Vengeance Trail

Max Brand

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781774643648
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Westerns
• Index: Literature

Young Johnnie Tanner didn't know how to shoot, camp out, or even ride a mule, but more than anything else he wanted to go to the Wild West... Then he got his chance. Along with Hank Raney, a grizzled, sharp-shooting cowboy who taught him Western ways, Johnnie hit the trail. Little did he know that he would soon find himself stalking a magnificent white buffalo worshipped by the Indians as a sacred beast, battling savage Pawnees who lusted for the white man's blood, and above all, hunting down a vicious thief called Pawnee Harry who had stolen a fabulous pearl from Johnnie and then escaped into the wild, untamable mountains of the American West!

1 • A BOY’S DREAM

John had reached the princely age. He was fourteen. Ordinarily, at this age, a boy has most of the powers of a man and none of the responsibilities. But John Tanner had had the responsibilities for several years. Since he was eight, in fact, he had chopped kindling, washed and dried dishes, helped with the laundry on Mondays, scrubbed floors and windows. His aunt kept body and soul together by running a boarding house and, if it had not been for the help which she received from young John, she would have had to employ an experienced servant.

She used to make a point of telling him that he amply earned his board and lodging and his schooling. He took a stern pride in this knowledge, and the work made him a little grimmer about the mouth and a little steadier in the eyes than are most boys of that age. Only on Sunday afternoons and for a few hours on holidays could he get out into the back yard and play Indian.

That was the passion of his heart. For in those days stories of encounters with the plains Indians were coming in from the West. Buffalo robes and beaver poured in from the distant wilderness of the green, treeless sea. And once, parading through the streets of New York to advertise a show in which they appeared, he had seen four plains Indians, garbed and painted as for war.

An indecent exhibition, Aunt Maggie had called it. But it gave to the imagination of the boy the wings which were sufficient to carry him into the land of his fondest dreams, not only when he lay awake staring at the darkness of the night, but also during every still moment of the day. If he paused in his dish-washing, if he leaned for a moment on the handle of the spade with which he dug up the soil of the back yard to make the truck garden, in that instant there streamed inward upon his soul a picture of the stretching plains, the dark and thundering buffalo herds and the wild red riders which raced upon the stampeding flanks of the bison.

He thought of that far country not with an active hope, but as a child might dream his way into the fairyland of the “Arabian Nights.” Nevertheless, it was in his brain and in his blood.

The back yard of the house was deep. It stretched straight through the block, occupying the vacant lot on the next street. That would be built upon, one day, but now it was a tangle of shrubbery and young trees, and it made for John Tanner a very good imitation wilderness in which he pursued his games. A high board fence gave him reasonable security against observation on any side, except for the upper windows of the neighboring houses, and these were mostly shuttered during the greater part of his play-day.

His outfit was very simple. It consisted of a very old pair of overalls, which he himself had cut tight, so that his leg was fitted as with deerskin leggings, a pair of heavy socks with a leather sole sewed on, in lieu of moccasins, and a headdress made of some good-sized chicken feathers, stained yellow, red and purple, with ink. He had for weapons a bow and a number of home-fashioned arrows, constructed with infinite patience, a worn-out, dull hatchet for a tomahawk, a hickory joint and branch as the knobby war club and, above all, a discarded butcher knife, half of the blade of which had been broken away.

What remained, he had turned to a point on the grindstone and made it as keen as a razor. Since it was the best sort of Sheffield steel, it was a real weapon, and the heart of John Tanner used to leap when he so much as thought about it.

He spent a great part of his time with the knife, practicing throws, and growing in the course of years so expert that at twenty feet he could sink it almost without fail into a sapling not a span broad.

Of course, he delighted in his skill. He dared to tell himself that in accomplishing this feat, he proved himself to be a real plainsman or a mountain man.

As has been said, there was not a great deal of time for these sports, but he did trailing, imaginary and otherwise, in that vacant lot. He aimed his wooden rifle many a time and hurled his keen knife a thousand thousand times into the heart of brutal enemies. He took imaginary scalps, backed imaginary wild stallions, and conquered in a hundred wars.

Furthermore, and perhaps best of all, sometimes he would rest a moment during his play and then, perhaps, small sights and sounds of true wild life would come to him, and always out of the air. There would be the whir of wings and the whistle of birds, with the full song of the springtime. He used to go out and stalk the singer with such pains and secrecy, it might have been thought that he was striving to come at not only the singer but the joyousness of the song itself.

So for six years he had lived with Aunt Maggie. Then his father came home and all was changed.

He had not heard very much about his father. He only knew that his mother had died shortly after his birth and that when his father was mentioned a hard, bitter look appeared upon Aunt Maggie’s face.

Then home came Gilbert Tanner from the East, where he had been traveler, adventurer, trader, during those ten years. He had sent home money now and again, but never very much, so that his appearance amazed both Aunt Maggie and the boy.

In looks he resembled his son. He was of middle height, strongly and yet actively made, with a good, gray-green eye and tawny hair. But he had been burned a sort of sallow brown in the Orient. And the marks of suffering were in his face.

It was not in his person, however, that he astonished the two at home. It was in his wealth!

He was dressed, in the first place, quietly, but like a gentleman of means. He carried a stick, and the manner in which he used it turned the cane almost into a scepter. His neck scarf, which fitted well up under his chin, seemed to add to the haughtiness of his manner.

He had six large trunks! They filled the whole attic of the boarding house. They crammed it from end to end, together with certain carryalls and numbers of bags which were also parts of his luggage.

He came in the evening. And they sat up till midnight.

“Maggie,” he said to John’s aunt, “you’ll send your boarders away as soon as possible. Pay them back everything they’ve advanced for this month, and get them out. Then we’ll furbish up the old house a bit. The hull seems to be sound, but the cabins ought to be rebuilt, I’d say, and the top-hamper should be replaced, too.”

“Gilbert,” said she, sitting up with her work-reddened hands gripped hard together in her lap, “will you tell me what it means? Are you rich, Gilbert?”

He looked thoughtfully at her, with the eye of one who computes.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m rich. I think I can say that, as money goes in the world. There’s to be no more work for you, my dear. You’ve done your share of it, both on your own account and for my boy.”

“He’s been no care. He’s been a joy and a profit to me,” said Aunt Maggie, with tears in her eyes.

Gilbert raised his hand and overawed her to silence. “I want you to try to forget these years,” said he. “I’m going to try to give you happiness that will enable you to forget them. For my part, I shall always remember.”

He turned to his son.

“You’ll learn to forgive me, John,” said he.

John Tanner turned crimson. It had never occurred to him that he had a right to make demands upon his father. He never would have dreamed of accusing him of anything whatever. So now he could only blush with violence and look miserably down to the floor.

But, the very next day, he had the first glimpse of heaven. He was taken downtown, he was clad from head to foot in the best of clothes.

“This stuff will do until the tailor can turn you out,” said his father. “Now, you tell me what you’re most interested in.”

“Indians,” said the boy, and then blushed once more, after he had blurted out the word.

His father looked sharply askance at him with an eye suddenly cold, keen, critical.

Then he said: “Well, you mean the redskins, by that, eh?”

“Yes,” said John.

“You want to take scalps, I suppose, and have a herd of ponies?”

John looked at him wistfully. A boy’s confidence may be won, but it cannot be forced.

“I used to want to do the same thing,” said the father.

“You know,” said John, “I just think about it a little.”

“It’s the shortest way through the winter evenings,” rejoined Gilbert Tanner. “I suppose that you have a rifle, my boy?”

“Oh, no! Of course not.”

“Never shot one?”

“Yes, quite a lot. Aunt Maggie gives me a little money for birthdays and Christmas, now and then. And I go down to the ranges and shoot at the targets.”

“You like that?”

“More than anything, mostly.”

“You shall have rifles,” said the father. “Horses, too. Depend on that! Rifles, pistols, horses, and everything that you want. You might make a list. You’re going to start a new life, Johnnie.”

That new life began that very day; they returned to the house with a pair of small-caliber rifles and a pair of light pistols.

“They’re for you to start with,” said Gilbert Tanner. “Afterwards, you’ll have something better.”

Better? It was a paradise that the boy saw laid before his eyes upon the bed of his room, a shining metal paradise. He stroked those weapons. He loved them. And Gilbert Tanner looked on with a somewhat grim smile.

That evening, after dinner, Aunt Maggie went to bed with a headache. So much happiness had upset her terribly. She trembled, and laughed, giggled and almost cried through the whole course of the day.

And John Tanner sat on the edge of a chair and watched his father on the other side of the living room. His father was erect, not from nervous excitement, but as a cavalryman is erect, or one accustomed to wear an air of authority in the presence of other men. Those bright, gray-green eyes of his were rather hard for John Tanner to meet, but he managed the job, smiling a little from time to time. He wanted to find words to express his gratitude for that flood of presents, which was enough, as he felt, to crowd an entire life full of joy. But the words would not come. Something filled his throat.

“Rifles or pistols, which do you like the best?” asked the father.

“Pistols,” said the boy, instantly.

His father raised his brows a trifle.

“I suppose I’m wrong,” said the boy, penitently.

“Well,” said Gilbert Tanner, “pistols are very good things—if you’re boarding a pirate junk, say; or holding up some wealthy fellow in the dark of the highroad. Pistols are very good for that, of course.”

His smile was a mere shadow of mirth.

“Otherwise,” he said, “I should think that a rifle would be a good deal more useful.”

“I don’t know much about it,” said John. “But you know, if you had to charge through a lot of Indians, then a pair of pistols would be—”

He stopped himself, clapping his hand over his mouth, his eyes round and staring. He felt that he had made a fool of himself. But his father merely nodded.

“I understand, perfectly,” said he. “The pistol’s the thing for work at short range. But it’s not equal to something else.”

“To what?” asked the boy.

“To this,” said his father.

And, from somewhere about his clothes, he produced what looked like a pistol, except that about the root of the barrel there was a heavy steel cylinder.

“This little Yankee trick will shoot six times without reloading. There’s six dead Indians for you, John. Six of ’em dead all in a second or so. How’s that?”

2 • TANNER’S STORY

John was stunned with admiration. He could see that all of his favorite dreams would have to be refurnished, immediately, with new linings. Then he looked up suspiciously into the face of his father.

“You’re not joking, father?” said he.

“Of course, I’m not,” said the father. “I haven’t cracked thirteen jokes in the last thirteen years. You see how the thing works? Samuel Colt is the inventor. And I suppose that he’ll change the history of the world somewhat with this bit of a trick of his. This is the way it goes together.”

He laid it out on the table. It seemed to fairly fall apart in his hands.

“You know it by heart!” cried the boy, in admiration.

“Well, Johnnie,” said his father, “no man knows the thing that he can’t make. And certainly no man knows what he can’t put together. You’ll learn this in a little while.”

He explained with care; the attentive eyes of the boy drank in every detail.

“Six shots!” said he, and shook his head again.

Why, by such a shower of bullets, a whole crowd could be split and scattered. A whole crowd of charging, yelling, raving Indians, eager to rush in after the first shot was fired, amazed, confounded by the bullets that followed—how they would break to either side and scamper away from the miracle gun!

“Will they have them, now, out West?” he asked.

“Here and there, perhaps. I don’t think in many places. Though I got this from a Yankee skipper in the South Seas!”

He chuckled softly as he spoke.

The boy, bright of eye, looked the question which he did not ask.

“No,” said Gilbert...