Iron Dust

by Max Brand

  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.

  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 that kept him in a constant torture. The third man was hit cleanly through the thigh, and although 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.

  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 the reward of the trapper. This was his in lieu of the money that 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.

  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 that 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, standing on a box to bring him above the level of the sink, 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. I know what you’re after, and it’s pretty good to see you here. Ain’t particular comfortable for an oldster like me when they’s a full-grown, man-eatin’ outlaw lyin’ 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 offen 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 innards.”

  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.”

  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 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 on the rocks; nothing showed on the sharp 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 move 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,” Hal Dozier agreed, nodding, “but queer things happen. Let’s go back and have a look.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  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 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 rôle 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.”

  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. No doubt it was all created by the words he had overheard before he entered. 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 that the youngster felt in beholding Hal Dozier, the man hunter, at close range. All these things were decidedly small clues, but the marshal was accustomed to acting on hints.

  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. The point is, they chatter a consid’able lot about how hard they work, and they all got a favorite way of making jelly, or bakin’ bread, or sewin’ calico. But I ask you… man-to-man… did you ever see a cleaner floor’n 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. “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 underground, 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.

  “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 that 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.

  “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 cleanhanded. As I said before, my heart isn’t in this trail. But too late now.”

  “Who had him outlawed? Who put it up to the governor?” asked Pop shrewdly.

  Hal Dozier had to turn his head and cough, for he found his stroke parried and the point placed at his own breast. “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, with the freckles standing out more rusty than ever and the eyes painfully wide.

  “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 mout
h. 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, Granddad.”

  “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. He would have given a great deal if he could have made the child meet his glance at that moment, but the boy was looking steadily at his grandfather. 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. But seein’ it’s you, Dozier, I’ll let you copy it. Better go up and see how it’s done. 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.