by Max Brand
“Laugh, damn you,” said Shorty, heated to such a point that he half-forgot his exhaustion. “You ain’t been through what I been through. You ain’t man enough to of lasted.” The imputation sobered Little Joe and he shrugged his massive shoulders significantly. Shorty’s laugh was shrill with contempt. “Oh, you’re big enough,” he sneered. “But what does beef count agin a lightning flash?” He grew reminiscent. “I seen him bluff down the Wyoming Kid, yesterday.”
A religious silence spread in the bunkhouse. The cowpunchers sat as stiff as though in Sunday store-clothes. Shorty took advantage of this favoring hush.
“I find him sitting in at a game of poker and I give him the girl’s letter. He shakes it open saying: ‘See that ten and raise you ten more.’ I look over his shoulder as he flips up his cards. He’s got a measly pair of deuces! Then he reads the letter and hands it back to me. ‘Is it as bad as all that?’ he says. ‘See that other five and raise you twenty.’ ‘You’re too strong for me Red,’ says the gent that was bucking him—and lays down to that pair of deuces! I read the letter:
“‘Dear Mr. Perris,
“‘I know you don’t like to hire out. But this is a job where you won’t have a boss. The chestnut horse that nearly killed Manuel Cordova—Alcatraz—has come to my ranch and stolen half a dozen valuable mares. Will you come up and try to get rid of him for me? The job seems to be too big for my men. Name your own terms.
“‘Cordially yours,
“‘Marianne Jordan.’
“I hands him back the letter while he rakes in his winnings. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as she does about the men she’s got,’ I says, ‘but the hoss is sure a fast thinking, fast moving devil.’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘it sort of sounds good to me. Soon as this game busts up we’ll start. They’s only four of us. Won’t you take a hand?’
“Well, that game run on forty hours. Every time I got busted he staked me agin like a millionaire. But finally we was both flat.
“‘All right,’ says he, ‘I got a purse light enough for travel now. Let’s start.’
“‘Without no sleep?’ says I.
“‘Have it your own way,’ says he. ‘We’ll have a snooze and then start.’
“We didn’t have the price of another room. He took me up to his room and makes me take the bed while he curls up on the floor. The next minute he’s snoring while I was still arguing about not wanting to take the bed.
“Minute later I was asleep, but didn’t seem my eyes were more’n close when he gives me a shake.
“‘Five o’clock,’ says he, ‘and time to start.’
“We’d gone to bed about twelve but I wasn’t going to let him put anything over on me. He bums a breakfast off the hotel, stalls ’em on his bill, and then we hit the road, him singing every step of the way and me near dead for sleep. I got so mad I couldn’t talk. That damn singing sure was riding my nerves. I tried to take it out on a squirrel that run across the road but I missed him.
“‘Tell you what, partner,’ says Perris, ‘for a quick shot, shooting from the hip is the only stuff.’
“‘Shooting from the hip at squirrels?’ says I. ‘I’ve read about that sort of stuff in a book, but it never was done out of print.’
“‘Just a matter of practice,’ says he.
“‘Huh,’ says I, ‘I’m here to see and do my talking afterwards.’
“Just then another squirrel pops across the trail dodging like a yearling trying to get back to the herd. Quick as a wink out comes Red’s gun. It just does a flip out of the holster and bang! The dust jumped right under the squirrel’s belly. Bang! goes the gat again and Mister Squirrel’s tail is chopped plumb in two and then he ducks down his hole by the side of the trail and we hear him squealing and chattering cusswords at us.
“I never see such shooting in my life. But Perris puts up his gun and gets red as a girl when two gents ask her for the same dance.
“‘I’m plumb out of practice,’ he says. ‘Anyways, I guess I been talking too much. You’ll have to excuse me, Shorty!’
“And he meant it. He wasn’t talking guff. Didn’t seem possible anybody could shoot as fast and straight as that, but Perris was all cut up because he’d missed and he didn’t do no more singing for about half an hour. And I needed that time for a lot of thinking. Made up my mind that if anybody wanted to make trouble for Perris they could count me out of the party.
“And he kept on singing, when he started again, all the way to the ranch and me wondering when I was going to go to sleep and fall off. I tried to make talk. Seen a queer looking fob he wore for his watch pocket. Asked him where he got it.
“‘Tell you about it,’ he says. ‘Comes from me being plumb peaceable.’ I remembered some of the things I’d heard about Red Perris in Glosterville and didn’t say nothing. I just swallowed hard and took a squint at a cloud. ‘Four or five years back,’ he says, ‘when they was more liquor and ambition floating around these parts, I was up in a little cross-roads saloon in Utah, near Gunterville. Saloon was pretty jammed with folks, all strangers to me. I wasn’t packing a gun. Never do when I’m in a crowd, if I can help it. Well, I got into a little game of stud, and things were running pretty easy for me when a big gent across the table that had been losing hard and drinking hard ups and says he allows I sure have the cards talking. It sort of riled me. I tell him pretty liberal what I think of him and all like him. I go back into the past and give him a nice little description all about his ancestors. I aim to wind up with an invite to step outside and have it out with fists, but he don’t wait. Right in the middle of my sermon he outs with a gat and blazes away at me. The slug drills me in the thigh and I go down.
“‘Well, this is the slug. And I been wearing it to remind me that I particular want to meet up with that same gent before he gets too old for a gunfight!’”
Here Shorty paused and sighed, shaking his bullet-head. And a deep murmur of appreciation passed around the room. Shorty sank back again on the bunk and turned his broad back on the crowd.
“Don’t nobody wake me for chuck,” he warned them. “I’ve just finished cramming a month into four days and I got a night off coming.”
Instantly his snoring began but it was some moments before anyone spoke. Then it was Little Joe in his solemn bass voice.
“Sounds man-sized,” he declared. “Wears a bullet for a watch-fob, busts hosses for fun, sleeps one day a week, and don’t work under a boss. Hervey, you’ll have to put on kid gloves when you talk to that Perris, eh? Hey, where you going?”
“He’s going out to think it over!” chuckled another. “He needs air, and I don’t blame him. Just as soon be foreman over a wildcat as over a gent like Perris. There goes the gong!”
CHAPTER XIII
THE BARGAIN
But in spite of the dinner bell, Hervey made for the corrals instead of the house, roped and saddled the fastest pony in his string, jogged out to the eastern trail, and then sent his mount at a run into the evening haze. After a time he drew back to a more moderate gait, but still the narrow firs shot smoothly and swiftly past him for well over half an hour until the twilight settled into darkness and the treetops moved past the horseman against a sky alive with the brighter stars of the mountains. He reached the hills. The trail tangled into zigzag lines, tossing up and down, dodging here and there. And in one of these elbow turns, a team of horses loomed huge and black above him, and against the stars behind the hilltop it seemed as though the team were stepping out into the thin air. Behind them, Lew Hervey made out the low body of the buckboard and on the seat a squat, bunched figure with head dropped so low that the sombrero seemed to rest flat on the shoulders.
Hervey raised his hand with a shout of relief: “Hey, Jordan!”
The brakes crashed home, but the impetus of the downgrade bore the wagon to the bottom of the little slope before it came to a stop and Hervey was choked by the cloud of dust. He fanned a clear path for his voice.
“It’s me. Hervey.�
� And he came close to the wagon.
“Well, Lew?” queried the uninterested voice of the master.
Hervey leaned a little from the saddle and peered anxiously at the “big boss.” He counted on creating a panic with his news. But a man past hope might very well be a man past fear. Hopeless Oliver Jordan certainly had been since his accident, hopeless and blind. That blindness had enabled Hervey to reap tidy sums out of his management of the ranch, and now that the coming of the sharp-eyed girl had cut off his sources of revenue he was ready to fight hard to put himself back in the saddle as unquestioned master of the Valley of the Eagles. But he could only work on Jordan through fear and what capacity for that emotion remained in the rancher. He struck at once.
“Jordan, have you got a gun with you?”
“Gun? Nope. What do I need a gun for?”
“Take this, then. It’s my old gat. You know it pretty near as well as I do.”
A nerveless hand accepted the heavy weapon and allowed it to sink idly upon his knee.
“How come?” drawled Jordan, and the heart of Lew Hervey sank. This was certainly not the voice of a man liable to panic.
“You and me got a bad time coming, Jordan, when we get to the ranch. He’s there, and he’s a devil for a fight!”
“Who?”
“Him! You remember that fight you got into in that saloon up in Wyoming? That night you and me was at the cross-roads saloon and you got off your feed with red-eye?”
The figure on the seat of the buckboard grew taller.
“Do I remember? Aye, and I’ll never forget! The one downright bad thing I’ve ever done, Hervey. It was the infernal red-eye that made me a crazy man. You should of let me go back and see how bad he was hurt, Lew!”
“Nope. I was right. Best thing a gent can do after he’s dropped his man is to climb a hoss and feed it leather.”
“He didn’t have a gun,” groaned Jordan heavily. “But I forgot it. The red-eye got to working on me. I was losing. It was the one rotten yaller thing I ever done, Lew!”
“I know. And now he’s here. He’s Red Perris!”
“Red Perris!” breathed Oliver Jordan. “The man Marianne sent for? Why—why it’s like fate, her bringing him right to the ranch!”
Hervey was discreetly silent.
“But,” cried Jordan suddenly, and there was a ghost of the old ring in his voice, “I dropped him once by a crooked play and now I’ll drop him fair and square, if he’s here looking for trouble! I don’t want your help, Lew. Mighty fine of you to offer it, but I ain’t plumb forgot how to shoot. I don’t want help!”
Hervey waited a moment for that heat of defiance to die away. Then he said with the quiet of certainty: “No use, Jordan. No use at all. Shorty seen this gent do some shooting on the way up to the ranch. He pulled on a squirrel that dodged across the trail. First slug knocked dust into the squirrel’s belly-fur and the second chipped off his tail. Both of them slugs would have landed dead-center in a target as big as the body of a man!”
He paused again. He could hear the heavy breathing of Oliver Jordan and the figure of the driver swayed a little back and forth in the seat as a man will do when his mind is swinging from one alternative to another.
“He done that shooting from the hip,” added Hervey, as though by afterthought.
There was a gasp from Jordan.
“Good God, Lew! You don’t mean that!”
“That’s what he done the shooting for—to show Shorty how to get off a quick shot. Shorty says he got his gun out and fired inside the time it’d take a common gun-man to wink twice. And that’s why you and me have got to face him together, chief. You know I ain’t particular yaller. But I’d as soon tackle a machine gun with a pea-shooter as run into this Perris all by myself. He’s bad medicine, chief!”
“Two to one. That’d be worse’n murder, Lew. Neither you nor me could ever hold up a head around these parts again if the two of us jumped one gent.”
“I know it,” said Hervey solemnly. “But it’s better to be shamed than to be dead. That’s the way I figure. And I ain’t so sure that both of us together could win out.”
There was another interval of silence, far more important than many words. Through the hush Hervey, with a beating heart, strove to peer into the mind of the rancher.
“I’ll go back and face him all by myself,” said Jordan huskily. “I’ll let him rub out that old score. If he finishes me—well, what good am I in the world, anyway? No good, Lew. I’m done for just as much as though somebody had plugged me with a gat. Let Perris finish the job.” He added hastily: “But these five years have changed me a lot. Maybe he won’t know me.”
“You ain’t changed that much, Jordan. Look at Howlands. He hadn’t seen you for eight years. He knew you right off.”
“Ay,” growled Jordan. “That’s true enough. But what makes you so sure that Perris is so hot after me. Ain’t there been time enough for him to cool down?”
With the skill of a connoisseur, saving his choicest morsel for the end, Hervey had waited for the most favorable opportunity before striking home with his most convincing item.
“You remember you drilled him in the leg, chief?”
“I remember everything. The whole damned affair has never been out of my head for a whole day. I’ve gone over every detail of it a thousand times, Lew!”
“So has Perris,” answered Lew Hervey solemnly. “That slug of yours—when the doctor cut it out of his leg he had it fixed up and now he wears it for a fob so’s he won’t forget the gent that shot him down that night when he wasn’t armed!”
“Most like that’s why he’s practiced so much with a gun,” muttered Jordan. “He’s been getting ready for me.”
“Most like,” said the gloomy Hervey, but his voice well-nigh trembled with gratification.
The head of Jordan bowed again, but this time, as Hervey shrewdly guessed, it was in thought, not in despair.
“Why,” chuckled Jordan at last, “what we wasting all this fool time about? You just slip back to the ranch and fire Perris.”
In the favoring dark, Hervey threw back his head and made a grimace of joy. Exactly as he had prefigured, this talk was going. Every card was being played into his hand as though his wishes were subconsciously entering and ruling the mind of the chief.
“I can’t do it,” he answered firmly.
“You can’t? Ain’t you foreman?”
“No,” said Hervey, and a trace of bitterness came into his voice. “I used to be. But you know as well as me that I’m only a straw boss now. Miss Marianne is running things, big and small. Besides, she picked up Perris. And she won’t let him go easy, I tell you!”
“What do you mean by that, Hervey?”
“I seen her face when she met him. I was standing outside the bunkhouse. And she sure was tolerable pleased to see him.”
A tremendous oath burst from Jordan.
“You mean she’s sweet on this—this Perris?” But he added: “Why should that rile me? Maybe he’s all right.”
“He’s one of them flashy dressers,” said Lew Hervey. “Silk shirts and swell bandannas and he wears shopmade boots and keep ’em all shined up. Besides, it’s dead easy for him to talk to a girl. He’s the kind that get on with ’em pretty well.”
The innuendo brought a huge roar from Oliver Jordan.
“By God, Lew, d’you think that’s what it means? I thought she talked pretty strong about this Perris!”
“Maybe I’ve said too much,” said Hervey.
“Not a word too much,” said Jordan heartily, and reaching through the night he found the hand of Hervey and wrung it heartily. “I know how square you are, Lew. I know how you’ve stood by me. I’d stake my last dollar on you!”
Hervey blessed again the mercy of the darkness which concealed the crimson that spread hotly over his face. There was enough truth in what the rancher said to make the untruths the more painful. Before the accident Hervey had, indeed, been all that anyone could as
k in a manager. But when too much authority came into his hands owing to the crippling of his chief, the temptation proved too strong for resistance. It was all so easy. A few score of cows run off here and there were never noted, and his share in the profit was fifty-fifty. Indeed, as the hand of Jordan crushed over his own he came perilously near to making a clean breast of everything, but the memory of his fat and growing bank-account gagged the confession.
“If that’s the way things are standing,” Jordan was saying, “we got to get rid of this skunk Perris. Good-looking, as I remember him, and Marianne is so darned lonely on the ranch that she might begin to take him serious and—Hervey, I’ll give you a written note. That’ll be authority. I’ll give you a note to Marianne, telling her that I’ve got to go across the mountains and that I want you to have the running of the place till I get back. I guess that’ll give you a free hand, Lew! You fire that Perris, and when he’s gone, send me word over to the hotel in Lawrence. That’s where I’ll go.”
Hervey appeared dubious with great skill.
“I’ll take the note, Jordan,” he said, putting all the despair he could summon into his tone. “But it sure goes hard—the idea of losing my place up here. I’ve been in the Valley so long, you see, that it’s like a home to me.”
“And who the devil said anything about you leaving? Ain’t I just now about to give you a note to run the ranch while I’m gone?”
“Sure you are. And I’ll take it—and fire Perris. But when you come back—that’s the end of me!”
“What?”
“You know how your daughter is. She’ll plumb hate me when I come back with orders to run things. She’ll think I asked for ’em.”
“I’ll tell her different.”
“Were you ever able to convince her, once she made up her mind?”
“H-m-m,” growled Jordan.
“And she’ll never rest till things are so hot for me that I got to get out. Not that I grudge it, Jordan. I’d give up more than this job for your sake. Only it sure makes me homesick to think about starting out at my time of life and riding herd for a strange outfit.”
