Sun and Sand Page 16

  She stopped. He heard the rattle of her bridle as she shook her head. Again he groaned forth a stifled order, and again she went on. She stepped forth at a brisk walk, and his body slid easily over the grass.

  Every step from that lean-to was a step toward salvation. And with a vast incredulity, he found himself drawn up to the verge of the brush and then through a gap in it. He had taught her to go by gee and haw. Those words he used now, bringing them out of his throat without much difficulty, in spite of the fact that his teeth were locked. So he guided her well to the left. For straight above them would be those waiting watchers of the gang of McGregor, and he would have to attempt to cut around to the side of them.

  His hope was to find the other men—the group of six who were searching the trail.

  So he guided her, and she dragged him steadily up until they came to the rocks. Half a dozen times, a projecting stone caught at his shoulder and broke the grip of his teeth. A tooth snapped off short. Blood filled his mouth. But he was hardly sensible of it or of the pain.

  Faith, which had been born in him full-grown in the shed, in the presence of death, had grown to a giant in his soul now that he had the hope of life. Again and again he resumed his grip on the stirrup leather, and again and again the mare, having lost him, came back to his voice. She began to learn her work. She began to avoid obstacles against which she might drag that precious burden that trailed behind.

  A sound of steps came near him. He stopped the mare with a whisper and lay still. Horses were moving by him. He saw nothing, but he heard the grinding of the iron shoes against the rocks.

  Then two voices.

  “They won’t find nothin’.”

  “If they do, we’ll be gone.”

  “McGregor’s killed Peary.”

  “Yeah. But Peary’s the lucky one, I reckon.”

  And they laughed, both of them.

  But the night covered the sound of the horses, rapidly. Once more Barney could resume that strange progress. It brought him up, at last, onto the trail. The clothes on his back and sides had been ripped to tatters. His flesh was raw in many a place. But that hardly mattered, when he saw far away the gleam of a light. Whoever searched that trail was not a friend of McGregor. That was certain, and that was all he wished to know.

  So he raised his voice to a shout, to a thundering outcry that beat far away in echo on echo. “Help! Help! This way! Help!”

  The light staggered and disappeared. There was a rush of hoof-beats. He shouted again, and suddenly around him was a swirl of horsemen.

  “Who’s there?” called the voice of Parmelee.

  “Barney Dwyer,” he answered.

  They gave one wild yell of satisfaction and rage, commingled. In an instant he was free, he was lifted. Furious inquiries poured on him.

  But Barney was already in the saddle on the red mare.

  “Parmelee,” he said, “Loftus was a liar. McGregor sent him. I suppose that Sue’s letter was forged. But down there in a shack is Peary . . . and perhaps some of the rest of them.” And he added: “Will you follow me?”

  “To hell and back!” shouted the voice of Red.

  And Barney drove the mare frantically back over the ground he had just covered so painfully, inch by inch.

  They swept through the brush and rocks, and they came beating out on the level of the grass.

  Were the men of McGregor waiting for the attack, hidden like so many Indians? No, but far away, the hoofs of their horses were pounding.

  From the shed burned the light of the lantern, still. That was the first goal. Out of the saddle and into the doorway, in time to see a frightful picture of poor Len Peary lifting himself from the floor, with glazed eyes like the eyes of the dead and a horrible red wound that slanted from the center of his forehead up into his hair. It must have been a glance wound. There was no other explanation for the life in that half-conscious body.

  But the life was there. That was the main thing. The life was in him, and yonder were the beating hoofs of the horses that carried the men of McGregor away. They must not escape. It was not mere anger that filled Barney. It was a coldness of resolution, like the coldness of steel.

  “Leave one man, Parmelee,” he begged, “and the rest come on with me. I’ve got to find McGregor before this trail ends.”

  XIII

  There was not a man of them all who did not ride as well as his horse would carry him on that night. But the difference was that their horses galloped, and the red mare flew. And a ragged half moon rose in the east and looked down the narrow ravine through which the men of McGregor were fleeing.

  Barney was hardly aware that his friends were dropping behind him. He only knew that he was gaining rapidly on the scurrying forms that ran ahead.

  Two of them rode side-by-side, last of all. Would they fight? Not they. Well had Peary announced the quality of those who followed the diminished fortunes of McGregor now. He had snatched a revolver that was thrust into his hands by one of the men from the Parmelee Ranch—Red, was it not?—and now he fired high in the air.

  The two rascals nearest at hand screeched as though the bullet had driven through both their bodies. They drew up and turned, and lifted their hands high above their heads and yelled for mercy.

  But Barney drove headlong past them.

  They were nothing. They were the ciphers without meaning, once McGregor was removed.

  And McGregor was there.

  Off to the sides scurried three more, before the charge of the red mare, and now remained only two. He could swear that they were the great McGregor and terrible old Doc Adler.

  But even Adler hardly mattered. He was old, and time would soon end him, no doubt. But McGregor was young. He must be slain as a wolf is slain when there are sheep in the pasture lands.

  The small ravine gave into a larger one with great broken walls that fenced, high above them, a narrow street through the sky, but still the valley held toward the east, and therefore the moon shone down into it.

  And still the red mare gained, running with a deathless courage, faster and faster, as though she understood very well the meaning of this race. She did not need watching. She would pick her footing among the loose rocks that were scattered over the floor of the valley. No wild mountain goat could be surer of foot than was she.

  But not so one of the nearing horses of the pair ahead. It staggered, toppled, and leaped again to its feet. On the ground, prostrate, remained the long body of Adler, with the moon glinting on his hair. He was raising himself, crawling slowly to his feet, as though stunned, when Barney drove past. Nothing could have been easier than to drive a bullet through that murderous old man, but the finger of Barney Dwyer would not close over the trigger.

  A strange passion came over him. There was a roar of water from the deep of the ravine. It entered his brain like the shouting of voices. The moon seemed to him to be hung divinely in the sky to give him light for his purpose. There was no doubt in him. It seemed to him now that from the first he had been merely a tool to be used in breaking McGregor. And now he would finish the work. He would have charged on if a hundred men were there to stand beside the bandit.

  The red mare knew that the end was near. She redoubled her efforts as the fugitive’s horse began to lose strength. Twice McGregor turned his head. Then he pulled up and turned his horse, and the long barrel of his rifle flashed in the moonlight as he unsheathed it.

  He might as well have made a gesture with a straw, as far as Barney was concerned. For he drove straight in, balancing his revolver for the distant shot.

  The rifle bullet sang past his head, with the clap of the report behind it.

  Still he closed on McGregor, with the revolver poised and ready in his hand.

  A second time the rifle spoke, and again the fickle moonlight made McGregor miss.

  But before the third chance for McGregor, Barney Dwyer fired. It seemed as though horse and man had been slain outright, they dropped in such a heap. But it was only the mustan
g that had suffered with a bullet through the head.

  As Barney came up, he saw McGregor struggle free, stagger, and then turn to fight his last. If the revolver ever came into the magic hand of McGregor, there could only be one termination to the battle, and Barney, as he swung out of the saddle, gripped the outlaw with both hands.

  As a great, electric current paralyzed a strong man, so McGregor was paralyzed. He struggled vainly. He flung his head from side to side. But Barney held him like a child.

  At last McGregor knew and stood still. Only his face worked, as words came up to his lips and were denied utterance. What could he say?

  “Barney,” he gasped at last, “for Christ’s sake give me a last chance. I would have murdered you. But you were ready to die. And I’m no more ready than a black dog. Barney, don’t kill me with those hands of yours.”

  “McGregor,” said Barney, “don’t whine. You’ve lived and fought and killed. You’ve been what you thought a man should be. You ought to die like a man. And I’ve got to kill you.”

  “Don’t kill me, Dwyer!” shouted McGregor. “Barney, I can make you rich. I’ve got enough money . . .”

  Unable to meet the terror in that face, Barney had looked away, down the smooth descent of rock on which they stood to the verge of the creek’s channel, where the spray leaped like the pale lashes of a thousand whips.

  Now, with a groan of disgust, he suddenly stepped back and thrust McGregor from him, exclaiming: “You’re not fit to live, McGregor, but in my mind, you’re not fit to die, either. I can’t kill a coward!”

  So he had exclaimed, casting McGregor from him, and hearing the outlaw groan with relief.

  Then chance took its turn in the game. That slope of rock to the verge of the inner ravine was wet and slippery with the spray that had been thrown up by the stream, and the boots of McGregor slipped on the surface as though it were oiled. He put down a hand to stop the sliding. It was in vain. Suddenly he realized that he was barely set free from death in one way to be delivered to it in another.

  He cast himself face down, spreading out his arms with such a screech as Barney Dwyer would never forget. But the descent was too swift, and the surface of the rock too slippery. A jutting rock stopped the slide of McGregor for an instant and brought him to his feet. But he reeled backward. For an instant he beat at the air with his hands, and his terrible face was silvered by the moon for Barney to see. Then he was gone.

  Barney, shaking in all his body, worked his way down to the edge of the rock.

  That was where the men from the Parmelee Ranch found him—stretched prone and looking down into the furious uproar, the wild beating of the water and the leaping of the foam.

  They had gathered in the gang of McGregor as fishermen gather up little fish from the sea. Only old Doc Adler had slipped through their fingers.

  But Barney Dwyer felt no exultation. He was silent all the way into the town of Coffeeville, where the Parmelee cowpunchers brought their prisoners.

  The moon turned into a pale tuft of cloud, before they reached the town. The dawn began. In the rose of it, they entered Coffeeville, but not too early to be seen and observed.

  So the news ran riot through the little place. McGregor was dead. He had escaped only to die at once, more horribly than the death that the law would have given him. McGregor was dead. Doc Adler, alone, would hardly be more than a twigless snake, to be sure. And as for the harm done by McGregor’s last efforts, there was only Leonard Peary to account for, and he was now lying in the hospital in Coffeeville recovering as fast as rest and medicine could make him.

  He would be marked for life, to be sure. But, as he said to Barney Dwyer: “I had it coming to me. If I hadn’t been marked, it would have been wrong. I deserved a lot worse than I got.”

  Barney studied that thought, but finally he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s justice, somewhere, and there’s a judge. I felt it out there in the lean-to. I felt that I was being judged, and McGregor and Adler were being judged. And no matter what we do or how far or how fast we run, we never can get away from that sort of a judgment, Len.”

  He stood up.

  “My father’s in the next room. He wants to see you,” said Peary.

  Barney considered.

  “I used to think,” he said at last, “that I wanted nothing so much as to get back there to the ranch and be among those cowpunchers again. But I’ve been changing my mind, Len. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things. I don’t blame people for what they used to do to me. But I don’t want to see them again. You tell your father that, and I think that he’ll understand.”

  He went down the stairs and to the back of the hotel. Through the back door, he escaped into the lane, and so, by devious paths, afraid that the crowd might see him, he returned to the house of Dr. Swain.

  Sue Jones was sitting up straight in her easy chair in the garden. And Robert Parmelee was sitting beside her, talking hard and fast, making eager gestures, leaning toward her.

  A certain coldness came over the mind of Barney. For Parmelee talked like a man making love, and the girl listened as though she were moved to her heart, for her eyes were closed and there was a tender smile on her lips.

  Slowly Barney approached.

  Big Parmelee stood up and greeted him. “I’ve got the whole future blocked out, Barney,” he said. “You’re going up there and take a part of my land. That’s to be your beginning. Rustling is going to die . . . the rustlers are going to clear out, when they know that you’re around. You’ll be my foreman on a fat salary, and you’ll boss your own herds, and Sue will boss you. Tell me, Barney, if that makes a happy future?”

  Barney Dwyer smiled, but looked quickly at the girl. She did not even open her eyes, but held out a hand toward him.

  “What do you say to it, Sue?” he asked her.

  “Nothing,” said the girl. “I don’t care what happens, or what we do. We could sit and drift, I think, and everything would be sure to come out right in the end. These mountains were made for you, and you were made for the mountains. Any other air is too thick for a mountain man.”

  Sun and Sand

  Although Faust continued to write for Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine through 1935, by 1933 his output was being published in a variety of publications, including Argosy, McCall’s Magazine, and Collier’s. “Sun and Sand” was his penultimate story in Western Story Magazine, appearing in the issue dated February 16, 1935, under his Hugh Owen byline. The protagonist, Jigger, is similar to several of Faust’s youthful heroes—Speedy and Reata—in that he is able to outwit and out-maneuver even the deadliest of men without the use of a gun.

  I

  At the pawnbroker’s window, Jigger dismounted. He had only a few dollars in his pocket, but he had an almost-childish weakness for bright things, and he could take pleasure with his eyes even when he could not buy his fancy. But on account of the peculiar slant of the sun, the only thing he could see clearly, at first, was his own image. The darkness of his skin startled him. It was no wonder that some people took him for a Gypsy or an Indian. He was dressed like a Gypsy vagrant, too, with a great patch on one shoulder of his shirt and one sleeve terminating in tatters at the elbow.

  However, he was not one to pride himself on appearance. He stretched himself; his dark eyes closed in the completeness of his yawn. Then he pressed his face closer to the window to make out what was offered for sale.

  There were trays of rings, stickpins, jeweled cuff links. There were four pairs of pearl-handled revolvers, some hatbands of Mexican wheelwork done in metal, a little heap of curiously worked conchos, a number of watches, silver or gold, knives, some fine lace, yellow with age, a silver tea set—who had ever drunk tea in the midafternoon in this part of the world?—an odd bit of Mexican feather work, spurs of plain steel, silver, or gold, and a host of odds and ends of all sorts.

  The eye of Jigger, for all his apparently lazy deliberation, moved a little more swiftly than the snappi
ng end of a whiplash. After a glance, he had seen this host of entangled curiosities so well that he would have been able to list and describe most of them. He had settled his glance on one oddity that amused him—a key ring that was a silver snake that turned on itself in a double coil and gripped its tail in its mouth, while it stared at the world and at Jigger with glittering, little eyes of green.

  Jigger went to the door, and the great, golden stallion from which he had dismounted started to follow. So he lifted a finger and stopped the horse with that small sign, then he entered.

  The pawnbroker was a foreigner—he might have been anything from a German to an Armenian—and he had a divided beard that descended in two points, gray and jagged as rock. He had a yellow, wrinkled forehead, and his thick glasses made two glimmering obscurities of his eyes. When Jigger asked to see the silver-snake key ring, the bearded man took up the tray that contained it.

  “How much?” asked Jigger.

  “Ten dollars,” said the pawnbroker.

  “Ten which?” asked Jigger.

  “With emeralds for eyes, too. But I make it seven fifty for such a young man.”

  Jigger did not know jewels, but he knew men.

  “I’ll give you two and a half,” he said.

  “I sell things,” answered the pawnbroker. “I can’t afford to give them away.”

  “Good-bye, brother,” Jigger said, but he had seen a shimmer of doubt in the eyes of the other, and he was not surprised to be called back from the door.

  “Well,” said the pawnbroker, “I’ve only had it in my window for two or three hours. It’s good luck to make a quick sale . . . so here you are.”

  And as Jigger laid the money on the counter, he commenced to twist off the keys.