by Max Brand
But Gray Peter was not a steeplechaser. He had not been trained to it, and he refused. His rider had to whirl and go up the line of shrubs until he found a place to break through. Then he was after Sally again. But the moment that Andrew saw the marshal had been stopped, he did not use the interim to push the mare and increase her lead. Very wisely he drew her back to the long, rocking canter that was her natural gait, and Sally got the breath that Gray Peter had run out of her. She also regained priceless lost ground, and when the gray came in view of the quarry again, his work was all to do over again.
Hal Dozier tried again in straightaway running. It had been his boast that nothing under the saddle in the mountain desert could keep away from him in a stretch of any distance, and he rode Gray Peter desperately to make his boast good. He failed. If that first stretch had been unbroken—but there his chance was gone, and starting the second spurt, Andrew came to realize one greatly important truth—Sally could not sprint for any distance, but up to a certain pace she ran easily and without labor. That was the meaning of those comparatively short forelegs and the high croup that gave the slight-and-awkward downpitch to her figure—she was essentially a distance horse. Gray Peter could outhoof her by many seconds in a mile sprint, but kept inside a certain maximum, she ran tirelessly. He made it his point to see that she was never urged beyond that pace. He found another thing—that she took a hill in far better style than Peter, and she did far better in the rough, but on the level going he ate up her handicap swiftly.
With a strength of his own found, and a weakness in his pursuer, Andrew played remorselessly to that weakness with his strength. He sought the choppy ground as a preference and led the stallion through it wherever he could; he swung to the right, where there was a stretch of rolling hills, and once more Gray Peter had a losing space before him.
So they came to the river itself, with Gray Peter comfortably in the rear, but running well within his strength. Andrew paused in the shallows to allow Sally one swallow, then he went on. But Dozier did not pause for even this. It was a grave mistake.
And so the miles wore on. Sally was still running like a swallow for lightness, but Andrew knew by her breathing that she was giving vital strength to the effort. He talked to her constantly. He told her how Gray Peter ran behind them. He encouraged her with pet words. And Sally seemed to understand, for she flicked one ear back to listen, and then she pricked them both and kept at her work. It was a heart-tearing thing to see her run to the point of lather and then keep on.
They were in low hills, and Gray Peter was losing steadily. They reached a broad flat, and the stallion gained with terrible insistence. Looking back, Andrew could see that the marshal had stripped away every vestige of his pack. He followed that example with a groan. And still Gray Peter gained. He went forward in the stirrups to ease the mare by putting more weight on her forehand, and still Gray Peter gained.
It was the last, great effort for the stallion. Before them rose the foothills of the Roydon Mountains; behind them the Las Casas range was lost in mist. It seemed that they had been galloping like this for an infinity of time, and Andrew was numb from the shoulders down. If he reached those hills, Gray Peter was beaten. He knew it; Hal Dozier knew it, and the two great horses gave all their strength to the last duel of the race.
The ears of Sally no longer pricked. They lay flat on her neck. The amazing lift was gone from her gait, and she pounded heavily with the forelegs. And still she struggled on. He looked back, and Gray Peter still gained, an inch at a time, and his stride did not seem to have abated. The one bitter question now was whether Sally would not collapse under the effort. With every lurch of her body, with every impact of her hoofs, Andrew expected to feel her crumble beneath him. And yet she went on. Courage? She was all courage. She was all heart, all nerve, and running on it. Behind her came Gray Peter, and he also ran with his head stretched out.
He was within rifle range now. Why did not Dozier fire? Perhaps he had set his heart on actually running Sally down, not dropping his prey with a distant shot.
And still they flew across the flat. The hills were close by, and sometimes, when the drizzling rain that had wet Andrew to the skin and chilled him to the bone lifted, it seemed that the Roydon Mountains were exactly above them, leaning out over him like a shadow. He called on Sally again and again. He touched her for the first time in her life with spurs, and she found something in the depths of her heart and her courage to answer with. She ran again with a ghost of her former buoyancy, and Gray Peter was held even.
Not an inch could he gain after that. Andrew saw his pursuer raise his quirt and flog. It was useless. Each horse was running itself out, and no power could get more speed out of the pounding limbs.
With his head still turned, Andrew felt a shock and flounder. Sally had almost fallen. He jerked sharply up on the reins, and she broke into a staggering trot. Then Andrew saw that they had struck the slope of the first hill, a long, smooth rise that she would have taken at full speed in the beginning of the race, but now it broke her heart to make it. He called to her; he spurred again; the trot quickened, but although she labored bitterly, she could not raise a gallop. The trot was her best effort.
There was a shrill yelling behind, and Andrew saw Dozier, a hand brandished above his head. He had seen Sally break down; Gray Peter would catch her; his horse would win that famous duel of speed and courage. Rifle? He had forgotten his rifle. He would go in, he would overhaul Sally, and then finish the chase with a play of revolvers. And in expectation of that end, Andrew drew his revolver. It hung the length of his arm; he found that his muscles were numb from the cold and the cramped position from the elbow down. Shoot? He was as helpless as though he had no gun at all. His hand shook crazily under the strain. And in the meantime, flogging with his quirt, no doubt the marshal had kept his blood in circulation.
It gave Andrew a nightmare sensation, as of one fleeing in his sleep up a long stairs—only a step to gain safety, and yet his feet are turned to lead, and the horror rushes like the wind upon him from behind. He beat his hands together to bring back the blood. He bit the cold fingers. He thrashed his arms against the pommel of the saddle. There was only a dull pain; it would take long minutes to bring those hands back to the point of service, and Gray Peter galloped upon him from behind!
Well, he would let Sally do her best. For the last time he called on her; for the last time she struggled to respond, and Andrew looked back and grimly watched the stallion sweeping across the last portion of the flat ground, closer, closer, and then, at the very base of the slope, Gray Peter tossed up his head, floundered, and went down. And as he went, he hurled his rider over his head.
Andrew, fascinated, let Sally fall into a walk, while he watched. He was now in pointblank range of that deadly rifle, but he forgot his own danger in watching the singular, convulsive struggles of Gray Peter to gain his feet. Hal Dozier was up again; he ran to his horse, caught his head, and at the same moment the stallion grew suddenly limp. The weight of his head dragged the marshal down, and then Andrew saw that Dozier made no effort to rise again.
He sat with the head of the horse in his lap, his own head buried in his hands, and Andrew knew then that Gray Peter was dead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The mare herself was in a far-from-safe condition. And if the marshal had roused himself from his grief and hurried up the slope on foot, he would have found the fugitive out of the saddle and walking by the side of the played-out Sally, forcing her with slaps on the hip to keep in motion. She went on, stumbling, her head down, and the sound of her breathing was a horrible thing to hear. But she must keep in motion, for if she stopped in this condition, Sally would never run again.
Andrew forced her relentlessly on.
At length her head came up a little, and her breathing was easier and easier. Before dark that night he came on a deserted shanty, and there he took Sally under the shelter, and tearing up the floor, he built a fire that dried them both. The fol
lowing day he walked again, with Sally following like a dog at his heels. One day later he was in the saddle again, and Sally was herself once more. Give her one feed of grain, and she would have run again that famous race from beginning to end.
But Andrew, stealing out of the Roydon Mountains into the lower ground, had no thought of another race. He was among a district of many houses, many men, and for the final stage of his journey, he waited until after dusk had come, and then saddled Sally and cantered into the valley. It was late on the fourth night after he left Los Toros that Andrew came again to the house of John Merchant and left Sally in the very place among the trees where the pinto had stood before. There was no danger of a discovery on his approach, for it was a wild night of wind and rain. The drizzling mists of the last three days had turned into a steady downpour, and rivers of water had been running from his slicker on the way to the ranch house. Now he put the slicker behind the saddle and, from the shelter of the trees, surveyed the house.
It was bursting with music and light; every moment or so automobiles, laboring through the mud, hummed up to the house or left it, bringing guests and taking them away; it must be the reception before the wedding. For some reason he had always imagined the house wrapped in black night, as it was the time of his first coming, and it baffled him, this music, this noise, this radiance behind every window. Sometimes the front door was opened and voices stole out to him; sometimes even through the closed door he heard the ghostly tinkling of some girl’s laughter.
And that was to Andrew the most melancholy sound in the world.
The rain, trickling even through the foliage of the evergreen, decided him to act at once. It might be that all the noise and light were, after all, an advantage to him, and running close to the ground, he skulked across the dangerous, open stretch and came into the safe shadow of the wall of the house.
Once there, it was easy to go up to the roof by one of the rain pipes, the same low roof from which he had escaped on the time of his last visit. On the roof, the rush and drumming of the rain quite covered any sound he made, but he was drenched before he reached the window of Anne’s room. Could he be sure that on her second visit she would have the same room? He settled that by a single glance. The curtain was not drawn, and a lamp, turned low, burned on the table beside the bed. The room was quite empty. The lamp reassured him, for the first person to enter the apartment would be sure to turn up the wick.
The window was fastened, but he worked back the fastening iron with the blade of his knife and raised himself into the room. He closed the window behind him. At once the noise of rain and the shouting of the wind faded off into a distance, and the voices of the house came more clearly to him. But he dared not stay to listen, for the water was dripping around him; he must move before a large, dark spot showed on the carpet, and he saw, moreover, exactly where he could best hide. There was a heavily curtained alcove at one end of the room, and behind this shelter he hid himself. In case of a crisis the window was straight ahead of him; also, he could watch the door into the hall by pushing back the curtain.
Here he waited. How would she come? Would there be someone with her? Would she come laughing, with all the triumph of the dance bright in her face?
Behind him and about him, he touched silken things; a mingling of fragrances reached him; apparently he had found the closet she used as a dressing room, and every sight and scent—for a twilight came from the lamp and stole through above the curtain—spoke of Anne Withero and of her gentleness and all that nameless purity that he connected with her. He fell into a sort of sad-happy dream behind the curtain. Vaguely he heard the shrill droning of the violins die away beneath him, and the slipping of many dancing feet on a smooth floor fell to a whisper and then ceased. Voices sounded in the hall, but he gave no heed to the meaning of all this. Not even the squawking of horns, as automobiles drove away, conveyed any thought to him; he wished that this moment could be suspended to an eternity.
Parties of people were going down the hall; he heard soft flights of laughter and many young voices. People were calling gaily to one another, and then, by an inner sense rather than by a sound, he knew that the door was opened into the room. He leaned and looked, and he saw Anne Withero close the door behind her and lean against it. In the joy of her triumph that evening?
No, her head was fallen, and he saw the gleam of her hand at her breast. He could not see her face clearly, but the bent head spoke eloquently of defeat. She came forward at length.
Thinking of her as the reigning power in that dance and all the merriment below him, Andrew had been imagining her tall, strong, with compelling eyes commanding admiration. He found all at once that she was small, very small, and her hair was not that keen fire that he had pictured. It was simply a coppery glow, marvelously delicate, molding her face. She went to a great, full-length mirror; he had not seen it until her reflection suddenly flashed out at him from it with a touch of dull-green fire at her throat. Was that a jewel?
He had not time to see. She had raised her head for one instant to look at her image, and then she bowed her head again and placed her hand against the edge of the mirror for support. Little by little, through the half-light, he was making her out, and now the curve of her arm, from wrist to shoulder, went through Andrew like a phrase of music. He stepped out from behind the curtain, and at the sound of the cloth swishing back into place, she whirled on him.
If he could have had a picture of her as she stood there with the first fear parting her lips and darkening her eyes, I suppose that Andrew Lanning would have parted with the rest of Anne Withero with small pain indeed.
“I’ve come to do no harm,” he said hastily. “Do not be afraid.”
She was speechless; her raised hand did not fall; it was as if she were frozen where she stood.
“I shall leave you at once,” said Andrew quietly, “if you are badly frightened. You have only to tell me.”
He had come closer. Now he was astonished to see her turn swiftly toward the door and touch his arm with her hand. “Hush,” she said. “Hush. They may hear you.” She glided to the door into the hall and turned the lock softly and came to him again.
It made Andrew weak to see her so close, and he searched her face with a hungry and jealous fear, lest she should be different from his dream of her. “You are the same,” he said with a sigh of relief. “And you are not afraid of me?”
“Hush… hush,” she repeated. “Afraid of you? Don’t you see that I’m happy, happy, happy to see you again?” She drew him forward a little, and her hand touched his as she did so. She turned up the lamp, and a flood of strong-yellow light went over the room. “But you have changed,” said Anne Withero with a little cry. “Oh, you have changed. What have they been doing to you?”
He was dumb. Something cold that had been forming about his heart was breaking away and crumbling, and a strange warmth and weakness was coming in his blood. She was answering her own question.
“I know. They’ve been hounding you… the cowards.”
“Does it make no difference to you… all that I’ve done?” asked Andrew.
“What is it that should make a difference?”
“I have killed a man.”
“Ah, it was that brother to the Dozier man. But I’ve learned about him. He was a bloodhound like his brother, but treacherous. I’ve learned everything about him, and people say it was a good thing that he died. Besides, it was in fair fight. Fair fight? It was one against six.”
“Don’t,” said Andrew, breathing hard, “don’t say that. You make me feel that it’s almost right to have done what I’ve done. But besides him… all the rest… do they make no difference?”
“All of what?”
“People say things about me. They even print them.” He winced as he spoke.
But she was fierce again; her passion made her tremble. “When I think of it…,” she murmured. “When I think of it, the rotten injustice makes me want to choke them all. Why, today I heard… I can
’t repeat it. It makes me sick… sick. And you’re only a boy, Andrew Lanning.”
It was a staggering blow. He was not altogether sure that he was glad to hear this statement. He made himself his full height.
“Some people would smile if they heard you say that,” said Andrew.
“If you draw yourself up like that again, I’ll laugh at you. Andrew Lanning, I say, you’re just a boy. You’re not two years older than I am. Why, they’ve hounded you and bullied you until they’ve made you think you are bad, Andrew. They’ve even made you a little bit proud of the hard things people say about you. Isn’t that true?”
Was it any wonder that Andrew could not answer? He felt all at once so supple that he was hot tallow that those small fingers would mold and bend to suit themselves.
“Sit down here,” she commanded. Meekly he obeyed. He sat on the edge of his chair, with his hat held with both hands, and his eyes widened as he stared at her—like a person coming out of a great darkness into a great light.
Tears came into the eyes of the girl. “You’re as thin as a starved… wolf,” she said, and closed her eyes and shuddered. “And all the time I’ve been thinking of you as you were when I saw you here before… the same clear, steady eyes and the same direct smile. Oh, you see I’ve never forgotten that night. What girl would? It was like something out of a play… but so much finer. But they’ve made you older… they’ve burned the boy out of you with pain. And I’ve been thinking about you just cantering through wild, gay adventures. Are you ill now?”
He had leaned back in the chair and gathered his hat close to his breast, crushing it.
“I’m not ill,” said Andrew. His voice was hoarse and thick. “I’m just listening to you. Go on and talk.”
“About you?” asked the girl.
“I don’t hear your words… hardly. I just hear the sound you make.” He leaned forward again and cast out his arm so that the palm of his hand was turned up beneath her eyes. She could see the long, lean fingers. It suddenly came home to her that every strong man in the mountain desert was in deadly terror of that hand. Anne Withero was shaken for the first time, and her smile went out.
