Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “You mean the mining town? The silver mines?”

  “What else?”

  “I’ve heard of that. Whereabouts does it lie?”

  At this, the stranger stared at him in some wonder.

  “You beat me,” said he. “As sure as my name is Henry—” He paused, cutting himself very short, and went on: “You don’t know Monument?” It was as if he had said: “You don’t know the sun?”

  “I don’t know the place. I’ve never been there.”

  “You’re from the hind side of the range, are you?”

  “Yes, from over there.”

  “You don’t have to cover up with me,” said the other, smiling most disarmingly again. “You’re on the run, kid, I suppose. Well, that’s your business. I’m on the run, too. That is to say, more or less. I’ve had to hop a dozen times in my life. I still hop, now and then. If you want to tell me who you are — it goes. If you don’t I shut up. But my name is Henry Colter.”

  There was enough force in that name to make Signal, who had just buckled the last cinch, wheel about, his shoulders flattened against the ribs of his horse.

  “You’re Colter!” he exclaimed.

  “That’s me.”

  “Well, I’m damned!”

  “To think you had me down, eh?” grinned the other. “I suppose it does seem a little funny; but, as you’ve seen for yourself, I’m not as hard as they’ve made me out, all these years!”

  His words came dimly to the ears of John Signal, who was seeing many strong images that rushed up into his mind. There was a picture of a big, rugged fellow, riding a mustang through the streets of the town, burdened with revolvers and a long rifle. That was Dan Garrison, bound outward, men said, to ride until he found death or the life of Henry Colter. Dan Garrison never had come again. He had found the end of his trail, and Colter’s superior gun had won. And there was Ned Levis, famous for his dapperness and his savage fighting, who had been brought down the Bender Creek to the town, five long years before, and had lain for three days in bed before he died, more of exhaustion from the loss of blood than because of the terrible wounds which the bullets of his conqueror had driven through his body. Henry Colter was that conqueror.

  Those were two overt pictures, so to speak. But there was much else, such as the wild tales of robbery and murder which, from time to time, drifted upon the tongues of men, not quite enough substantiated to appear in the public press, which rather referred to Colter as “celebrated” than “notorious.” He was one of those men really wanted for a hundred crimes, but not yet outlawed because he had not actually been tried and found guilty for any important action. For he had lived not on the “hind side” of the range, but on the western front of it, where the law had not yet established itself. He had kept ahead of the sheriff, so to speak. And, though all the world knew that he was a criminal, there was probably not a warrant in existence for his arrest.

  So famous was this Henry Colter that young Signal looked upon him agape.

  “My God,” said he, “but I’ve heard a lot and a lot about you, Colter!”

  “Have you?” said the other, not unpleased. “And pretty near all bad, I take it?”

  “They say that you shoot straight — and you’re square with your pals,” said the boy, who had much to learn of diplomacy in this strangely tangled world of ours. However, he was talking with one who was quite indifferent to most criticism.

  “If they say that, they say enough,” said Colter. “I don’t ask for any more. I shoot straight, and I stand for my pals — all them that stand for me! Now, kid, where d’you aim to ride that hoss tonight — or are you still upstage with me?”

  The boy canted his ear a little, at this unfamiliar slang. It was a less sophisticated world than that of today, when all the side-talk of a dozen professions is spilled abroad through the newspapers and shop-talk finds its way into the conversation of the most uninitiated.

  However, he could understand the meaning of Colter, and he hesitated a little, not only because of what he would have to say, if he answered at all, but because there was a weight upon his heart when he even thought of the thing which sent him from Bender City to the highlands. He sighed, and instantly the words came.

  “They want me for murder at my home town. That’s my story. My name is John Signal.”

  The other nodded.

  “I knew it was a killing,” he said, unshocked.

  “Will you tell me how you happened to guess that?” asked Signal anxiously.

  “You haven’t got the story branded into your forehead,” smiled the other. “That needn’t bother you, if that’s what you mean. But folks have to have a reason for coming up to this section of the world. And, after I saw the way you tickled that revolver and danced it out under my nose, why, I didn’t have to ask any more questions. It was guns that made you leave your home town; and you’d shoot too straight not to kill your man!”

  This simple analysis left Signal a little bewildered. The other went on genially: “They ran you out, then?”

  “I didn’t stay to be run out,” said he. “I knew that they’d be after me.”

  “Self-defense, son,” said the experienced Colter. “That’s the gag to use on them — so long as the shooting is done from in front!”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders.

  “It was done from in front, but it was the son of the judge who dropped.” He exploded angrily: “Damn him, he’d been trading on his father’s name all his life. He tried to walk on me!”

  The other grinned broadly.

  “And you couldn’t reach him with your fists?”

  “It was poker,” said John Signal. “He began to talk and tap the table with his Colt. A man can’t stand for that!”

  “He had his gun out?”

  “He did.”

  “Did other people see it?”

  “Two sneaking cronies of young Bill Hampton.”

  “They’d testify against you?”

  “Of course they would. They’re both employed by the judge. I didn’t have a chance.”

  Colter held his peace for a serious instant. Then:

  “What do you aim at?”

  “A new start in life,” said the boy gloomily. “That’s the only thing that I can do.”

  “And why not a start in Monument?”

  “I’ve got to avoid towns — and the law!”

  Colter laughed.

  “You think that they’ll pepper the whole countryside with men looking for you, and a thousand-dollar reward. They won’t! On the hind side of the mountains, the law’s a growed-up man. But over yonder it goes on bare feet and ain’t as big as a baby. In Monument there ain’t any law to speak of. Not for a man that wears two guns and can use ’em! Monument, my boy. That’s the home that’s waiting for you!”

  “What would I do?” sighed Signal. “I’m not a miner.”

  Colter laughed again.

  “Who goes to a mining town to mine? Only the suckers — and five or six lucky devils. The rest go there to get their honey without working!”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “You know me, kid!”

  “Yes.”

  “What sort of work do I do?” Then, as the boy was silent, he went on: “Your best plan is as plain as the nose on your face. The thing for you to do is to stay here with me until my chums come along. Then throw in with me. That’s the absolute ticket! Why, kid, I’ll roll you in money.”

  He explained, during the next pause: “That sounds a lot — from a starved man that didn’t have even a bullet for his guns, eh? But wait and see. Today or tomorrow, the boys I’m waiting for will be up here. We head straight down for Monument. I’ll show you who’s king there, old-timer.”

  Signal shook himself like a man rousing from a profound sleep. He said rapidly:

  “That’s a kind offer. I take it that way. But the fact is that I want to go straight. You see how it is — I’m willing to work. I don’t mind work. I’ve worked before!�
�

  The other chuckled, unabashed.

  “Is that it?” said he. “Well, they all start like that, and feeling that way. The books say that the crooks have got to go down. Sure, because the books only know about the ones that have been caught. Well, I’m forty, and never saw the inside of a jail. You try working. But on Saturday night, you come around and talk to me!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LIKE A HOT toddy, the sense of his own virtue warmed the heart of John Signal through three bleak, beautiful days among the highlands, during which he shuddered at night beneath his blankets in the cold, and during the day drove gradually across the range until he came on the third afternoon to a lofty platform, held up as upon stilts, to view the lower regions around him. He saw almost as far as the human eye can reach, for the mountain air was pure and still — distance made objects dwindle in size but hardly obscured their features, except to the south where a reddish haze, like smoke, continually poured upward from the earth to the upper air. That was the desert, as he knew, over whose face the wind is never still, picking up sands and sifting them eternally through the sieve of the air.

  Out of that desert mist, while he watched, he saw a streak of black moving, making a pencil line which broadened and evaporated toward the rear as it ran straight on in front toward a range of hills — ran very slowly, but never stopping. He marveled only for a moment, for then he knew that it was a train heading north. The patience of the mountains was upon Signal, and he watched, amused, while the pencil stroke ran on to the foot of the hills where a gap opened among them. There it stopped at a number of houses, clustered close.

  Where was the railroad pointed? Not, surely, at this insignificant village which, nevertheless, seemed to be the terminal of the line. But beyond the broad heaps of the hills there was a small valley with a curving gleam of water down its center; and where the river flowed from the western hills, a town appeared, stretched out along the river edges. Still further west, the hills ran against the knees of great mountains which suddenly stood up against the sky, one of them loftier than all the rest with sides more rigidly straight and a great white hat upon its head. By many a description he knew that mountain. It was Monument, and therefore the town beside the river had likewise the same name. That was Monument, to which Colter had commended him.

  He frowned at the thought. In making that recommendation, Colter had clearly pointed out that there was little likelihood of proper work being found in the town, except for a gun-fighter or a hanger-on.

  But the rigid sense of his own virtue which had supported the boy so stoutly during these past days now faltered a little. What, otherwise, was he to do? To ride on into the unknown, and, at last, find obscure work on a ranch, riding herd? All the miseries of that labor came up in his mind — the blinding hot August days, and the winter blizzards — the weaklings of March which had to be tailed up endlessly — the continual labor, the dirty, ignorant companions, the poor food.

  Suddenly the boy put his conscience asleep by saying to himself that he would venture down to the lowlands and find Monument and then — see what might happen to him. Not that he deliberately chose a lawless life, but, having once ridden to the highlands above the law, it seemed a dreary descent to go back to the common ways of common men!

  So he rode down for Monument.

  It was no easy ride. That which his eye had seen, striking straight across the valley, as a bird might fly, was in reality many a long mile. He came down to the level, however, in the dusk of the day, and there he camped. In the gray morning he rode on up the valley, keeping close to the bank of the river when he had reached that water. It flowed with a hurrying murmur and he smiled a little as he watched it, wondering how much he could have learned from that continual whispering.

  The valley narrowed to a pass between two hills, the river cutting a gorge, and, following a trail over the first hill, he came to the top and had his first near view of Monument, laid out like a little map at his feet.

  He was amazed by it! For the stories he had heard of mining camps usually figured forth scanty shacks of thin wood, collected largely from packing cases, and patched with canvas — jumbles of dugouts, lean-tos, dog-tents thrown confusedly together. But Monument was different. There appeared before the startled eye of the boy a city of broad streets and structures up to three stories, built of adobe, frame, or brick. Even while he watched, he saw a long procession of wagons, loaded with lumber, come trundling down the main street on the right bank of the river, drawn by great teams of mules. At the chuckholes the teams paused, shocked to an instant’s halt, and then lurched ahead again, all hitting their collars with one rhythm while the loud voices of the drivers and the crackling of the big wheels came up to John Signal clearly and yet at such a distance that he was reminded of the music of the bees and the whirring wings of birds in the tableland of the mountains through which he had just passed.

  It was no scraggling frontier town, but seemed built for permanence and pleasure as well as utility. Each bank of the river had been made into a park, the tall trees which originally stood there in imposing files having been miraculously preserved from the hungry axes of the miners. And Signal at last shook his head in doubt, for it seemed impossible that such a place should be free from the influence of the law.

  He jogged his gelding down the slope, still scanning the town and the country all about it. It was a mining town set in the heart of a cow country. All the hills, at a little distance, were freckled with live stock, and as he came down again toward the river, he saw a pair of punchers bringing in a hundred beeves toward the town — for the butchers, no doubt. And even those scores of fat steers would not last long among the thronging crowds of the city of Monument.

  When he joined the trail, he fell in with the rearward puncher and helped him round into the crowd a runaway.

  “Are you an old hand here at Monument?” asked Signal.

  “I’m about as old as any,” said the puncher, who was a man of thirty-five. “I’ve worked cows around these parts for eleven year.”

  “And worked silver too, I suppose?”

  “I never took nothing out of the ground,” answered the other. “What I say is: If you want to stay above ground, you better work there. Them that take the cash out of the rocks give their lives in exchange, before very long. That’s a bang up hoss you got there.”

  “He’s not bad,” admitted the boy, pleased.

  “A cuttin’ hoss, I’d say, by the way that he pointed that hunk of beef back into the herd.”

  It was an ugly roan that Signal bestrode, with jutting hip bones and a ewe neck and a great Roman nose and ears that perpetually sagged back.

  “It’s a cutting hoss, too,” said Signal.

  “Looks a pile more like a camel than it does like a hoss,” went on the puncher, “but by the looks of its legs, I could tell. Give a hoss a middle piece and four real legs, and he’s worth something.”

  “He stands over some ground,” pointed out the boy, well pleased by this appreciation of a favorite.

  “And you gotta use plenty of canvas to make cinches for him.”

  “He can last,” agreed Signal. “He can run all day. Can’t you, Grundy?”

  Grundy tossed his head and snorted, and flicked his ears back and forth, annoyed.

  “He’s got the temper of an old woman,” commented Signal. “He’d as soon eat you as a bale of hay. His idea of a good game is to get a man down and walk up and down his frame. But he’s all horse, and he has a head on his shoulders. That’s what counts, I suppose.”

  “Of course it is,” agreed the other. “I wouldn’t mind owning a hoss like that, myself. He’s got a turn of speed, I’d hope?”

  “Yep. He’d surprise you.”

  “What kind of a price would you put on him?”

  “More than you’d want to pay, partner,” said the boy amicably. “He’s worth more to me in my line of work than he would be to you in yours.”

  “Is that so? And what might yo
ur line of work be?”

  Signal hesitated. What, after all, was his line of work? To keep his hide and head intact, first and foremost, and for that purpose, of course the horse was invaluable to him.

  “I’m drifting on a long march,” he said in indirect answer. “I’m piling off on a mighty long march, and of course I wouldn’t be selling the best thing I got before I start.”

  “Are you gunna make a richer strike than Monument?” asked the puncher, with a grin. And he looked Signal up and down with a flick of his eyes which might have meant nothing, and which might have meant a great deal.

  The second puncher came up.

  “Here’s a kid,” said the first one, “who’s about to make a long march. A mighty long march. I dunno that he knows where!”

  The heart of Signal began to beat fast and his color altered a little, for he saw that they were beginning to suspect something about him. The second puncher laughed.

  “Maybe it ain’t what’s before but what’s behind that makes him ride,” was the latter’s comment.

  Signal reined up his horse.

  “What are you fellows driving at?” he asked in resentment.

  They made no answer, but worked slowly on after the herd, talking to one another, and not to him.

  He looked after them in some dismay, and, making a grim resolution that he would never again allow himself to be tricked into conversation about his own goals and destinies, he cantered up the road again, passed the herd without giving the drovers a glance, and rode on toward the town.

  In a few moments, he was within the verge of the city of Monument, and the sounds of the place gathered about him like the ripple of waters about the ears of a swimmer.

  So, determined to keep rigidly upon his guard, and to set a special watch over his tongue, he moved on, glancing to the left and right, and feeling extraordinarily like an escaped prisoner, returning to his jail.

  Who would attempt to lock the door upon him?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HE FOUND THE streets of Monument broad and fairly clean, though deeply rutted by the wheels of the great wagons which constantly were jolting and jarring through them, in all weathers of the years. The scheme of the town was pleasant enough, the upper stories of the buildings projecting out well above the lower, and being supported on strong pillars of adobe or brick or wood which rose from the outer edge of the sidewalks. In the shade of the arcades thus made, the citizens of Monument walked to and fro, sometimes almost lost in the shadow, but at the street corners emerging suddenly into the brightness of the sunlight, so that the boy was amazed by such types of clothes and people as he never had seen. Looking down from the height of his saddle, he stared at the headgear in particular and observed derbies, high silk hats most absurdly out of place, common felts of gray and brown, and the sloppy, wide-brimmed black felt which was so common all through the West, turning green with age and much sunshine; there were caps, and the peaked straw hats of Mexicans, and the flatter straw hats of others; there were sun helmets, and there were the towering, massive sombreros, sometimes flecked with metal work of varying kinds.