The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  And then that sad offer: “Maybe I could take a turn walking, Sandersen. I could hold on to a stirrup and hop along some way!”

  Lowrie and Quade sneered, and Sandersen retorted fiercely: “Shut up! You know it ain’t possible, but I ought to call your bluff.”

  He had no answer, for it was not possible. The twisted foot was a steady torture.

  In another half hour he asked for water, as they paused for Sandersen to mount, and Lowrie to take his turn on foot. Sandersen snatched the canteen which Quade reluctantly passed to the injured man.

  “Look here!” said Sandersen. “We got to split up on this. You sit there and ride and take it easy. Me and the rest has to go through hell. You take some of the hell yourself. You ride, but we’ll have the water, and they ain’t much of it left at that!”

  Sinclair glanced helplessly at the others. Their faces were set in stern agreement.

  Slowly the sun crawled up to the center of the sky and stuck there for endless hours, it seemed, pouring down a fiercer heat. And the foothills still wavered in blue outlines that meant distance—terrible distance.

  Out of the east came a cloud of dust. The restless eye of Sandersen saw it first, and a harsh shout of joy came from the others. Quade was walking. He lifted his arms to the cloud of dust as if it were a vision of mercy. To Hal Sinclair it seemed that cold water was already running over his tongue and over the hot torment of his foot. But, after that first cry of hoarse joy, a silence was on the others, and gradually he saw a shadow gather.

  “It ain’t wagons,” said Lowrie bitterly at length. “And it ain’t riders; it comes too fast for that. And it ain’t the wind; it comes too slow. But it ain’t men. You can lay to that!”

  Still they hoped against hope until the growing cloud parted and lifted enough for them to see a band of wild horses sweeping along at a steady lope. They sighted the men and veered swiftly to the left. A moment later there was only a thin trail of flying dust before the four. Three pairs of eyes turned on Sinclair and silently cursed him as if this were his fault.

  “Those horses are aiming at water,” he said. “Can’t we follow ’em?”

  “They’re aiming for a hole fifty miles away. No, we can’t follow ’em!”

  They started on again, and now, after that cruel moment of hope, it was redoubled labor. Quade was cursing thickly with every other step. When it came his turn to ride he drew Lowrie to one side, and they conversed long together, with side glances at Sinclair.

  Vaguely he guessed the trend of their conversation, and vaguely he suspected their treacherous meanness. Yet he dared not speak, even had his pride permitted.

  It was the same story over again when Lowrie walked. Quade rode aside with Sandersen, and again, with the wolfish side glances, they eyed the injured man, while they talked. At the next halt they faced him. Sandersen was the spokesman.

  “We’ve about made up our minds, Hal,” he said deliberately, “that you got to be dropped behind for a time. We’re going on to find water. When we find it we’ll come back and get you. Understand?”

  Sinclair moistened his lips, but said nothing.

  Then Sandersen’s voice grew screechy with sudden passion. “Say, do you want three men to die for one? Besides, what good could we do?”

  “You don’t mean it,” declared Sinclair. “Sandersen, you don’t mean it! Not alone out here! You boys can’t leave me out here stranded. Might as well shoot me!”

  All were silent. Sandersen looked to Lowrie, and the latter stared at the sand. It was Quade who acted.

  Stepping to the side of Sinclair he lifted him easily in his powerful arms and lowered him to the sands. “Now, keep your nerve,” he advised. “We’re coming back.”

  He stumbled a little over the words. “It’s all of us or none of us,” he said. “Come on, boys. My conscience is clear!”

  They turned their horses hastily to the hills, and, when the voice of Sinclair rang after them, not one dared turn his head.

  “Partners, for the sake of all the work we’ve done together—don’t do this!”

  In a shuddering unison they spurred their horses and raised the weary brutes into a gallop; the voice faded into a wail behind them. And still they did not look back.

  For that matter they dared not look at one another, but pressed on, their eyes riveted to the hills. Once Lowrie turned his head to mark the position of the sun. Once Sandersen, in the grip of some passion of remorse or of fear of death, bowed his head with a strange moan. But, aside from that, there was no sound or sign between them until, hardly an hour and a half after leaving Sinclair, they found water.

  At first they thought it was a mirage. They turned away from it by mutual assent. But the horses had scented drink, and they became unmanageable. Five minutes later the animals were up to their knees in the muddy water, and the men were floundering breast deep, drinking, drinking, drinking.

  After that they sat about the brink staring at one another in a stunned fashion. There seemed no joy in that delivery, for some reason.

  “I guess Sinclair will be a pretty happy gent when he sees us coming back,” said Sandersen, smiling faintly.

  There was no response from the others for a moment. Then they began to justify themselves hotly.

  “It was your idea, Quade.”

  “Why, curse your soul, weren’t you glad to take the idea? Are you going to blame it on to me?”

  “What’s the blame?” asked Lowrie. “Ain’t we going to bring him water?”

  “Suppose he ever tells we left him? We’d have to leave these parts pronto!”

  “He’ll never tell. We’ll swear him.”

  “If he does talk, I’ll stop him pretty sudden,” said Lowrie, tapping his holster significantly.

  “Will you? What if he puts that brother of his on your trail?”

  Lowrie swallowed hard. “Well—” he began, but said no more.

  They mounted in a new silence and took the back trail slowly. Not until the evening began to fall did they hurry, for fear the darkness would make them lose the position of their comrade. When they were quite near the place, the semidarkness had come, and Quade began to shout in his tremendous voice. Then they would listen, and sometimes they heard an echo, or a voice like an echo, always at a great distance.

  “Maybe he’s started crawling and gone the wrong way. He should have sat still,” said Lowrie, “because—”

  “Oh, Lord,” broke in Sandersen, “I knew it! I been seeing it all the way!” He pointed to a figure of a man lying on his back in the sand, with his arms thrown out crosswise. They dismounted and found Hal Sinclair dead and cold. Perhaps the insanity of thirst had taken him; perhaps he had figured it out methodically that it was better to end things before the madness came. There was a certain stern repose about his face that favored this supposition. He seemed much older. But, whatever the reason, Hal Sinclair had shot himself cleanly through the head.

  “You see that face?” asked Lowrie with curious quiet. “Take a good look. You’ll see it ag’in.”

  A superstitious horror seized on Sandersen. “What d’you mean, Lowrie? What d’you mean?”

  “I mean this! The way he looks now he’s a ringer for Riley Sinclair. And, you mark me, we’re all going to see Riley Sinclair, face to face, before we die!”

  “He’ll never know,” said Quade, the stolid. “Who knows except us? And will one of us ever talk?” He laughed at the idea.

  “I dunno,” whispered Sandersen. “I dunno, gents. But we done an awful thing, and we’re going to pay—we’re going to pay!”

  CHAPTER 2

  Their trails divided after that. Sandersen and Quade started back for Sour Creek. At the parting of the ways Lowrie’s last word was for Sandersen.

  “You started this party, Sandersen. If they’s any hell coming out of it, it’ll fall chiefly on you. Remember, because I got one of your own hunches!”

  After that Lowrie headed straight across the mountains, traveling as much by instinct
as by landmarks. He was one of those men who are born to the trail. He stopped in at Four Pines, and there he told the story on which he and Sandersen and Quade had agreed. Four Pines would spread that tale by telegraph, and Riley Sinclair would be advised beforehand. Lowrie had no desire to tell the gunfighter in person of the passing of Hal Sinclair. Certainly he would not be the first man to tell the story.

  He reached Colma late in the afternoon, and a group instantly formed around him on the veranda of the old hotel. Four Pines had indeed spread the story, and the crowd wanted verification. He replied as smoothly as he could. Hal Sinclair had broken his leg in a fall from his horse, and they had bound it up as well as they could. They had tied him on his horse, but he could not endure the pain of travel. They stopped, nearly dying from thirst. Mortification set in. Hal Sinclair died in forty-eight hours after the halt.

  Four Pines had accepted the tale. There had been more deadly stories than this connected with the desert. But Pop Hansen, the proprietor, drew Lowrie to one side.

  “Keep out of Riley’s way for a while. He’s all het up. He was fond of Hal, you know, and he takes this bad. Got an ugly way of asking questions, and—”

  “The truth is the truth,” protested Lowrie. “Besides—”

  “I know—I know. But jest make yourself scarce for a couple of days.”

  “I’ll keep on going, Pop. Thanks!”

  “Never mind, ain’t no hurry. Riley’s out of town and won’t be back for a day or so. But, speaking personal, I’d rather step into a nest of rattlers than talk to Riley, the way he’s feeling now.”

  Lowrie climbed slowly up the stairs to his room, thinking very hard. He knew the repute of Riley Sinclair, and he knew the man to be even worse than reputation, one of those stern souls who exact an eye for an eye—and even a little more.

  Once in his room he threw himself on his bed. After all there was no need for a panic. No one would ever learn the truth. To make surety doubly sure he would start early in the dawn and strike out for far trails. The thought had hardly come to him when he dismissed it. A flight would call down suspicion on him, and Riley Sinclair would be the first to suspect. In that case distance would not save him, not from that hard and tireless rider.

  To help compose his thoughts he went to the washstand and bathed his hot face. He was drying himself when there was a tap on the door.

  “Can I come in?” asked a shrill voice.

  He answered in the affirmative, and a youngster stepped into the room.

  “You’re Lowrie?”

  “Yep.”

  “They’s a gent downstairs wants you to come down and see him.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I dunno. We just moved in from Conway. I can point him out to you on the street.”

  Lowrie followed the boy to the window, and there, surrounded by half a dozen serious-faced men, stood Riley Sinclair, tall, easy, formidable. The sight of Sinclair filled Lowrie with dismay. Pushing a silver coin into the hand of the boy, he said: “Tell him—tell him—I’m coming right down.”

  As soon as the boy disappeared, Lowrie ran to the window which opened on the side of the house. When he looked down his hope fled. At one time there had been a lean-to shed running along that side of the building. By the roof of it he could have got to the ground unseen. Now he remembered that it had been torn down the year before; there was a straight and perilous drop beneath the window. As for the stairs, they led almost to the front door of the building. Sinclair would be sure to see him if he went down there.

  Of the purpose of the big man he had no doubt. His black guilt was so apparent to his own mind that it seemed impossible that the keen eyes of Sinclair had not looked into the story of Hal’s broken leg and seen a lie. Besides, the invitation through a messenger seemed a hollow lure. Sinclair wished to fight him and kill him before witnesses who would attest that Lowrie had been the first to go for his gun.

  Fight? Lowrie looked down at his hand and found that the very wrist was quivering. Even at his best he felt that he would have no chance. Once he had seen Sinclair in action in Lew Murphy’s old saloon, had seen Red Jordan get the drop, and had watched Sinclair shoot his man deliberately through the shoulder. Red Jordan was a cripple for life.

  Suppose he walked boldly down, told his story, and trusted to the skill of his lie? No, he knew his color would pale if he faced Sinclair. Suppose he refused to fight? Better to die than be shamed in the mountain country.

  He hurried to the window for another look into the street, and he found that Sinclair had disappeared. Lowrie’s knees buckled under his weight. He went over to the bed, with short steps like a drunken man, and lowered himself down on it.

  Sinclair had gone into the hotel, and doubtless that meant that he had grown impatient. The fever to kill was burning in the big man. Then Lowrie heard a steady step come regularly up the stairs. They creaked under a heavy weight.

  Lowrie drew his gun. It caught twice; finally he jerked it out in a frenzy. He would shoot when the door opened, without waiting, and then trust to luck to fight his way through the men below.

  In the meantime the muzzle of the revolver wabbled crazily from side to side, up and down. He clutched the barrel with the other hand. And still the weapon shook.

  Curling up his knee before his breast he ground down with both hands. That gave him more steadiness; but would not this contorted position destroy all chance of shooting accurately? His own prophecy, made over the dead body of Hal Sinclair, that all three of them would see that face again, came back to him with a sense of fatality. Some forward-looking instinct, he assured himself, had given him that knowledge.

  The step upon the stairs came up steadily. But the mind of Lowrie, between the steps, leaped hither and yon, a thousand miles and back. What if his nerve failed him at the last moment? What if he buckled and showed yellow and the shame of it followed him? Better a hundred times to die by his own hand.

  Excitement, foreboding, the weariness of the long trail—all were working upon Lowrie.

  Nearer drew the step. It seemed an hour since he had first heard it begin to climb the stairs. It sounded heavily on the floor outside his door. There was a heavy tapping on the door itself. For an instant the clutch of Lowrie froze around his gun; then he twitched the muzzle back against his own breast and fired.

  There was no pain—only a sense of numbness and a vague feeling of torn muscles, as if they were extraneous matter. He dropped the revolver on the bed and pressed both hands against his wound. Then the door opened, and there appeared, not Riley Sinclair, but Pop Hansen.

  “What in thunder—” he began.

  “Get Riley Sinclair. There’s been an accident,” said Lowrie faintly and huskily. “Get Riley Sinclair; quick. I got something to say to him.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Riley Sinclair rode over the mountain. An hour of stern climbing lay behind him, but it was not sympathy for his tired horse that made him draw rein. Sympathy was not readily on tap in Riley’s nature. “Hossflesh” to Riley was purely and simply a means to an end. Neither had he paused to enjoy that mystery of change which comes over mountains between late afternoon and early evening. His keen eyes answered all his purposes, and that they had never learned to see blue in shadows meant nothing to Riley Sinclair.

  If he looked kindly upon the foothills, which stepped down from the peaks to the valley lands, it was because they meant an easy descent. Riley took thorough stock of his surroundings, for it was a new country. Yonder, where the slant sun glanced and blinked on windows, must be Sour Creek; and there was the road to town jagging across the hills. Riley sighed.

  In his heart he despised that valley. There were black patches of plowed land. A scattering of houses began in the foothills and thickened toward Sour Creek. How could men remain there, where there was so little elbow room? He scowled down into the shadow of the valley. Small country, small men.

  Pictures failed to hold Riley, but, as he sat the saddle, hand on thigh, and looked scor
nfully toward Sour Creek, he was himself a picture to make one’s head lift. As a rule the horse comes in for as much attention as the rider, but when Riley Sinclair came near, people saw the man and nothing else. Not because he was good-looking, but because one became suddenly aware of some hundred and eighty pounds of lithe, tough muscle and a domineering face.

  Somewhere behind his eyes there was a faint glint of humor. That was the only soft touch about him. He was in that hard age between thirty and thirty-five when people are still young, but have lost the illusions of youth. And, indeed, that was exactly the word which people in haste used to describe Riley Sinclair—“hard.”

  Having once resigned himself to the descent into that cramped country beneath he at once banished all regret. First he picked out his objective, a house some distance away, near the road, and then he brought his mustang up on the bit with a touch of the spurs. Then, having established the taut rein which he preferred, he sent the cow pony down the slope. It was plain that the mustang hated its rider; it was equally plain that Sinclair was in perfect touch with his horse, what with the stern wrist pulling against the bit, and the spurs keeping the pony up on it. In spite of his bulk he was not heavy in the saddle, for he kept in tune with the gait of the horse, with that sway of the body which lightens burdens. A capable rider, he was so judicious that he seemed reckless.

  Leaving the mountainside, he struck at a trot across a tableland. Some mysterious instinct enabled him to guide the pony without glancing once at the ground; for Sinclair, with his head high, was now carefully examining the house before him. Twice a cluster of trees obscured it, and each time, as it came again more closely in view, the eye of Riley Sinclair brightened with certainty. At length, nodding slightly to express his conviction, he sent the pony into the shelter of a little grove overlooking the house. From this shelter, still giving half his attention to his objective, he ran swiftly over his weapons. The pair of long pistols came smoothly into his hands, to be weighed nicely, and have their cylinders spun. Then the rifle came out of its case, and its magazine was looked to thoroughly before it was returned.