Trailin'! by Max Brand (novels to read .TXT) 📗

grey background of the sky. A window went up noisily.

"Am I runnin' a hotel?" roared Jerry Wood. "Ain't I to have no sleep no more? Who are ye?"

A lowered, muttering voice answered.

"All right," said Jerry, changing his tone at once. "I'll come down."

His steps descended the noisy stairs rapidly; the door creaked. Then voices began again outside the house, an indistinct mumble, rising to one sharp height in an exclamation.

Almost at once steps again sounded on the stairs, but softly now. Bard went quietly to the door, locked it, and stole back to the window. Below it extended the roof of a shed, joining the main body of the house only a few feet under his window and sloping to what could not have been a dangerous distance from the ground. He raised the window-sash.

Yet he waited, something as he had waited for Sally Fortune to speak earlier in the night, with a sense of danger, but a danger which thrilled and delighted him. No game of polo could match suspense like this. Besides, he would be foolish to go before he was sure.

The walls were gaping with cracks that carried the sounds, and now he heard a sibilant whisper with a perfect clearness.

"This is the room."

There was a click as the lock was tried.

"Locked, damn it!"

"Shut up, Butch. Jerry, have you got a bar, or anything? We'll pry it down and break in on him before he can get in action."

"You're a fool, McNamara. That feller don't take a wink to get into action. Sure he didn't hear you when you hollered out the window? That was a fool move, Wood."

"I don't think he heard. There wasn't any sound from his room when I passed it goin' downstairs. Think of the nerve of this bird comin' here to roost after what he done."

"He didn't think we'd follow him so fast."

But Anthony waited for no more. He slipped out on the roof of the shed, lowered himself hand below hand to the edge, and dropped lightly to the ground.

The grey, at his coming, flattened back its ears, as though it knew that more hard work was coming, but he saddled rapidly, led it outside, and rode a short distance into the forest. There he stopped.

His course lay due north, and then a swerve to the side and a straight course west for the ranch of William Drew. If the hounds of the law were so close on his trace, they certainly would never suspect him of doubling back in this manner, and he would have the rancher to himself when he arrived.

Yet still he did not start the grey forward to the north. For to the south lay Sally Fortune, and at the thought of her a singular hollowness came about his heart, a loneliness, not for himself, but for her. Yes, in a strange way all self was blotted from his emotion.

It would be a surrender to turn back—now.

And like a defeated man who rides in a lost cause, he swung the grey to the south and rode back over the trail, his head bowed.

CHAPTER XXXVII "TODO ES PERDO"

It was not long after the departure of Bard that Sally Fortune awoke.
For a step had creaked on the floor, and she looked up to find Steve
Nash standing in the centre of the room with the firelight gloomily
about him; behind, blocking the door with his squat figure, stood Shorty
Kilrain.

"Where's your side-kicker?" asked Nash. "Where's Bard?"

And looking across the room, she saw that the other bunk was empty. She raised her arms quickly, as if to stifle a yawn, and sat up in the bunk, holding the blanket close about her shoulders. The face she showed to Nash was calmly contemptuous.

"The bird seems to be flown, eh?" she queried.

"Where is he?" he repeated, and made a step nearer.

She knew at last that her power over him as a woman was gone; she caught the danger of his tone, saw it in the steadiness of the eyes he fixed upon her. Behind was a great, vague feeling of loss, the old hollowness about the heart. It made her reckless of consequences; and when Nash asked, "Is he hangin' around behind the corner, maybe?" she cried:

"If he was that close you'd have sense enough to run, Steve."

The snarl of Nash showed his teeth.

"Out with it. The tenderfoot ain't left his woman fur away. Where's he gone? Who's he gone to shoot in the back? Where's the hoss he started out to rustle?"

"Kind of peeved, Nash, eh?"

One step more he made, towering above her.

"I've done bein' polite, Sally. I've asked you a question."

"And I've answered you: I don't know."

"Sally, I'm patient; I don't mean no wrong to you. What you've been to me I'm goin' to bust myself tryin' to forget; but don't lie to me now."

Such a far greater woe kept up a throbbing ache in the hollow of her throat that now she laughed, laughed slowly, deliberately. He leaned, caught her wrist in a crushing pressure.

"You demon; you she-devil!"

She whirled out of the bunk, the blanket caught about her like the toga of some ancient Roman girl; and as she moved she had swept up something heavy and bright from the floor.

All this, and still his grip was on her left arm.

"Drop your hand, Nash."

With a falling of the heart, she knew that he did not fear her gun; instead, a light of pleasure gleamed in his eyes and his lower jaw thrust out.

She would never forget his face as he looked that moment.

"Will you tell me?"

"I'll see you in hell first."

By that wrist he drew her resistlessly toward him, and his other arm went about her and crushed her close; hate, shame, rage, love were in the contorted face above her. She pressed the muzzle of her revolver against his side.

"You're in beckoning distance of that hell, Steve!"

"You she-wolf—shoot and be damned! I'd live long enough to strangle you."

"You know me, Steve; don't be a fool."

"Know you? Nobody knows you. And God Almighty, Sally, I love you worse'n ever; love the very way you hate me. Come here!"

He jerked her closer still, leaned; and she remembered then that
Anthony had never kissed her. She said:

"You're safe; you know he can't see you."

He threw her from him and stood snarling like a dog growling for the bone it fears to touch because there may be poison in the taste—a starving dog, and a bone full of toothsome marrow which has only to be crushed in order that it may be enjoyed.

"I'm wishin' nothin' more than that he could see me."

"Then you're a worse fool than I took you for, Steve. You know he'd go through ten like you."

"There ain't no man has gone through me yet."

"But he would. You know it. He's not stronger, maybe not so strong. But he was born to win, Steve; he's like—he's like Drew, in a way. He can't fail."

"If I wrung that throat of yours," he said, "I know I couldn't get out of you where he's gone."

"Because I don't know, you see."

"Don't know?"

"He's given me the slip."

"You!"

"Funny, ain't it? But he has. Thought I couldn't ride fast enough to keep up with him, maybe. He's gone on east, of course."

"That's another lie."

"Well, you know."

"I do."

His voice changed.

"Has he really beat it away from you, Sally?"

She watched him with a strange, sneering smile. Then she stepped close.

"Lean your ear down to me, Steve."

He obeyed.

"I'll tell you what ought to make you happy. He don't care for me no more than I care for—you, Steve."

He straightened again, wondering.

"And you?"

"I threw myself at him. I dunno why I'm tellin' you, except it's right that you should know. But he don't want me; he's gone on without me."

"An' you like him still?"

She merely stared, with a sick smile.

"My God!" he murmured, shaken deep with wonder. "What's he made of?"

"Steel and fire—that's all."

"Listen, Sally, forget what I've done, and—"

"Would you drop his trail, Steve?"

He cursed through his set teeth.

"If that's it—no. It's him or me, and I'm sure to beat him out.
Afterwards you'll forget him."

"Try me."

"Girls have said that before. I'll wait. There ain't no one but you for me—damn you—I know that. I'll get him first, and then I'll wait."

"Ten like you couldn't get him."

"I've six men behind me."

She was still defiant, but her colour changed.

"Six, Sally, and he's out here among the hills, not knowing his right from his left. I ask you: has he got a chance?"

She answered: "No; not one."

He turned on his heel, beckoned to Kilrain, who had stood moveless through the strange dialogue, and went out into the night.

As they mounted he said: "We're going straight for the place where I told Butch Conklin I'd meet him. Then the bunch of us will come back."

"Why waste time?"

"Because he's sure to come back. Shorty, after a feller has seen Sally smile—the way she can smile—he couldn't keep away. I know!"

They rode off at a slow trot, like men who have resigned themselves to a long journey, and Sally watched them from the door. She sat down, crosslegged, before the fire, and stirred the embers, and strove to think.

But she was not equipped for thinking, all her life had been merely action, action, action, and now, as she strove to build out some logical sequence and find her destiny in it, she failed miserably, and fell back upon herself. She was one of those single-minded people who give themselves up to emotion rarely, but when they do their whole body, their whole soul burns in the flame.

Into her mind came a phrase she had heard in her childhood. On the outskirts of Eldara there was a little shack owned by a Mexican—José, he was called, and nothing else, "Greaser" José. One night an alarm of fire was given in Eldara, and the whole populace turned out to enjoy the sight; it was a festival occasion, in a way. It was the house of Greaser José.

The cowpunchers manned a bucket line, but the source of water was far away, the line too long, and the flames gained faster than they could be quenched. All through the work of fire-fighting Greaser José was everywhere about the house, flinging buckets of water through the windows into the red furnace within; his wife and the two children stood stupidly, staring, dumb. But in the end, when the fire was towering above the roof of the house, roaring and crackling, the Mexican suddenly raised a long arm and called to the bucket line, "It is done. Señors, I thank you."

Then he had folded his arms and repeated in a monotone, over and over again: "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

His wife came to him, frantic, wailing, and threw her arms around his neck. He merely repeated with heavy monotony: "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

The phrase clung in the mind of the girl; and she rose at last and went back to her bunk, repeating: "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo! All is lost; all is lost!"

No tears were in her eyes; they were wide and solemn, looking up to the shadows of the ceiling, and so she went to sleep with the solemn Spanish phrase echoing through her whole being: "Todo es perdo!"

She woke with the smell of frying bacon pungent in her nostrils.

CHAPTER XXXVIII BACON

The savour of roasting chicken, that first delicious burst of aroma when the oven door is opened, would tempt an angel from heaven down to the lowly earth. A Southerner declares that his nostrils can detect at a prodigious distance the cooking of "possum and taters." A Kanaka has a cosmopolitan appetite, but the fragrance which moves him most nearly is the scent of fish baking in Ti leaves. A Frenchman waits unmoved until the perfume of some rich lamb ragout, an air laden with spices, is wafted toward him.

Every man and every nation has a special dish, in general; there is only one