Black Jack, Max Brand [snow like ashes .txt] 📗
- Author: Max Brand
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hunting trip that afternoon. And pretty soon I heard a lot of noise
coming down the street, guns and what not. I look out the window and
there comes Jack Hollis, hellbent! Jack Hollis! And then it pops into my
head that they was a big price, for them days, on Jack’s head. I picked
up my gun and eased it over the sill of the window and got a good bead.
“Jack turned in his saddle—”
There was a faint groan from Elizabeth Cornish. All eyes focused on her
in amazement. She mustered a smile. The story went on.
“When Jack turned to blaze away at them that was piling out around the
corner of the street, I let the gun go, and I drilled him clean. Great
sensation, gents, to have a life under your trigger. Just beckon one mite
of an inch and a life goes scooting up to heaven or down to hell. I never
got over seeing Hollis spill sidewise out of that saddle. There he was a
minute before better’n any five men when it come to fighting. And now he
wasn’t nothing but a lot of trouble to bury. Just so many pounds of
flesh. You see? Well, sir, the price on Black Jack set me up in life and
gimme my start. After that I sort of specialized in manhunting, and I’ve
kept on ever since.”
Terry leaned across the table, his left arm outstretched to call the
sheriff’s attention.
“I didn’t catch that last name, sheriff,” he said.
The talk was already beginning to bubble up at the end of the sheriff’s
tale. But there was something in the tone of the boy that cut through the
talk to its root. People were suddenly looking at him out of eyes which
were very wide indeed. And it was not hard to find a reason. His handsome
face was colorless, like a carving from the stone, and under his knitted
brows his black eyes were ominous in the shadow. The sheriff frankly
gaped at him. It was another man who sat across the table in the chair
where the ingenuous youth had been a moment before.
“What name? Jack Hollis?”
“I think the name you used was Black Jack, sheriff?”
“Black Jack? Sure. That was the other name for Jack Hollis. He was mostly
called Black Jack for short, but that was chiefly among his partners.
Outside he was called Jack Hollis, which was his real name.”
Terence rose from his chair, more colorless than ever, the knuckles of
one hand resting upon the table. He seemed very tall, years older, grim.
“Terry!” called Elizabeth Cornish softly.
It was like speaking to a stone.
“Gentlemen,” said Terry, though his eyes never left the face of the
sheriff, and it was obvious that he was making his speech to one pair of
ears alone. “I have been living among you under the name of Colby—
Terence Colby. It seems an appropriate moment to say that this is not my
name. After what the sheriff has just told you it may be of interest to
know that my real name is Hollis. Terence Hollis is my name and my father
was Jack Hollis, commonly known as Black Jack, it seems from the story of
the sheriff. I also wish to say that I am announcing my parentage not
because I wish to apologize for it—in spite of the rather remarkable
narrative of the sheriff—but because I am proud of it.”
He lifted his head while he spoke. And his eye went boldly, calmly down
the table.
“This could not have been expected before, because none of you knew my
father’s name. I confess that I did not know it myself until a very short
time ago. Otherwise I should not have listened to the sheriff’s story
until the end. Hereafter, however, when any of you are tempted to talk
about Black or Jack Hollis, remember that his son is alive—and in good
health!”
He hung in his place for an instant as though he were ready to hear a
reply. But the table was stunned. Then Terry turned on his heel and left
the room.
It was the signal for a general upstarting from the table, a pushing back
of chairs, a gathering around Elizabeth Cornish. She was as white as
Terry had been while he talked. But there was a gathering excitement in
her eye, and happiness. The sheriff was full of apologies. He would
rather have had his tongue torn out by the roots than to have offended
her or the young man with his story.
She waved the sheriff’s apology aside. It was unfortunate, but it could
not have been helped. They all realized that. She guided her guests into
the living room, and on the way she managed to drift close to her
brother.
Her eyes were on fire with her triumph.
“You heard, Vance? You saw what he did?”
There was a haunted look about the face of Vance, who had seen his high-built schemes topple about his head.
“He did even better than I expected, Elizabeth. Thank heaven for it!”
Terence Hollis had gone out of the room and up the stairs like a man
stunned or walking in his sleep. Not until he stepped into the familiar
room did the blood begin to return to his face, and with the warmth there
was a growing sensation of uneasiness.
Something was wrong. Something had to be righted. Gradually his mind
cleared. The thing that was wrong was that the man who had killed his
father was now under the same roof with him, had shaken his hand, had sat
in bland complacency and looked in his face and told of the butchery.
Butchery it was, according to Terry’s standards. For the sake of the
price on the head of the outlaw, young Minter had shoved his rifle across
a window sill, taken his aim, and with no risk to himself had shot down
the wild rider. His heart stood up in his throat with revulsion at the
thought of it. Murder, horrible, and cold-blooded, the more horrible
because it was legal.
Something had to be done. What was it?
And when he turned, what he saw was the gun cabinet with a shimmer of
light on the barrels. Then he knew. He selected his favorite Colt and
drew it out. It was loaded, and the action in perfect condition. Many and
many an hour he had practiced and blazed away hundreds of rounds of
ammunition with it. It responded to his touch like a muscular part of his
own body.
He shoved it under his coat, and walking down the stairs again the chill
of the steel worked through to his flesh. He went back to the kitchen and
called out Wu Chi. The latter came shuffling in his slippers, nodding,
grinning in anticipation of compliments.
“Wu,” came the short demand, “can you keep your mouth shut and do what
you’re told to do?”
“Wu try,” said the Chinaman, grave as a yellow image instantly.
“Then go to the living room and tell Mr. Gainor and Sheriff Minter that
Mr. Harkness is waiting for them outside and wishes to see them on
business of the most urgent nature. It will only be the matter of a
moment. Now go. Gainor and the sheriff. Don’t forget.”
He received a scared glance, and then went out onto the veranda and sat
down to wait.
That was the right way, he felt. His father would have called the sheriff
to the door, in a similar situation, and after one brief challenge they
would have gone for their guns. But there was another way, and that was
the way of the Colbys. Their way was right. They lived like gentlemen,
and, above all, they fought always like gentlemen.
Presently the screen door opened, squeaked twice, and then closed with a
hum of the screen as it slammed. Steps approached him. He got up from the
chair and faced them, Gainor and the sheriff. The sheriff had
instinctively put on his hat, like a man who does not understand the open
air with an uncovered head. But Gainor was uncovered, and his white hair
glimmered.
He was a tall, courtly old fellow. His ceremonious address had won him
much political influence. Men said that Gainor was courteous to a dog,
not because he respected the dog, but because he wanted to practice for a
man. He had always the correct rejoinder, always did the right thing. He
had a thin, stern face and a hawk nose that gave him a cast of ferocity
in certain aspects.
It was to him that Terry addressed himself.
“Mr. Gainor,” he said, “I’m sorry to have sent in a false message. But my
business is very urgent, and I have a very particular reason for not
wishing to have it known that I have called you out.”
The moment he rose out of the chair and faced them, Gainor had stopped
short. He was quite capable of fast thinking, and now his glance
flickered from Terry to the sheriff and back again. It was plain that he
had shrewd suspicions as to the purpose behind that call. The sheriff was
merely confused. He flushed as much as his tanned-leather skin permitted.
As for Terry, the moment his glance fell on the sheriff he felt his
muscles jump into hard ridges, and an almost uncontrollable desire to go
at the throat of the other seized him. He quelled that desire and fought
it back with a chill of fear.
“My father’s blood working out!” he thought to himself.
And he fastened his attention on Mr. Gainor and tried to shut the picture
of the sheriff out of his brain. But the desire to leap at the tall man
was as consuming as the passion for water in the desert. And with a
shudder of horror he found himself without a moral scruple. Just behind
the thin partition of his will power there was a raging fury to get at
Joe Minter. He wanted to kill. He wanted to snuff that life out as the
life of Black Jack Hollis had been snuffed.
He excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully
upon Gainor.
“Mr. Gainor, will you be kind enough to go over to that grove of spruce
where the three of us can talk without any danger of interruption?”
Of course, that speech revealed everything. Gainor stiffened a little and
the tuft of beard which ran down to a point on his chin quivered and
jutted out. The sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise
and curiosity. And the three went silently, side by side, under the
spruce. They were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned.
Their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. Through the lower branches
the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the
ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these
were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat.
Indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain
air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.
It might have been this chill that made Terry button his coat closer
about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. The great trunks
shut out the world in a scattered wall. There was a narrow opening here
among the trees at the very center. The three
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