Torturous trek, p.1
Torturous Trek, page 1
TORTUROUS TREK
Max Brand®
Copyright © 1932 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Copyright © renewed 1959 by Dorothy Faust.
Copyright © 2016 by Golden West Literary Agency for restored material.
The name Max Brand® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission.
E-book published in 2018 by Blackstone Publishing
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6110-0
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6109-4
Fiction / Westerns
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
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Chapter One
Nagle’s Bar in Circle City was one of the best; certainly it was the most democratic, for it offered three grades of whiskey. There was a whole keg of each on tap.
One was sold at twenty-five cents the glass. On it was a sign that read: this liquor is for strong men. are you strong?
On the second keg, which retailed at fifty cents a drink, was the legend: this only hurts you now and then.
On the third keg, the price of which was seventy-five cents, or six bits in the vernacular, was the following: Your old man drank this; why not you?
The answer of one wit to this was: “Because the old man didn’t last long.”
However, as has been pointed out, Nagle’s Saloon offered two drinks—of a kind—for half a dollar. And Sammy Day, when he stepped into Nagle’s place, unheralded, unannounced, had fifty cents and a great thirst.
He looked at the legends over both of the cheaper kegs and then turned wistful eyes upon the higher-priced stuff. He was one who liked quality and never objected to high prices, if he could pay them. However, on this occasion he was limited to the half-dollar. He did not even have an overcoat to pawn, though the temperature outside was floating around zero. He had had an overcoat and plenty of cash the evening before, when he arrived by forced marches from the southland. Tonight he had nothing except the clothes he stood up in. Some $2,500 had slipped away across this bar and at the poker tables in the next room. He had no regrets. But at this moment, he wanted a drink.
The philosophical man adapts his desires to his pocketbook. But Sammy Day was not philosophical. He always acted as though he had a million in his pocket and two hundred plus of beef and bone at his disposal. As a matter of fact, he rarely had more than one month’s wages as a cowhand, along with whatever winnings bucking faro or beating poker put in his jeans. As for size, he was only a welterweight, with heavyweight ambitions. What there was of him was lean and hard and rather drawn out. His nose was short and his jaw was stubby. His eyebrows grew straight across and bushed out in the center, so that he always seemed between good nature and a frown, although he was a smiling fellow.
In his eyes was fire. Sometimes it smoldered, sometimes it danced and leaped, sometimes it raged with a green devil glinting through, but always the fire was in the eyes of Sammy Day.
The cow range was his home. He had worked it from Montana to Chihuahua. Occasionally little happenings forced Sammy Day to abandon the reaches of his native heath, broad as that was, and so he had had glimpses of far lands as well. He could talk a little Chinese for you in a pinch, and, when he was stripped, one could see the horrible, unmistakable scar that was made when a Malay kris dagger was driven home. The scar was under the left shoulder.
Now he was up in the white North, a stranger there but one who was accustomed to the role. Another little “accident” had accounted for his journey north. The accident occurred in a Montana mining camp. In it, there had been mixed-up poker chips, a pack of cards flying in the air, much noise of shooting guns and men, and the acrid, choking smell of gunpowder in the air. Sammy Day had escaped through a rear window and hit the long trail. They rode three days to overtake him. He hid in a wolf’s burrow and soaked in ice-cold mud for hours while he watched the posse pass. Then he started out again, followed the pursuers, slipped past them, and here he was in Circle City.
Much of the world, it will be seen, had flowed through the eye and even through the blood of Sammy Day. But for only ten years had he been a free, independent, self-supporting man. He was now just twenty-two.
Most of this picture of Sam Day—he was called by another name in a more southerly land—is necessary to understand what went through his mind as he fumbled fifty cents in his pocket and looked at a seventy-five-cent drink. He was as one who is thirsty, who has been thirsty many times before, and who has generally gratified that thirst.
Nagle himself was behind the bar, and he understood the direction of his client’s fixed stare and the reason of it. “Have this one on me,” he said.
“I never take the first drink of the day off the bar,” said Sammy. “It’s bad luck.”
There was no argument. “What’s in the back room?” asked Sammy Day, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.
“Nothing but a little game of craps.”
“Why, nobody but me knows just how to talk to a pair of dice,” remarked Sammy. “Big Joe and Little Joe is a pair of cousins of mine, and there’s been seven days in every week of my life.”
He went straightway into the gaming room. As he went, he whistled sharp and shrill, but made a melody through his teeth.
He found eight men assembled around a blanket lying on the floor and folded long and smooth. They were bouncing the dice against the wall to make sure of an honest fall.
“I’ve got fifty cents,” said Sammy. “Do I fade into this game?”
A redheaded man looked at him with a grin. “Here’s fifty dollars, kid,” he said. “You can fade in with that.”
“I don’t borrow stakes,” said Sammy Day. “There’s no luck in that sort of a play.”
“You’re in with your fifty cents,” said the redheaded man. The dicebox had come into his hands at this moment, and he grinned at Day again.
For half an hour, that game continued, uninterrupted. Then Sammy Day put five dollars into his pocket; he kept another
twenty-five dollars in the game. Fortune had been kind to him.
One sourdough mumbled: “Them that come in with nothin’, they can’t lose.”
Sammy overheard. “That’s true,” he said. “But turn and turn about is fair play. I’ve lost my stake, in my day, to a good many bums with a two-bit stake.”
“You’ve lost your stake?” sneered the sourdough.
Sammy was holding the dicebox. He paused and looked considerately and steadily upon the sourdough. There was a green glint in his eyes.
“If you start starin’ at me,” said the sourdough, more ugly than ever, “I’ll give you a good reason for lookin’. Go on with the game!”
For only an instant Sammy continued to watch the face of the other, and then he said cheerfully, “All right!” and cast the dice. He rolled an eleven and took in the bets. He had fifty dollars to play now. But his heart was not in the game. His heart was back there at the bar, thinking about the seventy-five cents that he could not afford to buy before. He could buy it now, and its twin brother to go down with it.
“I’ll fade twenty of that,” the sourdough was saying.
He drew aside that much of the money and covered it with his own. He had a hand that looked fit to throttle an ox. He was brown as old mahogany, and the bony ridges stood out along his cheek at jaw and forehead. He was about forty. He would, perhaps, have been a terrible antagonist in hand-to-hand conflict.
The side glance of Sammy Day was never far away from him. A fond look was in his eyes. He grew dreamy. If his mind was partly on the drink in the barroom, it still hovered about the formidable figure of the sourdough, nevertheless.
Then came an interruption. A door slammed, and shouting roared through the big barroom. Someone called out that Rush Mahan had just pulled in and that he had Klondike with him.
The gamblers scattered. Even the sourdough exclaimed. Money was scooped up and pocketed.
“Who’s Rush Mahan?” asked Sammy Day.
As though he could not find a better interlocutor, he addressed the big sourdough. The latter looked at him with an evil eye.
“Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and maybe you’ll find out,” he declared.
“I’d rather find out about you,” Sammy Day said.
“About what?” snorted the other.
“About the insides of you … whether they’re stuffed with man or feathers,” said Sammy.
“Why, I gotta mind to break you in two,” said the sourdough, amazed and contemptuous as he measured the smaller body of the man from the Southland.
Then the pressure of the other gamblers, as they made for the door, forced the two apart and swept the sourdough into the next room ahead of Sammy Day.
“Who’s Rush Mahan and Klondike?” he asked of his nearest neighbor.
“You don’t know?” came the breathless answer. “Rush is the finest musher that ever pushed a team to the North Pole, and Klondike is the best leader that ever smelled out a trail.”
Th en they were drawn into the barroom, and Sammy Day got a corner position, the strategic place that he always desired. It put the wall at his back and allowed only half the world to get at him at once. Also, it enabled him to keep the whole scene under his eye.
He had been thinking that they were a lethargic lot, these men of the white North. Nothing mattered much to them, winning or losing, drunkenness or sobriety. But now the proper event had occurred to sweep them out of their indifference. A man and a dog had appeared on the scene.
To young Sammy Day, it seemed that neither the man nor the dog was worth such particular observation, magnificent as they were, both of them. For there was a girl in the room now who filled his eye and his mind. The clumsy swathing of her furs could not hide her, and her face shone like a mysterious sun into the very soul of the young man.
He had to repeat his question twice and again to the man at his shoulder before the head of the latter swung about impatiently.
“That?” said the man of the Northland. “Why, that’s nothing but Rush Mahan’s kid sister. There’s Rush himself. That one there in the center. That one with Klondike standin’ beside him. What a man!”
Chapter Two
Sammy Day, connoisseur of men, had to admit that Rush Mahan was worthy of an exclamation point or two. He was one of those perfect men who begin as perfect boys and continue through their lives wise, noble, and strong. He must have filled a mother’s heart as fully as, one day, he would fill the heart of a wife. His brow was open; his eye was calm. He looked into the faces of other men without either challenge or inquiry, but with a cheerful acceptance of all around him.
Big of heart, big of mind, he was big of body also. He was one of those rare creatures who can use upward of two hundred pounds of bone and brawn, rather than merely carry it. Now and then, one sees such a man stand out like a star in athletics—a football player, a sprinter on the track, the stroke in an eight-oared crew. It means that bulk is not furnished at the expense of an adequate nervous system, that mere size and rough-hewing are not the goal in the making of such a prodigy among men.
Now that this magnificent monster of a man was being made the hero of the hour, he accepted his honors gladly and modestly.
Young Sammy Day looked at him, with head slightly bowed, from under gathered brows, his jaw setting and his eyes glinting that green light that was familiar to certain of his former associates in sunnier regions to the south. For Sammy was one of those types that are not impressed or appalled by size. In this he resembled the Louisiana Negro who said: “Ah whittles ’em down to mah own size, suh.” And when Sammy saw this prince among men, he could not help measuring the distance between himself and the other. Well, a small blade with a wonderful edge might cut as deep as a great one that is dull, he told himself. Whatever else he lacked, he had an edge.
Then, turning his eyes from the face of big Rush Mahan, he considered the girl again. He was rather amazed to see that her straight blue eyes were looking straight at him, reading him, judging him, not judging him kindly either. Her expression hardened as she glanced away from him.
Sammy Day merely laughed. You look at me today, beautiful, he said, and you’ll follow me tomorrow. He said it inwardly, with a hot electric flush leaping all through his body. You’ll follow me tomorrow, he said to himself again.
He forgot all about the center of the great demonstration. What was Rush Mahan to him? As he looked at the girl, he told himself that his life had reached a stopping point beyond which it would never flow. She was his goal and the end of his voyage, so far as women went. There would never be another for him.
There is a solemnity about final convictions, even the swift ones that are reached by one outward bound of the young spirit. He was rather grim than gay as he stared at her. He told himself that he would make her look back at him. There was such a thing as feeling the weight of an eye, and she would have to feel his. He would draw her glance back, through the crowd, in spite of all the men who were crowding, speaking to her and admiring her.
Presently, he had what he wanted. Through a gap among the many heads, he saw her face turning, and she looked full at him. Insolently, triumphantly, he smiled and raised his hat. It mattered not to Sammy Day that her head jerked suddenly higher and turned hastily away. Even in the distance, through the smoke-dimmed air of the room, he could see the flare of her sudden color. She hated him now. But that was all right, he told himself. At least, she would never forget that mug of his. It would be printed in her mind to the end of her days.
He was something like a cowpuncher, who feels content and master of the situation if he gets his rope on any obstacle, even if it is the plunging head of a landslide, He had made his contact, and he felt competent to manage the rest.
Rush Mahan was wading through the crowd of his admirers to the bar. They still shouted and cheered him. He had won the Nome Sweepstakes—$10,000 and an inscription on the famous cup. He had beaten the finest dog teams and the finest dog mushers in the Northland. And that was hardly to be wondered at, for he was the sort of man who was bound to win at everything.
They cheered him without envy, as subjects willingly cheer their king when he passes. There was only one dark, keen, closed mind in the room—Sammy Day’s.
Waiting and watching, he took note of the little open circle around Rush Mahan. Such distance would hardly be given to a prince, in the rough etiquette of the North. But it was given to Mahan, and to his dog.
With an unpracticed eye, Day looked at Klondike. Dogs were not his specialty. Horses were what he knew. He could read the points of a horse as another man reads the pages of a book. He had traveled thousands of miles with them. He had won and given them his confidence. He had watched over them, and, in the dangerous wilderness, they had watched over him like another man, a partner. Horses, therefore, were the open gateway to his heart, but dogs were a different matter. They were all right to tree a mountain lion or when hunting a grizzly; otherwise, they were sleepy beasts that clutter up a ranch house and scratch at their fleas in front of the stove in winter. He had no understanding of the species, but he did not need understanding to see that this Klondike was a lord of his kind.
He had the coat of a wolf and the kind, open face of a Newfoundland. He was bigger than any wolf that Day had seen, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds, even. Under the fluff of his long hair and the closely fitted coat of fur that lay next to his skin, one could sense the big muscles, made strong and hard with constant labor. But, as in the master, it was rather mind than matter that counted the most. He had the look of sapience; he had the bearing of the unbeaten.
“Yeah, that’s a dog,” Sammy Day found himself saying.
A glass of whiskey appeared at his hand. Everyone was preparing to drink. Nagle himself was beating on the bar for silence. Then he roared: “Here’s to the kingpin dog musher and straight shooter, Rush Mahan!”
Sammy Day glanced across the crowd, and he saw Mahan’s sister laughing with rosy joy. He forgot his whiskey. It stood untouched.
“This is mighty kind of you, Nagle,” said Mahan. “But give honor where honor is due, you fellows. Here’s to the dog that pulled the team through, and me along with it. Here’s to the dog that smelled a trail a foot deep under the snow. Here’s to what pulled us through a hurricane. Here’s to old Klondike, bless him!”
“I’ll drink that, too,” said Nagle. “Goldie Mahan, won’t you drink to that?”
They turned their heads, all the men, and smiled at her.
“I’ll taste a drop in honor of old Klondike,” she said. “Bless him.”
They handed her a glass. When all the glasses rose and shone, all save that of Sammy Day, he saw her taste the liquor and try hard to keep from making a face. He laughed again, cheerfully. Then he tossed off his own glass. He would rather, for his part, drink in honor of the dog than the man.
There was a second round, of course, for Rush Mahan this time. It was greeted with a whoop, such as a dog-puncher utters when he starts his team. Sam Day did not drink.
“Has Grant come in yet?” Mahan asked loudly. “Any of you boys seen Phil Grant?”
