Max Brand – The Complete Collection

Chapter 16

All sad thoughts were whisked from her mind as a gust whirls dead leaves away and shows the green grass beneath, newly growing. How it lifted her heart to see him. But she looked down, with a cold falling of gloom, at her blue gingham dress. That was not as she wished to appear. She could be in her riding costume, with the rather mannish blouse and loosely tied cravat, spurs on her boots and quirt in her hand as became the mistress and ruling force of a big ranch. Then she received sudden and convincing proof that mere outward appearances meant nothing in the life of Red Jim Perris. He took off his hat and swung it in greeting. There was a white flash of his teeth as he laughed, a red flash of his amazing hair in the sunset light. Then he was pulling up and swinging down to the ground. He came to meet her with his hat dangling in one hand and the other extended.

Typically Western, she thought, that in their second meeting he should act like an old friend. Delightfully Western, too! Under his straight-glancing eyes, his open smile of pleasure, new confidence came in Marianne, new self-reliance. The grip of his hand sent strength up her arm and into her heart.

"I'd given you up," she admitted.

"Mighty sorry it took so long," said Perris. "You see, I was right in the middle of a little poker game that hung on uncommon long. But when it finished up, me and Shorty come as fast as we could. Eh, Shorty?"

"Huh!" grunted Shorty. Marianne looked to her messenger for the first time.

He sat his saddle loosely, one hand falling heavily on the pommel, and his head bent. He did not raise it to meet her glance, but rolled his eyes up in a gloomy scowl which flitted over her face and then came to a rest on the face of Red Jim Perris. A frown of weariness puckered the brow of Shorty. Purple, bruised places of sleeplessness surrounded his eyes. And every line of age or worry or labor was graven more deeply on his face.

"Huh!" grunted Shorty again, mumbling his words very much like a drunkard. "I've killed my Mamie hoss, that's all!"

And with this gloomy retort, he urged the mare to a down-headed trot. In fact, the staunch little brown mare staggered on tired legs and her sides heaved like bellows. The grey horse of Red Jim Perris was in hardly better condition.

"I wanted you quickly," said Marianne, a little horrified. "But I didn't ask you to kill your horses coming."

"Kill 'em?" said Perris, and he cast a sharp glance of disapproval at her. "Not much! That hoss of mine is a pile fagged. I aim to get her that way. But she'll be fit as a fiddle in the morning. I ride her till she's through and never a step more. I know the minute she's through working on muscle and starts working on her nerve, and when that time comes, I stop. I've put up in the middle of nowheres to let her get back her wind. Kill her? Nope, lady, and the only reason Shorty's hoss was so used up was because he plumb insisted on keeping up with us!"

And Marianne nodded. Ordinarily such a speech would have drawn argument from her. Indeed, her own submissiveness startled her as she found herself gently inviting the fire eater to come into the house and learn in detail the work which lay before him.

CHAPTER XII

FROM THE HIP

Shorty rode for the bunkhouse instead of the corrals and tumbling out of the saddle he staggered through the door. Inside, the cowpunchers sat about enjoying a before-dinner smoke and the coolness which the evening wash had brought to their wind-parched skins. Shorty reeled through the midst of them to his bunk and collapsed upon it.

Not a man stirred. Not an eye followed him. No matter what curiosity was burning in their vitals, etiquette demanded that they ask no questions. If in no other wise, the Indian has left his stamp on the country in the manners of the Western riders.

In the meantime, Shorty lay on his back with his arms flung out crosswise, his eyes closed, his breath expelled with a moan and drawn in with a rattle.

"Slim!" he called at length.

Slim raised his little freckled face which was supported by a neck of uncanny length, and he blinked unconcernedly at his bunkie. He and Shorty were inseparable companions.

"Take the saddle off my horse and put 'er up," groaned Shorty. "I'm dead beat!"

"Maybe you been chasing Perris on foot," observed Lew Hervey. Direct questions were still not in order, but often a man could be taunted into speech.

"Damn Perris and damn him black," retorted Shorty, opening his eyes with a snap and letting a glance blaze into space. "Of all the leather-skinned, mule-muscled, wrong-headed gents I ever seen he's the outlastingest."

"You sure got your vocabulary all warmed up," observed Little Joe, so-called because of two hundred pounds of iron-hard sinew and muscle. Slim was wandering towards the door to execute his mission, but he kept his head c****d towards his prostrated friend to learn as much as possible before he left. "Which I disremember," went on Little Joe thoughtfully, "of you ever putting so many words together without cussing. Perris must of give you some Bible study down to Glosterville."

It brought Shorty up on one bulging elbow and he glared at Little Joe.

"Bible?" snorted Shorty. "His idea of a Bible is fifty-two cards and a joker. He does his praying with one foot on a footrail."

"He'll sure fit in fine here," drawled Little Joe. "What with a girl for our boss and a hired hoss-catcher, none of us being good enough to take the job, we-all will get a mighty fine rep around these parts. You done yourself proud bringing him up here, Shorty."

"Laugh, damn you," said Shorty, heated to such a point that he half-forgot his exhaustion. "You ain't been through what I been through. You ain't man enough to of lasted." The imputation sobered Little Joe and he shrugged his massive shoulders significantly. Shorty's laugh was shrill with contempt. "Oh, you're big enough," he sneered. "But what does beef count agin a lightning flash?" He grew reminiscent. "I seen him bluff down the Wyoming Kid, yesterday."

A religious silence spread in the bunkhouse. The cowpunchers sat as stiff as though in Sunday store-clothes. Shorty took advantage of this favoring hush.

"I find him sitting in at a game of poker and I give him the girl's letter. He shakes it open saying: 'See that ten and raise you ten more.' I look over his shoulder as he flips up his cards. He's got a measly pair of deuces! Then he reads the letter and hands it back to me. 'Is it as bad as all that?' he says. 'See that other five and raise you twenty.' 'You're too strong for me Red,' says the gent that was bucking him--and lays down to that pair of deuces! I read the letter:

"'Dear Mr. Perris,

"'I know you don't like to hire out. But this is a job where you won't have a boss. The chestnut horse that nearly killed Manuel Cordova-- Alcatraz--has come to my ranch and stolen half a dozen valuable mares. Will you come up and try to get rid of him for me? The job seems to be too big for my men. Name your own terms.

"'Cordially yours,

"'Marianne Jordan.'

"I hands him back the letter while he rakes in his winnings. 'I wouldn't go as far as she does about the men she's got,' I says, 'but the hoss is sure a fast thinking, fast moving devil.'

"'Well,' says he, 'it sort of sounds good to me. Soon as this game busts up we'll start. They's only four of us. Won't you take a hand?'

"Well, that game run on forty hours. Every time I got busted he staked me agin like a millionaire. But finally we was both flat.

"'All right,' says he, 'I got a purse light enough for travel now. Let's start.'

"'Without no sleep?' says I.

"'Have it your own way,' says he. 'We'll have a snooze and then start.'

"We didn't have the price of another room. He took me up to his room and makes me take the bed while he curls up on the floor. The next minute he's snoring while I was still arguing about not wanting to take the bed.

"Minute later I was asleep, but didn't seem my eyes were more'n close when he gives me a shake.

"'Five o'clock,' says he, 'and time to start.'

"We'd gone to bed about twelve but I wasn't going to let him put anything over on me. He bums a breakfast off the hotel, stalls 'em on his bill, and then we hit the road, him singing every step of the way and me near dead for sleep. I got so mad I couldn't talk. That damn singing sure was riding my nerves. I tried to take it out on a squirrel that run across the road but I missed him.

"'Tell you what, partner,' says Perris, 'for a quick shot, shooting from the hip is the only stuff.'

"'Shooting from the hip at squirrels?' says I. 'I've read about that sort of stuff in a book, but it never was done out of print.'

"'Just a matter of practice,' says he.

"'Huh,' says I, 'I'm here to see and do my talking afterwards.'

"Just then another squirrel pops across the trail dodging like a yearling trying to get back to the herd. Quick as a wink out comes Red's gun. It just does a flip out of the holster and bang! The dust jumped right under the squirrel's belly. Bang! goes the gat again and Mister Squirrel's tail is chopped plumb in two and then he ducks down his hole by the side of the trail and we hear him squealing and chattering cusswords at us.

"I never see such shooting in my life. But Perris puts up his gun and gets red as a girl when two gents ask her for the same dance.

"'I'm plumb out of practice,' he says. 'Anyways, I guess I been talking too much. You'll have to excuse me, Shorty!'

"And he meant it. He wasn't talking guff. Didn't seem possible anybody could shoot as fast and straight as that, but Perris was all cut up because he'd missed and he didn't do no more singing for about half an hour. And I needed that time for a lot of thinking. Made up my mind that if anybody wanted to make trouble for Perris they could count me out of the party.

"And he kept on singing, when he started again, all the way to the ranch and me wondering when I was going to go to sleep and fall off. I tried to make talk. Seen a queer looking fob he wore for his watch pocket. Asked him where he got it.

"'Tell you about it,' he says. 'Comes from me being plumb peaceable.' I remembered some of the things I'd heard about Red Perris in Glosterville and didn't say nothing. I just swallowed hard and took a squint at a cloud. 'Four or five years back,' he says, 'when they was more liquor and ambition floating around these parts, I was up in a little cross-roads saloon in Utah, near Gunterville. Saloon was pretty jammed with folks, all strangers to me. I wasn't packing a gun. Never do when I'm in a crowd, if I can help it. Well, I got into a little game of stud, and things were running pretty easy for me when a big gent across the table that had been losing hard and drinking hard ups and says he allows I sure have the cards talking. It sort of riled me. I tell him pretty liberal what I think of him and all like him. I go back into the past and give him a nice little description all about his ancestors. I aim to wind up with an invite to step outside and have it out with fists, but he don't wait. Right in the middle of my sermon he outs with a gat and blazes away at me. The slug drills me in the thigh and I go down.