Max Brand (10 page)

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you're reasonable."

"Did Jig tell you that?"

"And a pile more. Jig says you're a pretty fine sort. That's his
words."

The cowpuncher caressed the butt of his gun with his fingertips, his
habitual gesture when in doubt.

"Lady," he said at length, "suppose I cut this short? You think I ain't
going to keep Cold Feet here till the sheriff comes for him?"

"You see what it would mean?" she asked eagerly. "It wouldn't be a fair
trial. You couldn't get a fair jury for Jig around Sour Creek and
Woodville. They hate him—all the young men do. D'you know why? Simply
because he's different! Simply because—"

"Because all the girls are pretty fond of him, eh?"

"You can put it that way if you want," she answered steadily enough,
though she flushed under his stare. Then: "you'll keep that in mind,
and you're man enough to do what you think is right, ain't you, Mr.
Sinclair?"

He shifted away from the hand which was moving toward him.

"I'll tell you what," he answered. "I'm man enough to be afraid of a
girl like you, Sally Bent."

Then he saw her head fall in despair, as he turned away. When he
reached the shimmering heat of the outdoors again, he was feeling like
a murderer. His reason told him that Cold Feet was "yaller," not worth
saving. His reason told him that he could save Jig only by a confession
that would drive him, Sinclair, away from Sour Creek and his destined
victim, Sandersen. Or he could save Jig by violating the law, and that
also would drive him from Sour Creek and Sandersen.

Suddenly he halted in the midst of his pacing to and fro. Why was he
turning these alternatives back and forth in his mind? Because, he
understood all at once, he had subconsciously determined that Cold Feet
must not die!

The face of his brother rose up and looked into his eyes. That was the
friend of whom he would not speak to Jig, brother and friend at once.
And as surely as ever ghost called to living man, that face demanded
the death of Sandersen. He blinked the vision away.

"I
am
going nutty," muttered Sinclair. "Whether Sandersen lives or
dies, Jig ain't going to dance at a rope's end!"

Presently Sally called him in to lunch, and Riley ate halfheartedly.
All during the meal neither Sally nor John Gaspar had more than a word
for him, while they talked steadily together. They seemed to understand
each other so well that he felt a hidden insult in it.

Once or twice he made a heavy attempt to enter the conversation, always
addressing his remarks to Sally Bent. He was received graciously, but
his remarks always fell dead, and a moment later Cold Feet had picked
up the frayed ends of his own talk and won the entire attention of
Sally. Riley was beginning to understand why the youth of that district
detested Cold Feet.

"Always takes some soft-handed dude to make a winning with a fool
girl," he comforted himself.

He expected the arrival of Jerry Bent before nightfall, and with that
arrival, perhaps, there would be a new sort of attack on him. Sally and
Cold Feet were trying persuasion, but they might encourage Jerry Bent
to attempt physical force. With all his heart Riley Sinclair hoped so.
He had a peculiar desire to do something significant for the eyes of
both Sally and Jig.

But nightfall came, and then supper, and still no Jerry appeared.
Afterward, Sinclair made ready to sleep in Jig's room. Cold Feet
offered him the couch.

"Beds and me don't hitch" declared Riley, throwing two or three of the
rugs together. "I ain't particular partial to a floor, neither, but
these here rugs will give it a sort of a ground softness."

He sat cross-legged on the low pile of rugs, while he pulled off his
boots and smoked his good-night cigarette. Jig coiled up in a big
chair, while he studied his jailer.

"But how can you go to bed so early?" he asked.

"Early? It ain't early. Sun's down, ain't it? Why do they bring on
night, except for folks to go to sleep?"

"For my part the best part of the day generally begins when the sun
goes down."

With patient contempt Riley considered John Gaspar. "You look kind of
that way," he decided aloud. "Pale and not much good with your
shoulders. Now, what d'you most generally do with your time in the
evening?"

"Why—talk."

"Talk? Huh! A fine way of wasting time for a growed-up man."

"And I read, you know."

"I can see by the looks of them shelves that you do. How many of them
books might you have read, Jig?"

"All of them."

"I ask you, man to man, ain't they mostly somebody's idea of what life
is?"

"I suppose that's a short way of putting it."

"And I ask you ag'in, what's better to take a secondhand hunch out of
what somebody else thinks life might be, or to go out and do some
living on your own hook?"

Cold Feet had been smiling faintly up to this point, as though he had
many things in reserve which might be said at need. Now his smile
disappeared.

"Perhaps you're right."

"And maybe I ain't." Sinclair brushed the entire argument away into a
thin mist of smoke. "Now, look here, Cold Feet, I'm about to go to
sleep, and when I sleep, I sure sleep sound, taking it by and large.
They's times when I don't more'n close one eye all night, and they's
times when you'd have to pull my eyes open, one by one, to wake me up.
Understand? I'm going to sleep the second way tonight. About eight
hours of the soundest sleep you ever heard tell of."

Jig considered him gravely.

"I'm afraid," he answered, "that I won't sleep nearly as well."

Riley Sinclair smiled. "Wouldn't be no ways nacheral for you to do much
sleeping," he agreed. "Take a gent that's in danger of having his neck
stretched, like you, and most generally he don't do much sleeping. He
lies around awake, cussing his luck, I s'pose. Take you, now, Cold
Feet, and I s'pose you'll be figuring on how far a hoss could carry you
in the eight hours that I'll be sleeping. Eh?"

There was a suggestive lift of the eyebrows, as he spoke, but before
Jig had a chance to study his face, he had turned and wrapped himself
in one of the rugs. He lay perfectly still, stretched on one side, with
his back turned to Jig. He stirred neither hand nor foot.

Outside, a door slammed heavily; Cold Feet heard the heavy voice of
Jerry Bent and the beat of his heels across the floor. In spite of
those noises Riley Sinclair was presently sound asleep, as he had
promised. Gaspar knew it by the rise and fall of the arm which lay
along Sinclair's side, also by the sound of his breathing.

Cold Feet went to the window and looked out on the mountains, black and
huge, with a faint shimmer of snow on the farthest summits. At the very
thought of trying to escape into that wilderness and wandering alone
among the peaks, he shuddered. He came back and studied the sleeper.
Something about the nonchalance with which Sinclair had gone to sleep
under the very eye of his prisoner affected John Gaspar strangely.
Doubtless it was sheer contempt for the man he was guarding. And,
indeed, something assured Jig that, no matter how well he employed the
next eight hours in putting a great distance between himself and Sour
Creek, the tireless riding of Sinclair would more than make up the
distance.

Gaspar went to the door, then turned sharply and glanced over his
shoulder at the sleeper; but the eyes of Sinclair were still closed,
and his regular breathing continued. Jig turned the knob cautiously and
slipped out into the living room.

Jerry and Sally beckoned instantly to him from the far side of the
room. The beauty of the family had descended upon Sally alone. Jerry
was a swart-skinned, squat, bow-legged, efficient cowpuncher. He now
ambled awkwardly to meet John Gaspar.

"Are you all set?" he asked.

"For what?"

"To start on the trail!" exclaimed Jerry. "What else? Ain't Sinclair
asleep?"

"How d'you know?"

"I listened at the door and heard his breathing a long time ago.
Thought you'd never come out."

Sally Bent was already on the other side of Gaspar, drawing him toward
the door.

"You can have my hoss, Jig," she offered. "Meg is sure as sin in the
mountains. You won't have nothing to fear on the worst trail they is."

"Not a thing," asserted Jerry.

They half led and half dragged Cold Feet to the door.

"I'll show you the best way. You see them two peaks yonder, like a pair
of mule's ears? You start—"

"I don't know," said Jig. "It seems very difficult, even to think of
riding alone through those mountains."

Sally was white with fear. "You ain't going to throw away this chance,
Jig? It'll mean hanging sure, if you don't run now. Ask Jerry what
they're saying in Sour Creek tonight?"

Jerry volunteered the information. "They're all wondering why you
wasn't strung up today, when they got so much evidence agin' you. Also
they're thinking that the boys played plumb foolish in turning you over
to this stranger, Sinclair, to guard. But they're waiting for Sheriff
Kern to come over from Woodville an' nab you in the morning. They's
some that says that they won't wait, if it looks like the law is going
to take too long to hang you. They'll get up a necktie party and break
the jail and do their own hanging. I heard all them things and more,
Jig."

John Gaspar looked uncertainly from one to the other of his friends.

"You've
got
to go!" cried Sally.

"I've got to go," admitted Cold Feet in a whisper.

"I've got Meg saddled for you already. She's plumb gentle."

"Just a minute. I've forgotten something."

"You don't mean you're going back into that room where Sinclair is?"

"I won't waken him. He's sleeping like the dead."

Jig turned away from them and hurried back to his room. Having opened
and closed the door softly, he went to a chest of drawers near the
window and fumbled in the half-light of the low-burning lamp. He
slipped a small leather case into the breast pocket of his coat, and
then stole back toward the door, as softly as before. With his hand on
the knob, he paused and looked back. For all he knew, Sinclair might be
really awake now, watching his quarry from beneath those heavy lashes,
waiting until his prisoner should have made a definite attempt to
escape.

And then the big man would rise to his feet as soon as the door was
closed. The picture became startlingly real to John Gaspar. Sinclair
would slip out that window, no doubt, and circle around toward the
horse shed. There he would wait until his prisoner came out on Meg, and
then without warning would come a shot, and there would be an end of
Sinclair's trouble with his prisoner. Gaspar could easily attribute
such cunning cruelty to Sinclair. And yet there was something untested,
unprobed, different about the rangy fellow.

Whatever it was, it kept Gaspar staring down into the lean face of
Sinclair for a long moment. Then he went resolutely back into the
living room and faced Sally Bent; Jerry was already waiting outdoors.

"I'm not going," said Gaspar slowly. "I'll stay."

Sally cried out. "Oh, Jig, have you lost your nerve ag'in? Ain't you
got
no
courage?"

The schoolteacher sighed. "I'm afraid not, Sally. I guess my only
courage comes in waiting and seeing how things turn out."

He turned and went gloomily back to his room.

With the first brightness of dawn, Sinclair wakened even more suddenly
that he had fallen asleep. There was no slow adjusting of himself to
the requirements of the day. One prodigious stretching of the long
arms, one great yawn, and he was as wide awake as he would be at noon.
He jerked on his boots and rose, and not until he stood up, did he see
John Gaspar asleep in the big chair, his head inclining to one side,
the book half-fallen from his hand, and the lamp sputtering its last
beside him. But instead of viewing the weary face with pity, Sinclair
burst into sudden and amazed profanity.

The first jarring note brought Gaspar up and awake with a start, and he
stared in astonishment at the uninterrupted flood which rippled from
the lips of the cowpuncher. It concluded: "Still here! Of all the
shorthorned fatheads that I ever seen, the worst is this Gaspar—this
Jig—this Cold Feet. Say, man, ain't you got no spirit at all?"

"What do you mean?" asked Gaspar. "Still here? Of course I'm still
here! Did you expect me to escape?"

Sinclair flung himself into a chair, speechless with rage and disgust.

"Did you think I was joking when I told you I was going to sleep eight
hours without waking up?"

"It might very well have been a trap, you know."

Sinclair groaned. "Son, they ain't any man in the world that'll tell
you that Riley Sinclair sets his traps for birds that ain't got their
stiff feathers growed yet. Trap for you? What in thunder should I want
you for, eh?"

He strode to the window, still groaning.

"There's where you'd ought to be, over yonder behind them mule ears.
They'd never catch you in a thousand years with that start. Eight hours
start! As good as have eight years, kid—just as good. And you've
throwed that chance away!"

He turned and stared mournfully at the schoolteacher.

"It ain't no use," he said sadly. "I see it all now. You was cut out to
end in a rope collar."

Not another word could be pried from his set lips during breakfast, a
gloomy meal to which Sally Bent came with red eyes, and Jerry Bent
sullenly, with black looks at Sinclair. Jig was the cheeriest one of
the party. That cheer at last brought another explosion from Sinclair.
They stood in front of the house, watching a horseman wind his way up
the road through the hills.

"It's Sheriff Kern," said Jerry Bent. "I can tell by the way he rides,
sort of slanting. It's Kern, right enough."