Stagecoach

by Max Brand

  “A bandage . . .”

  There was a slight motion of the hand of Manuel. It denied all aid. It mocked at the possibility of assistance. “Nothing can be done, señor. Only, to make me sleep more easily, if one of them can be found . . . and sent where I am going . . . it would be a great comfort to me, señor. It is a place where one needs company, eh?”

  He began to laugh, but the laughter died off into a weirdly bubbling noise, and Manuel stiffened himself, and died.

  Chapter Six

  W hen Sammy Gregg had seen to the burial of poor Manuel and then suggested to the two remaining Mexicans to begin a pursuit of the thieves, the latter merely shrugged their shoulders and held out their hands for their pay. They declared that one dead man was enough and that the two of them were not prepared to fight with five who were as well armed and shot as straight as did these thieves.

  After all, they had a good deal of reason on their side, particularly since Sammy himself would not be of much use in a battle. So he paid them in haste, and then mounted and rode as hard as he could pelt for the town of Munson.

  He was glad of one thing, and that was that the flight of the thieves with their stolen horses had been in the same direction. They had driven on toward the very spot from which he would receive his succor. Indeed, they kept on that straight way until they were a scant ten miles from the town, and then the track of the herd diverged and turned to the left up a branching cañon. And Sammy Gregg pushed on and on. And by the midmorning his foaming, staggering horse come into Munson town, with Sammy shouting from the saddle the news of his loss.

  When they heard him, people ran out of shops and houses and listened, but when they understood the news that he brought, they shrugged their shoulders and turned back. Sammy began to see more backs than faces, and those who did turn toward him were, most of them, plainly laughing at him in his distress.

  Suddenly Sammy understood. They smiled at him because they simply did not care, these hard-hearted fellows. They did not care for the hundred and seventy mustangs that he had bought at such an expense and that he had driven with labor and money, both, into the mountains so near to his market place. What was it to them that the savings of ten years were represented in this holocaust? They merely shrugged their shoulders and were glad that the loss had not fallen upon them.

  He went into Rendell’s store and sat down on top of a barrel of dried apples and dropped his chin on his fist and stared at the dust cloud that trailed down the street behind a passing horseman, and wondered at the brilliancy of the sun as it flashed and burned and turned that fine dust into powdered diamonds. Rendell, even, did not offer sympathy. However, neither did he say: “I told you so.”

  He merely said: “Are you down-hearted, kid?”

  “No,” Sammy said truthfully. “But I’m surprised. That’s all. They don’t seem to care, you see . . . these people don’t seem to care.”

  “Not their horses that were stole,” Rendell pointed out.

  “Yes,” explained Sammy, “but if they let these things happen, their horses will be stolen next, you see. And they’ll suffer because I’ve suffered. Don’t they see that the only thing is to stand together and fight the thieves off?”

  Rendell shook his head. “Maybe about half of them would sort of like to be thieves themselves,” he said.

  That afforded a ray of dazzling light to Sammy, and he gaped at the genial storekeeper.

  “Sure,” expanded Rendell, “you can’t trust nobody. Nobody that likes a quiet life is up here, and you can depend upon that. Everybody you meet might be a crook. I might be a crook. You never can tell.” He added: “Some is made to understand these here things and prosper pretty good around here in the West. And some ain’t made to understand these things, and then they’d better go back to where they got a cop on every corner to watch out that the law is obeyed.”

  The hint was very pointed. But Sammy was really not frightened. He simply said: “I know what you mean. But they haven’t taken the heart out of me yet. I got something left. Only . . . I didn’t know how they played the game. That’s all. Now I’m beginning to understand, and maybe I’ll find a way to fit in with this sort of thing.”

  He went out into the street and the first thing he heard was the sharp whistling of a flute around the corner. He turned that corner and found a slender youth sitting on a broken apple box, with his back against the wall of the saloon that had once been run by Mortimer. He had the flute at his lips, and with eyes half closed, either from laziness or from love of the music that he was making, he blew forth sweet showers of sound.

  “Have a drink, kid,” a burly cowpuncher said, lounging past and pausing a moment to listen to the tunes.

  The musician shook his head with a smile and continued his work. He merely nodded at his hat, which lay on the ground at his feet.

  “Bah!” said the cowpuncher. “He’s a half-wit, I suppose. Rather eat than drink?” And the cowboy strode on with a snort and disappeared within the door of the saloon.

  Others seemed to be of the same opinion. Perhaps they could not understand why a white man who was sound of body had to sit and beg on the streets in that land of golden wages for either industry or rascality. But Sammy, feeling that he must more and more pause to study every strange feature of this strange land, stood nearby and watched the youth.

  He was dressed in what might have been called splendid rags. For his shirt was silk and so was his bandanna, and his boots were adorned with beautifully long-arched spurs, and the boots themselves, battered and tattered as they were, had evidently once been shop-made goods. The sombrero itself, which lay upon the ground to receive any random coins that the passers-by chose to drop into it, was now merely a relic of a former glory, for around the crown young Sammy Gregg could see a shadowy network that had once, no doubt, been left as an impression there by interlacing metalwork—silver or gold.

  He was a brown-eyed boy, this player of the flute—a handsome, lazy-looking, sleek-looking fellow, and the more Sammy looked upon him, the more he seemed worth beholding. For it seemed to Sammy, as he stared, that for the first time in his life he was looking upon a man who had never felt the sting of the universal curse of Adam. He had never worked.

  Aye, that accounted for the girlish smoothness of that cheek, the brow as clear and as placid as standing water, the eye so calmly open that one could look a thousand fathoms deep into it, as into the eye of a very young and simple child. Yet he was not simple, either, this player of the flute. And indeed, the more Sammy looked upon him, the more he felt that he was beholding something unique.

  Not so the others in Munson. They were too filled with their own affairs. Besides, the music was not to their taste. It consisted chiefly of wild improvisations, swift and light and eerie playings of the fancy, and there were none of the downright jigging tunes that the rough fellows of the mountains were apt to like, swelling the beat of the rhythm by the heavy beating of their heels. They shook their heads at the more refined music that the young stranger made. It annoyed them, more than anything else. And the only money that the labors of the stranger had gained were a few coppers and a few small silver coins. It seemed to Sammy that there was enough to this young man to be worth a more liberal reward, and so he stepped closer and dropped the broad bright face of a $10 gold piece into the hat.

  The flute player picked up the coin from his hat, rose to his feet, bowed slowly and with much grace to Sammy, placed the hat on his hand, the flute under his arm, and sauntered deliberately off down the street with the laziest step that Sammy had ever remarked in a human being—a stride in which he rested with every step.

  And that was all that Sammy’s $10 had bought him—in place of the interesting conversation that, he was sure, might be made to flow from the lips of the boy as readily as the music had come.

  Sammy had lunch at the hotel, and he was wandering back down the street to the door of Rendell’s store, in fact, when he saw a thing that made his heart leap. Straight down th
e street toward him came half a dozen tired mustangs driven along by a tall, wild-appearing fellow with long, sandy mustaches. He, however, was not the chief object of interest to Sammy. His horses were what held Sammy’s attention. The instant he glanced at them, he knew them. They were a fragment of his newly stolen herd.

  He could not be mistaken. At first, each of the hundred and seventy had looked very much like one another. But afterward he had begun to see the distinctions as he rode with them day and night. And now he knew them all. He knew that Roman-nosed roan. He knew very well that blaze-faced brown and the chestnut with the broken ear. He knew all six of them—he could swear to them. And the papers of sale were in his pocket.

  He started into the store and called to Rendell: “Here come six of them with one of the thieves behind!”

  Rendell ran to the door. “No,” he said, “that’s not one of the thieves, any more than I am. That’s one of the oldest ranchmen around these parts. It’s Cumnor, son . . . and he’s no thief. Look yonder . . . they got new brands burned into their shoulders. No, sir, you can depend upon it that Cumnor bought those horses honest.”

  “What bills of sale did he get with them?” asked Sammy.

  “Bills of sale?” asked the storekeeper, opening his eyes as though at some strange new star that had swum into the heavens. “Bills of sale?” Then he added with a rather wicked grin: “Maybe you’ll ask him what bills of sale he’s got, and he’ll show ’em to you.”

  The troop of horses was already opposite the doors of the store. And Cumnor was waving a buckskin-shod hand in greeting to Rendell, when Sammy ran down the steps. In another moment, Sammy was standing at the head of Cumnor’s pony.

  “Mister Cumnor,” he said abruptly, “these six horses were stolen from me this morning.”

  “Son,” said Cumnor, “dog-gone me if that ain’t interesting.”

  There seemed to be a touch of dry humor about this, but Sammy Gregg was not in a humor to enjoy such wit. He said: “I have the bills of sale, with the register of the brands, and all.”

  “You have?” echoed Cumnor, frowning a little.

  “I’m sorry,” said Sammy, “but the thief must have taken you in.”

  “You’re sorry?” echoed Cumnor.

  “Sorry that you’ve lost your money.”

  “Look here,” said Cumnor. “I paid fifty dollars spot cash for each of them six, and I had all the trouble, too, of picking ’em out of a big herd. Now what do you think I’m gonna do about it?”

  Sammy shrugged his shoulders as he had seen others do that day. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “but if you want to see my documents, here . . .”

  He reached for an inside pocket, but before his hand got to it, a long Colt was in the hand of Cumnor and the muzzle yawned terribly just before the face of Sammy Gregg. It seemed, indeed, that Cumnor had gravely mistaken the gesture of Sammy Gregg.

  “Now, look here,” said Cumnor, “I ain’t aiming to have any more trouble with you than I can help. But I ain’t got any care to see your papers. The papers that I’m interested in is the gold coins that I paid for the six horses that stand here. And outside of that, I bought them six horses from a gentleman that I would trust pretty complete.”

  “Will you tell me his name?” asked Sammy.

  “His name is one that’s pretty well known around here in the past few months. Maybe even you have heard of Chester O. Furness, young stranger?”

  Sammy gasped, and then he shouted: “But I tell you, if that’s his name and he sold you those horses, then Chester Ormonde Furness is one of the five thieves who ran off my horses this morning!”

  Cumnor lowered his revolver just a trifle. “I’m sort of busy today,” he said.

  “Ride on,” said Sammy. “I’ll herd the horses away . . .”

  “You’ll what?” Cumnor asked. “Keep off of them six, son.”

  “Cumnor,” Sammy Gregg said, facing the big man without fear, though he saw that danger was before him, “I offer to prove my right to them, one by one.”

  “I ain’t got time to listen. You find Furness and talk to him, first of all. Now stand out of my way.”

  Oaths were rare upon the lips of Sammy, but now he cried out: “I’ll see you damned before I stand away!”

  “Then take it, you fool,” Cumnor snapped, and fired his pistol full in the face of Sammy Gregg.

  Chapter Seven

  Rendell heard the shot fired and saw Sammy fall, and the big storekeeper came hobbling down the steps in haste, moving himself sidewise on account of his stiffened, ruined hip. And yet he had agility and strength enough left in his body to lean and lift poor Sammy in his arms. He carried him to the porch of the store and laid him out in the shade. One side of Sammy’s head was running blood, and big Rendell made no effort to bind the wound or examine it. Death seemed only too certain.

  But he busied himself fumbling through the pockets of Gregg and at length he stood up with an oath and turned upon Cumnor, who sat his saddle sullenly nearby, keeping one gloomy eye upon the disappearing mustangs down the street as though he wanted very much to ride after them, and yet not daring for shame to ride away from his victim so soon. Such a hasty flight might well turn self-defense into murder, even in the lenient eye of the public opinion of Munson.

  “D’you know that he didn’t carry no gun . . . d’you know that, Cumnor?” Rendell asked.

  “How should I know that?” growled Cumnor.

  “By the look of him, for one thing, I should say,” said the storekeeper. “The devil, man, you ain’t blind.”

  “I ain’t no mind-reader, though,” Cumnor said.

  “D’you need to read minds to see that he ain’t a wild fighting type.”

  “He was talking pretty big,” Cumnor rumbled.

  “He was talking for his rights,” said Rendell. “And nothing more’n his rights.”

  “Look here,” said Cumnor, “who made you the judge and the sheriff in this here county?”

  “Why,” Rendell replied, “if it comes right down to that, I’m due to prove that I can handle myself as well as though I was a judge and a jury. I may’ve busted up my ribs and my hip, Cumnor, but darned if my gun fingers and my gun wrist ain’t about as supple as they ever was.”

  But Rendell had built up a not inconsiderable reputation in the days before he retired to the quiet of his store, and Cumnor was in no haste to see the storekeeper make his threat good. So the rancher was extremely pleased to see an opportunity to make a change of conversation, and, pointing past the other, he said: “What’s all the shouting for, Rendell? Are you talking about a dead man or one that’s only been scratched a mite and taught a lesson?”

  Rendell whirled about and saw Sammy Gregg, with a hand laid against the side of his head, propping himself up on the other arm. Instantly the big fellow was at work examining and dressing the head wound, and Cumnor, glad to be away from this place, spurred off to look after his mustangs so recently purchased. And he had barely veered around the corner at the farther end of the street when who should he see before him but the tall form and the handsome face of Chester Ormonde Furness, mounted upon a magnificent, dappled-gray horse—a gelding with a stallion’s wild eye and crested neck. The heat of the recent scene was still in Cumnor, or perhaps he would not have ventured as much as he did, for the men of that region had not forgotten and were not likely ever to forget how Furness had burned his name in the bar at Mortimer’s saloon. Cumnor, however, was in the humor for a hasty action at this instant, and he reined his horse abruptly in front of Furness.

  “Furness,” he sang out, “when you sold me those six horses an hour ago, did you know that I was buying trouble with them, too?”

  “My dear fellow,” Furness said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m sure. Except that I know you got the pick of the herd. You paid fifty dollars a head for horses that might have brought sixty-five in any market about here.”

  “Aye, and suppose that I was to ask you for a bill of sale .
. . and the records of the transfers of those horses, Furness . . .”

  “Records?” Furness echoed, frowning like one in pain. “Why, Cumnor, the word of the man from whom I bought those animals wholesale was enough for me, I’m sure.”

  “What man?” snapped Cumnor. “What man did you buy them from, I’d like to know?”

  Furness grew exceedingly cold. And he straightened himself in the saddle. And upon his hip he rested his ungloved right hand. A very odd thing about Furness was that though he never rode forth without his gloves, yet he was rarely or never seen to wear leather upon that supple right hand. Indeed, constant exposure had covered it with a very handsome bronze that made his well-kept fingernails look almost snowy white in contrast.

  And he said to the rancher: “I trust that I don’t understand you, Cumnor.”

  “The devil,” said Cumnor. “I’m talking English, ain’t I?”

  Then Cumnor saw that the deadly right hand of Furness was resting on his right hip—resting there lightly, as though poised for further movement.

  And Cumnor regretted with all his heart that he had been so extremely hasty in making remarks upon the financial principles of Furness. The latter was saying coldly: “Really, Cumnor, this is extraordinary. I don’t know that I can tolerate this even from you.”

  Cumnor saw that he had come to a point in which it was far better to walk backward than to continue straight ahead, and he remarked gravely: “I think that if you ride down the street, you’ll find a man at the store of Rendell with a bullet wound in his head. I wish that you’d ride down there and hear that fellow talk.” And he said no more about sale records and deeds of transfer, but he reined his horse to the side again, and spurred away in the pursuit of the six mustangs.

  Furness cantered his big gray gelding down the street to the store of Rendell and dismounted there and looked into the store. What he saw was young Sammy Gregg leaning against the counter with a very white face—a face almost as white as the bandage that was tied around his head. And the color of face and bandage was set off by a spreading spot of crimson that was soaking through the cloth.