by Max Brand
There was a melancholy stirring in the soul of Harrigan.
“We’ve been through great things, Kate,” he said. “Will you kiss me good bye?”
He put his left arm around her, gently.
She had not stirred, but still looked past him at the upper night. She was like a stone.
“Oh, Dan Harrigan, you half-wit,” said Molly Bingham. “You swore that you’d leave her if she loved MacTee. But make her swear your own oath that she loves him. Make her swear that it’s true she loves MacTee.”
“Almighty thunder!” groaned Harrigan.
His left arm was no longer gentle. It crushed Kate Malone to him.
“Swear it, by God, Kate, and I’ll leave you. Swear that you love MacTee. For if you don’t mean it with all your heart . . . if it’s only a trick to get me and all the murdering trouble out of the way. . . Swear that you love him, Kate. The saying of it won’t do with me.”
But Kate Malone began to sob.
And that baffled Harrigan. It made him more bewildered than ever.
“She’s only a poor liar, after all,” said Molly Bingham. “Kiss her, Dan Harrigan, and see what’s left of her pretending. Kiss her . . . the silly baby.”
But Molly Bingham was herself crying, and talking through her tears. And Harrigan knew that in all the days of his life he never would understand women truly.
He leaned to touch his lips to the face of Kate Malone. Her head dropped weakly against the hollow of his shoulder.
“Kate!” he cried out in an ecstasy of revelation. “You’re mine. You belong to me! It isn’t MacTee that you care for.”
“It’s you, Danny,” said the girl. “It’s always been you. But I’ve never dared to show what I feel, for fear of Angus MacTee. What can we do now? He’ll kill you, Dan, if he finds out the truth.”
“God means it to come to a showdown between us,” said Harrigan. “I’ve got to see MacTee, and face him . . . and have it out.”
“No!” cried the girl. “You’d never come back to me alive!”
“I’ve got to tell him that I’ve found you,” said Harrigan. “I came in for both of us to find your trail, Kate. We’re partners, Angus and I. We’ll keep on being partners . . . till he goes for my throat. There’s no other honest way out of it.”
“Would you be honest with the devil, Dan Harrigan?” asked Molly hotly. “Well, no matter what MacTee would do to a man, he’ll never touch a girl. Let me know where to find him, and I’ll take him the word that you’ve found Kate, and that you and she are away together. I don’t have to tell what the direction is.”
“I can’t let you go out and face him,” said Harrigan.
“It’s the one way to live up to your partnership with him,” said Molly briskly. “If you talk to him, you know it’ll be the death of both of you. Tell me where to find him.”
“Tell her,” said Kate Malone.
So Harrigan hesitantly, uncertainly gave the word to Molly of how she could pass through the woods and come to the creek, and so to the camp of Black MacTee.
“I’ll be on my way,” said Molly. “Kate, do up your things. Get out of Yellow Gulch with Harrigan. Take the Dormer Pass and head straight for the railroad. You’ll be out of the reach of MacTee before long. Go fast! You have your own horse, Kate. And in the shed behind my house there’s a big bay gelding that belongs to nobody but me. You can take that horse, Dan Harrigan. Good bye, Kate! Good bye, Harrigan!”
“Wait!” exclaimed Kate Malone. “Stop her, Danny!”
Harrigan barred the way of Molly. At the touch of his hand, she was still, laughing and trembling with excitement.
“What am I to say to you, Molly, darling?” said Kate. “And what’s Dan to say to you? We’ll owe you everything.”
“I could teach Dan what to say to me,” said Molly. “If I were a year or two older, I’d fight you for him, Kate. Dan, if you lose her somewhere in the mountains, come back and you can find me.”
She slipped away and was instantly lost in the darkness. She had given them the means of escaping, and now she was determined to assure their safety still further, so that no harm whatever could overtake them. . .
Running as fast as any boy, she got to the house of the deputy sheriff. He sat on his front porch with a wet towel around his head and various swellings discoloring his face.
“Hello, Dave,” said the girl. “I’ve got news for you that’ll make you open both eyes.”
“It’ll be a month before I get both eyes wide open,” said the deputy sheriff. He had the shamelessness of a man whose courage has been proved over and over. He sat up and took the towel from his face. “It’s not mumps that I caught, but the Harrigan,” he explained with a grin. “What’s the good news, Molly?”
“Harrigan’s gone,” said the girl.
“The devil he has. Where?”
“Through the Dormer Pass with Kate Malone, and if you lift a hand to follow ’em, Dave, you’re not a right man.”
“Listen to her,” said Dave’s wife, chuckling. “I suppose she loves the red man.”
“I do,” said Molly. “Who wouldn’t love a man that can beat Dave, here? And my own brother laid up with some broken ribs from the same fist. Of course, I love Red Harrigan. But there’s a thing for you to do still. You can catch Black MacTee.”
“Aye,” said the deputy sheriff. “He has a fist like an iron club. I’d like to put hands on MacTee, and irons on him, too.”
“You’d better have the irons on him before you try your hands,” said Molly. “Get some of your best men, Dave. There are plenty in Yellow Gulch that’d be glad to be in at the killing of MacTee or of Harrigan. You know that.”
“I know that,” agreed Dave, “and I’ll do it.” He stood up from his chair. “You’ll be running the whole county before long, Molly,” he said. “You’re running Yellow Gulch already.”
“As soon as I outgrow freckles,” said Molly, “I’m going to run for governor. You won’t take after Harrigan, Dave?”
“No,” said the deputy sheriff. “Not if you tell me to keep my hands off him. I wouldn’t dare.” He chuckled again. “But this MacTee. Where is he, Molly?”
“You cut across town till you come through the woods to the creek. Go up the creek till you find a sandbar with the creek spilling over the two ends of it. Black MacTee will be somewhere there. And go carefully, Dave. He’s a tiger.”
“I’ll have five men with me,” said the deputy sheriff cheerfully. “I’d rather walk into the cave of a mother grizzly than into a place where that black Scotchman is hiding.”
X
Black MacTee, sitting on a rock at the side of the water, trailed his left hand in the icy current. His heart was aching with desire for a smoke, but he dared not smoke for fear that even the easily dissipated smoke of a cigarette might reach inquisitive nostrils and bring danger.
So, as he sat there, he occupied his mind and quelled his nerves by submitting his flesh to the biting chill of the stream. He was so engaged when he heard a faint rustling sound. It was a very small sound. It might have been the rustling of leaves when branches toss slightly. It might have been the step of a wild beast inside the wood.
But the nerves of MacTee were drawn taut, and therefore he lifted his head to listen. What he heard next was hardly a sound at all. It was rather a vibration, a nothingness of tremor that ran through the ground. But it sent MacTee into cover with the speed of a slinking cat. He crouched in the shadow, looking out savagely, tensely around him.
After a time, he heard another mere whisper. It was close beside him, and now he could make out the silhouette of a man moving from behind the trunk of a tree, coming toward the sandbar.
MacTee reached out his arm, massive and rigid as the walking beam of a great engine. With the sharp, deadly knuckles of his second joints, he struck the stalking silhouette behind the ear. The sound was very muffled. It was not as loud as the noise a chopper makes when it is struck into soft meat. And yet the hunting figure relaxed, a
t once.
MacTee, taking a single long stride forward, caught the slumping body before it could crash to the ground. With that burden in his arms, he straightened, and stalked away soundlessly.
On his left, he made out another dim form, slipping in the opposite direction, and he felt that he had been betrayed, and by Harrigan. The thought stopped his heart with cold sickness. There was no rage in him, at the moment. There was only that unutterable smallness of soul and despair as he thought that Red Dan Harrigan might have betrayed a partner.
He locked that misery behind his teeth and went on, stepping softly. When the burden he carried began to moan faintly and to stir in his arms, he was at a considerable distance from his starting point. So he put the man on his feet and shook him. Searching through his clothes, MacTee found a revolver and took it away from his captive.
“Who are you?” asked MacTee.
The other muttered: “Lord God, my head’s smashed in.”
“It’ll feel better, after a while,” said MacTee. “What d’ye mean by sneaking through the night like a mountain lion hunting mutton? Who are you?”
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Dave. . .”
“Ah,” said MacTee. “You’re the deputy sheriff, eh?”
“I’m the deputy sheriff, and. . .”
“Somebody told you that you’d find me here?”
“Yes,” admitted the man of the law, his wits still reeling from the blow that he had received.
“He told you, then,” muttered MacTee.
He drew in a long, long breath to keep away the sense of strangulation.
“Even Harrigan,” said MacTee miserably. “Anybody else . . . but not Harrigan a traitor. Traitors don’t wear red hair.” He added loudly: “Where’s Harrigan?”
“I don’t know,” said the deputy sheriff. “It’s MacTee that has me? What happened?”
“What’s happened doesn’t matter, compared with what’s going to happen pretty soon,” said MacTee, “unless you tell me what’s become of Harrigan. Have you caught him?”
“No.”
“He’s not in jail?”
“No, he’s not in jail.”
“Then where is he? D’you think I’ll hesitate to squash your windpipe for you, unless you talk out to me, man?”
A shudder passed through the deputy sheriff. It was a tremor imparted to his body by the quivering of the angry hand of MacTee as it grasped the shoulder of the prisoner.
Far ahead of them a voice called anxiously: “Dave! Hey, Dave!”
“My God, I’ve made a fool of myself,” groaned Dave.
“It’s better to be a living fool than a dead one,” said MacTee. “Tell me where Harrigan is, or. . .”
“He’s in the Dormer Pass, I suppose, by this time.”
“Ha? You know where he is? In the Dormer Pass?”
“Yes. They’ve gotten up into it by this time.”
“They? Who’s with him?”
“Kate Malone,” said the deputy sheriff.
“God in heaven!” groaned MacTee. “The coward, the cur, the traitor. He stole her and he’s running with her?”
“She’s gone willingly with him, MacTee,” said the deputy sheriff. “She has. . .”
“You lie,” said MacTee, and struck him heavily in the face, so that the head of the deputy bobbed back on his shoulders.
“Where’s the Dormer Pass?” asked MacTee.
“There,” said the frightened deputy, for he felt that he was in the hands of a madman. “There, to the right of that sugarloaf, in that cut, yonder. That’s the Dormer. You can see the cloud rolling down through it.”
MacTee looked, and he saw a white serpent of mist, brightened by the moon, crawling down the face of a mountain.
“The Judas!” groaned MacTee. “The damned, sneaking, Irish blarney, hypocrite, and traitor. He stole Kate and he sent the law after Angus MacTee to keep me from. . .”
“No,” said the deputy Sheriff. “He didn’t send. . .”
“Be still, damn you!” snarled MacTee. He dashed his fist into the battered face of Dave again, with such force that the deputy slumped senselessly to the ground.
MacTee let him drop. Well ahead of him, through the trees, he could hear the shouting of several voices that blended and blurred together, and yet he could make out among them the calling of the name: “Dave!”
But there was something better close at hand. He could see the glint of the metal work on bridles, the vague outlines of saddles, and one glistening spot of moonlight on the rump of a horse. Half a dozen of them were tethered in one group among the trees just before him.
“Dave! Dave!” yelled the searchers.
“Here,” groaned the feeble voice of the deputy.
MacTee stepped to the tethered mustangs, chose the biggest for himself, mounted it, untied the others of the group, and led them off at a quiet walk that turned into a jangling trot, and thence into a flying gallop that swept him straight toward the Dormer Pass.
XI
The horses of Harrigan and Katie Malone were already entering the thick mist. At once they were lost as though in smoke. Above them the strength of the moon pierced here and there through the gathering storm clouds. It peered as though through a window, and sent down a broad shaft of milky white enabling the two riders to see one another, vaguely.
The way had grown extremely steep. The horses began to slip and slide. Even mountain horses, which are nearly sure-footed as goats, could hardly negotiate those smooth rocks after the wet of the clouds had greased them.
They rode very close together, for a time. Then Harrigan dismounted. His great bulk made it difficult for his horse to climb. The girl, however, could still make better progress by remaining in the saddle.
It began to be difficult work. In half a dozen places, the horses could barely climb the sharp grades. They grunted. Their striking, sliding hoofs knocked long sparks out of the stones. And yet through this difficult time, they did not speak to one another. Not until Kate said, as they paused a moment, panting: “Do you think that we were right to take this pass?”
“Molly seems to be right about everything. She told us to take this one,” answered Harrigan.
“Aye, but suppose that MacTee is able to make her talk to him, and gets the name of the pass out of her, and the fact that we’ve gone through this way?”
“You don’t know MacTee,” said Harrigan. “He’s man enough to smash a regiment, but he couldn’t even whisper against a woman.” He added, out of the largeness of his heart: “There’s only one thing I regret, and that is that I didn’t go find him myself before I left Yellow Gulch.”
As he spoke, looking toward the girl, a radiance of moonlight flowed over her through the mist and made her like a form of glowing marble.
She said: “All right, Danny. We don’t care, so long as we’re here together, and safe for the minute. Only. . .”
“Only what?” urged Harrigan.
“It’s too happy,” she answered. “It can’t last. There’s a pricking in my blood that tells me. There’s something that follows me like a ghost.”
They had come to a narrow point of the ravine, as she spoke, and here the wind gathered as into a funnel, blew the mist rushing against their faces, then dispersed it as the wind gathers the dust of the desert and sweeps it off against the horizon.
They looked back to find that the pass was clear of mist, for the moment, behind them. And that was how they happened to see, far away, laboring up the slope of a very distant incline, the form of a horseman who looked larger than human, the horse driven frantic by constant spurring.
“MacTee,” said Harrigan.
He felt, in an instant, as though he were a small child followed by a demoniacal power. The very thought of MacTee became overpowering.
“Angus MacTee!” cried the girl. For even at that distance she, also, could recognize the bearing and size of the Black MacTee.
They looked at one another, silently. There was no longer a mist between th
em. They could see each other’s face clearly, and as plainly as he could see the fear in the face of the girl, so she could see the fear in the face of Harrigan.
They fled up the pass, the hoofs of the horses striking out an iron clangoring.
Then the wind ceased. The clouds closed over them more darkly than ever. The moonlight ceased. They began to fumble forward through a wet, cold darkness.
Wind came again, but it did not clear away the clouds. It merely heaped on more and more mountainous vapors. Gusts of rain struck them wetly in the darkness. The hail came in great, pelting volleys of stones that dazed and hurt the horses. They whacked on the broad shoulders, they stung and cut the face of Harrigan, until he almost wondered that the girl could keep in her saddle.
But she made no complaint.
He dismounted again, went to her during a brief halt, and took her hands. They were as ice. He made her bend down from the saddle, and he kissed her face. It was icy, also. All her body was quivering. He knew that it was not the storm but the fear that was killing her, and he wanted to say words that would start the currents of her blood again. But he was not able to speak.
He went on, leading the two horses, with an ache of emptiness in his heart. He knew that he was afraid, and he feared lest she might despise him for the terror that he felt.
The storm increased. The wind came charging. Under the weight of it and the sting of the hail and rain that charged it, the horses frequently halted and balked.
The moon shone through again briefly. Harrigan saw the mouth of a ravine that opened to the right, and into this he suddenly turned.
Now the high walls shut off the main torrent of the storm. The clouds flowed higher over them, and only occasional rattlings of hail beat against them. Then the hail ceased, and it rained in torrents. The lightning sprang with it, making the mountain faces above them fluctuate wildly.
It was by the lightning that he saw how the girl had bowed herself, clinging to the saddle pommel with both hands, her head down, as one who submissively endures, without hope.
He felt as though he had beaten her. He felt as though she were a child.