The Seventh Man. Max Brand
streamed out into the currents, and now and then in moist ground under a sheltering bank he found rich patches of violets.
His eyes went happily among these tokens of the glad time of the year, but while he noted them and the bursting buds of the aspen, reddish-brown, his mind was open to all that middle register of calls which the human ear may notice in wild places. Far above his scale were shrilling murmurs of birds and insects, and beneath it ran those ground noises that the rabbit, for instance, understands so well; but between these overtones and undertones he heard the scream of the hawk, spiraling down in huge circles, and the rapid call of a grouse, far off, and the drone of insects about his feet, or darting suddenly upon his brain and away again. He heard these things by the grace of the wind, which sometimes blew them about him in a chorus, and again shut off all except that lonely calling of the grouse, and often whisked away every murmur and left Gregg, in the center of a wide hush with only the creak of the pack-saddle and the click of the burro's accurate feet among the rocks.
At such times he gave his full attention to the trail, and he read it as one might turn the pages of a book. He saw how a rabbit had scurried, running hard, for the prints of the hind feet planted far ahead of those on the forepaws. There was reason in her haste, for here the pads of a racing coyote had dug deeply into a bit of soft ground. The sign of both rabbit and coyote veered suddenly, and again the trail told the reason clearly—the big print of a lobo's paw, that gray ghost which haunts the ranges with the wisest brain and the swiftest feet in the West. Vic Gregg grinned with excitement; fifty dollars' bounty if that scalp were his! But the story of the trail called him back with the sign of some small animal which must have traveled very slowly, for in spite of the tiny size of the prints, each was distinct. The man sniffed with instinctive aversion and distrust for this was the trail of the skunk, and if the last of the seven sleepers was out, it was spring indeed. He raised his cudgel and thwacked the burro joyously.
“Get on, Marne,” he cried. “We're overdue in Alder.”
Marne switched her tail impatiently and canted back a long ear to listen, but she did not increase her pace; for Marne had only one gait, and if Vic occasionally thumped her, it was rather by way of conversation than in any hope of hurrying their journey.
Chapter II. Grey Molly
If her soul had been capable of enthusiasm, Marne could have made the trip on schedule time, but she was a burro good for nothing except to carry a pack well nigh half her own weight, live on forage that might have starved a goat, and smell water fifteen miles in time of drought. Speed was not in her vocabulary, and accordingly it was late afternoon rather than morning when Gregg, pointing his course between the ears of Marne, steered her through Murphy's Pass and came out over Alder. There they paused by mutual consent, and the burro flicked one long ear forward to listen to the rushing of the Doane River. It filled the valley with continual murmur, and just below them, where the brown, white-flecked current twisted around an elbow bend, lay Alder tossed down without plan, here a boulder and there a house. They seemed marvelously flimsy structures, and one felt surprise that the weight the winter snow had not crushed them, or that the Doane River had not sent a strong current licking over bank and tossed the whole village crashing down the ravine. One building was very much like other, but Gregg's familiar eye pierced through the roofs and into Widow Sullivan's staggering shack, into Hezekiah Whittleby's hushed sitting-room, down to the moist, dark floor of the Captain's saloon into that amazing junkshop, the General Merchandise store; but first and last he looked to the little flag which gleamed and snapped above the schoolhouse, and it spelled “my country” to Vic.
Marne consented to break into a neat-footed jog-trot going down the last slope, and so she went up the single winding street of Alder, grunting at every step, with Gregg's whistle behind her. In town, he lived with his friend, Dug Pym, who kept their attic room reserved for his occupancy, so he headed straight for that place. What human face would he see first?
It was Mrs. Sweeney's little boy, Jack, who raced into the street whooping, and Vic caught him under the armpits and swung him dizzily into the air.
“By God,” muttered Vic, as he strode on, “that's a good kid, that Jack.” And he straightway forgot all about that knife which Jackie had purloined from him the summer before. “Me and Betty,” he thought, “we'll have kids, like Jack; tougher'n leather.”
Old Garrigan saw him next and cackled from his truck garden in the backyard, but Vic went on with a wave of his arm, and on past Gertie Vincent's inviting shout (Gertie had been his particular girl before Betty Neal came to town), and on with the determination of a soldier even past the veranda of Captain Lorrimier's saloon, though Lorrimer himself bellowed a greeting and “Chick” Stewart crooked a significant thumb over his shoulder towards the open door. He only paused at the blacksmith shop and looked in at Dug, who was struggling to make the print of a hot shoe on a hind foot of Simpson's sorrel Glencoe.
“Hey, Dug!”
Pym raised a grimy, sweating forehead.
“You, boy; easy, damn you! Hello, Vic!” and he propped that restless hind foot on his inner thigh and extended a hand.
“Go an workin', Dug, because I can't stop; I just want a rope to catch Grey Molly.”
“You red devil—take that rope over there, Vic. You won't have no work catchin' Molly. Which she's plumb tame. Stand still, damn you. I never seen a Glencoe with any sense!—Where you goin', Vic? Up to the school?”
And his sweaty grin followed Vic as the latter went out with the coil of rope over his shoulder. When Gregg reached the house, Nelly Pym hugged him, which is the privilege of fat and forty, and then she sat at the foot of the stairs and shouted up gossip while he shaved with frantic haste and jumped into his best clothes. He answered her with monosyllables and only half his mind.
“Finish up your work, Vic?”
“Nope.”
“You sure worked yourself all thin. I hope somebody appreciates it.” She chuckled. “Ain't been sick, have you?”
“Say, who d'you think's in town? Sheriff Glass!”
This information sank in on him while he tugged at a boot at least a size and half too small.
“Pete Glass!” he echoed. Then: “Who's he after?”
“I dunno. Vic, he don't look like such a bad one.”
“He's plenty bad enough,” Gregg assured her. “Ah-h-h!”
His foot ground into place, torturing his toes.
'“Well,” considered Mrs. Pym, in a philosophic rumble, “I s'pose them quiet gents is the dangerous ones, mostly; but looking at Glass you wouldn't think he'd ever killed all those men. Know about the dance?”
“Nope.”
“Down to Singer's place. Betty goin' with you?”
He jerked open the door and barked down at her: “Who else would she be goin' with?”
“Don't start pullin' leather before the horse bucks,” said Mrs. Pym. “I don't know who else she'd be goin' with. You sure look fine in that red shirt, Vic!”
He grinned, half mollified, half shame-faced, and ducked back into the room, but a moment later he clumped stiffly down the stairs, frowning. He wondered if he could dance in those boots.
“Feel kind of strange in these clothes. How do I look, Nelly?” And he turned in review at the foot of the stairs.
“Slick as a whistle, I'll tell a man.” She raised her voice to a shout as he disappeared through the outer door. “Kiss her once for me, Vic.”
In the center of the little pasture he stood shaking out the noose, and the three horses raced in a sweeping gallop