for you in a week. But think of me stumbling on to you!”
It was the first time that Terry had a fair opportunity to speak, and he made the best of it.
“It's very pleasant to meet you—on this basis,” he said. “But as for taking up—er—road life—”
The lifted hand of Joe Pollard made it impossible for him to complete his sentence.
“I know. You got scruples, son. Sure you got 'em. I used to have 'em, too, till your old man got 'em out of my head.”
Terry winced. But Joe Pollard rambled on, ignorant that he had struck a blow in the dark: “When I met up with the original Black Jack, I was slavin' my life away with a pick trying to turn ordinary quartz into pay dirt. Making a fool of myself, that's what I was doing. Along comes Black Jack. He needed a man. He picks me up and takes me along with him. I tried to talk Bible talk. He showed me where I was a fool.
“'All you got to do,' he says to me, 'is to make sure that you ain't stealing from an honest man. And they's about one gent in three with money that's come by it honest, in this part of the world. The rest is just plain thieves, but they been clever enough to cover it up. Pick on that crew, Pollard, and squeeze 'em till they run money into your hand. I'll show you how to do it!'
“Well, it come pretty hard to me at first. I didn't see how it was done. But he showed me. He'd send a scout around to a mining camp. If they was a crooked wheel in the gambling house that was making a lot of coin, Black Jack would slide in some night, stick up the works, and clean out with the loot. If they was some dirty dog that had jumped a claim and was making a pile of coin out of it, Black Jack would drop out of the sky onto him and take the gold.”
Terry listened, fascinated. He was having the workings of his father's mind re-created for him and spread plainly before his eyes. And there was a certain terror and also a certain attractiveness about what he discovered.
“It sounds, maybe, like an easy thing to do, to just stick on the trail of them that you know are worse crooks than you. But it ain't. I've tried it. I've seen Black Jack pass up ten thousand like it was nothing, because the gent that had it come by it honest. But I can't do it, speaking in general. But I'll tell you more about the old man.”
“Thank you,” said Terry, “but—”
“And when you're with us—”
“You see,” said Terry firmly, “I plan to do the work you asked me to do— kill what you wanted killed on the range. And when I've worked off the money I owe you—”
Before he could complete his sentence, a door opened on the far side of the room, and Kate Pollard entered again. She had risen from her bed in some haste to answer the summons of her father. Her bright hair poured across her shoulders, a heavy, greenish-blue dressing gown was drawn about her and held close with one hand at her breast. She came slowly toward them. And she seemed to Terry to have changed. There was less of the masculine about her than there had been earlier in the evening. Her walk was slow, her eyes were wide as though she had no idea what might await her, and the light glinted white on the untanned portion of her throat, and on her arm where the loose sleeve of the dressing gown fell back from it.
“Kate,” said her father, “I had to get you up to tell you the big news— biggest news you ever heard of! Girl, who've I always told you was the greatest gent that ever come into my life?”
“Jack Hollis—Black Jack,” she said, without hesitation. “According to
Plainly her own conclusions might be very different.
“According to anybody's way of thinking, as long as they was thinking right. And d'you know who we've got here with us now? Could you guess it in a thousand years? Why, the kid that come tonight. Black Jack as sure as if he was a picture out of a book, and me a blind fool that didn't know him. Kate, here's the second Black Jack. Terry Hollis. Give him your hand agin and say you're glad to have him for his dad's sake and for his own! Kate, he's done a man's job already. It's him that dropped old foxy Minter!”
The last of these words faded out of the hearing of Terry. He felt the lowered eyes of the girl rise and fall gravely on his face, and her glance rested there a long moment with a new and solemn questioning. Then her hand went slowly out to him, a cold hand that barely touched his with its fingertips and then dropped away.
But what Terry felt was that it was the same glance she had turned to him when she stood leaning against the post earlier that evening. There was a pity in it, and a sort of despair which he could not understand.
And without saying a word she turned her back on them and went out of the room as slowly as she had come into it.
CHAPTER 26
“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