Black Jack by Max Brand (top android ebook reader txt) 📕
His sister's voice cut into his musing. She had two tones. One might be called her social register. It was smooth, gentle--the low-pitched and controlled voice of a gentlewoman. The other voice was hard and sharp. It could drive hard and cold across a desk, and bring businessmen to an understanding that here was a mind, not a woman.
At present she used her latter tone. Vance Cornish came into a shivering consciousness that she was sitting beside him. He turned his head slowly. It was always a shock to come out of one of his pleasant dreams and see that worn, hollow-eyed, impatient face.
"Are you forty-nine, Vance?"
"I'm not fifty, at least," he countered.
She remained imperturbable, looking him over. He had come to notice that in the past half-dozen years his best smiles often failed to mellow her expression. He felt that something disagreeable was coming.
"Why did Cornwall run away this morning? I hoped to take him on a trip."
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The chorus in full cry was around the horse, four or five excited cow-punchers waving their sombreros and yelling for horse or rider, according
to the gallantry of the fight.
The bay was in the air more than he was on the ground, eleven or twelve
hundred pounds of might, writhing, snapping, bolting, halting, sunfishing
with devilish cunning, dropping out of the air on one stiff foreleg with
an accompanying sway to one side that gave the rider the effect of a
cudgel blow at the back of the head and then a whip-snap to part the
vertebrae. Whirling on his hind legs, and again flinging himself
desperately on the ground, only to fail, come to his feet with the
clinging burden once more maddeningly in place, and go again through a
maze of fence-rowing and sunfishing until suddenly he straightened out
and bolted down the slope like a runaway locomotive on a downgrade. A
terrifying spectacle, but the rider sat erect, with one arm raised high
above his head in triumph, and his yell trailing off behind him. From a
running gait the stallion fell into a smooth pace—a true wild pacer, his
hoofs beating the ground with the force and speed of pistons and hurling
himself forward with incredible strides. Horse and rider lurched out of
sight among the silver spruce.
“By the Lord, wonderful!” cried Vance Cornish.
He heard a stifled cry beside him, a cry of infinite pain.
“Is—is it over?”
And there sat Elizabeth the Indomitable with her face buried in her hands
like a girl of sixteen!
“Of course it’s over,” said Vance, wondering profoundly.
She seemed to dread to look up. “And—Terence?”
“He’s all right. Ever hear of a horse that could get that young wildcat
out of the saddle? He clings as if he had claws. But—where did he get
that red devil?”
“Terence ran him down—in the mountains—somewhere,” she answered,
speaking as one who had only half heard the question. “Two months of
constant trailing to do it, I think. But oh, you’re right! The horse is a
devil! And sometimes I think—”
She stopped, shuddering. Vance had returned to the ranch only the day
before after a long absence. More and more, after he had been away, he
found it difficult to get in touch with things on the ranch. Once he had
been a necessary part of the inner life. Now he was on the outside.
Terence and Elizabeth were a perfectly completed circle in themselves.
“If Terry worries you like this,” suggested her brother kindly, “why
don’t you forbid these pranks?”
She looked at him as if in surprise.
“Forbid Terry?” she echoed, and then smiled. Decidedly this was her first
tone, a soft tone that came from deep in her throat. Instinctively Vance
contrasted it with the way she had spoken to him. But it was always this
way when Terry was mentioned. For the first time he saw it clearly. It
was amazing how blind he had been. “Forbid Terence? Vance, that devil of
a horse is part of his life. He was on a hunting trip when he saw Le
Sangre—”
“Good Lord, did they call the horse that?”
“A French-Canadian was the first to discover him, and he gave the name.
And he’s the color of blood, really. Well, Terence saw Le Sangre on a
hilltop against the sky. And he literally went mad. Actually, he struck
out on foot with his rifle and lived in the country and never stopped
walking until he wore down Le Sangre somehow and brought him back
hobbled—just skin and bones, and Terence not much more. Now Le Sangre is
himself again, and he and Terence have a fight—like that—every day. I
dream about it; the most horrible nightmares!”
“And you don’t stop it?”
“My dear Vance, how little you know Terence! You couldn’t tear that horse
out of his life without breaking his heart. I know!”
“So you suffer, day by day?”
“I’ve done very little else all my life,” said Elizabeth gravely. “And
I’ve learned to bear pain.”
He swallowed. Also, he was beginning to grow irritated. He had never
before had a talk with Elizabeth that contained so many reefs that
threatened shipwreck. He returned to the gist of their conversation
rather too bluntly.
“But to continue, Elizabeth, any banker would lend me money on my
prospects.”
“You mean the property which will come to you when I die?”
He used all his power, but he could not meet her glance. “You know that’s
a nasty way to put it, Elizabeth.”
“Dear Vance,” she sighed, “a great many people say that I’m a hard woman.
I suppose I am. And I like to look facts squarely in the face. Your
prospects begin with my death, of course.”
He had no answer, but bit his lip nervously and wished the ordeal would
come to an end.
“Vance,” she went on, “I’m glad to have this talk with you. It’s
something you have to know. Of course I’ll see that during my life or my
death you’ll be provided for. But as for your main prospects, do you know
where they are?”
“Well?”
She was needlessly brutal about it, but as she had told him, her
education had been one of pain.
“Your prospects are down there by the river on the back of Le Sangre.”
Vance Cornish gasped.
“I’ll show you what I mean, Vance. Come along.”
The moment she rose, some of her age fell from her. Her carriage was
erect. Her step was still full of spring and decision, as she led the way
into the house. It was a big, solid, two-story building which the
mightiest wind could not shake. Henry Cornish had merely founded the
house, just as he had founded the ranch; the main portion of the work had
been done by his daughter. And as they passed through, her stern old eye
rested peacefully on the deep, shadowy vistas, and her foot fell with
just pride on the splendid rising sweep of the staircase. They passed
into the roomy vault of the upper hall and went down to the end. She took
out a big key from her pocket and fitted it into the lock; then Vance
dropped his hand on her arm. His voice lowered.
“You’ve made a mistake, Elizabeth. This is Father’s room.”
Ever since his death it had been kept unchanged, and practically
unentered save for an occasional rare day of work to keep it in order.
Now she nodded and resolutely turned the key and swung the door open.
Vance went in with an exclamation of wonder. It was quite changed from
the solemn old room and the brown, varnished woodwork which he
remembered. Cream-tinted paint now made the walls cool and fresh. The
solemn engravings no longer hung above the bookcases. And the bookcases
themselves had been replaced with built-in shelves pleasantly filled with
rich bindings, black and red and deep yellow-browns. A tall cabinet stood
open at one side filled with rifles and shotguns of every description,
and another cabinet was loaded with fishing apparatus. The stiff-backed
chairs had given place to comfortable monsters of easy lines. Vance
Cornish, as one in a dream, peered here and there.
“God bless us!” he kept repeating. “God bless us! But where’s there a
trace of Father?”
“I left it out,” said Elizabeth huskily, “because this room is meant
for—but let’s go back. Do you remember that day twenty-four years ago
when we took Jack Hollis’s baby?”
“When you took it,” he corrected. “I disclaim all share in the idea.”
“Thank you,” she answered proudly. “At any rate, I took the boy and
called him Terence Colby.”
“Why that name,” muttered Vance, “I never could understand.”
“Haven’t I told you? No, and I hardly know whether to trust even you with
the secret, Vance. But you remember we argued about it, and you said that
blood would out; that the boy would turn out wrong; that before he was
twenty-five he would have shot a man?”
“I believe the talk ran like that.”
“Well, Vance, I started out with a theory; but the moment I had that baby
in my arms, it became a matter of theory, plus, and chiefly plus. I kept
remembering what you had said, and I was afraid. That was why I worked up
the Colby idea.”
“That’s easy to see.”
“It wasn’t so easy to do. But I heard of the last of an old Virginia
family who had died of consumption in Arizona. I traced his family. He
was the last of it. Then it was easy to arrange a little story: Terence
Colby had married a girl in Arizona, died shortly after; the girl died
also, and I took the baby. Nobody can disprove what I say. There’s not a
living soul who knows that Terence is the son of Jack Hollis—except you
and me.”
“How about the woman I got the baby from?”
“I bought her silence until fifteen years ago. Then she died, and now
Terry is convinced that he is the last representative of the Colby
family.”
She laughed with excitement and beckoned him out of the room and into
another—Terry’s room, farther down the hall. She pointed to a large
photograph of a solemn-faced man on the wall. “You see that?”
“Who is it?”
“I got it when I took Terry to Virginia last winter—to see the old
family estate and go over the ground of the historic Colbys.”
She laughed again happily.
“Terry was wild with enthusiasm. He read everything he could lay his
hands on about the Colbys. Discovered the year they landed in Virginia;
how they fought in the Revolution; how they fought and died in the Civil
War. Oh, he knows every landmark in the history of ‘his’ family. Of
course, I encouraged him.”
“I know,” chuckled Vance. “Whenever he gets in a pinch, I’ve heard you
say: ‘Terry, what should a Colby do?’”
“And,” cut in Elizabeth, “you must admit that it has worked. There isn’t
a prouder, gentler, cleaner-minded boy in the world than Terry. Not
blood. It’s the blood of Jack Hollis. But it’s what he thinks himself to
be that counts. And now, Vance, admit that your theory is exploded.”
He shook his head.
“Terry will do well enough. But wait till the pinch comes. You don’t know
how he’ll turn out when the rub comes. Then blood will tell!”
She shrugged her shoulders angrily.
“You’re simply being perverse now, Vance. At any rate, that picture is
one of Terry’s old ‘ancestors,’ Colonel Vincent Colby, of prewar days.
Terry has discovered family resemblances, of course—same black hair,
same black eyes, and a great many other things.”
“But suppose he should ever learn the truth?” murmured Vance.
She caught her breath.
“That would be ruinous, of course. But he’ll never learn. Only you and I
know.”
“A very hard blow, eh,” said Vance, “if he were robbed of the Colby
illusion and had Black Jack put in its place as a cold fact? But of
course we’ll never tell him.”
Her color was never high. Now it became gray. Only her eyes remained
burning, vivid, young, blazing out through the mask of age.
“Remember you said his blood would tell before he was twenty-five; that
the blood of Black Jack would come to the surface; that he would have
shot a man?”
“Still harping on that, Elizabeth? What if he does?”
“I’d
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