by Max Brand
“You talked to the sheriff? What did he have to say?”
“He thought that I was one of you . . . one of your men, McGregor. He told me that he was going to clear up everything and everybody. He said that he’d do it, or die. He said that the men before him had been murdered or bought off, and that he wouldn’t be bought, and that he would take a good deal of killing. That’s about what he said.”
McGregor studied him. Then he said: “Len, you may think that I’m a fool, but I’ve got half a mind to take Dwyer at face value, and call him a little bit simple.”
“Come on, Mack,” sneered Peary. “Can the old con game be worked on you like this?”
“Did the sheriff say anything particular about Peary?” asked McGregor.
“No.”
“Didn’t say that he specially wanted him?”
“No.”
McGregor looked significantly toward Peary, and the latter nodded and smiled faintly with pleasure.
“You won’t talk out to me, Dwyer?” asked McGregor. “You won’t come clean with me?”
“I’ve said everything. I’ve told you the whole truth,” said Barney Dwyer.
McGregor stood up and raised a finger. Len Peary unsheathed a pair of guns and directed the muzzles carelessly toward Barney, without rising from his chair.
“That’s right, keep him covered,” said McGregor. “Don’t you know enough to hoist your hands, Dwyer?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Barney, and stretched his arms so violently above his head that the gesture brought him on tiptoe.
“He thinks he’ll get a laugh with this low comedy work,” said Peary. “Watch him, chief. I’ve got an idea that he’s poison, and a new kind of poison, at that.”
McGregor stepped back from searching Barney.
“He’s a new kind, all right,” he said, juggling a pocket knife that he had taken from Barney Dwyer. “No gun . . . only this to cut his way through the world. He just about beats me, Len. Get a pair of those handcuffs that Sheriff Cary loaned us last year. Maybe Dwyer’s nerve will rust faster than the steel of those handcuffs. We’ll make a try of it, and see.”
VII
They took Barney Dwyer back through a kitchen where the smell of food was a torment to him. Old Wash, in the act of putting a big pan of bread into the oven, looked up at the three, saw the manacled hands of Barney Dwyer, and glanced hastily down again.
Peary opened in the floor a cellar door. McGregor took a lantern from the wall and went first, lighting the way down a flight of damp stone steps into a room piled with provisions. Beyond this he unlocked a door so massive that it groaned loudly on its hinges. Inside was a still larger room, three walls of which were living stone. The fourth wall, into which the door was set, was rough masonry—big, rounded stones having been cemented together to make the partition. One pillar of the natural rock had been left in the center of the room to uphold the floor of the house above. It was the storage place of wood. Some good-size pieces were corded along one side of the chamber.
“Think of Bunny going to all the trouble of having this place dug out,” said Peary. “What did he think he’d put here? Treasure?”
“He’s romantic,” answered McGregor. “That’s why I like him. Now look here, Dwyer, you can see that there’s no way for you out of this room. You stay here and think things over. We’ll look in on you tomorrow, maybe, and see if you feel more like talking.”
“I’ll talk now!” cried Barney desperately. “You wouldn’t leave me here in the dark, would you? I’ll talk now.”
McGregor lifted the lantern until the light of it flashed in the eyes of Barney. “We’ve all got our little weaknesses,” sneered McGregor. “What broke your nerve about darkness, Dwyer? Ever do a stretch of solitary in the pen? Well, if you’ll talk, come out with it. I’ve guessed part of the truth already. I think Dutch Hendry is working with you. Dutch sent you up here to drop a monkey wrench into my machine, is that it?”
“No!” exclaimed Barney. “I’ve never even heard of Dutch Hendry. I’ve told you the whole truth. I’ll tell you more of it. I’ll tell you everything that ever happened in my life and . . . ”
“You’ve been telling me the truth, have you?” said McGregor. “Well, then you stay here till you can think up some interesting lies, then. Sorry the floor’s a little wet. But you can sleep dry enough on that woodpile. So long.”
He went out—the door slammed—the lock turned with a grinding and a rusty clank of iron against iron—then the terrible velvet blackness fell upon the eyes and across the brain of Barney Dwyer.
The strength went out of him. He dropped to his knees and gripped his hair with both hands. The darkness of a shut room had been a horror to him since his childhood. The black of open night, no matter how storms curtained it in, was nothing to him, but in the stifling shadow of a closed room he could not breathe and the light went out of his mind.
They would look in tomorrow—perhaps. Twenty-four hours of this would bring madness to him, he thought.
He found the woodpile and leaned against it, gripping the rough wood, breathing the resinous fragrance of the pine. And that restored him, somewhat, for it set him thinking of the great, gallant forests that go up the sides of the mountains. It made him think of the winds that beat the branches, of the squirrels, of the woodpeckers chiseling tunnels under the bark. So many pictures of life helped to ease his mind. But still he was desperate.
He found the door, and leaned his weight against it, braced his feet, gradually gave his whole strength, not in a sudden effort, but little by little, until the mighty stress made him rigid as a vibrating steel beam of a bridge. But the door held. He had known it would hold. The ponderous clang of it in shutting had told him that he would not be able to break the lock.
He went to the corner of the room and fumbled until he found a stone much larger than its neighbors in the wall. He scratched the cement and felt it come away in small flakes under the tips of his fingers. So, not with hope but because he felt that inaction would drive him insane, he wedged his shoulders against the corner of adjoining walls and stamped his feet against the face of that larger stone in the masonry. With pulsing efforts, he thrust out.
He thought his feet had merely slipped on the smooth surface, at first, but then he heard a faint noise of something falling. He thrust again, and there the stone was quite dislodged. He heard it bump heavily on the other side of the wall, against the floor of the provision room. The hole was large, and he quickly made it larger, pulling out adjoining bits of rocks from the mortar that embedded them, until he was able to wriggle through the opening. He lay still for a moment, panting, incredulous of this escape. He stood up to fumble for the stairs, and, as he felt his way through the darkness, he heard a rasping noise.
A wedge of light drove from the stairs, striking his feet, spilling across the floor. It jerked upward and steadied on his face, and struck him to the heart like a flight of arrows. It was a dark lantern that had just been unshuttered.
The voice of Len Peary said: “You were right, chief. I don’t know how he managed it, but there he is. Look at that hole in the wall.”
“He’s silent dynamite,” said Big Mack. “He explodes but he doesn’t make a noise. Bring in a fifth-chain from the wagon shed, will you?”
“I’ll have it here in a jiffy,” said Peary, running up the stairs. “But how did he get through that wall? Did he gnaw it open?”
The door opened and slammed at the head of the stairs.
“Well done, Dwyer,” said McGregor, having come down to the foot of the steps. “How did you get through that wall?” He used the lantern to examine the breach.
“I pushed through,” said Barney rather feebly. “I wedged my back against the other wall, in the corner, and I pushed through.”
“I believe it,” said McGregor. He came up to Barney, put the muzzle of a revolver against the breast of his prisoner, and then, with the hand that also held the lantern, fingered the shoulder of Barney, working th
e tips of his fingers among the big rubbery fibers. “You’re not so big, Dwyer,” he said. “Not more than two hundred pounds, I’d say. But strength isn’t a matter of poundage, with some people. Two hundred pounds of wildcat, for instance, would go a long way.” He had the air of a jockey, looking over a fine horse.
“I could use you, Dwyer. The way you keep your face is a charm, to me. I’ll tell you what . . . for a time I was on the verge of breaking down. For a while I was about ready to believe that you were actually no more than a simple ranch hand . . . an extra simple one with simply an extra share of strength in your hands. But there was a flicker of something else in you. I could feel the heat even when I couldn’t see the flames. I knew that there was a fire in you, somehow. That was why we came back here to watch for a little while. I heard the door groan and shudder, and knew you were at it. And it gave me a groan and a shudder, too, Dwyer, to think what would happen if you got those paws of yours on me.”
He stepped back a little, and again threw the flare of the lantern’s light straight against the eyes of Barney Dwyer, who steadied his glance a little, seeing the wavering image of the flame in the intolerable brightness of the polished reflector, inside.
This seemed to be of importance to Big Mack, who muttered, partly to himself: “You could look right into the eye of the sun, too, I suppose?”
Still Barney Dwyer did not speak. Words were evolving slowly in the back of his mind, but they would not reach his lips. He felt that a steer might wait in this manner for the butcher’s mallet to fall.
Young Leonard Peary returned, carrying a heavy weight of chain on which eight horses could safely pull. The door was unlocked once more. McGregor passed the big fifth-chain inside of the slender steel links that bound the wrists of Barney together. He padlocked the wagon chain together. Then he stepped back and played the light of the lantern over the picture before he left it.
He said: “How does it look to you, Len?”
“That’ll hold a plow team. It ought to hold a man,” said Peary.
“Yes, it ought to hold him,” agreed McGregor. He stepped up to his prisoner, saying: “Wait outside for me, Len.”
Peary passed into the provision room, and McGregor said very quietly: “Now, Dwyer, you see how it is. You have no chance. I’ve got you, and I’m going to keep you. However, I’m not a fool. I know how to value a man when I find one. Talk straight to me and you’ll find that I’m open to reason. Probably you could make more, working for me, than you ever have made working alone. Perhaps Dutch Hendry isn’t behind you. Perhaps you’re working your game alone. But whatever it is, you can understand that I’d be committing suicide if I let a fellow like you run loose in my part of the country. There isn’t room in the whole of the Rocky Mountains for two men like you and me. Come, now. Will you talk?” And he flashed his lantern again into the eyes of Barney Dwyer.
Desperately Barney strove to bring some rich invention to birth, some sounding lie that would fill the imagination of even a McGregor. He could say that he was a bank robber, or a train robber. He could say that a life of crime stretched behind him, but how could he convince McGregor without sufficient details? How could he really offer an explanation of a purpose sufficient to bring him into these mountains?
Before he was half ready to speak, McGregor snarled: “All right, Dwyer. It’s to be a contest of strength, eh? Well, man, I tell you I’ll keep you here till those handcuffs rust off your wrists. I’ll starve you, damn you, or else I’ll get words out of you.”
He left, slammed the door, and the darkness swallowed Barney again. He heard the footfalls go up the stairs. He heard the sharp, rapid voice of McGregor speaking to Peary until the second door shut this noise away.
Then, at last, a sound bubbled up in the throat of Barney Dwyer. Even that groan died before it reached his teeth. He leaned his forehead against the damp coldness of the a stone. There was no hope. There was no thought of hope, unless he could break the chain that bound his wrists together. He put his feet against the base of the column, swayed back, and gave his mighty strength to the pull. The handcuffs turned into collars of fire on his wrists, but the chain held.
A pull would not turn the trick. A sudden wrench with all his force might give him a better chance. It might also crush all the bones in his wrists and hands. But even to be a handless cripple for life would be better than to die here, in the grave-like darkness of the cellar.
He turned his hands into two bulging fists the better to cushion the shock. He replanted his feet at the base of the pillar. Then he swayed his weight far back, thrusting with the power of his legs, jerking with the strength of back and shoulders and arms. The chain parted. The impetus of his lunge skated him far off along the cellar floor. He got to his knees and remained there a moment with his head thrown back, trying to give thanks. But not a word entered his mind. Blood dripped from the fingers of his left hand. While the red was still running, he wanted to fasten his clutch on the throat of McGregor. That was the image that filled his mind, instead of prayer—his grip on the throat of McGregor, and Big Mack on his knees, biting like a frantic, helpless dog at the wrists that still wore the steel bracelets.
Then Barney stood up, found the hole in the wall, and squirmed through it a second time. There would be no third imprisonment. He knew that. If he had to use his naked hands against guns, still he would not surrender to them again.
He stole noiselessly up the stairs.
VIII
At the door above, he bowed and listened for his life. Hearing had to be to him then like sight, piercing the walls and seeing the dangers that were still ahead. He heard a clanging, as though the oven door in the kitchen had been shut suddenly, with force. Footfalls crossed the kitchen, treading on the cellar trap door and knocking dust into the face of Barney. The step went on. Another door closed lightly. Might it not mean that Wash had left the kitchen?
No better chance seemed likely to come, at any rate. So Barney lifted one wing of the trap door and looked cautiously out. The room was empty.
Stealthily he crawled out. The back door was open on the dark of the night. Beyond the other door he could hear the voice of McGregor saying: “If you want the girl, Peary, you don’t want your place with me. I won’t give my confidence to any man who’s tied to apron strings.
“Then sooner or later I’ll have to break with you. I’ll have to break anyway, if I hope to get her. She’s told me that,” said the voice of Peary. “She knew that I’m hand in glove with you, Mack. And she hates the idea. Stolen money is poison to her.”
“All right,” said McGregor. “Do as you please and when you please. Only give me warning. And this is the last that I want to hear about Sue Jones or any other girl that comes into your life. Women are a waste of time.”
The voice of Peary began to answer, but the words had no meaning to Barney. He was too occupied with stealing across that floor without permitting the boards to creak, putting down his feet cautiously, the outer edge first. Yet, reaching the table, he could not avoid stretching out his hand and passing a package of raisins into his pocket.
As he did so, a door creaked, the voice of Peary entered suddenly into the room, saying: “ . . . Wilson told me about the tunnel that they cut under the wall. Wait a minute and I’ll tell you what he said . . . ”
For at the door between the kitchen and the dining room stood Leonard Peary, pushing it open, still talking with his head turned toward McGregor.
But in another instant that head of his would be facing straight toward Barney, and it was impossible for Barney to get suddenly from the room without betraying himself with the noise he would make.
Therefore he stole straight at Peary, and, as the latter stepped on into the kitchen, he turned his head just in time to have a bleeding fist clip him on the chin. It was only a grazing blow, but it was like being grazed by the great steel knuckle of a walking beam.
With wide open eyes, Peary stared before him at Barney, but they were the eyes of a sleepwa
lker. The second blow that Barney had started, he checked in mid-air, and instead caught up the sagging body lest it should slump noisily to the floor.
Not till he had the weight of Peary in his arms did he remember the greater purpose that had been in his mind when he came to Timberline. So, holding his breath, the head, the arms, and the legs of Peary trailing down from his grasp, he crossed the kitchen floor.
“Hurry it up, Peary!” called the loud voice of McGregor. “Bring the coffee with you, too.”
Barney with his burden reached the outer door. The boards of the verandah creaked ominously under his tread. He got to the ground with a leap, and then ran hard toward the barn that stood behind the house.
There was only the dimmest twilight to show it to him, but there he would have to get transportation for Peary and himself. There, surely, they must have placed the red mare.
As he pulled open the nearest door of the barn, Peary stirred, groaned, began to struggle. That meant further delay when every moment was a breath of life to him. At least, in fanning him, McGregor had not taken the twine from his pocket. He used a length of it now to tie the hands of Peary behind his back.
One of the rows of stalled horses began to whinny loudly, and Barney knew that sound as well as though it were a human voice. It was the red mare, calling to him, betraying him with her love, summoning danger on his head.
He groaned at the ear of Peary: “Stop trying to break away. I’ve got you. Keep in front of me. If you yell . . . I’ll strangle you, Peary!”
In the meantime, he was picking saddle, bridle, and blanket from the peg on which they hung. And Peary obediently stood close by while the first horse was saddled. It was a gray whose bright color made it easier to work on her in the almost total darkness of the barn. The next in order was a taller horse; he jerked saddle and bridle on this one, also.
The voice of Peary kept gasping and muttering: “Dwyer, don’t do it. Don’t take me away like a chicken picked out of a hen house. I’d rather be murdered. The whole range will start laughing at me. I’ll be shamed, Dwyer, more than if I took water from a Chinaman. For God’s sake, give me a fair chance. I’ll do anything you want. I don’t care what your game is, I’ll play into your hands. But to be kidnapped like a baby . . . ”
