by Max Brand
“I’m interested,” she said steadily, “because he — he means more to me than any other man in the world.”
She saw the head of the foreman jerk back as though he had received a blow in the face.
“More’n your father?”
“In a different way — yes, more than Dad!”
Hervey rose and stretched an accusing arm towards her.
“You’re in love with Red Perris!”
And she answered him fiercely: “Yes, yes, yes! In love with Red
Perris! Go tell every one of your men. Shame me as far as you wish!
But — Mr. Hervey, you won’t dare lead a gang against him now!”
He drew back from her, thrust away by her half-hysteria of emotion.
“Won’t I?” growled Hervey, regarding her from beneath sternly gathered brows. “I seen something of this to-night. I guessed it all. Won’t I lay a hand on a sneaking hound that comes grinning and talking soft and saying things he don’t half mean? Why, it’s a better reason for throwing him off the ranch than I ever had before, seems to me!”
“You don’t mean that!” she breathed. “Say you don’t mean that!”
“Your Dad ain’t here. If he was, he’d say the same as me. I got to act in his place. You think you like Perris. Why, you’d be throwing yourself away. You’d break Oliver Jordan’s heart. That’s what you’d do!”
Her brain was whirling. She grasped at the first thought that came to her.
“Then wait till he comes back before you touch Jim Perris.”
“And let Perris raise the devil in the meantime?”
He laughed in her face.
“At least,” she cried, her voice shrill with anger and fear, “let me know where he is. Let me send for him myself.”
“Dunno that I’m exactly sure about where he is myself,” fenced Lew
Hervey.
“Ah,” moaned the girl, half-breaking down under the strain. “Why do you hate me so? What have I done to you?”
“Nothing,” said Hervey grimly. “Made me the laughing stock of the mountains — that’s all. Made me a joke — that’s all you’ve done to me. ‘Lew Hervey and his boss — the girl.’ That’s what they been saying about me. But I ain’t been taking that to heart. What I’m doing now is for your own good, only you don’t know it! You’ll see it later on.”
“Mr. Hervey,” she pleaded, “if it will change you, I’ll give you my oath to stop bothering with the management of the ranch. You can run it your own way. I’ll leave if you say the word, but — —”
“I know,” said Hervey. “I know what you’d say. But Lord above, Miss
Jordan, I ain’t doing this for my own sake. I’m doing it for yours
and your father’s. He’ll thank me if you don’t! Far as Perris goes,
I’d — —”
He halted. She had sunk into a chair — collapsed into it, rather, and lay there half fainting with one arm thrown across her face. Hervey glowered down on her a moment and then turned on his heel and left the house.
He went straight to the bunkhouse, gathered the men about him, and told them the news.
“Boys,” he said, “the cat’s out of the bag. I’ve found out everything, and it’s what I been fearing. She started begging me to keep off Red Jim’s trail. Wouldn’t hear no reason. I told her there wasn’t nothing for me to gain by throwing him off the ranch. Except that he’d been ordered off and he had to go. It’d make a joke of me and all of you boys if the word got around that one gent had laughed at us and stayed right in the Valley when we told him to get out.”
A fierce volley of curses bore him out.
“Well,” said Hervey, “then she come right out and told me the truth: she’s in love with Perris. She told me so herself!”
They gaped at him. They were young enough, most of them, and lonely and romantic enough, to have looked on Marianne with a sort of sad longing which their sense of humor kept from being anything more aspiring. But to think that she had given her heart so suddenly and so freely to this stranger was a shock. Hervey reaped the harvest of their alarmed glances with a vast inward content. Every look he met was an incipient gun levelled at the head of Red Jim.
“Didn’t make no bones about it,” he said, “she plumb begged for him.
Well, boys, she ain’t going to get him. I think too much of old man
Jordan to let his girl run off with a man-killing vagabond like this
Perris. He’s good looking and he talks dead easy. That’s what’s turned
the trick. I guess the rest of you would back me up?”
The answer was a growl.
“I’ll go bust his neck,” said Little Joe furiously. “One of them heart-breakers, I figure.”
“First thing,” said the foreman, “is to see that she don’t get to him.
If she does, she’ll sure run off with him. But she’s easy kept from
that. Joe, you and Shorty watch the hoss corrals to-night, will you?
And don’t let her get through to a hoss by talking soft to you.”
They vowed that they would be adamant. They vowed it with many oaths. In fact, the rage of the cowpunchers was steadily growing. Red Perris was more than a mere insolent interloper who had dared to scoff at the banded powers of the Valley of the Eagles. He was far worse. He was the most despicable sort of sneak and thief for he was trying to steal the heart and ruin the life of a girl. They had looked upon the approaching conflict with Perris as a bitter pill that must be swallowed for the sake of the Valley of the Eagles outfit. They looked upon it, from this moment, as a religious duty from which no one with the name of a man dared to shrink. Little Joe and Shorty at once started for the corral. The others gathered around the foreman for further details, but he waved them away and retired to his own bunk. For he never used the little room at the end of the building which was set aside for the foreman. He lived and slept and ate among his cowpunchers and that was one reason for his hold over them.
At his bunk, he produced writing materials scribbled hastily.
“Dear Jordan,
“Hell has busted loose.
“I played Perris with a long rope. I gave him a week because Miss Jordan asked me to. But at the end of the week he still wasn’t ready to go. Seems that he’s crazy to get Alcatraz. Talks about the horse like a drunk talking about booze. Plumb disgusting. But when I told him to go to-night, he up and said they wasn’t enough men in the Valley to throw him off the ranch. I would of taken a fall out of him for that, but Miss Jordan stepped in and kept me away from him.
“Afterwards I had a talk with her. She begged me not to go after Perris because he would fight and that meant a killing. I told her I had to do what I’d said I’d do. Then she busted out and told me that she loved Perris. Seemed to think that would keep me from going after Perris. She might of knowed that it was the very thing that would make me hit the trail. I’m not going to stand by and see a skunk like Perris run away with your girl while you ain’t on the ranch.
“I’ve just given orders to a couple of the boys to see that she don’t get a horse to go out to Perris. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll settle his hash.
“This letter may make you think that you’d better come back to the ranch. But take my advice and stay off. I can handle this thing better while you’re away. If you’re here you’ll have to listen to a lot of begging and crying. Come back in a week and everything will be cleared up.
“Take it easy and don’t worry none. I’m doing my best for you and your daughter, even if she don’t know it.
“Sincerely,
“LEW HERVEY.”
This letter, when completed, he surveyed with considerable complacence. If ever a man were being bound to another by chains of inseparable gratitude, Oliver Jordan was he! Indeed, the whole affair was working out so smoothly, so perfectly, that Hervey felt the thrill of an artist sketching a large and harmonious composition. In the first place, Red Jim Perris, whom he hated with unutterable fervo
r because the younger man filled him with dread, would be turned, as Hervey expressed it, “into buzzard food.” And Hervey would be praised for the act! Oliver Jordan, owing the preservation of his daughter from a luckless marriage to the vigilance of his foreman, could never regret the life-contract which he had drawn up. No doubt that contract, as it stood, could never hold water in the law. But Jordan’s gratitude would make it proof. Last of all, and best of all, when Perris was disposed of, Marianne would never be able to remain on the ranch. She would go to forget her sorrow among her school friends in the East. And Hervey, undisputed lord and master of the ranch, could bleed it white in half a dozen years and leave it a mere husk, overladen with mortgages.
No wonder a song was in the heart of the foreman as he sealed the letter. He gave the message to Slim, and added directions.
“You’ll be missing from the party,” he said, as he handed over the letter, “but the party we have with Perris is apt to be pretty much like a party with a wild-cat. You can thank your stars you’ll be on the road when it comes off!”
And Slim had sense enough to nod in agreement.
CHAPTER XX
THE TRAP SHUTS
IN ONE MATTER Lew Hervey had acted none too quickly. Shorty and Little Joe arrived at the corral in time to find Marianne in the very act of leading out her pony. They told her firmly and gently that the horse must go back, and when she defied them, they astonished her by simply removing her hand from the lead-rope and taking the horse away. In vain she stormed and threatened. In vain, at length, she broke into tears. Either of them would have given an arm to serve her. But in fact they considered they were at that moment rendering the greatest service possible. They were saving her from herself.
She fled back to the house again, finally, and threw herself face down on her bed in an agony of dread, and helplessness, and shame. Shame because from Little Joe’s brief remarks, she gathered that Hervey had already spread the news of her confession. But shame and fear were suddenly forgotten. She found herself sitting wide-eyed on the edge of the bed repeating over and over in a shaking voice “I have to get there! I have to get there!”
But how utterly Hervey had tied her hands! She could not budge to warn
Perris or to join him!
The long night wore away with Marianne crouched at the window straining her eyes towards the corrals. Night was the proper time for such a thing as the murder of Red Perris. They would not dare, she felt, for all their numbers, to face him in the honest sunshine. So she peered eagerly towards the shadowy outlines of the barns and sheds until at length a wan moon rose and gave her blessed light.
But no one approached the corrals from the bunkhouse, and at length, when the dawn began to grow, she fell asleep. It was a sleep filled with nightmares and before the sun was well up she was awake again, and at watch.
Mid-morning came, yet still none of the men rode out to their ordinary work. There could be only one meaning. They were held back to join the expedition. They were at this very moment, perhaps, cleaning their guns in the bunkhouse. Noon brought no action. They trooped cheerfully towards the house in answer to the noon-gong. She heard them laughing and jesting. What cold-blooded fiends they were to be able to conduct themselves in this manner when they intended to do a murder before the day had ended! And indeed, it was only for this meal they seemed to have planned to wait.
Before the afternoon was well begun, there was saddling and mounting and then Hervey, Little Joe, Shorty, Macintosh, and Scotty climbed onto their mounts and jogged out towards the east. Her heart leaped with only a momentary hope when she saw the direction, but instantly she undeceived herself. They would, of course, swing north as soon as they were well out of sight from the house, and then they would head for the shack on the mountain-side, aiming to reach it at about the fall of twilight. And what could she do to stop them?
She ran out through the patio and to the front of the house. The dust-cloud already had swallowed the individual forms of the riders. And turning to the left, she saw McGuire and Hastings lolling in full view near the corrals. With consummate tact, Hervey had chosen those of his men who were the oldest, the hardest, the least liable to be melted by her persuasions.
Moaning, she turned back and looked east. The dust-cloud was dwindling every minute. And without hope, she cast another glance towards the corrals. Evidently, the men agreed that it was unnecessary for two of them to stay in the heat of the sun to prevent her from getting at a horse. Hastings had turned his back and was strolling towards the bunkhouse. McGuire was perched on a stump rolling a cigarette and grinning broadly towards her.
He would be a hard man to handle. But at least there was more hope than before. One man was not so hard to manage as two, each shaming the other into indifference. She went slowly towards McGuire, turning again to see the dust-cloud roll out of view over a distant hill.
In that cloud of dust, Hervey kept the pace down to an easy dog-trot. From mid-afternoon until evening — for he did not intend to expose himself primarily and his men in the second place, to the accurate gun of Red Jim in broad daylight — was a comfortable stretch in which to make the journey to the shack on the mountain-side. Like a good general, he kept the minds of his followers from growing tense by deftly turning the talk, on the way, to other topics, as they swung off the east trail towards Glosterville and journeyed due north over the rolling foothills. There was only one chance in three that he could have deceived the girl by his first direction, but that chance was worth taking. He had a wholesome respect for the mental powers of Oliver Jordan’s daughter and he by no means wished to drive her frantic in the effort to get to Perris with her warning. Of course it would be impossible for her to wheedle McGuire and Hastings into letting her have a horse, but if she should ——
Here Hervey abruptly turned his thoughts in a new direction. The old one led to results too unpleasant.
In the meantime, as they wore out the miles and the day turned towards sunset time, the cheery conversation which Little Joe had led among the riders fell away. They were coming too close to the time and place of action. What that action must be was only too easy to guess. It was simply impossible to imagine Red Perris submitting to an order to leave. He had already defied their assembled forces once. He would certainly make the attempt again. Of course odds of five to one were too great for even the most courageous and skilful fighter to face. But he might do terrible damage before the end.
And it was a solemn procession which wound up the hillside through the darkening trees. Until at length, at a word from Hervey, they dismounted, tethered their horses here and there where there was sufficient grass to occupy them and keep them from growing nervous and neighing, and then started on again on foot.
At this point Hervey took the lead. For that matter, he had never been lacking in sheer animal courage, and now he wound up the path with his long colt in his hand, ready to shoot, and shoot to kill. Once or twice small sounds made him pause, uneasy. But his progress was fairly steady until he came to the edge of the little clearing where the shack stood.
There was no sign of life about it. The shack seemed deserted. Thick darkness filled its doorway and the window, though the rest of the clearing was still permeated with a faint afterglow of the sunset.
“He ain’t here,” said Little Joe softly, as he came to the side of the watchful foreman.
“Don’t be too sure,” said the other. “I’d trust this Perris and take about as many chances with him as I would with a rattler in a six-by-six room. Maybe he’s in there playing possum. Waiting for us to make a break across the clearing. That’d be fine for Red Jim, damn his heart!”
Little Joe peered back at the anxious faces of the others, as they came up the path one by one. He did not like to be one of so large a party held up by a single man. In fact, Joe was a good deal of a warrior himself. He was new to the Valley of the Eagles, but there were other parts of the mountain-desert where his fame was spread broadcast. There were even places where
sundry officers of the law would have been glad to lay hands upon him.
“Well,” quoth Joe, “we’ll give him a chance. If he ain’t a fighting man, but just a plain murderer, we’ll let him show it,” and so saying, he stepped boldly out from the sheltering darkness of the trees and strode towards the hut, an immense and awesome figure in the twilight.
Lew Hervey followed at once. It would not do to be out-dared by one of his crew in a crisis as important as this. But for all his haste the long strides of Joe had brought him to the door of the hut many yards in the lead, and he disappeared inside. Presently his big voice boomed: “He ain’t here. Plumb vanished.”
They gathered in the hut at once.
“Where’s he gone?” asked the foreman, scratching his head.
“Maybe he ain’t acting as big as he talked,” said Shorty. “Maybe he’s slid over the mountains.”
“Strike a light, somebody,” commanded the foreman.
Three or four sulphur matches were scratched at the same moment on trousers made tight by cocking the knee up. Each match glimmered through sheltering fingers with dull blue light, for a moment, and then as the sulphur was exhausted and the flame caught the wood, the hands opened and directed shafts of light here and there. The whole cabin was dimly illumined for a moment while man after man thrust his burning match towards something he had discovered.
“Here’s his blankets. All mussed up.”
“Here’s a pair of boots.”
“Here’s the frying pan right on the stove.”
They wandered here and there, lighting new matches until Little Joe spoke.
“No use, boys,” he declared. “Perris has hopped out. Wise gent, at that. He seen the game was too big for him. And I don’t blame him for quitting. Ain’t nothing here that he’d come after. Them boots are wore out. The blankets and the cooking things he got from the ranch. Look at the way the blankets are piled up. Shows he quit in a rush and started away. When a gent figures on coming back, he tidies things up a little when he leaves in the morning. No, boys, he’s gone. Main thing to answer is: If he ain’t left the valley why ain’t he here in his shack now?”