The Cure of Silver Cañon

by Max Brand

  “What makes you so infernally sure of that?”

  “A still small voice is speaking to me from inside,” said Gerald.

  And suddenly rage mastered him. It was the one defect in his nature that from time to time these overmastering impulses of fury would sweep across him. He lowered his voice to a whisper that could not reach the girl, but what he said to Maddern was, “You overbearing fool, step down the hill with me away from the girl, and I’ll tell you some more about yourself.”

  To his amazement, Maddern chuckled.

  “This lad has spirit,” he said cheerfully. “Ain’t you going to introduce me, Kate?”

  “This is my father?” said Kate.

  “I have gathered that,” said Gerald.

  “And, Dad, this is Gerald Kern, who was just …”

  “Gerald Kern?” shouted Maddern, leaping back a full yard. “Are you the one that … come up here?”

  He caught Gerald by the arm and literally dragged him up the stairs and into the shaft of light that streamed through the open door. “It’s him!” he thundered to the girl as he stood back from Gerald, a rosy-cheeked, white-haired man with an eye as bright as a blue lake among mountains of snow. “It’s the one that kicked Red Charlie out of town. Oh, lad, that was a good job. Another day, and I’d’ve got myself killed trying to fight the hound. When he talked to me, it was like a spur digging me in the ribs. But Charlie’s gone, and you’re the man that started him running. Gimme your hand!” And he wrung the fingers of Gerald Kern with all his force.

  This was pleasant enough, but in the background what was the girl doing? She was regarding the stranger with wonder that went from his odd riding boots to his riding trousers, thence up to his face. But anon her glance wandered toward the trail outside the house again, and the heart of Gerald sank. Truly, she was even more deeply smitten than he had dreaded to find her.

  But William Maddern was taking him into his house and heart like a veritable lost brother.

  “Come inside and sit down, man,” went on Maddern. “Sit down and let me hear you talk. By heaven, it did me good to hear the story. I’d have given a month of life to see Red Charlie when the lanterns and the other truck landed on him. Kate, you can stand watch for Tommy.” Gerald was dragged inside the house.

  “Why should I watch?” said Kate.

  “Make yourself busy,” said Maddern. “We’re going to have a talk.”

  “Am I too young to hear man-talk?” Kate asked angrily, standing at the door.

  “Now there’s the woman of it,” said her father with a grin. “Lock a door, and she’s sure to break her heart unless she can open it, even if she has all the rest of the house to play in. But if you’re inside, you’ll be sure to wish you were out to wait for Tommy Vance.”

  She tossed her head. “Let him stay away,” she said. “But not to have sent a single word, Dad!”

  And Gerald bit his lip to keep from smiling. It was all working out as though charmed.

  “When I was a youngster in Montana,” began Maddern, “I remember a fellow in the logging camp as like Red Charlie as two peas in a pod. And when …”

  With one tenth of his mind, Gerald listened. With all the rest he dwelt on Kate. And she was all that he had hoped. The glimpse had been a true promise. Now for a season of careful diplomacy and unending effort.

  Were not ten days long enough for a great campaign?

  VI

  But ten days were not enough! Not a day that he left unimproved. Not a day that he did not manage to see Kate Maddern. But still all was not as it should be. He felt the shadowy thought of big, handsome Tom Vance ever in her mind. It fell between them in every silence during their conversation.

  Not that he himself was unwelcome, for she liked him at once and showed her liking with the most unaffected directness. But sometimes he felt that friendship is farther from love than the bitterest hate, even.

  Meanwhile, he had become a great man in Culver City. The sinews of war he provided by a short session every evening in Canton Douglas’ place—a very short session, for it must never come to the ear of the girl that he was a professional gambler who drew his living from the cards. To her, and to the rest of Culver City, he was the ideal of the careless gentleman, rich, idle, with nothing to do except spend every day more happily than the days before it.

  Neither was there any need for more battle to establish his prowess. It was taken for granted on all hands that he was invincible. Men made way for him. They turned to him with deference. He was considered as one apart from the ordinary follies of lesser men. He was an umpire in case of dispute; he was a final authority. And the sheriff freely admitted that this stranger had lessened his labors by half. For quarrels and gunplay did not flourish under the regime of Gerald Kern.

  There was the case of Cheyenne Curly, for instance. Cheyenne had built him a repute that had endured upon a solid foundation for ten years. He was not one of these showy braggarts. He was a man who loved battle for its own sake. He had fought here and there and everywhere. If he could not lure men into an engagement with guns, he was willing to fall back upon knife play, in which he was an expert after the Mexican school, and if knives were too strong for the stomach of his companion, he would agree to a set-to with bare fists. Such was Cheyenne Curly. Men avoided him as they avoided a plague.

  And in due time, stories of the strange dandy who was running Culver City drifted across the hills and came to the ear of the formidable Curly. It made him prick his ears like a grizzly scenting a worthy rival. Before dawn he had made his pack and was on the trail of the new battle.

  None who saw it could forget the evening on which Cheyenne arrived in Culver City. He strode into Canton Douglas’ place and held forth at the bar, bracing his back against a corner of the wall. There he waited until the enemy should arrive.

  Canton Douglas himself left his establishment and went to give Gerald warning. He found that hero reading quietly in his room, reading the Bible and …

  But that story should be told in the words of Canton himself.

  “I come up the hall wheezing and panting, and I bang on Gerald’s door,” he narrated. “Gerald sings out for me to come in. I jerk open the door, and there he sits done up as usual like he was just out of a bandbox.

  “‘Hello,’ he says, standing up and putting down the big book he was reading. ‘I’m very glad to see you, Mister Douglas. Sit down with me.’

  “‘Mister Kern,’ I say, ‘there’s hell popping.’

  “‘Let it pop,’ he says. ‘I love noise of kinds.’

  “‘Cheyenne Curly’s here looking for you,’ I say.

  “‘Indeed?’ he says. ‘I don’t remember the gentleman?’

  “I leaned ag’in’ the wall.

  “‘He’s a nacheral-born hell-cat,’ I say. ‘He don’t live on nothing less’n fire. He’s clawed up more gents than would fill this room. He’d walk ten miles and swim a river for the sake of a fight.’

  “‘And he has come here hunting trouble with me?’ says Gerald.

  “‘He sure has,’ I say.

  “‘But I’m a peaceable man and an upholder of the law, am I not?’ says Gerald.

  “‘Which you sure are, Mister Kern,’ I say. ‘When you play in my house, I know that there ain’t going to be no gunfights or no loud talk. And that’s the straight of it, too.’

  “‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Then, if you won’t stay with me and try a few of these walnuts and some of this excellent homemade wine … if you insist on going back immediately … you may tell Mister Cheyenne Curly that I am most pacifically disposed, and that I am more interested in my book than in the thought of his company.’

  “I let the words come through my head slow and sure. Didn’t seem like I could really be hearing the man that had cleaned up Red Charlie. I backed up to the door, and then I got a sight of the book that he was readin
g. And … by the Lord, boys, it was the Bible! Wow! It near dropped me. I was slugged that hard by the sight of that book! Yep, it was an honest-to-goodness Bible all roughed up along the edges with the gilt half tore off, it had been carried around so much and used so much.

  “Well, sir, it didn’t fit in with Gerald the way we knew him, so quick with a gun and so handy with a pack of cards. But, after all, it did fit in with him, because he always looked as cool and as easy as a preacher even when he was in a fight. It give me another look into the insides of him, and everything that I seen plumb puzzled me. Here he was reading a Bible, and the rest of us down yonder wondering whether he’d be alive five seconds after he’d met Cheyenne Curly. He seen me hanging there in the doorway, and he started to make talk with me. Always free and easy, Gerald is. He sure tries to make a gent comfortable all the time.

  “He says to me … ‘I get a good deal of enjoyment out of this old book. Do you read it much, Mister Douglas?’

  “‘Mister Kern,’ I say, ‘I ain’t much of a hand with religion. I try to treat every man as square as I can and as square as he treats me. That’s about as much religion as I got time for.’

  “‘Religion?’ he says. ‘Why, man, the Bible is simply a wonderful storybook.’

  “Yes, sir, them was his words. And think of a man that could read the Bible because of the stories in it. Speaking personal, there’s too many ‘ands’ in it. They always stop me.

  “‘Well,’ I say to Gerald, ‘I’ll go down and tell Cheyenne that you’re too busy to see him tonight. He’ll have to call later.’

  “‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘One can’t be at the beck and call of every haphazard stranger, Mister Douglas.’

  “‘No, sir,’ I say. ‘But the trouble with Cheyenne is that he ain’t got no politeness, and that when I tell him that, he’s mighty liable to come a-tearing up here and knock down your door to get at you.’

  “At that, Gerald lays down his book and shuts it over his finger to keep the place. He looks at me with a funny twinkle in his eye.

  “‘Dear, dear,’ he says, ‘is this Cheyenne such a bad man as all that? Would he actually break down my door?’

  “‘He would,’ I say, ‘and think nothing of it.’

  “‘In that case,’ he says, ‘you might tell him that I am reading the story of Saul, and that when I have finished, I may feel inclined to take the air. I may even come into your place, Mister Douglas. Will you be good enough to tell him that?’

  “‘Mister Kern,’ I say, ‘I sure wish you luck. And if he gets you, there ain’t a chance for him to get out of this town alive.’

  “At that he jumps up, mad as can be.

  “‘Sir,’ he says, ‘I hope I have misunderstood you. If there should be an altercation between me and another man, I know that the victor would never be touched by the mob.’

  “‘All right,’ I say, and backed out the door, feeling as though I’d stepped into a hornet’s nest.

  “I come downstairs and back to my place. There’s Cheyenne Curly still standing at the bar with his back to the wall. He ain’t drinking none. And all the half of the bar next to him is empty. The boys are doing their drinking in front of the other half. And Curly is waiting and waiting and not saying nothing to nobody, but his shiny little pig eyes are clamped on the door all the time.

  “I go up to him and say, ‘Curly, Gerald is plumb busy reading a book, but when he gets through with it, he says that he’s coming down to have a little talk to you.’

  “Curly don’t say nothing back. He just runs the tip of his tongue over the edge of his beard and grins to himself like I’d just promised him a Christmas dinner. Made my blood turn cold to look at him.

  “Then we started in waiting … me and every other man in my place, and there was a clear path from the door to the place where Curly was standing at the bar. But outside that path nobody was afraid of getting hurt. When two like Gerald and Curly started the bullets flying, every slug would go where it was aimed.

  “It wasn’t more’n half an hour, but it seemed like half a year to all of us, before the swinging doors come open and in walks Gerald. He was done up extra special that night. He had a white silk handkerchief wrapped around his throat like he was afraid of the cold. His boots shined like two lanterns. And the gun he was carrying wasn’t no place to be seen. Matter of fact, just where he aims to pack his gun we ain’t been able to make out … he gets it out so slick and easy out of nowhere.

  “I looked over to Curly. And there he was crouched a little and with his right hand glued to the butt of his gun, and he was trembling all over, he was so tensed up for a lightning-quick draw. But his hand hung on the gun. He didn’t draw, and I wondered why.

  “I looked down to Gerald. And by heaven, sir, he wasn’t facing Curly at all. He’d turned to one side and he was talking to young Hank Meyers. Yes, sir, with that wildcat all ready to jump at his throat, Gerald had turned his back on him, pretty near, and he was standing over by the table of Hank.

  “Everything was as silent as the inside of a morgue. You could hear every word Gerald was saying. And his voice was like silk, it was so plumb easy.

  “‘I haven’t seen you since the last mail, Mister Meyers,’ he was saying. ‘What is the word from your sick mother now?’

  “Well, sir, hearing him talk like that sent a shiver through me. It wasn’t nacheral or human, somehow, for a gent to be as calm and cool as that.

  “Hank tried to talk back, but all he could do was work his lips. Finally he managed to say that the last mail brought him a letter saying that his mother was a lot better. And Gerald drops a hand on Hank’s shoulder.

  “‘I’m very glad to hear the good news,’ he says. ‘I congratulate you on receiving it. I have a little engagement here, and when I’m through, I’ll come back to you and hear some more, if I may.’

  “You could hear every word clear as a bell. He turns back again.

  “Curly was still crouched, and now he yanks his gun half clear of the holster, but Gerald leans over and takes out a handkerchief and flicks it across the toe of his boot.

  “‘Beastly lot of dust in the street,’ he says.

  “Well, sir, there was a sort of a groan in the room. We was all keyed up so high it was like a violin string breaking in the middle of a piece. I was shaking like a scared kid.

  “But finally Gerald straightened and come right up toward Curly. I looked at Curly, expecting to see his gun jump. But there was nary a gun in his hand. Maybe he was waiting for Gerald to make the first move, I thought. And then I seen that Curly’s eyes were glassy. His mouth was open, and his jaw was beginning to sag. And he was shaking from head to foot.

  “I knew what had happened. That long waiting had busted his nerve wide open the same as it had busted the nerve of the rest of us.

  “Up come Gerald straight to him.

  “‘I understand,’ says Gerald, ‘that your name is Cheyenne Curly, and that you’ve come to see me. What is it you wish to say to me, sir?’

  “Curly moved his jaw, but didn’t say nothing. I could hear the boys breathing hard. Speaking personal, I couldn’t breathe at all.

  “‘I was given to understand further,’ says Gerald, ‘that you intend to wipe up the ground with me.’

  “Curly’s hand moved at last. But it swung forward … empty! And I knew that there wasn’t going to be no shooting that night. But it was like a nightmare, watching him sort of sag smaller and smaller. Straightened up, he must have been about three inches taller’n Gerald. But with Gerald standing there so straight and quiet, he looked like a giant, and Curly looked like a sick boy with a funny beard on his face.

  “Hypnotism? I dunno. It was sure queer. Pretty soon Curly manages to speak.

  “‘I was just riding this way,’ says Curly, his voice shaking. ‘I ain’t meaning any harm to you, Mister Kern. No harm in the world to you, sir.’


  “He starts forward. I felt sick inside. It ain’t very pretty to see a brave man turned into a yaller dog like that. Halfway to the door Curly throws a look over his shoulder, and then he starts running like he’d seen a gun pointed at him. He went out through the door like a shot. And that was the end of Curly.

  “But, speaking personal, you and me, I’d rather hook up with a pair of tornadoes than have to face Gerald with a gun.”

  VII

  There were other tales of that famous encounter between Gerald and Cheyenne Curly, that bloodless and horrible battle of nerve against nerve. And certainly the sequel was true, which related how terrible Curly sank low and lower until finally he became cook for a gang of laborers on the road, a despised cook who was kicked about by the feeblest Chinaman in the camp.

  There was another aftermath. From that time on, men shunned an encounter with Gerald as though he carried a lightning flash in his eye. For who could tell, no matter how long his record of heroism, what would happen if he should encounter Gerald Kern in Culver City? Who could tell by what wizardry he accomplished his work of unnerving an antagonist? And was it not possible, as Canton Douglas had so often suggested, that there was a species of hypnotism about his way of looking a man squarely in the eye?

  Even Kate Maddern was inclined to believe. And Kate was, of all people, the least likely to be drawn by blind enthusiasms. But she talked seriously to Gerald about it the next day.

  It was a fortnight since Tommy Vance had disappeared, and Gerald himself was beginning to wonder at the absence of Tom. Was it possible that the young miner had determined to double the test to which he was subjecting himself? December was wearing away swiftly, and still he did not come. It troubled Gerald. It was incomprehensible to him, for he had not dreamed that there was so much metal in his rival. But perhaps it could be explained away as the result of some disaster of trail or camp that had overwhelmed Tommy Vance.

  In fact, he became surer and surer as the days went by that Tom would never return—that somewhere among those hard-sided mountains lay his strong young body, perhaps buried deep beneath a snowslide or the thousand tons of an avalanche.