by Max Brand
“Partner,” said Charlie, “will you do something for me?”
“Anything I can,” Duval answered offhand.
“Try that mare of yours in the race at Kendry tomorrow. I’ve bet that she could run.” He saw the face of Duval darken, and added hastily: “I wouldn’t bet she’d win. I know she couldn’t beat Dave Shine’s blood horse. But I’ve bet she can move a little.”
Duval flushed a trifle. “I’d a pile rather not,” he said. “Unless you keep me to that promise.”
“I’m gonna keep you,” said Nash. “Dog-gone it, man, I don’t want to bother you, but you’d enjoy the rodeo, anyway. Will you come?”
“I’ve given you a promise,” said Duval shortly. “I suppose I’ll be there.”
And he was.
* * * * *
Though, to be sure, rodeos did not seem at all to his taste, and he was nowhere to be seen with his mare until the very end of the bulldogging contest, in which Charlie Nash himself won glory and almost first place, except, as everyone said, that he had been thrown at the toughest maverick of the lot. But when the riders lined up for the race, while loud voices were shouting bets and offering odds, Duval appeared on Discretion in the starting row.
There were already eight known horses in the string and not a one but made Discretion look a sad thing indeed, especially when she grew excited and began to prance, throwing her long legs about. People chuckled as they looked at her — chuckled behind their hands, because those who had not come from Moose Creek, nevertheless had heard of Duval. His name had gone like magic over all the range.
Charlie Nash, grimly bent on supporting a friend who he had introduced to trouble, savagely bet a borrowed $100, and got odds of eight to one — high odds for such a race as this. Then he returned to the place where Marian Lane stood near the finish with a big black camera in her hands. She was setting up a tripod as he came near.
“It ain’t gonna be such a close finish as all that,” Charlie said gloomily. “They won’t need a picture to show which one got first. When Dave Shine’s blood horse gets warmed up, he’s gonna swallow this whole field.” He added grimly: “Then you’ll feel a lot better.”
“Why,” Marian said sweetly, “it’s no disgrace if poor Duval doesn’t know horses. I’m sure he’s shown that he knows a great many other things.”
“You’ve got a mean way about you sometimes, Marian,” the boy assured her. “What’s Duval ever done to you, anyhow?”
“Hush,” she said. “They’re about to start...and...oh, he’s left at the post. They ought to call them back and start over...what a shame! Will he pull up? Will he pull up, Charlie?”
She asked it eagerly as the starter’s gun exploded while Discretion was turned broadside to the course. The rest swept away in a thundering line, while Discretion, floundering behind, slowly straightened and then began to labor after the field.
Her efforts brought great laughter from the spectators. It was like the running of a jack rabbit — a young jack rabbit that had not yet found its strength — so did the long, bounding gait of the mare impress the watchers, while the rest of the field scoured rapidly before her.
“And that’s Mister Duval’s fine horse,” the girl said scornfully. “He ought to pull her up, even if he doesn’t.”
However, Duval was not pulling her up, though he made no effort to overtake the others, but simply had rode the chestnut mare. So the runners swung around the first half of the circle, to the point where the early leaders began to tire, and now a fine black stallion rushed out from the pack as though they were standing still.
A wild yell of triumph went up for that favorite.
“There goes Duster! There goes Shine’s horse. The race is over, boys!”
The race seemed indeed over, as the last bend was rounded, when through the tiring pack cut a chestnut streak that seemed to make but one stride to two of the others. Duval, and Discretion, coming like the wind — so uncomfortably fast that all shouting ceased, and Charlie Nash, standing on the fence, raised both his hands, whispering: “Eight to one. Oh, you ugly beauty. Come on, Cherry.”
Cherry came on, but not fast enough. Those who watched, wondered why Duval had not taken up his whip. Even hand ridden, she was making a race of it and gaining on Duster’s frightened rider, but what if a whip were laid on her? Indeed, it looked as though her head were drawn in by the pull that Duval was giving her.
And Marian, crouched behind her camera, watched with parted lips and with hands gripped hard, as though she saw a thousand things more interesting than a mere horse race — as though, indeed, there were volumes of hidden meaning being revealed to her eyes alone.
The rest of the crowd gave tongue like a hungry pack — and as they yelled, the right rein of Cherry’s bridle parted. They saw Duval sway back. They saw the mare dart ahead.
It was like the release of a stone from the hand of the thrower. With every leap, she gained momentum. Her long neck was stretched straight out, her ugly, lean head was snaky as she thrust forward, and the very wind of her going seemed to have flattened her ears along her neck. She looked no longer awkward. She was like a thing with wings, and every stroke carried her swiftly up toward the stallion.
He should have won, however, if the rider had done his duty. But just before the wire, looking back in fear at that sound of hoofs, the youngster let the stallion swerve.
That was fatal. Discretion shot under the wire, first by a head.
That, however, was not the important thing in the eyes of the winning rider, for as Duval looked to the side of the track in crossing the line, he saw the big black square of the camera aimed not at Discretion at all, but at the height of his own head. He jerked his face in the other direction, but, somehow, he knew that he was too late.
Already she knew too much, he guessed, and now she was well on the way to learning everything!
Back at the start, the girl was gripping the arm of Charlie Nash, who was almost the only voice to celebrate. He and Pete, the bartender, who, strangely enough, had chosen to bet on the mare of his own free will and not out of loyalty to the rider of Cherry.
“Listen to me, Charlie,” Marian said. “Collect your bets tomorrow. I have to go home. I have to go fast. Do you hear me, Charlie?”
“Sure I hear you. Can she run, Marian? Can she run?”
“Like the wind...she’s wonderful...only get me away quickly, quickly.”
“Sure,” Charlie said, sobered. “But what’s the matter?”
“I forgot something at the store. Oh, make the horses fly on the way back!”
Chapter Twelve
It was night before the sweating horses of Charlie Nash brought the girl back to Moose Creek. He himself was serious enough before they arrived, and he would have got out of the buckboard in which he had brought her home.
“There’s something wrong, Marian,” he said. “You’re sick, or something.”
She laughed, and tried to make that laughter sound natural, but knew that she had failed.
“Maybe I’m about to be ill, but I’m not now,” she told him. “You go along home, Charlie. There’s nothing for you to worry about and nothing that you can help me in. Good night. I’m glad you made a big winning plus my dollar.”
She was gone into the darkness of the store before he could answer, and then he heard the front door locked and double locked.
She herself, standing in a blue funk inside the big glass windows, felt, when she saw young Nash drive away, that she had stripped herself of her last chance of safety. Then she gathered her courage and went on about the thing she had planned.
She had no faith in the locked front door, though she did have some in the chain and bolt that she fastened across it. The windows she locked, also, and despaired of securing them in a better manner.
Then, lamp in hand, she walked back down the aisle, while the shadows ros
e and fell softly around her with every step she made. The rear windows she secured in the same manner. She would have gone into the cellar to fasten its two windows, also, but when she raised the trap to go down, something seemed to rush at her out of the darkness, the flame dwindled and turned blue in the throat of the chimney, and she dropped the door with a crash.
This also possessed a bolt, though it seemed to her now a most feeble one. She shot it home, and remained stunned with terror, feeling the noise of that fall still reverberate along her nerves. After that she had to pass through the door that led to the rear stairs, lock this behind her without the additional security of any bolt, and climb up to her own chamber.
The door stood wide open, and for a moment she dreaded to enter, leaning sick and helpless against the jamb, for it seemed that even if the rest of the building had been empty, here she would certainly find what she feared. But when she raised the lamp above her head, it showed her nothing but emptiness. She set her teeth, entered with a quick step, and closed and locked this last door of all.
There remained one last barrier that she could erect against the world, and that was the open window, which she closed, and fastened the ridiculously weak catch that was supposed to keep it from being opened from the outside.
That done, she fell to work.
Adjoining her room was a small closet that she used as a dark cabinet. No one else in the town developed films and she derived a vitally necessary little income from this work. Rapidly she prepared the acid bath, immersed the film from her own camera, and then waited desperately until the proper time had elapsed.
A wind had risen. It was not strong, but it was sufficient to stir the shutters of adjoining houses. Once, in a neighbor’s place, a window was drawn down in screeching protest, and the sound made Marian Lane sink against the wall, half fainting.
But the time ended. She forgot the small, pulsing sounds that continually seemed to steal up the stairs and stand listening outside her door. At last she could take the film from the bath and hold it to a light.
Her heart leaped in fierce triumph, for it was Duval’s face she had snapped. Clearly, unblurred by all the speed of the horse, it stood before her, and she faced around at her door in victorious defiance, as though the thing she feared could look through the wood to see her.
There was still the printing to be managed. It was long before it was accomplished. Three copies she struck off, and, having made them, she sat down to write:
Dear Eleanor:
This is a hasty note, first to apologize for not writing for so long, and most of all to send you this snapshot. A strange fellow has come to Moose Creek and made a great place for himself here. You can see even from the picture, I think, that he’s not a type, and in the flesh, he’s a great deal more remarkable. He has a pale face and gray eyes. That’s not much of a description, but if you’ve ever seen the man, it will mean a great deal to you. The reason I’m sending the picture, dear, is that I want to have him identified if I can. I don’t want talk made, but if you could quietly show this picture to a few people you know, I’d be glad to hear if they know him. I have reasons for thinking that he’s quite a horseman, and among your Long Island or Maryland friends who hunt and follow the races, there may very well be someone who will recognize him.
I know that you can manage this gracefully, without any embarrassment for yourself. You might say that this is a picture of the typical cowpuncher, who recently won a race in a rodeo at Kendry, in the Far West.
The real point is that I don’t think that he’s typical at all. However, start your little investigation for me. I’m eaten with curiosity to learn the result.
I intend to write to you again soon, and make it a real letter. What has stopped me so often with the pen in my hand is that the old, school days seem so sadly distant that it’s like raising ghosts to talk with someone who knew them with me.
She hesitated for something else to say, then signed the letter, placed it with a print of the picture in the envelope, and sealed it and stamped it.
She had hardly ended, when the window was struck as if by a hand, and rattled so that the blood ran out of her brain to her heart, and she almost fainted. However, she heard the gale whistle in the distance and guessed that it must have been the wind that had made the disturbance.
Then she sat down to wait for the morning.
Of all the hours of her life there was none that compared with the strain of that long waiting. Listening with aching nerves, a dozen times she knew she heard the faint metallic rattle with which the front door of the store was opened, heard the unlocking of that at the foot of her stairs, and then again the pause of someone outside her very room. Once she could have sworn that she saw the knob slowly turned, and, gasping with horror, she picked up a small bulldog revolver and leveled it with both hands.
Nothing happened.
She assured herself that she was childish and a fool. No one was in the building and no one would come there. Yet she dared not even propose to herself to open the door and go down to the street to drop the letter through the slot in the post office wall. That would have to wait until the reassuring eye of day opened over Moose Creek.
But she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and lay down on the bed to rest, with a book — and with the gun. There was no rest. The print swam into a confusion of shadows, and every moment her haunted eyes were lifted toward the door, or toward the window.
It was like a blessing to her when she saw the gray of the dawn begin, but never had it lingered so slowly. Never had she so prayed for the honest sun.
At last it came. The rose died from the sky, the brilliant golden light was everywhere, and, springing up from the bed, she prepared to go down at once to the street.
With nervous hands she dressed her hair, put a hat over it, rubbed color into her cheeks, and then with much trouble looked at the shadows beneath her eyes.
Never had she wanted anything as she wanted coffee now.
First, she had to dispose of the two extra prints and the film itself. These she placed for the time being in the book that she had attempted to read that night, a much-battered old copy of LORNA DOONE that she had taken because she felt it might give her ease from its very familiarity. She was ready now. First, she listened at the door. Then she boldly unbolted, unlocked it, and flung it wide.
Nothing happened. Only the breath of wind that its opening had set in motion entered the room, and now she nerved herself to go down.
She held herself very well until she was halfway up the aisle of the store, and then she went to pieces and fled to the big front door. She tore back the bolt and chain, but the key stuck in the lock, and terror gripped her by the back like a lion. Crouched then against the door, she looked back — but all was familiar emptiness. That moment the key moved in her trembling fingers, and she was free to stagger out into the freshness of the early morning.
So early was it that not a chimney in Moose Creek was smoking as she hurried up the street, and every step gave her additional confidence, additional courage, until in half a block the terrors of the night seemed more fatiguing than real.
She could almost have laughed at them by the time she reached the post office, but when she held the letter at the slot in the wall, she hesitated again. There was danger in it, no matter how broad the daylight, and as she remembered the pale face of Duval with its usual faint smile, she took a deep breath and told herself that the risk was not worth the profit, if profit there were in this business.
She turned away. She half crumpled the letter in her hand as she did so. Then the last impulse won, for she stepped back and, with a decisive flick, shot the envelope away — away into the hands of the law, which would cherish it, protect it, shed blood of brave men for its sake, if necessary. In that instant, she felt a warm assurance that she had gained a mighty ally and started wheels too huge for even Duval to stop.
Then
lassitude overcame Marian Lane. She went dreamily back down the sidewalk, the loose boards creaking a bit beneath her step, and smiled vaguely at the open door of the store, remembering the horror with which she had flung it open only a few moments before.
She closed it again, yawned at the blank street, and returned upstairs for a cold plunge, then to breakfast quickly, and so to work before any early orders might come in, as they often did.
But life seemed a little blank and dreary to Marian Lane as she opened the door of her room and went in to prepare for the day, after such a night as this. She was unnerved, too, by an increasing pity for Duval, who had done no wrong, at least in Moose Creek. Here he was a hero, a champion of might, a tower of strength, a defender of the weak.
But she had hoped to take the hero in the palm of her hand and make him tremble.
Now that her mind was clearer, she wished suddenly to see how good a likeness she had taken, and so opened LORNA DOON, to find that the pictures and the film were gone!
Chapter Thirteen
It was so impossible that she laughed and stared suddenly out the window as though to ask the bright day how such a monstrous thing could happen when all the night had produced no harm. She told herself that she had really put them in some other place, and was opening the drawer of her writing table when she saw the letter that was placed on top of it.
It was written — or rather printed — in very dim ink that made hardly a mark on the surface. As a matter of fact, it seemed to have been done with a brush that possessed an extremely fine point, for some of the letters blurred one into another. She read:
Dear Marian:
As I watched you through the window last night and this morning, you sure made a mighty pretty picture....
She ran to the window and jerked it open. The sill projected well to either side, and to the right it seemed to her that the dusty paint had been cleaned a little. On the rusted pipe that drained away the roof water, she told herself that there was a distinctly brighter place, where a hand might have grasped it for support. But how could anyone have climbed here from the outside?
