Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 99
With this accomplished, the bandit leader overtook Hugh Dawn and his daughter.
“You, Dawn,” he said gruffly; “maybe you think you got a free ticket to chuck and bed and everything, eh? Not a hope of that, son! You mosey along and do your share. You can help the boys with the unpacking. Treat will give you orders just what to do. And mind that you keep in sight. No trying to run off through the trees. Treat has a terrible nervous trigger finger. Now off with you! Go tell Treat that I sent you!”
Hugh Dawn cast a glance at his daughter and then departed.
“And now,” said Moon, his voice changed adroitly to fit her hearing, “I got a chance to talk to you private. I been wanting to all day, but one thing or another kept coming up. What I got to say is this: Me and the boys all like you fine, and we aim to give you as good a time as we can, considering everything.”
She turned a little and looked him squarely in the eye, smiling whimsically.
“I suppose,” said Jack Moon, grave before her subdued mirth, “that that sounds pretty queer to you. I suppose that you got us all wrote down as man- eaters that do a couple of murders before breakfast to work up an appetite. That it?”
She examined him somewhat cautiously. She had always thought that the fellow was far too intelligent to have any illusions about himself or about what others might think of him. Now, searching for a trace of stupidity or of weak conceit, she was unable to find it. She saw a noble cast of features, strange only in their unvarying pallor. She had heard of men like this before, whose skins were apparently impervious to the burning rays of the mountain suns, but Moon was the first she had seen.
Aside from his complexion, however, there was nothing curious about his make-up. The mouth was generously large, and formed with a promise of sensitiveness. The chin was cut in a manner to suggest plenty of solid bone beneath. The nose was straight, large enough to give dominance to his face, but perfectly formed. The eyes were large and well separated, and they looked straight as the flight of an arrow. The forehead above was magnificently high and broad, and crowning all was a luxuriant mass of chestnut-colored hair. His face, indeed, was like his body, flawless in proportions; and the unmanageable hair suggested the mane of a lion — a leonine head, a leonine nature formed to command. By his looks, by his voice, by his glance, he could have been picked among ten thousand chosen men.
It suddenly came to her that perhaps such a fellow, framed for superiority, might have chafed against the bonds of society, learned the fierce empire of the outlawed world, and broken away to it.
“I thought,” she said, deciding that frankness was entirely permissible with such a man, “that you would understand everything. I thought you wouldn’t make friendly speeches that seem to require friendly answers. Because, you know, I have to do what I’m expected to do. If you want friendliness, I’ll have to act the part. Is that the order?”
He smiled again, enjoying her mood.
“What’s always queer to me about folks like you,” he said, “clean-bred, clean-raised, clean-taught, is that you ain’t got the imagination to put yourselves in the boots of the other fellow. You see, we know we’re a hard lot. We know you know it. But we figured you to have a sense of humor, lady. We figured you’d be able to forget what can’t be helped for a day or two, and make yourself sociable. Understand?
“Back in the old days they had what they called The Truce of Heaven. I think it lasted from Thursday nights to Mondays. I dunno for sure, but a schoolteacher told me about it once. Those were the times when every gent done his bit of fighting pretty regular and counted a week lost that didn’t see him whaling away at some other gent in armor. Well, when Thursday night come, they quit the fighting. They laid off their armor and called on their enemies and sat down and had a smoke together, so to speak — because they wasn’t any use talking mean and acting mean between Thursday and Monday. Well, I thought it was kind of the same way with us. Suppose it takes us a couple of days to dig that next hole. Does it pay for us to keep our claws out all the time during them two days? Can’t we use the velvet paw, lady? Can’t we call it The Truce of Heaven till we sink that hole and find out if the treasure of Cosslett is down under it.”
“And if the treasure isn’t there?”
“Then out come the claws. I have a bargain with your father, lady. You know that!”
She shuddered.
“But that’s a good way off — two days, three days — three centuries!” he suggested.
She nodded, intensely curious at this working of his mind.
“You’d gain one thing,” he said. “If you’d give me your word not to try to leave and get to a town through the mountains, I’d parole you. Savvy?”
“You would accept my word?” she queried.
“As free as you’d accept mine,” he answered at once.
She bit her lips to keep back the smile.
“I know,” he said. “But when you come to think it over, you would take my word on anything. Go all through the mountains. That’s what I’m known as — a gent that never busted a promise. Lot of other things charged up again’ me, but never a real promise that I’ve broke.”
“For instance,” she said, “last night you promised that Ronicky Doone would be received as a friend, and yet your men opened fire on him!”
“Sure,” he replied, absolutely unabashed. “I just stated that he’d be received that way. I didn’t promise. I didn’t take no oath. I didn’t give anybody my hand on it.”
She observed the distinction with a thoughtful mind. There was a distinction. Even the low took heed of the difference between an oath and a mere given word.
“It’s hard for me to sympathize with that viewpoint,” she said coldly. “In my world we could not call it fair play.”
“I’m not asking for sympathy,” he replied readily. “Not a bit. I ain’t asking you to step inside my world. But I want to find out if my world is so plumb far away from yours that you can’t even see it through a telescope, so to speak. Is it?”
“No,” she said, “I think I can understand a good many things. And I’ll give you my word that I won’t attempt to escape until—”
He did not wait for her to finish the difficult sentence.
“Mind shaking on that?” he said.
“No.”
They shook hands. His palm was as soft as a woman’s, well nigh. No labor had ever hardened it. For some reason the touch of that hand convinced her more than a thousand words, a thousand deeds, of the essential evil of the man.
“This is fine!” he said. “We’ll have a couple of good days out of this. Why not? Every minute you save out of being sad is a minute that’s gained.”
“But what if sorrow comes afterward?”
“Well, what happens tomorrow doesn’t change what happens today.”
It was the root, she felt, of his philosophy.
“I suppose not,” she said cautiously. Then she became frank again. After all, he was distinctly worth frankness. Good or bad, he was a man. “Everything is very new to me here, as you understand. I’m trying to make it out.”
“I wish you’d postpone judging me for a while,” he begged. “Will you do that? I know it’s hard for you to make me out. You can’t know how a gent gets hungry to be free.”
“I think I do know,” she insisted. “I’ve met Ronicky Doone, and if ever there was a man who lives to be free, it is he!”
Her head went up with her enthusiasm; his head went down in thought, and he examined her with a keen glance.
“You figure he’s a lot better than the ordinary, eh?”
“Don’t you? But then, you don’t know him.”
“Lady,” said the other, “I know him like a book.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Never laid eyes on his face.”
“You admit it!”
“I don’t have to. I’ve heard about him. He’s too important for me not to have heard. Gents like him and me can’t live within a thousand miles of each other without knowing what the other fellow is.”
“But he doesn’t know you.”
“Sure he don’t. That’s where he’s weaker.”
“Ah! Weaker?”
“That’s what I said. He’s got his parts. But he’s too much of a fighter to be at the top of any game.”
It was so absurd that she laughed. “You object to fighting?” she said.
“I wish you’d try to understand,” he said, irritated. “You can if you want to. But you can’t get all I mean with the first jump of your mind, every time. Sure I object to fighting. That’s a last resource. Gents that do nothing but fight their way into trouble and out of it are like wolves. No better. They’re beasts. Maybe fine beasts, but beasts just the same. What makes men different? Brains, lady, brains! It ain’t how hard a gent can hit or how quick and straight he can shoot. It’s what he’s got above the eyes. Understand me?”
“Of course I understand you; and of course I agree.” She was piqued by his bluntness. And yet at the same time it made her wish more than ever to have his respect. The respect of Jack Moon! Afterward, she would marvel at herself and her mood during that talk! “But you have to admit that it sounds queer coming from Jack Moon.”
“Sure — Jack Moon the way you know him now. Not the Jack Moon I hope you’ll get to know.”
“Do you really want me to know you? Wouldn’t you be less strong, less invincible, if any one really understood you?”
“You won’t,” said he calmly. “But I’m going to show you my insides if I can. The more you show of yourself the more people miss you.”
“Where are your weaknesses?” she said.
“That’s asking. But I’ll tell you. I’m vain. I like to be flattered.”
“But you intend to be forearmed, I see!”
“Don’t do any good to be prepared for a thing. That’s my weakness. You’d laugh if you knew the way it works. Ain’t a man in my crowd that I don’t want to have respect me. If I can’t get ’em to love me, I want ’em to fear me; and you can lay to it that they all do!”
“And that flatters you?”
“Of course. Take you, for instance. If I can’t make you like me — like to talk to me; of course I don’t mean anything more’n that — then the next best is to have you shake every time I come near you.”
She looked at him out of narrowed eyes. And she knew that the fellow was actually telling the truth! And yet the door he had opened let in only enough light upon his involute nature to give her a deceptive feeling of knowledge. The main theme — the key to the mystery — was still farther beyond.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m not going to use what I know.”
“Thanks,” said the outlaw. “Here we are almost home!”
The clearing of the shacks was before them, and the crowd, which had hurried on ahead of them, was already busy at twenty preparations for the night and the evening meal. The sunset was touching only the tops of the trees now. All beneath was swiftly deepening shadow.
“However,” she said as a parting shot, “I’m going to maintain that there are two types of freedom — yours and Ronicky’s!”
“You know him well enough to call him Ronicky?”
“Yes.”
“And he calls you Jerry!”
“Why not?”
“No harm. Well, I tell you what: I could take this Ronicky Doone and wind him around my finger. I could make him my man! I could get him into my crowd if I wanted to!”
She flushed with her anger.
“That’s simply impossible! Ronicky Doone? He’s the soul of everything honorable!”
“Actions speak, lady,” and Jack Moon grinned. “Suppose I was to go out and bring him into this camp!”
“You could only bring him dead!”
“That so? I’d bet on it, though.”
“As a member of your band?”
“That’s what I said. Have him in here sleeping right along with the rest of the boys. He’d take Harry Bush’s place!”
“You can’t do it, Jack Moon! I — unless you’re a hypnotist.”
“You’re weakening,” said the other coldly. “Must be kind of fond of this gent if you can’t believe anything wrong about him!”
“I’ll tell you this,” she said firmly. “If he came down here as a member of your band, I’d despise him with all my heart. I’d loathe him!”
“That’s hard on me,” remarked Jack Moon. “But it sounds to me like a bet. What say? Shall I go out and try to get him down here?”
“If you go to face him, you’d risk your life!”
“Not the first time. Besides, it’d be worth it.”
“How?”
“To see your face when I bring him in. Shall I try?”
“You’ll gain nothing from me, sir!” She was trembling with excitement. “But go out. Try him. If he’s as weak as that, then there’s no steady faith, no honesty, no truth in any man in the world! But how — how could you get him?”
“Ain’t there gold over yonder? Wouldn’t he like a share in it?”
“You’d buy him!”
“They say everybody has a price, and I can bid pretty high right now!”
“You’ll fail, Jack Moon!”
He laughed mockingly and turned abruptly on his heel and strode out into the shade of the trees.
XVI. BROKEN FAITH
HIS FIRST HUNDRED yards were made at a rapid pace, but after that, finding himself entirely alone and well out of possible observation from behind, he reduced his gait and went on more slowly, more cautiously, keeping a sharp lookout through the tree trunks around him. Indeed, so sensitive had he suddenly become that now and again he paused and whirled toward the movement of a wind-swayed sapling or the swing of a bough. His progress, however, was fairly steady. He paused only to break off a slender dead branch some six feet long, and at the top of this he tied a white handkerchief.
In this wise he broke from the trees and came into the clearing at the bottom of the hollow. He must now be well beyond earshot of the camp, and suddenly he began to shout: “Doone! Ronicky Doone! Oh, Doone!”
He repeated the call in a high and piercing wail several times, and yet it was strange that he should expect the man to come to what might well be considered a trap. Strange, too, that he should expect to find him so near the scene of danger. Yet at the third repetition of the call a voice spoke behind him.
“I’m here. What’s the racket about?”
He turned slowly, very slowly. It was a maxim with him that quick moves were very dangerous.
He found himself looking at Ronicky Doone, though the latter was so covered with a mottling of shadows that he was almost rendered invisible. It was a sort of protective coloration — or shadowing, to be more accurate.
“Been following me long?” said the outlaw, leaning on his branch.
“Only since you started away from the shacks,” said Ronicky.
“Well, well,” and Moon sighed, “you sure are handy in a forest. Must of learned young.”
“Tolerable.”
“Ain’t it kind of dangerous trusting yourself on foot, when we got so many men to cut in around you on hossback?”
As a reply Ronicky whistled very softly, so softly that it barely reached the ears of the bandit leader, and out of the denser night of the trees behind Ronicky came the form of Lou. She was almost lost in the sea of shadow. Only her head, with the pricking ears and the bright eyes, appeared at the shoulder of her master.
“By Jiminy!” exclaimed Jack Moon, smiling with an almost boyish pleasure. “That’s sure a hoss, that one of yours. Lou?”
“You’ve heard of her?”
“Everybody that’s heard of you has heard of her, if they have any ears to listen to folks’ talk,” said the other. “She’s handy herself, ain’t she? How come she don’t make any more noise going through a wood?”
“Training,” answered Ronicky Doone. “Took a pile of pains.”
“I reckon!”
“But now she knows enough not to step where the dead leaves are thick or on a branch or nothing like that. Besides, I’ve got her so’s she knows when she ain’t to make any noise like whinnying.”
“That must of took time, Ronicky!”
“About two years, training her every day.”
“You don’t say! Well, you sure are the out-beatingest gent for patience, Ronicky!”
The other returned no answer. It was very strange to hear them conversing in so frank a manner, making no mysteries with each other — the one asking simple questions, the other answering them with fully as much simplicity. One might have thought them old and familiar acquaintances. Neither had raised his voice since Ronicky answered the third call.
“How come you to foller so close?” went on Jack Moon.
“I’m going to kill you, Moon,” said the smaller man, as gentle of voice as ever.
“The devil you are!” murmured Moon, also without violence. “How come?”
“They won’t hear the gun. Not with that wood-chopping going on and at this distance.”
“No, maybe not. And then what?”
“Hide your body and then drift back to the camp and get Dawn and the girl tonight.”
“You agin’ a dozen?”
“A dozen? They’s only a man and a half in that camp. And you’re the whole man, partner.”
“I take that kind of you, Ronicky.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“But they’ll have numbers on you!”
“Numbers ain’t anything. Not in night work. Not when you got the instinct for shooting. I’d sort of like it.”
“You would?”
“Yep. I never met up with so many gents that was all ripe for shooting, Moon. And I sure would like to get busy right among all them targets.”
“Why don’t you get a job with a sheriff?” asked Moon. “That’d keep your hand in on the work you like.”
