by Max Brand
All things were made smooth for him; and when he reached the age when he began to think of marriage, and was tentatively courting half a dozen girls of the district, unhoped-for great fortune had fairly dropped into his path.
The close acquaintance with old Mervin in that hunting trip had been entirely accidental, and he had been astounded by the marriage contract which Mervin shortly after proposed between the two families. Ordinarily even Jude Cartwright, with all his self-esteem, would never have aspired to a star so remote as Mervin’s daughter. The miracle, however, happened. He saw himself in the way to be the richest man on the range, the possessor of the most lovely wife.
That dream was first pricked by the inexplicable disappearance of the girl on their marriage day. He had laid that disappearance to foul play. That she could have left him through any personal aversion never entered his complacent young head.
He went out on the quest after the neighboring district had been combed for his wife, and he had spent the intervening months in a ceaseless search, which grew more and more disheartening. It was only by chance that he remembered that Mervin had lived for some time in Sour Creek, and only with the faintest hope of finding a clue that he decided to visit that place. In his heart he was convinced that the girl was dead, but if she were really hiding it was quite possible that she might have remembered the town where her father had made his first success with cattle.
Now the coincidence that had brought him face to face with her, stunned him. He was still only gradually recovering from it. It was totally incredible that she should have fled at all. And it was entirely beyond the range of credence that modest Elizabeth Mervin should have donned the clothes of a man and should be wandering through the hills with a male companion.
But when his wonder died away, he felt little or no pity for his wife. The pang that he felt was the torture of offended pride. Indeed, the fact that he had lost his wife meant less to him than that his wife had seen him physically beaten by another man. He writhed in his saddle at the memory.
Instantly his mind flashed back to the details of the scene. He rehearsed it with himself in a different role, beating the cowpuncher to a helpless pulp of bruised muscle, snatching away his wife. But even if he had been able to do that, what would the outcome be? He could not let the world know the truth—that his wife had fled from him in horror on their marriage day, that she had wondered about in the clothes of a man, that she was the companion of another man. And if he brought her back, certainly all these facts would come to light. The close-cropped hair alone would be damning evidence.
He framed a wild tale of abduction by villains, of an injury, a sickness, a fever that forced a doctor to cut her hair short. He had no sooner framed the story than he threw it away as useless. With all his soul he began to wish for the only possible solution which would save the remnants of his ruined self-respect and keep him from the peril of discovery. The girl must indubitably die!
By the time he came to this conclusion, he had struck out of the hills, and, as his horse hit the level going and picked up speed, the heart of Jude Cartwright became lighter. He would get weapons and the finest horse money could buy in Sour Creek, trail the pair, take them by surprise, and kill them both. Then back to the homeland and a new life!
Already he saw himself in it, his name surrounded with a glamour of pathetic romance, as the sad widower with a mystery darkening his past and future. It was an agreeable gloom into which he fell. Self-pity warmed him and loosened his fierceness. He sighed with regret for his own misfortunes.
In this frame of mind he reached Sour Creek and its hotel. While he wrote his name in the yellowed register he over-heard loud conversation in the farther end of the room. Two men had been outlawed that day—John Gaspar, the schoolteacher who killed Quade, and Riley Sinclair, a stranger from the North.
Paying no further attention to the talk, he passed on into the generalmerchandise store which filled most of the lower story of the hotel. There he found the hardware department, and prominent among the hardware were the gun racks. He went over the Colts and with an expert hand took up the guns, while the gray-headed storekeeper advanced an eulogium upon each weapon. His attention was distracted by the entrance of a tall, painfully thin man who seemed in great haste.
“What’s all this about Cold Feet, Whitey?” he asked. “Cold Feet and Sinclair?”
“I dunno, Sandersen, except that word come in from Woodville that Sinclair stuck up the sheriff on his way in with Jig, and Sinclair got clean away. What could have been in his head to grab Jig?”
“I dunno,” said Sandersen, apparently much perturbed. “They outlawed ’em both, Whitey?”
There was an eagerness in this question so poorly concealed that Cartwright jerked up his head and regarded Sandersen with interest.
“Both,” replied Whitey. “You seem sort of pleased, Sandersen?”
“I knowed that Sinclair would come to a bad end,” said Sandersen more soberly.
“Why, I thought they said you cottoned to him when the boys was figuring he might have had something to do with Quade?”
“Me? Well, yes, for a minute. But out at the necktie party, Whitey, I kept watching him. Thinks a lot more’n he says, and gents like that is always dangerous.”
“Always,” replied Whitey.
“But it’s the last time Sinclair’ll show his face in Sour Creek—alive,” said Sandersen.
“If he does show his face alive, it’ll be a dead face pronto. You can lay to that.”
Sandersen seemed to turn this fact over and over in his mind, with immense satisfaction.
“And yet,” pursued the storekeeper, “think of a full-grown man breaking the law to save such a skinny little shrimp of a gent as Jig? Eh? More like a pretty girl than a boy, Jig is.”
Cartwright exclaimed, and both of the others turned toward him.
“Here’s the gun for me,” he said huskily, “and that gun belt—filled—and this holster. They’ll all do.”
“And a handy outfit,” said Whitey. “That gun’ll be a friend in need!”
“What makes you think they’ll be a need?” asked Cartwright, with such unnecessary violence that the others both stared. He went on more smoothly: “What was you saying about a girl-faced gent?”
“The schoolteacher—he plugged a feller named Quade. Sinclair got him clean away from Sheriff Kern.”
“And what sort of a looking gent is Sinclair? Long, brown, and pretty husky-looking, with a mean eye?”
“You’ve named him! Where’d you meet up with him?”
“Over in the hills yonder, just where the north trail comes over the rise. They was sitting down under a tree resting their hosses when I come along. I got into an argument with this Sinclair—Long Riley, he called himself.”
“Riley’s his first name.”
“We passed some words. Pretty soon I give him the lie! He made a reach for his gun. I told him I wasn’t armed and dared him to try his fists. He takes off his belt, and we went at it. A strong man, but he don’t know nothing about hand fighting. I had him about ready to give up and begging me to quit when this Jig, this girl-faced man you talk about—he pulls a gun and slugs me in the back of the head with it.”
Removing his sombrero he showed on the back of his head the great welt which had been made when he struck the ground with the weight of Sinclair on top of him. It was examined with intense interest by the other two.
“Dirty work!” said Sandersen sympathetically.
The storekeeper said nothing at all, but began to fold up a bolt of cloth which lay half unrolled on the counter.
“It knocked me cold,” continued Cartwright, “and when I come to, they wasn’t no sign nor trace of ’em.”
Buckling on the belt, he shoved the revolver viciously home in the holster.
“I’ll land that pair before the posse gets to ’em, and when I land ’em I won’t do no arguing with fists!”
“Say, I call that nerve,” put in the storeke
eper, with patent admiration in his eyes, while he smoothed a fold of the cloth. “Running agin’ one gent like Sinclair is bad enough—let alone tackling two at once. But you’d ought to take out a big insurance on your life, friend, before you take that trail. It’s liable to be all out-trail and no coming back.”
A great deal of enthusiasm faded from Cartwright’s face.
“How come?” he asked briefly.
“Nothing much. But they say this Sinclair is quite a gunfighter, my friend. Up in his home town they scare the babies by talking about Sinclair.”
“H’m,” murmured Cartwright. “He can’t win always, and maybe I’ll be the lucky man.”
But he went out of the store with his head thoughtfully inclined.
“Think of meeting up with them two all alone and not knowing what they was!” sighed Sandersen. “He’s lucky to be alive, I’ll tell a man.”
Whitey grinned.
“Plenty of nerve in a gent like that,” went on Sandersen, his pale blue eyes becoming dreamy. “Get your gat out, will you, Bill?”
Bill Sandersen obliged.
“Look at the butt. D’you see any point on it?”
“Nope.”
“Did you look at that welt on the stranger’s head?”
“Sure.”
“Did you see a little cut in the middle of the welt?”
“Come to think of it, I sure did.”
“Well, Sandersen, how d’you make out that a gun butt would make a cut like that?”
“What are you driving at, Whitey?”
“I’m just discounting the stranger,” said Whitey. “I dunno what other talents he’s got, but he’s sure a fine nacheral liar.”
CHAPTER 20
It was some time before Riley Sinclair interrupted his pacing and, turning, strode over to the dim outlines of the sleeping girl. She did not speak, and, leaning close above her, he heard her regular breathing.
Waiting until he was satisfied that she slept, he began to move rapidly. First, with long, soft steps he went to his saddle, which was perched on a ridge of rock. This he raised with infinite care, gathering up the stirrups and the cinches so that nothing might drag or strike. With this bundle secured, he once more went close to the figure of the sleeper and this time dropped on one knee beside her. He could see nothing distinctly by the starlight, but her forehead gleamed with one faint highlight, and there was the pale glimmer of one hand above the blankets.
For the moment he almost abandoned the plan on which he had resolved, which was no less than to attempt to ride into Sour Creek and return to the girl before she wakened in the dawn. But suppose that he failed, and that she wakened to find herself alone in the mountain wilderness? He shuddered at the idea, yet he saw no other issue for her than to attempt the execution of his plan.
He rose hastily and walked off, letting his weight fall on his toes altogether, so that the spurs might not jingle.
Even that brief rest had so far refreshed his mustang that he was greeted with flattened ears and flying heels. These efforts Sinclair met with a smile and terrible whispered curses, whose familiar sound seemed to soothe the horse. He saddled at once, still using care to avoid noise, and swung steeply down the side of the mountain. On the descending trail, he could cut by one half the miles they had traversed winding up the slope.
Recklessly he rode, giving the wise pony its head most of the time, and only seeing that it did not exceed a certain speed, for when a horse passes a certain rate of going it becomes as reckless as a drunken man. Once or twice they floundered onto sheer gravel slides which the broncho took by flinging back on its haunches and going down with stiffly braced forelegs. But on the whole the mustang took care of itself admirably.
In an amazingly short time they struck the more placid footing of the valley, and Sinclair, looking up, could not believe that he had been so short a time ago at the top of the flat-crested mountain.
He gave little time to wondering, however, but cut across the valley floor at a steady lope. From the top of the mountain the lights of Sour Creek were a close-gathered patch, from the level they appeared as a scattering line. Sinclair held straight toward them, keeping away to the left so as to come onto the well-beaten trail which he knew ran in that direction. He found it and let the mustang drop back to a steady dogtrot; for, if the journey to Sour Creek was now a short distance, there would be a hard ride back to the flat-topped mountain if he wished to accomplish his business and return before the full dawn. He must be there by that time, for who could tell what the girl might do when she found herself alone. Therefore he saved the cattle pony as much as possible.
He was fairly close to Sour Creek, the lights fanning out broader and broader as he approached. Suddenly two figures loomed up before him in the night. He came near and made out a barelegged boy, riding without a saddle and driving a cow before him. He was a very angry herdsman, this boy. He kept up a continual monologue directed at the cow and his horse, and so he did not hear the approach of Riley Sinclair until the outlaw was close upon him. Then he hitched himself around, with his hand on the hip of his old horse, swaying violently with the jerk of the gait. He was glad of the company, it seemed.
“Evening, mister. You ain’t Hi Corson, are you?”
“Nope, I ain’t Hi. Kind of late driving that cow, ain’t you?”
The boy swore with shrill fluency.
“We bought old Spot over at the Apwell place, and the darned old fool keeps breaking down fences and running back every time she gets a chance. Ain’t nothing so foolish as a cow.”
“Why don’t your dad sell her for beef?”
“Beef?” The boy laughed. “Say, mister, I’d as soon try to chew leather. They ain’t nothing but bones and skin and meanness to old Spot. But she’s a good milker. When she comes in fresh she gives pretty nigh onto four gallons a milking.”
“Is that so!”
“Sure is! Hard to milk, though. Kick the hat right off’n your head if you don’t watch her. Never see such a fool cow as old Spot! Hey!”
Taking advantage of this diversion in the attention of her guardian, Spot had ambled off to the side of the road. The boy darted his horse after her and sent her trotting down the trail, with clicking hoofs and long, sweeping steps that scuffed up a stifling dust.
“Ain’t very good to heat a milker up by running ’em, son,” reproved Sinclair.
“I know it ain’t. But it wouldn’t make me sorry if old Spot just nacherally dropped down dead—she gives me that much trouble. Look at her now, doggone her!”
Spot had turned broadside to them and waited for the boy to catch up before she would take another forward step.
“You just coming in to Sour Creek?”
“Yep, I’m strange to this town.”
“Well, you sure couldn’t have picked a more fussed-up time.”
“How come?”
“Well, you hear about the killing of Quade, I reckon?”
“Not a word.”
“You ain’t? Where you been these days?”
“Oh, yonder in the hills.”
“Chipping rocks, eh? Well, Quade was a gent that lived out the norm trail, and he had a fuss with the schoolteacher over Sally Bent, and the schoolteacher up and murders Quade, and they raise a posse and go out to hang Gaspar, the teacher, and they’re kept from it by a stranger called Sinclair; when the sheriff comes to get Gaspar and hang him legal and all, that Sinclair sticks up the sheriff and takes Gaspar away, and now they’re both outlawed, I hear tell, and they’s a price on their heads.”
The lad brought it out in one huge sentence, sputtering over the words in his haste.
“How much of a price?”
“I dunno. It keeps growing. Everybody around Woodville and Sour Creek is chipping in to raise that price. They sure want to get Gaspar and Sinclair bad. Gaspar ain’t much. He’s a kind of sissy, but Sinclair is a killer—and then some.”
Sinclair raised his head to the black, solemn mountains. Then he looked ba
ck to his companion.
“Why, has he killed anybody lately?”
“He left one for dead right today!”
“You don’t mean it! He sure must be bad.”
“Oh, he’s bad, right enough. They was a gent named Cartwright come into town today with his head all banged up. He’d met up with Gaspar and Sinclair in the hills, not knowing nothing about them. Got into an argument with Sinclair, and, not being armed, he had it out with fists. He was beating up Sinclair pretty bad—him being a good deal of a man—when Gaspar sneaks up and whangs him on the back of the head with the butt of his Colt. They rode off and left him for dead. But pretty soon he wakes up. He comes on into Sour Creek, rarin’ and tearin’ and huntin’ for revenge. Sure will be a bad mess if he meets up with Sinclair ag’in!”
“Reckon it had ought to be,” replied Sinclair. “Like to see this gent that waded into two outlaws with his bare fists.”
“He’s a man, right enough. Got a room up in the hotel. Must have a pile of money, because he took the big room onto the north end of the hotel, the room that’s as big as a house. Nothin’ else suited him at all. Dad told me.”
“I ain’t got nothing particular on hand,” murmured Sinclair. “Maybe I can get in on this manhunt—if they ain’t started already.”
The boy laughed. “Everybody in town has been trying to get in on that manhunt, but it ain’t any use. Sheriff Kern has got a handpicked posse—every one a fightin’ fool, Dad says. Wish you luck, though. They ain’t starting till the morning. Well, here’s where I branch off. S’long! Hey, Spot, you old fool, git along, will you?”
Sinclair watched the youngster fade into the gloom behind the ambling cow, then he struck on toward Sour Creek; but, before he reached the main street, he wound off to the left and let his horse drift slowly beyond the outlying houses.
His problem had become greatly complicated by the information from the boy. He had a double purpose, which was to see Cartwright in the first place, and then Sandersen, for these were the separate stumbling blocks for Jig and for himself. For Cartwright he saw a solution, through which he could avoid a killing, but Sandersen must die.
