Max Brand (22 page)

"Now, the tables is turned, eh? I'll take the high hand from now on,
Sinclair!"

"It's no good," said Sinclair dryly. "The gent that shot out the light
had a chance to see something before he done the shooting. And what he
seen must have showed that you're yaller, Cartwright—yaller as a
yaller dog!"

Cartwright flung his fist with a curse into the face of the cowpuncher.
The weight of the blow jarred him back against the wall, but he met the
glare of Cartwright with a steady eye, a thin trickle of crimson
running down his cut lips. The sheriff rushed in between and mastered
Cartwright's arms.

"One more little trick like that, stranger, and I'll turn you over to
the boys. They got ways of teaching gents manners. How was you raised,
anyway?"

Suddenly sobered, Cartwright drew back from dark glances on every side.

"Fellows," he said, in a shaken voice, "I forgot his hands was tied.
But I'm kind of wrought up. He tried to murder me!"

"It's all right, partner," drawled Red Chalmers, and he laid a strong
hand on the shoulder of Cartwright. "It's all right. We all allow for
one break. But don't do something like that twice—not in these parts!"

Sinclair walked beside the sheriff, while the crowd poured past him and
down the hall. When they reached the head of the stairs they found the
lighted room below filled with excited, upturned faces; at the sight of
the sheriff and his prisoner they roared their applause. The faces were
blotted and blurred by a veil of rapidly, widely waving sombreros.

The sheriff paused halfway down the stairs and held up his hand.
Sinclair halted beside him looking disdainfully over the crowd.
Instantly noise and movement ceased. It was a spectacular picture, the
stubby little sheriff and the tall, lean, wolflike man he had captured.
It seemed a vivid illustration of the power of the law over the
lawbreaker. Sinclair glanced down in wonder at Kern. It was in
character for the sheriff to make a speech. A moment later the
sheriff's own words had explained his reason for the impromptu address.

"Boys," he said, "I figure some of you has got an almighty big wish to
see Sinclair on the end of a rope, eh?"

A deep growl answered him.

"Speaking personal," went on the sheriff smoothly, "I don't see how
he's done a thing worth hanging. He took a prisoner away from me, and
he's resisted arrest. That's all. Sinclair has got a name as a killer.
Maybe he is. But I know he ain't done no killing around these parts
that's come to light yet. I'll tell you another thing. A minute ago he
could have sent three men to death and maybe come off with a free skin.
But he chose to take his chance without shooting to kill. He tried to
fight his way out with his hands sooner'n blow the heads off of gents
that never done him no harm except to get in his way. Well, boys,
that's something you don't often see. And I tell you this right now: If
they's any lynch talk around this here town, you can lay to it that
you'll have to shoot your way to Sinclair through me. And I'll be a
dead one before you reach to him."

He paused. Someone hissed from the back of the crowd, but the majority
murmured in appreciation.

"One more thing," went on the sheriff. "Some of you may think it was
great guns to take Sinclair. It
was
a pretty good job, but they ain't
no credit coming to me. I'm up here saying that all the praise goes to
a fat friend of mine by name Arizona. If you got any free drinks, let
'em drift the way of Arizona. Hey, Arizona, step out and make a bow,
will you?"

But no Arizona appeared. The crowd cheered him, and then cheered the
generous sheriff. Kern had won more by his frankness than he could
possibly have won in half a dozen spectacular exploits with a gun.

The crowd swirled out of the hotel before the sheriff and his prisoner,
and then swirled back again. No use following the sheriff if they hoped
for details. They knew his silence of old. Instead they picked off the
members who had taken part in some phase of the fight, and drew them
aside. As Sinclair went on down the street, the populace of Sour Creek
was left pooled behind him. Various orators were giving accounts of how
the whole thing had happened.

Sinclair had neither eye nor ear for them. But he looked back and up to
the western sky, with a flat-topped mountain clearly outlined against
it. There was his country, and in his country he had left Jig alone and
helpless. A feeling of utter desolation and failure came over him. He
had started with a double-goal—Sandersen or Cartwright, or both. He
had failed lamentably of reaching either one. He looked back to the
sheriff, squat, insignificant, gray-headed. What a man to have blocked
him!

"But who's this Arizona?" he asked.

"I dunno. Seems to have known you somewhere. Maybe a friend of yours,
Sinclair?"

"H'm," said the cowpuncher. "Maybe! Tell me: Was it him that was
outside the window and trimmed the light on me?"

"You got him right, Sinclair. That was the gent. Nice play he made,
eh?"

"Very pretty, sheriff. I thought I knowed his voice."

"He seems to have made himself pretty infrequent. Didn't know Arizona
was so darned modest."

"Maybe he's got other reasons," said Sinclair. "What's his full name?"

"Ain't that curious! I ain't heard of anybody else that knows it. He's
a cool head, this Arizona. Seemed to read your mind and know jest how
you'd jump, Sinclair. I would have been off combing the trails, but he
seemed to know that you'd come into town."

"I'll sure keep him in mind if I ever meet up with him," murmured
Sinclair. "Is this where I bunk?"

The sheriff had paused before a squat, dumpy building and was working
noisily at the lock with a big key. Now that his back was necessarily
toward his prisoner, two of the posse stepped up close beside Sinclair.
They had none of the sheriff's nonchalance. One of them was the man
whose head had made the acquaintance of Sinclair's knee, and both were
ready for instant action of any description.

"I'm Rhinehart," said one softly. "Keep me in mind, Sinclair. I'm him
that you smashed with your knee. Dirty work! I'll see you when you get
out of the lockup—if that ever happens!"

The voice of Sinclair was not so soft. "I'll meet you in jail or out,"
he answered, "on foot or on horseback, with fists or knife or gun. And
you can lay to this, Rhinehart: I'll remember you a pile better'n
you'll remember me!"

All the repressed savagery of his nature came quivering into his voice
as he spoke, and the other shrank instinctively a pace. In the meantime
the sheriff had succeeded in turning the rusted lock, which squeaked
back. The door grumbled on its heavy hinges. Sinclair stepped into the
musty, close atmosphere within.

"Don't look like you had much use for this here outfit," he said to the
sheriff.

The latter lighted a lantern.

"Nope," he said. "It sure beats all how the luck runs, Sinclair. We'd
had a pretty bad time with crooks around these parts, and them that was
nabbed in Sour Creek got away; about two out of three, before they was
brought to me at Woodville. So the boys got together and ponied up for
this little jail, and it's as neat a pile of mud and steel as ever you
see. Look at them bars. Kind of rusty, they look, but inside they're
toolproof. Oh, it's an up-to-date outfit, this jail. It's been a
comfort to me, and it's a credit to Sour Creek. But the trouble is that
since it was built they ain't been more'n one or two to put in it.
Maybe you can make out here for the night. Have you over to Woodville
in a couple of days, Sinclair."

He brought his prisoner into a cagelike cell, heavily guarded with bars
on all sides. The adobe walls had been trusted in no direction. The
steel lining was the strength of the Sour Creek jail. The sheriff
himself set about shaking out the blankets. When this was done, he bade
his two companions draw their guns and stand guard at the steel door to
the cell.

"Not that I don't trust you a good deal, Sinclair," he said, "but I
know that a gent sometimes takes big chances."

So saying, he cut the bonds of his prisoner, but instead of making a
plunge at the door, Sinclair merely stretched his long arms luxuriously
above his head. The sheriff slipped out of the door and closed it after
him. A heavy and prolonged clangor followed, as steel jarred home
against steel.

"Don't go sheriff," said Sinclair. "I need a chat with you."

"I'm in no hurry. And here's the gent we was talking about. Here's
Arizona!"

The sheriff had waved his two companions out of the jail, as soon as
the prisoner was securely lodged, and no sooner was this done, and they
had departed through the doorway, than the heavy figure of Arizona
himself appeared. He came slowly into the circle of the lantern light,
an oddly changed man.

His swaggering gait, with heels that pounded heavily, was gone. He
slunk forward, soft-footed. His head, usually so buoyantly erect, was
now sunk lower and forward. His high color had faded to a drab olive.
In fact, from a free-swinging, jovial, somewhat overbearing demeanor,
Arizona had changed to a mien of malicious and rather frightened
cunning. In this wise he advanced, heedless of the curious and
astonished sheriff, until his face was literally pressed against the
bars. He peered steadily at Sinclair.

On the face of the latter there had been at first blank surprise, then
a gradually dawning recognition. Finally he walked slowly to the bars.
As Sinclair approached, the fat cowpuncher drew back, with lingering
catlike steps, as if he grudged every inch of his retreat and yet dared
not remain to meet Sinclair.

"By the Eternal," said Sinclair, "it's Dago!"

Arizona halted, quivering with emotions which the sheriff could not
identify, save for a blind, intense malice. The tall man turned to the
sheriff, smiling: "Dago Lansing, eh?"

"Never heard that name," said the sheriff.

"Maybe not," replied Sinclair, "but that's the man I—"

"You lie!" cried Arizona huskily, and his fat, swift hand fluttered
nervously around the butt of the revolver. "Sheriff, they ain't nothing
but lies stocked up in him. Don't believe nothing he says!"

"Huh!" chuckled Sinclair. "Why, Kern, he's a man about eight years ago
that I—"

Pausing, he looked into the convulsed face of Arizona, who was
apparently tortured with apprehension.

"I won't go on, Dago," said Sinclair mildly. "But—so you've carried
this grudge all these days, eh?"

Arizona tossed up his head. For a moment he was the Arizona the sheriff
had known, but his laughter was too strident, and it was easy to see
that he was at a point of hysterically high tension.

"Well, I'd have carried it eighty years as easy as eight," declared
Arizona. "I been waiting all this time, and now I got you, Sinclair.
You'll rot behind the bars the best part of the life that's left to
you. And when you come out—I'll meet you ag'in!"

Sinclair smiled in a singular fashion. "Sorry to disappoint you, Dago.
But I'm not coming out. I'm going to stay put. I'm through." The other
blinked. "How come?"

"It's something you couldn't figure," said Sinclair calmly, and he eyed
the fat man as if from a great distance.

Sinclair was remembering the day, eight years ago, in a lumber camp to
the north when a shivering, meager, shifty-eyed youngster had come
among them asking for work. They had taken pity on him, those big
lumberjacks, put him up, given him money, kept him at the bunk house.

Then articles began to disappear, watches, money. It was Sinclair who
had caught the friendless stripling in the act of sleight of hand in
the middle of the night when the laborers, tired out, slept as if
stunned. And when the others would have let the cringing, weeping youth
go with a lecture and the return of his illicit spoils, it was the
stern Sinclair who had insisted on driving home the lesson. He forced
them to strip Dago to the waist. Two stalwarts held his hands, and
Sinclair laid on the whip. And Dago, the moment the lash fell, ceased
his wailing and begging, and stood quivering, with his head bent, his
teeth set and gritting, until the punishment was ended.

It was Sinclair, also, when the thing was ended, and the others would
have thrust the boy out penniless, who split the contents of his wallet
with Dago. He remembered the words he had spoken to the stripling that
day eight years before.

"You ain't had much luck out here in the West, kid, but stay around. Go
south. Learn to ride a hoss. They's nothing that puts heart and honesty
in a man like a good hoss. Don't go back to your city. You'll turn into
a snake there. Stay out here and practice being a man, will you? Get
the feel of a Colt. Fight your way. Keep your mouth shut and work with
your hands. And don't brag about what you know or what you've done.
That's the way to get on. You got the markings in you, son. You got
grit. I seen it when you was under the whip, and I wish I had the doing
of that over again. I made a mistake with you, kid. But do what I've
told you to do, and one of these days you'll meet up with me and beat
me to the draw and take everything you got as a grudge out on me. But
you can't do it unless you turn into a man."

Dago had listened in the most profound silence, accepted the money
without thanks, and disappeared, never to be heard from again. In the
sleek-faced man before him, Sinclair could hardly recognize that
slender fellow of the lumber camp. Only the bright and agile eyes were
the same; that, and a certain telltale nervousness of hand. The color
was coming back into his face.

"I guess I've done it," Arizona was saying. "I guess we're squared up,
Sinclair."

"Yep, and a balance on your side."

"Maybe, maybe not. But I've followed your advice, Long Riley. I've
never forgot a word of it. It was printed into me!"