by Max Brand
It might be—why not?—that the posse had made only a pretense of withdrawing at once with the body of the dead man. No doubt Bill Dozier had taken five hand-picked fellows from the crowd, and it seemed strange, indeed, if they would give up the battle when the odds were still five-to-one in their favor. Perhaps, then, they had only waited until they were out of sight and had then circled swiftly around, leaving one man with the body. They might be waiting now at the mouth of any of these gullies.
No sooner had the thought come to Andy than he whitened. The pinto had been worked hard that morning and all the night before, but now Andy sent the spurs home without mercy as he shot up the basin at full speed. Each spur of hills pointed at him accusingly. Each shadowy cañon yawned like a door of danger as he passed, and he went with his revolver drawn, ready for a snap shot, and a drop behind the far side of his horse.
For half an hour he rode in this fashion with his heart beating at his teeth. And each cañon as he passed was empty, and each had some shrub, like a crouching man, to startle him and upraise the revolver. At length, with the pinto wheezing from this new effort, he drew back to an easier gait. But still he had a companion ceaselessly following, like the shadow of the horse he rode. It was fear, and it would never leave him.
Chapter Ten
In her room, Anne Withero was reading. She had always disliked that room, for her tastes were by no means idle standards but tyrants, and the flowered wallpaper of that old-fashioned place and the vivid red of the carpet were a torture to her eyes. The room had not changed overnight, yet now she preferred it to any other place in the house. And there was only one possible explanation. Once, twice, and again she got up from her chair to examine the sill of her window. On it there was a dotted scratch in the paint, such a scar as the sharp rowel of a spur might make. And on the slant roof of the veranda below her, there was a broken shingle on which she could make out—or perhaps this was imagination—the print of a heel. At any rate, the windowsill fascinated her.
After that forced-and-early rising, the rest of the house had remained awake, but Anne Withero was gifted with an exceptionally strong set of nerves. She had gone back to bed and fallen promptly into a pleasant sleep. And when she wakened, all that had happened in the night was filmed over and had become dream-like.
No one disturbed her rest, but when she went down to a late breakfast, she found Charles Merchant lingering in the room. He had questioned her closely, and after a moment of thought, she told him exactly what had happened, because she was perfectly aware that he would not believe a word of it. And she was right. He had sat opposite her, drumming his fingers without noise on the table, with a smile now and then that might be plain amusement, but that was tinged, she thought, with insolence.
Yet he seemed oddly undisturbed. She had expected some jealous outburst, some keen questioning of the motives that had made her beg them not to pursue this man. But Charles Merchant was only interested in what the fellow had said and done when he talked with her. “He was just like a man out of a book,” said the girl in conclusion, “and I’ll wager that he’s been raised on romances. He had the face for it, you know… and the wild look.”
“A blacksmith… in Martindale… raised on romances?” Charles had said as he fingered his throat, which was patched with black and blue.
“A blacksmith… in Martindale,” she had repeated slowly. And it brought a new view of the affair home to her. It had all seemed quite clear before. This romantic fellow caught a glimpse of her, thought he was in love with a face, got into a scrape, and like a wild boy risked his life to see that face again while he was being pursued. Besides, now that they knew from Bill Dozier that the victim in Martindale had been only injured, and not actually killed, the whole matter became rather a farce. It would be an amusing tale. But now, as Charles Merchant repeated the words—“blacksmith,” “Martindale”—the new idea shocked her, the new idea of Andrew Lanning, for Charles had told her the name.
The new thought stayed with her when she went back to her room after breakfast, ostensibly to read, but really to think, for Anne Withero was still young enough to love to turn adventures over her tongue like a wine-taster.
Remembering Andrew Lanning, she got past the white face and the brilliant, black eyes; she felt, looking back, that he had shown a restraint that was something more than boyish. When he had taken her in his arms just before he fled, he had not kissed her, although for that matter she had been perfectly ready to let him do it.
That moment kept recurring to her—the beating on the door, the voices in the hall, the shouts, and the arms of Andrew Lanning around her, and his tense, desperate face close to hers. It became less dream-like that moment. It became a living thing that grew more and more vivid. She began to understand that if she lived to be a hundred, she would never find that memory dimmer. Men had made love to her, had poured out their hearts before her, but only once she had seen the soul of a man. And very naturally she kept thinking: What did he see in return? No, he had not seen the truth, but he had taken away a picture to worship. It was not strange that she did not hold this against young Lanning.
When her eyes were misty with this thought, and a half-sad, half-happy smile was touching the corners of her mouth, Charles Merchant knocked at her door. Truly it was a most inopportune moment, but since she had promised to become his wife, Charles made a common, masculine mistake—he considered that she was already a possession and that even her thoughts belonged to him. She gave herself one moment in which to clear the wistfulness from her face, one moment to banish the queer pain of knowing that she would never see this wild Andrew again, and then she told Charles to come in.
In fact, he was already opening the door, and she resented this fiercely. Besides, there was a ragged crack across the door where they had battered it down early that day. Then Charles stood before her. He was calm of face, but she guessed an excitement beneath the surface.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said.
A great thought made her sit up in the chair, but she was afraid just then to stand up. “I know. The posse has reached that silly boy and brought him back. But I don’t want to see him again. Handcuffed, and all that.”
“The posse is here, at least,” said Charles noncommittally.
She was finding something new in him. The fact that he could think and hide his thoughts from her was indeed very new, for when she first met him, he had seemed all surface, all clean, young manhood without a stain—frank, careless, gay. Also, he danced wonderfully and could wear his clothes. Everything between them had grown out of that and an impulse.
“Do you want me to see the six brave men again?” she asked, smiling, but really she was prying at his mind to get a clue of the truth. “Well, I’ll come down.”
And she went down the stairs with Charles Merchant beside her; he kept looking straight ahead, biting his lips, and this made her wonder. She began to hum a gay-little tune, and the first bar made the man start. So she kept on. She was bubbling with apparent good nature when Charles, all gravity, opened the door of the living room.
The shades were drawn. The quiet in that room was a deadly, living thing. And then she saw, on the sofa at one side of the place, a human form under a sheet.
“Charles,” whispered the girl. She put out her hand and touched his shoulder, but she could not take her eyes off that ghastly, dead thing. “They… they… he’s dead… Andrew Lanning. Why did you bring me here?”
“Take the cloth from his face,” commanded Charles Merchant, and there was something so hard in his voice that she obeyed.
She did not want to see the horror beneath, but she followed his order in a daze. The sheet came away under her touch, and she was looking into the sallow face of Bill Dozier. She had remembered him because of the sad mustaches, that morning, and his big voice.
“That’s what your romantic boy out of a book has done,” said Charles Merchant. “Look at his work.”
But she dropped the sheet a
nd whirled on him. “And they left him…” she said.
“Anne,” he said, “are you thinking about the safety of that murderer… now? He’s safe, but they’ll get him later on… he’s as good as dead, if that’s what you want to know.”
“God help him,” said the girl. And going back a pace, she stood in the thick shadow, leaning against the wall, with one hand across her lips.
It reminded Charles of the picture he had seen when he broke into her room after Andrew Lanning had escaped. And she looked now, as then, more white, more beautiful, more wholly to be desired than he had ever known her before. Yet he could neither move nor speak. He saw her go out of the room with staring eyes. Then, without stopping to replace the sheet, he followed.
He had hoped to wipe the last thought of that vagabond blacksmith out of her mind with the shock of this horror. Instead, he knew now that he had done quite another thing. And in addition he had probably made her despise him for taking her to confront such a sight.
All in all, Charles Merchant was exceedingly thoughtful as he closed the door and stepped into the hall. He ran up the stairs to her room. The door was closed. There was no answer to his knock, and by trying the knob, he found that she had locked herself in. And the next moment he could hear her sobbing. He stood for a moment more, listening, and wishing Andrew Lanning dead with all his heart.
Then he went down to the garage, climbed into his car, and burned up the road between his place and that of Hal Dozier. There was very little similarity between the two brothers. Bill had been tall and lean; Hal was compact and solid, and he had the fighting agility of a starved coyote. He had a smooth-shaven face as well, and a clean eye, which was known wherever men gathered in the mountain desert. There was no news to give him. A telephone message had already told him of the death of Bill Dozier.
“But,” said Charles Merchant, “there’s one thing I can do. I can set you free to run down this Lanning.”
“How?”
“You’re needed on your ranch, Hal, but I want you to let me stand the expenses of this trip. Take your time, make sure of him, and run him into the ground.”
“My friend,” said Hal Dozier, “you turn a pleasure into a real party.”
And Charles Merchant left, knowing that he had signed the death warrant of young Lanning. In all the history of the mountain desert, there was a tale of only one man who had escaped, once Hal Dozier took his trail, and that man had blown out his own brains.
Chapter Eleven
Far away in the western sky, Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and was coming up the wind toward that scent. He had seen them many a time before on their gruesome trails, and the picture that he carried was not a pleasant one.
But now the picture that drifted through his mind was still more horrible. It was a human body lying face downward in the sand, with the wind ruffling in the hair and the hat rolled a few paces off and the gun close to the outstretched hand. That was the way they would leave him when they found him. And he knew from Uncle Jasper that no matter how far the trail led, or how many years it was ridden, the end of the outlaw was always the same—death and the body left to the buzzards. Or else in some barroom, a footfall from behind and a bullet through the back.
The flesh of Andy crawled. Hunger was a sharp pain in his vitals. He smoked a cigarette and forgot it. His eyes dimmed from long wakefulness and squinting across the sand, but one rub of his hand restored the freshness of his sight. It was not possible for him to relax in vigilance for a moment, lest danger come upon him when he least expected it, perhaps in some open space like this. He could feel the muscles of his face drawing with the test, but he went on until the sun was low in the west and all the sky was rimmed with color.
The mountain desert changed now. The hills were hung with blue on the eastern sides. The coolness seemed to come out of the ground, and the wind changed its direction. But for Andy these were not pleasant things. Night had become an enemy. And the first moments of his long torment were beginning—men, who made up his danger, were also a necessity, and he felt that any danger were better than this solitude and the dark.
The sun was down, and dusk had come over the hills in a rush, when he saw a house half lost in the shadows. It was a narrow-fronted, two-storied, unpainted, lonely place, without sign of a porch. It was obviously not made to be lived in and enjoyed. It was only a shelter into which people crept for the night or where they ate their meals. And here certainly, where there was no vestige of a town near, and where there was no telephone, the news of the deaths of Bill Dozier and Buck Heath could not have come. Andy accepted the house as a blessing and went straight toward it.
But the days of carelessness were over for Andy, and he would never again approach a house without searching it like a human face. He studied this shack as he came closer. It was an evil-appearing building, with no sign of smoke from the stovepipe until he was almost on the house, and then he saw a meager wisp of vapor, showing that the fire had almost burned down. And if there were people in the building, they did not choose to show a light. The windows were black inside, and on the outside they glimmered with the light reflected from the sky.
Andy went around to the rear of the house, where there was a low shed beside the corral, half tumbled down because the owner had fed from it carelessly, but in the corral were five or six fine horses—wild fellows with bright eyes and long forelocks. They had the long necks of speed and lithe, strong bodies. Andy looked upon them wistfully. Not one of them but was worth the price of three of the pinto, but as for money there was not $5 in the pocket of Andy.
Stripping the saddle from the pinto, he put it under the shed and left the mustang to feed and find water in the small pasture. Then he went with the bridle, that immemorial sign of one who seeks hospitality in the West, toward the house. He was met halfway by a tall, strong man of middle age or more. There was no hat on his head, which was covered with a shock of brown hair much younger than the face beneath it. He beheld Andy without enthusiasm.
“You figure on layin’ over here for the night, stranger?” he asked.
“That’s it,” said Andy.
“I’ll tell you how it is,” said the big man in the tone of one who is willing to argue a point. “We ain’t got a very big house… you see it… and it’s pretty well filled right now. If you was to slope over the hills there, you’d find Gainorville inside of ten miles.”
Andy explained that he was at the end of a hard ride. He pointed to the pinto, which in spite of a roll in the pasture, still bore the distinct outlines of the saddle, black with sweat, and all the rest of him dusted with salt, where the perspiration had come out and repeatedly dried in layers. “Ten more miles would kill the pinto,” he said simply. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll have a bit of chow and then turn in out there in the shed. That won’t crowd you in your sleeping quarters, and it’ll be fine for me.”
The big man opened his mouth to say something more. Andy, watching him with active eyes, saw three distinct shades of expression cross the face of the other, then his host turned on his heel.
“I guess we can fix you up,” he said. “Come on along.”
At another time Andy would have lost a hand rather than accept such churlish hospitality, but he was in no position to choose. The pain of hunger was like a voice speaking in him.
It was a four-room house. The rooms on the ground floor were the kitchen, where Andy cooked his own supper of bacon and coffee and flapjacks, and the combination living room/dining room, and from the bunk covered with blankets on one side, the bedroom. Upstairs there must have been two more rooms of the same size.
Seated about a little kitchen table in the front room, Andy found three men playing an interrupted game of blackjack, which was resumed when the big fellow took his place before his hand. The three gave Andy a look and a grunt, but otherwise they paid no attention to him. And if they had cons
ulted him, he could have asked for no greater favor. Yet he had an odd hunger about seeing them. They were the last men in many a month, perhaps, whom he could look at or who he could permit to see him without a fear. He brought his supper into the living room and put his cup of coffee on the floor beside him. While he ate, he watched them together and in detail.
They were, all in all, the least prepossessing group he had ever seen. The man who had brought him in was far from well-favored, but he was handsome compared with the others. Opposite him sat a tall fellow, very erect and stiff in his chair. A candle had recently been lighted, and it stood on the table near this man. It showed a wan face of excessive leanness and lank hair that seemed damp straggling across his forehead. His eyes were deep under bony brows, and they alone of the features showed any expression as the game progressed, turning now and again to the other faces with glances that burned; he was losing steadily. A redheaded man was on his left, with his back to Andy, but now and again he turned, and Andy saw a heavy jowl and a skin blotched with great, rusty freckles. His shoulders overflowed the back of his chair, which creaked whenever he moved, and Andy knew the man was a veritable Hercules—when he dropped his arm, the tips of his fingers brushed close to the floor.
The man who faced the redhead was as light as his companion was ponderous. He had frail hands and wrists, almost girlish; he was dressed also in a sort of feminine neatness and display; his voice was gentle, his eyes large and soft, and his profile was exceedingly handsome. But in the full view, Andy saw nothing except a grisly, purple scar that twisted down beneath the right eye of the man. It drew down the lower lid of that eye, and it pulled the mouth of the man a bit awry, so that he seemed to be smiling in a smug, half-apologetic manner. In spite of his youth and his gentle manner, he was unquestionably the dominant spirit here. Once or twice the others lifted their voices in argument, and a single word from him cut them short. And when he raised his head, now and again, to look at Andy, it gave the latter a feeling that his secret was read and all his past known.
