The Black Rider (25 page)

“‘All right,’ says I and backed out the door feeling as though I’d stepped into a hornet’s nest.

“I come downstairs and back to my place. There’s Cheyenne Curly still standing at the bar with his back to the wall. He ain’t drinking none. And all the half of the bar next to him is empty. The boys are doing their drinking in front of the other half. And Curly is waiting and waiting and not saying nothing to nobody, but his shiny little pig eyes are clamped on the door all the time.

“I go up to him and say: ‘Curly, Gerald is plumb busy reading a book, but when he gets through with it he says that he’s coming down to have a little talk to you.’

“Curly don’t say nothing back. He just runs the tip of his tongue over the edge of his beard and grins to himself like I’d just promised him a Christmas dinner. Made my blood turn cold to look at him.

“Then we started in waiting…me and every other man in my place, and there was a clear path from the door to the place where Curly was standing at the bar. But outside that path nobody was afraid of getting hurt. When two like Gerald and Curly started the bullets flying, every slug would go where it was aimed.

“It wasn’t more’n half an hour, but it seemed like half a year to all of us, before the swinging doors come open and in walks Gerald. He was done up extra special that night. He had a white silk handkerchief wrapped around his throat like he was afraid of the cold. His boots shined like two lanterns. And the gun he was carrying wasn’t no place to be seen. Matter of fact, just where he aims to pack his gun we ain’t been able to make out…he gets it out so slick and easy out of nowhere.

“I looked over to Curly. And there he was crouched a
little and with his right hand glued to the butt of his gun, and he was trembling all over, he was so tensed up for a lightning-quick draw.

“But his hand hung on the gun. He didn’t draw, and I wondered why.

“I looked down to Gerald. And by Heaven, sir, he wasn’t facing Curly at all. He’d turned to one side and he was talking to young Hank Meyers. Yes, sir, with that wild cat all ready to jump at his throat, Gerald had turned his back on him, pretty near, and he was standing over by the table of Hank.

“Everything was as silent as the inside of a morgue. You could hear every word Gerald was saying. And his voice was like silk, it was so plumb easy.

“I haven’t seen you since the last mail, Mr. Meyers,’ he was saying. ‘What is the word from your sick mother now?’

“Well, sir, hearing him talk like that sent a shiver through me. It wasn’t nacheral or human, somehow, for a gent to be as calm and cool as that.

“Hank tried to talk back, but all he could do was work his lips. Finally, he managed to say that the last mail brought him a letter saying that his mother was a lot better. And Gerald drops a hand on Hank’s shoulder.

“‘I’m very glad to hear the good news,’ he says. I congratulate you on receiving it. I have a little engagement here, and when I’m through I’ll come back to you and hear some more, if I may’

“You could hear every word clear as a bell. He turns back again.

“Curly was still crouched, and now he yanks his gun half clear of the holster, but Gerald leans over and takes out a handkerchief and flicks it across the toe of his boot.

“‘Beastly lot of dust in the street,’ he says.

“Well, sir, there was a sort of a groan in the
room. We was all keyed up so high it was like a violin string breaking in the middle of a piece. I was shaking like a scared kid.

“But finally Gerald straightened and come right up toward Curly. I looked at Curly, expecting to see his gun jump. But there was nary a gun in his hand. Maybe he was waiting for Gerald to make the first move, I thought. And then I seen that Curly’s eyes were glassy. His mouth was open, and his jaw was beginning to sag. And he was shaking from head to foot.

“I knew what had happened; that long waiting had busted his nerve wide open the same as it had busted the nerve of the rest of us.

“Up come Gerald straight to him.

“I understand,’ says Gerald, ‘that your name is Cheyenne Curly, and that you’ve come to see me. What is it you wish to say to me, sir?’

“Curly moved his jaw, but didn’t say nothing. I could hear the boys breathing hard. Speaking personal, I couldn’t breathe at all.

“I was given to understand further,’ says Gerald, ‘that you intend to wipe up the ground with me.’

“Curly’s hand moved at last. But it swung forward…empty! And I knew that there wasn’t going to be no shooting that night. But it was like a nightmare, watching him sort of sag smaller and smaller. Straightened up he must have been about three inches taller’n Gerald. But with Gerald standing there so straight and quiet, he looked like a giant, and Curly looked like a sick boy with a funny beard on his face.

“Hypnotism? I dunno. It was sure queer.

“Pretty soon Curly manages to speak.

“‘I was just riding this way’ says Curly, his voice shaking. ‘I ain’t meaning any harm to you, Mr. Kern. No harm in the world to you, sir.’

“He starts forward. I felt sick inside. It ain’t very pretty to see a brave man turned into a yaller dog like that. Half way to the door Curly throws a look over his shoulder, and then he starts running like he’d seen a gun pointed at him. He went out through the door like a shot. And that was the end of Curly.

“But, speaking personal, you and me, I’d rather hook up with a pair of tornadoes than have to face Gerald with a gun!”

T
here were other tales of that famous encounter between Gerald and Cheyenne Curly, that bloodless and horrible battle of nerve against nerve. And certainly the sequel was true, which related how terrible Curly sank low and lower until finally he became cook for a gang of laborers on the road, a despised cook who was kicked about by the feeblest Chinaman in the camp.

There was another aftermath. From that time on, men shunned an encounter with Gerald as though he carried a lightning flash in his eye. For who could tell, no matter how long his record of heroism, what would happen if he should encounter Gerald Kern in Culver City? Who could tell by what wizardry he accomplished his work of unnerving an antagonist? And was it not possible, as Canton Douglas had so often suggested, that there was a species of hypnotism about his way of looking a man squarely in the eye?

Even Kate Maddern was inclined to believe. And Kate was, of all people, the least likely to be drawn by blind
enthusiasms. But she talked seriously to Gerald about it the next day.

It was a fortnight since Tommy Vance had disappeared, and Gerald himself was beginning to wonder at the absence of Tom. Was it possible that the young miner had determined to double the test to which he was subjecting himself? December was wearing away swiftly, and still he did not come. It troubled Gerald. It was incomprehensible to him, for he had not dreamed that there was so much metal in his rival. But perhaps it could be explained away as the result of some disaster of trail or camp which had overwhelmed Tommy Vance.

In fact, he became surer and surer as the days went by that Tom would never return—that somewhere among those hard-sided mountains lay his strong young body perhaps buried deep beneath a snow slide or the thousand tons of an avalanche.

And yet there was no feeling of remorse in Gerald, even though it was he whose cunning suggestion had thrust Tom out of the camp. His creed was a simple one: “Get what you can from the world before the world gets what it can from you.”

In his own life he had never encountered mercy, and for mercy he did not look in his dealings with others. He gave no quarter, because he expected none. And if, from time to time, the honest and happy face of Tom Vance rose before him, Tom Vance with his eyes shining with the thought of Kate—if that thought rose for a moment, it was quickly forgotten again. Did not an old maxim say that all was fair in love or in war?

And he loved Kate profoundly, beyond belief. He could no longer be alone. The thought of her followed him. It fell like a shadow across the page of the book he was reading. It whispered and stirred behind his chair.

It laid a phantom hand upon his shoulder and breathed upon him in the wind.

Yet for all the vividness with which he kept the thought of her near him, she was always new. And on this bleak morning, as December grew old, it seemed to Gerald that it was a new girl who welcomed him at the door of her cabin.

He studied her curiously. All these days he had been waiting and waiting. There was something in her which kept certain words he was hungry to say locked behind his teeth. But this morning, with a bounding heart, he knew that there was a change.

He told her so in so many words.

“Something has happened,” he said. “There’s been some good news since I saw you yesterday. What is it, Kate?”

“Didn’t you see when you came up the steps?”

“Nothing,” he said thoughtfully. “I saw nothing changed.”

She brought him to the door again and threw it open. The strong wind, sharp with cold from the snows, struck them in the face and tugged her dress taut about her body.

“Don’t you remember the boulder which used to be beside the door?” she inquired.

“I remember now,” he said, looking down to the ragged hollow near the threshold, where the great stone had once lain.

“Now look down the hillside. Do you see that big wet brown stone among all the black ones?”

A hundred yards away, across the road and down the farther slope, he saw the stone she pointed out.

“I pried the boulder up this morning,” she said. “All last night I lay awake thinking about it, but finally I made up my mind. This morning I pried it out of its bed, and it
rolled down the mountain. It sprang across the road in one bound, and then it fell with a crashing and smashing away off yonder.”

She closed the door. They turned back into the room, and Gerald sat down with her near the fire.

“Well,” she cried at last, “aren’t you going to ask me what it all means?”

“I’d very much like to know,” said Gerald.

“You’re always the same,” said Kate Maddern gloomily. “You keep behind a fence. You’re like a garden behind a wall. One never knows what is going on inside. And it isn’t fair, Gerald! It’s like reading a book that has the last chapter torn out. One never has the ending of the yarn.”

He smiled at her anger and said nothing.

“Well, the stone was in the way when we built the shack,” she went on at last, still a little sulky. “Dad is very strong, and yet he couldn’t budge it. He was about to blast it when Tom Vance came up from the mine. He laid hold of the stone…he’s a perfect Hercules, you know…and he tugged until his shoulders creaked. He stirred it, but he couldn’t lift it.

“‘It’s no good,’ ” Father said. ‘You can’t budge the stone, Tommy. Don’t make a fool of yourself and break your back for nothing.’

“Tommy simply looked at him and at me. Then he jumped back, caught up the stone, and staggered away with it. He dropped it yonder, and when we built the house the stone was by the door.”

She paused. Gerald had leaned forward, and she said the rest looking down to the floor.

“I’ve never been able to see that boulder,” she said, “without thinking of Tommy. It meant as much to me as the sound of his voice, and it was just as clear. Can you understand what I mean?”

“Of course,” said Gerald sadly. “Of course I can understand.”

“But finally,” she went on, “I made up my mind last night. Tommy was not coming back. Perhaps he had found some other girl. Perhaps he was tired of me, and he hadn’t the words or the courage to tell me about it. So he simply faded away. And this morning I got up and pried out the stone and watched it roll away.”

He could raise his eyes no higher than her throat, and there he saw the neck band of her blouse quiver ever so faintly with the hard beating of her heart.

“And after the boulder rolled away,” said Gerald at last, “what did you do then?”

“What do you think I did?”

He looked up to her face. She was flushed with a strange excitement.

“You came back and lay on your bed and cried,” said Gerald.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I did.”

“And then.…” continued Gerald.

He interrupted himself to draw out a cigarette, and he smoked a quarter of it in perfect silence before he completed his sentence.

“And then,” he concluded, “you jumped out and wiped the tears out of your eyes and vowed that you were an idiot for wasting so much time on any man. Is that right?”

“My father saw me, then…and he told you all about it!”

“Not a word.”

“But how do you know so well?”

“I make a game of guessing, you see.”

She stared at him with a mixture of anger and wonder.

“I wonder,” she said, “if there is something about
you…something queer…and do you really see into the minds of people?”

“Not a bit,” he assured her.

“Do you think I believe that?”

Her head canted a bit to one side, and she smiled at him so wistfully that his heart ached.

“Now that the boulder is gone, Kate, won’t you be lonely?”

“On account of a stone? Of course not. And then I have you, Gerald, to keep the blues away, except when you fall into one of your terrible, terrible, endless silences. I almost hate you then.”

“Why?”

“Because, when a man is silent too long, it makes a girl begin to feel that he knows all about her.”

“And that would be dreadful?”

“Dreadful!” said Kate Maddern and laughed joyously. As though she invited the catastrophe!

“But I’m only a stuffed figure, I’m afraid,” said Gerald. “You’re like a little girl playing a game. You call me Gerald to my face, but you call me Tommy to yourself, and when you are talking to me you are thinking of him.”

She flushed to the eyes.

“What a terrible thing to say!” cried Kate.

“Then it is true?”

“Not a word.”

“Ah, Kate,” said he, “I guessed it before, but that doesn’t lessen the sting of knowing that my guess was right.”

She sprang out of the chair.

“Do you imagine that I’m still dreaming about him?” she challenged him.