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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In Max Brand's poignant novel, "The Long, Long Trail," readers are invited into the rugged landscapes of the American West, where themes of endurance and the pursuit of one's destiny unfold in a rich tapestry of narrative. The novel skillfully marries Brand's vivid descriptive prowess with an engaging plot that chronicles the perilous journey of its protagonist, navigating both the external challenges of frontier life and the internal struggles of identity and belonging. Set against the backdrop of a nation in flux, the tale captures the essence of early 20th-century Americana, echoing the literary traditions of naturalism and romanticism that profoundly influenced the era's storytelling. Max Brand, born Frederick Schiller Faust, was a prolific author whose extensive body of work reflects his deep-seated love for the Western genre. Growing up in the American West and experience as a soldier during World War I deeply shaped his perspective on courage, sacrifice, and the human spirit, themes that are intricately woven into the narrative of "The Long, Long Trail." His ability to infuse realistic details with a sense of grand adventure renders this novel both accessible and profound. This novel is a must-read for enthusiasts of the Western genre and those interested in exploring the complexities of human resilience. Brand's masterful storytelling and rich character studies make "The Long, Long Trail" a rewarding examination of the American spirit, prompting readers to reflect on their own journeys and the universal quest for meaning. 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.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Long, Long Trail
Table of Contents
Introduction
Across an unforgiving frontier, a single, stubborn journey tests the balance between personal conscience and the rough justice of the West.
The Long, Long Trail by Max Brand, the widely read pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust, stands within the classic American Western tradition. Set against the broad landscapes and spare settlements of the American West, it draws on the genre’s rugged codes and stark moral choices. Brand wrote and published prolifically during the first half of the twentieth century, when pulp magazines and popular fiction brought Western narratives to a vast readership. Within that context, this novel carries the hallmarks of its time: swift storytelling, evocative terrain, and a focus on men and women navigating violence, loyalty, and the demands of survival.
Without revealing more than the initial setup, the book centers on a demanding passage across wild country, where each mile traveled deepens the stakes and clarifies the costs of pressing on. The journey structure gives the narrative a relentless momentum, while the shifting dangers along the way keep the tension taut. Readers can expect a direct, unadorned voice, vivid scene work, and a mood that alternates between simmering menace and guarded calm. Rather than relying on elaborate backstory, Brand builds character through decisive action, terse exchanges, and the practical choices that the landscape and its risks force upon travelers.
Endurance and identity anchor the novel’s concerns, with the trail functioning as both a literal road and a moral proving ground. Questions of justice arise not in courtrooms but at crossroads, where the difference between necessity and revenge can be hard to parse. The story probes how reputation shapes fate, how courage can tip into obsession, and how loyalty is measured when the price of keeping faith grows steep. The West here is neither merely hostile nor purely redemptive; it is a testing field where character reveals itself under pressure, and where mercy, when it appears, carries genuine weight.
Brand’s craft lends the narrative both its pace and its resonance. Crisp action sequences avoid spectacle for clarity, while the cadence of the prose mirrors hard travel—economical, steady, and alert to sudden turns. Dialogue is lean and coded, relying on implication as much as declaration. Side characters sketch a living social world of ranches, camps, and way stations, each encounter pressing the central conflict forward. The result is a story that operates on two levels: a suspenseful pursuit across difficult ground and a reflective inquiry into the unwritten laws that govern people when formal authority is distant or unreliable.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in the questions it poses about responsibility in places where clear rules are absent or contested. It considers how far a person should go to right a wrong, what is surrendered in the name of duty, and how communities form—however briefly—under strain. The West becomes a lens for thinking about freedom and its limits, about trust in volatile circumstances, and about the costs of holding to a code when outcomes are uncertain. Those themes, though rooted in a historical frontier, echo modern debates over justice, risk, belonging, and the burden of personal choice.
Approached as both a tense journey and a character study, The Long, Long Trail offers the satisfactions of a classic Western—wide horizons, mortal stakes, decisive moments—tempered by moral ambiguity and emotional restraint. Readers who appreciate brisk storytelling will find momentum on nearly every page, while those drawn to questions of motive and meaning will recognize a deeper current beneath the action. Brand’s novel invites you to walk beside its travelers, to weigh their choices, and to feel the terrain shape what is possible. It is a story of distance measured not only in miles but in the ground a conscience must cover.
Synopsis
Set in the American West during the waning days of open range, The Long, Long Trail follows a lone rider whose reputation precedes him into a small cattle town. An abrupt outbreak of violence places him at the center of suspicion, and the swift judgment of frontier justice forces him to flee. With scant supplies and a worn but willing horse, he takes to the backcountry. What begins as a desperate escape turns into a determined quest to uncover who engineered the charge against him. The title’s promise defines the story: a journey measured in miles, trials, and shifting loyalties.
As word spreads, a seasoned lawman takes up the chase, not as a vengeful zealot but as a thoughtful professional bound by duty. The pursuit becomes a running conversation about justice conducted through trails, tracks, and near misses. The fugitive’s skill with the land keeps him alive: water found where there seems none, cover taken where others see only open ground. Each halted night underscores the cost of the hunt. He learns that behind his predicament lies more than a single crime, and that the route to clearing his name will be longer and harsher than any straight ride to freedom.
Along the way he encounters people who illuminate the region’s fragile order: a solitary prospector who hoards both gold and grievances, a stage driver who measures men by the way they handle horses, a ranch family balancing survival with fairness, and a woman whose judgment cuts through rumors. These meetings provide food, shelter, and information, but also reflect the West’s competing codes. He aids strangers at personal risk, and their gratitude yields small clues. Names surface, motives hint at themselves, and a pattern emerges: the incident that drove him out may be the visible edge of an organized wrong.
The towns and camps he passes reveal a frontier in transition—saloons where legends are traded like currency, and fenced pastures signaling the end of boundless ride. He moves cautiously through them, listening more than speaking, assembling details others ignore. Rumors tie respected figures to unsavory dealings. The lawman narrows the gap, each skirmish testing wits rather than merely speed. A tense visit to a remote settlement places the fugitive close to those he seeks, but also within reach of capture. His choices, once simple matters of survival, become calculations about risk, reputation, and the kind of justice worth fighting for.
At the story’s midpoint, a reversal upends his tenuous advantage. Someone he trusted leverages his need for allies, and a carefully laid trap nearly ends the trail. The tight escape costs him safe ground and forces a retreat into harsher country. In the aftermath, he confirms the scope of the scheme that marked him: it touches money, power, and the quiet transaction of favors across county lines. The revelation clarifies his goal. He no longer seeks only to avoid a rope; he must dismantle the accusation by striking at the motive behind it, while keeping just ahead of the badge.
The chase bends into the high places—timbered ridges, wind-scoured passes, and valleys where a single shot echoes for minutes. Here, nature joins the contest. Weather and terrain press both men to their limits, drawing out grudging respect between hunter and hunted. Circumstance forces a brief, unspoken truce against a common peril, exposing the lawman’s fairness and the fugitive’s restraint. Neither swerves from his path afterward. Yet this interlude reframes the conflict: what separates them is less personal malice than divergent duties. Their next encounters carry a quiet gravity, as if each recognizes that the end, whenever it comes, must count.
Using what he has learned, the fugitive devises a plan that requires stepping back into populated ground. He arranges to bring key players together where rumor cannot cloud witness and where the lawman, present by duty, can weigh truth for himself. Allies collected on the trail perform small but crucial roles—one passing a message, another opening a door at the right moment. The strategy balances risk and timing, hinging on documents, testimony, and a carefully chosen stage. With the town’s tensions close to breaking, he must decide whether to accept a narrow personal escape or attempt to untangle the broader wrong that ensnared him.
The confrontation unfolds in measured beats, with words serving as weapons until iron speaks. Accusations surface, denials harden, and the bonds between respectable facades and outlaw deeds strain. The lawman, keeping his oath, tests each claim against what he has seen on the trail. When violence comes, it follows from character rather than spectacle. The core truths emerge without ornate confession, and the immediate danger resolves in a way consistent with Western codes. The outcome addresses the frame that started the flight, but the novel withholds neat sentimentality, treating justice as a balance struck between law, evidence, and earned trust.
In the aftermath, the title’s meaning widens. The long trail is not only the literal miles crossed but also the extended work of building or repairing a name. The protagonist’s path forward is possible yet remains demanding, shaped by what he has done as much as what has been proven. The lawman’s role concludes with integrity intact, suggesting that duty and fairness can coexist without softening either. The story leaves the West neither tamed nor lawless, but in contested transition. Endurance, restraint, and clear-eyed judgment form the lasting message, carried like dust on a rider’s coat long after the ride ends.
Historical Context
Max Brand situates The Long, Long Trail in the waning decades of the American frontier, roughly the 1880s to 1890s, when the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the Southwest were being reorganized by capital, law, and settlement. The period follows the Civil War migration west, with towns like Dodge City, Abilene, Tombstone, and Cheyenne serving as railheads and market nodes. The 1890 U.S. Census declared the frontier closed, reflecting denser settlement, fenced ranges, and formal jurisdiction. Trails, stage routes, and emerging rail lines structured movement, commerce, and violence. Brand’s landscapes of open country punctuated by boomtowns mirror this geography, placing solitary riders between isolated ranches, county seats, and contested stretches of range.
The Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160-acre parcels to claimants who improved the land, ultimately distributing over 270 million acres by 1934. Subsequent land rushes, notably the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, accelerated smallholder settlement. Technological change—barbed wire patented by Joseph Glidden in 1874—enabled enclosure, igniting conflicts like the Texas Fence-Cutting Wars of 1883–1884. These confrontations pitted established cattle interests against new farmers and smaller ranchers seeking access to water and trail corridors. The novel’s conflicts between itinerant cowhands, large outfits, and settlers reflect this transformation, evoking disputes over grazing rights, water, and the privatization of commons that altered social hierarchies on the plains.
The cattle boom after 1865 exploited open range and northern markets. The Chisholm Trail (circa 1867–1884) and the Goodnight–Loving Trail (from 1866) moved millions of Longhorns from Texas toward railheads at Abilene, Dodge City, and Ogallala. The winter of 1886–1887, combined with drought and overstocking, crashed the industry, bankrupting outfits and dispersing crews. Trail life demanded endurance, horsemanship, and a code among drovers crossing rivers like the Red and Arkansas and navigating Comanche and Kiowa country. The title’s image of an arduous trail resonates with this world: Brand’s characters endure long drives, stampedes, and employer caprice, capturing the instability of wage labor and the hazards of open-range logistics.
Law and order on the frontier blended formal institutions with extralegal violence. The U.S. Marshals policed Indian Territory under Judge Isaac C. Parker in Fort Smith (1875–1896), while the Texas Rangers evolved into a professional force by the 1901 reorganization. High-profile confrontations like the 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone and vigilante hangings across Montana and Wyoming illustrate contested sovereignty. Sheriffs, posses, and railroad detectives (notably the Pinkerton Agency) pursued rustlers and robbers. The novel’s pursuit plots, wary relations with sheriffs, and oscillation between posse justice and courtrooms mirror this milieu, highlighting how community standing, rumor, and private enforcement could outweigh statutory protections on the edge of state power.
Indigenous dispossession framed western expansion. After the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the Great Sioux War of 1876–1877 followed U.S. incursions into the Black Hills, culminating in the 25 June 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. The Nez Perce flight of 1877 and the Apache Wars ending with Geronimo’s 1886 surrender marked the contraction of Native autonomy. The 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre signaled the violent closure of the Plains wars, while off-reservation boarding schools like Carlisle (founded 1879) enforced assimilation. Though Brand centers cowboys and settlers, his depictions of empty ranges, abandoned camps, and contested watercourses register landscapes already structured by removal, treaty violations, and the imposition of federal reservation systems.
Railroads bound the West to national markets: the 1869 transcontinental link at Promontory Summit integrated freight, mail, and migration. Lines such as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe reached New Mexico by 1880, while spurs connected mining districts. Mineral strikes—Comstock Lode (Nevada, 1859), Leadville silver (Colorado, 1879), Tombstone silver (Arizona, 1877–1882), Black Hills gold (Dakota Territory, 1876), and Cripple Creek gold (Colorado, 1891)—created boomtowns with volatile labor and speculative capital. Company towns, saloons, and gambling dens proliferated and collapsed with ore prices. Brand’s towns of boardinghouses, assay offices, and saloons map onto this cycle, using shifting fortunes and railroad timetables to propel characters between wage work, debt, and outlawry.
Range wars epitomized clashes over land and labor. The Lincoln County War (New Mexico, 1878) pitted rival mercantile-ranching coalitions, entangling figures like Billy the Kid and drawing territorial militia intervention. Most decisive for northern plains mythology, the Johnson County War (Wyoming, April 1892) saw the Wyoming Stock Growers Association hire gunmen to eliminate alleged rustlers near Buffalo; Governor Amos Barber requested federal troops from Fort McKinney to end the siege at the TA Ranch. These conflicts revealed efforts by large ranches to monopolize range, water, and courts. Brand’s portrayals of cattle barons, hired guns, and besieged smallholders echo such power struggles, dramatizing blacklists, foreclosures, and reputational warfare as instruments of control.
By foregrounding drifters, small ranchers, and sheriffs under pressure from capitalized outfits, The Long, Long Trail functions as a critique of the period’s inequities. It exposes how enclosure, company dominance, and privatized violence displaced customary access to land and water. The narrative highlights structural precarity—seasonal wages, debt to company stores, and the sway of associations over juries—while suggesting the frailty of due process in a society reliant on posse power and hired detectives. Its emphasis on mobility, loyalty, and honor assesses the human cost of consolidation. The book implicitly challenges the moral legitimacy of concentrated property and the suppression of dissenting livelihoods in the late frontier order.
The Long, Long Trail
CHAPTER 1
He was popularly nicknamed Morg, and it may be understood that strangers were apt to spell the name Morgue; yet his full name, as he signed it on the day of his wedding and never again, before or after, was Morgan Algernon Valentine. Someone discovered that hidden and forbidden signature and once addressed the rancher as Algie, and the result was a violent accident.
Yet Morgan Valentine was a peaceful man. He was one of those who accomplish romantic results in an everyday manner. Banish his mountains from his horizon, and he would have been a wretched man, and yet when he thought about the mountains at all, it was only to remember the trails that netted them and the sweat of the hard climbs. His labor in life had been noble and was apt to prove enduring. Thirty years before—he and his brother, John, followed the Crane River, where it splits through the higher mountains and comes out upon the lower, rolling hills on the farther side—it occurred to John Valentine, who was the dreamer of the family, that the slopes might not be too steep to preclude cultivation with the plow, and though the regions of the hill crests were a jagged soil, much broken by rocks, there might be enough grass to graze cattle on. Five minutes later he was painting a picture of the house which might be built there—one for Morgan and one for John, on opposite sides of the Crane River. There they could live in eyeshot, each with a broad domain separated by the arrowy, yellow waters of the Crane. There was ample room for both—a hundred thousand acres of hill and valley land.
And still another five minutes found John Valentine already tired of his dream and ready to spur on. But Morgan would not stir. There he resolved to pitch his tent. And though John tried valiantly to dissuade him, the tent was pitched and the two brothers remained. Forthwith, the empire which John had seen, the younger brother proceeded to build. Who are the greater men—the empire seers or the empire makers? At any rate the thing was done; front to front, a couple of miles apart, and with the noisy river splitting the landscape in the middle, rose the two houses. The house of John Valentine was planned as a nobly proportioned structure, and though it had never progressed beyond the columns of the entrance and the first story of the original, it was nevertheless beautiful even in the piece. On the other hand, practical Morgan Valentine built himself a plain shack and gradually extended it. Now it stumbled up the hills on either side, big enough to shelter a whole clan of Valentines and their supporters.
From which it may be gathered that John Valentine lived his life as Byron wrote his poems—he leaped once, tigerlike, and if he failed in the first attempt, or grew weary of labor, he was off to fresh fields and pastures new. He was the sort of man of whom people can easily expect great things; he could have sat on a throne; he could have painted pictures or written verse or made shoes for his own horses; but in accomplishment he was continually falling short. But Morgan Valentine seemed to have reached above his height; people wondered at what he had done. Yet perhaps his neighbors overlooked this fact: that simplicity may be profound;[1q] and though few thoughts came to him, those he had worked deep into the roots of his being.
For instance, there was only one human being whom he had ever truly loved, and that was his brother. And when John died, Morgan transferred a portion of that love to the orphan daughter of the dead man.
But Morgan's own wife and children were merely incidents in his life.
It is necessary to be so explicit about this Morgan Valentine, because, in spite of his simplicity, this narrative could never have been written were it not that he did some astonishing things. Indeed, so unusual were some of the things that he did, that one is tempted to add fact to fact so that there will be no misapprehension—no tendency to call him a dream figure. On this night he was exactly fifty-one years and three months old. He stood five feet nine and three-quarter inches and weighed one hundred and eighty pounds; he had a gray head and a young, stern face; he was slow in speech and agile in movement; and at this particular moment he was smoking a stubby corncob pipe on the front porch of his house, with his heels cocked upon the top of the railing.
His wife was in bed; the servants dared not make a sound in the house even if they were awake; the songs and the laughter of the men in the bunkhouse had long since died out; but Morgan Valentine, who slept never more than five hours a night, was still wakeful at twelve.
But if his body waked, his mind slept indeed, and only his eye roved lazily through the valley. A broad moon, nearing the full, had rolled like a wheel up the side of Grizzly Peak, and it cast enough light for him to make out the details of his possessions. In the heart of each valley there was the black- plowed land in narrow strips—incredibly rich loam; and over the rest of the unfenced ground where the cattle ranged, the moon flashed here and there on a bit of outcropping quartz, or twinkled along a line of new-strung barbed wire. But far and wide, over the neighboring hollows, all to his right was his, over range after range of hills, rocking away toward a dim horizon. And looking straight ahead all was his to the silver streak of the river. Indeed, this was little more than an imaginary boundary, for though the great district beyond belonged to his niece, it would be, by all prospects, many and many a year before Mary Valentine[1] was married, and until such a time, he was the executor, his will was law through all the rich region of that valley.
No wonder that the bowl of the pipe tilted up as he set his teeth, and he was filled with the solid sense of possession.
Into his quiet thought beat the swift tattoo of a horse coming across the valley road; it rounded the hill, and at once the hoofbeats rang loudly through the night with the speed of the fugitive—the speed of the pursuer—the speed of anger, perhaps. Now the horseman lurched into view, a black form, with a black shadow trailing beside it over the white road. Straight up to the front of Morgan Valentine's house; then out of the saddle with a leap; then heavy heels and ringing spurs on the high flight of steps. He caught sight of the figure of Morgan.
"Morgan Valentine?" he called.
Now, midnight hushes voices and makes men walk lightly, but the ring in this question was uncontrolled, as if the fellow had a right to waken the entire house if he felt so inclined.
"Gus Norman?" queried the rancher, rising.
"That's me!"
He came along the porch more slowly now, with the slowness of one who deliberates and prepares words. But when he came close, the calmness of Morgan Valentine snapped his self-control, and he burst out: "Valentine, it's got to stop!"
"What's got to stop?"
"That—that girl!"
He turned his head as he spoke mechanically and looked across the shining strip of the Crane River toward the unfinished house of John Valentine which stood on the crest of a hill, white under the moon, and with a solemn, Doric beauty.
"What girl?" persisted Valentine obtusely.
"What girl? Mary Valentine; your niece! That's what!"
"Stop? How stop?"
"Stop her from going about—man-killing—"
"What!"
"That's what it amounts to. It's murder, Valentine!"
The ugly word came out with an ugly oath behind it, and the change in Valentine was instant.
"Seems to me," he observed in his unhurried manner, "that you're talking kind of foolish, Norman. Suppose I give you a minute to think that over and then say it again!"
The other shifted his position a little, but he rushed on with his speech of accusation.
"I don't need no minute, nor nothing like it. My boy is lying home, bleeding; that's why I'm here talking to you now. What I got to say won't keep. He's shot down, and it's her that has it done!"
For a time the glance of Valentine traveled gravely up and down the form of the other.
At length he said quietly: "I'd sort of hate to have Mother woke up with news like this; mind talking sort of soft?"
"There's no use talking soft," said the other, but nevertheless he lowered his voice. "The whole world is finding out things about Mary Valentine, my friend, and the whole world won't be talking in a soft voice about what it knows."
"Ah?" murmured Valentine. Suddenly his tone changed, as though the idea had just filtered completely home in his brain.
"Now, what the devil d'you mean by that, Norman?"
"I ain't here to argue with you. I'm here to point out facts. My boy is shot down; your son Charlie is the one that done it. How d'you explain it?"
"By the fact that your boy Joe ain't as handy with his gun as my boy Charlie. That's a tolerably clear explanation, I figure."
"Tolerable clear for some, maybe, but it ain't the fact. The hand that held the gun was Charlie's, but the mind that directed it was Mary Valentine's."
"All these here remarks," declared Valentine, "is considerable compromising, which maybe I'll be asking for more talk later on. But now, keep right on. Charlie shot Joe, but you say that Mary had a hand in it? Where's Mary now?"
"She's taking care of Joe; your boys, Charlie and Louis, is both there, too; up at my house."
"She's taking care of Joe?" echoed Valentine.
"Listen, Morg, while I go back a ways in this story. You remember that there was a dance last Saturday night at Dinneyville?"
"I don't."
"Anyway, there was. Well, did Mary say anything to you the day after that dance about her and my boy Joe?"
"She didn't."
"Then, sir, she knows how to keep a lot to herself. But Joe had something to say to me on Sunday. He says: 'Dad, I'm the luckiest gent on the ranges. I'm going to marry Mary Valentine.' I was struck all of a heap by hearing that. But Joe tells me that they can't be no mistake. She'd as good as promised to be his wife. He'd never knowed her much before the night at that dance. But he took a liking to her right off; and it seemed she done the same by him. He smiled at her; she smiled right back. It kind of went to his head. He started talking to her real serious; and she seemed just a wee bit more serious than him. Well, she scarce danced with anybody but him the rest of the night, and when he come home the next morning after the dance, he was like drunk. Couldn't think, couldn't talk of nothing but how beautiful Mary Valentine was and how quick he was going to marry her, couldn't hardly wait to get started with an outfit of his own.
"I spoke to my wife about it. The old woman didn't say nothing. She just grinned at me. Pretty soon she allows that it's all right. But maybe Joe had better make sure of the girl before he got out any wedding license. That sounded like funny talk to me, but I didn't pay no attention.
"Well, along comes the dance at Salt Springs school-house tonight. My boy goes over. He don't see nothing nor speak to nobody until he sees Mary Valentine come in. Then he goes straight for her.
"Then something mighty queer happened. They was another man with her. His name was Henry Sitterley; Hank Sitterley's boy. And when Joe goes up to her and starts talking sort of foolish, the way a boy will when he's in love, she looks right through him. Acts the way she'd hardly ever met him before. And pretty soon she goes dancing off with young Sitterley, and Joe can see her talking to him and knows that she's making a mock out of him—my son!
"Well, it gets into Joe's head and starts him seeing red, and it gets into his heart and starts his heart aching. He don't think it's really no ways possible. He waits till the dance is over. He tries to see her ag'in. But she sees him coming and slips away into the crowd and laughs back at him.
"Then it comes into Joe's head that she's jilting him, and—"
"Wait a minute," broke out Valentine. "Did she promise to marry him that other Saturday night?"
"They's other ways of promising things than with words, friend Valentine. She sure promised Joe with her eyes and her smiles and her sighs. So when she give him the go-by like that tonight, he mighty near went crazy. He goes out into the hall where they was some of the other boys standing smoking, and there he busts out with something about Mary being a flirt.
"Quick as a wink, your boy Charlie takes him up—like a bulldog, he was, Joe says. Besides, Joe was too mad and sad not to fight it out. First thing you know, guns is pulled?"
"Who pulled his gun first?" cut in Valentine, snapping his words.
"Joe."
Valentine sighed.
"Joe pulled his first, and Charlie beat him to the draw. But here's the point. Your girl starts flirting with my boy; she gets him so he can't sleep for a week, thinking about her—and then when she meets him ag'in she don't know him, or lets on that she don't.
"Then my boy says something he shouldn't of said; they's a fight; he gets shot through the arm—thank Heaven it wasn't no worse!—and I tell you that it was Mary that had him shot, and not Charlie Valentine! Because why? Because when Mary and Charlie drive my boy back home in their buckboard and while they're fussing over him, and after Joe has told me what happened, I go to my wife and tell her I think Joe was crazy the first time he seen Mary. He was crazy with love—calf love. But she just grins at me. 'Why,' she says, 'don't you know she's the worst flirt in the country?'
"And that's why I'm here, Valentine. Two inches more to one side and that bullet would of gone through my boy's heart. And the murderer would of been your girl Mary. Valentine, I'm new to the country; I don't know your folks nor your ways, but I know that in the part of the country that I come from a girl like that ain't allowed to run around loose. She's kept up close, and if her dad can't look after the way she handles her eyes and her smiles, then her ma goes along to watch out for her; and if her ma can't do it, then she ain't allowed to go out where they's young men to be made fools of and their hearts broke, if it don't come to no other thing. I'm a tolerable reasonable man, Valentine, and that bullet wound don't amount to nothing.
"Two weeks, and it'll be all healed up; but what if it had struck two inches away? So I come here straight to you and say, 'Something has got to be done!' I leave it to you, what."
During the latter part of this talk Morgan Valentine had abased his head and stared at the floor of the veranda, but now he raised his head, and even through the shadow the other could see the black frown on the forehead of the rich rancher.
"You got a reason for your talk, Norman," he admitted. "Now step inside and I'll tell you just how this matter stands. You ain't the first that's had cause to complain. I wish you could be the last; but come on inside and we'll talk."
CHAPTER 2
But Gus Norman shook his head.
"In my part of the country," he said stubbornly, "we like to talk in the open air; it keeps us cool."
"Not a half-bad idea. But before we start talking serious, maybe you'll tell me just what you're aiming to do?"
"I'm aiming to keep out of bad trouble, Valentine. I don't like trouble; I'm a peaceable man; but I ain't the only Norman around here. They's a lot of us and some of 'em take this shooting sort of to heart. They want blood for blood. My brother and my nephew are at my house, and they want action. But I talked to 'em and told 'em to keep quiet till I come back."
The other considered his visitor gravely in the dim light. Short time though this clan of Normans had been in the mountains, they had established a name for bulldog ferocity in fighting.
"Look over yonder," he said at length. "You see that house?"
"Yep. What has that to do with it?"
"A whole pile. That's the house my brother built. He started building it and stopped halfway. All through his life he was starting things and stopping halfway. Well, Norman, his girl Mary is the same way. She's always starting things and stopping when they're halfway done. When she was a youngster, she was a regular tomboy[2]. Doing everything that my kids did. When Charlie first got interested in guns, she started practicing, too; and she got so she could beat Charlie with a light rifle or a light revolver. She's still almost as good as Louis, but she got tired of fooling with guns in a couple of months. Same way with hosses. Long as a colt was a wild one, she'd go riding every day and fight it. But as soon as the hoss got tame, she was done with it. And it's the same way with men. She's interested in every strange man that she meets. Shows 'em that she's interested, and thinks they're the finest in the world until they begin to think she's in love with 'em. But after a while she gets tired of 'em. Now d'you understand about her, Norman?"
The other shook his head and growled: "Guns is one thing and hosses is another; but my boy is something more'n either; and he's got to be treated human."
"D'you aim to make me force Mary to marry him?" asked the other calmly.
"I ain't forcing my boy on no girl. Speaking without no offense, Valentine, I wouldn't have your girl in my family. But I think you ought to keep her in hand. They's other young men in my family. Maybe another'll fall in love with that girl when she makes eyes at 'em. And then there may be another fight. And the next time it may be your boy that gets drilled. Luck is always changing. But if she was my girl, I'd use the whip, Valentine."
For some reason Valentine smiled at this, but the darkness covered the expression.
"They's another side to her," he said gently. "She's a true-blue girl, Norman. No malice in her. Keeps to her friends. Plays square—every way except where some strange young gent is concerned, and then she runs amuck with her eyes and her smiles, just as you say. What can I do? Whip? Why, she'd murder me and then kill herself out of shame and spite if I so much as touched her. Don't you suppose I've thought of this before? Haven't I got most of the people around here down on me because of the way Mary has treated the boys, one time or another? Ain't she always making trouble for me? And ain't my boys in peril of their lives because she keeps making places where they got to fight for her sake and their own?"
"Then send her away."
"Ah, man, blood has got a feeling for blood! Can I turn out my brother's daughter?"
The other was silent for a moment, breathing hard. He was a wild-looking man, with unshaven face and a beard that began at his eyes and ran ragged until it terminated in a shaggy point beneath his chin. He was a lean, hard man, and he had reddish eyes as bright as the eyes of a ferret and as restless.
"The day'll come when you'll have sorrow in your home for keeping this girl here," he announced gloomily. "The day'll come when you'll wish you'd sent her off."
"She's been away to school, man, but nothing changed her."
"Sometime, Valentine, she'll find a man that'll be her master.[2q] Mark me when I say it. And when that man comes, she'll go to him and foller him whether he be good or bad. If she could find a hoss that would never be safe under the saddle, she'd never want to ride nothing but that hoss, I figure; and when she finds a man that won't pay no attention to her, she'll be following that man, Valentine, you mark my word. She'll love the man that laughs at her; she'll follow the man that runs from her; she'll kneel to the man that beats her." He paused again.
For Morgan Valentine had shifted so that the moonlight struck abruptly across his face, painting the wrinkles and his frown black and making the rest deadly white. He stood with his jaw set, and through the shadow of his brows the eyes glittered. He spoke nothing, but Gus Norman saw enough to make him wince back a step. He put out his hand in a conciliatory gesture.
"I don't wish her no unhappiness and I don't speak out of no malice. I ain't come to talk hard, neither, nor to make no threats. But I'm here to put my case in front of you. You got a big reputation around these parts, Valentine, for being a square shooter. Put yourself in my boots and figure out what you'd do. My folks are a tolerable tempery lot, and they're a pile cut up about this fracas; but I'm holding 'em back. I don't want 'em to run foul of Charlie; most of all I don't want 'em to run foul of you. Think over what I've said. Good night."
He turned on his heel, strode across the veranda, went down the steps, and once more sent his horse up the road.
Before he disappeared into the moon haze, Valentine was walking up and down the veranda with a short, quick step. And of all the people in the world only his wife, no doubt, could have read the meaning behind his manner. Only his wife did know it; for the loud voice of Norman had wakened her in her room just over the veranda, and she had gone to her window. From it she had overheard the conversation, and now she knew the meaning of that pacing, that short, quick, decisive step. She gathered her dressing gown about her, put her feet in slippers, and hurried downstairs. Her husband was coming in just as she reached the lowest range of the stairs, and she paused with her hand on the rail. It was a lovely hand in spite of her forty-five years and the hard labor which had been hers during the early part of her married life. Her slippered foot, too, would have been the pride of a debutante; and the dressing robe fluttered about her in graceful lines. She was still beautifully formed; her skin retained its glow and purity of texture. But cover her hands with winter gloves, her feet with boots, her body with a heavy coat, and Maude Valentine became a homely farmer's wife. There had been a fine spirit in her face, but never beauty; and now that the grace and hope of youth was gone there remained only the lines of the unloved wife and the unheeded mother of two wild sons and one headstrong daughter.
"Are you up, Mother?" he asked from the hall beneath.
"I couldn't sleep, Morgan."
"Read a bit; then you'll sleep."
"I wish to talk to you just a little minute, Morgan," she replied. Her voice had the gentleness of long sorrow.
"Come on into the library, then."
They went into the big room ranged high with books, for John's library had been brought here after his death, and it was a rare collection. How few had been opened since his hand last touched them!
"Are you warm, Mother?"
She looked up at him quickly as she slipped into the big chair, a furtive glance. For one brief moment at the time of their marriage—whether it were a matter of days or weeks did not count—she had felt that he loved her truly, with a fire concealed by his customary self-restraint. And ever since those passionate days of happiness she had been probing him with these half- frightened glances in search of the vanished tenderness. And though she lived with him a hundred years there would still be a hope in her heart. But he was hardly glancing at her now as he asked the question, and settling back into the chair, she smiled at him a still and quiet smile, for pain may take on the gentlest seeming.
"Now, Mother, what is it?"
"I guess maybe I shouldn't have said that I couldn't sleep. It was Gus Norman's voice that waked me up."
"He talks like a roaring bull. Some of these days maybe a ring'll be put through Norman's nose and he'll be led about!"
"I heard all he said."
"Well?"
At his carelessness she fired a trifle.
"And I heard that Charlie shot a man!"
"His third man. He's starting well."
"Morgan Valentine, do you know what lies ahead of your son one of these days? Murder! I've seen him getting angry in the house and reach natural for his hip. And someday he'll get in trouble—and shoot—and kill!"
Her voice had raised very little, but her changing expression answered a similar purpose. Indeed, Morgan Valentine looked sharply at her, so astonished was he by any variation in her monotone.
"He's sowing his wild oats, that's all. No cause for worry."
"He's never worried you, Morgan." There was a bitter emphasis on the pronoun. "None of your children have. Seems like you don't care, sometimes."
The remarkable fact that his wife was actually complaining finally reached the understanding of Valentine, and now he watched her calmly, waiting. His quiet made her flush.
"Charlie, nor Liz, nor Louis—they none of them worry you, Morgan. You act— you act—as if Mary was your daughter, and my children didn't have your blood in 'em!"
"Mother!" murmured her husband.
"I ain't going to make a scene, Morgan," she assured him, and she gathered her robe a little closer to her as if to cover her trembling. "I'm just going to tell you a few facts. This ain't the first time that Mary has made trouble for me and mine. She—"
"You don't like her, Mother. You get a bad light in your eyes every time you think of her. I've seen that for a long while."
"I've done what's right for her," said Mrs. Valentine stubbornly. "They ain't nobody can say I haven't mothered her as much as the wild thing would let me—after her father died."
Again he was silent, and again the silence spurred her on more than words.
"And here she is paying me back. She's putting my boys in peril of their lives. That's what she's doing. And who but her has made my girl Liz unhappy?"
