The Max Brand Megapack (226 page)

“Well, what happens tomorrow doesn’t change what happens today.”

It was the root, she felt, of his philosophy.

“I suppose not,” she said cautiously. Then she became frank again. After all, he was distinctly worth frankness. Good or bad, he was a man. “Everything is very new to me here, as you understand. I’m trying to make it out.”

“I wish you’d postpone judging me for a while,” he begged. “Will you do that? I know it’s hard for you to make me out. You can’t know how a gent gets hungry to be free.”

“I think I do know,” she insisted. “I’ve met Ronicky Doone, and if ever there was a man who lives to be free, it is he!”

Her head went up with her enthusiasm; his head went down in thought, and he examined her with a keen glance.

“You figure he’s a lot better than the ordinary, eh?”

“Don’t you? But then, you don’t know him.”

“Lady,” said the other, “I know him like a book.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Never laid eyes on his face.”

“You admit it!”

“I don’t have to. I’ve heard about him. He’s too important for me not to have heard. Gents like him and me can’t live within a thousand miles of each other without knowing what the other fellow is.”

“But he doesn’t know you.”

“Sure he don’t. That’s where he’s weaker.”

“Ah! Weaker?”

“That’s what I said. He’s got his parts. But he’s too much of a fighter to be at the top of any game.”

It was so absurd that she laughed. “You object to fighting?” she said.

“I wish you’d try to understand,” he said, irritated. “You can if you want to. But you can’t get all I mean with the first jump of your mind, every time. Sure I object to fighting. That’s a last resource. Gents that do nothing but fight their way into trouble and out of it are like wolves. No better. They’re beasts. Maybe fine beasts, but beasts just the same. What makes men different? Brains, lady, brains! It ain’t how hard a gent can hit or how quick and straight he can shoot. It’s what he’s got above the eyes. Understand me?”

“Of course I understand you; and of course I agree.” She was piqued by his bluntness. And yet at the same time it made her wish more than ever to have his respect. The respect of Jack Moon! Afterward, she would marvel at herself and her mood during that talk! “But you have to admit that it sounds queer coming from Jack Moon.”

“Sure—Jack Moon the way you know him now. Not the Jack Moon I hope you’ll get to know.”

“Do you really want me to know you? Wouldn’t you be less strong, less invincible, if any one really understood you?”

“You won’t,” said he calmly. “But I’m going to show you my insides if I can. The more you show of yourself the more people miss you.”

“Where are your weaknesses?” she said.

“That’s asking. But I’ll tell you. I’m vain. I like to be flattered.”

“But you intend to be forearmed, I see!”

“Don’t do any good to be prepared for a thing. That’s my weakness. You’d laugh if you knew the way it works. Ain’t a man in my crowd that I don’t want to have respect me. If I can’t get ’em to love me, I want ’em to fear me; and you can lay to it that they all do!”

“And that flatters you?”

“Of course. Take you, for instance. If I can’t make you like me—like to talk to me; of course I don’t mean anything more’n that—then the next best is to have you shake every time I come near you.”

She looked at him out of narrowed eyes. And she knew that the fellow was actually telling the truth! And yet the door he had opened let in only enough light upon his involute nature to give her a deceptive feeling of knowledge. The main theme—the key to the mystery—was still farther beyond.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m not going to use what I know.”

“Thanks,” said the outlaw. “Here we are almost home!”

The clearing of the shacks was before them, and the crowd, which had hurried on ahead of them, was already busy at twenty preparations for the night and the evening meal. The sunset was touching only the tops of the trees now. All beneath was swiftly deepening shadow.

“However,” she said as a parting shot, “I’m going to maintain that there are two types of freedom—yours and Ronicky’s!”

“You know him well enough to call him Ronicky?”

“Yes.”

“And he calls you Jerry!”

“Why not?”

“No harm. Well, I tell you what: I could take this Ronicky Doone and wind him around my finger. I could make him my man! I could get him into my crowd if I wanted to!”

She flushed with her anger.

“That’s simply impossible! Ronicky Doone? He’s the soul of everything honorable!”

“Actions speak, lady,” and Jack Moon grinned. “Suppose I was to go out and bring him into this camp!”

“You could only bring him dead!”

“That so? I’d bet on it, though.”

“As a member of your band?”

“That’s what I said. Have him in here sleeping right along with the rest of the boys. He’d take Harry Bush’s place!”

“You can’t do it, Jack Moon! I—unless you’re a hypnotist.”

“You’re weakening,” said the other coldly. “Must be kind of fond of this gent if you can’t believe anything wrong about him!”

“I’ll tell you this,” she said firmly. “If he came down here as a member of your band, I’d despise him with all my heart. I’d loathe him!”

“That’s hard on me,” remarked Jack Moon. “But it sounds to me like a bet. What say? Shall I go out and try to get him down here?”

“If you go to face him, you’d risk your life!”

“Not the first time. Besides, it’d be worth it.”

“How?”

“To see your face when I bring him in. Shall I try?”

“You’ll gain nothing from me, sir!” She was trembling with excitement. “But go out. Try him. If he’s as weak as that, then there’s no steady faith, no honesty, no truth in any man in the world! But how—how could you get him?”

“Ain’t there gold over yonder? Wouldn’t he like a share in it?”

“You’d buy him!”

“They say everybody has a price, and I can bid pretty high right now!”

“You’ll fail, Jack Moon!”

He laughed mockingly and turned abruptly on his heel and strode out into the shade of the trees.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Broken Faith

His first hundred yards were made at a rapid pace, but after that, finding himself entirely alone and well out of possible observation from behind, he reduced his gait and went on more slowly, more cautiously, keeping a sharp lookout through the tree trunks around him. Indeed, so sensitive had he suddenly become that now and again he paused and whirled toward the movement of a wind-swayed sapling or the swing of a bough. His progress, however, was fairly steady. He paused only to break off a slender dead branch some six feet long, and at the top of this he tied a white handkerchief.

In this wise he broke from the trees and came into the clearing at the bottom of the hollow. He must now be well beyond earshot of the camp, and suddenly he began to shout: “Doone! Ronicky Doone! Oh, Doone!”

He repeated the call in a high and piercing wail several times, and yet it was strange that he should expect the man to come to what might well be considered a trap. Strange, too, that he should expect to find him so near the scene of danger. Yet at the third repetition of the call a voice spoke behind him.

“I’m here. What’s the racket about?”

He turned slowly, very slowly. It was a maxim with him that quick moves were very dangerous.

He found himself looking at Ronicky Doone, though the latter was so covered with a mottling of shadows that he was almost rendered invisible. It was a sort of protective coloration—or shadowing, to be more accurate.

“Been following me long?” said the outlaw, leaning on his branch.

“Only since you started away from the shacks,” said Ronicky.

“Well, well,” and Moon sighed, “you sure are handy in a forest. Must of learned young.”

“Tolerable.”

“Ain’t it kind of dangerous trusting yourself on foot, when we got so many men to cut in around you on hossback?”

As a reply Ronicky whistled very softly, so softly that it barely reached the ears of the bandit leader, and out of the denser night of the trees behind Ronicky came the form of Lou. She was almost lost in the sea of shadow. Only her head, with the pricking ears and the bright eyes, appeared at the shoulder of her master.

“By Jiminy!” exclaimed Jack Moon, smiling with an almost boyish pleasure. “That’s sure a hoss, that one of yours. Lou?”

“You’ve heard of her?”

“Everybody that’s heard of you has heard of her, if they have any ears to listen to folks’ talk,” said the other. “She’s handy herself, ain’t she? How come she don’t make any more noise going through a wood?”