Jokers Extra Wild by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781428518230
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing
Published: 2011-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Splitting of the Loot

Anna, starting up suddenly from her place at the window, cried: “I see him!”

“Who?” demanded Rosita.

“I see the señor! Señor Sleeper! I see him walking across the patio, and now through the gate. He turns up the street.”

“There’s nothing in that,” said Rosita.

“Why should he be going out now, in the dusk of the day?” asked Anna. “And at the very time when supper is nearly ready?”

“Men are like cats,” said Rosita, “and they must walk out in the twilight. They must walk out and smell the night and bristle their whiskers a little . . . the devils!”

“Señor Sleeper is walking up the street,” Anna continued. “He comes to the lane . . . and he turns down it. Why does he turn down that lane? Is it because he has seen that little fool of a Dolores with her loud, squealing laugh and her painted mouth?”

“Girls have the meaning that men choose to give them,” said Rosita. “Is he going straight down the lane toward her house?”

“He has come to the bend of the lane . . . no, he is walking around it. He stops and looks about him . . . then he slips into the tall brush.”

“I knew, when I first saw him, that he was a hunting cat,” said Rosita. “What bird will he catch in that bush?”

“He has gone through it. He is on the farther side. He looks stealthily about him. He thinks he is alone. He cannot tell that I can look down on him from this height like a bird from the sky.”

“Poor bird!” said Rosita. “You are in the sky and yet you are caught if he whistles.”

“He begins to run!” exclaimed Anna. “He disappears into the shallow draw. Now I see only his head as he moves to the west. I am going.”

“Where?”

“After him. How do I know where?” She turned hastily from the window.

“Don’t be a crazy thing,” said Rosita. “A woman never can run fast enough to catch a man . . . it is better to sit still . . . they run so far that they end up where they begin.”

Anna, instead of making an answer, threw open a chest that stood in a corner of the room and snatched out a big new Colt revolver.

“What are you doing with that? Put that back . . . it’s your father’s finest gun!” called Rosita.

“If Señor Sleeper needs help, he needs more than my bare hands can give him. Mother, pray for me.”

“Ai! Anna! Wait . . . listen to me!”

But Anna was already off down the steps. Her mother puckered her face and tilted back her head to scream. But she thought better of this and took her stand at the window, looking out over the dim, sunset landscape. She saw Anna cross the patio, turn up the street and into the lane.

At the bend of the lane, the tall girl slipped through the brush and appeared on the farther side of it, running like a deer.

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