Max Brand (14 page)

To all this Jig returned no answer, but in a peculiarly lifeless manner
went to his horse and climbed in his awkward way into the saddle. They
went down the trail slowly.

"Because," explained the cowpuncher, "if I save my hoss's wind I may be
saving my own life."

Where the trail bent like an elbow and shot sheer down for the plain
and Sour Creek, Riley Sinclair pointed his horse's nose up to the
taller mountains, but Jig sat his horse in melancholy silence and
looked mournfully up at his companion.

"So long," said Sinclair cheerily. "And when you get down yonder, it'll
happen most likely that pretty soon you'll hear a lot of hard things
about Riley Sinclair."

"If I do—if I hear a syllable against you," cried the schoolteacher
with a flare of color, "I'll—I'll drive the words back into their
teeth!"

He shook with his emotion; Riley Sinclair shook with controlled
laughter.

"Would you do all of that, partner? Well, I believe you'd try. What I
mean to say is this: No matter what they say, you can lay to it that
Sinclair has tried to play square and clean according to his own
lights, which ain't always the best in the world. So long!"

There was no answer. He found himself looking down into the quivering
face of the schoolteacher.

"Why, kid, you look all busted up!"

"Riley," gasped Jig very faintly, "I can't go!"

"And why not?"

"Because I can't meet Jude."

"Cartwright, eh? But you got to, sooner or later."

"I'll die first."

"Would your nerve hold you up through that?"

"So easily," said Jig. There was such a simple gravity and despair in
his expression that Sinclair believed it. He grunted and stared hard.

"This Cartwright gent is worse'n death to you?"

"A thousand, thousand times!"

"How come?"

"I can't tell you."

"I kind of wish," said Sinclair thoughtfully, "that I'd kept my grip a
mite longer."

"No, no!"

"You don't wish him dead?"

Jig shuddered.

"You plumb beat me, partner. And now you want to come along with me?"
Sinclair grinned. "An outlaw's life ain't what it's cracked up to be,
son. You'd last about a day doing what I have to do."

"You'll find," said the schoolteacher eagerly, "that I can stand it
amazingly well. I'll—I'll be far, far stronger than you expect!"

"Somehow I kind of believe it. But it's for your own fool sake, son,
that I don't want you along."

"Let me try," pleaded Jig eagerly.

The other shook his head and seemed to change his mind in the very
midst of the gesture.

"Why not?" he asked himself. "You'll get enough of it inside of a day.
And then you'll find out that they's some things about as bad as
death—or Cartwright. Come on, kid!"

It was a weary ride that brought them to the end of that day and to a
camping place. It seemed to Jig that the world was made up of nothing
but the ups and downs of that mountain trail. Now, as the sun went
down, they came out on a flat shoulder of the mountain. Far below them
lay Sour Creek, long lost in the shadow of premature night which filled
the valley.

"Here we are, fixed up as comfortable as can be," said Sinclair
cheerily. "There's water, and there's wood aplenty. What could a gent
ask for more? And here's my country!"

For a moment his expression softened as he looked over the black peaks
stepping away to the north. Now he pointed out a grove of trees, and on
the other side of the little plateau was heard the murmur of a feeble
spring.

Riley swung down easily from the saddle, but when Jig dismounted his
knees buckled with weariness, and he slipped down on a rock. He was
unheeded for a moment by the cowpuncher, who was removing from his
saddle the quarters of a deer which he had shot at the foot of the
mountain. When this task was ended, a stern voice brought Jig to his
feet.

"What's all this? How come? Going to let that hoss stand there all
night with his saddle on? Hurry up!"

"All right," replied the schoolteacher, but his voice quaked with
weariness, and the cinch knot, drawn taut by the powerful hand of Jerry
Bent, refused to loosen. He struggled with it until his fingers ached,
and his panicky breath came in gasps of nervous excitement.

Presently he was aware of the tall, dark form of Sinclair behind him,
his saddle slung across his arm.

"By guns," muttered Sinclair, "it ain't possible! Not enough muscle to
untie a knot? It's a good thing that your father can't see the sort of
a son that he turned out. Lemme at that!"

Under his strong fingers the knot gave by magic.

"Now yank that saddle off and put it yonder with mine."

Jig pulled back the saddle, but when the full weight jerked down on him
he staggered, and he began to drag the heavy load.

"Hey," cut in the voice of the tyrant, "want to spoil that saddle, kid?
Lift it, can't you?"

Gaspar obeyed with a start and, having placed it in the required
position, turned and waited guiltily.

"Time you was learning something about camping out," declared the
cowpuncher, "and I'll teach you. Take this ax and gimme some wood,
pronto!"

He handed over a short ax, heavy-headed and small of haft.

"That bush yonder! That's dead, or dead enough for us."

Plainly Jig was in awe of that ax. He carried it well out from his
side, as if he feared the least touch against his leg might mean a cut.
Of all this, Riley Sinclair was aware with a gradually darkening
expression. He had been partly won to Jig that day, but his better
opinion of the schoolteacher was being fast undermined.

With a gloomy eye he watched John Gaspar drop on his knees at the base
of the designated shrub and raise the ax slowly—in both hands! Not
only that, but the head remained poised, hung over the schoolteacher's
shoulder. When the blow fell, instead of striking solidly on the trunk
of the bush, it crashed futilely through a branch. Riley Sinclair drew
closer to watch. It was excusable, perhaps, for a man to be unable to
ride or to shoot or to face other men. But it was inconceivable that
any living creature should be so clumsy with a common ax.

To his consummate disgust the work of Jig became worse and worse. No
two blows fell on the same spot. The trunk of the little tree became
bruised, but even when the edge of the ax did not strike on a branch,
at most it merely sliced into the outer surface of the wood and left
the heart untouched. It was a process of gnawing, not of chopping. To
crown the terrible exhibition, Jig now rested from his labors and
examined the palms of his hands, which had become a bright red.

"Gimme the ax," said Sinclair shortly. He dared not trust himself to
more speech and, snatching it from the hands of Cold Feet, buried the
blade into the very heart of the trunk. Another blow, driven home with
equal power and precision on the opposite side, made the tree shudder
to its top, and the third blow sent it swishing to the earth.

This brought a short cry of admiration and wonder from the
schoolteacher, for which Sinclair rewarded him with one glance of
contempt. With sweeping strokes he cleared away the half-dead branches.
Presently the trunk was naked. On it Riley now concentrated his attack,
making the short ax whistle over his shoulders. The trunk of the shrub
was divided into handy portions as if by magic.

Still John Gaspar stood by, gaping, apparently finding nothing to do.
And this with a camp barely started!

It was easier to do oneself, however, than to give directions to such
stupidity. Sinclair swept up an armful of wood and strode off to the
spot he had selected for the campfire, near the place where the spring
water ran into a small pool. A couple of big rocks thrown in place
furnished a windbreak. Between them he heaped dead twigs, and in a
moment the flame was leaping.

As soon as the fire was lighted they became aware that the night was
well nigh upon them. Hitherto the day had seemed some distance from its
final end, for there was still color in the sky, and the tops of the
western mountains were still bright. But with the presence of fire
brightness, the rest of the world became dim. The western peaks were
ghostly; the sky faded to the ashes of its former splendor; and Jig
found himself looking down upon thick night in the lower valleys. He
saw the eyes of the horses glistening, as they raised their heads to
watch. The gaunt form of Sinclair seemed enormous. Stooping about the
fire, enormous shadows drifted above and behind him. Sometimes the
light flushed over his lean face and glinted in his eyes. Again his
head was lost in shadow, and perhaps only the active, reaching hands
were illuminated brightly.

He prepared the deer meat with incomprehensible swiftness, at the same
time arranging the fire so that it rapidly burned down to a firm,
strong, level bed of coals, and by the time the bed of coals were
ready, the meat was prepared in thick steaks to broil over it.

In a little time the rich brown of the cooking venison streaked across
to Jig. He had kept at a distance up to this time, realizing that he
was in disgrace. Now he drifted near. He was rewarded by an amiable
grin from Riley Sinclair, whose ugly humor seemed to have vanished at
the odor of the broiling meat.

"Watch this meat cook, kid, will you? There's something you can do that
don't take no muscle and don't take no knowledge. All you got to do is
to keep listening with your
nose
, and if you smell it burning, yank
her off. Understand? And don't let the fire blaze. She's apt to flare
up at the corners, you see? And these here twigs is apt to burn
through—these ones that keep the meat off'n the coals. Watch them,
too. And that's all you got to do. Can you manage all them things at
once?"

Jig nodded gravely, as though he failed to see the contempt.

"I seen a fine patch of grass down the hill a bit. I'm going to take
the hosses down there and hobble 'em out." Whistling, Sinclair strode
off down the hill, leading the horses after him.

The schoolteacher watched him go, and when the forms had vanished, and
only the echo of the whistling blew back, he looked up. The last life
was gone from the sunset. The last time he glanced up, there had been
only a few dim stars; now they had come down in multitudes, great
yellow planets and whole rifts of steel-blue stars.

He took from his pocket the old envelope which Sinclair had given him,
examined the scribbled confession, chuckling at the crude labor with
which the writing had been drawn out, and then deliberately stuffed the
paper into a corner of the fire. It flamed up, singeing the cooking
meat, but John Gaspar paid no heed. He was staring off down the hill to
make sure that Sinclair should not return in time to see that little
act of destruction. An act of self-destruction, too, it well might turn
out to be.

As for Sinclair, having found his pastureland, where the grass grew
thick and tall, he was in no hurry to return to his clumsy companion.
He listened for a time to the sound of the horses, ripping away the
grass close to the ground, and to the grating as they chewed. Then he
turned his attention to the mountains. His spirit was easier in this
place. He breathed more easily. There was a sense of freedom at once
and companionship. He lingered so long, indeed, that he suddenly became
aware that time had slipped away from him, and that the venison must be
long since done. At that he hurried back up the slope.

He was hungry, ravenously hungry, but the first thing that greeted him
was the scent of burning meat. It stopped him short, and his hands
gripped involuntarily. In that first burst of passion he wanted
literally to wring the neck of the schoolteacher. He strode closer. It
was as he thought. The twigs had burned away from beneath the steak and
allowed it to drop into the cinders, and beside the dying fire, barely
illuminated by it, sat Jig, sound asleep, with his head resting on his
knees.

For a moment Sinclair had to fight with himself for control. All his
murderous evil temper had flared up into his brain and set his teeth
gritting. At length he could trust himself enough to reach down and set
his heavy grip on the shoulder of the sleeper.

Even in sleep Jig must have been pursued by a burdened consciousness of
guilt. Now he jerked up his head and stammered up to the shadowy face
of Sinclair.

"I—I don't know—all at once it happened. You see the fire—"

But the telltale odor of the charring meat struck his nostrils, and his
speech died away. He was panting with fear of consequences. Now a new
turn came to the fear of Cold Feet. It seemed that Riley Sinclair's
hand had frozen at the touch of the soft flesh of Jig's shoulder. He
remained for a long moment without stirring. When his hand moved it was
to take Jig under the chin with marvelous firmness and gentleness at
once and lift the face of the schoolteacher. He seemed to find much to
read there, much to study and know. Whatever it was, it set Jig
trembling until suddenly he shrank away, cowering against the rock
behind.

"You don't think—"

But the voice of Sinclair broke in with a note in it that Jig had never
heard before.

"Guns and glory—a woman!"

It came over him with a rush, that revelation which explained so many
things—everything in fact; all that strange cowardice, and all that
stranger grace; that unmanly shrinking, that more than manly contempt
for death. Now the firelight was too feeble to show more than one
thing—the haunted eyes of the girl, as she cowered away from him.

He saw her hand drop from her breast to her holster and close around
the butt of her revolver.

Sinclair grew cold and sick. After all, what reason had she to trust
him? He drew back and began to walk up and down with long, slow
strides. The girl followed him and saw his gaunt figure brush across
the stars; she saw the wind furl and unfurl the wide brim of his hat,
and she heard the faint stir and clink of his spurs at every step.