by Brand, Max
After a time the sobbing ceased. She lay panting, and out of her panting she said finally:
“Oh, Dick, my heart’s broken! Nothing can save him. He’s worse every day.”
“Listen!” said the sheriff.
“Yes?” she said.
“Listen to me. I’m going to do something,” said the sheriff.
She made a moaning sound for an answer. They spoke no more. He pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat in it all night long, without sleeping. He put his hand on the bed. Sometimes she caught at the hand in her sleep and clung to it. At other times she threw it away.
In the morning the sheriff bathed in a tub of cold water, shaved, dressed, and went down to the jail. He walked up and down the cell aisles. There were twenty men in the jail this morning. Half of them were disturbers of the peace; half of them were old offenders. He looked all of those old offenders in the eye and decided that his criticism of them in the past had always been rather too harsh.
He was so full of thoughts on this day that he could hardly give attention to a single item of business.
Late in the afternoon word came in that young Crowley was over in the First Chance Saloon smashing things up dead drunk, and crazier than ever. The peculiarity of young Crowley was that the more drunk he grew, the straighter he shot.
But the sheriff did not wait to raise a posse. He did not even take a gun. He got up from his office chair and went right over the way he was, bare-headed, and went into the First Chance Saloon, smiling faintly.
Young Crowley stood down at the other end of the bar and fired three bullets. One of them clipped a lock off the head of the sheriff. But that didn’t matter. It was simply a relief to have something to do with his hands, the sheriff thought. And he went up to Crowley and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m going to break you open,” said Crowley.
“Sure you are,” agreed the sheriff, “but you’re coming along with me first, so that we can have a quiet little talk together.”
“If anybody tries to keep us from having a talk,” said Crowley, “I’ll salt ‘em down with lead.”
So the sheriff walked him harmlessly back to the jail and took the weapons away from him and locked him up. Afterward, as Crowley lay face downward on the cot in his cell, snoring loudly, the sheriff stood by and looked at him with an almost envious eye.
Crowley had simply been breaking the peace in a rather obnoxious manner. That was all that Crowley would have to answer for in the court. There would be nothing important on the mind or the conscience of Crowley. And the sheriff?
Well, Heaven alone could tell what he would have to answer for before another day was chalked up on the calendar.
When he got home that night he could hardly eat his supper, because young Dick was having a choking and coughing fit, and in between the spells the sheriff could hear him panting. Mrs. Williams kept running back and forth between the dining room and the sick boy. But she was very cheerful and affectionate. She kept smiling and shining her eyes at the sheriff. And the sheriff understood. She was making amends for her behavior of the night before.
As if she needed to make amends! As if she could not spend the rest of her life kicking him in the face!
Well, after supper he went out into the darkness of the veranda and sat still, smoking his pipe.
There was plenty of wealth in the world. There was plenty of money right there in Crow’s Nest. And he knew how to get it.
If people paid a man the salary of a dog catcher and asked him to take the duties of a sheriff, what could they expect of him?
Then he heard a soft voice say out of the darkness: “Evening, sheriff. May I have a chat with you?”
The sheriff closed his eyes and knew that this was the softness of the voice of the devil, uttering temptation. He stood up, his eyes still half closed, and blundered down the steps and into the garden path.
CHAPTER VIII
Gregor’s Escape
CHRISTIAN, walking jauntily up and down in front of the little cabin in the woods near the town of Kendal, said: “Now, Bill, it’s time that we should begin to do something.”
Bill Naylor sat on a stump whittling at a piece of soft white pine which furled away from the edge of his sharp knife in translucent slivers. He squinted at his whittling as though he were trying to make sure that the stick was shaping straight and true; in reality, he was thinking about his ride to Blue Water, and wondering what Barry Christian meant by “doing something” if that trip to Blue Water had not been “something.”
Then he regarded the tall body and the long, pale, handsome face of Barry Christian, so full of mobility and expression.
“All right,” said Bill Naylor.
A squirrel came out on a branch and chattered down at them, bobbing its tail as rapidly as it barked. Christian with a fluid gesture, produced an oversized Colt from under his coat and shot the squirrel off the branch. It dropped at a distance, a red smudge on the pine needles. Naylor stopped whittling and regarded that little blur against the ground. Even children in that part of the world could take a squirrel out of a tree with a rifle, but revolver work was another matter. The great feats of revolver marksmanship were generally talked about, and rarely seen.
Christian said: “Now we can talk in quiet — and in private, eh?”
The remark pleased Naylor very little. The laughter pleased him not at all. There were certain features in the character of the great Barry Christian which were not ideal. That, in short, was the truth, though Bill Naylor still valiantly strove to close his eyes to the unpleasant truth. Of course, the man was a criminal, but he must be a great, important, classic example of crime, not one to do casual murder even on a squirrel.
Bill Naylor forcibly removed his mind from these thoughts.
“All right, chief,” said he. “We’ll do something, then.”
“In the first place,” said Christian, “we must pick up Duff Gregor.”
“Sure,” said Naylor. “All we gotta do is to break the jail, and then, after we’ve unlocked his cell and taken off his irons, we can pick him up. That oughta be easy.”
His irony had small effect on Barry Christian, who merely said:
“Well, it may not be so complicated. Let me tell you what I’d like to have you do.”
“Fire away,” said Naylor.
“First I want you to go through town — Kendal, yonder — and buy a good, fast, tough mustang. Then I want you to drift down to Crow’s Nest.”
“Right.”
“You know the southwest corner of the vacant lot the jail stands in, in Crow’s Nest?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Go there with your two horses after dark, and wait in the grove of saplings. Pretty soon a man will walk into those trees and call out in a quiet voice, ‘Barry!’ You will answer ‘Waiting!’ Can you remember that?”
“Yes. Who will the man be?”
“Why, the man will be Duff Gregor.”
“The devil he will be!”
“Not the devil. Just Duff Gregor. There’s plenty of bluff, but not much devil in Duff Gregor.”
“How’ll he get out of the jail? Bribery?”
“What a thing to say!” replied Christian. “Bribery? How could that be? No, no. Gregor will break out at a time when the sheriff is in the jail all by himself. At a time when the sheriff, in fact, has made sure that all is well, and has gone into his office to do some paper work. At that time the door of the cell of Gregor will push open, just as though the sheriff had unlocked it. And Gregor will steal out, just as if the sheriff had thrown him the key for his manacles. Gregor will go to the side door, and with another key he’ll unlock that. And then he’ll step out into the night and walk straight to you. Understand?”
“By thunder,” said Naylor, “you even managed to get to Dick Williams? You can do anything, then!”
“Give me a purse of the right size and I’ll find any man’s price,” boasted Christian. “It’s simple enough. But you’ll be t
here with two horses waiting, and you and Gregor will ride out of Crow’s Nest — keeping to the by lanes — and head straight on down the valley till you come to the river. You’ll trail along beside the river till you reach the island. You’ll probably be able to wade the horses across to the island. If not, and if the river’s high and fast, you can swim them across. When you reach the island, I’ll probably be there, waiting for you. If not, take the trail I told you about to that deserted ranch. Better take along some provisions in case we need ‘em later.”
“I’ll do what you say,” said Naylor.
“You don’t seem happy about it, Bill,” suggested Barry Christian. “What’s the matter?”
“Me? Aw, I’m happy enough. I’m just wondering where the whole job is heading.”
“As long as you work with me, old-timer,” said Christian, “you can always be sure that every job is heading for easy money.”
“Unless there’s a Jim Silver in the way.”
From Christian there was a silence after this remark. Bill Naylor, rather frightened by the silence, stood up and prepared to leave at once. He promised himself that he would make no more cracks about the great Jim Silver — not in the presence of Barry Christian.
So, saddling his mustang, Bill Naylor started at once for Kendal town, first rehearsing to Christian exactly what he should do. All of the instructions were firmly in his mind before he left, and he jogged the patient mustang through the sweeping shadows of the pine woods and out into the blue and green and gold of the open day.
In Kendal he got an excellent mustang, mean, but as tough as leather. The meaner the mustang, the more wear to it, is a regular precept in the West.
He made a few purchases of provisions in Kendal, and then resumed the journey in a very leisurely manner. In fact, he had to kill two hours in idleness outside of Crow’s Nest before the coming of sunset, when he was free to enter the town.
As he passed down the streets and saw the lamplight streaking out of the houses, he kept saying to himself that behind every house there was the fortune and the strength of a most corruptible man. If Dick Williams had been bought, then any man could be bought, and Barry Christian was right. Every man in the world could be bought, except, let us say, Jim Silver.
And he was a freak. He didn’t count!
When Naylor came to the big vacant space in the center of which the jail stood, it was pitch-dark. All the houses were subdued, and only occasional voices came drifting through the open windows from supper tables.
In the dark of the grove of saplings he waited, holding the lead ropes of the two horses. He grew tired of standing, and sat down on his heels, then cross-legged, like an Indian.
He expected to hear an outbreak of shouting from the jail, first of all, since it did not seem possible that even with the sheriff’s connivance a criminal could escape without making some disturbance. Instead, it happened exactly as the great Barry Christian had predicted. There was simply the sound of a quiet voice, calling, in a tone that could not be heard more than ten steps away: “Barry! Barry!”
Bill Naylor could have whistled with surprise. It proved to him that Barry Christian, when he laid a plan, knew how to have one part dovetail with another.
Naylor gave the answer, and instantly a dim shadow appeared before him among the trees as he rose to his feet.
“You’re from what?” asked the stranger.
“Barry. And you’re Duff?”
“Shut up!” gasped the stranger. “Shut up, you fool!”
Naylor grinned into the darkness. After all, Gregor had not been spending time in jail for fun, and it was no wonder that his nerves were a little bit frayed out.
“All right,” said Naylor. “Here’s your pony. Here, on the near side. Mind — it’s likely to pitch. I took out most of the kinks to-day, but there may still be a few left.”
Duff Gregor mounted. He was so big that he made the horse look small as a pony indeed. But no wonder he was big. A man who passed for Jim Silver had to have inches, at the least.
Naylor repeated the instructions in a quiet voice.
The only remark of Gregor was: “The island in the lower river is too close to Crow’s Nest. A thousand miles is what ought to be between me and this town. They’re all going to be out on my trail before half an hour.”
Naylor led the way out of the trees. They jogged across the lot, turned down an alley toward the left, and then made the first right turn, and as they entered this new lane, bad luck overtook them.
A house door beside them swung open suddenly, and as a pair of men came out, the shaft of the lamplight struck full on Gregor. The mustang, startled, reared up, and in so doing, held Gregor in the light for an instant and caused the brim of his sombrero to flare away from his face.
As the horse pitched forward again, well-ridden, a voice said from the porch of the house:
“That’s Jim Silver, by thunder!”
And the other voice gasped: “No, that’s Duff Gregor — out of jail!”
CHAPTER IX
The Pursuit
BILL NAYLOR felt that it might be only a guess that would be lost in the darkness of the night; he kept his horse to a dog-trot and muttered to big Duff Gregor to do the same, but a moment later a gun exploded three times, and two wild voices yelled in chorus:
“Turn out! Turn out! Gregors on the loose! Duff Gregor’s on his way!”
Could the devil himself have planned the thing more perfectly? Could that door have been opened more inopportunely?
There was nothing for it but to spur the horses. They went through the rest of Crow’s Nest at a dead run, and behind them, whirling up into the sky, floating dimly in their ears, was the racket of the gathering pursuit.
For the people of Crow’s Nest were not such city dwellers that they had become pedestrians. In front of nearly every house there was sure to be at least one horse tethered. And every man, almost, carried a gun. In ten seconds a man seated quietly at his supper table could be under way, riding like mad in a chase. It was like tapping a wasp’s nest and then trying to get away, with the wasps in hot pursuit of the first moving object.
The uproar spread as fast as they could ride; and as they shot out of town and took the dangerous, long down grade toward the bottom of the valley beyond, a man who had run out of his house at the sound of the shouting dropped to one knee and opened on the two fugitives with a rifle. They whirled by some trees, and heard the bullets fly among the branches.
Luckily they had two good horses which could run and stand the gaff for a long time. How good they would prove matched against the very best that the young bloods of Crow’s Nest could bring into the field remained to be seen. The bulk of Duff Gregor made Bill Naylor shake his head.
They got down the slope with the pursuit thundering halfway down the hill behind them. Now they had either a straight road to follow, or else there were the open fields toward the river. The road was too dangerous, for at any time they might run into a party of riders from the opposite direction and be hailed to stop. So they took to the fields at the shouted advice of Naylor.
The turf was good; the ground was firm; the horses flew along with doubled speed. The cool, sweet smell of the grass came off the ground. The night had no moon. Before them they could see patches of trees here and there, and willows receded far from the bank of the river now and again, marking out marshy places. If it came to a pinch, they might be able to hide in one of those patches and try to swim the river.
The river, however, was by no means a promising sight. Usually it kept well behind its banks, but there must have been a freshet somewhere among its tributaries in the higher mountains, for now the starlight glistened on wide, still flats of standing water, where the stream had overflowed. Twice their horses spattered through the edges of these floods, and half bogged down in the steep going.
Behind them came the men of Crow’s Nest. Bill Naylor saw them spread out like a great fan, which kept growing longer and longer in the handle as the
slower riders fell back and the faster ones with a later start speeded up from behind.
Naylor shook his head. By the way the head of that fan was creeping up on them, he could tell what sort of horses and riders there were in the outfit. He could almost see the beauty of the horses and the keen riders leaning forward to jockey the utmost speed out of the mounts.
If Barry Christian had been there — well, what could even a Barry Christian think of a time like that? The paralyzing fear of flight began to thicken the blood of Bill Naylor. Once he jerked out a revolver and turned with a beastly, snarling desire to fire blindly back at the pursers.
Something stopped his hand. Besides, if it came to shooting the thing out at close range, he would want well-filled chambers in his guns.
Then the horse of Duff Gregor stumbled, groaned like a stricken man, and went on, limping heavily.
“What sort of a cheap plug did you bring me?” yelled Gregor. “They’re goin’ to get me They’re goin’ to swallow me up again. You bring me a cheap, second-hand plug like this and expect me to do anything with it?”
Naylor said nothing. His whirling mind could not evolve any words, but gallantly he pulled down the gait of his own horse to the labored strivings of Gregor’s mustang. Behind them the men of Crow’s Nest ever were looming larger and larger.
If only the Indian yelling would stop! But it increased each instant, rising in a wild chorus of joy. Guns exploded rapidly. They were not aimed at the fleeing pair; they were fired in mere excess of happiness as the riders found the quarry coming into their hand.
Then Naylor knew the one thing that remained for them to try. He waved toward the river and yelled:
“Take to the water!”
“I’d rather hang than drown!” shouted Duff Gregor.
Well, it looked like that, right enough. Even the starlight was enough to show the dangerous face of the river, the irregular swirling of the currents, and here and there a rifle lifting from the surface like the fin of a great fish.
But it was the only thing.
