by Brand, Max
"Where did the men of this valley come from?" he asked.
Tonio made a great gesture toward the east. "A long time ago they were in England, some people that looked like beasts, I suppose," said Tonio. "Then they move out and go to Carolina. They go back up into mountains. They stay there till their neighbors begin to hunt them like beef. They leave that country and they go West. They come to the valley here. They kill the Haverhills, who own half the valley. They start fighting the Montereys. They keep on fighting the Montereys. Now there is one old man left to us, and there are plenty of Drummons remaining. They stay all the same. When strangers come into the valley, the Drummons ride them down. They burn the houses the squatters build. Sometimes they burn the squatters with the houses."
"And nothing is done to 'em?" asked Silver.
"The sheriff is Drummon, the jury is Drummon, the judge is Drummon," said Tonio calmly.
Then his eyes rolled, and his teeth flashed in something that was not a smile.
"Before I die, I shall do something!" said Tonio. "I have already done a little bit in my life!"
He held up one finger as he spoke, and drew in his breath through his teeth, as though he were drinking.
He had killed at least one Drummon; that was fairly clear.
"How many have gone down in the fighting?" asked Silvertip. He took off HIS hat and ran his hand over his head as he waited for the answer.
"Who knows?" asked Tonio cheerfully. "Fifty years- and who knows? When I was a boy there were two other little towns in the valley. They were both Mexican towns. Now they are gone. The fire caught hold of them on windy nights, and they're both gone. Look there-by the edge of the river-yonder!"
Silver could see it-a curious dark smudge, covered with small mounds.
"That was one of them. That was the last one. The grass hasn't begun to grow on them yet," said Tonio. "There is only Haverhill now. But who can tell? Some night the wind may blow up the valley, and there may be fire in that wind; and then there will be no Haverhill town, either."
He began to laugh and nod. And Silvertip saw the picture of the flames whirling, and the houses dissolving, and the people running into the night, dragging with them what they were trying to save from the ruin, and clouds of sparks exploding up into the sky.
Perhaps he would have to see that, picture painted brightly in before he came to the end of his days.
Chapter XV
The Drummon Place THEY came to the verge of the bright water, with its currents running like half-luminous shadows beneath the surface.
"This is the limit," said Tonio. "This is as far as we can go. Over there is the home of Henry Drummon- beyond that hill, with the trees covering it. If any of the men of Monterey are found across this river, we are shot like dogs. It is the dead line."
"We could ford the stream right here, I think," said Silver.
"Yes," said Tonio, "and we could be shot on the other bank."
Silver scanned the wooded head of that hill and knew perfectly that he would have to cross to the other side of it. He knew, rising in him, the peculiar force of the temptation, and he set his teeth against the surge of it in vain.
At last he said: "We'd better go over to have a bit of a look, Tonio, don't you think so?"
Tonio stared at him.
"This," he said, making an appropriate gesture, "is the dead line." He indicated the river with the sweep of his hand, and continued by drawing the edge of the hand across his throat suddenly. "Besides," he said, "this is the daylight. And they are all hawks and owls. They can see miles and miles even in the half light. What do you wish to do, senor?"
Silver drew up his belt a notch, as though he were hungry.
"I'll go over and take a look at the house," he said. "Go back in there among those trees, Tonio, and wait for me. If you hear guns, and don't see me come pelting back over the head of that hill, you'll know that they've got me, and you won't have to wait any longer."
Tonio shouted in rapid protest, but Silver was already riding into the water. He would not look back, in spite of the heated arguments that Tonio poured into his ears from a distance. But when he gained the farther bank, he turned and waved his hand. Tonio, with both arms moving, was indicating to heaven and earth that he abandoned the cause of a madman. Silver cantered his mustang up the easy slope and made straight at the hill.
As he came to it, he swung the horse to the side, and well away from a road that cleft through the trees. He had barely changed direction when he heard the beating of many hoofs, the creaking of leather, the notes of raised voices. And as the trees began to spread their branches above him, he saw a cavalcade of half a dozen riders sweep over the top of the hill, with a cluster of dogs racing about the horses, or frolicking in the lead.
It was a group of the Drummons. He could have known them at a greater distance by the way the big, blocky heads were set on the thick necks, and by the way the necks grew out of the shoulders. He could have judged, too, by something devil-may-care in the free swing of their riding. The very dogs had a look that to Silver seemed harmonious in the entire picture. They were huge brutes, all of a type, and the type something between wolfhound and mastiff.
When he came to a good thickness of brush, Silver dropped from the saddle, threw the reins, and made sure that he was well hidden from the eye of any observer. With a rattle and a roar, the group went by down the road.
He breathed more easily, and was about to toss the reins over the head of the sweating mustang again when a hound gave tongue on a note that approached him rapidly. A voice yelled out of the distance: "Belle! Hey, Belle, you brindle-faced fool, stop running that rabbit track! Come back here, Belle!"
But the baying of the dog still approached, and now a great brute with a brindled head and a white-and-tan body broke through the shrubbery, hesitated, then hurled itself straight at Silver.
He aimed at the head of Belle a kick that missed but made her swerve. Her bared teeth almost gripped his leg. As he turned, she was swerving, leaping full at his head. Instinct made him reach both hands forward, and luck gave him a double handhold just under the jaws. He let the big dog swing with the impetus of its own leap and flung her heavily on her back, his own weight behind the fall.
She lay still, on her side, with her long red tongue lolling out onto the dust and no sign of motion in her sides. He was afraid for an instant that she was dead, and if her master found her stretched out, he would not pause until he had found the cause that had brained her.
Through the trees, through the shrubbery, a horse was crashing its way, and the voice of the master was roaring:
"Belle, you woodenheaded fool! Belle! Come here! Hey, Belle! I'm going to have the hide off you; I'm going to have it off with a whip!"
The dog revived all in an instant. Once on her feet, she stood swaying for a moment, her red eyes fixed eagerly on Silvertip; then she swung to the side and went hurtling away toward the calling voice.
Silver heard the man cursing. They were so close that he could even make out the whistling of the whip with which he struck at the dog. Then all those noises receded. He heard the pounding of hoofs, and the high-pitched halloo of the rider, hastening after his mates.
Silvertip took the loop of the reins over his arm and walked on among the trees slowly, scanning the vistas which opened among the trunks, and swerved away and closed to either side. He went on until he reached the brow of the hill. The trees stopped there suddenly. Through the verge of them he glimpsed a picture still obscured and brown-striped by the tree trunks which intervened between him and the open.
He saw a shallow valley, with a crooked flash of water streaked across the center of it, trees clustering here and there, and a long, low-fronted house that had once been painted white, though now the weather had scraped the wood bare in most places, and left merely a look of wet dust. The tramping of many hoofs had worn away all grass near the house, and across the face of the building stretched a hitch rack whose beams had been gnawed thin in m
any places. The front door-was set off by an ornamental hood of carved wood, and there was a brass knocker that looked foolishly out of place.
Silvertip left his mustang and rounded to the rear of the house. A narrow veranda ran along it. A workbench had been rigged here by laying a few long boards across two sawbucks. On the bench appeared the keel and the ribs of a sharp-ended rowboat which was probably intended for the stream that ran down the hollow near the house, and not for the Haverhill Valley itself. There was a litter of wood shavings on the floor, and spilling off onto the ground. From pegs along the outer wall hung bits of harness, and coats and hats mostly green with age, as though they had been hung up one day and then forgotten during years.
Silvertip tapped at the open kitchen door. He could see no one inside-only the worn tatters of some linoleum on the floor, and a broom with half the straw scrubbed from it, and a big rusty range on which a few pots were steaming idly. But a stifled voice called from an unseen corner of the room, and Silver went in.
In a corner near the sink, at a little kitchen table, sat a lad of fifteen, chewing at a big mutton bone, ripping off the shreds of flesh, or gnawing at the knuckle with strong, white teeth. He kept on gnawing, his eyes half closed with content, half buried by the upward snarling of his face muscles. Even at fifteen, he had the perfect Drummon features beneath a ragged mop of hair. He continued to chew at the bone, mumbling around it:
"Who're you?"
"I'm a new man," said Silver, and walked over to the stove, where he lifted the lid, replenished the fire box with wood, and thrust the heavy poker into the rising of the flames. With the lids replaced, except one which the poker shaft lifted askew, Silver turned toward young Drummon and found that the latter, having put down his bone for a moment, was licking his chops and staring with insolent eyes. He looked as dangerous as a half-grown mountain lion; and one could be sure that he was far more formidable than that.
"You're the new man, are you?" asked young Drummon.
"Yes. I'm the new man."
"The devil you are. There ain't any new man."
"You ask your old man," said Silver.
"Whatcha mean? That a way of telling me to go to the devil?"
"why? Is he dead?" said Silver.
"Yeah. Sure, he's dead. The greasers got him. But I'm goin' to get me a coupla yaller skunks to make up before I'm a lot older. What's your name? Who are you?"
"I'm a fellow that keeps my mouth shut," said Silver, "and never asks a lot of questions, and doesn't answer 'em, either."
"You don't, don't you?" asked the lad, rising. He showed six feet and an inch of tough muscle laid over a burly frame. His neck was already as thick as a wrestler's; and his pale Drummon eyes glared at Silvertip. "You're goin' to talk, or you're goin' to get out," said young Drummon. "If Alligator Hank was here, he'd know if you was one of the real men. But he ain't far away, and I could call him. But I don't need to call him. Whatcha doin' with that poker? Back up and lemme hear you chatter! I mean it. Turn around here and talk or I'm goin' to sock you."
The voice of the lad was rising as he spoke. It reached a high-pitched snarl at this moment, and he leaped with no further warning at Silver. Silver was loath to strike. But it was not defending himself against a boy so much as against a dangerous young beast of prey. He let the hard-driven fist of Drummon go past his head, and clipped him on the chin as he swayed forward.
The hair flew up on the head of the youth. He stood rocking, with blank eyes. Silver took him under the armpits, led him to the door, and thrust him outside. He walked away with drunken, fumbling steps, and Silver, turning back to the stove, drew out the poker.
It was white-hot, throwing out a shower of coruscations. He went through the house and opened the front door. On the solid face of it he fulfilled the first vow of old Arturo Monterey by searing into the wood the sign of the Cross, with the wavering line of the Snake underneath it.
Chapter XVI
The Pursuit HE RETRACED the line of the Snake with the tip of the poker, now a dull red, and heard from the rear of the house a loud shouting, answered from not far off. Silver threw the poker away and ran for the woods where his mustang was left. He had hoped that all the Drummon men would be in the party which he had watched ride out hunting. But, as in a hornet's nest, there appeared to be a continual reserve of warriors about the camp. For now he heard the thudding of hoofs, and he looked back as the big youngster, running on foot, turned the corner of the house with three horsemen sweeping up behind him.
They were Drummons, every one, and the central figure of the three bore a face which Silvertip would never forget. It was the true Drummon type, with fleshy, battered brow, and skull-like eyes, but the neck and the features of the man were flushed over and swollen with whisky bloat, like a raw sunburn.
He led the way, and, pointing to the side, toward the front door of the house, uttered a sudden wild yell of rage. For he had seen the newly drawn brand!
Silver was already inside the brush. It crashed and crackled around him. A rapid fire of bullets searched it, also. One of them nicked the mustang as Silver mounted. It reared, struck out at the air, then fled unmanageably among the trees. There was more danger from its running than from the gunfire to the rear. The branches of the trees seemed to reach out and then stoop suddenly at the head of the rider. The tree trunks threatened to strike him on either side and fling him with a broken body to the ground.
At last, sawing savagely at the reins, he managed to get the head of the frightened horse under control. They were already nearing the edge of the woods; now they swept out into the open, and Silvertip saw a cavalcade coming up on the farther side of the river, the same rout of horsemen and dogs that had streamed past him not long before. But there was one difference now. For in the midst of them, his hands tied behind his back, rode Tonio.
The distance was still great, but by the horse Silver knew his companion. The little mustang went proudly along, as though feeling that it was a guard of honor that accompanied its master. But the sight was a stroke to the very heart of Silvertip. For Tonio had protested; he had not come blindly into the region of danger, but had been persuaded and drawn on against his will.
Retreat in the direction of the river was impossible.
Silver turned the horse back into the trees. The three riders, yelling loudly, poured into the open, had a glimpse of him, and hurtled in pursuit again.
He ran the horse hard, so that the brush cracked noisily about him. Then, making a sudden halt, he turned to the side and walked the mustang a few quiet steps into high brush.
It might be that he could lose them in that way. He heard them come with a sweep; he saw, through the screen of branches, shadowy forms leaping past him, two of them in succession. But a third drove straight at his place of concealment. Only chance was aiming that course; but it came near to being the death of Silvertip. He had to get his mustang under way with a rush, swerving it well to the side.
It was the man of the bloated face, looking redder than ever because of the white flash of his bared teeth as he fired on Silver. The first bullet sang at the ear of Silver; the second knocked the hat from his head.
"Alligator-hey, Hank-you got him?" yelled a voice from in front.
"I've nicked him. Turn to the right and we'll bag him. We got him! He's the one that killed Terry!"
But Silvertip's mustang already had taken him clear of the woods. He took an angling course to the right, down the slope of the hill. The guns began again behind him. Then the trees of an open grove received him, flicking back in a shadowy throng, like the pickets of a fence.
That patch of trees shielded him from gunfire for a little distance. He reached the small stream in the center of the hollow at a narrows, and the mustang leaped the gap. On the farther slope he gained another cluster of trees.
The Drummons were not gaining. They had been too eager with their guns, and a man cannot shoot and ride his best at the same time. They gave up gun work now. Their hat brims blown
and flapping like open jaws, they came now with a rush; and off to the side, from the big barn behind the house, the youngster was quirting a mustang into full speed, trying to cut across the line of the flight.
Silvertip angled again to the right. There were more trees in clusters that received him as clouds in the sky receive a fugitive bird when the hawks are flying near.
Then the mouth of a narrow canyon opened to his left. He shot into it. A yell of frenzied delight rang behind him, to give warning that he was in a trap, and, scudding around the next corner, he saw the very face of the danger. For the ravine ended against a sheer wall of rock fifty feet high, with a dribble of water dropping into mist from the lip of the rock.
He snatched the rifle from its saddle holster and leaped to the ground while the mustang was still running.
To the left the wall of the ravine went up like the flat of a hand; to the right a rubble and scattering of great boulders climbed in broken stairs toward the sky line. Silver was instantly in the heart of that rocky confusion.
The Drummons were already at the spot. They were out of the saddle; they were pouring in among the big boulders, calling directions.
Silver lay out on the flat forehead of a rock and waited. A head bobbed at the side of a great stone twenty yards beneath him.
He knocked the hat off that head. Another man lurched into view and dodged back to shelter again with a yelp; a bullet from Silver's gun had slipped through his arm.
Then Silver continued his retreat, for he knew that they would not press him too closely. Twice he came into the open; twice they salted the rocks around him with splashes-of lead. But he was not touched in body. He had lost a hat; his coat was torn with a great gash close to the pit of his right arm; and that was the only mark he bore.
He reached the top of the divide. Beneath him was another valley; or he could go up or down the divide itself. But he chose, as an alternative, to double back down the hillside which he had just climbed. He could hear the gritting of heels among the stone. So he pulled off his riding boots and feathered his way among the boulders in his stockinged feet.