Gunman's Rendezvous

by Max Brand

  She exclaimed with impatience. “I suppose I have to prove it to you!” she said. “What do you mean by strength?”

  “Oh, Nancy”—the boy sighed—“does it give you pleasure to show you that I know? Well . . . there you are . . . look at them . . . look at my hands.” He flung them out before her—slender, delicately made hands.

  “Well,” she said, “suppose you had big hands. What could you do with them?”

  He laughed bitterly and jerked up his head. “I could . . . well, I could throw logs around as if they were matchwood.”

  “Humph!” said Nancy.

  “I could . . . I could knock down a bull.”

  “Like Jack, you mean?”

  “Yes, yes. Oh, what a man Jack is!”

  “And who is Jack’s master?” she said.

  “Don’t talk like that, Nancy. Of course I’m not his master.”

  “You are, you are,” she insisted.

  “This is just saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ like children. You can believe that, if you want to.”

  “Who is the strongest man that ever came among us . . . the bravest, most wonderful man?”

  “Do you mean Roger Lincoln?”

  “Of course I mean Roger Lincoln.”

  “Yes.” The boy nodded with interest.

  “Well, then, who was it that got the affection of Roger Lincoln when he came? Who was it that became a sort of brother to Roger Lincoln? Which of the strongest men in the clan?”

  “That?” murmured Paul. “That was just a sort of accident.”

  “Does Roger Lincoln like weak men?” she asked sharply. “Is he a fool? Does he offer his friendship forever to fools and weaklings?”

  Torridon was agape. Then he said slowly: “I can’t carry a pack the way they do, Nan. My legs buckle under the weight.”

  “Horses are for carrying packs,” she said.

  “If I wrestle . . . even the youngsters can throw me down.”

  “Partly because you don’t put any heart into it. You take it for granted that you’ll be beaten. Besides, men don’t fight with wrestling . . . they don’t fight with bare hands.”

  “They fight with rifles!” he exclaimed. “And what am I with a rifle? They’re too heavy for me!”

  “You haven’t tried one for years. You know you haven’t. You could handle a rifle now just as well as anyone.”

  He started to deny this, but hesitated. It was true that he had not made the attempt for a long time.

  “You just give up,” said the girl. “You just sit and wring your hands like an old woman. But you have a pistol.”

  He started. “Jack told you that?”

  “Yes, Jack tells me everything. Look . . . Could you hit that with your pistol?” She picked up a pebble and tossed it a dozen yards away.

  “Perhaps,” he said. He drew the pistol and fired. The pebble disappeared. Then he began to reload, absent-mindedly, never looking at his gun.

  “Well,” said the girl after a moment, “who else among us could do that?”

  “What does a pistol matter?” he said sadly.

  “Suppose that pebble had been the heart of a man?” said the girl.

  “I never thought of that,” he muttered. Then he added: “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “Leave us while you have a chance to leave. While you have life in you.”

  “You don’t think they’d murder me, Nancy? Why should they want to? What have I ever done to them?”

  “You’ve stolen Ashur.”

  “No, no, no! I wouldn’t dream of doing it!”

  “You don’t understand. You have to hear it in words of one syllable, I suppose. Well, why do wolves kill a dog?”

  “Why, because . . . because they’re different, and . . .”

  “That’s why the Bretts will kill you. Because you’re different. You’re a Torridon.” She went on, gravely: “There’s not a man or a woman in the tribe who likes you, except Jack. There’s not one that doesn’t hate you, really . . . or they would hate you, if any one encouraged them to do it. The young men are jealous of you. The girls don’t understand you. They think you despise them because you never go near them.”

  “But, Nancy, how crazy that is. I’m simply afraid of them.”

  “Well, I’ve told you what you ought to know.”

  He dropped his chin on his hand. After a while he could hear the rustling of the water, again, the noise of the horses, grinding the grass with their powerful jaws.

  “Now, Paul, tell me just what’s in your mind this very minute.”

  “I . . . a great many things.”

  “I want to know exactly what you’re seeing and thinking and hearing.”

  “How all the gold and red and purple from the trees and the bushes floats in the stream there. It never is drowned, Nancy. Nothing that’s real seems to be worthwhile. Do you see?”

  “I don’t see. Why do you look at the trees in the water, and not on the bank, just opposite, and all around us?”

  “Well, those trees will lose all their leaves the first strong wind that comes along. But their images in the water . . . you see where the still water is, around the curve? . . . they stand in the water taller and bigger and brighter than they really are. You can see the blue of the sky, too, and a bright streak of cloud all filled with sun. That’s not real, so you can look at that picture in the water and it will never die. It’s like a thought. You see that, Nancy?”

  She nodded and muttered something.

  “There is no wind to go moaning and mourning through the branches that are reflected there, Nan. That’s important, I think. Now, while I look at that picture, I’m hearing all the humming and buzzing and whirring and singing of the insects. The hornets, and the wasps, and the bumblebees and the bees, and the crickets and the flies, and the grasshoppers. They aren’t real noises. If you speak, you put out all those sounds. Well, you see how it is. You just sit close to the ground with your eyes and your ears open, and you gather things in. All those things die. They’re singing just for this autumn only. Two days together the sounds will never be the same singing exactly. So it’s better to shut your eyes on things as they are and see them as you want them to be.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” said Nancy briskly. “I’ve told you that you’re in danger of your life and you start in thinking about reflections in the water, and humming bees. I’m finished, Paul. I’ll never try to do anything for you again. I just suspected that it would be like this.”

  “You want me to go away,” he said, looking deep in the quivering beauty that lay in golden towers inlaid with blue in the river. “Well, I would have to leave Ashur if I went.”

  “A man can live without a horse,” she said. “Besides, you’ll have your memory of Ashur, you know. And memories and thoughts . . . they’re all that you really care about.”

  He was so earnestly intent that he failed to see the sarcasm.

  “Oh, no, they’re not . . . not always, I mean. There’s Ashur. I can’t use him for a starting point and go on imagining finer horses. He’s perfect. He just fills my mind. I can’t imagine him made differently.”

  “Perhaps you can’t,” said the girl. “Well, Ashur would go with you if you whistled to him.”

  He shook his head. “Then I would be leaving good old Jack.”

  “I think good old Jack would follow you, too, Paul.”

  “Suppose that I had Jack and Ashur . . . of course I couldn’t have either of them . . . but just supposing . . . then there’d still be you left behind me.”

  “I?” said Nancy in an oddly altered voice. “That would be hard for you, of course.”

  He was perfectly serious, still. “Even if I ran away,” he went on, “I would have to come slipping back to try to see you. Do you know why I want school to begin? So that I can see you every day. You are so beautiful, Nancy.”

  “Paul!” cried a breathless voice. “I don’t see why you’re saying this.”

  He stared gloomily at th
e lovely waters. “Oh, I know that you don’t care. But you’ve started me confessing. Do you mind if I go on about you?”

  “No,” she said, “perhaps you’d better. You don’t simply hate me for being so blunt?”

  “Hate you? What an idea! Why, Nancy, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I want to see you so much that I almost jump up out of bed to go and stand under your window. Sometimes when I think of you I feel . . . I feel . . .” He became silent.

  “You were saying,” she prompted in a faint voice, “when you think about me, Paul . . .”

  “I feel the way a dog sounds when it bays the moon.”

  He laughed a little. Nancy did not laugh.

  “I think of your mother and your father, Nancy. They have you every day.”

  “And they have no other child. And I’m only a girl.”

  “You?” cried Torridon. “You? Only a girl? Why, Nancy,” he went on, carried away, and turning upon her, “you’re the most beautiful thing in the world, and the sweetest . . . although you frighten me terribly, you’re so cold and grave . . .” He stopped in mid-gesture, mid-speech.

  Great, bright, glistening tears were running rapidly down Nancy’s face.

  He could not believe it. But most of all it was wonderful that she did not try to conceal them. She simply kept on looking straight at him with wide eyes. As if she were looking through him, and not at him. It was like the falling of proud towers, like the rushing of great walls and the battlements to the earth, so that a city was revealed in all its undefended beauty.

  “I suppose you’re finished,” said Nancy.

  “Oh, Nancy,” he stammered, “I never meant to hurt you. I never dreamed, no matter what I said, you’d ever care. Tell me what I’ve done, and how I can make up for it? I wouldn’t care if I had to work on my knees all the rest of my life.”

  And he fell on his knees before her as he spoke. His heart was aching terribly. But he could not tell whether it was joy or sorrow that swelled it so greatly.

  “I don’t want you to work on your knees,” said Nancy. “But I think you ought to kiss me, Paul.”

  XII

  They went back down the road, side-by-side, slowly, their horses close. Outstretching branches brushed at their faces. The moist odor of decaying leaves was pungent from the woods, and here and there were faintly tangled suggestions of wood smoke, drawn from far away and drooping down again, to be caught among the trees.

  The day was wearing late, past the heat of the afternoon; the sun in the west was turning gold, but they rode in the shadow of the valley. All about them the autumn colors that had looked like scarlet enamel, gold leaf, and burnished Tyrian purple under the higher sun, now were filmed across with delicacy. But the heads of the trees lifted into a more brilliant beauty than ever before, yet harmonizing more, drawn from one into another by the golden softness of the light.

  It was, in a way, like passing through water and looking up to the day. It was like riding through thin winter mist, except that not winter chill, but summer warmth was above them.

  As they drew down the broadening valley, they looked from a gap in the trees and saw a house in the distance. All its western windows flared like polished metal; blue-white smoke rose kindly above it. And suddenly the two lovers looked at one another with inexpressible tenderness and joy.

  “What shall I do?” he said. “Tell me, Nancy. You think better than I do.”

  “Make a small pack of your clothes tonight as soon as you are in your room alone. Then, when the house is still, come out and to my house.”

  “Nancy, Nancy, what do you mean?”

  “Are you frightened?”

  “I’m trying not to be,” he said. “I want to be a hero for you, Nancy darling.”

  “You will be,” she said slowly, looking at him half critically, half smiling. “You always will be when the danger really comes. But you’ll come?”

  “If you told me to ride down into the river, I’d never dream of disobeying.”

  They laughed together—she softly, he on a broken note.

  “I’ll be waiting for you before eleven o’clock,” she went on. “I’ll have two horses . . . I don’t suppose that you’d bring Ashur?”

  He looked down to the beautiful head of the horse and stroked the stallion’s neck, and the colt turned its head and looked back to him.

  “If you think it would be stealing . . .” said Nancy. “Well, but they’ll never be able to make any use of him when you’re away.”

  “I want him more than diamonds,” he said sadly. “More than masses and masses of diamonds, Nancy dear. But I . . .”

  He looked at her in apology, and she shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’ll be waiting with two horses, then. I don’t mind stealing.”

  “It’s all that I’d ever take from your father. And usually fathers give their children something. We’ll give ours everything.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, with tears in her eyes. Then, after a little pause, she added: “By the poplars beside our house I’ll wait for you. I’ll have some money, too. I have some of my own.”

  “You give me everything, and I give you nothing!” cried Torridon in anguish.

  “You will give later, dear.”

  “I have this one thing to give you. Do you see?” He took her hand. “Here is this ring.”

  “This? This is the ring of Roger Lincoln. See his initials on the seal?”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “You mustn’t give this away.”

  “I must. It makes me happier to think of giving you something.”

  He slipped it on her finger. She did not look at it, but at him. There was such joy in them that for a moment they remained speechless, worshipping one another.

  “We haven’t decided where to go, dear.”

  “We’ll go to the Torridons over the mountains . . . my people, dear Nancy.”

  “What would they feel if you came back to them out of death and brought a Brett with you?”

  “They would love you. Everybody loves you, Nancy.”

  “We’d better go to a new place, Paul.” She shook her head.

  “I don’t care.”

  “We could go west . . . beyond the river.”

  “Into the Indian countries?”

  “Into the free countries,” she said.

  “I don’t care. Oh, Nancy, what a kind world it is.”

  “Now I must go home. Poor old Jack. What will he do when you’re gone?”

  “Would he want to come, Nancy?”

  “He’d go to the end of the world with you and me.”

  “Shall we tell him?”

  “If you want to.”

  “You tell him if you think best, Nancy.”

  “I shall, then. Good bye.”

  “I hate that word,” he said. “Only for a little while.”

  She held out her arms to him and he took her close to him. There was fragrance in her hair; her eyes were looking up to him; he began to tremble.

  “Paul Torridon, Paul Torridon,” she said, “heaven give you to me . . . and heaven give me to you.”

  He watched her ride away. When she was at the next bending of the trail, she turned and waved back to him, then the trees swallowed her, but still the beat of her horse in full gallop sounded faintly.

  “If that should be my last sight of her,” said Torridon to his soul.

  Then he looked up and saw that the sun was down, and all the glory was stolen, even from the heads of the autumn trees. He shivered with his thought and with the sudden cold.

  Then he rode home, taking the slow way, the roundabout way. It was well enough to gallop madly across country, flying the fence. But that was before he belonged to another, and now what would Nancy do without him?

  Still he could not entirely believe, and, before he reached the house, he pinched himself once or twice, wondering if it were real, not all a dream. If, after all, she had not been making a cruel game with him, drawing out h
is folly so that she could tell her people, and then all of them would laugh long and loudly. He was still tormented by that foolish dream when he came in the dusk toward the house.

  It was all dark, and he wondered at that, although doubtless only in the kitchen and dining room were the lamps lit at this hour. He had no sooner come to that conclusion than three or four men started out of the brush.

  “Who goes there?” cried one of them.

  Paul reined in his horse. He was too shocked to make a quick answer.

  “Answer!” called a voice that he thought must be that of Charlie Brett. “Answer, or we’ll blow you to bits! Who are you?”

  “Why, it’s only Paul Torridon,” he said. “Is that you, Charlie?”

  “Don’t Charlie me, you murdering traitor,” answered young Brett. “Get off that hoss, will you? Get off and get off quick!”

  Paul dismounted. He leaned against the shoulder of the stallion, unable to believe that such things could be.

  Had they spied upon him and seen beautiful Nancy in his arms? That must be it.

  They were all about him. Charlie caught one of his arms. Will Brett caught another. They lashed his wrists together behind his back.

  Finally he could ask: “But what does it mean, Will? What does it mean? What have I done?”

  “What have you done? You ask that! You and a dozen of your sneaking Torridons ain’t come down on the Harry Bretts and wiped them out, I suppose?”

  “What?” breathed the boy.

  “You spy!” cried Charlie, furious. “I could thrash you! I could thrash you within an inch of your life! You sneaking spy! We’re gonna burn you to a crisp. Walk on.”

  And they jerked Paul Torridon headlong up the path toward the house.

  XIII

  They dragged Torridon straight in before old John Brett, and the latter regarded him with bent brows.

  “Paul Torridon,” he said, “I’ve been keeping you in my house for twelve years or more. I’ve kept you in food and clothes and I’ve given you easy work. Your own father wouldn’t’ve treated you half as good. How’ve you paid me back?”

  Torridon looked earnestly back into the face of the clansman. It was not contorted with anger. It was simply hard and cold. He glanced rapidly at the others. Their passion was less under control than that of their leader. They stared at him with hungry malice.