The Black Rider (20 page)
Authors: Max Brand
Here, then, had his dream gone out. But, as the first rush of relief left him, he was struck with a sharp little pang of grief. He had banished that dream and all that was in it. He had found the most simple of explanations. But what of the girl? By the fashion of that coat and the puffed shoulders, she was dead these many years, or else she had grown into middle age, something of her youth had died from her. She was dead, indeed, and he could never find her as he had seen her.
The door opened on the chambermaid with clean linen over her arm.
“Look here,” said Macdonald to the old woman. “Have you ever known the girl in this picture?”
“Miss Mary Moore?” said the other. “Sure I knew her! Mind you, the man that painted that picture was her lover, and she died in a fall from that very same horse three days after that picture was painted. I mind it as
well as if it was yesterday. I was a servant in this house then, and I’ve been here ever since!”
Macdonald dismissed her with a dollar bill and returned to his own gloomy thoughts. He had gone for two days in what he considered an exquisite torment. But now he began to wonder if the torment into which he was passing might not be worse after all. For there had lingered in his mind, all those hours, the hope that some day he would find her, just as she had been when she rode into his dream. And if all the terror of the dream were gone, all the beauty of it was gone, too.
There was a light rap at the door, and he bade the person enter. It was a dusty, barefoot boy with a letter in his hand, and great frightened eyes fixed upon the face of Macdonald, as though the latter had been an evil spirit. He was gone the instant the big man took the envelope. Macdonald tore it open and found within it the shortest and the most eloquent of notes:
I am waiting for you, just in front of the blacksmith shop
Rory Moore
Methodically he tore the letter to bits. It was an old habit of his. Next, still out of force of habit, he took out his Colt and examined it from muzzle to the butt, polished by the years of use. Last of all he turned to the picture of Mary Moore. What he had seen in the dream was true enough. She was very like Rory. She might have posed as his sister.
L
ike all events which grow in importance after they happen, and which become a part of even minor history, what happened that day was remembered even to the most minute details. And everyone of mature years in the town was able to recall some part. At least they had seen Macdonald issue from the hotel, dressed with unusual care, a flaming red bandanna around his throat, with the point hanging far down between his shoulders, and a great sombrero decorated with silver medallions upon his head, and his boots shined until they were like twin mirrors. One might have thought that he was going to be the best man at a wedding, the groom himself. But everyone knew that he was going out to give battle and take a life, or give his own. For the rumor had passed, as swiftly as rumors do, through the length and the breadth of the town that Rory Moore was waiting in front of the blacksmith shop, and that he had sent a message to the terrible Macdonald.
So scores of eyes were watching as the big man walked down the single street of the village. He had never seemed taller. He had never seemed more sedate. He carried with him that unconscious air of importance which goes with men who have seen or suffered much.
He paused at the corner, where the corral from the hotel bordered the street. There he leaned against the fence and called. And the big red stallion came running
to the voice of his new master. A dozen men swore that they saw Macdonald pass his arms around the neck of the horse and put his head down beside the head of Sunset.
Then he went on again with as light a stride as ever. When the watchers thought of Rory Moore, their hearts shrank within them. For it seemed impossible that such a force as Macdonald could be stopped by any one man.
More than one hardy cowpuncher set his teeth at the thought and looked to his gun. If anything happened to Rory it would take all the desperate nerve and skill of a Macdonald to get out of that town. For they had determined that, fair play or not, the time had come to finish this destroyer of men.
In the meantime Macdonald had passed the general merchandise store. He had come to the Perkins place, and there he paused to speak to an old Mexican beggar woman who came with a toothless whine to ask for money. They saw him take out a whole wad of rustling bills and drop it into her hand. The bills overflowed. She leaped upon them like an agile old beast of prey. When she straightened again, he was half a block away, and she poured out a shrill volley of blessings. Her borrowed English failed her, and to become truly eloquent she fell back upon the native Spanish and filled the air with it.
But her benefactor went on without a glance behind him.
“He’s superstitious,” said the beholders. “He’s trying to get good luck for the meeting with Rory…and the devil take him and the old beggar!”
But now he had come in sight of the blacksmith shop. A cluster of men fell back. One or two lingered beside Rory Moore, begging him to the last minute not to throw away his life in vain. But he tore himself away from them
and strode well out into the street, where the fierce white sun beat down upon him. Nearer drew Macdonald, and still his bearing was as casual and light as the bearing of any pleasure seeker.
“Macdonald!” cried Rory Moore suddenly in a wild, hoarse voice.
“Well, Rory,” answered the smooth tones of the man-killer, “are you ready?”
“Yes, curse you, ready!”
“Then get your gun!”
And Rory, waiting for no second invitation, reached for the butt of his Colt. It was an odd contrast that lay between the two, as they faced one another, Rory crouched over and taut with eagerness, and the tall and careless form of Macdonald. And it seemed that the same carelessness was in the gesture with which he reached for his weapon. Yet such was the consummate speed of that motion that his gun was bare before the revolver of Rory Moore was out of the holster. His gun was bare, but there seemed to be some slip. Carelessness had been carried too far, for the gun flashed in his hand and dropped into the dust.
And Rory? His own weapon exploded. It knocked up a little fountain of dust at the feet of the giant. He fired again, and Macdonald collapsed backward, like a falling tower. The big sombrero dropped from his head, and he lay with his long red hair floating like blood across the dust.
And yet so incredible was it to all who watched that Macdonald should indeed have fallen, that there was a long pause before a yell of triumph rose from a hundred throats, and they closed around the big man, like wolves around a dead lion.
And when the wonder of it was faded a little, they picked up his gun, where it had fallen in the dust. They
picked it up, they examined it, as one might have examined the sword of Achilles, after the arrow had struck his heel, and the venom had worked. They broke the gun open. But not a bullet fell out. And then they saw that it was empty, and that Macdonald had come so carelessly down that street not to kill, but to be killed!
It was a thunderstroke to the townsmen. It was as though the devil, being trailed into a corner, should turn into an angel and take flight for heaven!
“There ain’t more’n one way of looking at it,” said the sheriff, when he came into the town that evening on a foaming horse. “Macdonald didn’t want to kill young Moore. But he had to face him, or be called a coward. And there you have it! He’s been a hound all his life, but he’s died like a hero!”
And that was the motive behind the monument which was built for Macdonald in that town. Although partly perhaps, they simply wanted to identify themselves with that terrible and romantic figure.
But, while the turmoil of talk was sweeping up and down the town, two women were the first to think of striving to untangle the mysterious motives of Macdonald by something which he might have left behind him in his room—perhaps some letter to explain everything.
It was Mrs. Charles Moore who led the way, and with her went her niece, the sister of Rory They found the room undisturbed, exactly as it had been when Macdonald left. But all they found was his rifle, his other revolver, his slicker, and his bed roll. There was nothing else except a few trifles. So they began to look around the room itself.
“And look yonder!” cried Mrs. Charles Moore. “There’s the place he dumped out the bullets from his gun…poor man…right underneath the picture of your poor
dead Aunt Mary! And, child, child, how astonishingly you’ve grown to be like her! I’ve never seen such a likeness…just in the last year you’ve sprouted up and grown into the very shadow of her!”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “how can you talk of such things!” “What in the world…” began the other. “Here in this very room…and…here where he thought his last thoughts!”
“Heavens above, silly child, you’re weeping for him!” “But I saw him when they carried him in from the street,” said Mary softly, with the tears running slowly down her face. “And even in death he seemed a greater man than any I’ll ever see. And one great arm and hand was hanging down…I shall never forget!”
I
n the Golden Age of American fiction magazines, the decades between 1920 and 1940, many of the slick paper publications had a category known as the short short story. W Somerset Maugham wrote several fine short shorts for
Cosmopolitan. Liberty Magazine
offered an annual prize of $1,000 above the standard payment for the best short short to appear in its pages, and there was one every week. In the 1930s Alan Le May wrote numerous brilliant short shorts for
Collier’s.
The short short at
The American Magazine
was called a “sto-riette” and in “Partners” in the issue dated January, 1938, Faust took up the challenge of this most demanding of all forms of fiction. During his lifetime Faust signed his own name to only ten stories. This was one of them.
Since the days of Anton Chekhov who along with Edgar Allan Poe really pioneered the short short story the structure has always been what Aristotle in the
Poetics
termed in Greek drama the
anagnorisis:
the shock of revelation. There is little time in a short short story for plot contrivances. The focus must be on one climatic moment in the life of a man or woman when all that went before and all that will follow, as in a sudden flash of summer lightning, stands painfully naked and starkly quiveringly real. “Partners” records one such moment. What reaffirms that this is truly a
Western
story is to be found in the last line.
A
fter September, no one takes Caldwell Pass because, although it is the shortest way west from Bisby it is so high, so threatened with avalanches of snow and rubble. It has a bad name, also, for the northwest wind which, once it sights its way down the ravine, can blow frost even into the heart of a mountain sheep.
This was a December day, but Tucker was spending the early afternoon in Caldwell Pass, sitting behind a stone with his rifle across his knees. Once a bird shadow slid over him. As it moved beside the rock it touched Tucker with a finger of ice and forced him to shift his position. But he waited with the patience of a good hunter until he heard the footfall come down the pass toward him. Then he slid the rifle out into the crevice of the rock.
He waited till he could hear the man’s breathing. Then he said, “Hands up, Jack!”
Huntingdon turned his back sharply. Seen from behind there was no trace of middle age about him. He looked as trim and powerful as a young athlete.
The echo in the ravine had fooled him. “Well, Harry?” he was saying.
“Keep your hands up. You’ll get it straight through the back of the head if you don’t,” said Tucker to the big man.
He went out and laid the muzzle of the rifle against
the base of Huntingdon’s skull. He held the gun under his right arm and patted the clothes of his partner with his left hand. He found the fat lump which the wallet made, and drew it out. There was no weapon.
“All right, Jack. Turn around,” he said.
Huntingdon turned. He was a bit white on each cheek, below the cheekbone. He kept on smiling.
“How much did you take?” asked Tucker, with his gun still threatening.
“I cleaned out the safe.”
“You left me flat?”
“I left you the house, the office, and the good will,” said Huntingdon.
“I had the house and the office and the good will before you came,” said Tucker.
“You had a mortgage on the house; nobody ever came to your office; and where was the good will?” asked Huntingdon.
Tucker frowned. He had been telling himself that he was the mere executor of justice; but he might have known that the tongue of Huntingdon would turn this execution into murder.
“Kind of surprised to find me here, aren’t you?” asked Tucker.
“I’m surprised…a little.”
“Why, I’ve always seen through you,” said Tucker. “I knew about you and Molly right from the first.”
He laughed, without letting the laughter shake his body or the gun in his hands.
“You never knew a wrong thing between us,” said Huntingdon.
“Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong enough to get a divorce for,” said Tucker.
“Molly’s dead,” said Huntingdon. “For God’s sake, Harry…she’s dead!”
Tucker licked his lips. It pleased him to see the pain in Huntingdon’s eyes.
“There’s more things than bedtime stories in the world,” he persisted. “There’s a sneaking into a man’s life and taking his wife away from him. There’s a holding together of eyes, when the hands don’t touch. There’s a way of just silently enduring the poor damned fool of a husband. There’s…! Oh, damn you! You rotten…!” He got out of breath and took a deep inhalation through his teeth. “I wish she could see you here, with the stolen money!” said Tucker.
Huntingdon smiled. “I think you’re going to kill me.”
Tucker looked at that handsome face with a dreadful amazement; for he saw that his partner was not afraid.
“Before you put the bullet into me, though,” said Huntingdon, “I want to speak about the money. I’ve worked for ten years for you. Slaved. You called me a junior partner. But I was only a slave. At the end of that time, I had nothing.”
“You know the kind of expenses…,” began Tucker.
“At the end of ten years,” said Huntingdon, “I find eighteen hundred dollars in the safe, and I take it. It’s the only way I’ll ever get a share. I take the money and get out. I thought I was going ten thousand miles to have elbow-room between us.…But this way is about as good. It will put the greatest possible distance between us.”
“Now, what in hell d’you mean by that?” asked Tucker.
“You couldn’t understand.”
“It’s too high for me to understand? It’s above me, maybe?” All at once Tucker screamed, “Take this, then! And this!”
He fired as he was shouting. And the rifle went crazy in his hands. It missed twice. The third bullet hit
Huntingdon between the knee and the hip. He sank slowly to the ground. The blood came up in a welter of dark red. It soaked his trouser leg at once and began to trickle down over the rock.
“You’re too high for me, are you?” yelled Tucker. “Well, what you think now…? Another thing, damn you, and you listen hard to it. What you ever do with your life before you hooked up with me in the partnership? Just a bum. Just a rambling bum. Never did a thing. Isn’t that true? Speak out!”
“It’s true,” said Huntingdon.
“Never a damn’ bit of good to yourself or anybody else till you hooked up with me,” said Tucker.
“That’s true, also,” said Huntingdon. He looked away from Tucker and smiled at the sky. “In a sense, I suppose, we needed each other; in a sense, perhaps we were ideal partners,” he said.
Tucker began to laugh, and then a chill gust of wind stopped his breath, quickly, like a handstroke. It was not a mere breath of wind. It was the true northwester which had found the ravine and was sighting down it as down a gun barrel.
He withdrew himself from his passion and, looking about him, saw that the sun was about to set. It was more than time for him to start back home. In spite of his fleece-lined coat, his teeth would be chattering long before he got out of the pass. He turned with the rifle toward big Huntingdon. His face was blue with cold. Tucker had lifted the gun butt to his shoulder, but now he lowered it again.
“I’ve got to leave you, Jack,” he said. “But it’ll be thirty below in half an hour, with plenty of wind to drive the cold through you. You’re going to have a few minutes to think things over, and then…you’ll get sleepy!”
He saw Huntingdon’s eyes widen; and then he was calm again.
“Good bye, then,” said Huntingdon.
“Ah, to hell with you!” snarled Tucker.
He whirled, determined to run the entire distance down the pass in order to keep from freezing, but with his first springing step his feet shot from beneath him, because he had stepped in the blood that ran from Huntingdon. He came down heavily on his right knee, and heard the bone crunch like old wood.
For an instant the pain leaped out of the broken bone and ached behind his eyes; then he forgot all about it because he realized that he was about to die. The northwest wind pitched its song an octave higher, and right through the heavy, fleece-lined coat it laid its invisible hand on the naked flesh of Tucker.
Huntingdon’s voice said, cheerfully, “If you finish me off now, and take my clothes, the warmth of them will do you less good than the warmth of my body…. But if we haul to the windward of that rock and lie down close together…. Sam Hillier comes through the pass tomorrow morning with his pack mules. We might last it out.”
“Lie close together? You and me?” said Tucker, in a sort of horror. And then he saw that it was the only way.
Moving was bitterest agony, but both he and Huntingdon got to the shelter of the big rock, and the salvation from the wind was like a promise of heaven that they still might live. Tucker lay flat on his back, his teeth set with a scream working up higher and higher in his throat. The cut of the wind grew less and less. He opened his eyes and saw that Huntingdon was piling smaller rocks on each side of the boulder so that the icy eddyings of the gale might not get at them.
Afterward, Huntingdon lay down beside him, gathered him close.
“What chance is there?” asked Tucker. “What chance, Jack?”
“One in fifty,” said Huntingdon. And then, as he felt the shudder pass through Tucker’s body, he added, “Yes, or one in five. The thing to do is to keep on hoping, and talking.”
“Ay, and we’ve things to talk about,” said Tucker.
“We have,” answered Huntingdon.
The warmth of Huntingdon’s body began to strike through Tucker’s clothes. He blessed God for it.
“But man, man,” said Tucker, “what a fool you were to come up into Caldwell’s Pass on a December day without a heavy coat! Take the fleece-lined thing off me and put it over us both. And hope, Jack. It’s hope that keeps the heart warm!”
