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- Herausgeber: GAEditori
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Pulp western, moves along quickly. There is a bad guy to hate throughout the book and this one is a good novel, right and tough, with feeling.
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Indice dei contenuti
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
Max Brand
BLACK JACK
CHAPTER 1
It was characteristic of the two that when the uproar broke out Vance
Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister
Elizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs.
After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was as
peaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering away down the
street.
A boy was stirring up the dust of the street, enjoying its heat with his
bare toes, and the same old man was bunched in his chair in front of the
store. During the two days Elizabeth had been in town on her cattle-buying trip, she had never see him alter his position. But she was
accustomed to the West, and this advent of sleep in the town did not
satisfy her. A drowsy town, like a drowsy-looking cow-puncher, might be
capable of unexpected things.
“Vance,” she said, “there’s trouble starting.”
“Somebody shooting at a target,” he answered.
As if to mock him, he had no sooner spoken than a dozen voices yelled
down the street in a wailing chorus cut short by the rapid chattering of
revolvers. Vance ran to the window. Just below the hotel the street made
an elbow-turn for no particular reason except that the original cattle-trail had made exactly the same turn before Garrison City was built.
Toward the corner ran the hubbub at the pace of a running horse. Shouts,
shrill, trailing curses, and the muffled beat of hoofs in the dust. A
rider plunged into view now, his horse leaning far in to take the sharp
angle, and the dust skidding out and away from his sliding hoofs. The
rider gave easily and gracefully to the wrench of his mount.
And he seemed to have a perfect trust in his horse, for he rode with the
reins hanging over the horns of his saddle. His hands were occupied by a
pair of revolvers, and he was turned in the saddle.
The head of the pursuing crowd lurched around the elbow-turn; fire spat
twice from the mouth of each gun. Two men dropped, one rolling over and
over in the dust, and the other sitting down and clasping his leg in a
ludicrous fashion. But the crowd was checked and fell back.
By this time the racing horse of the fugitive had carried him close to
the hotel, and now he faced the front, a handsome fellow with long black
hair blowing about his face. He wore a black silk shirt which accentuated
the pallor of his face and the flaring crimson of his bandanna. And he
laughed joyously, and the watchers from the hotel window heard him call:
“Go it, Mary. Feed ‘em dust, girl!”
The pursuers had apparently realized that it was useless to chase.
Another gust of revolver shots barked from the turning of the street, and
among them a different and more sinister sound like the striking of two
great hammers face on face, so that there was a cold ring of metal after
the explosion—at least one man had brought a rifle to bear. Now, as the
wild rider darted past the hotel, his hat was jerked from his head by an
invisible hand. He whirled again in the saddle and his guns raised. As he
turned, Elizabeth Cornish saw something glint across the street. It was
the gleam of light on the barrel of a rifle that was thrust out through
the window of the store.
That long line of light wobbled, steadied, and fire jetted from the mouth
of the gun. The black-haired rider spilled sidewise out of the saddle;
his feet came clear of the stirrups, and his right leg caught on the
cantle. He was flung rolling in the dust, his arms flying weirdly. The
rifle disappeared from the window and a boy’s set face looked out. But
before the limp body of the fugitive had stopped rolling, Elizabeth
Cornish dropped into a chair, sick of face. Her brother turned his back
on the mob that closed over the dead man and looked at Elizabeth in
alarm.
It was not the first time he had seen the result of a gunplay, and for
that matter it was not the first time for Elizabeth. Her emotion upset
him more than the roar of a hundred guns. He managed to bring her a glass
of water, but she brushed it away so that half of the contents spilled on
the red carpet of the room.
“He isn’t dead, Vance. He isn’t dead!” she kept saying.
“Dead before he left the saddle,” replied Vance, with his usual calm.
“And if the bullet hadn’t finished him, the fall would have broken his
neck. But—what in the world! Did you know the fellow?”
He blinked at her, his amazement growing. The capable hands of Elizabeth
were pressed to her breast, and out of the thirty-five years of
spinsterhood which had starved her face he became aware of eyes young and
dark, and full of spirit; by no means the keen, quiet eyes of Elizabeth
Cornish.
“Do something,” she cried. “Go down, and—if they’ve murdered him—”
He literally fled from the room.
All the time she was seeing nothing, but she would never forget what she
had seen, no matter how long she lived. Subconsciously she was fighting
to keep the street voices out of her mind. They were saying things she
did not wish to hear, things she would not hear. Finally, she recovered
enough to stand up and shut the window. That brought her a terrible
temptation to look down into the mass of men in the street—and women,
too!
But she resisted and looked up. The forms of the street remained
obscurely in the bottom of her vision, and made her think of something
she had seen in the woods—a colony of ants around a dead beetle.
Presently the door opened and Vance came back. He still seemed very
worried, but she forced herself to smile at him, and at once his concern
disappeared; it was plain that he had been troubled about her and not in
the slightest by the fate of the strange rider. She kept on smiling, but
for the first time in her life she really looked at Vance without
sisterly prejudice in his favor. She saw a good-natured face, handsome,
with the cheeks growing a bit blocky, though Vance was only twenty-five.
He had a glorious forehead and fine eyes, but one would never look twice
at Vance in a crowd. She knew suddenly that her brother was simply a
well-mannered mediocrity.
“Thank the Lord you’re yourself again, Elizabeth,” her brother said first
of all. “I thought for a moment—I don’t know what!”
“Just the shock, Vance,” she said. Ordinarily she was well-nigh brutally
frank. Now she found it easy to lie and keep on smiling. “It was such a
horrible thing to see!”
“I suppose so. Caught you off balance. But I never knew you to lose your
grip so easily. Well, do you know what you’ve seen?”
“He’s dead, then?”
He locked sharply at her. It seemed to him that a tremor of unevenness
had come into her voice.
“Oh, dead as a doornail, Elizabeth. Very neat shot. Youngster that
dropped him; boy named Joe Minter. Six thousand dollars for Joe. Nice
little nest egg to build a fortune on, eh?”
“Six thousand dollars! What do you mean, Vance?”
“The price on the head of Jack Hollis. That was Hollis, sis. The
celebrated Black Jack.”
“But—this is only a boy, Vance. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old.”
“That’s all.”
“But I’ve heard of him for ten years, very nearly. And always as a mankiller. It can’t be Black Jack.”
“I said the same thing, but it’s Black Jack, well enough. He started out
when he was sixteen, they say, and he’s been raising the devil ever
since. You should have seen them pick him up—as if he were asleep, and
not dead. What a body! Lithe as a panther. No larger than I am, but they
say he was a giant with his hands.”
He was lighting his cigarette as he said this, and consequently he did
not see her eyes close tightly. A moment later she was able to make her
expression as calm as ever.
“Came into town to see his baby,” went on Vance through the smoke.
“Little year-old beggar!”
“Think of the mother,” murmured Elizabeth Cornish. “I want to do
something for her.”
“You can’t,” replied her brother, with unnecessary brutality. “Because
she’s dead. A little after the youngster was born. I believe Black Jack
broke her heart, and a very pleasant sort of girl she was, they tell me.”
“What will become of the baby?”
“It will live and grow up,” he said carelessly. “They always do, somehow.
Make another like his father, I suppose. A few years of fame in the
mountain saloons, and then a knife in the back.”
The meager body of Elizabeth stiffened. She was finding it less easy to
maintain her nonchalant smile.
“Why?”
“Why? Blood will out, like murder, sis.”
“Nonsense! All a matter of environment.”
“Have you ever read the story of the Jukes family?”
“An accident. Take a son out of the best family in the world and raise
him like a thief—he’ll be a thief. And the thief’s son can be raised to
an honest manhood. I know it!”
She was seeing Black Jack, as he had raced down the street with the black
hair blowing about his face. Of such stuff, she felt, the knights of
another age had been made. Vance was raising a forefinger in an
authoritative way he had.
“My dear, before that baby is twenty-five—that was his father’s
age—he’ll have shot a man. Bet you on it!”
“I’ll take your bet!”
The retort came with such a ring of her voice that he was startled.
Before he could recover, she went on: “Go out and get that baby for me,
Vance. I want it.”
He tossed his cigarette out of the window.
“Don’t drop into one of your headstrong moods, sis. This is nonsense.”
“That’s why I want to do it. I’m tired of playing the man. I’ve had
enough to fill my mind. I want something to fill my arms and my heart.”
She drew up her hands with a peculiar gesture toward her shallow, barren
bosom, and then her brother found himself silenced. At the same time he
was a little irritated, for there was an imputation in her speech that
she had been carrying the burden which his own shoulders should have
supported. Which was so true that he could not answer, and therefore he
cast about for some way of stinging her.
“I thought you were going to escape the sentimental period, Elizabeth.
But sooner or later I suppose a woman has to pass through it.”
A spot of color came in her sallow cheek.
“That’s sufficiently disagreeable, Vance.”
A sense of his cowardice made him rise to conceal his confusion.
“I’m going to take you at your word, sis. I’m going out to get that baby.
I suppose it can be bought—like a calf!”
He went deliberately to the door and laid his hand on the knob. He had a
rather vicious pleasure in calling her bluff, but to his amazement she
did not call him back. He opened the door slowly. Still she did not
speak. He slammed it behind him and stepped into the hall.
CHAPTER 2
Twenty-four years made the face of Vance Cornish a little better-fed, a
little more blocky of cheek, but he remained astonishingly young. At
forty-nine the lumpish promise of his youth was quite gone. He was in a
trim and solid middle age. His hair was thinned above the forehead, but
it gave him more dignity. On the whole, he left an impression of a man
who has done things and who will do more before he is through.
He shifted his feet from the top of the porch railing and shrugged
himself deeper into his chair. It was marvelous how comfortable Vance
could make himself. He had one great power—the ability to sit still
through any given interval. Now he let his eye drift quietly over the
Cornish ranch. It lay entirely within one grasp of the vision, spilling
across the valley from Sleep Mountain, on the lower bosom of which the
house stood, to Mount Discovery on the north. Not that the glance of
Vance Cornish lurched across this bold distance. His gaze wandered as
slowly as a free buzzes across a clover field, not knowing on which
blossom to settle.
Below him, generously looped, Bear Creek tumbled out of the southeast,
and roved between noble borders of silver spruce into the shadows of the
Blue Mountains of the north, half a dozen miles across and ten long of
grazing and farm land, rich, loamy bottom land scattered with aspens.
Beyond, covering the gentle roll of the foothills, was grazing land.
Scattering lodgepole pine began in the hills, and thickened into dense
yellow-green thickets on the upper mountain slopes. And so north and
north the eye of Vance Cornish wandered and climbed until it rested on
the bald summit of Mount Discovery. It had its name out of its character,
standing boldly to the south out of the jumble of the Blue Mountains.
It was a solid unit, this Cornish ranch, fenced away with mountains,
watered by a river, pleasantly forested, and obviously predestined for
the ownership of one man. Vance Cornish, on the porch of the house, felt
like an enthroned king overlooking his dominions. As a matter of fact,
his holdings were hardly more than nominal.
In the beginning his father had left the ranch equally to Vance and
Elizabeth, thickly plastered with debts. The son would have sold the
place for what they could clear. He went East to hunt for education and
pleasure; his sister remained and fought the great battle by herself. She
consecrated herself to the work, which implied that the work was sacred.
And to her, indeed, it was.
She was twenty-two and her brother twelve when their father died. Had she
been a tithe younger and her brother a mature man, it would have been
different. As it was, she felt herself placed in a maternal position with
Vance. She sent him away to school, rolled up her sleeves and started to
order chaos. In place of husband, children—love and the fruits of love—
she accepted the ranch. The dam between the rapids and the waterfall was
the child of her brain; the plowed fields of the central part of the
valley were her reward.
In ten years of constant struggle she cleared away the debts. And then,
since Vance gave her nothing but bills to pay, she began to buy out his
interest. He chose to learn his business lessons on Wall Street.
Elizabeth paid the bills, but she checked the sums against his interest
in the ranch. And so it went on. Vance would come out to the ranch at
intervals and show a brief, feverish interest, plan a new set of
irrigation canals, or a sawmill, or a better road out over the Blue
Mountains. But he dropped such work half-done and went away.
Elizabeth said nothing. She kept on paying his bills, and she kept on
cutting down his interest in the old Cornish ranch, until at the present
time he had only a fingertip hold. Root and branch, the valley and all
that was in it belonged to Elizabeth Cornish. She was proud of her
possession, though she seldom talked of her pride. Nevertheless, Vance
knew, and smiled. It was amusing, because, after all, what she had done,
and all her work, would revert to him at her death. Until that time, why
should he care in whose name the ranch remained so long as his bills were
paid? He had not worked, but in recompense he had remained young.
Elizabeth had labored all her youth away. At forty-nine he was ready to
begin the most important part of his career. At sixty his sister was a
withered old ghost of a woman.
He fell into a pleasant reverie. When Elizabeth died, he would set in
some tennis courts beside the house, buy some blooded horses, cut the
road wide and deep to let the world come up Bear Creek Valley, and retire
to the life of a country gentleman.
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.”
“He had business to do.”
His diversion had been a distinct failure, and had been turned against
him. For she went on: “Which leads to what I have to say. You’re going
back to New York in a few days, I suppose?”
“No, my dear. I haven’t been across the water for two years.”
“Paris?”
“Brussels. A little less grace; a little more spirit.”
“Which means money.”
“A few thousand only. I’ll be back by fall.”
“Do you know that you’ll have to mortgage your future for that money,
Vance?”
He blinked at her, but maintained his smile under fire courageously.
“Come, come! Things are booming. You told me yesterday what you’d clean
up on the last bunch of Herefords.”
When she folded her hands, she was most dangerous, he knew. And now the
bony fingers linked and she shrugged the shawl more closely around her
shoulders.
“We’re partners, aren’t we?” smiled Vance.
“Partners, yes. You have one share and I have a thousand. But—you don’t
want to sell out your final claim, I suppose?”
His smile froze. “Eh?”
“If you want to get those few thousands, Vance, you have nothing to put
up for them except your last shreds of property. That’s why I say you’ll
have to mortgage your future for money from now on.”
“But—how does it all come about?”
“I’ve warned you. I’ve been warning you for twenty-five years, Vance.”
Once again he attempted to turn her. He always had the impression that if
he became serious, deadly serious for ten consecutive minutes with his
sister, he would be ruined. He kept on with his semi-jovial tone.
“There are two arts, Elizabeth. One is making money and the other is
spending it. You’ve mastered one and I’ve mastered the other. Which
balances things, don’t you think?”
She did not melt; he waved down to the farm land.
“Watch that wave of wind, Elizabeth.”
A gust struck the scattering of aspens, and turned up the silver of the
dark green leaves. The breeze rolled across the trees in a long, rippling
flash of light. But Elizabeth did not look down. Her glance was fixed on
the changeless snow of Mount Discovery’s summit.
“As long as you have something to spend, spending is a very important
art, Vance. But when the purse is empty, it’s a bit useless, it seems to
me.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to mortgage my future. As a matter of fact, I
suppose I could borrow what I want on my prospects.”
A veritable Indian yell, instantly taken up and prolonged by a chorus of
similar shouts, cut off the last of his words. Round the corner of the
house shot a blood-bay stallion, red as the red of iron under the
blacksmith’s hammer, with a long, black tail snapping and flaunting
behind him, his ears flattened, his beautiful vicious head outstretched
in an effort to tug the reins out of the hands of the rider. Failing in
that effort, he leaped into the air like a steeplechaser and pitched down
upon stiffened forelegs.
The shock rippled through the body of the rider and came to his head with
a snap that jerked his chin down against his breast. The stallion rocked
back on his hind legs, whirled, and then flung himself deliberately on
his back. A sufficiently cunning maneuver—first stunning the enemy with
a blow and then crushing him before his senses returned. But he landed on
nothing save hard gravel. The rider had whipped out of the saddle and
stood poised, strong as the trunk of a silver spruce.
The fighting horse, a little shaken by the impact of his fall,
nevertheless whirled with catlike agility to his feet—a beautiful thing
to watch. As he brought his forequarters off the earth, he lunged at the
rider with open mouth. A sidestep that would have done credit to a
pugilist sent the youngster swerving past that danger. He leaped to the
saddle at the same time that the blood-bay came to his four feet.
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.
CHAPTER 3
“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 disown him, throw him out penniless on the world, never see him
again.”
“You’re a Spartan,” said her brother in awe, as he looked on that thin,
stern face. “Terry is your theory. If he disappoints you, he’ll be simply
a theory gone wrong. You’ll cut him out of your life as if he were an
algebraic equation and never think of him again.”
“But he’s not going wrong, Vance. Because, in ten days, he’ll be twenty-five! And that’s what all these changes mean. The moment it grows dark on
the night of his twenty-fifth birthday, I’m going to take him into my
father’s room and turn it over to him.”
He had listened to her patiently, a little wearied by her unusual flow of
words. Now he came out of his apathy with a jerk. He laid his hand on
Elizabeth’s shoulder and turned her so that the light shone full in her
face. Then he studied her.
“What do you mean by that, Elizabeth?”
“Vance,” she said steadily, but with a touch of pity in her voice, “I
have waited for a score of years, hoping that you’d settle down and try
to do a man’s work either here or somewhere else. You haven’t done it.
Yesterday Mr. Cornwall came here to draw up my will. By that will I leave
you an annuity, Vance, that will take care of you in comfort; but I leave
everything else to Terry Colby. That’s why I’ve changed the room. The
moment it grows dark ten days from today, I’m going to take Terry by the
hand and lead him into the room and into the position of my father!”
The mask of youth which was Vance Cornish crumbled and fell away. A new
man looked down at her. The firm flesh of his face became loose. His
whole body was flabby. She had the feeling that if she pushed against his
chest with the weight of her arm, he would topple to the floor. That
weakness gradually passed. A peculiar strength of purpose grew in its
place.
“Of course, this is a very shrewd game, Elizabeth. You want to wake me
up. You’re using the spur to make me work. I don’t blame you for using
the bluff, even if it’s a rather cruel one. But, of course, it’s
impossible for you to be serious in what you say.”
“Why impossible, Vance?”
“Because you know that I’m the last male representative of our family.
Because you know my father would turn in his grave if he knew that an
interloper, a foundling, the child of a murderer, a vagabond, had been
made the heir to his estate. But you aren’t serious, Elizabeth; I
understand.”
He swallowed his pride, for panic grew in him in proportion to the length
of time she maintained her silence.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t blame you for giving me a scare, my dear
sister. I have been a shameless loafer. I’m going to reform and lift the
burden of business off your shoulders—let you rest the remainder of your
life.”
It was the worst thing he could have said. He realized it the moment he
had spoken. This forced, cowardly surrender was worse than brazen
defiance, and he saw her lip curl. An idler is apt to be like a sullen
child, except that in a grown man the child’s sulky spite becomes a dark
malice, all-embracing. For the very reason that Vance knew he was
receiving what he deserved, and that this was the just reward for his
thriftless years of idleness, he began to hate Elizabeth with a cold,
quiet hatred. There is something stimulating about any great passion. Now
Vance felt his nerves soothed and calmed. His self-possession returned
with a rush. He was suddenly able to smile into her face.
“After all,” he said, “you’re absolutely right. I’ve been a failure,
Elizabeth—a rank, disheartening failure. You’d be foolish to trust the
result of your life labors in my hands—entirely foolish. I admit that
it’s a shrewd blow to see the estate go to—Terry.”
He found it oddly difficult to name the boy.
“But why not? Why not Terry? He’s a clean youngster, and he may turn out
very well—in spite of his blood. I hope so. The Lord knows you’ve given
him every chance and the best start in the world. I wish him luck!”
He reached out his hand, and her bloodless fingers closed strongly over
it.
“There’s the old Vance talking,” she said warmly, a mist across her eyes.
“I almost thought that part of you had died.”
He writhed inwardly. “By Jove, Elizabeth, think of that boy, coming out
of nothing, everything poured into his hands—and now within ten days of
his goal! Rather exciting, isn’t it? Suppose he should stumble at the
very threshold of his success? Eh?”
He pressed the point with singular insistence.
“Doesn’t it make your heart beat, Elizabeth, when you think that he might
fall—that he might do what I prophesied so long ago—shoot a man before
he’s twenty-five?”
She shrugged the supposition calmly away.
“My faith in him is based as strongly as the rocks, Vance. But if he
fell, after the schooling I’ve given him, I’d throw him out of my life—
forever.”
He paused a moment, studying her face with a peculiar eagerness. Then he
shrugged in turn. “Tush! Of course, that’s impossible. Let’s go down.”
CHAPTER 4
When they reached the front porch, they saw Terence Colby coming up the
terrace from the river road on Le Sangre. And a changed horse he was. One
ear was forward as if he did not know what lay in store for him, but
would try to be on the alert. One ear flagged warily back. He went
slowly, lifting his feet with the care of a very weary horse. Yet, when
the wind fluttered a gust of whirling leaves beside him, he leaped aside
and stood with high head, staring, transformed in the instant into a
creature of fire and wire-strung nerves. The rider gave to the side-spring with supple grace and then sent the stallion on up the hill.
Joyous triumph was in the face of Terry. His black hair was blowing about
his forehead, for his hat was pushed back after the manner of one who has
done a hard day’s work and is ready to rest. He came close to the
veranda, and Le Sangre lifted his fine head and stared fearlessly,
curiously, with a sort of contemptuous pride, at Elizabeth and Vance.
“The killer is no longer a killer,” laughed Terry. “Look him over, Uncle
Vance. A beauty, eh?”
Elizabeth said nothing at all. But she rocked herself back and forth a
trifle in her chair as she nodded. She glanced over the terrace, hoping
that others might be there to see the triumph of her boy. Then she looked
back at Terence. But Vance was regarding the horse.
“He might have a bit more in the legs, Terry.”
“Not much more. A leggy horse can’t stand mountain work—or any other
work, for that matter, except a ride in the park.”
“I suppose you’re right. He’s a picture horse, Terry. And a devilish eye,
but I see that you’ve beaten him.”
“Beaten him?” He shook his head. “We reached a gentleman’s agreement. As
long as I wear spurs, he’ll fight me till he gets his teeth in me or
splashes my skull to bits with his heels. Otherwise he’ll keep on
fighting till he drops. But as soon as I take off the spurs and stop
tormenting him, he’ll do what I like. No whips or spurs for Le Sangre.
Eh, boy?”
He held out the spurs so that the sun flashed on them. The horse
stiffened with a shudder, and that forward look of a horse about to bolt
came in his eyes.
“No, no!” cried Elizabeth.
But Terry laughed and dropped the spurs back in his pocket.
The stallion moved off, and Terry waved to them. Just as he turned, the
mind of Vance Cornish raced back to another picture—a man with long
black hair blowing about his face and a gun in either hand, sweeping
through a dusty street with shots barking behind him. It came suddenly as
a revelation, and left him downheaded with the thought.
“What is it, Vance?” asked his sister, reaching out to touch his arm.
“Nothing.” Then he added abruptly: “I’m going for a jaunt for a few days,
Elizabeth.”
She grew gloomy.
“Are you going to insist on taking it to heart this way?”
“Not at all. I’m going to be back here in ten days and drink Terry’s long
life and happiness across the birthday dinner table.”
He marvelled at the ease with which he could make himself smile in her
face.
“You noticed that—his gentleman’s agreement with Le Sangre? I’ve made
him detest fighting with the idea that only brute beasts fight—men argue
and agree.”
“I’ve noticed that he never has trouble with the cow-punchers.”
“They’ve seen him box,” chuckled Elizabeth. “Besides, Terry isn’t the
sort that troublemakers like to pick on. He has an ugly look when he’s
angry.”
“H’m,” murmured Vance. “I’ve noticed that. But as long as he keeps to his
