The Steel Box

by Max Brand

  So hoped Standing Bull, and smiled at the thought. He talked with Rushing Wind as they changed saddles for the last time. Yellow Man had fulfilled his weird dream of the night before. He was dead, but his body, lashed to a pony’s back, was being brought back to his family. Not two hours of steady riding lay before them. And if the girl collapsed, they could tie her to her saddle and finish the ride at any rate, like a whirlwind covering the plains.

  So, as they made the change of saddles, they helped her to her new mount. She was a dead weight in their hands. With sunken head and lips compressed she sat the saddle, both hands clinging feebly to the pommel.

  “Tie her now in her place,” suggested Rushing Wind. “She is very weak.”

  It was done at once, and, while Standing Bull made sure that the fastenings were secure, he heard an excited call from Rushing Wind.

  On the northern horizon, clearly seen against the red of the sunset sky, there was a flash as of silver, and, when Standing Bull looked more closely, he made out a horseman coming steadily toward them.

  Roger Lincoln! Or was it one of the Cheyennes who, having killed Lincoln, had sent back one of their number on the captured horse to give the news to the village and bring out food and a medicine man to the wounded of the party?

  So muttered Standing Bull, but Rushing Wind cried excitedly: “I tell you I can see that it is the white man! I can see the paleness of his long hair about his shoulders even at this distance. But what has become of the others?”

  “He has dodged them,” said Standing Bull gloomily. “Or else . . .”

  “Or else he has killed them!” exclaimed Rushing Wind. “He has killed them, Standing Bull. I feel that they are dead men and that we never shall look on them again. Shall we go back to face him?”

  “He has great medicine in his rifle,” said Standing Bull in grave thought, “but I would not run away from any single warrior. Nevertheless, it is not for us to think of ourselves. We are working to bring happiness to White Thunder, and through him to the entire tribe. Is it true?”

  “That is true,” admitted Rushing Wind, still staring at the far distant rider.

  “Let us finish that work,” said Standing Bull. “Afterward we may be able to ride out and find Roger Lincoln on the war trail. I hope so. In his death there would be enough fame to make ten braves happy. Now let us ride. Pray to the wind to help on our horses, or the white man will send our souls where he has sent all five of our companions before us. Ride, Rushing Wind, and call on the ghosts of our fathers to make the legs of our horses strong.”

  By the time they were in the saddle, the form of Roger Lincoln was beginning to grow more and more distinct until, even in that half light, they were sure of the blond hair about his shoulders.

  Nancy Brett cast one last, desperate look over her shoulder, and then set her teeth to endure the last stage of the journey as well as she could. If she was not strong, she was not brittle stuff that breaks. Only by degrees her power had failed her in this long forced march.

  Making no effort to keep the horse herd running before them now, Standing Bull drove the last three ponies straight across the prairie and toward the Cheyenne village.

  XVI

  How earnestly Standing Bull prayed for the night, then. And night was coming down upon them fast. In a few moments, there would not be sufficient illumination to enable the white man to use the great magic of his rifle on the Cheyennes, and without that gun Standing Bull feared Lincoln not at all.

  But the gray mare, Comanche, drew closer and closer. She seemed supported on wings, so rapidly did she overtake the straining Indian ponies. She had been matching her wonderful speed that day against half a dozen animals, and yet she had the strength to make such a final burst as this.

  Standing Bull, throwing glances over his shoulder from moment to moment, suddenly exclaimed: “Rushing Wind, my brother! Look and tell me if what I think is true! That the gray gains on us no longer!”

  Back came the joyous cry of the younger brave: “She has lost her wings! She is flying no longer!”

  “Ride hard, ride hard!” urged Standing Bull. “Now that he cannot gain, he will no longer try to push the mare. He will take to the ground and fire on us.”

  He had rightly interpreted the intention of the white scout. Now that the last strength had gone from beautiful Comanche, Roger Lincoln pulled her up short and dropped to his full length on the prairie. It was wonderfully long range, and the light was very bad indeed—far less than a half light. Yet at the explosion of the gun, Rushing Wind ducked his head and lurched forward with a stifled cry.

  “Brother, brother!” called Standing Bull anxiously. “Did the bullet strike you?”

  “No, no!” answered the boy. “But I heard it singing past me more loudly than a hornet. I am not hurt. Heammawihio, to you I vow a fine buffalo hide, well painted. I shall make your heart glad because you have saved me today.”

  There was no second report. In another moment they were out of sight of Roger Lincoln in the thickening dusk. And now the stars began to come out, pale and winking. Other lights like stars, like red stars, appeared on the southern horizon.

  “That is our city,” said Standing Bull. “We are free from pursuit.”

  He drew up his horse. So weak was the girl that, as her horse stopped, she lurched forward and almost sprawled to the ground. But she recovered at once, and sat with stiffened lip.

  “Look,” said Standing Bull to his fellow warrior. “I have never seen such a woman before. I saw her in the house in Fort Kendry, crying as a baby cries. I smiled and thought she was worthless. But you see, my friend. Out of such metal a man could make arrowheads and knives. White Thunder . . . you will see . . . he will be mad with joy.”

  “I shall stand by and watch,” said Rushing Wind, laughing. “He pretends that nothing matters to him. He yawns when warriors make great gifts to him. But now we will see him cry out and shout and dance. But, for me, I prefer the girls of the Cheyennes. It needs a strong back to dig roots and a big hand to hold an axe.”

  Standing Bull, however, made no answer. Once or twice he turned and stared earnestly into the darkness behind him, but there was no sound or trace of Roger Lincoln. It was as though he had permitted the night to swallow him after that single shot into which he had thrown all his skill.

  Now the Indian leader rode close to the girl. With a strong hand beneath her arm, he supported her greatly. She let her head fall straight back, sometimes, so utterly weakened was she.

  “She is tired. She is like a dead reed. It may break in the wind, Standing Bull,” cautioned the younger man.

  Again Standing Bull made no reply, but looked earnestly on the face of the girl. There was no moon. There were no stars. Yet he could see her. It was as though he beheld her by the light of her own whiteness.

  They came to the edge of the village before they were discovered. They entered, of course, in the midst of pandemonium. And straight they went to the lodge of White Thunder. It was as white as his name, made of the skins of nineteen buffalo cows, all of an age, all killed at the perfect season, or cured in exactly the same fashion.

  Fires glimmered dimly through open lodge entrances. In the center of White Thunder’s lodge there was a fire, also. Standing Bull took the girl from her horse. She lay in his arms with closed eyes. Then he stalked into the lodge.

  Paul Torridon lolled against a backrest, by the firelight, carefully sharpening a knife. Young Willow was at work cleaning the great iron cooking pot that simmered over the central fire all the day.

  “Brother,” said Standing Bull, “I have come back from a far land and a far people to bring you a present.”

  At the sound of his voice, all the noise outside the lodge was hushed. Only a child cried out, and the slap of a rebuking hand sounded like the popping of a whiplash. All that Standing Bull said clearly could be heard.

  “When I brought you alone,” said Standing Bull simply, “I saw that you were unhappy. I decided that I would bring y
ou a present that would fill your lodge with content.”

  Here Torridon stood up and waved a hand in acknowledgment. Then, taking closer heed of the burden that the big Indian carried in his arms, Torridon stepped closer.

  “She should be worth much to you,” said Standing Bull in conclusion, “because five good men and brave warriors have died that she might be brought to you.” Suddenly he stretched out his arms and the burden in them.

  Torridon peered at it curiously, the white face, the closed eyes—and then with a great cry he caught Nancy Brett to his breast. Young Willow, her eyes glittering like polished steel, threw a robe beside the fire, and on it Torridon kneeled, and then laid down the girl, crying out her name in a voice half of joy and half of sorrow.

  Standing Bull strode from the teepee, herding Rushing Wind before him into the outer darkness. He raised his great arm and stilled the clamor that began to break out from the crowd that surrounded him.

  “Be still,” he said. “In that lodge there is a woman who is worth five men. Heammawihio demanded their lives before we could bring her here. And he knows the worth of human beings. It is her spirit that is great. Her body is not strong. Now all go away. Your shouting would kill her. Go away. The village should be silent.”

  Out of respect for him, the throng was still. He walked through them to his teepee, and there was Owl Woman, the perfect wife, waiting to greet him. The firelight turned her to golden copper; her smile was beautiful. But to Standing Bull she suddenly seemed like a hideous cartoon of a woman, with a vast, stretching mouth, and a great nose, and high cheek bones. He made himself take her in his arms. She had been boiling fat meat in the pot. The odor of cookery clung to her garments. And Standing Bull remembered how he had ridden grandly from Fort Kendry, and the slender body that had lain in his arms, and the fragrance as of spring wildflowers that had blown from her hair against his face.

  The Steel Box

  “The Steel Box” first appeared as a five-part serial, “The Stranger,” in Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine beginning in the January 12, 1929 issue. It was one of eleven serials to be published that year by Frederick Faust. It is an unusual Western story in which two cowpunchers, Tiny Lew Sherry and Pete Lang, find themselves in the midst of a mystery involving suicide, murder, family intrigue, a hilltop fortress, a ship lost at sea, revenge, and romance. This is the first time it appears in its entirety since its original publication.

  I

  They were holding beef out of Clayrock, for the UX outfit. Eighteen hundred steers, strong with good feeding and apt to want their own way, were quite enough for two cowpunchers to handle, even two like Pete Lang and Lew Sherry, whose range name was Tiny Lew. But the beef had had their fill of good grass on this day, and had been drifted enough miles to make them at once contented and sleepy. They began to lie down, slumping heavily to their knees, and so gradually down—unlike the grace of a mustang dropping for the night.

  “Trouble and beef . . . that’s all you get out of a bunch like this,” said Tiny Lew Sherry as he circled his horse quietly around the herd. “And we don’t get the beef,” he concluded.

  “Shut up and start singing,” said Pete Lang. “Which if you was an orator, these shorthorns wouldn’t vote for you, anyway. Sing, darn you,” said Pete Lang.

  “You start it, then. I got no singing in my throat tonight.”

  Lang began, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean.”

  Last night as I lay on the prairie,

  And looked at the stars in the sky,

  I wondered if ever a cowboy

  Would drift to that sweet by and by.

  Roll on, roll on,

  Roll on, little doggies, roll on, roll on,

  Roll on, roll on,

  Roll on, little doggies, roll on!

  “Will you quit it?” asked Tiny Lew plaintively. “It makes me ache to hear such mournful lingo.”

  “You’ve got too much education,” said Lang. “I always told you so. If there was any nacheral sense born into you, it was read out in books. But there’s that speckled steer got up again. Will you sing him down, sucker, or are you gonna start wrangling until the whole herd begins to mill?”

  Tiny Lew tipped back his head and his bass voice flowed in a thick, rich current, carefully subdued.

  There’s old ‘Aunt’ Jess, that hard old cuss,

  Who never would repent;

  He never missed a single meal

  Nor never paid a cent.

  But old ‘Aunt’ Jess like all the rest

  To death he did resign

  And in his bloom went up the flume

  In the days of Forty-Nine.

  The speckled steer lay down again with a grunt and a puff.

  “A fine, soothing song is that,” sneered Pete Lang. “Let ’em have some more. You oughta be singing in a hall, Tiny.”

  Tiny Lew, unabashed, continued his song with another stanza.

  There is ‘Ragshag’ Jim, the roaring man,

  Who could outroar a buffalo, you bet;

  He roared all day and he roared all night,

  And I guess he is roaring yet.

  One night Jim fell in a prospect hole—

  It was a roaring bad design—

  And in that hole Jim roared out his soul,

  In the days of Forty-Nine.

  “I’ve had enough,” said Pete Lang. “Whistle to ’em, son.”

  Slowly the two cowpunchers walked or jogged their horses around the night herd, sometimes with low, soft whistles; sometimes they sang a word or two of a song and hummed the rest of it, and the great, fat steers, plump for shipping on the next day, quieted under the soothing of the familiar sounds, and with that human reassurance about them—like a wall to shut away danger of wolf or mountain lion, danger of the very stars and winds—they went to sleep.

  Then the two cowpunchers drew their horses together and let the mustangs touch noses.

  “It’s quite a town, Clayrock, by the look of the lights,” said Tiny Lew.

  “I’ve had my share of talking juice in yonder, under them lights,” remarked Pete Lang. “It’s got one trouble. The kind of red-eye they peddle there over the bar ain’t made for boys, but for growed-up men. You’d better keep away from that joint, Tiny.”

  Tiny Lew stretched forth a hand and took his companion firmly by the back of his coat collar. Then he heaved Pete Lang a yard out of the saddle and held him dangling against the stars.

  “Do I let you drop, you little, sawed-off son-of-a-gun?” asked Tiny Lew pleasantly.

  “I’ll have your gizzard out for this,” declared Pete Lang, keeping his voice equally low, for fear of disturbing the steers.

  Tiny deposited him back in the saddle. “It’s so long since I’ve had a drink,” he said, “that I’m all rusty inside. I’m lined with red rust, two inches deep. I’m more full of sand than a desert. A couple of buckets full of red-eye would hardly be heard to splash inside of me, Pete.”

  At this, Pete Lang chuckled. “Look here,” he said. “You go in and tip over a couple. These here doggies are plumb sleepy, and I can hold ’em till morning. Go in and tip over a couple, and then come back and I’ll make a visit for myself, before morning.”

  The big man glanced over the herd. Every steer was down. Now and again, the sound of a horn clicked faintly against a horn, or a tail swished could be heard distinctly, so still was the night.

  “I’d better stay,” said Tiny Lew with indecision.

  “You drift, son,” replied his companion. “Besides, you’re only a nuisance, tonight. The thoughts that you got in your head, they’d disturb the peace of a whole town, let alone a night herd like this. Get out of here, Tiny. You’ve near strangled me already.” He touched his throat, where the strain of his collar had chafed the skin when Sherry had lifted him from the saddle. The big fellow slapped Lang on the shoulder.

  “So long, Pete. Wish me luck, and no fights, and a safe return.”

  “All right,” said Lang, “b
ut I warn you that a mule makes a safer ride than a horse into Clayrock . . . there’s so much quicksand and so many holes in the ground. Don’t find no friends, and don’t stay to make none, but just tip down a couple and come on back.”

  “Right as can be,” said Tiny Lew, and turned his pony’s nose toward the lights of the town.

  He rode a pinto, only fifteen hands high, but made to carry weight, even weight such as that of Tiny, and tough as a mountain goat. They split straight across country, jumping two fences that barred the way, and so entered at last the first street of Clayrock. It was a big, rambling town, with comfortable yards around the houses, and, as Tiny Lew rode in, he could hear the soft rushing sound made by sprinklers on the lawns; he could smell the fragrance of the gardens, too, and the umbrella trees stood in shapely files on either side of the way.

  “Civilized,” said Tiny to himself. “Pete was stringing me along a little.”

  He came to a bridge over a little river, and, in spite of his hurry, he reined in his horse to watch the flash and swing of the current as it dipped around a bend of the stream. There was sufficient distance from the arched center of the bridge to the nearest houses to enable him to look about him, over the head of Clayrock, as it were, and he saw that the town was snuggled down among the hills—easy hills for riding, he judged, by the round outlines of the heads of the hills. Only to the south there was a streak of darkness against the higher sky, and the glimmer of a number of lights that he thought, at first, must be great stars.

  But then he realized that stars cannot shine through such a dark cloud, and finally he was aware that it was a flat-faced cliff that rose over Clayrock—the very feature that gave the town its name, of course. The select center of the town, no doubt.

  Tiny Lew went on. He had no desire to see select centers, but presently, on the farther side of the river, he found the houses closer together. The gardens ended. People were in the streets. He passed a moving-picture house where the sign was illuminated with crimson lights. And so he reached the Parker Place.