by Max Brand
“I don’t know, Mike,” said I. “What can they do?”
“Then if they can’t do any better,” said Mike, tucking her chin up into the air, “why don’t they put a bullet through their own heads rather than to come to live like sneaking, stealing rats? Oh, I hate a man that would live that way! I hate a man. I’d hate you, Leon Porfilo — even if you do have such a funny way of telling lies!”
She ended on a smile, but there was so much seriousness in her that I found myself blinking and winking at her. You have no idea how she had grown in the last few minutes. I began to feel as though she were actually my elder; she had gathered me up into the palm of her hand, you might say, and was giving me a lesson, shaking her finger at me.
To tell you the truth, it threw the matter before me in a new way. Since society had driven me out, it seemed to me that the only thing to do was to live just as I could. I knew that society had been wrong in turning me outdoors. Then let society take the consequences! But Mike put a new face on matters. I told her frankly that I would hate to have her despise me, and that I would make a hard try to go straight.
“If you’re broke again, ride up that ravine across the valley,” said Mike, “until you come to an old house over the creek. If you were to stand outside in the dark and whistle like this”
She whistled twice, made a pause, and whistled again. “I’d know that you were there, and I’d come out with another twenty dollars — if I had that much!”
How could I answer her? I could merely stare. Then she added with her strange little smile: “If I had forty dollars’ worth of you, I might nearly control the stock. Don’t you think so?”
“Why, Mike,” said I, in a rather wobbly voice, “why, Mike, if I can go straight, I’ll”
She changed her own voice at once and made it very crisp and sharp. “You’d better saddle your horse,” said she. “It’s about time for you to run along!”
I knew she understood that I had been on the verge of growing sentimental. I bit my lip and did as she bade me, like a very dumb, down-headed, foolish boy.
When I had rubbed the saddle marks off the gray and brushed him and rubbed him all over with a hard twist of dry grass, I cinched the saddle on him and dug my knee into his ribs to make the rascal let the wind out of his lungs. Then I came back to her, leading the gelding.
“I’m going to blow north,” said I. “But may I walk a way home with you, Mike?”
“You may not,” said she. “I don’t like the silly look in your eye!”
It angered me, and then I twitched my brains back into good working order and saw that she was quite right. I had been growing pretty foolishly soft about her, and she had a right to jerk me back to my better senses.
I shook hands with her. “I hope that you’ll never hear that your twenty dollars has gone wrong,” said I.
“I hope that I won’t,” said Mike, with her green eyes very serious.
I climbed into the saddle. “So long, Mike.”
“So long, Leon. Wait a minute. How old are you?”
A little spirit came back to me. “I’ve forgotten that,” said I, and so I rode off on the northern trail.
XIII. SEEKING SHELTER
I FELT VERY triumphant because I had, in a way, had the pleasure of the last smile at the expense of Mike. But it was rather a flat pleasure. By the time I had topped the next ridge of the mountains, though there was still a warm glow in the mountain sky, the valley was beginning to take thick pools of shadow, and the lights winked on in the windows of the ranch house far below me. At the same time a cutting wind began to comb across the mountains.
Ah, that wind! There are sailors who will swear to you that a storm at sea is a wicked thing, but I have always felt that it is the reeling, staggering, unsure ship that makes a sea storm dreadful. In the mountains, it is another matter, and the wind itself is the devil turned loose. I had my first taste of a mountain storm that night.
I had to lean far forward in the saddle against the sheer poundage of the gale that shot across the ridge, while my poor horse, desert bred, tried to stop every now and then and bunch its back and drop its head between its forelegs — and great shudders of cold went through the chilled gelding. However, I had to bear it, and my horse had to bear it, too.
I have been in worse storms than that one during my life in the mountains. But considering that this was the first, and that I was on a desert horse, and in the dark of unknown trails, I think that the combination was terrible enough.
Pressed up against the sky, I felt all that any poor man can feel who has climbed into a chair of power greater than he can use. I felt naked — naked of my cold body, and naked of my colder soul.
When I saw a thin, yellow, winking light before me, I did not pause to reconnoiter. I headed straight for it! Had I known that behind that single ray of light there waited for me a whole group of the bitterest enemies — a whole posse with a sheriff at the head of it — had there been a fifty-thousand-dollar reward upon my head, dead or alive — I should nevertheless have done as I did — ride straight to the barn behind the house and put up my horse in the first vacant stall, and then, carrying my saddle and bridle, proceed to the door of the house itself.
I battered at it. Before there was an answer from within, a great handful of wind, scooped from the black heart of the gorge behind me, struck me in the back and set the whole house staggering and chattering.
Somewhere from within there was a sound of crashing pottery, and then the windy bang of a closing door. I cast one glance behind me at the rough edges of the ravine, towering high above me. The cloud masses which had shut across the face of the heavens earlier in the night were scattered now. Through the gaping rifts bright shafts of starlight struck down and showed dizzy glimpses of the black sky itself which swam behind the flocking thunder clouds.
I waited for no more. Like a scared boy, with all my hundred and ninety pounds of athletic bone and muscle quivering, I wrenched the door open and jumped inside. It took the full strength of my arm to press the door shut behind me, and the blast which the momentary opening of the door loosed across the room raised a great flapping and a tearing of papers, and a violent rush of oaths.
Now, with my shoulders leaning back against the door, I shrugged the chill out of the small of my back and blinked at the unfamiliar brightness of the light from a big, round-burner lamp on the central table.
I did not see clearly. I only made out three men, but just what manner of men, I could not very well tell, for the wind had stung the tears into my eyes in a thick mist.
I was very conscious, however, that after the storm of oaths, there was a black moment of silence. Then a heavy voice said without cordiality: “Make yourself at home. There’s a chair yonder by the stove.”
I hung up my saddle and bridle, and went to the chair beside the stove. While the heat waves washed legs and head and throat and belly, and sent the cold shuddering out of me, a gruff voice asked:
“Chow?”
“Yep,” said I, and stretched my arms closer around the stove.
At my answer, one of the men had lurched with a groan of involuntary protest out of his chair and strode into a kitchen from which he came back with a tin plate, which he cast clattering down on the table. He spooned a great heap of brown beans into it, a chunk of white fat of pork, and tossed down a liberal square of bread. Then he poured a tin cup of coffee — the greater part of a pint.
I did not wait for my invitation. It seemed as though the last relics of the rabbit had disappeared into my vitals a long age since. Wind and weather and the labor of the ride and the vital strain upon my courage and my attention through so many hours among the mountains, had made me a more famished man than ever. I marched across that plate with a huge iron spoon in less time than any heroic charge was ever sent home in history. The host, without a word, strode again into the kitchen and returned with an iron pot which, still without speech, he settled with a thump before me.
It was half fil
led with beans and pork. I ate like a wolf, or an Indian, until I was through. Then, with a great sigh, with the bottom of the kettle almost stripped of its provisions, I loosed my belt to the last notch and settled back in my chair. As I did so, I raised my head to the level of a small mirror set against the wall.
It showed me my own face, my broad mouth, my blunt nose, and that square, heavily timbered jaw which, as Father McGuire was wont to say, was designed by a special Providence for the careless receipt of all the buffets which life was likely to send my way. I saw that, and the gleaming black of my eyes, and the glossy black of my Indian hair, and the high cheek bones which are the sign of that outcross of blood which has marked me so deep, and the swarthy skin now flushed with rushing blood in the newly welcomed heat of the room.
I saw all of these things, and then I saw, in the outer corner of the mirror, the dim picture of a man standing with his feet spread wide apart, leaning against the opposite wall of the room. I saw thick cowhide boots on his legs, and heavy corduroy trousers, stained on the thighs with a crust of dirt and grease — perhaps from an untidy habit of wiping his hands there. I saw a burly body and a woolen shirt opened at the hairy throat. I saw a bull neck and a seamed, stern face decorated with a lean fighting jaw and a pair of all-seeing eyes.
He seemed to guess that I was watching and considering him. For now he said: “Well, Porfilo, have you had enough?”
The name went through my heart like a jag of lightning through a summer sky. I leaned heavily forward in the chair and then, swinging around, I saw a last detail of his costume which I had not marked before — the well- polished steel shield of a sheriff pinned on the breast of his shirt!
I flipped a hand back for my gun. But the sheriff did not make a move for his. Neither did either of the other two. They merely leaned forward in their chairs with their elbows on their knees and regarded me with a sort of sad concern and bewilderment.
It was the telegraph, of course, which had given them a description. No doubt the wires had been working as they sent out the word of me from Mendez, and, with my height and bulk and complexion, it was not difficult to spot me from the most casual description. They could practically wire my photograph over the entire range.
“I dunno,” said the sheriff, “but I hope that you come in here to give yourself up, Porfilo?”
“You have me,” said I. “Will you tell me your name?”
“Richard Lawton,” said the sheriff.
“Well, sheriff, here’s my gun,” said I, and I handed over the revolver which Tex Cummins had provided in the saddle holster of the outfit with which he had equipped me.
The sheriff looked down to it like a man in a dream. He folded his hands behind his back.
“Well, boys?” said he. “What am I gonna do?”
“It may be a stall,” said one.
I pushed the revolver back into its leather.
“It may be a stall,” replied the sheriff in the same tone. “I dunno. I dunno what to guess. But he wasn’t so tuckered out that he had to come in here!”
“It’s up to you,” said one of his companions.
“Damnation!” growled the sheriff.
I could not imagine what they were talking about, except that it was me. Why the cold steel of handcuffs was not already securing my wrists, I could not dream.
The sheriff began to pace the floor. He was a huge man. He was as massively built as Harry Chase himself. My hundred and ninety pounds felt fairly elfish in contrast with him.
Then he stopped with his back turned to all of us. “He didn’t know me,” said he. “I guess that’s straight, eh?”
“I guess that’s straight,” answered the pair in the same tone, staring earnestly at me.
“He come in and hung up his saddle and his bridle. You seen that yourself!”
“I seen it!” they replied.
“Darn his boots!” groaned the sheriff. “Ain’t this a devil of a hole for a man to be in?”
“The law is the law, by my way of looking at it,” said one of Lawton’s friends.
“Darn the law!” said the sheriff. “I’m thinkin’ about something that’s more important.”
“What can that be?”
“My honor, you squarehead!”
He was working himself into a greater and greater passion. For my part, the talk was so much beyond me that I began to be a bit worried. It was like sitting in the presence of three serious madmen.
A clock began to strike rapidly and rang out eleven o’clock.
“Bedtime,” said the sheriff. “And what about him?”
There was no answer. The two scratched their chins and looked at me and then at one another.
“Aw, the devil!” said Mr. Lawton. “I’m gonna do this the way I want to do it. The pair of you can talk all you want, and you can let everybody in the mountains hear about it!”
“Not a word from me,” said one. “Only I’m considerable glad that I ain’t in your boots. I’m downright sorry for you, Lawton!”
All this time, while he fought out some inward battle, the sheriff had kept his back to us and his face to the wall, and his big voice had been quivering and booming through the room. Now he turned sharply and beckoned to me. I followed him without a word through a door that opened into a little side room with a snug bunk built against the wall. There was a tick stuffed with straw on it, looking deliciously soft and comfortable.
“You got your own blankets,” said the sheriff. “You can turn in!”
I waited, without saying a word. I waited for the irons which would surely be used to secure me for the night. The sheriff seemed to understand my perplexity, for, as he went out, he leaned a moment at the door.
“I’ll put you on parole, kid,” said he.
It made me jerk up my head like a horse that sights the home barn.
“Do you mean that?” said I.
“I mean it,” said the somber man.
“Then I’ll take you on it! You can have my word of honor, Lawton!”
“Thanks,” murmured the sheriff, and he gave me a queer, uncomfortable little smile. “I suppose I’ll see you in the morning, then?”
“You will.”
The sheriff tilted back his head and laughter flooded his thick throat.
“All right, kid,” said he. “I got to admit that you’re a rare one!”
I sat down on the edge of the bunk after I had spread out my blankets, and I tried to puzzle the thing out. What the whole disturbance was about, I could not understand at all, except that it was clear that there was a weight upon the mind of the sheriff just as there was a weight upon the minds of the others.
Perhaps I should have remained awake to think the thing out, and then I might have seen through the mystery, but after my exposure, the warmth from the food and the meal I had eaten served to put me into a drowsy humor; my brain was working like the stiff cogs of an unoiled machine. I curled the blanket around me, and I was asleep in another moment.
When I wakened at last, the storm was no longer rumbling, but the wind was whistling a keen song around the edges of the house. The sun was shining through the little window, and the noise of tins was in the big room, and a stir of voices. The sheriff and his friends were wakening.
I tumbled out as quickly as I could, and when I stepped into the living room, the first man that saw me was one of Lawton’s companions. He gave out a wild sort of yell, as though he had seen a ghost.
“Name of Heaven!” cried the man. “Hey, Lawton!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Lawton, come here!”
The sheriff came into the doorway with his sleeves rolled up and a strip of raw bacon on the end of his fork, just as it had been when he prepared to drop it into the frying pan. He threw up both his hands. The strip of bacon fluttered away and flopped in the middle of the floor.
“It ain’t him!” cried Lawton. “It’s his ghost!”
“I thought of that — but there’s his saddle!”
The sheriff strode up to me in a black passion. “You stayed over!” he snarled at me.
“Why not?” said I.
“Why, darn your heart,” said he, “how long d’you think I want you here?”
It was an odd question.
“I suppose you don’t have to feed the boys in jail out of your own pocket,” I suggested stiffly.
“Jail? Jail, the devil,” said the sheriff. “Who said anything about jail?”
A weird little hope went through me; it was too fantastic to be put into words, I felt.
“I understood” I began.
“You understood nothin’!” he broke in. “Or else you wouldn’t be here!”
“Lawton,” said I, “it may sound foolish, but as a matter of fact, this sounds very much to me as though you wanted to make an end of keeping me in any place. It almost sounds as though you figured on turning me loose!”
“Does it look that way?” sneered Lawton. “Why, you got eyes, then, ain’t you?”
His sarcasm, however, did not affect me. “Very well,” said I. “I have done talking. You may say what you please.”
He glowered again. His passion seemed to be rising every minute. “Look here, kid,” said Lawton, “I don’t aim to be hard on kids like you. But, worse that that — I can’t be hard on you!”
“Sheriff,” said I, “I don’t follow this. Will you say it in words of one syllable?”
The sheriff raised his big voice to its top note — and he had a voice which would have swamped the bellow of a mad bull.
“You young jackass!” yelled he. “Ain’t this my house? Can I jail a fool kid that walks in and eats my chuck?”
XIV. A RUNNING START
WHEN I TOLD that story to Tex Cummins, a little later, he said: “How did you feel?”