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

When I got off the steamer at the dock at Zander City, I stood for a time to watch men working with ropes to bind the great stacks of buffalo hides into bales for shipping down the river. Then I went on to see what was to be seen.

You would never have guessed what was in the air of that town, at this time of the day. For it was close to noon, and only the face of honest traffic showed itself. Wagons rolled in and out of town, followed by an attending cloud of dust, and a dull murmur of labor rolled up toward that prairie sky. A murmur with sharp notes struck through it from the clang of the anvil in a distant blacksmith shop. Yonder, many carpenters kept up the burden of the march with a rattle of hammers as steady as the roll of drums.

It was a quietly sleeping town, so far as excitement was concerned. I had seen twenty places more or less of a pattern. The long row of squat shacks which staggered down the street on either side of me was not thrilling—I was not even able to guess what lay behind those dull faces.

Here a wagon went by, and when the teamster swung his whip the lash caught my hat and flicked it into the dust. I caught it up with an oath and glared at my teamster, but he was not even glancing my way as he swayed on in his lofty seat.

I finished dusting that hat off and settled it on my head again. It was barely pulled down when another whiplash curled around it, as a second wagon rumbled past over a culvert. That hat was yanked fairly from my head, tossed high in the air, and sent spinning to the farther side of the road.

It was hard to imagine that two such things could have happened by mere accident. Yet it was almost harder to believe in such skill in a whip hand as must be there, if I were to attribute it to malice.

When I looked wildly around me, I saw all that I wanted to see in order to make myself sure. No one laughed. It was not the time of day when men laughed in Zander City. But there were villainous broad grins of appreciation of the knavish trick which had been played on me.

I was twenty-two years old, and any one at that age is a sensitive fool. I leaped after that wagon like a tiger and sprang up beside the seat—only to have the muzzle of a huge revolver gaping in my very face while a brutal voice asked me what I wanted.

What had happened to me was what usually happened to people who got into a blind rage in the West in those days—particularly in towns where the population had grown faster than the law. I had simply run into a corner where I had to show myself a fool. I was only lucky that instead of merely showing the gun he had not fired it. If he had, what would have been done about it?

Not a thing in the world! I had no friends in that town. No voice would be raised against him. The universal comment would simply be that, being unable to take a joke, I had forced a battle and been destroyed by the teamster in self-defense.

As I stood on the board sidewalk again, I was almost blind with fury. The grins had not abated. No one laughed. That, as I said before, was merely because it was not the time of day when men laughed in Zander City.

I could not endure this. I, a Riviere-Duchesne, had been handled like an idiot in this town of ruffians. I had to have redress. I picked out the largest and most formidable-looking fellow I could see, walked up to him, and demanded to know what he was laughing at.

“I ain’t laughing,” said he. “You ain’t worth a real laugh!”

This to me! Shades of the pirate and revolutionary and robber whose names I bore!

My gun came out faster than a thought, and I was curling my finger around the trigger when I saw that the other fellow had not made a move to get out a weapon.

He was never to know how close he came to being wiped out in that moment.

When he did not even alter his smile, I began to realize that there was something unusual about the people of this town. They made me feel wonderfully like a small boy who was attempting to play a grown-up role and doing a powerfully bad job of it.

He said: “I don’t wear a gun till noon, because me temper ain’t fit for it. So run along, son, till noontime, and then come back and get a hole drilled through you, if you have to die young! We got a fool garden of a good size out here. There’s always room for one more plant in it!”

By that, of course, he meant the cemetery.

Well, I was completely blind by this time. I tore off my coat and flung down my hat, shouting:

“There lies my advantage of guns on the ground. If you won’t fight with a gun, you’ll have to fight me with your fists!”

“It’s before noon,” said he, “and I hate to put up my ‘maulies’ before noon! However, if you are bound to have your fun, I’ll do what I can to keep up my end of it!”

He stepped forth without deigning to strip off his coat as I had done. He stepped forth, a long, big-boned man with the reach and a large share of the strength of a gorilla. Not that there was anything stupidly brutal about this man. He had a long face with pale, thoughtful eyes, wonderfully cold. The instant he put up his hands, I knew that he was a boxer. He was receiving some forty pounds from poor me; he was a trained man, and he was calm as standing water while I was as mad as a raging brook.

I flung out at him with a rush. He stepped back, caught my punches on forearms as solid as bars of iron, and then, in turn, snapped his fist up.

It glanced from my face like a flung boulder, flicking off a bit of skin and flesh and sending me reeling.

“Now, bantam,” said the tall man, “have you had enough of this business?”

I merely gasped out: “I’ll kill you, you big devil!”

Again I came in at him, completely beyond myself with rage and grief and agonizing shame. I managed to duck under the terrible reach of a driving arm as I came at him. I landed on his ribs.

It was like striking the ribs of a ship! Before I could strike again, a big hand caught me by the shoulder and shoved me away; the second hand dropped upon my chin and blanketed my brain in blackness so complete and sudden that I do not even remember how I felt.

What first brought me to my senses was a burning heat against my face. It was the dust of the street in which I had fallen—a dust baked stove hot, by the direct rays of the midday sun. I got up in time to hear the big man say:

“Now, youngster, the thing for you to do is to skin out of Zander City before some of the rough boys find out that you’re here. Because I ain’t rough. I’m one of the lambs. But there is men in this here town that wouldn’t think nothing of eating you raw. Now you believe me! The thing for you to do is to just start out back for the part of the country where folks has been letting you pass for a man. Up here in Zander City, disguises like you’re wearin’ are dangerous. You run along, and while you’re running I’ll keep these here shooting irons, to save you from getting into any more messes that may be a lot worse than this one!”

I was sick; my knees were swaying under my weight, and I could hardly see a foot before me. So I knew that it would be folly for me to attempt to strike back at the big man now.

Going to a box which I saw, I sat down on it until my head had partially cleared. Then I got up and started back for the boat. I was determined to kill that tall man if it were the last act of my life, and kill him before that day was ended.

When I got back to the boat, I got ashore the rest of my belongings. One of them was a long-legged Kentucky thoroughbred with the bone and substance that comes from a diet of blue grass and lime water. It had cost me a lot of money and trouble to take that bay gelding up the river with me, but I never regretted it, because Sir Thomas had speed and endurance and something that is better than both—brains! He knew how to sprint like a racer; he knew how to hold himself in and work calmly through a long day over dusty, narrow, broken trails.