Mountain Storms

by Max Brand

  “I could not help it,” said Gloria.

  He laughed silently in his happiness. “I knew that! I knew that!” he exclaimed.

  A door closed in the distance. Instantly he was on his feet, and his bigness, his alertness, alarmed her.

  “I must go now,” he said. “Your father will be coming back. No, that is not he.”

  He had listened intently, while he spoke, and, although she heard nothing at first, she presently made out a footfall going through the house. Gloria slipped between Tom and the door.

  “You must not go!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you see that the house is surrounded by men? Beyond them, there is another circle around the town. How you came through them tonight, I can’t imagine!”

  “I didn’t come into town tonight,” he replied quietly. “I have been in this house since yesterday.”

  Gloria gasped.

  “In this house?”

  “I was afraid to wait and see you yesterday,” said Tom Parks, “so I’ve been lying in a room upstairs where no one comes. There were no trails in the dust on the floor when I went in. I guessed that no one would come while I was there. And I have laid there trying to make myself brave to come and see you.”

  “You were afraid . . . of me?” said Gloria.

  “I should have known,” he said humbly, “that because you are so beautiful, you are kind, also. But I have seen men do strange things. How could I be sure that a woman is different? You will not believe what I have seen men do!”

  “Tell me,” said Gloria.

  With all her heart she wanted to bid him to be gone, or else find some way of sheltering him there and warning him of his danger. But to part with him was like parting with a rare treasure that may be held for a moment but not kept. The time of their meeting was like bubbles of foam, melting away every instant, never to be repeated.

  “I cannot tell you everything,” he said, “but once I saw a man tie a horse to a tree because the horse was tired and could not pull the wagon up the hill. He beat that horse with a whip. He beat that horse until the blood came . . . and the horse was helpless!”

  “Oh,” cried Gloria, “how terrible! And what did you do?”

  He stiffened and knotted his hands, and in that gesture there was a connotation of Herculean power.

  “I climbed into the tree,” he said. “Then I dropped out of the branches. I tied him, and I beat him with his own whip!”

  She had heard that story with many strange embroiderings.

  “Once,” he went on, “I saw a hunter come to a mountain sheep that had broken its leg in a fall. He stabbed it in the throat and watched it bleed to death, slowly, slowly.”

  “Ah,” murmured Gloria in horror, “what did you do then?”

  “I turned and ran away,” he said, his face dark with rage and disgust. “I did not dare to stay near, because I wanted to take him in my hands and kill him. I wanted to kill him little by little, as he was killing the sheep. But there are other things I have seen men do. I have a horse that comes to me when I speak to him. He follows me when I walk. He is sad when I leave him, and, when I come again, he sees me at a great distance and comes to me with much neighing and calling. He dances around me. And then he hunts in my pouch for something I have brought. He will run with me until his heart breaks and still keep his ears pricking to show that his love for me is greater than his weariness!” He paused. Tears were in his eyes. “But that horse,” he said savagely, “a man had tied to a post and was about to shoot. That very horse . . . Peter! Can you believe that?”

  She could not answer. His wild anger, his profound pity, and his overwhelming love, were like unknown countries to her. She was amazed.

  “When I had seen men do such things,” he said, “how could I tell what even you would do . . . Gloria?”

  He made a little pause before her name and after it, and he spoke the name itself with an intonation that made it music. She was looking into a mirror and seeing herself transformed, glorified.

  “I lay by the fire,” he said, “and listened to your voice. It was to me . . . to me . . . like the falling of fragrant flowers. And again, it was like a look up, through the trees, into the sky, into the stars. And still I was afraid that, when I met you, I would find you like other men. But the moment I came inside this room and into your presence I knew the truth. I knew that you were as good as you are beautiful.”

  “Hush!” said Gloria, and raised her hand.

  She saw him wince. Then he stood statue-still.

  “I knew it,” he murmured at last. “Words cannot say what I wish them to say. They are made out of breath. I speak and speak and speak, but I take nothing from what is within me. There is still more than ever within me . . . like all that lies between two great mountains and all that lies beyond them.”

  “I cannot listen to you,” Gloria said faintly.

  “I have made you unhappy?”

  “Not . . . not unhappy, but too happy, too sadly happy. Do you see?”

  “I shall not try to understand,” he said humbly.

  She passed a hand across her forehead to wipe the spell away, but, when she looked at him again, it was unchanged. He still seemed like a young god out of another world, a world lost to all except himself, into which she could not follow him.

  “I have found the thing at last,” she said suddenly. “I shall keep you here in this room . . . yes, in this very room . . . until morning. Then, when they have left the fires, you will have a better chance to get away.”

  He looked at her in amazement. “You don’t know them, then,” he said. “You don’t know these men. They hate me. But how have I harmed them? Still, they hate me. If they knew you helped me, they would kill you, Gloria, even you!”

  “They would never touch a woman, not the worst of them,” said Gloria.

  But he shook his head. “I have seen them torture dumb animals,” he said, “and a woman can speak. Men who kill sheep would kill women. I know! And so I leave you, Gloria, before they come. But I shall come again.”

  “You must not. They watch me in order to catch you. Since Dick Walker was killed . . . oh, I know that you killed him because he deserved death, but the others cannot understand.”

  “I did not kill that man,” he said calmly.

  She stared at him. But could any man lie with such a steady face?

  “They found him dead,” she said slowly. “And they found the trail of a horse and a bear near him.”

  “I came to that place and saw him on his back with a hole in his forehead,” said Tom with a shudder. “I went away quickly. It is a terrible thing to see a dead man. I have seen two.”

  “Ah,” murmured Gloria, “it is true, then? He was killed by some other man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then,” she cried in excitement, “don’t you see what you must do? You must go back to that place. You must find the murderer. You must bring him to Turnbull. That is the only serious crime they can charge against you. Money can settle all the rest, and I have money.”

  He was bewildered, fumbling for her meaning. “Do you mean,” he said at last, “that, if I find him and bring him here, they will no longer hunt me?”

  “I mean that,” said Gloria. “And if . . .”

  She stopped, for a familiar step came hastily down the hall, stopped at her door. The knob was turned under his hand.

  “What the deuce, Gloria?” cried the father. “Have you locked yourself in?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE BATTLE OF THE NIGHT

  Gloria was rooted to the floor with horror. She should not have allowed him to stay until the trap had closed. Before she could rally her wits, Tom Parks turned to her with a smile and a gesture that, if it meant anything, declared that there was no serious danger immediately ahead. She saw him turn the key in the lock. The door opened. Then, suddenly, fear for her father leaped into her brain. There was a shrill, involuntary cry of warning, but what happened came before Themis could understand and defend hi
mself.

  As he stepped into the room, he was seized from the side, pitched headlong to the floor on his face with as much ease as though he had been a child, and Tom Parks, leaping into the hall, paused to turn the lock from the outside. She heard it click. Then John Hampton Themis sprang to his feet with his revolver in his hand, bewildered and furious. He cast at his daughter one baffled glance. Then he leaped for the door. When he found it locked, his shout of warning rang through the house. Next, a bullet from his revolver shattered the lock, and he burst into the hall.

  As for Tom Parks, he had not fled headlong down the hall. He turned into the door of the room next to that of Gloria. He found a window open and stood beside it, waiting. Beyond the window he could see armed men standing, regarding the house with a sober interest, for they had half heard the cry of Gloria. But when the revolver shot of Themis was heard, then the crash of the door as it was flung open, and last his shout of rage and alarm in the hall, they waited no longer outside the house but rushed pell-mell around the corner to enter it and get at the root of the trouble.

  That was the movement for which Tom had waited. Instantly he was out the window and had dropped with the lightness of a cat to the ground. There, in the deep shadow of the house, he waited an instant. He was unarmed, and his hands ached for a gun. But when he came near the haunts of men, the great enemy, he purposely left weapons behind him, because he never knew when the temptation would become stronger than his ability to resist.

  That second of thoughtfulness gave him a course, however. In another moment the lines of watchers around the town would know that he was inside its limits, and, by simply turning around and facing the village instead of the outer night from which they had expected him to come, they would have him sealed in a trap.

  He raced to the rear of the next house on the street. In the corral beside the barn there were horses, but none for his purpose. He could tell that even by their outlines in the darkness. He went on like a flash to the next corral and scanned a huddle of horses standing in a corner. He looked for a head, not for a body, and finally he saw what he wanted—a small, compact, bony head, with short, sharp ears. That was his horse.

  He sprang to the barn, wrenched the door open, and, on a row of pegs inside, he found bridles, saddles, and blankets. But he only took a bridle. Even for that there was barely time. Voices were beginning to shout here and there in the outer night. Perhaps the whole circle of the campfires had been alarmed by this time.

  He came out again. The horses in the corner of the corral split apart and scattered, snorting.

  “Halloo!” shouted the voice of a man from the house in front of the barn. “Hello, out there! What’s up?”

  Tom made no answer. He had just succeeded in cornering the horse with the finely made head. It was a disappointingly small animal—not comparable with Peter, of course. But he stayed with his choice.

  “Look here!” roared the man of the house, now excited. “What’s up out there? Bill, come along and let’s take a look.”

  Tom heard the voice of Bill answer. But now he was working at the head of the horse. The stubborn little brute kept his jaws locked and refused to admit the bit. He put two fingers into the side of the beast’s mouth and dug them down into the gums. That forced the mouth open, and instantly the bridle was on and slipped over the ears of the mustang.

  After that, he did not wait to secure the throat-latch. He sprang to the back of his horse—and instantly found that his hands were filled with an argument of another nature, for the bronco tipped into the air and came down crooked. For thirty seconds it bucked with a wild enthusiasm and a cunning intelligence that proved it to be an old hand. But there was no unseating Tom Parks. He had learned to ride Peter in the mountains without a saddle. He had a grip with his knees almost sufficient to break the ribs of his mount, so he clung on his back.

  “By heaven!” roared one of the men who was running toward the corral. “It’s somebody on Sideways!”

  Sideways was demonstrating the aptness of that name by a series of bucks from side to side delivered with the violence of a snapping whip and the speed of striking fists.

  “Shoot for him. Try for his head!” cried one of the men.

  Tom gritted his teeth. It is impossible to sit a bucking horse without carrying one’s head high. He could not duck and flatten himself along the back of the mustang. A gun clanged, and a bullet sang wickedly close to his ear.

  “Look out for Sideways, though,” cautioned the other. “I’ll watch the gate. We’ll get him.”

  Suddenly Sideways came out of the bucking humor and decided to try running, as horses will do, apparently thinking that they can run out from under the burden on their backs. So Sideways bolted and made, naturally enough, straight for the corral gate. A frightened yell went up from the man who had posted himself there. Two guns banged in close succession, but the shots flew idly overhead, for the instant the mustang stopped bucking and began to run, Tom had flattened himself along its neck.

  They reached the gate. He twitched Sideways to one side and aimed him at the fence. Did the little brute know how to jump, and could he manage it with such a weight on his back? The question was quickly answered. Sideways went for the fence with a grunt of anger, reared, and skimmed it like a bird. Yells of amazement greeted the feat.

  He landed in his stride and was off racing. Tom let him get past two barns. Then he twitched him to the side and hurried him across the village, leaving behind him the line of campfires with the excited men milling around them, black, misshapen silhouettes.

  The village of Turnbull was long and narrow, like most Western towns. In an instant he was across the main street, had plunged Sideways down an alley, and came in view of the opposite campfires. Everywhere was shouting and confusion and the gleam of the fires upon guns.

  Coming out of the black night, he was dazzled by that glare of many lights. He could not choose or pick. He simply made for the first gap between the fires while a wild yell of excitement and fear went tingling up to greet him. Then the air was filled with the din of guns.

  “We were only fifty yards away,” goes the old hunting story. “Every one of us was a good shot. At that range who could miss? We put forty bullets into that grizzly before he hit the brush, and we lost him. Yes, sir, he was a walking lead mine before he disappeared.” Yet, when the bear was found dead the next day, there was a solitary slug in him, and he had died from the effects of that one. What had made fifty bullets or more fly astray? Simply that fever of nervousness that makes the hand, so steady in firing at a target, quiver just a little in firing at a living thing. And hands that shook when they fired at a bear would certainly be tremulous when they attempted to kill this terrible wild man who came upon them by surprise from an unexpected direction. Just an instant, and the flying horse had carried him—long, bare arms and long, flying hair and all—out of the darkness of the houses and into the midst of the guards.

  Of a hundred shots, not one struck home or even grazed the target. There was one flurry of wild shooting, and then Sideways, running with wild speed in his terror, dipped into a swale in a hollow and was lost to view. The others rushed to the edge of the swale to get in another volley, but by that time Sideways had put a precious 100 yards between him and the foremost of the sentinels.

  The last volley flew wildly astray, and then the blanketing night closed on them, and Tom headed for the hills.

  What a blessing it was that the noise fell away behind him, every stride of the good little horse making it dimmer. He had no occasion to regret the selection of Sideways, bucking and all, for every inch of his scant fifteen hands was all horse. He was a bundle of strength and nervous energy, and it was all loosed in that wild horse to get away from the town.

  But now Tom Parks drew the mustang back to a more moderate gait. A furlong of sprinting exhausts a man as much as a mile of running. Sideways had been taxed by fear and anger and a racing gait all at once. It was no wonder that his sides were heaving as T
om brought him down to a canter. He began to talk as he alone knew how to talk to a dumb beast. What wonder that he could, when only dumb beasts had been near to listen for years? In a moment the tremor had left the body of Sideways, and under the persuasion of that gentle voice and the hand that stroked his sleek, strong neck, he began to raise his head, and one ear pricked forward. It warmed the heart of Tom to see.

  In the meantime, all was not well. There had been a pale semicircle of light over the eastern hills. Now from that glow was born a great, full moon that filled the valley with swarthy shadows. It was not so bad as the all-revealing sun, but it was bad enough. For one thing, he had come out from Turn-bull on the side farthest from the direction that led toward Peter and safety. For another thing, there was a dull and increasing roar of hoofs in his rear. Tom knew that the battle of the night was by no means ended.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  TOM MAKES A PROMISE

  They were coming fast and hard on his heels. Every man in the village who had a horse had flung himself into the saddle. But most had fallen to the rear. There remained a round dozen of well-mounted men who had pushed on. To be sure, their horses had the burden of saddles to carry, a thing from which Sideways was freed, but the little mustang had in Tom a greater weight than an average rider and saddle combined. Moreover, he had used up the blossom of his strength in that first wild burst of running and bucking. Tom shrewdly suspected that Sideways, with his short legs and his sturdy frame, would be better fitted for a long and steady run than for the arduous labors of a swift chase.

  The thing to do was to get to Peter. Five minutes of that matchless speed would leave the posse staggering and floundering behind him in the night. But how to reach Peter was the problem.

  He decided, first of all, to keep straight on until the hills were a screen behind him. Then he would angle to the right and speed around until he could break across toward the opposite side of the valley where Peter had been left. What he needed now was a burst of speed to carry him into those hills as soon as possible.