Curry

by Max Brand

  Lang swallowed. In his eye there was the yearning of the hound on the trail, but he assented.

  The sheriff, accordingly, went out and down the steps at the rear of the house to get his horse. Lang accompanied him eagerly.

  “We need something more’n just the hoss that you’re going to ride on,” insisted Lang. “We need the white mare … we need Meg.”

  “Eh?” said the sheriff. “Why do we need her?”

  “Ain’t it true,” responded Lang, “that Meg and the Red Devil are pretty close to each other? Ain’t it true that she comes when he whistles, and that she can pick him out of a crowd of a hundred?”

  “Why, I dunno,” said the sheriff noncommittally, although he began to take Lang more seriously from this moment, and showed it by a frowning side glance. “I dunno. Nobody ain’t seen ’em much together, so far as I know. But, if you really think … well, Lang, confound you, we’ll take Meg out and try your fool notion.”

  His tone, however, was much milder than his words, and there was even a touch of commendation in his manner as he escorted the taller man toward the corral.

  In a few minutes they had saddled the sheriff’s horse and Meg and led them out onto the road. They abandoned Lang’s own mount, to wait for them at the hitching post, and struck out for the ranch of Henry Mark at a swinging gallop.

  On the way they talked little. Lang kept his gaunt figure erect; only the compression of his lips and the glitter of his eyes showed that he felt an important crisis lay before them. And the sheriff began to grow more and more excited, and urged on Meg to greater and greater efforts as they neared the ranch.

  And what a horse she was. The sheriff’s own horse was a fine one, and Lang was horseman enough to show it to advantage. But Meg fairly floated over the road—head high, bright eyes gleaming kindly on all things around her, and this in spite of the hard ride of the day before. Both the sheriff and Lang marveled at her in silence.

  “But don’t it seem to you,” said the sheriff, as they approached the ranch, “that it’s kind of hard to trap the Red Devil … if the gent on Mark’s place is really him or his partner … by his liking for the hoss or the liking of the hoss for him?”

  “It ain’t going to need the hoss altogether,” replied Lang. “If it’s the Red Devil, he’ll have a hurt on his left hand or wrist. You seen the stains on Meg last night? We’ll just hold her for luck. If his hand ain’t hurt … well, then we’re sure, anyway, that he didn’t do the work last night. Afterward we can try him out on Meg, too. And if he gets by both tests, I’m willing to stop talking.”

  They were crunching the gravel of the road to the farmhouse underfoot now. Presently they had swung down—the sheriff from the mare and Lang from the sheriff’s horse.

  “We’ll tether ’em here at this hitching rack around the corner of the house,” suggested Lang. “That’ll sort of take ’em by surprise.”

  It was done, and they then rapped at the door and were straightway admitted to the house by Ruth Mark.

  “We dropped in to have a word with Jim,” said the sheriff. “Might we see him, Ruth?”

  “He’s sleeping,” said the girl. “He couldn’t get much rest last night, I think. And no wonder. After that terrible man … but you tell them about it, Little Billy.”

  Billy, honored by this appeal to step into the limelight, at once accepted. He related how, coming back from their walk, they had seen the figure at the window and then the white horse under the trees, how Jim had cautioned him to be still and had gone alone—oh, thrilling act of courage!—into the house to find the bandit. And presently the bandit had rushed out on the far side of the house, whistled and called Meg to him, and disappeared without a single shot being sent after him. The whole number of grown men on the place at once rushed in pursuit and were gone for many hours down the valley, hunting for traces of the criminal. It was close to dawn when they came back and found that Jim was in bed. He admitted that he had stayed awake a good part of the night, and he now merely wished to be left alone and finish his nap.

  His tale of the bandit was very simple. As he came upstairs, the Red Devil had slipped past and run down. That was all there was to it. His gun had stuck in the holster, and, before he could get it out for a shot in the darkness on the stairs, the Red Devil was by him and gone around a bend in the stairway.

  “Hmm,” grunted the sheriff. “What you think of that, Lang?”

  Lang was shaken, but he thrust out his jaw in determination.

  “I want to talk to him,” he said. “Let’s go up.”

  The sheriff agreed, and they walked up the stairs, side by side. Ruth ran a few steps after them, whispering, “There’s nothing wrong, Sheriff?”

  “Sure there ain’t, honey,” said the sheriff. “We’ve just come to do a mite of talking. Go back and rest yourself.”

  At the door of the room above, the sheriff waved Lang to take the lead.

  In the answer to the knock, they were not bidden to enter. Instead the door was opened, and to their surprise they saw Jim Curry before them, fully dressed. More than that, his left wrist was tightly bandaged, and Lang, in silence, pointed to it.

  “Good Lord!” gasped out the sheriff.

  His next act meant more than words. He shoved his long Colt under the nose of Jim.

  “Stick up your hands,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

  “Sure,” said Jim coolly. “What’s the charge?” he added as he raised the hands.

  “Murder, robbery, and every other blamed thing in the calendar. Jim, you’re under suspicion of being the Red Devil.”

  XI

  A frightened cry from a girl, echoed by a boy’s voice in the hall, warned them that they had been followed. Ruth and Little Billy stood there, white and incredulous.

  “Take it all easy,” said Jim reassuringly to them, although he himself had turned a little gray. “I’m going to show up this pair of four-flushers pretty pronto. Just rest easy, and …”

  “Save your talk,” said the sheriff, “until you’ve told us how you come by that hurt on your left wrist. Fan him for a gun, Lang. All right. If you ain’t got a gat on you, you can put your hands down, but I’m watching you, son, every minute.”

  “Follow me,” said Jim Curry quietly. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

  He led the group, now having added a panting, big-eyed Henry Mark, into the room across the hall and showed them the nail on the window sill on which he had torn his wrist. Instantly there was a chorus of approval and belief from Ruth and Little Billy and Henry Mark, but the sheriff insisted on having the wound unbandaged and examined. He was forced to admit that it was unlike the clean slash that a bullet would be apt to make, and now he turned to Lang for further guidance.

  “Take him downstairs and outside,” said Lang. “I got something to say to him in the open. But search his room first for the swag.”

  They combed the bedroom from top to bottom without revealing a sign of the needed money, and the sheriff consented at length to follow Lang’s last suggestion, his gloomy face in no wise improved by the dignified tirade of Henry Mark.

  “I’ll hold this against you, sir,” he was saying. “You have come under my roof to insult an honored guest, sir. And by the eternal, Sheriff Nance, I’ll hold this against you to your death day, sir.”

  However, the family, including Little Billy, now jubilant and defiant, followed Jim Curry down the stairs and around the corner of the house where—to their surprise—they saw the sheriff’s horse and near it the white form of Meg. There was no need to tell them what horse this was, for she had been described from fetlock to ear many and many a time; even had she not been described in detail, there was an air about her that often lingers about great horses, and it proclaimed great-hearted Meg as truly as the fragrance proclaims the rose.

  But there was far more to hear and to see immediately. No s
ooner did the beautiful mare see Jim Curry than she flung herself sheer back, snapped the rotten old halter rope like a bit of packing thread, and plunged straight for him. Before that rush the others gave back in a scurry, saw Meg slide to a halt on braced legs, and then rear straight up as though she would smash Jim Curry into the earth. Instead she came down with a whinny, and then she flirted at his hat with her nose while her great eyes gleamed with affection.

  The others stood astonished, too astonished for speech or motion. Jim Curry glanced around him, and by the desperate glimmer of his eyes he seemed to be contemplating a break for freedom by leaping onto the back of the mare. Perspiration stood out on his forehead, but he did not make the move. The gun was still in the hand of the sheriff, and he would not be in too great a daze to whip it up and fire with deadly accuracy at the first sign of a flight. More than the sheriff, he saw in the face of Lang incredulous joy and exultation. The tall man was fairly gibbering with cruel pleasure. And even the Mark family, from Henry to Little Billy, stood back, white of face, for there was enough in the repute of the Red Devil to freeze the veins of any one of them, no matter what kindness they had felt for him up to that time. Ruth herself stood back and veiled her eyes with her hands.

  He was lost; plainly he was lost past hope. He was betrayed by the affection of his mare. Bitterly he touched her silken neck and stroked it mechanically while she nosed him in a frenzy of joy.

  Then came one shrill note of faith, and it roused immense hope in Jim. It was the voice of Little Billy, trembling and broken with emotion.

  “That don’t mean nothing!” he was shrilling. “All hosses come pretty easy to Jim, and a pile of ’em will come running to him. They ain’t no hoss that he’s afraid of … and what does it mean if Meg comes to him?”

  It was a feeble plea.

  Lang took it up with a cruel sneer. “Then maybe he’d like to hop over the fence into the corral with that stallion yonder? Maybe he’d like to step inside the bars with the gray? That’d be proof he didn’t fear nothing.”

  He pointed to the distant corral where the famous gray outlaw paced up and down, wolfish, and, as everyone knew, fierce as a wolf when he saw a chance to get at a man. Hero of a hundred horse-breaking contests, he had never yet been ridden, although one Jud Canby, two years before, had stayed four minutes on his back. But at length Jud had gone off like all the rest. They all fell. Moreover, they dared not let the wicked old stallion buck save on two ropes, so that he could be choked down and dragged away when he attempted to turn and crush the fallen rider. This was the beast to which Lang pointed, and Jim Curry knew the malice behind the gesture and knew, also, that he must accept the chance.

  He made up his mind very quickly, as brave men do. He gave one glance about him, patted the neck of the mare again, heard the faint cry of horror from Ruth, and then turned on his heel. “Come along, boys,” he said as cheerfully as he could. “I’ll show you that Little Billy is right. There isn’t a horse in the world that’ll try to eat me. Old Bald Eagle ain’t going to be any different from the rest.”

  Straight to the corral he marched, with the others following hastily, only Henry Mark lingering behind and urging Ruth to take the boy away to the house.

  “It isn’t going to be pretty,” he was assuring his daughter.

  “Are you going to allow this horrible murder …?” Jim heard her saying, and then distance and the work before him swept all else from his mind.

  Bald Eagle was a brute as scrawny and unlovely in outward appearance as he was terrible of heart within. He favored Jim with one narrow, side glance, and then halted in his uneasy walk and, dropping his head, pretended to be drowsing. That clumsy lure did not fool Jim Curry. He hesitated, his hand freezing onto the rail on which it had fallen.

  In that moment of suspense he was aware of the unplumbed blueness of heaven above him, of the whiteness of Meg in the distance, whinnying after him, of the bowed head of Ruth as the girl turned away. And at that he found the strength to slip between the bars and stand erect inside the corral—at the mercy of the stallion.

  In a swirl of dust—so savage was his eagerness—the horse turned. There was a hoarse cry from the sheriff, repenting the brutal test to which he was submitting the man. Jim saw the revolver glint in the hand of Nance and blessed him for it. Then out shot the hand of Lang and knocked down the sheriff’s arm.

  “Let him finish,” said Lang. “This ain’t more’n what folks would do to him if he was brought into town and put in jail. No jail walls would keep him from the hands of them that wants to get at him.”

  But Bald Eagle was already upon him with terrible, snaky head outstretched, ears flattened, mouth agape. On toward him he tore—while Jim waited. One hope was with him—that the first onslaught would be so terrible that death would be instant. And he kept one belief—that afterward the girl would believe no wrong of him. Having seen him die dauntless, she would keep a shrine of faith for him in some part of her being, no matter what tales the men of the world might bring up against him.

  All of this rushed through his mind, for thought in that last second was plunging with the speed of traveling light. And so he saw Bald Eagle throw himself back, come to a sliding halt that cast a great, choking cloud of dust over him, and then there was the stallion rearing above him.

  The great hoofs hung in the air—rushed down—and then swerved from the head at which they were aimed. An instant later Bald Eagle stood at a little distance, trembling, with his head held high, and shaking it in bewilderment at this man who neither cursed him nor beat him nor fled from him, but stood harmless, fearless, watching with the uncanny, human eyes. Bald Eagle snorted, then raised his head higher, pricked his ears, and neighed.

  “By the eternal!” cried the sheriff. “Little Billy was right! Jim has a power over horses. Ruth, hold up your head and look, girl. I knew it all the time … in my heart. He’s no more the Red Devil than I am. There he is … alive still, and he’s done about the same thing with Bald Eagle as he did with Meg.”

  So thought the others. Even Lang was dull of eye, and watched Jim with a touch of horror as the latter left the corral. But there was no thought of retaliating for the malice the latter had shown him. Clambering through the bars of the corral, Jim Curry straightened and looked first of all to Ruth Mark, only to see her collapsing in the arms of her father. And then Little Billy ran at him, and he threw the youngster into the air, laughing hysterically, both of them, and white Meg came up and danced behind him for joy of that new meeting.

  Lang drew back, evidently feeling that a hand of wrath was about to descend upon him, and the sheriff came up with his hand outstretched to Jim.

  “I should’ve knowed,” he said, “that a gent that could make horses come to him wasn’t no man-killing hound. Will you shake hands and forget all about this, partner?”

  Jim Curry took the hand with a crushing grip.

  “Now,” said the sheriff, “you go on to the house. I think that girl has something to say to you.”

  “And I,” said Jim, still patting the neck of Meg, “have something to say to you. I’m not the man who robbed you, Sheriff, but suppose I showed you the money you lost. Do you suppose it might be arranged for me to have an inside track when it comes to the auctioning of Meg?”

  The sheriff gasped. He turned white and then red in swift succession.

  “You …?” he muttered. “Does that mean …?”

  “It means,” said Jim firmly, “that I’m not the man you want, Sheriff. Heaven strike me if I ever killed more’n one man in my life, and that man was a skunk that needed killing. Now what do you say about the bargain?”

  “Bargain?” said the sheriff. “Why, son, it’s a gift, not a bargain. Bad? Why, Jim, would the Red Devil make me a bargain like that? A fortune against one hoss?”

  He caught the hand of Jim and wrung it, and Lang, beholding, turned his back and skulked hastily out
of sight.

  Jim Curry’s Sacrifice

  I

  Outside, the speed of the train blurred that indescribable desert, and, against that blur Charlie Mark, looking through the window, built up the pictures of his past. What he saw was not entirely pleasing. Certainly in the adopted role of bandit he had distinguished himself for a time at least. He left behind him a record of bloodshed and robbery that set his nerves tingling with a fierce scorn for his fellow men—and that made him look downward, lest someone in the train encounter one of those wolfish and hungry glances of contempt. In truth, as an amateur he had done very well indeed, and although he had been beaten—here he touched a scar in the center of his forehead running up into his hair—he had at least fought like a man, and only the greatest of the great had been able to bring him down.

  Sufficient tribute to his cleverness was the fact that he was now riding in an eastbound train with his fellow citizens around him, and not a one of them suspicious of the fact that in the train with them was one who for two eventful months had carried upon his shoulders the character of the Red Devil, and in the role of that terrible and famous outlaw had committed enough deeds of villainy to pack the lives of ten ordinary criminals from birth to death. He sat among them. He ate with them in the diner. He chatted with them in the club car or on the observation car, and never a one of them could guess. And sometimes the exultation grew so great in Charlie Mark that his whole body shook in silent laughter as though an ague had gripped him. How utterly he despised these fools!

  No matter if the real Red Devil, that strange man who had consented to change places with him in the beginning, had at length struck him down. No matter for that. He escaped miraculously with his life, and with enough money to set him up again in his interrupted career as a gambler in the East. That was his province, he felt. It was for the shrewd and deft work of cheating his fellows at cards that he had been born and placed upon this merry old earth. In his pocket was sufficient to pay the $20,000 in debts that had driven him from his old haunts. How they would be surprised when he appeared again! By this time they would have begun terming him a deadbeat. And now he would come to pay off all the debts at one sweep and still retain in his pocketbook the fat and tidy sum of $12,000.