The Rangeland Avenger - Max Brand
Bill Wood was a peerless trailer; Red Chalmers would, the sheriff felt,
be one day a worthy aspirant for the office which he now held, and Red
was the only man the sheriff felt who could succeed to that perilous
office. As for Joe Stockton, he was distinctly bad medicine, but in a
case like this, it might very well be that poison would be the antidote
for poison. Of all the men the sheriff knew, Joe was the neatest hand
with a gun. The trouble with Joe was that he appreciated his own
ability and was fond of exhibiting his prowess.
Having sent out for his assistants on the chase, the sheriff retired to
his office and set his affairs in order. There was not a great deal of
paper work connected with his position; in twenty minutes he had
cleared his desk, and, by the time he had finished this task, the first
of his posse had sauntered into the doorway and stood leaning idly
there, rolling a cigarette.
"Have a chair, Bill, will you?" said the sheriff. He tilted back in his
own and tossed his heels to the top of his desk. "Getting sort of warm
today, ain't it?"
Bill Wood had never seen the sheriff so cheerful. He sat down gingerly,
knowing well that some task of great danger lay before them.
14
All that Gaspar dreaded in Riley Sinclair had come true. The
schoolteacher drew his horse as far away as the trail allowed and rode
on in silence. Finally there was a stumble, and it seemed as if the
words were jarred out from his lips, hitherto closely compressed:
"_You_ killed Quade!"
A scowl was his answer.
But he persisted in the inquiry with a sort of trembling curiosity,
though he could see the angry emotions rise in Sinclair. The emotion of
a murderer, perhaps?
"How?"
"With a gun, fool. How d'you think?"
Even that did not halt John Gaspar.
"Was it a fair fight?"
"Maybe--maybe not. It won't bring him back to life!"
Riley laughed with savage satisfaction. Gaspar watched him as a bird
might watch a snake. He had heard tales of men who could find
satisfaction in a murder, but he had never believed that a human being
could actually gloat over his own savagery. He stared at Riley as if he
were looking at a wild beast that must be placated.
Thereafter the talk was short. Now and again Sinclair gave some curt
direction, but they put mile after mile behind them without a single
phrase interchanged. Gaspar began to slump in the saddle. It brought a
fierce rebuke from Sinclair.
"Straighten up. Put some of your weight in them stirrups. D'you think
any hoss can buck up when it's carrying a pile of lead? Come alive!"
"It's the heat. It takes my strength," protested Gaspar.
"Curse you and your strength! I wouldn't trade all of you for one ear
of the hoss you're riding. Do what I tell you!"
Without protest, without a flush of shame at this brutal abuse, John
Gaspar attempted to obey. Then, as they topped a rise and reached a
crest of a range of hills, Gaspar cried out in surprise. Sour Creek lay
in the hollow beneath them.
"But you're running straight into the face of danger!"
"Don't tell me what I'm doing. I know maybe, all by myself!"
He checked his horse and sat his saddle, eying Gaspar with such
disgust, such concentrated scorn and contempt, that the schoolteacher
winced.
"I've brought you in sight of the town so's you can go home."
"And be hanged?"
"You won't be hanged. I'll send a confession along with you. I've
busted the law once. They're after me. They might as well have some
more reasons for hitting my trail."
"But is it fair to you?" asked Gaspar, intertwining his nervous
fingers.
Sinclair heard the words and eyed the gesture with unutterable disgust.
At last he could speak.
"Fair?" he asked in scorn. "Since when have you been interested in
playing fair? Takes a man with some nerve to play fair. You've spoiled
my game, Gaspar. You've blocked me every way from the start, Cold Feet.
I killed Quade, and they's another in Sour Creek that needs killing.
That's something you can do. Go down and tell the sheriff when he
happens along and show him my confession. Go down and tell him that I
ain't running away--that I'm staying close, and that I'm going to nab
my second man right under his nose. That'll give him something to think
about."
He favored the schoolteacher with another black look and then swung out
of the saddle, throwing his reins. He sat down with his back to a
stunted tree. Gaspar dismounted likewise and hovered near, after the
fashion of a man who is greatly worried. He watched while Sinclair
deliberately took out an old stained envelope and the stub of a pencil
and started to write. His brows knitted in pain with the effort.
Suddenly Gaspar cried: "Don't do it, Mr. Sinclair!"
A slight lifting of Sinclair's heavy brows showed that he had heard,
but he did not raise his head.
"Don't do what?"
"Don't try to kill that second man. Don't do it!"
Gaspar was rewarded with a sneer.
"Why not?"
The schoolteacher was desperately eager. His glance roved from the set
face of the cowpuncher and through the scragged branches of the tree.
"You'll be damned for it--in your own mind. At heart you're a good man;
I swear you are. And now you throw yourself away. Won't you try to open
your mind and see this another way?"
"Not an inch. Kid, I gave my word for this to a dead man. I told you
about a friend of mine?"
"I'll never forget."
"I gave my word to him, though he never heard it. If I have to wait
fifty years I'll live long enough to kill the gent that's in Sour Creek
now. The other day I had him under my gun. Think of it! I let him go!"
"And you'll let him go again. Sinclair, murder isn't in your nature.
You're better than you think."
"Close up," growled the cowpuncher. "It ain't no Saturday night party
for me to write. Keep still till I finish."
He resumed his labor of writing, drawing out each letter carefully. He
had reached his signature when a low call from John Gaspar alarmed him.
He looked up to find the little man pointing and staring up the trail.
A horseman had just dropped over the crest and was winding leisurely
down toward the plain below.
"We can get behind that knoll, perhaps, before he sees us," suggested
Jig in a whisper. His suggestion met with no favor.
"You hear me talk, son," said Sinclair dryly. "That gent ain't carrying
no guns, which means that he ain't on our trail, we being figured
particularly desperate." He pointed this remark with a cold survey of
the "desperate" Jig.
"But the best way to make danger follow you, Jig, is to run away from
it. We stay put!"
He emphasized the remark by stretching luxuriously. Gaspar, however,
did not seem to hear the last words. Something about the strange
horseman had apparently riveted his interest. His last gesture was
arrested halfway, and his color changed perceptibly.
"You stay, then, Mr. Sinclair," he said hurriedly. "I'm going to slip
down the hill and--"
"You stay where you are!" cut in Sinclair.
"But I have a reason."
"Your reasons ain't no good. You stay put. You hear?"
It seemed that a torrent of explanation was about to pour from the lips
of Jig, but he restrained himself, white of face, and sank down in the
shade of the tree. There he stretched himself out hastily, with his
hands cupped behind his head and his hat tilted so far down over his
face that his entire head was hidden.
Sinclair followed these proceedings with a lackluster eye.
"When you _do_ move, Jig," he said, "you ain't so slow about it. That's
pretty good faking, take it all in all. But why don't you want this
strange gent to see your face?"
A slight shudder was the only reply; then Jig lay deadly still. In the
meantime, before Sinclair could pursue his questions, the horseman was
almost upon them. The cowpuncher regarded him with distinct approval.
He was a man of the country, and he showed it. As his pony slouched
down the slope, picking its way dexterously among the rocks, the rider
met each jolt on the way with an easy swing of his shoulders, riding
"straight up," just enough of his weight falling into his stirrups to
break the jar on the back of the mustang.
The stranger drew up on the trail and swung the head of his horse in
toward the tree, raising his hand in cavalier greeting. He was a
sunbrowned fellow, as tall as Sinclair and more heavily built; as for
his age, he seemed in that joyous prime of physical life, twenty-five.
Sinclair nodded amiably.
"Might that be Sour Creek yonder?" asked the brown man.
"It might be. I reckon it is. Get down and rest your hoss."
"Thanks. Maybe I will."
He dropped to the ground and eased and stiffened his knees to get out
the cramp of long riding. Off the horse he seemed even bigger and more
capable than before, and now that he had come sufficiently close, so
that the shadow from his sombrero's brim did not partially mask the
upper part of his face, it seemed to Sinclair that about the eyes he
was not nearly so prepossessing as around the clean-cut fighter's mouth
and chin. The eyes were just a trifle too small, a trifle too close
together. Yet on the whole he was a handsome fellow, as he pushed back
his hat and wiped his forehead dry with a gay silk handkerchief.
Sinclair noted, furthermore, that the other had a proper cowpuncher's
pride in his dress. His bench-made boots molded his long and slender
feet to a nicety and fitted like gloves around the high instep. The
polished spurs, with their spoon-handle curve, gleamed and flashed, as
he stepped with a faint jingling. The braid about his sombrero was a
thing of price. These details Sinclair noted. The rest did not matter.
"The kid's asleep?" asked the stranger, casting a careless glance at
the slim form of Jig.
"I reckon so."
"He done it almighty sudden. Thought I seen him up and walking around
when I come over the hill."
"You got good eyes," said Sinclair, but he was instantly put on the
defensive. He was heartily tired of Cold Feet Gaspar, his
peculiarities, his whims, his weaknesses. But Cold Feet was his riding
companion, and this was a stranger. He was thrown suddenly in the
position of a defender of the helpless. "That's the way with these
kids," he confided carelessly to the stranger. "They get out and ride
fast for a couple of hours. Full of ambition, they are. But just when a
growed man gets warmed up to his work; they're through. The kid's tired
out."
"Come far?" asked the stranger.
"Tolerable long ways."
Sinclair disliked questions, and for each interrogation his opinion of
the newcomer descended lower and lower. His own father had raised him
on a stern pattern. "What you mean by questions, Riley? What you can't
figure out with your own eyes and ears and good common hoss sense, most
likely the other gent don't want you to know." Thereafter he had
schooled himself in this particular point. He could suppress all
curiosity and go six months without knowing more than the nickname of a
boon companion.
"You come from Sour Creek, maybe?" went on the other.
"Sort of," replied Sinclair dryly.
His companion proceeded to dispense information on his own part so as
to break the ice.
"I'm Jude Cartwright."
He paused significantly, but Sinclair's face was a blank.
"Glad to know you, Mr. Cartwright. Mostly they call me Long Riley."
"How are you, Riley?"
They shook hands heartily. Cartwright took a place on the ground,
cross-legged and not far from Sinclair.
"I guess you don't know me?" he asked pointedly.
"I guess not."
"I'm of the Jesse Cartwright family."
Sinclair smiled blankly.
"Lucky Cartwright was my dad's name."
"That so?"
"I guess you ain't ever been up Montana way," said the stranger in
disgust which he hardly veiled.
"Not much," said Sinclair blandly.
"I wished that I was back up there. This is a hole of a country down
here."
"Hossflesh and time will take you back, I reckon."
"I reckon they will, when my job's done."
He turned a disparaging eye upon Sour Creek and its vicinity.
"Now, who would want to live in a town like that, can you tell me?"
It occurred very strongly to Riley Sinclair that Cartwright had not yet
fully ascertained whether or not his companion came from that very
town. And, although the day before, he had decided that Sour Creek was
most undesirable and all that pertained to it, this unasked
confirmation of his own opinion grated on his nerves.
"Well, they seems to be a few that gets along tolerable well in that
town, partner."
"They's ten fools for one wise man," declared Cartwright sententiously.
Sinclair veiled his eyes with a downward glance. He dared not let the
other see the cold gleam which he knew was coming into them. "I guess
them's true words."
"Tolerable true," admitted Cartwright. "But I've rode a long ways, and
this ain't much to find at the end of the trail."
"Maybe it'll pan out pretty well after all."
"If Sour Creek holds the person I'm after, I'll call it a good-paying
game."
"I hope you find your friend," remarked Riley, with his deceptive
softness of tone.
"Friend? Hell! And that's where this friend will wish me when I heave
in sight. You can lay to that, and long odds!"
Sinclair waited, but the other changed his tack at once.
"If you ain't from Sour Creek, I guess you can't tell me what I want to
know."
"Maybe not."
The brown man looked about him for diversion. Presently his eyes rested
on Cold Feet, who had not stirred during all this interval.
"Son?"
"Nope."
"Kid brother?"
"Nope."
Cartwright frowned. "Not much of nothing, I figure," he said with
marked insolence.
"Maybe not," replied Sinclair, and again he glanced down.
"He's slept long enough, I reckon," declared the brown man. "Let's have
a look at him. Hey, kid!"
Cold Feet quivered, but seemed lost in a profound sleep. Cartwright
reached for a small stone and juggled it in the palm of his hand.
"This'll surprise him," he chuckled.
"Better not," murmured Sinclair.
"Why not?"
"Might land on his face and hurt him."
"It won't hurt him bad. Besides, kids ought to learn not to sleep in
the daytime. Ain't a good idea any way you look at it. Puts fog in the
head."
He poised the stone.
"You might hit his eye, you see," said Sinclair.
"Leave that to me!"
But, as his arm twisted back for the throw, the hand of Sinclair
flashed out and lean fingers crushed the wrist of Cartwright. Yet
Sinclair's voice was still soft.
"Better not," he said.
They sat confronting each other for a moment. The stone dropped from
the numbed fingers of Cartwright, and Sinclair released his wrist.
Their characters were more easily read in the crisis. Cartwright's face
flushed, and a purple vein ran down his forehead between the eyes.
Sinclair turned pale. He seemed, indeed, almost afraid, and apparently
Cartwright took his cue from the pallor.
"I see," he said sneeringly. "You got your guns on. Is that it?"
Sinclair slipped off the cartridge belt.
"Do I look better to you now?"
"A pile better," said Cartwright.
They rose, still confronting each other. It was strange how swiftly
they had plunged into strife.
"I guess you'll be rolling along, Cartwright."
"Nope. I guess I like it tolerable well under this here tree."
"Except that I come here first, partner."
"And maybe you'll be the first to leave."
"I'd have to be persuaded a pile."
"How's this to start you along?"
He flicked the back of his hand across the lips of Sinclair, and then
sprang back as far as his long legs would carry him. So doing, the
first leap of Sinclair missed him, and when the cowpuncher turned he
was met with a stunning blow on the side of the head.
At once the blind anger faded from the eyes of Riley. By the weight of
that first blow he knew that he had encountered a worthy foeman, and by
the position of Cartwright he could tell that he had met a confident
one. The big fellow was perfectly poised, with his weight well back on
his right foot, his left foot feeling his way over the rough ground as
he advanced, always collected for a heavy blow, or for a leap in any
direction. He carried his guard high, with apparent contempt for an
attack on his body, after the manner of a practiced boxer.
As for Riley Sinclair, boxing was Greek to him. His battles had been
those of bullets and sharp steel, or sudden, brutal fracas, where the
rule was to strike with the first weapon that came to hand. This single
encounter, hand to hand, was more or less of a novelty to him, but
instead of abashing or cowing him, it merely brought to the surface all
his coldness of mind, all of his cunning.
He circled Cartwright, his long arms dangling low, his step soft and
quick as the stride of a great cat, and always there was thought in his
face. One gained an impression that if ever he closed with his enemy
the battle would end.
Apparently even Cartwright gained that impression. His own brute
confidence of skill and power was suddenly tinged with doubt. Instead
of waiting he led suddenly with his left, a blow that tilted the head
of Sinclair back, and then sprang in with a crushing right. It was poor
tactics, for half of a boxer's nice skill is lost in a plunging attack.
The second blow shot humming past Sinclair as the latter dodged; and,
before the brown man could recover his poise, the cowpuncher had dived
in under the guarding arms.
A shrill cry rose from Cold Feet, a cry so sharp and shrill that it
sent a chill down the back of Sinclair. For a moment he whirled with
the weight of his struggling, cursing enemy, and then his right hand
shot up over the shoulder of Cartwright and clutched his chin. With
that leverage one convulsive jerk threw Cartwright heavily back; he
rolled on his side, with Sinclair following like a wildcat.
But Cartwright as he fell had closed his fingers on a jagged little
stone. Sinclair saw the blow coming, swerved from it, and straightway
went mad. The brown man became a helpless bulk; the knee of Sinclair
was planted on his shoulders, the talon fingers of Sinclair were buried
in his throat.
Then--he saw it only dimly through his red anger and hardly felt it at
all--Jig's hands were tearing at his wrists. He looked up in dull
surprise into the face of John Gaspar.
"For heaven's sake," Jig was pleading, "stop!"
But what checked Sinclair was not the schoolteacher. Cartwright had
been fighting with the fury of one who sees death only inches away.
Suddenly he grew limp.
"You!" he cried. "You!"
To the astonishment of Sinclair the gaze of the beaten man rested
directly upon the face of Jig.
"Yes," Gaspar admitted faintly, "it is I!"
Sinclair released his grip and stood back, while Cartwright, stumbling
to his feet, stood wavering, breathing harshly and fingering his
injured throat.
"I knew I'd find you," he said, "but I never dreamed I'd find you like
this!"
"I know what you think," said Cold Feet, utterly colorless, "but you
think wrong, Jude. You think entirely wrong!"
"You lie like a devil!"
"On my honor."
"Honor? You ain't got none! Honor!"
He flung himself into his saddle. "Now that I've located you, the next
time I come it'll be with a gun."
He turned a convulsed face toward Sinclair.
"And that goes for you."
"Partner," said Riley Sinclair, "that's the best thing I've heard you
say. Until then, so long!"
The other wrenched his horse about and went down the trail at a
reckless gallop, plunging out of view around the first shoulder of a
hill.
15
Sinclair watched him out of sight. He turned to find that Jig had
slumped against the tree and stood with his arm thrown across his face.
It reminded him, with a curious pang of mingled pity and disgust, of
the way Gaspar had faced the masked men of Sour Creek's posse the day
before. There was the same unmanly abnegation of the courage to meet
danger and look it in the eye. Here, again, the schoolteacher was
wincing from the very memory of a crisis.
"Look here!" exclaimed Sinclair. His contempt rang in his voice. "They
ain't any danger now. Turn around here and buck up. Keep your chin high
and look a man in the face, will you?"
Slowly the arm descended. He found himself looking into a white and
tortured face. His respect for the schoolteacher rose somewhat. The
very fact that the little man could endure such pain in silence, no
matter what that pain might be, was something to his credit.
"Now come out with it, Gaspar. You double-crossed this Cartwright, eh?"
"Yes," whispered Jig.
"Will you tell me? Not that I make a business of prying into the
affairs of other gents, but I figure I might be able to help you
straighten things out with this Cartwright."
He made a wry face and then rubbed the side of his head where a lump
was slowly growing.
"Of all the gents that I ever seen," said Sinclair softly, "I ain't
never seen none that made me want to tangle with 'em so powerful bad.
And of all the poisoned fatheads, all the mean, sneakin'
advantage-takin' skunks that ever I run up again', this gent Cartwright
is the worst. If his hide was worth a million an inch, I would have it.
If he was to pay me a hundred thousand a day, I wouldn't be his pal for
a minute." He paused. "Them, taking 'em by and large, is my sentiments
about this here Cartwright. So open up and tell me what you done to
him."
To his very real surprise the schoolteacher shook his head. "I can't do
it."
"H'm," said Sinclair, cut to the quick. "Can't you trust me with it,
eh?"
"Ah," murmured Gaspar, "of all the men in the world, you're the one I'd
tell it to most easily. But I can't--I can't."
"I don't care whether you tell me or not. Whatever you done, it must
have been plumb bad if you can't even tell it to a gent that likes
Cartwright like he likes poison."
"It was bad," said Jig slowly. "It was very bad--it was a sin. Until I
die I can never repay him for what I have done."
Sinclair recovered some of his good nature at this outburst of
self-accusation.
"I'll be hanged if I believe it," he declared bluntly. "Not a word of
it! When you come right down to the point you'll find out that you
ain't been half so bad as you think. The way I figure you is this, Jig.
You ain't so bad, except that you ain't got no nerve. Was it a matter
of losing your nerve that made Cartwright mad at you?"
"Yes. It was altogether that."
Sinclair sighed. "Too bad! I don't blame you for not wanting to talk
about it. They's a flaw in everything, Jig, and this is yours. If I was
to be around you much, d'you know what I'd do?"
"What?"
"I'd try to plumb forget about this flaw of yours: That's a fact. But
as far as Cartwright goes, to blazes with him! And that's where he's
apt to wind up pronto if he's as good as his word and comes after me
with a gun. In the meantime you grab your hoss, kid, and slide back
into Sour Creek and show the boys this here confession I've written.
You can add one thing. I didn't put it in because I knowed they
wouldn't believe me. I killed Quade fair and square. I give him the
first move for his gun, and then I beat him to the draw and killed him
on an even break. That's the straight of it. I know they won't believe
it. Matter of fact I'm saying it for you, Jig, more'n I am for them!"
It was an amazing thing to see the sudden light that flooded the face
of the schoolteacher.
"And I do believe you, Sinclair," he said. "With all my heart I believe
you and know you couldn't have taken an unfair advantage!"
"H'm," muttered Riley. "It ain't bad to hear you say that. And now trot
along, son."
Cold Feet made no move to obey.
"Not that I wouldn't like to have you along, but where I got to go,
you'd be a weight around my neck. Besides, your game is to show the
folks down yonder that you ain't a murderer, and that paper I've give
you will prove it. We'll drift together along the trail part way, and
down yonder I turn up for the tall timber."
To all this Jig returned no answer, but in a peculiarly lifeless manner
went to his horse and climbed in his awkward way into the saddle. They
went down the trail slowly.
"Because," explained the cowpuncher, "if I save my hoss's wind I may be
saving my own life."
Where the trail bent like an elbow and shot sheer down for the plain
and Sour Creek, Riley Sinclair pointed his horse's nose up to the
taller mountains, but Jig sat his horse in melancholy silence and
looked mournfully up at his companion.
"So long," said Sinclair cheerily. "And when you get down yonder, it'll
happen most likely that pretty soon you'll hear a lot of hard things
about Riley Sinclair."
"If I do--if I hear a syllable against you," cried the schoolteacher
with a flare of color, "I'll--I'll drive the words back into their
teeth!"
He shook with his emotion; Riley Sinclair shook with controlled
laughter.
"Would you do all of that, partner? Well, I believe you'd try. What I
mean to say is this: No matter what they say, you can lay to it that
Sinclair has tried to play square and clean according to his own
lights, which ain't always the best in the world. So long!"
There was no answer. He found himself looking down into the quivering
face of the schoolteacher.
"Why, kid, you look all busted up!"
"Riley," gasped Jig very faintly, "I can't go!"