by Max Brand
Whatever Chuck had heard from the hall outside the door of Dunmore’s room, he could not be prepared for this, and his jaw sagged loosely as he watched.
Tankerton went up to him with a smile. “Why, Chuck,” he said, “you might have known that you were mistaken about Dunmore. He’s one of my oldest friends, and one of my best, come out here at my invitation to be my partner. But the scoundrel wanted to introduce himself in his own way . . . so long since we’ve seen each other that I hardly recognized him, at that. Eh, Carrie?”
“Well,” said Dunmore, “it’s the first time that Judge Colt has made old friends recognize one another. What’s my bill, Harper?”
“Seventy-four dollars and fifty cents this morning,” said Chuck, “and. . . .”
“Pay him for me, old fellow, will you?” Dunmore said to the outlaw. “Don’t generally carry such small change as that around with me.”
Tankerton flashed a grim side glance at his companion, but he immediately took out a roll of bills and peeled off two of them. “Here’s a hundred, Chuck,” he said. “You keep the change for luck, will you?”
Chuck, trembling with emotion in all his great bulk, drew the other aside. He was breathing so hard that it was almost impossible for him to speak. Finally he could say: “Him? A friend of yours, chief?”
“We played together when we were youngsters,” Tankerton explained easily. “He’s all right, Chuck . . . only a little eccentric, you know, and that doesn’t matter among old friends. You see that you’ve been paid for what he’s eaten.”
“Paid?” echoed Chuck hollowly. “I couldn’t be paid with a million dollars, unless the money was printed on his hide.” He jerked about, presenting his back to his master, and strode away.
This was an act of open rebellion that would have called for quick disciplining at any other time, but Tankerton had now many important details to occupy his mind and let the trifles slip. He heard Dunmore saying good-bye to Mrs. Harper, and watched her face turn yellow with disappointed malice. In their own way, Tankerton felt that there were no two more evil characters in the mountains than this precious pair, and it seemed that Dunmore had been at pains to bring out every ugly phase of them.
He was saying now: “This here is a sad time for both of us, Missus Harper. But that’s the way of things. Smooth goin’ for a little while, and then we get the bumps. Don’t you take on though, little woman. Because all the time that I’m away, I’m gonna be thinkin’ of you. Every time I see a wildflower, like a flowerin’ cactus, say, or a prickly pear, I’m gonna be reminded of you constant, and that’ll help me to bear up. Shake hands, little woman.”
She jerked her hands behind her back. “I’d . . . I’d rather touch a toad!” she gasped at him, and fled from the room.
“They hate you, Dunmore,” Tankerton commented, looking after her.
“Look here,” remarked Dunmore. “Would you take it for a compliment to have that sort of a crowd like you or want you in the middle of the family?”
Tankerton shrugged his shoulders, and he went with Dunmore out the front door of the hotel.
The light of the sun, sloping through the great trees from the west, sent long splotches of shadow across a crowd of fifty or sixty people who were gathered there; Harpersville hardly could have collected a greater number. When they saw Dunmore and the outlaw as friends, side-by-side, they gave back with an awed and bewildered murmur. Tankerton stood up on the steps of the hotel and made a little speech.
He said briefly: “Friends, I’m mighty glad to see you all here, because I want to introduce you to an old companion of mine who has come up here to be my partner. We didn’t recognize each other at first, and it came close to being a bad meeting . . . but good luck made us both miss, and we’re glad of it. If you see Dunmore after this, look on him as much a friend of yours as I could be.”
He said this quietly, cheerfully, but Dunmore could see the pallor of the man’s face and recognize the forced quality in his smile. By those tokens he could guess at the shame and rage and hatred that were gathered in the breast of the outlaw, and he could prophesy the danger that must lie before him. Yet he was amazed by the honesty with which the man fulfilled his pledge.
In all his life he had not seen a more savage-looking crowd. They looked like rough hunting dogs leaning on the leash, and one word from Tankerton, one gesture, even, would have launched them in a wave at Dunmore. Yet Tankerton refrained. It was pride, no doubt, that held him back. He would not admit that he needed the assistance of any man in single fight.
The manner in which the assemblage took the speech of their patron was typical of their rude, half-savage natures. A sort of growl ran through them, then they swayed into groups, facing the two main objects of interest, but muttering and mumbling among themselves. It was plain that, when they heard of the arrival of Tankerton, they expected that swift destruction would overtake the impertinent stranger, and they could not accommodate themselves to the disappointment. Yet they eyed Dunmore with some admiration and a great deal of wholesome respect.
As the horses for two were brought around to the front of the hotel, such a space had formed in front of them that Tankerton turned to Dunmore and said with a smile that was for the benefit of the crowd, and a bitterness of voice that was for the man beside him: “I’ve lost this day as much as I’ve won in the last three years. I owe that to you, Dunmore.”
“Take me as you find me,” answered Dunmore. “A month from today you may be glad that I’ve joined you.”
Tankerton allowed his smile to slip into a sneer for an instant, and then looked down the street toward the form of a rider who was coming up at a furious speed. It came closer and grew from a blur of dust and haste into the figure of a flying bay horse, dust-coated and flecked with foam. In the saddle was no man, in spite of this furious speed, but a girl. As she came up, the speed of her gallop furled the brim of her hat, and so it was that Carrick had his first view of Beatrice Kirk, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and beautiful.
Straight into the crowd she rushed her horse, so that they scattered with yells to each side. A man would have been dragged from his horse and flogged for such conduct, but they laughed at her recklessness. For her part, she paid not the slightest attention to them, but drew in hard on a wicked Spanish curb that threw the bay on his haunches. So he skidded to a halt in splendid style, and a gush of dust spurted over those who were standing nearby.
“It’s Beatrice Kirk,” Dunmore heard a voice say. He thought it a lovely name, and, although the horse no longer stirred, it seemed to him as though the beauty of her face were sweeping on strongly into his mind. All was delicately feminine in her fashioning, all was lightness and grace, but in her expression he could see neither humility nor patience, or kindness, or friendship, or timidity, or any of those domestic and shrinking virtues with which most men fit out their ideal. She was all fire, passion, contempt, pride, courage, and a sinister dash of cruelty lurked about her mouth and eyes, Dunmore thought.
She flung out of the saddle and stood panting before them. “Is it all over and I’m too late, Jimmy?” she said to Tankerton. “I rode like the mischief to get here, because I wanted to see that fight. But now you’ve finished it, and I’ll only see the Dunmore corpse.” She panted out the words, making a savage little gesture of disappointment.
“Dunmore?” said Tankerton. “Does he look like a corpse?”
He pointed at his companion, and the girl, turning with a start, stared fully at Dunmore. He felt as though he never had been looked at before those hard, bright, and searching eyes were fixed on his. It was as though she did not see his body, his clothes, his face, but only demanded: What is in the soul of this man?
Suddenly he felt empty, and a little frightened.
She turned back to Tankerton, as suddenly as she looked on Dunmore. “Bah!” she said. “He won.” A world of ringing disappointment and contempt was now in that voice of hers.
Dunmore said hastily: “Nobody won. We were introduced w
ith a couple of shots, and we found out that we were old friends.”
“Old friends,” Tankerton said, repeating the idea, and it seemed to Dunmore that he spoke with a touch of desperation in his voice. “Why, Beatrice, we played together when we were kids.”
She looked at him, then flashed her bright eyes at Dunmore and never had he seen such disbelief and such contempt commingled. “Well,” she said, “your guns have scared the two of you into a mighty good story. Jim, is he going back with us?”
“Yes,” he answered with an unwilling drag in his voice.
“He is?” she snapped. “Well . . . give me a hand up. I’m going to ride on ahead.”
“We’ll all be going back the same road, Beatrice,” he said, well nigh pleading.
“Are we? Not unless you can go faster than the bay will take me.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Tankerton demanded.
“I want to be alone,” she answered bitterly. “I want to be alone, so that I can have a daydream and think about one real man. There aren’t any wearing boots in these mountains.”
EIGHTEEN
At several things Dunmore wondered. He had seen proud girls and pretty girls before. He had seen them treat men with all the contempt of that tyrannical power that beauty gives into their hands, but never before had he witnessed such a thing as this. Most marvelous of all, the proud Tankerton submitted to this abuse in the face of the crowd and actually was offering his hand to help her mount. More wonderful still, the crowd did not seem offended, or to find anything ridiculous in this submission, but they merely looked upon Beatrice Kirk with wondering and admiring eyes.
There was an interruption just as she was about to put her foot into the hand that Tankerton was offering. Out across the street from the butcher shop lurched a big man, Bill Ogden. He had humped shoulders and a long, brutal face; he looked, in fact, very much like Jimmy Larren’s description of him—a swine that had run wild in the woods. He carried a stout stick in his hand, and, singling out Jimmy in the crowd, he brought the cudgel down on his shoulders.
“You little brat!” yowled Ogden, even louder than Jimmy’s yell of surprise and of pain. “I’ll teach you to go gaddin’! I’ll learn you manners! I’ll. . . .”
Jimmy dodged away like a flying bird into the open and took to his heels, but the club reached him again as he darted off, and this time it grazed his head with sufficient force to make him stagger.
Dulled though his wits were by that stroke, still he had intelligence enough to know that he could not get away in the open after receiving such a blow, so he wheeled and staggered back into the crowd.
They seemed used to this brutality and gave back, roaring with laughter, while the youngster fled on with a contracted, desperate face, and the monster gained rapidly behind him, one hand outstretched, his mouth grinning with expectant joy.
At the first shout, the girl had turned from her horse. Now she leaped in between Jimmy and his persecutor, with her quirt flashing through the air like a sword. It fell straight across the leering face of Bill Ogden.
“You wildcat!” yelled the butcher, staggering back. “I’ll . . . I’ll teach you! I’ll. . . .”
She leaped straight in at him.
Dunmore could see her face and it was on fire with a savage joy, a sort of animal ferocity.
“You brute!” she said through her teeth. “I’ll teach you to grunt and howl among human beings.” With almost every word the rapid quirt slashed and lashed over the head, the face, the guarding hands of Bill Ogden.
Once he actually lurched forward at her, but at the same moment he saw the leveled revolver in the hand of Tankerton and received a blow that drew blood from forehead to chin. Howling like a beast with pain and with rage, Bill Ogden turned at last and fled with a bleeding face to the shelter of his shop.
Beatrice Kirk, watching him out of sight, went back toward her horse, saying: “Bah, bah! The filthy pig. Why do you let such creatures stay here, James? Why do you do it?”
“I don’t think that he’ll stay long, after this,” answered Tankerton.
“Where’s the boy?” she demanded. “I want to have a look at him.”
Out of the crowd, someone found young Larren as he was skulking away, and brought him back to her. He was rubbing his injured head, but the expression on his face was calm enough.
“Are you hurt, sonny?” she asked.
Dunmore, listening for some feminine touch of pity and gentleness, thought that he recognized none whatever in the voice of the girl.
“Well, whatcha think, ma’am?” said Jimmy.
She laughed, seeming much pleased by this sharp answer.
“Not hurt bad, though,” he said philosophically. “He didn’t bust anything. Otherwise, I don’t care a rap.”
“You don’t? You don’t get many of these beatings?”
“Enough to keep me toughened up pretty good,” he responded.
Again she laughed. She drew nearer to the ragged lad and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Look me in the eye,” she said.
“Aw, I can look at you, all right,” said Larren. He tilted his head a little, for he lacked a good deal of her height, and the pair confronted each other. Dunmore surveyed them with a peculiar interest. It was this same lad who had whistled “The Campbells Are Coming” under his window and roused him from the bed where he was drowsing—roused him just in time and cleared his brain to meet the sudden attack of Tankerton.
Steadily she eyed the boy, while the crowd watched curiously. “Well,” she said, “what’s your name?”
“Jimmy Larren.”
“Was that your father?”
“Does he look it? He don’t, and he ain’t,” said Larren.
“You’re not very grateful to me,” she suggested.
“Aw,” he said, “I’ll get everything that you saved me from. I’d rather you had let me alone. Because then he would have finished in one bust. This way, he’ll spread it on thick for a month. He’ll whack me every time the cuts on his face hurt him.” Then he added, with a boy’s sense of justice: “You meant pretty good, though. I thank you for that, ma’am.”
“James,” she said suddenly.
“That’s me,” said the boy.
“No, it isn’t,” she retorted, as Tankerton came up. “Why don’t you take this boy along with you? He’s not living with his family.”
“You don’t mean it, Beatrice,” said Tankerton.
“Why don’t I? I’ll take care of him. Besides, he looks like something real to me. Not a fake.” She looked insultingly into the face of Tankerton, and then straight across at Dunmore.
At that, his heart rose hotly in him, but shame and yearning immediately followed.
Tankerton had stepped back.
“Youngster, do you want to come with us?”
“Me? Why not?” said Jimmy.
“You know that we move about a good deal?”
“Well, you’ve had a good look at my speed just now,” said Jimmy, grinning.
At that, the crowd laughed, except the girl and Dunmore. She was too busy watching the boy’s face. Dunmore was watching the keen, almost grim, expression of Beatrice Kirk.
When the laugher died down, Tankerton nodded: “You understand me, Jimmy? You’ll hardly have a steady home with us?”
“Say,” said Jimmy, “I ain’t used to a home. I been raised in a butcher shop.”
“Don’t make any more objections,” commanded the girl. “I want him. He’s a good boy. Maybe he will be a man. Give him a horse, James, and we’ll start together.”
This high-handed command Tankerton mildly obeyed, and at once. A mustang and a saddle were on hand in five minutes, and Jimmy Larren was mounted; his clothes, in obedience to a message from the outlaw leader, had been tied in a bundle and flung through the window of the butcher shop into the dust of the street. These were tied on behind the saddle, and the four were ready to start.
As they mounted, Dunmore heard Tankerton say to the girl:
“Where’s the kid?”
“What kid?” she asked.
“Young Furneaux. D’you mean to say that he let you ride out of camp without tagging along?”
“Oh, Furneaux’s all right,” she said, “but I’m tired of him. He started to come along, but I chucked him in the woods, and it’ll take the greenhorn a whole day to find his way back.”
To that, Dunmore listened with sharpened ears, but now they began to move out from the crowd, and presently they were jogging down the road, raising the dust in lazy drifts behind them. The sun was very low now, and crimson was appearing in the eastern sky, down between the blue mountains. Up from the gorges, more blue was welling, the very trees were entangled in it, and it seemed to Dunmore that he was riding, truly, into the blue kingdom of the horizon to where Carrick Dunmore had ruled so many hundred years before him.
The girl and Larren went in front, and Tankerton and Dunmore kept to the rear—Tankerton deep in thought, and now and then biting his lip.
“Is she one of you?” asked Dunmore at last, tormented into speech by his curiosity.
“She? Beatrice?” Tankerton said absently. Then he explained: “Her father was Judge Kirk’s son. The great Judge Kirk, I mean. The one who was run out of Tennessee by the Hodgkin-Kirk feud. His son took that to heart. They’d lost everything, you see. And Phil Kirk . . . that was the girl’s father . . . after his father’s death went back to Tennessee to settle a lot of overdue accounts. He killed three men, or four, I think.”
“Fair fight?”
“Why, I suppose so. That doesn’t matter so much in a feud, I guess. At any rate, he killed ’em, and they didn’t leave it to the feud law. They called in the police.”
“And ran him out?”
“Ran him straight into these mountains. He was working a patch of land, taking a few pelts every winter, and living like a beggar, he and his girl, until I come along eight years ago and showed him how to find an easier life for himself, and an education for Beatrice.”
“She’s been educated?”
“About everything that money can do for her has been done,” said Tankerton almost drearily, “but. . . .”