The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  Terence rose from his chair, more colorless than ever, the knuckles of one hand resting upon the table. He seemed very tall, years older, grim.

  “Terry!” called Elizabeth Cornish softly.

  It was like speaking to a stone.

  “Gentlemen,” said Terry, though his eyes never left the face of the sheriff, and it was obvious that he was making his speech to one pair of ears alone. “I have been living among you under the name of Colby— Terence Colby. It seems an appropriate moment to say that this is not my name. After what the sheriff has just told you it may be of interest to know that my real name is Hollis. Terence Hollis is my name and my father was Jack Hollis, commonly known as Black Jack, it seems from the story of the sheriff. I also wish to say that I am announcing my parentage not because I wish to apologize for it—in spite of the rather remarkable narrative of the sheriff—but because I am proud of it.”

  He lifted his head while he spoke. And his eye went boldly, calmly down the table.

  “This could not have been expected before, because none of you knew my father’s name. I confess that I did not know it myself until a very short time ago. Otherwise I should not have listened to the sheriff’s story until the end. Hereafter, however, when any of you are tempted to talk about Black or Jack Hollis, remember that his son is alive—and in good health!”

  He hung in his place for an instant as though he were ready to hear a reply. But the table was stunned. Then Terry turned on his heel and left the room.

  It was the signal for a general upstarting from the table, a pushing back of chairs, a gathering around Elizabeth Cornish. She was as white as Terry had been while he talked. But there was a gathering excitement in her eye, and happiness. The sheriff was full of apologies. He would rather have had his tongue torn out by the roots than to have offended her or the young man with his story.

  She waved the sheriff’s apology aside. It was unfortunate, but it could not have been helped. They all realized that. She guided her guests into the living room, and on the way she managed to drift close to her brother.

  Her eyes were on fire with her triumph.

  “You heard, Vance? You saw what he did?”

  There was a haunted look about the face of Vance, who had seen his high-built schemes topple about his head.

  “He did even better than I expected, Elizabeth. Thank heaven for it!”

  CHAPTER 13

  Terence Hollis had gone out of the room and up the stairs like a man stunned or walking in his sleep. Not until he stepped into the familiar room did the blood begin to return to his face, and with the warmth there was a growing sensation of uneasiness.

  Something was wrong. Something had to be righted. Gradually his mind cleared. The thing that was wrong was that the man who had killed his father was now under the same roof with him, had shaken his hand, had sat in bland complacency and looked in his face and told of the butchery.

  Butchery it was, according to Terry’s standards. For the sake of the price on the head of the outlaw, young Minter had shoved his rifle across a window sill, taken his aim, and with no risk to himself had shot down the wild rider. His heart stood up in his throat with revulsion at the thought of it. Murder, horrible, and cold-blooded, the more horrible because it was legal.

  Something had to be done. What was it?

  And when he turned, what he saw was the gun cabinet with a shimmer of light on the barrels. Then he knew. He selected his favorite Colt and drew it out. It was loaded, and the action in perfect condition. Many and many an hour he had practiced and blazed away hundreds of rounds of ammunition with it. It responded to his touch like a muscular part of his own body.

  He shoved it under his coat, and walking down the stairs again the chill of the steel worked through to his flesh. He went back to the kitchen and called out Wu Chi. The latter came shuffling in his slippers, nodding, grinning in anticipation of compliments.

  “Wu,” came the short demand, “can you keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told to do?”

  “Wu try,” said the Chinaman, grave as a yellow image instantly.

  “Then go to the living room and tell Mr. Gainor and Sheriff Minter that Mr. Harkness is waiting for them outside and wishes to see them on business of the most urgent nature. It will only be the matter of a moment. Now go. Gainor and the sheriff. Don’t forget.”

  He received a scared glance, and then went out onto the veranda and sat down to wait.

  That was the right way, he felt. His father would have called the sheriff to the door, in a similar situation, and after one brief challenge they would have gone for their guns. But there was another way, and that was the way of the Colbys. Their way was right. They lived like gentlemen, and, above all, they fought always like gentlemen.

  Presently the screen door opened, squeaked twice, and then closed with a hum of the screen as it slammed. Steps approached him. He got up from the chair and faced them, Gainor and the sheriff. The sheriff had instinctively put on his hat, like a man who does not understand the open air with an uncovered head. But Gainor was uncovered, and his white hair glimmered.

  He was a tall, courtly old fellow. His ceremonious address had won him much political influence. Men said that Gainor was courteous to a dog, not because he respected the dog, but because he wanted to practice for a man. He had always the correct rejoinder, always did the right thing. He had a thin, stern face and a hawk nose that gave him a cast of ferocity in certain aspects.

  It was to him that Terry addressed himself.

  “Mr. Gainor,” he said, “I’m sorry to have sent in a false message. But my business is very urgent, and I have a very particular reason for not wishing to have it known that I have called you out.”

  The moment he rose out of the chair and faced them, Gainor had stopped short. He was quite capable of fast thinking, and now his glance flickered from Terry to the sheriff and back again. It was plain that he had shrewd suspicions as to the purpose behind that call. The sheriff was merely confused. He flushed as much as his tanned-leather skin permitted. As for Terry, the moment his glance fell on the sheriff he felt his muscles jump into hard ridges, and an almost uncontrollable desire to go at the throat of the other seized him. He quelled that desire and fought it back with a chill of fear.

  “My father’s blood working out!” he thought to himself.

  And he fastened his attention on Mr. Gainor and tried to shut the picture of the sheriff out of his brain. But the desire to leap at the tall man was as consuming as the passion for water in the desert. And with a shudder of horror he found himself without a moral scruple. Just behind the thin partition of his will power there was a raging fury to get at Joe Minter. He wanted to kill. He wanted to snuff that life out as the life of Black Jack Hollis had been snuffed.

  He excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully upon Gainor.

  “Mr. Gainor, will you be kind enough to go over to that grove of spruce where the three of us can talk without any danger of interruption?”

  Of course, that speech revealed everything. Gainor stiffened a little and the tuft of beard which ran down to a point on his chin quivered and jutted out. The sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise and curiosity. And the three went silently, side by side, under the spruce. They were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned. Their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. Through the lower branches the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat. Indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.

  It might have been this chill that made Terry button his coat closer about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. The great trunks shut out the world in a scattered wall. There was a narrow opening here among the trees at the very center. The three were in a sort of gorge o
f which the solemn spruce trees furnished the sides, the cold blue of the mountain skies was just above the lofty tree-tips, and the wind kept the pure fragrance of the evergreens stirring about them. The odor is the soul of the mountains. A great surety had come to Terry that this was the last place he would ever see on earth. He was about to die, and he was glad, in a dim sort of way, that he should die in a place so beautiful. He looked at the sheriff, who stood calm but puzzled, and at Gainor, who was very grave, indeed, and returned his look with one of infinite pity, as though he knew and understood and acquiesced, but was deeply grieved that it must be so.

  “Gentlemen,” said Terry, making his voice light and cheerful as he felt that the voice of a Colby should be at such a time, being about to die, “I suppose you understand why I have asked you to come here?”

  “Yes,” nodded Gainor.

  “But I’m damned if I do,” said the sheriff frankly.

  Terry looked upon him coldly. He felt that he had not the slightest chance of killing this professional manslayer, but at least he would do his best—for the sake of Black Jack’s memory. But to think that his life—his mind—his soul—all that was dear to him and all that he was dear to, should ever lie at the command of the trigger of this hard, crafty, vain, and unimportant fellow! He writhed at the thought. It made him stand stiffer. His chin went up. He grew literally taller before their eyes, and such a look came on his face that the sheriff instinctively fell back a pace.

  “Mr. Gainor,” said Terry, as though his contempt for the sheriff was too great to permit his speaking directly to Minter, “will you explain to the sheriff that my determination to have satisfaction does not come from the fact that he killed my father, but because of the manner of the killing? To the sheriff it seems justifiable. To me it seems a murder. Having that thought, there is only one thing to do. One of us must not leave this place!” Gainor bowed, but the sheriff gaped.

  “By the eternal!” he scoffed. “This sounds like one of them duels of the old days. This was the way they used to talk!”

  “Gentlemen,” said Gainor, raising his long-fingered hand, “it is my solemn duty to admonish you to make up your differences amicably.”

  “Whatever that means,” sneered the sheriff. “But tell this young fool that’s trying to act like he couldn’t see me or hear me—tell him that I don’t carry no grudge ag’in’ him, that I’m sorry he’s Black Jack’s son, but that it’s something he can live down, maybe. And I’ll go so far as to say I’m sorry that I done all that talking right to his face. But farther than that I won’t go. And if all this is leading up to a gunplay, by God, gents, the minute a gun comes into my hand I shoot to kill, mark you that, and don’t you never forget it!”

  Mr. Gainor had remained with his hand raised during this outbreak. Now he turned to Terry.

  “You have heard?” he said. “I think the sheriff is going quite a way toward you, Mr. Colby.”

  “Hollis!” gasped Terry. “Hollis is the name, sir!”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Gainor. “Mr. Hollis it is! Gentlemen, I assure you that I feel for you both. It seems, however, to be one of those unfortunate affairs when the mind must stop its debate and physical action must take up its proper place. I lament the necessity, but I admit it, even though the law does not admit it. But there are unwritten laws, sirs, unwritten laws which I for one consider among the holies of holies.”

  Palpably the old man was enjoying every minute of his own talk. It was not his first affair of this nature. He came out of an early and more courtly generation where men drank together in the evening by firelight and carved one another in the morning with glimmering bowie knives.

  “You are both,” he protested, “dear to me. I esteem you both as men and as good citizens. And I have done my best to open the way for peaceful negotiations toward an understanding. It seems that I have failed. Very well, sirs. Then it must be battle. You are both armed? With revolvers?”

  “Nacher’ly,” said the sheriff, and spat accurately at a blaze on the tree trunk beside him. He had grown very quiet.

  “I am armed,” said Terry calmly, “with a revolver.”

  “Very good.”

  The hand of Gainor glided into his bosom and came forth bearing a white handkerchief. His right hand slid into his coat and came forth likewise— bearing a long revolver.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “the first man to disobey my directions I shall shoot down unquestioningly, like a dog. I give you my solemn word for it!”

  And his eye informed them that he would enjoy the job.

  He continued smoothly: “This contest shall accord with the only terms by which a duel with guns can be properly fought. You will stand back to back with your guns not displayed, but in your clothes. At my word you will start walking in the opposite directions until my command ‘Turn!’ and at this command you will wheel, draw your guns, and fire until one man falls—or both!”

  He sent his revolver through a peculiar, twirling motion and shook back his long white hair.

  “Ready, gentlemen, and God defend the right!”

  CHAPTER 14

  The talk was fitful in the living room. Elizabeth Cornish did her best to revive the happiness of her guests, but she herself was a prey to the same subdued excitement which showed in the faces of the others. A restraint had been taken away by the disappearance of both the storm centers of the dinner—the sheriff and Terry. Therefore it was possible to talk freely. And people talked. But not loudly. They were prone to gather in little familiar groups and discuss in a whisper how Terry had risen and spoken before them. Now and then someone, for the sake of politeness, strove to open a general theme of conversation, but it died away like a ripple on a placid pond.

  “But what I can’t understand,” said Elizabeth to Vance when she was able to maneuver him to her side later on, “is why they seem to expect something more.”

  Vance was very grave and looked tired. The realization that all his cunning, all his work, had been for nothing, tormented him. He had set his trap and baited it, and it had worked perfectly—save that the teeth of the trap had closed over thin air. At the denouement of the sheriff’s story there should have been the barking of two guns and a film of gunpowder smoke should have gone tangling to the ceiling. Instead there had been the formal little speech from Terry—and then quiet. Yet he had to mask and control his bitterness; he had to watch his tongue in talking with his sister.

  “You see,” he said quietly, “they don’t understand. They can’t see how fine Terry is in having made no attempt to avenge the death of his father. I suppose a few of them think he’s a coward. I even heard a little talk to that effect!”

  “Impossible!” cried Elizabeth.

  She had not thought of this phase of the matter. All at once she hated the sheriff.

  “It really is possible,” said Vance. “You see, it’s known that Terry never fights if he can avoid it. There never has been any real reason for fighting until today. But you know how gossip will put the most unrelated facts together, and make a complete story in some way.”

  “I wish the sheriff were dead!” moaned Elizabeth. “Oh, Vance, if you only hadn’t gone near Craterville! If you only hadn’t distributed those wholesale invitations!”

  It was almost too much for Vance—to be reproached after so much of the triumph was on her side—such a complete victory that she herself would never dream of the peril she and Terry had escaped. But he had to control his irritation. In fact, he saw his whole life ahead of him carefully schooled and controlled. He no longer had anything to sell. Elizabeth had made a mock of him and shown him that he was hollow, that he was living on her charity. He must all the days that she remained alive keep flattering her, trying to find a way to make himself a necessity to her. And after her death there would be a still harder task. Terry, who disliked him pointedly, would then be the master, and he would face the bitter necessity of cajoling the youngster whom he detested. A fine life, truly! An almost noble anguish of the
spirit came upon Vance. He was urged to the very brink of the determination to thrust out into the world and make his own living. But he recoiled from that horrible idea in time.

  “Yes,” he said, “that was the worst step I ever took. But I was trying to be wholehearted in the Western way, my dear, and show that I had entered into the spirit of things.”

  “As a matter of fact,” sighed Elizabeth, “you nearly ruined Terry’s life—and mine!”

  “Very near,” said the penitent Vance. “But then—you see how well it has turned out? Terry has taken the acid test, and now you can trust him under any—”

  The words were literally blown off ragged at his lips. Two revolver shots exploded at them. No one gun could have fired them. And there was a terrible significance in the angry speed with which one had followed the other, blending, so that the echo from the lofty side of Sleep Mountain was but a single booming sound. In that clear air it was impossible to tell the direction of the noise.

  Everyone in the room seemed to listen stupidly for a repetition of the noises. But there was no repetition.

  “Vance,” whispered Elizabeth in such a tone that the coward dared not look into her face. “It’s happened!”

  “What?” He knew, but he wanted the joy of hearing it from her own lips.

  “It has happened,” she whispered in the same ghostly voice. “But which one?”

  That was it. Who had fallen—Terry, or the sheriff? A long, heavy step crossed the little porch. Either man might walk like that.

  The door was flung open. Terence Hollis stood before them.

  “I think that I’ve killed the sheriff,” he said simply. “I’m going up to my room to put some things together; and I’ll go into town with any man who wishes to arrest me. Decide that between yourselves.”

  With that he turned and walked away with a step as deliberately unhurried as his approach had been. The manner of the boy was more terrible than the thing he had done. Twice he had shocked them on the same afternoon. And they were just beginning to realize that the shell of boyhood was being ripped away from Terence Colby. Terry Hollis, son of Black Jack, was being revealed to them.