Free Max Brand by Riders of the Silences Page B

One of us you are by your own choice from
this day on. You're neither man nor woman, but a long-rider with every
man's hand against you. You've done with any hope of a home or of
friends. You're one of us. Poor Jack—my girl!"
    "Poor?" she returned. "Not while I can make a quick draw and shoot
straight."
    And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boast
lightly, but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent. At
this she relented somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing
from throat to hair. She held out her hand.
    "Will you shake and call it square?"
    "I sure will," nodded Pierre.
    "And we're pals—you and me, like the rest of 'em?"
    "We are."
    She took the place beside him.
    As the whisky went round after round the two seemed shut away from the
others; they were younger, less marked by life; they listened while
the others talked, and now and then exchanged glances of interest
or aversion.
    "Listen," she said after a time, "I've heard this story before."
    It was Phil Branch, square-built and square of jaw, who was talking.
    "There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's a
sledgehammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd,
well, give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out."
    Bud Mansie grinned: "Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all
the hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing
makes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."
    "Ah, ah!" growled Branch. "But when they've heard bone crunch under
the hammer there's nothing will hold them."
    "I'd have to see that."
    "Maybe you will, Bud, maybe you will. It was the hammer that started
me for the trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory who
couldn't learn how to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursed
him and damn near prayed for him. But he somehow wouldn't learn—the
swine—ah, ah!"
    He grew vindictively black at the memory.
    "Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and the
eraser he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer after
watchin' him make a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg and
down the other. The Scotchman had a hangover from the night before and
he made a pass at me. It was too much for me just then, for the day
was hot and the forge fire had been spitting cinders in my face all
morning. So I took him by the throat."
    He reached out and closed his taut fingers slowly.
    "I didn't mean nothin' by it, but after a man has been moldin' iron,
flesh is pretty weak stuff. When I let go of Scotchy he dropped on the
floor, and while I stood starin' down at him somebody seen what had
happened and spread the word.
    "I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys got
together and pretty soon they come pilin' through the door at me,
packin' everything from hatchets to crowbars.
    "Lads, I was sorry about Scotchy, but after I glimpsed that gang
comin' I wasn't sorry for nothing. I felt like singin', though there
wasn't no song that could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the
big fourteen-pound hammer and met 'em halfway.
    "The first swing of the hammer it met something hard, but not as hard
as iron. The thing crunched with a sound like an egg under a man's
heel. And when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, how sick
they looked! They didn't wait for no second swing, but they beat it
hard and fast through the door with me after 'em. They scattered, but
I kept right on and didn't never really stop till I reached the
mountain-desert and you, Jim."
    "Which is a good yarn," said Bud Mansie, "but I can tell you one
that'll cap it. It was—"
    He stopped short, staring up at the door. Outside, the wind had kept
up a perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the opening
door. Bud Mansie, facing that door, however, turned a queer yellow
and sat with his lips parted on the last word. He was not pretty to
see. The others turned their heads, and there followed the