Sun and Sand Page 15

  “Yeah. We been thinking a little about Barney Dwyer,” agreed Doc Adler. He stood up and turned toward Barney, and licked his gray, dry lips.

  “Peary!” called out McGregor.

  “Well?” Leonard Peary said calmly enough.

  “You know what I do to traitors, Peary?”

  “You shoot ’em,” said Peary.

  “And I’m going to shoot you!”

  Peary nodded.

  “Unwind that rope from his legs. Let him stand up,” said McGregor.

  “Why?” asked Adler. “Shoot him the way he is.”

  “I want to see him drop, when I shoot,” said McGregor.

  “That’s the trouble with you Scotch gents,” said Adler. “You got a lot of sentimentality in you, that’s what you got. You’re like poets, is what you’re like. You wanna make things into pretty pictures. This here Peary dead, is what you want. Ain’t that enough? You got to see him drop, too? Well, well, well, well. When I was around in the world, I didn’t go and waste my time like that, McGregor. But have it your own way.” He was unwrapping the legs of Peary as he spoke. “Stand up,” he said.

  Peary had been half numbed so that he could not move quickly. Adler turned his foot and drove the long rowels of his spur into the side of the boy.

  “Up, old horse,” Adler said, and laughed.

  Peary rose to his feet. Barney, sickened, closed his eyes.

  “Look,” said the voice of McGregor. “Look, Doc. That’s what he can’t stand.”

  “Yeah,” said Adler. “His nerves, they run right out into the body of this here Peary, maybe. Well, well, well.” He chuckled again.

  “Peary,” said McGregor, “you’re going to die . . . now!”

  “I’m better dead than one of your gang,” said Peary.

  “He’s turning good,” McGregor said. “Listen to him, Adler. He’s one of the curs that get religion before they’re hanged. They repent, and they confess when they’ve got a rope around their necks.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve seen and heard ’em do it, and it’s a funny thing, all right,” commented Adler. He shook his head in the wonder of it.

  “I’d give you some special attention,” said McGregor, “instead of bumping you off like this. I’d set you to screaming until the boys who are waiting out there would take a warning and a lesson by what they heard. There’ll be no more traitors in my gang, for a while.”

  Peary was stone-white. Barney could see that, clearly, and he wondered at the change in his friend. And yet like a stone, Len Peary was steady.

  “Your gang is about finished, Mack,” said Peary.

  “Finished, eh? What makes you think that?”

  “You used to be a great man, Mack,” said Peary. “But you’re a great man no longer. There was a time when men used to think that you couldn’t be beaten. You were a superman. That’s what I felt about you. I knew you were a robber, but I thought, as a kid, that you were not exactly bad. You were a Robin Hood, in my eyes. Not bad, but simply strong. That’s why I joined you. I was a fool. I thought I was doing a great thing, when I was able to join you. I thought it was a high adventure and all that. I was proud. So were most of the rest who worked for you. But the old crowd is gone. Look what you’ve picked up now . . . throat-cutters and second-story thugs. Bums and loafers and deadbeats and mangy dogs, compared with the men you used to have. Put me in a room with all five of those yellow hounds, and I’ll clean them out. You know I will. But you’re gone, McGregor. You’re not a Robin Hood any more. You’re just a plain robber and murderer. Barney Dwyer opened the windows and let in the light on you, and the whole world knows about you now. The ranch boys don’t read about you and talk about you. They have a new hero. They have a real hero. And that’s Barney Dwyer.”

  “Are you through?” McGregor asked in a terrible voice.

  “I could make a pretty long speech,” said Peary. “But I’ve said enough to let you know why I’d rather die right here and now than be free and live to work with you again.”

  “Die, and be damned, then,” said McGregor, gasping out the words through his teeth. He jerked out a gun and fired—one smooth, blindingly fast movement.

  It was to Barney as though he had seen lightning strike. Poor Leonard Peary dropped on his face and lay still.

  XI

  There was an odd thing, now, for any man to see, which was that the great McGregor, instead of giving even a second glance to his victim, turned on his heel and looked sharply at Barney Dwyer.

  But Barney was contemplating infinitely distant space. He was no longer in this world. There would be some pain, but he was used to pain of body and mind. It might be a long and dreadful frontier, but he would pass it and reach peace.

  Leonard Peary must be already there, in that peace. A man who could face death in that manner could not be unrewarded by whatever powers may be.

  McGregor snarled: “He doesn’t feel it, Adler.”

  “He’ll feel something else, though,” said Adler. “I’ve got some ideas in my head that he’ll feel, and don’t you doubt it.” He chuckled and warmed his skinny claws by chafing them together.

  The red mare whinnied, her voice inside the room. She was standing at the doorway, looking with puzzled eyes at her master.

  “Look there, now,” said Adler, pleased by the sight of that beautiful head. “There’s a horse, now, that would just about die for her master, if she knowed what was goin’ on. But she don’t know. She don’t know no more than a baby in a cradle. So she stands there and sings out to him, and there ain’t a word that he can speak, and there ain’t a sign that he can make to her. And that’s a thing that I could set down and watch for a considerable time.” He kept on chuckling as he spoke.

  It seemed to Barney that these two men were pictures out of old books, representing the ultimate evil. Old painters and engravers were never tired of showing the devils of hell as goat-like, evil, old men and crime-hardened, smooth-faced tormentors, master fiends with the face of McGregor. The comparison was of interest to Barney.

  “Try Peary,” said McGregor. “See if he’s really dead.”

  Adler stalked to the fallen body, took Peary by the hair, and lifted the head. The mouth gaped open loosely, the eyes were open, too, mere slits as dull as the dead eyes of a fish. Adler dropped the head. It bounced a trifle on the floor.

  “He’s dead,” said Adler.

  “Listen to his heart,” McGregor said.

  “Did you see the hole in the middle of his forehead?” asked Adler.

  “Oh, is that it?” McGregor said.

  “When I was your age,” Adler said, frowning, “I knowed where I was shootin’. I didn’t have to go and look. I knowed where the bullet went. It was my business to know.”

  “You and your ages be damned,” said McGregor. “Here’s our main job, Doc. We’ve brushed the small things out of the way, and now we can give a little attention to Mister Barney Dwyer, the hero!”

  “We can give him some attention,” Adler agreed, nodding.

  “I’ve got some ideas borrowed from Indians,” said McGregor.

  “Don’t go and be backward, like that,” urged Adler. “This here world keeps on progressin’. Go clean back to the redskins? No, sir. I got better ideas than the Indians ever had in all their lives, the devils. I could show you some things that’d warm up your heart for you, Mack.”

  “I’ll bet you could, Doc,” McGregor said, highly pleased. “And I’m as willing to learn as a boy at school from an old schoolteacher. Go right ahead and use that brain of yours.”

  “It ain’t a thing to hurry with,” said Doc Adler.

  There was a broken-down chair in the room. He pulled this out to the center of the floor and sat down in it, facing Barney, studying him like a problem in geometry.

  “This here,” said Doc Adler, “is the sort of a thing that a gent had oughta set and study over, and work over and think out, and smoke, and think, and smoke, and get the right ideas.” He filled a pipe as he spoke, tam
ping the tobacco in hard. Then he scratched a match and puffed seriously, shielding his eyes a little from the smoke by a frown and a squint.

  When the pipe was well kindled, he went on, driving the smoke out of one corner of his vast mouth, and the words out of the other corner: “This here life of Dwyer is only one life. It’s like the last match for the lightin’ of a fire. Once that life is burned out, there ain’t no way that you can start it again. Once he’s dead, there ain’t gonna be no way we can bring him to life ag’in and kill him ag’in in a longer and a better method. When he’s dead, he’s dead. So we gotta kill him the best way. The way that’s gonna leave the longest and the best taste in your mouth, afterward.”

  “Go on, Doc,” said McGregor in approval. “I agree with everything.”

  “You’ve done us a lot of harm, Barney,” said Doc Adler, sadly shaking his head.

  “Yes,” said the gentle voice of Barney. “I believe that I have done you a lot of harm.”

  “He sounds sorry for it,” Adler said, interested.

  “Damn him,” said McGregor. “You’ll have to hurry with your ideas a little, Doc. When I think what he’s done, I want to get my hands on him.”

  “And hands ain’t a bad idea, neither,” said Doc Adler. “Maybe handwork is the best way to finish him, but I ain’t so sure. I wanna think things out. The fact is, you done us a lot of harm, Barney. Here’s Mack, now, that was the kingpin in these here mountains. He was pointed to by the crooks as the king of them all. He was pointed at by the honest men as a gent that had covered up his trail so well that he’d never been even once in jail. And now look at him. Look at him!”

  “Shut up. That’s enough!” snapped McGregor.

  “Well,” said Doc Adler, “Maybe it is enough, because I reckon that Peary put it about right. You’ve started downhill, Mack, and from now on, you’re gonna go to hell fast. Year or two, it wouldn’t surprise me if you was washin’ dishes for a Chink cook and eatin’ the scraps off of plates for your food.”

  McGregor made a nervous gesture and said nothing. Adler grinned at him, but then went on: “As for me, there was old Doc Adler that had retired. And nobody had nothin’ on him, neither. They just knowed that he’d been around the world a mite . . . quite a mite! But they didn’t have nothin’ on old Doc Adler. Not until he throwed in with McGregor to put down Barney Dwyer. And then everything went wrong, and poor old Doc Adler, he’s gotta put a bullet through his head, rather than be caught by the police. Because they’d jail him for the rest of his days, because of the mess he’s got into in his old days. And that’s all because of you, Barney Dwyer.”

  “I’m afraid it is,” said Barney, sighing a little.

  McGregor burst out: “Do something, Doc, before I throttle him . . . the damned half-wit!”

  “Well,” Adler said, “he’s the one that could do a good, quick job of throttlin’, when you come to that. He’s got the hands for it. He could squash out the life with one grip of them terrible hands of his. Which makes me think . . . suppose that we was to start with his right hand, so long as we don’t think of nothin’ better?”

  “How do you mean?” asked McGregor.

  “Kill his right hand for him, while the rest of him is still alive.”

  “I don’t follow that.”

  “Suppose that we wrap his right hand in a bit of cloth and soak that there cloth in some kerosene. And then touch a match to it. That would burn the flesh off his bones, and we could set and study. And by the light of that there burnin’ hand, Mack, we might see our way clear through to something worthwhile.”

  McGregor strained his head suddenly back and stared up at the ceiling. “Ah, Doc,” he said. “I was wondering if it were worthwhile to wait, like this. But now I see that it is right. You’ve found one perfect thing to do. We’ll think of other things, for other parts of him. Unfasten that right hand . . . but treat it like dynamite.”

  That, in fact, was what they did. They held a gun at the head of Barney while they freed his right forearm from the ropes. McGregor then ripped the shirt from the back of the prostrate body of Peary, and that cloth was tightly wrapped around the hand of Dwyer and soaked with kerosene from the lantern.

  Doc Adler sat on his heels and looked into the eyes of Dwyer.

  “They ain’t changed. His eyes ain’t changed, Mack,” he announced regretfully. “Seems like he’s quite a man, Mack. How come, Barney? What holds you together? If you ain’t sad about yourself, what about that pretty gal, that loves you so much?”

  “I never was worthy of her,” said Barney.

  “Scratch a match, Mack,” Adler said.

  It was done. McGregor, smiling with a terrible and hungry joy, held the match to wait for final instructions from Adler, who seemed such a master hand at this business.

  “We touch this here match to the rag,” said Adler, “and that’s the end of your right hand, Barney. A doggone famous right hand it is, too. There ain’t a man in the mountains that would dare to stand up to that hand, nor any two men, neither. And now it’s gonna go up in smoke, and who’ll make up the difference to you, Barney?”

  “There is God,” Barney said slowly.

  “By the jumping thunder, he’s got religion!” exclaimed Adler. “And that spoils everything! What makes you think there’s a God?”

  “I was never sure before,” Barney said truthfully.

  “And what makes you sure now?” demanded McGregor, scowling blackly.

  “I don’t know,” answered Barney. “It’s seeing people like you two, I suppose. There would have to be a God to make up the difference.”

  “Damn him,” McGregor hissed as the match went out against the tender tips of his fingers. “I knew that he’d sink a knife in us, some way.”

  “It’s religion that does it, Mack,” commented Adler. “You find it where you don’t expect it, and you can’t never beat it, I’ve noticed. It’s a funny thing that you can’t never beat it.”

  Rapid footfalls swept toward them.

  “Mack!” called a voice.

  McGregor hurried to the door of the shed.

  Barney, looking vaguely before him, saw something move on the floor. It was the hand of Peary. It contracted slowly and opened again!

  And a golden bolt of hope darted through the noble soul of Barney Dwyer, not a hope for his own safety, but that the life of Peary might endure, after all.

  “There’s half a dozen men up on the trail,” said a voice in the outer darkness.

  “Half a dozen. What about ’em? Let ’em go,” said McGregor.

  “Maybe they ain’t inclined to go,” said the other. “They’re flashin’ lights on the trail and studyin’ signs. Might be that they’re lookin’ for us, eh?”

  “If they’re looking for us . . . we’ll blow them to hell. I won’t have this job spoiled in the middle.” He added: “Go back up to the trail and watch with the rest of ’em. I’m following on.”

  The footsteps retreated.

  McGregor turned back into the room. “Tie that hand against his body again, Doc,” he commanded. “We’ll go up there and see what’s what.”

  “Suppose we come back and find this gent gone?” complained Adler, busily obeying instructions, nonetheless.

  “He might roll as far as the door . . . that’s all,” said McGregor. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “I don’t like it,” answered Doc Adler. “There’s a pricklin’ up my spine that makes me not like it. But . . . you’re the boss, Mack.”

  So the right forearm of Barney was once again gathered in the invincible strength of the ropes against his body, and McGregor left the place. At the door, he paused to strike at the head of the red mare. Then he ran on.

  “Hey, Len!” Barney called cautiously.

  He received no answer. He rolled himself across the floor to his friend, and called at his ear: “Peary!”

  A faint groan answered him.

  “Peary, can you wake up . . . can you cut the ropes on me?” pleaded Barney.


  A faint sigh answered him, and he knew that there was no hope of rousing the unconscious body of Peary to give him a single stroke of help.

  XII

  They would be back before long, he could be sure.

  He looked around for help. So much as a sharp-edged nail might be enough, projecting from the wall, for him to chafe through a few strands of the rope until he could snap it with a great effort of his arms.

  But there was not a sign of anything that faintly resembled a tool. Nothing was near him on which he could look with pleasure, except the bright eyes of the red mare, in the doorway.

  He rolled toward her, never thinking of what he could manage when he reached her, and as he floundered forward, she actually stepped through the doorway and stood there, whinnying a little, her knees bent with terror at finding herself inside this enclosure with the smell of blood in the air, but her affectionate soul was drawn by the sight of her master, the god-like man, wallowing toward her like some strange earth-bound animal.

  Barney heaved himself to a half-erect sitting position. It was the limit of his ability to move. If once he could reach that saddle, he could guide her by word of mouth wherever he pleased. But he might as well have hoped to leap on the back of an eagle.

  She stamped on the floor. A cloud of dust rose into his face, and the stirrups flopped just above his head. That was what gave him the idea. He caught the leather edge of the stirrup in his teeth and hissed softly at her.

  The red mare whirled and bounded out of that place of doom like a thunderbolt, almost wrenching the teeth from Barney’s head, and leaving him behind.

  When he recovered from the shock, he worked his way, snake-like, through the doorway into the open. His voice called her back, still trembling and uneasy. And again she snuffed at him, and again the whinny came from her throat as softly as a human voice.

  He gained the strategic position again. Then, lifting his body as well as he could, he gained a firmer grip of the edge of the stirrup. He made a faint sound in the hollow of his throat, and the mare moved. The strain of the starting almost disengaged his hold, but the strength that was in all parts of his body was not lacking in the mighty grasp of his jaw. Like the bulldog to which old Doc Adler had compared him, he kept his hold, and the mare dragged him over the grass.