The Max Brand Megapack. Max Brand
“I could do nothing as bad as the crime he has done. For twenty years the dread of his coming haunted my father, broke him, aged him prematurely. Every day he went to a secret room and cared for his revolver—this gun here in my hand, you see? He and I—we were more than father and son—we were pals, Sally. And then this devil called my father out into the night and shot him. Damn him!”
“You’ve got to listen to me, Anthony—”
“I’ll listen to nothing, for there he is and—”
She said with a sharp, rising ring in her voice: “If you shoot at him while he carries that white flag I’ll—I’ll send a bullet through your head—that’s straight! We got only one law in the mountains, and that’s the law of honour. If you bust that, I’m done with you, Anthony.”
“Take my gun—take it quickly, Sally, I can’t trust myself; looking at him, I can see the place where the bullet should strike home.”
He forced the butt of his revolver into her hands, rose, and stepped to the door, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Tell me what he does.”
“He’s comin’ straight toward us as if he didn’t fear nothin’—grey William Drew! He’s not packin’ a gun; he trusts us.”
“The better way,” answered Bard. “Bare hands—the better way!”
“He has killed men with those bare hands of his. I can see ’em clear—great, blunt-fingered hands, Anthony. He’s coming around the side of the house. I’ll go into the front room.”
She ran past Anthony and paused in the habitable room, spying through a crack in the wall. And Anthony stood with his eyes tightly closed, his head bowed. The image of the leashed hound came more vividly to her when she glanced back at him.
“He’s walkin’ right up the path. There he stops.”
“Where?”
“Right beside the old grave.”
“Anthony!” called a deep voice. “Anthony, come out to me!”
He started, and then groaned and stopped himself.
“Is the sign of the truce still over his head, Sally?”
“Yes.”
“I daren’t go out to him—I’d jump at his throat.”
She came beside him.
“It means something besides war. I can see it in his face. Pain—sorrow, Anthony, but not a wish for fightin’.”
From the left side of his cartridge belt a stout-handled, long-bladed hunting-knife was suspended. He disengaged the belt and tossed it to the floor. Still he paused.
“If I go, I’ll break the truce, Sally.”
“You won’t; you’re a man, Anthony; and remember that you’re on the range, and the law of the range holds you.”
“Anthony!” called the deep voice without.
He shuddered violently.
“What is it?”
“It sounds—like the voice of my father calling me! I must go!”
She clung to him.
“Not till you’re calmer.”
“My father died in my arms,” he answered; “let me go.”
He thrust her aside and strode out through the door.
On the farther side of the grave stood Drew, his grey head bare, and looking past him Anthony saw the snow-clad tops of the Little Brother, grey also in the light of the evening. And the trees whose branches interwove above the grave—grey also with moss. The trees, the mountain, the old headstone, the man—they blended into a whole.
“Anthony!” said the man, “I have waited half my life for this!”
“And I,” said Bard, “have waited a few weeks that seem longer than all my life, for this!”
His own eager panting stopped him, but he stumbled on: “I have you here in reach at last, Drew, and I’m going to tear your heart out, as you tore the heart out of John Bard.”
“Ah, Anthony,” said the other, “my heart was torn out when you were born; it was torn out and buried here.”
And to the wild eyes of Anthony it seemed as if the great body of Drew, so feared through the mountain-desert, was now enveloped with weakness, humbled by some incredible burden.
After that a mist obscured his eyes; he could not see more than an outline of the great shape before him; his throat contracted as if a hand gripped him there, and an odd tingling came at the tips of his fingers. He moved forward.
“It is more than I dreamed,” he said hoarsely, as his foot planted firmly on the top of the grave, and he poised himself an instant before flinging himself on the grey giant. “It is more than I dreamed for—to face you—alone!”
And a solemn, even voice answered him, “We are not alone.”
“Not alone, but the others are too far off to stop me.”
“Not alone, Anthony, for your mother is here between us.”
Like a fog under a wind, the mist swept from the eyes of Anthony; he looked out and saw that the face of the grey man was infinitely sad, and there was a hungry tenderness that reached out, enveloped, weakened him. He glanced down, saw that his heel was on the mount of the grave; saw again the headstone and the time-blurred inscription: “Here sleeps Joan, the wife of William Drew. She chose this place for rest.”
A mortal weakness and trembling seized him. The wind puffed against his face, and he went staggering back, his hand caught up to his eyes.
He closed his mind against the words which he had heard.
But the deep organ voice spoke again: “Oh, boy, your mother!”
In the stupor which came over him he saw two faces: the stern eyes of John Bard, and the dark, mocking beauty of the face which had looked down to him in John Bard’s secret room. He lowered his hand from his eyes; he stared at William Drew, and it seemed to him that it was John Bard he looked upon. Their names differed, but long pain had touched them with a common greyness. And it seemed to Anthony that it was only a moment ago that the key turned in the lock of John Bard’s secret room, the hidden chamber which he kept like Bluebeard for himself, where he went like Bluebeard to see his past; only an instant before he had turned the key in that lock, the door opened, and this was the scene which met his eyes—the grave, the blurred tombstone, and the stern figure beyond.
“Joan,” he repeated; “your wife—my mother?”
He heard a sob, not of pain, but of happiness, and knew that the blue eyes of Sally Fortune looked out to him from the doorway of the house.
The low voice, hurried now, broke in on him.
“When I married Joan, John Bard fled from the range; he could not bear to look on our happiness. You see, I had won her by chance, and he hated me for it. If you had ever seen her, Anthony, you would understand. I crossed the mountains and came here and built this house, for your mother was like a wild bird, Anthony, and I did not dare to let men near her; then a son was born, and she died giving him birth. Afterward I lived on here, close to the place which she had chosen herself for rest. And I was happy because the boy grew every day into a more perfect picture of his dead mother.
“One day when he was almost three I rode off through the hills, and when I came back the boy was gone. I rode with a posse everywhere, hunting him; aye, Anthony, the trail which I started then I have kept at ever since, year after year, and here it ends where it began—at the grave of Joan!
“Finally I came on news that a man much like John Bard in appearance