by Max Brand
He looked up to the ragged sides of those mountains. The rider of such a horse as Sunset could make his home among those peaks. From those impracticable heights he could sweep down like a hawk on the wing and take toll from the groveling men of the plains—strike, ravage, destroy, beat down enemies, award justice for past injuries—and then away on wings again, wings strong enough to sweep him up the slopes and back to safety, while the sweating posse labored and puffed and cursed and moiled vainly in the dust far behind him.
No wonder that Macdonald looked back from those distant heights to the stallion with a heart on fire with eagerness. The speed of an eagle, the strength of a lion, and the heart of a lamb. Yonder stood the giant horse nosing the hand of the man who was talking softly to him and stroking his sleek neck. Macdonald dismounted. He stepped closer to the pair.
He had one gracious quality, and that was a soft and deep bass voice. He used it with more effect because in all his travels he had picked up no slang. He spoke the same pure tongue that he had learned in his boyhood.
“I wonder,” he said to the stranger, “if you’re the man who owns this horse?”
“Sunset?” The other turned, as though surprised that anyone should have asked such a question. He was a tall and slenderly built youth, with long tawny hair, a brown, weather-marked face with joyous gray eyes looking out at Macdonald. “Yep,” he said. “I own Sunset.”
“Sunset?” echoed Macdonald, and he looked back to the stallion. It was an appropriate name, and he said so. It was doubly appropriate now, as the big horse turned, and a wave of red light rippled along his flank, like a highlight traveling over bright silk.
At the deep and quiet sound of his voice, Sunset came closer, snorted softly his suspicion, then reached out with bright and mischievous eyes and nibbled at the brown back of Macdonald’s hand.
“Oh, he doesn’t seem to be afraid, does he?” asked Macdonald of his companion in the profoundest wonder.
“Why should he be afraid?” asked the other, frowning. “He’s been raised right and treated right. He don’t connect with gents with clubs and spurs, like most of the horses around these here parts.”
Macdonald looked over his shoulder, and his gelding flattened its ears and stared at the master with concentrated malice. Back to Sunset turned Gordon Macdonald. The teeth of the stallion had caught up a fold of skin on the back of his hand and pinched it very gently. Yet, as though he had committed a crime deserving punishment, the red horse started away, tossing and shaking his head. No rough curses followed him. He came back again slowly. Once more he sniffed at the stranger. Once more he came back and thrust out his beautiful head. Wonder of wonders, he permitted that great, strong hand of Macdonald to reach and touch his velvet muzzle. He permitted the tips of those terrible fingers to rub his forehead, to touch his silken ears, to stray along his throat. Nay, he grew so emboldened that he reached high. He caught the brim of Macdonald’s hat. He twitched it off, and then, wheeling like a dog playing a game, half afraid and half delighted, he bolted across the field, whipping the hat from side to side and flashing his heels in the air.
“Hey!” yelled the owner. “Come back here, Sunset! Say, stranger, I’m mighty sorry that happened … looks like a good hat, too.”
He broke off in his apologies. Fifty dollars in gold had been paid the Mexican who first owned that sombrero. But now Macdonald was staring after a fleeing horse, like one enchanted by a dream of beauty. The long sweep of that gallop made him dizzy with delight. His stern lips parted to the tenderest of smiles. On the farther side of the field Sunset dropped the sombrero and dashed his hoofs upon it. In an instant it was a mass of rents and fragments. And behold, Macdonald turned to his companion a laughing face.
“He’s like a big, happy dog,” he said.
The other stared upon him with no less surprise than if he had been convicted that instant of lunacy. And, indeed, there was something wild in this careless throwing away of a sombrero, dearer to a cowpuncher’s heart than aught except his gun.
After the episode, Sunset picked up the hat again and came back at full gallop, the fragments dangling from his teeth, his head thrust out, his ears flattened, his mane flying like the plumes above a Grecian helmet, swift as an arrow loosed from the string, the ground shivering under the impact of his beating hoofs. A red flash of danger he shot at them, then threw himself back and slid to a halt on stiffly braced legs, while his hoofs plowed up long strips of the turf. At the very feet of Macdonald he dropped the hat.
“Like he expected a lump of sugar for spoiling my hat,” Macdonald said, and laughed again. “And look at this! He comes right back to my hand again. Man, man, there’s only one horse in the world … only one horse in the world.”
“Come here, Sunset,” said the master. “Come here, I say.”
But Sunset only wavered toward his owner. Then he returned to the fascinating task of trying to catch a lock of Macdonald’s fire red hair in his teeth. What it meant to Macdonald no man could know. Perhaps a mother feeling the tugging hands of an infant could understand how his heart ached with joy to see this magnificent dumb creature defy him without malice and tease him as though he were some harmless child.
“What have you done to Sunset?” growled the young owner. “Never saw him act up like that to any other man.”
It was wine of purest delight to Macdonald.
“He doesn’t take up with strangers, you say?” he asked greedily.
“Takes them with his heels, if he can.”
“Well,” said Macdonald, “he’s no common horse. He understands. He understands, eh, old boy?” He turned abruptly on the youth. “What’s your name?”
“Rory Moore.”
“Moore, is your horse for sale?”
“Nope.”
“Moore, I’ve got five hundred dollars in my pocket.”
“He’s not for sale. Why, I raised him.”
“Look here, five hundred is quite a lot. It takes a long time for a cowpuncher to save that much.” He put the amount in Moore’s hand.
“No use talking, stranger,” declared Moore.
“Six hundred, then.”
“Not if you made it six thousand.”
“Moore, here’s nine hundred and eighty dollars. It’s yours. Give me the horse!”
“Not for nine thousand eight hundred.”
Moore recoiled a little, for the expression of Macdonald had changed. His lips had stiffened. His big body had trembled. There was even a change in the hand that had been stroking the neck of the stallion, for the horse suddenly drew back and sniffed suspiciously at the bony fingers. But if there had been a glimpse of danger in the face of Macdonald, he smoothed it away quickly enough and managed to smile.
“No way in the world that you’d give up that horse … couldn’t be taken from you?”
“Not unless the luck was against me.”
“Luck?”
“I mean I’ve never backed down at dice for any man. And, in fact,” Rory Moore was laughing at the thought, “I’d stake my life on my luck. Look here, I’ve got a pair of dice with me. Your nine hundred against Sunset … one roll.”
Eagerly Macdonald reached for the little cubes, then drew his hand back with a groan. “I never gamble,” he said.
“What?” cried the other, as though the sun had vanished from the heavens. “Never gamble?”
“No.” He turned, took one last, long look at Sunset, who had pressed his breast against the fence, as though eager to follow, and then stepped to his gelding.
“What name’ll I remember you by?” asked Moore.
But Macdonald did not seem to hear. He had thrown himself into the saddle and spurred the gelding down the road toward town, whose roofs already pushed up above the trees.
III
“But how a gold digger like you,” Macdonald said, “could ever go broke, I don’
t see. You can make the cards do everything but talk, can’t you? And I’ve watched you practice with the dice and call your throw nine times out of ten, even bouncing them against a wall.”
The gambler lifted his wan, lean face from his hands. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
“Yep,” he said, “I can do that. And I had my big game planted, Macdonald. There was a fortune in sight … a hundred thousand, if there was a cent in that game. I had the cards stacked. Nothing better. Gent started betting against me. He had two aces and two jacks. My guns, how well I remember! I’d given him the ace of spades and the ace of hearts and the jack of spades and the jack of diamonds. He opened on the jacks, and I gave him the aces on the draw. The fifth card ought to have been the seven of clubs. I had three little deuces, but they looked big against two pair. I figured him to be bluffing. He began to raise. I raised him right back. He began to sweat. I figured that he was sorry for his bluff but thought that he could work it out. He saw me and raised me right back.
“Then I smeared in the rest of my chips … every cent I had was on that table … and he called. I showed my three deuces … I was reaching for the pot, and he laughed and put down two jacks and three aces on top of them. Yes, sir, it wasn’t the seven of clubs that I’d given him … the first mistake I’d made in a hundred deals, and how I made it, I dunno. An ace full on jacks is what he hands me, and me with three measly deuces! That’s how I’m busted, Macdonald.”
“Just change that name, will you?” said Macdonald.
“They don’t know you here?”
“No, it’s new country for me.”
“Me too, and bad country it is. What name do you want? I call myself Jenkins.”
“Call me nothing … call me Red, if you wish.”
“All right. And, Red, you ain’t fixed to stake me, are you?”
“What?”
The gambler shrank from him with a sickly smile. “I meant to stake me to a couple of square meals, pal. I’m lined with vacancy, fact. Ain’t eaten since I can remember.”
Macdonald rubbed his knuckles across his chin, and under his gaze Jenkins shuddered. His eyes widened. Plainly he knew a great deal indeed about the past of this slayer of men.
“Suppose I do stake you?”
“Why, then I’ll sure pay you back, partner, the minute …”
“Suppose I stake you to five hundred dollars?”
The jaw of Jenkins fell. “Five hundred,” he whispered. “What you want of me, Mac? What can I do for you? You know I ain’t any hand with a gat, or for …”
The raised hand of Macdonald silenced him. “I want you to gamble for me.”
“Why I’d play my head off. You mean I’m to split with you after …”
“Shut up,” said Macdonald. “I want to think.”
He strode up and down the room for a time, and the rat-like, sharp eyes of Jenkins followed him guiltily back and forth. Presently he shrank back in his chair again as the bulk of the other loomed before him, and Macdonald stood still with his legs braced far apart.
“I want no split,” he said. “If you win, you win, and you keep the coin you make.”
Jenkins swallowed with difficulty, and his haunted eyes clung to the face of Macdonald.
“There’s a youngster who lives in an old house near the town. His name is Moore.”
“Oh, yes, Rory Moore.”
“You know him?”
“All about him.”
“What do you know?”
“The Moores used to own most of this here country. Look across the street.”
Macdonald looked across to the lofty and gabled front of the hotel. It was a spacious building for such a small town, and it was set far back from the street in deep grounds, in which all the garden had perished except a scattering of shrubs.
“That used to be the Moore home,” said Jenkins.
“Well?”
“Rory’s father blew the whole wad of coin. He was a hot spender. Paris was his speed, that’s all. Come back with a mighty small jingle in his purse and a funny accent. The kids got his empty purse, but they couldn’t inherit the funny accent.” And Jenkins laughed with a malicious satisfaction. “If he wanted to throw his coin away, why wasn’t poker right here in Texas as good as Monte Carlo? Down with a gent that don’t patronize home folks, I say!” His thin lips writhed into a snarl of deathless malevolence.
“This youngster, Rory Moore … he likes to play pretty well?”
“And he usually wins. That’s how he’s made enough money to start his ranch. He’s sure got luck with dice and cards. Well, you know what luck means.”
“You mean he’s crooked?”
There was an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
“I think you are lying, Jenkins.”
The latter winced under the word, but he recovered himself at once.
“I ain’t seen him crook the cards,” he confessed. “But he’s a bad one … a fighter.” He stopped short, watching Macdonald, in dread lest this imputation of blame to a fighter might offend the man of battle.
But Macdonald was not thinking of himself. “He’s a fighter, you say? Neat with a gun, eh?”
“Quick and certain … which is what counts most.”
“Look here, Jenkins, would you have the nerve to sit in with Moore at a game and beat him?”
Jenkins turned white. “What if I made a slip … and he seen? I’d be ready for planting, right there and pronto!”
“What if you didn’t make a slip?”
“Then I’d clean him out.” He twisted his bony hands together in glee at the prospect.
“Yes, he’s the sort that would bet down to his last dollar,” nodded Macdonald.
“He’d bet the boots he rides in,” assented Jenkins. “And if he stuck by the game, a gent could clean him out of his ranch … out of everything. But what’s the use of talking like that? I ain’t got a stake to start a game, have I?” He fixed upon Macdonald the eyes of a ferret.
“Five hundred dollars, Jenkins. I’ll stake you as high as that.”
“And how do we split?”
“How do you think we should?”
“I dunno,” whined Jenkins. “You furnish the cash, but I take the chances. And if he thinks I’m running up the cards on him, there’ll be a gun play sure.”
“He has a horse …”
“Sunset, you mean?” asked Jenkins.
“That’s the name. Jenkins, I want that horse. When you break him, he’ll stake Sunset. I want Sunset, but you can keep the cash.”
For a time they were both silent, the lips of Jenkins moving, and his eyes fixed so intently upon the distance, that he reminded Macdonald of one who bet his last cent on a horse race and sees the ponies battling desperately down the homestretch.
“A man has to die sometime,” Jenkins said at last. “And ain’t it better to die flush than broke?”
“There’s no doubt about that.”
“I’ll take you up, Red! Gimme that coin and I’ll lay for him. I’ll get him tonight. Say, Red, I been broke so long that this looks like a pile of money that you’re giving me. Don’t you want some sort of a receipt?”
But Macdonald, as he put the wallet back into his pocket, merely smiled. “No,” he said. “I don’t need a receipt.”
“Sure you don’t,” murmured Jenkins, shivering violently, as another thought came to him. “I guess there ain’t many west of the Mississippi that would try to beat you out of anything.” His shivering ended in a crackling laugh. But he had a pocket bulging with money, and his spirits would not stay down. Warmth was beginning to strike through all his body.
“One thing I never could make out about you, Red,” he went on.
“What’s that?”
“You can do about anything that any other man can do. But you always stay shut of c
ards. Don’t seem to want to take chances that way. But you sure made a mistake, Red. With your nerve you get by fine. The trouble with me … the trouble with me is that I get to thinking of what might happen, if they should find me out in a pinch, and something sort of melts in me.”
It was not often that Macdonald showed any delicacy of feeling, but now he turned away to hide the scorn that darkened on his face.
“Jenkins,” he said, facing the other again, “has an honest gambler a chance of winning?”
“Honest gambler!” sneered Jenkins. “There ain’t any such bird.”
“That’s why I don’t gamble,” said Macdonald. “I haven’t enough coin to throw away, and as for the other way of gambling, I hate a sure thing.”
“But look here,” argued Jenkins, “do you think that I’m going to play square with Rory Moore?”
Macdonald scowled upon his confederate. “I offered Moore twice the value of his horse,” he explained. “He was a fool not to take it, and you’re a worse fool, Jenkins, to ask questions.”
IV
Here ended the talk, of course. Macdonald left Jenkins and stalked across the street to the hotel. There he went at once to his bed and flung himself upon it. Since he had not closed his eyes in forty-eight hours, he could hardly prop them open long enough to finish his bedside cigarette, peering through the shadows of the room at the old photographs and pictures that hung along the walls. These might all be members of the clan of Moore—kinsmen, relations, supporters of the old power in the days when it was really great, and when this hotel was like a castle in the midst of a principality.
Such were the thoughts that formed vaguely in the mind of Macdonald before he threw his cigarette butt through the window, turned on his side, and was instantly asleep. It was a sleep filled with visions of uncertain misery for a time, but by degrees he passed into a dream of such pleasantness that he began to smile in his sleep.
For it seemed to Macdonald that he was mounted at last upon the great red beauty, Sunset, and that he was galloping over the mountain desert like a dry leaf soaring on a wind. A dizziness of joy swept into his brain, with the sway and swing of that galloping. And there was perfect accord between the red horse and himself. A pressure of his knee was as good as a twist of the reins, and his voice was both bit and spur.