Max Brand

Gunmans Reckoning Max Brand

The fifty empty freights danced and rolled and rattled on the rough road bed andfilled Jericho Pass with thunder; the big engine was laboring and grunting at thegrade, but five cars back the noise of the locomotive was lost. Yet there is a way totalk above the noise of a freight train just as there is a way to whistle into the teethof a stiff wind. This freight-car talk is pitched just above the ordinary tone-it is anovertone of conversation, one might say-and it is distinctly nasal. The brakie couldtalk above the racket, and so, of course, could Lefty Joe. They sat about in thecenter of the train, on the forward end of one of the cars. No matter how the trainlurched and staggered over that fearful road bed, these two swayed in their placesas easily and as safely as birds on swinging perches. The brakie had touched LeftyJoe for two dollars; he had secured fifty cents; and since the vigor of Lefty's oathshad convinced him that this was all the money the tramp had, the two now satelbow to elbow and killed the distance with their talk."It's like old times to have you here," said the brakie. "You used to play this linewhen you jumped from coast to coast.""Sure," said Lefty Joe, and he scowled at the mountains on either side of the pass. The train was gathering speed, and the peaks lurched eastward in a confused, ragged procession. "And a durned hard ride it's been many a time.