Man From Mustang

by Brand, Max

  “I think,” said Silver, “that some one wants to stop a thing that’s due to happen to Kenyon to-morrow.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell you. I’ve promised Kenyon not to tell.”

  “Stop him by killing him?”

  “Gladly, if there’s no other way.”

  “Silver, how much do you know?”

  “Hardly more than a baby.”

  The sheriff laid hold of his chin with a big brown hand and gripped hard, staring over his knuckles at the face of Silver.

  “It’s hard,” he said, “but I’m going to believe you. I want to know this: Are you working with me?”

  “With all my might!”

  “Good!” said the sheriff. “And if you have an idea, you can call on me night or day.”

  “I’ll have an idea before the end of tomorrow,” said Silver. “And then I may call on you to blow up half this town!”

  Chapter 6

  Silver went to his room, dipped a towel in cold water, tied it around his head, and waited for the whisky fumes to disappear. He had had only two drinks, but he felt that they were too many. He sat in the darkness, without a lamp, watching the moonlight inch its way across the floor, reach the feet of a chair, and crawl up the varnished legs.

  But still he could find no answer to the questions which were whirling in his mind.

  He took off his boots, left his room, and went down the stairs. The outer doors were all locked. He opened a window, got onto the veranda, and stole down it until he stepped onto the pine needles beneath the grove beside the building. There he sat with his back to a tree, not even smoking, and watched the moonlight shine on the windows of the house as on pools of black water.

  The moon grew dim. Its shadows no longer made a pattern of jet and white on the ground. The dawn came, with a chill that started his flesh quaking, and then he heard the loud rattling of iron on iron, as some one began to work at the kitchen stove. Immediately afterwards, a door in the back of the hotel groaned faintly.

  Silver got up, and walked behind the trees until he could see the small form of a woman hurrying toward the barn. He knew her by the walk — the girl who was to marry Ned Kenyon before noon of this day.

  He rounded to the back of the stable. Two seconds after she led out the black mare he was on Parade. He was saddling as she turned down the main street of Mustang, and he was able to note the direction. A half minute later he was riding west, also, but keeping behind the most outlying houses of the town. In that way, he rounded into the head of the valley in time to see the rose of the morning bloom on all the snow-clad peaks of the distance. A solitaire was singing as though the beauty of the dawn had filled its heart. And in the distance he saw the black horse slide into the shadows of a big grove of pines.

  He followed only a short distance up the valley, for he was reasonably sure, for a definite reason, that she would ride up the same trail by which he had seen her descend the evening before. Kenyon had told him that she loved to ride out by herself — generally toward the west. That was her favorite, the zigzag trail down the western hills, Kenyon had remarked.

  But it would be very odd if she preferred that trail to others that were ten times more beautiful. And if she was, as Kenyon said, merely a girl tenderfoot trying to see the west for herself unimpeded by too much chaperonage, it would have been more natural for her to take all of the trails, one by one. Some singular attraction had kept her until deep into the evening of the day before among those western hills. Perhaps the same thing — not the beauty of the morning — was taking her out there before the day had well begun.

  Silver rode up the slope to the left of him to the water divide above. The black mare was fast, but she could not keep pace with the cat feet and the winged stride of the golden stallion. Parade was well over the ridge and coming through a group of trees, when Silver saw the girl swinging her horse at an angle across his line. And he sighed with content. He was on the right trail. And if she were ten thousand times more beautiful than she was, he would find her share in the mystery and lay it bare.

  So he shadowed her, moving Parade with care from one covert to another, half guessing the probable course of the girl a dozen times, and always hitting it correctly.

  She dipped into a narrow ravine, at last, and Silver had to halt his horse on the brink of the steep ground, then rein it well back to wait for the black mare to climb out up the farther bank.

  He waited a sufficient time, until a pinch of suspicion stirred him. So he dismounted, put Parade in a clump of tall brush, gave him the word that would tether him in place more strongly than ropes, and went forward on foot to investigate.

  He had to lie flat and peer over the rim of the canyon, before he could see what he wanted. But the sight was reward, and a rich one. For in a clearing among the trees in the middle of the ravine he saw the girl walking up and down with a young man in a gray felt hat with a brim foolishly narrow for Western weather, and with a quick step, and nervous gestures. That was all that Silver could make out.

  The stranger seemed to be pouring out a tirade, to which the girl listened most of the time with a bent head. She seemed then to be making gestures of denial, and at this he fell into an attitude of earnest argument and persuasion, until the very ears of Silver ached to hear the words.

  Whatever they were, they were sufficient. Presently she was nodding in agreement, and then she was putting her head up in its characteristic fearless poise, as though she were ready to outface the world.

  A few minutes later, the two disappeared under the trees, and then the black mare mounted the farther slope and tipped out over the rim of it beyond his view.

  There remained the fellow in the ravine. Silver worked down the sharp slope toward him, moving more like a snake than a man. It was hard to make that descent with any surety that he was unseen, for a dozen times he was without real cover. He was perhaps twenty steps from the bottom of the valley when a rifle clanged, a bullet spatted against the ground beside his face, and he had to dive into the shrubbery before him as into water.

  He was worming his way through that cover, with his revolver in his hand, when he heard the rapid thudding of hoofs that ranged up the ravine, and knew his quarry had taken to flight.

  Gloomily he went on until he came to a small clearing in which a mere dog tent was pitched. There was a heap of empty cans, at one side. There was a rudely put together fireplace built of stones. And under the cover of the tent he saw a bed made down, the blankets rumpled, together with a book or two and a few magazines.

  Silver went around the camp with a furtive step. This camper had been on the spot for a week, at least. He was not used to a life in the open, or he would have built his fireplace better. He was no fisherman, for he would have worn a trail along the side of the little brook, and particularly down to the edge of the broad, still pool not far away. He was, in fact, nothing but a tenderfoot.

  Silver sat down on a stump and smoked a cigarette. He had plenty of facts, and he could make a few deductions.

  The girl who was betrothed to Kenyon came to this place daily, so it seemed, in order to talk with a light-stepping, active young man who apparently was able to persuade her against her will on matters of importance. This young gentleman, instead of going to the hotel in the town, preferred to live in the wilderness, though he had neither talent nor apparent liking for that life — for no one who liked it could have put up with the arrangements of that camp. In addition to these things, there was the further fact that the stranger actually had tried with his rifle for the life of a man who was stealing upon his camp!

  The component parts made the picture of one who could not be other than a criminal, it seemed to Silver. And if he were, it was a fact that threw keen light upon the character of the girl.

  But with this much gained, Silver had to return to Mustang. He went back to Parade, and took a leisurely way to the town, his mind crammed with thought every inch of the way. In the stable behind the hotel, he p
ut up the stallion and paused to look over the mare. She had been taken flying home. She still was head down, panting hard, and the sweat was still running on her sleek body. It was apparent that the girl had wished to be away from the hotel as short a time as possible.

  Silver went up to his room, undressed, slipped into his bed, turned on his face, and slept soundly for two hours. Then the striking of the breakfast gong roused him.

  A wash in cold water wakened him thoroughly. He dressed, and went down the stairs humming softly, and into the dining room, where the girl and Ned Kenyon were already having bacon and eggs, with a sooty pot of coffee beside them, for service in that hotel was not of the most polite.

  “A good night, Arizona?” asked the girl cheerfully.

  “One of the best,” said Silver. “Did you sleep right through?”

  “Like the dead!” said she, and smiled at him.

  It was a good, direct smile, with open eyes that met his, easily. He wanted to say to her: “You lie well. I know the types of liars, and you’re one of the best!”

  Yet, as he sat there with them, as he heard the softness of her voice, as he watched the clear beauty of her face, he found himself saying, against his better judgment, that she must be all right. It would be an irony, a sarcasm of nature, if she were other than honest and true.

  Poor Ned Kenyon, who dwelt on her with his eyes, who devoured her every gesture, every word from her throat -what would he say if he knew of that visitation to the stranger over the hills?

  Silver had a chance to find out, a few moments later, when the girl finished and excused herself from the table. As she rose from her place, her glance lingered for one serious, penetrating instant on the face of Silver. Then she went out hastily, as though not trusting the words that she was tempted to speak.

  Afterward, Silver said, to the rapt face of Ned Kenyon: “You love her, son.”

  “More’n breath,” said Kenyon simply.

  “If she turned out to be a counterfeit -would that stop you?”

  Kenyon did not smile. He merely looked out the window for a moment, as though to contemplate the immensity of that suggestion in a calm seriousness.

  Then he said: “You’re a swimmer, Jim?”

  “Yes,” said Silver.

  “You know what it means,” said Kenyon, “to fetch under water for a long distance?”

  Silver nodded.

  “And the way your lungs burn — and all? Well, suppose that you came up to the surface and there was no air to breathe! And it’s that way with me. It ain’t what is right or wrong about her, any more. It’s just that I couldn’t live without her in every day of my life -either having her, being with her, knowing all the time that she belongs to me. You see?”

  “I see,” said Silver.

  “Murder,” said Kenyon quietly, “not even if she’d done murder, it wouldn’t stop me. It’d matter, but it’d matter as though I’d done it myself. That’s all. But what was in your mind, partner?”

  “Well, I was just thinking, was all,” said Silver. “I simply wanted to know how you felt.”

  “In a couple of hours,” murmured Kenyon, “there’s a new life waiting for me. I’m not thinking about that. I don’t dare. It’s like thinking of walking on water, or walking on blue air. But you’ll be there, Jim. You’ll be there to steady me. That’s what I’m counting on.”

  Silver got out of the room like a blind man, fumbling. For he knew that to tell his friend of what he had seen this morning would be like pouring acid on a man already incurably ill. He could not speak!

  Chapter 7

  The church was a little frame box with a steeple tacked onto one side of it, like a forefinger lifted above a fist. The preacher was a good, hardworking man who covered all parts of his parish both winter and summer, climbing among ice-clad rocks in winter to places that no horse or mule could ever reach. Only a small percentage of Mustang attended his Sunday services, but there was not a man in the district who would not have fought for the sky pilot.

  Silver looked on him with wonder. He was regarding all things with astonishment, at that moment, for he could not believe that Kenyon and the girl were actually standing in front of the man of God, about to be joined in wedlock. The hotel proprietor was one witness. The keeper of the general merchandise store was the other. As for Silver, he had dodged the duty. In case he served, his real name would have to be written down, and that name he preferred to keep unknown.

  He stood in the back of the empty little church, acutely aware of the four windows that looked in on the scene, and prepared any instant to see the gleam of a gun outside the glass, for if they had killed one man in the cause of preventing the marriage, did it not stand to reason that they would kill another?

  So, with a sense of the two revolvers that hung beneath his armpits, Silver waited, and watched, and was all eyes rather than ears. Yet he could hear the responses, too, and he could be aware of the surprised face which the minister kept continually turning toward Kenyon. Even that unworldly man could see the absurdity of such a match.

  All had been done quietly. Not a soul in the village knew of what was to take place. That was the reason why the church was not crowded.

  He heard the preacher saying: “You promise to love, honour and obey — ”

  Silver saw the girl turn her head suddenly, and flash her eyes at Kenyon before she answered in a forced, barely audible voice: “I do.”

  Poor Kenyon!”

  It was over, suddenly. In turn, the witnesses bent to sign the little book. The preacher was shaking hands with the bride and groom. And out of a few spoken words there had been established a bond which should last until death. But would it last for even a day?

  Silver watched them come down the aisle. Kenyon was a man walking above the surface of this earth. The girl was pale, with a frozen smile. A careless eye might have put her pallor down to mere timidity, but Silver saw, or felt he saw, that it was an agony of the mind that moved her.

  Silver himself avoided shaking hands with them, first by opening the door for them, then by saying that he would hurry to the hotel, and see that the buckboard was ready. For the plan of Kenyon was to take her at once out of Mustang, and then over the green plains and up to the little town where his mother and father lived. It would be a simple honeymoon, but it was all that his purse could afford.

  At the hotel, Silver harnessed the span of mustangs which Kenyon had bought to the small buckboard. He heaped in the baggage behind the seat, while Kenyon came out of the hotel to help where he could. But his hands were helpless, and his small eyes were continually lifting to the sky, and being dazzled until they filled with moisture.

  The girl would be down in a moment from her room, Kenyon said.

  But she did not come for five minutes, for ten minutes, for half an hour.

  “Women have always got fixings to go through,” said Kenyon. “It don’t matter, I’d rather wait for her here than dance with anybody else while a band was playin’.”

  Silver said abruptly: “Perhaps I can help her about something.”

  “No. Leave her be. Let her take her time,” said Kenyon.

  But Silver was already through the door of the hotel. Once out of sight, he moved fast, up the stairs, and to the door of the girl’s room. He knocked. There was no answer. He pushed the door open, and no sign of Edith Alton was inside. Only a wraith of white smoke hung in the air above the little round-bellied stove that stood in a corner. And on the table was an envelope, sealed, and addressed in her handwriting to Edward Kenyon.

  Silver went down to the back of the hotel and found the cook.

  “See Miss Alton go out toward the barn?” he asked.

  “Half an hour ago she rode her black mare out of the barn and went up the valley,” said the cook. “She was traveling fast, too, like she wanted to catch a train.”

  Silver came through the hotel to Kenyon and took him by the arm.

  “Ned,” he said crisply. “You’ve got bad news. She’s le
ft you.”

  Kenyon straightened. It reminded Silver of how the man had stood the night before, in the saloon — straight, ready to meet his fate, but unable to struggle against it.

  “She’s left a letter for you upstairs,” said Silver. “That may do a little explaining. I’ll wait for you down here.”

  The stone-gray lips of Kenyon parted stiffly. He put a hand on the shoulder of his friend.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Jim,” said he, “if it wouldn’t be wrong for me to ask, I’d like to have you come up there with me.”

  That was why Silver climbed the stairs again, suddenly feeling old and weak.

  Yet there would be a sufficient strength in him, he thought, if he could lay his eyes on the girl, or on that fellow in the hills, who moved with that alert and springing step.

  It seemed to Silver now that he had done everything wrong. He should have spoken his suspicions to Kenyon at once. At least he should have demanded from the girl an explanation of her morning visit to that rifleman in the hills — that young fellow who was so ready to try his hand at murder!

  But now there was a ruin, and it was entirely in the life and the heart of poor Ned Kenyon.

  When they got into the room, Kenyon paused a moment at the door, and took off his hat, breathing deeply.

  “Kind of fragrant, Jim, ain’t it?” said he. “I mean the air. Kind of like her. Like flowers, eh?”

  He actually smiled at Silver, to invite his agreement. But Silver, jerking his hat a little lower on his head, stalked to the window and looked down to the ruts in the dusty street, and across the roofs of the houses, above which the heat waves were shimmering and dancing. He could have drunk hot blood.

  He looked sideways, curiously, at the stove, above which the wraith of smoke was dissolving. In winter weather in Mustang there would be plenty of need for stoves, but hardly at this time of the year. He opened the door. On the fire grate there was a ball of gray-and white fluff, the ashes of small bits of paper which had been wadded together. Now the draft took hold of them and blew them dissolving up the chimney.