by Max Brand
“Well, I’ll have to find that out for myself.” He leaned and plucked up a bush by the roots, a stout bush with great roots that thrust far down into the earth. Yet the effort of Sandy Sweyn had been no greater than a normal man would have had to make in order to pluck up a knot of bunch grass. He began to tear the bush apart. It was green and the wood was as tough leather. Under the remorseless hands of Sandy, it was shred to small strips, which he tossed on the fire. All of this he did not with a concentrated effort, but rather with an effect of an absent mind—as though he hardly knew what his hands were employed in.
“How far away is the place where she is running?”
“Out on the Condon Desert. Do you know that country?”
“I don’t know it. How far?”
“Oh, a hundred miles from here.”
“And if I catch the mare?”
“You bring her to me, Sandy.”
“And then?”
There was a startled exclamation behind them, and Shorty leaped out of the shrubbery, where he had been hiding all this while, to guard his master from any dangerous effects from conversation with this strange child of nature.
“Look sharp!” gasped out Sandy. “There’s a grizzly as big as a barn right at my heels!”
Twenty-One
Swinging his own rifle under the pit of his arm, Peter Dunstan said: “Throw a stone, and the big brute’ll scamper away fast enough.”
“He ain’t that kind of a bear” objected Shorty. “He come for me like he knew all about menfolk and wanted to examine me for what kept me running. Y’understand? He came up like he meant business, and there…there he is now.”
He pitched the butt of his rifle into the hollow of his shoulder at the same moment that a great black grizzly—or one so dark-coated that it actually seemed black in this dim firelight, reared from among the bushes and stood before them. An eight- or nine-hundred-pound monster such as had never before come into even the dreams of Dunstan or Shorty—old hunters though they were.
The giant greeted them with its vast paws folded on its stomach and a growl that seemed to fill the forest and far corners of the night.
In another instant, there would have been launched at its vitals two streams of lead from the high-power repeating rifles of the men had not the voice of Sandy Sweyn broken in with a harsh shout. It carried a note in it such as Dunstan had never heard before in the voice of any man. It seemed to shrivel up his strength. It made the hand that steadied his rifle shake like a dead leaf in the wind. There was an evident prohibition in the command that made the trigger finger turn numb and refuse to contract. He did not have to look at Shorty to know that his cowpuncher felt the same sensations.
Then, to Dunstan’s utter confusion of soul and mind, Sandy Sweyn leaped between them and the bear—leaped in between with his arms outstretched.
“Don’t shoot!” Sandy cried. “He’ll do you no harm. Don’t shoot, partners!”
He backed up as he spoke, until he came fairly within reach of the monster. Aye, and the two arms, each as thick as a beam, unfolded, extended, and seemed about to take Sandy in a bone-crushing hug. No, only one of them touched lightly on the shoulder of the man and stayed there,
Shorty, who recovered his wits first, after sight of this, whispered: “He’s tamed a plumb wild grizzly.”
“He’ll do you not a mite of harm,” Sandy said calmly. “He was just wandering around and seeing who my visitors might be. There’s no trouble in him.” With the flat of his hand, he smote the great, muscle-cushioned shoulder of the black giant.
Peter Dunstan cast an anxious glance over his shoulder. “Have you got any more pets hanging around, Sandy?” he asked. “Because my life insurance has run out, and I don’t want to get into your family circle without being pretty well covered.”
“There’s no more to speak of,” Sandy said as the black bear pitched to his feet, and then sat down, with the hand of his master resting on his shoulder. “But there’s one mean one that don’t get on with me very well. He’s sort of offish.” And he raised his two thumbs to his mouth and whistled a screeching note through them. For answer, there immediately came a harsh spitting close at hand.
“There he is,” Sandy Sweyn murmured, and smiled, while a faint, malicious light gleamed for an instant in his eyes. “He’s generally close by, but he don’t like to show himself none. He hates to have your eye on him, you know.” He called: “Come here, boy!”
Among the shadows, Dunstan saw two round, gleaming eyes. Then a bobcat crawled forth on his belly, lashing his flanks with his long tail. On the verge of the firelight he crouched, blinking.
“I ain’t gonna torture him by bringing him closer,” Sandy said. “He hates me and everybody else, except himself. He’s a queer one. Run along, boy.” He waved his hand, and the big cat was gone, while Dunstan and Shorty exchanged mute glances.
“But Jim, here,” went on the man of the woods, “he’s my regular family. I’m wondering, sort of, how he would get along with the dog. What might the dog’s name be?”
“His name is Chris,” answered Dunstan.
Sandy, with some difficulty, freed the chain from the place where it was fastened about the tree. Then he carried the dog in his arms and placed him between the forepaws of the great bear.
Jim curled back his paws from the cowering sheep dog and lowered his great head to sniff at the puppy. His lip curled. One champ of those jaws would break every bone in the dog’s body. Still Jim forbore. While the other two men stood by in wonder, they saw Chris, under the ministering hands of Sandy, lift his own head a little and begin to thump the ground with his tail in a most conciliatory fashion. Big Jim finally heaved his bulk up and, with his head turned to the side, and his small pig-eyes glittering, left the clearing with a rumbling growl.
“Jealous,” interpreted Sandy. “He’s jealous, d’ye see? Even jealous of the cat. I never seen such a bear. Eight hundred pounds of foolishness, pretty near.” He laughed and patted the head of Chris, who straightened and began to whine with pleasure, now that the grizzly was gone from sight. “He’s a brave dog,” Sandy commented. “You could see that, eh? Put his head right up, even with Jim leaning over him. I’ll tell you, I’ll have a time, though, getting Jim used to the pup. Might I have the dog before I get the mare, Mister Dunstan? To give him back, y’understand, if I don’t catch her for you. ”
Dunstan shook his head. “Business is business, Sandy,” he said. “You get the horse for me and deliver that horse to me right at the door of my ranch house. Then you’ll get Chris, safe and sound. But if the horse dies while you were hunting for her, or if somebody else gets her first…why, Sandy, you have to admit that these things happen…you might be so attached to Chris, by that time, that you’d hate to give him up.”
To this logic of the businessman, Sandy listened with his head bent to one side. “I suppose that you’re right,” he said at the last. “I don’t seem to have any way of answering what you’ve just said. But I’ll have that mare down at your place inside of a couple of weeks, or else I’ll bust.”
“Will you shake hands on that, Sandy?”
“Sure.”
Their hands closed upon one another.
In his own section of the country, the strength of the grip of Peter Dunstan was almost proverbial. Yet, under the casual pressure of the fingers of Sandy, he felt the strength of his wrist and his hand give way, and his power failed him. His hand buckled under that enormous pressure, and, though he managed to maintain his smile, his face went white.
Sandy stepped back. He looked up—and a broad moon with a yellow-figured face was drifting up among the trees. “Why,” he said uneasily, “I suppose that there ain’t any time better than right now, for starting. So long.” He turned instantly from the clearing.
As for the men that he left behind him, they sat down and stared rather helplessly at one anoth
er.
Peter Dunstan worked blood and feeling into his crushed right hand. “It was like taking hold of soft iron. You understand what I mean? It began closing in on me…and closing in…and it got stronger and stronger. In another fifth of a second, I think that he would have been breaking the metacarpal bones. What a man!”
“A man?” Shorty said.
“You look sort of wild, Shorty.”
“I was just thinking of something.”
“And what’s that?”
“How empty-looking his eyes are, mostly.”
“Aye.”
“But when he jumped in front of us…you remember?…his eyes were blazing like the eyes of that cat, when it sneaked up to the edge of the fire. And I thought…I couldn’t help thinking….” Shorty paused.
“Well?” Dunstan urged.
“I guess it was the same thought that you had, chief, for that matter. And I’ll name it, too. I figured that if I was to turn loose some of the bullets right into his hide, while he stood there in front of us, that maybe I would be doing the world a good turn.”
Dunstan nodded solemnly. “I had the same idea,” he admitted. “Because it occurred to me that, if he should ever start and run amuck among other folks, he would smash up a dozen or two good men before he more than got warmed up. Someday, he’ll make a killing that will make the worst things that Wild Bill ever did look like fifty cents.”
Shorty paused in his task of stamping out the fire, to look up and nod. They said no more, but presently they went to their horses, mounted, and started out across the forest. If they had luck, they could get back to the village by midnight.
They threaded their way until they came to a more or less obliterated trail that wound along in the general direction that they wished to follow.
“What put the idea into your head…of baiting him with a yelling dog?” asked Dunstan.
“I dunno. I remembered him and the gelding at the ranch…and then the queer look in his eyes, as if he understood things that can’t talk.”
“Shorty, you got a great head. Isn’t that a galloping horse that we hear?”
Suddenly, across the face of the hill that rolled out naked from the shadows of the forest, they saw a rider on a speeding horse—a great-striding animal that showed only for an instant, and then was gone.
“There he goes,” whispered Peter Dunstan. “More luck to him. Damn his weird heart.”
“Mind the dog!” called Shorty.
Chris was struggling forward with all his might, straining against the lariat by which he was being led along, vainly endeavoring to follow the fleeing rider through the night.
Twenty-Two
Up on the Condon Desert, the horse hunters were not so numerous as they had once been, for Elena Blanca had given her pursuers the slip so often that many of them had given up the chase. But others arrived. Where a dozen careless fellows started in the beginning, there now arrived professional strivers after forlorn hopes—calm-faced, desperate men. They were old and young. If you asked some grizzled veteran whether he really wanted to marry beautiful little Señorita Catalina, he would have shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
Of course, he did not want to marry her, but he wanted the money that, as all men knew, her father would be more than willing to pay to the lucky captor of the mare, to buy off the claims of the horse catcher to the hand of the girl.
Young and old, as the weeks passed, these hunters after the little white mare began to grow into a loose society, known to one another, carrying news of the new arrivals in the chase, and narrating the historic moments in the pursuit of Elena Blanca when some cunning snare had almost entangled her.
Of all the moments in that Iliad of horse adventure, none matched with one that happened in the fag-end of a long, hot day. For the two foremost pursuers of the mare combined their efforts to capture her, that day.
They were José Rézan and John Lucas.
It would have been difficult to select two men of types more opposite. José Rézan you have already seen—big, blond, splendid in his beauty and in his strength. John Lucas came from somewhere in the Vermont mountains. He was made long and narrow, body and head. His thin face seemed to have been designed to cleave through the wind with the least resistance. His neck was like the crooked neck of a bird. There was nothing about him of a manly size except his arms and his legs. They were long and strong, and John Lucas added to their animal strength an animal quickness. He was like a big snake, just as José Rézan was like a big lion, tawny and grand.
These two came together. Each had appeared as a hero more than once in the epic hunt for the white mare. José Rézan suggested that they join forces to see if they might not compass her capture.
“But,” John Lucas said, “suppose that we get her. Who’ll be the lucky man?”
“You take the money,” José Rézan suggested, “and I’ll take the girl.”
John Lucas thrust forward his long, lean chin. “I’ll have the money and the girl,” he said ominously.
“Very well,” Rézan answered without bitterness and without fear. “We’ll wait till we have Elena Blanca. After she’s ours, then we’ll fight for her, you and I…a good fair fight, eh?”
John Lucas thrust out his brown hand. “We’ll make that a bargain,” he said.
They gathered their best horses, employed the cleverest helpers that they could find, and laid their plans with such effect that during half a day they harried the beautiful white mare, driving her not fast enough to come up with her, but continually turning her toward points where fresh horses would be available to take up the labor
Twice, as she streamed through the heat of the afternoon with the sun burning on her silver body, it seemed to José Rézan that she must be theirs—and twice she found in her strong, wild heart an extra fund of energy, and drew away from the pursuit.
It was not until the golden time of the day, when the sun was low in the western sky, that magical moment on the desert when the period of rosy light has not yet quite begun and the white light of the stronger sun has ended, that Elena Blanca broke suddenly across the line of the pursuit. She struck off for the mouth of a ravine that pointed into the broader valley, with all one side of it painted with gold and all the other side clouded in purples. In vain John Lucas and big José Rézan offered their best riding and strove with quirt and spur to get a little more power into the legs of their horses. They simply had not the speed. To be sure, they had not run, either of them, a tithe of the distance that the white mare had covered on this day. On the other hand, she was not carrying the weight of a heavy man, or the gripping burden of a ponderous range saddle, equipped with two biting cinches that hugged belly and chest. Neither was she worried by spur and whip. She flew across the desert, urged by the vision before her of liberty and hounded by the dread of slavery behind.
She left them behind her with every stride. She was tired but still had an untapped store of nerve energy, and pride to call upon. It seemed to the despairing pursuers that she ran as freely and as freshly as she had that morning when the first sight of them sent her drifting away downwind.
She darted into the mouth of the ravine. Perhaps it was a blind alley into which she had dipped? They flogged their frantic horses, but there was no more speed in them. They could rock along all day and not mind the labor of the canter greatly, but to gallop a single mile behind Elena Blanca was a killing thing. They were spent; their heads were up; their hoofs beat hard upon the ground. The spring was out of their stride.
When they reached the mouth of the ravine, the two saw White Helen running lightly far before, and making for the uplands. At that moment, as they were about to resign themselves to the inevitable and draw rein, out of the shadows of the western side of the valley there started a rider on a strong blue roan—a long-striding creature that plunged after Elena Blanca.
She met that challenge
with a stout heart. She tossed her little head and, with pricking ears, drew upon her great soul for greater and greater speed. The speed was there to be drawn forth. She darted with wonderful beauty of gait straight up the valley, like a true blood horse when it answers the call of its jockey and fights down the home stretch.
Such speed as that would have blown her instantly out of the reach of the best horse that the two men had ridden in their strings that day. Yet they had a fine speedster in the lot. Seeing her running, they could only gape and marvel at her and see how infinitely she had been beyond them, really, even when she allowed them to press along at her heels.
That frantic galloping did not settle the issue in this instance. The rider on the blue horse was not distanced. He was not even put slightly to the test. At once the two wondering observers could see that the reaching stride of the blue roan was gradually swinging up on Elena Blanca at every stride.
Aye, she had done great running and long running on this day. Even when she was fresh and free, could she have withstood this challenge?
She had still more to call upon. She flattened her ears in her desperation. She pushed forward with a relentless earnestness. It was not enough, and the blue horse gained still more rapidly.
Then a rounding elbow of the valley wall came between the two leaders and the two behind. When the latter were in view again, they found that the blue horse ran literally almost side-by-side with the little white mare. She, with tossing, frantic head, strove to get more way, strove to shake off this cruel runner, and strove in vain.
John Lucas, drew rein suddenly, crying: “He’s only playing with Elena! He’s only playing with her, old son. We could ride all night, but we’d never see him capture her. He’ll take the heart out of her first, and then he’ll take her when she has no more spirit in her than a lamb.”
The white mare and the great blue roan disappeared into the highlands, while the two pursuers remained in the lowlands, staring with a deep wonder in the direction in which they had disappeared.