The Rangeland Avenger, Above the Law & Alcatraz (3 Wild West Adventures in One Edition). Max Brand
Читать онлайн книгу.
with its muzzle pointing out to the side, a clumsy position for rapid work. But his lean face with the small, sad eye made her guess at qualities of quiet fearlessness. However, it was useless to speculate on the chances for or against Montgomery! The event could be scarcely more than half an hour away.
They had scarcely left Three Rivers behind when she produced the small revolver from her pocket. The driver grinned and asked if it were loaded. It was a sufficient opening for Geraldine. She sketched briefly for his benefit a life in the wilds during which she had been brought up with a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other. The stage driver heard her with grim amusement, while she detailed her skill in knocking squirrels out of a treetop.
“The top of a tree like that one, lady?” he asked, pointing out a great sugar pine.
“You don’t believe me?” asked Jerry, with a convincing assumption of pique, “I wish there was a chance for me to show you.”
“H-m!” said the driver. “There’s a tolerable lot of things for you to aim at along the road. Take a whirl at anything you want to. The horses won’t bolt when they, hear the gun.”
“If I did hit it,” said Jerry, with truly feminine logic, “you would think it was luck.”
She dropped the pistol back into the pocket of her dress. They were swinging round a curve which brought them to the foot of the long slope, at the top of which Montgomery must be waiting.
“I hope something happens,” she assured the driver, “and then I’ll show you real shooting.”
“Maybe,” he nodded, “I’ve lived so long, nothin’ surprises me, lady.”
She smiled into the fast-growing night and made no answer. Then she broke out into idle chatter again, asking the names of all the horses and a thousand other questions, for a childish fear came to her that he might hear the beating of her heart and learn its meaning. Up they drudged on the long slope, the harness creaking rhythmically as the horses leaned into the collars, and the traces stiff and quivering with the violence of the pull. The driver with his reins gathered in one hand and the long whip poised in the other, flicked the laggards with the lash.
“Look at them lug all together as if they was tryin’ to keep time!” he said to Geraldine? “I call that a team; but this grade here keeps them winded for a half an hour after we hit the top.”
The rank odor of the sweating horses rose to her. A silence, as if their imaginations labored with the team, fell upon the passengers. Even Geraldine found herself leaning forward in the seat, as though this would lessen the load.
“Yo ho, boys!” shouted the driver.
“Get into that collar, Dixie, you wall-eyed excuse for a hoss! Yea, Queen, good girl!”
His whip snapped and hummed through the air.
“One more lug altogether and we’re there!”
They lurched up onto the level ground and the horses, still leaning forward to the strain of the pull, stumbled into a feeble trot. Jerry sat a little side-wise in the seat so that from the corner of her eye she could watch the rest of the passengers. One of the guards was lighting a cigarette for the other!
“Hands up!” called a voice.
The driver cursed softly, and his arms went slowly into the air; the hands of the two guards shot up even more rapidly. Not three yards from the halted leaders, a masked man sat on a roan horse, reined across the road: and covered the stage with his revolver.
“Keep those hands up!” ordered the bandit. “Now get out of that stage—and don’t get your hands down while you’re doin’ it! You—all there by the driver, get up your hands damned quick!”
III. THE MIXED CAST
A great tide of mirth swelled in Jerry’s throat. She recognized in these deep and ringing tones, the stage voice of Freddie Montgomery. Truly he played his part well!
She crouched a little toward the stage driver, whipped out the revolver, and fired,—but a louder explosion blended with the very sound of her shot. The revolver spun out of her fingers and exquisite pain burned her hand.
Her rage kept her from screaming. She groaned between her set teeth. This was an ill day for Frederick Montgomery!
“For God’s sake!” breathed a voice from the stage behind her. “He’ll kill us all now! It’s Black Jim!”
“Down to the road with you,” cried the bandit, in the same deep voice, “and the next of you-all that tries a fancy trick, I’ll drill you clean!”
Warm blood poured out over her hands and the pain set her shuddering, but the white-hot fury gave her strength. Jerry was the first to touch the ground.
“You fool!” she moaned. “You big, clumsy, square-headed, bat-eyed, fool! They’ll stick you in the pen for life for this!”
“Shut up!” advised a cautious voice from the stage, where the passengers stood bolt upright, willing enough to descend, but each afraid to move. “Shut up or you’ll have him murdering us all!”
“Sorry, lady,” said the masked man, and still he maintained that heavy voice. “If I had seen you was a girl I wouldn’t have fired!”
“Aw, tell that to the judge,” cried Geraldine, “You’ve shot my hand off! I’ll bleed to death and you’ll hang for it! I tell you you’ll hang for it!”
He had reined his horse from his position in front of the leaders and now he swung from his saddle to the ground, a sudden motion during which he kept his revolver steadily leveled.
“Steady in there!” he ordered, “and get the hell out of that stage or I’ll blow you out!”
He gestured with his free hand to Jerry.
“Tear off a strip from your skirt and tie that hand up as tight as you can! Here, one of you, get down here and help the lady. You can take your hands down to do that!”
But there was another thought than that of La Bella Geraldine in the mind of the practical stage driver. His leaders stood now without obstruction. He had lost one passenger, indeed, but the gold in the boot of his stage was worth a hundred passengers to him. He shouted a warning, dropped flat on his seat and darted his whip out over the horses. At his call the other passengers groveled flat, which put the thickness of the boot between them and the bullets of the bandit. The horses hit the collars and the stage whirled into the dusk of the evening.
To pursue them was folly, for it would be a running fight with two deadly shotguns handled by men concealed and protected. The masked man fired a shot over the heads of the fugitives and turned on Jerry. She was weak with excitement and loss of blood and even her furious anger could not give her strength for long. She staggered.
“I’m done for, all right—” she gasped, “As a bandit, you’re the biggest cheese ever. My hand—blood—help—”
Red night swam before Jerry’s eyes, and as utter dark came, she felt an arm pass round her. When she woke from the swoon her entire right arm ached grimly. She was being carried on horseback up a steep mountainside. The trees rose sheer above her. She strove to speak, but the intolerable weakness flooded back on her and she fainted again.
She recovered again in less pain, lying in a low-roofed room, propped up on blankets. A lantern hung against the wall from a nail, and by its light she made out the form of the man who stooped over her and poured steaming hot water over her hand. He still wore the mask. She closed her eyes again and lay gathering her wrath, her energy, and her vocabulary, for the supreme effort which confronted her.
“So you did your little bandit bit, did you?” she said at last with keen irony, as she opened her eyes again, “You had