The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition. Max Brand
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nobody ever near it. I'll be there in an hour, m'frien'."
"I'll be waiting for you there," nodded Mac Strann, and so saying, he turned back to his table as if he had been interrupted by nothing more than a casual greeting. Still Dan Barry remained a moment with his eyes on the face of Mac Strann. And when he turned and walked with his light, soundless step down the length of the silent barroom, the wolf-dog slunk at his heels, ever and anon swinging his head over his shoulder and glancing back at the giant at the end of the room. As the door closed on man and dog, the saloon broke once more into murmur, and then into an excited clamoring. Pale Annie stepped from behind the bar and leaned upon the table beside Mac Strann. Even while leaning in this manner the bartender was as tall as the average man; he waved back the others with a gesture of his tremendous arm. Then he reached out and took the hand of Mac Strann in his clammy fingers.
"My friend," said the ex-undertaker in his careful manner, "I seen a man once California a husky two-year-old—which nobody said could be done, and I've seen some other things, but I've never seen anything to touch the way you handled Black Bart. D'you know anything about that dog?"
Mac Strann shook his ponderous head and his dull eyes considered Pale Annie with an expression of almost living curiosity.
"Black Bart has a record behind him that an old time gun-man would have heard with envy. There are dead men in the record of that dog, sir!"
All this he had spoken in a comparatively loud voice, but now, noting that the others had heeded his gesture and had made back towards the bar to drink on the strength of that strange fight between man and beast, the bartender approached his lips close to the ear of the giant.
He said in a rapid murmur: "I watched you talking with Dan Barry and I saw Barry's face when he went out. You and he are to meet somewhere again to-day. My friend, don't throw yourself away."
Here Mac Strann stared down at his mighty hand—a significant answer, but Pale Annie went on swiftly: "Yes, you're strong, but strength won't save you from Dan Barry. We know him here in Elkhead. Do you know that if he had pulled his gun and shot you down right here where you sit, that he could have walked out of this room without a hand raised to stop him? Yes, sir! And why? Because we know his record; and I'd rather go against a wolf with my bare hands—as you did—than stand up against Dan Barry with guns. I could tell you how he fought Jim Silent's gang, one to six. I could tell you a lot of other things. My friend, I will tell you about 'em if you'll listen."
But Mac Strann considered the speaker with his dull eyes.
"I never was much on talkin'," he observed mildly. "I don't understand talkin' very well."
Pale Annie started to speak again, but he checked himself, stared earnestly at Mac Strann, and then hurried back behind his bar. His face was even graver than usual; but business was business with Pale Annie—and all men have to die in their time! Haw-Haw Langley took the place which Pale Annie had left vacant opposite Mac Strann.
He cast a frightened glance upward, where the rain roared steadily on the roof of the building; then his eyes fluttered back until they rested on the face of his companion. He had to moisten his thin lips before he could speak and even then it was a convulsive effort, like a man swallowing too large a morsel.
"Well?" said Haw-Haw. "Is it fixed?"
"It's fixed," said Mac Strann. "Maybe you'd get the hosses, Haw-Haw. If you're comin with me?"
A dark shadow swept over the face of Haw-Haw Langley.
"You're going to beat it?" he sneered. "After you come all this way you're going to run away from Barry? And him not half your size?"
"I'm going out to meet him," answered Mac Strann.
Haw-Haw Langley started up as if he feared Mac Strann would change his mind if there were any delay. His long fingers twisted together, as if to bring the blood into circulation about the purple knuckles.
"I'll have the hosses right around to the front," he said. "By the time you got your slicker on, Mac, I'll have 'em around in front!"
And he stalked swiftly from the room.
XXXIX. THE STORM
When they rode out of the town the wet sand squashed under the feet of their horses and splashed up on their riding boots and their slickers. It even spotted their faces here and there, and a light brown spray darted out to right and left of the falling hoofs. For all the streets of Elkhead were running shallow rivers, with dark, swift currents, and when they left the little town the landscape was shut out by the falling torrents. It made a strange and shifting panorama, for the rain varied in its density now and again, and as it changed hills which had been quite blotted out leaped close upon them, like living things, and then sprang back again into the mist.
So heavy was that tropical fall of water that the horses were bothered by the beating of the big drops, and shook their heads and stamped fretfully under the ceaseless bombardment. Indeed, when one stretched out his hand the drops stung him as if with lashes of tiny whips. There was no wind, no thunder, no flash of lightning, only the tremendous downpour which blended earth and sky in a drab, swift river.
The air was filled with parallel lines, as in some pencil drawings—not like ordinary rain, but as if the sky had changed into a vast watering-spout and was sending down a continuous flood from a myriad holes. It was hard to look up through the terrific downpour, for it blinded one and whipped the face and made one breathless, but now and again a puff of the rare wind would lift the sodden brim of the sombrero and then one caught a glimpse of the low-hanging clouds, with the nearest whiffs of black mist dragging across the top of a hill. Without noticeable currents of wind, that mass of clouds was shifting slowly—with a sort of rolling motion, across the sky. And the weight of the rain forced the two to bend their heads and stare down to where the face of the earth was alive with the gliding, brown waters, whose surface was threshed into a continual foam. To speak to each other through the uproar, they had to cup their hands about their lips and shout. Then again the rainfall around them fell away to a drizzling mist and the beating of the downpour sounded far away, and they were surrounded by distant walls of noise. So they came to the McDuffy place.
It was a helpless ruin, long abandoned. Not an iota of the roof remained. The sheds for the horses had dropped to the earth; but the walls of the house still remained standing, in part, with the empty windows looking out with a mocking promise of the shelter which was not within. Upon this hollow shack the rain beat with redoubled fury, and even before they could make out the place through the blankets of rain, they heard the hollow drumming. For there were times, oddly enough, when any sound would carry a great distance through the crashing of the rain.
A wind now sprang up and at once veered the rain from its perpendicular fall. It slashed them in the face under the drooping brims of their sombreros, so they drew into the shelter of the highest part of the standing wall. Still some of the rain struck them, but the major part of it was shunted over their heads. Moreover, the wall acted as a sort of sounding board, catching up every odd noise from the storm-beaten plain beyond. They could speak to each other now without effort.
"D'you think," asked Haw-Haw Langley, pressing his reeking horse a little closer to Mac Strann, "that he'll come out after us in a rain like this?"
But simple-minded Mac Strann lifted his head and peered through the thick curtains of rain.
"D'you think," he parried, "that Jerry could maybe look through all this and see what I'm doin' to-day?"
It made Haw-Haw Langley grin, but peering more closely and observing that there was no mockery in the face of the giant, he wiped out his grin with a scrubbing motion of his wet hand and peered closely into the face of his companion.
"They ain't any doubt of it," he said reassuringly. "He'll know what you do, Mac. What was it that Pale Annie said to you?"
"Wanted me not to meet Barry. Said that Barry had once cleaned