Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Before I finished, the colonel came back, looking very pleased with himself. He said that he had two men who were made to order for work like this. They would be at my disposal the moment I wanted them. He also had a good, strong buckboard; one of the two hired hands was greasing the wheels. And there would be four horses as tough as shoe leather. They would gallop all the way to Makerville and back, if need were.

  In finishing, he pointed out that it was already after sundown!

  Yes, he was as keen as a ferret that I should start the work at once, and I could hardly keep from laughing as I saw him striding about the office on his long, cranelike legs. However, there was plenty to crowd the laughter back in my throat, when I thought forward to the job that lay ahead.

  Then the colonel took me out the back door of the hotel and across a vacant lot. There, waiting in a lane inches deep with dust, was the outfit — a two-seated buckboard, a span hitched to it, and another pair on a lead behind. The men who waited with the rig were humped over, looking no more human than shapeless sacks in that dim light.

  Riggs made me acquainted with “Slim Jim” Earl, on the driver’s seat, and Dan Loftus, handling the led horses. We shook hands all around. The colonel wanted to put in a big bottle of whisky, but I made him take it back with him. We said good-by, I stepped into the rig, and off we went, swishing through the dust. It was exactly nine o’clock.

  Daylight had ended long ago, but every star was out in a pure sky, and the loom of the trail was distinct enough before us. One could always tell the difference in color between the dust of its surface and the darker ground around us. But we could not see well enough to dodge ruts and bumps.

  I never had such a rough ride in my life. It fairly jolted and hammered the life out of me, especially during the first miles. For Slim Jim Earl wanted to distinguish himself immediately and show how careless he was and what a breakneck driver. Finally I had to tell him to pull up, and that he was the bravest driver in the world, but that I was not the bravest passenger.

  He grunted when I said that, but he managed to control his disgust.

  After that, we went along at a more moderate gait, but that road was the work of the devil. Rather, it was not work at all — it was simply an accident that happened to connect the two towns of Makerville and Piegan. It dipped into hollows, climbed to rises, staggered along bumpy levels, and swayed down again into abysmal depths which often had a cold, ominous glint of starlit water in them. Once we crossed running water so deep that it almost touched the body of the wagon.

  No matter with what caution we navigated that road, the straining and the bumping began to tire me terribly. We went along, I should say, at about seven miles an hour; it would be after midnight before we arrived, even maintaining a steady pace. But I had to stop the buckboard twice and walk ahead of it. A pinch was coming in my side, threatening to double me up.

  When we came in sight of the glimmer of lights in Makerville, I pulled up the buckboard again, wrapped up in a blanket, and lay down on the bottom of the wagon. They wanted to know what was the matter, and I said that we were too early for the execution of my plan. That was not true. I simply had to get the kinks out of me and stop the pattering downfall of my heartbeats. So I lay there and looked at the stars, and went to sleep.

  When I wakened, it was more than an hour later — just one-thirty, to be exact — and I was cold and stiff. But the heart was behaving now, for the first time in hours, and I cared little about anything else.

  My two companions were disgusted. They would hardly answer when I spoke to them. They had sat up, shivering, all the time that I lay snug in the blanket. And it was a cold night. The wind was not strong, but it was nicely iced by the mountain snows over which it had blown.

  They asked me what share they were to take in what was about to happen, and I told them that they were simply to wait where I wanted them. Where I wanted them was a good deal closer in. It was across the bridge, and bang up close to the house of the creator of Makerville.

  “They may be watching that bridge,” said Slim Jim, as we came closer to it.

  But there was no light showing, and I thought that we might be able to chance it. So we drove straight onto it. The sound grew more and more hollow beneath the hoofs of the horses; the heavy planks that made the bridge surface began to rattle like castanets at the sides.

  When we got to the top of the arch, I could see the glimmer of the water up and downstream, and two or three lights gleaming on it. A moment later, three men stepped out and covered us with double-barreled shotguns.

  Yes, we put up our hands.

  A man can take a chance with a revolver, and half a chance with a rifle. But shotguns are poison, at close range, and these were close. One fellow stood at the heads of the horses. The others were on each side of us.

  “Where’s Doc, with the lantern?” one of the trio asked, and another said that “Doc” was coming at once.

  We could see him running toward us, his shadow swinging crazily between heaven and earth, with the lantern flashing beside him.

  “This is an outrage,” Slim Jim Earl was saying.

  “Maybe it is, boys,” said one of the three. “We ain’t here to please ourselves, but to please Mr. Maker. It may be an outrage, but we ain’t taking any chances. After all, it ain’t a very long cry from here to Makerville, is it?”

  The lantern bearer came up and flashed the light in our faces.

  “By thunder!” he cried out. “These are Piegan men! I recognize that one! He’s Slim Jim Earl, one of Riggs’s crooks!”

  CHAPTER IX. MEN OF MAKERVILLE

  AS YOU CAN tell electricity by the shock and the thrust of it, so you could tell by the sound of those fellows’ growling that they meant trouble and big trouble for the three of us. I sat numbed and sick in my place, and my heart began to race like a stone bounding downhill, rattling and crashing. That was the thing that I had to think of first.

  The four guards of the bridge had their guns under our noses. And Slim Jim Earl seemed to give up the fight, for he said:

  “Well, I’m from Piegan, and that’s a fact. What of it?”

  One of the Makerites fairly shouted with rough laughter.

  “He says what about it, but we’ll show him what about it!” he declared. “We’ll show him pronto. If they ain’t ropes in Piegan, they maybe think that we ain’t got ’em in Makerville. Who is these other two?”

  The lantern was thrust in the face of Dan Loftus.

  “I know that fellow, too,” said one. “That’s Loftus, and he’s from Piegan, too. The whole three of ’em are from Piegan. Get them out of that rig. I dunno that we’ll find a tree handier than the arch of this here bridge.”

  “D’you mean that you’ll hang us for doing nothing but drive into your town?” roared Dan Loftus.

  “Doing nothing?” said the lantern bearer, a big man, who seemed to be the chief spirit among them all. “Living in Piegan is doing something. I’d rather see a man from the pen than from Piegan. A lot of worthless crooks you all are. And who’s this one?”

  He flashed the lantern on me, his face all viciously set to jeer. It wasn’t an easy moment. I was walking on tiptoe, as you might say, along the edge of a cliff high enough to put the life out of all three of us. They meant murder, right enough.

  Well, when I had the glare of the lantern in my face, I had to think fast and reach far for my words, and the only name or word or idea that came to me was what I blurted out:

  “Maker! That’s who I want to see.”

  The lantern bearer turned, like the brute and fool that he was, to one of his companions, with that same loud, bawling laugh.

  “He wants to see Maker, he says. He’ll see Maker, all right!”

  “Yeah, we’ll show him to Maker, and Maker to him,” said another of the guards, and they laughed again, as though they were great wits.

  I saw Slim Jim turn his head and look at me. His eyes rolled, and the whites of them were glistening. I never saw a man
in greater fear.

  “Look what you’ve brought us into!” he snapped at me, with a whine of high terror in his voice.

  “You done the bringing, did you?” said the man of the lantern, jeering at me again. “We’ll do the taking, though!”

  “Is there any one here with half his wits about him?” I asked, looking around past their leader.

  “Hey!” he shouted at me. “I don’t suit you, eh?”

  I still had my hands in the air and knew that I dared not lower them. But I was thinking of all sorts of chances — I might crash my fists down into his face and jump for the rail of the bridge and so dive over for the water beneath. Though probably the water was shallow enough to let me break my head on the bottom.

  “You don’t suit me,” I said to him. “Or has Maker nothing but fools working for him? He talked sensibly enough when he told me to bring these two boys over from Piegan.”

  The man of the lantern was hot as a coal, when he heard me talk like this. He swung back his fist and seemed about to slam me with it, when something stopped him and kept him wavering for an instant, poised on the blow.

  “He told you to bring them here?”

  “Yes,” said I.

  “Sid Maker told you?”

  I pretended to lose my temper.

  “I’ve told you that before, you jackass,” said I. “How many times do I have to repeat it? Why else should I be here with the pair of them if Maker hadn’t promised me a good fat split, and pay for both the boys, if I brought them in?”

  The man of the lantern lowered his fist. And at the same time I lowered my hands — but slowly. The guards hardly seemed to notice what I had done with my hands, they were so troubled by what I had just said to them.

  Jim Earl looked at me again, but this time there was a wild hope mingled with the fear in his rolling eye. I was beginning to do a little hoping myself.

  “What would he want you to bring them in for?” asked the leader of the guards, scowling at me.

  “Go and ask him,” I snapped back, sharp and quick. “You know most of his business, it seems, and so you might as well know that, too. Take us along to Sid Maker. He’s the man that I have to see to-night — unless I’m hanged by fools on the way. Take us on to Sid Maker.”

  “What would Maker want men from Piegan for?” said the lantern bearer, growling out the words to one of the others.

  “I dunno,” said his companion. “I dunno what he would want with anybody out of Piegan.”

  “You know everything about Piegan, do you?” I broke in.

  “I know enough about Piegan. I don’t wanta know any more,” said the fellow.

  “Well,” said I, “Sid Maker doesn’t feel that way. He finds it hard to learn too much about Piegan. He wants to learn and to keep right on learning. That’s his way. That’s what he willing to pay hard cash for. Take us on to Maker, will you?”

  “I dunno,” said the lantern bearer. “I never thought of that. I never thought that they might be deserters, coming over to our side. I wouldn’t blame anybody for leaving Piegan and coming over to our side.”

  “Scotch Malmsby came over last week, just this way,” said another of the men.

  That recollection seemed to make up their minds for them all.

  The lantern bearer turned back on me and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I dunno,” said he, “but I guess that you’re all right. I’d like to knock the loose jaw off of your face, and I guess that I’ll do in for you, the next time that we meet — but you can go through, to-night.”

  “Come along with us,” said I. “I want you to come along.”

  “Why do you want me to come along?” he asked.

  “I want Sid Maker to see the sort of fools he has working for him,” said I.

  The man swelled like a pouter pigeon.

  “I’m going to slam you right now. I ain’t going to wait!” he snarled and made a step at me.

  I let him come right up close and laughed in his face. I knew that he didn’t have the nerve to hit what he thought was one of his boss’s men. And I was right.

  “Go on and slam me,” said I. “Sid Maker won’t believe what I’ve got to tell him, unless I’ve got your signature on me. But if I can show him that, he’ll have your hide instead of pigskin and cover saddles with it. It’s thick enough for that, I guess.”

  He went into another convulsion, but, stepping back, he ordered us to drive on. He said that he would fill us full of buckshot if we remained there another moment.

  Well, I badgered him a little longer, and invited any of them to come with us, but they declined the job, with thanks. They had enough of our company, it seemed, and finally Slim Jim Earl started the mustangs up, and we went walking, and then jogging across the bridge.

  When there was enough night and rumbling behind us to shut us completely away from the guards, Earl gave a little yell of triumph, and Dan Loftus joined him in cheering.

  They seemed pretty pleased with the way that I had handled the thing, and I thought, myself, that I had been fairly smart about it. However, the truth was simply that a chance bluff had worked. Slim Jim wouldn’t have it so. I couldn’t tell him that his own words had popped into my mind the proper answer to the guards.

  Slim Jim said that he was ready to follow on any trail in the world, no matter where it led. He said that he had been close to trouble before, but this night he had been so close to hanging that he could feel a kink in his neck.

  And Dan Loftus said that he could agree to all that and that he had felt the scratching of the rope and the pressure of the knot under his ear.

  I laughed a little as I heard them talking. It made me feel prouder, and I was warm all through to think of the way we had driven straight through that bridge guard.

  But I didn’t laugh very long. There were too many things before us and behind us now. For one thing, there was the necessity of getting back across that creek, if we were to return. And across the bridge we could not go. That was settled!

  I thought the thing over and wished that I had made inquiries about the state of the creek’s bank. We drove the buckboard down the side of the water until we found a place where the two shores were shelving and the water spread out so wide that it was almost sure to be a sound ford.

  We would have to unhitch the horses from the rig and have them in readiness to use as riding mounts, on that return trip.

  Both Slim Jim and Loftus groaned at the thought of this. Those mustangs were meant for driving, anyway. They were not intended to be riding horses, both of my companions said. So I had them unhitched, and bareback they rode the four.

  I thanked my luck that only one of the four bucked, and even that mustang seemed to do it rather from excess of spirit than any real intention of getting its rider off.

  Then I turned my mind straight toward the business of the evening.

  CHAPTER X. SIDNEY MAKER

  SO I LEFT the two Piegan men there with the horses and started off for the house of Sidney Maker. Now that I look back on it, I wonder at the folly of the thing — I mean, hitting off there through the dark like that, with no real plan, but just aiming blindly to get near to my man and then trust to luck. However, that was what I did.

  Earl and Loftus, I remember, asked me what I had in my mind, and I told them, with a lofty air, that it would turn out all right and that talk would do no good.

  That was true, because there were no ideas in my mind. Not a one. Well, I went on, and found the main road, and it wasn’t hard, in the clearness of that starlight, to locate the lane that turned off to the Maker house. One could see it from a distance, bulking big and black against the glow of the white stars. Maker had picked out a large hill and crowned it with his house.

  When I got up close to it, I found a large gate — two big stone pillars, rather, with the gates to be fitted in later on, I suppose. Inside of that there was a graveled drive, and I avoided that. There’s nothing that makes such noises underfoot as gravel. So I skirted that
, and when I came up under the house, I saw that it was a big two-story affair, with not a light in the front. The windows were as dark as the eyes in the skull of a death’s-head.

  That was not so very cheerful.

  I went around to the side of the place. That was all black, too. I had brought along a dark lantern, and now I saw that I would have to get into the place and hunt from room to room, with a ray of light of pick out the sleeping face of Sid Maker.

  Nothing to make one jolly, that idea!

  However, I didn’t shudder. You see, whatever I was doing, I had to keep telling myself that the most important thing was to keep my heart steady and quiet. Once it began rioting, I was done for, and might have to lie on the ground for an hour until it grew quiet once more. So I kept myself calm, and turned the corner to the back of the house.

  There I saw a broad funnel of light striking out of a window and showing up a couple of patches of sagebrush and the dark of some trees beyond it. Sid Maker was apparently making a garden. I saw the winding of a couple of paths. The garden was chiefly blow sand and hope, but you could tell that it was a garden that he had in mind.

  I tried to remember all the details that I had heard of him, but I stopped with the one sentence that everybody had repeated to me, without fail. He was like a bulldog. That was the main thing. A man who looked like a bulldog and was a bulldog. That was all. I couldn’t fail to know him!

  I tried to conjure up in my mind a picture of a bulldog’s face, but I couldn’t find anything essentially human in that. I had asked for a picture, but nobody had any photos of Sidney Maker.

  I paused at the corner of the house, thinking this over, and I was about to step toward the window from which the light came, when a smudge fell over my eyes. It was the dull shade cast by a great hulk of a man with a rifle in his hands. He had stepped out of some shrubs right into my path.