Black Jack, Max Brand [snow like ashes .txt] 📗

CHAPTER 2

Twenty-four years made the face of Vance Cornish a little better-fed, a

little more blocky of cheek, but he remained astonishingly young. At

forty-nine the lumpish promise of his youth was quite gone. He was in a

trim and solid middle age. His hair was thinned above the forehead, but

it gave him more dignity. On the whole, he left an impression of a man

who has done things and who will do more before he is through.

 

He shifted his feet from the top of the porch railing and shrugged

himself deeper into his chair. It was marvelous how comfortable Vance

could make himself. He had one great power—the ability to sit still

through any given interval. Now he let his eye drift quietly over the

Cornish ranch. It lay entirely within one grasp of the vision, spilling

across the valley from Sleep Mountain, on the lower bosom of which the

house stood, to Mount Discovery on the north. Not that the glance of

Vance Cornish lurched across this bold distance. His gaze wandered as

slowly as a free buzzes across a clover field, not knowing on which

blossom to settle.

 

Below him, generously looped, Bear Creek tumbled out of the southeast,

and roved between noble borders of silver spruce into the shadows of the

Blue Mountains of the north, half a dozen miles across and ten long of

grazing and farm land, rich, loamy bottom land scattered with aspens.

 

Beyond, covering the gentle roll of the foothills, was grazing land.

Scattering lodgepole pine began in the hills, and thickened into dense

yellow-green thickets on the upper mountain slopes. And so north and

north the eye of Vance Cornish wandered and climbed until it rested on

the bald summit of Mount Discovery. It had its name out of its character,

standing boldly to the south out of the jumble of the Blue Mountains.

 

It was a solid unit, this Cornish ranch, fenced away with mountains,

watered by a river, pleasantly forested, and obviously predestined for

the ownership of one man. Vance Cornish, on the porch of the house, felt

like an enthroned king overlooking his dominions. As a matter of fact,

his holdings were hardly more than nominal.

 

In the beginning his father had left the ranch equally to Vance and

Elizabeth, thickly plastered with debts. The son would have sold the

place for what they could clear. He went East to hunt for education and

pleasure; his sister remained and fought the great battle by herself. She

consecrated herself to the work, which implied that the work was sacred.

And to her, indeed, it was.

 

She was twenty-two and her brother twelve when their father died. Had she

been a tithe younger and her brother a mature man, it would have been

different. As it was, she felt herself placed in a maternal position with

Vance. She sent him away to school, rolled up her sleeves and started to

order chaos. In place of husband, children—love and the fruits of love—

she accepted the ranch. The dam between the rapids and the waterfall was

the child of her brain; the plowed fields of the central part of the

valley were her reward.

 

In ten years of constant struggle she cleared away the debts. And then,

since Vance gave her nothing but bills to pay, she began to buy out his

interest. He chose to learn his business lessons on Wall Street.

Elizabeth paid the bills, but she checked the sums against his interest

in the ranch. And so it went on. Vance would come out to the ranch at

intervals and show a brief, feverish interest, plan a new set of

irrigation canals, or a sawmill, or a better road out over the Blue

Mountains. But he dropped such work half-done and went away.

 

Elizabeth said nothing. She kept on paying his bills, and she kept on

cutting down his interest in the old Cornish ranch, until at the present

time he had only a fingertip hold. Root and branch, the valley and all

that was in it belonged to Elizabeth Cornish. She was proud of her

possession, though she seldom talked of her pride. Nevertheless, Vance

knew, and smiled. It was amusing, because, after all, what she had done,

and all her work, would revert to him at her death. Until that time, why

should he care in whose name the ranch remained so long as his bills were

paid? He had not worked, but in recompense he had remained young.

Elizabeth had labored all her youth away. At forty-nine he was ready to

begin the most important part of his career. At sixty his sister was a

withered old ghost of a woman.

 

He fell into a pleasant reverie. When Elizabeth died, he would set in

some tennis courts beside the house, buy some blooded horses, cut the

road wide and deep to let the world come up Bear Creek Valley, and retire

to the life of a country gentleman.

 

His sister’s voice cut into his musing. She had two tones. One might be

called her social register. It was smooth, gentle—the low-pitched and

controlled voice of a gentlewoman. The other voice was hard and sharp. It

could drive hard and cold across a desk, and bring businessmen to an

understanding that here was a mind, not a woman.

 

At present she used her latter tone. Vance Cornish came into a shivering

consciousness that she was sitting beside him. He turned his head slowly.

It was always a shock to come out of one of his pleasant dreams and see

that worn, hollow-eyed, impatient face.

 

“Are you forty-nine, Vance?”

 

“I’m not fifty, at least,” he countered.

 

She remained imperturbable, looking him over. He had come to notice that

in the past half-dozen years his best smiles often failed to mellow her

expression. He felt that something disagreeable was coming.

 

“Why did Cornwall run away this morning? I hoped to take him on a trip.”

 

“He had business to do.”

 

His diversion had been a distinct failure, and had been turned against

him. For she went on: “Which leads to what I have to say. You’re going

back to New York in a few days, I suppose?”

 

“No, my dear. I haven’t been across the water for two years.”

 

“Paris?”

 

“Brussels. A little less grace; a little more spirit.”

 

“Which means money.”

 

“A few thousand only. I’ll be back by fall.”

 

“Do you know that you’ll have to mortgage your future for that money,

Vance?”

 

He blinked at her, but maintained his smile under fire courageously.

 

“Come, come! Things are booming. You told me yesterday what you’d clean

up on the last bunch of Herefords.”

 

When she folded her hands, she was most dangerous, he knew. And now the

bony fingers linked and she shrugged the shawl more closely around her

shoulders.

 

“We’re partners, aren’t we?” smiled Vance.

 

“Partners, yes. You have one share and I have a thousand. But—you don’t

want to sell out your final claim, I suppose?”

 

His smile froze. “Eh?”

 

“If you want to get those few thousands, Vance, you have nothing to put

up for them except your last shreds of property. That’s why I say you’ll

have to mortgage your future for money from now on.”

 

“But—how does it all come about?”

 

“I’ve warned you. I’ve been warning you for twenty-five years, Vance.”

 

Once again he attempted to turn her. He always had the impression that if

he became serious, deadly serious for ten consecutive minutes with his

sister, he would be ruined. He kept on with his semi-jovial tone.

 

“There are two arts, Elizabeth. One is making money and the other is

spending it. You’ve mastered one and I’ve mastered the other. Which

balances things, don’t you think?”

 

She did not melt; he waved down to the farm land.

 

“Watch that wave of wind, Elizabeth.”

 

A gust struck the scattering of aspens, and turned up the silver of the

dark green leaves. The breeze rolled across the trees in a long, rippling

flash of light. But Elizabeth did not look down. Her glance was fixed on

the changeless snow of Mount Discovery’s summit.

 

“As long as you have something to spend, spending is a very important

art, Vance. But when the purse is empty, it’s a bit useless, it seems to

me.”

 

“Well, then, I’ll have to mortgage my future. As a matter of fact, I

suppose I could borrow what I want on my prospects.”

 

A veritable Indian yell, instantly taken up and prolonged by a chorus of

similar shouts, cut off the last of his words. Round the corner of the

house shot a blood-bay stallion, red as the red of iron under the

blacksmith’s hammer, with a long, black tail snapping and flaunting

behind him, his ears flattened, his beautiful vicious head outstretched

in an effort to tug the reins out of the hands of the rider. Failing in

that effort, he leaped into the air like a steeplechaser and pitched down

upon stiffened forelegs.

 

The shock rippled through the body of the rider and came to his head with

a snap that jerked his chin down against his breast. The stallion rocked

back on his hind legs, whirled, and then flung himself deliberately on

his back. A sufficiently cunning maneuver—first stunning the enemy with

a blow and then crushing him before his senses returned. But he landed on

nothing save hard gravel. The rider had whipped out of the saddle and

stood poised, strong as the trunk of a silver spruce.

 

The fighting horse, a little shaken by the impact of his fall,

nevertheless whirled with catlike agility to his feet—a beautiful thing

to watch. As he brought his forequarters off the earth, he lunged at the

rider with open mouth. A sidestep that would have done credit to a

pugilist sent the youngster swerving past that danger. He leaped to the

saddle at the same time that the blood-bay came