'Firebrand' Trevison - Charles Alden Seltzer (top 10 books of all time .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Alden Seltzer
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“I wouldn’t ride a horse down there for the damned railroad!” declared Murphy.
“Thrue for ye—ye c’udn’t,” grinned Carson.
“A man could ride anywhere with a horse like that!” remarked the fireman, fascinated.
“Ye’d have brought a cropper in that slide, an’ the road wud be minus a coal-heaver!” said Carson. “Wud ye luk at him now!”
The black was coming down, forelegs asprawl, his hind quarters sliding in the sand. Twice as his fore-hoofs struck some slight obstruction his hind quarters lifted and he stood, balanced, on his forelegs, and each time Trevison averted the impending catastrophe by throwing himself far back in the saddle and slapping the black’s hips sharply.
“He’s a circus rider!” shouted Carson, gleefully. “He’s got the coolest head of anny mon I iver seen! He’s a divvil, thot mon!”
The descent was spectacular, but it was apparent that Trevison cared little for its effect upon his audience, for as he struck the level and came riding toward Carson and the others, there was no sign of self-consciousness in his face or manner. He smiled faintly, though, as a cheer from the laborers reached his ears. In the next instant he had halted Nigger near the dinky engine, and Carson was introducing him to the engineer and fireman.
Looking at Trevison “close up,” Murphy was constrained to mentally label him “some man,” and he regretted his deprecatory words of a few minutes before. Plainly, there was no “show-off stuff” in Trevison. His feat of riding down the wall of the cut had not been performed to impress anyone; the look of reckless abandon in the otherwise serene eyes that held Murphy’s steadily, convinced the engineer that the man had merely responded to a dare-devil impulse. There was something in Trevison’s appearance that suggested an entire disregard of fear. The engineer had watched the face of a brother of his craft one night when the latter had been driving a roaring monster down a grade at record-breaking speed into a wall of rain-soaked darkness out of which might thunder at any instant another roaring monster, coming in the opposite direction. There had been a mistake in orders, and the train was running against time to make a switch. Several times during the ride Murphy had caught a glimpse of the engineer’s face, and the eyes had haunted him since—defiance of death, contempt of consequences, had been reflected in them. Trevison’s eyes reminded him of the engineer’s. But in Trevison’s eyes was an added expression—cold humor. The engineer of Murphy’s recollection would have met death dauntlessly. Trevison would meet it no less dauntlessly, but would mock at it. Murphy looked long and admiringly at him, noting the deep chest, the heavy muscles, the blue-black sheen of his freshly-shaven chin and jaw under the tan; the firm, mobile mouth, the aggressive set to his head. Murphy set his age down at twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Murphy was sixty himself—the age that appreciates, and secretly envies, the virility of youth. Carson was complimenting Trevison on his descent of the wall of the cut.
“You’re a daisy rider, me bhoy!”
“Nigger’s a clever horse,” smiled Trevison. Murphy was pleased that he was giving the animal the credit. “Nigger’s well trained. He’s wiser than some men. Tricky, too.” He patted the sleek, muscular neck of the beast and the animal whinnied gently. “He’s careful of his master, though,” laughed Trevison. “A man pulled a gun on me, right after I’d got Nigger. He had the drop, and he meant business. I had to shoot. To disconcert the fellow, I had to jump Nigger against him. Since then, whenever Nigger sees a gun in anyone’s hand, he thinks it’s time to bowl that man over. There’s no holding him. He won’t even stand for anyone pulling a handkerchief out of a hip pocket when I’m on him.” Trevison grinned. “Try it, Carson, but get that boulder between you and Nigger before you do.”
“I don’t like the look av the baste’s eye,” declined the Irishman. “I wudn’t doubt ye’re worrud for the wurrold. But he wudn’t jump a mon divvil a bit quicker than his master, or I’m a sinner!”
Trevison’s eyes twinkled. “You’re a good construction boss, Carson. But I’m glad to see that you’re getting more considerate.”
“Av what?”
“Of your men.” Trevison glanced back; he had looked once before, out of the tail of his eye. The laborers were idling in the cut, enjoying the brief rest, taking advantage of Carson’s momentary dereliction, for the last car had been filled.
“I’ll be rayported yet, begob!”
Carson waved his hands, and the laborers dove for the flat-cars. When the last man was aboard, the engine coughed and moved slowly away. Carson climbed into the engine-cab, with a shout: “So-long bhoy!” to Trevison. The latter held Nigger with a firm rein, for the animal was dancing at the noise made by the engine, and as the cars filed past him, running faster now, the laborers grinned at him and respectfully raised their hats. For they had come from one of the Latin countries of Europe, and for them, in the person of this heroic figure of a man who had ridden his horse down the steep wall of the cut, was romance.
For some persons romance dwells in the new and the unusual, and for other persons it dwells not at all. Certain of Rosalind Benham’s friends would have been able to see nothing but the crudities and squalor of Manti, viewing it as Miss Benham did, from one of the windows of her father’s private car, which early that morning had been shunted upon a switch at the outskirts of town. Those friends would have seen nothing but a new town of weird and picturesque buildings, with more saloons than seemed to be needed in view of the noticeable lack of citizens. They would have shuddered at the dust-windrowed street, the litter of refuse, the dismal lonesomeness, the forlornness, the utter isolation, the desolation. Those friends would have failed to note the vast, silent reaches of green-brown plain that stretched and yawned into aching distances; the wonderfully blue and cloudless sky that covered it; they would have overlooked the timber groves that spread here and there over the face of the land, with their lure of mystery. No thoughts of the bigness of this country would have crept in upon them—except as they might have been reminded of the dreary distance from the glitter and the tinsel of the East. The mountains, distant and shining, would have meant nothing to them; the strong, pungent aroma of the sage might have nauseated them.
But Miss Benham had caught her first glimpse of Manti and the surrounding country from a window of her berth in the car that morning just at dawn, and she loved it. She had lain for some time cuddled up in her bed, watching the sun rise over the distant mountains, and the breath of the sage, sweeping into the half-opened window, had carried with it something stronger—the lure of a virgin country.
Aunt Agatha Benham, chaperon, forty—maiden lady from choice—various uncharitable persons hinted humorously of pursued eligibles—found Rosalind gazing ecstatically out of the berth window when she stirred and awoke shortly after nine. Agatha climbed out of her berth and sat on its edge, yawning sleepily.
“This is Manti, I suppose,” she said acridly, shoving the curtain aside and looking out of the window. “We should consider ourselves fortunate not to have had an adventure with Indians or outlaws. We have that to be thankful for, at least.”
Agatha’s sarcasm failed to penetrate the armor of Rosalind’s unconcern—as Agatha’s sarcasms always did. Agatha occupied a place in Rosalind’s affections, but not in her scheme of enjoyment. Since she must be chaperoned, Agatha was acceptable to her. But that did not mean that she made a confidante of Agatha. For Agatha was looking at the world through the eyes of Forty, and the vision of Twenty is somewhat more romantic.
“Whatever your father thought of in permitting you to come out here is a mystery to me,” pursued Agatha severely, as she fussed with her hair. “It was like him, though, to go to all this trouble—for me—merely to satisfy your curiosity about the country. I presume we shall be returning shortly.”
“Don’t be impatient, Aunty,” said the girl, still gazing out of the window. “I intend to stretch my legs before I return.”
“Mercy!” gasped Agatha; “such language! This barbaric country has affected you already, my dear. Legs!” She summoned horror into her expression, but it was lost on Rosalind, who still gazed out of the window. Indeed, from a certain light in the girl’s eyes it might be adduced that she took some delight in shocking Agatha.
“I shall stay here quite some time, I think,” said Rosalind. “Daddy said there was no hurry; that he might come out here in a month, himself. And I have been dying to get away from the petty conventionalities of the East. I am going to be absolutely human for a while, Aunty. I am going to ‘rough it’—that is, as much as one can rough it when one is domiciled in a private car. I am going to get a horse and have a look at the country. And Aunty—” here the girl’s voice came chokingly, as though some deep emotion agitated her “—I am going to ride ‘straddle’!”
She did not look to see whether Agatha had survived this second shock—but Agatha had survived many such shocks. It was only when, after a silence of several minutes, Agatha spoke again, that the girl seemed to remember there was anybody in the compartment with her. Agatha’s voice was laden with contempt:
“Well, I don’t know what you see in this outlandish place to compensate for what you miss at home.”
The girl did not look around. “A man on a black horse, Aunty,” she said. “He has passed here twice. I have never seen such a horse. I don’t remember to have ever seen a man quite like the rider. He looks positively—er—heroish! He is built like a Roman gladiator, he rides the black horse as though he had been sculptured on it, and his head has a set that makes one feel he has a mind of his own. He has furnished me with the only thrill that I have felt since we left New York!”
“He hasn’t seen you!” said Agatha, coldly; “of course you made sure of that?”
The girl looked mischievously at the older woman. She ran her fingers through her hair—brown and vigorous-looking—then shaded her eyes with her hands and gazed at her reflection in a mirror near by. In deshabille she looked fresh and bewitching. She had looked like a radiant goddess to “Brand” Trevison, when he had accidentally caught a glimpse of her face at the window while she had been watching him. He had not known that the lady had just awakened from her beauty sleep. He would have sworn that she needed no beauty sleep. And he had deliberately ridden past the car again, hoping to get another glimpse of her. The girl smiled.
“I am not so positive about that, Aunty. Let us not be prudish. If he saw me, he made no sign, and therefore he is a gentleman.” She looked out of the window and smiled again. “There he is now, Aunty!”
It was Agatha who parted the curtains, this time. The horseman’s face was toward the window, and he saw her. An expression
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