The Winged Horse

by Max Brand

  Jimmy smiled with content. “You see what I mean?” he said.

  The dusk was gathering through the room, the sordid, swift evening of the winter day. It turned the corners black, and the air seemed stained with soot, through which the firelight struggled and made a yellow glow.

  “I see what you mean,” said Montague. “And maybe you’re right. I’ve been at the head of things pretty near too long.” He was silent for a moment. Then he jerked up his head. “If you was to work this right, Jimmy, I’d step down … I’d take a trip to Denver, or someplace like that, maybe, and I’d let you have the runnin’ of things from this time forward.”

  “If I’d had the runnin’ a long time ago,” Jimmy said, “it would’ve been a sight better for you, and me, and everybody else. You’ve dragged things out. You’re old.”

  “Aye,” his grandfather said, and sighed. “I’m old. There ain’t any denyin’ of that. I’m pretty old.”

  The room fell into another thoughtful silence. For all of them were seeing those hills, white with the winter, and the battle that before long might choke the very throats of the two distant valleys.

  “You ain’t said much, kid,” Montague said at last.

  “He don’t have to talk. He can do something much better than talk,” Jimmy said. His voice rose into a sudden exultant booming. “I’ll tell you what. He can do better than talk. And if he won’t be a fool, if he won’t be a darn’ fool … if he’ll work for me and with me … I’ll take in the whole range, here. I’ll swallow it all. I’ll make him rich. Him and me … we could clean up the whole range. We could swallow it!”

  “Maybe you will,” said Monty Montague. “I like to hear you young kids talk. Me, I’ve just broke the ground. Lemme see what you’re gonna plant in it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Now that the strategy of the camp of Montague had been revealed, the Lamb was in haste to get the news to his friends. No time had as yet been fixed for the raid. Perhaps it would come the very next morning, and if he could place the information in the hands of Colonel Pete Loring, the hunters would be caught in their own trap.

  He left the house after supper, and walked out into the night. He found the sky had cleared through the zenith. A broad, white moon was up. The world was one of black and silver. Just east of him he looked at the broad back of the mountain from which he had promised the colonel he would send his signal. No doubt that eyes were straining from the Loring camp, this night, to make out the glow of the double fire.

  The Lamb drew his belt tighter, making up his mind to start. He pulled out his watch. The moonlight was sufficiently bright to show him that it was only 7:30 p.m., which would give him ample time to get to the mountain and send the signal, and even confer with the colonel, yet return in time to be in bed at an hour so seasonable that no questions would be asked. He nodded to himself, and dropped the watch back—not into the secure watch pocket, but into the larger pocket at the side of his coat. His mind was traveling too far before him to be troubled by details.

  The door slammed, and the voice of Milligan came up behind him.

  “You done a great job today, kid. You got yourself a home here, by what you done. What about it? You ain’t sorry that you came over, eh?”

  The Lamb did not answer. He merely said, after a moment, “The old mountain looks pretty cold, eh?”

  “With the moon on the snow,” admitted Milligan. “When spring comes up this way, it ain’t so bad.”

  “No, I guess it wouldn’t be. The boys still ride that trail even in this weather, don’t they?”

  “They gotta. Look at the way some of the old cows will work uphill in the snow. They know that somewhere or other they’re gonna find a place where the snow has slipped, and that’ll give ’em easy feeding.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “You ain’t a puncher, kid, or you’d know that.”

  “Maybe. It’s a twister, that trail.”

  “Sure it is,” Milligan said. “But it ain’t bad going.”

  “Ain’t it? But even in good weather, with no snow on the ground, one of your boys took a tumble off of it last year.”

  “You mean Will Dunstan?”

  “I guess that was his name. I dunno.”

  “Sure, he took a tumble. I dunno how that happened. Will wasn’t a drinkin’ kind of a gent. But the best horse will stumble goin’ down a trail, and the best puncher will sometimes sit too loose in the saddle.”

  “Where’d he fall?”

  “Oh, along there where the trees thin out. You see … where the black of the trees thins out a little.” He pointed. “The poor fellow, he done a real brodie. He went down about five hundred feet and hit a nest of black rocks.”

  “I think I’ve noticed them. Big fellows!”

  “They are. Bad as shark’s teeth to fall into. That’s where Dunstan dropped.”

  The Lamb was quiet for a moment, and then he said in rather a hushed voice, “We all gotta find trail’s end. We all gotta come to it. Dunstan was his name, was it?”

  “It was. He was a good kid. Young. Eighteen, or not much more, I guess. Everybody liked him. Even Jimmy took to him. Jimmy was away, when the accident happened. He took on quite a bit, for him, when he came back and heard the news.”

  “Wouldn’t seem like Jimmy would be much busted up by anything, would it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. But I heard him say that Dunstan was the makin’s of the best cowboy that ever rode on this here range. Which is talkin’ pretty wide and high, when you come down to it, because we got some men around here.”

  Milligan moved off toward the stable.

  The Lamb turned out of the house yard, across the bridge, and hastily swung away through the snow. It was hard going down the hillside. He had to balance as though on skates, for every now and then the snow crust would quiver, and then lunge away from beneath his feet. But when he came to the valley, the going was very good. The crust of the snow held him up, and he could make good time across the hollow and to the rising land beyond. So he started the ascent of the mountain.

  Here he kept to the trail. The surface of it had been badly chopped by the hoofs of horses, and the split toes of cattle, and the churned snow had frozen hard again in the most difficult shapes for a pedestrian to cover. Nevertheless, he stuck to the trail, for there alone the sign he left behind him might not be noticed.

  He passed the naked region, where only black heads of brush here and there jutted up above the surface of the snow. He entered the region of scattering trees, and a steer heaved up from its bedding down place and stood snorting, puffing out its breath in white clouds of alarm.

  So he came to the verge of the solid pine woods, and then he paused. The trail jerked here about a corner of the mountain’s shoulder, and he looked down on a bristling mass of dark rocks beneath him. At this point, then, Will Dunstan’s horse had stumbled, and Dunstan himself had been cast from the saddle and rolled down to his death. There was no question about the violence of the fall, since it was a very steep shelving slope—so steep that an expert hardly could have climbed it.

  The Lamb sighed. Then, absently, he kicked a tuft of frozen snow from before him. The lump rolled straight over the brim and went bounding down with enough violence to start a small current of snow dust behind it. When it came to the midway point, it turned to the right. The snow dust turned to the right, also, and dropped down to the level beneath with a flash of powdered silver.

  The Lamb looked after it blankly. Then he started, as a thought drove home in his mind. He caught up a fifty-pound rock whose nose rose above the snow on one side of the trail, and tumbled this down the slope in turn, aiming it with the greatest precision at the group of black rocks beneath. The bulk of this stone broke through the crust of the snow on the slope and started a small slide. Before his eyes the Lamb saw the stone bound to the right, and the slid
ing snow split and turned to either the right or the left. A moment later, he heard the stone strike with an audible thud, well to the right of the black rocks. The snow crunched down to either side. The black rocks had not been touched by either snow or stone.

  At this, the Lamb looked up to the sky with suddenly set teeth, and then looked down again at the slope. However, he was not yet sure. He went a little above the bend and immediately below it, and tried pitching and rolling weights down the hill. In no case would they reach the black rocks. The conformation of the slope just above was such that it acted as the prow of a ship acts on water, turning it deftly to one side or the other. And yet the angles were so gradual that the thing was not apparent to the naked eye.

  The Lamb returned to the very point of the bend and there he folded his arms behind his back and stared fixedly down. He was quite certain of one thing, now. No matter how Will Dunstan had died, he had not perished by falling from this point upon the black rocks beneath. He could not have fallen upon them, had he chosen to leap out into the air with all his might, bent upon destroying himself. How had he come to die upon those rocks, then? In what manner had he slipped upon them?

  From above, he could not have fallen, except from the trail. And yet there he had been found, his head crushed, dead from the fall.

  The Lamb turned and looked darkly toward the house of Montague, which arose above the trees in the distance, looking like a black hand that was raised in signal of arrest.

  Then he went up the trail, and into the black of the pine woods. When he had rounded the shoulder of the mountain, the house of Montague was straight behind him, and thoroughly well hidden. Straight before him, although he could not begin to see it, he knew the house of Colonel Loring stood. Therefore, he descended through the woods until he came to a partial clearing. Then he made a fire. It took a good deal of work to raise a bright flame, but he managed it with patience, searching out dried bits of bark, and furnishing himself very largely with the inside rind from the stump of a tree. In this manner he worked up two small fires, with a little space between them. He allowed them to burn for a scant two or three minutes, during which time he remained in the shelter of the woods.

  He grew nervous. He pulled out his watch, glanced at it, and made out that it was 8:30. One hour ago he had left the house, and this was very fair progress.

  He returned to the fires, extinguished them thoroughly with snow, and then went straight down the side of the mountain toward the valley. It was difficult work. Only here and there the moon gave him good light. He was continually slipping, and crashing into the wet sides of trees. When he reached the valley floor beneath, he was in a very bad temper indeed, but he scarcely had issued into the open when he saw a horseman coming toward him.

  The colonel it was, beyond a doubt, but the Lamb slipped back into shelter to make sure.

  The rider came straight on across the snow, his horse hanging in its stride, now and again, as its feet slipped, but when he had come very close, the man halted and remained for a moment looking fixedly up the mountainside, in the direction from which the fires could have been seen.

  He raised a hand, pushed back his hat, and scratched his head as if in perplexity, and so the moon had a chance to shine fair and full upon the face of Jack McGuire.

  Chapter Thirty

  But McGuire did not linger. After that moment’s inspection, he pulled the head of his horse about, pointed it down the valley toward the house of Montague, and disappeared. From behind him, the Lamb most grimly watched his departure, fingering a Colt the while.

  Of all the men in the house of Montague, there was none who he liked so little as Jack McGuire. The man was a brute, with the sign of his brutality stamped broadly and deeply upon his face. Moreover, McGuire hated him, and had shown it plainly. Great uneasiness possessed the Lamb. He bit his lip and shook his head. He would dread greatly returning to the house of Montague and facing the inspection of McGuire, and of other eyes.

  How could he explain the condition of his boots, or the bark stains that undoubtedly would be on his coat? He would have to trust to the night, the lateness of the hour, the indifference of the sleepy men, to cover these details, and pray that he might come in for no lasting inspection.

  In the meantime, another rider came out of the woods on the far side of the valley, halted for an instant, and then came on with his horse at a trot—a long-legged horse, and a short, heavily built rider. This surely was the colonel, on one of his well-bred horses.

  And the colonel it was. The Lamb hailed him before he stepped out from the shadow of the trees. Colonel Loring swung quickly to the ground and advanced with hand outstretched.

  “I’m damned glad to see you here, young man,” he said. “I have never seen a face that meant more to me.”

  “Hold on,” murmured the Lamb. “You thought that I’d double-crossed you today, when I met Fargo for them?”

  “What else was I to think?” asked the colonel.

  “And that I’d lit those two fires sort of to draw you in?”

  “It might have looked that way. I knew that Montague would pay a good price for me.”

  “Of course he would,” agreed the Lamb. “But not to me. As for Fargo, suppose you look at it this way. It’s hard to train a dog not to eat raw meat.”

  “Fargo was an old enemy. I heard that … afterward.”

  “How is he?”

  “Living, thank goodness, but pretty sick.”

  “Does he blame his horse?”

  “He blames his horse, of course. He says that the cards beat him, and not the play. But let Fargo go. I hope he lives. If he doesn’t … he’s been taking his chances, and he’s been paid for it in cash, as much as he asked.”

  In the moonlight, the boy could see the colonel’s wry face, and by that he could judge that the price had been very high indeed.

  Loring went on, “When I had the chance to get Fargo, I thought I’d better. I figured that maybe he was the man to get rid of Jimmy Montague for me. Then you’d come back to me. And no matter what the Montagues tried, with Jimmy gone, and with you and Fargo working for me, we’d clean ’em off the range.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  The colonel snorted like a horse. “Nothin’ else,” he assured the boy. “They’ve hounded me … give me a chance to hound them.”

  The Lamb shrugged his shoulders.

  “And when we make up the final accounts, kid, you’ll get your share of the pickings!” the colonel exclaimed warmly.

  “Let that drop. I’ll pay myself,” the Lamb said bitterly. “Suppose you tell me about the way the boys are holding up?”

  The colonel hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll keep nothin’ from you. They’re pretty sick. Shorty and Muldoon will fight the thing through with me, but the rest of the boys are pretty sick. They lost most of their heart today, when Fargo went down. We all thought that Fargo couldn’t be beaten. He had that sort of a reputation.”

  “Aye,” murmured the Lamb, “the best of ’em drop when the cards are wrong. The others want to quit?”

  “They want to quit bad. They’re hunting around for excuses. They whine about everything. They growl at the sort of horses they gotta ride. They growl at the sort of chuck they gotta eat. All that any of them want is a chance to exchange a couple of pretty mean words with me, so’s they’ll have an excuse to quit me cold.”

  “Leave Muldoon to handle ’em, and you stay close.”

  “I tried that. They raise the dickens then because they say that I take it easy, while the ranch goes along short-handed. They’re pretty sour. They’re as sour as vinegar,” the poor colonel said. Then he added hastily, “If we can do something quick, kid, there’s a chance. They still got the shame of men inside of ’em. They’ll fight if they’re crowded into it.”

  “Can they hold off a week?”

  “Not more than three d
ays. They’ll bust loose on me almost anytime. Muldoon lies and swears and promises, but he ain’t got any heart in what he says, and they can see that he’s only talking through his hat. Kid, you sent for me. Do you find things right at Montague’s place?”

  “They figure that they got you cooked, and salted, and buttered for swallowing!”

  “They got reason for that idea, too.”

  “They’re going to start for you some break of day.”

  “The house?”

  “They’ll not tackle the house, they say. Jimmy has a better idea. They’ll slide in and get the heads of the passes between the hills, and then they’ll bag your gents as they come in off of the range.”

  The rancher exclaimed in surprise. “Aye, that’s an idea,” he said.

  “You could stop that.”

  “Sure. By keeping a boy on the top of the Black Hills, day and night, to send out smoke or fire signals to call in the men. But even then, they’d be between us and the house.”

  “They can’t do a thing to you. Scatter your gents in the rocks and the brush, and the Montagues will never run you out into the open.”

  The colonel sighed. “I wish I could have you for that time,” he said.

  “You’ll have me for that time, I hope,” said the boy. “There’s only one thing that keeps me hanging about the Montague place, and that’s my own business.”

  “Your own business?” echoed the colonel.

  “Why, it’s a sort of a little matter about a dead man. That’s all there is to it.”

  The colonel hesitated. But his own affairs were too pressingly important to allow him to diverge from them for any length of time. He said, “What day, kid?”

  “I dunno. Pronto, though.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It cuts me short,” said the colonel bitterly. “But I’ll do what I can. I’ll stand the watch myself till morning.”