Max Brand - Essential Novelists - Max Brand

He had succeeded in part, at least. The sheriff sat bolt erect; he seemed to be hearing distant music.

“Lee Haines!” he murmured. “That was Jim Silent's man. They say he was as fast with a gun as Jim himself.” He sighed again. “They's nothing like a big man, Vic, to fill your sights.”

“Daniels and Haines, suppose you count them off agin' the rest of your gang, Pete. That leaves Barry for you.” He grinned maliciously. “D'you know what Barry it is?”

“It's a kind of common name, Vic.”

“Pete, have you heard of Whistlin' Dan?”

No doubt about it, he had burst the confidence of the sheriff into fragments. The little man began to pant and even in the dim light Vic could see that his face was working.

“Him!” he said at length. And then: “I might of knowed! Him!” He leaned closer. “Keep it to yourself, Vic, or you'll have the rest of the boys runnin' for cover before the fun begins.”

He snuggled a little closer to his rock and turned his head towards the house.

“Him!” he said again.

Columbus, when he saw the land of his dream wavering blue in the distance, might have hailed it with such a heart-filling whisper, and Vic knew that when these two met, these two slender, small men—with the uneasy hands, there would be a battle whose fame would ring from range to range.

“If they was only a bit more light,” muttered the sheriff. “My God, Vic, why ain't the moon jest a mite nearer the full!”

After that, not a word for a long time until the lights in the house were suddenly extinguished.

“So they won't show up agin no background when they make their run,” murmured the sheriff. He pushed up his hat brim so that it covered his eyes more perfectly. “Boys, get ready. They're comin' now!”

Mat Henshaw took up the word, and repeated it, and the whisper ran down the line of men who lay irregularly among the rocks, until at last Sliver Waldron brought it to a stop with a deep murmur. Not even a whisper could altogether disguise his booming bass. It seemed to Vic Gregg that the air about him grew more tense; his arm muscles commenced to ache from the gripping of his hands. Then a door creaked—they could tell the indubitable sound as if there were a light to see it swing cautiously wide.

“They're goin' out the back way,” interpreted the sheriff, “but they'll come around in front. They ain't any other way they can get out of here. Pass that down the line, Mat.”

Before the whisper had trailed out half its course, a woman screamed in the house. It sent a jag of lightning through the brain of Vic Gregg; he started up.

“Get down,” commanded the sheriff 'curtly. “Or they'll plant you.”

“For God's sake, Pete, he's killin' his wife—an'—he's gone mad—I seen it comin' in his eyes!”

“Shut up,” muttered Glass, “an' listen.”

A pulse of sound floated out to them, and stopped the breath of Gregg; it was a deep, stifled sobbing.

“She's begged him to stay with her; he's gone,” said the sheriff. “Now it'll come quick.”

But the sheriff was wrong. There was not a sound, not a sign of a rush.

Presently: “What sort of a lass is she, Gregg?”

“All yaller hair, Pete, and the softes' blue eyes you ever see.”

The sheriff made no answer, but Vic saw the little bony hand tense about the barrel of the rifle. Still that utter quiet, with the pulse of the sobbing lying like a weight upon the air, and the horror of the waiting mounted and grew, like peak upon peak before the eyes of the climber.

“Watch for 'em sneakin' up on us through the rocks. Watch for 'em close, lads. It ain't goin' to be a rush.”

Once more the sibilant murmur ran down the line, and the voice of Sliver Waldron brought it faintly to a period.

“Three of 'em,” continued the sheriff, “and most likely they'll come at us three ways.”

Through the shadow Vic watched the lips of Glass work and caught the end of his soft murmur to himself: “.... all three!”

He understood; the sheriff had offered up a deep prayer that all three might fall by his gun.

Up from the farther end of the line the whisper ran lightly, swiftly, with a stammer of haste in it: “To the right!”

Ay, there to the right, gliding from the corner of the house, went a dark form, and then another, and disappeared among the rocks. They had offered not enough target for even chance shooting.

“Hold for close range” ordered the sheriff, and the order was repeated. However much he might wish to win all the glory of the fray, the sheriff took no chances—threw none of his odds away. He was a methodical man.

A slight patter caught the ear of Vic, like the running of many small children over a heavy carpet, and then two shades blew around the side of the house, one small and scudding close to the ground, the other vastly larger—a man on horseback. It seemed a naked horse at first, so close to the back did the rider lean, and before Vic could see clearly the vision burst on them all. Several things kept shots from being fired earlier.

The first alarm had called attention to the opposite side of the house from that on which the rider appeared; then, the moon gave only a vague, treacherous light, and the black horse blended into it—the grass lightened the fall of his racing feet.

Like a ship driving through a fog they rushed into view, the black stallion, and Bart fleeting in front, and the surprise was complete. Vic could see it work even in the sheriff, for the latter, having his rifle trained towards his right jerked it about with a short curse and blazed at the new target, again, again, and the line of the posse joined the fire. Before the crack of their guns went from the ears of Vic, long before the echoes bellowed back from the hills, Satan leaped high up. Perhaps that change of position saved both it and its rider. Straight across the pale moon drove the body with head stretched forth, ears back, feet gathered close—a winged horse with a buoyant figure upon it. It cleared a five foot rock, and rushed instantly out of view among the boulders. The fugitive had fired only one shot, and that when the stallion was at the crest of its leap.

The sheriff was on his feet, whining with eagerness and with the rest of his men he sent a shower of lead splashing vainly into the deeper night beside the mountain, where the path wound down.

“It's done! Hold up, lads!” called Pete Glass. “He's beat us!”

The firing ceased, and they heard the rush of the hoofs along the graveled slope and the clanging on rocks.

“It's done,” repeated the sheriff. “How?”

And he stood staring blankly, with a touch or horror in his face.

“By God, Mat's plugged.”

“Mat Henshaw? Wha—?”

“Clean through the head.”

He lay in an oddly twisted heap, as though every bone in his body were broken, and when they drew him about they found the red mark in his forehead and even made out the dull surprise in his set face. There had been no pain in that death, the second for the sake of Grey Molly.

“The other two!” said the sheriff, more to himself than to Vic, who stood beside him.

“Easy, Pete,” he cautioned. “You got nothin' agin Haines and Daniels.”

The sheriff flashed at him that hungry, baffled glance.

“Maybe I can find something. You Gregg, keep your mouth shut and stand back. Halloo!”

He sent a long call quavering between the lonely mountains.

“You yonder—Lee Haines! D'you give up to the law?”

A burst of savage laughter flung back at him, and then: “Why the hell should I?”

“Haines, I give you fair warnin'! For resistin' the law and interferin', I ask you, do you surrender?”