Black Thunder

by Max Brand

  But out the window, Traynor could see hardly a thing. For the funnels of white smoke, rushing away from the house, filled the air and covered the ground, toward the barns.

  “Rose,” he said, “there’s a ghost of a chance.”

  He went to the dining room door and pulled it open. Before him a wild furnace was roaring, tossing up a billion-footed dance of flames. The heat seared his face, searched his body through his clothes. He jammed the door shut again.

  “Half a minute!” he called to the girl. “Have you got a handkerchief. Then wet it in that pitcher, and tie it over your mouth and nose. Like this. You see?”

  He used the bloody handkerchief of the doctor, unknotting it from around his throat, for the same purpose. When he looked again, the girl was masked in white. She furled up the lower lip of the mask and threw her arms around him. And he, pushing the handkerchief high on his head, took what well might be his last clear view of her.

  They only looked, desperately, with great eyes; they did not touch their lips together because each was striving, in divine despair, to see the face before them as it might be transfigured in another life. Then they drew down the wet masks again and went out the door onto the porch.

  The full heat of the conflagration struck them at once. And the sweep of the wind hurried them into the boiling columns of the smoke. He had her hand in his.

  “Close your eyes . . . I’ll guide!” he called at her ear, and jumped with her from the edge of the porch.

  He had a deep breath of pure air in his lungs. He ran forward straining his eyes through the smoke that burned them, until the breath was spent in his lungs. They were far from the house, by this time, and the dim outlines of the barns loomed dark before him.

  He threw himself flat on the ground and dragged the girl down beside him. She was coughing and gasping. But there, close to the ground, it was possible to breathe and fill their lungs with better air, for the smoke kept rising.

  Voices were still shouting: “Keep a watch! Keep a watch! What’s passing there?” And distantly a rifle cracked. Three shots—at some smoky phantom, no doubt—and the firing ceased. But it was a good measure of the peril into which they were running.

  “Now,” he said at the ear of Rose Laymon, and helped her to rise.

  His knees were very weak. Yet he could stagger again to a run that carried them on toward the barns. The door of one yawned open right before them. He had carried the rifle slung in his left hand; now he transferred it to the right, and, as he did so, he saw forms loom into the shadows of the doorway, peering into the smoke.

  “Hey!” yelled one. The voice was a scream. “Here they come . . . here! Here!”

  Traynor fired from the ready, straight into the breast of that big, bearded figure. He turned and jammed the muzzle of the rifle into the face of the second man, and the victim staggered backwards, screeching out something about his eyes, firing a revolver repeatedly at nothingness.

  The girl and Traynor already were far down the empty aisle of the barn, with flickering lights from the burning house entering the place. Behind them, they heard a great crashing, a loud whistling of the triumphant wind, and a gust of heat and light streamed with a thousandfold brilliance into the shadows of the barn.

  That was what enabled them to see half a dozen horses tethered to the manger near the rear door. The frightened beasts were rearing and stamping and pulling violently back on the tie ropes to escape.

  Rose Laymon threw up her hands in helpless terror at that mill of great, tigerish bodies, as she heard the stamping of the hoofs and saw the frantic eyes of the horses rolling toward the distant fire.

  But Traynor, with a knife, cut loose the first two horses. They looked no better than ordinary broncos, but ordinary broncos would have to do. They could not pick and choose. He hung onto the reins of a fiery little pinto as the girl swung into the saddle.

  She had the rear door of the barn open the next moment, and Traynor was barely able to hook a leg over the cantle of the saddle before his horse flew like a stone through the doorway and into the open night.

  “This way! This way!” a voice was screeching. “This way, everyone! Here they go . . . and on horses! Ride like hell! She’s worth a hundred thousand to us. A thousand bucks to the gent that snags her first.”

  Traynor, righted himself with a vast effort in the saddle, then shot his horse in pursuit of the flying pinto, and he heard behind him the swift beginning of the pursuit, the rumble of hoofs growing louder and louder as man after man joined the chase.

  IX

  They went up the easy slope of a hill that was half white with the moon, half trembling with the glow from the fire. The house of John Laymon lay prone, but huge red and yellow ghosts rose above it, dancing, sometimes throwing up great arms that disappeared in the upper air.

  There was plenty of light for shooting, and the Whartons used it. “Get that damned Traynor, and the gal will give up!” the familiar voice of Jim Wharton was thundering.

  The result was an endless shower of bullets. Many of them flew wide. He only knew of their passing by the clicking of them through the branches of the trees or by their solid thudding into the trunks. But others clipped the air close about him, whining small with eagerness, each like a dog that misses its stroke and has to rush on past the quarry.

  They rounded the hill. They entered a narrow shoot of a glade that carried them straight out into the road for Little Snake. To have that road under them seemed to insure freedom. He saw the head of the girl go up; he heard her crying: “We’re going to make it, Larry! They’re not going to catch us!”

  But he, glancing back, still smiling, saw that half a dozen riders had forged ahead of the rest and were gaining steadily.

  “Ride ahead!” he commanded Rose. “You’re lighter than I am. The pinto’s a flash. You’ll get to help first.”

  She shook her head, waving her denial. And as he stared at her, the blood trickling again from the open wound in his neck, he realized that she would never leave him—not now—not hereafter.

  There are fools, he thought, who doubt the future. Those are the men who have never gone through the fear of death with a friend, in the knowledge that an equal faith is on each side. But for such as have endured the crisis, there must be a promise of life thereafter. An eternity of faith poured over him as he watched her at his side and saw the tight pull she was keeping on the head of the pinto. She could flash away from him in an instant, but all the dangers in the world could never persuade her.

  They rushed around a great loop of the road, and behind them the beating of hoofs was louder and louder. Then the voices rose in a sudden triumph that was like a song. He looked wildly behind him, and saw the waving arms in the moonlight and the brandished guns.

  He could not understand, until he looked ahead again and saw a solitary rider, straight up in the saddle, rushing his horse down the slope to intercept their way.

  Would he come on them in time?

  It seemed almost an even race, but at the end, as the pinto and Traynor’s mustang struggled up a slope in the way, it seemed that the horse of the stranger was losing speed. He did not attempt to shoot. Perhaps he was afraid of striking the girl with a bullet. And Traynor himself held his fire with the rifle.

  A roar of angry surprise rose from the crowd of the leading pursuers. Then a twist of the way cut off everything from the view of Traynor. He was amazed to hear an outburst of rifle fire, with yells of high dismay scattered through the explosions.

  The beat of hoofs died out. Still the voices clamored furiously, far away. Still the gunfire beat more rapidly.

  But the pursuit had died at that spot. What had happened? Well, he could save his breath for the work of riding, for he was very, very tired. His legs shuddered against the side of his horse, and his back was bending.

  Hours seemed to flow past him, and more hours. He passed into a sort of trance through which the quiet, cheerful voice of the girl cut into his consciousness, from time to time
. She was riding the pinto close to his horse. She was supporting him. And then he saw the lights of Little Snake clustered ahead.

  “Do you know what happened back there?” she asked him as she gave the horses their last halt before making the town.

  “Where?” he asked, his mind very dim.

  “The rider who came down the slope . . . didn’t you know him, Larry?”

  “Ah, the fellow who almost cut us off, and then his horse petered out, or his nerve failed him?”

  “His horse didn’t give out, and he had as much nerve as any man in the world.”

  “What do you mean, Rose,”

  “It was Parker Channing. I knew him by his way in the saddle. I knew him by the wave of his hand when I looked back. And I saw him turning against the rest of them.”

  “The doctor? You mean that he cut in to help stop them? You mean . . .? Rose, I’ve got to go back to him. . .”

  “Hush, and be still,” said the girl. “He died hours and hours ago. They’ve killed him, and gone on. But not till he let us get safely away.”

  “Die? For us?” cried Traynor.

  “Yes, for us,” she answered.

  And he knew that it was true. His brain cleared of all weakness. He looked ahead at the twinkling lights of the town and the glimmering stars, and it seemed to Traynor that the glory of the heavens descended without a check and overspread this earth.

  Back there at the head of the hill, the doctor had charged in earnest to cut off the retreat of the two, for he felt that he had abandoned all shame and all virtue forever, when he left them in the condemned house. There was nothing for him, now, but to race forward into crime and greater crime and welcome the darkness of the future.

  And there was a savage earnestness in his riding as he considered how close the two rode together, Traynor beside the girl. He wanted to kill Traynor—not with guns but with his hands. When the last life bubbled up under the compressed tips of his fingers, then only would he be satisfied.

  What was it that changed him? It was when he saw, quite clearly by the moonlight, how Rose Laymon was reining in her pinto until its neck bowed sharply; it was when he understood perfectly her will to live or die at the side of Traynor.

  If his strength was in his mind rather than his heart, perhaps it was in the quiet perfection of his thinking that he saw how the two were blended together for a single destiny that should be far higher than to be trampled down by the ruffians of Jim Wharton. And it was clear thinking, also, that showed him what he must do. No one would know. His reputation would not be cleansed by the act, unless the girl, perhaps, had recognized him by his riding. But he had to face the Whartons and check their pursuit.

  So, as he swung into the road at the crest of the shallow hill, he turned straight back toward the pursuers and pulled his rifle out of its holster. He took good aim. The very first shot jerked back the head of the foremost rider, and with upflung arms the man dropped backwards out of the saddle. The second brought a yell of agony.

  The party split to this side and to that. With screaming curses the riders fled.

  He could ride after the fugitive pair now. But that was not his plan. To his clear brain the future of this act was very plain. His life was cast away. He had thrown it away and made it forfeit with the bullet that killed old Sam. Perhaps he had returned a partial payment by the slaying of the ruffian, who lay yonder, twisted in the road. But there was still more to do—it was a long account.

  He got his horse into a nest of rocks and made the animal lie down. By that time, the tail of the pursuit had come up, and warning yells of the Whartons made the other men take cover. They began to spread out to this side and to that. Bullets, now and then, whirred through his imperfect fortifications.

  He kept a keen look-out. He saw a shadow crawling between two bushes, took careful aim, and fired. The man leaped with a yell that burned like a torch through the brain of the doctor. One bound, and the fellow was out of sight. But he would remember this night for the rest of his days.

  Suddenly, on his right, four men charged right up the hill for him. They came from a distance of fifteen yards. He dropped—one, two—and the remaining pair dodged to the side and pitched out of view behind an outcrop of rock.

  One of the remaining two lay still. The other, groaning, got to his hands and knees and started crawling away. The doctor let him crawl. Something in the tone of that groaning told him that the bullet wound was through the body, and if that were the case. . .

  In the meantime, the pair under the rock so close at hand would be a thorn in his flesh. He had to keep his attention at least half for them.

  Still he watched until he saw a head and shoulders lift from beside the rock. He had to snatch up his own rifle quickly. He knew that his bullet struck the target. The head bobbed down like a weighted cork, but right through the shoulder and into the body of the doctor drove the answering slug.

  That was his end, and he knew it. Calmly—because there was the clear mind in him to the end—he prepared for the last stroke. He could not manage the rifle very well with one arm. But he had a borrowed Wharton revolver. That was in his hand as he roused the horse and slipped into the saddle.

  The instant his silhouette loomed, the rapid firing began. He spurred the mustang straight toward the flashes of the guns. And a glory came over the doctor, and enlarged his spirit and widened his throat. The shout that came from him was like a single note from a great song.

  So, firing steadily, aiming his shots, he drove his charge home against the enemy until a bullet, mercifully straight, struck the consciousness from him, and loosed the life from his body, and sent the unharmed spirit winging on its way.

  ****

  They gave Parker Channing a church funeral. And the town of Little Snake followed him to the grave.

  There was a very odd picture of Rose Laymon kneeling at the edge of the grave, dropping roses into it. The rest of the people held back. They knew it was her right, her duty, to play the part of chief mourner. And not a soul in Little Snake doubted that her tears were real.

  Those who watched kept shifting their looks from the girl to the pale-faced solemn young man who stood not far behind her, with his head bowed. He was waiting for the end of the ceremony. He was waiting for Rose Laymon.

  And it is fair to say that in all of Little Snake there was not a man who did not judge that Larry Traynor had come fairly by his happiness.

  White-Water Sam

  Frederick Faust saw thirty-seven of his stories—twenty-three of which were short novels and the remainder serials—published in 1932. All but two of the serials appeared in Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine. Nonetheless, that year saw the beginning of the end of Faust’s almost exclusive relationship with Western Story Magazine when his rate was lowered from 5¢ to 3¢ per word by Street & Smith. “White-Water Sam”, a first-person narrative about river boating in Alaska, appeared in the January 30th issue that year under Faust’s George Henry Morland byline.

  I

  This happened after the White Pass Railway went through. I was out of a job because I had been working on the Thomas Drayton, and after the railroad was completed, of course, there was no more for that ship. A ship she was, too, and not just a dirty shakedown of a scow with an engine dumped into her, like most of the river craft. I don’t suppose that any river boats were ever built for beauty, but the Thomas Drayton looked mighty handsome to me. She was as limber as a sword blade from crawling over sand banks, and she was as strong as a sword, too, for bashing a way through ice. At that time, what with her two funnels and her big, powerful engines, she was the finest thing floating in Alaskan waters.

  I’ll tell you how well she was finished off. She had steel sheathing over the blades of her paddles. Why? Well, so that in case of need you could back her through shallows at a sand bank and she would claw her way over like a dog, scrambling to pull a sled through soft snow. I loved that boat. She answered her helm like a bird dog, and there was nothing finer in th
e world, to my way of thinking, than the way she would tremble all over, from head to heel, when she went away under full steam. There was zest in her. She seemed to have a personal interest in getting where she ought to go.

  But there she was now, tied up to the dock, as useless a thing as you ever saw. The wind was coming straight across the lake, knocking up some waves, and they rocked her a trifle from side to side and kept her image shuddering, deep in the water.

  She had cost $40,000 or $50,000 if she had cost a penny; and now she was worth—well, perhaps there was a $1,000 worth of junk in her, if anyone cared to wreck her for what could be got out of her hide and bones, but nobody cared.

  Not even Thomas Drayton cared. He’d made a couple of fortunes out of her, young as she was, and now he was only lingering long enough to collect a few debts that were owing to him, before he went back to his own country to live a life of ease.

  Nobody cared about her except me, Joe Palmer. And what was I to her? Why, I was an ex-deck hand.

  But the Thomas Drayton is only a part of this narrative. Another part, just then, was paddling the edge of the lake in a birch-bark canoe, a regular, trim-built Indian craft. I admired the way the fellow in the canoe was paddling, because, Indian style, he never took the blade out of the water entirely, but worked it back and forth with a sinuous movement, like a snake in the water. A fellow who is a master of a paddle, like that, is driving his canoe ahead, steadying her and steering her every instant with one and the same stroke. I got up from the tarry barrel I was sitting on to watch the stranger beach his boat, and then I saw that he was not a stranger at all.

  Who he was, I couldn’t spot, just yet. So many thousands of faces had passed across my vision while I was working on the Thomas Drayton, that my mind was a blur, but I knew that I had seen that big thick pair of shoulders before and had noticed something both lazy and powerful in the way they were used. Well, shoulders, if you take a good look at ’em, express character as much as the face.