Max Brand (17 page)

Now he looked calmly, almost contemptuously upon the sheriff and the
rest of the posse.

"Gents, has any of you ever seen this Jig you talk about ride a hoss?"

"Me, of course," said the sheriff.

"Anything about him strike you when he was in a saddle?"

"Sure! Got a funny arm motion."

"Like he was fanning his ribs with his elbows to keep cool?" went on
Arizona, grinning.

The sheriff chuckled.

"Would you pick him for a good hand on a long trail?"

"Never in a million years," said the sheriff. "Is he?"

Kern seemed to admit his inferiority by asking this question. He bit
his lip and was about to go on and answer himself when Arizona cut in
with: "Never in a million years, sheriff. He couldn't do twenty miles
in a day without being laid up."

"What's the point of all this, Arizona?"

"I'll show you pronto. Let's go back to Sinclair. The other day he was
one of a bunch that pretty near got Gaspar hung, eh?"

"Yep."

"But at the last minute he saved Jig?"

"Sure. I just been telling you that."

Their inability to follow Arizona's train of thought irritated the
others. He literally held them in the palm of his hand as he developed
his argument.

"Why did he save Jig?" he went on. "Because when Gaspar was about to
swing, they was something about him that struck Sinclair. What was it?
I dunno, except that Jig is tolerable young looking and pretty
helpless, even though you say he killed Quade."

"Say he killed him?" burst put the sheriff. "It was plumb proved on
him."

"I'd sure like to see that proof," said the man from the southland.
"The point is that Sinclair took pity on him and kept him from the
noose. Then he stays that night guarding him and gets more and more
interested. This Jig has got a pile of education. I've heard him talk.
Today you come over the hills. Sinclair sees Woodville, figures that's
the place where Jig'll be hung, and he loses his nerve. He sticks you
up and gets Jig free. All right! D'you think he'll stop at that? Don't
he know that Jig's plumb helpless on the trail? And knowing that, d'you
think he'll split with Jig and leave the schoolteacher to be picked up
the first thing? No, sir, he'll stick with Jig and see him through."

"Well, all the better," snapped the sheriff. "That's going to make our
trail shorter—if what you say turns out true."

"It's true, well enough. Sinclair right now is camping somewhere in the
hills near Sour Creek, waiting for things to quiet down before he hits
the out-trail with this Gaspar."

"He wouldn't be fool enough for that," grumbled the sheriff.

"Fool? Has any one of you professional man hunters figured yet on
hunting for 'em near Sour Creek? Ain't you-all been talking long
trails—Colma, and what not?"

They were crushed.

"All you say is true, if Sinclair saddles himself with the tenderfoot.
Might as well tie so much lead around his neck."

"He'll do it, though," said Arizona carelessly. "I know him."

It caused a new focusing of attention upon him, and this time Arizona
seemed to regret that he stood in the limelight.

"You know him?" asked Joe Stockton softly.

The bright black eyes of the fat man glittered and flickered from face
to face. He seemed to be gauging them and deciding how much he could
say—or how little.

"Sure, I drifted up to this country one season and rode there. I heard
a pile about this Sinclair and seen him a couple of times."

"How good a man d'you figure him to be with a gun?" asked the sheriff
without apparent interest.

"Good enough," sighed Arizona. "Good enough, partner!"

Presently the sheriff showed that he was a man capable of taking good
advice, even though he could not stamp it as his own original device.

"Boys," he said, "I figure that what Arizona has said is tolerable
sound. Arizona, what d'you advise next?"

"That we go to Sour Creek pronto—and sit down and wait!"

A chorus of exclamations arose.

Arizona grew impatient with such stupidity. "Sinclair come to Sour
Creek to do something. I dunno what he wants, but what he wants he
ain't got yet, and he's the sort that'll stay till he does his work."

"I've got in touch with the authorities higher up, boys," declared
Kern. "Sinclair and Gaspar is both outlawed, with a price on their
heads. Won't that change Sinclair's mind and make him move on?"

"You don't know Sinclair," persisted Arizona. "You don't know him at
all, sheriff."

"Grab your hosses, boys. I'm following Arizona's lead."

Pouring out of the door in silence, the omniscience of Arizona lay
heavily upon their minds. Inside, the sheriff lingered with the wise
man from the southland.

"If I was to get in touch with Colma, Fatty, what d'you think they'd be
able to tell me about your record up there?"

The olive skin of Arizona became a bleached drab.

"I dunno," he said rather thickly, and all the while his little black
eyes were glittering and shifting. "Nothing much, Kern."

His glance steadied. "By the way, when you had your glove off a while
ago I seen something on your wrist that looked like a rope gall, Kern.
If I was to tell the boys that, what d'you figure they'd think about
their sheriff?"

It was Kern's turn to change color. For a moment he hesitated, and then
he dropped a hand lightly on Arizona's shoulder.

"Look here, Arizona," he muttered in the ear of the fat man, "what you
been before you hit Woodville I dunno, and I don't care. I figure we
come to a place where we'd both best keep our mouths shut. Eh?"

"Shake," said Arizona, and they went out the door, almost arm in arm.

For Jude Cartwright the world was gone mad, as he spurred down the
hills away from Sinclair and the girl. It was really only the second
time in his life that he had been thwarted in an important matter. To
be sure he had been raised roughly among rough men, but among the
roughest of them, the repute of his family and the awe of his father's
wide authority had served him as a shield in more ways than Jude
himself could realize. He had grown very much accustomed to having his
way.

All things were made smooth for him; and when he reached the age when
he began to think of marriage, and was tentatively courting half a
dozen girls of the district, unhoped-for great fortune had fairly
dropped into his path.

The close acquaintance with old Mervin in that hunting trip had been
entirely accidental, and he had been astounded by the marriage contract
which Mervin shortly after proposed between the two families.
Ordinarily even Jude Cartwright, with all his self-esteem, would never
have aspired to a star so remote as Mervin's daughter. The miracle,
however, happened. He saw himself in the way to be the richest man on
the range, the possessor of the most lovely wife.

That dream was first pricked by the inexplicable disappearance of the
girl on their marriage day. He had laid that disappearance to foul
play. That she could have left him through any personal aversion never
entered his complacent young head.

He went out on the quest after the neighboring district had been combed
for his wife, and he had spent the intervening months in a ceaseless
search, which grew more and more disheartening. It was only by chance
that he remembered that Mervin had lived for some time in Sour Creek,
and only with the faintest hope of finding a clue that he decided to
visit that place. In his heart he was convinced that the girl was dead,
but if she were really hiding it was quite possible that she might have
remembered the town where her father had made his first success with
cattle.

Now the coincidence that had brought him face to face with her, stunned
him. He was still only gradually recovering from it. It was totally
incredible that she should have fled at all. And it was entirely beyond
the range of credence that modest Elizabeth Mervin should have donned
the clothes of a man and should be wandering through the hills with a
male companion.

But when his wonder died away, he felt little or no pity for his wife.
The pang that he felt was the torture of offended pride. Indeed, the
fact that he had lost his wife meant less to him than that his wife had
seen him physically beaten by another man. He writhed in his saddle at
the memory.

Instantly his mind flashed back to the details of the scene. He
rehearsed it with himself in a different role, beating the cowpuncher
to a helpless pulp of bruised muscle, snatching away his wife. But even
if he had been able to do that, what would the outcome be? He could not
let the world know the truth—that his wife had fled from him in horror
on their marriage day, that she had wondered about in the clothes of a
man, that she was the companion of another man. And if he brought her
back, certainly all these facts would come to light. The close-cropped
hair alone would be damning evidence.

He framed a wild tale of abduction by villains, of an injury, a
sickness, a fever that forced a doctor to cut her hair short. He had no
sooner framed the story than he threw it away as useless. With all his
soul he began to wish for the only possible solution which would save
the remnants of his ruined self-respect and keep him from the peril of
discovery. The girl must indubitably die!

By the time he came to this conclusion, he had struck out of the hills,
and, as his horse hit the level going and picked up speed, the heart of
Jude Cartwright became lighter. He would get weapons and the finest
horse money could buy in Sour Creek, trail the pair, take them by
surprise, and kill them both. Then back to the homeland and a new life!

Already he saw himself in it, his name surrounded with a glamour of
pathetic romance, as the sad widower with a mystery darkening his past
and future. It was an agreeable gloom into which he fell. Self-pity
warmed him and loosened his fierceness. He sighed with regret for his
own misfortunes.

In this frame of mind he reached Sour Creek and its hotel. While he
wrote his name in the yellowed register he over-heard loud conversation
in the farther end of the room. Two men had been outlawed that
day—John Gaspar, the schoolteacher who killed Quade, and Riley
Sinclair, a stranger from the North.

Paying no further attention to the talk, he passed on into the general
merchandise store which filled most of the lower story of the hotel.
There he found the hardware department, and prominent among the
hardware were the gun racks. He went over the Colts and with an expert
hand took up the guns, while the gray-headed storekeeper advanced an
eulogium upon each weapon. His attention was distracted by the entrance
of a tall, painfully thin man who seemed in great haste.

"What's all this about Cold Feet, Whitey?" he asked. "Cold Feet and
Sinclair?"

"I dunno, Sandersen, except that word come in from Woodville that
Sinclair stuck up the sheriff on his way in with Jig, and Sinclair got
clean away. What could have been in his head to grab Jig?"

"I dunno," said Sandersen, apparently much perturbed. "They outlawed
'em both, Whitey?"

There was an eagerness in this question so poorly concealed that
Cartwright jerked up his head and regarded Sandersen with interest.

"Both," replied Whitey. "You seem sort of pleased, Sandersen?"

"I knowed that Sinclair would come to a bad end," said Sandersen more
soberly.

"Why, I thought they said you cottoned to him when the boys was
figuring he might have had something to do with Quade?"

"Me? Well, yes, for a minute. But out at the necktie party, Whitey, I
kept watching him. Thinks a lot more'n he says, and gents like that is
always dangerous."

"Always," replied Whitey.

"But it's the last time Sinclair'll show his face in Sour
Creek—alive," said Sandersen.

"If he does show his face alive, it'll be a dead face pronto. You can
lay to that."

Sandersen seemed to turn this fact over and over in his mind, with
immense satisfaction.

"And yet," pursued the storekeeper, "think of a full-grown man breaking
the law to save such a skinny little shrimp of a gent as Jig? Eh? More
like a pretty girl than a boy, Jig is."

Cartwright exclaimed, and both of the others turned toward him.

"Here's the gun for me," he said huskily, "and that gun
belt—filled—and this holster. They'll all do."

"And a handy outfit," said Whitey. "That gun'll be a friend in need!"

"What makes you think they'll be a need?" asked Cartwright, with such
unnecessary violence that the others both stared. He went on more
smoothly: "What was you saying about a girl-faced gent?"

"The schoolteacher—he plugged a feller named Quade. Sinclair got him
clean away from Sheriff Kern."

"And what sort of a looking gent is Sinclair? Long, brown, and pretty
husky-looking, with a mean eye?"

"You've named him! Where'd you meet up with him?"

"Over in the hills yonder, just where the north trail comes over the
rise. They was sitting down under a tree resting their hosses when I
come along. I got into an argument with this Sinclair—Long Riley, he
called himself."

"Riley's his first name."

"We passed some words. Pretty soon I give him the lie! He made a reach
for his gun. I told him I wasn't armed and dared him to try his fists.
He takes off his belt, and we went at it. A strong man, but he don't
know nothing about hand fighting. I had him about ready to give up and
begging me to quit when this Jig, this girl-faced man you talk
about—he pulls a gun and slugs me in the back of the head with it."

Removing his sombrero he showed on the back of his head the great welt
which had been made when he struck the ground with the weight of
Sinclair on top of him. It was examined with intense interest by the
other two.