by Max Brand
His call was answered almost at once by a shrill whistle. And glancing back through a gap among the trees that grew thick at the margin of the property, Wilbur had an unexpected sight of the lifeless mare jerking away from Henry, the groom, and running across the meadows toward the house. She went with her head stretched out and with a long, bounding gallop so different from the gait of a cow pony that Wilbur laughed as he watched it. This singular stride faded her out of view almost at once, and Wilbur jogged on down the road, still chuckling to himself.
The way the mare had responded to the whistle had not surprised Henry, the groom, however. As she cantered away, he strolled still more slowly forward, giving his attention to the fields on either side of the driveway up which he was advancing, and even coming to a stop to watch the flight of a bird that rose nearby and shot up into the sky. One could not have said that there was peace in his face and that relaxation of the spirit that generally comes to those who are in the quiet of the countryside. Instead, he turned his head restlessly from side to side as though the grass in the fields, and the very trees, and the voice of the creek could tell him something as definite as words.
So, pausing, examining, he strolled on toward the cabin, which seemed to him a greater novelty than all else. This and the sheds behind it he stared at as if they were so many human faces, each worthy of separate consideration, each expecting something worth adding to his total. He rounded the corner of the house and came in clear view of Duval.
The latter was engaged in walking around and around the chestnut mare, a task that she made difficult, for though she dropped her head to pick at the grass now and then, she insisted on following her owner closely, with ears that pricked with pleasure.
“Cherry hasn’t changed a bit,” Duval said, his back to the groom. “She gave you plenty of trouble on the way out, I reckon, stranger?”
“Oh,” Henry said, “she’s got a mind of her own, but I like folks that can think for themselves.”
Now, at the sound of his voice, Duval stiffened a little, like one who hears something in the distance and fixes his attention upon it.
At last he said curtly: “Put her in the pasture corral over there by that shed.”
“Certainly, sir,” Henry said, and, taking up the lead rope, he took the mare toward the corral.
He coaxed her along with much patience, and this was needed, because she made stubborn efforts to leave him and go after Duval, who had gone into the cabin. However, Henry seemed unhurried. He humored her, and all the while with the same secret smile that he had worn before, as though he knew a jest that even a horse could appreciate if he told it.
In this manner, he brought her to the pasture, took off her blanket, looked into the little watering trough, and, finding that it was slightly lined with green scum at the sides, he emptied it and spent some time in scouring it clean. When he had pumped it full of sparkling water again, he left the corral and went with his usual lack of haste up the path to the house. When in front of it, he paused, surveying the big trees by the creekside with special interest.
“That pair by the path must be three or four hundred years old, sir,” he suggested.
He received no answer. Again, the faint smile appeared on the face of Henry, and now he went in across the verandah, and through the doorway. Just inside of the shack he paused again, not to look at the owner, but to survey the furnishings, as though they told him more about Duval than the face of the man could do.
The latter, in the meantime, sat at ease in his most comfortable chair, with his hands interlocked and his gray eyes quietly studying the groom.
“Henry?” he said at last.
Henry straightened himself. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“A long trip, wasn’t it?”
“A very long trip,” agreed Henry.
“And after such a long trip,” went on Duval in his gentle way, “Henry, what do you want to make it worth your while?”
At this, Henry no longer smiled his secret smile, but laughter rose up and shook him with a dry violence of mirth. “Why, sir,” he said, “I ain’t hardly had a chance to look around and see what’s worth taking.”
Chapter Ten
In spite of its oddity, Duval accepted the last speech with a nod.
“Sit down, Henry,” he said kindly.
“Thank you, sir...I’ll stand,” said Henry.
“You have plans for returning at once, I suppose?”
“Me, sir? Not at all, sir. I was raised in the country...that’s where I learned horses.”
“Now I remember, of course. You’ve always said that horsemen have to grow up on the grass. But do you mean that you like it out here? Hardly that, Henry!”
“Why not, sir?”
“So far from the ponies? So far from the interesting big cities, too?”
“Old men go back to the soil, sir.”
“But these big open spaces are only meant for people who have been born in them. Strangers never can quite adapt themselves to the range, Henry.”
“No, sir?”
“No, as a matter of fact, they find the elevation a great trial. They’re apt to grow short of breath. They’re even apt to grow dizzy and fall from a cliff.”
“Me,” Henry said genially, “I’ve always been used to heights, sir.”
“Ah, yes?” said Duval.
“Besides,” Henry said, “I’ve got to be an old man, sir, and so I’ve left all my affairs in pretty good order.”
“You’re a wise man,” said Duval.
“Left letters,” said Henry, “to be opened a month after I left New York, unless the bank heard from me in the meanwhile. Letters about my will, and such things, sir. So it would be pretty hard to see how trouble would bother me, sir.”
“Of course,” Duval agreed. “You really should sit down, Henry. Out here one doesn’t stand on formalities, you know.”
“Just as you please, sir,” said Henry, and sank into a chair.
“You think of staying on, then?”
“I don’t mind if I do. As I was saying, I take to the open air, and it takes to me. You’d have room for me here, sir?”
“You can see for yourself that it’s a small house.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to crowd you, Mister....”
“Certainly not,” Duval stated hastily. “I was only considering your own comfort, Henry.”
“Ah, sir,” said Henry. “That was always your kind way, sir.”
“Besides, in this part of the country we don’t ‘sir’ one another.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll remember that.”
“If you insist on staying?”
“Insist? Of course, I don’t want to press in on you, Mister....”
“No pressing in, Henry. Delighted to have you, of course. You have a bag with you?”
“Yes. Wilbur brought it up in his rig. I left it at the gate when I brought up Cherry.” “Henry, I’m a curious man and want to ask you a question. What brought you out with Cherry?”
The same secret smile that often before had twisted the face of Henry reappeared on his lips.
“That makes a story,” he said.
“I’d like to hear it, if I’m not prying.”
“Well, then, when the news came of your drowning...which was a shock to me....”
“No doubt it was,” cut in Duval. “Go on.”
“I remembered that you could swim only about twice as well as an otter. It was a half-mile pull to the shore from where that boat upset....”
“No, nearly a mile.”
“All right, sir, but I looked at the place and all at once I was sure that you could have made the land. Why didn’t you, then? Because you didn’t want to. Why didn’t you want to? You were young, you felt your blood as much as any yearling just in off the grass. What would make you want to go off stage
? Nothing, maybe, except a few debts. And it wasn’t your style to scratch at the last minute.”
“You’re full of compliments,” Duval commented. “But I’m still interested.”
“Besides, the boat looked too small to beat you. I don’t know how to put it any other way. When you hear that a selling plater has beat a stake horse at even weights, you know there’s something wrong. I felt that way when I saw that boat. I told myself that it couldn’t have beat you.”
“Thank you,” said Duval. “Go on, Henry.”
“When your things went at auction, I was on hand, and I saw Slater and Grimm bid on the mare. Now, no matter what happened to the rest of the stable, and the house, and the furniture, and all that, I made up my mind that even if you were dead, you’d stir in your grave when Discretion was sold.
“I sat up there in the stand at the auction and watched them prance her up and down. They had a fool of a boy up that couldn’t show her a whit...in fact, she never had right hands on her, except yours, sir.”
A flash of pleasure appeared in the pale face of Duval. “She has to know that she’s respected, but not feared,” he explained.
“Right, sir,” Henry agreed. “When the idiot of a boy showed her, he couldn’t keep her straight, and she sky-hopped the jumps like a rabbit, it was a shame to see.”
“The puppy!” Duval said angrily.
“Even that way, the bidding went to three thousand. But Slater and Grimm wouldn’t let her go, of course, at that price. They entered her afterward in the Chester Point-to-Point and gave young Enderley the mount.”
“He hasn’t the strength or the brains for Cherry,” Duval murmured.
“He tried to get both out of Scotch highballs,” Henry said, grinning in his lop-sided way. “And he did fine up to the last half mile. Then the whiskey faded out of him. He rode her like a lump of lead and fell off at the last jump, when she was three lengths to the good. I wished he’d broken his neck. However, I knew that race would boost her price. I used to drop in at the stables of Slater and Grimm nearly every day and have a look at her and a talk with the boys. Then one day they told me that she was sold. A man from the West had seen her shown last winter, liked her, and now he bid up for her...bid high enough to make even Slater smile. They were shipping her out.
“Now, sir, I put two and two together and thought that it made a thousand. So I said I’d always wanted to take a trip West, and I’d go along with her, for the chance to travel, and no pay. Of course, they took me, and that’s how I’m here. I knew, somehow, that if you were living, you were Duval. And so it turned out.”
“So it turned out,” agreed Duval without enthusiasm. He stood up suddenly. “Bring up your suitcase, Henry!”
“Thank you,” said the groom, and went at once to fetch it.
Duval stood in the doorway of his house and looked out on the spring that had spread more thickly beneath the pines, the leaves of trees and shrubs turning a darker green. Through the woods, it was impossible to see so far through the transparent mist of coming foliage, but the farm was now embowered in impenetrable hedges. He was closed in, and that thought made him lift his pale face and look beyond the treetops to the mountains that walked off far-away into the sky.
Now Henry was coming up the path, leaning far over against the weight of his suitcase, his mouth compressed with effort. Duval hurried down to him and took the burden lightly in his hand.
“Whew!” Henry gasped, relieved. “I’m turning into an older man than I thought, sir.”
“An old body with a young brain, Henry,” said Duval, “is one of the highest-priced things in the world.”
They chuckled together as they reached the house, and Duval laid the suitcase on the bunk in the corner of the room.
“Unlock it, Henry,” he said.
Henry looked askance at him, hesitated, but then obeyed. He stood anxiously by.
“I’m going through it,” Duval informed him.
“Sir?” said Henry. “Going through it?”
“Yes, stand away from me.”
Henry, with a very dark face, stood back without a word, and Duval raised the top of the case.
All inside was packed very neatly, and with great care Duval lifted out article by article, until the case was half emptied.
Through the rest of it he passed his hands, feeling here and there until he touched something that seemed to tell him what he wanted to know, for he looked at Henry with the slightest of smiles.
“I thought so,” Duval said, and drew from the suitcase a package wrapped in oiled silk, beneath which the texture of chamois showed through. As he fingered this, a faint gritting of metal on metal was heard. “I’ll take this,” he said.
Henry was biting his lip. “I don’t know...,” he began.
“You don’t understand, Henry,” said Duval. “I lead a quiet life here, as you can see for yourself. A very quiet life. I’m rarely off the farm, in fact, but stay here most of the time, with no face to see, except those of the trees. When you realize that, Henry, I’m afraid that you won’t find yourself as much at home here as you expected to be. Am I right?”
Henry sighed, but then shrugged his high, narrow shoulders. “Blood lines and performance is what I bet on,” he said. “I’ll stay here with you, sir.”
“Very well, then. Your bunk is that one in the other corner. Take your stuff over there. You’ll find some shelves behind that curtain. Get into old clothes. Everyone works in Moose Creek, Henry.”
Saying this, he turned his back on Henry and descended through a trap in the floor, down a ladder into the cellar. There he dug a small hole in a corner next to the wall, placed the package in its wrapping of oiled silk in the aperture, and then covered it over and tramped down the moist earth. The remnant of loose soil he scattered here and there, before returning to the floor above.
There he found Henry apparently quite recovered from his blues. He already had changed into stable clothes and a pair of heavy boots. An old slouch hat was on the back of his head, and he gave Duval his twisting grin as he said: “It’s time to work, sir. But I ain’t seen a cow on the place. It’s not a farm without a cow.”
“I’ll get one,” said Duval. “I’ve always wondered what was missing, and, of course, milk is the thing.”
Chapter Eleven
Woman, like the elephant, never forgets, and cannot forgive. So it was that Marian Lane, behind her emotionless property smile, was filled with bitterness when she remembered how Duval in their last encounter had checked and thwarted and scorned her by his superior wit.
He had given an acid strength to her old passion for discovering who Duval might be. She transferred a portion of her curiosity, naturally, to the very plain-looking chestnut mare that had arrived for him from the East, and promptly she decided that the secret virtues of that animal — since it was not to be expected that Duval would waste money and time on a thing no better than she looked to be — must be investigated. Not that she expected to learn much, but she was eager to learn a little.
She hit at once on a plan for making the investigation, and started to work on Charlie Nash the next time he entered the store.
“Poor Charlie,” she said. “I suppose you’re terribly embarrassed now?”
“About what?” he asked her.
“Why, the way everyone is laughing at your friend.”
“You mean Duval, of course,” said Charlie Nash. “Nobody’s laughing at Duval in this here town, honey. Unless it’s you. And what’s your call?”
“At Duval, and his mare,” she insisted. “When I saw the poor, pitiful thing going up the street, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
“Look here, Marian,” the youth objected. “She’s got points. She’s got bone...”
“She’s full of bones!” said the girl.
“And legs, too.”
“Yards of ’em
,” she said.
“What makes you hate Duval so?”
“Hate Duval? What an idea! Why should I hate him?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Charlie,” she said, “what a silly thing to say.”
“It ain’t silly. You’re always taking a crack at Duval.”
“If the mare’s any good, Charlie, what is it good for?”
“You can’t go on a man’s looks,” Charlie said stubbornly, “or on a horse’s, either.”
“But what is she good for?”
“How can I tell?”
“Does she look good for anything?”
“As I was saying....”
“Stuff!” said Marian. “He simply doesn’t know horses, and you have to admit it.”
On that range, this was far worse than saying that a man could neither read nor write.
“I’ll bet she can run,” Charlie said, desperate.
“How much will you bet?”
“Anything you want.”
“I’ll give you odds,” she answered. “Two dollars to one.”
“Who’d be the judge?”
“Why, there’s the race at the end of the rodeo at Kendry tomorrow.”
“You know Duval. He won’t....”
“I don’t know him at all.”
“You know he won’t leave the farm.”
“He’ll do anything for a friend, you always say.”
“Well, and it’s true. Everybody knows that.”
“You’re his friend, I suppose.”
“I reckon I am.”
“Then why don’t you ask him?”
“Maybe I will. But he won’t enter Cherry.”
“Not for a friend?”
“Well, if I have a chance to see him.”
“I saw him go into Pete’s just this minute.”
Charlie was cornered, and, sullenly swinging around, he crossed to Pete’s Place and found Duval there, treating his new companion, Henry, to a tall glass of beer.
