The Winged Horse

by Max Brand

  And, at that last hope, the heart of the Lamb rose in him. He took from his pocket an old envelope, opened it, and made a tracing of the shoe. So perfect was the imprint in the rock that the tracery came out clear and perfect, also. He folded the envelope, so that the tracery might be on the inside of it, and then he carefully restored it to his pocket.

  He continued to clear away the snow, but he found nothing else of importance. Here and there the surface of the yielding soapstone seemed to have been scarred, but he could not find anything that could be called a distinguishing mark.

  When he determined that it was useless to hunt here any longer for sign, he took the trouble to shovel the snow roughly back in place, with the assurance that the present downfall would soon cover all the remaining signs of his presence at the spot.

  That was an item of some importance, for the murderer might still live near—he might even be on the Montague place. And, if that were the case, a morbid curiosity would perhaps bring him back to the spot again and again. What if the man returned and found such evidence?

  The Lamb remounted the black stallion and rode out from the trees, turning up the valley. He went on until he came to the spot at which he had left the woods, after lighting and extinguishing the fires. Then he left the stallion and climbed up to the site of the fires, for he was reasonably sure that it was there he last had looked at his watch, and it was there he might find it again, in the snow.

  In the clearing, the snow had covered everything over with a fine, thick powder. It was very dry with cold. A mere breath lifted it into the air again. And through this he scuffed about here and there.

  In a few moments, he began to realize that it was a hopeless task. And he retired to the side of the clearing, like an actor from the center of the stage, in order to think for a moment, and make some sort of a plan, if he could, before resuming the search. To go over the snow inch by inch would take hours. Perhaps even then the search would fail, for he could not be sure that he actually had lost the timepiece here. He must remember when he looked at it last.

  He sighed. Like most thoughtful men, he looked down, and upon the crisp surface of the snow at his feet he saw a neat little round impression. It was the very size of his lost watch. And if a watch were dropped here, just such an impression it would be apt to make upon the crusted surface, for here the thickly spreading branches of the pine tree sheltered the ground from any precipitation, except that which might be blown or drifted beneath it. And the windless fall of this morning fluttered straight down to the ground.

  He leaned to peer at the spot, and then, just behind it, he saw something glittering in the dull morning light even more brightly than the crystals of the snow surface. He touched them, and prickles of sharp glass came away, clinging to his fingertip. Then, greatly excited, he swept into his palm all the broken shards that he could find. One fragment was a quarter of an inch wide and from this he could make sure that it was in fact a watch crystal.

  This was beyond any human doubt a relic of his watch, and yet he could have sworn that nothing he had done could have broken the timepiece. Certainly a fall into the snow would not have been sufficient.

  There was a footprint not a foot from the spot where the watch had fallen. He made one of his own beside it, and instantly his heart leaped into his throat, half choking him. For that footmark was not his own. It was a shorter shoe, a broader toe, a heavier heel that had driven into the snow here. And, in that instant, the Lamb knew that he had been followed to this spot, and that his watch must surely have been found, and broken, and carried away.

  He went sick with the knowledge of it, for he understood most surely that the bearer of that watch could easily learn from it his identity—the identity of the Lamb himself. And once that was known, perhaps the Montague Ranch would be no safer to him than a den of rattlesnakes.

  He stumbled down to the edge of the trees, and the sight of the black horse was more to him than a safe conduct signed by a king or twenty sheriffs of the Wild West. For the stallion meant secure flight, and the whole panic-stricken heart of the Lamb yearned suddenly to swing into the saddle, and ride, and ride, in a straight line, away from the curse that lay on these mountains, and into some other region where the air was freer and purer. He even grasped the withers, sprang up to the saddle, and turned the head of the stallion away.

  And then he remembered. He remembered Colonel Loring’s fat, ugly face, and the invincible good humor of the rancher’s spirit, his courage, his gentleness, his peculiar wisdom. And he had devoted himself to that cause. But the other and the greater impulse that drew him back was the cause of Will Dunstan, who had been murdered, surely, there by the black rocks. So, fighting against himself, his better nature slowly conquering the worse, he turned the head of the big horse again.

  At this, the ears of the black flicked forward, as though he well knew the road toward him. He whinnied softly, and pressed at a half canter against the bit. The Lamb let him have his head. And forward they flew up the valley, with the clots of snow leaping up, and hanging for a moment like small white birds above their heads. The wind of that gallop made the falling snow whip at the face of the Lamb. This roused his blood, and it raised his heart, and so he came on a sweating horse into the stable yard of the Montague place.

  Ray Milligan, with his smiling lips and his bright, unsmiling eyes, met him. “Hey, where have you been this time of day, sleepy?”

  “Working some of the belly off of the horse,” the Lamb returned carelessly, and went on into the stable without looking back. But he did not like that question, nor the penetrating glance of Milligan that he could feel behind him, probing at his back.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Breakfast was a silent meal. The room was dark, for the windowpane was clotted with the light, newly fallen snow, and yet there was no lamp. There was no needless expenditure of oil in the house of Montague. So they ate in the dimness, consuming beans, porridge, hot cakes and molasses, coffee, and bacon. They had quantities of food. They devoured it in dark discontent, their eyes clouded with sleep, their faces bent over their plates, so that one looked up and down the table at a long double row of tousled heads. From them issued harsh, guttural voices, like the talk of Indians.

  “Gimme some salt.”

  “Sling the beans down this way.”

  “Chuck a lumpa bread across here.”

  They finished with an elbow on the table, a fist propped against a cheek bone, a tin cup of black coffee clutched in the other hand. This powerful nerve poison they took joyously, as a far-gone victim takes his cocaine. They felt the stimulant working in them, and they were roused, not to cheerfulness, but to angry interest in life and in the world about them. They glared at one another with baleful eyes. They snatched at the food before them. But like savage dogs that have felt the teeth of one another before, they kept their surliness within certain bounds.

  At the head of the table, old Monty Montague kept watch, looking here and there, drinking coffee, tasting no food, hating the others for their youth and their appetites, but glorying also in their strength, as in the sharpness of so many swords.

  Then in came the half-breed, Jack McGuire, and the old man scowled and smiled upon him at the same time. He was ashamed of having introduced bad blood into his household, but the qualities of the half-breed were so valuable, at times, that he would not have dreamed of sending him away. McGuire took a place, lowered his head a little more than the others, and began to feed with a wolfish rapidity. He was by far the last to sit down, but he was by no means the last to rise. And this quality also the head of the house admired with all his heart.

  But the last of the lingerers were finished, finally. The cook came and leaned in the doorway, with a wreath of evil-smelling kitchen smoke about him. “It’s clearin’ off,” he announced.

  “The coffee’s like mud,” answered old Montague.

  “Is it?” said the co
ok. He picked up the nearest cup from the table and swallowed the cold dregs he found in it. “That ain’t bad,” he said. “It’s too good for them, of course. But if you want better coffee, buy it. Fire and water won’t tell you lies about what it’s worth. Where’s the Lamb? He ain’t showed up.”

  “Are you givin’ me the news?” Montague asked. “Ain’t I been watchin’ for him?”

  “I ain’t gonna pamper nobody in this house,” said the cook. “I got my job to do. I’ve waited food for him before. This here is the last time, I tell you. I’m through with it!” He scooped up an armful of dishes from the table. And just at this strategic moment, the Lamb appeared. The cook glared at him, looked at Monty, and then he burst out, “You’re too late, kid. You get no chuck this mornin’.”

  “Aw, I didn’t come in for chuck,” the Lamb said.

  “Nor no coffee, neither.”

  “I can get along without coffee, too,” the Lamb said.

  “Then whatcha want here?”

  “I wanna have a chat with you,” the Lamb said.

  “The boys is turnin’ out for work,” said the other. “You could go and chat with them.”

  He grew more insolent, seeing that Montague made no remark during this dialogue.

  The Lamb made a cigarette in his usual dexterous manner, and sat down at his ease, crossing his legs as he lit the smoke. “The way a gent overloads his stomach is something terrible,” he said.

  “Aye,” said the cook grimly, “there ain’t any lie in what you say there.”

  “Look!” said the Lamb. He gestured toward the great platters that had been heaped and now were empty, and only streaked here with beans, there with cold bacon grease. “Enough chuck there to feed ten horses.”

  “If horses would eat meat,” said the cook.

  “They will,” the Lamb said.

  “What?” The cook paused, a great stack of dishes upon one arm, the other greasy fist planted upon his hip. “A horse eat meat?” he repeated challengingly, and he looked to old Montague, as though inviting him to be a witness to this absurdity.

  “I disremember where it was,” the Lamb began, “but there came a time when I was sort of tired of hearing the yammering and the chattering and the noise of folks, and I figured that I’d go off and have a time alone in the hills.”

  “The chatterin’ of guns didn’t have nothin’ to do with helpin’ you to make up your mind?” suggested the cook with a sour grin.

  “I disremember all the details,” the boy said with perfect good nature. “I tell you what. Sort of a longing to get away from the trails was on me. I hankered for still places more than a dog ever hankered after a bone.”

  “You might have tried a jail,” the sour cook said.

  “I did,” answered the Lamb, nodding genially.

  “Hey?”

  “I tried a jail, but there was a couple of doors with squeaking hinges in that there jail.”

  The cook was silent, grinning in pure expectancy now.

  “So I took off them doors, one night,” said the boy. “I figured on oiling ’em. But then I remembered that I didn’t have any oil. So I left the jail, and went out to get some oil. But it was late at night, and all the stores were closed. Doggone absent-minded, I am.”

  “Sure,” said the cook. He laughed. “I bet you forgot to come back to the jail, even.”

  “Well, sir,” the Lamb said, “you sure are a mind reader, partner. That’s exactly what happened. Which I dunno how you come to guess it.”

  “Was that the night your horse ate meat?”

  “Nope. I borrowed back my horse from the sheriff and took a ride off to sort of enjoy the cool look of the moon on the snow, because it was this time of the year. We went along for a couple of days …”

  “Enjoyin’ the moon, all the time?” put in the cook sagely.

  “And the silence. And pretty soon a couple of posses rode along to find out what for I’d took down them doors and not put ’em back? But I was in that kind of a frame of mind, I sure hated conversation. So I rode on. They give me an eight-day run, off and on. They came so close to me a couple of times that they scared the nap off of my hat. And I got right down low in food. There was plenty of water, or snow that would do for water, but there wasn’t much chuck, except a lot of jerked beef that I’d got off a rancher that was willing to loan it to me. And for three days I dined off of my belt, and tough chewing I found it. And I fed that horse, four times a day, little chunks of the dried meat. He was plumb skinny. His hips looked like the hips of a ten-year-old cow in February. But doggone me if he didn’t keep a lot of his strength.”

  “Is that a fact?” the cook murmured, his eyes staring.

  “There’s a couple of sheriffs that’ll tell you how that mare of mine come through the chase. They had some pretty close views of her … all from the rear.”

  “Damn my eyes!” cried the cook. “That’s the outbeatin’est thing I ever heard tell of.”

  “I thought you’d like to know about it,” the Lamb said. “Time might come along when you’d get tired of other gents and want to take a trip yourself and avoid all kind of talk, even with sheriffs.”

  The cook laughed deeply. “I dunno but I might,” he said. “That horse didn’t get sick, did he?”

  “No. And a delicate, highbred mare she was, at that.”

  “Aye, aye! It was her, was it?”

  “It was,” the Lamb said, and sighed. “But every horse and every man has gotta come to the end of the trail.”

  “They do,” agreed the cook grimly. “I remember even old Jeff Parker, he went down, at last. Him that I thought never would break or rust. Wait a minute till I hustle up some chuck and we’ll have breakfast together. You know Jeff Parker?”

  “Him? I was in the panhandle with him!”

  “You was there?”

  “Sure.”

  “At the time he fought Buck Marston?”

  “I was about fifty feet off.”

  “The dickens! I always thought there was nobody else there.”

  “Sure, they say that. I wasn’t writing for the newspapers in them days.”

  “I’ll be back in ten shakes!” cried the cook. “Wait a minute, kid! Doggone me if I wouldn’t pay a hundred in gold to hear the facts about that fight.” Then he disappeared, the kitchen door slamming after him as a great clattering of pans began in the kitchen.

  Montague asked, “You really was a friend of Parker?”

  “I never heard of him before.”

  Monty smiled, and the Lamb smiled back, and a sweet understanding passed between the two of them.

  “He’ll carve you up small, if he finds out you’re lying,” Montague commented.

  “A man can’t live forever … not even Jeff Parker,” said the Lamb.

  And the old man laughed in his rasping way. “You was put together so’s you could have your own way … even into a snake’s hole,” he said. “I’m glad that I got you here with us.”

  “Thanks,” said the Lamb.

  Then the patriarch leaned across the table. “But if you was to try to outsmart me, son,” he said, “heaven help you, because no man would be of much use to you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  As the cook had announced, the sky had cleared. After the rather involuntary breakfast, the Lamb walked out into a dazzling world. There was not air enough to flutter away the snow that his walking knocked up. There was not air enough to make the tips of the pine trees tremble. It was not the wind but their own weight that caused little streams of crystal fineness to slip from the loaded branches and glimmer to the ground.

  The Lamb’s step was silent, as though he moved upon feathers. Or at the most, there was only the faintest of whispers as he strode forward.

  A very pleasant and bright day it was. To look down into the level floor of the valley w
as to be blinded with the reflected light. And even the forest was seamed and streaked with gashes of the most startling white. Snow was king. It threatened to heap over everything in another day. The cook was beginning to shovel out a great trench behind the kitchen door.

  The Lamb drank in this cheerfulness with head thrown high and with eyes almost closed, but he kept moving at a brisk pace, for the cold was extreme. His breath came forth as white clouds of steam, which almost instantly was converted into a haze of suspended ice crystals. Moving briskly, he came out through the trees at almost the same point where he had met and talked with Louise Patten before, and here he found her again, and His Lordship, leaping and floundering through the snow.

  He warned her hastily, “You’d better take him in. This cold will get at his lungs, most likely.”

  “I’m only giving him a breath of air. I’ll take him in before the cold drives into him,” she said. “It’s a lovely morning.”

  She glowed with beauty and high health. The Lamb turned in beside her, and they went on a few steps, with His Lordship diving through the drifts and plunging above them like a porpoise gamboling before the prow of a ship.

  The Lamb began to feel absurdly happy and wonderfully alone with her. He had a strong sense of possession, of superior age, of vaster experience. He wanted to kick the snow from before her and clear her way. He wanted to help her over the inequalities of the path. Then he knew, suddenly, that he was in love, and that admission passed through him warmly, and with a sudden weakness, so that he felt his strength was disintegrating. He swore beneath his breath, and looked up to find her regarding him gravely. He apologized.