The Rangeland Avenger - Max Brand
Somewhere behind his eyes there was a faint glint of humor. That was
the only soft touch about him. He was in that hard age between thirty
and thirty-five when people are still young, but have lost the
illusions of youth. And, indeed, that was exactly the word which people
in haste used to describe Riley Sinclair--"hard."
Having once resigned himself to the descent into that cramped country
beneath he at once banished all regret. First he picked out his
objective, a house some distance away, near the road, and then he
brought his mustang up on the bit with a touch of the spurs. Then,
having established the taut rein which he preferred, he sent the cow
pony down the slope. It was plain that the mustang hated its rider; it
was equally plain that Sinclair was in perfect touch with his horse,
what with the stern wrist pulling against the bit, and the spurs
keeping the pony up on it. In spite of his bulk he was not heavy in the
saddle, for he kept in tune with the gait of the horse, with that sway
of the body which lightens burdens. A capable rider, he was so
judicious that he seemed reckless.
Leaving the mountainside, he struck at a trot across a tableland. Some
mysterious instinct enabled him to guide the pony without glancing once
at the ground; for Sinclair, with his head high, was now carefully
examining the house before him. Twice a cluster of trees obscured it,
and each time, as it came again more closely in view, the eye of Riley
Sinclair brightened with certainty. At length, nodding slightly to
express his conviction, he sent the pony into the shelter of a little
grove overlooking the house. From this shelter, still giving half his
attention to his objective, he ran swiftly over his weapons. The pair
of long pistols came smoothly into his hands, to be weighed nicely, and
have their cylinders spun. Then the rifle came out of its case, and its
magazine was looked to thoroughly before it was returned.
This done, the rider seemed in no peculiar haste to go on. He merely
pushed the horse into a position from which he commanded all the
environs of the house; then he sat still as a hawk hovering in a
windless sky.
Presently the door of the little shack opened, and two men came out and
walked down the path toward the road, talking earnestly. One was as
tall as Riley Sinclair, but heavier; the other was a little, slight
man. He went to a sleepy pony at the end of the path and slowly
gathered the reins. Plainly he was troubled, and apparently it was the
big man who had troubled him. For now he turned and cast out his hand
toward the other, speaking rapidly, in the manner of one making a last
appeal. Only the murmur of that voice drifted up to Riley Sinclair, but
the loud laughter of the big man drove clearly to him. The smaller of
the two mounted and rode away with dejected head, while the other
remained with arms folded, looking after him.
He seemed to be chuckling at the little man, and indeed there was
cause, for Riley had never seen a rider so completely out of place in a
saddle. When the pony presently broke into a soft lope it caused the
elbows of the little man to flop like wings. Like a great clumsy bird
he winged his way out of view beyond the edge of the hilltop.
The big man continued to stand with his arms folded, looking in the
direction in which the other had disappeared; he was still shaking with
mirth. When he eventually turned, Riley Sinclair was riding down on him
at a sharp gallop. Strangers do not pass ungreeted in the mountain
desert. There was a wave of the arm to Riley, and he responded by
bringing his horse to a trot, then reining in close to the big man. At
close hand he seemed even larger than from a distance, a burly figure
with ludicrously inadequate support from the narrow-heeled riding
boots. He looked sharply at Riley Sinclair, but his first speech was
for the hard-ridden pony.
"You been putting your hoss through a grind, I see, stranger."
The mustang had slumped into a position of rest, his sides heaving.
"Most generally," said Riley Sinclair, "when I climb into a saddle it
ain't for pleasure--it's to get somewhere."
His voice was surprisingly pleasant. He spoke very deliberately, so
that one felt occasionally that he was pausing to find the right words.
And, in addition to the quality of that deep voice, he had an
impersonal way of looking his interlocutor squarely in the eye, a habit
that pleased the men of the mountain desert. On this occasion his
companion responded at once with a grin. He was a younger man than
Riley Sinclair, but he gave an impression of as much hardness as Riley
himself.
"Maybe you'll be sliding out of the saddle for a minute?" he asked.
"Got some pretty fair hooch in the house."
"Thanks, partner, but I'm due over to Sour Creek by night. I guess
that's Sour Creek over the hill?"
"Yep. New to these parts?"
"Sort of new."
Riley's noncommittal attitude was by no means displeasing to the larger
man. His rather brutally handsome face continued to light, as if he
were recognizing in Riley Sinclair a man of his own caliber.
"You're from yonder?"
"Across the mountains."
"You travel light."
His eyes were running over Riley's meager equipment. Sinclair had been
known to strike across the desert loaded with nothing more than a
rifle, ammunition, and water. Other things were nonessentials to him,
and it was hardly likely that he would put much extra weight on a
horse. The only concession to animal comfort, in fact, was the slicker
rolled snugly behind the saddle. He was one of those rare Westerners to
whom coffee on the trail is not the staff of life. As long as he had a
gun he could get meat, and as long as he could get meat, he cared
little about other niceties of diet. On a long trip his "extras" were
usually confined to a couple of bags of strength-giving grain for his
horse.
"Maybe you'd know the gent I'm down here looking for?" asked Riley.
"Happen to know Ollie Quade--Oliver Quade?"
"Sort of know him, yep."
Riley went on explaining blandly "You see, I'm carrying him a sort of a
death message."
"H'm," said the big man, and he watched Riley, his eyes grown suddenly
alert, his glance shifting from hand to face with catlike uncertainty.
"Yep," resumed Sinclair in a rambling vein. "I come from a gent that
used to be a pal of his. Name is Sam Lowrie."
"Sam Lowrie!" exclaimed the other. "You a friend of Sam's?"
"I was the only gent with him when he died," said Sinclair simply.
"Dead!" said the other heavily. "Sam dead!"
"You must of been pretty thick with him," declared Riley.
"Man, I'm Quade. Lowrie was my bunkie!"
He came close to Sinclair, raising an eager face. "How'd Lowrie go
out?"
"Pretty peaceful--boots off--everything comfortable."
"He give you a message for me?"
"Yep, about a gent called Sinclair--Hal Sinclair, I think it was."
Immediately he turned his eyes away, as if he were striving to
recollect accurately. Covertly he sent a side glance at Quade and found
him scowling suspiciously. When he turned his head again, his eye was
as clear as the eye of a child. "Yep," he said, "that was the name--Hal
Sinclair."
"What about Hal Sinclair?" asked Quade gruffly.
"Seems like Sinclair was on Lowrie's conscience," said Riley in the
same unperturbed voice.
"You don't say so!"
"I'll tell you what he told me. Maybe he was just raving, for he had a
sort of fever before he went out. He said that you and him and Hal
Sinclair and Bill Sandersen all went out prospecting. You got stuck
clean out in the desert, Lowrie said, and you hit for water. Then
Sinclair's hoss busted his leg in a hole. The fall smashed up
Sinclair's foot. The four of you went on, Sinclair riding one hoss, and
the rest of you taking turns with the third one. Without water the
hosses got weak, and you gents got pretty badly scared, Lowrie said.
Finally you and Sandersen figured that Sinclair had got to get off, but
Sinclair couldn't walk. So the three of you made up your minds to leave
him and make a dash for water. You got to water, all right, and in
three hours you went back for Sinclair. But he'd given up hope and shot
himself, sooner'n die of thirst, Lowrie said."
The horrible story came slowly from the lips of Riley Sinclair. There
was not the slightest emotion in his face until Quade rubbed his
knuckles across his wet forehead. Then there was the faintest jutting
out of Riley's jaw.
"Lowrie was sure raving," said Quade.
Sinclair looked carelessly down at the gray face of Quade. "I guess
maybe he was, but what he asked me to say was: 'Hell is sure coming to
what you boys done.'"
"He thought about that might late," replied Quade. "Waited till he
could shift the blame on me and Sandersen, eh? To hell with Lowrie!"
"Maybe he's there, all right," said Sinclair, shrugging. "But I've got
rid of the yarn, anyway."
"Are you going to spread that story around in Sour Creek?" asked Quade
softly.
"Me? Why, that story was told me confidential by a gent that was about
to go out!"
Riley's frank manner disarmed Quade in a measure.
"Kind of queer, me running on to you like this, ain't it?" he went on.
"Well, you're fixed up sort of comfortable up here. Nice little shack,
partner. And I suppose you got a wife and kids and everything? Pretty
lucky, I'd call you!"
Quade was glad of an opportunity to change the subject. "No wife yet!"
he said.
"Living up here all alone?"
"Sure! Why?"
"Nothing! Thought maybe you'd find it sort of lonesome."
Back to the dismissed subject Quade returned, with the persistence of a
guilty conscience. "Say," he said, "while we're talking about it, you
don't happen to believe what Lowrie said?"
"Lowrie was pretty sick; maybe he was raving. So you're all along up
here? Nobody near?"
His restless, impatient eye ran over the surroundings. There was not a
soul in sight. The mountains were growing stark and black against the
flush of the western sky. His glance fell back upon Quade.
"But how did Lowrie happen to die?"
"He got shot."
"Did a gang drop him?"
"Nope, just one gent."
"You don't say! But Lowrie was a pretty slick hand with a gun--next to
Bill Sandersen, the best I ever seen, almost! Somebody got the drop on
him, eh?"
"Nope, he killed himself!"
Quade gasped. "Suicide?"
"Sure."
"How come?"
"I'll tell you how it was. He seen a gent coming. In fact he looked out
of the window of his hotel and seen Riley Sinclair, and he figured that
Riley had come to get him for what happened to his brother, Hal. Lowrie
got sort of excited, lost his nerve, and when the hotel keeper come
upstairs, Lowrie thought it was Sinclair, and he didn't wait. He shot
himself."
"You seem to know a pile," said Quade thoughtfully.
"Well, you see, I'm Riley Sinclair." Still he smiled, but Quade was as
one who had seen a ghost.
"I had to make sure that you was alone. I had to make sure that you was
guilty. And you are, Quade. Don't do that!"
The hand of Quade slipped around the butt of his gun and clung there.
"You ain't fit for a gun fight right now," went on Riley Sinclair
slowly. "You're all shaking, Quade, and you couldn't hit the side of
the mountain, let alone me. Wait a minute. Take your time. Get all
settled down and wait till your hand stops shaking."
Quade moistened his white lips and waited.
"You give Hal plenty of time," resumed Riley Sinclair. "Since Lowrie
told me that yarn I been wondering how Hal felt when you and the other
two left him alone. You know, a gent can do some pretty stiff thinking
before he makes up his mind to blow his head off."
His tone was quite conversational.
"Queer thing how I come to blunder into all this information, partner.
I come into a room where Lowrie was. The minute he heard my name he
figured I was after him on account of Hal. Up he comes with his gun
like a flash. Afterward he told me all about it, and I give him a
pretty fine funeral. I'll do the same by you, Quade. How you feeling
now?"
"Curse you!" exclaimed Quade.
"Maybe I'm cursed, right enough, but, Quade, I'd let 'em burn me, inch
by inch in a fire, before I'd quit a partner, a bunkie in the desert!
You hear? It's a queer thing that a gent could have much pleasure out
of plugging another gent full of lead. I've had that pleasure once; and
I'm going to have it again. I'm going to kill you, Quade, but I wish
there was a slower way! Pull your gun!"
That last came out with a snap, and the revolver of Quade flicked out
of its holster with a convulsive jerk of the big man's wrist. Yet the
spit of fire came from Riley Sinclair's weapon, slipping smoothly into
his hand. Quade did not fall. He stood with a bewildered expression, as
a man trying to remember something hidden far in the past; and Sinclair
fingered the butt of his gun lightly and waited. It was rather a
crumbling than a fall. The big body literally slumped down into a heap.
Sinclair reached down without dismounting and pulled the body over on
its back.
"Because," he explained to what had been a strong man the moment
before, "when the devil comes to you, I want the old boy to see your
face, Quade! Git on, old boss!"
As he rode down the trail toward Sour Creek he carefully and deftly
cleaned his revolver and reloaded the empty chamber.
4
Perhaps, in the final analysis, Riley Sinclair would not be condemned
for the death of Lowrie or the killing of Quade, but for singing on the
trail to Sour Creek. And sing he did, his voice ringing from hill to
hill, and the echoes barking back to him, now and again.
He was not silent until he came to Sour Creek. At the head of the long,
winding, single street he drew the mustang to a tired walk. It was a
very peaceful moment in the little town Yonder a dog barked and a
coyote howled a thin answer far away, but, aside from these, all other
sounds were the happy noises of families at the end of a day. From
every house they floated out to him, the clamor of children, the deep
laughter of a man, the loud rattle of pans in the kitchen.
"This ain't so bad," Riley Sinclair said aloud and roused the mustang
cruelly to a gallop, the hoofs of his mount splashing through inches of
pungent dust.
The heaviness of the gallop told him that his horse was plainly spent
and would not be capable of a long run before the morning. Riley
Sinclair accepted the inevitable with a sigh. All his strong instincts
cried out to find Sandersen and, having found him, to shoot him and
flee. Yet he had a sense of fatality connected with Sandersen. Lowrie's
own conscience had betrayed him, and his craven fear had been his
executioner. Quade had been shot in a fair fight with not a soul near
by. But, at the third time, Sinclair felt reasonably sure that his luck
would fail him. The third time the world would be very apt to brand him
with murder.
It was a bad affair, and he wanted to get it done. This stay in Sour
Creek was entirely against his will. Accordingly he put the mustang in
the stable behind the hotel, looked to his feed, and then went slowly
back to get a room. He registered and went in silence up to his room.
If there had been the need, he could have kept on riding for a
twenty-hour stretch, but the moment he found his journey interrupted,
he flung himself on the bed, his arms thrown out crosswise, crucified
with weariness.
In the meantime the proprietor returned to his desk to find a long,
gaunt man leaning above the register, one brown finger tracing a name.
"Looking for somebody, Sandersen?" he asked. "Know this gent Sinclair?"
"Face looked kind of familiar to me," said the other, who had jerked
his head up from the study of the register. "Somehow I don't tie that
name up with the face."
"Maybe not," said the proprietor. "Maybe he ain't Riley Sinclair of
Colma; maybe he's somebody else."
"Traveling strange, you mean?" asked Sandersen.
"I dunno, Bill, but he looks like a hard one. He's got one of them
nervous right hands."
"Gunfighter?"
"I dunno. I'm not saying anything about what he is or what he ain't.
But, if a gent was to come in here and tell me a pretty strong yarn
about Riley Sinclair, or whatever his name might be, I wouldn't incline
to doubt of it, would you, Bill?"
"Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn't," answered Bill Sandersen
gloomily.
He went out onto the veranda and squinted thoughtfully into the
darkness. Bill Sandersen was worried--very worried. The moment he saw
Sinclair enter the hotel, there had been a ghostly familiarity about
the man. And he understood the reason for it as soon as he saw the name
on the register. Sinclair! The name carried him back to the picture of
the man who lay on his back, with the soft sands already half burying
his body, and the round, purple blur in the center of his forehead. In
a way it was as if Hal Sinclair had come back to Me in a new and more
terrible form, come back as an avenger.
Bill Sandersen was not an evil man, and his sin against Hal Sinclair
had its qualifying circumstances. At least he had been only one of
three, all of whom had concurred in the thing. He devoutly wished that
the thing were to be done over again. He swore to himself that in such
a case he would stick with his companion, no matter who deserted. But
what had brought this Riley Sinclair all the way from Colma to Sour
Creek, if it were not an errand of vengeance?
A sense of guilt troubled the mind of Bill Sandersen, but the obvious
thing was to find out the reason for Sinclair's presence in Sour Creek.
Sandersen crossed the street to the newly installed telegraph office.
He had one intimate friend in the far-off town of Colma, and to that
friend he now addressed a telegram.
* * * * *
Rush back all news you have about man calling self Riley Sinclair of
Colma--over six feet tall, weight hundred and eighty, complexion dark,
hard look.
* * * * *
There was enough meat in that telegram to make the operator rise his
head and glance with sharpened eyes at the patron. Bill Sandersen
returned that glance with so much interest that the operator lowered
his head again and made a mental oath that he would let the Westerners
run the West.
With that telegram working for him in far-off Colma, Bill Sandersen
started out to gather what information he could in Sour Creek. He
drifted from the blacksmith shop to the kitchen of Mrs. Mary Caluson,
but both these brimming reservoirs of news had this day run dry. Mrs.
Caluson vaguely remembered a Riley Sinclair, a man who fought for the
sheer love of fighting. A grim fellow!
Pete Handley, the blacksmith, had even less to say. He also, he
averred, had heard of a Riley Sinclair, a man of action, but he could
not remember in what sense. Vaguely he seemed to recall that there had
been something about guns connected with the name of Riley Sinclair.
Meager information on which to build, but, having seen this man, Bill
Sandersen said the less and thought the more. In a couple of hours he
went back through the night to the telegraph office and found that his
Colma friend had been unbelievably prompt. The telegram had been sent
"collect," and Bill Sandersen groaned as he paid the bill. But when he
opened the telegram he did not begrudge the money.
Riley Sinclair is harder than he looks, but absolutely honest and will
pay fairer than anybody. Avoid all trouble. Trust his word, but not his
temper. Gunfighter, but not a bully. By the way, your pal Lowrie shot
himself last week.
The long fingers of Bill Sandersen slowly gathered the telegram into a
ball and crushed it against the palm of his hand. That ball he
presently unraveled to reread the telegram; he studied it word by word.
"Absolutely honest!"
It made Sandersen wish to go straight to the gunfighter, put his cards
on the table, confess what he had done to Sinclair's brother, and then
express his sorrow. Then he remembered the cruel, lean face of Sinclair
and the impatient eyes. He would probably be shot before he had half
finished his story of the gruesome trip through the desert. Already
Lowrie was dead. Even a child could have put two and two together and
seen that Sinclair had come to Sour Creek on a mission of vengeance.
Sandersen was himself a fighter, and, being a fighter, he knew that in
Riley Sinclair he would meet the better man.
But two good men were better than one, even if the one were an expert.
Sandersen went straight to the barn behind his shack, saddled his
horse, and spurred out along the north road to Quade's house. Once
warned, they would be doubly armed, and, standing back to back, they
could safely defy the marauder from the north.
There was no light in Quade's house, but there was just a chance that
the owner had gone to bed early. Bill Sandersen dismounted to find out,
and dismounting, he stumbled across a soft, inert mass in the path. A
moment later he was on his knees, and the flame of the sulphur match
sputtered a blue light into the dead face of Quade, staring upward to
the stars. Bill Sandersen remained there until the match singed his
finger tips.
All doubt was gone now. Lowrie and Quade were both gone; and he,
Sandersen, alone remained, the third and last of the guilty. His first
strong impulse, after his agitation had diminished to such a point that
he was able to think clearly again, was to flee headlong into the night
and keep on, changing horses at every town he reached until he was over
the mountains and buried in the shifting masses of life in some great
city.
And then he recalled Riley Sinclair, lean and long as a hound. Such a
man would be terrible on the trail--tireless, certainly. Besides there
was the horror of flight, almost more awful than the immediate fear of
death. Once he turned his back to flee from Riley Sinclair, the
gunfighter would become a nightmare that would haunt him the rest of
his life. No matter where he fled, every footstep behind him would be
the footfall of Riley Sinclair, and behind every closed door would
stand the same ominous figure. On the other hand if he went back and
faced Sinclair he might reduce the nightmare to a mere creature of
flesh and blood.
Sandersen resolved to take the second step.
In one way his hands were tied. He could not accuse Sinclair of this
killing without in the first place exposing the tale of how Riley's
brother was abandoned in the desert by three strong men who had been
his bunkies. And that story, Sandersen knew, would condemn him to worse
than death in the mountain desert. He would be loathed and scorned from
one end of the cattle country to the other.
All of these things went through his head, as he jogged his mustang
back down the hill. He turned in at Mason's place. All at once he
recalled that he was not acting normally. He had just come from seeing
the dead body of his best friend. And yet so mortal was his concern for
his own safety that he felt not the slightest touch of grief or horror
for dead Quade.
He had literally to grip his hands and rouse himself to a pitch of
semihysteria. Then he spurred his horse down the path, flung himself
with a shout out of the saddle, cast open the door of the house without
a preliminary knock, and rushed into the room.
"Murder!" shouted Bill Sandersen. "Quade is killed!"
5
Who killed Quade? That was the question asked with the quiet deadliness
by six men in Sour Creek. It had been Buck Mason's idea to keep the
whole affair still. It was very possible that the slayer was still in
the environs of Sour Creek, and in that case much noise would simply
serve to frighten him away. It was also Buck's idea that they should
gather a few known men to weigh the situation.
Every one of the six men who answered the summons was an adept with
fist or guns, as the need might be; every one of them had proved that
he had a level head; every one of them was a respected citizen.
Sandersen was one; stocky Buck Mason, carrying two hundred pounds close
to the ground, massive of hand and jaw, was a second. After that their
choice had fallen on "Judge" Lodge. The judge wore spectacles and a
judicial air. He had a keen eye for cows and was rather a sharper in
horse trades. He gave his costume a semiofficial air by wearing a
necktie instead of a bandanna, even at a roundup. The glasses, the
necktie, and his little solemn pauses before he delivered an opinion,
had given his nickname.
Then came Denver Jim, a very little man, with nervous hands and
remarkable steady eyes. He had punched cows over those ranges for ten
years, and his experience had made him a wildcat in a fight. Oscar
Larsen was a huge Swede, with a perpetual and foolish grin. Sour Creek
had laughed at Oscar for five years, considered him dubiously for five
years more, and then suddenly admitted him as a man among men. He was
stronger than Buck Mason, quicker than Denver Jim, and shrewder than
the judge. Last of all came Montana. He had a long, sad face,
prodigious ability to stow away redeye, and a nature as simple and kind
and honest as a child's. These were the six men who gathered about and
stared at the center of the floor. Something, they agreed, had to be
done.