Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  When he reached the stallion, below, he rode the big horse out from the vines and looked up, and he saw her standing there and waving to him. The heart of Phil Slader went weak with sadness and with yearning. He told himself that, after all, this might be the last time. The law and all its millions of hands would be working hard enough to make it the last time. And every mile that he rode back toward her would be a mile of deadly danger. He waved his hat toward her, and then he turned the head of Rooster back toward the mountains.

  It was still only dawn when he was in the upper foothills. He was among the mountains themselves when the sun arose. There he made a camp. He could have pushed on. His strength and the might of the stallion seemed hardly sapped at all. But he did not wish to work Rooster until he was jaded. Rooster, as he stood, was a king which no mustang could live with for half a mile without breaking its heart. But Rooster, tired, might be a horse that another could run to earth from a fresh start. And that was the chief strength and great reliance of Phil — Rooster’s matchless burst of speed.

  He spent a chilly morning until the sun was warm. Then he drowsed until the prime. After that he journeyed on again, heading well to the north along the upper ridges of the mountains, and keeping in what covert he could. But when the evening came on, it came with a sharpened wind and a sudden fall of rain.

  There is nothing so depressing as rain. Snow has a wildness and a thrill about it. It is beautiful to the eye. A cold rain bites to the marrow of a man’s soul and his body also. At least, so it was with Phil Slader, and he was a gloomy man, indeed.

  Oh, he was rough enough and tough enough to have suited the fancy of the most exacting, but when it came to facing a night in some ramshackle camp of his own devising, his spirit failed him.

  Besides, did they not tell such tales of his father? Jack Slader did not ride from wilderness to wilderness. He rode from house to house and from camp to camp. And at nine places he bought what he needed. At the tenth he took it by the force of hand.

  He forced the stallion on over the next rise of ground, and there he found a little yellow star to guide him. It proved to be the kitchen light in the window of a little shack. When he knocked at the door a little, old, bent woman and a little, old, bent man were revealed to him. Heaven alone could tell what their business and their life might be, that kept them here in the upper reaches of the wilderness, or how their pinched bodies could outlast another winter.

  They were glad to see him. The old man took him to the barn and gaped and shook his head at the tall stallion.

  “A mighty upstanding hoss, stranger. I had a colt ten year back that had something of the look of him, I tell you. But not quite the same, I got to admit. Not the same cut to its legs. But he don’t look tired none for a hoss that has carried you all day long over ground like this. A mountain hoss. I see that’s what he is. Nothing like mountain hosses — aye, and mountain men, too, some say. I’ve heard it said, I mean to say!”

  He took Phil back to the house, still chattering idly as they walked. And so they came into the kitchen again. Of course, they had a spare bed, and, of course, any man that came to them on a wet night like this . . . .

  The woman had gone that far when Phil stepped into the full light of the lamp, and out of the nerveless, red, and wrinkled hand of his hostess the iron spoon fell with a clatter to the floor.

  Her husband turned to her in amazement. “What ails you, Bess?” he asked her.

  She pointed to the young stranger aghast.

  “Ain’t you got eyes in your head, man? D’you see what you’ve brought in under our roof? The red-handed murder of the both of us, I’m thinking! Oh, Harry, Harry, don’t you see, man? It’s young Phil Slader come to murder and rob us of all that we got! It’s Phil Slader, like his daddy’s ghost, come back to us!”

  The old man turned to stare in his turn. And he, too, turned a sickly white.

  So the news had come here, too. Oh, how busy the sheriff and the rest must have been to spread it so far, and so soon! He would have at least one willing volunteer to help him — Magruder!

  “Old folks,” said Phil, “I’ve not come up here to plague you or to rob you. I’d like to get a supper here from you. And — tell me what harm my father ever did to you when you saw him! Was he ever in this house before me?”

  “He sat in yonder chair,” said old Harry. “And yonder are the holes in the wall where Deputy Racham emptied a gun, trying to kill him, before he killed Racham!”

  It was a grisly feeling that came upon Phil, then, as though he had been shunted back suddenly through the years, and had come to the place where his father had stood before him, not in time but in the flesh. More than a ghost — his father’s self, just as famous Jack Slader had been in those other days.

  He saw another thing, just as clearly, and this was the impossibility of forcing the ordinary run of people to believe that there was anything in him different from other desperadoes who had ranged through the mountains.

  And indeed, was there? He was no brute, no beast of prey, but surely other fellows before him had just as many claims to the same distinctions. They were as gentle and as goodnatured as he had ever been, but still, the tiger had grown in them faster than the other elements, and so, at length, they had become public menaces. And he would become so in time!

  He sat down at the little table in the corner of the room and he would have had them sit with him. He wanted to share their supper — not simply be fed like a horse in a stall. But they seemed afraid to sit. They moved like frightened ghosts about the room. They placed food before him with trembling hands. They spoke to one another not at all, or else in hushed voices. They knew not, good souls, that this was more sad to the heart of Phil Slader than leveled guns and well-aimed bullets!

  He could not even finish his meal — for the terrified eyes of the old people were poison to his very soul. He started up, at last, and hurried from the room. He took gray Rooster from the horse shed and he rode wildly off through the rain. The wind had come up sharp and steady. The rain was turning to rattling bursts of hail, but this dreary weather and the wild mountain way and the blackness of the night all seemed to Phil Slader preferable to the wretched silence in that house.

  He found a half-sheltered nook among the trees, after a time, and there he made his camp for the night, trying to sleep and finding it a miserably wet, chilly business altogether. However, as the hours drifted on, it began to seem to Phil that a stormy night was not half so dreadful to those who were out in the midst of it as it was to those who remained indoors and only listened to its howlings through the windowpanes.

  There was not much real sleep for him on that night; and when the morning came, he was prepared to find himself a haggard, nervous, and weary man. But he was not. The rest that comes to us under an open sky is twice as precious as that which we enjoy indoors. Even Rooster, in spite of all the ill use and hard wear which he had had in the past day, had his crest as high and his eyes as bright as ever they had been before.

  So Phil mounted and they went on together. They drifted through the highest and the wildest part of the range on that day, for he could guess that the word would have gone out, by this time, and that scores of hunters for fame and fortune would be heading toward him. So he kept a sharp lookout and rode warily.

  And yet when he saw a winking eye of yellow before him through the sharp cold of the mountain dusk, he could not avoid riding in toward it again.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  IT WAS A more promising abode for the night — in the estimation of Phil Slader — than that which he had approached the last evening. It was an old shack of the most ragged structure, leaning at a perilous angle on the side of the mountain, as though hardly more than the weight of a man’s hand was necessary to thrust it from its place and start it toppling headlong down the hillside. It had a staggering chimney which proceeded by means of several crazy elbows up the side of the building and extended a very little distance above its roof.

  Its
windows had long ago lost all of their glass except a very few broken fragments. To shut out the air of the night and the storm, there were boards of various kinds nailed across the apertures. However dilapidated it might seem to be, nevertheless it was a building to the taste of Phil Slader. He regarded it with much satisfaction and, leaving the stallion behind a clump of great rocks, he slipped forward on foot to make a closer examination.

  When he peered through the chink of the first window, he saw a scene of enough confusion to have satisfied the heart of the very devil. The whole first floor of this building had been turned into a single room, not according to any plan, as it seemed, but just as fancy or laziness moved the inhabitants to kick down the partitions and use them for kindling or for cooking wood. At all events, everything except the ragged stumps of some of the posts had been broken off, and the unsupported ceiling sagged dangerously. So much had it curved, that all of the plaster had broken off, save a few bits. Most of the rough slats were revealed.

  The furnishings of the great ugly room were just what would have been expected, if the contents of a junk heap had been carelessly mixed and exposed to the day. There was not a sound stick of wood in the lot or a bit of cloth upholstery that was not honeycombed with holes. The table was the most imposing bit that remained. It had given way to the weight of various occasions, but every time it had been propped up once more. Three of the original legs were gone. A sagging box now served as one of the legs, and two rough-cut sapling lengths supplied the place of the others. But there stood the table, and so long as it was there, it furnished something around which the interest of the room could be rallied.

  Three men had gathered at the board. There was a wan old man with an evil, twisted face; there was a youth with a handsome Italian cast of countenance and a gay scarf twisted around his neck; and there was a man of middle age with a face which was partly bulldog for firmness of will and strength of purpose.

  Phil Slader examined them in no great detail. He did not have to. For he felt that if here were not three outcasts and rascals who had been forced to flee from the society of the rest of the world, then his eye was unable to put together the facts which it saw. Evil was written in large capitals, he knew, on the face of every one of these rascals.

  And therefore they were fit company for him!

  It gave him a sudden stab of pain to think of it. It was the proof of the distance which lay between him and the law-abiding world, of course.

  He left his post at the window and searched back among the little ruined sheds, which stood behind the shack. He was not surprised by what he found there. For each of those three vagabonds in the house, there was a fine animal standing in the sheds — longlegged, beautiful animals, with the look of blood and speed written at large over them.

  Ordinary honest cowpunchers had no use for horses like these. Of what use would these long legs be, to be sure, when a man wanted to work cutting calves from a herd? How could these beasts manage to do the twisting and the dodging that would be necessary to follow the windings and charges of a mad-headed yearling? No, they were not meant for such work as that. They were intended, purely and simply, to cover the greatest amount of ground in the shortest possible time. They were useful exactly as the gray stallion was useful to Phil Slater. If he had wanted any further proofs of the nature of the three men who were in the house, he felt that he had them here.

  He was about to turn from the investigation of the last horse when there was the faintest of stirs behind him, and he whirled. He had not been long in danger on the trail; but instinct taught him to bring his Colt into his hand as he whirled about.

  A big, rosy-faced man was stepping into the doorway — a man with a round red pair of cheeks, curling white hair, and a pat of shaggy white eyebrows.

  “Hello, hello, hello!” said the fat stranger. “Have you come to put up at my hotel for the night?”

  “Your hotel?” asked Phil Slader.

  “I’m Don Remy,” said the fat man. “I suppose that everybody knew me by description if they didn’t by looks. It ain’t every county that can boast of a two-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, is it? Oh, yes, I’m Don Remy — I’m all that there is of him!”

  He laughed again and reached out a ponderous arm. His hand did not fall on the shoulder of Phil, who had slipped smoothly away.

  “There you are and there you ain’t,” said the fat man. “But what for are you side-stepping me? I ain’t a sheriff and a posse, am I?”

  “Look here,” said Phil, amused and a good deal puzzled by this speech, “why should I want to dodge a sheriff and a posse?”

  “Why for should you be here, then, if you don’t want to dodge some sheriff or other? Why, son, you wouldn’t try to pull the wool over the eyes of ‘Daddy’ Remy, would you?”

  He looked Phil over with an appreciative eye. “You look familiar to me, though. Look like somebody that I had seen before. But not lately — not lately. I’ll have to comb around in my memory and see what turns up! I’ll have to see what shows itself about you.”

  “You’ll find nothing,” said Phil. “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Tut, tut, young man!” said the fat fellow. “Don’t tell Daddy Remy that his memory is wrong. You know as well as I do that I’m never wrong. I always remember. In the end I can always remember, and I’ll remember you, son, and every word that I ever said to you and every look that was ever on your face in my seeing. I can remember anything. Why, kid, you look as though you didn’t believe me!”

  He did not seem offended, however, but waved his hand toward the blackness of the great outdoors. “Where’s your hoss, kid?”

  “I’ll get him, eh?”

  “Yes, you get him and bring him in. And I’ll shake down a feed for him.”

  “Wait,” said Phil. “It must cost you a lot to cart hay and such stuff up here!”

  “It costs me a lot but it pays me a lot,” said the fat man. “Why do you ask, son? Are you thinking of starting up an opposition shop against me?”

  “I wanted to say this,” said Phil Slader, “that I haven’t got any money.”

  “Ah, ah!” said the other. “I understand. Most of the boys don’t have anything when they get this far away from nowhere. While they got plenty of coin, they can afford to pay for protection down in some town. But when they get up here they’re flat. However, don’t you bother yourself none. I been a hotel keeper for thirty years. And in the first twenty years I’ll tell you what — I made enough coin to let me settle down up there and here I’ve been for the past ten years, keeping open shop for the boys, and never charged a penny in all that time!”

  He rubbed his great hands together and beamed upon Phil Slader. But as for Phil, he stared fixedly into the face of the fat man and marked a strange thing. For while the lips of Daddy Remy were stretching and grinning, while his voice was swelling with laughter and good cheer and his cheeks were puffing and dimpling with mirth, his eyes remained as large and steady as the eyes of an owl — great yellow eyes that met the glance of Phil Slader and encountered it without blinking — the very first man in all his life who could meet him look for look.

  “So get in your horse, son,” said the fat man. “And I’ll have the feed ready for him. And then let out your belt to the last notch, because there’s enough chuck in that house to fill your belly, not matter how lean it may be!”

  Phil Slader went obediently forth and found his horse and brought it back, and all the while his mind was busy with the riddle of the fat man who kept open house — open house in this tumble-down, desolate shack — to the haphazard guests who might chance to come to him.

  When he brought in Rooster, the eyes of the fat man glittered under his white brows like yellow diamonds.

  “Hello,” he cried. “Is this your style, son? Is this your style? Why, here I’ve been thinking that you were simply a fellow who had misplaced a few dollars that belonged to his boss. Or maybe that had taken a liking to some of the yearlings on the next ranch to yours
— but it seems that I’m wrong! Very wrong! Why, my son, when I see the looks of this horse — when I read his eye — I should say, bless me, that there must be a dead man behind you on your trail, eh? A dead man lying back there some place, eh?”

  He approached Phil Slader with a prodigious wink and prodded him in the ribs with a stiff thumb.

  “Aye,” said Don Remy, “I’d like to remember, if I could, where I’ve seen that face of yours. But amnesia is my trouble. Darned if I can remember all the things, that are loaded away in my head. Have to search for them. Have to comb them out fine to get at ’em. However, we ain’t gunna leave this hoss here. Bring him along behind me!”

  He brought Phil out of the shed and up the hillside to a little cluster of tall shrubs. Through these they passed and Don Remy opened a door, set aslant on the face of the ground, and showed a black cavity beneath it. Through this he passed and presently lighted a lantern which revealed a snug little stable with stalls for three horses.

  “All dry as you please,” he said to Phil. “Underground, but not damp. Smell the air and see for yourself. We’ll leave him here. Not that they can’t find him here, the thieves! But to get him out they’d have to make such a lot of noise that we’d hear them.”

  When they had put the stallion inside, Don Remy took Phil outside, closed the heavy door, locked and double locked it and gave him the key.

  “There we are!” said he. “And if they try to work a passkey on this lock, they’ll have no luck. I’ll tell you why — I made the lock myself!”

  With this he broke again into his booming laughter and then led the way back to the shanty.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  THE THREE HAD finished their meal when Phil and the landlord appeared. The old man was nursing a tin cup of black coffee; the other two were smoking cigarettes. They greeted Phil Slader with nods and most casual glances. So long as he faced them, they acted almost as though he were not in the room. But the moment that his head was turned, he knew by an extra sense, which all men possess, that their glances were prying restlessly at him.