by Max Brand
He began to feel that he himself could not control the drift of his life. There was the touch of magic — a magic name that informed his actions and guided him. When he said himself that this was the sheerest folly, nevertheless the belief persisted. He told himself that he must have a chance. So he walked into the little room where Von Ehrn sat and dozed through his days. He tapped the old man on the shoulder.
“I’m going out,” he said. “I can’t play tonight.”
“Going out?” cried Von Ehrn. “But Gil Hotchkiss and old Gunter are coming this evening, and they’ve got enough money to load down a freight car.”
“I’m going out,” said Pierre Delapin.
“If you’re getting temperamental — ,” began the old man gloomily, and he raised his evil eye to Pierre’s face.
“Well?”
“This sort of thing won’t do. We’ll lose everybody, if they find out that they can’t depend upon you being here.”
“What do I care?”
“Are you tired of your job?”
“I’ve made enough to retire on,” said Pierre coldly, “and you have enough to die on.”
“Bah!” cried the old man. “I’ll live twenty years longer. Ninety is nothing in my family. They’re all long-lived. And as for you, I laugh when you say that you could retire. You’ve worked up expensive tastes here. It’d take a rich marriage to support you.”
Pierre Delapin went up to his room. It had been formed by knocking out three partitions. His bed was in a recess that could be curtained away from the rest of the chamber. Sunk into the north wall was an immense fireplace for the chill days of winter and autumn. On the floor were spots of color, rare rugs from the Orient. On the rough-plastered wall were faces in oils — yes, he had formed expensive tastes. He could not leave Von Ehrn as yet. Not quite yet. But in another year —
He had said that for five years, now, he reflected as he dressed for the saddle. These very clothes he was donning, English in pattern, sure to be stared at when he went out during the day, were a type of his extravagance. But he could not leave the expensive ways. To avoid being wondered at, he took his excursions by night. In fact, from the end of one week to the next he rarely addressed a human being except Von Ehrn, the mulatto servant who cared for him, the big Negro who watched the door of the game room, and those gentlemen who dropped in for play. For the rest, he had as company the beauty of the two rooms — the one he worked in and the one he lived in — the growing numbers of books in the shelves near the fireplace, and these occasional night excursions.
He had ordered his horse before he began to dress. When he went down to the stable, he found the bay mare, Patricia, fretting at her bit and making vain efforts to drive her heels through one of the two men who were cautiously polishing her off, holding a lantern high to inspect their work, and this, although there was a white, full moon in the heavens. But Pierre Delapin, as they had learned before, was extremely particular. Even though he went off riding into the heart of the blackest night where no one could possibly see him, he insisted on having his horse turned out as flawless as the face of a mirror.
He gathered the reins, leaped into the saddle, and then found himself lunging at the moon as Patricia strove to reach it. She landed with her feet close together, her legs stiffened, and her back arched. For thirty seconds she tried to tie herself in knots, then, as though recognizing that she had met an irresistible force, she straightened under the cut of his whip and bolted out of the yard. Another instant, and they had flashed through the town and were rushing through the open beyond.
Pierre, in the perfection of his content, began to smile at the wind that whistled into his face. Patricia was his favorite of the six horses he kept. He needed that number, for one of these midnight frolics across the hills, leaping fences, climbing across ravines, exhausted a horse of the stoutest timber until another week had rolled around. Patricia herself, tough as whipcord, with the temper of a demon and the beauty of a white angel, might have served for double duty, but, instead of that, she was used on the great occasions when Pierre needed the greatest possible excitement and the least danger of breaking his neck. Tonight she galloped as swiftly as water sliding downhill, and as smoothly. She cut across the fields, cleared the fences like a bird, and made sleeping cattle swing clumsily to their feet and dash away, bellowing.
As they swept along, half the mind of Pierre Delapin was on the jumps and the rough country before him, but half of his attention was given to the dream that rode with him. And that dream was of the future that lay before him. That name which the doctor had given him had taken him out of beggary and placed him in a fine school, given him four years of culture and education, and, when he was plunged back into poverty again, it was the power of his name, he felt, which had given him the work with Von Ehrn. Pierre Delapin — it had all the ring of a gambler’s name, it seemed to him. Would the hard-headed old fellow have noticed him for an instant, if he had been plain Tom Delapin, cowpuncher? Although the life of a gambler was not on the highest level, at least it had given him five years of leisure in which he could lead his own life, reading, dreaming, drifting on and on toward that character that should fit with the name he bore.
He was thinking of these things when he found himself in a thicket of trees going downhill. That was one of the glories of Patricia. She ran like a dodging football player, picking the way through an open field, and he let her go at the serried ranks of the trees in the perfect security that she would be able to find a way through. There followed two minutes of breathless dodging, and then they lunged out onto a comparatively clear space. There were no trees save a scattering, and the downward slope had increased its angle sharply. Straight before them, a wall of black was rising against the stars. It was the opposite wall of a ravine, and Delapin remembered, with a sudden clearing of the mind, where he was. He had blundered into Lawson Cañon.
The steep slope became a precipitous slant. The frightened mare threw herself back on her haunches and strove to strike her forehoofs into the ground to check their downward rush, but they had gained too great an impetus now. A campfire gleamed among the trees beneath them. With the risk of sending her rolling over and over, Delapin drew his horse to the side, a slight swerve, but enough to take her out of the line of the campfire. His own most cautious line of procedure was to throw himself out of the saddle and into a clump of shrubbery. But there was something cowardly in abandoning the poor mare to her fate — something glorious in riding through with her to whatever came.
He began to laugh like a drunken man. By the fire a shadow-black figure had risen, and he heard a thin cry of horror.
VI. ROSE PURCHASS
THE LAST PART of that swoop down the cañon-side was blurred, as when a train darts through a narrow cut, and the trees that climb up on either hand become streaks and blotches, pulled out of shape and bulging. Pierre Delapin crashed his horse into a thicket that probably saved the lives of horse and man. A myriad of thin branches, each nothing in itself, received him like a great, soft net. They plunged through twenty feet of entanglement and came out on the farther side, thoroughly scourged, but really unhurt. Every inch of the bodies of horse and man had been lashed by the twigs, but the skin was not broken. And, swinging Patricia to the side, Delapin rode her into the light of the campfire that he might examine her thoroughly and make sure she was uninjured. He stopped her, however, on the outer edge of the pool of firelight, for he could see the face of the girl.
Suddenly he was sure that he knew why fate had made him mount Patricia on this night of the full moon, and had made him ride in this direction. It was that he might encounter the girl that stood before him. It was the premonition of what was to come that had been throbbing in his heart every step of the way.
“In heaven’s name!” breathed the girl. “You’re not dashed to pieces?” She pointed up the slope. “You seemed to be dropping through the thin air.”
In fact, the black shadow of the moon, falling over the slope, made
it seem as sheer as a precipice. Delapin shivered as he looked up to it, but, glancing back to the girl, he managed to smile. “But you see that everything turned out safely,” he said.
He felt her eyes flicker over him, taking in the details of a costume very strange for such a country. Yet there was nothing but approval in her face, and still more approval when he excused himself and led the mare close to the fire and examined her inch by inch.
Patricia was unhurt in body, but she was thoroughly cowed. She had felt herself on the very threshold of the heaven to which good horses go, and she had been saved from destruction — how, she knew not. It must have been through the agency of that daredevil, her master. And, still shaken, she pressed close to him and tried to thrust her muzzle into his hand or under his arm, very like a great dog. The girl, however, did not laugh. Instead, great tears came into her eyes.
“The poor thing,” she said, and again, “the poor thing.”
“Don’t come near her,” said Delapin. “She has a nasty temper, and she’d as soon send her heels through you as look at you.”
The girl, however, hesitated only an instant. Then she went straight up to the head of Patricia and was presently rubbing the velvet nose and whispering into the trembling ears of the mare.
“How in the world did you manage to get on with her like this?” asked Delapin, stepping back from his examination and breathing a sigh of relief as he found all well.
“Is she hurt?” asked the girl.
“Not a bit. Frightened almost to death, but not hurt. How do you manage to become so chummy with my fire-eater?”
The girl answered to Patricia, not to him.
“Oh,” she said, tapping the mare between her shining eyes, “we understand, old dear, don’t we?”
To Delapin, watching, it seemed delightful, and a great happiness started his heart beating. He could not have told why he was so joyful, but all at once the circle of that yellow firelight, leaping up and down on the trees as the breeze puffed up the flames and let them fall, seemed to Pierre to contain all that was worthwhile in the universe.
“I see,” he said, “that you’ve established a mystery with Patricia?”
“Is that her name?”
She had a way at once fascinating and annoying, Delapin thought, of turning the flank of one question with another. And quite apart from the pleasure of the moment, he decided that he must take this lesson to heart. It might stand him in good stead at another time.
“That’s her name,” he said, “and the name of her master is Pierre Delapin.”
“Monsieur or mister?”
“Mister,” Delapin laughed.
“I am happy to know the master of Patricia,” she said. “I am Rose Purchass.”
She sat down on a log that had been rolled near to the fire. This little withdrawal permitted Delapin to glance around the scene, and he could make out that a large party was camping here. There were horses dimly discernible through the trees in a neighboring clearing. There was a great litter of camp truck within the precincts of the fire itself.
“But what,” she said as he was beginning to understand her silence as a dismissal, “can have brought you onto the face of that — cliff?”
“I was making a short cut into the ravine,” said Delapin.
Of course, that was untrue, but he could not tell her that he had been foolish enough to blunder into such a situation.
“You actually mean to say you rode down that cliff on purpose?”
“Of course.”
She caught her breath.
“But I aimed badly,” he said in explanation, “otherwise, I shouldn’t have landed in that clump of brush.”
“I’ve been thinking that was the only thing that saved your life.”
“Not at all. One can manage by jockeying one’s horse at the foot of the slope to keep it on its feet. And they straighten out on the level very quickly—”
“Or else break their necks and the neck of the rider,” she cut in.
“Of course, I don’t do this every day, you understand.”
“You’re not jesting. You really use that devil’s slide as a short cut?”
“Naturally.”
“To go where?”
“To the river.”
“But why in the world — I beg your pardon for being so inquisitive, only — this is like a section out of a fairy tale.”
“Isn’t it,” agreed Pierre heartily.
“You admit you are unusual, then?”
He laughed. “I was referring to my good luck in finding you,” he said.
“Fiddlesticks!” she cried. “You’re making fun of me this instant.”
“If it hadn’t been for the cliff, as you call it, I might not have met you.”
“It has played the part of a mutual friend, then?” And the girl chuckled.
But he accepted the remark, with the utmost gravity, as a returned compliment. “You are very kind,” he said, and bowed low to point his acceptance.
When he straightened, she was smiling steadily at him. And her nose, which was a trifle tip-tilted, was wrinkling at him. Altogether she was not beautiful. She was better than beautiful. She was charming. Everything about her was extraordinary. The sound of her voice was as different from all other voices as one face is unique among all other faces. She had black hair and brown eyes and that transparent complexion which only comes to those who live in an atmosphere drenched with the wet winds from the sea. Where the firelight struck her throat, the curve shone like a painted highlight, and her slender, white hands, it seemed to Delapin, had a radiance of their own.
He wanted to step closer to her, just as one is not content with seeing a blossom but must breathe of its fragrance also. She, he felt, must be like a flower. And yet, if he ever stepped so close to her — closer to her eyes and closer to her voice and closer to her soul, he might almost say-he wondered if he would ever be able to leave her side again.
All of this was a great weight of pondering, a great mass of thinking and feeling. Yet it was all thrust through his body and his brain by three beats of the heart. After that he was calmer, more a master of himself, but he knew that a trap had closed over him, and that he was caught forever.
“But after all,” she went on, “you have to admit that it is very unusual for a man to ride down a cliff in order to get at a river — a plain river.”
He saw a meager loophole for escape. “If it were a plain river, of course, there would be no excuse.”
“What have you to say in defense of it?”
“About that I could talk an indefinite time.”
“But it seems to me just a muddy, brown stream that runs between banks that are not very beautiful.”
“That is why the river must be visited by night.”
“I see,” said the girl, “that you are a nature lover.”
“And are not you?” he asked.
“I hate it,” she said with a fervor of honest enthusiasm in the word.
“Hate nature!”
“It’s so horribly casual and without a plan.”
“Really,” breathed Delapin.
“I suppose I’m soulless,” she said, “but nature depresses me.”
“Even such a moon, in such a sky?”
She looked up at it. In so doing the firelight was shut away from her features, and they were bathed, instead, by the cold shining of the moon that floated now in the central sky.
“As for the moon,” she answered, “I never could see anything in it. It simply shuts out the stars, and the stars are delightful.”
“Yes,” he murmured, “delightful.”
There was something in his voice that made her look hastily back to him, half frowning. And Delapin retreated. In truth, he had been on the verge of saying a single word too much, so close to the verge that he shivered now with uneasiness. A voice sounded in the distance, then a murmur of laughter of men and women.
“I must ride on,” said Delapin.
“Not
before my friends meet you.”
“I really cannot stay.”
“But you must,” said Rose Purchass, “because, of course, I’ll have to tell them about what I’ve seen, and half the point of the story will be lost, if they haven’t seen the hero of the tale, you know.”
He shook his head.
“Please stay,” she urged him.
“If I stay—”
“Yes?”
“You will see why I wanted to go.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“I hope that you never will.”
“But you will stay?”
“If you insist.”
She hesitated, studying him with rather anxious, troubled eyes.
And then, before she could answer, the party broke out of the trees. Delapin saw the big, red-faced rancher, Jefferson Purchass, and with him a rout of younger people — men and girls. They had fishing rods and baskets with them, and it was plain that they had been enjoying the sport by moonlight. They came to a halt, their voices dying out, when they saw the stranger. And Rose Purchass hastened with the introduction.
“Dad,” she said, “this is Pierre Delapin. This is my father, Mister Delapin, and this is—”
He barely heard the names as she presented them. He was too busy studying their faces, and there he read enough — far more than any words could have told him. The healthy red of Purchass turned to an angry crimson as he glared at the interloper. And there were two or three young sons of ranchers in the party who glowered at him in the same hostile fashion. The girls, however, were cordial enough, even no little intrigued by his appearance, but the glum silence of the men checked their flow of talk. In a moment the quiet held every tongue, and a battery of eyes glared at Delapin.
He turned to Rose Purchass with a faint smile. “I am already late,” he said, “and I must leave you.”
She was watching her father so intently and with so much surprise that she hardly answered. And ten seconds later Patricia was picking her way through the brush beyond the pale of the campfire.