Iron Dust

by Max Brand

  The bridle rattled at his feet.

  “This has gone far enough,” said Henry. “Lanning, you’ve got the wrong idea. I’m going ahead with the introductions. The redheaded fellow we call Jeff is better known to the public as Jeff Rankin. Does that mean anything to you?” Jeff Rankin acknowledged the introduction with a broad grin, the corners of his mouth being lost in the heavy fold of his jowls. “I see it doesn’t,” went on Henry. “Very well. Joe’s name is Joe Clune. Yonder sits Scottie Macdougal. There is Larry la Roche. And I am Henry Allister.”

  The edge of Andrew’s alertness was suddenly dulled. The last name swept into his brain a wave of meaning, for of all words on the mountain desert there was none more familiar, more hauntingly well-known, than Henry Allister. Scar-Faced Allister, they called him. He had not yet reached middle age, and yet for nearly twenty years, his had been a name to conjure with, a thing to frighten strong men by the bare mention. Of those deadly men who figured in the tales of Uncle Jasper, Henry Allister was the last and the most grim. A thousand stories clustered about him: of how he killed Watkins; of how Langley, the famous federal marshal, trailed him for five years and was finally killed in the duel that left Allister with that scar; of how he broke jail at Garrisonville and again at St. Luke City. In the imagination of Andrew, he had loomed like a giant, some seven-foot prodigy, whiskered, savage of eye, terrible of voice. And, turning toward him, Andrew saw him in profile with the scar obscured—and his face was of almost-feminine refinement.

  $5,000?

  A dozen rich men in the mountain desert would each pay more than that for the apprehension of Allister, dead or alive. And bitterly it came over Andrew that this genius of crime, this heartless murderer as story depicted him, was no danger to him but almost a friend. And the other four ruffians of Allister’s band were smiling cordially at him, enjoying his astonishment. The day before his hair would have turned white in such a place among such men; tonight they were his friends.

  “Gentlemen,” said Andrew, “I’m glad to meet you.”

  A chorus boomed back at him; he made out the different voices; even the savage Larry la Roche was smiling. “Well, kid, this is one on you.” “Sit down and tell us about it.” “So you bumped off Bill Dozier… the skunk?” “Hang up your hat and make yourself to home.” “You can share my bunk.”

  Tears came to Andrew’s eyes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After that, things happened to Andrew in a swirl. They were shaking hands with him. They were congratulating him on the killing of Bill Dozier. They were patting him on the back. Larry la Roche, who had been so hostile, now stood up to the full of his ungainly height and proposed his health. And the other men drank it standing. Andy received a tin cup half full of whiskey, and he drank the burning stuff in acknowledgment. The unaccustomed drink went to his head; his muscles began to relax, and his eyes swam. Voices began to boom at him out of a haze. “Why, he’s only a young kid. One shot put him under the weather.”

  “Shut up, Larry. He’ll learn fast enough.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Larry to himself, “he’ll learn fast enough.”

  Presently he was lifted and carried by strong arms up a creaking stairs. He looked up, and he saw the red hair of the mighty Jeff, who carried him as if he had been a child and deposited him among some blankets, with as much care as if he had been a child.

  “I didn’t know,” Larry la Roche was saying. “How could I tell he didn’t know how to handle his booze? How could I tell a man killer like him couldn’t stand no more than a girl?”

  “Shut up and get out,” said another voice.

  Heavy footsteps retreated; then Andrew heard them once more grumbling and booming below him.

  After that his head cleared rapidly. Two windows were open in this higher room, and a sharp current of the night wind blew across him, clearing his mind as rapidly as wind blows away a fog. The alcohol had only stupefied him for the moment. It was not enough to make him sleep, and instead, it reacted presently as a stimulus, making his heart flutter, while a peculiar sense of depression and guilt troubled him. Now he made out that one man had not left him; the dark outline of him was by the bed, waiting.

  “Who’s there?” asked Andrew.

  “Allister. Take it easy.”

  “I’m all right. I’ll go down again to the boys.”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, kid. Are you sure you want to go down?” He added slowly: “Are you sure your head’s clear?”

  “Yep. Sure thing.”

  “Then listen to me, Lanning, while I talk. It’s important. Stay here till the morning, then ride on.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, away from Martindale, that’s all.”

  “Out of the desert? Out of the mountains?”

  “Of course. They’ll hunt for you here.” Allister paused, then went on. “And when you get away what’ll you do? Go straight?”

  “God willing,” said Andrew fervently. “It… it was only luck, bad luck, that put me where I am.”

  The outlaw scratched a match and lighted a candle, then he dropped a little of the melted tallow on a box, and by that light, he peered earnestly into the face of Andrew. He appeared to need this light to read the expression of Andrew. It also enabled Andrew to see the bare rafters and the cobwebs across the ceiling, and it showed him the face of Allister. Sometimes the play of shadows made that face unreal as a dream, sometimes the face was filled with poetic beauty, sometimes the light gleamed on the scar and the sardonic smile, and then it was a face out of hell.

  “You’re going to get away from the mountain desert and go straight,” said Allister in résumé.

  “That’s it.” He saw that the outlaw was staring with a smile, half grim and half sad, into the shadows and far away.

  “Lanning, let me tell you. You’ll never get away.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Andrew. “Those fellows downstairs wouldn’t have known what I was talking about, but I can explain to you. Allister, I don’t like fighting. It… it makes me sick inside. It isn’t easy to say, but I’ll whisper it to you… Allister, I’m not a brave man.”

  He waited to see the contempt come on the face of the famous leader, but there was nothing but grave attention.

  “Why,” he went on in a rush of confidence, “everybody in Martindale knows that I’m not a fighter. My uncle made me work with guns. He’s a fighter. He wanted to make a fighter out of me. But I don’t want to be one. I feel friendly toward people, Allister. I want them to like me. When they sneer at me, it hurts me like knives. The only reason I ever wanted to do any fighting was just to get the respect of people. Those fellows downstairs think that I’m a sort of bad hombre. I’m not. I want to abide by the law. I want to play clean and straight. Why, Allister, when I turned over Buck Heath and saw his face, I nearly fainted, and then…”

  “Wait,” cut in the other. “That was your first man. You didn’t kill him, but you thought you had. You nearly fainted, then. But as I gather it, after you shot Bill Dozier you simply sat on your horse and waited. Did you feel like fainting then?”

  “No,” explained Andrew hastily. “I wanted to go after them and shoot ’em all. But that was because they’d hounded me and chased me. They could have rushed me and taken me prisoner easily, but they wanted to shoot me from a distance… and it made me mad to see them work it. I… I hated them all, and I had a reason for it. Curse them!” He added hurriedly: “But I’ve no grudge against anybody. All I want is a chance to live quiet and clean.”

  There was a faint sigh from Allister. “Lanning,” he murmured. “I’ll tell you a story. Away east from here there was a young chap of a mighty good family, but rather gay habits… nothing vicious. He simply spent a little too much money, and his father didn’t approve of it. Well, one day his father gave him twenty dollars to take to another man. Mind that… just twenty dollars. Our young fellow started out, but in the crowd his pocket was picked. It made him sick when he found t
hat he hadn’t that money. He knew that his father would put it down to a lie. His father would think that he’d spent that money on himself, and the idea of another row with the governor made the boy sick inside. Just the way you felt about fighting.

  “He told himself he couldn’t go home until he had that money back. He couldn’t face his father, you see? Well, he was pretty young and pretty foolish. He went into an alley that evening, pulled a cloth over his face with eyeholes in it, and waited until a well-dressed fellow came through. He held up that man by putting a little toy pistol under the man’s nose. Then he went through his victim’s pockets and took twenty dollars… just that, and left over a hundred. And he went away.

  “There was a hue and cry, but our young chap was safe at home in one of the most respectable families in the city. Who’d think of looking there?

  “But one night at a party… a sort of town dance, you see… our young chap was talking in one of the anterooms. Pretty soon a big fellow stepped up and drew him to one side. ‘Youngster, I recognized your voice,’ he said. ‘You’re the one who stuck me up in the alley and got twenty bucks from me, eh?’

  “Of course, our friend could have denied it. But he didn’t think of that. He was afraid. He turned white. Then he took out twenty dollars and put it into the other man’s hand. ‘It was a joke,’ he said. ‘Forget about it.’ ‘Sure,’ said the other. ‘It was a joke.’ But ten days later the victim of the holdup came again. He was in trouble. He wanted a hundred dollars. And the young chap had to get that money… otherwise he’d be exposed.

  “And a week after that, there was another call for money. It came while the youngster was in the garden of the girl he loved, talking to her. This big chap looked over the hedge and called. He had to come. He was afraid. Also, he was cold inside. But his nerves were steady. He was frightened to death, he was white, but his brain was clear. Ever feel like that, Lanning?”

  “Go on,” said Andrew hoarsely.

  “He said to the big man… ‘Go away from here, or I’ll kill you.’ Of course the big man laughed. And the hands of the youngster went up of their own accord and fastened on that fellow’s throat. There wasn’t a sound. But in one minute he had become a murderer. All the time he was frightened to death, but he felt that he had to kill that man.

  “Then he ran. He got on a train. He went two thousand miles. He stayed in a small town a month, then the police were on his trail. He broke away. He went on a ship to the other side of the world. The police dropped in on him, and in one terrible ten seconds, he shot down and killed three men. He doubled straight back on his trail. He landed in the mountain desert. All he wanted was a chance to play clean… to settle down and be a good citizen. But the law wouldn’t let him. It kept dogging him. It kept haunting him. And wherever it crossed his path, there was a little cross of blood. And, finally, a good many years later, this youngster of ours, grown into a man, sat in an attic of an old shanty and told another youngster what was coming to him.”

  “You?” murmured Andrew breathlessly.

  “I,” said Allister calmly. “And this is what you have to hear. All the time I thought that I was trying to run away from trouble, but really I was hungry for the fighting. I wanted the excitement. What I thought was fear was simply a set of nerves that could be tuned up to a thrilling point, but that would never break. I’ll tell you why. I had the metal in me from the first. In the blood… in my muscles. A queer sort of foreknowledge of things. Lanning, the moment I lay eyes on a man, I know whether I can beat him or not. I even know whether his bullet will strike me. Queer, isn’t it? And when I meet the man who is going to kill me in a fair fight, I’ll know I’m a dead man before the bullet goes through my heart. Oh, it’s nothing altogether peculiar to me. I’ve talked with other men of the ilk. It’s a characteristic… it’s in my blood… it’s iron dust inside me, that’s all.”

  Andrew caught a great breath.

  “Now I’ll tell you why I say all this, Lanning. The minute I laid eyes on you, I knew you were one of my kind. In all my life I’ve known only one other with that same chilly effect in his eyes… that was Marshal Langley… only he happened to be on the side of the law. No matter. He had the iron dust in him. He was cut out to be a man killer. You say you want to get away… Lanning, you can’t do it. Because you can’t get away from yourself. I’m making a long talk to you, but you’re worth it. I tell you I read your mind. You plan on riding north and getting out of the mountain desert before the countryside there is raised against you the way it’s raised to the south. In the first place I don’t think you’ll get away. Hal Dozier is on your trail, and he’ll get to the north and raise the whole district and stop you before you hit the towns. You’ll have to go back to the mountain desert. You’ll have to do it eventually; why not do it now? Lanning, if I had you at my back, I could laugh at the law the rest of our lives. Stay with me. I can tell a man when I see him. I saw you call Larry la Roche. And I’ve never wanted a man the way I want you. Not to follow me, but as a partner. Shake and say you will.”

  The slender hand was stretched out through the shadows; the light from the candle flashed on it. And a power outside his own will made Andrew move his hand to meet it. He stopped the gesture with a violent effort.

  The swift voice of the outlaw, with a fiber of earnest persuasion in it, went on: “You see what I risk to get you. Hal Dozier is on your trail. He’s the only man in the world I’d think twice about before I met him face-to-face. But if I join to you, I’ll have to meet him sooner or later. Well, Lanning, I’ll take that risk. I know he’s more devil than man when it comes to gunplay, but we’ll meet him together. Give me your hand.”

  There was a riot in the brain of Andrew Lanning. The words of the outlaw had struck something in him that was like metal chiming on metal. Iron dust? That was it! The call of one blood to another, and he realized the truth of what Allister said. If he touched the hand of this man, there would be a bond between them that only death could break. In one blinding rush, he sensed the strength and the faith of Allister.

  But another voice was at his ear, and he saw the crystal purity of the eyes of Anne Withero, as she had stood for that moment in his arms in her room. It came over him with a chill like cold moonlight; it came over him with a chill like the bouquet of a fine wine.

  “Do you fear me?” he had whispered.

  “No.”

  “Will you remember me?”

  “Forever!”

  And with that ghost of a voice in his ear, Andrew Lanning groaned to the man beside him: “Partner, I know you’re nine-tenths man, and I thank you out of the bottom of my heart. But there’s someone else has a claim to me… I don’t belong to myself.”

  There was a breathless moment of pause. Anger contracted the face of Henry Allister, and then he nodded his head gravely.

  “It’s the girl you went back to see,” said Allister.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, go ahead and try to win through. Try to get out of the desert and get away among men. I wish you luck. But if you fail, remember what I’ve said. Now, or ten years from now, what I’ve said goes for you. Now roll over and sleep. Good-bye, Lanning, or rather, au revoir.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The excitement kept Andrew awake for a little time, but then the hum of the wind, the roll of voices below him, and the weariness of the long ride, rushed on him like a wave and washed him out into an ebb of sleep.

  When he wakened, the aches were gone from his limbs, and his mind was a happy blank. Only when he started up from his blankets and rapped his head against the slanting rafters just above him, he was brought to a painful realization of where he was. He turned, scowling, and the first thing he saw was a piece of brown wrapping paper held down by a shoe and covered with a clumsy scrawl.

  These blankets are yours and the slicker along with them and heres wishin you luck while youre beatin it back to civlizashun. your friend

  Jeff Rankin

  Andy glanced swiftly
about the room and saw that the other bunks had been removed. He swept up the blankets and went down the stairs to the first floor. It was gutted of everything except the crazy-legged chairs and the boxes that had served as tables. The house reeked of emptiness; broken bottles, a twisted, tin plate in which someone had set his heel, were the last signs of the outlaws of Henry Allister’s gang. A bundle stood on the table with another piece of the wrapping paper near it. The name of Andrew Lanning was on the outside. He unfolded the sheet and read in a precise, rather-feminine writing:

  Dear Lanning: We are, in a manner, sneaking off. I’ve already said good-bye, and I don’t want to tempt you again. Now you’re by yourself, and you’ve got your own way to fight. The boys agree with me. We all want to see you make good. We’ll all be sorry if you come back to us. But once you’re here, once you’ve found out that it’s no go trying to beat back to good society, we’ll be mighty happy to have you with us. In the meantime, we want to do our bit to help Andrew Lanning make up for his bad luck.

  For my part, I’ve put a chamois sack on top of the leather coat with the fur lining. You’ll find a little money in that purse. While you slept, I took occasion to run through your pockets, and I see that you aren’t very well supplied with cash. Don’t be foolish. Take the money I leave you, and when you’re back on your feet, I know that you’ll repay it at your own leisure.

  And here’s best luck to you and the girl,

  Henry Allister

  Andrew lifted the chamois sack carelessly, and out of its mouth tumbled a stream of gold. One by one he picked up the pieces and replaced them; he hesitated and then put the sack in his pocket. How could he refuse a gift so delicately made?

  A broken kitchen knife had been thrust through a bit of the paper on the box. He read this next.

  Your hoss is known. So Im leavin you one in place of the pinto. He goes good and he dont need no spurrin, but when you come behind him keep watchin your step. your pal,