The Winged Horse
Page 24
“And now, you dog,” said Jimmy. “There’s one minute of whiskey and honey left to me. I’m gonna wring your heart out. You hear me, you sneakin’ spy? I killed Will Dunstan, if that’s what you want to know. I bashed out his brains. And I seen him tumble like a sheep out of the saddle. Now, here’s for you.”
He rushed eagerly in, laughing drunkenly, and the Lamb laughed, also, if such snarling could be called laughter. Straight in at the lunging giant he sprang. The spat of his fists on the face of Jimmy was like the clapping of open palms. Then, Montague stumbled. And his gasp had more bewilderment than pain in it. He lunged, and the blinding, hard fists of the Lamb were in his eyes.
“Damn, it ain’t possible,” Jimmy gasped, and dropped to his knees as a straightly driven right found his chin.
But he had power still. He came to his feet, with a ragged rock in his fist, and lunged forward, and it was at that instant that little Shorty rose from behind the rearmost screen of rocks and fired. Jimmy wandered two aimless paces forward, and then slumped upon his face.
They turned him face upward. Both his hands were knotted in the last convulsion, and the Lamb turned savagely upon Shorty.
“Bad luck to you!” he cried angrily. “That was due to me.”
Epilogue
But there was no bad luck for Shorty. There was no bad luck for any of Loring’s men. They had not received a scratch in this fracas. Most mysteriously, there was not a dead man among the forces of the Montagues. But afterward, their name faded from the range. They were heard of no more. Except that Monty Montague, dead of a broken heart, as men said, was buried with honors in the town, and speeches were made over him.
For the rest, Colonel Loring suddenly prospered. His herds miraculously increased, but remarks about that miracle were the most unpopular words that could be spoken, and the least safe.
The law—what law there was—asked no questions. And men were chary of expressing their opinions, also. It was not safe, while Colonel Loring sat enthroned among the hills. Particularly it was not safe while one Alfred Dunstan, alias the Lamb—and alias many another famous name—ran his cows with the cows of the colonel, sat at the colonel’s Sunday table, built his house upon ground donated by the colonel’s large heart, and named his first son after that kind and ugly man.
Louise insisted upon that.
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 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, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world.