Max Brand

Trailin'! Max Brand

All through the exhibition the two sat unmoved; yet on the whole it was the best Wild West showthat ever stirred sawdust in Madison Square Garden and it brought thunders of applause from thecrowded house. Even if the performance could not stir these two, at least the throng of spectatorsshould have drawn them, for all New York was there, from the richest to the poorest; neither thecombined audiences of a seven-day race, a prize-fight, or a community singing festival would makesuch a cosmopolitan assembly. All Manhattan came to look at the men who had lived and fought and conquered under the limitlessskies of the Far West, free men, wild men-one of their shrill whoops banished distance andbrought the mountain desert into the very heart of the unromantic East. Nevertheless from all thesethrills these two men remained immune. To be sure the smaller tilted his head back when the horses first swept in, and the larger leaned towatch when Diaz, the wizard with the lariat, commenced to whirl his rope; but in both cases theirinterest held no longer than if they had been old vaudevillians watching a series of familiar actsdressed up with new names. The smaller, brown as if a thousand fierce suns and winds had tanned and withered him, looked upat last to his burly companion with a faint smile."They're bringing on the cream now, Drew, but I'm going to spoil the dessert."The other was a great, grey man whom age apparently had not weakened but rather settled andhardened into an ironlike durability; the winds of time or misfortune would have to break thatstanch oak before it would bend.