Black Thunder

by Max Brand

  “I told her the truth about what you’re going to be, Harrigan,” said MacTee. “Because when I get through with you, today, you’re going to be afraid to lift your head and look even a Chinaman in the face. I’m going to grind you so damn’ small, Harrigan, that the wind can blow you away.”

  “Perhaps,” said Harrigan, “but not just now.”

  “You’re turning yellow already, are you?” demanded MacTee. “You’re trying to back down, are you? You’re a rat.”

  “MacTee,” said Harrigan, “all the soul of me is itching in my hands. But we can’t fight it out now. She’ll be back before we could finish. Only, I promise you that you’ll have your chance before the day’s ended. We’re going to take a walk, now, with Kate. We’re going to be polite to each other. And tomorrow, one of us will either be dead or gone away. Is that right?”

  MacTee, after fixing a glance of terrible disdain on Harrigan for a moment, turned on his heel and strode off to a small distance. He began to walk up and down, wrapped in his dark thoughts.

  But Harrigan leaned against a tree and smoked a cigarette, and watched Angus MacTee. Dimly there passed through his mind the many pictures of the days when he had walked at the side of Angus MacTee into the face of dangers that they had met together. They had wrought such deeds for one another that the whole wide West had spoken of them. They had been such friends as men conceive, but never find.

  Of these things, however, Harrigan saw only the faint pictures. For now they wanted one woman. In the old days they had done battle for her. Matched in strength, in craft, in desperate courage, Red Dan Harrigan and Black Angus MacTee had struggled to win her, until in the end she had fled from them both for fear that they would kill one another. She had told them that they would never see her again. She had told them, in her last letter, that she truly loved one of them. But her choice she would not name.

  When she was gone, they were to each other more than brothers. But now that she was with them again, they mutually poisoned the air for one another.

  All this was the mind of Harrigan, as he stared at MacTee. When they were together at the mine, the vigilance of MacTee in acts of courtesy and in kindness never ended. He was always first to find the water jar empty and to assume the labor of filling it. He was the first to forage for wood. He labored willingly extra hours sharpening the drills. The money in his pocket was Harrigan’s money; the blood in his body was Harrigan’s blood; the breath of his nostrils he would give up for his friend. But not Kate Malone!

  When she entered their world, MacTee became a dark and crafty savage. A wild Indian was capable of no more atrocities. His fruitful malevolence had scattered a hundred dangers along the trail that Harrigan had just followed. It would scatter more, in the future. So there arose in Harrigan a red flame of detestation and hatred. If Kate Malone were removed, he knew that he and MacTee were welded as one flesh and one blood and one bone. That was the very reason she had fled from them before.

  Suddenly Harrigan said: “MacTee, it’s more than ten minutes we’ve been waiting.”

  “Ah?” muttered MacTee.

  “It’s nearer to fifteen,” said Harrigan.

  “What would you mean by that, and glaring at me?” asked MacTee.

  “I’d mean,” said Harrigan, “that you let the brute beast come out in your face, a minute ago, and she could see it plain enough. She’s gone again . . . I’ll bet my soul on it. She’s gone again.”

  MacTee gave him one stern glance. “Maybe you’re right. But it’s the red hell that shone out of you that she saw.”

  They were already dashing through the woods toward the house.

  “I might have guessed . . .” groaned Harrigan.

  He strained with all his might to gain the lead. It seemed to him that in this contest the supremacy between them would be established. But when they issued from the trees before the house, MacTee was a stride in the lead.

  Instantly they saw the answer to their fears. On a distant hill a rider wavered for an instant on the horizon, then disappeared from their view. It was a woman. It must be Kate Malone.

  “Damn you!” hissed Harrigan, and smote the dark granite of the jaw of MacTee.

  Stone is hard, but iron is harder, and the fist of Harrigan was iron. MacTee was hurled to the ground, and Harrigan ran toward a big, brown gelding that was tethered in front of the ranch house.

  “Hey, boss you ain’t runnin’ off with that hoss, are you?” shouted the cook.

  Harrigan answered merely: “I’ll send back the price in hard cash.”

  He untethered the rope with flying fingers. He had his foot in the stirrup, when a thunderbolt struck him to the ground. It was Angus MacTee.

  And it was Angus MacTee who leaped into the saddle. Harrigan rose and laid his mighty clutch on the reins, reaching for the gun hand of MacTee at the same time, and locking his hold on the wrist.

  Then a calm voice said behind them: “You two hoss thieves, get away from that mustang.”

  They looked toward the house and saw on the verandah a little man with a long rifle leveled firmly at his shoulder.

  There is no arguing with a rifle held by such hands. One may gamble against a revolver, but not against a rifleman who kills his deer at six hundred yards.

  So MacTee dismounted and stood at the side of Harrigan.

  “I oughta hold you and jail you, maybe,” said the rancher. “But all I’ll do is to get you off my place. Move, the pair of you.” He raised his voice to an angry yell, as he lost control of his temper. “Get!” he cried.

  MacTee and Harrigan got.

  They strode rapidly across the rolling ground until they found the trail of the horse that had carried the girl away from them. They came to the hilltop over which she had dropped from view. There they paused.

  They glared at one another with gloomy detestation. On the jaw of MacTee there was a red lump. On the side of Harrigan’s face was its mate.

  “Harrigan,” said MacTee. “I’m going to break you open like a crab and eat the heart out of you, before long.”

  “MacTee,” said Harrigan, “there’s nothing here but the sky and the grass to look at us. I’m better than you with a gun. I’ll put it aside. I’ll have you with my bare hands. There’ll be more taste to the killing of you, that way.”

  “Harrigan,” said MacTee, “it’s a true thing that I’d love to be at you. But we’ve got a job on our hands that may use up the brains of both of us. Look yonder!”

  He pointed toward the wide landscape, the green hills, and the ragged storm of mountains that rose toward the horizon.

  “There’s our job. Kate’s no fool. She’s as tough as whipcord, and she’ll run like a fox till she thinks that she’s dropped us off her trail. She’s dropped us before. She’ll drop us again, unless we put our heads together and all the strength that’s in us. Let’s be partners again till we’ve found her. And afterwards . . . God help you, Harrigan.”

  Red Dan Harrigan grinned. He held out his hand.

  “I’ll be a brother to you, MacTee,” he said, “till we’ve found her. And after that, MacTee, I’ll work you into a red mud, with my hands.”

  Their hands closed, joining with a mighty pressure.

  VI

  They traveled through the rest of that day as only Harrigan and MacTee could travel. If there was more speed in MacTee’s long legs over the level, there was more agility in Harrigan when they came to rough country. In the evening, they came to a little ranch house on the southern side of a hill. In a big field near the house and barn, horses were grazing.

  Said MacTee: “We’ve got to have horses, if we want to find Kate Malone.”

  “We’ve got to find horses,” agreed Harrigan. “But you know this part of the world, MacTee. They’d rather hang a horse thief than a murderer, Angus.”

  “There was never a rope spun that could hang me,” said Angus MacTee. “If there’s no heart in you, Harrigan, turn back, now, and I’ll go on alone.”

  “How coul
d a Scotchman have the heart of a Harrigan?” asked the other. “I’ll go wherever you’ll go, MacTee, and do whatever you’ll do, and then one step beyond.”

  “Go into that barn, then, and find saddles and bridles,” said MacTee calmly, “and ropes. When you’ve got ’em, I’ll catch the horses. I’m not as good a thief as you are. There’s not much cat in me. But I can handle a rope.”

  It might seem an unfair division of the labor for Harrigan to risk the danger of men, and MacTee to take only the task of catching up horses. But Red Harrigan was not one to split straws. He circled the hill on which the ranch buildings stood, came over the shoulder of it, and passed out of the twilight into the thick, muddy black of the interior of the barn. Suddenly out of the darkness he heard the overbearing powerful neigh of a stallion. A horse began to plunge and batter inside a box stall. Harrigan groaned, for the people in the ranch house were sure to hear this uproar and respond to it. He was not surprised when, far away, he heard a screen door slam with a tin-pan jingling.

  He had found saddles and saddle blankets and bridles. And now hurried back with them toward the rear door. He was not yet at it when the other door opened.

  Harrigan, leaping eagerly into the outer night, found that he was lighted by the brightening moonlight. A man shouted loudly: “Stop, thief!”

  Harrigan kicked the door shut behind him and ran into the field, the corner where MacTee was already holding a pair of mustangs. He reached MacTee, who held the horses steady while Harrigan began the saddling in frantic haste.

  The near door of the barn opened. Harrigan groaned. But he could hear the man who stood in the entrance swearing angrily, apparently unable to see anything suspicious.

  The rancher fired twice, but the bullets came nowhere near the two thieves. Then he cried out, loudly, as other men came running from the house.

  But Harrigan and MacTee were already spurring away. The instant they were seen, bullets came whirring. But what can a revolver do at long range when it is fired by moonlight? They rode straight on up a narrow valley, the floor of which grew steeper and steeper.

  MacTee began to laugh. “Dan, d’ye hear me? Isn’t it like the old days? Were there ever any better days than the old ones?”

  And Dan Harrigan laughed, too. He forgot Kate Malone. He forgot the very object of his quest. It seemed to him that there was nothing in the world that was half so important as the great Black MacTee, the companion who never failed a man in time of danger.

  Behind them came the noise of hoofs. But the two merely laughed again, in the highest indifference. Mere mortals could not be matched against a Red Harrigan and a Black MacTee.

  For two hours, off and on, they heard the distant noise of the pursuit. Twice rifles were fired after them. Then they were left alone to travel deeper into the night.

  “Suppose that she left this trail?” asked Harrigan.

  “She’d keep to the valley,” answered MacTee. “I know the way her mind works. She’d keep to this valley. She’d want to get those mountains for a fence between her and Harrigan and MacTee.”

  A wind struck them, iced by the high mountain snows. But they held steadily on, crossed the divide, and came down through tall forests. At last, staring through a gap in the woods, they made out the wide-spread, gleaming lights of a town.

  “That’s where she is,” said MacTee with great assurance.

  “There’s no use killing the horses. We’ll go down in the morning, and find her there.”

  “She’ll start on before the morning,” said Harrigan.

  “She can’t keep running all the way around the world,” answered MacTee. “No, she’ll stay there for a while and hope that we’ll never find her. We’d better camp here.”

  So they camped. They built a bed of evergreen boughs and were soon asleep. And when they wakened, the sky was luminous with the dawn. They resaddled the horses, pulled up their belts a notch, and jogged the mustangs down toward the town.

  It was sprawled like a spider, with a small body and with long arms that stretched up many narrow gulches roundabout. Twenty trails converged on that small city.

  “It’s a jumping-off place,” said Harrigan gloomily. “She might have gone in any direction.”

  “We’ll find her,” said MacTee. “There’s something in me that knows how to find her as sure as a magnet knows how to find north.”

  The trail down was slow work. It was very rough and entailed constant windings that absorbed much time. The sun was high and hot when at last they dropped into the hollow where the town lay.

  MacTee wanted to go straight to the hotel.

  “Suppose a pair of stolen horses have been trailed as far as this town?” suggested Harrigan uneasily.

  “We have to take chances,” answered MacTee. “And in the hotel, we’ll find people who’ll know every stray dog that’s entered the town in the last ten years.”

  They reached the hotel, which was a square white box shouldered tightly in between adjoining buildings, with the usual verandah strung across the face of it. In a livery stable across the street they put up the horses, then entered the hotel. They washed and shaved, and went into the dining room.

  It was after 8 a.m., and, therefore, very late for breakfast in a Western town. The chairs were standing on tables. A big fellow with a tattooed arm of a sailor was scrubbing the floor with a pail of suds and a stable broom.

  “Too late, brother,” he growled over his shoulder at the pair.

  MacTee took two chairs from a small table and put them in place.

  “Ham and eggs, coffee, hot cakes, and anything else that’s handy,” he said.

  The waiter walked up to him with a scowl.

  “Are you tryin’ to start something?” he demanded.

  MacTee put the end of a forefinger against the breast of the ex-sailor. It was like touching him with a rod of steel.

  “What I start, I finish,” said MacTee. “Unless you want to be close to the end, move some chuck out of the kitchen and into this room. Understand?”

  The waiter understood. He moved his glance in a small arc, from the third button of MacTee’s shirt to his gleaming eyes.

  “All right,” said the waiter, and nodded.

  MacTee and Harrigan sat down. “Danny,” said MacTee, “I wish that we’d never laid eyes on Kate Malone.”

  “I wish it, too,” said Harrigan, “except when I think of her.”

  “She’s nothing,” said MacTee, “but a snip of a girl with a brown face and blue eyes. There’s a thousand prettier than she is. What is she to come between friends like you and me?”

  Harrigan frowned and shook his head.

  “I’d like to agree with you, Angus,” he said. “But I’m just after seeing her. Besides, you’d never hold to the idea that you have right now. Not if you thought that I had Kate Malone.”

  “No,” agreed MacTee suddenly. He jarred the heavy table with one fist. “You and I have fought for her and starved for her and bled for her too many times. I couldn’t give her up to you, Danny. But I could wish that another man would come and take her. Not like you. Not my kind of a man. But some damned long-haired violin player that I couldn’t touch for the fear of mashing him like a rotten apple. If a sneaking fool like that should come along and walk off with Kate Malone, Harrigan, I’d be a happy man, after a while. After the poison boiled down in me, I’d be a happy man.”

  “The waiter came in, but not with a stack of dishes piled on his arm. Instead, he came with an armed man walking on each side of him, and behind this leading trio there moved others, a whole dozen or more of stalwarts.

  Harrigan gave them one side glance. “They’ve come for us, Angus,” he said.

  “There’s hardly a round dozen of ’em,” answered MacTee calmly. “And if they knew us, Danny . . . if they knew us as we know ourselves . . . wouldn’t the fools bring the whole town together before they tried to come at the bare hands of Harrigan and MacTee?”

  He who walked on the right hand of the wait
er was built like a lumberjack and dressed like a lumberjack in a plain Mackinaw. On the lapel of the coat was a steel badge, brighter than silver.

  He was such a big man that he did not touch a weapon, in making this arrest. He merely stepped to the table and rapped his brown knuckles on the top of it.

  “Stand up, you bohunks,” he said. “Hoss thieves get free board and room, in this here town of Yellow Gulch.”

  VII

  Harrigan looked at the deputy sheriff and at the fellows ranging beside him, and realized that they were men.

  “All right,” he said to MacTee, “I guess we’ll have to stick up our hands, partner.”

  “We will,” said MacTee, and, rising to his feet, he brought up his fist like the head of an iron mace. It bashed the deputy sheriff under the jaw and sent him staggering across the floor. Harrigan selected the ex-sailor who had betrayed them. It was neither an uppercut nor a swing or a straight punch that he used, but his favorite hook. The hook of Harrigan was like the snapping of a whiplash, with an anvil hitched to the end of the lash. His blow struck the jaw of the waiter, and that unfortunate man fell on his hands and knees.

  Then Harrigan and MacTee raised a frightful yell and charged home among the men of Yellow Gulch. Whoever they struck fell or staggered far away. That single charge should have ended the fight at once, for guns could not be used in the tangled heart of this mêlée.

  But Harrigan saw a strange thing. The men of Yellow Gulch might be felled, but they would not stay down. The deputy sheriff, the first to drop, was already on his feet and coming straight into the thick of the fight. The ex-sailor was up, also, and charging. And all the other men of Yellow Gulch came in with cheerful shouts. Their eyes shone, and it was plain that they considered this a delightful game. Their bodies were of India rubber—their jaws were of whalebone—and their souls were the purest flame of battle.