by Max Brand
It was not mere despair, however, that Crosson showed when he realized that his cries would not bring back the boy. He turned about in a wild frenzy, and, stamping up and down through the clearing, he cursed his luck, his fate, his origin, and all his life. He cursed the house, the trees, the boy who had just left, and the very horse that had carried him.
To this outbreak, the trapper listened in amazement. Anger, disappointment he was prepared to find, but there was something like a blasting hate gathered into the outpourings of old Peter Crosson. He dashed his hands together; he literally tore his hair.
And then, as though he must have some animate object on which to pour out his fury, he whirled upon Lefty Ranger and shouted: “You’ve brought the pest with you! The evil one was in your pocket. You’ve come down here to start what trouble you can. Tell me that. Admit it! Come out in the open and admit that Menneval sent you!”
This name struck like a trip hammer on the consciousness of Ranger. “Menneval?” he cried. “What do you know about Menneval, Crosson?”
“What do I know about him?” answered Crosson. “I know that he’s a beast, a ghoul. And he sent you down here! Get out of my sight and stay out. If there’s murder in the air, I’ll do my share of it!”
He looked like a man transported. Lefty Bill, bewildered and unnerved, turned and did exactly as he had been bidden, striding off under the trees and wishing that he had on seven league boots.
He simply wanted to get away from it all—from the mystery of the boy, and Menneval, and Peter Crosson. There was danger in the air, real as fire, and it might burn him to the quick of the heart at any moment.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Ranger got back to his camp, he did not hesitate a moment. He had learned all that even an exacting man like Menneval could ask from him. He wanted to get straight back to civilization, where he would have the comfort of normal men around him. It seemed to him that his brain was whirling, that he was walking in a dream.
By the time he reached a town, no doubt a rumor would be flying about concerning the death of Chet Lyons. He was as sure of the coming destruction of that outlaw as he was of the setting of the sun. Through his mind went a moving picture of the pursuit through the night, the remorseless speed of the youth, the keen noses of the wolves picking up the trail, and the sound of their hunting cry striking a chill note into the very soul of Lyons and his men.
What would they do? Would they turn back, united, to hunt the hunter? It hardly made any difference, Ranger felt. They would go down, and Lyons with them. Or perhaps the whole group would flee as if from a supernatural power, and, as they fled, the more poorly mounted men would be overtaken, one by one, by that terrible boy and left dead behind him as he pushed forward. What ambush could they make that his wolfish senses and his wolfish allies would not penetrate?
No, Lyons was a dead man, no more and no less, though at this moment he might be cantering securely along, mounted on his fine horse.
With the information that he possessed, Ranger decided, he would return as quickly as he could and, in the great white North, pick up the abandoned trail of his life. Once more it seemed to him that he had come from a land of absolute security and peace, and had stepped into a madhouse here in the sunny southern land.
He made a light pack. It meant abandoning a good many things, but what he wanted was a chance to make good time. He kept his rifle and filled a rough knapsack of his own making. This he strapped over his shoulders and started on his march.
He was a good walker. He had built up the muscle and the talent during the long treks through the snows of the Arctic. Now he hit away through the hills at a four-and-a-half-mile gait, swinging his rifle at the full length of his arm to add to his stride.
He saw the sun slide down the western sky. So great was his haste, it seemed to him that time was running doubly fast about him to shorten this day of his walking. Now and again, he marked the lengthening of the shadows, and then he came into a forest of great pines that jumped up above his head and crowded in a host against the sky. A sort of mild and mellow twilight surrounded him here, but, above, the dying sun touched the hedge of huge branches at intervals. It was a perfect California day; a gentle, warm wind came to him in soft breathings among the trunks of the forest, and the resinous purity of the pines filled the air. Well, let others have this magic land. For him, there was a blight upon it.
He left the forest again for a more open district, where the brush grew as tall as the second-growth trees of a less favored land. Rocks that sloped toward the west were now shining as though they burned; they flashed here and there through the greenery, and he was well into that hole-in-the-wall country that sheriffs hated, and outlaws loved.
Still, as he walked, he canted his ear toward the horizon sounds, a dozen times imagining that he heard the hunting cry of a wolf pack, far away, and a dozen times realizing that the sound was a dream that dissolved in the light of reality. But he was much more content, now, seeing that he had recovered the same trail that he had followed in coming out to this region. He was helped, too, by the knowledge that every stride took him farther and farther away from the Crosson Ranch. The very name Crosson now sent a prickle through his blood.
Going on in this way, he was stopped by a quiet hail from behind him. He whirled about, amazed. For who knew his name in this part of the world?
He saw nothing but the empty trail behind him. And the heart of Ranger stood still with a superstitious fear.
“Lefty Bill!” said the same voice again.
Then he saw. Through the dense green of the shrubbery to the right and close at hand, he could make out the silhouette of a mounted man. That silhouette now moved and rode a glorious bay mare out onto the rocks of the trail. But what did horses mean to Bill Ranger, then? He was only aware of one thing, and that was the face of the man—a face of a middle-aged man, strangely old and yet strangely unlined, and silver hair so thin and closely cropped that it fitted his head like a white silken skullcap.
He had pulled his rifle to the ready, so that its muzzle covered the breast of the stranger.
“Menneval,” said Lefty Bill.
“Yes, it’s I,” said Menneval. “I couldn’t trust everything to your reports, Lefty. You know how it can be with a man. He wants to learn by his own eyes and ears.”
Lefty groaned. He shook his head and groaned again. Grounding his rifle, he leaned upon it and took his bandanna out to wipe his face. “I wish that you’d had the idea before you started me south,” he said.
“I got it a week later,” said Menneval. “Have you had a bad time, Lefty?”
“Bad? I’ve had the evil one . . . I’ve had him at my elbow. Do you call that a bad time?”
“It depends, a little,” said Menneval. “You’ve seen the Crossons?”
“I’ve seen ’em,” said the trapper, “as nobody else ever could’ve been lucky enough to see ’em. I’ve seen ’em together, and then I’ve seen ’em break apart for good and all.”
“What’s that?” demanded Menneval.
“I’ve seen ’em together, and I’ve seen ’em break apart.”
Menneval suddenly dismounted. It seemed that he wished to be nearer, in order that he might hear more clearly something that was of great importance to him.
“I dunno what it is that makes you take such a lot of interest in the pair of ’em,” said Ranger. “One of ’em oughta be in an insane asylum . . . maybe the old one, too.”
“Are they both wrong in the head?” asked Menneval. He kept his voice quiet, as usual, but there was a certain tenseness behind his words.
And Lefty Bill, staring at him, strove with all his might to penetrate the secret. He failed. He might as well have searched a mask of stone as to attempt to probe the brain of Menneval.
“I dunno how wrong in the head they are,” said the trapper. “I dunno much of anything. I’m kind of stunned, Menneval, to see you step your horse out of that brush. It’s like you had taken one step, four t
housand miles long, and put yourself from Circle City to here.”
“Everyone has a right to wonder once,” said Menneval coldly. “But only a fool will wonder twice about the same thing, once it’s before him. Suppose you tell me what you found out, and why you’re turning back so soon. I thought that you’d hardly got out here.”
“Hardly, but I’ve had enough of it,” said the trapper. “I been trapping varmints for their pelts. I done pretty good at it, too.”
“And you saw both of ’em, eh?”
“I saw ’em both.”
“Tell me what sort of people they are to look at.”
“The old man’s out of a graveyard. The boy is out of a wolf. That’s the truth.”
“Out of a wolf? What do you mean by that?”
“Menneval,” said the other, “I thought that I could tell you, when the time come. But I expected to have between here and Alaska to get my words in order, and you sort of take me a little mite by surprise, d’you see?”
Menneval bit his lip. “Take your time,” he said. And he waited impatiently.
“I’m trying to think, but thinking doesn’t do any good,” went on Ranger. “I’m gonna tell you everything that happened, and just the way that it happened. Mostly you’ll think that I’m a grand liar. But if you think so, you go and try to find out for yourself, and you’ll soon have enough of it.”
“Why’ll I soon have enough?” asked Menneval.
The other stared at him. He thought, then, of all the wild and wonderful stories that men told of Menneval and his ways—of his battles, his savageries, his triumphs, his great and impossible achievements of all kinds. But, as he stared, he remembered the wild boy and could only shake his head.
“You’re a grand man, Menneval,” he said, “but you couldn’t handle that boy without burning the palms out of your hands. Asbestos gloves, they wouldn’t be good enough to keep him from burning you to the bone.”
Menneval frowned almost bitterly upon the other. “It’s the boy that you’re talking of, and he’s a bad one, is he?”
“Yes,” said the trapper. “He’s too much for me. I reckon that he’d be too much for you or any other man. Or any two men, for that matter.”
Menneval pointed with his finger suddenly: “He’s been raised with guns, has he?”
Ranger shook his head. “He’s only got the instinct for ’em. And he doesn’t need guns, and that’s a thing that you can’t understand until you see him. Look here, Menneval, you’re quite a man, but he’d take your gun away from you and make you eat it.”
The answer was a faintly sneering smile. “You’d better tell me everything,” said Menneval.
“I’ll tell you,” said the trapper. And that he did.
They sat by the trail until the dusk. Into the dusk they still sat there, and, the longer they sat, the more questions Menneval still asked and the more painstakingly he had to be answered by the trapper. The smallest details seemed to be the details in which Menneval was the most interested.
And sometimes he answered the voice of Ranger with a short, sneering laughter.
It appeared that he was reasonably pleased, and Ranger could guess why. There was something that the man wanted to get out of those two, and, now that the father and the son were parted, get it he would, and with the minimum of effort. For his own part, he lost his feeling of hostility toward the elder Crosson. He merely felt a pang of sympathy for the poor old man, with a tiger-like Menneval prowling on his trail.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Then, out of the far horizon, through the dusk, they heard the long-drawn cry of a single wolf, and so quickly did it come on the heels of the narrative that Ranger had told, that he started up to his feet with a low exclamation. Menneval turned his head, also, and nodded.
The wolf cry was followed by the sudden clamor of a pack, and on the heels of this a number of rifle shots, one close upon the other, and, following the sound of the guns, the high-pitched death scream of a stricken wolf.
“He’s hunting ’em. He’s using the wolves,” Ranger muttered under his breath.
Menneval laid a hand on the shoulder of his companion and even patted that shoulder lightly. “Son,” he said, “if it’s really Chester Lyons that the boy’s after, he’ll get what a fool deserves to get. Anyone who takes mere wolves out after such a fellow as Chet Lyons is going to lose his wolves and his life.”
Ranger drew in a gasping breath. “It’s the dusk of the day. There’s good light for a wolf. There’s no light to shoot a gun by. Listen.”
A few scattering shots followed, and then the cry of the pack again, the hunting cry, the cry of the blood trail.
“They’ve found something,” said Menneval quietly. “They’re on the heels of something.”
“They are,” agreed Ranger. “There’s some sort of vile work going on yonder.”
“If that’s Chester Lyons . . .” began Menneval, and paused.
“If that’s Chet Lyons and his gang, they’re running before the pack!” cried Ranger. “Listen for yourself, if you won’t believe what I say.”
“It sounds that way,” said Menneval softly. “It sounds pretty much that way, of course.”
For they could hear the song of the pack, tossed up into the air and now running faint and far away, now flung back more boldly, where there was a sheer cliff of rocks to reflect the cry cleanly.
“Whatever they’re hunting, they’re following pretty close. No, not so closely now,” said Menneval. “They’re losing ground, but still they’re hunting.”
“A mounted man on a decent horse could get away from a pack, until the rough country was come to,” said Ranger. “What makes you think that those wolves are losing ground?”
“By the yell of them. There’s one song for the pack when it’s running in view, and another yell when they’ve got to trust to their noses. They’re running by the nose now, that outfit.”
“Likely, likely. But they’ll keep on running. I know the look of ’em. They’re built to stay like running fire in the wind, and whatever they touch, they’ll burn it black. You can trust to that.”
“Lyons is drawing the boy on,” said Menneval. “That’s all. When the pinch comes, Lyons will eat him. I know Lyons.”
“I’ve heard about him, too,” said Ranger. “But I’ve seen the kid at work. And he’s a worker, let me tell you.”
“Lyons is one of the fastest and straightest men with a gun that ever carried one inside of leather,” said the man from the Northland. “He’ll eat the young fool, and serve him right . . . going hunting human rabbits through the night like that. Fools are soon out of their luck, and the Crosson boy will be out of his before many minutes.”
“I’ll make a bet with you!” exclaimed the trapper.
“What will you bet?” asked Menneval curiously.
“I’ll bet you a cold thousand that the boy comes out on top. I tell you, I’d bet that if he had you against him. He ain’t a man. He’s just part wildcat and part wolf, and, if he walks and talks like a man, that’s only a mask and it don’t mean anything.”
“You’ll bet me a thousand, eh?” Menneval said thoughtfully.
“Or five,” said the other.
Menneval whistled. “But you’re not a betting man, old-timer. Well, I take it that the kid made an impression on you. Do you want to cut across country with me and have a look at that wolf hunt? There’s going to be a moon up before long. There’s the hair of it blowing up in the east, I guess.”
“Man,” said the trapper, “if you ain’t a fool, you’ll keep far away from that hunt.”
“They’ve turned,” said Menneval suddenly. “The pack has the view again, or else it can hear the noise of the horses running . . . if mounted men are what they’re chasing.”
“An elk, that’s what it is,” suggested the trapper with a shudder.
“Elk? Wolves never sang like that for an elk, my son. Not even in the middle of a starvation winter.”
“You know th
e beasts pretty good, I guess,” said Ranger.
“I ought to. I’ve been out in the winter dark, Ranger, with nothing better than those singers and dancers to amuse me for six months at a time.” He pointed. “Let’s climb over that hill, Ranger. We ought to have a chance to see some of the fun. And here’s the moon for a lantern, eh?”
“I wouldn’t go there for a thousand dollars,” said the other.
“Then I’ll go on alone, and let you keep the thousand dollars, Ranger,” said Menneval. “Unless you’re afraid to stay here alone in the dark?”
He laughed as he said that, an ugly ring in his voice, and suddenly Ranger said loudly: “I am afraid to stay alone. I’ll go on with you, only I’ve told you beforehand that you’ve no sense to go near to the boy and his pack. But if you’re climbing the hill, I’ll do it with you.”
This he did, and, as they went up the slope, the trapper under his pack and the other erect in the saddle, the moon came up over the eastern mountains, shining through the trees and lifting into the steel-blue heavens. There it hung, glowing and floating with a golden face.
They climbed the hills. From the farther shoulder of it, they looked down into a very shallow little valley that had the appearance of a dump yard and unimproved backgrounds of the world, for it was scattered over with trees, big and small, and ragged patches of brush, and great boulders were strewn among the trees, some of them as lofty as the tallest tops.
The pale moonshine did not help to give a sense of order to that scene, and Bill Ranger began to rub his chin with his knuckles. “It looks kind of funny to me,” he said, “jumbled and all together. I’d rather get out of here, Menneval.”
“Listen,” said Menneval. He raised his hand, and out of the distance they heard the cry of the pack again. “They’re running in sight again. They’ve got their view,” he said with an odd content in his voice. “I’m not taking that thousand-dollar bet that you offered, though. When a boy can teach wolves to hunt men like that, it proves that there’s something in the boy. And men they’ve certainly got before ’em. D’you hear the hate and the fear in their throats, Lefty?”