by Max Brand
“He died,” said Terry soberly, “before I was a year old.”
“The hell,” murmured the other. “The hell. Poor kid. That was a rotten lay, all right. If I’d known about that I’d’ve . . . but I didn’t. Well, let it go. Here we are together. And you’re the sort of a sidekick I need. Black Jack, we’re going to trim this town to a fare-thee-well.”
“My name is Hollis,” said Terry. “Terence Hollis.”
“Terence hell,” snorted the other. “You’re Black Jack’s kid, ain’t you? An ain’t his moniker good enough for you to work under? Why, kid, that’s a trademark most of us would give ten thousand cash for.” He broke off and regarded Terry with a growing satisfaction. “You’re his kid, all right. This is just the way Black Jack would’ve sat . . . cool ice . . . with a gang under him talking about stretching his neck. And now, bo, hark to me sing. I got the job fixed and . . . but wait a minute. What you been doing all these years? Black Jack was known when he was your age.”
With a peculiar thrill of awe and of aversion Terry watched the face of the man who had known his father so well. He tried to make himself believe that twenty-four years ago Denver might have been quite another type of man. But it was impossible to recreate that face other than as a bulldog in the human flesh. The craft and the courage of a fighter were written large in those features.
“I’ve been leading . . . a quiet life,” he said gently.
The other grinned. It was an all-obliterating smile—nothing remained of his face but the stretching lips, the glint of the wrinkling eyes, and the outjut of the chin.
“Sure . . . quiet.” Denver chuckled. “And then you wake up and bust Minter for your first crack. You begin late, son, but you may go far. Pretty tricky with the gat, eh?” He nodded in anticipatory admiration. “Old Minter had a name. Ain’t I had my run-in with him? He was smooth with a cannon. And fast as a snake’s tongue. But they say you beat him fair and square. Well, well, I call that a snappy start in the world.”
Terry was silent, but his companion refused to be chilled.
“That’s Black Jack over again,” he said. “No wind about what he’d done. No jabber about what he was going to do. But when you wanted something done, go to Black Jack. Bam! There it was done clean for you and no talk afterward. Oh, he was a bird, was your old man. And you take after him, right enough.”
A voice rose in Terry. He wanted to argue. He wanted to explain. It was not that he felt any consuming shame because he was the son of Black Jack Hollis. But there was a sort of foster parenthood to which he owed a clean-minded allegiance—the fiction of the Colby blood. He had worshiped that thought for twenty years. He could not discard it in an instant.
Denver was breezing on in his quick, husky voice, so carefully toned that it barely served to reach Terry. “I been waiting for a pal like you, kid. And here’s where we hit it off. You don’t know much about the game, I guess? Neither did Black Jack. As a peteman he was a loud ha-ha . . . as a damper-getter he was just an amateur . . . as a heel or a houseman, well, them things was just outside him. When it come to the gorilla stuff, he was there a million, though. And when there was a call for fast, quick, soft work, Black Jack was the man. Kid, I can see that you’re cut right on his pattern. And here’s where you come in with me. Right off the bat there’s going to be velvet. Later on I’ll educate you. In three months you’ll be worth your salt. In a year you’ll be a card. Are you on?”
He hardly waited for Terry to reply. He rambled on. “I got a plant that can’t fail to blossom into the long green, kid. The store safe. You know what’s in it? I’ll tell you. Ten thousand cold. Ten thousand bucks, boy. Well, well, and how did it get there? Because a lot of the boobs around here have put their spare cash in the safe for safekeeping.” He tilted his chin and indulged in another of his yawning, silent bursts of laughter. “And you never seen a safe like it. Tin, kid, tin. I could turn it inside out with a can opener. But I ain’t long on a kit just now. I’m on the hog for fair, as a matter of fact. Well, I don’t need a kit. I got some sawdust and I can make the soup as pretty as you ever seen. We’ll blow the safe, kid, and then we’ll float. Are you on?” He paused, grinning with expectation, his face gradually becoming blank as he saw no response in Terry, certainly no burst of enthusiastic acceptance.
“As nearly as I can make out . . . because most of the slang is new to me,” said Terry, “you want to dynamite the store safe and . . .”
“Who said sawdust? Soup, kid, soup. I want to blow the door off the peter, not the roof off the house. Say, who d’you think I am, a boob?”
“I understand, then. Nitroglycerin? Denver, I’m not with you. It’s mighty good of you to ask me to join in . . . but that isn’t my line of work.” The yegg raised an expostulatory hand, but Terry went on: “I’m going to keep straight, Denver.”
It seemed as though this simple tidings took the breath from Denver. “Ahhh.” He nodded at length. “You playing up a new line. No strong-arm stuff except when you got to use it. Going to try scratching, kid? Is that it, or some other kind of slick stuff?”
“I mean what I say, Denver. I’m going straight.”
The yegg shook his head, bewildered. “Say,” he burst out suddenly, “ain’t you Black Jack’s kid?”
“I’m his son,” said Terry faintly.
The other nodded, apparently reassured. “All right. You’ll come to it. It’s in the blood, Black Jack. You can’t get away from it.”
Terry tugged his shirt open at the throat; he was stifling. “Perhaps,” he said.
“It’s the easy way,” went on Denver. “Well, maybe you ain’t ripe yet, but, when you are, tip me off. Gimme a ring and I’ll be with you.”
“One more thing. You’re broke, Denver. And I suppose you need what’s in that safe. But if you take it, the widow will be ruined. She runs the hotel and the store, too, you know.”
“Why, you poor boob,” groaned Denver, “don’t you know she’s the old dame that’s trying to get you mobbed?”
“I suppose so. But she was pretty fond of the sheriff, you know. I don’t blame her for carrying a grudge. Now, about the money, Denver . . . I happen to have a little with me. Take what you want.”
Denver took the proffered money without a word, counted it with a deftly stabbing forefinger, and shoved the wad into his hip pocket. “All right,” he said, “this’ll sort of sweeten the pot. You don’t need it?”
“I’ll get along without it. And you won’t break the safe?”
“Hell!” grunted Denver. “Does it hang on that?”
Terry leaned forward in his chair. “Denver, don’t break that safe.”
“You kind of say that as if you was boss, maybe,” sneered Denver.
“I am,” said Terry, “as far as this goes.”
“How’ll you stop me, kid? Sit up all night and nurse the safe?”
“No. But I’ll follow you, Denver. And I’ll get you. You understand? I’ll stick to your trail till I have you.”
Again there was a long moment of silence, then—“Black Jack.”—muttered Denver. “You’re like his ghost. I think you’d get me, right enough. Well, I’ll call it off. This fifty will help me along a ways.”
At the door he whirled sharply on Terrence Hollis.
“How much have you got left?” he asked.
“Enough,” said Terry.
“Then lemme have another fifty, will you?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t quite manage it.”
“Make it twenty-five, then.”
“Can’t do that either, Denver. I’m very sorry.’’
“Hell, man. Are you a short sport? I got a long jump before me. Gimme ten more and I’ll stop bothering you.”
“Not even that. I wish I could, Denver.”
“Ain’t you got any credit around this town?”
“I . . . not very much, I’m afraid.”
“You’re kidding me.” Denver scowled. “That wasn’t Black Jack’s way. From shoes to his skin . . . ev
erything he had belonged to his partners. His ghost’ll haunt you if you’re turning me down, kid. Why, ain’t you the heir of a rich rancher over the hills? Ain’t that what I been told?”
“I was,” said Terry, “until today.”
“Ahh. You got turned out for beaning Minter?”
Terry remained silent.
“Without a cent?” Suddenly the pudgy arm of Denver shot out and his finger pointed into Terry’s face. “You damn’ fool! This fifty is the last cent you got in the world.”
“Not at all,” said Terry calmly.
“You lie.” Denver struck his knuckle across his forehead. “And I was going to trim you. Black Jack, I didn’t know you was as white as this. Fifty? Pal, take it back.” He forced the money into Terry’s pocket. “And take some more. Here, lemme stake you. I been pulling a sob story, but I’m in the clover, Black Jack. Gimme your last cent, will you? Kid, here’s a hundred, two hundred . . . say what you want.”
“Not a cent . . . nothing,” said Terry, but he was deeply moved.
Denver thoughtfully restored the money to his wallet. “You’re white,” he said gently. “And you’re straight as they come. Keep it up, if you can. I know damned well that you can’t. I’ve seen ’em try before. But they always slip. Keep it up, Black Jack, but if you ever change your mind, lemme know. I’ll be handy. Here’s luck!”
And he was gone as he had entered with a whish of the swiftly moved door in the air, and no click of the lock.
Chapter Eighteen
The door had hardly closed on him when Terence wanted to run after him and call him back. There was a thrill still running in his blood since the time the yegg had leaned so close and said: That wasn’t Black Jack’s way.
He wanted to know more about Black Jack, and he wanted to hear the story from the lips of this man. A strange warmth had come over him. It had seemed for a moment that there was a third impalpable presence in the room—his father listening. And the thrill of it remained, a ghostly and yet a real thing. And there was a kindness for the yeggman himself; it became understandable why a man such as he strove to convince himself that the great Black Jack Hollis was, should have found something worth trust and even friendship in that solid-built criminal with the keen eyes.
But he checked the impulse. Let Denver go, and the thought of his father with him. For the influence of Black Jack, he felt, was quicksand pulling him down. The fact that he was his father’s son had made him shoot down one man. Again the shadow of Black Jack had fallen across his path today and tempted him to crime. How real the temptation had been Terry did not know until he was alone. Half of $10,000 would support him for many a month. One thing was certain. He must let his father remain simply a name.
Going to the window in his stockinged feet, he listened again. There were more voices murmuring on the verandah of the hotel now, but within a few moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she could have desired. And Terry went to bed and to sleep.
He wakened with the first touch of dawn along the wall beside his bed and tumbled out to dress. It was early, even for a mountain town. The rattling at the kitchen stove commenced while he was on the way downstairs. And he had to waste time with a visit to El Sangre in the stable before his breakfast was ready.
Craterville was in the hollow behind him when the sun rose, and El Sangre was taking up the miles with the tireless rhythm of his pace. He had intended searching for work of some sort near Craterville, but now he realized that it could not be. He must go farther. He must go where his name was not known.
* * * * *
For two days he held on through the broken country, climbing more than he dropped. Twice he came above the ragged timberline, with its wind-shaped army of stunted trees, and over the tiny flowers of the summit lands. At the end of the second day he came out on the edge of a precipitous descent to a prosperous grazing country below. There would be his goal.
A big mountain sheep rounded a corner with a little flock behind him. Terry dropped the leader with a snap shot and watched the flock scamper down what was almost the sheer face of a cliff—a beautiful bit of acrobatics. They found footholds on ridges a couple of inches deep, hardly visible to the eye from above. Plunging down a straight drop without a sign of a ledge for fifty feet below them, they broke the force of the fall and slowed themselves constantly by striking their hoofs from side to side against the face of the cliff. And so they landed, with bunched feet, on the first broad terrace below and again bounced over the ledge and so out of sight.
He dined on wild mutton that evening. In the morning he hunted along the edge of the cliffs until he came to a difficult route down to the valley. An ordinary horse would never have made it, but El Sangre was in his glory. If he had not the agility of the mountain sheep, he was well-nigh as level-headed in the face of tremendous heights. He knew how to pitch ten feet down to a terrace and strike on his bunched hoofs so that the force of the fall would not break his legs or unseat his rider. Again he understood how to drive in the toes of his hoofs and go up safely through loose gravel where most horses, even mustangs, would have skidded to the bottom of the slope. And he was wise in trails. Twice he rejected the courses that Terry picked, and the rider very wisely let him have his way. The result was that they took a more winding, but a far safer course, and arrived before midmorning in the bottom lands.
The first ranch house he applied to accepted him. And there he took up his work.
It was the ordinary outfit—the sun and wind-racked shack for a house, the stumbling outlying barns and sheds, and the maze of corral fences. They asked Terry no questions, accepted his first name without an addition, and let him go his way.
He was happy enough. He had not the leisure for thought or for remembering better times. To a common eye that range would have been a dull place, but Terry was born to the country and every mile of riding was the turning of another page in an unending book, whose title came out of the signs of the air, and the drift of eagle and buzzard overhead, and the body of whose print was the loose writing of the trail. If he had leisure here and there, he used it industriously in teaching El Sangre the cow business. The stallion learned swiftly. He began to take a joy in sitting down on a rope.
At the end of a week Terry won a bet when a team of draught horses hitched onto his line could not pull El Sangre over his mark, and broke the rope instead. There was much work, too, in teaching him to turn in the cow-pony fashion, dropping his head almost to the ground and bunching his hoofs together. For nothing of its size that lives is so deft in dodging as the cow pony. That part of El Sangre’s education was not completed, however, for only the actual work of a roundup could give him the faultless surety of a good cow pony. And, indeed, the ranchman declared him useless for real roundup work.
“A no-good, high-headed fool,” he termed El Sangre, having sprained his bank account with an attempt to buy the stallion from Terry the day before.
At the end of a fortnight the first stranger passed, and ill luck made it a man from Craterville. He knew Terry at a glance, and the next morning the rancher called Terry aside.
The work of that season, he declared, was going to be lighter than he had expected. Much as he regretted it, he would have to let his new hand go. Terry taxed him at once to get at the truth.
“You’ve found out my name. That’s why you’re turning me off. Is that the straight of it?”
The sudden pallor of the other was a confession. “What’s names to me?” he declared. “Nothing, partner. I take a man the way I find him. And I’ve found you all right. The reason I got to let you go is what I said.”
But Terry grinned mirthlessly. “You know I’m the son of Black Jack Hollis,” he insisted. “You think that, if you keep me, you’ll wake up some morning to find your son’s throat cut and your cattle gone. Am I right?”
The Adam’s apple of the other rose and fell. “Not at all . . . not at all,�
� he assured Terry.
“By all that’s holy,” groaned Terry suddenly, “it’s an outrage.”
The rancher was gray as ashes. “Listen to me,” he said uncertainly. “I know how you feel about losing a job so sudden when you figured it for a whole season. Suppose I give you a whole month’s pay and . . .”
“Damn your money!” said Terry savagely, and he brooded on the boots of the other. “I don’t deny that Black Jack was my father. I’m proud of it. But listen to me, my friend. I’m living straight. I’m working hard. I don’t object to losing this job. It’s the attitude behind it that I object to. You’ll not only send me away, but you’ll spread the news around . . . Black Jack’s son is here. Am I a plague because of that name? Am I going to start a pestilence in the cattle?”
“Mister Hollis,” insisted the rancher in a trembling voice, “I don’t mean to get you all excited. Far as your name goes, I’ll keep your secret. I give you my word on it. Trust me, I’ll do what’s right by you.” He was in a panic. His glance wavered from Terry’s eyes to the revolver at his side.
“Do you think so?” said Terry. “Here’s one thing that you may not have thought of. If you and the rest like you refuse to give me honest work, there’s only one thing left for me . . . and that’s dishonest work. You turn me off because I’m the son of Black Jack . . . and that’s the very thing that will make me the son of Black Jack in more than name. Did you ever stop to realize that?”
“Mister Hollis,” quavered the rancher, “I guess you’re right. If you want to stay on here, stay and welcome, I’m sure.” And his eye hunted for help past the shoulder of Terry and toward the shed, where his eldest son was whistling.
Terry turned away in mute disgust. By the time he came out of the bunkhouse with his blanket roll there was neither father nor son in sight. The door of the shack was closed, and through the window he caught a glimpse of a rifle. Ten minutes later El Sangre was stepping away across the range at a pace that no mount in the cattle country could follow for ten miles.