by Max Brand
And here was old Jarvin, tilting the familiar black bottle at his lips and then passing it to Soapy. Yet Soapy, standing up to lash the horses to a great frenzy of speed, disregarded liquor for the first time in his life. He was literally garbed in flying tatters, rather than in clothes. And the bellow of his exultant voice came back like a dim thunder to Peter.
“I smashed ’em! I made ’em take water! I backed ’em into the last ditch and made ’em holler when I jumped in their faces. I was ten wildcats. I was a roarin’ grizzly! Oh, Mike, you should’ve been there to’ve seen what I did to them.”
The booming voice of Mike Jarvin roared in answer: “I’m glad you trimmed ’em, kid. But what was that compared to what I did to ’em? Made suckers of the lot of them! I would’ve quit after the first time. I had enough cash after that bout... but that sucker Hale sneaked it away from me. So I went back, Soapy, I sat in on another game. Why, it was taking candy away from babies. Except that these here babies wore whiskers and packed tons of Colts. I fished the coin out of their pockets and made them like it.
“Dog-gone me if they didn’t think that I was losing, for a time. And then they begun to tumble to the fact that my luck appeared in the losing of the small bets and the winning of the big ones. I’m salted down with money, Soapy. I got forty thousand in my wallet, pretty near. A hundred thousand, by rights... but that sucker Hale... “ He broke off to take another drink, and then, forgetting his anger at Peter, his voice pitched into thundering song.
For all their exultation, Soapy was still lashing the horses, and Peter rode half turned in the saddle, constantly watching the winding bit of road behind him.
Now that the dust of the town was gone, and they had clean countryside behind them, the moonlight flooded everything with its own brilliant silver. The town, in the distance, was a mean huddle of shadows, surprisingly small to have held all the excitement that had been foaming up and down its streets that night.
Out of the larger darkness of the village other, smaller shadows crept out and wound down the trail behind them. Peter knew what those creeping shadows were. They were raging, cursing, spurring horsemen, mounted on their best nags and determined to ride them into the ground, to capture the fugitive trio.
How vast would be the disgrace of the town if it were to be told, hereafter, how three men had dared to beat up their best citizens, and then had been able to rescue one of their members from the hands of countless odds and whisk away to safety.
They were spurring hard for matters of personal honor — and for the honor of their town and the range around it. Besides that, how many in that scurrying party had felt the weight of the mulatto’s fist or had lost money to the hated Jarvin? They had motives in plenty, and presently Peter could see that they were gaining fast. The mustangs ran well, rattling the buckboard over the rough road, It was not in the horses’ power, hampered as they were by harness and the dangling, banging weight behind them, to match the speed that their pursuers were showing. Watching the rate at which the townsmen gained, Peter sent Larribee swinging up beside the wagon.
“You hear me, Jarvin?”
“I hear ye, Pete, me lad,” answered Jarvin, “and I drink to you, too. I thought, after you trimmed me of that money that I’d earned by a lot of honest, hard work at the cards... I thought that you and me would never be friends again. But, curse you, Peter, you knock a man down one minute and you pick him up the next... pick him right away from a thousand pairs of hands, at that! Oh, lad, that trick of the wild horses... that was better than any that I’ve ever worked at cards, and yet I’ve trained and worked with the pasteboards all my life.”
“Will you be quiet, Jarvin? Look back down the road, if you think that you’re out of this mess. Look back and see them coming. A hundred of them if there’s one. A hundred lions, at that.”
The fat man braced himself in front of the seat and stood up, the better to scan the scene behind him. “It’s true.” Jarvin shuddered, and he shook his fist at them. “They’ll get to know the insides of this pal of mine, before the night is over. They’re hungry and hankering after it, and they’re bound to get it, I tell you.”
“Do you think that would do anything except hurry up your hanging by a few seconds? Look again and try to see the facts. Those fellows are coming too fast for us to get clear of them.”
“Then we’ll take to the horses. What have we got saddles along with us for?”
“Fast horses for two of us... but what about Soapy on his nag?”
“Curse it, Hale, would you put my neck inside of a rope for the sake of a Negro? Keep your hands from me, Soapy, or I’ll blow you to the devil!”
As the great hand of Soapy darted to Mike’s throat, Jarvin pitched the double muzzle of his terrible gun into the midriff of the mulatto — and Soapy’s hand gradually relaxed and recoiled.
“There are three of us here,” said Peter. “There’s going to be three of us saved, or three of us who go down together. That’s flat and final. Do you hear me, Jarvin?”
The other turned a desperate face toward Peter, and then leered down the road at the group of streaking shadows. They had grown rapidly in clearness. Now across the face of a little hill they streaked in a rapid procession — an endless string of clear-cut silhouettes against the moonlit sky.
“All right,” said Jarvin. “I’ll stick by you... if you’ll stick by me. But God knows what we’ll do.”
The hoofs of the horses beat hollow on the narrow little bridge, and beneath them they caught a glimpse of the river, like polished ebony, with the high light of the moon Striking across its surface.
“Pull up, Soapy!” shouted Peter.
“Pull up, man, do you hear?”
Soapy obediently drew rein.
“Are you crazy, Pete?” yelled Jarvin. But Peter was calmly dismounting from his horse. “Listen to me, Soapy,” gasped Jarvin. “He’s lost his head. I’ll sink a bullet through him. Then you and me on the two fast horses... for the sake of our necks, Soapy...”
“You fool!” Soapy sneered. “D’you think that you and me... yes, or that whole crowd back there... could faze him?”
CHAPTER XXXVII
OF ONE THING in the world Mr. Jarvin was sure — that Soapy, the mulatto, was the incarnation of all that was wicked in the world, of all that was hard and self- centered. But this speech seemed to indicate an almost superstitious respect for the will and the opinion of big Peter Hale. It was most strange to Jarvin. He could not make it out. As the panting mustangs came to a halt, he could distinctly hear the flints in the roadway ringing under the volleying hoofs of that approaching mob of destroyers.
“Get out of that buckboard!” came the order of Peter.
Jarvin started — as though a gun had been pointed at him — and he obeyed. Soapy was already on the ground, and Peter herded them back to the edge of the bridge.
“He’s going to hold us up,” murmured Jarvin with a groan at the ear of Soapy. “He’s going to hold us here under his guns and then turn us over to that lynching gang... to pay for his own sweet hide.”
“Shut up!” snarled Soapy. “You’re drunk.” And he faced his master in silence, turning his massive shoulders upon Mr. Jarvin.
“Now,” Peter said with a maddening deliberation, “it’s plain that we can’t ride away from those fellows. Since we can’t ride away from them, we’ve got to stop them. The only place where we can stop them and insure our escape is at this bridge.”
“Hold ’em at the bridge. Sure, the three of us could hold them all night!” cried the cheerful Soapy.
“And be shot to pieces when the morning came?” put in Jarvin. “You’re talking a fine brand of sense, Hale.”
Said Peter: “This is our only chance. We stop them at the bridge, or we’re dead men. Now let’s see if the bridge won’t do a little work for us.”
“What the devil are you talking about, Hale?”
Even Soapy was staring at his master now, bewildered and rather frightened.
“Come down under the bridge with me,” Peter stated, and swung himself down in the lead.
They followed. By the slanting moonshine, they could see that the bridge rested, at this end, on two massive boulders.
“Now,” Peter explained, “we roll away one of those boulders and let the bridge slide into the river... or else we hang before morning. Is that clear?”
They looked at Peter, raising their heads, and looked back down the moon- whitened strip of road at the approaching shadows, and then they laid their hands upon the boulder. They were three mighty men, to be sure, but the time- lodged and rugged weight of that great stone merely shuddered under their effort.
There was a snarl from Soapy. “Lemme get under there and get my back ag’in’ that stone,” he said. He lay flat, his feet against the bank, his legs bunched slightly, his heavy shoulders against the stone.
“Now!” said Soapy.
As they tugged in unison, at the first strain he drove his great feet deep into the soft dirt. There they found firm grip. Then all the might of his body gradually came into play — not suddenly, for he was not one to bring all his forces to their highest development in a single effort — but little by little his power increased. The rugged face of the stone was grinding through his shoulder muscles and cutting against the bone, and they could hear him groaning with his agony, but still he heaved relentlessly. The other two, inspired by his patient might, redoubled their efforts.
The stone trembled; there was a slight sliding, and suddenly it bulged straight out from its socket, hurtling down the slope. It barely missed Peter; it brushed past Jarvin. And the bridge sloped and settled with a jar on this side, seemingly straight down upon the prostrate form of the mulatto, while the great rock leaped from the edge of the bank, crashed against the farther rock wall, and then fell with rebounding thunders, until it raised a mighty crashing in the water beneath, and they saw a white leaping of the foam where it had struck.
But Soapy?
“He’s done!” cried Jarvin. “And good riddance. You and me, Pete, my lad.”
But Peter held him to the work. Their united strength budged that edge of the fallen bridge a little. And forth from the darkness crawled Soapy, snarling and gasping: “I think there was a spider that dropped down my throat. Gimme a drink, Jarvin.”
“We have something else to do besides drinking, Soapy,” said Peter. “We wanted your hand to start the bridge sliding. Look there. All the planks that fastened it have been torn loose by that fall... now heave together.”
Together they heaved with a will. The bridge strained with a great groaning, then it slid forward, and Peter, losing his foothold, dropped fairly into its path. He had no chance to raise himself, and the sliding, ponderous mass of the bridge would have swept him straight into the dizzy void of the cafton. But there was a stronger hand than his own that reached for him and plucked him lightly out to safety.
Soapy chuckled. “Bridges, they ain’t afraid even of you, Mister Hale.”
So Peter, with his hand fixed in a kindly grip upon the bulging shoulder muscles of Soapy, watched the bridge stagger and then slide past the edge of the ravine. With a great tearing and rending sound, the farther side of the bridge tore loose from its anchorage and kicked high in the air. Then the whole ruin shot down toward the stream.
The three of them hurried back to their horses. But there was no hurry. Three jumps of the horses brought them into the screening shadows of some low-growing trees, and, as they jogged up the hillside, they could look back and see the dark mass of the riders raging up and down the brink of the ravine. There were no means of crossing. No horse could ever have lived, going down that rigid- faced cliff.
All the pursuers could do was to wheel away, with a yell of hate and rage, and speed toward the nearest bridge, many a long mile away — or perhaps to some closer crossing. They would never catch the fugitives on this night — that much was perfectly certain. By the time their racing horses had completed the circuit, the three would be far, far away — toward the mine and the safety that awaited them there.
It was a jovial journey for both, but not for Peter. All the way, with his head bowed, he listened vaguely to the stream of wild language and of thundering praises that issued in his honor from the lips of the pair. As Soapy diligently pointed out, both Jarvin and he had been more than once saved during this expedition by the might of their new ally.
Toward morning, Jarvin dozed on the seat. He wakened in the gray of the dawn with a start. “Hey, Peter!”
Peter Hale rode closer to the wagon.
“Peter, I dreamed that I was fighting off snakes... and your hand reached down... a thousand miles out of nothing... and yanked me back to safety. Peter, bless you, what would have happened to me without you?”
It needed no answer, and Peter did not attempt one. So they journeyed on. In the middle of the morning they made a halt to rest the staggering horses and to sleep themselves. It was late in the afternoon before they reached the mine.
Telegraph and telephone had done their work, in the meantime.
They found a tall, spare-bodied, man walking up and down in front of Jarvin’s shack. And they found a grinning, excited group of miners waiting and watching.
“It’s Will Nast!” Jarvin gasped when he saw the stranger.
“What does he want here?”
But Will Nast was not in an ugly humor, apparently. He waved his hand to them most cheerfully, and then stood with his hand dropped on his hip, while the wind fanned his coat open and showed the sparkling face of his sheriffs badge beneath.
“Well, boys,” he said, “it was a pretty good party, eh?”
They nodded to him in silence and waited like pupils before a teacher.
“As for you, Soapy, I s’pose that you’ll be heading for the regular prize ring before long. Matter of fact, I’ve often wondered why you didn’t land there before. Easier money than this in the ring, Soapy... and not so crooked, either.”
Soapy grunted and stepped back — highly pleased to be dismissed in this fashion.
“Jarvin,” said the sheriff, “you cardsharper and sneaking rat... you miserable low hulk and scoundrel, I’ve been hoping that the time would come when I could get my hands on you, with any fair excuse. When the first reports of this mess came in, I thought that the time had surely come.
“But it seems that I was wrong. All wrong. There are no dead men back there, after all. You’re only a shade more famous. And there are only a few more shadows connected with you... a few more suspicions that you’ve been cheating at cards, eh?”
He turned his back on Mike Jarvin — a most daring thing was that, considering what he had just said. But Mike Jarvin was one who never struck in the day — when there were witnesses standing by. Although his face swelled and turned purple, he did not budge his hand.
“Now,” the sheriff said to Peter, “I think that it’s time for you to go back home with me, Peter Hale. What do you think?”
“I have a working agreement with Mister Jarvin,” said Peter. “Are you willing to let me go, Jarvin?”
Jarvin snapped his fingers high above his head with a brutal laugh. “Let you go? Say, Nast, when did you ever hear of Mike Jarvin throwing a handful of diamonds into the sea? And what’s diamonds to me, compared with Hale. Will you tell me that?”
Said the sheriff: “Ah, Pete, what the devil has come over you? Why did you do it?”
“I’ll tell you in one word,” said Peter. “It’s a thing that would land me behind the bars, Sheriff.”
The keen eye of Will Nast sharpened and shone. “Is it really as bad as that?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ve heard enough. But walk along here with me. I’ve some things to tell you about your father.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE SCREEN DOOR of the McNair house slammed loudly as Charles Hale stepped out onto the front verandah. There sat Mr. McNair, with his chair tilted back against the wall and his heels hooked over a low
er rung. He did not turn his head, but he said: “Well, Charlie, you had some luck, today?”
“Ah, sir,” said Charlie, “how did you guess that?”
“I see that you’re full of talk,” said McNair. “So go ahead.”
“Why, sir, she’s set the day.”
“Who?”
“Ruth, Mister McNair.”
“You don’t tell me!” said the father, and while he yawned, his eyes wandered carelessly over the face and form of his prospective son-in-law.
“Yes,” said Charles. “If it meets with your approval... for next Friday.”
“Quick, ain’t she, once she sets her mind on a thing?”
Charles coughed. “Unless you have objections.”
“Me? Why should I have objections? I don’t have to marry you.”
Charles, very red, fell silent. He said at last: “I’ll be going along, then.”
“So long, Charlie.”
“But,” Charles said, turning suddenly back, “it’s wonderful that she should have changed her mind so suddenly when... “ He paused.
“When you thought she was setting herself to marry Peter, eh?”
“Why... ,” began Charles.
“I’ll tell you,” said the rancher, “your cousin has gone and got himself so famous that she’s proud to marry into his family. I guess that’s the reason for her change of mind. Eh?”
“As a matter of fact,” Charles said, “I presumed... I mean, I guessed...”
“That Peter had shut himself out of the picture by raising so much deviltry over at Lawson Creek? Is that what you thought?”
“You might know, sir.”
“I know a little about my girl,” said McNair. “But I don’t know that she’s so measly and mean as to turn down a he-man just because he’s proved that he can fight better on wooden legs than most folks can on their own pins.”
Charles, abashed, withdrew straightway, for he felt, somehow, that this was not his day to draw pleasant speeches from the father of Ruth. He mounted his horse, and, as he rode up the road, he encountered Ross Hale riding hard toward him. They drew rein with a jerk.