the Long, Long Trail (1923)

by Brand, Max

  "You hitched up to a pile of womenfolks?" he muttered.

  "My wife and my daughter won't bother you none, and my two boys knows what's manners between men, but Mary--she's my niece--can make a murderer talk if she sets her mind right on it."

  At this the bandit chuckled. It was always a surprise to hear the soft, musical voice of this man.

  "Leave her to me, pardner. It's been a good many years since I got my imagination all going at once, but when I get oiled up, I can spin the yarns out all night. What was the name of that town--Ireton? Nothing queer about it? Well, leave the rest to me, Valentine. If she wants talk, I'll let her have it."

  "Aye, but one thing more, while we're on the subject of Mary. She's a fine girl, Dreer, but she has her ways. And one of them is to get all excited about any stranger man that comes around. She starts in by being foolish about 'em and most generally they wind up by being foolish about her. Now, I don't mean that you're the kind to get foolish about any girl, but I'm just telling you beforehand that if Mary begins to smile at you and act like you was a gold mine that she'd discovered all by herself, don't let it bother you."

  "Don't bother none about me, Valentine. I'm well broke, pardner. I ain't gun-shy and I ain't girl-shy. Lead on!"

  Since the night had turned crisp, Valentine found his entire family grouped near the big fireplace in the living room. They were in characteristic attitudes. Maude Valentine sat with her feet tucked well back under her chair and her knitting needles flew with soft precision. Elizabeth, her daughter, lay in a big chair with her hands locked behind her head, looking dreamily out the black window. In another corner Mary was plotting with Charlie Valentine, and Louis, disconsolately out of the picture, attempted to bury himself in a book, out of which he lifted envious glances at Charlie from time to time. When the door opened, there was a general shifting of eyes and attitudes; the tall and deceptively graceful form of Jess Dreer became the center of attention.

  "Mother, I've brought home an old friend. Jess Dreer. Dreer, this is my girl Elizabeth. Mary Valentine, my niece, and my boys, Charlie and Louis."

  They shook hands.

  How much did the bandit learn from the touch of their fingers--from the cold, faint pressure of Mrs. Valentine; from the grip of Charlie, boyishly eager to test the comparative strength of this tall stranger; from the nervous touch of Louis's hand, for Louis was always ill at ease and apt to be embarrassed before newcomers. "Lizbeth" greeted him at the full distance of her rather thin arm. She was one of those who come late to womanhood. Her eyes still held that infinite quiet of childhood; her throat was small, but her mouth had a kindly softness. She would never have Mary Valentine's gemlike beauty of detail, but in time she would ripen to a rare womanhood. And as for Mary, her hand and her glance both lingered on him. It was as if she had seen him before and was now trying to resurrect the complete memory.

  Mrs. Valentine took them into the dining room, and there she busied herself all the time they were eating by popping up out of her chair and running to get something as soon as she was once fairly seated. She discovered that Morgan's napkin was spotted, that his favorite chow-chow had been left off the table, that the baked potatoes were underdone, for which the cook received a brief, stern sentence, that the window was too widely open; in short, she spent the entire space of the meal asking Jess Dreer how long he had been in that part of the country, and interrupting herself every time before she got through with the interrogation. Finally she forgot all about her question, and sat as usual, with a smile of attention on her lips, listening to the men talk, while her eyes roved wistfully about the table hunting for the missing things. Yet never once did she win a glance from Morgan Valentine. She filled the time of the meal with an atmosphere of flurry and uncertainty, quite unheeded by her husband. But once, twice the gray eye of Jess Dreer fixed her through and through and tumbled her sad, small soul into full view. Not that she understood it; she only felt a vague fear of the stranger, his silences, his alert calm.

  When they went back into the living room, two big chairs were drawn comfortably near to the fire, and the other chairs arranged in a loose semicircle on both sides of the fireplace so that the travelers could rest in ease.

  "And how's young Norman?" asked Morgan Valentine.

  He had turned to Charlie, but the latter indicated Louis with a jerk of his thumb.

  "I dunno. Lou went over to see how Joe was coming on."

  "I rode over," said Louis, embarrassed by the sudden focusing of all eyes upon him, "but I might as well have stayed away. They was about a thousand Normans hanging around the house. When I come up the path from the hitching rack, they was about a dozen of 'em on the front veranda. I hear 'em say: 'It's him.' 'No,' says someone, 'it ain't him, but it's his brother.' Then I come up and says howdy to 'em, but all they do is grunt like pigs--"

  "Which they are!" cried Charlie.

  The chair of Morgan Valentine creaked as he turned, and under his glance his eldest son lowered his gaze. All of this byplay was noted by the shrewd eye of the bandit. And the fact that he had been observed by a stranger to endure a reprimand made Charlie jerk up his head again and glare defiantly at Jess Dreer. The latter did not turn his head politely as another man might have done. He met the challenging glance of the younger man with a calm indifference so that it could be felt he was coolly measuring the other and filing an estimate of him away.

  "Anyway," went on Louis, "I went up to the door and knocked. Mrs. Norman came, and I took off my hat and says: 'I've come to ask after Joe. How is he?'

  "She didn't say nothing for a minute. She just stood there drying the dishwater off her hands and looking me up and down.

  "'Oh,' she says after a while, 'it's you, is it? And why didn't your brother come and ask about his murdered man?'

  "And when she said that, all the men on the veranda growled. I turned away and didn't say any more--"

  "Oh," cried Mary Valentine, "I wish that I'd been in your boots! I'd have found something to say!"

  "Mary," said Mrs. Valentine, "it looks to me like you'd found too much to say other times."

  Her husband checked her with a swiftly raised hand, but Mary continued to stare defiantly at her aunt. Since the episode of Joe Norman they had been almost openly at war, and now Mrs. Valentine compressed her lips and knitted with a venomous speed.

  "You needn't think that I wouldn't have talked back fast enough if one of the men had talked up," said Louis, turning red. "I wasn't afraid of any of 'em, Mary, if that's what you mean."

  "You know it isn't what I mean, Lou," she said with a diplomatic change of voice. "Nobody is fool enough to doubt your courage; you're a Valentine, I guess! But it makes me mad to think of you turning away without giving that mob a few hot shots between wind and water."

  "I wish I'd had the chance at 'em," said Charlie ferociously, and he flashed Mary a glance that sought approval.

  "Good thing you hadn't," replied the girl instantly. "You'd probably have had ten men on your hands in no time. Better to say nothing at all, like Lou, than say the wrong thing."

  It made Charlie glower at her, but Louis smiled in triumph. Plainly Jess Dreer saw how the clever girl balanced one of them against the other.

  "But here we are talking family shop before a stranger!" continued Mary Valentine, and she smiled an apology at Jess Dreer.

  He shifted his regard from Louis to his cousin, and, if ever a smile failed to strike its target, certainly Mary's smile glanced harmlessly away from the impersonal eyes of Dreer. She found herself suddenly sobered.

  "Don't mind me," he was saying in that surprisingly gentle voice.

  "A little fracas," explained his host swiftly. "Charlie had a mix-up with Joe Norman and dropped him--through the arm--nothing to talk of."

  Here Mrs. Valentine raised her eyes, let her glance fall pointedly upon Mary, sighed, and shook her head. It was impossible to miss her meaning. Mary had been the cause of the quarrel. But Jess Dreer was looking toward the ceiling and ha
d apparently seen nothing. Mary did not know whether to be relieved or piqued. But now that the stranger's attention was diverted to other things she took the occasion to examine him more minutely. Ordinarily she was not in the least interested in the few acquaintances whom her uncle brought home, but now she discovered that this stranger was probably not quite so old as his weather-beaten appearance had at first led her to imagine.

  Then she found that the conversation had taken a new turn. Mrs. Valentine apparently felt that it was the part of a perfect hostess to draw the stranger into the center of attention.

  "How long have you and Mr. Dreer known each other, Morgan?" she asked.

  Chapter 9

  At this Morgan Valentine flashed a glance at his companion, indicating that the danger line was being approached.

  "Oh--about five years," he said carelessly. He should have said more. His very carelessness made Mrs. Valentine continue her inquiry as though she feared that Dreer would consider himself slighted by so summary a dismissal from conversation.

  "Five years? Well, you're a secretive man, Morgan. Would you believe, Mr. Dreer, that he's never mentioned you in all that time? I've known him to do the same with some of his oldest and best friends. That's Morgan's way! Where was it you first met Mr. Dreer, Morgan?"

  "Down in Ireton."

  "Well, well! As long ago as that?" And the subject was closed for Mrs. Valentine. Then Mary entered the lists.

  "Why, that was the time you bought the timber, Uncle Morgan?"

  "I guess it was. I disremember."

  "Were you one of the men Uncle Morgan bought it from?"

  "I never been interested in timber," said Jess Dreer. "Horses is more my line. But speaking about timber--"

  Who knows how far he might have rambled afield on the subject of timber and all its possibilities had not chance interrupted him. There was a snap, and a bright coal leaped out of the fireplace and onto the rug. In the flurry of putting it out Dreer's promised anecdote was forgotten, and before he could resume it, Mary was back on the subject.

  "Oh, did you buy that string of grays from Mr. Dreer, Uncle Morgan?"

  "I disremember how it was that I met Dreer," said Valentine, with a mild voice like that of one who labors in vain to find a suitable lie.

  Dreer came to his rescue.

  "It was in Tolliver's saloon. We were drinking--"

  "Why, Uncle Morgan! I thought it was ten years since you'd had a drink!"

  "Not drinking whisky," put in Jess Dreer calmly. "Leastways, he was taking lemonade, and I was tossing off my redeye. That was how we come to talk."

  As plain as day the steady eye of the girl said to him: "You are lying, Mr. Jess Dreer, and I know it."

  But he went on: "And I'll tell you why Mr. Valentine ain't ever mentioned me. It's because he's a modest man. But here's the facts. I was saying that I had been drinking whisky. Well, when I went out into the sun, it got into my head and made it spin. When I climbed onto my hoss, I raked his side with a spur, and the next thing I knew my pinto was ten feet in the air. When he landed, I kept right on traveling. And when pinto seen me on the ground, he allowed I was his meat and started for me. He was a maneater, was pinto.

  "There I lay stretched out with eight hundred and fifty pounds of red-eyed hossflesh tearing for me and about twenty fools laughing their heads off in front of the saloon. But they was one man cool enough to see what was coming off: a man-killing. He had a split part of a second to keep that hoss from reaching me, and he done it. He outs with his guns and drills pinto clean through the temples. As pretty a snapshot as ever I seen. And that man was Morgan Valentine!"

  He dropped his hand lightly on the shoulder of Valentine.

  "But he's so modest that it ain't no wonder he's never talked about me."

  Now Mary Valentine sat next to the tall stranger, and she was leaning forward to catch every syllable and read every detail of his expression, but for some reason he did not seem to see her. His target lay beyond. It was Elizabeth who had pushed her chair a little out of line with the rest of the circle, quite content to let Mary take the lion's share of the attention of the evening. On her Jess Dreer bent his steady eye, and every inflection of his voice was aimed at the girl, so that she, too, leaned forward, and before the end was smiling in breathless interest.

  While the general exclamation went the rounds at the end of the tale, Mary snapped a glance over her shoulder at her cousin. Then she turned her attention back upon the tall man.

  "I guess you've made that a bit strong," Valentine was saying.

  "Facts are facts," said the bandit, and rolled a cigarette.

  He had adroitly pushed his host out of the embarrassing center of the stage and stepped into the spotlight himself.

  "Pinto reared when the lead hit him; coming down, one of his forefeet clipped me here."

  And the bandit touched the scar upon his forehead. There was a general leaning forward and an intaken breath; Mrs. Valentine fixed her starry eyes upon her husband. In the clamor Mary could say to the stranger without fear of being overheard:

  "Mr. Dreer, how much of that is made up?"

  He neither smiled nor flushed.

  "Guess," he said.

  "The whole thing."

  "Lady," he answered calmly, "you sure got faith in my imagination!"

  At this point the fire blazed up so hot that Mrs. Valentine had to move her chair. It was Jess Dreer who read her wish and pulled the chair back, and when he sat down again, it was in a place beside Lizbeth.

  It would not be fair to Mary to say that she was piqued by this occurrence. She was not angered; she was merely gathered up in the silence of a vast astonishment. For the first time in her life she had been overlooked, it seemed, and her cousin was preferred. And yet she had given Jess Dreer his full share of intriguing glances and bright smiles.

  Indeed, the interest of the stranger in Lizbeth was so pointed that the whole family began to notice. He gave his host and hostess a phrase or a word now and then, but he contrived to make his talk go constantly toward the girl. And it was plain that Mrs. Valentine was not altogether displeased. As for Elizabeth, Mary saw her at first embarrassed, and then flushed, and then lost in a great interest. She was beginning to dwell on the face of Dreer while he spoke. Mary drew her uncle to one side.

  "Your friend likes Lizbeth," she said pointedly. "And Lizbeth seems to like him."

  "Now, Mary, what are you aiming to come at?"

  "I aim to know who Jess Dreer is."

  "Ain't you been told tolerable in detail?"

  "Too much detail, dear Uncle Morgan. Do you think I was taken in by that cock-and-bull story about the mad horse?"

  "Hush, Mary!" and his glance sought his wife guiltily.

  "I knew it!"

  "Mary, you're a nuisance."

  "But just tell me who he is, and I won't bother you a word more."

  "He's a man. Two legs, tolerable long; two arms, tolerable strong, and, speaking in general, he's like any other man."

  "He's as much like any other man," said the girl, watching him earnestly, "as a wolf is like a dog. Look at his hands, Uncle Morgan. They're brown. He hasn't worn gloves much, the way honest cowpunchers do. Look at the inside of his palms. No calluses. I noticed when I shook hands with him. Look at the way he moves! Like a cat moves, Uncle. Don't tell me he's an ordinary man!"

  "They's all kinds of men, and when you're older, you'll know it. Wolf? That's foolishness, honey."

  "A wolf, Uncle."

  "You think he's talking too much to Lizbeth?"

  "Oh, no. Lizbeth is too much of a baby to be harmed."

  "She's grown up, Mary."

  "On the outside; inside she's about ten years old. But I'm right about this stranger. Even Charlie and Louis see that he's different. Usually Charlie starts edging up to new men, but he keeps clear of Dreer. See how he eyes him!"

  "There you go again."

  "Then tell me the truth about him."

  "I'll tell you t
his much, honey. He's not the kind for you to set your cap at."

  "You mean that you think I'll flirt with him?"

  "Maybe."

  "Uncle! With a man fifteen years older than I am?"

  "Maybe not so old as that. But he's old enough. You've played around with boys, Mary, and they was no particular harm in it, excepting for getting Charlie into scrapes now and then. But when you start making eyes at a grown man, trouble will hit you and not them."

  "You admit that it isn't very safe to be friendly with him. And yet you've known him five years?"

  "No matter how long. I know him. And you keep away from him, honey."

  "How long does he stay?"

  "Till after you go."

  "Somewhere there's a mystery," said Mary Valentine, and she added suddenly: "There he is laughing at us now. Why, he knows we're talking about him, and he's mocking me."

  "Honey, he ain't laughing."

  "With his eyes, Uncle Morgan. Oh, he's a deep one!"

  Chapter 10

  If Valentine had sought to create a diversion and start new interests by bringing his bandit home, he had indubitably succeeded. The advent of the stranger had the effect of a bomb which is about to explode. No one could really have said why Dreer was exciting, but before he had been in the room for ten minutes, each member of Valentine's family had felt the same influence of excitement which had affected Morgan Valentine and induced him to bring the stranger to his home. Perhaps it was that in spite of the grave decorum of Dreer's manner one felt about him a native wildness. In a way, it might be said that he carried a gust of fresh air into the room. And he was constantly alert and active after the manner of wild things. His hands were rarely still, and though he seldom turned his head, his eyes went everywhere.

  When he smiled at a remark of Elizabeth's, Mary felt that he was laughing at her, and Charlie felt that he was being mocked. Not that the stranger pointedly ignored the rest of the room, but it seemed that he had happened to sit down by Elizabeth, and he found her sufficiently entertaining. But the great point of wonder was that Elizabeth was actually talking. At first haltingly, confused because the eyes of the others in the room were occasionally turning upon her with wonder, but by degrees warming into complete forgetfulness of the rest. She lowered her voice. She was talking to the tall man alone. About what? The others caught fragments of phrases about her horses, about her last hunting trip, about the lobo she shot last spring. She had begun by asking timidly polite questions. She ended by chattering gaily about herself.