Out of the Wilderness

by Max Brand

  “Why, José Rézan, of course…I suppose,” the sheriff answered. “I’ll get a statement from him at once.”

  * * * * *

  A youngster on a fast horse had brought to the house of Rézan a little pink envelope addressed in the handwriting that meant more than all others to José Rézan. He tore it open eagerly. In place of a message of sad and loving condolence, he read within:

  José, José, do you know that they are hunting Señor Sweyn up and down the valley today? And for what crime? For having attacked you and your men in your own house. Where he, poor simple man, thought that he had a right to go to seek redress after you had robbed him of Elena Blanca. I am told that you are the only person who can lay a charge against Señor Sweyn. I know that that charge will not be pressed. There is too much generosity in you.

  Let the boy know when you are well enough to receive a visit from your devoted Catalina.

  Poor José read this letter again and again. It made him excessively ill at ease, but there was certainly a shred of justice in what Catalina said. What shocked him, indeed, was simply the vein of chivalry that appeared to have developed in her at this late moment. Chivalry in Catalina, of all the people in the world.

  However, there was not much time remaining to ponder upon this note, for now the sheriff was announced to him. When Kilmer entered, he spoke as though he had just been looking over Rézan’s shoulder to read that same letter.

  “Rézan,” he said, “I want you to swear out a formal warrant before I start rampaging up and down the valley to find this Sandy Sweyn who’s made a monkey out of us all.”

  “How in the name of all that is wonderful,” Rézan asked, “could he have escaped? They say that the door to his cell was found unlocked, as well as the rear door to the jail.”

  “How he got away is interesting, but not important,” said the sheriff. “What is to the point now, is getting him back. I need a posse to help me with that rascal, and I need your warrant before I open a case against the fellow. Can you write enough to sign your name?”

  “Enough to sign it a hundred times,” answered José Rézan. “But I’ll never write it under a warrant to arrest this Sweyn. And the reason, Sheriff, is simply that I got what I more or less deserved. I tried to impose on a poor half-wit, and the poor half-wit that I had robbed turned around and nearly wrecked me and my home.”

  “The whole world has gone mad with its talk on the side of Sandy Sweyn. I begin to think that crime pays. It’s a moral virtue…to hear you madmen talk about Sandy.”

  “Sheriff,” Rézan said, closing his eyes and shaking his bandaged head, “I do not complain. Hunt up another witness. I’ll not serve against Sweyn.”

  * * * * *

  That news spread instantly abroad. The sheriff was not one to allow head-hunters to proceed with their work when they did not have law and order behind them. Since the work of law and order had been checked by the odd inconstancy of José Rézan, the sheriff sent out riders to call back his hunters. They came, and they came without tidings of the hunted. One thought that he had seen a blue roan shadow moving through the trees here; another thought that he had seen a bluish horse galloping down a hollow—but all was on the testimony of fleeting glimpses of which they could not be sure. So it was that Sandy Sweyn went unscathed, after such a career of wildness as the valley had never seen before.

  As that day wore toward a close, a dozen armed men guarded every inch of the ground around José Rézan’s house. Around the corral where Elena Blanca was kept, Señor Mirandos had posted more warriors. It was commonly felt that if the wild man chose to strike again, it would be in one of the two places, although Mirandos was rather startled by a telephone message from the sheriff, saying: “While you’re on your guard, keep an eye on your daughter tonight, Mirandos.”

  “A thousand thanks,” Mirandos said.

  When he hung up the telephone, he smiled to himself. The rest of the world might regard his Catalina as a shrinking flower and a tender bud, but he, who knew her for these many years, felt that she was the last person in the world to need any cherishing from any person, even from her father. He paid no heed to establishing any guard over his daughter.

  Little Catalina was left strictly alone. She had spent the entire day in her room. She was smiling and gay in the morning, when she heard of the escape of the prisoner. But as the day wore on, the miracle that she had expected did not develop. No Sandy Sweyn came to her, and toward night she grew into a towering passion.

  Something had to bear the brunt of it when 9:00 p.m. arrived, and no wild lover had appeared at either window. When poor Dick stood up and stretched himself with a yawn, she flew into a mad, unreasoning passion, snatched up a whip, cut him twice with it, and as he fled with a howl, she threw the whip after him, and stamped with all the passion in her furious little body.

  Poor Dick! He would never know that in this moment he had accomplished his destiny and one more good service to the world than any other of his kind in many and many a year. At that moment, as the whip was raised and cut against his tender hide, a shadowy head had risen at the casement of the bedroom. Two blazing, yellow eyes watched the scene, then the head slowly disappeared.

  Catalina rushed into her inner chamber to be utterly alone with her disappointment, but Dick, cowering in the corner, suddenly came to life, and hurried toward the casement, whining softly.

  To another girl, that evening brought no eager expectations. Peggy Kilmer felt that she had abdicated in behalf of her rival. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that Sandy Sweyn was mad with love of Catalina. How could Peggy guess that a dog, a mere dog, might come between?

  In the soft black of the night, Peggy sat in the hammock outside the sheriff’s house and watched the stars that shimmered through the trees above her. She stroked old Tabby, who lay purring in her lap. Purring in her lap one minute, but with a snarl and a gasp, here was Tabby scooting up the trunk of the first tree and spitting from the branches, while a dog whined underneath, eager-eyed.

  “Heavens above,” Peggy Kilmer said. “It’s Dick…it’s Catalina’s dog.”

  We will sometimes speak our thoughts aloud, when we feel ourselves most securely alone, and Peggy spoke hers aloud on this night. A deep voice answered her at once from the thick of the black night beneath the tree.

  “Aye, it’s Catalina’s dog. I went looking for a girl, and I only came away with a dog. Sit down here, Peggy. I’m gonna tell you why.”

  Sit down by the side of a strange youngster like Sandy Sweyn? She had not time or chance to make up her own mind. For Sandy scooped her lightly into the hollow of his arm, and there they sat in the hammock, side-by-side.

  “I went up the valley to the Mirandos’ house,” Sandy said, “looking to find Catalina, because that pretty face of hers has been living here behind my eyes for the last day, you understand?”

  “I understand,” Peggy replied faintly.

  “When I got there, I worked my way up to her window, as I’d done before, and as I got there, I was just in time to see her take a whip and flog this dog…flog him for nothing at all. Why, Peggy, when I watched it, it turned things into a red blur. I wanted to take her by the throat. I waited till she was out of the room, and then I scooped up Dick and brought him down here. What I want to know is, do you think that a delicate dog like this could follow me the way I live, in the woods, without getting sick?”

  “I think he could…I know he could,” Peggy said with more animation.

  “Well,” Sandy Sweyn said, “you think you would trust a dog to me, then?”

  “I would, Sandy.”

  “Then there’s one thing more, Peg. There were two faces in my mind. One very pretty, and one very freckled. One of them has gone out, tonight, and I’ll never see it again. That leaves the freckled one, Peg. And that leaves one question more that I’ve got to ask. If you’d trust a dog to me, Peg, d’you th
ink that one day you would trust yourself?”

  “I…,” gasped out Peggy. “I…. How can I tell?”

  “Who but you could?”

  “Dad, and he’s yonder in the house.”

  “The sheriff!” Sandy Sweyn cried.

  “Aye,” Peggy said with a strange note in her voice, “and I think that he’s sort of expecting you to call.”

  “I’ll do it,” Sandy Sweyn avowed. “The sheriff is a white man, and I’ll do it. Dick, you come along and back me up.”

  He started slowly toward the lit window of the house, with the setter close against his heels.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of five hundred thirty ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways. Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles. Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His next Western will be The Tracker. His Website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.