The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  “That was the 11th of July. First real day of my life.”

  She gathered her mind out of that scene.

  “You stepped out of a telegraph office, with your finger on the key all day, every day, and you jumped into two thousand dollars?”

  After she had stopped speaking her thoughts went on, written in her eyes.

  “You’d like to try it, eh?” said Ben Connor.

  “Haven’t you had years of happiness out of it?”

  He looked at her with a grimace.

  “Happiness?” he echoed. “Happiness?”

  She stepped back so that she put his deeply-marked face in a better light.

  “You’re a queer one for a winner.”

  “Sure, the turf is crowded with queer ones like me.”

  “Winners, all of ’em?”

  His eye had been gradually brightening while he talked to her. He felt that the girl rang true, as men ring true, yet there was nothing masculine about her.

  “You’ve heard racing called the sport of kings? That’s because only kings can afford to follow the ponies. Kings and Wall Street. But a fellow can’t squeeze in without capital. I’ve made a go of it for a while; pretty soon we all go smash. Sooner or later I’ll do what everybody else does—put up my cash on a sure thing and see my money go up in smoke.”

  “Then why don’t you pull out with what you have?”

  “Why does the earth keep running around the sun? Because there’s a pull. Once you’ve followed the ponies you’ll keep on following ’em. No hope for it. Oh, I’ve seen the boys come up one after another, make their killings, hit a streak of bad luck, plunge, and then watch their sure-thing throw up its tail in the stretch and fade into the ruck.”

  He was growing excited as he talked; he was beginning to realize that he must make his break from the turf now or never. And he spoke more to himself than to the girl.

  “We all hang on. We play the game till it breaks us and still we stay with it. Here I am, two thousand miles away from the tracks—and sending for dope to make a play! Can you beat that? Well, so-long.”

  He turned away gloomily.

  “Good night, Mr. Connor.”

  He turned sharply.

  “Where’d you get that name?” he asked with a trace of suspicion.

  “Off the telegram.”

  He nodded, but said: “I’ve an idea I’ve been chattering to much.”

  “My name is Ruth Manning,” answered the girl. “I don’t think you’ve said too much.”

  He kept his eyes steadily on her while he shook hands.

  “I’m glad I know some one in Lukin,” said Connor. “Good night, again.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Connor wakened the next morning, after his first impression of blinding light, he closed his eyes and waited for the sense of unhappy doom which usually comes to men of tense nerves and active life after sleep; but, with slow and pleasant wonder, he realized that the old numbness of brain and fever of pulse was gone. Then he looked up and lazily watched the shadow of the vine at his window move across the ceiling, a dim-bordered shadow continually changing as the wind gathered the leaves in solid masses and shook them out again. He pored upon this for a time, and next he watched a spider spinning a web in the corner; she worked in a draft which repeatedly lifted her from her place before she had fastened her thread, and dropped her a foot or more into space. Connor sat up to admire the artisan’s skill and courage. Compared to men and insects, the spider really worked over an abyss two hundred feet deep, suspended by a silken thread. Connor slipped out of bed and stood beneath the growing web while the main cross threads were being fastened. He had been there for some time when, turning away to rub the ache out of the back of his neck, he again met the contrast between the man of this morning and the man of other days.

  This time it was his image in the mirror, meeting him as he turned. That deep wrinkle in the middle of the forehead was half erased. The lips were neither compressed nor loose and shaking, and the eye was calm—it rested him to meet that glance in the mirror.

  A mood of idle content always brings one to the window: Connor looked out on the street. A horseman hopped past like a day shadow, the hoofbeats muffled by thick sand, and the wind, moving at an exactly equal pace, carried a mist of dust just behind the horse’s tail. Otherwise there was neither life nor color in the street of weather-beaten, low buildings, and the eye of Connor went beyond the roofs and began to climb the mountains. Here was a bald bright cliff, there a drift of trees, and again a surface of raw clay from which the upper soil had recently slipped; but these were not stopping points—they were rather the steps which led the glance to a sky of pale and transparent blue, and Connor felt a great desire to have that sky over him in place of a ceiling.

  He splashed through a hasty bath, dressed, and ran down the stairs, humming. Jack Townsend stood on a box in the corner of the room, probing at a spider web in the corner.

  “Too late for breakfast?” asked Connor.

  The fat shoulders of the proprietor quivered, but he did not turn.

  “Too late,” he snapped. “Breakfast over at nine. No favorites up here.”

  Connor waited for the wave of irritation to rise in him, but to his own surprise he found himself saying:

  “All right; you can’t throw a good horse off his feed by cutting out one meal.”

  Jack Townsend faced his guest, rubbing his many-folded chin.

  “Don’t take long for this mountain air to brace up a gent, does it?” he asked rather pointedly.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Connor. “It isn’t the air so much; it’s the people that do a fellow good.”

  “Well,” admitted the proprietor modestly, “they may be something in that. Kind of heartier out here, ain’t they? More than in the city, I guess. I’ll tell you what,” he added. “I’ll go out and speak to the missus about a snack for you. It’s late, but we like to be obligin’.”

  He climbed carefully down from the box and started away.

  “That girl again,” thought Connor, and snapped his fingers. His spirits continued to rise, if that were possible, during the breakfast of ham and eggs, and coffee of a taste so metallic that only a copious use of cream made it drinkable. Jack Townsend, recovering to the full his customary good nature, joined his guest in a huge piece of toast with a layer of ham on it—simply to keep a stranger from eating alone, he said—and while he ate he talked about the race. Connor had noticed that the lobby was almost empty.

  “They’re over lookin’ at the hosses,” said Townsend, “and gettin’ their bets down.”

  Connor laid down knife and fork, and resumed them hastily, but thereafter his interest in his food was entirely perfunctory. From the corner of his eye a gleam kept steadily upon the face of Townsend, who continued:

  “Speaking personal, Mr. Connor, I’d like to have you look over them hosses yourself.”

  Connor, on the verge of speech, checked himself with a quick effort.

  “Because,” continued Townsend, “if I had your advice I might get down a little stake on one of ’em. You see?”

  Ben Connor paused with a morsel of ham halfway toward his lips.

  “Who told you I know anything about horses?” he asked.

  “You told me yourself,” grinned the proprietor, “and I’d like to figure how you knew the mare come from the Ballor Valley.”

  “From which?”

  “From the Ballor Valley. You even named the irrigation and sand and all that. But you’d seen her brand before, I s’pose?”

  “Hoofs like hers never came out of these mountains,” smiled Ben Connor. “See the way she throws them and how flat they are.”

  “Well, that’s true,” nodded Jack Townsend. “It seems simple, now you say what it was, but it had me beat up to now. That is the way with most things. Take a fine hand with a rope. He daubs it on a cow so dead easy any fool thinks he can do the same. No, Mr. Connor, I’d still like to have you come out and take
a look at them hosses. Besides”—he lowered his voice—“you might pick up a bit of loose change yourself. They’s a plenty rolling round to-day.”

  Connor laughed, but there was excitement behind his mirth.

  “The fact is, Townsend,” he said, “I’m not interested in racing now. I’m up here for the air.”

  “Sure—sure,” said the hotel man. “I know all that. Well, if you’re dead set it ain’t hardly Christian to lure you into betting on a hoss race, I suppose.”

  He munched at his sandwich in savage silence, while Connor looked out the window and began to whistle.

  “They race very often up here?” he asked carelessly.

  “Once in a while.”

  “A pleasant sport,” sighed Connor.

  “Ain’t it, now?” argued Townsend. “But these gents around here take it so serious that it don’t last long.”

  “That so?”

  “Yep. They bet every last dollar they can rake up, and about the second or third race in the year the money’s all pooled in two or three pockets. Then the rest go gunnin’ for trouble, and most generally find a plenty. Any six races that’s got up around here is good for three shooting scrapes, and each shooting’s equal to one corpse and half a dozen put away for repairs.” He touched his forehead, marked with a white line. “I used to be considerable,” he said.

  “H-m,” murmured Connor, grown absentminded again.

  “Yes, sir,” went on the other. “I’ve seen the boys come in from the mines with enough dust to choke a mule, and slap it all down on the hoss. I’ve seen twenty thousand cold bucks lost and won on a dinky little pinto that wasn’t worth twenty dollars hardly. That’s how crazy they get.”

  Connor wiped his forehead.

  “Where do they race?” he asked.

  “Right down Washington Avenue. That is the main street, y’see. Gives ’em about half a mile of runnin’.”

  A cigarette appeared with magic speed between the fingers of Connor, and he began to smoke, with deep inhalations, expelling his breath so strongly that the mist shot almost to the ceiling before it flattened into a leisurely spreading cloud. Townsend, fascinated, seemed to have forgotten all about the horse race, but there was in Connor a suggestion of new interest, a certain businesslike coldness.

  “Suppose we step over and give the ponies a glance?” he queried.

  “That’s the talk!” exclaimed Townsend. “And I’ll take any tip you have!”

  This made Connor look at his host narrowly, but, dismissing a suspicion from his mind, he shrugged his shoulders, and they went out together.

  The conclave of riders and the betting public had gathered at the farther end of the street, and it included the majority of Lukin. Only the center of the street was left religiously clear, and in this space half a dozen men led horses up and down with ostentatious indifference, stopping often to look after cinches which they had already tested many times. As Connor came up he saw a group of boys place their wagers with a stakeholder—knives, watches, nickels and dimes. That was a fair token of the spirit of the crowd. Wherever Connor looked he saw hands raised, brandishing greenbacks, and for every raised hand there were half a dozen clamorous voices.

  “Quite a bit of sporting blood in Lukin, eh?” suggested Townsend.

  “Sure,” sighed Connor. He looked at the brandished money. “A field of wheat,” he murmured, “waiting for the reaper. That’s me.”

  He turned to see his companion pull out a fat wallet.

  “Which one?” gasped Townsend. “We ain’t got hardly any time.”

  Connor observed him with a smile that tucked up the corners of his mouth.

  “Wait a while, friend. Plenty of time to get stung where the ponies are concerned. We’ll look them over.”

  Townsend began to chatter in his ear: “It’s between Charlie Haig’s roan and Cliff Jones’s Lightning—You see that bay? Man, he can surely get across the ground. But the roan ain’t so bad. Oh, no!”

  “Sure they are.”

  The gambler frowned. “I was about to say that there was only one horse in the race, but—” He shook his head despairingly as he looked over the riders. He was hunting automatically for the fleshless face and angular body of a jockey; among them all Charlie Haig came the closest to this light ideal. He was a sun-dried fellow, but even Charlie must have weighed well over a hundred and forty pounds; the others made no pretensions toward small poundage, and Cliff Jones must have scaled two hundred.

  “Which was the one hoss in your eyes?” asked the hotel man eagerly.

  “The gray. But with that weight up the little fellow will be anchored.”

  He pointed to a gray gelding which nosed confidently at the back hip pockets of his master.

  “Less than fifteen hands,” continued Connor, “and a hundred and eighty pounds to break his back. It isn’t a race; it’s murder to enter a horse handicapped like that.”

  “The gray?” repeated Jack Townsend, and he glanced from the corner of his eyes at his companion, as though he suspected mockery. “I never seen the gray before,” he went on. “Looks sort of underfed, eh?”

  Connor apparently did not hear. He had raised his head and his nostrils trembled, so that Townsend did not know whether the queer fellow was about to break into laughter or a trade.

  “Yet,” muttered Connor, “he might carry it. God, what a horse!”

  He still looked at the gelding, and Townsend rubbed his eyes and stared to make sure that he had not overlooked some possibilities in the gelding. But he saw again only a lean-ribbed pony with a long neck and a high croup. The horse wheeled, stepping as clumsily as a gangling yearling. Townsend’s amazement changed to suspicion and then to indifference.

  “Well,” he said, smiling covertly, “are you going to bet on that?”

  Connor made no answer. He stepped up to the owner of the gray, a swarthy man of Indian blood. His half sleepy, half sullen expression cleared when Connor shook hands and introduced himself as a lover of fast horse-flesh.

  He even congratulated the Indian on owning so fine a specimen, at which apparently subtle mockery Townsend, in the rear, set his teeth to keep from smiling; and the big Indian also frowned, to see if there were any hidden insult. But Connor had stepped back and was looking at the forelegs of the gelding.

  “There’s bone for you,” he said exultantly. “More than eight inches, eh—that Cannon?”

  “Huh,” grunted the owner, “I dunno.”

  But his last shred of suspicion disappeared as Connor, working his fingers along the shoulder muscles of the animal, smiled with pleasure and admiration.

  “My name’s Bert Sims,” said the Indian, “and I’m glad to know you. Most of the boys in Lukin think my hoss ain’t got a chance in this race.”

  “I think they’re right,” answered Connor without hesitation.

  The eyes of the Indian flashed.

  “I think you’re putting fifty pounds too much weight on him,” explained Connor.

  “Yeh?”

  “Can’t another man ride your horse?”

  “Anybody can ride him.”

  “Then let that fellow yonder—that youngster—have the mount. I’ll back the gray to the bottom of my pocket if you do.”

  “I wouldn’t feel hardly natural seeing another man on him,” said the Indian. “If he’s rode I’ll do the riding. I’ve done it for fifteen years.”

  “What?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Is that horse fifteen years old?” asked Connor, prepared to smile.

  “He is eighteen,” answered Bert Sims quietly.

  The gambler cast a quick glance at Sims and a longer one at the gray. He parted the lips of the horse, and then cursed softly.

  “You’re right,” said Connor. “He is eighteen.”

  He was frowning in deadly earnestness now.

  “Accident, I suppose?”

  The Indian merely stared at him.

  “Is the horse a strain of blood or an accide
nt? What’s his breed?”

  “He’s an Eden gray.”

  “Are there more like him?”

  “The valley’s full of ’em, they say,” answered Bert Sims.

  “What valley?” snapped the gambler.

  “I ain’t been in it. If I was I wouldn’t talk.”

  “Why not?”

  In reply Sims rolled the yellow-stained whites of his eyes slowly toward his interlocutor. He did not turn his head, but a smile gradually began on his lips and spread to a sinister hint at mirth. It put a grim end to the conversation, and Connor turned reluctantly to Townsend. The latter was clamoring.

  “They’re getting ready for the start. Are you betting on that runt of a gray?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Conner shook his head almost sadly. “A horse that stands not a hair more than fourteen-three, eighteen years old, with a hundred and eighty pounds up—No, I’m not a fool.”

  “Which is it—the roan or the bay?” gasped Townsend. “Which d’you say? I’ll tell you about the valley after the race. Which hoss, Mr. Connor?”

  Thus appealed to, the gambler straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked coldly at the horses.

  “How old is that brown yonder—the one the boy is just mounting?”

  “Three. But what’s he got to do with the race?”

  “He’s a shade too young, or he’d win it. That’s what he has to do with it. Back Haig’s horse, then. The roan is the best bet.”

  “Have you had a good look at Lightnin’?”

  “He won’t last in this going with that weight up.”

  “You’re right,” panted Townsend. “And I’m going to risk a hundred on him. Hey, Joe, how d’you bet on Charlie Haig?”

  “Two to one.”

  “Take you for a hundred. Joe, meet Mr. Connor.”

  “A hundred it is, Jack. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Connor?”

  “I’ll go a hundred on the roan, sir.”

  “Have I done it right?” asked Townsend fiercely, a little later. “I wonder do you know?”

  “Ask that after the race is over,” smiled Connor. “After all, you have only one horse to be afraid of.”

  “Sure; Lightnin’—but he’s enough.”

  “Not Lightning, I tell you. The gray is the only horse to be afraid of though the brown stallion might do if he has enough seasoning.”