With profound deliberation the old man turned to his wife and put his arms around her. The tears streaming down his face started to dissolve the coagulated blood. “Sorry, woman,” he was mumbling. “Sorry to make you worry like thet.”
“Oh, Emmitt, Emmitt!” She sat back from him, crying and smiling and half laughing all at once. “You gonna listen to me now and git yourself a hand to do the heavy work?”
“Reckon I ain’t got much choice.” The rancher climbed effortlessly to his feet and extended a hand down toward the beaming giant and the flabbergasted Ramses. “Mighty grateful to you, mister.”
The mountain man nodded as he shook the proffered hand. “Glad to be o’ service, sir. I could sense you were a good man, and I could see how serious you wanted to live.”
“It weren’t fer myself. Heck, I done had a decent life. But the woman, it would’ve gone hard on her. This way I got a little time to make some better plans.”
“It’s good fer a man to have plans, Emmitt,” the giant said.
Leaping lithely from the buckboard, the rancher loosened the reins from the hitching rail, climbed back aboard, and lifted his startled wife into the seat alongside him. She almost forgot to hand the cup back to Malone, following which her husband chucked the reins. Jerking forward, the buckboard rattled up the dirt road that led out of town, kicking up dust as it passed the seeping pump.
Ramses had forgotten all about the piece of eight. His attention was now riveted on the old wooden cup. “Might I have a look at that vessel, sir?”
“Don’t see why not.” The giant handed it over. Ramses scrutinized it as minutely as he’d ever inspected a suspect coin, turning it over and over in his fingers, feeling the scars in the old wood, lifting it to smell of the interior. It reeked of old rooms, and dampness, and something he couldn’t quite place. Some fragrance of a faraway land and perhaps also a distant time.
With utmost reluctance he passed it back. “What potion did you have in that, sir, that brought that man back from the dead? For the country of the dead was surely where he was headed. I saw his skull. It was well stove in, and his brains were glistening in the sunlight.”
“’Tweren’t no potion.” The mountain man walked back to his lunatic steed and casually returned the cup to the unsecured saddlebag whence it had come. “That man wanted to live. Out o’ love for another. That right there’s a mighty powerful medicine. Mighty powerful. Didn’t need but a little nudge to help it along.”
“Yes, of course.” Then it was no potion, Ramses thought furiously, but the cup itself, the cup! “Might I ask where you acquired that vessel?”
“What, the grail? Won it off the Shemad Bey, pasha of Tripoli, durin’ a game o’ chess we played anon my last sojourn along the Barbary Coast. After he’d turned it over, the old pasha confessed to me that it had been stolen many times afore comin’ his way. So I didn’t see the harm in relievin’ him of its possession. I reckon it’s better off in my care than his, anyways.” He pulled the straps of the saddlebag through both buckles and notched them tight.
“Your pardon, sir,” said Ramses, “but did you say ‘grail’?”
“That’s right. Belonged long time ago to a feller name of Emmanuel. Took his last swallow from it, I believe.”
“You are jesting with me, sir.”
“Nope.” The giant walked down the street, his mount trailing alongside with a notable air of equine indifference. “When I jest, I laugh, and when I laugh, rivers bubble and mountains shake. You don’t see no rivers bubblin’ or mountains shakin’ hereabouts now, do you?”
“Sir, we stand in the plains of the Missouri. There are no mountains hereabouts, and the nearest river is the Meramec, some twenty miles to the south.”
“Why, ’tis right you are. I reckon you’ll just have to take my word for it, then.”
“Sir, would you consider selling that gr—that drinking vessel? I will make you a fine offer for it, in gold.”
“’Tain’t fer sale, friend. Fer one thing, I got plenty o’ gold. Fer t’ other, it wouldn’t work for you nohows.”
“And why not?”
“The grail, see, it don’t do nothin’ by itself. It’s just a cup, an ordinary drinkin’ cup. It’s what’s in the heart and the soul of whomever’s drinkin’ from it that makes a difference. Most times it don’t make no difference. Sometimes it do. I was glad it did tonight, but you kin never be sure.” He halted, and Ramses saw they were standing outside the blacksmith shop and stable.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, friend, I’ve been three days and nights on the back of this lamentable alibi of a horse, and I’ve a might o’ sleepin’ to catch up on.” With that he turned and entered the stable. Emerging a few minutes later, he strode off down the street toward the town’s single hotel, from whose attached saloon could imprecisely be heard the brittle jollities of a banjo player in shifty voice.
Ramses was left standing solitaire in the starlight, thinking hard. The giant would be a bad man to cross, he ruminated. He’d seen the heavy Sharps rifle protruding from its scabbard on the side of the saddle. But the Promethean rustic had neglected even to lock the stable! And Ramses had taken careful notice of the fact that there were no locks on the saddlebags, not even a knot. Just a couple of straps on each one.
But Ramses was no simpleton. He returned to his wagon and mounted the seat, chucking the reins and making as much noise as possible on his ostentatious way out of town. The mountain man had refused to sell him the cup, and that was that, and like the honest soul that he was, he was moving placidly on.
A mile out of town he set up a hasty camp by the bank of a running stream, tethering one of his horses to a convenient cottonwood while hoping there were no acquisitive Indians or white men about. He made and drank some strong coffee, considered the night sounds and the stars, and round about three A.M. saddled up his other animal and rode quietly back into town.
The wooden buildings were shadowy now, the two saloons as silent as the distant church that dominated the far end of the main street. Dismounting outside the stable, he kept a wary eye on the distant hotel. The door hardly creaked as he edged it aside just enough to slip through. His excitement rose as through the dim light he saw that the mountain man’s animal stood where he’d left it in the farthest stall.
Ramses could move fast when he needed to, whether running from irate fathers or from authorized representatives of the law. He moved fast now, the straw hissing under his feet as he hurried to the far end of the building. The dozing horses and one mule ignored him.
Lifting the stall door as he opened it so the hinges wouldn’t creak, he stepped inside. Facing him, the improbably large quadruped filled the smelly enclosure from wall to wall. At the back of the stall, the saddlebags lay draped across a pile composed of saddle and tack.
Turning sideways, he attempted to slip between the animal’s mass and the unyielding stall panels.
“C’mon there, boy. Give us a little room. Move on over just a bit, won’t you?”
Swinging its mottled face to cast a skewed eye at him, the ludicrous creature emitted a soft snort and promptly lowered its head to begin cropping at the straw underhoof.
“Come on, damn you!” Ramses put both hands on the animal’s flank and shoved, bracing himself against the wall and putting all his weight into the effort. He might as well have been trying to convert a reluctant Jesuit.
Breathing hard, Ramses deposed on the four-legged barricade to his intent a few choice nonmedical terms. He bent and passed through the slats of the stall wall into the vacant stall next to it, then carefully slipped in again near the rear, taking care to keep an eye on the horse’s oversized rear hooves. It continued to ignore him, wholly intent on the available fodder.