by Max Brand
“And that’s Crawford — man-eating Crawford — that’s all he is — yaller, yaller, yaller! I walked out of his place all holler inside to think that a thing like him should look so much like a man. Out in the air, I took a glimpse at my gun and seen that it wasn’t loaded, but it might’ve been a whole cannon, Garrison, for all of Crawford. No, sir, you couldn’t get a Chinaman to step inside of Crawford’s boots today, he’s that low.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lee. “I’m sure sorry for the poor devil. Did you come down to tell me that story?”
The old man snorted. “I thank heaven,” he said, “that I ain’t one of them that has to have reasons for everything they do. Sumpthin’ told me that I’d better slide down here early this morning. Down I come, and the lady of the house says that you ain’t up. ‘It don’t make no difference,’ says I. ‘I’ll wait till he wakes up.’
“‘Mister,’ says she, ‘I don’t know’s I know you.’
“‘I don’t know as you do,’ says I, ‘and I’m sorry for you. Kindly step out of the way.’
“Polite but turrible firm. That’s me with women folk.
Give ’em an inch, and they take a mile. I never give ’em that inch of a fingerhold to start with. Well, sir, I come in here, and what d’you think I see? I seen you, lying there with the sun on your face. Was it spirits that brought me clean the length of the town to put that chair there to keep your eyes shaded? I dunno, but here I been sitting ever since, watching out that nothing happens. I can see that you need a pile of watching, son. Did they break you last night before you finished?”
And Lee Garrison knew that the old fellow had adopted him.
“If they did,” he said, “there’s plenty more money to be won at Lefhvre’s.”
“No, sir,” said Billy. “First thing I’m going to do is to break you of that gambling habit, son.”
“You think you could cure me, Billy?”
“If patience will do it,” asserted Billy Sidney, “I’m the most outlastingest gent that ever you seen.”
“In the meantime,” said Lee, “hadn’t I better try one more whirl while I’m getting some coin to start on?”
“Money? Money ain’t nothing that counts,” said the old man. He drew out a wallet and tossed it to Lee. “Use that,” he said, “and, when it’s gone, something else will turn up. Ever notice that nobody starves in this heaven- blessed world of ours?”
Lee raised the worn leather wallet. “This is about all you’ve got in that same heaven-blessed world, isn’t it?”
“Ain’t I just been saying that money don’t count?” snapped out Billy. “They’s five hundred in that. It ain’t so much, and it ain’t so little, if you go easy when you’re spending.”
Lee tossed the wallet back to the old man’s lap. “You’ve got a good heart, Billy,” he said, “and you think you’ve got hold of some wild, man-killing, gold-eating wildcat. But I’m not, Billy. I’m none of those things.”
The old man gazed upon Lee with gentle eyes.
“This town thinks it knows me, but it doesn’t,” argued Lee. “It’s all a misunderstanding. I’ve won some money by blind luck, and most likely I’ll never win another penny. I don’t need anyone to ride herd on me, Billy. I’m not a troublemaker. Will you believe me?”
“Sure I will,” said Billy Sidney. “You’re a lamb, you are. You’re plumb covered with soft fleece, I guess. Yep, they all figure the same way — they all figure that they’re flying around like doves of peace.”
“Aren’t you going to believe me?” cried Lee.
“I believe every word you say, son. Sure I do. I ain’t come to ride herd on you. Shucks, no. I’m just here to pass the time of day and keep out any badmen that might come in here and bother a peaceful fellow like you and get your nerves shook up.”
Lee lay back on the bed and laughed feebly. With or without his assent, he felt that a partnership had been formed.
XXII. THE CHALLENGE
“TELL ME WHAT they’ve been saying about me today,” asked Lee with painful eagerness.
Bad Luck Billy Sidney grinned. “They say you’re one of them quiet gents that thinks every day is Sunday,” he said.
“Tell me the truth,” pleaded Lee.
“Well,” admitted Billy, “I had a look at some red-eye in that new dump the man from Chicago is opening up.”
“They were talking about the fool I made of myself last night, I guess,” muttered Lee.
“They was talking about how Crawford left town last night,” chuckled the old man. “Out he slipped before dawn, and whipped his hosses down the valley. But he can’t travel so fast and so far that the news of what he is won’t come along and catch up with him, the yaller dog! Come to think of it, they was a little talk about you, too. I guess that surprises you, maybe?” And he winked at Lee.
“You’ve got a talent for picking up the news, Billy.”
“It ain’t a talent — it’s a gift,” said Billy. “I don’t do nothing but sit still and pretty soon gents begin to tell me all about themselves. Just keeping still works better than asking questions.”
“But what were they saying?” insisted Lee impatiently.
“They were saying,” chuckled Billy with another wink, “that for a gent that don’t make a business of it, you sure got a pile of luck, son. You raked in a lot of admiration, Garrison. And, you got Harry Chandler so worked up that he wants to run Laughter ag’in’ Moonshine. About a thousand gents have been going up to Harry and saying that they thought Moonshine was a finer set-up hoss than Laughter, and that he’d just nacherally walk away from the mare, if they had a race. But Harry’ll be along and talk to you about it, most like. He’s a-ramping and a-raving. It’s plumb blasphemy to him, this talk that any hoss in the mountains can run faster than Laughter. Would you bet on Moonshine ag’in’ the mare?”
Lee Garrison laughed and waved his hand.
“She’s a clean-bred one,” cautioned the old man.
But Lee had passed beyond thought of horses. “I saw a girl with Harry last night,” he said.
“Can you see Harry when there ain’t a girl with him?” asked Billy. “Was it in Lefhvre’s?”
“It was outside. She was pale and kind of dark-eyed. And she looked sort of young.”
“That might be a dozen,” observed Billy Sidney. “I never seen a camp like this — Gus Tree says that he ain’t, either. Gents have brung along wives and daughters like they was going homesteading, instead of mining — which ain’t such a bad idea, at that, to have a woman along for cooking and such, and leave both of a man’s hands free for breaking rock. That reminds me—”
“If you have ever seen the girl I’m talking about,” said Lee thoughtfully, “you wouldn’t be saying that there’re any others like her, because there aren’t. You mind that I don’t mean she’s the kind that a gent would turn around to stare at, when she went by him in the street, but he’d wake up in the middle of the night and see her face as plain as though daylight was on it.”
Billy Sidney was staring at him with black disapproval, and spelled out the words of his answer with oracular reluctance.
“Maybe the — lady — you seen,” he said, with the word lady set off by both pause and emphasis, “maybe the lady you seen, Garrison, was McGuire’s girl. Maybe it was Sally McGuire. She’s going to marry Harry — of course, you know that?”
Lee Garrison rose, crossed the room, and stared out the window. “They’ll make an uncommonly fine-looking couple,” he said.
“They will,” said the old man with equal gravity.
“But why aren’t there crowds around her?”
“There was until Harry got mixed in, and then they seen there was no chance. Competition don’t prosper none around Harry. He’s got the looks. And he’s a hellbender in a fight.”
“Him!” exclaimed Lee. “He looks more like a four-o’clock tea.”
“Sure he does. But the reason I been telling you all this, Garrison, is because I knowed he was coming, an
d I want to warn you. Please don’t make no slips when you’re chinning with Harry. And he ain’t fifty steps down the street right now.”
He was even closer. The words were hardly out of Billy’s mouth, when big Harry Chandler stood at the open door and nodded a greeting to them.
“If Billy is here,” said Harry, “you know the talk that’s going around the town, Garrison. They’ve gone wild over Moonshine. I’ve had a steady string of men dropping in to bet me that the stallion can beat my mare. They’ve worn me out, as a matter of fact, so I’ve come over to see what you think of a race.”
“I’ve never seen the mare,” said Lee.
Chandler lighted a cigarette and studied Lee for a moment through a veil of smoke before he answered. “Suppose we take a look at her, then?”
So they crossed the street. Behind the line of houses, in a box stall far more solidly and spaciously built than most of the houses in Crooked Creek, they looked in at Laughter. She was one of those glossy, night-dark browns which a sheen of perspiration turns into glistening black. She came to meet them with pricking ears and nibbled mischievously at the hand that Chandler held out to her.
It was a beautiful head, wide across the brow, bony, small-muzzled, and with great dark eyes like the eyes of a deer. Lee Garrison looked on her with delight, then stepped behind the stall with the others. Viewed from the side, she was a new chapter in his knowledge of horses. Long-barreled, thin of belly, she had what seemed to Lee an awkward length of leg. For the quick-dodging, twisting work of a roundup she would be worse than useless. How she could carry the weight of Harry through a single day was a mystery.
But there was a reason. Along the sloping shoulders and down the thigh to the hock she was muscled like a greyhound. There was ample bone, too, and plenty of girth where the forward cinch runs, and where size means lung power. Yes, she had strength to spare to drive those spindling legs, but every ounce of her muscle was placed at the point of greatest need.
“If a man was to ask me,” said Billy Sidney, “I’d say that her and Moonshine ain’t made for the same sort of running. Give her a nice stretch of flat land and not too far to go, and you couldn’t catch her, if you had a saddle on the wind. But over tough going through the hills Moonshine would break her heart in half an hour. That’s my idea.”
“No one has asked you for your idea!” said Chandler with violence. “I followed Moonshine for three days on this horse and couldn’t lay a rope on him — he made a fool of us.”
“Because Moonshine was carrying nothing but his skin, and Laughter had a couple of hundred pounds on her back,” mused Lee.
“I understand,” said Chandler, leading the way out of the stall. “Your horse is for show purposes, Garrison, not for use.”
Lee winced, for half a dozen men had gathered about them, and others were coming in the distance. To deny Moonshine before the world would be almost like denying his God.
“You’ve got a sprinter,” he said, “and I’ve got a long-distance horse. If we could fix up a race that would be fair to both of ’em — ?”
“Why,” said Harry smoothly, “occasionally stakes are run up to distances as high as two miles and a quarter. What about a two-mile race, Garrison?”
But Lee shook his head. “If it were ten — ,” he began.
“I’ve been speaking of a race,” broke in Chandler, “not a day’s march. Suppose we compromise and make it three miles. That is surely enough for any horse.”
“That’s quite a ways,” said someone in the gathering crowd, and there was a murmur of assent.
“Moonshine would clean her up in two miles, even,” said another. “Ain’t you got any faith in your hoss, Garrison?”
“He doesn’t like the idea of a race,” said Chandler to the crowd.
“Make it four miles,” said Lee.
“Ah,” exclaimed Harry, “he’ll run his horse against Laughter at four miles! Garrison, I accept. We try them out this afternoon in Sheep Valley.”
And he held out his hand. Instinctively Lee took it, although the warning voice of Bad Luck Billy cried: “Sheep Valley is as level as the palm of your hand. Not there, Garrison!”
“He’s shaken hands on it,” said Chandler, grinning. “The bargain is made, Billy. Go croak in another place.”
And Lee, with despair, turned toward Laughter, where she stood at the door of her stall, watching them with bright eyes. He had been trapped.
“As for the bet to bind the bargain,” went on Harry, lighting another cigarette, “name anything you wish. I’ll try to cover it — anything up herself.”
“Whatever you want,” said Lee wretchedly.
“Moonshine against Laughter, then — the winner takes the other horse. Shake again on that, Garrison.”
There was a stir of excitement in the crowd as it thickened. But Lee stepped back.
“Risk the horse on the race? Good heaven, no!”
“I thought the sky was the limit,” said Harry to the spectators. “But, of course, a horse race is not run in Lefhvre’s.”
There was a subdued chuckle. And it maddened Lee. That imp of the perverse that makes us torture the very things we love had him by the throat.
“Moonshine against Laughter, then!” he cried hoarsely. “And there’s my hand on it, Chandler.”
There was no chance to retract. He looked down in sick horror at the strong fingers of Chandler, clasping his hand.
How he broke through the crowd and regained his room, he never could tell afterward. But there he threw himself downward on the bunk, covering his eyes with darkness. Like a vain child, he had thrown Moonshine away because he dreaded the scorn of a crowd.
XXIII. THE MESSAGE
FOR A LONG hour he lay there, seeing always that vision of Laughter galloping ahead. When he stood up, Bad Luck Billy Sidney was again sitting in the sun, whittling at the stick — an endless task, for he struck off shavings so thin that the sun gleamed through them as they fell. So deep was the thought of Billy that he did not lift his head as Lee left the room and went out to the corral.
He found it, as usual, with a group of onlookers ranged along the fences. But on this occasion they were not standing in the customary silence, dreaming over the horse. Instead, they talked eagerly, with many gestures. From the distance more men were coming in businesslike haste. The first words he heard left no doubt as to the nature of these spectators. Every man there had placed a bet with Harry on the result of the race between Moonshine and Laughter. The news of the duel was spreading as fast as Harry could travel through Crooked Creek, laying his wagers.
“Five hundred of coin I’ve sweated for,” said one, “is on your back, you gray devil.”
“I spent two thousand cold trying to catch you, beauty,” said another. “Run for me today and win it back!”
A sallow-faced man, smoking a cigar, came with a notebook in his hand, recording bets. He was making a drive on Laughter, and from the fence he looked over the gray and the gray’s owner.
“Tolerable good news you got there, son,” he said. “Certainly looks like he could stand up all day. Laying any money?”
“He’s betting the hoss,” answered the crowd in an admiring murmur. “He’s betting Moonshine on the race!”
The backer of Laughter removed his cigar. “Well, sir,” he said, “that’s what I call sporting. I’m Henry Dexter, sir.” They shook hands. “You got to pardon me, if my money and my heart goes with the clean-bred ones, Mister Garrison. Laughter is a lovely mare, sir, and she carries my coin. But good fortune to you. If your hoss has as much courage as you have, sir, he’ll give the mare a race.”
But Lee heard him through a mist. There was only one daylight reality, and that was the beauty of Moonshine. Moonshine, who would wear the saddle of another man tomorrow, and learn in time to raise his head and prick his ears, when Harry Chandler spoke.
He went back to the street, and there he met McLeod, swinging along with one hand dropped in his coat pocket and the other spinning
a cane. He hurried to Lee.
“i can’t say that you’re wasted in your present profession,” he said, “but you might be in advertising, Garrison. You put them asleep at night with your name on every lip, and you waken them in the morning with the same sound. What’s this about the race — about Moonshine and Laughter?”
Lee studied the rascal with peculiar interest. That which is wholly evil is often wholly delightful, and in the tumult of dread and wretched expectation that possessed him it was pleasant to be distracted, even by McLeod.
“A four-mile race?” went on McLeod. “But Laughter is a lightning flash, Garrison. She blows over the ground like a black leaf in the wind. She — why, with training she would be close to a stake horse, Henry Dexter says. And he ought to know. Is it true that you’ve bet? Have you really gone deep?”
“I’ve bet Moonshine to win,” answered Lee. And he half wished that he could lead the doctor to plunge the same on the lost cause.
“Moonshine to win! That’s betting. What’s the scheme, Garrison? Well, I’ve half a mind to follow your lead — but Laughter is a witch.”
“Is Charlie better?” asked Lee.
“Turning the subject, eh?” chuckled McLeod. “But I don’t mind. No, Charlie is on his last legs. Guttorm began to see through the fog I’ve drawn around him. This morning, Charlie had a hemorrhage, and Guttorm ran all the way to the far end of town, dragged Doc Larramee out of bed, and made Larramee run all the way back with him. Larramee is a hardy scoundrel. No more care for a man’s feelings than for a piece of stone. He spent thirty seconds looking at Charlie. I was sitting in the next room, waiting, and I timed him. Then he came out.
“‘What can be done?’ says poor Guttorm. ‘It’s only a little setback? He’s coming through all right?’
“‘He’ll die before two days,’ says Larramee.