Old Carver Ranch

by Max Brand

  “Twenty-one thousand five hundred!” And he waited for the announcement to take effect.

  Indeed, the big man turned a little away—it was only to scratch a match on the wall—and as he faced the auctioneer again he said “Twenty-five thousand.”

  A haze of darkness spun before the eyes of poor Jerry Swain. He saw his hopes of Mary Carver fade into a thin mist. He saw the danger of terrible John Carver looming, close and grim, John Carver changed to his old identity—the White Mask! He must bid higher for the ranch. If only his father had not set that limitation.

  “Let me have half an hour’s time to reach my father!” Jerry cried to the auctioneer. “He may sanction a higher bid and …”

  By that confession he had delivered himself into the hands of the enemy, and he was at once made aware of the fact by the jarring, booming laughter of Tom Keene as the latter gave way to his mirth beside the door.

  But John Carver, in the far corner, devoured with hope as he saw the bidding leap to twenty-five thousand dollars, now rose and seconded the appeal of Jerry Swain.

  “Bill,” he called to the auctioneer, “it ain’t right to knock the place down unless everybody that wants to bid on it has a chance to bid all he can! Give young Swain a chance to talk to his father.”

  The auctioneer wavered. It was not exactly legal, this suggested delay, but on the one hand he would be injuring a stranger, and on the other hand he was being urged on by two neighbors. He actually stood with parted lips, unable to speak, while Jerry Swain started hastily for the door, calling over his shoulder: “It’ll be less than half an hour! I … I’ll run the horse all the way. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes!

  But now the floor of the room quivered under a heavy tread, and Tom Keene strode to the center down the main aisle. “Everybody around this town,” he declared, “has had a chance to think over the amount of money he could pay for old Carver Ranch. Swain Senior thought it over. He decided that twenty-five thousand was his limit. He told his son to come in and bid as high as that and no higher. Well, Mister Auctioneer, he turned out to have guessed wrong. Is he going to have a chance for a second guess? Is this an auction sale or a bargain shop? Do your advertisements mean anything, or is it just a little town deal of the kind you permit in Porterville?”

  As he spoke, he looked about him at every face. Suddenly they were aware that he was scoffing at them, challenging the manhood of the entire town with his mirth, as it were. But with an equal suddenness they felt that he was changed. His gray hair, which had been branding him with the helpless sluggishness of age, now became an inconsiderable object. Instead, their attention was centered upon the square outlines of the face, outlines of bony strength to resist shocks. And they saw the dark, beetling brows that gathered above the eyes, and they saw the huge hands that were raised with the thumbs hooked inside the cartridge belt. At the same time, they became aware of the Colt revolver that had been hanging in the holster at his thigh, but which now received a singular prominence. In spite of themselves all of those hardy fellows were abashed. They resolved, in their heart of hearts, upon a fixed hatred of the big man, but at the same time they felt that their like or dislike would mean absolutely nothing to him, and that, against men who have this attitude, society has no weapon except downright force.

  The effect on Jerry Swain was immediate. He had felt that, once outside the door, they would not dare conclude the sale behind his back until he had a chance to bid again. But now he dared not leave, so he swung nervously around to watch. And he was in time to see the auctioneer succumb. Not only physical power but legal right was on the side of Tom Keene.

  “What’s your name, stranger?” asked Bill, the auctioneer, in a crisp tone that was intended to cover whatever shame there might be in the surrender that was to follow.

  “Timothy Kenyon,” Tom said instantly.

  “Then, Mister Kenyon, I got to say that you’re certainly speaking inside of your rights. If there’s any bidding to be done beside what’s been done, let me hear ’em speak up. This sale has been advertised. As Mister Kenyon says, it ain’t a bargain counter.”

  He had adopted the attitude of the just, the scrupulously law-abiding man, and there was no resisting him. The protest of Jerry Swain was a mere wail of despair as he disappeared through the doorway. “I’m going to break this sale. It isn’t legal. It’s a crooked deal …”

  His heels crashed down the front steps, then the rattle of his horse’s hoofs passed away. The broad hand of the auctioneer descended upon the teacher’s desk with a bang. The Carver Ranch thereby was sold to Tom Keene.

  In the stir and confusion of the succeeding moments, with everyone rising from their places, the auctioneer approached Tom to learn what payment he wished to make to bind the deal.

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars cash,” Tom said, “is the way I intend to bind the deal.”

  The auctioneer blinked. It was a good round sum even in a district where good round sums were not unknown. He took Tom Keene to the corner of the room, where a condoling group of men surrounded the haggard-faced Carver as the latter attempted to smile and shrug their consolation away. There they were introduced, and there Tom shook hands with Carver and smiled upon him.

  And it seemed to Tom that the sweetness of revenge was like an intoxicating wine. His brain whirled with it.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  They waited in the front room of the house, the three of them—Elizabeth Carver with her patient, troubled eyes never moving from the face of her husband, and John Carver staring steadfastly at the floor. Plainly he was broken. In his effort to reform, to make himself a new place in the world during the past eight years, he had poured too much of his energy. Now he had no power left. He was only saying to himself that he would wait for the time when he could strike down the leech who had stolen the fruit of his labors—Jerry Swain. After that they would jail him if they could catch him. Yes, he would not even attempt to flee. Let the law end a useless life, a failure, with a rope around his neck.

  These thoughts were moving solemnly, fiercely through his brain as he sat there with his shoulders slumped forward, his hands falling on his knees with the palms turned up. He heard the voice of his daughter like the voice of a brook in the distance. It was a pleasant sound, but it conveyed no meaning to him. It was only a cheerful pattering of sound against which the black gloom of his inward thoughts became more and more solemn.

  “He’d ought to be here,” said the wife. “I told Jeff that we’d be wanting to get out of here early. He promised to be here by eight-thirty at the latest. I don’t know what can be keeping him. Maybe his rig broke down.”

  “Maybe,” John Carver said automatically.

  He had not heard a word that she said; at least, he had not heard it in his conscious mind. It would not be work for a gun, he was deciding—the proper end for Jerry Swain. No, the right thing would be for him to get the throat of the younger man inside of his hands, and then, with a great pressure, thrusting his thumbs into the flesh …

  The effort of that thought jerked him up in his chair. He heard Mary Carver clearly for the first time.

  “It isn’t going to be a tragedy,” she was saying. “You’ve worked for me long enough, Dad and Mother dear. Now it’s time for me to work for you while you rest.”

  He looked wonderingly at her. His relation toward her was more singular than ever. He had kept the promise that his wife extorted from him as the price of her silence eight years before. He had sent the girl to school in the East. And, when she returned home during vacation times, he had felt a pride in her. But always she had grown more and more a stranger, and he never could feel that she was his own. Even her mother had less and less claim upon her as the years rolled by. Now it was typical that she sat on the sill of the open window, swinging one foot unconcernedly, with her hands dipped into the pockets of her tweed coat.

  She did not wear clothes lik
e other girls in the neighborhood of Porterville. She wore them, indeed, like no one that he had ever seen. Perhaps they taught her how to do such things at the school. But, sitting there in the window, with the bright morning light bringing a glow upon her cheek, she seemed more aloof than ever, and she seemed more distantly beautiful, also. Sometimes he wondered how his wife could maintain such a possessive manner when she was around the girl. It seemed more natural that she should always be as she was this morning—off by herself, independent of them, stronger than both of them put together.

  “There are all sorts of openings, too,” she went on. “I can get work as a secretary, you know. I understand shorthand and typewriting. And a good secretary gets … well, ever so much. Someone told me about a girl who started working for some railroad president. She started at ten dollars a week, and inside of twelve years she was getting fifty! Why, in twelve years I’d be only thirty-two and …”

  But here the voice trailed out of the hearing of the father. He turned back to the all-absorbing topic, the killing of the traitor. He had promised the purchase of the ranch. And certainly it was in his power to buy if he really wanted to buy. No, there had been treachery somewhere. Just where and why, he was too weary in the brain to figure out. But he was done with thinking. Hereafter, he would confine himself to action. In the old days, he had shown the world action enough.

  He raised his head again, and this time with a faint smile, for far away he was seeing some of the exploits of the White Mask. Suppose he should step back behind the mask? He was a little slower, a little less agile, but he was stronger in body, and he would be steadier in nerve, he assured himself.

  “Why doesn’t Jeff come?”

  This time the shrill, angry voice of his wife roused John Carver. Yes, Jeff was very late. There was nothing on the ranch that they now owned. House, land, stock—all were the possessions of Timothy Kenyon. They did not own even a horse and buckboard to take them and their clothes to town. Jeff had promised to call for them, but now he was so late that it seemed they could not avoid seeing Timothy Kenyon arrive and take possession of the old home.

  “But I want to see him!” said the girl.

  “You want to?” Elizabeth Carver cried. “Oh, Mary, have you no heart? Do you want to …?” She choked and could not finish the sentence, but Mary ran to comfort her.

  “I only want to stay and offer to buy Major from him.”

  “Major? Are you thinking of horses on a day like this?” wailed the mother. “Besides, you have no money. Not a cent!”

  “At least, I can give him my note, payable in a year. Major is twelve years old. If I can’t make enough money to buy him in a year …”

  “Hush! What’s that?” Mrs. Carver ran to the window, and then shrank from it with a cry, and, when the others looked out, they saw a huge rider on a huge horse of a dirty-cream color thundering down the road and coming to a halt in front of their hitching rack. They saw Timothy Kenyon swing down out of the saddle. Christmas edged clumsily toward him. A fierce jolt in the ribs from the master’s elbow made him jump away with a grunt.

  “Oh, what a brute of a man!” gasped Mary. “How can he treat a horse like that?”

  “He’s a bad man to have trouble with,” was all that John Carver said. “I can see that. I’d dislike crossing him.”

  Then, as the stranger approached the house, he was lost to view. His heavy footfall went up the steps, sounded loudly and hollowly on the porch, and then he smote the door with his fist. Mrs. Carver and her husband could not stir. But Mary ran to let the big man in.

  It seemed to her, as she stepped back and swung the door wide, that he was not quite so formidable at close range as he was at a little distance. It was the presence of pain in his face—pain and unsuspected youth—that made him seem less terrible. Neither was he so overmastering in size.

  “We’ll be gone in a moment,” she told him. “We’re just waiting for the rig to take us to town.”

  He took off his hat, pushed his thick fingers through the unwieldy growth of gray hair, and answered nothing. He merely stared at her. She must not let him come into the presence of her parents. It would madden her father, and it would break her mother’s heart. So she held him in the little room to the right of the hall. The first founder of the Carver fortune had planned that room as a little reception hall. Now it was serving its original purpose, but there was only one rickety chair in it. That was all the furniture.

  “We’ll be gone in a minute,” she repeated. “Won’t you sit down here and wait?”

  “Thank you,” said the big man, but he made no move toward the chair. He stood impassively, with his fists dropped upon his hips, his singularly white face expressive of no emotion whatever.

  And Mary strove to fill in the awkward pause. She pointed out the window to black Major standing in his corral alone, for his tyrannical disposition made it impossible for him to be kept with other horses.

  “I want to talk to you about that horse,” she said. “I was riding him yesterday, you may remember.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s Major. I’ve had him for eight years.”

  “You raised him here?”

  “No, he was four years old when he came. You’d never guess who brought him. It was the White Mask!”

  “The White Mask?” he said, and lifted his brows.

  “Yes, the White Mask. He came pretending to be a wandering preacher. Imagine that! I remember him as though it were yesterday.” She had interested him beyond her hopes. “He was a giant among men,” she went on. “Yes, he must have been at least four or five inches taller than you are. And he had a great black beard that flowed down over his chest. Your voice is heavy, but his was like thunder. I can remember him still, laughing.” She shivered at the thought and then raised her eyes, still full of the strange memory. “But, no matter what they say of him, he had some good in him. He saved me out of the well. That’s one reason I think there was some good in him. Besides, he talked with such a fire that he must have meant a little part of what he said.”

  “He’s dead now, I imagine,” suggested Timothy Kenyon. “I haven’t heard of him since he was sent to prison.”

  “Worse than dead. He’s in prison for life. But I want to talk to you about Major. That horse has been almost like a chum with me. No one else can ride him, but I used to climb onto his bare back when I was too small for him to suspect me. That’s how I learned to manage him. You see? And I want to know, Mister Kenyon, if I can hope to buy him with a note. If you’ll take my note for a year, I …”

  “He looks big enough to carry me. And, if he’s strong enough for that, I won’t sell him.”

  “But no one can ride him, you see.”

  He turned squarely to her with a faint smile that made her flesh creep. “I guess I can manage that,” he said. “Now let me see your father.”

  She stared at him. It was incomprehensible that a man who seemed to possess some shreds of culture should have, at the same time, so very little tact. But there was nothing she could do, since he asked so bluntly, except take him into the other room. And, with a lugubrious look, she conducted him out, talking loudly at the same time, so that the others might be prepared. But before they reached the doorway, she heard her mother—most welcome sound—start out of her chair exclaiming, “There’s Jeff at last, thank heaven! Come along, John!”

  And both of them were started for the door when Mary came before them with Timothy Kenyon.

  He greeted the pair he was dispossessing without the slightest embarrassment. Indeed, there was even a great cheerfulness in his voice. “Wait half a minute,” he said. “I hear that you’re starting for town, but what are you going to do there, Carver? These are hard times for men without money.”

  “Money or no money,” growled Carver, “I’ll get on in my own way, no doubt.”

  “You’d better get on in my way,
” said the new owner. “Stay here. There’s work that has to be done on the ranch. Why not do it? I’ve no wish to turn you loose on the world. I’m not as hard-hearted as that, man.”

  In a trice, Jeff and his waiting and his long-expected buckboard were forgotten. Suitcases were dropped out of hands. They sat down in the parlor to discuss possibilities. And in five minutes all chance of removal was ended. In fact, the eagerness with which her parents fell in with the proposals of Kenyon proved conclusively to the girl that it would have been a tragedy had they moved away. They were rooted too deeply in their attachment to the old home. It would have broken the hearts of both of them to go.

  So she waited quietly in the background, watching her poor mother dab furtively at the tears of joy that ran down her face while she nodded and smiled at every suggestion the big stranger made.

  With dazzling swiftness, it was all settled. Mr. and Mrs. Carver and Mary were to live in the little cottage behind the big house as soon as the smaller building was placed in a state of sufficient repair. Carver could have a steady job on the ranch as foreman. His daughter could eke out the wages of the family and increase their savings working as cook and general housekeeper for the new owner. At that idea Mary hotly revolted, but a moment of reflection showed her that it was for the best.

  It had been all a pleasant dream, that thought of moving away from the ranch and living elsewhere. But penniless and without work, the most they could do, at least until they had accumulated enough funds to take them to some city would be to work as hired hands on one of the neighboring ranches. And, bitter though it might be to step into that capacity on the old home place, it would be still more bitter to do the same work on strange land.

  So it was all settled quickly. There was an immense kindliness in the manner of Timothy Kenyon. To be sure, now and again one might run into a certain hardness. But this happened only now and again, as when she tried to buy Major. But what difference did that make, now that he assured her that she could ride the black stallion as much as she pleased while she stayed on the ranch? Moreover, though he did not express the sentiment in exactly these words, there was an air about Timothy Kenyon that seemed to say: Trust all this to me.