by Max Brand
"He doesn't doubt himself as much as you doubt him!" suggested Clonmel. "But they can't work up the logs of that roofing—not without crowbars and a lot of noise. What'll they do ? They'll simply try the front door."
"While a man's walking up and down in front of it, on guard?" said I.
"That's all right," answered Clonmel, still in a whisper. "Jim Silver won't give up the ship, old son."
I could feel my pulse in my forehead and in my lips. There's nothing more exhausting than long fear, long expectation, and I felt as though my endurance had rubbed thin as a shingle, ready to break at a touch. I rolled over to the front wall and put my eye at the largest chink I could find between the floor and the edge of the wall.
I could see the guard pacing up and down. His lantern was hung on the side of a tree. The light of it stretched his shadow long or short along the ground.
He was a fellow I had not noticed before. He was close to forty, big and splendidly made, like all of the Carys, and wearing a short beard that was trimmed to a point. It was stiffly curling and such a glossy black that in certain lights it glistened like colored glass. The sheen of his eyes, under the deep brim of his hat, matched the gloss of his beard. He made a romantic figure, as he strode along there with a fine swing, but it wasn't his magnificence that impressed me. It was the rifle that he carried under his arm, and the pair of revolvers that weighted his cartridge belt. He had an air of authority. He had the air of one who would astonish himself if he missed a shot.
When he came to the end of his beat, though he was out of sight, I could hear him speak, each time. He said softly: "Hi!" or "Here!" as he turned to swing back past the front of the smoke-house once more. Now that I was listening for the sounds, with my ear close to the chink, I could hear dim answers, and I knew that other men were walking on at least two other sides of the building.
If those were friends of ours on the top of the house, how had they managed to climb there, unobserved? That was what baffled me. I gave up hope at once and decided that they could not be friends, but must be another pair of guards. It seemed that the Carys were ready to treat Jim Silver and Taxi as though they were a pair of hawks that were apt to drop down out of the sky!
That metaphor had just occurred to me when my bearded man came striding along about opposite the door. He stopped, looked up suddenly, so that I saw the strange white of his throat beneath the beard. And that was the moment that the blow struck him.
The object moved so fast that I could not tell what it was, for an instant. Then I saw the guard lying on the ground, and a big man rising from the prostrate form. That big man was Jim Silver!
My heart gave one great stroke, then all the blood in my body ran warmly and easily through the channels. For, if Silver was there, only a fool would stop hoping.
As Silver rose, the big guard threw up his hands. Silver leaned and struck him behind the ear. I heard the dull, clicking noise as though the knuckles sounded through the thin flesh against the bone of the skull. The guard turned limp. Silver straightened, and caught out of the air another form, softening the fall so that the man alighted noiselessly on the ground. That was Taxi, who sprang instantly out of my field of vision toward the door, while Silver scooped the hat of the fallen man off, jerked it over his own head, and caught the rifle up under his arm.
Then he in his turn stepped out of my line of sight, and a moment later I heard him say softly: "Hi!" at the next corner of the building.
At the same time, a light, scratching sound of metal against metal began in the lock of the door.
I could understand the idea then, though it was the sort of a thought that only the calmest brain in the world could have conceived in the beginning, or the steeliest nerves have attempted to execute. Somehow, the pair of them had managed to get up the rear of the smoke-house, and, working across the roof, Silver had dropped out of the air and had flattened the guard on duty there. Besides, he was to walk up and down and give a glimpse of himself at the alternate corners, repeating the single word each time, as the others were doing. And while he in this manner kept up the face of things, Taxi was to pick the lock and set us free.
I could remember more stories about Taxi now. It was said that, before he joined Silver, he had made his living by his mastery of that same art of picking locks. Well, I wished him millions of dollars' reward, no matter how he came by it, if only he could succeed in mastering the intricacies of that big steel lock which secured the smoke-house against thieves.
Just there, when my hopes were beginning to gallop like horses, I heard a voice from the rear of the cabin sing out loudly:
"Pete? Pete?"
"Hi?" called the guarded voice of Jim Silver.
"That you, Pete?" asked the other.
"Oh, the devil—" said Silver, not loudly, and again appeared to me, stepping calmly past the front of the cabin.
I waited, on edge, but there was no repetition of the question from the rear of the smoke-house. That casual answer had soothed the suspicions of the other guard, and I suppose the words were sufficiently natural to cover up any dissimilarity of voices. As a matter of fact, all bass voices have a faculty of sounding more or less alike.
Still the light, scratching sound continued at the door until I heard a heavier noise, though still very subdued, and then the door swayed open. A broad, truncated cone of lantern light appeared in the room, and showed me the broken beam on which I had stood with Clonmel.
Through that light slithered Taxi, with a winking bit of steel in his fingers.
He got to big Clonmel and freed him. I heard the slash of the sharp edge as it went through the ropes. He sprang to me, afterward. And I give you my word that his coming was as soundless as a shadow. An owl could not have moved more softly through the air. It seemed to be a bodiless thing that leaned over me, but it was no ghostly unreality—the fact that I was free, a moment later, from the grip of the ropes.
I got to my feet and swung my arms and flexed my knees to get the blood going and the sense back into my nerves.
Outside, I could hear Jim Silver saying: "Hi!" at a corner of the smoke-house, as he turned on his fake beat. Taxi, gripping me with one hand, and big Clonmel with the other, was saying in a whisper:
"Don't run, but walk. Walk straight out the door, past the trees, around the side of the smoke-house. Walk steadily. Jim and I will be behind you."
I led the way. I suppose it was hard for Clonmel to turn his face for flight before he had had a chance to get his grip on one of those rascals.
However, I could clearly feel and hear him striding behind me as we went out of the door of the smokehouse.
There were clouds in the sky, but there were stars, too, and the look of them was the finest thing that ever came to my eyes, I can promise you. And if I looked at the stars, the stars seemed to be looking right back at me!
I stepped past the motionless length of the bearded man, Pete. His arms were stretched straight out at his sides. His mouth was open, and he looked more dead than stunned.
I went beneath the big hood of the branches of the tree where the lantern was hung, and then into the cone of shadow on the farther side of the tree. It certainly felt good to me, that shadow.
The big, sprawling house of the Carys was before me now. I went around the corner of it with Clonmel now stepping at my side. Indoors, we heard voices, and then a hearty burst of laughter startled me. It was oddly as though someone had been watching us all the time and now were deriding our silly little efforts to escape.
I had to think back with a start to Jim Silver. I had to remember that Jim Silver never did silly things.
Except, somehow, that he had let Clonmel take Parade and Frosty!
Then we were in front of the house, where a full dozen of saddled horses were tied to two long hitch racks.
A light footfall came up from behind me. That was Taxi, whispering:
"Take every horse. Tie the reins together. We've got to delay 'em, old man. Don't be rattled. Steady, old man!"
> Steady? Yes, if I could make my fingers behave like flesh and blood instead of like frozen pieces of nerveless wood. But I began to untie the horses, one after another. One of them threw up his head suddenly, and the rattling of the bridle made my heart jump. It seemed to me louder than the chiming of heavy church bells.
Then from the rear of the house came the thing that I was set for, that my whole soul was ready and opened by dread to perceive, so that the echoes of the noise ran through me and set all the nerves tingling like responsive wires. It was the short, heavy bark of a revolver!
I had four of the horses linked up. I got into the first saddle with one jump. A trained circus athlete could never have mounted faster. I pulled the head of the mustang around, and it seemed to me that it took a whole minute to get the iron-mouthed brute turned.
If only I had had spurs! Whereas I had only heels to grind into the ribs of the horse!
The sound of the gun had echoed through my soul; it had echoed through the house, too, and started doors banging and heavy feet bumping here and there. More gunshots followed, and then voices began to yell the alarm.
I tried to untangle the sounds in my memory and recall what they were, but I can only remember one word, over and over again: "Silver! Silver! Silver!"
Well, if the old man had not known Silver before, he would know him after this!
Then a tall form came around the corner of the building and leaped into a saddle with a fantastic bound. That was Jim Silver. And with the sweep of the whole procession of horses, we plunged away.
Two more figures came flickering around the corner of the house. They were shooting as they ran. One of our horses reared and squealed. I saw Silver shoot, and one of the shadowy forms spilled along the ground.
He fired again. The second went staggering.
The door of the house opened behind us, letting out a rush of light and of voices, but now we were tearing at full speed through the dark shelter of the trees.
CHAPTER XVI
The Pursuit
REVOLVERS are bad business inside a house or at short range, but there's nothing so infernally convincing as the ringing explosion of a rifle at a little distance, and the way the rifle bullets went cracking through the branches kept me flattened along the neck of the mustang.
We came out into the open, beyond the trees. The long., dry grass swished like water around the legs of the horses, and the beat of the hoofs was so muffled that far away we could hear the squealing of half-wild bronchos as the Carys caught up fresh mounts and threw saddles on them.
We had a good lead, but not a secure one, for we knew that the Carys would get out of their horses all that savage Indians could get. That was what they were—Indians. And they had the blood thirst high in their throats.
Beyond the trees, I saw that a moon was rising, the big yellow circle just detaching itself from the hills. We were aimed right at it, and I remember that the light seemed to make a path over the flat of the ground, like a light's path on water. It was all very beautiful, but when that same moon was a little higher, it would furnish excellent light for the rifles of the Cary clan.
Silver swung over toward me.
"Avon," he said, "you know this country better than any of the rest of us, it seems. What's the best way out?"
"The way we came in," said I.
"We can't go that way. It takes us right back past the Cary house."
That was true. I looked rather wildly around me. It upset me to have to lead the way, even as a guide, because such men as Taxi and Silver ought to be ruling all of our movements. Besides, I really knew very little about the valley, except that two or three times, on long hunting expeditions, I had come to the verge of the cliffs and looked over that forbidden land. The high wall of stone was broken in only a few places, where creeks, large or small, had eaten through the barrier, but all of the creeks had not cut out valleys that were passable; some of the waters had dropped down through box canyons that even a mountain sheep could not wander through.
I looked along a glint of water ahead of us and saw by glimpses of brightness that it wound away toward a black, yawning mouth in the wall of the cliffs. Certainly that opened a good promise, and I pointed it out.
"That ought to be the next best way," I called to Silver.
He nodded in answer and turned his horse in that direction. We made time as fast as we could hoof it along, because the great object, of course, was to get out of sight before the Cary horsemen swarmed out on our trail; as I forced my broncho into a racing gallop, I kept looking back over my shoulder. The plain behind me was dark, because I was looking away from the moon, and the trees that screened the Cary house were like big storm clouds. Riders out of those clouds would be like lightning flashes to me, no matter how dimly they appeared.
But we pulled up to the mouth of the canyon without seeing a single pursuer. It was only as I kicked my mustang through the gap that it seemed to me something came out from the trees. It was like seeing shadows of shadows, but I knew it was real. That flick of a glimpse, that mere hint, was composed of riders on running horses. I could hope, however, that they hadn't seen us, for the shadows of the rocks fell down on us, thrown by the rising moon.
In the meantime, we poured through that canyon, and rounding a sharp elbow bend, we came smash on the end of our way. There was a big cliff of hard stone —granite, perhaps. It was glistening white with the moon, above and ink-black with shadow below, and the little wan brightness of the falling water streaked a glimmer of reflected moonshine down through the shadow. It was a whale of a cliff. It was a good hundred feet high, and instead of offering foothold, here and there, it actually swayed back from the top toward the base. A lizard would have grown dizzy looking at the thing, to say nothing of trying to climb it. And like measuring sticks to show up the height of the stone, there were some tall, slender trees, straight-shafted and arrow-tipped, that stood up from the floor of the valley.
We stopped our horses and looked around us. We could hear the panting of the horses, the saddle leather creaking a good deal as the mustangs heaved their sides. And I could hear the unspoken words of the men who were condemning me for pointing out a blank trail.
Then we swung around and hurried back to the mouth of the shallow little box canyon.
It was a whole lot too late to do anything in that direction, for the moon was brightening all this while and shaking silver dust over the grass of the plain. And in the middle of the plain came the men of the Cary clan.
They looked more terrible to me than wild Indians. Wild as Indians they were, and more cruel, and more formidable in wits. And the numbers of them! There was a cluster of twelve or fifteen at the head of the search, and others kept ripping out of the woods with whoops. Even at that distance, I could hear the thin yells walking across the air of the night. A fine sight, a stirring picture—to be looked at in a book!
I glanced aside at Jim Silver, sitting very still on his' horse, with a hand on his hip. The moon fell full on his face, so that I could see the tranquillity of it, and I knew the meaning of the phrase "ready to die." He was ready. He must always have been ready. Perhaps that was why he had rubbed shoulders with death so many times and escaped. But most of the time he had had with him a horse that nothing could match, or that wise devil of a Frosty. Now he was stripped of his tools—and Clonmel had stripped him.
It would not have been strange, when he saw how we were bottled up, when he saw that we could not venture out of our hole in the ground without being rushed by the hunters, if he had turned and cursed Clonmel heartily. Instead, I saw him put out his hand casually and drop it on the huge shoulder of that tattered figure. I heard Clonmel say in a choking voice: "Jim—" And Silver answered gently: "Hush, old son!"
There was something between the pair of them, something that would make Silver give more than horse or wolf, or even life, to this young giant.
"They're working the trail with Frosty. They'll soon be here," said Silver, after that.
I had not seen at first, but now I could make it out. I could see the figure of the big lobo on the end of the lariat, straining forward across the plain, and the riders cantering easily after him. They had brought out Frosty, knowing that he would follow the trail of his master with a perfect certainty. A horrible thought, it seemed to me, that the love of the beast for the man should have been used to kill Silver. And that was what they meant. The rest of us didn't count. Not even Taxi, not even the hugeness of Clonmel counted. Jim Silver was the man they wanted. If they got him, Barry Christian would flood their wallets with hard cash. Barry Christian himself, with that invincible enemy removed, would go on to build up for himself a new and greater empire of crime.
I could see one rider far loftier than the others, on a gleaming horse. That was Barry Christian, I had no doubt, on the silken brightness of Parade. And the whole current of fighting men was set directly toward us.
Silver said: "We'd better pull back from this."
Taxi broke out: "We can slip out and ride along the cliffs and, if they see us, we can make a running fight of it."
Silver simply said: "That won't do."
He didn't advance any arguments, and no arguments were needed. Cary rifles would not miss, even by moonlight, and all of us knew it.
Silver dismounted. We all did the same. He told me to take the horses back up the canyon. I did that and tethered them to trees. Then I hurried back.
We all had rifles from saddle holsters of the Cary clan. We had plenty of ammunition. If it came to a matter of siege, we could eat horseflesh and cut down trees to make fires, and there was water flowing through the ravine. But before long the Carys would be on the heights above us, as well as plugging the mouth of the ravine, and they would pick us off at their leisure. It seemed improbable that they would be able to scale the cliffs on either side of the ravine directly, but they could send back a party through the mountains, to come down from the headwaters of the little creek, and get at us in that way. I thought that out as I stood there, and saw the others ready with their guns.