Old Carver Ranch

by Max Brand

  “Timothy Kenyon,” Tom said. “That’s my name.” And so he rode off toward the trail up Crystal Mountain.

  He found beneath him a gait that was racking and pounding even at a canter, but he also found that there was no wearing out of Christmas. All day the cream-colored gelding could stick doggedly to his work, even with such a bulk as that of Tom on his back, and the rider remorselessly urged him on through the hills and then up the long trail on the mountain side.

  All the way he blessed the rugged strength of Christmas, for it meant that this detour would not so vitally affect him. He could swing back at once toward his true destination and, rushing Christmas through the hills, strike down at John Carver and his treacherous wife. In the meantime, he must keep his word to poor Johnson and complete the journey.

  In the early afternoon he was so far up that he could sight across the two peaks to the northwest on a line with which, Johnson had said, the exposed ore lay. It was a full hour later, however, before he reached the designated spot and saw, with a gasp of astonishment, that the little cripple was right—the whole side of the mountain had been gouged bare by a great landslide. He swung out of the saddle, secured the gelding, and then began hurriedly examining the rocks until the stroke of his hammer cracked off a fragment and …

  He threw up a great, brandished fist. “Gold!” shouted Tom Keene. “Gold!” He began striking right and left, and at every stroke on that narrow, outcropping ledge, the dull, weathered, outer layer of stone chipped off and exposed the rich, rich ore—such ore as Tom had never dreamed of.

  Then he stopped abruptly. Eight years before, if that had happened, he would have fallen upon his knees and given thanks to heaven. But now he turned from the mountain side, each hand weighted down by a heavy chunk of ore, and peered into the distance where the smoke columns of a mountain village were twisting lazily into the blue of the sky. And he scowled at them with a savage satisfaction. For this gold was power, a greater power than sheer muscle could ever be. It was in itself a weapon and the arm that swings the weapon.

  And now let heaven pity his enemies, for he, Tom Keene, would not.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  In order to be perfected, vengeance must wait. He delivered up a prayer that the gold-bearing ledge not be discovered in the interim, rushed for the county seat to file his claim, and then rode even stanch Christmas well-nigh into the ground in his burst for the railroad. Thence he headed for Denver with his specimens of ore and returned a week later with experts. A fortnight afterward a small cow town was startled by the appearance of a gigantic horse and a gigantic rider who stormed down the main street, paused to ask a single question at the store, and then continued to the lower end of the town.

  There, on her doorstep, her face supported in her work-knotted, work-reddened hands, with clamor of three children sweeping about her in the yard of the little shack, sat a middle-aged woman. The arduous labor needed to raise three children by the strength of her hands had bowed her body and, perhaps, broken her heart long since, but still she had never yet failed in the battle. Only the spark and the spring were gone from her, and it was a dead-gray eye that looked up to Tom Keene.

  “Are you Missus Johnson?” he asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “Are you the one whose husband is …?”

  He hesitated, but she brought out in a hard, unshaken voice, “Whose husband is in prison for murder? Aye, I’m her that married the worthless rat. I’m her that have worn myself to the bone raising his brats. And what are you to ask? Are you one of the worthless good-for-nothings that used to take him out of his home?”

  But Tom Keene shrugged his shoulders. He looked at her curiously. In the old days, he would have felt a pang of pity, and there would have been a great outgoing of the spirit in his desire to help her. But now she was something so detached from him that he felt she must even be of a different species. For what was her pain to the agony that he had passed through—three years of mental and physical torture and five years of torment of the spirit, which had whitened his hair?

  “I’m a friend of Johnson’s,” he admitted coldly. “I’ve come here to tell you that it was only bad luck that put him in prison. And good luck may get him out again.”

  “That’s the way they all talk … all the old friends,” the woman said bitterly. “They talk about luck, but what I talk about and what I feel is the work and the pain of work. What fault was it of mine that he killed a man? But all on account of him the curse of Adam is put on me.”

  “Suppose it were taken off again by him?”

  “Suppose …?” She started up and stared at Tom, then shook her head, the fire dying from her face. “What good is there in supposing fool things like that?” she asked.

  “Listen to me,” Tom said. “You’re wrong to accuse him, and you were wrong to give him up as soon as he was sent to prison. But that’s the way of it with people. Presumption of innocence? Bah! But let me tell you that that night, ten years ago, Johnson had come down out of the mountains to celebrate because he felt that he had the resources of a rich man under his thumb to tap when he pleased. That very night he had the fight and struck the blow that killed a man. That blow sent him to jail to await his trial. He wrote to you, telling you about the location of the gold ledge. But you were through with him as soon as you heard about his arrest. You returned his letter unopened. Johnson was furious. He decided that he would take his secret to prison with him. Well, Missus Johnson, after he was in the prison, he changed his mind again and wanted to let you know, but he could not write a letter without having its contents pass under the eye of the warden, and that would have meant simply putting his secret in the hands of Warden Tufter. So he could do nothing. He had a fortune waiting for him in the hills, and with that fortune he could reopen his case and fight for a new trial … anything was possible.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” the woman asked harshly. “What good does it do me?”

  “It does you this good,” the big man said cruelly. “It shows you that, if you had stayed with your husband when he was arrested, and if you’d been willing to fight for him, you and your youngsters would have spent ten years of comfort instead of ten years of slavery.”

  And he watched her with a contemptuous smile while she gasped, her eyes rolling at the thought.

  “It ain’t the first time that men have talked about a fortune that they had … in the ground,” she declared. “But that’s no part of my life. I’d like to see a grain of gold dust out of it. Then I’d begin to think that I’d missed something. But I know that Johnson was always no good. I was a fool to marry him. I was a double fool to have three babies. And I was more fool still to wear out my life working for his children. But who sent you here? Who sent you here to tell lies for my husband?”

  In response, Tom drew out his wallet, sifted forth a thin packet of bills, folded them, and passed them to the woman. “Here’s that grain of gold dust you were asking for,” he said. “Buy tickets to Denver. Go there with your children. Go to this address.” Here he handed her a card. “You will find out things which it is to your interest to know.”

  She flipped up the corners of the bills, saw their denominations, and uttered a faint moan. She pressed the money to her heart and stared timidly at Tom.

  “In the meantime,” he said, still cold as stone, “get down on your knees and beg your children to forgive you for the ten years of poverty you’ve condemned them to because you had no trust in …” Here he paused as though the words choked him, turned Christmas away, and sent the big horse in a thundering gallop down the street.

  He had found himself talking of trust. Some of his old roadside sermons came dimly back to his mind, with the memories of the prison years like whiplashes barring those thoughts. Far south lay Porterville and the old Carver Ranch and the Carver family on the road just outside the village. Having once known them, how could he be so ma
d as to use the word trust ever again? He could only pray, then, that John Carver had indeed reformed as he had sworn to Tom that he would do that day when he lay wounded on the hillside. For if Carver had turned the leaf and become an industrious citizen, then Tom could strike with redoubled purposefulness.

  After that, there was no mercy shown to Christmas. The great ugly horse was driven remorselessly down the south trail. So, weary days later, he was forced up the slopes of a mountain range and at length checked for an instant on the brow of an eminence while Tom Keene searched the familiar land below.

  Yonder, out of sight and too far away for even smoke to betray its presence, was Porterville. But closer at hand were the trees and the buildings of old Carver Ranch, a faint blur. Closer still, and he saw the very dale where he had changed places with John Carver on that luckless day that had brought him, for his wholehearted generosity, eight years of bitter penance.

  It was for only a brief view that he paused. His very heart was burning up with a desire to come closer. Down the slope he pushed Christmas until the big horse trotted, frothing and spuming, into the hollow. But, as he turned the corner of the hillside, he saw that he was not the only visitor to the place on this day.

  He heard a volley of shouts—a man and a girl, calling sharply to racing horses, the drumming of whose hoofs was muffled on the brown turf. Then, over the brow of that hill where the White Mask had appeared to him, shot Jerry Swain Jr. on a flying chestnut mare that was straightened to full speed—her head, snaky with its flattened ears, poking eagerly before her. It was a beautiful animal. Breeding showed in its every line and in its every movement. There was red earnest in its eye as it raced, and Jerry Swain, with a sort of laughing dread, urged the fine animal ahead.

  There was an immediate explanation of his haste, for now over the hilltop plunged a black-haired, black-eyed girl on an immense stallion blacker than her own shining hair. How fresh and beautiful she was, and, in contrast, how terrible the strength of the horse. And the heart of Tom Keene for the moment forgot its sternness and melted at the sight of great Major, seen for the first time in eight years.

  He did not seem to have aged a day, and he rushed in pursuit of the chestnut mare with a speed whose edge had not been dulled by passage of time. Who was she who sat on his back, neatly turned out in a riding dress with a white blouse and a high white collar and gleaming boots? There was loveliness in her such as Tom had never seen before, and there was something familiar, also. It needed only an instant of reflection, and then he knew. It was dark-dark-eyed Mary, Elizabeth Carver’s girl, grown into a twenty-year-old beauty.

  With a rush of new interest he studied her. Yes, unquestionably John Carver had turned over a leaf and had brought prosperity to his family. The quality of her clothes meant money; her very carefree attitude meant that she had never been bowed by the necessity of labor.

  Tom turned attention to another thing, and that was the consummate ease with which she handled Major. The great horse who refused obedience to any except one master, now answered every whim of the girl. It was plain to see that at any instant she could turn loose a hurricane of speed that would sweep her past the chestnut mare. The latter could not live for a moment beside the great, striding stallion. But the girl held Major in, checking him closely and playing with her antagonist. The goal was apparently a brace of small pines a little distance ahead. For this they rushed, Jerry Swain beginning to quirt and spur at the same time to lift his mount forward.

  But there came a short, thrilling shout from the girl. She bent over into the position of a jockey, the long, blue-black mane of the stallion flying in her face, and in a trice, unspurred and unwhipped, Major was at the side of the mare and had shot past her. A good length in the lead, he went by the pines. Jerry Swain brought up his mare with an exclamation of rage, sawed violently at her head, and then spurred and cut her with the quirt, so that she leaped high into the air.

  It made Tom Keene set his teeth. Plainly Jerry Swain was as viciously worthless now as he had been eight years before. Time had altered his character no more, it seemed, than it had altered his face, which was the same smoothly handsome countenance that Tom remembered. But the girl now cried out, “Shame, Jerry! Shame! She did her honest best, poor girl! You mustn’t beat her!”

  “She’s no good!” Jerry cried savagely, though he desisted from the punishment. “I’ll tell the governor that he was done brown when he bought this nag. Thoroughbred? Bah! She’s not even a half-breed. That black plow horse simply walked by me.”

  “He’s walked by better horses than the chestnut mare,” the girl said proudly. “Good old Major … he has the feet of the wind when he wants to run.”

  “But the black devil wants to run for nobody but you.”

  “You hate him because he threw you two years ago. That’s small-spirited Jerry. I’m ashamed of you. You wore spurs. I told you that Major wouldn’t stand them.”

  They dipped out of sight beyond the next hill, the chestnut still foaming and prancing, and Major jogging softly on with his head a little turned to listen to his rider, just as in the old days he used to listen to Tom Keene. It sent a thrill of jealous anger through him.

  Then he started on toward the high road. There were many deductions to be drawn from what he had just seen. Jerry Swain, it seemed, was back in the good graces of his father. And the girl had not only been happily raised, to make up for the miseries of her childhood, but she had been sent off to a school, to judge by the manner of her talk. If all were as it struck the observant mind of Tom, then might it not be that the daughter of the newly prosperous Carver and the son of rich Jerry Swain were about to marry to unite the fortunes?

  He pushed ahead to the road. There he found that Mary Carver and Jerry Swain Jr. had arrived before him, but they were proceeding at a laggard pace, the shoulders of their horses almost rubbing as they talked in the most animated fashion. And it seemed that Jerry was pressing an argument of some sort upon the girl, an argument to which she listened seriously but without acquiescence. Was their debate on the subject of love and wedlock?

  Tom Keene smiled with a gloomy content. This would be a fitting end for the daughter of the traitor.

  He pressed past them, Christmas dripping with sweat but full of energy and viciousness again after the brief breathing space among the hills. But the sight of the foaming horse drew an exclamation from the girl and from Jerry Swain, “Blasted outrage!”

  Tom took off his hat. “I beg your pardon,” he said politely, like one hard of hearing. “Did you speak to me?”

  The sound of his great, rich, bass voice had a peculiar effect upon both Jerry and his companion, for they started and glanced rather wildly at the stranger. But then their attention was held by the shining silver hair that he had exposed for the moment as he removed the hat to honor the girl. This observation, as a matter of fact, seemed to encourage Jerry Swain to follow up the protestation that he had muttered as Tom rode the foaming horse by them.

  “I spoke not to you,” Jerry said, swelling with virtuous indignation, and very conscious of the presence of the girl as an applauding witness, “but about the horse. It looks to me as though you’ve ridden your horse to the dropping point, sir.” This severe remark concluded, he turned a side glance to note the approval of the girl, and, receiving a faint smile and a nod of encouragement from her, he turned again upon Tom with redoubled wrath. “Men like you,” he said, “are the ones who make it necessary for us to have societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. And …”

  Tom smiled mirthlessly on the other. “My white hair,” he said, “is what gives you courage, but I’m younger than I look, my friend, and quite young enough to wring the neck of a knave.”

  So saying, he swung the terrible, foaming Christmas in toward Jerry Swain. The latter, with a gasp, reined the mare away and reached for his revolver—only to find that he had ridden out without it. At the same time, the
chestnut struck the black stallion, who reared, and the trio were suddenly in the greatest confusion.

  Here Tom at once drew the gelding back, bestowed a contemptuous smile upon Swain, and continued at a leisurely pace down the road. He heard Swain exclaiming behind him, “If it weren’t that the mare is so restless, confound her, I’d give that horse killer a lesson in spite of his gray hair.”

  “Jerry,” returned the grave voice of the girl, “I think you’d better keep away from him. He looks like a fighter. And he reminded me of someone …”

  “He reminded me, too. Who the devil is he?”

  Thus far, a fall of the wind had allowed the words to come distinctly to the ear of Tom, but now it rose again and drowned the conversation behind him. He roused Christmas to a gallop with relentless spur.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The talk that Tom had observed between the girl and young Jerry Swain had been of exactly the nature that he surmised. Jerry was pressing for an engagement, and the girl had been of another mind. It was all revealed that night in the library of the rich cattleman’s house. He welcomed the chance to escape for a few moments from the weary volumes. Above all, he was glad of the opportunity to talk of Mary Carver, it seemed.

  In the shadowy corner at the far side of the big room was the intellectual preceptor of the rancher, quite lost in the dark, indistinct as a ghost. The only reality about him was the glowing of lamplight across the page of the yellow tome that he was perusing. Though he had bought largely for the rancher, he had used the latter’s money to buy still more largely for himself, and now, as he bent over the book, his hanging white beard was a bit of mist and the book was held open by spirit hands. There was no need of sending him from the room. No matter how private the conversation, he would not hear and retain a word that was spoken.