The Max Brand Megapack (151 page)

“It’s like touchin’ somethin’ dead, granddad,” said the boy. “I don’t dast to do it!”

“Jud, they’s some times when I just about want to give you up! Dead? He ain’t nowheres near dead. Just bled a bit, that’s all. Two as pretty little wounds as was ever drilled clean by a powerful rifle at short range. Dead? Why, inside two weeks he’ll be fit as a fiddle, and inside a month he’ll be his own self! Dead! Jud, you make me tired! Gimme
that water.”

He went to work busily. Out of a sort of first-aid chest he took homemade bandages and, after cleansing the wounds, he began to dress them carefully.

He talked with every movement.

“So this here is the lion, is it?” nodded granddad. “This here is the ravenin’, tearin’, screechin’ man-eater? Why, he looks mostly plain kid to me.”

“He—he’s been shot, ain’t he, granddad?” asked the child in a whisper.

“Well, boy, I’d say that the lion had been chawed up considerable—by dogs.”

He pointed. “See them holes? The big one in front? That means they sneaked up behind him and shot him while his back was turned.”

“He’s wakin’ up, granddad,” said Jud, more frightened than before.

The eyes of Andrew were indeed opening.

He smiled up at them. “Uncle Jas,” he said, “I don’t like to fight. It makes me sick inside, to fight.” He closed his eyes again.

“Now, now, now!” murmured Pop. “This boy has a way with him. And he killed Bill Dozier, did he? Son, gimme the whisky.”

He poured a little down the throat of the wounded man, and Andrew frowned and opened his eyes again: He was conscious at last.

“I think I’ve seen you before,” he said calmly. “Are you one of the posse?”

The old man stiffened a little. A spot of red glowed on his withered cheek and went out like a snuffed light.

“Young feller,” said the old man, “when I go huntin’ I go alone. You write that down in red, and don’t forget it. I ain’t ever been a member of no posse. Look around an
d see yourself to home.”

Andrew raised his head a little and made out the neat room. It showed, as even his fading senses had perceived when he saw the house first, a touch of almost feminine care. The floor was scrubbed to whiteness, the very stove was burnished.

“I remember,” said Andrew faintly.

“You did see me before,” said the other, “when you rode into Tomo. I seen you and you seen me. We changed looks, so to speak. And now you’ve dropped in to call on me. I’m goin’ to put you up in the attic. Gimme a hand to straighten him up, Jud.”

With Jud’s help and the last remnant of Andrew’s strength they managed to get him to his feet, and then he partly climbed, partly was pushed by Jud, and partly was dragged by the old man up a ladder to the loft. It was quite cool there, very dark, and the air came in through two windows.

“Ain’t very sociable to put a guest in the attic,” said Pop, between his panting breaths. “But a public character like you, Lanning, will have a consid’able pile of callers askin’ after you. Terrible jarrin’ to the nerves when folks come in and call on a sick man. You lie here and rest easy.”

He went down the ladder and came back dragging a mattress. There, by the light of a lantern, he and Jud made Andrew as comfortable as possible.

“You mean to keep me here?” asked the outlaw.

“Long as you feel like restin’,” answered the old man.

“You can make about—”

“Stop that fool talk about what I can make out of you. How come it you stayed so close to Tomo? Where was you lyin’ low? In the hills?”

“Not far away.” “And they smelled you out?”

“A man I thought was my frie
nd—” Andrew clicked his teeth shut.

“You was sold, eh?”

“I made a mistake.”

“H’m,” was the other’s comment. “Well, you forget about that and go to sleep. I got a few little attentions to pay to that posse. It’ll be here r’arin’ before tomorrer. Sleep tight, partner.”

He climbed down the ladder and looked around the room. Jud, his freckles still looking like spots of mud or rust, his eyes popping, stood silent.

“I’m glad of that,” said the old man, with a sigh.

“What, granddad?”

“You’re like a girl, Jud. Takes a sight to make you reasonable quiet. But look yonder. Them spots look tolerable like red paint, don’t they? Well, we got to get ’em off.”

“I’ll heat some more water,” suggested Jud.

“You do nothing of the kind. You get them two butcher knives out of the table drawer and we’ll scrape off the wood, because you can’t wash that stain out’n a floor.” He looked suddenly at Jud with a glint in his eyes. “I know, because I’ve tried it.”

For several minutes they scraped hard at the floor until the last vestige of the fresh stains was gone. Then the old man went outside and, coming back with a handful of sand, rubbed it in carefully over the scraped places. When this was swept away the floor presented no suspicious traces.

“But,” he exclaimed suddenly, “I forgot. I plumb forgot. He’s been leakin’ all the way here, and when the sun comes up they’ll foller him that easy by the sign. Jud, we’re beat!”

They dropped, as at a signal, into two opposite chairs, and sat staring gloomily at each other. The old man looked simply sad and weary, but the color came and went in the face of Jud. And then, like a light, an idea dawned in the face of the child. He got up from his chair, lighted a l
antern, and went outside. His grandfather observed this without comment or suggestion, but, when Jud was gone, he observed to himself: “Jud takes after me. He’s got thoughts. And them was things his ma and pa was never bothered with.”

CHAPTER 24

The thought of Jud now took him up the back trail of Andrew Lanning. He leaned far over with the lantern, studying with intense interest every place where the wounds of the injured man might have left telltale stains on the rocks or the grass. When he had apparently satisfied himself of this, he turned and ran at full speed back to the house and went up the ladder to Andrew. There he took the boots—they were terribly stained, he saw—and drew them on.

The loose boots and the unaccustomed weights tangled his feet sadly, as he went on down the ladder, but he said not a word to his grandfather, who was far too dignified to make a comment on the borrowed footgear.

Again outside with his lantern, the boy took out his pocket-knife and felt the small blade. It was of a razor keenness. Then he went through the yard behind the house to the big henhouse, where the chickens sat perched in dense rows. He raised his lantern; at once scores of tiny, bright eyes flashed back at him.

But Jud, with a twisted face of determination, kept on with his survey until he saw the red comb and the arched tail plumes of a large Plymouth Rock rooster.

It was a familiar sight to Jud. Of all the chickens on the place this was his peculiar property. And now he had deter
mined to sacrifice this dearest of pets.

The old rooster was so accustomed to his master, indeed, that he allowed himself to be taken from the perch without a single squawk, and the boy took his captive beyond the pen. Once, when the big rooster canted his head and looked into his face, the boy had to wink away the tears; but he thought of the man so near death in the attic, he felt the clumsy boots on his feet, and his heart grew strong again.

He went around to the front of the house and by the steps he fastened on the long neck of his prisoner a grasp strong enough to keep him silent for a moment. Then he cut the rooster’s breast deeply, shuddering as he felt the knife take hold.

Something trickled warmly over his hands. Dropping his knife in his pocket, Jud started, walked with steps as long as he could make them. He went, with the spurs chinking to keep time for each stride, straight toward a cliff some hundreds of yards from the house. The blood ran freely. The old rooster, feeling himself sicken, sank weakly against the breast of the boy, and Jud thought that his heart would break. He reached the sharp edge of the cliff and heard the rush of the little river far below him. At the same time his captive gave one final flutter of the wings, one feeble crow, and was dead.

Jud waited until the tears had cleared from his eyes. Then he took off the boots, and, in bare feet that would leave no trace on the rocks, he skirted swiftly back to the house, put the dead body back in the chicken yard, and returned to his grandfather.

There was one great satisfaction for him that evening, one reward for the great sacrifice, and it came immediately. While the old man stood trembling before him, Jud told his story.

It was a rich feast indeed to see the relief, the astonishment, the pride come in swift turns upon that grim old face.

And
yet in the end Pop was able to muster a fairly good imitation of a frown.

“And here you come back with a shirt and a pair of trousers plumb spoiled by all your gallivantin’,” he said, “not speakin’ of a perfectly good chicken killed. Ain’t you never goin’ to get grown up, Jud?”

“He was mine, the chicken I killed,” said Jud, choking.

It brought a pause upon the talk. The other was forced to wink both eyes at once and sigh.

“The big speckled feller?” he asked more gently.

“The Plymouth Rock,” said Jud fiercely. “He wasn’t no speckled feller! He was the finest rooster and the gamest—”

“Have it your own way,” said the old man. “You got your grandma’s tongue when it comes to arguin’ fine points. Now go and skin out of them clothes and come back and see that you’ve got all that—that stuff of’n your face and hands.”

Jud obeyed, and presently reappeared in a ragged outfit, his face and hands red from scrubbing.

“I guess maybe it’s all right,” declared the old man. “Only, they’s risks in it. Know what’s apt to happen if they was to find that you’d helped to get a outlaw off free?”

“What would it be?” asked the boy.

“Oh, nothin’ much. Maybe they’d try you and maybe they wouldn’t. Anyways, they’d sure wind up by hangin’ you by the neck till you was as dead as the speckled rooster.”

“The Plymouth Rock,” insisted Jud hotly.

“All right, I don’t argue none. But you just done a dangerous thing, Jud. And there’ll be a consid’able pile of men here in the mornin’, most like, to ask you how and why.”

He was astonished to hear Jud break into laughter.

“Hush up,” said Pop. “You’ll be wakin’ him up with all that noise. Besides, what d’you mean by laughin’ at the law?” “Why, granddad,” said Jud, “don’t I know you wouldn’t never l
et no posse take me from you? Don’t I know maybe you’d clean ’em all up?”

“Pshaw!” said Pop, and flushed with delight. “You was always a fool kid, Jud. Now you run along to bed.”

CHAPTER 25

In Hal Dozier there was a belief that the end justified the means. When Hank Rainer sent word to Tomo that the outlaw was in his cabin, and, if the posse would gather, he, Hank, would come out of his cabin that night and let the posse rush the sleeping man who remained, Hal Dozier was willing and eager to take advantage of the opportunity. A man of action by nature and inclination, Dozier had built a great repute as a hunter of criminals, and he had been known to take single-handed chances against the most desperate; but when it was possible Hal Dozier played a safe game. Though the people of the mountain desert considered him invincible, because he had run down some dozen notorious fighters, Hal himself felt that this simply increased the chances that the thirteenth man, by luck or by cunning, would strike him down.