by Max Brand
“Aye.” The old man nodded.
“I’m hungry as a wolf,” said the boy.
The old man looked suddenly up to him. “Then why didn’t you eat . . . with the rest of the wolves, the rest of your pack?” said Crosson.
The boy stared at him. “Raw meat?” he asked, incredulous.
“Aye, you’ve had the taste of blood,” said old Crosson sternly.
Oliver Crosson looked down at his clothes, at his hands.
“Not on your hands, but in your heart,” said Peter Crosson.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The nerves of Ranger had been growing more and more tense, and now the weight upon them had increased almost to the breaking point, but there was not a word said to follow up the subject for some time. The fish were duly roasted. They were drawn forth from the coals, and they were eaten as they were.
There was no fork, no knife. There was a little cold pone, badly baked, soggy, and stale, to eat with it. There was, otherwise, not even salt. For drink, they had water from the brook, which the boy brought in a leather water bag and poured out into bark cups, which leaked in little streams upon their hands, upon their knees. It was primitive living—far surpassing what Ranger had seen among the Indians, and even the rigors of the Arctic trail, where a man makes his flapjack with baking powder, grease, and flour, fries it, and washes it down with bitter black coffee or blacker tea. The fish seemed tasteless to him at first.
But, afterward, he began to enjoy a delicate flavor that even salt would have rendered imperceptible, rather than to underline and increase. There was the gamy taste of the fish itself, the freshness, the juice of life. And into this was baked the flavor of the cress and leaves in which the fish had been wrapped. The charred coverings fell away, but they imparted some of their aroma and pungency to the flesh. Yes, such a meal was not bad, aside from the bread. And the sauce of the open air, of a keen appetite, brought a relish for simple fare.
“This is the way you eat, mostly?” he asked.
“Well, when the berries are in season . . .” said the boy in a matter-of-fact tone.
He lay back upon the pine needles suddenly, and stretched out his arms, crosswise. He was looking at the sky with steady, unwinking eyes.
And Ranger, glad of the chance, looked freely, steadily upon the lad. It was true. He never before had seen a human being who interested him so much, nor one from whom he had learned so much, either. What was in the lesson he could not exactly say, except that it had something to do with the virtue of living close to the ground, of the ground, of being one with the beasts of prey and the beasts of the field. That was the lesson—a lesson of communion with Nature, of the savagery and strength and mystery of Nature. He only guessed at these things. He could not really comprehend them.
Looking around, he had found the eyes of old Crosson fixed steadily upon him, and the dweller in the wilderness did not avoid the answering glance of question. Instead, he leaned a little forward and probed deeply into the eyes of Lefty Ranger.
The latter grew uneasy. He felt his lids parting wider. He grew nervous.
Then old Crosson sighed and suddenly averted his glance. “Oliver,” he said.
“Aye, Father?” said the boy, still looking at the sky.
“What have you done?”
There was no answer for a moment.
“Well,” said Oliver. “I waited inside the house until the two of them got off their horses and said that they were coming inside to hunt for me. Then I stepped beside the door. As they came in, and stood staring around, blinking like birds at the darkness of a cave, I hit one of them with my fist, there at the base of the neck, where an animal is easily stunned, there where the big tendons join to the base of the skull, and the brain is close. I struck him there, and he dropped on his face. The other one turned around. I lifted him up and choked him until his tongue stuck out and his face turned purple-black.
“Then I went out behind the house, because I thought they would soon be looked for, and it would be better not to have them found on the floor of the house. I thought of taking them to the creek and throwing them into the water. The current, tumbling them on the rocks, would soon have battered and killed them, as it sometimes batters and kills the fish at the cascades, during the spring freshets. But then I remembered that there should be no dead men on the trail. You often have said that, eh?”
Old Crosson looked not at the boy, but at Ranger, as though there was a meaning in those words worth some contemplation. “Well?” he coaxed.
“So I did not throw them into the creek. Instead, I took them out behind the house, one at a time. There were several of the pack there.”
“What did you do then?”
“You know how I’ve taught them to walk close together and carry the weight of a good log out of the woods and back to the house?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them do it for you.”
“I made them stand together. Then, I laid one body on their backs. You would have laughed.”
“At what?”
“Why, at the way they turned their heads and showed their teeth. I could see their throats swelling, too, but I made them keep from snarling, for fear the people back here in front of the house would hear. They went on with him lying on their backs, his body wriggling a little from side to side, but lying safely behind their big shoulders. I laughed. I nearly choked, seeing how they hated to carry him. And he lay like a dead man.”
“Do you know how a dead man looks?” asked Peter Crosson.
“I mean, his mouth was open, and his face was still swollen, and on his throat I could see the finger marks. But I knew that he would live. I had not driven home the thumbs, quite, into the hollow of the throat. He had frightened himself more than I’d hurt him.
“I took the other man over my back and walked after the wolves, taking care that I made no trail to follow for such eyes as those people would have. They would have had to lift the needles to find the weight where I had stepped. Then I got to a little distance. I tied them. I stopped their mouths with bark and withes. And I laid them in the avenue that points north, the easiest way back through the woods. I guessed that you would make a bargain, when the time came. That’s all.”
Old Crosson looked at Ranger, and Ranger, his eyes popping out, stared at the boy and at the half-smiling, half-grim face of the father. For Ranger had seen those two men. With neither of them would he have liked to fight out any battle. And here was a youngster who had handled them both, idly, easily. With a single blow he had stunned one of them. And the other? What was that about lifting the bulk of a weighty man from the ground and strangling him in the air? Ranger’s face became damp with sweat at the thought. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, but the shudder would not leave him.
“And then?” queried Peter Crosson.
“Well,” said the boy slowly, “this will make you angry.”
“Tell me.”
“As the wolves were carrying that man along, a revolver fell out of his clothes. I picked it up and was about to throw it into the brush, but somehow it stuck to my hand.” He stopped his narrative and whistled. A blue jay stooped from the nearby treetops and flashed close overhead.
“Throw it a bit of fish,” said the boy.
The father paid no heed to the request. “Go on,” he said.
“You told me never to take a gun,” said Oliver Crosson. “But that one stuck to my hand. It would not leave me. So I kept it. And afterward I went back to the edge of the woods, and there I found the gray wolf, watching a deer. She had run back to fetch me along. She had helped to carry the man for me.” He paused.
“You shot the deer?” said old Crosson suddenly.
The boy sighed. “Yes,” he said softly, “I shot the deer.”
“And you let the wolves eat it?”
“How did you guess that?” asked the boy, frowning at the sky.
“Because men don’t eat their own murders,” Peter Crosson said gloomily.
�
�Murder?” said the boy.
Peter Crosson in turn looked up to the sky. “Oh, God,” he whispered, “teach me what to do with him.”
“A deer by the knife, a deer by the bullet, what difference does it make?” asked Oliver.
“This difference,” said Peter Crosson, “as I’ve told you before. The man with the knife is risking his own life. He needs courage. He needs skill. He kills only to eat. But the man with the gun bends his finger and beckons the life away. He imitates God Almighty, for only God should have such power. He makes life cheap. And life should not be cheap . . . it should be sacred. You . . . today . . . the instant that a gun was in your hand, you took a life not for the sake of food, but for your own pleasure.” He raised a hand and added solemnly: “May God forgive you for it.”
The boy did not stir where he lay upon the ground. Only his forehead contracted, gradually, into a frown. And he said not a word; it was plain that he was thinking deep thoughts.
As for the lesson contained in this homily, it was far above the head of Ranger. Vaguely, dimly he reached for the truth, only to find it elusive.
Suddenly the boy sat up, his ear strained for a sound. “What was that?” he asked, half under his breath.
“What? I heard nothing,” said the father.
“Something gasping, something dying,” said the boy. He leaped to his feet.
Never had Ranger seen a man rise so lightly, so suddenly.
Then he pointed, and, as if the gesture conjured the form out of nothingness, into the clearing came the dragging form of the great black wolf that Ranger had seen before, and well noted. It was the king of the wolf pack, the master of them all, and now its life was plainly near an end.
The old man, unnoticing, his eyes half closed, went on speaking: “You have taken a life for pleasure. Blood calls for blood, in this bitter world.” Then he saw the wolf and paused.
Straight up to the feet of young Oliver Crosson came the big creature, and there slumped heavily to the ground. Oliver kneeled suddenly and took its head in his arms, and Ranger saw the wolf look up and its red tongue lick the face of the master. Then it quivered, and all its weight drooped. It was dead.
Oliver Crosson slowly, gently lowered the great head to the ground.
“Blood calls for blood,” he repeated.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Even to Lefty Ranger, there was something exciting in the words of the boy. But they fairly drove Peter Crosson frantic. He called out—“Oliver! Oliver!”—two or three times, but Oliver went on into the house without a word.
When he came out, he was carrying a single small roll, too thin to be a pack, thought Ranger, even for a man who intends to journey on foot, and yet obviously meant as an accommodation for a journey. Between two fingers, he blew a whistle that screeched up and down the valley, and in another moment there was an answer—the neigh of a horse. He did not whistle again, but soon a cream-colored mustang came swiftly out of the woods near the river’s edge and galloped straight up to him.
Oliver threw onto the back of the horse a battered old saddle, and began to arrange the pack behind it, tying it on with the straps.
The excitement of Peter Crosson grew with the passage of every moment. “Hold on, Oliver,” he insisted. “Hold on and listen to me, will you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Oliver. But, without pausing, he continued his operations.
“I tell you to stop!” cried Peter, his voice jumping suddenly up the scale, so that one could not help realizing that he was an old man.
“Yes, sir,” said Oliver.
But stop he would not.
“Oliver Crosson!” shouted the father.
“Yes, sir?”
“Turn around here to me!”
Oliver turned his head only, for his hands were busied with the work before them.
“Oliver, what’s in your mind?”
“I’m going to find him,” said Oliver.
“D’you mean that you’re going to find Chester Lyons?”
“I’m going to find him,” said Oliver.
“What for?”
For answer, Oliver pointed to the big body of the dead wolf. “For that,” he said.
“You’re going to murder him?” asked Peter Crosson.
“It’s turn for turn,” said Oliver.
Looking desperately about him, Peter Crosson’s glance fell upon Ranger, but there was no help in the blank eyes of the latter. “I’ll tell you something!” cried Peter Crosson. “If ever you do that . . . if ever you go on a man’s trail . . . you’ll never leave it till you’ve had his blood. And once you’ve tasted that, you’ll have no care for anything else in the world. I’ve known it these years. That’s why I’ve kept you here. D’you think that I’m a man to enjoy living alone in this blasted wilderness? I’ve kept you here and suffered for you. But now you throw away the work that I’ve done for you.”
“How do I throw it away?” asked the boy. “Do you mean to say that he doesn’t deserve anything that I can do to him . . . Chester Lyons, I mean?”
“You’re not the law, and you’re not the judge,” said the other. “You’re a fool, and you’re a young fool . . . which is the blackest kind that there is.”
It was enough to strike even Oliver silent.
Ranger, seeing that a crisis had come, looked uneasily from one to the other. Oliver was waiting. Peter Crosson plainly had much more to say. But he could not bring it out freely. He was trembling with excitement. There was something that was plainly fear in his eye, together with something very like hatred. Ranger was amazed.
“D’you hear?” shouted Peter Crosson.
“I hear,” said the boy.
“I forbid your going.”
Oliver answered nothing. But, significantly, he gathered the reins slowly in one hand as he stood at the head of the cream-colored mustang.
Peter Crosson made another effort of a different kind. “Oliver, my son,” he said, “in one more month you’re twenty-one years old. Let me keep you safe, and in a quiet life for the full legal period. After that, you can be your own master. But now the law gives me a right to your obedience. A month is a short time. It’s only a step . . . it’s only a step. Wait till the step is finished, Oliver.”
Oliver, with a faint frown, glanced over his shoulder. “In a month, he may be a thousand miles away,” he responded.
Peter Crosson struck a hand against his forehead. He seemed in despair. Perspiration gleamed on his face. “Oliver, Oliver!” he cried, and actually wrung his hands in the effort to persuade. “Why have I kept you out here in the wilderness alone with me? Why have I lived like a castaway on a desert island? I’ve denied myself everything. I’ve tried to bring you safely through. Do you know why I’ve kept you away from other people and never trusted a gun to your hands?”
“No,” said the boy.
“Because there’s murder in your blood.”
The heart of Ranger contracted a little, but the effect of the words on the boy was amazing. Gray with emotion, rigid as a stone, he stood by the horse and stared at the tall old man.
“You never took a man’s life,” he said. “Who did, then? My mother?” His voice rose at the last words, and there was a ring and almost a wail in it. But the next moment he bit his lip to master his outbreak.
Peter Crosson was gesturing with both hands, as though in denial. “I’ve said what I can. I cannot say more,” he declared. “But take my solemn oath for it . . . there is murder in your blood. Leave me, and you leave me to start such a life as you yourself don’t dream of. And if you leave me now, this day, I swear to you, Oliver, that you never can come back to me.”
The boy started again under this bludgeon stroke. “I don’t think you mean it,” he said. “Whatever there is in me, I don’t know. But you can’t blot me out of your life like a word on a piece of paper.”
“Can’t I?” the old man cried, more excited than ever. “I can, and I will. I’ve given you all that a man could give to a child. I�
��ve given you teaching, training. I’ve been a father and a mother and a brother to you. I’ve asked you for one thing in return, and that’s obedience. If you disobey me now, I cut you out of my heart and out of my life. By heaven, you’re more interested in a dead wolf than in your own father. Oliver, Oliver, will you try to use your wits? Will you try to think what it means?”
Oliver, stern and tense, looked down for a moment to the ground. Then he came straight forward to Peter Crosson and held out his hand.
The old man uttered a sharp, high sound of joy and caught the hand in both of his. “Ah, Oliver,” he said, “God forgive me for doubting you for a moment. You’re staying with me, of course.”
“I’m saying good bye,” said Oliver. “I want to do what you say, but I can’t. There’s something pulling at me harder than a wind in a treetop. I’m sick to be gone out after Chester Lyons. I’m starved to be on his trail.”
He had raised his voice somewhat; there had been a tremor in it that made the heart of Ranger jump.
“If I tried to stay here another month,” said the boy, “it would kill me.”
“Let it kill you, then!” screamed Peter Crosson. “I’d rather see you dead here of the bloodlust, than dead in a hangman’s noose. That’s the branch that you’ll ripen and rot on. I wish that I never had put eyes on you. Curse and wither you, brain and body!” He turned his back and stamped off a few paces, and there he threw his long, skinny arms above his head.
The boy looked after him for a moment only. Then he turned on his heel and jumped into the saddle. His face was a blank. If he suffered under the terrible denunciation of the old man, he would not let the trouble appear in his eye; one word sent the mustang galloping away.
At the sound of the hoof beats, old Peter Crosson whirled about. He shouted. But the boy was gone now, among the trees, and Bill Ranger grew sick with pity as he saw Crosson, with terror and rage in his face, throw his arms forward and run in pursuit, still shouting. In that instant, Ranger could see the old fellow condemned to a life of cold loneliness. Well, he would not endure long. He must be near the end of his long span.
