Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Vincent Allan did not stay to observe further. He wandered on down the track, walking lightly and happily, for he knew that the magic had not yet left him — that it would never leave him and that he could make his way by the might of his hands wherever he might be. With this wealth of strength in his hands, however, how could he spend it? What could he do next?

  He hardly knew. He hardly cared. Every day would take care of itself in its own turn, and he refused to worry over such non-essentials as clothes or food or a sleeping place. He had only to stretch out his hand and take what he would. He was in a farming district where strength had a value. He spent a week pitching hay. He broke the handles of three forks and blistered his hands raw until he mastered that peculiar little knack of getting under a large load of hay with the most ease. But Vincent Allan had learned to acquire information swiftly. All his life he had ever believed that there was a mystery behind everything, from the dexterous fashion in which a woman used a broom to bring the dust out of a thick carpet to the exquisite dexterity of a smith welding steel or tempering it; but he had always accepted his own stupidity so completely that he had not dared to attempt to imitate.

  That bout with Bud had changed his mind. He had seen that his hands could do what other hands could do, and perhaps a little better than most of them! He kept on for a month. He learned, in that time, not only how to pitch hay but how to handle the bales, which is a very great mystery indeed! He learned how to ride a horse, how to drill fence holes with a hand auger, how to swing an ax, how to run a great cross-cut saw. Of course he did not become proficient in so many things at once, but he learned prodigiously every day. He learned with his body; he learned with his mind. He was in a new field, sinking roots into a new soil, and with the passage of every moment he felt his body coming into its own. The natural might with which he had been born was now being multiplied by exercise. For two weeks he went to bed with a thousand wearinesses in his flesh and wakened the next morning with a thousand aches. These pains began to disappear. By the end of the month his face was lean, this skin healthily flushed and tanned, and in his very fingertips the tingling certainty of his power.

  What was in his spirit, however, hardly showed in his face. The mild, kindly blue eyes had not changed their light; his voice remained soft with a note of confiding and of appeal still in it. The habits of a life could not be changed so suddenly. He could not even ask for a direction without adopting the attitude of one who begged for bread. Such was Vincent Allan as he found himself in this new land, save that now he called himself Allan Vincent, feeling that even this small inversion might help to keep him from the knowledge of the police. For a few weeks of safety had not made him feel immune. An old saying rang in his brain day and night. Murder would out, and having been the cause of the killing of a man, his guilt must be eventually discovered.

  So he pressed steadily West and West. At the end of the second week he considerably improved his position, for a farmer made a certain foolish wager concerning a three-hundred-pound bale of hay and the height to which it could be lifted, whereat Allan took the monster in his hands and heaved it to arm’s length above his head. He could have put fifty dollars in his pocket, but instead the farmer offered a horse, a stoutly made and even rather beautifully finished animal with a strong Roman nose and long, mulish ears. That horse was offered in payment of the debt, together with an old saddle of which most of the leather had been worn from the wooden frame, and Allan, thinking that the farmer must have lost his mind, saddled and bridled the mare.

  “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “Mustard!” said the farmer.

  Allan had no sooner settled into the saddle than he was unsettled, sailed high into the air, and landed on his back. He sat up to find that Mustard was regarding him with a genial and whimsical eye while the laughter of the farmer and his men was a jovial thunder.

  After that, when Allan journeyed West — a day of travel and then a day of work, here and there — he was accompanied by the roan mare. Not that he rode her, but that she strolled, contented, beside him. Every morning he attempted to stay in the saddle; every morning the battle was more and more desperate, more and more prolonged; but every morning Mustard pitched him upon his head and stood by panting to enjoy the picture of his fall. He was covered with bruises which were her handiwork, but he stuck by his guns. He was receiving a condensed, post-graduate course in the riding of a bucking horse. In the meantime, he passed from the district of farms. He came into open country. Bald, brown mountains lay before him in the day, and turned blue with the coming of evening, and it was now that he found a companion.

  5. THE COMPANION

  IT WAS ON the shoulder of a hill that he had camped, with plenty of dead shrubs near by to supply him with firewood and with a not over-clean brook near by for water. Squatting by the fire with the sooty frying pan and the equally blackened coffeepot upon it, who could have recognized in young “Allan Vincent” the white-faced bank clerk? It is upon the tenderest skins that the sun paints most quickly. And tenderfeet always are sure to expose themselves to the sun more than others. Allan, instead of the wide-brimmed sombreros of the natives of that district, had upon his head a rag of felt which had once been black and which sheltered him only at high noon, for whenever the sun shone at a slant its rays were certain to scorch his neck or his face. His color was now a rich mahogany. Hard labor had flattened the line of his cheeks and squared his chin. And for clothes he had a cast-off coat, ragged at the elbows, an old blue- flannel shirt, a pair of overalls with the dye rubbed pale at the knees, and heavy cowhide boots. A very rough diamond was Allan now, but in spite of exteriors he felt happier than ever, for every day the maturity of his full strength had been growing upon him. It was the wealth of Croesus, quite incalculable.

  Allan had fried his bacon and warmed up his pone and the coffee was steaming when Mustard lifted her head and neighed. At the same time he himself heard the regular click of the armed hoofs of a horse trotting over the rocks up the hillside, and presently the rider came into view, a small figure on a beautiful little pinto, which was weaving deftly among the boulders. The flat red face of the westering sun was in the eyes of Allan; he did not see until the stranger was very close that it was a girl. Indeed, she rode with all the careless vigor of a man, and when she came closer she loosed the reins and twisted about sideways in the saddle.

  “Hello, stranger,” she said.

  “How do you do,” said Allen, and shaded his eyes to look at her. Her face was as brown as an Indian’s except that when she pushed her sombrero back he saw a pale streak where the band had rested, and a fuzz of blonde hair, not overabundant. But her eyes alone would have proclaimed her a white woman. They were very big, very blue, very feminine in everything except their expression, and that was bold past the boldness of a man — bold as the eyes of a ten-year-old boy compared with which all other things are tame. She did not wear gloves. Now she rested her elbow on the pommel of her saddle and dropped her chin on a sun-blackened fist. In the meantime she was considering him gravely and in detail.

  “You’re a tenderfoot, ain’t you?” said she.

  He glanced down at himself. In his opinion he was rough enough in appearance to have passed as a veteran of the West.

  “I suppose I am,” said Allan. “I didn’t know that it showed. Won’t you get down and have supper with me?”

  She was instantly on the ground, yanked the saddle from the back of the pinto, and turned him loose. Then she went over to the fire and leaned above the pan.

  “You ain’t feeding very rich,” she said gloomily.

  He suggested that he had some other provender in his pack — some more bacon, some corn-meal flour, some potatoes, a few cans of tomatoes, and other essentials.

  “Huh!” said the girl. “All that chuck and you eatin’ like this? That’s tenderfoot, I’d say. Look here, you got everything except what you need to tie them fixin’s together. And I’ve got that!”

  She went ba
ck to her saddle and produced the limp body of a headless jack rabbit of some size.

  “We’ll have rabbit stew, partner,” said she. “Hustle up some wood. I need a fire, not just a plain smoke like you got here!”

  He obeyed; obedience was his habit, and now the fire rose to seasonable proportions, but her own flying hands were working miracles. She tore the skin off the body and then with a long, blue-bladed hunting knife she slashed the meat into convenient chunks. A can of the tomatoes was confiscated, potatoes peeled with wonderful dexterity, slit into morsels, some bits of bacon added, and the whole mess dropped into a pot which she produced from her pack.

  “Looks like a load, don’t it?” she remarked as she fixed the pot above the fire, wedging it safely against capsizing. “It is a load, too. But it’s a dog- gone handy thing, partner. It beats a fryin’ pan more’n a mile. A fryin’ pan fills up your stomach with grease and half-cooked dough. This here pot gives you a meal.”

  By this time the roaring fire made the contents of the pot begin to simmer around the edges and the fragrance which it gave off seemed to Allan a heavenly thing. She sat by with a peeled stick of wood to stir the contents from time to time, and all the while she blazed forth questions at Allan. She wanted to know from what place he came, what was his destination, what he had been doing, what was his name, his age, his purpose in life. He told her, in reply, that he was Allan Vincent, that he had grown tired of living in a city, that he had come West to find what he could find, and that he was gradually beating his way West. For the rest, he had neither purpose nor destination. He wanted to hear her own story. She told it gayly and briefly enough, stirring the pot from time to time.

  “My name is Frances Jones,” said she, “by rights. But folks call me Frank. Dad named me after a fightin’ dog he owned when he was a kid because he said he could see by my eye that I had a fightin’ nacher.”

  She grinned at Allan, but he did not smile in return; he was regarding her seriously and gently.

  “My dad loved fighting dogs and buckin’ hosses,” she went on. “He wouldn’t have no hoss about the place that didn’t have a little pitchin’ in its system. He used to say that a hoss was like a man; if it didn’t have a little devil inside, it didn’t have no good, neither. My dad had both! But bad luck beat him. Mother died before I could remember her. The rest of the time dad was fightin’ wild hosses and a mortgage. He could beat the hosses, but he couldn’t beat the mortgage. He used to say that a mortgage was like bad rheumatism: you couldn’t get it out of your system. Things was so bad that my big brother, Jim, he pulled up and went West, one day. That was three years back. Dad kept on goin’ down-hill. Six months ago he lay down and died.”

  She paused here and stabbed at the pot with her stick — a little blindly, thought Allan.

  “I stuck on, got things on the ranch fixed up good enough to sell the place, and when it was sold there was just enough money to leave my pinto and this here outfit. I tried to get in touch with Jim, but he’d disappeared. What I’m aimin’ at now is to locate him. And here’s the stew ready to eat. Get your plate ready, Al!”

  It seemed to Vincent Allan a most sumptuous feast; even the tough flesh of the rabbit had been boiled to a state approaching tenderness. He ate it with relish.

  “But,” said he, “I’ve been wondering how you were able to catch it?”

  “The rabbit?” said she.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll tell you how it is,” said Frances Jones. “When you see a rabbit jump across your trail, all you got to do is to sit fast and look it in the eye. It gets plumb hypnotized. All you got to do then is to hop off your hoss and grab it by the neck.”

  “Is that really the way?” asked Allan, fascinated.

  “Mostly around these parts,” said the girl gravely. “That’s the way they catch ’em. But some folks that ain’t got the time to spare just uses a gun.”

  “Ah,” said Allan, “I don’t suppose that a girl like you could handle a gun?”

  “Can’t I just!” said she. “Lemme show you with your own Colt.”

  “I don’t carry a gun,” said Allan. “I’ve never shot one in my life, you know!”

  At this, she was reduced to staring, and he knew that he had sunk to the lowest possible point in her estimation. In fact, she said not another word, but sat back with her chin in her hand and allowed him to clean up the utensils without proffering the slightest assistance. He hardly noticed this oversight on her part, however, for his mind was full of another thought which matured slowly and did not come to expression until his work had ended. The sun had long since set when he turned to her at the last. The red in the west had paled and there was only orange and palest green along the horizon.

  “Traveling by oneself is a lonely thing,” said Allan. “Don’t you suppose that we could go on together — until you reach your brother?”

  At this she lifted her head sharply, and the last of the sunset light fell upon her features; they seemed to Allan of a most dreamlike loveliness.

  “That brother of mine is a gun-fightin’ man getter!” she declared.

  “Well?” asked Allan.

  “What would he think, Al, if he knowed that I’d been travelin’ alone with a man?”

  Allan considered all the possibilities that might arise from such a thing.

  “Why,” said he at the last. “I suppose that he’d be mighty glad that you had company on your ride. Don’t you think so?”

  He heard a faint gasp from the girl.

  “You got the world beat!” she stated at last.

  “Is anything wrong?” asked Allan.

  “How many girls have you teamed around with?” she asked, and he thought the question most surprising.

  “I have never had time to see them,” he said frankly.

  “H’m!” said she. “I thought not.”

  “I’ve always been very busy,” he confessed. He swallowed; it was bitterly hard to let her know the whole truth, but there was something about her that drew it from him. “I was always so slow in school,” said he, “that I had to work at home every afternoon and evening to keep up. And then when I went into business it was the same thing over again; there was so much to learn. Besides,” he continued, with a growing embarrassment which he could hardly explain, “one must know a great deal to talk to a girl.”

  “You seem to be talkin’ pretty free and easy to me,” she stated.

  “You’re more like a man — or a boy!” said Allan. It was a discovery which he was glad to get into words; it cleared his own mind. He came an enthusiastic step closer to her, smiling. “You’re easier to understand,” he said. “You aren’t always laughing at me, you know?”

  He broke off with a sigh of disappointment, for at this very point she had burst into ringing laughter. She mastered it with an effort. Then she sprang up and found his hand and shook it heartily.

  “You’re queer,” she said. “But I guess you’re all right. I’m goin’ to turn in on the other side of the hill. Gimme a call at breakfast time, will you?”

  With that, she was off up the hill. She whistled, and the pinto fell in at her heels like a dog. He saw her against the stars on the crest of the hill; then she disappeared and all at once the very thick of the night closed about him. He became desperately lonely, even more so than when he had rolled out of New York, Boston-bound, on the night of the tragedy which had changed his life so utterly. All that he could do, at first, was to refresh the fire, but when it blazed most brightly it only served to make him conscious of the limitless dark around him, and of the chilly distance to the stars. He left the fire and went for a walk. Mustard would not follow at his heels as the pinto had followed the girl. He stumbled gloomily among the rocks and found no content. Then a new thought came to him when a wolf bayed far, far away, a terrible and lonely voice in the night. Other wolves might come. Maybe they were hungry.

  Suppose, then, that danger should come upon her when she slept? Plainly it was his duty to guar
d her, and the thought warmed his heart. He hastened up the hill and went cautiously over the crest, for he must not alarm her with his approach. It needed half an hour of laborious searching. Then he made her out where she was rolled in her blanket in a sandy hollow surrounded by rocks; by leaning very close he could make out even the glimmer of her features and the whispering sound of her breath. He listened to it for a long time with an inexpressible delight; then he sat down with his back against one of the rocks and began his vigil.

  The night grew cold; he set his jaw and braved the chill from his blood. Sleep came upon him step by step, numbing his brain. He shook it off. There was an immense and quiet excitement in his heart with the feeling that he was serving her in this fashion, silently, unknown to her. Suppose, however, that among the soft shadows in the hollow below them a lurking wild beast should be stirring and should rush ravening upon them both? It made his blood run cold, but he gripped a heavy rock near by and weighed it in his hand. Such a missile would smash the skull of any living creature and for the sake of Frank, he told himself, his aim would surely be straight. All the loneliness had left him now. The very touch of the air against his face was friendly; the stars were familiar eyes above him. And when he tired of sensing these things, he could fall back upon rich stores of memory. Tucked into the corners of his mind there were infinite pictures, and even the sound of her voice, so plainly recalled that it vibrated through his body.

  The rock put forth an angle which hurt his back; he shifted into a more comfortable position, his chin resting upon his breast, and almost instantly heavy sleep rolled over him. A vague feeling of guilt struggled against it for a moment; then he was lost.

  He was wakened by the lifting of the hat from his head which allowed the level splendor of the newly risen sun to strike against his face and cover his eyes with a mist of red. When he looked up he found the girl standing before him, half stern, half astonished.