Max Brand

Flaming Irons

Warsaw 2017

Contents

I. A FINE PAIR

II. A SUCCESSOR TO SAMSON

III. BY PROCESS OF DEDUCTION

IV. A MINOR PROPHET

V. ACROSS THE HILLS

VI. LIKE A GALLON OF WATER

VII. "SOMETHING PRETTY FINE"

VIII. A DRIFTING LOG

IX. SLIPPERY SHORES

X. FIVE RIDERS SEARCHING

XI. FOR THE LOST CAUSE

XII. A BELTED KNIGHT

XIII. A WAY WITH HORSES

XIV. A CORNERED WILD-CAT

XV. VAIN SEARCH

XVI. BREAKFAST FOR TWO

XVII. WHAT FLIES BY NIGHT

XVIII. WHAT THE MOONLIGHT SHOWED

XIX. LIKE A GALE OF WIND

XX. IN THE DUST OF THE TRAIL

XXI. AS TIME IS MEASURED

XXII. A MAN WITH THREE HORSES

XXIII. WHERE LIES LA PAZ?

XXIV. THE PILLARS OF SMOKE

XXV. THE END OF A FAMOUS MAN

XXVI. ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD

XXVII. ENTER JUAN CORDOBA

XXVIII. BY STARLIGHT AND FIRELIGHT

XXIX. GOODBYE MONTE!

XXX. A LIGHT SHINING

XXXI. BRAVE TALK

XXXII. LIGHT FEET ON THE MOUNTAINS

XXXIII. OVER THE PRECIPICE

XXXIV. A BEGGAR AFOOT

XXXV. CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS

XXXVI. A CURTAIN-RAISER

XXXVII. 'GAINST SOLID STEEL

XXXVIII. THREE ON THE LOOKOUT

XXXIX. CLOSE TO THE CLUE!

XL. IF FORTUNE FAVOR

XLI. THROUGH THE TALL GATEWAY

XLII. A DARK-EYED MAIDEN

XLIII. ONE REACHES THE CITY IN THE SKY

I. A FINE PAIR

If the colt had stood still and taken things calmly all would have been well, and they could have worked it out in time. But the colt was not much over three years–just old enough to have its strength and not old enough to have full sense. Except to one person, it was as wild as any unsaddled mustang from the farthest range of the mountains. And when it found itself caught in the treacherous mud at the edge of the water hole, it began to flounder and fight with a terrible energy.

Tarron and his older boy got a lariat of stout rawhide over its head and tried to pull it out in that way, but it was sunk much too deep.

Then they ventured into the slush and tried to quiet the fine gray, but their presence only made the handsome fellow more wild with fear.

It was down to the shoulders; then down to the very withers, and such were the furious efforts which it made that its strength was rapidly ebbing, and before long its exhausted head would sink.

A horse is too intelligent in some crises. A mule, when in a tight corner, will stand quiet and trust to Providence whose special care has always been mules. But when a horse cannot solve a riddle, like many a high-spirited and high-strung man, it gives up, surrenders completely, and so is lost.

A very little more and the gray would surrender in just that manner, and Tarron knew it.

He was desperately put to it. From his little place, where he managed to provide for his family only by dint of the most constant exertions, he could not afford to lose a sheep or a calf, to say nothing of the finest horse that mare had ever foaled in those mountains.

Suddenly he cried: “Where’s Les? Where’s Les? Get Les down here, Joe!”

Joe, with a nod, leaped on the back of his cow pony and spurred over the hill.

When he reached the house he shouted, as he sprang from the saddle, “Where’s Les?”

Mrs. Tarron, dishcloth in hand, came toward him in a flurry.

“Poor Les has a dreadful headache. He’s still in bed, I guess.”

“Oh, dash his headaches! The gray’s drowning in the tank!”

And Joe Tarron hurried up the ladder to the attic room.

It was still semidark in that room. The atmosphere was close, and in a corner an outline could be dimly discerned under a huddle of bedclothes.

“Les!” Joe yelled.

There was no answer.

Hurrying to the huddle of clothes, he tore them off the prostrate form of the sleeper.

“Les!”

There was a faint groan, and then a feeble voice muttered: “Sick, Joe. Can’t get up–”

“Damn you and your sickness! Get up! Get up! I know the kind of sickness that keeps you in bed on frosty mornings!”

Les Tarron groaned softly again, and, turning on his side, his heavy breathing announced that he was already falling into soundest slumber.

His brother, in an impatient fury, stretched out a hand to strike, but something withheld him.

“You fool!” he shouted. “It’s the gray, your own colt, bogged down at the edge of the tank–”

You would have said that he had struck some vital nerve, not of a man, but of a cat, so quickly did Les Tarron spring to his feet. He was past his brother in a bound. Half dressed, his long hair flying behind him, he dropped from the trap door, disdaining the ladder–fled through the kitchen, and, springing into the saddle on the mustang, rode furiously away while Joe afoot labored heavily behind.

When he got to the edge of the tank, he could see his father keeping the lariat taut, but it was patently a useless effort to maintain the head of the colt above the edge of the slime. The eyes of the gray, usually so fiery bright, were now glassing over.

“Jim!” called the rescuer.

The mud-covered ears of the colt pricked, and he uttered a feeble whinny, as Les Tarron jumped from the saddle and stood on the edge of the tank.

“In bed–by heaven, I might of knowed it!” sneered his father. “Now save the gray, or it’s the last day that I keep and feed your useless carcass!”

Les Tarron hardly seemed to hear. He reached one hand over his shoulder and plucked away his undershirt. The garment, not coming free at once, was ripped in twain by the force of that grasp. A strange thing to see, for the shirt was of stoutest wool, and one would have guessed that the united strength of two men could hardly have accomplished so easily what a single gesture had done now. However, now that the shirt was off and the sun glinted on the naked torso of Les Tarron, the explanation was not far to seek. He was no giant in bulk, but Nature, which makes so many forms in slipshod haste, had here worked with the delicate hand of an artist and composed all in a perfect harmony and a perfect balance. The muscles stirred and moved like living snakes beneath his skin.

He had come barefooted. Now he stepped straight into the slush.

“Keep a pull on Jim’s head,” he directed. “Not too hard, y’understand, but hard enough to take advantage of what I’m gunna do.”

“What are you gunna do?” asked the father, seeing his son already sunk hip-deep in the mud.

Les did not answer. Bending low, he seemed to find a grip on the horse and made an effort to move him.

It caused the muscles along his back to stand out like knotted fists, but it only drove Les Tarron shoulder-deep into the mud.

“Steady!” shouted the father in alarm. “It’s no good! Anyway, you ain’t fool enough to think that you can lift the weight of a horse, are you? Get out of that mud before you’re drowned, you blockhead.”

Still Les Tarron made no reply. He squelched through the mud. He straddled a little farther apart and felt a firmer bottom beneath his gripping toes. Then he took a great breath, and, leaning over, he sank shoulders, neck, and head beneath the surface of the slime.

In the filthy darkness beneath, his hands fumbled, and presently he found his grip–both hands and wrists thrust under the barrel of the gray behind the elbows.

Then he began to lift, with flexed legs that stiffened and straightened, and with bent back that struggled to straighten also.

A groan from the colt told of a body half crushed by the gigantic pressure. The gray tried to rear to avoid the pain, and so some of its weight was transferred to the hindquarters. Suddenly he was thrust up, head and neck, clear of the mud.

There was a shout of triumph from the shore. Then beside the colt rose the mud-covered head of Les Tarron. He had to tip his head up to clear his face; then, wiping away the filth from mouth and eyes and nose, he breathed a great gasp of relief, and waved a blackened arm toward his father and brother.

“Great work, Les! Now, get out of that and come ashore. I thought that you’d never come up again. You were down a whole minute!”

“Leave me be,” said Les Tarron. “He ain’t cleared yet!”

The colt had begun its desperate struggles once more, but now a single word from its master quieted it. Back to the sunken hind quarters went Les Tarron, moving with desperate flounderings. Once more he sank beneath the surface of the mud. Once more he bent and strained–and now the colt was fairly dragged out from the deeper mud which had imprisoned it.

The strain on the lariat could tell, from this point. The struggles of the gray itself were helpful, and last of all was the gigantic strength of Les Tarron moving the horse and lifting it forward.

In five minutes the rescued colt was on firm ground, and stood with sinking head and trembling legs while all three washed off the thick layers of mud with water.

Once clean, a horse was revealed eminently worth even such efforts as these had been, a compactly built, powerful animal, with legs which mean speed.

“My, but ain’t you a mess?” sneered Joe at his mighty brother.

“That’s nothing,” answered Les.

He ran down to a point where firm ground came to the edge of the little artificial lake. There he plunged in, and presently he came up white, freed from the black mud. He stood, dripping, beside the dripping colt, and his father, with a sort of happy sadness, admired the magnificent group.

“Ah, Les,” said he, “if you could ever come into yourself and be worthy of sitting in the saddle on that horse, what a man you’d be! But there ain’t much chance of it, I’m afraid. And one of these days you’ll just be bogged down and lost–like Jim here nearly was. Lost doing something useless and foolish, and men are gunna be glad that you’re done for!”

These bitter words seemed to slip unregarded over the youth’s head. Now that the limbs of the colt had ceased to tremble Les Tarron leaped up and sat sidewise on its back. There was no need of bridle to guide Jim; a word or two and he broke into a gliding pace that carried them softly over the hill, horse and rider, still dripping wet, flashing like a precious stone in the morning sun.

“Watch ‘em go,” said the rancher to his older son, “watch ‘em go! And where would you find a finer pair than them, Joe? Where would you ever see a finer horse–that won’t cut a cow, or work with a rope? Where would you ever see a finer man–that won’t ride herd or handle a lariat or a branding iron or a pitchfork? Aye, strong enough to lift a horse, as you and me have seen this day, but what good’ll his strength be put to, I’m asking you? And yet they say that God made all things with a purpose–even the flies in the air!”

“Aye,” said Joe bitterly, “and he made Les so that we could have our foretaste of hell on earth!”

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