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

"I don't know."

"It would be an acid test, Elizabeth. But perhaps now is the time. You've spent twenty-four years training him. If he isn't what he ought to be now, he never will be, no doubt."

"It may be that you're right," she said gloomily. "Twenty-four years! Yes, and I've filled about half of my time with Terry and his training. Vance, you are right. If he has the elements of a mankiller in him after what I've done for him, then he's a hopeless case. The sheriff shall stay! The sheriff shall stay!"

She kept repeating it, as though the repetition of the phrase might bring her courage. And then she went back among her guests.

As for Vance, he remained skillfully in the background that day. It was peculiarly vital, this day of all days, that he should not be much in evidence. No one must see in him a controlling influence.

In the meantime he watched his sister with a growing admiration and with a growing concern. Instantly she had a problem on her hands. For the moment Terence heard that the great sheriff himself had joined the party, he was filled with happiness. Vance watched them meet with a heart swelling with happiness and surety of success. Straight through a group came Terry, weaving his way eagerly, and went up to the sheriff. Vance saw Elizabeth attempt to detain him, attempt to send him on an errand. But he waved her suggestion away for a moment and made for the sheriff. Elizabeth, seeing that the meeting could not be avoided, at least determined to be present at it. She came up with Terence and presented him.

"Sheriff Minter, this is Terence Colby."

"I've heard of you, Colby," said the sheriff kindly. And he waited for a response with the gleaming eye of a vain man. There was not long to wait.

"You've really heard of me?" said Terry, immensely pleased. "By the Lord,
I've heard of you, sheriff! But, of course, everybody has."

"I dunno, son," said the sheriff benevolently. "But I been drifting around a tolerable long time, I guess."

"Why," said Terry, with a sort of outburst, "I've simply eaten up everything I could gather. I've even read about you in magazines!"

"Well, now you don't say," protested the sheriff. "In magazines?"

And his eye quested through the group, hoping for other listeners who might learn how broadly the fame of their sheriff was spread.

"That Canning fellow who travelled out West and ran into you and was along while you were hunting down the Garrison boys. I read his article."

The sheriff scratched his chin. "I disremember him. Canning? Canning? Come to think of it, I do remember him. Kind of a small man with washed- out eyes. Always with a notebook on his knee. I got sick of answering all that gent's questions, I recollect. Yep, he was along when I took the Garrison boys, but that little party didn't amount to much."

"He thought it did," said Terry fervently. "Said it was the bravest, coolest-headed, cunningest piece of work he'd ever seen done. Perhaps you'll tell me some of the other things—the things you count big?"

"Oh, I ain't done nothing much, come to think of it. All pretty simple, they looked to me, when I was doing them. Besides, I ain't much of a hand at talk!"

"Ah," said Terry, "you'd talk well enough to suit me, sheriff!"

The sheriff had found a listener after his own heart.

"They ain't nothing but a campfire that gives a good light to see a story
by—the kind of stories I got to tell," he declared. "Some of these days
I'll take you along with me on a trail, son, if you'd like—and most like
I'll talk your arm off at night beside the fire. Like to come?"

"Like to?" cried Terry. "I'd be the happiest man in the mountains!"

"Would you, now? Well, Colby, you and me might hit it off pretty well. I've heard tell you ain't half bad with a rifle and pretty slick with a revolver, too."

"I practice hard," said Terry frankly. "I love guns."

"Good things to love, and good things to hate, too," philosophized the sheriff. "But all right in their own place, which ain't none too big, these days. The old times is gone when a man went out into the world with a hoss under him, and a pair of Colts strapped to his waist, and made his own way. Them days is gone, and our younger boys is going to pot!"

"I suppose so," admitted Terry.

"But you got a spark in you, son. Well, one of these days we'll get together. And I hear tell you got El Sangre?"

"I was lucky," said Terry.

"That's a sizable piece of work, Colby. I've seen twenty that run El Sangre, and never even got close enough to eat his dust. Nacheral pacer, right enough. I've seen him kite across country like a train! And his mane and tail blowing like smoke!"

"I got him with patience. That was all."

"S'pose we take a look at him?"

"By all means. Just come along with me."

Elizabeth struck in.

"Just a moment, Terence. There's Mr. Gainor, and he's been asking to see you. You can take the sheriff out to see El Sangre later. Besides, half a dozen people want to talk to the sheriff, and you mustn't monopolize him. Miss Wickson begged me to get her a chance to talk to you—the real Sheriff Minter. Do you mind?"

"Pshaw," said the sheriff. "I ain't no kind of a hand at talking to the womenfolk. Where is she?"

"Down yonder, sheriff. Shall we go?"

"The old lady with the cane?"

"No, the girl with the bright hair."

"Doggone me," muttered the sheriff. "Well, let's saunter down that way."

He waved to Terence, who, casting a black glance in the direction of Mr. Gainor, went off to execute Elizabeth's errand. Plainly Elizabeth had won the first engagement, but Vance was still confident. The dinner table would tell the tale.

Elizabeth left the ordering of the guests at the table to Vance, and she consulted him about it as they went into the dining room. It was a long, low-ceilinged room, with more windows than wall space. It opened onto a small porch, and below the porch was the garden which had been the pride of Henry Cornish. Beside the tall glass doors which led out onto the porch she reviewed the seating plans of Vance. "You at this end and I at the other," he said. "I've put the sheriff beside you, and right across from the sheriff is Nelly. She ought to keep him busy. The old idiot has a weakness for pretty girls, and the younger the better, it seems. Next to the sheriff is Mr. Gainor. He's a political power, and what time the sheriff doesn't spend on you and on Nelly he certainly will give to Gainor. The arrangement of the rest doesn't matter. I simply worked to get the sheriff well-pocketed and keep him under your eye."

"But why not under yours, Vance? You're a thousand times more diplomatic than I am."

"I wouldn't take the responsibility, for, after all, this may turn out to be a rather solemn occasion, Elizabeth."

"You don't think so, Vance?"

"I pray not."

"And where have you put Terence?"

"Next to Nelly, at your left."

"Good heavens, Vance, that's almost directly opposite the sheriff. You'll have them practically facing each other."

It was the main thing he was striving to attain. He placated her carefully.

"I had to. There's a danger. But the advantage is huge. You'll be there between them, you might say. You can keep the table talk in hand at that end. Flash me a signal if you're in trouble, and I'll fire a question down the table at the sheriff or Terry, and get their attention. In the meantime you can draw Terry into talk with you if he begins to ask the sheriff what you consider leading questions. In that way, you'll keep the talk a thousand leagues away from the death of Black Jack."

He gained his point without much more trouble. Half an hour later the table was surrounded by the guests. It was a table of baronial proportions, but twenty couples occupied every inch of the space easily. Vance found himself a greater distance than he could have wished from the scene of danger, and of electrical contact.

At least four zones of cross-fire talk intervened, and the talk at the farther end of the table was completely lost to him, except when some new and amazing dish, a triumph of Wu Chi's fabrication, was brought on, and an appreciative wave of silence attended it.

Or again, the mighty voice of the sheriff was heard to bellow forth in laughter of heroic proportions.

Aside from that, there was no information he could gather except by his eyes. And chiefly, the face of Elizabeth. He knew her like a book in which he had often read. Twice he read the danger signals. When the great roast was being removed, he saw her eyes widen and her lips contract a trifle, and he knew that someone had come very close to the danger line indeed. Again when dessert was coming in bright shoals on the trays of the Chinese servants, the glance of his sister fixed on him down the length of the table with a grim appeal. He made a gesture of helplessness. Between them four distinct groups into which the table talk had divided were now going at full blast. He could hardly have made himself heard at the other end of the table without shouting.

Yet that crisis also passed away. Elizabeth was working hard, but as the meal progressed toward a close, he began to worry. It had seemed impossible that the sheriff could actually sit this length of time in such an assemblage without launching into the stories for which he was famous. Above all, he would be sure to tell how he had started on his career as a manhunter by relating how he slew Black Jack.

Once the appalling thought came to Vance that the story must have been told during one of those moments when his sister had shown alarm. The crisis might be over, and Terry had indeed showed a restraint which was a credit to Elizabeth's training. But by the hunted look in her eyes, he knew that the climax had not yet been reached, and that she was continually fighting it away.

He writhed with impatience. If he had not been a fool, he would have taken that place himself, and then he could have seen to it that the sheriff, with dexterous guiding, should approach the fatal story. As it was, how could he tell that Elizabeth might not undo all his plans and cleverly keep the sheriff away from his favorite topic for an untold length of time? But as he told his sister, he wished to place all the seeming responsibility on her own shoulders. Perhaps he had played too safe.

The first ray of hope came to him as coffee was brought in. The prodigious eating of the cattlemen and miners at the table had brought them to a stupor. They no longer talked, but puffed with unfamiliar awkwardness at the fine Havanas which Vance had provided. Even the women talked less, having worn off the edge of the novelty of actually dining at the table of Elizabeth Cornish. And since the hostess was occupied solely with the little group nearest her, and there was no guiding mind to pick up the threads of talk in each group and maintain it, this duty fell more and more into the hands of Vance. He took up his task with pleasure.

Farther and farther down the table extended the sphere of his mild influence. He asked Mr. Wainwright to tell the story of how he treed the bear so that the tenderfoot author could come and shoot it. Mr. Wainwright responded with gusto. The story was a success. He varied it by requesting young Dobel to describe the snowslide which had wiped out the Vorheimer shack the winter before.

Young Dobel did well enough to make the men grunt at the end, and he brought several little squeals of horror from the ladies.

All of this was for a purpose. Vance was setting the precedent, and they were becoming used to hearing stories. At the end of each tale the silence of expectation was longer and