Valley of Outlaws

by Max Brand

  They came out, finally, upon the little valley that the outlaw remembered so well. The time was just after sunset. They could look down from the eminence and see the lower mountains lost in the night, and all the broad, dark plain stretching away to the south, tinged with purple. But up here, reflected from the near sky all around, there was a strong and rosy twilight. From the horizon, north, east, south, and west, the radiance sprang upward, faded in the center of the sky, and covered the whole face of Mount Shannon with a rosy glory.

  So the four, drawing together in a compact group, came up the little valley, and they saw before them the homestead that the hermit had made here on the very edge of the world. The hour was late, but he was employing the light in a strange fashion. He had put together a wooden plow, tying the tough timbers together with sun-dried and toughened withes, and, by dint of pressing down with all his weight on the handle, he managed to sink this Egyptian-style plow point into the rain-softened earth. Before him walked a saddled horse, and from the point of the saddle ran back a lariat that was hitched to the plow beam. Patiently the horse worked ahead and, scratching some sort of a feeble furrow behind it, answered the twitching of the reins, and, turning again at the end of the field, came back along the other side.

  Young Shawn stopped his companions on the edge of the woods. “Look, look!” he exclaimed. “Do you see the old boy there? Do you see that horse? Tame, ain’t it? But let me tell you, I never got a day’s ride out of that devil without a full dose of bucking to warm up on. Bucking in the morning was bacon and eggs to him, and bucking at night was like coffee to a tired man. And now look at him . . . tame as a baby, and begging for more work! Look at his ears . . . pitched straight forward like he was eatin’ apples. If that man ain’t a witch, I’m a sucker.”

  This speech was not greeted with a smile. José, even, took off his hat in a sort of odd reverence.

  “Señores,” he said, “that is a holy man . . . a saint.”

  “No, not a saint,” said Hack Thomas. “It’s just some wise old shake. Why, kid, this is old Shannon, ain’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “I’ve heard about him. Let’s go have a look at him.”

  They went up the valley from the woods, accordingly, and, when he saw them coming, Shannon paused in his work and leaned upon his plow. Then, taking note of the lateness of the twilight, he abandoned the plowing and began to unknot the draw rope. The four greeted him in silence, knowing him to be deaf, but they waved most cheerfully, while Shawn explained to his companions.

  “That was a soft brute. Soft and foolish, but now look at him. Shannon has made him hard and wise. Look at his eye. As understanding as a man’s. That’s Shannon’s work.”

  “Look!” said Hack Thomas.

  Shannon, in the midst of his work, had paused with the loosened lariat in his hand to wave a courteous greeting to his guests. But at that very moment he was turned to stone, it appeared, by the sight of the young chestnut horse. They saw him stiffen, then he dropped the rope and went slowly forward.

  “Keep back!” yelled José. “Keep back! That horse is a man-eater, señor! Keep back beyond the length of his line!”

  The deaf-mute did not falter, and Shawn called sharply, “Be still, José! Are you going to teach the finest horse wrangler that ever walked how to handle a horse in his own home yard?”

  José, anxious but silenced, fidgeted in the saddle, and even drew out a gun, so that he would be able to stop the murderous charge of the stallion, if it were necessary to resort to severe measures in the end.

  Without the slightest hesitation, Shannon went straight up to Sky Pilot, who flattened his ears when he saw the man coming straight at him, and then made a little rear and plunge, as though about to hurl himself upon him. Yet he did not advance, but suddenly halted, with his legs widely braced, and his head stretched out, and his nostrils expanding and snorting.

  On went Shannon, until he laid a hand on the starred brow of the beautiful animal. Sky Pilot at the same instant pointed forward his ears, and a whinny of joy rose from the very depths of his heart. He sniffed at the feet of Shannon. He sniffed at his ground-stained knees, at his hands, at his chest, and at his face, and at last he nipped slyly at the hair of Shannon’s head.

  The hermit smiled. He turned his back to Sky Pilot, and to Shawn he made a singularly graceful gesture.

  “He’s thanking me,” said Shawn, “for bringing back his horse. Now, how can I explain? José, let go the rope and see what happens.”

  “Let go a thunderbolt? Señor, we will never see the colt again!”

  “We will, though. Let go and see,” commanded Shawn.

  It was done, and Sky Pilot, after a lofty spring and a plunge or two, began to gallop swiftly around Shannon, shaking his head and pretending a vast fury, but finally bringing up behind the man of the mountain and trotting like a dog at his heels.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At the open fire of Shannon, they cooked their supper, and Shannon, coming and going with perfect patience, never showed the slightest irritation when he saw his larder so heavily drawn upon to meet the needs of the strangers. It was a very dark night. There were enough high-flying clouds to shut out the stars, and now and again some downward blast of wind came rushing and roaring through the forest in the valley like a warning of danger to come.

  They finished their meal and sat about; the fire was built larger, whole logs and small trees being cast upon the blaze out of Shannon’s stock of well-dried and seasoned timber, but still he made no protest.

  “We’ll have to pay high for this,” suggested Thomas.

  “He won’t take money,” declared Shawn. “I know him . . . he’d throw your money back at you. He’s a queer one, this Shannon is. He won’t take money. He trades in skins for everything that he wants. Never uses coin at all.”

  Thomas fell into thought. “We could send him up some stuff like guns, and ammunition and such. He’d need that up here.”

  “You try it,” said Shawn. “He’ll take nothing. I know him, I tell you.”

  “But,” exclaimed Thomas, “then we’re just calmly sitting at our ease, here, and usin’ up things that he’s worked hard for and that we can’t repay?”

  “It looks like it,” said Shawn. “Except that I’ve been figuring on the thing, and I’ll find a way sometime.”

  “What way? What way is there that ain’t got money in it?” asked Thomas with vigor. “Tell me that, Shawn?”

  “Money ain’t the only thing in the world, I suppose?” suggested Shawn with warmth.

  Thomas then grew irritatingly logical. “Look here. What have you ever had in your life that you didn’t steal?”

  Shawn was silent, growing hot with anger.

  “I ain’t insulting you,” the other assured him. “I just mean to tell you that all a man can steal is money, or things that you exchange for money. And so that’s all you’ve got to make a payment to Shannon. Well, money is nothing to him. So that makes us unable to pay our debt. We can’t have anything to do with him. We can’t be square with him. If we take anything, we never can pay it back.”

  He had warmed to his words, and now he finished with such emphasis that Berry stared upon him, mouth agape. He turned toward young Shawn, forgetting his recent enmity, merely curious to hear what the answer could be.

  Shawn had no answer. He reached deeply into his mind and almost felt that he had words to reply with, but in every instance his heart failed him. He said at last: “I don’t know, Thomas. I can’t sling words the way that you can. Only, I feel that there’s something that could be said by a clever talker.” He stared gloomily at Thomas as he spoke. “You can give a fellow a helping hand, Thomas. I’d call that something that ain’t money.”

  “Sure,” agreed Thomas instantly. “You’re going to take this old goat’s horse that he cottons to so close, and afterward you’re going to wait till he’s in trouble so’s you can pay him back. Likely that he’ll be in trouble up here, ain’t it?
He’s got so many neighbors that’ll bother him, eh?”

  Shawn’s only reply was to fall into a passion. He leaped violently to his feet and started to burst into a tirade. Then, thinking better of it, but unable to control his anger, he turned and hurried away into the darkness.

  It left the Mexican, Thomas, and Jim Berry alone by the fire. This had died down a little, but still it stained the hands and the faces of the men with streaks of blood-red. They remained subdued and quiet for a moment after the departure of their companion.

  Then José took up a handful of pine needles and tossed them into the coals. There was a brief crackling, and then an arm of fire wagged high in the air.

  “So,” said José. “My friend, he is that.” He assisted his meaning by throwing up both hands in an aspiring gesture. Then he relapsed into a chuckle.

  “Nice fellow,” said Jim Berry with sarcasm. “Nice, even temper. A lamn . . . he is. I say,” he added with greater warmth, “that he’s been spoiled. He’s been runnin’ with people that he could walk over and sink his spurs into, but the time’s come when . . .”

  He was distracted by the heel of Thomas, which descended with force upon his toes, and, as he turned a furious face on his companion, he was directed toward José with a nod. It could be seen that José was looking gloomily downward, his brow contracted into a deep frown.

  “The kid is all right,” said Thomas heartily.

  “Oh, maybe he is,” agreed Berry, massaging his injured foot. “Only he gets on my nerves a little. It ain’t anything I have against him, only look how close he was to a fight just then.”

  “That is true,” murmured José, reassured by this change of tone in the conversation. “But look, friends, it needs a hot fire before iron can be melted. What good is a little yellow flame?”

  They broke up their fireside group to clean the kitchen utensils and knives that they had used in their cookery, and, when they had finished that duty, they found Shannon waiting for them on the edge of the dim circle of firelight. Behind him was a splendid and shimmering form of black and crimson—Sky Pilot, still at the heels of the hermit.

  Shannon beckoned to them, and, leading the way to his shack, he kindled a lantern there and pointed out four beds that he had made with pine boughs and hay, with warm skins for blankets. The three thanked him with gestures and turned in for the night. But when Shannon had gone they conversed softly, as though for fear of being overheard.

  Was it fear of them that had made their host treat them with such hospitality? Or was it a sense of hospitable duty that had ruled his actions? In the meantime, where was Shawn? Gone to walk off his evil temper and try to devise a way of getting the chestnut colt, undoubtedly.

  This made Berry put the question: “But how will Shawn settle with you, José, if he wants the horse? Sky Pilot belongs to you, I suppose?”

  José laughed softly. “That is nothing to worry about,” he said. “Who is there that can handle the devil . . . except a saint, my friends?”

  They fell asleep, at last, and were not disturbed when Shawn, in turn, entered softly, found his bunk prepared, and turned in. He slept a short and broken sleep, however, and, when the early mountain dawn had come, he was up and about once more. Early as he had risen, however, he was behindhand with the trapper. He saw Shannon already in the meadow, carrying a saddle and bridle, and Sky Pilot cantering eagerly toward him.

  With rather a cruel smile of expectation, Shawn crouched behind the pile of newly cut wood that stood beside the shack and watched what was to follow. It was all very well for Sky Pilot to welcome the man on foot, but what would it be when there was a saddle on his back and feet in the stirrups? A little shudder went through Shawn, and many recently bruised places ached violently, in sympathy.

  In fact, when the chestnut spied the saddle, he paused with a snort, and swept in a rapid circle around Shannon. Then, coming up from the rear, he sniffed at the saddle and flattened his ears. Shawn grinned again with dark foreknowledge of what was about to take place. He had little sympathy for Shannon. That elderly hermit was so far removed from the ways and the speeches of ordinary mortals that the outlaw could not help feeling that a fall on the turf of the soft meadow could do him no harm, and might give his conceit a tumble. He felt this the more so as he noted the unhesitant manner in which the lone dweller went about the work of saddling.

  There was one miracle, to begin with, and that was that Sky Pilot stood unroped for the burden to be strapped upon his back. Once he side-stepped and shook himself like a wet dog. But after that he was calm enough while saddle and bridle were fitted on and made secure. Now for the mounting!

  To the amazement of Shawn the hermit approached the fire-eating colt from the wrong side, and still Sky Pilot endured. He stood still while a clumsy foot was raised and thrust into the stirrup, only twisting his head around and biting softly at the arm of Shannon. A heave and a sway, and there was Shannon in the saddle at last.

  The chestnut crouched suddenly low, ears flattened so that his head had a snaky appearance, and every muscle of his splendid body stood out as though carved in stone, so tense were his muscles with fear.

  Now for the bolt forward or the lunge into the air. Shannon clucked; the chestnut crouched lower, and now he was urged forward by a heavy thump of a heel against his ribs. Shawn caught his breath, for who shall urge on the lightning?

  Yet there was no explosion. Instead, the colt straightened, shook his head as though to resolve his doubts, and then obediently and softly trotted off with his master, who was such an inexpert horseman that even at that silken gait he bounced violently in the saddle.

  The dark of the morning woods received them, and Shawn stood up with a still greater darkness upon his face, for this was such a miracle as even seeing could hardly make him believe.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The situation in the valley on Mount Shannon grew rapidly tense. Berry and Thomas pressed for a departure; they had assented to this trip up into the wilderness only in order to please a foolish whim of young Shawn, because they wanted his promised assistance in the matter of the bank robbery, but now they had arrived in the valley and the business of Shawn appeared hopeless and ridiculous. They urged instant departure.

  As Thomas put it briefly and vigorously: “You ought to get out of this section of the country where the law is looking for you. We offer to take you through the dangerous ground and get you away to a safe region and fill your pockets with coin, besides. You prefer to stay here and look at a wild horse. Why?”

  And Shawn could only answer: “The longer I look at that horse the more I want it. If the old man can use the horse, then maybe I can learn how, too.”

  “The old man has that pony hypnotized,” declared Hack Thomas. “He’s got something about him. All the horses like him.”

  This was obvious truth, and the implied challenge was: unless you, also, have a touch of that natural magic, how can you hope to exercise any power over a bad one like Sky Pilot?

  “Besides,” added Thomas, “even if you could handle the chestnut, he ain’t yours . . . he belongs to José.”

  Shawn could be reduced to a point when he could argue no longer, but he could not be made to leave the valley. So Jim Berry took his companion aside and declared firmly in favor of chucking the more famous outlaw and going about their work without him. He pointed out that all of their plans were perfect. If they needed a third man, they could pick him up somewhere—any hireling gunfighter.

  Thomas listened. He was the sort of man who hears everything to the end, and then makes his answer.

  “Three is all we want,” he replied. “Four makes a crowd of it. Four men attract too much attention . . . but three is just right. One man for each end of the big bank room. Number three is the steely devil who shoves his gun under the cashier’s nose and paralyzes him and takes the cash away. Neither of us, kid, is good enough to play the part of number three, and Shawn is the only man we know that is good enough. That’s why we’ll
wait here for Shawn.”

  Against this argument Jim Berry fought, but he fought unsuccessfully, for in his heart of hearts he recognized the truth of what Thomas had said.

  In the meantime, José was dreaming his hours away in the sun, smoking cigarettes, or fishing in the stream with great success. And Shawn spent all his hours on the study of Shannon and the stallion. He followed on foot when Shannon rode out along his trap line. He raced and scrambled and tore through trees, up rocky slopes, down sheer pitches, in order to keep his eye on the old fellow and try to penetrate his secret. But always it remained hidden. Sometimes he felt that he had got a line on something—in the touch of the hand of Shannon, in his manner of sitting on the wild horse. But in the end he realized that these thoughts were the worst sort of folly. Plainly Shannon rarely wasted caresses on the chestnut, and, as for his sitting the saddle, the miracle was simply that he was permitted to stay in it at all. No, it was a control of spirit over spirit, rather than of flesh over flesh, and the more irritated and perplexed he grew, the keener became the interest of Shawn.

  Whenever the stallion was away from Shannon, Shawn improved by striving with all his might to cultivate its friendship, offering choice bunches of seed grass or succulent dainties that would appeal to the tooth of Sky Pilot. Yet he never could draw near without having Sky Pilot shrink away from him. He never came really close without having the stallion toss his head with an upper lip thrust out stiffly and a foolish look in his eyes—the folly of blank terror and dislike.

  “What have I done to you?” Shawn was apt to say through his teeth. And he confided to Jim Berry and Thomas: “That horse is two-thirds fool. What’ve I ever done to him? But he’s scared to death.”