by Max Brand
CHAPTER 27
The bullets of the posse had neither torn a tendon nor broken a bone.Striking at close range and driven by highpower rifles, the slugs hadwhipped cleanly through the flesh of Andrew Lanning, and the fleshclosed again, almost as swiftly as ice freezes firm behind the wire thatcuts it. In a very few days he could sit up, and finally came down theladder with Pop beneath him and Jud steadying his shoulders from above.That was a gala day in the house. Indeed, they had lived well ever sincethe coming of Andrew, for he had insisted that he bear the householdexpense while he remained there, since they would not allow himto depart.
"And I'll let you pay for things, Andrew," Pop had said, "if you won'tsay nothing about it, ever, to Jud. He's a proud kid, is Jud, and he'dbust his heart if he thought I was lettin' you spend a cent here."
But this day they had a fine steak, brought out from Tomo by Pop theevening before, and they had beans with plenty of pork and molasses inthem, cream biscuits, which Pop could make delicious beyond belief, tosay nothing of canned tomatoes with bits of dried bread in them, andcoffee as black as night. Such was the celebration when Andrew came downto join his hosts, and so high did all spirits rise that even Jud, theresolute and the alert, forgot his watch. Every day from dawn to dark hewas up to the door or to the rear window, keeping the landscape under asweeping observance every few moments, lest some chance traveler--allsearch for Andrew Lanning had, of course, ceased with the moment of hisdisappearance--should happen by and see the stranger in the householdof Pop. But during these festivities all else was forgotten, and in themidst of things a decided, rapid knock was heard at the door.
Speech was cut off at the root by that sound. For whoever the strangermight be, he must certainly have heard three voices raised in that room.It was Andrew who spoke. And he spoke in only a whisper. "Whoever it maybe, let him in," said Andrew, "and, if there's any danger about him, hewon't leave till I'm able to leave. Open the door, Jud."
And Jud, with a stricken look, crossed the floor with trailing feet. Theknock was repeated; it had a metallic clang, as though the man outsidewere rapping with the butt of a gun in his impatience, and Andrew,setting his teeth, laid his hand on the handle of his revolver. Here Judcast open the door, and, standing close to it with her forefeet on thetop step, was the bay mare. She instantly thrust in her head and snortedin the direction of the stranger.
"Thank heaven!" said Andrew. "I thought it was the guns again!" And Jud,shouting with delight and relief, threw his arms around the neck of thehorse. "It's Sally!" he said. "Sally, you rascal!"
"That good-for-nothing hoss Sally," complained the old man. "Shoo heraway, Jud."
But Andrew protested at that, and Jud cast him a glance of gratitude.Andrew himself got up from the table and went across the room with halfof an apple in his hand. He sliced it into bits, and she took themdaintily from between his fingers. And when Jud reluctantly ordered heraway she did not blunder down the steps, but threw her weight back onher haunches and swerved lightly away. It fascinated Andrew; he hadnever seen so much of feline control in the muscles of a horse. When heturned back to the table he announced: "Pop, I've got to ride thathorse. I've got to have her. How does she sell?"
"She ain't mine," said Pop. "You better ask Jud."
Jud was at once white and red. He looked at his hero, and then he lookedinto his mind and saw the picture of Sally. A way out occurred to him."You can have her when you can ride her," he said. "She ain't much useexcept to look at. But if you can saddle her and ride her before youleave--well, you can leave on her, Andy."
It was the beginning of busy days for Andrew. The cold weather wascoming on rapidly. Now the higher mountains above them were swiftlywhitening, while the line of the snow was creeping nearer and nearer.The sight of it alarmed Andrew, and, with the thought of beingsnow-bound in these hills, his blood turned cold. What he yearned forwere the open spaces of the mountain desert, where he could see theenemy approach. But every day in the cabin the terror grew that someonewould pass, some one, unnoticed, would observe the stranger. The whisperwould reach Tomo--the posse would come again, and the second time thetrap was sure to work. He must get away, but no ordinary horse would dofor him. If he had had a fine animal under him Bill Dozier would neverhave run him down, and he would still be within the border of the law. Afine horse--such a horse as Sally, say!
If he had been strong he would have attempted to break her at once, buthe was not strong. He could barely support his own weight during thefirst couple of days after he left the bunk, and he had to use his mind.He began, then, at the point where Jud had left off.
Jud could ride Sally with a scrap of cloth beneath him; Andrew startedto increase the size of that cloth. To keep it in place he made a longstrip of sacking to serve as a cinch, and before the first day was goneshe was thoroughly used to it. With this great step accomplished, Andrewincreased the burden each time he changed the pad. He got a bigtarpaulin and folded it many times; the third day she was accepting itcalmly and had ceased to turn her head and nose it. Then he carried up asmall sack of flour and put that in place upon the tarpaulin. She wincedunder the dead-weight burden; there followed a full half hour of franticbucking which would have pitched the best rider in the world out of asaddle, but the sack of flour was tied on, and Sally could not dislodgeit. When she was tired of bucking she stood still, and then discoveredthat the sack of flour was not only harmless but that it was good toeat. Andrew was barely in time to save the contents of the sack fromher teeth.
It was another long step forward in the education of Sally. Next hefashioned clumsy imitations of stirrups, and there was a long fightbetween Sally and stirrups, but the stirrups, being inanimate, won, andSally submitted to the bouncing wooden things at her sides. And still,day after day, Andrew built his imitation saddle closer and closer tothe real thing, until he had taken a real pair of cinches off one ofPop's saddles and had taught her to stand the pressure withoutflinching.
There was another great return from Andrew's long and steady intimacywith the mare. She came to accept him absolutely. She knew his voice;she would come to his whistle; and finally, when every vestige ofunsoundness had left his wounds, he climbed into that improvised saddleand put his feet in the stirrups. Sally winced down in her catlike wayand shuddered, but he began to talk to her, and the familiar voicedecided Sally. She merely turned her head and rubbed his knee with hernose. The battle was over and won. Ten minutes later Andrew had cincheda real saddle in place, and she bore the weight of the leather without astir. The memory of that first saddle and the biting of the bur beneathit had been gradually wiped from her mind, and the new saddle wasconnected indisolubly with the voice and the hand of the man. At the endof that day's work Andrew carried the saddle back into the house with ahappy heart.
And the next day he took his first real ride on the back of the mare. Henoted how easily she answered the play of his wrist, how little her headmoved in and out, so that he seldom had to sift the reins through hisfingers to keep in touch with the bit. He could start her from a standinto a full gallop with a touch of his knees, and he could bring her toa sliding halt with the least pressure on the reins. He could tell,indeed, that she was one of those rare possessions, a horse with awise mouth.
And yet he had small occasion to keep up on the bit as he rode her. Shewas no colt which hardly knew its own paces. She was a stanchfive-year-old, and she had roamed the mountains about Pop's place atwill. She went like a wild thing over the broken going. That catlikeagility with which she wound among the rocks, hardly impaired her speedas she swerved. Andrew found her a book whose pages he could turnforever and always find something new.
He forgot where he was going. He only knew that the wind was clippinghis face and that Sally was eating up the ground, and he came to himselfwith a start, after a moment, realizing that his dream had carried himperilously out of the mouth of the ravine. He had even allowed the mareto reach a bit of winding road, rough indeed, but cut by many wheels andmaking a white streak across
the country. Andrew drew in his breathanxiously and turned her back for the canyon.
