Black Jack by Max Brand (interesting novels to read TXT) 📖

Terence Hollis had gone out of the room and up the stairs like a man

stunned or walking in his sleep. Not until he stepped into the familiar

room did the blood begin to return to his face, and with the warmth there

was a growing sensation of uneasiness.

Something was wrong. Something had to be righted. Gradually his mind

cleared. The thing that was wrong was that the man who had killed his

father was now under the same roof with him, had shaken his hand, had sat

in bland complacency and looked in his face and told of the butchery.

Butchery it was, according to Terry’s standards. For the sake of the

price on the head of the outlaw, young Minter had shoved his rifle across

a window sill, taken his aim, and with no risk to himself had shot down

the wild rider. His heart stood up in his throat with revulsion at the

thought of it. Murder, horrible, and cold-blooded, the more horrible

because it was legal.

Something had to be done. What was it?

And when he turned, what he saw was the gun cabinet with a shimmer of

light on the barrels. Then he knew. He selected his favorite Colt and

drew it out. It was loaded, and the action in perfect condition. Many and

many an hour he had practiced and blazed away hundreds of rounds of

ammunition with it. It responded to his touch like a muscular part of his

own body.

He shoved it under his coat, and walking down the stairs again the chill

of the steel worked through to his flesh. He went back to the kitchen and

called out Wu Chi. The latter came shuffling in his slippers, nodding,

grinning in anticipation of compliments.

“Wu,” came the short demand, “can you keep your mouth shut and do what

you’re told to do?”

“Wu try,” said the Chinaman, grave as a yellow image instantly.

“Then go to the living room and tell Mr. Gainor and Sheriff Minter that

Mr. Harkness is waiting for them outside and wishes to see them on

business of the most urgent nature. It will only be the matter of a

moment. Now go. Gainor and the sheriff. Don’t forget.”

He received a scared glance, and then went out onto the veranda and sat

down to wait.

That was the right way, he felt. His father would have called the sheriff

to the door, in a similar situation, and after one brief challenge they

would have gone for their guns. But there was another way, and that was

the way of the Colbys. Their way was right. They lived like gentlemen,

and, above all, they fought always like gentlemen.

Presently the screen door opened, squeaked twice, and then closed with a

hum of the screen as it slammed. Steps approached him. He got up from the

chair and faced them, Gainor and the sheriff. The sheriff had

instinctively put on his hat, like a man who does not understand the open

air with an uncovered head. But Gainor was uncovered, and his white hair

glimmered.

He was a tall, courtly old fellow. His ceremonious address had won him

much political influence. Men said that Gainor was courteous to a dog,

not because he respected the dog, but because he wanted to practice for a

man. He had always the correct rejoinder, always did the right thing. He

had a thin, stern face and a hawk nose that gave him a cast of ferocity

in certain aspects.

It was to him that Terry addressed himself.

“Mr. Gainor,” he said, “I’m sorry to have sent in a false message. But my

business is very urgent, and I have a very particular reason for not

wishing to have it known that I have called you out.”

The moment he rose out of the chair and faced them, Gainor had stopped

short. He was quite capable of fast thinking, and now his glance

flickered from Terry to the sheriff and back again. It was plain that he

had shrewd suspicions as to the purpose behind that call. The sheriff was

merely confused. He flushed as much as his tanned-leather skin permitted.

As for Terry, the moment his glance fell on the sheriff he felt his

muscles jump into hard ridges, and an almost uncontrollable desire to go

at the throat of the other seized him. He quelled that desire and fought

it back with a chill of fear.

“My father’s blood working out!” he thought to himself.

And he fastened his attention on Mr. Gainor and tried to shut the picture

of the sheriff out of his brain. But the desire to leap at the tall man

was as consuming as the passion for water in the desert. And with a

shudder of horror he found himself without a moral scruple. Just behind

the thin partition of his will power there was a raging fury to get at

Joe Minter. He wanted to kill. He wanted to snuff that life out as the

life of Black Jack Hollis had been snuffed.

He excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully

upon Gainor.

“Mr. Gainor, will you be kind enough to go over to that grove of spruce

where the three of us can talk without any danger of interruption?”

Of course, that speech revealed everything. Gainor stiffened a little and

the tuft of beard which ran down to a point on his chin quivered and

jutted out. The sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise

and curiosity. And the three went silently, side by side, under the

spruce. They were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned.

Their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. Through the lower branches

the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the

ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these

were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat.

Indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain

air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.

It might have been this chill that made Terry button his coat closer

about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. The great trunks

shut out the world in a scattered wall. There was a narrow opening here

among the trees at the very center. The three