Rancher's Legacy by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Chapter Twenty-three

Surprises are less dramatic than long expected calamities. Tragedy gathers around the sick man, who has fought for years against his disease. People hold their breath when at last he goes to bed. They shudder when they learn of his death. But when your strong, robust fellow drops dead without warning in the street, we shrug our shoulders, turn up our eyes, and say without conviction that one never knows what may happen. Public interest must be worked up. There have to be two good preliminary acts before the tragedy.

So it was in the case of young Flash David.

He had held the center of the stage for a long time and prepared the public mind for just what had happened. They had watched him with a breathless intensity, as though he were buried powder, with a forest fire nearby. Now the word went out that he had killed a Gypsy, made a fool of the sheriff and two good fighting men, and a second time in one day had escaped through their fingers.

The sheriff came back to Pazo looking somewhat dour. Hank had vowed never to leave this blood trail. And big Jim appeared with his head tied in a strong bandage. He said nothing. His looks were enough.

No one was surprised that Flash David had escaped from the sheriff. Probably they would have been vastly disappointed in their hearts if Crusty Bill had captured him at the first stroke. That was not how the play was, so to speak, advertised. In the first place, the boy had pointed toward eventual outlawry for a long, long time. But his exploits had been confined to the mysterious realm of self-defense, or else they had been performed south of the Río Grande. Now, that he had broken through and struck the law in the face, there would be no peace for him. It seemed absurd that the death of a mere Gypsy should have been the cause of his outlawry. But, whatever the cause, it was clear that a man could be hanged for the killing of a Gypsy as well as for the killing of a President of the United States.

Now that the boy was cut adrift and was roaming at large, everyone looked forward to a long chase. People settled back and shook their heads with outward gravity and inward smiling. If Flash did not give them good newspaper reading for six months at least, they missed their guess.

Good old Crusty Bill, he would stick like a bulldog to the trail, and he would do his best, but, of course, one cannot expect a bulldog to catch a thunderbolt without being badly burned, and already Crusty and his party had been singed, so to speak.

So the downfall of Flash called for neither great sympathy nor great surprise, only a deep interest. There were only three people in the county who so much as guessed that Flash was not guilty of the slaying of the Gypsy. Everyone else took it for granted.

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