by Brand, Max
They opened once more. They turned with a vague, struggling glance on Silver and remained on his face.
“Silver!” said the faint and groaning voice of Taxi.
“We’re going to beat them, Taxi,” said Silver.
He no longer steadied the head of Taxi by holding the lock of hair between his teeth. That head no longer joggled and bounced lifelessly, but was sustained almost steadily by the man’s own strength. His body seemed a lifeless pulp, but there was life in the head and eyes. A little life in the hands, also; for now one of them gripped the back of the saddle to take some of the strain away from Silver.
Taxi looked back.
He saw, behind him, the streaming flight of the five riders in pursuit. Their yelling voices sounded in his ear like the voices of so many hawks, screaming in the sky. And he was the prey that an eagle had seized on and was bearing off toward safety.
His brain was still clouded. It had seemed to him, at first, that he was borne through a sort of cold fire, a world of cold fire. He was dead then. He was dead, and his soul was carried on rushing wings through the flames of hell. Soon they would winnow him with ethereal heat, but now they were still at a distance.
Then the agony of his body called him back to life in a realer measure. He was aware of the strong arms that upheld him. The gallop of Parade forced the cold sweetness of the morning air into his lungs. He could think, and his first thought was of what motive worked behind the brown face of his deliverer.
In the beginning all was mystery. How this one man could have entered the house of the enemy and taken a senseless body out — that was the greatest mystery of all.
Why, now, he risked his life by making his horse carry double in a race which must be lost if it endured long was another thunderstroke to the brain of Taxi.
There was some hidden reason, of course. People don’t do things unless they have a reason. The preservation of his life was important in the eyes of Silver. Otherwise Silver would not be there. What that importance might be was a closed book to Taxi. But he was willing to wait for developments. There are many things in this life which cannot be solved by the first glance of the eye.
And above all that was strange was this sense of being cared for by the brain, the courage, the skill of a stranger. There was no bond between them. They had entered into no partnership. They belonged to no “crowd.”
Back in the memory of Taxi remained the words that he had overheard between Silver and the girl. Silver had said that Taxi would be his care. But it could not be that there was no profound cause for that care.
In the basement of the house of Barry Christian, there in the mountains, gold was packed in many little buckskin sacks. That, perhaps, was the reason at the base of all. Behind every mystery there is always a question of money, if you look far enough!
So these thoughts struggled through the mind of Taxi as Parade rushed him forward through the cool morning air. Sometimes his physical agony made all thoughts a blank, but he kept the screaming of his nerves far back, as a rule, buried in a corner of his consciousness. When things like this were happening, it was no time to be aware of mere bodily pain.
A ravine opened to the right.
They swept down it with a speed increased by the greater slope. It seemed impossible that the shoulders of any horse could endure the frightful strain that was falling on the forelegs of Parade. But he was all steel — all steel under a golden sheathing.
A smile came again over the face of Taxi as he muttered: “What a horse!”
Silver said nothing. He rode with the grip of his legs only, his hands and arms supporting the body of Taxi. Now and then he turned his head a little to measure the increasing distance between him and the men behind. They were yelling no longer. They were saving brains and breath for the work of jockeying their horses to a greater and a greater speed.
Now Parade swept out of the ravine into a more open valley. Silver groaned as he saw it, and Taxi could understand why.
The going underfoot was smooth enough, but the floor of the valley stretched before them endlessly without so much as a tree to give a hint of shelter. To the left there were trees enough, to be sure. There was a great wave of brush and pines that swept on up the mountain, and in which they well might hide themselves. But on the nearer side of the narrow canyon there was no more than an occasional lone tree.
“What’s up?” asked Taxi.
“We’re done for,” said Silver through his teeth. “Parade is almost finished. There’s no cover. And we can’t stand off five men when one of ‘em is Barry Christian.”
That was simple mathematics. No, they could not stand off five men when one of them was Barry Christian!
Far behind them came the enemy, streaking. Tasxi, as he glanced back, saw them waving their hats in circles, a certain sign that they considered the battle won.
Then Silver with one sharp call brought Parade to a halt, and flung himself down to the ground.
Still with his hand he supported the limp body of Taxi.
Taxi said: “Go on, you fool! Let ‘em have me. You can’t beat ‘em. But if you’re riding alone in the saddle this pony will walk away from that crowd. Go on, Silver. I don’t know what you expect to get back from me, but it’s not worth the price!”
Silver made no answer. He had cut off the reins close to the head stall of the hackamore which served him instead of a bridle. Now, with the reins, he lashed the feet of Taxi beneath the belly of the stallion, and, drawing Taxi forward flat on his face, tied his hands with full force around the neck of Parade.
Next he picked up the light end of a fallen tree trunk that lay close to the verge of the little ravine. Years had stripped away its foliage. He upended it, walked it up into the air, and let it topple forward.
Crouched forward, tense with anxiety, Taxi saw Silver standing as the trunk fell straight and true across the dozen yards that separated the walls of the little ravine. It dropped with such force that it seemed certain that the slender tip of the tree would be broken off. But there was seasoned strength in the long, fragile sapling. The tip of it recoiled and bounced up from the shock, and the long trunk lay trembling across the breach.
Taxi could understand now. It was a sort of bridge that Silver had laid down across the stream with this one swift gesture. But what living man could cross such a structure, what walker of the loose wire, even, could step across that trembling, uncertain, rolling support?
The thought of walking was not in Silver’s mind, however. But, swinging out from the near side of the gorge, he grasped the round of the trunk between his hands and so carried himself on, swinging pendulous from his hands, taking one great arm haul after another like a sailor on a rope.
That was the meaning of the big shoulders, the long and powerful arms.
To the left, rushing down the valley, came the five, with big Barry Christian already in the lead and pulling a rifle out of its sheath as he saw what went on before him. To win Taxi, to win the great horse, Parade, might be something; but it was nothing compared with the loss of such a prize as Silver. That was plain.
Taxi saw that Silver was close to the farther end of the trunk. He saw the meager tip of the tree bend, sag terribly, slip away at the point where it rested on the opposite rock. And then feebly Taxi yelled the warning, and saw the tree go down. Silver disappeared.
No, it seemed as though a mysterious hand caught and buoyed him up in mid-air while the trunk leaped like a living thing into that hundred-foot abyss.
Some projecting ridge, invisible to the eyes of Taxi at that angle, had been found by the catlike feet of Silver as the man fell. Now he was swarming up the face of the rock, standing on the top of it, shouting a wild appeal to Parade.
For what? To come to him!
The breath left the body of Taxi as the great stallion came to the edge of the ravine, so that Taxi could look down into the chasm and hear and see the white frothing of the stream. It sang on a hollow note, prolonged by endless echoing.
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On the verge of the gorge Parade reared. The strength of his neighing sent a great shudder through the body of Taxi. Then the big horse whirled and ran back.
With dizzy eyes, as Parade turned, Taxi saw the men of Christian racing toward him. Christian himself, well in the lead, was firing shot after shot, not attempting to level the rifle from his shoulder on that racing horse, but shooting it from the ready. How closely he was edging the target was told by the keen wasp sounds that darted by the ears of Taxi.
And now, turning back toward the gorge, Parade rushed it at full speed. He was going to try the leap. Taxi knew that. There was no more turning the massive rush of the horse than of checking a huge avalanche.
That was as good a way as any, when a man had to die. Better than the torturing hands of Babe.
Then Parade left the ground with a wrench that jerked Taxi far to the side. Along the flank of the stallion he lay bunched beside the saddle. Beneath him he saw the white of the churning water. They seemed to hang in mid-air. They dropped. The hoofs of Parade struck the rock with a force that drove Taxi almost under his belly.
The big stallion was still struggling to gain a footing on the ledge when consciousness left Taxi.
XVII
The Care
WHEN Taxi recovered his wits, he lay in semidarkness with a smell of moist earth strong in his nostrils. When he stirred, the voice of Silver said beside him, in a whisper:
“Be still! Don’t stir! Don’t breathe.”
Taxi turned his head. He was looking out toward the source of light now, and against it he could see the dull shimmer of gold along the flank of Parade. Outside, toward the open air, there were other noises now. There was trampling through brush, and the sound of voices far off, answered nearer at hand.
Then two were speaking close by.
That was Pokey who cried out: “He’s got to be around here, somewhere. Jim Silver and his horse can’t evaporate, can they?”
“Don’t ask me what the devil they can do,” said Barry Christian.
“Well, I’ll crawl back into this here cave,” said Pokey.
“You fool,” said Christian. “Even if a man could get back in there under the rock, how could a horse do it? Lie on its side and crawl like a snake?”
“Yeah,” said Pokey. “But a man could get back in there.”
“You’ll find Silver where you find the horse,” said Christian firmly. “I know it in my bones. I’ve always known it. There’ll be no end to Silver until there’s an end to the horse. The two of them are tied together.”
“There’s Babe yelling down there in the hollow. Blast him, he’s the one that lost Taxi for us!” cried the high, snarling voice of Pokey.
“Babe did everything he was able to do,” said Christian, with surprising moderation. “I was the fool to leave Taxi in the hands of Babe after I knew that Silver had started on the trail. There was no way for Silver to trail us, but I might have known that he would find us, in the end. And how could Babe tell that Scotty had been caught and gagged by Silver? There’s no one to blame except the devil that’s inside Jim Silver, and that devil I’ll have out of his body. One day I’ll see what his heart is made of, or he’ll see mine.”
He said this with a calm determination that baffled Taxi. It was as though the man had seen the future and knew to a degree what it held. And he thought of that intellectual and cruel face, and it seemed to Taxi that it would be worth while to die at once, if only he could first put a bullet through the brain, between the eyes of Barry Christian.
The voices retreated, after a time, and left Taxi to the long agony of his bruised body.
Half a dozen times, during the next few days, voices again came by them, very close, and half a dozen times they went away again before, at last, Silver said:
“We’re going to chance it and get out in the sun. The sun may do more for you than I can.”
There had been, in the interim, such care from the hands of Silver as it seemed only a physician could give. He went out once a day to go to a distance, cut a burden of grass, trap fresh meat, cook it, and then carry the supplies back to the darkness of the cave. That was how Taxi and Parade were supported during the interim of twilight in that refuge. Then, with his saddlebags as buckets, Silver carried in water for the horse and fell to his usual occupation of massaging the invalid.
He seemed to need no light; but, as one who knew every muscle like an anatomist, he carefully rubbed the battered body of Taxi. It was agony to endure. It was exhausting, at first, to such a degree that Taxi always fell into a long sleep, after the massage had ended. But with each treatment more use of his limbs returned to him.
He did not need to be carried, when Silver at last gave the word and they went from the inner into the outer cave. There, lying prone on the verge of the golden day, with the sun soaking through his clothes, reaching his body with healing fingers of warmth, Taxi saw the mystery solved.
The inner cave was blocked off from the outer by two great rocks, under which there was left a hole through which a man could barely crawl. But Silver, grasping the lower edge of one of those boulders, gradually managed to turn it until it fell clear and crashed against the side wall. Then it seemed to fit into an old notch, and Silver called to Parade, who came out like a huge dog, flat on his belly, crawling and scratching until he was through and at last stood in the sun and threw up his head to neigh his delight in the world.
“Stop him!” cried Taxi. “Don’t let him whinny — they’ll hear sure as shooting!”
Silver shook his head. “We’ve stopped playing safe. We’re taking chances now,” he said.
Taxi lay back and wondered at him.
In fact, Silver set to work to make a home of this place, since he had decided that they were to take chances and no longer live a secret existence.
He made a fireplace of stone, in front of the cave and just to the side of it, so that as little smoke as possible might blow inside. He cut down with a hand ax a quantity of pine boughs and saplings to build two huge, soft beds of the fragrant evergreens. He built two windbreaks that cost him a whole day’s labor. And when the next storm came they had reason to be thankful for the shelter.
In the meantime, Taxi increased in strength each day. The diet was cold water, unsalted meat, and certain roots which Silver baked with the meats; besides, there were herbs to make a green salad and go down with the meat.
There was a great, hollow-topped rock near the entrance to the cave. That hollow Silver filled with water every day, and then built a fire about the rock until the water inside it was hot. To that he carried Taxi and gave him as warm a bath as he could stand, followed by massage.
That was a help, but most of all to make the cure, the heat of the sun was at work every day. Silver made Taxi lie out stripped in the white fire that fell through the trees, and the searching heat went to the very marrow of his bones.
Every day he could do more. He could crawl. He could prop himself up on his arms and sit with his back against a tree: Then he could pull himself up along the tree and stand. Finally he could walk, brief, tottering steps.
He was never still while he was awake. To regain control of himself was his present goal. He bent every energy of his keen brain to the task. As soon as he could use a muscle, he was at it constantly. He got a gun from Silver and, sitting under the tree, practiced for hours, making the draw from whatever part of his clothes held the weapon.
It was not like his automatics. It was a big single action Colt with a huge barrel that had, in length, at least four extra inches added. The trigger had been filed away. The sights were filed off, also. And the hammer worked on an easy spring, so that it could be fanned.
There was practically no conversation between him and Silver, because he felt it was dishonorable for him to ask Silver what the hidden purpose behind the rescue might be, and until Silver told him, there was a barrier between them. However, he could at least ask why this weapon pleased Silver more than an automatic.
Silver answered the question readily enough.
“When you use an automatic,” he said, “the kick of the first shot throws the gun out of line for the second one. You’re not placing every shot with care. You’re sprinkling lead out of a hose, so to speak, and none of the drops may hit the bull’s-eye. Besides, the mechanism of an automatic will go out of shape, now and then; and if it’s only once in a thousand times, that once is enough to be the death of you, I suppose.”
It seemed to Taxi a fine calculation of chances, this last bit of the argument.
As for the rest, he answered: “I’m fair with my automatics. They shoot pretty straight for me. Will you let me see you work?”
“Certainly,” said Silver.
It had seemed to Taxi that there had been just a shade of boasting about the previous comparison between a single-shot, old-fashioned Colt and the newest pride of the gunsmiths. Now, moved by a malicious impulse, he picked up two small rocks from the ground beside him and tossed them high in the air.
“All right,” said Taxi, and watched not the rocks but the effect on the man.
Even so, it seemed to him that there was no actual move of the hand to get a heavy gun from under the coat. There was merely a double flash and then the double report of a gun, fired from just a little above the hip.
Taxi looked up. But there were no longer two black spots falling through the air. The stones had disappeared.
Taxi continued to stare upward for a moment at the unstained blue of the sky. It was for him a moment of awe and wonder. In all his days he never had encountered a man who was his master with weapons, but now he realized that this big, brown-faced man was his superior as far as he himself was the master of some green novice, almost.
“Pretty good,” said Taxi, and fell back into his usual long silence.
The day came, however, when he could endure it no longer. It was a bright morning. Down the slope between the trees he could see a solitaire, the loveliest of songsters, lifting itself from the top of a shrub by the wild joy of its own music and then descending again to its perch only to be blown upward again on an entrancing cloud of song. Something came out of that song into the soul of Taxi. He could not exactly say what it was; but he knew that, as he listened, a great panorama unrolled in his mind. It was not of towering skyscrapers and shadowed streets and alleys that he thought, but he saw now big-shouldered and hard-flanked mountains, gaunt as athletes, thrusting their heads at the sky, the white of the summits hardly paler than the sun-drenched shining of the heavens. And it seemed to Taxi that he had found a thing which he could never live without again.