by Max Brand
Sir—I got this to say. Since you done my brother dirt I bin looking for a chans to get even and I ain’t seen any chanses coming my way so Ime going to make one which I mean that Ile be waiting for you in town today and if you dont come Ile let the boys know that you aint only an ornery mean skunk but your a yaller hearted dog also which I beg to remain.
Yours very truly,
Bud Larrimer
Terry Hollis read the letter and tossed it with laughter to Phil Marvin, who sat cross-legged on the floor mending a saddle, and Phil and the rest of the boys shook their heads over it.
“What I can’t make out,” said Joe Pollard, voicing the sentiments of the rest, “is how Bud Larrimer, that’s as slow as a plow horse with a gun, and couldn’t never hit more’n the side of a barn with a rifle, could ever find the guts to challenge Terry Hollis to a fair fight.”
Kate Pollard rose anxiously with a suggestion. Today or tomorrow at the latest she expected the arrival of Elizabeth Cornish, and so far it had been easy to keep Terry at the house. The gang was gorged with the loot of the Lewison robbery, and Terry’s appetite for excitement had been cloyed by that event, also. This strange challenge from the older Larrimer was the fly in the ointment.
“It ain’t hard to tell why he sent that challenge,” she declared. “He has some sneaking plan up his sleeve, Dad. You know Bud Larrimer. He hasn’t the nerve to fight a boy. How’ll he ever manage to stand up to Terry unless he’s got hidden backing?”
She herself did not know how accurately she was hitting off the situation, but she was drawing it as black as possible to hold Terry from accepting the challenge. It was her father who doubted her suggestion.
“It sounds queer,” he said, “but the gents of these parts don’t make no ambushes while McGuire is around. He’s a clean-shooter, is McGuire, and he don’t stand for no shady work with guns.”
Again Kate went to the attack, and again she hewed to the line as though she had second sight.
“But the sheriff would do anything to get Terry. You know that. And maybe he isn’t so particular about how it’s done. Dad, don’t you let Terry make a step toward town. I know something would happen. And even if they didn’t ambush him, he would be outlawed even if he won the fight. No matter how fair he may fight, they won’t stand for two killings in so short a time. You know that, Dad. They’d have a mob out here to lynch him.”
“You’re right, Kate.” Her father nodded. “Terry, you better stay put.”
But Terry Hollis had risen and stretched himself to the full of his height, and extended his long arms sleepily. Every muscle played smoothly up his arms and along his shoulders. He was fit for action from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.
“Partners,” he announced gently, “no matter what Bud Larrimer has on his mind, I’ve got to go in and meet him. Maybe I can convince him without gun talk. I hope so. But it will have to be on the terms he wants. I’ll saddle up and lope into town. He may be waiting for me now.” He started for the door.
The other members of the Pollard gang looked at one another and shrugged their shoulders. Plainly the whole affair was a bad mess. If Terry shot Larrimer, he would certainly be followed by a lynching mob, because no self-respecting Western town could allow two members of its community to be dropped in quick succession by one man of an otherwise questionable past. No matter how fair the gun play, just as Kate had said, the mob would rise. They knew it, and they regretted it. The bravest man who ever lived fears the invincible power of an aroused public opinion. It cannot in the end be dodged. But on the other hand, how could Terry refuse to respond to such an invitation without compromising his reputation as a man without fear?
There was nothing to do but fight.
But Kate ran to her father. “Dad,” she cried, “you got to stop him!”
He looked into her drawn face in astonishment. “Look here, honey,” he advised rather sternly. “Man talk is man talk, and man ways are man ways, and a girl like you can’t understand. You keep out of this mess. It’s bad enough without having your hand added.”
She saw there was nothing to be gained in this direction. She turned to the rest of the men; they watched her with blank faces. Not a man there but would have done much for the sake of a single smile. But how could they help?
Desperately she ran to the door, jerked it open, and followed Terry to the stable. He had swung the saddle from its peg and slipped it over the back of El Sangre, and the great stallion turned to watch this perennially interesting operation.
“Terry,” she said, “I want ten words with you.”
“I know what you want to say,” he answered gently. “You want to make me stay away from town today. To tell you the truth, Kate, I hate to go in. I hate it like the devil. But what can I do? I have no grudge against Larrimer. But if he wants to talk about his brother’s death, why . . . good Lord, Kate, I have to go in and listen, don’t I? I can’t dodge that responsibility.”
“It’s a trick, Terry. I swear it’s a trick. I can feel it.” She dropped her hand nervously on the heavy revolver that she wore strapped at her hip, and fingered the gold chasing. Without her gun, ever since early girlhood, she had felt that her toilet was not complete.
“It may be.” He nodded thoughtfully. “And I appreciate the advice, Kate . . . but what would you have me do?”
“Terry,” she said eagerly, “you know what this means. You’ve killed once. If you go into town today, it means either that you kill or get killed. And one thing is about as bad as the other.”
Again he nodded. She was surprised that he would admit so much, but there were parts of his nature that, plainly, she had not yet reached to.
“What difference does it make, Kate?” His voice fell into a profound gloom. “What difference? I can’t change myself. I’m what I am. It’s in the blood. I was born to this. I can’t help it. There’s a drive, I tell you, that keeps forcing me to this sort of thing. To beat the law is a game. And there’s nothing in the world to compare with having a life under the beck of your forefinger. I like the game. I know that I’ll lose in the end. But while I live I’ll be happy. A little while.”
She choked. But the sight of his drawing the cinches, the imminence of his departure, cleared her mind again. “Give me two minutes,” she begged.
“Not one,” he answered. “Kate, you only make us both unhappy. Do you suppose I wouldn’t change if I could?” He came to her and took her hands. “Honey, there are a thousand things I’d like to say to you, but, being what I am, I have no right to say them to you . . . never, or to any other woman. I’m born to be what I am. I tell you, Kate, the woman who raised me, who was a mother to me, saw what I was going to be . . . and turned me out like a dog. And I don’t blame her. She was right.”
She grasped at the straw of hope. “Terry, that woman has changed her mind. You hear? She’s lived heartbroken since she turned you out. And now she’s coming for you to . . . to beg you to come back to her. Terry, that’s how much she’s given up hope in you.”
But he drew back, his face growing dark. “You’ve been to see her, Kate? That’s where you went when you were away those four days?”
She dared not answer. He was trembling with hurt pride and rage.
“You went to her . . . she thought I sent you . . . that I’ve grown ashamed of my own father, and that I want to beg her to take me back? Is that what she thinks?” He struck his hand across his forehead and groaned. “God! I’d rather die than have her think it for a minute. Kate, how could you do it? Was it square to me?”
“Let me try to explain for one minute. . . .”
“I don’t want to hear your explanations. And hereafter I’ll go my own way without advice. Kate, you’ve fallen down on me . . . I’d have trusted you always to do the right thing and the proud thing . . . and here you’ve shamed me.”
He turned to the horse, and El Sangre stepped out of the stall and into a shaft of sunlight that burned on him like blood-red fire. And beside h
im, young Terry Hollis, straight as a pine, and as strong—a glorious figure. It broke her heart to see him, knowing what was coming.
“Terry, if you ride down yonder you’re going to a dog’s death. I swear you are, Terry.” She stretched out her arms to him, but he turned to her with his hand on the pommel, and his face was like iron.
“I’ve made my choice. Will you stand aside, Kate?”
She stepped back, but not to one side. A wave of woman weakness struck to her brain, and then this cleared away and left her with a calm, cold sorrow, but a clear brain. She would have paid with her life to keep him there. Keep him for just the half day that remained until Elizabeth Cornish should come. She would be the open sesame. She would cut the Gordian knot.
“Terry,” begged the girl, “for God’s sake wait . . . listen to me!”
“I hear you, but your words get no farther than my ears. Kate, will you step out of the way?”
“You’re set on going? Nothing will change you? But I tell you, I’m going to change you. I’m only a girl. And I can’t stop you with a girl’s weapons. I’ll do it with a man’s. Terry, take the saddle off that horse. And promise me you’ll stay here till Elizabeth Cornish comes.”
“Elizabeth Cornish?” He laughed bitterly. “When she comes, I’ll be a hundred miles away, and bound farther off. That’s final.”
“You’re wrong!” she cried hysterically. “You’re going to stay here. You may throw away your share in yourself. But I have a share that I won’t throw away. Terry, for the last time.”
He shook his head.
She caught her breath with a sob. Someone was coming from the outside. She heard her father’s deep-throated laughter. Whatever was done, she must do it quickly. And he must be stopped.
The hand on the gun butt jerked up—the long gun flashed in her hand.
“Kate!” cried Terry. “Good God, are you mad?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Mad. Will you stay?”
“What infernal nonsense . . . ?”
The gun boomed hollowly in the narrow passage between mow and wall. El Sangre reared, a red flash in the sunlight, and landed far away in the shadow, trembling. But Terry Hollis had spun half way around, swung by the heavy, tearing impact of the big slug, and then sank to the floor, where he sat clasping his torn thigh with both hands, his shoulder and head sagging against the wall.
Joe Pollard, rushing in with an outcry, found the gun lying sparkling in the sunshine, and his daughter, hysterical and weeping, holding the wounded man in her arms.
“What . . . in the name of . . . ?” he roared.
“Accident, Joe,” gasped Terry. “Fooling with Kate’s gun and trying a spin with it. It went off . . . drilled me clean through the leg.”
Epilogue
That night, very late, in Joe Pollard’s house, Terry Hollis lay on the bed with a dim light reaching to him from the hooded lamp in the corner of the room. His arms were stretched out on each side and one hand held that of Kate, warm, soft, young, clasping his fingers feverishly and happily. And on the other side was the firm, cool pressure of the hand of Aunt Elizabeth. His mind was in a haze. Vaguely he perceived the gleam of tears on the face of Elizabeth. And he had heard her say: “All the time I didn’t know, Terry. I thought I was ashamed of the blood in you. But this girl opened my eyes. She told me the truth. The reason I took you in was because I loved that wild, fierce, gentle, terrible father of yours. If you have done a little of what he did, what does it matter? Nothing to me. Oh, Terry, nothing in the world to me. Except that Kate brought me to my senses in time . . . bless her . . . and now I have you back, dear boy.”
He remembered smiling faintly and happily at that. And he said before he slept: “It’s a bit queer, isn’t it . . . even two wise women can’t show a man that he’s a fool. It takes a bullet to turn the trick.”
But when he went to sleep, his head turned a little from Elizabeth toward Kate.
And the women raised their heads and looked at one another with filmy eyes. They both understood what that feeble gesture meant. It told much of the fine heart of Elizabeth that she was able to smile at the girl and forgive her for having stolen again what she had restored.
* * * * * *
It was the break-up of the Pollard gang, the sudden disaffection of their newest and most brilliant member. Joe himself was financed by Elizabeth Cornish and opened a small string of small-town hotels.
“Which is just another angle of the road business,” he often said, “except that the law works with you and not ag’in’ you.”
But he never quite recovered from the restoration of the Lewison money on which Elizabeth and Terry both insisted. Neither did Denver Pete. He left them in disgust and was never heard of again in those parts. And he always thereafter referred to Terry as “a promising kid gone to waste.”
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of five hundred and thirty ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways. Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles. Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.