by Max Brand
“Skinny little sparrow, ain’t he?” remarked the trapper.
At that, Jimmy opened his eyes wide and looked straight up into the face of his impromptu host. “Hullo,” said Jimmy, “whose grandpa are you, mister?”
The trapper grinned. “You’re gonna pull through, son,” he assured. “You been about as bad scared as you been hurt, I reckon.”
The face of Jimmy puckered with anger. “Chief,” he said, “did I show the white feather?”
“Never a touch of it, Jim,” said Dunmore.
“Go on, chief,” urged the boy. “You’ve gotta hurry. How much time you’ve wasted here on me might. . . .”
“We have to ride on,” said Dunmore. “If you’ll take care of him for us, partner, I’ll pay you.”
The trapper raised his hand in protest. “If I was a doctor or a hotel or some such,” he said, “I’d sure be glad to get your money, but the way it is, I can’t use it. The kid’s gonna be all right with me. You run along and forget about him. I’ll be glad to have him for company.” “Go on, chief, go on!” pleaded the lad.
Dunmore gripped both the hard, skinny hands in one of his and stared into Larren’s eyes. “You’ve been as straight as a gun barrel and as good as gold, kid,” he said. “I’m comin’ back for you later on. You and me belong together.”
Tears that his pain could not have brought to the eyes of Jimmy Larren now misted his sight. He tried to speak, but there was only a twisting of his mouth. Beatrice kissed him, then she turned behind Dunmore toward the door. He sprang out of it for the mare, but his hand did not get to her. Three rifles flashed from the brush on that side of the clearing as Dunmore appeared. One bullet nicked the hip of the mare and sent her off at a wild gallop. Another slashed the cheek of Dunmore as he leaped back into the hut again.
He slammed the door, and looked savagely about him. There was a small window at the back of the shack, but yet it was perhaps not too small for him to wedge his shoulders through and draw the girl after him. He leaped to it, and jerked up the sash. Instantly half a dozen shots barked from the bottom of the hill, and he heard the pellets of lead strike the logs with a soggy impact.
He whirled back again toward the door. Blind fighting instinct urged him to break out through that door again and charge the enemy, and he actually had taken a step toward it, scooping up his rifle as he went, when the thin, piping voice of Jimmy called out: “Don’t do it, chief! Don’t do it, for Pete’s sake! They got you cornered, but they ain’t got you in hand yet. Chief, take your time, will you?”
Beatrice ran to the door, shot home the bolt, and then put her shoulders against it. He, lurching forward still full of his first impulse, stopped to brush her aside. But she struck at his hand and shook her head.
“They’re lying down, with beads all drawn,” she said. “They can’t miss you. Don’t go, Carrick. Don’t go.” She was white. Her lips trembled with earnestness.
Dunmore stepped slowly back from her. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll have to stay here. It’s better that way, a lot.” For though it might be that she had interfered as she would have done to keep any man from running out to death, still he felt that there was something more in the emotion with which she had spoken.
“Good for you!” called the boy. “Good for you, Beatrice. If that maverick had busted loose, they’d’ve turned him into beef in about two steps.”
“Halloo!” called a voice on the outside. “Hey! Whitey Dodd!”
The old trapper went to the door and set it ajar a crack. “Halloo!” he thundered back. “Is that you, Neighbor Parson, that’s come here murderin’ my guests in the middle of the night?”
FORTY
“Guests, you old loon?” yelled Parson in answer. “It’s Dunmore and Tankerton’s girl!”
Whitey Dodd fairly reeled from the shock of this announcement, but he rallied instantly. “Nobody in this here house is for sale, Parson!” he yelled. “And they can’t raise the price high enough to get ’em!”
“You’re cracked in the head,” the other assured him.
There was a nest of rocks halfway between the house and the beginning of the woods, and from this vantage point the speaker called on behalf of the besiegers.
“I’d rather be a cracked bell than a sold one,” retorted Dodd hotly. “If you-all start for this house, I’m gonna be ready for you, and I tell you that I don’t miss my shots!”
“The old rattle-head,” commented a voice from the rocks, perfectly audible in the breathless stillness of the night, “is gonna get romantic and big-hearted. And he’ll hold us up till the Tankertons get here and grab most of the reward for themselves. And here we are, ten of us, that had oughta be able to divide the profit among us. Whitey’s beatin’ us out of more’n a thousand dollars apiece.”
“I’d like to have his scalp,” said a companion. “Look sharp, old son. That Dunmore might bust loose any minute.”
“I’m watching, all right. I got that reward right inside the hook of my trigger finger, in case he tries to bust out in this direction. Is that horses?”
It was the wind, rattling with a sudden violence in the leaves of the trees, and then making the big boughs groan dismally. A film of cloud was instantly tarnishing the moonlight, and Dunmore, watching from the door that was still ajar, could thank his fortune that was sending a light less brilliant. Even so, he could not see a possible solution of his problem. The house was solidly surrounded, and even the horses were gone. So that it must be a case of breaking out on foot, in which event there was hardly a chance in a million that they would be able to get clear. Besides, the Tankertons would soon be here.
Even as he thought of it, he heard a noise louder than the rattling of the leaves in the wind, and in a moment it had grown into the distinct beating of hoofs. They poured up to the verge of the clearing. Voices called. There was a triumphant Indian yell from many throats, the wild sound shrilling and thrilling the blood. Then all doubt ended, and all hope with it. The Tankertons were here.
“They’ve come,” said Dunmore over his shoulder, without looking back.
“Let ’em stay till they rot!” said the trapper savagely. “They’ll get no man out of my house.”
“Won’t they everlastin’ly lambaste us?” asked Jimmy Larren, laughing feebly. “Ain’t they just gonna drill this here house from one end to the other, though?”
“These here logs will soak up lead like a blotter soaks up water,” said Whitey Dodd. “Besides, will the Tankertons fire into the house as long as their woman is here?” He turned toward Beatrice. She stood against the farthest wall of the cabin, staring steadfastly at Dunmore.
“In this here game of tag,” he said, “it looks as though I’ve been caught. You’re free to go whenever you feel like it. Just unbolt the door again for her, will you, Dodd?”
Beatrice shook her head. “I’ve made my bargain. I’ll stick to it,” she said. “I’m not going to leave.”
A loud voice called from the clearing at this moment: “Dunmore! Dunmore!”
He paused for another inquiring glance at the girl, but she looked back at him as steadily as a soldier on parade. Then he went back to the door.
“Dunmore!” came the voice of Furneaux.
“I hear you, Furneaux.”
“Dunmore, you’re trapped and done for,” he said. “But I’ll give you a last chance to die like a man. Come out here and I’ll stand up to you, man to man.”
Dunmore laughed. Rage and despair were in that laughter, but afterward he answered: “I know the way we would fight. You in the open, and twenty rifles among the trees. As Tucker and Legges and Tankerton fought, they’d fight again. One honest man don’t make a square show.”
“Is that final?” said Furneaux. “You won’t come out?”
There was sufficient anger in Dunmore, considering his helpless position, to have made him leap at such a chance, but it seemed to him, as he leaned against the door and talked, that he could see again the dark old panel in t
he Furneaux house that showed his own features out of the old time dimly, like a face reflected in muddy water. But he was The Dunmore, and this was a member of his clan. That old pride of race that had sent him into the mountains to do the impossible now boiled up in him again, steadied him, and enabled him to answer almost gently: “I won’t come out against you, Furneaux.”
“If you were any other man,” he responded, “I’d call you a coward and a sneak. Heaven knows what you are, Dunmore. But you’ve done a thing worse than murder. You’re going to die, Dunmore, and heaven have pity on your soul. Where is she now?”
“She’s with me in this cabin.”
“Are you going to keep her there until the bullets have killed her?” shouted Furneaux.
“I’m going to send her out,” answered Dunmore. “The rest of them go with her . . . Dodd and Jimmy Larren, I mean. Larren is wounded. What sort of care will he get with you?”
“I’ll give you my word for that. I’ll take care of the kid. Do you mean that you’ll send them out freely?”
“Man,” exclaimed Dunmore, “what sort of a low hound do you think I am?”
“It’s finished, then,” said Furneaux. “Tankerton has left this job to me. I’ll promise you one thing, and that is that there’ll be no burning you out. You’ll have as fair a chance as I can give you.”
“Why,” said the prisoner, “that’s more than any man could really ask for. I’ll send them out at once.” He turned to the other three.
“I dunno,” said Whitey Dodd, “that I’ve ever been turned out of my house before by any gent that wanted to use it for a coffin. I claim it’s big enough to hold two, and I’ll stay.”
“That’s your idea of it, Whitey,” said Dunmore good-humoredly. “But step into my boots and you’ll see the other side of it. Can I let you stay here and be butchered? Go out, Dodd, or I’ll have to push you through the door myself.”
Dodd was silent, but he nodded a little, looking off into the distance as though he were seeing and recognizing the truth there.
“You’ll be able to carry Jimmy. He’s light.”
“Me?” shrilled Jimmy Larren. “Who’s gonna carry me out?” He worked himself up on one elbow. “Whatcha mean, chief?”
“What good will it be to me to have you here?” asked Dunmore sternly.
“Can’t I clean and load guns as good as the next one? You wouldn’t turn me off, chief. What’s the good of anything, if I can’t make the last march with you? What’s the good of belongin’ to a friend, if you can’t make the last stand with him, eh?”
Dunmore leaned over him. “If the two of us are gone, Jimmy, who’ll be alive to really look after her?”
Jimmy Larren opened great eyes. “You mean I’m to watch after her?”
“Aye,” whispered Dunmore. “Even whether she knows it or not. I’ve tried to bring her down out of the mountains, Jimmy, and I’ve failed. You’ll tackle it, one day, and win.”
Jimmy Larren looked at the ceiling with anguished eyes. “Have I gotta leave you, chief?”
“There ain’t any other way, Jimmy. You can see for yourself. So long, old-timer.”
They shook hands, and Dunmore, lifting him, placed him in the lean, strong arms of Whitey Dodd. One last glance Jimmy cast at his hero. He tried to make a last speech, but his manhood, at that moment, deserted him. He buried his face on the shoulder of the old man and wept, fighting hard against the noise so that it sounded only like a soft moaning.
Whitey Dodd said in farewell: “Possession is nine points in the law, young feller. You got your own life in your hand. Keep a-hopin’, and you may learn how to keep it there. Nobody’s dead till he’s closed his eyes.”
He went out, bearing the boy, and Beatrice lingered an instant behind.
“Is there one big thing that you want done in the world?” she asked. “If there is, I’d try to do it for you.”
“You would? Then send Furneaux back to his own people.”
“Send him back?”
“It’s what I came up here to do, Beatrice. I thought that I could beat Tankerton and all his men. But I was foolish to think so.”
“Furneaux!” she gasped again. “But you taunted him, and worked up trouble with him.”
“One of the best ways of sending a man home is on a stretcher.”
“Then . . . I’ll send him if I can. Is there anything else?”
“There’s nothing else,” he said, “except for yourself. Get out of Tankerton’s hands, Beatrice.”
“I shall. I shall,” she said. “I thought he was a lion, but after I saw. . . .” She checked herself, although the very heart of Dunmore yearned to hear more. “Furneaux and myself . . . and nothing that is for you, Carrick?”
“Aye, one thing that’s for me. Take Jimmy under your wing. He’ll be worth the trouble, goodness knows, because I never seen the makings of a better man.”
“I’ll do it,” said the girl. “Oh, Carrick, why did you make me hate you those other days? But I was blind. I should have known you were playing some deep game unselfishly. I should have guessed from little Jimmy Larren, when he picked you out of all the band.”
“It’s time to go,” he announced. “Furneaux and the rest will be wonderin’ at you if. . . .”
“Dunmore! Dunmore!” shouted Furneaux loudly. “Are you holding the girl back?”
He led her to the door. “She’s comin’ at once,” he answered, and added softly to her: “There’s one last thing you could do. Remember me on Sundays and on holidays, now and then, and think of me as a fellow who lived a lazy and a useless and a pretty crooked life, but, before the end, he thanked heaven that he tried to do one decent thing . . . and failed tryin’ it. And he found one woman and loved her, and lost her . . . but died mighty glad of the findin’.”
He saw that she would have spoken again. But, like Jimmy, she seemed choked.
“Good-bye,” said Dunmore, and helped her through the doorway, and closed the door after her.
FORTY-ONE
When Dunmore was alone, he looked around him and prepared to die. From the edges of the clearing, he heard a sudden shouting and whooping, by which he knew that the girl had come to the hands of the Tanker-tons again. The next moment, it seemed that a hundred rifles blazed. He distinctly heard the thudding of the bullets into the wood, and then a clang and a crashing from the pans that hung on the wall behind the stove. That answered what Dodd had said of the impregnable walls of his house. In certain spots, at least, the lead would fly through like water through a sieve.
He tried the flooring. The boards were loose and came away easily in his hand. He ripped up three of them. From a corner he took a shovel and started scooping up the earth beneath the flooring. Clang! rang a bullet that glanced from the iron blade of the shovel. Another clipped close past his head. But every swing of his arms drove the shovel deeply into the soil, and quickly he had entrenched himself.
As for the wound on his cheek, it was a trifle. Already the blood had stopped flowing. He laid himself down behind his barricade and waited.
Wasp sounds darted above his head. Again and again the pans crashed against the wall; a steady tattoo drummed upon the stove; they were searching the cabin through and through with rapid fire from repeating rifles, and no doubt they would continue steadily.
No, the firing died off. Only a single shot came now and again, as though, having vented their spleen in a first outburst, they were content to keep him disturbed with an occasional shot.
He chose that moment to slip across the floor to one of Dodd’s loopholes, and, when he looked out, he was glad that he had come in time. For he saw a pair of shadows work out from the trees and slide rapidly along the ground toward the nest of rocks. He drew up his rifle and fired. The leading shadow twisted into a knot, like a worm that has been stepped upon. The second bounded to its feet and fled. Dunmore fired low, aiming between hip and thigh, and saw the fellow topple. The speed of his running carried him along, and with a cry he rolled back int
o the shelter of the trees.
There was a wild burst of rifle fire, a chorus of fierce shouting that reminded him of the baying of a pack of hounds, and something stung the calf of his leg.
At the same instant the door of the cabin swung open with a loud creaking. He whirled, rifle at the ready, but no one appeared. There was only the deadly whistling of the bullets as they cut through the opening and lodged with sullen thuds against the rear wall of the house. Then he knew what had happened. The rusty bolt had been cracked in two by the impact of bullets, and the weight of flying lead had driven the door wide open. He was not really sorry. The door itself was too thin for a shield, and with it open he had a wider view of what was happening outside. He could see, for instance, the wounded man rolling on the ground in agony.
At the first let-down in the fire, he raised his head above his trench and thundered: “Go get your sick man, Tankerton. I won’t shoot you down.”
A bullet, as though in answer, struck the dirt before him and filled his mouth with a loose shower of soil.
He spat it out with a curse, and heard the clear, rising voice of Tankerton calling: “I’ll take that offer, Dunmore! Two of you fellows go out and get Mike.”
There was a pause. Dunmore could hear the muttering of the distant voices, almost immediately drowned by a roar of the wind, which was rising rapidly. Then, out of the shadows, appeared two men without guns in their hands. They skulked along uncertainly, as though they expected bullets at any moment, but Dunmore held his fire. He saw them reach Mike, and pick up the hurt man between them. Mike groaned loudly, then was carried forward in a run, like children fleeing from the dark, but still Dunmore did not fire. As a result, he got a rousing cheer from the Tankertons. Yet he would not trust them as much as they had trusted him. He went instantly to the back of the cabin, as the firing recommenced, and from a loophole there he scanned that side of the battle.
The ground was empty, as well as he could see, but sight now was difficult. Rapid clouds had swept across the face of the moon and the woods were blurred masses of shadow. A moment later, the rain rattled against the thatched roof. The wind whistled it into the cabin, and the face of Dunmore was wet with water and with blood.