Max Brand

The White Wolf

Warsaw 2019

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER I

IN an upper box-cañon of the Winnemago River, Gannaway saw the big man first. Gannaway himself was big, and hard-muscled from wandering across the ridges of the Rockies whether in summer suns or through combing winter hurricanes. By the very face of Adam Gannaway, one knew that he could make himself at home in the heart of a blizzard one day and in the desert the next. And his work as meteorologist kept him busy year in and year out, wandering and never pausing. That deep and quiet soul of his, ever removed from the ways of other men, was more at ease up here and in the wilderness of the mountains, he could spread his elbows at the board; in all other places he was a self-conscious, clumsy fellow.

He was a great hunter, too, this Adam Gannaway, though he was fonder of hunting with a camera than with a rifle; but the result was that he knew the ways of the wild beasts as hardly any other in the length and the breadth of the mountains. But for all these qualifications, when he saw Tucker Crosden for the first time, he felt like some effete city dweller brought suddenly before the face and frown of nature.

Adam Gannaway was big. He was well above six feet, and he had a sturdy spread of shoulders, but when Crosden strode closer to him, Gannaway felt himself shrinking into the dimensions of a boy again.

And Gannaway had had his share of this world’s troubles and its joys, but when he looked up into the face of the other, half brutal and half melancholy, it seemed to Gannaway that compared with the soul of the stranger his own was filled with nothing but remembered stuff–dead print!

Tucker Crosden walked with a staff which was heavily shod with steel, and such was its length that it reminded Gannaway of the rough-hewn spear of some early hero; such was its girth that despite the sinewy strength of his own arms, Gannaway would not have cared to carry it with him through a single march. Yet it dangled like a peeled willow wand in the fingers of the giant. The little burro which scampered along before him, the big man whacked with this staff, from time to time, and every blow raised a welt along the ribs of the suffering little beast; and compared with the bulk of its master it seemed rather like a dog than a beast of burden.

However, it was loaded with a heavy pack, and so completely spent by the long struggle up the steep cañons of the Winnemago that when they reached Gannaway the giant let it stop to rest on wide-braced legs.

Human society in the San Jacinto Mountains was rarer than sweet music and more deeply hungered for, but Gannaway had a shrewd conviction that had the burro been fresh the big man would have pressed on with never a word. As it was, he glanced twice at the scientist before he rumbled an indistinguishable word of greeting and then:

“Have you got the makings, stranger?”

Gannaway handed over a package of brown papers and a little Bull Durham in the bottom of a sack. Then he wondered at fingers so heavy and so thick employed in the nuances of rolling a cigarette. Crosden did not waste time in thanks. When his smoke was lighted, he went to the farther side of the burro’s pack and took from an open hamper a big female bull-terrier. She was heavy with young and it was patent when Crosden put her on the ground that her hour was fast approaching, yet even so Gannaway wondered that such a man had burdened his single pack animal with the weight of a dog.

The giant followed her to the edge of the Winnemago and watched her drink, scowling thoughtfully down at her. Then, because there was a sharp pitch up the bank which she had to climb, he lifted her carefully under his arm and brought her to the top. She thanked him with a wag of the tail and lift of the ears. Then she went slowly off through the grass.

But Gannaway felt a wonder that deepened every minute. After all, what he had seen was not much more than any humane man would have done for a dog in the terrier’s condition, but it seemed as absurd to attribute humanity to the giant as to attribute mercy to a mountain lion or charity to a grizzly. Moreover, it seemed to the observer that the care which the big fellow lavished upon the dog was not the spontaneous result of emotion, but rather the effect of carefully considered plans. As if, for instance, he had been offered a very great reward for bringing the bitch safely across the mountains.

“She’s a fine specimen,” said Gannaway.

The brute glanced sourly across at him.

“Is she?” said he, offensively, and continued to watch the maneuverings of the terrier with a gloomy eye.

Now Gannaway was no expert in bull-terriers, but he knew all animals well enough, and he knew not only dog standards in general, but something of the special type which the bull-terrier breeder has in his eye. Now Gannaway scanned the bitch again, carefully. He saw her from the front and the rear, the side and the back, and he found nothing against her. Here were legs splendidly straight and huge in bone, a great chest, a pair of shoulders to glad the eye with their cleanness and their fine muscles, a neck neither too long nor too short, and not covered with loose skin. There was her tail, too, set on low, thick at the butt, tapering beautifully–looking as straight as a string, with a spring set in the base of it. But perhaps the head was at fault. No, for it was a glorious head, with little triangular black eyes and a “fill up” clear to the eyes, like the back of a man’s hand.

“By heavens,” said Gannaway; “if that bitch hasn’t championship stuff in her, I’m a fool.”

“You ain’t the only fool in the world,” said the other.

He waited, glowering, expecting the other to take up the insult, but when Gannaway remained calm, the giant consented to add:

“But she’s a champion, right enough.”

Gannaway was much intrigued. Good bull-terriers do not grow on every bush, in these degenerate days, and one does not expect a champion to approach her hour to litter among the bleak heights of the San Jacinto mountains and expose several hundred dollars’ worth of blind puppyhood to the tender mercies of a winter gale.

“Where did she win? And what’s her name?” he asked.

The giant, turned his back: “It’s time to move, Nell. Come here, Nell!”

She came obediently, trotting with a heavy step, and stood before him waiting for further orders so that the heart of Gannaway was warmed in spite of the insolence of the big man. However, at this moment the other finished his cigarette and he half turned to ask: “Got another makings?”

“No,” said Gannaway, “that’s the last.”

“All right,” said the giant. “I’ll take pipe tobacco, then.”

“I’m out of that, too. Not a crumb of it left.”

The big fellow stared, incredulous, but there was a world of honesty in the steady blue eyes of Gannaway, and Crosden burst out with an enormous oath.

“But” he growled, “you ain’t been giving away your last smoke?”

“I can get on. I’ve gone without it before,” said Gannaway.

The giant looked helplessly about him, as though he strove to find an explanation in the wind and sun and hard rocks around him, but discovered no way of interpreting such generosity as this. Then another thought struggled into his eyes, a conclusion against which he fought hard but which persisted in spite of him.

“Why, hell, man,” he exclaimed suddenly, “you must be white!”

And he glared at Gannaway mutely, like another Balboa, “silent on a peak in Darien.” As though, indeed, this discovery of decency in a fellow man were a mystery which could not be comprehended, breaking down all preconceptions.

“Have you got a pipe?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

“Then–fill her up!”

He dragged out a well-filled pouch and offered it; but still while Gannaway gladly and obediently filled his black pipe, the stranger surveyed him with wonder from head to foot, writing down in his mind the distinguishing features of this new species.

“She’s Barnsbury Lofty Lady II,” he broke out at last, “and she got her championship right back there in New York, like the rest of my breed. I don’t bother with none of the little country shows. The big stuff, or nothing.”

“An expensive business, that–shipping the dogs so far,” suggested Gannaway with respect.

“Oh–ay, it costs money, but I get enough for my dogs out of the traps. I sell enough furs to keep the dogs pretty good. The family don’t like it. But–damn the family!”

Gannaway overlooked the latter half of these remarks, and he answered: “She’s a good-looking bitch. By the way, my name is Gannaway.”

“Gannaway,” said the trapper, “I dunno what your business is but it ain’t dogs. Well, she’s good looking enough for most. They wrote her up when she went East. They give her cups, and they shook hands with me, and they offered me big money for her. Three thousand dollars, says a pinch-faced little son of a fool to me. Three thousand for her? No–nor thirty thousand–nor three hundred thousand–nor three million. Money ain’t gunna touch her.”

It was not madness, but the divine enthusiasm which makes good horses or dogs on the one hand–good statues and poems on the other. Gannaway understood and nodded in sympathy. His heart too, was set upon a distant star.

“No, it ain’t what she is,” went on the giant more to himself than to Gannaway. “It ain’t what she is, but it’s the hope that’s locked up in her. She’s got the stuff in her; and maybe it’ll come out. She’s got the stuff in her!”

“And what is that?” asked Gannaway gently.

The giant looked at him in irritation, askance, but then his thought took hold on him and made him raise his head until his long, thick hair fell back and showed a smile of singular and pure beauty on his face.

“The King!” whispered he. “She’s got the blood of The King in her, and maybe that blood’ll come out–in this here very litter. I dunno. Nobody can tell–only God!”

CHAPTER II

THEIR way did not lie in the same direction, but Gannaway was glad to turn from the true course which should have led him across the valley of the Winnemago and across Mount Spencer and Mount Lomas in the southern distance; he travelled, instead, up the valley of the river until in the evening they reached the lower Winnemago hills and camped there among the pines. Beyond that range, over the broad side of Spencer Mountain, the stranger intended to hold his way until he reached the valley of the Seven Sisters. In the morning, therefore, they must part, but in the meantime, Gannaway determined to learn, if craft and patience could help him, the riddle which would solve the mystery of why a sane man chose to peril the life of a three thousand dollar dog among the cold winds of the upper mountains–and endanger all the lives of her cubs also, as a matter of course!

But it was not easy to draw information from Crosden. He responded to apparent curiosity as an Indian does–with silence. And what was chiefly clear to Gannaway was that the dog- breeder was a pure type of brute with one consuming passion–the desire to produce a perfect bull-terrier. But it was not until their supper had been cooked and eaten and their second pipes thereafter were fuming that the tongue of Crosden was loosened by chance.

“Whatever else they may say about her, she has a perfect head,” said Gannaway, and took the head of Nelly in his hand.

Only one phrase of his speech seemed to come to the ear of the giant.

“A perfect head?” echoed Crosden softly. “Once there was a perfect dog. You hear me, Gannaway? You, being a white man, you might understand. There is crooks and sneaks and damned little else, and who would want to talk about a real dog to such as them? Them folks back East–worms! They ain’t men! But you, Gannaway–you’re white and you would understand, maybe. Suppose–should I tell you the story–why, here it goes, and why not? It’ll do me good, or send me crazy–talking!”

He brushed the long hair back from his face, half melancholy and half brute, and with his walking staff gripped in his hand, he brooded for a time upon the fire until a flare of its light seemed to gather again in his own eyes from long staring.

Suddenly he raised his glance to Gannaway, and the latter shrank a little and had to steady himself.

“I’ll tell you, back in the beginning there wasn’t nobody much except Newton and me. The others had dogs, and they showed ‘em, and they got their championships and they did their talking, but nobody knew the secret of putting a head on a bull-terrier. Nobody but me–and then Newton, he stole my idea. He seemed to understand, too. The bitches are what count. You can have the best stud dogs in the world and get nothing. But when you take a bitch that has got an eye in her head–and enough weight to–but here, you ain’t a dog-breeder.

“Well, let that go. I knew, and Newton knew. I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew. Sometimes we wouldn’t get much. Just red ribbons or yellow, or such, but I would go and look at Newton’s dogs, and he would come and look at mine. And each of us knew that the other fellow was coming pretty close to the real thing–a dog that would be a dog.

“We got our championships, too. We got them pretty thick and fast, after a while. But still he kept waiting and watching me, and I kept waiting and watching him. And finally one time when I got to Madison Square Garden I seen Newton go by with a guilty look in his eye and I reached out and grabbed him. He’s a little gent. He curled up inside my hand and put up an arm like I was going to hit him.

“‘Keep off of me!’ says he. ‘Who’s been talking to you?’

“All at once, I guessed that he had it. I guessed that he had beat me out–and I come near to killing him–mighty near!”

He raised the steel-shod staff and struck with it a heavy rock–and the rock splintered like crumbled chalk.

“‘You take me back and lemme see it!’ said I. ‘It ain’t on your bench yet.’”

“Because I had seen the dogs that he had on the bench. So he took me back and he opened a crate in a corner of the room and he snapped his fingers and out jumped–the perfect dog!

“I mean, when I seen her in the first flash, and her whiteness, and the sick sort of a feeling that I had in the bottom of my stomach, I figgered that Newton had turned the trick and he had beat me.

“I said: ‘Newt, you’ve done it! This here is the dog!’

“Well, he looked up sidewise at me and he shook his head, God bless him! I loved him for doing that. And he said: ‘I used to think that she might come to it when she was a pup. Her promise was perfect. But when you haul off and take another look at her, partner, you see what’s wrong. And it’s in the head and neck–but it ain’t nothing that the standard’ll tell!”

“‘Ah, damn the standard!’ says I. For we’ve all seen the dog that lived up to the standard pretty near perfect but that would get beat by some ordinary cur, because the cur would have the fire in him. And I looked at the bitch and I seen that Newton was right. She was a mite off in the head and the neck. Just a mite wrong below the eyes.

“‘What is her name?’ says I.

“‘The only name she’s got,’ says he, ‘is The Queen.’

“‘Newton Queen?’ says I.

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