by Max Brand
But Barney had given over wondering why God had given to him nothing but the strength of his hands, and to all other creatures some special blessing of mind and spirit. He looked up to this wild, brave horse. She was all iron and fire. What was this night of storm to her, when she had known how to brave four or five lonely winters on the range, pawing away the snow to get at the grass, hunting out shelters before the hurricanes began?
The thought of this gave to Barney a sudden warmth of confidence. For if she could take such good care of herself, she was not apt to lead him into trouble. It was better, therefore, to let her go ahead on a loose rope.
They came to steeper hills and slopes where he could be glad that fatigue was such a stranger to him. Then they reached the lowest belt of the lodgepole pines and from these passed into a great forest. Here they had shelter from the edge of the wind, but the rain still found them, sluicing down among the trees in torrents, or again hail would crash among the branches. It seemed to Barney Dwyer that many of those huge pines trees offered a perfect resting place for the remainder of the night, yet the mare went on with such eagerness that he kept expecting the trees to give back, at any moment, for a clearing with a house in it. So they continued through the forest on a trail that had grown into what could almost be called a road.
That road dipped out of the forest into a ravine that was filled with a sound of rushing like a great wind, but there was no stir of air through most of its length. It was merely the pouring of water that swept down the valley. The trail was looped along the rocky wall of the ravine. Sometimes it was safe enough. Sometimes horse and man had to go in single file. At those moments, Barney let the mare go first on a length of the rope, for her footing of the dangerous places held up a light for him to follow.
It was like passing through a storm inside of a storm. Sometimes at a bend of the stream he could hear the rush of water nearby, the booming of a waterfall in the distance, and over his head the lightning ripped from sky to earth, and the noise of the thunder beat incessantly on the base of his brain. That springing of the lightning sometimes lighted the whole range, and showed him down the narrow channel, framed between the glimmering walls of stone, brief glimpses of the three mountains that he knew rose near the town of Timberline. By that he could be sure that they were on the right trail, although he never had traveled it before.
Those same lightning flashes always showed him the mare as she went busily up the trail, sometimes shaking her head at the peals of thunder, but never daunted, never hesitant, except when some narrowing of the trail threatened to leave no footing at all between the wall of the gorge and the water beneath. At those places, lowering her head, she would smell her way from step to step, as it were.
They came to the waterfall. The roar of it stunned the mind of Barney. Driftings of the spray blew into his face. And the lightning kept that bright downpouring of silver and white pulsing out of the darkness. All the rocks of the ravine wall and the trail were gilded with water, also, and it was a place to watch every step. Yet the mare went safely and steadily up the steepness of the way until they had gained the top. There was no longer a ravine, merely a valley with wooded hills rolling back on either side, and Barney heaved a sigh of relief. Exactly then luck failed them.
They had just passed the lip of the falls when the bank crumbled under the hoofs of the bay mare and she dropped into a current that was whipping toward the precipice like a flight of arrows. One instant she was before Barney, the next she was gone, and the rope burned through his hands to the final knot.
On that he glued the strength of his grip and was jerked into the margin of the stream, but on an elbow of rock he hooked his left arm, and endured the strain. By the lightning he saw the horse struggling at the end of the rope, her head lost to him in the flinging water, most of the time. But when he glimpsed it, he saw that the ears were still pricked. Just beyond her, the river bent down to make its long plunge.
Little by little she worked in toward the bank. It might be that she could reach it and clamber up. It might be that the bank was sheer. In that case it was merely a question of how soon Barney’s endurance might give way. In the meantime, the snow-water froze him to numbness. There was no life in him below his straining shoulders. He dropped his chin on his chest and grinned with agony. Between his shoulder blades, the muscles seemed to be giving way. His shoulders ached with an increasing tension, but still his grip remained on the knot.
He told himself that he would count to ten, and then let go. He counted to ten, and hung on. He counted to ten again. He counted many times, but still he could not surrender that grasp that was the life of the mare. That was what he was doing, he told himself. He was holding a life in his hand. She was brave, she was wise, she was beautiful, she was strong, and all of her lay in the grip of his hand. It was like being God for one creature, but, ah, the agony of that being!
Then the rope jerked violently. The strain ceased. He thought that the strands must have parted, but, looking up, he saw the red mare on the ledge above him.
Slowly he clambered out. He sat for a time on the very edge of the bank, where it had crumbled, until by degrees the warmth of his strength returned to him. He rose. The mare was troubled with cold and exhaustion. Her head was hanging. Therefore Barney found a sheltered place among the pine trees. With twists of the pine needles he rubbed the horse dry, tethered her to a sapling, then wrung out his own clothes, which were soaking, pulled them on again, and into heaped up leaves and pine needles he crawled and slept.
The sense of the storm remained with him all night, but in the morning he found a brilliant sky with only enough white clouds steering through it to set off the blue. The world burned with life. Every rock glistened. The trees were a shimmering green. When Barney Dwyer walked up the valley from meadow to meadow and from grove to grove, it seemed to him that there was nothing ugly or dangerous on earth except the men who inhabit it.
The mare was quite herself again. She was gayer than the birds or the leaping of the water in the river. When they came to a green plateau of rolling ground, it seemed to Barney that no crime could be greater than to keep such a wild thing enslaved. So he stripped off saddle and bridle and rope. He swung the rope with a shout, and off she went, a red ray of speed that disappeared around the shoulder of the next hill.
He looked after her, long after she was gone, then settled saddle and bridle and rope in the fork of a tree before he went on. He was very hungry, by this time, so he paused to tighten his belt. He had heard in his boyhood that Indians found this a comfort in days of famine. It never had been a comfort to him, but he always followed the practice when he was starving. When at last he was ready to start up the valley toward the three mountains of Timberline, he saw the red mare not twenty yards away, cropping the grass.
Bewilderment made him take off his hat to the sun and the wind. She had returned. But perhaps it was merely as the wild hawk will dip down from the upper air in scorn of the hunter. He walked straight up to her, holding out his hand, and she, pretending not to see him, kept her head turned until the last instant. Then she was gone like quicksilver from the touch. She fled in a circle, brandishing her heels in the air, now and then tossing and shaking her head. He laughed with joy at her beauty and because of the circle in which she ran. At last she paused near him and, with legs well planted, ready to dodge him in any direction, dared him to come on. But still Barney laughed, for she had come back to him. Some gossamer thread of affection had drawn her back to him. If he had loved her beauty, her wisdom, and her courage, she had found something in him to love in turn. It was to Barney a benediction and a revelation.
She fell to cropping the grass. Without hesitation, with a strength of conviction, he walked straight up to her and put his hand on the gloss of her shoulder, but she merely lifted her head and turned fearless eyes on him, as one who might say: Well, what of it?
He took her by the mane, and led that red thunderbolt back to the tree, where he saddled and bridl
ed her, put the rope on her neck, and then tied it to the horn of the saddle. After that, he walked straight up the valley with excitement bubbling like a fountain of wine in his heart.
Something linked him to her. Something would draw her after him. Once she was a mile behind. A little later she passed him with a rush, flourished her heels nearby, and fell to grazing well ahead of him. He laughed again, with tears in his eyes. Even far back into the dimness of childhood, the glances and the voices of men had been hard with scorn. Nothing about him had ever been desired, except the strength of his hands. But this was far otherwise.
He began to talk to her as he never had talked to a human being. In a short time, his whistle stopped her wherever she was running. When he spoke and held out his hand, she would come curiously up to him.
So he forgot the miles. He forgot his hunger. He could not stop smiling all the way through the uplands, while the three great mountains drew closer above him, their blue-white heads shining in the sky.
He reached Timberline, and, looking down into a great hollow where the trees began again and a stream angled through the midst, he saw a small village. On three sides of it the three mountains looked down, so that he knew he was at the town of Timberline at last. He took out the folded bit of paper torn from the notebook. Water had blurred the writing, but it was still decipherable. With that paper fluttering in his fingers, and with the red mare crowding close up to his heels, he came out of the happy wilderness and entered among men again.
III
It was a very small town, but complete after the Western fashion with general merchandise store, hotel, blacksmith shop, and three saloons.
Half a dozen boys playing in a vacant lot pointed their fingers at the stranger and the red mare, and shouted, and laughed. No matter how accustomed he was to shouts and laughter, the iron entered freshly into the soul of Barney Dwyer; he had been free from pain so long that he had forgotten some of its quality, but the old ache began again in the familiar place.
On the verandah of the hotel sat one tall, stark man with his hands laid out on his knees, his eyes fixed far off on the darkness of his thoughts.
“Can you tell me where I can find Leonard Peary?” asked Barney. His hand made a slight upward movement. He always had an impulse to take off his hat when he spoke to a grown man, a stern man.
The other drew his glance away from the distance and examined Barney Dwyer without interest. Then he returned to his reflections.
“I said,” repeated Barney more loudly, “can you tell me where I can find Leonard Peary?”
A faint smile of pleasure appeared at the corners of the lips of the man on the verandah. That was the only answer.
Barney broke into a sweat and turned helplessly away. The street was as empty as his heart. A gust of wind went by carrying a galloping phantom of dust, and the mare pressed close to him.
Through the storm and the wilderness she had been as carefree as an eagle in the sky, but now she was nervous with fear. The creaking of a shutter made her tremble. Down the street a yellow sign vibrated in the wind. It hung over a pair of saloon doors, and to that place went Barney Dwyer.
He tied the mare to the hitching rack and went inside. Half a dozen men were at the bar, talking quietly. Barney stepped up to the deserted end of the counter and faced his image in the mirror, the familiar gray flannel shirt unbuttoned at the throat—all collars choked him a little—his throat and face looking a little sleek, but not exactly boyish. Between his eyes there was one line of trouble, rather than of thought.
The bartender made a step toward him, leaned a little. “Yours, stranger?” he asked.
“I can’t buy a drink. I . . . ” began Barney.
“No hand-outs here for bums,” said the bartender.
“I only wanted to ask a question,” said Barney.
“Shoot, then.”
“I wanted to know if you can tell me where to find a man called Leonard Peary, in this town?”
The bartender elevated his brows, turned his head, and looked toward one of his customers. He was a darkly handsome fellow, young, with a continual glow of health in his cheeks, and a pair of those restless bright eyes that see everything at a glance.
He nodded toward Barney Dwyer.
“You want me?” he asked.
“I’ve got a note, here, from your father,” said Barney. He came up and held out the scrap of paper.
Leonard Peary read it, reflected for an instant, and then drew out a wallet. He continued to talk to the others. And they hung upon his words, already smiling before they heard the point of the tale. They seemed to Barney a formidable lot of manhood, and yet it was plain that they were mere attendants upon this paladin. Everything set them apart. The very clothes he wore had a half Mexican dash and color about them. His peaked sombrero made him seem as foreign as his swarthy complexion; the flash of his smile was wholly Latin, too.
So, still talking, he drew out a bill, stiffened it with a jerk, and so extended it toward Barney without turning his head.
“Thanks,” said Barney. “Thanks a lot! Sorry to bother you, but . . . ”
Leonard Peary talked on carelessly. Not one of his auditors had so much as a glance to waste on the stranger. So Barney Dwyer went hastily out of the saloon. The mare danced and neighed impatiently as she saw him, but Barney stood overcome by a memory. Had not Daniel Peary told him to bring back his son to the ranch, even by the nape of the neck?
As well think of bringing a beautiful black panther out of the woods with naked hands. Yet such a command had a weight with Barney. He always had tried to obey orders with a literal exactness. And now it seemed to him that, if he could do what Daniel Peary had bidden, he might win, as by a sudden stroke, the affection of those good fellows on the ranch, those who had been sorry to see him go, who had spoken to him with sympathy, who had offered him money out of their pockets. These were rascals who surrounded young Leonard Peary in Timberline. So his father had said. And if, on a day, Barney brought the son back to the ranch, would there not be a deathless rejoicing and gratitude?
So, on the instant, he fixed in his mind the great determination. He would have to eat, rest, and think over the project, first. It was so far the greatest action that ever had entered his mind that the might of it appalled him.
He untethered the mare and went down the street with her at his heels. He left her outside the general merchandise store, untied, while he went in to buy food. He found a counter running around three sides of the room to accommodate purchasers of hardware, or groceries, or of clothes. In the center of the open floor rose a big stove, the swelling iron sides of it discolored by the red heat that they often had endured. It was girt with a nickeled rail on which heels could be rested in winter, and half a dozen chairs were at hand, but they had been hitched around to face the central counter. There was the presiding clerk, a girl whose bare arms were folded as she chatted with the loiterers. She was so pretty that Barney, the instant he stood inside the door, dragged off his hat. He felt that the haste of the gesture had made his blond hair stand on end.
And one of the trio, half turning toward him, jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the stranger. “Hey, look it,” he said.
They chuckled, all of them. How strange, thought Barney, that they were able to see, with the first glance, that he was a fit subject for derision. Ah, the wisdom, the strange insight of all men.
As he approached the counter, slowly, the girl straightened.
“Why are you laughing, Riley?” she demanded briskly. “You wouldn’t know enough to take off your hat, even if you were in church.”
At this rebuke, they laughed all the more, and loudly.
And big Riley, lolling in the chair, exclaimed: “Is this a church, Sue?”
Barney waited for her to answer that question, but she kept her brown eyes fixed on him, expectantly, and took no more heed of the three, or of Riley’s question.
“I’d like to get some flour and bacon,” said Barney. �
�And some fish hooks and a line. And some salt and baking powder. And . . . ”—he looked down to the torn left sleeve of his flannel shirt, where it had been ripped—”and a needle and some thread,” he concluded. He looked up at her from his sleeve. She was smiling, a twisted smile that made him blush.
“He’s gonna set up housekeeping,” said Riley. “That’s like a married man, giving an order. That’s what it is.”
“Oh, no,” said Barney, for he felt that the words should be answered. “I’m not married.”
They crowed with delight. They smote one another on knee and shoulder. They leaned toward Barney and examined him with a bright pleasure, beginning to hope for more sport.
“You be quiet, all of you,” said the girl. Yet Barney saw that she, also, would have liked to laugh. “How much of all these things do you want?”
Barney tried to think in pounds and numbers, but his mind was struck with confusion. He wanted only to get out into the street again as soon as possible.
“I don’t know,” he told her, making a vague gesture with both hands. “About three dollars’ worth, if you don’t mind.”
He spread the $5 bill on the edge of the counter, and waited.
“Well,” said the girl,” if you don’t know . . . oh, all right. I’ll get everything together. Three dollars, eh?”
“Who’s your father, boy?” asked Riley.
“My father is dead,” said Barney.
The girl was busy, her brown hands flashing here and there. “Let him alone, Riley!” she exclaimed, but without turning from her rapid work. “Let him alone. It isn’t fair.”
