Out of the Wilderness Read online

  Steve McGuire was not mentally equipped to struggle with abstractions, and there was that in his soul that revolted against all that was supernatural. Yet he knew that his strong-minded employer was certainly more than hinting at the possibility of more than the earthly in Sandy Sweyn.

  It put everything in a new light, and McGuire went out to the rear of the kitchen where, in a corner, he kept the three broken axes. That which had the handle broken to wiry match wood he picked up and considered with awful solemnity. Then, laying it down, he raised another memento of the axemanship of Sandy. This was a chunk of scrub oak, old and sun-seasoned, the grain twisted around and around, heavy as lead in spite of its dryness, and three inches in thickness. Yet there was only the one mark of the axe. It had gone through the limb with a single sway and left the surface of the wood as smoothly polished as though it had been burnished with much care and with long labor. McGuire ran the tips of his horny fingers carefully over this trinket. For a moment there rushed into his mind a shadowy-winged conviction that Dunstan was right, even without the further proof of the taming of any maddened bull. There was a sort of weird magic in this matter.

  However, upon a more sober recasting of his thought, he recalled various significant details concerning Sandy Sweyn. He remembered the smooth, thick padding that rolled under the shirt of the youth like fat—except that it was not fat at all. He remembered, most of all—a thing once seen never to be forgotten—the singular naked forearm of Sandy Sweyn, the smooth roundness of it, the tapered exactness of its proportions, and all the myriads of coiled and twisting muscles that slid back and forth upon one another whenever the boy laid hold on any object.

  Yes, there might be a sufficient explanation in the mere muscles of any feats of strength that he had performed—among which the light handling of the senseless body of the rancher was not the least miraculous to McGuire. As for the control of animals, doubtless these, too, could be explained away. Science was a queer thing. You never could tell what it would discover. Look at wireless telegraphy. That was a standing example with McGuire. Things might be mysterious on the face of them, but then there was always a reason. Only, there could not very well be any reason that would prevail over the red bull—unless it were the reason of strength superior to his own incalculable powers.

  The more that the cook thought upon these matters, the more serious he became. When the cowpunchers came in from the field that night, he confided in them, seriously, that the boss had sent young Sandy out to bring in the bull—and had allowed the half-wit to proceed on foot.

  Shorty said: “You’re sort of fond of the kid, then?”

  “Me?” McGuire said. “I don’t care what comes of him…as long as he has a good fighting chance. But I’d like to see anybody get that. Even a snake. And if that kid don’t come back, I surely….”

  They all agreed with him on this point. The chief had gone very far indeed in allowing a half-witted youngster to venture out on such a terrible expedition.

  “Even with my best cutting horse under me,” said Shorty, “I wouldn’t want no part of the big bull’s game. Not me! It would take three men and three horses to tire that big devil out and to bring him in.”

  The late afternoon sank into the amber evening; the amber turned to red gold; the red gold died to rose and crimson and orange and streaks of green. All of this turned to softly colored dusk, and dusk waned to twilight, and then across the pure face of the night the last small stars drew down in droves and in clusters. Still there was no sign of Sandy Sweyn.

  Shorty rose in the bunkhouse and looked through the open window. He said: “I am gonna wait until mornin’. And if the kid ain’t come in by that time, I’m gonna ride to town. And if the sheriff wants a posse to bring in the boss of this here ranch, I’m gonna be the first volunteer.” He turned upon his heel and stood in the doorway with his thumbs hooked in his belt. Then he said to the open and solemn face of the night: “Not that I give a hang about that fool-faced kid. But there’s really such a thing in this wide world as a truly square deal….”

  He left that thought unfinished. Because, in truth, it did not need any great amount of finishing. The rest made not a comment. The lantern was put out, some half hour later, and the first snore was making its trembling beginning, when another deep voice spoke out of the dark in a rumble.

  “And me, I’m gonna ride right in at your side, Shorty, old-timer. There ain’t nobody has got a right to act like a king. Not in this here country. Not in this here century.”

  Let no one think that Peter Dunstan did not realize very well just what was passing in the minds of his men. In the middle of the night, his sleepless mind tormented him to such a point that he rose, in spite of his aching body, and went out to the corral where his own saddle string was kept by itself, because he would not have his high-blooded horses mixed with others. A $1,000 blooded horse can be spoiled by a kick as easily as any $50 mustang.

  He chose an easy-gaited brown mare. Since there was no one to see and comment, he could make this concession to his aching bones and to his bruised muscles. He saddled that horse and rode forth through the night, straight toward the spot at which he had seen the red bull the same day. Because, to his thinking, it was unlikely that the bull, untrained in the ways of the range, would wander far from the same spot, where the water of the nearby tank would tempt him to remain.

  As he rode, his doubts grew greater and greater. If it had not been that his wits had been almost shattered and his vanity racked to death by that fall from the back of the gelding, with two capable witnesses at hand to relate his defeat, he felt that he would never have been tempted to give the boy such impossible orders. There was shame in the heart of Peter Dunstan. He realized more and more clearly that even black magic would have recoiled from such a task. Because magic—the kind that works—has to have a mind to operate upon. And what is the mind of an infuriated bull? What is it other than an insensate fury?

  He rode freely, and he rode fast, but the distance was long. On the way, the moon stepped above the eastern horizon line and looked him in the face. That slanting light turned the quiet face of the broad tank into a sheet of solid silver, when at last he came into sight of it. The next thing that he made out was the great black silhouette of the bull against that bright background.

  He rode a little closer. There was something white on the dark of the ground, and a shadowy outline beneath the moon—the form of a man. The heart of Peter Dunstan seemed to stop in his breast. He reined his horse to a standstill. There lay the motionless form of a man, not ten feet from the grazing bull. The dead body of Sandy Sweyn, of course. Across the brain of the rancher swarmed sudden and frightful pictures. For the first time, keenly, he was aware of how much the honest respect of his neighbors and his men meant to him. Beside their respect and beyond it, there was the dreadful arm of the law. What would the law say to a case of this sort—where a poor half-witted youngster, a poor mental child was the victim?

  At least, he would put a period to the bull’s existence. At that instant the bull saw him, too. Up flashed his tail and down sank his head. He rushed thirty steps nearer, and paused to snort at the earth and send low, long billows of dust rolling away on either side. He stamped and pawed the earth with mighty strokes. In the meantime, giving the rancher all the time that he needed to draw his bead and make sure of his target with a perfect bead.

  His trigger finger was already curling softly about the trigger. Death was not a tenth of a second away from the Durham bull, when a mild voice said, not far away: “Hello, who’s there?”

  The voice of Sandy Sweyn.

  Or his ghost? a dreadful premonition in the soul of the rancher said. No, for yonder stood up Sandy himself against the silver of the lake beyond. Sandy in the living flesh, saying to the bull: “Steady, steady, boy. So, boy. So-o-o!”

  Behold, he advanced to the side of the bull. He stood with one hand resting lightly upon
the horns where the blood of the day’s victim was still black and stiff.

  “Hello, Mister Dunstan. It’s a grand, bright night, ain’t it? I stayed out here to sort of enjoy it. There ain’t no breathing in a house, you know.”

  Eleven

  In the gray of the morning, when the cowpunchers turned out from their bunks, they were aware of the big outline of their boss riding in toward the house. Shorty, himself, hailed Peter Dunstan.

  “Has the half-wit turned up yet, Mister Dunstan?”

  “The devil with the half-wit!” Dunstan bellowed. And he hastily rode on.

  That was why five Colts were plied and looked to with care in the bunkhouse before the men went in to their breakfast. As they sat about the table, there was a hoarse roar from Steve McGuire. What he said was not instantly made out, but it caused a rush to the windows. There they saw one of the strangest spectacles that ever the eye of a good Westerner rested upon. They saw the giant Durham bull meandering slowly in, pausing to crop a bunch of grass of favorable appearance, from time to time. And some fifty yards ahead of him, strolling along with an equal unconcern, walked none other than young Sandy Sweyn.

  No man spoke. It was a thing to be expressed only in muted curses. Who could find the right words to apply to such a picture?

  To have said that the bull was following the man at heel like a dog would have been an absurdity, a thing never to be believed. Yet what else was happening, if this were not the fact? The great red bull at the rear of the youth passed toward one of the corrals and entered it with a strange meekness. They saw the bars put up. They saw a quantity of hay taken from the shed and pitched down in a corner for the hungry beast to feed upon. They saw Sandy then place his hand upon the top bar of the fence and vault over it with as much ease as though a great beat of wings were floating him across it.

  What seemed, to some of them, strangest of all was that the hollow-sided bull, in spite of his famine, straightway left the hay and ran to the corral fence, pawing the ground into clouds of dust as he bellowed forth a thunderous call after Sandy. Sandy turned near the house and spoke a few words that had no sense at all, but that changed the restlessness of the big bull into perfect passivity.

  The bull went back toward his hay, and Sandy entered the kitchen.

  “He’s promised to come back and see that brute again,” somebody said.

  The others glared askance at the speaker, for the same absurd idea had entered every brain, and a cowpuncher is not used to attributing brains to beef.

  “Familiarity breeds contempt,” says the crusty old proverb, and certainly the Westerner sees nothing but trouble on the hoof in the herds over which he watches. Yet here was a half-witted youngster who seemed to have discovered not brain only but soul also in a monstrous bull. Such a matter was not to be spoken of. It was a mystery to be stored away with one’s religious experiences.

  They heard Sandy in the kitchen asking the cook if he were too late for breakfast, and they heard big Steve McGuire grumblingly admit that he had something for the boy to eat. So Sandy came in and sat down at the table. He did not speak to them. The necessity of greetings at morning or at night was not obvious to Sandy. He sat down, and while the cook prepared his tin plate and poured his cup of coffee in the kitchen, Sandy leaned his chair back against the wall, and dropped his head upon his breast. He was asleep!

  They knew some of his peculiarities already, and therefore they spoke out at once, freely and loudly, for they knew that nothing would rouse him from his slumber except some danger call, or the rattle of the plate as the cook placed it before him.

  “Just the way that a tired dog will curl up and close his eyes and be off that minute,” Dunstan declared, leaning his broad chin upon his fist while he scowled at the sleeper in study. “And yet,” he went on, “he had his share of sleep last night. I went out there early this morning and found him lying down on the ground asleep, with this brute of a bull grazing near him…sort of keeping watch over him, you might say.”

  Another stunning blow for the cowpunchers. They stirred their coffee and stared gloomily at Sandy, who was tearing down a veil and giving them glimpses of a world at which they had never before so much as guessed.

  “Now, take a look at him,” said one of them. “All relaxed like a kid asleep…there ain’t another growed-up man in the world that knows the secret of sleeping like that. What tired him out, then?”

  Another suggested: “Using his brain to find the way to tame the red bull. That was the sort of an idea that would tire out any man, to get the solution of it, maybe. Hey, what’s going on outside?”

  This remark was called for by a wild outburst of neighing and squealing from the corrals. Big Peter Dunstan rose from the table and peered out of the window. The distant hubbub only caused Sandy to moan in his sleep. He did not raise his head. What Dunstan saw was a form like a pillar of blue morning mist shot through with the rose of dawn. It leaped the lofty corral fence and plunged on toward the house—the blue roan mare.

  “It’s Cleo,” the rancher said in the same gloom. “She’s coming, looking for her boss.”

  “Tell him,” one of the ranch men said. “That fool horse is apt to kick down this old shack of a house, if she don’t find him pretty soon.”

  So—Sandy was roused with a sharp word from the rancher. He awakened from the depth of his sleep as a dog awakens—the mere opening of his eyes opened his wits, also, to their full activity. He stood up, raised the window, and instantly the long neck and the glorious head of the mare were thrust through. With flaring nostrils she snorted at the others, then thrust her muzzle into the hand of her master.

  He gave her a single word, and she went back contentedly and began to pick and choose in the grass that grew near the house. Then Sandy’s plate came from the kitchen. It was not like the plates that had been given to the other men. They were mighty men, these cowboys of the Dunstan outfit, but when the cook supplied victuals to Sandy Sweyn, he discarded plates and brought in a great platter.

  It was rough but useful food. All one end was heaped high with an enormous quantity of beans. On the central section fried potatoes were piled aloft, and next to these there was a mighty wedge of half-fried ham. To finish off the trencher there was half a pound of stale bread. For drink, there was the greater part of a quart of black lye, disguised by the name of coffee.

  Quality was not essential to big Sandy Sweyn, but quantity was a prime requisite. Dunstan, who hated waste, was nevertheless not unwilling to feed a man who had turned a terrible menace on his range into a valuable piece of property quietly in hand in the corral near the house.

  The other men wandered out toward the day’s work, but Dunstan made pause in the kitchen. “What’s that beef that I saw in the meat house, Steve?”

  “A yearling that Buck got.”

  “That infernal bear. How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. The same that usually happens. The boys was close enough to hear the bawl of the calf chopped off short in the middle by a blow that sounded like a whang on a bass drum. When they come up, Buck wasn’t waiting for them, but there were his tracks leading away through the brush. And there was the calf, dead on the ground, with his ribs along one side smashed in flat.”

  “They didn’t follow the trail?”

  “What’s the good?” McGuire asked. “They’ve follered his trail a hundred times and never got nothing out of it. Ain’t you follered it ten times yourself, Dunstan?”

  It is very bad for a man when he has no vent for healthy rage. Dunstan, striding back into the dining room, glared down at Sandy. He saw the eyes of the youth widen and his color alter a little. He half choked upon a great chunk of bread.

  He was afraid of Dunstan. The rancher knew it, and rejoiced in it, as a woman rejoices when she has a strong man at her beck and call, without exactly knowing why. In his own arm Dunstan knew there was force enough to overma
tch any man on his place. But in the terrible right hand of Sandy there was an incalculable power, and yet all of that power was the rancher’s to command. In the frightened eyes of Sandy he looked with a wonder and a pleasure combined. If there were any clue to this mystery, it was that he had driven the doctor from the country. Sandy knew it, and Sandy had loved and reverenced the doctor. Therefore he regarded the rancher with a superstitious awe.

  “Sandy,” Dunstan said, “I have a job for you.”

  Gloom descended upon the features of Sandy Sweyn.

  “It would be a job for anybody else,” said the rancher, “but I think that you would like it. It’s to go off by yourself for as long as you like, and bring me back a grizzly’s hide.”

  The gloom lifted from the face of Sandy. “Oh,” said Sandy, “I’ll start after breakfast and a nap.”

  “You’ll find my rifles in the front room,” Dunstan advised. “And you can take the one that you like the best. Take your pick of saddles, too. And the roan will….”

  “Why,” Sandy Sweyn said, “horses throw a scent farther than a man does. And a rifle is too heavy to carry.”

  Dunstan swallowed with some difficulty. “Are you going to spend the season trapping him, Sandy?” he asked.

  “No,” Sandy said. “This will shoot hard enough if you get close and hit the right spot.” And he brought out an old-fashioned Colt and laid it on the table, where he regarded it for a long time with the most affectionate eyes.

  “Come, come,” Dunstan said. “You’d have to get right on top of him to kill a grizzly with a gun like that…or else you’d have to put a bullet through his eye.”