The Max Brand Megapack (399 page)

Alcatraz lunged out into a rickety gallop. Only new hope sustained him as he headed straight for the trees.

Even the dazed brain of Perris understood. With all his force he wrenched at the bit—it was hopelessly lodged in the teeth of the stallion—and then he groaned in despair and a moment later swayed forward to avoid a bough brushing close overhead.

There were other branches ahead. On galloped Alcatraz, heading cunningly beneath the boughs until he was stopped by a shock that dropped him staggering to his knees. The pommel had struck a branch—and Red Perris was still in place.

Once more the chestnut started, reeling heavily in his lope. This time, to avoid the coming peril, the rider slipped far to one side and Alcatraz veered swiftly towards a neighboring tree trunk. Too late Red Perris saw the danger and strove to drag himself back into the saddle, but his numbed muscles refused to act and Alcatraz felt the burden torn from his back, felt a dangling foot tug at the left stirrup—then he was free.

So utter was his exhaustion that in checking himself he nearly fell, but he turned to look at the mischief he had worked.

The man lay on his back with his arms flung out cross-wise. From a gash in his forehead the blood streamed across his face. His legs were twisted oddly together. His eyes were closed. From head to foot the stallion sniffed that limp body, then raised a forehoof to strike; with one blow he could smash the face to a smear of red as he had smashed Manuel Cordova the great day long before.

The hoof fell, was checked, and wondering at himself Alcatraz found that his blow had not struck home. What was it that restrained him? It seemed to the conqueror that he felt again the gentle finger-tips which had worked down the muscles of his shoulder and trailed down his neck. More than that, he heard the smooth murmur of the man’s voice like a kindly ghost beside him. He dreaded Red Perris still, but hate the fallen rider he could not. Presently a loud rushing of the wind among the branches above made him turn and in a panic he left the forest at a shambling trot.

CHAPTER XIX

HERVEY TAKES A TRICK

The night before, when Perris rode off from the ranchhouse after defying Hervey and his men, his hoofbeats had no sooner faded to nothing than the cowpunchers swarmed out from the patio and into the open; as though they wished to put their heads together and plan the battle which the command of Hervey, to-night, had postponed. All of that was perfectly clear to Marianne. Her call brought Hervey back to her and she led him at once off the veranda and to the living room where she could talk secure of interruption or of being overheard. There he slumped uninvited into the first easy chair and sat twirling his sombrero on his finger-tips, obviously well satisfied with himself and the events of the evening. She herself remained standing, carefully turning her back to the light so that her face might, as much as possible, be in shadow. For she knew it was pale and the eyes unnaturally large.

Hervey must not see. He must not guess at the torment in her mind and all the self-revelations which had been pouring into her consciousness during the past few moments. Greatest of all was one overshadowing fact: she loved Red Jim Perris! What did it matter that she had seen him so few times, and spoke to him so few words? A word might be a thunderclap; a glance might carry into the very soul of a man. And indeed she felt that she had seen that proud, gay, impatient soul in Jim. What he thought of her was another matter. That he found a bar between them was plain. But on the night of his first arrival at the ranch, when she sang to him, had she not felt him, once, twice and again, leaning towards her, into her life. And if they met once more, might he not come all the way? But no matter. The thing now was to use all her cunning of mind, all her strength of body, to save him from imminent danger; and the satisfied glint of Hervey’s eye convinced her that the danger was imminent indeed. Why he should hate Jim so bitterly was not clear; that he did so hate the stranger was self-evident. The more she studied her foreman the more her terror grew, the more her lonely sense of weakness increased.

“Mr. Hervey,” she said suddenly. “What’s to be done?”

Her heart fell. He had avoided her eyes.

“I dunno,” said Hervey. “You seen to-night that I treated him plumb white. I put my cards on the table. I warned him fair and square. And that after I’d given him a week’s grace. A gent couldn’t do any more than that, I guess!”

He was right, in a way. At least, the whole populace of the mountains would agree that he had given Red Jim every chance to leave the ranch peaceably. And if he would not go peaceably, who could raise a finger against Hervey for throwing the man off by force?

“But something more
has
to be done,” she said eagerly. “It
has
to be done!”

Hervey frowned at her.

“Look here,” he said, in a more dictatorial manner than he had ever used before. “Why you so interested in this Perris?”

She hesitated, but only for an instant. What did such a thing as shame matter when the life of Perris might be saved by a confession? And certainly Hervey would not dare to proceed against Perris if she made such a confession.

“I’m interested,” she said steadily, “because he—he means more to me than any other man in the world.”

She saw the head of the foreman jerk back as though he had received a blow in the face.

“More’n your father?”

“In a different way—yes, more than Dad!”

Hervey rose and stretched an accusing arm towards her.

“You’re in love with Red Perris!”

And she answered him fiercely: “Yes, yes, yes! In love with Red Perris! Go tell every one of your men. Shame me as far as you wish! But—Mr. Hervey, you won’t dare lead a gang against him now!”

He drew back from her, thrust away by her half-hysteria of emotion.

“Won’t I?” growled Hervey, regarding her from beneath sternly gathered brows. “I seen something of this to-night. I guessed it all. Won’t I lay a hand on a sneaking hound that comes grinning and talking soft and saying things he don’t half mean? Why, it’s a better reason for throwing him off the ranch than I ever had before, seems to me!”

“You don’t mean that!” she breathed. “Say you don’t mean that!”

“Your Dad ain’t here. If he was, he’d say the same as me. I got to act in his place. You think you like Perris. Why, you’d be throwing yourself away. You’d break Oliver Jordan’s heart. That’s what you’d do!”

Her brain was whirling. She grasped at the first thought that came to her.

“Then wait till he comes back before you touch Jim Perris.”

“And let Perris raise the devil in the meantime?”

He laughed in her face.

“At least,” she cried, her voice shrill with anger and fear, “let me know where he is. Let me send for him myself.”

“Dunno that I’m exactly sure about where he is myself,” fenced Lew Hervey.

“Ah,” moaned the girl, half-breaking down under the strain. “Why do you hate me so? What have I done to you?”

“Nothing,” said Hervey grimly. “Made me the laughing stock of the mountains—that’s all. Made me a joke—that’s all you’ve done to me. ‘Lew Hervey and his boss—the girl.’ That’s what they been saying about me. But I ain’t been taking that to heart. What I’m doing now is for your own good, only you don’t know it! You’ll see it later on.”

“Mr. Hervey,” she pleaded, “if it will change you, I’ll give you my oath to stop bothering with the management of the ranch. You can run it your own way. I’ll leave if you say the word, but—”

“I know,” said Hervey. “I know what you’d say. But Lord above, Miss Jordan, I ain’t doing this for my own sake. I’m doing it for yours and your father’s. He’ll thank me if you don’t! Far as Perris goes, I’d—”

He halted. She had sunk into a chair—collapsed into it, rather, and lay there half fainting with one arm thrown across her face. Hervey glowered down on her a moment and then turned on his heel and left the house.

He went straight to the bunkhouse, gathered the men about him, and told them the news.

“Boys,” he said, “the cat’s out of the bag. I’ve found out everything, and it’s what I been fearing. She started begging me to keep off Red Jim’s trail. Wouldn’t hear no reason. I told her there wasn’t nothing for me to gain by throwing him off the ranch. Except that he’d been ordered off and he had to go. It’d make a joke of me and all of you boys if the word got around that one gent had laughed at us and stayed right in the Valley when we told him to get out.”

A fierce volley of curses bore him out.

“Well,” said Hervey, “then she come right out and told me the truth: she’s in love with Perris. She told me so herself!”

They gaped at him. They were young enough, most of them, and lonely and romantic enough, to have looked on Marianne with a sort of sad longing which their sense of humor kept from being anything more aspiring. But to think that she had given her heart so suddenly and so freely to this stranger was a shock. Hervey reaped the harvest of their alarmed glances with a vast inward content. Every look he met was an incipient gun levelled at the head of Red Jim.

“Didn’t make no bones about it,” he said, “she plumb begged for him. Well, boys, she ain’t going to get him. I think too much of old man Jordan to let his girl run off with a man-killing vagabond like this Perris. He’s good looking and he talks dead easy. That’s what’s turned the trick. I guess the rest of you would back me up?”

The answer was a growl.

“I’ll go bust his neck,” said Little Joe furiously. “One of them heart-breakers, I figure.”

“First thing,” said the foreman, “is to see that she don’t get to him. If she does, she’ll sure run off with him. But she’s easy kept from that. Joe, you and Shorty watch the hoss corrals to-night, will you? And don’t let her get through to a hoss by talking soft to you.”

They vowed that they would be adamant. They vowed it with many oaths. In fact, the rage of the cowpunchers was steadily growing. Red Perris was more than a mere insolent interloper who had dared to scoff at the banded powers of the Valley of the Eagles. He was far worse. He was the most despicable sort of sneak and thief for he was trying to steal the heart and ruin the life of a girl. They had looked upon the approaching conflict with Perris as a bitter pill that must be swallowed for the sake of the Valley of the Eagles outfit. They looked upon it, from this moment, as a religious duty from which no one with the name of a man dared to shrink. Little Joe and Shorty at once started for the corral. The others gathered around the foreman for further details, but he waved them away and retired to his own bunk. For he never used the little room at the end of the building which was set aside for the foreman. He lived and slept and ate among his cowpunchers and that was one reason for his hold over them.

At his bunk, he produced writing materials scribbled hastily.

“Dear Jordan,

“Hell has busted loose.

“I played Perris with a long rope. I gave him a week because Miss Jordan asked me to. But at the end of the week he still wasn’t ready to go. Seems that he’s crazy to get Alcatraz. Talks about the horse like a drunk talking about booze. Plumb disgusting. But when I told him to go to-night, he up and said they wasn’t enough men in the Valley to throw him off the ranch. I would of taken a fall out of him for that, but Miss Jordan stepped in and kept me away from him.

“Afterwards I had a talk with her. She begged me not to go after Perris because he would fight and that meant a killing. I told her I had to do what I’d said I’d do. Then she busted out and told me that she loved Perris. Seemed to think that would keep me from going after Perris. She might of knowed that it was the very thing that would make me hit the trail. I’m not going to stand by and see a skunk like Perris run away with your girl while you ain’t on the ranch.

“I’ve just given orders to a couple of the boys to see that she don’t get a horse to go out to Perris. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll settle his hash.

“This letter may make you think that you’d better come back to the ranch. But take my advice and stay off. I can handle this thing better while you’re away. If you’re here you’ll have to listen to a lot of begging and crying. Come back in a week and everything will be cleared up.

“Take it easy and don’t worry none. I’m doing my best for you and your daughter, even if she don’t know it.

“Sincerely,

“LEW HERVEY.”

This letter, when completed, he surveyed with considerable complacence. If ever a man were being bound to another by chains of inseparable gratitude, Oliver Jordan was he! Indeed, the whole affair was working out so smoothly, so perfectly, that Hervey felt the thrill of an artist sketching a large and harmonious composition. In the first place, Red Jim Perris, whom he hated with unutterable fervor because the younger man filled him with dread, would be turned, as Hervey expressed it, “into buzzard food.” And Hervey would be praised for the act! Oliver Jordan, owing the preservation of his daughter from a luckless marriage to the vigilance of his foreman, could never regret the life-contract which he had drawn up. No doubt that contract, as it stood, could never hold water in the law. But Jordan’s gratitude would make it proof. Last of all, and best of all, when Perris was disposed of, Marianne would never be able to remain on the ranch. She would go to forget her sorrow among her school friends in the East. And Hervey, undisputed lord and master of the ranch, could bleed it white in half a dozen years and leave it a mere husk, overladen with mortgages.

No wonder a song was in the heart of the foreman as he sealed the letter. He gave the message to Slim, and added directions.

“You’ll be missing from the party,” he said, as he handed over the letter, “but the party we have with Perris is apt to be pretty much like a party with a wild-cat. You can thank your stars you’ll be on the road when it comes off!”

And Slim had sense enough to nod in agreement.

CHAPTER XX

THE TRAP SHUTS

In one matter Lew Hervey had acted none too quickly. Shorty and Little Joe arrived at the corral in time to find Marianne in the very act of leading out her pony. They told her firmly and gently that the horse must go back, and when she defied them, they astonished her by simply removing her hand from the lead-rope and taking the horse away. In vain she stormed and threatened. In vain, at length, she broke into tears. Either of them would have given an arm to serve her. But in fact they considered they were at that moment rendering the greatest service possible. They were saving her from herself.