Max Brand

The Seventh Man Max Brand

If her soul had been capable of enthusiasm, Marne could have made the trip on schedule time, but she was a burro good for nothing except to carry a pack well nigh half her own weight, live onforage that might have starved a goat, and smell water fifteen miles in time of drought. Speed wasnot in her vocabulary, and accordingly it was late afternoon rather than morning when Gregg, pointing his course between the ears of Marne, steered her through Murphy's Pass and came outover Alder. There they paused by mutual consent, and the burro flicked one long ear forward tolisten to the rushing of the Doane River. It filled the valley with continual murmur, and just belowthem, where the brown, white-flecked current twisted around an elbow bend, lay Alder tossed downwithout plan, here a boulder and there a house. They seemed marvelously flimsy structures, and onefelt surprise that the weight the winter snow had not crushed them, or that the Doane River had notsent a strong current licking over bank and tossed the whole village crashing down the ravine. Onebuilding was very much like other, but Gregg's familiar eye pierced through the roofs and intoWidow Sullivan's staggering shack, into Hezekiah Whittleby's hushed sitting-room, down to themoist, dark floor of the Captain's saloon into that amazing junkshop, the General Merchandisestore; but first and last he looked to the little flag which gleamed and snapped above theschoolhouse, and it spelled "my country" to Vic. Marne consented to break into a neat-footed jog-trot going down the last slope, and so she wentup the single winding street of Alder, grunting at every step, with Gregg's whistle behind her. Intown, he lived with his friend, Dug Pym, who kept their attic room reserved for his occupancy, sohe headed straight for that place. What human face would he see first?It was Mrs. Sweeney's little boy, Jack, who raced into the street whooping, and Vic caught himunder the armpits and swung him dizzily into the air."By God," muttered Vic, as he strode on, "that's a good kid, that Jack." And he straightwayforgot all about that knife which Jackie had purloined from him the summer before. "Me andBetty," he thought, "we'll have kids, like Jack; tougher'n leather