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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“That’s where I want him to look,” answered Terry, “and that’s where
he’ll find me. Pollard will hide the coin and we’ll get one of the boys
to take our sweaty horses over the hills. We can tell McGuire that the
two horses have been put out to pasture, if he asks. But he mustn’t find
hot horses in the stable. Certainly McGuire will strike for the house.
But what will he find?”
He laughed joyously.
Suddenly the voice of Denver cut in softly, insinuatingly.
“You dope it that he’ll cut for the house of Pollard? So do I. Now, kid,
why not go another direction—and keep on going? What right have Pollard
and the others to cut in on this coin? You and me, kid, can—”
“I don’t hear you, Denver,” interrupted Terry. “I don’t hear you. We
wouldn’t have known where to find the stuff if it hadn’t been for
Pollard’s friend Sandy. They get their share—but you can have my part,
Denver. I’m not doing this for money; it’s only an object lesson to that
fat-headed sheriff. I’d pay twice this price for the sake of the little
talk I’m going to have with him later on tonight.”
“All right—Black Jack,” muttered Denver. For it seemed to him that the
voice of the lost leader had spoken. “Play the fool, then, kid. But—
let’s feed these skates the spur! The town’s boiling!”
Indeed, there was a dull roar behind them.
“No danger,” chuckled Terry. “McGuire knows perfectly well that I’ve done
this. And because he knows that, and he knows that I know it, he’ll
strike in the opposite direction to Pollard’s house. He’ll never dream
that I would go right back to Pollard and sit down under the famous nose
of McGuire!”
The dawn was brightening over the mountains above them, and the skyline
was ragged with forest. A free country for free men—like the old Black
Jack and the new. A short life, perhaps, but a full one.
The coming of the day showed Denver’s face weary and drawn. Those moments
in the bank, surrounded by danger, had been nerve-racking even to his
experience. But to him it was a business, and to Terry it was a game. He
felt a qualm of pity for Lewison—but, after all, the man was a wolf,
selfish, accumulating money to no purpose, useless to the world. He
shrugged the thought of Lewison away.
It was close to sunrise when they reached the house, and having put up
the horses, staggered in and called to Johnny to bring them coffee; he
was already rattling at the kitchen stove. Then, with a shout, they
brought Pollard himself stumbling down from the balcony rubbing the sleep
out of his eyes. They threw the money down before him.
He was stupefied, and then his big lion’s voice went booming with the
call for his men. Terry did not wait; he stretched himself with a great
yawn and made for his bed, and passed Phil Marvin and the others hurrying
downstairs to answer the summons. Kate Pollard came also. She paused as
he went by her and he saw her eyes go down to his dusty boots, with the
leather polished where the stirrup had chafed, then flashed back to his
face.
“You, Terry!” she whispered.
But he went by her with a wave of the hand.
The girl went on down to the big room. They were gathered already, a
bright-eyed, hungry-faced crew of men. Gold was piled across the table in
front of them. Slim Dugan had been ordered to go to the highest window of
the house and keep watch for the coming of the expected posse. In the
meantime the others counted the money, ranging it in bright little
stacks; and Denver told the tale.
He took a little more credit to himself than was his due. But it was his
part to pay a tribute to Terry. For was it not he who had brought the son
of Black Jack among them?
“And of all the close squeezes I ever been in,” concluded Denver, “that
was the closest. And of all the nervy, cold-eyed guys I ever see, Black
Jack’s kid takes the cake. Never a quiver all the time. And when he
whispered, them two guys at the table jumped. He meant business, and they
knew it.”
The girl listened. Her eye alone was not upon the money, but fixed far
off, at thin distance.
“Thirty-five thousand gold,” announced Pollard, with a break of
excitement in his voice, “and seventeen thousand three hundred and
eighty-two in paper. Boys, the richest haul we ever made! And the coolest
deal all the way through. Which I say, Denver and Terry—Terry
particular—gets extra shares for what they done!”
And there was a chorus of hearty approval. The voice of Denver cut it
short.
“Terry don’t want none. No, boys, knock me dead if he does. Can you beat
it? ‘I did it to keep my word,’ he says, ‘with the sheriff. You can have
my share, Denver.’
“And he sticks on it. It’s a game with him, boys. He plays at it like a
big kid!”
In the hush of astonishment, the eyes of Kate misted. Something in that
last speech had stung her cruelly. Something had to be done, and quickly,
to save young Terry Hollis. But what power could influence him?
It was that thought which brought her to the hope for a solution. A very
vague and faraway hope to which she clung and which unravelled slowly in
her imagination. Before she left the kitchen, her plan was made, and
immediately after breakfast, she went to her room and dressed for a long
journey.
“I’m going over the hills to visit the Stockton girls,” she told her
father. “Be gone a few days.”
His mind was too filled with hope for the future to understand her. He
nodded idly, and she was gone.
She roped the toughest mustang of her “string” in the corral, and ten
minutes later she was jogging down the trail. Halfway down a confused
group of riders—some dozen in all—swarmed up out of the lower trail.
Sheriff McGuire rode out on a sweating horse that told of fierce and long
riding and stopped her.
His salutation was brief; he plunged into the heart of his questions. Had
she noticed anything unusual this morning? Which of the men had been
absent from the house last night? Particularly, who went out with Black
Jack’s kid?
“Nobody left the house,” she said steadily. “Not a soul.”
And she kept a blank eye on the sheriff while he bit his lip and studied
her.
“Kate,” he said at length, “I don’t blame you for not talking. I don’t
suppose I would in your place. But your dad has about reached the end of
the rope with us. If you got any influence, try to change him, because if
he don’t do it by his own will, he’s going to be changed by force!”
And he rode on up the trail, followed by the silent string of riders on
their grunting, tired horses. She gave them only a careless glance. Joe
Pollard had baffled officers of the law before, and he would do it again.
That was not her great concern on this day.
Down the trail she sent her mustang again, and broke him out into a stiff
gallop on the level ground below. She headed straight through the town,
and found a large group collected in and around the bank building. They
turned and looked after her, but no one spoke a greeting. Plainly the
sheriff’s suspicions were shared by others.
She shook that shadow out of her head and devoted her entire attention to
the trail which roughened and grew narrow on the other side of the town.
Far away across the mountains lay her goal—the Cornish ranch.
When she first glimpsed Bear Valley from the summits of the Blue
Mountains, it seemed to her a small paradise. And as she rode lower and
lower among the hills, the impression gathered strength. So she came out
onto the road and trotted her cow-pony slowly under the beautiful
branches of the silver spruce, and saw the bright tree shadows reflected
in Bear Creek. Surely here was a place of infinite quiet, made for
happiness. A peculiar ache and sense of emptiness entered her heart, and
the ghost of Terry Hollis galloped soundlessly beside her on flaming El
Sangre through the shadow. It seemed to her that she could understand him
more easily. His had been a sheltered and pleasant life here, half
dreamy; and when he wakened into a world of stern reality and stern men,
he was still playing at a game like a boy—as Denver Pete had said.
She came out into view of the house. And again she paused. It was like a
palace to Kate, that great white facade and the Doric columns of the
veranda. She had always thought that the house of her father was a big
and stable house; compared with this, it was a shack, a lean-to, a
veritable hovel. And the confidence which had been hers during the hard
ride of two days across the mountains grew weaker. How could she talk to
the woman who owned such an establishment as this? How could she even
gain access to her?
On a broad, level terrace below the house men were busy with plows and
scrapers smoothing the ground; she circled around them, and brought her
horse to a stop before the veranda. Two men sat on it, one white-haired,
hawk-faced, spreading a broad blueprint before the other; and this man
was middle-aged, with a sleek, young face. A very good-looking fellow,
she thought.
“Maybe you-all could tell me,” said Kate Pollard, lounging in the saddle,
“where I’ll find the lady that owns this here place?”
It seemed to her that the sleek-faced man flushed a little.
“If you wish to talk to the owner,” he said crisply, and barely touching
his hat to her, “I’ll do your business. What is it? Cattle lost over the
Blue Mountains again? No strays have come down into the valley.”
“I’m not here about cattle,” she answered curtly enough. “I’m here about
a man.”
“H’m,” said the other. “A man?” His attention quickened. “What man?”
“Terry Hollis.”
She could see him start. She could also see that he endeavored to conceal
it. And she did not know whether she liked or disliked that quick start
and flush. There was something either of guilt or of surprise remarkably
strong in it. He rose from his chair, leaving the blueprint fluttering in
the hands of his companion alone.
“I am Vance Cornish,” he told her. She could feel his eyes prying at her
as though he were trying to get at her more accurately. “What’s Hollis
been up to now?”
He turned and explained carelessly to his companion: “That’s the young
scapegrace I told you about, Waters. Been raising Cain again, I suppose.”
He faced the girl again.
“A good deal of it,” she answered. “Yes, he’s been making quite a bit of
trouble.”
“I’m sorry for that, really,” said Vance. “But we are not responsible for
him.”
“I suppose you ain’t,” said Kate Pollard slowly. “But I’d like to talk to
the lady of the house.”
“Very sorry,” and again he looked in his sharp way—like a fox, she
thought—and then glanced away as though there were no interest in her or
her topic. “Very sorry, but my sister is in—er—critically declining
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