Peyton

by Max Brand

  As for the other, he stood for a moment surveying Jerry, and finally came down from the hilltop with a long, sure step surprising in so old a man, and as dignified as his standing appearance.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I am Manuel Guzman.”

  “Sir,” said Jerry, “I’m glad to know you. My name is Jeremiah Peyton, and I hope I haven’t been riding over your land.”

  A cloud came on the brow of the old man, and Jerry remembered what he had heard from the author.

  “When you passed that point,” said Don Manuel, “you entered my estate.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jerry.

  The old man was silent, and a sense of guilt came to Jerry. He felt as if he had been spied upon and a weakness observed.

  “I am sorry for your horse,” the other replied calmly. “You are a wild rider, Mister Peyton.”

  Rebuffs were bitter food for Jerry. He had to waste a frown on the ground before him before he could look up and meet the eye of Señor Guzman calmly. And then he was surprised to see a smile gradually spread over the lean face.

  “For my part,” said the Spaniard, “I keep away from my horses when I am angry. Or perhaps it was the horse itself that angered you?”

  “The horse is a fool horse,” said Jerry gloomily. “Look at him. Winded already and his spirit about busted.”

  “By a ride on the edge of a cliff,” said the old man, smiling more broadly. He looked narrowly at Jerry. “I thought you were going into the sea when you rounded that point.”

  Jerry looked back. The point was marked by a great boulder of red stone, and between the boulder and the sea drop there was only a meager footpath. Jerry shuddered. “Did I ride around that rock?” he asked.

  The old man was silent again and appeared to be thinking of other things. “You must come up to my house with me,” he said, “and sit down for a time. Your nerves are upset.” Jerry hesitated. “And I have some whiskey you shall taste, if you will.”

  “Lead the way,” Jerry said instantly. “I’m so dry”—he paused to find a sufficient word—“that my throat crackles every time I draw a breath.”

  The Spaniard chuckled and led the way over the hilltop front that he had just descended. It gave an unexpected view of a low, broad valley, covered with a thick green crop on this side, and, where it went up toward a range of hills beyond, Jerry could see the regular avenues of an orchard. “Once,” the Spaniard said, pointing, “that land to the hills was in my estate. However, I have still land enough. Follow me, sir.”

  And he took Jerry down the slope and up again until they reached a plateau densely covered by a growth of gigantic palms and trees almost as tall. In the center of this little forest there was an opening, where they found the house. It was built solidly of sawn rock, a single story sprawling around a patio with the usual fountain in the center. There was an arcade about the patio, and the stone floor, newly washed, was unbelievably cool to the eye. It was a green rock, worn deeply in places. Here they sat down in the shade, facing each other across a little table. The chairs were never meant for comfort; at least, though the rigid backs may have fitted the form of the don, the larger body of Jerry overflowed them. He forgot the chair, however, when a barefooted Negro in white cotton jacket and trousers came pattering out with a tray, and the whiskey and ice and seltzer were arranged between them.

  “Are you staying long in Saint Hilaire?” Don Manuel asked.

  “You put me down for a newcomer, eh?” Jerry replied.

  “No old inhabitant rides as hard as that,” said the Spaniard, “at ten o’clock in the morning. In the morning and the evening . . . oh, they are reckless enough . . . but at ten o’clock the day begins to fall into a sleepy time and every one yawns and drowses.”

  “Then,” Jerry added, “you make an exception, señor?”

  “With me it is different,” said the old man. “I carry whip and spur within me, and in a way, sir, you might say that I also gallop along the edge of a cliff.” He sighed. “To your happiness, señor.”

  Jerry bowed, and they drank together.

  There is a period after liquor has passed the lips of two men when they sit and look at one another and can read minds. This brief moment stole over the old man and the young, and they sat regarding each other solemnly.

  The white-clad Negro had brought a basket of fruit and knives, but Jerry refused it.

  “I don’t know how long I shall stay,” said Jerry, reverting to the last question. “As soon as my business is over, I leave.”

  The Spaniard smiled again in his wise way.

  “And yet, señor,” he said, “when I saw you careering along the hills, between the sea and the sky, one might say, I made up my mind that you were a prisoner in Saint Hilaire.”

  “A prisoner?” repeated Jerry slowly.

  “To your interests here,” replied the Spaniard coolly. “A prisoner rebelling, however, against his captivity. I can remember a day,” he went on, “when I rode very much as you rode along the hills, and I cared very little whether my horse fell into the sea or remained on the dry land.” He pushed the whiskey bottle toward Jerry as he spoke, but the latter sat, turning the bottle slowly.

  “I can almost tell you why you rode that day,” said Jerry.

  “¿Señor? ” queried the old man.

  “You had spoken to Langley, eh?” said Jerry. He saw the other quiver under the shock. “Because,” went on Jerry hastily, “I’ve just finished talking to the same fellow.”

  Don Manuel had raised the glass toward his lips, but now he lowered it again, untasted.

  An inspiration came to Jerry. He filled his own glass and poised it. “I think,” he said, “that there is a real reason for us to drink together. Once more, to your good health, señor.”

  Don Manuel looked long and earnestly at the American. “I drink,” he said, “to the kind fortune that has sent me a man.”

  XVIII

  The casual visit of the morning was extended until noon, and when the noon meal passed there was a lazy warmth in the air that forbade travel. When the evening approached, the don showed Jerry through the house, and, stopping in a room where the windows overlooked the sea, he said: “This is your place, sir, until you leave Saint Hilaire.” It was impossible to refuse hospitality offered in this manner. Jerry made up his mind that he would make his refusal later on, but then came the dinner, and, after they dined, the night dropped about them and Jerry began to talk. The words flowed almost without his knowledge, and before he knew it he had laid his heart bare to Señor Guzman. He had told of the first meeting; he had told of the pursuit; he had told of the scene in Langley’s study, and, finally, of his unquenchable determination.

  They were sitting in the patio, and after the story was done the Spaniard remained silent for a pause of embarrassing length, looking up at the stars. Finally he went into the house and returned with a candle. He placed it at the other end of the long court, so that the flame was merely a slender eye of light, tilted sidewise with its halo by the steady pressure of the northeast trades, which blow day and night unceasingly over St. Hilaire. Don Manuel came and stood behind the chair of Jerry; the young man turned and looked up, but, with his hands on the muscular shoulders of the American, preventing him from rising, Don Manuel said: “There is a tale going the rounds,” he said, “that at ten paces Señor Langley can snuff a burning candle. Yonder candle, now, is about twice that distance, I think.”

  “Ah?” said Jerry. And as he spoke he whirled in the chair. He did not rise, but the gun leaped out of his clothes and exploded—the flame of the candle leaped and went out. “Confound!” Jerry said at the end of a moment of silence. “Too low or I would have trimmed it.”

  But the Spaniard went down and picked up the candle and came back carrying it in both hands. He stood, then, peering down at Jerry as though the candle still burned, and by its light he studied the stranger.

  “I am out of practice,” said Jerry, flushing, “but with my gun in shape and a bit
of work to . . .”

  Don Manuel raised a compelling hand and went into the house. When he came out again he said, without prologue: “It is because you have no way to touch the man’s nerve, is it not?”

  “How can I touch him?” Jerry replied sadly. “Can I get at his property? Can I threaten him in any way? If he had a son, I might manhandle him, but I can’t hit a man forty-five years old.”

  An aria from an opera which had been popular twenty years before Jerry was born came whistling from the lips of Don Manuel. He sat with his chin in his hand. At length the music stopped short. “Go to bed and sleep, my son,” he said finally. “For you must get up with me at dawn, and then I shall show you the key to Señor Langley’s heart.”

  “We’re going to his house?” asked Jerry sharply.

  “You must trust me,” said the old man with a marvelously evil smile. The bitterness of half a life was summed up and expressed by that smile. “Be prepared, for in the morning you shall see the key to his heart.”

  From the first meeting it had seemed to Jerry that he sensed a base of rock in the nature of the Spaniard, and now he knew that misfortune had not taught him or bowed him. He was as rigid as he had been in the pride of youth, and in the place of the warm blood of the young man his veins were filled with acid hate. Yet evil is usually more imposing than good. Jerry saw, when he lay in bed looking into the dark, that the only reason he had spoken to the Spaniard and told the whole story was because he recognized subconsciously the unholy fire in Don Manuel. He trusted to that fire now. And in this trust he fell into a profound slumber.

  Once, it was a dream-like thought, he seemed to part his eyelids slightly and look up at the form of the Spaniard in a robe of white, shielding a candle so that little of its light touched the face of the sleeper, but a bright radiance fell on Don Manuel. Jerry shuddered—in his sleep. When he next wakened the hand of Señor Guzman was on his shoulder.

  “Get up,” said the host. “Here is a bathing suit that will fit you. You must be thoroughly awakened, so plunge into the tub of cold water that waits for you. When that is done, put on the bathing suit and come into the patio.”

  It was impossible to deny those eyes, so bright under their wrinkled lids. And before Jerry was fully awake, he had gone through the routine that the host prescribed and stood beside him in the patio.

  Don Manuel looked over his guest with an almost painful attention—as a trainer, say, looks over the trim muscles of an athlete—then he nodded as one who knew men. “Come,” he said simply, and led the way from the house and over a terrace of grass to a hilltop that overlooked the sea. The sun had not risen. To the east, over a gray mist along the horizon, the tints of the dawn were rolling up the sky, and one cloud, high above the rest, was burning with red fire. It sent a stain of crimson across the sea toward the two on the cliff.

  “Well?” said Jerry.

  “Are you cold?” said the Spaniard. He himself was wrapped in a heavy cloak.

  “No,” said Jerry Peyton. Indeed, the air was as mild as a spring noontide.

  “Look down to the beach.”

  It was a drop of a hundred feet, at least. A long, white stretch of sand lay before him, and along its margin the waves rolled, broke into sudden lines of white, and then slipped swiftly up the shore.

  “What’s next? I see the beach.”

  “Patience.”

  It was odd to see the old man assume command. He paid not the slightest heed to Jerry, but began to walk up and down. The northeast wind sent his cloak flapping every time he turned at the end of his pacing. For the rest, he seemed to be looking up into the eye of this wind more than any place else, and a ghostly feeling came to Jerry that the Spaniard was about to receive a message out of the empty air. He, also, began to scan that horizon, and he started when Don Manuel stopped in his pacing and pointed suddenly down at the beach.

  “The key to Señor Langley,” he said.

  And Jerry, looking down, saw a girl galloping a horse along the beach. She wore a light cloak, which blew behind her, and a scarlet cap covered her head. The blue cloak, the red cap, the cream-colored horse—she was sweeping along the beach like a gay cloud out of the sunrise. A claw-like hand caught the shoulder of Jerry and dragged him down behind a rock.

  “She mustn’t see you with me,” said the Spaniard. “Not now.”

  “Is this part of the job you plan on, partner?” said Jerry coldly. “Spyin’ on a girl?”

  The cream-colored horse stopped, and the girl, dismounting, threw away the cloak, slipped the shoes from her feet, and ran down the beach toward the sea. Jerry sat up, and, when the Spaniard turned to him, he found that the boy’s face was scarlet, and a white line showed above his eye.

  “Did you get me up before sunrise,” said Jerry fiercely, “to spy on a girl?”

  The Spaniard blinked and then smiled.

  And in spite of the lessons of his father, in spite of the scar on his face, in spite of that fine Western scorn of anything connected with duplicity where women are concerned, Jerry looked again. It had been merely a causeless shock, he decided, as he watched her run along the beach and saw the skirts of her bathing suit fluttering about her. As he looked, the water was struck to white about her feet, and then she dived under the surface.

  As the wave rolled swirling to the shore, the Spaniard smiled again at Jerry. “That is the key to Señor Langley,” he said. “That is his daughter, Patricia.”

  For a time Jerry stared at him stupidly. “Listen to me, partner,” he said coldly, when he had finished his survey of that ancient, evil face. “I come from a place where bad men are pretty fairly thick, but bad men around women don’t flourish in those parts. They wither away sudden. They get cut off at the root. You see?”

  Don Manuel made a slow gesture, with both the palms of his hands turned up.

  “Señor Peyton,” he said, “you are not wise. I point out to you a way in which you can make Señor Langley come to you as you wish, raving, with his gun in his hand, and you insult me for pointing out the way.” He leaned over and laid a bony hand on Jerry’s arm.

  “Do not say it,” Jerry murmured, the flush gradually leaving his face.

  “That is much better, my son,” said the Spaniard. “Now hear me calmly. You will go down to the beach. You will swim. When you come on shore, you will be close to Señorita Langley. She will speak to you . . . you will speak to her. You will tell her your name. She will tell you her name. Is there any harm in that?”

  “It looks straight to me,” said Jerry cautiously. “What’s it lead to?”

  “To much,” said Don Manuel. “It leads to everything we wish. She will go home and remember you. You will be easy for her to remember.”

  “Me?” said Jerry, wide-eyed.

  “Peyton is a simple name,” said the Spaniard hurriedly.

  “That’s straight enough,” murmured Jerry.

  “And when she goes home, she will tell her father that she has met you. Now, the Señor Langley is a stern man in his home. His word is law. Ever since she has become a young woman, the girl is used to hearing her father say . . . ‘Receive this man’ . . . and she receives him, or . . . ‘Do not smile on this man’ . . . and she makes her face a blank before him. There is always a reason. Such a man is too poor, too rich, or one is of the good blood and another is not. There is always a reason, and the girl obeys, for her heart has not been touched. Do you understand?”

  “I partly follow you,” said Jerry, frowning with the effort.

  “A woman is like a blossom,” the old man continued, watching the eyes of the American. “For a time she is hulled in green. And after that the green opens and she is stiff petals . . . a bud. But then, all on a day, a bee touches the bud or the wings of a moth dust across it or a leaf falls on it, and then it opens in that one day and lets the sun come into its heart. It is all in a day . . . and all in a day a girl steps into womanhood. Is that clear, señor?”

  “I see something in it,” admitted Jer
ry cautiously.

  “But the Señor Langley does not see it,” said Don Manuel. “He is the cold Northern race . . . his heart is ice . . . he cannot see the heart of a woman. But I am a Guzman, and I know. Old men and poets know women, my son, and I am a very old man.”

  “Go on,” Jerry commanded sternly as the don paused.

  “We return, then, to the moment when Langley orders her to see this stranger she has met on the beach no more. He gives her a reason . . . she is not to make friends with every nobody she meets. Pardon me, señor.”

  “That’s all right,” said Jerry heartily. “I can see the old boy’s face as he says it. Go on.”

  “She understands that this must be so. Yet she is thoughtful. For when she mentions your name, she sees her father start. It is a little thing . . . a lifting of the eyebrows. You see? But the girl sees it. She says . . . ‘My father knows this man before.’ So she asks her father to inquire about you and find out your past. Perhaps he does it . . . perhaps he tells her a lie. He dare not tell her the truth, and, if he tells her a lie, who will know it is not the truth?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jerry. “You don’t know this Langley. She’ll never guess it’s a lie.”

  “I am an old man, and I know women,” persisted Don Manuel stubbornly. “She will know it is a lie, and, also, she has the blood of her father in her and she understands. So she sits in her room and thinks. For one, two mornings she goes to another beach . . . but there is no good beach in Saint Hilaire but my beach. She cuts her feet on the coral . . . she wades up to the ankles in slime and mud . . . and she thinks of the hard, clean, smooth sand of the beach of Don Manuel. It will be so.” He paused. “Also, she may remember you . . . you are different from the others, my son.” So on the third morning she says to herself . . . ‘What harm in going there? Father need not know. The man is not a viper.’ So she comes on the third morning to the beach of Don Manuel.”