Out of the Wilderness Read online

  “I got the boy here to the West with me, and he’s developed a great deal in the past dozen years, since I have been here. So that I can tell you that he will not be a case of charity for you. He cannot do many things well, but he has a talent for handling certain animals. If there’s a need of any hard shooting that you and your men can’t manage to handle, you can turn the job over to Sandy. He’ll turn the trick for you.”

  For all the apparent carelessness of the doctor, he had put his heel upon a very tender spot in Dunstan’s honor, and he knew it.

  “As for the hard shooting,” Dunstan said, “I suppose that if there is anything that I can’t handle, one of my men will be able to do it.”

  The doctor answered calmly: “Isn’t there a cattle-killing grizzly that has been living on your cows for two or three years…and always on your own range, man? Are you leaving him there for fun, or is it because you want him to stay?”

  Peter Dunstan grew hot in the face. “You are meaning that the idiot could bag the old devil who’s been eating my cows?”

  “I mean that.”

  “I have a thousand dollars,” Dunstan said, “that say you are wrong.”

  “My friend,” said the doctor, “I bet now and then, but never on a sure thing. If you send the boy after the bear, he’ll get it. You take my word for it.”

  Dunstan was very loath to do so. There were a great many questions that he wished to ask, but he refrained, because there was something in the face of the doctor that said plainly that he meant what he had said.

  “Very well,” said the rancher, “if he can turn that trick for me, I’ll admit that he has earned his board for a year or two. What else can he do, my friend?”

  “If you have some bad-acting horseflesh on your ranch…and I believe that you like them that way…he may be able to tame the outlaws. If he takes a fancy to them, I mean.”

  “If he takes a fancy to them? He’ll never take a fancy to any of the bad actors up my way,” declared Dunstan.

  “That’s to be found out. I’ll tell you this…I took him to town with me to see a circus, and in the circus one feature was a wild horse with a standing offer of a hundred dollars to any ’puncher who could stay on its back for five minutes. In this section of the country, you know there are plenty of the boys to take up a bet like that and call it easy money if they get off with sound bones. That horse was a devil, however. It tossed those ’punchers as fast as they could get into the saddle. Big Sandy, yonder, was delighted…not with the riding, but with the meanness of that horse. He begged me to buy the brute, and when I asked him why, he said that he would soon tame it. I bought the horse and brought it on to the farm at the end of three lassoes and with hobbles on its legs. When I got it out here, I turned it over to Sandy. He had it put in a big corral by itself, then he started to work on it. How, I never could tell, unless it was by fascination. It was about two weeks before he led that horse up to the front door by the mane!”

  “The devil!” the startled Dunstan cried.

  “And the day after that, he was riding the horse across the fields, sitting bareback on it. I saw that the youngster had power over horses, after that. When the bad horse fell and broke two of its legs, I thought that Sandy would die of grief. He would actually go to sit and mourn at the spot where it had been shot. I finally offered him another horse to take its place, but he wouldn’t listen to me until Cristobal Mendez came by with a roan demon of a mare….”

  “I saw that man-eater,” the rancher said, nodding.

  “When Sandy saw that mare, he took a great fancy to her, and begged me to buy her. I remembered what he had done before, and I got her from Mendez for ten dollars. He was tired of venturing his head behind her heels.”

  “The devil,” Dunstan muttered. “And did he actually do anything with that wild mare?”

  “Look at the fork horse again,” the doctor said, grinning.

  The rancher looked, and, behold, the animal that big Sandy led up and down through the dust was a sleek roan mare.

  Three

  The curiosity of Peter Dunstan was like the curiosity of a lion, in so much that where his eye traveled, his paw was apt to strike. Now that he had decided that this youth was worthy of more investigation, he touched his gelding with the spur and, at a bound, it placed him beside young Sandy Sweyn. The roan mare was at that moment in the act of advancing, and dragging the fork with its little load of hay out of the stack. Dunstan rode straight into the path of the horse and raised his hand. The horse stopped. The forker on the bench of the great stack looked agape at the rider who had dared to halt the fork horse, and the feeder paused on his empty table with the pitchfork raised, cursing the delay in a dust-roughened voice. All had to stop. The power driver had to reach for the rarely touched reins and jerk his team to a halt. The bale-roller could sit down on the weighing scales, and the wire-puncher could take time to roll and really enjoy the smoke of another cigarette.

  All of this because Peter Dunstan chose that particular moment for asking a few questions. Morgan grew a little flushed. Then he remembered that the baling outfit was no longer his, and that it was practically in the hands of Peter Dunstan. He shrugged his shoulders and wondered. He wondered at the effrontery of the rancher, and he wondered at the way in which the balers of the crew took this interruption.

  If he himself, who had introduced them into this section of the country, where their wages had been so fat for these many months, had held up their work for even a moment, they would have forgotten everything except that they were losing seventeen or eighteen cents a ton per man. When Peter Dunstan stopped the entire press and all the crew, that crew straightway seemed to take it for granted that there was nothing extraordinary in what the rancher had done. They merely made sure that it was indeed one of the working world, and not some mere idler who had come here out of foolish curiosity.

  They took positions of easy rest and waited until it should be the good pleasure of Peter Dunstan to permit them to continue their labors. It wasn’t from fear of Dunstan and all his fighting men, because men who labor up to a certain point of weariness and might cannot be bothered with such a trifling emotion as fear.

  At any rate, there was Peter Dunstan sitting on his dancing, trembling gelding, looking down upon the roan mare. As he had said, he had heard much of her, and he found that she was worthy of all the talk. Those squared quarters of hers, viewed from behind, seemed to promise the bulk of a draft horse, and the depth of her girth would have done honor to a truck horse. She had other points to redeem her from massive sluggishness. It was easy to understand, how she could drag the heavy, creaking fork up and down, tearing out great bunches of wedged hay with enormous effort. When one studied the finely sloped shoulders, the length of the neck, and the tapered sweep of the legs, it was still easier to understand what legend told of her.

  She had the speed of the eagle, and the endurance of the very wind that the eagle sails on. As for the soul of a witch that had been bestowed upon her, there was an ample foreshadowing of it from the little, restless, fiery eye that gleamed brightly at the rancher.

  It made a silly picture—the harnessing of this glorious charger to such a menial task. She was of a mold that might have carried armored men to battle. Aye, and in need she could have carried a heavyweight hunter to many a kill behind the hounds, even over the fastest galloping country. Yet here she was, plodding back and forth, coated with dust, with only this Sandy Sweyn to control her devilish soul.

  Peter Dunstan was amazed to the very roots of his soul. He did not believe in miracles. He had seen that gallant rider and horsebreaker, Jack Lamone, after Jack had been battered to worthlessness by this she-devil of a horse. Yet here she had given herself up to slavery at the bidding of a half-wit.

  “Take her away again,” Peter Dunstan said, and reined his gelding back from the path.

  The youth did not speak. He merely put a han
d against the broad hip of the roan. At this, with suddenly pricking ears, she leaned into the collar, and the fork with its great load of tangled, matted hay went dancing lightly over the rough surface of the stack, and then swung up and dumped at the feeding table. Once more the life of the hay-baler commenced with huge groanings and clamors.

  Peter Dunstan watched the movement of that fork load on top of the stack, but he gave it only a glance, for his fullest attention was riveted upon the mare and the long, light, swinging stride with which she walked away under the burden.

  Bitter envy took hold upon his heart. He was willing to work for his money and he was willing to spend his money for the thing that he wanted. Just at that moment he knew he was looking upon a thing that money could not buy. If he separated the youth from the mare, he would be committing a crime; it was the foreshadowing of the crime that darkened the heart and the face of Peter Dunstan.

  He saw the fork tripped—the load of hay dropped with a jar upon the feed table—and Sandy Sweyn commenced to back up the roan. It was a different matter from her forward progress. She had pricked her ears willingly enough, as though she did not at all mind the struggle of the lift. To back up—that was a thing that went against her grain. Back went the short, sharp ears, with a quiver of malice and hatred. She shook her head, and she switched her tail nervously.

  Dunstan began to feel anxious. Assuredly had he stood in that place behind the famous heels of that man-killer, he would have jumped for safety. Not so the half-wit. He simply jerked impatiently at the singletree. He said not a word. It did not even occur to him, apparently, to touch the reins that were festooned about his neck, but he strained back upon the singletree in silence

  Peter Dunstan observed two things. The first was a great shock of surprise to him—for the roan mare, after a brief instant of hesitation, did indeed begin to back up, obedient to that pressure—not with the lounging, sloppy step of a work horse, but a neat, precise, high leg action. She backed as straight as a string, and as fast and light as the forker could gather in the spare length of rope before he dragged the fork back upon the stack.

  This was all very strange to Dunstan. For it was affording, in the most simple manner, the surest proof that the half-wit had fully conquered the great mare. And yet this was not the most remarkable matter that the rancher had observed. For the sleeves of Sandy Sweyn were no longer than his brown elbows. When he pulled back upon the singletree, Dunstan had observed that upon the forearm of the fork-horse driver an intricate tangle of twisting muscles leaped into view. Now Sandy Sweyn leaned dreamily against the side of the mare; she leaned a little against him, and the relaxed arm of Sandy Sweyn looked not merely large, but soft and round with fat. Dunstan had seen, and he knew that it was not fat at all. By the forearm you will tell the man. It was not the mere bulk and the sinewy development of that forearm that interested the rancher; it was even more the taper formation, which suggested an incredible strength of upper arm and shoulder and back. There were only some five feet and eleven inches of Sandy Sweyn, but the rancher on his second guess shrewdly suspected that he carried well over two hundred pounds of muscle. A burden, in fact, that needed the mighty frame of such a horse as the roan to carry him fast and far.

  Dunstan rode closer and he looked down at Sandy’s hand. It was as he had suspected. That hand was not squared and blunted by much labor; it was as tapered and graceful as the hand of any gentleman of leisure who has never gripped a heavier tool than a golf club. No, that miracle of strength that had been revealed to Dunstan upon the arm of Sandy Sweyn was not the power that is the result of honest labor, long performed. It was a mere gift of Nature.

  A sudden anger burned in the heart of Dunstan. Ah, how cruelly unlucky it was that this simple creature should have been endowed with the might of a Hercules, a power to which even the stout and famous right arm of Peter Dunstan was like the power of a child, and that this boy should have been endowed with the singular ability to rule even such a dreadful malefactor as the roan mare, Cleo. And then to blur and spoil the splendid picture, that he should be a half-wit! Dunstan could have used those gifts.

  Then he lost all conscience. It was not right that to this strong-handed idiot such a treasure as the glorious mare should be entrusted. It was not right by any means. She was fitted to bear upon her back a ruler of men—such a one as Peter Dunstan himself, and his two hundred pounds of fighting strength. Peter decided to take her from Sandy Sweyn—not by force. He would not be guilty of such an act—but by deception.

  “Sandy,” he said, “what will you take for the roan?”

  Sandy Sweyn looked up to him out of vague eyes. They were a strange color, and they gave the strangeness to the face of the youth, Peter Dunstan decided. For the rest, he was a handsome fellow, though, perhaps, his features were a little too heavily and grossly made. The hair of Sandy Sweyn was tawny in hue, and his eyes were tawny, also—the color of a lion’s mane. Such a color in eyes Peter Dunstan had never seen before except in the dazzled eye of an owl.

  He waited a long moment for an answer, but when it came it shocked him.

  “I don’t know,” Sandy Sweyn said, “but I suppose that I’d take a faster horse for the roan…if I can get one.”

  “Ah,” Dunstan said. “You don’t really love the mare, then?”

  “I like her pretty well,” Sandy Sweyn said, and he ran his mighty fingers through the mane of Cleo, “but I suppose that I would like a faster horse better.”

  Four

  As Dunstan felt that he would be able to close the bargain, he felt an eye upon him. When he looked up, he saw that it was the doctor, studying him with greatest attention. Peter Dunstan flinched, as though he had been caught in the commission of a most unworthy act. He rode back to Dr. Morgan.

  “Of all the half-wits that I’ve ever seen,” he said, “this fellow is the queerest.”

  “Perhaps,” Dr. Morgan said, “he is. But for my part, I’ve never been able to make up my mind as to whether he’s a half-wit…or whether he has the real sense, and I’m the fool.”

  The rancher did not like mysteries. He felt that matters that he could not instantly understand were almost immoral. He frowned now upon the doctor. “I’d like to know what you mean by that,” he said.

  “Why,” replied the doctor, “it’s really hard for me to explain, except in a general way. But you have heard a good deal of talk, now and then, about the primitive man…the abysmal brutes?”

  “Oh,” the rancher said, “I see what you mean. Well, I suppose that you may be right, in a way. I am able to imagine that the cave dwellers may have been like that fellow. He’s born just a thousand years or so after his time…or maybe a million years, Doctor.”

  The doctor nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said. “That’s the idea that got into my head after I had known him only a few years. But lately I’ve been considering the other side of the question…the opposite side.”

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “That he may have been born about a million years ahead of his time.”

  The rancher started in the saddle. “You mean that the human race will go backward toward the brute type again?”

  “No, I’m an optimist. I think that we’ll always slowly advance…until the human race freezes to death…unless it has found a way of transplanting itself to some warmer, planet by that time. But I wonder if this Sandy Sweyn isn’t a type of what we are going to be as we climb the ladder?”

  The rancher struck one hand heavily into the other. “Now, look here, old-timer,” he said. “I’m a simple fellow, and I don’t pretend to know a lot of things that are just ABC to you. But I hate to fool around with stuff that may be nonsense. Are you calling this half-wit a step toward a perfect man?”

  “I don’t want to be mysterious,” the doctor said, “but frankly I’m talking about an idea that only is half out of the shadow in my own mind. I
mean…this fellow who appears like a half-wit to us might be a most tremendous person if he ever were to have a chance to develop himself. Well, how is a man developed? How did you and I get our education? By playing and talking with other boys of our own age, and so growing up to have what we call good sense. This Sandy Sweyn has never found people of his own kind.”

  “Because, of course,” the rancher said, “most of his kind are sent to institutions where they’re not apt to do themselves any harm.”

  “Do you think that?” the doctor asked. “Ah, well. Perhaps you are right. But the other idea sticks in my crop. That boy needs conversation that you and I and other people can’t give him. He’s a mute because there is no one to understand him…except animals.”

  “Confound it, Morgan, that is too much, unless you intend it as a joke.”

  “Wait till you have a better chance to know him. You’ll see what a considerable distance he is from being a fool.”

  “Aye,” the rancher said, “I’m going to study him. But first of all I want to buy that mare of his.”

  “He won’t sell her.”

  “Why, man, that shows that you really don’t know him. He has said already that he’ll give her up for a faster horse, if I can find one for him.” There was triumph in the tone of the rancher.

  The doctor flushed a little. As a matter of fact, he had expended a great deal of patience and self-control upon the rancher. Now he was near the end of his string. He answered calmly: “I’d like to wager that you won’t find a horse very soon to beat Cleo.”

  “Nonsense,” answered Peter Dunstan. “She’s a fine brute, but too heavy to move fast. I have a dozen ponies who could step right past her.”

  “Do you think so? Well, Dunstan, I’ll bet you that you haven’t a single one that can outrun her.”

  It was time for Dunstan to flush—and he turned a dark and dangerous red.

  “Do you mean to say, Doctor Morgan, that you think this gelding I’m on couldn’t walk away from the mare?”