Men Beyond the Law E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

All day the storm had been gathering behind Chimney Mountain and peering around the edges of that giant with a scowling brow, now and again; and all day there had been strainings of the wind and sounds of dim confusion in the upper air, but not until the evening did the storm break. A broad, yellow-cheeked moon was sailing up the eastern sky when ten thousand wild horses of darkness rushed out from behind Mount Chimney and covered the sky with darkness. Dashes and scatterings of rain and hail began to clang on the tin roofs in the valley, and the wind kept up a continual insane whining, now and then leaping against window or door and shaking them in an impatient frenzy.

Leseprobe

MAX

BRAND

Men Beyond the Law

1921

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383837541

WEREWOLF

In the mid 1920s Faust both consulted with C. G. Jung and entered analysis with H. G. Baynes, a Jungian analyst in London. This proved to have an effect on the preoccupations of his Western stories as is quite apparent in “Werewolf” which first appeared in Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine (12/18/26) under the Max Brand byline. Christopher Royal finds that he has become a wanderer, a searcher, and it is in the deep fastnesses of the wilderness through the medium of an ancient Indian that he is confronted with the terrors of his own soul and the meaning of his life. He has found love, as deep and abiding as it is ever given to human beings to know, but it is lost to him until his own spiritual odyssey has completed its course, until he has had his spirit vision, confronted the terrifying shadow within, with only the mournful howl of an ancient werewolf to accompany him on this lonely, and terrible, and anguished journey.

I “THE NEW COMER”

All day the storm had been gathering behind Chimney Mountain and peering around the edges of that giant with a scowling brow, now and again; and all day there had been strainings of the wind and sounds of dim confusion in the upper air, but not until the evening did the storm break. A broad, yellow-cheeked moon was sailing up the eastern sky when ten thousand wild horses of darkness rushed out from behind Mount Chimney and covered the sky with darkness. Dashes and scatterings of rain and hail began to clang on the tin roofs in the valley, and the wind kept up a continual insane whining, now and then leaping against window or door and shaking them in an impatient frenzy.

On such a night as this, few men got as far as Yates’s Saloon beyond the outskirts of the town of Royal, but nevertheless he was always glad to have this weather, for those who did come stayed long and opened their purses with as much freedom as though the morrow was to be doomsday, and as though their souls needed much warming with honest rye whiskey against that great event.

Mr. Yates had two rooms. The bar was in one, with a round iron stove at one end where the guests might warm themselves and a row of chairs against the walls, for one of the maxims of Yates had to do with the evils of drinking—while standing.

He was engaged in giving good advice at this moment to a youth who rested one elbow on the edge of the bar and poised the other fist upon his hip—a tall, strong, fierce young man who smiled down at the saloon keeper partly in contempt for the advice and partly in mild recognition of the privilege of white hairs.

“You give me another slug of the red-eye, old boy,” said the cowpuncher.

Mr. Yates filled the glass with an unwilling shake of the head. As he pushed it back across the bar and gathered in the fifty-cent piece he said gloomily: “You can’t hurry liquor, son. Whiskey is something that can’t be rushed. You got to go slow and easy, let it mellow you, treat it with caution . . . and then whiskey will stand your friend.”

“All right,” said the cowpuncher, tossing off the drink and shoving back the glass. “Never mind the change. Gimme another, will you . . . and then you can talk some more.”

Mr. Yates came to a pause.

“I dunno that I ought to let you drink another so quick,” he said.

“You dunno?” said the young men. “I know, though. Fill up that glass!”

There were five men in the barroom, their chairs tilted against the wall, and now five chairs swung softly forward, and five heads were raised.

“I tell you, lad,” explained the saloon keeper, “that the whiskey which will be a friend to the wise man can turn into a devil if it’s treated carelessly. You can’t crowd it into a corner. You can’t treat it like a slave!”

“What’ll it do?” asked the boy. And stretching out his arm with a movement of snaky speed, he wrenched the bottle from the hands of the saloon keeper, and filled his glass with such a careless violence that an extra quantity spilled upon the well-rubbed varnish of the bar.

“What’s this stuff going to do to me?”

Mr. Yates did not attempt to protest against the act of violence. But a dark flush spread over his face and he said solemnly: “It’ll take you by the throat and strangle you. It’ll send a bullet into your back. It’ll throw you under the feet of a mad horse. Or it’ll kill you with the horrors, if it feels like it!”

The youngster tossed off his liquor again, coughed, and then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” he said, “and I don’t know that I give a damn! Is there any writing paper in that other room?”

There was still more contention upon the tip of the tongue of Yates, but he controlled himself with an effort, for words flow more willingly from the lips of an old man than water from a rich spring. He merely said: “There’s always paper there, and welcome!”

There was no answer to this courtesy. The cowboy turned from the bar and kicked open the door. His chair screeched as he drew it up to a table, and after that there was silence from the second room, and silence at the bar, also. The five farmers and cow hands smoked their pipes or cigarettes and watched the thoughtful cloud upon the brow of their host.

“And who is he?” asked one at length.

“Him? Didn’t you have a fair look at him?”

“It’s Cliff Main,” said another. “I knew him over in the Ridoso Valley a few years back, and I’m sure it’s him.”

“Yes,” nodded Yates, “it’s the same man.”

But one of the others said suddenly: “Why, partner, that’s the name of Harry Main’s brother!”

Again the saloon keeper nodded.

“It’s him,” he confessed.

This was followed by a deeper and longer silence, and more than one apprehensive glance was cast at the door of the second room. A weather-beaten farm hand approached the bar and leaned against it.

“Tell me,” he murmured, “is he like Harry?” And he hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

“You can see for yourself,” said Yates solemnly. But he added, forced on by a keen sense of fairness: “No, he ain’t a killer, you might say. He’s gone straight enough. But still he ain’t any lamb!”

The farmer shuddered a little. “What’s his game here?” he asked.

“It’s that girl up the valley . . . her that young Royal is after.”

“Which Royal?”

“I mean Christopher.”

“It’s the Lassiter girl that Chris Royal goes with, ain’t it?”

“That’s the one. They say that Main seen her at a dance down in Phoenix last year, and it addled his head a good deal. So I guess that’s why he’s here.”

“That would be a thing!” said the farmer. “A Lassiter to look at a Main, eh?”

“Well, I’ve seen stranger things happen,” said Yates. “A pretty girl takes to a strong man, and a strong man takes to a pretty girl. Goodness and badness ain’t considered much, and neither is the poor old family tree. But that ain’t the point. Georgie Lassiter, she’s got one strong man already, and that had ought to be enough! I guess that no woman can ask for more than a Royal, eh?” He leaned on the edge of the bar. “I guess that no woman could ask for more than that,” he echoed himself, and he shook his head slowly from side to side and laughed softly.

The others nodded in understanding, as though they were all familiar with the qualities of the family which had given its name to the valley and to the town.

In the meantime the storm had been rising and quickening like the pulse of a sick man’s heart, and now the wind broke with hysterical wailing around the saloon. The windows and the doors rattled furiously. The very roofs seemed about to be unsettled, and a contrary gust came down the chimney and knocked a puff of smoke through every crack of the stove.

“What a night!” breathed Yates.

“I’ll take another whiskey!” said one.

“And me!” said another. “We’ll set ’em up all around. I say that I don’t mind a night like this when you can sit warm around a fire with something to keep your heart up. But I could tell you about a night that was a twin brother to this, except that it was in February with ice in the wind. I was back up in Montana, that winter, riding range for the. . . .”

The door quivered and then jerked open, and the wind, like an entering flood of water, made every man cringe in his place. With that burst of the storm came a big young man who thrust the door shut behind him with a strong hand and then leaned against the bar, stamping the water out of his soaked riding boots and shaking the rain out of his hat. He was neither beaten nor even embittered by the force of the wind and the rain. It had merely brought a rosy glow into his face and dimmed the brightness of his eyes a bit with moisture.

“Well, Chris Royal,” said the bar keeper. “What’re you having?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m bound home, you see, and Mother doesn’t like me to have liquor on my breath. I stopped and put my mare in your shed for a feed and a bit of rest. She was fagged by bucking this wind all the way up the valley.”

He broke off to speak to the other men in the room and, as he completed that little ceremony and had asked after their welfare, you might have put him down as the son of a great landed proprietor on whose estates all of these men were living, so that their welfare in a way was his. However, that was not the case, even though the Royals had been so long in the valley, had given it its name, and had dominated all affairs in it that they were placed in a truly patriarchal position. There were no political parties in Royal County or in Royal Valley, for instance. There were only the Royal partisans and their opponents. And the opponents were sure to be merely a scattering and spiteful handful. In other ways, too, the family dominated the region.

“It’s a sort of queer name . . . Royal,” someone had said to a man from the valley, and the answer had been instant: “That’s because you ain’t seen them. They’re all fit to be kings!”

“But look here, Christopher,” said Yates. “D’you know that, if you don’t drink, you’re missing one of the best things in life?”

“I take a drink now and then,” said Christopher. “I like it as well as most, I suppose. But it bothers Mother to have me do it. So I don’t when I’m going toward her, you see.”

“Ah, well,” said Mr. Yates, holding up a bottle toward the light, “here’s something twenty-five years old that I was going to offer you a sip of, but heaven knows that I’d make trouble between no boy and his mother. She’s a grand lady, Christopher, and amazing how well she carries her years, ain’t it?”

“Years?” said Christopher. “Years?”

“Well, she’s getting on, ain’t she?”

Christopher Royal looked rather blankly at his host. “I never thought of that,” he said. “She isn’t really old, you know.”

“No, not old! Not old!” said Yates, smiling. “But when we have white hair. . . .”

“Her silver hair,” said Christopher, “is beautiful. It’s always been silver, you know. As far as I can remember.”

“I can remember farther back than that, though,” smiled the saloon keeper. “I can remember when she first came to Royal Valley. It was a dark, mean day, and she come in a covered carriage, all made snug. But I had a glimpse of her through the carriage window and saw her face all pink and white and her yellow hair like a pool of sunshine in the shadows of the carriage.”

Christopher shook his head. “I can hardly think that my mother was ever like that,” he said, smiling in rather a bewildered way. “But you mustn’t call her old!”

“Why, Chris, at sixty you can’t exactly call her young, can you?”

“Sixty?” exclaimed Christopher. He began to think back. “I’m twenty-five. Duncan is twenty-eight. Peter is thirty. Edgerton is thirty-one. Samson is thirty-five. By heavens, you’re right, and she’s sixty years old. I should never have guessed that. One doesn’t connect years and time with her.” He added with a smile to Yates: “And you’re one of the unchangeables, too. You’ve never been any different, have you? Not in my lifetime!”

“Well, lad, well!” smiled Yates, “I do well enough. I just shrink and shrivel a bit as time goes on. I get a little whiter and a little drier, and there’s less hair for me to bother about combing, from year to year. But I don’t change much. Neither does the old place.”

“You’ve put a new wing on the shed, though.”

“You noticed that, eh?”

“Yes. Who did you have do the work?”

“I had the slaves of Adam,” said Mr. Yates, and he held out his two hands with a chuckle.

“You did it all yourself?” Christopher whistled. “You’re a rare old one. If there were more like you, there’d be no room for the youngsters in the world. You’d take our work away from us.”

A door crashed just behind him.

“Are you Chris Royal?” asked a voice, and he turned about and looked into the dark eyes of Cliff Main.

“I’m Christopher Royal,” he admitted.

The other stepped up and faced him at the bar.

“I started to find you today,” he said. “Then the rain dropped on me and I put in here. I want to have a talk with you, Royal.”

“A talk? Where?”

“Well, there’s an empty room back here. We might go there.”

II “THE LOCKED ROOM”

Christopher regarded the newcomer rather dubiously for a moment, but then he nodded and followed him into the other apartment. The door closed behind Main, and the lock grated as it was turned.

“Hello!” said the saloon keeper, starting around from behind the bar. “I don’t like that!”

“What’re you going to do, Yates?” asked one of the farm hands, catching his sleeve as he passed.

“I’m going to have that door open.”

“Now, don’t you do it. You know Main. Don’t take more’n a little thing like that to send Harry Main crazy. And his brother looks like the same kind of gunpowder.”

Yates paused, biting his lip with anxiety.

“Besides, there ain’t gunna be no trouble,” said one of the others. “It ain’t as though Duncan or Edgerton or Samson Royal was in there. Christopher, he’s softer than the rest. He’s easier and quieter. He’s more like a girl, you’d say, compared to his older brothers. He can get on with anybody. I never heard of Chris having an enemy.”

“And that’s all gospel,” said Yates, going back behind the bar. But he paused, now and again, and shook his head. “I don’t like that locked door,” he sighed. “I remember once that me and my wife had a bad quarrel. And it started with me locking the door. . . .” He broke off with a laugh. “And when I wanted to open that door, I’d lost the key!”

There was general mirth at this, until a sudden uproar of the wind and its loud whistling beneath the door caused the human voices to fall away. The wind itself dropped to a murmur shortly afterward, and everyone in the barroom could hear the voice of Christopher Royal, saying sharply: “I tell you, man, that I don’t want any trouble with you! I swear that I’ve never done you any harm!”

The wind began again, and all the six in the barroom looked mutely at one another, with great eyes.

“It’s the whiskey,” said Yates suddenly. “I might of knowed it. I told him when he was pouring it down that way. I’ve seen it happen before. And I tell you that door’ll never be unlocked until there’s been hell to pay inside!”

He rushed out from behind the bar and tore at the knob.

“Open the door!” he yelled.

There was a sudden sound of thunderous scuffling within, and then a heavy body crashed against the door. Yates, terribly frightened, shrank away.

“Why don’t you do something?” he wailed. “Ain’t they in there killing each other? Ain’t there five of you, big and strong and young, to stop ’em? Why do you stay here with your hands hangin’?”

They looked at one another, these five. Surely they were as strong and as brave as most men, but the sound and the thought of the battle which was raging beyond that door baffled and overawed them. They could not move to help. Perhaps in another instant they would have recovered their courage and been able to act, but the whole duration of the scuffle within the other room lasted only a single moment. It ended with the sound of a revolver shot. Then the key grated in the lock. “May heaven forgive me,” said old Yates, “but I’m gunna die with poor young Chris or revenge him!” He picked up a shotgun from behind the bar and laid it level with the opening door, his old face white and tense with savage energy.

The door swung wide—and Christopher Royal stepped out, while a gasp of wonder and relief came from the others in the place. For their sense of suspense had been as great as if they had been forced to stand by while a man was caged with a tiger. And now the man came forth alive.

In the hand of Christopher there was hanging a big Colt with a thin wisp of smoke still clinging to its muzzle like a ghost.

“He’s dead, I think,” said Christopher, and he leaned against the bar. “I wish that some of you would go and see.”

They poured into the writing room. It was half a wreck. One could see that two very strong men had wrestled here, and whatever they touched had given way. Cliff Main lay in the corner on his back with a smudge of blood across his face. There was no reason for a second glance. He had been shot fairly through the brain.

When they came back into the barroom, Yates hastily filled a glass with whiskey and in silence placed it beside the youngster. He gripped it eagerly—and then pushed it away. “She wouldn’t like it,” he explained. He raised his head and, seeming to discover the gun in his hand, or to remember it for the first time, he threw it on the bar and shuddered violently. He was very white, with a look of sickness in his face, but he was extremely steady and quiet. He said: “Is your telephone working in spite of the storm, Yates?”

“It’s working, Chris.”

“Then I want you to ring up the sheriff and tell him what’s happened out here.”

“I’ll do that.”

“There’s nothing to be done for . . . him, I suppose?”

“For Main? No, he’s dead, Chris.”

“I thought so. But what did you say the name was?”

“Cliff Main . . . Harry Main’s brother.”

“Harry Main’s brother!”

He took the glass of whiskey which was standing on the bar. He tossed it off, and then without another word he strode away into the night.

“Look at him,” said Yates, addressing the door through which his guest had just disappeared. “Look at him. And you call him soft. I tell you, even Harry Main wouldn’t get any better than his brother, if he should come along to even things up. There’s something in the Royal blood, and it can’t be beat, and it can’t be downed. Did you notice him when he came out from that room? Sick looking, because it had been a dirty job and a dirty sight at the finish. But like a rock, eh?” He rubbed his hands together. “As for the killing of Cliff Main,” he added with a sudden sternness, “you was all here to witness how Main carried on from first to last, wasn’t you?”

“We seen it all,” said one of the farmers. “They’ll never lay a hand on Chris for this. It’s only Harry Main that he’s got to think about! And I thank heaven that I ain’t in Chris’s boots!”

III “DARK THOUGHTS”

The wind had changed so that, as Christopher Royal rode up the valley, the rain was volleyed at him from the side, stinging his face until he was forced to cant his head against it. It was an automatic movement. The howling of the wind and crashing of the rain which had seemed terrible enough to him before were now as nothing, for there was a war in his spirit which quite overwhelmed all mere disturbances of nature.

He had killed a man! To Christopher the miracle was that in the crisis, when his back was against the wall, his skill with a gun, built up by many a long year of practice, by many a strenuous hunting season, had not deserted him. When the need came, mechanically the weapon had glided into his hand, and he had shot swift and true, so swiftly and truly, indeed, that Cliff Main had not been able to complete his own draw before the pellet of lead had crashed through his brain.

But suppose that he had known that the name of the man was Main? Suppose that he had known that this was none other than a brother to the famous fighting man, Harry Main? What then?

It made convulsive shudders run through Christopher’s body, and in the blackness of the night with the rush of the storm about him he told himself again the secret that no one other than the Almighty and his own soul had ever been cognizant of before: he was a coward!

How, then, could he have come to the age of twenty-five years without having that weakness publicly exposed by the rough men of Royal Valley, where he had spent his life? The answer was simply that his family were all above the shadow of reproach. They had filled the mountains with their deeds for many a year, and this present brood seemed to have improved upon the old stock rather than fallen away from the good tradition. If there were a riding or a hunting or a shooting contest, one could be sure that one of the Royals would be the winner. And when it came to fighting—why, who was apt to forget that the scars on the face of Samson Royal had been received in hand-to-hand battle with a grizzly? And who could fail to know that Edgerton Royal had ridden single-handed into Pinkneyville, when he was deputy sheriff, and come out again herding two prisoners before him—prisoners he had taken away from beneath the eyes of a hundred of their friends? As for Peter Royal, he had proved that he was worthy of spurs on that dire night when the three Mexicans cornered him, and only a year before Duncan Royal had shot out an argument with two men on the Chimney Trail.

So they were all proven, and there had remained only the youngest of the brood, Christopher, to make his name. Yet it had hardly needed making. Men took it for granted that one Royal was about as good as another. There might be little differences, but the world generally agreed that all were lions—pick which you would!

For one thing they all looked alike. That is to say, the smallest of them all, Samson, was a full two inches above six feet, and the tallest of them, Duncan, towered a palm’s breadth above his older brother. They had all the same sort of shoulders, filling a door as they went through it. And concerning their might of hand, wonderful and beautiful fables filled the land. How Samson had twisted the iron bar in the blacksmith shop in Royal Town—behold, it still hangs against the wall as proof! And how Edgerton could take two packs of playing cards and tear them across. And how Christopher himself had lifted the entire bulk of a horse!

Such stories filled the mountains with echoes. Since not one of the band had ever been found weak in any manner of physical or nervous test, it was taken for granted that all were of the same true, pure steel. But one person in all the world knew the facts. He knew that Duncan and Edgerton and Samson and Peter were all undoubted heroes with hearts even stronger than their hands. But he knew also that there was one fatally weak link in the chain of brotherhood. That was himself. For Christopher during years and years had felt a weakness in his spirit, and he had waited for the dreaded moment when he should be tested. Or could it be that the family name and fame would shield him effectually all his life?

In his school days he had not so much as guessed it. No matter how mighty had been the tradition that his brothers had left behind them in the little white schoolhouse by the river, he had not been overawed. The height of Duncan’s jump, and the width of Peter’s leap, and the speed of Samson on foot, and the weight of Edgerton’s fist had all become proverbial in the school. But young Christopher bided his time and surpassed them, one by one. He was just as strong as they, and in addition he was a little more supple, a little more graceful, a little more brilliantly swift and sure of hand. And other graces had been lavished upon him, as though Nature, who had framed his brothers on so magnificent a scale, had been merely practicing for the moment when she was to create Christopher. So she had made the others big and glorious, but she gave to Christopher the gift of beauty, also. The others were dark. She made him fair. There was a touch of gloom about the others, as there is apt to be with big men, but Christopher she made joyous from the beginning. Altogether, if the citizens of Royal Valley had been asked to select one of the family as the representative of all that was best and finest in them, they would have picked Christopher with almost one voice. There were a few, of course, who were not impressed by his gentleness.

But in this lavishness of hers, Nature had forgotten the prime and essential gift. She had left out the vital spark of courage. And though no man knew it except Christopher himself, he had passed through many a dreadful moment when he stood face to face with his secret.

Now the very secrecy that enveloped the fault was threatened. For, as certainly as lightning strikes, Harry Main was sure to come to avenge the death of his brother. And when Harry Main came, what would Christopher do?

In his desperation he vowed that he would go out to meet the destroyer and in some hidden place, with no man to see, he would fight and die. Yet, in his heart of hearts he constantly knew that he would not be able to meet the great test. When Harry Main approached the valley, Christopher would slink away—and never again dare to show his face among his kin. Somewhere far off he would have to find a new place in the world, a new name, and there live out his wretched destiny.

And when he thought of these things, it was typical of Christopher that he did not think of the faces of his four strong brothers, hard with scorn and contempt, but the picture that rose before him was of two women. One was his mother, and the other was the lovely Georgia Lassiter whose head was always carried so jauntily high. He was sure that the reason she loved him so passionately was not so much for himself, his mind and his spirit, as because of an ideal of manhood which she had conceived and which she had grafted upon Christopher. She loved, not him, but her idea of him. If once she guessed at such a dreadful taint as cowardice, all her love would be replaced by a fiery disgust.

And his mother? When Christopher thought of her, his heart bowed almost to the mud of the road. What she would think and do and say was beyond him, for he knew the sternness which underlay her motherhood, and he knew the iron of her pride in her family.

He reached the turning from the main road and saw before him the avenue of poplars, their heads shaken and bent beneath the fierce hand of the wind. Down the gravel drive he galloped the tired mare and so wound into view of the Royal House itself, with its lofty front and its romantic wooden battlements. From the top of the neighboring hills the naked eye could see Royal House like a great natural landmark of the valley, and from directly beneath it looked rather like a great palace than the residence of a rich rancher.

Behind its wide-flung arms were the sheds, the barns, and the maze of the corrals where the weaker cattle were sheltered and fed through the severer winters. There were the quarters for the hired men, also. Day and night, for all these years, there had never been a moment when smoke did not rise from some chimney in that group of buildings.

Christopher, looking at it all, and thinking of what it meant, felt again what he had often felt in his childhood—that big and strong as all his brothers were, his father who had built these things must have been even to them as a giant to pygmies. And his mother had been the proper wife of such a man. Still she ruled the establishment with a power as firm as it was mild, and even her eldest son dreaded her quiet voice more than the booming of a cannon.

Christopher had been a little different. He had been the baby of the family. He had been the petted one. For having raised so many sons so well, even such a woman as Marcia Royal could afford to relax a little and favor her youngest child.

He thought of this bitterly now. For, if he had passed through the same stern school as the others, might he not have developed, like them, the same iron core to his spirit? Might he not have grown, like them, into a hero of heart and hand also?

He gave the mare to a stable boy. Then he turned to the house, and, as he walked, he wondered how he should tell the story. And what would the others say? He decided that he would say nothing for the time being. So he went into the living room and found them all, except Samson, gathered in easy chairs near the fire on the open hearth.

He changed his clothes, and, when he came down again, he found that his mother had a cup of hot coffee waiting for him. She stood behind his chair, with her hands on his shoulders, while he drank it.

She spoke quietly: “Christopher, dear, you shouldn’t have come out on such a night. You know that.”

“I tried to telephone from Wooley’s, but the line was down in the wind, I think. I was afraid you’d worry if you didn’t hear from me. So I came on out.”

“And why not telephone from Yates’s place? And stay there the rest of the night?”

He did not have a chance to answer, for just then Samson came in and fixed his dark eyes instantly and firmly upon the face of his youngest brother, so that Christopher understood that Samson knew all that had happened.

IV “NO ASSISTANCE”

There was something so unusual about Samson’s air that the others noticed it instantly. For that matter, the oldest brother of the Royal family was always so direct, so fiercely sincere, that it was not usually difficult to understand what was going on in his mind.

He came across the room after a moment and stared down at Christopher, who stirred uneasily beneath that glance. Afterward, Samson went before the fire and stood with his back to it, until steam began to rise from his wet clothes.

“Now what is it, Sammie?” asked his mother.

Samson was the only member of the family that dared disregard for an instant a direct remark from his mother. In place of answering he suddenly put back his head and shook with silent laughter.

“Samson!” cried Mrs. Royal.

At this, he came to himself with a start.

“What on earth is the matter with you?”

“Nothing, Mother.”

“My dear, you must tell me at once. You make me nervous.”

Samson allowed a broad smile to spread over his face, while he stared straight across the room directly at Christopher. “Look there!” he commanded.

“There is Christopher, of course,” said the mother. “You are really rude, Samson. Now, what about Christopher?”

“I don’t know what you mean. What should there be about him?”

“Don’t beat about the bush, Samson!”

He sobered down at that, but still there was a suppressed exultation in his eyes and in his voice. “You haven’t heard. He wouldn’t say anything about it. He doesn’t want to shock you!” And the laughter broke out again, not mirthful, but savage. “I’ll tell you what,” said Samson, “this old Christopher of ours, whom we’ve always thought so gentle and all that, he’s a lion under the fleece! I’ve always guessed it. And tonight he’s proven it!”

Mrs. Royal turned on her youngest son. “Christopher, what have you done?”

Christopher stirred in his chair and tried to answer, but he could only shake his head and murmur, “I can’t talk about it!”

“It was too much,” said Samson with a grim satisfaction. “Nasty business. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to at all! Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I came up the road to Yates’s Saloon and got there just after Chris left. I heard what had happened, and I saw!”

“What was it, Sammie, in the name of heaven!”

“Why, I’ll tell you what it was! I found there the proof that Chris is your real son, Mother!”

“Have you doubted that? Did you think he was a foundling?” asked Mrs. Royal, looking fondly at her youngest son.

Samson went over to her and dropped his big hands on her shoulders. “You understand, Mother, that it was always easy to see that Chris was like you in one way . . . like the gentler side of you . . . but we didn’t think that he had your iron.”

“Am I iron, Sammie dear?”

“You may smile at me, Mother, but you can’t fool me. Yes, you are iron, in the time when iron is needed. And if you hadn’t been a woman, you would have made as hard a man as ever stepped!”

“That needs some explaining, foolish boy.”

“Well, we all remember the time that the Crogan dog went mad, and tried to get at us, and how you stood it off with your walking stick!”

“That was a horrible day,” she said.

“No, you liked it! I’ll never forget how your eyes shone as you stood up to that wild, foaming beast!”

“Tush, Sammie. But I want to hear about Christopher.”

“Well, about darling Christopher,” murmured Samson, and he turned his powerful, homely face toward him. “I’ll tell you. But watch him squirm. Watch him wriggle while I talk.”

“Don’t be too ridiculous, Samson. Just tell me the facts.”

“There were several facts. To begin with, Chris was at the Yates place this evening. And so were several others. And one of them was young Main.”

There was a sudden stiffening in the attitudes of all of the family.

“You mean Harry Main’s younger brother?” asked Duncan, the giant.

“Yes.”

“A ruffian, like his brother Harry!” exclaimed Mrs. Royal.

“Look at Mother’s eyes shine,” nodded Samson. “She’s gentle . . . no iron about her.” He stopped to laugh with a savage satisfaction again.

“Samson!” cried Christopher hoarsely. “I don’t want to hear any more of this!”

“You can’t help it, Chris. You simply can’t help hearing it.”

“I can, though, and I shall!”

And Christopher strode hurriedly from the room.

“Now will you tell us before we all go mad?” said Mrs. Royal.

“It was like this . . . Cliff Main had come to Yates’s place, poured down some stiff whiskies, and then gone into the next room to write a letter. Then Chris came in. He wouldn’t drink, not when he was riding home to his mother.”

He paused and grinned.

“My darling Christopher,” smiled Mrs. Royal.

“He’s a darling,” nodded Samson. “A perfect lamb. Wait until you hear the end of this yarn, though.”

“I want to hear it, if you’ll only get on.”

“Main come out of the other room and found Christopher. . . .”

Here the door opened suddenly and caused everyone to start. It was Christopher coming back—a pale and shaken Christopher.

“Samson,” he said, “I want you to stop making such nonsense over what happened.”

“Well?”

“I’ll tell them myself exactly what happened, since they have to know the truth about the miserable affair.”

“Go on, old man. Of course, we have to know.”

“Cliff Main made me leave the barroom with him. We went into that other little room. The moment we were alone, he grew insulting. And after a time, when he saw that I wanted to be friendly and keep out of trouble, he grew overbearing . . . horribly so! And finally he said that he happened to be interested in Georgia Lassiter, and that that was reason enough for me to stop paying attention to her.”

There was a stifled exclamation from Mrs. Royal. Christopher, his eyes closed, rested a hand against the wall. He said slowly: “I couldn’t quite stand for that, you know. And I had to tell him that the thing would not do.”

“And then?”

Christopher did not speak for a moment. He was recalling that moment over again—the sinking of his heart and the sickness of his spirit, and the manner in which he had felt that he was slipping into a sea of darkness. Another instant and he would have begged for mercy. Another instant and he would have tried to flee from the room. But that instant was not given him by the brutal Main. There had been a flash of a hand toward a gun. And he instinctively had moved to make his own draw—and made it first!

“And then,” said Christopher faintly, “he started for his gun. And I had to start for mine. . . .” He paused, breathing hard. “The bullet passed through his brain.” Christopher sank down in a chair. He was overcome by horror.

His mother was suddenly beside him, her arm around him. “Chris, my dear boy. I know. No matter what a brute he was, he was a human being. But now that you’ve done this thing, there’ll never be any need for you to do another. You detest bloodshed, and having proved that you’re a man who cannot be tampered with safely, the others will be sure to leave you alone! Dear boy, how my heart aches.”

He did not answer. He could not look at her. She thought his horror was because he had had to take a life. But it was not. It was horror at the knowledge of how close he had been to a nervous collapse, to a complete hysteria of cowardice.

“But you’re wrong, Mother,” said Edgerton Royal, the logician of the family. “You’re quite wrong. Before the week’s out there’ll be another gun fight on Chris’s hands.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think for yourself. Will Harry Main allow the man who killed his brother to get on without another fight?”

“Harry Main! That murderer! That gunfighter! No, you will all band together and prevent him. You’ll all meet him and crush him!” cried Mrs. Royal.

“Wait!” said Peter Royal, for he was the judge of the family. “Wait, Mother, and tell me if you yourself would allow other people to fight your battles if you were a man?”

She hesitated. Christopher, his face buried in his hands, waited breathlessly. Then he heard her saying slowly: “No, I couldn’t. And not a one of you will be different. Not a one of you will want to help poor Chris, though every one of you would die to avenge him! But oh . . . what a dreadful trial for my poor Chris. Such a man as Harry Main.”

Samson was speaking, Samson the mighty, the ugly of face, the steely hearted. “Chris’ll beat him! Let these gentle fellows get the taste of blood and they’re worse than the worst of the gunfighters that are born hard and mean. I’m a prophet. You wait and see what happens. For a million I wouldn’t be in the boots of that fellow Harry Main!”

Harry Main? To Christopher, it was as though he had been thinking about a great tiger rather than a man. Harry Main? He would as soon stand up to a thunderbolt as to that destroyer. What was Cliff Main compared to such a devil of a man?

He waited. A pause of solemnity had come in the talk of the room. And in that solemnity he knew that every one of the stern and strong brothers was resolving that the battle must be fought out man to man. So his last hope was thrown away.

V “WORDS FOR THE WEAK”

Sleep came to him that night as a most unexpected guest. And the morning dawned and found him twelve hours nearer, not to death, but to his humiliation. For all thought of standing for the trial of courage against Harry Main had left him. But, knowing that in the crisis he would not be present, he was able to put on a smile when he went down to breakfast. The others greeted him with a forced cheerfulness that made him feel they already thought him as good as dead. Only his mother did not smile but sat very sternly erect, her eyes looking far away. What schemes might be passing through that formidable brain of hers, equal to any man’s?