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  And there were some—chiefly among the old women—whose eyes were so keen that they were able to distinguish the form of the horse of fire as it fled upward, glancing as swift as light.

  But this much was certain, that when the rider came to the river, after the blinding flash of lightning, he and Meany disappeared, and on the water’s face appeared a great, glowing spot, which floated slowly down with the current and disappeared around the next bend of the river.

  That was the last that was seen of the miracle.

  The Blackfeet hurried back to their teepees. All the night they made medicine and offered prayers and made vows of sacrifice. Then, the visiting chiefs from the council went back to their own peoples and told what they had seen, and every Crow and every Cheyenne gave thanks that they were not as the Blackfeet, under the wrath of the Sky People.

  The next morning, a few of the most daring spirits climbed the hill, and there they found what looked like strange garments of leather, clumsily cut. The meaning of this was not understood. But certainly men could see the prints of the hoofs of a horse, leading down from the crest straight to the door of the prisoner’s lodge.

  XVI

  The next morning, in the earliest dawn, though the thunderstorm had passed, the three nations hastily struck their lodges and prepared to march, when a messenger came out from the fort.

  He was the half-breed, Young River, and he said to the Indians that the heart of Meany was compassionate, that he had interceded with the flaming rider from heaven and had induced him to promise that, although the sin of the Blackfeet had been great in taking advantage of the person of a helpless man, moreover of a favorite of heaven, yet now at the request of Meany the Blackfeet and their allies would be wholeheartedly forgiven.

  Meany himself would forgive. He sent that assurance to all the chiefs, and above all to Spotted Calf. If they wished to open the trading now, he, Meany, would be glad to have them do so, on the basis of a cup of sugar to one buffalo robe.

  Furthermore, he desired to say that where the hand of the fiery messenger had rested upon his head, some of the celestial fire still glowed, and though it was dim and not visible in the daylight, in a darkened teepee he, Meany, would show to the greatest of the chiefs the sign of the fire still burning upon his hair.

  They went down in wonder, and the greatest chiefs were duly admitted, and the crowd was gathered into a big, darkened lodge in a corner of the fort. Then Meany took off his hat, and it was seen that upon his hair, visibly imprinted in pale fire, was the mark of the five fingers of a hand.

  From that moment, Meany became a colossal figure, a legendary form.

  From that moment, there was not an Indian of the plains who would not sooner have cut off his own hand than offend the mysterious favorite of the Sky People, whose favor had been so visibly shown to them in the camp of the Blackfeet.

  * * * * *

  That day the trading was very brisk. Floods of robes, of beaver pelts, poured into the fort. There was nothing but good feeling on all sides. The Indians felt that a great clemency had been shown to them all, and they made no hard points in the trading. The whites themselves were more than a little overawed.

  For, from the top of the palisade, more than one watcher had seen, with a sinking heart, that form of white fire ride down and disappear in the river. Some said one thing, and some said another, but upon the whole there was an air of mystery attached to Meany from that day forth, even among the white men of the frontier. They were almost as superstitious as the Indians, if the truth be told.

  Certainly there was no getting away from one truth—that Meany had been captured by the Blackfeet, that the fort had been in the utmost peril, that his life had been despaired of by Meany himself—and that then by a figure of fire he was led forth to safety.

  But, except to an Indian, it was a matter on which Meany never would utter a word. His lips were sealed.

  But after that first day’s trading, a group of five gathered in the room where Quigley lay wounded. In that group was Duncan, and Meany himself, and Helen his daughter, and Quigley, of course, and lastly young Tarlton, who was miraculously restored to the good graces of both Meany and Duncan.

  Said Duncan: “Now, young man, you can go out and tell this story around, and it’ll get you a famous name for one of the slickest tricks, and the coolest-headed, if not the smartest, that ever I heard of in the stories of the whole frontier. But I’d wait till the trading with these tribes is over, if I was you.”

  And Meany said with feeling: “Aye, wait till that is over. There’s a fortune in this day, my son. The Blackfeet are pouring out their plews like water and asking almost nothing in exchange. My skin room is overflowing. I’ve never seen such furs.”

  Then Tarlton answered with his usual cynical lightness: “The point is, my friends, that it’s dangerous for a man to speak lightly of the fires from heaven.” And he took a flask from his pocket. “But there’s still a little touch of the stuff left in here. I used up almost all of it and put the last big daub on the head of the spear. Confound me if the stuff didn’t run off the steel and drip on the ground. And those Blackfeet groaned like so many frightened demons. But perhaps you’d better take this flask and keep the phosphorus that’s left in it. Because there’s no telling . . . you may get in a tight pinch again. But now that you’ve got a chummy reputation as a friend of the Sky People, you can always show the mark of their hand on your head. The rest of the time, you’d better keep on your hat.”

  * * * * *

  That was advice that Meany kept to the end of his life, so that day and night a hat always was clamped upon his head. And the mystery never left him—at least in the eyes of the Indians. And that mystery, with good, native, Yankee thrift, he converted into a fortune of handsome proportions.

  What came of Tarlton?

  Young Helen Meany had designs upon him. Because she saw that not only was this youth agreeable and different from others, but also he stood high in the councils of her father, and literally he had given life back to the trader when life was forfeit. Even stern-faced Duncan had so utterly relented that he insisted upon taking Tarlton’s goods and driving with them such prodigious bargains with the Indians that the fortune of Tarlton was at least restored to what it should have been when he departed from the river.

  However, Tarlton took all these things lightly. For it is to be feared that he was a light-minded young man. And perhaps Helen Meany looked a trifle less beautiful to him as soon as he saw that he could have her.

  At any rate, it is useless to make surmises, and it is safer to tell the truth even when it cannot be fully comprehended.

  For as they walked forth before the fort, on a day toward the end of the trading, Tarlton paused and pointed down at the camp of the Cheyennes. It was growing deep into the dusk of the day, and every transparent teepee glowed with the fire that burned within.

  “Helen,” said the young man, “if I ever have a home, I think it will have to be a home like that.”

  “A home like that!” cried the girl. “A wretched tent?”

  “Ah, does it look like that to you?” he said dreamily.

  “You don’t mean that you’d go to live in a tribe of wild savages, David?” she said.

  “Savages?” said Tarlton. “Well . . . I don’t know. They look like free men to me.”

  And the very day after the trading ended, when the Cheyennes disappeared, David Tarlton disappeared with them, all his possessions being deftly moved away by his half-breed companion, Young River. And Fort Meany saw the flaming rider from the sky no more.

  Outlaw Buster

  “Outlaw Buster” appeared in the August 1937 issue of Complete Western Book Magazine and features one of Faust’s gentle giants, Barney Dwyer, a social outcast with more brawn than brain, who has yet to find a place in the world, despite his efforts to do what is right. It is the third and final story in the Barney Dwyer saga that began with “The Quest,” which appeared in the May 1933 issue of West and was
collected in The Quest (Five Star Western, 2009). The second Dwyer story, “The Trail of the Eagle,” which appeared in the July 1933 issue of West, is collected in Outlaws From Afar (Five Star Westerns, 2007).

  I

  From the window of the hotel, Sheriff Jim Elder pointed out the Coffeeville jail. It was a little, white-frame building with a roof painted green.

  “We’ve got ’em there for the minute, Barney,” he said to Dwyer, “but if you refuse to appear against ’em, we probably can’t hold ’em long. Not unless I can get one of McGregor’s gang to turn state’s evidence against his boss.”

  “Suppose that I go into court and tell what I know about Adler and McGregor?” he said.

  “Adler will get enough years to make it life, for him . . . and they’ll hang McGregor,” said the sheriff instantly. “And with McGregor gone, we’ll have peace through the whole range.”

  Barney Dwyer put his hands together and twisted them so hard that his shoulder muscles leaped out and filled the slack of his blue-flannel shirt, as a hard wind fills a sail. There was trouble in his eyes, pain wrinkling the center of his brow.

  “I can’t do it, Jim,” he said. “I know they’re bad ones, that pair. But if a man were hanged because of what I said in a courtroom, it would be poison to me.”

  The sheriff exclaimed impatiently: “What would they do to you, if they managed to get out of that jail, Barney? Tell me that?”

  “They’d murder me if they could,” said Barney. “I know that. I’m afraid of ’em, too. But to hang a man with the words I speak . . . I couldn’t do it.”

  The sheriff had many reasons for respecting Barney Dwyer, but now he stared with a mounting fury into that gentle, simple, troubled face. Words to voice all his anger came up into the throat of Jim Elder, but he choked them suddenly back. He turned his back sharply on big Barney Dwyer and made two rapid turns up and down the room. When he halted again in front of Barney, he snapped: “Will you talk to Sue Jones before you make up your mind?”

  “I’ll talk to her,” agreed Dwyer. “But even Sue couldn’t change my mind about this, I’m afraid. I’m going out to see her now at Doctor Swain’s. The doctor says that he can cure her shoulder so that there’ll hardly be a sign of a scar. Think of that!”

  “Think of the beast that fired the bullet at a woman,” said the sheriff. “Think of that . . . and think what it will mean to the range to put Adler and McGregor either in a hemp rope or behind the bars for life. I’ve spent years trying to hunt them down. After all my trying, you caught McGregor. It was a great thing. That’s why that crowd is hanging around the hotel to see you. It was a wonderful thing that you did, Barney. But unless you follow it up with testimony in the courtroom, what you’ve done is as good as nothing.”

  The same pain came into the face of Dwyer, but he shook his head, slowly, and the sheriff knew, with despair, that nothing could budge him. Instead of answering directly, Barney Dwyer stepped gingerly toward the window and looked down into the street.

  Men lingered on the veranda of the General Merchandise Store, and more men were talking and laughing under the roof of the hotel porch, as well. New arrivals constantly galloped up, tied their horses at the long hitching rack, and before entering the barroom or joining the others on the veranda, paused for a moment to look at the red mare, near to which none of the other animals were tethered. She herself was not tied, but she remained as though she were bound to the spot, switching her tail at the flies, sometimes swinging her head about to frighten them from her shoulders, sometimes stamping deeper holes in the dust with her forehoofs.

  “D’you mean that they’ve come into Coffeeville to see me?” asked Barney Dwyer, his eyes growing round.

  “You and the mare, yes,” said the sheriff. “And all the women in the town are trying to get past Missus Swain to have a look at Sue. The Swain house is filled with pies, and fresh fish and flowers and everything the ladies of Coffeeville can think of that may get them past the front door of the house. Well, it’s no wonder. Sue is the heroine, and you’re the hero, Barney. You’ll have a crowd at your heels the rest of your life, after the things you’ve done. And I hope the crowd bothers you as much as the flies are bothering your mare, down there.”

  There was a good-humored petulance in his voice as he spoke. But Barney Dwyer held up a protesting hand.

  “I’m no hero, Jim,” he said. “I was frightened, too, a lot of times. I was terribly frightened, as a matter of fact. I . . . I . . . how can I get away from that crowd, Jim? Will you tell me? I’ve got to see Sue, but I can’t wade through all those people and . . .”

  He blushed, with misery in his eyes, he appealed to the sheriff, but Jim Elder merely grinned.

  “You’ve made your medicine, and you’ll have to swallow it,” he said.

  “No!” exclaimed Barney Dwyer. “I could go down the back way.”

  “What back way?” asked the sheriff.

  Barney pointed to the window at the rear of the room. Then he picked up a forty-foot rope that hung on the back of a chair, neatly coiled, and carried it to the back window. There was a long drop beneath him to the yard below, which was walled about by a high-board fence. Barney tied one end of the rope firmly to a chair.

  “Are you going to take the risk of breaking your neck,” demanded Jim Elder angrily, “for the sake of avoiding that gang, which only wants to shake hands with you and buy you drinks?”

  “Whiskey makes my head buzz around and around as though there were flies inside it,” said Barney. “And yet if I don’t take a drink, men are angry. It hurts their pride. And then there’s apt to be fighting, and I hate a fight, Jim. You see how it is?”

  The sheriff peered at him as though he were a great distance off; he peered as a man does when the glare of the desert is hurting the eyes.

  “You beat me, Barney!” he exclaimed. “But in the name of God, let me try to make you see reason before you break your back falling out of a hotel window. You admit that McGregor has done everything he can to put you out of the way. He’s jailed you in his cellar. He’s turned loose his gang to kill you. He’s brought that old devil of a Doc Adler into the business to wreck you. He’s even put his hands on Sue and taken her away from you. I’m asking you to remember that every low trick a man can use on another man, he’s tried on you. And all I’m asking of you is to take that devil out of the world by simply standing up in a courtroom and telling the truth, as the law requires you to do. It’s not even vengeance. It’s justice. It’s doing your duty to the world.”

  Barney Dwyer paused to consider, with his head raised, and his mild eyes contemplating his thought. Slowly his big head began to shake from side to side in denial.

  “Maybe you’re right, Jim” he said at last. “You know a lot more than I do. A whole lot more. But I’ll tell you something . . . once I had McGregor in my hands, and I was killing him. I went blind with the joy of killing him, till Sue stopped me. Afterward, I was sick. My heart was sick to think I’d been acting like a beast. I’ve seen a wildcat killing a mountain grouse, tearing it. I must have been like that. And afterward, I swore that I’d never lift a hand against any man, except to defend myself. And I won’t lift my voice, either, Jim. Not even in a courtroom.”

  The sheriff groaned, made a gesture of surrender with both hands, and said no more. Barney Dwyer was already through the window. He wedged the chair carefully, threw out the length of the rope, and then went down it, hand over hand, rapidly. The two hundred pounds of his weight was a mere nothing, depending from the power of his arms.

  The sheriff leaned out and watched. He saw the red bandanna fluttering at the neck of Dwyer. Near the bottom of the rope, he saw Barney pause for a moment to consider his landing place, holding by one hand to the rope as easily as an ape. And the sheriff bit his lip with wonder. Then Barney loosed his grip and dropped lightly.

  He looked up and waved a cheerful hand at the sheriff, smiling.

  “He makes no more of that circus trick,” grunted th
e sheriff, “than I’d make of walking across the room. He’s different from the rest of us, body and brain. Plain different.”

  Barney Dwyer had turned to the high-board fence. There was no gate or door through it. So he leaped up, caught the upper rim, and so swung himself lightly over and dropped onto the sunburned grass of the farther side.

  It was a little, winding lane that led down to the side of Coffee Creek. He glanced up and down it, and sighed as he made sure that there was no one in sight. He was wrong. A lad with a home-made rod in one hand and a small string of fish in the other, was drifting slowly up the slope, under the deep shadow of the trees, and, seeing Barney, he had paused at once to stare.

  Now Barney tilted back his head and whistled three quick, sharp notes. After that he waited. The red mare would hear that call; the red mare would come at once, when she located the direction of the whistle. And he waited for her with his head thrown back, smiling a little in expectation. With her speed and grace under him, he would soon be far from the annoyance of crowds.

  He heard the whinny of the mare, as familiar to him as the voice of a human to another man. Then another voice shot up close by, the yell of a boy who cried: “He’s here! Come quick! Barney Dwyer! Barney Dwyer!”

  That voice jumped with electric tinglings along the nerves of Barney. He turned, and, as he turned, he saw the boy come at him. The fishing rod was dropped, and the string of little, silver fish tumbled into the dust.

  “Barney Dwyer! I’ve got Barney! He’s here! Hurry up, everybody!”

  The freckled face of the lad was convulsed with delight. How many men in all the world would have dared to rush in this manner upon the famous might of Dwyer? But the boy had no fear. He dodged the surprised and outstretched hands of Barney and caught at his belt.