When Iron Turns to Gold
George Owen Baxter
(Max Brand)
I
Even though the slope was steep and broken and cut with boulders, Andrew Lanning let the reins hang slack and gave the mare her head. But, in spite of the difficulty of the course before her, Sally gave only half of her attention to it. She was mountain bred and mountain trained, and accordingly, she had that seventh sense in her dainty feet to which only mountain horses ever attain.
She knew a thousand little tricks. She knew that, when gravel began to slip beneath her, the thing to do was not to stop merely or to whirl and go back, but to spring like a cat to one side. For that small beginning might mean a landslide of no mean proportions. By that seventh sense on those small, black hoofs she understood the rocks; she sensed which of them were too slippery for acrobatics and which, for all their apparent smoothness, were so friable that she could get a toehold. She knew to a fraction of a degree what angle of a slope was practicable for a descent, and as for climbing, if she did not quite have the prowess of a mountain sheep, she had the same heart and the same calm scorn for heights. With this equipment it was no wonder that Sally went carelessly down the slope according to her own free will, sometimes walking, sometimes sitting back on her haunches and sliding, sometimes breaking into a beautiful, free gallop when she came onto a comparatively level shoulder of the hill.
But, no matter how busy she was, from time to time Sally tossed up a head that had made the heart of many a horse lover leap, and regarded the valley below her. It was a new country to Sally, and about strange things she was as curious, as pryingly inquisitive, as a woman. Everything about Sally, indeed, was daintily feminine, from the nice accuracy with which she put down her feet to the big, gentle, intelligent eyes, and there was even something feminine in the way her pricking ears quivered back to listen when her master spoke.
When he said, at length—“Ah, Sally, there’s where I fight my big fight and my last fight”—she came to an abrupt halt and raised her head to look down into the shadowy heart of the valley. From here one could plainly see the little village of Martindale and every winding of its streets. For the mountain air was as clear as glass. Having surveyed it to her own content, she turned her head and regarded the master from a corner of her eye, as one who would say: “I’ve seen a hundred towns, better or worse than that one. What the deuce is there about it to interest you?” But Andrew Lanning nodded to her, and she tossed her head again and started on down the slope with the same nervous, cat-like placing of her feet. Plainly these two were closely in tune. He was among men very much what she was among horses, with the same clean-cut, sinewy, tapering limbs and the same proud lift of the head and the same clear, dark eyes.
But as they drew closer to the bottom of the valley, his face clouded more and more with thought. He even went the length of drawing his rifle from its case to examine its action, and then he tried his revolvers. Having looked to them, he was more at ease, as could be told by the way he settled back in the saddle, but still it was plain that he approached Martindale very much in doubt as to the reception that waited for him there.
As if to hasten the conclusion, the moment the hoofs of Sally touched the smooth trail that slid down the valley floor, he gathered her to a fast gallop. She came up on the bit in a flash, eager to stretch out at full speed, and under the iron restraint of his wrist, her neck bowed. There was no suggestion of daintiness about her now. She was all power, all flying speed, all mighty lungs and generous heart, and she rushed down the trail with that deceptively easy, long stride that only a blooded horse can have. But, even in the midst of her joyous gallop, the mind of the master guided and controlled her, not with the tug of the reins but with a word, and at his voice she canted her head just a trifle to one side, in the beautiful way that horses have, and seemed to listen and read his mind and his heart.
“Not so fast, Sally,” he was saying. “Not so fast, old girl. We’re going into Martindale at full gallop, and we may go out again with twenty men and horses on our heels. Well, that won’t be anything new to us, eh?”
The wind had picked up a little whirl of dust before her; she cleared it from her nostrils with a snort and then came back to an easier gait, smooth as flowing water; her rider sat like a rock. And so they came to the outskirts of Martindale. It was one of those typical mountain towns, weather-stained, wind-racked, with the huddling houses that gave a comfortable promise of warmth in the winter snows and of cool shade in the summer. Andrew Lanning called Sally to a walk and went slowly along the main street.
If Martindale were awake, it only opened one eye at Andrew Lanning. There were no people at windows or on porches, so far as he could see, and very few sounds of life from the interiors of the shacks. The predominate sound was the dismal bellowing of a cow on a hillside pasture above the town, a disconsolate mother mourning for a son who had gone to make veal for the hungry. Not a particularly cheery welcome for Andrew Lanning, and his heart grew heavier with every step Sally took.
His manner had changed the moment he came between the two lines of houses that fenced him in. He sat bolt erect in the saddle, looking straight ahead of him, but his eyes had that curious, alert blankness of the pugilist who looks into your eyes and is nevertheless watching your hands. Andrew Lanning was watching, while he stared straight down the street, every window, every door, every yard that he passed, and when a little girl of nine or ten years came out on the porch of a shack, a quiver ran through the body of the rider before he saw that the newcomer was harmless. He turned squarely toward the child, whose great eyes were staring at the beauty of the horse. Andrew brought Sally to a halt.
“Hello, Judy!” he called. “Have you forgotten me?”
“Oh, my! Oh, my land!” exclaimed Judy, clasping her hands after a grown-up fashion. “Oh, Andy, you did come back.”
He chuckled, but his glance slipped up and down the street before he answered. “Don’t they expect me?”
“Of course they don’t.”
“Didn’t Hal Dozier tell ’em I was coming?”
“He did, but nobody believed it. My dad said …” She stopped and choked back the next words.
He leaned a little from the saddle. “Judy, you ain’t afraid of me?”
Her hands were clasped again. She came toward him with slow, dragging steps, as though her curiosity were gradually conquering her timidity, and all the while she peered into his face. Something approaching a smile began to grow on her lips. “Why, Andy, you ain’t so much changed. You’re most awful brown and you’re thinner and you’re older, but you ain’t changed. I think you’re even a lot nicer. Is this the hoss that everybody talks about all the time? Is this Sally?”
“This is Sally. Do you know where I got her?”
“Did you … did you … shoot somebody for her?”
His lips twitched. “A little boy gave her to me, Judy. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t see how he could. I don’t really, Andy.”
She stretched out her hand with the palm up—man’s age-old way of approaching a horse—and tried to touch Sally’s face. Under the smooth-flowing voice of Andy the mare tremblingly submitted, and discovering that the soft, little, brown hand of the girl did no harm, Sally began to sniff at it.
“I know what she wants!” said Judy delightedly. “She wants apples or something. Ain’t that it? Oh, you beauty! Might I ride her sometime?”
“Maybe. But what was it your father said?”
A shade of trouble came in her face. “I don’t believe a single thing they say about you, Andy.”