The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  “For when I leave you of what do you think, and what do you do? I am like the blind.”

  She felt this speech was peculiar in character. Who but David of Eden could have been jealous of the very thoughts of another? And smiling at this, she went into the patio where Ben Connor was still lounging. Few things had ever been more gratifying to the gambler than the sight of the girl’s complacent smile, for he knew that she was judging David.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing worth repeating. But I think you’re wrong, Ben. He isn’t a barbarian. He’s just a child.”

  “That’s another word for the same thing. Ever see anything more brutal than a child? The wildest savage that ever stepped is a saint compared with a ten-year-old boy.”

  “Perhaps. He acts like ten years. When I mention leaving the valley he flies into a tantrum; he has taken me so much for granted that he has even picked out the site for my house.”

  “As if you’d ever stay in a place like this!”

  He covered his touch of anxiety with loud laughter.

  “I don’t know,” she was saying thoughtfully a moment later. “I like it—a lot.”

  “Anything seems pretty good after Lukin. But when your auto is buzzing down Broadway—”

  She interrupted him with a quick little laugh of excitement.

  “But do you really think I can make him leave the valley?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “He says there’s a law against it.”

  “I tell you, Ruth, you’re his law now; not whatever piffle is in that Room of Silence.”

  She looked earnestly at the closed door. Her silence had always bothered the gambler, and this one particularly annoyed him.

  “Let’s hear your thoughts?” he asked uneasily.

  “It’s just an idea of mine that inside that room we can find out everything we want to know about David Eden.”

  “What do we want to know?” growled Connor. “I know everything that’s necessary. He’s a nut with a gang of the best horses that ever stepped. I’m talking horse, not David Eden. If I have to make the fool rich, it isn’t because I want to.”

  She returned no direct answer, but after a moment: “I wish I knew.”

  “What?”

  She became profoundly serious.

  “The point is this: he may be something more than a boy or a savage. And if he is something more, he’s the finest man I’ve ever laid eyes on. That’s why I want to get inside that room. That’s why I want to learn the secret—if there is a secret—the things he believes in, how he happens to be what he is and how—”

  Connor had endured her rising warmth of expression as long as he could. Now he exploded.

  “You do me one favor,” he cried excitedly, more moved than she had ever seen him before. “Let me do your thinking for you when it comes to other men. You take my word about this David Eden. Bah! When I have you fixed up in little old Manhattan you’ll forget about him and his mystery inside a week. Will you lay off on the thinking?”

  She nodded absently. In reality she was struck by the first similarity she had ever noticed between David of Eden and Connor the gambler: within ten minutes they had both expressed remarkable concern as to what might be her innermost thoughts. She began to feel that Connor himself might have elements of the boy in his make up—the cruel boy which he protested was in David Eden.

  She had many reasons for liking Connor. For one thing he had offered her an escape from her old imprisoned life. Again he had flattered her in the most insinuating manner by his complete trust. She knew that there was not one woman in ten thousand to whom he would have confided his great plan, and not one in a million whose ability to execute his scheme he would have trusted.

  More than this, before her trip to the Garden he had given her a large sum of money for the purchase of the Indian’s gelding; and Ruth Manning had learned to appreciate money. He had not asked for any receipt. His attitude had been such that she had not even been able to mention that subject.

  Yet much as she liked Connor there were many things about him which jarred on her. There was a hardness, always working to the surface like rocks on a hard soil. Worst of all, sometimes she felt a degree of uncleanliness about his mind and its working. She would not have recoiled from these things had he been nearer her own age; but in a man well over thirty she felt that these were fixed characteristics.

  He was in all respects the antipode of David of Eden. It was easier to be near Connor, but not so exciting. David wore her out, but he also was marvelously stimulating. The dynamic difference was that Connor sometimes inspired her with aversion, and David made her afraid. She was roused out of her brooding by the voice of the gambler saying: “When a woman begins to think, a man begins to swear.”

  She managed to smile, but these cheap little pat quotations which she had found amusing enough at first now began to grate on her through repetition. Just as Connor tagged and labeled his idea with this aphorism, so she felt that Connor himself was tagged by them. She found him considering her with some anxiety.

  “You haven’t begun to doubt me, Ruth?” he asked her.

  And he put out his hand with a note of appeal. It was a new rôle for him and she at once disliked it. She shook the hand heartily.

  “That’s a foolish thing to say,” she assured him. “But—why does that old man keep sneaking around us?”

  It was Zacharias, who for some time had been prowling around the patio trying to find something to do which would justify his presence.

  “Do you think David Eden keeps him here as a spy on us?”

  This was too much for even Connor’s suspicious mind, and he chuckled.

  “They all want to hang around and have a look at you—that’s the point,” he answered. “Speak to him and you’ll see him come running.”

  It needed not even speech; she smiled and nodded at Zacharias, and he came to her at once with a grin of pleasure wrinkling his ancient face. She invited him to sit down.

  “I never see you resting,” she said.

  “David dislikes an idler,” said Zacharias, who acknowledged her invitation by dropping his withered hands on the back of the chair, but made no move to sit down.

  “But after all these years you have worked for him, I should think he would give you a little house of your own, and nothing to do except take care of yourself.”

  He listened to her happily, but it was evident from his pause that he had not gathered the meaning of her words.

  “You come from the South?” he asked at length.

  “My father came from Tennessee.”

  There was an electric change in the face of the Negro.

  “Oh, Lawd, oh, Lawd!” he murmured, his voice changing and thickening a little toward the soft Southern accent. “That’s music to old Zacharias!”

  “Do you come from Tennessee, Zacharias?”

  Again there was a pause as the thoughts of Zacharias fled back to the old days.

  “Everything in between is all shadowy like evening, but what I remember most is the little houses on both sides of the road with the gardens behind them, and the babies rolling in the dust and shouting and their mammies coming to the doors to watch them.”

  “How long ago was that?” she asked, deeply touched.

  He grew troubled.

  “Many and many a year ago—oh, many a long, weary year, for Zacharias!”

  “And you still think of the old days?”

  “When the bees come droning in the middle of the day, sometimes I think of them.”

  He struck his hands lightly together and his misty-bright eyes were plainly looking through sixty years as though they were a day.

  “But why did you leave?” asked Ruth tenderly.

  Zacharias slowly drew his eyes away from the mists of the past and became aware of the girl’s face once more.

  “Because my soul was burning in sin. It was burning and burning!”

  “But wouldn’t you lik
e to go back?”

  The head of Zacharias fell and he knitted his fingers.

  “Coming to the Garden of Eden was like coming into heaven. There’s no way of getting out again without breaking the law. The Garden is just like heaven!”

  Connor spoke for the first time.

  “Or hell!” he exclaimed.

  It caused Ruth Manning to cry out at him softly; Zacharias was mute.

  “Why did you say that?” said the girl, growing angry.

  “Because I hate to see a bad bargain,” said the gambler. “And it looks to me as if our friend here paid pretty high for anything he gets out of the Garden.”

  He turned sharply to Zacharias.

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “Sixty years. Long years!”

  “And what have you out of it? What clothes?”

  “Enough to wear.”

  “What food?”

  “Enough to eat.”

  “A house of your own?”

  “No.”

  “Land of your own?”

  “No.”

  “Sixty years and not a penny saved! That’s what I call a sharp bargain! What else have you gained?”

  “A good bright hope of heaven.”

  “But are you sure, Zacharias? Are you sure? Isn’t it possible that all these five masters of yours may have been mistaken?”

  Zacharias could only stare in his horror. Finally he turned away and went silently across the patio.

  “Ben,” cried the girl softly, “why did you do it? Aside from torturing the poor man, what if this comes to David’s ear?”

  Connor snapped his finger. His manner was that of one who knows that he has taken a foolish risk and wishes to brazen the matter out.

  “It’ll never come to the ear of David! Why? Because he’d wring the neck of the old chap if he even guessed that he’d been talking about leaving the valley. And in the meantime I cut away the ground beneath David’s feet. He has not standing room, pretty soon. Nothing left to him, by Jove, but his own conceit, and he has tons of that! Well, let him use it and get fat on it!”

  She wondered why Connor had come to actually hate the master of the Garden. Sure David of Eden had never harmed the gambler. She remembered something that she had heard long before: that the hatred always lies on the side of injurer and not of the injured.

  They heard David’s voice, at this point, approaching, and in another moment a small cavalcade entered the patio.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  First, a white flash beneath the shadow of the arched way, came a colt at full run, stopping short with four sprawling, braced feet at the sight of the strangers. It was not fear so much as surprise, for now it pricked its ears and advanced a dainty step or two. Ruth cried out with delight at the fawn-like beauty of the delicate creature. The Eden Gray was almost white in the little colt, and with its four dark stockings it seemed, when it ran, to be stepping on thin air. That impression was helped by the comparatively great length of the legs.

  Next came the mother, walking, as though she was quite confident that no harm could come to her colt in this home of all good things, but with her fine head held high and her eyes luminous with concern, a little anxious because the youngster had been out of sight for a moment.

  And behind them strode David with Elijah at his side.

  Ruth could never have recognized Elijah as the statuesque figure which had confronted David on the previous day. He was now bowing and scraping like some withered old man, striving to make a good impression on a creditor to whom a great sum was owing. She remembered then what David had told her earlier in the day about the judging of Timeh, the daughter of Juri. This, then, was the crisis, and here was Elijah striving to conciliate the grim judge. The old man kept up a running fire of talk while David walked slowly around the colt. Ruth wondered why the master of the Garden did not cry out with pleasure at sight of the beautiful creature. Connor had drawn her back a little.

  “You see that six months’ mare?” he said softly, with a tremor in his voice. “I’d pay ten thousand flat for her the way she stands. Ten thousand—more if it were asked!”

  “But David doesn’t seem very pleased.”

  “Bah! He’s bursting with pleasure. But he won’t let on because he doesn’t want to flatter old Elijah.”

  “If he doesn’t pass the colt do you know what happens?”

  “What?”

  “They kill it!”

  “I’d a lot rather see them kill a man!” snarled Connor. “But they won’t touch that colt!”

  “I don’t know. Look at poor Elijah!”

  David, stopping in his circular walk, now stood with his arms folded, gazing intently at Timeh. Elijah was a picture of concern. The whites of his eyes flashed as his glances rolled swiftly from the colt to the master. Once or twice he tried to speak, but seemed too nervous to give voice.

  At length: “A true daughter of Juri, O David. And was there ever a more honest mare than Juri? The same head, mark you, deep from the eye to the angle of the jaw. And under the head—come hither, Timeh!”

  Timeh flaunted her heels at the sun and then came with short, mincing steps.

  “At six months,” boasted Elijah, “she knows my voice as well as her mother. Stay, Juri!”

  The inquisitive mare had followed Timeh, but now, reassured, she dropped her head and began cropping the turf of the patio. Still, from the play of her ears, it was evident that Timeh was not out of the mother’s thoughts for an instant.

  “Look you, David!” said Elijah. He raised the head of Timeh by putting his hand beneath her chin.

  “I can put my whole hand between the angles of her jaw! And see how her ears flick back and forth, like the twitching ears of a cat! Ha, is not that a sign?”

  He allowed the head to fall again, but he caught it under his arms and faced David in this manner, throwing out his hand in appeal. Still David spoke not a word.

  With a gesture he made Elijah move to one side. Then he stepped to Timeh. She was uneasy at his coming, but under the first touch of his hand Timeh became as still as rock and looked at her mother in a scared and helpless fashion. It seemed that Juri understood a great crisis was at hand; for now she advanced resolutely and with her dainty muzzle she followed with sniffs the hand of David as it moved over the little colt. He seemed to be seeing with his finger-tips alone, kneading under the skin in search of vital information. Along the muscles those dexterous fingers ran, and down about the heavy bones of the joints, where they lingered long, seeming to read a story in every crevice.

  Never once did he speak, but Ruth felt that she could read words in the brightening, calm, and sudden shadows across his face.

  Elijah accompanied the examination with a running-fire of comment.

  “There is quality in those hoofs, for you! None of your gray-blue stuff like the hoofs of Tabari, say, but black as night and dense as rock. Aye, David, you may well let your hand linger down that neck. She will step freely, this Timeh of mine, and stride as far as a mountain-lion can leap! Withers high enough. That gives a place for the ligaments to take hold. A good long back, but not too long to carry a weight. She will not be one of your gaunt-bellied horses, either; she will have wind and a bottom for running. She will gallop on the third day of the journey as freely as on the first. And she will carry her tail well out, always, with that big, strong dock.”

  He paused a moment, for David was moving his hands over the hindlegs and lingering long at the hocks. And the face of Elijah grew convulsed with anxiety.

  “Is there anything wrong with those legs?” murmured Ruth to Connor.

  “Not a thing that I see. Maybe the stifles are too straight. I think they might angle out a bit more. But that’s nothing serious. Besides, it may be the way Timeh is standing. What’s the matter?”

  She was clinging to his arm, white-faced.

  “If that colt has to die I—I’ll want to kill David Eden!”

  “Hush, Ruth! And don’t l
et him see your face!”

  David moved back from Timeh and again folded his arms.

  “The body of the horse is one thing,” ran on Elijah uneasily, “and the spirit is another. Have you not told us, David, that a curious colt makes a wise horse? That is Timeh! Where will you guess that I found her when I went to bring her to you even now? She had climbed up the face of the cliff, far up a crevice where a man would not dare to go. I dared not even cry out to her for fear she would fall if she turned her head. To have climbed so high was almost impossible, but how would she come down when there was no room for her to turn?

  “I was dizzy and sick with grief. But Timeh saw me, and down she came, without turning. She lifted her hoofs and put them down as a cat lifts and puts down wet paws. And in a moment she was safe on the meadow and frisking around me. Juri had been so worried that she made Timeh stop running and nosed her all over to make sure that she was unhurt by that climb. But tell me: will not a colt that risks its life to climb for a tuft of grass, run till its heart breaks for the master in later years?”

  For the first time David spoke.

  “Is she so wise a colt?” he said.

  “Wise?” cried Elijah, his eye shining with joy at the opening which he had made. “I talk to her as I talk to a man. She is as full of tricks as a dog. Look, now!”

  He leaned over and pretended to pick at the grass, whereat Timeh stole up behind him and drew out a handkerchief from his hip pocket. Off she raced and came back in a flashing circle to face Elijah with the cloth fluttering in her teeth.

  “So!” cried Elijah, taking the handkerchief again and looking eagerly at the master of the Garden. “Was there ever a colt like my Timeh?”

  “The back legs,” said David slowly.

  Elijah had been preparing himself to speak again, with a smile. He was arrested in the midst of a gesture and his face altered like a man at the banquet at the news of a death.

  “The hind legs, David,” he echoed hollowly. “But what of them? They are a small part of the whole! And they are not wrong. They are not very wrong, oh my master!”