Max Brand

Rustlers of Beacon Creek

Warsaw 2019

Contents

I. MEDIUM

II. TWO MEN IN THE DARK

III. A GOOD DEAL

IV. MULDOON

V. "COME AND GET IT"

VI. THE FIGHT

VII. IN BEACON CREEK

VIII. PETE TELLS ONE

IX. A CRUEL RECEPTION

X. DAN BURNS

XI. LOUISE AND SAMMY

XII. DOWN STAIRS AND UP

XIII. HOTFOOT

XIV. THE WINGED HORSE

XV. MILLIGAN, THE NEW MAN

XVI. FOUR THOUSAND DOWN

XVII. AN AGREEMENT

XVIII. THE NIGHT TRAIL

XIX. DELIVERED TO THE MONTAGUES

XX. BAD MEN, OLD AND YOUNG

XXI. HANDS OFF THE BLACK!

XXII. IN THE ENEMY'S FORTRESS

XXIII. AN EMERALD

XXIV. LEFTY FARGO IS HEARD FROM

XXV. AND LEFTY APPEARS

XXVI. THE CONTEST

XXVII. THE LAMB BURNS HIS BRIDGES

XXVIII. THE YOUNG MEN TALK

XXIX. ON THE HILLSIDE

XXX. JACK McGUIRE

XXXI. ONE WATCH MISSING

XXXII. A HALF-BREED TRAILER

XXXIII. TIME REGAINED

XXXIV. ON THE TRAILER'S TRAIL

XXXV. THE LAMB AND THE COOK

XXXVI. THE LAMB, THE LADY AND HIS LORDSHIP

XXXVII. "WHAT WAS HE TO YOU?"

XXXVIII. WHAT HE WAS TO SOMEONE

XXXIX. ALIKE AS TWO PEAS

XL. A QUESTION OF TIME

XLI. HAND OVER HAND

XLII. BIG JIM'S FALL

EPILOGUE

I. MEDIUM

HE was an inch over six feet, and yet he looked light enough to ride a small horse and strong enough to break a big one. He was not a pretty man, because his eye was cold and his jaw was grim. Since he was without a coat and one sleeve had been torn out of his shirt, an arm was visible. It showed a white dazzlingly pure, contrasted with the sun-blackened skin of hands and face. A student of anatomy would have been entranced by that arm. It was not bulky, but it was not sleeked over with a layer of fat. On the contrary, every muscle was a separate string which could have been picked out between thumb and forefinger. The sheriff had been regarding him.

“I’m gunna soak you into the hoosegow, stranger,” said he.

“All right,” said the stranger. “I need a rest, anyway.”

“You’re gunna get one,” said the sheriff. “A good long one!”

“That depends on the way you feed,” said the stranger. “What kind of chuck you throw to the boys in the hoosegow?”

“Frijoles,” said the sheriff.

“Well, they’ll hold me for a day or two,” said the stranger.

“We’ll hold you the rest of the time,” said the sheriff.

The other smiled. The hardness vanished from his face and the sheriff found himself looking into the twinkling eyes of a boy.

“Aw, I dunno,” said the stranger.

This was a challenge, and the sheriff sneered with anger. He jerked a piece of paper toward him and stabbed his pen into the inkwell.

“What name or names have you got?” said he.

“That depends,” answered the other.

“Depends on what?”

“On where I am.”

“You’re here, now.”

“I dunno what this place is,” said the prisoner. “It ain’t on the map, is it?”

“Stow your jaw,” answered the sheriff, growing very hot of face. “On the map!” he echoed fiercely.

“Maybe I’ll put it on,” said the prisoner cheerfully. “But I dunno how it is–some places are pretty hard!”

“You’ll find this place hard enough,” the sheriff assured him with satisfaction.

“I mean, hard to wake up,” said the other.

“You heard me talk. What’s your name or names?”

“In Montana they call me ‘The Kid.’”

“They do, do they? Is that all they think of you up there?”

“They spell it with capitals like a headline,” said The Kid.

“It’s kind of terrible the way you despise yourself,” sneered the sheriff.

“They found me pretty young,” said The Kid. “I growed up in a week.”

“Tall enough to see, eh?”

“You couldn’t miss me,” the boy assured him.

“What else name have you got besides The Kid?”

“Over in Wyoming, they call me ‘Slippery Elm.’”

“Why?”

“Because I was sort of hard to hold.”

“I’ll hold you,” said the bitter sheriff.

“You’ll hold trouble then,” said the prisoner, and yawned in the face of the officer. “And maybe I’ll give you trouble to hold,” he added blandly.

“What other name, or names?” asked the sheriff, breathing hard.

“Once in Nevada I was traveling pretty light and pretty fast. It was winter, kind of bleak and miserable. I hit a cow camp. I hadn’t no hoss and only but one shoe on. They call me ‘Lonesome,’ over Nevada way, right up to now.”

“That don’t mean nothing.”

“Yonder around Denver way, they call me ‘The Doctor.’”

“Because of the way you could handle a sick hoss, maybe?” glowered the sheriff.

“Because I was pretty handy with a knife,” said the prisoner. “That was all.”

“What other kind of names might you have, Kid?”

“Why, down in Texas, they call me ‘Montana,’ and up in Idaho they call me ‘Texas.’”

“They call you pretty near anything, it looks like,” suggested the sheriff. “Do you always come?”

“Sure,” said the prisoner. “I come anywhere. Even into a joint like this town!”

“You’ll stay a while, too,” said the sheriff.

The prisoner yawned again.

“What’s your real name?” asked the sheriff.

“Alfred.”

“You?”

“Sure. My mother liked the name.”

“What else?”

“Percy.”

“What!”

“She thought that I looked that way.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Lamb.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Sheriff, don’t say that again!”

“Alfred Percy Lamb–that’s a moniker to be hung onto a bird like you.”

“It rests pretty light,” said the prisoner, “and don’t bother me none at all.”

“There’s some mules,” said the sheriff, “that dunno when they’re carrying a load or not.”

“I hanker for that rest to start,” said the prisoner. “Lead me to that hay pile, sheriff, will you?”

“Lemme fill out this record. You never been arrested before, I s’pose?”

“Me? Oh, never. I never been this tired before.”

The sheriff snorted like a seal.

“I bet you been in every hoosegow betwixt here and Frisco!” cried he.

“You got a kind face,” said the prisoner, “but you left school young.”

“What kind of a face have you got for describing?” asked the sheriff. “Start with the hair, what color is it?”

“I never stopped to think,” said Alfred Percy Lamb.

He ran his hand through it; the links of the handcuffs jangled with a delicate sound like silver bells. It was ordinary blond-brown hair, but faded by the sun at the edges, and with a broad streak of gray that ran back above one eye; so that at times it gave oddly the effect of a single horn.

“How would you say?” appealed the sheriff.

It was dusk, and the lamp was lighted, but at this moment, there was not enough lamplight to replace the day, and not enough day to withstand the night. The sheriff, by raising the lamp, merely dazzled his own eyes. He put the lamp down hastily, for the prisoner had leaned quietly and quickly forward and his eyes became like the eyes of a cat. The sheriff shrugged his shoulders. A chill ran up and down his spine, and his blood was only warmed again by the honest touch of the handles of his revolver.

“I’d say average brown, or medium brown, maybe?”

“Medium brown,” said the sheriff, and forced his hand through the labored writing, his head cocked over to one side, his eyes looking blankly at the prisoner, as though he were composing a poem that far exceeded the subject matter. “Now your eyes. What say?”

“I dunno; gray, or green, or blue, or something.”

“That’s a help. Don’t you know what color your own eyes are?”

“I dunno. Look for yourself.”

The sheriff impatiently snatched up the lamp and rose to approach his man; but suddenly he seemed to remember something, and halted far short of his mark. He merely leaned over, holding the lamp high, and squinting.

“Why, they’re hazel!” said he.

“Put down hazel, then,” said the prisoner.

“No, they’re gray.”

“Make it gray, old-timer.”

“Or blue, is it? Say, I never seen such changeable eyes! Medium, I might say.”

“Yes, you might.”

“Eyes, medium,” wrote down the sheriff with somewhat less care. “Lemme see–the nose?”

“I dunno.”

“Turn your head, will you? It ain’t very long. It ain’t snubbed, though. It ain’t got a hook onto it, either. It ain’t big and it ain’t small. How would you describe that nose of yours, Lamb?”

“I dunno that I ever thought about my nose.”

“Medium, I might put.”

“Sure you might.”

“Medium,” wrote down the sheriff, toiling over his pen work. “Now take your whole face like a map, what might I say about it?”

“Pretty,” suggested Alfred Lamb.

“Huh!” said the sheriff, puffing like a seal again. “Pretty! Pretty? Huh! Face–lemme see!–Western-looking for a face, I’d call it. Face–er–medium, say. Any kind of distinguishing marks?”

“Not that I know about.”

“Where you get that streak of gray in your hair?”

“There was a greaser come up Tucson way that thought that he had a grudge agin’ me. He was pretty near right about it, too. But he was just a fraction high; afterward the hair all growed in white, the way that you see.”

“That’s a mark. Now, I got something definite on you! This is better; and how did you lose that bite out of your left ear?”

“There was a little argument in Denver, one night, over some cards. He had his gun slung under his armpit. He tried over the table at me, while I tried under the table at him. He removed part of this here ear.”

“And you removed a part of him, I suppose?”

“He began to scream something terrible,” said the prisoner. His eyes grew soft with reminiscence. “There was a fine sunset, all gold, outside the window. Says one of the boys to him: ‘Joe, you couldn’t’ve picked a better time for snuffing out.’ Funny how little things like that sticks in your mind, ain’t it?”

“Sure it’s funny,” answered the sheriff.

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