Son of an Outlaw

by Max Brand

  The next morning he had asked his visitor to sit for a picture, and his request had been granted. All day he labored at the canvas, and by night the work was far enough along for him to dismiss his visitor. So the stranger asked for a small brush with black paint on it, and in the corner of the canvas drew in the words: Yours, Black Jack. Then he rode into the night.

  Black Jack! Lawrence Montgomery had made up his pack and struck straight back for the nearest town. There he asked for tidings of a certain Black Jack, and there he got what he wanted in heaps. Everyone knew Black Jack—too well! There followed a brief summary of the history of the desperado and his countless crimes, unspeakable tales of cunning and courage and merciless vengeance taken.

  Vance Cornish turned the last page of the article, and there was the reproduction of the painting. He held his breath when he saw it. The outlaw sat on his horse with his head raised and turned, and it was the very replica of Terence Colby as the boy had waved to them from the back of Le Sangre. More than a family, sketchy resemblance—far more.

  There were the same large, dark eyes; the same smile, half proud and half joyous; the same imperious lift of the head; the same bold carving of the features. There were differences, to be sure. The nose of Black Jack had been more cruelly arched, for instance, and his cheek bones were higher and more pronounced. But in spite of the dissimilarities the resemblance was more than striking. It might have stood for an actual portrait of Terence Colby masquerading in long hair. That is, if one did not have the original to look at.

  When the full meaning of this photograph had sunk into his mind, Vance Cornish closed his eyes and shut his hands. “Eureka,” he whispered to himself.

  There was something more to be done. But it was very simple. It merely consisted in taking out a sharp pocket knife and covertly cutting out the pages of the article in question. Then, carefully, for fear of loss, he jotted down the name and date of the magazine, folded his stolen pages, and fitted them snugly into his breast pocket.

  He stood up from the table armed as with a gun, and he walked out of the room with a springy step. His threatened youth was returning to him. That night he ate his first hearty dinner in four days.

  Chapter Four

  Vance’s work was not by any means accomplished. Rather it might be said that he was in the position of a man with a dangerous charge for a gun and no weapon to shoot it. He started out to find the gun.

  In fact, he already had it in mind. Twenty-four hours later he was in Craterville. Five days out of the ten before the twenty-fifth birthday of Terence had elapsed, and Vance was still far from his goal, but he felt that the lion’s share of the work had been accomplished.

  Craterville was a day’s ride across the mountains from the Cornish Ranch, and it was the county seat. It consisted of a wretched group of frame buildings staggering between great masses of black rock for protection. It was one of those towns that spring into existence for no reason that can be discovered, and cling to life generations after they should have died. But Craterville held one thing of which Vance Cornish was in great need, and that was Sheriff Joe Minter, familiarly called Uncle Joe. His reason for wanting the sheriff was perfectly simple. Uncle Joe Minter was the man who had killed Black Jack Hollis.

  He had been a boy of eighteen then, shooting with a rifle across a window sill. That shot had formed his life. He was now forty-two, and he had spent the interval as the professional enemy of criminals in the mountains. For the glory that came from the killing of Black Jack had been sweet to the youthful palate of Minter, and he had cultivated his taste. Assiduous practice gave him skill with weapons, and a perfect knowledge of the mountains and a fair share of craft completed his equipment.

  He became the most dreaded manhunter in those districts where manhunting was most common. He had been sheriff at Craterville for a dozen years now, and still his supremacy was not even questioned. And having made the region bad times for the lawless element, the sheriff often threatened that he would move elsewhere and try to find better hunting—a threat that always frightened Craterville and its neighbors.

  Vance Cornish was lucky to find the sheriff in town presiding at the head of the long table of the hotel at dinner. He was a man of great dignity. He wore his stiff black hair, still untarnished by gray, very long, brushing it with difficulty to keep it behind his ears. It grew far down and over his collar, turning up a little at the ends. This mass of black hair framed a long, stern face, the angles of which had been made by years. But there was no sign of weakness. He had grown dry, not flabby. His cheeks were somewhat sunken; his mouth was a thin, straight line, and his fighting chin jutted out in profile.

  He rose from his place to greet Vance Cornish. Indeed, the sheriff acted the part of master of ceremonies at the hotel, having a sort of silent understanding with the widow who owned the place. It was said that the sheriff would marry the woman sooner or later, he so loved to talk at her table. His talk doubled her business. Her table afforded him an audience; so they needed one another.

  “You don’t remember me,” said Vance.

  “I got a tolerable poor memory for faces,” admitted the sheriff.

  “I’m Cornish, of the Cornish Ranch.”

  The sheriff was duly impressed. The Cornish Ranch was a show place. He arranged a chair for Vance at his right, and presently the talk rose above the murmur to which it had been depressed by the arrival of this important stranger. The increasing noise made a background. It left Vance alone with the sheriff.

  “And how do you find your work, Sheriff?” asked Vance, for he knew that Uncle Joe Minter’s great weakness was his love of talk. Everyone in the mountains knew it, for that matter.

  “Dull,” complained Minter, “damn’ dull. Men ain’t what they used to be, or else the law is a heap stronger.”

  “The men who enforce the law are,” said Vance.

  The sheriff absorbed this patent compliment with the blank eye of satisfaction and rubbed his chin.

  “But they’s been some talk of rustling, pretty recent. I’m waiting for it to grow and get ripe. Then I’ll bust it.”

  He made an eloquent gesture that Vance followed. He was distinctly pleased with the sheriff. For Minter was wonderfully preserved. His face seemed five years younger than his age. His body seemed even younger, round, smooth, powerful muscles padding his shoulders and stirring down the length of his big arms. And his hands had that peculiar light restlessness of touch that Vance remembered to have seen—in the hands of Terence Colby, alias Hollis!

  “And how’s things up your way?” continued the sheriff.

  “Booming. By the way, how long is it since you’ve seen the ranch?”

  “Never been there. Bear Creek Valley has always been a quiet place since the Cornishes moved in . . . and they ain’t been any call for a gent in my line of business up that way.”

  He grinned with satisfaction, and Vance nodded.

  “If times are dull, why not drop over? We’re having a celebration there in five days. Come and look us over.”

  “Maybe I might, and maybe I mightn’t,” said the sheriff. “All depends.”

  “And bring some friends with you,” insisted Vance.

  Then he wisely let the subject drop, and went on to a detailed description of the game in the hills around the ranch. That, he knew, would bring the sheriff if anything would. But he mentioned the invitation no more. There were particular reasons why he must not press it on the sheriff any more than on others in Craterville.

  The next morning, before train time, Vance went to the post office and left the article on Black Jack addressed to Terence Colby at the Cornish Ranch. The addressing was done on a typewriter, which completely removed any means of identifying the sender. Vance played with Providence in only one way. He was so eager to strike his blow at the last possible moment that he asked the postmaster to hold the letter for three days, which would land it at the ranch on the morning of the birthday. Then he went to the train.

  His s
elf-respect was increasing by leaps and bounds. The game was still not won, but, starting with absolutely nothing, he had marshaled forces that had at least an even chance of winning. No wonder he smiled a self-congratulatory smile. In six days he had planted a charge that might send Elizabeth’s twenty-four years of labor up in smoke.

  He got off the train at Preston, the station nearest the ranch, and took a hired team up the road along Bear Creek Gorge. They debouched out of the Blue Mountains into the valley of the ranch in the early evening, and Vance found himself looking with new eyes on the little kingdom. He felt the happiness, indeed, of one who has lost a great prize, and then put himself in a fair way of winning it back.

  They dipped into the valley road. Over the tops of the big silver spruces he traced the outline of Sleep Mountain against the southern sky. It was, in reality, a whole range, but the summits formed one long, smooth, undulating line that dimly suggested the body of a sleeping woman, her hair flowing down a soft slope in a blue mass of lodgepole pine, and the rest of her figure loosely covered with drapery.

  But no imagination was needed to feel the peace and symmetry of that pleasant mountain. And who but Vance, or the dwellers in the valley, would be able to duly appreciate such beauty? If there were any wrong in what he had done, this thought consoled him: The end justifies the means.

  Now, as they drew closer, through the branches he made out glimpses of the dim, white front of the big house on the hill. A prospect as peaceful, he felt, as the quiet outlines of Sleep Mountain above it. Here was just such a place as he could have built for himself to spend the gentle end of his life. That big, cool house with the kingdom spilled out at its feet, the farming lands, the pastures of the hills, and the rich forest of the upper mountains. Certainty came to Vance Cornish. He wanted the ranch so profoundly that the thought of losing it became impossible.

  Chapter Five

  But while he had been working at a distance, things had been going on apace at the ranch, a progress that had now gathered such impetus that he found himself incapable of checking it. The blow fell immediately after dinner that same evening. Terence excused himself early to retire to the mysteries of a new pump gun. Elizabeth and Vance took their coffee into the library.

  The night had turned cool, with a sharp wind driving the chill through every crack, so a few sticks were sending their flames crumbling against the big back log in the fireplace. The lamp glowing in the corner was the only other light, and, when they drew their chairs close to the hearth, great tongues of shadows leaped and fell on the wall behind them. Vance looked at his sister with concern. There was a certain complacency about her this evening that told him in advance that she had formed a new plan with which she was well pleased. And he had come to dread her plans.

  She always filled him with awe—and never more so than tonight, with her thin, homely face illumined irregularly and by flashes. He kept watching her from the side, with glances.

  “I think I know why you’ve gone away for these few days,” she said.

  “To get used to the new idea,” he admitted with such frankness that she turned to him with unusual sympathy. “It was rather a shock at first.”

  “I know it was. And I wasn’t diplomatic. There’s too much man in me, Vance. Altogether too much, while you . . .”

  She closed her lips suddenly. But he knew perfectly the unspoken words? She was about to suggest that there was too little man in him. He dropped his chin in his hand, partly for comfort and partly to veil the sneer. If she could have followed what he had done in the past six days!

  “And you are used to the new idea?”

  “You see that I’m back before the time was up and ahead of my promise,” he said.

  She nodded. “Which paves the way for another new idea of mine.”

  He felt that a blow was coming and nerved himself against the shock of it. But the preparation was merely like tensing one’s muscles against a fall. When the shock came, it stunned him.

  “Vance, I’ve decided to adopt Terence.”

  The fire became a confused play of red in a cavern of black. His fingertips sank into his cheek, bruising the flesh. What would become of his six days of work? What would become of his cunning and his forethought? All destroyed at a blow. For if she adopted the boy the very law would keep her from denying him afterward. For a moment it seemed to him that some devil must have forewarned her of his plans.

  “You don’t approve?” she said at last, anxiously.

  He threw himself back in the chair and laughed. All his despair went into that hollow, ringing sound. “Approve? It’s a queer question to ask me. But let it go. I know I couldn’t change you.”

  “I know that you have a right to advise,” she said gently. “You are my father’s son and you have a right to advise on the placing of his name.”

  He had to keep fighting against surging desires to throw his rage in her face. But he mastered himself, except for a tremor of his voice. “When are you going to do it?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Elizabeth, why not wait until after the birthday ceremony?”

  “Because I’ve been haunted by peculiar fears, since our last talk, that something might happen before that time. I’ve actually lain awake at night and thought about it. And I want to forestall all chances. I want to rivet him to me.”

  He could see by her eagerness that her mind had been irrevocably made up, and that nothing could change her. She wanted agreement, not advice. And with consummate bitterness of soul he submitted to his fate. “I suppose you’re right. Call him down now and I’ll be present when you ask him to join the circle . . . the family circle of the Cornishes, you know.”

  He could not school all the bitterness out of his voice, but she seemed too glad of his bare acquiescence to object to such trifles. She sent Wu Chi to call Terence down to them. He had apparently been in his shirt sleeves working at the gun. He came with his hands still faintly glistening from their hasty washing, and with the coat that he had just bundled into still rather bunched around his big shoulders. He came and stood against the massive, rough-finished stones of the fireplace, looking down at Elizabeth. There had always been a sort of silent understanding between him and Vance. They never exchanged more words and looks than were absolutely necessary. Vance realized it more than ever as he looked up to the tall, athletic figure. And he realized, also, that since he had last looked closely at Terence, the latter had slipped out of boyhood and into manhood. There was that indescribable something about the set of the chin and the straight-looking eyes that spelled the difference.

  “Terence,” she said, “for twenty-four years you have been my boy.”

  “Yes, Aunt Elizabeth.”

  He acknowledged the gravity of this opening statement by straightening a little, his hand falling away from the stone against which he had been leaning. But Vance looked more closely at his sister. He could see the gleam of worship in her eyes. She patently loved every inch of that clean young life.

  “And now I want you to be something more. I want you to be my boy in the eyes of the law, so that when anything happens to me your place won’t be threatened.”

  He was straighter than ever.

  “I want to adopt you, Terence.”

  Somehow, in those few moments, they had been gradually building to a climax. It was prodigiously heightened now by the silence of the boy. The throat of Vance tightened with excitement.

  “I will be your mother, in the eyes of the law,” she was explaining gently, as though it were a mystery that Terry could not understand. “And Vance, here, will be your real uncle. You understand, my dear?”

  What a world of brooding tenderness went into her voice. Vance wondered at it. But he wondered more at the stiff-standing form of Terence, and his silence, until he saw the tender smile vanish from the face of Elizabeth and alarm come into it. All at once Terence had dropped to one knee before her and taken her hands. And now it was he who was talking slowly, gently explaining something
that might be difficult to understand.

  “All my life you’ve given me things, Aunt Elizabeth. You’ve given me everything. Home, happiness, love . . . everything that could be given. So much that you could never be repaid, and all I can do is to love you, you see, and honor you as if you were my mother in fact. But there’s just one thing that can’t be given. And that’s a name.”

  He paused. Elizabeth was listening with a stricken face, and the heart of Vance thundered with his excitement. Vaguely he felt that there was something fine and clean and honorable in the heart of this youth that was being laid bare, but about that he cared very little. He was getting at facts and emotions that were valuable to him in terms of dollars and cents.

  “It makes me choke up,” said Terence, “to have you offer me this great thing. I tell you, it brings the tears to my eyes to have you offer me your name. It’s a fine name, Cornish. But you know that I can’t do it. It would be cowardly . . . a sort of rotten treason for me to change. It would be wrong. I know it would be wrong. I’m a Colby, Aunt Elizabeth. Every time that name is spoken I feel it tingling down to my fingertips. I want to stand straighter, live cleaner. When I looked at the old Colby place in Virginia last year, it brought the tears to my eyes. I felt as if I were a product of that soil. Every fine thing that has ever been done by a Colby is a strength to me. I’ve studied them. And every now and then, when I come to some brave thing they’ve done, I wonder if I could do it. And then I say to myself that I must be able to do just such things or else be a shame to my blood.