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Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 57 | With his head cleared by sleep, his muscles and nerves relaxed, Andrew began to plan his escape with more calm deliberation than before.
The first goal was the big blue cloud on the northern horizon—a good week's journey ahead of him—the Little Canover Mountains. Among the foothills lay the cordon of small towns which it would be his chief difficulty to pass. For, if the printed notices describing him were circulated among them, the countryside would be up in arms, prepared to intercept his flight. Otherwise, there would be nothing but telephoned and telegraphed descriptions of him, which, at best, could only come to the ears of a few, and these few would be necessarily put out by the slightest difference between him and the description. Such a vital difference, for instance, as the fact that he now rode a chestnut, while the instructions called for a man on a pinto.
Moreover, it was by no means certain that Hal Dozier, great trailer though he was, would know that the fugitive was making for the northern mountains. With all these things in mind, in spite of the pessimism of Henry Allister, Andrew felt that he had far more than a fighting chance to break out of the mountain desert and into the comparative safety of the crowded country beyond.
He made one mistake in the beginning. He pushed the chestnut too hard the first and second days, so that on the third day he was forced to give the gelding his head and go at a jarring trot most of the day. On the fourth and fifth days, however, he had the reward for his caution. The chestnut's ribs were beginning to show painfully, but he kept doggedly at his work with no sign of faltering. The sixth day brought Andrew Lanning in close view of the lower hills. And on the seventh day he put his fortune boldly to the touch and jogged into the first little town before him. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 58 | It was just after the hot hour of the afternoon. The shadows from the hills to the west were beginning to drop across the village; people who had kept to their houses during the early afternoon now appeared on their porches. Small boys and girls, returning from school, were beginning to play. Their mothers were at the open doors exchanging shouted pieces of news and greetings, and Andrew picked his way with care along the street. It was a town flung down in the throat of a ravine without care or pattern. There was not even one street, but rather a collection of straggling paths which met about a sort of open square, on the sides of which were the stores and the inevitable saloons and hotel.
But the narrow path along which Andrew rode was a gantlet to him. For all he knew, the placards might be already out, one of the least of those he passed might have recognized him. He noticed that one or two women, in their front door, stopped in the midst of a word to watch him curiously. It seemed to Andrew that a buzz of comment and warning preceded him and closed behind him. He felt sure that the children stood and gaped at him from behind, but he dared not turn in his saddle to look back.
And he kept on, reining in the gelding, and probing every face with one swift, resistless glance that went to the heart. He found himself literally taking the brains and hearts of men into the palm of his hand and weighing them. Yonder old man, so quiet, with the bony fingers clasped around the bowl of his corncob, sitting under the awning by the watering trough—that would be an ill man to cross in a pinch—that hand would be steady as a rock on the barrel of a gun. But the big, square man with the big, square face who talked so loudly on the porch of yonder store—there was a bag of wind that could be punctured by one threat and turned into a figure of tallow by the sight of a gun.
Andrew went on with his lightning summary of the things he passed. But when he came to the main square, the heart of the town, it was quite empty. He went across to the hotel, tied the gelding at the rack, and sat down on the veranda. He wanted with all his might to go inside, to get a room, to be alone and away from this battery of searching eyes. But he dared not. He must mingle with these people and learn what they knew. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 59 | He went in and sought the bar. It should be there, if anywhere, the poster with the announcement of Andrew Lanning's outlawry and the picture of him. What picture would they take? The old snapshot of the year before, which Jasper had taken? No doubt that would be the one. But much as he yearned to do so, he dared not search the wall. He stood up to the bar and faced the bartender. The latter favored him with one searching glance, and then pushed across the whisky bottle.
"Do you know me?" asked Andrew with surprise. And then he could have cursed his careless tongue.
"I know you need a drink," said the bartender, looking at Andrew again. Suddenly he grinned. "When a man's been dry that long he gets a hungry look around the eyes that I know. Hit her hard, boy."
Andrew brimmed his glass and tossed off the drink. And to his astonishment there was none of the shocking effect of his first drink of whisky. It was like a drop of water tossed on a huge blotter. To his tired nerves the alcohol was a mere nothing. Besides, he dared not let it affect him. He filled a second glass, pushing across the bar one of the gold pieces of Henry Allister. Then, turning casually, he glanced along the wall. There were other notices up—many written ones—but not a single face looked back at him. All at once he grew weak with relief. But in the meantime he must talk to this fellow.
"What's the news?"
"What kind of news?"
"Any kind. I've been talkin' more to coyotes than to men for a long spell."
Should he have said that? Was not that a suspicious speech? Did it not expose him utterly?
"Nothin' to talk about here much more excitin' than a coyote's yap. Not a damn thing. Which way you come from?"
"South. The last I heard of excitin' news was this stuff about Lanning, the outlaw."
It was out, and he was glad of it. He had taken the bull by the horns.
"Lanning? Lanning? Never heard of him. Oh, yes, the gent that bumped off Bill Dozier. Between you and me, they won't be any sobbin' for that. Bill had it comin'. But they've outlawed Lanning, have they?"
"That's what I hear."
But sweet beyond words had been this speech from the bartender. They had barely heard of Andrew Lanning in this town; they did not even know that he was outlawed. Andrew felt hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat. Now for one long sleep; then he would make the ride across the mountains and into safety. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 60 | He went out of the barroom, put the gelding away in the stables behind the hotel, and got a room. In ten minutes, pausing only to tear the boots from his feet, he was sound asleep under the very gates of freedom.
And while he slept the gates were closing and barring the way. If he had wakened even an hour sooner, all would have been well and, though he might have dusted the skirts of danger, they could never have blocked his way. But, with seven days of exhausting travel behind him, he slept like one drugged, the clock around and more. It was morning, mid-morning, when he wakened.
Even then he was too late, but he wasted priceless minutes eating his breakfast, for it was delightful beyond words to have food served to him which he had not cooked with his own hands. And so, sauntering out onto the veranda of the hotel, he saw a compact crowd on the other side of the square and the crowd focused on a man who was tacking up a sign. Andrew, still sauntering, joined the crowd, and looking over their heads, he found his own face staring back at him; and, under the picture of that lean, serious face, in huge black type, five thousand dollars reward for the capture, dead or alive—
The rest of the notice blurred before his eyes.
Some one was speaking. "You made a quick trip, Mr. Dozier, and I expect if you send word up to Hallowell in the mountains they can—"
So Hal Dozier had brought the notices himself.
Andrew, in that moment, became perfectly calm. He went back to the hotel, and, resting one elbow on the desk, he looked calmly into the face of the clerk and the proprietor. Instantly he saw that the men did not suspect—as yet.
"I hear Mr. Dozier's here?" he asked.
"Room seventeen," said the clerk. "Hold on. He's out in the square now."
"'S all right. I'll wait in his room." He went to room seventeen. The door was unlocked. And drawing a chair into the farthest corner, Andrew sat down, rolled a cigarette, drew his revolver, and waited.
He waited an eternity; in actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed a babble of questions as the men struggled for the honor of a word from the great man. Perhaps he was coming to his room to form the posse and issue general instructions for the chase. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 61 | The door opened. Dozier entered, jerked his head squarely to one side, and found himself gazing into the muzzle of a revolver. The astonishment and the swift hardening of his face had begun and ended in a fraction of a second.
"It's you, eh?" he said, still holding the door.
"Right," said Andrew. "I'm here for a little chat about this Lanning you're after."
Hal Dozier paused another heartbreaking second, then he saw that caution was the better way. "I'll have to shut you out for a minute or two, boys. Go down to the bar and have a few on me." He turned, laughing and waving to them. Then the door closed, and Dozier turned slowly to face his hunted man. Into Andrew's mind came back the words of the great outlaw, Allister: "There's one man I'd think twice about meeting, and that—"
"Sit down," said Andrew. "And you can take off your belt if you want to. Easy! That's it. Thank you."
The belt and the guns were tossed onto the bed, and Hal Dozier sat down. He reminded Andrew of a terrier, not heavy, but all compact nerve and fighting force.
"I'll not frisk you for another gun," said Andrew.
"Thanks; I have one, but I'll let it lie."
He made a movement. "If you don't mind," said Andrew, "I'd rather that you don't reach into your pockets. Use my tobacco and papers, if you wish." He tossed them onto the table, and Hal Dozier rolled his smoke in silence. Then he tilted back in his chair a little. His hand with the cigarette was as steady as a vise, and Andrew, shrugging forward his own ponderous shoulders, dropped his elbows on his knees and trained the gun full on his companion.
"I've come to make a bargain, Dozier," he said.
The other made no comment, and the two continued that silent struggle of the eyes that was making Andrew's throat dry and his heart leap.
"Here's the bargain: Drop off this trail. Let the law take its own course through other hands, but you give me your word to keep off the trail. If you'll do that I'll leave this country and stay away. Except for one thing, I'll never come back here. You're a proud man; you've never quit a trail yet before the end of it. But this time I only ask you to let it go with running me out of the country."
"What's the one thing for which you'd come back?"
"I'll come back—once—because of a girl." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 62 | "What's the one thing for which you'd come back?"
"I'll come back—once—because of a girl."
He saw the eyes of Dozier widen and then contract again. "You're not exactly what I expected to find," he said. "But go on. If I don't take the bargain you pull that trigger?"
"Exactly."
"H'm! You may have heard the voices of the men who came up the hall with me?"
"Yes."
"The moment a report of a gun is heard they'll swarm up to this room and get you."
"They made too much noise. Barking dogs don't bite. Besides, the moment I've dropped you I go out that window."
"It's a good bluff, Lanning," said the other. "I'll tell you what, if you were what I expected you to be, a hysterical kid, who had a bit of bad luck and good rolled together, I'd take that offer. But you're different—you're a man. All in all, Lanning, I think you're about as much of a man as I've ever crossed before. No, you won't pull that trigger, because there isn't one deliberate murder packed away in your system. It's a good bluff, as I said before, and I admire the way you worked it. But it won't do. I call it. I won't leave your trail, Lanning. Now pull your trigger."
He smiled straight into the eye of the younger man. A flush jumped into the cheeks of Andrew, and, fading, left him by contrast paler than ever. "You were one-quarter of an inch from death, Dozier," he replied.
"Lanning, with men like you—and like myself, I hope—there's no question of distance. It's either a miss or a hit. Here's a better proposition: Let me put my belt on again. Then put your own gun back in the holster. We'll turn and face the wall. And when the clock downstairs strikes ten—that'll be within a few minutes—we'll turn and blaze at the first sound."
He watched his companion eagerly, and he saw the face of Andrew work. "I can't do it, Dozier," said Andrew. "I'd like to. But I can't!"
"Why not?" The voice of Hal Dozier was sharp with a new suspicion. "Get me out of the way, and you're free to get across the mountains, and, once there, your trail will never be found. I know that; every one knows that. That's why I hit up here after you." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 63 | "I'll tell you why," said Andrew slowly. "I've got the blood of one man on my hands already, but, so help me God, I'm not going to have another stain. I had to shoot once, because I was hounded into it. And, if this thing keeps on, I'm going to shoot again—and again. But as long as I can I'm fighting to keep clean, you understand?"
His voice became thin and rose as he spoke; his breath was a series of gasps, and Hal Dozier changed color.
"I think," said Andrew, regaining his self-control, "that I'd kill you. I think I'm just a split second surer and faster than you are with a gun. But don't you see, Dozier?"
He cast out his left hand, but his right hand held the revolver like a rock.
"Don't you see? I've got the taint in me. I've killed my man. If I kill another I'll go bad. I know it. Life will mean nothing to me. I can feel it in me."
His voice fell and became deeper.
"Dozier, give me my chance. It's up to you. Stand aside now, and I'll get across those mountains and become a decent man. Keep me here, and I'll be a killer. I know it; you know it. Why are you after me? Because your brother was killed by me. Dozier, think of your brother and then look at me. Was his life worth my life? You're a cool-headed man. You knew him, and you knew what he was worth. His killings were as long as the worst bad man that ever stepped, except that he had the law behind him. When he got on my trail he knew that I was just a scared kid who thought he'd killed a man. Why didn't he let me run until I found out that I hadn't killed Buck Heath? Then he knew, and you know, that I'd have come back. But he wouldn't give me the chance. He ran me into the ground, and I shot him down. And that minute he turned me from a scared kid into an outlaw—a killer. Tell me, man to man, Dozier, if Bill hasn't already done me more wrong than I've done him!"
As he finished that strange appeal he noted that the famous fighter was white about the mouth and shaken. He added with a burst of appeal: "Hal, you know I'm straight. You know I'm worth a chance."
The older man lifted his head at last. "Andy, I can't leave the trail." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 64 | The older man lifted his head at last. "Andy, I can't leave the trail."
At that sentence every muscle of Andrew's body relaxed, and he sat like one in a state of collapse, except that the right hand and the gun in it were steady as rocks.
"Here's something between you and me that I'd swear I never said if I was called in a court," went on Hal Dozier in a solemn murmur. "I'll tell you that I know Bill was no good. I've known it for years, and I've told him so. It's Bill that bled me, and bled me until I've had to soak a mortgage on the ranch. It's Bill that's spent the money on his cussed booze and gambling. Until now there's a man that can squeeze and ruin me any day, and that's Merchant. He sent me hot along this trail. He sent me, but my pride sent me also. No, son, I wasn't bought altogether. And if I'd known as much about you then as I know now, I'd never have started to hound you. But now I've started. Everybody in the mountains, every puncher on the range knows that Hal Dozier has started on a new trail, and every man of them knows that I've never failed before. Andy, I can't give it up. You see, I've got no shame before you. I tell you the straight of it. I tell you that I'm a bought man. But I can't leave this trail to go back and face the boys. If one of them was to shake his head and say on the side that I'm no longer the man I used to be, I'd shoot him dead as sure as there's a reckoning that I'm bound for. It isn't you, Andy; it's my reputation that makes me go on."
He stopped, and the two men looked sadly at each other.
"Andy, boy," said Hal Dozier, "I've no more bad feeling toward you than if you was my own boy." Then he added with a little ring to his voice: "But I'm going to stay on your trail till I kill you. You write that down in red."
And the outlaw dropped his gun suddenly into the holster. "That ends it, then," he said slowly. "The next time we meet we won't sit down and chin friendly like. We'll let our guns do our talking for us. And, first of all, I'm going to get across these mountains, Hal, in spite of you and your friends." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 65 | "You can't do it, Andy. Try it. I've sent the word up. The whole mountains will be alive watchin' for you. Every trail will be alive with guns."
But Andrew stood up, and, using always his left hand while the right arm hung with apparent carelessness at his side, he arranged his hat so that it came forward at a jaunty angle, and then hitched his belt around so that the holster hung a little more to the rear. The position for a gun when one is sitting is quite different from the proper position when one is standing. All these things Uncle Jasper had taught Andrew long and long before. He was remembering them in chunks.
"Give me three minutes to get my saddle on my horse and out of town," said Andrew. "Is that fair?"
"Considering that you could have filled me full of lead here," said Hal Dozier, with a wry smile, "I think that's fair enough."
As Andrew went down the stairs and through the entrance hall he noticed it was filled with armed men. At the door he paused for the least fraction of a second, and during that breathing space he had seen every face in the room. Then he walked carelessly across to the desk and asked for his bill.
Someone, as he crossed the room, whirled to follow him with a glance. Andy heard, for his ears were sharpened: "I thought for a minute—But it does look like him!"
"Aw, Mike, I seen that gent in the barroom the other day. Besides, he's just a kid."
"So's this Lanning. I'm going out to look at the poster again. You hold this gent here."
"All right. I'll talk to him while you're gone. But be quick. I'll be holdin' a laugh for you, Mike."
Andrew paid his bill, but as he reached the door a short man with legs bowed by a life in the saddle waddled out to him and said: "Just a minute, partner. Are you one of us?"
"One of who?" asked Andrew.
"One of the posse Hal is getting together? Well, come to think of it, I guess you're a stranger around here, ain't you?"
"Me?" asked Andrew. "Why, I've just been talking to Hal."
"About young Lanning?"
"Yes."
"By the way, if you're out of Hal's country, maybe you know Lanning, too?"
"Sure. I've stood as close to him as I am to you."
"You don't say so! What sort of a looking fellow is he?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said Andrew, and he smiled in an embarrassed manner. "They say he's a ringer for me. Not much of a compliment, is it?" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 66 | "You don't say so! What sort of a looking fellow is he?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said Andrew, and he smiled in an embarrassed manner. "They say he's a ringer for me. Not much of a compliment, is it?"
The other gasped, and then laughed heartily. "No, it ain't, at that," he replied. "Say, I got a pal that wants to talk to you. Sort of a job on him, at that."
"I'll tell you what," said Andy calmly. "Take him in to the bar, and I'll come in and have a drink with him and you in about two minutes. S'long."
He was gone through the door while the other half reached a hand toward him. But that was all.
In the stables he had the saddle on the chestnut in twenty seconds, and brought him to the watering trough before the barroom.
He found his short, bow-legged friend in the barroom in the midst of excited talk with a big, blond man. He looked a German, with his parted beard and his imposing front and he had the stern blue eye of a fighter. "Is this your friend?" asked Andrew, and walked straight up to them. He watched the eyes of the big man expand and then narrow; his hand even fumbled at his hip, but then he shook his head. He was too bewildered to act.
At that moment there was an uproar from the upper part of the hotel. With a casual wave of his hand, Andy wandered out of the barroom and then raced for the street. He heard men shouting in the lobby.
A fighting mass jammed its way into the open, and there, in the middle of the square, sat Hal Dozier on his gray stallion. He was giving orders in a voice that rang above the crowd, and made voices hush in whispers as they heard him. Under his direction the crowd split into groups of four and five and six and rode at full speed in three directions out of the town. In the meantime there were two trusted friends of Hal Dozier busy at telephones in the hotel. They were calling little towns among the mountains. The red alarm was spreading like wildfire, and faster than the fastest horse could gallop.
But Andrew, with the chestnut running like a red flash beneath him, had vanished. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 67 | But Andrew, with the chestnut running like a red flash beneath him, had vanished.
Buried away in the mountains, one stiff day's march, was a trapper whom Uncle Jasper had once befriended. That was many a day long since, but Uncle Jasper had saved the man's life, and he had often told Andrew that, sooner or later, he must come to that trapper's cabin to talk of the old times.
He was bound there now. For, if he could get shelter for three days, the hue and cry would subside. When the mountaineers were certain that he must have gone past them to other places and slipped through their greedy fingers he could ride on in comparative safety. It was an excellent plan. It gave Andrew such a sense of safety, as he trotted the chestnut up a steep grade, that he did not hear another horse, coming in the opposite direction, until the latter was almost upon him. Then, coming about a sharp shoulder of the hill, he almost ran upon a bare-legged boy, who rode without saddle upon the back of a bay mare. The mare leaped catlike to one side, and her little rider clung like a piece of her hide. "You might holler, comin' around a turn," shrilled the boy. And he brought the mare to a halt by jerking the rope around her neck. He had no other means of guiding her, no sign of a bridle.
But Andrew looked with hungry eyes. He knew something of horses, and this bay fitted into his dreams of an ideal perfectly. She was beautiful, quite heavily built in the body, with a great spread of breast that surely told of an honest heart beneath a glorious head, legs that fairly shouted to Andrew of good blood, and, above all, she had that indescribable thing which is to a horse what personality is to a man. She did not win admiration, she commanded it. And she stood alert at the side of the road, looking at Andrew like a queen. Horse stealing is the cardinal sin in the mountain desert, but Andrew felt the moment he saw her that she must be his. At least he would first try to buy her honorably.
"Son," he said to the urchin, "how much for that horse?"
"Why," said the boy, "anything you'll give."
"Don't laugh at me," said Andrew sternly. "I like her looks and I'll buy her. I'll trade this chestnut—and he's a fine traveler—with a good price to boot. If your father lives up the road and not down, turn back with me and I'll see if I can't make a trade." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 68 | "You don't have to see him," said the boy. "I can tell you that he'll sell her. You throw in the chestnut and you won't have to give any boot." And he grinned.
"But there's the house." He pointed across the ravine at a little green-roofed shack buried in the rocks. "You can come over if you want to."
"Is there something wrong with her?"
"Nothin' much. Pop says she's the best hoss that ever run in these parts. And he knows, I'll tell a man!"
"Son, I've got to have that horse!"
"Mister," said the boy suddenly, "I know how you feel. Lots feel the same way. You want her bad, but she ain't worth her feed. A skunk put a bur under the saddle when she was bein' broke, and since then anybody can ride her bareback, but nothin' in the mountains can sit a saddle on her."
Andrew cast one more long, sad look at the horse. He had never seen a horse that went so straight to his heart, and then he straightened the chestnut up the road and went ahead.
He had to be guided by what Uncle Jasper had often described—a mountain whose crest was split like the crown of a hat divided sharply by a knife, and the twin peaks were like the ears of a mule, except that they came together at the base. By the position of those distant summits he knew that he was in the ravine leading to the cabin of Hank Rainer, the trapper.
Presently the sun flashed on a white cliff, a definite landmark by which Uncle Jasper had directed him, so Andrew turned out of his path on the eastern side of the gully and rode across the ravine. The slope was steep on either side, covered with rocks, thick with slides of loose pebbles and sand. His horse, accustomed to a more open country, was continually at fault. He did not like his work, and kept tossing his ugly head and champing the bit as they went down to the river bottom. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 69 | It was not a real river, but only an angry creek that went fuming and crashing through the cañon with a voice as loud as some great stream. Andrew had to watch with care for a ford, for though the bed was not deep the water ran like a rifle bullet over smooth places and was torn to a white froth when it struck projecting rocks. He found, at length, a place where it was backed up into a shallow pool, and here he rode across, hardly wetting the belly of the gelding. Then up the far slope he was lost at once in a host of trees. They cut him off from his landmark, the white cliff, but he kept on with a feel for the right direction, until he came to a sudden clearing, and in the clearing was a cabin. It was apparently just a one-room shanty with a shed leaning against it from the rear. No doubt the shed was for the trapper's horse.
He had no time for further thought. In the open door of the cabin appeared a man so huge that he had to bend his head to look out, and Andrew's heart fell. It was not the slender, rawboned youth of whom Uncle Jasper had told him, but a hulking giant. And then he remembered that twenty years had passed since Uncle Jasper rode that way, and in twenty years the gaunt body might have filled out, the shock of bright-red hair of which Jasper spoke might well have been the original of the red flood which now covered the face and throat of the big man.
"Hello!" called the trapper. "Are you one of the boys on the trail? Well, I ain't seen anything. Been about six others here already."
The blood leaped in Andrew, and then ran coldly back to his heart. Could they have outridden the gelding to such an extent as that?
"From Tomo?" he asked.
"Tomo? No. They come down from Gunter City, up yonder, and Twin Falls."
And Andrew understood. Well indeed had Hal Dozier fulfilled his threat of rousing the mountains against this quarry. He glanced westward. It was yet an hour lacking of sundown, but since mid-morning Dozier had been able to send his messages so far and so wide. Andrew set his teeth. What did cunning of head and speed of horse count against the law when the law had electricity for its agent? |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 70 | "Well," said Andrew, slipping from his saddle, "if he hasn't been by this way I may as well stay over for the night. If they've hunted the woods around here all day, no use in me doing it by night. Can you put me up?"
"Can I put you up? I'll tell a man. Glad to have you, stranger. Gimme your hoss. I'll take care of him. Looks like he was kind of ganted up, don't it? Well, I'll give him a feed of oats that'll thicken his ribs."
Still talking, he led the gelding into his shed. Andrew followed, took off the saddle, and, having led the chestnut out and down to the creek for a drink, he returned and tied him to a manger which the trapper had filled with a liberal supply of hay, to say nothing of a feed box stuffed with oats.
A man who was kind to a horse could not be treacherous to a man, Andrew decided.
"You're Hank Rainer, aren't you?" he asked.
"That's me. And you?"
"I'm the unwelcome guest, I'm afraid," said Andrew. "I'm the nephew of Jasper Lanning. I guess you'll be remembering him?"
"I'll forget my right hand sooner," said the big, red man calmly. But he kept on looking steadily at Andrew.
"Well," said Andrew, encouraged and at the same time repulsed by this calm silence, "my name is one you've heard. I am—"
The other broke in hastily. "You are Jasper Lanning's nephew. That's all I know. What's a name to me? I don't want to know names!"
It puzzled Andrew, but the big man ran on smoothly enough: "Lanning ain't a popular name around here, you see? Suppose somebody was to come around and say, 'Seen Lanning?' What could I say, if you was here? 'I've got a Lanning here. I dunno but he's the one you want.' But suppose I don't know anything except you're Jasper's nephew? Maybe you're related on the mother's side. Eh?" He winked at Andrew. "You come along and don't talk too much about names."
He led the way into the house and picked up one of the posters, which lay on the floor.
"They've sent those through the mountains already?" asked Andrew gloomily.
"Sure! These come down from Twin Falls. Now, a gent with special fine eyes might find that you looked like the gent on this poster. But my eyes are terrible bad mostly. Besides, I need to quicken up that fire." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 71 | "They've sent those through the mountains already?" asked Andrew gloomily.
"Sure! These come down from Twin Falls. Now, a gent with special fine eyes might find that you looked like the gent on this poster. But my eyes are terrible bad mostly. Besides, I need to quicken up that fire."
He crumpled the poster and inserted it beneath the lid of his iron stove. There was a rush and faint roar of the flame up the chimney as the cardboard burned. "And now," said Hank Rainer, turning with a broad smile, "I guess they ain't any reason why I should recognize you. You're just a plain stranger comin' along and you stop over here for the night. That all?"
Andrew had followed this involved reasoning with a rather bewildered mind, but he smiled faintly in return. He was bothered, in a way, by the extreme mental caution of this fellow. It was as if the keen-eyed trapper were more interested in his own foolish little subterfuge than in preserving Andrew. "Now, tell me, how is Jasper?"
"I've got to tell you one thing first. Dozier has raised the mountains, and I could never cross 'em now."
"Going to turn back into the plains?"
"No. The ranges are wide enough, but they're a prison just the same. I've got to get out of 'em now or stay a prisoner the rest of my life, only to be trailed down in the end. No, I want to stay right here in your cabin until the men are quieted down again and think I've slipped away from 'em. Then I'll sneak over the summit and get away unnoticed."
"Man, man! Stay here? Why, they'll find you right off. I wonder you got the nerve to sit there now with maybe ten men trailin' you to this cabin. But that's up to you."
There was a certain careless calm about this that shook Andrew to his center again. But he countered: "No, they won't look specially in houses. Because they won't figure that any man would toss up that reward. Five thousand is a pile of money."
"It sure is," agreed the other. He parted his red beard and looked up to the ceiling. "Five thousand is a considerable pile, all in hard cash. But mostly they hunt for this Andrew Lanning a dozen at a time. Well, you divide five thousand by ten, and you've got only five hundred left. That ain't enough to tempt a man to give up Lanning—so bad as all that." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 72 | "Ah," smiled Andrew, "but you don't understand what a stake you could make out of me. If you were to give information about me being here, and you brought a posse to get me, you'd come in for at least half of the reward. Besides, the five thousand isn't all. There's at least one rich gent that'll contribute maybe that much more. And you'd get a good half of that. You see, Hal Dozier knows all that, and he knows there's hardly a man in the mountains who would be able to keep away from selling me. So that's why he won't search the houses."
"Not you," corrected the trapper sharply. "Andy Lanning is the man Dozier wants."
"Well, Andrew Lanning, then," smiled the guest. "It was just a slip of the tongue."
"Sometimes slips like that break a man's neck," observed the trapper, and he fell into a gloomy meditation.
And after that they talked of other things, until supper was cooked and eaten and the tin dishes washed and put away. Then they lay in their bunks and watched the last color in the west through the open door.
If a member of a posse had come to the door, the first thing his eyes fell upon would have been Andrew Lanning lying on the floor on one side of the room and the red-bearded man on the other. But, though his host suggested this, Andrew refused to move his blankets. And he was right. The hunters were roving the open, and even Hal Dozier was at fault.
"Because," said Andrew, "he doesn't dream that I could have a friend so far from home. Not five thousand dollars' worth of friend, anyway."
And the trapper grunted heavily.
It was a truth long after wondered at, when the story of Andrew Lanning was told and retold, that he had lain in perfect security within a six-hour ride from Tomo, while Hal Dozier himself combed the mountains and hundreds more were out hunting fame and fortune. To be sure, when a stranger approached, Andrew always withdrew into the horse shed; but, beyond keeping up a steady watch during the day, he had little to do and little to fear. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 73 | Indeed, at night he made no pretense toward concealment, but slept quite openly on the floor on the bed of hay and blankets, just as Hank Rainer slept on the farther side of the room. And the great size of the reward was the very thing that kept him safe. For when men passed the cabin, as they often did, they were riding hard to get away from Tomo and into the higher mountains, where the outlaw might be, or else they were coming back to rest up, and their destination in such a case was always Tomo. The cabin of the trapper was just near enough to the town to escape being used as a shelter for the night by stray travelers. If they got that close, they went on to the hotel.
But often they paused long enough to pass a word with Hank, and Andrew, from his place behind the door of the horse shed, could hear it all. He could even look through a crack and see the faces of the strangers. They told how Tomo was wrought to a pitch of frenzied interest by this manhunt. Well-to-do citizens, feeling that the outlaw had insulted the town by so boldly venturing into it, had raised a considerable contribution toward the reward. Other prominent miners and cattlemen of the district had come forward with similar offers, and every day the price on the head of Andrew mounted to a more tempting figure.
It was a careless time for Andrew. After that escape from Tomo he was not apt to be perturbed by his present situation, but the suspense seemed to weigh more and more heavily upon the trapper. Hank Rainer was so troubled, indeed, that Andrew sometimes surprised a half-guilty, half-sly expression in the eyes of his host. He decided that Hank was anxious for the day to come when Andrew would ride off and take his perilous company elsewhere. He even broached the subject to Hank, but the mountaineer flushed and discarded the suggestion with a wave of his hand. "But if a gang of 'em should ever hunt me down, even in your cabin, Hank," said Andrew one day—it was the third day of his stay—"I'll never forget what you've done for me, and one of these days I'll see that Uncle Jasper finds out about it."
The little, pale-blue eyes of the trapper went swiftly to and fro, as if he sought escape from this embarrassing gratitude. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 74 | The little, pale-blue eyes of the trapper went swiftly to and fro, as if he sought escape from this embarrassing gratitude.
"Well," said he, "I've been thinkin' that the man that gets you, Andy, won't be so sure with his money, after all. He'll have your Uncle Jasper on his trail pronto, and Jasper used to be a killer with a gun in the old days."
"No more," smiled Andrew. "He's still steady as a rock, but he hasn't the speed any more. He's over seventy, you see. His joints sort of creak when he tries to move with a snap."
"Ah," muttered the trapper, and again, as he started through the open door, "Ah!"
Then he added: "Well, son, you don't need Jasper. If half what they say is true, you're a handy lad with the guns. I suppose Jasper showed you his tricks?"
"Yes, and we worked out some new ones together. Uncle Jasper raised me with a gun in my hand, you might say."
"H'm!" said Hank Rainer.
When they were sitting at the door in the semidusk, he reverted to the idea. "You been seein' that squirrel that's been runnin' across the clearin'?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to see you work your gun, Andy. It was a sight to talk about to watch Jasper, and I'm thinkin' you could go him one better. S'pose you stand up there in the door with your back to the clearin'. The next time that squirrel comes scootin' across I'll say, 'Now!' and you try to turn and get your gun on him before he's out of sight. Will you try that?"
"Suppose some one hears it?" "Oh, they're used to me pluggin' away for fun over here. Besides, they ain't anybody lives in hearin'."
And Andrew, falling into the spirit of the contest, stood up in the door, and the old tingle of nerves, which never failed to come over him in the crisis, was thrilling through his body again. Then Hank barked the word, "Now!" and Andrew whirled on his heel. The word had served to alarm the squirrel as well. As he heard it, he twisted about like the snapping lash of a whip and darted back for cover, three yards away. He covered that distance like a little gray streak in the shadow, but before he reached it the gun spoke, and the forty-five-caliber slug struck him in the middle and tore him in two. Andrew, hearing a sharp crackling, looked down at his host and observed that the trapper had bitten clean through the stem of his corncob.
"That," said the red man huskily, "is some shootin'." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 75 | "That," said the red man huskily, "is some shootin'."
But he did not look up, and he did not smile. And it troubled Andrew to hear this rather grudging praise.
In the meantime, three days had put the gelding in very fair condition. He was enough mustang to recuperate swiftly, and that morning he had tried with hungry eagerness to kick the head from Andrew's shoulders. This had decided the outlaw. Besides, in the last day there had been fewer and fewer riders up and down the ravine, and apparently the hunt for Andrew Lanning had journeyed to another part of the mountains. It seemed an excellent time to begin his journey again, and he told the trapper his decision to start on at dusk the next day.
The announcement brought with it a long and thoughtful pause.
"I wisht I could send you on your way with somethin' worthwhile," said Hank Rainer at length. "But I ain't rich. I've lived plain and worked hard, but I ain't rich. So what I can give you, Andy, won't be much."
Andrew protested that the hospitality had been more than a generous gift, but Hank Rainer, looking straight out the door, continued: "Well, I'm goin' down the road to get you my little gift, Andy. Be back in an hour maybe."
"I'd rather have you here to keep me from being lonely," said Andrew. "I've money enough to buy what I want, but money will never buy me the talk of an honest man, Hank."
The other started. "Honest enough, maybe," he said bitterly. "But honesty don't get you bread or bacon, not in this world!"
And presently he stamped into the shed, saddled his pony, and after a moment was scattering the pebbles on the way down the ravine. The dark and silence gathered over Andrew Lanning. He had little warmth of feeling for Hank Rainer, to be sure, but the hush of the cabin he looked forward to many a long evening and many a long day in a silence like this, with no man near him. For the man who rides outside the law rides alone.
He could have embraced the big man, therefore, when Hank finally came back, and Andrew could hear the pony panting in the shed, a sure sign that it had been ridden hard.
"It ain't much," said Hank, "but it's yours, and I hope you get a chance to use it in a pinch." And he dumped down a case of.45 cartridges. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 76 | "It ain't much," said Hank, "but it's yours, and I hope you get a chance to use it in a pinch." And he dumped down a case of.45 cartridges.
After all, there could have been no gift more to the point, but it gave Andrew a little chill of distaste, this reminder of the life that lay ahead of him. And in spite of himself he could not break the silence that began to settle over the cabin again. Finally Hank announced that it was bedtime for him, and, preparing himself by the simple expedient of kicking off his boots and then drawing off his trousers, he slipped into his blankets, twisted them tightly around his broad shoulders with a single turn of his body, and was instantly snoring. Andrew followed that example more slowly. Not since he left Martindale, however, had he slept soundly. Take a tame dog into the wilderness and he learns to sleep like a wolf quickly enough; and Andrew, with mind and nerve constantly set for action like a cocked revolver, had learned to sleep like a wild thing in turn. And accordingly, when he wakened in the middle of the night, he was alert on the instant. He had a singular feeling that someone had been looking at him while he slept.
First of all, naturally, he looked at the door. It was now a bright rectangle filled with moonlight and quite empty. There must have been a sound, and he glanced over to the trapper for an explanation. But Hank Rainer lay twisted closely in his blankets.
Andrew raised upon one elbow and thought. It troubled him—the insistent feeling of the eyes which had been upon him. They had burned their way into his dreams with a bright insistence.
He looked again, and, having formed the habit of photographing things with one glance, he compared what he saw now with what he had last seen when he fell asleep. It tallied in every detail except one. The trousers which had lain on the floor beside Hank's bed were no longer there. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 77 | It was a little thing, of course, but Andrew closed his eyes to make sure. Yes, he could even remember the gesture with which the trapper had tossed down the trousers to the floor. Andrew sat up in bed noiselessly. He slipped to the door and flashed one glance up and down. Below him the hillside was bright beneath the moon. The far side of the ravine was doubly black in shadow. But nothing lived, nothing moved. And then again he felt the eye upon him. He whirled. "Hank!" he called softly. And he saw the slightest start as he spoke. "Hank!" he repeated in the same tone, and the trapper stretched his arms, yawned heavily, and turned. "Well, lad?" he inquired.
But Andrew knew that he had been heard the first time, and he felt that this pretended slow awakening was too elaborate to be true. He went back to his own bed and began to dress rapidly. In the meantime the trapper was staring stupidly at him and asking what was wrong.
"Something mighty queer," said Andrew. "Must have been a coyote in here that sneaked off with your trousers, unless you have 'em on."
Just a touch of pause, then the other replied through a yawn: "Sure, I got 'em on. Had to get up in the night, and I was too plumb sleepy to take 'em off again when I come back."
"Ah," said Andrew, "I see." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 78 | Just a touch of pause, then the other replied through a yawn: "Sure, I got 'em on. Had to get up in the night, and I was too plumb sleepy to take 'em off again when I come back."
"Ah," said Andrew, "I see."
He stepped to the door into the horse shed and paused; there was no sound. He opened the door and stepped in quickly. Both horses were on the ground, asleep, but he took the gelding by the nose, to muffle a grunt as he rose, and brought him to his feet. Then, still softly and swiftly, he lifted the saddle from its peg and put it on its back. One long draw made the cinches taut. He fastened the straps, and then went to the little window behind the horse, through which had come the vague and glimmering light by which he did the saddling. Now he scanned the trees on the edge of the clearing with painful anxiety. Once he thought that he heard a voice, but it was only the moan of one branch against another as the wind bent some tree. He stepped back from the window and rubbed his knuckles across his forehead, obviously puzzled. It might be that, after all, he was wrong. So he turned back once more toward the main room of the cabin to make sure. Instead of opening the door softly, as a suspicious man will, he cast it open with a sudden push of his foot; the hulk of Hank Rainer turned at the opposite door, and the big man staggered as though he had been struck.
It might have been caused by his swift right-about face, throwing him off his balance, but it was more probably the shock that came from facing a revolver in the hand of Andrew. The gun was at his hip. It had come into his hand with a nervous flip of the fingers as rapid as the gesture of the card expert.
"Come back," said Andrew. "Talk soft, step soft. Now, Hank, what made you do it?"
The red hair of the other was burning faintly in the moonlight, and it went out as he stepped from the door into the middle of the room, his finger tips brushing the ceiling above him. And Andrew, peering through that shadow, saw two little, bright eyes, like the eyes of a beast, twinkling out at him from the mass of hair. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 79 | "When you went after the shells for me, Hank," he stated, "you gave the word that I was here. Then you told the gent that took the message to spread it around—to get it to Hal Dozier, if possible—to have the men come back here. You'd go out, when I was sound asleep, and tell them when they could rush me. Is that straight?"
There was no answer.
"Speak out! I feel like shovin' this gun down your throat, Hank, but I won't if you speak out and tell me the truth."
Whatever other failings might be his, there was no great cowardice in Hank Rainer. His arms remained above his head and his little eyes burned. That was all.
"Well," said Andrew, "I think you've got me, Hank. I suppose I ought to send you to death before me, but, to tell you the straight of it, I'm not going to, because I'm sort of sick. Sick, you understand? Tell me one thing—are the boys here yet? Are they scattered around the edge of the clearing, or are they on the way? Hank, was it worth five thousand to double-cross a gent that's your guest—a fellow that's busted bread with you, bunked in the same room with you? And even when they've drilled me clean, and you've got the reward, don't you know that you'll be a skunk among real men from this time on? Did you figure on that when you sold me?"
The hands of Hank Rainer fell suddenly, but now lower than his beard. The fingers thrust at his throat—he seemed to be tearing his own flesh.
"Pull the trigger, Andy," he said. "Go on. I ain't fit to live."
"Why did you do it, Hank?"
"I wanted a new set of traps, Andy; that was what I wanted. I'd been figurin' and schemin' all autumn how to get my traps before the winter comes on. My own wasn't any good. Then I seen that fur coat of yours. It set me thinking about what I could do if I had some honest-to-goodness traps with springs in 'em that would hold—and—I stood it as long as I could."
While he spoke, Andrew looked past him, through the door. All the world was silver beyond. The snow had been falling, and on the first great peak there was a glint of the white, very pure and chill against the sky. The very air was keen and sweet. Ah, it was a world to live in, and he was not ready to die! |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 80 | He looked back to Hank Rainer. "Hank, my time was sure to come sooner or later, but I'm not ready to die. I'm—I'm too young, Hank. Well, good-by!"
He found gigantic arms spreading before him.
"Andy," insisted the big man, "it ain't too late for me to double-cross 'em. Let me go out first and you come straight behind me. They won't fire; they'll think I've got a new plan for givin' you up. When we get to the circle of 'em, because they're all round the cabin, we'll drive at 'em together. Come on!"
"Wait a minute. Is Hal Dozier out there?"
"Yes. Oh, go on and curse me, Andy. I'm cursin' myself!"
"If he's there, it's no use. But there's no use two dyin' when I try to get through. Only one thing, Hank; if you want to keep your self-respect don't take the reward money."
"I'll see it burn first, and I'm goin' with you, Andy!"
"You stay where you are; this is my party. Before the finish of the dance I'm going to see if some of those sneaks out yonder, lyin' so snug, won't like to step right out and do a caper with me!"
And before the trapper could make a protest he had drawn back into the horse shed.
There he led the chestnut to the door, and, looking through the crack, he scanned the surface of the ground. It was sadly broken and chopped with rocks, but the gelding might make headway fast enough. It was a short distance to the trees—twenty-five to forty yards, perhaps. And if he burst out of that shed on the back of the horse, spurred to full speed, he might take the watchers, who perhaps expected a signal from the trapper before they acted, quite unawares, and he would be among the sheltering shadows of the forest while the posse was getting up its guns.
There was an equally good chance that he would ride straight into a nest of the waiting men, and, even if he reached the forest, he would be riddled with bullets.
Now, all these thoughts and all this weighing of the chances occupied perhaps half a second, while Andrew stood looking through the crack. Then he swung into the saddle, leaning far over to the side so that he would have clearance under the doorway, kicked open the swinging door, and sent the chestnut leaping into the night. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 81 | If only the night had been dark, if the gelding had had a fair start; but the moon was bright, and in the thin mountain air it made a radiance almost as keen as day and just sufficiently treacherous to delude a horse, which had been sent unexpectedly out among rocks by a cruel pair of spurs. At the end of the first leap the gelding stumbled to his knees with a crash and snort among the stones. The shock hurled Andrew forward, but he clung with spurs and hand, and as he twisted back into the saddle the gelding rose valiantly and lurched ahead again.
Yet that double sound might have roused an army, and for the keen-eared watchers around the clearing it was more than an ample warning. There was a crash of musketry so instant and so close together that it was like a volley delivered by a line of soldiers at command. Bullets sang shrill and small around Andrew, but that first discharge had been a burst of snap-shooting, and by moonlight it takes a rare man indeed to make an accurate snapshot. The first discharge left both Andrew and the horse untouched, and for the moment the wild hope of unexpected success was raised in his heart. And he had noted one all-important fact—the flashes, widely scattered as they were, did not extend across the exact course of his flight toward the trees. Therefore, none of the posse would have a point-blank shot at him. For those in the rear and on the sides the weaving course of the gelding, running like a deer and swerving agilely among the rocks, as if to make up for his first blunder, offered the most difficult of all targets.
All this in only the space of a breath, yet the ground was already crossed and the trees were before him when Andrew saw a ray of moonlight flash on the long barrel of rifle to his right, and he knew that one man at least was taking a deliberate aim. He had his revolver on the fellow in the instant, and yet he held his fire. God willing, he would come back to Anne Withero with no more stains on his hands!
And that noble, boyish impulse killed the chestnut, for a moment later a stream of fire spouted out, long and thin, from the muzzle of the rifle, and the gelding struck at the end of a stride, like a ship going down in the sea; his limbs seemed to turn to tallow under him, and he crumpled on the ground. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 82 | The fall flung Andrew clean out of the saddle; he landed on his knees and leaped for the woods, but now there was a steady roar of guns behind him. He was struck heavily behind the left shoulder, staggered. Something gashed his neck like the edge of a red-hot knife, his whole left side was numb.
And then the merciful dark of the trees closed around him.
For fifty yards he raced through an opening in the trees, while a yelling like wild Indians rose behind him; then he leaped into cover and waited. One thing favored him still. They had not brought horses, or at least they had left their mounts at some distance, for fear of the chance noises they might make when the cabin was stalked. And now, looking down the lane among the trees, he saw men surge into it.
All his left side was covered with a hot bath, but, balancing his revolver in his right hand, he felt a queer touch of joy and pride at finding his nerve still unshaken. He raised the weapon, covered their bodies, and then something like an invisible hand forced down the muzzle of his gun. He could not shoot to kill!
He did what was perhaps better; he fired at that mass of legs, and even a child could not have failed to strike the target. Once, twice, and again; then the crowd melted to either side of the path, and there was a shrieking and forms twisting and writhing on the ground.
Some one was shouting orders from the side; he was ordering them to the right and left to surround the fugitive; he was calling out that Lanning was hit. At least, they would go with caution down his trail after that first check. He left his sheltering tree and ran again down the ravine.
By this time the first shock of the wounds and the numbness were leaving him, but the pain was terrible. Yet he knew that he was not fatally injured if he could stop that mortal drain of his wounds.
He heard the pursuit in the distance more and more. Every now and then there was a spasmodic outburst of shooting, and Andrew grinned in spite of his pain. They were closing around the place where they thought he was making his last stand, shooting at shadows which might be the man they wanted. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 83 | Then he stopped, tore off his shirt, and ripped it with his right hand and his teeth into strips. He tied one around his neck, knotting it until he could only draw his breath with difficulty. Several more strips he tied together, and then wound the long bandage around his shoulder and pulled. The pain brought him close to a swoon, but when his senses cleared he found that the flow from his wounds had eased.
But not entirely. There was still some of that deadly trickling down his side, and, with the chill of the night biting into him, he knew that it was life or death to him if he could reach some friendly house within the next two miles. There was only one dwelling straight before him, and that was the house of the owner of the bay mare. They would doubtless turn him over to the posse instantly. But there was one chance in a hundred that they would not break the immemorial rule of mountain hospitality. For Andrew there was no hope except that tenuous one.
The rest of that walk became a nightmare. He was not sure whether he heard the yell of rage and disappointment behind him as the posse discovered that the bird had flown or whether the sound existed only in his own ringing head. But one thing was certain—they would not trail Andrew Lanning recklessly in the night, not even with the moon to help them.
So he plodded steadily on. If it had not been for that ceaseless drip he would have taken the long chance and broken for the mountains above him, trying through many a long day ahead to cure the wounds and in some manner sustain his life. But the drain continued. It was hardly more than drop by drop, but all the time a telltale weakness was growing in his legs. In spite of the agony he was sleepy, and he would have liked to drop on the first mat of leaves that he found.
That crazy temptation he brushed away, and went on until surely, like a star of hope, he saw the light winking feebly through the trees, and then came out on the cabin.
He remembered afterward that even in his dazed condition he was disappointed because of the neat, crisp, appearance of the house. There must be women there, and women meant screams, horror, betrayal. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 84 | He remembered afterward that even in his dazed condition he was disappointed because of the neat, crisp, appearance of the house. There must be women there, and women meant screams, horror, betrayal.
But there was no other hope for him now. Twice, as he crossed the clearing before he reached the door of the cabin, his foot struck a rock and he pitched weakly forward, with only the crumbling strength of his right arm to keep him from striking on his face. Then there was a furious clamor and a huge dog rushed at him.
He heeded it only with a glance from the corner of his eye. And then, his dull brain clearing, he realized that the dog no longer howled at him or showed his teeth, but was walking beside him, licking his hand and whining with sympathy. He dropped again, and this time he could never have regained his feet had not his right arm flopped helplessly across the back of the big dog, and the beast cowered and growled, but it did not attempt to slide from under his weight.
He managed to get erect again, but when he reached the low flight of steps to the front door he was reeling drunkenly from side to side. He fumbled for the knob, and it turned with a grating sound.
"Hold on! Keep out!" shrilled a voice inside. "We got guns here. Keep out, you dirty bum!"
The door fell open, and he found himself confronted by what seemed to him a dazzling torrent of light and a host of human faces. He drew himself up beside the doorway.
"Gentlemen," said Andrew, "I am not a bum. I am worth five thousand dollars to the man who turns me over, dead or alive, to the sheriff. My name is Andrew Lanning."
At that the faces became a terrible rushing and circling flare, and the lights went out with equal suddenness. He was left in total darkness, falling through space; but, at his last moment of consciousness, he felt arms going about him, arms through which his bulk kept slipping down, and below him was a black abyss.
It was a very old man who held, or tried to hold, Andrew from falling to the floor. His shoulders shook under the burden of the outlaw, and the burden, indeed, would have slumped brutally to the floor, had not the small ten-year-old boy, whom Andrew had seen on the bay mare, come running in under the arms of the old man. With his meager strength he assisted, and the two managed to lower the body gently. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 85 | The boy was frightened. He was white at the sight of the wounds, and the freckles stood out in copper patches from his pallor.
Now he clung to the old man.
"Granddad, it's the gent that tried to buy Sally!"
The old man had produced a murderous jackknife with a blade that had been ground away to the disappearing point by years of steady grinding.
"Get some wood in the stove," he commanded. "Fire her up, quick. Put on some water. Easy, lad!"
The room became a place of turmoil with the clatter of the stove lids being raised, the clangor of the kettle being filled and put in place. By the time the fire was roaring and the boy had turned, he found the bandages had been taken from the body of the stranger and his grandfather was studying the smeared naked torso with a sort of detached, philosophic interest. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand he was pressing deeply into the left shoulder of Andrew.
"Now, there's an arm for you, Jud," said the old man. "See them long, stringy muscles in the forearm? If you grow up and have muscles like them, you can call yourself a man. And you see the way his stomach caves in? Aye, that's a sign! And the way his ribs sticks out—and just feel them muscles on the point of his shoulder—Oh, Jud, he would of made a prime wrestler, this fine bird of ours!"
"It's like touchin' somethin' dead, granddad," said the boy. "I don't dast to do it!"
"Jud, they's some times when I just about want to give you up! Dead? He ain't nowheres near dead. Just bled a bit, that's all. Two as pretty little wounds as was ever drilled clean by a powerful rifle at short range. Dead? Why, inside two weeks he'll be fit as a fiddle, and inside a month he'll be his own self! Dead! Jud, you make me tired! Gimme that water."
He went to work busily. Out of a sort of first-aid chest he took homemade bandages and, after cleansing the wounds, he began to dress them carefully.
He talked with every movement.
"So this here is the lion, is it?" nodded granddad. "This here is the ravenin', tearin', screechin' man-eater? Why, he looks mostly plain kid to me."
"He—he's been shot, ain't he, granddad?" asked the child in a whisper.
"Well, boy, I'd say that the lion had been chawed up considerable—by dogs."
He pointed. "See them holes? The big one in front? That means they sneaked up behind him and shot him while his back was turned." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 86 | "He—he's been shot, ain't he, granddad?" asked the child in a whisper.
"Well, boy, I'd say that the lion had been chawed up considerable—by dogs."
He pointed. "See them holes? The big one in front? That means they sneaked up behind him and shot him while his back was turned."
"He's wakin' up, granddad," said Jud, more frightened than before.
The eyes of Andrew were indeed opening.
He smiled up at them. "Uncle Jas," he said, "I don't like to fight. It makes me sick inside, to fight." He closed his eyes again.
"Now, now, now!" murmured Pop. "This boy has a way with him. And he killed Bill Dozier, did he? Son, gimme the whisky."
He poured a little down the throat of the wounded man, and Andrew frowned and opened his eyes again: He was conscious at last.
"I think I've seen you before," he said calmly. "Are you one of the posse?"
The old man stiffened a little. A spot of red glowed on his withered cheek and went out like a snuffed light.
"Young feller," said the old man, "when I go huntin' I go alone. You write that down in red, and don't forget it. I ain't ever been a member of no posse. Look around and see yourself to home."
Andrew raised his head a little and made out the neat room. It showed, as even his fading senses had perceived when he saw the house first, a touch of almost feminine care. The floor was scrubbed to whiteness, the very stove was burnished.
"I remember," said Andrew faintly.
"You did see me before," said the other, "when you rode into Tomo. I seen you and you seen me. We changed looks, so to speak. And now you've dropped in to call on me. I'm goin' to put you up in the attic. Gimme a hand to straighten him up, Jud."
With Jud's help and the last remnant of Andrew's strength they managed to get him to his feet, and then he partly climbed, partly was pushed by Jud, and partly was dragged by the old man up a ladder to the loft. It was quite cool there, very dark, and the air came in through two windows.
"Ain't very sociable to put a guest in the attic," said Pop, between his panting breaths. "But a public character like you, Lanning, will have a consid'able pile of callers askin' after you. Terrible jarrin' to the nerves when folks come in and call on a sick man. You lie here and rest easy." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 87 | He went down the ladder and came back dragging a mattress. There, by the light of a lantern, he and Jud made Andrew as comfortable as possible.
"You mean to keep me here?" asked the outlaw.
"Long as you feel like restin'," answered the old man.
"You can make about—"
"Stop that fool talk about what I can make out of you. How come it you stayed so close to Tomo? Where was you lyin' low? In the hills?"
"Not far away." "And they smelled you out?"
"A man I thought was my friend—" Andrew clicked his teeth shut.
"You was sold, eh?"
"I made a mistake."
"H'm," was the other's comment. "Well, you forget about that and go to sleep. I got a few little attentions to pay to that posse. It'll be here r'arin' before tomorrer. Sleep tight, partner."
He climbed down the ladder and looked around the room. Jud, his freckles still looking like spots of mud or rust, his eyes popping, stood silent.
"I'm glad of that," said the old man, with a sigh.
"What, granddad?"
"You're like a girl, Jud. Takes a sight to make you reasonable quiet. But look yonder. Them spots look tolerable like red paint, don't they? Well, we got to get 'em off."
"I'll heat some more water," suggested Jud.
"You do nothing of the kind. You get them two butcher knives out of the table drawer and we'll scrape off the wood, because you can't wash that stain out'n a floor." He looked suddenly at Jud with a glint in his eyes. "I know, because I've tried it."
For several minutes they scraped hard at the floor until the last vestige of the fresh stains was gone. Then the old man went outside and, coming back with a handful of sand, rubbed it in carefully over the scraped places. When this was swept away the floor presented no suspicious traces.
"But," he exclaimed suddenly, "I forgot. I plumb forgot. He's been leakin' all the way here, and when the sun comes up they'll foller him that easy by the sign. Jud, we're beat!" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 88 | "But," he exclaimed suddenly, "I forgot. I plumb forgot. He's been leakin' all the way here, and when the sun comes up they'll foller him that easy by the sign. Jud, we're beat!"
They dropped, as at a signal, into two opposite chairs, and sat staring gloomily at each other. The old man looked simply sad and weary, but the color came and went in the face of Jud. And then, like a light, an idea dawned in the face of the child. He got up from his chair, lighted a lantern, and went outside. His grandfather observed this without comment or suggestion, but, when Jud was gone, he observed to himself: "Jud takes after me. He's got thoughts. And them was things his ma and pa was never bothered with."
The thought of Jud now took him up the back trail of Andrew Lanning. He leaned far over with the lantern, studying with intense interest every place where the wounds of the injured man might have left telltale stains on the rocks or the grass. When he had apparently satisfied himself of this, he turned and ran at full speed back to the house and went up the ladder to Andrew. There he took the boots—they were terribly stained, he saw—and drew them on.
The loose boots and the unaccustomed weights tangled his feet sadly, as he went on down the ladder, but he said not a word to his grandfather, who was far too dignified to make a comment on the borrowed footgear.
Again outside with his lantern, the boy took out his pocket-knife and felt the small blade. It was of a razor keenness. Then he went through the yard behind the house to the big henhouse, where the chickens sat perched in dense rows. He raised his lantern; at once scores of tiny, bright eyes flashed back at him.
But Jud, with a twisted face of determination, kept on with his survey until he saw the red comb and the arched tail plumes of a large Plymouth Rock rooster.
It was a familiar sight to Jud. Of all the chickens on the place this was his peculiar property. And now he had determined to sacrifice this dearest of pets. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 89 | It was a familiar sight to Jud. Of all the chickens on the place this was his peculiar property. And now he had determined to sacrifice this dearest of pets.
The old rooster was so accustomed to his master, indeed, that he allowed himself to be taken from the perch without a single squawk, and the boy took his captive beyond the pen. Once, when the big rooster canted his head and looked into his face, the boy had to wink away the tears; but he thought of the man so near death in the attic, he felt the clumsy boots on his feet, and his heart grew strong again.
He went around to the front of the house and by the steps he fastened on the long neck of his prisoner a grasp strong enough to keep him silent for a moment. Then he cut the rooster's breast deeply, shuddering as he felt the knife take hold.
Something trickled warmly over his hands. Dropping his knife in his pocket, Jud started, walked with steps as long as he could make them. He went, with the spurs chinking to keep time for each stride, straight toward a cliff some hundreds of yards from the house. The blood ran freely. The old rooster, feeling himself sicken, sank weakly against the breast of the boy, and Jud thought that his heart would break. He reached the sharp edge of the cliff and heard the rush of the little river far below him. At the same time his captive gave one final flutter of the wings, one feeble crow, and was dead.
Jud waited until the tears had cleared from his eyes. Then he took off the boots, and, in bare feet that would leave no trace on the rocks, he skirted swiftly back to the house, put the dead body back in the chicken yard, and returned to his grandfather.
There was one great satisfaction for him that evening, one reward for the great sacrifice, and it came immediately. While the old man stood trembling before him, Jud told his story.
It was a rich feast indeed to see the relief, the astonishment, the pride come in swift turns upon that grim old face.
And yet in the end Pop was able to muster a fairly good imitation of a frown.
"And here you come back with a shirt and a pair of trousers plumb spoiled by all your gallivantin'," he said, "not speakin' of a perfectly good chicken killed. Ain't you never goin' to get grown up, Jud?"
"He was mine, the chicken I killed," said Jud, choking. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 90 | "And here you come back with a shirt and a pair of trousers plumb spoiled by all your gallivantin'," he said, "not speakin' of a perfectly good chicken killed. Ain't you never goin' to get grown up, Jud?"
"He was mine, the chicken I killed," said Jud, choking.
It brought a pause upon the talk. The other was forced to wink both eyes at once and sigh.
"The big speckled feller?" he asked more gently.
"The Plymouth Rock," said Jud fiercely. "He wasn't no speckled feller! He was the finest rooster and the gamest—"
"Have it your own way," said the old man. "You got your grandma's tongue when it comes to arguin' fine points. Now go and skin out of them clothes and come back and see that you've got all that—that stuff of'n your face and hands."
Jud obeyed, and presently reappeared in a ragged outfit, his face and hands red from scrubbing.
"I guess maybe it's all right," declared the old man. "Only, they's risks in it. Know what's apt to happen if they was to find that you'd helped to get a outlaw off free?"
"What would it be?" asked the boy.
"Oh, nothin' much. Maybe they'd try you and maybe they wouldn't. Anyways, they'd sure wind up by hangin' you by the neck till you was as dead as the speckled rooster."
"The Plymouth Rock," insisted Jud hotly.
"All right, I don't argue none. But you just done a dangerous thing, Jud. And there'll be a consid'able pile of men here in the mornin', most like, to ask you how and why."
He was astonished to hear Jud break into laughter.
"Hush up," said Pop. "You'll be wakin' him up with all that noise. Besides, what d'you mean by laughin' at the law?" "Why, granddad," said Jud, "don't I know you wouldn't never let no posse take me from you? Don't I know maybe you'd clean 'em all up?"
"Pshaw!" said Pop, and flushed with delight. "You was always a fool kid, Jud. Now you run along to bed." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 91 | "Pshaw!" said Pop, and flushed with delight. "You was always a fool kid, Jud. Now you run along to bed."
In Hal Dozier there was a belief that the end justified the means. When Hank Rainer sent word to Tomo that the outlaw was in his cabin, and, if the posse would gather, he, Hank, would come out of his cabin that night and let the posse rush the sleeping man who remained, Hal Dozier was willing and eager to take advantage of the opportunity. A man of action by nature and inclination, Dozier had built a great repute as a hunter of criminals, and he had been known to take single-handed chances against the most desperate; but when it was possible Hal Dozier played a safe game. Though the people of the mountain desert considered him invincible, because he had run down some dozen notorious fighters, Hal himself felt that this simply increased the chances that the thirteenth man, by luck or by cunning, would strike him down.
Therefore he played safe always. On this occasion he made surety doubly sure. He could have taken two or three known men, and they would have been ample to do the work. Instead, he picked out half a dozen. For just as Henry Allister had recognized that indescribable element of danger in the new outlaw, so the manhunter himself had felt it. Hal Dozier determined that he would not tempt Providence. He had his commission as a deputy marshal, and as such he swore in his men and started for the cabin of Hank Rainer.
When the news had spread, others came to join him, and he could not refuse. Before the cavalcade entered the mouth of the cañon he had some thirty men about him. They were all good men, but in a fight, particularly a fight at night, Hal Dozier knew that numbers to excess are apt to simply clog the working parts of the machine. All that he feared came to pass. There was one breathless moment of joy when the horse of Andrew was shot down and the fugitive himself staggered under the fire of the posse. At that moment Hal had poised his rifle for a shot that would end this long trail, but at that moment a yelling member of his own group had come between him and his target, and the chance was gone. When he leaped to one side to make the shot, Andrew was already among the trees. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 92 | Afterward he had sent his men in a circle to close in on the spot from which the outlaw made his stand, but they had closed on empty shadows—the fugitive had escaped, leaving a trail of blood. However, it was hardly safe to take that trail in the night, and practically impossible until the sunlight came to follow the sign. So Hal Dozier had the three wounded men taken back to the cabin of Hank Rainer.
The stove was piled with wood until the top was white hot, and then the posse sat about on the floor, crowding the room and waiting for the dawn. The three wounded men were made as comfortable as possible. One had been shot through the hip, a terrible wound that would probably stiffen his leg for life; another had gone down with a wound along the shin bone which kept him in a constant torture. The third man was hit cleanly through the thigh, and, though he had bled profusely for some time, he was now only weak, and in a few weeks he would be perfectly sound again. The hard breathing of the three was the only sound in that dim room during the rest of the night. The story of Hank Rainer had been told in half a dozen words. Lanning had suspected him, stuck him up at the point of a gun, and then-refused to kill him, in spite of the fact that he knew he was betrayed. After his explanation Hank withdrew to the darkest corner of the room and was silent. From time to time looks went toward that corner, and one thought was in every mind. This fellow, who had offered to take money for a guest, was damned for life and branded. Thereafter no one would trust him, no one would change words with him; he was an outcast, a social leper. And Hank Rainer knew it as well as any man. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 93 | A cloud of tobacco smoke became dense in the room, and a halo surrounded the lantern on the wall. Then one by one men got up and muttered something about being done with the party, or having to be at work in the morning, and stamped out of the room and went down the ravine to the place where the horses had been tethered. The first thrill of excitement was gone. Moreover, it was no particular pleasure to close in on a wounded man who lay somewhere among the rocks, without a horse to carry him far, and too badly wounded to shift his position. Yet he could lie in his shelter, whatever clump of boulders he chose, and would make it hot for the men who tried to rout him out. The heavy breathing of the three wounded men gave point to these thoughts, and the men of family and the men of little heart got up and left the posse.
The sheriff made no attempt to keep them. He retained his first hand-picked group. In the gray of the morning he rallied these men again. They went first to the dead, stiff body of the chestnut gelding and stripped it of the saddle and the pack of Lanning. This, by silent consent, was to be the reward of the trapper. This was his in lieu of the money which he would have earned if they had killed Lanning on the spot. Hal Dozier stiffly invited Hank to join them in the manhunt; he was met by a solemn silence, and the request was not repeated. Dozier had done a disagreeable duty, and the whole posse was glad to be free of the traitor. In the meantime the morning was brightening rapidly, and Dozier led out his men.
They went to their horses, and, coming back to the place where Andrew had made his halt and fired his three shots, they took up the trail. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 94 | They went to their horses, and, coming back to the place where Andrew had made his halt and fired his three shots, they took up the trail.
It was as easy to read as a book. The sign was never wanting for more than three steps at a time, and Hal Dozier, reading skillfully, watched the decreasing distance between heel indentations, a sure sign that the fugitive was growing weak from the loss of the blood that spotted the trail. Straight on to the doorstep of Pop's cabin went the trail. Dozier rapped at the door, and the old man himself appeared. The bony fingers of one hand were wrapped around the corncob, which was his inseparable companion, and in the other he held the cloth with which he had been drying dishes. Jud turned from his pan of dishwater to cast a frightened glance over his shoulder. Pop did not wait for explanations.
"Come in, Dozier," he invited. "Come in, boys. Glad to see you. Ain't particular comfortable for an oldster like me when they's a full-grown, man-eatin' outlaw layin' about the grounds. This Lanning come to my door last night. Me and Jud was sittin' by the stove. He wanted to get us to bandage him up, but I yanked my gun off'n the wall and ordered him away."
"You got your gun on Lanning—off the wall—before he had you covered?" asked Hal Dozier with a singular smile.
"Oh, I ain't so slow with my hands," declared Pop. "I ain't half so old as I look, son! Besides, he was bleedin' to death and crazy in the head. I don't figure he even thought about his gun just then." "Why didn't you shoot him down, Pop? Or take him? There's money in him."
"Don't I know it? Ain't I seen the posters? But I wasn't for pressin' things too hard. Not me at my age, with Jud along. I ordered him away and let him go. He went down yonder. Oh, you won't have far to go. He was about all in when he left. But I ain't been out lookin' around yet this morning. I know the feel of a forty-five slug in your inwards."
He placed a hand upon his stomach, and a growl of amusement went through the posse. After all, Pop was a known man. In the meantime someone had picked up the trail to the cliff, and Dozier followed it. They went along the heel marks to a place where blood had spurted liberally over the ground. "Must have had a hemorrhage here," said Dozier. "No, we won't have far to go. Poor devil!" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 95 | And then they came to the edge of the cliff, where the heel marks ended. "He walked straight over," said one of the men. "Think o' that!"
"No," exclaimed Dozier, who was on his knees examining the marks, "he stood here a minute or so. First he shifted to one foot, and then he shifted his weight to the other. And his boots were turning in. Queer. I suppose his knees were buckling. He saw he was due to bleed to death and he took a shorter way! Plain suicide. Look down, boys! See anything?"
There was a jumble of sharp rocks at the base of the cliff, and the water of the stream very close. Nothing showed on the rocks, nothing showed on the face of the cliff. They found a place a short distance to the right and lowered a man down with the aid of a rope. He looked about among the rocks. Then he ran down the stream for some distance. He came back with a glum face.
There was no sign of the body of Andrew Lanning among the rocks. Looking up to the top of the cliff, from the place where he stood, he figured that a man could have jumped clear of the rocks by a powerful leap and might have struck in the swift current of the stream. There was no trace of the body in the waters, no drop of blood on the rocks. But then the water ran here at a terrific rate; the scout had watched a heavy boulder moved while he stood there. He went down the bank and came at once to a deep pool, over which the water was swirling. He sounded that pool with a long branch and found no bottom.
"And that makes it clear," he said, "that the body went down the water, came to that pool, was sucked down, and got lodged in the rocks. Anybody differ? No, gents, Andrew Lanning is food for the trout. And I say it's the best way out of the job for all of us."
But Hal Dozier was a man full of doubts. "There's only one other thing possible," he said. "He might have turned aside at the house of Pop. He may be there now."
"But don't the trail come here? And is there any back trail to the house?" one of the men protested.
"It doesn't look possible," nodded Hal Dozier, "but queer things are apt to happen. Let's go back and have a look." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 96 | "But don't the trail come here? And is there any back trail to the house?" one of the men protested.
"It doesn't look possible," nodded Hal Dozier, "but queer things are apt to happen. Let's go back and have a look."
He dismounted and gave his horse to one of the others, telling them that he would do the scouting himself this time, and he went back on foot to the house of Pop. He made his steps noiseless as he came closer, not that he expected to surprise Pop to any purpose, but the natural instinct of the trailer made him advance with caution, and, when he was close enough to the door he heard: "Oh, he's a clever gent, well enough, but they ain't any of 'em so clever that they can't learn somethin' new." Hal Dozier paused with his hand raised to rap at the door and he heard Pop say in continuation: "You write this down in red, sonny, and don't you never forget it: The wisest gent is the gent that don't take nothin' for granted."
It came to Hal Dozier that, if he delayed his entrance for another moment, he might hear something distinctly to his advantage; but his role of eavesdropper did not fit with his broad shoulders, and, after knocking on the door, he stepped in. Pop was putting away the dishes, and Jud was scrubbing out the sink.
"The boys are working up the trail," said Hal Dozier, "but they can do it by themselves. I know that the trail ends at the cliff. I'll tell you that poor kid walked to the edge of the cliff, stopped there a minute; made up his mind that he was bleeding to death, and then cut it short. He jumped, missed the rocks underneath, and was carried off by the river." Dozier followed up his statement with some curse words.
He watched the face of the other keenly, but the old man was busy filling his pipe. His eyebrows, to be sure, flicked up as he heard this tragedy announced, and there was a breath from Jud. "I'll tell you, Dozier," said the other, lighting his pipe and then tamping the red-hot coals with his calloused forefinger, "I'm kind of particular about the way people cusses around Jud. He's kind of young, and they ain't any kind of use of him litterin' up his mind with useless words. Don't mean no offense to you, Dozier." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 97 | The deputy officer took a chair and tipped it back against the wall. He felt that he had been thoroughly checkmated in his first move; and yet he sensed an atmosphere of suspicion in this little house. It lingered in the air. Also, he noted that Jud was watching him with rather wide eyes and a face of unhealthy pallor; but that might very well be because of the awe which the youngster felt in beholding Hal Dozier, the manhunter, at close range. All these things were decidedly small clews, but the marshal was accustomed to acting on hints.
In the meantime, Pop, having put away the last of the dishes in a cupboard, whose shelves were lined with fresh white paper, offered Dozier a cup of coffee. While he sipped it, the marshal complimented his host on the precision with which he maintained his house.
"It looks like a woman's hand had been at work," concluded the marshal.
"Something better'n that," declared the other. "A man's hand, Dozier. People has an idea that because women mostly do housework men are out of place in a kitchen. It ain't so. Men just got somethin' more important on their hands most of the time." His eyes glanced sadly toward his gun rack. "Women is a pile overpraised, Dozier. I ask you, man to man, did you ever see a cleaner floor than that in a woman's kitchen?"
The marshal admitted that he never had. "But you're a rare man," he said.
Pop shook his head. "When I was a boy like you," he said, "I wasn't nothin' to be passed up too quick. But a man's young only once, and that's a short time—and he's old for years and years and years, Dozier." He added, for fear that he might have depressed his guest, "But me and Jud team it, you see. I'm extra old and Jud's extra young—so we kind of hit an average."
He touched the shoulder of the boy and there was a flash of eyes between them, the flicker of a smile. Hal Dozier drew a breath. "I got no kids of my own," he declared. "You're lucky, friend. And you're lucky to have this neat little house."
"No, I ain't. They's no luck to it, because I made every sliver of it with my own hands." An idea came to the deputy marshal.
"There's a place up in the hills behind my house, a day's ride," he said, "where I go hunting now and then, and I've an idea a little house like this would be just the thing for me. Mind if I look it over?"
Pop tamped his pipe. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 98 | "There's a place up in the hills behind my house, a day's ride," he said, "where I go hunting now and then, and I've an idea a little house like this would be just the thing for me. Mind if I look it over?"
Pop tamped his pipe.
"Sure thing," he said. "Look as much as you like."
He stepped to a corner of the room and by a ring he raised a trapdoor. "I got a cellar 'n' everything. Take a look at it below."
He lighted the lantern, and Hal Dozier went down the steep steps, humming. "Look at the way that foundation's put in," said the old man in a loud voice. "I done all that, too, with my own hands."
His voice was so unnecessarily loud, indeed, just as if the deputy were already under ground, that it occurred to Dozier that if a man were lying in that cellar he would be amply warned. And going down he walked with the lantern held to one side, to keep the light off his own body as much as possible; his hand kept at his hip.
But, when he reached the cellar, he found only some boxes and canned provisions in a rack at one side, and a various litter all kept in close order. Big stones had been chiseled roughly into shape to build the walls, and the flooring was as dry as the floor of the house. It was, on the whole, a very solid bit of work. A good place to imprison a man, for instance. At this thought Dozier glanced up sharply and saw the other holding the trapdoor ajar. Something about that implacable, bony face made Dozier turn and hurry back up the stairs to the main floor of the house.
"Nice bit of work down there," he said. "I can use that idea very well. Well," he added carelessly, "I wonder when my fool posse will get through hunting for the remains of poor Lanning? Come to think of it"—for it occurred to him that if the old man were indeed concealing the outlaw he might not know the price which was on his head—"there's a pretty little bit of coin connected with Lanning. Too bad you didn't drop him when he came to your door."
"Drop a helpless man—for money?" asked the old man. "Never, Dozier!"
"He hadn't long to live, anyway," answered the marshal in some confusion. Those old, straight eyes of Pop troubled him.
He fenced with a new stroke for a confession.
"For my part, I've never had much heart in this work of mine."
"He killed your brother, didn't he?" asked Pop with considerable dryness. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 99 | He fenced with a new stroke for a confession.
"For my part, I've never had much heart in this work of mine."
"He killed your brother, didn't he?" asked Pop with considerable dryness.
"Bill made the wrong move," replied Hal instantly. "He never should have ridden Lanning down in the first place. Should have let the fool kid go until he found out that Buck Heath wasn't killed. Then he would have come back of his own accord."
"That's a good idea," remarked the other, "but sort of late, it strikes me. Did you tell that to the sheriff?"
"Late it is," remarked Dozier, not following the question. "Now the poor kid is outlawed. Well, between you and me, I wish he'd gotten away clean-handed. But too late now.
"By the way," he went on, "I'd like to take a squint at your attic, too. That ladder goes up to it, I guess."
"Go ahead," said Pop. And once more he tamped his pipe.
There was a sharp, shrill cry from the boy, and Dozier whirled on him. He saw a pale, scared face.
"What's the matter?" he asked sharply. "What's the matter with you, Jud?" And he fastened his keen glance on the boy.
Vaguely, from the corner of his eye, he felt that Pop had taken the pipe from his mouth. There was a sort of breathless touch in the air of the room. "Nothin'," said Jud. "Only—you know the rungs of that ladder ain't fit to be walked on, grandad!"
"Jud," said the old man with a strained tone, "It ain't my business to give warnin's to an officer of the law—not mine. He'll find out little things like that for himself."
For one moment Dozier remained looking from one face to the other. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went slowly up the ladder. It squeaked under his weight, he felt the rungs bow and tremble. Halfway up he turned suddenly, but Pop was sitting as old men will, humming a tune and keeping time to it by patting the bowl of his pipe with a forefinger.
And Dozier made up his mind.
He turned and came down the ladder. "I guess there's no use looking in the attic," he said. "Same as any other attic, I suppose, Pop?"
"The same?" asked Pop, taking the pipe from his mouth. "I should tell a man it ain't. It's my work, that attic is, and it's different. I handled the joinin' of them joists pretty slick, but you better go and see for yourself."
And he smiled at the deputy from under his bushy brows. Hal Dozier grinned broadly back at him. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 100 | And he smiled at the deputy from under his bushy brows. Hal Dozier grinned broadly back at him.
"I've seen your work in the cellar, Pop," he said. "I don't want to risk my neck on that ladder. No, I'll have to let it go. Besides, I'll have to round up the boys."
He waved farewell, stepped through the door, and closed it behind him.
"Grandad," exclaimed Jud in a gasp.
The old man silenced him with a raised finger and a sudden frown. He slipped to the door in turn with a step so noiseless that even Jud wondered. Years seemed to have fallen from the shoulders of his grandfather. He opened the door quickly, and there stood the deputy. His back, to be sure, was turned to the door, but he hadn't moved.
"Think I see your gang over yonder," said Pop. "They seem to be sort of waitin' for you, Dozier."
The other turned and twisted one glance up at the old man.
"Thanks," he said shortly and strode away.
Pop closed the door and sank into a chair. He seemed suddenly to have aged again.
"Oh, grandad," said Jud, "how'd you guess he was there all the time?"
"I dunno," said Pop. "Don't bother me."
"But why'd you beg him to look into the attic? Didn't you know he'd see him right off?"
"Because he goes by contraries, Jud. He wouldn't of started for the ladder at all, if you hadn't told him he'd probably break his neck on it. Only when he seen I didn't care, he made up his mind he didn't want to see that attic."
"And if he'd gone up?" whispered Jud.
"Don't ask me what would of happened," said Pop.
All his bony frame was shaken by a shiver.
"Is he such a fine fighter?" asked Jud.
"Fighter?" echoed Pop. "Oh, lad, he's the greatest hand with a gun that ever shoved foot into stirrup. He—he was like a bulldog on a trail—and all I had for a rope to hold him was just a little spider thread of thinking. Gimme some coffee, Jud. I've done a day's work." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 101 | The bullets of the posse had neither torn a tendon nor broken a bone. Striking at close range and driven by highpower rifles, the slugs had whipped cleanly through the flesh of Andrew Lanning, and the flesh closed again, almost as swiftly as ice freezes firm behind the wire that cuts it. In a very few days he could sit up, and finally came down the ladder with Pop beneath him and Jud steadying his shoulders from above. That was a gala day in the house. Indeed, they had lived well ever since the coming of Andrew, for he had insisted that he bear the household expense while he remained there, since they would not allow him to depart.
"And I'll let you pay for things, Andrew," Pop had said, "if you won't say nothing about it, ever, to Jud. He's a proud kid, is Jud, and he'd bust his heart if he thought I was lettin' you spend a cent here."
But this day they had a fine steak, brought out from Tomo by Pop the evening before, and they had beans with plenty of pork and molasses in them, cream biscuits, which Pop could make delicious beyond belief, to say nothing of canned tomatoes with bits of dried bread in them, and coffee as black as night. Such was the celebration when Andrew came down to join his hosts, and so high did all spirits rise that even Jud, the resolute and the alert, forgot his watch. Every day from dawn to dark he was up to the door or to the rear window, keeping the landscape under a sweeping observance every few moments, lest some chance traveler—all search for Andrew Lanning had, of course, ceased with the moment of his disappearance—should happen by and see the stranger in the household of Pop. But during these festivities all else was forgotten, and in the midst of things a decided, rapid knock was heard at the door.
Speech was cut off at the root by that sound. For whoever the stranger might be, he must certainly have heard three voices raised in that room. It was Andrew who spoke. And he spoke in only a whisper. "Whoever it may be, let him in," said Andrew, "and, if there's any danger about him, he won't leave till I'm able to leave. Open the door, Jud." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 102 | And Jud, with a stricken look, crossed the floor with trailing feet. The knock was repeated; it had a metallic clang, as though the man outside were rapping with the butt of a gun in his impatience, and Andrew, setting his teeth, laid his hand on the handle of his revolver. Here Jud cast open the door, and, standing close to it with her forefeet on the top step, was the bay mare. She instantly thrust in her head and snorted in the direction of the stranger.
"Thank heaven!" said Andrew. "I thought it was the guns again!" And Jud, shouting with delight and relief, threw his arms around the neck of the horse. "It's Sally!" he said. "Sally, you rascal!"
"That good-for-nothing hoss Sally," complained the old man. "Shoo her away, Jud."
But Andrew protested at that, and Jud cast him a glance of gratitude. Andrew himself got up from the table and went across the room with half of an apple in his hand. He sliced it into bits, and she took them daintily from between his fingers. And when Jud reluctantly ordered her away she did not blunder down the steps, but threw her weight back on her haunches and swerved lightly away. It fascinated Andrew; he had never seen so much of feline control in the muscles of a horse. When he turned back to the table he announced: "Pop, I've got to ride that horse. I've got to have her. How does she sell?"
"She ain't mine," said Pop. "You better ask Jud."
Jud was at once white and red. He looked at his hero, and then he looked into his mind and saw the picture of Sally. A way out occurred to him. "You can have her when you can ride her," he said. "She ain't much use except to look at. But if you can saddle her and ride her before you leave—well, you can leave on her, Andy." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 103 | It was the beginning of busy days for Andrew. The cold weather was coming on rapidly. Now the higher mountains above them were swiftly whitening, while the line of the snow was creeping nearer and nearer. The sight of it alarmed Andrew, and, with the thought of being snow-bound in these hills, his blood turned cold. What he yearned for were the open spaces of the mountain desert, where he could see the enemy approach. But every day in the cabin the terror grew that someone would pass, some one, unnoticed, would observe the stranger. The whisper would reach Tomo—the posse would come again, and the second time the trap was sure to work. He must get away, but no ordinary horse would do for him. If he had had a fine animal under him Bill Dozier would never have run him down, and he would still be within the border of the law. A fine horse—such a horse as Sally, say!
If he had been strong he would have attempted to break her at once, but he was not strong. He could barely support his own weight during the first couple of days after he left the bunk, and he had to use his mind. He began, then, at the point where Jud had left off.
Jud could ride Sally with a scrap of cloth beneath him; Andrew started to increase the size of that cloth. To keep it in place he made a long strip of sacking to serve as a cinch, and before the first day was gone she was thoroughly used to it. With this great step accomplished, Andrew increased the burden each time he changed the pad. He got a big tarpaulin and folded it many times; the third day she was accepting it calmly and had ceased to turn her head and nose it. Then he carried up a small sack of flour and put that in place upon the tarpaulin. She winced under the dead-weight burden; there followed a full half hour of frantic bucking which would have pitched the best rider in the world out of a saddle, but the sack of flour was tied on, and Sally could not dislodge it. When she was tired of bucking she stood still, and then discovered that the sack of flour was not only harmless but that it was good to eat. Andrew was barely in time to save the contents of the sack from her teeth. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 104 | It was another long step forward in the education of Sally. Next he fashioned clumsy imitations of stirrups, and there was a long fight between Sally and stirrups, but the stirrups, being inanimate, won, and Sally submitted to the bouncing wooden things at her sides. And still, day after day, Andrew built his imitation saddle closer and closer to the real thing, until he had taken a real pair of cinches off one of Pop's saddles and had taught her to stand the pressure without flinching.
There was another great return from Andrew's long and steady intimacy with the mare. She came to accept him absolutely. She knew his voice; she would come to his whistle; and finally, when every vestige of unsoundness had left his wounds, he climbed into that improvised saddle and put his feet in the stirrups. Sally winced down in her catlike way and shuddered, but he began to talk to her, and the familiar voice decided Sally. She merely turned her head and rubbed his knee with her nose. The battle was over and won. Ten minutes later Andrew had cinched a real saddle in place, and she bore the weight of the leather without a stir. The memory of that first saddle and the biting of the bur beneath it had been gradually wiped from her mind, and the new saddle was connected indisolubly with the voice and the hand of the man. At the end of that day's work Andrew carried the saddle back into the house with a happy heart.
And the next day he took his first real ride on the back of the mare. He noted how easily she answered the play of his wrist, how little her head moved in and out, so that he seldom had to sift the reins through his fingers to keep in touch with the bit. He could start her from a stand into a full gallop with a touch of his knees, and he could bring her to a sliding halt with the least pressure on the reins. He could tell, indeed, that she was one of those rare possessions, a horse with a wise mouth.
And yet he had small occasion to keep up on the bit as he rode her. She was no colt which hardly knew its own paces. She was a stanch five-year-old, and she had roamed the mountains about Pop's place at will. She went like a wild thing over the broken going. That catlike agility with which she wound among the rocks, hardly impaired her speed as she swerved. Andrew found her a book whose pages he could turn forever and always find something new. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 105 | He forgot where he was going. He only knew that the wind was clipping his face and that Sally was eating up the ground, and he came to himself with a start, after a moment, realizing that his dream had carried him perilously out of the mouth of the ravine. He had even allowed the mare to reach a bit of winding road, rough indeed, but cut by many wheels and making a white streak across the country. Andrew drew in his breath anxiously and turned her back for the cañon.
It was, indeed, a grave moment, yet the chances were large that even if he met someone on the road he would not be recognized, for it had been many days since the death of Andrew Lanning was announced through the countryside. He gritted his teeth when he thought that this single burst of childish carelessness might have imperiled all that he and Jud and Pop had worked for so long and so earnestly—the time when he could take the bay mare and start the ride across the mountains to the comparative safety on the other side.
That time, he made up his mind, would be the next evening. He was well; Sally was thoroughly mastered; and, with a horse beneath him which, he felt, could give even the gray stallion of Hal Dozier hard work, and therefore show her heels to any other animal on the mountain desert, he looked forward to the crossing of the mountains as an accomplished fact. Always supposing that he could pass Twin Falls and the fringe of towns in the hills, without being recognized and the alarm sent out. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 106 | Going back up the road toward the ravine at a brisk canter, he pursued the illuminating comparison between Sally and Dozier's famous Gray Peter. Of course, nothing but a downright test of speed and weight-carrying power, horse to horse, could decide which was the superior, but Andrew had ridden Gray Peter many times when he and Uncle Jasper went out to the Dozier place, and he felt that he could sum up the differences between the two beautiful animals. Sally was the smaller of the two, for instance. She could not stand more than fifteen hands, or fifteen-one at the most. Gray Peter was a full sixteen hands of strong bone and fine muscle, a big animal—almost too big for some purposes. Among these rocks, now, he would stand no chance with Sally. Gray Peter was a picture horse. When one looked at him one felt that he was a standard by which other animals should be measured. He carried his head loftily, and there was a lordly flaunt to his tail. On the other hand, Sally was rather long and low. Furthermore, her neck, which was by no means the heavy neck of the gray stallion, she was apt to carry stretched rather straight out and not curled proudly up as Gray Peter carried his. Neither did she bear her tail so proudly. Some of this, of course, was due to the difference between a mare and a stallion, but still more came from the differing natures of the two animals. In the head lay the greatest variation. The head of Gray Peter was close to perfection, light, compact, heavy of jowl; his eye at all times was filled with an intolerable brightness, a keen flame of courage and eagerness. But one could find a fault with Sally's head. In general, it was very well shaped, with the wide forehead and all the other good points which invariably go with that feature; but her face was just a trifle dished. Moreover, her eye was apt to be a bit dull. She had been a pet all her life, and, like most pets, her eye partook of the human quality. It had a conversational way of brightening and growing dull. On the whole, the head of Sally had a whimsical, inquisitive expression, and by her whole carriage she seemed to be perpetually putting her nose into other business than her own. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 107 | But the gait was the main difference. Riding Gray Peter, one felt an enormous force urging at the bit and ready and willing to expend itself to the very last ounce, with tremendous courage and good heart; there was always a touch of fear that Gray Peter, plunging unabated over rough and smooth, might be running himself out. But Sally would not maintain one pace. She was apt to shorten her stride for choppy going, and she would lengthen it like a witch on the level. She kept changing the elevation of her head. She ran freely, looking about her and taking note of what she saw, so that she gave an indescribable effect of enjoying the gallop just as much as her rider, but in a different way. All in all, Gray Peter was a glorious machine; Sally was a tricky intelligence. Gray Peter's heart was never in doubt, but what would Sally's courage be in a pinch?
Full of these comparisons, studying Sally as one would study a friend, Andrew forgot again all around him, and so he came suddenly, around a bend in the road, upon a buckboard with two men in it. He went by the buckboard with a wave of greeting and a side glance, and it was not until he was quite around the elbow turn that he remembered that one of the men in the wagon had looked at him with a strange intentness. It was a big man with a great blond beard, parted as though with a comb by the wind.
He rode back around the bend, and there, down the road, he saw the buckboard bouncing, with the two horses pulling it at a dead gallop and the driver leaning back in the seat.
But the other man, the big man with the beard, had picked a rifle out of the bed of the wagon, and now he sat turned in the seat, with his blond beard blown sidewise as he looked back. Beyond a doubt Andrew had been recognized, and now the two were speeding to Tomo to give their report and raise the alarm a second time. Andrew, with a groan, shot his hand to the long holster of the rifle which Pop had insisted that he take with him if he rode out. There was still plenty of time for a long shot. He saw the rifle jerk up to the shoulder of the big man; something hummed by him, and then the report came barking up the ravine. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 108 | But Andrew turned Sally and went around the bend; that old desire to rush on the men and shoot them down, that same cold tingling of the nerves, which he had felt when he faced the posse after the fall of Bill Dozier, was on him again, and he had to fight it down. He mastered it, and galloped with a heavy heart up the ravine and to the house of Pop. The old man saw him; he called to Jud, and the two stood in front of the door to admire the horseman and his horse. But Andrew flung himself out of the saddle and came to them sadly. He told them what had happened, the meeting, the recognition. There was only one thing to do—make up the pack as soon as possible and leave the place. For they would know where he had been hiding. Sally was famous all through the mountains; she was known as Pop's outlaw horse, and the searchers would come straight to his house.
Pop took the news philosophically, but Jud became a pitiful figure of stone in his grief. He came to life again to help in the packing. They worked swiftly, and Andrew began to ask the final questions about the best and least-known trails over the mountains. Pop discouraged the attempt.
"You seen what happened before," he said. "They'll have learned their lesson from Hal Dozier. They'll take the telephone and rouse the towns all along the mountains. In two hours, Andy, two hundred men will be blocking every trail and closin' in on you."
And Andrew reluctantly admitted the truth of what he said. He resigned himself gloomily to turning back onto the mountain desert, and now he remembered the warning of failure which Henry Allister had given him. He felt, indeed, that the great outlaw had simply allowed him to run on a long rope, knowing that he must travel in a circle and eventually come back to the band.
Now the pack was made—he saw Jud covertly tuck some little mementoes into it—and he drew Pop aside and dropped a weight of gold coins into his pocket.
"You tarnation scoundrel!" began Pop huskily.
"Hush," said Andrew, "or Jud will hear you and know that I've tried to leave some money. You don't want to ruin me with Jud, do you?"
Pop was uneasy and uncertain. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 109 | "You tarnation scoundrel!" began Pop huskily.
"Hush," said Andrew, "or Jud will hear you and know that I've tried to leave some money. You don't want to ruin me with Jud, do you?"
Pop was uneasy and uncertain.
"I've had your food these weeks and your care, Pop," said Andrew, "and now I walk off with a saddle and a horse and an outfit all yours. It's too much. I can't take charity. But suppose I accept it as a gift; I leave you an exchange—a present for Jud that you can give him later on. Is that fair?"
"Andy," said the old man, "you've double-crossed me, and you've got me where I can't talk out before Jud. But I'll get even yet. Good-by, lad, and put this one thing under your hat: It's the loneliness that's goin' to be the hardest thing to fight, Andy. You'll get so tired of bein' by yourself that you'll risk murder for the sake of a talk. But then hold hard. Stay by yourself. Don't trust to nobody. And keep clear of towns. Will you do that?"
"That's plain common sense, Pop."
"Aye, lad, and the plain things are always the hardest things to do."
Next came Jud. He was very white, but he approached Andrew with a careless swagger and shook hands firmly.
"When you bump into that Dozier, Andy," he said, "get him, will you? S'long!"
He turned sharply and sauntered toward the open door of the house. But before he was halfway to it they heard a choking sound; Jud broke into a run, and, once past the door, slammed it behind him.
"Don't mind him," said Pop, clearing his throat violently. "He'll cry the sick feelin' out of his insides. God bless you, Andy! And remember what I say: The loneliness is the hard thing to fight, but keep clear of men, and after a time they'll forget about you. You can settle down and nobody'll rake up old scores. I know."
"D'you think it can be done?"
There was a faint, cold twinkle in the eyes of Pop. "I'll tell a man it can be done," he said slowly. "When you come back here I may be able to tell you a little story, Andy. Now climb on Sally and don't hit nothin' but the high spots." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 110 | There was a faint, cold twinkle in the eyes of Pop. "I'll tell a man it can be done," he said slowly. "When you come back here I may be able to tell you a little story, Andy. Now climb on Sally and don't hit nothin' but the high spots."
Even in his own lifetime a man in the mountain desert passes swiftly from the fact of history into the dream of legend. The telephone and the newspaper cannot bring that lonely region into the domain of cold truth. In the time that followed people seized on the story of Andrew Lanning and embroidered it with rare trimmings. It was told over and over again in saloons and around family firesides and in the bunk houses of many ranches. For Andrew had done what many men failed to do in spite of a score of killings—he struck the public fancy. People realized, however vaguely, that here was a unique story of the making of a desperado, and they gathered the story of Andrew Lanning to their hearts.
On the whole, it was not an unkindly interest. In reality the sympathy was with the outlaw. For everyone knew that Hal Dozier was on the trail again, and everyone felt that in the end he would run down his man, and there was a general hope that the chase might be a long one. For one thing, the end of that chase would have removed one of the few vital current bits of news. Men could no longer open conversations by asking the last tidings of Andrew. Such questions were always a signal for an unlocking of tongues around the circle.
Many untruths were told. For instance, the blowing of the safe in Allertown was falsely attributed to Andrew, while in reality he knew nothing about "soup" and its uses. And the running of the cows off the Circle O Bar range toward the border was another exploit which was wrongly checked to his credit or discredit. Also the brutal butchery in the night at Buffalo Head was sometimes said to be Andrew's work, but in general the men of the mountain desert came to know that the outlaw was not a red-handed murderer, but simply a man who fought for his own life. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 111 | The truths in themselves were enough to bear telling and retelling. Andrew's Thanksgiving dinner at William Foster's house, with a revolver on the table and a smile on his lips, was a pleasant tale and a thrilling one as well, for Foster had been able to go to the telephone and warn the nearest officer of the law. There was the incident of the jammed rifle at The Crossing; the tale of how a youngster at Tomo decided that he would rival the career of the great man—how he got a fine bay mare and started a blossoming career of crime by sticking up three men on the road and committing several depredations which were all attributed to Andrew, until Andrew himself ran down the foolish fellow, shot the gun out of his hand, gave him a talking that recalled his lost senses.
But all details fell into insignificance compared with the general theme, which was the mighty duel between Andrew and Hal Dozier—the unescapable manhunter and the trapwise outlaw. Hal did not lose any reputation because he failed to take Andrew Lanning at once. The very fact that he was able to keep close enough to make out the trail at all increased his fame. He did not even lose his high standing because he would not hunt Andrew alone. He always kept a group with him, and people said that he was wise to do it. Not because he was not a match for Andrew Lanning singlehanded, but because it was folly to risk life when there were odds which might be used against the desperado. But everyone felt that eventually Lanning would draw the deputy marshal away from his posse, and then the outlaw would turn, and there would follow a battle of the giants. The whole mountain desert waited for that time to come and bated its breath in hope and fear of it. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 112 | But if the men of the mountain desert considered Hal Dozier the greatest enemy of Andrew, he himself had quite another point of view. It was the loneliness, as Pop had promised him. There were days when he hardly touched food such was his distaste for the ugly messes which he had to cook with his own hands; there were days when he would have risked his life to eat a meal served by the hands of another and cooked by another man. That was the secret of that Thanksgiving dinner at the Foster house, though others put it down to sheer, reckless mischief. And today, as he made his fire between two stones—a smoldering, evil-smelling fire of sagebrush—the smoke kept running up his clothes and choking his lungs with its pungency. And the fat bacon which he cut turned his stomach. At last he sat down, forgetting the bacon in the pan, forgetting the long fast and the hard ride which had preceded this meal, and stared at the fire.
Rather, the fire was the thing which he kept chiefly in the center of his vision, but his glances went everywhere, to all sides, up, and down. Hal Dozier had hunted him hotly down the valley of the Little Silver River, but near the village of Los Toros the fagged posse and Hal himself had dropped back and once more given up the chase. No doubt they would rest for a few hours in the town, change horses, and then come after him again.
It was a new Andrew Lanning that sat there by the fire. He had left Martindale a clear-faced boy; the months that followed had changed him to a man; the boyhood had been literally burned out of him. The skin of his face, indeed, refused to tan, but now, instead of a healthy and crisp white it was a colorless sallow. The rounded cheeks were now straight and sank in sharply beneath his cheek bones, with a sharply incised line beside the mouth. And his expression at all times was one of quivering alertness—the mouth a little compressed and straight, the nostrils seeming a trifle distended, and the eyes as restless as the eyes of a hungry wolf. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 113 | Moreover, all of Andrew's actions had come to bear out this same expression of his face. If he sat down his legs were gathered, and he seemed about to stand up. If he walked he went with a nervous step, rising a little on his toes as though he were about to break into a run or as though he were poising himself to whirl at any alarm. He sat in this manner even now, under that dead gray sky of sheeted clouds, and in the middle of that great rolling plain, lifeless and colorless—lifeless except for the wind that hummed across it, pointed with cold. Andrew, looking from the dull glimmer of his fire to that dead waste, sighed. He whistled, and Sally came instantly to the call and dropped her head beside his own. She, at least, had not changed in the long pursuits and the hard life. It had made her gaunt. It had hardened and matured her muscles, but her head was the same, and her changeable, human eyes, the eyes of a pet, had not altered.
She stood there with her head down, silently; and Andrew, his hands locked around his knees, neither spoke to her nor stirred. But by degrees the pain and the hunger went out of his face, and, as though she knew that she was no longer needed, Sally tipped his sombrero over his eyes with a toss of her head, and, having given this signal of disgust at being called without a purpose, she went back to her work of cropping the gramma grass, which of all grasses a horse loves best. Andrew straightened his hat and cast one glance after her. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 114 | A shade of thought passed over his face as he looked at her. But this time the posse was probably once more starting on out of Los Toros and taking his trail. It would mean another test; he did not fear for her, but he pitied her for the hard work that was coming, and he looked almost with regret over the long racing lines of her body. And it was then, coming out of the sight of Sally, the thought of the posse, and the disgust for the greasy bacon in the pan, that Andrew received a quite new idea. It was to stop his flight, turn about, and double like a fox straight back toward Los Toros, making a detour to the left. The posse would plunge ahead, and he could cut in toward Los Toros. For he had determined to eat once again, at least, at a table covered with a white cloth, food prepared by the hand of another. Sally was known; he would leave her in the grove beside the Little Silver River. For himself, weeks had passed since any man had seen him, and certainly no one in Los Toros had met him face to face. He would be unknown except for a general description. And to disarm suspicion entirely he would leave his cartridge belt and his revolver with Sally in the woods. For what human being, no matter how imaginative, would possibly dream of Andrew Lanning going unarmed into a town and sitting calmly at a table to order a meal?
Retrospection made Andrew Lanning's coming to Los Toros a mad freak, whereas it was in reality a very clever stroke. Hal Dozier would have been on the road five hours before if he had not been held up in the matter of horses, but this is to tell the story out of turn.
Andrew saddled the mare and sent her back swiftly out of the plain, over the hills, and then dropped her down into the valley of the Little Silver River until he reached the grove of trees just outside Los Toros—some four hundred yards, say, from the little group of houses. He then took off his belt, hung it over the pommel, fastened the reins to the belt, and turned away. Sally would stay where he left her—unless someone else tried to get to her head, and then she would fight like a wildcat. He knew that, and he therefore started for Los Toros with his line of communications sufficiently guarded. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 115 | He instinctively thought first of drawing his hat low over his eyes and walking swiftly; a moment of calm figuring told him that the better way was to push the hat to the back of his head, put his hands in his pockets, and go whistling through the streets of the town. It was the middle of the gray afternoon; there were few people about, and the two or three whom Andrew passed nodded a greeting. Each time they raised their hands the fingers of Andrew twitched, but he made himself smile back at them and waved in return.
He went on until he came to the restaurant. It was a long, narrow room with a row of tables down each side, and a little counter and cash register beside the door, some gaudy posters on the wall, a screen at the rear to hide the entrance to the kitchen, and a ragged strip of linoleum on the narrow passage between the tables.
These things Andrew saw with the first flick of his eyes as he came through the door; as for people, there was a fat old man sitting behind the cash register in a dirty white apron and two men in greasy overalls and black shirts, perhaps from the railroad. There was one other thing which immediately blotted out all the rest; it was a big poster, about halfway down the wall, on which appeared in staring letters: "Ten thousand dollars reward for the apprehension, dead or alive, of Andrew Lanning." Above this caption was a picture of him, and below the big print appeared the body of smaller type which named his particular features. Straight to this sign Andrew walked and sat down at the table beneath it.
It was no hypnotic attraction that took him there. He knew perfectly well that if a man noticed that sign he would never dream of connecting the man for whom, dead or alive, ten thousand dollars was to be paid, with the man who sat underneath the picture calmly eating his lunch in the middle of a town. Even if some supercurious person should make a comparison, he would not proceed far with it, Andrew was sure, for the picture represented the round, young face of a person who hardly existed now; the hardened features of Andrew were now only a skinny caricature of what they had been. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 116 | At any rate, Andrew sat down beneath the picture, and, instead of resting one elbow on the table and partially veiling his face with his hand, as he might most naturally have done, he tilted back easily in his chair and looked up at the poster. The fat man from behind the register had come to take his order. He noted the direction of Andrew's eyes while he jotted down the items.
"You ain't the first," he said, "that's looked at that. Think of the gent that'll get ten thousand dollars out of a single slug?"
"I can name the man who'll get it," said Andrew, "and his name is Hal Dozier."
"I guess you ain't far wrong," replied the other. "For that matter, the folks around here would mostly make the same guess. But maybe Hal's luck will take a turn."
"Well," said Andrew, "if he gets the money I'll say that he's earned it. And rush in some bread first, captain. I'm two-thirds starved."
It was a historic meal in more than one way. The size of it was one notable feature, and even Andrew had to loosen his belt when he came to attack the main feature, which was a vast steak with fried eggs scattered over the top of it.
The steak had been reduced to a meager rim before Andrew had any attention to pay to the paper which had been placed on his table. It was an eight-page sheet entitled The Granville Bugle, and a subhead announced that it was "the greatest paper on the ranges and the cattleman's guide." Andrew found a picture on the first page, a picture of Hal Dozier, and over the picture the following caption: "Watch this column for news of the Andrew Lanning hunt."
The article in this week's issue contained few facts. It announced a number of generalities: "Marshal Hal Dozier, when interviewed, said—" and a great many innocuous things which he was sure that grim hunter could not have spoken. He passed over the rest of the column in careless contempt. On the second page, in a muddle of short notices, one headline caught his eye and held it: "Charles Merchant to Wed Society Belle."
The editor had spread his talents for the public eye in doing justice to it:
On the fifteenth of the month will be consummated a romance which began last year, when Charles Merchant, son of the well-known cattle king, John Merchant, went East and met Miss Anne Withero. It is Miss Withero's second visit in the West, and it is now announced that the marriage— |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 117 | On the fifteenth of the month will be consummated a romance which began last year, when Charles Merchant, son of the well-known cattle king, John Merchant, went East and met Miss Anne Withero. It is Miss Withero's second visit in the West, and it is now announced that the marriage—
Andrew crumpled the paper and let it fall. He glanced at a calender on the wall opposite him. There remained six days before the wedding.
And he was still so stunned by that announcement that, raising his head slowly, his thoughts spinning, he looked up and encountered the eyes of Hal Dozier as the latter sank into a chair.
He did not complete the act, but was arrested in midair, one hand grasping the back of the chair, the other hand at his hip. Andrew, in the space of an instant, thought of three things—to kick the table from him and try to get to the side door of the place, to catch up the heavy sugar bowl and attempt to bowl over his man with a well-directed blow, or to simply sit and look Hal Dozier in the eye.
He had thought of the three things in the space that it would take a dog to snap at a fly and look away. He dismissed the first alternatives as absurd, and, picking up his cup of coffee, he raised his eyes slowly toward the ceiling, after the time-honored fashion of a man draining a glass, let his glance move gradually up and catch on the face of Dozier, and then, without haste, lowered the cup again to its saucer. The flush of his own heavy meal kept his pallor from showing. As for Dozier, there was a succession of changes in his features, and then he concluded by lowering himself heavily the rest of the way into his chair. He gave his order to the proprietor in a dazed fashion, looking straight at Andrew, and the latter knew perfectly that the deputy marshal felt that he was in a dream. He was seeing what was not possible to see; his eyes were telling his brain in definite terms: "There sits Andrew Lanning and ten thousand dollars." But the reason of Dozier was speaking no less decidedly: "There sits a man without a weapon at his hip and actually beneath the poster which offers a reward for the capture of the person he resembles. Also, he is in a restaurant in the middle of a town. I have only to raise my voice in order to surround him."
And reason gained the upper hand, though Dozier continued to look at Andrew in a fascinated manner. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 118 | And reason gained the upper hand, though Dozier continued to look at Andrew in a fascinated manner.
Suddenly the outlaw knew that it would not do to disregard that glance so long continued. To disregard it would be to start the suspicions of Dozier as soon as his brain cleared.
"Hello, stranger," said Andrew, and he merely made his voice a trifle husky and deep. "D'you know me?"
The eyes of Dozier widened, there was a convulsive motion of his arm, and then his glance wandered slowly away.
"Excuse me," he said. "I thought I remembered your face."
Should he let it rest at that? No, better risk a finishing touch. "No harm done," he said in the same loud voice. "Hey, captain, another cup of coffee, will you? And a cigar."
He tilted back in his chair and began to hum. And all the time his nerves were jumping, and that old frenzy was taking him by the throat, that bulldog eagerness for the fight. But fight emptyhanded—and against Hal Dozier? The restaurant owner brought Dozier's order, and then the coffee and the cigar to Andrew, and while the deputy continued to look with dumb fascination at Andrew with swift side glances, Andrew finished his second cup. He bit off the end of his cigar, asked for his check, and paid it, and then felt his nerves crumble and go to pieces.
It was not Hal Dozier who sat there, but death itself that looked him in the face. One false move, one wrong gesture, would betray him. How could he tell? That very moment his expression might have altered into something which the marshal could not fail to recognize, and the moment that final touch came there would be a gun play swifter than the eye could follow—simply a flash of steel and a simultaneous explosion.
Even now, with the cigar between his teeth, he knew that if he lighted a match, the match would tremble between his fingers, and that trembling would betray him to Dozier. Yet he must not sit there, either, with the cigar between his teeth, unlighted. It was a little thing, but the weight of a feather would turn the balance and loose on him the thunderbolt of Hal Dozier in action.
But what could he do?
He found a thing in the very deeps of his despair. He got up from his chair, pushed his hat calmly upon his head and walked straight to the deputy. He dropped both hands upon the edge of Hal's table and leaned across it.
"Got a light, partner?" he asked. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 119 | He found a thing in the very deeps of his despair. He got up from his chair, pushed his hat calmly upon his head and walked straight to the deputy. He dropped both hands upon the edge of Hal's table and leaned across it.
"Got a light, partner?" he asked.
And standing there over the table, he knew that Dozier had at length finally and definitely recognized him; but that the numbed brain of the marshal refused to permit him to act. He believed and yet he dared not believe his belief. Andrew saw the glance of Dozier go to his hip—his hip which the holster had rubbed until it gleamed. But no matter—the gun was not there—and stunned again by that impossible fact Dozier reached back and brought up his hand bearing a match box. He took out a match. He lighted it, his brows drawing together and slackening all the time, and then he looked up, his eyes rising with the lighted match, and stared full into the eyes of Andrew.
It was discovery undoubtedly—and how long would that mental paralysis last?
Andrew looked straight back into those eyes. His cigar took the fire and sucked in the flame. A cloud of smoke puffed out and rolled toward Hal Dozier, and Andrew turned leisurely and walked toward the door.
He was a yard from it.
"Lanning!" came a voice behind him, terrible, like a scream of pain.
As he leaped forward a gun spoke heavily in the room. He heard the bullet crunch into the frame of the door; the door itself was split by the second shot as Andrew slammed it shut. Then he raced around the corner of the restaurant and made for the grove.
There was not a sound behind him for a moment. Then a roar rose from the village and rushed after him. It gave him wings. And, looking back, he saw that Hal Dozier was not among the pursuers. No, half a dozen men were running, and firing as they ran, but there was not a rifle in the lot, and it takes a good man to land a bullet on the run where he is firing at a dodging target. The pursuers lost ground; they stopped and yelled for horses.
But that was what Hal Dozier was doing now. He was jerking a saddle on the back of Gray Peter, and in sixty seconds he would be tearing out of Los Toros. In the same space Andrew was in his own saddle with a flying leap and spurring out of the trees. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 120 | By one thing he knew the utter desperation of Hal Dozier. For the man had fired while Andrew's back was turned. The bullet had followed the warning cry as swiftly as the strike of a snake follows its rattle. Luck and his sudden leap forward had unbalanced the nice aim of Dozier, and perhaps his mental agitation had contributed to it. But, at any rate, Andrew was troubled as he cleared the edge of the trees and cantered Sally not too swiftly along the Little Silver River toward Las Casas mountains, a little east of south.
He did not hurry her, partly because he wished to stay close and make sure of the number and force of his pursuers, and partly because he already had a lead sufficient to keep out of any but chance rifle shots.
He had not long to wait. Men boiled out of the village like hornets out of a shaken nest. He could see them buckling on belts while they were riding with the reins in their teeth. And they came like the wind, yelling at the sight of their quarry. Who would not kill a horse for the sake of saying that he had been within pistol range of the great outlaw? But, fast as their horses ran, Dozier, on Gray Peter, was able to keep up with them and also to range easily from group to group. Truly, Gray Peter was a glorious animal! If he were allowed to stretch out after the mare, what would the result be?
The pursuers, under the direction of Dozier, spread across the river bottom and, having formed so that no tricky doubling could leave them in the lurch on a blind trail, they began to use a new set of tactics. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 121 | The pursuers, under the direction of Dozier, spread across the river bottom and, having formed so that no tricky doubling could leave them in the lurch on a blind trail, they began to use a new set of tactics.
Dozier kept Gray Peter at a steady pace, never varying his gait. But, on either side of him groups of his followers urged their horses forward at breakneck speed. Three or four would send home the spurs and rush up the river bottom after Andrew. If he did not hurry on they opened fire with their rifles from a short distance and sent a hail of random bullets, but Andrew knew that a random bullet carries just as much force as a well-aimed one, and chance might be on the side of one of those shots. He dared not allow them to come too close. Yet his heart rejoiced as he watched the manner in which Sally accepted these challenges. She never once had to lurch into her racing gait; she took the rushes of the cow ponies behind her by merely lengthening her stride until the horses behind her were winded and had to fall back.
If Andrew had let out Sally she would have walked away from them all, but he dared not do that. For, after he had run the heart out of the commoner ones, there remained Gray Peter in reserve, never changing his pace, never hurrying, falling often far back, as the groups one after another pushed close to Sally and made her spurt, gaining again when the spurts ended one by one. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 122 | There were two hours of daylight; there was one hour of dusk; and all that time the crowd kept thrusting out its small groups, one after the other, reaching after Sally like different arms, and each time she answered the spurt, and always slipped away into a greater lead at the end of it. And then, while the twilight was turning into dark, Andrew looked back and saw the whole crowd rein in their horses and turn back. There remained a single figure following him, and that figure was easily seen, because it was a man on a gray horse. And then Andrew grasped the plan fully. The posse had played its part; the thing for which the mountain desert had waited was come at last, and Hal Dozier was going on to find his man single-handed and pull him down. Twice, before complete darkness set in, Andrew had been on the verge of turning and going back to accept the challenge of Hal Dozier. Always two things stopped him. There was first the fear of the man which he frankly admitted, and more than that was the feeling that one thing lay before him to be done before he could meet Dozier and end the long trail. He must see Anne Withero. She was about to be married and be drawn out of his world and into a new one. He felt it was more important than life or death to see her before that transformation took place. They would go East, no doubt. Two thousand miles, the law and the mountains would fence him away from her after that.
During the last months he accepted her as he accepted the stars—something far away from him. Now, by some pretext, by some wile, he must live to see her once more. After that let Hal Dozier meet him when he would.
But with this in mind, as soon as the utter dark shut down, he swerved Sally to the right and worked slowly up through the mountains, heading due southwest and out of the valley of the Little Silver. He kept at it, through a district where the mare could not even trot a great deal of the time, for two or more hours. Then he found a little plateau thick with good grazing for Sally and with a spring near it. There he camped for the night, without food, without fire. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 123 | And not once during the hours before morning did he close his eyes. When the first gray touched the sky he was in the saddle again; before the sun was up he had crossed the Las Casas and was going down the great shallow basin of the Roydon River. A fine, drizzling rain was falling, and Sally, tired from her hard work of the day before and the long duels with the horses of the posse, went even more down-heartedly moody than usual, shuffling wearily, but recovering herself with her usual catlike adroitness whenever her footing failed on the steep downslope.
For all her dullness, it was a signal from Sally that saved Andrew. She jerked up her head and turned; he looked in the same direction and saw a form like a gray ghost coming over the hills to his left, a dim shape through the rain. Gloomily Andrew watched Hal Dozier come. Gray Peter had been fresher than Sally at the end of the run of the day before. He was fresher now. Andrew could tell that easily by the stretch of his gallop and the evenness of his pace as he rushed across the slope. He gave the word to Sally. She tossed up her head in mute rebellion at this new call for a race, and then broke into a canter whose first few strides, by way of showing her anger, were as choppy and lifeless as the stride of a plow horse.
That was the beginning of the famous ride from the Las Casas mountains to the Roydon range, and all the distance across the Roydon valley. It started with a five-mile sprint—literally five miles of hot racing in which each horse did its best. And in that five miles Gray Peter would most unquestionably have won had not one bit of luck fallen the mare. A hedge of young evergreen streaked before Sally, and Andrew put her at the mark; she cleared it like a bird, jumping easily and landing in her stride. It was not the first time she had jumped with Andrew. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 124 | But Gray Peter was not a steeplechaser. He had not been trained to it, and he refused. His rider had to whirl and go up the line of shrubs until he found a place to break through. Then he was after Sally again. But the moment that Andrew saw the marshal had been stopped he did not use the interim to push the mare and increase her lead. Very wisely he drew her back to the long, rocking canter which was her natural gait, and Sally got the breath which Gray Peter had run out of her. She also regained priceless lost ground, and when the gray came in view of the quarry again his work was all to do over again. Hal Dozier tried again in straightaway running. It had been his boast that nothing under the saddle in the mountain desert could keep away from him in a stretch of any distance, and he rode Gray Peter desperately to make his boast good. He failed. If that first stretch had been unbroken—but there his chance was gone, and, starting the second spurt, Andrew came to realize one greatly important truth—Sally could not sprint for any distance, but up to a certain pace she ran easily and without labor. He made it his point to see that she was never urged beyond that pace. He found another thing, that she took a hill in far better style than Peter, and she did far better in the rough, but on the level going he ate up her handicap swiftly.
With a strength of his own found and a weakness in his pursuer, Andrew played remorselessly to that weakness with his strength. He sought the choppy ground as a preference and led the stallion through it wherever he could; he swung to the right, where there was a stretch of rolling hills, and once more Gray Peter had a losing space before him.
So they came to the river itself, with Gray Peter comfortably in the rear, but running well within his strength. Andrew paused in the shallows to allow Sally one swallow; then he went on. But Dozier did not pause for even this. It was a grave mistake.
And so the miles wore on. Sally was still running like a swallow for lightness, but Andrew knew by her breathing that she was giving vital strength to the effort. He talked to her constantly. He told her how Gray Peter ran behind them. He encouraged her with pet words. And Sally seemed to understand, for she flicked one ear back to listen, and then she pricked them both and kept at her work. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 125 | It was a heart-tearing thing to see her run to the point of lather and then keep on.
They were in low hills, and Gray Peter was losing steadily. They reached a broad flat, and the stallion gained with terrible insistence. Looking back, Andrew could see that the marshal had stripped away every vestige of his pack. He followed that example with a groan. And still Gray Peter gained.
It was the last great effort for the stallion. Before them rose the foothills of the Roydon mountains; behind them the Las Casas range was lost in mist. It seemed that they had been galloping like this for an infinity of time, and Andrew was numb from the shoulders down. If he reached those hills Gray Peter was beaten. He knew it; Hal Dozier knew it; and the two great horses gave all their strength to the last duel of the race.
The ears of Sally no longer pricked. They lay flat on her neck. The amazing lift was gone from her gait, and she pounded heavily with the forelegs. And still she struggled on. He looked back, and Gray Peter still gained, an inch at a time, and his stride did not seem to have abated. The one bitter question now was whether Sally would not collapse under the effort. With every lurch of her feet, Andrew expected to feel her crumble beneath him. And yet she went on. She was all heart, all nerve, and running on it. Behind her came Gray Peter, and he also ran with his head stretched out.
He was within rifle range now. Why did not Dozier fire? Perhaps he had set his heart on actually running Sally down, not dropping his prey with a distant shot.
And still they flew across the flat. The hills were close now, and sometimes, when the drizzling rain lifted, it seemed that the Roydon mountains were exactly above them, leaning out over him like a shadow. He called on Sally again and again. He touched her for the first time in her life with spurs, and she found something in the depths of her heart and her courage to answer with. She ran again with a ghost of her former buoyancy, and Gray Peter was held even. Not an inch could he gain after that. Andrew saw his pursuer raise his quirt and flog. It was useless. Each horse was running itself out, and no power could get more speed out of the pounding limbs. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 126 | And with his head still turned, Andrew felt a shock and flounder. Sally had almost fallen. He jerked sharply up on the reins, and she broke into a staggering trot. Then Andrew saw that they had struck the slope of the first hill, a long, smooth rise which she would have taken at full speed in the beginning of the race, but now though she labored bitterly, she could not raise a gallop. The trot was her best effort.
There was a shrill yelling behind, and Andrew saw Dozier, a hand brandished above his head. He had seen Sally break down; Gray Peter would catch her; his horse would win that famous duel of speed and courage. Rifle? He had forgotten his rifle. He would go in, he would overhaul Sally, and then finish the chase with a play of revolvers. And in expectation of that end, Andrew drew his revolver. It hung the length of his arm; he found that his muscles were numb from the cold and the cramped position from the elbow down. Shoot? He was as helpless as though he had no gun at all. He beat his hands together to bring back the blood. He thrashed his arms against the pommel of the saddle. There was only a dull pain; it would take long minutes to bring those hands back to the point of service, and in the meantime Gray Peter galloped upon him from behind!
Well, he would let Sally do her best. For the last time he called on her; for the last time she struggled to respond, and Andrew looked back and grimly watched the stallion sweeping across the last portion of the flat ground, closer, closer, and then, at the very base of the slope, Gray Peter tossed up his head, floundered, and went down, hurling his rider over his head. Andrew, fascinated, let Sally fall into a walk, while he watched the singular, convulsive struggles of Gray Peter to gain his feet. Hal Dozier was up again; he ran to his horse, caught his head, and at the same moment the stallion grew suddenly limp. The weight of his head dragged the marshal down, and then Andrew saw that Dozier made no effort to rise again.
He sat with the head of the horse in his lap, his own head buried in his hands, and Andrew knew then that Gray Peter was dead. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 127 | He sat with the head of the horse in his lap, his own head buried in his hands, and Andrew knew then that Gray Peter was dead.
The mare herself was in a far from safe condition. And if the marshal had roused himself from his grief and hurried up the slope on foot he would have found the fugitive out of the saddle and walking by the side of the played-out Sally, forcing her with slaps on the hip to keep in motion. She went on, stumbling, her head down, and the sound of her breathing was a horrible thing to hear. But she must keep in motion, for, if she stopped in this condition, Sally would never run again.
Andrew forced her relentlessly on. At length her head came up a little and her breathing was easier and easier. Before dark that night he came on a deserted shanty, and there he took Sally under the shelter, and, tearing up the floor, he built a fire which dried them both. The following day he walked again, with Sally following like a dog at his heels. One day later he was in the saddle again, and Sally was herself once more. Give her one feed of grain, and she would have run again that famous race from beginning to end. But Andrew, stealing out of the Roydon mountains into the lower ground, had no thought of another race. He was among a district of many houses, many men, and, for the final stage of his journey, he waited until after dusk had come and then saddled Sally and cantered into the valley.
It was late on the fourth night after he left Los Toros that Andrew came again to the house of John Merchant and left Sally in the very place among the trees where the pinto had stood before. There was no danger of discovery on his approach, for it was a wild night of wind and rain. The drizzling mists of the last three days had turned into a steady downpour, and rivers of water had been running from his slicker on the way to the ranch house. Now he put the slicker behind the saddle, and from the shelter of the trees surveyed the house.
It was bursting with music and light; sometimes the front door was opened and voices stole out to him; sometimes even through the closed door he heard the ghostly tinkling of some girl's laughter.
And that was to Andrew the most melancholy sound in the world. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 128 | It was bursting with music and light; sometimes the front door was opened and voices stole out to him; sometimes even through the closed door he heard the ghostly tinkling of some girl's laughter.
And that was to Andrew the most melancholy sound in the world.
The rain, trickling even through the foliage of the evergreen, decided him to act at once. It might be that all the noise and light were, after all, an advantage to him, and, running close to the ground, he skulked across the dangerous open stretch and came into the safe shadow of the wall of the house.
Once there, it was easy to go up to the roof by one of the rain pipes, the same low roof from which he had escaped on the time of his last visit. On the roof the rush and drumming of the rain quite covered any sound he made, but he was drenched before he reached the window of Anne's room. Could he be sure that on her second visit she would have the same room? He settled that by a single glance. The curtain was not drawn, and a lamp, turned low, burned on the table beside the bed. The room was quite empty.
The window was fastened, but he worked back the fastening iron with the blade of his knife and raised himself into the room. He closed the window behind him. At once the noise of rain and the shouting of the wind faded off into a distance, and the voices of the house came more clearly to him. But he dared not stay to listen, for the water was dripping around him; he must move before a large dark spot showed on the carpet, and he saw, moreover, exactly where he could best hide. There was a heavily curtained alcove at one end of the room, and behind this shelter he hid himself.
And here he waited. How would she come? Would there be someone with her? Would she come laughing, with all the triumph of the dance bright in her face?
Vaguely he heard the shrill droning of the violins die away beneath him, and the slipping of many dancing feet on a smooth floor fell to a whisper and then ceased. Voices sounded in the hall, but he gave no heed to the meaning of all this. Not even the squawking of horns, as automobiles drove away, conveyed any thought to him; he wished that this moment could be suspended to an eternity. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 129 | Parties of people were going down the hall; he heard soft flights of laughter and many young voices. People were calling gaily to one another and then by an inner sense rather than by a sound he knew that the door was opened into the room. He leaned and looked, and he saw Anne Withero close the door behind her and lean against it. In the joy of her triumph that evening?
No, her head was fallen, and he saw the gleam of her hand at her breast. He could not see her face clearly, but the bent head spoke eloquently of defeat. She came forward at length. Thinking of her as the reigning power in that dance and all the merriment below him, Andrew had been imagining her tall, strong, with compelling eyes commanding admiration. He found all at once that she was small, very small; and her hair was not that keen fire which he had pictured. It was simply a coppery glow, marvelously delicate, molding her face. She went to a great full-length mirror. She raised her head for one instant to look at her image, and then she bowed her head again and placed her hand against the edge of the mirror for support. Little by little, through the half light, he was making her out and now the curve of this arm, from wrist to shoulder, went through Andrew like a phrase of music. He stepped out from behind the curtain, and, at the sound of the cloth swishing back into place, she whirled on him.
She was speechless; her raised hand did not fall; it was as if she were frozen where she stood.
"I shall leave you at once," said Andrew quietly, "if you are frightened. You have only to tell me."
He had come closer. Now he was astonished to see her turn swiftly toward the door and touch his arm with her hand. "Hush!" she said. "Hush! They may hear you!"
She glided to the door into the hall and turned the lock softly and came to him again.
It made Andrew weak to see her so close, and he searched her face with a hungry and jealous fear, lest she should be different from his dream of her. "You are the same," he said with a sigh of relief. "And you are not afraid of me?"
"Hush! Hush!" she repeated. "Afraid of you? Don't you see that I'm happy, happy, happy to see you again?" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 130 | "Hush! Hush!" she repeated. "Afraid of you? Don't you see that I'm happy, happy, happy to see you again?"
She drew him forward a little, and her hand touched his as she did so. She turned up the lamp, and a flood of strong yellow light went over the room. "But you have changed," said Anne Withero with a little cry. "Oh, you have changed! They've been hounding you—the cowards!"
"Does it make no difference to you—that I have killed a man."
"Ah, it was that brother to the Dozier man. But I've learned about him. He was a bloodhound like his brother, but treacherous. Besides, it was in fair fight. Fair fight? It was one against six!"
"Don't," said Andrew, breathing hard, "don't say that! You make me feel that it's almost right to have done what I've done. But besides him—all the rest—do they make no difference?"
"All of what?"
"People say things about me. They even print them." He winced as he spoke.
But she was fierce again; her passion made her tremble.
"When I think of it!" she murmured. "When I think of it, the rotten injustice makes me want to choke 'em all! Why, today I heard—I can't repeat it. It makes me sick—sick! Why, they've hounded you and bullied you until they've made you think you are bad, Andrew. They've even made you a little bit proud of the hard things people say about you. Isn't that true?"
Was it any wonder that Andrew could not answer? He felt all at once so supple that he was hot tallow which those small fingers would mold and bend to suit themselves.
"Sit down here!" she commanded.
Meekly he obeyed. He sat on the edge of his chair, with his hat held with both hands, and his eyes widened as he stared at her—like a person coming out of a great darkness into a great light.
And tears came into the eyes of the girl.
"You're as thin as a starved—wolf," she said, and closed her eyes and shuddered. "And all the time I've been thinking of you as you were when I saw you here before—the same clear, steady eyes and the same direct smile. But they've made you older—they've burned the boy out of you with pain! And I've been thinking about you just cantering through wild, gay adventures. Are you ill now?"
He had leaned back in the chair and gathered his hat close to his breast, crushing it.
"I'm not ill," said Andrew. His voice was hoarse and thick. "I'm just listening to you. Go on and talk."
"About you?" asked the girl. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 131 | He had leaned back in the chair and gathered his hat close to his breast, crushing it.
"I'm not ill," said Andrew. His voice was hoarse and thick. "I'm just listening to you. Go on and talk."
"About you?" asked the girl.
"I don't hear your words—hardly; I just hear the sound you make." He leaned forward again and cast out his arm so that the palm of his hand was turned up beneath her eyes. She could see the long, lean fingers. It suddenly came home to her that every strong man in the mountain desert was in deadly terror of that hand. Anne Withero was shaken for the first time.
"Listen to me," he was saying in that tense whisper which was oddly like the tremor of his hand, "I've been hungry for that voice all these weeks—and months."
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," said the girl, very grave. "I'm going to break up this cowardly conspiracy against you. I've written to my father to get the finest lawyer in the land and send him out here to make you—legal—again."
He began to smile, and shook his head.
"It's no use," he said. "Perhaps your lawyer could help me on account of Bill's death, but he couldn't help me from Hal."
"Are you—do you mean you're going to fight the other man, too?"
"He killed his horse chasing me," said Andrew. "I couldn't stop to fight him because I was comin' down here to see you. But when I go away I've got to find him and give him a chance back at me. It's only fair."
"Because he killed a horse trying to get you, you're going to give him a chance to shoot you?"
Her voice had become shrill. She lowered it instinctively toward the end and cast a glance of apprehension toward the door.
"You are quite mad," said the girl.
"You don't understand," said Andrew. "His horse was Gray Peter—the stallion. And I would rather have killed a man than have seen Gray Peter die. Hal had Peter's head in his arms," he added softly. "And he'll never give up the trail until he's had it out with me. He wouldn't be half a man if he let things drop now."
"So you have to fight Hal Dozier?"
"Yes."
"But when that's done—"
"When that's done one of us will be dead. If it's me, of course, there's no use worryin'; if it's Hal, of course, I'm done in the eyes of the law. Two—murders!"
His eyes glinted and his fingers quivered. It sent a cold thrill through the girl. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 132 | "When that's done one of us will be dead. If it's me, of course, there's no use worryin'; if it's Hal, of course, I'm done in the eyes of the law. Two—murders!"
His eyes glinted and his fingers quivered. It sent a cold thrill through the girl.
"But they say he's a terrible man, Andrew. You wouldn't let him catch you?"
"I won't stand and wait for him," said Andrew gravely. "But if we fight I think I'll kill him."
"What makes you think that?" She was more curious than shocked.
"It's just a sort of feeling that you get when you look at a man; either you're his master or you aren't. You see it in a flash."
"Have you ever seen your master?" asked the girl slowly.
"I'll want to die when I see that," he said simply.
Suddenly she clenched her hands and sat straight up.
"It's got to be stopped," she said hotly. "It's all nonsense, and I'm going to see that you're both stopped." "Four days ago," he said, "you could have taken me in the hollow of your hand. I would have come to you and gone from you at a nod. That time is about to end."
He paused a little, and looked at her in such a manner that she was frightened, but it was a pleasant fear. It made her interlace her fingers with nervous anxiety, but it set a fire in her eyes.
"That time is ending," said Andrew. "You are about to be married."
"And after that you will never look at me again, never think of me again?"
"I hope not," he answered. "I strongly hope not."
"But why? Is a marriage a blot or a stain?"
"It is a barrier," he answered.
"Even to thoughts? Even to friendship?"
"Yes."
A very strange thing happened in the excited mind of Anne Withero. It seemed to her that Charles Merchant sat, a filmy ghost, beside this tattered fugitive. He was speaking the same words that Andrew spoke, but his voice and his manner were to Andrew Lanning what moonshine is to sunlight. She had been thinking of Charles Merchant as a social asset; she began to think of him now as a possessing force. Anne Withero possessed by Charlie Merchant!
"What you have told me," she said, "means more than you may think to me. Have you come all this distance to tell me?"
"All this distance to talk?" he said. He seemed to sit back and wonder. "Have I traveled four days?" he went on. "Has Gray Peter died, and have I been under Hal Dozier's rifle only to speak to you?" He suddenly recalled himself. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 133 | "All this distance to talk?" he said. He seemed to sit back and wonder. "Have I traveled four days?" he went on. "Has Gray Peter died, and have I been under Hal Dozier's rifle only to speak to you?" He suddenly recalled himself.
"No, no! I have come to give you a wedding present."
He watched her color change.
"Are you angry? Is it wrong to give you a present?"
"No," she answered in a singular, stifled voice. "It is this watch." It was a large gold watch and a chain of very old make that he put into her hand. "It is for your son," said Andrew.
She stood up; he rose instinctively.
"When I look at it I'm to remember that you are forgetting me?"
A little hush fell upon them.
"Are you laughing at me, Anne?"
He had never called her by her name before, and yet it came naturally upon his lips.
She stood, indeed, with the same smile upon her lips, but her eyes were fixed and looked straight past him. And presently he saw a tear pass slowly down her face. Her hand remained without moving, with the watch in it exactly as he had placed it there.
She had not stirred when he slipped without a noise through the window and was instantly swallowed in the rushing of the wind and rain.
There was, as Andrew had understood for a long time, a sort of underground world of criminals even here on the mountain desert. Otherwise the criminals could not have existed for even a moment in the face of the organized strength of lawful society. Several times in the course of his wanderings Andrew had come in contact with links of the underground chain, and he learned what every fugitive learns—the safe stopping points in the great circuit of his flight. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 134 | Three elements went into the making of that hidden society. There was first of all the circulating and active part, and this was composed of men actually known to be under the ban of the law and openly defying it. Beneath this active group lay a stratum much larger which served as a base for the operating criminals. This stratum was built entirely of men who had at one time been incriminated in shady dealings of one sort and another. It included lawbreakers from every part of the world, men who had fled first of all to the shelter of the mountain desert and who had lived there until their past was even forgotten in the lands from which they came. But they had never lost the inevitable sympathy for their more active fellows, and in this class there was included a meaner element—men who had in the past committed crimes in the mountain desert itself and who, from time to time, when they saw an absolutely safe opportunity, were perfectly ready and willing to sin again.
The third and largest of all the elements in the criminal world of the desert was a shifting and changing class of men who might be called the paid adherents of the active order. The "long riders," acting in groups or singly, fled after the commission of a crime and were forced to find places of rest and concealment along their journey. Under this grave necessity they quickly learned what people on their way could be hired as hosts and whose silence and passive aid could be bought. Such men were secured in the first place by handsome bribes. And very often they joined the ranks unwillingly. But when some peaceful householder was confronted by a desperate man, armed, on a weary horse—perhaps stained from a wound—the householder was by no means ready to challenge the man's right to hospitality. He never knew when the stranger would take by force what was refused to him freely, and, if the lawbreaker took by force, he was apt to cover his trail by a fresh killing. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 135 | Of course, such killings took place only when the "long rider" was a desperate brute rather than a man, but enough of them had occurred to call up vivid examples to every householder who was accosted. As a rule he submitted to receive the unwelcome guest. Also, as a rule, he was weak enough to accept a gift when the stranger parted. Once such a gift was taken, he was lost. His name was instantly passed on by the fugitive to his fellows as a "safe" man. Before long he became, against or with his will, a depository of secrets—banned faces became known to him. And if he suddenly decided to withdraw from that criminal world his case was most precarious.
The "long riders" admitted no neutrals. If a man had once been with them he could only leave them to become an enemy. He became open prey. His name was published abroad. Then his cattle were apt to disappear. His stacks of hay might catch fire unexpectedly at night. His house itself might be plundered, and, in not infrequent cases, the man himself was brutally murdered. It was part of a code no less binding because it was unwritten.
All of this Andrew was more or less aware of, and scores of names had been mentioned to him by chance acquaintances of the road. Such names he stored away, for he had always felt that time impending of which Henry Allister had warned him, the time when he must openly forget his scruples and take to a career of crime. That time, he now knew, was come upon him.
It would be misrepresenting Andrew to say that he shrank from the future. Rather he accepted everything that lay before him wholeheartedly, and, with the laying aside of his scruples, there was an instant lightening of the heart, a fierce keenness of mind, a contempt for society, a disregard for life beginning with his own. One could have noted it in the recklessness with which he sent Sally up the slope away from the ranch house this night. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 136 | He had made up his mind immediately to hunt out a "safe" man, recently mentioned to him by that unconscionable scapegrace Harry Woods, crooked gambler, thief of small and large, and whilom murderer. The man's name was Garry Baldwin, a small rancher, some half day's ride above Sullivan's place in the valley. He was recommended as a man of silence. In that direction Andrew took his way, but, coming in the hills to a dished-out place on a hillside, where there was a natural shelter from both wind and rain, he stopped there for the rest of the night, cooked a meal, rolled himself in his blankets, and slept into the gray of the morning.
No sooner was the first light streaking the horizon to the east than Andrew wakened. He saddled Sally and, after a leisurely breakfast, started at a jog trot through the hills, taking the upslope with the utmost care. For nothing so ruins a horse as hard work uphill at the very beginning of the day. He gave Sally her head, and by letting her go as she pleased she topped the divide, breathing as easily as if she had been walking on the flat. She gave one toss of her head as she saw the long, smooth slope ahead of her, and then, without a word from Andrew or a touch of his heels, she gave herself up to the long, rocking canter which she could maintain so tirelessly for hour on hour.
A clear, cold morning came on. Indeed, it was rarely chill for the mountain desert, with a feel of coming snow in the wind. Sally pricked one ear as she looked into the north, and Andrew knew that that was a sign of trouble coming.
He came in the middle of the morning to the house of Garry Baldwin. It was a wretched shack, the roof sagged in the middle, and the building had been held from literally falling apart by bolting an iron rod through the length of it.
A woman who fitted well into such a background kicked open the door and looked up to Andrew with the dishwater still dripping from her red hands. He asked for her husband. He was gone from the house. Where, she did not know. Somewhere yonder, and her gesture included half the width of the horizon to the west. There was his trail, if Andrew wished to follow it. For her part, she was busy and could not spare time to gossip. At that she stepped back and kicked the door shut with a slam that set the whole side of the shack shivering. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 137 | At that moment Andrew wondered what he would have done when he lived in Martindale if he had been treated in such a manner. He would have crimsoned to the eyes, no doubt, and fled from the virago. But now he felt neither embarrassment nor fear nor anger. He drew his revolver, and with the heavy butt banged loudly on the door. It left three deep dents in the wood, and the door was kicked open again. But this time he saw only the foot of the woman clad in a man's boot. The door remained open, but the hostess kept out of view.
"You be ridin' on, friend," she called in her harsh voice. "Bud, keep out'n the kitchen. Stranger, you be ridin' on. I don't know you and I don't want to know you. A man that beats on doors with his gun!"
Andrew laughed, and the sound brought her into view, a furious face, but a curious face as well. She carried a long rifle slung easily under her stout arm.
"What d'you want with Garry?" she asked.
And he replied with a voice equally hard: "I want direction for finding Scar-faced Allister."
He watched that shot shake her.
"You do? You got a hell of a nerve askin' around here for Allister! Slope, kid, slope. You're on a cold trail."
"Wait a minute," protested Andrew. "You need another look at me."
"I can see all there is to you the first glance," said the woman calmly. "Why should I look again?"
"To see the reward," said Andrew bitterly. He laughed again. "I'm Andrew Lanning. Ever hear of me?"
It was obvious that she had. She blinked and winced as though the name stunned her. "Lanning!" she said. "Why, you ain't much more'n a kid. Lanning! And you're him?"
All at once she melted.
"Slide off your hoss and come in, Andy," she said. "Dogged if I knew you at all!"
"Thanks. I want to find Allister and I'm in a hurry."
"So you and him are goin' to team it? That'll be high times! Come here, Bud. Look at Andy Lanning. That's him on the horse right before you." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 138 | "Thanks. I want to find Allister and I'm in a hurry."
"So you and him are goin' to team it? That'll be high times! Come here, Bud. Look at Andy Lanning. That's him on the horse right before you."
A scared, round face peered out at Andrew from behind his mother. "All right, partner. I'll tell you where to find him pretty close. He'll be up the gulch along about now. You know the old shack up there? You can get to him inside three hours—with that hoss." She stopped and eyed Sally. "Is that the one that run Gray Peter to death? She don't look the part, but them long, low hosses is deceivin'. Can't you stay, Andy? Well, s'long. And give Allister a good word from Bess Baldwin. Luck!"
He waved, and was gone at a brisk gallop.
It was not yet noon when he entered the gulch, he was part way up the ravine when something moved at the top of the high wall to his right. He guessed at once that it was a lookout signaling the main party of the approach of a stranger, so Andrew stopped Sally with a word and held his hand high above his head, facing the point from which he had seen the movement. There was a considerable pause; then a man showed on the top of the cliff, and Andrew recognized Jeff Rankin by his red hair. Yet they were at too great a distance for conversation, and after waving a greeting, Rankin merely beckoned Andrew on his way up the valley. Around the very next bend of the ravine he found the camp. It was of the most impromptu character, and the warning of Rankin had caused them to break it up precipitately, as Andrew could see by one length of tarpaulin tossed, without folding, over a saddle. Each of the four was ready, beside his horse, for flight or for attack, as their outlook on the cliff should give signal. But at sight of Andrew and the bay mare a murmur, then a growl of interest went among them. Even Larry la Roche grinned a skull-like welcome, and Henry Allister actually ran forward to receive the newcomer. Andrew dropped out of the saddle and shook hands with him.
"I've done as you said I would," said Andrew. "I've run in a circle, Allister, and now I'm back to make one of you, if you still want me."
Allister, laughing joyously, turned to the other three and repeated the question to them. There was only one voice in answer. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 139 | "I've done as you said I would," said Andrew. "I've run in a circle, Allister, and now I'm back to make one of you, if you still want me."
Allister, laughing joyously, turned to the other three and repeated the question to them. There was only one voice in answer.
"Want you?" said Allister, and his smile made Andrew almost forget the scar which twisted the otherwise handsome face. "Want you? Why, man, if we've been beyond the law up to this time, we can laugh at the law now. Sit down. Hey, Scottie, shake up the fire and put on some coffee, will you? We'll take an hour off."
Larry la Roche was observed to make a dour face.
"Who'll tell me it's lucky," he said, "to have a gent that starts out by makin' us all stop on the trail? Is that a good sign?"
But Scottie, with laughter, hushed him. Yet Larry la Roche remained of all the rest quite silent during the making of the coffee and the drinking of it. The others kept up a running fire of comments and questions, but Larry la Roche, as though he had never forgiven Andrew for their first quarrel, remained with his long, bony chin dropped upon his breast and followed the movements of Andrew Lanning with restless eyes.
The others were glad to see him, as Andrew could tell at a glance, but also they were a bit troubled, and by degrees he made out the reason. Strange as it seemed, they regretted that he had not been able to make his break across the mountains. His presence made them more impregnable than they had ever been under the indomitable Allister, and yet, more than the aid of his fighting hand, they would have welcomed the tidings of a man who had broken away from the shadow of the law and made good. For each of the fallen wishes to feel that his exile is self-terminable.
And therefore Andrew, telling his story to them in brief, found that they were not by any means filled with unmixed pleasure. Joe Clune, with his bright brown hair of youth and his lined, haggard face of worn middle age, summed up their sentiments at the end of Andrew's story: "You're what we need with us, Lanning. You and Allister will beat the world, and it means high times for the rest of us, but God pity you—that's all!"
The pause that followed this solemn speech was to Andrew like an amen. He glanced from face to face, and each stern eye met his in gloomy sympathy. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 140 | The pause that followed this solemn speech was to Andrew like an amen. He glanced from face to face, and each stern eye met his in gloomy sympathy.
Then something shot through him which was to his mind what red is to the eye; it was a searing touch of reckless indifference, defiance.
"Forget this prayer-meeting talk," said Andrew. "I came up here for action, not mourning. I want something to do with my hands, not something to think about with my head!"
Something to think about! It was like a terror behind him. If he should have long quiet it would steal on him and look at him over his shoulder like a face. A little of this showed in his face; enough to make the circle flash significant glances at one another.
"You got something behind you, Andy," said Scottie. "Come out with it. It ain't too bad for us to hear."
"There's something behind me," said Andrew. "It's the one really decent part of my life. And I don't want to think about it. Allister, they say you never let the grass grow under you. What's on your hands now?"
"Somebody has been flattering me," said the leader quietly, and all the time he kept studying the face of Andrew. "We have a little game ahead, if you want to come in on it. We're shorthanded, but I'd try it with you. That makes us six all told. Six enough, boys?"
"Count me half of one," said Larry la Roche. "I don't feel lucky about this little party."
"We'll count you two times two," replied the leader. He added: "You boys play a game; I'm going to break in Lanning to our job."
Taking his horse, he and Andrew rode at a walk up the ravine. On the way the leader explained his system briefly and clearly. Told in short, he worked somewhat as follows: Instead of raiding blindly right and left, he only moved when he had planned every inch of ground for the advance and the blow and the retreat. To make sure of success and the size of his stakes he was willing to invest heavily.
"Big business men sink half a year's income in their advertising. I do the same." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 141 | "Big business men sink half a year's income in their advertising. I do the same."
It was not public advertising; it was money cunningly expended where it would do most good. Fifty per cent of the money the gang earned was laid away to make future returns surer. In twenty places Allister had his paid men who, working from behind the scenes, gained priceless information and sent word of it to the outlaw. Trusted officials in great companies were in communication with him. When large shipments of gold were to be made, for instance, he was often warned beforehand. Every dollar of the consignment was known to him, the date of its shipment, its route, and the hands to which it was supposed to fall. Or, again, in many a bank and prosperous mercantile firm in the mountain desert he had inserted his paid spies, who let him know when the safe was crammed with cash and by what means the treasure was guarded.
Not until he had secured such information did the leader move. And he still delayed until every possible point of friction had been noted, every danger considered, and a check appointed for it, every method of advance and retreat gone over.
"A good general," Allister was fond of saying, "plans in two ways: for an absolute victory and for an absolute defeat. The one enables him to squeeze the last ounce of success out of a triumph; the other keeps a failure from turning into a catastrophe."
With everything arranged for the stroke, he usually posted himself with the band as far as possible from the place where the actual work was to be done. Then he made a feint in the opposite direction—he showed himself or a part of his gang recklessly. The moment the alarm was given—even at the risk of having an entire hostile countryside around him—he started a whirlwind course in the opposite direction from which he was generally supposed to be traveling. If possible, at the ranches of adherents, or at out-of-the-way places where confederates could act, he secured fresh horses and dashed on at full speed all the way. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 142 | Then, at the very verge of the place for attack, he gathered his men, rehearsed in detail what each man was to do, delivered the blow, secured the spoils, and each man of the party split away from the others and fled in scattering directions, to assemble again at a distant point on a comparatively distant date. There they sat down around a council table, and there they divided the spoils. No matter how many were employed, no matter how vast a proportion of the danger and scheming had been borne by the leader, he took no more than two shares. Then fifty per cent of the prize was set aside. The rest was divided with an exact care among the remaining members of the gang. The people who had supplied the requisite information for the coup were always given their share.
From this general talk Allister descended to particulars. He talked of the gang itself. They were quite a fixed quantity. In the last half dozen years there had not been three casualties. For one thing, he chose his men with infinite care; in the second place, he saw to it that they remained in harmony, and to that end he was careful never to be tempted into forming an unwieldy crew, no matter how large the prize. Of the present organization each was an expert. Larry la Roche had been a counterfeiter and was a consummate penman. His forgeries were works of art. "Have you noticed his hands?"
Scottie Macdougal was an eminent advance agent, whose smooth tongue was the thing for the very dangerous and extremely important work of trying out new sources of information, noting the dependability of those sources, and understanding just how far and in what line the tools could be used. Joe Clune was a past expert in the blowing of safes; not only did he know everything that was to be known about means of guarding money and how to circumvent them, but he was an artist with the "soup," as Allister called nitroglycerin.
Jeff Rankin, without a mental equipment to compare with his companions, was often invaluable on account of his prodigious strength. Under the strain of his muscles, iron bars bent like hot wax. In addition he had more than his share of an ability which all the members of the gang possessed—an infinite cunning in the use of weapons and a star-storming courage and self-confidence.
"And where," said Andrew at the end of this long recital, "do I fit in?" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 143 | "And where," said Andrew at the end of this long recital, "do I fit in?"
"You begin," said Allister, "as the least valuable of my men; before six months you will be worth the whole set of 'em. You'll start as my lieutenant, Lanning. The boys expect it. You've built up a reputation that counts. They admit your superiority without question. Larry la Roche squirms under the weight of it, but he admits it like the rest of' em. In a pinch they would obey you nearly as well as they obey me. It means that, having you to take charge, I can do what I've always wanted to do—I can give the main body the slip and go off for advance-guard and rear-guard duty. I don't dare to do it now.
"Do you know why? Those fellows yonder, who seem so chummy, would be at each other's throats in ten seconds if I weren't around to keep them in order. I know why you're here, Lanning. It isn't the money. It's the cursed fear of loneliness and the fear of having time to think. You want action, action to fill your mind and blind you. That's what I offer you. You're the keeper of the four wildcats you see over there. You start in with their respect. Let them lose their fear of you for a moment and they'll go for you. Treat them like men; think of them as wild beasts. That's what they are. The minute they know you're without your whip they go for you like tigers at a wounded trainer. One taste of meat is all they need to madden them. It's different with me. I'm wild, too."
His eyes gleamed at Andrew.
"And, if they raise you, I think they'll find you've more iron hidden away in you than I have. But the way they'll find it out will be in an explosion that will wipe them out. You've got to handle them without that explosion, Lanning. Can you do it?"
The younger man moistened his lips. "I think this job is going to prove worth while," he returned.
"Very well, then. But there are penalties in your new position. In a pinch you've got to do what I do—see that they have food enough—go without sleep if one of them needs your blankets—if any of 'em gets in trouble, even into a jail, you've got to get him out."
"Better still," smiled Andrew.
"And now," said the leader, "I'll tell you about our next job as we go back to the boys." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 144 | "Better still," smiled Andrew.
"And now," said the leader, "I'll tell you about our next job as we go back to the boys."
It was ten days later when the band dropped out of the mountains into the Murchison Pass—a singular place for a train robbery, Andrew could not help thinking. They were at the southwestern end of the pass, where the mountains gave back in a broad gap. Below them, not five miles away, was the city of Gidding Creek; they could see its buildings and parks tumbled over a big area, for there was a full twenty-five thousand of inhabitants in Gidding Creek. Indeed, the whole country was dotted with villages and towns, for it was no longer a cattle region, but a semifarming district cut up into small tracts. One was almost never out of sight of at least one house.
It worried Andrew, this closely built country, and he knew that it worried the other men as well; yet there had not been a single murmur from among them as they jogged their horses on behind Allister. Each of them was swathed from head to heels in a vast slicker that spread behind, when the wind caught it, as far as the tail of the horse. And the rubber creaked and rustled softly. Whatever they might have been inclined to think of this daring raid into the heart of a comparatively thickly populated country, they were too accustomed to let the leader do their thinking for them to argue the point with him. And Andrew followed blindly enough. He saw, indeed, one strong point in their favor. The very fact that the train was coming out of the heart of the mountains, through ravines which afforded a thousand places for assault, would make the guards relax their attention as they approached Gidding Creek. And, though there were many people in the region, they were a fat and inactive populace, not comparable with the lean fellows of the north. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 145 | There was bitter work behind them. Ten days before they had made a feint to the north of Martindale that was certain to bring out Hal Dozier; then they doubled about and had plodded steadily south, choosing always the most desolate ground for their travel. There had been two changes of horses for the others, but Andrew kept to Sally. To her that journey was play after the labor she had passed through before; the iron dust of danger and labor was in her even as it was in Andrew. Three in all that party were fresh at the end of the long trail. They were Allister, Sally, and Andrew. The others were poisoned with weariness, and their tempers were on edge; they kept an ugly silence, and if one of them happened to jostle the horse of the other, there was a flash of teeth and eyes—a silent warning. The sixth man was Scottie, who had long since been detached from the party. His task was one which, if he failed in it, would make all that long ride go for nothing. He was to take the train far up, ride down as blind baggage to the Murchison Pass, and then climb over the tender into the cab, stick up the fireman and the engineer, and make them bring the engine to a halt at the mouth of the pass, with Gidding Creek and safety for all that train only five minutes away. There was a touch of the Satanic in this that pleased Andrew and made Allister show his teeth in self-appreciation. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 146 | So perfectly had their journey been timed that the train was due in a very few minutes. They disposed their horses in the thicket, and then went back to take up their position in the ambush. The plan of work was carefully divided. To Jeff Rankin, that nicely accurate shot and bulldog fighter, fell what seemed to be a full half of the total risk and labor. He was to go to the blind side of the job. In other words, he was to guard the opposite side of the train to that on which the main body advanced. It was always possible that when a train was held up the passengers—at least the unarmed portion, and perhaps even some of the armed men—would break away on the least threatened side. Jeff Rankin on that blind side was to turn them back with a hurricane of bullets from his magazine rifle. Firing from ambush and moving from place to place, he would seem more than one man. Probably three or four shots would turn back the mob. In the meantime, having made the engineer and fireman stop the train, Scottie would be making them continue to flood the fire box. This would delay the start of the engine on its way and gain precious moments for the fugitives. Two of the band would be thus employed while Larry la Roche went through the train and turned out the passengers. There was no one like Larry for facing a crowd and cowing it. His spectral form, his eyes burning through the holes in his mask, stripped them of any idea of resistance.
While the crowd turned out, Andrew, standing opposite the middle of the train, rifle in hand, would line them up, while Allister and Joe Clune attended to overpowering the guards of the safe, and Larry la Roche came out and went through the line of passengers for personal valuables, and Clune and Allister fixed the soup to blow the safe. Last of all, there was the explosion, the carrying off of the coin in its canvas sacks to the horses. Each man was to turn his horse in a direction carefully specified, and, riding in a roundabout manner, which was also named, he was to keep on until he came, five days later, to a deserted, ruinous shack far up in the mountains on the side of the Twin Eagles peaks.
These were the instructions which Allister went over carefully with each member of his crew before they went to their posts. There had been twenty rehearsals before, and each man was letter perfect. They took their posts, and Allister came to the side of Andrew among the trees. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 147 | These were the instructions which Allister went over carefully with each member of his crew before they went to their posts. There had been twenty rehearsals before, and each man was letter perfect. They took their posts, and Allister came to the side of Andrew among the trees.
"How are you?" he asked.
"Scared to death," said Andrew truthfully. "I'd give a thousand dollars, if I had it, to be free of this job."
Andrew saw that hard glint come in the eyes of the leader.
"You'll do—later," nodded Allister. "But keep back from the crowd. Don't let them see you get nervous when they turn out of the coaches. If you show a sign of wavering they might start something. Once they make a surge, shooting won't stop 'em."
Andrew nodded. There was more practical advice on the heels of this. Then they stood quietly and waited.
For days and days a northeaster had been blowing; it had whipped little drifts of rain and mist that stung the face and sent a chill to the bone, and, though there had been no actual downpour, the cold and the wet had never broken since the journey started. Now the wind came like a wolf down the Murchison Pass, howling and moaning. Andrew, closing his eyes, felt that the whole thing was dreamlike. Presently he would open his eyes and find himself back beside the fire in the house of Uncle Jasper, with the old man prodding his shoulder and telling him that it was bedtime. When he opened his eyes, in fact, they fell upon a solitary pine high up on the opposite slope, above the thicket where Jeff Rankin was hiding. It was a sickly tree, half naked of branches, and it shivered like a wretched animal in the wind. Then a new sound came down the pass, wolflike, indeed; it was repeated more clearly—the whistle of a train.
It was the signal arranged among them for putting on the masks, and Andrew hastily adjusted his.
"Did you hear that?" asked Allister as the train hooted in the distance again.
Andrew turned and started at the ghostly thing which had been the face of the outlaw a moment before; he himself must look like that, he knew.
"What?" he asked.
"That voicelike whistle," said Allister. "There's no luck in this day—for me."
"You've listened to Larry la Roche too much," said Andrew. "He's been growling ever since we started on this trail."
"No, no!" returned Allister. "It's another thing, an older thing than Larry la Roche. My mother—" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 148 | "That voicelike whistle," said Allister. "There's no luck in this day—for me."
"You've listened to Larry la Roche too much," said Andrew. "He's been growling ever since we started on this trail."
"No, no!" returned Allister. "It's another thing, an older thing than Larry la Roche. My mother—"
He stopped. Whatever it was that he was about to say, Andrew was never to hear it. The train had turned the long bend above, and now the roar of its wheels filled the cañon and covered the sound of the wind.
It looked vast as a mountain as it came, rocking perceptibly on the uneven roadbed. It rounded the curve, the tail of the train flicked around, and it shot at full speed straight for the mouth of the pass. How could one man stop it? How could five men attack it after it was stopped? It was like trying to storm a medieval fortress with a popgun.
The great black front of the engine came rocking toward them, gathering impetus on the sharp grade. Had Scottie missed his trick? But when the thunder of the iron on iron was deafening Andrew, and the engine seemed almost upon them, there was a cloud of white vapor that burst out on either side of it and the brakes were jumped on; the wheels skidded, screaming on the tracks. The engine lurched past; Andrew caught a glimpse of Scottie, a crouched, masked form in the cab of the engine, with a gun in either hand. For Scottie was one of the few natural two-gun men that Andrew was ever to know. The engineer and the fireman he saw only as two shades before they were whisked out of his view. The train rumbled on; then it went from half speed to a stop with one jerk that brought a cry from the coaches. During the next second there was the successive crashing of couplings as the coaches took up their slack.
Andrew, stepping out with his rifle balanced in his hands, saw Larry la Roche whip into the rear car. Then he himself swept the windows of the train, blurred by the mist, with the muzzle of his gun, keeping the butt close to his shoulder, ready for a swift snapshot in any direction. In fact, his was that very important post, the reserve force, which was to come instantly to the aid of any overpowered section of the active workers. He had rebelled against this minor task, but Allister had assured him that, in former times, it was the place which he took himself to meet crises in the attack. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 149 | The leader had gone with Joe Clune straight for the front car. How would they storm it? Two guards, armed to the teeth, would be in it, and the door was closed.
But the guards had no intention to remain like rats in a trap, while the rest of the train was overpowered and they themselves were blasted into small bits with a small charge of soup. The door jerked open, the barrels of two guns protruded. Andrew, thrilling with horror, recognized one as a sawed-off shotgun. He saw now the meaning of the manner in which Allister and Clune made their attack. For Allister had run slowly straight for the door, while Clune skirted in close to the cars, going more swiftly. As the gun barrels went up Allister plunged headlong to the ground, and the volley of shot missed him cleanly; but Clune the next moment leaped out from the side of the car, and, thereby getting himself to an angle from which he could deliver a cross fire, pumped two bullets through the door. Andrew saw a figure throw up its arms, a shadow form in the interior of the car, and then a man pitched out headlong through the doorway and flopped with horrible limpness on the roadbed. While this went on Allister had snapped a shot, while he still lay prone, and his single bullet brought a scream. The guards were done for.
Two deaths, Andrew supposed. But presently a man was sent out of the car at the point of Clune's revolver. He climbed down with difficulty, clutching one hand with the other. He had been shot in the most painful place in the body—the palm of the hand. Allister turned over the other form with a brutal carelessness that sickened Andrew. But the man had been only stunned by a bullet that plowed its way across the top of his skull. He sat up now with a trickle running down his face. A gesture from Andrew's rifle made him and his companion realize that they were covered, and, without attempting any further resistance, they sat side by side on the ground and tended to each other's wounds—a ludicrous group for all their suffering. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 150 | In the meantime, Clune and Allister were at work in the car; the water was hissing in the fire box as a vast cloud of steam came rushing out around the engine; the passengers were pouring out of the cars. They acted like a group of actors, carefully rehearsed for the piece. Not once did Andrew have to speak to them, while they ranged in a solid line, shoulder to shoulder, men, women, children. And then Larry la Roche went down the line with a saddlebag and took up the collection. "Passin' the hat so often has give me a religious touch, ladies and gents," Andrew heard the ruffian say. "Any little contributions I'm sure grateful for, and, if anything's held back, I'm apt to frisk the gent that don't fork over. Hey, you, what's that lump inside your coat? Lady, don't lie. I seen you drop it inside your dress. Why, it's a nice little set o' sparklers. That ain't nothin' to be ashamed of. Come on, please; a little more speed. Easy there, partner; don't take both them hands down at once. You can peel the stuff out of your pockets with one hand, I figure. Conductor, just lemme see your wallet. Thanks! Hate to bother you, ma'am, but you sure ain't traveling on this train with only eighty-five cents in your pocketbook. Just lemme have a look at the rest. See if you can't find it in your stocking. No, they ain't anything here to make you blush. You're among friends, lady; a plumb friendly crowd. Your poor old pa give you this to go to school on, did he? Son, you're gettin' a pile more education out of this than you would in college. No, honey, you just keep your locket. It ain't worth five dollars. Did you? That jeweler ought to have my job, 'cause he sure robbed you! You call that watch an heirloom? Heirloom is my middle name, miss. Just get them danglers out'n your ears, lady. Thanks! Don't hurry, mister; you'll bust the chain." |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 151 | His monologue was endless; he had a comment for every person in the line, and he seemed to have a seventh sense for concealed articles. The saddlebag was bulging before he was through. At the same time Allister and Clune jumped from the car and ran. Larry la Roche gave the warning. Every one crouched or lay down. The soup exploded. The top of the car lifted. It made Andrew think, foolishly enough, of someone tipping a hat. It fell slowly, with a crash that was like a faint echo of the explosion. Clune ran back, and they could hear his shrill yell of delight: "It ain't a safe!" he exclaimed. "It's a baby mint!"
And a baby mint it was! It was a gold shipment. Gold coin runs about ninety pounds to ten thousand dollars, and there was close to a hundred pounds apiece for each of the bandits. It was the largest haul Allister's gang had ever made. Larry la Roche left the pilfering of the passengers and went to help carry the loot. They brought it out in little loose canvas bags and went on the run with it to the horses.
Someone was speaking. It was the gray-headed man with the glasses and the kindly look about the eyes. "Boys, it's the worst little game you've ever worked. I promise you we'll keep on your trail until we've run you all into the ground. That's really something to remember. I speak for Gregg and Sons."
"Partner," said Scottie Macdougal from the cab, where he still kept the engineer and fireman covered, "a little hunt is like an after-dinner drink to me."
To the utter amazement of Andrew the whole crowd—the crowd which had just been carefully and systematically robbed—burst into laughter. But this was the end. There was Allister's whistle; Jeff Rankin ran around from the other side of the train; the gang faded instantly into the thicket. Andrew, as the rear guard—his most ticklish moment—backed slowly toward the trees. Once there was a waver in the line, such as precedes a rush. He stopped short, and a single twitch of his rifle froze the waverers in their tracks.
Once inside the thicket a yell came from the crowd, but Andrew had whirled and was running at full speed. He could hear the others crashing away. Sally, as he had taught her, broke into a trot as he approached, and the moment he struck the saddle she was in full gallop. Guns were rattling behind him; random shots cut the air sometimes close to him, but not one of the whole crowd dared venture beyond that unknown screen of trees. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 152 | To Andrew the last danger of the holdup had been assigned as the rear guard, and he was the last man to pass Allister. The leader had drawn his horse to one side a couple of miles down the valley, and, as each of his band passed him, he raised his hand in silent greeting. It was the last Andrew saw of him, a ghostly figure sitting his horse with his hand above his head. After that his mind was busied by his ride, for, having the finest mount in the crowd, to him had been assigned the longest and the most roundabout route to reach the Twin Eagles.
Yet he covered so much ground with Sally that, instead of needing the full five days to make the rendezvous, he could afford to loaf the last stage of the journey. Even at that, he camped in sight of the cabin on the fourth night, and on the morning of the fifth he was the first man at the shack.
Jeff Rankin came in next. To Jeff, on account of his unwieldy bulk, had been assigned the shortest route; yet even so he dismounted, staggering and limping from his horse, and collapsed on the pile of boughs which Andrew had spent the morning cutting for a bed. As he dropped he tossed his bag of coins to the floor. It fell with a melodious jingling that was immediately drowned by Jeff's groans; the saddle was torture to him, and now he was aching in every joint of his enormous body. "A nice haul—nothin' to kick about," was Jeff's opinion. "But Caesar's ghost—what a ride! The chief makes this thing too hard on a gent that likes to go easy, Andy."
Andrew said nothing; silence had been his cue ever since he began acting as lieutenant to the chief. It had seemed to baffle the others; it baffled the big man now. Later on Joe Clune and Scottie came in together. That was about noon—they had met each other an hour before. But Allister had not come in, although he was usually the first at a rendezvous. Neither did Larry la Roche come. The day wore on; the silence grew on the group. When Andrew, proportioning the work for supper, sent Joe to get wood, Jeff for water, and began himself to work with Scottie on the cooking, he was met with ugly looks and hesitation before they obeyed. Something, he felt most decidedly, was in the air. And when Joe and Rankin came back slowly, walking side by side and talking in soft voices, his suspicions were given an edge. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 153 | They wanted to eat together; but he forced Scottie to take post on the high hill to their right to keep lookout, and for this he received another scowl. Then, when supper was half over, Larry la Roche came in to camp. News came with him, an atmosphere of tidings around his gloomy figure, but he cast himself down by the fire and ate and drank in silence, until his hunger was gone. Then he tossed his tin dishes away and they fell clattering on the rocks.
"Pick 'em up," said Andrew quietly. "We'll have no litter around this camp." Larry la Roche stared at him in hushed malevolence. "Stand up and get 'em," repeated Andrew. As he saw the big hands of Larry twitching he smiled across the fire at the tall, bony figure. "I'll give you two seconds to get 'em," he said.
One deadly second pulsed away, then Larry crumpled. He caught up his tin cup and the plate. "We'll talk later about you," he said ominously.
"We'll talk about something else first," said Andrew. "You've seen Allister?"
At first it seemed that La Roche would not speak; then his wide, thin lips writhed back from his teeth. "Yes."
"Where is he?" "Gone to the happy hunting grounds."
The silence came and the pulse in it. One by one, by a natural instinct, the men looked about them sharply into the night and made sure of their weapons. It was the only tribute to the memory of Allister from his men, but tears and praise could not have been more eloquent. He had made these men fearless of the whole world. Now were they ready to jump at the passage of a shadow. They looked at each other with strange eyes.
"Who? How many?" asked Jeff Rankin.
"One man done it."
"Hal Dozier?" said Andrew.
"Him," said Larry la Roche. He went on, looking gloomily down at the fire. "He got me first. The chief must of seen him get me by surprise, while I was down off my hoss, lying flat and drinking out of a creek!" He closed his great, bony fist in unspeakable agony at the thought. "Dozier come behind and took me. Frisked me. Took my guns, not the coin. We went down through the hills. Then the chief slid out of a shadow and come at us like a tiger. I sloped."
"You left Allister to fight alone?" said Scottie Macdougal quietly, for he had come from his lookout to listen. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 154 | "You left Allister to fight alone?" said Scottie Macdougal quietly, for he had come from his lookout to listen.
"I had no gun," said Larry, without raising his eyes from the fire. "I sloped. I looked back and seen Allister sitting on his hoss, dead still. Hal Dozier was sittin' on his hoss, dead still. Five seconds, maybe. Then they went for their guns together. They was two bangs like one. But Allister slid out of his saddle and Dozier stayed in his. I come on here."
The quiet covered them. Joe Clune, with a shudder and another glance over his shoulder, cast a branch on the fire, and the flames leaped.
"Dozier knows you're with us," added Larry la Roche, and he cast a long glance of hatred at Andrew. "He knows you're with us, and he knows our luck left us when you come."
Andrew looked about the circle; not an eye met his.
The talk of Larry la Roche during the days of the ride was showing its effect now. The gage had been thrown down to Andrew, and he dared not pick it up.
"Boys," he said, "I'll say this: Are we going to bust up and each man go his way?"
There was no answer.
"If we do, we can split the profits over again. I'll take no money out of a thing that cost Allister's death. There's my sack on the floor of the shack. Divvy it up among you. You fitted me out when I was broke. That'll pay you back. Do we split up?"
"They's no reason why we should—and be run down like rabbits," said Joe Clune, with another of those terrible glances over his shoulder into the night.
The others assented with so many growls.
"All right," said Andrew, "we stick together. And, if we stick together, I run this camp."
"You?" asked Larry la Roche. "Who picked you? Who 'lected you, son? Why, you unlucky—"
"Ease up," said Andrew softly.
The eyes of La Roche flicked across the circle and picked up the glances of the others, but they were not yet ready to tackle Andrew Lanning. |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 155 | "You?" asked Larry la Roche. "Who picked you? Who 'lected you, son? Why, you unlucky—"
"Ease up," said Andrew softly.
The eyes of La Roche flicked across the circle and picked up the glances of the others, but they were not yet ready to tackle Andrew Lanning.
"The last thing Allister did," said Andrew, "was to make me his lieutenant. It's the last thing he did, and I'm going to push it through. Not because I like the job." He raised his head, but not his voice. "They may run down the rest of you. They won't run down me. They can't. They've tried, and they can't. And I might be able to keep the rest of you clear. I'm going to try. But I won't follow the lead of any of you. If there'd been one that could keep the rest of you together, d'you think Allister wouldn't have seen it? Don't you think he would of made that one leader? Why, look at you! Jeff, you'd follow Clune. But would Larry or Scottie follow Clune? Look at 'em and see!"
All eyes went to Clune, and then the glances of Scottie and La Roche dropped.
"Nobody here would follow La Roche. He's the best man we've got for some of the hardest work, but you're too flighty with your temper, Larry, and you know it. We respect you just as much, but not to plan things for the rest of us. Is that straight?
"And you, Scottie," said Andrew, "you're the only one I'd follow. I say that freely. But who else would follow you? You're the best of us all at headwork and planning, but you don't swing your gun as fast, and you don't shoot as straight as Jeff or Larry or Joe. Is that straight?"
"What's leading the gang got to do with fighting?" asked Scottie harshly. "And who's got the right to the head of things but me?"
"Ask Allister what fighting had to do with the running of things," said Andrew calmly.
The moon was sliding up out of the east; it changed the faces of the men and made them oddly animallike; they stared, fascinated, at Andrew.
"There's two reasons why I'm going to run this job, if we stick together. Allister named them once. I can take advice from any one of you; I know what each of you can do; I can plan a job for you; I can lead you clear of the law—and there's not one of you that can bully me or make me give an inch—no, nor all of you together—La Roche! Macdougal! Clune! Rankin!" |
Way_Of_The_Lawless_-_Max_Brand | 96 | 156 | It was like a roll call, and at each name a head was jerked up in answer, and two glittering eyes flashed at Andrew—flashed, sparkled, and then became dull. The moonlight had made his pale skin a deadly white, and it was a demoniac face they saw. The silence was his answer.
"Jeff," he commanded, "take the hill. You'll stand the watch tonight. And look sharp. If Dozier got Allister he's apt to come at us. Step on it!"
And Jeff Rankin rose without a word and lumbered to the top of the hill. Larry la Roche suddenly filled his cup with boiling hot coffee, regardless of the heat, regardless of the dirt in the cup. His hand shook when he raised it to his lips.
There was no further attempt at challenging his authority. When he ordered Clune and La Roche to bring in boughs for bedding—since they were to stop in the shack overnight—they went silently. But it was such a silence as comes when the wind falls at the end of a day and in a silent sky the clouds pile heavily, higher and higher. Andrew took the opportunity to speak to Scottie Macdougal. He told Scottie simply that he needed him, and with him at his back he could handle the others, and more, too. He was surprised to see a twinkle in the eye of the Scotchman.
"Why, Andy," said the canny fellow, "didn't you see me pass you the wink? I was with you all the time!"
Andrew thanked him and went into the cabin to arrange for lights. He had no intention of shirking a share in the actual work of the camp; even though Allister had set that example for his following. He took some lengths of pitchy pine sticks and arranged them for torches. One of them alone would send a flare of yellow light through the cabin; two made a comfortable illumination. But he worked cheerlessly. The excitement of the robbery and the chase was over, and then the conflict with the men was passing. He began to see things truly by the drab light of retrospection. The bullets of Allister and Clune might have gone home— they were intended to kill, not to wound. And if there had been two deaths he, Andrew Lanning, would have been equally guilty with the men who handled the guns, for he had been one of the forces which made that shooting possible. |
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