Essential Western Novels - Volume 4. Max Brand

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      Ahead of them stretched what appeared to be an unbroken expanse of rolling brush land, lying arid and uninviting in the shimmering heat of the morning.

      Presently there broke upon Marvel's vision the scene for which he had been waiting, the picture of which he had been carrying in his memory since boyhood—a large, bowl-like depression, in the bottom of which green verdure proclaimed the presence of the element that might mean the difference between life and death to them.

      As they dropped over the edge and rode down a steep trail leading toward the water, Eddie contemplated the back of the man riding just ahead of him. "Dude!" he murmured. "I wonder what long-eared, locoed son-of-a-gun hitched that monicker onto this bozo?"

      "You speakin' to me, young feller?" asked Marvel, for the mutterings of the man had come to his ears, although he had not been able to interpret the meaning.

      "You and your old man trailed cattle this a-way when you were a kid?" asked Eddie.

      "Yes."

      "What made 'em think you were a dude?" demanded the man.

      "Who said I was a dude?" asked Marvel.

      "Butts—" Eddie stopped in confusion.

      "So you know Butts, too, eh?" asked Marvel, casually.

      Eddie hesitated. "I seen him once," he said at last.

      "Don't worry, Eddie," said Marvel. "You aint give nuthin' away. As I told you once before I know all about you—all five of you."

      "You think you're a smart guy," said Eddie, "but you aint got nuthin' on me. They aint no law against my knowin' people."

      "It aint so good for your health to know some folks too well, though, Eddie," replied Bruce. "I can think of three of 'em offhand right now— there used to be five, but two of 'em's dead."

      Eddie looked up quickly from contemplation of his saddle horn. He thought a moment. "Who's the other?" he asked.

      "Bryam," replied Marvel.

      "Did you kill him?"

      "I had to, Eddie. He was shootin' at me with a thirty-thirty, and for a lion hunter I will say that he was a damn poor shot." It went against Marvel's grain to speak of this killing, much less to boast of it; but for reasons of his own he wished to break down the man's morale—in the vernacular, to put the fear of God into him—and he knew that if Eddie had Bryam to think of now as well as Mart, he would worry that much more over his own possible fate and break the easier under the strain when the time came.

      The balance of the trail into the bottom of the depression they negotiated in silence. Marvel noted with relief that green grass grew over a considerable area around the spring. He had not even dared hope for such good fortune as this.

      "They can't be runnin' many cattle in here this year," he said to Eddie.

      "They aint never run nuthin' in here since I've been in this neck of the woods," replied Eddie, "and I aint never even been in this valley before. They aint near as many cattle on the range as they used to be since the cattle business got bumped a few years ago, and there still bein' some rustlin' over the border, no one ranges in here no more."

      "The feed never was no good in this valley anyhow, I guess," said Marvel. "They used to feed in the hills on both sides and water in this hole on the way across."

      They halted beside a spring of clear, cold water that ran a little stream for a hundred yards or so before it sank into the earth again. Below the main spring they watered their horses, permitting them only a little at a time. Marvel took a half hour to this, releasing Eddie's hands that he might assist him, while Kay filled their canteens and each of them quenched his thirst. After the two men had hobbled their horses and turned them loose, Marvel secured Eddie's wrists again; then the three threw themselves upon the ground to rest.

      Bruce made Kay lie at full length and relax, and he wet his bandana and brought it and laid it across her forehead. Eddie needed no invitation to lie down, though he grumbled at the uncomfortable position his bound wrists necessitated. Marvel lay where he could watch the trail down which they had come into the depression and where, at the same time, he could watch the horses, for he knew that they might be the first to give warning of the approach of a pursuer. Occasionally the man turned his head and looked at the girl lying quietly a few yards away. How soft and small she looked; and always the sight induced a strange sensation in his breast—a sudden fullness. "By golly," he soliloquized, "it's just like I wanted to cry; but I don't want to cry, I want to sing. There's something about her that makes a fellow want to sing when he's close to her."

      Presently he saw by the steady rising and falling of her breasts that she had fallen asleep. He half rose then and hitched himself over close to where Eddie lay. The man looked up at him. "I want to talk to you, young fellow," he said; and then, in a low tone that might not awaken the girl, he talked steadily for several minutes, while the changing expressions upon the face of his listener denoted various reactions, the most marked of which were surprise, consternation, and fear.

      "I aint askin' you nuthin'," he said in conclusion. "There aint nuthin' to ask you, I just been tellin' you. Now if you know what's good for you, you'll know how to act." As he ceased speaking he drew a large pocket knife from his overalls and opened one of the blades. Then he drew one of his forty-fours, the wooden grip of which bore many notches, the edges of which were rounded and smooth and polished by the use of many years. As Eddie watched him, fascinated, Marvel cut two new notches below the older ones.

      "Them's Bryam and Mart?" asked the prisoner.

      Marvel nodded. "And there's room for some more yet, Eddie," he said.

      "You make all them?" asked Eddie.

      "No," replied Marvel. "These guns were my father's."

      "He must have been a bad man from way back," commented Eddie in frank admiration.

      "He weren't nuthin' of the kind," replied Bruce. "He was a sheriff."

      "Oh!" said Eddie.

      For two hours they rested there; and while they rested, Cory Blaine drove his faltering mount ruthlessly along the back trail toward Bryam's.

      They had had several hours start of him, but their rest and the killing pace that he was travelling might easily permit him to overcome the handicap; so that now it was a race with, perhaps, much depending upon who reached the TF Ranch first, though only Cory Blaine realized that it was a race.

      For two hours Marvel permitted the girl and the horses to rest and recuperate. Then he aroused Eddie, removed his bonds and the two men went out and fetched the horses back to the spring. Not until they were saddled and ready to ride did he arouse Kay.

      "I hate to do it," he said, as she opened her eyes to the pressure of his hand upon her shoulder, "but we got to get goin'. We can't make the ranch tonight, but if the horses hold out we ought to pull in some time after breakfast in the mornin'."

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