by Max Brand
Suddenly Harrigan loosened his grasp. “I can’t do it, MacTee!” he groaned, drawing back.
He had been in so close that there was no chance for those hammering bludgeons, the fists of MacTee, to strike a vital spot. But drawing away, he came into perfect range. At the last instant, he saw the danger coming like a shadow, from the corner of his eye. He tried to raise his left arm to block the punch. But his hasty guard was beaten down. A ponderous mass struck full and fair on the side of his chin, near the point. The shock was telegraphed into his brain like a thunderclap, while the darkness of thunderclouds spread over his eyes.
The moonlight seemed to disappear. Before him all was the thick of night.
In that murk of darkness, he saw a vague silhouette drifting. He put up his hands and stretched them out. But terrible blows struck him and knocked across his brain showers of fiery sparks. They gave him only light by which to see his own coming destruction. He was beaten, and he knew that he was beaten.
A wave of sick weakness came over him. He fell on hands and knees. The darkness, at the same time, cleared instantly from his mind, letting in the fullness of the moonlight, so that he could see the valley, the pale boat of the moon, the clouds that fled down the wind.
He saw MacTee, in the act of catching up a great, jagged stone, and heaving it into the air.
A sudden lightness of body and a strength of limb enabled Harrigan to rise. Once upon his feet, he could only stand there, tottering, his helpless arms hanging at his sides.
He saw the stone heaved back, until the strain of the effort was shown in the whole body of MacTee, prepared to deal the final stroke.
But MacTee did not strike. The stone dropped out of his hand and thumped its weight heavily against the ground.
“Damn you, Harrigan,” said MacTee, “I can’t do it. You’re a traitor, Harrigan. But I can’t finish you off the way you deserve to be finished.”
Harrigan pointed toward the cabin.
“It’s the girl that counts, MacTee. She’s half out of her mind with fear of you. We’ve got to show ourselves to her . . . alive.”
He stumbled forward. His knees were so uncertain that he was in danger of falling. MacTee gripped him by the arm and sustained him. They moved forward crookedly toward the cabin.
“Why did you do it, Harrigan?” asked MacTee. “Why did you knife me in the back? Why did you tell ’em where to hunt me down?”
“I didn’t,” said Harrigan. “I’ll swear on the Book, MacTee, that I left a girl behind to take the news to you that I was gone, and Kate with me. Maybe she was afraid to go and thought she’d do better by sending men and guns. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t stab you in the back, MacTee . . . as you’ve tried to stab me, many a time.”
“You lie,” said MacTee.
He released the arm of Harrigan. And Red Harrigan, giving his head a shake, turned like a bull on MacTee.
“All down the railroad line, you left the railroad dicks ready to put lead in me. Answer me that, MacTee.”
“Are you going to bring up the past?” asked MacTee gloomily. “Are you going to . . . ?”
A faintly murmuring voice broke in upon them from the cabin.
“Hush,” said MacTee. “Do you hear?”
They hurried into the cabin, and there they found that the girl was slumped against the wall of the shack, her head fallen on one shoulder, her eyes closed, her face crimsoned with more than the heat of the firelight.
MacTee put his hand on her forehead.
“She’s burning with the fever, Danny!” gasped MacTee. “Ah, Harrigan, what have I done?”
Harrigan brushed him aside. It was not hard to do. There seemed to be no strength remaining in MacTee, for the moment. Harrigan pressed his face against her breast and heard the rapid hammering of her heart.
“It’s the shock that’s made her sick, Angus,” he said. “And happiness will make her well, again. I’m sure of that. Make her know that we’re friends.”
“Friends?” said MacTee. “I’d rather be friends to a snake than to a Harrigan.”
“You fool,” said Harrigan. “Do you think that I want your friendship? I wouldn’t have the whole man of you, not a dozen a nickel. But it’s the girl that I’m thinking of. Make her know that you’re not hounding the trail of her and me, now.”
MacTee stared sourly at the red-headed man. Then he leaned and called: “Kate! Kate Malone! Oh, Kate, do you hear me?”
She opened her eyes and looked uneasily toward him. Fear began to gather in her face.
“Hush, Kate,” said MacTee. “Here’s Dan Harrigan beside me. Do you see that? And we’re friends, Kate. We’ll be friends all the days of our life. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
She looked blankly at him.
“Is it true, Danny?” she said.
“It’s true,” said Harrigan.
“Then let me sleep again,” said the girl. “I haven’t slept . . . I haven’t dared to rest . . . for years and years. . .”
“Oh, God,” said MacTee. “What have I done, if she dies, Harrigan?”
“I’ll tell you, MacTee,” said Harrigan.
“Tell me, then,” said Angus MacTee, “and curse me, Dan. Damn my heart black, because black it is.”
“You’re talking like a fool, MacTee,” said Harrigan. “What’s in a man has to come out of him. You loved her too much to want to see her turned over to a man like me, that’s all. I’m not worthy of her. Neither are you. God pity her for coming into the hands of either of us, Angus. But God knows you’re a better man than I am. If there’s a black devil in you, there’s a red devil in me.”
“You’re raving, Danny,” said MacTee. “It hurts me to see you make such a fool of yourself. Stay here with her. Hold her life in your hands like a young bird, and I’ll be back with a doctor to take care of her for you.”
Instantly he was gone through the door of the cabin. The galloping hoofs of his horse went ringing up the valley and faded away into nothingness.
XIII
It was a long, long night for Dan Harrigan. He climbed the rock to the wooded mountainside above and broke off evergreen branches until he had enough arm loads of them to make a bed. He beat them dry, built them soft and thick in the cabin, near the fire, and spread a saddle blanket over them. There he put the girl.
She merely groaned in her sleep as he lifted her. Another saddle blanket covered her. Harrigan sat beside her and watched through the hours.
Her breathing grew easier and more regular, and deeper. Another light than the red of the fire began to enter the cabin, and, turning his head, Harrigan saw the doorway brightened by the coming of the day.
A greater hope came up in Harrigan at the same time. He went to the door and stared out at the dawn, which was brightening the mountains above them.
“Dan!” called a voice behind him.
He whirled about and found her sitting up, braced on both arms.
“I’ve been dreaming,” said the girl. “I thought that MacTee came.”
“Hush,” said Harrigan. “He came, and he’s gone again. He’ll never trouble us again.”
He heard the clattering hoofs of horses coming down the valley, over the rocks. So he went to the doorway, and, looking out, he saw three riders, of whom the first was MacTee.
As they came up, Harrigan saw that the other two were elderly men, frowning with grave thoughts and with the labor of their ride into the mountains. They dismounted.
“Two would be better than one, for what’s wrong with Kate,” said MacTee. “Here’s Doctor Harden.”
“She’s better,” said Harrigan to the doctor. “She’s a lot better. I think the fever’s dead in her.”
The doctor gave him a rather biting glance, then entered the cabin.
Harrigan remained outside with the other two.
“It’s a strange business,” said the other visitor, shaking his head. “What the law will say to this kidnapping in the middle of the night . . . what the law will say to
that, you know as well as I do, Mister MacTee.”
“Let the law be damned,” said MacTee. “There are things above the law, I can tell you. And one of them is Harrigan and MacTee, just now.”
The voice of the doctor spoke from within.
“She wants to see both of you . . . Harrigan and MacTee.”
They entered.
Her face was half white and half flushed. Eagerly she fixed her glance upon MacTee.
“Is it true, Angus?” she asked. “Are you the friend of Dan Harrigan now, and always?”
MacTee scowled at Harrigan, but he nodded.
“Was there ever a man made for a better friend than Harrigan?” he said. “I’ll tell you this, Kate. I came up last night to find him and murder him. We fought it out. He could have choked the life out of me, Kate. He had my life in the tips of his fingers, but he wouldn’t take it. And then the chance came to me. I had him helpless, and I couldn’t finish him. There’s a charm on us, Kate. We can’t harm one another. And if you want him, you want the better man of us.”
“Take his hand, then, Angus,” said the girl.
“Here, Danny,” said MacTee.
He turned and gripped the ready hand of Harrigan.
“I wish to God that I’d never laid eyes on you, Dan,” said MacTee. “But now that it’s too late for such wishing, I hope to the same God that nothing will ever come between us again.”
“Why,” said Harrigan, “Angus, if we put our hands together, not even the devil could tear ’em apart. And there’s my hand for life.”
“Kiss me, Danny,” said the girl. “God bless the two of you. This is the happiest day the world ever saw. Kiss me, Angus, too.”
MacTee leaned over her.
“It’s a way of kissing good bye to what I’ve wanted the most in my life,” he said. “But there you are, Kate.” He touched his lips to her forehead. “I’ve kissed one part of you good bye, but not the friend in you, Kate.”
“No,” she said, with sudden tears running down her face. “Never that.”
“Come in here, now!” exclaimed MacTee, rising. “I brought two doctors . . . to make all well. I’m going to see an end of this damned business and get it off my mind for good. Come in here, Johnson.”
The solemn face of the other stranger appeared in the doorway.
“Here’s a sky pilot,” said MacTee. “He’ll tie your hand into the hand of Harrigan. I’m going outside till the trick’s turned. Afterwards, I’m coming back inside to see what Missus Danny Harrigan looks like, and how she wears her new name!”
He strode out through the doorway.
“You must make him happier, Danny,” said the girl. “Make him come back and be our witness. Can you lead him back in here?”
“Can I?” said Harrigan joyously. “Why, I could lead him now with a silk thread. I could lift the whole weight of the soul of him on the tip of my little finger. For didn’t you see, Kate? The blackness has gone out of MacTee forever!”
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways. Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles. Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world.