Max Brand

Speedy

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 XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER I

WHEN John Pierson had a dog and a gun, he felt as though he owned the entire range of the Rocky Mountains from head to heel. And he had the gun and the dog with him, and there were still two days of clear vacationing before the moment when he had to turn back towards his home. He loved his home and he had made it worth living. He loved his work, and he had made it worth loving. But still his heart was half the time running out the window of his office and plunging off among the blue peaks that he could see.

It was not often that he got there in person. A week end here, and a fortnight in the slack season of the year were about all that he could afford. But he took what he could in the way of mountain days.

He was on foot. He had been raised on a horse, but when his time was so short, he generally felt that one got closer to the heart of things by walking. And so he walked now, with a good, free, powerful stride, in spite of his closeness to fifty years of age. He went uphill with a strong drive; he went downhill on springs. He was a big fellow, built like a rock, bull-necked, brown-faced. The tan on the back of his neck had been built up layer by layer since the days when he was a tow-headed boy riding range on a Texas ranch.

He was given a slightly professional touch, perhaps, by the short cropped mustache that he wore; it was still jet black, and glistening, though his hair was very gray. And in the keen, straight-looking blue eyes was the soul of the acquisitive man. Even the glance with which he surveyed the mountains he loved was almost that of one estimating their acreage, regretting that sheep were not browsing on the difficult patches of upland grass, or that cattle were not dotting the lower valleys.

In one of those lower valleys he paused so long that the dog lay down in the grass and began to roll and play with itself, as though confident that the day’s work and sport were over. For the master was lost in delight.

It was not much of a valley. It was a little broken ravine with a twisting, singing line of silver water thrown along the length of it. But it had groves along the banks, or single big trees thrusting out at a slant, holding green sunshades, as it were, over picnic grounds. And there were thickets of blooming shrubbery, and here a patch of rocks thrust up through the soil, glistening, the bony knees of Mother Earth breaking through a threadbare place. But mostly the water was enchanting. For sometimes it roared over a little cataract and multiplied itself with shadows, and in all ways tried to imitate a real river. And again it shot down a steep flume with a hissing sound of speed; but finally, it paused entirely in a large pool.

The very soul of John Pierson had paused there, also, and while the dog rolled in the grass, he was probing the mirrored mountains, the sky, the white blowing clouds that were quickly lost in the shrubbery along the banks, like sheep; and then the quick shadow of a soaring hawk skimmed across the water.

Down there below, where the water broke down from the pool and began to wrinkle as it gathered speed–there ought to be fish in that spot, among the rocks–good brook trout, basking there, loving their shadows and scornful of man! He saw exactly where he could stand, first here and then there, doing his casting. It was not long before lunch. He had shot nothing. And he determined that he would eat fish this day! It was one of his boasts that when he adventured into the mountains, he never took with him more than his rifle and his fishing rod and salt. Nature had to provide for all his needs–nature and his ability to harvest her gifts.

He screwed the pieces of the rod together and then tried the balance and whip of it with an expert hand. He was proud of that hand; the wrist was steel-strong, even now, when he was deep in middle age. And his touch was delicate, and his eye was sure. He would be able to fish that stream as no one had fished it before, as no one might fish it again. The trout that escaped from him would die of old age, he assured himself, as he selected his fly.

He whipped out a sufficient length of line, smiling with delight as he listened to the sharp, small whistling of the thread cutting the air. In the canon above, he could hear in the distance the talking of the little river, a musical, excited conversation. Farther down the stream, there was the harsh crashing of the water as it tripped over a ledge of rock and smashed itself into foam and spray on a base fifty or sixty feet below.

But though this sound was both steady and ominous, it was not loud. It needs only a little distance of the thin air of the mountains to muffle noise. Indeed, to the ear of the lawyer, there was just enough sound to make him conscious of the voice of the mountains; there was enough sound to make him dream in the upland quiet into which he would be plunging, before long. He would lift above the valleys before the midafternoon. He would be shouldering among the peaks, where only the wind talks, and the insects sing and whisper in small hushing waves of sound.

He was content. He was mightily content, and now he made his first cast–the line flew far, and flicked the water as straight as though its length had been ruled.

He admired that cast, the accuracy of it. Like the true fisherman, the fish were only in a corner of his mind, and his way of catching them was all that mattered.

He had dropped the fly just on the verge of the shadow that sloped down beside a big rock, and he had half finished reeling in his line, when the strumming of a guitar, nearby, smote his ear like the roar of trains, the disputing of voices, the whole angry noise of civilized, hurrying, foolish man.

And then a voice, pleasant enough, a man’s baritone voice, rang through the glade, singing:

“Julia, you are peculiar,
Julia, you are queer;
Truly, you are unruly,
As a wild, western steer.
Sweetheart, when we marry,
Dear one, you and I,
Julia,
You little mule you,
I’m gunna rule you,
Or die!”

The lawyer finished reeling in his line and then put the rod, for a moment, over his shoulder. He looked for the singer with an air of personal insult. He had been snatched back too suddenly into the follies and vanities and idiocies of the youth of the world.

And now he found the musician, just finishing, his mouth wide on the last note. He was lying on a grassy ledge not twenty feet from the fisherman; the guitar was in his lap, his coat was rolled to support his head comfortably against the bank at his back.

The wrath of the older man overflowed. For he could see worthlessness in the tattered clothes of this boy, and in his too-handsome face. Good looks, when they pass a certain point, always appear a trifle effeminate, a weakening of the true male character. And this lad was made with the scrupulous care that should better have been bestowed on the making of a reigning beauty. He was slim, delicate, dainty. He had big, brown, sleepy, indifferent eyes. His rather swarthy skin bloomed with color. And he was set off, with the vanity of one who knew his good point, by a necktie of flaring yellow and blue.

The lip of John Pierson curled with wrath and scorn.

“Young man,” he said, hotly, “d’you know that these mountains are not the place for young ragtime fools?”

He wanted to thrash the boy. He wanted to make him jump and howl. There was in him a great possibility of the family tyrant, though as a matter of fact his only child was a daughter who ruled him with an easy and impertinent adroitness. He knew that she was the monarch of the house, and yet he loved her all the more. But his sense of failure with her, made him a little more absolute in his dealings with others in the world.

The musician, pushing himself languidly up on one elbow, first plucked a blade of grass and began to bite at it absently, studying the stranger.

“Is this a reservation for tired lawyers, sir?” said he.

And as though to point the insolence of his remark, he raised his hat and bowed a very little to John Pierson.

The wrath of the latter flamed higher.

He could hardly say what irritated him most in this speech–the air with which it was delivered, the goodness of the English and the enunciation, or the happy guess which it contained as to his profession. Everything combined with the place and what had gone before to madden Pierson.

He said, “Your kind of nonsense ought to be kept for Mexican cafés. Are you a Mexican, young man?”

“No such luck,” said the boy.

He resettled the coat under his head, so that he could regard Pierson more comfortably, without quite sitting up.

“No such luck,” snapped Pierson. “You rather be one, eh?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” said the other, yawning a little, and covering his mouth with a graceful, slender hand. “You know how it is, Mr. Lawyer; one grows a little tired of hearing the eagle scream, because it’s usually yipping about work. ‘Work, work, young man. In work is salvation. The kingdom of God is in the muscles!’ And that sort of thing.”

It was the most offensive statement that Pierson had ever heard. He guessed that a philosophy of indolence lay behind it, and vice is never so damnable as when the vicious justify their actions.

“You, I take it,” said he, “are a fellow who doesn’t care what the eagle screams?”

“Not a bit,” said the other, “except when it turns me out of bed. I came up here to rest a little, but I see that the eagle has spotted me. He’s screaming in my ear, again.”

At this not too subtle reference to himself, the heat of Pierson increased.

“If we were a little nearer my home town,” said he, “I’d find a more secure place for you to rest, my friend. Where you wouldn’t spoil a landscape. They’d find something for you to work at, for about thirty days.”

“No, no,” said the youngster.

He showed his hands, smiling.

“For here,” said he, “you see hands which have never yet been stained by work or fee!”

CHAPTER II

NEVER in his life had John Pierson met with a human being who so thoroughly irritated him in every way as did this lad.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-two, sir,” said the boy, with a false humility.

“College, eh?”

“Part way, sir.”

“Stop calling me ‘sir!’”

“Very well, sir.”

Now, in his own town, throughout his community, and in many ways it was a large one, Pierson was a man of great influence and power. His word was respected, his advice followed. Throughout this same mountain district, there were few people, no matter what their position, who would not gladly have bowed to him. Here was the exception, and a most unpleasant one it proved. He was even angry with himself because a worthless waif moved him so much.

“My boy,” said he, “I will make a bargain with you. This place happens to suit me. There must be a thousand others where you can lie on grass just as soft as that. I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll stir along.”

The boy nodded, not as one assenting, but one considering.

“That’s a matter,” he declared at last, “that needs a lot of considering. In the first place, there’s the question of the way this bank fits my back. Nature isn’t such a handy cabinet maker, you know.”

“Humph!” said the lawyer.

“Then there’s the fish to consider,” said the boy.

“The fish?”

“I’ve been seeing the glint of ’em down there in the water for some time. I’d hate to disturb ’em as long as the sun is shining like this.”

“But after it stops shining?” suggested the lawyer.

“Oh, then I’d eat a dozen of ’em with a lot of pleasure, thank you.”

“A very good speech for the perfect opportunist,” said the man of the law.

“Finally, and the thing that seems to close the question,” went on the handsome tramp, “there’s the matter of my profession.”

“Ah-ha,” said the lawyer. “And what might your profession be?”

“Acting,” said this brazen-faced lad.

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