Lightning of Gold

by Max Brand

  She looked fixedly down at the ground. Then she looked up at him. She had thought of him as a young fiend in human form. After her look at him in the street, she had thought of him as a handsome, lithe, young fiend. But now her opinion was changed. She hardly knew what to say, but she knew that she was fascinated, that most of the horror had disappeared from her conception of him. She had to think and consciously remember that this was the man who had hunted her and Chester Lyons through the mountains only the night before.

  He was saying now, in the gentlest and most conciliating manner: “But you don’t like them? They look dangerous . . . mostly tooth and claw to you? I’ll send them away.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  But he shook his head, and, whistling a thin, shrill, piercing note, he waved his hand. The three wolves started to slink away. Once or twice they paused, crouching a little, their wild, bright eyes fixed upon the master. Then they galloped away on a single impulse and were gone from sight in the woods.

  “There they watch you out of shelter, I suppose?” she asked.

  “No. They’ll only stay within scent and hearing,” he said. “You notice that they’re down wind from us?”

  She had not noticed. But before she could pay any heed to another thing, a water ouzel flew up the stream and sheered wide to avoid them. The next instant it was snared in the whistle of young Crosson. It was an amazing thing to see, as though he had thrust out a long, invisible arm and caught the bird, for it began to flutter in a rapid circle about his head. He turned slowly on a pivot, his face lifted, mischievous, delighted, the whistle trilling repeatedly from his lips, the bird making darts toward him and shooting off again, lured, incredulous, frightened, and yet fascinated again and again by the sound.

  Now and again he glanced at Nan, to invite her to an understanding of the sport, and suddenly there was the bird perched upon his shoulder, and the whistling trilling softly, continually, while the wild little ouzel canted its head quickly first to this side and then to that in a manner absurdly like that of a musical connoisseur pronouncing judgment upon an important performance.

  A finger was held up. It hopped upon the proffered perch. It spread its wings as though to fly when it was held directly before the face of the musician. But still the whistle persisted, and still it was forced to cant its head to listen. At length he was silent, and the bird, after a moment, darted off.

  “But the next time,” said Oliver Crosson, “it will come at the first call.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “How do you learn to do that?” she asked.

  “It’s a hard thing,” he answered. “You have to lie and listen for hours. Sometimes there are other birds striking in . . . but you glue your ear to one song. You keep following it in your mind. You keep pursing your lips to make the same sound. Afterward you go off, and for a few minutes you practice it aloud until you know that you’ve gone wrong. Then you come back and start over again. Sometimes it takes a month, working every day like that, before you’ve learned the whole song.

  “And still there are the single whistles and the trills, and that sort of thing. You know the noises they make, sleepy noises, at the end of the day, or when the dawn starts, before the full song is started. You can make a sound of nesting and bring a mother bird dropping right out of the middle of the sky.”

  He laughed at the thought. But she was filled with wonder.

  “You like to do it,” she suggested. “Because you like the birds?”

  “They’re beautiful things,” he said, “and there’s never a one like the other. Take the jays. Some of them are more green than blue, and some of them are more blue than green. Jays are demons, but they’re entertaining. They’re up to tricks. There are some at home who steal things from me.” He laughed.

  “Important things?”

  “Not often,” he responded. “And it makes no difference. I know where the nests are, and I can go and get them again whenever I wish. Terrible thieves, though, the jays are. Terrible thieves!” And he laughed. Then, turning serious, he pointed to a fallen log. “Sit down,” he said.

  She sat down. She was entranced by the new door that he had opened to her, and through which she was seeing the world. That other thing—that monster with wolves at hand that hunted men through the mountains and struck them down one by one—that other thing like a disassociated phantasm was pushed away into the shadowy corners of her memory.

  He took a place facing her, on a low rock that stood at the verge of the stream.

  “You’re not comfortable there,” she observed.

  “I can see you better this way,” he said.

  There was no cause for her to flush; he was stating a fact, not a mere compliment. He went on, enlarging his thought.

  “I thought at first that standing beside you was very well. But this way is better. You turn a little aside now and then when you think. So I see you from every angle. Ha!” he cried so suddenly that she started. “It makes me remember a day.”

  “What day?” she asked.

  “The first day that I caught a solitaire. I made it sit on my finger like that water ouzel. It listened to my whistle, and then it seemed to shake its head and say no. And it would ruffle its throat feathers and lift up its head and thrust out its wings in flurries, so that the light shone through the feathers. Then it would give me a singing lesson. But a lesson like that I could never learn. I could do the whistling of the other thrushes, some of them. But never the solitaire. It’s a poet. It makes up as it goes along. And that’s the way with you.”

  She did flush, then—suddenly red hot with embarrassment and with shame. For she began to have a guilty feeling. She had no right to remain here with this lad. But it was hard, very hard, to leave him.

  “Come, come,” she said. “I’ve hardly said a word.”

  “Look,” he said, pointing.

  “Well?”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see the still water in the pool.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, not all. I see the blue of the sky in the water and the trees shining. Why?”

  “Well,” he said, “has the water of the pool said a word, either?”

  She was amazed at the turn he had given to the talk.

  “So with you, also,” he said. “Words would be foolish things for you to use. Or even to sing would be foolish, too. Because, by yourself, you are . . . you are . . . the lightning of gold that comes from nearest the sun.”

  She stirred. If another youth had begun to talk to her like this, she would have told herself that it was high time for her to go home. To him she merely said: “How many times have you talked to . . . to women before?”

  “Never once,” he answered.

  She opened her eyes. “Not once?” she cried.

  “I have seen them a good many times. Once there was a big hunting party in the hills. There were women with them, too. I used to go out and follow them through the evening and come up to their camp at night and lie on the horizon of the firelight. Then I’d look at them and listen to them. Most of them had squeaking voices. There was only one who had a voice a little like yours. She was golden, too, but not the gold that lies nearest the sun.”

  “You see,” she said, “that’s what I wish that you wouldn’t do.”

  “What?” he said. “You tell me only what it is and I’ll never do it again.”

  “I mean, to talk to me, like that. I mean, I hardly know how to put it, only you mustn’t think out loud or pretend to think out loud about people, because it embarrasses them.”

  “Are you embarrassed?” he asked.

  “I would be, soon,” she said.

  “I’ll stop,” he said, “if I only know exactly what I should stop. Will you try to tell me more clearly?”

  “Why, when you speak of me and the blue sky in the pool . . . and of me and the golden light nearest the sun . . .”

  “I was trying to reach out for ideas that were mo
st like you,” he said. “I’ve been a fool. I should try to use my brain better and find clearer words. I should try to say that you are . . .”

  “Don’t say what I am.”

  “Ah?” he said, fell silent, and stared sadly at her. “Well,” he said finally, “my father always said that I would do a great many wrong things when I came to know people.” His eyes grew sadder still. He pressed a hand over the hollow of his throat, as if there were a pain that touched him at that place.

  She was amazed that she could hurt him so easily. She said, trying to explain: “Suppose that I were to talk about you?”

  “Ah, well,” he said in a melancholy tone, “I know that I’m as sun-blackened as a crow.”

  She stared at him at that. He was a dark bronze, with a patina and sheen of perfect health. His black hair shone, also, but, most of all, she was struck with the intense blue eyes, unlike any she ever had seen in a human face except one. She could not remember, just then, where she had seen an eye like the boy’s. And an odd, dizzy feeling came over her, so that she felt, if only she gave her tongue way, it would find words, many of them, to speak to him as he had spoken to her, in a language and with such images as never had come to her mind before.

  She forced herself to stand up. He leaped to his feet.

  “You act as if . . .” he began. Then he stopped himself, as though dreading to name his suspicion.

  “I have to go back,” she announced.

  He stepped before her, with his arms extended, barring her way, but, when her head went up, in half fear, half anger, he stood aside.

  “Look,” he said. “It has only been one moment.”

  “It has been a long time,” she contradicted. “I must go back.”

  “The shadows have only gone from here to here.” He drew a line on the ground to show how far the shadow beside the log had traveled. “From there to there,” he said, “and that is the only time in my life when I have been perfectly happy. Is it all right to say that?”

  She avoided his curious and pleading eyes. “Why,” she said, “of course . . .” And then she hesitated and stopped.

  “But I’m used to trouble,” he said. “This is some more. You are going back. I may walk with you to the edge of the trees?”

  She could not speak. Her tongue was leaden, and as she started back up the course of the stream, he walked beside her. They entered the woods again. Behind them, silent shadows moved, drifting here and there. They were the wolves, she knew, but she gave them no more heed than she would have paid to leaves blowing down the wind.

  At the outer verge of the forest he stopped. “I have to wait here,” he said. “There may be guns watching for me from the windows of the hotel. Unless you wish me to walk up the slope with you?” His eyes shone. He invited her, he begged her to challenge him even to that desperate game.

  She merely shook her head.

  “Will you tell me where I can find you a second time?” he asked her. “If it is a thousand miles away, I shall get there and wait before you.”

  “You’ll never see me again,” said the girl.

  She watched his eyes wander wildly for a moment. He drew himself up and bowed a little to her.

  “As my father said,” he replied. “And I have made you angry and you despise me.”

  “You know that I’m Nan Lyons,” said the girl. “You know that you’re hunting down my cousin. What else do you expect me to say?”

  “You love him, then?” he asked her.

  She could hardly face the intolerable anguish of his look. “Yes,” she said, “with all my heart I love him.”

  She could not, being what she was, plead with him to leave that blood trail. She could merely wait for an instant with a blinding hope that she could turn him aside. But she saw his head bend, and knew that it would not lift again while she was before him.

  So she went hastily away through the brush. And when she was almost at the outermost verge of it, she turned and looked back, and she could see vaguely, through the mist of foliage, that he remained as she had left him, looking down at the ground, dumb with misery, turned to a stone.

  She hurried back to the hotel and up to her room. When she came in, she passed in front of her mirror, and what she saw there made her stop short to look again, for her face was pale, her lips pinched, her eyes staring with pain.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was the brightest time of the day in Shannon. The shadows, which had been shortening from west to east all the morning, were now standing straight under the objects that cast them. Under the trees there was a steep downdropping of the shade.

  It was, in fact, exactly half past eleven, when young Oliver Crosson, seated in the back room of the saloon, saw Menneval enter the place.

  Oliver had come to Shannon, a person totally unknown. Overnight he had become famous. There were a hundred purses willing to buy his liquor. They knew what he had done in the street the day before to Winnie Dale.

  It happened that Winnie was a famous man in Shannon. Just as a champion is rated by the strength of the champion who he has dethroned, so young Oliver Crosson was judged by the worth of Winnie Dale. And Winnie was known as a man of bone and sinew, of might, of courage, of a sort of reckless willfulness for which he was loved by the town of Shannon, and for which Shannon was right to love him. But he was also a danger. And just as one likes to see a big, overbearing dog disciplined, so Shannon enjoyed the thought that Winnie Dale had been put in his place, that the next time he rode in with his followers they would not follow him quite so blindly, and that the lights of Shannon would not be shot out so soon.

  On top of this, they knew that the famous Chester Lyons was in their village. That in itself was enough to thrill every heart. In addition, they also understood that young Oliver Crosson was to meet Chester Lyons that day, and that he would fight with him until one of the two was dead.

  In thirty minutes, to the second, Chester Lyons would walk out of the hotel and cross the hotel verandah and walk up the long, crooked, winding street of Shannon. The entire town knew that he would do this thing, and it had gathered to stare. At the windows, by the doors, and posted at the corners of the houses, every man, woman, and child in Shannon was at some chosen spot, waiting.

  How the people knew that the duel was to take place no one could say. Some said that Mr. Lyons himself had admitted it, scornfully, bravely. Some said that a waiter at the hotel was blessed with ears that were oversharp. But however it came about, the fact was that the entire town understood exactly what had taken place.

  To another city such an affair would have been terrible, no doubt. To Shannon it was simply delightful and enthralling. They had seen countless gunfights, those men of the town, and they were ready to see another. But this one was posted, declared, and established beforehand. It was advertised, so to speak, and would surely take place.

  Therefore the men, the women, the children were in their places.

  Some of them had chosen posts near to the hotel, because they felt that Oliver Crosson would rush out and meet his man as soon as he appeared through the door of the hotel. Others had taken posts at the first bend of the street, because from that position they could look to the hotel and well up the way to the place where the street made the next bend. Still others were beyond this corner, and more were at the farthest end of the street, thinking that Oliver Crosson would probably wait until the very end before he fulfilled his promise of an encounter with the great Chester Lyons. There were still others who waited for the battle just outside of the saloon.

  And these were the best guessers. For there young Crosson intended to stay until the word was brought to him that Lyons had left the hotel. Afterward he would walk out to the door, and, when Lyons appeared, strolling up the street, they would have the matter out.

  He had a curious lack of doubt about the thing, though he knew that Lyons was much more practiced with firearms than he. It might be, very possibly, that the first bullet would fly from the pistol of Lyon
s, and that that bullet would strike him down. But unless he were killed, he knew that he would turn as he fell, and level his own weapon and shoot to kill.

  What were mountains lions, even when they were braved in their dens? They were as nothing compared with a brave man. And Lyons was a brave man. He was famous for his courage. Every man here in Shannon knew all about him, it seemed.

  Had they not come to Oliver Crosson and said: “Look out for him if his back is turned. He can whirl and draw and shoot all in a second, and he never misses.”

  “Look out for him if he’s looking down and away. He can get out a gun like a thought, and he never misses.”

  “Look out for Lyons when he seems to be joking and laughing. He can change in a second and pull a gun, and he never misses.”

  They had given him such warnings, as he sat there in the little, dark back room of the saloon. It was not empty, that room. There were others in it. They were pretending to play cards. That was merely their excuse. They had to have some reason for being back there in the shadows of the house. So they sat, at four tables, playing poker. The betting was small. No man had his eye on the deal. Each was looking at the youngster who sat there in the corner, his hands folded in his lap, silently waiting. They looked at him, and they ventured to smile on him, and he smiled back absently. They could see that he was merely waiting.

  And they respected him all the more for his quiet pose. Which one of them could have endured that dreadful interval without growing impatient, terrified? Which one of them would not have welcomed talk, even from a Chinaman?

  But the boy wanted nothing, it appeared. He sat there with his hands folded in his lap. When they spoke to him, he said nothing. When they smiled at him, he smiled back absently, as though he sympathized with their mirth, but knew not the cause of it.

  So, exactly at half after the hour of eleven, Menneval stepped into the saloon. They did not know him. It mattered not that the first part of his career had been passed in the same state. Long years had passed since that time, and he had become a legend, and then the legend had died. There was nothing remembered now except that somewhere in the vague past there had been a Menneval, and he had done certain strange things. No man talked of those things. Very few knew of them. And those who knew did not talk. They had learned discretion in the course of the years, and there was only a head shaken, now and again, and a secret twinkling of the eye.