by Max Brand
“They’s some fun comin’,” said the cowpuncher. “The Crisco Kid is apt to lose his horse, and, if he loses him, they’ll be a gunfight, sure.”
“Ah?” Valdivia said politely. For he loved a bullfight as well as the next man, whereas even a fool could tell that a man fight was far more exciting. So he pricked up his ears and made conversation. “It is enough to fight over,” he said. “A fine horse is a rare possession.”
“But this here horse ain’t no good to nobody but The Kid,” said the cowpuncher.
“How can that be?”
“He’s a plumb outlaw, till Crisco tamed him. He found this here horse down under a fence where he’d rolled and got cast … couldn’t get up. Crisco got him out, and, after that, he got plumb gentled to The Kid. But all he’s got for other folks is hoofs and teeth … and plenty of them. That’s the horse that killed Jack Renau.”
“I have always held,” said the Argentinean, “that proper handling, and the right men, will manage any animal, no matter how stubborn.”
The cowpuncher turned and stared blankly at him. Then he made a careful gesture, as though explaining a difficult point to a child. “I said that this here horse was the one that killed Jack Renau,” he explained.
“Ah?” said the other.
“Now Crisco has been ridin’ the horse for a year, but he’s got a gent in town that hates his liver. He knows that nobody but Crisco can sit still for more’n a minute on this Twilight horse, and he knows that nobody but Crisco will bid for him. And Twilight wouldn’t be no good to him. But he’s out here … there he is yonder … to buy that horse away from Crisco if he can. Just because he hates Crisco’s heart.”
“Yes, yes,” Señor Valdivia said, as though this matter were something that he could understand far more easily than the Texan could comprehend it. “I see how it might well be so. Which is the man who wants to buy the horse … Twilight, did you call it?”
“That’s because of his color. Doggoned if the name don’t fit him. You’ll see that when he comes into the corral. There’s Bud Carew yonder. He’s the gent that’ll mingle with Crisco when they start biddin’.”
“Which has the more money?” Valdivia asked, growing more and more interested. He looked over Bud Carew. There was nothing about Bud to suggest any particular malevolence. He was a broad-built youth with rather handsome face, his sombrero pushed on the back of his head, a cigarette turning between his lips.
“I dunno about the money,” said the informant. “I guess they are about a set-up. They been borrowin’ all month to raise all the coin they can. They say that Carew had near pawned his gizzard to get coin. And I know The Kid has done the same. They’ll be pushing that money up pretty high before the game is over … unless one of ’em loses his nerve. But no matter which one of ’em wins, they’ll be a fight afterward. That’s doggoned sure and certain. That’s why Twilight’s goin’ to be the last horse knocked by ol’ Jim Bradley. Jim don’t want no livestock hit with slugs before he’s sold it.” He chuckled at this practical thought.
“But the sheriff?” Valdivia suggested tentatively.
“Him? He’s mighty busy. The Clark boys come down and busted things up over to Rangel Crossin’. He’s got some help and started chasin’ them. He won’t be on hand to stop no shootin’ that might start.”
“Ah,” said Valdivia, half closing his eyes and drawing in his breath slowly. “There are some few delightful customs left. But civilization is a plague that works very fast, my friend. I am glad to see that it has not yet wiped out everything. Which, then, is this gentleman with the odd name? Crisco, did you call him?”
The cowpuncher chuckled again. “I dunno nothin’ about him. Nobody don’t know nothin’ about him. Except that he come ridin’ in from the north, an’ he talks book-made langwidge like a doggone’ schoolteacher. He looks mighty good-natured, and he is. But his idea of chicken an’ ice cream is a fight where everything but the beer bottles is used. He’ll come to a fight like a range cow comin’ in for water. He’d walk ten miles and swim a river for the sake of swattin’ some gent that had been bustin’ things up. Take a bad man … with two guns and a lot of reputation … them kind are raisins and nuts to Crisco. Doggone me if his mouth don’t water when he sees ’em comin’. All he does is to take a flyin’ hop onto his horse and go to meet ’em. And when the dust dies down, there’s The Kid joggin’ back, smokin’ a cigarette … and yonder is the two-gun man lookin’ at the sky and wonderin’ what’s hit him.”
“He is a man, then, of some talent,” Señor Valdivia said with another of those delighted indrawn breaths.
At that moment The Crisco Kid appeared, and the cowpuncher explained: “There’s Crisco now.”
Señor Valdivia beheld a handsome youth in his early twenties who had just taken off his hat to mop his head with his handkerchief. He thus exposed a thatch of yellow hair clipped short to discourage its tendency to curl. And he had in common with Señor Valdivia himself a pale skin in spite of his life in the open sun. Valdivia looked him over with instant approval.
How strange that he, though a most superstitious man, had no suspicion of all that would come to pass through this handsome young Anglo-Saxon.
Chapter Three
The last horses of the sale had now been disposed of with a single exception, and when this final animal was brought forward, there was a stir of interest keener than even the beginning of the sale had caused. Purchasers left the corrals where they had been receiving, or looking over again, their newly acquired stock. Men who had been loitering under the shed to escape the blast of the sun—cowpunchers and idlers—now hurried up to view the closing bidding. There was a hasty jostling around the corral, and Señor Valdivia managed to get himself a place next to the rail with his informant by his side.
And here came Twilight. No one man held his head; no two men held him. There were no fewer than four ropes attached to his halter that was made doubly stout, but the four men at the ends of the ropes clutched tightly and looked with awful eyes upon their captive as though it were a tiger, ready to spring upon them.
As for Twilight, he regarded these fellows with the most magnificent disdain. With proudly raised head, he looked calmly over the faces of the crowd and then above and beyond them as though a floating wisp of white cloud in the great distance had attracted his attention. He canted his head a little to one side like an intelligent dog or a thoughtful child, and seemed to be studying the contents of that far-off bit of moisture. A whisper and a hum of admiration went through the beholders.
What could be said of Twilight? There needed some old Arab bard to describe him, one whose horses carried him fifty miles across the desert and came majestically home in the evening with ears pricking and tails proudly arched; one whose mares nosed open the flap of his tent and entered to beg for bread or to smell the newly brewed coffee in the egg-shell cups from which their muzzles must be put gently aside, like a baby’s too inquisitive hands; there needed a poet whose hands knew the corded strength of perfect thighs and haunches and the glorious slope of shoulders, one who had dwelt long upon the dreamy lights that lived in the eyes of the brood mare when she touched her foal nose to nose and let the youngster tyrannize.
Such a one, so knowing and so loving horses might have described Twilight, but no other. But when he stood in the center of the corral with catlike lightness on his four hoofs, it seemed as though he could leap into the thin air and stride away through it with flashing legs. It seemed as though all the others, thoroughbreds and the rest, had been mere dull preludes and preambles leading up to this perfect thing. As for his name, his color indeed explained it. He was a black dappled chestnut—not the dark of night, but a deep and burnished chestnut mottled over like a leopard with dark splotches. His mane and his tail were silken black; there was not a white hair on him. And the fingers of Señor Valdivia yearned to run over the glistening shoulders where the muscles were mark
ed softly beneath the skin.
Someone said: “Talk soft, Jim. Shoutin’ might start him playin’ the tiger. An’ my brother Al is holdin’ one of them ropes.”
There was a laugh at this, a laugh made gentle out of respect for the hidden devil in the stallion. Even Jim Bradley admitted the importance of the advice he had just received by the modified voice in which he now spoke.
“Gents,” he said, “there is horses and horses. There is some that’ll cut out a calf from a herd before its ma could bawl twice. There is some that could smell water on a desert fifty miles away. There is some that’ll carry you soft as a buggy all day long. There is some that’ll come when you hollers for ’em. There is some horses that a baby could ride. There is some that is made for womenfolk to sit on. And, gents, there is some horses that’re made for men!”
Alas for the power of habit, especially in orators! The mild voice with which the auctioneer had begun rose and rose during this brief address until it had swelled to considerable proportions and the last sentence was delivered in his usual bawling note. And as his tones began to rise, the stallion withdrew his glance from the distant cloud and pricked his ears. He did not glance at the auctioneer, but a slight shudder went through his body, and, when the voice ascended suddenly into a roar, Twilight plunged straight up into the air while poor Jim Bradley paused in midgesture with his truncheon extended, agape to see four stout-bodied men twitched so lightly from their feet and suspended at the ends of their ropes.
Twilight, landing, reached for one of his captors with his teeth and, securing a shoulder hold, ripped the coat from the fellow’s back with a force that tossed the owner head over heels in a far corner of the corral. Then his heels shot like twin speeding rifle bullets at the head of another of his jailkeepers. The fellow avoided death by dropping flat, and then rolling through the thick velvet dust toward the fence and safety. The other two waited for no more, but turned on their heels and fled for their lives.
Only sharp wits and matchless agility saved one, for as he raced for the fence, Twilight was a tiger at his heels.
“Shoot the devil!” yelled the frightened man, as though he felt the yawn of those bone-crushing great teeth just behind him. “Shoot the …!” Here he reached the fence. There was no time to climb it. Instead, he made a dive as into water, and by good luck managed to pass cleanly between the second and third bars, landing on his head on the ground outside.
There was no laughter to greet this mishap. The crowd stood by in awe, for Twilight, like a disappointed cat that has been playing with a mouse until the little creature has escaped, now went raging around the corral, squealing with fury, beating at the air with his forehoofs—hammer blows that would have cracked a man’s skull like the shell of an empty nut—shaking his head, gnashing his teeth, and whipping his heels into the air behind him.
He lurched at some of those who stood too close to the fence. They retreated in terror, with yells. He whirled about, and, speeding across the enclosure, seemed as though he would dash himself to pieces against the stout bars sustained as they were by posts ten inches square of new wood. But, at the last instant, he rose like a bird, floated across the uppermost bar with half a foot to spare, and landed outside. Not to flee. That was not in the devilish mind of Twilight. His ears were back, his eyes were red, and he wheeled to do further execution.
Those who could flee fled. Those who were blocked away by the thickness of the crowd before them yelled for help.
But Señor Valdivia, with his eyes half closed and the singular faint smile upon his lips, drew out his revolver and held it ready.
He had no chance to fire, for a madman—or a hero—leaped into the path of the charging horse. A great voice shouted above the noise: “Twilight, you doggone’ fool!”
And behold, yonder stood Twilight with his head down, inside the arms of The Crisco Kid, who patted the sleek neck and muttered words with the soft voice of a lover.
“Get that devil back inside the fence, Crisco!” yelled someone, panting.
The Crisco Kid obeyed. He led back Twilight, docile as a lamb, into the enclosure, and there he stood at the head of the man-killer with not even a rope in his hand but with his fingers resting lightly upon the arched and trembling neck of the great stallion. That little touch was enough to dissolve all the ferocity of the wild horse. The drama was at an end. Or, perhaps, it could be said that it had entered upon a new phase.
Once more the crowd assembled, their faces still pale. And Jim Bradley, weak at the knees and breathing hard, climbed back upon his box.
“Gents,” he said heavily, “gents, I was sayin’ … I was sayin’ …” He fumbled for the lost thought, found it, recovered his courage and his color. “I was sayin’ that there’s some horses for children, some for women, and there’s some horses for men.”
His voice was ringing harshly again, and the stallion, wincing a little with flattened ears, swung his head around toward The Kid, touched his nose against the man’s shoulder as though for reassurance, and again was calm.
“Somebody has raised hell with that horse when it was a colt,” said the cowpuncher who had previously given so much information to Valdivia.
“Not at all, my friend,” said the Argentinean. “Let me tell you that there are horses like that … and women … born with the devil in them.” And then he added, fixing his glance upon the careless figure of The Crisco Kid who stood at ease, stroking the horse and paying no attention to the battery of eyes that were fixed upon him: “It seems to me that our friend, Bud Carew, will have some difficulties before him when he undertakes to dispose of … The Kid.”
“Sure,” said the cowpuncher in ready agreement. “But Carew is one of them nacheral killers. He’s got rid of three men already. And when a gent has done that much, he’s pretty sure to figure out that there ain’t nobody in the world that he can’t handle. He’s got about one chance in three, the way I figure, of beating The Kid to the draw. After that … they both shoot too doggone’ straight to suit me.”
Señor Valdivia nodded and sighed again in that peculiar way of his—smiling, and with a softly indrawn breath as though he were sitting in a box at a most delightful play.
“There’s some horses meant for men, and men only,” the auctioneer was declaring, “and I say that that horse in there is one of the last kind. I say that horse is meant for a man.”
“Ain’t you a man, Jim?” asked an inquiring voice. “D’you want him?”
Jim Bradley grinned broadly. “I’m retired,” Bradley said, after the laughter had died down. “I’m a retired … man. Like a lot of the rest of you. But I say ag’in, there’s a horse. They ain’t a flaw in him, inside or out. I say that a gent that knows a horse knows that Twilight is one in a million. Maybe some of you has seen finer horses, but … has one of you ever seen a slicker jumper than Twilight?”
There was more laughter. Jim Bradley held up his scepter and then beat it against his palm for silence.
“What do I hear for Twilight? What do I hear for a horse worth … what anybody can afford to pay for him?”
There was a pause.
“I’ll start it at a hundred,” The Crisco Kid said quietly.
Chapter Four
There was one of those quick murmurs of excitement, dying almost as soon as it is born, because there is more to come than has as yet been revealed. Half a dozen men were seen crowding around Bud Carew, persuading, while Bud, very red of face and with his jaw thrust out, shook his head grimly in denial.
“Let The Kid have the horse!” shouted someone. “God knows he’s the only one that can get any use out of the brute! What would you use him for, Carew? Dog feed?”
Carew brushed back his persuaders and leaned across the corral fence. “They’s some men that I might use for my dogs,” he said grimly. “Jim, I’m in for a hundred and fifty on that there colt.”
Men drew a long breat
h. It was decided, then, and the battle was to continue to the bitter end. Who had the more money to buy the horse? And after it was bought, how would the fight turn out? There could be no shadow of a doubt now. They saw Bud Carew vault to the top rail of the fence and sit there—carefully pulling his cartridge belt around so that the gun swung easily on his hip, ready for the draw. They saw The Crisco Kid turn to face his competitor, and they saw his hand steal down to the butt of his gun, loosen it, and slip away again to rest once more, with control, upon the graceful neck of the dappled chestnut.
And men who watched, no matter how hardy their nerves might be, began to tremble and frequently they had to moisten their lips, and if their glances were forced away for an instant, they jerked back suddenly to the central figures of the tragedy that was to come. It was as though one could watch a thunderbolt forming in the sky—watch it descending perceptibly through the air, but remain ignorant of what head it was doomed to strike, knowing that it was foredoomed to shy.
“It’s a hundred and fifty, gentlemen,” said Jim Bradley. “It’s a hundred and fifty. Do I hear two hundred?”
“Two hundred,” said The Kid.
“And …” the auctioneer said, turning toward Bud Carew and thrusting out his cane at him. “And what?”
“Fifty.”
“You, Crisco?”
“Three hundred!”
“That’s bidding like gentlemen! But can he have him? He cannot! You, Bud?”
“Three-fifty!”
It was rather high bidding for cowpunchers who might work for a tenth of that sum per month. Another interest was now added to that of the coming death scene.
“Three fifty from Mister Carew. Now, Crisco, what’ll you bid for your horse, the horse that nobody but you can ride … the horse that loves you like a brother. What d’you say, Crisco?”
“Five hundred,” Crisco said, his hand going slowly back and forth, soothing the great stallion.”
