by Max Brand
“How many times you tried to ride him?” asked Thomas.
“Oh, half a dozen.”
“You weren’t wearing spurs, I suppose?”
“Well, maybe.”
“You didn’t have a quirt?”
“Sure I did.”
“And you ask why he’s scared of you.”
Certainly those wild interviews with Sky Pilot had not been of the sort to fill his soul with trust and peace, but, on the second evening, Shannon saw fit to interest himself in the hopeless attachment of Shawn to the chestnut.
The outlaw had followed the stallion down the meadows to a spot where the stream entered a pleasant grove. There it widened and spread to a still-faced pool, all covered with shadow, with a long branch thrusting up out of the water like a black, skeleton arm. The grass grew long and rank around the edges of this pool, and, as every good horse loves changes of diet, so Sky Pilot had come here to vary his food. Shawn, carefully following with a handful of grain and a bit of sugar, strove to slip up to the red beauty.
The maneuvers of Sky Pilot were those of a naturally wicked and cool-headed horse, for he would allow the man to come almost up to him before he whipped his tail into the face of his pursuer and moved on. Or he would stand patiently and let Shawn reach his shoulder, before he swerved just a little, and kept on swerving to mock and baffle Shawn as completely as a wide gallop across the fields could have done.
Shawn paused, at last, gritting his teeth to keep back the curses, and, half lost in the pattern of the shadows, he was suddenly aware that eyes were watching him. He started erect, ready for trouble, and then he made out that it was old Shannon, smiling faintly through the beard that now grew long and gray, and descended far down his breast, matching the almost equally long hair that fell over his shoulders.
He nodded when he saw that he was observed, and came forward at once. Sky Pilot, as though to show his unmistakable preference, flirted his heels toward Shawn, and cantered eagerly to meet his master. Shannon waved the colt aside as though it were a human being, and, going on to Shawn, he took the lean hand of the outlaw in his and led him to the chestnut. It was exactly, thought Terry Shawn, like a child being presented, but at the touch of that hand awe overcame him, and he went gravely forward.
Sky Pilot, as one who would have none of this, whirled off in a crimson streak, but he came back in a wide circle, looped swiftly around them, and halted suddenly before them again, snorting and stamping. As clearly as with words he said to Shannon: “That man is dangerous. I know all about him, and he’s full of harm.” Yet the raised hand of Shannon subdued the stallion, and, although he trembled violently, Sky Pilot allowed the two to come up, allowed the hand of the master to carry the hand of the outlaw to his muzzle, his forehead, allowed the hand of Shawn, alone, to pass down his silky neck, although at this Sky Pilot shook his head and whinnied softly to Shannon for help. For half an hour in that darkening place the introduction continued, and then they walked out from the trees side-by-side—Terry Shawn leading the stallion by the mane.
He could feel that he was under bare endurance; it was the presence of old Shannon that made the thing possible, and yet even that hardly diminished the delight of Terry Shawn in his first victory. Through that tangle of mane he felt a tremor vibrate under his hand, and it was very like holding a smoking thunderbolt, ready to be launched. Nevertheless, by the delicate thread of the will of Shannon, the stallion was held. Some day, perhaps, with his own unaided hand he might do as much.
The spell was snapped by the sudden exclamation of José, who came out of the woods with half a dozen fish dangling from his hand and cried out at this sight.
Sky Pilot veered away with a neigh, and Shannon went on to catch him for the night and put him away in the shed.
José came up to Terry Shawn with blazing, dark eyes. “What is the trick, amigo?” he asked. “How did you manage to do that?”
“There’s no trick,” said Shawn, gazing earnestly after Sky Pilot. “It’s all in the head of Shannon. Heaven knows how he does it, but he seems to have a rope on the colt all the time.”
“Bah!” snapped José, growing angry. “I saw you lead him with your own hand. Is that no trick?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Shawn, rolling a cigarette, but keeping his glance fully on the face of the Mexican, “I’m feeling near enough to winning to want to buy your claim in that horse. What do you say, José?”
“What price?” asked the other sullenly, but curious.
“I can give you a thousand, spot cash. I’ll pay you that much, José.”
“Why should I sell?” asked José. “I take him down to a town and charge five dollars a ride. I make two or three hundred dollars a month that way. Why should I sell him, señor?”
“Because it’s a dangerous game. You have ten men pitched on their heads. One day somebody breaks his neck. And that man’s brother or father or son will come gunning for you.”
“I wear a gun, also,” said José scornfully.
“Aye, and you can use it,” admitted the other. “You’re a straight shooter, both ways from the start. But still you know what I mean. It’s dangerous. Now, José, I’m offering you a fat little stake for that pony. What do you say?”
The thoughts of José were on another matter.
“How much did you pay Señor Shannon to learn the trick? I, José, have no money to pay to him.” He said it bitterly, a glimmer of anger in his eyes.
“I didn’t pay a penny,” said Shawn with perfect truthfulness.
The Mexican shrugged with impatience. “I am a child,” he suggested. “I must believe everything you tell me.”
“Believe a thousand dollars,” said the outlaw. “Will that sound right to you, old son?”
“Bother a thousand dollars.”
The patience of Terry Shawn came to an abrupt end. “Look here, José, what’s your real claim to Sky Pilot? You’ve told me the yarn with your own mouth. What right have you got to him?” he demanded.
“I have paid,” said José slowly, “nearly three years of hell. Who else has paid so much for him?”
“What would a judge say to that?” asked Shawn with a sneer. “What new kind of a bill of sale is that, José?”
“Villain!” shouted José, growing wild. “You would take him?”
“Steady,” urged Terry Shawn. “I’ll never take him against your will. I’m just asking you to be reasonable. There’s a horse that’ll bring you in ten dollars’ worth of trouble for every penny of cash that you can get out of him. I offer you a thousand bucks. Look here, man, right in my hand.”
He extended the bills, but José, with a furious oath, struck the money from that extended hand and turned on his heel. The bills fluttered slowly down to the ground and Shawn stood transfixed, staring at his hand, at the falling money, and at the departing form of the Mexican. Never before had he endured so much from any man, and by that blow he felt all the amenities and ties that existed between them were wiped away and made as nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Let a wolf smell bear near his home, and he will sleep lightly, for a month at least. So it was with Terry Shawn that night in the shack, dozing for a moment, then opening his eyes suddenly and lying with all senses alert, listening to the breathing of the other four in the little room. When he heard a little rustling sound, late in the night, he raised his head silently, and waited.
A shadow was moving through the dark—something to be guessed at rather than seen—something to be felt rather than heard. He could have sworn that a form leaned above him through the darkness, and, with a ready revolver, Terry Shawn waited. After an instant, the sense of imminent danger became so great that he was about to sweep a hand before him and fire if that hand struck any obstacle, but at that moment he saw a form, indistinct but real, step into the doorway, and out again into the starlit night.
He followed at once, picking his way in soft silence, with fastidious care. Outside the door, he flattened himself against the wall of
the house, while he enjoyed a few deep breaths of the cold, pure, outer air. Wine-like, it made his blood leap, blew the weariness out of his brain, and made him perfectly alert and collected.
A thin night mist covered the woods, so that it was hard to tell which was forest and which was fog, save that close by the black trunks that seemed stepping toward the shack. Overhead, through wide pockets in the mist, he saw the stars, hanging as if from wires, out of the thick black velvet of the sky. There was not a ghost of wind; there was not a murmur of sound, except an occasional stamp and rumble from the horse shed. Very late for the horses still to be standing.
So thinking, he looked to his revolver again, spun the cylinder, weighed the weapon with affectionate familiarity, and then stole around the edge of the shack and the horse shed.
He was barely in time. José had not many moments the start, but José worked fast, indeed. There he sat on a saddled horse—Shawn’s own mount he had selected for this occasion—and behind him he was drawing Sky Pilot out of the shed door at the end of a long lariat. Unwillingly the stallion came out into the cold of the night, with flattened ears and expanded nostrils.
“Hello, José,” said the outlaw.
José groaned, and, dropping the lead rope, he fired from the hip.
Good reason had Terry Shawn for commending the accuracy of the Mexican with firearms, and if hitherto he had seen no proof of that skill, now he could bear personal testimony hereafter. At the first stir of José’s hand he had dropped toward the ground, but even so the skill of José, shooting by starlight, sent a bullet that clipped open the shoulder of Shawn’s coat, cut through the bottom of the coat, and blew away half the heel of his boot. Also, before he struck the ground in falling, Shawn sent in his own fire.
That bullet ended the battle, for it apparently struck the right arm or shoulder of José. Out of his hand, the gun slipped to the ground, and, leaning well over the saddle bow, flattening himself like an Indian, José drove away through the night. The mist opened its arms to receive him.
“José! José!” shouted Terry Shawn. “Come back! I’ll do you no harm. You’re hurt! Come back!”
But José was gone in the mists, and the dull, hollow echo of his own voice came back to Shawn in empty answer.
Other noises, of course, soon joined in. The three roused sleepers rushed from the house, Jim Berry in the lead, a Colt in either hand. He found Terry Shawn closing the door of the horse shed, and in a most uncommunicative humor.
“What’s happened, Terry?”
“José wanted a little exercise by night,” said Shawn slowly. “I just gave him a little send-off.”
Berry wasted no further time in questions. He gave one glance at the downcast head of Terry, and then stepped past him and opened the shed. By match light he made his examination and came out to report to the other two. Terry Shawn had gone quietly back to his blankets.
“Sky Pilot is loose with a lariat around his neck, and Terry’s own nag is gone,” he informed them. “José must have tried to get away with both of them. Think of it. To steal Shawn’s own horse!” He whistled softly.
“There you are,” announced the philosophical Thomas. “He was a good greaser, too. Enough grit to supply a couple of bears and a painter . . . hard as nails . . . straight as they come . . . but too dog-gone’ changeable. Lovin’ the kid one day . . . tryin’ to murder him the same night.”
Old Shannon went into the shed to examine things for himself.
“Nothing better could have happened,” declared Jim Berry. “The kid has been hangin’ on here, wasting his time. Now he’ll have to move, because it’s a cinch that the Mexican will never stop till he’s brought trouble back to us.”
“He’ll have to move,” agreed Thomas. “Listen to that.”
Out from the stable came a soft, deep-throated whinny, such a sound as a horse makes to a dear friend.
“Poor Shannon,” whispered Thomas. “And he can’t speak a word back to that colt. It’s enough to break your heart.”
Now that a double death scene had been averted, all went calmly back to sleep, and not five minutes after his gun had sent a bullet into poor José, Terry Shawn had closed his eyes in profound slumber. Thomas and Berry paused in the doorway to listen in astonishment to the soft snoring of the youth.
“That’s nerve,” said Thomas in quiet reverence. “Most likely he had a bullet fanning his ear . . . most likely he about finished that greaser . . . and now he’s sound asleep again. He’s a lamb, Jim, ain’t he?”
Jim agreed with a gloomy murmur; nothing could make him admit much good in the character of Shawn.
Neither did Shawn speak a word about the fight in the morning. The damage that his clothes and boots had suffered spoke for themselves, but since nothing was volunteered, nothing was asked by his two companions. As for old Shannon, he seemed above an interest in such things, and made an early departure to ride the round of his traps.
That day the upper crests of Mount Shannon were hidden under a gray shawl of clouds, and far to the north the fringes of that garment flickered across the sky. Snow undoubtedly was falling, yonder on the heights, and, although the wind was from the south, it seemed a cold wind. By noon the creek had lost half of its volume, and Thomas pointed out the cause.
Up there on the heights the snow was coming down in thick layers; the melting that supplied that stream had stopped. Before the next morning, no doubt, a heavy freeze would lock the whole upper reaches of Mount Shannon in the first embrace of winter. And, indeed, at any time a heavy fall of snow might wrap the great mountain in white far down its sides, and make the rocky trails perilous, and fill the bottoms of the ravines with great wind drifts of crusted white, impassable for man or horse.
“It’s time to start, kid.”
“It won’t snow. It’s just a touch of cold,” said Shawn morosely.
“Then look there!”
As if by special intent, the wind, shifting a little, opened the gray mantle that hid the shoulders of Mount Shannon, and exposed a dazzling patch of white that instantly was veiled again.
“Now what do you say to that?” exclaimed Jim Berry. “Good grief, man, are you going to wait to be snowed in here?”
For answer Shawn walked sullenly away, his head hanging a little as if in thought.
“It’s too much,” said Thomas, touched at last. “Let him go . . . we’ll try for a third man somewhere else . . . the kid’s gone crazy.”
Chapter Thirty
The cold increased every moment. It thickened the mist that kept pouring up from the south through the trees; it set the horses trembling in the meadow, and it herded them into the lee of the trees; it filled the solidly built shack with a damp, disheartening chill.
When Shannon came back from his traps in the mid-afternoon, his first greeting was an eloquent gesture toward the mountaintop, and then, by signs, he indicated that the snow that was falling there might soon be heaped thick along the floor of the valley. Thomas and Berry, ready to be impressed, tried a last appeal with young Shawn, but Terry refused to answer.
“We’ve waited a long time,” said Thomas, biting his lip with angry impatience. “Tomorrow morning we start, old son. Think it over tonight, will you?”
Terry Shawn nodded, but plainly his heart was still too strongly bent upon the stallion. The horse was no sooner back from the round of the traps that day than he went out to work over it.
Slow work for Terry Shawn. He could not stalk the horse, but when he found the section of grass on which it chose to graze—for the cold weather seemed to make no difference whatever to this hardy creature—Terry sat down on a half-crumbled, fallen tree trunk, and gradually the stallion drew nearer. He was troubled by the presence of this man, but nevertheless, in that particular place, Sky Pilot chose to graze, and, since the man sat quietly and merely talked in a gentle voice, there seemed no particular harm.
And so Terry Shawn sat in the damp cold and picked seed grass, and patiently offered it. It was scorn
ed for a long time; at length, as he held forth a large and choice bunch, Sky Pilot turned away and stared up the mountain. The clouds had parted and blown clean away from the mountain head, streaming toward the west with a shifting of the wind, and all the summit of Mount Shannon was revealed, heavily coated with white except where the shadowy ravines made streaks of black. That expanse of dazzling brightness made Terry Shawn shudder more deeply than before, and then Sky Pilot turned deliberately and, without a sign of fear, took the seed grass from the hand of Shawn!
It was done so suddenly that Terry Shawn hardly could believe that the thing had happened. Amazed and delighted, he stretched out the empty hand. Sky Pilot, eyes blazing with fear and curiosity and hatred, stretched his head in answer, sniffed at the naked hand, and then flung away in a wildly frightened gallop.
Much, much to do! Indeed, the outlaw felt that he hardly had his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, but this much at least had been accomplished—by the will of the mysterious Shannon, he had led the horse by the mane, and by his own patience and calm he had induced Sky Pilot to take food from that same hand. Well, much could be done after that. A step at a time, little by little.
Somewhere he had heard the Chinese fable of the old woman who sat at the roadside, grinding an iron pestle in an empty mortar. “What are you doing, mother?” she was asked. “I am grinding the pestle down to make a needle,” was her answer.
Patience would be its own reward, in that case, but here there was something profoundly more important—there was Sky Pilot.
Ah, let other men live as they would with wealth and comfort around them, while he flashed through the wide Western ranges with such speed under him that cities and mountains and rivers would be spurned under foot. With such a horse beneath him what could he not do? So he soared in his imagination, as any wild-hearted boy, looking up from a fairy tale, flies through the sky from Harun-al-Rashid’s Bagdad to Valhalla.
He rose and followed the stallion then, but this time the chestnut made as if to charge him, and fled away across the meadow, squealing with rage. Enough had been done for that day, so he turned his back reluctantly on the horse and wandered to the creek.