by Max Brand
“Hear what?”
“It’s spring,” he murmured, without answering more directly than this, and Vic felt that the other had changed again, grown understandable. Nevertheless, the shock of that sudden alteration at the window kept him watching his host with breathless interest. Whatever it was that the strange fellow heard, a light had gleamed in his eyes for a moment. As he sauntered back towards the bed just a trace of it lingered about him, a hint of sternness.
“Spring?” answered Gregg. “Yep, I smelled spring a few days back and I started out to find some action. You can see for yourself that I found it, partner.” He stirred, uneasily, but it was necessary that the story should be told lest it reach the ears of this man from another source. It was one thing to shelter a fugitive from justice whose crime was unknown, perhaps trifling, but it might be quite another story if this gentle, singular man learned that his guest was a new-made murderer. Better that he should learn the tale now and form his prejudices in favor of Gregg. “I’ll tell you the whole story,” he began.
But the other shrugged his shoulders.
“You leave the story be,” he said, and there was something in the quiet firmness of his manner which made it impossible for Vic to continue. “You’re here and you’re hurt and you need a pile of rest. That’s about enough story for me.”
Vic put himself swiftly in the place of the other. Suppose that he and Betty Neal should have a cabin off in the mountains like this, how would they receive a wounded fugitive from justice? As unquestioningly as this? In a surge of gratitude he looked mistily towards his host.
“Stranger,” he said, “you’re white. Damned white. That’s all. My name’s Vic Gregg and I come from—”
“Thanks,” cut in the other. “I’m glad to know your name but in case anybody might be askin’ me I wouldn’t care to know where you come from.” He smiled. “I’m Dan Barry.”
It had to be a left-handed shake on the part of Vic, a thing of which he often thought in the days that followed, but now he sent his memory hunting.
“Seems like I’ve heard your name before,” he murmured. “I dunno where. Were you ever around Alder, Barry?”
“No.” His manner suggested that the topic might as well be closed. He reached over and dropped his hand lightly on the forehead of Vic. A tingling current flowed from it into the brain of the wounded man. “Your blood’s still a bit hot,” he added. “Lie quiet and don’t even think. You’re safe here. They ain’t a thing goin’ to get at you. Not a thing. You’ll stay till you get ready to leave. S’long. I’ll see that you get something to eat.”
He went out with that unusual, padding step which Vic had noticed before and closed the door softly behind him. In spite of that barrier Gregg could hear the noises from the next room quite clearly, as some one brought in wood and dropped it on a stone hearth, rattling. He fell into a pleasant doze, just stretching his body now and then to enjoy the coolness of the sheets, the delicious sense of being cared for and the returning strength in his muscles. Through that haze he heard voices, presently, which called him back to wakefulness.
“That ought to be good for him. Take it in, Kate.”
“I shall. Dan, what has Joan done?”
“She went in there. I told her to leave him alone.”
“But she says he asked her to come in—said he would take the blame.”
“I told her not to go.”
“Poor baby! She’s outside, now, weeping her eyes out on Bart’s shoulder and he’s trying to comfort her.”
It was purer English than Vic was accustomed to hear even from his schoolmistress, but more than the words, the voice surprised him, the low, controlled voice of a woman of gentle blood. He turned his head and looked out the window, baffled. Far above, shooting out of sight, went the slope of a mountain, a cliff shining in the slant sun of the afternoon here, a tumbled slide of rocks and debris there, and over the shoulder of this mountain he saw white-headed monsters stepping back in range beyond range. Why should a girl of refinement choose the isolation of such a place as this for her home? It was not the only strange thing about this household, however, and he would dismiss conjectures until he was once more on his feet.
She was saying: “Won’t you speak to her now?”
A little pause. Then: “No, not until evenin’.”
“Please, Dan.”
“She’s got to learn.”
A little exclamation of unhappiness and then the door moved open; Vic found himself looking up to the face with the golden hair which he remembered out of his nightmare. She nodded to him cheerily.
“I’m so happy that you’re better,” she said. “Dan says that the fever is nearly gone.” She rested a large tray she carried on the foot of the bed and Vic discovered, to his great content, that it was not hard to meet her eyes. Usually girls embarrassed him, but he recognized so much of Joan in the features of the mother that he felt well acquainted at once. Motherhood, surely, sat as lightly on her shoulders as fatherhood did on Dan Barry, yet he felt a great pity as he looked at her, this flowerlike beauty lost in the rocks and snow with only one man near her. She was like music played without an audience except senseless things.
“Yep, I’m a lot better,” he answered, “but it sure makes me terrible sorry, ma’am, that I got your little girl in trouble. Mostly, it was my fault.”
She waved away all need of apology.
“Don’t think an instant about that, Mr. Gregg. Joan needs a great deal of disciplining.” She laughed a little. “She has so much of her father in her, you see. Now, are you strong enough to lift yourself higher in the pillows?”
They managed it between them, for he was weaker than he thought and when he was padded into position with cushions she laid the tray across his knees. His head swam at sight of it. Forty-eight hours of fasting had sharpened his appetite, and the loaded tray whetted a razor edge, for a great bowl of broth steamed forth an exquisite fragrance on one side and beside it she lifted a napkin to let him peek at a slice of venison steak. Then there was butter, yellow as the gold for which he had been digging all winter, and real cream for his coffee—a whole pitcher of it—and snowy bread. Best of all, she did not stay to embarrass him with her watching while he ate, since above all things in the world a hungry man hates observation when the board is spread.
Afterwards, consuming sleep rippled over him from his feet to his eyes to his brain. He partially roused when the tray was removed, and the pillows slipped from under his back, but with a vague understanding that expert hands were setting the bed in order his senses fled once more.
Hours and hours later he opened his eyes in utter darkness with a thin, sweet voice still ringing in his ears. He could not place himself until he turned his head and saw a meager, broken, rectangular line of light which was the door, and immediately afterwards the voice cried: “Oh, Daddy Dan! And what did the wolf do then?”
“I’m comin’ to that, Joan, but don’t you talk about wolves so loud or old Black Bart’ll think you’re talkin’ about him. See him lookin’ at you now?”
“But please go on. I won’t say one little word.”
The man’s voice began again, softly, so that not a word was audible to Gregg; he heard the crackle of burning logs upon the hearth; saw the rectangle of light flicker; caught a faint scent of wood smoke, and then he slept once more.
CHAPTER IX
The Long Arm Of The Law
From the first the wound healed rapidly, for Vic’s blood was perfectly pure, the mountain air a tonic which strengthened him, and his food and care of the best. The high-powered rifle bullet whipped cleanly through his shoulder, breaking no bone and tearing no ligament, and the flesh closed swiftly. Even Vic’s mind carried no burden to oppress him in care for the future or regret for the past, for if he occasionally remembered the limp body of Hansen on the floor of Captain Lorrimer’s saloon he could shrug the picture into oblivion. It had been fair fight, man to man, with all the odds in favor of Blondy, who had been allow
ed to pull his gun first. If Vic thought about the future at all, it was with a blind confidence that some time and in some unrevealed way he would get back to Alder and marry Betty Neal. In the meantime, as the days of the spring went mildly by, he was up and about and very soon there was only a little stiffness in his right arm to remind him of Pete Glass and the dusty roan.
He spent most of his time close to the cabin, for though he had forgotten the world there was no decisive proof that the world would forget him half so easily; that was not the way of the sheriff. He had been known to spend years in the hunt for a single misdoer and Vic had no care to wander out where he might be seen. Besides, it was very pleasant about the cabin. The house itself was built solidly, roomily, out of logs hewn on the timbered slopes above and dragged down to this little plateau. Three mountains, to the north, south and west, rolled back and up, cutting away the sunlight in the early afternoon, but at this point the quick slopes put out shoulders and made, among them, a comfortable bit of rolling ground, deep soiled and fertile. Here, so Kate Barry assured him, the wild flowers came even earlier than they did in the valley so far below them, and to be sure when Vic first walked from the house he found the meadow aflame with color except for the space covered by the truck-garden and the corral. In that enclosure he found Grey Molly fenced away from the black with several other horses of commoner blood, for the stallion, he learned, recognized no fraternity of horseflesh, but killed what he could reach. Grey Molly was quite recovered from her long run, and she greeted him in her familiar way, with ears flattened viciously.
He might have stayed on here quite happily for any space of time, but more and more Vic felt that he was an intruder; he sensed it, rather than received a hint of word or eye. In the first place the three were complete in themselves, a triangle of happiness without need of another member for variety or interest. It was plain at a glance that the girl was whole-heartedly happy, and whatever incongruity lay between her and these rough mountains he began to understand that her love for Barry and the child made ample amends. As for the other two, he always thought of them in the same instant, for if the child had her eyes and her hair from her mother, she had her nature from the man. They were together constantly, on walks up the mountain, when she rode Black Bart up the steep places: on dips into the valley, when he carried her before him on the stallion. She had the same soft voice, the same quick, furtive ways, the same soundless laughter, at times; and when Barry sat in the evening, as he often did for hours, staring at empty air, she would climb on his knee, place his unresisting arm around her, and she looking up into his face, sharing his silences. Sometimes Vic wondered if the young mother were not troubled, made a little jealous by this perfect companionship, but he never found a trace of it. It was she, finally, who made him determine to leave as soon as his shoulder muscles moved with perfect freedom, for as the days slipped past he felt that she grew more and more uneasy, and her eyes had a way of going from him to her husband as though she believed their guest a constant danger to Barry. Indeed, to some small extent he was a danger, for the law might deal hardly with a man who took a fugitive out of the very grip of its hand.
By a rather ironical chance, on the very morning when he decided that he must start his journey the next day but one, Vic learned that he must not linger even so long as that. Pete Glass and the law had not forgotten him, indeed, nearly so well as he had forgotten the law and Pete Glass, for as he sat in his room filling a pipe after breakfast the voice of Barry called him out, and he found his host among the rocks which rimmed the southern end of the plateau, in front of the house. To the north the ground fell away smoothly, rolled down to the side of the mountain, and then dipped easily to the valley—the only direction from which the cabin was accessible, though here the grade was possible for a buckboard. To the south the plateau ended in a drop that angled sharply down, almost a cliff in places, and from this point of vantage the eye carried nameless miles down the river.
“Are them friends of yours?” asked Dan Barry, as he stood among those rocks. “Take a long look.” And he handed a strong pair of field glasses to Gregg.
The latter peered over the dizzy edge. Down there, in the very act of fording the river to get to their side of it, he marked five horsemen—no, six, for he almost missed the leader of the troop, a dusty figure which melted into the background. All the terror of the first flight rushed back on Vic. He stood palsied, not in fear of that posse but at the very thought of pursuit.
“There’s only one way,” he stammered at length. “I’ll—Dan, give me a hand to get a saddle on Grey Molly and I’ll laugh at ’em yet. Damn ’em!”
“What you goin’ to do?” It was the same unhurried voice which had spoken to Vic on the day of the rescue and it irritated him in the same manner now. Kate had come running from the house with her apron fluttering.
“I’m going down that slope to the north,” said Vic, “and I’ll get by ’em hell-bent-for-election. Once I show my heels to that lot they’re done!”
He talked as much to restore his courage as from, confidence, for if the posse sighted him going down that slope on the gray it would take a super-horseman and a super-horse to escape before they closed the gap. Barry considered the situation with a new gleam in his eye.
“Wait a minute,” he said, as Vic started towards the corral. “That way you got planned is a good way—to die. You listen to me.”
But here Kate broke in on them. “Dan, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take the gray and go down the slope. I’m going to lead ’em off Vic’s trail,” said Barry quietly, but it seemed to Vic that he avoided his wife’s eye.
The voice of Betty Neal, Vic knew, would have risen shrill at a time like this. Kate spoke even more low than usual, but there was a thing in her voice that struck a tremor through Gregg. “If it’s death for him, what is it for you?”
“Nothing at all. If they see me and head for me before the way’s clear, I’ll let ’em come up and see they have the wrong man. If I get the chance, I’ll lead ’em away. And Vic, you’ll hit between those two mountains—see ’em?—and cut across country. No hoss could carry you there, except Satan, and you couldn’t ride him. You’ll have to go on foot but they’ll never look for you on that side. When you get to the easygoin’, down in the valley, buy a hoss and hit for the railroad.”
Kate turned on Vic, trembling. “Are you going to let him do it?” she asked. “Are you going to let him do it, again?”
He had seen a certain promise of escape held before him the moment before, but pride made him throw that certainty away.
“Not in a million years,” he answered.
“You’ll do what I say, and you’ll start now. I got a better idea than that. If you head just over the side of that north mountain you’ll find a path that a hoss can follow. It won’t take you clear away from them down below, but there ain’t a chance in ten that they’ll come that way. Take my old brown hoss with the white face. He’ll carry you safe.”
Vic hesitated. The fierce eyes of Kate were on him and with all his soul he wanted to play the man, but liberty was sweet, sweeter than ever to Vic. She seemed to give him up as he stood there with his heart, in his throat; she turned back to Barry.
“Dan!” she pleaded.
She had not touched him, but he made a vague gesture as though brushing away a restraining hand. She cried: “If you come close to them—if, they start shooting—you might want to fight back—”
“They shot before,” he answered, “and I didn’t fire once.”
“But the second time?”
To be sure, there would be danger in it, but as Barry himself had said, if the way was closed to him he could surrender to them, and they could not harm him. Vic tried in vain to understand this overmastering terror in the girl, for she seemed more afraid of what Dan might do to the posse than what the posse might do to Dan.
“This ain’t a day for fightin’,” said Dan, and he waved towards the mountains.
It was one of those misty spring days when the sun raises a vapor from the earth and the clouds blow low around the upper peaks; every ravine was poured full of blue shadow, and even high up the slopes, where patches of snow had melted, grass glimmered, a tender green among the white. “This ain’t a day for fighting,” he repeated.
A shrill, quavering neigh, like the whinney of a galloping horse, rang from beyond the house, and Vic saw the black stallion racing up and down his corral. Back and forth he wove, then raced straight for the bars, flashed above them, and stood free beyond, with the sunshine trembling on him. He seemed to pause, wondering what to do with his new freedom, then he came at a loose gallop for the master. Not Satan alone, for now Black Bart slid across the plateau like a shadow, weaving among the boulders, and came straight towards Barry. Vic himself felt a change, a sort of uneasy happiness; he breathed it with the air. The very sunlight was electric. He saw Kate run close to Barry.
“If you go this time, you’ll never come back, Dan!”
The black stallion swung up beside them, and as he halted his hoofs knocked a rattling spray of pebbles ahead. On the other side of the woman and the man the wolf-dog ran uneasily here and there, trying to watch the face of the master which Kate obscured.
“I ain’t goin’ far. I just want to get a hoss runnin’ under me enough to cut a wind.”
“Even Satan and Bart feel what I feel. They came without being called. They never do that unless there’s danger ahead. What can I do to convince you? Dan, you’ll drive me mad!”
He made no answer, and if the girl wished him to stay now seemed the time for persuasion; but she gave up the argument suddenly. She turned away, and Vic saw in her face the same desperate, helpless look as that of a boy who cannot swim, beyond his depth in the river. There was no sign of tears; they might come afterwards.
What had come over them? This desperation in Kate, this touch of anxiety in the very horse and the wolf-dog? Vic forgot his own danger while he stared and it seemed to him that the spark of change had come from Barry. There was something in his eyes which Vic found hard to meet.