by Max Brand
Pausing, Dunstan looked to the loading of his rifle. Behind him in the camp, he had left a man who would be willing to testify that an open threat had been delivered on the free range to a hunter within his own rights in hunting down destructive game on whose head there was a bounty placed. If the opportunity favored him, and, if necessity demanded it, Dunstan was prepared to shoot and shoot to kill.
Had he not registered an oath that he would have the scalp of that bear, no matter what obstacles lay before him? If he returned from the mountains, baffled by a half-wit, what manner of story would not Shorty spread through the cow camps about a once respected master?
For the first time in his life, Dunstan actually went out on the man trail. He had worked his way for a scant fifty yards when something whistling and wickedly brief passed above his head. It was a sound heard and gone before he could be sure that it was approaching. He jerked up his head in haste and snatched his rifle to his shoulder.
There was nothing before him, but a bullet had just been fired over his head.
Yet Dunstan went slowly on, for he was a very brave man, and shame and anger were forcing him along, as well as a great reputation that needed to be upheld.
Thirty slow yards away he found the following charcoal legend scraped upon the face of a rock: Dere Mr Dunstan, I ain’t gonna kill you unles you make me. Sandy Sweyn.
Peter Dunstan felt the cold perspiration roll down his forehead. He realized, now, that that bullet had not been an accidental miss. It had been merely a warning; the next one fired by this hidden marksman would certainly put a period to his life.
He did not hesitate an instant. He stood up, turned his back upon the forward trail and all the oaths that he had sworn to keep to it. He trudged slowly, with bent head, back to the fire where Shorty sat, quietly smoking.
Shorty stood up and nodded. “I knew that you’d use good sense, chief,” he said.
His chief made no reply. They went slowly on the back trail toward the far distant point where they had left Doc with the horses. All through that day, hardly a word was spoken, man to man, except a monosyllable, here and there. When the darkness came, Dunstan dropped a buck, as it sprang from a little covert. That night the roasted venison loosened their tongues.
“Two miracles,” said Dunstan. “How could he ride a horse through country like this? Second miracle…how could he tame that bear enough to travel with it…even granting that he’s crazy enough to really want to save the bear…and not just to make me mad?”
“I dunno,” Shorty said. “But I sort of wish, chief, that you hadn’t drove him off into the hills like this.”
“Drove him off?” the rancher shouted. “What are you talking about?”
“Man, man,” Shorty said with the dignity of the self-assured, “didn’t he bring you in the bear skin that you wanted? Why shouldn’t you let a poor half-wit like him keep the other bear where it was till it got well…and then he would’ve gone out and killed that bear for you his own self…or led you right up where you could’ve got in your shot at it.”
Dunstan, for some reason, could not answer. He felt that half of his repute had been torn from him, however. He suddenly found himself echoing the words of Steve McGuire: “Nobody will ever gain, in the end, by anything that this fellow Sandy Sweyn might do. He’s nothing but bad luck, Shorty.”
Shorty said after a time: “We’re gonna hear a lot more about him, chief, since he’s up here in the mountains. Suppose that some gents meet up with him that see that he’s a half-wit and don’t see that he’s what we know…a gent with a murder in each of his hands, if he wants to use them. There’s apt to be dead men in these parts, chief. And I hope that you ain’t gonna be blamed for them.”
Once again, Dunstan had nothing to say. He thought of the letter from Dr. Morgan, and, with all his heart, bitterly he wished that he had followed the instructions in that letter.
It was too late for that. There was nothing remaining for him to do except to ride back to his ranch and there face the old life with the new name and the bad name that he had made for himself. He cursed the day when his eyes had first fell on the blank eyes of Sandy Sweyn. And something told Peter Dunstan that the days of his strength and the days of his glory were nearly at an end. This was a foretaste of his fall.
As for Sandy Sweyn—no one saw him for a long time. But there was a wild tale repeated some time later in the mountain villages about a great, dark-coated grizzly bear who was seen at close hand, with what appeared to be a great cloth bandage wrapped around a forepaw. In the rear, behind the monster, followed a man. The wind blew from that shadowy form of a man to the bear, and yet the bear’s hair-trigger nostrils gave it no warning—or else this one man of all the race it did not fear.
Part II
Sixteen
“Palabras de la boca, piedras de la honda,” said Diego Mirandos, who was fond, like most Mexicans, of bringing in a pat proverb wherever the chance offered. He said this at a time when chance so framed affairs that never was a proverb more truly applied.
“Words of the mouth, stones of the sling,” Diego Mirandos had said, and quite truly for, after all, words fly as far and strike as deep as stones from a sling. To the truth of this remark pretty Catalina Mirandos could not be expected to pay any heed. She was in a mighty passion. Standing on the verandah of the house, she looked across the garden that her own hands had helped to make beautiful in this strange land of the Americans, then she twisted her fingers together and shook her head in violence.
José Rézan stood before her. He was at the bottom of the steps, but he was so big, and she was so small that even at that disadvantage he seemed nearly as tall as she. He was Mexican as much as she. Yet some said that his was a Russian name. Certainly his hair was blond, and his skin was pale.
He had said: “I have ridden everywhere. I have searched everywhere. But the little devil of a horse…I cannot find her, Catalina. She has turned herself into a mist, and she has disappeared.”
Catalina raised herself on her toes, answering in a voice of passion: “It is not true! You have not looked. You have given her away. You have sold her. You have sold her! Because my father does not wish me to ride her. But I will ride her…I will ride her. I shall find her and ride her. I do not care what may happen. I shall have her…she is mine. I love her! I own her…you gave her to me with your own hands. I will not live unless I have her. Do you hear me, stupid José?”
Poor José. He was so big, so strong, so calm in his bigness and in his strength, that he loved her all the more because she was so tremendously spoiled. Her father was a big man and a gentle one, also. For so many years he had poured out to Catalina all that her heart could desire so that it had grown impossible for her to endure a disappointment.
“I’ll get her for you if I can, Catalina,” big José said. “But you have to remember that we trapped her by accident, really. She was always more than half wild…a real little devil, dear Catalina.”
“Do not call me dear. I am not dear…I am not yours!”
The eyes of José Rézan grew greater than ever with a sudden fear. “Consider, Catalina, that she will have gone back to the same wild herd from which she came, perhaps. But even if it takes hundreds of dollars, I shall send men to follow her and run her down, and catch her if they can.”
“Run her down, starve her down, ruin her, break her spirit!” cried Catalina. “Do I want a diamond with the fire gone from it? No, no, no! I shall have my Elena…my Elena Blanca…my beautiful white one! I shall have her again. I shall have her without a hair changed. I shall see her just as she was. And if there is so much as a rope scald on one of her legs, I will not take her at all. I will not, I will not!”
José was paler than ever. His eyes rolled frantically from side to side, seeking for help. Finding nothing that could save him, he said: “It is only three days to the wedding. After we are married a little time, Catalin
a, I shall go myself….”
“After we are married?” the little tyrant screamed. “No, but before! Before!”
“Ah, my dear,” José said, “but can I catch Elena Blanca and bring her back to you all in three short days? Can I do that?”
“Three days or thirty days,” Catalina Mirandos said. “What do I care? I love Elena Blanca. I must have her again. And I shall never marry any but the man who brings her back to me!”
José struck his big hands together. “Child, child…you must not say it. You have given me your word, and the priest knows it.”
“I take my word back. I catch it back!” Catalina Mirandos cried. “I catch it back and keep it again and swear a new oath!”
“Catalina, you kill me with sorrow.”
“Ah, but you do not care when I die. You do not care at all. It is only for your own huge self that you care. I lose my beautiful Elena, and it is nothing to you. My father told you to kill her, or to give her away, or to turn her loose…and you have done it.”
“I swear….”
“Do not be perjured. I would not believe your oath. But I swear….”
Here a sudden and a heavy voice struck in from the side, the voice of her father, Diego Mirandos: “Do not swear, Catalina!”
This double opposition did not check her. It only served to increase her fury more and more. It made her so angry that she danced up and down, unable to speak a single word. The two big men stood aghast at her, staring earnestly at one another, each with a prayer in his eyes, as much as to say: “You, who are big and strong and wise, do something with her, because you see that I am helpless.”
Why did they care so much? I think that if she had been all that she was and yet just a little larger, no one would have put up with such nonsense. But she was not more than two or three inches above five feet, and she seemed smaller because she seemed so childish; she seemed so childish because she was so small. Who can be seriously angry with a child?
Moreover, she was made in such a way that—how shall I speak of her to make you understand? She was made as a great, great artist would make a little toy. She was made with love and with tenderness and with most infinite care. If you could have seen the delicate olive of her hand, with the sun striking a flush through it, you would have thrilled with joy.
That is why the two men stood helplessly before her. Even as she stormed and raged, and even while they trembled, her voice was so musical that they almost smiled with pleasure, as you or I would have smiled, also. The wisest man in the world with the whitest beard, and the youngest boy with the most careless heart, seeing her would have said with one voice: “Oh, to have her now and forever!”
When her voice came back to her, she cried shrilly at them: “I swear that I shall never marry anyone, except the man that brings Elena Blanca back to me!”
Poor José Rézan. He shrank from her, and a thousand terrible possibilities rushed upon his mind.
It was at this moment that her father said solemnly: “Palabras de la boca, piedras de la honda.”
With that solemn voice ringing in her ear, even little Catalina Mirandos understood, indeed, that the words she had spoken might be like the stones from a sling. Where would they fall, who would they strike? Or might they not return upon her?
Then, for fear lest they should see the terror in her eyes, she whirled around, raced into the house, and got to her room where the silks whispered and rustled about her, and the canary began suddenly to sing for joy at the sight of her. There she lay, curled up on a couch, and felt the beating of her heart that made all her body quiver, while she said to herself over and over: “Surely it cannot be such a terrible thing that I have said. What difference can they make…the words that poor little Catalina may speak?”
A minute later she had nearly forgotten that last scene, except for a guilty sense of pleasure because of the pain that she had given to big, honest José and to her father, Don Diego. After that, she was thinking of nothing but Elena Blanca once more, yearning for her.
You must consider that, in all the world of horses, there was only one made for Catalina. That was the white mare. She had been a bright vision of delight, enchanting the eyes of many a hunter and many a cowpuncher who had some dazzling glimpse of her as she fled away across the hills or stood like a frightened deer against a dark bank of the pine trees. Chance brought her into the hands of José, who gave her into the hands of the lady of his heart. With infinite labor, through weeks and weeks, that wild creature was tamed until Catalina could be trusted in the saddle on her back. It was a crimson saddle, all fretted over with silver, and there was a crimson bridle worked with shining gold. When they saw the little mare dance forth, they knew that all their work had been well rewarded. It was like a harmony of well-matched sounds, seeing the beauty of the girl and the beauty of Elena Blanca together.
As for Catalina, she knew that when she sat on the back of White Helen she was mounted, as it were, upon an enchanted horse, with the surety that she could ride forthright into the hearts of all men. Do you wonder that she should have cared so much about this—seeing that she was betrothed to marry the good José, so rich, so handsome and so strong? You wonder, only because you did not know Catalina.
Perhaps the wild oath that Catalina had spoken that day would never have been heard of again had it not been that another ear had listened, the ear of Rosa, the half-breed moza. In another moment she was at the stable door, whispering to her wild-faced son Filipo: “The kind God has prepared riches and happiness for you, Son. The señorita has sworn that she will marry only the man who brings back the white mare. Whose hand but yours tamed her and trained her? And who but you will find her trail and catch her again?”
“An oath is only a word,” Filipo said, trembling at the thought of all that might be.
“Oh, fool, fool!” gasped out Rosa. “It is the oath of a Mirandos, and their word is sacred always.”
Filipo did not wait. He started at once, on his fastest pony, with his best rawhide lariat coiled beside the saddle. There was fire in his heart, and the thought of the señorita was like a living breath from heaven. He rode straight through the village down the trail. It was only when he got to the farther side that he remembered a certain little house on the edge of the town where, for a certain price, a known man might buy forbidden liquor, and drink it in a circle of the discreet. He turned back and sat in the little house the rest of that day.
By the time that the evening came, there were others around him. The spirit of good fellowship carried the heart of Filipo upon the wings of a swallow. He was in such a heaven of content that it seemed a bitter wrong that the precious secret should remain in his hands, only. Therefore, he confided it to one, and then to another. Before the world was an hour older, the eavesdropping vixen rumor had seized on the tidings and was abroad—clattering out the story. For it was one made exactly after her liking; it did not need a single stitch of embroidery. The naked facts were enough to strike silence and wonder through the hearts of men.
Before the next morning, every soul in the village had heard. Before the next sunset, the word was gone across the mountains, running like liquid fire down every valley, from village to village, from ranch to ranch.
Seventeen
There is nothing like competition to create excitement. If men eagerly run horses to see which will pass under the wire first, they run even more vigorously themselves the same honor. If the challenge had gone out to catch the white mare alone, it would have brought a great answer. When such a reward as the hand of the Mexican girl was added, there was hardly a cowpuncher, competent or incompetent, who did not raise his head. The newspaper got hold of the thing quickly enough. Half a dozen photographers slipped out to the house of Don Diego, and managed to get snapshots of the beauty before her father herded them away, promising that the next man to approach the place with such an infernal machine should have a thorough slatin
g down with lead, placed in the spots where it would do the most good.
However, the mischief had been done much too thoroughly to be undone. There was the story, in the first place, which editors caught up on the run and printed in broad columns, under titles sometimes witty, and sometimes not. Afterward, when the pictures went the rounds, the tale was printed again, with much embroidery.
It was something more than the melodramatic hunger of a pretty girl for publicity. Everyone knew that the tale had gone abroad by accident. In addition, when the house and the lands of Don Diego were described, even the most conservative could tell that in this game there was something of greater value than there were pictures on the cards. Besides, a girl might have been offered for any other prize in the whole world and been considered either vainglorious or a fool. When she offered herself in exchange for the return of her horse—why, that was a different matter, by far, you may be sure. It touched the romantic sense of irresponsibility that runs in every human being, especially in every Westerner.
The pictures crowned it all. Those wicked photographers had been trained to their arts in devious ways. They had practiced themselves, according to their politics, in snapping the candidate for mayor and making him look like a jackass, or in snapping him to make him appear a philosopher and a philanthropist. They had been able to make old actresses appear to be young ones, and they had learned the secret of putting guilt or innocence upon the faces of accused men.
When it merely came to showing the grace and beauty of Catalina Mirandos, they were at their ease. They showed her swinging into the saddle on another horse, stepping from the door of the house, in the garden, startled and letting an armful of flowers drop to the ground.