The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition - Max Brand

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Then they heard a crashing in the underbrush, and the beautiful mare came like a bullet out of the trees and glinted in the dawnlight of the clearing. Beside Ronicky she drew up, snorting her pleasure at the reunion.

      A change of saddles was quickly made, and now, on the back of the mare, Ronicky laughed with joy.

      “Now let Jack Moon ride hard,” he said, “because, no matter how much foot the grays have, I’m going to run ‘em into the ground—if I can ever pick up the trail. But Lord knows where they’ve gone. Can you guess, Hugh?”

      “Can’t make a good guess,” the older man returned, watching with an appreciative eye while the bay mare danced in her eagerness to be off. “But how’m I to keep up with that little streak of lightning you’re on now?”

      “You won’t keep up,” answered Ronicky. “Never come across a hoss in the mountains that could keep up, partner.”

      Now the gray morning was brightening each moment, and already the light was so clear that they could look back into the heart of the hollow and see the clearing and the shacks. There was no pursuit apparently. Small figures of men moved here and there hurriedly. There was a knot of horses, looking as small as ants in the distance, in the central space.

      “I knew,” muttered Ronicky Doone, “that there was a curse on that treasure of Cosslett’s. We ain’t the men that dug the stuff out of the ground in the first place, and neither did they give it to us. Hugh, they’s going to be a curse wherever that gold travels!”

      “I got none of it,” said Hugh Dawn almost cheerfully. “Left it all behind in the shack. And I think you’re right, Ronicky. But now where do we head?”

      “We can only guess. Where would a smart gent like Jack Moon go if he wanted to throw folks off the trail?”

      “North was where he and the band expected to head.”

      “That’s why he won’t head there. And over to the east the ground slopes too easy and smooth. That’s where folks would naturally think that Moon had gone trying to get away. But most like, just to throw us off, Moon has taken the west road, through those hills. The harder the road, the less chance we’d have to foller him on it. Ain’t that the way he’d think?”

      “I dunno, Ronicky. But it sounds pretty reasonable, except that for my part I’d take the east road. That’s where he must of gone.”

      “Take it if you want. I go west.”

      “Take it, then. We’ll each try a road. And if we both miss?”

      “I’ll see you in Trainor—if I come through alive.”

      “Good-by, Ronicky—and Heaven bless you!”

      Ronicky Doone waved his hand cheerfully.

      “You look happy,” said the older man curiously, “like you was going to a party, son!”

      “I am,” said Ronicky Doone. “I’m going on the trail of the gent I’d rather meet than anybody in the world. Good luck, Hugh!”

      Hugh Dawn waved again and then watched Ronicky send his mare at a gallop down through the sparsely wooded slope leading toward the west. He kept on watching as the rider disappeared in the thicket in the lower hollow, and until Ronicky came into view again on the farther slope. He was still allowing Lou to keep a swift pace, and he was riding jauntily erect, as though he rode to a feast.

      Then Hugh Dawn turned his face east and trotted down through the trees.

      XXVII. THE THREAT

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      It was, indeed, down the western trail taken by Ronicky, that Jack Moon had urged his horses with Jerry Dawn at his side, and never before had the leader ridden with such high hopes of great success to lure him on. The weariness of the girl was a great part in his favor. He had well nigh convinced her of the honesty of his intentions during the first part of the ride, and now, as the long strain of anxiety and of physical effort during the past few days began to tell upon her, she turned to the strong man beside her automatically for assistance and guidance. If she had been in full possession of her natural keenness, she might have probed motives and probabilities far more deeply. But as it was, she took for granted, it seemed, in the mental fog that springs out of physical exhaustion, that Jack Moon was a rock of support.

      She had ceased riding erect and lightly in the saddle by the time the sun pushed up out of the eastern trees and looked down at them as they twisted along a narrow trail on a mountainside. Now her head had lowered a little, and one hand rested heavily on the pommel of the saddle. Sometimes he thought that she was on the verge of falling asleep, so heavily she swung to one side or another as the big gray turned a sharp corner of the trail, but these swerves always wakened her a little and made her smile at her companion with dim amusement. The outlaw pressed close to her side to make sure that she should not fall.

      In all his dark and cruel career he had never come so close to a good and pure emotion as he had come now. To him the girl in her weariness and helplessness was a more controlling power than a hundred men with guns rushing at him. The night of sleeplessness, with other dreary nights of watching before, had robbed her of all sprightliness of mind, all elasticity of body. She had become, mentally and physically, a child. He could mold her as he would. Should he take advantage of her now, to press on her the great desire which had been beating at his brain since he first saw her those few short days before?

      Watching her wavering in the saddle, he decided that for very shame he could not trouble her with his importunities. But looking more closely again, and this time at her bowed face, it seemed to Jack Moon that there was nothing in the world so tender or so perfectly beautiful as the line of her profile, curving over brow and nose and lips and chin and rounded throat. Behind all the gentleness, he knew there was more courage than ordinarily comes to the lot of woman. All in all, it seemed to him that he had at last found a helpmate —the woman he wished to make his wife.

      It must be said in justice to the man that in his associations with women he had ever played an honorable role. Whatever his ways with men, he had kept his trickery for them alone, and he had reserved for womankind as much reverence as he possessed. He was one of those odd fellows who, in the midst of a thousand crimes, retain a measure of self-respect by adhering to standards of one kind or another. It is not an unusual characteristic of criminals. There are murderers who kill for a price, and a cheap price, at that, who would scorn to commit an act of thievery. There are robbers who would not keep themselves from starving by descending to such a pitifully small act as picking a pocket. But with Jack Moon the exception had been a very large one—he had built a solid reputation as a man who never broke his word.

      He writhed with shame and anguish of spirit to think that at last he had shattered the painfully acquired repute. He had betrayed his own followers, he had tricked and betrayed Ronicky Doone, he had betrayed Hugh Dawn. But he had lied and perjured himself for the sake of the girl, and he had the price of his sin with him. At least he had her presence. How far he was from having won her confidence, her affection, remained to be seen. In the meantime, she was here beside him, and as the miser, looking at his gold, makes small the privations he has endured to heap up the money, so Jack Moon, looking at the girl, sneered at the lost honor which she had cost him.

      Yet, how much of her was his? How truly did she trust him? Might it not be that he had paid the terrible price simply for the sake of a single ride with her? All of these possibilities swarmed through the tormented mind of the outlaw, but he forced them away. It was too much to be considered. Never before had he laid siege to the mind of a man without eventually winning him over, and surely a single, weak woman could not endure against his persuasiveness!

      But before she could even listen to him, she must be stimulated to complete wakefulness. He halted his party, helped the girl dismount, and built a camp fire hastily. Over it he made coffee, finding all the materials necessary in the pack which was behind the saddle on Jerry’s

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