Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Let him stay,” grunted McGuire. “A man that runs away after he’s beaten isn’t worth calling back.”

  “Father!” cried Sally.

  “Sally!” mocked her father. His tone changed to a growl. “I’m tired of this temperamental stuff.”

  “Then I’ll go myself!”

  Lee Garrison listened with a hollow heart to the thrill and the sob in her voice.

  “Go where?”

  “To find poor Harry and bring him back and save him from despair. He’ll do some desperate thing. He’s capable of anything, now that he considers his life a failure.”

  “Rot,” said McGuire. “He’s off sulking. In a week he’ll be back to marry you, if you’re fool enough to throw yourself away on him.”

  “What possible right have you to speak of him like this? You know he’ll never marry me unless he can support me. He’s told you that himself.”

  “Which makes it Bible stuff, does it?”

  “Now that he’s down, you speak of him like this?”

  “Never hit a man in my life when he was down. But I say, give Harry rope, and he’ll run in a circle and come back. He’s like a small boy that’s left home because he got a spanking. That’s all.”

  “It’s that detestable liar and hypocrite — !” She could not finish the sentence. She paused, indignant.

  “You’re blaming this on the gambler — on Garrison? I tell you, Sally, a fellow who can ride as he did today can’t be all wrong. He gave you a promise to quiet you, that was all. Of course, he couldn’t keep it. And what under the heavens possessed you to try to buy him off?”

  “To save Harry.”

  “A man that needs a woman’s saving isn’t worth being saved.”

  “I won’t be answered with stale maxims. You talk as if I were a coward.”

  “There are more kinds of courage than that which takes a man through a fight.”

  Oh, wise, wise brain under shock of wild gray hair, how the heart of Lee Garrison hung upon his words. It was as though a brave and skillful champion stood in the lists, fighting his battle.

  “You — you’re like all the rest!” cried the girl. “You hate him because he failed today. But I tell you it only makes me prouder to fight for him and show him that my faith has never wavered.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. Give a woman a lost cause — that’s all she wants. She’ll throw her heart away on it! And you’ve found your hopeless case.”

  “Father!” cried Sally McGuire.

  “Bah!” roared the inelegant McGuire. “That yap — that big four- flusher! He makes me tired. I saw through him a year ago. Man to man, Sally, like the honest little woman you are, confess to me that you are all wrapped up in Chandler simply because you think you may be able to save him — make something useful out of him. Confess, Sally, it’s a sort of missionary interest.”

  She could master her indignation barely enough to permit speech. “Have you finished insulting me and the man I love?” she managed to ask.

  “I’m through. But I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I’ve been swallowing what I think of Chandler all these months.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “Where?”

  “To find him.”

  “Sally!”

  “To find him, if I have to spend the rest of my life in the search. Let me go, Dad.”

  “Let you ride off alone — at night? Good heavens, Sally, are you mad?”

  “I tell you, I shall go.”

  “Sally, this isn’t like you. I’ve argued you into a frenzy. Don’t ruin your life, following the first wild-headed impulse. By heaven, I’m talking to the wind. Sally, if you must go, I’ll go with you.”

  “I don’t want you.”

  “You know that I’ll never let you go alone. But, step out here and look at those black mountains. You see how foolish it is to try to follow him in this country?”

  They passed through the doorway. They would surely have seen Lee Garrison as he shrank to the side had it not been that they were so filled with their own thoughts.

  “I know where to find him,” she declared, her voice made soft and smaller by the presence of the wide night. “When we came over the mountains, do you remember that gorge with a straight wall of rhyolite on one side and a slope tucked away under the bluff?”

  “I remember,” muttered McGuire. “It was just this side of The Captain.”

  “Yes, Harry and I both thought it was a lovely valley. And that day we agreed that — in a word, Dad, I know that Harry will go there first and wait to see if something doesn’t bring me to him.”

  “He’s mighty reckless,” said McGuire. “He runs away without saying a word. Sally, it would take a night of riding. It would be dawn before we reached that valley under The Captain.”

  “Have I asked you to come?”

  She hurried away, almost running, and Lee heard her father groan, then set out in pursuit. He watched them disappear. A fragment of talk from a passing group of men drifted upon his mind.

  “I was sitting on a stull and gadding out a hitch. I heard the drum groaning out, and I knew that pair of mules had balked again. Pretty soon I hear Joe hollering down the shaft. He says to me— ‘These here mules don’t think much of this mine. They ain’t got no heart in the work.’ And I hollers back to Joe like I—”

  The voice of the narrator drifted to an unintelligible jumble, and Garrison returned to his own thoughts. The talk he had overheard fitted into his preconceptions as perfectly as though it had been planned on a stage. Here was a demonstration that proved how utterly the girl loved Harry Chandler, how blank her life would be without him. All the doubts that had been lingering like hope in the corners of his brain were expelled.

  He went back to the corral behind Mrs. Samuels’s house. Moonshine greeted his return with an ecstasy, but Lee cut his antics short with the first abrupt word he had ever spoken to the stallion, and after that the horse stood quiet as a mouse, his head turned in wonder as he watched Lee saddle.

  After that, Lee brought him to the front of the house. He carried out a hundred pounds of gold coin and dumped it into the saddlebags. Then he swung into the saddle and headed east and north toward The Captain.

  XXIX. THE FATAL SHOT

  DAWN FOUND HIM in a wilderness of tumbled mountain heads, and, while the rough crest of The Captain was bright with rosy light, Lee Garrison looked down beneath the great peak into a valley all awash with shadow. The south wall of that gulch was an abrupt cliff of rhyolite, a delicate mingling of colors now, like a garden seen by the half light of dusk. From the north there was a tumble of hills and smoothly dropping slopes, pine-covered, and where the trees crowded, thickened in the heart of the valley, a stream wound. He saw its silver flashing here and there.

  The day grew brighter by the moment. The radiance stole down the rhyolite cliff to its base. The evergreens were shimmering. In the clearings the narrow river flashed, and from one strip of white water he heard the deep and distant voice of the cascades. Morning had swept around him at a step. He moved to the left. Now he could see the base of the cliff, with a little cabin squatted against the rock in a setting of huge boulders, and a single horseman was going toward it. He needed no glass to spy that man out and tell he was Harry Chandler.

  There was only one care in his mind when he sent the stallion down the slope in pursuit. He must be finished with Chandler and out of the valley before McGuire and Sally came up, and how far he was ahead of them he could not guess. For with that chinking burden in the saddlebags, he had spared Moonshine more than usual, more than there was need, it seemed, for now, at the end of that long, arduous trail, the gray ran as lightly as ever, his gallop as swift and free as the winging of a bird. Even on this grim morning that gallop raised the heart of Lee Garrison, made him lift his head, and brought the faintest of smiles upon his worn face.

  He ran his hand with a caress along the neck of the horse, and Moonshine tossed his head with pricking ears and whinni
ed joyously as he ran. For, as Lee suddenly remembered, it was the first time during all the night that he had given the stallion so much as a touch of the hand, far less a single word to hearten him at his labor. And how happily Moonshine ran now, turning his head to examine the forest as he passed, or glancing up at an impudent hawk stooped close overhead, or bounding to the side with simulated fear as they shot past a lightning-stricken, white ghost of a tree.

  The pines thinned before them, scattered to nothing, and curving around the shoulder of a low knoll, he came in view of Harry Chandler. He was in the act of drawing the saddle from a sweat-blackened horse, not a hundred yards away, at the door of the cabin.

  Harry saw him at the same instant. The saddle dropped from his hands. “What the devil do you mean by following?” he called.

  “I’ll tell you,” answered Lee. His voice jerked away to nothing. A brook separated the two men, and Moonshine was crossing it as a greyhound could hardly have done, avoiding the cold, black pools of deep water and leaping with consummate skill from the slippery rocks of one shallows to land with bunched feet on the next. So he wove his way across the stream with Lee enchanted by that adroitness until the yell of Chandler struck hammer-like against his ear over the rushing of the water.

  “Keep back, Garrison. I warn you fairly. Come a step nearer — !”

  What was in his mind? It was incredible. It was madness to think of — and yet now into Chandler’s hand came the long, gleaming body of a Colt revolver.

  “Keep back!” he yelled. And before Lee could rally his bewildered wits, before he could swerve the gray horse with a touch on the bridle: “Then take it on your own head, damn you!”

  The gun barked, jerking up its nose with the recoil as though rearing to see what mischief it had done. Mischief enough! For Moonshine stopped and half reared as the bullet struck, then rallied, and sprang for the shore. As for Lee, he could not move, he could not think. This was a dream of things that could not be. Only in a nightmare could a man stand with black hatred in his face and murder a horse! But there was Harry Chandler, transformed to a fiend, bringing down his revolver to the level again.

  Once more! The report broke louder as they left the bank with a force that knocked Lee over and over in the dirt and gravel, till a log stopped him with a crash. He saw Moonshine turning toward him and sinking on trembling legs. Down slumped the hindquarters. Still, propped on the shaking forelegs, his ears pricked, the gray horse neighed toward the master and struggled in vain to lift himself and come. But all that unmatchable strength was withering out of his body. There was no power of sinew and muscle now, but still the great spirit looked out of his eyes at Lee, and there was never a glance for the man who was killing him. One knee buckled to the ground, then the other, the proud neck with its wind-lifted mane fell lower, and Moonshine lay dead among the rocks.

  “And now you!” shouted the madman who had been Harry Chandler.

  He shattered the stream of his own oaths with the explosions of his gun. A handful of gravel was scuffed into the face of Lee Garrison. That was the work of the first bullet. The second spattered to water on the face of a quartzite rock. Then Lee came to his feet. That he was facing a leveled revolver did not matter. That the man behind the gun bulked twice as large as he was a little thing. A sort of insane energy was burning in his brain, turning his muscles to iron. To the hysterical speed with which his mind was working the movements of Harry Chandler seemed ridiculously slow, as though he were gesturing on a stage. His revolver had jammed as Lee sprang up. He struggled with it an instant, then hurled it at the head of Garrison. It brushed past the ear of Lee, and the next instant Lee had closed on the murderer, his stiff fingers buried in flesh.

  It was strangely easy. He was filled with perfect certainty, complete assurance. The fist of Harry beat into his face. He caught that flying arm by the wrist. He held it with bone-crushing force and smiled into the eyes of Harry Chandler who shrieked as even a brave man cries out when a beast closes in on him. Chandler strove to tear himself free, but his powerful body was turned to a figure of sand. Lee Garrison raised Chandler as he might have lifted a great, loosely filled sack and dashed him to the ground. The head of Harry struck a rock, jarred far to the side, and then the great body lay still.

  Lee went back to the horse, but the brave eyes were dull. He ran his fingers down the neck, silken smooth, still warm with life. Realization came to him in wave on wave as a ship sinks, staggering down, down, till the water licks quite across its decks. Moonshine would never rise again. Moonshine would never run again. Moonshine was dead.

  So the fruit of that first great adventure was vanished. Then he turned to Chandler with the last of his insane fury melting out of his brain. The strength left his body. His limbs trembled, and his knees shook under his weight as he went to see if the quest were, indeed, ended with two deaths.

  Crimson stained the pebbles on which the head of Chandler lay. His eyes were closed, his face wax-pale, but, even as Lee dropped to his knees beside him, the prostrate man stirred, groaned, opened his eyes. The nightmare of fear came back into them as he saw Lee. He dared not rise.

  “Sit up,” said Lee.

  The other obeyed.

  “Stand up.”

  Chandler rose.

  “You’re not hurt bad,” said Lee. “Go inside the cabin. There’s something out here we don’t want to see.”

  Chandler cast a glance at the body of the stallion, another wild glance at Lee, still a third look at the revolver he had thrown away, and obeyed. As for Lee, he delayed only to unbuckle the saddlebags. Then he followed Chandler in and cast the pouches of coin upon the floor. They fell with a heavy crunching of metal.

  Harry had tied a white handkerchief around his head to stop the bleeding. Now he sat on the side of a bunk that was built against the wall in one corner of the shack.

  “Chandler,” said Lee, “You shot to kill Moonshine.”

  The fascinated eyes of Chandler widened, fixed on the revolver that hung in the other’s holster, then jerked up to his face.

  “I shot for you, Garrison,” he said. “That first time I aimed to get you, and, when I saw that I’d missed and hit the horse instead — I went crazy — I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “So you shot again — at Moonshine.”

  Chandler drew in a long, gasping breath. He was collapsing, shrinking smaller and smaller.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. I.—” His voice was beginning to tremble, sure warning that he was about to break down, and a horror came to Lee of the shameful thing that might be just ahead.

  “I believe you, Harry,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve got to believe you. I believe that you aimed to get me with that first slug, and — otherwise, what sort of a husband would you make for her? How could she be happy with you?”

  The question broke off sharply. He was talking swiftly, arguing with himself, and such arguments are always won.

  “Chandler, I’ve heard about you. You’ve told Sally you’ll not marry her till you’ve got money of your own to support her. Maybe you’d like to change your mind. Maybe it’s fear of her father that keeps you from changing. I dunno, but I guess a lot. Only the main thing is that she wants you. Look here, Chandler. Here’s more than ten thousand dollars in cash. That’s enough money for a man to marry on. It’s money that Moonshine made for me, and I’ll never use it.”

  “Just a moment,” said Harry. He started up from his seat. “Did you trail me up here to offer me that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I — what have I done to you? Garrison, can you forgive me?”

  The hand he had extended fell.

  “If it had been me that dropped,” said Lee, “and if I’d seen Moonshine running free while I died, then I could have forgiven you clean and free. It would have been the right ending. Now what matters is that she wants you. Will you go to her?”

  “Man, man,” said Harry, “how can I take your money?”

  “Because all
I can do for her is to give her the man she loves. You’ll take what I offer? You’ll swear to go back to her?”

  His voice had risen, and Chandler shrank back from him.

  “I swear, Garrison.”

  “Saddle your horse and start. Ride down the valley. You’ll meet her coming this way.”

  He sat on the edge of the bunk with his face dropped in his hands. He heard the floor creak under the weight of Chandler, heard the rattle of the coin as the saddlebags were lifted, heard the flop of the saddle as it was swung onto the back of the horse. He heard the creak and strain of the stirrup leather as Chandler lifted himself into place. He heard the grinding of pebbles under hoof. And still he waited through the dragging moments. At last he went out. He sat down by his horse and took the lifeless head in his lap.

  Now into his mind flowed the quiet music of the creek, and beyond that the bird voices out of the trees or in the wind, and he heard, too, the buzz and faint singing of insects, hunting through the grass around him. But above all these noises the silence of the mountains was king, just as it overpowered the tumult of the mines in Crooked Creek. And he knew that when the years went by the happy days to which his mind would go back were those times when, in the long agony of the quest for Moonshine, he had paused in the morning or the twilight and waited for the mountain silence to step in swiftly around him, and in his memory and in his daydreams Moonshine would never be captured.

  A shadow fell across the brightness of his spur, and he looked up into the face of McGuire, standing beside him. Had he dropped out of the bodiless air? No, behind him was the horse Chandler had been riding, and McGuire’s face was a scowl as he puffed steadily at his pipe. How long ago could he have come up the trail under the cliff?

  “Garrison,” he said, “Harry told us what happened. They went back in the buggy. I rode on up here on Harry’s hoss. It was a damned shame — the way this accident happened. Sally wanted for me to tell you she intends to raise a monument for him — to carve his name—”

  He bowed his face then, feeling that these words were useless, almost cruel, feeling as much a loss in Sally as perhaps Garrison felt with Moonshine.