Man From Mustang

by Brand, Max

“To Lorens, of course. He’s handled everything.”

  “And how much of it is left with Lorens?”

  “Nothing, David. He had to spend floods in the prison, through the trusties.”

  “He used up the entire forty thousand dollars? He didn’t put anything in his own pocket?”

  “No, David. Not a penny. He has hardly a cent in his wallet, now. He told me only to-day. But I’ve brought more. I brought another fifty thousand out — ”

  “Fifty thousand?” cried Holman. “Don’t you know that it’s enough to get you murdered? Fifty thousand dollars, carrying it around like pebbles in your pocket? But wait a moment. How much does he get of that fifty thousand? How much does he expect?”

  “Nothing for himself, David. All that he wants to do is to see you safe. He’s had trouble with the law himself, and he took pity on us, David. He himself offered to do what he could. I’ve never been able to give him a single dollar for his own pocket.”

  “He sounds like an ideal character,” said Holman dryly. “But he doesn’t look like one. Not by a mile! Go on, Edith. Tell me how much you’ll need to spend now?”

  “Just for the moment, a good deal,” said the girl. “Lorens is going to arrange everything for us. He knows a section of the mountains where we can be safe, he swears. Perhaps not for days and weeks, but for years. He knows the sheriff of that county, and he knows several others who can be bribed to close their eyes and not know that we’re there. It will cost a good deal, to begin with, but then — ”

  “How much?”

  “About forty thousand dollars.”

  “Forty thousand? Forty thousand dollars, did you say? For a sheriff — and a few others? Who are the others?”

  “I didn’t ask him. I know that we can trust him. Why are you glaring like that, David?”

  “Because the thief is bleeding you! If he spent ten thousand to get me out of the prison, he was a fool. If there’s a sheriff to be fixed, either the man can be bought for five thousand, or else he couldn’t be touched for five millions. And that’s more apt to be the case. Have you given him that forty thousand, yet?”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “Because he -What are you going to do, David? You’re not — ”

  Holman came to the door of the shack.

  “Oh, Lorens!” he called.

  “Here!” answered Lorens, and came swiftly. “Anything wrong?” he asked cheerfully.

  “I think there is,” said Holman. “Come inside. I’ve been hearing about your money dealings with Edith. I’ve been hearing about your altruism, too. I’ve heard that you’ve just bled her for another forty thousand dollars, you cur! And I’m going to take that money away from you!”

  Lorens flashed his hand for a gun.

  Holman hit out with a strength that flung Lorens back against the wall and made him drop to one knee. He was half-stunned, but not enough to spoil his shooting at such a close range. And he meant murder. The snarling look in his face was like that of a wild cat about to put his teeth in red meat.

  “You fool!” yelled Lorens, above the cry of the girl. “I’ve trimmed her. And now I’m going to trim you — and collect the blood money on your head!”

  “No, señor,” said Silver, and he shoved the muzzle of his Colt out of the darkness and into the verge of the light in the room.

  Chapter 16

  The whole scene was in nice balance. The girl had caught up a Winchester, but dared not swing the muzzle toward Lorens, knowing that she would be too late. So she stood with the rifle in her right hand, her left arm flung out, her face white with fear, and strained in every muscle. Holman, obviously unarmed, was on tiptoe to rush at the kneeling Lorens, but even Holman, though there was a savage fury in his face, kept himself from moving. And as for Lorens, he was tasting the kill beforehand, with an infinite relish.

  But the gleaming of Silver’s revolver was enough to change everything. It made Lorens glance to the side.

  “You rat!” he yelled. Then he swung into smooth Spanish, saying: “Juan, you know the hand that feeds you. You know — ”

  “I know, señor,” said Silver calmly. “And I know that it is the lady who will spend the money, and not you. Señor, I am sad, but if you don’t put down that gun, I shall have to shoot you through the head! Quickly, amigo!”

  Lorens turned on Silver a frightful look. Then, in silence, his right hand jerked down inch by inch until the gun lay on the floor. Still his fingers worked on the butt, yearning to snatch it up for action. At last his hand was clear of the Colt.

  “Now stand up, señor,” said Silver. “Forgive me — but if you make one quick move, my poor thumb on the hammer of this gun will be frightened, and the hammer will fall, and you will go up to join the sky people.”

  Lorens stood panting, silent. He obeyed Silver’s instructions, and turned his face to the wall with both arms stretched high above his head, and in this position, Silver searched him from his hair to the soles of his boots. There was plenty to find, but what mattered most was not the hidden knife and the hidden little two-barrel pistol, but the wallets. One was a good pigskin and rested in the inside coat pocket, but the others were simply a tissue of oiled silk inside the top of each boot.

  In the first wallet there was intact exactly the forty thousand dollars which Lorens had been paid on this day. In the two silk swathings, there was almost thirty-two thousand more. Holman counted out that considerable fortune in greenbacks of large denominations.

  In the meantime, Lorens was saying to Silver: “What a cursed fool I was! Tonight I argued on your side of the fence, too. But I’ll tell you, Juan — I’ll find a way to come back to you. How you’ll pray to die — how you’ll beg for hell itself when my hands get to work on you, one day!”

  “You hear him, Juan?” said David Holman, in very poor Mexican dialect. “He means poison. You’ve given me a life that’s not worth a rap, but I’m thanking you for it. That’s all I can do — thank you. But the lady will try to choke you with a flood of money. Tell us, in the first place, what we can do with this fellow Lorens?”

  “Señor,” said Silver softly, “what do we do when we find a snake?”

  “Kill him? Kill him out of hand?” asked Holman. “You mean that, Juan?”

  He stepped back a little, not horrified, but looking at Silver with a sort of pitying curiosity.

  “Listen to me, señor,” said Silver. “If you try to take him with you, he will escape. If you set him free, no matter what he promises, he’ll have the hunters on your trail very soon. I shall not murder him. Let him have back his revolver. We shall both put our guns away, and then it will be fair and even at the start!”

  “Good!” said Lorens, with a sudden cry of relief. “I’ll do that, Holman! I’ll take my free chance with him, first, and with you, afterward!”

  Holman shook his head. He lifted a finger at Juan.

  “Tie his hands,” said Holman. “Then we’ll try to think the thing out.”

  Silver obediently bound the hands of Lorens. He could hardly believe the work that his fingers were doing.

  He had found the trail of this adventure when he came out from the upper mountains into view of the plains. He had encountered poor Ned Kenyon and followed him into a maze of strangeness. He had outfronted Buck; he had seen Buck murdered on the verge of speaking the name which began with “Nel — ” And he had become the “Mexican” servant of One-eyed Harry Bench, and then of Lorens, only to swing over to the aid of an outlaw with a price on his head!

  “I’m wrong to keep him alive, perhaps,” explained Holman to Silver, “because I know that he’s no great gift to the world. But at the same time, we can’t have people killed like that, Juan.”

  The girl came up close to Lorens.

  “Why did you do it?” she pleaded. “I would have given you money. I would have given you anything you asked for. I trusted you. Don’t you see, you were only harming yourself? Why did you do it?”

  Lorens bared his teeth as he looked at her.


  “Partly,” he said insolently, “because I felt like doing it that way — because I wanted to make a fool out of you -because I intended to suck the blood out of your fortune and leave only a shell of it. And partly I did it because I hated the sight of your face, and the yammering about Holman. Is that enough reason for you?”

  He was magnificent as is a fearless beast that is ready to fight to the last, and Silver dimly admired him for the savage that was in him. It was only strange, in the light of this wonderful courage, that the fellow had run away from him that day in the ravine, after firing the first shot. But perhaps that could be explained. There was no money, after all, in the murder of a stray rider, and why should such a man as the great Lorens needlessly leave dead men in his trail, so that the law could find them afterward?

  “We’ll have to talk things over,” said Holman to the girl. “Come outside with me, and we’ll make a decision. You, Juan — are you intending to help us?”

  “And you shall have as much money — ” cried the girl.

  “Hush!” said Holman, lifting his hand. “There’s something else. He’s not doing this all for money.”

  “No,” said Silver. “If they catch me with money, they’ll soon know that Juan is a rascal. Let me be a poor man, señor, and when I leave you, give me only what you please. There is no spending of money when a man is buried, señor. And cold tortillas and stale beans are better to eat than lead; neither is it easy to swallow with a rope tight around the neck. Señor, they want you, and they have put a price on you. Señor, they want poor Juan, also. There are people who would pay a price for him, too. So I shall serve you, if you please. I only wish to run back into the town. In half an hour — in an hour, I come again.”

  “Very well,” said Holman. “Trot along.”

  Lorens began to sneer.

  “You see him now. When you see him again, he will have the head hunters along with him! Bah! When was there a greaser who could keep his tongue still?”

  Holman merely said: “You can make a noise, Lorens, but you can’t make a sound that any one of us wants to hear. Go on, Juan. I’ll trust you. I’d rather be dead than give up the hope that there’s an honest man somewhere in the world!”

  That was what rang in the brain of Silver, as he raced down the valley toward the town again. The hope to find an honest man! It could hardly be mere hypocrisy. And was it true, therefore, that David Holman had been falsely accused, falsely sentenced?

  Chapter 17

  It seemed to Silver that he was in a labyrinth. Now and then he found or thought he found a glimmer of light, but whatever passage he took, led him eventually deeper into profound darkness. But he had the sense of one verity which measured with the simple honesty and gentleness of poor Ned Kenyon — and that was the passion that existed between Holman and the girl.

  Silver ran straight on through the town. The dawn was commencing, and the edges of the river were streaked with fire. For this one hour in the day, work on the bridge almost seemed to have ceased. On through the silence of the town, and down the valley he went at full speed.

  But when he was still at a distance from the lean-to, he saw the huge bulk of One-eyed Harry in front of the shack, and the smoke of the fire he had kindled rolling slowly off on the wind.

  Silver leaned against the shack, panting out words.

  “Harry, what’s your limit? Are you ready for anything?”

  “What are you up to?” asked Harry Bench, the beard puckering all over his face as he pressed his lips hard together.

  “Taking an outlaw and his woman where the headhunters won’t find him.”

  Harry Bench grunted. “That’s a mean job,” he said. “It’s been tried, and it don’t often work.”

  “This time it has to work,” said Silver.

  “What do you get out of it?”

  “I get a barrel of fun out of it,” said Silver grimly, “and a chance to put my claws into one or two people who need trouble. You get any sort of pay that you want.”

  “Well,” said One-eyed Harry, considering. “I’ve worked a lot for a dollar and a half a day, and there’s been times when I’ve got two and a half a day, for a short job that was a hard one. But for a layout like this, I’d want double that. They’d have to come across with five dollars a day to me, brother!”

  He shook his head to emphasize his demand.

  “Ten dollars, call it,” suggested Silver, smiling.

  “Ten dollars?” said Harry Bench, his eyes gleaming. Then he shook his head again, but this time in denial. “It’s too much. There ain’t any man that’s worth that much for the work he does with his hands. Five dollars a day does for me. No more, and no less. I ain’t a hog, Silver!”

  “Saddle up, then,” said Silver. “Fix my outfit on Parade. Get everything together, and the pack saddle on Parade, and throw some dust on him to tame his color a little. I’m going to sleep a half hour, if it takes you that long.”

  He lay down on his back, closed his eyes, relaxed his body, his limbs. There was a nervous twitching of his right hand which presently stilled in turn, and as it ceased, Silver was asleep. Through the noise made by the heavy stride of Bench, through the squeaking of saddle leather, he slept on, until Bench called his name.

  Then they went up the valley together, as Bench protested.

  “It ain’t right to start a long march on an empty stomach, partner!”

  “You can live on your fat, for a few days,” answered Silver. “We’re not apt to have much time for cooking of fodder, or for the eating of it, either!”

  “All right,” said One-eyed Harry. “A gent can’t expect to travel Pullman when he’s collecting five bucks a day. Lead on, son!”

  One-eyed Harry put his horse to a trot. Silver rode the mule with his own saddle on it, and Parade followed on a lead. That was how they got into Kirby Crossing just as the town wakened in earnest and the stores were opened. In the distance they could hear the shouting of voices, and the beating of hammers where the bridge was building.

  “Go into the grocery store,” said Silver. “We’ll need more bacon and general grubstakes for four people. We’re going to hit for the tall timber, and we won’t be stopping to do any shopping on the way. Pick up what you want, Harry. I’ll wait out here and hold the nags.”

  He sat down on his heels as Harry disappeared, made a cornucopia-shaped cigarette, and smoked with his back against a post of the hitch-rack, and his eyes half closed. As a matter of fact, he was half asleep when a voice said:

  “Arizona, are you goin’ to forget your old friends?”

  He turned his head, suddenly, and found Ned Kenyon standing behind him, smiling a twisted smile.

  Silver rose quickly to his feet.

  “How did you spot me? Who told you that I’d be in this sort of get-up?” asked Silver scanning the street up and down.

  “Nobody told me,” said Kenyon. “But there was a kind of look about this here stallion. Four legs like those ain’t put under every horse in the world, you know. And every man ain’t got a pair of shoulders like yours, Arizona. Not shaking hands?”

  “Do you shake hands with every greaser that you meet?” asked Silver.

  The twisted smile of Kenyon appeared again. He was so worn about the eyes, his face was so sallow, that he looked as though he had barely dragged himself out of a sick bed.

  “All right,” said Kenyon. “No offense, Arizona. Shall I go along?”

  “Wait a minute,” answered Silver. “What brought you up here to Kirby Crossing?”

  “There’s a man by the name of Nellihan that I’m goin’ to meet in a few minutes,” said Kenyon. “He got in touch with me. I guess he’s not much of a man, partner, but he has an idea about me making some trouble for Edith.”

  The eyes of Silver narrowed.

  “Of course,” went on the slow, weary voice of Kenyon, “I don’t intend to do that. But I was thinking that through Nellihan, maybe, I’d be able to see her again. I managed to rake up five hundre
d dollars. I borrowed it here and there, and sold a coupla old saddles. And if Nellihan knows where she is, maybe for five hundred dollars he’d be willing to take me to her.”

  “Why do you want to see her again, Ned?” asked Silver, setting his teeth hard as pity for his friend mastered him.

  Kenyon looked far off across the roofs of the houses. He pushed his hat back and scratched his head.

  “Well, it’s like this,” he said. “If I could kind of tell her that there ain’t any hard feelings on my part, and that I’m willing to go and get the divorce, if she wants me to, or keep on being married, if she wants me to, it would sort of ease me, a good bit. And more’n that, to tell you the truth, there’s been some minutes — since that day — that I’ve sort of wished that I could see her. Just only that. To see her and not say anything, that would be better for me than venison steaks and church music, Jim!”

  Silver swallowed hard.

  “Nellihan,” he said. “Where are you to meet him?”

  “Right over there, in that little shack down the street — the one that’s got white paint on the front of it and no paint on the rest of it.”

  “Are you going there now?”

  “I’m going there as soon as you’re through talking to me.”

  “Listen to me, Ned. Nellihan is a bad hombre.”

  “He has to be,” answered Kenyon, “or he wouldn’t want to make trouble for Edith.”

  “You don’t need to talk to him, if you want to see her. I can take you to her.”

  “You?”

  “Yes,” said Silver. He waited for the flush to finish burning the face of Kenyon, and when the pallor had come over it again, as quickly, he said: “But I wonder if it’s the right thing for you to do, Ned?”

  “Maybe it ain’t,” agreed Kenyon gently. “I been thinking sort of selfish about it. But maybe it ain’t the right thing to do. You know better, Jim. If you think that it would hurt her to see me, I wouldn’t go.”

  He waited, tense with anxiety, for the judgment. He was only a child, thought Silver, but never in the world had a more honest child existed.