The Rangeland Avenger, Above the Law & Alcatraz (3 Wild West Adventures in One Edition). Max Brand
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heart and soul, Jim!”
“Jerry, you’re talkin’ loco!”
“It isn’t much to be loved by a smalltime actress, and I’ve never once been behind the lights on the real big time. But, oh, Jim! I wish I was keen in the bean like Cissy Loftus, because then—”
Slowly, fumbling, his arms went around her and tightened.
“Jerry!” he whispered.
“Yes?” she answered in the same tone.
“It seems to me—”
“Dear Jim’”
“It won’t be so partic’lar hard—”
“Dear—dear old Jim!”
“To pass out now. But it’s too late to ask for a new deal. This deck’s already shuffled and stacked. Jerry, we’ll play a straight game even with a fixed deck. An’, an’ I love you, honey, more ‘n the roan an’ my six-gun put together!”
He gathered her close with powerful arms, but the kiss which touched her eyes and then her lips, was gentle and reverent.
“Are you sleepin’, Jim?” called a voice.
He turned and went with drawn revolver o the door, still slightly ajar. From behind him, Jerry could see Montgomery and Porky standing in the moonlight.
“I ain’t sleepin’,” replied Black Jim, “but I’m figurin’ why I ain’t shot such hounds as you two, without warnin’!”
As if he had pressed a spring which set automata in motion, they whirled and leaped behind trees.
“Take warning!” called Black Jim, “I could have bagged you both with my eyes shut, an’ the next man of you that I see I’ll let him have it’”
For reply a revolver barked and a bullet thudded into the heavy door. Black Jim slammed it and dropped the heavy latch. A series of wild yells sounded from the trees on all sides and a dozen shots rang in quick succession. After this first venting of their disappointed spleen, the bandits were silent again. Jerry poised her revolver and searched the trees carefully. A hand dropped on her arm and another hand took away the revolver.
“If there’s shootin’ to be done,” said Black Jim, “I’ll do it, The blood of a man don’t wash off so easy, even from soft white hands like yours, Jerry!”
“Then when you shoot, shoot to kill!” she said fiercely. “They are trying for your life like bloodhounds, Jim’”
“Kill?” he repeated, taking up his place at the small window with his revolver raised. “Jerry, I’ve never killed a man yet, no matter what people say, an’ I’m not goin’ to begin now. While a bullet in the leg or the shoulder puts a man out of the way jest as well as if it went through the heart. Git down closer to the floor!”
His gun exploded; a yell from the edge of the trees answered him; and then a chorus of shouts and a score of bullets in swift succession smashed against the logs, Through the silence that followed they heard a distant, faint moaning.
Black Jim, running with his body close to the floor, crossed the room to the window on the other side. Almost instantly his gun spoke again, and a man screamed in the night of the trees.
“Too high!” she heard Jim saying. “I meant it lower.”
“They’re beaten, Jim!” she called softly. “They don’t dare try to rush the cabin. They’re beaten!”
“Not yet!” he answered. “Unless they’re plumb crazy they’ll tackle us from the blind side. There ain’t any window in the shed, Jerry!”
XI. BACK TO THE LAW
From three sides of the house he could command the approaches through the door and the two slits in the wall which answered in place of windows. On the side of the shed where the roan was stabled, there was not the smallest chink through which he could fire. Jerry sat twisting her hands in despair.
“Take the ax, Jim,” she said at last, “and chop away a hole in the logs. They’re all light and thin. You could make a place to shoot from in a minute!”
“Jerry, girl,” he said; “you’ve a heart of gold!”
He started to fumble about in the dark for the ax. But the weak side of the cabin was too apparent to be overlooked by the besiegers. Before the ax was found, a great crackling of fire commenced outside the shed and a cry of triumph rose from the men without. The sound of the fire rose; the roan whinnied with terror. Black Jim slipped his revolver back into his holster, and turned with folded arms to Jerry.
“So this is the finale,” she said with white lips. “Where’s our soft music and the curtain, Jim?”
“Let the girl out!” shouted the voice of Montgomery. “We won’t hurt her! Come out, Jerry!”
“Go on out, honey,” said Black Jim.
She went to him and drew his arm about her.
“Do you think I’d go out to them, Jim?”
“I don’t think,” he said; “I know. There’s nothin’ but death in here!”
A gust of wind puffed the flames to a roar up the side of the shed outside, and they heard the stamping of the roan in an agony of panic.
“There’s only two ways left to me,” she said, “and dying with you is a lot the easiest, Jim. Give back my gun!”
“Honey,” he said, and she wondered at the gentleness of his voice, “you’re jest a girl—a bit of a slip of a girl—an’ I can’t no-ways let you stay in here. Go out the door. They won’t shoot.”
“Give back my gun!” she said.
She felt the arm about her tremble, and then the butt of a revolver was placed in her hand. The fire hissed and muttered now on the roof of the cabin. Red glimmers of light showed before the windows and filled the interior with grim dance of shadows.
“I never knew it could be this way, Jerry,” he said.
“Nor I, either,” she answered, “and the day I make my final exit is the day I really began to live. Jim, it’s worth it!”
Through another pause they listened to the fire. Outside Montgomery was imploring the girl to leave the house, and as the fire mounted, an occasional yell from the crowd applauded its progress.
“Seein’ we’re goin’ out on the long trail together,” said Black Jim, “ain’t there some way we can hitch up so’s we can be together on the other side of the river?”
She did not understand.
“I mean, supposin’ we were married—”
She pressed her race against his body to keep back a sob.
“Seems to me,” he went on, “that I can remember some of a marriage I fence read. Do you suppose, Jerry, that if me an’ you said it over now, bein’ about to die, that it would mean anything?”
“Yes, yes!” she cried eagerly. “We’re above the law, Jim, and what we do is either sacred or damned.”
“The part I remember,” he said calmly, though the room was hot now with the rising fire, “begins something like this, an’ it ain’t very long Is Jerry your real name, honey?”
“My real name is Annie Kerrigan. And yours, Jim?”
“I was never called nothin’ but Black Jim. Shall I begin?”
“Yes!”
“I,