by Max Brand
Mike, understanding, sneaked into a far corner of the shack and crouched there, grinning and shaking with expectancy like a drunkard eying a glass of whiskey that he has not the price to buy.
Dunstan, as he pushed the hat out a second time, received what he wanted—the bark of a revolver from the farther side of the clearing, and a sharp twitch that knocked the hat spinning from the Colt.
His eye was at the door in an instant. Yonder he saw a tall form rising from a screening bush with a yell of triumph. It was a long shot for even the best of Colts, but Dunstan risked it, with a quick snap shot. He saw the man in the brush run forward a blundering step or two, then fall heavily upon his face—down, but not dead. He lay yonder, twitching and then writhing convulsively.
“Lemme get to him,” Mike said in a passion of commiseration. “I’ve been down just like that.”
When he reached the door, he struck the arm of Dunstan, like a bar of iron, beating him back.
“He’s got pals behind him,” Dunstan said, “and we want to know just who they are.”
Certainly the groaning of the wounded man in the clearing might have moved any torturer, but Dunstan was serene.
Presently a voice shouted: “Dunstan, give us a chance to help him, and we’ll give you a chance to get away!”
Other voices broke in, in agreement.
“Who are you?” Dunstan shouted in answer.
“I’m Coudray.”
That name was vaguely familiar to the ear of Dunstan. It was connected, by rumor, with sundry atrocities on the highway. It was not the most famous name in Chorleywood.
Dunstan answered in a ringing voice: “I’ll talk to Simonides, and nobody else. If Simonides is not there, I’ll take my chances with the rest of you, but if he’s there, I’ll dicker with him.”
Simonides, the little Greek, had written himself large in the recent history of Chorleywood. Of all the criminals who had sought shelter there, he was far the most famous; of all who had dwelt there among the mountains and the evergreens, none had behind him so long a list of dead men, of wrecked bank safes, of prodigies of cunning and invention. He had risen to fame first as a great counterfeiter. He had gone on growing in importance after skillful detectives broke up his gang for manufacturing and pushing the queer. Now it was said that no man led a successful life of crime in the West except by the direction or the connivance of Simonides. Now a voice answered from the edge of the woods—a voice pitched just high enough to carry to Peter Dunstan without effort.
“Here I am, Dunstan. I’m Simonides. If you want my word for your safety, you’ll have it.”
“Simonides, I hear you. And I take you at your word. You boys are free to take up the chap I winged. Hop to it!”
“All right, men!” called the calm, strong voice of Simonides. “Get to him!”
The numbers that responded sent a shiver down the back of Dunstan. For he knew that he had long been hated in Chorleywood, but he did not dream, really, that the power of his name could draw so many enemies about him, and so quickly. Now a full half dozen men hurried out from the covert of the trees toward their fallen comrade.
There were others as well, to say nothing of Simonides himself, who now stepped from the trees—a little man with a great, Napoleonic head. He wore an air of distinction; he stepped as one in authority. Peter Dunstan saw that he had made a ten-strike when he placed himself, more or less, in the hands of this formidable outlaw.
He came straight up to Dunstan and shook hands with him, saying: “I thought that I’d be looking at your dead face, Dunstan, when we all started for the shack, here. But perhaps we can patch things up pretty well. Tell me what’s brought you here?”
Honesty, as Dunstan could very well see, was the usual policy of this arch criminal. His dissimulation he reserved for great events of death or of plunder. In his usual intercourse with other men, no matter what crude criminals they might be, he chose to be bluntly frank, hyper-honest.
“First,” Dunstan said, “tell me who I dropped. He must be some important man.”
“Why?”
“By the willingness of you all to make a bargain to save his hide.”
“That means nothing at all,” answered Simonides, turning his great, black, considerate eyes up to the face of the tall rancher. “When we’re here in Chorleywood, we pretend to be very fond of each other. But after all, there is some sense in this mutual devotion in Chorleywood. You save me when I’m in danger, then you can depend upon it that I shall try to save you.
“I have known yeggs who rode five hundred miles from Chorleywood to go to the help of a man they had never heard of before, simply because they knew that he was a fellow crook. You understand how it is…the romantic idea, something for nothing, the forlorn hope, the necessity that all of us have in believing in our virtues as individuals and even as a class…that’s what creates the bonds between us rascals here in Chorleywood. Down in our more honest hearts, that so seldom influence our actions, we know that we are great liars and hypocrites.”
It was in many ways the most astonishing speech that Dunstan had ever heard. He watched the speaker from the corner of his eyes. On the other hand he watched the crooks of Chorleywood tenderly caring for the wounded man, binding up his hurt, and then carrying him away on an improvised stretcher.
“Through the hip,” Simonides said, nodding. “Very painful, that. I think I had rather be shot through the body, though that is painful enough.”
He spoke with quiet authority, and well he might, for legend declared that Simonides had been blown almost to bits, one time or another in his exciting career by the bullets of the men of the law, or of rivals in his own profession.
“But,” the rancher said, “who the devil might he be?”
“If you don’t know his name, don’t ask me,” answered Simonides. “When he gets well, he’ll come calling on you with a pair of guns, and you’ll find out his name well enough, unless you die first. Now, Dunstan, what has brought you here?”
“Necessity,” said Dunstan.
“Bah!” exclaimed the other. “Do you imagine that I thought you had come here for fun? Who do you want robbed or murdered, Dunstan?”
The latter started. “Robbed or murdered?” he echoed. “I don’t want either.” He checked himself abruptly. “That is to say….”
“Good!” said the outlaw. “You may as well be perfectly honest from the start. What is it, man?”
“In the first place,” Dunstan said, “I don’t know how serious this affair may be. You understand me?”
“Very well. I’ll use my imagination.”
“In the second place, I want to find out how I can be useful to you before I ask you to be useful to me.”
“Friend,” Simonides said, “you are supposed to be our great enemy. If we could use your ranch as a second Chorleywood, when in a pinch, it would be worth ten thousand a year…to me alone.”
“That is not enough,” said the rancher.
The other whistled. “You are going to put up a high price?”
“I am.”
“What is it, Dunstan?”
“Do I know you well enough to talk straight out?”
“You do,” Simonides said. “I can be honest with you because I have not a thing to gain by lying to you. Go on and put your cards on the table.”
“A poor half-wit youngster,” Dunstan said, “is riding in this direction, I’m afraid, and bringing a horse toward my ranch. I won’t go into all the details. I’ll only tell you that with one man at my ranch, I’ve left word that I’m at Chorleywood. The half-wit will start in this direction after me. Now, Simonides, I have to have the horse that he is bringing along with him.”
“I knew that you were fond of good horseflesh,” said the outlaw, “but I didn’t know that you were as fond as all of this. Go on, man…I’m interested.”
“When the fellow comes here, I want that horse taken away from him and turned over to me.”
“Look here,” Simonides said solemnly, “do you mean to say that you respect the law so much that you wouldn’t dare to take away from a half-wit anything that you wanted?”
“Simonides,” the other said, “you’re a keen fellow. The law wouldn’t hold me back. It’s the fear of the half-wit that stops me.”
“Fear of a half-wit!” cried Simonides.
“Exactly that. And, if you undertake this job…to get the horse and turn it over to me…I want you to understand in the first place, Simonides, that you have taken on a man-size job. I’m a fair hand with a gun. You’re a much better one, perhaps. But if the two of us went out gunning for this simple-minded fellow, I’m afraid that the money would be on him, and not on us.”
Twenty-Seven
While Dunstan and Simonides stood in comfortable conversation in the clearing at Chorleywood, a strange apparition appeared before the blinking eyes of the two toughest and oldest cowpunchers on the Dunstan Ranch—namely Shorty and Macfarlane.
They had barely finished dragging a stupid cow out of the muddy margin of a tank, where she had mired down almost to her back. Turning, almost too weary to curse, Shorty cried out in a loud voice and pointed up the slope. Mack, looking in the same direction, saw only a thick dust cloud blown down the shallow draw. As the sand mist dissipated, he was aware of the brilliant figure of a white horse—a dazzlingly bright form, as though cut out of a rock crystal.
A moment later, he yelled to Shorty: “It’s Elena Blanca! It’s White Helen!”
“Ride to the right!” Shorty cried in a voice made husky with terrible excitement and suspense. “I’ll go to the left, and if we can cut in behind her and turn her down onto the ranch….”
For she was running freely down the draw, until she saw them and came to a stop—like a wild wolf, with a hoof raised and her head high. As she was at that instant, with the sun burning upon her, and the wind combing out the silver of her mane and tail, there was never in the world a creature more beautiful.
Yet even then, the nearer approach to them did not seem altogether to daunt her. She turned her head and whinnied softly—then she actually advanced toward them again, down the draw.
The cowpunchers were frozen in place and overcome with awe. Did they not know the tales with which the mountains were now filled, of how this wind-footed mare was instantly away at the first suspicion of the scent or sight of man? So much so, that even the most careful hunters had their view of her only through strong glasses in the distance?
The explanation was almost stranger than the fact. For now, above the farther side of the draw, there appeared Sandy Sweyn on the great blue roan. A dusty man on a dusty horse, like a poor attendant following a bright angel form—like a picture of labor following wearily after wild freedom.
“It’s Sandy,” Macfarlane said gloomily. “Just for a minute, I thought that you and me would have to shoot it out to see who had caught the mare. It’s Sandy, and he ain’t got her on a rope, even. Can you get over that?”
A call from Sandy, and the white mare whirled and darted back to his side. She looked no larger than a pony, as delicately lovely as any antelope, dancing along in the shadow of the great blue roan.
So Sandy Sweyn came down to the waiting pair. Sandy was not one to waste much time upon idle greetings. He merely wanted to know at once where he might find their master.
Shorty answered: “He rode off the other day, taking a dog along with him….”
“Taking a dog along with him,” Sandy said sadly.
Macfarlane waved Shorty back. “I’ve got to talk to this gent alone,” he cautioned his friend. He rode up close to the blue mare until his mustang touched noses with her.
“Sandy,” he said, “the chief left word that you was to leave Elena Blanca here and ride over to meet him…and get the dog from him.”
Sandy nodded, saying: “I’ll take her to a corral….” He paused abruptly. “But suppose that Mister Dunstan won’t believe that I’ve got her until he sees her…I’ll have to ride clear back here with him…and I got to go north pretty quick. No, you tell me where to find him, and I’ll take Elena Blanca along with me. Look at her, Mack. She’s a pretty thing, ain’t she?”
Macfarlane agreed with all his heart. Something kept him from trying to press the point and draw the mare from Sandy now and keep her at the ranch. He did not want to be inveigled into the war that was apt to follow between Dunstan and the half-wit.
“Go to Chorleywood, Sandy,” he said. “You’ll find that Dunstan is over there, some place. Ride to Chorleywood and look sharp around, and you’ll find him….”
“The dog…Chris…,” broke in Sandy, “how was he looking?”
“Pretty well,” Macfarlane said tersely. “Pretty well, I suppose.”
“It’s a queer thing,” Sandy said, “how a dog will sneak along and step right into your heart, that way. Before you can hardly tell what’s happening. I’ve been missing that dog a pile ever since I last seen him. Which way lies Chorleywood from here?”
“Why, Sandy, you seen it every day while you was working here. There it is, north and east…that black smudge on the edge of the sky. D’you see?”
“I see it. I can make it by tomorrow morning.”
“Easy. It ain’t so far off as it looks.”
“So long, Mack.”
“So long, Sandy. But ain’t you gonna stop in at the house and say hello to the boys and have a cup of coffee, even, before you start along?”
“I’ll start along the way that I’m fixed right now. Adiós.”
He waved to Shorty in the distance, and, turning the blue roan, he sent her away at a free-swinging trot. It is at that gait that a horse will cover long distances with the least effort. As for the racking, jolting effects of the gait upon the rider, Sandy Sweyn showed that he had learned to sit the saddle without stirring, no matter how the hoofs of the blue roan pounded the earth. With the white mare running daintily beside him, he recrossed the draw.
Shorty and Macfarlane followed to the edge of the farther rise and, sitting in their saddles, watched him draw farther and farther away. Still, when they thought that he had disappeared, the sun would flash upon the silken flank of Elena Blanca and send an electric signal back to the watchers.
Shorty said slowly, at last: “Something says to me that there is gonna be something wrong when Sandy gets to the boss, wherever he might be.”
Macfarlane, who knew all, started guiltily. “What makes you think that?”
“Because it ain’t exactly right…that a gent should get a horse and a wife and a fortune…all for the sake of a dog that didn’t cost him no more than two dollars and pretty little care. There’ll be no good come out of that.”
Macfarlane said nothing, but he agreed with all his soul.
Sandy Sweyn, in the meantime, had no thought for anything in the world except the strength and the truth of the blue mare, Cleo, carrying him swiftly toward his goal, the beauty and grace of Elena Blanca, sporting before him like a happy child—and before him, drawing him on, the desire to see the shepherd puppy, Chris.
Men and the thought of men rarely entered the brain of Sandy. He was far too busy in a world which he could understand far better, the world of beasts and of birds.
He camped early that evening, before he had entered a mile into the green margin of Chorleywood. There he set about getting his own meal. For provisions, he carried salt in a little leather sack—and a store of cartridges, for rifle and revolver. A rabbit and a squirrel were collected by two snap shots, before he had roved five minutes from the camping site beside a bright little stream. In a trice, he was back at the place, with a cheerful fire burning.
The squirrels, startled by the noise of the gun, even if they had not known that one of their own kind had been
slaughtered, were hushed in the branches above him. Such silence did not please Sandy. While he turned the roasting meat on the wood spit above his fire, he raised his head from time to time, uttering little sharp chattering. Once he gave a cry that exactly imitated the noise of an angry squirrel, surprised by another in the harvesting of a rare prize, and ready to fight in its defense.
Presently he had his reward. Half a dozen squirrels slipped out on overhanging branches of the great trees about the spot and commenced to chatter down to him, or to one another, or to the curious blue jay that dipped in and out among the shadows, like a gay jewel.
The jay itself came down at last to a lower branch, and cocked its head to one side while Sandy uttered faint little pipings, imitating with incredible skill the murmurs of a wounded nestling fallen from the nest. The bright, cruel eyes of the jay wandered here and there, in search of the fallen one. At last it looked full at the man, rose with an angry squawk, and hung in the air above the top of the tallest pine. From this height, it seemed to see something behind it in the forest that drew his attention. For it slid through the air to a place where Sandy could no longer see it. Hovering there, it uttered a series of harsh cries. Then its strident voice rapidly grew dim as it flew away.
Before the last of its calls trailed away, Sandy had laid aside his roasting spit and caught up his rifle. He knew the ways of the jay, and how that most hated of birds hunts the helpless, haunting those who are strong enough to hunt for themselves. Yonder among the trees was something that had been dreadful enough to startle even the cool nerves of the blue jay. Sandy wanted to learn what it was.
With never so much as a whisper of noise, he melted into the forest, following through it, close to the bank of the stream until his ear, close to the ground, heard the faintest of noises. Hardly a noise, indeed, it was only the soft, soft rustle of pine needles when a heavy weight is brought gently down upon them. It was a weight like the falling foot of a hunting bear.
Prepared to stalk the keenest of all hunters, Sandy Sweyn turned aside and made for the spot from which he had heard the sound by a little semicircle that should bring him behind it. And he smiled to himself as he moved, for he had no doubt that it was a bear, indeed—perhaps some sage, old grizzly, bent on trailing down the scent from the campfire, and the delicious odor of the roasting meat.