by Max Brand
A greater space had opened, now, when from the side, straight toward him, walked another man. Four, then, to finish him off? He could have laughed. It was too perfect and too complete a trap, and with what ease they were prepared to swallow him! Let him kill but one man before he fell!
Upon either side the three killers were terribly close, when the newcomer stepped up to Signal and turned toward the pair who advanced cautiously from the rear.
“Hello, boys,” said he. “What you come for in here? Me?”
It was Colter! But how different from the ragged, tattered, hunger-pinched man of the mountains! He was like a cavalier; he needed only plumes in his lofty sombrero. Even young Charlie Bone was not more splendid. Yet, within this casing of glory, there was the same lean, hard, handsome face.
He stood now with his feet spread a little apart, and his hands dropped upon either hip, which was girdled with the most brilliant of silken scarfs. And, strapped to his hips, there were two guns, just under the tips of his fingers.
“Henry, what the devil do you mean?”
“I mean what I say. Have you come here for me?”
“It’s the deputy! It’s that damned new one! I’m gunna get him now!”
So said Charlie Bone, and Henry Colter nodded.
“All right, boys,” he remarked. “You can have him any minute, when you’re through with me. But not until I’m down — and I’ll go down smoking, I warn you that!”
They had halted.
Signal, dizzy with relief, turned toward the third man and saw a hideously scarred face which was known to him before. Those features contracted and worked with malice, now. But the fellow had halted. Suddenly Signal cried over his shoulder, softly:
“Colter, if you’ll stand with me, let’s clean them up! The damned, sneaking murderers! They laid the trap for me. Three to one!”
“Come, come!” said Colter. “These ain’t bad boys at all. I know ’em all. They’re all friends of mine, I tell you! Don’t you go worrying and bothering about them. They’re all right. Look here, I’ll introduce you!”
“Henry,” said Mentor, who accompanied Charlie Bone, “are you really going to gum up this here deal? We got him spread out for a wind up!”
Colter replied genially: “The man that takes a shot at John Alias is taking a shot at me. And the man that takes a shot at me is gunna live in an atmosphere that’s blowin’ lead for a considerable spell. Now I tell you boys the straight of this, and I mean it! Step up here and shake hands with my friend, John Alias.”
They had come to a pause. They formed a tight little circle of five, glowering at one another. In the distance the spectators no longer crowded back against the horses along the walls but moved nearer, to hear what they could, now that it appeared there would be no shooting.
“You all ought to know each other,” said Henry Colter. “Here’s Doc Mentor. You can tell him by the scar on his face. And here’s Santa Claus. He’s got a kind face, ain’t he? All he needs is the whiskers! And of course you’ve met Charlie Bone before. Shake hands, boys!”
“If you’re right with Henry,” said Charlie Bone, “you’re right with me. If you’re good enough for Colter, you’re good enough for Charlie Bone. And here’s my hand, John Alias!”
“Good for you—” began Colter.
But Signal struck the proffered hand away and stepped closer to the handsome face of the boy. In the smiling youth of Charlie Bone he felt, now, more danger than he ever had felt before in any man — unless it were Henry Colter himself, and great Fitz Eagan. But he welcomed that danger with a whole-hearted hatred.
“I’d rather,” said Signal, “shake hands with a damned sneak of a coyote just in from killing chickens. I’d rather shake hands with the fangs of a rattlesnake than touch you — except with my fist, Bone!”
Charlie Bone looked him up and down, contented, still smiling.
“You take it hard,” he commented.
“They would have murdered me!” said Deputy Sheriff John Alias. “Do you hear me, Colter? They trailed me through the town. Three against one is their idea of a fair sporting chance and an even fight!”
“The point is,” said Colter, soothingly, “that you ain’t been touched. Don’t you let your imagination start running away with you. These here boys, I’ll swear, was only playing a little sort of a game of tag with you. They was trying out your nerves.”
“Of course,” agreed Santa Claus, smiling in turn. “And we found that the kid was made of the real stuff. He didn’t run. He stood to deliver the goods!”
Said John Signal: “I’ve heard your say. I’ve seen all of your lying faces. Mind you this: The next time that I see two of you together, I start shooting, and I shoot to kill. You, Bone, I’ve written down specially big and clear. And you, Mentor! This is the second time that you’ve tried to get me. And the third time, one or the other of us will have to leave home!”
An angry answer came upon the lips of Mentor, but Henry Colter waved him away.
“Get off, the three of you,” said he. “I’ll handle this colt, if I can!”
And the three drifted off in one ominous group.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NOW, RELEASED FROM the presence of the others, it appeared to Signal that the crowd would soon flow back toward their old place in the center of the room, but there seemed to be no desire on the part of anyone to come too close to them. Colter was saying quietly to his companion:
“You’ve made a big mistake today, son. Those boys would have been your friends. They would have stuck to you through thick and thin!”
“I don’t want such friends for a gift,” replied Signal. “Every one of the three is capable of damned mob-murder. You saw them all come at me! Thank God I had you here, Colter. And that’s one thing that I’ll never forget. Mind you, I’m going to show you what I’ll do to all of ’em, before the finish; and I’ll try to show you that I never forget a friend, Colter. It was a fine thing to see you stand them off!”
He was on fire with enthusiasm, but Colter said quietly:
“I wasn’t in the least danger. Those boys are all old friends of mine. And whatever I’ve done, it doesn’t more than balance against what you did for me in the mountains. You took me in, kid, I tried to double-cross you, and then you gave me another chance. Any way you figure up this account, I’m still in debt!”
Signal protested.
“You’re in the sheriff game for what you can get out of it?” asked Colter suddenly. “Or are you in it for glory?”
The boy laughed lightly. So great a burden had been lifted from him in the past few minutes that he could have afforded to laugh into the face of a dragon.
“I’m here for the glory,” said he.
“Well, then,” said Colter, “I don’t know how you and me are going to get along together.”
“Because I work for the sheriff?”
“No. Ogden is a good friend of mine. I never bother Monument, and Monument never bothers me. There you are! How are you going to stand toward me?”
“I’ve taken an oath,” answered the youngster. “God knows how close I’ll come to living up to it!”
“And friendship, John?”
“Ay, that’s the other thing. But after what’s happened between us, how could I ever want to lay a hand on you, Colter?”
Said Henry Colter gravely:
“You know my line, partly. I’m not a saint. I’ve raised a good deal of hell. I expect to raise a good deal more. I won’t ask you in to cut the melons with me because I see that you ain’t that kind, but if it’s agreeable to you, suppose that we say: ‘Friend!’ and shake permanent on that?”
“I never was gladder to do anything!” replied the boy, and their hands closed strongly.
Colter nodded, highly pleased.
“That’s that,” said he. “We’ll have to solder that handshake with a drink; but first I want to see how that bone-headed blacksmith is gunna fit my hoss with shoes. Will you come over and take a look?�
��
It was a splendid bay, wedged sideways against the wall, head thrown high and strained back, ears flattened, nostrils dilated with fear.
“That’s a horse!” commented the boy with much enthusiasm.
“That’s a horse,” agreed the other. “I can’t afford to ride cheap horseflesh. I have to cover too much ground, now and then. This brute is a little too nervous.”
The blacksmith, approaching at that moment, laid a quieting hand upon the flank of the bay, and then picked up a forefoot to take off the old shoe.
“It’s the other foot that needs a shoe,” pointed out Colter.
The blacksmith shifted to the other side of the horse, and after working a moment with his tool, he pried off the shoe and cast it on the floor — a freshly made shoe, at that, but the tip of one side had been broken off.
“There’s a sign of the damned shoddy work that they do now,” explained Colter, picking up the shoe. “They don’t temper the iron with any care. Look at this one! Chilled it too quick, and took the life out of the metal, the fools!”
But the boy stared, in a maze of wonder, for he recognized that shoe. In his pocket, at that moment, was the fragment which had been broken from it! He knew, therefore, who had organized that murderous attack upon the Mexicans in the ca¤on of San Real; who had shot them down, and gone back and forth, murdering the wounded who lay on the trail. It was Colter and his crew. Colter, with whom he had barely finished shaking hands, with such a warmth and swelling of his heart!
Colter, in the meantime, was examining the shoes out of which the smith intended to pick a new one, and when the selection had been made to his taste, he carried Signal away to the nearest saloon.
At the door, he paused with a broad grin.
“You know what this saloon is?”
“Well?”
“It’s Mortimer’s.”
“I can’t go in here, then. This is the Bone hang-out!”
“Of course it is. But you’re drinking with me, and while you’re with me, there ain’t a Bone in the world that would raise a gun at you. Come on in. It’ll give the boys a little shock. They’ll kind of half figure that I’m throwin’ them down!”
They passed inside. Mortimer’s Saloon was as fine an emporium of liquor as stood in the town of Monument. Ninety feet of varnished bar ran down one side of the room, with four bartenders working busily behind it, their images rising and bowing rapidly in the big mirrors at the rear of the bar; but what Signal saw, first of all, was a white-bearded old man, with a benevolent aspect and a gentle eye. He smiled upon them and waved them forward for a drink.
“This is Daddy Bone,” said Colter. “Dad, this is John Alias that you’ve heard about. This drink is on me. Alias and me are turning bottoms up to a long friendship and a smooth one!”
Old Bone nodded again in his amiable manner.
“It’s a kind of a drink that I dunno that I could swaller,” said he. “I jest finished drinkin’ with Mentor and Charlie to the quick scalpin’ of this same young feller. But I’ll drink mine afterward!”
This singular remark made Signal chuckle. He observed that he had become a bright center of interest all along the bar. There was a shifting away from the end at which he stood with Colter.
“They don’t know whether I’m going to pull a gun on you and try to blow your spinal column apart, or what I’m after!” smiled Colter. “This here bothers them a lot. Here’s to you, Johnny Alias — a long life and a straight one to you; a short life and a damned bright one for me. Will you drink to that?”
And down went the whisky.
Old Bone, in the meantime, waited until the liquor of the first pair of glasses was exhausted. Then he raised his own brimmer.
“Here,” said he, “is to the hand that holds the gun that shoots the slug that finishes the fight in Monument.” He tossed off the glass and coughed. “And I dunno that I could of drunk nothin’ more grand and impartial. Boys, will you have another on me?”
But Colter answered: “I’ve got something else to do with the kid.” He pointed about the room. There were at least two score of men of all sizes and ages standing before the bar or sitting in the leather upholstered chairs, for Mortimer had spent a small fortune to equip his place with the utmost comfort.
“You look around you, John,” said he. “Write down their faces in your mind. These fellers are all friends of mine and friends of old Dad Bone, here. You take a long think. Maybe you’ll make up your mind that you’ll want to pick more than me for your friend out of the lot.”
He took the boy back to the street and there found his horse waiting. They mounted.
“You better come along with me,” said Colter.
“And where?”
“Out to old Pineta’s house. I gotta see Esmeralda. She’s cut up a good deal, right now.”
“And why?”
“Because for two reasons. One is that it’s pretty near six weeks since I asked Esmeralda to marry me, and she’ll be kind of peeved if I don’t pay her that little attention now and then. The other is that she needs cheering up. She’s had a couple of cousins killed in that gun-fight in the San Real Ca¤on. You heard about that from Pancho Pineta, I guess.”
“Gun-fight!” echoed the boy. “From what I heard of the thing, it wasn’t a fight at all. It was a massacre, Colter!”
“Massacre? Massacre?” echoed Colter amiably, as though he hardly placed the word. “I’ll tell you what, I don’t get your drift, there.”
“Murder, then. That’s better, I’d say,” said Signal, and looked keenly from the corner of his eye at his companion.
The face of Henry Colter was totally unmoved.
“I dunno,” said he, “but I never quite been able to call the killing of a greaser or two murder.”
Undoubtedly he spoke, to a certain extent, from the heart, and great wonder came upon Signal. Half the disgust and the horror left him until he remembered the scene as he had come upon it, and the dead men lying in their blood where they had fallen in the hopeless slaughter.
“Ten men!” said the boy. “Ten human beings! Great God! And all for the sake of a few mule loads!”
“Few mule loads your head!” answered his companion. “I know one of the boys who worked in that job. They split up sixty-four thousand Mexican silver dollars among the lot of ’em. Was that worth while? It was, I’d say! What right had a lot of greasers to that much money? Come along. I’m overdue at the Pineta house!”
So young John Signal allowed himself to drift on at the side of his companion, the roan swinging out freely, reaching hard at the bit.
Never, he felt, did an officer of the law ride more strangely fitted with a companion who was a murderer, wholesale, but against whose arrest his hands were so securely tied by the bonds of mutual service, and by a deeply pledged word of honor.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT WAS A moment in the life of the boy when he felt that he could add up the list of the forces which were working upon him, though he could not tell the direction in which they would eventually cast him; for though he could enumerate so many, yet he could not tell how each would be applied to him, and how one might reinforce or nullify another.
Yonder was the shooting scrape which had driven him across the mountains, above and beyond the law as he had known it all his life. And here in Monument, he was living in the service of the very law which he had offended.
To Fitz Eagan he was a friend, or wished to be one. But Fitz Eagan was an enemy of the law and therefore his own professional enemy!
To all the Bone tribe, and particularly to Charlie Bone, and to Mentor, of the scarred face, and to Joe Klaus (otherwise Santa Claus) and to Sim Langley, he had devoted his particular hatred. But, chief of all that faction, Henry Colter was his boon companion and sworn friend. Colter, murderer in chief, with the blood of San Real Ca¤on still fresh upon his hands and upon whatever conscience he might possess!
It bewildered him to think of these complications. And there was the
sheriff himself, vaguely fumbling ahead, striving to bring law and order to Monument, while he sustained one faction of these villains consciously, and set his face against the rest!
In this wild confusion of impulses and impacts, what, therefore, would be the ultimate conclusion? Where was he bound, and how long would he be able to sail with the whirlwind before he was struck by a reef?
He began to surrender all hope of solving the problems, but he told himself that he would follow what compass he could, pointing due north toward his duty. For young men continually struggle toward the absolute; only middle age accepts the world as it finds it and is more or less content to drift with life, asking no perfection, no sky-towering standards.
So the deputy sheriff rode out with Monument’s greatest criminal and came to the house of Pineta, cool and retired in a cloud of trees. They found Esmeralda Pineta all in black, which made her face seem pale and her eyes and her hair more shadowy dark than when Signal, fleeing from Langley’s Mexicans, had had his first glimpse of her.
She greeted them cheerfully enough but turned her attention to Signal at once. She had been waiting eagerly, she said, to see him. Their first meeting had been only an exchange of glances. However, Mr. Langley had had a great deal to say about him. So she laughed with Signal, and softened her eyes at him, and told him, as plainly as a musical voice and a beautiful face could, that she liked him very well indeed and that there was really no other man with whom she would more willingly spend these minutes of this particular day.
And out of the cold darkness of his doubts and perplexities and his fears, Signal stepped as it were into a pleasant sunshine, and unfolded, and laughed back at her, and years disappeared from his stern young face.