The Black Rider by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand®, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4285-0622-0
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 1996-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

VI “The Gregorys”

The tidings of his coming went out on wings, and that night the Gregorys assembled. In the course of two generations a large family had multiplied greatly and become almost a clan, of which the head was old Charles Gregory; and it was at his ranchhouse, a scant mile from the town of Sudeth, that the assembly gathered. Old or young, gray or dark, they packed into the big dining room. The elders sat. The younger men, the fighting van of the Gregory family, were ranged around the wall, smoking cigarettes until their faces were lost behind a haze, but speaking rarely or never. For it was felt in the Gregory family that age had its rights and its wisdom, and that young men may listen to them with profit.

Old Charles Gregory himself sat at the head of the board. Time had withered, but not faded, him. His arms and hands were shrunk like the arms and hands of a mummy, but his thin, bronzed cheek still held a healthful glow, and his eyes were as bright as the eyes of a youth. He opened the meeting with a little speech.

“There ain’t no use saying why we’ve come together, folks,” he said. “The hound has come back. It wasn’t enough that we didn’t follow him out and finish him off after he murdered poor Bill. That wasn’t enough. We kept the law and stayed quiet. But being quiet only made him figure that he could walk right over us. So he’s back here sitting easy at the hotel and waiting for us to do something. The question is: What are we going to do?”

The elders around the table neither stirred nor spoke, but there was a slight and uneasy shifting of feet around the wall and a dull jingling of spurs. Not a man there but was a man of action.

“None of you seem to have no ideas!” said Charles Gregory fiercely. “But first off I’d better tell you just what happened when Bill was killed. There’s been a lot of talk about it since. There’s been five years for talk to grow up, and talk grows faster than any weed on the range! I’ll tell you the facts because, come my time of life, the longer ago a thing happens the clearer it is to me!”

He paused and closed his eyes. For the moment he looked like a weary mask of death. Now again his eyes looked out from the steep shadow of his brows, and he went on: “And you younger people listen close. You’re going to hear the facts. It started over nothing, the way most shooting scrapes start. Bill comes riding into town one day and goes up on the verandah and sits down in a chair. Pretty soon Abe Sawyer comes up to him and says to him: ‘You know who that chair belongs to?’

“‘I dunno,’ says Bill.

“‘Gordon Macdonald has been sitting in it,’ says Abe.

“‘Who’s Gordon Macdonald?’ says Bill.

“‘A nacheral born man-killer,’ says Abe, ‘and the worst man with a gun that ever was born.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.