Blue Kingdom by Max Brand

Elizabeth exclaimed.
    He wiped his forehead. “Don’t matter,” he said. “But . . . Elizabeth, tell me one thing. Is there anything I can do to help you . . . that’s not work? It makes me pretty sick to have to admit that, but I’m not a worker. I’ve got no strength for it . . . no strength in the brain, I mean.” He was taken by an impulse that made him stand close to her and catch both her hands. “D’you think I’m talkin’ like a fool?” he asked. “Or . . . ?”
    She was serious at once. “You’ve no obligation to this house, Carrick,” she said.
    â€œThen why’s my picture hanging inside it?”
    Her eyes wandered, and then they came back to his face with a snap. “The fact is that you might walk into a lion’s den for me, Carrick,” she said, without smiling in the least.
    â€œGive me the street and number of the lions,” he stated, “and tell me what was in the purse you dropped there?”
    â€œI’ll tell you,” she said. “There’s a twenty-one-year-old boy now herding with Jim Tankerton’s gang. Go get him and bring him safe home before he has a chance to commit more crimes . . . hanging crimes, Carrick.” Suddenly she was trembling. “Don’t answer quickly, Carrick. But think . . . think a moment.”
    â€œTankerton?” he repeated slowly.
    â€œYes, Tankerton. Jim Tankerton. You couldn’t find a harder man to deal with.”
    Instinctively he turned toward the mountains. The brown foothills rolled away into smoky blue, which was spotted here and there with streaks of white that might be the gleam of a cloud or of the snow on a distant peak.
    Carrick Dunmore laughed softly. “That’s my road, Elizabeth,” he said. “That’s Tankerton’s hang-out, isn’t it?”
    She looked white and sick, and her mouth twisted a little to one side as she watched him. “Yes,” she said faintly. “Heaven forgive me for letting the idea come into your mind. Oh, you know of Tankerton, but you can’t know all that we do in this part of the world. There is no other evil, no other supreme, overmastering, and exquisitely complete evil except Tankerton.”
    â€œI’ve heard a bit about him, here and there,” he admitted, “but you see how it is? What right has he got over there on my ground?”
    â€œWhat ground, Carrick? What do you mean?”
    â€œWhy, Elizabeth, I mean the blue, yonder, and allthe roads that climb out of sight into the horizon blue. That’s the land of the first Carrick Dunmore, and I’d say that I ought to have the same right, eh? Don’t you think no more about it. I’m off.”
    â€œNot before lunch, Carrick.”
    â€œI wouldn’t trust myself,” he said bitterly. “I might start to thinking about the long, hot trail that’s lyin’ ahead of me, and the first thing you know, you’d have to wake me up for supper. No, no, Elizabeth, I’m startin’ now. As quick as I can make up my pack and slap it onto the back of Excuse Me.”
    She did not speak another word in dissuasion but went meekly about working on the pack. She put up a quantity of food for him, since, as she pointed out, he would be following a road that rarely touched houses, and he would probably have to sleep out in the open that night. So the pack was made up, wrapped securely in a tarpaulin, and lashed behind the saddle upon the back of Excuse Me. She accepted this new burden with an angry stamping and rattling of her bridle, but she did not attempt to buck it off. Then Elizabeth Furneaux opened the corral gate for her champion to get out onto the road. She stood beside the open panel with the same troubled look and white face that he had seen before, so he checked the mare close beside her, as he came out, and leaned above her.
    â€œLook here, Elizabeth,” he said,