The Night Horseman by Max Brand

M >> Max Brand >> The Night Horseman

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

By Max Brand

The Untamed Trailin'
The Night Horseman

THE NIGHT HORSEMAN

BY

MAX BRAND

1920

CONTENTS

I.--THE SCHOLAR

II.--WORDS AND BULLETS

III.--THE DOCTOR RIDES

IV.--THE CHAIN

V.--THE WAITING

VI.--THE MISSION STARTS

VII.--JERRY STRANN

VIII.--THE GIFT-HORSE

IX.--BATTLE LIGHT

X.--"SWEET ADELINE"

XI.--THE BUZZARD

XII.--FINESSE

XIII.--THE THREE

XIV.--MUSIC FOR OLD NICK

XV.--OLD GARY PETERS

XVI.--THE COMING OF NIGHT

XVII.--BUCK MAKES HIS GET-AWAY

XVIII.--DOCTOR BYRNE ANALYSES

XIX.--SUSPENSE

XX.--THE COMING

XXI.--MAC STRANN DECIDES TO KEEP THE LAW

XXII.--PATIENCE

XXIII.--HOW MAC STRANN KEPT THE LAW

XXIV.--DOCTOR BYRNE LOOKS INTO THE PAST

XXV.--WEREWOLF

XXVI.--THE BATTLE

XXVII.--THE CONQUEST

XXVIII.--THE TRAIL

XXIX.--TALK

XXX.--THE VOICE OF BLACK BART

XXXI.--THE MESSAGE

XXXII.--VICTORY

XXXIII.--DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH

XXXIV.--THE ACID TEST

XXXV.--PALE ANNIE

XXXVI.--THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE

XXXVII.--THE PIEBALD

XXXVIII.--THE CHALLENGE

XXXIX.--THE STORM

XL.--THE ARROYO

XLI.--THE FALLING OF NIGHT

XLII.--THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

THE NIGHT HORSEMAN

CHAPTER I

THE SCHOLAR

At the age of six Randall Byrne could name and bound every state in the
Union and give the date of its admission; at nine he was conversant with
Homeric Greek and Caesar; at twelve he read Aristophanes with perfect
understanding of the allusions of the day and divided his leisure
between Ovid and Horace; at fifteen, wearied by the simplicity of Old
English and Thirteenth Century Italian, he dipped into the history of
Philosophy and passed from that, naturally, into calculus and the higher
mathematics; at eighteen he took an A.B. from Harvard and while idling
away a pleasant summer with Hebrew and Sanscrit he delved lightly into
biology and its kindred sciences, having reached the conclusion that
Truth is greater than Goodness or Beauty, because it comprises both, and
the whole is greater than any of its parts; at twenty-one he pocketed
his Ph.D. and was touched with the fever of his first practical
enthusiasm--surgery. At twenty-four he was an M.D. and a distinguished
diagnostician, though he preferred work in his laboratory in his
endeavor to resolve the elements into simpler forms; also he published
at this time a work on anthropology whose circulation was limited to two
hundred copies, and he received in return two hundred letters of
congratulation from great men who had tried to read his book; at
twenty-seven he collapsed one fine spring day on the floor of his
laboratory. That afternoon he was carried into the presence of a great
physician who was also a very vulgar man. The great physician felt his
pulse and looked into his dim eyes.

"You have a hundred and twenty horsepower brain and a runabout body,"
said the great physician.

"I have come," answered Randall Byrne faintly, "for the solution of a
problem, not for the statement thereof."

"I'm not through," said the great physician. "Among other things you are
a damned fool."

Randall Byrne here rubbed his eyes.

"What steps do you suggest that I consider?" he queried.

The great physician spat noisily.

"Marry a farmer's daughter," he said brutally.

"But," said Randall Byrne vaguely.

"I am a busy man and you've wasted ten minutes of my time," said the
great physician, turning back to his plate glass window. "My secretary
will send you a bill for one thousand dollars. Good-day."

And therefore, ten days later, Randall Byrne sat in his room in the
hotel at Elkhead.

He had just written (to his friend Swinnerton Loughburne, M.A., Ph.D.,
L.L.D.): "Incontrovertibly the introduction of the personal equation
leads to lamentable inversions, and the perceptive faculties when
contemplating phenomena through the lens of ego too often conceive an
accidental connotation or manifest distortion to be actuality, for the
physical (or personal) too often beclouds that power of inner vision
which so unerringly penetrates to the inherent truths of incorporeity
and the extramundane. Yet this problem, to your eyes, I fear, not
essentially novel or peculiarly involute, holds for my contemplative
faculties an extraordinary fascination, to wit: wherein does the mind,
in itself a muscle, escape from the laws of the physical, and wherein
and wherefore do the laws of the physical exercise so inexorable a
jurisdiction over the processes of the mind, so that a disorder of the
visual nerve actually distorts the asomatous and veils the
pneumatoscopic?

"Your pardon, dear Loughburne, for these lapses from the general to the
particular, but in a lighter moment of idleness, I pray you give some
careless thought to a problem now painfully my own, though rooted
inevitably so deeply in the dirt of the commonplace.

"But you have asked me in letter of recent date for the particular
physical aspects of my present environment, and though (as you so well
know) it is my conviction that the physical fact is not and only the
immaterial is, yet I shall gladly look about me--a thing I have not yet
seen occasion to do--and describe to you the details of my present
condition."

Accordingly, at this point Randall Byrne removed from his nose his thick
glasses and holding them poised he stared through the window at the view
without. He had quite changed his appearance by removing the spectacles,
for the owlish touch was gone and he seemed at a stroke ten years
younger. It was such a face as one is glad to examine in detail, lean,
pale, the transparent skin stretched tightly over cheekbones, nose, and
chin. That chin was built on good fighting lines, though somewhat
over-delicate in substance and the mouth quite colourless, but oddly
enough the upper lip had that habitual appearance of stiff compression
which is characteristic of highly strung temperaments; it is a
noticeable feature of nearly every great actor, for instance. The nose
was straight and very thin and in a strong sidelight a tracery of the
red blood showed through at the nostrils. The eyes were deeply buried
and the lower lids bruised with purple--weak eyes that blinked at a
change of light or a sudden thought--distant eyes which missed the
design of wall paper and saw the trees growing on the mountains. The
forehead was Byrne's most noticeable feature, pyramidal, swelling
largely towards the top and divided in the centre into two distinct
lobes by a single marked furrow which gave his expression a hint of the
wistful. Looking at that forehead one was strangely conscious of the
brain beneath. There seemed no bony structure; the mind, undefended,
was growing and pushing the confining walls further out.

And the fragility which the head suggested the body confirmed, for he
was not framed to labor. The burden of the noble head had bowed the
slender throat and crooked the shoulders, and when he moved his arm it
seemed the arm of a skeleton too loosely clad. There was a differing
connotation in the hands, to be sure. They were thin--bones and sinews
chiefly, with the violet of the veins showing along the backs; but they
were active hands without tremor--hands ideal for the accurate scalpel,
where a fractional error means death to the helpless.

After a moment of staring through the window the scholar wrote again:
"The major portion of Elkhead lies within plain sight of my window. I
see a general merchandise store, twenty-seven buildings of a
comparatively major and eleven of a minor significance, and five
saloons. The streets--"

The streets, however, were not described at that sitting, for at this
juncture a heavy hand knocked and the door of Randall Byrne's room was
flung open by Hank Dwight, proprietor of Elkhead's saloon--a versatile
man, expert behind the bar or in a blacksmith shop.

"Doc," said Hank Dwight, "you're wanted." Randall Byrne placed his
spectacles more firmly on his nose to consider his host.

"What--" he began, but Hank Dwight had already turned on his heel.

"Her name is Kate Cumberland. A little speed, doc. She's in a hurry."

"If no other physician is available," protested Byrne, following slowly
down the stairs, "I suppose I must see her."

"If they was another within ten miles, d'you s'pose I'd call on you?"
asked Hank Dwight.

So saying, he led the way out onto the veranda, where the doctor was
aware of a girl in a short riding skirt who stood with one gloved hand
on her hip while the other slapped a quirt idly against her riding
boots.

CHAPTER II

WORDS AND BULLETS

"Here's a gent that calls himself a doc," said Hank Dwight by way of an
introduction. "If you can use him, Miss Cumberland, fly to it!"

And he left them alone.

Now the sun lay directly behind Kate Cumberland and in order to look at
her closely the doctor had to shade his weak eyes and pucker his brows;
for from beneath her wide sombrero there rolled a cloud of golden hair
as bright as the sunshine itself--a sad strain upon the visual nerve of
Doctor Randall Byrne. He repeated her name, bowed, and when he
straightened, blinked again. As if she appreciated that strain upon his
eyes she stepped closer, and entered the shadow.

"Doctor Hardin is not in town," she said, "and I have to bring a
physician out to the ranch at once; my father is critically ill."

Randall Byrne rubbed his lean chin.

"I am not practicing at present," he said reluctantly. Then he saw that
she was watching him closely, weighing him with her eyes, and it came to
the mind of Randall Byrne that he was not a large man and might not
incline the scale far from the horizontal.

"I am hardly equipped--" began Byrne.

"You will not need equipment," she interrupted. "His trouble lies in his
nerves and the state of his mind."

A slight gleam lighted the eyes of the doctor.

"Ah," he murmured. "The mind?"

"Yes."

He rubbed his bloodless hands slowly together, and when he spoke his
voice was sharp and quick and wholly impersonal. "Tell me the symptoms!"

"Can't we talk those over on the way to the ranch? Even if we start now
it will be dark before we arrive."

"But," protested the doctor, "I have not yet decided--this
precipitancy--"

"Oh," she said, and flushed. He perceived that she was on the verge of
turning away, but something withheld her. "There is no other physician
within reach; my father is very ill. I only ask that you come as a
diagnostician, doctor!"

"But a ride to your ranch," he said miserably. "I presume you refer to
riding a horse?"

"Naturally."

"I am unfamiliar with that means of locomotion," said the doctor with
serious eyes, "and in fact have not carried my acquaintance with the
equine species beyond a purely experimental stage. Anatomically I have a
superficial knowledge, but on the one occasion on which I sat in a
saddle I observed that the docility of the horse is probably a poetic
fallacy."

He rubbed his left shoulder thoughtfully and saw a slight tremor at the
corners of the girl's mouth. It caused his vision to clear and
concentrate; he found that the lips were, in fact, in the very act of
smiling. The face of the doctor brightened.

"You shall ride my own horse," said the girl. "She is perfectly gentle
and has a very easy gait. I'm sure you'll have not the slightest trouble
with her."

"And you?"

"I'll find something about town; it doesn't matter what."

"This," said the doctor, "is most remarkable. You choose your mounts at
random?"

"But you will go?" she insisted.

"Ah, yes, the trip to the ranch!" groaned the doctor. "Let me see: the
physical obstacles to such a trip while many are not altogether
insuperable, I may say; in the meantime the moral urge which compels me
towards the ranch seems to be of the first order." He sighed. "Is it not
strange, Miss Cumberland, that man, though distinguished from the lower
orders by mind, so often is controlled in his actions by ethical
impulses which override the considerations of reason? An observation
which leads us towards the conclusion that the passion for goodness is a
principle hardly secondary to the passion for truth. Understand that I
build the hypothesis only tentatively, with many reservations, among
which--"

He broke off short. The smile was growing upon her lips.

"I will put together a few of my things," said the doctor, "and come
down to you at once."

"Good!" said the girl, "I'll be waiting for you with two horses before
you are ready."

He turned away, but had taken hardly a step before he turned, saying:
"But why are you so sure that you will be ready before I--" but she was
already down the steps from the veranda and stepping briskly down the
street.

"There is an element of the unexplainable in woman," said the doctor,
and resumed his way to his room. Once there, something prompted him to
act with the greatest possible speed. He tossed his toilet articles and
a few changes of linen into a small, flexible valise and ran down the
stairs. He reached the veranda again, panting, and the girl was not in
sight; a smile of triumph appeared on the grave, colourless lips of the
doctor. "Feminine instinct, however, is not infallible," he observed to
himself, and to one of the cowboys, lounging loosely in a chair nearby,
he continued his train of thoughts aloud: "Though the verity of the
feminine intuition has already been thrown in a shade of doubt by many
thinkers, as you will undoubtedly agree."

The man thus addressed allowed his lower jaw to drop but after a moment
he ejaculated: "Now what in hell d'you mean by that?"

The doctor already turned away, intent upon his thoughts, but he now
paused and again faced the cowboy. He said, frowning: "There is
unnecessary violence in your remark, sir."

"Duck your glasses," said the worthy in question. "You ain't talkin' to
a book, you're talking to a man."

"And in your attitude," went on the doctor, "there is an element of
offense which if carried farther might be corrected by physical
violence."

"I don't foller your words," said the cattleman, "but from the drift of
your tune I gather you're a bit peeved; and if you are--"

His voice had risen to a ringing note as he proceeded and he now slipped
from his chair and faced Randall Byrne, a big man, brown, hard-handed.
The doctor crimsoned.

"Well?" he echoed, but in place of a deep ring his words were pitched in
a high squeak of defiance.

He saw a large hand contract to a fist, but almost instantly the big man
grinned, and his eyes went past Byrne.

"Oh, hell!" he grunted, and turned his back with a chuckle.

For an instant there was a mad impulse in the doctor to spring at this
fellow but a wave of impotence overwhelmed him. He knew that he was
white around the mouth, and there was a dryness in his throat.

"The excitement of imminent physical contest and personal danger," he
diagnosed swiftly, "causing acceleration of the pulse and attendant
weakness of the body--a state unworthy of the balanced intellect."

Having brought back his poise by this quick interposition of reason, he
went his way down the long veranda. Against a pillar leaned another tall
cattleman, also brown and lean and hard.

"May I inquire," he said, "if you have any information direct or casual
concerning a family named Cumberland which possesses ranch property in
this vicinity?"

"You may," said the cowpuncher, and continued to roll his cigarette.

"Well," said the doctor, "do you know anything about them?"

"Sure," said the other, and having finished his cigarette he introduced
it between his lips. It seemed to occur to him instantly, however, that
he was committing an inhospitable breach, for he produced his Durham and
brown papers with a start and extended them towards the doctor.

"Smoke?" he asked.

"I use tobacco in no form," said the doctor.

The cowboy stared with such fixity that the match burned down to his
fingertips and singed them before he had lighted his cigarette.

"'S that a fact?" he queried when his astonishment found utterance.
"What d'you do to kill time? Well, I been thinking about knocking off
the stuff for a while. Mame gets sore at me for having my fingers all
stained up with nicotine like this."

He extended his hand, the first and second fingers of which were
painted a bright yellow.

"Soap won't take it off," he remarked.

"A popular but inexcusable error," said the doctor. "It is the tarry
by-products of tobacco which cause that stain. Nicotine itself, of
course, is a volatile alkaloid base of which there is only the merest
trace in tobacco. It is one of the deadliest of nerve poisons and is
quite colourless. There is enough of that stain upon your fingers--if it
were nicotine--to kill a dozen men."

"The hell you say!"

"Nevertheless, it is an indubitable fact. A lump of nicotine the size of
the head of a pin placed on the tongue of a horse will kill the beast
instantly."

The cowpuncher pushed back his hat and scratched his head.

"This is worth knowin'," he said, "but I'm some glad that Mame ain't
heard it."

"Concerning the Cumberlands," said the doctor, "I--"

"Concerning the Cumberlands," repeated the cattleman, "it's best to
leave 'em to their own concerns." And he started to turn away, but the
thirst for knowledge was dry in the throat of the doctor.

"Do I understand," he insisted, "that there is some mystery connected
with them?"

"From me," replied the other, "you understand nothin'." And he lumbered
down the steps and away.

Be it understood that there was nothing of the gossip in Randall Byrne,
but now he was pardonably excited and perceiving the tall form of Hank
Dwight in the doorway he approached his host.

"Mr. Dwight," he said, "I am about to go to the Cumberland ranch. I
gather that there is something of an unusual nature concerning them."

"There is," admitted Hank Dwight.

"Can you tell me what it is?"

"I can."

"Good!" said the doctor, and he almost smiled. "It is always well to
know the background of a case which has to do with mental states. Now,
just what do you know?"

"I know--" began the proprietor, and then paused and eyed his guest
dubiously. "I know," he continued, "a story."

"Yes?"

"Yes, about a man and a hoss and a dog."

"The approach seems not quite obvious, but I shall be glad to hear it."

There was a pause.

"Words," said the host, at length, "is worse'n bullets. You never know
what they'll hit."

"But the story?" persisted Randall Byrne.

"That story," said Hank Dwight, "I may tell to my son before I die."

"This sounds quite promising."

"But I'll tell nobody else."

"Really!"

"It's about a man and a hoss and a dog. The man ain't possible, the
hoss ain't possible, the dog is a wolf."

He paused again and glowered on the doctor. He seemed to be drawn two
ways, by his eagerness to tell a yarn and his dread of consequences.

"I know," he muttered, "because I've seen 'em all. I've seen"--he looked
far, as though striking a silent bargain with himself concerning the sum
of the story which might safely be told--"I've seen a hoss that
understood a man's talk like you and me does--or better. I've heard a
man whistle like a singing bird. Yep, that ain't no lie. You jest
imagine a bald eagle that could lick anything between the earth and the
sky and was able to sing--that's what that whistlin' was like. It made
you glad to hear it, and it made you look to see if your gun was in good
workin' shape. It wasn't very loud, but it travelled pretty far, like it
was comin' from up above you."

"That's the way this strange man of the story whistles?" asked Byrne,
leaning closer.

"Man of the story?" echoed the proprietor, with some warmth. "Friend, if
he ain't real, then I'm a ghost. And they's them in Elkhead that's got
the scars of his comin' and goin'."

"Ah, an outlaw? A gunfighter?" queried the doctor.

"Listen to me, son," observed the host, and to make his point he tapped
the hollow chest of Byrne with a rigid forefinger, "around these parts
you know jest as much as you see, and lots of times you don't even know
that much. What you see is sometimes your business, but mostly it
ain't." He concluded impressively: "Words is worse'n bullets!"

"Well," mused Byrne, "I can ask the girl these questions. It will be
medically necessary."

"Ask the girl? Ask her?" echoed the host with a sort of horror. But he
ended with a forced restraint: "That's _your_ business."

CHAPTER III

THE DOCTOR RIDES

Hank Dwight disappeared from the doorway and the doctor was called from
his pondering by the voice of the girl. There was something about that
voice which worried Byrne, for it was low and controlled and musical and
it did not fit with the nasal harshness of the cattlemen. When she began
to speak it was like the beginning of a song. He turned now and found
her sitting a tall bay horse, and she led a red-roan mare beside her.
When he went out she tossed her reins over the head of her horse and
strapped his valise behind her saddle.

"You won't have any trouble with that mare," she assured him, when the
time came for mounting. Yet when he approached gingerly he was received
with flattened ears and a snort of anger. "Wait," she cried, "the left
side, not the right!"

He felt the laughter in her voice, but when he looked he could see no
trace of it in her face. He approached from the left side, setting his
teeth.

"You observe," he said, "that I take your word at its full value," and
placing his foot in the stirrup, he dragged himself gingerly up to the
saddle. The mare stood like a rock. Adjusting himself, he wiped a sudden
perspiration from his forehead.

"I quite believe," he remarked, "that the animal is of unusual
intelligence. All may yet be well!"

"I'm sure of it." said the girl gravely. "Now we're off."

And the horses broke into a dog trot. Now the gait of the red roan mare
was a dream of softness, and her flexible ankles gave a play of whole
inches to break the jar of every step, the sure sign of the good
saddle-horse; but the horse has never been saddled whose trot is really
a smooth pace. The hat of Doctor Byrne began to incline towards his
right eye and his spectacles towards his left ear. He felt a peculiar
lightness in the stomach and heaviness in the heart.

"The t-t-t-trot," he ventured to his companion, "is a d-d-d-dam--"

"Dr. Byrne!" she cried.

"Whoa!" called Doctor Byrne, and drew mightily in upon the reins. The
red mare stopped as a ball stops when it meets a stout wall; the doctor
sprawled along her neck, clinging with arms and legs. He managed to
clamber back into the saddle.

"There are vicious elements in the nature of this brute," he observed to
the girl.

"I'm very sorry," she murmured. He cast a sidelong glance but found not
the trace of a smile.

"The word upon which I--"

"Stopped?" she suggested.

"Stopped," he agreed, "was not, as you evidently assumed, an oath. On
the contrary, I was merely remarking that the trot is a damaging gait,
but through an interrupted--er--articulation--"

His eye dared her, but she was utterly grave. He perceived that there
was, after all, a certain kinship between this woman of the
mountain-desert and the man thereof. Their silences were filled with
eloquence.

"We'll try a canter," she suggested, "and I think you'll find that
easier."

So she gave the word, and her bay sprang into a lope from a standing
start. The red mare did likewise, nearly flinging the doctor over the
back of the saddle, but by the grace of God he clutched the pommel in
time and was saved. The air caught at his face, they swept out of the
town and onto a limitless level stretch.

"Sp-p-p-peed," gasped the doctor, "has never been a p-p-passion with
me!"

He noted that she was not moving in the saddle. The horse was like the
bottom of a wave swinging violently back and forth. She was the calm
crest, swaying slightly and graciously with a motion as smooth as the
flowing of water. And she spoke as evenly as if she were sitting in a
rocking chair.

"You'll be used to it in a moment," she assured him.

He learned, indeed, that if one pressed the stirrups as the shoulders of
the horse swung down and leaned a trifle forward when the shoulders rose
again, the motion ceased to be jarring; for she was truly a matchless
creature and gaited like one of those fabulous horses of old, sired by
the swift western wind. In a little time a certain pride went beating
through the veins of the doctor, the air blew more deeply into his
lungs, there was a different tang to the wind and a different feel to
the sun--a peculiar richness of yellow warmth. And the small head of the
horse and the short, sharp, pricking ears tossed continually; and now
and then the mare threw her head a bit to one side and glanced back at
him with what he felt to be a reassuring air. Life and strength and
speed were gripped between his knees--he flashed a glance at the girl.

But she rode with face straightforward and there was that about her
which made him turn his eyes suddenly away and look far off. It was a
jagged country, for in the brief rainy season there came sudden and
terrific downpours which lashed away the soil and scoured the face of
the underlying rock, and in a single day might cut a deep arroyo where
before had been smooth plain. This was the season of grass, but not the
dark, rank green of rich soil and mild air--it was a yellowish green, a
colour at once tender and glowing. It spread everywhere across the
plains about Elkhead, broken here and there by the projecting boulders
which flashed in the sun. So a great battlefield might appear,
pockmarked with shell-holes, and all the scars of war freshly cut upon
its face. And in truth the mountain desert was like an arena ready to
stage a conflict--a titanic arena with space for earth-giants to
struggle--and there in the distance were the spectator mountains. High,
lean-flanked mountains they were, not clad in forests, but rather
bristling with a stubby growth of the few trees which might endure in
precarious soil and bitter weather, but now they gathered the dignity of
distance about them. The grass of the foothills was a faint green mist
about their feet, cloaks of exquisite blue hung around the upper masses,
but their heads were naked to the pale skies. And all day long, with
deliberate alteration, the garb of the mountains changed. When the
sudden morning came they leaped naked upon the eye, and then withdrew,
muffling themselves in browns and blues until at nightfall they covered
themselves to the eyes in thickly sheeted purple--Tyrian purple--and
prepared for sleep with their heads among the stars.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20