The Winged Horse

by Max Brand

  Then he saw that this was the impression made by a man’s foot, and that the foot was clad in a cowboy’s boot, that the boot was new—because of the crispness of the pattern of the heel—that the boot was equipped with spurs, and that the spurs had small rowels.

  He sat back a little, and smiled again, and swallowed, as though he were tasting and retasting his pleasure. Then he stood up and made a stride, bringing his foot down parallel with the imprint in the snow. He took another and another. Then he went back and had regard to the corresponding series of impressions left in the snow by the stranger. He could make other deductions—that this man was of more than middle height and that he was in weight probably between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and eighty pounds. Unless his stride was longer or shorter than his inches suggested. He was a young man, too. For a youth lets his weight rest longer, springing on the toes, while an older man keeps the heel down more, and does not use the spring of the toe so much.

  McGuire discovered these things. Then he went on the forward trail far enough to make sure that the pedestrian had gone straight on down the valley. At the end of that valley the half-breed saw the house of Montague rising up darkly against the blossoming eastern sky.

  That home trail could be followed at leisure, at another time. But now he turned back and made a cut for sign in a big loop. Straightway, he found his own tracks, where he had ridden home the night before, and crossing them, at a slight angle, those of a rider coming, and a rider going. He dismounted. The same horse had made those prints, he discovered when he had blown the newly fallen snow out of the sign. There was a bar across the left fore shoe for proof that he was right. Someone, then, had ridden across his line down the valley. When? And had he anything to do with the pedestrian? Or was it the same person—who had, perhaps, thrown the reins off his horse on the edge of the woods?

  He compared, carefully, the trail of his own horse with that of the trail that crossed it, and he made sure that the two must have been made at almost the same time.

  This was a small point. But he was overlooking nothing. In the composition of a trail story, the details are not picked and assembled beforehand. Out of a thousand incoherent and trifling things, two or three may point in a significant direction.

  He followed the line of the horse trail close to the woods. There the horse had halted for a little while. The man had not dismounted. That was proved, because if he had done so, the horse either would have stood motionlessly, or else it would have ranged a little to one side or another. Probably it would have edged in toward the trees to nibble at the brush.

  However, instead of this, he found that the hoof prints were scattered close together, as though the animal had shifted from leg to leg, restlessly, as a horse will do, when there is a weight in the saddle. At length, it had swerved sharply around, the snow was scuffed deeply away where the forehoofs had rested last—and the horse had gone off across the hills—in what direction?

  The half-breed followed for a little distance—far enough to see that the general line of the rider extended toward the house of Colonel Loring. However, as he had failed to follow up the trail of the pedestrian, so he failed to follow up the trail of the horseman. He had made sure that they were not the same. Now he wanted to learn, if he could, why they had met, since met they had, to judge by the thick swarm of footmarks near where the horse had been held immobile,

  And did either of these men have anything to do with the double fire, which, like the eyes of a great, angry snake, had glared out through the dark woods at Jack McGuire the night before?

  He mustered his information, ran over it in his mind, made sure that it was all lodged securely in his memory, and then he went forward into the woods, carefully following, in the growing light, the back track of the pedestrian, into the trees. It was perfectly simple for McGuire. The light was quite clear now, and he was able to take the track back to a point high up on the side of the mountain, where he found that the trail spread again, and left many footmarks in a small clearing. From that clearing, he could look out over the heads of the trees, and, so doing, he was able to make up his mind that it was at about this point that he had seen the fires glowing

  However, there should be ways to make sure. The surface of the snow looked regularly crusted, except that toward the center there was a slight depression. He leaned and touched it—behold, the snow was soft and unjoined. He dipped his hand deeper, and withdrew it with a smear of soot upon the tips of the fingers.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Having first touched the telltale soot of the fire, McGuire straightway removed the upper surface of the snow and laid bare the fire level. It was small. There were only a few charred sticks. That would have been enough for most searchers, but McGuire was not content.

  He began to move again over the surface of the snow, patting it with his hands, until it gave way a trifle. At that point he worked again, and uncovered another fire site, exactly like the first, for the last heat of the embers had slightly melted the snow that had been heaped upon them and the roof of the little cavern gave way under the weight of his hand.

  He had found the two fires that had gleamed at him the night before, and a certain peace fell upon the soul of Jack McGuire. For this had been the sole task that he had set himself in leaving the house. It was now time to return, if he were to get to the Montague place in time for breakfast and the start of work.

  But still he lingered, for there was much that he wanted to do. For one thing, it would have satisfied the very cockles of his heart to know the identity of the man who had laid this fire. There was already no hope of tracing him down the valley, because the fall of the snow had by this time covered every trace of a footfall. However, he kicked at random in the snow about the fires, in the hope of turning up something of interest, and presently his toe connected with something that flew away in a yellow-gleaming arc and struck the trunk of a tree with a slight crash.

  He followed, almost over-awed by such luck, and picked up a thin, gold watch. The crash had smashed the glass covering the face to bits, but the blow that his toe had given the watch had started it running again. He held it to his ears. At first, in his excitement, he could not hear a sound. But presently he made out the clicking of the smooth and perfectly balanced escapement, softly muffled by the skill of the maker.

  The half-breed grinned with joy. Keen as his senses were, cunning as his hands could be, there was a patient and wise craft represented by this watch that his strong fingers, or the fingers of all his race never could have rivaled. He held it on the hard palm of his hand, smiling down at it, rejoiced. It was as though he expected that small voice to spell out to him the name of its owner.

  He saw the second hand turning with a rhythmic flow; he marked that the watch face told the hour of half past eight. But, most of all, the dainty workmanship of the second, the minute, and the hour hands fascinated him. So odd did it seem to him that human wits could have found such splinters—that human patience and craft could have shaped each tiny morsel to an arrowhead. Let those arrows point him, then, to the owner of the watch!

  The watch said 8:30, though it had been stopped for a long time. Having been plunged into the snow, perhaps the intense cold had stopped it—by congealing the oil—in a very short time. The hands now marked, therefore, the approximate hour at which the owner had dropped his watch, and had built these fires. In fact, McGuire could distinctly remember that he had seen the gleaming of the double eye at about that time.

  When he was reassured about this, he put the watch inside a twist of paper, arranging it so that there was no pressure against the hands, and when he had done this, he put it carefully into his pocket. Then he started up the back trail from the fire.

  It led onto the trail above him, where it angled around the mountainside. The trees successfully shut away the snow up to that point; on the trail itself, the footmarks disappeared, but they seemed to have turned of
f from the lower side, as though the walker had been climbing the hill.

  McGuire sighed. There would have been much interest in pursuing those tracks in the snow, but at that moment there was a downward flurry so thick and white that it was like the waving of dense moth wings about him, and he knew that one such moment as that would be enough to obscure the deepest of tracks.

  This thick rush of snow faded. He could look again over the tops of the trees and down to the white of the valley with its border of black pines. In that valley he saw a horseman coming from the direction of the Montague place. He looked again, and knew that this was the great black stallion that had been the pride of Jimmy—that now was the property of the Lamb.

  The bitter heart of the half-breed swelled again with fury and envy. He even reached for his rifle, and a question leaped instinctively into his mind: What was this idler doing abroad, so early in the morning, and why had he come there?

  It was not that he immediately connected the Lamb with what he had found. For the moment he had even forgotten the details of the return of the Lamb the night before. Only deep, bitter malice kept McGuire watching, until he saw the rifle of the lonely rider uncased, flashing like a sword in his hand, then tipping to his shoulder.

  Cowering for an instant in dread, the half-breed stared upward. Certainly a rifle would reach to him—but, no, the rifle barrel—he could tell at even that distance—was not pointed at him, but at some loftier object.

  He saw neither spurt of fire nor tuft of smoke. But he did mark the wide-ranged flight of a hawk, tipping smoothly into the teeth of the wind, and he saw that hawk drop suddenly over to one side and turn clumsily in midair like a creature of the pedestrian earth, and then hurtle downward—a mere lump of flesh and feathers.

  The Lamb was practicing his hand. And, with a swift guess, McGuire estimated the distance to the hawk from the boy, and shuddered. To him, there was something miraculous in the swift and accurate shot. It did not occur to him that there was any large element of luck or of chance in such shooting, but he told himself that the Lamb could strike what he pleased. Skill and magic lived in the magazine of his rifle.

  With that in his mind, McGuire was seized with dread lest the boy should encounter him alone in the wilderness. He could remember, now, the insolence with which he had spoken to this destroyer of men the night before, and the fear that fell upon him was colder than the cold that is pressed against the face of the earth by the accumulated weight of the winter snows.

  Down the side of the mountain he scurried as a squirrel scurries, frantically crossing a clearing among the trees when it dreads lest the yellow eye of the lynx be concealed among the brush. He gained the bottom of the slope and there found that his horse was waiting heedless of the brush before him, where he might have nibbled here and there, but with downward head, glazed eyes, hanging lip, completing the sleep from which its master had roused it this morning.

  The half-breed sprang into the saddle, and roused the mustang to full gallop at the same moment. He angled the swift little horse straight up the valley under the lee of the trees, then pulled him across the flat, with the snow flying up in clotted lumps and thin mists above his head, and drove into the verge of the pines on the farther side.

  There he paused, chilled to the marrow of his bones. And again and again the picture of the death of the hawk sprang back into his mind, made clearer, and magnified with dreadfulness, until it seemed it had been his own winged soul that had been smitten in the midst of the snow-streaked sky and brought tumbling down through the air.

  But no great black horse came up the valley. McGuire bit his lip with relief, and his blood began to stir again, stimulated with the old malice, the old hatred, which is the most potent mover of the heart. The valley was empty and his way home was secured.

  Yet he chose to enter into the woods and there work his path, snakelike, among the trees, weaving constantly back and back toward the Montague house.

  At last he felt that he was sufficiently past the danger point at which he had seen the Lamb to come to the edge of the trees again and look out. When he did so, he still saw nothing except the wide, flat face of the valley.

  Then, far up the mountainside, he saw the beginning of a small snowslide, widening from a narrow trail to a broadening front, cutting down to the blackness of the mountainside. It struck a belt of strong trees, and the movement was at once extinguished there.

  That was all the half-breed saw, before he turned the head of the mustang definitely toward the ranch house, and rode fast for home, and for breakfast.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The half-breed had lost all sight of the Lamb because the latter had turned straight aside from the floor of the valley and gone into the trees.

  He was not urged to this change of direction because he wanted to escape from the fall of the snow. His skin was not perhaps as leathery as that of the half-breed, but now he was on a trail the pursuit of which excited him so much that he forgot such paltry details as the weather.

  He went steadily up through the pines, the ground rising gradually before him, until he came to that point where the downward sweep of the mountainside definitely joined the more gradual lift of the valley floor. And there he found the big, black rocks that he had noted from the trail above the day before.

  It was not actually a clearing, but the trees were sparse, here—growing more thinly than on the edges of the valley or than higher up the slope of the mountain itself. And the reason for this thinness was simply the continual downward-brushing hands of the snowslides, and the shower of great boulders that, from time to time, thundered down the mountain and heaped themselves along its foot.

  In such a spot as this, where the rocks broke down and kept back the trees, there was sure to be a good deal of grass growing in thick, rich lines and ridges, here and there. And the wise cowboy would have to look into such corners for strays from his herd. He looked up the slope, and he made out that the bulge of the mountain side above the rocks, almost imperceptible from above, was absolutely indistinguishable from below. At this sight, his heart quickened a little, for it was a notable confirmation and reenforcement of his theory.

  Suppose, then, that Will Dunstan had been murdered by a blow—a blow from behind as he rode by these rocks. Then the murderer, glancing up, would see the trail above him—for there was the trail in plain sight, a narrow shoulder stretched across the white of the mountain side. Surely there was nothing more natural than for a man to put two and two together. There was the trail, here were the rocks. The dead man had perished, therefore, by a fall from the trail. How many have died in the same way before him?

  And with that thought the killer arranges the body among the rocks—makes sure that blood appears upon one surface—tears the clothes as though rocks had rent them on the descent—throws dust and pebbles upon the prostrate form—places it in a crushed and limp position, as though the weight of the fall might have broken many bones and brought instant death. Then the destroyer takes the dead man’s horse, winding back with it to the foot of the trail, and climbs up to the point above. There he leaves it, with thrown reins. The thrown reins will keep it there, and yet they might have been thrown unconsciously by the hand of a man pitched suddenly from the saddle.

  Now and then, there is a degree of certainty that comes to one like the solution of a proposition in geometry. It is not only felt to be the truth, but the ocular demonstration of the truth is here before the eyes.

  With such a perfect conviction, then, the Lamb regarded his surprise. But still he wished to make surety, doubly sure. He dismounted. There was the stump of a tree nearby, rotted in the center, surrounded as always by a rim of hard, sound wood. A slab of that rim he tore away, and, using it for a shovel, he removed the snow that extended before the front of the rocks. He discovered, at once, that there was a healthy thickness of grass beneath, growing in the interstices of a species of soft soaps
tone, as it seemed to him, which came to the surface.

  He cleaned away a considerable surface until he came, at length, to the imprint of a horse’s hoof. He paused to admire the distinctness of the imprint in that yielding rock surface. He even could make out two or three of the nail holes in the shoe. He could tell that it was a hoof for the off forefoot, as well. Idly analyzing the mark, he made sure that few ordinary cow ponies could have left that sign. They had not hoofs of such a size; they had not the bulk to stamp such a mark in the rock, soft though it was.

  He leaned above it, still half idle in his interest. The Lamb was no miracle worker, no Jack McGuire of the trail. There was a tiny spot of red in the indentation that the shoe of the horse had made. It was like a blood stain, and the blood had been shed here.

  He straightened with a sudden shudder, and a sickness at the heart, and glanced over his shoulder into the woods. Then he returned to the mark of the hoof. For it seemed to him that the red stain had a mysterious meaning—though, of course, blood of the last autumn it could not be.

  He scratched at the red, and the color crumbled to nothing beneath his touch, but there came away on the nail of his finger the tough fiber of a leaf. It was a bit of autumn leaf, then, that had been imprisoned there on the rock by the stamp of a horse. Then he remembered that the girl had told him the death of Will Dunstan occurred when the autumn leaves had begun to fall. And the imprint of this hoof had been made at that very season of the year. It was the horse that Dunstan rode that had made the mark, then, or the horse of one of those who had found the missing body, or else it was the horse of the murderer that had made this mark.

  One thing at least the Lamb could do. It was true that many horses wore shoes of almost the same size, but usually there was a slight difference between one and the other. This shoe, for instance, was certainly of a big spread and a heavy make. And he could reasonably hope that if he found the horse that had made such a mark upon the ground, the rider of that horse would have been one of the cowpunchers who had found the body, or else Dunstan himself, or the murderer.