by Max Brand
Milligan flashed one glance at his companion, and it seemed to the Lamb that this look was filled with hate and fear, and that the face of the man changed color a little. But Milligan did not argue. He walked straight ahead down the bleak, dark hallway. The Lamb kicked the door shut, and as it slammed and sent a mournful, profound echo through the old house, he stepped on after his guide.
Behind him, he thought he heard the subtle closing of another door, and then he appeared to pass a stir of voices, soft as the rustling of silk. Of this he was not sure, or he would have stopped his guide and paused to investigate, but he refused to allow himself to become panic stricken.
The house was amazingly large. Twice they had turned corners. Always the halls seemed the same—narrow, dark, damp. Then Milligan paused at a door and knocked. “Here it is,” he said. A voice called out in a deep note. Milligan opened the door and stepped inside.
“You’re back damned quick for a quitter and a failure,” said the harsh, bass voice within.
Then the Lamb entered slowly behind Milligan and saw before him a very comfortable and spacious apartment with a big fire burning upon a wide hearth, and in front of this fire, in shirt sleeves and carpet slippers, there was a very old man, with a beard long, white, and pointed that touched the middle of his body. But that beard was no denser than a mist, and like pale smoke, the hair of the ancient man curled around his wicked face. The Lamb knew that he was standing in the very same room where Shorty had stood before him, and he knew that this was Montmorency Montague, whose nickname was so famous through all the range. The old fellow was now twisted about in his chair, his thin neck seamed with wrinkles.
“By gravy,” he said, “and there he is. Ray, here he is. The Lamb has come into the fold.”
Another door was cast open, and Jimmy Montague leaped into the room. Then, at the sight of the Lamb, he paused and slowly an expression of the most savage content spread over his face. His eyes filled with a soft fire.
“Ha,” murmured Jimmy Montague, and his voice was as deep as that of his grandfather, but to the Lamb it sounded softer, like the purring note of a great cat. “You got the man, Milligan. Tell me, did you get the horse, too?”
“I got the horse, too,” Milligan confirmed.
What joy there was in Jimmy as he spoke, so that he could not keep the bubble of pleasure out of the sound. The Lamb took note. He had stepped carefully back into a corner. He had a Colt in each of his loose, big coat pockets, and a hand was dropped upon each. Under this thin cover, he kept an instinctive aim upon Monty Montague, and Jimmy, his grandson.
“Go try the horse, Jimmy,” said the Lamb with firmness, “while I stay back here and have a little talk with the old man, will you?”
“What’ve you done to him?” Jimmy asked. “Look here, young feller, I flattened you once, but I was too hasty and went before finishin’ up the job good and steady. I ain’t gonna be in any such a hurry now. There’s time … there’s time.”
“You sound like a fairy story,” said the Lamb. “You’re smelling blood and bones and you want to chew and champ on ’em, right away. All right, old son. But first, you go out and find how useful the black will be to you, or to any other gent in the world. Then you come back inside and talk to me.”
At this, Jimmy Montague leaned forward a little, as though he needed a lesser distance to examine the stranger and to look into his mind. “By Jiminy,” he whispered, “I dunno … I sort of think …”
“Go do what he tells you,” barked the deep, harsh voice of Monty. “I wanna have a little talk with this here youngster. Get yourself out of the way, will you?”
Silently the giant slunk from the room. Only at the door he hesitated for an instant to glare at the new arrival. Then he went on, with Milligan crowding at his heels.
The Lamb turned back to the old man, and found him leaning to warm his hands at the blaze. Then, beyond the door that opened at one side of his corner, he heard the knock and the light metallic clang of a rifle butt being grounded, and he knew that armed men were gathered at that possible point of exit.
Chapter Twenty
“Just you take your time and look around you,” said the old man. His voice was so extremely grating that it sounded more like the croaking of a prodigious bullfrog. It made the throat of the Lamb contract with sympathy, so sore and broken did the vocal chords appear to be. “There’s nothin’ like rubbin’ the moss off a new place. When you turn a colt into a new corral, you wanna give him time to make himself to home.”
“They don’t take such trouble with a steer in the butcher shop,” declared the Lamb.
“Tut, tut, tut,” chuckled Monty Montague. “You just look around, and then come over and sit down here beside me.”
The Lamb willingly availed himself of the chance to look around. The big room was quite bare. On the mantel there were a few books, and on a table in a corner some yellowed newspapers and newsprint magazines. Two scraps of rag rug, worn by heel and spurs, inadequately covered the floor, or rather spotted it. There were four or five chairs. All of them were comfortable in appearance; all of them were homemade. There was much of interest, but the chief objects were not visible. He knew that they undoubtedly were posted behind the door at his back, and behind each of the other two doors that opened into this room.
He considered the windows. There were two, each small and set inconveniently high in the wall, and across each of these windows several strong iron bars were stretched. Now that he was in the lion’s den, it was plain that the lion had him irretrievably under his paw. He shrugged his shoulders and settled himself to his fate, whatever it might be.
Monty Montague was filling his pipe. When he had packed the deep porcelain bowl with black plug tobacco, tamping it hard and compact, then he picked from the hearth a large coal, oozing little yellow flames. This he expertly shifted from his fingertips to the palm of his hand, and from his palm slipped it onto the tobacco. He puffed strongly, and clouds of smoke gushed from the bowl, from the mouth and nose of the ancient. These wreaths of smoke were as thick and as real as the misty hair and beard of the old man.
“And here you are,” said Monty Montague. “And here you are, my son.” The rattling voice gave an indescribable irony to the last words. He turned in his chair. “Sit down and rest your feet by the fire. It’s kind of chilly out, even with the Chinook blowin’.”
“I’ll rest better standing,” said the Lamb. “Standing … and walking.” He moved restlessly up and down, close to the wall, his eyes alert.
“I’ve been hearin’ a good deal about you,” went on Monty Montague, not attempting to press his invitation. “A good deal from the boys on the place, for one thing. You’ve been turnin’ up under their noses pretty frequent.”
“They’ve been keeping their noses where they hadn’t ought to’ve been,” said the Lamb.
“One man shot down and pretty doggone sick in bed for weeks and weeks. And another three gents have tasted lead out of your gun.”
“Which was the reason,” said the Lamb, “that you wanted to have me on your side of the fence, I s’pose?”
To this, the other did not answer immediately, for he went on, “Then I’ve heard a good many other things. I hear that you’ve been a bad one.”
“I dunno that I’ve been,” the Lamb said. “I’ve never been turned down yet, wherever I tried to pass myself.”
“Maybe you ain’t,” said Monty Montague. “A bad coin will go around until the brass begins to show through the silver.”
The Lamb, coming to the door by which he had entered the room, tried the handle with a swift touch, and he was not surprised to find that it was locked. This, and the manner of the old man’s speech, convinced him that he was trapped, and trapped for a sinister purpose. But he allowed no signs of this to appear, except from his restless pacing back and forth through the room.
“I’ve been hearin’,
” rumbled on his host, “about your start, and everything important that you’ve done. You started young. They called you the Kid, when you was fifteen. Is that right?”
“Where’d you hear that?” the Lamb said, impressed.
“I hear everything,” said the other harshly. “I know pretty near everything about everybody that I want to know about. You started bein’ called the Kid. Not the Boise City Kid, or the Slim Kid, or Al, the Kid, but just the Kid. Because they thought that starting that young, with one man knifed and one man shot, you’d pretty well be known apart from all the others that was called Kid. Is that supposition right?”
The Lamb paused in a corner and performed his skillful trick of manufacturing a cigarette with one hand, and lighting it. He snapped the match across the room in the direction of the hearth.
“Keeping the right hand free for a gun,” Montague said, and smiled. “That’s a good idea. You’ve been keeping your right hand free for a gun for a good many years, haven’t you? You’ve been hating to sit down at a table where your back would be turned to any window, or to any doorway. That’s right, too?”
The Lamb did not answer. He smoked leisurely, was evidently thinking very hard.
“You went to Texas, and comin’ out of the north with your northern saddle and your northern horse, and your long rope, they called you Montana. Just plain Montana. Him that downs three and kills two of ’em in a barroom, he’s got a right to be known as Montana … not Montana Al, or anything. Just Montana. Is that right?”
Receiving no answer, he went on, “Texas didn’t seem big enough to you. It sort of peeved you to find that you were bumping into the borders of a little old state like Texas, all the time. You wanted a chance to just sort of spread out your elbows. And so you drifted up to Nevada. There was more sand in Nevada, and sand doesn’t keep tracks preserved for very long. That pleased you, too, I dunno why.”
He laughed a little. It was a terrible hoarse, painful laughter, the smoke pouring out of mouth and nose the while. He had gathered himself into the dim heart of a cloud, out of which he rumbled, “Up in Nevada you began a different tune. There were quite a few hombres on your trail, and listenin’ for news of you with both ears peeled, by this time. And so along about this date, when you met up with a bad-actin’ two-gun gent by name of the Lonesome Kid, you stopped and admired him a good deal. You saw that he was about your size, about your cut, and not much older. He was called the Lonesome Kid because mostly he stayed out by himself … the sheriff in a dozen counties not givin’ him any encouragement to sit still any length of time. Well, you let the Lonesome Kid have words with you. He was pretty damn well-known, and he was a fine hand with a gun, but you beat him fair and square, and you killed him. And then you did a pretty smart thing. You started off with your mare and called yourself the Lonesome Kid, and wherever anybody knew the Lonesome Kid pretty well and said that you wasn’t him, you poked the muzzle of a gun down his throat and made him change his mind. But, after a while, it got so that you was gettin’ a little too well-known as the Lonesome Kid. Living off card games and fights, you felt that you’d better duck and run ag’in. And it seemed like it was better to run from one name into another name than it was just simply to run a long distance in miles.”
He paused in his speech and nodded, and the smoke broke before his face and allowed his eyes to be seen. They were covered with a furling of very loose eyelids, but the eyes themselves were needle points of exceedingly brilliant power.
“There was a gent by name of the Doctor, over Denver way,” continued the old man, “and you heard about him, and saw that he was about your general cut. You laid for the Doctor, and him and you had it out plenty, I reckon.”
At this, the Lamb suddenly chuckled. “I reckon we did,” he said. “That was a grand fight. Believe me, I’ll never forget that.” He touched the scar that disappeared from his throat beneath the band of his shirt. “That was an all-night fight,” said the Lamb.
“You left the Doctor lyin’ under the leaves, in spite of his fine operating work with his knife.” Montague grinned. “You rode off, callin’ yourself by his name, and that name was so damn well-known that you had a little trouble wearin’ it, but still you stuck to it pretty well for about six months, and your old trail was fairly well covered up, and everything was beginning to go along pretty smooth for you. And you picked up a pretty good job, and you were allowed to pick up a few cows for yourself, and you got some of the weakest weaners, and started ’em on the way to make good husky dogies. And you had a patch of farm land given to you by the old codger that needed your guns to keep him free from the rustlers. Is that right?”
The Lamb frowned for the first time.
“Aye,” said Montague, gasping out the words with a great deal of vicious pleasure, “you don’t mind a bit when I tell you all about the crooked and the mean and the fightin’ things that you’ve done in your born days. But it sort of riles you when you see that I’ve worked your trail right down to your home nest, eh? That touches you under the skin, and touches you with salt and pepper, eh?” He laughed, his toothless lower jaw falling widely agape. There was something demoniacal and altogether inhuman in the delight of this bad old man.
“You don’t mind nothin’ that I’ve found out about you but that,” insisted Montague. “But how you hate that. How you’d hate to have me send up word that the fine, upstandin’ law-abidin’ youngster that has done so damn well, is really a trouble-raisin’ gunfighter with eleven notches filed into the handles of his guns!” He laughed in the same hideous cackle. Then he paused and through the smoke shook his hand at the youngster. “But mainly what I’d like to know from you, friend,” he said, “is why you pulled up stakes from that there ranch where they was all eatin’ out of your hand, and why you barged off here, and why you started raisin’ hell so hard? Open up and tell me that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The Lamb, listening to this indictment, and to this quick questioning, continued to frown. Only gradually his frown faded and a grin took its place.
“These here deep thinkers,” the Lamb began, “pretty near always are walking around corners when all they gotta do is to march straight ahead. I remember a mighty smart dog that I had once. One day, he had a fight on the street and he got licked bad. He ran away, but the next day the other dog died of the cuts he’d got in that fight. Now, my dog didn’t know the other was dead. I couldn’t tell him. And every day after that, because he was a smart dog and had done a lot of thinking, he never would go down that street, but would always run three blocks out of the way. Here you are, dodging around corners and trying to get the right idea about me. It ain’t so hard to find. You don’t have to run three blocks out of the way to find out about me.”
“Go on, then,” the old man said curiously. “I wanna know.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” said the Lamb. “You’re right that I was pretty well fixed up yonder, and that I’d got a herd started, and that I’d got some land of my own handed to me, and that I’d had the making of a real start. Well, you wonder why I barged off and started getting into trouble?”
“I wonder considerable.”
“I had a horse once,” the Lamb continued, “that was raised out on the Staked Plains, where grass grew fewer than hairs on a bald head. That horse was all ribs and shoulder blades and withers, when I got him. His neck looked like the neck of a sheep. He was gaunted up till he looked like a bow. I fetched him north and put him on good grass, and he got sleeked up till he was a horse to look at, but his heart was different. Down there on the Staked Plains, when he was thin as a rail, he always had a fire burning inside of him. He always would give you a snaky ride in the morning. And when you climbed off of him at night, he’d try to eat your leg off. Up north, he just went to sleep. He didn’t have no heart. He couldn’t run as fast as a cow. I happened to go back south with him ag’in, and the first day that he saw the sand and the sun baking
and burning over it, and the cactus sticking up like tombstones here and there, he let out a snort, and frisked his tail, and pitched me right over his head, taking me that much by surprise.” He paused to fashion another cigarette in his own peculiar way.
“You mean that livin’ peaceful was like meat without salt?” said the old man.
“That’s what I mean,” the Lamb agreed.
“You had to ramble out and get on a rampage?”
“What for else?”
“I dunno, I dunno,” said Montague. He closed his eyes and suddenly looked a very old and tired man. His lips parted, his face sagged. “Why pick out the colonel’s place?” he asked.
“There’s always more action on the losing side.”
Montague shook his head. “What sort of action on the winning side?” he asked. “Because that’s the side where you are now.”
“Four thousand dollars hard cash is action enough for me,” said the boy. “I’ve worked two years to get me a start that ain’t worth that much in cash.” He laughed and made a little gesture with his right hand, as though with it enclosing something from the empty air. “You understand, Montague? Four thousand dollars maybe isn’t so much to you that has got plenty more. But four thousand sounds good to me. I don’t sink it in any bank. But I wait for the time when the big drives go by, and the lame dogies begin to drop out, all skin and bones. Then I pick ’em up for ten dollars a head, maybe. I fatten ’em up. In a year they’re hard cash for every pound that they weigh, and they weigh plenty of pounds. Is that business? I think it is. But how can you play that sort of a game unless you’ve got working capital? It can’t be done. I don’t want to crawl all my life. I want to run. If there’s a ladder, I want to start and run all the way to the top of it.”
