by Max Brand
“Let the people who laugh come and try their own luck here, and I think that they’ll stop laughing.”
“It would turn me into a joke forever, Nan. Think what you’re saying.”
Instead of answering with words, she pointed suddenly. And when they all turned in the indicated direction, they saw a great timber wolf glide across the margin of the shadows beneath the trees. He gave them a flash of his teeth in a wide grin of hate and started away. Lyons had whipped out a revolver on the instant, but the girl caught his hand.
The wolf disappeared.
“What made you do that?” he asked her.
She began to laugh, and the sound was wild, half hysterical. “I don’t know,” she said. “After what I’ve heard about this infernal place, and after what’s happened here under our eyes, I was half afraid that that wolf would turn into a man if you shot it.”
“A dead wolf . . . or a dead man!” he exclaimed. “What do I care which it might be? I don’t care a hang, my dear. You spoiled a good snap shot for me, that’s all.”
“It isn’t all,” she said.
He faced her, curious, irritated for the first time. “You don’t seriously think that I ought to get out of here?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s what I think.”
“And leave two of my men behind me?”
“You won’t be leaving anyone behind you,” broke in old Crosson with a touch of surprise and hope. “He’s only keeping them as hostages, man.”
“And he’ll turn them over to me, will he?”
“He’ll turn them over.”
“What proof of that have I?”
“Proof?” exclaimed Crosson, as though bewildered that the question should have been asked. Then he added: “The boy never lies. He doesn’t know how to lie. His promise is harder to budge, Lyons, than one of those mountains yonder.”
Ranger listened with profoundest interest. For his own part, he had decided that the instant he was free from this complication—if free he could get—he would start back for Alaska. Wild winds and bitter frosts would be nothing to him after this touch of California spring. It would be a thousand times better for him to face a year of blizzards than another day in this mysterious forest. No, he would return, give back to Menneval everything except the sheer traveling expenses, and tell him to come south in person if he wanted more accurate news.
Menneval? Aye, even Menneval might not be sufficient here.
Here came Wully and the other from the exploration of the farther side of the house.
“There ain’t a sign,” he said. “There ain’t a single sign.”
“Except wolf tracks,” said the other.
There was a short, gasping cry from Nan. “Do you hear, Chet?” she whispered to him, but Ranger heard the words distinctly.
“I hear,” said the other impatiently. He glared at the two men. “What sort of tracks?” he demanded.
“Timber wolves. Half a dozen of ’em, I should say.”
“Looked as if they had been dragging something,” said the other.
“Confounded nonsense and rot!” declared the leader, angered. Then he snapped his fingers. “Nan!”
“Yes, Chet?”
There was pleading in her voice, and he nodded at her. “I’m going to take your advice.”
“You’re going to get out of here?”
“Yes, I am. I’m two men down. It would be no particular satisfaction to me to break the necks of these two old dodgers. I’m going to pull out of here . . . and see if we get our two men back.”
He stared at Wully and at the other to see how their faces changed. They showed no emotion whatever.
“Well, Wully,” he said aloud, “what would you do if you were in my boots?”
The gentle Wully said without hesitation: “I’d tap this pair over the head . . . and then I’d ride like the wind until I got back to daylight. It’s sort of like a green night in here. It gives me the jim-jams.”
“We’ll get out of here, but we won’t tap the pair of ’em on the head,” decided the leader. “Crosson,” he added, “I’ve been turned into a fool. This time I’m beaten. But when I get my two men back, I’m going to return. Do you hear me?”
Crosson started violently. He was so excited that he even made a few rapid steps toward Lyons, almost in the manner of one about to deliver an attack. “If you return, man,” he said, “you’ll wish that you’d sooner gone into a sea of fire than into this forest. You’re a marked man . . . a marked man. Not you or anyone of the rest of you ever could come into this forest again and go back alive to tell about it.”
“I’m marked, am I?” replied the leader.
“You’re marked all right. Yes, you’re marked down for life here.”
“By what, will you tell me? The eyes in the trees?”
“There are eyes in the trees,” was the old man’s mysterious and solemn reply. “Other eyes, too.”
“And tongues to tell you about us, eh?”
“Yes,” said old Crosson. “Listen.”
Not very far away, thrillingly clear, there sounded a chorus of several wolves coming to them through the wood. The sound broke off short in the middle of a yell.
Nan Lyons gripped the pommel of her saddle with both hands, with the air of one who might fall unless supported. “Will you go? Will you go, Chet?” she begged.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “It’s like midnight, and a nightmare midnight, at that. Yes, I’m going to get out of here. Boys,” he said to the two men, “this is a thing that won’t make good talk until we’ve come back and put it right.”
Wully’s companion had one of those dark faces and yellow eyes that always suggested mixed blood. His lip twisted like the snarling mouth of a dog as he answered: “I’m willing never to come back. I’ve had enough. Guns are all right. But this here air . . .” He waved about him.
“We’re off,” said Lyons abruptly.
They mounted.
“Where shall I find the two of them?” said Lyons to Crosson.
“Whichever way you go, you’ll find ’em on the way,” he responded.
Lyons stared at the speaker for a gloomy moment, and then he nodded. “We’re leaving you behind us, Crosson,” he said, “but if there’s any crooked play, and, if my two men are not given back, I’ll burn this wood to a crisp and hunt down the game that the fire doesn’t kill.”
Then, turning the head of his horse, he rode off at a good clip down the huge, winding avenues.
He did not speak on the way. Neither did the girl nor either of the men who brought up the rear of the procession. Each of these rode with a naked weapon in his hand, and many a glance they threw over their shoulders, and many a sidelong look with which to probe the ranks of the trees near them.
They saw before them, presently, a broader and stronger glare of light that announced that they were almost out of the grove, and the girl muttered: “Will we find the men? Will we find them, Chet?”
“We won’t!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been tricked and gulled again. By heaven, Nan, I think that the scoundrels take me for a baby that they can make free with and . . .”
Here they swung around a cluster of mighty tree trunks grouped close together, and just before them, stretched upon the pine needles, they saw their two men. But in what condition!
Their clothes were torn to shreds; blood oozed from many cuts. Their hands and their feet were bound fast together, and each man was lashed to the other. Each was securely gagged.
“I’m going to have blood for this!” exclaimed Lyons. “I’m going to have a city full of blood for this!”
He cut the gags away, cruel, cutting gags made of green withes and choking bark. But the rescued men did not leap to their feet. Instead, one of them pushed himself up on one elbow and stared at his friends with the empty eyes of an idiot, and the other, turning over on his face, buried it in his arms and began to sob heavily, like a child.
Chapter Twenty
They got the two
men to their feet. There was no serious wound upon either, but one of them seemed stunned, as though he had been heavily drugged, while the other continued as hysterical as a girl after a great fright. The presence of his comrades could not prevent him from weeping and rolling his head wildly about on his shoulders, as though in overwhelming agony of mind and body.
The girl looked on him and his companion with more horror than compassion. She had been raised to feel that men will sooner die than be shamed.
“What can have happened to them?” she asked of her cousin. “It hasn’t been long, whatever that fellow you call Oliver Crosson may have had time to do . . . but how did he steal them away?”
Chester Lyons abandoned the hysterical man. He turned his attention to the mute.
“What happened, Harry?” he demanded. “What happened to you when you got inside the house?”
Harry looked up at him with a face hideously blank. “I dunno,” he said. “I dunno.”
“You know something. You’re all right now. You’re safe, Harry. We’re with you. You’re safe.”
“I’m safe?” muttered Harry, looking vaguely around him. “I was safe before. I had a partner with me. But he . . . he . . .” He closed his eyes. He swayed from side to side, muttering softly under his breath.
“Out with it!” exclaimed Lyons. “Tell me, Harry. You’re safe here, and we have to know!”
The eyes of Harry did not open. “I heard him drop,” he said slowly. “I turned, and he had me by the throat, and lifted me into the air. I kicked . . . I hit at him. He held me up there like he’d been a giant. He choked me while I was hanging from his hands like from a noose of rope. I couldn’t make a sound. My partner was lying on the floor, looking like he had a broken neck . . .” He fumbled at his throat, and his eyes, opening, stared blankly before him.
“That’s it,” said Lyons briskly, looking at Chet and Nan. “Slugged with a sandbag or some such thing. When Harry turns, he’s caught by the throat.”
“Hold on!” said Wully. “How much man would it take to throttle Harry and muscle him out into the air at the same time? Harry is man-size, I guess.”
Chet Lyons shrugged. “We’ve promised to get on out of these woods today. I’m coming back another time, however, and I’m going to . . .”
“Chet!” cried the girl.
“Well?” he snapped, angry at the interruption in the flow of his rage.
“Don’t say anything more!” she exclaimed. “Don’t make any rash promises. There’s something spooky about this. I’m going to have nightmares for half a year on account of it.”
At any rate, Lyons was not the man to expend himself in vain threats. He said: “We’ll get on out of this. What we do afterward can be seen when the time comes.”
They mounted the two men on the led horses, and more slowly they crossed the remaining distance to the edge of the forest. But as they passed into the clear light of the day, there was a sigh of relief from every man. They were never gladder to leave any place behind them.
As they turned to glance back at the huge, gloomy trees, Wully cried out sharply: “There’s one of the devils now!” And he snatched out a revolver as he spoke. Not till he fired did the others see his target. Then the yelp of a wolf showed them a great lobo springing away through the shadows at the margin of the trees.
“Wully!” declared the girl in strange excitement. “I think that you’re a fool to have done that!”
“I suppose that I should’ve let the murdering, four-footed throat cutter get away?” said Wully. “Not me. And right from this day on, every time I see one, I’m going to snag it.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t badly hurt?” said Nan Lyons hopefully.
“Maybe not,” replied Wully. “But if I ain’t a fool and a liar, I sank that one right behind his right shoulder. He’s a dead wolf before he’s run far.”
“Then . . . we’ll all pay for it,” said the girl.
“What’s the matter with you, Nan?” asked her cousin briskly. “One might think that you’re afraid there are ghosts in there. What’s the matter with you today?”
“What’s the matter with all of us?” the girl answered. “Chet Lyons and four of his best men rode into those woods today and rounded up one of the Crossons and a harmless old trapper along with him. Chet Lyons wants to find out all about the Crossons. He had half a mind that he would run them out of the country. But what’s happened? Why, Chet Lyons had to run for his life. Isn’t that strange enough? Strange enough to send the chills down my back. If I were you boys, I’d get out of here and stay away. I wouldn’t come within rifle shot of young Oliver Crosson so long as I lived.”
They felt better, however, now that they were beyond the shadows of the trees, and with the familiar keenness of the sunshine cutting through their coats and scalding their bodies. They shrugged their shoulders at the thought of young Oliver Crosson.
That youth, not long before, having left the two prisoners on the most probable course that the strangers might follow in leaving the wood, went off among the trees with a step as light and bounding as the stride of a deer. As he went, he whirled something that glittered in his hand and twinkled above his head. It gleamed even in the shadows, and it sparkled brightly when a ray of sun dripped down upon it through the lofty branches of the forest. It was a new Colt revolver, heavy, blue-barreled, with all the smugness of a hand-fitted tool and all the beauty of efficient strength. That was his prize.
It mattered very little that he had freed his father and the stranger from the hands of the outlaws. But he now held in his hands the forbidden fruit, the knowledge that had been forbidden to him all the days of his life.
He had a guilty joy as he danced along with the gun. He knew perfectly well how the thing was put together, how it was cleaned, how it was assembled, exactly how it worked. More than once, prowling like a beast of prey through the hills, he had worked up close to the camp of a trapper or a hunter and seen them by firelight, busy at their guns. More than once the weapons had been in his hands, but he had thrown them away. His father’s command had been enough to banish the guns from his touch. Yet a thing banished is not a thing forgotten. And the very prohibition that was put upon firearms on the Crosson Ranch was enough to make him desire the forbidden thing. It was like Bluebeard’s forbidden chamber; it was in his mind more than all else.
Now he had a gun. He was acquainted with the method of using it. Had he not, for long hours, played with a rusted, useless relic, whipping it out from his clothes to make the sudden and perfect draw that, as he knew, was half the thing in handling guns? Had he not spent a thousand hours weighing and hefting the thing, taking its balance and learning its touch so that it responded to him as a pen to a penman? Had he not sighted it ten thousands of times, drawing the quick bead and then stooping his head, while his hand remained steady as stone, to make sure that the bead was perfect?
He had done all this. For many a year he had dreamed of guns with the passion of a child for fairyland. He had gone through the woods with that rusted, worthless, heavy old toy of his, and, taking sudden sight at the squirrels on the boughs of the trees, he had made sure along the barrel that this one would have fallen without hindquarters and the head of the other would be missing when it tumbled to the ground.
But what was that toy, that clumsy, outdated thing, compared with this living marvel? It fitted against the palm of his hand with a wonderful security. It answered his touch. After the rust that his fingers had rubbed from the ancient gun, the touch of this one was all velvet and the polish silken. It was not light, but it seemed light to him. The balance of it answered him like a familiar mind. And in its chambers were locked up six deaths! That was the chief marvel of the thing.
Sixfold death was inside the little gun, and, with the pressure of his forefinger, the doors could be opened one by one. Why, he was like a king; he was more than a king—he was a god. No wonder that he danced and leaped as he ran through the woods. He had taken the thing from enemies by
the force of his hand and by the strength of his cunning, and when should he use it?
To give a perfect flavor to his happiness, there was a sense of guilt attaching to it, for he well understood that he should not have the thing. What would his father say? The wrath of the stern old man hung like a cloud in the back of his mind, like a storm cloud rolling high and higher above the horizon. It oppressed and chilled his ardor—for he knew that it would not be long before he challenged that wrath by using the weapon.
He did not go straight back to the house to see how his father did, and the trapper stranger who was with him. Instead, he made a detour, leading toward a distant side of the woods. And as he sped along, he chirped to the squirrels above him, and they, fearless at the familiar voice, stood up on their branches and looked fearlessly down at him. They had no fear, but they winced and dodged at the sight of the glimmering steel that he leveled at them. No, he could not press the trigger against such harmless creatures.
Then a gray female wolf rose out of the shadows and bounded beside him. She panted with lolling tongue as she galloped easily beside him. There was a stain of red in her fierce eyes, and, coming closer, she whined and looked eagerly in his face.
He knew that look well. He had seen it before. Either there was a stray maverick come from the upper hills, or else there was a deer near at hand.
The timber wolf, running before him, began to skim low, head close to the ground, and the boy instantly changed his running. He went more slowly. He picked the places upon which his feet fell; he went as softly as a gentle evening breeze through the shadows beneath the trees, and, coming to the place where the wolf was couched in covert behind some brush at the edge of the wood, he halted in turn.
Beyond, enjoying the coolness of the shade, was a tall buck, switching his tail at the flies and stamping now and then—a sleek, fat-ribbed buck.
No prohibitions from a father could hold back Oliver Crosson then. The deer must be his!
Chapter Twenty-One
He crouched near the female wolf, one hand upon her trembling withers. She turned her head to the right and then to the left. He saw them now. Except for his excitement, he would have noted them before—two couchant wolves of his own band, sure in the hunt and deadly for the kill. He had stolen them from their mothers; he had fostered and reared them; he knew, almost, their speech. They waited, their jaws locked, their eyes as bright as fire, until the master should give the word. Then out they would bound. But what would they gain?
