Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  It came from the newly rising sun which, beginning as a small disk above the eastern hill, slowly floated up until it showed a broad face, intolerably bright, at which they blinked and then turned their heads away.

  And, a moment later, the far-off rattle of guns began from the heart of the canon.

  31. “DO YOU SURRENDER?”

  THEY HAD GATHERED inside the shack, the handful of fighting men who were to undertake the wildest of wild adventures on this day. They began looking to small matters of their equipment. They drew their revolvers and examined them carefully to make sure that that delicate and terrible mechanism worked smoothly in their familiar hands. They took up their rifles and went over them in the same fashion. Such preparations required few minutes. For, like men whose profession is war against other men, they never lay down at night without first going carefully over their weapons. This was only the last nervous survey before going into action.

  They hitched their belts a notch or two above the accustomed point. They looked dubiously down to their high-heeled, narrow-toed, long-spurred boots, so admirable for riding and so wholly inappropriate for the work afoot which they would now have to perform. Last of all, they settled their hats upon their heads and each man looked earnestly about him upon his neighbors. Here were the men with whom they had fought through many and many an adventure before. Here were men whom they might have thought, the day before, that they knew. But when this great final test came, how many would fall short of the testing?

  Such, at least, were the emotions of Allan as he stared on those sun- blackened faces, marked with hard labor, with great vices, with a hundred debauches, but stamped equally with that great redeeming virtue of heroism. Would they all die together before the sun was an hour old? Or would some, perhaps, reach their companions charging swiftly up the canon with snapping guns and a swirling dust cloud above them?

  At last. Lefty drew the front door open, and there to the east the red rim of the rising sun showed above the mountains.

  “There, gents,” said he, pointing, “is our order to start. Boys, I’m goin’ out first. I figger that the rest of you’ll come close behind and stay close behind all the way.”

  And he stepped out into the morning air with his head high and with every muscle tensed to meet, perhaps, the tearing impact of a bullet fired by some alert watcher.

  But there was no gunfire. Not a sound was heard, and nothing living moved before their eyes. The gravel and the sand crunched beneath their feet. The first desperation and terror left them. They began to walk more freely, with the hearts beating to a steadier rhythm and the color returning to their sallow, thin cheeks. They covered a hundred yards and gained a little eminence a few yards in height above the rest of the valley floor. There was nothing to be seen! Still nothing moved, but the rocks, here and there, stared back at them and surrounded them with a gloomy meaning.

  “Gents,” said Denver Charlie, “it looks to me like maybe we was going to have a chance—”

  Something thudded against the body of Denver. He wheeled and pitched on his face with his fingers digging into the sand. His long legs writhed together, and he was still, while the ringing report of the rifle beat against their ears. They were seen indeed!

  “Go back!” shouted Tom Morris. “Christopher ain’t here. Go back, boys, before we’re all slaughtered.”

  A singing volley whirled around them to give weight to his words, and the party sagged back to flee, all saving Lefty Bill. For, like a true standard bearer in the time of danger, his heart was true to his chief in this crisis. He leaped ahead and waved his hat.

  “It’s as hot work goin’ back as goin’ forward,” he cried. “Come on, boys!”

  And he raced ahead, a gallant, stodgy little figure with his spurs flashing and clanking as he ran. And behind him the others started. The whole of the little party plunged ahead through the sand, crying aloud to one another, each man to raise his own spirits more than to encourage his comrades. But in half a dozen steps another man was down. For those were practiced hands which fired on either side of them, and also straight in front. There men were lying at their ease with their rifles couched, and their bodies protected by natural entrenchments. There was nothing to shake their hands saving the knowledge that they were shooting to destroy human beings, and to those marksmen a human life was nothing.

  Still, it was obviously true that it was as dangerous to recoil as to go ahead. Another dropped, the third to fall in that deadly moment as the battle began, and still they had not been able to do so much as return a single shot. Lefty Bill, leaping with fury, raced still in the lead, heading squarely at the little cluster of rocks straight ahead from which two guns were barking. Then another figure came up beside him, swinging a rifle as though it were made of painted, hollowed wood. It was Allan, running like a deer, and shouting like a madman, for the spirit of the fight was in him. Yonder were enemies no more to be protected or respected than the wildest Indian who ever painted their faces and whooped on a war trail, hungry for blood.

  Already that charge was ruined. But still they pressed ahead, mad for vengeance. It was Allan who reached the circle of rocks first. Behind him came Lefty and Tom Morris, gasping and blowing, their teeth set for the work which now lay at their hands. As for Allan, he leaped high above the circling rocks. That leap saved him. The bullet which had been aimed for his heart whirred past his leg, and he descended on him who had fired the shot. One blow of the rifle butt; and when he looked up, Morris had finished the second man.

  Here, at last, was some revenge. They flattened themselves in the entrenchment while the swift bullets spattered against the outer faces of the stones. They were, for the moment, fairly safe. But now, through the crevices, the bullets were finding a way. Tom Morris winced and gasped. A flesh wound, but it showed them that their case was indeed desperate.

  Three of the enemy threw themselves on horses and rushed to a more commanding point which would overlook the circle where the others lay. In vain Morris and Lefty pumped bullets after them. The move had been too sudden, the race was too brief, the distance too great for them to become accurate in their shooting.

  “We’re only half paid for,” said Lefty savagely. “And look! They’re makin’ sure of the boys that have dropped.”

  In fact, those savages were pumping bullets at those of the party who had fallen on the way.

  A diversion, however, was coming. There was a steady rushing of hoofs from the head of the valley, and then — here they came, a splendid sight in the slant morning sun, their horses gleaming, the brims of their hats blown back by the rushing wind of their gallop. Here was Harry Christopher, a revolver caught in either hand, firing as he rode, and firing straight. For, out of a nest of rocks, they saw a man leap high into the air with a death cry. There was Harry Christopher, fighting like a gallant knight, and with him all his men, and with his men, the led horses.

  Two men toppled from their saddles, but that splendid charge trampled through the rock nest with guns thundering, and swept on toward the next point, where Ramsay’s fellows lay entrenched. Here the enemy was in force. The roar of his guns, as the repeaters were fired until the barrels grew too hot for handling, made a continuous noise like the falling of masses of water. Three empty saddles now, but they reached the rock nest, and there they whirled for an instant in a terrible hand-to-hand encounter.

  There remained one point of vantage left to Ramsay. From that rock cluster suddenly a tall, thin man jumped into view, tossed off his hat, and his long hair blew in the wind. Allan heard his yell of defiance.

  “Ramsay — gone crazy — fightin’ is like booze to him,” panted Tom Morris. “That devil! He ain’t a man!”

  Lefty was shouting: “Come on, boys! We’ll join in from this side. That’s the last of ’em.”

  And there they were racing across the sand. Tom Morris stopped, wheeled, and tumbled head over heels, dead. But the others still raced on; and from the farther side they saw Harry Christopher pushin
g home the charge to the last ounce of his energy.

  Then the rock nest was reached, and before Allan he saw a swirl of bodies, battle-maddened faces rising to meet him and to meet the thinned group of horsemen. He saw teeth from which the lips were grinned back. He saw glittering, red-stained eyes. He saw the flash and the shimmer of steel. The stinging powder smoke was in his nostrils. And in his heart was a raging fury. There was no fear. There was no room for fear. There was no room for thought or for compassion.

  What he did he could not tell. He knew that he struck with the gun and that the butt splintered to bits on some yielding thing. He knew that he smote with the naked gun barrel, and that the steel bent like untempered iron in the terrible fury of his stroke. He cast that bent weapon away. He reached with his bare hands, and something crushed in his grip.

  Then, through the swirling blackness of the battle madness, a voice pierced to his heart and to his mind; the voice of Jim, groaning.

  Allan stood up, disentangling himself from a limp weight. And no other man stood in the death pen beside him. He looked wildly about him and something like a voice cried in him that this was the work of God, using the enemies of man to destroy one another.

  There lay Jim, propped against a rock, his hands fallen limply at his sides, his head rolled back, and his eyes fixed upon Allan not in pain, not in appeal, but in a very horror of fear.

  He reached out his hand and spoke. Behold, he did not know the iron tone of his own voice, or its husky depth. He had been changed in body and in soul, and after that day would he ever be the same? Even Jim shrank from him — his tried and well-proven companion, Jim! And he fell on his knees, beside Jim.

  “Jim,” he said, “are you badly hurt?”

  Jim shuddered and raised a weak hand as if to push him back.

  “What’s wrong?” cried Allan.

  “I seen you at work — I seen you, Al. What are you? A devil?”

  All of that thought Allan brushed from him. “No matter about the rest,” he said as a pitiful groan spoke near by. “There’s no good man among ’em all except you, Jim. Where are you hurt?”

  “I’m done,” said Jim. “I’m finished. If I’d had a chance to live another little while, I might of had a chance to show folks that I ain’t so bad. But now I’m finished.”

  “Where?”

  “It hit me some place here in the side. They don’t get well when they get punctured there. I know that. I’ve seen it before.” He stopped and began to cough weakly. Then, when he could speak again, he gasped out: “Who’s won?”

  “Nobody. They’re all gone.”

  A wan smile came over the face of Jim. “Then you’re near a million to the good, old man. What’ll you do with it?”

  “Give it back to those to whom it belongs.”

  Jim started. “After we’ve worked like this and died like this for it?”

  “It’s dirt,” said Allan with a sudden solemn conviction. “I used to think people who had it were great folks. But I see that what they have is only dirt and nothing else. Good old Jim, keep your head up. You’re not dead yet, and with God’s help, we’ll bring you through.”

  Far up the canon he heard the pattering hoofs of horses. He looked up and saw two riders approaching at a swift gallop.

  “Perhaps they’re coming now,” he cried eagerly. “If they’re honest, we’ll pull you through, Jim. If they’re more of Ramsay’s men”

  He reached down for his rifle to finish the thought. But, the next moment, he tossed the gun down again with a strange cry.

  “Honest men, Jim; and you’re saved.”

  For he had recognized Jardine and Johnston. And those worthies had the strange spectacle of their long-hunted man waving his hands to them and shouting to them to hurry.

  They dismounted gingerly as they came up, still covering him with their guns.

  “Do you surrender, Al Vincent?” they demanded.

  “Save Jim,” he said, “and I’ll follow you to jail!”

  32. A FIRST-CLASS FOOL

  HOW THEY SAVED Jim Jones the newspapers told.

  The three worked to bring the wounded to the shack and give them what treatment they could. Nine men were living, but helpless. The rest were dead, and Christopher and Ramsay were among them.

  Then Johnston rode ten hours to the nearest village, gave the news, and rushed back again with help — and plenty of it. Luck had placed a newspaper correspondent in that town. He had come out to get a cattle story. But he forgot about cattle when he heard the tale. He was with that first rush of men, and it was he who gave the world the strange story of Salisbury Canon. He told of the place, and of the dead men, and how they were buried, and of the epitaphs which were cut in stone above their graves, and of how he found Walter Jardine playing nurse to nine starving invalids helped only by a paroled prisoner. He heard, too, how that prisoner had surrendered himself for the sake of an injured comrade, and had thrown away the chance of winning three quarters of a million in cash for himself — three quarters of a million which he might have had by throwing himself on a horse and galloping away.

  There was so much story here that the reporter worked himself into a fever. Every moment red-hot copy was flowing into his hands. Even when the buckboards carried the prisoners out of the valley, fresh copy came from their lips with every word they uttered. From the village, every day, he issued copious reports. A New York editor had gone delirious with joy. For five whole days he had a scoop. And he ordered his correspondent to spare nothing, to leave out no adjectives, to say everything he saw and heard and felt. The correspondent obeyed. And that was how Vincent Allan became a national figure.

  His photograph went East as fast as express trains could rush it. It appeared in many poses in Sunday supplements and picture sections. Sentimental lady writers went forth to interview him and to retell his story. He acquired many adjectives before his name. He was called “The desperado, Vincent.” He was termed bandit, gunman, caveman, aboriginal man killer.

  And, in the midst of all this, the manager of the branch bank in which he had worked saw the picture, recognized, it and gave the reporters what they turned into a four-column story of the youth of this Western hero.

  Altogether, it was a perfect newspaper story. It had a sensational side. It had a sentimental side. For Jim Jones had confided that the only reason Vincent Allan had joined Christopher was because of their friendship. This was the final touch, and the most was made of it.

  The name of Vincent Allan became table talk. On account of him business men got up earlier to get their newspapers at the front door. And in the meantime? Poor Vincent Allan sat in a cell in the little town of El Ridal and heard the people of the town cheering their new sheriff, Elias Johnston.

  He bore his honors mildly. He even told them that what he and Jardine had done had been nothing, that Vincent Allan had merely surrendered of his own free will. But this was termed modesty and not truth. They made a hero out of Johnston and Jardine in spite of the facts of the case. They made a villain hero out of Vincent in the same manner and for the same reasons.

  “When we get a few more like him hung,” ran public opinion, “that mighty and subtle triumph, ‘the West,’ will begin to be a decent and a safe place for law-abiding folks to live in.”

  In the meantime, newspapers had been brought to Allan. He had an opportunity to see himself as others saw him, and he used to say to Sheriff Johnston: “Is it all true, Walt? Am I all of this?”

  Then came the trial. It was spectacular partly because it came after so much that had gone before and partly because it was so brief. The State claimed that this man had been a party to the killing of the guard on the train. At least, it could be proved that he was present. As for those who fell in the canon, their lives were all long since forfeited and their killing did not matter.

  Allan simply said that he believed he was guilty enough to die, that the matter confused and troubled him, and that the newspapers alone were enough to convince him that he w
as deeply in the wrong all through. And the young lawyer whom the judge appointed to see that justice was done to the prisoner, hardly knew what to say. He ended by saying nothing except to advise his client to plead guilty, and that was exactly what Allan did.

  The jury stayed out for ten minutes for the sake of decency, and then came back to give their verdict, after which Allan stood before the judge with a man on either side and received a sentence to be hanged by the neck until he was dead. But all the time that the judge was speaking, the words meant no more to him than the tolling of a bell. What his mind was really busy with was a sparrow which was hopping about gayly on the sill of a window which was open, letting the hot wind stir through the room. And he saw the broad, hot square which the sun dropped upon the floor. And he saw the well-oiled hair of the clerk, shining like polished wood as the man bent over his broad book, and he saw the court reporter’s flying pencil, and he saw wrinkles stand out and disappear and stand out again upon the forehead of the kind-faced judge who was saying these terrible words.

  Then he turned, and there were the faces of the audience, stricken with horror and with interest. They had packed in every one who could enter. Others were jammed in the doorway. The death silence had ended, now, and little whispers were beginning. He heard some of them as he passed down the aisle.

  “He don’t look so very bad, Tom. D’you think so?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Betty. It ain’t what they look like on the outside, but it’s what they are on the inside that counts.”

  “Look at him! Ain’t turned a hair. Nacherally bad blood in that young gent, and you can take it from me.”

  “Dog-gone me if he ain’t as cool as a cucumber. I’d hate to meet up with a fellow like that on a dark night. Cut your throat and think nothing of it. Look at them eyes. Nothin’ in ’em. A brute.”

  He listened to these things very calmly, and when each one spoke, he turned his quiet eyes for a deliberate instant upon the speaker, according to his old habit. But what he was feeling was that they knew only a few surface truths about him. Under that surface there was much, much more. He could hardly explain it himself. But he felt as though he had been through a dream, and that, if the chance came to him, he could step back into the bank which he had left and sit down on the high stool as though nothing had happened. They could not tell this. Yet he knew that there was no malice in his heart against them.