by Max Brand
When the youngsters said curiously—“Well, who is this Menneval?”—the older people would look at one another. They would perhaps wink. They would say: “Well, you’ll find out someday.”
And then the youngsters would perhaps say: “Who is he? What is he? Is he a crook, like Lyons?”
And one old man, white-headed, stern, an old prospector, had said: “Don’t make fools of yourselves. There’s a thousand Lyonses. There’s only one Menneval.”
Such comments were sure to make talk. The youths gathered together and made a thousand conjectures. But they could not hit on the truth, ill-guided as they were.
Therefore they built a mountain of imagination that hit the sky. They had in the town, at the same moment, Lyons, his lovely cousin, Oliver Crosson, and Menneval. The other three might be interesting, but there was a special mystery about Menneval.
When he came in, the oldest man in the town was standing there at the bar. And he looked at Menneval, and Menneval, in passing, looked at him.
He was walking straight on toward the inner room, the little room where the four tables of poker were going and where young Crosson was sitting in the darkest corner. When he saw the oldster with his white hair and white beard, he went across to him and stood with him at the side of the bar.
“Your name is Adams,” he said.
“My name is Adams,” said the old man. And he smiled a little, as though his name amused him, or as though he were philosophically amused by the fact that Menneval remembered him. Those who stood by and heard this talk were not impressed at the moment. But they remembered it afterward.
“You were in Frisco when the Golden Arrow burned at the docks,” said Menneval.
“Hello,” said Adams, “how come that you remember that?”
“You were working on the forecastle head,” said Menneval. “And you had on a blue shirt, and you were handing parcels over the bow to the men in the boats.”
“Well, well,” said Adams, beginning to laugh, “you got a memory on you, I must say.”
Menneval had been reciting as from a book, with his forefinger extended, pointing to the other, and the old man had been nodding and smiling. Now Menneval straightened suddenly, like a man who has cast off a load. “And you’re still here,” he said.
“Not in Frisco. It’s a long way from Frisco,” said Adams.
“You’re still here,” repeated Menneval. And his air seemed to say that it was wonderful to find the other in the same world, in the same form, in the same existence.
“You’re a strange kind,” said Adams. “I would’ve thought that you remembered me, maybe, from the time when the Wells, Fargo Express came into Carson City and the express box was . . .”
Menneval raised his finger. “Sometimes,” he said, “things drop out of a man’s mind. Sometimes they ought to drop out.” He turned to the bartender. Old Adams was silently looking at the floor. “Here,” said Menneval. “Take this twenty dollars. If you spend more than five of it on yourself, I’ll come back here and have a talk with you. The other fifteen you spend on Adams as often as he wants a drink.”
“Yes, sir,” said the bartender.
“Will you have a drink yourself, sir?”
Said Menneval, a thing remembered afterward: “I never drink on working days.” Then he nodded to the bartender and smiled almost affectionately upon old Adams.
“Thank you, Mister . . .” said Adams.
He swallowed the name, and Menneval smiled again and went on through the length of the barroom, into the darkness of the back room where poker was being played at the four tables, and where young Oliver Crosson was sitting in the darkest corner of the room.
Chapter Forty
When such things happen as happened there in the obscurity of that little back room of the saloon, the memories of men are sharpened. The trouble is that their imaginations are stimulated, also. Therefore, of the twenty-five people who were within the walls of the room, there were not two whose accounts of what followed agreed in every detail. No more easy, to be sure, is it for witnesses in a court of law to rake the truth out of the hot embers of established fact. One remembers one thing, and one remembers another. None of them recalls the entire train of events.
So were the testimonies of the men who were in the little obscure back room of that town of Shannon in California.
Afterward they tried desperately to remember, but where they left off remembering and began to think there were always peculiar combinations of mind and memory that were added to one another, and finally made a story that was quite fictitious.
But what actually occurred was this: Menneval, coming into the back room of the saloon, paused for a moment just in front of the window, though by standing there he cut off half of the light that fell upon the cards of the gamesters. Some of them were rough men, and they would have protested, ordinarily. They would have protested, anyway, had they been actually interested in the fall of the cards.
But they were only passing the time. When they looked up at the strange face of Menneval and the silver hair that covered his head as though with a thin cap of silk, they changed their minds about speaking to the stranger.
So Menneval was left unmolested, to look over the room and watch the faces of the gamblers—the way they picked up their cards casually, as men who have no interest in what they are doing.
He looked at their faces, and an odd sneer curled the corners of his lips. He was like an arch-demon who looks in upon the tiny affairs of men who are worth neither a blessing nor a cursing. He seemed to be reading and despising them. Finally his glance rested upon young Oliver Crosson.
The latter had not stirred, though there had been a little commotion and a casual readjusting of people after Menneval came into the room. He remained with his hands folded in his lap, looking somewhat like a child that is troubled by being in the presence of strangers. On the other hand, he seemed chiefly absorbed in his own thoughts, for his eye had an inward look, and there was a faint smile on his lips, very like that of a woman who is striving to be polite and has forgotten why she wishes to seem so. In this manner he sat in the corner, when Menneval walked over and accosted him.
“You’re alone here, young fellow?” said Menneval.
Oliver Crosson looked up, startled. “Alone?” he said. “Yes, I suppose I’m alone.” He said it in a strange way, as though he were always alone, and found it odd that the fact needed any commenting upon.
“I’ll sit down,” said Menneval. And he pulled up a chair beside Oliver Crosson.
How many of those present wished, afterward, that they had strained their ears and jotted down every item of the words that followed, but, as it was, they could remember only bits of the conversation that, at first, was pitched in a low voice, and continued in that manner for a few moments. Two or three other men sauntered into the back room of the saloon after a time, and these, in turn, took note of the fact that Menneval was there and with young Crosson.
Suddenly Menneval’s voice rose, and it became a sharply ringing challenge as he stood up. “Then what brought you here?” he was crying out.
“A thing I had to do,” said the boy almost gently. “That was why I came.”
“You came for murder,” Menneval insisted. “You came for murder, because there’s murder in you. There’s murder in your blood. You’re as detestable as a wild beast, and there’s my opinion of you.”
As he said this, he leaned forward a little and flicked the open palm of his hand across the face of Crosson. It was a stroke so light that it would not have stung the delicate skin of an infant. It was not a blow, but simply an insult, and Oliver Crosson seemed to realize the distinction instantly. A blow he would have answered with a tiger leap that would have landed him fairly on the stranger. And what man was there who could have resisted him for a moment? Not even Menneval, perhaps, for Menneval was no longer what he once had been.
But it was not a blow. It was simply the insult that stung, and Crosson, springing up, drew hi
s revolver at the same instant. He drew, but he did not fire.
For Menneval, the instant that he had struck the lad, turned deliberately on his heel away from him and made for the doorway. He did not go with haste. He certainly was not fleeing, but, with a calm and ordered step, he left the room and passed into the front of the saloon. There was an old clock fixed there upon the wall, above the swinging doors, and in the face of this clock he saw that the time was ten minutes to twelve. He looked up at the clock and nodded a little, satisfied. Then, passing through the swinging doors, he stepped out into the blinding white light of the midday.
Dignity and slowness of gait left him now. He ran like a bounding cat to get his horse. He had not tethered it at either of the long racks that fronted the saloon. Instead, he had tied it around the corner of the saloon. There he found it, mounted it, and at the same instant had his spur in the side of the stallion. He flew it over the fence, rushed through the back yard of the place, winged loftily across another fence, and then down the free open fields of the valley of the Shannon.
In the meantime, young Crosson had stood for the first few seconds, amazed. Some thought that he was waiting for Menneval to turn and come back for the battle that had to follow. Others imagined that the purplish color of his face and the tremor of every fiber of it betrayed a numbing fear that made him incapable of movement. But they were wrong.
It was intolerable rage that numbed the body of Crosson for a moment. Whatever had happened to him in the way of wild life, his personal dignity was now affronted for the first time. It was a thing that he could not have imagined, and that he could not now understand. In the place of understanding, there arose merely a blind resentment.
Like a torrent the fury ran through him. He forgot the purpose that had brought him the long distance to Shannon. He forgot lovely Nan Lyons. He forgot Lyons himself. There was no problem, no fact in existence, except that he had been insulted in public, and the offender had walked calmly away, as though he had struck a mere child that was in need of a bit of disciplining.
Then a low moan grew in the throat of Crosson. He looked wildly about him. Finally he leaped for the door. He went through it and into the front room without pausing. His quick glances, flashing from side to side, showed him that his quarry could not be here.
He leaped out to the front of the saloon and passed into the glare of the sunlight. Still the other was not there, and the ranks of the horses tethered before the saloon showed no gaps. The cream-colored horse with the silver mane and tail was there among them, for one thing.
He bounded around the corner of the building, half bewildered, and there in the distance he saw a great black stallion plunge over the rearmost fence and sweep from sight in a grove of poplars. It was too far for more than a blindly chance shot with the revolver. Yet his fury was so great that he actually made a few steps forward, as though ready to hunt down his newly made enemy on foot. Then he thought better of this.
The men who had poured out of the saloon, watching him agape, saw his face transformed with rage and hatred, and watched him run back to the hitching rack. There he untethered the cream-colored horse, leaped into the saddle, and drove the animal straight at the fence. Over they skimmed. They crossed the yard. They soared above the second barrier and twinkled out of view in the silver flashing of the poplar grove, on the trail of the fugitive.
Then the bystanders could afford for the first time to turn and look at one another. They did not make any comments, however, for just then there occurred in rapid succession two things almost as fascinating as the insult, the flight, and the pursuit.
First, out of the door of the hotel, straight down the street, appeared Chester Lyons, trimly dressed in his tailed coat, and walking with a cane, which he carried in his gloved left hand. The right hand was left bare, for reasons which all who saw him understood. There came Chester Lyons at the appointed hour, but the danger had flown out of Shannon town, for the moment, at least.
In the opposite direction down the street, with its fringe of curious, tense watchers, came a man who seemed to be hurrying to meet an engagement. He was a very old man, his hair flowing and white, his clothes of ragged deerskins, and his mount a shambling, knock-kneed mule. Eagerness and haste were in the face of the veteran. He looked wildly about him, to either side of the street, and, when he came to the front of the saloon, where the crowd was thickest, he halted.
Ranger, coming up at that moment, was in hearing distance, and recognized the old man at once as Peter Crosson. Looking down the street, he saw Lyons approaching. Hurrying, half running in the rear of her cousin, was Nan Lyons, desperate of face, bent on intervening before the duel should take place. All these came up as the old man said in a hoarse, weary voice: “Gentleman, may I ask you if a lad with a cream-colored horse has been seen in this town? Shannon, I think you call this place?”
The bartender had come out and had planted his fists on his broad hips. Now he called over his shoulder: “We’ve seen a lad on a cream-colored horse, stranger. We’ve had him here for a day, and he’s warmed us up like a fire. You want him?”
“It’s his father,” said Ranger in a hasty muttering. “Don’t say another word.”
“His father?” growled the bartender, nevertheless lowering his voice. “They’re no more alike than a crow and a hawk.”
He made no direct reply to Crosson, who was saying: “I have to see Oliver Crosson at once. I must see him at once.”
One of the crowd, who had not heard the warning of Ranger, pointed toward the poplar trees. “There’s his trail going out. You foller it and you’ll soon find red.”
Chapter Forty-One
Old Peter Crosson groaned audibly. “Has he been hurt? Have they driven him out from the town?”
“He ain’t hurt, but he’s gonna be soon . . . unless he kills the other one,” added the bystander. “He was due to meet up with Chester Lyons, yonder, at twelve sharp. And then in steps this other gent . . . this stranger, Menneval . . . and slaps the kid’s face, and then runs out of Shannon with the kid on his trail.”
This explanation struck old Crosson like a bullet, or, rather, like a club, for he reeled heavily in the saddle, with his hands thrown up before his face.
One would have thought that he was striving to keep out a new impression and additional details of horror. Yet the added burdens seemed to be falling upon him, for he swayed more sharply in the saddle. He actually fell forward and rolled off the neck of the patient mule.
Several arms caught him before he struck the ground. His foot was disentangled from the stirrup. He was in a dead faint, with pale face and closed eyes. And they carried him into the shadow of the saloon verandah. There they put a folded coat under his feet to raise them higher than his head and forced a choking dram of brandy down his throat.
He coughed. His eyes opened. “Oh, Oliver,” he muttered. “Oh, Oliver. My poor boy.”
“Look here,” said the hearty bartender. “The kid ain’t dead yet. And from what we’ve heard and seen of him around here he’s more likely to kill.”
Old Crosson staggered to his feet. “Who of you have the fastest horses?” he cried. “Go after them as hard as you can gallop. Overtake them. Stop them in the name of God. It is most horrible murder. Menneval has drawn him away, but he’ll never fight back against him. It will be parricide. Do you hear me? Why do you stand like stones around me? Parricide! He is the true father of Oliver!”
It went through the mind of Ranger like a thunderclap. As he stood there, immovable, remembering all that had gone before that pointed toward and justified the truth of what the old man had just said, he heard out of the woodland distance the weird and blood-chilling baying of a wolf pack, gathering on the trail. He knew what wolves they were, and the human leader that urged them on, and the fugitive who fled before them.
A most magnificent horse was that black stallion that Menneval rode, but suddenly Ranger knew with profound conviction that no horse, no man, could escape from the boy
and his pack in that rough wilderness of mountains and wooded ravines.
And still he was stunned and more stunned as he thought of the thing that had happened. The life of Lyons was saved for the moment; the price might be the murder of Menneval by his own boy.
There was a sudden response.
Those who had fine horses rushed to get them. Someone must overtake young Crosson, or young Menneval, if that were his name. Someone must tell him his true identity. It was a thing to drive one to madness. It was an incredible thing.
Old Peter Crosson was saying: “Menneval will never tell the boy the truth. It’s the one purpose he’s had in making me act like a father to the boy. He’d have me be the father and give him my name because he said that the name of Menneval was too black, and there was a curse on it. Aye, aye, there’s a curse on it, and today the curse begins to work, and I’ve wasted twenty years of my life for nothing. He’s gone. He’s wasted, he’s thrown away, and God forgive the miseries and the wretches in this world. Oh, Oliver, poor lad, poor lad. What man will ever look you in the face?”
He sat down in one of the chairs that lined the wall of the verandah, and, swaying slowly back and forth, he gave way silently to his sorrow.
Those others, in a frenzy of horror, were doing their best to get away on the trail as fast as they could. But Ranger was in no such haste. It was likely to be a long hunt, considering the qualities of the horse of Menneval. If only he could keep away until the darkness fell, then the danger might be evaded for a time. But could he keep away?
