Black Jack by Max Brand (short story to read TXT) 📕

go, and I drilled him clean. Great sensation, gents, to have a life under your trigger. Just beckon one mite of an inch and a life goes scooting up to heaven or down to hell. I never got over seeing Hollis spill sidewise out of that saddle. There he was a minute before better'n any five men when it come to fighting. And now he wasn't nothing but a lot of trouble to bury. Just so many pounds of flesh. You see? Well, sir, the price on Black Jack set me up in life and gimme my start. After that I sort of specialized in manhunting, and I've kept on ever since."

Terry leaned across the table, his left arm outstretched to call the sheriff's attention.

"I didn't catch that last name, sheriff," he said.

The talk was already beginning to bubble up at the end of the sheriff's tale. But there was something in the tone of the boy that cut through the talk to its root. People were suddenly looking at him out of eyes which were very wide indeed. And it was not hard to find a reason. His handsome face was colorless, like a carving from the stone, and under his knitted brows his black eyes were ominous in the shadow. The sheriff frankly gaped at him. It was another man who sat across the table in the chair where the ingenuous youth had been a moment before.

"What name? Jack Hollis?"

"I think the name you used was Black Jack, sheriff?"

"Black Jack? Sure. That was the other name for Jack Hollis. He was mostly called Black Jack for short, but that was chiefly among his partners. Outside he was called Jack Hollis, which was his real name."

Terence rose from his chair, more colorless than ever, the knuckles of one hand resting upon the table. He seemed very tall, years older, grim.

"Terry!" called Elizabeth Cornish softly.

It was like speaking to a stone.

"Gentlemen," said Terry, though his eyes never left the face of the sheriff, and it was obvious that he was making his speech to one pair of ears alone. "I have been living among you under the name of Colby— Terence Colby. It seems an appropriate moment to say that this is not my name. After what the sheriff has just told you it may be of interest to know that my real name is Hollis. Terence Hollis is my name and my father was Jack Hollis, commonly known as Black Jack, it seems from the story of the sheriff. I also wish to say that I am announcing my parentage not because I wish to apologize for it—in spite of the rather remarkable narrative of the sheriff—but because I am proud of it."

He lifted his head while he spoke. And his eye went boldly, calmly down the table.

"This could not have been expected before, because none of you knew my father's name. I confess that I did not know it myself until a very short time ago. Otherwise I should not have listened to the sheriff's story until the end. Hereafter, however, when any of you are tempted to talk about Black or Jack Hollis, remember that his son is alive—and in good health!"

He hung in his place for an instant as though he were ready to hear a reply. But the table was stunned. Then Terry turned on his heel and left the room.

It was the signal for a general upstarting from the table, a pushing back of chairs, a gathering around Elizabeth Cornish. She was as white as Terry had been while he talked. But there was a gathering excitement in her eye, and happiness. The sheriff was full of apologies. He would rather have had his tongue torn out by the roots than to have offended her or the young man with his story.

She waved the sheriff's apology aside. It was unfortunate, but it could not have been helped. They all realized that. She guided her guests into the living room, and on the way she managed to drift close to her brother.

Her eyes were on fire with her triumph.

"You heard, Vance? You saw what he did?"

There was a haunted look about the face of Vance, who had seen his high- built schemes topple about his head.

"He did even better than I expected, Elizabeth. Thank heaven for it!"

CHAPTER 13

Terence Hollis had gone out of the room and up the stairs like a man stunned or walking in his sleep. Not until he stepped into the familiar room did the blood begin to return to his face, and with the warmth there was a growing sensation of uneasiness.

Something was wrong. Something had to be righted. Gradually his mind cleared. The thing that was wrong was that the man who had killed his father was now under the same roof with him, had shaken his hand, had sat in bland complacency and looked in his face and told of the butchery.

Butchery it was, according to Terry's standards. For the sake of the price on the head of the outlaw, young Minter had shoved his rifle across a window sill, taken his aim, and with no risk to himself had shot down the wild rider. His heart stood up in his throat with revulsion at the thought of it. Murder, horrible, and cold-blooded, the more horrible because it was legal.

Something had to be done. What was it?

And when he turned, what he saw was the gun cabinet with a shimmer of light on the barrels. Then he knew. He selected his favorite Colt and drew it out. It was loaded, and the action in perfect condition. Many and many an hour he had practiced and blazed away hundreds of rounds of ammunition with it. It responded to his touch like a muscular part of his own body.

He shoved it under his coat, and walking down the stairs again the chill of the steel worked through to his flesh. He went back to the kitchen and called out Wu Chi. The latter came shuffling in his slippers, nodding, grinning in anticipation of compliments.

"Wu," came the short demand, "can you keep your mouth shut and do what you're told to do?"

"Wu try," said the Chinaman, grave as a yellow image instantly.

"Then go to the living room and tell Mr. Gainor and Sheriff Minter that Mr. Harkness is waiting for them outside and wishes to see them on business of the most urgent nature. It will only be the matter of a moment. Now go. Gainor and the sheriff. Don't forget."

He received a scared glance, and then went out onto the veranda and sat down to wait.

That was the right way, he felt. His father would have called the sheriff to the door, in a similar situation, and after one brief challenge they would have gone for their guns. But there was another way, and that was the way of the Colbys. Their way was right. They lived like gentlemen, and, above all, they fought always like gentlemen.

Presently the screen door opened, squeaked twice, and then closed with a hum of the screen as it slammed. Steps approached him. He got up from the chair and faced them, Gainor and the sheriff. The sheriff had instinctively put on his hat, like a man who does not understand the open air with an uncovered head. But Gainor was uncovered, and his white hair glimmered.

He was a tall, courtly old fellow. His ceremonious address had won him much political influence. Men said that Gainor was courteous to a dog, not because he respected the dog, but because he wanted to practice for a man. He had always the correct rejoinder, always did the right thing. He had a thin, stern face and a hawk nose that gave him a cast of ferocity in certain aspects.

It was to him that Terry addressed himself.

"Mr. Gainor," he said, "I'm sorry to have sent in a false message. But my business is very urgent, and I have a very particular reason for not wishing to have it known that I have called you out."

The moment he rose out of the chair and faced them, Gainor had stopped short. He was quite capable of fast thinking, and now his glance flickered from Terry to the sheriff and back again. It was plain that he had shrewd suspicions as to the purpose behind that call. The sheriff was merely confused. He flushed as much as his tanned-leather skin permitted. As for Terry, the moment his glance fell on the sheriff he felt his muscles jump into hard ridges, and an almost uncontrollable desire to go at the throat of the other seized him. He quelled that desire and fought it back with a chill of fear.

"My father's blood working out!" he thought to himself.

And he fastened his attention on Mr. Gainor and tried to shut the picture of the sheriff out of his brain. But the desire to leap at the tall man was as consuming as the passion for water in the desert. And with a shudder of horror he found himself without a moral scruple. Just behind the thin partition of his will power there was a raging fury to get at Joe Minter. He wanted to kill. He wanted to snuff that life out as the life of Black Jack Hollis had been snuffed.

He excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully upon Gainor.

"Mr. Gainor, will you be kind enough to go over to that grove of spruce where the three of us can talk without any danger of interruption?"

Of course, that speech revealed everything. Gainor stiffened a little and the tuft of beard which ran down to a point on his chin quivered and jutted out. The sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise and curiosity. And the three went silently, side by side, under the spruce. They were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned. Their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. Through the lower branches the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat. Indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.

It might have been this chill that made Terry button his coat closer about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. The great trunks shut out the world in a scattered wall. There was a narrow opening here among the trees at the very center. The three were in a sort of gorge of which the solemn spruce trees furnished the sides, the cold blue of the mountain skies was just above the lofty tree-tips, and the wind kept the pure fragrance of the evergreens stirring about them. The odor is the soul of the mountains. A great surety had come to Terry that this was the last place he would ever see on earth. He was about to die, and he was glad, in a dim sort of way, that he should die in a place so beautiful. He looked at the sheriff, who stood calm but puzzled, and at Gainor, who was very grave, indeed, and returned his look with one of infinite pity, as though he knew and understood and acquiesced, but was deeply grieved that it must be so.

"Gentlemen," said Terry, making his voice light and cheerful as he felt that the voice of a Colby should be at such a time, being about to die, "I suppose you understand why I have asked you to come here?"

"Yes," nodded Gainor.

"But I'm damned if I do," said the sheriff frankly.

Terry looked upon him coldly. He felt that he had not the slightest chance of killing this professional manslayer, but at least he would do his best—for the sake of Black Jack's memory. But to think that his life—his mind—his soul—all that was dear to him and all that he was dear to, should ever lie at the command of the trigger of this hard, crafty, vain, and unimportant fellow! He writhed at the thought. It made him stand stiffer. His chin went up. He grew literally taller before their eyes, and such a look came on his face that the sheriff instinctively fell back a pace.

"Mr. Gainor," said Terry, as though his contempt for the sheriff