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

as a cow-pony’s

head is stretched when he runs; he held it rather high, as though he

carried in his big heart a reserve strength ready to be called on for any

emergency. For all that, it was running such as Terry had never known.

 

The wind became a blast, jerking the brim of his sombrero up and

whistling in his hair. He was letting the shame, the grief, the thousand

regrets of that parting with Aunt Elizabeth be blown out of his soul. His

mind was a whirl; the thoughts became blurs. As a matter of fact, Terry

was being reborn.

 

He had lived a life perfectly sheltered. The care of Elizabeth Cornish

had surrounded him as the Blue Mountains and Sleep Mountain surrounded

Bear Valley and fenced off the full power of the storm winds. The reality

of life had never reached him. Now, all in a day, the burden was placed

on his back, and he felt the spur driven home to the quick. No wonder

that he winced, that his heart contracted.

 

But now that he was awakening, everything was new. Uncle Vance, whom he

had always secretly despised, now seemed a fine character, gentle,

cultured, thoughtful of others. Aunt Elizabeth Cornish he had accepted as

a sort of natural fact, as though there were a blood tie between them.

Now he was suddenly aware of twenty-four years of patient love. The

sorrow of it, that only the loss of that love should have brought him

realization of it. Vague thoughts and aspirations formed in his mind. He

yearned toward some large and heroic deed which should re-establish

himself in her respect. He wished to find her in need, in great trouble,

free her from some crushing burden with one perilous effort, lay his

homage at her feet.

 

All of which meant that Terry Hollis was a boy—a bewildered, heart-stricken boy. Not that he would have undone what he had done. It seemed

to him inevitable that he should resent the story of the sheriff and

shoot him down or be shot down himself. All that he regretted was that he

had remained mute before Aunt Elizabeth, unable to explain to her a thing

which he felt so keenly. And for the first time he realized the flinty

basis of her nature. The same thing that enabled her to give half a

lifetime to the cherishing of a theory, also enabled her to cast all the

result of that labor out of her life. It stung him again to the quick

every time he thought of it. There was something wrong. He felt that a

hundred hands of affection gave him hold on her. And yet all those grips

were brushed away.

 

The torment was setting him on fire. And the fire was burning away the

smug complacency which had come to him during his long life in the

valley.

 

When El Sangre pulled out of his racing gallop and struck out up a slope

at his natural gait, the ground-devouring pace, Terry Hollis was panting

and twisting in the saddle as though the labor of the gallop had been

his. They climbed and climbed, and still his mind was involved in a haze

of thought. It cleared when he found that there were no longer high

mountains before him. He drew El Sangre to a halt with a word. The great

stallion turned his head as he paused and looked back to his master with

a confiding eye as though waiting willingly for directions. And all at

once the heart of Terence went out to the blood-bay as it had never gone

before to any creature, dumb or human. For El Sangre had known such pain

as he himself was learning at this moment. El Sangre was giving him true

trust, true love, and asking him for no return.

 

The stallion, following his own will, had branched off from the Bear

Creek trail and climbed through the lower range of the Blue Peaks. They

were standing now on a mountain-top. The red of the sunset filled the

west and brought the sky close to them with the lower drifts of stained

clouds. Eastward the winding length of Bear Creek was turning pink and

purple. The Cornish ranch had never seemed so beautiful to Terry as it

was at this moment. It was a kingdom, and he was leaving, the

disinherited heir.

 

He turned west to the blare of the sunset. Blue Mountains tumbled away in

lessening ranges—beyond was Craterville, and he must go there today.

That was the world to him just then. And something new passed through

Terry. The world was below him; it lay at his feet with its hopes and its

battles. And he was strong for the test. He had been living in a dream.

Now he would live in fact. And it was glorious to live!

 

And when his arms fell, his right hand lodged instinctively on the butt

of his revolver. It was a prophetic gesture, but there, again, was

something that Terry Hollis did not understand.

 

He called to El Sangre softly. The stallion responded with the faintest

of whinnies to the vibrant power in the voice of the master; and at that

smooth, effortless pace, he glided down the hillside, weaving dexterously

among the jagged outcroppings of rock. A period had been placed after

Terry’s old life. And this was how he rode into the new.

 

The long and ever-changing mountain twilight began as he wound through

the lower ranges. And when the full dark came, he broke from the last

sweep of foothills and El Sangre roused to a gallop over the level toward

Craterville.

 

He had been in the town before, of course. But he felt this evening that

he had really never seen it before. On other days what existed outside of

Bear Valley did not very much matter. That was the hub around which the

rest of the world revolved, so far as Terry was concerned. It was very

different now. Craterville, in fact, was a huddle of broken-down houses

among a great scattering of boulders with the big mountains plunging up

on every side to the dull blue of the night sky.

 

But Craterville was also something more. It was a place where several

hundred human beings lived, any one of whom might be the decisive

influence in the life of Terry. Young men and old men were in that town,

cunning and strength; old crones and lovely girls were there. Whom would

he meet? What should he see? A sudden kindness toward others poured

through Terry Hollis. After all, every man might be a treasure to him. A

queer choking came in his throat when he thought of all that he had

missed by his contemptuous aloofness.

 

One thing gave him check. This was primarily the sheriff’s town, and by

this time they knew all about the shooting. But what of that? He had

fought fairly, almost too fairly.

 

He passed the first shapeless shack. The hoofs of El Sangre bit into the

dust, choking and red in daylight, and acrid of scent by the night. All

was very quiet except for a stir of voices in the distance here and

there, always kept hushed as though the speaker felt and acknowledged the

influence of the profound night in the mountains. Someone came down the

street carrying a lantern. It turned his steps into vast spokes of

shadows that rushed back and forth across the houses with the swing of

the light. The lantern light gleamed on the stained flank of El Sangre.

 

“Halloo, Jake, that you?”

 

The man with the lantern raised it, but its light merely served to blind

him. Terry passed on without a word and heard the other mutter behind

him: “Some damn stranger!”

 

Perhaps strangers were not welcome in Craterville. At least, it seemed so

when he reached the hotel after putting up his horse in the shed behind

the old building. Half a dozen dark forms sat on the veranda talking in

the subdued voices which he had noted before. Terry stepped through the

lighted doorway. There was no one inside.

 

“Want something?” called a voice from the porch. The widow Rickson came

in to him.

 

“A room, please,” said Terry.

 

But she was gaping at him. “You! Terence—Hollis!”

 

A thousand things seemed to be in that last word, which she brought out

with a shrill ring of her voice. Terry noted that the talking on the

porch was cut off as though a hand had been clapped over the mouth of

every man.

 

He recalled that the widow had been long a friend of the sheriff and he

was suddenly embarrassed.

 

“If you have a spare room, Mrs. Rickson. Otherwise, I’ll find—”

 

Her manner had changed. It became as strangely ingratiating as it had

been horrified, suspicious, before.

 

“Sure I got a room. Best in the house, if you want it. And—you’ll be

hungry, Mr.—Hollis?”

 

He wondered why she insisted so savagely on that newfound name? He

admitted that he was very hungry from his ride, and she led him back to

the kitchen and gave him cold ham and coffee and vast slices of bread and

butter.

 

She did not talk much while he ate, and he noted that she asked no

questions. Afterwards she led him through the silence of the place up to

the second story and gave him a room at the corner of the building. He

thanked her. She paused at the door with her hand on the knob, and her

eyes fixed him through and through with a glittering, hostile stare. A

wisp of gray hair had fallen across her cheek, and there it was plastered

to the skin with sweat, for the evening was, warm.

 

“No trouble,” she muttered at length. “None at all. Make yourself to

home, Mr.—Hollis!”