Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Out of that song he built a picture of their old lives, the hot sunshine, the dust, and all the things which Matthew had told him of the slaves and their ways before the time of the making of the Garden.

  He waited, then, either for their messenger or for another song; but he neither saw the one nor heard the other for a considerable time. An angry pride sustained him in the meantime, in the face of a life alone in the Garden. Far off, he heard the neigh of the grays in the meadow near the gate, and then the clarion clear answer of Glani near the house. He was grateful for that sound. All men, it seemed, were traitors to him. Let them go. He would remain contented with the Eden Grays. They would come and go with him like human companions. Better the noble head of Glani near him than the treacherous cunning of Benjamin! He accepted his fate, then, not with calm resignation, but with fierce anger against Connor, who had brought this ruin on him, and against the men who were preparing to desert him.

  He could hear plainly the creaking of the great wains as the oxen were yoked to them and they were dragged into position to receive the burdens of the property they were to take with them into the outer world. And, in the meantime, he paced through the patio in one of those silent passions which eat at the heart of a man.

  He was not aware of the entrance of Elijah. When he saw him, Elijah had fallen on his knees near the entrance to the patio, and every line of his time-dried body expressed the terror of the bearer of bad tidings. David looked at him for a moment in silent rage.

  “Do you think, Elijah,” he said at last, “that I shall be so grieved to know that you and the others will leave me and the Garden of Eden? No, no! For I shall be happier alone. Therefore, speak and be done!”

  “Timeh—” began the old man faintly.

  “You have done that last duty, then, Elijah? Timeh is no longer alive?”

  “The day is still new, David. Twice I went to Timeh, but each time when I was about to lead her away, the neighing of Juri troubled me and my heart failed.”

  “But the third time you remembered my order?”

  “But the third time — there was no third time. When the bell sounded we gathered. Even the watchers by the the gates — Jacob and Isaac — came and the gate was left unguarded — Timeh was in the pasture near the gate with Juri — and—”

  “They are gone! They have passed through the gate! Call Zacharias and Joseph. Let them mount and follow and bring Juri back with the foal!”

  “Oh, David, my master—”

  “What is it now, Elijah, old stammerer? Of all my servants none has cost me so much pain; to none shall I say farewell with so little regret. What is it now? Why do you not rise and call them as I bid you? Do you think you are free before you pass the gates?”

  “David, there are no horses to follow Juri!”

  “What!”

  “The God of John and Paul give me strength to tell and give you strength to hear me in patience! When you had spoken, and the servants went back to speak of the strange things you had said, some of them spoke of the old days before they heard the call and followed to the Garden, and then a song was raised beginning with Zacharias—”

  “Zacharias!” echoed David, softly and fiercely. “Him whom I have favored above the others!”

  “But while the others sang, I heard a neighing near the gate and I remembered your order and your judgment of Timeh, and I went sorrowfully to fulfill your will. But near the gate I saw the meadow empty of the horses, and while I stood wondering, I heard a chorus of neighing beyond the gate. There was a great answer just behind me, and I turned and saw Glani racing at full speed. I called to him, but he did not hear and went on, straight through the pillars of the gate, and disappeared in the ravine beyond. Then I ran to the gate and looked out, but the horses were gone from sight — they have left the Garden — they are free—”

  “And happy!” said David in a terrible voice. “They, too, have only been held by fear and never by love. Let them go. Let all go which is kept here by fear. Why should I care? I am enough by myself. When all is gone and I am alone the Voice shall return and be my companion. It is well. Let every living thing depart. David is enough unto himself. Go, Elijah! And yet pause before you go!”

  He went into his room and came out bearing the heavy chest of money, which he carried to the gate.

  “Go to your brothers and bid them come for the money. It will make them rich enough in the world beyond the mountains, but to me there is need of no money. Silence and peace is my wish. Go, and let me hear their voices no more, let me not see one face. Ingrates, fools, and traitors! Let them find their old places; I have no regret. Begone!”

  And Elijah, as one under the shadow of a raised whip, skulked from the patio and was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE LAST QUIET began for David. He had heard the sounds of departure. He had heard the rumble of the oxwains begin and go slowly toward the gate with never the sound of a human voice, and he pictured, with a grim satisfaction, the downcast faces and the frightened, guilty glances, as his servants fled, conscious that they were betraying their master. It filled him with a sort of sulky content which was more painful than sorrow. But before the sound of the wagons died out the wind blew back from the gate of the Garden a thin, joyous chorus of singing voices. They were leaving him with songs!

  He was incredulous for a time. He felt, first, a great regret that he had let them go. Then, in an overwhelming wave of righteousness, he determined to dismiss them from his mind. They were gone; but worse still, the horses were gone, and the valley around him was empty! He remembered the dying prophecy of Abraham, now, as the stern Elijah had repeated it. He had let the world into the Garden, and the tide of the world’s life, receding, would take all the life of the Garden away beyond the mountains among other men.

  The feeling that Connor had been right beset him: that the four first masters had been wrong, and that they had raised David in error. Yet his pride still upheld him.

  That day he went resolutely about the routine. He was not hungry, but when the time came he went into the big kitchen and prepared food. It was a place of much noise. The great copper kettles chimed and murmured whenever he touched them, and they spoke to him of the servants who were gone. Half of his bitterness had already left him and he could remember those days in his childhood when Abraham had told him tales, and Zacharias had taught him how to ride at the price of many a tumble from the lofty back of the gentle old mare. Yet he set the food on the table in the patio and ate it with steady resolution. Then he returned to the big kitchen and cleansed the dishes.

  It was the late afternoon, now, the time when the sunlight becomes yellow and loses its heat, and the heavy blue shadow sloped across the patio. A quiet time. Now and again he found that he was tense with waiting for sounds in the wind of the servants returning for the night from the fields, and the shrill whinny of the colts coming back from the pastures to the paddocks. But he remembered what had happened and made himself relax.

  There was a great dread before him. Finally he realized that it was the coming of the night, and he went into the Room of Silence for the last time to find consolation. The book of Matthew had always been a means of bringing the consolation and counsel of the Voice, but when he opened the book he could only think of the girl, as she must have leaned above it. How had she read? With a smile of mockery or with tears? He closed the book; but still she was with him. It seemed that when he turned in the chair he must find her waiting behind him and he found himself growing tense with expectation, his heart beating rapidly.

  Out of the Room of Silence he fled as if a curse lived in it, and without following any conscious direction, he went to the room of Ruth.

  The fragrance had left the wild flowers, and the great golden blossoms at the window hung thin and limp, the bell lips hanging close together, the color faded to a dim yellow. The green things must be taken away before they molded. He raised his hand to tear down the transplanted vine, but his fingers fell away from it
. To remove it was to destroy the last trace of her. She had seen these flowers; on account of them she had smiled at him with tears of happiness in her eyes. The skin of the mountain lion on the floor was still rumpled where her foot had fallen, and he could see the indistinct outline where the heel of her shoe had pressed.

  He avoided that place when he stepped back, and turning, he saw her bed. The dappled deerskin lay crumpled back where her hand had tossed it as she rose that morning, and in the blankets was the distinct outline of her body. He knew where her body had pressed, and there was the hollow made by her head in the pillow.

  Something snapped in the heart of David. The sustaining pride which had kept his head high all day slipped from him like the strength of the runner when he crosses the mark. David fell upon his knees and buried his face where her head had lain, and his arms curved as though around her body. Connor had been right. He had made himself his god, and this was the punishment. The mildness of a new humility came to him in the agony of his grief. He found that he could pray, not the proud prayers of the old days when David talked as an equal to the voice, but that most ancient prayer of sinners:

  “O Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief!”

  And the moment the whisper had passed his lips there was a blessed relief from pain. There was a sound at the window, and turning to it, he saw the head and the arched neck of Glani against the red of the sunset — Glani looking at him with pricked ears. He went to the stallion, incredulous, with steps as short as a child which is afraid, and at his coming Glani whinnied softly. At that the last of David’s pride fell from him. He cast his arms around the neck of the stallion and wept with deep sobs that tore his throat, and under the grip of his arms he felt the stallion trembling. He was calmer, at length, and he climbed through the window and stood beside Glani under the brilliant sunset sky.

  “And the others, O Glani,” he said. “Have they returned likewise? Timeh shall live. I, who have judged others so often, have been myself judged and found wanting. Timeh shall live. What am I that I should speak of the life or the death of so much as the last bird in the trees? But have they all returned, all my horses?”

  He whistled that call which every gray knew as a rallying sound, a call that would bring them at a dead gallop with answering neighs. But when the thin sound of the whistle died out there was no reply. Only Glani had moved away and was looking back to David as if he bid the master follow.

  “Is it so, Glani?” said the master. “They have not come back, but you have returned to lead me to them? The woman, the man, the servants, and the horses. But we shall leave the valley, walking together. Let the horses go, and the man and the woman and the servants; but we shall go forth together and find the world beyond the mountains.”

  And with his hand tangled in the mane of the stallion, he walked down the road, away from the hill, the house, the lake. He would not look back, for the house on the hill seemed to him a tomb, the monument of the four dead men who had made this little kingdom.

  By the time he reached the gate the Garden of Eden was awash with the shadows of the evening, but the higher mountain-tops before him were still rosy with the sunset. He paused at the gate and looked out on them, and when he turned to Glani again, he saw a figure crouched against the base of the rock wall. It was Ruth, weeping, her head fallen into her hands with weariness. Above her stood Glani, his head turned to the master in almost human inquiry. The deep cry of David wakened her. The gentle hands of David raised her to her feet.

  “You have not come to drive me away again?”

  “To drive you from the Garden? Look back. It is black. It is full of death, and the world and our life is before us. I have been a king in the Garden. It is better to be a man among men. All the Garden was mine. Now my hands are empty. I bring you nothing, Ruth. Is it enough? Ah, my dear, you are weeping!”

  “With happiness. My heart is breaking with happiness, David.”

  He tipped up her face and held it between his hands. Whatever he saw in the darkness that was gathering it was enough to make him sigh. Then he raised her to the back of Glani, and the stallion, which had never borne a weight except that of David, stood like a stone. So David went up the valley holding the hand of Ruth and looking up to her with laughter in his eyes, and she, with one hand pressed against her breast, laughed back to him, and the great stallion went with his head turned to watch them.

  “How wonderful are the ways of God!” said David. “Through a thief he has taught me wisdom; through a horse he has taught me faith; and you, oh, my love, are the key with which he has unlocked my heart!”

  And they began to climb the mountain.

  THE END

  Wild Freedom (1922)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  CHAPTER I

  NO SEASONED MOUNTAINEER would have tried to cross the mountain range encumbered as John Parks was, and with the cloud streamers blown out stiff from the summits and snapping off little fleecy bits which the wind hurried across the sky. Even in the lowlands the norther had spread an arctic chill, and the bald heights must be insufferably cold. To be sure, the trip would have been practicable enough to warmly dressed, active men, but the little burro would slow the pace of the journey to a dreary crawl; and, besides, there was Tommy to think of. Hardened far beyond city children by his three years in the mountains, still at twelve there is a marked limit to a boy’s endurance. And he was already fagged by the journey, for, though they had come only ten miles since morning, it had been bitter work for Tommy up and down the. hills, and it might be ten miles more across the summits and down to shelter on the farther side.

  John Parks consulted his son.

  “We could camp over yonder, Tommy,” he said. “You see that little hollow with the pines standing around it?”

  Tommy looked, and his heart went out to the circle among the trees as though the night had already closed and the evergreens were full of shine and shadow from a fire built in their midst.

  “But,” went on John Parks, “it’s not far past noon, and just over that next crest is the place!”

  And he lifted his gaunt face with that strange smile which Tommy knew so well. All his life he had seen his father looking off from the sorrows of every day to a bright tomorrow.

  “So what do you think, Tommy?” said John Parks, resting his hand on the shoulder of his son. “Do you think we could make it without tiring you out?”

  The wind stooped against them and passed an icy thrill through the body of the boy, but when he looked up he found the smile still on his father’s face as though he heard already the far-off murmur of the Turnbull River. What a weary way they had come to find that promised land!

  “Oh,” he said, “I can make it, Dad. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  The hand closed on his shoulder.

  “Ah, you’re a tough fellow. Tommy,” said John Parks. “We’ll try it, then!”

  They trudged on, the burro grunting and switching its tail before them. They climbed two thousa
nd feet in three miles with the trees dwindling and dwarfing until they came to a waist-high hedge of lodgepole pine, willow, and tough shrubs at timber line, a hedge shaved level across the top by the edge of storm winds, running in and out along the mountainsides at one height like the verge of green water. Above was the bald region of the summit. The sun had melted the surface snow; the wind had frozen it again; and now it blazed like glass. That was poor footing for the climb. Even the burro, as it pressed out from the thicket, shrank back after trying the glazed surface with a tentative hoof. Moreover, the wind now leaped into their faces. It flattened the burro’s ears and drove his tail straight out. Tommy looked up in dismay, but John Parks shook a bony hand above his head.

  “They can’t beat us, Tommy!” he shouted. “It takes more than wind and weather to beat us!”

  “No, Dad, we’ll make it!” Tommy tried to say, but the wind passed his lips and blew a stiff pocket in one cheek, so he put down his head and staggered on in the lee of John Parks. Then his father took his hand, and with that aid he managed to keep steadily at work. When John Parks looked down at him, he even managed a pinch-faced smile, but all the time the core of warmth at his heart was shrinking, and the numbing cold spread swiftly up to his shoulders, then up his legs to the knees, to the hips. He centered all his mind, all his will, on every step he made, but oh, the weariness which the cold was bringing home to him!

  A fresher blast caught him and wrenched him to the side against John Parks.

  “Steady, Tommy!” cried his father. “It’s all downhill now. Don’t you see? We’re going to make it easily, boy!”

  It was true, for when Tommy looked ahead there was no longer that soul- taking, upward slope. Instead, his eye pitched down past the snowfields to the dark streak of timber line, and past timber line to a great, green valley with a river running straight as a silver arrow through its heart. That was the promised land, then, and yonder was the Turnbull. Here was the place where his father’s traps every day would take full toll, where the deer came up to the edge of the camp fire to watch and wonder, where the cabin was to rise, where the ground would be cleared.