The Big Trail E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The boss was a hard man, and he was not at great pains to conceal his hardness. He had waited for a week to fill out his judgment upon the new hand, and now his mind was full.
After supper, he went into the bunk house and stood in the door.
“Fuller!” he called.
Tom Fuller leaned his head out of his bunk—he had turned in early—and lowered the magazine which he had been reading, while the vision of Indians, galloping riders, and rescued heroines slowly faded from his mind and was replaced by the solid image of Pete Stringham in the doorway.
“Here!” said Fuller.
The boss took a few long strides into the room.
“Fuller, you’re a cowpuncher?”
“I’m a cowboy, I guess,” said Fuller.
“Who made you a cowpuncher?” asked the boss.
There was silence.
“It’s a sure thing that nature didn’t intend you that way,” said the boss. “Answer me one thing. Can you handle a rope?”

Leseprobe

MAX

BRAND

THE BIG TRAIL

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743765

1

The boss was a hard man, and he was not at great pains to conceal his hardness. He had waited for a week to fill out his judgment upon the new hand, and now his mind was full.

After supper, he went into the bunk house and stood in the door.

“Fuller!” he called.

Tom Fuller leaned his head out of his bunk—he had turned in early—and lowered the magazine which he had been reading, while the vision of Indians, galloping riders, and rescued heroines slowly faded from his mind and was replaced by the solid image of Pete Stringham in the doorway.

“Here!” said Fuller.

The boss took a few long strides into the room.

“Fuller, you’re a cowpuncher?”

“I’m a cowboy, I guess,” said Fuller.

“Who made you a cowpuncher?” asked the boss.

There was silence.

“It’s a sure thing that nature didn’t intend you that way,” said the boss. “Answer me one thing. Can you handle a rope?”

“Why, I’ve handled one considerable.”

“Sure you have,” said the boss, “but did you ever daub it onto a cow and make it fit where you wanted it to go?”

All hands were attentive, with broad grins.

Tom Fuller sat bolt upright, so suddenly that his head landed with a loud thump against the slats of the bunk above him. Then he swung his feet out onto the floor and sat there, wriggling his toes in his socks.

“What’s the matter?” asked Tom Fuller.

“I’m askin’ you,” said the boss. “Who else should I ask? Did you ever daub a rope and make it fit where you wanted it?”

A broader grin passed around the circle, but their eyes dropped to the floor as the boy stared blankly around him. They were in no haste to meet his eye, no matter what their opinion of him might be.

“I dunno,” said Fuller thoughtfully.

He raised his head and considered the question.

“I dunno as I’ve had much luck with a rope,” he confessed.

“You know how to tail up a cow?” went on the boss.

“Why, I suppose so,” said Fuller gently.

“Dash it! You suppose so, do you? What do the cows suppose?”

There was open laughter at this, and Tom Fuller flushed miserably. He stared down at his wiggling toes and sighed.

“What I mean to say is,” said the boss, “did you ever tail a cow up without bustin’ her tail?”

There was a loud roar of mirth. And again Tom blushed. Evidently, the taunt had struck home in a tender spot. He looked down at his big hands and muttered:

“The fact is—sometimes things happen that I don’t intend!”

“The fact is, that you dunno what you can do and what you can’t do!” declared the boss. “Take these!”

He scooped a greasy, well-thumbed pack of cards from the long kitchen table which stood in the center of the room. This pack he tamped solidly together, and then handed it to the boy.

“Tear it in two!” he commanded.

Without a word, Tom Fuller adjusted his grip a little—and suddenly the pack was in two parts. The boss nodded grimly.

“You can do that, eh? But you can’t get a rope onto a cow without havin’ your hoss pulled flat and you knocked head over heels?”

Tom sighed again, nodding gently as he admitted the truth of this accusation.

“I could bulldog ’em better,” he suggested in his mild way.

“You could bulldog ’em, could you? Now, look here, are we workin’ on a ranch, or are we runnin’ a circus? I ask you that, Fuller!”

The answer was so obvious that even Tom Fuller did not speak. He waited, a haunted look in his eyes.

“If you seen a heifer agin’ the sky line, could you tell by the manner of her kickin’ what kind of flies was at her?” inquired the boss.

Tom Fuller was silent.

“Can you handle a brandin’ iron?”

The boy shook his head.

“When I sent you down to run the new wire on that southeast fence, last week, what happened afterward?”

“The cows busted through the next day,” admitted the boy.

This frankness did not appease the boss.

“And they tramped down forty acres of good new wheat, and the old man’ll give the dickens to who? To you? No, to me! To me! I’m likely to get the sack because I put a muttonhead on such a job. Cow-puncher? Say! You couldn’t herd sheep!”

It was the most terrible condemnation to which a puncher could listen, and the boy hung his head.

“You couldn’t herd sheep!” thundered Pete Stringham, raising his voice still higher. “Who ever told you that you could work cows, that’s what I’d like to know?”

“Nobody ever told me,” admitted the boy.

Again the circle smiled.

They were kindly enough, but it pleased them to watch the grilling of the new man. Not one of them but had had extra work thrust upon his shoulders by the appalling inefficiency of the new hand. They watched, and they only partially swallowed their grins when the blank, tormented eye of the boy fell upon their faces.

“Who dropped the whiskey just last night, and busted it to bits, when everybody was hangin’ his tongue out for a drop?” went on the boss.

“I did,” sighed the boy.

Dark looks greeted him all around. This was too serious a matter for smiling.

“Who spilled the steak into the coffee pail and left us without any supper to speak of, at the camp?”

“I did,” admitted Tom Fuller.

“Bah!” snorted the boss. “Who left the gate unlocked on the hoss corral, and let them mustangs go rampin’ over the half of creation?”

“I did,” said the boy.

“You did! You’re darned right you did! And the rest of us toiled and cussed and wore our hosses out tryin’ to get ’em back. And they’s still one missin’! You been here seven days. Can you tell me seven things that you’ve managed to do for the ranch?”

Tom Fuller thought, desperately. His face suddenly flushed—for he blushed very easily—and his forehead knotted.

“I—” he hesitated. “I shot seven coyotes, and a couple of wolves, boss,” he said at last.

“You shot some varmints,” said the boss, more furious than ever. “Sure, this here has been kind of a huntin’ trip, for you. This here has been kind of a pleasure outin’ for you, and I say that you been out havin’ your good time on a dude ranch, and gettin’ paid for it! Is that right?”

Tom Fuller rubbed his big knuckles across his forehead.

“I was tryin’ to recollect the pleasure, boss,” he said slowly.

There was a brief roar of laughter at this. It ended soon. They were afraid to miss some of this man-baiting by covering it with their noise.

“You were tryin’ to recollect it,” sneered Pete Stringham, “and doggone my hide if I can recollect any pleasure that we’ve had out of you. If anybody can, let him speak up!”

He dropped his hands on his hips and glared around the circle, but no one spoke. If there were any heart which beat in sympathy with the persecuted new hand, its owner remained silent. It was not worthwhile to challenge Stringham on such a minor point. Jobs were none too plentiful on the range, at that season.

Stringham turned back on the persecuted man.

“I wanta know,” he said, “what you gotta say for yourself?”

The boy was silent. He swallowed hard, and before his eyes there rose up the prospect of no work. It often had confronted him before, and he knew all the pangs of one meal a day, and that a scant one. It seemed to him that his famished stomach had hardly been filled by three huge meals a day out here on the ranch.

Suddenly he said: “I’ll tell you what, Stringham. I ain’t a very slick cowboy, I guess—”

“I guess you ain’t,” said the other.

“But suppose I was to stay on and work for my board?”

Stringham roared with indignation.

“You eat more’n three men,” he said. “If you was to pay me fifty dollars a month, I wouldn’t have the boardin’ of you, and all the work that you done, it would take three men to undo it! And so they call you ‘Honest Tom,’ don’t they?”

“I been called that at times,” said the cowpuncher, fearful of taking too much for granted in this seemingly favorable turn of the conversation.

“They call you that, do they?” retorted Stringham. “Then I’ll tell you somethin’. There’s some that are honest because they’re too dumb to be crooked! If that there shoe fits you, you put it on. You hear me?”

Honest Tom shrank, and blinked.

And this shrinking on his part put a false idea into the mind of the boss. Besides, he had been too much tormented by the new man during the past week, and it was hardly a wonder that his patience now snapped. He stood over Tom Fuller and shouted: “The way you’ve messed things up, I got a mind to soak you! I got a mind to put an eye on you, you sheep-walkin’ Polack!”

“Oh,” said Honest Tom.

And he stood up before Stringham.

He was not so tall, by inches. He looked rather sleek and fat about the shoulders, like a man who would quickly be out of wind, but the boss remembered certain details—the broken tail of a cow too forcibly heaved from the mud, the bulldogging of a full-grown maverick, and, just a moment before, the tearing across of that tightly compacted wad of cards.

Stringham stepped back more suddenly than he had stepped forward. There had been no challenge from the boy, but a faint light of pleasure had come up into his eyes, and the boss suddenly understood what it meant. He remembered, too, the seven dead coyotes, and the two dead wolves.

So, changing his mind, he roared with more violence than ever. “When the mornin’ comes, I expect you to get out of here, y’understand? The only sign of you that I want to see around here is tracks headin’ out!”

He turned on his heel and strode to the door. The other cowpunchers glanced keenly from one to the other. They had not missed the imminence of battle, and they had not missed the reason that the battle had not been fought. In spite of themselves, they depreciated the boss at that instant.

At the door the foreman turned, sneering:

“Cow-puncher? A blacksmith is all that you’re fit to be!”

Then he was gone.

2

That he was stupid, Honest Tom Fuller knew.

He had known it in school, where it was continually pointed out to him by the teachers in words not of one syllable. He knew it by the mockery of his classmates, too. But in the playing yard he had always been able to get back something of his own. The other youngsters might surpass him infinitely in the classroom, but when it came to the sports of the gravel-covered yard they were outmatched.

It never occurred to him to take pride in these physical accomplishments. It never occurred to him that they were of the slightest importance, even when other boys would sometimes draw him aside and say: “Look here, Tommie. I got a sack full of marbles, here. I’ll give you half of ’em, and you show me how you can jump so far.” Or: “Tommie, how d’you manage to hit so hard? You show me, will you? I’m gunna be your friend.”

“There ain’t any secret,” Tom Fuller used to answer. “You just put your mind on getting there, you see.”

“Yeah,” would be the sneering answer, “the way that you get there in school, eh?”

To that taunt he never had a reply, for he was well aware of his deficiency.

And sometimes, looking around upon his fellows, he wondered at the brightness, the cleverness, the wonderful wit of all his peers. As for himself, he was always at the bottom of the class, in school, and after he left it. He was willing to accept the superiority of the others without jealousy, but he could not well understand the bitterness with which they looked upon him. It seemed as though they hated him for his stupidity.

“Honest Tom, all beef and no brains!”

They used to taunt him with such words as these, and the sting of them had troubled him so often that there was a numb place somewhere in his heart—that place where cruel usage lodges!

Sometimes it seemed to him that, in the course of the years, the cloud in which he lived was lifting a little, and that he could look through it to a brighter future, where all things lay more clearly defined under a bluer sky, and under a more kindly sun. But the cloud never was quite gone.

He went to a doctor, once, and asked him if there was anything wrong with his head. The doctor was a very old and a very kind man, and he looked at the boy with the dim eyes of gentle wisdom.

“In our lives there are turning points,” he said to Tom. “One day the child turns into the boy. One day the boy turns into the youth. One day the youth turns into the man. I remember when I turned into a man. I’d fallen off a rafter in the barn. I was up hunting for pigeons’ nests, high in the mow. I fell and gave myself a bad knock. And all at once I realized that I was not writhing around or groaning. I was simply lying there and accepting the pain, and setting my teeth against it. Well, I’d become a man. Do you understand?”

Tom could understand that, fairly well, and he said so.

“There’s nothing wrong with your head,” said the doctor. “On the contrary, it’s a well-shaped head. It’s big, and it’s built in the right fashion. There’s plenty above the ears, as they say, and plenty behind them, too! If you find that other people consider you dull, no matter. You’re called ‘Honest Tom,’ I believe?”

“Some people have called me that.”

“Then I can tell you this. There’s no one in the world more wise than the honest man, because he’s the only one who really exists, and really lives. Can you understand that?”

“No,” said Tom. “I can’t.”

“Well, some day I think you will. And in the meantime, another day may come along when you’ll wake up. You’ll break through the mist. Do you understand what the mist is?”

“No,” said Tom, “except that I don’t know what other people know.”

“Knowledge,” said the doctor, “is simply a store of facts arranged together in systems. You have plenty of facts. Ten times as many as the average man. You have your compensations, because your eyes are clearer, your hearing is more sensitive, and your hands are stronger than those of your companions. And, after a time, it may be that a crisis will come in your life when suddenly you’ll see the relation between all the facts with which your mind is now stored. And then you will have that brightness which you notice in other people.”

“How shall I bring the time on?” said Tom with a bitter eagerness.

“That I can’t tell,” said the doctor. “That’s in the hands of Providence, as I well may say. But, in the meantime, forget the things that you are without. Cling to what you are. Remain above all, honest. Then you are sure to lead a worthy life. If I were a prophet, my lad, sent down from heaven, I could not tell you a truer thing than that. Be honest, be kind, be brave, and the greatest minds in the world will find ways in which they can look up to you!”

A good deal of the speech slipped over the mind, or through the mind, of the boy, but there was so much directness about a part of it, that it could not fail to cling in his memory. So that he left the wise counselor with the vague hope that, one day, the fog would be blown from his mind and that he would find himself walking over the ridges of the world, and looking clearly down into the deepest shadows of the hollows.

This secret hope had warmed his heart in many a cold moment of despair, and it warmed him again, on the morning when he left the ranch and rode to town. The sun was low in the east, but its heat already was beginning. The light shimmered upward from the rocks, or clung in the dew of the grass, and the songs of birds flashed here and there, driving loudly down the wind, and more suddenly snatched away into the background of murmurs and of music.

To these things, Tom Fuller listened with his head raised, and a little smile of joy upon his lips, though the sad look never quite left his eyes, for trouble and pain and self-distrust were too deeply imprinted in his soul. However, this outward world was more than a mere outwardness to him, and somehow it slipped through his eyes and through his ears and fed a starved self which never had food from human companionship. It seemed to Tom Fuller that the loftiest rock range was a gentle thing compared with the hardness of other men, and the ways of a wolf were simple and genuinely kind contrasted with the keen, cruel ways of wolfish man!

With this in his mind, he enjoyed himself without stint, as he passed through the countryside, always looking ahead, and never trusting himself to glance backward at the range where he had failed once more.

So many failures!

His life was paved with them. To every place he had known, and to the faces of all the men, and to the events of all his days, failure, failure and more failure, was hitched by association, so that he groaned inwardly. He could not look back. He could not look to the future with any confidence whatever. But he could let the landscape and the creatures of the landscape flow inward upon his mind and find a pure content in them.

The road swung over the brow of a hill and suddenly he halted his horse. For beneath him, in the hollow, he saw the town, with the shadowy half of the roofs still wet with dew, and the windows blazing, here and there in the morning light. Smoke rose from the chimneys and swayed out to the south, hardly able to climb. The whole town was surrounded by groves of trees, and the streets themselves were outlined by fine trees, as well. It made as pretty a picture as one could ask of a village, with the silver of the river flowing at its side, but it gave nothing but pain to the boy.

Here were men, again, blotting the landscape, as they blotted his life with their cruel sharpness of wit, more sharp than a cat’s tooth!

And he wondered why it was that he had to cast in his lot with them, continually. Other creatures could survive in the wilderness; only men had to herd together, join hand to hand, work with the power of one another. In those human chains, he was always the misfitted link, and was cast out quickly.

However, he had learned to endure this pain. He drew in a deep breath and went on down the hill, and crossed the bridge, and entered the town.

He paused again at the head of the main street and looked at the signs. Carpenter, mason, store, coal and feed yard. He had tried all of these things, and he had failed in them all. He looked down at his big hands. Was there nothing that he could do?

Then he heard something like the tinkling of a bell. And he rode toward it as one in a dream.

The noise grew louder and louder, as he passed down the street, looking at one sign after another, feeling beforehand the emptiness, the hunger, which would beset him at noon—and then the tinkling as of a bell grew into a rhythmical chiming, and then a crashing, clangoring sound of hammers thundering upon a forge.

That noise ended.

Out from a doorway, carrying a wisp of the black forge smoke about his shoulders like some newly born spirit, ran a tall, wide-shouldered stripling, and behind him, in the door of the blacksmith shop, a big man, gray-haired, bare-armed, girt in a leather apron, roared oaths after him.

The boy turned, shook his fist at the big man, and then took to his heels as the blacksmith lurched a step after him.

Suddenly, Honest Tom remembered the last words of his last employer.

“Blacksmith!”

Well, if that was what he was fitted for, he would accept his fate. He would give up the shining open country. He had given it up many a time before, but those sacrifices had been in vain. Yet perhaps the bitterness of Pete Stringham had made him see the truth. His eye had been sharpened by malice until he was able to see to the central problem of his useless cowpuncher.

“Hullo!” said Tom.

The blacksmith glared at him.

“You want a helper? Is that one fired?” asked Tom.

The other glared again.

Then he beckoned with a grimy finger and, turning his back, he led the way into his shop. Tom swung down from the saddle and followed.

The thick-and-acrid odor of the coal smoke choked his lungs and made him cough.

“You’re fat. You’re too fat,” said the blacksmith. “Can you hold that straight out by the handle?”

And he passed a fourteen-pound sledge to Tom. The boy took it by the end of the handle and held it straight out.

“Take off your coat,” said the blacksmith. “Maybe you’ve come home!”

3

It was one thing to make a sudden muscular effort and hold out the heavy sledge hammer with one hand. It was still another to swing a fourteen-pound sledge hammer for the long hours which remained in that day.

But there was little respite.

Charlie Boston, which was the blacksmith’s name, was forging some huge angle irons to use in the building of a bridge, and Charlie never gave under weight, either in his work or with his fists. Those irons he was barely commencing on, and he toiled at them without ceasing. It was a rush order, and could not be delayed. If it were executed in time, other orders were pouring in from the county supervisors. Therefore, Charlie Boston was ready to do his best, and he demanded the best from his new assistant.

When the great mass of iron, which Boston steadied with his huge tongs, was laid upon the forge, he turned it here and there, and gave the strokes of direction with an eight-pound sledge, which alone, in his capable hands, would do the work of an ordinary twelve or fourteen-pounder, but the instant that his smaller hammer had landed, he expected it to be followed with crushing force by the larger tool.

And this required labor almost without surcease.

When the iron cooled, it was thrust back into the fire, but then Tom Fuller had to work at the bellows. They were of the most antiquated pattern, old, ponderous, working with a groan at every move, so that some huge animal seemed dying in agony in the shop, and furthermore, the bellows leaked mysteriously, so that the boy had to redouble his hand power on the lever. His master was too busy regarding the fire, stacking the coal so that it would produce the hottest flame next to the skin of the iron, frowning into the smoke, and beating it away with his great hands so that he could regard the metal more carefully.

Then out came the great lump of iron again, and there was more hammering, endlessly. The first moments were not so bad. The heat-softened mass yielded pleasantly under the tremendous strokes which Tom Fuller bestowed upon it, and all went well, so long as the sparks were spurting beneath the hammer face, but as soon as the metal darkened, then the work was doubly difficult. The hammer sprang back with a jar, and the hammer handle tore at the hands of Tom.

He had a fine coat of blisters in a single hour. Before noon, the blisters broke, the hammer handle became crimson. Still he gritted his teeth and said not a word.

For it seemed to him that there had truly been a prophecy in the words of Pete Stringham. He must have known. A blacksmith was what he was intended to be! Moreover, what else was there left for him to do? He had tried so many things, and he had failed in them all! So he sighed, and bent to his work, and taught his body a sway from shoulder to heel which eased the work, getting into a comfortable rhythm, only to have the terrible Boston roaring:

“Are you sleepin’? Faster! Faster! You’re one of them that wants the fire to do all of his work for him! Faster, by gosh, or I’ll keep you at it an hour when it’s cold!”

He did not speak back.

There soon came a time when he could not answer, for fear lest the voice he spoke with should be a hopeless groan.

When noon came, the handle of the hammer was red, but Boston appeared to see nothing of this. He led the way to his house.

“What sort of pay you want, kid?” asked Boston.

“I don’t care,” said Honest Tom. “I want a job. That’s all.”

“Is that worryin’ you?” asked Boston. “Ain’t the whole country full of work?”

“Sure it is,” muttered Tom, “but not for me. I’ve been everything from a dry-goods clerk to a brick layer. I couldn’t make a go of anything! Well, maybe I can learn to swing a hammer.”

The other glanced keenly at him.

“You come on home and eat,” said he.

He led the way to a surprisingly neat little house, with a wonderfully tidy little gray-haired woman in charge of it. She seemed appalled and astonished by the sooty appearance of her husband and she actually held up her hands at Tom’s condition. However, he had a basin of hot water to wash his damaged and swelling hands. Suddenly she cried out: “Look, Charlie! Land alive, if the boy’s hands ain’t raw!”

“Bah!” said Charlie Boston. “Women and fools is always afraid of a coupla blisters. It’s good for hardenin’ the hands. If the kid had ever done enough honest work to keep warm, his hands wouldn’t be so tender!”

“I never heard of such a thing,” said Mrs. Boston, and with a great deal of skill she bandaged the raw places with rags and plaster. Still, his hands seemed to be on fire, and, after lunch, he went out on the back porch and lay flat on his back, aching, with waves of fatigue rushing into his brain. It seemed that he had lain there only a moment when the harsh voice of Charlie Boston roused him.

He had to start back for the inferno of the shop, and the first time he grasped the hammer, it seemed as though its weight were tearing the flesh from the bones of his hands. But he closed the fingers one by one, resolutely.

“It’s this, or else to be a wandering bum!” said he.

And he thought of stolen rides on freight cars, of frozen nights in the fields, of crime, filth, and slow degradation. So he clung to his last hope in clinging to the handle of the sledge, and gradually the thing became endurable.

All that afternoon, his labor went on at what seemed an equal pace to him; if Charlie Boston slowed the rhythm, the boy did not notice. By five o’clock he was dizzy, almost staggering, when Mrs. Boston appeared with coffee, stewed prunes and bread. He ate a little, and drank greedily of the coffee until his brain cleared and gave him courage to continue. But longer than any month of his life was the period from this tea time to the close of the work. They labored until the forge fire cast more light in the shop than the sun; then the blacksmith reluctantly resigned his day’s task.

“Where you going to live?” he asked. “The hotel?”

“I dunno,” said Tom, his brain utterly numbed.

“You come home with me.”

Tom went home with Charlie Boston. The bandages on his hands were sodden rags, and Mrs. Boston dressed them again, muttering fiercely. He ate a vast supper, but when it came to bedtime, and he was shown into a little white-painted room, he was barely able to take off his clothes, so stiff and sore were his fingers. His whole body ached for that matter.

He closed his eyes, and was called almost instantly, it seemed to him, for the beginning of the next day. At last he dragged himself to a sitting position and, looking down at his hands, wondered how he could use them even for dressing, let alone for seizing the ponderous hammer.

But that was only a beginning.

The first day was bad enough. The second day was terrible. The third day was a sword of fire that searched his very soul.

But then suddenly affairs began to improve a little. He felt, for his own part, that a sort of superhuman grace had been extended to him, partly because he had made a great effort, and partly because mercy had been taken upon him from above! But at any rate, he found it possible to keep at his work.

His powerful body, first of all, grew accustomed to that straining labor. At the end of the first week, he had nothing to think of except the pain of his raw hands. But even these were beginning to heal in places, and the healed parts were as tough as leather. There is an intricate mystery in the art of changing and adjusting grips, and of this art he became the master, for pain taught him the best ways. Yet the first ten days always appeared to Tom Fuller as a red mist, through which voices, faces, things, appeared dimly. And what was registered finally in his brain was a sense of exhaustion, a dull-red iron cooling on the anvil, and the tapping hammer of Charlie Boston, relentlessly showing the way, and insisting upon more speed.

But like one who has passed through the fire, after this his sufferings became more endurable. It was possible for him to stand at ease before the anvil. The fourteen-pound sledge was the merest toy in his hands. The least scruple of fat had been clawed from his body by the long agony through which he had passed, and the appearance of sleekness about his face and his shoulders was totally deceptive. But as the shoulder and the forearm of a tiger seem softly sleek, so did he appear, and the reality of both was much the same. From right to left, and from left to right, alternating his swing, he could whirl the great sledge and make it flash like a dancing sword. And, with that alternate beat, the blows would fall so fast that it seemed that two men were working at the forge. He cared not for the greatness of the work. His hands were hard, his body was accustomed to the sway and the beat of the thing, and he made this labor a trifle, a jest.

It did not seem to him that he was beating iron, but that he was hammering his own chance in the world into shape. He was securing himself from all disaster!

As soon as he was accustomed to things, he began to feel at home, and gratitude flowed out from his heart. On Sundays he used to work in the garden and the little orchard of Charlie Boston, while the young men of the town went by, laughing and talking to one another.

“He ain’t a man; he’s a hoss!” they would say.

Tom did not care, for Mrs. Boston approved of him.

“It’s almost like havin’ a son in the house,” said she.

Charlie Boston would say nothing, but sometimes his cloudy brows descended and gathered above his eyes, and from those eyes out shot a spark that went to the very heart of the youngster.

At those times, he was vastly uneasy; he could not understand; but well he knew that in the mind of Charlie Boston some conclusion about his assistant already had been reached. Later on, he could find out what that conclusion was.

But, when it came, it was like a thunderbolt to Tom Fuller.

It was on a Sunday that word was brought that a man driving through town with a team of mustangs and a buckboard needed new shoes for his span. That was too profitable an order to be passed, week day or Sunday, and so Tom was ordered into his working clothes. Walking hurriedly down to the forge with his master, he saw before the locked doors of the shop the man with whom his destiny was to be so strangely entangled.

4

He was a tall man of fifty or fifty-five, slenderly made, and the rough clothes which he wore looked totally out of place on him. A neat mustache, snowy white, gave a touch of refinement to his face, even when Tom Fuller saw him in the distance. And when the boy came closer, he was more assured that this was no ordinary traveler, no ordinary ranchman. He had the face of a student, topped by a great, pyramidal brow and sunken eyes of study. Those eyes were gently meditative, and the whole upper part of the face was suggestive of retired, unpractical thought. But the chin, and the aquiline nose, were made narrow and long and denied all the promise of the brow and eyes. If he were a man of thought, he was also a man of action, and the boy was sure of it at a glance, for he had something of a child’s ability to read character. There was such dignity and personality in this man that his wrinkled linen duster fell from his shoulders like a robe of state.

He had attracted a great deal of attention, already. His mustangs were a most ordinary pair, and his buckboard was covered with dust. There was nothing about his turnout to take the eye of the village boys, but half a dozen of them were gathered about with a vaguely expectant air. Others were coming, and Sunday loungers were beginning to approach.

“Howd’ye?” said the blacksmith, as he came up and fitted his key into the big lock upon his doors.

“Well, I thank you,” said the stranger.

And the boy stared at him. He had almost forgotten that “howd’ye” was a question, and not merely a casual greeting.

The doors opened. Tom Fuller began to unhitch the horses, and the stranger stood by, gently stroking his mustache, his manner as abstracted as though it never occurred to him to lend a hand to the business.

The mustangs were duly unhitched, but they were an unruly pair, newly broken, tough as nails, and wild as antelope. When the bellows groaned the first note of preparation, under the hand of Tom, the cream-colored mare jerked back with such force that she pulled the hitching ring fairly out of the wall. She whirled and started to bolt, but mere chance threw the swinging ring into the hands of Tom, and he swayed back with all his might. There was a heavy shock that snapped his body like the cracker on the end of a whip lash; then the mare toppled head over heels. Tom helped her up, and she stood trembling, and blinking, more than half stunned.

He tied her to a stronger place, and by a shorter rope, while the stranger approached in a leisurely way and examined the lead rope. Then he turned to look at the boy.

Tom, beginning at the bellows again, noted a peculiar, secret smile on the face of Charlie Boston, and he wondered at this. But he was accustomed to being bewildered by the sneers and the mockeries of men, and he accepted this as another mystery which he could not penetrate.

In the meantime, the forge fire began to hiss and the heavy fumes of coal smoke arose and clouded the sooty rafters. Tom, working the bellows with long, powerful strokes, looked upward, contentedly. He was glad to see the smoke, he was pleased even by the familiar look of the rafters, by the bulging faces of the hammers which leaned against the wall, and by all the evidences of the work with which he was growing acquainted. Far ahead of him lay the greater and profounder mysteries of smithery. The welding of iron, the guiding of hammer blows in the forging of it to new shapes, the neat precision of Charlie Boston in roughing out with hammer strokes the most intricate patterns. And if he sighed a little as he thought of all that lay before him to be learned, he did not begrudge the years of effort. He was willing to be a blacksmith; there was no great ambition in Tom beyond the desire to live without too much humanly inflicted pain.

He looked down to his hands, and the leathered thickness of the skin was a comfort to him. He drew a great breath, and felt the pull of the muscles across his stomach and shoulders. He was fit. He never before had been half so strong, and it was a quiet delight to him.

Then the shoe was drawn out of the fire, the anvil work was beginning delicately, with quick, small blows. The boy, with knotted brow of attention and effort, did his best, and Charlie Boston lashed him mercilessly with his tongue.

“You ain’t beating angle irons!” said he. “Neither are you tryin’ to sink a ship! D’you wanta flatten the anvil or bash it into the ground? Ain’t you got any feelin’ in your hands? You handle a hammer like you had four feet, instead of two. I never seen such a man! What’s in your head? Gimme that hammer and stand back and try to watch. You have eyes; try to see with ’em, will you?”

This brutal talk humbled the boy, but it did not crush him, since for weeks he had listened to a similar strain constantly pouring from the lips of his master. He stepped back obediently, while the idle circle of onlookers snickered.

And he stared around at them with another sigh.

Beside him, there was a tall fellow of eighteen, full of his new-found manhood, glorious in spurs and chaps, jingling with brilliant conchas. He stood with legs braced wide apart, conscious of himself, of his six brawny feet of height, of his wide shoulders, and of the increasing weight of his hands.

“Am I standin’ in your light, kid?” said he to Tom.

“No, no,” said Tom, in haste.

For he hated trouble, unless it were thrust upon him. And though the companions he had found on the ranch had learned the strength of his arm, he never had taken advantage of that strength. He was like a very sleepy bull terrier, smiling at battles, but leaving them to his dreams.

“You’re standin’ in mine, though, ’Lanky!” bellowed Charlie Boston. “Kid, grab him and throw him out, will you?”

“Let him try it!” said the new-made puncher.

“You better go home,” said Tom to him, gently.

“Why, you Polack—” began the youngster.

Tom gathered him firmly in his arms. There seemed to be yards and yards of writhing, tugging, cursing humanity. He bore the burden forward. A wildly outthrust heel sank into the flank of the cream-colored mare, and she squealed with surprise and with pain.

The spur had cut her a little, and Tom saw a streak of red.

“You better be quiet,” he said, and drew his burden closer to his breast.

All struggling ceased with one great gasp.

At the door he set the lad upon his feet, but found that he had to support him, while the other leaned over, drawing in groaning breaths.

“I hope you ain’t hurt,” said Tom. “You were in Charlie’s light. Maybe you better go home?”

This he said seriously, as good advice, for the puncher was very pale. But all around them the children had gathered, chattering like magpies, chuckling, dancing with delight in mischief.

The tall youth, able to straighten at last, had now sufficient wind in his lungs to make other thoughts possible. He looked upon the impish faces of the boys, and suddenly he realized his disgrace. Far worse than death, to his young pride!

“You—you—” he yelled at Tom. “I’m gunna blow you inside out.”

For he remembered that he was wearing a gun. He reached for it with a well-practiced motion.

Old hands will tell you that there is nothing more dangerous than a youngster on the range. He has not learned to settle into his saddle and his boots and accept his job as work. He is still in the red light of romance, and horses, and guns, and bright spurs, fill his mind, so that he is apt to spend endless hours of practice in snatching his revolver out according to the best Wild West model. He is always preparing for a bar-room fight, and because he is so well prepared, sooner or later he is fairly sure to have it. So this boy snatched out his Colt from the holster which was buckled low down on his thigh—the approved position, said the romances!—but as it flashed up, and as the children shrieked suddenly with fear, a long steel barrel flicked across his wrist, his fingers were numbed by the stroke, and his own gun fell into the dust while he found another weapon hanging from the right hand of Tom Fuller.

Tom leaned and, picking up the fallen weapon, handed it to the other.

“You better go home,” he said in the same gentle voice.

And this time his advice was taken.

The tall boy started off with a downward head and with a shambling stride, but Tom ran after him, and touched his arm. The youth turned, his face white with grief and with shame, his eyes burning. He had been beaten, but there was still danger in him. He felt that his life was ruined, and, therefore, he was quite willing to throw it away.

“You?” he barked at Tom. “Whatcha want?”

“Don’t you feel bad,” said Tom. “That was a trick my father taught me. Don’t you feel bad, partner. I’d rather like to shake hands before you go!”

This he said with an eye so open, and so gentle, and a face of such perfect belief and good nature that the youngster was stunned. He had lived among the young bullies of the range, and had fought his way to an accepted place among them. He blinked, and then, overwhelmed by a philosophy which was not his own, he stretched out an uncertain hand.

“I’ve been a fool!” he muttered.

“No, no,” said Tom. “I guess that things you can forget won’t do you any harm!”

So his hand closed, gently, carefully, upon the hand of the other. He went back to the blacksmith shop to take up his work, and about him flocked the boys of the town. They had been laughing for a month at this stranger. They had been shying stones at him when he went down the street, and they had been winking at each other, shrugging their shoulders as he passed with his handsome, troubled, and unlighted face.

But now they had changed their minds. He was something more than the half-wit they had taken him for. He was, to their eyes, a great hero, and by the greatness of the fall of his last opponent he was just so much elevated and increased.

So they buzzed and murmured, and congratulated him, and admired him mightily, and turned up their shining faces toward him as flowers turn up to see the sun. But that atmosphere of joy was suddenly shattered at the door of the shop by the roar of Charlie Boston:

“Where’n heck have you been? On a pleasure trip? You been out takin’ a Sunday walk and lookin’ at the pretty girls? Come in here and work this here bellows!”