The Rangeland Avenger, Above the Law & Alcatraz (3 Wild West Adventures in One Edition). Max Brand
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To her astonishment he nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, “they-all ain’t much more’n cattle.”
With that he disappeared into the next room. He came back at once bearing a bolstered revolver which he dropped beside her carelessly.
“They’re a rotten gang, all right,” he went on, “and that last man—why did you want him to stay?”
Under the direct question of his eyes, her own dropped till they fell upon the revolver-butt, significantly protruding from the holster.
“You don’t need to tell me,” he said gently, “I guess you thought you’d be safer with two. But that pale-faced one ain’t a man. He’s a skunk. I told him to keep ‘em out.”
She did not answer. Her head remained bowed with wonder. Montgomery had been no protection to her. Even now there were twelve grim men who were twelve dangers to her. Yet in the presence of this man-queller, she felt unutterably safe. She glanced at her injured hand and smiled at her sense of security. Black Jim retreated. He came back with a great armful of logs.
Hunger and weariness fought like drugs against the stimulus of fear. She found herself drowsing as she stared into the growing blaze of flames. Her ear caught the chink, the rattle, and the hiss of cookery. Then she watched as through a haze the tall figure of Black Jim, swart against the fire. Through her exhaustion, her suffering, and her fear, that shadowy figure became the symbol of the protector.
He came before her again carrying a tin plate that bore a steaming venison steak flanked with big chunks of bread and a cup of black coffee. She tasted the coffee first and it cleared her mind, pumped strong blood through her body again.
Another woman would have roused to a paralyzing terror when her faculties returned; but now the strange schooling of Annie Kerrigan stood her in good stead. She was used to men, but she was not used to the fear of them. After all, what difference was there between this man and those she had known before? She had felt helpless indeed when the twelve filled the room. She had seen and she should never forget a certain flickering light of hunger in their eyes. They were dangerous, but that element of danger she did not see in Black Jim. Some men are dangerous to men alone. Others threaten all nature; born destroyers. She knew that Black Jim was of the first category. Nothing told her except a small inner voice that chanted courage to her heart. Consequently when the hot coffee gave her strength she sat erect, propping herself with her sound hand.
“I say!” she called. He started where he sat before his food at the table, lifted his head, and stared at her.
“What about these hobbles, deary?” she went on. His eyes widened, but he answered nothing.
“Cut out the silent treatment, cutie,” said Jerry, her courage rising, “and this rope. You’ve got your stage guarded. There’s no fear that I’ll jump through the curtain to get to the audience. I can’t run away, I’m not very slow, but bullets are a little faster. So drop the hobbles, Alexander. They’re away out of date.”
He sat with knife poised and ear canted a trifle to one side as if he strained every effort to follow the meaning of her slang. At last he comprehended, nodded, and set her free with a few strokes of a knife.
“It’s all right to let you go free,” he said, “but you got to remember that this shack may be watched from now on. You could get away any time. I won’t stop you. But outside you’ll find, maybe no bullets, but some of the boys who were in here a while ago. Savvy?”
She understood, but she shrugged the terror away, as she would have shrugged away self-consciousness on the stage.
“All right, Jimmy,” she said cheerfully, “I savvy. Lend me a hand, will you?”
She reached up with a smile for him to assist her to her feet. His astonishment at this familiar treatment made his eyes big again, and Jerry laughed.
“It’s all right, cutie,” she said. “You’ve got a funny name, but you can’t get by as a nightmare as far as I’m concerned. Not without a make-up. Can the glassy eye, and give me your hand.”
He extended his hand hesitatingly, and she drew herself erect with some difficulty, for she had remained a long time in a cramped position.
“It’s all right to feed some Swede farmhand in the corner, Oscar, but not La Belle Geraldine. Nix. It isn’t done. There’s no red light on that table, is there?”
“Red light?” he repeated.
“Sure. I mean there’s no danger sign. Say, deary, do I have to translate everything I say into ‘Mother Goose’ rimes? I mean, may I eat at the table, or do I have to stay on the floor?”
He regarded her a moment with his usual somber concern. Then he turned and carried a stool to the table and brought her food to it.
“This is solid comfort,” declared Jerry, as she settled herself at the board, and she attacked the venison with great vigor.
There were certain difficulties, however, against which she had to struggle. Her right hand was useless to manage the knife, but she managed to steady the fork between the third and fourth fingers. With her left hand she tried to cut the meat, but progress in this way was highly unsatisfactory. In the midst of her labors a brawny hand carried away her plate.
She looked up with a laugh and surrendered her knife and fork.
“After all,” she said, “you flashed the gun that put my hand to the bad. So it’s up to you to do the prompting when I break down.”
He raised his eyes a moment to consider this statement, but he failed to find the clue to its meaning, went on silently cutting up the meat, and finally passed it back to her. Dumfounded by this reticence, Jerry kept a suspicious eye upon him. Among the people with whom she was familiar silence meant anger, plots, hatred. Evidently he turned the matter over seriously in his mind, for his gaze was fixed far away.
“Lady,” he said at last, meeting her inquiry with his dull, unreadable eyes, “was you-all born with that vocabulary, or did you jest find it?”
Jerry rested her chin upon a clenched white fist while she smiled at him.
“You’re wrong twice, Solomon,” she answered, “an angel slipped it to me in a dream.”
“Which a dream like that is some nightmare,” nodded Black Jim. “Would you-all mind wakin’ up when you talk to me?”
He chuckled softly.
“Say, Oscar,” said Jerry, “I’d lay a bet that’s the first time you’ve laughed this year.”
He was sober at once.
“Why?”
“The wrinkles around your eyes ain’t worn very deep.”
He shrugged his shoulders and confined his attention to his plate for a time, as if the matter no longer interested him, but when she had half forgotten it he resumed, breaking into the midst of her chatter: “Speakin’ of wrinkles, you don’t look more’n a yearling yourse’f. Which I would ask, how old are you, ma’am?”
The instinct of the eternal feminine made her parry the question for a moment.
“I’m old enough,” she answered; “but take it from me, I don’t have to wear a wig.”
“H-m!” he growled, considering this evasive return. “What I want to know is where you-all got to know so much?”
“Know so much?” repeated Jerry, “On the level, Oscar, or speaking with a smile? I mean, do you ask that straight?”
“Straight as I shoot,” he said.
She leaned back, curiosity greater than her mirth.
“Honest,” said La Belle Geraldine, “you’ve got me beat.