by Max Brand
He had taken a step or two, with a gloomy feeling that all his mission was a failure, and that he would be able to report little or nothing to the man who had hired him for this extraordinary mission, when the voice of the boy called out sharply behind him. He turned about with a feigned reluctance.
“Well?” he said.
“I don’t think you’re entirely fair, Father,” said the boy.
“If you know better than I do,” said the other with his usual air of almost sleepy indifference, “make up your mind to please yourself.”
“This is the man,” said Oliver Crosson slowly, “who turned loose Birdcatcher after he was caught in the trap.”
“If a trapper turned a wolf loose,” said the old man, “it shows that he’s aiming to catch something bigger than wolves . . . men, likely.”
“Are you?” asked the boy point-blank.
He was naïve, but he was most decidedly dangerous. There seemed just enough humanity in him to temper a natural ferocity.
“I’d like to know,” said Ranger, “what I have to gain out of you . . . either of you or both of you? Have you got a private gold mine? Can you make rain? What’s in the pair of you that anybody should want to be stealing?”
“Do you hear that?” asked old Peter Crosson.
“I hear,” said the boy.
“Does it sound all right to you?”
“Yes, it sounds all right.”
“Well, it’s not all right, and don’t you forget it!”
“Tell me why,” said the youth. “You just say so. You don’t give me any proof.”
“The fish doesn’t have any proof that the worm’s unnatural,” said the old man. “Not till the hook is through his jaw. He finds out the truth, and he fries for it later on.”
“Humph!” said the boy.
He sat with his chin in his hand, staring fixedly at Ranger. It was the stare of a wild animal, unashamed, curious, bold, terrible. Ranger, to save himself, could not answer the glance, for it seemed to him as though his very soul must be revealed if he allowed the inquiry of the boy to pierce the open windows of his mind.
“Well,” said Oliver Crosson, “I think that you’re wrong. Hello! There goes the Chief!”
The big wolf, as though his ears had caught some sound of the wind, leaped up and vanished among the trees with a scratching sound as his nails tore at the ground.
“One of those fool deer have got inside the grove again,” said the old man.
“No,” answered the boy. “It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
“Well, it’s a mountain lion, at least. Perhaps it’s a man.” As he said this he began a laugh, a merry, ringing, mischievous laugh.
“Oliver!” exclaimed the father abruptly.
“Yes, sir?”
“Stop that laughing. You give me chills and fever.”
“Yes, sir.” He was obediently silent.
“I suppose that you’d enjoy plaguing another robber out of the wood?”
“Well, perhaps I would,” said Oliver frankly. “The last two . . .” He laughed again, but subdued the laughter suddenly.
“One of them will come back,” said Peter Crosson. “One of them will come back. Perhaps both of them. And they’ll bring friends with them.”
“And perhaps their friends will be handled in the same way,” said the boy. His teeth clicked as he spoke.
“Aye, perhaps, perhaps,” answered the other, nodding at the water. “But the day will come when there’ll be more than two or three. There’ll be five or six. All of them armed men. All of them good with rifles. What will happen to you then?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you won’t know when the time of that visit comes, either. Because there’ll be a whang and a flash of fire, and that’ll be the end of your young life, Oliver!”
Oliver lifted his head and frowned at the distant sky, out of which the two birds were sweeping rapidly toward them. He nodded, as though he agreed with his father. “Why shouldn’t I have a rifle of my own, then?” he cried out suddenly. “Why not, after all?”
Peter Crosson jerked his head around from his fishing. His jaws were set hard for a moment, and then his lips parted to let out words that rang long in the brain of the trapper.
“Because there’s a curse on powder and lead, and on all who use ’em!” he exclaimed.
Chapter Sixteen
On the very heels of his speech there was the report of a rifle out of the more distant woods. Old Crosson lifted his head a little, listening with an apparent placidity. The boy, however, had thrown himself flat upon the ground, very much as though he had heard the bullet whistling past his ears and instinctively had flinched.
It was not mere fear, however, as the trapper could tell in another moment. The boy had his ear to the ground, listening, tense with concentration.
“A curse on powder and lead,” said the older Crosson slowly, and pulled another trout, a great flaming fellow, out of the waters of the creek.
Ranger stood by, saying nothing. After all, without words on his part, he was learning more than mere questions could probably have drawn from this strange pair.
Oliver Crosson sprang up to his feet from the earth, light as a feather. “You see?” he said. And he pointed toward the south. Out of it flew two wide-winged birds, and now it was plain that they were hawks.
“And what about the hawks in the grove?” asked the father calmly. “Is there only a pair of ’em, or more?”
“Oh, four or five . . . on horses,” said the boy. “We’d better start toward the house. You start on toward the house, and I’ll go to meet ’em.”
He was off with a leap into the brush, but his father called him back as, with perfect calm and slowness, he rose from his cross-legged position beside the creek. “You’ll stay here with me,” he said.
“They’re shooting at our wolves!” exclaimed the boy impatiently.
“Let ’em shoot at the wolves, before a strange wolf shoots at one of us. I’m not ready to have my bones gnawed white.” He looked grimly at Ranger as he spoke.
And the trapper said suddenly: “I’ll tell you what. In a pinch, I’ll promise to stand with you, if that’s any good.”
“In a pinch he’ll stand with us,” said the old man sardonically. “That’s a mighty lot of help. One rifle . . . against four or five.”
“I believe him,” said the boy. “Go on with him to the house. I’ll cut down the draw and head them off.”
“Stop!” cried out his father loudly. “You’ve met one and you’ve met two. You’ve never met four or five.”
“They’ll only be twice as hard, and that’s not too hard,” said the boy. His face was aflame with excitement and eagerness. Plainly he wanted nothing more than to join whatever excitement was in the air, yonder where the rifle had been fired.
“Twice as hard?” echoed the old man. “I tell you, one man is one, and two men are two, but four men are an army. One Indian could kill one white . . . one Indian could kill two whites . . . but four whites could run forty Indians ragged. Back to back, shoulder to shoulder, and the courage of companionship.” He paused and made a sweeping gesture. “Pick up the fish and come with me,” he concluded abruptly.
The youngster hesitated. Then he looked to Ranger like a hunting dog, but an invisible leash held him fast. Sullenly he scooped up the fish in their moss, and the three went on together. Out of the distance the long, wailing howl of a wolf came up through the trees and rang weirdly in their ears. Another, another, and another answered, until there was a chorus.
“Which are they?” asked the elder Crosson.
The boy, head high and eyes raised as he walked lightly along, seemed to be separating the sounds one from another.
“The yellow female and her son,” he said, “and Birdcatcher, of course, and Whitefoot and Skinny and Old Tom and . . .”
“If Old Tom is there,” said the senior Crosson, “he’ll keep the rest in proper cover. He�
�ll keep the rest in proper cover . . .”
Half a dozen shots fired in rapid succession now boomed through the woods.
In answer came the thin, high-drawn yell of a wolf.
“They’ve got one of them,” said the boy almost under his breath. He halted in mid-stride. His face was pale and set with anger. “I’m going after them!” he exclaimed.
“You’ll stay with me,” said Peter Crosson. He reached out and caught the boy by the arm. “You’ll stay with me,” he repeated.
Ranger suddenly, for the first time, stopped watching the boy and stared at the father. And there, plainly, he saw a mortal terror. Was it terror of the strangers? Perhaps—but even more probably, as it appeared to Ranger, there was terror for fear he should not be able to control the youngster. It startled the trapper, so completely had Peter Crosson seemed the master of the boy’s actions up to this moment.
In spite of the extended arm and the gripping hand of his father, Oliver Crosson did not stir to go on with them. His eyes were fixed upon his father’s face, but plainly his thoughts were leaping away toward the sound of the shooting and toward that wolf’s howl.
It came again now, high-pitched and wailing.
“No, not dead . . . not mortally hurt,” said Oliver Crosson, “but badly stung. They’ve put a bullet into him, but he’ll live. I’m going to meet them. I’m going to stop them. I’m going to hunt them as surely as they ever hunted dumb beasts.”
Suddenly Peter Crosson released his grasp and flung out an arm before him. “Run on to the house,” he said. “Run on. Get the axes ready. We have those, at least, if the pinch comes. Run on to the house and get everything ready. It must mean a fight.”
Oliver nodded, and away he went. There was only a flash of him in the eye of Ranger, and then he was gone, with long, bounding, noiseless strides.
Old Crosson immediately went forward with a shuffling run. His age showed there. He could not make fast progress with his stiff muscles and his brittle joints. Presently he fell to a walk. And Ranger remained beside him. He could not tell why he had chosen to keep with the old fellow instead of the young greyhound.
With head thrust forward and with set jaws, Crosson strode along, not speaking at first. But suddenly a muttering came from him: “This is the day. This is the day.”
“What day?” asked Ranger.
“Dead man’s day!” exclaimed the other. “Didn’t you hear it? Didn’t you hear the song of it in the air?”
“You mean the guns?” asked Ranger. “You know, wolves don’t make dead men even with bullets through ’em.”
Old Crosson turned an impatient eye toward him. “You’re like the rest,” he said. “You won’t understand . . . you won’t understand. They’ll rub him the wrong way. They’ll laugh at him . . . they’ll treat him like a fool, and then . . .” He paused and began a coughing fit so violent that it stopped his walking for an instant. Then he went hurrying forward.
Who was it that he feared they would laugh at? It could only be his son that he had in mind.
“I tell you,” said Ranger seriously, “I’ll stand by you to the end. I’ll help to keep him out of danger, if I can.”
“Keep him out of danger?” cried out old Crosson. “What does he live on? What does he breathe? Nothing but danger! Nothing but the air of it. Keep him out of danger? There’s no danger to him. There’s no particle of danger to him. Only to the others . . . to the fools! That’s just where the danger will strike.” He threw up both his hands. His long white beard, suddenly divided by a gust of wind, blew half over either shoulder, and he leaned to make better progress.
There was tragedy and mystery in the air, greater than appeared to the naked eye of Ranger. To be sure, he could guess that the gunshots in the wood came from armed riders who were invading the place on an errand of no good to the Crossons. It might very well be that Wully and Sam had returned with friends, as old Crosson had prophesied they would. That would seem to make the picture black enough, but something greater undoubtedly was in the mind of Peter Crosson.
“By heavens!” cried out Ranger. “It sounds like you were more afraid for the gents who are riding in here than for your boy!”
“Afraid for him? Why should I be afraid for him? They can’t harm him. Not with bullets . . . not with bullets.”
He groaned as he spoke, and a prickly sensation ran over the scalp of Ranger. Did this old fellow believe in spells of witchcraft, perhaps, that could turn leaden bullets, or steel-jacketed ones, for that matter?
“Then nothing can happen,” suggested Ranger.
“Ha! Nothing happen? They can lay the powder trail. No, it was laid before. The powder trail was laid long ago. Only the match hasn’t been touched to it. And they’ll touch the match today. They’ll set him on fire.”
He finished with another groan, and began to run again, panting heavily, his eyes rolling in his head. He looked as though he had drunk too much. Plainly he was in the grip of a great mental misery.
“Mind me,” said Ranger. “It’ll come out all right. They won’t use guns on men that haven’t any. Don’t worry about him.”
“Bah!” cried the old man. “What do I care for them, whoever they are? And the fools don’t know. They don’t understand.”
“They don’t understand what?”
“That if they set him on fire, he’ll explode. He’ll blow them to bits. The idiots are riding over a mine . . . over a mine. The trampling of their horses may be enough to blow them to smithereens . . . to blow them up into the sky. And they don’t know. They come right on.”
Ranger could say nothing for a moment. He could only decide that age had taken too great a hold upon the mind of his companion. At last he said: “Why did you send him on alone?”
“Because I had to give him something to do. That’s why. Couldn’t you see? He was bursting. He was going mad. The red was in his eyes. I had to give him something to do. I’ve had to do it before. I’ve had to keep his hands filled, his mind filled, or else . . .” He stopped once more. He was panting from his hurry, from his mental distress, and every pant was a groan. “They don’t know,” he said again breathlessly. “They’ll never dream. They can’t imagine what he is. No one can . . . not even his father.”
Mad, thought Ranger to himself. Utterly mad. The old man’s brain has turned. Turned long ago, and that’s why he’s kept the boy out here in the wilderness and given him a kennel for a home to live in. That’s the only real reason.
They were nearing the house now, and a fresh, strong chorus of howling broke from the throats of many wolves. A crashing of rifle fire answered the outbreak, but there was no yell of a dying wolf to echo the rifle fire.
“They’ve missed. The cunning devils are under cover. He would teach them that. He has taught them. He’s given them the brains of men and women. Oh, God help the people who teach him his strength.”
“Do you mean your own boy?” cried out the trapper, amazed and horrified.
“What else would I mean? Oh, the fools, the fools. But they don’t know him. They don’t know how he was born.”
Ranger stared wildly around him. He felt as though he were losing his own brains as he listened to the excited ravings of this old dweller in the wilderness.
“But how was he born?” he asked.
“You’ve seen him, and you ought to know,” came the unexpected answer.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ve seen him. It’s in his eyes.”
“He’s a little wild.”
“Wild? Oh, man, man . . . he was born with blood on his hands . . . blood enough to stain half the world.”
Chapter Seventeen
They came in view of the shack presently. And as they came up, out from the woods there burst a cavalcade of half a dozen riders. The very first face upon which the eyes of Ranger fell was that of Wully, the renegade, the outlaw, the yegg—a Wully very changed from that evening when he had snarled at the camp of Ranger. Now his face was sw
athed with bandages, and his clothes were rags, loosely sewed together. It was the forward thrust of his head that identified him, and, in addition to this, something vaguely brutal that distinguished him from other men.
He was enough to give Ranger concern, but he was not alone.
There were three other men along with him with the look of cavaliers of the wilderness about them. Unshaven, red-brown from the fierceness of the sun and the cut of the wind, erect in the saddle, wild of eye, they looked like beasts of prey to Ranger. He knew the type. He had seen it from Arizona in the south to Circle City in the north. And beasts of prey they were, making of other men their game and their profit.
The fifth rider, however, was apparently the leader of the crew. He was a man of middle age, at least. His pale mustaches, short-cropped as they were, had been sunburned so white that one could hardly tell whether they were gray from age or weather. He was very straight in the saddle. His cheeks were so sunken that his cheek bones thrust out and the corners of his mouth were drawn in a faint smile that seemed rather mockery than mirth.
He was as neat in his appearance as his companions were wildly ragged. Boots, long-tailed coat like a gambler, a neck scarf neatly wound and fastened with a jeweled pin, a wide-brimmed hat that kept his face continually in shadow—Ranger noticed these details, but most of all he paid heed to the hands. One was clad in a long-gauntleted glove of the thinnest doeskin, but the right hand, brown as a berry, was significantly bare. The left hand reined the horse. The right hand rested lightly upon the thigh of the rider, and close to that hand was the butt of a revolver, holstered at the side of the saddle.
Here was a man to command; here was a man of action. And here, in addition, was one man in a thousand, even where the roughest of the rough were concerned. Even this commander, however, engaged his attention less than the last of those who issued from the wood.
This was a girl, dressed almost exactly like the leader. Divided skirts of none too widely flowing pattern made the only distinction. She had the same pale-golden hair, the same cravat, the same pattern of boots, of coat. She was not twenty, but even youth and beauty could not cloud her obvious relationship to the man. He was older brother, or some relative; there could be no doubt. Her smile was not a mockery; her eye was a deeper and a brighter blue, but the likeness was very marked. Like him, she had one gloved hand. Like him, her bare, brown right hand was kept significantly close to the handle of the revolver.
