Out of the Wilderness

by Max Brand

  When he wakened, it was to hear a slight groaning sound in his room. He sat upright. Again he heard the groaning, and this time he made out that it came from his window. Presently he recognized that awful sound as the noise of iron bent with a terrible force against the stones. Rézan could hardly stir, for a moment. Then, against the stars, he saw the head and shoulders of a man thrust into his chamber. He tried to shout—but the result was a scream, rather than a call for help. He jerked the revolver from beneath his head and fired. Even as he pulled the trigger, he knew that the shot had flown wild from his trembling hand. The next instant, the black form had slipped through the window and dropped to the floor of his room.

  In the corridor, outside, there was a stir of great voices. Vicente and Lorenzo knew that danger was there, and they were beating against the door to come to his aid—that door that he had so madly locked the night before, secure in the strength of the iron bars that guarded his window. In a moment, unless his hands could be steadied and unless he could shoot straight, the hands that had bent the iron at his window would be at him, breaking and rending.

  Another scream rose from the throat of Rézan as he fired again and again. But his nerves were shattered. Through the dark a form leaped at him like a cat, which springs in and dodges with a swerve as it springs. A hand shot past his gun arm; a frightful grip was laid upon his wrist. Then a blow struck full against his face. He fell with a faint moan and knew no more.

  That instant, however, the door of his chamber fell with a crashing. The two giant shepherds were rushing in to the defense of their master. What they found was a confused tangle of shadows upon the floor. Vicente struck, and his master groaned like a dying man beneath the stroke. They threw themselves into the struggle with their bared hands, and therein they made their mistake. With the clubs they could have felled oxen. Under their hands they felt a lightning and an animal power, shifting from their grips. When they strove to sink their fingers into the flesh of this man, it turned instantly to India rubber beneath their touch. Their fingers slipped harmlessly away. Dreadful hands laid hold upon the two brothers.

  The house had been roused by this time. The two vaqueros from the outside were speeding in. The stout mozos had tumbled from their beds and come, knife and gun in hand, in a swarm.

  Sandy Sweyn heard the rushing of the many feet. Intent as he was upon the dreadful work that lay before him, he knew enough to understand that this was the limit of his daring. He must turn and strive to get away, if he wished to live.

  He rose from three prostrate figures and rushed to the door. There he met a flood of struggling, shouting men, and he dived through them like a hot wedge through butter. He had scooped up one of the clubs of the two brothers, and before the very shadow of his stroke the mozos gave way. The tangle of their forms as they strove to flee from him blocked the efforts of more valiant fellows.

  Perhaps Sandy would have come unscathed from this strange battle, had it not been that Vicente had risen from the place where he fell. His left arm was broken by the terrific wrenching grip of Sandy, but his right arm was intact. In that arm there was the strength of two. Besides, he was nerved by a frenzy of excitement now. As he plunged for the door, he gathered up the club that he had let fall when he leaped to the help of his fallen master. Armed, he leaped with a shout into the hall. With his broken arm swinging and hanging drunkenly at his side, he rushed forward. His footing was upon fallen men more often than upon the floor.

  Sandy heard that shout and guessed at the flying danger behind him. As he turned, his foot slipped. He dropped to one knee, and, before he could rise, the blow was driving at his head. He reared the club as a guard; in his hand it was like a shield. Had there been power enough in the wood, he would have been saved, but the blow of Vicente’s club snapped the bludgeon that Sandy raised to meet it, and descended on his head.

  What seemed to Vicente himself the greatest miracle of all was that the stranger was able to rise even after this blow. To be sure, its force had been partly checked by the guard that he had raised against it. Even so, there seemed enough sheer weight remaining to have broken the head of any normal man.

  Sandy was no normal man; even he was staggered. He rose to his feet and lurched at Vicente, but half of his power was stolen from him, and his head rang with the effects of that blow.

  They could close on him now, and close on him they did, like valiant bulldogs pulling down a bear. By the grace of chance no ready knife was sheathed in his body, but he was fairly swathed in stout ropes. By the time his senses had cleared, his arms were almost helpless.

  They stood about him, panting and gasping with their efforts. Seeing the great rise and fall of his breast as he breathed himself, it seemed to those awe-stricken men of the Casa Rézan as though the stranger would snap even the strong ropes that bound him.

  Some of them guarded him closely with ready weapons. Others went running back to the room of the master and lifted the senseless body of big Lorenzo.

  They found Rézan breathing, but senseless. He would not be married on the morrow. That much was sure. A driving blow from the fist of the stranger had smashed his nose as though a horse had trampled upon him. His throat was swollen and purple where the grip of Sandy Sweyn had rested for a moment. So they carried him to his bed and cared for him tenderly.

  * * * * *

  The telephone was busy, and the sheriff was speaking again at the other end of the line. He only waited until he heard the name of Sweyn. He dropped his receiver and made for the horse that, day and night, was always saddled, ready to receive him. As he ran down the hall, the door of his daughter’s room opened, and he saw her pale, strained face in the glow of the lamplight from her room.

  “Dad, is it Sandy Sweyn again?” she asked.

  “Aye,” the sheriff answered, “Sandy Sweyn.”

  “He has not killed a man?” cried Peggy Kilmer.

  He paused for one startled backward glance at her. Plainly she was in an agony of dread. “I don’t know,” the sheriff muttered. “I don’t know. I hope not, honey. I’ll be back before long.”

  Then he rushed away through the night. He knew, now, what he had only guessed in the earlier evening. Sandy Sweyn was something more than a mere chance acquaintance to his daughter. It made his heart sore to think of it. He was an honest man, was the sheriff. He may be forgiven if, as he galloped his horse furiously down the valley, he hoped fervently that the mischief that Sandy Sweyn had done this night might be enough to keep him secure behind prison bars until the madness should have died from the brain of Peggy. If, indeed, it would ever die.

  He knew her very well, and he knew that, when once her heart was made up, it would not soon be pulled down.

  The curse, to the mind of the sheriff, was that when at last she looked with favor upon a man, it should have been this wild fellow, this mystery among men—Sandy Sweyn.

  Forty-Two

  When the sheriff arrived, he found six men guarding the bound form of Sandy Sweyn. So far as he could see, there was no sign of any harm done to Sandy himself. His head was high and jaunty, and in the eyes that so many men had called dull there was still burning that brilliant yellow light of life. He greeted the sheriff with a careless and confident smile, and Sheriff Kilmer passed on without saying a word.

  He reached the wreckage of the upper hall of the house. He passed on to a room where the two brothers, Vicente and Lorenzo, lay on two beds, silent, controlling their agony with set teeth. He gave them one look, and then went with his guide to the chamber where the master of the house lay, his pale face almost obscured with bandages.

  “Something is gone inside of me, Sheriff,” he said faintly. “He hit me in the face and in the body, when he came at me. The blow in the face broke my nose. The one in the body turned me numb, and I’m still numb, now. That’s the window that he came through. My father had it barred with the iron when he had the feud…you remember?…wi
th the sheepherders.”

  The sheriff stepped to the window. The bars had been fastened in place with a thick layer of stout cement. That cement was torn away. One bar remained only drawn to the side, instead of being torn bodily away. It was greatly bent, and the sheriff, using all the force in his wiry body, strove to complete the removal of that single bar. He could stir it a little back and forth, but he could not break it out entirely, neither could be bend it any farther back.

  A broad-shouldered vaquero stood beside him. “I have tried it, too,” he said in an awed whisper. “But I cannot break it out. Consider, señor, that this devil, climbing up from the outside, could not have had more than one hand free for pulling at the bars.”

  Kilmer put his head out and looked down. The wall fell sheer away, a dizzying height, and it seemed to him that there was nothing where a man could plant his feet. He drew back with a little shudder and returned to his prisoner. He examined the ends of Sandy’s fingers. One nail was splintered and the very tips of all the other fingers were a little chafed. It was a conclusive proof to Kilmer. By power of hand alone the stranger had drawn himself up that steep wall, with such deadly peril to life and limb that Kilmer hardly dared to conceive.

  Still in silence, Sheriff Kilmer substituted for the many ropes a single pair of stout handcuffs. The prisoner was placed in a buckboard, and, with a voluntary guard from among the men of Rézan, he was brought to the jail.

  It was a modern jail, built, through the importunities of the sheriff himself, of strong natural stone for walls, with strong steel bars for the block of cells. Into one of these he showed the prisoner. Kilmer sat down outside the bars and loaded his pipe, and he lit it carefully.

  “Now, Sweyn,” he said, “I’d like to know what devil got into you. How did you come to try to murder three men tonight?”

  “Three?” Sandy asked mildly. “No, Sheriff, only one.”

  “Sandy,” the sheriff said, a little moved, “I want you to realize that whatever you tell me here will be repeated in the court before the face of the judge and the jury. Do you understand? Whatever you confess to me now will be used against you. Still, I’d really like to know what was in your mind. Because you look rough to me, but you don’t look like a midnight murderer. Not you.”

  Sandy shook his head. “I never meant to kill three,” he said, “but only one. That one it was my right to kill, of course.”

  “Of course?” echoed the sheriff. “Man, what gave you a warrant to kill anyone?”

  Some of the light departed from the eyes of Sandy, and for a moment the sheriff could understand what people meant who had called him a half-wit.

  “What warrant?” Sandy asked. “Why, Sheriff, he was to marry Catalina tomorrow.”

  “And what the devil has that to do with it?” asked the sheriff.

  “Everything,” Sandy said, recovering some of his confidence. “Everything of course, because I am the man who will marry her.”

  The sheriff stared. Then he rose and paced up and down the floor of the alley between the cells. Then he came back and took his place on his stool again. “Go on,” he said. “You’re to marry little Catalina, then? And does she know about it?”

  “I did not speak to her in words. But her eyes said yes, I think.”

  “You’ve seen her, eh?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course? It’s the first that I’ve heard about it, and I think that, if you’d called at the Mirandos house, I should have heard. When did you go there?”

  “Just before I came to your house for food.”

  “And you saw Señor Mirandos and his daughter…and they didn’t let me know that you had been there. This begins to look like a devil of mystery.”

  “I did not see the señor….”

  “What? Would the girl see you alone? More mysterious still.”

  “I climbed up to the window of her room and went in to speak with her.”

  “The devil! She didn’t call for help?”

  “She started to run away, but she changed her mind. We did not talk long, but we said enough, I think.”

  The sheriff tilted back his head with a long whistle. “I’d never believe it,” he said. “And yet…I can’t disbelieve you. Anything seems possible to you, young fellow. But after you had talked to Catalina, you decided that you would marry her and you went singing down the valley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Intending to kill Don José? Don’t answer me unless you fully realize that your confession is damned dangerous.”

  “Of course I intended to kill him.”

  “Will you tell me why you take it for granted that you had to kill José?”

  “That is something that even a child could understand. I have said that he was to marry the girl tomorrow, and I had to stop that marriage.”

  “Ten thousand devils! And so you would stop it by killing the man?”

  “I could not ask Catalina to break her word to him. You will see that, of course.”

  The sheriff groaned. “This is a mess such as no judge in the world ever tried to unravel before,” he said gloomily, shaking his head. “I am glad that I don’t have to sit on the bench and pass judgment. Man…child…fool…whatever you are, you deliberately decided to kill this Rézan?”

  “I did not intend to harm him, at first,” Sandy confessed. “All I wanted was to steal Elena Blanca away again. But I thought that I would see this Catalina first, and after I had seen her, I knew that I wanted her more than I wanted Elena. Now, Don José had stolen the mare from me. With that stolen horse, he got the hand of Elena. Also, he tried to keep me from coming to her. He posted four men to keep me from it. The first two tried to kill me with the heat of the sun. They tied me in it.”

  “The devil they did!”

  “It is true, however. And the second two tried to kill me with their guns.”

  “I know…I think I know.”

  “Therefore, certainly it is clear that I have a right to kill José Rézan if I can. He robbed me, and then he tried to murder me.”

  The sheriff scratched his head. “And the other two that you piled up in the room on top of Rézan?”

  “I ask you fairly, Sheriff. Did they have a right to interfere between me and the man that I had a right to kill?”

  It seemed so clear to Sandy that he leaned back and smiled in a broad and open confidence at the sheriff.

  Sheriff Kilmer gasped. Then he stood up. “Sandy,” he said, “maybe I’m violating my oath as the sheriff of this county, but I can’t help seeing that you’re different from other men. I’m going to forget everything that you’ve told me. And I’m going to send the best lawyer that I know about to you. Maybe he can do you some good. I don’t know of anything else that can. In the meantime, I hope that you sleep well. Adiós, Sandy. I’m sorry to see you in this mess. But I’ve got to tell you this, to begin with. A man who breaks into another man’s house in the middle of the night, with intent to rob, is a burglar, and as such he stands in danger of taking a mighty long sentence from the judge. The man who breaks into another man’s house, in the middle of the night, to commit a murder on him, is going to get about as long a sentence as the law allows…or else be sent for life to some insane asylum. Heaven knows where you’d be better off. Good night, Sandy. I’m sorry for you.”

  With that the sheriff turned out into the night. He said first to the jailkeeper: “Sam, do you know what we’ve got in the jail tonight?”

  “Sure,” Sam answered. “We’ve got that Sweyn, Sheriff. The half-wit, of course. I know that.”

  “No, Sam,” said the sheriff, “but I’ll tell you the truth. We’ve got a grizzly bear in there. And, if I were you, I wouldn’t trust to any weakness of his wits. If I were you, I’d see to it that every half hour of the night I walked down through that alley between the cells with a shotgun in my hands…that big, double-
barreled shotgun, yonder, loaded with the big slugs. Because, you may have to use it. And if you do have to use it, don’t shoot for the legs to stop him. Shoot to kill!”

  Forty-Three

  When the sheriff got to his home, he found what he had expected to find. Peggy was waiting for him. He had left his house really interested only in what reaction Peggy would have to this affair. Although a great part of his interest was back yonder in the cell, in the strangest prisoner that had ever fallen into his hands, still his daughter came first by long odds.

  He put up his horse, and went around to Peggy’s window, and peered into her room. He found her sitting beside a lamp in which the flame was turned down low. There was a book in her lap, but she could not maintain even a pretense of interest in it. Her face was white, and her vacant eyes were wilted toward the empty blackness of the window beyond which her father was standing.

  Sheriff Kilmer came slowly around to the back door and let himself in. It was as bad as he could have feared, possibly. This odd chap had worked into the secret heart of poor Peggy, and now it was Kilmer’s determination to get him out, if he could.

  He had barely opened the kitchen door and stepped into the house before he heard the slippered feet of Peggy as she came running. “Was there anything wrong, Dad?”

  He could hardly force himself to look into that strained face. “When I got to the house of Rézan, I found things in a mess. This Sweyn, that we’ve seen, had been there. Do you know what he had done?”

  Her voice was nothing more than a husky whisper. “Don’t ask me to guess…only tell me, quickly…no dead man?”

  “No one dead,” said the sheriff, “but just about as bad, I can tell you.”

  Peggy had slipped against the wall and leaned there with eyes half closed, breathing slowly and deeply. “Oh, I’m thankful for that.”

  Certainly there was no shame in her. She did not care in the least if her father should guess how the stranger had moved her heart. The sheriff was not in a mood for talking about such tender subjects. If it were possible to raise horror in the heart of the girl, he intended to try his hand at it.