Max Brand

The Outlaw

Warsaw 2019

Contents

1. TO HELP THE BANK

2. HONEST MONEY

3. BAD TIDINGS

4. DRY POWDER

5. REPUTATION!

6. "DON'T SHOOT!"

7. NEVER AGAIN!

8. THE WORLD IS A DESERT

9. ADVICE FROM THE SHERIFF

10. HARRY DAY COMES—AND GOES

11. FEARLESS FRIAR

12. TWO KNOCKS AT ONE DOOR

13. CHERRY DANIELS

14. A NEW ADMIRER

15. VICTORY FOR THE SHERIFF

16. IN JAIL!

17. ON TRIAL

18. GOLDEN BOOK

19. LYNMOUTH FINDS HIS WINGS

20. OUTSIDE THE MILL

21. ALARM

22. THE SHERIFF SAYS "SHOOT!"

23. JAY CRESS HAS A PLAN

24. FOUR LITTLE LAMBS

25. THE STATE OF THE MOON

26. AN ARGUMENT ENDED

27. THE STAGE STARTS

28. THE STAGE STOPS

29. HORSES AND MEN

30. TURK HENLEY TALKS

31. FOUR MEN WAITING

32. JUDGE BORE SPEAKS HIS MIND

33. THUMBS DOWN!

34. DARK AND FAIR

35. TWO GIRLS RIDE

36. FAILURE

37. GOOD ADVICE

38. FREAK OF FATE

39. "OPEN, SESAME!"

40. FREE!

41. FLAMES AND FANCIES

42. PERIL'S PATH

43. ALL THAT MATTERS

1. TO HELP THE BANK

NORTHWEST of Crooked Horn, where the most prosperous ranches were located, ran a little wabbling line of telephone poles. Over this line, from ten miles away, came the news on this bright spring morning.

As soon as the word arrived in Crooked Horn, it spread to the limits of the little town like the proverbial ripple around the fallen stone.

The presidents and chief officers of each of the two banks ran out from their buildings and returned with armed men, who were placed in positions of advantage inside and outside the buildings.

Deputy Sheriff Neilan took his post with two assistants at the post office.

Isaac Stein, the owner of the pawnshop and jewelry store, went in frantic haste for his two nephews, who were placed behind the counter with double-barreled riot guns in their hands. Also, he ran out and hailed two passers-by. They were closed in the back room, where there was nothing worth stealing, but through the entrance to which they could fire into the front chamber. They, also, were equipped with riot guns.

Up and down the main street of Crooked Horn there were six saloons, and three stores, besides the hotel. From the hotel, the stores, and the saloons, came hastening men carrying sacks of cash and notes from cash drawers and registers. These sums of money were hastily deposited at one or the other of the banks.

Two of the stores and three of the saloons closed down, locked doors, windows, and shutters, and the proprietors remained inside under arms, while outposts were placed in upper windows.

“Faro Pete” closed his layout, locked it, barred and bolted it, and brought his cash to the Merchants’ Loan & Trust. After that, he did not delay, but mounted his fastest horse and spurred out of town with a desperate face.

“Two-gun” Billy Lambert had no cash to deposit, but he also mounted his best horse, and, with both his guns, and a rifle besides, dashed from Crooked Horn, taking the river road.

Young Sam Townsend, recently notorious and famous for his battle with the Brintons on the lower Pecos, followed the two good examples which had just been set. Young Sam did not even wait to dress fully. Rising in an undershirt and a pair of trousers–he had been out late the night before at a quiet poker game–Sam went out of Crooked Horn lashing his horse at every jump.

The citizens, however, who could not pretend either to a stock of hard cash or to any great reputation as gamblers, crooks, or man-killers, appeared rather unconcerned. They merely made sure that their children and womenfolks were safely within doors. They themselves were to be seen at posts of vantage, such as the corners of the central plaza, or perhaps idling in their gardens–if they were particularly cautious men.

A telephone message was sent to Stephen’s Crossing, to the south, that it might be well to get a posse of picked men ready to take horse. Another message reached First Chance, in the northern desert, to take similar precautions. County Sheriff Dan Peach was warned in a similar manner at his home, twenty miles away; and he announced that he was taking horse immediately to appear on the scene as soon as four strong legs could gallop the distance.

So Crooked Horn and the country round made what preparation could be made, and then waited, holding its breath. At the bridge, on the north road, young Joe Masters volunteered to take his post and signal from the top of the big cottonwood as soon as he was apprised of the danger coming down the road.

Doctor Crosswell, watching with glasses from the roof of his home, presently was able to see a white cloth waved from the top of the cottonwood, and in this manner he was able to know that the danger was, indeed, coming down the north road, and that it was close at hand.

He climbed down from the roof, and from an upper window he shouted the tidings to the street, where it ran up and down like wildfire. Every soul in Crooked Horn knew in another instant, and the town held its breath even more.

Then, around the turn beyond the hotel, a single rider appeared. As he came closer, it could be seen that he was mounted on a cream-colored horse.

“It’s him, and he’s on Fortune!” went the word down the street.

Then the rider came still closer, and a dozen glasses made out his face in the distance.

“It’s Larry Lynmouth himself, riding the mare, Fortune!”

Mouths gaped, and eyes widened. Women grew pale behind windows. Children stood tiptoe. Little girls trembled. Little boys shuddered with ecstatic joy.

Yet even to those who knew his face, even to those who had studied the familiar features a thousand times in a thousand newspaper photographs, it was a shock to see him as he actually was, in the flesh.

He was exactly twenty-four years old. He had been famous for almost half that time.

He was said to have killed twenty-four men, that is to say, a man a year. He had been arrested five times. He had broken away from his captors twice on the way to prison–once by the expedient of jumping out the window of a rapidly moving train and falling forty feet from the bridge it was crossing, into the water beneath. (This had been done with irons on hands and feet, so that for three months it had been considered certain that he lay dead in the mud of the river bottom.)

Three times, safely lodged behind bars, he had broken out. Once it was apparently by bribery. Once he had taken a jailer by the throat and forced the man to unlock the doors. Once he had worked a passage through three feet of solid masonry from a dark cell!

He had been hunted by private detectives, by public posses, by the most expert officers of the law, from Dawson to Panama, and from San Francisco to Halifax.

He was known to have “stuck up” at least six stages, and he was more than suspected of having a hand in three train robberies–one of them the spectacular holdup of the T. & L. train by a single man. Two bank robberies definitely were traced to his name, and twenty others were attributed to him.

But now Larry Lynmouth rode unharmed down the main street of Crooked Horn. Society stood on guard, but society dared not touch him without new provocation, for a scant two weeks before, he had been cleared and pardoned for all crime by the proclamations of five governors within whose territories he had committed the deeds of which he had been accused, and for which he had been tried in the past.

Except for a new offense, there was no use in arresting him again, because it was so certain that no jury would convict him. For it was now hardly a month since the affair of the Ridley Dam, and all men remembered how he had ridden a hundred miles between dusk and dawn, and, by the aid of this same beautiful mare, Fortune, had come to the Ridley Dam in time to stop the dastards who had planned to blast the big structure to a ruin. Sheer blindly venomous sabotage on their part, regardless of the crowded homes which huddled unprotected in the valley below the dam.

For this reason, Crooked Horn was on guard and held its breath, but dared not lift its hand.

And for all these reasons Crooked Horn stared with amazement upon the real facts about Lynmouth, as they appeared in his physical presence.

Where were the wild rumors about him? Where were they to be lodged?

As for his gigantic strength, how could it be confined in a rather slender body, certainly not over, but under six feet in height?

As for his gaudy clothes, he was dressed neatly, to be sure, but not unlike any other cow-puncher. Unless one were to take note of the manner in which the mane and tail of the mare had been braided. There was some openwork of gold, in the Mexican style, glittering on his tall sombrero. That was all! No silver conchos, no gaudy blues and reds.

And then, finally, those tales of grim ferocity–who could give them a local habitation and a name in connection with such a handsome and open young face? His blue eyes, to be sure, rested on one with a glance as straight as a rifle barrel steady on its mark, but a faint, continual smile of good nature appeared on his lips.

All the way before him, people stared, mute. All the way behind him, down that street, a murmur of comment arose.

Dangerous as a snake?

Not a bit of it! Not if they could read faces, as they thanked Heaven they could!

He stopped where?

Straight in front of the First National!

A wild buzz of excitement swept through Crooked Horn.

Was it possible that he would walk in there among those heavily armed and prepared fighting men? Would he walk into that set trap and try to rob the place?

He could not do it, under a miracle. But then, miracles were a favorite diet of this young man. Crooked Horn–at least, the citizens who had no deposits in the First National–rather wished that the miracle could be attempted. And, if attempted, who could wish bad luck to so amiable a young man, who wore a smile upon his face?

The door of the bank was locked. But it was slowly opened when he knocked.

He went straight to the president’s desk and took out a wallet. Three armed men watched him from the corners of the room as he counted out sixty-two bank notes of five hundred dollars each. He pushed these across to President Baynes.

“Are you opening an account, Larry?” asked the banker, amazed.

“No,” said Larry Lynmouth. “That’s just a present to help the old bank along.”

President Baynes counted the money, stupefied. Thirty-one thousand dollars!

And then that sum shocked his mind into understanding. Four years ago a desperado, single-handed, had walked into that bank in the middle of the afternoon, and walked out again with thirty- one thousand dollars in hard cash.

He looked up, but Lynmouth was already gone.

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