by Max Brand
“I don’t want to hear it!” she cried at him. “Oh, Carrick Dunmore,” she added, softening her voice with a wonderful suddenness, “you’re only playing with me, but you won’t really be cruel as this, I know.” Dexterously she had swung the stallion closer, and, touching the arm of Dunmore, with parted lips and appealing eyes, she looked upon him like a child to its elder.
“Well, well,” said Dunmore. “I can see how it is. This friend of yours is some old woman with a nacherally mean disposition. Some old aunt, likely, that’d clean go wild if she was to see that you wasn’t wearin’ the ring, eh?”
“It’s worse even than that,” she said eagerly, feeling that he was softening a bit.
“Don’t you worry none, though. You can tell her that you left it behind you at the camp, and there ain’t any danger of her seein’ it on my hand. I never bother that sort of folk much. Why, I’d hate to think of grievin’ you any, Beatrice.”
“I know you would,” she agreed heartily. “Such a fellow as you are, Carrick, couldn’t be half a hero.”
“Why, thanks,” he said.
“I thought for a moment that you were angry because my quirt happened to strike poor Excuse Me on the face. I was dreadfully sorry about that. I wouldn’t have claimed the race after that, even if I had won. You don’t doubt that, Carrick, I’m sure?”
“Why,” said Dunmore, “I wouldn’t doubt you for anything in the world. Of course, you wouldn’t’ve claimed it.”
“So you’re not cross with me, Carrick?”
“Me? Not a mite.”
“Then you’ll listen to reason, I know. You won’t let me down in this way. You . . . I’ll . . . we’ll have a fair man, one that knows stones, put a value on it. We’ll double that value. I’ll pay you every penny, but, for heaven’s sake, don’t keep the ring.”
“Now, there you are, all excited,” said Dunmore gently. “All excited and worked up, and about nothin’ at all. Why, I’d give you this here in a minute, if it wouldn’t be that would keep you from learnin’ that mountains can be made out of molehills. But that’s the fact. Dog-gone me if it don’t cut me up to hear the way that you carry on over this, Beatrice. That’s the only reason in the world that I’d keep it from you. Just for your own good.”
She struck her hands desperately together and her eyes wandered as though in search of another thought. Then she stared back at Dunmore. “Are you serious?” she asked him. “Do you think that it’s only a joke? I tell you, if you take that ring back to the camp, and, if you show it on your hand, there’ll be a murder.”
“Tush! Really?” said Dunmore.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, believe me,” said the girl. “If you won’t give it back to me, keep it safe in your wallet. Never tell a soul that you have it. Swear that you’ll do that?”
“Would it comfort you?” he asked her.
“Yes, yes! Will you promise that?”
“Reminds me,” he said, “of that story about the gent that had the Mackinaw with his luck all wrapped up in it. This here gent was by name of Jim Loyd. Likely you’ve heard of him?”
“No . . . I never heard of him . . . I don’t care, but I don’t want to be rude . . . only, will you promise?”
“You’ll see that this is right to the point. This here fellow Loyd, he was bein’ chased for a matter of liftin’ a couple hundred cows, now and then, and finally for borrowing a hoss. He got chased all the way across eleven hundred miles of mountain-desert. Well, sir, all that way he wore an old plaid Mackinaw. It was winter, and it served him pretty good to turn the edge of the wind. Got to feelin’ that his luck was all wrapped up in it. Never left it off, day or night, and, while he had it on, nobody ever could put a bullet into him. Well, sir, he was ridin’ south and south, and pretty soon he come to a warm night, and the stars all out, and a south wind a-fannin’ at him. So he peeled off his coat and rolled it into a blanket with the Mackinaw bunched under his head for a pillow. You listen, now, to what happened.”
She bit her lip, but instantly forced herself to nod and smile.
“Right there that same night, a voice hollered to him . . . ‘Jim Loyd, stand up an’ fill your hand!’ He jumped up, with a pair of guns, and missed his mark, and got shot right through the heart. And all because he left off his luck.”
“That’s a wonderful story,” she said. “I don’t know how you could have heard it, but. . . .”
“Why, I was the gent that had follered him the eleven hundred miles, because of him liftin’ an old hoss of mine. A cuttin’ hoss, at that. He lived about three seconds after I’d shot him. And he spoke to say it was the Mackinaw that had killed him, for leavin’ it off.”
“Carrick,” said the girl, “it’s a very strange story, but . . . I don’t see what it has to do with this case.”
“Don’t you, now?” said his smooth and genial voice. “Now, I’ll show you. Here’s this ring that just fits right into my eye. I can see that it’s my luck. Yes, sir, if that ring wasn’t meant for me, I never would’ve chanced to win the race, with Gunfire goin’ so strong, and such a handy rider on his back. Now, suppose that after gettin’ that ring, I was to just drop it into my pocket. Suppose I wasn’t to wear it where a ring’s supposed to be worn, why, there’d be a mess of trouble, wouldn’t there? The ring would go back on me and change all of my luck. Which I guess you wouldn’t wish on me, Beatrice, would you?”
Her eyes flared at him as though she would have wished him reduced to a heap of ashes at that moment, but again she controlled herself. “I don’t want to think that you’re joking with me,” she said. “You aren’t, Carrick, are you? You won’t refuse me when I beg you, with all my heart, to please give it back to me? Don’t you see that I’m not being foolish? Oh, as sure as there’s a heaven over us, there will be bloodshed if you wear that ring into the camp.”
“It plumb cuts me up to see you all so excited,” he told her.
“I’m not being foolish and hysterical,” she vowed to him. “I . . . I. . . .” Self-pity choked her suddenly, and the tears rushed into her eyes.
“There, there,” said Dunmore. “Poor girl, I can see the way it is. You been prizin’ this here ring for a long time. Now you look it here. Here’s my quirt that I got down in Mexico City. . . .”
“Yes?” she said, making a desperate effort to control herself and to show further interest in this rambling talker.
“Got it from a fine and high gentleman down there that was mighty rich and went in for fine fixin’s on his hoss, and self. Except that his way of usin’ his guns was a mite old-fashioned . . . he was a mighty bright gent, I can tell you. From him I got this quirt. You see that it’s got a fine big sapphire in the handle of it? Now, I’ll tell you. You can have this quirt to make up for the ring. If you were to wallop a hoss with this, it’d cut him right to the bone, supposing that the cut came across his face, say, in the middle of a race.”
Suddenly she understood. She jerked back Gunfire so strongly that he reared with a snort, and landed prancing. “You . . . you contemptible . . . you bully!” she panted at Dunmore, and she whirled her horse onto the back trail for the camp.
So it happened that for the first time she caught sight of young Jimmy Larren upon whose face the smile was still lingering. She rushed Gunfire to him as though she would trample him to the ground—Jimmy dodged behind the tree. “You mischief-making rascal!” cried the girl. “You’re behind all this, in some way. If you ever dare to show your face in the camp again, I’ll have you stripped and whipped! Do you hear?” Off she shot down the road on the stallion, cutting him again and again with the quirt, until he bounded high in the air with the pain of the whip strokes.
Jimmy, issuing from behind the tree, rubbed his chin as he looked after her. The mustang, coming out behind him, took his hat by the crown and playfully lifted it, but the boy paid no heed to this. His mind was intent on the vanishing form down the road.
“Look what kind of luck that I’ve got,” he said to Dunmore. “I’ve lost
my friend that got me into the camp, and now I’m kicked back into Cousin Bill’s butcher shop. I can sure feel the ache of the bones that I’ll have after he gets through whangin’ me for the first month.”
“You’d have to go back to him, eh?”
“I dunno where else. Bill’ll be glad to see me. Why, his mouth’ll fair water as I come prancin’ through the door. I can fair see the tears in his eyes as he kicks the door shut and reaches for my neck. Cousin Bill, he must be kind of fat and all out of exercise, since I left him in the lurch, chief.”
Dunmore nodded. “You’ll stay here,” he assured.
The boy looked wistfully at him. “No,” he said. “She’s gonna make you trouble enough, account of the ring, without her having to have another excuse like me.”
“You’ll stay with me,” said Dunmore quietly. “Why, Jimmy, I wouldn’t know how to get on without you.” He dropped his hand on the lad’s shoulder as he spoke, and the eyes of Jimmy, as he looked up, suddenly widened, grew bright.
“Jiminy,” he said. “Jiminy Christmas!”
THIRTY-ONE
Straight and slender, desperate of eye, Beatrice stood before Tankerton in her own cabin, her back against the door, her hand grasping the knob of it, as though to make sure that he would not leave until she had spoken her mind to him.
“And I hate him!” she ended her story.
“Well, Beatrice, I don’t love him particularly, for my part,” said Tankerton.
“The smiling, sneaking, oily, smooth, detestable hypocrite and liar!” she cried. “I loathe him! If he stays in this camp, I leave it! I won’t stay another minute if he’s here!”
“Tut, tut,” he said. “You’re being desperate about things that are not so very important.”
“Not important!” she cried. “But poor young Furneaux. Suppose he sees the ring on Carrick Dunmore’s finger? He. . . .”
“Well?”
“He’ll fight, of course.”
“It’s unlucky,” said Tankerton. “I’ve explained to you that Furneaux is a man I want to have with me. But . . . in that case he’ll simply die young.”
“He won’t!” said the girl fiercely. “He’ll . . . he’ll . . . he’ll kill that smiling villain, that soft-voiced sneak. He’ll kill him, James! He’ll kill him, I know. Fate wouldn’t let such a scoundrel kill a fine fellow like Rod.”
He did not answer, but remained gravely watching her and her excitement.
The effect of that steady gaze was enough in itself, without the use of words, for suddenly she threw out both her hands. “What will you do, James?You’re not going to stand by and let Rodman Furneaux be murdered?”
His eyebrows lifted curiously. “Do you care a great deal for that boy?” he asked.
“Care for him? Of course, I care for him. He’s so clean and straight as a a whistle, and there never was such a boy in the camp before. Are you going to let him be wiped out by that juggler, that worthless, useless Dunmore?”
Tankerton’s lips pinched. What he had feared long before was that someone in the camp, this sharp-eyed girl above all the rest, would be able to guess, before the end, that Dunmore was not there on Tankerton’s invitation, but had forced himself into the band. If that were known, Tankerton’s own authority would be shattered to the ground. There was only one reply that he could make. He said: “Beatrice, you know that I like to please you.”
“Ah, I know what you’re going to say!” she cried. “You’ll give me good clothes, you’ll be gay and cheerful, and all that, you’ll give me nice horses, too . . . but when it comes to anything important, I’m not to be counted. What I want makes no difference.”
Tankerton drew a quick breath. “Dunmore,” he said, “is the most valuable man who ever came to these mountains. He’s the straightest shot, the steadiest nerve, and the strongest hand. Do you think I can drive him away for the sake of a youngster like Furneaux? If Furneaux is going to make a scene, then Furneaux will die.”
She wrung her hands in excess of despair and grief. “Jim, Jim, you don’t see. I don’t want to think that you’re cold-blooded, but if Furneaux is killed, his blood is on my hands . . . and on yours, on yours! You told me to do what I did.”
Tankerton paused before answering. He could see the perfect logic of what she had said, and finally he nodded. “I’m going to do something,” he said. “I don’t yet know quite what. But I’ll do something. . . .”
His hand slipped inside his coat in his moment of absent-mindedness. She knew that it had touched the handle of a gun before it appeared again. A blur of misery crossed her mind. She saw, as it were, the flashing of revolvers and the roar of the guns.
“I can’t stand it,” said the girl. “I’m going to choke . . . I can’t breathe.” And she fled from the house suddenly into the open air. There, straight across the clearing before her eyes, she saw Jimmy Larren sauntering, carrying a bucket and whistling as he went along. That sight kindled her rage. She had been speaking of men, strong and dangerous men, but that a snip of a boy should have dared to disobey her in this camp was too much for endurance.
“Harry!” she called to one of the three men who sat beneath an adjoining tree, playing stud poker. “Harry, will you catch that little demon for me? I’m going to give him a lesson.”
Harry, young, lithe, graceful as a panther, leaped to his feet, and dashed at Larren with a laugh, glad to please Tankerton’s princess.
But Jimmy did not run. He merely turned with his usual complacent swagger and held out the bucket. “All right, Harry,” he said. “You runnin’ to help carry this here bran mash to Dunmore’s hoss?”
Harry, hand outstretched for the boy’s collar, checked himself in mid-rush. “Dunmore’s hoss?” he asked rather breathlessly. “You his errand-boy, Jimmy?”
“That’s the job that he’s give me,” said Jimmy carelessly. “But maybe he could use two, if you wanna help?”
“Run along, kid,” said Harry. “I didn’t know you was workin’ for Dunmore.” He turned, scowling at the ground, refusing to look into the white and scornful face of the girl. “Kid b’longs to Dunmore,” he said slowly. “You better get Dunmore to take charge of him, then.”
She did not answer. She did not even appeal to any of the others beneath that tree, because she could see by the intentness with which they looked at their cards and refused to glance at her that they would have answered in the same manner. Every man in that camp, she could guess, dreaded Carrick Dunmore little less than he feared the actual cold of death. She felt stripped of power, empty of hand, for the first time since she had stepped into a sort of mountain throne with these young desperadoes for subjects. She was baffled. She could not understand. Yet, as she looked into her mind, she could see that there was an actual difference between Dunmore and all the others who made up the membership of Tankerton’s men. Because she recognized that difference, she hated him the more.
At the side, as she moved slowly away, conscious of the grim and guilty looks of the men behind her, she saw Tankerton come out of the shack and start walking across the clearing. She glanced in the direction he was taking, and there she saw Carrick Dunmore in a group of laughing and admiring men. He was juggling half a dozen brilliant red apples that had just been brought to the camp that day, and they flowed up from his hands and hung winking and spinning in the sun. They seemed to form different designs in the air; they seemed to drop of their own volition into the hands of the magician. Dunmore began to whistle, and, as he whistled, he danced.
She stopped short and watched him with wonder. She knew that he was a heavy man, solid as lead, otherwise that mighty strength that amazed and disheartened other men could not have been lodged in his limbs. But when he danced, he seemed to float lightly, easily. It was almost as though the unseen beat of wings supported him. His dancing kept the time of his whistle, and the apples flowed up and down in rhythm with both.
The cowpunchers around the performer began to laugh and cheer. They picked up the tune. They shou
ted and whistled it in unison. They beat their hands together to give a stronger pulse to the rhythm. They swirled here and there. . . . Like moths around a flame, Beatrice could not help thinking, a flame that might singe and shrivel them to the heart, if it ever so much as touched them.
Then something moved nearby. It was Tankerton, who had remained rooted to the spot for a moment, watching the juggling and its effect upon his band. Now he went forward with a set jaw, and she knew what it meant. He was going to try conclusions with his new gang man upon the spot.
She called to him softly: “James!”
He wavered, then stopped, and came back to her. “What is it, Beatrice?” he asked, his eyes absently wandering beyond her.
“I know what you’ve got in mind,” she said.
“Well?”
“You’re going to start for Dunmore now. You’re going to fight him, James.”
He drew his glance down from the distance and centered it upon her. She saw that he was pale, although his eyes were as chilled steel.
“I can’t have any man bullying you,” he said. “You’ve practically asked me to get rid of him.”
“With a gun?”
“Well, how else?”
She went closer to him. “I’d like to know what happened in Harper’s hotel? What happened when you met him there.”
“I got in the first shot, if that’s what you mean,” he said.
“And then what happened?”
“No matter, Beatrice. We became fast friends. At any rate, we shook hands. Nobody had received a scratch.”
“You missed? At close range like that?”
“It’s a thing that I can’t tell you about. I’ve said that before. You’ll have to believe me, and, besides, that has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, but it has,” she insisted. “If it weren’t for that, I’d be glad to see you go at him.”
“Do you think he’s my master?” he asked her.
“I think that he’s not a man at all but a fiend,” she said, answering him indirectly. Then she added: “Look me straight in the eye, Jim. You know that you’d rather meet any three others at once than that single man. Come back with me. We’ll take a walk. Don’t jump over a cliff . . . don’t run against a strong wall. There’s no use in that.”
