The Winged Horse

by Max Brand

  There the news had gone before him. When he came to the stall of the black, he found Louise Patten and His Lordship lingering outside the door. The girl said nothing while the saddling went on, but the terrier ventured inside the stall and almost had his skull shattered by a crashing stroke of the stallion’s forehoof. He leaped back with a growl and stood in the aisle, bristling, and making low thunder. Then his mistress said to the Lamb, “Why are you riding out to fight?”

  He pulled up the last cinch without answering. Not that he wished to be rude, but the question startled him a little. He turned his head to her.

  She continued, “Is it for the money that the Montagues pay, or for the fun, or because you hate this Lefty Fargo?”

  “The cash will do me,” he answered, and led the big stallion into the aisle, as Jimmy Montague walked up to get his own horse. He passed them without a word, and with two separate looks—a keen one for the girl, a dark one for The Lamb.

  The latter went out to the front of the barn and Louise Patten followed him.

  “You’d better go back,” he said. “Jimmy will be pretty cross if you waste any time on me.”

  She answered, “I’m trying to make up my mind. The money hasn’t anything to do with it. It’s only the game that counts with you.”

  “You mean the hard job?” he answered.

  “Yes.”

  “I could have stayed with Loring if I’d wanted that. There were enough on this side of the fence to keep me pretty busy, wouldn’t you say?”

  She frowned in deep perplexity, and, stepping back from him, she shook her head a little.

  “Even the head of the clan is going,” she said, and pointed to Monty Montague, coming down the drive bent into the wind, with his beard whipping over one shoulder. “I’m going along, too!”

  She went back into the barn as Montague came up.

  “You can go along out into the road,” he said. “You’ll find a couple of the boys waiting for you there. Me and Jimmy will be along behind you.”

  The Lamb pointed with his thumb. “The girl says that she’s coming, too.”

  At this, the old man blinked a little. But he made no answer other than a nod, and went by the Lamb with an odd glint in his eyes, while the talker swung into the saddle. It was like mounting to the back of a rock, to swing up on the black horse. There was no sway and give to him; he stood solid and massive as black basalt. And there were angles from which he looked fit more for the plow than for the saddle. The huge girth of him, for one thing, pried the knees wide. But the instant that he stepped out, all sense of ponderous bulk disappeared.

  He jogged lightly as a pony down the driveway. When the full blast of the wind struck him as he drew out from the lee of the stable, he lowered and shook his head for an instant, then bounded into the air and flirted his heels like a colt, as though in defiance.

  The Lamb laughed suddenly, and sent the big fellow bounding down the drive. The bridge shook and gave out hollow thunder as they rounded onto the roadway. Three huddled, windblown forms waited for him there; three wretched mustangs shook their heads and slowly turned in at his side. Then he saw the sour face of Jack McGuire leading the party.

  “We gotta walk on!” yelled Jack into the teeth of the wind. “We’re gonna have some more company.”

  The Lamb rode his horse closer to the dark-faced fellow. “You’re here with the boys to be the cotton batting, Jack. Is that it? The old man wouldn’t ship a high-priced machine like me without packing it pretty safe. And Jack is my life insurance.” He had pitched his voice so that it cut easily into the wind.

  McGuire replied with a sudden roar of rage. “Keep off of me!” he yelled. “I’m gonna do you a harm, one of these days, I tell ye!”

  He sent his horse ahead with a start, but the Lamb laughed, and remained in line with the other two. They were the true range type—lean, thin-cheeked, supple as whalebone and as unbreakable by labor or by weather. They looked curiously back at him with the wide, clear eyes that knew no fear. They were not like McGuire. They never had pretended to be great gunmen and therefore they had no great fall to lament. They were like ten thousand other staunch cattlemen—not at all on the hunt for trouble, but willing to meet all that came their way with capable hands. For his own part, the Lamb would rather have fought with a practiced bully than cross one of these unpretending bulldogs who only knew how to bite, and not how to let go.

  The wind fell as they came under the shoulder of a hill. Behind them they heard the crackling sound of hoofs upon the frozen road, and, looking back, he saw that Jimmy was in his rear, and old Monty of the white beard beside him, looking wonderfully small and youthful in spite of his white hair. They came up fast, but never quite joined, keeping a hundred or more yards to the rear.

  “This is like a funeral,” the Lamb said to one of his two immediate companions, “and I dunno whether I’m the corpse or the chief mourner.”

  They looked at him with steady curiosity, because he could jest at such a time, and then the nearest one smiled faintly.

  “They’s apt to be one funeral today,” he said, and nodded, and then laughed aloud with his thin lips held close, as one accustomed to ride against the wind.

  That wind fell with unusual suddenness as they began to stretch across the range.

  When the Lamb spoke of this change, one of the cowpunchers chuckled. “The black horse scared the wind away,” he said.

  For the stallion went into it with his ears flattened, and his head looking snaky and dangerous. The black clouds above them began to break, and though the sun could not get through, at least it turned some tumbling masses into nebulous puffs and whirls of shining white, so that it looked as though cannon were pouring out white blasts of smoke in heaven.

  It was midafternoon as they came to the edge of Beacon Creek. The appointed meeting place had a low bank upon either side; the bottom was flat as the floor of a room, and covered with large, round pebbles. And above the other bank, they saw the men of Colonel Loring, and the colonel himself among them.

  When they were sighted, two riders started out down the slope of the farther side. One, by the bulk of him, was Muldoon. The other was a much smaller and rounder form—Lefty Fargo, beyond a doubt. And the Lamb raised his head like a dog that scents danger in the wind.

  Old Montague came up to the youngster and beckoned him forward. “We gotta go down and chatter with them for a minute,” he said. “They’ll want to hear why you’re substitutin’.”

  “Suppose they take a mind to finish you off, now that you’re close up to them?” the Lamb asked.

  “The big gent is Muldoon. He’s an honest fool,” said Montague. “Besides, I ain’t the kind of a bone that’ll be worth picking. It’ll be plumb starvation before anybody risks breaking teeth to crack me for the marrow inside. Come along.”

  They went down into the draw and met the other pair. Muldoon looked huger than ever. He was made almost on the scale of big Jimmy Montague. And when he saw the Lamb he roared with anger. He wanted to know what double-crossing trick this could be. And old Montague gave him a proper answer.

  “You came up with the best scrapper on the range,” he said, “and you want me to stack my closest heir ag’in’ him. That ain’t right or nacheral. You bring me up a hired man. Here’s the Lamb to meet up with him. Ain’t that fair enough to suit you?”

  “I’ve seen rats, and I’ve seen snakes,” said Muldoon, “but I never seen nothing as low as him. Him that bunked in with us, that ate our chuck, that seen the dirty Montague game played … him to double-cross us. What’s your price, you skunk?” asked Muldoon.

  He shook his fist at the Lamb, and the latter shrugged his eloquent shoulders.

  “You better keep your talk for a colder day to warm you up,” he said. “I’ve got conversation with the other gent just now.”

  Muldoon glowered. “You was a better ma
n than me when you played straight, kid,” he said. “Everybody saw it, I admit it myself. But now that you’ve turned crooked, you’ve turned yellow. I’d eat you up myself, except that here’s a surer hand.”

  He gestured, and Lefty Fargo came forward.

  Fargo wore no slicker. He was dressed in a light coat, and his shirt was open at the throat. For Lefty Fargo, like a whale, was lined with fat against the temperature of cold seas. And he was fairly rounded and plumped out with what was beneath his skin. He had pale red hair, and hazel eyes with a touch of red in them, also. He now let his horse drift forward.

  “It’s the Doctor, after all!” he exclaimed.

  “It’s the finish for you,” said the Lamb with equal geniality. “You’ve eaten your last steak and topped off your last coffee, old son.”

  “Fine,” said the gunman, and he laughed in an absurdly high, shrilling voice. It was like the shrill bark of a bull terrier. “When do we start?” he asked.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The famous Lefty Fargo always had a parboiled look, as though his skin was as delicate as a baby’s, and as though the sun recently had peeled off the epidermis. It was painful to think of what that nose must feel when a finger touched it, or a towel, say. Even his pale eyebrows appeared to be sunburned and painful. But his eyes were always cheerfully bright and his smile was continually happy. The Lamb looked upon him with a hungry grimness, but Lefty Fargo’s amiable nature was not at all perturbed by this. His smile continued, and his eyes remained as bright as ever.

  “We start now,” said the Lamb.

  “How d’you want to begin?” Fargo asked.

  “Partner,” the Lamb said amiably, “it doesn’t make any particular difference. I’m ready for you on horse or foot, and with knife, or gun, or plain bare hands, Lefty.”

  The fat man smiled and nodded. In fact, he could not help laughing in great pleasure, and his shrill laughter rang and pulsed in the air. It ceased to have a human meaning, and began to stab the mind like the cry of an animal.

  “I remember the last time that we met up, son,” he said. “I said then that we’d meet ag’in. But I thought it’d be even lower down than this.”

  “We met the last time. You stretched me out,” said the Lamb thoughtfully. “But those days I was in school. You were my last teacher, old-timer.”

  “Was that a diploma that I gave you?” asked the fat man.

  “I dunno,” the Lamb said. “But since then, I’ve never been scratched by knife or gun, Lefty. And I’ve never been downed by hand or fist.”

  “For a gent that stirs around, that says a considerable lot,” admitted Lefty Fargo. “But things bein’ so long distant, I sort of forget what I was teachin’ when I was your professor.”

  “I’ll tell you,” the Lamb said. “The thing that you were teaching to me that day was accuracy. I’d been working to burn up the world with my speed. I’d been flashing my gun so doggone fast that it pretty near blinded even me. I used to get it out with such a hop that I didn’t know where it was gonna go myself. Maybe you disremember that I got in two shots, before you planted me. But your third was better than my two.”

  “Sometimes it turns out that way,” Lefty said. “I take a likin’ to you, kid. I took it to you that first time that we met. I was sorry, then, that we had to have words.”

  “Matter of fact,” said the Lamb, “it’s a doggone bad failing of mine that I get pretty excited when any gent pulls five aces out of one pack. I dunno how it is, but it always makes me see red. I ain’t changed, either.”

  They smiled at each other with a grim understanding.

  “We’re gonna have a good chance today,” said Fargo, “to find out if you really graduated. We’re gonna find out how fast and straight you are.”

  “We are,” answered the boy. “I’m gonna write the answer on you, Lefty. Lord help your big heart … it’s gonna stop thumping before night.”

  Lefty frowned. “I been interested in you, sort of,” he said with gravity and disapproval. “But the fact is, that I’m turnin’ out disappointed before ever you pull a gun out of leather. You talk too much before the job starts. And you blow off a lot of hot air. I’m sorry, kid. But I gotta salt you down. We’ll start right now.”

  “Oh, man,” Muldoon said, “I hope that you blow the inside out of the double-crossin’ yellow hound.”

  “His whole insides is what I mean to get,” Lefty Fargo said, and he laughed again, that horribly high, shrill laughter. “What suits you, kid?” he demanded.

  “I’ve left the naming to you,” said the Lamb. “I’ve got a rifle, a Colt, and a knife. Or … bare hands. You hear me? Bare hands, Lefty.”

  “I’m an old-fashioned worker,” said Lefty. “A six-shooter always has been good enough for the range, and I dunno that it’ll be out of place here.”

  “Lefty,” the Lamb said, “nothing could please me more. It was with a Colt that you give me my last lesson.”

  “A Smith and Wesson,” answered Lefty Fargo. “And that’s what I pack today.”

  “The same one, I hope.”

  “The same one. It’ll wear two notches for one man, it looks like.”

  “How d’you want the party served up?”

  “Supposin’,” Fargo said, “that we ride these horses off fifty steps, and, at a given word, we whirl ’em around and go for each other, with the guns talkin’ on the way? How would that do?”

  The Lamb blinked. “Shootin’ off the back of a horse with a Colt,” he said, “is pretty doggone inaccurate, Lefty, and you know it. I dunno that I want to spoil the black horse, here.”

  Fargo’s lips curled in high disdain. “If that don’t suit you,” he said, “you name the way.”

  “Anything suits me,” the Lamb responded. “You … Muldoon! You stand off and holler when we’re to stop the horses. Montague, suppose you holler when we’re to begin?”

  He jerked the stallion about. The big fellow spun as on a spring, and Lefty Fargo, who had been counting upon the superior agility of his own mustang, bit his lip. Then he turned in order.

  They jogged their horses until the shout of Muldoon stopped them. To one side, Monty Montague sat his horse in a lump as the wind parted his mist of beard. His old eyes flamed with a wild fire.

  And the Lamb looked to him as he stripped off the mittens from his hands. With the pressure of his knees and with a murmured word, he brought the stallion to a high tension beneath him, ready to whirl in a flash. Then, looking instinctively before him, the Lamb saw a steer on the rim of the high ground, hunchbacked from the cold, head hanging. It had given up the attempt to paw through the encrustation of snow and now it stood waiting for death to weaken its knees. The Lamb understood, and he set his teeth hard. If death came to him, he prayed that it would come suddenly.

  Like the howl of a wolf, old Monty Montague yelled, “Shoot, you cowboys!”

  The stallion whirled like a dodging cat, and, with guns ready, the big horse controlled only by his knees and the sway of his body, the Lamb found himself brought into line with his target at exactly the same instant that Lefty Fargo turned about to fire. At the speaking of their guns, the hat leaped from the head of the Lamb; he knew that his own first fire was wide, and then the horses lunged forward. Their galloping, as he had expected, made accurate shooting impossible. Two hornet sounds buzzed at his ear, and those quick deaths went by, while he noted with a mute admiration that Lefty Fargo was shooting for the head. For himself, the body would do.

  But when he sent in his fourth shot, as the horses neared, the mustang of Lefty heaved itself into the air with striking forehoofs. He saw Lefty himself pitched far back in the saddle, with a yell of fear and surprise, while his own gun was poised, ready to drive the fatal ball home. But the breadth of that helpless beast disarmed him. He dropped the long barrel of his gun across the head of Lefty, instead, and shot by.
r />   Looking back, he saw Lefty sluice like water from the saddle, then strike the ground, and tumble over and over upon it. He was back and dismounted beside him, instantly. It seemed to him that this whole affair was very largely a joke, a horrible jest. There was not the high seriousness that should be about a struggle in which men fight for their lives. They had fired and missed, two experts as they were, and then one of them had been beaten out of the saddle by a bludgeon stroke.

  But the fat man looked a serious enough spectacle. His face was patched with white and purple. His teeth were fixed in his lower lip so deep that the blood flowed in a steady stream, and his eyes glared fixedly up to the clouds of the sky.

  Old Monty Montague rode up and looked down at the fallen man without dismounting. “That’s a fractured skull,” he said, “and maybe the end of Lefty. Go back to Loring,” he added to Muldoon, “and tell him that this is what will happen to all his hired gunmen, before the finish. This is the biggest scalp that we’ve took, and it’s the beginning of the finish.”

  Muldoon, on his knees beside the prostrate form, returned no answer to the old man, but he glowered sullenly up at the Lamb. “You, and Lefty, and me,” he said, “could’ve gone through ’em like a hot knife through butter. And there you are on the far side of the fence. Go back to your own kind, then, and heaven forgive you.”

  Loring and two more were coming down to the succor of their fallen champion. Therefore, the Lamb swung into the saddle on the black once more, and with old Montague, he returned up the steep slope to the waiting party on the bank. Then, looking to the side, he saw Louise Patten on her pony, on the crest of a small hill from which she could command an excellent view of the creek bed. She had seen the whole battle, and suddenly the Lamb turned cold with shame.