RED PERRIS: ADVOCATE
He did not choose to live in the ranch because of Hervey and because
it was too far removed from the scene of action. Instead, he selected
a shack stumbling with age on the west slope of the Eagle Mountains.
From his door many a time, with his glass, he picked out the shining
form of Alcatraz and the mares in the distance; he had even been able
to follow the maneuvers of the outlaw on several occasions when Hervey
and his men pursued with relays of horses, and on the whole he felt
that the site was such a position as a good general must prefer, being
behind the lines but with a view which enabled him to survey the whole
action. His quarters consisted of a single room while a shed leaned
against the back wall with one space for a horse, the other portion of
the shed being used as a mow for hay and grain.
It was the beginning of the long, still time of the mountain twilight
when Red Perris climbed to the clearing in which the cabin stood.
Ordinarily he would have set about preparing supper before the coming
of the dark, but now he watered and saddled his cowpony, a durable
little buckskin, and with a touch of the spurs sent him at a pitching
gallop down the slope.
It was not a kindly thing to do but Red Perris was not a kindly man
with horses and though he knew that it is hard on the shoulders of
even a mustang to be ridden downhill rapidly, he kept on with unabated
speed until he broke onto the well-established trail which led to the
Jordan house. Then a second touch of the spurs brought the pony close
to a full gallop. In fact, Perris was riding against time, for he
guessed that Lew Hervey, after quitting the trail of Alcatraz, would
veer straight towards the home place and there lay before Marianne
an account of how the chosen hunter had allowed the stallion to slip
through his hands. This, together with the fact that his week was up
was enough to bring about his discharge, for he had seen sufficient of
the girl to guess her fiery temper and he knew that she must have been
harshly tried during the last weeks by his lack of success and by the
continual sneers and mockery which the foreman and his followers had
directed at the imported horse-catcher. Before sunset of that day he
would have welcomed his discharge; now it loomed before him as the
greatest of all possible catastrophes.
Soon he was swinging down an easy road with the tilled lands on one
side, the pastures and broad ranges on the other, and even in the dim
light he guessed the wealth which the estate was capable of producing.
Even the deliberate mismanagement of Hervey was barely able to create
a deficit and Perris grew hot when he thought of the foreman. His own
dislikes found swift expression and were as swiftly forgotten; that
a grown ranchman could nourish resentment towards a girl, and that
because she was attempting to take charge of her own property, was
well beyond his comprehension. For he had that quality which is common
to all born leaders: he understood in what good and faithful service
should consist; with this addition, that he was far more fitted to
command than to be commanded.
It may be seen that there was a background of gloomy thought in his
mind, yet from time to time he startled the mustang to a harder
pace by a ringing burst of song. Remembering the windlike gallop of
Alcatraz, it seemed to him that the buckskin was hardly keeping to a
lope--as a matter of fact the cow pony was being ridden to the verge
of exhaustion. So the songs of Perris kept the rhythm of the departed
hoofs of wild Alcatraz and the shining form of the stallion wavered
and danced in his mind.
The ranch building grew out of the dun evening and he smiled at the
sight. The bank roll of Marianne had not been thick enough to enable
her to do the reconstruction she desired, but at least she had been
able to hire a corps of painters, so that the drab, weathered frame
structures had been lifted into crimson and green roofs, white yellow,
and flaming orange walls. "A little color is a dangerous thing,"
Marianne had said, somewhat overwisely, "but a great deal of it is
pretty certain to be pleasing." So she had let her fancy run amuck, so
to speak, and behind the merciful screen of trees there was now what
Lew Hervey profanely termed: "A whole damn rainbow gone plumb crazy."
Even Marianne at times had her doubts, but from a distance and by dint
of squinting, she was usually able to reduce the conglomerate to a
tolerably harmonious whole. "It's a promise of changes to come," she
told herself. "It's a milestone pointing towards new goals." But the
milestone set Perris chuckling. Yonder a scarlet roof burned through
the shadows above moonwhite walls--that was a winter-shed for cows.
Straight before him were the hot orange sides of the house itself. He
dismounted at the arched entrance and walked into the patio.
The first thing that Perris heard was the most provocative and
sneering tone of the foreman, and cursing the slowness of the
buckskin, he realized that he had been beaten to his goal. He paused
in the shadow of the arch to take stock of his position. The squat
arcade of 'dobe surrounding the patio was lighted vaguely by a single
lantern at his left. It barely served to make the shadowy outlines of
the house visible, the heavy arches, roughly sketched doorways, and
hinted at the forms of the cowpunchers who were ranged under the far
arcade for their after-dinner smoke, all eagerly listening to the
dialogue between the mistress and the foreman. When a breath of wind
made the flame jump in the lantern chimney a row of grinning faces
stood out from the shadow.
Marianne sat in a deep chair which made her appear girlishly slight.
The glow of the reading lamp on the table beside her fell on her hair,
cast a highlight on her cheek, and showed her hand lying on the open
book in her lap, palm up. There was something about that hand which
spoke to Perris of helpless surrender, something more in the gloomy
eyes which looked up to the foreman where he leaned against a pillar.
The voice drawled calmly to an end: "And that's what he is, this gent
you got to finish what me and the rest started. Here he is to tell you
that I've spoke the truth."
With the uncanny Western keenness of vision, Hervey had caught sight
of the approaching Perris from the corner of his eye. He turned now
and welcomed the hunter with a wave of his hand. Marianne drew herself
up with her hands clasped together in her lap and though in this new
attitude her face was in complete shadow, Perris felt her eyes
burning out at him. His dismissal was at hand, he knew, and then the
carelessly defiant speech which was forming in his throat died away.
Sick at heart, he realized that he must cringe under the hand which
was about to strike and be humble under the very eye of Hervey. He was
no longer free and the chain which held him was the conviction that
he could never be happy until he had met and conquered wild Alcatraz,
that he was as incomplete as a holster without a gun or a saddle
without stirrups until the speed and the great heart of the stallion
were his to control and command.
"I've heard everything from Lew Hervey," said the girl, in that low
strained voice which a woman uses when her self-control is barely as
great as her anger, "and I suppose I don't need to say that after
these days of waiting, Mr. Perris, I'm disappointed. I shall need you
no longer. You are free to go without giving notice. The experiment
has been--unfortunate."
He felt that she had searched as carefully as her passion permitted to
find a word that would sting him. The hot retort leaped to his lips
but he closed his teeth tight over it. A vision of Alcatraz with the
wind in tail and mane galloped back across his memory and staring
bitterly down at the girl he reflected that it was she who had brought
him face to face with the temptation of the outlaw horse.
Then he found that he was saying stupidly: "I'm sure sorry, Miss
Jordan. But I guess being sorry don't help much."
"None at all. And--we won't talk any longer about it, if you please.
The thing is done; another failure. Mr. Hervey will give you your pay.
You can do the rest of your talking to him."
She lowered her head; she opened the book; she adjusted it carefully
to the light streaming over her shoulder; she even summoned a faint
smile of interest as though her thoughts were a thousand miles from
this petty annoyance and back in the theme of the story. Perris, blind
with rage, barely saw the details, barely heard the many-throated
chuckle from the watchers across the patio. Never in his life had
he so hungered to answer scorn with scorn but his hands were tied.
Alcatraz he must have as truly as a starved man must have food; and to
win Alcatraz he must live on the Jordan ranch. He could not speak, or
even think, for that maddening laughter was growing behind him; then
he saw the hand of Marianne, as she turned a page, tremble slightly.
At that his voice came to him.
"Lady, I can't talk to Hervey."
She answered without looking up, and he hated her for it.
"Are you ashamed to face him?"
"I'm afraid to face him."
That, indeed, brought her head up and let him see all of her rage
translated into cruel scorn.
"Really afraid? I don't suppose I should be surprised."
He accepted that badgering as martyrs accept the anguish of fire.
"I'm afraid that if I turn around and see him, Miss Jordan, I ain't
going to stop at words."
The foreman acted before she could speak. The laughter across the
patio had stopped at Perris' speech; plainly Hervey must not remain
quiescent. He dropped his big hand on the shoulder of Perris.
"Look here, bucco," he growled, "You're tolerable much of a kid to use
man-sized talk. Turn around."
He even drew Perris slightly towards him, but the latter persisted
facing the girl even though his words were for the foreman. She was
growing truly frightened.
"Tell Hervey to take his hand off me," said the horse-breaker. "He's
old enough to know better!"
If his words needed amplification it could be found in the wolfish
malevolence of his lean face or in the tremor which shook him; the
thin space of a thought divided him from action. Marianne sprang from
her chair. She knew enough of Hervey to understand that he could not
swallow this insult in the presence of his cowpunchers. She knew also
by the sudden compression of his lips and the white line about them
that her foreman felt himself to be no match for this tigerish
fighter. She thrust between them. Even in her excitement she noticed
that Hervey's hand came readily from the shoulder of Perris. The older
man stepped back with his hand on his gun, but in a burst of pitying
comprehension she knew that it was the courage of hopelessness. She
swung about on Perris, all her control gone, and the bitterness of a
thousand aggravations and all her failures on the ranch poured out in
words.
"I know your kind and despise it. You practice with your guns getting
ready for your murders which you call fair fights. Fair fights! As
well race a thoroughbred against a cowpony! You wrong a man and then
bully him. That's Western fair play! But I swear to you, Mr. Perris,
that if you so much as touch your weapon I'll have my men run you down
and whip you out of the mountains!"
Her outbreak gave him, singularly, a more even poise. There was never
a fighter who was not a nervous man; there was never a fighter who in
a crisis was not suddenly calm.
"Lady," he answered, "you think you know the West, but you don't. If
me and Hervey fell out there wouldn't be a man yonder across the patio
that'd lift a hand till the fight was done. That ain't the Western
way."
He had spoken much more than he was assured of. He had even sensed,
behind him, the rising of the cowpunchers as the girl talked but at
this appeal to their spirit of fair-play they settled down again.
He went on, speaking so that every man in the patio could hear: "If
I won, they might tackle me one by one and we'd have it out till a
better man beat me fair and square. But mobs don't jump one man,
lady--not around these parts unless he's stole a hoss!"
"I don't ask no help," said Lew Hervey, but his voice was husky and
uneven. "I'll stand my ground with any man, gun-fighter or not!"
"Please be quiet and let me handle this affair," said the girl. "As
a matter of fact, it's ended. If you won't take the money from Mr.
Hervey, I'll pay it to you myself. How much?"
"Nothing," said Red Perris.
"Are you going to give me an example of wounded virtue?" cried
Marianne, white with contempt.
He was as pale as she, and taking off his hat he began to dent and
re-dent its four sides. The girl, looking at that red shock of hair
and the lowered eyes, guessed for the first time that he was suffering
an agony of humiliation. Half of her anger instantly vanished and
remembering her passion of the moment before, she began to wonder what
she had said. In the meantime, shrugging his shoulders with a forced
indifference, Hervey crossed the patio and she was aware that he was
received in silence--no murmurs of congratulation for the manner in
which he had borne himself during the interview.
"I got to ask you to gimme about two minutes of listening, Miss
Jordan. Will you do it?"
"At least I won't stop you. Say what you please, Mr. Perris."
She wished heartily that she could have spoken with a little show of
relenting but she had committed herself to coldness. In her soul of
souls she wanted to bid him take a chair and tell her frankly all
about it, assure him that after a moment of blind anger she had never
doubted his straightforward desire to serve her. He began to speak.
"It's this way. I come out here to shoot a hoss, and I've worked
tolerable hard to get in rifle range. I guess Hervey has been saying
that I've got into shooting distance a dozen times but it ain't true.
He happened to be sneaking about to-day, and he saw Alcatraz come
close by me for the first time."
He paused. "I'll give you my word on that."
"You don't need to" said the girl, impetuously.
His eyes flashed up at her, at that, and he stood suddenly straight as
though she had given him the right to stop cringing and talk like a
man. What on earth, she wondered, could have forced the man to such
humility? It made her shrink as one might on seeing an eagle cower
before a wren. As for Perris, his resentment was in no wise abated by
her friendliness. She had given him some moments of torture and the
memory of that abasement would haunt him many a day. He mutely vowed
that she should pay for it, and went on: "I sure wanted to sing when I
caught Alcatraz in the sights. I pulled a bead on him just behind the
shoulder but I could see the muscles along his shoulders working and
it was a pretty sight, Miss Jordan."
She nodded, frowning in the intentness with which she followed him.
She had thought of him as one with the careless, mischievous soul of
a child but now, in quick, deep glances, she reached to profounder
things.
"I held the bead," he kept repeating, his glance going blankly past
her as he struggled to find words for the strange experience, "but
then I saw his ribs going in and out. He was big where the cinches
would run, you see, and I began to understand where he got that wind
of his that never gives out. Besides, I somehow got to thinking about
his heart under the ribs, lady, and I figured it kind of low to stop
all the life in him with a bullet. So I swung my bead up along his
neck--he's got a long neck and that means a long stride--till I came
plump on his head, and just then he swung his head and gave me a
look."
He breathed deeply, and then: "It was like jumping into cold water all
of a sudden. I felt hollow inside. And then all at once I knew they'd
never been a hoss like him in the mountains. I knew he was an outlaw.
I knew he was plumb bad. But I knew he was a king, lady, and I
couldn't no more shoot him that I could lie behind a bush and shoot a
man." He was suddenly on fire.
"Looked to me like he was my hoss. Like he'd been planned for me.
I wanted him terrible bad, the way you want things when you're a
kid--the way you want Christmas the day before, when it don't seem
like you could wait for tomorrow."
"But--he's a man-killer, Mr. Perris. I've seen it!"
His hand went out to her and she listened in utter amazement while he
pleaded with all his heart in his voice.
"Lemme have a chance to make him my hoss, murders or not! Lemme stay
here on the ranch and work, because they's no other good place for
hunting him. I know you want them mares, but some day I'll get my rope
on him and then I swear I'll break him or he'll break me. I'll break
him, ride him to death, or he'll pitch me off and finish me liked he
finished Cordova. But I know I can handle him. I sure feel it inside
of me, lady! Pay? I don't want pay! I'll work for nothing. If I had a
stake, I'd give it to you for a chance to keep on trying for him. I
know I'm asking a pile. You want the mares and you can get them the
minute Alcatraz is dropped with a bullet,--but I tell you straight,
he's worth all of 'em--all six and more!"
A light came over his face. "Miss Jordan, lemme stay on and try my
luck and if I get him and break him, I'll turn him over to you. And I
tell you: he's the wind on four feet."
"You'll do all this and then give him to me when he's gentled and
broken--if that can be done? Then why do you want him?"
"I want to show him that he's got a master. He's played with me and
plumb fooled me all these weeks. I want to get on him and show him
he's beat." His fierce joy in the thought was contagious. "I want to
make him turn when I pull on the reins. I'll have him start when I
want to start and stop when I want to stop. I'll make him glad when I
talk soft to him and shake when I talk hard. He's made a fool of me;
I'll make a fool and a show of him. Lady, will you say yes?"
He had swept her off her feet and with a mind full of a riot of
imaginings--the frantic stallion, the clinging rider, the struggle for
superiority--she breathed: "Yes, yes! A thousand times yes--and good
luck, Mr. Perris."
He tossed his arms above his head and cried out joyously.
"Lady, it's more'n ten years of life to me!"
"But wait!" she said, suddenly aware of Hervey, lingering in the
background. "I haven't the power to let you stay. It's Mr. Hervey who
has authority while my father is away."
The lips of Red Jim twitched to a sneering malevolence mingled with
gloom.
"It's up to him?" he echoed. "Then I might of spared myself all of
this talk."
It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal.
Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains.
And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the
Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without Red Jim.
"You don't know Mr. Hervey," she broke in before the foreman could
speak for himself. "He'll bear no malice to you. He's forgotten that
squabble over--"
"Sure I have," said Lew Hervey. "I've forgotten all about it.
But the way I figure, Miss Jordan, is that Perris is like a chunk of
dynamite on the ranch. Any day one of the boys may run into him and
there'll be a killing. They're red-hot against him. They might start
for him in a gang one of these days, for all I know. For his own sake,
Perris had better leave the Valley."
He had advanced his argument cunningly enough and by the way
Marianne's eyes grew large and her color changed, he knew that he had
made his point.
"Would they do that?" she gasped. "Have we such men?"
"I dunno," said Lew. "He sure rode 'em hard that morning."
"Then go," cried Marianne, turning eagerly to Red Jim. "For heaven's
sake, go at once! Forget Alcatraz--forget the mares--but start at
once, Mr. Perris!"
Even a blind man might have guessed many things from the tremor of
her voice. Lew Hervey saw enough to make his eyes contract to the
brightness of a ferret's as he glanced from the girl to handsome Jim
Perris. But the red-headed adventurer was quite blind, quite deaf.
No matter how the thing had been done, he knew that the girl and the
foreman were now both combined to drive him from the ranch, from
Alcatraz. For a moment of blind anger he wanted to crush, kill,
destroy. Then he turned on his heel and strode towards the arch which
led into the patio.
"Mind you!" called Lew Hervey in warning. "It's on your own head,
Perris. If you don't leave, I'll throw you off!"
Red Jim flashed about under the shade of the arch.
"Come get me, and be damned," he said.
And then he was gone. The cowpunchers, furious at this open defiance
of them all, boiled out into the patio, growling.
"You see?" said Hervey to the girl. "He won't be satisfied till
there's a killing!"
"Keep them back!" she pleaded. "Don't let them go, Mr. Hervey. Don't
let them follow him!"
One sharp, short order from Hervey stopped the foremost as they ran
for the entrance. In fact, not one of them was peculiarly keen to
follow such a trail as this in the darkness. Breathless silence fell
over the patio, and then they heard the departing beat of the hoofs of
Red's horse. And the shock of every footfall struck home in the heart
of Marianne and filled her with a great loneliness and terror. And
then the noise of the gallop died away in the far-off night.