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

of the fall would not break his legs or unseat his rider. Again he understood how to drive in the toes of his hoofs and go up safely through loose gravel where most horses, even mustangs, would have skidded to the bottom of the slope. And he was wise in trails. Twice he rejected the courses which Terry picked, and the rider very wisely let him have his way. The result was that they took a more winding, but a far safer course, and arrived before midmorning in the bottomlands.

The first ranch house he applied to accepted him. And there he took up his work.

It was the ordinary outfit—the sun- and wind-racked shack for a house, the stumbling outlying barns and sheds, and the maze of corral fences. They asked Terry no questions, accepted his first name without an addition, and let him go his way.

He was happy enough. He had not the leisure for thought or for remembering better times. If he had leisure here and there, he used it industriously in teaching El Sangre the "cow" business. The stallion learned swiftly. He began to take a joy in sitting down on a rope.

At the end of a week Terry won a bet when a team of draught horses hitched onto his line could not pull El Sangre over his mark, and broke the rope instead. There was much work, too, in teaching him to turn in the cow-pony fashion, dropping his head almost to the ground and bunching his feet altogether. For nothing of its size that lives is so deft in dodging as the cow-pony. That part of El Sangre's education was not completed, however, for only the actual work of a round-up could give him the faultless surety of a good cow-pony. And, indeed, the ranchman declared him useless for real roundup work.

"A no-good, high-headed fool," he termed El Sangre, having sprained his bank account with an attempt to buy the stallion from Terry the day before.

At the end of a fortnight the first stranger passed, and ill-luck made it a man from Craterville. He knew Terry at a glance, and the next morning the rancher called Terry aside.

The work of that season, he declared, was going to be lighter than he had expected. Much as he regretted it, he would have to let his new hand go. Terry taxed him at once to get at the truth.

"You've found out my name. That's why you're turning me off. Is that the straight of it?"

The sudden pallor of the other was a confession.

"What's names to me?" he declared. "Nothing, partner. I take a man the way I find him. And I've found you all right. The reason I got to let you go is what I said."

But Terry grinned mirthlessly.

"You know I'm the son of Black Jack Hollis," he insisted. "You think that if you keep me you'll wake up some morning to find your son's throat cut and your cattle gone. Am I right?"

"Listen to me," the rancher said uncertainly. "I know how you feel about losing a job so suddenly when you figured it for a whole season. Suppose I give you a whole month's pay and—"

"Damn your money!" said Terry savagely. "I don't deny that Black Jack was my father. I'm proud of it. But listen to me, my friend. I'm living straight. I'm working hard. I don't object to losing this job. It's the attitude behind it that I object to. You'll not only send me away, but you'll spread the news around—Black Jack's son is here! Am I a plague because of that name?"

"Mr. Hollis," insisted the rancher in a trembling voice, "I don't mean to get you all excited. Far as your name goes, I'll keep your secret. I give you my word on it. Trust me, I'll do what's right by you."

He was in a panic. His glance wavered from Terry's eyes to the revolver at his side.

"Do you think so?" said Terry. "Here's one thing that you may not have thought of. If you and the rest like you refuse to give me honest work, there's only one thing left for me—and that's dishonest work. You turn me off because I'm the son of Black Jack; and that's the very thing that will make me the son of Black Jack in more than name. Did you ever stop to realize that?"

"Mr. Hollis," quavered the rancher, "I guess you're right. If you want to stay on here, stay and welcome, I'm sure."

And his eye hunted for help past the shoulder of Terry and toward the shed, where his eldest son was whistling. Terry turned away in mute disgust. By the time he came out of the bunkhouse with his blanket roll, there was neither father nor son in sight. The door of the shack was closed, and through the window he caught a glimpse of a rifle. Ten minutes later El Sangre was stepping away across the range at a pace that no mount in the cattle country could follow for ten miles.

CHAPTER 20

There was an astonishing deal of life in the town, however. A large company had reopened some old diggings across the range to the north of Calkins, and some small fragments of business drifted the way of the little cattle town. Terry found a long line of a dozen horses waiting to be shod before the blacksmith shop. One great wagon was lumbering out at the farther end of the street, with the shrill yells of the teamster calling back as he picked up his horses one by one with his voice. Another freight-wagon stood at one side, blocking half the street. And a stir of busy life was everywhere in the town. The hotel and store combined was flooded with sound, and the gambling hall across the street was alive even at midday.

It was noon, and Terry found that the dining room was packed to the last chair. The sweating waiter improvised a table for him in the corner of the hall and kept him waiting twenty minutes before he was served with ham and eggs. He had barely worked his fork into the ham when a familiar voice hailed him.

"Got room for another at that table?"

He looked up into the grinning face of Denver. For some reason it was a shock to Terry. Of course, the second meeting was entirely coincidental, but a still small voice kept whispering to him that there was fate in it. He was so surprised that he could only nod. Denver at once appropriated a chair and seated himself in his usual noiseless way.

When he rearranged the silver which the waiter placed before him, there was not the faintest click of the metal. And Terry noted, too, a certain nice justness in every one of Denver's motions. He was never fiddling about with his hands; when they stirred, it was to do something, and when the thing was done, the hands became motionless again.

His eyes did not rove; they remained fixed for appreciable periods wherever they fell, as though Denver were finding something worth remembering in the wall, or in a spot on the table. When his glance touched on a face, it hung there in the same manner. After a moment one would forget all the rest of his face, brutal, muscular, shapeless, and see only the keen eyes.

Terry found it difficult to face the man. There was need to be excited about something, to talk with passion, in order to hold one's own in the presence of Denver, even when the chunky man was silent. He was not silent now; he seemed in a highly cheerful, amiable mood.

"Here's luck," he said. "I didn't know this God-forsaken country could raise as much luck as this!"

"Luck?" echoed Terry.

"Why not? D'you think I been trailing you?"

He chuckled in his noiseless way. It gave Terry a feeling of expectation. He kept waiting for the sound to come into that laughter, but it never did. Suddenly he was frank, because it seemed utterly futile to attempt to mask one's real thoughts from this fellow.

"I don't know," he said, "that it would surprise me if you had been tailing me. I imagine you're apt to do queer things, Denver."

Denver hissed, very softly and with such a cutting whistle to his breath that Terry's lips remained open over his last word.

"Forget that name!" Denver said in a half-articulate tone of voice.

He froze in his place, staring straight before him; but Terry gathered an impression of the most intense watchfulness—as though, while he stared straight before him, he had sent other and mysterious senses exploring for him. He seemed suddenly satisfied that all was well, and as he relaxed, Terry became aware of a faint gleam of perspiration on the brow of his companion.

"Why the devil did you tell me the name if you didn't want me to use it?" he asked.

"I thought you'd have some savvy; I thought you'd have some of your dad's horse sense," said Denver.

"No offense," answered Terry, with the utmost good nature.

"Call me Shorty if you want," said Denver. In the meantime he was regarding Terry more and more closely.

"Your old man would of made a fight out of it if I'd said as much to him as I've done to you," he remarked at length.

"Really?" murmured Terry.

And the portrait of his father swept back on him—the lean, imperious, handsome face, the boldness of the eyes. Surely a man all fire and powder, ready to explode. He probed his own nature. He had never been particularly quick of temper—until lately. But he began to wonder if his equable disposition might not rise from the fact that his life in Bear Valley had been so sheltered. He had been crossed rarely. In the outer world it was different. That very morning he had been tempted wickedly to take the tall rancher by the throat and grind his face into the sand.

"But maybe you're different," went on Denver. "Your old man used to flare up and be over it in a minute. Maybe you remember things and pack a grudge with you."

"Perhaps," said Terry, grown strangely meek. "I hardly know."

Indeed, he thought, how little he really knew of himself. Suddenly he said: "So you simply happened over this way, Shorty?"

"Sure. Why not? I got a right to trail around where I want. Besides, what would there be in it for me—following you?"

"I don't know," said Terry gravely. "But I expect to find out sooner or later. What else are you up to over here?"

"I have a little job in mind at the mine," said Denver. "Something that may give the sheriff a bit of trouble." He grinned.

"Isn't it a little—unprofessional," said Terry dryly, "for you to tell me these things?"

"Sure it is, bo—sure it is! Worst in the world. But I can always tell a gent that can keep his mouth shut. By the way, how many jobs you been fired from already?"

Terry started. "How do you know that?"

"I just guess at things."

"I started working for an infernal idiot," sighed Terry. "When he learned my name, he seemed to be afraid I'd start shooting up his place one of these days."

"Well, he was a wise gent. You ain't cut out for working, son. Not a bit. It'd be a shame to let you go to waste simply raising calluses on your hands."

"You talk well," sighed Terry, "but you can't convince me."

"Convince you? Hell, I ain't trying to convince your father's son. You're like Black Jack. You got to find out yourself. We was with a Mick, once. Red-headed devil, he was. I says to Black Jack: 'Don't crack no jokes about the Irish around this guy!'

"'Why not?' says your dad.

"'Because there'd be an explosion,' says I.

"'H'm,' says Black Jack, and lifts his eyebrows in a way he had of doing.

"And the first thing he does is to try a joke on the Irish right in front of the Mick. Well, there was an explosion, well enough."

"What happened?" asked Terry, carried away with curiosity.

"What generally happened, kid, when somebody acted up in front of your dad?" From the air he secured an imaginary morsel between stubby thumb and forefinger and then blew the imaginary particle into empty space.

"He killed him?" asked Terry hoarsely.

"No," said Denver, "he didn't do that. He just