The Max Brand Megapack (391 page)

She had turned the bay towards the home-trail when something subconsciously noted made her glance over her shoulder. And she saw them! She needed no glass to bring them close. Those six small forms moving over the distant hill could be nothing else, but if she doubted, all room for doubt was instantly removed, for in a moment a group of horsemen passed raggedly over the same crest. Hervey had found them, after all! Tears of relief and astonishment streamed down her face. God bless Lew Hervey for this good work!

Even the bay seemed to recover her spirit at the sight. She had picked up her head before she felt the rein of the mistress and now she answered the first word by swinging into a brisk gallop that overhauled the others swiftly. How the eyes of Marianne feasted on the reclaimed truants! They danced along gaily, their slender bodies shining with sweat in the light of the early day, and Lady Mary mincing in the lead. A moment later, Marianne was among her cowpunchers.

They were stolid as ever but she knew them well enough to understand by the smiles they interchanged, that they were intensely pleased with their work of the night. Then she found herself crying to Hervey: “You’re wonderful! Simply wonderful! How could you have followed them so far and found them in the night?”

At that, of course, Hervey became exceedingly matter of fact. He spoke as though the explanation were self-evident.

“They busted away in a straight line,” he said, “so I knew by that that something was leading ’em. Them bays ain’t got sense enough of their own to run so straight.” She noted the slur without anger. “Well, what was leading ’em must of been what let ’em out of the corral; and what let ’em out of the corral—”

“Horse thieves!” cried Marianne, but Hervey observed her without interest.

“Hoss stealing ain’t popular around these parts for some time,” he said. “Rustle a cow, now and then, but they don’t aim no higher—not since we strung Josh Sinclair to the cottonwood. Nope, they was stole, but not by a man.”

Here he made a tantalizing pause to roll a cigarette with Marianne exclaiming: “If not a man, then what on earth, Mr. Hervey?”

He puffed out his answer with the first big cloud of smoke: “By another hoss! I guessed it right off. Remember what I said last night about the chestnut stallion and the bad luck he put on my gun?”

She recalled vividly how Hervey, with the utmost solemnity, had avowed that the leader of the mustangs put “bad luck” on his bullets and that they had not seen the last of the horse. She dared not trust herself to answer Lew but glanced at the other men to see if they were not smiling at their foreman’s absurd idea; they were as grave as images.

“The chestnut wanted to get back at us for killing his herd off,” went on Hervey. “So he sneaks up to the ranch and opens the corral gate and takes the mares out. When I seen the mares were traveling so straight as all that I guessed what was up. Well, if the hoss was leading ’em, where would he take ’em? Straight to water. They was no use trying to run down them long-legged gallopers. I took a swing off to the right and headed for Warner’s Tank. Sure enough, when we got there we seen the mares spread out and the chestnut and the grey mare hanging around.”

He paused again and looked sternly at Slim, and Slim flushed to the eyes and glared straight ahead.

“Slim, here, had been saying maybe it was my bum shooting and not the bad luck the stallion put on my rifle that made me miss. So I give him the job of plugging the hoss. Well, he tried and missed three times. Off goes the grey and the chestnut like a streak the first crack out of the box, but we got ahead of the mares and turned ’em. And here we are. That’s all they was to it. But,” he added gravely, “we ain’t seen the last of that chestnut hoss, Miss Jordan.”

“I guess hardly another man on the range could have trailed them so well,” she said gratefully. “But this wild horse—do you really think he’ll try to steal our mares again?”

“Think? I know! And the next time we won’t get ’em back so plumb easy. Right this morning, if they’d got started quick enough when he give ’em the signal, we’d never of headed ’em. But they ain’t turned wild yet; they ain’t used to his ways. Give him another whirl with them and they’ll belong to him for good. Ain’t no hosses around these parts can run them mares down!”

She heard the tribute with a smile of pleasure and ran satisfied glances over the six beauties which cantered or trotted before them.

“But even wild things are captured,” she argued. “Even deer are caught. If the chestnut
did
run off the mares again why couldn’t—”

Hervey interrupted dryly: “Down Concord way, Jess Rankin was pestered by a black mustang. Jess was a pretty tolerable fair hunter, knowed mustangs and mustang-ways, and had a right fine string of saddle hosses. Well, it took Jess four years of hard work to get the black. Up by Mexico Creek, Bud Wilkinson had a grey stallion that run amuck on his range. Took Bud nigh onto five years to get the grey. Well, I seen both the grey and the black, and I helped run ’em a couple of times. Well, Miss Jordan, when it come to running, neither of ’em was one-two-three beside this chestnut, and if it took five years to get in rifle range of ’em for a good shot, it’ll take ten to get the chestnut. That’s the way I figure!”

And as he ended, his companions nodded soberly.

“Plumb streak of light,” they said. “Just nacheral crazy fool when it comes to running, that hoss is!”

And Marianne, for the first time truly appreciating how great was the danger from which the mares had been saved, sighed as she looked them over again, one by one. It had been a double triumph, this night’s work. Not only were the mares retaken, but they had proved their speed and staying powers conclusively in the long run over the desert. Hervey himself began hinting, as they rode on, that he would like “to clap a saddle on that Lady Mary hoss, one of these days.” In truth, her purchase was vindicated completely and Marianne fell into a happy dream of a ranch stocked with saddle horses all drawn from the blood of these neat-footed mares. With such horses to offer, she could pick and cull among the best “punchers” in the West.

Into the dream, appropriately enough, ran the neigh of a horse, long drawn and shrill of pitch, interrupted by a sudden burst of deep-throated curses from the riders. The six mares had come to a halt with their beautiful heads raised to listen, and on a far-off hill, Mary saw the signaler—a chestnut horse gleaming red in the morning light.

“It’s him!” shouted Hervey. “The nervy devil has come back to give us a look. Shorty, take a crack at him!”

For that matter, every man in the party was whipping his rifle out of its holster as Mary raised her field glass hurriedly to study the stranger. She focused on him clearly at once and it was a startling thing to see the distant figure shoot suddenly close to her, distinct in every detail, and every detail an item of perfect beauty. She gasped her admiration and astonishment; mustang he might be, but the short line of the back above and the long line below, the deep set of the shoulders, the length of neck, the Arab perfection of head, would have allowed him to pass unquestioned muster among a group of thoroughbreds, and a picked group at that. He turned, at that instant, and galloped a short distance along the crest, neighing again, and then paused like an expectant dog, with one forefoot raised, a white-stockinged forefoot. Marianne gripped the glass hard and then dropped it. By the liquid smoothness of that gallop, by the white-stockinged forefoot, by something about his head, and above all by what she knew of his cunning, she had recognized Alcatraz. And where, in the first glimpse, she had been about to warn the men not to shoot this peerless beauty, she now dropped the glass with the memory of the trampling of Manuel Cordova rushing back across her mind.

“It’s Alcatraz!” she cried. “It’s that chestnut I told you of at Glosterville, Mr. Hervey. Oh, shoot and shoot to kill. He’s a murderer—not a horse!”

That injunction was not needed. The rifle spoke from the shoulder of Shorty, but the stallion neither fell nor fled, and his challenging neigh rang faintly down to them.

“Mind the mares!” shrilled Marianne suddenly. “They’re starting for him!!”

In fact, it seemed as though the report of the rifle had started the Coles horses towards their late companion They went forward at a high-stepping trot as horses will when their minds are not quite made up about their course. Now, in obedience to shouted orders from Hervey, the cowpunchers split into two groups and slipped away on either side to head the truants; Marianne herself, spurring as hard as she could after Hervey, heard the foreman groaning: “By God, d’you ever
see
a hoss stand up under gunfire like that?”

For as they galloped, the men were pumping in shot after shot wildly, and Alcatraz did not stir! The firing merely served to rouse the mares from trot to gallop, and from gallop to run. For the first time Marianne mourned their speed. They glided away as though the horses of the cowpunchers were running fetlock deep in mud; they shot up the slope towards the distant stallion like six bright arrows.

Then came Hervey’s last, despairing effort: “Pull up! Shorty! Slim! Pull up and try to drop that devil!”

They obeyed; Marianne, racing blindly ahead, heard a clanguor of shots behind her and riveted her eyes on the chestnut, waiting for him to fall. But he did not fall. He seemed to challenge the bullets with his lordly head and in another moment he was wheeling with the mares about him. Even in her anguish, Marianne noted with a thrill of wonder that though the Coles horses were racing at the top of their speed, the stallion overtook them instantly and shot into the lead. For that matter, handicapped with a wretched ride, staggering weak from underfeeding, he had been good enough to beat them in Glosterville, and now he was transformed by rich pasture and glorious freedom.

The whole group disappeared, and when she reached the crest in turn, she saw them streaking far off, hopelessly beyond pursuit, and in the rear labored a grey mare, sadly outrun. Then, as she drew rein, with the mare heaving and swaying from exhaustion beneath her, she remembered the words of Lew Hervey: “It’ll take ten years to get the chestnut!” Marianne dropped her face in her hands and burst into tears.

It was only a momentary surrender. When she turned back to join the downheaded men on the home-trail—for it was worse than useless to follow Alcatraz on such jaded horses—Marianne had rallied to continue the fight. Ten years to capture Alcatraz and the mares he led? She swept the forms of the cowpunchers with one of those all-embracing glances of which few great men and all excited women are capable. Yes, old age would capture Alcatraz before such men as these. For this trail there was needed a spirit as much superior to other men in tireless endurance and in speed as Alcatraz was superior to other horses. There was needed a man who stood among his fellows as Alcatraz had stood on the hillcrest, defiant, lordly, and free. And as the thought drove home in her, Marianne uttered a little cry of triumph. All in a breath she had it. Red Perris was the man!

But would he come? Yes, for the sake of such a battle as this he would journey to the end of the world and give his services for nothing.

CHAPTER XI

THE FAILURE

Before noon Shorty, that lightweight and tireless rider, unwearied, to all appearance, by his efforts of that night, had started towards Glosterville with her letter to Perris, but it was not until the next day that she confessed what she had done to Hervey. Certainly he had done more than his share in his effort to get back the Coles horses and she had no wish to needlessly hurt his feelings by letting him know that the business was to be taken out of his hands and given into those of a more efficient worker. But Hervey surprised her by the complaisance with which he heard the tidings.

“Never in my life hung out a shingle as a hoss-catcher,” he assured her. “He’s welcome to the job. Me and the boys won’t envy him none. It’ll be a long trail and a tolerable lonely one, most like.”

After that she settled down to wait with as great a feeling of security as though the mares were already safely back in the corral. If he came, the death-warrant of Alcatraz was as good as signed. But when the third day of waiting ended without bringing Shorty and Perris, as it should have done, the “if” began to assume greater proportions, and by late afternoon of the fourth day she had made up her mind that Perris was gone from Glosterville and that Shorty was on a wild goose chase after him. So great was her gloom that even her father, usually blind to all emotions around him, delayed a moment after he had been helped into his buckboard and stared thoughtfully down at her.

The habit had grown on Oliver Jordan of late. When the westering sun lost most of its heat and threw slant shadows and a yellow light over the mountains, Oliver would have a pair of ancient greys, patient as burros and hardly faster, hitched to a buckboard and then drive off into the evening and perhaps, long after the dinner hour. Only foul weather kept him in from these lonely jaunts on which he never took a companion. To Marianne they were a never-ending source of wonder and sorrow, for she saw her father slowly withdrawing himself from the life about him and dwelling in a gentle, uninterrupted melancholy. She met his stare, on this evening, with eyes clouded with tears.

Truly he had aged woefully in the past years. The accident which robbed him of his physical freedom seemed, at the same time, to destroy all spirit of youth. Whether walking or sitting he was bowed. His eyes were dull. Beside his mouth and between his eyes deep lines gave a sad dignity to his expression. And though, as his cowpunchers swore, his hand was as swift to draw a gun as ever and his eye as steady on a target, he had gradually lost interest in even his revolvers. Indeed, what real interest remained to him in the world, Marianne was unable to tell. He lived and moved as one in a dream surrounded by a world of dreams. His eyes were dull from looking into the dim distance of strange thoughts, and the smile which was rarely away from his lips was rather whimsically enduring than a sign of mirth.

But as he looked down at her from the buckboard, Marianne saw his expression clear to awareness of her. He even reached out and rested his hand on her head so that her face was tilted up to him.