Free Range Lanning

Front matter

FREE RANGE LANNING

"Gentlemen," said Andrew, "I am not a bum. I am worth five thousand dollars to the man who turns me over, dead or alive..."

Frontispiece—Page 155

Chapter 1: Blood and Iron

FREE RANGE LANNING

CHAPTER I

BLOOD AND IRON

BESIDE the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for this seventy-year-old veteran with his slant Oriental eyes and his narrow beard of white. Andrew Lanning was not even his son, but it came about in this way that Andrew became the life work of Jasper.

Fifteen years before the father of Andy died, and Jasper rode out of the mountain desert like a hawk dropping out of the pale-blue sky; for the clan spirit of the Lannings was as strong as the clan spirit of the Campbells and Stewarts in the old days. Jasper buried his brother without a tear, and then sat down and looked at the slender child who bore his name. Andy was a beautiful boy. He had the black hair and eyes, the well-made jaw, and the bone of the Lannings, and if his mouth was rather soft and girlish he laid the failing to the weakness of childhood. Jasper had no sympathy for tenderness in men. His own life was as littered with hard deeds as the side of a mountain with bowlders. But the black, bright eyes and the well-made jaw of little Andy laid hold on him, and he said to himself: "I'm fifty-five. I'm about through with my saddle days. I'll settle down and turn out one piece of work that'll last after I'm gone, and last with my signature on it!"

That was fifteen years ago. And for fifteen years he had labored to make Andy a man according to a grim pattern which was known in the Lanning clan, and elsewhere in the mountain desert. His program was as simple as the curriculum of a Persian youth. On the whole, it was even simpler, for Jasper concentrated on teaching the boy how to ride and shoot, and was not at all particular that he should learn to speak the truth. But on the first two and greatest articles of his creed, how Jasper labored!

For fifteen years he poured his heart without stint into his work! He taught Andy to know a horse from hock to teeth, and to ride anything that wore hair. He taught him to know a gun as if it were a sentient thing. He taught him all the draws of old and new pattern, and labored to give him both precision and speed. That was the work of fifteen years, and now at the end of this time the old man pressed his bony shoulders against the wall of the blacksmith shop and knew that his work was a failure.

It came coldly and smoothly home to him as truths which we discover for ourselves are apt to do, or as a poniard point comes easily home to the heart. Jasper felt like that; there was death inside him; but he rolled his cigarette in Mexican style, thin and hard, and smoked it with a masklike face. His life work was a failure, for he had made the hand of Andrew Lanning cunning, had given his muscles' strength, but the heart beneath was wrong.

It was hard to see Andy at the first glance. A film of smoke shifted and eddied through the shop, and Andy, working the bellows, was a black form against the square of the door, a square filled by the blinding white of the alkali dust in the road outside and the blinding white of the sun above. Andy turned from the forge, bearing in his tongs a great bar of iron black at the ends but white in the middle. The white place was surrounded by a sparkling radiance. Andy caught up an eight-pound hammer, and it rose and fell lightly in his hand; the blows were a shower; there was strength for you! The sparks were flung to the farthest corners of the shop. On the floor they became little spots of darkening red; they rushed against the leather apron of the hammer wielder, and as the blows fell rapid waves of light were thrown against the face of Andrew.

Looking at that face one wondered how the life work of Jasper was such a failure. For Andy was a handsome fellow with his blue-black hair and his black, rather slanting eyes, after the Lanning manner. Yet Jasper saw, and his heart was sick. The face was a little too full; the square bone of the chin was rounded with flesh; and, above all, the mouth had never changed. It was the mouth of the child, soft—too womanly soft. And Jasper blinked.

When he opened his eyes again the white place on the iron had become a dull red, and the face of the blacksmith was again in shadow. All Jasper could see was the body of Andy, and that was much better. Red light glinted on the sinewy arms and the swaying shoulders, and the hammer swayed and fell tirelessly. For fifteen years Jasper had consoled himself with the strength of the boy, smooth as silk and as durable; the light form which would not tire a horse, but swelled above the waist into those formidable shoulders.

Now the bar was lifted from the anvil and plunged, hissing, into the bucket beside the forge; above the bucket a cloud of steam rose and showed clearly against the brilliant square of the door, and the peculiar scent which came from the iron went sharply to the nostrils of Jasper. He got up and straightened his long, age-withered limbs as a horseman entered the shop. He came in a manner that pleased Jasper. There was a rush of hoofbeats, a form darting through the door, and in the midst of the shop the rider leaped out of the saddle and the horse came to a halt with braced legs. It knocked up a cloud of dust that blew slowly over to Jasper in the rear of the shop.

"Hey, you!" called the rider as he tossed the reins over the head of his horse. "Here's a hoss that needs iron on his feet. Fix him up. And look here"—he lifted a forefoot and showed the scales on the frog and sole of the hoof—"last time you shoed this hoss you done a sloppy job, son. You left all this stuff hangin' on here. I want it trimmed off nice an' neat. You hear?"

The blacksmith shrugged his shoulders. "Spoils the hoof to put the knife on the sole, Buck," said the smith. "That peels off natural." "H'm," said "Buck" Heath. "How old are you, son?" "Oh, old enough," answered Andy cheerily. "Old enough to know that this exfoliation is entirely natural." The big word stuck in the craw of Buck Heath, who brought his thick eyebrows together. "I've rid horses off and on come twenty-five years," he declared, "and I've rid 'em long enough to know how I want 'em shod. This is my hoss, son, and you do it my way. That straight?"

The eye of old Jasper in the rear of the shop grew dim with wistfulness as he heard this talk. He knew Buck Heath; he knew his kind; in his day he would have eaten a dozen men of such rough words and such mild deeds as Buck. But searching the face of Andy, he saw no resentment. Merely a quiet resignation.

"Another thing," said Buck Heath, who seemed determined to press the thing to a disagreeable point. "I hear you don't fit your shoes on hot. Well?"

"I never touch a hoof with hot iron," replied Andy. "It's a rotten practice."

"Is it?" said Buck Heath coldly. "Well, son, you fit my hoss with hot shoes or I'll know the reason why."

"I've got to do the work my own way," protested Andy.

A spark of hope burned in the slant eyes of Jasper. "Otherwise I can go find another gent to do my shoein'?" inquired Buck.

"It looks that way," replied the blacksmith with a nod.

"Well," said Buck, whose mildness of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. You'll do this job, and you'll do it my way. Maybe you got another way of thinkin'?"

There was a little pause.

"It's your horse," repeated Andy. "I suppose I can do him your own way."

Old Jasper closed his eyes and grinned in a silent agony. Looking again, he saw Buck Heath grinning with contempt, and for a single moment Jasper touched his gun. Then he remembered that he was seventy years old. He stood up. "Well, Buck?" he said, coming forward. For he felt that if this scene continued he would go mad with shame.

There was a great change in Buck as he heard this voice, a marked respect was in his manner as he turned to Jasper. "Hello, Jas," he said. "I didn't know you was here."

"Come over to the saloon, Buck, and have one on me," said Jasper. "I guess Andy'll have your hoss ready when we come back."

"Speakin' personal," said Buck Heath with much heartiness, "I don't pass up no chances with no man, and particular if he's Jasper Lanning." He hooked his arm through Jasper's elbow. "Besides, I'm all lined with alkali, Jas."

Then he added: "And that boy of yours has got me all heated up. Where'd he learn them man-sized words, Jas?"

All of which Andy heard, and he knew that Buck Heath intended him to hear them. It made Andy frown, and for an instant he thought of calling Buck back. But he did not call. Instead he imagined what would happen. Buck would turn on his heel and stand, towering, in the door. He would ask what Andy wanted. Andy chose the careful insult which he would throw in Buck's face. He saw the blow given. He felt his own fist tingle as he returned the effort with interest. He saw Buck tumble back over the bucket of water.

His thoughts roved on. He saw Buck drag himself up and away with a lump on his jaw. He saw the faces of other men as he passed them on the single street of the town. He felt their eyes on him the man who beat up big Buck Heath.

By this time Andy was smiling gently to himself. His wrath had dissolved in that thinking, and he was humming pleasantly to himself as he began to pull off the worn shoes of Buck's horse.

Chapter 2: Andy Examines His Hands

CHAPTER II

ANDY EXAMINES HIS HANDS

YOUNG Andrew Lanning lived in the small, hushed world of his own thoughts. Between him and the bitter necessities of a man's world stood the figure of Jasper, and Uncle Jasper's name was one to frighten off trouble from the most troublesome. Half a century ago he had done things which were now legend, and the awe of his past still surrounded him. It was pleasant for Andy to make things with his hands, and therefore the blacksmith shop contented him. As for the hard labor, his muscles made it play, and as to the future, for which every young man lives, the dreams of Andy made up that time to come.

In reality he neither loved nor hated the world and the people around him. He simply did not see them. His mother—it was from her that he inherited the softer qualities of his mind and his face—had lived long enough to temper his vocabulary also; she had even left him a little stock of books. And though Andy was by no means a reader, he had at least picked up that dangerous equipment of fiction which enables a man to dodge reality and live in his dreams. Those dreams had as little as possible to do with the daily routine of his life, and certainly the handling of guns, which his uncle enforced upon him, was never a part of the future as Andy saw it.

It was now the late afternoon; the alkali dust in the road was still in a white light, but the temperature in the shop had dropped several degrees. The horse of Buck Heath was shod, and Andy was laying his tools away for the day when he heard the noise of an automobile with open muffler coming down the street. He stepped to the door to watch, and at that moment a big blue car trundled into view around the bend of the road. The rear wheels struck a slide of sand and dust, and skidded; a girl cried out; then the big machine gathered out of the cloud of dust, and came bowling toward Andy. It came with a crackling like musketry, and it was plain that it would leap through Martindale and away into the country beyond at a bound. Andy could see now that it was a roadster, low-hung, ponderous, to keep the road. The ways through the mountains must be murderous to such a make of car.

Pat Gregg was leaving the saloon; he was on his horse, but he sat the saddle slanting, and his head was turned to give the farewell word to several figures who bulged through the door of the saloon. For that reason, as well as because of the fumes in his brain, he did not hear the coming of the automobile. His friends from the saloon saw, however. They yelled a warning, but he evidently thought it some jest, as he waved his hand with a grin of appreciation. The big car was coming, rocking with its speed; it was too late now to stop that flying mass of metal.

But the driver made the effort. His brakes shrieked, and still the car shot on with scarcely abated speed, for the wheels could secure no purchase in the thin sand of the roadway. Andy's heart stood still in sympathy as he saw the face of the driver whiten and grow tense. Charles Merchant, the son of rich John Merchant, was behind the wheel. Drunken Pat Gregg had taken the warning at last. He turned in the saddle and drove home his spurs, but even that had been too late had not Charles Merchant taken the big chance. At the risk of overturning the machine he veered it sharply to the left. It hung for a moment on two wheels. Andy could count a dozen heartbeats while the plunging car edged around the horse and shoved between Pat and the wall of the house—inches on either side. Yet it must have taken not more than the split part of a second.

There was a shout of applause from the saloon; Pat Gregg sat his horse, mouth open, his face pale, and then the heavy car rolled past the blacksmith shop. Andy, breathing freely and cold to his finger tips, saw young Charlie Merchant relax to a flickering smile as the girl beside him caught his arm and spoke to him.

And then Andy saw her for the first time.

She wore a linen duster and a linen hat. All Andy could see was the white flash of her hand as she gestured, and her face. But that was enough. His eyes had been traveling with lightning speed as the car threatened the horse and Pat. Now, in the brief instant as the machine moved by, he not only saw her clearly, but he printed the picture to be seen again when she was gone. What was the hair? Red bronze, and fiery where the sun caught at it, and the eyes were gray, or blue, or a gray-green. But colors did not matter. It was all in her smile and the turning of her eyes, which were very wide open. She spoke, and it was in the sound of her voice.

"Wait!" shouted Andy Lanning as he made a step toward them. But the car went on, rocking over the bumps and the exhaust roaring. Andy became aware that his shout had been only a dry whisper. Besides, what would he say if they did stop? And then the girl turned sharply about and looked back, not at the horse they had so nearly struck, but at Andy standing in the door of his shop. It seemed to him that that glance entered his eyes and reached his soul; he felt sure that she would remember his face; her smile had gone out while she stared, and now she turned her head suddenly to the front. Once more the sun flashed on her hair; then the machine disappeared. In a moment even the roar of the engine was lost, but it came back again, flung in echoes from some hillside.

Not until all was silent, and the boys from the saloon were shaking hands with Pat and laughing at him, did Andy turn back into the blacksmith shop. It confronted him like a piece of black night with shadows in it. Perhaps that was the effect of the sudden turning from bright daylight.

He sat down on the anvil with his heart beating, and began to recall the picture. Yes, it was all in the smile and the glint of the eyes. And something else—how should he say it?—of the light shining through her.

Once, in the mountains, looking suddenly up, it had seemed to Andy that all the stars were looking at him; that he could hear the silence of the wilderness. And his heart had beat as it was beating now. He had never had that sensation again, but he knew the sky would always be there, waiting And so with this girl. In the dusty street, in the sharp, hot sunshine, in the roar of the motor and the crackling of voices, she had fallen on the mind of Andy like a holy quiet. But having seen her once he would never see her again.

He could have borne that loss; he could have retained the picture as something beautiful and beautifully impersonal if he had not heard her voice. As a touch of velvet will thrill all the nerves from the finger tips so the sound of her voice had gone softly through him. And when her face was forgotten the memory of that voice would keep tugging at his heartstrings.

Suppose one wakens from a dream of music. The music is gone; only the happiness remains, together with the bitter sense of loss. Andy sat on the anvil with closed eyes and put his hand over his heart, where the pain was.

He stood up presently, closed the shop, and went home. Afterward his uncle came in a fierce humor, slamming the door. He found Andy sitting in front of the table staring down at his hands.

"Buck Heath has been talkin' about you," said Jasper.

Andy raised his head. "Look at 'em!" he said as he spread out his hands.

"Buck Heath has been sayin' things that would of got him shot when I was your age," said Jasper more pointedly than he had ever spoken before. And he sickened when he saw that Andy refused to hear.

"Look at 'em," repeated Andy. "I been scrubbin' 'em with sand soap for half an hour, and the oil and the iron dust won't come out."

Uncle Jasper, who had a quiet voice and gentle manners, now stood rigid. "I wisht to God that some iron dust would work its way into your soul," he said. He let his voice go big. "Oh, Lord, how I wisht you had some iron dust in your heart!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothin' you could understand; you need a mother to explain things to you."

The other got up, white about the mouth. "I think I do," said Andy. "I'm sick inside."

"Where's supper?" demanded Jasper.

Andy sat down again, and began to consider his hands once more. "There's something wrong—something dirty about this life."

"Is there?" Uncle Jasper leaned across the table, and once again the old ghost of a hope was flickering behind his eyes. "Wash off the dirt with soap, then."

"Soap won't touch some kinds of dirt. Uncle Jas, I'm sick inside."

A picture often recurred to Jasper Lanning of the little boy he had first seen, straight, handsome—too handsome. It came home to him now, and he winked his eyes hard.

"Who's been talkin' to you?"

He thought of the grinning men of the saloon; the hidden words. Somebody might have gone out and insulted Andy to his face for the first time. There had been plenty of insults in the past two years, since Andy could pretend to manhood, but none that might not be overlooked. "Who's been talkin' to you?" repeated Uncle Jasper. "Confound that Buck Heath! He's the cause of all the trouble!"

"Buck Heath! Who's he? Oh, I remember. What's he got to do with the rotten life we lead here, Uncle Jas?"

"So?" said the old man slowly. "He ain't nothin'?"

"Bah!" remarked Andy. "You want me to go out and fight him? I won't. I got no love for fighting. It doesn't buy me anything. I don't like to talk to people when they're mad. Makes me sort of sickish."

"Heaven above!" the older man invoked. "Ain't you got shame? My blood in you, too!"

"Don't talk like that," said Andy with a certain amount of reserve which was not natural to him. "You bother me. I want a little silence and a chance to think things out. There's something wrong in the way I've been living."

"You're the last to find it out."

"If you keep this up I'm going to take a walk so I can have quiet."

"You'll sit there, son, till I'm through with you. Now, Andrew, these years I've been savin' up for this moment when I was sure that2"

To his unutterable astonishment Andy rose and stepped between him and the door. "Uncle Jas," he said, "mostly I got a lot of respect for you and what you think. Tonight I don't care what you or anybody else has to say. Just one thing matters. I feel I've been living in the dirt. I'm going out and see what's wrong. Good night."

Chapter 3: In the Saddle

CHAPTER III

IN THE SADDLE

UNCLE JAS was completely bowled over. Over against the wall as the door closed he was saying to himself: "What's happened? What's happened?" As far as he could make out his nephew retained very little fear of the authority of Jasper Lanning.

One thing became clear to the old man. There had to be a decision between his nephew and some full-grown man, otherwise Andy was very apt to grow up into a sneaking coward. And in the matter of a contest Jasper could not imagine a better trial horse than Buck Heath. For Buck was known to be violent with his hands, but he was not likely to draw his gun, and, more than this, he might even be bluffed down without making a show of a fight. Uncle Jasper left his house supperless, and struck down the street until he came to the saloon.

He found Buck Heath warming to his work, resting both elbows on the bar. Bill Dozier was with him, Bill who was the black sheep in the fine old Dozier family. His brother, Hal Dozier, was by many odds the most respected and the most feared man in the region, but of all the good Dozier qualities Bill inherited only their fighting capacity. He fought; he loved trouble; and for that reason, and not because he needed the money, he was now acting as a deputy sheriff. He was jesting with Buck Heath in a rather superior manner, half contemptuous, half amused by Buck's alcoholic swaggerings. And Buck was just sober enough to perceive that he was being held lightly. He hated Dozier for that treatment, but he feared him too much to take open offense. It was at this opportune moment that old man Lanning, apparently half out of breath, touched Buck on the elbow.

As Buck turned with a surly "What the darnation?" the other whispered: "Be on your way, Buck. Get out of town, and get out of trouble. My boy hears you been talkin' about him, and he allows as how he'll get you. He's out for you now."

The fumes cleared sufficiently from Buck Heath's mind to allow him to remember that Jasper Lanning's boy was no other than the milk-blooded Andy. He told Jasper to lead his boy on. There was a reception committee waiting for him there in the person of one Buck Heath.

"Don't be a fool, Buck," said Jasper, glancing over his shoulder. "Don't you know that Andy's a crazy, man-killin' fool when he gets started? And he's out for blood now. You just slide out of town and come back when his blood's cooled down."

Buck Heath took another drink from the bottle in his pocket, and then regarded Jasper moodily. "Partner," he declared gloomily, putting his hand on the shoulder of Jasper, "maybe Andy's a man-eater, but I'm a regular Andy-eater, and here's the place where I go and get my feed. Lemme loose!"

He kicked open the door of the saloon. "Where is he?" demanded the roaring Andy-eater. Less savagely, he went on: "I'm lookin' for my meat!"

Jasper Lanning and Bill Dozier exchanged glances of understanding. "Partly drunk, but mostly yaller," observed Bill Dozier. "Soon as the air cools him off outside he'll mount his hoss and get on his way. But, say, is your boy really out for his scalp?"

"Looks that way," declared Jasper with tolerable gravity.

"I didn't know he was that kind," said Bill Dozier. And Jasper flushed, for the imputation was clear. They went together to the window and looked out.

It appeared that Bill Dozier was right. After standing in the middle of the street in the twilight for a moment, Buck Heath turned and went straight for his horse. A low murmur passed around the saloon, for other men were at the windows watching. They had heard Buck's talk earlier in the day, and they growled as they saw him turn tail. He would have no pleasant reception when he next returned to Martindale.

Two moments more and Buck would have been on his horse, but in those two moments luck took a hand. Around the corner came Andrew Lanning with his head bowed in thought. At once a roar went up from every throat in the saloon: "There's your man. Go to him!" Buck Heath turned from his horse; Andrew lifted his head. They were face to face, and it was hard to tell to which one of them the other was the least welcome. But Andrew spoke first. A thick silence had fallen in the saloon. Most of the onlookers wore careless smiles, for the caliber of these two was known, and no one expected violence; but Jasper Lanning, at the door, stood with a sick face. He was praying in the silence.

Every one could hear Andrew say: "I hear you've been making a talk about me, Buck?"

It was a fair enough opening. The blood ran more freely in the veins of Jasper. Perhaps the quiet of his boy had not been altogether the quiet of cowardice.

"Aw," answered Buck Heath, "don't you be takin' everything you hear for gospel. What kind of talk do you mean?"

"He's layin' down," said Bill Dozier, and his voice was soft but audible in the saloon. 'The skunk!"

"I was about to say," said Andrew, "that I think you had no cause for talk. I've done you no harm, Buck."

The hush in the saloon became thicker; eyes of pity turned on that proved man, Jasper Lanning. He had bowed his head. And the words of the younger man had an instant effect on Buck Heath. They seemed to infuriate him.

"You've done me no harm?" he echoed. He let his voice out; he even glanced back and took pleasurable note of the crowded faces behind the dim windows of the saloon. Just then Geary, the saloon keeper, lighted one of the big lamps, and at once all the faces at the windows became black silhouettes. "You done me no harm?" repeated Buck Heath. "Ain't you been goin' about makin' a talk that you was after me? Well, son, here I am. Now let's see you eat!"

"I've said nothing about you," declared Andy. There was a groan from the saloon. Once more all eyes flashed across to Jasper Lanning.

"Bah!" snorted Buck Heath, and raised his hand. To crown the horror, the other stepped back. A little puff of alkali dust attested the movement.

"I'll tell you," roared Buck, "you ain't fittin' for a man's hand to touch, you ain't. A hosswhip is more your style."

From the pommel of his saddle he snatched his quirt. It whirled, hummed in the air, and then cracked on the shoulders of Andrew. In the dimness of the saloon door a gun flashed in the hand of Jasper Lanning. It was a swift draw, but he was not in time to shoot, for Andy, with a cry, ducked in under the whip as it raised for the second blow and grappled with Buck Heath. They swayed, then separated as though they had been torn apart. But the instant of contact had told Andy a hundred things. He was much smaller than the other, but he knew that he was far and away stronger after that grapple. It cleared his brain, and his nerves ceased jumping.