Silvertip (1942)

by Brand, Max

  A wave of half hysterical delight shot through him, and centered in his throat.

  It was dashed away, a moment later, by the fear that he heard footfalls hurrying down the corridor outside his room. Then he realized that it was merely the beat and flutter of his racing heart.

  Juan Perez groaned, and sat up. He saw Silver standing over him, with the gun of Perez himself in his hand, and he groaned. In the rage of his despair, he cast himself back, and the slime into which he fell was flung out in a fine spray on either side.

  "You see, Perez?" said Silver. "After all, you were a fool, and sooner than you expected. But be patient, my friend. When you leave this room, a good many things may have happened, and, above all, the whole world will know that Perez is a fool!" He took the lantern, and left the Mexican groaning, beating his head with his hands. He left the room. A small, cold draft was stirring in the corridor, and as Silver locked the heavy door behind him, and pocketed the key, it seemed to him that all the freshness of the spring and the sweetness of spring flowers was in that air!

  He went up the hallway. There was no plan in his mind. He must simply pray that it was night, that he could be able to reach the outer door that led into the patio, that he could pass from the patio into freedom.

  And leave behind him the great task unfinished, and poor Pedro Monterey doubly dead?

  His heart failed him, when he thought of making such a surrender. Have not men said that nothing is impossible to the resolute mind? He thought of that saying, also, as he roamed up the corridors beneath the house of Monterey. But it seemed to him that it would be almost a sufficient miracle if he could save his life from the hands of the old man.

  But the thing persisted in him. He had set his soul on the purpose for too long. And the completion of the life of Pedro Monterey had become a spiritual necessity to him. That was why, as he roved through the passages, he began to deny in himself the thought of mere flight and take to his heart a greater steadiness.

  If he were to remain near Monterey, another miracle must happen, greater than any which had gone before. But Silver determined to let the events of each moment dictate what he was to do with himself in the immediate future.

  There was the problem of getting up from the cellars at all. And that seemed enough to fill his mind. For hours he wandered, and always he was coming to the end of passages that stopped against solid stone. The flame in the lantern burned low, flickered, died. He was left in a horror of darkness that seemed to keep flowing past him.

  A man might pass days, fumbling through that blindness, and never come to an exit. He might be so far lost that not even the faintest echo of his voice would reach to any ears.

  Silver leaned against a wall and closed his eyes, and tried to find in his mind some solution, but all his thoughts were whirling, spinning like foolish squirrels in a cage.

  He was still standing there when something clinked like the lock of a door. He looked up, and a flash of light entered the passage just before him, and footfalls came clumping down steps. Then light shone again, swinging out from behind the voluminous skirts of a woman.

  Silver crouched close to the floor, with hope once more in his heart. The light disappeared. The woman was singing softly as she went on some familiar errand, her wooden heels bumping on the stone.

  But what was important to Silver was that door through which she had come, for it seemed that his lantern had failed him when he was a very few steps from salvation.

  He hurried through the darkness, spreading his hands far out before him. Then his feet struck the steps. He climbed. He came, at the top of the steps, to the kind touch of wood, and fumbling, he soon found the knob.

  Softly he opened the door, and peered out. At once the rattle of many voices in laughter and raillery struck on his ears as if with open mockery of all that he was attempting.

  Chapter X

  In the Garden HE SHRANK back, then thrust the door wide in a sudden desperation. And springing out into the hall, he discovered to his amazement that it was empty.

  Still the voices persisted, but plainly they must come from some adjoining room, beating through a thin partition.

  He went rapidly to the end of the hall. The clinking of his spurs followed him like an accusing voice, so he drew off his boots, and left them in a corner.

  He tried the nearest door. It opened with a dull groan of hinges and let him into a big room. He knew its bigness, only, by the faintest of high lights that glimmered here and there in the chamber. It was a bedroom, and crossing it to the stars that filled a window, he looked out and down.

  Beneath him, he saw still another drop of twenty feet of unbroken wall, with a garden spread over the ground under the window. He must be on the first floor of the house, but on this side another story was added below. It was just the garden that a Mexican would conceive in happy dreams-a little flat of ground with a, canal of water lilies driven through it, and a rectangular pool at one end, with a fountain rising over it. That was the chief feature, together with a semicupola, a sort of open-faced summer-house raised on narrow columns, so that one would have both shade and wind.

  Silvertip saw this by the light of a big yellow moon which was lilting over the eastern mountains with its cheeks still puffed beyond the full. And this light showed him, moreover, a table laid in the cool beside the canal of water lilies. The girl, Julia, sat there, and opposite her old Monterey, rigid with dignity. The moon gleamed faintly on his long hair and his pointed beard.

  There was no escape by that window. So Silvertip turned, and, crouching low so that no light might strike up and outward through the window, he scratched a match. Cupping the flame securely in his hands, he threw the dull flash of it here and there about the room. He saw, at once, a small door to the right; he saw the big bed, like a mahogany house, the fireplace, and above it a portrait that drew him suddenly across the room. He ventured rising and passing the light from the match across the face in the picture. It was Pedro Monterey, younger, and alive and smiling.

  The flame of the match seared the fingers of Silvertip before he dropped it on the hearth, and still in the darkness he remained staring before him as though he could still see the portrait. The bitterness he had been feeling toward old Monterey now vanished. It was only strange to him that the slayer of the son had not been slain out of hand.

  He fumbled his way with outstretched hands through the darkness and came to the little door that he had seen on the right. When he opened it, a cool breath of air moved upward into his face. And he had a sense, though no sight, of steps descending through the shadows before him. With his foot he reached and found, as he had expected, a stairway that led down. He shut the door behind him. The draft no longer blew. A close dampness of moist stone surrounded him as he descended a winding way until one outstretched hand told him of another door.

  He opened it with great care, and instantly found the outdoors before his face, the yellow of the moonlight striking directly against him. It was the garden where the girl sat with Monterey.

  The silhouette of a man moved before him, close enough to touch. But the figure did not pause at the partially opened door. It went on, bearing a large tray with glasses twinkling on it, and a luster of half-seen silver.

  Silvertip ventured outside. Other people moved here and there, but all at a sufficiently safe distance, so he stole for the nearest shelter. It was a bank of shadow that looked to him like brush, but turned out to be tall flowers, which were hedged up here as a margin and border to surround the garden.

  Delicately he moved forward, putting the great, rank stalks aside until he had made for himself a covert of darkness. There he crouched, and parting the branches before him, he could look out on the garden scene and the table with a more intimate eye.

  They spoke suddenly, and then turned their faces directly toward him.

  "There is something in the flowers," said the girl.

  "There is the wind," said the voice of Senior Monterey.

  "Some
thing moved in there, slowly," she Insisted.

  "A snake, perhaps," suggested the old man.

  He dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. The wind stirred his long hair, and his beard, and the moon glittered over him till he looked to Silvertip like a patriarchal form that had walked out of a distant age.

  "You think of him still," said Monterey suddenly.

  The bowed head of the girl lifted slowly. And a touch on the heart of Silver told him that it was of him that Monterey was speaking. That was hardly strange.

  "I think of him," she answered. "I keep thinking. I keep trying for words that will move you, Uncle Arturo."

  The old man answered: "You would not need to whisper to me, Julia, if I dreamed that he is what you say- honest! But he can't be honest. There is no honesty in his race. I have suffered at their hands enough to have broken the hearts of twenty stronger men than I, and only my hope for revenge keeps life in me. Now that my boy is gone, you will wonder that I can still hope even for revenge, but let me tell you that the dream has been in my heart so long that it cannot die as quickly as Pedrillo did.

  I think that even bullets could not kill it. If my body came to an end, the hate for the gringos would still live. It would take a bodiless form; it would walk the earth like a ghost. But no matter how I hate his race, if this man were honest, I would set him free, reward him, beg for his pardon."

  "He is honest, if I ever saw honesty!" said the girl. "And now he lies in a pen where you would not even put swine!"

  "He is like his people-a liar and a traitor!" exclaimed Monterey. "How many times they have betrayed me, Julia! You know only a little of it! And now I think of how he tried to deceive you, of how he told you that he came here only hoping that he could fill the place of my dead boy, in some way. Oh, my child, it was the sort of a story that a man might use to a woman, but never to another man."

  "Uncle Arturo," said the girl, "he came with the horse, he told the truth of the death of poor Pedro, and he put himself in your hands. How could he have done those things unless he meant honestly?"

  But there was no response to her plea. After a pause of silence, the girl stirred.

  "To the good, all creatures are virtuous," said Monterey, "and there is such a well of goodness in you that you could forgive the devil himself for his craft and his fiendishness. You would pity him for the pain that he lies in. But let me tell you that I shall never again believe well of a gringo until his virtue is established more plainly than the mountains that stand by the Haverhill Valley!"

  She looked steadily at the old man for a moment. Then she sighed.

  "It's time to go in," said Julia. "Onate and Alvarez have been quarreling again, and you'll have to see them."

  "I can see them out here," said Arturo Monterey.

  "It's not safe," she answered. She leaned a little across the table. "The men of Drummon are bolder every day; how can you tell how bold they'll be at night? They may slip up here. They have a moon to show them their way.

  They may be here now. What I heard there among the flowers may be one of them lying still and watching, and listening."

  "Let them watch, and let them listen," said Monterey.

  "I have a feeling, Julia, that I've come to the end of my day. Let it close as soon as it will. I'm ready for it."

  The girl waited an instant. Then she said: "You're tired to-day, Uncle Arturo. And when a person is tired, the gloomy thoughts are the ones that come up in the mind."

  He answered: "I've been marked by my shame long enough, and if I am to die, I am ready for it."

  He touched his forehead significantly as he spoke, on the band of dark cloth that crossed his forehead.

  The girl would have spoken again, but he stopped her with a raised hand, saying:

  "There is nothing but cold and emptiness in my heart. And I should die even gladly, except that there is the one great purpose of all these years unaccomplished."

  "But if you stay out here," said the girl, "if you throw yourself away into the hands of Drummon's brutes-is there any chance, then, of doing what you promised yourself?"

  He answered: "If the hand of God is against me, why should I attempt to defend myself?"

  Chapter XI

  Brand of Shame OLD Monterey was asking to have Onate and Alvarez brought before him. They must have been attending close at hand, for now they came in, together, escorted by two vaqueros who had bound the hands of the pair. And they stood with bowed heads before the master. One was young, one a grizzled veteran. They were peons of the field, not cattle herders; they wore huarachos on their bare feet, and they were dressed in white cotton that shimmered in the moonlight.

  "Now, Tonio?" said Arturo Monterey.

  One of the vaqueros made half a step forward. He was a solid fellow with a grave, steady look.

  "Their houses are side by side, as you know, senior," said Tonio. "They have always been friends. Onate is a good man, and he has helped Alvarez. He's older, this Onate, and he has a head on his shoulders. But now, all at once, they are enemies. They run at each other with knives. We ask them why they quarrel. They give us no answer. They will not speak to each other. They will not speak to us. So we have brought them to you, senior."

  "Who began this quarrel?" asked Monterey.

  The two peons looked at one another, and were silent, staring again at the ground.

  "Answer!" cried Monterey, lifting his voice suddenly to thunder.

  They both started violently, and with one voice, both exclaimed: "I started the trouble, senor."

  Then they were mute, and again gaped on one another.

  "You both began the fight?" said Monterey, amused and interested. "How could you both begin it?"

  "It was I, senior," said Onate. "I am sorry, and I repent."

  "I am sorry, and I repent, also," said Alvarez. Then, losing his control for an instant, he exclaimed: "But this Onate is a liar and a fool!"

  Onate, grinding his teeth, said nothing. He continued to look merely at the ground.

  "You both began the fight; you both repent; and one of you is a liar and a fool. How, Onate? Are you the liar and the fool?"

  Onate jerked up his head savagely. Then something from within gave him pause. He drew a breath and gasped, "Yes, senior."

  Monterey regarded them both soberly.

  "They have seen you; perhaps it is enough. They will not fight again, senior," observed Tonio.

  Monterey hushed him with a gesture.

  "Fire can burn underground, but it will always break out when a wind blows," he said. "Why did you quarrel, you two?"

  Again the pair regarded one another, gloomily.

  "Speak!" commanded Monterey.

  Onate said slowly: "I, senior, said a foolish thing. I am sorry. I angered Alvarez. I ask him to forgive me. I am -a liar-a fool!"

  He brought out the last words with a bitter effort.

  "There is no more lying in you, Onate, than in a blessed saint," declared Monterey. "What was it you talked about?"

  There was another pause, but not so long that Monterey had to lay the whip of his impatience on either of them again. For Alvarez muttered:

  "About you, senor, and God forgive us!"

  "God will forgive you and so shall I, probably," said Monterey. "What was it that you said about me?"

  This time the full pause lasted so long, before an answer, that the silence itself became more of a threat than any words from Monterey could have been. It was this quiet pressure that made Alvarez say:

  "I asked Onate if he knew why the senior wore the cloth band about his head, always, day and night. And then he told me such a great lie that my knife got into my hand. But even a good man will lie, sometimes, to make talk. I am sorry. But the senior is my father; he is the father to us all."

  Monterey was so moved by something in this speech that he stood up from his chair, suddenly.

  "What did you say, Onate?" he demanded.

  "Senor," he said, "if you ask me for my words, I
shall seem to you a traitor and a scoundrel. In the name of Heaven, do not make me speak, and forgive me!"

  Monterey bowed his head for a moment in thought.

  "The time has come, Onate," he said, "when secret shame should be bared before the world. My son has gone from me, Onate, and I fear that he will not return. Perhaps the secrecy with which I have kept that shame of mine is the reason that God chooses to punish me. Speak out, freely. What did you say to Alvarez?"

  Onate flung himself suddenly on his knees.

  "Senor," he groaned, "it is a foul story that has been in the air for many years, since the night when Senor Drum-mon and his men poured into the house. And it is said- forgive me for repeating it!-but it is said that on that night the brand of the Cross and Snake was burned into your forehead with your own branding iron by the gringo devils!"

  He put up a hand before his face, as though to shield himself from an unexpected blow.

  The girl sprang up and hurried to the side of Arturo Monterey, anxiously, as though to be a shield to any object of his wrath. But the old man, after a moment, cried out:

  "It is the will of God that the whole world should know. Onate, you spoke the truth."

  With that, he suddenly tore the cloth band from about his head, and the brightness of the moon showed to them all, and above all to the straining eyes of Silvertip, a small cross printed in a shadowy furrow in the brow of Mon-terey, and beneath it a wavering line-the complete brand of the Cross and Snake.

  The Mexicans, both the prisoners and the vaqueros who had guarded them, slowly drew back from that sight, then turned, and fairly fled. Monterey slipped back into his chair and the girl, lifting the cloth circle from the ground, fitted it carefully over the bowed head again. She was weeping, stifling her sobs as well as she could. Then she sat beside him, watching his bowed face.