by Max Brand
Of other things Lincoln talked, half drowsily.
“Four men for you, Paul Torridon. Four Cheyennes, at that!”
“Luck,” explained Torridon. “Both times it was a question of quick shooting at close range. That was why the pistol was useful. Might live a long life before such a chance came to me again.”
“Only luck?” Roger Lincoln smiled.
“Chiefly,” said Torridon. “I don’t want you to think that I pose as a hero. I’m not. I’ve been scared white all through this.”
“When you rode down at those five yelling redskins?” Lincoln asked with the same good-humored smile.
“Then,” said Torridon, “well, I don’t know. Something came over me.”
“You yelled as though you were having a jolly time of it,” chuckled Lincoln.
Torridon was silent. He could not understand himself, and how could he offer an explanation. But still there was a sort of memory in his throat, where the muscles had strained in that dreadful yell.
He almost felt, in fact, as though another spirit at that moment had entered his body and directed his movements. And there was something disquieting in the calm, curious eye of Lincoln, and the little smile that was on his lips.
“Tell me, Paul.”
“Yes . . . if I can.”
“You can. This is a simple question, this time. Were you ever so happy as you were that instant, charging the Cheyennes?”
“Happy? Good heavens, of course I’ve been happier!” exclaimed Torridon.
“Don’t be shocked like an old maid, my lad. Think back honestly. Even when Nancy Brett, yonder, told you one day that she’d marry you, were you as happy as when you went through those Indians and split them away before you, like water before the nose of a canoe? Be honest, now.”
Torridon, desperately striving for that honesty, suddenly took a great breath. “I think you’re right. No . . . I never was happy . . . in the same way, at least. It was a sort of madness, Roger. It really was a sort of wildness in the head.”
“But not enough to make your pistol miss.”
“They were very close,” said Torridon, vaguely feeling that this was not praise, and worried.
“They were riding like fury at you, and you at them. Most men don’t shoot straight at a time like that . . . particularly with an old-fashioned pistol.” He sat up straight and pointed a finger at Torridon. Every vestige of the smile was gone from his face. “Paul,” he said, “you’re a grand fighting man, but you never ought to stay on the frontier.”
“I don’t understand,” Torridon murmured. “But, of course, I’ve no particular desire to stay out here.”
“You think not. But . . . don’t stay. Go back East and starve, if that’s your luck, but don’t stay on the frontier.”
“Will you tell me why?”
“Because all the men out here are armed to the teeth. And there are plenty of chances for trouble.”
“I don’t pretend to be a hero,” Torridon said a little stiffly, “but I don’t think that I’m an absolute coward, either.”
“You’re not,” replied Lincoln, with the same smile, half whimsical and half cold. “You’re decidedly not a coward. You’re the other thing, in fact.”
“What thing, Roger? Unless you mean a bully?”
He laughed at the mere thought. “Not a bully,” said Roger Lincoln, “a tiger, Paul. Not a bully.”
Torridon stared. “I’m trying to believe my ears,” he confessed, “but I find it a pretty hard job.”
“Why?”
“Because all my life I’ve been afraid of people. Terribly afraid of people. They’ve haunted me. I’ve lain awake at night, hoping that I’d never meet certain men again.”
Lincoln nodded. “You’ve led the life of a man who fears danger, I suppose,” he said dryly. “Think over the skeleton of it. Captured from your own people by the Bretts . . . raised among them and given the sharp side of the elbow all your life . . . made to teach their young bullies in a school, and mastering the roughest of them . . . I know that story.”
“I had help . . . I couldn’t do a thing with them, with my hands.”
“The brain, Paul! The brain is the tool that wins battles of all kinds. After that, you tame a wild horse that no man could handle except you . . .”
“Only by patiently visiting him every day, because I loved him. I never dreamed of mastering him.”
“But master him you did. Do you carry him, or does he carry you? When I lay on the ground with more than half a ton of that black stallion charging at me, who stood up and braved him away?”
“Afterward I . . . was sick with fear,” Torridon said honestly.
“The girl is sent away. You are thrown into a cellar and kept for a dog’s death . . .”
“From which you saved me, Roger, and heaven bless you for it.”
“I never could have saved you. We fought our way out, side-by-side. The girl was gone to the Far West. You didn’t hesitate to start cruising after her. Was that the act of a timid man?”
“I would have gone anywhere with you, Roger, of course.”
“You lost me on the plains. I gave you up for dead, but, just as I gave you up, you turn up at the fort. By heavens, you’d joined the wild Cheyennes, and you’d become their chief medicine man.”
“It was a strange combination of circumstances. I did nothing but a few silly tricks for them. Luck was with me tremendously.”
“Luck was with Columbus, too,” Lincoln said dryly. He went on: “They want you so badly that they follow you on and kidnap you at the fort. When you’re not happy among them, they steal Nancy away, too. You take them in the palm of your hand. Finally you break away and carry the girl with you . . .”
“Because you helped me, Roger.”
“Don’t interrupt. And when they follow too closely, you turn around and kill a pair of their best fighting men.”
“They were mere youngsters!”
“Were they? And was that nest of five scorpions that you charged, back yonder, a set of youngsters, too?”
“I had the night to cover me.”
“So did they! But you looked through the darkness like a cat and shot down a pair of them.”
“I don’t think either of them was very badly hurt.”
“Paul,” said Roger Lincoln, raising his hand gravely, “let me tell you that when I heard that terrible yell come out of your throat, I was frightened. So were those Cheyennes. They ran as if a fiend was after them. And just at that moment, you were a fiend. You were in your glory. And I tell you, Torridon, that having had one hot taste of blood, you’re going to turn into a man-eater, unless you keep away from temptation . . . such as you’ll find on this frontier.”
Torridon shook his head with conviction. “I hope I never have to draw a gun again,” he said earnestly.
“You think you hope that. You don’t know yourself. We’re always confusing the self of today with the self of yesterday. We don’t understand that we change. Now, you know your history better than I do. But I believe that in the beginning Robespierre hated the sight of blood. Even the blood of a chicken was too much for him. But in the finish, he shed tons of it.”
“Am I a Robespierre?” Paul Torridon asked with a faint smile.
“You’re not,” answered the frontiersman, “but you’re the hardest type of gunman and natural killer that steps the face of the earth.”
“Good heavens, Roger, what are you saying to me?”
“The gunman who is a bully,” said Roger Lincoln, “soon does murder for its own sake, and soon he’s disposed of. But the deadly fellow is the quiet man who looks always afraid of the world . . . who always is a bit afraid . . . and who loves that fear thrilling in his backbone as a dope fiend loves cocaine . . . the quiet, shrinking little fellow who never speaks without asking pardon, who, nevertheless, by some fatality is always near danger, who always is being forced to draw his weapons. Torridon, if you stay on the frontier six months longer, you’ll have kill
ed six men . . . not Indians, Paul . . . white men as good as yourself.”
He drew a long breath, and, leaning back on the hummock, he filled his pipe and began to smoke, while Torridon, confused and half frightened, stared at the distance and tried to recognize himself. He could not believe that Roger Lincoln was entirely right, but of one thing he was suddenly sure—that his old self was dead, and that in its place there was a man who he did not know, wearing the name of Paul Torridon!
There was a stir, and Nancy Brett came from beneath her shelter.
“Breakfast time,” said Roger Lincoln cheerfully, and got up from the grass.
XV
Whether the Cheyennes had been thrown into confusion by the failure of the fugitives to keep due north in the first place, and their then swinging south, and so had failed to guard the thrust to the northwest, the three were not able to tell at the time. But, going carefully forward, husbanding the strength of their horses as they worked back toward the direction of Fort Kendry, certain it was that no sign of the red men appeared until that wildly happy day when they rode into the fort and there passed in the street, no other than the tall form of Standing Bull, wrapped in a gorgeously painted buffalo robe, his eyes fixed blankly before him, as though he were unable to recognize the party.
Roger Lincoln was for taking the big Indian in hand at once, but Torridon dissuaded him. He pointed out that his relations with Standing Bull had been more friendly than hostile. And, at any rate, they were safely in from their long voyage over the prairie.
They took Nancy to her uncle’s house, and Torridon only hung in the background long enough to hear the shrill nasal cry of joy with which her strong-armed aunt welcomed her.
Then, with Roger Lincoln, he went toward the fort.
They were welcomed effusively. On that wild frontier strange exploits took place every day, but there was a peculiar strangeness about the adventures of Torridon and Nancy Brett. The commandant sat them down at his own table, and a crowded table it was to which Roger Lincoln was asked to give the details of the escape. He gave them with the utmost consideration of Torridon, but no matter what he said, the exploits of the boy were passed over. And if some eye lit with wonder and turned on Paul Torridon, the glance turned away again at once. Men want one of heroic appearance to fill the hero’s role, and Torridon looked too young, too weak, too timid, in fact, to satisfy. Everyone preferred to cast the entire glory upon Roger Lincoln. He filled the eye. He filled the mind, and he was known to have a long tale of glory in his past. This was treated as a crowning feat.
As for consideration of Paul Torridon, that unlucky youth himself blasted all opportunity when, as the party broke up, he was heard murmuring to his friend: “How shall I ever dare to go to Samuel Brett’s house to see Nancy, Roger?”
The remark was repeated with roars of laughter.
Hero? This? Fort Kendry told itself that it knew a man, and it could not be deceived.
But there was more trouble in store for Torridon. Some few lingered with the commandant after the supper party had broken up, and Torridon, with others, had gone to bed. And in the midst of this final chatting, there was a rap at the door, and a huge young man in rather ragged deerskins appeared before them. He wanted Paul Torridon, he said.
“Torridon’s not here.” said Roger Lincoln. “But I’m his friend. Can I give him a message? He’s gone to bed, dead tired. I don’t want to disturb him unless it’s very important.”
The youth in the doorway stepped a little inside and ran his bold eyes over the company.
“It might be important, it might not,” he said. “That all depends. My name is Dick Brett. I come out here with my brother Joe. We come hunting for a low skunk and yellow-hearted cur by name of Paul Torridon. We heard he was here. But if he ain’t . . . just somebody tell him that I’m gonna be waiting for him in the street in front of Chick Marvin’s store tomorrow morning about nine. If he comes and finishes me off, then he can take on Joe. But if he don’t come, I’m gonna hunt him down and finish him. I guess that’s about all.” He waited a moment.
There was an uneasy instant during which the guests half expected Roger Lincoln to attack this slanderer of his friend, but Roger Lincoln said not a word. And Dick Brett departed unhindered.
“What’ll be done, Roger?” asked the commandant uneasily. “It’s sort of a shame for a kid like that Torridon to be put on by one of Brett’s size. Any relation of that same Nancy?”
“Second cousin,” Roger Lincoln said smoothly. “And what do you think will happen when Torridon gets this message?”
“He’ll be heading back for the open lands,” chuckled the commandant.
There was a general nodding of heads.
“And what,” said Roger Lincoln, “will happen if he goes out to meet the pair of them?”
“Roger,” said one of the trappers, “I like you fine, and I know that you’ve got brains in your head. But you made a mistake about this here one. He ain’t got nothing in him. I looked him in the eye. He dropped his look. He’s pretty thin stuff for the making of a man.”
Roger Lincoln looked about him with a sigh. “I knew it would come unless I got him away quickly,” he said, “but I hoped that I’d have more time than this.”
“Before we found him out to be yellow, Roger?” asked the commandant curiously.
“Before,” said Lincoln, “you found him out a man-eater. Man, man, do you think I was talking for fun, tonight? Did I tell you he shot four Cheyennes out of their saddles with a pistol during that chase? And I tell you again that he’ll never be stopped by those great hulks, the Bretts! Only . . . how can he marry Nancy after he’s shed the blood of her kindred?”
“That’s sounding talk,” said the commandant calmly. “But you know yourself, Roger, that the kid would never dream of coming to the scratch, unless he knew that you’d be there to back him up.”
“Then,” said Roger Lincoln, “I’ll I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let one of the rest of you carry the word to Torridon. I’ll not go near him tonight or tomorrow. And heaven help the Brett boys, is all that I have to say.”
XVI
When Torridon heard the news, he merely lifted his head from the pillow and stared at the commandant with such gleaming eyes that that gentleman withdrew in some haste. He went thoughtfully back to his table companions.
“Roger,” he said slowly, “maybe there’s something in what you were saying.”
But Torridon himself merely lay awake for a few moments, staring into the darkness, then he fell into an untroubled sleep. When he wakened, he found himself singing as he sponged with cold water and then shaved. And in the midst of that singing he paused and struck himself lightly across the forehead with the back of his hand.
It was not as it had been of old. He should be cowering sick at heart in a corner. Instead, there was wine in his blood. And he remembered with a shock what Roger Lincoln had said about the hot taste of blood, never to be forgotten.
He shook that thought away. He had slept late. At 7:30 a.m. he went out from the fort to a vacant field, shrouded with fir trees, all whitened and frosted over by a slowly falling rain mist. He fired ten shots at a small sapling. When it sagged and then toppled over with a sharp, splintering sound, he cleaned his gun thoroughly, reloaded it, and went in for his breakfast.
Breakfast was over. The cook could give him only soggy, cold slices of fried bacon and cold pone, heavy as wood. Yet, with lukewarm coffee, that was a feast to Torridon. The famine of the long ride was still in his bones. He found the cook watching him curiously. When he came out into the big yard of the fort, other men left off their occupations and regarded him with the same wondering, hungry eyes, as though they could not believe what they saw.
He asked for Roger Lincoln. Roger was not there, it appeared. Well, he was glad of that. Roger, at least, would not be there to see the fight. Roger would not be there to accuse him. He felt a sudden pang of shame as he went into the street. Those other men, rifle raised and r
ifle trained, how could they stand against the subtle speed of a pistol at short range? Ah, well, they were Bretts. What pity need a Torridon show them?
And a terrible joy filled the blood of Torridon. He wanted to laugh and sing. He wanted to run. But he made himself go with a soft, quiet step, with a composed face; what wonder that his eye was fire, then?
He went straight to the house of Samuel Brett. That huge man in person came to the door, and, when he saw Torridon, he roared with rage, and lifted up a hand like a club. From within the house came the sharp call of Samuel’s wife, and the shrill cry of Nancy—poor Nancy.
Torridon laid his pistol mouth on the chest of the giant. “I’m going to kill a pair of Bretts,” he said quietly, “and then I’m coming back here to find my wife. I expect the door to be open.”
He put the pistol away, and turned slowly and walked up the street, and as food to his heart was the memory of the pale, astonished face of Samuel Brett.
He went in the middle of the road, picking his way carefully among the ruts and the puddles. It still rained. Once a gust of strong wind and rain came and unsettled his hat. He paused, deliberately raised his hat and combed the moisture from his long hair with his fingers, settled his locks over his shoulders, replaced the hat, and went on.
There was no one in any house. And, when he arrived there, he found the whole population of the town at the big store. They were like a sea at every door, at every window, and banked across the street—Indians, whites, half-breeds, Negroes, French Canadians, all wild as tigers, but looking to Torridon, suddenly, like a very gentle and rather awe-stricken crowd.
And in the middle of the street stood Dick Brett, huge as a tree and as immovable.
“He has a heart, however,” said Torridon coldly to himself, “and even with a pin one could kill him. Accuracy is all one needs.”
He walked straight on, while Dick Brett pitched the butt of his rifle into the hollow of his shoulder, aimed—and still Torridon went lightly, steadily toward him. The rifle was lowered. He was close now—pistol close. And yonder at the edge of the crowd, stern of face, was the other brother, rifle ready, too.