by Max Brand
The boy began to notice the equipment of the big man now. He was wearing enough rough clothes that were plastered with mud and torn with a thousand small rents, such as come when one rushes recklessly through dense forest or climbs over rough rocks with many a slip and fall. Also, in spite of the bushy beard of the man and his stalwart frame, Tommy saw that the upper part of his cheeks were sunken and his eyes buried. Plainly he had made a long and hurried march. He had made it on foot and he had made it without so much as a blanket. Yet he had chosen to carry a perfect arsenal of guns and ammunition. He was weighted down with a Colt and a heavy cartridge belt crammed full of bullets, and now there rested beside him a repeating rifle of the newest and most expensive model. Tommy could see that it had been scrupulously cared for. There was not so much as a scratch upon the wood of the butt.
From these things he began to make deductions actively. Men did not travel over the mountains hastily in the time of the thaw, equipped with only guns and bullets, unless they were either pursuing or fleeing. And something told Tommy that this was not a case of pursuit. Men who pursue are fearless, and the keen eyes of this fellow rested upon even a boy like Tommy with a world of suspicion and cautious reserve.
“Look here, kid,” he said suddenly, “how long have you been here?”
“Almost a year,” said Tommy.
“A year!” said the other. “And nobody ain’t been near you all that time?”
“Nobody,” said Tommy.
“Not a soul, eh?”
“Not a soul.”
The big man drew a great breath, and then, in silence, he stared off into vacancy. Presently he began to smile. Evidently what he had learned had pleased him immensely.
“And,” said Tommy, “I’d like to know when we start on.”
“What?” said the stranger. “When we start on?”
“I . . . I thought,” said Tommy, “that you’d take me with you when you went.”
The other laughed with a brutal abruptness.
“Now, why,” he said, “are you aching to get back to other folks? What’ll they do for you? Nothing! Look at the way I been treated by everybody. Look at the way everybody has treated me.”
He stopped suddenly and eyed Tommy in that keen way he had, until he apparently decided that there was nothing to fear. He shrugged his shoulders. His tongue loosened.
“There ain’t no justice down among men,” he said in a voice half gruff and half whining. “They don’t give a man a chance. Look at me! Is a gent responsible for what he does when he’s got some hooch under his belt? No, he ain’t. No right-thinking man can say that he is. But I wake up with a headache, not knowing what I’ve done, and find about a dozen of ’em chasing me with dogs and guns. No questions asked. They just open fire when they sight me. Well, says I to myself, what’s all the fuss about? What have I done? But there ain’t any use waiting to get my questions answered with a slug through the head, so I foot it for the hills and give ’em the clean slip and have a damn’ hard trip . . . and finally I wind up here. And here’s where I’m going to stay, and here’s where you’re going to stay!” he added fiercely. “I ain’t going to have nobody sneaking out and telling where I am. If you’ve been here a year without nobody finding you, I guess I can stay here a year the same way. By that time things will have cleared up a little, and I can go down and look around and see how the land lies. Ain’t that sense?”
He seemed to be speaking to himself more than to Tommy, and the boy kept a discreet silence. Suddenly the head of the fugitive jerked around, and the keen little brute eyes glared at Tommy.
“Come here!” he roared.
Tommy came, trembling. The big hand of the stranger shot out and clamped around Tommy’s wrist. The pressure seemed to be cracking the bones.
“You’re going to stay right on here with me, kid!” he thundered. “Besides, if you can forage for one, you can forage for two. So you start in and make me comfortable. And there ain’t going to be no getting away. If you try to run for it, I’ll start out and trail you, and I’m the out-trailingest man you ever seen. I’d run you down inside a couple of hours, and then I’d tear you to bits.”
His eyes snapped, and his teeth gleamed behind his beard as he spoke. Tommy’s heart turned cold.
“Speak out!” roared the big man. “Tell me how you like me.”
“Fine,” stammered poor Tommy. “I . . . I like you fine.”
“You lie!” cried the big man, and with a sweep of his thick arm he knocked Tommy flat on his back.
The sting of the blow on his cheek worked like a strange madness in Tommy. He had been accustomed to the gentle ways of John Parks. He could not understand a rough voice and a heavy hand. Unreasoning, he came off the ground like the recoil of a cat and flew at the face of the stranger.
The latter had barely time to erect a guard, and that guard was insufficient. He lurched to his feet while the stinging, small fists were cutting into his face with a rain of blows. Once erect, he pushed Tommy away with a long, extended arm. The wonder left his face. A cruel interest took its place. He poised his great right hand.
“I’m going to lesson you,” he said savagely, drawing his breath in with joy at the prospect. “I’m going to give you one lesson for the sake of manners and showing you who’s the boss. Stand off, you imp!”
The last word was a grunt of rage as Tommy slipped under the extended arm and struck savagely into the body of the big man. Then the blow fell. It came straight and hard, with the overmastering weight of the stranger’s shoulder behind it. It struck Tommy on the side of the head and rolled him along the ground. He lay there stunned with a sting along the side of his face and a warmth that told him that the skin had been broken by that brutal stroke.
“Get up!” roared the big man, and he kicked Tommy with his heavy boot.
That wild anger leaped into the heart of the boy again. He came off the ground, how, he could not say, and sprang into the face of the stranger.
“You little wildcat!” gasped out the big man, and recoiled, although driven more by astonishment than by his hurts.
That instant of recoil, however, gave another opportunity to Tommy. He leaped to the pile of dried wood that he had heaped along one side of the cave, and a second later the billet cracked heavily along the sconce of the stranger. Again Tommy struck, and again he shouted with a wild satisfaction as he felt the wood bite, soft and heavy into flesh. Then the stick was torn from his hand. He leaped away, and he raced for the entrance to the cave, knowing that now nothing could save him but flight. The big man was not cursing, and his silence meant strangely more than oaths.
Tommy was almost at the entrance when something told him to dodge. Down he dropped in a heap—and barely in time. The scooping arms of the big man swept over him, brushing his clothes. The toes of the stranger’s boot lodged with sickening force against his ribs. Then the other crashed against the rocks with a shout of pain and rage. But Tommy, rising hastily to his feet again, knew that his finish had come, for now the big man was between him and the mouth of the cave!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE WORK OF MAN
He slipped back into the very center of the cave where he would have more room. Yet he knew that even there he was playing a losing game. In speed of foot, in endurance, he could not compare with the grown man. Presently he would be cornered, and the great, bone-breaking hands would fall upon him. After that. . . . His horrified mind grew blank. But, having picked up another stick of wood, he waited. He might strike and dodge at the same time and so gain another chance to get at the outlet. But that chance was only one in ten. He glanced longingly up the side of the cave where he had laid away rifle and revolver on a higher shelf. Oh, fool that he had been to put his weapons in a place where they were not instantly accessible!
The stranger seemed to have the same thought. He had risen slowly from the ground, drawing out his revolver as he did so. But a second of thought seemed to reassure him. He pushed the Colt back into its h
olster. He began to advance slowly with such a face of fiendish rage that Tommy was paralyzed. No, there would be no dodging now. This cold fury would prove inescapable. He saw a tiny trickle of crimson down the face of the man and into the beard. That red mark would be warrant for his own destruction, beyond a doubt.
“Now,” gasped out the other, “now, we’ll try something!”
He came with his great arms spread out, moving with long, stealthy strides as though he were stealing up on an unwatchful victim. In that nightmare horror Tommy could not move.
It was then he saw a dark form emerging out of the spot of black night at the mouth of the cave. With Jack and Jerry crowding behind her, in waddled Madame Bruin with as much assurance as though into her own cave. A shout of joyous welcome, a cry of wildest relief burst from Tommy’s lips.
That shout made the big man whirl on his heel. One instant he stood petrified with astonishment. Then madame reared up and stood immense on her hind legs, with a roar at this unexpected stranger. Another moment and she would have taken to her heels. But the big man did not wait. He plunged to the side of the fire and snatched up his rifle and pitched the butt into the hollow of his shoulder. It happened all in a twinkling. The gun spoke, and madame pitched heavily forward and died before she struck the ground.
There was a hoarse shout of exultation from the man. The rifle steadied again, spoke again, and Jack, with a squeal of agony, whirled around, doubled up on the ground with the pain, and then stretched out, limp. There stood Jerry, bewildered, sitting back on his haunches in the most utter amazement and looking to Tommy as though for explanation of this strange catastrophe.
Tommy’s fear for himself was forgotten. He saw the gun steady. But he sprang at the big man, and the shock of his body made the other shoot wild.
“Curse you!” cried the murderer, and with a short arm blow he struck Tommy to the ground. “Your turn comes last!”
“Run, Jerry!” shouted Tommy as he lay in the dirt.
But Jerry did not run. His brain was not what it would be a day hence. It was thick and sleepy from the long hibernation. And calamities had rained down so fast upon those around him that his keen mind was stunned. He sat up there still with his head cocked to one side and innocently faced the rifle.
So much Tommy saw with a side glance, and he saw, too, that the big man was steadying the rifle for another shot, steadying it carefully. Thereafter, he would tell how he slew three grizzlies with three shots in as many seconds.
But fear for Jerry raised Tommy. He stood up with a shrill cry. Only with a gun could this destroyer be stopped. He reached for the butt of the revolver at the big man’s thigh just as the other, with an oath, struck him down again. He fell, but his fingers had gripped the weapon and drawn it forth. There he lay with black night swirling around his brain.
“I’ll brain you!” thundered the big man, and reached for the weapon that Tommy had stolen.
Tommy pulled the trigger. He fired blindly. All before him was thick night. In answer to the bullet, a crushing weight fell upon him, and he felt that he had failed. After that the darkness was complete.
When he wakened, Jerry was licking his face.
He sat up with his brain still reeling. There lay the big-bearded man on his face, beside him, motionless. In the entrance to the cave lay madame and Jack, in the same postures in which they had fallen.
That sight was enough to bring Tommy to himself. He stood up and ran to make sure. It was not the human being for whom he felt concern. It was not dread for having taken a human life that stung Tommy. It was overwhelming remorse that the affection that had brought Madame Bruin to him had brought her to her death.
She was quite dead, and Jack was dead beside her. He took the great, unwieldy head in his lap. Jerry sniffed the cold nose, and then looked up with a whine from the face of his young master for explanation. But Tommy could only answer with tears. Then, in the midst of his grief, he shook his fist toward the inert form of the killer. Here was man at last, man for whose coming he had yearned so bitterly. This was the work of man!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AFTER YEARS HAVE PASSED
The first minute of waiting is always the longest. That first year in the valley of the Turnbull was always the longest to Tommy. It seemed to him that it embraced more than half of his life, for fear and loneliness and weakness and peril had lengthened every day to an infinity. But the time that followed flew on wings. Every minute was crowded. There is no dull moment to the man who tears his living by force of hand and force of cunning out of the wilderness. And when events happen most swiftly, time seems to fly on the strongest wing. To Tom Parks it seemed that there was only one stride through the next few years. So let us step across them in the same manner, with one step, and come to Tom in the spring of his sixteenth year.
A babble of sharp noises wakened him, the daybreak chorus of the forest. Tom rose from his bed of a bearskin thrown across soft pine branches. He stood up, now grown to his full height of a shade more than six feet, equipped with nearly 170 pounds of iron-hard muscle. He looked four years more than his sixteen, except that the down of manhood was only beginning to darken his upper lip and his chin. But that crease of pain and thoughtfulness that had been cleft in the center of his forehead had never departed, and there was a resolution, an independence of a grown man in his face.
He stretched his arms, long and powerful, until the last of the sleep fled tingling out at his fingertips. He yawned and exposed a set of white, perfect teeth. Then with a shake of his head, he tore off the shirt in which he had laid down to sleep. It was made of the softest buckskin, sewed with sinew— a roughly made garment with mere holes for the head and the arms. His trousers were of the same stuff, ending in a ragged fringe between knee and ankle. He dropped them from him and stood naked in the chill of the morning air—brown as though carved cunningly out of bronze.
Through the cave he sped into the rosy flush of morning sunlight, then, a flashing form, he was down the slope to where the creek swirled into a deep, long pool. He leaped onto a rock and stood a moment before plunging in. Around him, he heard life waking in the woods. He heard birds calling. He heard swift rustlings that were not of the wind among the foliage. Far above him a hawk flew. He marked its flight with interest. No, it was not a hawk. It was a great eagle. A hawk, at that height, would seem far smaller. Yes, it was an eagle—no doubt that old eagle of Bald Mountain. Tom Parks turned his head to watch until the speeding king of the air was shut from view past the treetops. Then he lowered his head and dived.
The water closed behind his feet without noise, with hardly a ripple. Silently he came to the surface again, turned on his face, and swam with long, strong, silent strokes straight ahead. It seemed that he would surely strike the great trunk that shot out from the bank, with its tangle of drowned branches. But, when he was a foot away, up flashed his legs, down went his head. He was under the trunk, then came, all noiseless as ever, to the surface, trod water until he was exposed to the breast, and stood there, laughing silently.
But that water was snow fed, ice cold. Even the leather skin and the tough muscles of Tom’s body could not keep out the chill from vital places. Back he turned for the shore. The long arms slipped through the water. Without a splash he came to shore.
The sun turned him to a figure of gleaming, running quicksilver. But that wind, blowing on his wet skin, was too cold. He slicked the water from his body with his hands. Then he picked a section of clean grass, lay down, and rolled in it. He came up drier—and dirtier. He brushed off the leaves and what dirt would come. For the rest—what did he care? Dirt meant nothing in the life of Tom Parks. He wrung the water out of his long, sun-faded brown hair, and then raced up the slope to the cave.
Still he was not dry enough to dress. Many a day of stiff muscles and an aching body had taught him that it is better to have a dry skin before clothes are put on it. So he stepped to the side of the cave where a huge grizzly lay asleep. Into the side of the mo
nster he thrust his toes and jabbed the ribs under their layer of thick pelt and fat.
Jerry awoke with a grunt, blinked, and then straightway stood up. He had grown into a monster even of his monstrous kind. There was well over 1,000 pounds of meat and bone and hide in this giant; there would be even more when the autumn nuts had fattened him.
He put out his arms like a man stretching. But, the instant he did so, Tom Parks was at him. The hard shoulder of the youngster struck the breast of the bear. The long, brown arm wrapped around the furry body. With all his might he strove to topple Jerry. Topple half a ton’s weight of heaven-taught wrestler?
Jerry merely grunted. With one bone-crushing hug he squeezed the breath out of Tom’s body. Then came a flick of the forepaw, and Tom Parks was sent staggering to a distance. He gasped, but he came in again with a rush. His flying fists struck home on the solid body—one—two—but again came that inescapable stroke of the paw. It was nicely judged—oh, how delicately managed! A little more, and he could have caved in Tom’s chest with the stroke, but Jerry was an old hand at this game, and he struck just hard enough to knock Tom flat on his back.
He was up again, like a cat, but that had been enough boxing for one morning. He was in a glow of heat, and the blood was coursing strongly through his arteries. He brushed off the sand, stepped into his buckskin suit, and slipped moccasins onto his feet. He was ready for the day.
Jerry went out to hunt for grubs on the hillside while Tom kindled a fire. Over that fire he fried flat thin cakes of cornmeal mixed with water. No meat till night for Tom. He had formed that habit long ago. But when evening came he would eat enough for three.
That quick breakfast done, he went out down the hillside and, with a shrill whistle, brought Jerry after him. Down they went across the plateau where that year’s crop of corn was burgeoning out above the ground.
