Brand, Max - 1925 Read online

  That ended the fight before it even began. He was turned into a weak pulp that rolled off the horse and onto the ground as I struck him. The horse danced away, and the young chap lay with his eyes tightly closed like a child afraid to see a nightmare. He was groaning and begging me not to kill him. I was trembling too much with the cold to laugh. I simply tied his own handkerchief over his head, and there he lay like a great lump of blubber, moaning, begging, while I turned him out of his clothes. I left him naked as a newborn child, and I ran off into the forest in my new clothes.

  They were warm, but after the first moment or two I did not care a great deal for my prize. They were too heavy. The boots were like steel jackets on my feet which were used to no shoes, or ragged ones. The coat was a useless weight. I tossed away the hat. I chucked the coat into a bramble bush. I kicked off shoes and socks and knifed away those good trousers at the knee. It was a shameful waste of honest materials, but I was glad to be free once more.

  I went straight down to the sheds along the quays. There I sat on a pile with my bare feet hooked around it and looked out to sea. The big wind of the night before had kicked up some mighty waves, and, as far as my eye stretched off to the horizon, I saw the big, gray, white-bearded rollers, traveling. It brought my heart into my throat. If my father had been across the water, I should have spent the rest of my life at sea, I don't doubt. But he was not across the water. He was headed West and Far West. And that was my destination. I had enough of an idea of geography to know that the ocean way toward the West led to New Orleans, so I began to make inquiries. I was in luck. Before the night closed on that day, I was duly shipped on board a boat that was taking candle coal down to New Orleans. I was shipped as odd boy, to be handy generally.

  It was a pleasant voyage. The captain had two jugs of whiskey, one at the wheel, and one in the cabin. He and the other three men were always mellow, and so the old boat staggered down the coast. We were as light on provisions, though, as we were heavy on liquor. Every night we dropped anchor off some little cove, and two or three went ashore to forage. After the first expedition they saw my talents and left the majority of the work to me. One man would lie back on the oars in the skiff, ready to take us fast away from shore when we came back with supplies; another hand went up with me to help carry what I plundered, but the skillful tasks were all left to me.

  The bidding of any older man is usually authority enough for any small boy or young fellow to do mischief. I had not a qualm of conscience. I used to slide into a chicken house and pick off the fattest birds from the roost. There is only one way to manage it. That is to snake the bird off by the neck and, with the same motion, clap him under your elbow. I learned to do it so that I could pick off a prize from a crowded line of roosters and never have the vacancy noticed. Then there were kitchens to invade. I cleaned out many a pantry on that piratical cruise down the coast, and often I secured as much as two of us could stagger under, going back to the boat. Not that it was always safe. Once the dogs took after us and followed so close that the leader came up as we took to the boat, and we had to brain the beast with an oar as it leaped after us. And once three men came after us with guns and gave us a race through the woods. However, there was only enough danger to give spice to life, and night and morning we feasted on my thefts.

  With modesty put aside, I may say that I was a valued member of that crew, and all went merry as a wedding bell until we reached New Orleans, and I asked for my pay. Then the captain let out a shout and said that he would turn me over to the police for a young thief. He caught at a belaying pin as he spoke, and I had to act quickly. I dived between his knees, and, while he was flat on his back, I snatched his wallet and dived overboard. When I came up, he was pitting at my head with a rifle, but he was too poor a shot to fetch me. They tumbled into the skiff, but, before they had rowed around the stem of the ship, I was shinnying up a mossy pile and then streaking away across the docks. Some Negroes heard the captain shouting after me and offering rewards. They started after me, but they might as well have tried to tag the strong north wind. I had them gasping in half a mile, and then I dodged away to a quiet place where I could examine my prize.

  By the noise that rascal of a captain had made and his effort to kill me or get his wallet back, I had naturally thought that I had a treasure. But when I opened the wallet, I found there was only nine dollars and twenty-two cents in the purse. First I wanted to go back and throw the wallet and the money in his face, but I reflected that this was more money than I had ever been able to call my own before.

  So I dried myself out in the sun and then went back to the wharves. I did not meet the captain again, and two days later I managed to get a place on a passenger steamer that was bound for the mouth of the Missouri. I worked as cabin boy - that is to say, I had to do the work of a man and a boy for three weeks while the old tub of a boat butted its way up the current. But we made the big muddy wash of the Missouri at last. I was now West, but not for enough West to have found a land that would be to the taste of Will Dorset. All was too tame and too easy for him.

  I had to beat about the town for a whole week before I found another steamer bound up the Missouri for Boonville, and in that boat I made the passage as a junior waiter. What with tips and wages, which were not very large, I reached Boonville with just thirty-two dollars in my pocket, and I felt myself to be a rich man. So I started out like any prosperous youngster to see the sights of the town - and in ten minutes I was seated at a poker game.

  One expects, of course, to hear that I lost my money at once. I was playing with two others, both big men with widebrimmed black hats, and long, drooping mustaches, and little bright black eyes that glittered at me and at one another. They offered me whiskey, but I could not stand the taste of this Western alcohol and filth which went by the name of whiskey, so I refused it. I remember that they praised me for having so much sense, and so the first hand was dealt. I hardly knew how to play, but I did know that four of a kind was rare good luck. So I bid high and finally won twenty dollars. Of course, that was a stacked pack the hand was dealt from, and those two rascals intended to trim me thoroughly in another ten minutes and then turn me adrift. But as I was raking in my profits, a tall, lean fellow came up to the table and stood there with his hands dropped on his hips, smiling down at the three of us.

  I shall never forget what a picture he made. He had his hat in his hand, which allowed his long, sun-faded hair to tumble down about his shoulders. He had on deerskins, almost the first I had ever seen, and one of the finest suits of them that I have ever come across. The coat was very long, reaching almost to the knee, and at the shoulder, the wrist, and at the bottom, there were deep fringes cut very fine. His trousers, which fitted tight, were beaded and fringed to the heel, and he had moccasins on his feet. Around his waist there was a broad, thick belt of the finest goatskin, new and white, and in a big holster at his right hip he had a Colt revolver - a weapon I had heard about but had never seen in backward Virginia.

  It was not his clothes that took my eye half so much as his brown, thin, ugly face. I could tell that this was an honest man at a glance. My two new friends seemed to be able to tell that, too, and they grew a little uncomfortable.

  "Son," said this man in the deerskins, "does your pa know that you're here?"

  "He doesn't," I said. "And I don't know where he is. I've come about four thousand miles, hoping to hit his trail. Maybe you could help me out."

  "I'm afraid not," he said. "But I can tell you the first best step to get to him. That's to get up from this here table and get out of this dirty hole."

  It seemed natural for me to obey him. I pocketed my money and stood up, but the two began to shout and swear at the stranger. He watched them for a moment, and then he said: "You sneakin' wolves... can't you find no man-sized meat? Have you got to eat veal? Now lemme hear no more yappin' out of you. Young man, you start for the door."

  HANDY WITH A COLT

  I did what he ordered me to do as tho
ugh he had a right to command me. When I came to the street, he backed out after me, keeping his face toward the others. Once he was beyond the door, he stopped sidewise and walked me around the corner into an alleyway.

  "What's your name?" he inquired.

  "My name is Lew Dorset."

  "Lew Dorset, my name is Chris Hudson. Those buzzards in there was about to pick you till your bones was white and dry. If you're hunting for your father like you say you are, the nearest way is to keep outside of curs like them."

  I began to see what he meant. I thanked him and promised to follow his advice. He put on his hat and brushed his hair back over his shoulders. I smiled at that, because it was like the gesture of a little girl - and yet I had seen few more manly-looking men than Chris Hudson. All this while he was looking at me with his eyes squinted a little, very much as though I were a long distance away from him. Then he asked me if I were a stranger here and without friends. I told him that I was, and a moment later I had popped out the whole story - not about Will Dorset having escaped from jail, but about how he had quarreled with my uncle and left, and how I started west after him.

  Chris Hudson listened very patiently to me. When I had finished, he said: "How much of that is true, and how much a lie?"

  It took me so much aback I couldn't find an easy answer. Finally I blurted out: "All that I've told you is true."

  "Have you told me half the truth?" He looked at me another moment, and then he grinned. "Well," he said, "you're pretty cool. How old are you? Eighteen?"

  "Sixteen."

  He reached out for my hand, turned it up, and ran his thumb over the calluses.

  "You'll live through it," he said.

  What he meant I had no idea, then.

  "What's made you think that your father will be in Boonville?" he asked me.

  "He'll be farther west, I guess. He's the sort of man that will need space."

  "And not too much law?" He winked at me, and I winked back.

  "Not too much law," I agreed.

  "Son, might he be your style of a man?"

  "You could put two like me inside him. He's a man!"

  He grinned again. Then he slapped me on the shoulder. "Would you like to go out where there's plenty of space... and not too much law?" he asked me. "Would you like to go out with me?"

  If he had asked me if I wanted to accept a chunk of the purest gold, my answer would have been given no more quickly.

  "The kind of law that goes for you," I said, "is the kind of law that goes for me."

  He grew a little more serious, after that. "No, I ain't settin' up for no sort of a model that a kid might grow up by. But yonder on the prairies where the angels wear red skins and where the nighest thing to a house dog that licks your hand is a buffalo wolf that tears your throat out...out yonder where most folks forget all about heaven and can feel hell knocking right up ag'in' the heels of their boots... out yonder, old son, you got to cany your own law locked up inside of your head. And they's damned few that ain't spoiled by the chance. But, good man or bad man, nobody but a fool goes onto them prairies without a rifle and the knowledge of how to shoot straight, to say nothin' of a pistol or a brace of revolvers for the little handy inside work. Can you shoot straight, kid?"

  It wasn't particularly pride that had made me learn to shoot straight. When Uncle Abner sent me out to get a mess of half a dozen squirrels, he used to give me six bullets, and no more, in an old rifle heavy enough to make my shoulder ache even now when I think about it. He didn't ask questions, because he wasn't a talkative man. But if I came back with four squirrels or even five, he reached for the hickory. After one of his hidings, I had to sit down and think - or stand up and think, because sitting wasn't particularly comfortable. You can't catch squirrels with your hands. When you're sent to shoot them, you have to shoot them. So I had to practice, and I had no bullets to practice with. What could I do? Practice without them, of course. That may sound like nonsense to men of this day, but marksmanship isn't weighed by the pound, as powder and bullets are. I've seen a great many men in these times who have burned up a thousand dollars' worth of good ammunition and who are still ten-cent marksmen - and that with rifles so light and which shoot so straight they hit the mark of their own free will, and with ammunition so clean and so cheap that every ten-year-old boy can keep his .22 rifle "in board and room."

  No, the average fellow in these days says to himself with his rifle at his shoulder: "I want to hit the target." But for my part, I had to say: "I dare not miss it." I have had some compliments in my time for quick shooting and for straight shooting, but my schooling came from Virginia and Uncle Abner who taught his lessons with a hickory - not a switch, but a stick that was a handful.

  I used to lie on my belly, when I was too young to hold the heavy rifle steady, and draw my bead on some small thing - the head of a nail, a bit of shining stone - anything would do. I drew my bead, until I could say: "You're dead!" I kept at it for hours - because, when I had bullets, every bullet had to mean a life. Afterward, for almost half a day at a time, as I grew bigger and stronger, I learned to snatch that big rifle to my shoulder and hold it there with hands turned into stone until the line of light on the top of the rifle barrel ran straight out into the heart of the target. Speed was necessary, too. Squirrels don't stand still, daydreaming and talking about the weather. They give you a glimpse of their head one minute and the fluff of their tail the next as they drift through the branches of a tree. I had to get hands as sensitive as the fingers of a crooked gambler and as steady as rock. And I got them. I got them by those years of steady practice with an empty gun. Even when times grew better with me, I don't think that I have spent a hundred rounds of ammunition in my entire life for the sake of practice.

  But pistol ammunition was cheaper than rifle food, and Uncle Abner used to give me a pistol, as often as not, and send me off to bring in the family meal with that. Now, a pistol is far different from a rifle. I think that with a rifle almost anyone can be trained to become a first-rate shot through constant practice - granting a background of steady nerves. But steady nerves and practice will never make a pistol expert. Rifle shooting is a science; pistol or revolver shooting is an art. One comes from the head, and one comes from the heart. Any blockhead can learn to run a camera well enough to pass muster - i f he tries to learn - but only a few can draw a picture, and one man in a century can really put paint on canvas as it should be put. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that what the camera is to the oil painting, the rifle is to the revolver. I have seen hundreds of men so really expert with a rifle that it is not extravagant to call them "dead shots." What came in line with their sights was actually dead before they pulled a trigger. But in all my experience I have come into contact, personally, with only three true artists with the revolver, in spite of the fact that in my day I have been from cow camp to mining ground to gambling hell where every man wore at least one Colt, and where only the fools failed to practice every day if they valued their lives.

  There are many reasons for this, and I think the most important reason is the six shots which lie in the Colt cylinder. Samuel Colt was a great genius, of course, but, when he gave men six chances instead of one, he divided their surety into six parts. In an oil painting every stroke ought to count. The result is that I have seen more than one barroom brawl where twenty Colts were chattering, where the mirrors and the furniture and the bar and the windows were blown to pieces - but where the total casualties were only one or two dead. People are too much abused with fiction which tells of deadly revolver play. I believe that it takes twenty revolver shots, even at close range, to accomplish what one rifle bullet brings about. On the whole, I think the old-school revolver play where the gun was fired from the shoulder and in line with the eye actually caused more execution. Afterward speed became the thing, and men shot from the elbow and then from the wrist.

  But all of these schools of shooting were wrong. There is one perfect way of drawing and shooting a revolv
er, and that is with the fingers only, A mere flexion and twist of the fingers ought to snatch the revolver out of the holster and fire it. But this can only be done by men who have practiced constantly and who have, in addition, a certain genius born in their eyes and in their hands. In my entire life, as I have said, I have only known three great artists with the revolver. One was the great Andy McGruder, one was Chuck Morris, and the third was - myself!

  This vanity will perhaps not be pardoned, but at least I say the words honestly. And, once again, I attribute my skill with a revolver to Uncle Abner, who made me turn bullets even from a pistol into dead squirrels or dead birds, as the case might be. I had to learn young, and childhood is the time for schooling, whether in books or in guns. I had another advantage. I learned in the hardest of all schools, with an old, badly-balanced pistol, so that, when I took the Colt from the hand of Chris Hudson, it seemed like a part of my body. I felt that I could not fail with it.

  I must apologize for this long digression, but, because guns, unfortunately, were to play such a large part in my history, I thought that I would explain why it was that I had a certain skill with them. Indeed, after I went into the West, I never improved in anything except in learning to draw a revolver. I was only sixteen when I started to master that phase of the art, but even then I was almost too old. I could manage to make my draw as fast as poor old Andy McGruder, perhaps, but I never could achieve that flashing light magic with which Chuck Morris could get his weapon out of leather.