by Max Brand
“What are you doing here?” she asked him bluntly. “Oh,” said he stupidly. “I’m so sorry I fell asleep. But I thought it would be better to be near you in case — in case something—”
“Jiminy, Al!” murmured the girl. “You come here to take care of me, maybe?”
He rose to his feet, a little red. “I thought it might be safer.” It seemed to him that a faintest gleam of a smile crossed her eyes, but it was gone at once.
“Let’s hustle breakfast,” said she. “I’m hungry as a wolf!”
6. JIM JONES IS WANTED
BREAKFAST WAS FINISHED and the saddling completed before the great problem came into the mind of poor Allan. How was he who could not sit the saddle on his horse to keep pace with the rider of the agile pinto? He told the girl with much dismay of the difficulty, and her amazement was extreme.
“D’you mean to say,” she breathed, “that you’re travelin’ with a hoss that you can’t ride?”
“I’m trying to learn,” said Allan. “I try her every morning and stay on a little longer each time.”
“A hoss like that,” said the girl, chuckling, “is like tobacco without no matches. Lemme see you try her out?”
He obeyed. There followed an earnest fight which lasted through three exhausting minutes. But, at the end of that time. Mustard began to swing in a circle and slung poor Allan headlong from his seat.
“You see,” he said as he staggered to his feet, “that it’s better than it used to be. She used to knock me off in a second.”
The girl had not yet stopped laughing at the picture of Allan tumbling head over heels in the sand. But now she dismounted from the pinto, fitted her toe into the stirrup of Mustard’s saddle, and whisked into place as lightly as a bird. Allan stood agape with every muscle tensed, expecting to see her skyrocket through the air at any instant, afraid to shout a warning for fear that the noise might excite the mare. To his unspeakable amazement, Mustard merely tossed her head in the air and then jogged obediently off. She turned in a circle and came back.
“Let out the stirrup leathers on the paint hoss,” called the girl, busily shortening those of Mustard. “You can ride pinto to-day.”
“What did you do? How did you manage it?” panted Allan.
She looked him calmly in the face.
“Hosses is a good deal like rabbits,” she told him. “You got to catch their eyes; then they’re easy!”
It was an explanation which needed to explore the subject further. Besides he was mystified at her remark; behind her eyes, behind her silence, he guessed at laughter which was bubbling very near to the surface. As for pinto, he merely grunted and kicked a few times at the unexpected weight which dropped upon his back, but being as sturdy as he was fine looking, he presently shook his head in resignation and trotted off by the side of Mustard. Poor Allan was too full of bewilderment to talk for half an hour, and at length he put his state of mind into words clearly enough.
“There are a great many things which one can only learn from experience,” he said. “I thought that the country would be simpler. But after all, I’m afraid it isn’t.”
“Except the girls,” she suggested. “Which they’re a lot easier to talk to in the country.”
He considered her for a moment. He rarely answered a remark hastily or offhand, and now he concluded by shaking his head.
“If I had known you then as well as I know you now,” said he, “I should never have dared to begin talking to you at all.” At this she broke into laughter. Mirth must have been stocked up in her for a long time, so hearty and so continued was her outbreak. But, since it was by no means the first time in his life that he had been laughed at, he did not mind the mockery. No doubt she was putting him down as a fool and a weakling, but at least there was no positive dislike in her manner. How little she thought of him as a man was revealed before long by her questions. She wanted to know how he expected to make his way in this wild country, and he answered that he had worked his way so far and hoped to be able to do so again. Could he handle a rope? Did he know anything of cows or sheep? He did not! What had he been doing up to this time? He had worked in the hay, loose and baled.
“Did you stand up under that?” she asked, and under her casual manner he could read her surprise.
“I managed it,” said Vincent Allan a little tersely. But, in his heart of hearts, he had a foolish and childish wish that she could have been present at Casey’s when he had beaten Bud with a punch! In the late morning a rabbit jumped from behind a cluster of out-thrusting porphyry rocks at the top of a dike and raced across the path before them. He had a chance then to see her hypnotism. It came in the form of a Winchester snatched from the holster of the saddle on pinto, which she leaned across like a flash to reach. She whipped it to her shoulder. He saw the muzzle slowly follow the flight of the rabbit for an instant, then the gun spoke and the poor victim leaped into the air and ran no more.
“The head, Al! The head, I guess!” cried the young savage and spurred Mustard furiously to the place. She had reached it, dismounted, and was holding up the prize in her hand when he came up.
“Look!” she cried, and he saw that the rifle bullet had passed clean through the head of the jack.
That was their noon meal when they made a dry camp, a short halt, and then pushed ahead once more. He asked her then how she had been able to learn to shoot so very well, and before she could answer she had to pause, squirming carefully down the trail.
“I’ll tell you, Al,” she said at last. “You get a look at the target through the sights — then you — you wish it dead, and pull the trigger!”
And her whole young body quivered with savage exultation. He wondered at that. Indeed, he went through the whole day with a continual bewilderment in his mind and the feeling that she was far, far beyond his mental horizon. That night he had indubitable proof that her feeling for him was only pity. For sitting beside the camp fire she opened her heart and told him frankly that he was out of place in this region. He should go back to the cities in the East, where good-natured men had the law to take care of them. He saw her lip curl a little when she mentioned the law. It was plain that for her part she had little use for it; but for him she considered it a necessity.
That night was far different from the first one. He hardly closed his eyes from dark to dawn, so miserably did the sting of her contempt torment him; and if he dozed a few moments by chance, it was to dream of a wild young creature racing over the mountain-tops with a brandished rifle in her hand and her laughter streaming down the wind behind her. Yet, when Frances was cooking breakfast the next morning, as if to baffle him the more, she showed him her first trace of real feminine weakness.
“Suppose when we get to El Ridal — suppose that Jim ain’t there and that there ain’t no trace of him. What’ll I do?”
She made such a gesture of helplessness that his heart leaped in him, but at her new remark his heart failed him again. He asked when she expected to reach El Ridal, and she said that they must be there a little after noon of that day. That day, then, would be their last together, unless Jim failed to be there. Upon that possibility he set his heart. Before they started the day’s ride he made a desperate effort to conquer Mustard and a little more of the girl’s esteem, but it was not to be. Mustard turned herself into a figure eight and in half a minute shook her master dangling into empty space. When he stood up, the girl was not smiling; she was shaking her head in a slow disapproval.
“I’ll never make a rider,” said he hopelessly, and she only responded with a cold: “Oh, I dunno. Lemme try her again!” She tried Mustard not only quietly, but with quirt and spurs. Mustard fought like a maddened thing. There was a five-minute struggle which left Allan staring and shouting; but Mustard was thoroughly beaten. The girl flung herself out of the saddle. The battle had shaken her terribly; her face was white and her eyes glaring, but she bit her lip and called up all her gallant spirit to keep herself from staggering when she walked.
&n
bsp; “Try Mustard now,” she said a little hoarsely. “I guess she’s got the pepper out of her now!”
So up the trembling, sweat-dripping side of Mustard he climbed and settled himself gingerly in the saddle. Behold, there was not even a kick! Mustard flattened her ears, shook her head, and then accepted the inevitable. She had had enough out of one clinging piece of humanity that day; she wanted no further lessons. But if her spirit were crushed, that of Allan was completely broken. He who wished to appear as the protecting hero had been forced to accept charity, as it were, out of the hand of the lady of his heart. He groaned inwardly when he thought of it!
All morning they climbed through the foothills and into the mountains themselves. They journeyed through the cedar brakes of the hills; they came among the giant forests of pine where the beds of dead needles received the fall of hoofs with a softened crackling; and so they reached, by noon, the view of El Ridal.
Down the face of the mountain to the west a snow-fed torrent ripped its way, white with foam like a streak of snow itself, or shaken into veils of mist where it plunged over lofty precipices, and where the stream reached the foot of the mountain lay El Ridal at the head of a narrow valley with the dark hosts of the pines marching down to it on either hand. It was only a small village. Perhaps there were threescore buildings in it, and though they were still an hour’s ride from the place, Allan could count every roof.
Down the steep trail they hurried, now, until the trail widened to a road, chopped into ruts and hollows by the wheels of buckboards, and so they raised the dust of the main street of the town itself. Before they entered it the girl drew rein. “This here town,” she said cautiously, reading his face, “has a lot of pretty hard men in it. Are you dead sure that you want to come in, Al? They got a way of talkin’ with their guns!” His humiliation was so great that he dared not look into her
“I’ll take the chance,” said Allan huskily, and so they went on side by side until they came before an old, unpainted shack of large proportions across whose front was inscribed the sign: “Empire Hotel.”
The girl cried out at the sight of it. ‘That’s Jim’s headquarters!” she said. “I’ve always sent his mail care of the Empire.”
“Wait here,” said Allan, and, dismounting from Mustard, he went inside.
Times seemed to be dull in the Empire. There was no lounger on the veranda in front. There was no one in the hallway which served as a lobby also, saving one fat fellow who leaned far back in his chair with his boots propped against the face of the tall stove which stood in the center of the space.
“I wish to find the proprietor of the Empire,” said Allan in his most pleasant voice.
The fat man ran a thumb beneath the single strand of a suspender which crossed his shoulder, sinking deep into the soft flesh.
“I’m him,” said he.
“Then,” said Allan, “perhaps you will be able to give me some information.”
“P’r’aps,” said the other.
“I wish to find Jim Jones,” said Allan.
The proprietor kicked the door of the stove clanging open, and kicked it clanging shut again. Otherwise he made no answer.
“I wish to find Jim Jones,” said Allan a little more loudly.
“Might you be a friend of hisn?” said an ominous voice, though the head still failed to turn toward him on the puffy neck.
The nature of Allan, as has been seen, was as mild as milk and honey, but something began to grow taut in him.
“Can you or can you not tell me where I may find Jim Jones?” he asked for the third time.
“Who wants to know?”
“A lady. His sister,” said Allan.
The proprietor did not deign an immediate answer to this remark, but after a time he said deliberately: “I wish that all of Jim Jones’ friends was in purgatory, where he’d find ’em soon!”
A film of red floated across the eyes of Allan, as though he were looking at the noon sun through closed lids. He leaned, put his hands on the arms of the proprietor’s chair, and lifted him lightly around, chair and all. Then he repeated his question. The proprietor had turned purple, all his face puffing up with fury, and his big, pudgy hand squashed over the butt of a Colt. But he did not draw the gun. He was considering another fact, which was that his weight, the last time he waddled onto a scale, was nearly two hundred and eighty pounds, that the chair in which he sat must weigh twenty pounds more, and that the man before him had raised all that clumsy burden as lightly as though it had been a stuffed toy and not a reality of flesh and fat. The proprietor thought of these things, and some of the blood departed from his face.
“Why might you want to know about Jim Jones?” he asked. And he studied the face of the other hungrily, curiously. It was not the face of a man of violence. And the eye which looked down to him was as mild and gentle an eye as ever looked forth from the brow of a maiden of seventeen who has not yet learned to doubt the world.
“I’ve already said that Jim’s sister is here inquiring,” said Allan.
“Dog-gone me if I don’t hate to have ladies take long trips for nothin’,” said the fat man, “but as sure as my name’s Bill Hodge, she wasted her time. She ain’t goin’ to find no Jim Jones here!”
“He was here formerly, was he not?” “He was.” “But he left?” “He did.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“If I knowed, would I be sittin’ here now? No, sir, I’d be hell-bendin’ to get at him, and I wouldn’t be ridin’ alone. Nope, they’s a sheriff an’ a dozen other gents around this here town that’s plumb anxious to see that young gent ag’in!”
The joyous, expectant face of Frances came before the memory of the other, and he asked sadly what her brother had done.
“Nothin’ but beat me out of a month’s room and board. That’s all, aside from shooting the sheriff’s boy, Charlie, and dog-gone nigh killin’ him, and makin’ us all waste hossflesh tryin’ to catch him, an’ stealin’ a hoss from Hank Moon, an’ most likely playin’ in with Harry Christopher’s gang of murderin’ hounds! Outside of them things he ain’t done nothin’ to speak of!”
7. ALLAN’S GREAT BLUNDER
ALLAN WENT BACK to Frances Jones with a singular mixture of outward gloom and inward happiness — selfish inward happiness because he was sure, now, that he would still have an opportunity to prove to her that he was a man in spite of all of his failings, and because no brother could take her suddenly away from him. She needed only one glance at his face; then she slipped from pinto and ran to him.
“What’s wrong?” she cried in an excited whisper. “What’s happened? Is Jim hurt?”
“No. He’s sound and well,” said Allan as cheerfully as he could.
But she stepped back with a groan of anguish.
“It’s worse than that, then,” she said instantly. “Jim has busted loose at last and tore things up. Is that it?”
“There’s been a little trouble”
“He’s been drove out of town. I know! Oh, dad had it in him, but he got married young, and he fought it down inside of him. And now everything that he didn’t do Jim’ll be doin’ for him — an’ — an’ I wish I’d never been born! I wish I’d never been born!” -
Her grief was so wild that Allan could not even attempt to comfort her. Sorrow in most women had always seemed to him very like sorrow in a child — pitiful, perhaps, but never tragic. But grief in Frances Jones was like grief in a man. No tears fell from her eyes, but her body trembled and her voice seemed to tear her throat.
When the spasm left her, she leaned a hand against a pillar of the veranda, still shaken, exhausted, despairing.
“What’ll I do now?” she said, not appealing to him but to herself.
“We camp right here,” said Allan. “There’s very little chance that we’ll be able to find him. If the other people in El Ridal knew where he was, they’d be out hunting for him. So it’s plain that they can’t tell us what we wish to find out. We can only wait her
e and hope that Jim will find out where we are and then try to come to see you. That’s logical, I think.”
She gave him a look of surprise, as though such intelligence in him startled her, but it was so plainly the only thing for her to do that she nodded.
“Except,” she said, “that I’ll have to sell the pinto to pay for my board.”
“I’ve got enough to see you through a few days,” he offered.
“I don’t take no charity,” said she coldly.
“It’s not charity, you see. Jim will pay me back when he
comes.”
At least, there was nothing better for her to do than to accept for the time being, but when he had carried her roll of blankets up to the room which Bill Hodge grudgingly assigned to her, she hesitated at the door of the chamber with one hand upon the knob and the other laid lightly on his arm while she looked up into his face.
“Al,” she said, “you’re a square shooter — the squarest I ever seen.”
And she slipped inside the room and shut the door in his face before he could make any answer. In the meantime, he had twelve dollars to support them both, and mountain prices ran high. For lack of a better source of information, he went straight to Bill Hodge.
Hodge, to his inquiry about work, squinted a pair of fat eyes at him. “What kind of work might you be able to do?” he asked. “Can you handle an ax or work a drill and a single jack, or ride herd, or”
“I know nothing about these things,” confessed Allan. “But if I can do something which needs only patience and strong hands, I’ll do my best. Is there such work around El Ridal?”
It was impossible for Bill Hodge to believe him. Men who talked a pure form of English and looked one in the eye as they spoke, did not ask for mucking jobs. He thought it wise to wink at the young man and tell him that the sort of work he was looking for would come along in due time.