The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  “His absence is cheaply bought at the price of one mare,” continued the old servant soothingly.

  “One mare of Rustir’s blood! What is the sin for which the Lord would punish me with the loss of Shakra? And I miss her as I would miss a human face. But Benjamin will return with her. He did not ask for the horse.”

  “He knew you would offer.”

  “He will not return?”

  “Never!”

  “Then I shall go to find him.”

  “It is forbidden.”

  Abraham sat down, cross-legged, and watched with impish self-content while David strode back and forth in the patio. A far-off neighing brought him to a halt, and he raised his hand for silence. The neighing was repeated, more clearly, and David laughed for joy.

  “A horse coming from the pasture to the paddock,” said Abraham, shifting uneasily.

  The day was old and the patio was filled with a clear, soft light, preceding evening.

  “It is Shakra! Shakra, Abraham!”

  Abraham rose.

  “A yearling. It is too high for the voice of a grown mare.”

  “The distance makes it shrill. Abraham, Abraham, cannot I find her voice among ten all neighing at once?”

  “Then beware of Benjamin, for he has returned to take not one but all.”

  But David smiled at the skinny hand which was raised in warning.

  “Say no more,” he said solemnly. “I am already to blame for hearkening to words against my brother Benjamin.”

  “You yourself had said that he tempted you.”

  Because David could find no ready retort he grew angry.

  “Also, think of this. Your eyes and your ears are grown dull, Abraham, and perhaps your mind is misted also.”

  He had gone to the entrance into the patio and paused there to wait with a lifted head. Abraham followed and attempted to speak again, but the last cruel speech had crushed him. He went out on the terrace, and looking back saw that David had not a glance for him; so Abraham went feebly on.

  “I have become as a false prophet,” he murmured, “and I am no more regarded.”

  His life had long been in its evening, and now, at a step, the darkness of old age fell about him. From the margin of the lake he looked up and saw Connor ride to the patio.

  David, at the entrance, clasped the hand of his guest while he was still on the horse and helped him to the ground.

  “This,” he said solemnly, “is a joyful day in my house.”

  “What’s the big news?” inquired the gambler, and added: “Why so happy?”

  “Is it not the day of your return? Isaac! Zacharias!”

  They came running as he clapped his hands.

  “Set out the oldest wine, and there is a haunch of the deer that was killed at the gate. Go! And now, Benjamin, did Shakra carry you well and swiftly?”

  “Better than I was ever carried before.”

  “Then she deserves well of me. Come hither, Shakra, and stand behind me. Truly, Benjamin, my brother, my thoughts have ridden ten times across the mountains and back, wishing for your return!”

  Connor was sufficiently keen to know that a main reason for the warmth of his reception was that he had been doubted while he was away, and while they supped in the patio he was even able to guess who had raised the suspicion against him. Word was brought that Abraham lay in his bed seriously ill, but David Eden showed no trace of sympathy.

  “Which is the greater crime?” he asked Benjamin a little later. “To poison the food a man eats or the thoughts in his mind?”

  “Surely,” said the crafty gambler, “the mind is of more importance than the stomach.”

  Luckily David bore the main burden of conversation that evening, for the brain of Connor was surcharged with impatient waiting. His great plan, he shrewdly guessed, would give him everything or else ruin him in the Garden of Eden, and the suspense was like an eating pain. Luckily the crisis came on the very next day.

  Jacob galloped into the patio, and flung himself from the back of Abra.

  David and Connor rose from their chairs under the arcade where they had been watching Joseph setting great stones in place around the border of the fountain pool. The master of the Garden went forward in some anger at this unceremonious interruption. But Jacob came as one whose news is so important that it overrides all need of conventional approach.

  “A woman,” he panted. “A woman at the gate of the Garden!”

  “Why are you here?” said David sternly.

  “A woman—”

  “Man, woman, child, or beast, the law is the same. They shall not enter the Garden of Eden. Why are you here?”

  “And she rides the gray gelding, the son of Yoruba!”

  At that moment the white trembling lips of Connor might have told the master much, but he was too angered to take heed of his guest.

  “That which has once left the Garden is no longer part of it. For us, the gray gelding does not exist. Why are you here?”

  “Because she would not leave the gate. She says that she will see you.”

  “She is a fool. And because she was so confident, you were weak enough to believe her?”

  “I told her that you would not come; that you could not come!”

  “You have told her that it is impossible for me to speak with her?” said David, while Connor gradually regained control of himself, summoning all his strength for the crisis.

  “I told her all that, but she said nevertheless she would see you.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Because she has money with which to buy another horse like her gelding, which is old.”

  “Go back and tell her that there is no money price on the heads of my horses. Go! When Ephraim is at the gate there are no such journeyings to me.”

  “Ephraim is here,” said Jacob stoutly, “and he spoke much with her. Nevertheless she said that you would see her.”

  “For what reason?”

  “She said: ‘Because.’”

  “Because of what?”

  “That word was her only answer: ‘Because.’”

  “This is strange,” murmured David, turning to Connor. “Is that one word a reason?

  “Go back again,” commanded David grimly. “Go back and tell this woman that I shall not come, and that if she comes again she will be driven away by force. And take heed, Jacob, that you do not come to me again on such an errand. The law is fixed. It is as immovable as the rocks in the mountains. You know all this. Be careful hereafter that you remember. Be gone!”

  The ruin of his plan in its very inception threatened Ben Connor. If he could once bring David to see the girl he trusted in her beauty and her cleverness to effect the rest. But how lead him to the gate? Moreover, he was angered and his frown boded no good for Jacob. The old servant was turning away, and the gambler hunted his mind desperately for an expedient. Persuasion would never budge this stubborn fellow so used to command. There remained the opposite of persuasion. He determined on an indirect appeal to the pride of the master.

  “You are wise, David,” he said solemnly. “You are very wise. These creatures are dangerous, and men of sense shun them. Tell your servants to drive her away with blows of a stick so that she will never return.”

  “No, Jacob,” said the master, and the servant returned to hear the command. “Not with sticks. But with words, for flesh of women is tender. This is hard counsel, Benjamin!”

  He regarded the gambler with great surprise.

  “Their flesh may be tender, but their spirits are strong,” said Connor. The opening he had made was small. At least he had the interest of David, and through that entering wedge he determined to drive with all his might.

  “And dangerous,” he added gravely.

  “Dangerous?” said the master. He raised his head. “Dangerous?”

  As if a jackal had dared to howl in the hearing of the lion.

  “Ah, David, if you saw her you would understand why I warn you!”

&
nbsp; “It would be curious. In what wise does her danger strike?”

  “That I cannot say. They have a thousand ways.”

  The master turned irresolutely toward Jacob.

  “You could not send her away with words?”

  “David, for one of my words she has ten that flow with pleasant sound like water from a spring, and with little meaning, except that she will not go.”

  “You are a fool!”

  “So I felt when I listened to her.”

  “There is an old saying, David, my brother,” said Connor, “that there is more danger in one pleasant woman than in ten angry men. Drive her from the gate with stones!”

  “I fear that you hate women, Benjamin.”

  “They were the source of evil.”

  “For which penance was done.”

  “The penance followed the sin.”

  “God, who made the mountains, the river and this garden and man, He made woman also. She cannot be all evil. I shall go.”

  “Then, remember that I have warned you. God, who made man and woman, made fire also.”

  “And is not fire a blessing?”

  He smiled at his triumph and this contest of words.

  “You shall go with me, Benjamin.”

  “I? Never!”

  “In what is the danger?”

  “If you find none, there is none. For my part I have nothing to do with women.”

  But David was already whistling to Glani.

  “One woman can be no more terrible than one man,” he declared to Benjamin. “And I have made Joseph, who is great of body, bend like a blade of grass in the wind.”

  “Farewell,” said Connor, his voice trembling with joy. “Farewell, and God keep you!”

  “Farewell, Benjamin, my brother, and have no fear.”

  Connor followed him with his eyes, half-triumphant, half-fearful. What would happen at the gate? He would have given much to see even from a distance the duel between the master and the woman.

  At the gate of the patio David turned and waved his hand.

  “I shall conquer!”

  And then he was gone.

  Connor stared down at the grass with a cynical smile until he felt another gaze upon him, and he became aware of the little beast—eyes of Joseph glittering. The giant had paused in his work with the stones.

  “What are you thinking of, Joseph?” asked the gambler.

  Joseph made an indescribable gesture of hate and fear.

  “Of the whip!” he said. “I also opened the gate of the Garden. On whose back will the whip fall this time?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Near the end of the eucalyptus avenue, and close to the gate, David dismounted and made Jacob do likewise.

  “We may come on them by surprise and listen,” he said. “A soft step has won great causes.”

  They went forward cautiously, interchanging sharp glances as though they were stalking some dangerous beast, and so they came within earshot of the gate and sheltered from view of it by the edge of the cliff. David paused and cautioned his companion with a mutely raised hand.

  “He lived through the winter,” Ephraim was saying. “I took him into my room and cherished him by the warmth of my fire and with rubbing, so that when spring came, and gentler weather, he was still alive—a great leggy colt with a backbone that almost lifted through the skin. Only high bright eyes comforted me and told me that my work was a good work.”

  David and Jacob interchanged nods of wonder, for Ephraim was telling to this woman the dearest secret of his life.

  It was how he had saved the weakling colt, Jumis, and raised him to a beautiful, strong stallion, only to have him die suddenly in the height of his promise. Certainly Ephraim was nearly won over by the woman; it threw David on guard.

  “Go back to Abra,” he whispered. “Ride on to the gate and tell her boldly to be gone. I shall wait here, and in time of need I shall help you. Make haste. Ephraim grows like wet clay under her fingers. Ah, how wise is Benjamin!”

  Jacob obeyed. He stole away and presently shot past at the full gallop of Abra. The stallion came to a sliding halt, and Jacob spoke from his back, which was a grave discourtesy in the Garden of Eden.

  “The master will not see you,” he said. “The sun is still high. Return by the way you have come; you get no more from the Garden than its water and its air. He does not sell horses.”

  For the first time she spoke, and at the sound of her voice David Eden stepped out from the rock; he remembered himself in time and shrank back to shelter.

  “He sold this horse.”

  “It was the will of the men before David that these things should be done, but the Lord knows the mind of David and that his heart bleeds for every gelding that leaves the Garden. See what you have done to him! The marks of the whip and the spur are on his sides. Woe to you if David should see them!”

  She cried out at that in such a way that David almost felt she had been struck.

  “It was the work of a drunken fool, and not mine.”

  “Then God have mercy on that man, for if the master should see him, David would have no mercy. I warn you: David is one with a fierce eye and a strong hand. Be gone before he comes and sees the scars on the gray horse.”

  “Then he is coming?”

  “She is quick,” thought David, as an embarrassed pause ensued. “Truly, Benjamin was right, and there is danger in these creatures.”

  “He has many horses,” the girl went on, “and I have only this one. Besides, I would pay well for another.”

  “What price?”

  “He should not have asked,” muttered David.

  “Everything that I have,” she was answering, and the low thrill of her voice went through and through the master of the Garden. “I could buy other horses with this money, but not another like my gray. He is more than a horse. He is a companion to me. He understands me when I talk, and I understand him. You see how he stands with his head down? He is not tired, but hungry. When he neighs in a certain way from the corral I know that he is lonely. You see that he comes to me now? That is because he knows I am talking about him, for we are friends. But he is old and he will die, and what shall I do then? It will be like a death in my house!”

  Another pause followed.

  “You love the horse,” said the voice of Ephraim, and it was plain that Jacob was beyond power of speech.

  “And I shall pay for another. Hold out your hand.”

  “I cannot take it.”

  Nevertheless, it seemed that he obeyed, for presently the girl continued: “After my father died I sold the house. It was pretty well blanketed with a mortgage, but I cleared out this hundred from the wreck. I went to work and saved what I could. Ten dollars every month, for twenty months—you can count for yourself—makes two hundred, and here’s the two hundred more in your hand. Three hundred altogether. Do you think it’s enough?”

  “If there were ten times as much,” said Jacob, “it would not be enough. There—take your money. It is not enough. There is no money price on the heads of the master’s horses.”

  But a new light had fallen upon David. Women, as he had heard of them, were idle creatures who lived upon that which men gained with sweaty toil, but this girl, it seemed, was something more. She was strong enough to earn her bread, and something more. Money values were not clear to David Eden, but three hundred dollars sounded a very considerable sum. He determined to risk exposure by glancing around the rock. If she could work like a man, no doubt she was made like a man and not like those useless and decorative creatures of whom Matthew had often spoken to him, with all their graces and voices.

  Cautiously he peered and he saw her standing beside the old, broken gray horse. Even old Ephraim seemed a stalwart figure in comparison.

  At first he was bewildered, and then he almost laughed aloud. Was it on account of this that Benjamin had warned him, this fragile girl? He stepped boldly from behind the rock.

  “There is no more to say
,” quoth Jacob.

  “But I tell you, he himself will come.”

  “You are right,” said David.

  At that her eyes turned on him, and David was stopped in the midst of a stride until she shrank back against the horse.

  Then he went on, stepping softly, his hand extended in that sign of peace which is as old as mankind.

  “Stay in peace,” said David, “and have no fear. It is I, David.”

  He hardly knew his own voice, it was so gentle. A twilight dimness seemed to have fallen upon Jacob and Ephraim, and he was only aware of the girl. Her fear seemed to be half gone already, and she even came a hopeful step toward him.

  “I knew from the first that you would come,” she said, “and let me buy one horse—you have so many.”

  “We will talk of that later.”

  “David,” broke in the grave voice of Ephraim, “remember your own law!”

  He looked at the girl instead of Ephraim as he answered: “Who am I to make laws? God begins where David leaves off.”

  And he added: “What is your name?”

  “Ruth.”

  “Come, Ruth,” said David, “we will go home together.”

  She advanced as one in doubt until the shadow of the cliff fell over her. Then she looked back from the throat of the gate and saw Ephraim and Jacob facing her as though they understood there was no purpose in guarding against what might approach the valley from without now that the chief enemy was within. David, in the pause, was directing Jacob to place the girl’s saddle on the back of Abra.

  “For it is not fitting,” he explained, “that you should enter my garden save on one of my horses. And look, here is Glani.”

  The stallion came at the sound of his name. She had heard of the great horse from Connor, but the reality was far more than the words.

  “And this, Glani, is Ruth.”

  She touched the velvet nose which was stretched inquisitively toward her, and then looked up and found that David was smiling. A moment later they were riding side by side down the avenue of the eucalyptus trees, and through the tall treetrunks new vistas opened rapidly about her. Every stride of Abra seemed to carry her another step into the life of David.

  “I should have called Shakra for you,” said David, watching her with concern, “but she is ridden by another who has the right to the best in the garden.”