by Max Brand
“Yes. Animals mean something to him more than they do to us. I saw his face when he heard the lowing of the cattle at Hurry Creek.”
“What are you going to do, Georgia?”
“Wait,” said Georgia, “and pray that I never see him again.” Mrs. Milman, staring at the girl like one who hopes against hope, said simply: “I think that you’re right, Georgia.”
Then she added. “And what about your father?”
“I’ve thought of that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go to him and tell him—”
“Think it over. You’ll have to have the right words.”
“I’m simply going to tell him that it doesn’t matter, whatever he’s done in the past. Not to me. Not to you and me, Mother! Am I right?”
Elinore Milman caught a quick breath.
“We can’t let it matter. There has to be such a thing as a blind faith and a blind loyalty, doesn’t there?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “That’s just what I feel.”
The mother stood up and put her arms around Georgia.
“We’re all standing on the brink of ruin,” she said. “Yesterday we were rich and happy and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Today, there’s every chance that we’ll go downhill and never rise again. Your father’s life is in horrible danger from that boy. There’s a shame in his past that is never going to take its shadow off our lives, no matter how the affair comes out. All of our wealth seems in danger of being snatched away. And I have you to tremble about and pray for, Georgia. There’s only the way to face these things, and that’s together, shoulder to shoulder.”
“Yes,” said Georgia.
She began to tremble violently and suddenly her mother whispered: “I think that you’re having the hardest time of all. But now go and tell your father what you’ve told me, will you?”
“I’ll go at once,” said Georgia.
She turned to the door and waited there for a moment, breathing deeply to drive away a faintness which was growing upon her. Then, composing herself with a great effort, she went out of the house toward the barn.
She met little, one-legged Harry Sams, with a manure fork in his hand coming from behind the barn. The stem of his corncob pipe had had a new mouthpiece whittled and rewhittled in it. It was now hardly two inches long, and the fumes from the bowl of the pipe kept him constantly blinking. But he was faithful to old pipes, as to old friends.
“Harry,” she said, “have you seen Father?”
“Aye,” said Harry, “he’s gone and got him that white-faced fool of a chestnut gelding, and he’s gone off toward Hurry Creek as though there was guns behind him, instead of in front.”
The words struck her like bullets. All the sunset blurred and darkened before her face, for she knew that her father had gone off in hope of finding his death.
33. DANGER AHEAD
THE KID, WHEN he got to the bottom of the long lariat, still found that his feet dangled well above either water or ground. He looked down, but all that he could see was the white dashing of the water — not white, really, but a dusky gray in that half light. He could not tell whether the water ran directly beneath him or if there were a small ledge of rock at the side of the canyon bed.
Hanging by one strong hand, with the other, he took out a match and scratched it. It was only a single spluttering of dim light before a dash of spray put it out, but that glimpse was enough to reveal to the Kid a raging inferno of waters. And, beneath him, a narrow, slippery ledge of rock, hardly a single foot wide.
To the ledge he dropped.
By daylight it would have been a simple matter, perhaps, to get along the place. And he cursed himself because he had not thought of exploring here while the sun was still shining.
He tried matches again and again. But the wind of the water or the flying spray itself instantly snatched away the flame. He had to explore by touch alone. Light there was almost none, Though when he looked up, he could see stars sprinkled across the narrow road which the canyon walls fenced through the high heavens; and there was among them one broad-faced planet — its name he did not know.
The thunder of the creek now pounded steadily, like the continual roar of guns; the solid rocks trembled slightly beneath his hands; and the absence of light gave him only vague and illusive hints of what was around him.
Therefore he closed his eyes altogether for the purpose of shutting out the few, faint rays which merely helped to confuse him, and he began to fumble along the wall of the ravine.
It swung to the left for a little distance. He tried to remember just how the creek had been seen to curve from above, but even this point he carelessly had overlooked. However, that did not matter now. He was committed to that bare, slippery wall of rock, and if he fell from it, he was done forever.
That was not the only danger.
He had hardly made three steps’ progress when something crashed behind him, and then a great black form shot by him, low down on the face of the water.
It missed his feet in inches, grinding on the ledge of rock on which he stood. Hurtling onward, it struck on the corner of the next big rock with a staggering shock, then was whirled around the edge.
Vaguely he had seen this, after opening his eyes when the blow came behind him. He knew that it was a tree trunk, torn down from the banks higher up the stream, and now sent like a javelin, flying down toward the lower waters. A second of these might very well strike him and dash him to a pulp, or else flick him off from the wall like a caterpillar from a tree, to be ground up by the teeth of the rocks.
Yet he went on. In fact, there was no return, but the grim steadiness of his purpose never left him.
With closed eyes, and still fumbling, he worked out to a place where the rock ledge shelved away to nothing beneath the grip of his feet. He reached down, pulled off his boots, and prepared to see what naked hands and feet could do with the treacherous surface of that canyon face in the dark, with the spray whipping continually around him.
He found a handhold. His feet, reaching at the rock below, helped him a good deal. He was working his way out and out to the left, where the creek turned its corner, and now he turned the point of it.
It was grisly, hard work, for his weight was hanging almost entirely from his hands. Only now and then did he get any purchase for his feet. And the handholds were hard to find also. He had to hold by one hand and with the other fumble before him, vaguely, up and down, until he found some small projection, or some crevice into which even the tips of his fingers could be fitted.
Sometimes he was swaying up. Once he descended until his feet thrust into the water.
The current jerked at him like a hand. He almost lost his hold. For one breathless moment he thought that he was gone.
But his hands were strong, and his hold remained true.
In this manner he found that he had turned the corner. But now his position was not much better. There was still no foothold beneath him, and his arms were now aching to the pits of the shoulders. They were so extremely tired that they shook with a violence which of itself threatened to shake him loose from the wet rock.
And there was no light!
He opened his eyes.
Yes, far away to the left there was a red star shining toward him. It glared at him like an eye, threateningly. But suddenly, his eyes opening more clearly, he saw that it was the flame of the Dixon camp fire.
That, which should have depressed him still more, gave him a sudden hope, and with the hope came strength.
He could not have endured the strain of going back to the last ridge which he had left. The very idea of turning back, however, had not come to him. And he worked on, gritting his teeth until his jaws ached as well as his arms.
Then, fumbling forward with his left foot, he touched a firm support.
He rested his whole weight upon the rock beneath. It was strong and firm.
At this the relief was so great that the blood bound
ed violently into his head, and he was dizzy. But he clung, fighting his way through the first moments of the reaction after the strain was over.
Still his body was shaking a little, and his arms were numb, but he began to breathe more easily, and his mind was more at ease also.
Those who have passed through the desperate gates of an enterprise feel that the early danger must assure them of better luck further on. At least, so the Kid felt, as he stood there in the dark of the ravine, with the chilly drops of snow water flicking at him.
The canyon walls opened here perceptibly, moreover, and there was sufficient starlight to enable him to see dimly what was before him.
It was no easy road. Here the ledge ran a little distance. There it disappeared entirely. But the walls were not so perpendicular and the weight of his body would in no place fall so sheerly upon his tired hands and upon his shoulders.
He swung his arms. He kneaded them with his shaking hands until the flow of blood subdued their aching. And when at last he felt sufficient master of himself, he resumed his progress toward the mouth of the canyon.
He had had practice now; besides, he had some sight to help him, so that the work went on more easily, and he made good use of all his advantages until he carne to where the very lips of the ravine spread out wider and wider, and the opening flood of the river flattened and lost its noise over a more ample bed. Its speed was quenched, in the same manner and moment, for a final reef of rocks in the neck of the canyon had chopped up the waters and taken their headway from them.
Now, all in a moment, the water slackened and spread out shallowly across a bed four times as spacious as that into which it had been crowded by the narrow walls of the ravine. Here, flat-faced, gently, it ran into the open valley, heading toward the other dark throat into which it was soon to fall and again begin to rage and roar like a lion.
And the Kid, soaked to the skin, tired, and aching from his labors, looked out on that flow of water as a strong and busy man looks out upon one placid moment between strenuous days of action and of danger — one walk through the green country, one solemn moment of peace.
Yet there was no peace for him.
He had performed all of these labors merely to bring himself to the door which opened upon the real peril. And of all the arduous tasks which he had taken in hand in his days, none was comparable with the thing which lay before him.
No strength or craft of hand, he knew, could ever make him equal to the assembled strength which Dixon had gathered here.
If he were superior to each of them by the flickering, broken part of a second in speed of draw; if he were a finger’s breadth closer to the bull’s-eye when he fired, these advantages which meant life and victory in a single combat were nothing compared with the overwhelming odds which he would have to encounter.
No, there was now nothing left for him except subtlety and silent craft, like an adventuring Indian in a camp of the enemy.
The Kid, taking stock of these truths, gravely advanced still farther, until he was on the exact verge of the canyon mouth, where a little shore of gravel went down to the waters.
From this point, he could see all that the hollow contained. He could see the mist rising faintly against the stars above the uneasy cattle. He could hear the desperate moaning voices of the thirst-starved creatures. That sound made the roar of the river at once a small thing.
He looked down on the red beacon of the camp fire where his enemies were. He looked away to either side, where the soft curves of the hills undulated against the sky line; surely those hills never had seen a stranger thing than he would attempt this night!
Then, narrowing his eyes, he crouched low, his head close to the water, and scanned the shore on each side.
He was inside the lines, He could see, here and there, the flicker of the barbed wire which made the outer defense. He could see also the occasional form of a guard marching as a sentinel up and down the fences.
Now, as he watched, he saw the vague outline of a man come from the camp fire and walk down to the water’s edge. There the fellow stood. It was Dixon, perhaps rejoicing in the mischief which he was working, and grinning as he listened to the noise of the tormented cattle.
His own mind flashed back to another picture — the sunwhitened desert, and the two poor cows struggling and swaying under their unaccustomed yokes.
Then he stepped with his naked feet into the cold waters of the stream.
34. THE APPROACH
HIS REVOLVER HE kept above the surface of the stream, which was now not more than three or four feet deep. But though it was shallow, and slid along a fairly fiat surface, there was amazing force in it still, the last effect of the long impetus which it had received in shooting down the flume of the ravine.
He had to lean upstream at a sharp angle, with the current heaping shoulder and even neck high as it bubbled and rushed and gurgled loudly.
His nerves were as good as those of any man, but before he was halfway across the stream, walking in the dim, red path of the light from the camp fire, he made certain that the men on the shore must have seen him. If they had not seen, they must have heard. Surely they were watching there, laughing in the dark of the covert, and grinning at the poor fool who was walking into their hands.
Then he remembered that there were other noises abroad in the valley besides the intimate voice of the river just under his ear. There was the dull and distant roaring of the penned-up waters in the canyon above, and a deeper, fainter call from the lower ravine; above all, the solemn music of the lowing cattle flooded across the hollow.
No, he could not be heard, but surely he was seen!
The long, red arm of the firelight stretched toward him and caught him by the throat.
He thought of lying flat on the surface of the stream. It would shoot him like a log safe past the fire, past all the watchers, and at the mouth of the lower canyon, he would struggle on shore and try to escape.
That thought of flight tempted him mightily. He fairly trembled on the verge of giving way to it.
But he went on.
The strength of the resolve which drove him had a pull like that of gravity and carried him step by step against his reason. And then the ground was shoaling beneath him. The suction grew less in the shallows, and finally he crawled out on his hands and knees.
There on the shore he lay flat.
He was shuddering with cold. He was helpless with it. Any yokel, any cowardly boy might have mastered him then, he felt. The snow water had sent its numbing chill through him to the bone. His breathing failed. The tremors shook him more than earthquakes shake cities.
But he had to lie quietly while he took stock of the situation before him.
He was not nearly as close to the camp fire as he had thought while striding across the creek. He lay, in fact, some distance to the north of it, and between him and the flames stood a row of three wagons. Their wheels looked enormous and misshapen. They seemed to be broken and flattened on the lower surface that met the ground. Their shadows went wavering across the ground. Sometimes it was as though the wheels were turning.
Around the fire three or four men were sitting.
Others, wrapped in their blankets, apparently were asleep, or trying to sleep. And it seemed to the Kid that this was the ultimate proof of their brutality. They could sleep while that sound of agony from the thirsty cattle moaned and howled across the valley! That water which had tugged at him which had swept by him in countless barrelfuls, in unnumerable tones, which had frozen and shaken him, how sweet it would have been in the dusty, dry gullets of those thousands and thousands of dying beasts. All the sweetness of life would have been in it.
A blast of heat came to him out of memory as he thought again of the unforgotten picture of his boyhood — the creaking wagon, and the two old cows swaying and staggering before it, halting in their steps, but leaning again on the yoke and slowly drifting the miles behind them. He himself had had the thirst of fever in his body on that da
y. He had it again now. A flash of burning heat, and of hatred for these men or devils who were with Dixon.
When he looked more closely toward the fire, he saw that on the opposite side, with the full red flush of the flame in his face, sat Dixon himself, looking rather old and stoop-shouldered, as almost any man will, who is sitting cross-legged on the ground.
Suppose that Dixon guessed, even faintly dreamed, that his enemy had broken through the invincible outer lines and was lying there in easy gunshot? Oh, so easy to draw a bead even from this distance, and by pressing the trigger, beckon the brain and heart of the enterprise out of existence!
He could not do it.
His philosophy, blunt and uncertain on many points of life, was in one respect absolute and true. He could not strike from behind or from the dark. There was no Indian in his nature to excuse such ways of fighting.
But he felt, at the sight of Dixon, a calm heat of anger rise that made him forget the river water and its cold hands.
He got up to his knees and went slowly on, still pausing to turn his head from time to time, until he reached a thick, solid wedge of shadow that extended behind one of the wagons.
When he came to this, he rose, and as he rose, he saw suddenly that a man was standing before him!
The breath was pressed from him by that sight. His mind spun about. It was as though a spirit had risen through and out of the solid ground.
How long had the man been there, lost in the shadow, calmly watching the progress of the spy, the secret enemy? Who was he that he dared to take that advance so calmly?
These questions rushed through the mind of the Kid in a broken portion of a second.
“Where’d you get the redeye that knocked you out, buddy?” said the man. “You know where you been? You been crawlin’ around, this side of the water, like a sick snake! Did Bolony Joe open up that keg of his for you, or d’you tap it for yourself? Old Champ will sure raise a riot if he finds out. You better not let him see you!”
“You’re a fool,” snarled the Kid in apparent anger. “I got a slip and fall down there on the edge of the water, and I got soaked, and turned my ankle. The ligaments are ‘bout pulled out of place. Get out of the way, will you, and leave me be with your fool ideas!”