The Winged Horse Page 9

  “Look here,” Milligan said as the rider came up, “is your name Lamb?”

  “That’s my name.”

  He spoke, and the horse halted. Dexterously, in one blue and ungloved hand, he rolled a cigarette, as skillfully brought out a box of matches, sifted one out, lit it and the cigarette, and ever with his right hand hanging free.

  Milligan, fox-like and observant, saw, admired, and understood. “I’m Milligan,” he said.

  “We never told our lies at the same camp,” said the other positively.

  “I come from the Montagues,” Milligan said.

  The Lamb looked mildly down upon him. His face was blue and red with the cold, however, and his mildest expression could not soften his features greatly.

  “They’ve sent over a stand-up gunfighter to get me at last, have they?” he said.

  “I’ve come to get you,” said Milligan, “but I ain’t come to get you with a gun.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  In reply to this mysteriously significant speech, the Lamb looked into the bright fox eyes of the other and finally said, “You ain’t smoking?”

  “No,” said Milligan, “I’m talking.”

  “I speak Spanish,” the Lamb said, “and I speak a sort of an English lingo … but I dunno that I talk your language, partner.”

  “Everybody talks it,” answered Milligan.

  Suddenly he began to laugh softly. In the excess of his confidence and his swelling surety, he stretched out his hand as though to stroke the neck of the stallion, and the teeth of the black clacked together on the nap of his sleeve. The big horse, disappointed, stretched his head straight forth, like the head of a snake, and his evil eyes burned at Milligan, who stepped back and shook his head.

  “Nothing but wickedness in that horse,” he commented, his jaw thrusting out a little. “Somebody had oughta put that beast out of his pain, because living is a pain to him.”

  “Maybe,” the rider said, and touched the firm ridge of the stallion’s neck. At this, the head of the big horse rose, his ears slowly pricked, and he turned his head a little, as a horse does when it wishes to look straight back, and his eyes softened. “Maybe,” said the rider. “You should come along, if you want to talk. The big boy is due for a feed and a rubdown.”

  He rode into the barn, drew off saddle and blankets, and then, having tethered his horse to the filled manger, he fell to work with a pair of stiff brushes. The black stood motionlessly, regardless of the good sweet hay, his eyes half closed. Even the grain in the feed box could not tempt him, so utterly was he given up to the sensuous pleasure of that grooming.

  “You slicking him up for the Derby, maybe?” asked Milligan, who lounged outside the stall, safely beyond the range of those long hind legs. “Or does your best girl come out on Sundays and take a ride on him?”

  The Lamb did not reply to this. He went on vigorously with his work, until he had finished the horse down to the fetlocks. On the tender skin above the hoof, he carefully worked with a bit of chamois.

  One by one, the stallion lifted his black hoofs, hard as iron, and offered them for this care, and when his new master came to the forelegs, the horse lowered and turned his great head and sniffed and nibbled at the shoulder of the rider.

  “What in hell have you done to the black brute?” asked Milligan. “Last time I seen him groomed, there was four men to hold him and an extra hand behind, to swing a blacksnake.”

  “Because Jimmy Montague didn’t hanker to work on his own horse?” suggested the Lamb.

  “Him? There was only one place that the black would have him, and that was in the saddle. He never dared to wear spurs on this one, either.”

  The Lamb, finishing his work, leaned against the burnished flank of the horse and began to brisk the two brushes together to free the bristles from dust and dirt. He looked upon Milligan with kindly eyes, half dreaming, so that the emissary could see that he had touched a soft spot, at last, in this armored youth.

  “Him and me have agreed,” he explained simply, and as he walked from the stall, the stallion turned his head and looked after him.

  “He’s off his feed, though,” Milligan suggested rather anxiously.

  “He’ll eat later,” the Lamb said, and walked on down the dark aisle of the barn, with the chilly whistling of the wind about them, and the small, cold hands of it reaching at them through the crevices. Behind them, the stallion whinnied. “You ol’ fool,” said the Lamb, “shut yer face, will you?” The whinny softened to a nicker, and then they distinctly heard a rumbling grinding. “He’s said good night,” the Lamb said. “Now he’s trying to bust his way right through the bottom of that feed box. You were talking about a lingo that everybody understands?” he resumed.

  “This here.” The hand of Ray Milligan dipped into his pocket and presently made a soft chuckling of coins, one against the other.

  “You’ll talk to me with that, eh?”

  “Well?”

  “Aw, I dunno,” the Lamb said. “I’m human, maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Milligan laughed, and he had a fierce sort of triumph in his voice. Then he added an aside—as though, his goal being assured, he could speak of other things, “I used to know a gent about your cut. By name of Dunstan … him that Jimmy Montague done in.”

  “I never heard tell of him,” said the Lamb.

  “Well, coming back to facts and figures. What would you want?”

  “Wait a minute till I catch up,” the Lamb said. “Where we’ve been going?”

  “Well, toward a big stake for you. You know yourself, kid. What’s your price?”

  “From the Montagues?”

  “That’s it, I suppose.”

  “They got plenty of kale?”

  “Why, I dunno. Punchers think that everybody that’s got a barn and a cow is rich. But what you want?”

  “That depends on the hours and the job.”

  “There’s two things you can do. One is to leave the Loring gang. There’s a price for that. The other is to hook up with the Montagues. There’s a price for that, too.”

  “You mean to double-cross the Loring tribe?”

  “It ain’t double-crossing for a gent to quit his job, is it?”

  “Well, I could use a couple thousand.”

  Milligan gripped the arm of the other—and instinctively let the tips of his fingers wander and pry a little among the stringy muscles. He said, “A couple of thousand?”

  “Yes. To get away from even numbers, I could use twenty-five hundred for leaving the colonel.”

  Milligan choked, then laughed, and the laughter sounded like the cackle of an old woman. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “We’ll have a laugh out of that. Twenty-five hundred dollars? Why, you’re crazy!”

  In his quick, smooth way, the Lamb made another cigarette and lit it. When the match flared, he was looking through the glow, not at the tip of his smoke, but at the tempter. “Well, cowboy,” the Lamb said, “you can’t catch this dogie without spreading your loop a bit. You can’t daub a short rope on me, son, because it couldn’t fit on over my horns.”

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars! You got a bit of a nerve, kid. I’ll say that for you. I’ll publish it for you.”

  “Go home to Monty Montague and tell him to send a grown-up man to talk to me, the next time. I can’t do business with messenger boys,” the Lamb said.

  Milligan gasped, with a snarl at the end of the sound, like the flash of teeth behind the growl of a wolf. Then he said, “Twenty-five hundred for quitting … it ain’t reasonable, and you know it.”

  “It is reasonable,” said the Lamb. “Since I came here, you’ve run off one big gang of weaners. But we’ve snaked in several hundred dogies off your range. Since I’ve got going, your boys ain’t been showing much on our side. They keep out of rifle range … even long range at that. Why
? We ain’t got a decent number to do the work here … the riding and feeding … but Montague and all his crowd don’t dare to bother us. I ask you why, old-timer. Can you tell me?”

  “You mean it’s you?”

  “Aw, I’m modest,” the Lamb said. “I got my good name that I’m selling.”

  “That weighs like lead, I guess,” said Milligan.

  “Or gold,” said the Lamb. “You’ve heard my little story, Milligan. How do you like it?”

  “For busting away and joining the Montagues, then? How much more for that?” demanded Milligan.

  “Does Jimmy Montague want the horse as bad as all that?”

  “I ain’t talking about the horse. I’m talking about you.”

  “I hear you talking. I’m wondering about your meaning … but suppose for twenty-five hundred more I should come down to the Montagues?”

  The other exclaimed, “You oughta be selling mining stock! Take the way you add up a list and put in the items, doggone me if you don’t beat the expense account of a traveling salesman.”

  “The way that you bargain, you oughta be a pawnbroker,” suggested the Lamb. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Lump the two things together, and I’ll quit the colonel and join the Montagues for four thousand. Does that suit you?”

  “That gives me gray hair and’ll turn the rest of the boys clean white.”

  “I’m worth it,” the Lamb insisted. “Besides, this’ll give Jimmy Montague another chance to get back his horse.” He laughed a little. “Take this bargain or leave it, because it’s a cut price and dead cheap.”

  “You’re a mind reader,” sighed Milligan. “You’ve hit my outside price on the nail. You must’ve had some inside dope on what I was to give as a limit. What do you want for cash down?”

  “One half. That’s two thousand, I suppose.”

  “Light a match, will you?”

  The Lamb held the match, and Milligan counted twenty one-hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet. He counted them again into the hand of the Lamb. The last two he delayed over. “No commission?” he asked.

  “Commission?” the Lamb declared vacantly. Then he added in haste, “Sure. Take it down.” He put away his bribe money into his coat. His head was bent thoughtfully. “I gotta go in and face the old colonel and the rest of the boys,” he said.

  “The first dip is the one that gives you the chill,” suggested Milligan. “C’mon along.”

  They passed from the barn into the open. It was the very end of the day. There was a sheen of purple upon the snow. The smoke from the horizon had climbed to the vault of the sky, and two or three pale stars were looking through. Before them, the snow rose in a sudden whirl of wind, like a pool of dust in a street.

  “A hard life!” exclaimed Milligan. “It takes hard men to live through it!”

  And he laughed again, richly contented.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Good Colonel Loring was worn with many months of anxiety. There was a streak of red in the yellow whites of his eyes, but still the smile upon his thick, wide lips remained as beaming, as rich, as fervent as ever, and his eyes, as ever, melted quite out of sight under its full influence or, at least, left only two narrow slots from which he looked out upon the world. So he looked upon the Lamb when, after dinner, that youth stood before him in his private room.

  “You want to talk, kid,” said the colonel. “You get choked with snow dust, the sort of lingo that’s passed around up here on my farm!”

  “Why no, sir,” the Lamb said, “dust ain’t a thing that ever I could get tired of, after this winter’s ice cakes, and sleet, and frost in your pocket, and icicles hanging onto your nose.”

  “Sure,” the homely colonel said, “it’s a rough life up here in the hills.”

  “It is,” said the Lamb. “You could sandpaper this here sort of life a good deal just to rough off the outside bumps.”

  “Have a smoke,” the colonel offered, his smile relaxing several degrees from anxiety.

  The Lamb accepted the bowl of tobacco that was poured toward him and rolled his own with his usual one-handed dexterity. As he did, he said, “I gotta cut this short. I been asked to sit in at a new game, and this here is the first hand that was offered me, without the draw. What do you think?”

  He took the money from his pocket. Like a poker hand, he fanned it out and laid it upon the edge of the table.

  The colonel leaned over and scanned it with an intimate curiosity. “It’s a big hand,” he said, without looking up.

  “It’s pretty high,” the Lamb agreed.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” said the colonel, “it’s a straight flush, and I ain’t gonna call you … I can’t afford to.” He smiled at the Lamb.

  “You’re pinched, I’d say,” the Lamb said.

  “Pinched ain’t the word for it,” said the colonel. “I owe for the chuck that I carted out to the camp last week, and I’m gonna owe for the next bunch that I bring out, too … if I got the luck to bring out any at all.”

  “You’re sort of deep for wages, too, I suppose,” said the Lamb.

  “I don’t wear laces in my boots,” said the colonel. “If I did, I wouldn’t be able to afford ’em.”

  The Lamb, as though this speech made him at home, though thoughtful, slumped into a chair. “You’ve been a considerable burden to me, Colonel,” he said.

  “I have,” said the colonel. “I’ve been a load to myself, for months and months. Maybe I can last to the spring roundup. I dunno.”

  “If you had to sell out now,” the Lamb opined, “you wouldn’t get ten cents a dollar on most of your stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t,” the colonel agreed. “I’d get nothing on a pack of it. There ain’t any market that I could drive to in this sort of weather, except down the hill to Montague.”

  “You’d drive quicker down the hill to destruction,” the Lamb suggested, and he raised his brows.

  “I would,” said the colonel. “I would just that, and maybe a little bit more. But as for you, kid, you’ve done me proud, you’ve given the Montagues the lash for me while you lasted, and now that they’ve offered you a chair in a better game, I gotta admit that I can’t play in that company. I wasn’t fixed to pay off, this trip, but out of regard for the way you’ve kept my range cleaned of the Montagues, and out of the way you’ve raided ’em for me, I ain’t going to offer you any compensation … I’ll only ask you to take a little memento from me.” He drew from his vest pocket a fine old gold watch and passed it across his table.

  The Lamb took it, and turned it in his hand with an impersonal admiration. “I’ll take it,” he said, and dropped it into his own pocket without a word of thanks or of comment. The colonel did not seem hurt, however, but leaned back in his chair and smiled again at the boy.

  “While you were with me,” the colonel said gently, “you’ve done a proper good job for me. I wish you luck with anybody that you go to, even to the Montagues, and most of all, I wish that you get a square deal from them.”

  “They’ve started by handing me a pretty high hand,” young Alfred Lamb said.

  “They have,” said the colonel, “but where there’s Colts in the deck, there’s always a higher hand than a royal straight.”

  “There is,” agreed the boy. Then he took from his money a single bill. The rest he pushed across the table.

  “What’s this?” asked the colonel. In the middle of his cheeks, a gray spot gradually had been growing.

  “I want to leave my savings with you,” the Lamb said.

  “You’re sitting in at a game,” said the colonel, and he straightened again, and looked at the boy with a new hope in his eyes.

  “I’ll take my chance, chucking this hand into the discard,” the Lamb said. “I’ll take my chance on a new draw.”

  “You want me to keep this for you?” the colonel que
ried.

  “This’ll fill up the chuck wagon for you a few times, and pay off some of the suckers that’ve had enough,” the Lamb explained.

  The lips of the colonel twitched. Suddenly his eternal smile had gone. He stared. He looked all at once like a white-faced owl. “You want to sort of make a donation with this?” the colonel said, looking down.

  “You’ll play banker for me,” said the Lamb.

  “I’ll put this in a safety deposit vault for you, lad,” the colonel said uneasily.

  “I’d rather you dropped it into the business,” said the Lamb. “Because I’d like six percent at the end of the season.”

  The colonel stared again. He drew his hand across his big, loose-lipped mouth. “I don’t understand,” he murmured, his voice quite robbed of its usual richness. “You’re making me a loan, kid.”

  “I’m going to play another game,” the Lamb said. “I don’t need that.” Still the colonel stared. “I’m only going to seem on the other side of the fence,” the Lamb explained at last.

  At this, the colonel rose, as though lifted from his chair, and he stood with drooped head, and braced feet, clutching the edge of the desk and looking wildly toward the Lamb. “You’re gonna double up on ’em?” he asked.

  “Oh, damn it all!” exclaimed the Lamb, but then controlled himself. “It ain’t only your side that I play, when I play against ’em,” he declared.

  “Hold on. You mean to say,” the colonel said, “that you come out here of your own accord to fight the Montagues?”

  “Do you think,” the Lamb said with bitter pride, “that I ain’t hot enough to’ve melted away through the hands that grabbed me in that one-horse dive of a town?”

  The colonel moistened his lips, which were still gray.

  “That night I came into the sheriff’s office, I saw you both as I opened the door. The sheriff’s lantern was ajar, a mite. However, that was what I wanted. I couldn’t come to your place at all, unless I came with some kind of a reputation, and there was the quickest place to get one, I suppose.”