Black Jack

“It don’t mean nothing,” Pollard hastened to assure Terry.  “It don’t mean a thing in the world except that she’s a fool girl.  The queerest, orneriest, kindest, strangest, wildest thing in the shape of calico that ever come into these parts since her mother died before her.  But the more you see of her, the more you’ll value her.  She can ride like a man—­no wear out to her—­and she’s got the courage of a man.  Besides which she can sling a gun like it would do your heart good to see her!  Don’t take nothing she does to heart.  She don’t mean no harm.  But she sure does tangle up a gent’s ideas.  Here I been living with her nigh onto twenty years and I don’t savvy her none yet.  Eh, boys?”

“I’m not offended in the least,” said Terry quietly.

And he was not, but he was more interested than he had ever been before by man, woman, or child.  And for the past few seconds his mind had been following her through the door behind which she had disappeared.

“And if I were to see more of her, no doubt—­” He broke off with:  “But I’m not apt to see much more of any of you, Mr. Pollard.  If I can’t stay here and work off that three-hundred-dollar debt—­”

“Work, hell!  No son of Black Jack Hollis can work for me.  But he can live with me as a partner, son, and he can have everything I got, half and half, and the bigger half to him if he asks for it.  That’s straight!”

Terry raised a protesting hand.  Yet he was touched—­intimately touched.  He had tried hard to fit in his place among the honest people of the mountains by hard and patient work.  They would have none of him.  His own kind turned him out.  And among these men—­men who had no law, as he had every reason to believe—­he was instantly taken in and made one of them.

“But no more talk tonight,” said Pollard.  “I can see you’re played out.  I’ll show you the room.”

He caught a lantern from the wall as he spoke and began to lead the way up the stairs to the balcony.  He pointed out the advantages of the house as he spoke.

“Not half bad—­this house, eh?” he said proudly.  “And who d’you think planned it?  Your old man, kid.  It was Black Jack Hollis himself that done it!  He was took off sudden before he’d had a chance to work it out and build it.  But I used his ideas in this the same’s I’ve done in other things.  His idea was a house like a ship.

“They build a ship in compartments, eh?  Ship hits a rock, water comes in.  But it only fills one compartment, and the old ship still floats.  Same with this house.  You seen them walls.  And the walls on the outside ain’t the only thing.  Every partition is the same thing, pretty near; and a gent could stand behind these doors safe as if he was a mile away from a gun.  Why?  Because they’s a nice little lining of the best steel you ever seen in the middle of ’em.

“Cost a lot.  Sure.  But look at us now.  Suppose a posse was to rush the house.  They bust into the kitchen side.  Where are they?  Just the same as if they hadn’t got in at all.  I bolt the doors from the inside of the big room, and they’re shut out agin.  Or suppose they take the big room?  Then a couple of us slide out on this balcony and spray ’em with lead.  This house ain’t going to be took till the last room is filled full of the sheriff’s men!”

He paused on the balcony and looked proudly over the big, baronial room below them.  It seemed huger than ever from this viewpoint, and the men below them were dwarfed.  The light of the lanterns did not extend all the way across it, but fell in pools here and there, gleaming faintly on the men below.

“But doesn’t it make people suspicious to have a fort like this built on the hill?” asked Terry.

“Of course.  If they knew.  But they don’t know, son, and they ain’t going to find out the lining of this house till they try it out with lead.”

He brought Terry into one of the bedrooms and lighted a lamp.  As the flare steadied in the big circular oil burner and the light spread, Terry made out a surprisingly comfortable apartment.  There was not a bunk, but a civilized bed, beside which was a huge, tawny mountain-lion skin softening the floor.  The window was curtained in some pleasant blue stuff, and there were a few spots of color on the wall—­only calendars, some of them, but helping to give a livable impression for the place.

“Kate’s work,” grinned Pollard proudly.  “She’s been fixing these rooms up all out of her own head.  Never got no ideas out of me.  Anything you might lack, son?”

Terry told him he would be very comfortable, and the big man wrung his hand again as he bade him good night.

“The best work that Denver ever done was bringing you to me,” he declared.  “Which you’ll find it out before I’m through.  I’m going to give you a home!” And he strode away before Terry could answer.

The rather rare consciousness of having done a good deed swelled in the heart of Joe Pollard on his way down from the balcony.  When he reached the floor below, he found that the four men had gone to bed and left Denver alone, drawn back from the light into a shadowy corner, where he was flanked by the gleam of a bottle of whisky on the one side and a shimmering glass on the other.  Although Pollard was the nominal leader, he was in secret awe of the yegg.  For Denver was an “in-and-outer.”  Sometimes he joined them in the West; sometimes he “worked” an Eastern territory.  He came and went as he pleased, and was more or less a law to himself.  Moreover, he had certain qualities of silence and brooding that usually disturbed the leader.  They troubled him now as he approached the squat, shapeless figure in the corner chair.

“What you think of him?” said Denver.

“A good kid and a clean-cut kid,” decided Joe Pollard judicially.  “Maybe he ain’t another Black Jack, but he’s tolerable cool for a youngster.  Stood up and looked me in the eye like a man when I had him cornered a while back.  Good thing for him you come out when you did!”

“A good thing for you, Joe,” replied Denver Pete.  “He’d of turned you into fertilizer, bo!”

“Maybe; maybe not.  Maybe they’s some things I could teach him about gun-slinging, Pete.”

“Maybe; maybe not,” parodied Denver.  “You’ve learned a good deal about guns, Joe—­quite a bit.  But there’s some things about gun fighting that nobody can learn.  It’s got to be born into ’em.  Remember how Black Jack used to slide out his gat?”

“Yep.  There was a man!”

“And Minter, too.  There’s a born gunman.”

“Sure.  We all know Uncle Joe—­damn his soul!”

“But the kid beat Uncle Joe fair and square from an even break—­and beat him bad.  Made his draw, held it so’s Joe could partway catch up with him, and then drilled him clean!”

Pollard scratched his chin.

“I’d believe that if I seen it,” he declared.

“Pal, it wasn’t Terry that done the talking; it was Gainor.  He’s seen a good deal of gunplay, and said that Terry’s was the coolest he ever watched.”

“All right for that part of it,” said Joe Pollard.  “Suppose he’s fast—­ but can I use him?  I like him well enough; I’ll give him a good deal; but is he going to mean charity all the time he hangs out with me?”

“Maybe; maybe not,” chuckled Denver again.  “Use him the way he can be used, and he’ll be the best bargain you ever turned.  Black Jack started you in business; Black Jack the Second will make you rich if you handle him right—­and ruin you if you make a slip.”

“How come?  He talks this ‘honesty’ talk pretty strong.”

“Gimme a chance to talk,” said Denver contemptuously.  “Takes a gent that’s used to reading the secrets of a safe to read the secrets of a gent’s head.  And I’ve read the secret of young Black Jack Hollis.  He’s a pile of dry powder, Joe.  Throw in the spark and he’ll explode so damned loud they’ll hear him go off all over the country.”

“How?”

“First, you got to keep him here.”

“How?”

Joe Pollard sat back with the air of one who will be convinced through no mental effort of his own.  But Denver was equal to the demand.

“I’m going to show you.  He thinks he owes you three hundred.”

“That’s foolish.  I cheated the kid out of it.  I’ll give it back to him and all the rest I won.”

Denver paused and studied the other as one amazed by such stupidity.

“Pal, did you ever try, in the old days, to give anything to the old Black Jack?”

“H’m.  Well, he sure hated charity.  But this ain’t charity.”

“It ain’t in your eyes.  It is in Terry’s.  If you insist, he’ll get sore.  No, Joe.  Let him think he owes you that money.  Let him start in working it off for you—­honest work.  You ain’t got any ranch work.  Well, set him to cutting down trees, or anything.  That’ll help to hold him.  If he makes some gambling play—­and he’s got the born gambler in him—­you got one last thing that’ll be apt to keep him here.”

“What’s that?”

“Kate.”

Pollard stirred in his chair.

“How d’you mean that?” he asked gruffly.

“I mean what I said,” retorted Denver.  “I watched young Black Jack looking at her.  He had his heart in his eyes, the kid did.  He likes her, in spite of the frosty mitt she handed him.  Oh, he’s falling for her, pal—­and he’ll keep on falling.  Just slip the word to Kate to kid him along.  Will you?  And after we got him glued to the place here, we’ll figure out the way to turn Terry into a copy of his dad.  We’ll figure out how to shoot the spark into the powder, and then stand clear for the explosion.”

Denver came silently and swiftly out of the chair, his pudgy hand spread on the table and his eyes gleaming close to the face of Pollard.

“Joe,” he said softly, “if that kid goes wrong, he’ll be as much as his father ever was—­and maybe more.  He’ll rake in the money like it was dirt.  How do I know?  Because I’ve talked to him.  I’ve watched him and trailed him.  He’s trying hard to go straight.  He’s failed twice; the third time he’ll bust and throw in with us.  And if he does, he’ll clean up the coin—­and we’ll get our share.  Why ain’t you made more money yourself, Joe?  You got as many men as Black Jack ever had.  It’s because you ain’t got the fire in you.  Neither have I. We’re nothing but tools ready for another man to use the way Black Jack used us.  Nurse this kid along a little while, and he’ll show us how to pry open the places where the real coin is cached away.  And he’ll lead us in and out with no danger to us and all the real risk on his own head.  That’s his way—­that was his dad’s way before him.”

Pollard nodded slowly.  “Maybe you’re right.”

“I know I am.  He’s a gold mine, this kid is.  But we got to buy him with something more than gold.  And I know what that something is.  I’m going to show him that the good, lawabiding citizens have made up their minds that he’s no good; that they’re all ag’in’ him; and when he finds that out, he’ll go wild.  They ain’t no doubt of it.  He’ll show his teeth!  And when he shows his teeth, he’ll taste blood—­they ain’t no doubt of it.”

“Going to make him—­kill?” asked Pollard very softly.

“Why not?  He’ll do it sooner or later anyway.  It’s in his blood.”

“I suppose it is.”

“I got an idea.  There’s a young gent in town named Larrimer, ain’t there?”

“Sure.  A rough kid, too.  It was him that killed Kennedy last spring.”

“And he’s proud of his reputation?”

“Sure.  He’d go a hundred miles to have a fight with a gent with a good name for gunplay.”

“Then hark to me sing, Joe!  Send Terry into town to get something for you.  I’ll drop in ahead of him and find Larrimer, and tell Larrimer that Black Jack’s son is around—­the man that dropped Sheriff Minter.  Then I’ll bring ’em together and give ’em a running start.”

“And risk Terry getting his head blown off?”

“If he can’t beat Larrimer, he’s no use to us; if he kills Larrimer, it’s good riddance.  The kid is going to get bumped off sometime, anyway.  He’s bad—­all the way through.”

Pollard looked with a sort of wonder on his companion.

“You’re a nice, kind sort of a gent, ain’t you, Denver?”

“I’m a moneymaker,” asserted Denver coldly.  “And, just now, Terry Hollis is my gold mine.  Watch me work him!”