Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Jeremy Major had leaped back an astonishing distance. He seemed to have grown, suddenly, two or three inches in height. He filled his clothes more sleekly. And he was poised on his toes with the lightness, well, with the lightness of nothing human, you may be sure!

  “Will you take that clumsy fool away from me before I do him any harm?” said Jeremy Major in a peculiar voice. “Will you take him away before I have to—”

  It was Mr. Cosden, whose brain was a vital second or two faster than the brains of the men, who heard and understood at once. And he uttered a yell to Harrison and tried to break out to get at the fighters.

  It was too late. He could only paw and strain to break away through the jam at the doorway, while, before his eyes, happened one of the oddest things he had ever witnessed in the length of a very full and active life. For as Harrison leaped in again — warily, now, as a trained fighter who realizes that he has an enemy worthy of his steel — Jeremy Major went to meet him.

  You could not say that Jeremy exactly leaped as Harrison did. But he slithered low over the ground. One was simply conscious that he had left one place and had appeared again at another.

  Somehow, he managed to straighten up just under and inside the arms of big Harrison, and the result was worth traveling long miles to see. For truly it was as though a shell had exploded in front of big Harrison. He made a clumsy effort to strike at his smaller foeman with both hands, but in the meantime the fists of Jeremy Major had sunk into the mid-section of Harrison’s anatomy. He tried to stagger in and close with this elusive fellow. But his efforts were only too successful. Jeremy Major met him in mid-air. They swirled into a tangle of twisting, writhing bodies, and then Harrison collapsed.

  It was all so quick that no one could see exactly what had happened. Only the result was visible. And the most important result was the picture of Harrison lying prostrate upon the ground with his eyes wide and staring, as the eyes of a dead man, and his face swollen either with effort or from being nearly throttled.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thing to see. They went to pick him up, and it was odd to see them go in to him, like children advancing toward the edge of a fire, so carefully did they keep their eyes fixed upon the form of Jeremy Major in the background.

  He made no effort to persecute his fallen enemy, however. He seemed to be shrinking away into the distance, as though ashamed of what he had done.

  They raised Harrison. He himself half-recovered from his swoon at the same instant and put out a hand to help himself up, but the arm which he extended crumpled under the strain and he uttered a wild scream of pain. And everyone nearby could hear the gritting of the broken ends of the arm bone. At some time in that brief and terrible struggle, Jeremy Major had snapped the arm of his enemy like a pipestem.

  I suppose everyone there had seen a good deal of rough-and-tumble fighting. Even the girl had seen her share, for Anne Cosden loved boxing almost well enough to try her own turn at the gloves. However, there was no jubilant shout from the spectators, no shout such as usually goes up when the smaller man of a pair wins a fight. And the reason was that this was different from ordinary fighting.

  There was not many outward signs of a fist fight on the body of big Harrison. His face, as has been said, was swollen and discolored a little and his jaw was marked with a purple patch near the point. But, on the whole, he looked rather like one who has collapsed from a great shock than one who has been beaten with fists to insensibility.

  And the same touch of horror that was in his eyes was in the eyes of the others as they raised him to his feet. He saw Jeremy Major, then, and uttered a groan. Then he was led, staggering, into the house.

  The men were busy with him. Only Anne Cosden remained behind in the yard of the house with Jeremy Major, and now she turned and looked at him with a frown.

  “Well,” said she at last, “I see that you’ve been playing a part all day long. I suppose you have simply been hungry for the trouble to start so that you could show us what you could do!”

  And he replied quietly: “Do you think I really wanted that fight?”

  When she looked back on the affair, she had to admit that he certainly had not pushed himself forward in the fray. Yet she could not help a feeling that his lazy, shrinking indolence had been all an assumed mask. No one, with this devilish, compacted energy within, could have been utterly nonchalant at a moment when battle was in the offing. And then, too, there had been a destructiveness about his fight. It was not like a mere encounter of fists.

  Usually in those struggles there is a vast deal of swinging and smashing and puffing and heaving. But here there had been hardly more than a brush, one tangle, one thrust and there lay Harrison, swollen of face, crushed, perhaps broken in spirit forever, and here was this slender youth untouched!

  In the older days, no doubt, this matter would have been put down to a little use of black magic, and though there were few girls more levelheaded than Anne Cosden, yet even Anne had a slight sense of weird awe.

  “Well,” said Anne, “and what do you want to do now?”

  “Stay here, ma’am, and go right on working,” said Jeremy.

  “Working?” echoed Anne. “We’ll keep you, though. Out of curiosity, if nothing else. But will you please tell me where you learned to fight like that?”

  “Why, yes,” said Jeremy. “I used a lot of patience, you know. I had to admit, when I was younger, that I was a good deal weaker than most boys of my age. And so I had to make a good deal of myself if I were going to hold up my end with the other boys. I had to do everything in the best way, or else I couldn’t do it at all.”

  “Humph!” said Miss Cosden. “All very probable, I’m sure! And the same sort of patience, I presume, taught you how to work so fast, with so little effort! Young man, are you trying to make a fool out of me?”

  “No,” said Jeremy Major blandly. “Oh, no!”

  And he and the young lady stared at each other, she with a bright-eyed challenge in her eyes, and he calmly defying her and smiling inwardly, so it seemed.

  In the meantime, Mr. Cosden had busied himself with Dick Harrison and that stout young man gradually came back toward consciousness with a brain still reeling. He wanted to know where he was, and if the fight was over. And when he was assured that it was, he shamelessly thanked the Lord for it. After they had poured a dram or two of hot brandy down his throat, he recovered a bit more and gave them his own impressions of the battle.

  “It was like hitting a bunch of feathers and finding that they were carved out of rock!” said he. “I thought my fist could hardly be kept from going clean through him. But when he got his hands on me I thought I’d fallen under the feet of a thousand buffaloes stampeding!”

  So young Harrison talked on, without shame, not as one who details a defeat, but as one interested in the portrayal of some unhuman phenomenon.

  Mr. Hubert Cosden felt that there was a heavy moral responsibility on his hands for what young Major had done. And he gave his men a little talk in which he told them that it was possible that Jeremy Major would be on hand for some time, and in that case, he hoped that they would make it a point not to indulge in any more quarrels with Jeremy. Mr. Cosden discovered that he need not have troubled himself about this matter. His young men were not at all inclined to experiment after Harrison had opened their eyes.

  CHAPTER XXII. MAJOR’S PLAN

  EARLY THE NEXT morning in the canvas-walled, floorless place which was known as “The Hotel,” young Sammy Gregg was wakened by the capable hand of Hubert Cosden upon his shoulder.

  “Gregg,” said the miner, “tell me at once just what you know about this fellow Major, this Jeremy Major.”

  It took Sammy Gregg hardly ten minutes to tell how he had first seen an unsuccessful young beggar blowing improvised music with a flute in Munson, and how he had dropped ten dollars into the hat of the stranger; of how he had seen the same figure grown brilliant and playing with huge sums in a gambling den in Texas not very many days later
; of how he had encountered him later in a tramp “Jungle,” and how Jeremy Major and his horse had driven a herd of wild mustangs through the mountains to Crumbock.

  Mr. Cosden listened to these details with a hungry interest, but still he continued to shake his head, as though he did not find in what he heard the sort of answers which were satisfying to him.

  “It’s a dangerous business, using fire to fight fire, or poison to fight poison. My one hope is that the business will be over soon, and if they don’t mutually brain one another, I shall be disappointed. Jeremy Major is coming to see you. He has told me that he is willing to do whatever he can to handle Furness for me. And he thinks that he needs you and me both to arrange the matter.

  “His idea is an odd one. And yet there is something a little attractive about it, too. What he wants to do is to throw out a sort of general challenge to big Furness. He says that Furness is not holding up stages merely to get the money out of them, but also because he is rather amused by the exciting work. Confound his heart!

  “Now, then, what this fellow Major wants to do is to have me entrust a good fat shipment of gold to the stage. You yourself, Gregg, will go along to deliver the shipment and to check up on all that happens. There will be a driver, and there will be young Major. Or, if a driver doesn’t want to handle the risky job, Major himself says he will drive the coach and ‘fight’ it, also.

  “You understand the scheme? Everything is to be published far and wide. Jeremy Major is going to attempt to push a stage carrying a good many thousands in gold straight through the mountains to Munson. And the hope is that Mr. Furness will take it into his head to meet Mr. Major and dispute the way with himpartly for the sake of the money and partly for the sake of maintaining himself as ruler of the roost!”

  This was the origin of that odd plan which Jeremy Major had conceived, and which he also desired to execute. And Sammy Gregg, listening to the scheme, found a good deal that he could object to. But he also saw two great advantages for himself for which he would willingly have sacrificed himself a thousand times over. One advantage was that he would, in this fashion, be rid of Furness. Another was that if Jeremy Major traveled in that stage line to defend it, it would discourage not only Furness, but perhaps all other prospective thieves who had sundry villainous intents in mind.

  He announced on the spot his willingness to direct the whole affair and travel in the “danger stage” himself for that purpose. Also, he would provide, if he could, a driver and a good team to make the first relay run.

  There would be no trouble about the provision of horses. For the Texas mustangs, which had lost so much flesh during the first few days of the operation of the line, were now waxing fat again. And their spirits were rising with their flesh. For poor Sammy Gregg had been forced to reduce the number of stages until now only one was making the trip. It came from Munson to Crumbock. And at Crumbock it was relieved by another vehicle which started back under the same driver.

  But, in the meantime, the patronage of the line had fallen off so hugely that even the running of one coach was not worthwhile. It was never a third filled. And they were penniless adventurers. For the coach from Munson to Crumbock and back had become known throughout the range as the “danger line,” or the “danger stage,” a name to which it had lived up to only too well.

  But now, with the mines booming more strongly than ever with the presence of business coming closer and closer to the boiling point, the one rapid and effective means of communication between Munson and Crumbock was practically abandoned by miners and travelers.

  Sammy Gregg had to admit that they were right. All he objected to was that they made a joke of his line. Yes, even the men who were on his payroll were inclined to smile at the prospects of the stage. All of them were looking forward to a necessary change of work before long, and all of them were loafing on a job which no longer required their industry. And Sammy, remarking the fact that the rats were leaving the sinking ship, felt every day more convinced that his doom was surely creeping upon him.

  Furness, of course, was the main rock upon which he was splitting. All the other ruffians who had infested the highway across the mountains had not been as dangerous to life and property as that single man. And now there was a last hope, that Jeremy Major might meet and crush the famous rider of the gray horse.

  Sammy himself saw the stage looked to, and every nut in her tightened and the wheels greased.

  He saw the six best horses he had prepared for the work. Then he set about finding a driver for the team.

  This, however, was a different matter. The news had purposely been sent far abroad that the stage, on the fourteenth of the month, was to start out for Munson with fifteen thousand dollars in raw gold aboard her. And it was perfectly well understood why that information had been cast out. It was that a hook might be baited for Mr. Chester Ormonde Furness. And there was a very generally expressed opinion that Mr. Furness would not only be snagged by the hook, but that he would straightway swim off with hook, line, sinker, and fishers also!

  Nobody, in short, wished to take the job. Old Alec, with his crippled arm, wrote in to sympathize with his old boss upon the cowardice of his successors on the driver’s scat. But Alec himself had been rendered not available by the very enemy whom now they had specially singled out.

  If there were any doubt as to what might become of the news which had been sent out in the general direction of the mountains which sheltered Mr. Furness, it was removed when a neatly written and quite surprising letter was received by Sammy in the following language:

  Dear Mr. Gregg:

  It is so long since I have seen anything but frightened tramps in your stages that I am delighted to hear that you have changed your policy, and that you have now made yourself responsible for a shipment of gold.

  I am so interested that I must convey to you my intention of taking special charge of the gold at the earliest opportunity.

  Believe me to be most faithfully yours, and in gratitude for many favors conferred by you in the past,

  Chester Ormonde Furness.

  Over this letter young Sammy Gregg pondered with a gray face. He was fairly well convinced that, no matter how formidable slender Mr. Major might be, Furness was unbeatable. And therefore he carried the letter to Cosden with a gloomy silence. However, Cosden was indomitable.

  “I have seen this man handle his hands. If he can use a gun half as well, he will be fairly invincible! Don’t talk to me about failure. He cannot fail! The gold goes by that stage, and if you cannot persuade another man or young Major himself to drive, I’ll drive the infernal wagon myself!”

  There was no need of that. Jeremy Major willingly took upon himself to manage the team, and upon the appointed morning, with the June sun just turning the sky to rose and gold, Jeremy Major stepped into the street and passed through the dense crowd which had gathered to see the “danger coach” start. Six men held the dancing, furious horses, all high strung from their long stay in the pasture. But when Jeremy mounted the seat where Sammy Gregg was already waiting for him and picked up the reins, it was noted that under his hand and voice the team became suddenly quiet. A moment more and the brake was eased with a screech and the big wagon lurched away down the street.

  There was a final thrill for the crowd of spectators after the coach had rolled down the street and while they were still standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the pair on the high-pitched seat rock with every inequality of the road.

  Someone called out: “Look here! Look at this stray! Hey, boys, who owns that hoss?”

  There was such a note of wild excitement in this call that every head jerked around and presently they were aware of a tall, black stallion footing it down the street in strange guise.

  For he was fully saddled, most beautifully saddled, in fact. And upon the horn of the saddle there was tied a bridle which was one mass of burnished metal work. But the head itself of the horse was free, and as he trotted along he tossed his crest high and glanced
disdainfully from side to side upon the people in the street. For he was of a royal dignity, this king of kings among horses.

  There was not a white hair on him. He was as black as tar from head to foot. Yes, and the hooves themselves were as black as though they had been newly stained. And he shone, too, as though he had been newly burnished, so that one could speak of the brightness of his glimmering flanks, but hardly of their color. Yes, the very hooves flashed as though they had just been waxed and polished. Yet one knew, after an instant of attention, that nature was the groom in this case.

  There is a gait which exceeds in beauty either the racing step or the swinging canter or the high or “daisy-cutting” trot; and that is the walking pace of a truly fine horse. For, as he walks, his actions are not too swift for the human eye to follow the play of light upon his shoulders and the exquisite cushioning flexibility of the supple fetlock joints. And what these knowers of horseflesh saw as the big black walked past stirred their hearts. One did not need to know horses. A child would have understood that here was the speed of the wind.

  Presently he broke into a gallop, swept out from the town, and away after the stage and up the hill, following his master.

  The black did not alter his stride until he had put himself ahead of the swinging trot of the stagecoach that Jeremy Major was driving over the mountain way. And, still in the lead, he idled along, keeping himself just beyond the leaders, pausing now and again to crop a tempting bunch of grass, and then brushing on.

  “If Furness should get away,” said Jeremy Major, and finished by pointing to the stallion.

  Out from Crumbock there was a three-mile slope to climb, and after that for a distance the trail wound along the crest of a ridge. They had covered a good mile of this easier going when Major called softly and suddenly to the horses and at the same time shot the long handle of the brake forward. There was a screech of the brake pads against the heavy iron tires. The coach slowed to a walking pace, with the traces of the team slack, and then for the first time Sammy Gregg saw a reason for the halt.