Valley Thieves

by Max Brand

  "You want to help me," he admitted, "but it's not any use, and I don't want you to get into trouble. If the sheriff wants to see me—well, I'll have to stay here till he arrives."

  It was like arguing with a woman, adding up two and two and two, and finding that they make zero. Then, before I could say a word more, a door opened, and the sheriff stood there. He wasn't raging. He was all cold, and there was a stony smile chiseled out around his mouth.

  "Clonmel," he said, "you're a bully and a big-mouthed cur. I've come to get you—in the name of the law!"

  When he mentioned the law, his grin turned from stone to iron and froze wider on his face. Law? Well, it was gun law that he meant.

  Clonmel swayed forward to rise. Then I shouted:

  "Sit still! If you get on your feet, he'll murder you. Sheriff, this is an unarmed man!"

  "You lie," said the sheriff. "The yellow dog is going to get up and fill his hand."

  I got so angry that I forgot to be afraid. I jumped in between them and shook my finger at the sheriff.

  Behind me I could feel Clonmel rising like a mighty shadow.

  "If you pull a gun on him,". I yelled at the sheriff, "I'll have a lynching posse after you. I'll bring this up to the law courts. I'll tell 'em what I know—that Clonmel hasn't a gun! Milton, keep your hand away from that Colt!"

  The sheriff managed to center some attention on me, when he heard this. He had worked himself right up to the killing point. Now he saw that raw meat was being snatched away from his teeth and he shuddered like a crazy bull terrier.

  But the truth of what I had said struck him harder than bullets. I wasn't a drinking man; I wasn't a fighting man; I was, in fact, just a dull, ordinary drone of a worker, trying to make a home and paying my debts as they came up. For that reason, in a law court my testimony would be about ten times as heavy as all the thugs and crooks and hangers-on of the gambling dump put together. Besides, in a society of cowpunchers and young miners and prospectors, I was a fairly old man. All of these things began to add up in the mind of the sheriff. I could see them clicking in his eyes as big Clonmel pushed me gently to the side. The sweep of his arm was like the drive of a downstream current.

  "I don't need anyone between you and me," said Clonmel to the sheriff. "You've used some language that—"

  "Oh, hell," said Walt Milton, and turned on his heel and walked away.

  Clonmel started after him. I ran in front of him and held out my hands. He walked into them. My arms buckled under the weight of him.

  "Are you going to be fool enough to play his game?" I asked.

  His lips worked a couple of times before he managed to unlock his jaws and answer:

  "You're right. I've got to—I've got to learn how to shoot if I stay in this part of the country. If—"

  He shut his teeth on the rest of it. Learn to shoot? Why, those hands of his were too big to be very fast, and what could he learn compared with the gun knowledge of men who were born with the smell of gunpowder in the air? He could only learn enough to make one first gesture, which would be his last. I could see the bullets smashing into his body, into his handsome face. It turned me sick.

  "Clonmel," I said, "come up to my ranch and go to work for me. I'll teach you to shoot on the side."

  It was the vaguest sort of a gesture on my part. I thought at first that he didn't hear me, because he was still staring through the doorway after Walt Milton. I was a good deal surprised when he pried his jaws open to answer:

  "Thanks. I'll do it."

  CHAPTER III

  The Sign of Trouble

  WHEN I got Harry Clonmel up to the ranch, I felt somewhat as though I'd landed a fighting pike in a small boat. There was going to be trouble ahead. How much trouble, I couldn't guess, but I imagined that one face of it would be Sheriff Walt Milton.

  If only he had been the worst of it! But, of course, back there in the beginning of things, I couldn't dream what was going to happen. I simply knew that Clonmel was an explosive and that, when he burst, a good many things might be broken. But, like an old sea story, everything went well at first, and we had nothing but clear skies and cheerful days.

  Clonmel liked the life up there in the Blue Water Mountains. He liked the air and the beauty of the big peaks. He liked my wife, and my wife liked him. Charlotte was a big, soft, pretty girl when I married her. She kept on getting bigger and softer, but she lost her prettiness. She used to rub her face with cold cream, a good deal, and she'd lie in bed late on Sunday mornings to rest her features, but the pink and the smile of her prettiness would never come back. She was a good, cheerful, hearty woman, in lots of ways, but she had a pride of her own. She spoke careful English, smiled at the lingo of the cowpunchers, and raised our boy with an idea in the back of his head that somehow he came of better blood than most. Such ideas are dangerous, of course, but Charlotte had to have something to keep her head in the air.

  She said that Harry Clonmel was a gentleman and that he would be a good influence for our boy, Al. As a matter of fact, it was Al who seemed to be top dog of the two, most of the time. Al was twelve, tough as hickory, and knew all about range ways and mountain life. It was Al who became special instructor of Clonmel in using a rope, in riding bronchos, in shooting with a rifle or with a revolver. They spent every spare moment that he had on those jobs.

  But all during the working hours of the day, Clonmel kept with me. I never saw a better worker, because he was the strongest man I've ever found, and in addition to that he had a fire of vast cheerfulness always stoked up and burning bright inside him. A cheerful man doesn't get tired easily; a cheerful man keeps his eyes open and knows what's happening around him. I never had to tell Clonmel things twice. He used his brain as much as he used his big hands.

  And what hands—and what they could do! The meanest job on a ranch is building fence, but Clonmel could eat a hole in hard ground in no time, with a boring auger, and he would carry about an armful of the heavy posts as though they were fagots for the kitchen stove. There wasn't much need of a lever to pull the wire lines tight. A heave of his big shoulders was generally enough to draw the heavy barbed wire until it shuddered. Of course, there were a lot of things that Clonmel knew nothing about, but though he might start a day helplessly, he generally had done more work, by evening, than three ordinary hands, no matter how experienced they happened to be.

  Nothing made him sick, either. He could shrug away weariness with one gesture of his shoulders, and at the end of a day he would wash, comb his hair, and sit down at our table, shining with good nature. I can tell you that we lived well while he was with us, because my wife worked overtime to please the taste and fill the huge maw of Harry. Her trouble was always repaid, because he could eat for five as easily as he could work for ten. He was a good talker, too, and he kept us laughing with his chatter when he sat about in the evening. There was only one thing that shut him up, and that was to ask him why he was in the West.

  He dodged that question; all we could make out was that he was hunting for something or someone. He never would tell us precisely what he wanted, but we got the Idea that in our country, somewhere, he expected to find what he was looking for, and that, in the meantime, he was glad to grow accustomed to Western ways and harden himself in the new life. Whatever it was that he had before him, he apparently expected that it might take him a great part of his life.

  Charlotte and I used to put our heads together and conjecture. I had an idea that he might have done something that forced him out of his home to save his neck. If he lost his temper in a fight, for instance, he might easily have killed a man. But Charlotte declared that no man outside the law could have an eye so open, so clear, and so bright.

  Well, those were good days, take them all in all. Al and Harry slept up in the attic, and when Charlotte's alarm clock rattled the call for the day's work to begin, we'd hear the tremendous bellow of Harry in answer, like the booming of a bull moose.

  Yes, those were good days, but they couldn't
last long, and the first sign of the trouble to come was the appearance of a woman. Julie Perigord walked in on us, one afternoon, and knocked the spots out of our peaceful existence.

  It happened like this:

  The day had been hot and close, but in the middle of the afternoon the wind changed, a cloud showed its black shoulders in the northwest behind Mount Craven, and in twenty minutes the storm was screaming, and the cattle were drifting at a trot, lowering their heads away from the wind.

  The sky blackened over. The chill blew through our bones. Winter came back in the middle of summer and darkened the world for us. I got hold of Harry Clonmel and took him back to the house with me.

  He merely said: "This is all right. This is what a fellow sees from the lowlands, when the clouds come —zoom! Right across the heads of the mountains. I've always wanted to be inside the clouds, one day."

  "You and the lightning, eh?" said I, and right on the heels of my words, the lightning started dancing in the rain like a hundred red devils.

  We got back to the house, and Charlotte made us some coffee. We sat in the kitchen, as usual, and watched Charlotte mix up the batter for a cake. She'd started baking cake a lot after Harry came out to us.

  It was warm and pleasant, sitting in there with the storm yelling louder all the while, drawing back, and then charging us, and laying hands on the shack until the pans started shivering and rattling against one another along the kitchen wall. I remember saying that we would have to dig the foundations and get ready to build another place—not of boards, but of logs. Harry and I would start felling the trees right away.

  "Dad," Al said, "you always talk about building a house, but we're never going to have a good one."

  "Why not?" I asked him.

  "Because Ma wants a cave or a palace; she don't want nothing in between," said Al.

  I looked down at the floor to cover my grin, because what Al said of Charlotte was just about true. She remarked :

  "I don't want you to refer to me as 'Ma,' and how does 'don't want nothing' sound to your own ears, Alfred?"

  "Is it wrong?" asked Al.

  She was so angry at that, that she began to breathe last and hard.

  "You know perfectly well it's wrong," she said. "If It's the last act of my life, I'm going to insist on good grammar from you, Alfred. It takes just as much breath to speak incorrectly as it does to use proper words."

  "I heard old Pie Jennings talk the other day," said Al. "He don't have to stop when he draws in his breath. It's like whistling, the way he talks. He was swearing at his off leader, and the way he burned that gray mule was enough to—"

  "Oh, Bill Avon," said Charlotte to me, "do you see what's happening to my son? Do you see how rude, rough, vulgar men are going to—"

  She came to a stop, her voice all trembling.

  I was uncomfortable. Al looked at Harry Clonmel, and Clonmel looked back at Al with an empty eye. Just then the wind whistled on its highest pitch, a blow fell against the kitchen door, it was jerked open, and Julie Perigord came into the room with a sway and a stagger. The draft went rattling off through the house as Clonmel reached the door and shoved it shut.

  "Wow!" said Julie. "What a zipper this one is!"

  She was very cold. The white of it had fingered her face, here and there, and the blue shadow was around her mouth.

  I asked her where her horse was; she said that she'd put it up herself before she came into the house. That touched me. She was such a headlong, wild girl, that one didn't expect her to show so much consideration.

  Charlotte pulled off the dripping slicker and wrapped Julie in a big blanket. It made her look like an Indian, what with her black hair and brown-black eyes and her swarthy skin—before the color came up in her cheeks.

  "What brought you up here in this sort of weather ?" asked Charlotte. "The storm must have been in sight for some time before you ever started through the pass."

  "Of course it was," said Julie. "But Will Cary told me not to start and he was so proud and strong and sure of everything that I just came along anyway, to put him in his place." She explained to Harry Clonmel:

  "Will Cary's the fellow who's going to marry me. That's what he says, anyway."

  Clonmel said nothing. He just got hold of the coffee pot and poured her a cup of the coffee. Then he stood by and watched her sipping the hot stuff, and his eyes kept drifting contentedly from the cup to her face and back again. It was easy to see that he could keep on looking for a long time. That was no wonder. Julie was the sort of a girl who knocks the spots out of a crowd of other girls as soon as she appears. She trailed a dust cloud over all the other females every time she rode by. The brightness of her seemed to put Charlotte, for instance, right out of the room.

  I remember thinking, as I looked at her, that it would take somebody like Will Cary to rouse her even to disobedience. She had the daring of any man, the strength of most men, and a spirit, in addition, that could have been the admiration of arch fiend or arch-angel. Clonmel was feeding his eyes on her. I knew, somehow, that the results of this day would be more than apparent later on.

  The first effects were not long in showing.

  Charlotte was saying: "You know, Julie, that you can't trifle with Will Cary."

  "Will can't trifle with me," said Julie. "He has to know that, too. I'm not the sort to marry a man and leave him."

  That was rather neatly put. She would do her finding out before she took the step that might be irrevocable in her eyes. It was always that way with Julie. She might do a great deal of balking and shying, but always because she thought she saw something wrong.

  "Commands are a temptation—to some people," I said. "Will ought to know by this time."

  She paid no attention to me, for a moment. She had found Harry Clonmel with her mind as well as with her eyes, and she was staring at him with a frank interest, half smiling with pleasure to see such a sight.

  "That's a lot of man to find inside of one skin," she said. "Why don't you introduce me, Bill?"

  CHAPTER IV

  The Famous Man

  WHEN I introduced them, they each wore a faint smile, faintly shining eyes, as though each understood that a good deal was being seen at that moment.

  "You've tucked yourself into a quiet corner," said Julie. "Who are you going to scare when you pop out?"

  He kept on smiling at her, as though answering with words would be no good at all. But Al piped up:

  "He's the strongest man you ever saw, Julie."

  "Well, I've seen some strong ones," said Julie. "That's why riding through the pass into the storm was worth while. You know who I saw in the narrows of the pass, Charlotte?"

  My wife gaped and waited.

  "I saw the last man in the world that you'd expect. I saw Jim Silver," said Julie.

  That famous name came home to me with a shock. It always did. I never had seen him, but he had been in the Blue Waters almost more than in any other part of the West, and, of course, I had heard plenty of stories about him. Charlotte had actually met him, and she told us how gentle and kind he was.

  "You saw Jim Silver?" she cried now.

  "I did. I saw Jim Silver, and Parade, and Frosty, too. That's the biggest dog I ever saw, Charlotte. He's a whale. If he isn't a wolf, he's first cousin of a wolf."

  "Frosty is a wolf," said I.

  "Nonsense," said my wife. "No wolf was ever tamed."

  "This one is only tame for Silver," said I.

  "Don't split hairs," said Charlotte testily. "Go on, Julie. You saw Jim Silver? My goodness, when I saw him— But you'd seen him before?"

  "I hadn't. Not with my own eyes. I've heard so much about him, though, that I should have recognized him. But it was only Parade and Frosty that spotted him for me. That stallion is big enough to carry even you, Harry Clonmel, as easily as a feather."

  "Maybe I'd better get that horse, then," said Clonmel.

  The girl laughed. So did Charlotte and I. Other men had tried to get the big golden
stallion from Jim Silver. What happened to them was enough to fill a book.

  "When you get Parade, get Frosty, too," said Julie Perigord. "Silver has made a team of them. You might as well do the same thing."

  "Why not?" said Clonmel.

  "Well, when you get 'em, come ask me to go riding with you, will you?" said Julie. She went on to say to my wife: "I could see Parade shine through the clouds! The fog was blowing through the pass, and I saw Parade shine as though he were a horse of gold. And then I spotted Frosty, running back like a wisp of the gray mist to report to his master, I suppose. Afterward, I lost sight of them. The mist was closing in. When it cleared again, close by me, Jim Silver came breaking out of the cloud, with Frosty showing the way and snarling up at me. I mean, Frosty was doing the snarling."

  She laughed in her excitement.

  Then she went on: "He looked younger than I had expected. I don't think that he's more than thirty. He came right up to me and lifted his hat, and I saw the tufts of gray hair over his temples, like the beginning of little horns. He's handsome. I never knew that. Very brown and handsome, and he has a smile that warms the heart. He told me that I should know that it's dangerous to be up in the pass when the wind blows out of the northwest. I told him that I was all right. He said that I ought to let him come along with me until I was in a safe place. And I wanted to have him come, too, but all at once I thought what a little coward and worthless fool I was, if I took Jim Silver off his trail."

  "He was probably hunting Barry Christian again, for all that I knew. I couldn't turn him aside. I swore that I was all right. He told me if I grew confused and couldn't find shelter, if the storm grew any worse, I was to keep on up the mountain along the side of the creek, and I'd find his camp. He'd take care of me. That was romantic enough. Think of sitting at Jim Silver's campfire and having him tell stories to you— about Parade and Frosty, and the trail of Barry Christian. Do you think, Bill, that Barry Christian can be in this part of the world now, since his jail break? Is that why Jim Silver has appeared?"