by Max Brand
The geldings plunged at the explosion of the gun, and the bandit burst at once into a stream of excuses.
“Now ain’t that a fool kid thing to do?” he cried. “Shooting a gun without asking you if your hosses was gun-broke? Well, sir, call me a blockhead, because I am one. Mr. Valentine, I sure am sorry!”
Indeed, his words did not seem overdone, for his earnest gray eyes were upon the rancher in a species of entreaty.
“Dreer,” said the cattleman earnestly, as soon as he had quieted the horses, “you don’t have to apologize. It was worth it — to see that gun act all by itself.”
But the other shook his head and returned the weapon to its leather.
“You see,” he explained, “that gun is almost human to me. Suppose you had a friend with you when you got into a fight, and it was a dead-sure cinch that you’d get plugged if your friend didn’t stand up and play the man by you. And suppose you never knowed whether that friend would fight like a devil or else lie down and quit — like a greaser — Well, sir, that’s the way it is with that gun. If I shoot with it, I have to look twice to see if I’ve hit a thing.”
“And yet you still carry it? You still let your safety depend on that old rattletrap?”
The crimson departed suddenly from the face of the stranger. And the muscle at the angle of his jaw leaped out into prominence.
“Sir,” he said quietly, “they’s one thing that I appreciate, and that’s a gent that chooses his words. Rattletrap ain’t particular accurate, speaking about my gun!”
“Why, Dreer, you’ve as good as said as much as that yourself.”
The other turned his face, and there was the old unpleasant glint in his eyes.
“I’m a peaceable man, Mr. Valentine,” he said. “Matter of fact, I’m a quiet kind of a gent and I mostly hate trouble, but I don’t think you and me are going to agree.”
Morgan Valentine was too dumfounded to reply.
“In the first place, sir,” went on the stranger, “you say you don’t think nothing particular fine about my hoss. Then I let that pass, and I just throw in a few qualifying remarks about the roan. And pretty soon you up and say my gun — my gun — is a rattletrap!”
He was unable to continue for a moment.
“But after you’d just said practically the same thing yourself, man.”
“Sir, whatever else may be wrong with that gun, it’s mine, and, being mine, they ain’t any man in the world that I’m going to hear say things about it that they won’t stand up and prove. And, speaking man to man, I can sure digest a pile of that sort of proof before I admit that I’m wrong.”
A veritable devil was in his face as he spoke. And the long brown fingers were becoming restless upon his knee.
Then, very suddenly, and most welcome sight to Valentine, the blood rushed into the face of the tall man again.
“Hanged if I didn’t forget for a minute,” he said, “that I was your guest, riding in your wagon. Mr. Valentine, I got to ask your pardon again. Just stop the buckboard and I’ll get out and climb on the roan. They ain’t any man living whose pardon I’ve asked three times hand-running. And I’ve done it twice by you already!”
“Sit still,” replied Morgan Valentine. “I figure to keep you right here and take you home with me.”
CHAPTER 7
IT SHOULD NOT be thought that Valentine was that cheap type of fellow who attempts to carry his points by surprise, but as the stranger talked with him, the gradual conviction grew in him that he must see more of Jess Dreer. In the meantime Jess stared at his host as though the latter had gone mad.
“Mr. Valentine,” he said, “I ain’t prying into what’s behind your mind. I’ll just say one little thing: I ain’t been under the roof of another man for eight years — as a friend.”
“Why, then, if you object to coming as a friend, come as an enemy.”
“With the bars down and you free to call in the sheriff when you please?”
“Dreer, do you think I’m the sort who’d call in a sheriff while you’re under my roof?”
“I didn’t mean no insult,” replied the bandit more gently. “But I ain’t a mind reader, Mr. Valentine. Why the devil should you want me to come home with you?”
“Because,” said the rancher, “although I’ve lived some fifty years and a bit more, I don’t think I’ve met more’n two men that particularly interested me. And you’re one of ’em. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing so strange. You’ve taken some of my money. Well, what you’ve taken won’t break me. I’m what you might call a pretty well-to-do man, Dreer. Now, I’d spend fifteen hundred on a fine hoss and never think twice about it. Why shouldn’t I spend fifteen hundred for a man and enjoy talking to him? Think it over.”
“I stick you up and lift fifteen hundred iron men. Then you step out and ask me home. I go to your home. I put my legs under your table. I eat your chuck—” He made a face of disgust. “I couldn’t do it, pardner, even though you don’t mean nothing but kindness.”
“Think it over,” echoed the rancher.
A silence fell. The geldings jogged relentlessly, tirelessly forward; the roan cantered softly behind the buckboard.
“If I could figure how you’d gain anything,” the bandit murmured finally, “I might chance it, but—”
“Take your time and think it over,” insisted Morgan Valentine.
“Well, sir,” said the bandit suddenly, “I call your bluff. If it’s a trap — well, a nerve like yours ought to catch something. I’ll go home with you.”
Valentine stretched out his hand. But the tall man glanced down at the stubby, proffered fist, and then back to the rancher.
“Some ways,” he said, “you might put me down as queer. But I ain’t any too fond of shaking hands. You see, a handshake means a pile to me. I shook hands with a man that sold me to a sheriff once.”
“And the sheriff got you?”
“No, the other way round. But I couldn’t touch the gent that had double- crossed me — the skunk! — because I’d shaken hands with him. Now, remembering that, I guess you’ll change your mind about this handshaking?”
“It goes with me as far as it goes with you.”
Suddenly they shook hands.
Then they said in one voice, like a trained chorus: “That takes a load off my mind!”
In the meantime the evening was approaching. The early night had patched the mountains with purple and filled every ravine with tides of incredible blue. Before them the hills began to divide.
“D’you know something?” said the bandit.
Valentine saw that his companion was leaning far forward, his elbows on his knees and his face wistful. It meant a great deal more than words, that unguarded attitude. It meant that Morgan Valentine had been judged by this man and had been accepted according to his standards.
“What’s that?”
“Yonder — behind them hills — well, I’ll be stepping out into a new part of my life.”
“I wouldn’t wonder much if you were.”
Still the geldings jogged on, and the hills moved by them slowly, awkwardly, growing each moment more dusky. They turned a sharp bend, and below them lay the valley of the Crane River; above it the red of the sunset filled the sky, and the river itself was a streak of dark crimson.
“Gimme the reins,” said the bandit.
Silently the rancher passed them to his companion, who now gathered them in closer. He did not speak a word, but perhaps the tenseness of the reins, the new weight vibrating against their bits, carried a message to the geldings. Of one accord, they stepped out into a freer gait, their heads raised, their ears pricked. Life came into their step. If two whips had touched them at the same instant the effect could not have been more noticeable. And it seemed to Morgan Valentine that a current of strength and knowledge was passing down the reins and into the minds of the dumb brutes. To him it was more than a miracle.
“Do you know,” he said, as the buckboard was whipped forward with redo
ubled speed and jolted noisily over the bumps in the road, “that’s the first time I’ve seen those nags change that old dogtrot of theirs—”
The bandit made no reply for some time. He was changing the pressure on the reins. First the off horse came up on the bit and strained against the collar; then the near horse, who had been pulled back, was released and quickened his pace until he was snorting beside his companion and even ahead of him. And then both increased their pace, and the jolting was redoubled.
“Look at that!” murmured the bandit. “As long as they agreed, they wasn’t worth a nickel. As long as they went ahead at that same old sleepy trot, they wasn’t worth powder and lead enough to blow their heads off. But now they’re beginning to try each other out. They’re beginning to race. I tell you what, Valentine, the way to get the most out of men — or hosses — is to play ’em one agin’ the other.”
Indeed, the two geldings now had their heads as high as if they were just beginning a journey — higher than they had ever held them for Morgan Valentine.
And the latter was naturally full of thought as the buckboard careened down the hillside and dropped into the valley floor. Now and again, as the dusk thickened, he looked behind him and saw the roan mare following patiently, always with her ears flat against her neck. It was almost as if the fear of the master she hated were still in the saddle, spurring her on, curbing her free spirit, and breaking it to do his will.
Something in this thought made him look up at the face of the bandit, and he saw him sitting with his face tense and a light of cruel enjoyment in his eyes. It was as if he drew a deep delight out of the rivalry which he had put in the hearts of the two geldings.
It was, of course, night when they reached the stables behind the ranch house, although the moon, which hung over Grizzly Peak, was sending a faint, slant light down the valley. One of the hands came out to unhitch the horses, but the outlaw insisted upon handling his own mount. He led it into one of the individual corrals.
“A roof over her head always sort of bothers Angelina,” he explained, while the rancher looked on in curiosity.
He watered her carefully, fed her grain and hay in cautious portions, and rubbed away the sweat under the saddle blanket. Yet the instant he turned to answer a word from the rancher, she whirled on her master. He did not turn his head to make sure that she was coming; though she veered noiselessly, her master did not pause, but leaped straight for the bars and vaulted over them. The teeth of the mare clicked with the noise of a steel trap shutting, just at the place where his hand had rested on the top bar.
“Ah, beauty! Ah, Angelina!” cried Jess Dreer, and came back to the bars. “Eyes in the back of my head, girl, and tomorrow you’ll pay for this. Remember — Tomorrow — Or the next day; it’s added to the score.”
There was, at this point, a sudden outbreak of snorting and a rattle of harness from the big watering trough.
“What the dickens! Jud! Harry!” a man was crying. “What the devil has got into you? Quiet there!”
“By Heaven,” murmured the rancher, “the geldings are fighting!”
“Is that strange?” asked Jess Dreer.
“They’ve lived like two brothers — which they are — ever since they were foaled.”
“All the better,” said Jess Dreer gaily. “A hoss is like a man. Needs a good fight now and then to keep ’em on edge.”
And Morgan Valentine shivered. He did not say another word on the way to the house. He was beginning to think of many things.
CHAPTER 8
IT WAS NOT until they had reached the very shadow of the sprawling old house that the rancher recovered from his absent-mindedness.
“How am I to introduce you?” he asked.
“As Jess Dreer,” said the bandit. “I guess I’ve outrode my reputation.”
“I think so. But where have I met you?”
“Somewhere south.”
“I haven’t traveled about much in the south. Let me see. Five years ago I was in Ireton; have you ever been there?”
“Nope. What’s it like?”
“Common cow town.”
“All right. I know it then. You met me there.”
“That’s all I’ll have to say unless Mary starts asking questions. She’s the outbeatingest girl for talking when she gets started on a thing.”
At this the bandit sidestepped and scowled at his companion.
“You hitched up to a pile of womenfolks?” he muttered.
“My wife and my daughter won’t bother you none, and my two boys knows what’s manners between men, but Mary — she’s my niece — can make a murderer talk if she sets her mind right on it.”
At this the bandit chuckled. It was always a surprise to hear the soft, musical voice of this man.
“Leave her to me, pardner. It’s been a good many years since I got my imagination all going at once, but when I get oiled up, I can spin the yarns out all night. What was the name of that town — Ireton? Nothing queer about it? Well, leave the rest to me, Valentine. If she wants talk, I’ll let her have it.”
“Aye, but one thing more, while we’re on the subject of Mary. She’s a fine girl, Dreer, but she has her ways. And one of them is to get all excited about any stranger man that comes around. She starts in by being foolish about ’em and most generally they wind up by being foolish about her. Now, I don’t mean that you’re the kind to get foolish about any girl, but I’m just telling you beforehand that if Mary begins to smile at you and act like you was a gold mine that she’d discovered all by herself, don’t let it bother you.”
“Don’t bother none about me, Valentine. I’m well broke, pardner. I ain’t gun- shy and I ain’t girl-shy. Lead on!”
Since the night had turned crisp, Valentine found his entire family grouped near the big fireplace in the living room. They were in characteristic attitudes. Maude Valentine sat with her feet tucked well back under her chair and her knitting needles flew with soft precision. Elizabeth, her daughter, lay in a big chair with her hands locked behind her head, looking dreamily out the black window. In another corner Mary was plotting with Charlie Valentine, and Louis, disconsolately out of the picture, attempted to bury himself in a book, out of which he lifted envious glances at Charlie from time to time. When the door opened, there was a general shifting of eyes and attitudes; the tall and deceptively graceful form of Jess Dreer became the center of attention.
“Mother, I’ve brought home an old friend. Jess Dreer. Dreer, this is my girl Elizabeth. Mary Valentine, my niece, and my boys, Charlie and Louis.”
They shook hands.
How much did the bandit learn from the touch of their fingers — from the cold, faint pressure of Mrs. Valentine; from the grip of Charlie, boyishly eager to test the comparative strength of this tall stranger; from the nervous touch of Louis’s hand, for Louis was always ill at ease and apt to be embarrassed before newcomers. “Lizbeth” greeted him at the full distance of her rather thin arm. She was one of those who come late to womanhood. Her eyes still held that infinite quiet of childhood; her throat was small, but her mouth had a kindly softness. She would never have Mary Valentine’s gemlike beauty of detail, but in time she would ripen to a rare womanhood. And as for Mary, her hand and her glance both lingered on him. It was as if she had seen him before and was now trying to resurrect the complete memory.
Mrs. Valentine took them into the dining room, and there she busied herself all the time they were eating by popping up out of her chair and running to get something as soon as she was once fairly seated. She discovered that Morgan’s napkin was spotted, that his favorite chow-chow had been left off the table, that the baked potatoes were underdone, for which the cook received a brief, stern sentence, that the window was too widely open; in short, she spent the entire space of the meal asking Jess Dreer how long he had been in that part of the country, and interrupting herself every time before she got through with the interrogation. Finally she forgot all about her question, and sat as usual, with a smile o
f attention on her lips, listening to the men talk, while her eyes roved wistfully about the table hunting for the missing things. Yet never once did she win a glance from Morgan Valentine. She filled the time of the meal with an atmosphere of flurry and uncertainty, quite unheeded by her husband. But once, twice the gray eye of Jess Dreer fixed her through and through and tumbled her sad, small soul into full view. Not that she understood it; she only felt a vague fear of the stranger, his silences, his alert calm.
When they went back into the living room, two big chairs were drawn comfortably near to the fire, and the other chairs arranged in a loose semicircle on both sides of the fireplace so that the travelers could rest in ease.
“And how’s young Norman?” asked Morgan Valentine.
He had turned to Charlie, but the latter indicated Louis with a jerk of his thumb.
“I dunno. Lou went over to see how Joe was coming on.”
“I rode over,” said Louis, embarrassed by the sudden focusing of all eyes upon him, “but I might as well have stayed away. They was about a thousand Normans hanging around the house. When I come up the path from the hitching rack, they was about a dozen of ’em on the front veranda. I hear ’em say: ‘It’s him.’ ‘No,’ says someone, ‘it ain’t him, but it’s his brother.’ Then I come up and says howdy to ’em, but all they do is grunt like pigs?”
“Which they are!” cried Charlie.
The chair of Morgan Valentine creaked as he turned, and under his glance his eldest son lowered his gaze. All of this byplay was noted by the shrewd eye of the bandit. And the fact that he had been observed by a stranger to endure a reprimand made Charlie jerk up his head again and glare defiantly at Jess Dreer. The latter did not turn his head politely as another man might have done. He met the challenging glance of the younger man with a calm indifference so that it could be felt he was coolly measuring the other and filing an estimate of him away.
“Anyway,” went on Louis, “I went up to the door and knocked. Mrs. Norman came, and I took off my hat and says: ‘I’ve come to ask after Joe. How is he?’