazed, had cros
sed the room slowly. The marshal saw him go across to the place where Sally stood; she met him halfway, and, in her impudent way, tipped his hat half off his head with a toss of her nose. He put his arm around her neck and they walked slowly off together.

  “Well,” said Hal Dozier faintly, “what can you do with a man who don’t know how to choose between a horse and a girl?”

  Alcatraz (1922)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER I

  CORDOVA

  THE WEST WIND came over the Eagles, gathered purity from the evergreen slopes of the mountains, blew across the foothills and league wide fields, and came at length to the stallion with a touch of coolness and enchanting scents of far-off things. Just as his head went up, just as the breeze lifted mane and tail, Marianne Jordan halted her pony and drew in her breath with pleasure. For she had caught from the chestnut in the corral one flash of perfection and those far-seeing eyes called to mind the Arab belief.

  Says the Sheik: “I have raised my mare from a foal, and out of love for me she will lay down her life; but when I come out to her in the morning, when I feed her and give her water, she still looks beyond me and across the desert. She is waiting for the coming of a real man, she is waiting for the coming of a true master out of the horizon!”

  Marianne had known thoroughbreds since she was a child and after coming West she had become acquainted with mere “hoss-flesh,” but today for the first time she felt that the horse is not meant by nature to be the servant of man but that its speed is meant to ensure it sacred freedom. A moment later she was wondering how the thought had come to her. That glimpse of equine perfection had been an illusion built of spirit and attitude; when the head of the stallion fell she saw the daylight truth: that this was either the wreck of a young horse or the sad ruin of a fine animal now grown old. He was a ragged creature with dull eyes and pendulous lip. No comb had been among the tangles of mane and tail for an unknown period; no brush had smoothed his coat. It was once a rich red-chestnut, no doubt, but now it was sun-faded to the color of sand. He was thin. The unfleshed backbone and withers stood up painfully and she counted the ribs one by one. Yet his body was not so broken as his spirit. His drooped head gave him the appearance of searching for a spot to lie down. He seemed to have been left here by the cruelty of his owner to starve and die in the white heat of this corral — a desertion which he accepted as justice because he was useless in the world.

  It affected Marianne like the resignation of a man; indeed there was more personality in the chestnut than in many human beings. Once he had been a beauty, and the perfection which first startled her had been a ghost out of his past. His head, where age or famine showed least, was still unquestionably fine. The ears were short and delicately made, the eyes well-placed, the distance to the angle of the jaw long — in brief, it was that short head of small volume and large brain space which speaks most eloquently of hot blood. As her expert eye ran over the rest of the body she sighed to think that such a creature had come to such an end. There was about him no sign of life save the twitch of his skin to shake off flies.

  Certainly this could not be the horse she had been advised to see and she was about to pass on when she felt eyes watching her from the steep shadow of the shed which bordered the corral. Then she made out a dapper olive-skinned fellow sitting with his back against the wall in such a position of complete relaxation as only a Mexican is capable of assuming. He wore a short tuft of black moustache cut well away from the edge of the red lip, a moustache which oddly accentuated his youth. In body and features he was of that feminine delicacy which your large-handed Saxon dislikes, and though Marianne was by no means a stalwart, she detested the man at once. For that reason, being a lady to the tips of her slim fingers, her smile was more cordial than necessary.

  “I am looking for Manuel Cordova,” she said.

  “Me,” replied the Mexican, and managed to speak without removing the cigarette.

  “I’m glad to know you.” she answered. “I am Marianne Jordan.”

  At this, Manuel Cordova removed his cigarette, regardless of the ashes which tumbled straightway down the bell-mouthed sleeve of his jacket; for a Mexican deems it highly indecorous to pay the slightest heed to his tobacco ashes. Whether they land on chin or waistcoat they are allowed to remain until the wind carries them away.

  “The pleasure is to me,” said Cordova melodiously, and made painful preparations to rise.

  She gathered at once that the effort would spoil his morning and urged him to remain where he was, at which he smiled with the care of a movie star, presenting an even, white line of teeth.

  Marianne went on: “Let me explain. I’ve come to the Glosterville fair to buy some brood mares for my ranch and of course the ones I want are the Coles horses. You’ve seen them?”

  He nodded.

  “But those horses,” she continued, checking off her points, “will not be offered for sale until after the race this afternoon. They’re all entered and they are sure to win. There’s nothing to touch them and when they breeze across the finish I imagine every ranch owner present will want to bid for them. That would put them above my reach and I can only pray that the miracle will happen — a horse may turn up to beat them. I made inquiries and I was told that the best prospect was Manuel Cordova’s Alcatraz. So I’ve come with high hopes, Señor Cordova, and I’ll appreciate it greatly if you’ll let me see your champion.”

  “Look till the heart is content, señorita,” replied the Mexican, and he extended a slim, lazy hand towards the drowsing stallion.

  “But,” cried the girl, “I was told of a real runner—”

  She squinted critically at the faded chestnut. She had been told of a four-year-old while this gaunt animal looked fifteen at least. However, it is one thing to catch a general impression and another to read points. Marianne took heed, now, of the long slope of the shoulders, the short back, the well-let-down hocks. After all, underfeeding would dull the eye and give the ragged, lifeless coat.

  “He is not much horse, eh?” purred Cordova.

  But the longer she looked the more she saw. The very leanness of Alcatraz made it easier to trace his running-muscles; she estimated, too, the ample girth at the cinches where size means wind.

  “And that’s Alcatraz?” she murmured.

  “That is all,” said the pleasant Cordova.

  “May I go into the corral and look him over at close range? I never feel that I know a horse till I get my hands on it.”

  She was about to dismount when she saw that the Mexican was hesitating and she settled back in the saddle, flushed with displeasure.

  “No,” said Cordova, “that would not be good. You will see!”

  He smiled again and rising, he sauntered to the fence and turned about with his shoulders resting against the upper bar, his back to the stallion. As he did so, Alcatraz put forward his ears, which, in connection with the dullness of his eyes, gave him a peculiarly foolish look.

  “You will see a thing, señorita!” the Mexican was chuckling.

  It came without warning. Alcatraz turned with the speed of a whiplash curling and drove straight at the place where his master leaned. Marianne’s cry of alarm was not needed. Cordova had already started, but even so he barely
escaped. The chestnut on braced legs skidded to the fence, his teeth snapping short inches from the back of his master. His failure maddened Alcatraz. He reminded Marianne of the antics of a cat when in her play with the mouse she tosses her victim a little too far away and wheels to find her prospective meal disappearing down a hole. In exactly similar wise the stallion went around the corral in a whirl of dust, rearing, lashing out with hind legs and striking with fore, catching imaginary things in his teeth and shaking them to pieces. When the fury diminished he began to glide up and down the fence, and there was something so feline in the grace of those long steps and the intentness with which the brute watched Cordova that the girl remembered a new-brought tiger in the zoo. Also, rage had poured him full of such strength that through the dust cloud she caught again glimpses of that first perfection.

  He came at last to a stop, but he faced his owner with a look of steady hate. The latter returned the gaze with interest, stroking his face and snarling: “Once more, red devil, eh? Once more you miss? Bah! But I, I shall not miss!”

  It was not as one will talk to a dumb beast, for there was no mistaking the vicious earnestness of Cordova, and now the girl made out that he was caressing a long, white scar which ran from his temple across the cheekbone. Marianne glanced away, embarrassed, as people are when another reveals a dark and hidden portion of his character.

  “You see?” said Cordova, “you would not be happy in the corral with him, eh?”

  He rolled a cigarette with smiling lips as he spoke, but all the time his black eyes burned at the chestnut. He seemed to Marianne half child and half old man, and both parts of him were evil now that she could guess the whole story. Cordova campaigned through the country, racing his horse at fairs or for side bets. For two reasons he kept the animal systematically undernourished: one was that he was thereby able to get better odds; the other was that only on a weakened Alcatraz would he trust himself. At this she did not wonder for never had she seen such almost human viciousness of temper in a dumb beast.