by Max Brand
“Then heaven help Kinkaid’s unlucky soul,” Henry said solemnly. “Because he ain’t gonna live to talk about this day. What’s happenin’ now?”
“They’ve rolled into the shade of the trees, and I can’t see anything. Get my horse...my horse! Henry, Henry! Be quick!”
He got the horse swiftly, his own hands shaking with the same nervousness that made the glasses quaver in the hands of the girl.
But at last the saddle and bridle were on. He gave her a leg up, and as she dashed the pony down the hillside, like water leaping with a full head, swerving around big boulders, dodging among the trees. Henry already had picked up the fallen binoculars and, regardless of Marian, was scanning the pine trees eagerly, but nothing could he see.
Never was there madder riding than that which took Marian Lane down to the bottom of the lower ravine. For she told herself that fate would not let her have such happiness as that which had been in touch of her hand. Duval was dead. It must be so, and, therefore, she rode wildly, not caring greatly what came of her in that perilous descent.
She reached the lower and level footing, with the mustang stretched out at full gallop, and came plunging on to the view of the pines under whose shadow she had watched Duval disappear.
Then she saw a man seated on a rock at the edge of the woods, and waving a hat at her.
Duval!
She came closer, and made sure that it was he. But why did he remain there, seated?
On and on rushed the mustang, and now she could tell a vitally good reason, for red ran down one side of Duval’s face, and red soaked his torn and ragged shirt, and red streaked his trousers, also.
She was out of the saddle with a leap, like a man, and there was David smiling up at her with perfect peace in his face.
“Davie, Davie, Davie!” sobbed the girl. “He’s killed you!”
“He wouldn’t say so, if you asked him,” Duval said calmly. “He’s gone back toward Moose Creek a rather sick fellow, Marian. When Henry comes jogging along, we’ll send him after Kinkaid to see that the pieces get home, safely. Dead? I’ll live to be a thousand, if I’m never sicker than I am now.”
His head drooped back against the tree trunk behind him, however, as he spoke. It was instantly supported in the cup of her arm, and she heard a rapid murmur saying: “I’ll live, Marian. No fear of that, my dear, but work fast. The life is soaking out of me. Fast, fast....”
And when Henry came, he found Duval with eyes closed, senseless, and the girl working, white-lipped, stern, with determination.
Between them they closed the wounds with bandages. And long after, Duval opened his eyes and gritted his teeth as he felt the binding power that was on his injuries. He mastered himself at once, and was able to smile wanly up at Marian.
“He was down and out, the cur,” said Duval. “And he gave in. And after that, he came at me again when my head was turned. He came like a blind beast...and I can thank heaven for that blindness, or I wouldn’t be living in your hands, my dear. But at last he was done for. He backed away from me, Marian, and ran for his horse...and he’s ridden out of our lives forever. He’ll ride other trails, but never the trail that leads to me again.”
* * * * *
This is the history of David Duval as Moose Creek knew it, and, in some respects, a great deal more than all of Moose Creek knew.
As for David and his wife, they never came back to the little town again.
It was said that he was ill for a long time in the mountains, until she and Henry had nursed him back to some shadow of his old strength, and then they resumed their journey north and west to a new land, and to a new life.
To this day, opinions in Moose Creek differ concerning David. Pete the barkeeper is the one who talks the least, knowing as he does the most.
Simon Wilbur is sure that no squanderer will ever come to a good end.
The blacksmith has confidence in the two swift, strong hands of Duval and his good wits to solve all the problems of his life, and Charlie Nash says that the husband of Marian Lane never could fail in the great test.
But all that Pete will say is that David Duval knew a horse when he saw one. Perhaps he knew them too well!
Once a rumor came back to Moose Creek from a wanderer who spoke of a little village in Maryland, a shining sweep of river, wide meadows green as lawns, a spacious grove, a house on a hill, and a happy face at a window that looked strangely like the face of Marian Lane, not a whit older than she had been in the former days.
But there was never any confirmation of this rumor, and now Duval and Marian Lane have both joined the ghostly procession of legendary forms that ride across the imagination of the West.
the end
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of five hundred thirty ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.
Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles.
Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in THE MAX BRAND COMPANION (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His Website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.
