Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  I am waiting for you at the little cabin in the hollow above Emmett’s. Come when you can.

  Christopher Royal

  Then she doubted. For it might very well be that Main would question the genuineness of this handwriting.

  She hunted through her desk until she found a letter from Christopher. Then, with a resolute hand, she rewrote her note, making the letters as bold and firm and sweeping as the hand of Christopher himself She addressed the note in the same manner.

  Then she called Wong, the cook. He was the only person in the household so stupid that he would not think this a most suspicious affair. To him she entrusted the note with a word to drive down the valley as fast as he could and leave the letter at Yates’s saloon.

  Presently she heard the wheels of the buggy grinding down the gravel of the driveway. She knew that Wong was gone and that she had set in motion the wheels of death that must overtake her son before another twenty-four hours had spun away. In the meantime she was to wait, striving to close her eyes against the passing of time, and praying every moment, with all her heart, that Christopher would find in his soul enough courage to let him meet death as a man should meet it.

  She went down to her garden. There she could leave behind her most surely the thoughts of her boy.

  “Where is Lurcher?” she asked of Granger, the gardener. “He’s always basking there on the terrace at this time of the morning.”

  “Lurcher’s gone,” said the gardener. “I called him for his breakfast, and he didn’t come in. I whistled and hollered for him. You know that he never leaves the ranch. And so I’m afraid that something must of happened to him here.”

  But Mrs. Royal’s breath caught as she heard. For could it be that the strange dog had indeed left the place and followed her boy, with an animal’s strange instinct for an approaching death?

  IX. THE PHANTOM

  WHEN CHRISTOPHER STUMBLED away from the house toward the corrals, you may be sure that half his mind was behind him in the house with his mother. But instinctively he found the saddle shed, his saddle, bridle and rope, and dragged them out into the corral. He had hardly emerged before a dozen sleek-coated horses started to their feet in a corner of the enclosure, ready to bolt from threatened danger, but they were already too late to flee. He could pick out the roan by the size and the ugliness of his head, and the snaky loop of rope darted through the air and settled true to its aim. The rest of the saddle band fled, and he went on methodically with the saddling of the roan, glad that this work had not caused enough disturbance to waken the cow-punchers in the bunk house.

  When the horse was saddled at last, he swung into the saddle, and the big gelding, having his head, thrust it well out and down and proceeded to unlimber himself with a little artistic pitching. Christopher let him have his way, because he rather enjoyed anything in the way of excitement that would take his mind from his wretched self.

  That struggle did not last long. The bone-breaking grip of his knees and the iron of his hand upon the reins soon assured the roan that fighting was no use. He stopped, and shook his head, as though partly bewildered. At that moment he received a cruel prick with the spurs, and his head was quickly straightened at the fence.

  Ears flattened, eyes trailing fire, mouth agape under the pull of the bits, he bolted straight at the loftiest part of the fence, and Christopher let him go. As he rode, he wondered grimly to himself what other man in Royal Valley would have put an untried mount at such an obstacle? Aye, but courage across fences was not what was needed in his life. Courage to face a fighting man was the thing!

  The fence rose sheer before him, then the roan pitched into the air. His two trailing hind hoofs clicked sharply against the upper bar, and then they were away across the field beyond.

  He gave the big horse his head for two miles up the valley and by the time they had come to Fisher’s Well, where the road forked toward Emmett’s on the right and toward Cluster Canon on the left, the roan had had enough of such high life. He came back to a moderate canter and then to a soft, sweeping trot that brushed the miles away behind him with a wolfish ease.

  There was a miserable satisfaction in the heart of big Christopher as he considered the action and the breathing of his mount. A few days on the road and the roan would be in such condition that Harry Main, desperate rider and expert trailer as he was famed to be, would have much to do to keep up with such a pace as the fugitive could set.

  But then, even Harry Main could not fathom, surely, the problem that now lay before him. And unless Christopher had a mind reader working against him, he was confident that he could lie in secure hiding among the tall, dark woods above Emmett’s.

  After that, he would wait a number of days until it was certain that Harry Main was away from the trail, and then he would ride down to a new country, and far off where the name of Royal had never been heard and his race of tall brothers had never been seen.

  He headed the roan onto the right-hand road and turned to look back down the valley, perhaps for his last look at it. He could see the lofty roof of the Royal house looming above the distant trees, and nearer at hand a shadow slipped from one bush to another, across the road.

  “Coyote,” murmured Christopher, and turned his face forward again.

  When he was climbing the divide, leading toward the upper ranges of the hills, he glanced back down the winding trail again. There was not much light. There were clouds enough to kill the stars, and behind the high-blown mist the moon sailed in a pale-gray canoe. But still there was enough light to show him once more a shadow, skulking from bush to bush behind him.

  He drew rein at that and instinctively reached for his rifle for since when had coyotes begun to trail lone riders? The creature behind him was not half large enough for a wolf!

  After a moment, hearing nothing but the hiss of the wind through the willow by the creek, and seeing nothing but the hurried bobbing of the heads of the trees, he turned his face forward along the trail again.

  Yet it worried him. For, though wolves and bears were apt to trail men, all other animals were either unable to keep up with the pace of a horse or else were too thoroughly afraid of the lords of creation to come near for any length of time. And so this small thing remained a mystery to him that troubled his mind as he toiled up the slopes, with the good horse bowing his head to the work.

  He reached Emmett’s in the gray of the coming dawn, and passed it, keeping well within the forest, so that only now and then could he see the lights of the little village, twinkling dim and cold through the mist which lay pooled in the hollow. Beyond Emmett’s he rode up to the dell where that deserted cabin stood in which they had passed the vacation those years before. He could see to the right the hilltop from which he had sighted the big grizzly in the valley beyond — that grizzly which he had trailed for three days and nights before he caught up with it and finished its marauding life with a well-placed bullet.

  Now it was his turn to be hunted! He dismounted, and, throwing the reins, he entered the cabin. It was far gone with mouldering time now. Those years before it had been small and simple enough, but now it was a complete wreck, and a board of the flooring crunched away to rotten pulp under the weight of his stride as he entered. It was so damp, so dark, so utterly dismal, that he was half inclined to spend the night beneath the dank and dripping trees rather than in this place, and yet, when he thought of the matter, he could see that the more hopelessly ruined the shack was, the more perfect would be his security in it.

  So he entered with a shudder and, lighting a match, looked around him. He noted the table, leaning to the floor in a corner of the room, and the fallen branch of a great tree, blown down in a storm that had crunched its way through the rotten roof and showed its ragged butt as though even now ready to fall farther.

  Yes, the cabin was a complete wreck. But now he felt that he was satisfied. It was safe — safe from all men, and, therefore, it was dearer to him than any palace of a king.

  As he crossed
the old, brush-grown clearing again, the wind slashed and tugged at his slicker, and the rain cuffed his face with cold fingers, but in the dripping forest he busied himself cutting a number of tender fir branches, till he had gathered a great armful.

  These he carried back to the cabin, beat the water out of them thoroughly, and then built them into the foundation of a bed in the cabin. He laid down his meager blanket roll over them, and then he looked about to take care of the horse.

  By this time the roan had cooled off so much that there was no danger of chilling him by removing the saddle, and now he remembered the little natural meadow higher up on the creek, surrounded by trees so tall and thick that it was amply fenced in against all manner of bitter weather.

  To this place he led the gelding. The grass was tall and matted with the remains of old crops around its roots. The dense trees shut out the cutting edges of the wind, and yonder was the leaning rock, which stood out so far from the side of the mountain that it made a natural shelter against the rain, unless it was blowing from the east.

  What better place could a hardy cow horse have asked — one that had fought its way through half a dozen of the range winters? He hobbled the roan here, and left it contentedly cropping the grass beneath the shelter of the hanging rock.

  Then he turned back toward the cabin, and, passing through the trees, he was sure that in the freshening daylight a small animal darted from one tree to another. He could not be certain that he had actually seen any shape, however, and, since the light had not strengthened to such a point that he could effectually study a trail, he marched on to the cabin, kicked off his boots, and lay down with a grunt upon the damp bed.

  He was very tired. Body and soul had been worn by the trials through which he had been passing and by the long ride he had made. And so sleep dropped in a sudden wave over him and had almost swallowed his senses when he awakened again with a start and sat up, a cold sweat on his forehead, for it seemed to him that something had been watching him from the entrance to the cabin.

  Yet it could not be! He gritted his teeth as he clutched his rifle and started to his feet. If there were the dread of man in him, at least there was no dread of any other beast, and he would be able to prove that he dared as much in the hunt as any human in the world.

  So he leaped to the door, but, when he glanced toward the clearing through the growing glow of the dawn light, it seemed to him that he saw a subtly moving form melt like a shadow among shadows into the margin of the wood. He jerked the rifle to his shoulder and fired point-blank. The range was very short; his hand was never steadier; and he was confident that he must have nailed the fugitive with the bullet.

  He was so very confident, indeed, that he did not even go out to look for the dead, but turned back to the cabin and to his bed, where he stretched himself and allowed himself to drop securely toward slumber until... He sat up again, this time with a racing heart, and, as he sat up, he made sure from the corner of his eye that a fugitive form was leaping through the doorway into the day outside.

  He had only a glimpse, but his hand moved lightning fast to snatch a revolver and fire. There was no sound to answer the shot. He rushed to the door, and once more all that he saw was the dark and ominous face of the forest, rising tall and deathly silent before him.

  He sprinted around the shack, thinking that the creature must have dodged out of sight by that route, but still there was no sign of it high or low. As he leaned his broad shoulders against the wall of the shack, the dreadful thought came to Christopher that it was no animal of flesh and blood at all, but a phantom sent to cross his way with a foreboding of doom.

  X. AN ANCIENT CREED

  HE HAD NO need of sleep after that. There was no trace of the white mist that had obscured the hollows and tangled among the forest trees as he was climbing the trail. All was bright sunshine — far brighter than the lowlands could ever know.

  So he began to cut for sign through the woods. But though he thought that he found traces, here and there, so thick was the carpeting of pine needles that lay everywhere beneath the trees that he could not make sure of anything that he saw by way of foot impression upon the soil.

  Where the pine needles did not lie, grew rank, tall grass, with the matted dead remains of other seasons entangled about the roots to such a degree that the tread of a horse upon it could hardly have been distinguished from the step of a bear, for it curled upward again the moment the pressure of the step was removed.

  Then, as he came to a pause, he heard the sudden howl of a wolf not a hundred yards away — a cry that went thronging through the trees and seemed to well up to his ears from every side. He made no effort to trace the beast by the cry, for the grim surety came to him that tracing would do no good. Twice he had tried the nature of this phantom with good powder and lead, and twice the thing had escaped from him unscathed.

  Perhaps it would have seemed a small affair to some, but to Christopher, whose nerves were already on edge and whose whole spiritual stamina had been broken down by shame and grief and self-disgust, this was enough to carry away the last of his resolution and to make him determined to leave the cabin behind Emmett’s as soon as possible, hunting out another hiding place deeper in the mountains — some place, for instance, where the cheerless woods would not be standing so perilously close to him.

  He went to the roan at once, saddled it, rolled his blankets, and started forging through the pass that opened above him. It was a cheerful canon, after the depression of the hollow, and he enjoyed the keen morning sun which smote between his shoulder blades. It was just such a day as leads to the dispelling of all foolish illusions.

  So he followed the dim trail along the edge of a creek, until the way turned into a shallow ford. He was in no hurry, and, therefore, he dismounted and examined the bottom of the ford, to make sure that it was safe for the roan. The rocks at the bottom seemed firm and secure enough, and he led the gelding across. On the farther side he paused to mount once more, and, doing so, he scanned the valley up which he had just been riding.

  It was very open and clear. There was hardly a stone big enough for a prairie dog to have hidden behind, and there was not the slightest sign of the ghost wolf that had haunted him before. He nodded to himself with satisfaction and had turned to put his foot in the stirrup when he found himself looking straight into a pair of eyes — human eyes that watched him from close by.

  It was an Indian, so old that his wasted body could have illustrated the legend of Tithoonus, and clad in such tatters that his half-naked body and his clothes, and even the homely fishing rod which he held, melted into the patchwork of the valley side with its bronzed rocks and spotted shrubs. And yet Christopher was a little startled that he could have been so close without noticing the presence of the other. That was before he studied the eyes of this stranger and saw that they were vacant with age. There was no more life in this withered creature than in a dying tree, say, or some blind growth that floats in the depths of the sea, untouched by the sun.

  Said Christopher: “Do you have luck here, my father? Do the fish take the bait?”

  The ancient Indian looked at him without interest, and then, lifting his head, he glanced at the pale blue of the mountain sky. When he spoke, it was with a voice wonderfully deep and hoarse and with a humming indistinctness of sound, so that it passed away into the noise of the brook and was almost lost there.

  “The Great Spirit sends the fish and the fisher,” he said. “Sometimes the fish are taken, and sometimes the fisher!”

  Christopher, staring at him, was sure that he was in contact with something other than an ordinary Indian. Here was a man of such age that he must have ridden his ponies and taken scalps long before the repeating rifle had been dreamed of. Even the revolver was still an unheralded invention in the days of the youth of this chief. How much had been seen by the old man? Half the continent had first been explored, and then fought for, and conquered, and peopled during the span of his existence.

 
“However,” said Christopher, falling in with the old fellow’s own phraseology, “the Great Spirit has favoured men a little more than He has favoured fish, you must admit.”

  “How?” asked the Indian gravely.

  “He has given us brains.”

  “To walk on the dry land, but the fish lives in water. Can we follow him there?”

  “He has only a thin stream or a little muddy pool for his life.”

  “His rivers lead down to the ocean, my son.”

  Christopher stared. It was very odd to find so much mental agility in so dead a body as that which sat before him.

  “However,” said Christopher, “He has given us a soul, you know.”

  “Look!” said the chief, and he scooped up some sand in his claw-like hand. “How many grains of sand are here? But, if all of them were the souls of men, only one of them all would come to the life of the Sky People and stand before the face of the Great Spirit, and ride His horses there and take scalps, and live in happiness.”

  “Only one?” asked Christopher, enchanted by this voice from the past and this prophet of a dead creed. “But what of all the rest?”

  “Some,” said the chief, “will die having done no great deed. For many men grow old, and they have done nothing greater than to skin a buffalo or to make an arrow.” He let most of the sand sift away from his bony fingers. “And there a few who have fought like men and been strong and true, but in the last moment they turned coward before their enemies, and the enemies have taken them and split their heads with axes, taken off their scalps and left their souls to blow up and down the earth forever like that leaf, never resting.”

  Christopher turned and regarded the little spinning, twisting, drifting leaf with curiosity. The thought sent a thrill of coldness through him. “But suppose,” he said, “that these men have fought bravely and been overcome in battle by numbers but not with fear?”