The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  “All very absurd, you will agree, and you may get some inkling as to my state of mind while I walked over those same dark hills. I seemed a part of that darkness. I looked up to the stars. They were merely like the pages of a book. I named them off hand, one after the other, and thought of their characteristics, their distances, their composition, and meditated on the marvels the spectrum has made known to us. But no sooner did such a train of thoughts start in my brain, than I again recurred to the girl, Kate Cumberland, and all I was aware of was a pain at heart—something like homesickness. Very strange.

  “She and the man are together constantly. The other day I was in Joseph Cumberland’s room and we heard whistling outside. The face of the old man lighted, ‘They are together again,’ he said. ‘How do you guess at that?’ I asked. ‘By the sound of his whistling,’ he answered. ‘For he whistles as if he expected an answer—as if he were talking with someone.’ And by the Lord, the old man was right. It would never have occurred to me!

  “Now as I started down the farther slope of a hill a whistling sound ran upon me through the wind, and looking back I saw a horseman galloping with great swiftness along the line of the crest, very plainly outlined by the sky, and by something of smoothness in the running of the horse I knew that it was Barry and his black stallion. But the whistling—the music! Dear God, man, have you read of the pipes of Pan? That night I heard them and it made a riot in my heart.

  “He was gone, suddenly, and the whistling went out like a light, but something had happened inside me—the first beginning of this process of internal change. The ground no longer seemed so dark. There were earth smells—very friendly—I heard some little creature chirruping contentedly to itself. Something hummed—a grasshopper, perhaps. And then I looked up to the stars. There was not a name I could think of—I forgot them all, and for the first time I was contented to look at them and wonder at their beauty without an attempt at analysis or labelling.

  “If I say that I went back to the ranch-house with my feet on the ground and by heart up there among the stars, will you understand?

  “I found the girl sewing in front of the fire in the living room. Simply looked up to me with a smile, and a certain dimness about the eyes—well, my breath stopped.

  “‘Kate,’ said I, ‘I am going away to-morrow morning!’

  “‘And leave Dad?’ said she.

  “‘To tell you the truth,’ I answered, ‘there is nothing I can do for him. There has never been anything I could do for him.’

  “‘I am sorry,’ said she, and lifted up her eyes to me.

  “Now, I had begun by being stiff with her, but the ringing of that whistling—pipes of Pan, you know—was in my ears. I took a chair beside her. Something overflowed in my heart. For the first time in whole days I could look on her beauty without pain.

  “‘Do you know why I’m going?’ I asked.

  “She waited.

  “‘Because,’ said I, and smiled right into her face, ‘I love you, Kate, most infernally; and I know perfectly well that I will get never the devil a bit of good out of it.’

  “She peered at me. ‘You aren’t jesting?’ says she. ‘No, you’re serious. I’m very sorry, Doctor Byrne.’

  “‘And I,’ I answered, ‘am glad. I wouldn’t change it for the world. For once in my life—to-night—I’ve forgotten myself. No, I won’t go away and nurse a broken heart, but I’ll think of you as a man should think of something bright and above him. You’ll keep my heart warm, Kate, till I’m a very old man. Because of you, I’ll be able to love some other girl—and a fine one, by the Lord!’

  “Something in the nature of an outburst, eh? But it was the music which had done it. All the time it rang and echoed through my ears. My words were only an echo of it. I was in tune with the universe. I was living for the first time. The girl dropped her sewing—tossed it aside. She came over to me and took my hands in a way that would have warmed even the icicles of your heart, Swinnerton.

  “‘Doctor,’ says she, ‘I know that you are going to be very happy.’

  “‘Happiness,’ said I, ‘is a trick, like riding a horse. And I think that I’ve learned the trick. I’ve caught it from you and from Barry.’

  “At that, she let go my hands and stepped back. The very devil is in these women, Swinnerton. You never can place them for a minute at a time.

  “‘I am trying to learn myself,’ she said, and there was a shadow of wistfulness in her eyes.

  “In another moment I should have made a complete fool of myself, but I remembered in time and got out of the room. To-morrow I start back for the old world but I warn you beforehand, my dear fellow, that I’m bringing something of the new world with me.

  “What has it all brought to me? I am sad one day and gay the next. But at least I know that thinking is not life and now I’m ready to fight.

  “Randall Byrne.”

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  THE PIEBALD

  The morning of the doctor’s departure witnessed quite a ceremony at the Cumberland ranch, for old Joe Cumberland insisted that he be brought down from his room to his old place in the living-room. When he attempted to rise from his bed, however, he found that he could not stand; and big Buck Daniels lifted the old man like a child and carried him down the stairs. Once ensconced on the sofa in the living-room Joe Cumberland beckoned his daughter close to him, and whispered with a smile as she leaned over: “Here’s what comes of pretendin’, Kate. I been pretending to be too sick to walk, and now I can’t walk; and if I’d pretended to be well, I’d be ridin’ Satan right now!”

  He looked about him.

  “Where’s Dan?” he asked.

  “Upstairs getting ready for the trip.”

  “Trip?”

  “He’s riding with Doctor Byrne to town and he’ll bring back Doctor Byrne’s horse.”

  The old man grew instantly anxious.

  “They’s a lot of things can happen on a long trip like that, Kate.”

  She nodded gravely.

  “But we have to try him,” she said. “We can’t keep him here at the ranch all the time. And if he really cares, Dad, he’ll come back.”

  “And you let him go of your own free will?” asked Joe Cumberland, wonderingly.

  “I asked him to go,” she answered quietly, but some of the colour left her face.

  “Of course it’s going to come out all right,” nodded her father.

  “I asked him when he’d be back, and he said he would be here by dark to-night.”

  The old man sighed with relief.

  “He don’t never slip up on promises,” he said. “But oh, lass, I’ll be glad when he’s back again! Buck, how’d you and Dan come along together?”

  “We don’t come,” answered Buck gloomily. “I tried to shake hands with him yesterday and call it quits. But he wouldn’t touch me. He jest leaned back and smiled at me and hated me with his eyes, that way he has. He don’t even look at me except when he has to, and when he does I feel like someone was sneaking up behind me with a knife ready. And he ain’t said ten words to me since I come back.” He paused and considered Kate with the same dark, lowering glance. “To-morrow I leave.”

  “You’ll think better of that,” nodded Joe Cumberland. “Here’s the doctor now.”

  He came in with Dan Barry behind him. A changed man was the doctor. He was a good two inches taller because he stood so much more erect, and there was a little spring in his step which gave aspiration and spirit to his carriage. He bade them good-bye one by one, and by Joe Cumberland he sat down for an instant and wished him luck. The old ranchman drew the other down closer.

  “They’s no luck for me,” he whispered, “but don’t tell none of ’em. I’m about to take a longer trip than you’ll ride to-day. But first I’ll see ’em settled down here—Dan quiet and both of ’em happy. S’long, doc—thanks for takin’ care of me. But this here is something that can’t be beat no way. Too many years’ll break the back of any man, doc. Luck to ye!”r />
  “If you’ll step to the door,” said the doctor, smiling upon the rest, “you’ll have some fun to watch. I’m going to ride on the piebald.”

  “Him that throwed you yesterday?” grinned Buck Daniels.

  “The same,” said the doctor. “I think I can come to a gentleman’s understanding with him. A gentleman from the piebald’s point of view is one who is never unintentionally rude. He may change his mind this morning—or he may break my back. One of the two is sure to happen.”

  In front of the house Dan Barry already sat on Satan with Black Bart sitting nearby watching the face of his master. And beside them the lantern-jawed cowpuncher held the bridle of the piebald mustang. Never in the world was there a lazier appearing beast. His lower lip hung pendulous, a full inch and a half below the upper. His eyes were rolled so that hardly more than the whites showed. He seemed to stand asleep, dreaming of some Nirvana for equine souls. And the only signs of life were the long ears, which wobbled, occasionally, back and forth.

  When the doctor mounted, the piebald limited all signs of interest to opening one eye.

  The doctor clucked. The piebald switched his tail. Satan, at a word from Dan Barry, moved gracefully into a soft trot away from the house. The doctor slapped his mount on the neck. An ear flicked back and forth. The doctor stretched out both legs, and then he dug both spurs deep into the flanks of the mustang.

  It was a perfectly successful maneuvre. The back of the piebald changed from an ugly humped line to a decidedly sharp parabola and the horse left the ground with all four feet. He hit it again, almost in the identical hoof-marks, and with all legs stiff. The doctor sagged drunkenly in the saddle, and his head first swung far back, and then snapped over so that the chin banged against his chest. Nevertheless he clung to the saddle with both hands, and stayed in his seat. The piebald swung his head around sufficiently to make sure of the surprising fact, and then he commenced to buck in earnest.

  It was a lovely exhibition. He bucked with his head up and his head between his knees. He bucked in a circle and in a straight line and then mixed both styles for variety. He made little spurts at full speed, leaped into the air, and came down stiff-legged at the end of the run, his head between his braced forefeet, and then he whirled as if on a peg and darted back the other way. He bucked criss-cross, jumping from side to side, and he interspersed this with samples of all his other kinds of bucking thrown in. That the doctor stuck on the saddle was a miracle beyond belief. Of course he pulled leather shamelessly throughout the contest, but riding straight up is a good deal of a myth. Fancy riding is reserved for circus men. The mountain-desert is a place where men stick close to utility and let style go hang.

  And the doctor stuck in the saddle. He had set his teeth, and he was a sea-sick greenish-white. His hat was a-jog over one ear—his shirt tails flew out behind. And still he remained to battle. Aye, for he ceased the passive clinging to the saddle. He gathered up the long quirt which had hitherto dangled idly from his wrist, and at the very moment when the piebald had let out another notch in his feats, the doctor, holding on desperately with one hand, with the other brandished the quirt around his head and brought it down with a crack along the flanks of the piebald.

  The effect was a little short of a miracle. The mustang snorted and leaped once into the air, but he forgot to come down stiff-legged, and then, instantly, he broke into a little, soft dog trot, and followed humbly in the trail of the black stallion. The laughter and cheers from the house were the sweetest of music in the ears of Doctor Randall Byrne; the most sounding sentences of praise from the lips of the most learned of professors, after this, would be the most shabby of anticlimaxes. He waved his arm back to a group standing in front of the house—Buck Daniels, Kate, the lantern-jawed cowboy, and Wung Lu waving his kitchen apron. In another moment he was beside the rider of the stallion, and the man was whistling one of those melodies which defied repetition. It simply ran on and on, smoothly, sweeping through transition after transition, soaring and falling in the most effortless manner. Now it paused, now it began again. It was never loud, but it carried like the music of a bird on wing, blown by the wind. There was about it, also, something which escaped from the personal. He began to forget that it was a man who whistled, and such a man! He began to look about to the hills and the sky and the rocks—for these, it might be said, were set to music—they, too, had the sweep of line, and the broken rhythms, the sense of spaciousness, the far horizons.

  That day was a climax of the unusual weather. For a long time the sky had been periodically blanketed with thick mists, but to-day the wind had freshened and it tore the mists into a thousand mighty fragments. There was never blue sky in sight—only, far up, a diminishing and lighter grey to testify that above it the yellow sun might be shining; but all the lower heavens were a-sweep with vast cloud masses, irregular, huge, hurling across the sky. They hung so low that one could follow the speed of their motion and almost gauge it by miles per hour. And in the distance they seemed to brush the tops of the hills. Seeing this, the doctor remembered what he had heard of rain in this region. It would come, they said, in sheets and masses—literal water-falls. Dry arroyos suddenly filled and became swift torrent, rolling big boulders down their courses. There were tales of men fording rivers who were suddenly overwhelmed by terrific walls of water which rushed down from the higher mountains in masses four and eight feet high. In coming they made a thundering among the hills and they plucked up full grown trees like twigs thrust into wet mud. Indeed, that was the sort of rain one would expect in such a country, so whipped and naked of life. Even the reviving rainfall was sent in the form of a scourge; and that which should make the grass grow might tear it up by the roots.

  That was a time of change and of portent, and a day well fitted to the mood of Randall Byrne. He, also, had altered, and there was about to break upon him the rain of life, and whether it would destroy him or make him live, and richly, he could not guess. But he was naked to the skies of chance—naked as this landscape.

  Far past the mid-day they reached the streets of Elkhead and stopped at the hotel. As the doctor swung down from his saddle, cramped and sore from the long ride, thunder rattled over the distant hills and a patter of rain splashed in the dust and sent up a pungent odor to his nostrils. It was like the voice of the earth proclaiming its thirst. And a blast of wind leaped down the street and lifted the brim of Barry’s hat and set the bandana at his throat fluttering. He looked away into the teeth of the wind and smiled.

  There was something so curious about him at the instant that Randall Byrne wanted to ask him into the hotel—wanted to have him knee to knee for a long talk. But he remembered an old poem—the sea-shell needs the waves of the sea—the bird will not sing in the cage. And the yellow light in the eyes of Barry, phosphorescent, almost—a thing that might be nearly seen by night—that, surely, would not shine under any roof. It was the wind which made him smile. These things he understood, without fear.

  So he said good-bye, and the rider waved carelessly and took the reins of the piebald and turned the stallion back. He noted the catlike grace of the horse in moving, as if his muscles were steel springs; and he noted also that the long ride had scarcely stained the glossy hide with sweat—while the piebald reeked with the labour. Randall Byrne drew thoughtfully back onto the porch of the hotel and followed the rider with his eyes. In a moment a great cloud of dust poured down the street, covered the rider, and when it was gone he had passed around a corner and out of the life of the doctor.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  THE CHALLENGE

  All this time Black Bart had trotted contentedly ahead of Satan, never having to glance back but apparently knowing the intended direction; save that when Dan Barry turned to the road leading out of the little town, the wolf-dog had turned in an opposite direction. The rider turned in the saddle and sent a sharp whistle towards the animal, but he was answered by a short howl of woe that made him check Satan and swing around. Black Bart stood
in the centre of the street facing in the opposite direction, and he looked back over his shoulder towards his master.

  There was apparently a perfect understanding between them, and the master first glanced up and made sure of the position of the sun and the length of time he might allow for the trip home, before he decided to follow the whim of the wolf-dog. Then he turned Satan and cantered, with the piebald trailing, back towards Black Bart.

  At this the wolf-dog began to trot down the street, turned the next corner, and drew up at the door of a rambling building above which hung a dirty, cracked sign: “GILEAD SALOON” and underneath in smaller letters was painted the legend: “Here’s where you get it!”

  Black Bart strolled up to the swinging doors of the emporium and then turned to look back at his master; clearly he wished Dan to enter the place. But the rider shook his head and would certainly have ridden on had not, at that moment, the rain which had hitherto fallen only in rattling bursts, now burst over the roofs of the town with a loud roaring as of wind through a forest. It was possible that the shower might soon pass over, so Dan rode under the long shelter which stretched in front of the saloon, dismounted, and entered behind Black Bart.

  It was occupied by a scattering of people, for the busy time of the day had not yet commenced and Pale Annie was merely idling behind the bar—working at half-speed, as it were. To this group Black Bart paid not the slightest heed but glided smoothly down the centre of the long room until he approached the tables at the end, where, in a corner, sat a squat, thick-chested man, and opposite him the most cadaverously lean fellow that Whistling Dan had ever seen. Before these two Black Bart paused and then cast a glance over his shoulder towards the master; Whistling Dan frowned in wonder; he knew neither of the pair.