by Max Brand
There appeared to be no other person present, at first, but by the light of a lantern that burned at the foot of the room, Dunmore presently saw in the farther corner a slender youth who lay in his bunk reading a magazine. This he now lowered, as though feeling Dunmore’s eyes, and looked fixedly at the newcomer.
So Dunmore crossed to him and, coming nearer, saw that the left arm and shoulder of the reader were swathed in bandages. “My name is Dunmore,” he said.
The other extended his right hand. “I’m Bud Arthur,” he said in a curiously soft voice.
He waited without another word, his calm, cold eyes fixed steadily on Dunmore’s face, but the latter, with a nod, turned away. For the name shot many pictures across his mind’s eye.
Bud Arthur never had appeared off his father’s ranch or in the public prints a year before. Since then, he had stood in a mask before a stagecoach and plundered the boot—he had walked into a bank at midday and nearly got off with a fortune—he had then returned to his hometown to shoot down a marshal who had made certain poisonous remarks about him, and had escaped from the town, hotly pursued.
Since, he had passed into oblivion, so far as the public was concerned, and the reason now was clear. The omniscient Tankerton could not afford to overlook a lad who had killed four men in the space of six months, and, therefore, he had stretched out his hand and taken in the wounded youngster. Another week or so and the hawk would once more be on the wing, flying at the whistle of Tankerton. For such were the ideal citizens of the blue kingdom of the horizon where Dunmore now must sow and reap, and once more his mind grew dark with the way that lay before him.
As he went back to his bunk, young Larren grinned.
“What’s eating you, Jimmy?” he asked.
The latter clucked as though calling to a hen yard. “Chick, chick, chick!” he said. “You got some raw wolf meat to feed to these here chickens, big boy? They’re plumb tired of raw dog, the way they look.”
TWENTY-ONE
A gong sounded loudly and rapidly across the clearing, and a high, singsong voice intoned: “Come an’ get it, come an’ get it, boys!”
So Jimmy Larren and Dunmore went out of the bunkhouse and headed in the direction of the clamor. From the other houses, other streams were heading in the same direction, and presently Dunmore entered a low cabin that had a log table stretched down its center, the men taking their places on either hand.
There was plenty of light. Two lamps were hung by iron chains from the roof, and they threw an illumination that enabled him to see all the faces around the table clearly. The men were filing in with cheerful words to one another, until Dunmore appeared—after which came a moment of silence until the cook, a broad-faced fellow with a face as scarred as that of a pirate or a German student, called out: “There you are, new man! There’s your place down by the foot of the table. Set down!”
All cooks are tyrants, but Dunmore overlooked the order entirely. Tankerton was taking a place at one end of the long board, and Dr. Legges was about to take the other end, when Dunmore tapped the doctor on the shoulder.
“Did you aim to set down here, Doctor?” he asked genially.
“This is my place, my young friend,” Legges answered. “It’s good to see you among us at last, Dunmore. Idleness, idleness is the greatest sin, Dunmore . . . and it pleases me that you’re about to set to work.”
“Thanks,” said Dunmore, feeling that all eyes were on him and the doctor—men even refrained from dragging back their chairs, as though they would not risk shutting out a word of the conversation by their noise. “Thanks, Doctor. There ain’t a thing in the world that’s better than good advice. It’s a better present than money, because money can be swiped, eh? But now I’d like to do something in return. Look here, you were going to sit down where the draft is blowing straight in on you through the window cracks. It’s no place for a man of your age.”
Legges blinked, as though not understanding what was meant. “There’s no draft here,” he said at last. “Not a stir of air.”
“Listen to you,” said Dunmore in gentle reproval. “You’d set right down here and sacrifice yourself for the sake of keepin’ a younger man out of this here chair. You’d set here and take rheumatism and lumbago and a chill, and all for the sake of sparin’ a mighty lot younger and stronger man from the same troubles. But I wouldn’t let you, Doctor.” Softly he pushed the doctor away. “Down there by the stove is the place for you,” he insisted. “That’s where you. . . .”
“This,” said Legges, turning red and then white with anger, “has always been my chair.”
“There you are,” said Dunmore. “I got no doubt that’s what’s aged you . . . settin’ in a draft, givin’ up your health for the rest of the boys. But I’m gonna save you from that after this. I’m gonna take the chair . . . and keep it.”
With that he sat down, but no other man in the room stirred. All looked fixedly at Legges, thus ousted from the second place of honor at the table. The doctor himself seemed to waver for a moment between a desire of battle and fear of the new enemy. But at length the genially smiling face of the younger man overcame his own power of will. He turned with a nod and an assumed smile.
“As a matter of fact,” Legges said, “there is a chilly draft of air blowin’ at that end of the room. We gotta get hold of some weather-strippin’ to shut out some of the wind from this room.”
With a murmur and a scraping of chairs, the rest sat down. Tankerton seemed to be busying himself talking with Lynn Tucker, who sat at his right, studiously avoiding the eyes of Dunmore at the farther end of the room. As a matter of fact, all the others avoided the attention of Dunmore, but there was a good excuse for this, since huge platters of beefsteaks, of potatoes roasted in ashes, of corn pone, and of ham were borne in and carried about to various positions of advantage, where the long arms of the hungry men could reach to the food.
Dunmore was liberal to his own plate, but he could not claim any instant procedure in such an assemblage of eaters.
While the first clatter of plates, and of steel forks grating on tin, was still at its height, Tankerton said suddenly: “We have bad news. Our friend and bunkie, Chelton, has been nabbed.”
It was a new name to Dunmore, but the announcement made a sensation among the others. They stared at one another and at their leader. Eating paused for an instant.
“How was he got?” someone asked.
“He wanted hotel food in a big town, and he went all the way to Clifford Springs to get it.”
“I’ve had that hankerin’,” said a ruffian close to Dunmore, although he was not addressing his words to the latter. “I seen a time when I’d’ve paid its price in gold for a table set out with a white cloth, and a waitress in a white apron and a clean pair of hands to bring on the chuck and ask how many lumps of sugar would I have in the. . . .”
“Who got him?” interrupted another.
“Why, nobody but that Ban Petersen,” Lynn Tucker stated with fury in his voice. “He’s gonna be got, is Ban Petersen, and he’s gonna be got good.”
“He’s ridin’ us,” said another.
“They say he keeps a special picture gallery in his hometown jail, all filled with our pictures.”
“I’d like to make a fire of them pictures and toast Ban on the top of the pile.”
“What’s gonna be done?” demanded another.
Tankerton raised his head a little, and, although he kept his voice quiet, every other sound and movement instantly ceased throughout the room.
“What’s going to be done?” he asked acidly. “Why, no doubt you have an idea, Jeff. You want something to be done, of course. I expect all of you to have brilliant ideas. When you go out and get yourselves tangled in barbed wire, you are always able to get out. You don’t clamor for me then and expect me to come. You don’t blame me and your own luck if I can’t get you free without tearing your clothes and pricking the skin. No, by heaven!” said Tankerton, his lips growing stiff with passion
. “When you’re well and flush, there’s no thought of Tankerton, the slave driver. You go off as Oscar Chelton did. You throw yourselves over a cliff, and you expect me to be standing by beneath, ready to catch you.” He snapped his fingers in careless fashion. “I’m tired of being nursemaid to a crew of halfwits,” he said, and sternly ended his speech.
The others did not rebel against this sweeping condemnation, but they looked studiously down at their plates, avoiding the eyes of their leader, even avoiding the eyes of their table companions.
When this had gone on for a few moments, there still remained a silence over the table, which was broken by the sound of angrily disputing voices.
“There’s our Beatrice at it with young Furneaux again,” said Dr. Legges. “If they keep it up, it will have to be a case either of marriage or of murder.”
Dunmore could hear the voices clearly as they disputed. Young Furneaux was making no effort to keep his temper or his voice within bounds, but he exclaimed bitterly: “You’ve made a fool of me again, Beatrice! This is the last time. You’ve tricked me and dodged me because you’re tired of having me around. Well, I’ll never bother you again that way. I’m through with this absurd business, I tell you.”
“You won’t listen to me,” said the girl. “You’re simply trying to make something out of nothing.”
“Is it nothing to ramble half a day through the woods, shouting for you?”
“Dear Rod,” said the girl, “how I wish I could have heard you.”
“I suppose you do, but this is the last time that I’ll be such an ass as to think that you can treat any man as a serious friend.”
“Hush! They’ll hear you inside the chuck house.”
“What if they do? They’ve known for weeks that I’ve been raving mad about you. It’s one of their great jokes.”
The girl appeared in the doorway, and, as all heads turned toward her, Dunmore saw her wink broadly upon the crew, as though to invite them into her confidence.
“Uncle Jim,” she appealed to Tankerton, “here’s Rodman saying that I’m a liar, and I don’t know what else. Are you going to sit by and listen to such things?”
“Of course, I am,” answered Tankerton. “Because he’s right, and you know he’s right.”
“Harder for you to tell the truth, Beatrice,” said one of the men, “than it is for a snake to make a straight trail on the ground.”
“There you are,” said the girl, taking her place at the right hand of Tankerton. “Every one of you hates me, and every one of you slanders me. I’m going away. I simply won’t stay here.”
“Why, honey,” broke in a Southern drawl, “the heat you raise would melt yo’se’f right out of any other place but this.”
Furneaux went gloomily to a chair and jerked it back, looking to right and to left as though he would have welcomed trouble on either hand. Then he sat down.
He looked somewhat like his Aunt Elizabeth. There was the same lean, aristocratic face, the same pride, the same bright, clear eyes. No other at that table seemed worthy of being placed beside young Furneaux, and Dunmore could not regret that he had come to win such a fellow back to an honest life. But though the task seemed worthwhile, it also appeared trebly difficult the instant that he laid eyes on the boy. It would be like guiding a hawk in the middle air to attempt to handle this lad.
The girl, in the meantime, by no means had given up her attack upon Furneaux, but Dunmore, carefully watching, saw her eyes rest more than once half sadly, half dreamily upon the face of Rod. The instant the latter became aware of her gaze, she pretended confusion, dropped her glance, and talked busily with Tankerton. Presently Furneaux was neglecting his food and looking straight before him into vacancy. Dunmore smiled. It was plain that she had won him back again.
“And now for Chelton, boys,” Tankerton stated suddenly. “How are we to help him? Let’s have ideas.”
Legges said instantly: “Why, Jim, there’s your man. He’s so careful to keep us out of drafts that he’ll be sure to nearly break his heart to keep any of us out of prison. Let Dunmore handle the job.”
TWENTY-TWO
Sheriff Ban Petersen had two qualities that were invaluable in his profession. In the first place, he knew how to shoot straight. In the second place, he had no sense of humor. In all men who laugh, there is a strain of the easy-going, and those who go easily, gently through life are not always prepared for the worst that they may find in the human nature of others. It was very different with Sheriff Ban Petersen. He was always ready to look to the bottom of any problem of crime, and no motive was too small or too mean to escape the keen eye of the sheriff.
In the same manner, he never thought that any jail was “safe enough.” He trusted in this world nothing but himself, and the result was a career that grew more and more brilliant. But of all that he had done, nothing promised so much for him as the bit of luck that made him the captor of that famous member of a famous band—Oscar Chelton. Good fortune had thrown Chelton into his hands, and the sheriff was determined that nothing on earth should get him away. Having got his man, it only needed that the sheriff should deliver him at the right place. Thereafter, his name would be among the immortals. He could be sheriff forever, and no man would dare to run against him. But that was only true if he kept Chelton from slipping through his hands.
In this case, he did not depend upon himself alone, but he occupied the rear of the smoking car on the train with his prisoner and a hand-picked posse of six men. They were mountain men, these, and they were armed, therefore, not with revolvers but with rifles. For his own part, the sheriff had not much faith in revolvers when they were used by anyone less expert than himself, or a Tankerton, say. Rifles were the safe bet.
“A slow shot but a sure shot is what we want,” he was fond of saying.
But even with the prisoner manacled to his own left arm, and with six hardy riflemen about him, the sheriff was not perfectly at ease, but examined every platform of every station that the local passed through, searching for suspicious faces in the groups that were often standing there.
The curious, from time to time, came back into the smoking car, and the sheriff regarded all these intruders with an intense interest. He would have been very glad to have the smoking car entirely to himself, but, since this could not be, he had to content himself with warning the passengers to keep three seats away from him and his armed escort. Even so, he sometimes unfastened Chelton from his arm, clamped the manacle to the side of the seat, and went forward to assess any man who appeared to him a possible danger.
It was at one of the smallest flag stations that the blind man got on board. Even this fellow the sheriff insisted upon examining, while the posse smiled covertly. For it would have been hard to imagine a more decrepit case of invalidism than this. The old fellow came well bent over, with a grizzly stubble of beard an inch or so long on his face, looking as though it had been trimmed with sheep shears. Dark glasses covered his eyes; his trousers were a sort of rusty green-black, and the frayed seat had been literally patched with sacking, stitched in with sack-sewer’s yarn. His boots were very old, and, because one foot was troubled with rheumatism, perhaps, the toe of that boot had been cut away and the foot protruded, wrapped in a dusty rag. He carried a stout stick, as well to feel his way as to support him in stepping, but even with it, his sight seemed so completely gone that he could not have made progress except for the boy who led him along. He was as ragged as his elder, but he was as blithe and chipper as a sparrow and seemed to be winking at the world to invite it to join him in laughter at the poor old derelict.
However, no sooner had these two steered to a seat than the sheriff disengaged himself from his prisoner, and, going to these two, he said: “Who are you, partner?”
The blind man cupped a hand at his ear and barked in a screeching voice that rang through the entire car: “Hey?”
The sheriff started. The posse and the other passengers laughed loudly, and perhaps it was this, or perhaps beca
use he really had detected something in the appearance of the old man that made him suspicious, but at any rate the sheriff at once plucked the glasses from the face of the other.
The old fellow raised a hand to shade his eyes, as though whatever bits of life remained in them were dazzled by the sudden radiance in which he found himself, and the sheriff leaned over and squinted sharply at him.
“Sonny, sonny, what might it be?” quavered the old man.
The sheriff replaced the glasses he had just removed.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, “but you got a mighty young-lookin’ pair of eyes to go with the rest of your make-up. How old are you?”
“Hey?” screamed the old man again, leaning closer with his hand cupped behind his ear.
The sheriff started back a step, thrust away by that horribly raucous voice. “You, kid,” he said to the grinning boy, “what’s his name?”
“Pop Cumberland is his name.”
“What does Pop stand for?”
“Grandpop.”
“What’s his first name?”
“I dunno. His old friends they all call him Squinty, and Gramma, she called him Josh.”
“Joshua Cumberland,” translated the sheriff. “Where you come from, kid?”
“Up the Kilrainie, in the hills, where Cousin Jack has a place with. . . .”
“Whatcha doin’ away down here?”
“When Pop started for Tulma, Cousin Jack, he said it’s be better to break the trip by stoppin’ off at Cousin Maggie’s down here at. . . .”
“You drove down?”
“Cousin Jack, he was sending down the wagon to cart back some two-by-fours for the buildin’ of a new corral, because Jack, he’s gonna catch mustangs for the market next year and he wanted to yard ’em up where they wouldn’t. . . .”
