by Max Brand
The next moment, they turned a narrow bend in the ravine, and the valley widened before them. The heavier roaring that he had thought to be the mere thundering of the wind, he knew, now, to be the dashing of water. And on the edge of the cañon wall, he saw a small shack and shed, built together, of logs.
He made for that. It was a steep and treacherous slope that they had to cover to get to the cabin. It was so steep and covered with loose, rolling stones, that it seemed incredible that anyone should have built in such a spot. Something must have altered the place in the meantime. The slope must have increased with weathering, and the treacherous coating of loose stones, like so many ball bearings, must have rolled down from the upper part of the mountain.
They came to the cabin doorway, in which there was no door. A blare of lightning showed them that there was nothing but a bleak emptiness within the place.
They entered, and the regular pulsing of the lightning showed them the vacant hearth, three broken chairs, and a loft of small poles overhead, with a ladder leading up to the attic trap door.
Harrigan climbed the ladder, tore down some of the poles, and came to the floor again. He broke up the poles and one of the chairs. Of the smallest fragments of the woods, he made a heap of tinder that had splintered off from the larger pieces. This he was able to light with his fourth match.
The yellow finger of flame took hold, mastered bit after bit of the refuse, burned up strong and clear. He built up the fire, cording the larger pieces around the flame.
Now the pale flare of the lightning was not the only illumination. There was, besides, the steadier, smokier light from the fire.
This showed to Harrigan the drooping figure of the girl. She stood close to the wall, one hand resting against it. He went to her and touched her shoulder.
She looked up to him. Her head fell back. She looked like one about to die.
“He could see the firelight,” said Kate.
Harrigan studied her a moment. She was dripping wet, so that her clothes clung to her, and she looked amazingly helpless. It was not that he loved her less, but for the moment it seemed an amazing thing that two forces as great as Harrigan and MacTee should be engaged in mortal combat because of such a negligible thing.
Yet there was no question that she was worth more than the rest of the universe to both of them. They knew her of old.
But she was crushed and weak, now. She was not the independent, strong, and almost imperious creature she had been. Strength had gone from her with hope, and Harrigan knew why. It was because she felt that terrible events lay just around the corner from them.
Harrigan felt the same thing. It was a sense of inevitable and inescapable disaster.
“He would see the house, if he happens to turn down this ravine after us,” said Harrigan. “But there’s no reason why he should come this way. He’ll go on through the pass, against the storm. That’s the way of MacTee. He faces things. He fights them straight through. That’s the greatness of him. Nothing turns him back. But if he happens to come through the ravine toward us, the lightning would show the cabin to him. The firelight won’t matter.”
“We’d better go on, then,” said the girl in a rapid, broken voice. “I don’t want to stay here. It’s like a cavern. I’d rather die in the open, than in a house. . .”
He put his hand against her face. It was burning hot. Despair ran through him in a sickening current.
Yet he made his voice calm to answer: “We’ll have to stay here. As a matter of fact, there’s no way of getting through without the danger of your catching pneumonia. I don’t dare take you through this sort of weather.”
“I won’t melt,” she said. She laughed a little, and repeated: “I won’t melt.”
It was like the voice of a child, trying to be brave. It was like the piping voice of a child. The heart of Harrigan was wrung by the sound of it.
“I’m taking the horses into the shed, the poor devils,” he said to her. “You stay in here and take your clothes off. Take them off and wring them dry. Look at you. You’re soggy. You’re wet to the skin. Wring your clothes as dry as you can and drag them on again. I’ll stay with the horses in the shed till I’ve fixed myself the same way.”
She looked at him vaguely, as though she had not understood.
“Do you have to go away, Danny?” she said. “I don’t want you to go away. Stay here with me.”
He was incredulous. He never had seen her so childish. Had the fever affected her mind? No, the dilation of her eyes gave the answer. It was not the heat fever, but the intense cold of fear that had numbed her brain. Her lips were pale. Her eyes were as great as the eyes of an owl. He would hardly have recognized her face.
“Do what I tell you, Kate,” he said sternly. He talked like a father to a child. “Do what I tell you. Take off your clothes and wring them out. I’ll be in the shed. Look. You tap on this partition, and I’ll be back in here before even a lightning flash would be able to jump in and steal you away from me.”
“All right,” said the girl. “It’s all right.”
She was actually smiling, a crooked, wistful smile.
Harrigan mastered his heart and went outside. The rain blasted against his face. The roar of it was less than the sound inside the cabin, but every water drop cut at his skin.
The two horses were huddled against the wall of the house, shrinking from the sweep of the storm, and wincing from the strong glare of the lightning. Overhead, the thunder broke in an endless booming, like the water of a great cataract falling on a world of tin.
Harrigan pulled at the reins. The horses closed their eyes and stretched out their necks, without stirring, for a moment. Then they followed him to the shed.
No water entered it, and no wind. A musty smell of emptiness was there, and some of the warmth of the day that had not yet ebbed away.
Harrigan stripped off his clothes. He was glad to give his strength to something. He almost tore the tough fabrics to pieces by the power with which he twisted them. Then he dragged them on again.
He took a bandanna, rolled it, and used that to rub down the horses until they were fairly dry. Their body heat set them steaming. By the lightning flashes he could see the steam rising. The rank smell of their damp pelts filled the little shed.
Suddenly the rain stopped beating. He looked out and discovered that the southern half of the sky was thronged with the great black forms of the storm, with lightning leaping beneath it. But in the northern portion of the sky there were enormous white waves of clouds, with the moon riding through them. It struck a solid bank, was lost in it, then burst through, flinging a luminous spray before it. Harrigan drew in his breath. The weight of the thunder, also, was withdrawn from his brain, as it were.
He hurried around to the front of the cabin. As he strode, the stones rolled suddenly under his weight. He was thrown flat, and skidded down the sharp incline until, at the very verge of the cañon, he found a fingerhold, and stayed his fall.
From where he lay, he could look down a hundred yards of cliff that was almost sheer to where a river worked and whirled and leaped white in the bottom of the gorge.
He remained prone for an instant, waiting for his heart to stop racing. Then he got up, cautiously, and crawled to the cabin before he ventured to rise and go weak-kneed to the doorway.
Beside it, he called: “Kate!”
“Yes!” she answered.
“Are you through? May I come in?”
“Come in,” she replied.
He paused to look down the ravine. A wisp of mist was standing in it like a monstrous ghost. Otherwise, it was empty, the moonlight glistening over the wet rocks.
Then he stepped inside and found the girl seated in a broken chair beside the fire. Her clothes were fitted to her skin as sleekly as the pelt of a wet animal. She had not followed his instructions. And she looked up at him with the same dumb, suffering eyes of fear.
XII
He crouched beside her. Bent in that fashion, he
felt far more keenly the hugeness of his bulk compared with her.
“What is it, Kate?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“It’s MacTee,” he insisted. “You’re afraid of MacTee. You think that he’s sure to come.”
She closed her eyes.
“Well,” said Harrigan, “you can’t sit here in wet clothes. You’ll have to do something about it. You’ll have to wring them out, Kate. I told you that. Listen to me . . . if you won’t do anything . . . if you just give up like a child . . . I’ll have to undress you and wring out the clothes myself.”
She opened her eyes and stared at him, as one who cannot understand.
He thought he would startle her into alertness. So he put out his hand and unfastened the top button of her khaki shirt. No change came in her uncomprehending eyes.
“Kate!” he exclaimed. “For God’s sake, what’s the matter?”
She closed her eyes again. The firelight touched her face, gently. The smoke, hardly drawn up the chimney at all from the hearth, curled behind her, and she was as the stuff of which dreams are made.
“It’s MacTee,” she answered. “Ever since the old days, I’ve been afraid, Danny. I’ve always known that a time would come when he and you would meet for the final time. I’ve always known, and now. . .”
“Now what?” asked Harrigan, staring in his turn, for the whole affair had grown ghostly.
She was silent. He touched her face. It was flushed and still burning hot. Her hands were hot, too, and dry. When she looked at him, there was a film over her eyes. A terrible feeling grew up in him that her brain was giving way under the strain.
“It’s going to be all right,” said Harrigan. “There’s been enough to keep us apart. This is the last bad time . . . this night, the storm, and all of that. Afterwards, we’re going to have plane sailing.”
“Not on this earth,” whispered her lips.
A ghostly coldness stole through his blood. He wanted to ask her if she had the power of second sight.
She said more loudly: “I know it’s the end, Danny. I want to make the most of it. I want to be gay. I want to make you happy for the last time. But I can’t. There’s a shroud over me. I’m afraid. I’m buried alive in fear.”
“It’s because you’ve been thinking of MacTee too long,” said Harrigan. “You’ve made a ghost out of him. That’s all. Besides, you’re too excited. And it’s night. The minute the sun comes up you’ll forget all of this. Everything will be all right.”
She lifted her head to answer, but, instead of speaking, she stared with terrible eyes of fear past him, toward the door.
Then the heavy, booming voice of MacTee said: “Everything will be all right for her, Harrigan. But you or I will be dead!”
Harrigan rose to his feet slowly, like an old man whose joints are frozen by age.
He turned. And there in the doorway, filling it from top to bottom, stood MacTee. His clothes were glued to his body by the wet. The brim of his sombrero sagged heavily around his face. And the face itself was as Harrigan had seen it before, in times of settled passion, like gray iron. The storm had not affected him, any more than it could affect a steel beam.
“Come out,” said MacTee.
A revolver was held in his right hand, waist high. Harrigan studied it. He was far faster with a gun, far straighter in the shooting of it. Perhaps there was a ghost of a chance that he would be able to get out a weapon and end the thing with a bullet.
MacTee said: “Don’t try it, Harrigan. Don’t try it.”
And Harrigan knew that it would be folly to try.
He looked back at the frozen face of the girl.
“Maybe this is the end, Kate,” he said. “Maybe you’ve been seeing the future a lot more clearly than I can make it out.”
He leaned and kissed her good bye. Her face had been burning before. Now it was cold. She made no response. Harrigan was not in her eyes at all, but only the great body and the terrible face of MacTee.
Harrigan turned to the door and strode toward it. MacTee backed away from the entrance. Harrigan had stepped outside when the girl screamed suddenly, a frightful sound, as though a bullet had torn through her flesh.
Harrigan glanced back. He saw that she had not risen from the chair. She simply sat as before, but with her head thrown back like a dying thing.
He stepped on into the night. The storm had retreated farther away. It was so far away, now, that the voices in it could hardly be heard, and over the rest of the sky fled the shining white waves of clouds with the moon sweeping grandly through them.
MacTee still backed up, step by step. Harrigan followed him to a little distance from the hut. Then MacTee stopped and glanced around him, swiftly—very swiftly, for fear lest the least absence of care might enable the magic of Harrigan to produce a gun.
Then he said: “Hoist your hands, Harrigan.”
His voice had the clang of iron in it.
Harrigan threw his hands well above his head. He knew that he was in touching distance, in breathing distance, of death.
“Turn your back to me!” commanded MacTee.
Harrigan turned his back. That was the hardest thing to do, to turn one’s back on a nightmare terror. But he turned his back, little by little.
MacTee stepped up to him and laid the weighty muzzle of the revolver in the small of Harrigan’s back.
“If you make a move . . . if you even breathe,” said MacTee, “I’ll blow your spine in two.”
“I won’t move,” said Harrigan.
The hand of MacTee searched him. It found two revolvers and threw them away. It found a knife, and threw it away.
The pressure of the gun was removed. MacTee drew back. “Turn around again,” he said.
Harrigan turned.
MacTee weighted the Colt in his hand.
“I ought to kill you like a dog,” he said. “You went into Yellow Gulch to search for both of us. You found Kate. You told her enough lies to get her for yourself. Then you got hold of the deputy sheriff and told him where to find me. You’re a traitor. You’re a treacherous dog, and I ought to shoot you like a dog. But killing with a bullet wouldn’t do me much good. I’m going to use my hands on you, Harrigan. I’m going to kill you with my hands.”
He tossed the revolver away and spread out his great hands.
“It’s been coming to you for a long time,” said MacTee. “And now you’re going to get it.”
“I didn’t send the deputy sheriff,” said Harrigan honestly. “I’m not such a sneak. I sent a girl to let you know. . .”
“My God,” shouted MacTee, “are you going to try to lie out of it like a dirty dog? Are you going to turn yellow when the pinch comes?”
And as he spoke, he rushed in at Harrigan.
Harrigan struck with all his might. His fist glanced as on rock, but he was able to side-step the rush. He turned and met it again. After the first blow, his heart was working again.
“I’m going to tear you to bits,” said MacTee, wiping the blood from his face.
“MacTee,” said Harrigan, “there never was a time when a Scotchman could beat an Irishman. It’s the end of you, damn you. Come in and take it.”
MacTee laughed. It was a terrible thing to watch, and a terrible thing to hear, that laughter of MacTee. And he came in again, with a leap.
There was no stopping him. Harrigan knew it. He hammered in a long, over-arm punch that landed solidly in the face. Then he doubled over quickly and got a low hold, straightened, and heaved the weight of MacTee over his shoulder.
The hand of MacTee gripped at him. With one gesture it tore coat and shirt from his back. Harrigan saw the white flash of the moon on his body. He looked down, and glimpsed the corrugated strength of his muscles, and laughed in turn. The battle madness had entered him.
He ran in as MacTee arose, and shouted: “Now, MacTee! Now, Angus! We’ll see who’s the better man!”
So he plunged straight into the embrace of MacTee.
>
He had reason to regret it, the instant later. For the arms of MacTee were iron, hot iron, that shrank into place around Harrigan and crushed him. The power of a machine squeezed the breath from Harrigan.
In a sudden panic, he beat at the head and at the body of MacTee. He saw that it was as idle as splashing drops of water off a rock. His wind was almost gone. He tried for another grip by shooting his right arm under the armpit of MacTee and bending his forearm over the shoulder. By chance he fixed his grasp on the point of MacTee’s jaw. The flesh was no more than a thin masking for the bone. It was against the bone that the grip of Harrigan was biting.
In the meantime, his own breath was gone. He jerked with all his might. The face of MacTee was convulsed to the mask of a beast, a dead beast, glaring with eyes of glass from the wall of a hunting lodge. The great neck muscles of MacTee bulged out to meet the strain. His whole body shook as Harrigan jerked with all his might, again and again, striving to bend back the erect head.
There was a sudden giving. The head of MacTee had gone back an inch, another inch. He groaned in an agony. They turned slowly. Bit by bit the head of MacTee was going back. His body began to bend at the waist. His knees sagged. He became smaller than Harrigan. He tottered. He was about to fall, but that was not enough for Harrigan, who suddenly shifted his clutch lower. The great spread of his fingers, like talons, fastened across the throat of MacTee.
That was the end. He held the life of the man. A bubbling, gasping sound came from MacTee’s lips. He staggered this way and that. It was a miracle that his stalwart legs still could hold him up, when he was dying on his feet.
Dying—all that was MacTee now pinching out in darkness, all the lion of courage and savage cruelty and great hearted friendship, also diminishing like a light that will fail and can never be kindled again.
“Angus!” groaned Harrigan. “I can’t be murdering you, man.” He added: “Say that you’ve had enough . . . I can’t be murdering you.”
But he knew, as he said this, that it was a vain appeal, for Black MacTee had never surrendered before, and he would never surrender now. How could that nature admit defeat?