The Max Brand Megapack (296 page)

The voice of Connor was full of hearty agreement.

“So do I. Yes, they’re small, if they’re all like that one. Too small. Much too small.”

He looked narrowly at Townsend from the corner of his eyes to make sure that the hotel proprietor suspected nothing.

“This deaf-mute sells some, now and then?”

“Yep. He comes down once in a while and sells a hoss to the first gent he meets—and then walks back to the garden. Always geldings that he sells, I understand. Stand up under work pretty well, those little hosses. Harry Macklin has got one. Harry lives at Fort Andrew. There’s a funny yarn out about how Harry—”

“What price does the mute ask?”

“Thinking of getting one of ’em?”

“Me? Of course not! What do I want with a runt of a horse like that? But I was wondering what they pay around here for little horses.”

“I dunno.”

“What’s that story you were going to tell me about Harry Macklin?”

“You see, it was this way—”

And he poured forth the stale anecdote while they strolled back to the hotel. Connor smiled and nodded at appropriate places, but his absent eyes were seeing, once more, the low-running form of the little gray gelding coming away from the rest of the pack.

CHAPTER SIX

When he arrived at the hotel Ben Connor found
the following telegram awaiting him:

Lady Fay in with ninety-eight Trickster did mile and furlong in one fifty-four with one hundred twenty Caledonian stale mile in one thirty-nine Billy Jones looks good track fast.

Harry Slocum.

That message blotted all other thoughts from the mind of Connor. From his traveling bag he brought out a portfolio full of wrinkled papers and pamphlets crowded with lists of names and figures; there followed a time of close work. Page after page of calculations scribbled with a soft pencil and in a large, sprawling hand, were torn from a pad, fluttered through the air and lay where they fell. When the hour was ended he pushed away the pamphlets of “dope” and picked up his notes. After that he sat in deep thought and drove puff after puff of cigarette-smoke at the ceiling.

As his brown study progressed, he began crumpling the slips in his moist fingers until only two remained. These he balanced on his finger-tips as though their weight might speak to his finely attuned nerves. At length, one hand closed slowly over the paper it held and crushed it to a ball. He flicked this away with his thumb and rose. On the remaining paper was written “Trickster.” Connor had made his choice.

That done, his expression softened as men relax after a day of mental strain and he loitered down the stairs and into the street. Passing through the lobby he heard the voice of Jack Townsend raised obviously to attract his attention.

“There he goes now. And nothing but the weight kept him from bettin’ on the gray.”

Connor heard sounds, not words, for his mind was already far away in a club house, waiting for the “ponies” to file past. On the way to the telegraph office he saw neither street nor building nor face, until he had written on one of the yellow blanks, “A thousand on Trickster,” and addressed it to Harry Slocum. Not until he shoved the telegram across the counter did he see Ruth Manning.

She was half-turned from the key, but her head was canted toward the chattering sounder with a blank, inward look.

“Do you hear?” she cried happily. “Bjornsen is back!”

“Who?” asked Connor.

“Sveynrod Bjornsen. Lost three men out of eight, but he got within a hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Found new land, too.”

“Lucky devil, eh?”

But the girl frowned at him.

“Lucky, nothing! Bjornsen is a fighter; he lost his father and his older brother up there three years ago and then he went back to make up for their deaths. Luck?”

Connor, wondering, nodded. “Slipped my mind, that story of Bjornsen. Any other news?”

She made a little gesture, palms up, as though she gathered something from the air.

“News? The old wire has been pouring it at me all morning. Henry Levateur went up thirty-two thousand feet yesterday and the Admiral Barr was launched.”

Connor kept fairly abreast of the times, but now he was at sea.

“That’s the new liner, isn’t it?”

“Thirty thousand tons of liner at that. She took the water like a duck. Well, that’s the stuff for Uncle Sam to give them; a few more like the Admiral Barr and we’ll have the old colors in every port that calls itself a town. Europe will have to wake up.”

She counted the telegram with a sweep of her pencil and flipped the change to Connor out of the coin-box. The rattle of the sounder meant new things to Connor; the edges of the world crowded close, for when the noise stopped, in the thick silence he watched her features relax and the light go out of her eyes. It enabled him to glance into her life in Lukin, with only the chattering wire for a companion. A moment before she had been radiant—now she was a tired girl with purple shadows beneath her eyes making them look ghostly large.

“Oh, Bobby,” she called. A tall youth came out of an inner room. “Take the key, please; I’m going out for lunch.”

“Come to the hotel with me,” suggested Connor.

“Lunch at Townsend’s?” She laughed with a touch of excitement. “That’s a treat.”

Already she gained color and her eyes brightened. She was like a motor, Connor decided, nothing in itself, but responding to every electric current.

“This lunch is on me, by the way,” she added.

“Why is that?”

“Because I like to pay on my winning days. I cashed in on the Indian’s horse this morning.”

In Connor’s own parlance—it brought him up standing.

“
You
bet on it? You know horse-flesh, then. I like the little fellow, but the weight stopped me.”

He smiled at her with a new friendliness.

“Don’t pin any flowers on me,” she answered. “Oh, I know enough about horses to look at their hocks and see how they stand; and I don’t suppose I’d buy in on a pony that points the toe of a fore-foot—but I’m no judge. I bet on the gray because I know the blood.”

She had stopped at the door of the hotel and she did not see the change in Connor’s face as they entered.

“Queer thing about horses,” she continued. “They show their strain, though the finest man that ever stepped might have a son that’s a quitter. Not that way with horses. Why, any scrubby pinto that has a drop of Eden Gray blood in him will run till his heart breaks. You can bet on that.”

Lunch at Townsend’s, Connor saw, must be the fashionable thing in Lukin. The “masses” of those who came to town for the day ate at the lunch-counters in the old saloons while the select went to the hotel. Mrs. Townsend, billowing about the room in a dress of blue with white polka-dots, when she was not making hurried trips into the kitchen, cast one glance of approval at Ben Connor and another of surprise at the girl. Other glances followed, for the room was fairly well filled, and a whisper went trailing about them, before and behind.

It was easy to see that Ruth Manning was being accused of “scraping” acquaintance with the stranger, but she bore up beautifully, and Connor gauging her with an accurate eye, admired and wondered where she had learned. Yet when they found a table and he drew out a chair for her, he could tell from the manner in which she lowered herself into it that she was not used to being seated. That observation gave him a feeling of power over her.

“You liked the gray, too?” she was saying, as he took his place.

“I lost a hundred betting against him,” said the gambler quietly. “I hope you made a killing.”

He saw by the slight widening of her eyes that a hundred dollars was a good deal of money to her; and she flushed as she answered:

“I got down a bet with Jud Alison; it was only five dollars, but I had odds of ten to one. Fifty dollars looks pretty big to me,” she added, and he liked her frankness.

“But does everybody know about these grays?”

“Not so many. They only come from one outfit, you see. Dad knew horses, and he told me an Eden Gray was worth any man’s money. Poor Dad!”

Connor watched her eyes turn dark and dull, but he tossed sympathy aside and stepped forward in the business.

“I’ve been interested since I saw that little streak of gray shoot over the finish. Eighteen years old. Did you know that?”

“Really? Well, Dad said an Eden Gray was good to twenty-five.”

“What else did he say?”

“He didn’t know a great deal about them, after all, but he said that now and then a deaf and dumb Negro comes. He’s a regular giant. Whenever he meets a man he gets off the horse and puts a paper into the hand of the other. On the paper it says: Fifty dollars in gold coin! Always that.”

It was like a fairy tale to Connor.

“Jude Harper of Collinsville met him once. He had only ten dollars in gold, but he had three hundred in paper. He offered the whole three hundred and ten to the deaf-mute but he only shook his head.”

“How often does he come out of the valley?”

“Once a year—once in two years—nobody knows how often. Of course it doesn’t take him long to find a man who’ll buy a horse like one of the grays for fifty dollars. The minute the horse is sold he turns around and starts walking back. Pete Ricks tried to follow him. He turned back on Pete, jumped on him from behind a rock, and jerked him off his horse. Then he got him by the hair and bent his head back. Pete says he expected to have his neck broken—he was like a child in the arms of that giant. But it seemed that the mute was only telling him in deaf-and-dumb talk that he mustn’t follow. After he’d frightened the life out of Pete the big mute went away again, and Pete came home as fast as his horse could carry him.”

Connor swallowed. “Where do they get the name Eden Gray?”

“I don’t know. Dad said that three things were true about every gray. It’s always a gelding; it’s always one price, and it always has a flaw. I looked the one over that ran to-day and couldn’t see anything wrong, though.”

“Cow-hocked,” said Connor, breathing hard. “Go on!”

“Dad made up his mind that the reason they didn’t sell more horses was because the owner only sold to weed out his stock.”

“Wait,” said Connor, tapping on the table to make his point. “Do I gather that the only Eden Grays that are sold are the poorest of the lot?”

“That was Dad’s idea.”

“Go on,” said Connor.

“You’re excited?”

But he answered quickly: “Well, one of those grays beat me out of a hundred dollars. I can’t help being interested.”

He detached his watch-charm from its catch and began to finger it carelessly; it was the head of an ape carved in ivory yellowed with age.

The girl watched, fascinated, but she made no mention of it, for the jaw of the gambler was set in a hard line, and she felt, subconsciously, a widening distance between them.

“Does the deaf-mute own the horses?” he was asking.

“I suppose so.”

“This sounds like a regular catechism, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t mind. Come to think of it, everything about the grays is queer. Well, I’ve never seen this man, but do you know what I think? That he lives off there in the mountains by himself because he’s a sort of religious fanatic.”

“Religion? Crazy, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s his religion?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl coldly. “After you jerk lightning for a while, you aren’t interested much in religion.”

He nodded, not quite sure of her position, but now her face darkened and she went on, gathering interest in the subject.

“Oh, I’ve heard ’em rave about the God that made the earth and the stars and all that stuff; the mountains, too. I’ve heard ’em die asking for mercy and praising God. That’s the way Dad went. It was drink that got him. But I’m for facts only. Far as I can see, when people come up against a thing they can’t understand they just close their eyes and say, God! And when they’re due to die, sometimes they’re afraid and they say, God—because they think they’re going out like a snuffed lantern and never will be lighted again.”

The gambler sat with his chin buried in his palm, and from beneath a heavy frown he studied the girl.

“I don’t hold malice more than the next one,” said the girl, “but I saw Dad; and I’ve been sick of religion ever since. Besides, how do you explain the rotten things that happen in the world? Look at yesterday! The King of the Sea goes down with all on board. Were they all crooks? Were they all ready to die? They can tell me about God, but I say, ‘Give me the proofs!’”

She looked at Connor defiantly. “There’s just one thing I believe in,” she said, “that’s luck!”

He did not stir, but still studied her, and she flushed under the scrutiny.

“Not that I’ve had enough luck to make me fond of it. I’ve been stuck up here on the edge of the world all my life. And how I’ve wanted to get away! How I’ve wanted it! I’ve begged for a chance—to cut out the work. If it doesn’t make callouses on a girl’s hands it will make them on her heart. I’ve been waiting all my life for a chance, and the chance has never come.” Something flared in her.

“Sometimes I think,” she whispered, “that I can’t stand it! That I’d do anything! Anything—just to get away.”

She stopped, and as her passion ebbed she was afraid she had said too much.

“Shake,” he said, stretching his hand across the table, “I’m with you. Luck! That’s all there is running things!”

His fingers closed hard over hers and she winced, for he had forgotten to remove the ivory image from his hand, and the ape-head cut into her flesh.

CHAPTER SEVEN

That evening Ruth sent a boy over to the hotel with
a telegram for Connor. It announced that Trickster, at six to one, came home a winner in the Murray. But Connor had time for only a grunt and a nod; he was too busy composing a letter to Harry Slocum, which read as follows:

Dear Harry:

I’m about to put my head in the lion’s mouth; and in case you don’t hear from me again, say within three months, this is to ask you to look for my bones. I’m starting out to nail a thousand-to-one shot. Working a hunch for the biggest clean-up we ever made. I’m going into the mountains to find a deaf mute Negro who raises the finest horses I’ve ever seen. Do you get that? No white man has gone into that valley; at least, no one has come out talking. But I’m going to bring something with me. If I don’t come out it’ll be because I’ve been knocked on the head inside the valley. I’m not telling any one around here where I’m bound, but I’ve made inquiries, and this is what I gather: No one is interested in the mute’s valley simply because it’s so far away. The mute doesn’t bother them and they won’t bother him. That’s the main reason for letting him alone. The other reasons are that he’s suspected of being a bad actor.