Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Glancing back, Lee saw the mare coming like a bullet. She had her head now, and presently she forced swiftly past him with the ugly face of Buddy Slocum turned toward him with a mocking grin.

  Little by little the mare drew clear. She was seventy yards away with only the last mile of the race before them.

  And yet with unhesitant courage he still poured every scruple of energy into his work. Those at the finish line could see that the black led, but they could not see by how far, and over their heads the sombreros danced and swung as they cheered on their favorites. Lee could see tall figures thrust up where one climbed on the shoulders of his companions for a clearer estimate.

  To finish thirty lengths behind, there was disgrace for which no difference in weight could account! Those scattering outposts who had advanced this far down the course to watch the running of the middle of the race were either slapping one another upon the back and laughing uproariously, or else they were stunned and silent.

  In dreary amazement Lee studied the tall black, but it seemed to him that she no longer swept along with the same frictionless stride that had carried ground so easily during the first three miles of the running. She was throwing her forelegs a trifle out of line, as though she had begun to pound a little. Presently she stumbled heavily, slowed, and was thrust into the bit again by a smart blow of Slocum’s whip. He was not keeping that tight rein to hold her in. He was merely riding her as she was accustomed to being ridden, not with the free head and the long rein of a cow pony, but well in hand every instant to keep her straight at full speed, and hold her up when she tired. And she was tiring now. A stumble to a fresh horse is a spur that makes it dart away at redoubled speed as though to leave the shame behind, but a tired horse takes advantage of any interruption to slacken efforts. Not that Laughter was by any means spent. Her faltering was the thing of an instant. Lee Garrison, far in the rear, barely noticed it, but he saw enough to make him guess the rest, and he called on Moonshine with a great voice.

  And there was an answer. In that great heart of Moonshine there was still an untapped reservoir of strength. The mare no longer drew away. She was held even. She began to come back. For that weary pressure of the wind was telling heavily. And Lee, riding not to win, but only to save the honor of his horse, stiffened in the saddle and yelled like an Indian on the warpath.

  Buddy Slocum jerked around to look, and in that moment he let Laughter founder into half a dozen strides of sand fetlock-deep. The soft going cut her speed in two. She struck the soft ground as though she had run into a wall, and came laboring onto firm going again. She had still a twenty-length lead, and the finish was a scant half mile away, but Buddy Slocum, feeling the tall mare labor and pound, and maddened by the cut of the wind against his face, lost his head.

  He snatched out his whip and went after her. She had been running confidently, rejoicing in her work as a good horse should, but now she saw the stallion gaining and felt the man who rode her go into a panic. Instead of the even pressure on the reins, reassuring her, there was a series of jerks and that whizzing whip seared her flanks. The panic of the rider ran into the horse. She bolted in a frenzy for two hundred yards, and then began to stop as though crushing weights had been added to her burden.

  Yet she could not lose! The finish was a scant quarter mile away, and twenty lengths behind came the gray; yet even a tyro now could mark the laboring gallop of the black. And Moonshine, in effort after effort, unwhipped and unspurred, increased his speed. He could tell that he gained even as Lee could tell, and the knowledge was to them as wine to the weary.

  And the head of Laughter was coming up — she was spent, indeed! Not that she gave up. No, the advantage she held was too great for that, and, if her heart was breaking, she was uplifted by the creed of an ancient ancestry that died, but never surrendered. No need of the cruel whip or the spurs that were goring her flanks to crimson. She was pouring out the last scruple of her strength, and, still five hundred yards from the end, she led by fifteen lengths, by forty mortal yards.

  It was enough to have settled all but one race in a thousand, but the men of Crooked Creek seemed to feel that this was perhaps the thousandth event, and were transformed, one and all, into rioting wild men. And every shout, it seemed to Lee, was a fresh source of energy that helped Moonshine on. He himself was stammering, groaning at the ear of the stallion. The sands washed dizzily beneath them. It seemed almost that the earth whirled and carried them back, when he looked down. But here was Laughter borne back and back with shortening stride and head jerking.

  A furlong away the rioting of the crowd grew less and less. Man after man was frozen into position by the agony of suspense. Some crouched and stretched out their arms with contorted faces. Some were turned to stone in the midst of cheer or groan, and, as the deep shouting of the men fell away, it was possible to hear the shrilling of the women more distinctly. Only a furlong away the sheriff was cursing the crowd back to clear the finish line, and now gallant Moonshine stretched his nose within four lengths of the blowing tail of the mare.

  He was weary, and he had done enough for honor. So long as he lived and that race was spoken of, every man would tell how the impost of extra weight had beaten him — never the speed of Laughter. Then it was that, at the side of the mob, Lee saw Sally McGuire with her hands clasped, her form bowed in the pain of waiting. He must draw rein. Slowly, with a breaking heart, he began to pull back while under the pressure he felt a shudder go through the gray — but more testimony that the harmony of effort between them was broken.

  Someone was shrieking hoarsely from the side: “Moonshine! Moonshine!” It was Billy Sidney, fallen on his knees, with his bony fists brandished in the air. Such a frenzy came on Lee Garrison as had swept him away when the gray turned toward the roar of the waterfall, that day so long ago. In an instant he was helping the stallion toward the line, and at every jump they gained. Rapidly the empty daylight between them was eaten away. Fifty yards away was the crowd, and men were turning their backs rather than see the inevitable. But it was not inevitable. The heart of Moonshine was deep as a well, and to the very bottom it was filled with clear courage.

  His nose was on her hip. It slipped onto her girth. Surely, enough had been done for the honor of Moonshine now! And Lee tightened the reins again and relaxed. And Moonshine was relaxed beneath him. The race was lost!

  But how could Buddy Slocum tell that, when he saw the gray head at the shoulder of his mare? How could he tell that in another stride the stallion would be falling back? He turned a face black with insane rage and fear.

  “Damn you!” he shouted, and slashed Moonshine straight across the face with the heavy lash of his whip.

  It seemed to Lee Garrison that cowardly blow fell on his own heart. The thought of the girl and the promise were erased from his mind.

  “Moonshine!” he shouted. “Moonshine!”

  The good horse had not winced from the blow. He flung himself forward across the line. Lee looked back. The sheriff had raised his sombrero in one hand and his naked revolver in the other. The silence of the crowd was like the silence of a church.

  “Moonshine by half a head!” he yelled.

  XXVII. A VISIT FROM GUTTORM

  MOONSHINE, BLACKENED WITH sweat, raised a high head with eyes that seemed to be searching the blue peaks of the distance but that were, in fact, waiting for the voice of the master. The voice did not speak, for Lee had seen Sally McGuire cover her face with her hands, and then turn and start slowly back for the town with a gray-headed man beside her.

  Yonder stood Laughter, her head low and her legs braced. Buddy Slocum had been torn from the saddle and literally kicked the first hundred feet of the distance back to Crooked Creek. Now Harry Chandler led the mare toward Garrison, and he mechanically dismounted to meet the vanquished. All about them, losers and winners hushed their noise to watch, and Harry met the crisis in the most kingly manner. The excitement brought color to his face. He carried his head high, and even managed
to muster a faint smile. Lee Garrison, with bowed head and gloomy face, seemed more the picture of a defeated man. Chandler took his hand and shook it heartily.

  “If Laughter had won,” he said, “after that scoundrelly trick of Slocum’s, I should have given you the race and the horse anyway, Garrison. But here she is. Good luck goes with her.”

  It was very well done, that speech of congratulation. It was one of those things that sends a chilly prickle down the backs of the bystanders. But Lee, patting the wet forehead of the mare lightly, touched Harry by the arm as he was turning away.

  “But I’ve got a horse,” said Lee, “that does for my needs pretty well. Chandler, I can’t take her. She’s yours.”

  It was too much for Harry. His nerve crumpled.

  “D’you think I’d take charity, Garrison? Give her away, if you don’t want her. Feed her to the dogs. I’m through with her!”

  And with a contorted face, more maddened by the knowledge that he had destroyed the effect of his previous acting, he plunged through the mob and was gone. That departure cost only a momentary cloud, however. Even the men who had backed Laughter heavily declared that the race they had seen was worth the money they had lost, and Lee Garrison was escorted back to the town as a conquering hero.

  If he were a gambler, at least he seemed a straight one, and of his generosity as victor they had been witnesses. Ten minutes saw him mounted from the trough of suspicion to the crest of popularity. But in that time of victory, as they went slowly back toward the town, with the black mare led behind by half a dozen willing hands, Lee Garrison saw one thing only: Sally McGuire as she bowed her face in her hands and turned away.

  In the dark of the evening, when he managed to slip from the crowd, he went straight to his room with an aching need for solitude. But there he found Billy Sidney, waiting like an actor for the rise of the curtain. The old man stood beside the bunk, over which he had thrown his coat. He was smoking a pipe with his thumbs thrust under his suspenders — an attitude of calm weariness with life that was quite gainsaid by the flashing of his eyes.

  “Well,” he said, “I got the bets down.”

  “Good for you, Billy.”

  “And I brought the winnings in. It ain’t much. There’s been more coin than this got together here and there. But — here it is, Lee. Here’s all there is.”

  He jerked the coat away and exposed the top of the heavy bunk groaning under a ponderous mass of gold coin, untarnishable, shimmering yellow. He shoveled from his pockets fresh handfuls that he had kept there for the final effect. Gold showered upon gold with a musical chiming.

  “We cleaned up the camp!” shouted Billy Sidney, fairly dancing around the room with joy. “Look at it, Lee! When I started betting, I was hollow-hearted. I was sure sick at the thought of backing Moonshine against that long-legged mare with the midget on her back. Right away came a rush of Laughter money. They offered me two to one. I took it in small chunks. It broke me all up to be throwing that gold coin away. But still I kept at it in little bets here and there. When they went up to the start, I was getting three to one, and, when Laughter went floating away as the race began, I got five to one. I bet a whole thousand ag’in’ five thousand. And I could’ve gone on betting for ten to one as the race went on, but all the money was gone.”

  He could not resist plunging his fingers into the mass as he spoke. As he raised his hands, a rain of money clattered down, some falling unheeded on the floor.

  Mrs. Samuels, her eyes pressed to the keyhole, nearly fainted at the sight of coined gold underfoot. Had she not been already on her knees, she might have fallen. But Lee Garrison had sunk wearily on his bunk.

  “Billy,” he said, “I want one thing more’n money. I want to be alone.”

  Billy Sidney loosed with a single crash all the coins that remained in his hands. Then he nodded in admiration. “Still scheming — never satisfied,” he said. “Well, that’s the way with a genius.” And he stole softly through the door.

  Now that he was alone, Lee blew out the lamp, but the darkness was no more merciful. He could see her only the more clearly. And he was glad when his door was opened. But it was not Billy Sidney returning. It was the heavy voice of Olie Guttorm that spoke.

  “Garrison — are you here?”

  “I’m here. I’ll light the lamp, Olie.”

  “I don’t want no light. I can say what I got to say better in the dark.”

  He closed the door, and Lee heard the sound of heavy breathing. He fumbled for his revolver and found it. Then he waited again.

  The voice of Guttorm began, again choked away to guttural murmurs, and finally was audible: “Garrison, it’s come. I thought that the doctor could save Charlie for me. Did it seem much for a smart man like him to do? I ask you, Garrison?”

  “No.”

  “And McLeod worked hard. He got right down on his knees by the bed and worked hard. But it wasn’t no good. Charlie began to roll his eyes and look every way at once and see nothing. I seen, then, that McLeod couldn’t help. Nobody could help. It was the whip for me because of what I done to you. When a man does wrong, he’s trying to cheat God.

  “I picked up Charlie in my arms and run outside with him where the breathing would be easier. But he kept on gasping. I tried to make a bargain. I called out— ‘God Almighty, don’t kill Charlie for what I done myself. I’ll give Garrison his half. I’ll tell that he made the strike.’”

  The voice of the prospector swelled to thunder, then fell away.

  “It wasn’t no good. It was too late to draw back then. Charlie was fighting for his breath. He begun to beat me in the face. I kept telling him to fight hard. But pretty soon he stopped hitting me, and I took him back into the light. All I was holding in my arms was nothing. My Charlie was gone away from me.”

  When he could speak again, he said slowly: “I went to Judge Brown. I told him what I owed you, and that half of my mines belonged to you by rights. He done some writing. I signed it, and here it is.”

  He found Garrison and stuffed the paper into his hand.

  “I kept a-hoping, somehow,” said Guttorm. “I dunno why. But it seemed after I’d signed that paper that Charlie would come back. He didn’t seem no more’n around the corner from me. I run all the way from the judge’s shanty to my house. But Charlie’s eyes are still closed, and he’s still smiling. He ain’t going to change.”

  He drew a great, noisy, sobbing breath, turned with the floor creaking beneath his tread, and went slowly from the house. The front door slammed behind him. The heavy footfalls went up the street, and the rustling of the paper in the dark told Lee that he was rich.

  Rich? It meant no more to him than the sound of dead leaves in a wind. It seemed that the smallness of the room crowded the picture of Sally McGuire relentlessly upon him, and at last he went out into the darkness behind the house. Moonshine whinnied plaintively from the corral.

  He listened, unmoved, to that call. Wondering at himself, he felt the dark anger cloud his mind. A day before there would have seemed nothing too great to do for the sake of the wild horse, but now he knew that there is a price on all but one thing in the world, and the price of Moonshine had been exceeded. That beautiful, strong body that the starlight now glimmered over was still his, and the scorn and the hatred of Sally were his also.

  Yet, automatically, he went on to the fence of the corral. He had formed the habit of going near Moonshine whenever he was in trouble, but now, when the horse came near, he folded his arms on the top of a fence and dropped his head upon them. He would not raise his face even when the stallion sniffed his face, even when the stallion sniffed at his hair and whinnied in anxiety almost as faint as a human whisper.

  XXVIII. TO THE CAPTAIN

  THE TRUTH CAME to him slowly, as his head lay on his arms. Whatever hope of one day winning Sally had glimmered before him, as the star haunts the pilot, was now vanished. He was roused to the dark reality of earthly fact. Harry Chandler was the man she loved, and that wi
thout him she could never be happy. And if he loved her, all Lee could do was to bring her marriage to Chandler closer to realization. It would be like a pouring forth of blood, such a work. It would be more torment than all the long agony of the trail behind Moonshine, for that labor was undertaken in his own behalf, and this would be for another.

  And to close the last door of hope and bolt it firmly shut is a grisly task. When Lee stood up straight again and turned away without a word or a touch for the waiting horse, he could feel the impress of pain, the wrinkles and the seams of new trouble already stamped upon his face. He crossed the street and went straight toward the little shack Chandler owned.

  There was a light in the small house, but it was not the steady shining of a lamp. Instead, the spot of illumination jumped at random here and there, flashed across the window, or spilled through the open doorway and streaked the road with white. The light ceased to rove as Lee came close. It settled brightly upon the face of a man in the hut, one who was packing down the burning coal of his pipe with a calloused forefinger before he answered. He was a great block of a man, with a mass of gray hair bristling on his head and whiskers masking the lower part of his face. He wore a red shirt, open at the throat and exposing a thick, corded, wrinkled neck that might have done credit to a Polish laborer. His fingers were habitually half bent, as though fixed in that position by many a year of polishing pick and shovel handle. He carried with him, also, that blunt and downright manner of those who tear their living out of the soil. And yet Lee Garrison, now drawn close, heard the voice of Sally McGuire address this stranger as her father.

  “He’s gone, Dad,” said the girl. “I knew that would happen. You see everything is in confusion. He’s taken his blankets. Harry’s gone.”