Mountain Riders

by Brand, Max

  “He’s one of the finest men in the world!” said Derry hotly.

  “Sure he is,” said the girl. “A razor is one of the finest things in the world, too — for cutting throats.”

  She laughed.

  “You must think I’m a half-wit,” she told Derry.

  He mounted, and she rode beside him on the home trail. He said no more about Barry Christian, because he was too deeply angered. In a deep silence they cantered the horses through the watery swishing of the grass until they came close to the house. Then half a dozen riders appeared out of the trees and charged in a body, yelling like Indians. Derry pulled up the black to a quick halt.

  “Come on!” shouted the girl to him. “Don’t show yellow or they’ll eat you. It’s only a bluff to see if you’re a real man. Don’t make a fool of yourself and of me!”

  She was very angry. She was tense and stiff with passion, staring back at him. So he sent the black ahead at a gallop. He saw Molly pull wide of him, to leave him alone to handle the charge; and now, with a rush, the Carys were at him. Ropes swung in the air; voices thundered; the flash of their eyes was like the glitter of naked guns; their horses were stretched out level with their speed.

  Well, resistance was out of the question, and Derry lifted his head and kept his face calm as he rode through the cyclone. It raged around him; it was gone to a distance; and the yelling turned into tumultuous laughter. Then the girl pulled back to his side as they entered the shade of the trees.

  “Clonmel would have known how to handle them,” she said curtly.

  “The devil with Clonmel!” said Derry. “Why do you throw him in my face?”

  “He’s a standard for measuring men,” she answered, “and it’s by him that I find you short.”

  Their eyes flared at one another almost with hate; but he thought she was prettier then than ever.

  They reached the house, dismounted, and half a dozen of the tall Cary women paused in front of the rambling cabin with huge baskets of soiled laundry poised on their heads. They were going down to the creek to do the day’s washing. They halted a moment to stare like handsome wild animals at the stranger.

  Past them, Derry entered the house with the girl leading the way, stepping fast, never looking back at him. She brought him straight into the room of the old man, where the air was stale and humid with the steam of the soup.

  There they found a strapping girl of twenty to whom the old man was saying:

  “It ain’t a hard job; it’s an easy job. But you gotta keep your eyes open and move when I tell you to move. Maybe I’ll have to damn you for a few days, but then you’ll get the hang of the work and — ”

  He broke off to say: “Hello, M’ria. Back here so soon with your man?”

  “He’s no man of mine,” she said. “He ain’t even a boy.”

  She marched up to the other girl, and anger seemed to swell in her body.

  “Get out of here!” cried Maria. “Get out before I sail into you. You big numb-headed cow, take your hoofs out of here!”

  “Grandpa called me in. He’s sick of you — he doesn’t want you back,” answered the other girl stoutly.

  “You lie!” said Maria furiously. “Did you dare to say you were sick of me, Grandpa?” she added to the old man.

  The grandfather rubbed his knuckles over his chin. “I thought you’d gone and left me,” he said, “and Bertha, there, might be a good gal to take your place. Would you come back and stay, M’ria?” he added wistfully.

  “I’ll stay as long as I can stand you!” answered Maria. “You — get out!”

  She snatched from the wall the dangling lash of a blacksnake, as she spoke, and slashed at Bertha with it. There was a scream of fear; Bertha vanished, and the old man lay contentedly back in his chair, laughing heartily.

  “You kind of gimme an appetite,” said the grandfather. “It’s good to lay eyes on you, M’ria. Are you through with this here Tom Derry?”

  “I’m through with him.”

  “The more fool you,” said the grandfather unexpectedly. “Here, lad. Where’s the money?”

  Tom Derry counted out the greenbacks rapidly. The stack amounted to exactly twenty-five thousand dollars. Old Man Cary folded it and shoved it in a great wad inside his belt, right against his bare, yellowish skin.

  “All right,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll be down there in Blue Water in time for the hangin’.”

  “There’ll be no hanging. You fellows will do your job?” asked Derry doubtfully.

  The old man gaped at him.

  Then he said: “You tell him, M’ria.”

  She said, with scorn: “Grandpa shook hands with you, didn’t he? That means that every man in the Cary Valley will die, if he has to, to put the deal through. Now get out We’re thoroughly tired of you, around here.”

  The old man began laughing huskily.

  Said Tom Derry: “You’ve got teeth and claws, and I’ve seen them. But when I want you, I’ll come back here and get you.”

  “You’ll come and get me!” cried the girl. “No, you stay with Barry Christian and his crooks. I don’t want to see the face of you, ever again. Get out!”

  She struck the floor with the lash of the whip and Tom Derry delayed only long enough to see that part of the brightness in her eyes was tears. Then he left.

  10

  AT BLUE WATER

  BARRY CHRISTIAN was not brought out to be hung the next day. He was given a reprieve of five days by the governor’s authority, no one knew why. The real truth was that more news-hawks wanted to get to the spot to make pictures with their cameras and with their words of the last moments of the famous man.

  That was why Tom Derry had a chance to get back to Buck Rainey and talk with him. Buck’s leg was nearly healed, even in this short time. He could walk with not a very great limp. He explained that he would soon be riding, and in the meantime, he had all that he wished. He only desired that Barry Christian should be brought in that direction after the delivery.

  To that Tom Derry assented. He merely remarked: “There seems to be a whole lot of people who think that Christian’s a crook.”

  “Ay, you know how it is,” said Rainey. “There are some men so big that we either have to hate them or envy them or fear them. We can’t meet them on their own level and so we pretend that they’ve sold their souls to the devil.”

  Tom Derry nodded. He could not help remarking, however: “A lot of people seem to think that Jim Silver’s the greatest man in the world.”

  “Sneaking hypocrites always have a big following,” answered Buck Rainey. “Only the people who have seen the money change hands know the right men from the bought men.”

  He said this so heartily that Derry answered: “I’ll leave it to you. You ought to know, Buck.”

  “Why leave it to me?” said Buck Rainey, with a little touch of sharpness. “I might be bamboozling you, as far as that goes. Find out the truth for yourself.”

  “I won’t bother,” replied Derry. “I trust you, Buck, and that’s enough for me.”

  “Suppose that I were wrong?” asked Rainey.

  Derry laughed a little at the thought.

  “Then murder would be too sweet for you,” he said finally. “A man who would fool a friend is the worst skunk in the world.”

  Rainey, however, did not laugh, but studied his friend for some time with his keen eyes. At length he turned the talk on the Carys and what had happened in the strange valley among the mountains. When Derry had answered, Buck asked:

  “What about the girl?”

  “Well, I’ve told you. There she is. There’s nobody like her.”

  “You love her?”

  “Love is a word I’ve read about,” said Derry. “I wouldn’t use it any too free. My mother was a great one. She used to make me go and cut the switches that she licked me with. But I loved her. I don’t know anybody else. Perhaps this girl. I don’t know.”

  “I mean, are you hungry to have her? Do you ache for her?�
��

  “Ay. I ache, well enough. She almost run me out of the valley, but she sticks in behind my eyes and won’t go away. She’s better to look at than roast meat when you’re starving. She can ride better than a man. She can shoot straighter than I can. She’d take the devil by his chin whiskers and wag his head for him. I never saw such a girl.”

  “What made her turn against you?” asked Rainey.

  “She thought I was talking down to her. She thought I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “She’ll learn better than that.”

  Tom Derry shook his head. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “To get some girls is harder than to kill some men. They won’t believe that they like you till you’re nearly dead. I’ll be near dead or dying, before she ever knows her own mind. Back in her head there’s a fellow called Clonmel. Know about him?”

  “I can tell you about him in three words — Jim Silver’s brother.”

  “As bad as Silver?”

  “The same blood in him.”

  A sudden great doubt made Derry exclaim: “Suppose that you were wrong!”

  “Yes, you can suppose that,” agreed the other. “Now, you’d better get back to Blue Water and fetch Christian out of jail. Work it with the sheriff and the Carys. As soon as the sheriff knows that you’re a friend of the Carys, he’ll make sure that you hate Christian. He’ll even let you visit Barry in the jail. Then you can talk to him and tell him things.”

  “Say it over again,” asked Derry. “Why do the Carys hate Christian so?”

  “Because he got them into trouble with Silver, and Silver made them out a set of crooks, in the eyes of everyone. To be a Cary was a proud thing, in the old days. To be one now is like being a mountain lion or any wildcat that asks its belly what it should do next.”

  Derry took a long breath.

  “I’d like to meet Jim Silver,” he said slowly. “I’d give my heart to talk to him.”

  “You’ll probably be dead before he speaks to you,” answered Rainey.

  But when Derry rode back to Blue Water, he was still in a strange degree of doubt. That question in the back of his mind had been answered only in part, and he had to ask it over and over again. He came on an old Mexican at a winding of the trail over Blue Water and he looked into the lack-lustre eyes of the ancient man for a moment before he said:

  “Partner, what d’you know about Jim Silver?”

  “If you are his friend, I salute you, señor. If you are his enemy, the good God forgive you!”

  The Mexican went on his way, and poor Derry, sorely troubled, continued into Blue Water.

  On the edge of the town, in a cluster of leather tents that would have been appropriate for Indians in the old days, he found the clan of the Carys. There were twenty grown men and one boy, who was called “Chuck.” There was one woman, and that was Maria, who had come to take care of the old man, who insisted on being present.

  Derry, making for the tents, found a camp-fire burning and the Carys sitting about it on their heels or cross-legged, toasting meat on wooden splinters. Derry went in among them, found the meat, carved some chunks, and roasted his portion along with the others. Those wild men received him as though he had been an image out of thin air. They did not talk to him. They did not seem to see him.

  Presently the girl came out and dipped a pannikin into the big iron pot in which coffee was seething. Derry stood up beside her.

  “Where’s the old man?” he asked.

  “He’s with Sheriff Walt Milton,” she said. She looked away from him.

  “I’ll go in with you,” said Derry.

  When Derry ducked after her through the entrance flap, he saw the grim face of Walt Milton, and he saw the old man leaning against a back rest, with his legs stuck out straight before him. It was nearly sunset, and a dimly rosy light filled the tent. The two men looked at him for a moment. It seemed that the old man had forgotten him.

  At last he said: “Walt, this here is Tom Derry. Friend of mine. Hates the heart of Christian. Wants to see him in the jail before he stretches his neck. Fix him up, will you? Tom, this is Walt Milton. He calls himself a sheriff.”

  Milton reached up a hand, and the pair shook hands. The girl was pouring out coffee for the two men.

  “Drop around before nine in the morning,” said the sheriff. “I’ll fix you up so’s you can damn Christian a few times. You ain’t the only one.”

  He chuckled as he said this, and a sharp distaste formed like a sourness in the back of Derry’s throat.

  He went out of the tent and stood in the darkening of the day, trying to put two and two together, and disliking very much the part that lay before him. He would go to the jail in the morning and try to form an attachment to Christian. Otherwise —

  While he was standing in the dimness of the twilight, listening to the mutter of voices inside the tent, the girl came out again. Derry caught her wrist and stayed her.

  “Look here, Molly,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “You’ve got a tongue, and I’m not deaf,” said the girl. ‘Take your hands away before you break my bones.”

  The sunset dealt with her more gently than did candlelight. It gave to her skin a glow of delicate warmth. Her swarthiness turned to gold. In her eyes he could see the blue sheen that overlay the black.

  “I’m going to see Christian,” said Derry. “Shall I believe in him or not?”

  “Sure you will,” said the girl. “You’re just that dumb.”

  She walked calmly away from him. Her head was high. There was a dignity about her that made it impossible for him to follow her.

  11

  A TALK WITH CHRISTIAN

  THAT next day was to see the end of Barry Christian. Therefore, the town of Blue Water was filled with people who had come scores and even hundreds of miles to attend the execution. Instead of a formal gibbet, a branch of a big spruce in the centre of the town was to serve as the lever by which Christian would be hoisted off the face of the earth and sent to his account. People loitered near the jail where the man was kept. They also lingered near the tree where he was to die. And Tom Derry rode under that tree, through the crowd, on his way to the jail.

  His keen ears drank in the comments around him, as he journeyed on. He heard a man say: “Burning would be better.”

  He heard another man mutter: “It’s a short bit of hell for Christian, but he’s given some long bits to other folks.”

  He heard still another say: “Silver ought to be here to see this. Silver put him in the jug, and Silver ought to see the end of him!”

  So when Tom Derry reached the jail, the doubt in the back of his mind was greater than before. He wished that, the night before, he had followed Molly Cary and made her tell him exactly what she meant. But it was too late for that, now.

  The jail itself was a solid fist of stone, thrust up among the frail wooden or clumsy log cabins of Blue Water. The sound of the creek hung in the air like the noise of a wind that blew all through the day and the night, in every weather.

  There was a crowd in front of the jail, milling about in the street. Right at the door were four riflemen, and they were all Carys. In their patched clothes, with their unshaven faces, they looked very wild even in comparison with the people of Blue Water, who were by no means mild. Up to the door went Tom Derry and waved a hand at the guards. They brought their rifles to the ready. One of them was that fellow with the shag of black beard all over his face — Dean Cary. Another was Dean’s handsome son, Will Cary. Dean pushed the muzzle of his gun right into the face of Derry.

  “Give this here jail a pile of room,” said Dean Cary. “What you want?”

  “The sheriff,” said Derry angrily.

  “Go try the side door, and maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  So Derry went around to the side door. He found a smaller mob here, but four Carys, with rifles, were on guard. He asked his question of one of them, and the fellow turned his head and bawled:

  “Hey, Sheriff!�
��

  The door opened a bit. The sheriff’s worn, hard face appeared.

  “Yeah? Hello, Derry. Come on in and see the boss.”

  At that invitation, Derry mounted the steps and entered the jail. The sheriff said:

  “He takes it pretty cool. A fellow like that Barry Christian, he ain’t goin’ to worry none till the breath is bein’ choked out of him. And choked out it’s goin’ to be, this time! I got the rope, I got the tree, and I got the men that hate his heart enough to want to see him through the misery!”

  How little the sheriff knew! To one who really wished to see Christian die, how much half a dozen words would mean, at this moment! That thought grew in Derry as he walked down the corridor to a corner cell, double-barred with steel. Inside those bars, like a figure in the obscurity of a blurred pencil drawing, he saw Barry Christian for the first time. He knew him perfectly, not by features, but by carriage. The dignity of a man of importance adhered to the big man. His pale, handsome face might have been that of an orator, an artist, a scientist. However big he was in body, it was plain that he was far more in mind than in muscle.

  He was not chained. Instead of chains, he was secured by another quartet of the Cary clan, who sat or walked near by, their rifles in their hands, their knives and revolvers in their belts. No wiles would cut Barry Christian out of the jail unless these men were willing to have him go. It seemed madness for the sheriff to trust so blindly to the imagined hatred of the Carys for Barry Christian.

  Christian lounged, reading. When the sheriff spoke, he first passed a hand through his long hair and then looked up calmly, without haste or nervousness. It was not fear that made him pale. That was plain. It was merely the natural colour of a skin that the sun could not tan.

  “Is it time, Sheriff?” he asked.

  “Time for you to meet a friend of mine, by name of Tom Derry,” said the sheriff. He added, rather brutally: “You’ll meet the other thing a little later on.”

  Then, turning, the sheriff drew the Cary guards along with him to a little distance, and Tom Derry stepped close to the bars.