Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Guttorm let out a cross between a moan and a howl. Then he looked to me. He’d made up his mind, when the hemorrhage came, that I was no good. The minute he heard the truth, he turned back to me.

  “‘It ain’t true, Doc?’ he says to me.

  “‘Certainly not,’ I said.

  “‘You scoundrel!’ bellows Guttorm at Larramee. ‘Get out!’

  “Larramee is a big man. But Guttorm picked him up by the neck and the seat of the trousers, the way big boys pick up little boys to throw them into the swimming pool. Guttorm threw Larramee through the door in exactly that manner. The doctor hit the ground, splashed a few curses around, and then got up, and swore he’d come back with a gun. Guttorm didn’t hear. He was back in Charlie’s room, stroking the brat’s forehead.

  “‘Take your hand away,’ says Charlie, ‘it’s rough.’

  “Guttorm came out into the next room with me.

  They’d brought him a couple of pounds of the first gold out of the new strike he made. He grabbed the bag out of his pocket and dropped it into mine.

  “‘You’re going to stick by us, Doc, ain’t you?’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t leave me now, just because I flew off the handle, and.—’

  “‘I’ll be with you as long as I can do the slightest good for you, Guttorm,’ I said. And he followed me all the way to the street, thanking me with tears in his eyes. By birth and education, Garrison, that Scandinavian is a fool. But to come back to this race. I understand it’s at five this afternoon. Shall I back Moonshine?”

  “As you please,” said Lee quietly.

  “Will anyone else in town bet on your horse, though, against a flash like Laughter?”

  “Everyone who ever tried to run Moonshine down with a string of horses, and there seem to be plenty of them here.”

  McLeod paused, spun his cane while he frowned at the ground, and then with a curt farewell was off down the street. Whatever his plans were, he was in haste to put them into execution. Lee looked after him with profound envy. If conscience is man’s most mortal disease, the doctor was immune to the plague.

  * * * * *

  A rider halted beside him with the dust spurting under the feet of his horse. “You’re Lee Garrison, ain’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Miss McGuire wants to know, can she see you?”

  He had felt that there was nothing in the world that would make him forget Moonshine and his melancholy, but this name in an instant brushed the clouds from the sky and let the kind sunshine fall upon him.

  “Sally McGuire? She wants to see me?”

  “She does. I dunno—” The messenger clamped his teeth on the rest of the sentence and twitched his cow pony around.

  “Wait a minute, partner. Where’s she now?”

  “the brown tent to your left, just outside of town.”

  Scratching for the start, the cow pony cast up a great fog of dust, and then drew away at a rapid gallop, while Lee headed for the store. There he purchased a shirt of blue China silk and a new scarlet bandanna, which, when the knot was turned under his chin, left a tip that flowed halfway down his back.

  These touches, he felt, made him presentable, but he stepped hastily into the street with an uncomfortable impression that he had kept her waiting long — far too long. He looked up at a sound of merriment, and in the upper story of the hotel, crowded into the narrow frame of a window, he saw Alice and another girl.

  When he paused, their laughter pealed again. No doubt she was rehearsing the story of how she had trimmed him. But the mockery could not harm him now. He stared up to her with an impersonal interest. Merciful shadows of evening and cunning art of makeup, how terribly they were needed now. But it seemed to Lee that he was seeing her not so much in the glare of the morning as in the light of Sally McGuire.

  He raised his sombrero to them — an act that strangely silenced their mirth — and walked on.

  XXIV. THE PROMISE

  IT WAS THE most sumptuous and house-like tent that Lee had ever seen. The furled sides exposed an interior so luxurious that he felt it was worthy of being put under glass. Even the ditch that had been trenched around the outside of the tent was set off with borders of little white stones, all of a size. Lee was filled with awe.

  A sound of hammering led him around to the side of the tent. There he saw Sally McGuire, driving a tent peg in deeper with a mallet. She swung it with wonderful grace, he thought. The wind curled the khaki dress about her, and there was a supple play in that lithe body from the waist to the strong, small wrists. It was a matter of secondary consideration that the mallet twisted awry in her hands and landed first on one side of the peg and then on the other, loosening it far more rapidly than it was driven into the earth.

  “If you’d let me help — ,” began Lee.

  She whirled on him, red of face. The vibrations of the pounding had shaken her hair loose, so that a strand of it coiled halfway down her cheek, and other strands were plastered to her forehead with perspiration. The wide felt hat that protected her from the sun sat crookedly upon her head. And even the red tie that girt the collar of her blouse was shifted far to the side. Smiles, to be sure, will redeem much, but the vexation that a pretty girl feels when fate exposes her in disarray left Sally McGuire in what can only be described as a staring rage. Such a mood as causes children to break their toys now made Sally McGuire fling the mallet upon the ground.

  And Lee was utterly bewildered. How could he recognize the pale-faced beauty of the evening before? But if an illusion of mystery were lost, who will not exchange the unapproachable beauty of a dream for daylight flesh and blood not altogether different from other girls? A few swift ministrations of her fingers and the stray threads of hair were tucked away, the hat and necktie righted. A great effort conjured the smile of polite greeting to her lips, but her eyes remained dark — there was a stinging blister raised by that infernal mallet on her right hand.

  “You sent for me.” said Lee.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Thank you for coming. And if you don’t put your hat on, you’ll get sunstroke.”

  He placed it on his head in haste. Of a surety this was not the sad-eyed girl of the night before. He was led inside the tent and a folding stool pointed out. There he sat with his hat in his hands between his knees, desperately conscious that his hair was blown on end and wagging in the breeze. She sat just opposite, her hands dropped in her lap, her eyes inescapably direct. Lee recognized the awe that spread over him. Many a time in his childhood he had felt it, when the schoolteacher turned on him, and he had chilly foreknowledge that he was about to be called on for an answer he did not know. Girls did not wear guns, decided Lee, because they did not need them.

  “It’s about the horse race,” she said, “your Moonshine against Laughter.” She paused, drew a little breath, and went on. “I understand that Laughter ought to win, but that there is a chance that she may fail.” It began to dawn on Lee that her crispness was an unnatural manner, and that she was badly frightened. “In fact, I understand you’re so sure of winning that you’ve bet your horse.”

  “I made that bet — yes.”

  “Very good,” she said. “Now, the point is, Mister Garrison, that for lots and lots of reasons Moonshine mustn’t win, and I’ll pay to see that he loses.”

  She drew out a checkbook and a pen. “How much does this race mean to you, Mister Garrison? Why I have courage to talk so frankly is simply because I understand that you make a business out of — chance, you know.”

  “They’ve told you I’m a gambler?”

  “I know,” she said with a faint smile. “You have to deny it, as a rule. But here is a time when you need not pretend. Not the least bit. I just want to finish this as quickly as I can. So tell me frankly, Mister Garrison, how much does this race mean to you in dollars and cents? Count in the price of the horse and all your bets — I won’t argue about the amount as long as it’s in reason.”

  With how neat an accuracy she laid the
last of her contempt upon him. He was a gambler — therefore, his very soul was for sale.

  “Other men are betting on my horse,” he said.

  “Other men can take their own chances. Besides, I’d pay back what they lose.”

  “You’re doing this for Mister Chandler?”

  “I’m asking you to name the amount, Mister Garrison.” It was consummate torture to sit so close to her contempt. But did she realize the full baseness of the thing she was asking him to do?

  “If Moonshine is winning,” he said, “you want me to pull him up and cheat the men who risked their money on him and me? And cheat Moonshine, too, when he’s fighting to win?”

  She fired up at that. “But if Laughter is beaten, the man who owns her will be beaten, too. And one more blow will break him — oh — I know it. He isn’t made to struggle for money. One more blow will finish him. What do I care for small points of honor? I’m fighting to save the soul of a man, and I’ll do it.”

  He could not help but remember those far-off days, when he had struggled down the trail, footsore, heartsick, and had seen the beauty of Moonshine on a hilltop above and beyond him. “Do you know how I got my horse?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I walked a thousand miles through the mountains, across five states.”

  “You walked?” she cried, amazed.

  “I was sitting in a dugout down in the Staked Plains, reading Malory. Do you know that book?”

  Her eyes were parted with her wonder as she nodded.

  “Well, into my dugout came a man that might have stepped right out of that book, except he was an American Indian. And he’d worn himself to death on the trail of a horse just the way the knights had once died for the Grail. I listened to him raving about Moonshine. I saw him die. And when I buried him — there was Moonshine, cutting across the hills, looking like he was made out of light. Oh, but he was glorious!”

  He stopped as that picture burned home in his mind. “I started after him the way I was — on foot. I kept walking till my feet were cut to pieces. I trailed him up into the mountains where I nearly froze. I trailed him down to the lava where I nearly died of thirst. I crossed the Colorado. I kept on going till my ammunition was gone. And, after it was gone, I lived on the sage hens and the grouse I could knock over with sticks and stones. I got thin and shriveled up with starving and no sleep. My hand was like the hand of an old man. But always Moonshine was galloping away ahead of me like there were wings on his feet. It seemed to me, if I could catch him, I’d die happy.

  “And sometimes I got into a rage. I wanted to ride him to death. I wanted to make him know that he had a master. And always he was getting thinner and weaker, until finally I managed to rope him.

  “He was too weak to buck me off, when I let him up. But off in the hills he heard a waterfall hollering like a hundred men, and the noise blowing away to a whisper and coming back with a shout. He couldn’t get me off any other way, so he ran for that waterfall to kill himself — to stay free! I saw what he was aiming at, but I stayed on. It seemed to me it was better to die fighting for him than to give up. We jumped off the cliff together and landed in the water beneath. I wasn’t hurt, but one of his hoofs was torn loose, and he was stunned.

  “Well, I dragged him on shore, dammed the water away, and tied up the hoof with mud and bark. There I stayed week after week, waiting for the hoof to get well, wondering if it would heal so he could walk on it, and all the time getting thicker and thicker with that horse. I pulled up grass to feed him. I built a shelter for him. And all those weeks I was happy. He got so he could hobble around on three feet, with the bad foot held up in a sling to keep it from hitting the ground, and him that I’d hated and trailed that thousand miles — he’d come to me, when I whistled — he’d come to me when I called.”

  He threw back his head with his eyes closed, trembling with the joy of that great time.

  “He’d eat from my hand. He’d lie down at my feet. He’d follow me like a friend. Then the great day came. I took the sling off and let his foot touch the ground. Would he be able to walk, or was he lame for life? I couldn’t bear to look to see. I closed my eyes.”

  Lee shuddered with the horror of it. “Then I heard him begin to trot away, and he was hobbling just on three feet. He was ruined forever, I thought, and it made me sick. I’m not a praying man, but I lifted up my head with my eyes still shut and begged God to help him. And a minute later I heard Moonshine galloping — galloping with all four hoofs striking the ground, and I knew I’d won — I knew I’d won.

  “We started on, with me on his back. His strength and his speed came back. He was like a king, but, when I spoke to him, he went slow or fast as I told him, and, when I touched his neck, he’d turn. Then, one day, we came on a wild herd, and Moonshine went mad at the sight of them. And it seemed to me it was better to lose him forever, if he wanted to go, than to keep him with me when half of his heart all the rest of his life would be aching to be off running with the band he’d been king of. So I got off him. I told him to go. And he went like the wind.”

  “Oh, no, no,” breathed the girl.

  “But he came back!” cried lee, throwing out his hands in exultation. “He came back to me, and, when Moonshine found I wouldn’t go with him, he went on with me.”

  He called himself back from the story. He saw her face again, and there were great tears in her eyes.

  “You see,” he said gently, “that’s why it’s hard to give him up. I simply couldn’t give him up.”

  “Oh,” she said, “what a beautiful story. I didn’t know — how could I dream — ?” She bit her lip, as though one part of her sentence would be better unspoken. She dropped her face in her hands, lost in thought. “But, after all,” she said, when she looked up, “you’ll only lose Moonshine for a few days. There is no reason why I should keep the secret. I am to marry Harry Chandler, and, after we are married, I can persuade him to give back your horse. It’s only a question of telling him the story you have told me.”

  Lee shook his head. “Nobody could give up Moonshine,” he said.

  “But I promise! Oh, Harry is the soul of generosity and honor. That’s the very thing that has spoiled all his chances. There’s no germ of the money-maker in him, and he’s sworn he will not marry me until he can support me without my fortune. But money is nothing to me. My father has made ten fortunes and piled them one on another. My mother made me rich in my own name. It means nothing to give you whatever the loss of this race may be worth to you. But, while it means nothing to me, it is everything to Harry. Today he’s taking his last chance. If he fails — he’ll ride out of my life and into some wild adventure — I know — I know!”

  There was no more storm and defiance. She had clasped her hands together in entreaty, and Lee could no longer resist that tugging at his heartstrings. He stood up.

  “Then Moonshine will lose,” he said. “I’ll give my word.”

  “God bless you!” cried Sally McGuire. “And now the money — ?”

  “I’ll manage that, some way. But I can’t take charity, you see.”

  She blocked his escape. “Mister Garrison! What are you going to do?”

  “What I’ve given my word I’ll do.”

  “But — ?”

  “Will you do one favor for me?”

  “Yes, yes — and the check will be whatever.—”

  “Will you try on this glove?”

  He drew out the old, tattered glove he had carried so far, and she, bewildered, slipped her hand into it. It fitted to a minute perfection, and, just as he had imagined, the rosy tip of a finger projected through the torn end.

  “What does it mean?” asked Sally McGuire, as she stripped it off and returned it to him.

  It seemed to Lee that emotion would choke him. Fate, then, must have taken a hand and guided him from the shanty among the mountains to the girl who had lived in it.

  “It means nothing,” stammered Lee, and took advantage of her wo
nder to slip past her, through the doorway, and into the night.

  XXV. SHEEP VALLEY

  THE UPROAR FROM the mines was ending as he left, token that Crooked Creek was already leaving the mines to gather for the race. The sunshine was neither bright nor warm as he went down the street again, and he noted the increased length of the shadows that meant the time for his parting with Moonshine was not far off. He turned to glance back at the tent, but Sally McGuire was not standing at the entrance to call him back and restore his promise. Instead, his eyes glanced upward to that mountain capped with white rock now thrusting so high into the tender blue of heaven. A curse had fallen upon him from that landmark toward which so many others were hurrying, even now, as the goal of hope.

  He shut himself up in his room for an hour. Even Billy Sidney could not come. It was not until the time for the race was close at hand that he went out again. He found a crowd around the corral. Little Gus Tree stepped out to meet him.

  “Well,” he chuckled, “I see that you ain’t on your way for the mines yet? You ain’t started with a drill and a single-jack, son?” Coming a bit closer, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Moonshine. “Shall I get money down on him, son? Don’t seem to me like he has the legs to stand off that Laughter here. But I ain’t a hoss-flesh expert. You tell me what to think, will you, Garrison, and I’ll do my talking in hard cash.”

  “You may be rich,” said Lee bitterly, “but you’d have to be terribly rich to afford to bet on Moonshine.”

  “Unless the weight of Harry breaks Laughter down?”

  “That won’t happen, I guess.”

  “Then why the devil are you racing against — ?” The barber stepped away, shaking his head solemnly. “I dunno how you figure this, Garrison. You’re certainly deep.”

  Lee pressed past him until he heard the voice of Billy Sidney and saw that ancient worthy in an attitude of commanding importance.

  “No other hoss in the world,” Billy was saying, “would’ve lived through the busting that this hoss took. But they’s only one Moonshine. Put your money where you please, boys, but, when Garrison finished betting Moonshine against Laughter, he turns around to me and says— ‘Billy, was there anything easier than that, ever? But it’s a shame to take his mare away from — here he is now — Lee!”