by Max Brand
Jerry roved in the rear. He was an incurable loiterer. There were thousands of food scents blowing to his nostrils every instant. He had to stop a few minutes here and a few minutes there to demolish a colony of ants or to turn a log and get at grubs or to tear a rotten stump to pieces because of the horde of insect life it harbored. Besides, he could overtake the master at will, for on one of these roving expeditions after amusement Tom loitered through the forest, seeing and hearing and learning out of an inexhaustible book.
When there was an expedition to a distant point on hand, that was quite another matter. Then one sharp, shrill whistle apprised Jerry that there was business on hand, and he forgot his appetite until the point was reached. But what he much preferred was one of these leisurely scouting trips. They might be back by night. They might not return for a week, for he had noted that Tom took with him the fishing line as well as his hunting knife. As for a gun, his store of ammunition had been used up long before. But the line and hook were enough, and, if he wanted additional food, he knew a dozen sorts of food traps that he could make and bait with good results. As for fire, he carried a piece of flint and the barrel of the demolished old Colt revolver. He could raise a flame when he willed.
Jerry did not sight Tom again until noon, and then he came up to the youth lying prone on a bank of grass and peering around a tree trunk to watch beavers busily at work cutting down trees. It was a new dam near the mouth of one of the Turn-bull’s tributaries. The water had been backed into a little gorge, and the beavers were just beginning to levy their toll on the forest. A dozen saplings were down and trimmed of branches, and Jerry stretched contentedly beside Tom to watch the work. To be sure, beaver meat was good, very good, and there was always an unfilled corner in that capacious belly of his. But now the little fellows were laboring so close to the edge of their pond that it would be impossible to surprise them. And, next to eating, Jerry loved to satisfy his curiosity.
It was a whole long hour before Tom had gazed his fill. Then he stood up and clapped his hands, and he laughed silently and heartily as the beavers dived for shelter beneath the water. He had learned his noiseless swimming from them, but he could never match their craft in waterways. But there was something worth knowing—this new dam. It was another treasure added to his horde. In the winter he would come down here and get enough fur to clothe himself like a prince through the season of the snows.
All the rest of that day Tom headed leisurely westward down the valley of the Turnbull. Jerry followed, although in high discontent, for, by the evening, they had passed the limits of the territory over which Jerry’s mother had roamed, and which Jerry and Tom had taken as their natural domain since the death of the wise old grizzly. But, as evening came, a windfall came to Jerry in the shape of a fat buck.
There had been born in Jerry the skill of all grizzlies in slipping silently through a forest, in spite of their bulk. So it was, gliding through the twilight, that he came suddenly on the rank scent of meat and an instant later—for they had turned directly into the wind—the deer sprang up before him in a thicket. Confusion made the poor creature run into the jaws of destruction. A crushing blow smashed its skull, and both Jerry and Tom dined in state that evening.
With the morning, when Jerry was preparing to turn back, hugely uneasy at this venturing into unknown country, Tom persisted in holding straight on down the valley. What moved him to it, he did not know, but, in this wandering down the course of the Turnbull, there had awakened in him a sudden and fierce disgust with the cave and everything in it and all the delightful country that he called his own. There was no temptation to go back over the bleak mountains that he had climbed with his father, but a hunger of curiosity grew up in him to see what undiscovered country lay westward.
Already he had come farther west than ever before, and still the pangs of curiosity increased, and he went on. In spite of the careless mode of travel, they had covered a full thirty miles the first day. On the second, the distance was a great deal more, for Tom pushed on relentlessly from dawn to mid day. Then he rested, and both he and Jerry slept. But in the evening they pushed on once more.
So it was that they came to the first settler’s cabin. It was almost dark, but far away Tom heard a faint, ringing sound that he presently recognized as the blows of an axe, clipped home with great force into hard wood. The sound ceased before he came close, but it was easy to continue to the place, with Jerry leading the way with an acute nose.
So they reached the verge of a man-made clearing. There was an acre of naturally cleared land. And there were ten acres more that had been cleared by cutting down the trees. In the exact center was a small log cabin whose open door was flooded with light and shadow flung in waves from an open fireplace. A guitar was tinkling and thrumming from the interior.
The heart of Tom leaped within him. The wind blowing through the trees above him was suddenly as mournful as a human sigh. Big Jerry, as though smitten with a sudden dread, turned about and looked Tom squarely in the face to read his thoughts. Perhaps it was only because the sensitive nose of Jerry was telling him tales of bacon and ham and a score of other delectables, and he was silently wondering why the master did not proceed to investigate.
But now the music ceased, and a great, rough, bass voice spoke. It made the very hair on Tom’s head bristle as he recalled that unforgettable voice of the man who had killed Jerry’s mother. A man with such a voice could not but be an enemy made terrible by the possession of firearms.
In the gathering night, he turned from the house and made a gesture to the grizzly that sent the latter into retreat. But it was not to be an altogether peaceful journey. A shifting of the wind had blown their scent to the house, and suddenly, behind them, came the yelping of dogs, sweeping closer, then breaking with a confusion of echoes through the forest as they entered the trees. Jerry stood up with a profound growl to listen, while Tom, realizing that they could not flee from these fleet-footed assailants, planted himself beside the bear with a drawn knife.
Instantly they came—four huge, wolfish beasts, scarred with many a battle. They recoiled at the sight of the man. But on the bear was the scent of this man, and the bear scent was equally on the man. Their minds were instantly made up, and they flew to the attack. Two leaped at Jerry from the front. But they were wise fighters. They made only a pretense of attack. The real work must come from those in the rear. The other pair, trained fighters that they were, jumped to take the bear at a disadvantage, and here it was that they encountered Tom.
His heart was raging with excitement, but he had learned that first great lesson of the wilderness, where all creatures fight to kill, that successful battle can only be waged with a cool head. Half crouched, ready to leap to either side, he poised the long knife. One brute rushed for his legs, and the other drove at his throat. He leaped high to avoid the first and, twisting to miss the second, he slashed it across the gullet as it flew by him.
He himself landed heavily on his side. He twisted to his feet like lightning. The dog he had used the knife on was standing to the side, head down, coughing and bleeding to death. But the first brute, wheeling as it missed its rush, was on him in a twinkling. The eye could barely follow the moves of Tom then. He sprang like a cat to the side, caught the great brute by the scruff of the neck, and, as the animal whirled to sink its teeth in his arm, he drove the knife home between his ribs.
His arm was bloody above the wrist as he turned back to Jerry, just in time to see one of the dogs, half wolf and half mastiff, venture too close. A lightning blow of the forepaw and a crushed skull for the dog were the result. The fourth dog leaped back, viewed the carnage for an instant, and then fled in dismay, howling.
Jerry made a lunge in pursuit, but Tom called him back, for voices of excited men were sounding not far away, and men meant guns, and guns meant that the only safety lay in flight. A low whistle apprised Jerry that overwhelming odds were now opposed to them, and Tom took to his heels.
CHAPTER SIXTEE
N
A MISTREATED DAY
He ran like the wind during the first quarter of a mile, weaving deftly through the trees, for he had been trained to such night work by many a prowl in company with Jerry. He could read the ground underfoot almost as though he saw in the dark. After that first sprint, as the voices died away behind him, he still ran on like a wild thing that cannot measure danger but only knows that it is somewhere in the rear, an indescribable thing. His swift and easy stride did not slacken until ten miles were behind him.
Then, breathing hard, but by no means winded, he went ahead at a brisk walk, with Jerry lumbering and grunting behind him. They encountered a steep hill. He slipped onto Jerry’s back, and they went up it handily. Down the farther slope they ran again, and so they hurried on through the night.
Just before dawn, he paused at a creek and spent an hour fishing with great results for Jerry and himself. Then they pushed on until mid-morning, reached the forested crest of a hill, and there made their covert.
They slept soundly until mid-afternoon and wakened as they had fallen asleep—in an instant. They climbed on, then, to a higher range of hills to the westward, and here, from the naked summit, Tom found that he was looking out on more than he had dreamed of.
Far to the east, Bald Mountain was lost in the pale horizon haze. All that he could see was the procession of rolling, forested hills that climbed up the valley of the Turnbull. North, behind him, rose higher hills, climbing to naked mountain heights. South stretched the wide expanse of the valley, with the broad Turnbull flashing in the midst and sweeping away to the west in lazy curves quite different from the arrowy little stream that he knew near the cave and through his own territory.
Westward, also, lay the things that most amazed him. In this direction the air was free of mist, the hills sloped away to smoother forms, and he saw the landscape dotted with houses and checked in loose patterns with fences. And yonder, not quite lost to his view, the houses collected in a village, a thick cluster of roofs and trees.
For years all of this had laid hardly more than a hundred miles from his own cave! He would have welcomed that sight four years before. This prospect would have been better than a promise of heaven to the lonely boy. But that was before the big stranger came to the cave and engraved in his mind the lesson that men are dangerous, treacherous, cruel, ungrateful. So it was that Tom, as he stared down on these houses, shivered a little and then cast a glance back over his shoulder as men do when they are in fear.
All his past, before the death of his mother and the day his father left the city and started into the mountains, was lost behind a veil of indistinctness. But he remembered enough to know that his father and mother had both suffered at the hands of other men, that there had been poverty in their household, that there had been hunger even. So there was ingrained in his mind the belief that men are evil. The first man he had met since the death of his father had repaid food and shelter with brutality. The second voice he had heard had been of one who kept fierce dogs that had attacked him without warning, without justification. In his buckskin trousers there were still spots of blood. Aye, that was the cardinal sin of man—bloodshed!
He shuddered in a strong revulsion.
Yet, that afternoon, in spite of Jerry’s earnest endeavors to stop the westward journey and head back toward the home country, he insisted upon skirting along the hills to get a better view of all that the valley might hold. Before the day was ended, he saw another proof that man is brute, and nothing but brute.
They passed among the trees to the head of a promontory, a low plateau that thrust out into the more level or rolling ground, and from the brow of this eminence Tom found himself in view of men—many men. A ranch house with shambling barns and outhouses around it had been built just beneath the cliff, and now, between the rearmost of the houses and the base of the cliff, a dozen men were gathered with their horses, in or around a large corral. Several of the men were grouped closely around one of their number who lay upon the ground, apparently badly hurt. They were pouring water upon his face and chest. But he was not the main object of interest.
In the center of the corral four men were holding a young bay stallion, saddled and blindfolded. He danced restlessly, his head snubbed to the saddle of another horse. Instantly Tom connected that empty saddle on the bay with the prostrate man outside the fence.
Presently the latter arose and staggered to the fence, where he leaned feebly. Another rider now advanced, climbed into the saddle, and the others grouped as closely as possible around the fence to watch while the ropes were taken from the stallion and his head was freed of the blindfold.
There followed one minute of more condensed action than Tom had ever seen, even when Jack and Jerry were having a mimic combat, for the bay began to leap into the air, tie himself almost literally into a knot, and then land on stiff legs. The rider was jolted and jarred from side to side. Suddenly the bay reared and flung himself backward. The yell of the watchers came tinglingly up to Tom on the height. But his fierce heart was all with the horse. Why had they united to torture the poor creature?
The rider had flung himself from the saddle barely in time, but, when he rose, he apparently refused to continue the contest. Yet still the struggles of the stallion were not over. A third rider presented himself, distinguished by a blue bandanna and a sombrero whose belt gleamed with pure, burnished gold. He mounted as the other had done. Once more the battle began, and this time it lasted thrice as long. Tom could see that the young stallion had grown black with sweat. But he fought on as though he were muscled with springs. In the end, a leap, a jarring landing, and a spring to the side unseated the rider.
He fell in a cloud of dust, while the tormented horse fled to the farther side of the corral and tried to leap to safety beyond the bars. He was roped and brought down heavily on his side, and, while he lay there, the dismounted man of the blue bandanna approached and quirted the helpless body brutally.
This, however, seemed too much for even the other savages. They drew the fellow away, the stallion was allowed to climb to his feet, and was led away, and the group dispersed.
But the heart of Tom followed the beautiful bay, for on the morrow, would not the torture begin again? And would they not persist until they had broken his spirit and his heart? Savagely he shook his fist at the backs of the disappearing men. Jerry, comprehending the anger, although not its cause, stopped in his digging for a ground squirrel and looked up with a growl among the trees.
But after that Tom turned eastward again, and Jerry went joyously in the lead. They had both had too much of men. A bright-running trout stream a mile away, however, was too great a temptation to them both. There they paused while Tom caught their supper. He risked a fire, carefully made of dead wood so that there would be as little smoke as possible, and broiled a small part of his catch for himself, while Jerry devoured the remainder.
When that meal was ended, the twilight was descending, and Tom, with a filled stomach, found that the vision of the bay still haunted him. It seemed to fill his mind, that picture of the horse. He began to remember an old mustang that his father had used for mountain work. Even that treacherous brute he had loved, for men are born to love horses or to despise them, and Tom was one of the former.
It seemed to him that, if he could have that magnificent creature in the mountains, his happiness would be complete. Not to ride, to be sure, for his own legs were good enough to carry him where he wished to go, and, when he was tired, there was the exhaustless Jerry, to carry him on.
But how could he take a wild horse from men who were armed with guns?
That question lay heavily on the mind of Tom as the twilight thickened. He sat broodingly beside the fire until Jerry began to growl, so great was his eagerness for the return journey to twice-traveled fields. But Tom shook his head. That very insistence confirmed him in his new desire.
“The point is,” he said to the huge bear, “that I’ve got to have that horse. And if I can
’t have him, I’ve got to have one more look at him. Stay here, Jerry. I’m going back!”
It was a command that Jerry understood. He stood still with an almost human groan, and Tom turned, drew tight his belt, and started back at a run.
He never walked when he was bent on business. Walking was the gait for leisure and careful observation. But he had learned to read even a difficult trail while he ran, and now he jogged back through the trees, twisted aside into the head of the cañon to his right, and then let out a link and raced blithely across the rolling ground until he turned the point of the promontory and the ranch houses were in view.
The instant he saw the first lighted window, he slowed to a walk. He had learned from Jerry’s mother a lesson of caution that he never forgot. Jerry himself was an alert hunter. He could not cross a clearing, no matter how small, without first pausing an instant to take in his surroundings. He seemed to carry in the back of his brain a chamber crowded with memories of dangers that had come upon his ancestors. He suspected every tree, apparently, lest it might turn into a monster.
There was something of the same manner in Tom as he approached the house. He took advantage of every tree. He skulked swiftly down the hollows. He crawled on hands and knees over the knolls. When he came to the first barn, his caution redoubled. Around it he stole. And then he heard men’s voices—many of them. A shudder crept down his spine as he listened, for the memory of the stranger in his cave was still rank. And, never having matched his strength against another man, how could he know that even that giant of a man would have been helpless now against his own lightning speed of hand and foot and that strange strength with which his muscles had been seasoned by those years of exposure and constant exercise? All he knew was that he had been helpless in the hands of a man once before, and he felt that he would be helpless again.
