by Max Brand
He had reached that resolution just as a tap came at the door. Holden dragged himself painfully to his feet and lighted the lamp on the bureau. Then he opened the door and found there a thin young man with a hawk’s face. He greeted Holden with a yellow-toothed smile.
“I’m Jefford,” said he, “of the Larramee Tribune. I’m glad to know you, Mr. Holden.”
He took the frail hand of Holden in a strong, moist grip. Then he slid sidewise into the room, extracting a pad of paper from one pocket and a pencil from the other.
“You’ve given us some of the best copy, we’ve had in months,” he said, smiling on Holden. “I wrote up that story myself—how you handled big Crogan. But now it seems that you have bigger news ahead for us. Something about your marriage—”
He poised his pencil.
“Marriage?” frowned Holden.
The other grew abashed. And in his agony of soul, Holden felt a grim pleasure in his first taste of the bully’s pleasure. This man feared him—feared him because of what he had done to Crogan. A horse neighed strongly, the ringing, unmistakable wild neigh of a stallion near the hotel.
“There’s Doone’s Clancy getting ready for tomorrow,” said the reporter, grinning. “This is a great week for news. I wish it could be spread out a little!”
“What’s Doone’s Clancy?” asked Holden, still busy steadying himself and glad to talk of something else.
“He’s the blood-bay, you know. I guess you’ve heard about him. The horse that killed Jim Crockett and hurt a lot of others?”
“No.”
“Never? He’s a bad one. Clancy Doone happened to die the day that colt was foaled. Old Man Doone swears that the bad nature of Clancy went into the colt. So he calls it Clancy. Al Morton is coming all the way from Denver to ride Doone’s Clancy in the morning.”
He cleared his throat and asked:
“About the marriage with Miss Alexa, do you—”
The first impulse of Holden was to draw out the heavy Colt of Crogan—the gun whose butt was roughened newly by the grinding teeth of Sneak—and send a bullet through the small brain of this news hunter. But he remembered that the whole world knew or would soon know that Mr. Jefford of the Larramee Tribune had heard. He controlled himself, though he felt his face grow cold.
“I’m not talking about that,” said Holden. “You can ask your questions elsewhere, I suppose?”
“I’ve been to Mr. Larramee already,” said Jefford guilelessly.
Holden closed his eyes and digested the shock.
“Mr. Larramee seemed displeased—frankly, I’ve never heard a man swear louder or harder. I judge—excuse me, but I judge that the family does not all agree with you and Miss Larramee about—”
“Damnation!” groaned Holden.
“Sir?” said the surprised reporter. “Ah,” he added, “I see that I have guessed right. Tell, sir, you know that old adage: The course of true love—”
“Wait!” said Holden, choking. “I want to tell you, Jefford, that if—” He paused, hunting for words.
“As for the announcement,” said Jefford, “I assure you that I can make it no more than—er—an interesting hint. I hate bluntness about such matters. I can wield a delicate pen, on my word.”
“If a word of this appears,” said Holden slowly, “I’ll call at your office, Mr. Reporter, and bring my gun with me.”
“Mr. Holden!” cried the editor, gliding back toward the doorway.
Then all the fury that had been gathering in Holden, all the rage and the hatred of himself, gathered and broke out into words.
“Are my affairs to be discussed in your rotten sheet? Do you know who I am?”
Mr. Jefford was two-thirds hidden around the corner of the door, but the last phrase held him there, his eyes starting from his head.
“No, sir,” he said. “I don’t know. It seems to me that I’ve heard, somewhere, but just a guiding hint, sir.”
“You’re a fool!” shouted Holden, and he drew the gun out by half of its length.
Mr. Jefford vanished, and flying footfalls echoed back to Holden. Then he closed the door and went miserably to the window. In a little paddock just beneath the window he could see clearly, in the bright mountain starlight, the form of a great horse with a stallion’s arched crest and thickly tangled mane. It seemed to feel his eyes even through the dark, for now it tossed up its head with a snort and stood at bay, staring up at him.
Oh, for the speed in that strong body, to carry him to the ends of the world, there to hide himself and his shame forever!
CHAPTER 10
He drew out the bed until the head of it was fairly beside the window. Then, certain that the first morning light could waken him in time for his flight before anything was stirring in the village of Larramee, he lay down to rest, and the last thing he knew was the sniffing of Sneak at his face to make sure that all was well.
But he had done much that day. He had traveled far. His body was exhausted. His mind had sustained a dozen shocks and long torments, and he slept like the dead. When he wakened, the morning light was indeed in the room. It was the blazing sunshine itself which dropped through the window and burned upon his face that wakened him from a dream of rising flames that were consuming him.
Beneath the hotel and outside the window the voices of his dream, taunting demons, turned into the voices of many men. He dressed and then looked out, his mind dazed and sick, only realizing that he had lost his opportunity and that he must spend the whole day in this town, a whole day of questions and agonizing shame.
What he saw below the window only partially took his eye. Around the corral were a full five hundred people, or even more. They were packed around the fence, whitened by the dust which had been raised, and which was still mounting through the air in ghostly columns. Beyond the first ranks of the spectators others sat in saddles, or stood up in buggies and buckboards. One could tell that there had been much commotion. At present there was a lull. The result of the foregoing labors was a saddled horse in the corral, a glorious animal nearly of seventeen hands, his eyes blinded with a sack, his blood-red body darkened with sweat and burnished with the sunshine. His feet were braced. The terrible blackness over his eyes paralyzed his efforts for the moment, but he was ready to strike again the moment light came to his assistance. A dozen men were busy about him, some holding ropes attached to his head, others making sure that the cinches were taut, and a final figure in the act of swinging into the saddle.
Holden watched with a melancholy pleasure, remembering what Jefford had said the night before. Here was enough, at last, to wean his thoughts away from his miserable self.
Now Al Morton sat the saddle, fixing his feet more firmly in the stirrups, tugging his hat deeper over his eyes, clutching the reins with a tighter hold, fingering the quirt. In the little silence, free from a single murmur from the crowd, Holden could hear the adventurous rider say quietly: “Well, boys, turn him loose and let’s sashay out of this dog-gone corral, if the hoss wants to go.”
The last words were torn off short, as the explosion of a gun splits a sentence in two. The bandage had been removed from the eyes of Doone’s Clancy, and that mighty animal had flung himself forward and high into the air. He reminded Holden, for the moment, of a gigantic, high-bounding deer.
The three lariats which were attached to the horns of three saddles and managed by as many riders upon expert roping horses, checked the vault and brought Clancy to the earth.
He was transformed from a graceful deer into a fighting-mad demon. He did not attempt to bolt; the area of the corral was plenty for him. With his head stretched straight forth, or tucked between his forelegs, he whipped himself up and down, into tangled knots and out of them again, cakewalking like a proud dancer, then flinging himself back to crush the rider, and snapping his vicious teeth as he landed and turned to his feet. Then he vaulted into the air again and landed upon a single stiffened foreleg with a shock that made the ground tremble and snapped the head of t
he poor rider violently down against his breast, or heavily across one shoulder.
No one could stand such pounding. Through the thickening dust Holden saw the face of Al Morton turn white with fear and then gray with dizziness.
“Help, boys!” cried Al Morton above the cheering of his friends.
Before help could come, a side twitch of that great body had slipped the rider into the air. He landed sprawling. Clancy lunged in pursuit with flattened ears and gaping mouth—not like a horse, but like a carnivore, an unnatural brute! In the nick of time the three ropes drew taut. Such was the shock of the impact that it tugged all three braced cow ponies forward. Then they dug their feet deeper into the churning dust and held. Al Morton was saved from the reaching teeth, but saved by a scant inch.
They carried Al Morton from the corral; voices shouted and many a bet was paid.
“He’s hurt bad!” yelled some one, and the tumult was a little appeased.
Through the quiet that followed: “Forty-eight seconds,” said a businesslike fellow. “That’s less than Tom Carey lasted in February.”
“Tom pulled leather, though.”
“So did Al.”
“I didn’t see it, and I guess I ain’t blind. Al rode him straight up.”
“Al swore he’d dig him. I didn’t see nothing of that.”
“Who told you Al said that?”
“Why, I heard him—”
“Mr. Doone!” called some authoritative person.
They had blindfolded Clancy after a mighty struggle and stripped him of saddle and bridle once more. Now the corral was cleared of all saving the stallion, sweat-blackened, with a bright glimmer of blood-red shining through here and there—a beautiful and sinister figure. His victory made him tower greater than his actual size. He had become a monster. Two of the cow ponies rolled together would not make his match. And he walked about, conscious of his strength, flattening his ears wickedly as he neared the fence, reveling in the hatred and the awe and the covetousness which showed in the eyes of the humans and their voices as he came by.
“Mr. Doone!” called that commanding voice again.
Holden identified the speaker, a big-shouldered man past middle age, but very vigorous still, to judge by the spring in his walk—a square-jawed, handsome man. One might almost have said that he looked too much the fighter and the conqueror to really be one. Toward him approached a lank old cattleman in a faded blue flannel shirt, his vest unbuttoned, the tag of his tobacco sack dangling in the wind. Holden noticed every detail of his dress.
“All right, Mr. Larramee,” said the cowman.
Holden forgot himself; and then remembered himself with a shudder and a wave of cold. This was the father of Alexa. Somehow the fact that a millionaire chose to dress himself so roughly, so like any other rancher, made Holden dread him and his wrath all the more.
The two had drawn together. Under the tree the doctor was busy over Al Morton, and a sobbing woman sat by Al’s head. But though half a dozen watched this group, the majority chose to follow the movements of Larramee and Doone.
“Now look here, Doone,” said the great man, “this ought to be proof positive that no one can handle that brute of a horse.”
“I dunno,” said Doone. “They’s still another month. On the third is my boy’s birthday. He’d of rode that hoss, I figger. Well, we got till then for somebody to ride Clancy.”
“No one except a madman will ever try to handle that killer,” said Larramee. “You know that, Doone.”
“I’m not askin’ no one. I say, they’s still a month, about.”
“And what then?”
“A slug of lead for Clancy. I guess that’s all for him!”
Mr. Larramee had grown greatly excited. So had the crowd, and its eagerness to hear allowed Holden to make out every word with great exactness.
“You don’t mean it, Doone. You really don’t mean that you’d throw away a magnificent life such as this?”
“What’s a hoss made for?” asked Doone.
“Why, to be used, of course.”
“No,” said Doone, “to be mastered. That’s what it’s made for. I’d give the hoss to him that could ride him. I wouldn’t sell him for a million.”
“Come, come!” said Larramee. “We’ll talk about this together when you—”
“It ain’t no use, sir. I’d like to please you, but I can’t. I think about my boy. He was like this hoss. Nobody never mastered him. He raised the devil all his life. Maybe it was a pretty good thing for the world when he died. All because I didn’t teach him nothin’. Well, the same way with this hoss. I ain’t gunna turn him out to kill folks. And that’s what he’ll do.”
“I’ll manage to handle him. And he’ll be immensely valuable to me. That blood and that bone—he’ll change the blood of my saddle stock and give me the finest set of range horses in the mountains. I need that Clancy. I have to have him, Doone, and I tell you frankly that I don’t give up my ambitions easily.”
At this, Doone thrust out his jaw. “Money is one thing,” said he. “And you got lots of it. But ideas is something, too. And this here idea of mine you can’t buy, no matter how hard or how high you go after it. I don’t let Clancy go except to a gent that can handle him!”
Larramee struck a fist against his open palm, then changed his mind.
“That’s final?” he snapped out.
“Mr. Larramee, I’m dog-gone sorry. That’s final, sir!”
CHAPTER 11
It occurred to Holden that he was wasting a golden opportunity here. The entire town was gathered here to see the place where the gladiators had striven together. Now was his opportunity, if ever, to slip away unobserved.
He paused only to dash some water over his face, untie the chain of Sneak, and fix his hat on his head, but as he turned to the door, a knock came upon it, and when he answered in a voice in which there was a groan, that door was opened by the strong hand of Mr. Oliphant Larramee himself—the great Larramee of Aunt Carrie’s narrative—the father of beautiful Alexa.
At the very first glimpse of the strongly squared jaw of this hero, poor little Tom Holden’s strength melted from his soul and melted from his limbs. He slipped into a chair simply because he had not strength enough to remain standing. And as the big rancher closed the door behind him, Holden felt the keen glance of the man of money go over him, little by little, missing nothing—not even the fact that he was not cleanly shaven for this morning.
Little—weak—unclean! Such must be the conclusions in the mind of Mr. Larramee. When shame reaches a certain point, it can go no farther. It begins to destroy itself. There was too much shame in Holden to pass into solution. The excess of that emotion of his soul served him as a false power and sustained him.
“I have been expecting you,” said Holden. “Won’t you sit down?”
Larramee drew off his gloves without answering, still eyeing his host. He said at length: “I presume we know one another; this is Mr. Holden?”
“This is. And you are Mr. Larramee.”
“I am.”
He dropped the gloves into a pocket; then he dropped his hands upon his hips. Holden thought that he had never confronted a more alert figure, no matter what the age of the other. There could be no doubt what the removal of those gloves meant. Mr. Larramee presumed that this conversation might lead to physical violence—or to gun play! And his readiness for either termination was thus implied.
“In the meantime,” said he, “you seem to know my daughter also, Mr. Holden.”
Holden shrugged his shoulders.
“You even seem to know her,” said the rancher, “a little better than she knows you.”
“I have no doubt,” said Holden.
“Ah,” said Larramee, flushing. “You have no doubt?”
“None whatever.”
Mr. Larramee drew in a breath. It was plain that he was taking a gigantic grip upon a gigantic temper.
“Won’t you sit down?” asked Holden.
“I shall not sit down,” said Mr. Larramee with much terseness.
Holden could not tell whether this display of irritability did more to frighten him or to give him an odd reassurance.
“I believe in looking into every phase of all the matters that enter my life—when there is time,” said Larramee. “I have looked into you, sir. I have been to the house of Miss Davis—”
“Who is she, sir?”
“Do you mean to tell me that you deny having been in her house last night?”
“Ah,” said Holden. “She is the witch?”
Mr. Larramee blinked at him.
“You seem to be extraordinarily fond of riddles,” said he. “Well, let that be as it is. What I have to say to you, young man, has to do with a matter which most definitely concerns me. My daughter—” He paused, as though feeling that he had begun in an awkward manner.
“Miss Larramee is charming,” said Holden soothingly.
At this, Larramee started and stamped. “Your commendation,” said he, “is—very kind. In the meantime, it appears that you do more than commend her?”
“I do.”
“You even announce that you are to be married to her?”
“I believe that I have made a remark of that nature.”
Mr. Larramee turned a dark, dark red. “By the eternal heavens,” said he, “I am a patient man, sir. I believe that I am a just man. But on this one subject I thank God that I am as touchy as a young colt. What was in your mind, Mr. Holden, when you presumed to make such a remark about a girl—”
“Who has never seen me?”
“Exactly.”
“First of all—may I ask you what Miss Davis had to say about me?”
“It was extraordinary. If it were not for what she had to say, I tell you frankly, Mr. Holden, I should have had you tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail out of this town! But it appears that she found you—extraordinary, to say the least.”
“As for the tar and feathers,” said Holden coldly, “I presume that you know to whom you are speaking? Or did Miss Davis make that point clear?”