Acres of Unrest (22 page)

The evening of another day came softly down from the shadows of the mountains. But there was still enough light to pour through the window and illuminate the table of Mike Jarvin, where he worked patiently at his card packs. As the dimness increased, he thrice begged Soapy to light a lamp for him, but Soapy was as indifferent as a piece of stone, and Peter refused to interfere.

“Soapy works for me,” said Peter, “and that means he doesn’t have to serve other people, unless he wants to. That’s final, Jarvin. You’ve heard me say it before, for that matter.”

“Well,” Soapy said, “I’ll light his darn lamp for him. Maybe it’ll help him to keep the ghosts away.”

There was a half-angry and half-frightened snarl from Mr. Jarvin inside of the shack. But now as Soapy looked down the slope, he saw a rider approaching through the dusk—a rider who came out of the shadows and rapidly into his ken—and he knew that it was a stranger to the mine.

“And there’s two more coming behind. A woman and a man coming up the slope behind, Mister Hale. What might they be? Woman riding a mighty bright pinto boss.”

“A pinto horse!” echoed Peter, rising suddenly in the hammock. He gave the couple, who were winding up the road, a single startled glance, and
then heaved himself to his feet. But now he started again. For he saw the horseman who was drifting nearer. “Father!” cried Peter. “What in the name of wonder has brought you up here?”

“Why, Peter,” said the older man, waving his hand to him, “I’ve come up here to see how things was with you. There ain’t any harm in that, I guess?”

“No harm,” Peter stated in a somewhat stifled voice. “No harm at all.”

“But there’s somebody else coming up the road that might surprise you, Peter.”

“Tell me,” gasped the son. “It can’t be…it really can’t be that…?”

“It’s McNair and his girl,” Ross Hale said calmly. “I passed them on the trail a while back. I recognised them, but they didn’t recognize me. I guess I was cutting in from the side and looking back, with the light ag’in’ their faces. You’d best go meet them, Peter.”

Said Peter in a shaken voice: “Do you hear, Jarvin?”

“I hear,” growled Jarvin.

“Shall I go to meet them, or shall I stay here with you?”

“Let them be cursed. Well, I don’t want to hear that McNair talk. Got no use for me…nor me for him. You go meet them, and let McNair know that he ain’t welcome here. The fool had ought to know. And you might take your old man along with you.”

“I’ll wait right here,” Ross Hale said as quietly as before. “There ain’t any hurry about what I got to say to you.”

Peter was already starting away with Soapy behind him.

“Hey, leave Soapy here!” shouted Jarvin.

“Go back, Soapy,” said Peter. “Watch Jarvin for me.”

Soapy obediently swung around and strode on to the verandah.

“No matches here for this lamp!” snarled Jarvin.

“Soapy, got a match?”

“No,” said Soapy.

“Go fetch me one, then.”

“I ain’t sent here to fetch things. The boss sent me to watch you, you fat swine,” replied amiable Soapy.

“Here,” said Ross Hale in genial tones. “Here’s a match, Jarvin.”

“Ah,” Mike Jarvin said, “come in, Hale. You can see what I got to put up with,” he continued, “from your son and his Negro. Thanks.”

For Ross Hale had entered the shack and handed a package of sulphur matches to the miner. One of those matches spluttered with a blue light that steadied to yellow, and the lamp was lighted.

“Now look here, Hale,” went on Jarvin more gently. “I suppose that you’ve come up here to get your boy. But that ain’t likely. He’s to stay with me, Hale. He gets pay enough for a major general. That ought to suit him. And he’s able to pull me out of a good many scrapes. You’ve heard about what happened at Lawson Creek, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Ross Hale.

“So we ain’t gonna have no argument, eh?”

“What I want to ask you, Jarvin, is just this…how long will Peter be workin’ for you?”

“How long will I be livin’?” replied Jarvin. “That’s a more sensible way of puttin’ that question. And I’m tough, Hale, and I’m gonna last.”

There was a little pause, which lasted long enough to make Jarvin squint at his guest.

“I’d like to say,” murmured Ross Hale at last, “that, if you was to think things over careful, you might want to make a compromise with me, Jarvin.”

“Compromise?” Jarvin snarled, growing ugly at once. “Why should I? I got Peter and I’m gonna keep him. I got him so’s he can’t get away. And that’s the finish of it.”

“Are you set on that? Is that final?” asked Hale.

“Soapy,” grunted the mine owner, “this here looks like trouble. Are you watchin’?”

“I’m watchin’,” replied Soapy from the window.

“Jarvin,” said Hale, “I’ve come here to have it out with you. And…” His right hand went back tohis hip; that gesture brought a snarl of fear from Jarvin. His own right hand went back to his gun and clung there.

As for Soapy, his own weapon was already bared and resting on the sill of the window. All of this, Ross Hale saw. He knew that, when he drew his own gun, a bullet would be through him. But still his courage did not falter. Life, for him, was not so sweet that he cared to linger it out. And before he died, he would be able to draw down Jarvin also into the eternal shadow. But there was no chance for him to fire.

Suddenly Jarvin looked askance at the window facing Soapy. And Jarvin, with a shrill scream, threw up his arms before his face and cringed back against the side of the wall.

“No, Sam!” he shouted. “For heaven’s sake…!”

It seemed to Ross Hale, as he looked in the same direction, that he saw at the other window
a very pale face, framed with long, silver hair, distinguishable dimly under the shadow of a hat. He had only the faintest glimpse. A gun spoke from the hand of the stranger, filling the little room with sudden thunder. Jarvin crashed forward on his face and moved no more. The face at the other window was gone as Soapy, his attention drawn from Ross Hale, fired a bullet vainly in that direction. When Soapy rushed around the side of the shack, there was no trace of any stranger. Perhaps he had run down among the big rocks that bordered the plateau.

Soapy hurried back into the little house and found Ross Hale on his knees beside Jarvin. He had turned the wounded man upon his back, but it was plain that nothing could be done. A crimson patch was growing in the very center of Jarvin’s breast—and his eyes were closed.

He opened them at last with a faint chuckle, and then his voice sounded with wonderful steadiness and a note of exultation. “A full house beats three of a kind, stranger,” Jarvin murmured cheerfully.

With the last word his eyes grew blank, and he was dead.

Jarvin was buried at the edge of the plateau. Some of the miners blasted a hole among the rocks, and he was laid away for the endless sleep. Aterward, he remained in the minds of men only as an ugly rumor, and no more. Perhaps he occupied less space in the thoughts of Peter Hale and his father than in any others—because there was too much, now, to fill the minds of the two.

There was only one point on which they differed—only one point of importance. Ross Hale
was firmly convinced that it was actually the ghost of Sam Debney, Jarvin’s murdered man, that had returned to work vengeance upon his destroyer. But Peter was just as firmly convinced that it must have been a brother, say, of poor Debney, who had returned after these many years to give Jarvin requital for that foul murder.

However, they could not dwell on such ideas, and certainly there was never a trace of the destroyer. He vanished from the knowledge of men utterly.

As for Peter and Ruth—they were married before the week was out, and at their marriage every notable in the county was present, with one exception.

Andy Hale was there, stern, and with a forced smile that deceived no one. But Charles Hale, it appeared, had been called away to the East upon important business, and no one could say how long it would be before he returned. Indeed, he did not return for many long months. Not, in fact, until his father had gone for him.

There were ugly rumors afloat—that Charlie had fallen in bad habits while he was away; that the gaming table had a singular lure for him; that he had learned to squander money. No one could understand how this could be, for certainly he had been raised according to a rigid rule of economy.

Peter passed on to a broader and a fuller life. He had the growing concerns of his father’s ranch to occupy him. Beyond this, he had all the business of McNair’s broad acres. McNair himself refused to lift a hand and left everything in the power of his son-in-law. As he said, he had been merely a worker on the old scale and scheme of things. He had merely sketched in the outlines of the picture,
and now Peter could fill in the details. As for himself, he was fond of sitting at his ease with Ross Hale on the verandah of Peter’s new house.

He would say to his friend: “Now which of us has the most claim to Peter, Ross? You made him, I know. But I discovered him. And that’s just as important.”

Max Brand®
is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways. Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles. Once the
United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in
The Max Brand Companion
(Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN

TREASURE WELL

THE WAY OF THE WEST (Anthology)

THE BLACK RIDER

CITY IN THE SKY

CROSSROADS

LUCK

RED ROCKS SECRET

DOGS OF THE CAPTAIN

THE LAWLES WEST (Anthology)

THE FUGITIVE

TWISTED BARS

TROUBLES MESENGER

BAD MANS GULCH

THE RANGE FINDER

MOUNTAIN STORMS

THE GOLDEN CAT

PETER BLUE

MORE TALES OF THE WILD WEST

FLAMING FORTUNE

THE RUNAWAYS

BLUE KINGDOM

JOKERS EXTRA WILD

CRUSADER

SMOKING GUNS

THE LONE RIDER

THE UNTAMED WEST (Anthology)

THE TYRANT

THE WELDING QUIRT

THE BRIGHT FACE OF DANGER

DON DIABLO

THE OUTLAW REDEEMER

THE GOLD TRAIL

THE PERIL TREK

THE MASTERMAN

TIMBER LINE

THE OVERLAND KID

THE GOLDEN WEST (Anthology)

THE HOUSE OF GOLD

THE GERALDI TRAIL

GUNMANS GOAL

CHINOOK

IN THE HILLS OF MONTEREY

THE LOST VALLEY

THE FUGITIVES MISSION

THE SURVIVAL OF JUAN ORO

THE GAUNTLET

STOLEN GOLD

THE WOLF STRAIN

MEN BEYOND THE LAW

BEYOND THE OUTPOSTS

THE STONE THAT SHINES

THE OATH OF OFFICE

DUST ACROSS THE RANGE/THE CROSS BRAND

THE ROCK OF KIEVER

SOFT METAL

THUNDER MOON AND THE SKY PEOPLE

RED WIND AND THUNDER MOON

THE LEGEND OF THUNDER MOON

THE QUEST OF LE GARRISON

SAFETY McTEE

TWO SIXES

SIXTEEN IN NOME

A LEISURE BOOK
^®

September 2009

Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
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Copyright © 2007 by Golden West Literary Agency

“Acres of Unrest,” a six-part serial by Max Brand, first appeared in Street & Smith’s
Western Story Magazine
(6/12/26-7/17/26). Copyright ©1926 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1954 by Dorothy Faust. Copyright © 2007 by Golden West Literary Agency for restored material. Acknowledgment is made to Condé Nast Publications, Inc., for their cooperation.

The name Max Brand® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission.

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E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0734-0

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