Mountain Riders

by Brand, Max

  He rode straight to the big fellow, and when he came close, he exclaimed with a shock of terror and a wild relief:

  “Stan Parker!”

  “Sure,” said the rider. “Sure, sure! Did I throw a shock into you, kid? You thought you’d done me in, down there in Cleve’s saloon, didn’t you? Well, you knocked the wind right out of me, and I still got a plaster across my ribs. But that ain’t nothin’. I come along here to fetch you. Buck Rainey sent me. How’s things?”

  “Turn your horse around and tin-can out of here as fast as you can,” urged Tom Derry, “because there’s worse trouble up there in the trees than you think about.”

  “What kind of trouble?” asked Stan Parker.

  “Jim Silver and Taxi,” said Derry.

  He expected to make an effect, but he did not expect to see Stan Parker doubled up by the news, then spread out along the back of the mustang, which he was spurring with might and main, looking back as though the air were already full of bullets. Derry shook his head, and followed him at a rapid gallop.

  17

  THE CARY OUTFIT

  STAN PARKER kept up his speed until he was far on the other side of Little Rock. Then he pulled up on a highland that permitted him to look far behind them toward possible danger of pursuit. Here Derry overtook him.

  “Not that there’s much use,” panted Parker, pulling off his hat and mopping his face with his sleeve, “If Silver wants to get you, he gets you. It ain’t much use runnin’ like that.”

  “Well, he’s only a man,” said Tom Derry. “One slug of lead would stop him, wouldn’t it?”

  “You try it,” urged Parker. “I don’t want none of it I’ve known gents that had the same idea about Silver. I’ve known fellows that went out and tried to slam him and get famous, that way. But they never come to no good. You try it, Tom. I don’t want no part of Jim Silver.”

  He mopped his face again, pulled out a flask, took a long swig at it, and proffered a drink to his companion.

  “No,” said Derry. “Not until I’m out of these woods. No whisky. It snarls up a man’s eye too much. About Silver, I’m not saying that I want trouble with him. I’m tired of trouble. But — where are we heading now?”

  Parker took another swig from the flask. Then he said:

  “I still got a shudder in the back of my brain. Silver and Taxi together, eh? That’s bad enough to give any man the willies. Where are we heading? For Christian and Rainey. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Then Stan Parker exploded: “Tell how you come close enough to Silver to see him without being seen — either by him or that witch wolf that he has along with him?”

  “They saw me,” said Derry, slowly recounting the facts, reassuring himself of their truth. “They had me roped and tied. Taxi wanted to put an end to me, but Silver seemed to think that I might be a straight shooter — and he turned me loose! Does that sound possible to you?”

  “They had you — and they turned you loose?” exclaimed Parker.

  He fell into a silence, staring at Derry through the moonlight.

  “Christian — he’ll want to know about that!” said Parker. “Come along. We got to make tracks. Make it fast. Over the hill yonder, we get a change of horses!”

  Over the hill was a long run of second-growth forest, through which they sped at a hard gallop until, in the hollow of the valley, Parker drew rein and whistled through his fingers, a long, trailing screech of high tension. It was instantly answered, so quickly and from such a distance that the second sound seemed an echo. Toward it they rode and found a man with a cluster of three horses, one of them saddled.

  “That you, Stan?” he called, while they were still a little way off.

  “Here!” shouted Parker. Then, to Tom Derry: “You take the grey. I take the chestnut. Make a fast change, because we’ve got to burn up the ground. Christian wants us by sun-up, and there’s a way to go.”

  They swung to the ground, pulled off the saddles, jumped them on to the backs of the waiting mustangs.

  He who held the animals said: “Who’s this, Stan?”

  “The hombre that done the trick up there at Blue Water,” said Stan. “Derry, this here is Pete Markel.”

  Pete gripped Derry’s hand.

  “It was a great job,” said he. “You’ve got the range talkin’. It’ll keep on talkin’ a good many years after you’ve danced on air, son!”

  Parker and Derry mounted. Away they went, with only a farewell wave. But the words of Pete Markel rang with an evil murmur in the brain of Derry still. It seemed to be taken for granted that he would have to hang, in the end, for saving Barry Christian at Blue Water. Or was it something else? Was it merely that he was now in the association of men whose steps went naturally toward the gallows?

  As he rushed the grey after Parker, who was showing the way, he had few chances for thought, but those moments were given to Markel’s words, and to the memories of Jim Silver.

  Two good men can both be wrong about a given subject. He stuck to that conclusion, finally. About Buck Rainey he would admit no doubts. About Jim Silver he found himself even more assured. Those two men must be straight. It was merely some entanglement of chance, some diversity of interest which made them enemies. Perhaps Tom Derry could manage to bring them together before the finish of the action.

  That was the thought that still was pleasant in his mind when, in the pink of the morning, he rode with Stan Parker through a high pass that brought them into one of those small, flat-bottomed mountain valleys that seem certainly the work of glacial ploughs. He had expected to find Christian and Buck Rainey. Instead, he found a whole encampment, of men and horses and dogs, and yonder were women cooking over open fires, and here were children playing or running errands, and farther away spilled a flood of a hundred or more fat-sided cattle.

  They were the Cary clan!

  “What’s happened? What are they doing here?” asked Derry.

  “You don’t know what’s happened to the Cary outfit? Well, you been in the saddle the last few days. What happened was that the Blue Water business was too much for a lot of the gents of that town. They got together, made the sheriff swear ’em in for deputies, and went up to Cary Valley with Walt Milton leadin’ ’em. There was a fair-sized scrap. But the Cary gang managed to hold back the Blue Water army long enough for them to hustle their children and their women out of the valley. A few Cary men dropped. So did a few of the boys from Blue Water. That made the posse so mad — to miss rounding up the whole Cary gang, I mean — that the first thing they did was to set fire to the grass in the valley. The flames ran to the house and burned it flat. Half the cattle was burned to death. A scatterin’ of ’em came away with the Carys. And the rest were stole, I guess.

  “They say that Cary Valley is as flat and bare as your hand, right now. Maybe the Cary’s won’t be any too happy to see you, old son. I mean, you’re the one that led ’em into the fracas at Blue Water, after all. But they’ve had to throw in with Barry Christian now. The Cary men are mad as hornets and want a lot of action. Folks say that even their land title to the valley is no good at all, and that anybody who wants to can go in and file claims on it. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the whole clan ain’t got a house to its name. And that throws ’em into the hands of Christian. He can use ’em for steel to cut steel, I guess.”

  As Parker talked like this, they approached the scattered scene of the camp. And what Tom Derry spotted first of all was a broad-branched tree beside the creek, and under that tree the glistening bald head of Old Man Cary. Maria was beside him, cooking over a handful of fire.

  Keen eyes had marked Tom Derry as soon as he came close. A general outcry rose, chiefly from the voices of women. The men stood back, watchful, dangerous. But the women were angry. An old hag whose face and body had been roughened and hammered by time and labour into the outlines of a man, ran at Derry and shook her fist in his face. She pranced backward as his horse went on, and she howled at him as she retreate
d:

  “You’re him that brought the bad luck to Cary Valley! A curse on your wide mug. A curse on your eyes and heart!”

  She turned and brandished her hands at the others.

  “Ain’t there men here? Ain’t there a Cary worth calling a man who’ll take hold on him? If there ain’t there’s women to handle him!”

  But there were men, too. They came not rapidly, but steadily.

  “Get out of here, Derry, if you’ve got a brain in your head!” advised Stan Parker. Then, as he saw that retreat was cut off by the closing circle of grim faces, he added:

  “Well, you got a good pair of hands, I seem to recollect. Why not use ’em?”

  And his broad face twisted with a grin of perfect malice.

  It seemed to Tom Derry that he had been purposely led into a nest of wasps where he would be stung to death. He stared around him at the big Cary men. They were all armed. Something brightly expectant in their eyes told him that they were prepared to use their guns the instant he turned and tried to escape. There was nothing for it except to sit still in the saddle and argue with them.

  He picked out the shaggy black face of big Dean Cary — big even among those giants.

  “You fellows know,” said Derry, “that I brought you hard cash to make a bargain. You closed for the deal and then you put it through. You got your money and you delivered the right man. After that, you’ve had some bad luck. Can you blame that on me?”

  “Men, are you goin’ to stand around and listen to the coyote yap?” screamed the old hag.

  Big Dean Cary gripped the reins of the grey gelding.

  “Get down!” he said to Derry. “Get down — and we’ll do some talkin’ face to face. Get down, or maybe well pull you down!”

  All the other men closed suddenly in around Derry with the hate blazing in their eyes, their hands ready for action.

  Maria slid through the crowd.

  “Back up, all of you,” she said. “The old man wants to talk to him.”

  “The gal’s talkin’ like a fool!” shouted the old woman who had roused the clan. “She wants a man and she’s come to get him. Bash her in the face. Shut her fool mouth and grab Tom Derry for yourselves! I can tell you some way to treat him!”

  “Get out of the way,” commanded Dean Cary to the girl.

  She did not shrink. Without so much as a glance at Derry, she stepped to the head of his horse and turned on the others, her hands resting on her hips as she faced them.

  “If the lot of you think that you have brains to finish without the old man, go ahead and kick him in the face now,” she told them. “He sent me to get Derry. I don’t know why, but I’ve come for him. Dean Cary, are you the one that’s slapping the old man in the face?”

  She pointed a sudden finger at Dean, who stepped back a little and growled:

  “How do I know it’s the old man who wants him?”

  “Did I ever bring you a lie from him before?” asked the girl.

  “Leave him go to the old man,” said another stalwart. “That don’t mean that he’s out and away from us. Take him off his hoss so’s he can’t make no sudden jump — and leave him go and see the old man.”

  That advice was taken. Powerful hands jerked Derry suddenly out of the saddle and planted him on his feet. A corridor opened through the angry crowd, and down it walked the girl, careless of the fierce faces to either side of her. Tom Derry followed her beyond the throng and to the broad-branched tree under which the old man was seated.

  “Well, doggone me,” said the old man. “You went and got your man, did you? What’s come over the Cary men? Are they gone and turned to milk and water? I reckoned before this here that I’d hear him screechin’ like a rabbit with the teeth of the greyhound sunk in it.”

  “I told ’em that you wanted to see him,” said Maria.

  “That I wanted to see him? I don’t want to see him nowhere but dead,” said the old man. “I’ll tell the boys different!”

  And he tilted back his head and opened his wide slit of a mouth to call to the men.

  “You yell for the boys,” said Maria, “and they’ll come and rip him to bits. But here’s the only useful man you know outside of Cary Valley, and why d’you want to chew him up so small?”

  “Why?” said the old man angrily. “Ain’t it him that brought us bad luck? Didn’t we have house and land and cows before he come? And look at us now!”

  “He didn’t drive you out of the valley. The Blue Water men did it,” answered the girl. “Might be that Tom could get you back inside again, if you want!”

  “Might be? Might not be!” snarled the old man. “You talk like too much of a fool, M’ria.”

  “Who are you hooked to now, then?” asked the girl.

  “To Barry Christian, and you know it.”

  “Barry Christian’s the man that you burned your fingers for. It’s for him that the house went up in smoke, and the year’s grass along with it, and mighty near all the cattle. This isn’t Barry. If you want to man-handle anybody, get your grips on Christian.”

  “He’s the goose that lays the golden eggs for us now, M’ria.”

  “He makes the promises, and you’re fool enough to eat ’em,” she answered.

  “Set down, Tom. Set down, M’ria,” said the old man. “Doggone me if it don’t stir me up, when I hear the girl talk like this. It pretty nigh chokes me, but afterwards it kind of gives me an appetite.”

  “I’m busy with breakfast. You two go ahead and yammer together,” said the girl. “See what you can come to before the Blue Water men come right down on us again!”

  “Ay,” muttered the old man. “Have you seen any of ’em headed up this way? Have you seen anything, Tom?”

  “How am I talking to you?” asked Derry pointedly.

  “Why,” said the old man, “you might as well talk as a friend. I was pretty nigh forgettin’ that I shook hands with you once.”

  “The Blue Water men won’t bother you again,” said Tom Derry. “You got Christian away from them, but they turned you out of your valley. You broke the law, but so did they. They’ll be glad enough to let sleeping dogs lie, I suppose.”

  “You think so?”

  “That’s what I guess.”

  “Maybe you’re right. And there’s other places than the old valley where we can settle down again. There’s more than one Promised Land in this part of the world. Though I reckon I’m maybe goin’ to see it but never get into it. Howsomever, we need hard cash to get more cattle and other things, before we try to set up a new home. And where can we get the cash except from Christian? That’s why we’re in his hands.”

  The logic of this was too simple and too clear to be denied. The old man began to load his pipe, wagging his head a little in what seemed to be troubled thought.

  “And what’ll he use the boys for?” asked Maria suddenly.

  She picked a coal from her fire with such swift dexterity that the tips of her rapid fingers were not scorched, and laid the fire on the tobacco in the old man’s pipe.

  “Him?” said the old man. “How would he be givin’ me advice?”

  “What else did he come up here for, and risk his bones among your wild men?” said the girl boldly. “Because he had an idea that was worth talkin’ about!”

  She turned to Tom Derry, who was rather stunned. Then he saw the girl’s lips say soundlessly:

  “Ask for time!”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Derry in answer, “but I’m not going to spring it at once. I mean to do you good if I can. But why,” he continued, the words flowing more freely as he embarked on his talk, “but why should I lift a hand or scratch out an idea for you until I make perfectly sure that the Cary outfit is friends with me?”

  “There’s some sense in that,” said the old man, “but what would budge you in the first place to do anything for us?”

  “Because I haven’t finished paying a price,” said Derry.

  “A price for what?”

  “
For the girl, there,” said Derry.

  The old man chuckled, but his husky laughter did not last very long.

  He said: “Some men’ll do things for women that they wouldn’t have in their heads without ’em, and maybe you’ve got something up your sleeve for us. M’ria, call in Dean and a couple of the older boys.”

  She called them in, with her high-piping voice. A semicircle of half a dozen middle-aged men, including Dean Cary, gathered in front of the old man.

  “Boys,” he said, “I wanta tell you that this here Tom Derry is a friend of mine, I guess. Maybe he’s a friend of all of us. He’s goin’ to do us some good before we get into a bad pinch. Leave him come and go, but never you leave him come and go except where your guns can point and carry. And on foot is the best way for him to travel. But treat him good. I ain’t pleased with everything we been layin’ out. The only thing we got in mind is to work for Christian. And you know doggone well that whatever we do for Christian is sure to be crooked, and whatever’s crooked brings the law on our heels. And I’m too old to run away from trouble.”

  18

  ON THE TRAIL

  THERE was enough in that speech to make the Carys scowl, but the control of the old man was still powerful over them. They listened in silence and then drew back. And Tom Derry remained rather dizzy and bewildered by what had happened. He had come close to as horrible a death as a man could think of, he knew, and the girl had saved him from this. But almost more than the danger he had gone through, was the feeling that Christian once and for all had been damned. The old man had said, and it had not been denied, that whatever they were asked to do for Christian was bound to be crooked. If that were true, then Rainey had lied to him about the character of his friend. That saving of Christian at Blue Water had been actually a crime against more than the letter of the law.