The Brand

________________________________________________
Title:     The Brand
Author: Rex Beach [More Titles by Beach]

I

The valley was very still. No breath of wind had stirred it for many days. It was smothered so heavily in snow that the firs were bent; even the bare birch limbs carried precarious burdens, and when gravity relieved some sagging branch the mass beneath welcomed the avalanche so softly that the only sound was a whisper as the bough returned to its position. The brooding cold had cleared the air of sound as it had of moisture. No birds piped, there was no murmur of running water, no evidence of animal life except an occasional wavering line etched into the white by the feet of some tiny rodent.

The rolling hills were sparsely timbered, against an empty north sky a jumble of saw-toothed peaks were limned like carvings, and everywhere was the same unending hush of winter. The desolation was complete.

Yet there was life here, for spaced at regular intervals across the gulch were mounds of white, each forming the lips of a rectangular cavity resembling an open grave. They were perfectly aligned and separated from each other by precisely thirty paces; surrounding each was a clearing out of which freshly cut stumps protruded bearing snow caps fashioned like the chapeau of a drum-major. There were six of these holes, and a seventh was in process of digging. Over the last one a crude windlass straddled and the heap of debris at its feet showed raw and dirty against the snow. Out of the aperture a thin vapor rose lazily, coating the drum and rope with rime; from the clearing a narrow trail wound to a cabin beside the creek-bank.

McGill came out into the morning and with him came his three giant malamutes, wolf-gray, shaggy, and silent like their master. He eyed the drooping, white-robed forest and the desolate ridges that shut him in, then said, in a voice harsh from disuse:

"Hello, people! Anything happened yet?"

He made it a practice to speak aloud whenever he thought of it, for the hush of an arctic winter plays pranks with a person's mind, and there is a certain effect of sanity in spoken words, senseless though they be.

After a moment he repeated his greeting: "Good morning, I said. Can't you answer?" Then his cheeks flamed above his heavy beard and he yelled, loudly, "Good morning, you ----! Can't you say anything?" He glared reproachfully at a giant spruce from the lower limbs of which depended the quarters of several caribou. "Tom, you ain't gone back on me? Say hello. You and me are friends. Speak up!" After a time he shook his head, murmuring: "It's no use. I've got to make all the noise there is. If it would only blow--or something. I'd like to hear the wind."

He strode toward the prospect hole, the dogs following sedately, their feet making no sound in the snow. They, too, felt the weight of isolation and never left his side. Arriving at the dump, McGill stood motionless beside the windlass for a long time, staring into nothingness with eyes that were strained and miserable. When the cold bit him he roused himself and addressed the steam-filled opening dispiritedly:

"So, you didn't freeze up on me. That's good. I'll get bed-rock to-day and show you up for a dirty cheat. Pay! Bah! there ain't none!"

He descended a ladder at one end of the shaft, gathered the charred logs, tied them into a bundle with the end of the windlass rope, then, mounting the ladder, hoisted them to the surface. Next, hooking on the ungainly wooden bucket, he lowered it, after which he descended for a second time.

There began a long and monotonous series of ascents and descents, for every bucket of gravel meant two journeys the full depth of the pit. It was a tedious and primitive process, involving a tremendous waste of effort, but he was methodical, and each time the tub rose it carried a burden sufficient to tax the strength of two men. He handled it easily, however, and by midday had removed the thawed ground and scraped a sample from close to frost. He laid a light fire, then took the heaping gold-pan under his arm and set off for his cabin, accompanied by the malamutes.

When he had prepared and eaten his lunch he seated himself before his panning-tub, a square box half filled with water melted from the creek ice, and began the process of testing his prospect.

Having worked down the gravel and sediment to a half-handful, he spread it with a movement of his wrists, leaving stranded at the tail of the black sand a few specks of yellow. These he eyed for a moment before washing them away.

"Too light--as usual," he said, aloud. The dogs stirred and raised their heads. "Always pretty near, but not quite. But it's here, somewhere, and I'll get it if I can last out this damned silence. That rim-rock didn't lie. And old Pitka didn't lie, either. Nobody lies except--women." He scowled at some remembrance, his whole face retreated behind a bristling mask of ferocity. He sat motionless over the tub of muddy water until the fire died out of the stove and the chill warned him that it was time to resume work.

For many weeks--how many McGill neither knew nor cared--he had pursued the routine of his search. He had penetrated this valley alone, unseen, in the late autumn, and every day since then he had labored steadily, mechanically, almost without physical sensation, for all feeling was centered in his memory, which never gave him time to consider his surroundings. Spring was coming now--the sun was already peeping over the southern hills in the middle of its daily journey--and during this time there had been but two interruptions which had roused him from his apathy. One had occurred when, in quest of fresh meat, he had discovered that he had neighbors ten miles to the west. He had seen their camp from the divide, then had turned and slunk away, cursing them for intruding upon his privacy. The other was when a herd of caribou had crossed. At that time he had given brief rein to his desire to kill, seeing ahead of his sights the face of the man who had sent him into the wilderness. He could have bagged half the herd, but checked himself in time, realizing that it was not Barclay at whom he leveled his rifle, but defenseless animals, the carcasses of which were useless.

Barclay! The name maddened McGill. He wondered dully why he continued to work so steadily when Barclay had robbed him of the need for gold. The answer to this, he supposed, was easier than the answer to those other questions that forever troubled him--he had to do something or die of his thoughts, and he knew no other work than this. Even in his busiest hours memories of Barclay and the woman obtruded themselves.

It was after dark when he had fired the hole a second time and returned to his cabin. He had not reached bed-rock and this fact irritated him--he was growing very irritable, it seemed. Lighting his pipe of rank "sheep-dip" tobacco when the supper-dishes were finally cleaned and the dogs fed, he once more prepared for the profitless process of panning. But he noticed that this sample of gravel was different to any he had yet found, being of a peculiar ashen color. He felt it with practised fingers and discovered it to be gritty and full of sediment.

"Feels good," he said, aloud, "but I'll bet it's barren."

He had panned so many samples that all eagerness, all curiosity as to the outcome, had long since disappeared, therefore his movements were purely perfunctory as he dissolved the clay lumps and washed the gravels down. He paused half-way through the operation to dry his hands and relight his pipe, then fell to thinking of Barclay and the woman once more, and remained so for a long time. When he resumed his task it was with glazed, unseeing eyes. He was about to dump the last dregs carelessly when something just slipping over the edge of the pan caught his eye and caused him to tilt the receptacle abruptly.

The breath whistling in his throat roused the dogs. McGill closed his eyes for an instant, then reached unsteadily for the candle. A movement of his wrist ran the water across the pan bottom and spread the black sand thinly. Instantly there leaped out against the black metal a heap of bright, clean, yellow particles which lay as if glued together.

"Coarse gold! Coarse gold!" he whispered, then cursed in the weak, meaningless manner of men under great excitement. Not trusting himself to hold the pan, he set it upon the table, but without removing his eyes from it. When his nerves had steadied he ran the prospect down, all the time muttering in his beard. He dried it over the fire, blew the iron sand free with his breath, then pushed the particles into a heap, striving to estimate their value.

"There's half an ounce," he said, finally. "Eight dollars a pan! God! that's big! Big! It's another Klondike." He rose and ran bareheaded out into the night, followed by the dogs, then stood staring at the smoke as it ascended vertically above his shaft, like a giant night-growing plant of some kind. He was tempted to descend the ladder and tear the crackling logs apart, but thought better of it. Swinging his eyes along the valley rim that stood out black against the aurora, he lifted his long arms. "It's mine, all mine! Understand?" He cried the words loudly, wildly, as if challenging the silence. "It's no good to me, but it's mine, and, by God, I'll keep it!"

McGill reached bed-rock the next evening and spent most of the night panning the pile of scrapings he had collected from the bottom of the pit. If the top of the streak had been rich, the lower concentration was amazing. Every seam in the shattered limestone, which stood on end like sluice riffles, contained little flattened pumpkin-seeds of gold; they lay embedded in the clay stringers like plums in a pudding or as if some lavish hand had inserted them there, as coins are slipped into the slot of a child's savings-bank. He could see them before the dirt was half washed, but took a supreme pleasure, nevertheless, in watching the yellow pile grow as the sediment disappeared. A baking-powder can was half filled when he had finished; it told him unmistakably the magnitude of his riches. He was a wealthy man, wealthier than he had ever dreamed of being there was more where this came from and the gulch lay unappropriated from end to end. Fortune had come in a day, and he would never want so long as he lived. His thoughts were wild and chaotic, for he was half mad from the silence.

But what use to make of his discovery he hardly knew, since he had slunk away from the world, ablaze with hatred for his fellow-men, intending to live alone for the rest of his days. His grudge was as bitter now as then, and he determined, therefore, to keep his find a secret. That would be a grim, if unsatisfactory, sort of revenge, he reflected. He would take what he wished, and let other men wear out their lives searching unsuccessfully. Those strangers to the westward, for instance, would toil and suffer through the long winter, then leave discouraged. There was money here for them and for hundreds--thousands--like them, but he decided to guard his secret and to let it die with him.

McGill pictured the result of this news if he gave it out; the stampede, the headlong rush that would bring men from every corner of the North. He saw this silent valley bared of its brooding forest and filled with people; he saw a log city in the flats down by the river; he heard the bass blasts of steamboats, the shrilling of saw-mills, the sound of music from dance-halls, the click of checks and roulette-balls, the noise of revelry--

"No! No! No!" He rose and shouted into the empty silence of his cabin. "I won't do it! I won't! I won't!"

But the voices called to him all through the night.

He rose early, for they would not let him rest, and during the darkness a terrible hunger had grown upon him. It was the hunger for companionship, for speech. His secret was too great for imprisonment, it threatened to burst the confines of the valley by its own tremendous force; he knew he could never sleep with it, for it would smother him; vampire-like, it would suck the life from his veins and the reason from his brain.

When he had eaten he pocketed the baking-powder tin, slipped into his snow-shoes and, crossing the gulch, climbed the westward hills that hid his neighbors. The dogs went with him.

 

II

News of the John Daniels strike reached Ophir in July, when a ragged, unkempt man arrived in a poling-boat. He was one of the party that had camped west of McGill, and he ate a raw potato with the ravenous appetite of an animal while waiting for his first meal at the Miner's Rest. Between mouthfuls he gave the word that set the town ablaze.

When he had bought a ton of grub at the A. C. store and weighed out payment in bright pumpkin-seed gold he went to Hopper's saloon and handed the proprietor a folded paper.

Hopper read it uncomprehendingly.

"This is a location notice, recorded in my name," the latter said, turning the document uncomprehendingly as if to see if it contained a message on the reverse side.

The stranger nodded. "Number Four Above, on John Daniels Creek. John staked for you, and told me to tell you to come. We've struck it rich."

Hopper's hand shook; he stared at the speaker in bewilderment. "John Daniels? I don't seem to remember him."

"He's a big slab-sided man with a deep voice and eyes like ice."

The listener started. "Is he--skookum?"

"Stronger 'n any two men--"

"God! It's--McGill!"

"I thought so, but I never saw him only once--that was in Circle. He's changed now--got a beard. He said you done him a favor once. You're his friend, ain't you?"

"I am."

"What's the trouble with him?" There was a pause. "You can tell me. He put me and my five pardners in on his strike. I'm taking grub to him and the others."

"Oh, it was about a woman, of course. It always is. Everybody here knows the story. She was no good, except to look at. Feller named Barclay brought her into the country, but Dan didn't know it, so he up and marries her. She thought he had money, and when she found he was broke like the rest of us she and Barclay began cuttin' up again. It was rotten. I came near putting Barclay away, but figgered Dan wouldn't like nobody to do his work, so I told him. He went out to clean the slate, but found his wife was crazy about the skunk and always had been, so he sent 'em away together. He done it for her sake, but he warned 'em to stay off his trail, because no camp was big enough to hold all three of 'em. It was blizzardy, and what did the blame' fools do but get caught ten miles below here. Cochrane brought 'em back that night on his sled. McGill was here, right where you're standing, when they were lugged in. When he seen Barclay he went after him again, figgerin', I suppose, that God was disgusted with his proposition and had sent the feller back to be finished."

"Good!" said the stranger. "And he got him, eh?"

"No! Barclay wasn't more 'n half dead, and the woman fell to beggin' for his life again. She appealed to all of us. McGill must have loved her more 'n we give him credit for, because when he saw that neither one of 'em was able to leave, he left instead. He walked right out of that door into the wickedest storm we had that season, and we never seen him again. Everybody thought he froze or the wolves got him. That was a year ago last winter."

"What become of the woman?"

"Oh, her and Barclay left for Dawson on the first boat. I guess they saw we didn't enjoy 'em here."

"And Barclay? Didn't nobody offer to bump him off?" The ragged stranger was incredulous.

"No, we just left him and the woman alone. Most of us was kind of sorry for her."

"Sorry? Why?"

"Well--" Hopper hesitated. "I don't think she exactly understood what she was doin'. You know the first winter up here is hard on tenderfeet, especially women. Most of 'em act mighty queer before they ca'm down. She'd have come to herself if McGill had given her time."

"Hm-m! It's too late now." Both men nodded. "When 'll you leave for John Daniels Creek?"

"When? Now! I've got enough of this camp, and I'll have these bar-fixtures packed in two hours."

* * * * *

McGill--or John Daniels, as he chose to call himself--saw his dream come true. The first stampeders came in August; gaunt fellows worn by sleepless days and nights during which they had fought the swift waters and the fear of pursuit. They were followed by a tiny river boat, then an A. C. packet, loaded heavy and carrying Hopper with his bar-fixtures and fifteen barrels of whisky. She had been aground a hundred times and had passed other stranded craft laden with men who cursed her as she gained the lead. A city of tents sprang up on the flats; it changed to one of cabins when the first snow flew. John Daniels Creek was overrun, at nights its tortuous course was lit by glowing fires, smoke hung above it constantly, it became pitted with prospect holes. Trails were broken to adjoining creeks where similar scenes were enacted. But of all who came, few saw, and almost none spoke to, John Daniels himself, for he never went to town and there was no welcome at his cabin. Of course his name was on every tongue, but he toiled underground by day and hid himself by night. Sometimes Hopper, on his way to or from Number Four Above, would stop over and spend an evening with him, but not often.

Meanwhile great ash-gray pay dumps grew upon Discovery, and there were rumors of a fabulous bed-rock, inlaid with gold, but Daniels did all his own sampling, so there was no way of verifying the reports. When the spring sluicing was finished it was said that he had cleaned up half a million.

Daniels himself, huge, gaunt, gray-bearded, and silent, saw his gold loaded aboard the first steamer and accompanied it to the "outside"--this being his first trip to the States in ten years.

During his absence the new camp of Arcadia grew, for its fame had spread. It changed from a formless cluster of log shacks to a small city of sawed lumber and paint. One season had made the wilderness into a frontier town, the next made of it a metropolis. With the current that flowed thither from the distant camps came the scum of the north country. Following the first tide of venturesome, strong-limbed men came the weaklings, the maimed and crooked of body and soul, the parasites and idlers. Among these there were women of the customary kind and a number of men who lived upon their earnings. Barclay was one of them.

Arcadia was in the fullest riot of its growth when John Daniels returned, late in the autumn. He had expected to find a change, but he was unprepared for the startling transformation that greeted his eyes. It stirred him deeply, for the town was his, he had made it, his hands had given it life. He wondered if this could be his desolate camping-place of two seasons before. Where was the melancholy forest? the brooding silence? As he walked up the front street past the painted stores the vigorous life and optimism of the place electrified him; he heard laughter and music, the tinkle of pianos from the dance-halls, the sounds of revelry. The air was filled with clamor, it was pungent with smoke and with the manifold odors of a city. Everywhere was activity and haste.

Of course the news of his return spread swiftly, for he was a personage, but before the curious could mark him he had left for the creek that bore his name, where a hundred men were preparing to drift out Discovery pay-streak under his supervision. He remained there a month, during which the first gray snows turned white and brought that peculiar loneliness, that depression of spirit which marks the beginning of winter.

Then one day he decided to go to town. The impulse surprised him, for he had meant to shun the place, as always, but his summer in the world outside had worked a change and something within him hungered for companionship, the glare of lights, the sight of animated faces. Then, too, he was curious to examine this town of his at closer range.

It was worth seeing, he decided proudly, during his inspection; it was a splendid, healthy camp. He walked the front street, then prowled through the regions behind. There were women in this part of Arcadia, and these he regarded distrustfully, although he was more than once arrested by a glimpse of some cozy home, and stood staring until warned by the frowns of indignant housewives that his presence was suspicious. He remembered another cabin like these--his own. He had never quite grown accustomed to its white curtains and china dishes and similar delights, any more than he had grown accustomed to the presence of that wonderful, mysterious creature who had filled the place with light. It was all part of another life, a bewildering dream too agreeable to last.

In the course of his wanderings, however, he came into a different district, one which offended him sorely. Immediately behind the saloons he found a considerable cluster of meaner shacks which were inhabited by women and yet which were not homes. These gaudily curtained houses huddled close together, as if for moral support or as if avoiding contact with their surroundings; they crouched in the shelter of the gilded dance-halls, seeking a sort of protection in one another's disreputable company. From some of the windows haggard faces smiled at Daniels, and he heard sounds of a merrymaking that were particularly offensive at this hour. Until this moment he had regarded Arcadia with fatherly pride, and had not dreamed it was wicked, hence this discovery enraged him. He was not a sensitive man, having trod the frontier where vice is naked, but something about the rotten core of this new community sickened him. It reminded him of a child diseased.

And then, as if to point the comparison, he saw a child, a tiny, fat, round-faced person leading a puppy by a string.

Now, women were strange to John Daniels, since there had been but one in his life, and he had possessed her only briefly, but children were mysterious, incomprehensible creatures; phenomena which excited at once his awe and his amazement. They made him ill at ease; he had never touched one, with the possible exception of an Indian papoose, now and then, therefore his present meeting constituted an experience--almost an adventure. It was a white child, too, and it gazed at him with the disconcerting calmness of a full-grown person. Daniels was both embarrassed and shocked at its presence in this locality. He hesitated, then summoned his courage and said, timidly:

"Say, kid, ain't you lost?"

The child continued to stare at him in unaffected wonder, leaving him painfully conscious of his absurd size and forbidding appearance. He feared that once it had overcome its first amazement it would begin to cry and thus cover him with ignominy. But, happily for him, the puppy experienced none of its owner's doubts and uncertainties; it flattened its round stomach, thumped its soft paws upon the sidewalk, then approached the giant in a delirious series of wobbly leaps, wiggling an eloquent, if awkward, declaration of friendship.

"Fine dog-team you're driving, sonny!" Daniels smiled, congratulating himself upon an admirable display of wit, only to realize with a start that he had made a mistake. Some sixth sense informed him that this was not a boy. It was a humiliating error.

"Say, missie, you--you don't belong here. You're plumb off your trail. That's a cinch!" He cast a worried glance over his shoulder and saw a hideous blanched face smile at him between a pair of red curtains. He glared back at the woman, and his cheeks grew hot. Meanwhile the little girl continued her unwinking examination.

She wore a ridiculous fur parka, scarcely larger than Daniels's cap, and tiny mukluks that made her legs look shorter and fatter than they were. Her mittens were the littlest things he had ever seen and he was regarding them wonderingly when she amazed him by approaching and laying one in his hand.

Now, this frank and full declaration of friendship reduced Daniels to a helpless condition; he had never been more troubled in his life. He was vaguely frightened, and yet he thrilled in an unaccountable manner at the touch. He was half minded to withdraw his hand from his glove and retreat, leaving it in her possession, but thought again of these evil surroundings, and of the responsibility that had devolved upon him with her surrender. In the midst of his dumbness the young lady burst into a bubbling and intimate recital of her adventures, which doubtless would have been perfectly intelligible to her mother, but which left the discoverer of John Daniels Creek floundering for a translation.

He concealed his disgraceful ignorance by an easy assumption of understanding. He nodded, he winked, he grinned. He eyed the infinitesimal hand that lay in his, then gingerly removed his own glove the better to safeguard its treasure, whereupon the small mitten promptly closed over one of his big knuckled fingers. Daniels gasped and held his digit as rigid as a pick-handle. Escape was no longer possible.

Having finished her recital the tot burst into a funny gurgle which plainly established a deep and undying intimacy between them, then, like all maidens who have pledged their affections, she made plain her readiness to accompany her protector to the end of the world.

But the puppy held back and delayed progress as effectively as a ship's anchor, so, fearing to exert too great a strain upon his extended finger, Daniels gave the animal bodily into her embrace. One short arm encircled the dog's neck, whereupon, as if by habit, it limply resigned itself to misery. The three went slowly out of that sin-ridden place, the man dazed and delighted, the child loquacious and trustful, the puppy with lolling tongue and legs protruding stiffly.

Daniels had mastered many dialects in his time, from Chinook to Pidgin English, but to save himself he could make nothing out of this language. Some words were plain, but they were lost in a bubbling flow of strange, moist, lisping articulations that left the general meaning obscure.

She answered all his questions eagerly, fully, and he acknowledged:

"She knows what she's sayin', all right, but I'm as rattled as a tenderfoot."

Nevertheless he derived a preposterous delight from this experience, until he realized that they were wandering aimlessly. Then thoughts of a possible encounter with a distracted parent filled him with such dismay that he appealed to the first woman he met.

"Lady! If you know where this baby lives--"

"Certainly I know."

"Then take her home. Her mother'll think I'm a kidnapper." Daniels perspired at the thought.

The woman laughingly accepted the responsibility of a full explanation, but as she lifted the child it turned up its face to Daniels, quite as a matter of course. The rosebud lips awaited him, yet he did not understand. He inquired, blankly:

"Now what does she want?"

"A kiss. Don't you, dearie?"

"God'lmighty!" breathed the man. Then he lowered his bearded face.

He was trembling when the strangers had gone; he felt those moist baby lips against his and the sensation almost overcame him. He didn't like the woman's appearance, but she seemed tender-hearted and--there was no better way of insuring the safety of his little charge than to give her over.

But that kiss! It remained upon his lips more fragrant, more holy than anything he had ever conceived. It left him conscious of his own uncleanliness and shortcomings.

Still in a daze, he looked down at his index finger, which remained rigid; it was blue with the cold, but he felt nothing except the clasp of a tiny woolen mitt.

"Well!" he exploded. "I--don't seem to be dreaming. She liked me--she must of--or she wouldn't of kissed me. She sure did, and I--God! I'd trade Discovery for another one."

He felt no further interest in Arcadia; he thought only of the child and the amazing adventure that had come to him; he could think of nothing else during the afternoon. More than once he touched his lips timidly with his tongue and bared his hand to stare at his big finger.

When he had dined that evening he began a leisurely round of the saloons and gambling-halls, pausing in each to invite every one to drink, as befitted a man of wealth. He played, more or less, without knowing whether he won or lost, for his thoughts were directed in other and stranger channels.

The Elite was the most pretentious place of amusement in Arcadia and it was running full blast when he strolled in, late that night. The show was over in the theater, but a dance was going on. Beyond the people at the gambling-tables he saw swiftly moving figures and heard the caller's shouts through the rhythmic beat of the orchestra.

He looked on with some interest until he could engage the attention of a bartender, then said:

"Call everybody up for a drink."

When the fellow eyed him distrustfully he explained:

"I'm John Daniels."

He was amused at the instant, almost ludicrous change of expression, and at the alacrity with which the crowd responded to his invitation. They stampeded, the games were deserted, the "sleepers" roused themselves, even the dancers came trooping forth with his name upon their lips. The music ended discordantly and the musicians followed them. The long bar was lined six deep by people who elbowed one another for a glimpse of the famous John Daniels. Those who succeeded beheld a huge, grim-featured man, bearded to the cheek-bones, who seemed deaf to their remarks and heedless of their stares. His hair was long and gray, his eyes were small and bright and hard; he looked like a Mormon elder.

It took time to serve such an assemblage, and during the delay Daniels stood motionless, vaguely resenting this curiosity. When the bartender said "All set!" he raised his glass and exclaimed, "Drink hearty!"

As the glass left his lips his eyes ran down the bar and along the bank of faces, clear to the end, where the dance-hall girls had squeezed themselves in. There they rested, and widened.

His hand fell heavily, crushing the glass beneath it, for facing him, clinging to the rail as if about to fall, stood his wife. Their eyes met fairly. Daniels saw in hers the first flaming light of recognition, then that expression of deathly terror that he remembered; he felt the floor sinking, saw the near-by figures whirling, heard the clamor die.

After his first start not a muscle of his face moved, but his eyes began slowly to search through the crowd as if for some one, and, seeing that, she understood. With a hand to her throat she groped her way blindly out of the crush, then made for the rear, but her knees forsook her and she paused, leaning against the wall. It never occurred to her that she might escape.

She knew without looking when he came toward her. He spoke in an emotionless tone, saying, "Come!" and she followed, half swooning--followed him up the stairs to the curtained boxes that ran round the gallery.

When they were alone, she faced him, managing to utter: "So! You--are John Daniels! They said you were dead."

She expected some violence--death, perhaps, but he only looked at her silently with an expression she could not read. She felt she must scream. She swayed, her eyes were filmed with terror.

"Well! Why don't you do it, McGill? Why don't you--?" she cried, hysterically.

"Where is Barclay?" he inquired.

"He's here--somewhere. We came three weeks ago--We--I didn't know--"

He saw that she was not the woman he had known: she was frail, broken; her fluttering hands were thin and bloodless; she had no spirit.

"So! He's got you working, eh? You're one of these--rustlers!"

"I had to do something. All I know is stage work."

"This ain't stage work!"

She nodded wearily. "He made me go the--limit."

"Made you! Did you get a divorce?"

"N-no!"

Daniels cursed so harshly that she flinched, although she had long since grown accustomed to profanity. Then he turned away, but, reading murder in his face, she seized him with fingers that were like claws.

"Wait! Don't do that!"

"You love him, don't you?"

"No, no! But--he's bad now, and--and probably drunk. He'll kill you, McGill. He's bad, I tell you--tough--don't you understand? He's bad, and he's made me bad, too, that's why I'm here. He's not worth it, McGill; neither am I!"

"You can't stay in Arcadia, neither of you. I got out of Ophir and let you alone, but this is my town; I can't leave it."

"We'll go," she cried, wringing her hands; "anyhow, I'll go, if you'll help me. But I'll need help--Oh, God! Yes, I'll need help! You don't know--You and he can settle things afterward."

"You want to leave him?"

"I've tried to break away, I've been trying ever since that first day in Ophir, but he won't let me. I kept trying--until I learned better; now I'm afraid. He's broken me, Dan, but you'll help me to leave him, won't you?"

After a time the husband answered, more to himself than to her: "I guess I'm even with you, anyhow. You've gone to hell, hand in hand with him. I won't interfere--not that way. I s'pose he beats you?"

She nodded, and saw his bearded face twitch. "Yes, and he'll make me like these other women--you understand? I've fought until I'm tired, worn out. I'm in a trap, McGill, and--I'm afraid--afraid for the little soul I have left."

"You sprung the trap," he told her, bitterly.

But his wife had seen a way to freedom and clutched at it with desperate persistence.

"Listen! I want to talk to you. Come with me for a minute."

"Come? Why?"

"Never mind. Oh, it's all right. You owe me something, for I still have your name. Do this for me, please! It's only a step."

He yielded to her imploring eyes and followed grudgingly down the back stairs and into the night, wondering the while at his own weakness. She led the way, bareheaded, heedless of the cold. They were in that ill-favored district he had penetrated earlier in the day, but if it had been offensive then it was doubly so now, with its muffled sounds of debauchery and wickedness. She paused finally, fumbling at the door of one miserable structure, whereupon he growled:

"You live here? You're worse than--"

"'Sh-h!" She laid a finger on her lips as she let him in and lit a lamp, then she beckoned him toward the single rear room, shading the light with one hand and inviting him silently to peer over her shoulder.

The surprise of what he saw struck McGill dumb, for there in a crib lay the tiny lass who had befriended him that afternoon. Her lips were pouting sweetly, her face was flushed with dreams, one plump little arm was outside the covers, and just below the doubled fist McGill saw the deep dimpled bracelet of babyhood. Her presence made of these squalid surroundings a place of purity; the room became suddenly a shrine.

"The son-of-a-gun!" said McGill, inanely, then his face darkened once more. "I know her," he announced, grimly. "What are you doing with that kid--in this hell-hole?"

From the alleyways near by came a burst of ribaldry, but the woman's face was shining when she answered:

"Why, she's mine--my baby. We have no other home."

He did not--could not--speak, so she said, simply:

"Now you see why I must leave Barclay, and--all this."

"Your baby!" McGill's eyes dropped to the index finger of his right hand, then he touched his lips curiously.

"Barclay won't let me run straight. I've always wanted to, and now I must, for the baby's sake." When this brought no response she continued, with growing intensity, but in a lowered tone. "She'll begin to understand things before long. She'll hear about him--and me. Then what? She'll think for herself, and she'll never forget a thing like that, never. How can she grow up to be good if she learns the truth? It wouldn't let her. Nobody could stay good around Barclay. Even I couldn't, and I was a woman when I met him. I'm decent, inside, McGill. Honestly I am, and I've been sorry every day since you left. Oh, I've paid for what I did! And I'll pay more, if I have to, but she mustn't be part of the price. No! You've got to help me. Don't you see?"

She mistook his gesture of bewilderment for one of refusal, then hurried to one final, frenzied appeal, although at a fearful cost to herself. It was this which had come to her in the dance-hall; it was this that she had led up to without allowing herself time in which to weaken.

"Listen! She shouldn't stay with me, even if I get away; it wouldn't be good for her; besides, Barclay would find us some time; or, if he didn't, I'm too sick to last much longer. Then she'd be alone. You're rich, McGill. You're John Daniels. You'll have to take her--not for my sake, understand, but--"

"I? " The man started. "I take Barclay's baby? Great God!"

There was a moment of silence during which the wife strove to steady herself, then she said:

"She's not his--she's yours--ours."

McGill uttered a great cry. It issued from the depths of his being and racked him dreadfully. He swung ponderously toward the rear room, then fell to trembling so that he could not proceed. He stared at the woman, lifted his hands, then dropped them; his lips shook. A fretful, sleepy complaint issued from the chamber, at which the mother raised a warning finger, and the necessity for silence calmed him more quickly than anything else could have done.

"My--baby!" he whispered, while he felt something melt within him and was filled with such an aching joy that he sobbed with the agony of it.

His wife's punishment overflowed when he breathed, fiercely:

"Then give her to me. You can't keep her. You can't touch her. You ain't fit."

She bowed her head in assent, although his torture was nothing as compared with hers.

"You'll help me get away from Barclay, won't you?" she asked, supporting herself unsteadily.

"Barclay! I forgot him! He's the one that did all this, ain't he? He brought you to--this; and my baby, too. He made her live among women like these. He raised her in slime--" The speaker's face became slowly, frightfully distorted.

His wife went swiftly to him; she struggled to fend him away from the door, but he moved irresistibly. They wrestled breathlessly so as not to awaken the child, while she begged him in the baby's name not to go, not to bring blood upon her; but he plucked her arms from around him and went out, closing the door softly.

When he had gone Mrs. McGill stood motionless, her eyes closed, her palms pressed over her ears as if to shut out a sound she dreaded.

Barclay was dealing "bank" in one of the saloons when McGill entered and came toward him down the full length of the room. They recognized each other as their eyes met, and the former sat back stiffly in his chair, feeling that the dead had risen. What he saw written in the face of the bearded man drove the blood from his cheeks, for it was something he had dreaded in his dreams. He knew himself to be cornered, and fear set his nerves to jumping so uncontrollably that when he snatched the Colt's from its drawer and fired blindly, he missed. The place was crowded, and it broke into a frightful confusion at the first shot.

None of those present told the same tale of what immediately followed, but the stories agreed in this, that John Daniels neither hesitated nor quickened his approach, although Barclay emptied his gun so swiftly that the echoes blended, then snapped it on a spent cartridge as the two clinched. Curious ones later searched out the bullet-marks in wall and ceiling which showed beyond doubt the nervous panic under which the gambler had gone to pieces, and so long as the building stood they remained objects of great interest.

Now McGill--or Daniels, as he was known to the onlookers--never went armed, having yet to feel the need of other weapons than his hands. He tore the gun from his victim's grasp, then mauled him with it so fearfully that men shouted at him and hid their faces. Meanwhile he was speaking, growling something into Barclay's ears. No one understood what it was he said until the confusion died and they heard these words:

"--And you'll go with my brand on you where everybody 'll read it and know you're a rat."

Next he did something that a great many had heard of but few, even of the old-timers, had witnessed. He gun-branded his enemy. Barclay was little more than a pulp by this time; he lay face up across the faro-table with McGill's fingers at his throat. They thought the older man was about to brain him, but instead he turned the revolver in his hand and drew the thin, sharp-edged sight across Barclay's forehead from temple to temple, then from forelock to bridge of nose. A stream of blood followed as the sight ripped through to the skull like a dull scalpel, leaving a ragged disfiguring cross above the gambler's eyes; it scarred the bone; it formed a hideous mutilation that would last as long as the fellow lived, and constitute a brand of infamy to single him out from ten thousand, telling the story of his dishonor.

When he had finished, McGill raised the wretch bodily and flung him half across the room as if he were unclean, then, without a glance to right or left, he went forth as he had come.

His wife was waiting with her ears covered, but she saw the blood on his hands when she opened her eyes, and cried out.

"It's his," he told her, roughly. "I don't think I killed him. I tried not to, for her sake." He inclined his head toward the inner door. "But it was hard to hold in, after all this time. He'll never trouble you again."

"When do you--mean to take the baby?" she whispered.

"Now--She--"

"No, no! Not yet. Let her stay here a little while--till I'm strong enough to let her go. Just a little while, McGill. You're a good man. Don't you understand?" She was palsied, incoherent with dread; in her eyes was a look of death.

But he held out his empty arms, crying, hoarsely, "Let me have my kiddie!"

So she went in and gathered up the sleeping babe.

It may have been the father's heart-beats that awakened the little one when she lay against his breast; at any rate the blue eyes opened and stared up at him gravely. Astonishment, alarm gave way to recognition; she smiled drowsily and her lids closed again, then a tiny hand curled about one of McGill's fingers.

His face was wet when he raised it to the stricken woman and said, gently, "We'll go now, if you're ready, Alice."

"What do you--?" She stared at him wildly. "You don't want me, McGill; not after all I've done, all I--am?"

"I've always wanted you," he told her, simply. "You'll have to come, for she needs you." Holding the baby close with one arm, he extended the other to his wife, but she drew back, choking.

"Not yet!" she managed to say through her tears. "Not until you know I'm not all bad--only weak."

He took her hand and together they went out, walking slowly so as not to awaken the child.

[The end]
Rex Beach's short story: Brand

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN