by Max Brand
She was silent, watching him, for it was plain that his mind was deep in the past, working here and there like a mole, underground.
“He was like brother and son to me,” said the Lamb. “I was his mother, and I was his father.”
“And how old are you?” she quickly asked.
“I’m old enough,” he said. “I got wages when I was twelve … I kept the kid in school.” At this, her eyes filled with tears, but he said to her harshly, “What difference did it make about me? Why, no difference at all. I was headed wrong from the start. Window-busting and nose-punching was my idea of a party since the time I could crawl. There wasn’t any good in me. So why shouldn’t I hit the range and have my fun?”
She wiped her eyes. Then, with her lips steadier, she watched him again rather dimly, as though she were seeing something with her mind’s eye, other than his face.
“He went to school. He did fine … maybe you disremember how slick he could talk?” asked the Lamb.
“No, no.”
“As slick as you,” the Lamb said defiantly.
“He knew a thousand times more than I.”
“He was gonna start college last fall,” the Lamb said thoughtfully. “That was what I’d got him up to. College!” He added, “There’ve been Dunstans in college before. Me, I’m the wrong one. I never did any good with books. I never cottoned to ’em none. But the kid was different. He took to ’em like a calf to bunch grass. You’ve never seen anything like it. The way he’d eat up a book, I mean. He could tell ’em out to you by the hour, what he knew. I used to listen. It didn’t hurt any to listen to the kid when he was talking, did it?”
“No,” said the girl, still looking past him, as though there was another person in the room.
“I got him up and ready for college,” said the Lamb. “I kept him out of the West and off the range. When he was in high school, he used to be writing me letters … he wondered how could I make so much money out of the little bunch of cows that I had.” The Lamb laughed.
“And how could you? Enough to keep a boy in school … no matter how poorly.”
“Poorly?” the Lamb cried savagely. “There wasn’t nothing poor about the way that he was turned out. I’m telling you that he was done up proper. He was slicked out in fine togs. He had about five suits, I mean to say, and a horse that was a high-stepper … you would’ve laughed to see how fine he looked on a horse. You’ve never seen anything like it!”
“And you could manage all that?” she asked.
“Why not?” he snapped at her. “I was sashaying around the range. You pick up a good deal of cash out of poker games, now and then. And you pick up more sometimes, at the talking end of a Colt!” He scowled sternly at her. “I’m not a Sunday school superintendent,” he assured her. She nodded. “And the kid was my bank. I sent the cash to him. He used to live pretty prime, the kid did.” Then he sighed, remembering. “He was the captain of his football team … he was on the debating team. He was a streak of greased lightning to run. You’ve never seen anything like that, either. They used to write to me about him … I mean, his teachers. They used to write to me. One time his football coach wrote to me, too.” He rubbed his hands slowly together, laughing softly to himself. “So sometimes, I’d just run in on him. There never was anything that he wouldn’t drop when he saw me around. We were thick, is what I mean to say. We were that close together. You would’ve laughed to see him stand up and box with me, too. There wasn’t anything yellow about the kid. He used to wade into me and those big shoulders of his, they used to work and pump the gloves at me, I’ll tell a man!” His head thrown back, he dreamed joyously. “You would’ve laughed to see him. He’d work in and slam me on the jaw. That’s what he used to do.” He laughed, as he had advised her to do. “Once he slammed me right up ag’in’ the wall. He comes in quick and grabs me beneath the arms to hold me up. He says that he hopes he hasn’t hurt me.
“‘Stand away or I’ll knock your block off,’ I said to him. “And I did it, too. And he took it, too. He was that straight. He was that clean. There was no whimper in Will,” said the Lamb. Dexterously he jerked a cigarette together, lit it, inhaled, and then talked rapidly on, the smoke crowding from his mouth, from his nose.
“He would’ve made something in the ring,” the Lamb finally continued. “I thought of going in for the ring myself. It was big money. It was quick money. But suppose when the kid was a highfalutin doctor, or lawyer, or senator, or something like that … suppose that somebody had said … ‘Where did he get his start? Why, his brother was Al Dunstan, the prize fighter.’ That would’ve sounded pretty good, I guess not.” He paused, then said to her, “I’m sort of stringing this along.”
“I want to hear,” she whispered.
“I got him the money, and he never knew how I got it. I mean, that he never knew for a long time. Till a dirty rat, he got the lowdown on me, and he wrote to the kid just before last summer’s vacation, and the kid came right out, hardly waiting to pass his last examinations at the top of his class. He came sashaying out. He said to me … ‘Is it true that you’re the Doctor of Denver, and the Lonesome Kid of Nevada? Is it true that they call you Texas in Idaho, and Montana in Texas?’
“It took me quick and it took me hard, like getting a straight right to the wind, when you expect it at the head. I tried to lie, but I must’ve turned pretty green, because he sat down and looked at me, white, and sick, and still. Gosh …” said the Lamb, and closed his eyes.
After a moment, he continued, “The kid wouldn’t stand for anything. He would work for what he got. I pretty near went down on my knees to him. No, he was gonna work for a whole year, and when he’d got his year’s pay, then he’d start in for college. He wouldn’t use any spoiled money. It was spoiled if it was dug out of a poker game, y’understand?”
“Yes, yes,” whispered the girl.
“Well, he went to work. He wouldn’t work for me. He said that he would go off and work by himself, where he’d get no favors. That was the way he was. He was clean. He was a straight one,” the Lamb said.
“He was,” said the girl.
“If you had known him the way that I knew him,” said the Lamb, “you would’ve loved him, too.”
“I did love him,” said the girl.
“Aye, and did you, then?” the Lamb said gently. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’re right,” he said. “There isn’t anything but rightness about you. But I used to get letters from him. He used to tell me about the work, and about getting his share of spills from the broncs … a darn tough bronc it would’ve taken to drop him, though. And then he wrote to me about meeting up with a fine girl, by the name of Louise Patten. He wasn’t so hot about going back to college, then. He thought that maybe the best thing for him was to start to work and make a home. Y’understand?”
“Yes,” said the girl.
“But he didn’t make any home,” the Lamb said slowly. “No, and he didn’t go back to college, either. But he was to come to his finish lying on the rocks, dead. He was to come by his death by murder, if you know what I mean.”
She caught her breath. “You’ve thought that, too?”
“I’ve proved it,” the Lamb said quietly. “But the years of his life, they come to an end, like all men have got to come. Only sometimes it sort of seems to me like he might’ve had his chance to stand up before the world, and that I could’ve been out there in the crowd, nobody knowing, and heard what the folks had to say about him. But he never had any chance,” murmured the Lamb.
He was silent, and then he saw that tears were running down the face of the girl. “Aye,” the Lamb said gently, “I understand. I’m sorry that I made you cry for him.”
“Ah, no,” said the girl, “but for you.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
She left him, while he still was fumbling at the meaning that her last words might have held. Then he
hurried to the door of the barn with a strange lightness of heart, but she was gone from his sight, and he leaned against the edge of the door, looking down, partly in thought, partly to keep the glare of the brilliant snow out of his eyes.
Rain and snow-soaked, battered by long usage, the lower boards of the tread way that led up to the barn floor were a pulp, soft and impressionable, where the hoofs of every horse inside the barn had often been printed, but to the side the Lamb’s attention was now held by a larger print than ordinary—the big, round, deeply stamped mark of a shoe. After that first glance, all memory of Louise Patten was scattered from the brain of the Lamb.
He dropped upon his knees and took the envelope from his pocket. There was no doubt. That print was identical with the print of the horse that he had copied from the soapstone near the black rocks, and that horse was now in the barn!
What horse, then, could it be? He swore that he would examine the hoofs of every mustang on the place until he found the right one, and in the meantime he passed them in a steady drift before his eyes.
But here he was puzzled. Only the huge, sleek animals that Jimmy Montague rode could possibly have made such marks, but which one of them all had forehoofs so beautifully rounded? He gasped as the truth jumped into his mind, and, turning, he ran straight back to the box stall of the black stallion, entered, and made the big fellow put his forehoof upon the sheet. All doubt vanished as soon as he examined the print that had been made. It was the black that had made that sign!
And, at this, other thoughts instantly were brought in line with a dizzy speed of succession. For in those days, only Jimmy had ridden the black. Upon the stallion Jimmy must have been when that mark was made in the soapstone. But Jimmy was away from the house at that time. Away, certainly. Away from the house, and lurking for days in the hills like a wolf, ready to strike down his prey.
The sign could not have been made later, for had not Louise said that she remembered the season as that in which the leaves were falling, and the snows had begun? So by good fortune the crimson bit of leaf had been stamped into the stone to give a sign and a date to the act. The stallion had been there, and therefore, Jimmy, and the murder lay at his door.
The Lamb did not need genius to find a motive for the crime. For young Will Dunstan had simply showed his fondness for the girl, no doubt, and she had smiled back at the boy. That would have been enough for the young, brutal Montague.
The Lamb began to pace up and down. The day was long. And it would be dusk, perhaps, before Jimmy returned to the house at the end of his day’s work. Let it be the end of the long trail for Jimmy, forever and ever, and the end of this strange and twisted trail that the Lamb had followed, also.
He set his teeth as he thought of the time that must pass in between, and bitterly he resigned himself.
* * * * *
At the end of this day, out on the range, Jimmy Montague was following up the trail of a cow in the snow. Behind and beside the sign of the cow went the triple sign of three timber wolves, and Jimmy, and Jack McGuire with him, could see where she had paused, time and again, to make a stand and drive away her foes.
She was weakening. She had fallen on her knees here, and stumbled with a wide sprawl as she regained her feet, but still the gray wolves had not closed on her. As if knowing that she was doomed, they took their time, playing safe in spite of the gnawing hunger in their bellies.
They came to a steep slope, and here McGuire, leaning to study the sign, pointed significantly before them, as though to say that they would find the tragedy acted out on the far side of the knoll.
So they dismounted, and, walking softly together through the snow, they soon heard deep snarling blown down the wind toward them. Hats off, on their knees, they raised their heads above the rim of the hill and saw the three lobos tearing the remains of the cow. No word was spoken. The half-breed took the right-hand wolf, Montague the left. Their guns spoke at the same instant. Two howls cut the air. Two lobos lay twisting and snapping on the snow. The third raced for liberty, dodging like a snipe, and though the repeating rifles chattered at him, he was soon in a patch of brush.
They made no attempt to follow. They did not even put the wounded wolves out of their misery, but only making sure that the cold of the night would surely end both the stricken animals, they looked at one another with sneering smiles of agreement. For the half-breed loved the infliction of pain no more than did his master.
The blue dusk began to pool in the valley as they went back to the horses.
“My watch has stopped,” Jimmy said. “What time you got? No, I forgot. You wouldn’t be carryin’ a timepiece.”
McGuire said, “Lemme tell you something. There ain’t a better watch on the range than what I carry.”
Jimmy grinned at him. “Where you carry it? In your head?”
“Here!” cried the half-breed. And suddenly a thin gold watch lay in the palm of his hand.
The rancher looked at it in amazement, for it had the slim look of a Swiss case. “Lemme see,” he said.
“What for?” fenced the half-breed.
“I ain’t gonna eat it. Give it here.” Jimmy snatched the watch and turned it. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“In town,” McGuire answered.
“You lie,” answered Jimmy with easy assurance. “You lie, because there ain’t been a time in your life when you ever had a hundred and fifty bucks to sink into a watch.”
“A hundred and fifty!” gasped the half-breed. “They ain’t any watches that cost that much!”
The big man was staring at the face of the watch, and announced with satisfaction, “They make ’em for that price in Geneva, where this watch comes from. They make ’em to cost more, too. Who’d you stick up for this, eh?”
“Give it back to me,” McGuire said surlily. “I ain’t gonna answer no more of your questions.”
“Aw, I’ll give it back to you,” replied the big man mildly. “I ain’t gonna rob you. Only … you tell me.”
“I’ll tell you nothin’,” said the half-breed. “Give it back, Montague, will you? Hey, whatcha doin’ now?”
For Montague had cracked open the back of the case and was squinting at the inner panel. “A. D.,” he read. “Since when was your initials A. D., McGuire?”
“I got it for a girl of mine,” said the half-breed. “Them was her initials.”
“Say,” said the other, “you didn’t even know the price of it.”
“Sure I didn’t,” McGuire said, “if it’s worth a hundred and fifty. I got it secondhand.”
“Huh,” grunted Montague. “There ain’t any pawnbroker that don’t know what a Swiss movement is worth.”
“Ain’t there?” growled the other. “You know a lot, don’t you? You got pretty near all the information drifted into a corner of your lot.”
“Your girl went by the name of A. D., did she?”
“Alice … er … Dougherty, was her name.”
“Dougherty? And you give her a man’s watch?”
“It looked about the right size for her.”
“What did you do? Take it back from her?”
“She died,” McGuire said. “And her ma gave me back the watch to remember her by.”
“I never heard worse or more foolish lies,” Jimmy declared.
“I’ll take the watch, and you can keep your opinion,” said McGuire. “You can keep your opinion, and be hanged to it, and to you.”
“Watch the way you shoot off your mouth,” said the delicate Montague. “Or I’ll be knockin’ a few manners into you and a few teeth out.”
“Montague, do I get that watch?” demanded the half-breed.
Jimmy was suddenly thoughtful. “A. D.,” he said. “A. D. Doggone me if the other one ain’t got W. D. wrote into it.” He turned suddenly upon McGuire. “Will you come home with me and lemme show you this
here watch’s own full brother?” he asked.
“You got one like it?”
“I have.”
“That you paid a hundred and fifty bucks for?” The eyes of the half-breed glimmered with curiosity and greed.
“I paid for mine what you paid for yours, maybe,” said the big man. “That was nothin’ at all. I just picked it up. Where did you pick up this?”
“I’m done talkin’ to you about it. Pass it over, is all I gotta say.”
“You chump,” said the big man. “Am I gonna rob you?”
“I ain’t trustin’ nobody with a hundred-and-fifty-buck watch,” McGuire said stoutly.
“We’ll go down together,” Jimmy said. “If this here watch is what I begin to get an idea of … why, I’ll pay you a hundred spot cash for it.”
The hesitation of McGuire vanished, under the strong heat of this temptation.
“It’s time to go back, anyway,” he argued. “It’s close on to suppertime.”
So they turned the heads of their horses back down the valley and jogged them patiently, steadily through the snow toward the ranch house, curved up onto the road, and then entered across the bridge. In the stable, they unsaddled together.
The tall, lithe form of the Lamb appeared among the shadows.
“I’d like to have a couple of words with you, Jimmy,” he said.
“About what?” Montague barked, dragging off his saddle.
“Something pretty important.”
“Important to who?”
“Why … maybe to both of us,” said the boy.
“I’m busy,” Jimmy answered gruffly.
“It’d take only a second,” urged the Lamb.
“I’ll give you a second later on. Come on, Jack!” They walked out of the stable together, and at the door McGuire looked over his shoulder with a slight shudder.
“Looked like he was gonna stop you,” he confided to the big man. “Doggone me … he makes me get gooseflesh. He’s a queer one, that fellow.”
