by Brand, Max
The doctor himself was often with Ben Trainor, looking pale and nervous, but firm to that temperance pledge which he had made in the silence of that moonlight night under Mount Baldy.
It was on the fourth day that the dance hall girl, Dolly, appeared. Trainor hardly recognized her. The make-up was gone from her face. She wore a sober gray street dress and a gray hat, and she sat on the side of the bed and looked Trainor over with a smile.
“The game kids are the ones that bring home the bacon,” she said.
“Where’s all the decoration, Dolly?” Trainor asked her.
She rubbed the tips of her fingers over her face, letting the touch linger around her eyes.
“Aw, what’s the use of the bother?” asked Dolly. “I’m going home and cut out the rough stuff. I’m sick of everything. You made me sick of everything.”
“You’re in mourning, Dolly,” he told her. “Who for or what for?”
“For Doc Yates,” she answered him frankly.
“Yates!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah,” said Dolly. “He was a big crook. I always knew that. But I loved him. Not so much that I’m going to fade away, but enough so’s I don’t want to put on the war paint as long as that crook isn’t around to see it.”
“Girls are funny,” said Ben Trainor, with a sigh and a shake of his head.
“Yeah, and you don’t know how funny we are,” said Dolly. “Girls and towns are funny. Look at Alkali. They’re going to plant trees in the streets, and have a park, and everything. Look what you did to us, Ben!”
“I didn’t do it,” said Trainor. “What a sick mess I would have made of everything, if Jim Silver hadn’t dropped in at the right time.”
“Aw, sure. There’s Silver, of course, but he doesn’t count,” said the girl. “He’s not human. He’s not like the rest of us. He’s the sort of thing you pray for, and it comes true once in your life.”
News of Silver, there was none, or of how his chase after Christian had progressed. Then, one night Trainor heard a light scratching sound at the door of his room. The door was opened, because of the heat, and he saw the gigantic head of Frosty framed against the black of the hall, with red, lolling tongue, and bright green eyes. Behind him loomed Silver, who entered with a long, noiseless stride.
He sat down and took the hand of Trainor and held it for a long time.
Silver was thin. There were great hollows under his eyes; his cheek bones stood out. The hunger of an unfilled yearning was still straining the lines about his eyes. He had been through a most apparent hell.
“Ah, Jim, you missed him!” said Trainor.
“I missed him,” said Silver, nodding. “How are you, old son?”
“I’m sick, thinking about the way I let Christian get away. The right arm was pretty numb. And then — Christian went up that rope like a flying snipe. I never saw anything like it. I missed him three times, I guess!”
Silver said: “Forget about it. One day I’ll meet him. It’s not going to be with other people around, I imagine. There’ll be nothing to stop us. There won’t be weapons, either. It’ll be bare hands, I suppose. And then — a finish — maybe for both of us.”
He spoke dreamily. But long, long afterwards Trainor was to remember those words.
“Jim,” he said, “what do you get out of all this? You split my share in the mine, will you? It’s rich as sin. There’s too much loot in it for just the three of us!”
Silver smiled at him.
“Money doesn’t stick to me,” he said. “And gold is a mighty heavy weight to carry on the sort of a trail I have to ride. Maybe I’ll meet you on that trail some time, Ben. That is, if you ever go broke!”
He laughed, stood an instant in the doorway, smiling back at Trainor, and then was gone, with the gray wolf at his heels.
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Copyright © 1934 by Frederick Faust. Copyright © renewed 1961 by the Estate of Frederick Faust. The name Max Brand® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission. Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4988-5
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4988-5
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4986-9
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4986-1
