Old Carver Ranch

by Max Brand

  “So I went out to a big horse ranch,” said Tom. “They had ’most a million horses, it looked like, that spring. And all of the mares, pretty nigh, had colts running at their sides. Well, I went right through the herds with Smithson. He kept pointing out colts that looked fine to him, high-spirited colts, because he wasn’t raising no ordinary weedy range stock. But it didn’t take me more’n a minute to see that ’most every one of them wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “How could you do that?” asked the girl breathlessly.

  She had been moaning faintly but steadily with the pain when Mrs. Carver left her. Now the torture of her arm was forgotten.

  “I could do that,” Tom explained, “by looking at the heads. The head of a horse, if you know what to see in it, means just as much as the face of a man. I was looking for a face, you might say, and pretty soon I found one that I wanted. I told Smithson that he needn’t take me no further, but, when he seen the colt I was pointing to, he set up a holler … ‘Why,’ he says, ‘I’d be ashamed to let you get off my place with a colt like that. Why, son, he’s all legs. He ain’t going to be good for nothing.’

  “‘Well,’ I says, ‘I figure that he’ll be good enough for me.’

  “And I was right, Mary, because that turned out to be Major. Listen!” He whistled. The sound of a short, eager neigh floated quickly back through the open window. “That’s Major talking to me now,” said Tom.

  There was a cry of delight from the girl. And then her mother came in with the tray.

  Pain was forgotten after that. It was a gay party for half an hour, and then Mary, overcome with weariness and the pain of her hurt, fell asleep almost in the midst of laughter. Tom leaned over her, arranged her pillow, drew up the covers, and he and the mother tiptoed out of the sickroom. In the dining room they sat down again.

  “You’ve been in sickrooms before,” Mrs. Carver said with feeling. “I can see that you’ve taken care of a sister, maybe?”

  She had started to say daughter, and then a second and closer look at Tom revealed that he was far younger than she had thought him to be. The black beard gave him an appearance half a dozen years, at the least, older than he really was.

  “I have no family,” Tom said. “My father is dead. I never knew my mother’s face … and that’s all!”

  “You’re all alone then?”

  “Tolerable lonely,” Tom answered. “But I keep stirring around. That’s a pretty happy way to live, Missus Carver.”

  Mrs. Carver made no answer to that remark. She remained thoughtful for some time, merely nodding and smiling when he talked, and answering his direct questions rather shortly. And when he asked what her husband was doing that kept him away from home so much of the time, she merely sighed and shook her head. He did not press that point.

  A few minutes later he saw what had been on her mind to keep her so quiet, for she said suddenly, “Have you never thought of settling down?”

  “Settling down?” Tom laughed. “I wouldn’t know how to do it. Some birds pretty near live on the wing, you know. And I reckon I’m that way. I like change, you see.”

  She shook her head. “A rolling stone don’t gather no moss,” she declared solemnly. “You’ll be coming to no good end if you keep roving, a young fellow like you.”

  “Maybe it’s dangerous,” agreed Tom, and he swallowed a smile.

  What if she should ever come to know exactly in what capacity he had roved in the old days?

  “D’you know what you’d ought to do?” she asked suddenly.

  “Well?” Tom said.

  “Stay right here on the ranch with us.”

  “What? Me?”

  “Exactly! Why not?”

  “Why, I dunno,” Tom said, “except that I figure I’d ought to be moving on in the morning.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’m not quite certain. Just the way the wind blows at dawn will tell me, I suppose.”

  “Them that don’t bide in one place,” Mrs. Carver said oracularly, “will come to repent it sooner or later. That’s the trouble with my poor husband. Anybody around here can tell you what the Carvers was once. But they ain’t the same now. John’s father stayed still and worked. And everything that he set his hand to turned into money. But John is always a-roving. And look at the way we are now.” She cast out her work-reddened hands to the empty box of a room, with its cracked ceiling. “Look what the Carvers have come to. Just look at it, will you? And all because he has to keep stirring around instead of staying put. I never knew what I was marrying … never dreamed it. But you … you’re different. You got a kind eye and a quiet eye. A body can talk to you and show you where you’re wrong if you keep gadding. That’s why I want you to stay here.”

  “Well,” Tom said gravely, “I sure take it kind of you to ask me this way.”

  “Ah, lad,” she said with a tremor in her voice, “I can see the good in you standing up and looking me in the eye. But why I offer you the place is this … it’s a good ranch. There ain’t any reason why it shouldn’t pay. But it’s meant for farming and not for running cattle. There’s a good hundred and sixty acres down in the ravine bottom that’s as rich land as you ever seen. All it needs is a plow and a handful of grain to show what it can do. But John won’t bother none with farming, and the place ain’t big enough to range many cows on. But you … if you was to stay on steady here and take a hand, you could make a pretty piece of money for yourself and us, too. I wouldn’t make you no hired hand. But I’d give you a share in all that you made. Don’t that sound like good business talk to you?”

  “What would John Carver say?”

  “He’ll take my advice. It’s time that he did.”

  Tom raised his head and stared at the blank, black rectangle of the window glass.

  “I’m going out for a walk,” he said, “and, when I come back, I’ll come with an answer for you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  He had felt himself called upon to go through the world ministering to the needy with his doctrine of faith in mankind, and how could he shrink his destiny to the problem of this single family?

  Heading toward the mountains, he started to walk until the problem should be settled. On the one hand, there was the call of the road. On the other hand, there was the need of little Mary Carver.

  She should be cared for and reared tenderly. Would the drunken wastrel, John Carver, do his duty by her? No, for all of him the girl and her mother, also, might be dead even now for lack of food. His gorge rose. And the unchristian-like desire to murder boiled in him when his mind dwelt upon Carver.

  So he fought the question back and forth as his long legs covered the distance toward the mountains. Blind with his own thoughts, he was walking in the higher mountains against the light of the dawn almost before he knew it, and then he realized, with a start, that he could not get back to the ranch before sunup. In fact, he could hardly get back before noon. But they would find Major still with them, and, so long as the horse was there, they would know that he had not deserted them entirely.

  Luckily he had slipped the gun he had taken from Jerry Swain into his belt before he started. And therefore he breakfasted heartily on stupid mountain grouse, the easiest of all game to shoot because they can be stalked almost to arm’s length. After breakfast on grilled grouse, he selected a place where his head would lie in shadow and his body in sunshine, and was instantly asleep.

  When he wakened, it was past noon, a drowsy, ambitionless time of day, and, when he came to a shining pool patterned with shadows, he could not resist the temptation, and he slipped out of his clothes and dived in. He found bottom a full fifteen feet below, and he was so delighted by that deep, clear water that he idled there until the hottest part of the afternoon was spent.

  But when he donned his clothes again, he was nearer the solution of the problem, and he had decided that, come what mig
ht, his place was in the home of the Carver family until Mary Carver was sure of a better future than at present opened before her. Besides, though he might amuse or even uplift ten thousand in the same space, might there not be a more solid satisfaction if, at the end of a year or more of gratuitous labor, he could so far restore the ranch to a paying basis that Mary might be assured of an education of one kind or another, and her mother secure from hunger, at least? That was the goal that he established for himself. When he went down again from the mountains, it would be to enter upon a course of severe labor not to end for many a weary month.

  But, for now, surely it was permissible if he dallied a little longer among the mountains in the old freedom that was so clear to him, hunting his food when he was hungry and exploring here and there as his fancy led him. So he gave up the thought of returning for the rest of the day, and, having registered a good resolution for the future, he closed the door on what was to come, and enjoyed himself. Most of the afternoon that remained to him, he spent in trailing a young grizzly, slipping along the trail of the bear and lying prone in the rocks to watch the deftest of mountain hunters, saving the loafer wolf alone, rip the heart out of a tree and devour a bee’s nest, honey, wax, stings, and all. Again he lay in the rocks above and kicked his heels together in childish pleasure, seeing the method in which the bruin tore up a big ant hill, moistened his right forepaw, and laid it down so that the brave ants, issuing, swarmed upon it and were successively licked off in multitudes.

  The one elderly thing about Tom Keene was his great black beard, and under that beard was the careless soul of a youth of twenty-seven. Every moment of that vacation from the Carvers and their needs was a golden treasure to him. He slept that night as he had not slept since he left the old life, and he wakened luxuriously late in the morning and started down the back trail. Once, with his face turned toward home, however, he swung off with his long stride and kept steadily on. He dropped out of the mountains into the lower foothills at midmorning. He was striding among these when Jerry Swain Jr. sighted him and struck in on his trail.

  The night before Jerry had determined to leave the country and take a long vacation far to the north. He had actually acted on the panic spur of the moment and galloped away. But on the road sober reflection had a chance to work in him. Distance would not save him from the pursuit of such men as those to whom he owed his debt. Distance would not save him, but, while he was away, they might choose to carry their claims to his father. What would happen when Jerry Swain Sr. was hounded to pay the gambling debts of his son, the youth could not exactly say, but he knew it would be one of two things. Either the two claimants would be kicked out of the house abruptly, or else they would be paid and Jerry Jr. would be disowned as an unworthy son. Neither eventuality was profitable. The kicks that the two crooks might endure from his terrible father they would be very apt to repay the son with chunks of lead. So Jerry, rising that morning, had reluctantly and mournfully started toward home by the most roundabout way through the hills. He wished to be alone as much as possible so that he might strive to think out a solution of his problem. Out there away from other men, perhaps inspiration might pop into his head.

  And so it was, coming over a hilltop, that he dropped into sight of the big form of Tom Keene striding away below him. At once Jerry reined back and rode carefully. It was most unusual to see a man going on foot through the mountains, particularly a man who owned such a horse as Tom Keene was known to possess. Besides, it tickled Jerry to trail the black-bearded stranger. With all the power of heart and soul, Jerry hated the big man. He had been detected in the commission of a cowardly crime by Tom, and, because the latter had permitted him to depart unpunished, he hated him only the more. No small spirit can endure to be pardoned by another man. It seems to be a threat hung perpetually above his head. And a sneaking hope came to Jerry that he might be able to run down the mystery of Tom Keene on this bright morning. At least, there was no better way in which he could drive from his mind the thoughts that haunted it.

  Unaware of the careful rider, Tom kept steadily on until he heard, far before him, the baying of a pack of hounds. He listened to the chorus with amazement. It was not like the mingled cry of other packs he had heard running on the trail of mountain lions and plagues of the cattle ranches. It was a deeper-pitched, more mellow call. It came to him very faintly. A moment later the change in the wind extinguished the sound save for a delicate echo that lived an instant along the hillside.

  And as this faded in turn, he saw a horseman spur over the next hill and plunge into the hollow, looking behind him with unmistakable dread as he bent over the horn of his saddle and urged his horse on.

  When he turned his head again, Tom saw, with a shock that the face was completely covered by a white mask. It could be no other than that safe blower and highway robber who he had heard mentioned the night of his arrival in Porterville. Yonder the hounds cried far away on his trail. And here he rode on a fast-failing horse. That he should be masked was natural enough, with the pursuit so close behind him. But that he should have retained the white mask that identified him was a mystery.

  However, there were ways of explaining it. Tom had known criminals before, who kept some betraying article of dress simply because they felt that their luck was wrapped up in the wearing of it. And this man, no doubt, had heard himself referred to so often as the White Mask that he had begun to feel that the secret of his power and of his success was in the wearing of the telltale mask.

  That wonder held the mind of Tom Keene for only an instant. Then he raced across the hillside shouting loudly for the fugitive to stop. The answer was a stream of curses, and then the sun winked on the bared revolver.

  On the hillcrest behind them, young Jerry Swain jerked his horse frantically to the shelter of some projecting rocks, and then, fearful of a stray bullet, he craned his neck and looked out to watch the progress of the battle.

  It was short lived. The gun in the hand of the robber barked twice before Tom Keene’s weapon made answer, but that answer was effective enough. The White Mask turned halfway around in his saddle, hurled the gun far from him as his arms flew up, and then pitched for the ground. He struck it heavily, a limp weight, and rolled over three times, coming to a pause in a crumpled heap.

  Tom reached him instantly, tore from his face the mask, and exposed to his own eyes and the eyes of Jerry Swain, in the distance, features that he recognized by the photograph that hung in the Carver house. It was John Carver himself!

  Chapter Fifteen

  Next, in horror, with the very spirits of Mary and Elizabeth Carver at his shoulder, Tom Keene looked to the wound and found that it was ugly indeed, but by no means mortal. The slug had torn its way through the deep shoulder and had missed the lungs. The weight of the heavy slug had been sufficient to knock the rider off balance, and the fall to the ground had jarred the senses out of him. Already he began to recover, and his first action was to reach for his face, where he found the mask gone. Next his hand went inside his coat toward the place where a revolver had been, which Tom had already found and removed.

  Then, calmly enough, he said, “I’m done, I guess. But where did you grow … out of the ground?” He glowered at Tom sullenly until a change of the wind brought to his ear the approaching clamor of the hounds. Then his bravado vanished and he turned white. His glance over his shoulder was a horrible caricature of the pretty, quick side looks of Mary Carver. “You’ll keep off the dogs?” he pleaded to Tom. “You’ll not let the dogs get at me, stranger?”

  Then speech returned to Tom Keene. “Carver,” he said, “you’re a goner.”

  “You know me, eh?” Carver gasped out. “I … I don’t recollect your face exactly. But … partner, if you’ll give me a hand back into that saddle right now, I’ll split the coin with you. I’m loaded with it, pal. Look here … and here.” He stuffed a hand into his coat pocket. He drew it out filled to the fingertips with fluttering gre
enbacks. “Quick!” he gasped out.

  But Jerry Swain, his face savage with his own need as he beheld that money, was astonished to see the big man shake his head in response to the unmistakable gesture.

  “How’d you get the money?” Tom asked.

  “There’s no killing on it,” panted out John Carver. “I swear there ain’t. They’ve told their lies about me, but I’ve never killed a man in my life. Lew Gibson they lay to the account of the White Mask. I never killed him, friend. Heaven blast me, lying right here, if I did. I’ve blowed safes, and I’ve stuck ’em up now and then … but I’ve never done more’n shoot into the air to give ’em a scare. Will you believe me? And will you give me a hand?”

  “Carver, you …”

  “But it’s real money!” Carver shouted, seeing denial in the face of the big man of the beard. “It ain’t the queer. You think it’s the queer? Take a look. Listen to me … they’s five thousand on me … five thousand! I’ll split it with you fifty-fifty.”

  The deep baying of the hounds floated closer. A spasm of uncontrollable terror shook the wounded man, and, dragging himself up, he embraced the knees of Tom Keene with his one manageable arm.

  “Partner,” he sobbed, “for heaven’s sake … for heaven’s sake!”

  “You couldn’t last an hour in the saddle … not half an hour,” Tom Keene said.

  But the other had seen the pity mixed with the horror and contempt in Tom’s face.

  “You know me … and you know that I got a family. The finest woman a man ever had for a wife. She’ll die grieving if they get me. And my little girl, partner … my little girl Mary will have to grow up shamed and …”

  “Shut up!” groaned Tom. “Ain’t I been thinking about them things?” He looked up to the clouds blowing through the sky for a solution of the wretched problem. And the suppliant used that chance to reach for the revolver lying on the ground, his face grown as subtle and savage as a beast’s. Tom looked down in time to grind the weapon into the dirt with his heel. And the robber snarled up at him.