by Max Brand
His head fell over, suddenly, weakly, against Tenney’s arm, and a faint sigh ended his words.
Tenney laid the loose body on the ground, softly. He pressed his face close to Rusty’s heart, and heard no beat. Was he dead? The eyes of dead men should remain half open, it was said, and yet Rusty’s eyes were closed.
“He’s dead,” said the major’s voice, stepping into the broken current of Tenney’s thoughts. “He’s dead . . . the red rat. D’you think I’d pass out without taking at least one life along with me?”
Tenney lifted his dazed head and saw that the major had managed to put his back against a rock, had at last managed to jerk out the knife. Now he held his two hands over the rent in his body, but still the blood forced its way rapidly out between the fingers.
Tenney picked up the dripping knife.
“D’you want to hurry me out?” said the major.
“No,” said Tenney. “I wouldn’t hurry you. If there was life worth saving in you, I’d tie you up and nurse you back to strength, so that I could kill you all over again. I’d make you last. I’d make you last days . . . and days. . . .”
The major nodded. “You and I could understand each other,” he said. “But that red-headed fool on the ground, there . . . nobody could understand him. He’s a cross between a baby and an old man, with a lot of the fool mixed in all the way. You never could get anything out of him.”
“He called me brother,” said Tenney slowly, and then he added: “I wish to God there was a way of holding the life in you till I’ve done what I could think of doing to you, Major.”
“It’s too late,” said the major. “The blood’s draining out of me, and my eyes are getting dim. I can still see the red of Sabin’s hair, though.”
“Aye, and your lips are blue.”
“That’s because there’s the taste of death on them,” said the major.
His voice was a little fainter now. A grim curiosity carried Tenney’s mind even away from his grief.
“How does it feel?” he asked wonderingly.
“Like lacking air. Like the middle of summer. And not enough air. But it’ll soon be over . . . I could take my hands away from the cut, and I’d go out like a breath. . . .”
“You’re a cool man . . . and a brave man,” said Tenney, willing to admire even the man he hated most. “And if you’d let Rusty work on you the way he worked on me, you could have been a good man and a right man, before you passed out.”
“Let him work on me? He’s worked enough on me,” said the major. “I’ve had my hand closed, almost, on the woman I wanted. And he’s forced my hand open, and taken her away again. I’ve had a reputation in my grip, and he’s smashed it like an egg, and made a fool of me. He’d broken my life before he ever ran his knife into me. That’s the work he’s done.”
“Because you stood against him like a fool. Like a log trying to swim up against a river. That was you.”
“Aye,” said the major, suddenly submitting to the idea. “And maybe you’re right, after all. But where did he ever get his strength?”
“Out of the sky,” said Tenney credulously, lifting his hand to point.
The major attempted to laugh his scorn at that answer, but the blood burst out of him, suddenly, and he began to choke. He fell on his face and kicked at the sands. He hit at the ground like a mad dog. And that was how he died, with Tenney staring, overwhelmed, seeing in this a fresh miracle, a blow struck by the sightless hand of Sweet Medicine.
Big Bill Tenney was still looking down at death when he heard a murmur behind him, and turned with a gasp of terror. For in fact he thought that the god of the Cheyennes, in ghostly person, would be seen standing behind him. And those who see the gods, unless they are like Rusty Sabin, cannot live long.
But there was no strange vision before him. The sound came from Rusty’s parted lips, the words stumbling slowly from them—words that had no meaning. But there was the breath of life behind them, and Bill Tenney shouted suddenly, gone mad with joy.
Somehow, Bill Tenney got Rusty into a better place, away from that terrible slaughter. He laid him on saddle blankets, heaping sand under the top end for a head rest.
Sometimes Rusty seemed dead, sometimes he seemed merely to sleep, but whenever life came into him he would begin to speak, and the first word that he said was always: “Brother. . . .”
Then the life would slide out of him again.
* * * * *
The hounds got the trail and ran it down in the middle of the day. Captain Dell found the dead man on the floor of the valley.
“One less Lavier in the world,” he said, and thanked God audibly.
Then he went on behind the dogs, to the place where the other three men lay dead. Rusty’s knife lay near the major’s breast. After that, he came to the spot where Bill Tenney lay like a giant, a ragged bandage about his face and his body dripping with blood.
Tenney stood up and barred the way, a rifle in his hands. But the captain merely said: “I’m putting down my arms, you see, Tenney? Tell me what’s happened. Tenney, is it murder? God help your soul. You see I’ve got twenty men behind me. There’s no use resisting.”
“Murder! Aye, it’s murder!” cried Tenney. “The Laviers and the major . . . they’ve murdered Rusty Sabin. They’ve killed the only man in the world. They’ve murdered him that’s a brother to me.”
* * * * *
Swift help was coming from the town, also. The word went wide and far, like the running of quicksilver. Men saddled their horses rapidly, but none so swiftly as Maisry Lester. Swift horses and keen riders rushed out along the river trail, but none as swift as Maisry and her pony.
She rode it with a merciless heel and hand, for it seemed to her that the beast stood still, running on a treadmill, and that the only movement was the terrible, hour-slow drifting of the hills along the horizon.
She had no hope, as she raced, that she might come to him in time to save him. But the prayer that left her lips in ragged fragments of words was only that she might reach him in time to see the last brightness of life in his eyes. For she felt that light would come into her like a new soul into her body.
Of the townspeople, she was first in the valley—she was first up its hot sands—she was first to reach the group of soldiers who moved clumsily here and there, trying to help and not knowing what to do.
When Bill Tenney saw her, he lifted up his bloodstained hands in a gesture of surrender.
“He won’t live for me,” said Tenney, “but maybe he’ll come back for you, Maisry. By his way of thinking, murder ain’t as strong as love.”
* * * * *
Well, Rusty Sabin was not murdered, after all. He was not going to die. The doctor who came out from the fort said so at the end of the long examination and the agony of probing that turned Rusty Sabin green. He would not die. He would live—if he could be kept quietly where he was and not moved for at least a fortnight.
Keep him where he was? The Lesters, mother and father, smiled. Already, they had sent back for two tents. Already, Maisry was installed as chief nurse. Richard Lester was taking charge.
And later, while Rusty lay flat on his back on a soft cot, he said: “I can see your head in the middle of the sky, Maisry . . . all blue around you. It’s mighty sweet medicine for me. And you are happy?”
She merely smiled. It would have been foolish for her to try to say it in words.
“Where’s Bill?” asked Rusty.
The big man came near and leaned slowly over the bunk.
“Aye, Rusty?” he said tenderly.
“There was never any chance of me dying,” said Rusty. “Sweet Medicine wouldn’t let me, because he knew that I could never tell you about yourself, Bill. He knew that it would take years more living before I could make you understand, brother.”
He put his hand in Tenney’s, and Bill Tenney held it softly, saying nothing. . . .
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-kn
own 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 530 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 a 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. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His Website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.
