Blue Kingdom

by Max Brand

  The firing instantly increased in volume. Across the threshold of the door and against the window, a steady succession of bullets plunged. That was to keep him from trying to break away in the dimness caused by the rainstorm. He had other troubles within the shack, for with a sudden crashing, the stove, battered by many bullets, lurched to the floor. The room filled with smoke and steam. Scattered embers rolled everywhere, and he had to become a firefighter.

  With a blanket, he thrashed right and left, and stamped out the bigger fragments. He won, but a stifling mist had filled the room. He could hardly breathe in it, and through that the wasp sounds of the bullets still were darting everywhere. A knife thrust, it seemed, raked his left side—such a wound as Jimmy had received.

  Dunmore sat down with a sudden sense that he was lost, indeed, that moment.

  “The cabin’s on fire!” he heard a voice yelling—the voice of Tankerton. “Charge him, boys!”

  “Charge him yourself!” answered a bass roar. “Let the fire take care of him.”

  Dunmore tore off his coat. He did not wait to draw his shirt and underwear over his head, but the tough cloth parted like paper under his mighty fingertips. He was naked to the waist, and, fumbling through the confusion of the cabin, he found on the bunk the remnants of his roll of bandages. Around his body he passed a thick, binding arm of cloth and tied it tight. He could have laughed as he performed that operation, but the strong grip of the cloth numbed the pain and left him more at ease. It would make him more fit for the final moment of his life, for he intended, when the weakness from his wounds increased upon him, to fling out the door and rush the enemy. If he could get to them and die fighting hand to hand, that would be the vital comfort for his end. The fierce thought of it warmed all his blood.

  The darkness increased. It was one of those mountain storms during which the clouds seem to be built like the ranges over which they were floating—a league-thick belt of densest moisture. All starlight, all moonshine had disappeared. The night became blacker and blacker.

  But still the rifle fire continued. They had spotted the window and the door, and such a steady flow of bullets swept at those vital points that it was impossible for any creature to pass through the stream unmaimed.

  There was another possibility, however. With the shovel, he enlarged the hole of his trench, found foundation logs, and in a few minutes, had mined beneath them. Once the hole was open, he thrust his head up into the open air, and ducked again as a rifle spat fire not ten strides away from the cover of a fallen log. He heard the bullet hum over his head and felt sure that he was seen. But when he raised a broken section of board, it did not draw the enemy’s fire. No, the man had been blazing away blindly at the house.

  Dunmore crawled back into the house to consider for a moment. He went for a last tour of the loopholes, peering anxiously into the mist on every side, until it seemed to him that something stirred to the south of the building. Aye, three forms suddenly loomed, running hard toward him, not twenty feet away, as it seemed.

  He fired point-blank. It was death, he knew, as he curled his finger on the trigger. The middle man of the trio bounded into the air with arms and legs spread-eagled. His yell stabbed the brain of Dunmore like a blinding flash of light. That cry was cut off in the middle, and the body dropped heavily to the earth, while the two companions, shouting with terror, turned and bolted. In half a second, the gray penciling of the rain had entirely covered them from view.

  He went back to the trench and lay curled there, while the outburst of revengeful fire that he had expected beat upon the shack. During this, his hands were not idle. He was lashing a revolver to a piece of wood. To the trigger of the gun, he attached one end of a big ball of string. This ball he next passed through the mouth of a large loophole and let it fall on the outside. The gun itself he then fixed with the muzzle protruding from the loophole, securing it safely there by means of the board that already had been tied to the handles. After that, he was ready for his great experiment.

  He returned to his mine beneath the wall of the house and crawled out, secured the fallen ball of string, and began to wriggle forward toward the log nearby. He had hardly started when the rifleman fired again. Dunmore lay flat, then tugged the string. Behind him, the revolver banged. His plan had worked almost too well, for the bullet actually skimmed the hair of his head.

  He went on. He pressed himself into the mud and worked as a snake would work, but holding now in his right hand a heavy Colt. Not for firing. It must serve him as a club now. Then, when he was hardly a half arm’s distance from the log, the pale gleam of the rifle and the dark outline of the sharpshooter’s head appeared again. Were there two men behind the log? If so, his plan was totally spoiled, but he had to take that chance, and, as the rifleman’s head raised, Dunmore struck with the butt of the revolver.

  It barely reached not the head but the face of the other. He pitched back, with a cry, but the blow had so stunned him that even his cry was faint. The next instant Dunmore was across the log like a wildcat and had the fellow by the throat.

  FORTY-TWO

  There was murderous force in the hands of Dunmore, for his own life depended on his ability to dispose of the man without allowing him to make a sound, but, as he grappled with him, he recognized, as he thought, something in the face of the other in spite of the dimness of the light. He jerked the man closer till his face was a scant inch away. It was Chelton.

  Already the outlaw had forgotten all gratitude to the man who had saved him from a death by hanging. He struggled furiously, tearing at the hands of Dunmore, and beating at his wounded face. But in a moment that throttling grasp had done its work. Chelton lay still. He was not dead. He breathed with a faint, harsh rattle in his throat, and Dunmore poised a revolver like a club to strike a final blow, but he could not. At least for some moments Chelton would lie here in the rain incapable of speech or motion, and Dunmore decided to leave him where he lay, unharmed.

  The hardest portion of his work lay before him. Once more he found the twine, tugged at it, and instantly the gun at the loophole spat fire behind him. He took note of that and crawled on. Soon the rim of the trees was not far away. Then twice he pulled on the twine, and twice the gun far behind him barked. He actually heard the bullets cut their way through the branches above him.

  Then came an oath, and half a dozen shots in rapid succession from a rifleman who fired from the cover of a tree just before him. Dunmore stood up and ran forward.

  The muzzle of a rifle struck his breast.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Chelton, you simpleton,” said Dunmore. “It’s too close work, out there. Tankerton can have that place behind the log for himself, it he wants it.”

  The rifle was removed, and the outlaw muttered: “Looks like that Dunmore can see in the dark. But why’s he usin’ a revolver at that distance?”

  “If you wanna find out, go up and ask him,” growled Dunmore, and strode away.

  He saw other shadowy forms crouched behind the trees, peering through the blindness of the rain, but he himself was behind the lines. If only Chelton did not give the alarm at once. Now that he was through the greatest peril, he paused to slick off with his hands some of the mud that covered him. As he paused, he thought again of the work that he had attempted and that apparently had failed in his hands. By a miracle, he was safe for a moment. What if he could strike one more blow?

  A light flared farther back among the trees, and toward it he went. The rays were broken, passing through the rain; they dazzled the eyes of Dunmore as he came closer, cautiously stealing from tree to tree, but, at last, he saw the sleek, glistening forms of horses. Next he heard voices, and finally he was in secure covert between a bush and a tree, looking out upon the main council of his enemies.

  Legges and Tankerton were there. At one side was Jimmy Larren, with Beatrice Kirk and old Dodd taking care of him. Gunfire was stamping impatiently, but Excuse Me, as though she cared not for the fate of her master, p
lucked at the green tips of some shrubbery contentedly. Furneaux was cinching a saddle upon the back of a fine bay gelding.

  “What’ll you do?” Legges was asking.

  “Rush the cabin,” said Furneaux curtly.

  “You’ll use up half a dozen men, if you do,” said the doctor. “Tucker’s dead already . . . and Dunmore apparently can see clearly enough even in this light.”

  “If he’s in there another half hour, the fox will find some way to get out,” snapped Furneaux. “He can’t escape! He’s got to die. You hear, Beatrice?”

  He turned on the girl, brutally. But Dunmore could see that his face was pinched and wrung with anguish.

  She was on her knees at that moment beside Jimmy. At Furneaux’s words, she started up and turned on the speaker. She said nothing. No words were needed to reinforce the white contempt and scorn that shone in her face, and Furneaux turned away with a twisted mouth of pain.

  “I’m on the rounds again. Will you walk ’em with me, Legges?”

  “Glad to,” said the doctor, and the two went off together.

  “You see how it is, Beatrice,” said Tankerton calmly.

  “I know that he’s as good as dead,” she answered steadily. “But I hope that he makes some of you know him still better before he dies.”

  “My dear,” said Tankerton, “this interest you’re taking in him doesn’t worry me. It’s a child’s romantic interest, and you’ll be laughing at the memory of it yourself inside of another month.”

  She did not answer. For out from the shadow of a tree she saw a dreadful form appear. It was Dunmore, naked to the hips, except for the red-stained bandages that girded his body, plastered with mud, and with the blood slowly rolling down from the wound on his face, which had been broken open again during his struggle with Chelton. He came from behind Tankerton, and in the full light of the fire he paused, gun in hand.

  “Tankerton,” he said quietly.

  The outlaw gasped, and spun like a frightened cat, stooping low and bringing out his gun as he swung about. No man beneath the sky could have moved faster. His side leap made the first bullet fly wide of the mark, but Dunmore’s second shot roared as Tanker-ton’s own weapon spoke for the first time.

  A whiplash mark of crimson sprang out on the naked side of Dunmore, but he saw Tankerton stagger, and held his fire.

  The gun dropped from the chief’s hand. He made a few staggering steps forward with an oddly blank face, then sank to one knee. He coughed, and red bubbled on his lips.

  Beatrice instantly was beside him. It was into her arms that he tipped sidewise and then—fell prostrate. He lived for a single second, muttering: “Marry him, Beatrice. He has the only hand that’s strong enough to hold you.” One convulsive shudder jerked his body, and then he lay still, smiling at the rain that streaked into his face.

  “Hello!” called the voice of Furneaux from the distance. Dunmore caught Beatrice from the ground, where she kneeled, weeping like a child. With a sway of his strong arms, he lifted her into the saddle on Gunfire.

  “Hello!” called Furneaux, coming closer. “Do you hear me, Tankerton?”

  “Go it, go it, chief. I knowed they’d never beat you,” said Jimmy Larren.

  On Excuse Me, Dunmore was already away through the trees, with the volleying rain crashing into his face, washing the mud from his body. They dipped into a narrow gully, and they were in the midst of it when a ringing clamor of voices broke out behind them. It seemed to Dunmore that he could hear the shouting and the cursing of Furneaux above the rest. Then they lost all the sound of the Tankertons in a fresh roaring of the wind that ripped away the clouds from before the moon and let its light through. Dunmore glanced at it with a wild emotion, for it seemed as though that bright moon had been covered merely to screen him in his escape and that now it shone again to illumine his way.

  The horses broke into a gallop on a level stretch. Through the trees they wound. Gusts of rain still rattled out of the sky, from time to time, and cut and hammered at Dunmore. But he knew that the miles were flowing rapidly behind him. He saw Beatrice rocked easily in the saddle on the stallion, always half a length before him, and the confidence of victory grew great in his heart.

  His blood no sooner had warmed with that sensation than a shuddering chill of weakness passed through him. It was as though all the vital power had drained out of his heart. He could understand it. He had lost enough blood to have been the death of a normal man. Even his own frame could not endure it. But he locked his teeth, and endured.

  The forest spilled away behind them. They rode out onto lower ground in the open with a sense of rushing into the brilliant heart of the moonlit sky. Then, beneath them, he saw the rolling of the foothills, and he saw the country of the range beyond like a mist.

  A warmth fell over his shoulders. It was a blanket thrown into place by Beatrice, and now she tied it securely. He blinked to see her more plainly, for a mist troubled him, like the breath upon a windowpane.

  “Are you very bad, Carrick?” she asked.

  “I’m well enough,” he told her.

  She said no more. They went on, knee to knee, down the trail that sloped and flowed among the hills. Sometimes he raised his head and turned it, hearkening for the sound of hoofs behind them, but never once was there alarm of that sort.

  His head began to spin; moments of utter mental lapse came. He roused from one of them to find that his knees had been lashed up with the saddle straps, and that Beatrice was riding close beside him. His weight had slumped heavily on her shoulder. Shame thrilled him back to life.

  “Seem to be mighty sleepy,” he whispered to her, and his lips were numb. He had to peer with effort to make out her face. The moon was gone. There was warmth in the air, a dazzle in the sky. It was the sun, and they had ridden out of the night into the full of day.

  The shock of this discovery made him take a brighter note of the things around them, and he saw with joy that they were actually on the road to the house of Elizabeth Furneaux. He had had enough of his wits during that dim night to enable him to keep to the trail.

  But here the landscape began to act in a strange fashion. The level ground heaved itself into soft swells, and these waves traveled around and around the horizon with increasing speed. He could no longer find Beatrice Kirk. She had disappeared! But her voice came sharp and strained with fear, out of the distance.

  “Old house on the right . . . above the trees . . . white . . . ,” said Dunmore, and then he bowed his head in the darkness and gripped the pommel with both hands.

  FORTY-THREE

  Dunmore dreamed that he was a bubble, floating high in the sky, with the sun shining through him. He roused a little from the dream, drifted slowly back to consciousness, and realized that it was not the warmth of the sun that he felt but the comfort of a soft bed. He heard the voices of two people in the distance—a man and a woman. They seemed to be walking toward him, but suddenly the voices were just beside his bed— Elizabeth Furneaux, and her nephew, Rodman.

  He would have opened his eyes, but they seemed weighted down with lead. Only his brain was awake, the rest of his body still heavy with slumber.

  “Aunt Elizabeth,” said the boy, “I don’t doubt what you’ve told me. But what could have made him tackle such a job as that? Certainly he didn’t give a rap about me . . . and you hardly had enough money to hire him for such a job.”

  “I had no money. I hired him with a shameful trick, Rod. I would have loathed myself, if the thing hadn’t worked out so well.”

  “A trick?”

  “You know the old panel in the library?”

  “Yes, of course. The old effigy, you mean?”

  “Well, Rod, I planned this thing with a good deal of care. I want you to take a look at the face of that effigy, and you’ll find that it looks like. . . .”

  “A donkey with a dead smile on its lips?” said the boy.

  “Not a whit! The fact is that I painted out the face of the effigy and paint
ed in a pretty fair likeness of Carrick Dunmore. Then I made up a little story for him, about that wild ancestor of ours, the one who went to Scotland from France in the days of the Bruce. I simply switched the names around and put in ones that fitted the new case. Before I got through, Carrick, here, was reasonably sure that he was the head of the family.”

  “Great Scott!” said Rodman Furneaux. “What . . . ?”

  “What will he do when he wakes up and finds out about the sham? I don’t know. Perhaps we can keep him from learning, ever. I’ll tell you what, Rodman, he wouldn’t be a bad head for this family, I should say.”

  There was a little pause, and then the youth replied: “He’s more man than I ever saw packed into one skin before. But he’ll be furious when he learns how he’s been tricked.”

  “Well, he has his reward, you know,” said Elizabeth Furneaux. “Do you really feel as sick as you look, when I say that?”

  “A little sick. But I’m learning to give up pretty fast. Of course, she couldn’t think much of me with such a man as that inside the horizon. How is she now?”

  “She’s sleeping. Worn out, poor child. What a beautiful girl, Rodman!”

  “Don’t rub it in,” he grumbled.

  “You’ll forget her in a month,” said his aunt.

  “Aye,” he said. “A month of hard work ought to rub out something. I’m going to pitch in.”

  “I think you will, Rodman.”

  “I swear I will. Aunt Elizabeth, you can’t imagine what shame I feel when I look at that fellow there on the bed and think what he’s been through for you, and all for nothing except your benefit and mine. I feel as though I’m only a half man.”

  “Do you think that’s a permanent change, Rod? Won’t the lure of the old, free life come back over you?”

  “How could it? The Tankertons are split to pieces. Legges tried to hold them. They killed him an hour after the old rascal tried to handle the reins. The rest of ’em are scattering fast, and the sheriff has gone up there. For the first time he’s got inside the stamping grounds of the Tankertons, and they’ll soon be pacified, I can tell you. We’ll have Jimmy Larren down here in a few hours, and he’ll be able to give us the latest news.”