by Max Brand
“But what?”
Tankerton did not answer, but looked down the road before him as though he were seeing some new and strange sight approach.
Dunmore did not press his last question, for he had seen and heard enough partially to understand what a problem the girl could be. He soon found himself staring ahead into the richness of the eastern sky, and at the noble, blue mountains that rolled to either side in rank on rank.
NINETEEN
Where the road took a sharp turn around the shoulder of the mountain, with the big pines walking up from the lower slope and the jumbled stumps left by a forest fire standing like black-hooded figures of misery, two men started out from the woods on active little mountain ponies and swung into the trail with raised hands.
Tankerton spurred instantly to the lead. “Who’s there?” he called.
“Hank and Lew Deacon,” came the answer, and the riders drew slowly closer, as though to prove that they were not dangerous but came in peace.
Dunmore saw two bulky figures of young men, looking in the dull glow of the sunset as large as the horses they sat on. Both stepped to the ground from the saddle, rather than leaped down, and they stood before Tankerton.
“What do you want with me?” he asked.
“We want half a minute of your time, Mister Tankerton.”
“What is it?”
“We been wranglin’ two years about a piece of ground down there in the river bottom. Our uncle died and he left no will. He owned the ground, and he’d promised it to Lew, because he always favored Lew over me. But I’m the older. And there wasn’t no written will. So I claim one half the place.”
“Why shouldn’t you let him have it?” asked Tanker-ton of Lew.
“I’ll see him hanged first,” said Lew. “He’s a sneak, and a fool, and too yaller to be willin’ to fight it out, man to man.”
“It’s a lie,” said Hank. “I’ll fight you now!” He said it quickly enough, but his voice was a shade unsteady.
“There’ll be no fighting,” said Tankerton. “You two split the land in two parts and each keep to his own share.”
“And the house?” said Lew. “Is that to be carved in two? Besides, it’d make me sick to see the face of him every day.”
“How many acres are there?”
“Forty.”
“What are they worth?”
“More’n two thousand dollars, and the house and the barn and the rest of the stuff, like hosses, and whatnot, would bring in pretty nigh onto three thousand more.”
Tankerton said quietly: “Lew, go back to the house and pack up your things. You leave that farm, and Hank will pay you twenty-five hundred dollars for your share.”
“Why,” said Lew, “I’d let him have it for two thousand, but he ain’t got that many cents.”
“He’ll pay to you a fifth part with interest every year. D’you hear, Hank?”
“I could manage that pretty good,” said Hank.
“I’d take anything to get shut of him,” Lew stated.
“Then,” said Tankerton, “you can go down to the Erickson Lumber Company and tell the boss that I sent you along. Or else I could get you a place on the plains working at. . . .”
“I’ll take the lumber, thanks.”
“I’m going on. Mind you that I’m the witness that this agreement has been made, and I’ll hold you both to it. There’s one last thing that I have to say to you. How long since you’ve shaken hands?”
“Us? Why, I dunno that we ever started.”
“You’ll start now,” Tankerton announced. “The pair of you, shake hands in front of me.”
Hank reluctantly held out his hand, but Lew started back.
“I’d rather touch mildew!” he spit savagely. “I’d rather take a dead man’s hand!”
“What?” exclaimed Tankerton with sudden force. “Do you think that those big shoulders of yours and the strength in your hands make you able to despise other people? I tell you, Lew, that no man has any power, except that which his friends are willing to give him. And where are you to pick up friends if you can’t get them out of your own family? A man full of hate is like a house with the shutters closed. He can’t see out, and no one else can see in. Shake hands with Hank, and no more words about it.”
Lew did not answer, but, making a slow step toward his cousin, he reluctantly held out his hand and gripped that of Hank.
“Good night,” said Tankerton. “And remember that, if you’re proud of your own blood, you ought to be proud of each other.”
He rode on, but the two cousins made no answer to him. They stood silently, facing each other in the dark of the increasing dusk. Then Dunmore found that Tankerton was no longer at his side, but went in the lead with Beatrice Kirk, while Jimmy Larren was now knee to knee with him.
Jimmy was chuckling softly.
“What’s the joke?” asked Dunmore.
“Why, Tankerton’s the joke,” he answered.
“I thought he did that job mighty well, sonny.”
“Aw, sure he did. Them two, they’ll be cryin’ on each other’s shoulders the whole of the way home. But that ain’t what I mean. I mean Tankerton, there, the way he treats her. Look at ’em now!”
With a sudden whoop, the two leaders darted away down the road and disappeared around the next bend.
“Aw, he let her beat him, too,” said Jimmy Larren. “Even let her beat Gunfire, he would.”
“Why not, if it makes her happy? She’s only a girl, Jimmy.”
“Say,” Jimmy said, “if you was to raise a dog like a wolf, would you call it a dog because it looked like one, or a wolf because it killed calves and was like to cut your own throat?”
“What do you mean by that?” Dunmore asked, gradually guessing what the youngster had in mind.
“Well,” said Larren, “here’s you and the chief that meet up and make friends, and along comes that girl and gives you both a dirty look, and horsewhips Cousin Bill, and takes me off to the camp.”
“You ain’t grateful, Jimmy, for that?”
“Aw, sure I am. But no man could’ve acted more rougher nor more prouder than her. You take the way that she hands lip to the chief, what would he do if she was wearin’ trousers instead of skirts? He’d give her a whackin’. Does he give her a whackin’? Naw, he treats her like she was a cross between an angel right down from the sky and his own grandmother.”
“You gotta learn to be polite to ladies, Jimmy.”
“Everybody oughta get what’s comin’ to ’em,” Jimmy replied. “And if a mule plays hoss, he’s gonna be rode with spurs. But when this here girl comes along and kicks you and the chief in your face, you both get on a kind of sick, moony look, like you’d swallowed a spoonful of honey and it turned out to taste like castor oil. Nope, I dunno what happens to a gent when he gets about eighteen. Seems to lose all holts when he sees a girl with a pretty face or fine figger. And when along comes one like Beatrice Kirk, as slick and as fine as a blood filly two-year-old, stampin’ on the ground, and runnin’ in the wind, it plumb paralyzes the brains of all kinds of important gents. There’s the chief looking like a lost calf every time she comes around, and there’s that Furneaux, that would like to go straight ag’in and climb back onto a high chair and be a bank clerk, or something, but he can’t get himself away from her.”
Dunmore started in the saddle. He began to bless the moment that had put him in touch with young Jimmy. “Where do you learn all this stuff?” he asked. “Or where do you think you learn it?”
“Aw, you take somebody as young as me,” explained Jimmy Larren, “and it don’t make no difference what you say right in front of me. A kid like me, he ain’t got no brain. And if you want to dodge me, all you gotta do is to use big words and give each other a funny look.”
He chuckled at the thought, and Dunmore laughed aloud.
“Who is this Furneaux?” he asked.
“He’s one of the men that always rides straight up and never pulls no leather,” s
aid the boy. “He’s got an idea about how he’d oughta act. If he was to ride five miles without gettin’ blood on his spurs, he’d be plumb ashamed of himself. He’s gotta wear a sash, like a greaser, and his hat cocked on one side, and pearl-handled guns, and, if he was to tip less’n a dollar, it’d keep him awake all night for ten nights runnin’.”
“He’s a fake, then?” asked Dunmore.
“Him? Aw, he wakes up every morning, and tells himself that he’s a desperado ten times before he puts on his boots. And when he goes to bed at night, he says . . . ‘I ain’t shot nobody down, or faced nobody down . . . this here is a wasted day.’ ”
“I sort of get your drift,” said Dunmore. “What started him?”
“He got sight of Beatrice Kirk, and he says to himself that the only thing to do is to turn wild. Finer than ice cream. Well, wild he turns, and he’s had so much cream that he’s hankerin’ after steak and fried potatoes.” The boy snorted with disgust. “Hey,” he continued, “what’s the matter with growed-up men that they can see something in her so doggone fine and rare?”
“She did something for you today,” said Dunmore, “that no other woman would’ve done.”
“Well,” said the boy, “that proves that she’s a pretty good sort of a man, then, don’t it?”
Dunmore did not answer, but he took the words of the boy home to his heart and considered them. Ever since he had seen Beatrice, there had been a hopeless ache in his heart, and he had found himself sighing deeply. It was like nothing so much as homesickness, to his way of thinking, and it gradually dawned upon Dunmore that he was at last thoroughly, wretchedly, miserably in love.
Now it seemed to Dunmore that the dusky road was changed, and the great woods around him began to be loftier and more majestic, brushing their tops against the stars, which were just appearing, and what he had heard from this ragged urchin seemed to Dunmore the profoundest wisdom.
She had been something beyond touching, beyond comparison; she had been like a blade that is all edge—something to dazzle but not to be grasped. Perhaps this lad had fitted a handle to the problem.
So Dunmore raised his head and drifted on with the smooth and sliding trot of the mare, while Larren bumped beside him on the back of his mustang.
“Hey,” said the boy at last, “are you gonna jolt the lungs out of me, Dunmore? Or are you jus’ ridin’ in your sleep?”
TWENTY
They came up with Beatrice Kirk and Tankerton after a time, and, from the first words they overheard, it was plain that the boy had been right. The two had raced, and Beatrice had won with her bay.
She said with perfect assuredness: “You don’t jockey your horse enough, James. You ride him too straight up.”
“You’re a lightweight,” he told her.
“What does weight count in a short sprint like that?” she demanded. “Look at the light they’re winking on the shoulder of Mount Tom!”
Dunmore, looking to the right as she waved, saw a rapidly blinking light, obviously spelling out some message. The leader was sufficiently interested to draw rein.
“I hope Legges is in camp taking that down,” he said.
“They wouldn’t go on chattering if they hadn’t had a signal back,” she stated.
“More business! More business!” sang out Tankerton quite cheerfully. “There’ll be something for us to do before long.”
“Then I’m going to ride with the boys,” she said.
“You?” cried Tankerton.
“You promised me.”
“That I’d let you ride on the next trip? Are you wild, Beatrice? You teased it out of me, but you know that I didn’t mean what I said.”
“If I don’t go,” she raged, “I’ll never have a thing to do with you again. I’ll. . . .”
“Look here,” broke in Tankerton, at last annoyed sufficiently to protest against this tyrant, “you’re not fair. You want me to let you put on trousers and be a man.”
“I’d make a better man than half of you,” she said. “I can ride as hard and as far . . . I can shoot as straight . . . I’m not afraid, and . . . I don’t knock myself silly with redeye. Why can’t I go with the party?”
“Don’t talk any more about it,” said Tankerton.
Instead of answering, she twitched her horse off the road and dashed noisily through the underbrush, disappearing at once among the big trees beyond.
Tankerton turned his horse as though to follow, but, thinking better of this, he reined back onto the road with a curse, and then spurred up the trail rapidly.
“It ain’t all turkey for Tankerton.” Jimmy Larren laughed. “I bet many a time he wishes that he was runnin’ a little farm, even if he had to get chilblains all winter and sunstroke in the summer.”
“He’s the king, however,” said Dunmore.
“Sure he’s the king,” said the boy, “but he’s settin’ on tacks all the time. Mostly when she’s around.”
They jogged on after the dwindling figure of Tankerton until the trees parted before them and they came into a clearing with a big fire in the center. By the light of the fire, they could see four log shacks built around the verge of the open space, and, at the doors or lounging around the fire itself, were fifteen or more men.
Dunmore instinctively drew a tighter rein on Excuse Me. He had known beforehand into what company he was riding, but no amount of mental preparation could altogether brace him for this scene. Nearly a score of men were there—all were armed, all were experts professionally with their weapons, and all obeyed Tanker-ton with an absolute faith. A gesture from him would be the end of Carrick Dunmore.
Dunmore could see reasons why the bandit would delay the business until the camp was reached. The mob of Harpersville was one thing, but here, in the camp, his killing could be executed far more privately and cause less talk. But of one thing at least Dunmore was assured. Tankerton would not admit a partner to his greatness without making some much more desperate and prolonged struggle than that in the hotel at Harpersville.
So he checked the mare and she pranced uneasily, while the boy sheered close to him and gasped: “You ain’t gonna go in, Mister Dunmore?”
Carrick threw a grim glance at the youngster, for the exclamation came as a sudden and unexpected reinforcement of his own feelings. The boy went on: “I thought . . . that you was just gonna be . . . the first gent that ever had a firsthand sight of Tankerton’s gang, but . . . are you gonna go on in?”
Dunmore looked aside, and there he saw, leaning against a big stump, a tall fellow with a rifle in his hands, watching him attentively. If he whirled Excuse Me and strove to bolt, that rifle would bring him down. His coolness deserted him then. He had to grit his teeth to make himself go on, and, coming within the circle of the firelight, he swung lightly down to the ground.
Out of the darker shadows in the background, Tankerton’s voice came harsh and grating upon his ear. “Boys, the doctor and Lynn Tucker were all wrong. Dunmore is an old friend of mine . . . I’ve brought him back to be one of us.”
That was all. There was no talk about division of authority, partnership, or even any lieutenancy placed in the hands of Dunmore. But the latter wisely decided that this was not the time to press the point. As he was introduced in this casual fashion, he saw every face around the fire lifted, while all eyes examined him for a single blazing second with the utmost fervor; men stepped out from the cabin doors, as well. After the first scanning, they regarded him more covertly, as though not wishing to offend him with a stare.
He waved his hand to them, and then started off to find the horse shed and put up the mare. It had been made plain to him that his name was familiar to the gang. Whatever other consolation he was to get out of the situation, this was a grim one—that they must have talked over his affairs more than once, and perhaps the three expeditions that had been made against him had every one been the subject of many surmises. Each day they had expected to see the champion come back victorious. Twice their men had been foiled. T
he third time, the chief brought him in. In what manner would they take this? As a victory on the part of the leader, or as something that Dunmore had forced Tankerton to do? No doubt, the former would be the way of it.
He found little Jimmy Larren at the stable before him. The stable was a long lean-to, built beneath the shelter of the trees and anchored against them, and inside there was a single row of horses.
Jimmy carried the lantern before him down the list, and he found himself looking over animals of two types. There were little sharp-backed mustangs for mountain work, and there were long-legged blood horses for expeditions farther afield. Toward the center, he found a vacant stall and put the mare into it. The boy scrambled up into the hay and forked down a feed, while Dunmore found the grain bin and brought a measure of clean oats.
Tankerton was waiting for him near the entrance to the stable.
“I’ll show you where you sleep,” he said, and marched Dunmore off to the largest of the four cabins. Inside, there were ten wide bunks fixed against the wall, a stove in the center of the room glowing with a fire, for the mountain night was always chilly, and a table at either end piled with tattered books and magazines whose covers had disappeared, and whose leaves were frayed, curled up with much reading, and yellowed with exposure to the sun. Between the head and foot of each bunk were a number of pegs, making a sort of clothes closet. He noted that every “closet” was well-filled, several hats of different kinds topped off the display, and on the whole there was a sense of much well-being, for men leading such lives. The cabin walls, too, seemed solidly built, without unstopped chinks through which the winds could pry, and, although in the winter it might be difficult enough to be comfortable here, at this season of the year it was better than most ranches.
“Here you are,” said Tankerton. “That bunk there in the center is empty. That’s yours. I’m busy now. So make yourself at home.”
Of course, it was unsatisfactory. After the promise of divided sovereignty that Tankerton had made in Harpersville, there should have been more ceremony, more opportunity to choose. But Dunmore had made up his mind to accept the present for what it would bring. He said nothing, but nodded and carried his pack into the room, while Jimmy Larren followed, dragging his own bundle of rags, and took an apparently free bunk at the foot of Dunmore’s.
