by Max Brand
“I suppose,” he admitted gloomily, “that I’ve been raised to do pretty much as I please . . . and the money I’ve spent has been given to me.”
The girl shook her head with conviction. “It ain’t possible,” she declared.
“Why not?”
“No son of Black Jack would live off somebody’s charity.”
He felt the blood tingle in his cheeks, and a real anger against her rose. What right had she to probe him with questions? Yet he found himself explaining humbly. “You see, I was taken when I wasn’t old enough to decide for myself. I was only a baby. And I was raised to depend upon Elizabeth Cornish. I . . . I didn’t even know the name of my father until a few days ago.”
The girl gasped. “You didn’t know your father . . . not your own father?” She laughed again, scornfully. “Terry, I ain’t green enough to believe that.”
He fell into a dignified silence, and presently the girl leaned closer, as though she were peering to make out his face. Indeed, it was now possible dimly to make out objects in the room. The window was filled with an increasing brightness, and presently a shaft of pale light began to slide across the floor, little by little. The moon had pushed up above the crest of the mountain.
“Did that make you mad?” queried the girl. “Why?”
What could he answer her? “You seemed to doubt what I said,” he remarked stiffly.
“Why not? You ain’t under oath, or anything, are you?” Then she laughed again. It was charming to Terry—that softly whispering sound. “You’re a queer one all the way through. This Elizabeth Cornish . . . got anything to do with the Cornish Ranch?”
“I presume she owns it, very largely.”
The girl nodded. “You talk like a book. You must’ve studied a terrible pile.”
“Not so much, really.”
“H-m-m,” said the girl, and seemed to reserve judgment. Then she asked with a return of her former sharpness: “How come you gambled today at Pedro’s?”
“I don’t know. It seemed the thing to do . . . to kill time, you know.”
“Kill time! At Pedro’s? Well . . . you are green, Terry!”
“I suppose I am . . . Kate.” He made a little pause before her name, and when he spoke it, in spite of himself, his voice changed, became softer. The girl straightened somewhat, and the light was now increased to such a point that he could make out that she was frowning at him through the dimness.
“You say that like you was afraid of my name.”
“You see,” he explained lamely, “I was not sure that I knew you well enough to . . . I mean . . .”
“Never mind.” Her attitude became suddenly more matter-of-fact. He saw her hand flash as she counted off her points against the other palm. “First, you been adopted, then you been raised on a great big place with everything you want, mostly, and now you’re out . . . playing at Pedro’s. How come, Terry?”
“I was sent away,” said Terry faintly, as all the pain of that farewell came flooding back over him.
“Why?”
“I shot a man.”
“Ah,” said Kate. “You shot a man?” It seemed to silence her. “Why, Terry?”
“He had killed my father,” he explained more softly than ever.
“And they turned you out for that? I know. It was Minter. And they turned you out for that?”
There was a trembling intake of her breath. He could catch the sparkle of her eyes, and knew that she had flown into one of her sudden, fiery passions. And it warmed his heart to hear her.
“I’d like to know what kind of people they are, anyway. I’d like to meet up with that Elizabeth Cornish, the . . .”
“She’s the finest woman that ever breathed,” said Terry simply.
The girl caught her breath again, this time with astonishment. “You say that,” she pondered slowly “after she sent you away?”
“She did only what she thought was right. She’s a little hard, but very just, Kate.”
She was shaking her head; the hair had become a dull and wonderfully gold in the faint moonshine. And it flashed across the whiteness of a bare shoulder.
“I dunno what kind of a man you are, Terry. I didn’t ever know a man could stick by . . . folks . . . after they’d been hurt by ’em. I couldn’t do it. I ain’t got much Bible stuff in me, Terry. Why, when somebody does me a wrong, I hate ’em . . . I hate ’em! And I never forgive ’em till I get back at ’em.” She sighed. “But you’re different, I guess. I begin to figure that you’re pretty white, Terry Hollis.”
There was something so direct about her talk that he could not answer. It seemed to him that there was in her a cross between a boy and a man—the simplicity of a child and the straightforward strength of a grown man, and all this tempered and made strangely delightful by her own unique personality.
“But I guessed it the first time I looked at you,” she was murmuring. “I guessed that you was different from the rest.”
“You hardly saw me,” said Terry. “You hardly looked at me when your father introduced me, you know.”
“Didn’t I? Say, partner, a girl can see a terrible long ways out of the corner of her eyes, and don’t you ever forget it. When I looked at you then, I was looking plumb through you, as near as I could. And then at the table I looked at you again. Because I was interested. Your kind don’t come my way very often, you see.” She had her elbow on her knee now, and, with her chin cupped in the graceful hand, she leaned toward him and studied him. “When they’re clean-cut on the outside, they’re spoiled on the inside. They’re crooks, hard ones, out for themselves, never giving a rap about the next gent in line. But mostly they ain’t even clean on the outside, and you can see what they are the first time you look at ’em.
“Oh, I’ve liked some of the boys now and then, but I had to make myself like ’em. But you’re different. I seen that when you started talking. You didn’t sulk . . . and you didn’t look proud like you wanted to show us what you could do . . . and you didn’t boast none. I kept wondering at you while I was at the piano. And . . . you made an awful hit with me, Terry.”
Again he was too staggered to reply. And before he could gather his wits, the girl went on: “Now, is there any real reason why you shouldn’t get out of here tomorrow morning?”
It was a blow of quite another sort. “But why should I go?”
She grew very solemn, with a trace of sadness in her voice. “I’ll tell you why, Terry. Because if you stay around here too long, they’ll make you what you don’t want to be . . . another Black Jack. Don’t you see that that’s why they like you? Because you’re his son, and because they want you to be another like him. Not that I have anything against him. I guess he was a fine fellow in his way.” She paused and stared directly at him in a way he found hard to bear. “He must’ve been. But that isn’t the sort of a man you want to make out of yourself. I know. You’re trying to go straight. Well, Terry, nobody that ever stepped could stay straight long when they had around ’em . . . Denver Pete and . . . my father.” She said the last with a sob of grief. He tried to protest, but she waved him away.
“I know. And it’s true. He’d do anything for me, except change himself. Believe me, Terry, you got to get out of here . . . pronto. You see, you got the makings of a hell raiser in you. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that word?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I guess not.” She sighed. “But I mean that I seen the fire in you . . . just a spark of it, but enough. You got some of your father in you, Terry. Well, you got to get out of temptation. That’s why I say, is there anything to hold you here?”
“A great deal. Three hundred dollars I owe your father.”
She considered him again with that mute shake of the head. Then: “Do you mean it? I see you do. I don’t suppose it does any good for me to tell you that he cheated you out of that money?”
“If I was fool enough to lose it that way, I won’t take it back.”
“I knew that, too . . .
I guessed it. Oh, Terry, I know a pile more about the inside of your head than you’d ever guess. Well, I knew that . . . and I come with the money so’s you can pay back Dad in the morning. Here it is . . . and there’s just a mite more to help you on your way.” She laid the little handful of gold on the table beside the bed and rose.
“Don’t go,” said Terry, when he could speak. “Don’t go, Kate. I’m not that low. I can’t take your money.”
She stood by the bed and stamped lightly. “Are you going to be a fool about this, too?”
“I . . . I’m afraid so.”
“You ain’t got a bit of sense,” she said.
“But I would still owe the money, you see, and I’d have to stay and work it off.”
“You’d owe nothing. It’s a gift.”
“Do you think I can take money from a woman?”
“It ain’t anything I’ve earned. It was given to me . . . and God knows where it come from. Anyway, this is about the only good use it could be put to. If you want to pay it back . . . why, help some young fellow to go straight, and you’ll never have to think about me again and what I’ve done.”
“But your father offered to give me back all the money I’d won. I can’t do it, Kate.”
He could see her grow angry, beautifully angry.
“Is there no difference between Kate Pollard and Joe Pollard?”
Something leaped into his throat. He wanted to tell her in a thousand ways just how vast that difference was.
“Man, you’d make a saint swear, and I ain’t a saint by some miles. You take that money and pay Dad, and get on your way. This ain’t no place for you, Terry Hollis.”
“I . . .” he began.
She broke in: “Don’t say it. You’ll have me mad in a minute. Don’t say it.”
“I have to. I can’t take money from you.”
“Then take a loan.”
He shook his head.
“Ain’t I good enough to even loan you money?” she cried fiercely.
The shaft of moonlight had poured past her feet; she stood in a pool of it.
“Good enough?” said Terry. “Good enough?” Something that had been accumulating in him now swelled to bursting, flooded from his heart to his throat. He hardly knew his own voice, it was so transformed with sudden emotion. “There’s more good in you than in any man or woman I’ve ever known.”
“Terry, are you trying to make me feel foolish?”
“I mean it . . . and it’s true. You’re kinder, more gentle . . .”
“Gentle? Me? Oh, Terry!”
But she sat down on the bed, and she listened to him with her face raised, as though music were falling on her, a thing barely heard at a perilous distance.
“They’ve told you other things, but they don’t know. I know, Kate. The moment I saw you I knew, and it stopped my heart for a beat . . . the knowing of it. That you’re beautiful . . . and true as steel . . . that you’re worthy of honor . . . and that I honor you with all my heart. That I love your kindness, your frankness, your beautiful willingness to help people, Kate. I’ve lived with a woman who taught me lessons . . . she taught me what was true. You’ve taught me what’s glorious and worth living for. Do you understand, Kate?”
And no answer—but a change in her face that stopped him. His mind became a tumult. He strove to remember what he had said, something that might have offended her. But the words had not come out of his mind. They had been born of themselves, and he could not remember a syllable.
“I shouldn’t’ve come,” she whispered at length, “and I . . . I shouldn’t’ve let you . . . talk the way you’ve done. But, oh, Terry . . . when you come to forget what you’ve said . . . don’t forget it all the way . . . keep some of the things . . . tucked away in you . . . somewhere . . .”
She rose from the bed and slipped across the white brilliance of the shaft of moonlight. It made a red-gold fire of her hair. Then she flickered into the shadow. Then she was swallowed by the utter darkness of the doorway.
But Terry remained, looking straight down into the pool of moonshine beside the bed. Because, for some reason, it was easy then to reconstruct her from head to foot just as she had stood there. Oddly enough, he remembered her in beautiful anger, and not when she smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There was no Kate at breakfast the next morning. She had left the house at dawn with her horse. “May be night before she comes back,” said her father. “No telling how far she’ll go. May be tomorrow before she shows up.”
It made Terry thoughtful for reasons that he himself did not understand. He had a peculiar desire to climb into the saddle on El Sangre and trail her across the hills. But he was very quickly brought to the reality that, if he chose to make himself a laboring man and work off the $300 he would not take back from Joe Pollard, the big man was now disposed to make him live up to his word.
He was sent out with an axe and ordered to attack a stout grove of the pines for firewood. But he quickly resigned himself to the work. He chose a broad-bitted axe, very heavy in the head, and fitted into the head the longest haft he could find in the tool shed. Then he started out. Whatever gloom he felt disappeared with the first stroke that sunk the edge deep into the soft wood. The next stroke broke out a great chip, and a resinous, fresh smell came up to him.
He made quick work of the first tree, working the morning chill out of his body, and, as he warmed to his labor, the long muscles of arms and shoulders limbering, the blows fell in a shower. The sturdy pines fell one by one, and he stripped them of branches with long, sweeping blows of the axe, shearing off several at a stroke. He was not an expert axeman, but he knew enough about that cunning craft to make his blows tell, and a continual desire to sing welled up in him.
Once, to breathe after the heavy labor, he stepped to the edge of the little grove. The sun was sparkling in the tops of the trees; the valley dropped far away below him. He felt as one who stands on the top of the world. There was flash and gleam of red, and there stood El Sangre in the corral below him. The stallion raised his head and whinnied in reply to the master’s whistle.
A great, sweet peace dropped on the heart of Terry Hollis. Now he felt he was at home. He went back to his work.
But in the midmorning Joe Pollard came out to him and grunted at the swathe Terry had driven into the heart of the lodgepole pines.
“I wanted junk for the fire,” he protested, “not enough to build a house. But I got a little errand for you in town, Terry. You can give El Sangre a stretching down the road?”
“Of course.”
It gave Terry a little prickling feeling of resentment to be ordered about. But he swallowed the resentment. After all, this was labor of his own choosing, though he could not but wonder a little, because Joe Pollard no longer pressed him to take back the money he had lost. And he reverted to the talk of Kate the night before. That $300 was now an anchor holding him to the service of her father. And he remembered, with a touch of dismay, that it might take a year of ordinary wages to save $300. Or more than a year.
It was impossible to be down-hearted long, however. The morning was as fresh as a rose, and the four men came out of the house with Pollard to see El Sangre dancing under the saddle. Terry received the commission for a box of shotgun cartridges and the money to pay for them.
“And the change,” said Pollard liberally, “don’t worry me none. Step around and make yourself to home in town. About coming back . . . well, when I send a man into town, I figure on him making a day of it. S’ long, Terry.”
“S’ long!”
“Hey,” called Slim, “is El Sangre gun shy?”
“I suppose so.”
The stallion quivered with eagerness to be off.
“Here’s to try him.”
The gun flashed into Slim’s hand and boomed. El Sangre bolted straight into the air, and landed on legs of jack rabbit qualities that flung him sidewise. The hand and voice of Terry quieted him, while the others stood around gri
nning with delight at the fun and at the beautiful horsemanship.
“But what’ll he do if you pull a gun yourself?” asked Joe Pollard, lingering at the door and showing a sudden concern.
“He’ll stand for it . . . long enough,” said Terry. “Try him.”
There was a devil in Slim that morning. He snatched up a shining bit of quartz and hurled it—straight at El Sangre! There was no warning—just a jerk of the arm and the stone came flashing.
“Try your gun . . . on that!”
The words were torn off short. The heavy gun had twitched into the hand of Terry, exploded, and the gleaming quartz puffed into a shower of bright particles that danced toward the earth. El Sangre flew into a paroxysm of educated bucking of the most advanced school. The steady voice of Terry Hollis brought him at last to a quivering stop. The rider was stiff in the saddle, his mouth a white, straight line, a glinting highlight where the jaw muscles bulged. He shoved his revolver deliberately back into the holster.
The four men had drawn together, still muttering with wonder. Luck may have had something to do with the success of that snap shot, but it was such a feat of marksmanship as would be remembered and talked about.
“Dugan,” said Terry huskily.
Slim lunged forward, but he was ill at ease. “Well, kid?”
“It seemed to me,” said Terry, “that you threw that stone at El Sangre. I hope I’m wrong?”
“Maybe,” growled Slim. He flashed a glance at his companions, not at all eager to push this quarrel forward to a conclusion in spite of his known prowess. He had been a little irritated by the adulation that had been shown to the son of Black Jack the night before. He was still more irritated by the display of fine riding. For horsemanship and clever gun play were the two main feathers in the cap of Slim Dugan. He had thrown the stone simply to test the qualities of this new member of the gang; the snap shot had stunned him. So he glanced at his companions. If they smiled, it meant that they took the matter lightly. But they were not smiling; they met his glance with expressions of uniform gravity. To torment a nervous horse is something that does not fit with the ways of the men of the mountain desert, even at their roughest. Besides, there was an edgy irritability about Slim Dugan that had more than once won him black looks. They wanted to see him tested now by a foeman who seemed worthy of his mettle. And Slim saw that common desire in his flickering side glance. He turned a cold eye on Terry.