by Max Brand
“I’ve been used to sashaying around mostly with horses and mules,” said the Lamb. “Out here in this part of the world, the animals wouldn’t understand you were talking at all, if you didn’t cuss a little. So it gets into your brain, y’understand?”
She nodded. She understood perfectly. But why should he swear now? At the snow?
“At myself,” said the Lamb, “for being more foolish than a six-month-old calf. Here I am walking along with you in the top of the morning and getting dizzier than measles and jaundice rolled together.”
“About what?” she asked. “Is the snow bothering your eyes?”
“You bother my eyes,” said the Lamb bluntly. She looked straight at him, without answering. He continued to explain. “I get taken this way, once in a while. It don’t mean anything. I’m harmless. Usually I don’t even talk about it. But for a couple of nights it keeps me awake, and gets me moony in the daytime. A miserable feeling it is.”
She was as grave as could be. “I’ve heard that it is,” she said.
“You never was in love?” he asked impersonally.
“No. Not really.”
“It’s a cross,” he said, “between seasickness and a pitching horse, when he fishes for the sun, and your heart jumps higher than the horse wants to go. Food doesn’t have any taste. A gent feels like the way that a cow sounds when her calf has been fetched away from her and turned into veal.”
Louise Patten, listening to this singular exposition, laughed and nodded.
“You don’t mind me talking?” he asked.
“No. Not a bit,” she said. “I’ll never hear another man talk like this, I know.”
“You won’t,” he agreed with her. “Mostly they’re took sudden … cowpunchers. But they take themselves pretty serious. They begin to propose. Sometimes I’ve known it to last out more’n a week of miserableness. There isn’t anything more foolish than love.”
“I don’t suppose there is,” she said.
“There isn’t,” he insisted needlessly. “There’ll be a spell now for a few days when thinking about you will plumb make me ache, and every minute I’ll have you in the back of my mind. Unless I can talk you out.”
“No doubt you can,” she said, and she smiled at him with such a friendly manner that the Lamb gasped. His grim face contorted.
“Don’t do that ag’in,” he said.
“What?” she asked him, perturbed.
“It’s like this,” he explained to her carefully. “A girl looks pretty mysterious and high-in-the-air to a puncher. There is no more writing on her face than there is on the face of a stone, and so, a poor cowboy, he turns her out dressed up in his best ideas. Look at me. I’m spraining my eyes and my brain to look high enough up to see you, and the next minute I’m on the edge of asking you in to work in my kitchen, and roll biscuits for me, and patch my duds, and all of that. There isn’t any sense in a man, when he’s taken this way. But it’s a sort of a fever.”
“Is it?” she said as one willing to be instructed.
“It is,” he repeated. “Thank goodness that the crisis comes pretty quick and the temperature goes down with a slam. Whiskey is a pretty good way of breaking it. Whiskey has cured a lot of colds and love affairs for me, only that here on this job I can’t drink. All I can do is to talk. If you don’t mind?”
She laughed cheerfully at him. “Every cowpuncher under sixty,” she said, “doesn’t feel polite unless he asks a girl to marry him. It’s his way of making conversation.”
The Lamb stopped and touched her arm. “D’you think that this is conversation?” he asked her darkly.
Her eyes opened a little at him. “Oh no,” she said. And she repeated it breathlessly. “Oh no! I don’t think that about you.”
He resumed his walk beside her. “I’m glad you don’t,” he said. “Because we’d better leave action out and stick to words. Suppose we change the subject. There’s the barn. Let’s go in and speak to the horse.”
She went obediently beside him, and this ready yielding to his suggestion caused the heart of the Lamb to soften more than before. He was aware of a decided shortness of breath, and an odd unsteadiness of lip, so that he grinned like an idiot at nothingness.
They reached the stall of the black stallion. He was at his manger, burrowing his head into a great feed of hay, but at the first word of his new master, he whirled lightly about.
“Great heavens,” said the girl, “what a cat he is on his feet.”
“Keep back your dog, or he’ll put a hoof through His Lordship.”
“Down,” said the girl. “Down, silly boy.”
The bull terrier sat down, with her hand upon his head, and he pricked his ears and canted his head wistfully to one side with a bull terrier’s own stupid hungering after trouble and after love. For the bull terrier is the knight of errant dogs. He is as useless as any knight in plate armor, and he is as glorious and as true.
“What have you done to that great black demon?” asked the girl as the stallion nibbled at the hand of the Lamb with tenderly mischievous eyes.
“Oh, I haven’t done a thing to him.”
“And yet you’ve made him safe?”
“Why, safe enough for me.”
“I don’t think that he’d hurt a soul,” she said, and straightway she laid her hand between the stallion’s eyes.
“Great guns,” breathed the Lamb, and struck her arm away just as the great teeth of the horse flashed and clicked like a steel machine.
“It’s only for you, then?” asked the girl. She had not changed color. She merely seemed curious and interested by this display of tigerish ferocity.
The Lamb took her hand in his, and held it to the muzzle of the stallion. “This isn’t an apple, you old fool,” he said. “This here is a friend. Understand?”
With flattened ears, with flaring nostrils, the great horse sniffed. Then he turned with a jerk of his head and went back to his hay.
“We’ll try again, later on,” said the Lamb. “The old fellow is mean today.”
“But he loves you,” the girl said, and she smiled at him with melting eyes.
“He’s only a horse,” the Lamb said brusquely to her.
He led the way out of the stable, gloomy, preoccupied. For he felt that her gentle ways, and her friendly manner, and the intimate trust of her glance were by no means making his way an easy one. However, he hardly could teach her how she should treat him.
He determined to go back to the house at once, and so he would have done, had not His Lordship, at that unlucky instant, sighted something in the snow—or was it only a flurry in the snow itself, at the verge of the ledge? Away he went with a shrilling yelp, a white thunderbolt.
On the verge of the danger he swerved and tried to save himself, but the stiff crust of the day before now was replaced with a stuff as unstable as feathers. That light surface snow gave instantly beneath him, and His Lordship toppled over the edge of the cliff and disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The girl did not cry out, but she ran like a deer for the edge of the cliff. The Lamb passed her, and he had to dig his heels to keep from being thrust over the edge by his own impetus. He saw beneath him a dizzy drop—not a sheer fall, but a gradual outward swoop of twenty feet. At the bottom of this, the cliff face dropped in a straight line to boulders beneath, and close to the beginning of the vertical drop the terrier, in brave silence, was digging furiously at the snow, fighting for his life, though all the time he was gradually slipping back toward the fall. The Lamb heard a moan from the girl beside him, and he looked suddenly at her—a grim, piercing glance at her helpless grief and wonder.
Then action followed more swiftly than words. The Lamb smashed away the rim of the snow with his heel, and, dropping suddenly, he clung by his hands to the rocky ledge that he had uncovered. The girl had cried out above
him, urging him in a piercing voice to come back. But he threw one glance over his shoulder and then launched himself down the slope. Fifteen feet below him there was an bush jutting outward, and at this he aimed, digging in with hands and toes to slow up his motion.
Yet it was impossible to retard his slide greatly, for the loose surface snow yielded and scooped away beneath him. Worst of all, a smother of white rose before his face, blinded him. Through that cloud, he clutched with both hands, and suddenly his grip was fixed upon the bush. The pull of the right hand ripped away the branch that he held, and the left-hand branch ripped, gave, but then held precariously, while he dangled from beneath the waist over emptiness.
He heard the cry of the girl, relief, and a sickness of terror, half choking her. She would go for a rope … but the dog would be lost long before that time could come. The Lamb drew himself up gingerly, then slued his whole body to the side. In that manner, his left leg came within reach of the scrambling terrier and the dog’s digging forepaws instantly were upon it. A second later, it had scrambled over the man’s body and lay on the snow on the Lamb’s shoulder. It gave the side of his face a wet flurry of gratitude, then it lay with head depressed and tongue hanging out while the hammering of its heart kept jerking its ribs against the cheek of the man.
But they hung by the least sure of holds. Twice he freshened his hold upon the branch of the vine that had held, but twice he felt it slipping. The first violent pull had apparently snapped the tap root. Now the lateral roots were giving away slowly, steadily and he could hear them popping beneath the snow.
Into that snow he kicked with his toes and scraped with his hands, but he could not get a purchase. He listened and wondered why the girl had not cried out for help. Then there came a crunching in the snow above him, and the long, lithe shadow of a rope dropped over his head.
“Find a rock,” he gasped to her, “and get a purchase on it.”
She disappeared behind the ledge. Then, “Ready!” rang her voice down at him.
He passed the rope under his shoulders at the same moment that the bush at last gave way and slid down beneath him. The bull terrier was firmly astraddle of his neck. And in five seconds he had climbed up the rope, hand over hand, and saw His Lordship leap wildly into the arms of his mistress.
The Lamb, grown oddly weak and shaky, disentangled himself from the rope and automatically began to coil it. Tiny black spots swarmed before his eyes. The snow surface rose and fell like waves at sea, and all the tall pines were in motion.
A hand took his arm firmly. “You’d better come over with me,” said the voice of the girl.
But he could only see a dim silhouette of her, as though they were standing in the thickest midnight. He followed obediently. Then she pushed him down on the stump of a tree.
“I’ll have some men here in a minute to help you into the house,” she began.
“Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “I’ll be all right again in a second. I’m mighty sorry. It never happened to me before. It’s this here cold air, I guess,” the Lamb apologized. Then a red-hot wave of shame went over him. Suddenly he could see, and as his senses came back to him, he knew that he had been reeling back and forth, swaying even as he sat on the stump. The mist was snatched from before his eyes and he could see the girl. Crimson painted the face of the Lamb—a deep, hot crimson.
“I got a little dizzy,” he finally said.
“Of course you did,” said the girl.
He stood up. Agony possessed him. “You’ll think I’m a pretty poor kind of a gent,” he said. “Getting shaky like this. I dunno what happened. I … maybe there’s something wrong with my insides … Well, so long.” He started for the barn door, cursing his knees, for they sagged dreadfully, trying to hold his head high. But the girl came beside him swiftly. “I’m gonna be all right,” he told her.
“Of course you are,” she said. “You’d better come to the house with me.”
“Nope. I’ll be all right. Must’ve pulled a ligament … seem sort of lame and …”
Oh, a poor lie was that to excuse the manner in which he was reeling. She drew his right arm over her shoulders, and when he looked down, he saw that her face was stern—or was it sheer disgust?
“You’ll come straight to the house!” she commanded.
He started to withdraw the arm of which she had taken possession, but discovered that he could not do so. She mastered him with her child’s strength. And when he drew away, his muscles twitched oddly and refused to react.
“You’ll come straight to the house,” she repeated.
He could not resist. She was drawing him forward, and he gasped in the agony of his heart, “Don’t do it. Lord knows I deserve it … but if a man was to see me like this. Lemme get to the barn … I’m pretty near finished. Help me to the barn … and then laugh at me. I’m a sack of bran … I’m no good … but don’t let the gents see me.”
“Ah, is that it?” he heard her murmur.
She was bringing him steadily on toward the barn. She put an arm around him, and his weight lopped down onto her shoulders and his knees gave sickeningly.
Then the sweet, warm air of the barn was about him. They passed a narrow door, and she lowered him toward a pile of sacks. Heavily he fell upon it, inert.
“All right, thanks,” said the Lamb.
She darted away, but she was back again while he still lay stretched in a strange valley of shadow that closed over his head and rose and closed again. She raised his head in the circle of her arm. The bull terrier licked his face assiduously and yet he had not the energy to push the dog away. Women, and even dogs, could pity him, now.
Suddenly he wished with all his might that the bush had not held, but that he had dropped to swift destruction before the eyes of man or beast should have seen him in this pitiable condition, but he could not resist the arm that supported his head. Against his lips the mouth of a flask was pressed, and stinging brandy flowed hurriedly down his throat. He coughed, shook his head, and lay back against the side of the big feed box. He closed his eyes, then, for he did not wish to see her face; he could only wonder that she disguised her contempt for him so perfectly.
“Are you a little better?”
“I’m gonna be all right,” he told her.
“I’ll open your shirt.”
“No,” he said.
Her quick fingers already had performed the task. He heard her cry out sharply, then she was silent.
At last he said, “I’m well enough, now. That brandy … that’s the stuff. I wish you’d let me be, now. My gosh,” murmured the Lamb, “I never knew I was a yellow dog.”
And the greatness of his horror made him open his eyes and look up into her face. She was white, and her eyes stared wildly back at him, but she was shaking her head and trying to smile at his words.
“You don’t understand, but I do,” she said. “It’s the shock that’s upset you. You’ll be as well as ever in five minutes. Your pulse is a lot better now.” Aye, she was holding his wrist with cool fingers. “The shock,” she said. “That was it. I’ve seen it happen before. Are you afraid that I think you’re a coward? You?” She laughed, and the laughter broke. “Ask His Lordship,” she said. “He’ll tell you.”
The terrier, hearing his name, pressed in between them and licked the face of the Lamb, then whined, as though eager to be of use.
The Lamb reached for the brandy flask, and drank from it again. It gave a quick, hot strength all through his body, and he thrust himself up to a sitting posture on arms that were suddenly restored to vigor. “You’re making things easy for me,” he said.
“Do you doubt that I’ve never seen a man do such a thing?” she cried at him. “Or a man that would dream of such a thing, even? Except one man alone … and why do you wear his picture around your neck? Ah, will you tell me that?”
He fumbled at his breast and nec
k until his fingers touched a thin chain and down the chain to a small locket. True—she had opened his shirt to give him air, and all at once the last weakness was stripped from him. He rose to his feet and faced her grimly.
“You knew the face, eh?” he asked her.
“It’s the face of Will Dunstan,” she told him.
“Go up to the house and tell ’em that you found me wearing this picture of him. There’ll be someone there that’ll be interested, I’m thinking.”
“I’ve been here these weeks that have seemed like years,” she said, “trying to find out how it was that he lay where they found him. If you are his friend, do you think that I’d be able to breathe a word of it? But what was he to you?”
“My brother,” the Lamb said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
She looked at him with bewilderment, with utter astonishment, and then with a flush of pleasure.
“You are Will’s brother?”
“You wouldn’t think it,” he admitted, “by the look of me. I never had any face like Will’s, and what I’ve had, has been shot crooked by kind friends. And now that we’re talking, what were you to Will?”
She hesitated, her eyes wandering a little.
“Will was fond of you, eh?” he asked her sharply. She nodded. “And you of him?” he persisted.
“And I of him,” she said softly. “But … differently. He wasn’t very old, you know.”
“And how old are you?” he asked her harshly.
“I’m twenty,” she said.
“As old as that?” he asked her almost sourly.
“Yes. Nearly as old as Will.”
“Older,” he said.
“He was twenty-one,” she said.
“He was nineteen,” said the brother.
“But he told me …”
“He lied to you. He knew that you wouldn’t be doing any cradle robbing, so he lied to you.”
She stared at him. “You couldn’t be wrong, of course,” she admitted.
“About him?” He laughed fiercely. “I couldn’t be wrong about him.”
