Son of an Outlaw

by Max Brand

  He excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully upon Gainor. “Mister 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 that 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, spilling through holes and pouring through crevices with diminished intensity 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 that 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. Someone was opening windows in the living room and a fresh current of laughter and talk went out to them; yet the noise was sufficiently in the background, so that it did not really intrude. Presently they were in the middle of the little grove. 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 of which the solemn spruce trees furnished the sides, the cold blue of the mountain skies was just above the lofty treetops, and the wind kept the pure fragrance of the evergreens stirring about them. That odor is the soul of the mountains. Even in the lowlands, if one comes on it, there is a deeper breath drawn, a lifting of the head, an upspring of thought to the high places. Terry felt all these things as he had never felt them before. A great surety had come to him 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.” Gainor nodded.

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

  Terry looked upon him coldly. He felt that he had the slightest chance of killing this professional man-slayer, 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.

  “Mister 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,” the sheriff said, and sneered. “But tell this young fool that 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 gun play, 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, Mister Colby.”

  “Hollis!” gasped Terry. “Hollis is the name, sir.” And he trembled. All at once the other two were touched with awe, for they saw that the pallor of the youth was not the pallor of nervousness or fear, but the pallor of a consuming rage that shook and burned him.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Gainor. “Mister 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 that I for one consider among the holiest 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 by moonshine with glimmering Bowie knives. He looked upon the sheriff and Terry now with an affectionate eye.

  “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?”

  “Nacherly,” said the sheriff, and spat accurately at a blaze on the tree trunk beside him. He had grown very quiet. Terry noted that his eyes had a shifty, considering look, as though there were an eye behind an eye, so to speak. And he knew that the sheriff was getting ready for the game—for game it was to him.

  “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 gun not displayed, but in your clothes. At my word you will start walking in 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 that glowed in the twilight beneath the spruce.

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

  Chapter Thirteen

  The talk was fitful in the living room. Elizabeth Cornish did her best to revive the happiness of her guests, but she herself was prey to the same subdued excitement that 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.�
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  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 dénouement 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 Aunt 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 he detested. A fine life, truly. Of course Terry would marry before long and bring home another young nuisance around the place. And then children—noise—an end of the sweet peace of the valley. He would hate them and they would hate him—and yet he must stay and take his beggar’s bread at their table. 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 whole-hearted in the Western way, my dear, and show that I had entered into the spirit of things.”

  “As a matter of fact”—Elizabeth sighed—“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 raggedly 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. It might be from the bunkhouse of the cowpunchers down the slope where they would be frolicking, perhaps. Or it might be from any direction.

  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. As plain as though he had been present, Vance saw the practiced hand of the sheriff whip up his revolver and watched Terry crumble on the ground. Vance shook a little—because of the vividness of his own vision, not from pity for Terry. 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.

  The men received the news with utter bewilderment. The sheriff was as formidable in the opinion of the mountains as some Achilles. It was incredible that he should have fallen. And naturally a stern murmur rose: “Foul play.”

  Since the first vigilante days there has been no sound in all the West so dreaded as that deep-throated murmur of angry, honest men. That murmur from half a dozen law-abiding citizens will put the fear of death in the hearts of a hundred outlaws.

  The rumble grew, spread. “Foul play.” And they began to look to one another, these men of action.

  Their murmuring was merely a deep undertone to the women. After the first silence of awe there had been a shrill outbreak of clamor. Only Elizabeth was silent. She rose to her feet, as tall as her brother without an emotion on her face. And her brother would never forget her.

  “It seems that you’ve won, Vance. Seems that blood will out, after all. The time is not quite up . . . and you win the bet.”

  Vance shook his head as though in protest and struck his hand across his face. He dared not let her see the joy that contorted his features. Triumph here on the very verge of defeat. It misted his eye. Joy gave wings to his thoughts. He was the master of the valley. The woman would not long survive this blow. Then he let her see his face.

  “But . . . you’ll think before you do anything, Elizabeth?”

  “I’ve done my thinking already . . . twenty-four years of it. I’m going to do what I promised I’d do.”

  “And that?”

  “You’ll see and hear in time. What’s yonder?”

  The men were rising, one after another, and bunching together. Before Vance could answer there was a confusion in the hall, running feet here and there. They heard the hard, shrill voice of Wu Chi chattering directions and the guttural murmur of his fellow servants as they answered. Someone ran out into the hall and came back to the huddling, stirring crowd in the living room.

  “He’s not dead . . . but close to it. Maybe die any minute . . . maybe live through it.” That was the report.

  “We’ll get young Hollis and hold him to see how the sheriff comes out.”

  “Aye, we’ll get him.”

  All at once they boiled into action and the little crowd of men thrust for the big doors that led into the hall. They cast the doors back and came directly upon the tall, white-headed figure of Gainor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gainor’s dignity split the force of their rush. They recoiled as water strikes on a rock and divides into two meager swirls. And when one or two went past him on either side, he recalled them.

  “Boys, there seems to be a little game on hand. What is it?”

  Something repelling, coldly inquiring was in his attitude and in his voice. They would have gone on if they could, but they could not. He held them with a force of knowledge of things that they did not know. They were remembering that this man had gone out with the sheriff to meet, apparently, his death. And yet Gainor, a well-tried friend of the sheriff, seemed unexcited. They had to answer his question, and could they lie when he saw them rushing through a door with revolvers coming from brown, skilful hands? It was someone from the re
ar who made the confession.

  “We’re going to get young Black Jack.”

  That was it. The speech came out like the crack of a gun, clearing the atmosphere. It told every man exactly what was in his own mind, felt but no one confessed. They had no grudge against Terry, really. But they were determined to hang the son of Black Jack. Had it been a lesser deed they might have let him go. But his victim was too distinguished in their society. He had struck down Joe Minter; the ghost of the great Black Jack himself seemed to have stalked out among them.

  “You’re going to get young Terry Hollis?” interpreted Gainor, and his voice rose and rang over them. Those who had slipped past him on either side came back and faced him. In the distance Elizabeth had not stirred. Vance kept watching her face. It was cold as ice, unreadable. He could not believe that she was allowing this lynching party to organize under her own roof—a lynching party aimed at Terence. It began to grow in him that he had gained a greater victory than he imagined.

  “If you aim at Terry,” went on Gainor, his voice even louder, “you’ll have to aim at me, too. There’s going to be no lynching bee, my friends.”

  The women had crowded back in the room. They made a little bank of stir and murmur around the tall form of Elizabeth.

  “Gentlemen,” said Gainor, shaking his white hair back again in his imposing way, “there has been no murder. The sheriff is not going to die. There has been a disagreement between two men of honor. The sheriff is now badly wounded. I think that is all. Does anybody want to ask questions about what has happened?”