The Black Rider Page 16

  But her benefactor went on without a glance behind him.

  “He’s superstitious,” said the beholders. “He’s trying to get good luck for the meeting with Rory…and the devil take him and the old beggar!”

  But now he had come in sight of the blacksmith shop. A cluster of men fell back. One or two lingered beside Rory Moore, begging him to the last minute not to throw away his life in vain. But he tore himself away from them and strode well out into the street, where the fierce white sun beat down upon him. Nearer drew Macdonald, and still his bearing was as casual and light as the bearing of any pleasure seeker.

  “Macdonald!” cried Rory Moore suddenly in a wild, hoarse voice.

  “Well, Rory,” answered the smooth tones of the man-killer, “are you ready?”

  “Yes, curse you, ready!”

  “Then get your gun!”

  And Rory, waiting for no second invitation, reached for the butt of his Colt. It was an odd contrast that lay between the two, as they faced one another, Rory crouched over and taut with eagerness, and the tall and careless form of Macdonald. And it seemed that the same carelessness was in the gesture with which he reached for his weapon. Yet such was the consummate speed of that motion that his gun was bare before the revolver of Rory Moore was out of the holster. His gun was bare, but there seemed to be some slip. Carelessness had been carried too far, for the gun flashed in his hand and dropped into the dust.

  And Rory? His own weapon exploded. It knocked up a little fountain of dust at the feet of the giant. He fired again, and Macdonald collapsed backward, like a falling tower. The big sombrero dropped from his head, and he lay with his long red hair floating like blood across the dust.

  And yet so incredible was it to all who watched that Macdonald should indeed have fallen, that there was a long pause before a yell of triumph rose from a hundred throats, and they closed around the big man, like wolves around a dead lion.

  And when the wonder of it was faded a little, they picked up his gun, where it had fallen in the dust. They picked it up, they examined it, as one might have examined the sword of Achilles, after the arrow had struck his heel, and the venom had worked. They broke the gun open. But not a bullet fell out. And then they saw that it was empty, and that Macdonald had come so carelessly down that street not to kill, but to be killed!

  It was a thunderstroke to the townsmen. It was as though the devil, being trailed into a corner, should turn into an angel and take flight for heaven!

  “There ain’t more’n one way of looking at it,” said the sheriff, when he came into the town that evening on a foaming horse. “Macdonald didn’t want to kill young Moore. But he had to face him, or be called a coward. And there you have it! He’s been a hound all his life, but he’s died like a hero!”

  And that was the motive behind the monument which was built for Macdonald in that town. Although partly perhaps, they simply wanted to identify themselves with that terrible and romantic figure.

  But, while the turmoil of talk was sweeping up and down the town, two women were the first to think of striving to untangle the mysterious motives of Macdonald by something which he might have left behind him in his room—perhaps some letter to explain everything.

  It was Mrs. Charles Moore who led the way, and with her went her niece, the sister of Rory They found the room undisturbed, exactly as it had been when Macdonald left. But all they found was his rifle, his other revolver, his slicker, and his bed roll. There was nothing else except a few trifles. So they began to look around the room itself.

  “And look yonder!” cried Mrs. Charles Moore. “There’s the place he dumped out the bullets from his gun…poor man…right underneath the picture of your poor dead Aunt Mary! And, child, child, how astonishingly you’ve grown to be like her! I’ve never seen such a likeness…just in the last year you’ve sprouted up and grown into the very shadow of her!”

  “Oh,” cried the girl, “how can you talk of such things!” “What in the world…” began the other. “Here in this very room…and…here where he thought his last thoughts!”

  “Heavens above, silly child, you’re weeping for him!” “But I saw him when they carried him in from the street,” said Mary softly, with the tears running slowly down her face. “And even in death he seemed a greater man than any I’ll ever see. And one great arm and hand was hanging down…I shall never forget!”

  Partners

  In the Golden Age of American fiction magazines, the decades between 1920 and 1940, many of the slick paper publications had a category known as the short short story. W Somerset Maugham wrote several fine short shorts for Cosmopolitan. Liberty Magazine offered an annual prize of $1,000 above the standard payment for the best short short to appear in its pages, and there was one every week. In the 1930s Alan Le May wrote numerous brilliant short shorts for Collier’s. The short short at The American Magazine was called a “sto-riette” and in “Partners” in the issue dated January, 1938, Faust took up the challenge of this most demanding of all forms of fiction. During his lifetime Faust signed his own name to only ten stories. This was one of them.

  Since the days of Anton Chekhov who along with Edgar Allan Poe really pioneered the short short story the structure has always been what Aristotle in the Poetics termed in Greek drama the anagnorisis: the shock of revelation. There is little time in a short short story for plot contrivances. The focus must be on one climatic moment in the life of a man or woman when all that went before and all that will follow, as in a sudden flash of summer lightning, stands painfully naked and starkly quiveringly real. “Partners” records one such moment. What reaffirms that this is truly a Western story is to be found in the last line.

  After September, no one takes Caldwell Pass because, although it is the shortest way west from Bisby it is so high, so threatened with avalanches of snow and rubble. It has a bad name, also, for the northwest wind which, once it sights its way down the ravine, can blow frost even into the heart of a mountain sheep.

  This was a December day, but Tucker was spending the early afternoon in Caldwell Pass, sitting behind a stone with his rifle across his knees. Once a bird shadow slid over him. As it moved beside the rock it touched Tucker with a finger of ice and forced him to shift his position. But he waited with the patience of a good hunter until he heard the footfall come down the pass toward him. Then he slid the rifle out into the crevice of the rock.

  He waited till he could hear the man’s breathing. Then he said, “Hands up, Jack!”

  Huntingdon turned his back sharply. Seen from behind there was no trace of middle age about him. He looked as trim and powerful as a young athlete.

  The echo in the ravine had fooled him. “Well, Harry?” he was saying.

  “Keep your hands up. You’ll get it straight through the back of the head if you don’t,” said Tucker to the big man.

  He went out and laid the muzzle of the rifle against the base of Huntingdon’s skull. He held the gun under his right arm and patted the clothes of his partner with his left hand. He found the fat lump which the wallet made, and drew it out. There was no weapon.

  “All right, Jack. Turn around,” he said.

  Huntingdon turned. He was a bit white on each cheek, below the cheekbone. He kept on smiling.

  “How much did you take?” asked Tucker, with his gun still threatening.

  “I cleaned out the safe.”

  “You left me flat?”

  “I left you the house, the office, and the good will,” said Huntingdon.

  “I had the house and the office and the good will before you came,” said Tucker.

  “You had a mortgage on the house; nobody ever came to your office; and where was the good will?” asked Huntingdon.

  Tucker frowned. He had been telling himself that he was the mere executor of justice; but he might have known that the tongue of Huntingdon would turn this execution into murder.

  “Kind of surprised to find me here, aren’t you?” asked Tucker.

  “I’
m surprised…a little.”

  “Why, I’ve always seen through you,” said Tucker. “I knew about you and Molly right from the first.”

  He laughed, without letting the laughter shake his body or the gun in his hands.

  “You never knew a wrong thing between us,” said Huntingdon.

  “Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong enough to get a divorce for,” said Tucker.

  “Molly’s dead,” said Huntingdon. “For God’s sake, Harry…she’s dead!”

  Tucker licked his lips. It pleased him to see the pain in Huntingdon’s eyes.

  “There’s more things than bedtime stories in the world,” he persisted. “There’s a sneaking into a man’s life and taking his wife away from him. There’s a holding together of eyes, when the hands don’t touch. There’s a way of just silently enduring the poor damned fool of a husband. There’s…! Oh, damn you! You rotten…!” He got out of breath and took a deep inhalation through his teeth. “I wish she could see you here, with the stolen money!” said Tucker.

  Huntingdon smiled. “I think you’re going to kill me.”

  Tucker looked at that handsome face with a dreadful amazement; for he saw that his partner was not afraid.

  “Before you put the bullet into me, though,” said Huntingdon, “I want to speak about the money. I’ve worked for ten years for you. Slaved. You called me a junior partner. But I was only a slave. At the end of that time, I had nothing.”

  “You know the kind of expenses…,” began Tucker.

  “At the end of ten years,” said Huntingdon, “I find eighteen hundred dollars in the safe, and I take it. It’s the only way I’ll ever get a share. I take the money and get out. I thought I was going ten thousand miles to have elbow-room between us.…But this way is about as good. It will put the greatest possible distance between us.”

  “Now, what in hell d’you mean by that?” asked Tucker.

  “You couldn’t understand.”

  “It’s too high for me to understand? It’s above me, maybe?” All at once Tucker screamed, “Take this, then! And this!”

  He fired as he was shouting. And the rifle went crazy in his hands. It missed twice. The third bullet hit

  Huntingdon between the knee and the hip. He sank slowly to the ground. The blood came up in a welter of dark red. It soaked his trouser leg at once and began to trickle down over the rock.

  “You’re too high for me, are you?” yelled Tucker. “Well, what you think now…? Another thing, damn you, and you listen hard to it. What you ever do with your life before you hooked up with me in the partnership? Just a bum. Just a rambling bum. Never did a thing. Isn’t that true? Speak out!”

  “It’s true,” said Huntingdon.

  “Never a damn’ bit of good to yourself or anybody else till you hooked up with me,” said Tucker.

  “That’s true, also,” said Huntingdon. He looked away from Tucker and smiled at the sky. “In a sense, I suppose, we needed each other; in a sense, perhaps we were ideal partners,” he said.

  Tucker began to laugh, and then a chill gust of wind stopped his breath, quickly, like a handstroke. It was not a mere breath of wind. It was the true northwester which had found the ravine and was sighting down it as down a gun barrel.

  He withdrew himself from his passion and, looking about him, saw that the sun was about to set. It was more than time for him to start back home. In spite of his fleece-lined coat, his teeth would be chattering long before he got out of the pass. He turned with the rifle toward big Huntingdon. His face was blue with cold. Tucker had lifted the gun butt to his shoulder, but now he lowered it again.

  “I’ve got to leave you, Jack,” he said. “But it’ll be thirty below in half an hour, with plenty of wind to drive the cold through you. You’re going to have a few minutes to think things over, and then…you’ll get sleepy!”

  He saw Huntingdon’s eyes widen; and then he was calm again.

  “Good bye, then,” said Huntingdon.

  “Ah, to hell with you!” snarled Tucker.

  He whirled, determined to run the entire distance down the pass in order to keep from freezing, but with his first springing step his feet shot from beneath him, because he had stepped in the blood that ran from Huntingdon. He came down heavily on his right knee, and heard the bone crunch like old wood.

  For an instant the pain leaped out of the broken bone and ached behind his eyes; then he forgot all about it because he realized that he was about to die. The northwest wind pitched its song an octave higher, and right through the heavy, fleece-lined coat it laid its invisible hand on the naked flesh of Tucker.

  Huntingdon’s voice said, cheerfully, “If you finish me off now, and take my clothes, the warmth of them will do you less good than the warmth of my body…. But if we haul to the windward of that rock and lie down close together…. Sam Hillier comes through the pass tomorrow morning with his pack mules. We might last it out.”

  “Lie close together? You and me?” said Tucker, in a sort of horror. And then he saw that it was the only way.

  Moving was bitterest agony, but both he and Huntingdon got to the shelter of the big rock, and the salvation from the wind was like a promise of heaven that they still might live. Tucker lay flat on his back, his teeth set with a scream working up higher and higher in his throat. The cut of the wind grew less and less. He opened his eyes and saw that Huntingdon was piling smaller rocks on each side of the boulder so that the icy eddyings of the gale might not get at them.

  Afterward, Huntingdon lay down beside him, gathered him close.

  “What chance is there?” asked Tucker. “What chance, Jack?”

  “One in fifty,” said Huntingdon. And then, as he felt the shudder pass through Tucker’s body, he added, “Yes, or one in five. The thing to do is to keep on hoping, and talking.”

  “Ay, and we’ve things to talk about,” said Tucker.

  “We have,” answered Huntingdon.

  The warmth of Huntingdon’s body began to strike through Tucker’s clothes. He blessed God for it.

  “But man, man,” said Tucker, “what a fool you were to come up into Caldwell’s Pass on a December day without a heavy coat! Take the fleece-lined thing off me and put it over us both. And hope, Jack. It’s hope that keeps the heart warm!”

  The Power of Prayer

  It was time again for the annual Christmas number of Western Story Magazine. The magazine, founded in 1919, for some time now was published every Saturday rather than every Thursday. Faust was asked by Street & Smith in late 1922 to contribute two Christmas stories to magazines the company published, one to Detective Story Magazine—“A Christmas Encounter” (12/23/22) by Nicholas Silver—and the story that follows which he titled “The Power of Prayer.” It appeared under the John Frederick byline in Western Story Magazine (12/23/22).

  It is remarkable how often the word “prayer” appears in Faust’s Western fiction—almost as often as the word “soul.” Earlier that same year “Gun Gentlemen” by Max Brand had appeared in five parts in Argosy/All-Story Weekly (2/25/22—3/25/22) and later on in the decade Street & Smith’s book publishing company would issue this serial as a novel under the same title, Gun Gentlemen (Chelsea House, 1928), but as by David Manning. Gerald Kern in “The Power of Prayer” embodies many of those same qualities of a figure found in several of Faust’s Western stories, a gunman who is also a gentleman. Yet, beyond this apparent contradiction, Gerald’s character has about it an element of the diabolical. Surely the figure of Shakespeare’s Iago lingered in the shadows of Faust’s imagination as he composed this tale, and perhaps no less that prototype of both Iago and Gerald Kern, the true and imperishable gentleman of darkness in the Book of Job.

  I “When West Meets East”

  One could not say that it was love of one’s native country which brought Gerald home again. It would be more accurate to say that it was the only country where his presence did not create too much heat for comfort. In the past ten years, forty nations— no less—had
been honored by the coming of Gerald and had felt themselves still more blessed, perhaps, by his departure unannounced. Into the history of forty nations he had written his name, and now he was come back to the land and the very region of his birth.

  No matter if the police of Australia breathed deeply and ground their teeth at the thought of him; no matter if the sleuths of France spent spare hours pouring over photographs of that lean and handsome face, swearing to themselves that under any disguise he would now be recognized; no matter if an Arab sheik animated his cavalry by recounting the deeds of Gerald; no matter if a South American republic held up its million hands in thanksgiving that the firebrand had fallen upon another land; no matter were all these things and more, now that the ragged tops of the Rocky Mountains had swept past the train which bore him westward.

  When he dismounted at a nameless town and drew a deep breath of the thin, pure, mountain air, he who had seen forty nations swore to himself that the land which bore him was the best of all.

  He had been fourteen when he left the West. But sixteen years could by no means dim the memories of his childhood. For was not this the very land where he had learned to ride and to shoot? A picture of what he had been rushed upon his memory—a fire-eyed youngster with flaming red hair, riding anything on four feet on the range, fighting with hard-knuckled fists, man or boy delving deep into the mysteries of guns, baffling his very brother with lies, the cunning depth of which were like the bottomless sea.

  He smiled as he remembered. No one would know him now. The fire-red had altered to dark auburn. The gleam was banished from his eyes, saving on occasion! And the ragged urchin could never be seen in this dapper figure clad in whipcord riding breeches and mounted—oh, hardy gods of the Far West behold him!— in a fiat English saddle.