Max Brand

Sun and Sand

Warsaw 2019

Contents

I. SILVER SNAKE

II. A NEW JOB

III. IN WELDON PASS

IV. THE CHART

V. ALKALI FLAT

VI. THE TREASURE

VII. BLAZING GUNS

VIII. FUN FOR SLEEPER

I. SILVER SNAKE

AT the pawnbroker’s window, Sleeper dismounted. He had only a few dollars in his pocket, but he had an almost childish weakness for bright things, and he could take pleasure with his eyes even when he could not buy his fancy. But on account of the peculiar slant of the sun, the only thing he could see clearly, at first, was his own image. The darkness of his skin startled him. It was no wonder that some people took him for a Gypsy or an Indian. He was dressed like a Gypsy vagrant, too, with a great patch on one shoulder of his shirt and one sleeve terminating in tatters at the elbow. However, he was not one to pride himself on appearance. He stretched himself; his dark eyes closed in the completeness of his yawn. Then he pressed his face closer to the window to make out what was offered for sale.

There were trays of rings, stick pins, jeweled cuff links. There were four pairs of pearl-handled revolvers; some hatbands of Mexican wheelwork done in metal; a little heap of curiously worked conchos; a number of watches, silver or gold; knives; some fine lace, yellow with age; a silver tea set–who had ever drunk tea in the mid-afternoon in this part of the world?–an odd bit of Mexican featherwork; spurs of plain steel, silver, or gold; and a host of odds and ends of all sorts.

The eye of Sleeper, for all his apparently lazy deliberation, moved a little more swiftly than the snapping end of a whiplash. After a glance, he had seen this host of entangled curiosities so well that he would have been able to list and describe most of them. He had settled his glance on one oddity that amused him–a key ring which was a silver snake that turned on itself in a double coil and gripped its tail in its mouth, while it stared at the world and at Sleeper with glittering little eyes of green.

Sleeper went to the door, and the great golden stallion from which he had dismounted started to follow. So he lifted a finger and stopped the horse with that small sign, then he entered.

The pawnbroker was a foreigner–he might have been anything from a German to an Armenian, and he had a divided beard that descended in two points, gray and jagged as rock. He had a yellow, wrinkled forehead, and his thick glasses made two glimmering obscurities of his eyes. When Sleeper asked to see the silver snake key ring, the bearded man took up the tray that contained it.

“How much?” asked Sleeper.

“Ten dollars,” said the pawnbroker.

“Ten which?” asked Sleeper.

“With emeralds for eyes, too. But I make it seven-fifty for such a young man.”

Sleeper did not know jewels, but he knew men.

“I’ll give you two and a half,” he said.

“I sell things,” answered the pawnbroker. “I can’t afford to give them away.”

“Good-bye, brother,” said Sleeper, but he had seen a shimmer of doubt in the eyes of the other, and he was not surprised to be called back from the door.

“Well,” said the pawnbroker, “I’ve only had it in my window for two or three hours... it’s good luck to make a quick sale, so here you are.”

As Sleeper laid the money on the counter, he commenced to twist off the keys.

“Hold on,” said Sleeper. “Let the tassels stay on it, too. They make it look better.”

“You want to mix them up with your own keys?” asked the pawnbroker.

“I haven’t any keys of my own,” said Sleeper, laughing, and went from the pawnshop at once.

As he walked down the street, the stallion followed him, trailing a little distance to the rear, and people turned to look at the odd sight, for the horse looked fit for a king, and Sleeper was in rags. There were plenty of men in the streets of Tucker Flat, because, since the bank robbery of three months ago, the big mines of the town had been shutting down one by one. They never had paid very much more than the cost of production, and the quarter million stolen from the Levison Bank had consisted chiefly of their deposits. Against that blow the three mines had struggled, but failed to recover. The result was that a flood of laborers was set adrift. Some of them had gone off through the mountains in a vain quest for new jobs; others loitered about Tucker Flat in the hope that something would happen to reopen the mines. That was why the sheriff had his hands full. Tucker Flat always was as hard as nails, but now it was harder still.

The streets were full, but the saloons were empty, as Sleeper soon observed when he went into one for a glass of beer. He sat at the darkest corner table, nursing the drink and his gloomy thoughts. Pop Lowry had appointed this town and this evening as the moment for their meeting, and only the devil that lived in the brain of the pseudo-peddler could tell what new and dangerous task Lowry would name for Sleeper.

He had been an hour in the shadows, staring at his thoughts, before the double swing doors of the saloon were pushed open by a man who looked over the interior with a quick eye, then muttered: “Let’s try the red-eye in here, old son.”

With a companion, he sauntered toward the bar. Sleeper was at once completely awake. For that exploring glance that the stranger had cast around the room had not been merely to survey the saloon, it had been in quest of a face, and, when his eye had lighted on Sleeper, he had come in at once.

But what could Sleeper be to him? Sleeper had never seen him before. In the great spaces of his memory, where faces appeared more thickly than whirling leaves, never once had he laid eyes on either of the pair. The first man was tall, meager, with a crooked neck and a projecting Adam’s apple. The skin was fitted tightly over the bones of his face; his hair was blond, his eyebrows very white, and his skin sun-blackened. It was altogether a face that would not be forgotten easily. The second fellow was an opposite type, fat, dark, with immense power swelling the shoulders and sleeves of his shirt.

The two looked perfectly the parts of cowpunchers; certainly they had spent their lives in the open. There was nothing to catch the eyes about them as extraordinary except that both wore their guns well down the thigh, so that the handles of them were conveniently in grasp of the fingertips.

Having spent half a second glancing at them, Sleeper spent the next moments in carefully analyzing the two. Certainly he never had seen their faces. He never had heard their names–from their talk he learned that the tall fellow was Tim, and the shorter man was called Buzz. They looked the part of cowpunchers, perfectly, except that the palms of their hands did not seem to be thickened or callused.

What could they want with Sleeper, unless they had been sent to the town of Tucker Flat in order to locate Sleeper and relay to him orders from Pop Lowry?

Several more men came into the saloon. It was apparent that they had nothing to do with the first couple. However, a few moments later both Buzz and Tim were seated at a table with two more. By the very way that tall Tim shuffled the cards, it was clear to Sleeper that these fellows probably had easier ways of making money than working for it.

Hands uncallused; guns worn efficiently although uncomfortably low–these were small indications but they were enough to make Sleeper suspicious. The two looked to him more and more like a couple of Lowry’s lawbreakers.

“How about you, stranger?” said Tim, nodding at Sleeper. “Make a fifth at poker?”

“I’ve only got a few bucks on me,” said Sleeper. “But I’ll sit in, if you want.”

He could have sworn that this game had been arranged by Tim and Buzz solely for the purpose of drawing him into it. Yet, everything had been done very naturally.

He remained out for the first three hands, then, on three queens, he pulled in a jackpot. Half an hour later he was betting his last penny. He lost it at once.

“You got a nice spot of bad luck,” said Buzz Mahoney, who was mixing the cards at the moment. “But stick with the game. If you’re busted, we’ll lend you something.”

“I’ve got nothing worth a loan,” said Sleeper.

“Haven’t you got a gun tucked away, somewhere?”

“No. No gun.”

He saw a thin gleam of wonder and satisfaction commingled in the eyes of Tim Riley.

“Empty out your pockets,” said Tim. “Maybe you’ve got a picture of your best girl. I’ll lend you something on that.”

He laughed as he spoke. They all laughed. Sleeper obediently put the contents of his pockets on the table, a jumble of odds and ends.

“All right,” said Tim at once. “Lend you ten bucks on that, brother.”

Ten dollars? The whole lot was not worth five, new. But Sleeper accepted the money. He accepted and lost it all by an apparently foolish bet in the next hand. But he wanted to test the strangers at once.

“I’m through, boys,” he said, and pushed back his chair.

He was eager to see if they would still persuade him to remain in the game. But not a word was said, except that Buzz Mahoney muttered: “Your bad luck is a regular long streak, today. Sorry to lose you, kid.”

Sleeper laughed a little, pushing in his cards with a hand that lingered on them for just an instant.

In that moment he had found what he expected–a little, almost microscopic smudge that was not quite true to the regular pattern on the backs of the cards. It was a tiny thing, but the eye of Sleeper was a little sharper than that of a hawk that turns its head in the middle sky and sees in the dim forest of the grass below the scamper of a little field mouse.

The cards were marked. Mahoney or Tim Riley had done that. They were marked for the distinct purpose of beating Sleeper, for the definite end of getting away something that had been in his possession.

What was it that they had wanted so much? What was it that had brought them on his trail?

II. A NEW JOB

IT was pitch dark when Pop Lowry reached the deserted shack outside the town of Tucker Flat. He whistled once and again, and, when he received no answer, he began to curse heavily. In the darkness, with the swift surety of long practice, he stripped the packs from the mules, nobbled and sidelined them. Presently they were sucking up water noisily at the little rivulet that crossed the clearing.

The peddler, in the meantime, had kindled a small fire in the open fireplace that stood before the shack, and he soon had the flames rising, as he laid out his cooking pans and provisions. This light struck upward on his long jaw and heavy nose, merely glinting across the baldness of his head and the silver pockmarks that were littered over his features. When he turned, reaching here and there with his long arms, the huge, deformed bunch behind his shoulders loomed. It was rather a camel’s hump of strength than a deformity of the spine.

Bacon began to hiss in the pan. Coffee bubbled in the pot. Potatoes were browning in the coals beside the fire. Soft pone steamed in its baking pan. Now the peddler set out a tin of plum jam and prepared to begin his feast. It was at this moment that he heard a yawn, or what seemed a yawn, on the farther side of the clearing.

The big hands of the peddler instantly were holding a shotgun in readiness. Peering through the shadows, on the very margin of his firelight he made out a dim patch of gold, then the glow of big eyes, and, at last, he was aware of a big horse lying motionless on the ground, while close to him, his head and shoulders comfortably pillowed on a hummock, appeared Sleeper.

“Sleeper!” yelled the peddler. “You been here all the time? Didn’t you hear the whistle?”

“Why should I show up before eating time?” asked Sleeper.

He stood up and stretched himself. The stallion began to rise, also, but a gesture from the master made it sink to the ground again.

“I dunno why I should feed a gent too lazy to help me take off those packs and cook the meal,” growled Pop Lowry. He thrust out his jaw in an excess of malice.

“You want to feed me because you always feed the hungry,” said Sleeper. “Because the bigness of old Pop’s heart is one of the things that everyone talks about. A rough diamond, but a heart of gold. A...”

“The devil with the people, and you, too,” said Pop.

He looked on gloomily while Sleeper, uninvited, helped himself to food and commenced to eat.

“Nothing but brown sugar for this coffee?” demanded Sleeper.

“It’s too good for you, even that way,” answered Pop. “What makes you so hungry?”

“Because I didn’t eat since noon.”

“Why not? There’s all the food in the world in Tucker Flat.”

“Broke,” said Sleeper.

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