by Max Brand
His survey of the mountain was interrupted by two hostile brakemen. They had been trying for the space of several stations to get him off the train, but always he had evaded them. Now they decided to swoop down upon him from either side and annihilate him.
“But,” one exclaimed as Tom took off his hat, “he’s an old man!”
“Old nothing,” said the other shack. “A hobo never gets old. He ought to know better, anyway.”
And they tackled him from behind. What followed was afterward described by the fireman who sat on the steps of the cab, filling his pipe.
“They hit the old boy at the same time, like they was bucking the line on a football team. But it seemed like they had bucked into a wall. He didn’t budge, but they sort of caved back. He opened up his arms and fell on ’em. There was some squirming, but it didn’t last long. The cloud of dust blowed away.
“‘Well, boys,’ says the hobo, ‘you picked out a hot day for your little joke.’
“He sat on ’em till he’d rolled a cigarette. Then he got up. He was about a mile high and all man. He looked old, but he sure dropped twenty years when he got into action. I went down the line and picked up them two shacks. They were just beginning to breathe and think.
“‘He hit me with a blackjack,’ says one of ’em.
“‘He slammed me with a gun butt,’ says the other. ‘Where is he?’
“But he was too dizzy to see the big, white-haired hobo walking twenty steps away.”
Such was the manner of Tom Keene’s reentry to his own country. He walked up the street of the little town with a tingle still in his fingertips, where his great grip had crunched into the flesh and bone of the brakemen. And there was a growing satisfaction in him. The shadow of the prison, he felt, had not yet been worn away. He was still not accustomed to the bite of the sunshine. The world as he found it again was harder than ever—burning hot from the sun and icy cold from the calloused cruelty of men.
He felt that a veil had been torn from that world. He had practiced in the prison in his new effort to pierce to the truth about men. He had learned there, he felt, that no such thing as generosity or good will existed. But now he had a wider field in which to exercise his faculties in the scientific inquiries.
All that he had seen since leaving the prison was an addition to the old story. Sometimes he laughed bitterly at himself to think of that large-hearted credulity with which he had begun his pilgrimage as a preacher of brother love and of faith in one another. At least he had recovered from that illusion while there still remained to him time that he could remedy the mistake and show the world the hardness of his fist before he was through.
In a way, he was grateful to the warden for the completeness of the lesson that had been taught him. The tortures of those first three years would never, of course, be wholly forgotten. The wounds might close, but there remained the scar tissue in his consciousness.
The first year had been a time of animal fury, of wild moments when he reproached heaven for having betrayed him with lies written into the book of books. In the second year, he had forgotten all about heaven in the intensity of the passion with which he devoted himself to the hatred of men. And all through these three years he had made attempts—first to break from the prison, and then to injure the guards of the prison, particularly to get at the throat of Warden Tufter.
But at the end of the third year the great light of a higher knowledge had come to him. He knew that, huge and powerful as he was, he made no match, in sheer strength, for the powers of banded society. If he wished to strike them hard, his way must be to use cunning.
So it was that he had conceived the great idea of pretending a change in mind and spirit. So cleverly had he done it that he made no overnight attempt, but for a month he deftly schooled himself and prepared himself by mentally smiling upon his guards even while they were cursing him and dreading him. And when he had made sure that he could control himself, and that the savagery that was buried in the core of his nature would not break out, taking him by surprise—then, and then only, did he allow the guards to become slowly aware of the change in him. But even then he did not make any avowal in words. He worked up toward it so slowly that when, on a day, they heard him singing, they did not gape and gasp, but they summoned one another to listen. The beast, it seemed, was dead in him, or dying, and a kindly man was taking its place.
And the warden had fallen instantly into the trap. He had carried matters so very far in his persecution of this singular giant that he was quite willing to make an about-face. So soon as Tom Keene gave him an opening, the warden, for the sake of dear life, changed, also. He knew that one could never tell. There were ways and ways for prisoners to be freed from their sentences. Suppose, for instance, that someone should rake over the old evidence against the White Mask and discover, as the warden himself had done, that it was entirely founded upon flimsy hearsay. Suppose a pardon should be based upon these discoveries. Then what would happen between the big man and himself? There would simply be a murder. The devil that he had so often seen rising into the eyes of Tom Keene would take possession of the man, and he, Warden Tufter, would be caught and killed with a slow relish.
The prospect had given him some nightmare hours and wakened him out of his deepest sleeps with a choking and gasping. And now he bent himself to the task of bringing happiness into the life of the big man. He had succeeded, he felt, wonderfully. To the very day of Tom’s delivery, he felt that he had done a truly great work in regenerating a savage soul. He had looked on—somewhat from the distance—while Tom pursued his labors in books. How could he have known that this bookishness was only a part of Tom’s plan to gain freedom, a plan worked out with the most consummate patience and devotion? For Tom had consulted his own mind, and, in looking for that thing which, in his own judgment, made a man least dangerous in appearance, he had picked upon the love of books at once.
So he had forced himself mightily into the subject. For five years, he had spent many hours every day bent over turning pages. At first it had been torture, but gradually he acquired a taste for the very thing that had been a torment. Suddenly he found himself looking forward to his work of the day in the library. For three years since that date, he had devoured books, reading not according to any plan, but anything and everything as it came into his path.
And as he strode up the street of the town, he was surprised to find that the only warm spot that remained in his heart was that dark library room in the prison itself, Yes, his spirit turned back toward that place as toward a home.
He stopped in front of the blacksmith shop. “Where’s there a good bunch of saddle stock around here?” he asked.
The blacksmith whipped the sweat off his brow and looked sidewise up from the hoof that was twisted across his knee.
“Pop Sherman,” he said, and turned with a curse to the hoof again.
“Where’s Pop Sherman’s place?” Tom asked at the next corner.
“Right out on the edge of town. You can’t miss it. He’s got his corrals plumb full of new stock. He’s going to start shipping ’em north to fatten ’em up.”
There was little exaggeration in that description. He found the corrals alive with twisting, lashing bodies, thinly veiled with clouds of dust of their own raising. They were packed in well-nigh as thick as fish in the bottom of a weir when the tide runs out.
Tom found Pop Sherman sitting on a fence post talking to three or four prospective purchasers, for the ranchers were coming in for miles to look over the horses and pick out one, here and there, for their own uses before the herd was sent to the cars. And at Pop’s orders, two or three horse wranglers were expertly sifting the horses through the corral, stringing them out from one enclosure to the other, so that they could be reviewed in detail. And yet they were careful not to give them so much exercise in a day that flesh would be worn from their already bony sides.
On joi
ning them, Tom waved to the others, was greeted as negligently himself, and then mounted on a second rail, the better to view the milling crowd. He could feel, the moment he gave his attention to the herd, that the eyes of the others were drawing covertly toward him. It was always this way. Men could not pass by that pale, worn face without turning for a second glance. And in his bitter heart, Tom Keene cursed them for their curiosity. He had seen the eyes of women soften because of the story of pain that they read. And he had hated them for their pity.
Now, sweeping the crowd of horses, he dismissed the greater portion of them abruptly from his attention. It took a horse of parts to bear the crushing impost of his weight. No doubt he would never again find a weight carrier like the black. But, if he expected to put a single respectable day’s journey behind him while he was in the saddle, he must choose with the very greatest care.
“Your horses seem to run to the runty kind,” he remarked coldly to Pop Sherman. “You don’t happen to have any real horseflesh out yonder, do you?”
Pop Sherman snapped his teeth together. “I don’t keep no horseflesh on my place,” he said pointedly. “I keep horses, though, son.”
“You treat all your horses as tender and kind as that, do you?” Tom said.
“I do,” Pop Sherman said coldly. “What’s more, I don’t sell to no man that aims to turn a horse into a machine. That’s final, stranger.”
He was a savage old fighter, was Pop Sherman. And now he sat on the top of his fence post with his lower jaw thrusting out, staring straight before him, after the fashion of a man who is ready to whirl and rend the nearest enemy at the first excuse. The others, who knew him well, exchanged quick glances and covert grins. They did not approve of the supercilious fashion in which the stranger had looked down upon the horses of that district. And they were intensely pleased because Pop was calling him.
But the big man neither smiled to ingratiate the fierce horse seller, nor did he attempt to turn the subject upon other threads of conversation. He merely turned and looked steadily upon Pop, and without emotion.
“I’ve come to buy a horse,” he said slowly. “After I’ve finished looking over what you have, I’ll start talking with you … talking or whatever else you have a mind for.”
The stiff lips of the old man parted readily enough to snap a savage return that might have led to instant action, but, before he could speak, the big man had turned his shoulder. And, having turned his shoulder, he began to sing softly to himself in a mighty though controlled bass voice while he looked over the swirling masses of horses.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Pop Sherman so far forgot himself that he dropped his cigarette. And the smiles of satisfaction disappeared from the faces of the ranchers, for, though many men sing or hum to cover their nervousness when they are confronted with a crisis, he who truly sings, because his spirit is singing within him in the imminent danger of battle, is one to be avoided.
As for Pop himself, he would not by any means have sat quietly under the imputation of having taken water in the slightest degree from the huge stranger. But he contented himself with a sort of oblique, or left-handed, invitation to the big man to take another step and cross the line before he fought.
“If it’s just plain meanness under the saddle that you’re looking for to exercise on,” he suggested, “take a slant at one of them hunchbacked roans over yonder … them six or eight that runs in a bunch most of the time. They’ll kick up enough dust to satisfy even a particular gent like yourself, I’d say.”
But Tom Keene shook his head. “They have no underpinning,” he said. “I want something that has legs. I’m not a bantamweight. If they have some fight in them … why, that can be taken out.”
“Maybe,” suggested one of the bystanders, all of whose sympathies turned toward the venerable and dreaded Pop Sherman, “he’d like to take a turn with Christmas.”
The suggestion brought an ugly gleam in the little eyes of Pop. He slid from his post, with a single glance at his neighbors that warned them that there was excitement to be had in the immediate future. “I got a horse,” he said, “that ain’t particular much to look at. But maybe you’d like to see him. His legs are strong enough, I guess, to suit even you, stranger.”
This brought a smother of laughter from the others. But the big man seemed quite oblivious of the whole scene.
“Lead me to that horse,” Tom said. “I’ll take my chances with him.”
He was taken to a shed, and there, in the midst of the wreckage of several stalls that had apparently fallen under the flying heels of the animal, stood an immense gelding of a dirty cream color. It was one of the largest horses that Tom Keene had ever seen, and one of the ugliest. That is to say, he was built on the typical lines of the mustang cow pony, with rather heavy legs, even for his bulk, ewe neck, roach back, ragged bit of a tail, and huge, lumpish head, given significance by the great Roman nose from time immemorial the token of a stubborn and warlike horse. He turned a little as Tom looked in, and regarded him out of a little bright, bloodshot eye indicative of a treacherous nature.
“There he is,” said the elder man. “There’s old Christmas. He ain’t what he used to be, but still he’s got … strong legs.”
Tom Keene turned and regarded the owner with a smile. “That’s an outlaw,” he said quietly. “That horse has never been ridden.”
“Sure he ain’t,” said the other, “but, as I said before, he’s got legs enough, and legs was all that you was asking for. But, if you was to ride him … which that saddle and bridle hanging in there ain’t to hold you back none … why, you could take old Christmas along with you for a gift.”
There was a brief roar of laughter from the others.
But Tom merely tightened his belt. “Legs, as you say, was all I asked for,” he remarked. “So, if I may use that rope yonder …”
“Go as far as you like,” said Pop Sherman.
The rope, accordingly, was scooped up, and Tom advanced into the shed. Old Christmas did not need to be told through an interpreter what the designs of the man might be. He took one look at the rope, another at the man who held it, and then planted his forehoofs firmly, hunched forward, whirled with great dexterity, and let loose a volley of kicks that would have torn the head from Tom’s wide shoulders had the least of them landed.
But Tom had leaped back to a corner of the enclosure, his agility bringing a shout of mingled amusement and approbation from the excited spectators. In another moment the rope left his hand. It tangled those mighty rear legs of the cream-colored horse, but thereat, instead of venturing the kick that would have thrown him helplessly to the ground, he changed his tactics to meet the assault. He turned again, and this time he presented his gaping mouth and lunged with flattened ears at his tormentor.
“Get out, you fool!” shouted Pop Sherman. “He ain’t no common horse. He’s a killer!”
The last word rose up the scale to a shrill scream, for, as Christmas plunged, the man suddenly plunged straight at Christmas with a shout so savage and so fiercely joyous at once, that it curdled the veins of the spectators.
Madness seemed to have swept the giant off his feet. But there was a cunning mind directing his attack. At the last instant, when he seemed rushing into the teeth of destruction, he veered far to the side, at the same time curling a twist into the rope that spun at the head of Christmas and whipped around his face. The great horse had reared to smash the enemy with his forehoofs and rend him with the gaping teeth at the same instant. But just under the downsweep of those great hoofs slid the big man and at the same time brought all of his lunging weight against the rope.
He had turned as he lunged, digging in his heels, but now the shock staggered him and brought him lurching forward. The effect upon Christmas, however, was even greater, for, taken unguarded by that heavy wrench to the side, the horse swung over in mid-leap and crashed heavily upon his sid
e. The fall stunned him. Before he recovered his senses, he was blindfolded with a sack, and, when at length he rose, he stood with legs braced as though expecting to receive another fall as mysterious as the first.
The onlookers regarded these maneuvers with undisguised admiration and wonder.
“I’d’ve hated to try that in a forty-acre lot, let alone in a little box like this,” Pop Sherman said, summing up the opinion of all.
And then, having saddled the quivering but motionless gelding, Tom led him through the door and into the open. He swung into the stirrups, jerked off the blindfold, and, with a wicked slash of the spurs, bade Christmas start his battle.
Christmas needed no second bidding. As Pop Sherman declared afterward: “The air was plumb full of Christmas. I looked for the stranger to begin to shake down in bits.”
But he would not shake down. Huge Christmas fought like a great cat, vengefully, and with a practiced skill that had made him the terror of bucking contests throughout the state. But for every squeal of rage that he uttered, there was a shout of savage delight and exultation from the giant rider. And for every maneuver in which he indulged himself, maneuvers that had made other riders pull leather desperately, he simply received fresh goading from the spurs, fresh cutting with the heavy quirt.
In the meantime, the intelligence that had made him so successful as a bucker now operated to warn him that he had met his match, and that continued battle simply meant continued pain. Therefore, as suddenly as he had begun, he stopped, sidled toward a bunch of dead grass, thrust down his cut mouth, and began to crop the grass with a foolish pretense that he had never intended anything but play from the first. But the red, vicious eyes and the heaving sides told a different story, and Pop Sherman paid Tom a generous tribute.
“The best piece of nerve that I ever seen,” he declared, and the others shared the opinion.
Tom merely shrugged his shoulders, and, swinging down from the horse, he took the reins over the crook of his arm and approached Pop Sherman to set a price on the outfit, actually turning his back upon the man-killer. They arrived at an agreement quickly enough, for the saddle and the bridle were old, and Christmas was a gift won in the riding of him. In five minutes, big Tom Keene was ready to depart. He left behind him a group won over from hostility to frank good-fellowship, and Pop Sherman said, as he shook hands, “Partner, what name am I going to jot down in the books to remember you by?”
