Читать книгу The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition - Max Brand - Страница 174

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There was no gun in his hand, and yet the man radiated danger. His silent coming, the very smile with which he looked down on them, were filled with terror-inspiring qualities. As for Hugh Dawn, he uttered a faint groan and then whirled out of his chair and stood upon his widely braced feet. Even when Dawn reeled back within reaching distance of his gun on the wall and made a motion toward it, the tall man in the door did not offer to draw his own weapon, but the smile hardened a little on his mouth, and his eyes grew fixed.

Jerry knew that it was Jack Moon. She had never seen his face, never even heard it accurately described; but somehow she knew that the man there in the doorway was the root of all evil.

Suddenly she leaped from the bunk and cast herself before her father. That sudden motion had brought the revolver into the hand of Moon, but it was instantly restored to its holster. The double movement had been merely a flash of light. Such speed of hand was uncanny.

“Steady,” said the outlaw. “No cause for jumping in front of the sneak, lady. I ain’t going to shoot him right away. Not right away. Maybe never. All depends on how him and me come to agree. Or maybe well agree to disagree. Just you sit down yonder where you were, miss. No harm’ll come to you.” He removed his hat and bowed to her, and in so doing he half turned his back on her father.

She knew that the devilish brain of the man had inspired this maneuver to tempt her father into action. But Hugh Dawn was in no condition to fight. His will was paralyzed. He could not fight any more than the bird can escape from the hypnotic eye of the snake.

“They tell hard tales about Jack Moon,” went on the big man, thus announcing himself, “but they never yet whispered a story about him laying a finger on a woman, young or old. I can tell you to lay to it that you’re as safe with me as if you was a six-months-old baby in the arms of your mother. It ain’t you I aim to talk to—it’s that!”

He indicated her father with a jerk of his thumb. But for some reason his contempt did not degrade Hugh Dawn. The man would fight willingly enough against odds which were at all even. But he recognized the madness of a bulldog attacking a lion. Even as great as this was the contrast, it was not that Moon was so much larger in physical dimensions. But he was made bigger by an inward lordliness that overflowed. The poise of his head was that of a conqueror. His spirit towered above her father like the young Achilles over some nameless Trojan warrior.

“I seen the box outside,” said Jack Moon. “What was in it, Dawn?”

There was no resistance in Dawn. He pointed sullenly to the slip of paper lying on the bed—the paper on which had been written the directions for reaching the site of the treasure.

The bandit strode across the room and reached for it, but the girl, with a lightning movement, forestalled him. She swept it up, leaped away from Moon, who followed with a startled exclamation, and, balling the paper to a hard knot as she ran, she reached the window above the lake and threw the paper as far as her strength allowed. The wind was blowing in that direction, and the precious slip would be wafted down to the waters of the lake.

The hand of Jack Moon was checked in the very act of falling on her shoulder and turning her around. But when she faced him, white and drawn about the lips, he was smiling again.

“That took nerve,” he said, “seeing the reputation I got around these parts. But I got to tell you this, lady. It don’t do even for ladies to fool with Jack Moon. I don’t handle ‘em the way I handle men, but most generally I find ways of makin’ ‘em behave. Now”—and here he turned on Hugh Dawn—“tell me what was on that paper!”

“No, no,” shouted the girl. “Don’t you see, dad, that it’s the price of your own head?”

“There you are again,” said Jack Moon sternly, seeing that the exclamation had sealed the lips of Dawn as the latter was about to speak. “You’ll have to learn better than that, lady, before you’re with me long. Dawn, will you open up and tell me?”

The gun gleamed in his hand. He thrust it against the breast of Dawn.

“Now talk quick,” he muttered. “I know everything, Dawn. Treat heard you and Whitwell, but I want to get the yarn out of your own mouth. I’ll tell you this, Dawn: if you open up, maybe they’ll be a way out for you!”

“Don’t talk, don’t talk!” cried Jerry Dawn. “Don’t trust him, dad!”

“If you care for your rotten soul,” said Jack Moon, “come out with it, Dawn!”

The latter groaned: “What price d’you pay, Moon?”

“Price? What sort of a price d’you ask?”

“Freedom,” said Dawn. “And your word on it.”

“Would you trust him?” moaned Jerry.

“Be quiet, Jerry,” said her father. “No matter what else Moon is, he’s a man of his word. It’s never been broke yet.”

“But it’s seldom given,” replied Moon coolly. “Why should I give it to you now?”

“How high,” retorted Dawn, “d’you put the price on my life?”

“Prices? I dunno. Prices change. I’ve known gents I’d shoot as soon as I’d kill a dog. I’ve known some that would have to pay thousands to buy themselves off. But for a gent that’s double crossed me the way you’ve done —well, it’d have to be high!”

Hugh Dawn nodded.

“How high?” he asked.

“Everything you got,” said the outlaw, “would be enough.”

To the astonishment of the girl, her father shook his head, puzzled.

“You can make your choice,” said Moon. “Either you turn over the whole Cosslett stuff to me or—”

“I haven’t got the Cosslett money. You know that!”

“You’ve got the plan to show where it is.”

“Suppose the plan turns out wrong?”

The admission implied in this question made the eyes of Jack Moon blaze.

“By the gods,” he whispered, “you did get it!”

“You lied to me, then,” growled Dawn. “Treat didn’t hear Whitwell talk about the box and what he thought was in it!”

“Treat didn’t hear anything. But now that I know you’ve got the plan inside your head, come out with it, Dawn, and you and me will make a dicker. Wait! Here’s something that the rest of the boys have got to vote on. You can thank your stars that I’ve got the majority of the crew with me!”

He whistled, a shrill, fluting sound long prolonged, and there was a rushing of horses’ hoofs up the slope to the crest of the hill. Presently the door and the windows were packed with ominous faces, and there was everywhere the glittering of drawn guns. Nearly a dozen men had gathered around the little ruined shanty in the space of a few seconds. Well indeed had it been for Hugh Dawn that he had not attacked the leader when the latter was seemingly alone.

“Boys,” said Jack Moon to the dark faces which waited silently, all turned toward Dawn and his daughter, “I’ve run him down, but it seems that he can offer a price. I want to know what figure you’d put on his head?”

“Whitwell was my pal,” said a voice sternly. “What price was he given a chance to pay? I say shoot the skunk and have it done with.”

Another voice growled: “What price was Gandil given a chance to pay? Wasn’t he a better man than Dawn ever dreamed of being? I say shoot the skunk!”

“Wait a minute, boys,” said the leader, raising his hand. “You got as good a right to vote on this as I have. And you’re going to have your way. You know I always see to that. But first I want you to know the whole facts. The price that Dawn can pay is the whole Cosslett treasure.”

That astonishing news brought a gasp from every member of the band. Evidently Moon had talked about that accumulation of wealth enough to have filled the fancies of his wild followers.

“Are you sure of that?” asked a number of voices.

“I’m sure he’s got the plan.”

“And if we don’t find the stuff?”

“Then Dawn dies. That’s easy, ain’t it? We give him our word that if we get the gold, he goes scot-free. If we don’t get it, he dies. Are you with me, boys?”

“How much,” said another voice, “d’you figure that gold would come to?”

“Five millions at least, and maybe anything up to twenty. Hard to believe all the yarns they told about that gold. Sometimes they got so excited they multiplied everything by four. Sometimes they got so careless about gold, and so used to it, that they understated things. I dunno how the Cosslett treasure stands, but I figure on five millions as the least we’d get. Think it over, boys! You and me! altogether, make fourteen. Add three more shares for me, which is only my right, and that makes seventeen. Seventeen into five million —how much does that make? Close to three hundred thousand dollars apiece, lads. Close to three hundred thousand! Put that out at seven per cent. That gives you twenty thousand a year. Think it over! That’s the price that Hugh Dawn can offer for his life. The biggest haul that was ever made in the mountains. Twenty thousand dollars to every one of you every year of your lives. Is it worth his life to you, boys?”

There was a moment of bewildered silence, and then a mutter of astonishment. Those eyes were calculating, spending, already.

“Cut all that down by one third,” said Hugh Dawn suddenly. “I’ve just thought of something.”

Moon turned on him with a snarl of anger.

“Are you going to bargain with me about it?” he asked. “Ain’t you satisfied with having your ratty life?”

For the first time Hugh Dawn did not shrink. He met the eye of Jack Moon steadily.

“Tell you how it is,” he said. “I can buy you off with my share of the stuff, and Jerry’s share. But she and me ain’t the only ones. They’s another gent that has to be figured in. ‘Twasn’t for him we’d never be here. It was him that warned me you was coming, him that got us safely up here, and him that helped us work out the puzzle. Moon, you got nothin’ agin’ him, and he’s got to come in for a third of everything you get! Understand?”

The girl was amazed. Her heart had been sinking, her blood growing cold, in the feeling that her father had from first to last in this encounter played the part of a coward. This sudden defiance of Jack Moon bewildered her. Then she began to make out the reasons for it. It was not the actual danger that terrified her father; he was simply paralyzed by the name and the presence of Moon. The outlaw was as amazed as any one could have been by this resistance, and by the revelation of these secrets.

“The gent that warned you?” he echoed. “Warned you I was coming?”

“He heard everything. He was in the barn. He rode around you and got to me and fought his way into the house to tell me you was coming.”

“I got a lot to thank this gent for,” said the leader calmly. “Him and me ought to be able to come to an understanding. What’s his name?”

“Ronicky Doone, he called himself. And he’s sure a square shooter.”

“Ronicky Doone?” echoed the outlaw. “Well, I’ll pass the word to the boys that if a gent shows up pretty soon, they’re not to take a pot shot at him. They got a habit of using up ammunition plumb careless that way. Si!”

Treat strode through the door.

“You remember how Dawn plugged you through the leg? Now you stay here and watch him, Si, and see he don’t get loose from you. Understand?”

The teeth of Treat showed through the tangles of his black beard and mustache. Calmly he drew his revolver and sat down with the weapon balanced on his knee and pointing toward Hugh Dawn.

The leader left the shack and with a gesture gathered half a dozen of his men around him.

“Baldy, you take charge. Take these gents along with you. Post ‘em scattering out along the hillside so’s to cover every direction. You heard the name of the gent that’s up here along with Hugh?”

“Nope.”

“Ronicky Doone! Ever hear of him?”

“Seems like I have, sort of in patches, somewhere.”

“If you’d ever been down South you’d of heard a pile more than patches about him. He’s the most nacheral gun fighter that ever drilled a gent full of lead. Baldy, go out on the hill and watch. Don’t shoot till you get him close. And then don’t ask no questions. Just blaze away. I’m going back inside and tell ‘em that I’ve arranged for a nice quiet reception for Doone. When you’ve dropped him, I’ll go busting out and raise the devil, like I’d give you strict orders not to do any shooting. Understand?”

Baldy whispered an assent.

“If you want to have something to give you a grudge agin’ him, I can tell you that this is the gent that overheard us in the barn, and that rode ahead and warned Dawn we were coming. Now scatter out yonder, and mind you shoot low.”