Alcatraz, Max Brand [scary books to read .TXT] 📗

the valleys.

"I'll be getting on, then, honey."

All at once, for pity at thought of him driving into the lonely silences, she caught his hand. It was still lean, hard of palm, sinewy with strength of which most extreme age, indeed, would never entirely rob it. And the touch of those strong fingers called back to her mind the picture of Oliver Jordan as he had been, a kingly man among men. Tears came into the eyes of Marianne.

"But where are you going?" she asked him gently. "And why do you never let me go with you, dear?"

"You?" he chuckled. "Waste time driving out nowheres with an old codger like me? I didn't give you all that schooling to have you throw your life away doing things like that. Don't you bother about me, Marianne. I'm just going to drift over yonder around Jackson Peak. You see?"

"But who is there, and what is there?"

He merely rubbed his knuckles across his forehead and then shook his head. "I dunno. Nothing much. It's tolerable quiet, though. And you get the smell of the pines the minute the trail starts climbing. Sort of a lazy place to go, but then I've turned into a lazy man, honey. Just sitting and thinking is about all I'm good for, or most like just the sitting without the thinking. Why, Marianne, where'd you get them tears?"

She choked them back.

"I wish—I wish—" she began.

"That's right," he nodded. "Keep right on wishing things. That's what I been doing lately. And wishing things is better than doing them. The way kids are, that's the best way to be. S'long, Marianne."

She stepped back, trying valiantly to smile, and he raised a cautioning finger, chuckling: "Look here, now, don't you go to bothering your head about me. Just save your worrying for this Perris gent."

He clucked to the greys and their sudden start threw him violently against the back of the seat.

The promise of that start, however, was by no means borne out by the pace into which they immediately fell, which was a dog-trot executed with trailing hoofs that raised little wisps of dust at every stride. She saw the lines slacken and hang loosely to every swing of the buckboard. Had she not, ten years before, trembled at the sight of this same team dashing into the road, high-headed, eyes of fire, and the reins humming with the strength of Oliver Jordan's pull?

The buckboard jolted slowly down the road and swung out of sight, but Marianne Jordan remained for long moments, staring after her father. Every time they passed through one of these interviews—and today's talk had been longer than most—she always felt that she had been pushed a little farther away from him. At the very time of his life when his daughter should have become a comfort to him, Oliver Jordan withdrew himself more and more from the world, and she could not but feel that his evening drives through the silences of the hill were dearer and closer to him than his daughter. The buckboard reappeared, lurching up a farther knoll, and then rolled out of sight to be seen no more. And Marianne felt again, what she had often felt before, seeing her father drive away in this fashion, that some day Oliver Jordan would never come back from the hills.

A moment later half a dozen of the cowpunchers came into view with the unmistakable form of Lew Hervey in the lead. He was a big-looking man in the saddle and he showed himself to the greatest advantage by riding rigidly erect with his head thrown a little back, so that the loose brim of his sombrero was continually in play about his face. For all her dislike of him she could not but admit that he was the beau ideal of the fine horseman. The dominant leader showed in every line and it was no wonder that the cowpunchers feared and respected him. Besides, there were many tales of his prowess with rifle and revolver to make him stand out in bolder relief.

She saw the riders disappear in the direction of the corrals and then turned back towards the house. Unquestionably it was to avoid sight of his men returning from their day's work that Oliver Jordan usually drove off at this time of the day; it brought home to him too keenly the many times when he himself had ridden back by the side of Lew Hervey from a day of galloping in the wind; it crushed him with a sense of the impotence into which his life had fallen. Indeed, unless some vital change came, her father must soon mourn himself into a grave. For the first time Marianne clearly perceived this. Oliver Jordan was wasting for grief over his lost freedom just as some youthful lover might decline because of the death of his mistress. The shock of this perception brought Marianne to a halt. When she looked up Shorty and Red Perris were not a hundred yards away, swinging along at a steady lope!

All sad thoughts were whisked from her mind as a gust whirls dead leaves away and shows the green grass beneath, newly growing. How it lifted her heart to see him. But she looked down, with a cold falling of gloom, at her blue gingham dress. That was not as she wished to appear. She could be in her riding costume, with the rather mannish blouse and loosely tied cravat, spurs on her boots and quirt in her hand as became the mistress and ruling force of a big ranch. Then she received sudden and convincing proof that mere outward appearances meant nothing in the life of Red Jim Perris. He took off his hat and swung it in greeting. There was a white flash of his teeth as he laughed, a red flash of his amazing hair in the sunset light. Then he was pulling up and swinging down to the ground. He came to meet her with his hat dangling in one hand and the other extended.

Typically Western, she thought, that in their second meeting he should act like an old friend. Delightfully Western, too! Under his straight-glancing eyes, his open smile of pleasure, new confidence came in Marianne, new self-reliance. The grip of his hand sent strength up her arm and into her heart.

"I'd given you up," she admitted.

"Mighty sorry it took so long," said Perris. "You see, I was right in the middle of a little poker game that hung on uncommon long. But when it finished up, me and Shorty come as fast as we could. Eh, Shorty?"

"Huh!" grunted Shorty. Marianne looked to her messenger for the first time.

He sat his saddle loosely, one hand falling heavily on the pommel, and his head bent. He did not raise it to meet her glance, but rolled his eyes up in a gloomy scowl which flitted over her face and then came to a rest on the face of Red Jim Perris. A frown of weariness puckered the brow of Shorty. Purple, bruised places of sleeplessness surrounded his eyes. And every line of age or worry or labor was graven more deeply on his face.

"Huh!" grunted Shorty again, mumbling his words very much like a drunkard. "I've killed my Mamie hoss, that's all!"

And with this gloomy retort, he urged the mare to a down-headed trot. In fact, the staunch little brown mare staggered on tired legs and her sides heaved like bellows. The grey horse of Red Jim Perris was in hardly better condition.

"I wanted you quickly," said Marianne, a little horrified. "But I didn't ask you to kill your horses coming."

"Kill 'em?" said Perris, and he cast a sharp glance of disapproval at her. "Not much! That hoss of mine is a pile fagged. I aim to get her that way. But she'll be fit as a fiddle in the morning. I ride her till she's through and never a step more. I know the minute she's through working on muscle and starts working on her nerve, and when that time comes, I stop. I've put up in the middle of nowheres to let her get back her wind. Kill her? Nope, lady, and the only reason Shorty's hoss was so used up was because he plumb insisted on keeping up with us!"

And Marianne nodded. Ordinarily such a speech would have drawn argument from her. Indeed, her own submissiveness startled her as she found herself gently inviting the fire eater to come into the house and learn in detail the work which lay before him.

CHAPTER XII FROM THE HIP

Shorty rode for the bunkhouse instead of the corrals and tumbling out of the saddle he staggered through the door. Inside, the cowpunchers sat about enjoying a before-dinner smoke and the coolness which the evening wash had brought to their wind-parched skins. Shorty reeled through the midst of them to his bunk and collapsed upon it.

Not a man stirred. Not an eye followed him. No matter what curiosity was burning in their vitals, etiquette demanded that they ask no questions. If in no other wise, the Indian has left his stamp on the country in the manners of the Western riders.

In the meantime, Shorty lay on his back with his arms flung out crosswise, his eyes closed, his breath expelled with a moan and drawn in with a rattle.

"Slim!" he called at length.

Slim raised his little freckled face which was supported by a neck of uncanny length, and he blinked unconcernedly at his bunkie. He and Shorty were inseparable companions.

"Take the saddle off my horse and put 'er up," groaned Shorty. "I'm dead beat!"

"Maybe you been chasing Perris on foot," observed Lew Hervey. Direct questions were still not in order, but often a man could be taunted into speech.

"Damn Perris and damn him black," retorted Shorty, opening his eyes with a snap and letting a glance blaze into space. "Of all the leather-skinned, mule-muscled, wrong-headed gents I ever seen he's the outlastingest."

"You sure got your vocabulary all warmed up," observed Little Joe, so-called because of two hundred pounds of iron-hard sinew and muscle. Slim was wandering towards the door to execute his mission, but he kept his head cocked towards his prostrated friend to learn as much as possible before he left. "Which I disremember," went on Little Joe thoughtfully, "of you ever putting so many words together without cussing. Perris must of give you some Bible study down to Glosterville."

It brought Shorty up on one bulging elbow and he glared at Little Joe.

"Bible?" snorted Shorty. "His idea of a Bible is fifty-two cards and a joker. He does his praying with one foot on a footrail."

"He'll sure fit in fine here," drawled Little Joe. "What with a girl for our boss and a hired hoss-catcher, none of us being good enough to take the job, we-all will get a mighty fine rep around these parts. You done yourself proud bringing him up here, Shorty."

"Laugh, damn you," said Shorty, heated to such a point that he half-forgot his exhaustion. "You ain't been through what I been through. You ain't man enough to of lasted." The imputation sobered Little Joe and he shrugged his massive shoulders significantly. Shorty's laugh was shrill with contempt. "Oh, you're big enough," he sneered. "But what does beef count agin a lightning flash?" He grew reminiscent. "I seen him bluff down the Wyoming Kid, yesterday."

A religious silence spread in the bunkhouse. The cowpunchers sat as stiff as though in Sunday store-clothes. Shorty took advantage of this favoring hush.

"I find him sitting in at a game of poker and I give him the girl's letter. He shakes it open saying: 'See that ten and raise you ten more.' I look over his shoulder as he flips up his cards. He's got a measly pair of deuces! Then he reads the letter and hands it back to me. 'Is it as bad as all that?' he says. 'See that other five and raise you twenty.' 'You're too strong for me Red,' says the gent that was bucking him—and lays down to that pair of deuces! I read the letter:

"'Dear Mr. Perris,

"'I know you don't like to hire out. But this is a job where you won't have a boss. The chestnut horse that nearly killed Manuel Cordova— Alcatraz—has come to my ranch and stolen half a dozen valuable mares. Will you come up and try to get rid of him for me? The job seems to be too big for my men. Name your own terms.

"'Cordially yours,

"'Marianne Jordan.'

"I hands