Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Already those echoes were turning to real voices, as the guests in the hotel wakened in alarm. And it seemed to Phil that he could distinguish the bull-like bellow of big Magruder in the distance. He had no care for that. He had crossed the ambit of his old world and he was reaching into a new one of action.

  On the stairs the Mexican half turned, with a second revolver in his hand, and tried a chance shot at the pursuer. The bullet went like a whip lash snapping past the face of Phil Slader, and he threw himself into the air and hurled down at Diego.

  He struck him halfway down the stairs, and they fell to the bottom, head over heels. Cold steel met the hand of Phil Slader. He wrenched it away — and now he was armed and most excellently armed, at that!

  Diego, fighting like a madman, tore out his knife and drove with it, but a hard fist caught him on the body and knocked him flat against the wall. Phil fired — not at his man but into the air — that the flash of the bullet might show him his work. It gave him a winking glimpse of Diego Pasqual flattened against the wall, but, knife in hand, he lunged in at Phil again. This time Phil fired at the darting body. It was either that or receive the blade of the knife in his own body. He fired, and Diego fell with a loud scream upon the floor.

  Phil leaned over him. “You brought it on yourself, Pasqual!” he said. “Will you tell the rest of them that?”

  “I’ll tell them anything — bring me air — water — Don Felipe — I am dying! I shall tell you everything — and the truth of how your father died. Only — Don Felipe — water — air — help!”

  His scream was horribly strangled and then a burst of voices and lights, rolled out into the hall — Magruder’s voice and others with him.

  “It’s Slader!” shouted Magruder. “He’s murdered the Mexican. I knew that it would happen. I warned the sheriff, and he wouldn’t do anything. Boys, will you stand by me? Will you help me to get hold on this young devil who . . . .”

  “Get hold on him, Magruder?” cried another. “Man, are you clean mad? Capture Jack Slader’s son? He’d have lead fed into half a dozen of us before that could happen. No, tag that young skunk with a .45 chunk of lead and see if that will put him to sleep. There never was a Slader that was a good citizen until he was dead. Boys, come on — we’re gunna stop this stone right now from rolling along and gathering itself into a regular slide that might wipe out half a hundred men, in its time. We’re with you, Magruder. You lead the way!”

  “This way, then! Phil, Phil! Are you down there? D’you hear me? The doors are double locked at the end of the hall. You can’t get out that way. Will you come up here and surrender?”

  “I’ll come up and surrender,” said Phil, “when I know that I’ll get a fair deal. I want you fellows to understand that this greaser jumped me in my room, in the black of the night.”

  There was a yell of mockery and rage from the others. And then the great voice of Magruder thundering:

  “You hear him, boys? Kill a man and then sneak behind a rotten excuse like than? Diego, are you dead?”

  There was only a faint groan from Diego Pasqual.

  And Phil felt that there was no longer any use in fighting against fate. He had done his best, he told himself, and plainly it was foredoomed that he should lead one of the lives of the hunted.

  “Magruder and the rest of you swine!” he shouted suddenly at them. “I’ve tried to get a fair deal, and you won’t give it to me. Now I tell you that I’m not going to chance myself in your hands. I’m going to get loose from this house, and Heaven help the first of you that gets into my way. You hear me?”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  HE WAS HEARD — a wild roar of anger and hate told him. And he shrank from the sound with wonder and dismay. There was no reason for it, he told himself. He had dared to defend himself from a midnight murderer; therefore was he to be set upon like a wild boar by a pack of dogs and torn to pieces?

  But he understood. It was not he, himself, but bad blood that they hated. And he was not to go straight, no matter how he tried. Crouched back against the wall, he felt evil rising in him in a flood, wonderingly strong and wonderfully sweet. It was an added power rushing through his body and his brain.

  In his immense surety he had time to lean and say in the ear of Pasqual: “Tell me how my father died, Pasqual, and I’ll forgive you for trying to murder me. I’ll be your friend — I’ll stay here now and bandage . . . .”

  There was only a faint gasp from Diego Pasqual, and Phil Slader knew that it was a dying man who lay at his feet. So his last opportunity of learning the truth, it seemed, was gone from him!

  He shut that disappointment away from his mind. There was something else for him to consider, and that was the manner in which he might escape from this unlucky house.

  So, first of all, he ran to the end of the hall and tried the doors. They were fast locked. He sent a bullet into the lock, but still it held, and a shout of triumph rose from three or four throats of men outside. He heard the rapidly approaching hoofs of many horses.

  This must be reënforcements for the enemy, which already outnumbered him so vastly. However, he felt no weakness. The more they penned him in with strength and with numbers, the more a savage ferocity rose in him, and the more clearly his brain saw what he must do.

  Magruder was back yonder in the hall, bellowing directions, telling one to guard the windows — another to run to help at the front. How many were now left in the narrow throat of the hall itself, at Magruder’s side?

  At any rate, that was the only point which remained for Phil to attack, and he determined to rush it. First he pulled off his boots. Then he ran back and hurled his shoulder against the doors at the end of the hall. They bulged and sagged under the shock, and an excited yell rose from the outside:

  “He’s coming out! He’ll bust those doors down the next try! Stand ready, boys. Don’t shoot too high — shoot low — shoot for the legs and you’re more apt to hit the body!”

  That was Bailey’s voice — Bailey, who only the day before had walked over the new alfalfa field with him and had admired with much apparent sincerity the manner in which the new plants were sprouting. Ah, well, Bailey and all the rest were of one piece. They could not understand. And God forgive Jack Slader for this heritage which he had left to an involuntary heir!

  One more shock would burst open those doors, as those on the outside knew. They had their guns ready, no doubt. A breath of silence fell over the night, and far away, through the darkness, a rooster, falsely prophesying the end of the night, crowed loud and long.

  Once more Slader threw himself at the doors, but rather to make a great rattling and confusion at them than to attempt to force his way through them. Then he turned and raced down the hallway on silent stocking feet.

  He went up the stairs like a sliding ghost and, as he reached the top of them, he saw Magruder on his knees, a double-barreled shotgun ready in his hands — and two men standing tall and stark behind the proprietor of the hotel, all ready to turn this night into one of carnage.

  He paid no heed to the two. It was Magruder who thirsted to murder him, for many reasons. He fired straight into the face of the big man — and saw his hat jump, so he knew that his bullet had missed. But the flare of fire, and the spitting smoke blinded and choked the big man. His shotgun swerved to one side, and, as both the barrels roared at once, the recoil flattened Magruder on the floor of the hall. And now there were only two men between Phil Slader and freedom on this side.

  He was not in haste. He picked his places to strike and then he struck home. His revolver was empty; he laid the long, heavy barrel of it alongside the head of the man to the left and seemed to feel the skull sag under the power of that blow. He turned and sank his left fist into the body of the second man, and so both were down — and one shape lay motionless, while Magruder and the other lay gasping, choking, moaning.

  They were writhing about among a veritable cluster of weapons, each dimly marked by a streak of light, and Phil Slader took
what he wanted — a rifle and a revolver. Then he ran on down the passageway.

  How slow were those fellows from the front of the house! Why was it that they were not already around at the back of the house to cut off his retreat?

  There was no one before him. But, from the inside of the house there was a steady and a rising roar, and from the front of the building men were yelling in a vast confusion to each other.

  Footfalls beat and echoed through the halls and chambers of the hotel. But no one loomed in sight of the fugitive.

  If that were the case, he would profit by this confusion to give himself one more chance at something which he prized almost above liberty itself. He reached the corral of Rooster, and in another instant the saddle was on the back of the big horse; the bit was slipped with a click of steel between his teeth; the bars were thrown down, and here was Phil Slader sitting in the saddle with the black night before him and the greatest horse ever seen in the Crusoe Valley, between his legs. A thunderbolt and like a thunderbolt, a hard, hard tool to manage!

  The confusion at the hotel had ended to a certain extent. For now Magruder was on his feet again, and, being on his feet, there was his bull voice bellowing forth directions and sending back his helpers to the work.

  Yonder ran a shadow. And there came another.

  “He’s in that corral — on the gray horse — he’ll never ride that horse. We got him, boys! Get in front of the gate — Charlie. We got Slader — Magruder, come on!”

  At this moment Phil Slader touched the flanks of the gray monster with his heels and loosed the reins just a trifle. The gray stallion left the corral like a streak of jagged lightning — jagged indeed, for he bucked his way through the corral and through the gate and, with enormous bounds, he plunged, sun-fishing across the open space beyond, giving for a target to the men of Magruder a dancing will-o’-the-wisp that flaunted across the starlight — now here — now there.

  It was magnificent pitching, but worse than useless to Magruder unless it landed Phil Slader on the ground, for in the meantime it was making a hit impossible with revolver or rifle. He himself knew, for the barrel of his rifle was turning hot in his hand, and there were the others, firing as rapidly and as straight as they could, to no purpose.

  But Phil Slader was not to be thrown from his saddle on this night of nights; he knew it with the very first bound that the stallion gave. He had been a worthy foeman of the stallion before. But on this night he was his master — now and forever. No matter how Rooster took veritable wings and knotted himself into quaint devices in the mid-air, Phil Slader still was sitting in the saddle as they reached the trees.

  There the stallion changed his tactics and rushed furiously, straight ahead, hoping to brush off his rider, against some low-hanging branch. So doing, he put a hundred yards of black night instantly between Phil and the guns of his human enemies.

  CHAPTER XXX

  THAT DANGER WHICH Phil Slader now enjoyed in place of the guns of Magruder and the rest was hardly a trifle less dangerous. For half a mile the gray horse raced through the woods, weaving back and forth and striving his best either to scrape his rider off against a trunk or to catch him against some low-dropping branch. And a dozen times there were close shaves. How the big horse managed to weave his way back and forth through that tangle of trees without crashing headlong against some one of them, Phil could not guess. It was almost as though the monster had the power of seeing by night as by day. For he dodged quicker than a football player, running through a tangled mass of opposition down the field.

  They came out from a hundred dangers into the open field beyond. At least one great gain had resulted. The noise of big Magruder and the rest had not even begun behind them. A great handicap was offered in favor of Phil even as the chase began.

  However, now that firm ground and the open presented themselves, Rooster passed into another frenzy of bucking, hurling himself on his back upon the ground and then flinging himself to his feet and into the air again, turning end for end in full leap, and crashing down to the earth again.

  He was a tiger in horseflesh, but another tiger in human form was on his back. Twice before Phil had tried his hand with the stallion; and each time he had learned something of the savage ways of Rooster. But now it was a different matter. On the one hand, the tricks of the stallion seemed somewhat trite; on the other hand, there was a new strength and confidence in Phil, and he countered every buck and every pitch with slashing quirt and biting spurs.

  Then Rooster dropped suddenly from the air to the ground, not like a falling rock, but like some softly winged creature. With his ears pricked against the stars, he started forward at a gallop lighter than the fancy of a child or poet had ever pretended in a steed of the imaginings.

  He had ended his battle as suddenly as he had begun it. He had recognized his master, just as Phil Slader had known that the great horse would do, in case a master ever sat in his saddle. No longer would the gray horse stand with high head and wistful eye fixed upon the far horizon. For the man from the sky had come at last. And he, Phil Slader, was that lord of men. He was the man from the horizon, to sit like a king of men upon this king of horses!

  Do you wonder, then, that he put back his head and laughed, rejoicing almost drunkenly while the black earth leaped away behind him, and the stallion gathered speed and speed from some magic wallet which the god of wings had given to him? For it seemed that the store of the stallion’s strength was totally inexhaustible, and all that he needed was more asking in order to gain more having.

  A chasm opened before him, a dark gulf which Phil knew to be a dry slough that never ran with water, except during the heaviest winter rains. The sides were steep, and the bottom was lined with hard and slippery rock. A fall into that pit would be death for horse and for rider also, and he drew in a little on the reins anxiously.

  But the gray horse shook his head impatiently and tossed his crest. It was as if he asked: “Why will you have me turn aside for such a trifling matter as this?”

  “Take it, then!” gasped Phil.

  And he loosed the reins — it was like being hurled, so suddenly did the speed of the big horse respond. The sharp wind cut like ice, stinging the face and the eyes of the rider. Then Rooster rose in the air. And the black gulf lay below, an endless stretch, it seemed, with a glint of starlight in an ominous little pond beneath. They hung in midair; they swooped down; and here was the firm ground receiving the shock of those formidable hoofs, which spurned that earth away again as he raced off with recovered stride.

  Phil Slader shook his fist at the stars above him. Whatever happiness was in their twinkling eyes, there was a greater fire in his own soul. A fence jerked up before him like something rising from the ground by life of its own. He had no hesitation now. He merely loosened the reins a trifle once more; again there was the dazing burst of wind in his face as Rooster lurched away; again they took wings in the upper air — and the obstacle flashed back unregarded behind them.

  What other horse had ever been like this? A hot tide of gratitude and joy rose in his heart. He could have sung, and it would have been a paean in praise of Rooster.

  All that had ever been extravagant and foolishly beautiful — if such a term could be used — was now matter of fact. All the tales of super horses and of supermen could be believed. It was easy to lift a mountain — to move a city — to crush a hundred — for the deeds of mighty Rooster made all checks, all boundaries, all ambits of whatever nature, seem like imaginary things. All that one willed and wished was possible!

  He pulled down the great horse to an easy canter and then to a trot. It was not like the trot of other horses, any more than his gallop was the gallop of others — but a swift and gentle gait in which the strokes of the hoofs were cushioned and softened by the flexible fetlock joints, playing through whole inches of give and take. Fast as a pounding cowpony’s canter, that trot carried them along, a beautiful and effortless gait which propelled them on as though they were afloat
on a swift river, gliding without friction beneath the stars.

  The rider listened keenly to the breathing of his mount. All was as he could have wished but not as he dared to dream that it would be. He was breathing deep and hard, of course, but there was no sign of labor in the lungs. At this fleet trot the great horse could recover whatever little strength he seemed to have expended in his bucking, in his breathless gallop thereafter. And far away, far away, the pursuit must be floundering in the darkness of the night, more and more hopelessly lost!

  Other thoughts rose in Phil then. First his mind dwelt on the perfection of that matchless horse and pondered on the grace and ease of motion which drifted them along as by witchcraft and not mere bone and muscle. He fingered the thought of the gray stallion, as some skilled virtuoso might finger a glorious violin. The more he dwelt upon it, the more there was to wonder at and rejoice in. And he said to himself that there was nothing to which he might not aspire on this night.

  Where was he riding now? What instinctive sense had guided him in this direction across the mountains? He knew, then, as he examined his mind. He was riding toward her who had invited him to come the moment that he had the horse beneath him. He was riding toward Nell. It took his breath a little as he realized it, but it rejoiced him also. And he made the big horse gallop joyously on again.

  Twenty miles, or was it thirty? He followed a road that climbed and wound about through the forest, wet and fragrant with the last rains, and then a road that fell away to the sweeping plains where the father of Nell was coining wealth and happiness for himself and for his son. But not for Nell. No, the things for which her heart hungered were not the things which could be got in return for fat steers and tonnage of hide and tallow. Something, bigger, greater, brighter must be included in her destiny than ever came from the soil of this world no matter how cultivated.