Black Jack - Max Brand (top 10 most read books in the world TXT) 📗

knew that he was searching for some

smooth means of introducing one of his yarns.

 

Victory!

 

But here Elizabeth cut trenchantly into the heart of the conversation.

She had seen and understood. She shot home half a dozen questions with

the accuracy of a marksman, and beat up a drumfire of responses from the

ladies which, for a time, rattled up and down the length of the table.

The sheriff was biting his mustache thoughtfully.

 

It was only a momentary check, however. Just at the point where Vance

began to despair of ever effecting his goal, the silence began again as

lady after lady ran out of material for the nonce. And as the silence

spread, the sheriff was visibly gathering steam.

 

Again Elizabeth cut in. But this time there was only a sporadic

chattering in response. Coffee was steaming before them, Wu Chi’s

powerful, thick, aromatic coffee, which only he knew how to make. They

were in a mood, now, to hear stories, that tableful of people. An

expected ally came to the aid of Vance. It was Terence, who had been

eating his heart out during the silly table talk of the past few minutes.

Now he seized upon the first clear opening.

 

“Sheriff Minter, I’ve heard a lot about the time you ran down Johnny

Garden. But I’ve never had the straight of it. Won’t you tell us how it

happened?”

 

“Oh,” protested the sheriff, “it don’t amount to much.”

 

Elizabeth cast one frantic glance at her brother, and strove to edge into

the interval of silence with a question directed at Mr. Gainor. But he

shelved that question; the whole table was obviously waiting for the

great man to speak. A dozen appeals for the yarn poured in.

 

“Well,” said the sheriff, “if you folks are plumb set on it, I’ll tell

you just how it come about.”

 

There followed a long story of how Johnny Garden had announced that he

would ride down and shoot up the sheriff’s own town, and then get away on

the sheriff’s own horse—and how he did it. And how the sheriff was

laughed at heartily by the townsfolk, and how the whole mountain district

joined in the laughter. And how he started out single-handed in the

middle of winter to run down Johnny Garden, and struck through the

mountains, was caught above the timberline in a terrific blizzard, kept

on in peril of his life until he barely managed to reach the timber again

on the other side of the ridge. How he descended upon the hiding-place of

Johnny Garden, found Johnny gone, but his companions there, and made a

bargain with them to let them go if they would consent to stand by and

offer no resistance when he fought with Johnny on the latter’s return.

How they were as good as their word and how, when Johnny returned, they

stood aside and let Johnny and the sheriff fight it out. How the sheriff

beat Johnny to the draw, but was wounded in the left arm while Johnny

fired a second shot as he lay dying on the floor of the lean-to. How the

sheriff’s wound was dressed by the companions of the dead Johnny, and how

he was safely dismissed with honor, as between brave men, and how

afterwards he hunted those same men down one by one.

 

It was quite a long story, but the audience followed it with a breathless

interest.

 

“Yes, sir,” concluded the sheriff, as the applause of murmurs fell off.

“And from yarns like that one you wouldn’t never figure it that I was the

son of a minister brung up plumb peaceful. Now, would you?”

 

And again, to the intense joy of Vance, it was Terry who brought the

subject back, and this time the subject of all subjects which Elizabeth

dreaded, and which Vance longed for.

 

“Tell us how you came to branch out, Sheriff Minter?”

 

“It was this way,” began the sheriff, while Elizabeth cast at Vance a

glance of frantic and weary appeal, to which he responded with a gesture

which indicated that the cause was lost.

 

“I was brung up mighty proper. I had a most amazing lot of prayers at the

tip of my tongue when I wasn’t no more’n knee-high to a grasshopper. But

when a man has got a fire in him, they ain’t no use trying to smother it.

You either got to put water on it or else let it burn itself out.

 

“My old man didn’t see it that way. When I got to cutting up he’d try to

smother it, and stop me by saying: ‘Don’t!’ Which don’t accomplish

nothing with young gents that got any spirit. Not a damn thing—asking

your pardon, ladies! Well, sirs, he kept me in harness, you might say,

and pulling dead straight down the road and working hard and faithful.

But all the time I’d been saving up steam, and swelling and swelling and

getting pretty near ready to bust.

 

“Well, sirs, pretty soon—we was living in Garrison City them days, when

Garrison wasn’t near the town that it is now—along comes word that Jack

Hollis is around. A lot of you younger folks ain’t never heard nothing

about him. But in his day Jack Hollis was as bad as they was made. They

was nothing that Jack wouldn’t turn to real handy, from shootin’ up a

town to sticking up a train or a stage. And he done it all just about as

well. He was one of them universal experts. He could blow a safe as neat

as you’d ask. And if it come to a gun fight, he was greased lightning

with a flying start. That was Jack Hollis.”

 

The sheriff paused to draw breath.

 

“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth Cornish, white about the lips, “we had better

go into the living room to hear the rest of the sheriff’s story?”

 

It was not a very skillful diversion, but Elizabeth had reached the point

of utter desperation. And on the way into the living room unquestionably

she would be able to divert Terry to something else. Vance held his

breath.

 

And it was Terry who signed his own doom.

 

“We’re very comfortable here, Aunt Elizabeth. Let’s not go in till the

sheriff has finished his story.”

 

The sheriff rewarded him with a flash of gratitude, and Vance settled

back in his chair. The end could not, now, be far away.