The Rangeland Avenger - Max Brand
There was a suggestive lift of the eyebrows, as he spoke, but before
Jig had a chance to study his face, he had turned and wrapped himself
in one of the rugs. He lay perfectly still, stretched on one side, with
his back turned to Jig. He stirred neither hand nor foot.
Outside, a door slammed heavily; Cold Feet heard the heavy voice of
Jerry Bent and the beat of his heels across the floor. In spite of
those noises Riley Sinclair was presently sound asleep, as he had
promised. Gaspar knew it by the rise and fall of the arm which lay
along Sinclair's side, also by the sound of his breathing.
Cold Feet went to the window and looked out on the mountains, black and
huge, with a faint shimmer of snow on the farthest summits. At the very
thought of trying to escape into that wilderness and wandering alone
among the peaks, he shuddered. He came back and studied the sleeper.
Something about the nonchalance with which Sinclair had gone to sleep
under the very eye of his prisoner affected John Gaspar strangely.
Doubtless it was sheer contempt for the man he was guarding. And,
indeed, something assured Jig that, no matter how well he employed the
next eight hours in putting a great distance between himself and Sour
Creek, the tireless riding of Sinclair would more than make up the
distance.
Gaspar went to the door, then turned sharply and glanced over his
shoulder at the sleeper; but the eyes of Sinclair were still closed,
and his regular breathing continued. Jig turned the knob cautiously and
slipped out into the living room.
Jerry and Sally beckoned instantly to him from the far side of the
room. The beauty of the family had descended upon Sally alone. Jerry
was a swart-skinned, squat, bow-legged, efficient cowpuncher. He now
ambled awkwardly to meet John Gaspar.
"Are you all set?" he asked.
"For what?"
"To start on the trail!" exclaimed Jerry. "What else? Ain't Sinclair
asleep?"
"How d'you know?"
"I listened at the door and heard his breathing a long time ago.
Thought you'd never come out."
Sally Bent was already on the other side of Gaspar, drawing him toward
the door.
"You can have my hoss, Jig," she offered. "Meg is sure as sin in the
mountains. You won't have nothing to fear on the worst trail they is."
"Not a thing," asserted Jerry.
They half led and half dragged Cold Feet to the door.
"I'll show you the best way. You see them two peaks yonder, like a pair
of mule's ears? You start--"
"I don't know," said Jig. "It seems very difficult, even to think of
riding alone through those mountains."
Sally was white with fear. "You ain't going to throw away this chance,
Jig? It'll mean hanging sure, if you don't run now. Ask Jerry what
they're saying in Sour Creek tonight?"
Jerry volunteered the information. "They're all wondering why you
wasn't strung up today, when they got so much evidence agin' you. Also
they're thinking that the boys played plumb foolish in turning you over
to this stranger, Sinclair, to guard. But they're waiting for Sheriff
Kern to come over from Woodville an' nab you in the morning. They's
some that says that they won't wait, if it looks like the law is going
to take too long to hang you. They'll get up a necktie party and break
the jail and do their own hanging. I heard all them things and more,
Jig."
John Gaspar looked uncertainly from one to the other of his friends.
"You've _got_ to go!" cried Sally.
"I've got to go," admitted Cold Feet in a whisper.
"I've got Meg saddled for you already. She's plumb gentle."
"Just a minute. I've forgotten something."
"You don't mean you're going back into that room where Sinclair is?"
"I won't waken him. He's sleeping like the dead."
Jig turned away from them and hurried back to his room. Having opened
and closed the door softly, he went to a chest of drawers near the
window and fumbled in the half-light of the low-burning lamp. He
slipped a small leather case into the breast pocket of his coat, and
then stole back toward the door, as softly as before. With his hand on
the knob, he paused and looked back. For all he knew, Sinclair might be
really awake now, watching his quarry from beneath those heavy lashes,
waiting until his prisoner should have made a definite attempt to
escape.
And then the big man would rise to his feet as soon as the door was
closed. The picture became startlingly real to John Gaspar. Sinclair
would slip out that window, no doubt, and circle around toward the
horse shed. There he would wait until his prisoner came out on Meg, and
then without warning would come a shot, and there would be an end of
Sinclair's trouble with his prisoner. Gaspar could easily attribute
such cunning cruelty to Sinclair. And yet there was something untested,
unprobed, different about the rangy fellow.
Whatever it was, it kept Gaspar staring down into the lean face of
Sinclair for a long moment. Then he went resolutely back into the
living room and faced Sally Bent; Jerry was already waiting outdoors.
"I'm not going," said Gaspar slowly. "I'll stay."
Sally cried out. "Oh, Jig, have you lost your nerve ag'in? Ain't you
got _no_ courage?"
The schoolteacher sighed. "I'm afraid not, Sally. I guess my only
courage comes in waiting and seeing how things turn out."
He turned and went gloomily back to his room.
12
With the first brightness of dawn, Sinclair wakened even more suddenly
that he had fallen asleep. There was no slow adjusting of himself to
the requirements of the day. One prodigious stretching of the long
arms, one great yawn, and he was as wide awake as he would be at noon.
He jerked on his boots and rose, and not until he stood up, did he see
John Gaspar asleep in the big chair, his head inclining to one side,
the book half-fallen from his hand, and the lamp sputtering its last
beside him. But instead of viewing the weary face with pity, Sinclair
burst into sudden and amazed profanity.
The first jarring note brought Gaspar up and awake with a start, and he
stared in astonishment at the uninterrupted flood which rippled from
the lips of the cowpuncher. It concluded: "Still here! Of all the
shorthorned fatheads that I ever seen, the worst is this Gaspar--this
Jig--this Cold Feet. Say, man, ain't you got no spirit at all?"
"What do you mean?" asked Gaspar. "Still here? Of course I'm still
here! Did you expect me to escape?"
Sinclair flung himself into a chair, speechless with rage and disgust.
"Did you think I was joking when I told you I was going to sleep eight
hours without waking up?"
"It might very well have been a trap, you know."
Sinclair groaned. "Son, they ain't any man in the world that'll tell
you that Riley Sinclair sets his traps for birds that ain't got their
stiff feathers growed yet. Trap for you? What in thunder should I want
you for, eh?"
He strode to the window, still groaning.
"There's where you'd ought to be, over yonder behind them mule ears.
They'd never catch you in a thousand years with that start. Eight hours
start! As good as have eight years, kid--just as good. And you've
throwed that chance away!"
He turned and stared mournfully at the schoolteacher.
"It ain't no use," he said sadly. "I see it all now. You was cut out to
end in a rope collar."
Not another word could be pried from his set lips during breakfast, a
gloomy meal to which Sally Bent came with red eyes, and Jerry Bent
sullenly, with black looks at Sinclair. Jig was the cheeriest one of
the party. That cheer at last brought another explosion from Sinclair.
They stood in front of the house, watching a horseman wind his way up
the road through the hills.
"It's Sheriff Kern," said Jerry Bent. "I can tell by the way he rides,
sort of slanting. It's Kern, right enough."
Sally Bent choked, but Jig continued to hum softly.
"Singin'?" asked Riley Sinclair suddenly. "Ain't you no more worried
than that?"
The voice of the schoolteacher in reply was as smooth as running water.
"I think you'll bring me out of the trouble safely enough, Mr.
Sinclair."
"Mr. Sinclair'll see you damned before he lifts a hand for you!" Riley
retorted savagely.
He strode to his horse and expended his wrath by viciously jerking at
the cinches, until the mustang groaned. Sheriff Kern came suddenly into
clear view around the last turn and rode quickly up to them, a very
short man, muscular, sweaty. He always gave the impression that he had
been working ceaselessly for a week, and certainly he found time to
shave only once in ten days. Dense bristle clouded the lower features
of his face. He was a taciturn man. His greetings took the form of a
single grunt. He took possession of John Gaspar with a single glance
that sent the latter nervously toward his saddle horse.
"I see you got this party all ready for me," said the sheriff more
amiably to Riley Sinclair, who was watching in disgust the clumsy
method of Jig's mounting. "You're Sinclair, I guess?"
"I'm Sinclair, sheriff."
They shook hands.
"Nice bit of work you done for me, Sinclair, keeping the boys from
stringing up Jig, yonder. These here lynchings don't set none too well
on the reputation of a sheriff. I guess we're ready to start. S'long
Sally--Jerry. Are you riding our way, Sinclair?"
"I thought I'd happen along. Ain't never seen Woodville yet."
"Glad to have you. But they ain't much to see unless you look twice at
the same thing."
They started down the trail three abreast.
"Ride on ahead," commanded Sinclair to Jig. "We don't want you riding
in the same line with men. Git on ahead!"
John Gaspar obeyed that brutal order with bowed head. He rode
listlessly, with loose rein, letting the pony pick its own way. Once
Sinclair looked back to Sally Bent, weeping in the arms of her brother.
Again his face grew black.
"And yet," confided the sheriff softly, "I ain't never heard no trouble
about this Gaspar before."
"He's poison," declared Sinclair bitterly, and he raised his voice that
it would unmistakably carry to the shrinking figure before them. "He's
such a yaller-hearted skunk, sheriff, that it makes me ashamed of bein'
a man!"
"They's only one thing I misdoubt," said the sheriff. "How'd that sort
of a gent ever get the nerve to murder a man like Quade? Quade wasn't
no tenderfoot, and he could shoot a bit, besides."
"Speaking personal, sheriff, I don't think he done it, now I've had a
chance to go over the evidence."
"Maybe he didn't, but most like he'll hang for it. The boys is dead set
agin' him. First, he's a dude; second, he's a coward. Sour Creek and
Woodville wasn't never cut out for that sort. They ain't wanted
around."
That speech made Riley Sinclair profoundly thoughtful. He had known
well enough before this that there were small chances of Jig escaping
from the damning judgment of twelve of these cowpunchers. The statement
of the sheriff made the belief a fact. The death sentence of Jig was
pronounced the moment the doors of the jail at Woodville clanged upon
him.
They struck the trail to Sour Creek and almost immediately swung off on
a branch which led south and west, in the opposite direction from the
creek. It was a day of high-driving clouds, thin and fleecy, so that
they merely filtered the sunlight and turned it into a haze without
decreasing the heat perceptibly, and that heat grew until it became
difficult to look down at the blazing sand.
Now the trail climbed among broken hills until they reached a summit.
From that point on, now and again the road elbowed into view of a wide
plain, and in the center of the plain there was a diminutive dump of
buildings.
"Woodville," said the sheriff. "Hey, you, Jig, hustle that hoss along!"
Obediently the drooping Gaspar spurred his horse. The animal broke into
a gallop that set Gaspar jolting in the seat, with wildly flopping
elbows.
"Look at that," said Sinclair. "Would you ever think that men could be
born as awkward as that? Would you ever think that men would be born
that didn't have no use in the world?"
"He ain't altogether useless," decided the sheriff. "Seems as how he's
done noble in the school. Takes on with the little boys and girls most
amazing, and he knows how to keep even the eighth graders interested.
But what can you expect of a gent that ain't got no more pride than to
be a schoolteacher, eh?"
Sinclair shook his head.
The trail drifted downward now less brokenly, and Woodville came into
view. It was a wretched town in a wretched landscape, far different
from the wild hills and the rich plowed grounds around Sour Creek. All
that came to life in the brief spring, the long summer had long since
burned away to drab yellows and browns. A horrible place to die in,
Sinclair thought.
"Speaking of hosses, that's a wise-looking hoss you got, sheriff."
"Rode him for five years," said the sheriff. "Raised him and busted him
and trained him all by myself. Ain't nobody but me ever rode him. He
can go so soft-footed he wouldn't bust eggs, sir, and he can turn loose
and run like the wind. They ain't no better hoss than this that's come
under my eye, Sinclair. Are you much on the points of a hoss?"
"I use hosses--I don't love 'em," said Sinclair gloomily. "But I can
read the points tolerable."
The sheriff eyed Sinclair coldly. "So you don't love hosses, eh?" he
said, returning distantly to the subject. It was easy to see where his
own heart lay by the way his roan picked up its head whenever its
master spoke.
"Sheriff," explained Sinclair, "I'm a single-shot gent. I don't aim to
have no scatter fire in what I like. They's only one man that I ever
called friend, they's only one place that I ever called home--the
mountains, yonder--and they's only one hoss that I ever took to much. I
raised Molly up by hand, you might say. She was ugly as sin, but they
wasn't nothing she couldn't do--nothing!" He paused. "Sheriff, I used
to talk to that hoss!"
The sheriff was greatly moved. "What became of her?" he asked softly.
"I took after a gent once. He couldn't hit me, but he put a slug
through Molly."
"What became of the gent?" asked the sheriff still more softly.
"He died just a little later. Just how I ain't prepared to state."
"Good!" said the sheriff. He actually smiled in the pleasure of
newfound kinship. "You and me would get on proper, Sinclair."
"Most like."
"This hoss of mine, now, has sense enough to take me home without me
touching a rein. Knows direction like a wolf."
"Could you guide her with your knees?"
"Sure."
"And she's plumb safe with you?"
"Sure."
"I know a gent once that said he'd trust himself tied hand and foot on
his hoss."
"That goes for me and my hoss, too, Sinclair."
"Well, then, just shove up them hands, sheriff!"
The sheriff blinked, as the sun flashed on the revolver in the steady
hand of Sinclair. There was a significant little jerking up of the
revolver. Each time the muzzle stirred, the hands of the sheriff jumped
higher and higher until his arms were stiffly stretched. Gaspar had
halted his horse and looked back in amazement.
"I hate to do it," declared Sinclair. "Right off I sort of took to you,
sheriff. But this has got to be done."
"Sinclair, have you done much thinking before you figured this all
out?"
"Enough! If I knowed you one shade better, sheriff, I'd take your word
that you'd ride on into Woodville, good and slow, and not start no
pursuit. But I don't know you that well. I got to tie you on the back
of that steady old hoss of yours and turn you loose. We need that much
start."
He dismounted, still keeping careful aim, took the rope coiled beside
the sheriff's own saddle horn and began a swift and sure process of
tying. He worked deftly, without undue fear or haste, and Gaspar came
back to look on with scared eyes.
"You're a fool, Sinclair," murmured the sheriff. "You'll never get shut
of me. I'll foller you till I drop dead. I'll never forget you. Change
your mind now, and we'll say nothing has happened. But if you keep on,
you're done for as sure as my name is Kern. Take you by yourself, and
you'd be a handful to catch. But two is easier than one, and, when one
of them two is a deadweight like Gaspar, they ain't nothing to it."
He finished his appeal completely trussed.
"I ain't tied you on the hoss," said Sinclair. "Take note of that. Also
I'm leaving you your guns, sheriff."
"I hope you'll have a chance to see 'em come out of the holster later
on, Sinclair."
The cowpuncher took no notice of this bitterness. Gaspar, who looked
on, was astonished by a certain deferential politeness on the part of
the big cowpuncher.
"Speaking personal, I hope I don't never have no trouble with you,
sheriff. I like you, understand?"
"Have your little joke, Sinclair!"
"I mean it. I know I'm usin' you like a skunk. But I got a special
need, and I can't take no chances. Sheriff, I tell you out of my heart
that I'm sorry! Will you believe me?"
The sheriff smiled. "The same as you'll believe me when we change
parts, Sinclair."
The big man sighed. "I s'pose it's got to be that way," he said. "But
if you come for me, Kern, come all primed for action. It'll be a hard
trail."
"That's my specialty."
"Well, sheriff, s'long--and good luck!"
The sheriff nodded. "Thanks!"
Pressing his horse with his knees, Kern started down the trail at a
slow canter. Sinclair followed the retiring figure, nodding with
admiration at the skill with which the sheriff kept his mount under
control, merely by power of voice. Presently the latter turned a corner
of the trail and was out of sight.
"But--I knew--I knew!" exclaimed John Gaspar. "Only, why did you let
him go on into town?" The cold glance of Sinclair rested on his
companion. "What would you have done?"
"Tied him up and left him here."
"I think you would--to die in the sun!" He swung up into his saddle.
"Now, Gaspar, we've started on what's like to prove the last trail for
both of us, understand? By night we'll both be outlawed. They'll have a
price on us, and long before night, Kern will be after us. For the
first time in your soft-hearted life you've got to work, and you've got
to fight."
"I'll do it, Mr. Sinclair!"
"Bah! Save your talk. Talk's dirt cheap."
"I only ask one thing. Why have you done it?"
"Because, you fool, I killed Quade!"
13
From the first there was no thought in the sheriff's mind of riding
straight into Woodville, trussed and helpless as he was. Woodville
respected him, and the whole district was proud of its sheriff. He knew
that five minutes of laughter can blast the finest reputation that was
ever built by a lifetime of hard labor. He knew the very faces of the
men who would never let the story die, of how the sheriff came into
town, not only without his prisoner, but tied hand and foot, helpless
in the saddle.
Without his prisoner!
Never before in his twenty years as sheriff had a criminal escaped from
his hands. Many a time they had tried, and on those occasions he had
brought back a dead body for the hand of the law.
This time he had ample excuse. Any man in the world might admit that he
was helpless when such a fellow as Riley Sinclair took him by surprise.
He knew Sinclair well by reputation, and he respected all that he had
heard.
No matter for that. The fact remained that his unbroken string of
successes was interrupted. Perhaps Woodville would explain his failure
away. No doubt some of the men knew of Sinclair and would not wonder.
They would stand up doughtily for the prowess of their sheriff. Yet the
fact held that he had failed. It was a moral defeat more than anything
else.
His mind was made up to remain in the mountains until he starved, or
until he had removed those shameful ropes--his own rope! At that
thought he writhed again. But here an arroyo opening in the ragged wall
of a cliff caught his eye. He turned his horse into it and continued on
his way until he saw a projecting rock with a ragged edge, left where a
great fragment had recently fallen away.
Here he found it strangely awkward and even perilous to dismount
without his hands to balance his weight, as he shifted out of the
stirrups. In spite of his care, he stumbled over a loose rock as he
struck the ground and rolled flat on his back. He got up, grinding his
teeth. His hands were tied behind him. He turned his back on the broken
rock and sawed the ropes against it. To his dismay he felt the rock
edge crumble away. It was some chalky, friable stuff, and it gave at
the first friction.
Beads of moisture started out on the sheriff's forehead. Hastily he
started on down the arroyo and found another rock, with an edge not
nearly so favorable in appearance, but this time it was granite. He
leaned his back against it and rubbed with a short shoulder motion
until his arms ached, but it was a happy labor. He felt the rock edge
taking hold of the ropes, fraying the strands to weakness, and then
eating into them. It was very slow work!
The sun drifted up to noon, and still he was leaning against that rock,
working patiently, with his head near to bursting, and perspiration,
which he could not wipe away, running down to blind him. Finally, when
his brain was beginning to reel with the heat, and his shoulders ached
to numbness, the last strand parted. The sheriff dropped down to the
ground to rest.
Presently he drew out his jackknife and methodically cut the remaining
bonds. It came to him suddenly, as he stood up, that someone might have
seen this singular performance and carried the tale away for future
laughter. The thought drove the sheriff mad. He swung savagely into the
saddle and drove his horse at a dead run among the perilous going of
that gorge. When he reached the plain he paused, hesitant between a
bulldog desire to follow the trail single-handed into the mountains and
run down the pair, and a knowledge that he who retreats has an added
power that would make such a pursuit rash beyond words.
A phrase which he had coined for the gossips of Woodville, came back
into his mind. He was no longer as young as he once was, and even at
his prime he shrewdly doubted his ability to cope with Riley Sinclair.
With the weight of Gaspar thrown in, the thing became an impossibility.
Gaspar might be a weakling, but a man who was capable of murder was
always dangerous.
To have been thwarted once was shame enough, but he dared not risk two
failures with one man. He must have help in plenty from Woodville, and,
fate willing, he would one day have the pleasure of looking down into
the dead face of Sinclair; one day have the unspeakable joy of seeing
the slender form of Gaspar dangling from the end of a rope.
His mind was filled with the wicked pleasure of these pictures until he
came suddenly upon Woodville. He drew his horse back to a dogtrot to
enter the town.
It was a short street that led through Woodville, but, short though it
was, the news that something was wrong with the sheriff reached the
heart of the town before he did. Men were already pouring out on the
veranda of the hotel.
"Where is he, sheriff?" was the greeting.
Never before had that question been asked. He switched to one side in
his saddle and made the speech that startled the mind of Woodville for
many a day.
"Boys, I've been double-crossed. Have any of you heard tell of Riley
Sinclair?"
He waited apparently calm. Inwardly he was breathless with excitement,
for according to the size of Riley's reputation as a formidable man
would be the size of his disgrace. There was a brief pause. Old Shaw
filled the gap, and he filled it to the complete satisfaction of the
sheriff.
"Young Hopkins was figured for the hardest man up in Montana way," he
said. "That was till Riley Sinclair beat him. What about Sinclair?"
"It was him that double-crossed me," said the sheriff, vastly relieved.
"He come like a friend, stuck me up on the trail when I wasn't lookin'
for no trouble, and he got away with Gaspar."
A chorus, astonished, eager. "What did he do it for?"
"No man'll ever know," said the sheriff.
"Why not?"
"Because Sinclair'll be dead before he has a chance to look a jury in
the face."
There were more questions. The little crowd had got its breath again,
and the words came in volleys. The sheriff cut sharply through the
noise.
"Where's Bill Wood?"
"He's in town now."
"Charley, will you find Billy for me and ask him to slide over to my
office? Thanks! Where's Arizona and Red Chalmers?"
"They went back to the ranch."
"Be a terrible big favor if you'd go out and try to find 'em for me,
boys. Where's Joe Stockton?"
"Up to the Lewis place."
Old Shaw struck in: "You ain't makin' no mistake in picking the best
you can get. You'll need 'em for this Riley Sinclair. I've heard tell
about him. A pile!"
The very best that Woodville and its vicinity could offer, was indeed
what the sheriff was selecting. Another man would have looked for
numbers, but the sheriff knew well enough that numbers meant little
speed, and speed was one of the main essentials for the task that lay
before him. He knew each of the men he had named, and he had known them
for years, with the exception of Arizona. But the latter, coming up
from the southland, had swiftly proved his ability in many a brawl.