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Way of the Lawless

M >> Max Brand >> Way of the Lawless




In the meantime, Pop, having put away the last of the dishes in a
cupboard, whose shelves were lined with fresh white paper, offered
Dozier a cup of coffee. While he sipped it, the marshal complimented his
host on the precision with which he maintained his house.

"It looks like a woman's hand had been at work," concluded the marshal.

"Something better'n that," declared the other. "A man's hand, Dozier.
People has an idea that because women mostly do housework men are out of
place in a kitchen. It ain't so. Men just got somethin' more important
on their hands most of the time." His eyes glanced sadly toward his gun
rack. "Women is a pile overpraised, Dozier. I ask you, man to man, did
you ever see a cleaner floor than that in a woman's kitchen?"

The marshal admitted that he never had. "But you're a rare man," he
said.

Pop shook his head. "When I was a boy like you," he said, "I wasn't
nothin' to be passed up too quick. But a man's young only once, and
that's a short time--and he's old for years and years and years,
Dozier." He added, for fear that he might have depressed his guest, "But
me and Jud team it, you see. I'm extra old and Jud's extra young--so we
kind of hit an average."

He touched the shoulder of the boy and there was a flash of eyes between
them, the flicker of a smile. Hal Dozier drew a breath. "I got no kids
of my own," he declared. "You're lucky, friend. And you're lucky to have
this neat little house."

"No, I ain't. They's no luck to it, because I made every sliver of it
with my own hands." An idea came to the deputy marshal.

"There's a place up in the hills behind my house, a day's ride," he
said, "where I go hunting now and then, and I've an idea a little house
like this would be just the thing for me. Mind if I look it over?"

Pop tamped his pipe.

"Sure thing," he said. "Look as much as you like."

He stepped to a corner of the room and by a ring he raised a trapdoor.
"I got a cellar 'n' everything. Take a look at it below."

He lighted the lantern, and Hal Dozier went down the steep steps,
humming. "Look at the way that foundation's put in," said the old man in
a loud voice. "I done all that, too, with my own hands."

His voice was so unnecessarily loud, indeed, just as if the deputy were
already under ground, that it occurred to Dozier that if a man were
lying in that cellar he would be amply warned. And going down he walked
with the lantern held to one side, to keep the light off his own body as
much as possible; his hand kept at his hip.

But, when he reached the cellar, he found only some boxes and canned
provisions in a rack at one side, and a various litter all kept in close
order. Big stones had been chiseled roughly into shape to build the
walls, and the flooring was as dry as the floor of the house. It was, on
the whole, a very solid bit of work. A good place to imprison a man, for
instance. At this thought Dozier glanced up sharply and saw the other
holding the trapdoor ajar. Something about that implacable, bony face
made Dozier turn and hurry back up the stairs to the main floor of
the house.

"Nice bit of work down there," he said. "I can use that idea very well.
Well," he added carelessly, "I wonder when my fool posse will get
through hunting for the remains of poor Lanning? Come to think of
it"--for it occurred to him that if the old man were indeed concealing
the outlaw he might not know the price which was on his head--"there's
a pretty little bit of coin connected with Lanning. Too bad you didn't
drop him when he came to your door."

"Drop a helpless man--for money?" asked the old man. "Never, Dozier!"

"He hadn't long to live, anyway," answered the marshal in some
confusion. Those old, straight eyes of Pop troubled him.

He fenced with a new stroke for a confession.

"For my part, I've never had much heart in this work of mine."

"He killed your brother, didn't he?" asked Pop with considerable
dryness.

"Bill made the wrong move," replied Hal instantly. "He never should have
ridden Lanning down in the first place. Should have let the fool kid go
until he found out that Buck Heath wasn't killed. Then he would have
come back of his own accord."

"That's a good idea," remarked the other, "but sort of late, it strikes
me. Did you tell that to the sheriff?"

"Late it is," remarked Dozier, not following the question. "Now the poor
kid is outlawed. Well, between you and me, I wish he'd gotten away
clean-handed. But too late now.

"By the way," he went on, "I'd like to take a squint at your attic, too.
That ladder goes up to it, I guess."

"Go ahead," said Pop. And once more he tamped his pipe.

There was a sharp, shrill cry from the boy, and Dozier whirled on him.
He saw a pale, scared face.

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply. "What's the matter with you,
Jud?" And he fastened his keen glance on the boy.

Vaguely, from the corner of his eye, he felt that Pop had taken the pipe
from his mouth. There was a sort of breathless touch in the air of the
room. "Nothin'," said Jud. "Only--you know the rungs of that ladder
ain't fit to be walked on, grandad!"

"Jud," said the old man with a strained tone, "It ain't my business to
give warnin's to an officer of the law--not mine. He'll find out little
things like that for himself."

For one moment Dozier remained looking from one face to the other. Then
he shrugged his shoulders and went slowly up the ladder. It squeaked
under his weight, he felt the rungs bow and tremble. Halfway up he
turned suddenly, but Pop was sitting as old men will, humming a tune and
keeping time to it by patting the bowl of his pipe with a forefinger.

And Dozier made up his mind.

He turned and came down the ladder. "I guess there's no use looking in
the attic," he said. "Same as any other attic, I suppose, Pop?"

"The same?" asked Pop, taking the pipe from his mouth. "I should tell a
man it ain't. It's my work, that attic is, and it's different. I handled
the joinin' of them joists pretty slick, but you better go and see for
yourself."

And he smiled at the deputy from under his bushy brows. Hal Dozier
grinned broadly back at him.

"I've seen your work in the cellar, Pop," he said. "I don't want to risk
my neck on that ladder. No, I'll have to let it go. Besides, I'll have
to round up the boys."

He waved farewell, stepped through the door, and closed it behind him.

"Grandad," exclaimed Jud in a gasp.

The old man silenced him with a raised finger and a sudden frown. He
slipped to the door in turn with a step so noiseless that even Jud
wondered. Years seemed to have fallen from the shoulders of his
grandfather. He opened the door quickly, and there stood the deputy. His
back, to be sure, was turned to the door, but he hadn't moved.

"Think I see your gang over yonder," said Pop. "They seem to be sort of
waitin' for you, Dozier."

The other turned and twisted one glance up at the old man.

"Thanks," he said shortly and strode away.

Pop closed the door and sank into a chair. He seemed suddenly to have
aged again.

"Oh, grandad," said Jud, "how'd you guess he was there all the time?"

"I dunno," said Pop. "Don't bother me."

"But why'd you beg him to look into the attic? Didn't you know he'd see
him right off?"

"Because he goes by contraries, Jud. He wouldn't of started for the
ladder at all, if you hadn't told him he'd probably break his neck on
it. Only when he seen I didn't care, he made up his mind he didn't want
to see that attic."

"And if he'd gone up?" whispered Jud.

"Don't ask me what would of happened," said Pop.

All his bony frame was shaken by a shiver.

"Is he such a fine fighter?" asked Jud.

"Fighter?" echoed Pop. "Oh, lad, he's the greatest hand with a gun that
ever shoved foot into stirrup. He--he was like a bulldog on a trail--and
all I had for a rope to hold him was just a little spider thread of
thinking. Gimme some coffee, Jud. I've done a day's work."




CHAPTER 27


The bullets of the posse had neither torn a tendon nor broken a bone.
Striking at close range and driven by highpower rifles, the slugs had
whipped cleanly through the flesh of Andrew Lanning, and the flesh
closed again, almost as swiftly as ice freezes firm behind the wire that
cuts it. In a very few days he could sit up, and finally came down the
ladder with Pop beneath him and Jud steadying his shoulders from above.
That was a gala day in the house. Indeed, they had lived well ever since
the coming of Andrew, for he had insisted that he bear the household
expense while he remained there, since they would not allow him
to depart.

"And I'll let you pay for things, Andrew," Pop had said, "if you won't
say nothing about it, ever, to Jud. He's a proud kid, is Jud, and he'd
bust his heart if he thought I was lettin' you spend a cent here."

But this day they had a fine steak, brought out from Tomo by Pop the
evening before, and they had beans with plenty of pork and molasses in
them, cream biscuits, which Pop could make delicious beyond belief, to
say nothing of canned tomatoes with bits of dried bread in them, and
coffee as black as night. Such was the celebration when Andrew came down
to join his hosts, and so high did all spirits rise that even Jud, the
resolute and the alert, forgot his watch. Every day from dawn to dark he
was up to the door or to the rear window, keeping the landscape under a
sweeping observance every few moments, lest some chance traveler--all
search for Andrew Lanning had, of course, ceased with the moment of his
disappearance--should happen by and see the stranger in the household
of Pop. But during these festivities all else was forgotten, and in the
midst of things a decided, rapid knock was heard at the door.

Speech was cut off at the root by that sound. For whoever the stranger
might be, he must certainly have heard three voices raised in that room.
It was Andrew who spoke. And he spoke in only a whisper. "Whoever it may
be, let him in," said Andrew, "and, if there's any danger about him, he
won't leave till I'm able to leave. Open the door, Jud."

And Jud, with a stricken look, crossed the floor with trailing feet. The
knock was repeated; it had a metallic clang, as though the man outside
were rapping with the butt of a gun in his impatience, and Andrew,
setting his teeth, laid his hand on the handle of his revolver. Here Jud
cast open the door, and, standing close to it with her forefeet on the
top step, was the bay mare. She instantly thrust in her head and snorted
in the direction of the stranger.

"Thank heaven!" said Andrew. "I thought it was the guns again!" And Jud,
shouting with delight and relief, threw his arms around the neck of the
horse. "It's Sally!" he said. "Sally, you rascal!"

"That good-for-nothing hoss Sally," complained the old man. "Shoo her
away, Jud."

But Andrew protested at that, and Jud cast him a glance of gratitude.
Andrew himself got up from the table and went across the room with half
of an apple in his hand. He sliced it into bits, and she took them
daintily from between his fingers. And when Jud reluctantly ordered her
away she did not blunder down the steps, but threw her weight back on
her haunches and swerved lightly away. It fascinated Andrew; he had
never seen so much of feline control in the muscles of a horse. When he
turned back to the table he announced: "Pop, I've got to ride that
horse. I've got to have her. How does she sell?"

"She ain't mine," said Pop. "You better ask Jud."

Jud was at once white and red. He looked at his hero, and then he looked
into his mind and saw the picture of Sally. A way out occurred to him.
"You can have her when you can ride her," he said. "She ain't much use
except to look at. But if you can saddle her and ride her before you
leave--well, you can leave on her, Andy."

It was the beginning of busy days for Andrew. The cold weather was
coming on rapidly. Now the higher mountains above them were swiftly
whitening, while the line of the snow was creeping nearer and nearer.
The sight of it alarmed Andrew, and, with the thought of being
snow-bound in these hills, his blood turned cold. What he yearned for
were the open spaces of the mountain desert, where he could see the
enemy approach. But every day in the cabin the terror grew that someone
would pass, some one, unnoticed, would observe the stranger. The whisper
would reach Tomo--the posse would come again, and the second time the
trap was sure to work. He must get away, but no ordinary horse would do
for him. If he had had a fine animal under him Bill Dozier would never
have run him down, and he would still be within the border of the law. A
fine horse--such a horse as Sally, say!

If he had been strong he would have attempted to break her at once, but
he was not strong. He could barely support his own weight during the
first couple of days after he left the bunk, and he had to use his mind.
He began, then, at the point where Jud had left off.

Jud could ride Sally with a scrap of cloth beneath him; Andrew started
to increase the size of that cloth. To keep it in place he made a long
strip of sacking to serve as a cinch, and before the first day was gone
she was thoroughly used to it. With this great step accomplished, Andrew
increased the burden each time he changed the pad. He got a big
tarpaulin and folded it many times; the third day she was accepting it
calmly and had ceased to turn her head and nose it. Then he carried up a
small sack of flour and put that in place upon the tarpaulin. She winced
under the dead-weight burden; there followed a full half hour of frantic
bucking which would have pitched the best rider in the world out of a
saddle, but the sack of flour was tied on, and Sally could not dislodge
it. When she was tired of bucking she stood still, and then discovered
that the sack of flour was not only harmless but that it was good to
eat. Andrew was barely in time to save the contents of the sack from
her teeth.

It was another long step forward in the education of Sally. Next he
fashioned clumsy imitations of stirrups, and there was a long fight
between Sally and stirrups, but the stirrups, being inanimate, won, and
Sally submitted to the bouncing wooden things at her sides. And still,
day after day, Andrew built his imitation saddle closer and closer to
the real thing, until he had taken a real pair of cinches off one of
Pop's saddles and had taught her to stand the pressure without
flinching.

There was another great return from Andrew's long and steady intimacy
with the mare. She came to accept him absolutely. She knew his voice;
she would come to his whistle; and finally, when every vestige of
unsoundness had left his wounds, he climbed into that improvised saddle
and put his feet in the stirrups. Sally winced down in her catlike way
and shuddered, but he began to talk to her, and the familiar voice
decided Sally. She merely turned her head and rubbed his knee with her
nose. The battle was over and won. Ten minutes later Andrew had cinched
a real saddle in place, and she bore the weight of the leather without a
stir. The memory of that first saddle and the biting of the bur beneath
it had been gradually wiped from her mind, and the new saddle was
connected indisolubly with the voice and the hand of the man. At the end
of that day's work Andrew carried the saddle back into the house with a
happy heart.

And the next day he took his first real ride on the back of the mare. He
noted how easily she answered the play of his wrist, how little her head
moved in and out, so that he seldom had to sift the reins through his
fingers to keep in touch with the bit. He could start her from a stand
into a full gallop with a touch of his knees, and he could bring her to
a sliding halt with the least pressure on the reins. He could tell,
indeed, that she was one of those rare possessions, a horse with a
wise mouth.

And yet he had small occasion to keep up on the bit as he rode her. She
was no colt which hardly knew its own paces. She was a stanch
five-year-old, and she had roamed the mountains about Pop's place at
will. She went like a wild thing over the broken going. That catlike
agility with which she wound among the rocks, hardly impaired her speed
as she swerved. Andrew found her a book whose pages he could turn
forever and always find something new.

He forgot where he was going. He only knew that the wind was clipping
his face and that Sally was eating up the ground, and he came to himself
with a start, after a moment, realizing that his dream had carried him
perilously out of the mouth of the ravine. He had even allowed the mare
to reach a bit of winding road, rough indeed, but cut by many wheels and
making a white streak across the country. Andrew drew in his breath
anxiously and turned her back for the canyon.




CHAPTER 28


It was, indeed, a grave moment, yet the chances were large that even if
he met someone on the road he would not be recognized, for it had been
many days since the death of Andrew Lanning was announced through the
countryside. He gritted his teeth when he thought that this single burst
of childish carelessness might have imperiled all that he and Jud and
Pop had worked for so long and so earnestly--the time when he could take
the bay mare and start the ride across the mountains to the comparative
safety on the other side.

That time, he made up his mind, would be the next evening. He was well;
Sally was thoroughly mastered; and, with a horse beneath him which, he
felt, could give even the gray stallion of Hal Dozier hard work, and
therefore show her heels to any other animal on the mountain desert, he
looked forward to the crossing of the mountains as an accomplished fact.
Always supposing that he could pass Twin Falls and the fringe of towns
in the hills, without being recognized and the alarm sent out.

Going back up the road toward the ravine at a brisk canter, he pursued
the illuminating comparison between Sally and Dozier's famous Gray
Peter. Of course, nothing but a downright test of speed and
weight-carrying power, horse to horse, could decide which was the
superior, but Andrew had ridden Gray Peter many times when he and Uncle
Jasper went out to the Dozier place, and he felt that he could sum up
the differences between the two beautiful animals. Sally was the smaller
of the two, for instance. She could not stand more than fifteen hands,
or fifteen-one at the most. Gray Peter was a full sixteen hands of
strong bone and fine muscle, a big animal--almost too big for some
purposes. Among these rocks, now, he would stand no chance with Sally.
Gray Peter was a picture horse. When one looked at him one felt that he
was a standard by which other animals should be measured. He carried his
head loftily, and there was a lordly flaunt to his tail. On the other
hand, Sally was rather long and low. Furthermore, her neck, which was by
no means the heavy neck of the gray stallion, she was apt to carry
stretched rather straight out and not curled proudly up as Gray Peter
carried his. Neither did she bear her tail so proudly. Some of this, of
course, was due to the difference between a mare and a stallion, but
still more came from the differing natures of the two animals. In the
head lay the greatest variation. The head of Gray Peter was close to
perfection, light, compact, heavy of jowl; his eye at all times was
filled with an intolerable brightness, a keen flame of courage and
eagerness. But one could find a fault with Sally's head. In general, it
was very well shaped, with the wide forehead and all the other good
points which invariably go with that feature; but her face was just a
trifle dished. Moreover, her eye was apt to be a bit dull. She had been
a pet all her life, and, like most pets, her eye partook of the human
quality. It had a conversational way of brightening and growing dull. On
the whole, the head of Sally had a whimsical, inquisitive expression,
and by her whole carriage she seemed to be perpetually putting her nose
into other business than her own.

But the gait was the main difference. Riding Gray Peter, one felt an
enormous force urging at the bit and ready and willing to expend itself
to the very last ounce, with tremendous courage and good heart; there
was always a touch of fear that Gray Peter, plunging unabated over rough
and smooth, might be running himself out. But Sally would not maintain
one pace. She was apt to shorten her stride for choppy going, and she
would lengthen it like a witch on the level. She kept changing the
elevation of her head. She ran freely, looking about her and taking note
of what she saw, so that she gave an indescribable effect of enjoying
the gallop just as much as her rider, but in a different way. All in
all, Gray Peter was a glorious machine; Sally was a tricky intelligence.
Gray Peter's heart was never in doubt, but what would Sally's courage be
in a pinch?

Full of these comparisons, studying Sally as one would study a friend,
Andrew forgot again all around him, and so he came suddenly, around a
bend in the road, upon a buckboard with two men in it. He went by the
buckboard with a wave of greeting and a side glance, and it was not
until he was quite around the elbow turn that he remembered that one of
the men in the wagon had looked at him with a strange intentness. It was
a big man with a great blond beard, parted as though with a comb by
the wind.

He rode back around the bend, and there, down the road, he saw the
buckboard bouncing, with the two horses pulling it at a dead gallop and
the driver leaning back in the seat.

But the other man, the big man with the beard, had picked a rifle out of
the bed of the wagon, and now he sat turned in the seat, with his blond
beard blown sidewise as he looked back. Beyond a doubt Andrew had been
recognized, and now the two were speeding to Tomo to give their report
and raise the alarm a second time. Andrew, with a groan, shot his hand
to the long holster of the rifle which Pop had insisted that he take
with him if he rode out. There was still plenty of time for a long shot.
He saw the rifle jerk up to the shoulder of the big man; something
hummed by him, and then the report came barking up the ravine.

But Andrew turned Sally and went around the bend; that old desire to
rush on the men and shoot them down, that same cold tingling of the
nerves, which he had felt when he faced the posse after the fall of Bill
Dozier, was on him again, and he had to fight it down. He mastered it,
and galloped with a heavy heart up the ravine and to the house of Pop.
The old man saw him; he called to Jud, and the two stood in front of the
door to admire the horseman and his horse. But Andrew flung himself out
of the saddle and came to them sadly. He told them what had happened,
the meeting, the recognition. There was only one thing to do--make up
the pack as soon as possible and leave the place. For they would know
where he had been hiding. Sally was famous all through the mountains;
she was known as Pop's outlaw horse, and the searchers would come
straight to his house.

Pop took the news philosophically, but Jud became a pitiful figure of
stone in his grief. He came to life again to help in the packing. They
worked swiftly, and Andrew began to ask the final questions about the
best and least-known trails over the mountains. Pop discouraged
the attempt.

"You seen what happened before," he said. "They'll have learned their
lesson from Hal Dozier. They'll take the telephone and rouse the towns
all along the mountains. In two hours, Andy, two hundred men will be
blocking every trail and closin' in on you."

And Andrew reluctantly admitted the truth of what he said. He resigned
himself gloomily to turning back onto the mountain desert, and now he
remembered the warning of failure which Henry Allister had given him. He
felt, indeed, that the great outlaw had simply allowed him to run on a
long rope, knowing that he must travel in a circle and eventually come
back to the band.

Now the pack was made--he saw Jud covertly tuck some little mementoes
into it--and he drew Pop aside and dropped a weight of gold coins into
his pocket.

"You tarnation scoundrel!" began Pop huskily.

"Hush," said Andrew, "or Jud will hear you and know that I've tried to
leave some money. You don't want to ruin me with Jud, do you?"

Pop was uneasy and uncertain.

"I've had your food these weeks and your care, Pop," said Andrew, "and
now I walk off with a saddle and a horse and an outfit all yours. It's
too much. I can't take charity. But suppose I accept it as a gift; I
leave you an exchange--a present for Jud that you can give him later on.
Is that fair?"

"Andy," said the old man, "you've double-crossed me, and you've got me
where I can't talk out before Jud. But I'll get even yet. Good-by, lad,
and put this one thing under your hat: It's the loneliness that's goin'
to be the hardest thing to fight, Andy. You'll get so tired of bein' by
yourself that you'll risk murder for the sake of a talk. But then hold
hard. Stay by yourself. Don't trust to nobody. And keep clear of towns.
Will you do that?"

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