Red Fire

by Max Brand

  She said this with a certain dryness of tone, such as people use when they have in mind a double innuendo.

  “What do you mean by that remark, Deborah?” he asked her with a sick suspicion beginning to grow in him.

  “I’ll be franker with you than you’ve been with me. Tom, you were sent for by poor Jack because he was tormented with worries about me. He’d seen you climb up through the window of my room.”

  Young Farnsworth grew bolt erect in his chair. Something was born in him then that he had never felt in himself before in all his life. It was a consummate desire to destroy with his hands. He had not even felt it when he faced Jack the other night. On that occasion he had fought suddenly and shot to kill, but it had been because his back was against the wall. Now, as the girl struck at him, by sudden surprise, his first impulse was a red rage and a passionate desire to take her with his hands . . . He controlled that impulse, marveling at himself, and watched the emotion die away in him, as an echo dies far down a canyon. Nevertheless, he felt that hot rush of blood to the head might come again, and, if it were any stronger, he would not be able to master himself. It filled him with awe. It also filled him with pride to know that he had in himself the sway of passions greater than his ability to control them. If he had made this discovery of new powers in himself, why might there not be other discoveries in the future? Anything became possible. He became a new country to himself. This was the attitude of Tom, and, as he faced the girl, he realized that she no longer meant to him what she had meant before. She had become a danger and a threat to him. Affection for her began to die at the roots of his heart.

  “He wanted to know what brought you there,” continued the steady voice of Deborah. “And he offered in exchange to keep it secret that you were the man, Tom, who shot him down.” She faced him steadily.

  He could not remain seated in the face of this attack. But, as he came to his feet, flaring at her, his cleared eyes looked through and through her, discerned all the glamour of her beauty fading from her, found her small, plain face common, and he marveled beyond words that he could ever have wasted any time on her. He almost thanked God that this tragic story had come about, if it could at least waken him to the truth about the lady of his heart. He wanted to laugh. Then he was disgusted by his own lack of taste. Last of all the hot anger that had gripped him just before swept over him again. She was assailing him, and he had to defend himself—with words.

  “Deborah,” he said at last, “I’ll tell you the facts.”

  He considered another moment, made up his mind definitely that it was better to confess than to arouse her suspicions by lying. Still, it was strange that she could have seen their meeting, since her shade had been drawn, as he was sure it had been. Perhaps she had spied down at him through a crack at the side.

  “I shot Jack,” he said bluntly, “but it was because he forced the fight on me.”

  She started in her place and drew in a gasping breath.

  “You didn’t see it, after all?” he asked sharply.

  “I only guessed,” she confessed.

  The hot wave came darkly upon his eyes once more. He had to clench his hands for a moment before his vision and his self-control returned.

  “You are very angry?” said the girl curiously.

  “You’ve made a fool of me.”

  “A fool?”

  “You’ve set this little trap for me.”

  “Tom, I had not even a suspicion about you when you came this evening. But, while you were here, it jumped into my mind. I can’t tell what had put it there. And still I can’t believe it. You . . . you shot poor Jack Pattison?”

  “In a fair fight!” cried Tom.

  She waved her hand. “Frankly I don’t believe it.”

  “Do you accuse me of lying, Deborah? Is that what your friendship means?”

  “I’m afraid that my friendship is dead.”

  “I swear to you, Deborah, that he started a hand for his gun before I stirred for mine.”

  “The real point of the matter,” she said, skipping over what she was certain was the crux of the story and the evidence, “is that you shot Pattison and then allowed another man to take the blame for that work.”

  “How could I keep Bobbie from making a fool of himself?”

  “Do you want me to tell you what I think? But, no, I won’t tell you that. It’s too easy to speak too much about such things. I won’t tell you. Only . . . you mustn’t be surprised if men who hear this grow a little angry with you.”

  “That infernal fool will be the destruction of me,” said Tom Farnsworth gloomily. “Why didn’t I tell him to go to the devil? As a matter of fact, Deborah, I knew nothing about what Bobbie intended. When he ran away and drew the rest of ’em after him, I was the most surprised man in Daggett. It was simply useless, foolish devotion on the part of Bobbie.”

  “I see,” said Deborah, and smiled coldly at him.

  He had been telling the truth on the whole. Now he flushed with rage. “You don’t believe me?”

  She rose and went to the door. “I suppose,” she said, studying her words carefully, “that this is the last time I shall have an opportunity of talking with you, Tom.”

  “What does that mean?” Then panic succeeded his anger. “Good God, Deborah, it doesn’t mean that you’d deliberately tell what . . .”

  “Go on.”

  “Tell what I’ve spoken to you in absolute confidence.”

  “When I’d wrung it out of you by a trick, Tom? No, I don’t think that I’d be violating a confidence.” Her eyes were impudent.

  “You really mean, then, that you’ll go to the sheriff with this rotten story? Don’t you see that it’ll make trouble for me, but that I can’t be harmed in the end? Jack himself would testify for me.”

  “Poor, honest Jack. If anything happens to him . . .” She controlled herself sternly. “Listen to me, Tom,” she said, “what I firmly believe about you is what I’m going to tell you now. When I’ve told my story, I’m sure that it’s what every other man and woman in Daggett will believe. You tried to kill poor Jack Pattison when he met you after you’d climbed down from my window.”

  “What will become of your reputation when you tell a story that has in it details such as this?”

  “I thank God,” said the girl quietly, “that my reputation is stronger than rock. I say that you shot Jack . . . probably through treachery, because he was known to be as good a shot as you are a bad one.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “Be patient till I’m ended, please. You shot Jack . . . you let your poor Negro take the blame on his shoulders . . . you let him run the danger of being shot as a murderer and a horse thief, and all the while you dared to pose as an innocent man in Daggett. It’s a black, black story, Tom. And I tell you plainly this much . . . if Bobbie is not brought back to safety . . . poor faithful fool . . . I’ll tell.”

  “Suppose he’s killed before I can reach him?”

  “If that happens, it isn’t your fault. Oh, Tom, even if you will make one great effort to save that poor black man, I swear that my lips are sealed forever. I’ll never tell what I guess and what I know through your own confession.”

  VII

  How often one hears the remark concerning a patiently working horse: “If only it knew its strength.” The same thing is rarely said about a man, for the picture that fills the eye is of the great bulk of twelve or fifteen hundredweight of bone and muscle turned in revolt, smashing the wagon it pulls and the harness that attempts to control it, killing the driver with the blow of a hoof, or destroying the rider with a crunch of teeth stronger than a tiger’s. If a man is wakened to lawlessness, his power is yet more terrible. He banishes with a gesture of the mind the load of duty at which he has been tugging. He annihilates the law by merely denying it. He trebles his strength by freedom that is absolute. He adds to the strength of a man the strength of a wild beast by casting himself loose from society.

  Such was the case of Bobbi
e. He had started on this affair as upon a most perilous adventure to which he was compelled only because he loved his master far more than he loved himself. For the sake of his young master he had ridden through the midst of perils on that first night and through the days that followed. But now he was beginning to forget that he had started out for the sake of another person. The game was worthwhile on its own account. He could not recall another period in his life when he had enjoyed a tithe of this happiness. He was playing a game of chess. Upon his side there were only two pieces—himself and his horse. On the other side was a filled board, and only by the most complicated maneuvers could he escape them. He could not have survived for a single day had he not been among the Kiever Mountains, for they were created especially, so it seemed, to give a fugitive a chance to dodge away from his pursuers. The Kiever Mountains run from end to end through a distance of seventy miles, curving from northeast to southwest. The plateau in which they have footing is two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The loftiest peaks of the Kiever range are not more than three thousand feet above this point. The king of them all is a scant fifty feet short of a mile in elevation. In a word, they are small mountains for a country such as the great mountain desert, but they use every inch of their size for the greatest possible roughness. They are hewed across and up and down by great ravines, so that a picture from above would make the range look like a butcher’s chopping block. There are not many trees, but there is sagebrush scattered here and there and a quantity of other small growths. Now and again, moreover, where there is water in a lowland or in a deep valley, one comes upon an almost tropical forest, for the soil is everywhere rich when it is deep enough to receive roots. This is not frequent in the range, however, and the majority of the upper slopes and of the mountain heads consist of junk heaps of stones and boulders and long slides of rock, still wearing the polish that was placed upon it during the glacial age. In this region of a myriad of rocks and a million hollows and gorges Bobbie found that he could hide so readily that it was even extremely difficult to find his own way. For two days he wandered in despair, appalled by the white-hot heat of the days, the cold of the nights, the lack of water, the scant provender that soon had the ribs of his horse thrusting out, and the difficulty of game. There were rabbits, of course, for there are rabbits everywhere, but there was little else. And the stomach of Bobbie revolted at his very second day of fare consisting of only one article of diet.

  His first exploit was undertaken purely with the view to recruiting his own larder. He had no higher motive, nor did he have the slightest desire to break away from the Kiever Mountains for, when he climbed to the central peaks, he could see out onto the wide sweep of desert and level plain beyond. In this covert he might prolong the game for some time. In yonder open he would receive a mate in the form of an ounce of lead planted skillfully among his ribs. So he contented himself with making himself in the first place master of his position.

  This he did by spending some hours on the top of Old Kiever itself, as the highest of the peaks was called. From this point of vantage he could make out clearly enough and jot down in his mind the various landmarks up and down the length of the range. Keeping these firmly in his recollection, he had only to consult his mental notebook in order to tell himself where he was at any point in his later wanderings. He had reached this point in understanding of his environment when the delicately nurtured stomach of Bobbie demanded a change of diet and forced him out of his inner retreats, toward which the hunting parties had been laboring on both days with the dogs to lead them.

  He stole down to the foot of the eastern mountains, and on the shores of a little pool he found a newly arrived party of a dozen honest citizens who had come out to join in this rare sport and to avenge the honor and fair fame of the town of Kiever. This was not a haphazard crew. Among them was the ex-sheriff, who secretly hoped to restore himself to the good graces of the voters in the county by rounding up the fugitive who had hitherto baffled both the regular and the irregular forces of the law in Kiever County. Accordingly this well-equipped and managed party went to sleep at the watering place only after all the horses had been well hobbled and a guard had been posted—the wariest and sharpest-eared member of the entire group, who could not conceivably doze.

  Bobbie, slipping down among the shadows of the trees, took note. The watcher had placed himself on the top of a stone that sat on the edge of the pool. His back was to the water, since he was safe from attack in that direction. His eyes restlessly turned up and down the shore, sweeping over the sleepers and their effects. And across his knees, ready for instant action, lay a rifle with fifteen shots tucked into the magazine. When Bobbie had observed these things, he made his plan at once, skirted around to the other side of the pool, took off his clothes, and slid down into the warm water, a deep shadow among shadows. One who had learned to high dive from a springboard and enter the swimming pool with such oiled smoothness that hardly a ripple ran out around the point at which he entered certainly found no trouble in entering this pool without a sound. He melted into the black water and disappeared at once. For a moment he was out of view. Then a little ripple began to travel across the tiny lake. In the center of the ripple the nose of Bobbie projected to the air. Beneath the ripple his powerful arms and legs moved in a soft rhythm, sending him in slow pulses across to the other shore.

  When he was near the spot, he sank deeper in the water, turned, dived, and came up directly behind the watcher on the stone. There was no struggle. Bobbie rose to his knees. He picked up the guard’s own coat which lay neatly folded on the ground. That coat he flung like a net over the head of the unfortunate. Then, when he had stopped the noise of cries, he stopped the noise of struggles also, by discreetly tapping the padded head of the sentinel with a rock. Thus put to sleep, the watcher was laid behind the rock on which he had been sitting, and Bobbie proceeded with his work. He did not have long, but he did not need long. He gathered the food and the ammunition—of which he had run short—together with some tobacco and matches and other items required. These articles he made into a great parcel, wrapped in a tarpaulin. Next he went into the little glade adjoining where the horses were hobbled on the grass. He selected the toughest and best weight carrier—which happened to be the mount of the ex-sheriff himself—and led the animal away, while the pack was slung over his own broad shoulder. He had reached the farther side of the pool before the man he had left behind him, stunned, recovered his senses and his wits enough to raise an outcry. Then his shout brought every member of the party to his feet.

  But Bobbie was in no great hurry. He changed saddles from his worn-out mount to his new one, arranged his pack behind the saddle, cast away a few non-essentials, and then mounted and jogged along on his way. As for the men on the farther side of the pool, they had hastily mounted and then bolted for the mountains, thundering threats of vengeance—all save the poor ex-sheriff, who stayed behind, cursing the thief who had deprived him of his best horse.

  They found no track of Bobbie on that day or the next. He was well away and traveling in security by a route that none discovered. In the heart of the mountains he built a large fire, cooked a great quantity of bacon and flapjacks, warmed some tinned beans, made himself a great pot of coffee, stayed awake after his feast long enough to smoke half a cigarette, and then dropped into a sound slumber that lasted a round of the clock. It was the first real sleep he had enjoyed during his flight. When he wakened again, his head was clear, his stomach was again empty, his eye was bright, and it was now that he began truly to enjoy the game in which he was engaged.

  After that, the hunters who worked through the Kiever Mountains led a wretched life. By nature Bobbie was two or three long strides closer to the soil than the white men who were now his enemies. His hearing was a little sharper, his sight a little more acute, and, above all, there was more keenly developed in him that indescribable sense that does not reside in any nerves of the flesh, but in the nerves of the soul—the power, in sho
rt, of premonition. After his long sleep he was ready for mischief, and straightway he had his fun.

  That afternoon three parties that had worked well into the hills glimpsed his horse, and at the same time Bobbie glimpsed them. They were coming in three different directions, and his chance of riding through was small. So he let his newly stolen horse remain behind him to keep the eyes of the enemy in focus, while he himself stole down a little gully and made off with his guns and little else besides. Half an hour later, as the baffled hunters closed on the horse and found that the master was gone, Bobbie discovered that a lone rider was jogging a fine bay stallion into the Kiever Mountains, hunting glory with his single hand. Bobbie tied that young hero’s hands behind his back, did him no other harm, took his excellent mount, and made off blithely again.

  He had no provisions again, however. So, on that very night, he dropped down on a party of his hunters. There were only three, and Bobbie used different methods here. He waked them up, herded them together with a few gestures of his revolvers, fastened them with two pairs of bridle reins, and then went through their belongings in the most leisurely fashion. He gained plunder enough. Hitherto he had taken only essentials. But now his eyes were caught and filled by a fine rifle, decorated with a little gold chasing. He took that weapon, while its owner groaned. Then he selected a fine hunting knife that belonged to another. Finally, though he retained the horse he was riding, he exchanged the saddle for another. He went through their stock of provisions, selected what he needed, cooked himself a meal, and then rode away through the night, singing in a rich and ringing baritone voice.

  By the time the report of this affair had spread through Kiever County, the men of the district were half hysterical with rage and the desire for revenge. If forty men had been hunting the fugitive the day before, by nightfall of that day no fewer than fifty parties were laboring among the slopes of the Kiever Mountains. Still their task was not accomplished, and, indeed, it was not simple, for in every square league of the range there were enough hiding places difficult of access to employ the entire fifty hunting parties through a whole day’s work. They had rushed out feeling that sheer numbers would now complete the net and make it perfect, but they saw that mere numbers would not avail them. Hard work and a little luck were what they needed.