Макс Брэнд
The Night Horseman
CHAPTER XXXV
PALE ANNIE
Even in Elkhead there were fires this day. In the Gilead saloon one might have thought that the liquid heat which the men imbibed would serve in place of stoves, but the proprietor, "Pale Annie," had an eye to form, and when the sky was grey he always lighted the stove.
"Pale Annie" he was called because his real name was Anderson Hawberry Sandringham. That name had been a great aid to him when he was an undertaker in Kansas City; but Anderson Hawberry Sandringham had fallen from the straight and narrow path of good undertakers some years before and he had sought refuge in the mountain-desert, where most things prosper except sheriffs and grass. He was fully six inches more than six feet in height and his face was so long and pale that even Haw-Haw Langley seemed cheerful beside the ex-undertaker. In Kansas City this had been much prized, for that single face could lend solemnity to any funeral. In Elkhead it was hardly less of an asset.
People came out of curiosity to see Pale Annie behind the bar with his tall silk hat—which he could never bring himself to lay aside—among the cobwebs of the rafters. They came out of curiosity and they remained to drink—which is a habit in the mountain-desert. A travelling drummer or a patent medicine man had offered Pale Annie a handsome stake to simply go about with him and lend the sanction of his face to the talk of the drummer, but Pale Annie had discovered a veritable philosopher's stone in Elkhead and he was literally turning whiskey into gold.
This day was even more prosperous than usual for Pale Annie, for the grey weather and the chilly air made men glad of the warmth, both external and internal, which Pale Annie possessed in his barroom. His dextrous hands were never for a moment still at the bar, either setting out drinks or making change, except when he walked out and threw a fresh feed into the fire, and stirred up the ruddy depths of the stove with a tall poker. It was so long, indeed, that it might have served even Pale Annie for a cane and it was a plain untapered bar of iron which the blacksmith had given him as the price of a drink, on a day. He needed a large poker, however, for there was only the one stove in the entire big room, and it was a giant of its kind, as capacious as a hogshead. This day Pale Annie kept it red hot, so that the warmth might penetrate to the door on the one hand and to the rear of the room where the tables and chairs were, on the other.
Since Pale Annie's crowd took little exercise except for bending their elbows now and again, and since the majority of them had been in the place fully half the day, by ten in the evening sounds of hilarity began to rise from the saloon. Solemn-faced men who had remained in their places for hour after hour, industriously putting away the red-eye, now showed symptoms of life. Some of them discovered hitherto hidden talents as singers, and they would rise from their places, remove their hats, open their bearded mouths, and burst into song. An antiquarian who had washed gold in '49 and done nothing the rest of his life save grow a prodigious set of pure white whiskers, sprang from his place and did a hoe-down that ravished the beholders. Thrice he was compelled to return to the floor; and in the end his performance was only stopped by an attack of sciatica. Two strong men carried him back to his chair and wept over him, and there was another drink all around.
In this scene of universal joy there were two places of shadow. For at the rear end of the room, almost out of reach of the lantern-light, sat Haw-Haw Langley and Mac Strann. The more Haw-Haw Langley drank the more cadaverous grew his face, until in the end it was almost as solemn as that of Pale Annie himself; as for Mac Strann, he seldom drank at all.
A full hour had just elapsed since either of them spoke, yet Haw-Haw Langley said, as if in answer to a remark: "He's heard too much about you, Mac. He ain't no such fool as to come to Elkhead."
"He ain't had time," answered the giant.
"Ain't had time? All these days?"
"Wait till the dog gets well. He'll follow the dog to Elkhead."
"Why, Mac, the trail's been washed out long ago. That wind the other day would of knocked out any trail less'n a big waggon."
"It won't wash out the trail for that dog," said Mac Strann calmly.
"Well," snarled Haw-Haw, "I got to be gettin' back home pretty soon. I ain't rollin' in coin the way you are, Mac."
The other returned no answer, but let his eyes rove vacantly over the room, and since his head was turned the other way, Haw-Haw Langley allowed a sneer to twist at his lips for a moment.
"If I had the price," he said, "we'd have another drink."
"I ain't drinkin'," answered the giant monotonously.
"Then I'll go up and bum one off'n Pale Annie. About time he come through with a little charity."
So he unfurled his length and stalked through the crowd up to the bar. Here he leaned and confidentially whispered in the ear of Pale Annie.
"Partner, I been sprinklin' dust for a long time in here, and there ain't been any reward. I'm dry, Annie."
Pale Annie regarded him with grave disapproval.
"My friend," he said solemnly, "liquor is the real root of all evil. For my part, I quench my thirst with water. They's a tub over there in the corner with a dipper handy. Don't mention it."
"I didn't thank you," said Haw-Haw Langley furiously. "Damn a tight-wad, say I!"
The long hand of Pale Annie curled affectionately around the neck of an empty bottle.
"I didn't quite gather what you said?" he remarked courteously, and leaned across the bar—within striking distance.
"I'll tell you later," remarked Haw-Haw sullenly, and turned his shoulder to the bar.
As he did so two comparatively recent arrivals came up beside him. They were fresh from a couple of months of range-finding, and they had been quenching a concentrated thirst by concentrated effort. Haw-Haw Langley looked them over, sighed with relief, and then instantly produced Durham and the brown papers. He paused in the midst of rolling his cigarette and offered them to the nearest fellow.
"Smoke?" he asked.
Now a man of the mountain-desert knows a great many things, but he does not know how to refuse. The proffer of a gift embarrasses him, but he knows no way of avoiding it; also he never rests easy until he has made some return.
"Sure," said the man, and gathered in the tobacco and papers. "Thanks!"
He covertly dropped the cigarette which he had just lighted, and stepped on it, then he rolled another from Haw-Haw's materials. The while, he kept an uneasy eye on his new companion.
"Drinkin'?" he asked at length.
"Not jest now," said Haw-Haw carelessly.
"Always got room for another," protested the other, still more in earnest as he saw his chance of a return disappearing.
"All right, then," said Haw-Haw. "Jest one more."
And he poured a glass to the brim, waved it gracefully towards the others without spilling a drop, and downed it at a gulp.
"Ben in town long?" he asked.
"Not long enough to find any action," answered the other.
The eye of Haw-Haw Langley brightened. He looked over the two carefully. The one had black hair and the other red, but they were obviously brothers, both tall, thick-shouldered, square-jawed, and pug-nosed. There was Irish blood in that twain; the fire in their eyes could have come from only one place on earth. And Haw-Haw grinned and looked down the length of the room to where Mac Strann sat, a heavy, inert mass, his fleshy forehead puckered into a half-frown of animal wistfulness.
"You ain't the only ones," he said to his companion at the bar. "They's a man in town who says they don't turn out any two men in this range that could give him action."
"The hell!" grunted he of the red hair. And he looked down to his blunt-knuckled hands.
"'S matter of fact," continued Haw-Haw easily, "he's right here now!"
He looked again towards Mac Strann and remembered once more the drink which Mac might so easily have purchased for him.
"It ain't Pale Annie, is it?" asked the black haired man, casting a dubious glance up and down the vast frame of the undertaker.
"Him? Not half!" grinned Haw-Haw. "It's a fet feller down to the end of the bar. I guess he's been drinkin' some. Kind of off his nut."
He indicated Mac Strann.
"He looks to me," said the red-haired man, setting his jaw, "like a feller that ain't any too old to learn one more thing about the range in these parts."
"He looks to me," chimed in the black haired brother, "like a feller that might be taught something right here in Pale Annie's barroom. Anyway, he's got room at his table for two more."
So saying the two swallowed their drinks and rumbled casually down the length of the room until they came to the table where Mac Strann sat. Haw-Haw Langley followed at a discreet distance and came within earshot to hear the deep voice of Mac Strann rumbling: "Sorry, gents, but that chair is took."
The black-haired man sank into the indicated chair.
"You're right," he announced calmly. "Anybody could see with half an eye that you ain't a fool. It's took by me!"
And he grinned impudently in the face of Mac Strann. The latter, who had been sitting with slightly bent head, now raised it and looked the pair over carelessly; there was in his eye the same dumb curiosity which Haw-Haw Langley had seen many a time in the eye of a bull, leader of the herd.
The giant explained carefully: "I mean, they's a friend of mine that's been sittin' in that chair."
"If I ain't your friend," answered the black-haired brother instantly, "it ain't any fault of mine. Lay it up to yourself, partner!"
Mac Strann stretched out his hand on the surface of the table.
He said: "I got an idea you better get out of that chair."
The other turned his head slowly on all sides and then looked Mac Strann full in the face.
"Maybe they's something wrong with my eyes," he said, "but I don't see no reason."
The little dialogue had lasted long enough to focus all eyes on the table at the end of the room, and therefore there were many witnesses to what followed. The arm of Mac Strann shot out; his hand fastened in the collar of the black-haired man's shirt, and the latter was raised from his seat and propelled to one side by a convulsive jerk. He probably would have been sent crashing into the bar had not his shirt failed under the strain. It ripped in two at the shoulders, and the seeker after action, naked to the waist, went reeling back to the middle of the room, before he gained his balance. After him went Mac Strann with an agility astonishing in that squat, formless bulk. His long arms were outstretched and his fingers tensed, and in his face there was an uncanny joy; his lip had lifted in that peculiarly disheartening sneer.
He was not a pace from him of the black hair when a yell of rage behind him and the other brother leaped through the air and landed on Mac Strann's back. He doubled up, slipped his arms behind him, and the next instant, without visible reason, the red-headed man hurtled through the air and smashed against the bar with a jolt that set the glassware shivering and singing. Then he relaxed on the floor, a twisted and foolish looking mass.
As for the seeker after action, he had at first reached after his revolver, but he changed his mind at the last instant and instead picked up the great poker which leaned against the stove. It was a ponderous weapon and he had to wield it in both hands. As he swung it around his head there was a yell from men ducking out of the way, and Pale Annie curled his hand again around his favorite empty bottle. He had no good opportunity to demonstrate its efficiency, however. Mac Strann, crouching in the position from which he had catapulted the red-haired man, cast upwards a single glance at the other brother, and then he sprang in. The poker hissed through the air with the vigour of a strong man's arms behind it and it would have cracked the head of Mac Strann like an empty egg-shell if it had hit its mark. But it was heaved too high, and Mac Strann went in like a football player rushing the line, almost doubled up against the floor as he ran. His shoulders struck the other hardly higher than the knees, and they went down together, but so doing the head of Mac Strann's victim cracked against the floor, and he also was still.
The exploit was greeted by a yell of applause and then someone proposed a cheer, and it was given. It died off short on the lips of the applauders, however, for it was seen that Mac Strann was not yet done with his work, and he went about it in a manner which made men sober suddenly and exchange glances.
First the stranger dragged the two brothers together, laying one of them face down on the floor. The second he placed over the first, back to back. Next he picked up the long poker from the floor and slipped it under the head and down to the neck of the first man. The bystanders watched in utter silence, with a touch of horror coming now in their eyes.
Now Mac Strann caught the ends of the iron and began to twist up on them. There was no result at first. He refreshed his hold and tried again. The sleeves of his shirt were seen to swell and then grow hard and taut with vast play of muscle beneath. His head bowed lower between his shoulders, and those shoulders trembled, and the muscles over them quivered like heat-waves rising of a spring morning. There was a creaking, now, and then the iron was seen to shiver and then bend, slowly, and once it was wrenched out of the horizontal, the motion was more and more rapid. Until, when the giant was done with his labor, the ends of the iron over-lapped around the necks of the two luckless brothers. Mac Strann stepped back and surveyed his work; the rest of the room was in silence, saving that the red-headed man was coming back to consciousness and now writhed and groaned feebly. He could not rise; that was manifest, for the thick band of iron tied his neck to the neck of his brother.
Upon this scene Mac Strann gazed with a thoughtful air and then stepped to the side of the room where stood a bucket of dirty water, recently used for mopping behind the bar. This he caught up, returned, and dashed the black, greasy water over the pair.
If it had been electricity it could not have operated more effectively. The two awoke with one mind, and with a tremendous spluttering and cursing struggled to regain their feet. It was no easy thing, however, for when one stood up the other slipped and in his fall involved the brother. In the meantime it made a jest exactly suited to the mind of Elkhead, and shrieks of hysterical laughter rewarded their struggles. Until at length they sat solemnly, back to back, easing the pressure of the iron as best they might with their hands. Assembled Elkhead reeled about the room, drunken with laughter. But Mac Strann went quietly back to his table and paid no attention to the scene.
There is an end to all good things, however, and finally the two brothers concerted action together, rose, and then side-stepped towards the door, dripping the mop-water at every step. Obviously they were bound for the blacksmith's to lose their collar; and everyone in the saloon knew that the blacksmith was not in town.
The old man who had done the hoe-down hobbled to the end of the barroom and before the table of Mac Strann made a speech to the effect that Elkhead had everything it needed except laughter, that Mac Strann had come to their assistance in that respect, and that if he, the old man, had the power, he would pension such an efficient jester and keep him permanently in the town. To all of this Mac Strann paid not the slightest heed, but with his fleshy brow puckered considered the infinite distance. Even the drink which Pale Annie, grateful for the averted riot, placed on the table before him, Mac Strann allowed to stand untasted. And it was private stock!
It was at this time that Haw-Haw Langley made his way back to the table and occupied the contested seat.
"That was a bum play," he said solemnly to Mac Strann. "When Barry hears about what you done here to two men, d'you think that he'll ever hit your trail?"
The other started.
"I never thought about it," he murmured, his thick lips, as always, framing speech with difficulty. "D'you s'pose I'd ought to go back to the Cumberland place for him?"
A yell rose at the farther end of the room.
"A wolf! Hey! Shoot the damn wolf!"
"You fool!" cried another. "He ain't skinny enough to be a wolf. Besides, whoever heard of a tame wolf comin' into a barroom?"
Nevertheless many a gun was held in readiness, and the men, even the most drunken, fell back to one side and allowed a free passage for the animal. It seemed, indeed, to be a wolf, and a giant of its kind, and it slunk now with soundless step through the silence of the barroom, glancing neither to right nor to left, until it came before the table of Mac Strann. There it halted and slunk back a little, the upper lip lifted away from the long fangs, its eyes glittered upon the face of the giant, and then it swung about and slipped out of the barroom as it had come, in utter silence.
In the utter silence Mac Strann leaned across the table to Haw-Haw Langley.
"He's come alone this time," he said, "but the next time he'll bring his master with him. We'll wait!"
The Adam's-apple rose and fell in the throat of Haw-Haw.
"We'll wait," he nodded, and he burst into the harsh, unhuman laughter which had given him his name.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE
This is the letter which Swinnerton Loughburne received over the signature of Doctor Randall Byrne. It was such a strange letter that between paragraphs Swinnerton Loughburne paced up and down his Gramercy Park studio and stared, baffled, at the heights of the Metropolitan Tower.
"Dear Swinnerton,
"I'll be with you in good old Manhattan about as soon as you get this letter. I'm sending this ahead because I want you to do me a favour. If I have to go back to those bare, blank rooms of mine with the smell of chemicals drifting in from the laboratory, I'll—get drunk. That's all!"
Here Swinnerton Loughburne lowered the letter to his knees and grasped his head in both hands. Next he turned to the end of the letter and made sure that the signature was "Randall Byrne." He stared again at the handwriting. It was not the usual script of the young doctor. It was bolder, freer, and twice as large as usual; there was a total lack of regard for the amount of stationery consumed.
Shaking his head in bewilderment, Swinnerton Loughburne shook his fine grey head and read on: "What I want you to do, is to stir about and find me a new apartment. Mind you, I don't want the loft of some infernal Arcade building in the Sixties. Get me a place somewhere between Thirtieth and Fifty-eighth. Two bed-rooms. I want a place to put some of the boys when they drop around my way. And at least one servant's room. Also at least one large room where I can stir about and wave my arms without hitting the chandelier. Are you with me?"
Here Swinnerton Loughburne seized his head between both hands again and groaned: "Dementia! Plain and simple dementia! And at his age, poor boy!"
He continued: "Find an interior decorator. Not one of these fuzzy haired women-in-pants, but a he-man who knows what a he-man needs. Tell him I want that place furnished regardless of expense. I want some deep chairs that will hit me under the knees. I want some pictures on the wall—but nothing out of the Eighteenth Century—no impressionistic landscapes—no girls dolled up in fluffy stuff. I want some pictures I can enjoy, even if my maiden aunt can't. There you are. Tell him to go ahead on those lines.
"In a word, Swinnerton, old top, I want to live. For about thirty years I've thought, and now I know that there's nothing in it. All the thinking in the world won't make one more blade of grass grow; put one extra pound on the ribs of a long-horn; and in a word, thinking is the bunk, pure and simple!"
At this point Swinnerton Loughburne staggered to the window, threw it open, and leaned out into the cold night. After a time he had strength enough to return to his chair and read through the rest of the epistle without interruption.
"You wonder how I've reached the new viewpoint? Simply by seeing some concentrated life here at the Cumberland ranch. My theories are blasted and knocked in the head—praise God!—and I've brushed a million cobwebs out of my brain. Chemistry? Rot! There's another sort of chemistry that works on the inside of a man. That's what I want to study. There are three great preliminary essentials to the study:
1st: How to box with a man. 2nd: How to talk with a girl. 3rd: How to drink old wine.
Try the three, Swinnerton; they aren't half bad. At first they may give you a sore jaw, an aching heart, and a spinning head, but in the end they teach you how to keep your feet and fight!
"This is how my eyes were opened.
"When I came out to this ranch it was hard for me to ride a horse. So I've been studying how it should be done. Among other things, you should keep your toes turned in, you know. And there are many other things to learn.
"When I had mastered them one by one I went out the other day and asked to have a horse saddled. It was done, and a lantern-jawed cowpuncher brought out a piebald gelding with long ears and sleepy eyes. Not a lovely beast, but a mild one. So I went into the saddle according to theory—with some slight hesitations here and there, planted my feet in the stirrups, and told the lantern-jawed fellow to turn loose the head of the piebald. This was done. I shook the reins. The horse did not move. I called to the brute by name. One ear wagged back to listen to me.
"I kicked the beast in the ribs. Unfortunately I had forgotten that long spurs were on my heels. The horse was instantly aware of that fact, however. He leaped into a full gallop. A very jolty process. Then he stopped—but I kept on going. A fence was in the way, so I was halted. Afterwards the lantern-jawed man picked me up and offered to carry me back to the house or at least get a wheelbarrow for me. I refused with some dignity. I remarked that I preferred walking, really, and so I started out across the hills and away from the house. My head was sore; so were my shoulders where I hit the fence; I began to think of the joy of facing that horse again, armed with a club.
"It was evening—after supper, you see—and the light of the moon was already brighter than the sunlight. And by the time I had crossed the first range of hills, it was quite dark. As I walked I brooded upon many things. There were enough to disturb me.
"There was old Joe Cumberland, at death's door and beyond the reach of my knowledge; and he had been taken away from death by the wild man, Dan Barry. There was the girl with the bright hair—Kate Cumberland. In education, nothing; in brain, nothing; in experience, nothing; and yet I was attracted. But she was not attracted in the least until along came the wild man again, and then she fell into his arms—actually fought for him! Why? I could not tell. My name and the things I have done and even my money, meant nothing to her. But when he came it was only a glance, a word, a smile, and she was in his arms. I felt like Caligula. I wished the world had only one neck, and I an axe. But why should I have felt depressed because of failures in the eyes of these silly yokels? Not one of them could read the simplest chemical formula!
"All very absurd, you will agree, and you may get some inkling as to my state of mind while I walked over those same dark hills. I seemed a part of that darkness. I looked up to the stars. They were merely like the pages of a book. I named them off hand, one after the other, and thought of their characteristics, their distances, their composition, and meditated on the marvels the spectrum has made known to us. But no sooner did such a train of thoughts start in my brain, than I again recurred to the girl, Kate Cumberland, and all I was aware of was a pain at heart—something like homesickness. Very strange.
"She and the man are together constantly. The other day I was in Joseph Cumberland's room and we heard whistling outside. The face of the old man lighted, 'They are together again,' he said. 'How do you guess at that?' I asked. 'By the sound of his whistling,' he answered. 'For he whistles as if he expected an answer—as if he were talking with someone.' And by the Lord, the old man was right. It would never have occurred to me!
"Now as I started down the farther slope of a hill a whistling sound ran upon me through the wind, and looking back I saw a horseman galloping with great swiftness along the line of the crest, very plainly outlined by the sky, and by something of smoothness in the running of the horse I knew that it was Barry and his black stallion. But the whistling—the music! Dear God, man, have you read of the pipes of Pan? That night I heard them and it made a riot in my heart.
"He was gone, suddenly, and the whistling went out like a light, but something had happened inside me—the first beginning of this process of internal change. The ground no longer seemed so dark. There were earth smells—very friendly—I heard some little creature chirruping contentedly to itself. Something hummed—a grasshopper, perhaps. And then I looked up to the stars. There was not a name I could think of—I forgot them all, and for the first time I was contented to look at them and wonder at their beauty without an attempt at analysis or labelling.
"If I say that I went back to the ranch-house with my feet on the ground and by heart up there among the stars, will you understand?
"I found the girl sewing in front of the fire in the living room. Simply looked up to me with a smile, and a certain dimness about the eyes—well, my breath stopped.
"'Kate,' said I, 'I am going away to-morrow morning!'
"'And leave Dad?' said she.
"'To tell you the truth,' I answered, 'there is nothing I can do for him. There has never been anything I could do for him.'
"'I am sorry,' said she, and lifted up her eyes to me.
"Now, I had begun by being stiff with her, but the ringing of that whistling—pipes of Pan, you know—was in my ears. I took a chair beside her. Something overflowed in my heart. For the first time in whole days I could look on her beauty without pain.
"'Do you know why I'm going?' I asked.
"She waited.
"'Because,' said I, and smiled right into her face, 'I love you, Kate, most infernally; and I know perfectly well that I will get never the devil a bit of good out of it.'
"She peered at me. 'You aren't jesting?' says she. 'No, you're serious. I'm very sorry, Doctor Byrne.'
"'And I,' I answered, 'am glad. I wouldn't change it for the world. For once in my life—to-night—I've forgotten myself. No, I won't go away and nurse a broken heart, but I'll think of you as a man should think of something bright and above him. You'll keep my heart warm, Kate, till I'm a very old man. Because of you, I'll be able to love some other girl—and a fine one, by the Lord!'
"Something in the nature of an outburst, eh? But it was the music which had done it. All the time it rang and echoed through my ears. My words were only an echo of it. I was in tune with the universe. I was living for the first time. The girl dropped her sewing—tossed it aside. She came over to me and took my hands in a way that would have warmed even the icicles of your heart, Swinnerton.
"'Doctor,' says she, 'I know that you are going to be very happy.'
"'Happiness,' said I, 'is a trick, like riding a horse. And I think that I've learned the trick. I've caught it from you and from Barry.'
"At that, she let go my hands and stepped back. The very devil is in these women, Swinnerton. You never can place them for a minute at a time.
"'I am trying to learn myself,' she said, and there was a shadow of wistfulness in her eyes.
"In another moment I should have made a complete fool of myself, but I remembered in time and got out of the room. To-morrow I start back for the old world but I warn you beforehand, my dear fellow, that I'm bringing something of the new world with me.
"What has it all brought to me? I am sad one day and gay the next. But at least I know that thinking is not life and now I'm ready to fight.
"Randall Byrne."
