by Max Brand
“I can’t do it,” he said frankly.
“Jump on his back,” urged David bitterly. “He’s no more to you than a yearling to the hands of Abraham.”
Connor realized now how far he had gone; he set about retracing the wrong steps.
“It may appear that way, but I can’t trust myself on his back. You understand?”
He stepped back with a gesture that sent Glani bounding away.
“You see,” went on Connor, “I never could really understand him.”
The master seized with eagerness upon this gratifying suggestion.
“It is true,” he said, “that you are a little afraid of Glani. That is why none of the rest can handle him.”
He stopped in the midst of his self-congratulation and directed at Connor one of those glances which the gambler could never learn to meet.
“Also,” said David, “you make me happy. If you had sat on his back I should have felt your weight on my own shoulders and spirit.”
He laid a hand on Connor’s shoulder, but the gambler had won and lost too often with an impenetrable face to quail now. He even managed to smile.
“Hearken,” said David. “My masters taught me many things, and everything they taught me must be true, for they were only voices of a mind out of another world. Yet, in spite of them,” he went on kindly, “I begin to feel a kinship with you, Benjamin. Come, we will walk and talk together in the cool of the morning. Glani!”
The gray had wandered off to nibble at the turf; he whirled and came like a thrown lance.
“Glani,” said David, “is usually the only living thing that walks with me in the morning; but now, my friend, we are three.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the mid-afternoon of that day Connor rested in his room, and David rested in the lake, floating with only his nose and lips out of water. Toward the center of the lake even the surface held the chill of the snows, but David floated in the warm shallows and looked up to the sky through a film of water. The tiny ripples became immense air waves that rushed from mountain to mountain, dashed the clouds up and down, and then left the heavens placid and windless.
He grew weary of this placidity, and as he turned upon one side he heard a prolonged hiss from the shore. David rolled with the speed of a water moccasin and headed in with his arm flashing in a powerful stroke that presently brought him to the edge of the beach. He rose in front of old Abraham.
A painter should have seen them together—the time-dried body of the old man and the exuberant youth of the master. He looked on the servant with a stern kindness.
“What are you doing here without a covering for your head while the sun is hot? Did they let you come of their own accord, Abraham?”
“I slipped away,” chuckled Abraham. “Isaac was in the patio, but I went by him like a hawk-shadow. Then I ran among the trees. Hat? Well, no more have you a hat, David.”
The master frowned, but his displeasure passed quickly and he led the way to the lowest terrace. They sat on the soft thick grass, with their feet in the hot sand of the beach, and as the wind stirred the tree above them a mottling of shadow moved across them.
“You have come to speak privately with me,” said David. “What is it?”
But Abraham embraced his skinny knees and smiled at the lake, his jaw falling.
“It’s not what it was,” he said, and wagged his head. “It’s a sad lake compared to what it was.”
David controlled his impatience.
“Tell me how it is changed.”
“The color,” said the old man. “Why, once, with a gallon of that blue you could have painted the whole sky.” He shaded his face to look up, but so doing his glance ventured through the branches and close to the white-hot circle of the sun. His head dropped and he leaned on one arm.
“Look at the green of the grass,” suggested David. “It will rest your eyes.”
“Do you think my eyes are weak? No, I dropped my head to think how the world has fallen off in the last fifty years. It was all different in the days of John. But that was before you came to the valley.”
“The sky was not the same?” queried the master.
“And men, also,” said Abraham instantly. “Ho, yes! John was a man; you will not see his like in these days.”
David flushed, but he held back his first answer. “Perhaps.”
“There is no ‘perhaps.’”
Abraham spoke with a decision that brought his jaw close up under his nose.
“He is my master,” insisted Abraham, and, smiling suddenly, he whispered: “Mah ol’ Marse Johnnie Cracken!”
“What’s that?” called David.
Abraham stared at him with unseeing eyes. A mist of years drifted between them, and now the old man came slowly out of the past and found himself seated on the lawn in a lonely valley with great, naked mountains piled around it.
“What did you say?” repeated David.
Abraham hastily changed the subject.
“In those days if a stranger came to the Garden of Eden he did not stay. Aye, and in those days Abraham could have taken the strongest by the neck and pitched him through the gates. I remember when the men came over the mountains—long before you were born. Ten men at the gate, I remember, and they had guns. But when my master told them to go away they looked at him and they looked at each other, but after a while they went away.”
Abraham rocked in an ecstasy.
“No man could face my master. I remember how he sat on his horse that day.”
“It was Rustir?” asked David eagerly.
“She was the queen of horses,” replied the old man indirectly, “and he was the king of men; there are no more men like my master, and there are no more horses like Rustir.”
There was a pause, then David spoke.
“John was a good man and a strong man,” he said, looking down at his own brown hands. “And Rustir was a fine mare, but it is foolish to call her the best.”
“There was never a horse like Rustir,” said the old man monotonously.
“Bah! What of Glani?”
“Yes, that is a good colt.”
“A good colt! Come, Abraham! Have you ever opened your dim eyes and really looked at him? Name one fault.”
“I have said Glani is a good colt,” repeated Abraham, worried.
“Come, come! You have said Rustir was better.”
“Glani is a good colt, but too heavy in the forehand. Far too heavy there.”
The restraint of David snapped.
“It is false! Ephraim, Jacob, they all say that Glani is the greatest.”
“They change like the masters,” grumbled Abraham. “The servants change. They flatter and the master believes. But my master had an eye—he looked through a man like an eagle through mist. When I stood before my master my soul was naked; a wind blew through me. But I say John was one man; and there are no other horses like his mare Rustir. My master is silent; other men have words as heavy as their hands.”
“Peace, Abraham, peace. You shame me. The Lord was far from me, and I spoke in anger, and I retract it.”
“A word is a bullet that strikes men down, David. Let the wind blow on your face when your heart is hot.”
“I confess my sin,” said David, but his jaw was set.
“Confess your sins in silence.”
“It is true.”
He looked at Abraham as if he would be rid of him.
“You are angry to-day, Abraham.”
“The law of the Garden has been broken.”
“By whom?”
“David has unbarred the gate.”
“Yes, to one man.”
“It is enough.”
“Peace, Abraham. You are old and look awry. This one man is no danger. I could break him in my hands—so!”
“A strong man may be hopeless against words,” said the oracular old man. “With a word he may set you on fire.”
“Do you think me a tinder and dry grass? Set me on fire wi
th a word?”
“An old man who looks awry had done it with a word. And see—again!”
There was a silence filled only by the sound of David’s breathing and the slow curling of the ripples on the beach.
“You try me sorely, Abraham.”
“Good steel will bend, but not break.”
“Say no more of this man. He is harmless.”
“Is that a command, David?”
“No—but at least be brief.”
“Then I say to you, David, that he has brought evil into the valley.”
The master burst into sudden laughter that carried away his anger.
“He brought no evil, Abraham. He brought only the clothes on his back.”
“The serpent brought into the first Garden only his skin and his forked tongue.”
“There was a devil in that serpent.”
“Aye, and what of Benjamin?”
“Tell me your proofs, and let them be good ones, Abraham.”
“I am old,” said Abraham sadly, “but I am not afraid.”
“I wait.”
“Benjamin brought an evil image with him. It is the face of a great suhman, and he tempted Joseph with it, and Joseph fell.”
“The trinket of carved bone?” asked David.
“The face of a devil! Who was unhappy among us until Benjamin came? But with his charm he bought Joseph, and now Joseph walks alone and thinks unholy thoughts, and when he is spoken to he looks up first with a snake’s eye before he answers. Is not this the work of Benjamin?”
“What would you have me do? Joseph has already paid for his fault with the pain of the whip.”
“Cast out the stranger, David.”
David mused. At last he spoke. “Look at me, Abraham!”
The other raised his head and peered into the face of David, but presently his glance wavered and turned away.
“See,” said David. “After Matthew died there was no one in the Garden who could meet my glance. But Benjamin meets my eye and I feel his thoughts before he speaks them. He is pleasant to me, Abraham.”
“The voice of the serpent was pleasant to Eve,” said Abraham.
The nostrils of David quivered.
“What is it that you call the trinket?”
“A great suhman. My people feared and worshiped him in the old days. A strong devil!”
“An idol!” said David. “What! Abraham, do you still worship sticks and stones? Have you been taught no more than that? Do you put a mind in the handiwork of a man?”
The head of Abraham fell.
“I am weak before you, David,” he said. “I have no power to speak except the words of my master, which I remember. Now I feel you rise against me, and I am dust under your feet. Think of Abraham, then, as a voice in the wind, but hear that voice. I know, but I know not why I know, or how I know, there is evil in the valley, David. Cast it out!”
“I have broken bread and drunk milk with Benjamin. How can I drive him out of the valley?”
“Let him stay in the valley if you can keep him out of your mind. He is in your thoughts. He is with you like a shadow.”
“He is not stronger than I,” said the master.
“Evil is stronger than the greatest.”
“It is cowardly to shrink from him before I know him.”
“Have no fear of him—but of yourself. A wise man trembleth at his own strength.”
“Tell me, Abraham—does the seed of Rustir know men? Do they know good and evil?”
“Yes, for Rustir knew my master.”
“And has Glani ever bowed his head for any man saving for me?”
“He is a stubborn colt. Aye, he troubled me!”
“But I tell you, Abraham, he came to the hand of Benjamin!”
The old man blinked at the master.
“Then there was something in that hand,” he said at last.
“There was nothing,” said David in triumph. “I saw the bare palm.”
“It is strange.”
“You are wrong. Admit it.”
“I must think, David.”
“Yes,” said the master kindly. “Here is my hand. Rise, and come with me to your house.”
They went slowly, slowly up the terrace, Abraham clinging to the arm of the master.
“Also,” said David, “he has come for only a little time. He will soon be gone. Speak no more of Benjamin.”
“I have already spoken almost enough,” said Abraham. “You will not forget.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Although David was smiling when he left Abraham, he was serious when he turned from the door of the old man. He went to Connor’s room, it was empty. He summoned Zacharias.
“The men beyond the mountains are weak,” said David, “and when I left him a little time since Benjamin was sighing and sleepy. But now he is not in his room. Where is he, Zacharias?”
“Shakra came into the patio and neighed,” Zacharias answered, “and at that Benjamin came out, rubbing his eyes. ‘My friend,’ said he to me, and his voice was smooth—not like those voices—”
“Peace, Zacharias,” said David. “Leave this talk of his voice and tell me where he is gone.”
“Away from the house,” said the old man sullenly.
The master knitted his brows.
“You old men,” he said, “are like yearlings who feel the sap running in their legs in the spring. You talk as they run—around and around. Continue.”
Zacharias sulked as if he were on the verge of not speaking at all. But presently his eye lighted with his story.
“Benjamin,” he went on, “said to me, ‘My friend, that is a noble mare.’
“‘She is a good filly,’ said I.
“‘With a hundred and ten up,’ said Benjamin, ‘she would make a fast track talk.’”
“What?” said David.
“I do not know the meaning of his words,” said the old servant, “but I have told them as he said them.”
“He is full of strange terms,” murmured David. “Continue.”
“He went first to one side of Shakra and then to the other. He put his hand into his coat and seemed to think. Presently he stretched out his hand and called her. She came to him slowly.”
“Wonderful!”
“That was my thought,” nodded Zacharias.
“Why do you stop?” cried David.
“Because I am talking around and around, like a running yearling,” said Zacharias ironically. “However, he stood back at length and combed the forelock of Shakra with his fingers. ‘Tell me, Zacharias,’ he said, ‘if this is not the sister of Glani?’”
“He guessed so much? It is strange!”
“Then he looked in her mouth and said that she was four years old.”
“He is wise in horses, indeed.”
“When he turned away Shakra followed him; he went to his room and came out again, carrying the saddle with which he rode Abra. He put this on her back and a rope around her neck. ‘Will the master be angry if I ride her?’ he asked.
“I told him that she was first ridden only three months before to-day, and that she must not be ridden more than fifty miles now in a day.
“He looked a long time at me, then said he would not ride farther than that. Then he went galloping down the road to the south.”
“Good!” said the master, and sent a long whistle from the patio; it was pitched as shrill and small as the scream of a hawk when the hawk itself cannot be seen in the sky.
Zacharias ran into the house, and when he came out again bringing a pad Glani was already in the patio.
David took the pad and cinched it on the back of the stallion.
“And when Shakra began to gallop,” said Zacharias, “Benjamin cried out.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“Zacharias, men do not cry out without speaking.”
“Nevertheless,” said Zacharias, “it was like the cry of a wolf when they hunt along the cliffs in winter
and see the young horses and the cattle in the Garden below them. It was a cry, and there was no spoken word in it.”
The master bit his lip.
“Abraham has been talking folly to you,” he said; and, springing on the back of the stallion, he raced out of the patio and on to the south road with his long, black hair whipping straight out behind his head.
At length the southern wall rose slowly over the trees, and a deep murmur which had begun about them as soon as they left the house, light as the humming of bees, increasing as they went down the valley, now became a great rushing noise. It was like a great wind in sound; one expected the push of a gale, coming out from the trees, but there was only the river which ran straight at the cliff, split solid rock, and shot out of sunlight into a black cavern. Beside this gaping mouth of rock stood Connor with Shakra beside him. Twice the master called, but Connor could not hear.
The tumbling river would have drowned a volley of musketry. Only when David touched his shoulder did Connor turn a gloomy face. They took their horses across the bridge which passed over the river a little distance from the cliff, and rode down the farther side of the valley until the roar sank behind them. A few barriers of trees reduced it to the humming which on windless days was picked up by echoes and reached the house of David with a solemn murmur.
“I thought you would rest,” said David, when they were come to a place of quiet, and the horses cantered lightly over the road with that peculiar stride, at once soft and reaching, which Connor was beginning to see as the chief characteristic of the Eden Gray.
“I have rested more in two minutes on the back of Shakra than I could rest in two hours on my bed.”
It was like disarming a father by praise of his son.
“She has a gentle gait,” smiled David.
“I tell you, man, she’s a knockout!”
“A knockout?”
The gambler added hastily: “Next to Glani the best horse I have seen.”
“You are right. Next to Glani the best in the valley.”
“In the world,” said Connor, and then gave a cry of wonder.
They had come through an avenue of the eucalyptus trees, and now they reached an open meadow, beyond which aspens trembled and flashed silver under a shock from the wind. Half the meadow was black, half green; for one of the old men was plowing. He turned a rich furrow behind him, and the blackbirds followed in chattering swarms in their hunt for worms. The plow team was a span of slender-limbed Eden Grays. They walked lightly with plow, shaking their heads at the blackbirds, and sometimes they touched noses in that cheery, dumb conversation of horses. The plow turned down the field with the sod curling swiftly behind. The blackbirds followed. There were soldier-wings among them making flashes of red, and all the swarm scolded.