Black Jack, Max Brand [snow like ashes .txt] 📗
- Author: Max Brand
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end of the road more and more clearly. The rider of the gray began to
curse. He was leaning forward, jockeying his horse, but still El Sangre
hurled himself forward powerfully, smoothly. They passed the first shanty
on the outskirts of the town with the red head of the stallion at the hip
of the other. Before they straightened into the main street, El Sangre
had shoved his nose past the outstretched head of the gray. Then the
other rider jerked back on his reins with a resounding oath. Terry
imitated; one call to El Sangre brought him back to a gentle amble.
“Going to sell this damned skate,” declared the stranger, a lean-faced
man of middle age with big, patient, kindly eyes. “If he can’t make
another hoss break out of a pace, he ain’t worth keeping! But I’ll tell a
man that you got quite a hoss there, partner!”
“Not bad,” admitted Terry modestly. “And the gray has pretty good points,
it seems to me.”
They drew the horses back to a walk.
“Ought to have. Been breeding for him fifteen years—and here I get him
beat by a hoss that don’t break out of a pace.”
He swore again, but less violently and with less disappointment. He was
beginning to run his eyes appreciatively over the superb lines of El
Sangre. There were horses and horses, and he began to see that this was
one in a thousand—or more.
“What’s the strain in that stallion?” he asked.
“Mustang,” answered Terry.
“Mustang? Man, man, he’s close to sixteen hands!”
“Nearer fifteen three. Yes, he stands pretty high. Might call him a freak
mustang, I guess. He reverts to the old source stock.”
“I’ve heard something about that,” nodded the other. “Once in a
generation they say a mustang turns up somewhere on the range that breeds
back to the old Arab. And that red hoss is sure one of ‘em.”
They dismounted at the hotel, the common hitching rack for the town, and
the elder man held out his hand.
“I’m Jack Baldwin.”
“Terry’ll do for me, Mr. Baldwin. Glad to know you.”
Baldwin considered his companion with a slight narrowing of the eyes.
Distinctly this “Terry” was not the type to be wandering about the
country known by his first name alone. There were reasons and reasons why
men chose to conceal their family names in the mountains, however, and
not all of them were bad. He decided to reserve judgment. Particularly
since he noted a touch of similarity between the high head and the
glorious lines of El Sangre and the young pride and strength of Terry
himself. There was something reassuringly clean and frank about both
horse and rider, and it pleased Baldwin.
They made their purchases together in the store.
“Where might you be working?” asked Baldwin.
“For Joe Pollard.”
“Him?” There was a lifting of the eyebrows of Jack Baldwin. “What line?”
“Cutting wood, just now.”
Baldwin shook his head.
“How Pollard uses so much help is more’n I can see. He’s got a range back
of the hills, I know, and some cattle on it; but he’s sure a waster of
good labor. Take me, now. I need a hand right bad to help me with the
cows.”
“I’m more or less under contract with Pollard,” said Terry. He added:
“You talk as if Pollard might be a queer sort.”
Baldwin seemed to be disarmed by this frankness.
“Ain’t you noticed anything queer up there? No? Well, maybe Pollard is
all right. He’s sort of a newcomer around here. That big house of his
ain’t more’n four or five years old. But most usually a man buys land and
cattle around here before he builds him a big house. Well—Pollard is an
open-handed cuss, I’ll say that for him, and maybe they ain’t anything in
the talk that goes around.”
What that talk was Terry attempted to discover, but he could not. Jack
Baldwin was a cautious gossip.
Since they had finished buying, the storekeeper perched on the edge of
his selling counter and began to pass the time of the day. It began with
the usual preliminaries, invariable in the mountains.
“What’s the news out your way?”
“Nothing much to talk about. How’s things with you and your family?”
“Fair to middlin’ and better. Patty had the croup and we sat up two
nights firing up the croup kettle. Now he’s better, but he still coughs
terrible bad.”
And so on until all family affairs had been exhausted. This is a
formality. One must not rush to the heart of his news or he will mortally
offend the sensitive Westerner.
This is the approved method. The storekeeper exemplified it, and having
talked about nothing for ten minutes, quietly remarked that young
Larrimer was out hunting a scalp, had been drinking most of the morning,
and was now about the town boasting of what he intended to do.
“And what’s more, he’s apt to do it.”
“Larrimer is a no-good young skunk,” said Baldwin, with deliberate heat.
“It’s sure a crime when a boy that ain’t got enough brains to fill a
peanut shell can run over men just because he’s spent his life learning
how to handle firearms. He’ll meet up with his finish one of these days.”
“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t,” said the storekeeper, and spat with
precision and remarkable power through the window beside him. “That’s
what they been saying for the last two years. Dawson come right down here
to get him; but it was Dawson that was got. And Kennedy was called a good
man with a gun—but Larrimer beat him to the draw and filled him plumb
full of lead.”
“I know,” growled Baldwin. “Kept on shooting after Kennedy was down and
had the gun shot out of his hand and was helpless. And yet they call that
self-defense.”
“We can’t afford to be too particular about shootings,” said the
storekeeper. “Speaking personal, I figure that a shooting now and then
lets the blood of the youngsters and gives ‘em a new start. Kind of like
to see it.”
“But who’s Larrimer after now?”
“A wild-goose chase, most likely. He says he’s heard that the son of old
Black Jack is around these parts, and that he’s going to bury the
outlaw’s son after he’s salted him away with lead.”
“Black Jack’s son! Is he around town?”
The tone sent a chill through Terry; it contained a breathless horror
from which there was no appeal. In the eye of Jack Baldwin, fair-minded
man though he was, Black Jack’s son was judged and condemned as worthless
before his case had been heard.
“I dunno,” said the storekeeper; “but if Larrimer put one of Black Jack’s
breed under the ground, I’d call him some use to the town.”
Jack Baldwin was agreeing fervently when the storekeeper made a violent
signal.
“There’s Larrimer now, and he looks all fired up.”
Terry turned and saw a tall fellow standing in the doorway. He had been
prepared for a youth; he saw before him a hardened man of thirty and
more, gaunt-faced, bristling with the rough beard of some five or six
days’ growth, a thin, cruel, hawklike face.
A moment later, from the side door which led from the store into the main
body of the hotel, stepped the chunky form of Denver Pete, quick and
light of foot as ever. He went straight to the counter and asked for
matches, and as the storekeeper, still keeping half an eye upon the
formidable figure of Larrimer, turned for the matches, Denver spoke
softly from the side of his mouth to Terry—only in the lockstep line of
the prison do they learn to talk in this manner—gauging the carrying
power of the whisper with nice accuracy.
“That bird’s after you. Crazy with booze in the head, but steady in the
hand. One of two things. Clear out right now, or else say the word and
I’ll stay and help you get rid of him.”
For the first time in his life fear swept over Terry—fear of himself
compared with which the qualm he had felt after turning from Slim Dugan
that morning had been nothing. For the second time in one day he was
being tempted, and the certainty came to him that he would kill Larrimer.
And what made that certainty more sure was the appearance of his nemesis,
Denver Pete, in this crisis. As though, with sure scent for evil, Denver
had come to be present and watch the launching of Terry into a career of
crime. But it was not the public that Terry feared. It was himself. His
moral determination was a dam which blocked fierce currents in him that
were struggling to get free. And a bullet fired at Larrimer would be the
thing that burst the dam and let the flood waters of self-will free.
Thereafter what stood in his path would be crushed and swept aside.
He said to Denver: “This is my affair, not yours. Stand away, Denver. And
pray for me.”
A strange request. It shattered even the indomitable self-control of
Denver and left him gaping.
Larrimer, having completed his survey of the dim interior of the store,
stalked down upon them. He saw Terry for the first time, paused, and his
bloodshot little eyes ran up and down the body of the stranger. He turned
to the storekeeper, but still half of his attention was fixed upon Terry.
“Bill,” he said, “you seen anything of a spavined, long-horned, no-good
skunk named Hollis around town today?”
And Terry could see him wait, quivering, half in hopes that the stranger
would show some anger at this denunciation.
“Ain’t seen nobody by that name,” said Bill mildly. “Maybe you’re chasing
a wild goose? Who told you they was a gent named Hollis around?”
“Black Jack’s son,” insisted Larrimer. “Wild-goose chase, hell! I was
told he was around by a gent named—”
“These ain’t the kind of matches I want!” cried Denver Pete, with a
strangely loud-voiced wrath. “I don’t want painted wood. How can a gent
whittle one of these damned matches down to toothpick size? Gimme plain
wood, will you?”
The storekeeper, wondering, made the exchange. Drunken Larrimer had roved
on, forgetful of his unfinished sentence. For the very purpose of keeping
that sentence unfinished, Denver Pete remained on the scene, edging
toward the outskirts. Now was to come, in a single moment, both the
temptation and the test of Terry Hollis, and well Denver knew that if
Larrimer fell with a bullet in his body there would be an end of Terry
Hollis in the world and the birth of a new soul—the true son of Black
Jack!
“It’s him that plugged Sheriff Minter,” went on Larrimer. “I hear tell as
how he got the sheriff from behind and plugged him. This town ain’t a
place for a mankilling houn’ dog like young Black Jack, and I’m here to
let him know it!”
The torrent of abuse died out in a crackle of curses. Terry Hollis stood
as one stunned. Yet his hand stayed free of his gun.
“Suppose we go on to the hotel and eat?” he asked Jack Baldwin softly.
“No use staying and letting that fellow deafen us with his oaths, is
there?”
“Better than a circus,” declared Baldwin. “Wouldn’t miss it. Since old
man Harkness died, I ain’t heard cussing to match up with Larrimer’s.
Didn’t know that he had that much brains.”
It seemed that the fates were
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