Gunman's Rendezvous

by Max Brand

  “A rifle’s the gun for me,” he said. “One of these here things, you gotta have nerves like steel to work with ’em. But you, Paul, you could do it. You . . . you can stand up and turn yourself into ice.”

  He flushed, making this oblique reference to the first day of school, when Paul had stood up only to be knocked down.

  So Paul took his new treasure home.

  He looked upon it as the most beautiful thing he ever had seen. The fact that big Jack had missed a target thrice with it showed that it was hard to master. But here was something within his strength, and once a master of the gun, then he would feel a man indeed.

  It began a new period in his life. Excalibur to the young Arthur meant no more than this weapon to Paul Torridon.

  The Indian border was not far away. The land was filled with rough men. The law of the land was not so strong as the law of guns, and this was a weapon that he could learn to use. He held it in an almost superstitious regard. Every night, his last act, performed with devotional care, was to clean it scrupulously, and through the day it never left him. Jack himself taught him how it could be carried out of sight in a sort of pouch under his left armpit, ready to be drawn. And it seemed that no one suspected that it was with him. Powder and lead were plentiful in the house of John Brett; what he took never was missed, and his practicing was done in the heart of the woods, where the small, hollow echo from the little weapon soon died away.

  Yet the shooting of the gun was the smallest part of Paul’s labor. He practiced for hours holding it on a mark. At first it twitched curiously in his nervous hand. But by degrees he learned to steady the nerves, until at last it was held in his fingers as in a rock.

  In the three years that followed, he marked time by the progress that he made with the gun, and in the third year, when he walked toward the school over the frosted roads, woe betide the unlucky rabbit that tried to bolt across the way to shelter on the farther side. The pistol glinted into the hand of Torridon, and the rabbit leaped once, and leaped no more.

  He had grown taller. Among the gigantic Bretts he was hardly more than a child, but actually he was well above the average. It was not in height that he differed from them so greatly, however, as in the manner of his making. There was hardly a woman or a girl among them with a hand so small, unless it were little Nancy’s. There was hardly a pair of shoulders that would not have made two like his.

  But he was not weak. He had not the power that enables a man to lug a heavy pack through the uncertain going of the woods for hours and hours, covering long miles. The lumbering giants of the Brett clan could do this. There was not a man of them who could not hold up his end. But Torridon, of a different blood, had other gifts.

  If it came to a foot race—bare feet along the hard, beaten path—he flashed home by himself. Not even big Jack—now passed beyond John Brett’s arbitrary school age—could keep up with the slender youngster. And that quality gave him additional standing, for fleetness of foot is prized in a community where speed of foot may mean the difference between life and death before the possessor is very old.

  The massive rifle still was clumsy in his hands; he had an awe of it, but no fondness for its use, and therefore he was shut out from distinction in the most important of all backwoods pursuits. But he could ride a horse. He had no might to crush the ribs of a horse, as the Bretts were apt to do. He had no jaw-breaking power in his hands and arms to check his mount, either. But he learned that touch will do what power will not, and balance will keep the saddle when strong knees are flung to the ground.

  So he grew up, light, wiry, nervously exact in his proportions. Beauty, after all, we are apt to judge by utility. In the backwoods, men wanted hands in which a massive axe would quiver like a reed, in which the ponderous iron rifle was a mere toy; to them such hands are beautiful. They wanted shoulders, too, that thought nothing of a hundred-pound pack and a day’s march, in time of need. So such shoulders were a point of beauty, too. They wanted a body of sufficient bulk to match those vital hands and shoulders. So their ideal grew up as naturally as a tree from the ground. But if an artist had been there to scan them, and then turn his eyes to Paul Torridon, he would have had strange things to say, things of which Paul himself was most ignorant. He despised that slender, supple body of his, those quick, light hands. He despised all things about himself except, alone, his knowledge of books, which had made the clan prize him, and his ability with the pistol that, in some distant day, might come to mean much to him.

  As for his attitude toward the clan, he accepted them because he knew nothing else.

  Said Jack to him on a day—Jack, newly back from a long hunting trip, brown, hard, powerful as Hercules—“Tell me, Paul, don’t you ever hanker to get over the mountains to your own people?”

  Paul had often thought of it, of course. But his answer to himself always had been what it was to Jack Brett on this day. “Suppose that I started. They’d hunt me down with dogs, Jack.”

  “Who?” asked Jack, frowning.

  “John Brett . . . your own father . . . perhaps you yourself, Jack.”

  “I?” cried Jack. “Never, Paul!”

  The schoolteacher laid a hand on the arm of his great friend. “You don’t know yourself. Suppose that I’m out of sight. I’m no longer Paul. I’m just a Torridon. Well . . . what did they do to my people before me?”

  Jack sighed and shook his massive head. “I don’t know, Paul,” he said. “How do you know? It was a fair fight, I think.”

  “That’s what the Bretts say.”

  “John Brett wouldn’t lie.”

  “I’m afraid to ask him. Suppose he has to tell me an ugly story? Then what would happen after that? He’d know that I hated him. He’d be suspicious. The first time I moved . . . that would be an end of me.”

  “But how can you stand it?” cried Jack. “Ain’t you gonna try to find out?”

  “Someday.” Paul nodded.

  “Well,” said Jack, “you’re . . . patient.”

  And Torridon knew that an uglier word had been in the mind of his big friend.

  VI

  Yet it seemed to Paul the wise thing to wait and let time bring its own decision. Vaguely, little by little, he could feel manhood coming upon him. He could feel a strength—not the strength of a Brett—garbing him.

  And at last that strength was revealed to all the clan and to him, as well.

  Ashur, the beginning of his rise in the world, was the turning point again.

  For John Brett, anxious that his chosen horse should grow great and strong, had refused to allow so much as a strap to be put on it until it came to its third year. And now, three years and more in age, he at last summoned the best rider he could find and bade him try out the colt.

  Of course that was Roger Lincoln.

  The great man came riding upon a lofty horse with rich wampum braided into its mane and tail. His own hair was free to flow down over his shoulders. He did not have a hat on his head. A crimson band around his forehead held the hair from fluttering into his eyes. Over his shoulder was a painted buffalo robe of price. He wore a splendid suit of antelope leather, beaded over almost its entire surface. His moccasins were miracles of Indian art.

  Even when Paul Torridon saw him in the distance, with half a dozen fences in between to obscure him, he recognized Roger Lincoln by the many descriptions that he had heard of that glorious hero. For Roger Lincoln was a king of the prairies, far West, and a true lord of the mind. Indian or white man, all were captivated by his mien, his grace, his dauntless heroism.

  It was very lucky that John Brett could find him. Nine-tenths of his days were spent on the distant plains, but now he was back on one of his rare visits.

  All the Bretts were on hand to see the breaking of Ashur.

  That great event was to take place at 10:00 a.m. Hours before, the clan began to assemble at the house of John Brett and then poured out into the pasture. So the whole crowd turned when the coming of Roger Lincoln was announced.r />
  He did not turn up the road. He came straight toward the pasture, jumping his horse over the fences on the way. It was a wonderful gray mare. Everyone knew the story of how Roger Lincoln journeyed far south to the land of the Comanches and captured that mare, the pride of its horse-loving nation. It was not overly tall, but it carried the weight of big Roger Lincoln like the merest feather, and winged its way over the fences—Roger Lincoln sitting handsomely at ease, his head high, his buffalo robe flaunting out behind him.

  He seemed to be regarding distant things upon the horizon, paying no attention to the obstacles in his path.

  So he came up to the pasture and leaped to the ground. With one hand he held the robe, flung gracefully about him. The other hand, his famous right hand, he offered to John Brett and to all the rest of the clan in turn, without making the slightest exception. He even paid that attention to tiny Miriam, two years old, as she backed against the knees of her mother and stared in fear at the tall stranger.

  Paul Torridon followed that progress with interest. Everyone seemed altered as by a touch of witchcraft at the coming of Roger Lincoln. The women seemed rudely made, ugly, clumsy, as he stood before them. The men, one after another, turned to heavy louts. Even Jack Brett, so tall, so handsome, so mighty of shoulder, seemed a staring, stupid boy in contrast with this bright Achilles of the plains.

  There were only two exceptions, for even the coming of Roger Lincoln could not dim the fierce presence of John Brett, the patriarch and lawgiver. And when the hero came to Nancy Brett, although she was a small girl in her seventeenth year, she seemed to grow taller, older, more beautiful. Torridon himself, as he afterward knew, was seeing her for the first time, that instant. He had always felt, before, that she was a little too proud, too calm, too self-contained. If she were kind and gentle, often it was merely because she had set herself a high standard, and, for the sake of her own self-respect, she would not fall beneath that level. She was judicious, grave; there was nothing emotional about her, nothing free, easy, carefree.

  But on this lovely day, when she took the hand of Roger Lincoln and smiled up into his handsome face, Torridon saw that there was an inner soul in Nancy such as he never had guessed at.

  He was full of the wonder of this when Roger Lincoln approached him.

  Of all the people gathered, Torridon was the only one that Roger Lincoln did not notice, and this was not because of any lack of courtesy on his part, but because Torridon was utterly overshadowed by the stallion.

  He had been given the task of holding Ashur, and for a very good reason. The horse was not used to others. He had been treated with such scrupulous and almost frightened reverence by the rest of the clan, since the moment of his foaling, that no one dared to take liberties with him, fondle his arched neck, rub his forehead between his gleaming eyes. But Torridon had begun in the beginning. He had made his way with sugar and apples and carrots. It was he who groomed the proud young beauty every morning before he went to the school. It was he who whistled Ashur in from the pasture in the evening.

  This morning, therefore, what more natural than that he should put the saddle on Ashur, and slip the bit between his teeth. He had taken Ashur by the forelock and pulled down his lofty head, so that the ear stalls could be slipped into place.

  Now, as the crowd gathered, it was Torridon who stood at the head of the stallion. He kept some wisps of grass with which to wipe away the froth that came as Ashur, growing excited in the presence of such numbers, champed at the bit and frothed.

  And while the observers circled and stared and wondered and admired this descendant of coal-black Nineveh, sometimes Ashur, wearied of them all, would close his eyes and flatten his ears, and thrust his nuzzle strongly against the breast of his keeper. At other times, however, he amused himself biting the back of Torridon’s hands. Sometimes he would catch the boy by the wrist and press harder and harder, mischievously dealing out pain until Torridon cried out in pretended agony. Then Ashur would throw up his glorious head, with upper lip stiffly distended, eyes wild, as though he expected a blow in repayment.

  They were full of understanding of one another. For three years, they had known one another every day.

  So it was only natural that Roger Lincoln, having made his circle of the crowd, when he came to the bright presence of the young stallion should not notice the youngster who stood at the head of the horse.

  Roger Lincoln stood for a long time gazing. Silence came upon all the crowd. They were still with expectancy and fear, because Roger Lincoln, of course, knew horseflesh as no other man in the world could know it.

  Only John Brett kept an unchanged face, but Torridon, who knew how to watch little things, made note that the pipe tilted up in the grip of the patriarch’s teeth and from its bowl thick clouds of smoke were driven forth by his heavy breathing.

  “Come here, Comanche,” said Roger Lincoln.

  The gray mare came to him like a dog, and all the women cried out softly, in admiration of such a tender intimacy between a man and his horse.

  Then all fell silent again, biting their lips and looking from Lincoln to John Brett. Because, of course, it was patent that Roger Lincoln had some disagreeable things to say, but that he would not say them until he could illustrate the difference between the colt and a perfect pattern, such as the gray mare.

  With a word the plainsman made his mare stand like a rock. Then he began to circle the two. He stood behind them. He stood before them.

  There was almost a tragedy when he reached for the hocks of Ashur. That young and haughty prince tried to bite and strike and kick at the same instant.

  Torridon, blackness whirling before his eyes, looked to see Roger Lincoln fall torn and crushed to the ground, but the big man had slipped away, as a dead leaf slips from before a striking hand.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Torridon eagerly. “Then he’ll be all right.”

  “You will?” said Roger Lincoln, and he turned to Torridon and saw him for the first time.

  Such eyes never had fallen upon Torridon before. They were between hazel and brown, and now they had a peculiar yellowish cast, like the eyes of a bird of prey.

  “You’re not afraid of him?” asked Roger Lincoln.

  “He knows me,” explained Torridon, and he stood beside the hip of the stallion and took him by the hock. The young stallion raised that leg and kicked with it, but it was only a small and feeble gesture that did not disturb Torridon’s hold.

  Roger Lincoln stepped up in turn, thus escorted, and laid his hand on the joint. He fumbled at it for some moments. And, again escorted by Torridon, who was bursting with pride, the man from the Indian country thumbed and fingered the knee of Ashur, and the cannon bone beneath it. Then he looked at the way the head was placed on the neck and put his fist beneath the jaws of the stallion while Torridon held Ashur irreverently by the nose. At length the great man stepped back and looked at the gray mare and went over her, in turn, with as much care as he had used on the stallion.

  Then he had ended—and he had consumed a full half hour in this examination. “I haven’t been on him, yet,” he said to John Brett. “But from the ground I can tell you this. I’ve never seen the horse that compares with Comanche until today. And now I can tell you that he’s as far above her as the sun is above the moon.”

  John Brett blinked. There was a sort of moan of joy and relief from the others.

  But Roger Lincoln laid his hand on the brow of the gray.

  “Poor girl,” he said. “Poor girl.” It was as though a queen had been dethroned that day.

  VII

  Torridon expected that the big man would, when he desired, simply leap into the saddle and gallop away on the colt. But he did nothing of the kind. First of all, he examined the girths with the greatest care, and then looked to the straps. The saddle itself he seemed suspicious of, although it was new and strong. He took the measurement from his own stirrups and came back to lengthen these to the same degree. He looked well to the bit,
the bridle, and above all to the reins.

  Then he stepped back and said quietly to John Brett: “That colt may be spoiled. It’s been petted too much.”

  “Ha?” cried John Brett. “Paul Torridon, have you spoiled that horse with petting? I’ll . . .”

  He grew purple with rage; Paul Torridon grew white with fear.

  “However,” said Roger Lincoln, “it may turn out all right.”

  And he could not help a little smile, as though the sense of his own strength and skill overcame his modesty for an instant.

  Then, in a trice, he had leaped into the saddle.

  “Good boy,” he said gently to Ashur. “Go along. Get up!”

  Ashur, as he felt the weight, turned stiff as a rock, and crouched.

  Torridon stepped back. He forgot his fear of John Brett and began to grow hot with anger. He knew very well that he had no right to feel this anger, but he could not help it when he saw Roger Lincoln on the back of Ashur.

  “Get along!” said Roger Lincoln, and slapped the colt lightly on the flank.

  Torridon could hardly keep back a voice that wanted to shout through his lips, tearing his throat with violence: Don’t do that! That’s the wrong way! Let him go easily . . . give him time! He needs time to learn!

  Ashur, however, suddenly straightened and broke into a trot. It was wonderful to see the silken ease of his movement, the supple fetlocks playing under the strong drive of his legs.

  From Roger Lincoln a single delightful glance flashed at John Brett. He pulled on the rein, and the colt swung slowly around while the crowd murmured: “Look. He’s broken Ashur already. He’s a perfect rider. What a man!”

  Past John Brett came the colt, and Roger Lincoln leaned to say: “Brett, this horse is the king of the world!”

  That instant Ashur acted as though he were a king indeed, and a very angry monarch. He began to buck.

  It was a coltish, clumsy beginning. He did not seem able to gather his legs under him, and he grunted when the weight of his rider beat relentlessly down on him.