Max Brand - Trailin'!

"Missed!" said Anthony.

He couldn't help it; the ejaculation popped out of its own accord. The other regarded him with grave displeasure.

"If you had your bead drawed an' somebody jogged your arm jest as you pulled the trigger, would you call it a miss?"

"Excuse me. I've no doubt you're extremely accurate."

"I ne'er miss," said the other, and proved it by disposing of the egg at the next imposing mouthful.

"I should like to know you. My name is Anthony Bard."

"I'm Marty Wilkes. H'ware ye?"

They shook hands.

"Westerner, Mr. Wilkes?"

"This is my furthest East."

"Have a pleasant time?"

A gesture indicated the barren, brown waste of prairie.

"Too much civilization."

"Really?"

"Even the cattle got no fight in 'em." He added, "That sounds like I'm a fighter. I ain't."

"Till you're stirred up, Mr. Wilkes?"

"Heat me up an' I'll burn. Soil wood."

"You're pretty familiar with the Western country?"

"I get around."

"Perhaps you'd recognize this."

He took a scroll from his breast pocket and unrolled the photograph of the forest and the ranchhouse with the two mountains in the distance. Wilkes considered it unperturbed.

"Them are the Little Brothers."

"Ah! Then all I have to do is to travel to the foot of the Little Brothers?"

"No, about sixty miles from 'em." "Impossible! Why, the mountains almost overhang that house."

Wilkes handed back the picture and resumed his eating without reply. It was not a sullen resentment; it was hunger and a lack of curiosity. He was not "heated up."

"Any one," said Anthony, to lure the other on, "could see that."

"Sure; any one with bad eyes."

"But how can you tell it's sixty miles?"

"I've been there."

"Well, at least the big tree there and the ranchhouse will not be very hard to find. But I suppose I'll have to travel in a circle around the Little Brothers, keeping a sixty-mile radius?"

"If you want to waste a pile of time. Yes."

"I suppose you could lead me right to the spot?"

"I could."

"How?"

"That's about fifty-five miles straight north-east of the Little Brothers."

"How the devil can you tell that, man?"

"That ain't hard. They's a pretty steady north wind that blows in them parts. It's cold and it's strong. Now when you been out there long enough and get the idea that the only things that live is because God loves 'em. Mostly it's jest plain sand and rock. The trees live because they got protection from that north wind. Nature puts moss on 'em on the north side to shelter 'em from that same wind. Look at that picture close. You see that rough place on the side of that tree—jest a shadow like the whiskers of a man that ain't shaved for a week? That's the moss. Now if that's north, the rest is easy. That place is north-east of the Little Brothers."

"By Jove! how did you get such eyes?"

"Used 'em."

"The reason I'd like to find the house is because—"

"Reasons ain't none too popular with me."

"Well, you're pretty sure that your suggestion will take me to the spot?"

"I'm sure of nothing except my gun when the weather's hot."

"Reasonably sure, however? The pine trees and the house—if I don't find one I'll find the other."

"The house'll be in ruins, probably."

"Why?"

"That picture was taken a long time ago."

"Do you read the mind of a picture, Mr. Wilkes?"

"No."

"The tree, however, will be there."

"No, that's chopped down."

"That's going a bit too far. Do you mean to say you know that this particular tree is down?"

"That's first growth. All that country's been cut over. D'you think they'd pass up a tree the size of that?"

"It's going to be hard," said Anthony with a frown, "for me to get used to the West."

"Maybe not."

"I can ride and shoot pretty well, but I don't know the people, I haven't worn their clothes, and I can't talk their lingo."

"The country's mostly rocks when it ain't ground; the people is pretty generally men and women; the clothes they wear is cotton and wool, the lingo they talk is English."

It was like a paragraph out of some book of ultimate knowledge. He was not entirely contented with his statement, however, for now he qualified it as follows: "Maybe some of 'em don't talk good book English. Quite a pile ain't had much eddication; in fact there ain't awful many like me. But they can tell you how much you owe 'em an' they'll understand you when you say you're hungry. What's your business? Excuse me; I don't generally ask questions."

"That's all right. You've probably caught the habit from me. I'm simply going out to look about for excitement."

"A feller gener'ly finds what he's lookin' for. Maybe you won't be disappointed. I've knowed places on the range where excitement growed like fruit on a tree. It was like that there manna in the Bible. You didn't have to work none for it. You jest laid still an' it sort of dropped in your mouth."

He added with a sigh: "But them times ain't no more."

"That's hard on me, eh?"

"Don't start complainin' till you miss your feed. Things are gettin' pretty crowded, but there's ways of gettin' elbow room—even at a bar."

"And you really think there's nothing which distinguishes the Westerner from the Easterner?"

"Just the Western feeling, partner. Get that an' you'll be at home."

"If you were a little further East and said that, people might be inclined to smile a bit."

"Partner, if they did, they wouldn't finish their smile. But I heard a feller say once that the funny thing about men east and west of the Rockies was that they was all—"

He paused as if trying to remember.

"Well?"

"Americans, Mr. Bard."

As the white heat of midday passed and the shadows lengthened more and more rapidly to the east, the sheep moved out from the shade and from the tangle of the brush to feed in the open, and the dogs, which had laid one on either side of the man, rose and trotted out to recommence their vigil; but the shepherd did not change his position where he sat cross-legged under the tree.

Alternately he stroked the drooping moustache to the right and then to the left, with a little twist each time, which turned the hair to a sharp point in its furthest downward reach near his chin. To the right, to the left, to the right, to the left, while his eyes, sad with a perpetual mist, looked over the lake and far away to the white tops of the Little Brothers, now growing blue with shadow.

Finally with a brown forefinger he lifted the brush of moustache on his upper lip, leaned a little, and spat. After that he leaned back with a sigh of content; the brown juice had struck fairly and squarely on the centre of the little stone which for the past two hours he had been endeavouring vainly to hit. The wind had been against him.

All was well. The spindling tops of the second-growth forest pointed against the pale blue of a stainless sky, and through that clear air the blatting of the most distant sheep sounded close, mingled with the light clangour of the bells. But the perfect peace was broken rudely now by the form of a horseman looming black and large against the eastern sky. He trotted his horse down the slope, scattered a group of noisy sheep from side to side before him, and drew rein before the shepherd.

"Evening."

"Evening, stranger."

"Own this land?"

"No; rent it."

"Could I camp here?"

The shepherd lifted his moustache again and spat; when he spoke his eyes held steadily and sadly on the little stone, which he had missed again.

"Can't think of nobody who'd stop you."

"That your house over there? You rent that?"

He pointed to a broken-backed ruin which stood on the point of land that jutted out onto the waters of the lake, a crumbling structure slowly blackening with time.