Max Brand - The White Cheyenne (Max Brand) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

As a matter of fact, I was not at all troubled by these reflections. I knew perfectly well that if I happened to be the victim of an injustice in this particular case, it was the merest accident. I had made enough trouble in my time to account for almost anything. I was not sorry to be away from home. I knew that my parents preferred my brothers and sisters to me. In turn, I did not waste much affection on them.

I was out of place in my father’s home. I knew it—and so did they. I could not listen to them and watch their grave ways without wanting to laugh. When I wanted to laugh, I generally did. There is nothing in the world that people will forgive less readily than a lack of reverence to their persons.

In fact, there was only one thing for which I was genuinely sorry. That was that my bullet had killed poor Arnold Perrault. There was nothing wrong with him except his high-headed pride. I suppose that his was not the most valuable life that was ended by that selfsame pride.

Even this regret was not enough, as you might say, to spoil my appetite for the life which I saw before me. I liked the prospect thoroughly well.

You see, I believed in the treble rascality of the nature which had been wished upon me in the three names with which my father had so foolishly endowed me. I haven’t the slightest doubt that a normal name might have turned me out a thoroughly normal boy in every respect. Yet here I was, as I felt, created for the sake of doing mischief in the world and thoroughly prepared to have a good time while I was doing it.

I was twenty-one years old. I had never had a sick day in my life. My nerves were as steady as chilled steel. I had at my disposal a hundred and fifty-odd pounds of muscle and bone which I knew very well how to use to the best advantage—whether the engagement were wrestling or boxing or straight rough and tumble—for which I had a low taste!

Just when a young hero of good mind and morals would have been deploring his fate, I was looking westward with a smile in my heart. I felt just as though I had received a signed commission permitting me to do as I pleased.

When I ran out of money I ran into a job which was running moonshine whisky from a mountain still down to the towns in the valley below. It was as risky a work as you would like to undertake. I liked it well enough, because it gave me a pair of thoroughly good horses to ride, plenty of money in my pocket, and plenty of danger blowing down the wind.

In short, I had found just the place for a young ruffian. And such I was, exactly that and no more, though my name and my antecedents might have stood for a good deal higher social stratum. I changed that name to Rivers. From that time on I was known as Terence Rivers over a widening pool of society.

A young man takes it for granted that the world is so great that no matter in what direction he travels he may keep going forever without ever once finding his own footmarks on the trail before him. Yet after I had been a while in this employment, a nasty wind blew over the mountains the rumor that Terry Rivers was wanted back in Charleston for murder.

I got a lift in wages at once. There are certain occupations where murder is at once rewarded in this fashion, and with a grisly sort of honor. That is the ultimate brand. It distinguishes the wolf from the house dog. In the line that I was following, the real wild strain was what was wanted.

However, this rumor that blew over the mountains crystalized in the shape of a posse that started on my trail. I took my choice of my two horses, sold the other for a song and drifted on farther west with a hundred dollars and a bit more in my pocket, a new-style Winchester rifle thrust into the long carbine holster that passed under my right knee and along the side of the saddle, two revolvers beside the pommel of that saddle, and two more stuck away in my clothes.

You might say that I was a young walking arsenal. I was. If I had had handy room for more guns and more than the one heavy-handled Bowie knife at my belt, I assure you that I would have carried more. Those were the days which you read about but to which justice can never be done. Those were the days when the West was really bad.

On the farther bank of the Mississippi there were the fine fellows who merely loved adventure in an innocent way, the hardy-handed chaps who wanted to beat raw nature on the frontier and make their living by their own efforts; there were the gay trappers and hunters and their set, and there were tourists, too. Yes, even as early as this there were tourists. But there were not enough of these law-abiding elements to make up for the high seasoning of deviltry which was spread through the community.

For there were the outlawed men from the Atlantic seaboard, together with many a chosen rascal who had sailed west from Europe. You could not find any town of five hundred which did not have in it some French gambler, some Italian knife artist, some German butcher.

Of all the towns along the range of crime I could not have picked out a wilder destination than Zander City.

I don’t know why Zander City should have passed on. The flower of its wickedness was bright enough to have given it immortality along with sundry other naughty towns. It should be living to keep before us, today, the memories of the bad men and the good who died in her streets, in her back yards, in her saloons and trading stores. However, civilization did not choose to place Zander City among the elect. I have seen it recently—just a brown stretch of flat ground with the dirty waters of the river walking past on the way toward the Mississippi.

Because Zander City is gone, the knaves and the heroes who once flourished in her have died, also. At a later date, no county historian found fellow townsmen to tell reverent lies, thinly salted with truth about the great men of the past. The little heroes of Rome all are remembered, but out of Carthage we know only a Hannibal and a little group which can still be seen in Hannibal’s light.

So it was with Zander City. I presume that most people have heard something about a few of the leading figures in my history, such as Major Beals and Danny Croydon, the scout. Above all, everybody must have listened to tales about that famous leader of the Cheyennes—Lost Wolf. They used that name to frighten the children for half a generation, and he still crops up in histories now and again. Who has heard of that odd and graceful fellow, Running Deer? Who knows the heroic minister, Gleason, and the rest of those who wore guns in Zander City?

Well, I cannot pretend to be able to recreate the entire picture of the dead days in that town and the people that lived there. In fact, I shall try only to publish the things with which I came intimately in contact.

I had been about a year around the West, by this time. I had had my share of trouble and fighting. I had learned to be glad of three things—a gun which shot to the mark, a straight left that was poison in a fight, and a knack of sitting the saddle on a raging horse.

Those were the three talents which I brought out of Charleston with me. They were all given scope, and the edge of them sharpened by my Western experiences. By the time that I got to that town on the flats, I was what you might have called a tough one.

Good society would not have tolerated me for a moment. I wore my hat at a rakish angle, kept my coat open to show a brilliant waistcoat, and always had the finest sort of riding boots, whose heels were finished off with great silver spurs. Ordinary guns would not suit me. Even the butt of my rifle was set off with gold fretwork, and the handles of my revolvers were works of art. More than this, I carried myself with a very aggressive air which was bound to find trouble in those dangerous waters. Trouble was exactly what I wanted.