Happy Jack E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

If you enjoy a fast moving western dealing with vengeance and well-deserved payback, you’ll like „Happy Jack” (1936) by Max Brand. One bullet was all it took to change Jack Anderson from a carefree boy into a hunted man. The plot is well constructed with well drawn subsidiary characters and provides a number of interesting twists and turns. The journey is the entertaining part. Highly recommended, especially for those who love the Old Western genre. No pulp writer was more prolific than Frederick Faust, who wrote nearly 15 million words under the pen name of Max Brand and seventeen others. He sold all his stories and sometimes wrote complete issues of Western Story Magazine.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER I

ON a hummock close to the corral fence stood “Happy Jack” Aberdeen. The sun shone in his young face–the last red of the dying sun.

“Here I stand on the top of the dog-gone world,” said Happy Jack. “Where’s the cowboy that’ll get me off?”

The cow-punchers lounged about in front of the bunk house, waiting for the supper gong to strike. The older men smoked on, indifferent to this crowing of youth; but the other youngsters pricked up their ears and began to measure him who stood on the top of the world, as he declared.

Professor Lang, looking out from the window of the living room in the ranch house, pointed toward Jack Aberdeen. He said to Marshall William Kinney, his host: “There’s a splendid young chap, Kinney. There’s a born athlete, I should say!”

The marshal leaned forward to look. He was a big man with a rugged face, and a rugged body, and great hands capable of holding whatever they seized upon. He had carved this ranch out of the wilderness and made it prosper; he had carved a grim fame for himself as a hunter of outlawed men; in his thirty-fifth year, he was already almost more legend than man.

“Him? He’s soft!” said the marshal. “Now, you watch what ‘Shorty’ does to him.”

Shorty, wide of shoulder and deep of chest, came from the steps of the bunk house with a waddling step; he was a bulldog of a man, with the face of a bulldog, also; he wore a faint grin of anticipation as he approached. He looked like a spirit of darkness, compared with the yellow-haired, blue-eyed boy on the mound.

“I’ll wager on the handsome chap,” said the professor.

“You will?” grunted the rancher. “Shorty’s got thirty pounds on him, I guess.”

“What’s poundage? What’s mere poundage?” said the professor. “It’s the mind that wins, I suppose.”

“Is it?” said the rancher, and he looked up at his guest with a faint grin, and noted the hollow chest and the narrow shoulders of the man of thought. “You’ll see,” said he.

“You’ve seen them tussle before?”

“Never. Don’t have to. Anybody oughta be able to pick the winner in that fight! Shorty’s bigger, older, harder, had more experience. When he puts a hand on the kid, Happy Jack will melt. You’ll see!”

“I doubt it,” said the professor. “There’s something magnificent about that young man.”

“He ain’t got any spark in him,” said the marshal.

“He may get one, however.”

“Look at that!”

Shorty had closed with Happy Jack with a bull-like rush. The struggle was swiftly ended. The very first assault thrust Happy Jack from the hummock, staggering. He came back with a leap, laughing, and instantly the two went down, rolled over and over, and came to a rest, with Shorty on top.

“Now you watch him quit!” said the marshal.

In fact, Happy Jack flattened out, and burst into the most cheerful laughter. Shorty arose with a grunt, as the supper gong rang, and gave Happy Jack a hand to lift him up.

“You see how it is,” said the marshal. “They don’t take Happy serious. Been of two minds about keepin’ him on, the last coupla months, he makes so many mistakes with the cows.”

“Does he?” said the professor. “And yet that’s a very intelligent face, Kinney.”

“Face?” asked the rancher. “I want a man with a pair of hands. I don’t care about his head, as long as he can listen to orders and remember ’em! Hands do the work, professor!”

The professor listened politely, looked off to the snows upon the distant summit, and shivered.

There was never a time in this country when he was not either too hot or too cold; above all, in the evening time, prying fingers of draft and cold reached for him and made him unhappy, and his face burned from the exposure of the day and made him drowsy and feverish. He had been sent out here to rest and lead the outdoor life; and an introduction from one friend to another, and then to another, had led him eventually to this ranch of Marshal Kinney’s. He had received here a careless, good-natured hospitality. He had been given horses to ride, a room to himself, and “ranch” food. He was beginning to shudder at the thought of that food–the endless procession of thin steaks, fried brown through and through and drenched in grease; of potatoes fried soggily also; of coffee that made the head swim; of half-baked bread. And now that the fall of the year was coming on, the house was always damp. The sheets into which he crawled at night were cold and clammy; he was glad that the next morning would see him off on the return journey.

He and the marshal sat in the private dining room. This was an innovation in his honor, and he knew that Kinney would much have preferred to sit at the head of the long table where his punchers ate their meals.

The Chinese waiter came running in haste to serve them, dealt out plates and cups and saucers with a huge rattling, and slopped a platter of steaks upon the center of the round table. The marshal proceeded with his meal with his usual haste, his head bowed low, to make the lifting of the hands almost unnecessary. That was another picture which the professor would be glad to get out of his mind!

But conversation began at once. The rancher had something important on his mind.

“Soft,” said he.

“You mean the potatoes?” asked the professor.

“I mean Happy Jack.”

“Nothing has happened to bring him out, perhaps,” said the professor.

“If a ranch don’t bring out a man, what will?” asked the marshal. “No, he’s soft. Look at the way that Shorty handled him!”

He broke off and added with a grin: “But he’s the richest one of the whole gang, just now.”

“Rich?”

“He’s got eighty dollars.”

The marshal laughed, and his grim face softened a little.

“Make you laugh to think of the way those bozos throw their money away,” he said. “Wind up at fifty where they started at fifteen.”

“But Happy has saved eighty dollars?”

“Sure. He had to. I’ll tell you how it came about. He ran into Charlie Lake one evening about six months ago. Charlie was drunk- -ever hear of Charlie Lake?”

“No. Is he a rancher?”

“Him? All that he raises is trouble, professor. That’s all! But the kid struck Charlie for a loan, and Charlie was drunk, as I was sayin’. He split what he had in his wallet. That was a hundred and sixty bucks. The kid got eighty and had a fine party. The next day, Charlie was sober. Somebody told him what he’d done, and he went on the kid’s trail. Would of ate him alive, I suppose, but some friends stopped him. The kid agreed to pay it back in six months. And Charlie’ll be over in the morning for his coin, I expect.”

“What if the boy didn’t have the money?”

“Why, I’d have to buy him a coffin, and then go and hunt down Charlie, I suppose,” said the marshal.

“I’ve been wondering, Kinney. Here’s a boy who’s soft, as you say. What would harden him?”

“Nerve is what he needs,” said the marshal.

“Is that the difference between these desperadoes and ordinary men?” asked the professor.

“Desperadoes? You been reading books,” said the marshal. “There ain’t any such things as desperadoes.”

“What about men that break out of prison, and wander for months, shooting down every one who tries to capture them–men whose weapons can’t miss? Aren’t they desperadoes?”

“Spent half my life trailin’ crooks,” said the marshal. “Never seen nothing such as you talk about. Sure they bust loose, once in a while, but they ain’t desperate. They’re ornery. And this dead-shot business, that’s nonsense!”

The professor pursed his lips and was again lost in thought. “When a man has his back to the wall–” he began.

“He generally gets knocked down,” said the rancher.

“And sometimes he suddenly begins to fight like a tiger,” finished the professor.

“Not if I once get my hands on him,” said the marshal. “If I get a grip, he melts, like the kid done, when Shorty laid hold on him!”

The professor looked at the steak plate, half empty now, and crusted at the edges with pale grease.

“Perhaps you’ve been fighting fire with fire and not knowing it,” said he. “Perhaps you’re a rather desperate man yourself, Kinney.”

Hearing this odd remark, Kinney stared at his guest with a good deal of amazement. Then he said:

“Look here, professor; you and me have got two kinds of eyes. You look at words and such stuff; I’m used to looking at cows and men. What you got on your mind, anyway?”

The professor smiled at him. The professor had lost a good deal of the dignity which he had brought with him from the East. He had lost his pallor, for one thing, his face being now all pink, except the nose, which was as red as the nose of a heavy drinker. He had discarded his glasses, too, for he did no reading, and, therefore, he did not really need them; but without the glasses the eyes which had appeared so penetrating and which had overawed classes of students, and even impudent reporters, now appeared dim, pale, blinking, as he searched his mind to find the secret from which his thoughts were springing. Now, therefore, he smiled at his impatient host, and blinked at him at the same time.

“You look like you were getting the range for a long-distance shot.”

“I am,” admitted the professor. “But my theory begins with the thought that all men are very much alike–have about the same powers, I should say–”

“If I can lift twelve hundred pounds–on the level and no faking,” said Kinney, with his sudden, rather savage grin, “how many pounds can your power lift, professor?”

“Perhaps a whole mountain,” said the professor. “Do you know how to move a mountain, Kinney?”

“Sure, buy blasting powder and bust the mountain to bits.”

“Can you make the powder?”

“No. I don’t have to.”

“You can’t make the powder. I can. If the two of us were left alone in the world, you would have to carry that mountain away in twelve-hundred-pound loads, and break your back doing it. I could make powder and smash it flat.”

Kinney laughed, but his laughter was short.

“I know the way that you folks figger things out,” he declared. “You’re always turning around the corner and coming out with a yip behind a man’s honest back.”

“I’m not dishonest,” said the professor. “I’m simply trying to make my point–that the powers of all men more or less equalize. What makes you a strong man is not that you can lift a few hundred pounds more than I can; because, on the other hand, you can not make powder, etcetera, as I can. I don’t even admit,” smiled the professor vaguely, “that you are stronger at all than I am. We each have our conceit. Yours has to do with horses, men, cows, land, and such things. Guns, too. Mine has to do with books. Let me put the matter in another way,” said he. “The component parts of gunpowder are not harmful. Charcoal, sulphur, saltpeter–there’s nothing in that, is there? Even when they’re mixed, they’re only potentially strong.”

“I follow the drift of that.”

“But drop a spark on the powder which you’ve ground up and mixed with your own hands, and what happens?”

“It blows you into kingdom come, of course.”

“Exactly. Drop a spark into it, and it blows you into kingdom come. Now, then, I want to spread out the comparison a little further. I said that all men were much alike. We all have the same appetites, the same emotions, the same tastes, in general.”

“Show me where I’m like a greaser, then?” asked the marshal aggressively.

“Like a greaser,” said the professor, “you are born and you have to die. You are hungry, cold, thirsty. You are happy, gay, charmed, melancholy, despairing. You respect strength, you worship courage.

“I say that all men are much alike. Now, take these various elements of human nature–these emotions, hopes, despairs, attractions, repulsions, and the rest. You change the man by changing the proportions and the manner in which they are mixed. Make Marshal Kinney a very jolly, cheerful man, and perhaps he would not be a rich rancher and a famous fighter, but simply a fat-and-lazy idler.

“But the element of grimness was added to the nature of Marshal Kinney. How? By some set of circumstances, or by the simplest incident. The spark was dropped into him, and he exploded. The world rings with the report.”

The rancher said slowly: “You mean that everybody’s about the same, until he’s given the kick?”

“I mean that, I suppose. It’s not the same impulse that achieves the same result with every man. Put the whip on two slaves and one of them tries to cut your throat and the other weeps. But you never can tell. Whip the fierce one the second time and his spirit may be broken; and whip the submissive one the second time, and he may gain the energy of despair.”

“Humph!” said the rancher. “I don’t see where all of this is driving, professor.”

“I can’t help thinking,” said the professor, “about that magnificent young chap we saw wrestling before supper.”

“Magnificent? You mean Shorty. Yes, he’s got a pair of shoulders on him, and a good grip, too, though it ain’t as good as some I could tell you about.”

He flexed his own fingers and nodded quietly. The man was literally full of combat.

“I didn’t mean Shorty,” said the professor. “I mean Happy Jack, if that’s his nickname.”

“Him? The skinny kid?” The marshal snorted his disgust.

“Not skinny. Not a heavyweight, either. But there’s a touch of quality about him.”

“There ain’t two men on the whole place that kid could lick,” said the marshal.

“Because he’s never been developed. He never has had the spark dropped on the powder,” said the professor.

“He’d never explode.”

“I think he would,” said the professor, “one of these days, something may happen, and when he’s cornered–”

“You seen what happened when Shorty cornered him. He just laid down and died. He quit. He ain’t got the spunk!”

“There wasn’t any necessity,” said the professor.

“He was fightin’, wasn’t he?”

“They were only exercising. There was no fight about that.”

The marshal turned a dark red. “I’d be danged before I’d lie still when I was put on my back,” said he. “I’d be danged before I’d quit cold.”

The professor shrugged. “However,” said he, “I’ll cling to my theory. What a man won’t do for the sake of winning a wrestling bout, he’d do for the sake of his life, say?”

The marshal put back his head and laughed scornfully.

“You got a lot of funny ideas in your head,” said he. “Sparks- -men that are powder magazines–desperadoes–”

“A desperado,” said the professor, “is a man who has offered himself to death. He despairs of life. Therefore, he salts and savors every remaining day of his existence with the taste of death. He is not crushed by the hostility of the world, but is fortified, strengthened, increased by it. Put the proper pressure on this fellow, and by heaven, Kinney, he might be a desperado himself!”

“The kid?”

“Yes.”

“You mean that skinny young loon, that softhead, Happy Jack Aberdeen?”

This continued running down of his hero made the professor so angry that he answered coldly:

“I could even conceive, marshal, that this same slender youngster might be able to stand face to face with you.”

Kinney flushed again, a richer, brighter crimson. He was one of those men who are maddened by the least suggestion of a physical challenge, and he said now:

“I’ll tell you what–he won’t have to tackle me. I’ll give him something easier. I’ll turn loose Charlie Lake on him. You want to see him cornered and the spark dropped on him? I’ll drop a spark. I’ll take his eighty dollars out of his blanket roll, and then let him stand up to Charlie Lake.”

“Kinney,” said the professor, “of course you realize that I’m only theorizing–a harmless diversion, surely. You wouldn’t actually make–”

The marshal dropped his fist upon the table, and it shuddered with the impact. “There’s too dang much theorizing, among some of you gents,” said he. “And I’m gunna bring this here case down to the facts.”

“Great Scott,” said the professor, his voice made quiet with horror. “Do you realize that you may cause a fight and then–“

“Fight? The kid’ll run a thousand miles if Charlie Lake frowns at him!”

CHAPTER II

THERE is a power in names, and the nickname which is bestowed by chance may become true out of its own strength of suggestion. Many a man has become indolent because some careless observer called him “lazy,” and many a cheerful man has grown dark because he was termed “gloomy.” But Happy Jack Aberdeen needed no nickname to make him merry. He could not be downhearted. His life of hard labor and small pay made no impression upon his mind. He lived like a bird in a tree, from day to day, never thinking of the future, never thinking of yesterday.

This is the sort of companion that most men love to have about them, and, therefore, Happy Jack never lacked for friends. He did not need to have money in order to enjoy a trip to town, for there were always companies which were glad to include him at their own expense.

Such men always have little incidental accomplishments, and Happy Jack had them, too. In a small way, he was a juggler. He could snatch four or five fragile teacups from a table and spin them in the air like lightning. Or he could make objects of strange sizes disappear from the midst of the air, and pluck them again from the hair, or the ear, or even the mouth of a friend. The clever Happy Jack was a musician, also.

He carried about with him a guitar. He could play and sing Negro songs, and Mexican wailing ballads, and galloping cowboy songs, and even a few Italian airs. If there were a violin at hand, he could play dance music on it. He could whistle with real skill, and sometimes it seemed that a blackbird had risen literally from the floor of the bunk house, and again that a meadow lark was showering her notes over a fresh green April field.

This, even, was not the end of his talents.

He could put down with the pencil all the sights that his eyes had fallen upon, and many and many an evening the men crowded about him and stared bewildered, delighted, over his shoulder as he scratched his pictures upon rough sheets of brown wrapping paper.

It was no wonder that he was admired. More than that, he was almost loved.

Almost, because there was something careless, indifferent, birdlike, about him in his way of living. He could not stay on a job more than a few months. Then he drifted off like a true migratory creature.

In the winter he winged his way south; in the summer he traveled north. In the spring he sought the happiest valleys, in the autumn the richest orchard lands. He was a taster of life, a connoisseur who gave to everything no more than enough to enjoy it. He was of all creatures the laziest, the idlest, the most capable of lying in the sun and forgetting that the night might be cold or the sky might presently let down chill showers.

This very quality endeared him to the wandering, semi-vagrant men of the cattle range. But, at the same time, they could not form any strong bonds with him. He gave to every man his hand and his smile, but he gave to no man his inmost soul, and that is what is wanted by your Westerner before he is willing to call you “friend.”

These qualities in Happy Jack which made him welcome wherever he went, which made men smile the instant that he entered a room and made them keep him almost by force when he wanted to leave, were also the qualities which fenced him away from all friendships.

He was aware of the fact that he was skimming the mere surface of life; but he had not, as yet, seen anything about it that demanded a more profound attention. He never had been greatly stirred. He had never seen a man or a woman whom he cared to remember from one year’s end to the other.

He sat up late this night describing an adventure he had had during the day with an old cow, bogged down at the side of a tank; and he brought yells of laughter from the punchers as he produced on great scraps of stout paper life-size caricatures of the expression of the poor beast when he was tailing her up, and finally her wild charge when she found herself free to turn upon her tormenter.

These things delighted his audience, and it was late when the foreman showed his grim face inside the door.

“You waddies, you think to-morrow’s Sunday?”

They groaned, but they turned in at once. Happy Jack turned in, also. He reached under his pillow, made sure that his wallet was there, and pinched fondly the fatness of it. Then his eyes closed. And he was instantly asleep.

The morning came before his eyes had been well closed, as it seemed to him. He was the last out, the last at breakfast; he lingered the longest over his food because, of course, he was a favorite with the cook; and he was the last man to finish his cigarette; the last man to catch his horse in the corral; the last to saddle, the last to ride out, trailing far behind the others.

The foreman came back to him, and cursed.

“You gotta wake up, Jack. The boss has his eye on you. He don’t like the way that you’re carrying on.”

“Don’t he?” said Happy Jack.

And he shrugged. Instantly his mind wandered south. It was almost time for him to begin his migration in pursuit of the sun!

However, he went through his morning’s duties with as much care as usual, which was not much, and he came back with the rest of the punchers for lunch.

There he saw a figure which he had been expecting, the sour face and the brutal little pig eyes of Charlie Lake. Charlie had come for his money.

He stood up. There was nothing distinguished about Charlie except his brutality. It appeared in his face, in his gait, in his manner. It appeared in his crimes, also. He was accepted by the incoming punchers with careless nods and a few muttered words. It was dangerous to be rude to this brute. It was also unpleasant to be cordial to him, and, therefore, he was strictly avoided.

When young Jack Aberdeen came in, Charlie Lake raised his left hand and crooked the forefinger significantly. It was an insult to be hailed in such a silent, contemptuous manner, but the boy was not burdened with foolish pride. No man ever had done him physical harm, and it never entered into his mind that any man ever would. And if, now and again, a bully rose to threaten him, he could afford to sit back and shrug his shoulders, because others were always ready to fight his battles for him.

In one word, Happy Jack was a spoiled child, and with the assurance of a spoiled child, he approached the man of guns and hailed him.

Charlie Lake looked him over with an air of gloomy disgust. He said at last: “You know why I’m here?”

“I dunno,” said Happy Jack. “Likely that you’re over here for the mornin’ air, or else, that you wanted to try out the cookin’ here, which after all, it ain’t as prime as some that I’ve ate after.”

“You think that I come for that?” said Charlie Lake, his eyes flashing.

“Why, I don’t know,” said Happy Jack, and he smiled around at the others. “What else would bring you here?” Jack Aberdeen could notice a difference when he looked around at his bunkies. They did not respond in the manner which he was accustomed to see, but every man hastily looked elsewhere, and seemed suddenly occupied. It was as though they did not know that Charlie Lake had ridden in. One was busy at the wash pan; another was pumping up a bucket of water, and another was splicing a broken bridle.

Such business was not their way at noon.

And suddenly Happy Jack was mystified. It was as though these punchers who had been so friendly now had lost all care about him. He was puzzled and worried by this change.

“I’ll tell you what brought me here, kid,” said Charlie Lake. “I come here for eighty dollars of my money that you sneaked out of my pocket six months ago. Now hand it over!”

His nostrils flared and his eyes gleamed as he spoke. Plainly he did not expect the money, and plainly he would take compensation of another sort.

“Wait two seconds,” said the boy, “and I’ll pay you in full, old-timer!”

As the boy disappeared into the bunk house, Charlie demanded: “What’s the kid been doing? Having a lucky turn at poker?”

No one answered.

Suddenly, Charlie pitched from the box he was sitting on to his feet. His voice rose into a squeak, like the voice of a bull terrier.

“Look here, dang you all, did I ask a question? Do I get an answer?”

One or two ugly words were covertly exchanged by the punchers, but nothing was answered except by the foreman, who made a dry face and then said:

“The kid never wins at cards. He’s been saving to pay you off.”

“I never heard of a puncher that saved eighty dollars,” said Charlie Lake. “He’s a crook. He’s picked somebody’s pocket, the way that he picked mine.”

Happy Jack came sauntering from the bunk house door, the wallet in his hand.

“Here you are, Charlie,” said he. “Take a look at it and count it, will you?”

“Aye. I’ll take a look at it, and I’ll count it, too. Most likely it’s queer.”

Happy Jack laughed. “There’s a gent with a sore head,” said he.

“Who’s got a sore head?” snapped Charlie Lake fiercely.

“Aw, quit it,” said the good-natured boy. “Nobody’s stepping on your toes as hard as that, I guess.”

Charlie Lake opened the wallet, and took from it–a thin sheaf of newspaper clippings! He looked up at the face of the boy, which had gone blank indeed.

“Is this my pay?” said he slowly, drawing in his breath in a strange way as he spoke.

“Why–somebody’s done a switch on me,” said the boy. “Somebody’s–somebody’s–why–”

“Is this my pay?” repeated Charlie Lake.

Happy Jack could say nothing.

“Then here’s the first part of my receipt,” said Charlie Lake, and lurching forward, he drove a smashing blow against the face of Aberdeen with disastrous effect.

Happy Jack went down as though he had been clubbed. The violence of the blow rolled him over, stunned, and he could hardly have regained his feet at once if a violent kick from Charlie Lake had not helped him.

He stood up, staggering. Red was running down his face. It entered his gaping mouth, and the taste of it was salt.

“I’m gunna beat you to a pulp,” announced Charlie Lake, his fists gripped. “After that, I’m gunna skin you, you sneakin’ crook!”

The boy turned his head toward the others.

But these fair-weather friends remained stationary.

Many a time before he had been rescued from some ruffian, but those were men of fisticuffs alone, and Charlie Lake was a two- gun man. Those guns hung low down on his thighs, easily in gripping range of his fingers, and he might meet intervention of any sort with bullets.

So, suddenly, the boy realized that he was alone. Lake rushed again. Instinctively, the boy stepped aside, and the bull fury of Lake carried him past. He recovered, whirled, and struck again, not a blind and clumsy swing, but a pile-driver straight-arm punch, aimed at the chin of the youngster.

Happy Jack ducked, and the next instant his chest struck the chest of Lake, he was in the mighty arms of the gunman.

“I’ll paint your pretty face for you,” said Charlie Lake, laughing horribly. “I’ll make you a new face, by gravy!”

With one hand, he held the boy. The other hand he raised, like a battering club.

And Happy Jack reached up and caught that poised destruction. By the wrist he gripped “Gunman Charlie,” and as he caught hold of the man, from the touch a new power ran down into his body, into his heart.

Every muscle in his frame leaped. And every nerve burned, and his mind cleared suddenly, as though a film had been snatched away from before his eyes.

It was not only that he could see clearly, but he could see with wonderful speed, and in a single glance he could behold the faces of all the men around him, and the blue of the sky, and the white puff of cloud which was drifting up above the corner of the bunk house roof; and the trail of smoke that sagged from the top of the cook’s chimney; and the mist of dust which hung over the milling horses in the corral, where a wild mustang was careening.

He saw these things, and, furthermore, he saw the face of Charlie Lake, turned to a fierce bewilderment.

The hand of Charlie, tugged and twisted and writhed in vain, but it could not escape. It was as though an electric current flowed up through the fingers of Happy Jack, and held the wrist of Charlie as a magnetic current sticks to iron.

“Why, dang you–” gasped Charlie.

And the boy knew that the monster had shriveled, and had become less, and that the power of Charlie Lake was as nothing, compared with his.

It gave him, also, a peculiar contempt for the man, as well as a wonder at the miracle which had been performed in his own being. He cast Charlie Lake from him, and the gunman went backward a staggering step or two.

“You–” shouted Lake. And then a gun winked into his hand, like a gleaming sickle of silver. The boy stepped in, and he struck, not over-hard, upon the snarling mouth of the gun fighter. Charlie Lake pitched backward and rolled in the dust. His gun exploded; the sense of smoke was in the nostrils of the boy, and the gun was at his feet.

He picked it up and saw Charlie coming to his knees, tugging at his second weapon.

“You jackass,” said the boy calmly, “drop that gun or I’ll kill you!”

A curse barked on the lips of Lake as the second gun jumped from its holsters, and all of this young Happy Jack Aberdeen saw and waited upon before he moved in answer; for there was no slightest doubt in his mind that he could be first with his bullet, and that that bullet could strike where he wanted it to strike.

He could drive the slug through the right shoulder of this ravening being and so cripple him now and forever, or he could crush in the forehead of the man with a slug.

Only one instant he hesitated, and then he chose to kill.

He fired. The head of Charlie Lake jerked back, as though he had been tugged suddenly by the hair from behind.

Then he sank upon his side and lay still. The mark was there in the center of the forehead, and the boy leaned over and looked quietly, to make sure. He had not missed.

Every horrible detail of that event he looked down quietly upon; even upon the bubbles which formed slowly on the lips of the dead man, and then burst and left the face blackened with the dust.

He looked around him at the circle of frozen faces, for something told him that another man might challenge him.

More, much more than that, something shouted aloud in him with a vast hunger to be satisfied, which could only be contented by more slaughter. It was not, he suddenly knew, that he dreaded lest another should champion the cause of the dead man, but an actual craving that such intervention should be attempted.