by Max Brand
Then he found that he was saying stupidly: “I’m sure sorry, Miss Jordan. But I guess being sorry don’t help much.”
“None at all. And—we won’t talk any longer about it, if you please. The thing is done; another failure. Mr. Hervey will give you your pay. You can do the rest of your talking to him.”
She lowered her head; she opened the book; she adjusted it carefully to the light streaming over her shoulder; she even summoned a faint smile of interest as though her thoughts were a thousand miles from this petty annoyance and back in the theme of the story. Perris, blind with rage, barely saw the details, barely heard the many-throated chuckle from the watchers across the patio. Never in his life had he so hungered to answer scorn with scorn but his hands were tied. Alcatraz he must have as truly as a starved man must have food; and to win Alcatraz he must live on the Jordan ranch. He could not speak, or even think, for that maddening laughter was growing behind him; then he saw the hand of Marianne, as she turned a page, tremble slightly. At that his voice came to him.
“Lady, I can’t talk to Hervey.”
She answered without looking up, and he hated her for it.
“Are you ashamed to face him?”
“I’m afraid to face him.”
That, indeed, brought her head up and let him see all of her rage translated into cruel scorn.
“Really afraid? I don’t suppose I should be surprised.”
He accepted that badgering as martyrs accept the anguish of fire.
“I’m afraid that if I turn around and see him, Miss Jordan, I ain’t going to stop at words.”
The foreman acted before she could speak. The laughter across the patio had stopped at Perris’ speech; plainly Hervey must not remain quiescent. He dropped his big hand on the shoulder of Perris.
“Look here, bucco,” he growled, “You’re tolerable much of a kid to use man-sized talk. Turn around.”
He even drew Perris slightly towards him, but the latter persisted facing the girl even though his words were for the foreman. She was growing truly frightened.
“Tell Hervey to take his hand off me,” said the horse-breaker. “He’s old enough to know better!”
If his words needed amplification it could be found in the wolfish malevolence of his lean face or in the tremor which shook him; the thin space of a thought divided him from action. Marianne sprang from her chair. She knew enough of Hervey to understand that he could not swallow this insult in the presence of his cowpunchers. She knew also by the sudden compression of his lips and the white line about them that her foreman felt himself to be no match for this tigerish fighter. She thrust between them. Even in her excitement she noticed that Hervey’s hand came readily from the shoulder of Perris. The older man stepped back with his hand on his gun, but in a burst of pitying comprehension she knew that it was the courage of hopelessness. She swung about on Perris, all her control gone, and the bitterness of a thousand aggravations and all her failures on the ranch poured out in words.
“I know your kind and despise it. You practice with your guns getting ready for your murders which you call fair fights. Fair fights! As well race a thoroughbred against a cowpony! You wrong a man and then bully him. That’s Western fair play! But I swear to you, Mr. Perris, that if you so much as touch your weapon I’ll have my men run you down and whip you out of the mountains!”
Her outbreak gave him, singularly, a more even poise. There was never a fighter who was not a nervous man; there was never a fighter who in a crisis was not suddenly calm.
“Lady,” he answered, “you think you know the West, but you don’t. If me and Hervey fell out there wouldn’t be a man yonder across the patio that’d lift a hand till the fight was done. That ain’t the Western way.”
He had spoken much more than he was assured of. He had even sensed, behind him, the rising of the cowpunchers as the girl talked but at this appeal to their spirit of fair-play they settled down again.
He went on, speaking so that every man in the patio could hear: “If I won, they might tackle me one by one and we’d have it out till a better man beat me fair and square. But mobs don’t jump one man, lady—not around these parts unless he’s stole a hoss!”
“I don’t ask no help,” said Lew Hervey, but his voice was husky and uneven. “I’ll stand my ground with any man, gun-fighter or not!”
“Please be quiet and let me handle this affair,” said the girl. “As a matter of fact, it’s ended. If you won’t take the money from Mr. Hervey, I’ll pay it to you myself. How much?”
“Nothing,” said Red Perris.
“Are you going to give me an example of wounded virtue?” cried Marianne, white with contempt.
He was as pale as she, and taking off his hat he began to dent and re-dent its four sides. The girl, looking at that red shock of hair and the lowered eyes, guessed for the first time that he was suffering an agony of humiliation. Half of her anger instantly vanished and remembering her passion of the moment before, she began to wonder what she had said. In the meantime, shrugging his shoulders with a forced indifference, Hervey crossed the patio and she was aware that he was received in silence—no murmurs of congratulation for the manner in which he had borne himself during the interview.
“I got to ask you to gimme about two minutes of listening, Miss Jordan. Will you do it?”
“At least I won’t stop you. Say what you please, Mr. Perris.”
She wished heartily that she could have spoken with a little show of relenting but she had committed herself to coldness. In her soul of souls she wanted to bid him take a chair and tell her frankly all about it, assure him that after a moment of blind anger she had never doubted his straightforward desire to serve her. He began to speak.
“It’s this way. I come out here to shoot a hoss, and I’ve worked tolerable hard to get in rifle range. I guess Hervey has been saying that I’ve got into shooting distance a dozen times but it ain’t true. He happened to be sneaking about to-day, and he saw Alcatraz come close by me for the first time.”
He paused. “I’ll give you my word on that.”
“You don’t need to,” said the girl, impetuously.
His eyes flashed up at her, at that, and he stood suddenly straight as though she had given him the right to stop cringing and talk like a man. What on earth, she wondered, could have forced the man to such humility? It made her shrink as one might on seeing an eagle cower before a wren. As for Perris, his resentment was in no wise abated by her friendliness. She had given him some moments of torture and the memory of that abasement would haunt him many a day. He mutely vowed that she should pay for it, and went on: “I sure wanted to sing when I caught Alcatraz in the sights. I pulled a bead on him just behind the shoulder but I could see the muscles along his shoulders working and it was a pretty sight, Miss Jordan.”
She nodded, frowning in the intentness with which she followed him. She had thought of him as one with the careless, mischievous soul of a child but now, in quick, deep glances, she reached to profounder things.
“I held the bead,” he kept repeating, his glance going blankly past her as he struggled to find words for the strange experience, “but then I saw his ribs going in and out. He was big where the cinches would run, you see, and I began to understand where he got that wind of his that never gives out. Besides, I somehow got to thinking about his heart under the ribs, lady, and I figured it kind of low to stop all the life in him with a bullet. So I swung my bead up along his neck—he’s got a long neck and that means a long stride—till I came plump on his head, and just then he swung his head and gave me a look.”
He breathed deeply, and then: “It was like jumping into cold water all of a sudden. I felt hollow inside. And then all at once I knew they’d never been a hoss like him in the mountains. I knew he was an outlaw. I knew he was plumb bad. But I knew he was a king, lady, and I couldn’t no more shoot him that I could lie behind a bush and shoot a man.” He was suddenly on fire.
“Looked to me like he w
as my hoss. Like he’d been planned for me. I wanted him terrible bad, the way you want things when you’re a kid—the way you want Christmas the day before, when it don’t seem like you could wait for tomorrow.”
“But—he’s a man-killer, Mr. Perris. I’ve seen it!”
His hand went out to her and she listened in utter amazement while he pleaded with all his heart in his voice.
“Lemme have a chance to make him my hoss, murders or not! Lemme stay here on the ranch and work, because they’s no other good place for hunting him. I know you want them mares, but some day I’ll get my rope on him and then I swear I’ll break him or he’ll break me. I’ll break him, ride him to death, or he’ll pitch me off and finish me liked he finished Cordova. But I know I can handle him. I sure feel it inside of me, lady! Pay? I don’t want pay! I’ll work for nothing. If I had a stake, I’d give it to you for a chance to keep on trying for him. I know I’m asking a pile. You want the mares and you can get them the minute Alcatraz is dropped with a bullet,—but I tell you straight, he’s worth all of ’em—all six and more!”
A light came over his face. “Miss Jordan, lemme stay on and try my luck and if I get him and break him, I’ll turn him over to you. And I tell you: he’s the wind on four feet.”
“You’ll do all this and then give him to me when he’s gentled and broken—if that can be done? Then why do you want him?”
“I want to show him that he’s got a master. He’s played with me and plumb fooled me all these weeks. I want to get on him and show him he’s beat.” His fierce joy in the thought was contagious. “I want to make him turn when I pull on the reins. I’ll have him start when I want to start and stop when I want to stop. I’ll make him glad when I talk soft to him and shake when I talk hard. He’s made a fool of me; I’ll make a fool and a show of him. Lady, will you say yes?”
He had swept her off her feet and with a mind full of a riot of imaginings—the frantic stallion, the clinging rider, the struggle for superiority—she breathed: “Yes, yes! A thousand times yes—and good luck, Mr. Perris.”
He tossed his arms above his head and cried out joyously.
“Lady, it’s more’n ten years of life to me!”
“But wait!” she said, suddenly aware of Hervey, lingering in the background. “I haven’t the power to let you stay. It’s Mr. Hervey who has authority while my father is away.”
The lips of Red Jim twitched to a sneering malevolence mingled with gloom.
“It’s up to him?” he echoed. “Then I might of spared myself all of this talk.”
It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal. Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains. And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without Red Jim.
“You don’t know Mr. Hervey,” she broke in before the foreman could speak for himself. “He’ll bear no malice to you. He’s forgotten that squabble over—”
“Sure I have,” said Lew Hervey. “I’ve forgotten all about it. But the way I figure, Miss Jordan, is that Perris is like a chunk of dynamite on the ranch. Any day one of the boys may run into him and there’ll be a killing. They’re red-hot against him. They might start for him in a gang one of these days, for all I know. For his own sake, Perris had better leave the Valley.”
He had advanced his argument cunningly enough and by the way Marianne’s eyes grew large and her color changed, he knew that he had made his point.
“Would they do that?” she gasped. “Have we such men?”
“I dunno,” said Lew. “He sure rode ’em hard that morning.”
“Then go,” cried Marianne, turning eagerly to Red Jim. “For heaven’s sake, go at once! Forget Alcatraz—forget the mares—but start at once, Mr. Perris!”
Even a blind man might have guessed many things from the tremor of her voice. Lew Hervey saw enough to make his eyes contract to the brightness of a ferret’s as he glanced from the girl to handsome Jim Perris. But the red-headed adventurer was quite blind, quite deaf. No matter how the thing had been done, he knew that the girl and the foreman were now both combined to drive him from the ranch, from Alcatraz. For a moment of blind anger he wanted to crush, kill, destroy. Then he turned on his heel and strode towards the arch which led into the patio.
“Mind you!” called Lew Hervey in warning. “It’s on your own head, Perris. If you don’t leave, I’ll throw you off!”
Red Jim flashed about under the shade of the arch.
“Come get me, and be damned,” he said.
And then he was gone. The cowpunchers, furious at this open defiance of them all, boiled out into the patio, growling.
“You see?” said Hervey to the girl. “He won’t be satisfied till there’s a killing!”
“Keep them back!” she pleaded. “Don’t let them go, Mr. Hervey. Don’t let them follow him!”
One sharp, short order from Hervey stopped the foremost as they ran for the entrance. In fact, not one of them was peculiarly keen to follow such a trail as this in the darkness. Breathless silence fell over the patio, and then they heard the departing beat of the hoofs of Red’s horse. And the shock of every footfall struck home in the heart of Marianne and filled her with a great loneliness and terror. And then the noise of the gallop died away in the far-off night.
CHAPTER XVII
INVISIBLE DANGER
Alcatraz, cresting the hill, warned the mares with a snort. One by one the bays brought up their beautiful heads to attention but the grey, as was her custom in moments of crisis or indecision, trotted forward to the side of the leader and glanced over the rolling lands below. Her decision was instant and decisive. She shook her head and turning to the side, she started down the left slope at a trot. Alcatraz called her back with another snort. He knew, as well as she did, the meaning of that faint odor on the east wind: it was man, unmistakably the great enemy; but during five days that scent had hung steadily here and yet, over all the miles which he could survey there was no sign of a man nor any places where man could be concealed. There was not a tree; there was not a fallen log; there was not a stump; there was not a rock of such respectable dimensions that even a rabbit would dare to seek shelter behind it. Still, mysteriously, the scent of man was there.
Alcatraz stamped with impatience and when the grey whinnied he merely shook his head angrily in answer. It irritated him to have her always right, always cautious, and besides he felt somewhat shamed by the necessity of using her as a court of last appeal. To be sure, he was a keener judge of the sights and scents of the mountain desert than any of the half-bred mares but though he lived to fifty years he would never approach the stored wisdom, the uncanny acuteness of eye, ear, and nostril of the wild grey. Her view-point seemed, at times, that of the high-sailing buzzards, for she guessed, miles and miles away, what water-holes were dry and what “tanks” brimmed with water; what trails were broken by landslides since they had last been travelled and where new trails might be found or made; when it was wise to seek shelter because a sand-storm was brewing; where the grass grew thickest and most succulent on far-off hillsides; and so on and on the treasury of her knowledge could be delved in inexhaustibly.
On only one point did he feel that his cleverness might rival hers and that point was the most important of all—man the Great Destroyer. She knew him only from a distance whereas had not Alcatraz breathed that dreaded scent close at hand? Had he not on one unforgetable occasion felt the soft flesh turn to pulp beneath his stamping feet, and heard the breaking of bones? His nostrils distended at the memory and again he searched the lowlands.
No, there was not a shadow of a place where man might be concealed and that scent could be nothing but a snare and an illusion. To be sure there were other ways hardly less convenient to the waterhole, but why should he be turned from the easiest way day after day because of this unbodied warning? He started down the slope.
It brought the grey after him, neighing wild
ly, but though she circled around him at full speed time after time, he would not pause, and when she attempted to block him he raised his head and pushed her away with the resistless urge of breast and shoulders. At that she attempted no more forceful persuasion but fell in behind him, still pausing from time to time to send her mournfully persuasive whinny after the obdurate leader until even the bays, usually so blindly docile, grew alarmed and fell back to a huddled grouping half way between Alcatraz and the trailing grey. It touched his pride sharply, this division of their trust. Twice he slackened his lope and called to them to hasten and when they responded with only a faint-hearted trot he was forced to mask his impatience. Coming to a walk he cropped imaginary grasses from time to time and so induced the others to draw nearer.
It was slow work going down the hollow in this way, and hot work, too, but though he often glanced up yearningly towards the wooded hills beyond, he kept to his pretense of carelessness and so managed to hold the mares in a close-bunched group behind him. In the meantime the scent grew stronger, closer to the ground on that east wind. Time and again he raised his head and stared earnestly, but it was impossible for any living creature to stalk within hundreds of yards of him without being seen—whereas that scent spoke of one almost within leaping distance. Once it seemed to his excited imagination—as he lowered his head to sniff at a tuft of dead grasses—that he heard the sound of human breathing.
He snorted the foolish thought into nothingness and after a glance back to make sure that his companions followed, he resolutely stepped out into the very heart of the man-scent. So closely was that phantom located by the sense of smell that it seemed to Alcatraz he could see the exact spot on the hillside behind a small rock where the ghost must lie. Yet he disdained to flee from empty air and for all his beating heart he raised his head and walked sedately on. The danger spot was drifting past on his left when a squeal of fear from the wild grey far in the rear made Alcatraz leap sidewise with catlike suddenness.
Growing by magic from the sand behind the little rock the head and shoulders of a man appeared, his shadow pouring down the sun-whitened slope. In his hand he swung a rapidly lengthening loop of rope and as his arm went back it knocked off the fellow’s hat and exposed a shock of red hair. So much Alcatraz saw while the paralysis of fear locked every joint for the tenth part of a second, and deeply as he dreaded the apparition itself he dreaded more the whipping circle of rope. For had he not seen the dead thing become alive and snakelike in the skilled hand of Manuel Cordova? The freezing terror relaxed; the sand crunched away under the drive of his rear hoofs as he flung himself forward—with firm footing to aid he would have slid from beneath the flying danger, but as it was he heard the live rope whisper in the air above his head.