by Max Brand
Afterwards he went out into the sun and sat down. The sun was hot. The wind carried life into his nostrils. Off at the side, he saw from the corner of his eye the silver flash of the cascade that kept on talking, high or low, by day and by night. It was better, he decided, to live up here, secluded, than to go down among men and be slaughtered. He could see now that, although there was a special peril in Martindale, there were other perils in all places for him. His hand had been too heavy, and it had fallen on too many people.
He could remember, now, the men he had fought against in other days—men with white, strained faces, distraught and desperate as they faced odds against which they knew they could not triumph. He had thought, in those other times, that these fellows were simply cowards. Now he knew better. He could feel the strain coming into his own face, as he merely thought of undertaking battle against normal fighting men.
On Wednesday he made up his mind that he would not go down to Martindale, no matter what he had promised the girl. On Thursday he was assured that it would be madness for him to enter that town. On Friday he stood out with his revolver in his right hand and tried three shots at a big rock. Twice the bullets hit the air. One slug hit the ground ten feet away from the base of the boulder.
Sick-faced, he stared down at hand and gun. He tried left-handed. All three shots hit the rock, but he had to fire slowly. In the time he needed for firing one shot with any accuracy, he could have poured in four or five in the old days, flicking home the shots with an instinct that was like touch.
Saturday morning a deer actually walked across the clearing. He had a chance for three shots—left-handed. The third wounded the deer in the shoulder. It fled, three-legged, for a mile. He had to follow and put it out of its pain. Then he had to cut up the carcass—left-handed—and bear the burden of the meat back to the little shack. Four shots to kill a deer!
But the best part of this was that he had plenty to do in fire-and-sun drying the venison. He would keep himself occupied while this day wore away, and the time of the dance with it. Then the sun went down.
He tried to busy himself about the shack, but the beauty of the sunset drew him to the door where he stood at watch. That turbulent rising of mountains west and north, that far flowing of the hills to the south made his mind flow that way to the picture of unseen Martindale.
He had been in that very dance hall, more than once. He knew every house and shop in the town. He had been a welcome visitor there. But now Danny Martin was dead, and Chuck Martin walked with a limp. Every time Chuck Martin limped, the Martins were sure to set their teeth and renew their bitter, silent resolve to take his life.
He began to think of Danny Martin, handsome and savage and treacherous, making an easy living through his crooked skill with the cards. Try as he might, he could not be sorry that he had planted a few ounces of lead in Danny’s lithe young body.
They would be lighting their lamps in Martindale, now. They’d be polishing the floor of the barn that served as a dance hall. And the girls of the town would be decorating the old place, stringing long sweeping lines of twisted, bright-colored paper streamers along the rafters and walls.
Cheyenne took a step outside the door of the shack. The night was coming. It was rising out of the earth, and the day was departing from the burning sky. There was a coldness and sickness in him. And he knew that was the stranger: fear. But there was a joy in him, too, and that, he knew, was the picture of Dolly Martin. He found himself saddling Sideways.
Then he was scrubbing his hands, working on the nails to get the impacted grease out from under them. He was taking a bath in cold water, using roughness of hard rubbing in the place of hot water and soap. Yet all the time he told himself that he would never be such a fool as to go down to the dance in Martindale. And all the time he knew that he would go.
VI
Cheyenne, riding steadily through the night, tried at first to keep his mind from Martindale and the dire test he knew awaited him there. He thought of the old days when he had been as strong as other men, of the night in Tombstone when he had won $500—and killed a man. But he found scant comfort in such memories and the new, cold fear in his heart at last drove all other thought from him. After all, was he not like a condemned prisoner passing to the gallows?
He expected to find himself tense, trembling when he entered the street of the town, but, as a matter of fact the moment he passed the first house, he was at ease. Not without pain, but it was as though he had squared off at another man and received the first blow that shocks the panic out of the mind.
Then he heard the music that throbbed out of the barn. He heard the burring sound of the bass viol and the thin shrill song of the violin, and above all the long and brazen snarling of the slide trombone. The beat of the drums was almost lost. It was a pulse in the air, and that was all.
Under the trees in front of the Slade barn the long hitching racks had been built. And horses were everywhere. He heard them snorting and stamping—those were the colts. And he saw, also, the old veterans of the saddle, down-headed, pointing one rear hoof.
He picked a gap in a rack near the lighted entrance, dismounted. Other men were about him, getting ready to enter the barn. He saw a gleam as of metal, and his heart leaped. But it was only the sheen of a bottle tilting slowly at the lips of a man.
He walked in toward the door, passing many figures in the darkness. He came into the little framed-off anteroom where coats and slickers and guns were left. He hung up his hat and his gun belt. The room was an armory.
The orchestra had paused. Now it began again. And the idlers were drawn suddenly back into the barn to the dance. He went up to the window and saw Jud Wilkins selling tickets. Jud was a long-jawed humorist with twinkling eyes. But his eyes did not twinkle when he saw Cheyenne.
“My Lord . . .” he murmured, then he pushed a ticket across the sill and took the money.
“Sort of a warm night for the dance, eh?” said Cheyenne.
“Yeah . . . kind of . . . but . . . my Lord,” muttered Jud Wilkins.
Cheyenne went inside. The roof of the barn was so high and black that the illumination under the lower rafters looked like rising rust. It was a tag dance, and he saw men running into the crowd and touching other men, sometimes slapping them resounding thwacks on the back or the shoulders. No one seemed to notice him. Then he found Dorothy Martin.
She was dancing with big Lew Parkin, who danced slowly. There was a slight bend to his head and shoulders, as though in proper reverence to his partner. She seemed to be enjoying her dance with Lew Parkin. She kept looking up at him and smiling a little. But now and again her glance went to the door of the barn.
Now her look fell straight on Cheyenne, and the smile she sent him set his heart to a thumping. He walked through the crowd, stepping lightly.
Some voice, a man’s voice, said behind him: “Excuse me . . . a gent just went by that looked almost like . . .”
Well, that would be the beginning of the whisper and the deadly preparation for the fight. But it seemed to Cheyenne that this would be the easiest night of a long lifetime for death. He felt that when bullets struck him, he could still be laughing. In fact, the faint smile that was characteristic of him was on his lips and in his eyes as he came to the girl and tapped Lew Parkin on the shoulder.
Lew stepped back and almost threw up his hands. “You?” he gasped. He looked like a hero in a cheap play, confronting the villain.
The girl stepped into Cheyenne’s arms, and they moved off. His feet found the swinging rhythm of the waltz. He usually danced on the outer edge of the floor, but he kept to the inside, now, on the verge of that slight vacuum that always forms toward the center of a big dance floor.
“I was hoping that you’d come earlier,” she said. “But this is better than nothing at all. Did you have a long distance to come? I’ve saved supper for you. You’ll have supper with me, John? Won’t you? I haven’t told anyone about you. Not a soul. Not even Mother. I want you to be a su
rprise. I didn’t even talk about being driven into a cave. No one knows a thing. How surprised they will all be. People are looking at you, John. They’re looking almost as though they know you. But you haven’t said . . . you’re going in to supper with me?”
“I can’t stay,” said Cheyenne. “I can only stay for this one dance.”
“Only for this one? Only one dance, John!”
The light threw the sheen of her hair down over her forehead, over her eyes. And if one had been unable to understand a word that she spoke, it would have been a delight, nevertheless, to watch the parting and the closing of her lips.
The fluff of her sleeve fell back up her arm almost to the shoulder. Other women had sharp elbows, and the flesh of a girl’s arm pinches away toward the shoulder, or else it hangs flabby. But hers was rounded, brown. She seemed to be brown all over.
“How did you get so brown?” he asked her.
“We have a swimming pool behind the house.” She laughed a little and looked up at him. “We’re clear around the floor, and no one has tagged you yet.”
“No one is going to tag me,” said Cheyenne.
“But look, John . . . half the people are off the dance floor.”
More than half had stopped dancing. In a tag dance, every girl ought to be busy, but now they were drifting off the floor, looking back over their shoulders. The music of the slide trombone screeched and died in the middle of a note.
“What’s wrong?” asked the girl. “What’s happening, John?”
VII
Everyone in the big room seemed to be asking the same question at the same moment, and the rest of the crowd rapidly stopped dancing and drifted away to the sides of the barn. The orchestra died away piece by piece, following the example of the slide trombone. The drums, the cornet, the bass viol went silent one by one, and the only music that remained was the thrilling voice of the violin.
The violinist was old Pop McKenzie, seventy years old with a rag of white beard on his chin and eyes that still danced faster than young feet ever performed to his music. The good old man had been sitting down, sawing away at the strings with his head canted a little to one side. But when he saw the crowd breaking up and pouring away from the single pair that remained, he jumped to his feet and began to play such a waltz as he never had played before to woo those two dancers to continue.
The drummer snarled at his shoulder: “Don’t you be a fool, Pop. There’s gonna be guns bangin’ away, pretty soon. Out yonder, that’s Cheyenne who’s dancing with Dolly Martin.”
“Is that Cheyenne? Well, God bless him. If he’s gonna die, he’ll die to all the music that I can give him,” answered Pop McKenzie, and he made his fiddle whistle more sweetly and loudly than before.
“What is it?” the girl was repeating to Cheyenne. “Everyone has stopped . . . even the music . . . except Pop McKenzie. Do you know what’s wrong?”
“I know what’s wrong,” he said.
“Please tell me.”
“I’m what’s wrong.”
“You? John Jones?”
“I’m not John Jones.” He held her a bit closer. “What do you care about the name? Well, you’ll start hating me in another five minutes, Dorothy. But up to then, while the fiddle plays, why shouldn’t we dance?”
“I’ll never start hating you,” she answered him.
Her father was a Martin, he knew, who had moved into the community only a year or two before, and perhaps the reputation of Cheyenne might not be such an outrage to his mind and to his daughter as to the rest. But they knew—all men knew—about the recent killing of Danny Martin.
“I’m a man that all the Martins are bound to curse,” he told her.
“All the Martins? Then I’m not really a Martin. How they are staring.”
“Dolly!” shouted a loud voice.
Cheyenne saw a tall, gaunt, stern-featured man standing at the side of the hall, holding up a hand. He was of middle age. There was a brightness in his eyes that made Cheyenne recognize him as the father of Dorothy Martin.
“Dolly, stop dancing! You hear me?”
She stiffened inside the arms of Cheyenne. “I’ve got to stop,” she said.
“One more round. It’ll be the last one,” said Cheyenne.
She came back to him, although she said: “It’s my father.”
“I know it,” said Cheyenne.
“Ah, but they’re staring at us.”
“It’s a good way to use their eyes.”
He hardly needed to touch her with his hands, she was so close, so balanced in a perfect rhythm. And all about them he heard a rising sound such as the muttering of trees far off across a forest. But this was composed of the voices of men and women. It gathered in strength. Tall Ned Martin was striding across the floor.
“Dolly, d’you mind what you’re doing . . . dancing with Cheyenne?” he shouted.
One might have thought that she had known the name all the while. There was no touch or stir of shock in her. He looked into her eyes, and they were the unalterable blue of mountain lakes.
“Did you hear him?” he asked.
“I heard,” said the girl.
“And there’s no difference?”
“There’ll never be any difference,” she said.
Long ago, years and years before, he had thought she was no more than a child. He began to understand, now, that he’d been wrong.
They moved straight past the outstretched arm and the stunned face of Ned Martin. Some of the men were starting out from their places along the wall as Cheyenne stopped in front of the entrance. The anteroom was crowded. Men out there had guns in their hands. They had grimly waiting faces. Between the barn and Sideways there was a distance of thirty steps that could be thirty deaths for him.
“Look,” said Cheyenne, “you’re the bigger half of things from now on. It may not be long, but you’re the bigger half of things. Good bye.”
“You came because I asked you,” she was saying. “You knew . . .”
He turned on his heel. If she had understood why he had come, it would make the going easier.
They were all there about him. He saw Chuck Martin back in the crowd with his head lowered a little. And as he saw the face of Chuck, the right arm of Cheyenne seemed as heavy and lifeless as lead. He remembered how Chuck had fired the bullet on that other day, dropping to his knees behind a table, where the return fire of Cheyenne had made him sprawl on the floor.
He saw the Glosters, father and son. They were Martins, to all intents and purposes. Everyone in Martindale lived in the town because they were bound together by strong ties of blood. Fifty men were ready for Cheyenne.
He walked right into their ranks, thronging the door into the anteroom. They receded on either side of him. He said: “All right, boys. Look me over. And bid up my price. There’s only one head of me, but I want the price of a herd.”
They spilled away on either side, like water from the prow of a ship. And then he was standing buckling on his gun belt.
Someone said: “You grab him, Chuck. Dive at his knees.”
Chuck Martin kept scowling, his huge shoulders stirring, but he could not quite force himself to take the final step.
Out of the dance room Dorothy Martin cried: “Let me go to him, Father! He came here because I asked him. I didn’t know . . . and he wouldn’t explain. If anything happens to him . . .”
“Something is gonna happen to him!” cried Chuck Martin.
Cheyenne pulled his hat over his eyes and walked up to the speaker. With his left hand, he struck Chuck across the face. The blow left a white patch between the cheek bone and the chin. “Why don’t you move a hand?” asked Cheyenne, then added: “Give me room . . . stand back, will you?”
They stood back. The sound of the blow that Chuck had endured without protest still seemed to be echoing through their brains. They had chosen big Chuck for a leader, and Chuck Martin was remembering too well that the gun of Cheyenne was a fatal thing. Perhaps he had courage enou
gh to fight and to die but he could not be a leader. He fell back, and the others receded around him.
That was how Cheyenne came to the outer edge of the crowd. Between that edge of that sea of danger and Sideways there was one open space. He would die as he crossed it, Cheyenne knew. The bullets would strike him from behind.
“Dolly!” called the frantic voice of Ned Martin. “Where’re you going? Come back here . . .!”
Then she was outside, running toward Cheyenne. She was a flash of white coming to him. She put an arm around him. She walked, leaning against him, looking back at the mass of her armed kinsmen.
“They won’t dare to shoot, now . . . but faster, faster, Cheyenne.”
“You ain’t gonna let him get loose?” yelled Chuck Martin. “Oh, you damned rats, you ain’t gonna let him get loose, are you? Gimme a chance to get through. Lemme get at him!”
There was a stirring and a movement in the crowd. Men began to exclaim. Everyone had a voice and a thought. None was the same. And always Ned Martin, pushing forward among the rest, was shouting to his daughter to return.
But she stood with Cheyenne at the side of his mare. “Only because I asked you, would you have come into this,” she said. “Ah, John, you could have died. Be quick. Take Sideways. Oh, Sideways, carry him safe and fast!”
There was need for speed. The Martins, having been held by the hypnotic power of this man’s reputation, had remained with all their strength dammed up in front of the dance hall. Now that he was at a distance, perhaps he was smaller in their eyes. They came out with a rush, and their voices rose in one increasing, gathering volume. But Cheyenne, aslant in the saddle, was already making Sideways fly down the street through the night.
A good bluff could be made to stick. Cheyenne carried that lesson away with him, as Sideways cut swiftly along the dark trail. Perhaps, with consummate skill and nerve, he might be able to go the rest of his life without being brought closer to a showdown than he had been at that moment in Martindale.