Peyton

by Max Brand

  Next came the tale of Torridon, hastily sketched in, to which Roger Lincoln listened with increasing joy. The trip to the Sky People filled him with laughter and excitement. And, finally, he caught the hand of Torridon and exclaimed: “You’re such big medicine to that pack of wolves that they’ll never give you peace! They’ll be trying to steal you again, one of these days.”

  “Don’t say it,” murmured Torridon. “It makes me faint and weak to hear you.”

  The frontiersman rested his chin on the palm of his hand and regarded the boy with a smile and a nod. “The same Paul,” he said. “The same Paul Torridon. Almost like a girl until it comes to the pinch . . . and then like a pair of tigers.”

  “No, no!” exclaimed Torridon. “Ah, Roger, if you knew how happy I am to be with you again, and how many times I’ve prayed to have a man like you with me.”

  Here they were interrupted by a knock at the door and no less a person than the commander of the fort appeared, a man of middle age, shrewd and hard-faced, to tell Roger Lincoln that he was accused by Samuel Brett of harboring a horse thief.

  “It’s the case of Ashur,” said Lincoln. “Come down with me and we’ll face Brett. He’s not a bad kind of a man. But they’ve written to him that the stallion was stolen, and in a way he was. Now’s the time to face it out.”

  He would not wait to hear the protest of Torridon, who had no wish to meet that grim axe man who so nearly had put an end to his days not long before. But down went Lincoln, Torridon, and the post captain together, and found Brett in a high rage. He repeated his accusation in a loud voice. Torridon was a sneak and a thief and a member of a cut-throat family. And he had repaid the kindness of the Bretts by slipping away with their finest horse.

  The post captain heard this speech with a growing darkness of brow. “The law ain’t overworked in these parts much,” he declared. “But a horse thief I hate worse than a snake . . . it’s one reason that I hate every damned Indian I ever seen. And if this Torridon has stole the black stallion . . . back he goes to Brett. And, besides, I’ll make an example of him that’ll . . .”

  “Hold on a half minute.” Roger Lincoln smiled. “Let me tell you that I found Torridon locked in the Brett cellar. They intended to cut this lad’s throat the next day. We had to fight our way out, and, once out, we had to take the best horse on the place to be sure of getting away from the murderers. The horse that we took is the black one. We’ll admit that. But I think the circumstances alter the case a good deal, don’t you?”

  “The damned lyin’ . . .” began Samuel Brett.

  “Wait!” interrupted the commandant sharply. “Lincoln, you give me your word that you’ve told me the straight of it? He took the horse to escape bein’ murdered?”

  “I give you my sacred word.”

  “Then the horse belongs to him by rights,” said the other, and, refusing to listen to another word, he turned upon his heel and hurried away, leaving Samuel Brett half apoplectic with fury.

  Roger Lincoln had drawn Torridon to one side. “Now, man,” he said, “while I keep Sam Brett here and try to hold him, get to Brett’s house. You’ll find Nancy there, I think. Go fast, my boy.” He turned to Samuel Brett. “Brett,” he said, “if you think that you have a fair claim to that black horse, will you sit down in my room and talk it over with me? Paul Torridon and I don’t want to figure as horse thieves.”

  “I’ll talk it over here!” roared Samuel Brett. “Or I’ll fight it over here. As for rights, I can show you . . .”

  Torridon heard no more. He had slipped away through the crowd and hastened through the open gates. Evening was covering Fort Kendry. Lamps were beginning to glimmer behind the windows, and the smell of frying meat made the air pungent as Torridon came again to the big square house and heard a woman’s voice calling: “Nancy! Oh, Nan!”

  From the distance: “Yes, Aunt Mary!”

  Oh, heart of Paul Torridon, how still it stood. He hastened through the gloom toward the trees and saw a form issuing from them with arms filled with greenery. He told himself that he could tell her by the mere pace at which she walked, the lightness of her step, and the sense of joy that went before her like radiance before a lamp. She came quickly on until she was aware of his shadow standing against the twilight gloom, and she stopped with a faint cry.

  Then, cheerfully: “Are you the new man that Uncle Samuel sent in from Gannet?”

  He did not answer. He could not. He heard her catch a frightened breath, but, instead of running from him, she came slowly forward, a small step and a halt, and a step again. The greenery slipped from her arms to the ground. He heard a small whisper, but to him it was all the vital, human warmth of song, and then she was in his arms.

  From the door a long nasal wail was calling: “Nancy! Oh, Nan, where are you?”

  And Torridon whispered: “She’s here. Oh, Nancy, Nancy, how beautiful you are.”

  And she: “Silly dear, how can you see me?”

  “I can see your goodness and your truth,” said Torridon. “And I . . . I . . .”

  “Nancy!” wailed the caller. “Are you comin’?”

  “Never, never,” whispered Torridon.

  “I have to take these in,” whispered Nancy in reply. “I’ll be out again in a flash. Wait here . . . I’ve got to go in . . . she’d never stop calling me. . . .”

  “How long will you be, Nan?”

  “I don’t know. Not half a minute. Not two seconds.”

  “Nan, I feel as though I’ll never see you again.”

  “Ah, but you will.”

  “Kiss me once.”

  “There, and there.”

  She swept up her fallen load and ran into the brightness of the doorway.

  Torridon heard her saying: “I stumbled on the path and quite lost my breath.”

  “Why, honey,” said her aunt, “you look all done in. Set down and rest yourself a minute, and . . .”

  And a hood of darkness that instant fell over the head of Torridon, was jerked tightly over his mouth by mighty hands, and strong arms caught him up, crushing him with their power.

  XVI

  He felt himself being carried rapidly away, and faint he heard a voice murmur, beside the robe that stifled him: “Will you be quiet and make no cry, White Thunder?”

  “Yes,” he gasped in the Cheyenne tongue.

  Instantly the hood was jerked from his head. They were standing under the edge of the trees, he in the huge arms of Standing Bull. He knew that ugly profile even in that faint light.

  “No harm, little brother,” murmured Standing Bull. “You are more safe now than you would be in your own teepee. I, Standing Bull, have spoken.”

  He allowed Torridon to stand, but kept a tight hold on him.

  And now the shadow of the girl ran out from the lighted door of the kitchen. Torridon saw her, as the Cheyenne drew him back into the shadow of the trees, saying: “Rising Hawk has gone to bring your horse. We would not take you back on a common pony. And all shall be as you wish in the tribe. You shall be a great medicine man among us, White Thunder. You shall be rich, with horses and scalps and squaws.”

  The trees closed between Torridon’s back-turned face and the silhouette of the girl, but faintly, far off, he heard a cautious voice calling: “Paul! Paul!” And then a little louder, in a voice broken with fear and grief: “Paul Torridon! Where are you?”

  A rustling passed among the trees before them. They came into a clearing and there were a dozen horses in waiting, and the gleaming, half-naked forms of several warriors. They closed in a whispering knot around Torridon. He did not hear their voices, for faintness dimmed his ears with a dull roaring through which he still seemed to hear the sad voice of a girl calling for Paul Torridon.

  And suddenly he groaned: “Standing Bull, if I have been true to you and helped you in bad times, be my friend now. Take your knife and strike it into my side, but don’t carry me back to the Cheyennes.”

  “Peace, peace, peace,” said Standing Bull, l
ike a father to a sick child. “Peace, little brother. Happiness is not one bird, but many. We shall catch them for you, one by one. We shall fill your hands with happiness. Behold. Here is Rising Hawk, and the black thunder horse is with him.”

  Suddenly Torridon was raised and placed in the saddle.

  Standing Bull stood close beside him. “If you make a loud shout,” he said, “I give you the thing for which you ask . . . this knife through the heart. But go with us quietly, and everything shall be well. You shall be to me a son and a brother and a father, and to all the warriors of the tribe. Rising Hawk, watch the rear. I ride in front with White Thunder. Ah, ha. This night Heammawihio has remembered us.”

  And with his feet lashed beneath the saddle, and a lariat running from the neck of the black stallion to the saddle bow of Standing Bull, Torridon was carried out from the settlement. The lights gleamed more dimly through the trees and went out altogether, and presently there was the faint glimmer of water to their left.

  They were well embarked on the homeward way—the out trail for Torridon, from which he could see no return. And he raised his head to the broad and brilliant sky, where every star shone brightly, and he wondered why God had chosen to torment him. The sense of Roger Lincoln’s faith and truth rode at his side like a ghost, and the beauty of Nancy Brett, but they had been shown to him only to be taken away.

  There were no tears in the eyes of Torridon. He had found a grief too great for that.

  Standing Bull put the horses to full gallop. They began to rush forward like the wind. Trees and brush and the shining river poured past them, but the calm stars hung unmoved in their silent places above him.

  Peyton

  I

  When the doctor told Hank Peyton that he was about to die, Hank took another drink and closed the secret inside his thin lips, but when, on the third morning following, he fell back on his bed in a swoon after pulling on his boots, Hank lay for a long time looking at the dirty boards of the ceiling until his brain cleared. Then he called for his tall son and said: “Jeremiah, I’m about to kick out.”

  Jerry Peyton was as full of affection as any youth in the town of Sloan, but the regime of his father had so far schooled him in restraining his emotions, that now he lighted a match and a cigarette and inhaled the first puff before he answered: “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s my concern and not yours,” the father said truthfully. “Further’n that, I didn’t call you in here for an opinion. The doctor give me that three days ago, Jeremiah.” He always pronounced the name in full; he characteristically despised the nickname that the rest of the world had given to his son. “I got you here to look you over.”

  He was as good as his word, but the only place he looked was straight between the eyes of Jerry. At length he sighed and turned his glance back to the ceiling, a direction that never changed while he lived. “I’m about to kick out,” went on the father, “and bringing you up is about all the good I’ve done, and, take it all around, I’m satisfied.” After a moment of thought he said to the ceiling: “You ain’t pretty, but you can ride straight up. Answer me.”

  “Yes,” said Jerry.

  “You talk straight.”

  “Yes.”

  “You shoot straight.”

  “Some say I do.”

  “You got a good education.”

  “Fair enough. But not too good.”

  “Ain’t you got a diploma from the high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t talk back. I say you’re educated and mostly I run this roost. What?”

  “Yes,” Jerry replied.

  “I leave you a house to live in and enough cows to grow into a real bunch . . . if you work. Will you work?”

  “Is this a promise you want?” asked Jerry, troubled.

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll try to work.”

  “I leave you one thing more.” He fumbled under the bedding and drew out a revolver. “You know what that is?”

  “The Mexicans call it The Voice of La Paloma.”

  “They call it right. You take that gun. Before you die you’ll hear men say a lot of things about your pa . . . and mostly they’ll be right . . . but afterward you go home and pull out this old gun and say to yourself . . . ‘He was a crook . . . he was a hard one . . . but he had plenty of grit, and he done for La Paloma that made the rest take water.’”

  “I shall,” said Jerry.

  After a time the father said: “Look at my legs.”

  “Yes.”

  “The boots?”

  “They’re on.”

  “Good,” said Hank Peyton. He added a moment later: “How do I look?”

  “Like you’d hit the end of your rope.”

  “You lie,” said Hank. “I can still see the knot in the ceiling.” And forthwith he died.

  When he was buried, the old inhabitants of Sloan said: “Who would’ve thought Hank Peyton would die in bed?” And the new inhabitants, who were the majority, added: “One ruffian the less.”

  Around Sloan the government had built a great dam to the north and irrigation ditches were beginning to spread a shining, regular pattern across the desert. Very few of the cowmen took advantage of all the opportunities that water threw in their way, but a swarm of newcomers edged in among them and cut up the irrigation districts into pitiful little patches of green that no true cattleman could help despising. The shacks of Sloan gave way to a prim, brick-fronted row of stores; the new citizens elected improvement boards; they began to boost. Very soon Sloan was extended in all directions by a checkering of graded streets and blocks that the optimists watched in confident expectation. But old-timers were worried by floors so cleanly painted that spurs could not be stuck into them when one sat down; they scorned, silently, the stern industry and sharpness of the homemakers, and many a cowpuncher was known to ride up the main street, look wistfully about him, and then, without dismounting, turn back toward his distant bunkhouse. For of the many faces of civilization, two were turned to each other eye to eye in Sloan, and the differences were too great for composition. For instance, among the cattlemen, law was an interesting legend that in workaday life was quite supplanted by unwritten customs; among the farmers and shopkeepers of Sloan, law was an ally or an enemy as the case might be, but always a sacred thing. From that point of view, Hank Peyton was one of the most fallen of the profane, and therefore the townsfolk drew a breath of relief when they heard of his death.

  It cannot be said that even the cowpunchers grieved very heartily, but they respected at least certain parts of his character, and above all they had an abiding affection for his son, Jerry. For his sake they were both sorry and glad, and it was generally understood among them that, when his father was out of the way, Jeremiah Peyton would shake up the old Peyton place and put it abreast of the times. They waited in vain for the signs of uplift. Jerry was willing enough to talk over changes and improvements with the wiser and more experienced heads among his neighbors, but when it came to tactics of labor he failed miserably, no matter how excellent his strategy of planning might be.

  Sheriff Sturgis, who was the only county official to retain his place in the new regime, said: “The trouble with Jerry is that his dad sent him away to school for just long enough to spoil any likin’ for work he might have had, but he didn’t stay in school long enough to learn a way of sittin’ down and makin’ a livin’.”

  This was the general opinion, for, after the death of Hank Peyton, Jerry drifted along in his usual amiable manner. He made enough busting broncos in the roundup seasons to see him through the remainder of the year in idleness, and he picked up from his little bunch of cows a few bits of spending money. The cowmen excused him for virtues of courage and generosity, but the townsfolk saw only the black side of the picture, and in their eyes Jerry was plain lazy. They waited for the latent fierceness of his law-breaking father to appear as the fortunes of the son declined month after month. His personal appearance remained as prospero
us as ever, but the townsfolk noted with venomous pleasure that his little string of horses was gradually sold off until he retained only a few cow-hocked, knock-kneed mustangs, and one buckskin mare with the heart of a lion and the temper of a demon. It may be gathered that, by this time, Jerry had reached a point of argument between cowpuncher and farmer. The one faction held that he retained the buckskin because he loved her; the farmers were certain that he kept her only because of her viciousness and the fights that she gave him.

  In truth, they could not understand him. Jerry was a tall, gaunt man with heavy shoulders, a pair of straight gray eyes, and a disarming smile; he was, indeed, a mass of contradictions. When he sat in silence, he had an ugly, cold look; when he was animated, he was positively handsome. The cowmen understood him hardly more than the farmers, but they had faith, which levels mountains.

  All this time Jerry may have known that he was frequently the subject of conversation, though none, even of his closest friends, had courage enough to tell him what was said; but, whatever he knew, Jerry was content to drift along from day to day, sitting ten hours at a time on his front verandah, or riding to town and back on the buckskin. From time to time the danger of approaching bankruptcy stood up and looked him in the face, but he was always able to blink the thought away—and go on whistling. Only this thing grew vaguely in him—a discontent with his life as it was, a subtle displeasure that was directed not against men but against fate, a feeling that he was imprisoned. In the other days he had always thought that it was the stern control of his father that gave him that shackled sensation, but now the first of the month, and its bills, was as dreaded as ever was any interview with terrible Henry Peyton, drunk or sober. He was not a thoughtful man. Sometimes his revolt was expressed in a sudden saddling of the buckskin mare and a wild ride that had no destination; more often he would sit and finger The Voice of La Paloma.

  It was an odd name for a revolver, for La Paloma means the dove, but there was a story connected with the name. Once upon a time—and after all it was not so long before—a little man with a gentle voice came to Sloan, and because of his voice the Mexicans called him La Paloma. He was an extremely silent man; he hardly ever spoke, and he never argued. So that when trouble came his way he put his back to the wall and pulled his gun. In a crisis the first explosion of his gun was his first word of answer, and eventually the imaginative Mexicans called the weapon The Voice of La Paloma. After a time the reputation of La Paloma followed him to Sloan from other places. A federal marshal brought it and then raised a posse to find the little man. They found him, but they did not bring him back, and with that a wild time began around Sloan, in which the officers of the law figured as hawks, and La Paloma was a dove who flew higher still and knew how to stoop from a distance and strike, and make off with his gains unharmed. He kept it up for months and months until Hank Peyton crossed him. There was an ugly side to the story, of how Peyton double-crossed the outlaw, after worming his way into La Paloma’s confidence, and sold him to the federal marshal. Be that as it may, the bandit learned the truth before the posse arrived and started a single-handed fight with Jerry’s father. When the marshal arrived, he found Peyton in the cabin, shot to pieces, but with the gun of La Paloma in his hand and the bandit dead on the floor.