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

CHAPTER 19

The door had hardly closed on him when Terence wanted to run after him

and call him back. There was a thrill still running in his blood since

the time the yegg had leaned so close and said: “That wasn’t Black Jack’s

way!”

 

He wanted to know more about Black Jack, and he wanted to hear the story

from the lips of this man. A strange warmth had come over him. It had

seemed for a moment that there was a third impalpable presence in the

room—his father listening. And the thrill of it remained, a ghostly and

yet a real thing.

 

But he checked his impulse. Let Denver go, and the thought of his father

with him. For the influence of Black Jack, he felt, was quicksand pulling

him down. The very fact that he was his father’s son had made him shoot

down one man. Again the shadow of Black Jack had fallen across his path

today and tempted him to crime. How real the temptation had been, Terry

did not know until he was alone. Half of ten thousand dollars would

support him for many a month. One thing was certain. He must let his

father remain simply a name.

 

Going to the window in his stocking feet, he listened again. There were

more voices murmuring on the veranda of the hotel now, but within a few

moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was

silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she

could have desired. And Terry went to bed and to sleep.

 

He wakened with the first touch of dawn along the wall beside his bed and

tumbled out to dress. It was early, even for a mountain town. The

rattling at the kitchen stove commenced while he was on the way

downstairs. And he had to waste time with a visit to El Sangre in the

stable before his breakfast was ready.

 

Craterville was in the hollow behind him when the sun rose, and El Sangre

was taking up the miles with the tireless rhythm of his pace. He had

intended searching for work of some sort near Craterville, but now he

realized that it could not be. He must go farther. He must go where his

name was not known.

 

For two days he held on through the broken country, climbing more than he

dropped. Twice he came above the ragged timber line, with its wind-shaped

army of stunted trees, and over the tiny flowers of the summit lands. At

the end of the second day he came out on the edge of a precipitous

descent to a prosperous grazing country below. There would be his goal.

 

A big mountain sheep rounded a corner with a little flock behind him.

Terry dropped the leader with a snapshot and watched the flock scamper

down what was almost the sheer face of a cliff—a beautiful bit of

acrobatics. They found foothold on ridges a couple of inches deep, hardly

visible to the eye from above. Plunging down a straight drop without a

sign of a ledge for fifty feet below them, they broke the force of the

fall and slowed themselves constantly by striking their hoofs from side

to side against the face of the cliff. And so they landed, with bunched

feet, on the first broad terrace below and again bounced over the ledge

and so out of sight.

 

He dined on wild mutton that evening. In the morning he hunted along the

edge of the cliffs until he came to a difficult route down to the valley.

An ordinary horse would never have made it, but El Sangre was in his

glory. If he had not the agility of the mountain sheep, he was well-nigh

as level-headed in the face of tremendous heights. He knew how to pitch

ten feet down to a terrace and strike on his bunched hoofs so that the

force of the fall would not break his legs or unseat his rider. Again he

understood how to drive in the toes of his hoofs and go up safely through

loose gravel where most horses, even mustangs, would have skidded to the

bottom of the slope. And he was wise in trails. Twice he rejected the

courses which Terry picked, and the rider very wisely let him have his

way. The result was that they took a more winding, but a far safer

course, and arrived before midmorning in the bottomlands.

 

The first ranch house he applied to accepted him. And there he took up

his work.

 

It was the ordinary outfit—the sun-and wind-racked shack for a house,

the stumbling outlying barns and sheds, and the maze of corral fences.

They asked Terry no questions, accepted his first name without an

addition, and let him go his way.

 

He was happy enough. He had not the leisure for thought or for

remembering better times. If he had leisure here and there, he used it

industriously in teaching El Sangre the “cow” business. The stallion

learned swiftly. He began to take a joy in sitting down on a rope.

 

At the end of a week Terry won a bet when a team of draught horses

hitched onto his line could not pull El Sangre over his mark, and broke

the rope instead. There was much work, too, in teaching him to turn in

the cow-pony fashion, dropping his head almost to the ground and bunching

his feet altogether. For nothing of its size that lives is so deft in

dodging as the cow-pony. That part of El Sangre’s education was not

completed, however, for only the actual work of a roundup could give him

the faultless surety of a good cow-pony. And, indeed, the ranchman

declared him useless for real roundup work.

 

“A no-good, high-headed fool,” he termed El Sangre, having sprained his

bank account with an attempt to buy the stallion from Terry the day

before.

 

At the end of a fortnight the first stranger passed, and ill-luck made it

a man from Craterville. He knew Terry at a glance, and the next morning

the rancher called Terry aside.

 

The work of that season, he declared, was going to be lighter than he had

expected. Much as he regretted it, he would have to let his new hand go.

Terry taxed him at once to get at the truth.

 

“You’ve found out my name. That’s why you’re turning me off. Is that the

straight of it?”

 

The sudden pallor of the other was a confession.

 

“What’s names to me?” he declared. “Nothing, partner. I take a man the

way I find him. And I’ve found you all right. The reason I got to let you

go is what I said.”

 

But Terry grinned mirthlessly.

 

“You know I’m the son of Black Jack Hollis,” he insisted. “You think that

if you keep me you’ll wake up some morning to find your son’s throat cut

and your cattle gone. Am I right?”

 

“Listen to me,” the rancher said uncertainly. “I know how you feel about

losing a job so suddenly when you figured it for a whole season. Suppose

I give you a whole month’s pay and—”

 

“Damn your money!” said Terry savagely. “I don’t deny that Black Jack was

my father. I’m proud of it. But listen to me, my friend. I’m living

straight. I’m working hard. I don’t object to losing this job. It’s the

attitude behind it that I object to. You’ll not only send me away, but

you’ll spread the news around—Black Jack’s son is here! Am I a plague

because of that name?”

 

“Mr. Hollis,” insisted the rancher in a trembling voice, “I don’t mean to

get you all excited. Far as your name goes, I’ll keep your secret. I give

you my word on it. Trust me, I’ll do what’s right by you.”

 

He was in a panic. His glance wavered from Terry’s eyes to the revolver

at his side.

 

“Do you think so?” said Terry. “Here’s one thing that you may not have

thought of. If you and the rest like you refuse to give me honest work,

there’s only one thing left for me—and that’s dishonest work. You turn

me off because I’m the son of Black Jack; and that’s the very thing that

will make me the son of Black Jack in more than name. Did you ever stop

to realize that?”

 

“Mr. Hollis,” quavered the rancher, “I guess you’re right. If you want to

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