Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  It was a dreary day and a dreary place. The bartender kept shrugging his shoulders to work his coat collar higher up around his neck. He kept glancing up too, as though he feared that the storm would slice off the room all the beams were groaning with the weight of the wind. In fact, winter was on top of us in a stride, and the windows were plastered white with frost and snow. And winter meant the beginning of the long, cold silence in Circle City. The howl of the wind and the thunder of the ice jamming in the river simply were the last guns of the summer.

  Sitting there in the corner, we made our plans. We were like two helpless, hopeless children trying to act in a lost cause. Baird was white and did not get his color back. I felt a hollowness in the pit of my stomach and could guess that I was as white as my companion. He began on an unexpected key, asking me how big a pile I wanted to make before I went back home. I told him that I aimed at eighty thousand. It was not a great fortune, but in those days it meant a good deal. A man could sit back pretty comfortably. He wanted to know how much of it I had stacked up, and I told him that I had raked in nearly fifty-five thousand dollars altogether.

  “If you leave now, you cut yourself short,” he said.

  “I’ll come back in for another season,” I told him. “I’ll be glad to get back to see the family. The kids are growing up. I’m hungry to have a look at them.”

  Baird was a good fellow. He grinned a little at me and shook his head. “Look here, Chalmers, this thing you’re going to do for me — why, money wouldn’t pay for it. I know that. But you’ll let me make up the difference between what you have and what you want to have? I’ll be glad to give you that twenty-five thousand at the end of the trail out.”

  I couldn’t take his money. He insisted that it was not hire. “Compensation” was what he called it. Otherwise, he couldn’t let me go along. We had quite an argument, but in the end I had it my way. I really felt that money did not much matter. To me it appeared that I had about one chance in five of getting through alive. As a matter of fact, as it turned out my chances were a good deal less than that, and frankly I would never have undertaken the job if I had dreamed of what lay before me.

  When the money matter was put aside, we got down to our actual plans. Jack Silver had five good dogs for sale, and I would pick up three more. Eight made a long string and we would load three sleds with nothing but food and the lightest sort of camp equipment. The girl was a good hand on snowshoes, he told me, but it probably would be necessary to let her ride a part of every day if we wanted to stretch some long marches behind us. I made a list of everything. There would be no trouble in getting what we wanted, though the prices would be high now that the last steamer had come up the river for the season.

  Then Baird stood up, ready to go home, and shook hands with me with tears in his eyes. “We’ll carry our rifles, at least,” he said.

  I looked back at him and understood what he meant.

  “We’ll carry one rifle, at least.”

  “You’ll come at midnight?”

  “I’ll come before that a little, if I can. Can you handle Sylvia?”

  “I can handle her. I’ll simply pick her up in my arms and carry her out, if I have to.”

  “Suppose that she squeals?”

  “She won’t squeal. Well, she might. I’ll keep a hand over her mouth. Don’t worry about Sylvia. She’s only a child. I can handle her all right.”

  We had both left out one detail. It wasn’t a small thing either, but it must appear in its due place. He went home, and I started to collect the outfit.

  I shall never forget how my heart failed me when I saw the things gathered into a heap on the floor of the store. It was the sight of the snowshoes that upset me more than anything else, for I could not look at the infernal things without thinking of the hundreds of miles of slogging we would have to cover with those clumsy instruments of torture lashed onto our wet, freezing feet.

  When everything had been gathered, I left the outfit of eight dogs with Jack Silver. It was a good lot of animals. I’ve seen plenty of Huskies that looked heavier and more fit to lug burdens, but these fellows were rangy and looked fit for speed dragging a light load. Jack Silver swore that his lot were all flyers; and I had selected the other three to suit.

  Then I went to get supper, and I laid in a good meal. It seemed that I could never get enough, when I looked forward to the long monotony of bacon grease and the flour and tea that lay ahead of us. The wind was still howling like an evil spirit, nudging the building with a solid shoulder and seeming to shake the ground. I sat in a corner chair, smoked a pipe, and then slept soundly in the chair for about an hour.

  When I awoke, it was close to half past eleven. The saloon was empty, and the bartender was sitting beside the stove, biting his lips while he read in a time-yellowed newspaper the description of a prize fight. He only grunted at me when I got up and went out. I looked over his shoulder and saw a picture of the two fighters, looking white and naked under the glare of electric lights, with the shadowy ropes fencing them into the pen.

  That was the picture that I had in mind as I passed outside, and it seemed to me that the thing was appropriate. I was going into a ring against Cobalt. I was stepping out of my class. The one comfort was the size of the arena. Outside in the dark, I hung onto the wall for a moment and practiced breathing. There was so much edge to that wind, and the snow kept flying so thick and fast along it that I was half choked, but I got my bearings.

  It’s an odd thing that a man will go through almost anything if he’s ever experienced it before. If I had not marched on worse nights than that one, I would have said, offhand, that no human being could face such a wind. Now I plowed ahead through snow and wind and got to the loaded sleds and the dog team, with Jack Silver sitting on the forward sled, asleep.

  I woke him up. He cursed me for being late, but I gave him a little money extra above our agreement, and he counted it and stopped grunting. He helped me break out the sleds, one by one. It was a tough job, not that the runners had frozen in very solidly, or that the sleds were heavily loaded, but the team did not pull together. Even Jack’s five dogs did not seem to know what it was all about.

  We got them going at last, and I steered for the house of Baird. When I drew up in front of it, I whistled twice. Then I waited. I began to hope that the screeching of the wind would drown the noise of the signal. I began to tell myself that if Baird did not hear that first signal, I would not whistle again. Then, like something on the stage, the door of the house opened with a bang and out came Baird with the girl in his arms. He had promised to stifle her with one hand if she cried out. He had promised to handle her easily, because she was still a child to him. Well, she was young enough and slender enough but, when I saw her at that moment, she was all arms and legs, kicking in every direction and screeching like a Scotch bagpipe with never a stop for breathing.

  It shocked me. I thought she must be out of her mind and ran to help Baird. He was cursing and groaning, trying to handle her, but she was fighting like an eel. So I took a big bandanna out of my pocket and put it around her head and over her mouth and gave it a good screw at the back of her head. I was rougher than necessary, but I was pretty angry. I had begun to think of myself as quite the hero, quite the dauntless and self-sacrificing fellow. To have Sylvia spoil my little act with this squealing upset me.

  I said at her ear: “Now quit it, Sylvia. Don’t be a little fool. Quit it, and I’ll stop choking you. Nod your head if you’ll promise to come along peaceably and stop the yipping.”

  She nodded. I took the handkerchief away from her mouth. She turned about and caught me by the elbows. “Tom!” she said, “if you force the thing through, there’ll be a frightful tragedy. You don’t think about it now, but I can see what will happen. I dreamed it this night. I dreamed that we were on the march and out of the white behind us a speck loomed, and we tried to go faster, but we couldn’t. We ran, but it did no good, and the speck got bigger and bigger, and it was Cobalt
. We knew him in the distance by the way that he was running. He came up to you, Tom. Do you hear? He took you with his hands. He seemed to break you.”

  The storm blew the last words far away and thin.

  “If he kills you, Dad and I will be the murderers!” she shouted through the wind.

  “Dreams go by opposites,” was all I could think of, like a fool. Then I asked her: “Will you go quietly?”

  “I’ve told you that I will, if you insist, Tom. Dad, it’s only fair that we should leave Tom out of it. We can leave together, but don’t drag poor Tom into it.”

  “You come back into the house if you’re over your screeching fit,” said her father, “and tie on the snowshoes.”

  XIV. RULING WOLFISH PASSION

  HOW EASILY A man grows irritated! I loved the girl for wanting to leave me out of the dangerous business. I almost hated poor Baird for overruling her so abruptly. Together they went back into the house but returned after some moments. Baird now carried a considerable bundle of additional clothing and odds and ends for Sylvia’s comfort. She came along without resistance as she had promised to come but, when she came near to me, I saw that she was crying. Tears, however, don’t mean a great deal at such a time. They’re only an extra depressant.

  I got the team started after some trouble, and I ran ahead to break trail for them through the fluff of the newly fallen snow, while Baird took the gee pole. I led straight out from Circle City through a white fog in which no one could see us and in which we would have looked like phantoms more than realities if we had been seen. So we headed up the country paralleling the river at a short distance inland.

  No matter whether a fellow is undertaking a possibility or an impossibility, it makes the heart rise to stop struggling with the mind and to begin working with the muscles. So I felt a great deal better as we went striding along, and I told myself no matter what he might be, Cobalt was not a bird. He could not skim the ground. He would have to walk over it, just as we were doing.

  I comforted myself in other ways as well, recalling that the greatest horse in the world is only a half second faster in the mile perhaps than twenty others. The winner of any race, as a rule, is not a great distance ahead of the last trailer. We now had a good advantage. It would probably not be until after this storm that the miners came in from the creek. Their progress would be slow. It would not be until Circle City was reached that Cobalt would learn that the three of us were no longer in town. If he could overtake us after that, more power to him. Gritting my teeth, I vowed that that would never be.

  Progress through the soft snow was not easy. Sometimes we hit bare rocks. Sometimes we skittered through feathery drifts. We got on. I remembered, for the thousandth time, what an iron-hard, half-breed ‘puncher once said to me: “The man who makes the long march is the man who keeps his legs moving a long time every day.” I believe it is true. On the trail across the White Horse and up through the lakes, I’ve seen the splendid athlete beaten and exhausted because every day he was aware of his own speed and tried to make the most of it, while little, skinny, narrow-chested clerks kept on with the uncaptained host because they were accustomed to mental pain, mental plodding and this is easily translated into snowshoe work.

  We went on for two hours. I continued to break trail when we had an odd interruption. I heard a wolf’s howl behind us. It was repeated nearer at hand. It came again, close upon us, and suddenly I looked back and saw the Lightning Warrior coming through the dimness. When he reached the girl, he bounded around her like a playful puppy multiplied by a hundred, and then he started forward for the dogs. Sylvia stopped him, just as the whole string of the dogs turned about and went for the big brute. They intended to mob him, but he had not the slightest intention of budging in spite of their numbers.

  He stood with his head high, ready to strike and jump this way and that. I never saw anything more splendidly fit and ready for trouble. Then the running dogs reached the limit of the traces and the lines and tumbled into a twisted, confused mass. They began to fight with one an other, and it was half an hour before I could get them straightened out, Baird helping. We both were bitten once or twice during the mix-up, but luckily the wounds were only surface scratches.

  The Lightning Warrior or King, as Sylvia now preferred to call him had been left behind and a note to a neighbor asked him to feed the brute. Some instinct must have told King that his mistress was leaving, and in a desperate manner he had managed to scale the lofty fence of the yard and get away, a thing he had never succeeded in doing when he was first captured, even after he had been unchained. He complicated our task. There would be his big mouth to feed from the food reserved for the dogs. There would be his saber teeth to keep from the throats of the team also. But now that we had started, it was impossible to go clear back with him. Sylvia took charge. He walked along at her side the rest of that march. When she was fagged and had to ride, he went close beside her, snarling at the sled which carried her and sniffing at the load on which she was lying.

  Taking turns in breaking trail, an exhausting business on account of the snow, Baird and I kept on until we were done in, and the dogs wavered against their collars. Then we made camp in the brush, and I was delighted to see Sylvia make herself useful. Baird and I put up the tent, which had a small partition in it so that he and I could occupy one section and Sylvia the other. We unharnessed the dogs. Sylvia in the meantime took the hand axe and cut down wood in the most business-like manner and then took the cooking in hand. She filled the kettle with snow which would melt into water for the tea, and at the same time on top of the little, flimsy stove she started bacon frying in the skillet. When it was fried, she took the grease and poured it into a hole made in the top of a sack of flour. In the same hole salt and baking powder already had been mixed with the flour, and now the mass of grease dough was kneaded and divided into three flapjacks. That’s what the Northerners called them, but there is no real name for their indigestibility and toughness. She made two of a size and a smaller one for herself. The flapjacks, bacon, and tea made up our meal and, now that the frozen fish had been thawed, the dogs ate and watched as they turned about in the snow to make themselves beds.

  We consumed every crumb of the food, making an odd picture, crouched there like beasts over our provisions. Behind us, right in the entrance to Sylvia’s section of the tent, was the Lightning Warrior, watching. The fish I had thrown to him he left untouched with a regal indifference, but he quickly accepted it in one gulp from the hand of the girl.

  And Sylvia herself? She was always a surprise to me. She never ceased being a surprise. She looked half child and half angel, but she was always turning out a real woman, with tough muscles and plenty of common sense. Now that she had been dragged into this flight, she bent every energy toward making a success of it. She kept her spirits high. She had a special smile for each of us. When at last we turned into our sleeping bags, my mind was full of thoughts of her.

  Another thing that occupied my attention was the strangeness of the entire business and the singular linking of the parts together until the final picture of danger was complete. These parts were Cobalt, first of all, and then Sylvia, elements totally without danger if other things had not been added. Then came the Lightning Warrior and, by accident or through perverse inspiration, this was drawn into the chosen circle. From the Lightning Warrior came the real danger, the real climax. Finally, nothing would have been done about it except that Baird and I at last tried to change the course of probable events and that’s why we were upon the march and Cobalt, like an invisible thunderstorm, was off there in the far distance.

  Somehow it seemed to me that even Cobalt was not the most significant part of the picture. It was upon the Lightning Warrior that my mind rested most as the pivotal point of the adventure. Nothing could exceed the unreality of having him lying there in the entrance of the little tent on guard. The only way to parallel it was to go back to the Arabian Nights in which the power of a ring induces an evil sp
irit to become the slave of a mere weak human. But there was magic in the power of Sylvia also. It was in her courage, her gentle voice, and the greatness of her love.

  I fell asleep literally I fell, that is to say, into a region of abysmal turmoil, strange images, unrest only to find Baird tapping my shoulder in the morning and telling me that it was time to get under way. We cooked breakfast and started to harness up after eating. Then we found the first real touch of tragedy. One of the dogs was missing.

  We kicked around in the snow until Baird uncovered the body. The beast was dead. Its throat was cleanly cut, as if by a pair of knives. We turned back. King was watching us with an air of splendid detachment, but we well knew what had happened. The sight of the dogs had been too much for him, and he had tried his old handicraft. Baird, without a word, got the rifle, loaded it, and took a bead, but Sylvia knocked up his hand.

  “He’s only started,” warned Baird. “He’ll never rest until he’s butchered them all. We can get on with one dog the less. But, with two gone, we’re handicapped, with three gone, we’re fairly hamstrung. Stand away, Sylvia. You go forward and we’ll catch up with you. It’s a dirty business, but there’s one thing certain, that it has to be done for the sake of our hides!”

  She stood squarely in front of him. She called and King came close up beside her, so that her hand rested on his head. “You can’t do it,” said the girl. “You don’t understand, Father. I don’t know how to explain. He gave him to me without a mark on him, no wound from a knife, or a bullet, or a trap’s teeth. You can’t touch him. Nobody has a right to touch him, except Cobalt.”

  “Sylvia,” said her father, “I don’t like to hear you talk like this. It sounds as if you’ve lost your wits. What sort of a mystery is in your head?”