by Max Brand
Someone with no common touch had made those fading paintings that hung along the walls. There, a small sketch, was the narrow and rushing river streaking down from the ragged hills that rolled back against the sky. And here, too, was the sweeping bird’s-eye view of the sunlit plain. But where was the girl?
He had only to turn to the opposite wall to see her, just as she had ridden into his dream, sitting lightly on the sidesaddle and riding around a curve down a long avenue of mighty walnut trees.
Here, then, had his dream gone out. But, as the first rush of relief left him, he was struck with a sharp little pang of grief. He had banished that dream and all that was in it. He had found the most simple of explanations. But what of the girl? By the fashion of that coat and the puffed shoulders, she was dead these many years, or else she had grown into middle age, something of her youth had died from her. She was dead, indeed, and he could never find her as he had seen her.
The door opened on the chambermaid with clean linen over her arm.
“Look here,” Macdonald said to the old woman. “Have you ever known the girl in this picture?”
“Miss Mary Moore?” said the other. “Sure I knew her. Mind you, the man that painted that picture was her lover, and she died in a fall from that very same horse three days after that picture was painted. I mind it as well as if it was yesterday. I was a servant in this house then, and I’ve been here ever since.”
Macdonald dismissed her with a dollar bill and returned to his own gloomy thoughts. He had gone for two days in what he considered an exquisite torment. But now he began to wonder if the torment into which he was passing might not be worse after all. For there had lingered in his mind, all those hours, the hope that someday he would find her, just as she had been when she rode into his dream. And if all the terror of the dream were gone, all the beauty of it was gone, too.
There was a light rap at the door, and he bade the person enter. It was a dusty, barefoot boy, with a letter in his hand, and great frightened eyes fixed upon the face of Macdonald, as though the latter had been an evil spirit. He was gone the instant the big man took the envelope. Macdonald tore it open and found within it the shortest and the most eloquent of notes:
I am waiting for you, just in front of the blacksmith shop.
—Rory Moore
Methodically he tore the letter to bits. It was an old habit of his. Next, still out of force of habit, he took out his Colt and examined it from muzzle to the butt, polished by the years of use. Last of all he turned to the picture of Mary Moore. What he had seen in the dream was true enough. She was very like Rory. She might have posed as his sister.
XII
Like all events which grow in importance after they happen, and which become a part of even minor history, what happened that day was remembered even to the most minute details. And everyone of mature years in the town was able to recall some part. At least they had seen Macdonald issue from the hotel, dressed with unusual care, a flaming red bandanna around his throat, with the point hanging far down between his shoulders, and a great sombrero decorated with silver medallions upon his head, and his boots shined until they were like twin mirrors. One might have thought that he was going to be the best man at a wedding, or the groom himself. But everyone knew that he was going out to give battle and take a life or give his own. For the rumor had passed, as swiftly as rumors do, through the length and the breadth of the town that Rory Moore was waiting in front of the blacksmith shop, and that he had sent a message to the terrible Macdonald.
So scores of eyes were watching as the big man walked down the single street of the village. He had never seemed taller. He had never seemed more sedate. He carried with him that unconscious air of importance that goes with men who have seen or suffered much.
He paused at the corner, where the corral from the hotel bordered the street. There he leaned against the fence and called. And the big red stallion came running to the voice of his new master. A dozen men swore that they saw Macdonald pass his arms around the neck of the horse and put his head down beside the head of Sunset.
Then he went on again with as light a stride as ever. When the watchers thought of Rory Moore, their hearts shrank within them. For it seemed impossible that such a force as Macdonald could be stopped by any one man.
More than one hardy cowpuncher set his teeth at the thought and looked to his gun. If anything happened to Rory, it would take all the desperate nerve and skill of a Macdonald to get out of that town. For they had determined that, fair play or not, the time had come to finish this destroyer of men.
In the meantime, Macdonald had passed the general merchandise store. He had come to the Perkins place, and there he paused to speak to an old Mexican beggar woman who came with a toothless whine to ask for money. They saw him take out a whole wad of rustling bills and drop it into her hand. The bills overflowed. She leaped upon them like an agile old beast of prey. When she straightened again, he was half a block away, and she poured out a shrill volley of blessings. Her borrowed English failed her, and to become truly eloquent she fell back upon the native Spanish and filled the air with it.
But her benefactor went on without a glance behind him.
“He’s superstitious,” said the beholders. “He’s trying to get good luck for the meeting with Rory … and the devil take him and the old beggar.”
But now he had come in sight of the blacksmith shop. A cluster of men fell back. One or two lingered beside Rory Moore, begging him to the last minute not to throw away his life in vain. But he tore himself away from them and strode well out into the street, where the fierce white sun beat down upon him. Nearer drew Macdonald, and still his bearing was as casual and light as the bearing of any pleasure seeker.
“Macdonald!” cried Rory Moore suddenly in a wild, hoarse voice.
“Well, Rory,” answered the smooth tones of the man-killer, “are you ready?”
“Yes, curse you, ready!”
“Then get your gun!”
And Rory, waiting for no second invitation, reached for the butt of his Colt. It was an odd contrast that lay between the two, as they faced one another—Rory crouched over and taut with eagerness, and the tall and careless form of Macdonald. And it seemed that the same carelessness was in the gesture with which he reached for his weapon. Yet such was the consummate speed of that motion that his gun was bare before the revolver of Rory Moore was out of the holster. His gun was bare, but there seemed to be some slip. Carelessness had been carried too far, for the gun flashed in his hand and dropped into the dust.
And Rory? His own weapon exploded. It knocked up a little fountain of dust at the feet of the giant. He fired again and Macdonald collapsed backward like a falling tower. The big sombrero dropped from his head, and he lay with his long red hair floating like blood across the dust.
And yet so incredible was it to all who watched that Macdonald should indeed have fallen, that there was a long pause before a yell of triumph rose from a hundred throats, and they closed around the big man, like wolves around a dead lion.
And when the wonder of it was faded a little, they picked up his gun, where it had fallen in the dust. They picked it up, they examined it, as one might have examined the sword of Achilles, after the arrow had struck his heel, and the venom had worked. They broke the gun open. But not a bullet fell out. And then they saw that it was empty, and that Macdonald had come so carelessly down that street not to kill, but to be killed!
It was a thunderstroke to the townsmen. It was as though the devil, being trailed into a corner, should turn into an angel and take flight for heaven.
“There ain’t more’n one way of looking at it,” said the sheriff, when he came into the town that evening on a foaming horse. “Macdonald didn’t want to kill young Moore. But he had to face him or be called a coward. And there you have it. He’s been a hound all his life, but he’s died like a hero.”
A
nd that was the motive behind the monument that was built for Macdonald in that town. Although partly, perhaps, they simply wanted to identify themselves with that terrible and romantic figure.
But, while the turmoil of talk was sweeping up and down the town, two women were the first to think of striving to untangle the mysterious motives of Macdonald by something which he might have left behind him in his room—perhaps some letter to explain everything.
It was Mrs. Charles Moore who led the way, and with her went her niece, the sister of Rory. They found the room undisturbed, exactly as it had been when Macdonald left. But all they found was his rifle, his other revolver, his slicker, and his bedroll. There was nothing else except a few trifles. So they began to look around the room itself.
“And look yonder!” Mrs. Charles Moore cried. “There’s the place he dumped out the bullets from his gun … poor man … right underneath the picture of your poor dead Aunt Mary. And, child, child, how astonishingly you’ve grown to be like her! I’ve never seen such a likeness … just in the last year you’ve sprouted up and grown into the very shadow of her.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “how can you talk of such things.”
“What in the world …” began the other.
“Here in this very room … and … here where he thought his last thoughts.”
“Heavens above, silly child, you’re weeping for him!”
“But I saw him when they carried him in from the street,” Mary said softly, with the tears running slowly down her face. “And even in death he seemed a greater man than any I’ll ever see. And one great arm and hand was hanging down … I shall never forget.”
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his works along with many radio and television programs. For good measure, he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in such a variety of different ways.
Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, Italy, and finally in Los Angeles.
Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every six months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.