1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Lightning Warrior," Max Brand crafts a riveting tale set against the backdrop of the American West, where themes of honor, bravery, and the struggle against injustice intertwine. Brand's signature prose, characterized by its vivid imagery and fast-paced narrative, transports readers into a world of outlaws, Native American legends, and heroic confrontations. The literary context of the novel resonates with the early 20th-century fascination with frontier mythology and the romanticized ideals of rugged individualism, making it a compelling addition to the genre of Western literature. Max Brand, born Frederick Schiller Faust, was not only a prolific author but also a journalist and screenwriter whose diverse experiences significantly influenced his writing. His deep-seated admiration for the West and its storied past is palpable in this novel, as he draws upon his understanding of both Native American culture and cowboy ethos. Brand's time in the West augmented his storytelling, allowing him to weave authenticity into the intricate tapestry of his characters and their adventures. "The Lightning Warrior" is a must-read for lovers of Western fiction and those intrigued by tales of heroism and cultural collision. Brand's engaging narrative style and rich character development invite readers to reflect on timeless themes of courage and the complexities of human relationships against a sweeping historical landscape. Prepare for an exhilarating journey that promises to ignite your imagination. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
The Lightning Warrior
Table of Contents
Introduction
A tale of swiftness and consequence, The Lightning Warrior turns speed itself into a moral test, asking whether the quickest hand and keenest resolve can deliver justice in a country where hesitation is fatal and certainty is rare.
Written by Max Brand, the pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust, The Lightning Warrior belongs to the American Western tradition and unfolds against the stark expanses of the frontier. Brand’s Westerns rose to prominence in the first half of the twentieth century, when readers embraced fast-moving narratives that balanced mythic figures with human motives. This novel participates in that heritage, offering a landscape of open ranges, isolated towns, and shifting allegiances. While the precise publication particulars may vary by edition, the book reflects the pulp-era appetite for adventure shaped by clear stakes, compressed time, and the hard edges of survival.
The premise centers on a figure whose daunting quickness—physical, tactical, and perceptual—earns a name that travels ahead of him. His arrival disturbs fragile equilibria, and his presence forces neighbors, outlaws, and would-be lawmen to declare themselves. Early chapters establish a sequence of encounters where speed functions as currency and risk compounds with every choice. The novel invites readers to follow a path marked by ambushes of conscience as much as by gunsmoke, keeping the focus on the pressures that drive a solitary talent into conflicts neither entirely sought nor easily avoided.
Brand’s storytelling is noted for its drive: brisk chapters, taut scenes, and a clean, forward-leaning cadence that turns pursuit and escape into a single, breath-held motion. The prose favors clarity over ornament, yet it holds a quiet lyricism in descriptions of distance, light, and the way danger sharpens attention. Dialogue is spare and charged, revealing character through choices more than speeches. Action arrives with economy, contingency, and consequence, maintaining a mood that is tense but not joyless, and suspenseful without resorting to ornamented brutality.
Central themes emerge from the friction between reputation and reality. A name can open doors or foreclose mercy, and The Lightning Warrior examines how legends shape both the bearer and the community that believes them. Justice and law seldom align perfectly in the frontier setting, and the novel weighs the cost of private codes when public institutions are weak. It interrogates courage, loyalty, restraint, and the peril of certainty, asking what a person owes to strangers, to friends, and to an ideal that may be simpler than the world it must govern.
For contemporary readers, the book’s questions resonate beyond spurs and saddles. In a climate where public image accelerates faster than deliberation, the problem of speed—deciding swiftly, acting decisively, and living with aftermath—feels strikingly current. The Lightning Warrior offers a study in the uses and abuses of force, the allure of decisive leadership, and the human need to slow judgment long enough to discern right from expedient. Its frontier becomes a testing ground for values under pressure, suggesting that character is forged in the interval between impulse and responsibility.
Approached today, The Lightning Warrior offers the pleasures of a classic Western—pace, peril, and the stark relief of vast country—while inviting a reflective read. Expect momentum without melodrama, moral uncertainty without cynicism, and a hero shaped as much by constraint as by prowess. The novel rewards attention to the way small choices compound into fate, especially in the opening movements that set tensions humming. Whether new to Max Brand or returning to a familiar voice, readers will find a story that moves quickly yet leaves space for judgment to catch up.
Synopsis
Set in a rugged frontier region where ranches border tribal lands and mining rumors swirl, The Lightning Warrior follows a tense community struggling to keep the peace. The title figure is a swift, elusive avenger whispered about by both settlers and native bands, a presence blamed for raids and praised for daring rescues. Into this pressure cooker rides a capable outsider with a steady sense of justice and a talent for reading people. His arrival coincides with a new wave of thefts and ambushes that suggest careful orchestration, setting the stage for a conflict that mixes local politics, longstanding grievances, and personal vendettas.
Early incidents introduce the book’s core tensions. Cattle go missing, a stage line is struck, and frightened townspeople rally behind a few powerful voices. These men demand a hard response against nearby tribes, even as some elders urge restraint. The outsider witnesses a botched manhunt and spots signs that the attacks are staged. Rumors about the Lightning Warrior deepen the divide, as some think this figure is a criminal mastermind while others see a protector targeting only the guilty. The law struggles to respond, pulled between an image of order and the reality that violence fuels hidden economic schemes.
Drawn into events by circumstance and choice, the outsider saves a traveler during an ambush and meets a quiet ally who knows the region’s unwritten rules. He starts to map the trail behind the attacks, tracing supply caches, decoy herds, and campfire marks that suggest disciplined planning. Brief glimpses of the Lightning Warrior complicate matters: the mysterious figure intervenes at key moments, then vanishes into the canyons. The outsider’s caution increases, as each clue raises the stakes for an honest investigation. He commits to uncovering the truth before panic hardens into war that neither side wants and few could survive.
The inquiry broadens across ranches, mining claims, and border settlements, revealing overlapping interests. A local magnate presses for fast justice, a ranch foreman guards a secret trail, and a merchant profits from shortages. At a nearby encampment, tribal leaders recount broken promises and new provocations. Through conversations with a perceptive intermediary who bridges the cultures, the outsider learns how stories shape loyalties. Patterns emerge: the Lightning Warrior strikes with speed and precision, targeting specific men and supply lines rather than random victims. The outsider begins to suspect a puppet master who uses fear to direct public opinion and private gain.
A sudden crisis in town intensifies the narrative. After a brawl and a suspicious fire, blame lands quickly on the most convenient targets. The outsider’s insistence on evidence earns him enemies, and he is maneuvered into a position where he must answer for the very chaos he challenges. A narrow escape reinforces the sense that someone anticipates his moves. Meanwhile, the Lightning Warrior appears amid smoke and uproar, turning a rout into an orderly retreat without revealing identity or motive. Divisions sharpen: some citizens call for mass reprisal, while others quietly pass information that contradicts the official line.
The middle section emphasizes pursuit and counterpursuit. The outsider travels rough trails, deciphers coded signs, and infiltrates a crew moving contraband through hidden passes. He tests alliances, accepting help from unlikely quarters, including a loyal animal companion whose keen senses repeatedly avert disaster. Skirmishes across ridges and gulches reveal the antagonists’ discipline and reach. The Lightning Warrior remains a wild card, disrupting ambushes and protecting bystanders while avoiding direct contact. With each narrow escape, the outsider gathers proof that high-placed hands profit from the unrest, even as foot soldiers risk their lives for causes they only half understand.
Escalation follows when a major drive to reclaim stolen cattle becomes a flashpoint. Armed groups converge on contested ground, and tempers flare in the valley. The outsider works to prevent a clash, seeking a temporary truce that might expose the architects behind the violence. Strategic moves by the Lightning Warrior limit bloodshed and isolate key agitators. The threatened confrontation pushes the town to a crossroads: either accept a narrative of blind retaliation or pause long enough to examine evidence. In the background, a pattern of forged documents, shadow accounts, and coerced confessions suggests that the conflict’s profits outweigh its risks for certain men.
The climax builds through a sequence of reveals and close calls in a remote stronghold where records and stolen goods converge. The outsider confronts those he suspects of directing the turmoil and faces the practical problem of bringing them to justice without inflaming the region. The Lightning Warrior’s identity becomes known to the outsider in the heat of action, and their goals align long enough to turn private truths into public consequences. Vantage points shift, confirming how carefully the conflict was engineered. Without disclosing specifics, the narrative resolves the immediate danger while laying out a credible path toward legal accountability.
In the aftermath, the book emphasizes restoration and perspective. With the worst violence averted, trust is rebuilt through restitution, testimony, and the steady work of fair process. The Lightning Warrior recedes into legend, remembered as both warning and reassurance that swift action can cut through fog when institutions hesitate. The outsider, having proved his case, refuses applause, framing justice as a community’s duty rather than a hero’s gift. The story’s central message prioritizes courage yoked to restraint, the testing of easy assumptions, and the belief that clarity and patience can defuse the profits of fear.
Historical Context
Set in the late nineteenth-century American West, The Lightning Warrior unfolds against a landscape of contested territories, arid basins, and mountain rimlands where settlement outran institutions. The implied milieu—akin to Arizona or New Mexico Territory—featured mining camps and cattle spreads orbiting boomtowns such as Tombstone (founded 1877) and Silver City (1870s). Railheads in Kansas and Colorado funneled stock from the open range, while telegraph lines compressed distance without guaranteeing safety. Territorial courts were thin, sheriffs overmatched, and U.S. Marshals rode long circuits. Indigenous homelands overlapped with new ranches and claims, decades before Arizona and New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912, shaping the novel’s tensions over law, land, and allegiance.
Westward expansion after the Civil War accelerated through federal policy and infrastructure. The Homestead Act (1862) and Pacific Railway Acts (1862, 1864) culminated in the transcontinental link at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, creating cattle trails to railheads like Abilene and Dodge City (Kansas). The open-range era (c. 1866–1885) gave way after Joseph Glidden’s 1874 barbed-wire patent, triggering Texas fence‑cutting conflicts (1883–1884) and disputes over water rights across the High Plains and Southwest. The novel mirrors these pressures in its quarrels over grazing corridors, line camps, and access to springs, staging confrontations between itinerant riders, small holders, and syndicates seeking to consolidate range control.
The American Indian Wars framed the region’s instability. In the Southwest, campaigns against the Chiricahua Apache ended with Geronimo’s final surrender at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, on 4 September 1886, after pursuits led by Generals George Crook and Nelson A. Miles and scouts crisscrossing the Sierra Madre. On the Plains, the Great Sioux War (1876–1877) included the Little Bighorn (25 June 1876), while the Dawes Act (1887) imposed allotment, fracturing communal landholding. Reservations such as San Carlos (est. 1872) concentrated displaced communities. The book’s title and code of hard-won honor evoke this martial frontier, and its contested mesas and canyons echo the campaigns’ geography and the era’s coerced relocations.
Law, order, and vigilantism occupied a gray zone in territories. The Lincoln County War (New Mexico, 1878) set rival mercantile-ranching factions—Murphy-Dolan versus Tunstall-McSween—against one another, drawing in deputized posses and figures like Billy the Kid near Fort Stanton. In Wyoming’s Johnson County War (1892), the Wyoming Stock Growers Association sent hired gunmen from Cheyenne and Casper against alleged rustlers until federal troops from Fort McKinney intervened. Earlier, the Montana Vigilantes (Bannack and Virginia City, 1863–1864) hanged Sheriff Henry Plummer’s gang amid mining-camp lawlessness. The Lightning Warrior channels this volatile legal climate through pursuits, posse culture, and fraught choices between due process, private retribution, and community survival.
Boom‑and‑bust cycles reshaped livelihoods and loyalties. The Comstock Lode (Nevada, 1859) and Butte’s copper surge (Montana, 1880s) drew transient labor and capital, while the Black Hills gold rush followed Custer’s 1874 expedition in Dakota Territory. The winter of 1886–1887—the “Great Die‑Up”—killed hundreds of thousands of cattle after drought and blizzards, accelerating consolidation by large outfits. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890) contributed to speculative volatility before its repeal amid the Panic of 1893. Such shocks echo through the novel’s motives—rustling rings, protection rackets, and town boosters—where sudden scarcity, collapsing credit, and opportunistic speculation fuel feuds over payrolls, ore shipments, and herds.
Borderland dynamics informed Southwestern life. The Mexican–American War (1846–1848) and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, followed by the Gadsden Purchase (1853), fixed a line that commerce and outlaws alike crossed. Fort Huachuca (established 1877) and the 10th Cavalry’s “Buffalo Soldiers” patrolled smuggling corridors between Sonora and Arizona, while cross‑border cattle theft and gun‑running surged in the 1880s. Sparse coordination between sheriffs, customs agents, and Army detachments left gaps exploited by riders shifting identities and brands. The Lightning Warrior reflects these realities in pursuits threading canyons and dry washes, where jurisdiction blurs, bilingual intermediaries navigate trade, and loyalty divides along kinship, opportunity, and terrain as much as law.
Agrarian protest and regional politics framed conflict with capital. The Farmers’ Alliance (late 1870s–1880s) and the People’s Party (founded 1891; Omaha Platform, 1892) challenged railroad rate discrimination, land monopolies, and speculative control by banks and cattle syndicates. In cattle country, associations leveraged private detectives and blacklist tactics; in farm districts, cooperatives and warehouse plans sought leverage against carriers. Currency debates around silver and the 1896 Bryan campaign signaled wider unease. The novel refracts this climate through confrontations with company towns, hired guns, and courthouse influence, where small ranchers and freighters press claims against well‑connected stock growers and rail‑linked suppliers, testing whether law can resist concentrated power.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the fragility of frontier order and the costs of consolidation. It highlights how territorial law bowed to capital, how vigilance filled institutional vacuums, and how dispossession and allotment scarred Indigenous communities while legitimizing seizure of water and grass. By staging conflicts over fences, franchises, and sheriffs’ badges, it interrogates the conflation of legality with justice and the myth that violence civilizes. The figure of the “warrior” becomes an instrument of competing sovereignties—corporate, communal, and personal—revealing class divides, racialized policing, and the ambivalence of heroism in a world where survival often demands bending the very rules that claim to protect it.
The Lightning Warrior
I. — THE MIRACLE MAN
From Dawson to the Bering Sea, Cobalt had no other name. The flame of his hair never won him the nickname of "Red" or "Brick." He was only Cobalt from the beginning to the end, and this name, no doubt, was given to him by his eyes, which varied according to his temper from a dull-steel gray to an intense blue with fire behind it. Everyone knew Cobalt. He had come over the pass three years before, and for every step that he took, rumor took ten more. Lightning splashed from the feet of the running gods, and startling reports had spread like lightning from the steps of Cobalt. Many of the things which were said of him never could have been true, but he gathered mystery and an air of enchantment about him. Even what men could not believe, they wanted to believe. There is no human being who has not reveled in fairy tales, and Cobalt was a fairy tale.
He was not beautiful, but he was glorious. When one saw him, one believed, or hypnotized oneself into believing the tales that were told of him. Cobalt never verified or confirmed any of these stories. He never repeated a syllable of them, but of course he must have known about them. All of these tales were remarkable, and some of them were sheer impossibilities, but it is as well to note some of them at the beginning. Men are not what they are, but what other people think them to be. So it was with Cobalt and, in order to know him, one must know of the opinions of his peers.
They told of Cobalt that he once ate eleven pounds of beef, slept twenty hours, and then did a full man's work in hauling for eight days without any sustenance except the bits of snow which he picked up and ate to quench his thirst. Four men attested to the truth of this tale. They said that the thing was the result of a bet, but I never have heard that they actually weighed the meat. Also I have seen eleven pounds of beef and, when cut as steaks, it makes an imposing heap. That tale of Cobalt was typical in that it showed a superhuman quality and also a half-mad, half-gay willingness to tackle anything for a bet, a jest, or a serious purpose.
It was said that once he jumped from a fifty-foot bridge and spoiled a fifty-dollar suit in order to win a one-dollar bet. This tale is among the ridiculous and impossible stories which are told of Cobalt, so that one would say that the man must have been absolutely mad to inspire such talk. However, it just happens that I was present and saw him take the dive.
It was said of Cobalt that in a traveling circus he saw a strong man lift a platform on which there was a piano, a woman playing the piano, and a small dog. The man was labeled the strongest in the world as a matter of course. Cobalt, on another bet, added to the platform another woman, another dog, and the strong man himself and lifted the entire enormous load. Of this story I have nothing to say, and I shall make very little comment upon the others. The items illustrating his strength were innumerable. It was said that he had taken a good-size steel bar and bent it into a horseshoe. This twisted bar was kept on the wall of a saloon in Circle City[1]. Men used to look at it, shake their heads over it, and try their own petty strength in a vain effort to change its shape. They always failed and finally that bar became a rather silly legend at which men laughed.
Then one day Cobalt came back. Someone asked him to unbend the steel bar, and it was handed to him. I myself was there, and I saw the purple vein lift and swell in a straight, diagonal line in his forehead, as he bent the bar into a straight line once more. He threw it to the man who had asked him to attempt the feat, and thereafter the bar was reinstalled upon the wall. Long after, it still remained there and must have been worth a fortune to the saloon keeper, so many people went in to look at the famous bar where the metal had failed to straighten correctly. Nearly everyone handled it and tried it between his hands, or even across his knee, but no one could alter the thing.
It was said that once he hit a man and killed him with a blow to the body. That has been done before, and actually the blow of a gloved hand has killed a man in the ring, a trained heavyweight who was struck over the heart. The miraculous feature of Cobalt's punch was that it had landed not on the left but upon the right side of the body. The blow was said to have broken three ribs. This always seemed to me one of the most incredible tales about Cobalt, but I have talked with Gene Pelham, now of Portland, Maine, and he declares that he was the physician who examined the body. He makes this report: that the man was a big Canuck with the build of a heavyweight wrestling champion and the bones to go with it. Upon the right side of the man, where the ribs spring out most boldly, there was a great purple welt and under this welt there actually were three broken ribs.
I asked the doctor if the breaking of the ribs upon the right side could have killed the man, big and strong as he was. He told me that it could hardly have been breaking of the ribs, but the effects of shock operate strangely. There was a bruise at the base of the Canuck's skull, and the doctor felt sure that his death had been due to concussion of the brain, owing to the manner in which his head struck the floor in falling.
Another exhibit for Cobalt was a row of four whiskey bottles in the Circle City saloon. Three were empty and one was about a third full. It was solemnly declared that he had drunk all of that whiskey during a single long session in the saloon. This would have been about two-thirds of a gallon of strong whiskey. The exhibit was kept on show partly as a curiosity and partly to demonstrate the excellent quality of the red-eye which was sold in the saloon. I leave those to judge of this feat who know what a strong head is needed to resist the punishment contained in a single bottle of whiskey.
In Eagle Falls I saw a large axe blade whose head was completely buried in hardwood and the handle shattered. This had been accomplished, it was said, at a single stroke by Cobalt. I examined the head of the axe carefully, and it seemed to me that I could detect the evidences of hammering to force the axe deeper into the wood.
These anecdotes may help to prepare the reader for the state of mind through which the men of the arctic looked at Cobalt. In person he was not a giant. I never heard his exact height or weight, but he looked not an inch over six feet, and his shoulders were by no means as massive as many I have seen. In fact, there was nothing remarkable about him except when he got in action. To see him sitting, Cobalt was nothing unusual. When he spoke, there was an odd quality about his voice that made men turn their heads and women also. When he walked, his step had the quality of one about to leap away at full speed.
He came in during the early days, well before the Dawson rush. He was twenty-two when he reached Circle City, and he mined there for two years before the Bairds arrived. That was the turning point in Cobalt's life. Most of the men who have been in Circle City can remember Henry Baird, his rosy face, his lack of eyebrows, and his wonderful luck at the mines. And even those who never saw her know all about his daughter, Sylvia.
I suppose she was what a scientist would have called a biological "sport," a freak, a sudden throw forward from her ancestry. Certainly there appeared to be nothing of her father about her. Her hair was glistening black and fine as a spider's web. She had black eyebrows, beautifully arched, and under the brows were blue eyes not gray blue, not sky blue, but the lustrous and unfathomable blue of the sea. She was rather small; I don't think that a big woman could have been made so exquisitely. It was enough for me to sit at Henry Baird's table and look at her hand alone, at the luster of the pink nails and the white glow of the skin. She was a radiant creature.
Nearly everyone in Circle City went mad about her, but I don't think that even the most audacious thought of making love to her. She was too beautiful. Her beauty set her apart. We looked up to her as to a being of another world. We talked to her with an odd respect, as if to some famous sage or reverend divine. Then young Cobalt came in and saw her.
Some people said that he did not need to go mad, because he had always been mad. Nobody but a madman would have done the things he had accomplished or tried to accomplish. Nobody, for instance, would have driven a team of six timber wolves and treated them like dogs. So it followed, as a matter of course, when Cobalt saw the girl, he tried to scale heaven and get at her. He saw her once and went right down to see Henry Baird. Baird was new to the country, but naturally he had heard a great deal about Cobalt.
He was rather frightened when the famous young man came in, took his hand in that terrible grasp of his, and looked him in the face with those steel-gray eyes which turned to pale-blue flame when he spoke of Sylvia. However, Baird was a sensible man. He said that he had not the slightest objection to Cobalt. For his own part he hoped that his daughter would not marry a man with less than a hundred thousand and a home to offer her. Of course, a hundred thousand meant a great deal more in those days than it does now. But everything really depended upon Sylvia herself. Had Cobalt spoken to her before on the subject? Did she care for him?
Cobalt said that he hadn't, but that he would make her care[1q]. That was how the trouble started. He went to Sylvia and spoke to her. And Sylvia laughed!
"Are you doing this on a bet, Cobalt?" she asked.
II. — MODERN GAL
I can see Sylvia as she must have been that day, muffled in that fine suit of brown furs, with her lovely mouth, and her shining eyes glowing like heaven's light through a cloud. Cobalt[2] stared at her as no human being ever had stared at her before.
"Do that ag'in," he said.
"What?" asked Sylvia.
"Laugh at me!"
She looked him up and down. No one ever had looked at him in such a manner before that moment no one at least in his right mind. A man did not have to know about Cobalt beforehand. His strength advertised itself, as fire is advertised by its flame. Sylvia was not afraid. Why should she be? Men were merely men! Cobalt might bend steel bars, but Sylvia had bent and molded whole brigades of young fellows and oldish fellows, too. Millions had been offered to her. She had stepped through rivers of gold and diamonds and never allowed the stuff to stick to her. She looked at Cobalt with the double strength of the proud and the good, with a spice of malice thrown in. How could she help being spiteful, when this fellow came along and dared to look at her as though she were merely a desirable girl?
"Will you slap me if I laugh?" asked Sylvia, and with that she let her laughter peal.
She had a way of putting up her chin a little and lowering her eyes when she laughed. Cobalt stood there and watched her.
"It's good," said Cobalt. "It's dog-gone good. It's like medicine to me."
"Is it?" she inquired.
She must have widened her eyes a trifle when she heard him speak like this. If she had any wit at all, she knew that he was out of the common run of men.
"Yes," he said, "it does me good to hear you laugh. You're pert, aren't you?"
"Pert?" asked Sylvia, her spirit beginning to rise toward anger.
"You know," said Cobalt. "You're a little sassy, but I don't mind it. It's spice in you."
"Thank you."
"You're proud, too," said Cobalt. "You're proud as Lucifer. I can see that."
"Do you always talk to people like this?" asked the girl.
"Yes. Of course, I do. How else should I talk to them?" stated Cobalt.
He meant that. He always said what he thought, straight out. Often it was a shocking thing to hear him, a brutal thing. That was why so many people savored respect for Cobalt with a good dash, not of envy, but of hate. Only a few of us endured and loved him in spite of the way he trod on our toes.
"Almost any other way," said the girl. "Almost any other way, I should think."
"You tell me how."
"Why, make them happy, of course. That's what most people try to do when they're talking to others."
"No," said Cobalt, "that's not right."
"Don't you think so?" questioned Sylvia, beginning to smile and freeze.
"No," said Cobalt, "because mostly people are lying, and the ones they talk to know they're lying."
"Ah, and you always tell the truth?"
"Nobody could always tell the truth," he replied, "but I try my best to do it."
"I must have read that somewhere," said Sylvia. "Where did you get it, Cobalt?"
"Out of my heart," he said, as grave as you please, and pointed at his breast, as though she could look through bones and flesh if she chose. "You'll find a lot more in there.[2q]"
"I only see a parka," said Sylvia.
"There you go again," said Cobalt, "but, when you're sassy like this, you ought always to laugh."
"Ought I?" she asked, lifting her brows to freeze him again.
But Cobalt didn't freeze. No, no, you might as well have tried to frost the equator.
"You ought to laugh and show that you're joking," Cobalt told her, "because, if you're serious, you simply need a spanking."
"You make me feel very young," said Sylvia, letting the temperature drop another hundred degrees toward absolute zero.
"Oh, don't stick up your nose and look down at me. It doesn't amuse me when I see you acting like that. You've learned that attitude out of your mirror, I suppose, but don't use it on me. Don't talk down to me because, after all, you're only a woman."
"I'm only a what?"
"You're so mad now that you can hardly hear me," went on Cobalt. "Get the cobwebs out of your mind and listen to the truth. I said that you're only a woman and, therefore, you've no right to look down your nose at anybody."
Sylvia must have nearly fainted. I know how other men were in front of her like lambs, like poor willing slaves, cluttering up the heavenly ground on which she deigned to put her feet.
"I see that you're a profound fellow," Sylvia said to him. "You can see at a glance that I'm only a woman. What did you expect to find me?"
"I expected to find you a good deal better than you are," he said. "I saw only the shine of you from a distance. Now that I get up close, I see that the wick needs a lot of trimming."
"You men," Sylvia said as sardonic as you please, "are such masters. Of course, women always look up to such wonderful—"
"Don't do that," urged Cobalt. "If you talk like that, I'll begin to despise you so much that I'll never look at you again. There's not much to women, you know. There's almost nothing—except loving 'em."
"True," said Sylvia, beginning to shake a little in the fury that was gripping her. "Of course, we're just mirrors, and nothing else. Mirrors for the parents, then for the great husband, then for the children. Is that it?"
"You mighty well know it's true," said Cobalt, "though, just now, I see that you're ready to scratch my eyes out."
"Not at all. I was only about to remark that my time is not entirely my own."
"No," said Cobalt, "that's true. A good part of it is mine."
"Ah?" said Sylvia, blinking a little, beginning to think him mad.
"Of course it is. One of these days, Sylvia, if you turn out to be half what I think of you, I'm going to marry you."
"I'm astonished and delighted," she said, forcing herself to smile at him again in such a way that any other man would have backed up as if from a tiger's claws. "Are you really going to marry me, Cobalt—I don't know any other name to give you, you know."
He merely grinned at her. "You handle a whip pretty well, but you can't cut me through the skin with your little turns and flips of the tongue. It won't do any good to flog me with ironies, Sylvia."
"As if I would attempt such a thing! Of course, I don't know what you mean, Cobalt, but then a woman never understands more than a part of what a man says. She only sees the feet of the god, I dare say."
"You've got a lot of stuff in you, but you need to be taken apart and put together again."
"Poor Dad. He'll be terribly upset when he hears that I have to be brought up all over again."
"I like you better and better." Cobalt was grinning again.
"Oh, how can you!" exclaimed Sylvia, putting her two little hands together in admiration.
"Dog-gone you're a feast for me. I could spend my life eating you, sauce and all, and spite, and malice, and thorny ironies, and all of that. Now let's get down to brass tacks."
"You mean, to name the wedding day?"
"That's the main idea. Your father says that your husband ought to have a home for you and a hundred thousand dollars. Now, what do you want?"
"I only want a great, big, wonderful, masterful man."
"You're going to be mastered, all right," said Cobalt. "Is that all you want?"
"Oh, yes. Just somebody I can look up to."
"You can look up to me, Sylvia. You can stand on your tiptoes, and still you'll have to look up."
She teetered up on her toes. "My gracious, you're right. I dare say that you're always right!"
"I'll have a hundred per cent average with you."
"Then I suppose that we'll have to be married at once. I can hardly wait and, of course, you have the lovely home and the hundred thousand waiting for us?"
"You she-wolf!" replied Cobalt, his grin flashing down at her. "I have a dog team, some dried fish, and my two hands. I'm going to rip that hundred thousand out of the ground this year."
"Oh, Cobalt," she asked, "do we have to wait a whole year?"
She made sad eyes at him. Cobalt drank it all in.
"What kind of a house do you want?" he asked her.
"Oh, for myself, just anything would do, but I'd never be happy unless I knew that my husband had the right surroundings. I wouldn't set a diamond in base metal. There'd have to be a night park for him to walk in when he's in the garden in the evening with his own thoughts. A good library for his study. Or do you need to study any more, Cobalt?"
"Go on," said Cobalt. "You write down the items, and I'll add up."
"Then you'd want two or three good servants to look after you properly, and a maid to dress me because I'd have to appear as well as possible in the eyes of such a husband. We'd need rooms for those servants, of course, and a good dining room because a little dining room is so stuffy and lacks dignity."
"Go on."
"Well, you can fill out the rest a great deal better than I can. The stables, the horses and such things—you would know exactly what to have. You'd need more, but three or four good hunters are about all that I would have, unless you wished to be too generous. But for myself I wouldn't want jewels."
"No?"
"Oh, no, nothing to speak of. Just a few nice, big, simple stones. Not emeralds. Oh, no! They're too expensive. I like rubies better myself. Just a few to help me catch your eye when you're losing yourself in meditations, you know."
"Now I begin to see the picture."
"Of course you do," said Sylvia, giving him a smile of childish adoration. "I shouldn't have said a thing. You would have known from the first, ever so much better than I do."
"Well," said Cobalt, "what do you think?"
"Why, I wouldn't try. I'd just leave all of that to you, dear! I know it won't take you long to make enough."
"Not long at all. Good bye for a little while, Sylvia."
He held out his arms to her. And she? Why, she stepped right inside them and let him kiss her. Then she followed him to the door and told him that she could hardly wait. That's the sort of stuff of which she was made.
III. THE LIGHTNING WARRIOR
Cobalt went down to the saloon and staked his dog team against six hundred dollars as a start. Before the next morning, he had won forty thousand dollars. He took a week spending that money. None of it went in dissipation. Everything was sunk in the preparation to get more gold out of the earth. Then he disappeared from Circle City and went to the diggings.
Everyone knew about that conversation he had had with Sylvia Baird. That talk was so typical of Cobalt that people could not help repeating the details of it and laughing heartily. They even asked Sylvia about it, and Sylvia would laugh in turn. But Circle City stopping laughing, and so did Sylvia Baird, when it was learned that Cobalt was organizing his expedition and hiring many hands. Circle City stopped smiling because it very well knew that, when Cobalt bent his energies in any direction, the time for foolish comment had ended. I think that Sylvia began to worry almost at once.
I saw her shortly after Cobalt went into the wilderness, and I chatted with her a little about Cobalt. Her way of putting the thing was characteristic.
"I hear that Cobalt is a great friend of yours," I said.
"Friend?" replied Sylvia. "Oh, not at all. I've only met him once, you know. Yet he means a good deal to me."
"Does he?" I asked.
"Yes. Because he's going to marry me it appears."
"Great Scott! That's exciting!"
"Isn't it?"
