The Max Brand Megapack. Max Brand
in the distance, and in the foreground, first a mighty pine with the branches lopped smoothly from the side as though some tremendous ax had trimmed it, behind this a ranch-house, and farther back the smooth waters of a lake.
He turned away sadly and had reached the door when something made him turn back and stand once more before the photograph. It was quite the same, but it took on a different significance as he linked it with the two other objects in the room, the picture of his mother and the revolver box. He found himself searching among the forest for the figures of two great grey men, equal in bulk, such Titans as that wild country needed.
West it must be, but where? North or South? West, and from the West surely that grey man at the Garden had come, and from the West John Bard himself. Those two mountains, spearing the sky with their sharp horns—they would be the pole by which he steered his course.
A strong purpose is to a man what an engine is to a ship. Suppose a hull lies in the water, stanchly built, graceful in lines of strength and speed, nosing at the wharf or tugging back on the mooring line, it may be a fine piece of building but it cannot be much admired. But place an engine in the hull and add to those fine lines the purr of a motor—there is a sight which brings a smile to the lips and a light in the eyes. Anthony had been like the unengined hulk, moored in gentle waters with never the hope of a voyage to rough seas. Now that his purpose came to him he was calmly eager, almost gay in the prospect of the battle.
On the highest hill of Anson Place in a tomb overlooking the waters of the sound, they lowered the body of John Bard.
Afterward Anthony Bard went back to the secret room of his father. The old name of Anthony Woodbury he had abandoned; in fact, he felt almost like dating a new existence from the moment when he heard the voice calling out of the garden: “John Bard, come out to me!” If life was a thread, that voice was the shears which snapped the trend of his life and gave him a new beginning. As Anthony Bard he opened once more the door of the chamber.
He had replaced the revolver of John Bard in the box with the oiled silk. Now he took it out again and shoved it into his back trouser pocket, and then stood a long moment under the picture of the woman he knew was his mother. As he stared he felt himself receding to youth, to boyhood, to child days, finally to a helpless infant which that woman, perhaps, had held and loved. In those dark, brooding eyes he strove to read the mystery of his existence, but they remained as unriddled as the free stars of heaven.
He repeated to himself his new name, his real name: “Anthony Bard.” It seemed to make him a stranger in his own eyes. “Woodbury” had been a name of culture; it suggested the air of a long descent. “Bard” was terse, short, brutally abrupt, alive with possibilities of action. Those possibilities he would never learn from the dead lips of his father. He sought them from his mother, but only the painted mouth and the painted smile answered him.
He turned again to the picture of the house with the snow-topped mountains in the distance. There surely, was the solution; somewhere in the infinite reaches of the West.
Finally he cut the picture from its frame and rolled it up. He felt that in so doing he would carry with him an identification tag—a clue to himself. With that clue in his travelling bag, he started for the city, bought his ticket, and boarded a train for the West.
CHAPTER VIII
MARTY WILKES
The motion of the train, during those first two days gave Anthony Bard a strange feeling that he was travelling from the present into the past. He felt as if it was not miles that he placed behind him, but days, weeks, months, years, that unrolled and carried him nearer and nearer to the beginning of himself. He heard nothing about him; he saw nothing of the territory which whirled past the window. They were already far West before a man boarded the train and carried to Bard the whole atmosphere of the mountain desert.
He got on the train at a Nebraska station and Anthony sat up to watch, for a man of importance does not need size in order to have a mien. Napoleon struck awe through the most gallant of his hero marshals, and even the porter treated this little brown man with a respect that was ludicrous at first glimpse.
He was so ugly that one smiled on glancing at him. His face, built on the plan of a wedge, was extremely narrow in front, with a long, high-bridged nose, slanting forehead, thin-lipped mouth, and a chin that jutted out to a point, but going back all the lines flared out like a reversed vista. A ridge of muscle crested each side of the broad jaws and the ears flaunted out behind so that he seemed to have been built for travelling through the wind.
The same wind, perhaps, had blown the hair away from the upper part of his forehead, leaving him quite bald half way back on his head, where a veritable forest of hair began, and continued, growing thicker and longer, until it brushed the collar of his coat behind.
When he entered the car he stood eying his seat for a long moment like a dog choosing the softest place on the floor before it lies down. Then he took his place and sat with his hands folded in his lap, moveless, speechless, with the little keen eyes straight before him—three hours that state continued. Then he got up and Anthony followed him to the diner. They sat at the same table.
“The journey,” said Anthony, “is pretty tiresome through monotonous scenery like this.”
The little keen eyes surveyed him a moment before the man spoke.
“There was buffalo on them plains once.”
If someone had said to an ignorant questioner, “This little knoll is called Bunker Hill,” he could not have been more abashed than was Anthony, who glanced through the window at the dreary prospect, looked back again, and found that the sharp eyes once more looked straight ahead without the slightest light of triumph in his coup. Silence, apparently, did not in the least abash this man.
“Know a good deal about buffaloes?”
“Yes.”
It was not the insulting curtness of one who wishes to be left in peace, but simply a statement of bald fact.
“Really?” queried Anthony. “I didn’t think you were as old as that!”
It appeared that this remark was worthy of no answer whatever. The little man turned his attention to his order of ham and eggs, cut off the first egg, manoeuvred it carefully into position on his knife, and raised it toward a mouth that stretched to astonishing proportions; but at the critical moment the egg slipped and flopped back on the plate.
“Missed!” said Anthony.
He couldn’t help it; the ejaculation popped out of its own accord. The other regarded him with grave displeasure.
“If you had your bead drawed an’ somebody jogged your arm jest as you pulled the trigger, would you call it a miss?”
“Excuse me. I’ve no doubt you’re extremely accurate.”
“I ne’er miss,” said the other, and proved it by disposing of the egg at the next imposing mouthful.
“I should like to know you. My name is Anthony Bard.”
“I’m Marty Wilkes. H’ware ye?”
They shook hands.
“Westerner, Mr. Wilkes?”
“This is my furthest East.”
“Have a pleasant time?”
A gesture indicated the barren, brown waste of prairie.
“Too much civilization.”
“Really?”
“Even the cattle got no fight in ’em.” He added, “That sounds like I’m a fighter. I ain’t.”
“Till you’re stirred up, Mr. Wilkes?”
“Heat me up an’ I’ll burn. Soil wood.”
“You’re pretty familiar with the Western country?”
“I get around.”
“Perhaps you’d recognize