Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  I simply blurted out: “I felt like the devil!”

  That was the truth. The sharpest emotion that I felt was simply a great shame, that I should have put a man of that caliber into such a position that he had to violate the law in order to maintain his sense of chivalry. It fairly knocked the ground out from under me. There was something so clean and direct and sort of childish about that attitude of mind, that it reminded me of Mike O’Rourke.

  “My Lord,” said I to the sheriff, “what sort of men do these mountains breed?”

  That took him back even more than what he said had taken me back. He stood there scratching his chin. Both of his friends had come in. I call them his friends. I might just as well have called them his trained man hunters, for that was what they were.

  “Look at this fool kid,” said the sheriff. “He took me at my word. I give him a parole and he takes it, and he lives up to it! Now what in the devil am I gonna do about it?

  “Look here, kid,” said he, “what do I make out of you? You murdered a gent called Turk Niginski. That’s what you go to the pen for!”

  “If I live to be a hundred,” said I, “they’ll never have a murder against me. That man tried to send a bullet through me. He hit my hat instead of my head. That was my luck. His luck was to get my slug fair and square. But when they picked him up to take him to town, they couldn’t locate his gun; and when they looked at my gun, there were two empty chambers. Y’understand? I’d taken a flier at a rabbit and missed it. That was what beat me. They said that I’d shot the hole in my own hat.”

  “Well, boys?” said the sheriff to his companions.

  They merely shrugged their shoulders.

  “Speaking professional, I don’t believe a word you’ve said,” remarked the sheriff in his rough way. “You been found guilty, and them that are found guilty are guilty. What twelve men decide on is Bible for every sheriff in this here country. But speaking man to man, I got to say that I believe everything you’ve said and a lot more. I think you’re innocent.”

  I cannot tell you how it thrilled me to hear him say it. A vast faith in human nature was brought back in a wave of joy upon my heart.

  He went on: “I’m gonna turn you loose. I wish that it had been at night so’s nobody could see you leave my house. But it’s got to be by day. So, vamose.”

  I was happier still. I went up to the sheriff and held out my hand.

  “Lawton,” said I, “when I thank you, I mean to”

  “Shut up!” said he. “I don’t want to shake hands with you. I’m gonna give you a running start — for a whole hour. Then I’m going to start on your trail and my two bunkies with me. We’re going to get you, too! We’ve got horses that are fast and fresh, and we know this country — which you don’t, I suppose. We’re going to get you, kid, and we’re going to send you back to Mendez on the way to the State prison, with a little extra added onto your term for breaking prison. I’m a sheriff. I’ve swore to uphold the law. I’m going to do it. I’ll run you down if it takes my last hoss and my last man!”

  There was no doubt that he meant business. It scared me; but it made me respect him, too.

  “Very well,” I answered him. “If you’re coming after me, I’ve got to tell you one thing in exchange for the white way you’ve treated me. If I’m caught, I go up to the pen for enough years to wreck my life. I’m not going up!”

  “You’re going to beat all the officers of the law?” said the sheriff with a sneer. “You’re going to outsmart us?”

  I looked at him without any anger. I suppose that the little stretch of time since I left the house of Father McGuire to go to jail had aged me more than all my life before. I was beginning to understand — oh, not very much, but a few of the corners of the world.

  “I don’t think that I can,” said I. “I don’t think that I can outsmart you, and I don’t think that I can beat you. But when you corner me, you won’t take me alive.”

  He was serious enough, at that, and scowled at me. “You’ll fight it out, then?” said he.

  “They took me up on a crooked charge,” said I. “I’ve got a right to be free and to fight to keep free!”

  “Have you?” said the sheriff. “Look here, my son, twelve pretty honest men looked over your case and figgered that you’re guilty. Well, sir, because of that you ain’t got a right to fight back. What the twelve say has to go for the law. Sometimes they make mistakes. From what I’ve seen, they make more mistakes turning guilty devils loose than they do sending up innocent men. But when they do make a mistake, we got to stick by it. It’s hard on you, I admit. But it’s better for the rest of us.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” said I. “I don’t see it your way. I’ve got a gun, and I intend to use it. If you corner me, I’ll shoot five times to kill. I’ll keep the sixth shot for myself.”

  There was just a faint wrinkling of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  “When I was a kid, it was easy for me to talk hard, too,” said he.

  It made me so proudly angry that I almost wished he would start the fight on the spot. But I went out from the house and sobered down when I found my horse. The gray had stood up to the first and second stages of the ride very well. But there was a good deal of fire missing from his eye, and I knew that if I pushed him too hard on this day, it would be the last real bit of work that I could get out of him.

  But in the meantime, I had exactly one hour to take advantage of my head start!

  I clapped a saddle on the gray, bridled him, and jogged out into the valley. The country was rough, but just about one per cent as terrible as it had looked to me in the storm of the night before. As I looked at the crevices, the tumbled stones as big as houses, the thickets and tangles of trees, the twisting ravines, and the big mountains, I decided that it would not be so hard to hide a whole regiment here, let alone one man.

  I timed myself by the watch. I rode straight for half an hour without trying to make any trail problems for the sheriff to solve. Then I intended to devote the rest of the hour to getting into a good hiding place.

  I reached a stretch of hard rocks, then, and turned the gray onto them. What marks he made with his shoes would be hard reading on fresh-faced granite, I thought. At least, it was a trail which I should not have cared to try to decipher.

  Still on those rocks, I turned into the mouth of a ravine and then worked my way to a natural covert among the rocks. There I tethered the gelding and sat down to wait. I waited a full hour. Then I found myself blinking my eyes and glaring in astonishment, for there came the sheriff riding, with his men behind him — three big men on three big horses, stepping lightly among the rocks, with the sheriff swung far down from his saddle to read the trail!

  They had solved my little trail problem almost as swiftly as I had made it. I cursed them in my heart for men with eagle eyes. I looked around me for a way to get out, but there was none. I was backed up against the wall of the cliff, and to escape I had to ride out full in their view.

  I threw myself on the back of the gelding and charged down at them desperately. They were in easy revolver distance — which means very point-blank range. They saw me the instant I shot into view, and three guns chimed like one. The poor gelding tossed its head and pitched to the ground.

  I had only time to touch my feet from the stirrups, and then I opened fire. They had not remained in the saddle. They had taken to their heels after their very first discharge brought me down, and now they were running for cover, firing toward me at random as they ran.

  It would be a very pleasant thing if I could tell you how I shuddered and shrank from the thing which lay before me. As a matter of fact, I didn’t shudder or shrink at all. I simply said to myself: “There are three men trying to kill me, or capture me and give me what is worse than death. I’m going to nail them all or die trying!”

  I thought that while I was rushing my horse out of my rocky covert. My first bullet was on the wing before the body of the brave gray was more t
han settled on the ground. It caught one of the sheriff’s friends in the leg and dropped him on his face. My second shot was better aimed. It struck the big man who was just dropping into cover behind a rock, so that he threw out his arms and rolled out into full view of me. There he lay writhing.

  I steadied my gun for a third shot.

  I thank the Lord that I couldn’t shoot, however; even with the cracking of the sheriff’s revolver to urge me on. He was shooting very straight, but I was in such a position that he could not see me clearly. I tied a white handkerchief on the end of a stick and held it up — a bullet chopped that handkerchief in two and left only a ragged tuft of cloth wagging at the end of the stick.

  Then I heard the sheriff yelling: “D’you give up? You yaller-bellied young swine!”

  That was enough to make any man fight, and I shouted back at him: “They haven’t the sort of men in these mountains that can make me give up. But both your men are down in plain sight of me. Do you want them murdered?”

  There was a moment of silence, during which I suppose the sheriff maneuvered behind his rock until he could catch a glimpse of his two companions. What he saw made him yell back:

  “You’ll hang for this! But is there a truce?”

  “Sure,” said I, “If I go clean free.”

  “Go free and be darned,” said the sheriff, and then he was rash enough, or humane enough, to jump from behind his shelter and rush for his fallen friends.

  I should have gone to help him care for them if I had been a true hero of romance. But I was not a true hero. I was simply a badly scared eighteen-year-old. I took the saddle and bridle and pack from my dead horse. Then I carried them over to the sheriff. He was paying no attention to the fellow who had been wounded in the thigh. But he was kneeling beside the other man, ripping his shirt off.

  I did not offer to help. Neither did I feel any horror when I saw the blood. I looked into the drawn, pain-stricken face of that unlucky fellow and rolled a cigarette! It was callous, of course, but I had just come off with my own life by the grace of good fortune.

  However, there was something about the look of him that told me he would not die.

  “Do you want me to help?” I asked Lawton.

  “You get the devil out of here,” said the sheriff. “I’ve seen too much of you, already.”

  “I’m shy a horse,” said I.

  He jerked his head around and glared very angrily at me. “You’ve got the crust of a brass monkey,” said Lawton. “Lemme hear what you want me to do about it?”

  “Give me a horse in exchange for the one that you killed.”

  Lawton gave one more glance at the wounded man and then back at me.

  “That’s sweet!” snarled he. “I fix up a crook so’s he can get away?”

  “What else is there to do?” I asked him.

  He twitched his big body around so that he could turn his back on me.

  “I’ll loan you any one of the three, if you’ll ride back to town for a doctor,” said he. “No,” he added, as I started in, “don’t take the black.”

  The black was his own horse. I was to know more about the qualities of that black later on. But in the meantime, I concentrated on the other pair. I have already said that they were strong horses, quite up to carrying my weight even in the mountains. I selected a pale chestnut mare with a rather Roman nose and an ugly look in her eye, but with four sound-looking legs and room enough where the front cinch ran to promise plenty of bottom. I dragged off the saddle and bridle which were on her and put on my own instead.

  Then I mounted, and with her first step I knew that I had not changed my gray for a worse mount. The step of the mare was as light as drifting smoke. I have always thought that you can read a horse’s enduring qualities and courage better by its walk than at any other gait. I like the rhythm of this nag’s tread. I rode back to the sheriff.

  “He won’t die,” I said.

  But he did not return a word to me.

  So I turned the head of the mare out of the ravine, and when I got into the valley I tried her gallop. It carried me along like a song until I came to a little huddle of houses at a crossroads — a wretched, cold-looking little village. I dared to ride straight into it. First I went on my own account into the store.

  “Ain’t that Jackson’s hoss you got?” asked the fat old storekeeper.

  “He loaned him to me to come in for some chuck,” said I.

  I bought some bacon and flour, some salt and sugar, some dried apples — and some ammunition for a Colt .45. Then I started out.

  “Kind of young to be workin’ for Lawton, ain’t you?” said the storekeeper, coming to the door to watch me mount.

  “Oh, I ain’t so young,” said I. “Besides, the sheriff will take a flier now and then.”

  “Has there been no track of that young Porfilo that’s said to of hit for the mountains up this way?” he broke off sharply, and, staring as though he saw my face for the first time: “Why” exclaimed the storekeeper, and then paused again.

  I knew that he had recognized me, but I also knew that he was not the sort of a man to pull a gun even at as young a criminal as myself. I merely waved to him and asked him where the doctor lived. He told me that the doctor’s house was at the eastern end of the street, set back behind a row of firs. I found it as he described it. It looked like a funeral, to be sure!

  I put my mare at the fence, and she took it flying. Then I went winging up the path to the front door and fetched a kick at it that sent a crashing echo through the house. In a moment the door was whipped open and the doctor jumped out under the nose of my horse.

  “Who’s dying?” he asked.

  “The sheriff and Jackson are in trouble. Jackson has been shot through the body,” I told him, and then I described where I had left the pair of them. He wanted me to wait and ride to the spot with him, but I told him that he couldn’t miss it — which was true — and that I would hurry back ahead of him. I hurried the mare over the fence again, put her down the street at a canter, and was beginning to gather headway when I heard a yelling behind me, and then I saw two fellers coming up the street like madmen, with the hat blown off the head of one and the brain blown out of the head of them both, I suppose.

  It was red-eye, perhaps. Or perhaps they had simply heard the excited storekeeper speak of me and the calm manner in which I had dared to ride into their town. Such effrontery was an insult to every man in the village, of course. This pair decided that they would have to go after me. Perhaps neither of them would have had the courage, taken by himself. But a companion egged him on.

  They had their guns out already, and as they came around the corner, reeling far off and shooting a cloud of dust out to the side, they opened fire. They worked from the backs of running horses. Their bullets went wide — yes, very wide!

  I put my first bullet through the shoulder of the unlucky rascal who rode on the right. It must have been a frightfully painful wound. He twisted around in his saddle with a great scream of agony and pitched onto his face in the dust.

  That was enough for his friend, too. He had a good excuse to stop his charge at me — he had to go back and take care of his unlucky bunkie. So he twitched his cow pony around and went back to the fellow who was kicking and cursing in the thick dust.

  I went on up the valley.

  I remember feeling that I was lucky to have only wounded them. But I did not feel it had been any great deliverance. Sooner or later, I decided, they would corner me, and my promise to the sheriff would have to be lived up to. In the meantime, one might as well be hunted for the killing of twenty men as of one!

  XV. IN HIDING

  BY THIS TIME, I despaired of getting any headway toward a safe flight until I was better acquainted with that country. It was far too bewildering. I never could tell from what direction men might be riding toward me. I did not know which were blind trails and which were well-traveled ones. I did not know the difficulties of short cuts or the advantages of them. In f
act, I knew nothing except that I was tossed down in a ragged ocean of mountains. In the meantime, I would have to get my bearings and establish some sort of a mental chart of my surroundings.

  There was sure to be a frightful stir. Such a man as Lawton, impatient and bold and strong and sure of himself, would go almost mad with the reflection that a youngster such as I had stopped him, shot down two of his men, and then bearded the villagers in his town a scant mile or two away!

  He would make enough trouble to occupy the attention of an army, to say nothing of the fuss that the men of the town might make, because I had had the impudence to go into their town in broad daylight.

  The fact was that I had had no intention of doing a dare-devil thing. Even after the sheriff had recognized me, I did not feel that every other man would be able to do so. I had felt quite secure during that adventure. But now I saw that I would be known instantly wherever I appeared.

  All of this was enough to make me decide to lie as low as possible for a time until, by quiet excursions here and there, I had mapped the country for myself. But where was I to hide?

  I had never forgotten how my father had hidden a book from me when he did not wish me to read it. He simply put it on a shelf in plain sight — except that the back was to the wall. I combed the house from top to bottom and hunted in every closet, through every old trunk in the attic, through every nook of the cellar. But it was six months before I found that volume — by purest accident.

  I decided that I should do the same thing with the sheriff. Wits I could not match against him. I felt that the coolest place for me would be on the very edge of the danger itself! So I went right back up the creek until I saw the peaked roof of his house to my left. Then I rode up a trail where the path came down to a ford, so that the prints of my horse would be lost in a tangle of other signs.

  In a hundred yards I dipped to the right into a thick wooded place. When I came to the first clearing I decided that this would have to be my home. There was forage here for my mare. I had my blankets and food. There was very little chance that they would comb the country so close to the house of the sheriff!