by Max Brand
It spoke well of Vic’s nerve that no start betrayed him. He bowed his head a little, as though to catch the trend of the jolly story better, nodding.
“What’s wrong?” he muttered back.
“Barry’s watchin’ you out of the shadow.”
Then: “You fool, don’t look!”
But there was method in Vic’s raising his head. He threw it back and broke into laughter, but while he laughed he searched the shadow by the wall where Dan sat, and he felt glimmering eyes fixed steadily upon him. He dropped his head again, as if to hear more.
“What’s it mean, Daniels?”
“You ought to know. I don’t. But he don’t mean you no good. He’s lookin’ at you too steady. If I was you—”
Through the whisper of Buck, through the loud, steady talk of Lee Haines, cut the voice of Barry.
“Vic!”
The latter looked up and found that Barry was standing just within the glow of the hearth-light and something about him made Gregg’s heart shrink.
“Vic, how much did they pay you?”
He tried to answer; he would have given ten years of life to have his voice under control for an instant; but his tongue froze. He knew that every one had turned toward him and he tried to smile, look unconcerned, but in spite of himself his eyes were wide, fixed, and he felt that they could stare into the bottom of his soul and see the guilt.
“How much?”
Then his voice came, but he could have groaned when he heard its crazily shaken, shrill sound.
“What d’you mean, Dan?”
The other smiled and Gregg added hastily: “If you want me to be movin’ along, Dan, of course you’re the doctor.”
“How much did they pay?” repeated the quiet, inexorable voice.
He could have stood that, even without much fear, for no matter how terrible the man might be in action his hands were tied in his own house; but now Kate spoke: “Vic, what have you done?”
Then it came, in a flood. Hot shame rolled through him and the words burst out:
“I’m a yaller houn’-dog, a sneakin’ no-good cur! Dan, you’re right. I’ve sold you. They’re out there, all of ’em, waitin’ in the rocks. For God’s sake take my gun and pump me full of lead!”
He threw his arms out, clear of his holster and turned that Barry might draw his revolver. Vaguely he knew that Haines and Buck had drawn swiftly close to him from either side; vaguely he heard the cry of Kate; but all that he clearly understood was the merciless, unmoved face of Barry. It was pretense; with all his being he wanted to die, but when Barry made no move to strike he turned desperately to the others.
“Do the job for him. He saved my life and then I used it to sell him. Daniels, Haines, I got no use for livin’.”
“Vic,” he said, “take—this!—and march to your friends outside; and when you get through them, plant a forty-five slug in your own dirty heart and then rot.” Haines held out his gun with a gesture of contempt.
But Kate slipped in front of him, white and anguish.
“It was the girl you told me about, Vic?” she said. “You did it to get back to her?”
He dropped his head.
“Dan, let him go!”
“I got no thought of usin’ him.”
“Why not?” cried Vic suddenly. “I’ll do the way Haines said. Or else let me stay here and fight ’em off with you. Dan, for God’s sake give me one chance to make good.”
It was like talking to a face of stone.
“The door’s open for you, and waitin’. One thing before you go. That’s the same gang you told me about before? Ronicky Joe, Harry Fisher, Gus Reeve, Mat Henshaw, Sliver Waldron and Pete Glass?”
“Harry Fisher’s dead, Dan, if you’ll give me one fightin’ chance to play square now—”
“Tell ’em that I know ’em. Tell ’em one thing more. I thought Grey Molly was worth only one man. But I was wrong. They’ve done me dirt and played crooked. They come huntin’ me—with a decoy. Now tell ’em from me that Grey Molly is worth seven men, and she’s goin’ to be paid for in full.”
He stepped to the wall and took down the bridle which Vic had hung there.
“I guess you’ll be needin’ this?”
It ended all talk; it even seemed to Gregg that as soon as he received the bridle from the hand of Barry the truce ended with a sudden period and war began. He turned slowly away.
CHAPTER XVI
Man-Hunting
As Vic Gregg left the house, the new moon peered at him over a black mountain-top, a sickle of white with a half imaginary line rounding the rest of the circle, and to the shaken mind of Vic it seemed as if a ghostly spectator had come out to watch the tragedy among the peaks. At the line of the rocks the sheriff spoke.
“Gregg, you’ve busted your contract. You didn’t bring him out.”
Vic threw his revolver on the ground.
“I bust the rest of it here and now. I’m through. Put on your irons and take me back. Hang me and be damned to you, but I’ll do no more to double-cross him.”
Sliver Waldron drew from his pocket something which jangled faintly, but the sheriff stopped him with a word. He sat up behind his rock.
“I got an idea, Gregg, that you’ve finished up your job and double-crossed us! Does he know that I’m out here? Sit down there out of sight.”
“I’ll do that,” said Gregg, obeying, “because you got the right to make me, but you ain’t got the right to make me talk, and nothin’ this side of hell can pry a word out of me!”
The sheriff drew down his brows until his eyes were merely cavities of blackness. Very tenderly he fondled the rifle-butt which lay across his knees, and never in the mountain-desert had there been a more humbly unpretentious figure of a man.
He said: “Vic, I been thinkin’ that you had the man-sized makin’s of a skunk, but I’m considerable glad to see I’ve judged you wrong. Sit quiet here. I ain’t goin’ to put no irons on you if you give me your parole.”
“I’ll see you in hell before I give you nothin’. I was a man, or a partways man, till I met up with you tonight, and now I’m a houn’-dog that’s done my partner dirt! God amighty, what made me do it?”
He beat his knuckles against his forehead.
“What you’ve done you can’t undo,” answered the sheriff. “Vic, I’ve seen gents do considerable worse than you’ve done and come clean afterwards. You’re goin’ to get off for what you’ve done to Blondy, and you’re goin’ to live straight afterwards. You’re goin’ to get married and you’re goin’ to play white. Why, man, I had to use you as far as I could. But you think I wanted you to bring me out Barry? You couldn’t look Betty square in the face if you’d done what you set out to do. Now, I ain’t pressin’ you, but I done some scouting while you was away, and I heard four men’s voices in the house. Can you tell me who’s there?”
“You’ve played square, Pete,” answered Vic hoarsely, “and I’ll do my part. Go down and get on your hosses and ride like hell; because in ten minutes you’re goin’ to have three bad ones around your necks.”
A mutter came from the rest of the posse, for this was rather more than they had planned ahead. The sheriff, however, only sighed, and as the moonlight increased Vic could see that he was deeply, childishly contented, for in the heart of the little dusty man there was that inextinguishable spark, the love of battle. Chance had thrown him on the side of the law, but sooner or later dull times were sure to come and then Pete Glass would cut out work of his own making go bad. The love of the man-trail is a passion that works in two ways, and they who begin by hunting will in the end be the hunted; the mountain-desert is filled with such histories.
“Three to five,” said the sheriff, “sounds more interestin’, Vic.”
A sudden passion to destroy that assured calm rose in Gregg.
“Three common men might make you a game,” he said, glowering, “but them ain’t common ones. One of ’em I don’t know, but he has a damned nervous hand. Anoth
er is Lee Haines!”
He had succeeded in part, at least. The sheriff sat bolt erect; he seemed to be hearing distant music.
“Lee Haines!” he murmured. “That was Jim Silent’s man. They say he was as fast with a gun as Jim himself.” He sighed again. “They’s nothing like a big man, Vic, to fill your sights.”
“Daniels and Haines, suppose you count them off agin’ the rest of your gang, Pete. That leaves Barry for you.” He grinned maliciously. “D’you know what Barry it is?”
“It’s a kind of common name, Vic.”
“Pete, have you heard of Whistlin’ Dan?”
No doubt about it, he had burst the confidence of the sheriff into fragments. The little man began to pant and even in the dim light Vic could see that his face was working.
“Him!” he said at length. And then: “I might of knowed! Him!” He leaned closer. “Keep it to yourself, Vic, or you’ll have the rest of the boys runnin’ for cover before the fun begins.”
He snuggled a little closer to his rock and turned his head towards the house.
“Him!” he said again.
Columbus, when he saw the land of his dream wavering blue in the distance, might have hailed it with such a heart-filling whisper, and Vic knew that when these two met, these two slender, small men—with the uneasy hands, there would be a battle whose fame would ring from range to range.
“If they was only a bit more light,” muttered the sheriff. “My God, Vic, why ain’t the moon jest a mite nearer the full!”
After that, not a word for a long time until the lights in the house were suddenly extinguished.
“So they won’t show up agin no background when they make their run,” murmured the sheriff. He pushed up his hat brim so that it covered his eyes more perfectly. “Boys, get ready. They’re comin’ now!”
Mat Henshaw took up the word, and repeated it, and the whisper ran down the line of men who lay irregularly among the rocks, until at last Sliver Waldron brought it to a stop with a deep murmur. Not even a whisper could altogether disguise his booming bass. It seemed to Vic Gregg that the air about him grew more tense; his arm muscles commenced to ache from the gripping of his hands. Then a door creaked—they could tell the indubitable sound as if there were a light to see it swing cautiously wide.
“They’re goin’ out the back way,” interpreted the sheriff, “but they’ll come around in front. They ain’t any other way they can get out of here. Pass that down the line, Mat.”
Before the whisper had trailed out half its course, a woman screamed in the house. It sent a jag of lightning through the brain of Vic Gregg; he started up.
“Get down,” commanded the sheriff curtly. “Or they’ll plant you.”
“For God’s sake, Pete, he’s killin’ his wife—an’—he’s gone mad—I seen it comin’ in his eyes!”
“Shut up,” muttered Glass, “an’ listen.”
A pulse of sound floated out to them, and stopped the breath of Gregg; it was a deep, stifled sobbing.
“She’s begged him to stay with her; he’s gone,” said the sheriff. “Now it’ll come quick.”
But the sheriff was wrong. There was not a sound, not a sign of a rush.
Presently: “What sort of a lass is she, Gregg?”
“All yaller hair, Pete, and the softes’ blue eyes you ever see.”
The sheriff made no answer, but Vic saw the little bony hand tense about the barrel of the rifle. Still that utter quiet, with the pulse of the sobbing lying like a weight upon the air, and the horror of the waiting mounted and grew, like peak upon peak before the eyes of the climber.
“Watch for ’em sneakin’ up on us through the rocks. Watch for ’em close, lads. It ain’t goin’ to be a rush.”
Once more the sibilant murmur ran down the line, and the voice of Sliver Waldron brought it faintly to a period.
“Three of ’em,” continued the sheriff, “and most likely they’ll come at us three ways.”
Through the shadow Vic watched the lips of Glass work and caught the end of his soft murmur to himself: “…all three!”
He understood; the sheriff had offered up a deep prayer that all three might fall by his gun.
Up from the farther end of the line the whisper ran lightly, swiftly, with a stammer of haste in it: “To the right!”
Ay, there to the right, gliding from the corner of the house, went a dark form, and then another, and disappeared among the rocks. They had offered not enough target for even chance shooting.
“Hold for close range,” ordered the sheriff, and the order was repeated. However much he might wish to win all the glory of the fray, the sheriff took no chances—threw none of his odds away. He was a methodical man.
A slight patter caught the ear of Vic, like the running of many small children over a heavy carpet, and then two shades blew around the side of the house, one small and scudding close to the ground, the other vastly larger—a man on horseback. It seemed a naked horse at first, so close to the back did the rider lean, and before Vic could see clearly the vision burst on them all. Several things kept shots from being fired earlier.
The first alarm had called attention to the opposite side of the house from that on which the rider appeared; then, the moon gave only a vague, treacherous light, and the black horse blended into it—the grass lightened the fall of his racing feet.
Like a ship driving through a fog they rushed into view, the black stallion, and Bart fleeting in front, and the surprise was complete. Vic could see it work even in the sheriff, for the latter, having his rifle trained towards his right jerked it about with a short curse and blazed at the new target, again, again, and the line of the posse joined the fire. Before the crack of their guns went from the ears of Vic, long before the echoes bellowed back from the hills, Satan leaped high up. Perhaps that change of position saved both it and its rider. Straight across the pale moon drove the body with head stretched forth, ears back, feet gathered close—a winged horse with a buoyant figure upon it. It cleared a five foot rock, and rushed instantly out of view among the boulders. The fugitive had fired only one shot, and that when the stallion was at the crest of its leap.
CHAPTER XVII
The Second Man
The sheriff was on his feet, whining with eagerness and with the rest of his men he sent a shower of lead splashing vainly into the deeper night beside the mountain, where the path wound down.
“It’s done! Hold up, lads!” called Pete Glass. “He’s beat us!”
The firing ceased, and they heard the rush of the hoofs along the graveled slope and the clanging on rocks.
“It’s done,” repeated the sheriff. “How?”
And he stood staring blankly, with a touch or horror in his face.
“By God, Mat’s plugged.”
“Mat Henshaw? Wha—?”
“Clean through the head.”
He lay in an oddly twisted heap, as though every bone in his body were broken, and when they drew him about they found the red mark in his forehead and even made out the dull surprise in his set face. There had been no pain in that death, the second for the sake of Grey Molly.
“The other two!” said the sheriff, more to himself than to Vic, who stood beside him.
“Easy, Pete,” he cautioned. “You got nothin’ agin Haines and Daniels.”
The sheriff flashed at him that hungry, baffled glance.
“Maybe I can find something. You Gregg, keep your mouth shut and stand back. Halloo!”
He sent a long call quavering between the lonely mountains.
“You yonder—Lee Haines! D’you give up to the law?”
A burst of savage laughter flung back at him, and then: “Why the hell should I?”
“Haines, I give you fair warnin’! For resistin’ the law and interferin’, I ask you, do you surrender?”
“Who are you?”
The big voice fairly swallowed the rather shrill tone of the sheriff.
“I’m sheriff Pete Glass.”
“You lie. Whoever heard of a sheriff come sneakin’ round like a coyote lookin’ for dead meat?”
Pete Glass grinned with rage.
“Haines, you ain’t much better’n spoiled meat if you keep back. I gave you till I count ten—”
“Why, you bob-tailed skunk,” shouted a new voice. “You bone-spavined, pink-eyed rat-catcher,” continued this very particular describer, “what have you got on us? Come out and dicker and we’ll do the same!”
The sheriff sighed, softly, deeply.
“I thought maybe they wouldn’t get down to talk,” he murmured. But since the last chance for a battle was gone, he stepped fearlessly from behind his rock and advanced into the open. Two tall figures came to meet him.
“Now,” said Lee Haines, stalking forward. “One bad move, just the glint of a single gun from the rest of you sheep thieves, and I’ll tame your pet sheriff and send him to hell for a model.”
They halted, close to each other, the two big men, Haines in the front, and the sheriff.
“You’re Lee Haines?”
“You’ve named me.”
“And you’re Buck Daniels?”
“That’s me.”
“Gents, you’ve resisted an officer of the law in the act of makin’ an arrest. I s’pose you know what that means?”
Big Lee Haines laughed.
“Don’t start a bluff, sheriff. I know a bit about the law.”
“Maybe by experience?”
It was an odd thing to watch the three, every one of them a practiced fighter, every one of them primed for trouble, but each ostentatiously keeping his hands away from the holsters.
“What we might have done if we had come to a pinch,” said Haines, “is one thing, and what we did do is another. Barry was started and off before we had a chance to show teeth, my friend, and you never even caught the flash of our guns. If he’d waited but he didn’t. There’s nothing left for us to do except say good-by.”
The little dusty man stroked his moustaches thoughtfully. He had gone out there hoping against hope that his chance might come—to trick the two into violence, even to start an arrest for reasons which he knew his posse would swear to; but it must be borne in mind that Pete Glass was a careful man by instinct. Taking in probable speed of hand and a thousand other details at a glance, Pete sensed the danger of these two and felt in his heart of hearts that he was more than master of either of them, considered alone; better than Buck Daniels by an almost safe margin of steadiness; better than Lee Haines by a flickering instant of speed. Had either of them alone faced him, he would have taken his chance, perhaps, to kill or be killed, for the long trail and the escape had fanned that spark within him to a cold, hungry fire; but to attempt a play with both at the same time was death, and he knew it. Seeing that the game was up, he laid his cards on the table with characteristic frankness.