The Long, Long Trail

Max Brand

CHAPTER 1

He was popularly nicknamed Morg, and it may be understood that strangers were apt to spell the name Morgue; yet his full name, as he signed it on the day of his wedding and never again, before or after, was Morgan Algernon Valentine. Someone discovered that hidden and forbidden signature and once addressed the rancher as Algie, and the result was a violent accident.
Yet Morgan Valentine was a peaceful man. He was one of those who accomplish romantic results in an everyday manner. Banish his mountains from his horizon, and he would have been a wretched man, and yet when he thought about the mountains at all, it was only to remember the trails that netted them and the sweat of the hard climbs. His labor in life had been noble and was apt to prove enduring. Thirty years before—he and his brother, John, followed the Crane River, where it splits through the higher mountains and comes out upon the lower, rolling hills on the farther side—it occurred to John Valentine, who was the dreamer of the family, that the slopes might not be too steep to preclude cultivation with the plow! and though the regions of the hill crests were a jagged soil, much broken by rocks, there might be enough grass to graze cattle on. Five minutes later he was painting a picture of the house which might be built there—one for Morgan and one for John, on opposite sides of the Crane River. There they could live in eyeshot, each with a broad domain separated by the arrowy, yellow waters of the Crane. There was ample room for both—a hundred thousand acres of hill and valley land.
And still another five minutes found John Valentine already tired of his dream and ready to spur on. But Morgan would not stir. There he resolved to pitch his tent. And though John tried valiantly to dissuade him, the tent was pitched and the two brothers remained. Forthwith, the empire which John had seen, the younger brother proceeded to build. Who are the greater men—the empire seers or the empire makers? At any rate the thing was done; front to front, a couple of miles apart, and with the noisy river splitting the landscape in the middle, rose the two houses. The house of John Valentine was planned as a nobly proportioned structure, and though it had never progressed beyond the columns of the entrance and the first story of the original, it was nevertheless beautiful even in the piece. On the other hand, practical Morgan Valentine built himself a plain shack and gradually extended it. Now it stumbled up the hills on either side, big enough to shelter a whole clan of Valentines and their supporters.
From which it may be gathered that John Valentine lived his life as Byron wrote his poems—he leaped once, tigerlike, and if he failed in the first attempt, or grew weary of labor, he was off to fresh fields and pastures new. He was the sort of man of whom people can easily expect great things; he could have sat on a throne; he could have painted pictures or written verse or made shoes for his own horses; but in accomplishment he was continually falling short. But Morgan Valentine seemed to have reached above his height; people wondered at what he had done. Yet perhaps his neighbors overlooked this fact: that simplicity may be profound; and though few thoughts came to him, those he had worked deep into the roots of his being.
For instance, there was only one human being whom he had ever truly loved, and that was his brother. And when John died, Morgan transferred a portion of that love to the orphan daughter of the dead man.
But Morgan's own wife and children were merely incidents in his life.
It is necessary to be so explicit about this Morgan Valentine, because, in spite of his simplicity, this narrative could never have been written were it not that he did some astonishing things. Indeed, so unusual were some of the things that he did, that one is tempted to add fact to fact so that there will be no misapprehension—no tendency to call him a dream figure. On this night he was exactly fifty-one years and three months old. He stood five feet nine and three-quarter inches and weighed one hundred and eighty pounds; he had a gray head and a young, stern face; he was slow in speech and agile in movement; and at this particular moment he was smoking a stubby corncob pipe on the front porch of his house, with his heels cocked upon the top of the railing.
His wife was in bed; the servants dared not make a sound in the house even if they were awake; the songs and the laughter of the men in the bunkhouse had long since died out; but Morgan Valentine, who slept never more than five hours a night, was still wakeful at twelve.
But if his body waked, his mind slept indeed, and only his eye roved lazily through the valley. A broad moon, nearing the full, had rolled like a wheel up the side of Grizzly Peak, and it cast enough light for him to make out the details of his possessions. In the heart of each valley there was the black-plowed land in narrow strips—incredibly rich loam; and over the rest of the unfenced ground where the cattle ranged, the moon flashed here and there on a bit of outcropping quartz, or twinkled along a line of new-strung barbed wire. But far and wide, over the neighboring hollows, all to his right was his, over range after range of hills, rocking away toward a dim horizon. And looking straight ahead all was his to the silver streak of the river. Indeed, this was little more than an imaginary boundary, for though the great district beyond belonged to his niece, it would be, by all prospects, many and many a year before Mary Valentine was married, and until such a time, he was the executor, his will was law through all the rich region of that valley.
No wonder that the bowl of the pipe tilted up as he set his teeth, and he was filled with the solid sense of possession.
Into his quiet thought beat the swift tattoo of a horse coming across the valley road; it rounded the hill, and at once the hoofbeats rang loudly through the night with the speed of the fugitive—the speed of the pursuer—the speed of anger, perhaps. Now the horseman lurched into view, a black form, with a black shadow trailing beside it over the white road. Straight up to the front of Morgan Valentine's house; then out of the saddle with a leap; then heavy heels and ringing spurs on the high flight of steps. He caught sight of the figure of Morgan.
“Morgan Valentine?” he called.
Now, midnight hushes voices and makes men walk lightly, but the ring in this question was uncontrolled, as if the fellow had a right to waken the entire house if he felt so inclined.
“Gus Norman?” queried the rancher, rising.
“That's me!”
He came along the porch more slowly now, with the slowness of one who deliberates and prepares words. But when he came close, the calmness of Morgan Valentine snapped his self-control, and he burst out: “Valentine, it's got to stop!”
“What's got to stop?”
“That—that girl!”
He turned his head as he spoke mechanically and looked across the shining strip of the Crane River toward the unfinished house of John Valentine which stood on the crest of a hill, white under the moon, and with a solemn, Doric beauty.
“What girl?” persisted Valentine obtusely.
“What girl? Mary Valentine; your niece! That's what!”
“Stop? How stop?”
“Stop her from going about—man-killing—”
“What!”
“That's what it amounts to. It's murder, Valentine!”
The ugly word came out with an ugly oath behind it, and the change in Valentine was instant.
“Seems to me,” he observed in his unhurried manner, “that you're talking kind of foolish, Norman. Suppose I give you a minute to think that over and then say it again!”
The other shifted his position a little, but he rushed on with his speech of accusation.
“I don't need no minute, nor nothing like it. My boy is lying home, bleeding; that's why I'm here talking to you now. What I got to say won't keep. He's shot down, and it's her that has it done!”
For a time the glance of Valentine traveled gravely up and down the form of the other.
At length he said quietly: “I'd sort of hate to have Mother woke up with news like this; mind talking sort of soft?”
“There's no use talking soft,” said the other, but nevertheless he lowered his voice. “The whole world is finding out things about Mary Valentine, my friend, and the whole world won't be talking in a soft voice about what it knows.”
“Ah?” murmured Valentine. Suddenly his tone changed, as though the idea had just filtered completely home in his brain.
“Now, what the devil d'you mean by that, Norman?”
“I ain't here to argue with you. I'm here to point out facts. My boy is shot down; your son Charlie is the one that done it. How d'you explain it?”
“By the fact that your boy Joe ain't as handy with his gun as my boy Charlie. That's a tolerably clear explanation, I figure.”
“Tolerable clear for some, maybe, but it ain't the fact. The hand that held the gun was Charlie's, but the mind that directed it was Mary Valentine's.”
“All these here remarks,” declared Valentine, “is considerable compromising, which maybe I'll be asking for more talk later on. But now, keep right on. Charlie shot Joe, but you say that Mary had a hand in it? Where's Mary now?”
“She's taking care of Joe; your boys, Charlie and Louis, is both there, too; up at my house.”
“She's taking care of Joe?” echoed Valentine.
“Listen, Morg, while I go back a ways in this story. You remember that there was a dance last Saturday night at Dinneyville?”
“I don't.”
“Anyway, there was. Well, did Mary say anything to you the day after that dance about her and my boy Joe?”
“She didn't.”
“Then, sir, she knows how to keep a lot to herself. But Joe had something to say to me on Sunday. He says: 'Dad, I'm the luckiest gent on the ranges. I'm going to marry Mary Valentine.' I was struck all of a heap by hearing that. But Joe tells me that they can't be no mistake. She'd as good as promised to be his wife. He'd never knowed her much before the night at that dance. But he took a liking to her right off; and it seemed she done the same by him. He smiled at her; she smiled right back. It kind of went to his head. He started talking to her real serious; and she seemed just a wee bit more serious than him. Well, she scarce danced with anybody but him the rest of the night, and when he come home the next morning after the dance, he was like drunk. Couldn't think, couldn't talk of nothing but how beautiful Mary Valentine was and how quick he was going to marry her, couldn't hardly wait to get started with an outfit of his own.
“I spoke to my wife about it. The old woman didn't say nothing. She just grinned at me. Pretty soon she allows that it's all right. But maybe Joe had better make sure of the girl before he got out any wedding license. That sounded like funny talk to me, but I didn't pay no attention.
“Well, along conies the dance at Salt Springs school-house tonight. My boy goes over. He don't see nothing nor speak to nobody until he sees Mary Valentine come in. Then he goes straight for her,
“Then something mighty queer happened. They was another man with her. His name was Henry Sitterley; Hank Sitterley's boy. And when Joe goes up to her and starts talking sort of foolish, the way a boy will when he's in love, she looks right through him. Acts the way she'd hardly ever met him before. And pretty soon she goes dancing off with young Sitterley, and Joe can see her talking to him and knows that she's making a mock out of him—my son!
“Well, it gets into Joe's head and starts him seeing red, and it gets into his heart and starts his heart aching. He don't think it's really no ways possible. He waits till the dance is over. He tries to see her ag'in. But she sees him coming and slips away into the crowd and laughs back at him.
“Then it comes into Joe's head that she's jilting him, and—”
“Wait a minute,” broke out Valentine. “Did she promise to marry him that other Saturday night?”
“They's other ways of promising things than with words, friend Valentine. She sure promised Joe with her eyes and her smiles and her sighs. So when she give him the go-by like that tonight, he mighty near went crazy. He goes out into the hall where they was some of the other boys standing smoking, and there he busts out with something about Mary being a flirt.
“Quick as a wink, your boy Charlie takes him up—like a bulldog, he was, Joe says. Besides, Joe was too mad and sad not to fight it out. First thing you know, guns is pulled—”
“Who pulled his gun first?” cut in Valentine, snapping his words.
“Joe.”
Valentine sighed.
“Joe pulled his first, and Charlie beat him to the draw. But here's the point. Your girl starts flirting with my boy; she gets him so he can't sleep for a week, thinking about her—and then when she meets him ag'in she don't know him, or lets on that she don't.
“Then my boy says something he shouldn't of said; they's a fight; he gets shot through the arm—thank Heaven it wasn't no worse!—and I tell you that it was Mary that had him shot, and not Charlie Valentine! Because why? Because when Mary and Charlie drive my boy back home in their buckboard and while they're fussing over him, and after Joe has told me what happened, I go to my wife and tell her I think Joe was crazy the first time he seen Mary. He was crazy with love—calf love. But she just grins at me. 'Why,' she says, 'don't you know she's the worst flirt in the country?'
“And that's why I'm here, Valentine. Two inches more to one side and that bullet would of gone through my boy's heart. And the murderer would of been your girl Mary. Valentine, I'm new to the country; I don't know your folks nor your ways, but I know that in the part of the country that I come from a girl like that ain't allowed to run around loose. She's kept up close, and if her dad can't look after the way she handles her eyes and her smiles, then her ma goes along to watch out for her; and if her ma can't do it, then she ain't allowed to go out where they's young men to be made fools of and their hearts broke, if it don't come to no other thing. I'm a tolerable reasonable man, Valentine, and that bullet wound don't amount to nothing.
“Two weeks, and it'll be all healed up; but what if it had struck two inches away? So I come here straight to you and say, 'Something has got to be done!' I leave it to you, what.”
During the latter part of this talk Morgan Valentine had abased his head and stared at the floor of the veranda, but now he raised his head, and even through the shadow the other could see the black frown on the forehead of the rich rancher.
“You got a reason for your talk, Norman,” he admitted. “Now step inside and I'll tell you just how this matter stands. You ain't the first that's had cause to complain. I wish you could be the last; but come on inside and we'll talk.”
CHAPTER 2
But Gus Norman shook his head.
“In my part of the country,” he said stubbornly, “we like to talk in the open air; it keeps us cool.”
“Not a half-bad idea. But before we start talking serious, maybe you'll tell me just what you're aiming to do?”
“I'm aiming to keep out of bad trouble, Valentine. I don't like trouble; I'm a peaceable man; but I ain't the only Norman around here. They's a lot of us and some of 'em take this shooting sort of to heart. They want blood for blood. My brother and my nephew are at my house, and they want action. But I talked to 'em and told 'em to keep quiet till I come back.”
The other considered his visitor gravely in the dim light. Short time though this clan of Normans had been in the mountains, they had established a name for bulldog ferocity in fighting.
“Look over yonder,” he said at length. “You see that house?”
“Yep. What has that to do with it?”
“A whole pile. That's the house my brother built. He started building it and stopped halfway. All through his life he was starting things and stopping halfway. Well, Norman, his girl Mary is the same way. She's always starting things and stopping when they're halfway done. When she was a youngster, she was a regular tomboy. Doing everything that my kids did. When Charlie first got interested in guns, she started practicing, too; and she got so she could beat Charlie with a light rifle or a light revolver. She's still almost as good as Louis, but she got tired of fooling with guns in a couple of months. Same way with hosses. Long as a colt was a wild one, she'd go riding every day and fight it. But as soon as the hoss got tame, she was done with it. And it's the same way with men. She's interested in every strange man that she meets. Shows 'em that she's interested, and thinks they're the finest in the world until they begin to think she's in love with 'em. But after a while she gets tired of 'em. Now d'you understand about her, Norman?”
The other shook his head and growled: “Guns is one thing and hosses is another; but my boy is something more'n either; and he's got to be treated human.”
“D'you aim to make me force Mary to marry him?” asked the other calmly.
“I ain't forcing my boy on no girl. Speaking without no offense, Valentine, I wouldn't have your girl in my family. But I think you ought to keep her in hand. They's other young men in my family. Maybe another'll fall in love with that girl when she makes eyes at 'em. And then there may be another fight. And the next time it may be your boy that gets drilled. Luck is always changing. But if she was my girl, I'd use the whip, Valentine.”
For some reason Valentine smiled at this, but the darkness covered the expression.
“They's another side to her,” he said gently. “She's a true-blue girl, Norman. No malice in her. Keeps to her friends. Plays square—every way except where some strange young gent is concerned, and then she runs amuck with her eyes and her smiles, just as you say. What can I do? Whip? Why, she'd murder me and then kill herself out of shame and spite if I so much as touched her. Don't you suppose I've thought of this before? Haven't I got most of the people around here down on me because of the way Mary has treated the boys, one time or another? Ain't she always making trouble for me? And ain't my boys in peril of their lives because she keeps making places where they got to fight for her sake and their own?”
“Then send her away.”
“Ah, man, blood has got a feeling for blood! Can I turn out my brother's daughter?”
The other was silent for a moment, breathing hard. He was a wild-looking man, with unshaven face and a beard that began at his eyes and ran ragged until it terminated in a shaggy point beneath his chin. He was a lean, hard man, and he had reddish eyes as bright as the eyes of a ferret and as restless.
“The day'll come when you'll have sorrow in your home for keeping this girl here,” he announced gloomily. “The day'll come when you'll wish you'd sent her off.”
“She's been away to school, man, but nothing changed her.”
“Sometime, Valentine, she'll find a man that'll be her master. Mark me when I say it. And when that man comes, she'll go to him and foller him whether he be good or bad. If she could find a hoss that would never be safe under the saddle, she'd never want to ride nothing but that hoss, I figure; and when she finds a man that won't pay no attention to her, she'll be following that man, Valentine, you mark my word. She'll love the man that laughs at her; she'll follow the man that runs from her; she'll kneel to the man that beats her.” He paused again.
For Morgan Valentine had shifted so that the moonlight struck abruptly across his face, painting the wrinkles and his frown black and making the rest deadly white. He stood with his jaw set, and through the shadow of his brows the eyes glittered. He spoke nothing, but Gus Norman saw enough to make him wince back a step. He put out his hand in a conciliatory gesture.
“I don't wish her no unhappiness and I don't speak out of no malice. I ain't come to talk hard, neither, nor to make no threats. But I'm here to put my case in front of you. You got a big reputation around these parts, Valentine, for being a square shooter. Put yourself in my boots and figure out what you'd do. My folks are a tolerable tempery lot, and they're a pile cut up about this fracas; but I'm holding 'em back. I don't want 'em to run foul of Charlie; most of all I don't want 'em to run foul of you. Think over what I've said. Good night.”
He turned on his heel, strode across the veranda, went down the steps, and once more sent his horse up the road.
Before he disappeared into the moon haze, Valentine was walking up and down the veranda with a short, quick step. And of all the people in the world only his wife, no doubt, could have read the meaning behind his manner. Only his wife did know it; for the loud voice of Norman had wakened her in her room just over the veranda, and she had gone to her window. From it she had overheard the conversation, and now she knew the meaning of that pacing, that short, quick, decisive step. She gathered her dressing gown about her, put her feet in slippers, and hurried downstairs. Her husband was coming in just as she reached the lowest range of the stairs, and she paused with her hand on the rail. It was a lovely hand in spite of her forty-five years and the hard labor which had been hers during the early part of her married life. Her slippered foot, too, would have been the pride of a debutante; and the dressing robe fluttered about her in graceful lines. She was still beautifully formed; her skin retained its glow and purity of texture. But cover her hands with winter gloves, her feet with boots, her body with a heavy coat, and Maude Valentine became a homely farmer's wife. There had been a fine spirit in her face, but never beauty; and now that the grace and hope of youth was gone there remained only the lines of the unloved wife and the unheeded mother of two wild sons and one headstrong daughter.
“Are you up, Mother?” he asked from the hall beneath.
“I couldn't sleep, Morgan.”
“Read a bit; then you'll sleep.”
“I wish to talk to you just a little minute, Morgan,” she replied. Her voice had the gentleness of long sorrow.
“Come on into the library, then.”
They went into the big room ranged high with books, for John's library had been brought here after his death, and it was a rare collection. How few had been opened since his hand last touched them!
“Are you warm, Mother?”
She looked up at him quickly as she slipped into the big chair, a furtive glance. For one brief moment at the time of their marriage—whether it were a matter of days or weeks did not count—she had felt that he loved her truly, with a fire concealed by his customary self-restraint. And ever since those passionate days of happiness she had been probing him with these half-frightened glances in search of the vanished tenderness. And though she lived with him a hundred years there would still be a hope in her heart. But he was hardly glancing at her now as he asked the question, and settling back into the chair, she smiled at him a still and quiet smile, for pain may take on the gentlest seeming.
“Now, Mother, what is it?”
“I guess maybe I shouldn't have said that I couldn't sleep. It was Gus Norman's voice that waked me up.”
“He talks like a roaring bull. Some of these days maybe a ring'll be put through Norman's nose and he'll be led about!”
“I heard all he said.”
“Well?”
At his carelessness she fired a trifle.
“And I heard that Charlie shot a man!”
“His third man. He's starting well.”
“Morgan Valentine, do you know what lies ahead of your son one of these days? Murder! I've seen him getting angry in the house and reach natural for his hip. And someday he'll get in trouble—and shoot—and kill!”
Her voice had raised very little, but her changing expression answered a similar purpose. Indeed, Morgan Valentine looked sharply at her, so astonished was he by any variation in her monotone.
“He's sowing his wild oats, that's all. No cause for worry.”
“He's never worried you, Morgan.” There was a bitter emphasis on the pronoun. “None of your children have. Seems like you don't care, sometimes.”
The remarkable fact that his wife was actually complaining finally reached the understanding of Valentine, and now he watched her calmly, waiting. His quiet made her flush.
“Charlie, nor Liz, nor Louis—they none of them worry you, Morgan. You act—you act—as if Mary was your daughter, and my children didn't have your blood in 'em!”
“Mother!” murmured her husband.
“I ain't going to make a scene, Morgan,” she assured him, and she gathered her robe a little closer to her as if to cover her trembling. “I'm just going to tell you a few facts. This ain't the first time that Mary has made trouble for me and mine. She—”
“You don't like her, Mother. You get a bad light in your eyes every time you think of her. I've seen that for a long while.”
“I've done what's right for her,” said Mrs. Valentine stubbornly. “They ain't nobody can say I haven't mothered her as much as the wild thing would let me—after her father died.”
Again he was silent, and again the silence spurred her on more than words.
“And here she is paying me back. She's putting my boys in peril of their lives. That's what she's doing. And who but her has made my girl Liz unhappy?”
“Why, Mother, Mary is always kind to Liz—always doing little things for her—taught her to ride, taught her to shoot, taught her to dance, even!”
“That's it. She's always led the way. Now Liz can't do anything out of her own mind. When she's in trouble, she don't come to her own mother. She goes to Mary. If she wants advice, she goes to Mary. And half the time—half the time—her and Mary has secrets that they're keeping from me. I come on 'em whispering together, and they break off as soon as I come. Mary makes a mock of me in my own house—with my own boys—my own girl!”
He had taken his pipe from between his teeth. He held it now in his stubby fingers until the wisp of smoke that curled out of the bowl dwindled.
“Besides, what is they ahead for Liz? Who'll she ever have a chance to marry so long as Mary is around? Nobody looks at her except because they think it might make Mary smile at 'em. At parties, they only dance with Liz because maybe then Mary'll dance with 'em. They wouldn't ask Liz except to get Mary. And—and I can't stand it no longer. Ain't Liz pretty? Ain't she gentle and kind? Ain't she got winning ways? But as long as Mary is here, she'll have a secondhand life. That's what she'll have. I've watched and watched and watched, and my heart was—breaking all the time. But I wouldn't talk until tonight—but now I see where things is leading. I see what Mary is doing—she's bringing into my house—murder!”
Morgan Valentine stirred in his chair.
“She's got the whole Norman clan worked up now. They'll all be laying for Charlie. That's the kind they are. Hunt like wolves in a pack. And they'll pull down Charlie—and maybe Louis. And you'll stand by and see it all—and do nothing!”
He expected her to break into tears at this point. But when her eyes remained dry, he moistened his lips and spoke.
“What d'you want me to do, Mother?”
“Send her away!”
“Send Mary away? Mother, she's the last living thing that can remind me of John. I can't turn her out. She ain't fit to be sent away. She's got to have them near her that love her, Mother.”
“Men? She'll always have them.”
“Now you ain't playing fair and square. You know what I mean.”
“You don't have to send her away alone. Send her to her sister in Chicago. Lord knows she's asked to have Mary often enough. She'll let her study music, or something.”
She left her chair and slipped to her knees before Morgan Valentine.
“Don't do that, Mother. Get up, won't you?”
“Don't you see what I want, Morgan? I want back all the things that Mary has stole from me—Charlie and Louis and Liz and—you!”
“Get up, Mother. It ain't right you should kneel to me!”
“But here's where I stay because I'm begging you for my happiness and for my boys and my girl, Morgan. Will you answer me?”
He looked down at her with a gray face, and she saw for the first time how deeply this cold man loved the girl. The pain of it made her cry out.
“In all the time we been married, it's the first thing I've asked you, Morgan!”
“Stand up,” said Morgan Valentine. “I'll send Mary away!”
CHAPTER 3
The law of compensation works in this manner: those who give their hearts to few things give in those cases wholly and without reserve. The life of Morgan Valentine had been a smooth-flowing river until the death of his brother; that blow aged him ten years. From that day until this it seemed to him that his life had been a blank, and now another blow was to fall. For if the girl left him, she left him forever. The city would swallow her—the city and her new life. He might see her again once or twice, but after the parting he would be dead to her and she would be dead to him. He set his teeth over the pain and smiled into the face of his wife. He raised her gently to her feet, and she put her hands timidly imploring upon his shoulders.
“Will you take it to heart a whole pile, Morgan?”
“It's for the good of all of us, Mother. I've seen that for some time. You see, I been looking on Mary as a girl all these days, and here all at once she turns the corner on me, and I see that she's a full-grown woman. It kind of beats me. But—I guess she's got to go. This ain't no sort of a country for her. Back where men don't wear guns and where they don't do more'n raise their eyebrows when they get real mad—that's the place for Mary to do her campaigning. But she'll be turning these parts around here into a regular battlefield if she stays.”
Mrs. Valentine caught her breath with joy.
“I hoped you'd be reasonable like this, Morg,” she murmured. “But then ag'in I was afraid you'd get all gray in the face, maybe, the way you did when—”
“Well?”
“When John died.”
“Mary ain't dying.”
“Of course not. And it's for the best. It ain't the first time she's started trouble, and you know it. There was the boys of old Jack White; they got into a fight because Mary smiled at Billy one week and at young Jack the next. Might have been a death if their father hadn't found them, it's said. Then there was 'Bud' Akin who—”
“Hush, Mother. You're getting all excited. Besides, you ought to be asleep. Now you go back to bed and stop worrying.” He stopped. The rattle of galloping horses had topped the hill and was rushing down toward the house. The cavalcade swept near.
“Maybe more trouble!” cried the poor woman, clasping her hands.
But as the riders poured past the house, a chorus of voices and laughter rose.
“That's Charlie and Louis and Liz,” cried the mother, recognizing all three voices in the chorus.
“And Mary,” said Valentine.
“Her, too,” she added shortly, and sent a glance at her husband.
The horses were put up; the voices grew out again; they were racing for the house; a shrill peal of laughter; a clatter on the steps—the door flew open and a girl sprang in. A flash of black hair and eyes and the flushed face, and then laughter.
“You tripped me, Mary!”
“But I got here first,” she was crying in triumph as a burly youth crowded through the doorway; and behind him his brother and sister were coming.
“Why, Mother—you up so late?” asked Charlie.
And the wonder of this strange event made the four faces of the young people grow sober.
“Now, Mother—” cautioned Morgan Valentine.
“Charlie!” she broke out. “What you been doing? What you been doing?”
He went to her and tried to take her in his big arms, but she fended him off and kept her head back to search his face.
“Some hound has been here talking,” he muttered.
“It was no worse'n he said?” she queried. “You only shot him in the arm?”
“It was only a scratch,” said Charlie. “He won't know he was touched in a couple of days.”
“And, oh, Uncle Morgan!” cried Mary Valentine, taking his hand in one of hers and waving to big Charlie. “You'd have been proud if you'd seen him! I'm so proud of him. Joe Norman insulted me and Charlie—oh, Charlie, you're a man!”
She turned full upon Charlie as she spoke, with such joy shining from her face that the boy crimsoned with happiness.
“It wasn't nothing, Mary. Don't make me feel foolish,” he stammered; and it was plain to be seen that he would venture a thousand times more for her sake. And in the background was his brother Louis, with a shadow on his face. As if he, too, would have been gladly a part of this ceremony of rejoicing and was determining to seize the first opportunity that came his way to strike a blow for the sake of Mary. But the voice of the mother cut in, cold and small, and withered all the happiness at the root.
“Mary Valentine,” she said, “it's you that's been drawing my boy into peril. It's you!”
“Aunt Maude!” cried the girl, and ran to her; but she stopped in the act of taking her hands.
“Have I deserved it of you, Mary?” whispered the older woman. “Ain't I tried to be kind to you and is this the way you pay me back—making murderers out of my sons?”
“Mother!” cried Charlie. “I won't stand you talking like that! She didn't.”
“You see?” said Mrs. Valentine sadly, turning to her husband.
“Charlie, you shut your mouth and keep still,” said Morgan Valentine sternly. “Ain't you got manners with your own mother? Liz, take your mother up to bed.”
The girl was taller than Mary by an inch or more and strongly built—as blonde a beauty as Mary was dark—yet when she went to her mother, she turned a glance of appeal upon her cousin, as though asking for direction. Mary slipped between her aunt and the door to which Elizabeth was leading her.
“If ever you think hard of me, Aunt Maude,” she said, “I want you to tell me what it's about. And if ever I've hurt you or done you wrong, I'll go down on my knees and beg you to forgive me! Tell me now, while your heart's hot with it!”
For a moment words trembled on the lips of Mrs. Valentine, but, looking past Mary, she saw the face of her husband, bowed her head, and hurried from the room.
“Go to bed,” said Morgan to his two sons. And they trooped out in silence, casting back frightened glances, not at their father, but at Mary.
She waved a smiling, careless good night to them, but the moment they were gone, her bravado vanished. She ran to her uncle and caught one of his burly hands in both of hers.
“What have I done?” she whispered. “Oh, what have I done?”
“Speaking personal,” he answered, “I'm hanged if I know. Sit down, and we'll talk about it.”
They sat down; she was still holding his hand, and though he made a faint effort to draw it away, she kept it strongly in her own.
“Aunt Maude—looked—as though—she hated me!”
“Stuff!”
“But she looked straight into my eyes; and women have a way of understanding other women, Uncle Morgan!”
“Ah, girl, there's the trouble; you're a woman now.”
“Do you mean that I've changed?”
“I dunno how to put it, Mary.”
She cried out softly: “Do you think that I've changed?”
“I knew your father before you.”
A little silence fell between them in which both of them asked many questions and were answered. At length the rancher began speaking again, slowly.
“If you was a man, Mary, you'd be a fine man. But you ain't a man.”
She waited.
“You're about nine tenths woman, I guess, with just enough man in you for spice.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Instead of spice I might say deviltry.”
“Oh!”
“I've got worse things than this to say to you. When you were a girl, Mary, I took all your mischief for granted.”
“Yes, I've been very bad.”
“Not bad. But you were always hunting for action. Same's a boy does. You got into lots of scrapes, but you come out ag'in just the way a boy does. But all at once you changed. You come pop out of a door one day, and you weren't a girl any more; you were a woman. That was when things started to pop. You see, nobody understands a woman.”
“Except you, Uncle Morgan.”
“Kindly leave me out. I don't know a thing about 'em.”
“But you know everything about me.”
“Not a thing, hardly. For instance, I don't know whether you just can't help making eyes at young gents, or whether you do it on purpose.”
“Is that the cause of all the trouble?”
She dropped his hand.
“You see it's the way I told you. I don't know a thing about you.”
“Do you believe what people say?”
“But tell me, aren't they right?”
She gasped.
“I thought so. You're turned into a man-eater, Mary.”
“I think you're making fun of me.”
“Me? Never!”
“It's this way: I don't mean any harm. But when I see some boy I've never known very well, I just can't help beginning to wonder about him. What is he inside? Maybe he has a touch of the fire; I always keep hoping that!”
“What fire?”
“I—I don't know.”
“Well, go on.”
“Maybe I've met him at a dance. The music is in my head. He dances well. He doesn't talk much. My imagination begins to work on him. All at once he dawns on me—a new picture—he's strong, brave, gentle, clever—and has the spark of fire. I begin to burn with it. I'm happy.” She dropped her chin upon her knuckles and stared gloomily into the distance. “And that's all I can say about it.”
“But mostly you tell him that he's making you happy?”
“Mostly.”
“And then what does the man do?”
“Mostly he says that I've made him happy, too. Sometimes they start being foolish. They want to sit in a corner and hold my hand. I don't like that. Or if we walk out of the hall they—” She shuddered. “Why do men want to put their arms around a girl when they're happy?”
“What do you expect them to do?”
“Why—talk—or be silent—and—”
“Well?”
“I don't know. But mostly they do something that makes me despise them before the evening's over. Or if they don't, then I think about them until the next time we meet. And then—everything pops into thin air. They always seem different. You understand?”
“Maybe. It's just what I thought.”
“Am I bad, Uncle Morgan?”
“No, but you need room, honey. I'm going to send you away to a big city.”
“You—send—I won't go. It's Aunt Maude! She's never liked me!”
“Hush, girl!”
She saw suddenly that his hand was trembling, and the sight of his grief struck her cold with awe.
“In some city,” he went on slowly, “you'll see crowds of clean young fellows. Maybe you'll get over this; or maybe you'll find a man that's worthy of you. But there ain't any round here. And I know them all. Why, rather than have you marry one of these unshaven, thickheaded fellows, I'd shoot the man, first! I want you—to marry—a gentleman.”
He spoke this last slowly, hunting for the words. She sat with her head bowed. Then she looked up to him.
“You'll do what I want you to do, Mary?”
She made a little gesture. He could not tell whether it meant yes or no, and all the while there was a glimmer in her eyes like the changing colors of watered silk.
CHAPTER 4
But two days later Morgan Valentine bought a ticket to Chicago and made his reservations; Mary had made up her mind apparently, though not half a dozen words had been spoken on the subject of her departure since that first night. But the next day she was talking of Chicago as though all her life had been spent there, and this experience in the mountain desert was only an excursion off her beaten trails.
“Between you and me, Uncle Morgan,” she said, “why not New York?”
This, for some reason, had rather staggered him. But now that the ticket was bought—dated ahead several days—and the step irremediably taken, he was easier. He made a short stay in Salt Springs that day. After he had the ticket in his wallet, he went to the bank and drew out the cash for his monthly payroll. His cowpunchers were numerous as befitted the keeping of his big range, but moreover there were the hired men who worked the cultivable ground, and in the northern part of his domain—the territory of his dead brother—there was a small logging outfit. Altogether, he had some thirty men to pay off each month, and the payroll ran around sixteen hundred dollars. He got it all in gold coin, and it made a heavy little canvas sack—fifteen pounds, or so. It was three in the afternoon before his buckskins jogged out of Salt Springs on the back trail of the twenty-five-mile trip, and though the going was fairly smooth most of the way, it would be dark before he arrived.
That, however, was a small worry to him. The two geldings were sure-footed as goats; and, given their own sweet way and a shambling trot, they could take the buckboard home in rain or shine, through the night and the rocks. They had done it before, so now Morgan Valentine bunched his duster around his shoulders with a shrug, settled back into the right-hand corner of the big seat, and let the reins hang idly.
An hour and seven miles dropped behind him, and still the buckskins were jolting steadily on. The suddenness of their stopping jerked him through a thousand miles of dreams back to the cold facts of earth. The buckskins had their heads high. And just before them was a horseman with a revolver pointing between the geldings and straight at the head of Valentine.
He put up his hands with the utmost unconcern.
“Thanks,” said the stranger. “If you've got any coin handy about you, you might throw it this way.”
There was deprecatory gentleness in this—the same tone of embarrassment which one uses when one asks a stranger for a match, and it made the rancher regard the holdup artist with more attention. The man sat a down-headed roan, an ugly brute which looked undersized in comparison with the bandit's length of limb; for he was a tall man, with formidable shoulders. He had long arms, also, which appeared extremely capable; and the heavy Colt was poised lightly as a feather and firmly as a rock.
He seemed indiscriminately somewhere between thirty and forty and might have been at either end of this limit. What little hair appeared beneath his sombrero was sunburned and dusted to a pale-gray brown. He had one of those lean, long faces which are thin through the cheeks and wide through the cheekbones and the jaw. He was far from good-looking; and a very wide mouth and a highly arched nose which showed that he clearly belonged in the predatory type of mankind, made up a further debit on the side of beauty. To complete the impression, his eyes were an uninteresting but very intelligent gray. In fact, one might say that the color of this man was gray; for the rest, he keenly impressed Morgan Valentine as being about equal portions of sinew and sinew-hard muscle.
“I suppose,” said Morgan, “that you want my gun first?”
“I'm getting old, pardner,” admitted the other. “I'm forgetting my A B C's. But—”
The last word was so explosive that Valentine paused with his hand on the way down to his weapon.
“But,” continued the stranger, “guns are things that I most generally like to take for myself. Thank you just the same.”
“As you please.”
He stood up and turned, his hands well above his shoulders, while the revolver was removed from his holster.
“Which I'm acting like a fool amachoor,” the bandit was saying apologetically, “and pretty soon you'll begin to be ashamed of being robbed.”
He skidded the weapon into the back part of the buckboard.
“Now you can sit down ag'in, pardner.”
Valentine accepted the invitation. At close hand, he found that the stranger lived fully up to his first impression. He was, indeed, a grim-faced fellow. Only his voice, which was of the most exquisite and tender softness, counteracted the general effect.
“Now, if you'll gimme your kind attention just a minute, sir,” went on the tall man, “I want to explain that holding a gun is plumb tiring to a gent of my nature that hates work. So I'm going to put it back in the leather. But here and there I've met curious gents that wanted to see just how quick that gun could come out of its house ag'in and say how'd you do. So they've let me take a gun off their hip, and then they've sprung a surprise by fetching out some little token of affection from under a coat or a shirt—say a knife, or a derringer. And them that have tried my gun have most generally found it right there on the job talking business.”
So saying, he slipped his weapon into its holster.
“I think I follow your meaning,” said Valentine. “Which I'm tolerable quick to do when men talk sense.”
He added: “Here's the coin.” And he kicked the canvas sack so that it jingled at the touch. “I have some in my wallet if that ain't enough to satisfy you.”
At this the stranger smiled gently upon him.
“They's one part of my heart that's an aching void sure enough,” he declared, “and that's the part where a plumb reasonable man fits in. Pardner, you seem to be it. Nope, I don't want your wallet, I guess. That is”—and here he lifted the canvas sack and weighted it in his hand—“that is, if this here talk is gold talk.”
Now, when he lifted the sack and held it lightly at arm's length, Valentine had seen a rippling of muscle under the shirt sleeve that fascinated him. So he murmured absently:
“Yes, it's all gold.”
“Maybe it's the price of a few hosses you've just took into town, now?” went on the other thoughtfully.
“Maybe it ain't,” replied Valentine.
“Yes, and maybe it ain't. Maybe it's the cash from some little claim you been working for some time?”
“Maybe.”
“To cut it short,” said the bandit a little sharply, “is this going to bust you or not?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars is quite a bit,” observed Morgan Valentine. “Took me three years to lake that much.”
“Three years' work in this bag?”
“Yes.”
The gray eyes puckered and gathered, and a gleam went out of them, but Valentine withstood the stare. At this, the outlaw stepped back and glanced over the equipage swiftly.
“Judging by that harness and the way them hosses is set up, I reckon I can put that down safe as the grand-daddy of all the lies I've heard lately.”
“You forget,” said Valentine, “that I didn't say what three years they were—recent ones or a long time back.”
The other grinned. There was something remarkably contagious in his smile; in spite of himself Morgan Valentine found his face wrinkling.
“I dunno why it is,” declared the bandit, “but I take to you uncommon strong.”
“And I think I can begin to say the same about you, my friend.”
“Dear me,” said the outlaw, and the feminine expression did not seem at all out of place for some reason, “we're getting real friendly, ain't we?”
“Seems that way. You're the first holdup gent that's ever troubled to ask whether or not what he took would bust me.”
“Judging by that maybe I could say that sticking you up is one of the favorite sports around these parts?”
“Maybe you could; it used to be.”
“How many times have you been entertained?”
“Eight times,” said the rancher.
“Dear, dear! Who'd of thought you was that rich?”
“The other eight,” said the rancher, “lived in these parts and knew the size of my bank account.”
“Eight times you've left your roll behind you?”
“Two of them,” replied Valentine, with a glittering eye, “I shot and buried. Two more I carried back to town after I'd bandaged them. Two more were killed by the posses, and the other two gave up before they were salted away.”
“You don't tell me!” exclaimed the other, with all the happiness of one who hears the ending of a pleasant tale. “And maybe this little job will gimme more fun than I was looking for.”
The rancher examined him for a time.
“No,” he said, “I guess the ninth man will be the lucky one.”
“How comes that guess?”
“As I said, the others lived in these parts, but you've come a long way, and you'll probably go on a long ways still.”
“You talk better'n a riddle,” declared the bandit with open admiration. “How d'you know I've come a long ways?”
“By the way your hoss is gaunted up; by the knot in your handkerchief; and by the look of your eyes.”
“Eyes?”
“As if you'd been riding into the sun for a good many days.”
“Them are all good signs. But I never heard of that last one before now.”
“Besides,” said the rancher, “you've got a professional air; I wouldn't even waste time sending the posse after you.”
“Now, that's what I call real friendly. You wouldn't even put the sheriff out about me?”
“Certainly not. Suppose he caught you? He'd probably get two or three men knocked in the head doing it; and fifteen hundred ain't worth all that bloodshed.”
“I see you got a kind heart,” said the other carelessly.
“Also, I've noticed that every real professional along your line has a pile of pals. Suppose I get you; the word is passed along. One of your friends comes and tries his hand with me just to get even. You see I ain't bluffing?”
“I see you ain't bluffing,” said the other. He flushed and straightened a little. “But if you come from my part of the country, you wouldn't say that I hunted with any gang, I play a lone hand, pardner. I've never seen the crook yet that you could trust as a friend.”
There was in this speech such naive and direct comment upon the bandit himself that the rancher could not forbear a smile. The other replied with instant good nature.
“Which you've already said I'm a professional.”
He dropped the money bag into the saddle pouch.
“You really work alone?”
“Why, you can call it that. But I got my gang. I got a hoss and a gun, which makes three of us. And they's both been well tried out and not found wanting.”
“No? But that hoss of yours don't look particular like a prize, Mr.—”
“Dreer,” replied the other quietly, “Jess Dreer.”
Valentine looked back into his memory. It presented a blank to him.
“It's the right name,” said the other, “but you won't remember it. I'm a quiet man, sir, and I got quiet ways.”
CHAPTER 5
At this Valentine looked him in the eye; after a moment a faint smile came in the eyes of the rancher, and the same smile was reflected in the eye of the bandit. It was an expression of infinite understanding.
“I am Morgan Valentine,” said the older man at length.
“Mr. Valentine, it's a pleasure to know you.” The rancher extended his hand but the other, appearing to be in the act of bowing very lightly in a most courtly manner, was apparently unaware of the proffered hand, which Valentine presently dropped back upon his knee. This time his smile broadened, deepened, and struck the corners of his mouth full of wrinkles.
“My hoss, as you say,” went on the bandit, “ain't a blue-ribbon winner in a beauty show. But she has her points. Step up, Angelina!”
At this, the mustang lifted a weary head, flattened both ears against her neck, and came at once to her master.
“Why, she comes to you like a dog,” said the rancher in admiring surprise.
“Sure, and she'd sink her teeth in me like a dog, if she got a chance. Get back, you she-devil! The outsneakingest hoss I ever see, Angelina is, Mr. Valentine.”
The mustang had, indeed, slipped around to the back of Jess Dreer, and her great yellow teeth were bared as her upper lip twitched up. And at the same time her eyes gleamed with a malevolence that made the rancher shiver. He even started up a little, but at the threat of Jess Dreer the roan shrank away.
In the meantime her master stood back; always keeping an eye upon his holdup victim, he expatiated upon the fine points of his mount.
“She's got a lumpish head,” he admitted. “And her neck ain't particular full. But look at those quarters. And look at those well-set down hocks and the way her high withers turns; and see how deep-girted she is, though she's a bit tucked up now, as you say. Give me a hoss with plenty of bone, and she's sure got it. Yes, sir, eight years Angelina and me has been pals.”
“Eight years with a man-killer,” said the rancher, his interest still growing. “You ought to do very well as a lion tamer, Mr. Dreer.”
“Lions,” declared the outlaw genially, “has nothing on Angelina. She's ripped up my forearm with her teeth”—he pointed to part of a white scar which ran down beneath the cuff of his shirt almost to the palm of his hand—“and she's nicked me with her heels.” He indicated a white scar which began at the top of his forehead and furrowed its way into his hair. “If she can't kick she'll strike, and if she can't strike she'll bite; and if she's fooled one day she'll be a lamb for a month and then try to murder you in ten ways in ten seconds.”
He paused and smiled upon the mare with an open-hearted affection.
“Why the devil do you keep her, then?”
“Partly because, though they's plenty that can out-sprint her, I ain't ever seen anything that can keep up with her after the first ten miles. And, my work is chiefly long-distance stuff.”
He confided the last remark to the rancher with perfect calm.
“Personally,” said Valentine, shuddering, “I've never seen a hoss with so much devil in its face. I'd rather have three men with guns behind me than that hoss under me.”
“The chances is about even for me to kill her or for her to kill me. Either way, it's been a good fight, and I've had a ringside seat.”
“You're a queer creature,” the rancher smiled, clashing his hands about one knee and rocking back in his seat as though he wished to get a more distant and complete perspective of his new acquaintance. “If I had that mare, the first thing I'd do would be to fill her full of lead. I wouldn't sell her any more than I'd sell a man his own death warrant.”
“Sir, she's a genius; she got her brains from the devil. For eight years we've been studying each other, and we've both still got a lot to learn.”
As he said this, his lower jaw jutted out a little and the muscles stood out in hard knots below the ears. Morgan Valentine blinked. He had had a glimpse of a face of such demoniac cruelty, such murderous hatred, that he was shaken to the core.
When he looked again, he saw that the bandit had smoothed his expression again. It was the former calm, sad face.
“I begin to see,” the rancher nodded. “Even a nightmare may be interesting. Has no one else ever ridden her?”
A shade crossed the face of the outlaw.
“If anyone else ever did,” he said, “I'd give her away—or shoot her and leave her for the buzzards. A thing that's mine has got to belong to me. Got to be all mine. The reason I can ride Angelina and nobody else can, is because I go at her in the right way. I get her scared; she don't never know what's coming next—what I've got up my sleeve—and so we get along tolerable well. But if she ever finds out that I've been bluffing her, they won't be enough of me left to put in a box.”
And so saying, he smiled again genially upon the roan; and her ears flattened against her neck. “Well, much obliged for the coin and the friendly chat,” the outlaw remarked in tones of finality.
“Wait a minute.”
Morgan Valentine was rubbing his chin with his knuckles.
“Well?” said the bandit a trifle impatiently.
“Which way might you be going?”
The other looked sharply at Valentine and then shrugged his shoulders.
“Over yonder,” he said.
“That's the way I'm going, Dreer. Suppose you rest your hoss for a spell and come along with me.”
A gleam of suspicion flashed into the face of the bandit, and once again Valentine glimpsed that fathomless, cruel strength of will and insight. Then he thought of a way to tempt the big man.
“They ain't much to be afraid of,” he said. “My gun is in the back of the wagon.”
“Why,” and Jess Dreer grinned, “this sounds to me like a real party.”
And he sprang instantly into the wagon and sat down beside the rancher.
CHAPTER 6
Morgan Valentine concealed his triumph, or sought to do so, by busying himself with taking up the reins and fastening them between his fingers.
“But will your horse follow?”
“It took me two years off and on to teach Angelina to follow. And I figure that if she lives to be two hundred, she won't forget what she's learned,” the outlaw replied.
Valentine spoke to the two geldings, and they struck their collars at the same instant in answer to his voice; but at once they settled down to their time-honored pace. In the meantime he was adjusting himself to his companion. It was plain to see that the other had accepted the invitation to ride with his victim simply in the light of a dare. Morgan had put himself side by side with a man who had already admitted to several killings, and he had allowed that man to choose his time and place for an attack. Yet the bandit, scorning to sit far to one side or to keep his head turned toward Valentine, sat perfectly erect in the seat with his eyes fixed far down the road. It was not until Valentine, jerking his hand up swiftly to his cigarette, had made a definite move that could be construed as hostile that his companion showed the slightest sign of being on the alert. Even then he did not turn his head, but Valentine was aware of a flash of those gray eyes to the side and a tint of yellow in them. And all at once he knew that Jess Dreer was fairly a-tremble with an electric watchfulness; that he was concentrating a tremendous energy in keeping aware of his companion, and that in the space of a split second he could have whirled in his seat and got at the throat of the rancher.
It was not altogether a comfortable feeling for Valentine, but in his day he had had to do with many a hard man and had even possessed a certain name for hardness himself. There were few men in that part of the mountain desert who would have cared to risk their lives on the speed and certainty of their gun play as opposed to the speed and certainty of Morgan Valentine. For he was a cold-headed man, a cold-blooded man, and he fought with the same nerveless accuracy with which he lived, with which he had married, with which he had raised his children. The death of his brother—the coming departure of his brother's child—these were the emotional landmarks of his life.
Indeed, it was a sense of loneliness, of lack of food to fill his mind and his heart that had made him ask the bandit to ride with him. There was also a lingering hope that he might be able to turn the tables upon his antagonist. For there was never a man born—at least none worthy of the name of man—who did not have somewhere in the bottom of his heart love for an honest fight. Yet he had sense enough to guess that whatever his prowess might be with weapons, it would be as nothing compared to the man in the seat beside him. For Jess Dreer was his antithesis. If he was without nerves, Jess Dreer was full of little else. And the calm exterior of Dreer was a disguise maintained by an almost muscular effort; beneath the disguise there was a mind of wolfish alertness. It suddenly occurred to Valentine that this man might be many years younger than he seemed, for he was of the kind who age rapidly.
And the interest of Valentine was by no means entirely malicious, as has been hinted. In Jess Dreer he crossed a new type of man, and he was curious to read beneath the surface.
“You've had your horse for eight years,” said the rancher, and he looked down to the holster at the hip of his companion, “but I'll chance a guess that you've had the gun a good deal longer.”
“This gun?”
With a gesture so smooth that the eye failed to appreciate its speed, the bandit reached back, and with the tips of his fingers—so it seemed—flicked the revolver out. It lay in the palm of his hand under the eye of Morgan Valentine.
Suppose he were to strike up, would he knock that weapon out of the open hand and send it spinning? Something told him that swift as his blow might be, the long brown fingers would move with vastly more speed to curl around the gun. The very thought of what might happen perceptibly lowered the temperature of the rancher's blood.
He saw that it was, as he had guessed, a very old weapon. It bore evidence of the most meticulous care, but in spite of that an expert could see at a glance that it had passed its palmy days as an engine of destruction.
“Now, there's a gun that ain't much to look at,” said the bandit, and his singularly winning smile softened his face for a moment. “And between you and me, it ain't much better'n it looks. It bucks like a wild colt. It's got funny ways. It shoots the way a one-eyed hoss runs. It keeps veerin' off to one side. Well, it's a hard shooter—if you know its ways.”
He paused, then added: “I seen it thrown out of the door into the ash can one day, and I picked it up.”
“Just like this?”
“All the parts was there, but it was considerable chewed up with rust. You can see where it's eat away in places. It was on a Friday that I seen that gun throwed away.”
“Unlucky day?”
“Unlucky for most, but I run by opposites. And when I seen it fall, I says: 'There goes somebody's bad luck. Maybe it'll be my good luck.' So I took out the gun and spent the off time for the next couple of days oiling it up. Then I went out and tried her. Lordy, lordy! I shot a circle around a knot. She had twenty queer tricks, that gun had. But after a while I got to know the tricks. And now she does pretty smooth, neat work. You see?”
The gun flipped up in the long fingers, and without raising his hand off his knees, the bandit fired. Twenty yards away a squirrel, standing up like a peg beside its hole, was blown to bits.
The geldings plunged at the explosion of the gun, and the bandit burst at once into a stream of excuses.
“Now ain't that a fool kid thing to do?” he cried. “Shooting a gun without asking you if your hosses was gun-broke? Well, sir, call me a blockhead, because I am one. Mr. Valentine, I sure am sorry!”
Indeed, his words did not seem overdone, for his earnest gray eyes were upon the rancher in a species of entreaty.
“Dreer,” said the cattleman earnestly, as soon as he had quieted the horses, “you don't have to apologize. It was worth it—to see that gun act all by itself.”
But the other shook his head and returned the weapon to its leather.
“You see,” he explained, “that gun is almost human to me. Suppose you had a friend with you when you got into a fight, and it was a dead-sure cinch that you'd get plugged if your friend didn't stand up and play the man by you. And suppose you never knowed whether that friend would fight like a devil or else lie down and quit—like a greaser? Well, sir, that's the way it is with that gun. If I shoot with it, I have to look twice to see if I've hit a thing.”
“And yet you still carry it? You still let your safety depend on that old rattletrap?”
The crimson departed suddenly from the face of the stranger. And the muscle at the angle of his jaw leaped out into prominence.
“Sir,” he said quietly, “they's one thing that I appreciate, and that's a gent that chooses his words. Rattletrap ain't particular accurate, speaking about my gun!”
“Why, Dreer, you've as good as said as much as that yourself.”
The other turned his face, and there was the old unpleasant glint in his eyes.
“I'm a peaceable man, Mr. Valentine,” he said. “Matter of fact, I'm a quiet kind of a gent and I mostly hate trouble, but I don't think you and me are going to agree.”
Morgan Valentine was too dumfounded to reply.
“In the first place, sir,” went on the stranger, “you say you don't think nothing particular fine about my hoss. Then I let that pass, and I just throw in a few qualifying remarks about the roan. And pretty soon you up and say my gun—my gun is a rattletrap!”
He was unable to continue for a moment.
“But after you'd just said practically the same thing yourself, man.”
“Sir, whatever else may be wrong with that gun, it's mine, and, being mine, they ain't any man in the world that I'm going to hear say things about it that they won't stand up and prove. And, speaking man to man, I can sure digest a pile of that sort of proof before I admit that I'm wrong.”
A veritable devil was in his face as he spoke. And the long brown fingers were becoming restless upon his knee.
Then, very suddenly, and most welcome sight to Valentine, the blood rushed into the face of the tall man again.
“Hanged if I didn't forget for a minute,” he said, “that I was your guest, riding in your wagon. Mr. Valentine, I got to ask your pardon again. Just stop the buckboard and I'll get out and climb on the roan. They ain't any man living whose pardon I've asked three times hand-running. And I've done it twice by you already!”
“Sit still,” replied Morgan Valentine. “I figure to keep you right here and take you home with me.”
CHAPTER 7
It should not be thought that Valentine was that cheap type of fellow who attempts to carry his points by surprise, but as the stranger talked with him, the gradual conviction grew in him that he must see more of Jess Dreer. In the meantime Jess stared at his host as though the latter had gone mad.
“Mr. Valentine,” he said, “I ain't prying into what's behind your mind. I'll just say one little thing: I ain't been under the roof of another man for eight years—as a friend.”
“Why, then, if you object to coming as a friend, come as an enemy.”
“With the bars down and you free to call in the sheriff when you please?”
“Dreer, do you think I'm the sort who'd call in a sheriff while you're under my roof?”
“I didn't mean no insult,” replied the bandit more gently. “But I ain't a mind reader, Mr. Valentine. Why the devil should you want me to come home with you?”
“Because,” said the rancher, “although I've lived some fifty years and a bit more, I don't think I've met more'n two men that particularly interested me. And you're one of 'em. As a matter of fact, there's nothing so strange. You've taken some of my money. Well, what you've taken won't break me. I'm what you might call a pretty well-to-do man, Dreer. Now, I'd spend fifteen hundred on a fine hoss and never think twice about it. Why shouldn't I spend fifteen hundred for a man and enjoy talking to him? Think it over.”
“I stick you up and lift fifteen hundred iron men. Then you step out and ask me home. I go to your home. I put my legs under your table. I eat your chuck—” He made a face of disgust. “I couldn't do it, pardner, even though you don't mean nothing but kindness.”
“Think it over,” echoed the rancher.
A silence fell. The geldings jogged relentlessly, tirelessly forward; the roan cantered softly behind the buckboard.
“If I could figure how you'd gain anything,” the bandit murmured finally, “I might chance it, but—”
“Take your time and think it over,” insisted Morgan Valentine.
“Well, sir,” said the bandit suddenly, “I call your bluff. If it's a trap—well, a nerve like yours ought to catch something. I'll go home with you.”
Valentine stretched out his hand. But the tall man glanced down at the stubby, proffered fist, and then back to the rancher.
“Some ways,” he said, “you might put me down as queer. But I ain't any too fond of shaking hands. You see, a handshake means a pile to me. I shook hands with a man that sold me to a sheriff once.”
“And the sheriff got you?”
“No, the other way round. But I couldn't touch the gent that had double-crossed me—the skunk!—because I'd shaken hands with him. Now, remembering that, I guess you'll change your mind about this handshaking?”
“It goes with me as far as it goes with you.”
Suddenly they shook hands.
Then they said in one voice, like a trained chorus: “That takes a load off my mind!”
In the meantime the evening was approaching. The early night had patched the mountains with purple and filled every ravine with tides of incredible blue. Before them the hills began to divide.
“D'you know something?” said the bandit.
Valentine saw that his companion was leaning far forward, his elbows on his knees and his face wistful. It meant a great deal more than words, that unguarded attitude. It meant that Morgan Valentine had been judged by this man and had been accepted according to his standards.
“What's that?”
“Yonder—behind them hills—well, I'll be stepping out into a new part of my life.”
“I wouldn't wonder much if you were.”
Still the geldings jogged on, and the hills moved by them slowly, awkwardly, growing each moment more dusky. They turned a sharp bend, and below them lay the valley of the Crane River; above it the red of the sunset filled the sky, and the river itself was a streak of dark crimson.
“Gimme the reins,” said the bandit.
Silently the rancher passed them to his companion, who now gathered them in closer. He did not speak a word, but perhaps the tenseness of the reins, the new weight vibrating against their bits, carried a message to the geldings. Of one accord, they stepped out into a freer gait, their heads raised, their ears pricked. Life came into their step. If two whips had touched them at the same instant the effect could not have been more noticeable. And it seemed to Morgan Valentine that a current of strength and knowledge was passing down the reins and into the minds of the dumb brutes. To him it was more than a miracle.
“Do you know,” he said, as the buckboard was whipped forward with redoubled speed and jolted noisily over the bumps in the road, “that's the first time I've seen those nags change that old dogtrot of theirs?”
The bandit made no reply for some time. He was changing the pressure on the reins. First the off horse came up on the bit and strained against the collar; then the near horse, who had been pulled back, was released and quickened his pace until he was snorting beside his companion and even ahead of him. And then both increased their pace, and the jolting was redoubled.
“Look at that!” murmured the bandit. “As long as they agreed, they wasn't worth a nickel. As long as they went ahead at that same old sleepy trot, they wasn't worth powder and lead enough to blow their heads off. But now they're beginning to try each other out. They're beginning to race. I tell you what, Valentine, the way to get the most out of men—or hosses—is to play 'em one agin' the other.”
Indeed, the two geldings now had their heads as high as if they were just beginning a journey—higher than they had ever held them for Morgan Valentine.
And the latter was naturally full of thought as the buckboard careened down the hillside and dropped into the valley floor. Now and again, as the dusk thickened, he looked behind him and saw the roan mare following patiently, always with her ears flat against her neck. It was almost as if the fear of the master she hated were still in the saddle, spurring her on, curbing her free spirit, and breaking it to do his will.
Something in this thought made him look up at the face of the bandit, and he saw him sitting with his face tense and a light of cruel enjoyment in his eyes. It was as if he drew a deep delight out of the rivalry which he had put in the hearts of the two geldings.
It was, of course, night when they reached the stables behind the ranch house, although the moon, which hung over Grizzly Peak, was sending a faint, slant light down the valley. One of the hands came out to unhitch the horses, but the outlaw insisted upon handling his own mount. He led it into one of the individual corrals.
“A roof over her head always sort of bothers Angelina,” he explained, while the rancher looked on in curiosity.
He watered her carefully, fed her grain and hay in cautious portions, and rubbed away the sweat under the saddle blanket. Yet the instant he turned to answer a word from the rancher, she whirled on her master. He did not turn his head to make sure that she was coming; though she veered noiselessly, her master did not pause, but leaped straight for the bars and vaulted over them. The teeth of the mare clicked with the noise of a steel trap shutting, just at the place where his hand had rested on the top bar.
“Ah, beauty! Ah, Angelina!” cried Jess Dreer, and came back to the bars. “Eyes in the back of my head, girl, and tomorrow you'll pay for this. Remember? Tomorrow? Or the next day; it's added to the score.”
There was, at this point, a sudden outbreak of snorting and a rattle of harness from the big watering trough.
“What the dickens! Jud! Harry!” a man was crying. “What the devil has got into you? Quiet there!”
“By Heaven,” murmured the rancher, “the geldings are fighting!”
“Is that strange?” asked Jess Dreer.
“They've lived like two brothers—which they are—ever since they were foaled.”
“All the better,” said Jess Dreer gaily. “A hoss is like a man. Needs a good fight now and then to keep 'em on edge.”
And Morgan Valentine shivered. He did not say another word on the way to the house. He was beginning to think of many things.
CHAPTER 8
It was not until they had reached the very shadow of the sprawling old house that the rancher recovered from his absent-mindedness.
“How am I to introduce you?” he asked.
“As Jess Dreer,” said the bandit. “I guess I've outrode my reputation.”
“I think so. But where have I met you?”
“Somewhere south.”
“I haven't traveled about much in the south. Let me see. Five years ago I was in Ireton; have you ever been there?”
“Nope. What's it like?”
“Common cow town.”
“All right. I know it then. You met me there.”
“That's all I'll have to say unless Mary starts asking questions. She's the outbeatingest girl for talking when she gets started on a thing.”
At this the bandit sidestepped and scowled at his companion.
“You hitched up to a pile of womenfolks?” he muttered.
“My wife and my daughter won't bother you none, and my two boys knows what's manners between men, but Mary—she's my niece—can make a murderer talk if she sets her mind right on it.”
At this the bandit chuckled. It was always a surprise to hear the soft, musical voice of this man.
“Leave her to me, pardner. It's been a good many years since I got my imagination all going at once, but when I get oiled up, I can spin the yarns out all night. What was the name of that town—Ireton? Nothing queer about it? Well, leave the rest to me, Valentine. If she wants talk, I'll let her have it.”
“Aye, but one thing more, while we're on the subject of Mary. She's a fine girl, Dreer, but she has her ways. And one of them is to get all excited about any stranger man that comes around. She starts in by being foolish about 'em and most generally they wind up by being foolish about her. Now, I don't mean that you're the kind to get foolish about any girl, but I'm just telling you beforehand that if Mary begins to smile at you and act like you was a gold mine that she'd discovered all by herself, don't let it bother you.”
“Don't bother none about me, Valentine. I'm well broke, pardner. I ain't gun-shy and I ain't girl-shy. Lead on!”
Since the night had turned crisp, Valentine found his entire family grouped near the big fireplace in the living room. They were in characteristic attitudes. Maude Valentine sat with her feet tucked well back under her chair and her knitting needles flew with soft precision. Elizabeth, her daughter, lay in a big chair with her hands locked behind her head, looking dreamily out the black window. In another corner Mary was plotting with Charlie Valentine, and Louis, disconsolately out of the picture, attempted to bury himself in a book, out of which he lifted envious glances at Charlie from time to time. When the door opened, there was a general shifting of eyes and attitudes; the tall and deceptively graceful form of Jess Dreer became the center of attention.
“Mother, I've brought home an old friend. Jess Dreer. Dreer, this is my girl Elizabeth. Mary Valentine, my niece, and my boys, Charlie and Louis.”
They shook hands.
How much did the bandit learn from the touch of their fingers—from the cold, faint pressure of Mrs. Valentine; from the grip of Charlie, boyishly eager to test the comparative strength of this tall stranger; from the nervous touch of Louis's hand, for Louis was always ill at ease and apt to be embarrassed before newcomers. “Lizbeth” greeted him at the full distance of her rather thin arm. She was one of those who come late to womanhood. Her eyes still held that infinite quiet of childhood; her throat was small, but her mouth had a kindly softness. She would never have Mary Valentine's gemlike beauty of detail, but in time she would ripen to a rare womanhood. And as for Mary, her hand and her glance both lingered on him. It was as if she had seen him before and was now trying to resurrect the complete memory.
Mrs. Valentine took them into the dining room, and there she busied herself all the time they were eating by popping up out of her chair and running to get something as soon as she was once fairly seated. She discovered that Morgan's napkin was spotted, that his favorite chow-chow had been left off the table, that the baked potatoes were underdone, for which the cook received a brief, stern sentence, that the window was too widely open; in short, she spent the entire space of the meal asking Jess Dreer how long he had been in that part of the country, and interrupting herself every time before she got through with the interrogation. Finally she forgot all about her question, and sat as usual, with a smile of attention on her lips, listening to the men talk, while her eyes roved wistfully about the table hunting for the missing things. Yet never once did she win a glance from Morgan Valentine. She filled the time of the meal with an atmosphere of flurry and uncertainty, quite unheeded by her husband. But once, twice the gray eye of Jess Dreer fixed her through and through and tumbled her sad, small soul into full view. Not that she understood it; she only felt a vague fear of the stranger, his silences, his alert calm.
When they went back into the living room, two big chairs were drawn comfortably near to the fire, and the other chairs arranged in a loose semicircle on both sides of the fireplace so that the travelers could rest in ease.
“And how's young Norman?” asked Morgan Valentine.
He had turned to Charlie, but the latter indicated Louis with a jerk of his thumb.
“I dunno. Lou went over to see how Joe was coming on.”
“I rode over,” said Louis, embarrassed by the sudden focusing of all eyes upon him, “but I might as well have stayed away. They was about a thousand Normans hanging around the house. When I come up the path from the hitching rack, they was about a dozen of 'em on the front veranda. I hear 'em say: 'It's him.' 'No,' says someone, 'it ain't him, but it's his brother.' Then I come up and says howdy to 'em, but all they do is grunt like pigs—”
“Which they are!” cried Charlie.
The chair of Morgan Valentine creaked as he turned, and under his glance his eldest son lowered his gaze. All of this byplay was noted by the shrewd eye of the bandit. And the fact that he had been observed by a stranger to endure a reprimand made Charlie jerk up his head again and glare defiantly at Jess Dreer. The latter did not turn his head politely as another man might have done. He met the challenging glance of the younger man with a calm indifference so that it could be felt he was coolly measuring the other and filing an estimate of him away.
“Anyway,” went on Louis, “I went up to the door and knocked. Mrs. Norman came, and I took off my hat and says: 'I've come to ask after Joe. How is he?'
“She didn't say nothing for a minute. She just stood there drying the dishwater off her hands and looking me up and down.
“ 'Oh,' she says after a while, 'it's you, is it? And why didn't your brother come and ask about his murdered man?'
“And when she said that, all the men on the veranda growled. I turned away and didn't say any more—”
“Oh,” cried Mary Valentine, “I wish that I'd been in your boots! I'd have found something to say!”
“Mary,” said Mrs. Valentine, “it looks to me like you'd found too much to say other times.”
Her husband checked her with a swiftly raised hand, but Mary continued to stare defiantly at her aunt. Since the episode of Joe Norman they had been almost openly at war, and now Mrs. Valentine compressed her lips and knitted with a venomous speed.
“You needn't think that I wouldn't have talked back fast enough if one of the men had talked up,” said Louis, turning red. “I wasn't afraid of any of 'em, Mary, if that's what you mean.”
“You know it isn't what I mean, Lou,” she said with a diplomatic change of voice. “Nobody is fool enough to doubt your courage; you're a Valentine, I guess! But it makes me mad to think of you turning away without giving that mob a few hot shots between wind and water.”
“I wish I'd had the chance at 'em,” said Charlie ferociously, and he flashed Mary a glance that sought approval.
“Good thing you hadn't,” replied the girl instantly. “You'd probably have had ten men on your hands in no time. Better to say nothing at all, like Lou, than say the wrong thing.”
It made Charlie glower at her, but Louis smiled in triumph. Plainly Jess Dreer saw how the clever girl balanced one of them against the other.
“But here we are talking family shop before a stranger!” continued Mary Valentine, and she smiled an apology at Jess Dreer.
He shifted his regard from Louis to his cousin, and, if ever a smile failed to strike its target, certainly Mary's smile glanced harmlessly away from the impersonal eyes of Dreer. She found herself suddenly sobered.
“Don't mind me,” he was saying in that surprisingly gentle voice.
“A little fracas,” explained his host swiftly. “Charlie had a mix-up with Joe Norman and dropped him—through the arm—nothing to talk of.”
Here Mrs. Valentine raised her eyes, let her glance fall pointedly upon Mary, sighed, and shook her head. It was impossible to miss her meaning. Mary had been the cause of the quarrel. But Jess Dreer was looking toward the ceiling and had apparently seen nothing. Mary did not know whether to be relieved or piqued. But now that the stranger's attention was diverted to other things she took the occasion to examine him more minutely. Ordinarily she was not in the least interested in the few acquaintances whom her uncle brought home, but now she discovered that this stranger was probably not quite so old as his weather-beaten appearance had at first led her to imagine.
Then she found that the conversation had taken a new turn. Mrs. Valentine apparently felt that it was the part of a perfect hostess to draw the stranger into the center of attention.
“How long have you and Mr. Dreer known each other, Morgan?” she asked.
CHAPTER 9
At this Morgan Valentine flashed a glance at his companion, indicating that the danger line was being approached.
“Oh—about five years,” he said carelessly. He should have said more. His very carelessness made Mrs. Valentine continue her inquiry as though she feared that Dreer would consider himself slighted by so summary a dismissal from conversation.
“Five years? Well, you're a secretive man, Morgan. Would you believe, Mr. Dreer, that he's never mentioned you in all that time? I've known him to do the same with some of his oldest and best friends. That's Morgan's way! Where was it you first met Mr. Dreer, Morgan?”
“Down in Ireton.”
“Well, well! As long ago as that?” And the subject was closed for Mrs. Valentine. Then Mary entered the lists.
“Why, that was the time you bought the timber, Uncle Morgan?”
“I guess it was. I disremember.”
“Were you one of the men Uncle Morgan bought it from?”
“I never been interested in timber,” said Jess Dreer. “Horses is more my line. But speaking about timber—”
Who knows how far he might have rambled afield on the subject of timber and all its possibilities had not chance interrupted him. There was a snap, and a bright coal leaped out of the fireplace and onto the rug. In the flurry of putting it out Dreer's promised anecdote was forgotten, and before he could resume it, Mary was back on the subject.
“Oh, did you buy that string of grays from Mr. Dreer, Uncle Morgan?”
“I disremember how it was that I met Dreer,” said Valentine, with a mild voice like that of one who labors in vain to find a suitable lie.
Dreer came to his rescue.
“It was in Tolliver's saloon. We were drinking—”
“Why, Uncle Morgan! I thought it was ten years since you'd had a drink!”
“Not drinking whisky,” put in Jess Dreer calmly. “Leastways, he was taking lemonade, and I was tossing off my redeye. That was how we come to talk.”
As plain as day the steady eye of the girl said to him: “You are lying, Mr. Jess Dreer, and I know it.”
But he went on: “And I'll tell you why Mr. Valentine ain't ever mentioned me. It's because he's a modest man. But here's the facts. I was saying that I had been drinking whisky. Well, when I went out into the sun, it got into my head and made it spin. When I climbed onto my hoss, I raked his side with a spur, and the next thing I knew my pinto was ten feet in the air. When he landed, I kept right on traveling. And when pinto seen me on the ground, he allowed I was his meat and started for me. He was a maneater, was pinto.
“There I lay stretched out with eight hundred and fifty pounds of red-eyed hossflesh tearing for me and about twenty fools laughing their heads off in front of the saloon. But they was one man cool enough to see what was coming off: a man-killing. He had a split part of a second to keep that hoss from reaching me, and he done it. He outs with his guns and drills pinto clean through the temples. As pretty a snapshot as ever I seen. And that man was Morgan Valentine!”
He dropped his hand lightly on the shoulder of Valentine.
“But he's so modest that it ain't no wonder he's never talked about me.”
Now Mary Valentine sat next to the tall stranger, and she was leaning forward to catch every syllable and read every detail of his expression, but for some reason he did not seem to see her. His target lay beyond. It was Elizabeth who had pushed her chair a little out of line with the rest of the circle, quite content to let Mary take the lion's share of the attention of the evening. On her Jess Dreer bent his steady eye, and every inflection of his voice was aimed at the girl, so that she, too, leaned forward, and before the end was smiling in breathless interest.
While the general exclamation went the rounds at the end of the tale, Mary snapped a glance over her shoulder at her cousin. Then she turned her attention back upon the tall man.
“I guess you've made that a bit strong,” Valentine was saying.
“Facts are facts,” said the bandit, and rolled a cigarette.
He had adroitly pushed his host out of the embarrassing center of the stage and stepped into the spotlight himself.
“Pinto reared when the lead hit him; coming down, one of his forefeet clipped me here.”
And the bandit touched the scar upon his forehead. There was a general leaning forward and an intaken breath; Mrs. Valentine fixed her starry eyes upon her husband. In the clamor Mary could say to the stranger without fear of being overheard:
“Mr. Dreer, how much of that is made up?”
He neither smiled nor flushed.
“Guess,” he said.
“The whole thing.”
“Lady,” he answered calmly, “you sure got faith in my imagination!”
At this point the fire blazed up so hot that Mrs. Valentine had to move her chair. It was Jess Dreer who read her wish and pulled the chair back, and when he sat down again, it was in a place beside Lizbeth.
It would not be fair to Mary to say that she was piqued by this occurrence. She was not angered; she was merely gathered up in the silence of a vast astonishment. For the first time in her life she had been overlooked, it seemed, and her cousin was preferred. And yet she had given Jess Dreer his full share of intriguing glances and bright smiles.
Indeed, the interest of the stranger in Lizbeth was so pointed that the whole family began to notice. He gave his host and hostess a phrase or a word now and then, but he contrived to make his talk go constantly toward the girl. And it was plain that Mrs. Valentine was not altogether displeased. As for Elizabeth, Mary saw her at first embarrassed, and then flushed, and then lost in a great interest. She was beginning to dwell on the face of Dreer while he spoke. Mary drew her uncle to one side.
“Your friend likes Lizbeth,” she said pointedly.
“And Lizbeth seems to like him.”
“Now, Mary, what are you aiming to come at?”
“I aim to know who Jess Dreer is.”
“Ain't you been told tolerable in detail?”
“Too much detail, dear Uncle Morgan. Do you think I was taken in by that cock-and-bull story about the mad horse?”
“Hush, Mary!” and his glance sought his wife guiltily.
“I knew it!”
“Mary, you're a nuisance.”
“But just tell me who he is, and I won't bother you a word more.”
“He's a man. Two legs, tolerable long; two arms, tolerable strong, and, speaking in general, he's like any other man.”
“He's as much like any other man,” said the girl, watching him earnestly, “as a wolf is like a dog. Look at his hands, Uncle Morgan. They're brown. He hasn't worn gloves much, the way honest cowpunchers do. Look at the inside of his palms. No calluses. I noticed when I shook hands with him. Look at the way he moves! Like a cat moves, Uncle. Don't tell me he's an ordinary man!”
“They's all kinds of men, and when you're older, you'll know it. Wolf? That's foolishness, honey.”
“A wolf, Uncle.”
“You think he's talking too much to Lizbeth?”
“Oh, no. Lizbeth is too much of a baby to be harmed.”
“She's grown up, Mary.”
“On the outside; inside she's about ten years old. But I'm right about this stranger. Even Charlie and Louis see that he's different. Usually Charlie starts edging up to new men, but he keeps clear of Dreer. See how he eyes him!”
“There you go again.”
“Then tell me the truth about him.”
“I'll tell you this much, honey. He's not the kind for you to set your cap at.”
“You mean that you think I'll flirt with him?”
“Maybe.”
“Uncle! With a man fifteen years older than I am?”
“Maybe not so old as that. But he's old enough. You've played around with boys, Mary, and they was no particular harm in it, excepting for getting Charlie into scrapes now and then. But when you start making eyes at a grown man, trouble will hit you and not them.”
“You admit that it isn't very safe to be friendly with him. And yet you've known him five years?”
“No matter how long. I know him. And you keep away from him, honey.”
“How long does he stay?”
“Till after you go.”
“Somewhere there's a mystery,” said Mary Valentine, and she added suddenly: “There he is laughing at us now. Why, he knows we're talking about him, and he's mocking me.”
“Honey, he ain't laughing.”
“With his eyes, Uncle Morgan. Oh, he's a deep one!”
CHAPTER 10
If Valentine had sought to create a diversion and start new interests by bringing his bandit home, he had indubitably succeeded. The advent of the stranger had the effect of a bomb which is about to explode. No one could really have said why Dreer was exciting, but before he had been in the room for ten minutes, each member of Valentine's family had felt the same influence of excitement which had affected Morgan Valentine and induced him to bring the stranger to his home. Perhaps it was that in spite of the grave decorum of Dreer's manner one felt about him a native wildness. In a way, it might be said that he carried a gust of fresh air into the room. And he was constantly alert and active after the manner of wild things. His hands were rarely still, and though he seldom turned his head, his eyes went everywhere.
When he smiled at a remark of Elizabeth's, Mary felt that he was laughing at her, and Charlie felt that he was being mocked. Not that the stranger pointedly ignored the rest of the room, but it seemed that he had happened to sit down by Elizabeth, and he found her sufficiently entertaining. But the great point of wonder was that Elizabeth was actually talking. At first haltingly, confused because the eyes of the others in the room were occasionally turning upon her with wonder, but by degrees warming into complete forgetfulness of the rest. She lowered her voice. She was talking to the tall man alone. About what? The others caught fragments of phrases about her horses, about her last hunting trip, about the lobo she shot last spring. She had begun by asking timidly polite questions. She ended by chattering gaily about herself.
It was a pretty thing to see her grow excited. What Mary Valentine could not decide was whether her cousin was excited by Jess Dreer the man, or Jess Dreer the audience.
She was similarly puzzled by Dreer. In another she would have thought his attitude one of polite indifference. But she could not be sure of him and his mental status.
She had known many a boy and many a boy's mind. They always showed their entire hand at once. One read the cards, was fascinated for a moment perhaps, and the next moment became bored because the antagonist was a known quantity. But Jess Dreer was not known. He lurked behind a screen. He revealed not half, not a tithe of his strength—or of his weakness, for that matter. As far as Mary could make out, this fellow had brought Lizbeth out of her shell as another woman might have done. It was odd. Mary would have given a great deal to know why he winced when a door was opened behind him, why his eyes were apt to flash suddenly up, glitter, and droop. She felt that he would be more content if his chair were back against the wall.
It was at this point in her train of thought that the doorbell rang, and Mary sprang up to answer it. She was glad to get away from the room. She wanted to have the chill air of the night against her face—to breathe of it in the hope that it would clear a mist from her mind and enable her to think logically and brush away her rising excitement. For the question was beating into her consciousness always: What is Jess Dreer? Her uncle had put her off. Why? Or did he know? And was Jess Dreer there because he had some claim and power over Morgan Valentine?
She threw open the front door after she had gone thoughtfully down the hall, and she saw—dim figures in the moonlight, and with the reek of a long horseback ride about them—Sheriff Clancy of Salt Springs, and another man. Now Sheriff Clancy's boy had been one of Mary's victims in the near past, and that was the reason that she threw a conciliatory warmth into her greeting:
“Why, Sheriff Clancy! Come in. Dad will be happy to see you.”
The sheriff smiled at her, and in smiling the ends of his drooping mustaches bristled out to the sides like tusks.
“Mostly folks feel another way when I come along to say how d'you do. But wait a minute, Mary. I ain't here on a pleasure call.”
“You have business—here?”
She thought of Charlie's affair with Joe Norman.
“That miserable Norman family—have they sent you after Charlie?”
The sheriff smiled, disagreeably.
“I dunno anything about Charlie and the Norman boy,” he said. “I don't go prying after trouble. Mostly, enough of it comes my way without hunting. All I want to do is to ask you a few questions, Mary.”
“And you won't come in?”
“Nope. Is there a man in your house called Jess Dreer?”
The floodgates opened, the water burst through the dam, and Mary Valentine was picked up in a torrent of sudden knowledge. Jess Dreer! The question flashed a lantern light on the man.
“Jess Dreer?” she repeated.
“That's the name. Is he inside?”
She fought for time. As a matter of fact she was balancing between two impulses. The first was to hand this fellow over to the law at once. The second impulse was—she did not know what—but certainly it was to keep him safe.
“What does he look like?”
“About as tall as my friend here. Mr. John Caswell—Miss Mary Valentine. About as tall as Caswell, maybe a mite smaller. Big shoulders, I understand, and the sort of a face that's easy to remember. Quiet. Soft-spoken. Active with his hands.”
She still paused. How fast her mind was working! And therefore her speech was slow.
“Oh, yes, I remember now. Yes, there was a man like that here, and, now that I remember, I think he said that his name was Jess Dreer.”
“But he ain't here now?”
“No. He rode away—quite a while ago.”
“I told you so,” said the big man who had been called Caswell. “That gent is a fox. He's got these people on his side.”
But Sheriff Clancy hushed the other with a raised hand.
“I think maybe you're mistaken, miss. We've got an idea that Dreer is in the house right now. Maybe he's hiding, and you don't know it. But we got his hoss and his saddle. In fact, we've found his hoss in the corral and saddled her, and now we got that hoss waiting for Mr. Dreer!”
“Of course you have his horse.” Mary Valentine nodded. “He left the mare and took one of Dad's horses. I think he paid Dad something into the bargain for the exchange.”
“How long ago?” Sheriff Claney asked.
“An hour; but, Sheriff, come on inside and search the house if you want.”
“Not if he's gone. Which way?”
“He took that road. You ought to catch him in the mountains.”
“How's your hoss, Caswell?”
“Played out.”
“So's mine, pretty nigh.”
“Well, then, come in, Sheriff.”
For she knew perfectly that this bulldog would not leave the trail. She leaned against the side of the door and laughed at him.
“I think that for a moment you suspected that we were sheltering him. But what's he done?”
“What's he done?” Caswell said explosively. “What ain't he done? He's done enough to bring me a thousand miles on the trail. What's he done? Why, that's Jess Dreer; they scare their kids with that name down south!”
One might have thought that Mary Valentine would shrink in horror at this news. She did not. No, a fire came in her eyes.
“Is he as bad as all that? Oh, I hope you get him, Mr. Caswell!”
“Right down that road!” She ran to the front of the veranda. “Hurry! I'll go back and tell Dad about it. He'll be after you in five minutes with fresh horses. He'll take along a couple of fresh mounts for you.”
“Come on, Caswell!”
But Caswell, with his foot on the verge of taking the first step down, paused.
“What I don't figure,” he said, “is why Dreer left his own saddle behind? It's hard enough to figure why he left the hoss.”
“Because he knew you were on his heels, Caswell,” cried Claney. “Hurry up, man. He's gaining miles on us.”
“How'd he know I was on his heels? Nobody else has give him a run—not for five years. He's always give the others too hot a reception at the end of the trail—them that ever come up with him.”
“Facts is facts. Come on.”
“I'm thinkin'.”
And he rubbed his chin and stared hard at Mary Valentine.
“Don't you see that he's getting away?” she cried in an apparent frenzy.
“Seems to me, ma'am, that you're in a considerable trouble to have him caught. Most of the womenfolk I know most generally hopes he gets away.”
“Caswell, I'm going on without you.”
“Wait a minute. Claney, it won't do.”
The latter turned and hurried back up the steps.
“I'll tell you why,” explained the man from the south. “That hoss has been with Dreer for eight years. Ten times he could of changed her for a fresh hoss when he was being trailed, but he never wouldn't do it. And why does he do it now? Even if he knowed I was after him, that mare could of kept on going and run down a fresh hoss. She ain't common hossflesh. She's all leather inside and out. I know her.”
“Well, where are you aiming?”
Claney turned on Mary.
“I'm aiming to search this house, and I don't think I'll have far to go.”
She stared at him an instant.
“You're a little insulting,” said Mary, drawing herself up. And then, seeing that he would persist in his purpose, she slipped before him and opened the door.
“Come in, then,” said Mary.
But when he made a step forward, she slammed the door in his face, and the astonished sheriffs heard the heavy bolt click home.
CHAPTER 11
In the living room there had grown up a slight suspense.
“What keeps Mary so long?” asked her uncle at length.
“I'll go to find out,” suggested Elizabeth.
And then, to the astonishment of the others, big Jess Dreer was seen to slip from his chair. The fire cast a gigantic shadow behind him against the wall.
“If you don't mind,” he said gently, “I think I'll step out and see.”
But at that moment the front door crashed; there was the metallic ring of the bolt driven home, and then Mary whipped into the room. A beautiful picture. A wisp of hair had blown down across her cheek. Her eyes were alight with excitement. And yet there was something akin to a laugh on her lips.
“Jess Dreer,” she cried, “follow me!”
And before one of the others could so much as rise from a chair, she had raced across the room and out through the farther door with Dreer gliding at her heels; even then he appeared unhurried.
“This way!” commanded the girl, and ran up the brief flight of steps that joined one stretch of the back hall with another at a higher level. They went down the passage at full speed, and then, at the foot of it, she cast open another door and beckoned him into the room. Once inside, she bolted the door behind her.
From the front of the house there was a thunder against the door, and the voice of Morgan Valentine was calling: “Mary, what's this all about?”
Jess Dreer took quick stock of the room. The moonlight struck in a broad shaft through one of the windows, and the rest of the apartment was filled with a dim, dim light. It was a girl's room. That indescribable fragrance lived in it, like a spirit. And there were splashes of bright color made faint by the night.
“They're after you,” cried the girl softly. “Sheriff Clancy and a man named Caswell, who has followed you from the south.”
She was shocked to see him leaning idly against the wall.
“Now, think of that,” murmured Jess Dreer. “I figured that Caswell was a sensible sort of gent, and here he is trying to make a reputation by catching me. Well, well, they ain't any way of judging a man when he starts out to try to get famous.”
She gasped away her surprise.
“No matter what he is. He may be a fool, but Sheriff Clancy is a dangerous man. He's well known. Too well known.”
“Mighty good of you to let me know about him.”
“Come here. Quick! It isn't far to drop to the ground from this window. You see how the hill slopes away up just underneath?”
“Dear me, now! But they's one great trouble. I have to get out to my hoss and saddle her before I can start on.”
“You'll never ride that horse again. They found her in the corral, and they've saddled her to take you away on her.”
“I knowed Caswell was a terrible considerate man.”
She paid no attention.
“You see that hill? Strike for that. Just beyond there's broken country. No horse can follow you over it. You have a gun?”
“A sort of a one.”
“Then go!”
“Lady,” said Jess Dreer, “I'd a pile rather go on Angelina as a prisoner than go on foot a free man.”
She stared at him.
There was the unmistakable sound of the splintering of wood.
“Quick!” she pleaded, almost sobbing in her frenzy of excitement.
“They's one or two things that sort of holds me back,” murmured the bandit.
“What? What?”
“Look out yonder!”
She saw to one side—fifty yards away—two men sitting motionless on their horses.
“Then you're lost!”
“I'm squeezed, anyways. And yonder is Angelina, I see.”
And following the direction in which he pointed, she saw another pair of men on their horses, with a spare horse held between them.
“There's no hope? Tell me how to help you!”
“Lady, I sure appreciate all the interest you're showing.”
And with this, he sank down upon a chair and crossed his legs.
She stood back from him at that.
“Are you going to give up without a struggle?”
“I'm going to have a little think,” said the outlaw. “I'd rather start a fight after I've thought it out than I would to have a pardner to help me. Two minutes of getting ready is worth an hour of hard riding sometimes.”
“I see. You don't really care if they do catch you? You haven't done anything very wrong? It doesn't mean that—”
“A busted neck. That's all it means.”
“Then what he said is true?”
“Most probable it is. Lady, I ain't one of them parlor bad men that wears a bad look and a nervous hand. You got a lot of questions to ask me. Am I a downtrodden man that's tried to right my wrongs and got tangled with the law? No, I ain't. Am I a wild but nacherally noble heart that's persecuted by the miserable world that don't understand me? No, I ain't. I'm plain Jess Dreer. Too lazy to work with my hands and just able to get a good living with my gun. That's all. Now take my advice. Get out of this room and wash your hands of me.”
“I don't care what you are,” cried the girl. “I believe in you. There never was a scoundrel yet that was a truly brave man. Jess Dreer, I believe in you. But quick, quick, quick. Do something! There's no time. They've broken in the door.”
“That's what I been waiting for,” said the bandit, and he raised his great length from the chair and stretched himself. “Now that I got part of 'em inside the house, they're divided. That's the way old Napoleon did, I guess.”
“But they're coming. I can do something. Raise a false alarm on the other side—”
He broke out with a strange heartiness: “You're the salt of the earth. No, don't raise your hand. The fools have give me a chance, and I'll take it.”
A heavy rush of feet in the hall. A body smashed against the door and the room quivered.
“Open, Mary!”
The surprise had brought a revolver in the hand of Jess Dreer, and even in that dim light the girl saw his face change. But he instantly put up the gun when he saw the door would hold.
“Now wouldn't you think that wise gents like them would look before they leap? However, I won't wait for 'em.”
The door groaned under a new shock, and then Jess Dreer slipped his long body feet-first through the window and dropped to the ground. She looked out. He had sunk into the shadow at the base of the wall and had not yet been seen, and now she heard a brief, shrill whistle, twice repeated.
It was answered by a snort of a horse, and instantly Angelina burst from the men who held her and plunged toward the house with flying bridle reins. Out from the shadow leaped Jess Dreer to meet her. He had covered half the distance before he was seen and before the others could start their horses toward him, he was in the saddle with a catlike bound. The four men converged on him, and straight toward the middle of the gap he sent the flying Angelina.
He lay flat on the back of the mustang; he had not even drawn his revolver, so far as she could see. But the others galloped with naked weapons. One of these flashed, and on the heels of the report there was a shriek from one of the posse who had been closing in on the other side. The bullet had missed the enemy and struck a friend.
It gave Jess Dreer a winking moment of a chance. For the shout of the hurt man and the plunge of his body to the ground threw the rest of the posse into confusion. Three horses were reined in three directions; Angelina rushed through the narrow gap between, and then Mary Valentine saw the fugitive strike out toward the nearest hill with three pursuers laboring behind him.
Each of them had a gun unlimbered; each of them was pumping a hail of bullets after Jess Dreer; but they doubly defeated themselves by that very eagerness. For the racking gallop ruined their chances to shoot true, and, sitting straight to fire, they could not get the best speed out of their horses. And in the meantime Jess Dreer was jockeying the cat-footed Angelina through the rough ground at the base of the hill. She veered and dodged like a dancing will-o'-the-wisp and presently darted around the hill into oblivion.
The fusillade of shots had drawn the two sheriffs from the door of Mary Valentine's room. She heard them plunging through the house, leaving a trail of crackling oaths behind them in lieu of musketry.
Afterward she waited in her room, terrified by what she had done, and, though her aunt and then Elizabeth came and called her, she would not come out.
She was spending that hour in profound thoughtfulness, and her thoughts were turning on that thing she had cried to Jess Dreer in her excitement: “There never was a scoundrel yet that was a truly brave man!”
Had she not spoken the truth by inspiration?
She heard the wounded man groaning as he was carried past her door. That was one result of her work, no doubt. Then she heard the posse returning from a fruitless chase. At this, Mary breathed freely for the first time.
CHAPTER 12
When she went out at last, she carried her head with a high stubbornness and walked bravely into the living room. Elizabeth was not there; she was tending the wounded man. And the rest of the posse was either gone home or had found quarters in the house. But the two sheriffs sat opposite each other. They scowled at Mary when she came in; only from Morgan Valentine did she receive the faint glimmer of a smile. As for Mrs. Valentine, she turned upon her niece a somber glance that betided no good.
“A pretty night's work for you, Mary Valentine,” she said. “Turning your uncle's house into a refuge for outlaws—and getting a man shot. All your work, too, Mary. And I'd like to know what you got to say to Sheriff Claney—and Sheriff Caswell, that's come so far all to be fooled by your doings.”
“Hush, Mother,” said Morgan Valentine. “That's a little too much.”
“Don't bother about me,” said Sheriff Caswell gloomily. “I don't hold no spite agin' the young lady—which I never knew womenfolk yet that didn't take the side of the underdog.”
“More power to the women!” muttered Morgan Valentine.
“Right!” observed Sheriff Caswell with surprising calmness. “I wouldn't wish my own girl to help corner a man. No, sir. And I don't hold no grudge, young lady, though you did lie most amazing for that fox Dreer.”
Mary Valentine stood where the firelight could play full on her face—and there is nothing like firelight to bring out the luminous tenderness of a woman's eyes. She cast out her hands toward the two men she had disappointed.
“How could I help it?” she said. “There were so many of you. And he was alone!”
They would have been more than men if they had not melted to some degree. Indeed, Mary would have done well on the stage.
“And yet I suppose,” she said, slipping into a chair, “that he's a scoundrel; a worthless rascal!”
Mary was not very old, and, I suppose, she was not very wise; but she understood that the way to guide a man is to oppose him.
“Really,” she said, “the moment I looked at Jess Dreer I knew that he was worthless.”
It caused Sheriff Caswell to take fire immediately, and inwardly she rejoiced.
“Then you know more'n I do,” he muttered.
“But haven't you chased him a thousand miles?”
“I had to. I dunno just how many thousand they is on his head. It ain't the money I want, but if I can get rid of Jess Dreer—why, they ain't much chance of another bad one ever crossing my trail. They'd keep clear of my country if they knowed that I'd run Jess Dreer to the ground.”
Mary Valentine shivered. She gazed with open admiration on the sheriff.
“It must take courage,” she murmured, “to follow a cold-blooded murderer!”
The sheriff looked at her. He was not displeased by her admiration, but he felt that he must put this very absolute young woman in her place.
“If you call him cool,” he said, “why, I call him that, too. But murder is a pretty strong word. Man-killer he is. They ain't any doubt about that. But murder, I ain't ever heard of his doing.”
“Isn't that a close distinction?” she said. “Is there much difference between a murderer and a man-killer?”
“To you, maybe not,” said the sheriff deliberately. “To me, they're just about the world apart. A murderer is a snake that strikes for the sake of striking. A man-killer is one that fights when he has to. But Jess Dreer—why, he'll almost take water before he'll fight. That's how mild he is.”
She had to lower her eyes, such a warm happiness had come in her blood that she feared it would shine out in her glance.
“For my part,” she said, “I think his mildness is just a sham. It looked snaky enough to me.”
“Then,” said the sheriff, “you and me see with different eyes. What chance did Jess Dreer have, I ask you? Jud Linsey's hoss is stole. It looks bad for Pete Dreer. Jud gets a crowd together. They put on masks and go to Dreer's house. They take Pete out, and when he says he's innocent, they laugh at him, the case was so black agin' him. They take him out, string him up, and let him swing. Along comes Jess Dreer and sees his father dead before the door of the house. He busts around town and finds out that Linsey done it.
''Along about that time the real hoss thief is found with the goods. They bring him in. They ain't any doubt that old Pete Dreer was innocent when he was lynched, but he was such a queer, silent old cuss that nobody would of believed it—considering how black the case was agin' him.
“Well, Jess Dreer buries his father and then he goes to the sheriff and asks for justice on Jud Linsey. Did he get it? No! Partly because they wasn't anybody that seen the lynching except them that was in the mob, and everybody in the mob was just as guilty as Jud Linsey in the eyes of the law. So would they talk? Would they accuse Jud and accuse themselves at the same time? No, they wasn't any chance of that.
“Besides, the sheriff was pretty thick with Jud Linsey, Jud having married his daughter. So he tells Jess Dreer to get out of his office and stop talking like a fool.
“You see, he didn't suspect that they was anything very hard about Jess. Nobody did. He'd been quiet as a lamb all his life.
“So Jess Dreer leaves the sheriff and goes out to the saloon where Jud Linsey was. I was there at the bar, and I seen everything that happened. Jess walks in and stands there with his hands on his hips.
“ 'Jud Linsey,' he sings out, 'I've been to the sheriff and asked for the law on you. But the sheriff has cussed me out and told me I couldn't come at you through the law. So I'm going to use my own hands. Linsey, I'm going to kill you.'
“Well, Linsey turns on his heel and has two guns out before you could wink, and he hits the floor without shooting either of them guns off. The reason why was because a slug out of Dreer's gun had gone through his heart.
“Now, that was what opened our eyes to Jess. Jud Linsey was called a quick man with his shooting irons, but beside Jess that day he looked as if he was standing still to have his picture taken. After Jud drops, Jess sings out in his quiet way: 'Well, boys, you see what I've done. And I ask you: What other way out was there for me?'
“They wasn't any other way, and we all knowed it. So we didn't say nothing. And Jess turns his back and walks out without nobody lifting his hand. But old 'Pike' Malone says to me, he says: 'Caswell, they's a good man gone wrong today.'
“And Pike told the truth. The sheriff went near crazy when he heard about the killing of his son-in-law. He rides up to the house of Jess Dreer and calls him out and cusses him up and down and tells him to come with him. The sheriff was aching for a gun play, but Jess didn't come halfway. He goes right along to the jail.
“Then comes the trial. They was twelve fair men on the jury, but what could they do? It was a plain case of manslaughter, the easiest they could let Jess off. And after he heard the decision, he busted jail.
“The sheriff followed hotfoot; some said that he left the way open for Jess so that he could have the pleasure of dropping him with his own guns instead of waiting for Jess to serve his sentence. The sheriff runs Jess down easy—because the first place Jess went was home. The sheriff goes in for him, and the sheriff never comes out again. But Jess Dreer comes out and rides off on the sheriff's hoss.
“They wasn't anything for it except to start after him with a posse, not that any of us really wanted to tackle the job. But we couldn't have our town put on the map as an easy place for a getaway. That wouldn't do. We got our guns and climbed on our hosses and followed Jess Dreer for blood.
“He'd have got away, because he has the real eye for a trail, and he knows how to shake any crowd that ever got together. But his hoss went lame, and we caught up with him.”
At this point the sheriff paused, sighed, and looked for a long moment at the fire.
“That was the time,” he said at length, “that Jess Dreer cut his name into the memory of the Southwest—and he cut it deep. Afterward Jess Dreer went on, and we went back. I got this that day.”
He touched a scar where a bullet had furrowed the base of his broad, tanned neck.
“And now here I am on his trail,” said the sheriff. He shook his head gloomily. “I may get Jess. Chances are that Jess'll get me. I ain't got no grudge agin' him. But I got to make a place for myself. It's a gamble how the trail will turn out, but it's a sure thing that they don't want a sheriff long down my way until they find the man that can get Jess Dreer. What've I got on my side? Numbers. They don't count. You've just seen how he slides through them. What else have I got? The fact that Jess has got away so often that maybe his luck is just about played out.
“Eight years of luck. Pretty soon he'll tumble. And—maybe—I'll be there with a gun to catch him when he drops!”
At the conclusion of this tale there was a silence; even Mrs. Valentine was motionless and her knitting needles were crossed idly for the first time in many an hour. But Mary, without a word, got up and left the room. She walked with her head fallen. There seemed to be a haze across her eyes, for when she reached the door, she fumbled blindly for it a moment.
All of this Morgan Valentine saw. What passed through his mind it would be impossible to say, but when the door had closed upon his niece, he said softly to Caswell: “Sheriff, between you and me, I think it'd be a pretty good idea if you didn't talk no more to Mary about this Jess Dreer.”
“Why not?”
“If you had a house built of dead leaves,” said Morgan Valentine, “would you encourage folks to come and light matches in it?”
CHAPTER 13
There was no sleep for Mary Valentine when she reached her room after Jess Dreer had escaped. She had drawn a picture by guesswork, and the picture had become a living thing.
She lighted the lamp to undress. At once the thought of going to bed became detestable, for she foresaw long hours of sleeplessness, twisting and turning from side to side. She tried to read, but the print tangled on the page, became a blur out of which grew a face and a form and a voice.
Throwing the magazine away, she tried to daydream, but the living reality cut into the midst of her dream. She blew out the lamp, but the moment it was extinguished, the pale moonlight cut into the room and brought back with breathtaking vividness the picture of Jess Dreer as he had got up from the chair and stretched himself before the window.
At length she slipped into a deep chair beside the bed and dropped her face in her hands. Time cannot be measured in some moods. She could not tell whether it was hours or moments before there was a faint scratching sound outside her window, but when she looked up, there sat the long body of Jess Dreer in the window, jet-black in the moonlight, in the very attitude he had been in when he dropped for the ground. She hardly dared to look again, and then she heard the ghost murmur: “Whist! Mary Valentine!”
At that, she started up, half fearful and tingling with a singularly happy excitement.
But when she ran to him, his greeting was characteristic.
“Well, well! Not in bed yet? Is that the way to treat yourself, Mary Valentine? I wouldn't treat my old hoss like that!”
“Do you know that the sheriffs are still in the house? That they haven't gone to bed? That their men are here? Do you know that, Jess Dreer?”
“I scouted around a bit first and seen their hosses saddled like they was hesitating about giving me another run.”
“And yet you came back?”
“Not for fun,” said Dreer.
“Come inside. They'll see you sitting there!”
“This is good enough for me.”
“But if it wasn't out of madness, what was it that brought you back?”
“Common sense. They'll hunt for me tomorrow over the hills. I'll be riding off the other way.”
“You're doubling on them. But Salt Springs lies the other way, and they're sure to comb the district around the town. They always do. The amateurs start by looking near home.”
“They're more generally right than the professionals, then. But Caswell is one of these crafty fellows. He starts right in to get inside my mind, find out what I'm thinking about, and then outguess me.” He laughed softly. “Caswell follers me as if he was a general; as if I was an army with a board of strategy—and here I am, plain Jess Dreer. All I do is to act simple, and that always fools him.”
“Listen to me.”
“Yes.”
“Jess Dreer, why have you come back?”
“Partly I've told you why. Partly because I left in such a terrible hurry that I forgot something. After all you done for me, I plumb forgot to thank you. So I come back to tell you now that you're the finest girl I've ever knowed, Mary Valentine.”
“Hush!” she whispered. And to cover her emotion and the tremor of her voice, she added: “Isn't that someone listening at the door?”
“Not a soul. They ain't anybody near. And they's another reason why I had to come back. Like as not you'll be hearing considerable talk about me the next few days. You'll be hearing about Jess Dreer the murderer, Jess Dreer the gambler, Jess Dreer the robber, Jess Dreer the no-good hound. Well, mostly I don't care what people think about me after I've gone by. My trail fades out, and what they think about me don't reach my ears, so why should I care? But this is different.”
He turned more fully toward her and looked up. She could see him frown with the effort of hard thought.
“I ain't much good with words. I'm out of practice, too. But this is the way I feel. When I come to this house I struck soft dirt, and I've left a trail that's going to last. I mean—I mean—I got an idea that maybe you won't forget me for quite a while, you see?”
He spoke very apologetically.
“I shall never forget you,” said the girl.
He paused.
“No,” he said carefully, “I don't think you ever will.”
It would have been disgusting assurance on the part of another man; but it seemed perfectly natural coming from Jess Dreer.
“And here's the way I feel,” he went on, “that if ever you should get your head filled full of wrong ideas about me, I'd know it if I was a thousand miles away. I'd know it, and I'd feel like someone had stuck a knife in me—and then—turned the knife. It would hurt, you see?”
She could not answer.
“Maybe this'll sound all foolish to you,” said Jess Dreer, “but what I say now I say because you're the first human being that's ever gone a step out of his way to help me since the law turned me out. You took a chance. You risked something. You got me a chance to get clear. And so what I say now I say for you and God and me to hear. That's a fact!
“I ain't going to pile up a lot of excuses. All I say is this: That first a wrong was done, and that I took the law into my own hands, and then the law threw me out. And since that time, no matter what liars say, I've never lifted my hand except to defend myself. They's another thing. I've took the money of other people. I'll tell you why. When they run me away from my home, they run me away from my own cattle and my own land. It was a good-paying ranch and I figure that the world owes me as much as I'd have made clear off that ranch. And that's what I take every year—or less. And I've never yet taken it from nobody who couldn't afford to lose it. Mostly I've taken it across card tables, but some—I've taken at the end of a gun.”
He paused.
Suddenly she was aware that he was in an agony; that he had spoken in an agony; that he sat now, waiting in a silent torment, for her judgment. And a great humility rushed over Mary Valentine. An ache came in the hollow of her throat. And somehow—she herself did not know how—she had taken both his hands.
“I'm talking the same way,” she said, “for you and God to hear me; and I swear that I'll never believe harm of you, Jess Dreer.”
He raised her hands suddenly to his face; her finger tips touched hot, pounding pulses in his temples; and his hands were quivering.
“God bless you!” he said.
Was it possible that he had kissed her hands?
“For eight years I've been riding on a lone trail,” said Jess Dreer. “I've had the spur dug into me for eight years. And a spur leaves scars. And now, for the first time, I've reached a stopping place.”
“If you can stay,” she was whispering, “oh, Jess, we'll find a way to clear you!”
“Girl, you don't know men! But wherever I may go on the outtrail, night and morning, I'll send my thoughts back to you.”
“Are you going? No, no! Not yet. I have something to say—I—”
She could not finish the sentence.
“But if you should ever need me; then send for me. I'm a gambler, as I've said. And they's a string of places through the mountains where they know me. In Salt Springs they's one. Dan Carrol knows me, and he can get word to me wherever I am—by underground wires. Good-by.”
“Not yet, Jess.”
“It ain't right for me to stay. Is there something troubling you, girl?”
At length she said: “Go now; quickly.”
He stared at her in wonder. She stood erect; her face was buried in her hands. And then Jess Dreer slipped down from the window.
Afterward, she cried out, or thought she cried out, but he did not turn again. After a while she saw him pass on Angelina over the top of the hill, and across the moon.
CHAPTER 14
Next to the rooster in the chicken yards, the cook is generally the first living thing to waken on a ranch. Even during the short nights and long days of early summer he is in his kitchen while the dawn is still chilly and gray. But on the ranch of Morgan Valentine there was always one person up even before the cook began to rattle at the lids of his big stove, and that person was the owner. He was like one of those old-fashioned skippers who keeps only one eye closed even during the dogwatch. Usually Morgan Valentine employed the early hour in a walk among the ranch buildings. He enjoyed that morning stroll while the light grew brighter and brighter on the mountaintops and the mists became thin in the lower valleys. Each day he watched his big domain unroll before his eye, and the first pride of the possessor flowed back upon him.
But this morning he went into the living room and knocked up a fire over the coals which remained from the night before. It burned poorly. There were charred ends of logs from which the smoldering heat had been eating the life all night, and now they glowed like charcoal, but would not flame. A thick smoke rose toward the chimney, and some of it rolled out and curled around the mantelpiece and filled the room with pungent scent.
Morgan Valentine remained hanging over this dreary blaze. A man, if fifty, is generally fat enough to content himself with the present, but when he turns back to the past, it is dangerous. And Valentine was thinking of the past. There had been something in Jess Dreer which made him reminiscent of the days when he and his brother became empire builders in this valley. Sitting before the fire, the rancher recalled how the tall man had sat back in the shadow and watched the others with bright, uneasy eyes. Like a wild animal, thought Valentine, which has come out of the night, and even in captivity carries with it an air of the freedom of the outer spaces.
That was the thing which tormented him. Jess Dreer was free. Free and penniless, no doubt, but freedom was worth poverty. Here was he, the rich man, tied down by his wealth. What had it brought him except an unloved wife and children who were hardly more than names to him? To Jess Dreer the whole mountain desert was synonymous with the word “home.”
There was something infinitely attractive to Valentine in the character of the outlaw. There was an honesty—if that word could be used with a thief—that drew the rancher as he had never been drawn before to any man except his dead brother.
Someone was coughing in the hall; he recognized his wife even before she appeared in the door.
“Why, Morgan, I thought the house was on fire,” she said, and straightway she went to a window and opened it. “The house was that full of smoke,” she added, coughing again.
He returned no answer to this, but kicked the log fragments again, and this time a yellow tongue of fire leaped out and hung for a moment quivering in the mist of smoke as though it had a life of its own. After that, the blaze began, and the smoke diminished. There had been a touch of irritation in that kick at the smoldering wood, but now he was able to turn his usual calm face toward his wife.
“You look kind of tired,” he said kindly.
“How could I look any other way after last night?”
“Bear up for a little while, Mother. Mary is leaving in a few days and then you can have a long rest.”
Maude Valentine regarded her husband critically. She had studied this silent man with profound attention for many years and knew less about him now than she had at the beginning.
“I been thinking something,” she said slowly, and folded her hands before her. “After Mary goes, every time you miss her, you'll look to me and be angry.”
“I'm never angry, Mother.”
At this a little spot of color came up in each cheek.
“I wish you'd talk straight out to me once in a while, Morgan. I wish you'd talk man talk to me now and then.”
He shrugged his shoulders, but she went on in spite of this danger sign: “Even if you was to storm at me, Morgan, I'd like it better than—this!”
“I try to be kind, Mother.”
“Kind?” she said. “Kind?” And there was a breathless little check in her voice. It suddenly occurred to the man that she was acting as if she had been enduring for a long time and had now reached the limit of her strength. He braced himself with that chilly feeling in his back which a man usually has when he faces the hysteria of a woman.
“Well,” she said at length, so calmly that his nerves gradually began to relax, “we won't talk any more about her. We'll talk about—you, Morgan.”
And she made a step toward him as timid as a girl approaching her new lover who has not yet completed his avowal. Now and then a sort of youthful beauty would flush across this middle-aged woman's face.
“Just now,” said he, “I'd kind of like to talk about her. You ain't apt to admire her, Mother, but you got to admit that what she did last night was pretty fine.”
Maude Valentine blinked.
“Fine?” she gasped, “Getting a murdering outlaw away from a sheriff. Fine?”
“Two sheriffs,” corrected her husband grimly.
“Are you laughing at me, Morgan?”
“I mean, she took a bad job off my hands, Mother.”
“Off your hands?”
“Would you of had me let them take my guest under my roof, when he come here by my invitation?”
She found no ready answer to this, but nevertheless she instinctively shook her head.
“If it hadn't been for Mary, I'd of had to stand back to back with that Jess Dreer and fought 'em off.”
He sighed.
“I think we'd of cleaned 'em up. Then it would of meant that I'd be riding this minute beside Jess Dreer on the long outtrail, no matter where it takes him, and every man's hand agin' us. That's what it would of meant.”
“Morgan, I actually believe that you almost regret it!”
“Sometimes—I dunno. But it's Mary that's kept me here.”
“Ah, but you don't look down deep and get the reasons why she done it, dear. Do you know what they were?”
“Well?”
She bore the patient, neglectful tone.
“Because she saw that Dreer was paying a lot of attention to Elizabeth. She was not being talked to. She was jealous! That's the whole fact of it!”
“Maude,” said her husband after a moment of silence, “here comes the sheriffs. Maybe you better meet 'em and make 'em at home.”
At that, she regretted what she had said, for she saw the mouth of Morgan Valentine setting in a way she knew very well. But he had closed the conversation too definitely and pointedly for her to attempt to reopen it.
The sheriffs were at least good losers. They made only laughing comments on their futile chase of Jess Dreer the night before. And they kept up the same cheery talk all during the breakfast. When Mary Valentine came down with Elizabeth beside her, they neither frowned at the girl who had broken through their trap nor openly reproached her. If anyone were estranged by the events of the night before, it seemed, oddly enough, to be the three women. For Elizabeth studiously avoided the eye of Mary and paid strict attention to eating, and as for Maude Valentine, it seemed that her niece was not in the room for all the attention that she paid her.
Charlie and Louis were full of open admiration for the manner in which the outlaw had broken through.
“But it must of been a lucky shot that he got in,” said Charlie. “It ain't hardly likely that it was aimed, the shot that dropped Sam.”
“D'you see where it hit him?” asked Sheriff John Caswell, raising his head at this point in the conversation.
“Clean through the thigh. He'll be on his feet ag'in inside three weeks and riding after Jess Dreer.”
At this the sheriff smiled pityingly.
“Son,” he said, “Clancy tells me you're kind of handy with a gun yourself; but you fasten onto this. If Dreer had wanted to kill Sam he would of done it. That was an aimed shot, son. And don't make no mistake.”
“But it was night, Mr. Caswell, and besides, he was on a galloping hoss.”
“Sure he was, but all Dreer needs is enough light to see what he's shooting at. He's a snap shot, son, and he shoots with a gun the way other men point with their finger. No, sir; he planted that shot on purpose not to kill Sam, but to drop him off'n his hoss. And here's another thing. Sam won't take the trail after Jess as soon as he can ride a hoss ag'in. Not him! It's a queer thing, but them that's ever faced Jess don't generally have any hankering to see him ag'in. And them that's seen him swing a gun jest natcherally lose all appetite for seeing the same show all over ag'in.”
“But you've been on the trail a long time, Sheriff,” said Charlie.
“It's different with me, son. I'll tell you how it is. Jess Dreer has made a fool out of me more times than you can count on your two fingers. And I don't mind much of anything except to have a man laugh at me. Well, they's been other men take after Jess that was a heap smarter men than I'll ever be, and they's been some that was faster fighters and straighter shots. Jess has fooled 'em all. He may keep right on fooling me, but he'll never shake me off'n his trail. I stay there till I come up with him and one of us goes down. I ain't fast, I ain't smart, but I'm a tolerable patient man, son. Tolerable patient!”
For some reason there was little talk at the breakfast table after this moment.
CHAPTER 15
It was the patient man who said to Sheriff Clancy of Salt Springs, a little later: “Clancy, have you been looking around over the ground this morning?”
“What ground, Caswell?”
“Around the house, where Dreer got away.”
“Yep. I ran over a little of the sign.”
“What'd you think about it?”
“It was all pretty clear reading, I thought. I seen the place where he dropped out of the window and camped for a minute waiting, before he whistled to that hoss of his, that Angelina you're always talking about.”
“I'll tell you something then, pardner. They's some new sign this morning. Something added on top of what they was last night. I seen where that long-stepping Angelina went away—and I seen where she come back.”
“Dreer came back?”
“Unless that hoss traveled alone, which ain't likely, I'd say.”
Sheriff Claney cursed fluently.
“He come back to the house, with you and me inside it?”
“Yep, with you and me inside it, asleep. And he didn't only come back and look things over. He come back and went inside the house.”
Claney gasped. “Are you sure?”
“Positive certain. And now, Claney, I think my hard work is over.”
“How comes that?”
“It's the first time that ever Dreer took a back step on a trail. It's the first time that ever he took a useless chance. What was they for him to gain by coming back here?”
“Nothing except to sass us.”
“Dreer wouldn't even sass a two-year-old kid. It means that he ain't the same man that he used to be. It means that he ain't working alone. Well, Claney, you know it's a hundred times easier to catch two men that travels together than it is to catch one.”
“I don't foller you, pardner.”
“I don't mean that they's really another man with Jess Dreer. What I mean is that he's found something in this house that he came back to. And I'd even talk up and say what it is.”
“Well?”
“It's the black-haired girl, I figure.”
“And if he come back to her once, he'll come back to her ag'in. It's his nature.”
“Soft on women?”
“Never looked twice at one before, so far as I know. That's why I'm sure that this means something. Dreer has played a lone hand, but now that he's got somebody besides himself to think about, he's lost. Claney, you write this down in red and remember it. As sure as they's rain and sunshine, I'm going to get Jess Dreer, and where I get him ain't going to be far away from this house.”
“You're going to camp here and wait for him to come back?” asked Claney, smiling.
“I'm going to camp near here,” replied the sheriff from the southland, “and I'm going to wait. Time and the black-haired girl, Claney, will win for me in the end.”
And the two men parted.
It happened that at this moment Charlie Valentine and his brother Louis were standing on the veranda together and overlooking this scene.
“What beats me,” said Charlie, “is the idea of a gent like this Caswell taking a crack at Jess Dreer. Why, big Dreer would bust him in two with one hand.”
“I dunno,” replied Louis in his mild way, “they's something about Caswell. Speaking personal, I'd sort of hate to have him on my trail.”
“That's another one of your hunches,” Charlie said in good-natured banter. And they watched the two sheriffs ride side by side up the road.
They had hardly disappeared around the hill when another horseman galloped into view from the opposite direction.
“It's Tom Waite,” said Charlie Valentine after a moment.
“How d'you tell?” asked his brother.
“By the way he rides, slanting. They ain't anybody has the same seat as Tommy.”
“Well,” murmured Louis, “I'll tell you another thing. Tom Waite is bringing us bad news.”
“And how d'you tell that?”
Louis Valentine scratched his head.
“I dunno, Charlie. Look at the way he keeps his head down and the brim of his hat blowing across his eyes. Take a gent that's just riding, and he'd be riding with his head up. But Tom comes as if he was trying to get away from something behind him.”
His brother looked askance at Louis. He constantly felt his superiority as the better fighter, stronger man, sharper wit; but all of these qualities were being continually discounted by a singular power in Louis. It might have been called second sight, these odd premonitions. It often made him laughed at, ridiculed; but there was an undercurrent of respect for the superstitions of the youngest Valentine. For instance, though he was a capable broncobuster, he had been known several times to refuse positively to mount a horse considered by no means dangerous; and it had been noted, on these occasions, that the horse was exceedingly apt to develop a bad streak after Louis Valentine refused to take the saddle. Not that Louis was considered a prophet, but he was widely known as “a gent that's got hunches.”
Accordingly, Charlie looked side wise at his younger brother on this day and frowned uneasily. Indeed, the prophecy was instantly verified, for Tom Waite ran up the steps and came to a panting halt before them. He wasted no words.
“Charlie, you're going to Salt Springs tomorrow?”
“Yep. To get that saddle I won at the bucking contest last month.”
“Then lemme give you some advice. Keep away from Salt Springs tomorrow. Keep right here at home. It ain't healthy for you to go into town.”
The brothers exchanged significant glances, but Louis showed no pleasure at seeing his “hunch” come true.
“Talk sharp, Tom,” said the elder of the Valentine boys. “What's up?”
“The Normans are up,” replied Tom Waite, drawing his first easy breath after the ride and the run up the steps.
“That news ain't altogether news.”
“Not about the Normans at the ranch, but now they's another twist to things.”
“Go ahead. Are they going to mob me when I come in?”
“Some say that the Normans was thinking of that very thing, but they found out mighty quick that around Salt Springs we wouldn't stand for any crowd jumping on one man. No matter what you've done, Charlie—and between you and me they's a good many think you're too free with a gun play—but no matter what you've done, it's always been man to man, a clean break, and a fair chance all around.”
“Thanks, Tommy.”
“Oh, I'm with you, solid enough; and they's a lot more of us younger gents that's all behind you. But with some of the older men it's different. They figure that you've got a lesson coming, or something like that. The long and short of it is, Charlie, that if somebody was to jump you single-handed, they wouldn't be many men that would go out to help you.”
“Thanks again,” remarked Charlie coldly. “I don't ask for no help agin' one man, Tommy.”
At this, the young fellow shook his head.
“They's men and men,” he said, with a probably quoted wisdom. “Stack you up agin' a common kind of fighter, and you'd come off first rate. But they's some that makes a business of fighting. Even with most of them you'd have a good chance, Charlie, because you've got a good idea of the hang of a gun. You shoot fast, and you shoot straight. You got plenty of nerve, too. But they's some you wouldn't have a chance agin'. And the Normans have found a gent like that.”
“What's his name? What's the name of this pet murderer of theirs?” asked Charlie, sneering, but a little white about the lips.
“Hired murderer is the right thing to call him,” said Tom Waite. “And his name is Jud Boone!”
He paused, expectant, and the results were not such as would disappoint him. The pallor which had begun on the face of Charlie now swept completely over it. Yet he maintained a steady front while Louis Valentine, as though it were he whom the danger threatened, fairly collapsed against the railing of the veranda and stared at Tom Waite.
For the name of Jud Boone was far known and known as a man of evil. A fighter and gamester by instinct and profession, he was one of those men about whose past few know many details, but regarding whom there is a general murmur of suspicion. One death near Salt Springs was charged already to his account, but that one killing was the sort whose mention would strike a whole circle of men silent.
“Seems he's some sort of relation to the Normans, and they've looked him up. I suppose they've paid him a bunch of money. Anyway, there's gossip around the town that the plan is for Jud Boone to be somewheres around Carrol's saloon when you go in there for the saddle. And then, of course, he'll pick a fight. So the thing for you to do is to stay home, Charlie.”
The latter stood motionless. Plainly he was badly frightened, but he had not yet made up his mind. It seemed that Louis was in fear of some rash decision.
“Don't be a fool, now,” he pleaded. “Do what Tommy says!”
“I dunno,” muttered Charlie. “I know I got no chance agin' a man like Jud Boone. But—since folks expect me to be in Salt Springs tomorrow—if I stay home—”
“Folks will say you got good sense, that's all.”
“I got to see Dad about that,” replied Charlie.
He led the others into the house, and finding his father, he related to him briefly the news which Tom Waite had brought. In the distance Mrs. Valentine heard and said nothing save with her eyes.
CHAPTER 16
“First thing,” said Morgan Valentine, when the story was completed, “is this: How d'you feel about it yourself, Charlie?”
His son was disturbed and showed it.
“I dunno,” he said cautiously, and he watched his father with troubled eye. “Point is, if I don't go in, folks maybe will think I'm afraid of Jud Boone.”
“You'd be a fool if you weren't,” answered his father. “I know Jud Boone. I've seen him work. I'm afraid of him myself.”
“Then you think I'm right to stay home?” And Charlie sighed, immensely relieved.
“I leave it to you,” said his father with his usual unperturbed manner. “When it comes to life and death, every man is his own best judge.”
“If he was an ordinary kind of man,” complained Charlie, “I'd take a chance as quick as anybody. But a professional murderer—” He shuddered. “You say you're afraid of him, and I guess it ain't wrong for me to say the same thing.”
“All right, son. You stay here tomorrow, and I'll go in and get the saddle for you.”
“Dad, if you go, they'll most likely take it out on you!”
“Most likely they'd try to.”
“And you've already said that you wouldn't like to meet Jud Boone.”
“I wouldn't like to, but I'd do it.”
Silence fell on the group. Charlie Valentine moistened his colorless lips.
“I'll tell you something,” went on the father in his calm manner, which had now a deadly interest for the younger men. “One time my brother John got mixed up with a ruffian in the early days.”
He paused to collect his thoughts, and the hush upon the others became deeper; for when Morgan Valentine, once in a year, mentioned the name of his brother, it became a breathless moment.
“I forget the name of the gun fighter. He was a gent with his notches in his gun—and he was the kind that talked about 'em. Well, John crossed him. The gunman was drunk, and he was too clever to fight while he was drunk. He waited till he was all sobered up and then he sent word to John that he was waiting for him.
“I was with John when the news came.
“Well, John waited for an hour or so, thinking. Then he sat down and wrote out his will as good as any lawyer could have done. Then he climbed on his horse and went down to the town. I tried to go with him, but he wouldn't let me.
“He didn't come back that night. I waited until dark and then I follered him. When I come to town, it was full of the fight. John had met the gunman, and the gunman had beat him to the draw. He knocked John down with the first bullet through the shoulder—the left shoulder. And while he lay on the floor, he shot John again, and the bullet ripped up the flesh along his ribs. But John lay there and lifted his own gun, slow, took a good aim, and then he fired. That bullet went through the gunman's heart.”
There was a pause, but no one spoke, for it was evident from the lifted, tense face of Morgan Valentine that he would speak again.
At length: “When I see John, he was pretty badly done up. He took my hand. 'Thank Heaven it's over, Morgan,' he says to me. I says: 'John, it was a glorious thing to do. The whole town is talking about how brave you are.'
“ 'It wasn't bravery. It was fear,' says John. 'I was afraid of that fellow as if he was death. But I'm more afraid of shame than I am of death.'
“I ain't asking you to follow the example of John, Charlie. I'm simply showing you the way one man faced the same sort of thing that you've got to face.”
Charlie was white, as though the bullet of Jud Boone had already pierced him.
“All right,” he said huskily, “then I'll—”
“Don't make up your mind now,” said his father gently. “Go off and sit down by yourself and think it over. If you go into Salt Springs, you'll meet Jud Boone. If you meet him, the chances are one out of four that you'll kill him and four to one that he'll kill you. You're a young man, Charlie. You got a lot of things ahead of you. It's hard to pay that price. But keep this thing in your head, too. That if you don't meet Jud Boone, the time may come, sooner or later, when you'll have another thing to face. It may be different. And when that time comes, you may say to yourself, 'Is it worth it? Is what people may say about me worth the money that I'll have to pay to keep my name clean?' And you may remember how you kept away from Jud Boone and then lived down the shame of it. But go off by yourself and think this thing out.”
He left them, and the moment he was gone, Mrs. Valentine, staggering, ran to her oldest son.
“You ain't going to go, Charlie. Oh, tell me you ain't going to go?”
He pushed her away, almost rudely.
“You take my nerve when you talk like that,” he said. “Gimme a chance to play the man, Mother! Gimme a chance to think it over!”
He went his way, and Mrs. Valentine, after standing a moment with her hands clasped, looking after him, cast a frantic glance over Tom Waite and Louis, and then hurried from the room.
She had remembered that source of comfort which had many times aided her in her problems with advice keen and to the point even if it came out of a younger head. In a word, she went to the room of Mary Valentine, and there she found not only Mary, but her daughter Elizabeth. They had been laughing together, whispering over some small secret. They started up at the sight of the smaller woman. Mrs. Valentine hardly saw her daughter.
“Mary,” she said, “I've got to see you alone.”
And Mary took Elizabeth to the door and then faced her aunt, turning slowly and nerving herself as if for a shock. Not that there was an actual anger existing between the two, but each was from a separate world, and they always looked on one another as from a distance. Mary, now, was forcing a faint smile of interest, but Mrs. Valentine was too distressed to even pretend to disguise her emotion.
“Like as not,” she said, and her voice was softer than her words were bitter, “like as not Elizabeth has been telling you things that only her mother should know.”
“I give you my word, Aunt Maude, that if there were anything really important about it, I'd tell you myself.”
The wan smile of Aunt Maude had no mirth in it.
“It's the same with Elizabeth as it is with the boys. You come first, Mary. And you come first with—Morgan—I think.”
“Hush! Hush! What are you saying?”
“A man likes spirit. Decision. All the things that you have and that I haven't.”
“Aunt Maude!”
“It's true. You see, I've watched and understood. They come to me just to be around. But when it's a big happiness or maybe a secret or maybe a sorrow—then they go to you. As if they felt I couldn't hold a big thing.”
“I'm only a shock absorber. I simply take the shock of silly things that would bother you.”
“Ah, Mary,” said Mrs. Valentine, and she made a singular gesture of drawing imperceptible things toward her heart. “Don't you know that a mother wants to be troubled by them that she loves? You'll know someday, Mary. The treasures of a woman are the troubles that her family bring to her. It's her secret life. I've got no such life, Mary! They pass by me. They go to you!”
Mary Valentine watched the head of her aunt bow with grief. She made a little movement as though she would go to her and strive to cherish her, but the movement was checked. Between the two was a barrier which even the smiles of Mary and all her ways could not break down.
“I don't complain,” said her aunt faintly. “After all, I suppose it's the call of blood to blood. You're a Valentine—and I'm just about—nothing. I'm on the outside.
“But I haven't come to rake up old troubles. I dunno why I always say these things to you, Mary. You've been fair and square to me, honey. You've never gone about behind my back. You've never repeated things. You've never tried to make bad blood between me and the rest. And Lord knows you could of done it many's the time. They ain't a small part about you, Mary. And—and now I've come the way Elizabeth comes to you, and the way Morgan comes to you, and the way Charlie and Louis come to you. I've come to ask for your help, Mary!”
After what she had said before, there could not have been a sadder confession.
“It's about Charlie. The old trouble that started over Joe Norman. Now the Normans have hired Jud Boone, and he's going to lay for Charlie when Charlie goes into Salt Springs to get the prize saddle tomorrow.”
“Then it all comes back to me. It was for my sake that Charlie fought Joe Norman.”
“But I'm not casting that in your face. I'm only asking you what we can do, Mary.”
“Sit down. You're all of a tremble. Sit down—here—let me hold your hands. Is that better?”
“Yes. You sort of steady me, Mary.”
“I'll tell you what we must do. We must keep Charlie at home.”
“I thought of that. Everybody thought of that first thing. But—Morgan won't have it that way.”
“His own father!”
“He says it's better to die than to be shamed.”
“Ah, that sounds like him! But—I'll go and try to persuade him.”
At this, Aunt Maude winced.
“You could always do more with him than anybody else could, Mary. But this time you can't budge Morgan. Because he's following an example.”
“Whose?”
“Your father's, dear.”
The girl was silent.
“But you'll try to think of something to do, Mary? You'll try to find some way to keep Charlie from Jud Boone? Ain't there anybody among all the men you know that would help Charlie? You could ask someone—Morgan wouldn't lift his finger to get help.”
Mary Valentine sat very stiff and straight in her chair and stared fixedly at her window, as though she saw a ghost forming against the bright rectangle:
“I've thought of a thing to do,” she said at last. “It won't be easy. Maybe it won't work. But—I'll try!”
CHAPTER 17
Silence lay over the house of Morgan Valentine. No one had asked Charlie for his ultimate decision, but Louis stole down to the family that afternoon and reported that Charlie was in his room upstairs working busily over two revolvers, oiling them, cleaning them, testing their balance with nervous care.
That report was more forcible than the most violent affirmation, on the part of young Valentine, of his determination to face Jud Boone and fight him man to man. Even the hand of Morgan Valentine was unsteady as he lighted his pipe. His wife had dropped her head upon her hands with a moan; and Elizabeth cried out.
One would have thought that a death had been announced.
But as for Mary, she still turned in her mind the gambling chance which she had determined to take. It was no less than a purpose of leaving the house and going to Salt Springs to speak with Dan Carrol and through him send to the outlaw, Jess Dreer, an appeal for help.
Yet it was not easy to do this. If she stated that she wished to go to town, some one of the family would accompany her; and if she wished to see Dan Carrol, questions would certainly be asked. For the repute of Carrol was a sooty thing and contaminated all who touched him. Even if she slipped away during the day and reached Salt Springs unknown to the family, it would be impossible to see Carrol without letting half of Salt Springs know to whom she made her visit. Not that she really cared what public opinion murmured about her, but if her visit were a public matter, there was very little chance that Carrol would tell her where she could find Jess Dreer.
It was a trip that must be completed between dark and dawn, and for this she laid her plans.
One thing favored her. The family did not sit up late in the living room, for it was a gloomy matter to stare from face to face and read in each eye the same foreboding which filled one's own mind. Mrs. Valentine, close to tears, was the first to leave. Then Charlie, who had remained white-faced, sullenly defiant, apparently decided that he dare not risk the complete breakdown of his nerves. He rose, muttered his good night huskily, and hurried from the room.
The others trooped away one by one, leaving Morgan Valentine alone beside the fire. The report of Louis had made him show one touch of emotion, but neither before nor since had he appeared to be in the slightest degree concerned.
As soon as she was in her room, Mary hurried into her riding clothes before she put out the light and crept into bed. For she feared that visitors might come. And they did. First, Elizabeth. And then Mrs. Valentine came in and leaned over her. But when she heard the regular breathing, she apparently decided that the girl was asleep. She leaned and touched Mary's forehead with her lips and then stole from the room.
Mary was deeply moved, for it had been years since her aunt had showed any true affection. And when, a little after this, the house was quiet, she got up, pressed her hat on her head, and slipped out by the rear of the house. Five minutes later she was speeding down the road on her sturdy little Morgan mare, docile as a pet dog and durable as leather.
Midnight brought her to Salt Springs, with the dust of the street squirting up around the hoofs of the mare. She rode on between the rows of black, silent houses until she was close to Carrol's place. Then she swung her horse between two dwellings and came out directly in the rear of the big saloon.
The midnight of Salt Springs was the noon of Dan Carrol. His saloon burst with light and voices, and through the open windows, across the shafts of light, clouds of tobacco smoke rose, cut briefly away by the darkness.
But how could she come to Dan Carrol?
A man came to the screen door at the rear of the building and opened it. She saw the faint arc of light as he tossed his cigarette butt away.
“Halloo!” called Mary, roughening her voice. “Send Danny out to me, will you?”
“Can't you walk?” cried the man, who apparently did not recognize the voice of a woman. “Go get him yourself, son.”
She waited. A skulking figure slipped out of the darkness and hurried across the open toward the gaming house. She reined her mare across and touched his shoulder with her quirt. At that, the man leaped sidewise, very agile. He was a small fellow.
“Pardner,” said Mary, “I've got a word to say to Dan Carrol. Will you take it in to him?”
“Me?” said a harsh, shrill voice, the voice of a Chinaman. “Dan Carrol?”
“Never mind,” and she reined her horse back, for she had recognized the accent of Kong Li, her father's cook.
This was the explanation, then, of Kong's periods of sudden affluence and sudden poverty. But now the little man followed her.
“Never mind,” she repeated. “I don't need you!”
“Miss Mary,” said the Chinaman, whining his astonishment. “Miss Mary!”
She writhed in the saddle. To be recognized in full daylight would have been bad enough; but to be recognized at the door of Carrol's gaming house and saloon in the middle of night was infinitely worse.
“Listen to me, Kong Li,” she said fiercely. “I have to see Dan Carrol. I want you to see that he's brought out here, but I don't want you to tell him my name before any other man. Understand?”
“I savvy.”
“And if you ever tell anyone that I've been here—I—I'll tie you by your queue to the limb of a tree till you starve to death, Kong Li. Understand?”
“I savvy,” said Kong, and he shuddered. It was not the first time in her life that Mary had threatened him, and he considered her quite capable of anything she named.
“But,” he murmured, “Dan Carrol very bad man, Miss Mary.”
“Don't I know that? I'll take care of myself. You hurry along.”
He hesitated a moment longer, but dread of Miss Mary's tongue at length made him whirl and shuffle away toward the gaming house. At the door he paused and looked back again, but he went on, the screen door banging loudly behind him.
There followed a long pause. Her mind filled up the vacancy of Kong Li approaching the table of the gambler, touching his arm, and being cursed for a no-good chink. But eventually there was a sound of scuffling, the screen door burst violently open, and Kong Li leaped from the lighted interior into the darkness, sprawling, his arms and legs stretched out before him, and the pigtail whipped straight out behind.
Dan Carrol sprang into the doorway and poured a hurricane of abuse and profanity after his victim while Kong Li darted by, crying to Mary as he passed: “Bad man! Very bad man, Miss Mary!”
“Mr. Carrol!” called the girl, guarding her voice.
Carrol fell silent; at the very sound of the voice he had touched the hat which was never off his head. Now he stepped cautiously outside. There were a hundred men who would have welcomed a chance to shoot Carrol securely, by night.
“Who's there?”
She rode close to him.
“I suppose you know me; but my name really doesn't matter. I've come on important business, Mr. Carrol.”
Slowly he took off his hat and spun it in his hands; she could feel his astonishment even though darkness quite covered his face.
“You're Mary Valentine!”
“Hush! I'm Mary Valentine. I want you to tell me where to find Jess Dreer. Can you?”
The gambler started, drew back, and then stepped close to the horse.
“How should I know Jess Dreer?” he muttered very softly. “You mean the outlaw?”
“He said you did.”
Carrol drew in his breath with a hissing sound.
“Dreer said that?”
“He did.”
“Well—he lied. That's straight talk, and it's true. What would I be doing with Dreer, eh?”
“He's a man whom I am proud to know,” said the girl. “Does that make it any easier for you to talk?”
“Listen,” said Carrol. “The gent that knows where Jess Dreer is can take down several thousand for telling the sheriff. They's a price on him that would stock a ranch.”
“That,” said she, “is the reason why he can't trust any except men who are above money, Mr. Carrol. Will you tell me where he is?”
“Did he say I was above money?” asked the gambler curiously, after a pause.
“He didn't. But he said you could send me to him. And I infer the rest of it.”
“You infer too much. I can't do it.”
“I thought that perhaps you couldn't. So I've written out what I have to say to him. I have it here in this envelope. If I give it to you, do you think that you could get it to Jess Dreer?”
“I don't know nothing about him.”
“Of course you don't.” She extended the letter. “But maybe you'd keep it for him on the chance that he might call in someday?”
“I don't know anything about him,” repeated the gambler, “but if you ask me to keep this for you—why, I'll hang onto it.”
“Thank you, and—good night. One thing, Mr. Carrol. I haven't seen you tonight.”
“Lady, the gent that was to say that you'd seen me tonight would have to chew up his talk and swaller it ag'in. Good night, and good luck!”
And he remained standing with his hat in his hand until she was gone into the darkness with a quick patter of hoofs.
CHAPTER 18
In the days of his youth, someone in the midst of a barroom brawl had stood on Dan Carrol's nose, and the result was that the rest of his life it remained sadly crushed in the center. The nostrils flared out disagreeably from the same cause, over a wide, thin-lipped, sinister mouth and just such a jaw as brings admiration to the bull terrier. For Dan Carrol was the fighting type. Not brawny. But his body made up for flesh by bones and sinews. When he turned his head, the cords stood out on his neck. In spite of his little more than average weight, there were tales of Dan Carrol performing prodigious feats of strength.
In fact, he rarely used a gun in the brawls that often developed in his barroom, but was far more apt to trust to his naked hands. And it was known that more than one obstreperous drunkard, no matter what his size, had been lifted and swung crashing through the swinging doors of Dan's domain.
He was not a pretty man to look at. Aside from his ugly face, his shoulders sloped forward so as to give an unhealthy look to his chest, and he was remarkably bow-legged.
“When most kids was flat on their backs sucking their thumbs,” Dan used to say, “I was on my feet trying to get places. That's how it come I overstrained my legs.”
Dan's moral character was as deformed as his body. But it would require a book by itself to deal with his past; and as for the name of Dan Carrol in Salt Springs, it was an offense. However, so long as no one aired his opinion in the hearing of Dan Carrol, he was indifferent to private judgments. He was known to run the squarest game in Salt Springs and to sell the cleanest liquor; and for that reason his prosperity waxed and his purse grew fat.
As he passed through the rooms with the letter stuffed into his hip pocket, someone hailed him to rejoin the game which he had just left, but he consigned them to another table and went on. To the second story of his rambling building he climbed and came to a room in the rear with this sign in great letters upon it: “Storeroom. Keep out!”
Upon this he tapped—three short taps, a pause, and then three more.
Whereupon, after a moment's pause, but with no preliminary sound of the knob being turned, the door was opened swiftly.
There was no sign of an occupant, at first, though the storeroom was fitted up as a bedroom, and the cigarette smoke was still curling slowly from an ash tray toward the shaded lamp. But as Dan Carrol stepped in, the inhabitant, who had been standing directly behind the door, now closed it and turned to his host. It was Jess Dreer.
“Neat little trick, that,” said Dan Carrol.
“Sit down,” Jess invited.
“I ain't got a minute. I been wondering if you was getting lonely up here?”
“Me? I'm never lonely. Besides, I hear the boys soaking up the laughter and the booze downstairs, and I enjoy a jag at second hand. It's cheaper, and it don't give you no morning after.”
“That's the first economical thing I ever heard you say. Well, Jess, it's a shame you can't pry your way downstairs and take in some of the loose coin. It's floating in in oceans. I hate to take it away. They come up and pour it into my pockets.”
“I don't have to play with the crowd,” murmured Jess. “I got it down to a finer system. You take the stuff from the boys, and then I get it from you. Nothing easier or simpler, Dan.”
The face of the gambler clouded, and he cast an expressive glance at the table as though it recalled gloomy scenes to him.
“You got all the luck,” he declared, “that a man was ever born with.”
“Nope,” said Jess. “I work on a system.”
“What?” His eyes gleamed while he asked.
“I wait for a hunch and then plunge to the limit.”
The gambler leaned back with a growl of disgust.
“Well, if you're all right up here, I'll go back.”
“Go ahead. But, first, ain't you forgetting something?”
Dan Carrol squinted narrowly at his friend, for of all the men in the world he would, perhaps, have named Jess Dreer first in this capacity.
“What d'you mean?” he asked sharply.
“I mean, ain't you forgot the thing that brought you up here? Talk short. What's up?”
“A girl come here and wanted to see you, Jess.”
“She's here?” cried the big man in an indescribable tone.
“She was here.”
“Carrol, you turned her away?”
There was something so sinister in his manner, so quietly grim, that the gambler gave back a little.
“Pardner, would you have wanted me to bring her in? Where a dozen men might have seen her? Where they'd been a hundred chances for folks to start talking about her? This ain't no ladies' seminary where they can come calling, is it?”
At this, Jess Dreer wiped his forehead.
“You're right.”
“She gimme this letter for you, Jess.”
He extended the letter, and then—a rare act of delicacy—lest he should see an unwonted emotion in the face of the big man, Carrol bowed his head and left the room without another glance at his guest.
But Jess Dreer, when the door closed, stood for a long moment with the letter unopened. At length, nervously, he ripped the envelope open and shook out the folded paper. He read:
DEAR JESS DREER: I thought at the time that it was not a farewell, but I never dreamed that I would have to remember your offer. And now I have to come to you for help. I have thought and thought, but there is really nobody else. Others might be willing to try, but you are the only one who could accomplish it.
It is an ugly thing out of my past. I hurt the feelings of young Joe Norman; and he said something indiscreet about me, and my cousin, Charlie Valentine, shot him—only a slight wound. The Normans were furious. They had no one to put up against Charlie, so they hunted until they found a professional fighter—the low cowards!—and that man is the notorious Jud Boone. Charlie has to go to Salt Springs tomorrow for a saddle he won in the bucking contest, and the plan as we hear it is for Jud Boone to meet him and bring on a fight.
What can I do? You see that Charlie is really in grave danger for my sake, for it all began with me. If I were a man—but I'm not a man, and I have to turn to the bravest and strongest man I know, and appeal to Jess Dreer for help.
Can you stop Jud Boone before he murders Charlie?
MARY VALENTINE.
CHAPTER 19
The whole theory of Dreer's strategy in remaining in Salt Springs was the theory of the rabbit which cowers in a hole while the hunters sweep on along the probable trail. But if the rabbit raises its head before the hunt has driven by, its trick is worse than useless—it is suicidal. And if Jess Dreer, while half a dozen headhunters were scouring distant mountains around Salt Springs in pursuit of him, should appear in the center of danger he would be fully in the role of the silly rabbit.
Yet he was called upon to act, and from the first moment of that call he had not the slightest hesitancy. The only question was: how he should strike at Jud Boone.
One possibility presented itself at once. Aside from the people on the Valentine ranch, and they would not be apt to be in Salt Springs, there was only one man who was apt to recognize him, and that was the sheriff of the southland—Caswell. Suppose, therefore, that he boldly walked into the bar of Carrol's saloon at the time when Charlie Valentine arrived for the saddle, and if matters reached a crisis, stepped between Charlie and danger. The repute of Jud Boone had reached his ears even in the distant south, yet he was perfectly willing to take a chance against the bad man. The thing that troubled him was that if he entered into a shooting fracas with Boone, he would certainly be detained for an inquiry after the affair was over. And in that case Caswell or someone else was certain to recognize him.
It was suicidal, therefore, to face Boone in the saloon. It remained to stop him even before he entered the saloon. And that was the plan of the outlaw.
The first thing he had done when he took refuge with Carrol was to secure from the gambler a rudely sketched map of Salt Springs, the trails around it and the location, and the alleys branching from the main street, as well as the position of each house and the name of the owner—a task far from complicated. To this plan he now had reference, and having located his goal, he left his room.
It was not difficult to escape from Carrol's gambling house without attracting attention. In the first place, the men within the building were occupied with interesting affairs of their own. In the second place, there was an easy “back door” for Jess Dreer. He had only to slip from his window out onto the broad, shelving roof; along this he worked to the lowest corner over the rear of the house, and having made sure that no one was in sight, he dropped noiselessly to the ground and remained where he fell, bunched and moveless, while he examined again everything around him.
No living thing moved within range of his eye. Behind him, the gaming house still bustled softly with humming voices and the occasional clink of glasses; but all the rest of Salt Springs was gathered in a black sleep.
So he went boldly down the main street until, coming opposite the house he wanted, he walked to the front door of it and knocked. Luckily, there was someone still up even at this hour, for a light flickered yellow in an upper window.
In answer to the knock, after a moment, a window was flung up noisily. Jess Dreer stepped back from the flat face of the shack, for in spite of its two stories there was no sign of a veranda, and he could look straight up to the second level of the building. There he saw that the window had been opened in the lighted room but the occupant was not standing in view. He remained to one side, and his bulky shadow wavered across the curtain above him.
“Who's there?” he called in a rather guarded voice.
“A friend with news.”
“Who d'you want to see?”
Dreer made swift calculations and then took his chance.
“Why, I want to see you, Jud.”
A silence. He could not tell how that announcement was taken, and yet by the change in the shadow he had no doubt that the other was striving to reconnoiter the midnight visitor and at the same time remain himself in covert. Law-abiding citizens were not apt to show such remarkable discretion, and Dreer's belief that his guess was right was growing stronger when the voice went on: “Well, and who are you that wants to see me?”
“Look down,” said Jess, knowing perfectly that the other could not distinguish his face by the starlight. “Look down and you'll recognize me, Jud.”
“I ain't a bat. How can I see in the dark? What's your name?”
“Don't you even know my voice?” said Jess in aggrieved tones. “Then lemme come up and surprise you, Jud.”
The other did not reply for a moment. Then he reached a decision.
“Come tomorrow. Too late now. Come tomorrow.”
“Whist!” Jess Dreer whispered. He stepped closer to the wall and cupped his hands about his whisper: “Tomorrow'll be too late, Jud!”
At this, the shadow swerved on the curtain; then a whisper answered.
“Come on up, pardner. The front door's open. This end of the hall—door on the right!”
So Jess Dreer entered the house and went up hurriedly over the uncarpeted stairs that creaked at every step, and down the hall until he tapped at the designated door.
“Come in,” said the other.
And Jess, entering, found on the other side of the room a blocky fellow, prematurely bald, perhaps thirty-five years old, with the small, chunky hands and the little feet which often denote a man of agility. He stood beyond a little deal table, with his hands resting lightly on his hips and an expression of face and attitude which betokened the utmost readiness for action.
All of these things Jess Dreer noted with a familiar eye, and while he closed the door without turning away from the stranger, he allowed a broad grin to spread over his face. The hands of Jud Boone slipped a little farther down his thighs.
“A fake, eh?” he said grimly.
“It's the first time, Jud, that I've ever been called a fake.”
“And who the devil might you be?”
“My name is something that I handle real tender. As a matter of fact, of late years every time I have to mention my name, I most generally have got to mention my gun at the same time. You know how it is?”
This amiability seemed by no means to the liking of Jud Boone. He studied his man from beneath a deepening frown, and by the twitching of his lips it was easy to tell that he was of two minds whether to pitch the stranger headlong through the door or let him continue to talk. Perhaps it was the width of the shoulders of Jess that discouraged the first notion.
“I don't know nothing,” averred Jud Boone. “But I'd like to know what you want out of me.”
“Talk,” said Jess, helping himself to a chair by hooking a foot under it and swinging it dexterously behind him. “Talk is my prime reason for coming here, Jud.”
“You know me, eh?”
“I never seen you before,” said Jess, smiling again.
The face of the other grew tense for an instant. He made half a step sidewise toward the window, and then seemed to realize that he could not look out of it without relinquishing his watch upon his visitor.
“I ain't got any friends with me,” said Jess. “If that's what's bothering you. I ain't got the sheriff down below waiting for me to bring you out.”
“And what's any sheriff got to do with me, eh?”
“I leave that to you,” said Jess with a careless gesture. But the gesture was with his left hand; the right remained resting easily upon his thigh. All of which Jud Boone took into careful consideration.
“Come short with me, stranger,” he said. “What you want? I'm a tolerable peevish man, and I need sleep just now.”
“I'm agreeable. What I want is a promise.”
Jud Boone gasped.
“If I had my pick between a million and a nerve like yours,” he declared with wondering admiration, “I dunno which I'd take. You want a promise out of me?”
“Gentleman's agreement. I want you to keep your hands off Charlie Valentine when he comes in tomorrow.”
“They's been a lot of fool talk floating around this town,” declared the gunman, “about what I figure on with Charlie Valentine. I ain't never seen him, and I don't never want to. But first I want to know what is the point you knife in at?”
“Jud, I'll tell you. I'll double the ante you got from the Normans. I'll give you a thousand bucks in cold cash if you just fade out of Salt Springs and make no noise.”
In response, the latter merely stared with narrowed eyes.
“I see,” nodded Jess. “You ain't so cheap as I figured. What's your price?”
“I dunno what you mean,” declared Jud Boone, “but if I did know, I reckon I'd have to bust you in two, pardner, and throw the loose ends out the window.”
“If that's the way of it,” and Jess smiled, “then maybe you know enough. Think again, Jud. What's your price?”
“I'll tell you the price of a whole hide for you,” said the gunfighter, “and that's to get up and back out of this joint mighty quick. I'm tired of your funny chatter, friend.”
“My money don't talk?”
“It don't.”
“My, my. Now you're getting real cross. But listen to reason. You get hired for one job—to bump off Valentine. But now it's a different job. You got two men on your hands.”
“Meaning you're the other?”
“Meaning just that.”
“And d'you think that'd stop me, pardner?”
“That's what I think.” He lowered his voice to the volume of a whisper: “I'm Dreer, Jud.”
CHAPTER 20
It caused an astonishing change in the face of the Other. Dreer saw a desperate thought balancing in the eyes of Boone, but then the glitter died away.
It was a slow death, and for a time either fought the other with his eyes. Just as two men try grips until the hand of one weakens—crumbles. In such a manner the nerve of Jud Boone, keyed up to the point of fighting, broke and weakened. In the first moment, had Jess Dreer made the slightest motion toward a weapon, gun play would have resulted. And Dreer knew it perfectly well. His hands did not stir, but the faint sneer was stamped upon his face, and his eyes never wavered until the mouth of Jud Boone sagged open a little and his glance grew dull.
“You're Dreer?” he said huskily.
“I'm Dreer.”
Jud Boone raised an uncertain hand and wiped his dry lips. Then he shrugged his shoulders and managed to chuckle.
“I might of known you,” he said with an attempt at cheeriness. “As a matter of fact, I've heard old Tom Le Sand talk a pile about you. Put her there!”
He crossed the room with a swagger and extended a hand which Dreer instantly took. But on the part of Boone it was unconditional surrender, and both men knew it. Just as some promising prize fighter, who would beat an ordinary man to a pulp, is suddenly frozen to helplessness when he is placed in the ring with a champion in his class, so Boone collapsed under the eye of his companion. And he hated Dreer for his superiority.
“What I don't figure,” he said, “is why you didn't tell me your name the minute you come in?”
“I knew I could trust you, Jud,” the other lied smoothly, “but I've sort of formed a habit of keeping my name in the dark. Mostly, it don't do no good but a lot of harm. You know how it is?”
“Sure, sure. Have a drink?”
“I'm keeping clear of the booze. Thanks.”
Jud Boone flushed and then sat down in turn. During the rest of the talk his eyes were mostly lowered, only flashing up for instants at the face of Dreer when the latter spoke.
“Now we'll talk turkey. Let's go back to the matter of the coin, Jud. I know how it is. A gent will get in a hole so that he needs a bit of coin, and—”
“Money ain't got nothing to do with it,” cried Jud Boone. He writhed in his chair. “I'll tell you the straight of it. I'm busting loose from the old game, Dreer. You know me. You know I ain't been any little tin angel. But you don't have anything on me—nothing cold. They ain't a man living that could put me behind the bars!”
How many of the dead could have given that evidence, was the thought of Jess Dreer.
“And now I've found some blood kin of mine. These Normans. They want me to settle down with 'em. They need me. And if I'm to go straight, I need them. It ain't easy to go straight. A gent's past is apt to come up and turn him wrong any time. Besides—”
He choked.
“They's a girl, Jud?” suggested Jess Dreer with singular emotion;
“Maybe,” admitted the other, flushing. “Here's my point: This Charlie Valentine is a bad one. He's got the makings of a gunman. He'd ought to be stopped before he gets going real good. You see?”
He was arguing desperately; and Jess Dreer sat back with a vague pity beginning to work in his heart—pity and contempt. This hardened rascal to talk of stopping the career of a gun fighter! But he saw that there was a grain of sincerity buried in the talk of Jud Boone. The man meant it. He wanted to go straight, to break away from his past. The whole story came out as he talked.
He had been passing through that section of the country. He had stopped in at the house of Joel Norman, a distant cousin. He had fallen desperately in love with Joel's daughter May. The girl had liked him, she had shown it, and he had tried to play the game straight by going to Joel and asking his consent to the marriage. But Joel put him away with horror.
And Jud Boone left the country with hatred for his whole clan in his heart. Then they sent after him, and Joel put up the proposition to him. He was to right the affair of Valentine and avenge the shooting of Joe Norman. That done, no cash would change hands but Jud—if May was still willing—could marry her and settle down on a piece of land which Joel would stock for him. His past would be forgotten. The family power of the Normans would be used to the utmost to restore Jud's standing as a law-abiding citizen.
Not that this tale flowed smoothly from the lips of Jud. It came brokenly. Illuminating phrases told whole episodes in a second.
“That's how I'm fixed,” he concluded. “I don't aim to kill Valentine, I just want to—”
“Wait a minute,” said Jess Dreer. “If Charlie was a common cowhand, you wouldn't need to kill him. You could drill him through an arm, or a leg, and let him go. But he ain't that kind. He's a fast boy, Jud, and you know what that means just as well as I know it. If you meet him, you'll have to shoot to kill. So would I, if I met him. Just the same as we'd have to shoot to kill if we got tangled up with each other.”
Once more Jud Boone met the eye of Dreer and quailed.
“Put it short,” he said at length. “How far'll you go for this Valentine?”
“To the limit.”
“They must of paid you high,” said Jud bitterly. “They's no other way out?”
“They ain't a single way. We got to give way, one off us, Jud. And that one ain't going to be me!”
A gray color invaded the face of Jud Boone. He rose slowly from his chair with his arms hanging stiffly at his sides.
“Dreer, I can't step out. I've give my word. I—I'd rather go to hell than to face her—after running out on my promise.”
He swayed himself a little back and forth and set his teeth. With every scruple of energy in his soul and body he was striving to call up the fighting passion, but the result was only a dull glare, and the mouth of the gun fighter was twitching loosely.
“If you're going to stop me, Dreer, you got to stop me now!”
The sneer deepened on the thin lips of Dreer.
“You poor fool,” he said contemptuously. “Look down at your hand! A Chinaman could beat you to your gun, Boone, and shoot you full of holes.”
As one fascinated by a superior power, Boone looked down, saw the quaking fingers of his hands, and dropped back in his chair. His face was buried and he groaned. Jess Dreer walked to him and touched the trembling, massive shoulders. The gun fighter dared not look up.
“Listen to me. Jud, I'm sorry for you. I ain't your confessor, but I tell you I've heard some awful things about you. About what you done to your pardner that found that claim for you back of Angelville. About a pile of other things I've heard, too. But I'll say now that I don't believe them.
“I'm going to do my part by you. How do I know that this Charlie Valentine is enough of a man to be worth all this trouble and pain saving? Maybe in a pinch he'd show yeller. I've seen it done. He's done nothing but clean up on a bunch of kids. How'd he act facing a real fighting gent like you? That's the question! Well, Jud, we'll try him out.
“You go to that saloon tomorrow and you hang around until Charlie Valentine comes in. Then give him a try. Walk up to him and see if he's got the nerve to meet you. Laugh at him, mock him, tell him what you're going to do in the line of filling him full of lead, and when you're done with that, just tell him to get out of the saloon; and then stand still and look him in the eye.
“They ain't one chance in ten that he'll come through. Most likely he'll try to grin and then back out. And if he does that, you're through. You've done your part better than the Normans could of asked, because you'll have shamed the boy.
“Aye, it would be worse than shooting him, in a way. But I'll stand by and give you the chance. And I tell you straight it costs me more'n you guess to do it. But you go ahead. Try his nerve.
“But if he don't buckle and quit—if he don't walk out of the saloon—if he stands ready for a fight—then, Jud, you won't be fighting him. You'll be fighting me. Because I'll be standing by, and the minute the test comes, I'm going to call your name out, and you and me'll finish what you and him begun.”
“D'you mean it?” cried Jud Boone, leaping to his feet, exultant.
“I mean it.”
“But how can you stand around in Carrol's place? What if you're seen?”
“I won't be seen, but I'll be seeing.”
“Then, pardner, you'll see this Charlie Valentine crumple up like wet paper when I get my eye on him. And—I know how to work it!”
His face went savage. Indeed, he had had a practical demonstration that night of the power which one eye may exert upon another.
“They's one thing more,” said Jess Dreer slowly. “You know my name. You know I'm wanted. If you was to spread the news around that I was in town, it might be kind of bad for me. I'll leave it to your honor, Jud.”
“Gimme your hand,” cried Jud. “You've met me halfway, and you can trust me to go square with you, pardner!”
“S'long, then.”
And the outlaw backed to the door, waved his hand, and was gone.
CHAPTER 21
But the moment he was alone, shame threw Jud Boone into a perfect frenzy of rage and self-hatred. He ran to the door with the revolver naked in his hand, as if even now he would call back Dreer and face him. But he heard the door close downstairs and he hurried back to the window. Across the street below him the tall figure was passing, and he raised his weapon for a chance shot, balanced it a moment—and then dropped it into the holster with a groan. He sank into a chair, grinding his knuckles into his forehead, then leaped up as though under a spur and paced the room. But the thought of Jess Dreer followed him like a ghost, and like a ghost kept the calm eye upon him.
At length he made up his mind. It was a shameful thing, perhaps, to betray the word which he had pledged to Jess Dreer, but to Jud Boone this was a matter of life and death; and where he was vitally concerned, he had never been in the habit of consulting the requirements of honor.
He went straight to the bedroom of his host, Sol Norman, and slipped in without knocking at the door. He found the lamp on the table by dint of fumbling and lighted it, looking up to find Sol Norman rising in bed on one elbow and blinking rapidly at the light. Sol Norman was prodigiously long of nose and chin and was considered the saddest-faced man on the ranges. His face was now even longer than usual while he gaped at the gun fighter.
“The game's off,” declared Jud, frowning at the other.
“What game?”
“Me and Charlie Valentine. I'm through.”
At this, Sol Norman swung out of bed and plunged his bony legs into trousers. Sol was preeminently a man of action. Half a minute later he was strapping on a gun, and all these vital seconds he had not asked a single question.
“Now,” he said, catching up his hat, “what's wrong?”
“I took on one man, not two,” declared the gunman sullenly. “I took on Charlie Valentine for you folks. You all figured that Charlie was too fast with his gun for any of you to tackle, and I was willing to have a try at him. But the new man—”
“What new man?”
“Jess Dreer.”
There was a foul oath from Sol Norman.
“What's he got to do with it?”
“This: That if I jump Charlie, Dreer will jump me.”
“Two to one, eh? Don't worry, Jud. That's just what we want. If we can get this down to mob action, everything is dead easy. We got the numbers.”
Jud Boone flushed.
“It ain't the numbers, Sol. He ain't going to work with Charlie. He'll work by himself.”
“Then you'll send him the same way you send Charlie Valentine, Jud, and you'll collect the price for him. Not a bad day's work, eh?”
He made his voice hearty as he said this, but Jud failed to show enthusiasm. He flushed as he approached the shameful truth.
“Sol, don't you know nothing about Jess Dreer?”
“Well?”
“He's the fastest man with a gun that ever sunk a spur into a hoss, Sol. Why, it was him that killed 'Salty' Moore—and—I've seen Salty work!”
He had turned gray while he recalled Salty, and now Sol Norman nodded slowly; he understood.
“But they's one way around it. We'll keep Dreer from coming anywheres near Carrol's saloon. He's an outlaw. Nobody don't need to wait for an invitation before they plug Dreer. We'll pass the word around. We'll get all our boys out with something on the hip.”
Jud Boone mopped his forehead.
“It's a rotten job,” he muttered. “I don't feel no ways right about it. Keep him away if you can. But—somehow I figure he'll get through. He'll be somewheres near watching when I face Charlie Valentine. But—”
“Have a drink,” urged Sol, studying the face of the fighter with his little, shrewd eyes. “Have a drink. Then you tumble into bed and have a snooze. I'm going to make the rounds and get the boys together. They'd be on hand, anyway; I'm going to make sure of having them here early. But what does this Dreer look like? I've never seen him; none of the rest of the boys have.”
“He's tall—big shoulders, narrow waist, long arms—like a gorilla. He ain't very good to look at. Kind of lean in the face. Got a straight-looking eye.” He shuddered slightly as he remembered that eye. He concluded: “You just tell the boys what I've told you. And when they see Jess Dreer—they'll know him well enough.”
He stepped closer and clutched the arms of Sol with his pudgy hands.
“Sol, you got to keep him away!”
And he turned to the whisky bottle.
Sol Norman left the room with three huge strides, went down the stairs with as many leaps, and burst into the night on his errand; and Jud Boone, turning the whisky glass nervously, was comforted by the beat of hoofs that swept down the street.
There was no sleep for Jud that night. Most of the time he spent in recalling the most minute details of his interview with Dreer. And then he focused the eye of the memory on the personal appearance of the outlaw—and most of all he dwelt upon the long, capable, deft ringers of the man. In those fingers a revolver would become a living thing, he felt.
In the meantime, before dawn was well up in the sky the first arrivals appeared at the house of Sol Norman, for this was the rallying place for the clan. And their coming, also, cheered Jud Boone, He could hear the front door slamming more and more frequently and their noisy stamping through the lower hall to the kitchen.
When he went down, they gave him a noisy reception. He was their champion, and they treated him like a king. Eagerly, to the circle of attentive faces, Jud described the outlaw, and the necessity of keeping him away from the saloon. They were to shoot at sight, ask their questions later, for if Dreer ever got the drop on them or even a fair warning of his danger, he would probably escape through a thousand of them. Jud was willing to exaggerate the prowess of Dreer. It made his fear of the outlaw less cowardly, and more like a man's dread of any power in nature. Jess Dreer became, under his painting, a cyclone against which one man or even two would be foolish to stand. And the result of the speech was that every man of the Norman clan looked to his weapons and then went out prepared for desperate battle.
By the time it was full day they had already laid their preparations and their plans of battle. And by the time it was full day Dan Carrol went up to the room of Dreer.
The big man, like Jud Boone, had not slept during the small remainder of the night, and at a signal from the gambler he went to the window.
“Look yonder.”
“Well?” asked Jess Dreer.
“What d'you see?”
“A bald old boy scratching his head.”
“That bald old boy is Tom Norman—the old man himself.”
He led the way to another window.
“What d'you see?”
“Why, the same thing you do. Three gents sitting on a log playing dice.”
“Them three are Walter Norman and his two cousins, Garry and Wally. Now, Jess, d'you begin to do a little thinking?”
“I begin to think that they's a considerable heap of Normans in this town. Anything else I'd ought to think?”
“Why d'you think they're there?”
“Why, they're going to hang around and wait for the fight to come off. They're waiting to see Jud Boone kill Charlie Valentine. Wouldn't take much brains to figure that out.”
“Don't it strike you that they're a wee mite early?”
“They don't want to get caught in the rush. Go on, Danny, and tell me what it all means—if it does mean anything queer.”
“Kind of queer, pardner. Them gents ain't the only ones. They's others all around the saloon. They're sitting on front porches. They're loafing around in the alleys. They's a couple of 'em down in the barroom now. Not talking much. Just standing and sipping their drink like they didn't like it, and looking, looking, looking. Jess, they're out there to keep you from getting to the saloon!”
It made the outlaw whirl on him.
“What the devil do they mean by that?”
“They's a whisper going the rounds that you intend to show up when it comes to the pinch between Jud and Charlie Valentine, you're going to step in and take a crack at Jud. They ain't anything in it, Jess, is there?”
The tall man was stunned, but he gradually recovered.
“It's Boone,” he said huskily. “The skunk has started talking. He gave me his word. Danny, I could of killed the hound dog and got away clean without nobody knowing I was ever near him. And now he's double-crossed me!”
“He told what?” gasped Carrol. “D'you mean to say that you were going to step in between Boone and young Valentine?”
“I was—and I am.”
“Jess, you're hanging yourself!”
“I'd only be hurrying up something that's sure to happen sooner or later. But—I still got one chance.”
“What's that?”
“If I can get back to my room after the fracas—”
“No good, Jess. They'll search every inch of the house.”
“That's right.” He fell silent. “They's only one chance, then. If I have to make a play agin' Jud Boone with all this gang around, I'm done. But if Jud bluffs down Charlie—why, then my neck's saved.”
“But what'll I do? Where can I help, Jess?”
“Nothing you can do. These here things, Danny, just up and happens.”
CHAPTER 22
Public opinion in Salt Springs was strictly neutral. On the one hand it was felt that Charlie Valentine had overstepped the bounds within which a peaceful man should walk by his various shooting scrapes. On the other hand there were not many who entirely approved of the Normans. They were a clannish tribe. They carried into the mountain desert the spirit with which they had lived in the Kentucky back hills. And the spirit of the clan is not wanted west of the Rockies in the large spaces where a man's malice should dissolve before he had spread it like a poison into the blood of his relations. Therefore, when Salt Springs found out that if the toes of one Norman were stepped upon, the fists of fifty Normans avenged the hurt, the townsmen put their heads together, marveled at this new spirit, and then began to frown. The Westerner does not make up his mind suddenly. He really is more conservative than the most hidebound New Englander. He is taught from his childhood to look on the better side of a man, and if the man has not a better side, then to avoid him altogether. The reason is simple. It is dangerous to disapprove of a man who wears a gun; it is far better to keep away from him, and above all, it is best to say nothing about him lest tidings of what you have said be brought to his ear.
Accordingly, Salt Springs saw the Normans, disapproved of them, and then waited in silence for something to happen. But on this day, when the Normans gathered in the streets of the town, every man armed, every man silently ugly, it was felt that they had overstepped the bounds of decorum. Salt Springs, in a word, disapproved, and hitched at its gun belt. And if the opposite party had not been a young mischief-maker himself, there was every probability that the neutrals would have risen en masse and run the Normans out of the town.
But as it was, it was felt that this private war had best run its own course, though many public-spirited men shook their heads with the knowledge that, if Charlie Valentine fell, it would be merely the beginning of constant warfare—for Morgan Valentine himself would then take up arms, and when Morgan Valentine stirred, society was shaken to the roots. As for the other rumor—that Jess Dreer was mixed up in this matter and was on the side of the Valentines, most people were inclined to disbelieve it. Besides, Dreer was to most of them a semi-mythical spirit. He came from the southland. His crimes were not of their region. And the man himself was discounted. Compared with Jud Boone, a known force, he was nothing.
But there was something so set and staged about this affair that Salt Springs began to grow excited before the morning was old. It drifted more and more thickly toward Danny Carrol's saloon, where the meeting was to take place. And all eyes, turning upon Jud Boone, who sat at a table in the corner, would then flick over to the prize saddle, which now lay at the other end of the bar waiting for Charlie Valentine.
Obviously, no one could look at the saddle and then at Jud Boone without picturing the gun fight which was coming.
But where was Jess Dreer? He had not been seen. The loose-flung circle of the Normans had espied no one even distantly resembling the descriptions of the outlaw. Of course, no one dreamed of looking into the saloon. And in the saloon, least of all, would they have looked into the old closet at one end of the room. But here stood Jess Dreer, with the door ajar a fraction of an inch. From this he could not see the barroom, but he could look down the long mirror behind the bar, and in this mirror he saw perfectly at second hand all that happened. He saw the crowd filter through the door, a silent crowd, lining up before the bar, and then breaking swiftly into groups that gathered along the wall—always hurrying across the line between the chair of Jud Boone and the door, as if at any moment Charlie Valentine might appear in this doorway and the guns be drawn.
Jud Boone drank with a deep relish of the excitement which his presence roused. The number of the mustered Normans soothed his nerves. And if Jess Dreer were kept away from the saloon, this day his triumph would never be threatened.
There was a sudden flurry around the door of the saloon. Everyone stood up—except Jud Boone.
Then the whisper passed down the room, rose to a murmur, to a deep voice: “Charlie Valentine is riding down the street—and he's coming alone!”
Alone, and into the very teeth of all this savage clan of Normans!
All at once the men of Salt Springs began to remember that Charlie Valentine was young, handsome, of good family. That in his quarrels he had never taken an unfair advantage; that he had never actually killed. And then they looked from the open doorway to the face of Jud Boone, killer. The contrast was perfect.
Not even Valentine's brother—not even his father had come with the boy. It was as though the whole family trusted everything to the sense of fair play in Salt Springs. And that was the reason for the deep, stern hum that went about the saloon. Sheriff Claney, of course, was not there. His habit was to attend such affairs after and not before.
But Steve Harrison made himself spokesman when he went up to Gus Norman.
“Look here, Gus,” he said, “they ain't any mystery about why you got all your men out here today. But you take my advice. Stay clear of trouble. Don't start no mob action. It ain't popular around these parts. And write this down in red—Charlie Valentine is going to get a square deal!”
And as he stepped back, once more the murmur passed up and down the barroom approving.
It was possible for Jess Dreer, in the closet, to watch the approach of Charlie Valentine down the street. Distant voices were calling from the outdoors, small at first and then growing in volume. Were they murmurs of admiration? Of sympathy?
Jud Boone, at his table, finished his drink, and then leaned back in his chair. It was a careless attitude, but the hand which hung by the gunman's side was clenched until the skin whitened across the knuckles. Jess Dreer saw all this in the mirror.
