Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Mrs. Newell had been waiting in terror, but when her husband reappeared with a hushed look upon his face, she understood, and she turned away in haste to hide her smile. In five scant minutes the howling of the wind had lulled all the household to sleep, save that in the spare room the stranger sat cross-legged on the edge of his bed, absently raising his hunting knife and letting it fall at a crack in the floor. If it missed the crack it would make an ugly scar in the paint and a thudding noise as well. But it did not miss, time after time, though all his thoughts had wandered elsewhere. At length he, too, turned in, and the house was silent and dark.

  It was still dark, barely edged with gray, when Newell arose the next morning. He went hastily to the room of Phil, but the boy was gone.

  Down the stairs went Newell in haste. He scanned the cupboard where the few pieces of silver were kept. All of them were in their places. He hurried on to the barn, and there stood all his best saddle stock, tossing their heads and whinneying when they heard the sliding door creak back.

  It seemed that the vagabond had taken nothing. He had gone on without farewell, in the dark of early morning, and perhaps it was better that way. Still, when the rancher stood at the door of the barn and looked up to the sky, where the upper wind harried the clouds farther south, he wondered what destination awaited that boy. He wondered, too, how many other things there might be in the world as strange and wild, to the mind of John Newell, as this apparition from the night had been.

  It was not a pleasant course of thoughts; therefore he turned hastily to the work of cleaning out the barn and giving the horses their morning feed. The light brightened. He was about to put out the lantern and let the gray of the morning serve him in its stead when suddenly something made him turn around.

  He saw a big man wrapped in an overcoat, standing in the doorway, a quirt hanging from his mittened hand — a big, rough man. Newell himself was big and rough enough to suit most needs, but in the presence of the physical size and the craggy spirit of this stranger he felt like a most ineffectual boy.

  “I’m ‘Doc’ Magruder of the Crusoe Hotel,” said the big man. “I’m here on the trail of a runaway kid. Might you of seen him? Twelve years old and he looks fifteen, pretty near. Big shoulders and an oldish face.”

  “Dressed In rags?” asked Newell.

  There was enough lantern light to show the flush which came on the stern features of Doc Magruder.

  “Ay,” he said, “he’d be in rags! As if I didn’t give him decent enough clothes to wear. Got no thought, he hasn’t, except of putting me in a wrong position with folks. And if I wasn’t a known man, Heaven knows what people would think of me! In rags, eh? Ay, the same stuff that he had when his father died, most likely. He’d put that on when he started to run away! But you’ve seen him, eh?”

  “I’ve seen him,” said the rancher, “and if you’ll come to the house and have breakfast, I’d like to find out something about him, if you’ll talk.”

  “Tell me one thing. Is he yonder in that house, now?”

  “No, he’s gone from his room.”

  “In the night, eh? That would be his way. Most likely you’ve missed something outside of his company before this?”

  “I hunted. Can’t find anything gone.”

  “You will find it, though,” said Magruder. “Bad blood will out.”

  “Like murder, eh?” said the rancher, nodding.

  “What?” cried Magruder. “What you mean by that, may I ask?”

  “Why, you’ve heard it said before this, of course.”

  “Oh, ay. I’ve heard it said before. But bad blood will out. You can’t keep it from showing, sooner or later. And you’ll find that he’s scooped up something and made off with it. He wouldn’t be his father’s son otherwise! Not him!”

  “Maybe not,” agreed Newell.

  He was rather pleased, than otherwise. For everything that he had heard, and the very bearing of this stranger, more and more excused the conduct of his own family toward the boy, as though they, being of honest blood with an honest rearing, had felt by instinct the gulf which separated them from the evil nature of young Phil. They were more and more excused, and the vagabond youth was more and more condemned in their places. Newell looked up with a lighter and a lighter heart as he asked: “And who might the father of this boy be, if I may ask?”

  “Who might he be, indeed!” asked the big stranger heavily. “Who might he be? Why sir, if it wasn’t for the wrinkled look around your eyes — which means range riding or I’ll eat my hat — that speech of yours would make me think that you was a dog-gone tenderfoot, and a mighty green one at that! It sure would. But you seen his face didn’t you?”

  “Ay,” said Newell, “I saw his face. And a mighty queer one I thought it.”

  “You ain’t the first that have felt the same way,” said Magruder. “Sort of handsome, too, in a way.”

  “Ay, mighty handsome, except for a sort of a strange, mean look that he had.”

  “Like his dad!” said Magruder. “Like his dad, except that his old man had the nerve to cover up his meanness with a smile. He was gay, was the daddy of this boy.”

  “Ay, man, but who was he before I bust with curiosity?”

  “I’m trying to get you to guess. Take another try. Think back a few years to the newspapers. They was running his pictures often enough. Ay, and the signboards in the post offices had his face, too. You can’t remember? Well, I’ll tell you. His daddy was Jack Slader himself. Now tell me if the kid ain’t a ringer for him?”

  “Slader? Slader?” gasped out the rancher. “Slader, the gun fighter and killer? But — good heavens, man, wasn’t it a fellow by the name of Magruder that killed Jack Slader?”

  CHAPTER IV

  IT SEEMED TO Newell that there was some relation between the cold, dim smile of Magruder as he listened to this remark, and the expression in the eyes of the boy Phil, which he had seen there the night before.

  Then the stranger said quietly: “It was a Magruder that killed Slader, right enough. And I’m the man!”

  The rancher strove to comprehend; he said slowly:

  “What I understood a minute ago was that this Phil is the son of Jack Slader?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And — I figgered out that he had run away from you?”

  At this, Magruder waved a hand in a large gesture. “It’s a hard thing to understand, maybe,” said he. “You ain’t the first that has pretty near sprained his brain trying to work out that idea, old-timer. But it ain’t the sort of a thing than can be told in a minute. You said chuck, and that sounds good to me. I’ve ridden all night, trying to get trace of the kid. And I’m starved. Let’s see the insides of that breakfast that you was talking about before we go any further.”

  Newell was willing to give more than a breakfast for the sake of information such as this. He conducted his guest hastily to the house, where they found the fire in the kitchen fuming and smoking. Two words to Mrs. Newell set her to work with a glowing ardor. For Jack Slader had been a man of such mark that to entertain his destroyer would have flushed the cheek of the wife of any rancher. In the meantime, Magruder was placed at the table in the dining room, while the egg beater of Mrs. Newell hummed a soft song in the kitchen.

  “Mostly,” said Magruder, “I thought that folks knew about how things happened. But since you’re a newcomer and ain’t heard, I’ll tell you myself. I ain’t going to be particular to you about how I happened to get on the trail of that Slader, after the hound had stole my best cutting hoss. But I’ll tell you what, I went after him so mad that I forgot about his reputation. And I still wasn’t thinking about his reputation as a man-killer when I got inside of a shack on the Crusoe River, with Slader in front of me. If I had been thinking, I wouldn’t of dared to fight, I suppose. A couple of days before I’d had to swim a river, and I’d got my Colt pretty wet, and then I hadn’t cleaned it quick enough, I was working so hard to figure out a trail puzzle. By the time that
I got to that gun, I was tired out, and I give it only a careless oiling up. Well, when I looked at it the next day, it was in bad shape. But still I thought that it would work pretty well.

  “However, there I was finally, finding myself unexpected in the same room with big Jack Slader.”

  “Bigger than you?” asked Newell, filled with admiration as he scanned the Herculean form of his companion.

  “Bigger than me? No, I suppose that he wasn’t. Not so terrible big in inches. But you’ve seen the kid, Phil?”

  “Of course.”

  “He looks big, don’t he?”

  “Ay, bigger than any boy I ever saw at that age.”

  “So did his dad. Looked bigger than any man you ever seen. And yet he didn’t measure so much in pounds and inches. That was the puzzling thing about him. That was the main reason, I suppose, that he could keep away from the sheriffs and their posses for so long. You see, when there was no trouble, he could mix right in with any crowd, as small as ever you please, and nobody would notice him particular. But when it come to a pinch, then you would say that he reached out and expanded, and you could of picked him out from among ten thousand by one look at him. There come up a fire in his eye. And even his voice changed and got big and you would of said that he could of took ordinary folks in his hands and busted them the same as you and me could crackle matchwood.”

  Here the narrator looked off, conjuring up the picture of the famous destroyer, and he winced a little from the very conception.

  “I didn’t stop to think about what he was,” he went on at last, “when I got inside of the room with him. All that I wanted was to tear his heart out. I snatched my gun out and was about to drive a slug through his heart when I seen that he didn’t have his own gat clear. It had stuck in the leather as he was making his draw. Somehow, I couldn’t pull the trigger. I couldn’t kill a gent that was helpless, even when he was a snake like Jack Slader had proved himself to be!”

  He paused again, and the heart of Newell began to thunder in his throat. For it was all very well to show mercy to some, but certainly it required a rare nerve to stand in front of such a destroyer as Jack Slader and then to think of insisting that he have his due fighting chances! It was like extending one’s naked wrist to a rattler’s sting.

  “I told Jack that we would both have another fling at the job, and then a mighty funny thing happened. You would hardly believe it, but I suppose that the fact was that Jack Slader had fought so many fights and always won them smooth and easy, that having one setback, like this, and having to take mercy from a gent, sort of sapped his nerve. It watered his blood a good deal, and he got white around the gills and wilted. He asked me what real reason I had for tearing in and wanting to kill him, and when I talked about the hoss, he actually offered to pay ten times its price, and he put the money right out there on the table in clear view of me. Well, sir, if I hadn’t been so heated up, I never could of pushed the thing through, because anybody can tell you that I ain’t the man to kick a fellow when he’s down. I was right sorry for Slader losing his nerve that way. But I’d followed such a long trail to get at him—”

  “Wait a minute!” broke in the rancher. “You mean to say that Jack Slader showed yellow when the pinch come?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I would hate to tell you just how crawling and how mean he got before I finished with him!”

  “I believe it!” said honest John Newell. “I’ve always believed that those gun fighters were never the men to stand up in a pinch like a fellow that lived by the law and not with his hands in the pockets of others. I’ve always believed that one of us was worth any two of them, pretty near!”

  “And you’re right, absolute!” said Doc Magruder. “A gun fighter does all pretty well. But he’s a bully, and when a bully gets hit on the nose as the fight starts, he ain’t so gay about mixing in with the other fellow! Anyway, that was the way that even the great Slader turned out. I would like to say that he was a tiger, of course. I would like to say how lightning fast he was, and how I was just a mite faster, and how I beat him by a shade — y’understand? But the fact is that I got to tell the truth.

  “He fair crawled and begged me to let him off — because he said that he was weak and sick, and not himself. He offered to ride to town with me and give himself up to the sheriff. Well, I wasn’t looking for that sort of work. I say that you got to consider how long I had been on the trail, hungering for a fight with the sneak that had stole my hoss — and stole the lives of a lot of other men, before that! When I got my chance, I couldn’t throw it away. Slader deserved to die. I know that. I only wanted to kill him in a fair fight.

  “Finally, I got him to the point where he said that we would both put our guns on the little table in the center of the room, and then he would jump for his as soon as I made a move. I agreed to that. We pooled our guns and stepped back, but Slader didn’t get more than half a step back before he whirled and dived for those guns. Crooked to the last, you understand! Well, I was watching him from the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t match that move. I was a half a second late, but when he pulled the trigger of the gun he had picked, it come down too slow to explode the cartridge, because the gun that he had scooped up in his hurry was my own. That gun had a hammer that was badly clogged with rust.

  “I have always held it against myself that I didn’t give him still another try. But matter of fact, I was so all-fired mad at him for trying to cheat me and get the jump on me, that way, that I just didn’t have the brain to see things clear. I was like a charging bull. I didn’t wait to think. I just reached for the other gun and I fired a split part of a second after Slader had made his try for me and failed. Well, sir, that gun that I picked up was Slader’s own, and you can bet that one of his Colts was sure to be the newest model and the most active and straight-shooting kind! My slug went through his body, and he curled up in the middle of the floor, a dying man.

  “Yes, sir, he should have been dead, because I believe that that bullet went right through his heart — or a corner of his heart. At least, that’s what the doctors said afterward. But the fact that follows is something that there are witnesses to prove. When they busted through the door at the sound of the shooting, they saw Jack Slader twist himself around on the floor and heave himself up a little. I was leaning over him, and saying: ‘Jack, what can be done for you?’

  “‘I’m a dead man, Magruder,’ says he. ‘Curse your soul, I’m a dead man. There’s nothing that can be done for me. But for Heaven’s sake, do something for my boy!’

  “You understand? There was I, standing over the first man that I had ever seen die, outside of a couple of accidents in mines. And I heard that dying man that I had killed, begging me to do something for his boy. What he said sunk deep into my heart. I couldn’t forget it none at all. I started out after the crook was dead and I said to myself that if I could find the boy, I would take him home with me, and then I would try to make an honest man out of him.

  “I did find him, sir. I found him and I took the little tiger home with me. And I’ve tried from that day to this to try to make him as honest as any man had ought to be. But you’ve seen him for your own self, sir. You know what he’s like. Bad! Mighty bad! Meant for the gallows, he is. Because bad blood will out!”

  CHAPTER V

  SO SAYING, HE shook back his hair and closed his eyes for a moment. With his brows wrinkled as though the pain of his thoughts for the moment overcame him, Rancher Newell regarded him with a proper awed respect; now that the keen hazel eyes were closed he could look at the man with more closeness than he had ventured before, and it seemed to Newell that the leonine face with its square-tipped, auburn beard was the noblest that he had ever seen. Moreover, he was more or less overwhelmed by the knowledge that this man, of his free will, had chosen to devote endless energy and time to the rearing of the wildcat son of a gun fighter. That self-imposed duty had brought him forth on an all-night ride through a blinding storm — and Newell felt that hi
s own virtues were shrinking to the vanishing point compared with the heroic qualities of the stranger.

  After the departure of Magruder, the rancher for a long time remained at the doorway, staring after the departing form of the big rider on the big horse. The last words of Magruder rang in his ears like a deep, grand strain of music.

  “But ain’t it dangerous?” he had asked Magruder. “Ain’t it terribly dangerous to keep the kid around your house and your family?”

  “I’ve got no family,” Magruder had answered him, “and if I can maybe bring this kid to right ways of thinkin’ and livin’, why, I’m glad to take the chance of waking up, every morning, with my throat cut from ear to ear!”

  With that, he had ridden away, leaving the rancher filled with a religious reverence behind him. Then the trailer took up the duties of his work. For actual trail itself, he paid no heed, as though he realized that nothing but chance could give him a glimpse of the footprint of that active and light-treading fugitive. He scanned the country carefully as he advanced, looking far to the right and the left as well as straight down the road. He had before him a long and easy road, just such a one as a traveler bound for the south would be glad to select. He knew the habits of the boy, however, and he felt that young Phil Slader would as soon keep to the open country while pursued, as a lobo would take to hunting in a populated country in the open day. No, where the nearest rough country and shelter from the eye might be found, there would the boy hide himself.

  To the right, there was a tangle of willows and other water-loving trees along the course of a little stream. But the thicket was narrow and might be hunted with some ease and speed; moreover, travel would be slow through such screenings of underbrush. It seemed more likely to the hunter that the boy had taken to the broken highlands a mile or two to the left of the valley floor. Here there was little or no vegetation, but all was up and down and the surface of the ground was scattered over with sharp-edged rocks.