by Max Brand
It was dangerous, but, as he had often done in his life, he trusted to luck and to speed to get him past his enemies before they ever knew he was there. While he was cantering past one of these groves, he saw a glimmer of light move in the trees nearest him, and he swung in the saddle, with a Colt poised.
A tall man had already stepped out, with a Winchester thrown into the crook of his arm, and he waved a cheerful greeting.
Shawn swerved rapidly up to him. “What’s up, Joe?” he asked.
“Oh, they’re swarmin’ again,” said Joe in casual answer. “You’ve got ’em stirred up again, just like a hornet’s nest. They’re swearin’ all the things that they’ll do to you, kid.”
“They’re hot?” queried the outlaw.
“They’re nothing but.”
“I don’t see why,” said Shawn.
“Maybe they’ve got no reason,” answered the tall man, as Shawn led his panting horse into the darkest center of the trees and loosened the girths. “Only the story that I heard was that when Bowen of the General Merchandise Store came home the other night, he found a gent sitting with his daughter on the front porch. Is that right?”
“I don’t know,” answered the other noncommittally.
“It had the sound of nothin’ else but Terry Shawn,” insisted the mountaineer. “Bowen says to his girl . . . ‘Who’s that with you, Kitty? I can’t see in the dusk, here.’
“‘I don’t know,’ says Kitty. ‘This gentleman says that he’s waiting for you.’
“Then the gent stood up.
“‘I was waiting for you, Bowen,’ he says, ‘because I swore that I’d come to pay a call on you. I swore it the day that Chet Lorrain was railroaded to the gallows by your high-paid lawyers. I swore to Chet, before he died, that I’d call on you and see whether you’d any claim to keep right on living. My name is Terence Shawn,’ says you.
“This here little announcement made the girl screech, and old man Bowen, he curled up and reached for his gun. But he changed his mind.
“‘All right,’ says you, according to the story, ‘I ain’t going to do what I came down to do. Because, while waitin’, I have been able to see that you have a real reason for deservin’ to live, understand?’
“And then you said good night to the girl and beat it. Is that the true story, kid?”
“Suppose that it is,” said the outlaw. “Why should it make people boil over like this? What harm was there in it?”
“Harm?” shouted Joe. “Man, do you mean to say you don’t know that it’s better to kill a man and have done with it than to shame him and let him try to get even afterward? Old Bowen is raving around and swearing that he’ll make a saddle out of your tanned hide.”
“Is that all that bothers these people?” asked Terence Shawn in real amazement. “I tell you, Joe, take things, by and large, I can’t figure men and their ways. They just naturally have got me beat.”
“Have they?”
“They have,” said Terence gloomily.
“It’s because you’re such a simple, honest, and lovin’ soul,” declared Joe with profound irony. “Come on to the shack with me and have a snack of something to eat . . . you’re always empty. And then you can explain some things to me.”
Chapter Five
There are plenty of ways of preparing beans, as everyone knows, and if you have any doubt as to the methods of serving them, look at any pork-and-beans advertisement. But Shawn’s way was unique. He simply sliced away the top of the can and drank off the contents, the can poised in one hand and a formidable and ragged-edged chunk of pone balanced in the other.
He kept silence. Joe was talking excitedly, but Shawn, with the meditative eyes of one who eats, viewed the far horizon.
“Do you hear me?” barked Joe.
“What?”
“I say, whatever has brought you right back into this mess, so soon after you raised it?”
“Well,” said Terry, searching idly for a reason, “I wanted to see the girl again. I wanted to apologize for swearing in her presence.”
“You lie,” said Joe with a calm surety.
“I’ve got to be going,” said Terry with a start.
“Wait half an hour, kid. It’ll be near dusk then, and you can slide along through the hills as safe as can be.”
Shawn made no answer. He went on out into the open. There he took his horse and drew up the cinches.
“You know that sucker, Dick Glover?” inquired Shawn, still with his mind remote from the situation.
“Went to school with him,” said Joe.
“You’re friends?”
“None better. We used to fight only on weekends. Sundays we rested.”
“I did Dick Glover a good turn the other day,” announced Mr. Shawn.
“How come? I didn’t hear him giving you any special praise last time I saw him,” remarked Joe.
“Which was when?”
“This morning.”
“Where?”
“Hereabouts. He was with the posse. All he wants of you is the hide,” was Joe’s reassuring reply.
“There’s gratitude,” said Terry Shawn, striking a thoughtful attitude. He added, with a sigh: “You know, Joe, people have got me beat so bad I pretty near give up.”
“What? Liquor?” asked Joe hopefully.
“No, hope,” said Shawn. “I pretty near give up hope. I’ve always been saying to myself that one day I’ll settle down fine and sober and be a credit to some lucky town. Do you see?”
“Go on,” said Joe, yawning shamelessly, and making no effort to hide it.
“But now that I come to think it over,” he said, “I don’t know that it’s worth while. Being bad is easy . . . just live naturally and you’re sure to raise a riot. But doing good . . . that’s the stickler, and that’s what breaks my heart. I’m like a little kid, Joe, I just don’t understand.”
“My heart . . . it sure does bleed for you,” said Joe, rubbing his chin with knuckles hard as flint.
“You take Bowen,” explained the outlaw, putting his foot in the stirrup. “Now that fat sucker comes home and finds a gent waiting all ready to kill him and roll his fat body down into the gully and chuck twenty ton of slip rock down on top of it. I had the place all picked out, Joe,” said Shawn sadly.
“Stop,” said Joe. “I’m goin’ to bust out cryin’ when I think what you’ve given up, kid.”
“But I didn’t kill him,” said the outlaw. “I let him crawl away, the skunk, and I said no more about troubling him.”
“No,” said Joe, “you never would understand. It’s this way. Bowen’s a gent that’s always been lord and master the minute that he stepped inside his front gate. And along you come and show him up to be a four-flusher. And the one you pick to show it in front of ain’t anybody but the person that’s nearest and dearest to him. I mean Kitty Bowen! And still you can’t understand.”
“Ah,” murmured the other. “Perhaps you’re right. You could always cut for sign wonderful, Joe. But the other thing,” went on Terry Shawn, after giving his horse a violent warning to stand still, “the other thing that cuts me up the most, is about your old friend, Dick Glover.”
“My boyhood chum,” Joe assured him.
“There’s a gent,” said Shawn, “that I was right charitable to the other day.”
“How come, would you mind saying?” asked Joe.
“Why no, I’d as soon tell. I was coming along in the need of a horse, and riding a regular hell-cat on steel. I says to myself . . . ‘where shall I leave a grand horse like that and take up another? Because, no matter where I go, I’m sure to leave a better horse than I take.’ Well, I could have drifted over and taken Sim Peters’s roan mare, or around to Calway’s in the draw and got his brown gelding that talks three languages and runs like thunder. But I happened to think of the nice hardy colt that Dick Glover had, and I said to myself . . . ‘Dick and me have never been particular good friends, so why not start right in now and put him on the list?’
“Well, I did it, Joe. I dropped over and cut his horse out of the corral and I strapped down my horse and left him in the place of the fresh one. Now, Joe, the next thing I hear is that Dick Glover is on my trail and after my scalp.
“It’s hard, Joe,” sighed the outlaw. “And there’s no pleasing men. The best way is just to hold ’em up, rob ’em, and make ’em feel friendly because you took their money and not their hide. Joe, I’m plumb disgusted. I’ve got half a mind,” he added gloomily, “to cut loose from these here diggings and strike away in a new direction.”
Joe, during the latter part of this moving speech, had been busy working the corner of a cut of tobacco, and now he bit off a huge section and stowed it with difficulty in one capacious cheek.
“Might it have been a chestnut?” asked Joe at last.
“It was,” said Shawn. “And I’m not surprised that you know about it, Joe. A horse like that . . . every ’puncher on the range would be breaking his heart for him after a few days.”
“Bones,” said Joe.
“What do you mean?” asked Shawn, confused.
“You said hearts . . . I said bones.”
“What’s your drift, Joe?” Shawn was more puzzled than before.
“I said that horse would break more bones than he ever would have a chance to break hearts.”
“You’re wrong,” answered the outlaw complacently. “He’s a lamb. I never came across one like him. Went like silk and I never had to touch him with a whip or a spur all the way down from the hills. It was like being tied to wind. Let him go and it was like sailing a kite . . . you just touched the high spots. Slow him up, and he came back as smooth and as soft as your own bandanna handkerchief.” Mr. Shawn cast about him for more eloquent words, for there was the light of disbelief in the eye of Joe.
“You could put that horse,” continued Shawn, “in a corner and tell him to stand, and he’d stand all day. You could put him outside your door and he’d watch it like a dog. He was a horse that you could have sat down and had your coffee with in the morning. I used to read the newspaper to him,” added Terry Shawn, warming to his story. “Now what have you got to say to that?”
He sat in his saddle and grinned amiably down upon Joe, who answered with gravity: “There are gifts that can’t be gained by study,” he began. “You’ve got to have a talent for ’em. You’ve got to have a head start, so to speak. And then you’ve got to keep right on cultivating, to have the sort of gift that you’ve got, kid. It’s rare, kid, and it’s beautiful.”
Young Terence Shawn turned his handsome head a little. “What’s that?” he asked expectantly.
“I have seen some grand men in my day,” said Joe. “Right back in my village there was a world-beater . . . and down in Mexico I met a couple of gents with the real native talent. But I tell you, Terry, that when you open up and get into your stride, there ain’t anybody like you at all. You stand away off by yourself.”
“Shut up!” commanded Shawn. “Stand off for what?”
“For grand, gray-bearded, mossy, granite-faced, cloud-busting lying,” declared Joe. “I’ve got a real respect for you, kid. When I hear you open up on one of your yarns, I wish that I could put it down in shorthand. When you die, I’m goin’ to get famous repeating things that you’ve said.”
“Humph,” said Shawn without wrath. “Go on, you sap. Go on an’ get the poison out of you. What’s wrong with what I’ve said? I might draw in my ears about reading the newspaper to him. Nothing else.”
“You know Chuck Marvin?” asked Joe, ignoring Shawn’s remarks.
“Don’t I?” was Shawn’s fervent reply.
“Can he ride?”
“About the best on the range . . . bar one,” said Shawn with a shameless assurance.
Joe could not help a faint smile. “I was over to see a little party the other day,” said Joe. “It was Chuck Marvin, who’d come a three-days’ journey to take a ride on a chestnut horse that a greaser has got over at Lister.”
“Look here,” said young Shawn. “I’m talking about a horse that I left with . . .”
“Keep yourself in line,” said Joe, “and wait for your turn. I say I saw Chuck Marvin workin’ and laborin’ on that chestnut . . .”
“He’s a grand man to rake a horse,” admitted Shawn with some jealousy in his voice.
“Grand?” repeated Joe contemptuously. “The only use he had for his spurs was to sink ’em into the cinches and wish that they were fish hooks. Chuck, he could hardly keep his head tied onto his neck. First he banged one shoulder and then the other . . . then he tried to sink his chin through his chest, and after that he tried to hit the small of his spine with the back of his head. He kept a good hold on the pommel and the cantle, too. But pretty soon his wrists began to give way. There was a dash of sun-fishing thrown in at the end, but I can tell you with all that the chestnut was just getting warmed up to the work!”
“It’s another horse,” insisted Shawn with irritation. “It couldn’t . . .”
“The doctor worked over Chuck for pretty near an hour before he came to,” went on Joe, unperturbed. “Lucky he wasn’t hurt bad . . . only a few ribs and an ankle smashed, as it was. Though I did hear something about concussion of the brain, and a twisted backbone. Otherwise, he was as fine as could be . . . as fine as you’d expect a gent to be after ridin’ on a horse that would sit down in a corner like a dog and listen when you read the mornin’ paper.”
“What an ornery, mean, low-down, useless critter you are, Joe!” remarked young Mr. Shawn with some irritability. “I still tell you that I don’t know anything about this horse you’re talking about.”
“Aw,” said the tall man, “Glover tried to keep the horse, but a greaser in town saw it and claimed it and had ten pals to swear it was stolen from him a couple of months ago. He knew its brand, its name, its bloodlines, and everything else about it, and the judge had to pass the horse on to him before Glover even had a chance to get the pony shod.”
“Pony?” said Shawn with a rising anger.
“No,” said Joe, ignoring the interruption, “they didn’t get him shod. They took him down there and they started. But they only had eight men and ropes to handle him, and he knocked over the anvil, smashed the forge, and spilled the fire everywhere. And while they were putting out the fire, he just took off the rear end of the shop and chucked it out into the pasture, and then he walked off to enjoy the sun. However, the greaser has him now, and he’s offering the horse to anybody that can ride him. The only drawback is that you’ve got to pay five dollars a throw.”
“It beats me,” said Terence Shawn with a good round oath. “He’s the sort that would eat out of the hand of a baby.”
“He still would,” said Joe. “And you could let him walk over ten babies and he never would touch one of them. And he stands in his pasture there and makes love to everybody that goes by. But if you start to make him do anything . . . that’s a little different.”
“Bah!” said Shawn. “I can make that horse . . .”
“You can’t,” said Joe firmly. “You didn’t know him. He wasn’t grown up the last time you met him. But now he’s had experience, and he’s changed, and you wouldn’t know him. They call him Sky Pilot over in Lister now.”
After a moment of thought, Mr. Shawn changed the conversation. “When you get to town, get me a side of bacon, will you?” he asked.
“Sure I will.”
“Here’s the price,” said Shawn, tossing him a bill.
“I don’t need fifty dollars for a side of bacon,” said Joe.
“I’ve got no change, and I’m in a hurry. I’m goin’ to get me the chestnut, Sky Pilot, Joe.”
Joe folded the bill and slipped it into his money belt.
“You go right on, son,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll ever come back to bother me for the change.”
Chapter Six
His horse had profited by a thorough breathing spell—the cool of the dusk was beginning—an
d now the kid galloped briskly away, taking the straight road for Lister. He had not had that goal in his mind when he started, but wherever the horse was, there was his duty.
Duty had forced him to undertake the restoration of the horse to the old man, and he wondered to himself, speculatively, how difficult the task would prove when he approached the town and found the pony.
He would have preferred that the horse should be in the hands of any rancher, no matter how rich or how well he kept the chestnut guarded, for such men could be deceived. But for a fellow of the type he guessed the Mexican to be—that was a different matter. It would be like entering a wolf’s den to take away the cubs before the mother’s very eyes. A horse that brought in $5 a ride was, to the Mexican no doubt, a veritable treasure, and neither day nor night would the fellow be away from the stallion.
Purposely he had not asked where the chestnut was kept. That information he wished to draw from another source, and the thought of the coming interview made Terry Shawn tilt his head a bit to one side, with an expression that was close to sheer deviltry.
So he went on toward the town of Lister cheerfully, not allowing his thoughts to roam too far into the future. Indeed, there never was a great deal of time for reflection in the life of Terry Shawn, for he never settled down to a lonely moment without having to listen up and down the wind, like a hunted wolf. And whether he were facing some winter storm in one at the bleak mountain passes, or whether he were passing a month of watchful waiting in the ravines of Mount Shannon, or among its lofty, polished peaks of rock, his soul was usually less employed than his wits, his eyes, and all his senses. He had a natural instinct for trickery, knavery, and fun, and this he allowed full play at all times.
He swung out of the dark at last, above the town of Lister, and he examined it with complacent satisfaction, almost as one might regard a picture one has painted. For he knew Lister so well that each of the lights had a meaning for him, and he could even pick out the dim glimmer of Mrs. Dodge’s lamp from the broader and clearer flare of Mrs. Thompson’s window across the street. He knew Lister. He had to know it, for Lister was his base of supplies.