Montana Rides Again E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The Montana Kid, „El Keed” south of the border, slips a marriage noose to join Mateo Rubriz, prince of Mexican outlaws, in a wild cross-border raid. The target: a gold and emerald crown stolen by the governor of Duraya from the church under his protection. In Duraya, Montana and Rubriz have no problem getting into the governor’s fort, even finding the crown. It’s the getting out that nearly undoes them!

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER I

THE strides of Brother Pascual were long and swift, but the day strode longer and swifter by far to its ending. Shadows as blue as water were flowing through the ravines, rising higher and higher, and the naked summits of the San Carlos range began to burn with rose and with golden flame against that Mexican sky; but the friar, taking a stronger hold on the staff which was his companion in the wilderness, gave little heed to the beauty around him. He had only one eye for it, after all; over the other he wore a big shield of black leather. A plaster patch made a big white cross on the opposite cheek and a bandage circled his head. To give his stride greater freedom he had pulled up his long grey robe so that a fold hung over the cord that girdled him and the edge of his garment kicked in and out around his knees. In the calf of each brown and hairy leg there was a mighty fist of muscle needed for the support of this towering bulk of a man, yet the only provision he carried with him on his journey was a pouch of dry corn meal. He was dark as an Indian, but his broad face was marked with the pain and the doubt of some high endeavour.

The sun bulged its cheeks in the west and blew radiant colour all across the sky; the heavens darkened to green and amber, then yellow-green and blue, with the green fading rapidly into night as Brother Pascual came to the narrow mouth of a gorge over which leaned pillars of lofty rock. A jack rabbit darted from behind a stone and fled, leaving the whisper of its speed in the air. And in the mouth of the ravine the friar paused and shouted:

“Oh-ho! Oh-ho! I am Brother Pascual! Hai! Do you hear! I am Brother Pascual!”

After a moment, while the echoes were still dimly flying, a voice almost at his elbow said:

“Well, brother, who’s hungry now? Whose bellyache are you to tell us about now?”

“Is it Luis?” asked the friar.

“Luis went spying once too often into the stockyards at Chihuahua. They killed him in the slaughterhouse. Maybe they made him into sausage. Damned stringy sausage he must have made, too!”

“What is your name? Ah, you are Carlos!”

“You’ve only seen me once; and it’s too dark for seeing now, unless you’re a cat. How do you remember people, Brother?”

“I remember them by their need of mercy,” said the friar. “Poor Luis! Is he gone? He had a need of mercy, also.”

“So has every man with Rubriz,” answered Carlos.

“So have I. So have all mortals,” declared Brother Pascual, humbly. “I am going on to the house.”

“There’s plenty of noise in the house,” said Carlos. “Yesterday we caught a mule train loaded with–”

“I don’t want to hear it,” broke in Pascual. “We are all sinners, Carlos. But good may come out of evil. Good may come out of evil. Saint Nicholas, be large in the eye of my mind!”

With that, he stalked on through the thick blackness of the ravine, which rapidly widened. Trees choked the way. With his long staff he fended his course through them until he came out on a level valley floor, with a stippling of lights nearby giving a vague outline of a house.

He heard singing and shouting and the beat of running feet while he was still in the distance, and, though he was one pledged to love good and hate evil, he could not help smiling a little. For Pascual was in many respects a true peon and therefore he had to forgive a true bandido like Mateo Rubriz. A thief steals from all alike; a bandido harries the rich only; and in Mexico there is a belief that grows out of the very soil that all rich men are evil.

When he came to the door of the house he beat on it three times with his staff. Then he threw the door open on the smoky light of the inner hall, and shouted:

“I, Brother Pascual, am coming! It is I, Brother Pascual!”

The thunder of his voice rumbled through the house, and then a door flung open to his right and let a rush of sound flow out about him.

“Bring in Pascual!” shouted the familiar, strident tones of Mateo Rubriz.

Half a dozen wild young fellows leaped through the doorway and seized on the burly friar and drew him into the room. It was the kitchen, dining-hall and reception-chamber of Mateo Rubriz. As a chorus of welcome rose to greet Brother Pascual, he snuffed up at the fragrance of roasting kid–most delicious of all meat in this world; and the savour of frijoles cooked with peppers, and the pungency of coffee, and the thin scent of beer and the sour of wine–all were in that air.

At the long table some of the men were still eating; others looked on with a careless interest as Mateo Rubriz, equipped with a small balance-scale, measured out lumps of shining white metal and small heaps of heavy yellow dust.

Brother Pascual refused to call it silver and gold because money is the root of all evil, and he loved these men in spite of himself. So he fastened his gaze only on the huge squat figure of Mateo Rubriz, who wore common cotton trousers, furled up to his knees, and cheap huaraches on his feet. The sleeves of his shirt were cut off near the armpit so as to leave unhampered that vast strength, which, men said, was unrivalled in all the San Carlos range, in all Mexico, perhaps, and therefore in the world!

So thought Pascual. And he rejoiced in the might of that fellow peon in his ragged, dirty clothes; he rejoiced in the red silk cap that Rubriz preferred to all the sombreros of cloth or of straw. And the heart of Pascual was touched with sympathy when he marked, diagonally across the flushed face of Mateo, the long white scar which the whiplash had left on the flesh. Men said that no single whip-stroke could have left such a broad and deep scar, but that Mateo Rubriz, in the passion of his shame and hate, had rubbed salt into his wound to freshen it and keep it burning on his face as rage burned in his heart. At any rate, there was the sign clearly visible whenever his face reddened–which was often.

“Come here, little old Pascual!” Rubriz was thundering. “What have you been doing to yourself? I’ve told you that if you keep taking your short cuts through the mountains, up the cliffs and down the Devil’s Slides, you’d have a fall one of these days. Well, if you’ve had a fall like that, thank God that your head was battered but not broken. Come here and dip your hands into that sack–all gold–and take out the fill of your big hands. You can weight down your pockets and spend it all on your poor. You can buy a new mule for your arriero, a new cow for your housewife, and a new gun for the hunter, a new trap for the trapper. You can give sheep to the shepherd and cattle to the poor charro. Dip in your hands as deep as the wrists and pull out what your fingers will hold. Come, Pascual! Hai, my children! We shall all be a thousand leagues nearer to heaven when Brother Pascual has prayed for us.”

Brother Pascual stood by the bandit and looked down at the buckskin sack which held such treasure. He was aware, too, of the gleam of white metal and of yellow up and down the table. He took a deep breath and looked up to the smoke-blackened rafters of the room.

“Father, forgive them!” he said from his heart. Then he added: “Not even for my poor, Mateo. Give me something to eat, as soon as I have washed. But stolen money poisons even the poor.”

Mateo caught him by the wrists and looked him up and down, half savage and half fond.

“Listen to me! Be silent, everyone. Mateo Rubriz is speaking. Do you hear? One day I shall give up this life and go into a desert with this good man. I shall scratch up roots with my bare hands and feed on them. I shall drink nothing but clear spring water–give me a cup of that wine, one of you!–and I shall spend the rest of my days praying and doing penance.”

He seized a great jewelled cup which was handed to him, brimming with sour red wine, and poured half the contents down his throat.

“When I do penance,” he roared, “it shall be the greatest penance that ever was done by a Mexican, and Mexicans are the only men.”

He made a gesture, and some of the wine slopped out of the cup and splashed from the floor on to the bare hairy calves of his legs.

“Do you hear me, Pascual? By God! I shall be such a saint, one day, that they’ll have to shift in their chairs and crowd their haloes closer together to make room for Mateo Rubriz. Give me some more wine, some one. I have not tasted a drink for a month of desert days. Pascual, go wash, if you please, and then come back and eat. San Juan of Capistrano! there is redder blood in me than this wine, and every drop of it sings when I see such a good man.”

Brother Pascual went to the well outside the room, in the little patio, and there, as he threw off his long robe and washed the sweat and the sand of the travel from his body, he could hear the voice of Rubriz, still, exclaiming:

“The rest of you–all swine at a trough. There is no other man in the world. There is only Brother Pascual!”

When Pascual came back into the room, he found a huge platter of kid hot from the turning of the spit and a mass of frijoles and thin, limber, damp tortillas. He used the tortillas as spoon and fork. A knife from his wallet was his carver.

As he ate, he sipped moderately from a big glass of the red wine. Pulque, as a matter of fact, would have been more to his truly Mexican taste. The division of the spoils had been completed and the treasure was cleared from the table, though still a bright yellow dust appeared here and there on the rough wood. The wages of ten labourers for a month were wasted out of the superfluity of these robbers. Mateo Rubriz himself was now eating again, walking up and down with his jewelled wine cup in one hand and in the other a fat joint from which he tore long shreds with those powerful teeth of his.

“Now is the time to speak, Lucio,” said Rubriz. “You have been sitting there with fire in your eyes, devouring José with glances. Tell me what was wrong.”

Lucio stood up. He lacked the rounded, blubbery face of a peon; his features were more the type of the aristocrat and his cheeks were so hollow that they pulled at the corners of his mouth and kept him with the semblance of a sneering smile. He said:

“José, stand up!”

“Ay, to you or to any man!” said a youth with very wide shoulders and very bowed legs. He was the true peon type. He swaggered out and stood well forward on the floor.

“When they came chasing after us,” said Lucio, “my horse went down under me. I ran as well as my legs would carry me. I heard hoof-beats. I looked back and saw that a friend was riding up. It was José. I held out my hand to let him help me up, but, by St. Christopher! he galloped right past me! He even tried to look the other way. And the Rurales and the soldiers were sure to get me, except that I found a crack among the rocks and ran and fell into it like a lizard. Mateo Rubriz, give me a judgment! Is that fellowship? A lame dog would be better treated by its fellows!”

A little murmur came out of the throats of the crowd. It was not loud, but it was high-pitched, and therefore the friar knew the strain of anger from which it proceeded.

“Now speak, José,” said Rubriz.

“This!” said José, loudly. “I saw Lucio running, of course. I wanted to help him. But I had a whole sack of the gold in the saddle bag. To throw away myself and my horse–that was nothing, though the Rurales were sure to catch us both if I tried to make the pinto carry double. But there was the gold. So I rode on. Speak up with a big voice, Lucio. Are you worth thirty pounds of gold?”

Lucio said nothing. He looked ready to leap at José, but he could not bring up words from his throat.

The whole room was hushed. Men leaned from their places, their eyes intent on the leader, who still walked calmly up and down. But now he paused and pointed the ragged joint of roast meat at José.

“Silver is a good thing and gold is better, but silver and gold and emeralds and diamonds are not worth one drop of blood. Blood is better than money. José, you have not been with me long. You have not learned. Otherwise, by San Juan of Capistrano! I would hang you from that rafter with my own hands! Ride by a dismounted comrade? Leave a friend behind for the Rurales? However, you have been with me only a short time. What I tell you now you will remember. No?”

“I will remember,” said José, suddenly abashed and staring at the floor.

“Are you satisfied, Lucio?” asked the master.

“No,” said Lucio.

“Take knives, then. Strip to the waist. Carve each other or kill each other. That is the law. But we’ll have no hatreds inside my band of charros.”

“Good!” said José, and began to tear off his jacket.

Lucio said nothing, but there was speech in the burning of his eyes and in his sneering lips.

That was when Brother Pascual stood up and went to Lucio.

“Lucio,” he said, “when your brother was sick in the mountains, I searched till I found him and carried him into the camp on my shoulders.”

“Therefore,” said Lucio, “ask me for my right hand and it is yours.”

“Give it to me, then,” said the gigantic friar. So he took the right hand of the astonished Lucio and half led and half dragged him across the floor to confront José. “Give your hand to me, José,” he commanded.

“My hand is my own,” said José, sullenly.

The huge grip of Pascual closed suddenly on the nape of José’s neck. He shook the young bandit violently. A knife flashed into the hand of José. It jerked back, but it was not driven home into the great, fearless breast of Brother Pascual. It was awe of the friar rather than the fierce yell that went up from the others that caused the knife to drop to the floor.

“Now give me your hand!” shouted Pascual, enraged, “or I’ll carry you out and throw you into the slime of the hog-wallow, where I’ve thrown bigger and stronger men than you!”

“Brother, forgive me!” said José, helplessly, and he gave his right hand. Pascual instantly clapped it into that of Lucio. He stood over the two men, who glared at one another.

“José is a fool, but he is a young fool and he can learn wisdom,” boomed Pascual. “Lucio, grip his hand. I, Brother Pascual, command you. José, tell him that you were wrong. A sulky man is worse than a sulky dog. But a confession washes the heart clean.”

There was a moment of pause, so tense that the breathing of the men in the room could be heard, and the ripping sounds as Mateo Rubriz tore at his joint of roast meat.

Then José said, suddenly, weakly:

“I was wrong. Lucio, I hated you because you got the black mare that I wanted. Will you forget?”

“Is it true?” said Lucio, stunned and gaping. “Do you confess this before them all? Then you are my brother!” And suddenly he had flung his arms around José.

“I am shamed–but I was wrong,” said José.

“Shamed?” cried Lucio. “I kill the man who smiles!”

But there was no smiling. Only Mateo Rubriz hurled towards the hearth the big bone which he had picked clean. It clanged loudly against an iron pot and spun into the ashes, knocking up a white cloud.

“By the blood of God!” cried Rubriz, “my men have turned into women. Well, let them go so long as I have you, Pascual. Have you only come here to make my poor fellows drop their knives on the floor?”

“I have come to speak seriously with you, Mateo,” answered the big friar.

“You hear that he wants to speak to me!” called Rubriz to the rest. “Then why do you wait? You have money in your wallets and food in your bellies. Go, drink yourselves to sleep and be damned. Away with you!”

CHAPTER II

THEY faced one another across the long table.

“Tell me about your tumble, first,” suggested Rubriz. “Well, even the mountain sheep break their necks now and again. If something hit you near the eye, thank your God that you are not blinded.”

“The gun butt hit the bone over my eye; that was all,” said the friar.

“Gun butt?” said Rubriz, suddenly scowling. Then he pointed. “Gun butt, eh? And what hit the other side of your face?”

“The point of a knife,” answered Brother Pascual. “But it was nothing.”

The bandit began to steal around the table as though he hoped to surprise news in the very mind of his big friend.

“And your head? The bandage, there?” he demanded.

“That is not very bad, either. The bullet glanced; I have a hard skull–”

“The butt of a gun–a knife–a bullet. Splendour of God! what fools have forgotten that you are the friend of Mateo Rubriz?”

“The governor of Duraya and his soldiers.”

“General Ignacio Estrada? Where did he dare to beat you?”

“In the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“The governor–beats you–in the church! Am I going mad? What were you doing?”

“Fighting a little, Mateo, to keep the governor and the rest of the masked men from stealing the emerald crown of Our Lady.”

“Why, brother, that crown was stolen long years ago!”

“It was found again by a peon whose son was very sick. He brought the crown back to the church; his son was healed; and then the governor stole the emeralds and the gold again.”

“How was he known, if his face was masked?”

“The holy bishop recognized the voice of the principal robber.”

“Bishop Emiliano?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” cried Rubriz, “that little man may be as thin as a knife, but he can cut as deep. He knows me, does he not?”

“You have made many good presents to the church.”

“It knows my gold and it knows my silver. Do you hear, brother? When the name of Rubriz is spoken in that church, all the shadows stir and the statues whisper a prayer for me. I tell you this: in that church alone I have bought half the distance from hell to heaven.”

The friar smiled a little.

“But this Estrada–what do you tell me about him? No good man ever wore the name of general–except Bonita Juarez–except Bonita Juarez–God rest his soul!”

“God rest his soul!” echoed the friar, devoutly. “But General Estrada came into the church. The poor monks ran away. Only the bishop guarded the image of Our Lady–”

“I would rather have one blessing from him than ten thousand Aves from a whole college of singing priests–”

“Peace, Mateo!” commanded the friar, sternly.

He went on:

“The holy bishop recognized the voice of the general and called out his name; and Estrada desired to leave no witness behind him. He struck Bishop Emiliano to the floor.”

“That poor bald head! Did it crack like an egg shell?” asked Rubriz.

“Our Lady had softened the blow or made it glance. The bishop lives, and the governor sits in his fort with the crown of Our Lady and the ten emeralds in it.”

“But you were there yourself?” demanded Rubriz, his face swelling and purpling with emotion.

“It had taken me a little time to get to my knees because I had been very deep in a prayer. I came shouting at them. But they struck down the holy bishop. I took a pair of the soldiers and knocked their heads together.”

“San Juan of Capistrano! If only I had been there to see and to help!”

“The two soldiers fell down. I knocked over another, but I tripped on him, and he stabbed at me and put the point of his knife in my cheek. As I was getting up a gun exploded; I felt that blow on my head as the bullet struck; and another man hit me over the eye with the butt of a gun. I tried to keep my wits, but they flew away into darkness like a flock of crows, and I fell on my face.”

“May they rot with a blight! I’ll put them on their faces! If I don’t cut off their eyelids and stake them out in the sun, my name is not–”

“Mateo, be still. The bishop called for me the next day–this morning. He said to me: �If I complain of the stealing, then all the hawks will gather; the jewels will be scattered through the land. It is better to carry word about this to Mateo Rubriz, because he will not allow this thing to be.’”

“Did he say that?” exclaimed Rubriz, leaping to his feet. “No wonder he’s a bishop. If he knows men as well as this, he must know a good bit about saints and angels, also. I shall show him, Pascual, that I am a man to trust. But what does he want me to do? I shall go to Duraya and cut the throat of the general the first time he leaves the fort at night!”

“That would leave the emerald crown still safely inside the fort, Mateo.”

“Hai! That is true! But, Pascual, in the name of God the bishop doesn’t think that I can fly like a bird or dig like a mole to get into the fort and then stand invisible inside it till I’ve found the emeralds and taken them? Does he think that?”

The friar sighed. He looked down at his own great hands and was silent.

“But that is what he wishes!” muttered Rubriz. He turned pale. On the hair of his bare arm he smeared some of the sweat off his face. “No single man in this world could do the thing!” he cried. “Look at me, Pascual, and tell me that I am right!”

But Pascual, in a misery, continued to stare silently down at his hands, which were gripped hard together.

“I shall find ten other emeralds and make them into a golden crown twice as big,” exclaimed Rubriz.

“Mateo, beware of blasphemy!” said the friar.

“True!” groaned Rubriz. “It is a holy thing. It has come from the brow of Our Lady. May God pour the fire of hell into the bones of Estrada! But what can I do–alone?”

“You have many men,” said Brother Pascual, softly, as though he wished that his words might become part of the other man’s thought.

“I have men? I have hands and feet and guns to help me. But for such work numbers are a loss, not an advantage. To be secret as a snake, quick as a cat’s paw, without fear under heaven–all of these things I am–but where is there another to be my brother in the danger? Oh, Pascual, two men together may outface the devil; but one man alone–in the fort of Duraya–”

He threw up his arms with a groan.

“Is there no other man?” asked the friar.

“There is one other, but he could not come.”

“Could money buy him?”

“He is rich.”

“For the sake of Our Lady?”

“He is a gringo dog,” cried Rubriz, pacing the floor, “and Our Lady means nothing to him. Besides, if he were to try to ride south into Mexico, a whisper of his coming would go before him, the stones would yell out under his feet, �El Keed!’ That is how he is hated and wanted by the Rurales, by the soldiers!”

“Ah, Mateo, is this gringo the only man? This man you hate?”

“Ay, this man I hate is the only one. But also I love him, and he loves me. Hai, Pascual! Think that I had him under the muzzle of my gun. That his life was like this, in my hand to crush. And there lay Tonio, the traitor–Pascual, keep me from speaking about it. O God! these are not tears of water that run out of my eyes. They are tears of blood and my heart is weeping. But I let them both go free because Tonio loves me, even while he is wearing another name and speaking another speech. And Montana I saw was the second man in the world. Rubriz, then El Keed. There is no third. I could not kill him. I left the house. I took his hand. We spoke quietly. We were friends. For a little while, as I went away, my heart was so full with my friend that I could forget how I had lost Tonio through him.”

Brother Pascual, listening to this speech, was so intent that sweat ran unheeded on his face, faster than the tears of Rubriz. He knew very well that famous tale of how the Montana Kid, by means of a tattooed birthmark, had insinuated himself into the Lavery household in the place of the son whom Rubriz, to repay the whip-stroke, had stolen twenty years before; but then some stroke of conscience had driven the Kid south into Mexico to find the real heir, whom he had seen there in his wanderings.

He knew how Montana had fought to take young “Tonio” away, and how Rubriz, who had raised the boy to love him and hate the “gringos,” had resisted desperately and then pursued the pair north towards the Rio Grande. Now Tonio was restored to his blood and his family; he had been sent off to Europe to put some distance between him and his terrible foster father, Rubriz; and the Montana Kid–El Keed in Mexico–remained on the Lavery ranch about to marry the daughter of the family. It was such a story that men were sure to remember it and talk about it. But nothing about it was more strange than that Rubriz respected Montana even more than he hated that reckless young adventurer.

Rubriz blew his nose with a great snoring sound.

“Now I am better,” he said.

“This Montana who stole Tonio–” began the friar.

“Be silent!” shouted Rubriz, with the face of a madman.

“If he were with you, might you not steal back the emeralds, even from Fort Duraya and General Estrada? And if you went to El Keed, might he not remember how you once spared him? Might he not ride with you in spite of the danger?”

“He is to marry the sister of Tonio. How can I make him leave her?”

“Mateo, it is not for us to doubt. Let us go north towards the land of the gringos. Let us cross the river. When we have come to the place, God will surely show us the proper way. He will bring even Montana into our hands.”

Rubriz, at this, had stopped his pacing. His head began to lift higher and higher.

“Pascual,” he said, “who can tell? Perhaps it is true. Perhaps it is the will of God, after all. Perhaps God wishes to see Mateo Rubriz at the side of El Keed. For even God Himself could never guess what two such men might do. It is true! I feel that the thing shall be. We shall ride together; we shall work together; and what will walls of stone be, what will soldiers be, when we two are side by side?”

“But he is a gringo–and ah, the pity of it!” said the friar.

“Ay,” groaned Rubriz, “the pity of it! But only his skin is American and his heart is pure Mexican!”

CHAPTER III

IN the corral the blood-bay mare was being drawn to the snubbing-post. And that great rider of outlaw horses, Tombstone Joe, was pulling the ropes. The cowpunchers sat like crows on the fence-posts, eight feet from the ground. The Montana Kid was among the crows. From the veranda of the ranch house, he looked like any of the others except that his shoulders were a little wider and the big double cord of back muscle could be distinguished even at that distance, and through the shirt.

Ruth Lavery stood by one of the porch pillars.

“We ought to go down,” she said.

“There’s no use having too much audience,” said Richard Lavery. “That would make Montana want to ride the mare himself.”

“He’s promised not to,” answered the girl. But fear changed the blue of her eyes as she spoke.

“Promises–well, promises are still only words, to Montana,” said her father.

“Don’t say that,” she protested.

“Well, I won’t say it, then,” answered tall Richard Lavery. But he kept his thought in the grim lines of his face.

“You’ve never loved him!” said the girl, nervously, still gripping the pillar against which she leaned.

“Honour and respect him I can,” said Lavery, curtly. “He’s more man than anyone I know.”

At this she sighed, quickly, as one in whom a great emotion is constantly pent. And she broke out, suddenly:

“You think he’s only a tramp.”

“I don’t think he’s only a tramp,” said Richard Lavery.

He looked down at a black band around the arm of his coat. His wife had died two months before.

“You think he’s a tramp–and something more,” said the girl, speaking quietly, mostly to herself. “You sent Dick away to Europe–to get him away from Montana–to get him away from temptation. You’ve never trusted Montana.”

“Now that your mother is gone,” said Lavery, very gently, “do you think that he’ll be with us long?”

She lifted her head a little. She scanned, as if to find the answer there, the long lines of the valley, and the high plateau, and the green pasture-lands for miles and miles which all belonged to the Lavery estate. Dick, who was once Tonio Rubriz, would be heir to half of that estate. Montana had brought him back from Mexican oblivion to share the rich heritage. The other half would go to her and to Montana.

“We’ll be married Sunday,” she said, briefly.

“He’s put it off before,” said the rancher, and there was no mercy in his hard voice. “He’ll put it off again.”

“He won’t! This is the last time! He knows it.” Then she added, in a half-weary, half-sad outburst, “Doesn’t he care about me?”

“Ay, he cares about you. And he cares about other things, too. Horses and guns–and his freedom.”

DOWN in the corral, Tombstone Joe walked backwards and looked over the mare. Now that he had snubbed her against the post, other men were blindfolding her, working on bridle and saddle. Ransome, the grey-headed ranch foreman, was in charge of this business.

“What you think of her, Tombstone?” asked Ransome.

“Half dynamite and half wildcat,” said Tombstone. “She’s too damn pretty to be good.”

Said the Montana Kid, from the fence:

“You don’t hitch on to a streak of lightning and ask is it good. You ask how far it’ll take you.”

Tombstone turned sharply around to rebuke the speaker. Then he saw that it was the Kid, and instead of answering he rubbed his jaw, slowly, as though he had been hit there on a day.

The Kid did not smile. His brown, handsome face remained perfectly calm, but as he stared at the mare the blue of his eyes burned paler and brighter continually. He pushed his hat back from his forehead and showed the blue-black of sleeked hair. He was so dark that he looked almost like a Mexican. Only, in moments of excitement the blue of his eyes turned bright and pale. He was like the mare–big, but with sinews and proportions that made him look swift and light.

“This here streak,” said Tombstone, “it’ll take you far, all right; it’ll take you to hell, but it might leave you there.”

The Kid tapped the ashes from his cigarette and made no answer. His eyes were on the mare. She was waiting patiently, submitting to the darkness that enveloped her eyes, muffled her thought. And yet there was danger in her patience. Down-headed, still there was nothing about her to suggest the thought of the wild-caught mustang.

In the old days, wild-caught hawks made the best hunting falcons. She was wild-caught. And she was the best. The Kid knew it. He kept tasting her strength and her speed as he had tasted them since the day when he started with many men on her trail. The length of that trail had caused the third postponement of his marriage with Ruth Lavery. Now he sat on the fence to watch this famous horsebreaker try his hand because Montana had promised, faithfully, never to mount the mare until she was well broken. That was why electric thrills kept starting in his heart and flooding out through his forehead and his finger-tips.

The bridle and the saddle were adjusted. Tombstone mounted gingerly. Many falls had taught him shameless caution. He almost acted like a man afraid.

“Let her go,” he said, quietly.

The bandage from her eyes, the rope from her neck, were instantly disengaged. And the mare shot at the sky.

Nobody spoke. They had all seen an infinity of horsebreaking, but this was not the same thing. They stiffened on the fence- posts. They looked with great eyes, seeing and thinking. Horses have to be broken, but the mare looked like Beauty and the man looked like the Beast.

He was a frightened Beast. There was no pretence of the dashing, cavalier ride which a cowpuncher tries to show at a rodeo. Tombstone started that way, sitting straight up, raking the mare fore and aft with his spurs, but after the second jump he was pulling leather like a tenderfoot caught in a horse- storm.

This was a tornado. It rushed as though it would tear down the fence. It turned as though it would bore a hole through the ground. And Tombstone sailed out of the saddle sidewise. He struck the corral soil, raised a dust, struck it again, and lay limp and still.

Three nooses settled over the neck of the mare and held her as she tried to get at the fallen rider and savage him. Someone crawled under the fence and dragged Tombstone to safety. Someone else emptied a canteen over the upturned face of Tombstone. After a while he breathed. Then he stood up.

“She foxed me that time but I’ll get her the next try,” he said.

Ransome, the foreman, said to the Kid, “Well, what you think?”

“She’s a sweetheart,” said the Montana Kid.

He eased himself down from the fence. The side of the fence he was on was the inside.

They were snubbing the mare close up to the post again.

Ransome grabbed Montana’s arm.

“Look at her,” he said. “Don’t you be a damn fool. Keep away from temptation.”

The Kid looked down at Ransome’s hand. Ransome took it away.

“We’ll just have a look-see,” said the Kid.

“You been and promised Miss Ruth!” said Ransome, huskily.

“Did I?” said the Kid, absently.

He walked around the front of the mare and looked into her eyes. She was quiet. The only thing she had learned was the burn of ropes, and she did not fight. Not outwardly. The devil was quiet in her, waiting.

Someone said, from the fence, “He could handle hell fire, but not that fire.”

Another man said: “What’s her name? What you gunna call her, Montana?”

“You better call her before you’re dead,” said another.

“Her name’s Sally,” said the Kid, gently.

He smiled beautifully at the men on the fence. He included them all in the gentleness of his glance. They feared him so much that they almost hated him; but because they loved him, also, no man smiled back.

“Why call her Sally?” asked Ransome, the foreman.

“I knew a gal called Sally once,” said the Kid.

“Did she look like this mare?” asked Ransome.