by Max Brand
“You know,” he said with sudden savagery, “what’s coming?”
“I’m a pretty good guesser,” nodded Red Jim. “When a fellow tries to shoot me in the dark, and then slugs me with a chair and ties me up, I generally make it out that he figures on murder, Hervey.”
He gave just the slightest emphasis to the important word, and yet something in Hervey grew tense. Murder it was, and of the most dastardly order, no matter how he tried to excuse it by protesting to himself his devotion to Oliver Jordan. The lies we tell to our own souls about ourselves are the most damning ones, as they are also the easiest. But Hervey found himself so cornered that he dared not think about his act. He stopped thinking, therefore, and began to shout. This is logical and human, as every woman knows who has found an irate husband in the wrong. Hervey began to hate with redoubled intensity the man he was about to destroy.
“You come here and try to play the cock of the walk,” cried the foreman. “It don’t work. You try to face me out before all my men. You threaten me. You show off your gun-fighting, damn you, and then you call it murder when I beat you fair and square and—”
He found it impossible to continue. The prisoner was actually smiling.
“Hound dogs always hunt in the dark,” said Red Jim.
A quiver of fear ran through Hervey. Indeed, he was haunted by chilly uneasiness all the time. In vain he assured himself with reason that his victim was utterly helpless. A ghostly dread remained in the back of his mind that through some mysterious agency the red-headed man would be liberated, and then—. Hervey shuddered in vital earnest. What would happen to a crow that dared trap an eagle.
“I’m due back at the ranch,” said Hervey, “to tell ’em how you jumped me here while I was waiting here quiet to warn you again to get out of the Valley of the Eagles peaceable. Before I go, Perris, is they anything you want done, any messages you want to leave behind you?”
And he set his teeth when he saw that Perris did not blench. He was perfectly quiet. Nearness to death sometimes acts in this manner. It reduces men to the unaffected simplicity of children.
“No message, thanks,” said Red Jim. “Nobody to leave them to and nothing to leave but a hoss that somebody else will ride and a gun that somebody else will shoot.”
“And the girl?” said Lew Hervey.
And a thrill of consummate satisfaction passed through him, for Red Perris had plainly been startled out of his calm.
“A girl?”
“You know what I mean. Marianne Jordan.”
He smiled knowingly.
“Well?” said Perris, breathing hard.
“Why, you fool,” cried the foreman, “don’t you know she’s gone plumb wild about you? Didn’t she come begging to me to get you out of trouble?”
“You lie!” burst out Perris.
But by his roving glance, by the sudden outpouring of sweat which gleamed on his forehead, Hervey knew that he had shaken his man to the soul. By playing carefully on this string might he not reduce even this care-free fighter to trembling love of life? Might he not make Red Perris cringe! All cowards feel that their own vice exists in others. Hervey, in his entire life, had dreaded nothing saving Red Jim, and now he felt that he had found the thing which would make life too dear to Perris to be given up with a smile.
“Begging? I’ll tell a man she did!” nodded Hervey.
“It’s because she’s plumb generous. She thought that might turn you. Why—she don’t hardly know me!”
“Don’t she?” sneered Hervey. “You don’t figure her right. She’s one of the hit or miss kind. She hated me the minute she laid eyes on me—hated me for nothing! And you knocked her off her feet the first shot. That’s all there is to it. She’d give the Valley of the Eagles for a smile from you.”
He saw the glance of Perris wander into thin distance and soften. Then the eye of Red Jim returned to his tormentor, desperately. The blow had told better than Hervey could have hoped.
“And me a plain tramp—a loafer—me!” said Perris to himself. He added suddenly: “Hervey, let’s talk man to man!”
“Go on,” said the foreman, and set his teeth to keep his exultation from showing.
Five minutes more, he felt, and Perris would be begging like a coward for his life.
CHAPTER XXII
MCGUIRE SLEEPS
Never did a fox approach a lion with more discretion than Marianne approached the careless figure of McGuire. His very attitude was a warning that her task was to be made as difficult as possible. He had pushed his sombrero, limp with age and wear, far back on his head, and now, gazing, apparently, into the distant blue depths of the sky, he regarded vacantly with mild interest and blew in the same direction a thin brownish vapor of smoke. Obviously he expected an argument; he was leading her on. And just as obviously he wanted the argument merely for the sake of killing time. He was in tremendous need of amusement. That was all.
She wanted to go straight to him with a bitter appeal to his manhood, to his mercy as a man. But she realized that this would not do at all. A strenuous attack would simply rouse him. Therefore she called up from some mysterious corner of her tormented heart a smile, or something that would do duty as a smile. Strangely enough, no sooner had the smile come than her whole mental viewpoint changed. It became easy to make the smile real; half of her anxiety fell away. And dropping one hand on her hip, she said cheerfully to McGuire.
“You look queer as a prison-guard, Mr. McGuire.”
She made a great resolve, that moment, that if she were ever safely through the catastrophe which now loomed ahead, she would diminish the distance between her and her men and form the habit of calling them by their first names. She could not change as abruptly in a moment, but she understood perfectly, that if she had been able to call McGuire by some foolish and familiar nickname, half of his strangeness would immediately melt away. As it was, she made the best of a bad matter by throwing all the gentle good nature possible into her voice, and she was rewarded by seeing McGuire jerk up his head and jerk down his glance at her. At the same time, he crimsoned to the eyes, changing his weathered complexion to a flaring, reddish-brown.
“Prison-guard?” said McGuire. “Me?”
“Well,” answered Marianne, “that’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re the guard and I’m the prisoner?”
“I’m watching these hosses,” said McGuire. “That’s all. They ain’t no money could hire me to guard a woman.”
“Really?” said Marianne.
“Sure. I used to have a wife. I know.”
She laughed, a little hysterically, but McGuire treated the mirth as a compliment to his jest and joined in with a tremendous guffaw. His eyes were still wet with mirth as she said: “Too bad you have to waste time like this, with such a fine warm day for sleeping. Couldn’t you trust the corral bars to take care of the horses?”
His glance twinkled with understanding. It was plain that he appreciated her point and the way she made it.
“Them hosses are feeling their oats,” said McGuire. “Can’t tell what they’d be up to the minute I turned my back on ’em. Might jump that old fence and be off, for all I know.”
“Well,” said Marianne, “they look quite contented. And if one of them did take advantage of you and run away while you slept, I’m sure it would come home again.”
He had quite fallen into the spirit of the thing.
“Maybe,” grinned McGuire, “but I might wake up out of a job.”
“Well,” said Marianne, “there have been times when I would have weighed one hour of good sleep against two jobs as pleasant as this. How much real damage might that sleep do?”
“If it took me out of the job? Oh, I dunno. Might take another month before I landed a place as good.”
“Surely not as long as that. But isn’t it possible that your sleep might be worth two months’ wages to you, Mr. McGuire?”
“H-m-m,” growled McGuire, and his little shifty eyes fastened keenly on her. “You sur
e mean business!”
“As much as anyone in the world could!” cried the girl, suddenly serious.
And for a moment they stared at each other.
“Lady,” said McGuire at length, “I begin to feel sort of yawny and sleepy, like.”
“Then sleep,” said Marianne, her voice trembling in spite of herself. “You might have pleasant dreams, you know—of a murder prevented—of a man’s life saved!”
McGuire jerked his sombrero low over his eyes.
“You think it’s as bad as that?” he growled, glaring at her.
“I swear it is!”
He considered another moment. Then: “You’ll have to excuse me, Miss Jordan. But I’m so plumb tired out I can’t hold up my end of this talk no longer!”
So saying, he dropped his head on both his doubled fists, and she lost sight of his face. It had come so inconceivably easily, this triumph, that she was too dazed to move, for a moment. Then she turned and fairly raced for the corral. It had all been the result of the first smile with which she went to McGuire, she felt. And as she saddled her bay in a shed a moment later she was blessing the power of laughter. It had given her the horse. It had let her pass through the bars. It placed her on the open road where she fled away at a swift gallop, only looking back, as she reached the top of the first hill, to see McGuire still seated on the stump, but now his head was canted far to one side, and she had no doubt that he must be asleep in very fact.
Then the hill rose behind her, shutting out the ranch, and she turned to settle to her work. Never in her life—and she had ridden cross-country on blood horses in the East—had she ridden as she rode on this day! She was striking on a straight line over hill and dale, through the midst of barbed wire. But the wire halted her only for short checks. The swift snipping of the pair of pliers which was ever in her saddle bag cleared the way, and as the lengths of wire snapped humming back, coiling like snakes, she rode through and headed into the next field at a renewed gallop. She was leaving behind her a day’s work for half a dozen men, but she would have sacrificed ten times the value of the whole ranch to gain another half hour of precious time.
For when she broke down the last of the small fenced fields the sun was already down. And when twilight came, she knew by instinct, the blow would fall. Yet the distance to the shack was still terribly far.
She straightened the gallant little bay to her work, but at every stride she moaned. Oh for such legs beneath her as the legs of Lady Mary, stretching swiftly and easily over the ground! But this chopping, laboring stride—! She struck her hand against her forehead and then spurred mercilessly. As a result, the bay merely tossed her head, for she was already drawn straight as a string by the effort of her gallop. And Marianne had to sit back in the saddle and simply pray for time, while the little thirty-two revolver in the saddle holster before her, flapped monotonously, beating out the rhythm of every stride.
And the night rode over the mountains with mysterious speed. It seemed to her frantic brain that the gap between crimson sunset and pallid twilight could have been spanned by a scant five minutes. And now, when she found herself at the foot of the last slope, it was the utter dark, and above her head the white stars were rushing past the treetops. The slope was killing the mare. She fell from her labored gallop to a trot, from the trot to a shambling jog, and then to a walk. And all the time Marianne found herself listening with desperate intensity for the report of a gun out of the woods ahead!
She threw herself out of the saddle, cast hardly a glance at the drooping figure of the bay, and ran forward on foot, stumbling in the dark over fallen branches, slipping more than once and dropping flat on her face as her feet shot back without foothold from the pine needles. But she picked herself up again and flung herself at her work with a frantic determination.
Through the trees, filtered by the branches, she saw a light. But when she came to the edge of the clearing she made out that the illumination came from a fire, not a lantern. The interior of the cabin was awash with shadows, and across the open doorway of the hut the monstrous and obscure outline of a standing man wavered to and fro. There was no clamor of many voices. And her heart leaped with relief. Hervey and his men, then, had lost heart at the last moment. They had not dared to attack Red Jim Perris in spite of their numbers!
But her joy died, literally, mid-leap.
“Hervey,” cried the voice of Perris, a trembling and fear-sharpened voice, “for God’s sake, wait!”
Red Perris begging, cringing to any man, to Lew Hervey? All at once she went weak and sick, but she hurried straight towards the cabin, trying to cry out. Her throat was closed. She could not utter so much as a whisper.
“Listen to me!” went on Perris. “I’ve been a fool all my life. I know it now. I’ve wandered around fighting and playing like a block-head. I’ve wanted nothing but action and I’ve got it. But now you tell me that I’ve had something else right in the hollow of my hand and I didn’t know it! Maybe you’ve lied about her. I dunno. But just the thought that she might care a little about me has—”
Marianne stopped short in the darkness and a hot wave of shame blotted out the rest of the words until the heavier voice of the foreman began again.
“Maybe you’d have me think you’re kind of fond of the girl—that you love her, all at once, just because I told you she’s in love with you?”
“I’d have you think it and I’d have you believe it. When a gent sits looking into the face of a gun he does his thinking and his living mighty fast and condensed. And I know this, that if you turn me loose alive, Hervey, I’ll give you my word that I’ll forget what’s happened. You think I’ll hit your trail with a gat. But you’re wrong. Make your own bargain, partner. But when I think of what life might be now—Hervey, I can’t die now! I’m not ready to die!”
She had been stumbling in a daze towards the door. Now she came suddenly in view of them, the broad back of Hervey turned towards her and Perris facing her, his face white, drawn, and changed. And the blood-stained bandage about his forehead. He leaned forward in his chair in the fervor of his appeal, his arms lashed against his sides with the loose of a lariat.
“Are you through begging?” sneered Hervey.
It threw Perris back in the chair like a blow in the face. Then he straightened.
“You’ve told me all this just to see me weaken, eh, Hervey?”
“And I’ve seen it,” said Hervey. “I’ve seen you ready to take water. That’s all I wanted. You’ve lost your grip and you’ll never get it back. Right now you’re all hollow inside. Perris, you can’t look me in the eye!”
“You lie,” said Red Jim quietly, and lifting his head, he stared full into the face of his tormentor. “You made a hound out of me, but only for a minute, Hervey.”
And then she saw him stiffen in the chair, and his eyes narrow. The chains of fear and of shame which had bound her snapped.
“Hervey!” she cried, and as he whirled she came panting into the door.
Just for an instant she saw a devil glitter in his eyes but in a moment his glance wavered. He admitted himself beaten as he thrust his revolver into the holster.
“Talk wouldn’t make Perris leave,” he mumbled. “I been trying to throw a little scare into him. And the bluff would of worked if—”
She cut in on him: “I heard enough to understand. I know what you tried to do. Oh, Lew Hervey, if this could be told, your own men would run you down like a mad dog!”
He had grown livid with a mixture of emotions.
“If it could be told. Maybe. But it can’t be told! Keep clear of him, or I’ll drill him, by God!” She obeyed, stepping back from Jim.
He backed towards the door where the saddle of Perris lay, and stooping, he snatched the revolver of Red Jim from the saddle-holster. For the moment, at least, his enemy was disarmed and there was no fear of immediate pursuit.
“I still have a day or two,” he said. “And the game ain’t ended. Remember that, Perris. It ain’t e
nded till Jordan comes back.”
And he turned into the darkness which closed over him at once like the falling of a blanket.
“You won’t follow him?” she pleaded.
He shook his head and a moment later, under the touch of his own hunting knife which she drew, the rope parted and freed his arms. At the same instant she heard the hoofs of Hervey’s horse crashing through the underbrush down the mountain side. And not till that final signal of success reached her did Marianne give way to the hysteria which had been flooding higher and higher in her throat ever since those words of Hervey had arrested her in the clearing. But once released it came in a rush, blinding her, so that she could not see Perris through her tears as he placed her gently in the chair. Only through the wild confusion of her sobbing she could hear his voice saying words she did not understand, over and over again, but she knew that his voice was infinitely soft, infinitely reassuring.
Then her mind cleared and her nerves steadied with amazing suddenness, just as the wind at a stroke will tumble the storm clouds aside and leave a placid blue sky above. She found Red Jim kneeling beside the chair with his arms around her and her head on his shoulder, wet with her tears. For the first time she could hear and really understand what he had been saying over and over again. He was telling her that he loved her, would always love her, that he could forgive Lew Hervey, even, because of the message which he had brought.
Had she confessed everything, then, in the hysteria? Had she confirmed what Lew Hervey said? Yes, for the voice of Red Jim was unquestioning, cherishing as men will the thing which they love and own.
“You’re better now?” he asked at length.
“Yes,” she answered, “I’m weak—and ashamed—and—what have I said to you?”
“Something that’s made me happier than a king. And I’ll make it a thing you’ll never have to regret, so help me God!”
He raised her to her feet.
“Now you have to go home—at once.”
“And you?”
