Black Thunder

by Max Brand

  He fired shot after shot. He fired them in groups of three, sure signals for help. And yet not a single rider rushed out from the ranch to help him. For four days he had been close enough to catch the attention of some range rider. But when he fired the gun, there was no response—there was only the mocking laughter of the doctor.

  But for the fifth day he mustered the last of his strength and the whole exhaustless mass of his courage to bridge the final gap. And it was bridged. Just at the sunset time, that poor, rolling monster and his handcuffed man reached the back door of the ranch house. The steps up the porch seemed to Traynor almost as insurmountable as the Alps.

  He shouted, and he had no answer except a feeble echo that flew back to him from the bald, vacant faces of the barns.

  Then the doctor said: “I’ve saved something to tell you. I’ll tell it to you now, and be damned to you. I’ve been crowing over you these five days because, you fool, the ranch is empty! There’s nobody in the house. All these five days your bleary eyes couldn’t make out the details, but I’ve seen that not a single soul has left this house or entered it!”

  “It can’t be empty. It’s the Laymon place,” mumbled Traynor. “You’ve got to be wrong . . . you’ve got to be lying. It’s the Laymon place and. . .”

  “If you had something besides death and cotton batting in your brain,” shouted the doctor, “you would have noticed that there are no cattle in the fields! Not a damned one. The place has been cleaned out!”

  Traynor waited for a moment. He could see very little. Off toward the west there was a redness in the sky, to be sure. Red—fire—and fire was in his wounds, and the ghastly fog of death was in his brain. So this was the end of the trail, at last.

  He said: “Doctor, you ought to die. I wanted to see you hanged.”

  “Thanks, old son,” said the doctor. “I’ve been appreciating that idea of yours for some days, you know.”

  “I could chain you here in the house if it’s empty, and you’d starve in three days.”

  The doctor said nothing.

  “That wouldn’t be pretty, eh? You tied and starving . . . and me spilled out on the floor, my body rotting away before I’m dead. Not pretty, Doctor, eh?”

  “My God, no,” breathed the doctor.

  “Well,” said Traynor, “I can’t do it. I’ll tell you why. I can’t help remembering that Rose loved you. I can’t do you in like this, Channing.” He had to pause and fight for breath.

  The captive stared at him with eyes made enormous by wonder.

  “Inside this right-hand trousers pocket,” said Traynor through his puffed lips, “there’s the key to the handcuffs. You take it . . . I can’t get my hand into the pocket any more. Take it, and set yourself free.” He laid down his gun as he spoke.

  The doctor, his hands trembling so that the chain between the handcuffs sang a tuneless song, reached into the pocket and found the key.

  And when he had it, he stood over his captor for a moment with his hands raised as though he intended to dash the steel manacles into the hideously distorted face.

  Pain in Traynor had reached such a point that he could not fear death itself. That was why he waited for the blow with a frightful caricature of a smile. He felt that this was natural. He had given the tiger its freedom, and the first place the tiger struck would be at him.

  But Parker Channing stood back after a moment. He scowled at Traynor. He fitted the key into the lock of the handcuffs; in an instant he was free. He hurled the manacles far away from him, and his glance wandered across the mountains. Freedom and safety lay for him there. The discarded hope of existence returned to him with a rush.

  From that prospect, he looked back, suddenly, at the helpless man who lay against the steps of the verandah. The sight made him sneer. As for the bloated, visionless eyes, there was little comprehension in them. To crush Traynor now would be like crushing a toad.

  But something else was working in the mind of the doctor. It made him take a few paces up and down, muttering to himself. He wanted to be away. He wanted to be putting miles of safety between himself and the society which waited now only the chance to strangle him at the end of a rope. And still the dim life in the eyes of Traynor held him back.

  Channing uttered a final exclamation and stepped away. Traynor looked after him without denunciation, without hope. With the sick man, even the effort of thinking had grown to be almost a physical strain. It was better to lie back and feel the damp cold of the night coming over him. It was better to lie still with the dreadful fluttering in his breast, the movement as of dying wings, wings that have flown to weariness over a sea of darkness into which they must fall. Very shortly, as the night closed over him, his eyes would be closed and never open.

  A returning footfall amazed him. Through the dimness he saw the tall form of the doctor go past him, up the steps, across the verandah. A little pause at the door, and Channing entered the house. His footfalls echoed through the emptiness. There was the rattling of iron, iron sounding like that of a stove. Finally the dying man heard the crackling of fire, more cheerful than the song of a cricket. Pans rattled. A fragrance of cookery moved out on the night air.

  The doctor was low, a murdering snake without pity or human compassion, but even in him it was peculiar that he should cook for his own comfort while a man lay hungry and dying within sense range of the preparation of the food. The footfalls came loudly out of the kitchen, across the verandah, and descended.

  “Stand up!” commanded the doctor harshly.

  “No use,” muttered Traynor. “If I’m in your way here, roll me out of the path. I’m not moving any more.”

  “Look,” said Channing. “You’re rotten. I don’t want to touch you. But if you’ll try to get up, I’ll do something for you.”

  “Thanks,” said Traynor. “And to hell with you, Channing.”

  The doctor sighed. He leaned down, fitting his strong hands under the shoulders of Traynor, and raised him into a sitting posture. The brain of Traynor whirled dizzily.

  “Let me be,” he said in a thick husky whisper. “I’m almost finished, Channing. Let me pass out, this way . . . no more pain . . . God! Let it finish off like this downhill. . .”

  The fierce hands of the doctor, strong, hard, painful, ground into his flesh and raised him. He was tottering on his feet. Now he went forward, his huge, hippopotamus feet bumping together as he was more than half lifted up the steps.

  The kitchen stove, as they entered the room, he heard roaring with fire. A lamp had been lighted. Wisps of smoke were twisting in the air above the stove, and pans over the fire were trembling a little with the force of the flames. Dim hope, now, entered the mind of Traynor.

  The doctor got him down the hall and turned him through a doorway into another lighted room. On the incredible softness of a bed he stretched the body of Traynor. He covered him with blankets.

  “Stop thinking,” said the doctor, standing over him at last. “Don’t do any more thinking. It’ll wear out your mind. Look at the light. Remember that you’re not going to die.”

  “Not die?” whispered Traynor.

  “No.”

  “Not die?” murmured Traynor again, and his mouth remained gaping open, as though he were drinking in hope with the air. The doctor left. He returned, after a little, with a cup of tea. He raised the bloated, spongy head of Traynor in the crook of his arm. The tea had a foul odor. The taste of it was green, bitter, sick.

  “Pretty bad to swallow, eh?” asked the doctor. “But it’s life, Traynor. This is the life that was green all around you, as we came through the valleys. Foxglove, Traynor. It’s the plant that doctors get digitalis from. Do you know why your body is almost rotting away from you? It’s because your heart has gone bad. And digitalis is going to cure that heart. When the heart is well, you’ll be well. You’ll be fit for a normal life again. Here . . . finish this stuff off and have some more.”

  And Traynor drank the foul stuff and almost found it good, it was so
sweetened by the taste of hope.

  ****

  In twenty-four hours the change was incredible. The bloating about the face was almost entirely gone. Traynor’s whole body and limbs felt lighter. Above all, he could see clearly; he could think clearly, and, as he stared up at the ceiling, his thoughts led him into a continual maze of wonder.

  Channing came back into the room that evening with food, and more of the digitalis tea. Now that his brain and eyes were clearer, he could watch in the face of the doctor the shadow of distaste as he looked down upon the sick man, but mastering that dislike, that horror, there was a keen interest showing through.

  He fed Traynor. He held the cup of tea for him, raising his head.

  Afterward, he pulled the soggy clothes from the sick man’s body and washed him. The exquisite comfort of cleanliness soaked through the flesh, into the soul of Traynor. He had felt too dirty to be worthy of life, or of fighting for it.

  And still he wondered, from day to day, as the strength flowed back into his body, into his brain. And the frightful fluttering of wings had left his breast. When he turned on his left side, he could still feel a slight, quick, abnormal vibration, but, otherwise, the beating of the heart did not trouble him except that now and then there would be a great, single drum stroke, as though to give him warning of the condition in which he had once lain.

  “The digitalis . . . it’s done all this?” he asked, marveling.

  The doctor nodded. “It’s one of the few drugs that are absolutely necessary to modern medicine. It works miracles. You’re one of the miracles. You look like a human being again . . . you are a human being. You’re able to sit up. You could start walking tomorrow . . . and that’s the day I leave you, Traynor.”

  Traynor stared upward at the ceiling. “Why did you do this Parker?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” answered Channing, scowling. “Partly because you were such a bulldog. Partly because . . . well, because the doctor in me was being tormented by the sight of you. My profession is sworn to relieve suffering, you know.”

  “And you’ll be paid for making me well. Do you know how?”

  “How?”

  “As soon as I can walk and ride, I’m coming on your trail again.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Parker Channing. “No damned sentimentality. And we’ll fight it out to a finish.”

  “Yes, we will,” said Traynor.

  He smiled in a strange way at Channing, and Channing smiled in the same manner back at his patient.

  “I understand,” said Traynor.

  “What do you understand?”

  “Why it’ll be a pleasure to you to cut my throat. It’s because you can’t stand the idea of me finding Rose Laymon again, and making her forget that the crooked doctor ever lived.”

  “You’ll never make her forget,” said the doctor.

  “Women know how to put things out of their minds,” insisted Traynor.

  A patch of white appeared around the mouth of the doctor. “I’ll talk no more about it!” he exclaimed, and straightway left the room.

  Their understanding was perfect, Traynor knew. They had made a fair exchange. To the doctor he had restored freedom, and the doctor had given him health and life. Neither needed to be grateful to the other. It was a fair exchange and they could part on an equal footing. Yet—except for the picture of old Sam lying on his back in the dust of the road—Traynor knew that he could be fond of this man.

  He was simply an outcrop from the ordinary blood of humanity. His brain worked not as the brains of other men operated. There was a greater logic in him, a detached, impersonal coldness of thought. When he was in need of money, therefore, he was able to conceive a crime. Having conceived the crime, he was able to execute it calmly, efficiently, killing the old hero who attempted to interfere with his scheme.

  This picture of cold-minded efficiency was marred by only two facts—the real love of the doctor for Rose Laymon, and the human weakness that forced him to tend his worst enemy, curing a patient who would afterward go on the trail to end his life.

  These thoughts were in the mind of Traynor that evening; in the morning, the doctor would go, sinking himself deep into the mountains, attempting to secure his freedom from pursuit. And Traynor would wait one day, recovering further strength before he started the long walk back to Little Snake.

  He could hear the pounding hoofs of a horse up the road; the doctor was stirring about in the kitchen, singing softly. The sound of the horse turned in toward the ranch house.

  Hinges creaked with a great groaning and vibration, as though a wooden gate were being dragged open. After that, noise of hoofs became louder.

  The doctor was no longer moving in the kitchen. His step came down the hall. He looked in at the door of the sick man, and Traynor saw the rifle in his hands.

  “Somebody’s coming. I guess this is good bye, Larry,” he said.

  “Good luck . . . till I meet you again,” said Traynor, smiling thinly.

  “The same to you,” sneered the doctor, “till I sink lead into you.”

  The noise of the horse had ended. A footfall sounded on the back porch as the doctor turned to slip away through the front of the house. He was checked by a voice that rang clearly through the old building, calling: “Hello! Who’s here? Who’s here?”

  Channing whirled about as though a knife had dug into him. It was the unforgettable voice of Rose Laymon.

  VI

  The doctor leaned the rifle against the wall. He looked white, strained, old. “Call her,” he whispered to Traynor.

  “All right.” He lifted his voice. “Rose! I’m in here!”

  And the girl answered: “Who . . . Larry Traynor?”

  She came running. At the door of the room she halted. The ride had blown color into her face. The hat was well back on her head. And there was such an upwelling of light in her eyes, such a gleaming of surprise and caution and excitement that she looked to Traynor like an Indian girl.

  “Larry,” she exclaimed, “are you ill? What’s the matter? Did you catch up with him? Did that murderer hurt you . . .?”

  She was coming into the room, one small step at a time, when she saw the doctor in the corner, among the shadows. She winced from him with an exclamation, as though she had been struck.

  The doctor, whiter than ever, made a small gesture. “Murderer is the word, Rose . . . but not a woman killer, you know.”

  She faced the doctor, but she kept backing up until she was close to the bedside of Larry Traynor. There she put out a small hand, and Traynor took it. He could see an agony in the face of Channing at this gesture that sprang from fear of him. Then the doctor mastered himself. He spoke almost lightly.

  “Why not sit down, Rose?” he asked. “I was leaving in the morning, but I’ll get out tonight since you’ve arrived. However, we might all have a chat together.”

  Her hand wandered behind her, found a chair, drew it toward her while her eyes were still fixed on the doctor. She sat down, close to Larry Traynor.

  It seemed as though she had stepped far back in time to the last moment when they had meant so much to one another. With a gesture, in an instant, she had banished the distance that had come between them. And Traynor, turning his own head away from the doctor, watched the breathing of the girl, and his soul extended toward her with an immensity of joy and possession.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said, shaking her head. “Will you tell me what’s happened Parker . . . why you’re here with Larry, like a friend?”

  “He caught me, and slipped the handcuffs on me,” said the doctor. He brought out his words with a cool precision. “We’re not friends. His heart went bad on the march in. He turned off to this place to shorten the way. He was close to dying when he got here, and, instead of sending me to hell before him, he turned me loose. So I cured his heart trouble for him. We part tomorrow. And we’ll meet another day on another trail.”

  Cold hatred—but respect, too—was in his glance as he
stared at Traynor. Yet he went on, forcing himself: “When you and the fools of Little Snake thought that Traynor was showing the white feather the other day . . . that was simply the same heart trouble. I saw the tremble and jump of the pulse, in his throat, and I knew that he was as helpless as a child.” He turned to Traynor: “I think this leaves us quits, Larry.”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Traynor.

  She almost turned her back on the doctor as she leaned over Traynor. “You know what I thought that day, Larry?” she said. “Yes, because you could see it in my face. Are you going to forgive me?”

  “Look,” said Traynor. “That didn’t happen . . . that’s forgotten. The other things . . . what’s to come . . . are all that matter.”

  A slight shadow like the breath of fear ran across her eyes, then she smiled at him. There was that in her smile that made him glad not to look toward the doctor.

  “I’ll be getting on,” said Channing.

  “You can’t go,” she said. “Not till I’ve thanked you for the thing you’ve done for Larry.”

  The face of Channing stiffened. “That’s unnecessary cruelty, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Parker, be honest,” she said. “It was all a game with you. You never cared a whit about me. I was simply a girl to fill some of the dull hours. Isn’t that the truth?”

  He stared at her. “All right,” he said. “We’d better let it rest that way.” Then he added: “No decent girl wants to think that a . . . murderer . . . ever cared for her.”

  “You’re being serious?” she asked.

  “My God,” he exclaimed bitterly, “even if there’s no heart in you, there ought to be a memory!”

  “There is a memory,” she answered. “You meant everything? Did you really mean everything, Parker?”

  “There’s no good in talking about it,” said Channing. “I know what I’m going to do. I’ve seen what you think of me now. But so far as meaning what I’ve said before . . . well, I meant more than that, even when my damned supercilious manner denied my words.”