Silvertip (1942)

by Brand, Max

  A footfall came toward them from the left; it was the second guard come to inquire into the reason that kept his companion still.

  "Send him back," said Silver to Bud. "Curse him out, and send him back."

  The other had come almost up to them, when Bud turned fiercely on him.

  "Get back on your own beat," commanded Bud. "What the devil you doin' on my side of the house?"

  "What's the matter with you?" asked the second guard. He recoiled a little as he spoke. "You act crazy, Bud! What the devil has Jerry put into your head? Has he been talkin' about me?"

  "Never mind," growled Bud. "Get out of here, and leave my side of the house, or I'll climb your frame."

  "You will, will you?" said the other angrily. He paused for a moment, swaying a little forward, as though he were about to hurl himself at Bud. But caution came gradually over him.

  "I'll be seein' you to-morrow about this," he declared. "If somebody finds out that you ain't been walkin' your beat, you'll have your explainin' to do, first, and your fight with me, afterward."

  He retreated, however. And Bud, leaning against the wall of the house, groaned softly, in his anguish; but the muzzle of Silvertip's gun was constantly pressed against his ribs.

  Inside the room, the Drummons were waiting for the coining of the "Runt." The pause was filled with odd conversation.

  "How much Spanish in you, Tonio?" asked Hank Drummon.

  "Yo soy puro Indio," said the Mexican, lifting his head a bit.

  "I thought so," said Drummon. "It takes an Indian to stand what you're goin' to have to stand. But listen to me -Monterey ain't Indian. There ain't no blood in him except Spanish. Why do you stick to him in a pinch like this? Can you tell me that?"

  Tonio's round face grew flushed, and his eyes glimmered.

  "Because the Senior Monterey is father and uncle and brother to me," he answered. "And if all the gringos, and all their lands, and all their money were offered to me instead, I would rather be a slave to the Cross and Snake brand."

  Two or three of the Drummons cursed Tonio savagely, but Hank Drummon merely laughed. He seemed to gain a great contentment out of this scene, and now he walked up and down and back and forth, chuckling and rubbing his great red hands together.

  With fascinated eyes, Silvertip regarded him. For this was the man on whose brow the brand of Monterey was to be planted, the Cross and Snake.

  The thing seemed hugely impossible. The man himself was a Titan; and around him were gathered the brutal ranks of the Drummons, those great-shouldered and heavy-jawed fighting men.

  "You know the dog who put the mark on my door?" asked Drummon. "That mongrel called Silvertip? That fellow they say has the gray spots in his hair, just like horns?"

  Tonio nodded. "I know him."

  "What sort of a man is he?" asked Drummon.

  "A man," said Tonio, "who is worth knowing. Most things-they are nothing to him. He finds life very dull. The taste of it is like flat beer to him. But there is one thing that amuses him a little. That is to hunt a Drummon, and kill him; or to lead them like blind dogs across the country, and take the horses from six or seven of them, and send them home on foot. When he is ready, he'll come to the Drummon house and run them down as a cat runs mice."

  Drummon stepped to the prisoner, swung his hand back, and struck him heavily, squarely, across the face.

  The head of Tonio bounced back from the blow. A thin stream of blood broke from his nose and mouth, and descended across his chin.

  Then the door opened, and the Runt came in.

  He was like all the other Drummons in his main features, but he was qualified in two important ways. His bulk was condensed into a height a head shorter than most of his clan; and a frightful event in his youth had stripped the skin from his face, so that it was a silver white, streaked here and there with a grotesque patterning of red. All his features had been pulled slightly awry by the same accident, and the resultant draw of the skin. He walked with a distinct waddle and a sway of his broad shoulders, entering the room.

  Coming straight up before the prisoner, the Runt said:

  "There ain't more than one way to handle him. Fix him the way the Apaches fixed me. Take the skin off of him."

  The whole clan applauded. And Silvertip would never forget the face of one man, the mouth gaping, the eyes closed with mirth, as he staggered this way and that, howling his glee.

  "Who'll do the job?" asked the Runt, turning his head slowly, this way and that.

  "Who but you?" answered Hank Drummon. "You oughta know how to work a skinning knife on human skin. The Indians done it on you, Runt. And this here is a pure Indian. He's just been gloryin' in it. Take a hold on him, and work slow, because I'm waitin' for him to break down -and you're the gent to do the trick."

  The Runt, when he heard this, looked once more around the room, but this time with a frightful air of satisfaction.

  He fastened his gaze, at last, on Tonio, drew out a knife, and commenced to whet the glistening edge of it on the sole of his boot.

  All the while, he looked not at all at his work, but at the face of Tonio.

  The Mexican was daunted, at last. That courage which had enabled him to endure the prospect of the torment, began to fail him when he saw the preparations in progress. For nothing in the world is so revolting to the man of Indian blood as is the thought of mutilation before his death. Christianity cannot dim the old legendary pictures of the unhappy warrior who goes broken and maimed to the happy hunting grounds, to perpetuate his shame and sorrows.

  So Tonio looked at the bright flashing of the knife, and strained at his ropes, and leaned forward in his chair, in an agony of terror. No sound as yet had come from him, but he was white about the lips, and his nostrils flared with the beastly breath of fear.

  The Drummons gathered close before him, shouting, laughing, pointing to his distorted face. And the Runt, having finished his preparations, took Tonio by the nose with the whole of his hand, and raised the blade for the first incision.

  "Around the forehead first, right by the roots of the hair," said the Runt. "Then we'll peel it off in strips. I'll give him plenty of time to feel everything. Oh, I ain't goin' to hurry any more than the swine done when they worked on me."

  He leaned closer over Tonio, and a shriek came tearing from the Mexican's throat.

  Silvertip, with a groan, jerked up his revolver and fired. The chain that held up the lamp snapped in two under the impact of the bullet. The great double lamp fell, the flames leaping brilliantly up the chimney throats.

  Chapter XIX

  The Second Branding THE round holders that supported the lamp were of strong iron, like the chain which had held up the heavy weight, but the body of the lamp itself was glass that shattered suddenly and completely. Flaming oil spurted to all sides; fire leaped in sparks, in crimson and yellow globules, in long streaks of brilliance, as high as the ceiling and far out to the walls. The whole room flared up with one might of illumination that died, suddenly, and left only dim welters of blue fire clinging here and there, spilling across the table, dripping in fits of flame to the floor, and on the floor itself giving out smudges of smoke, and rolling fire from whole pools of the liquid.

  The chamber was filled with a mad dance. Shadowy bodies sprang, here and there. One man hurled himself against the door, trusting to the impact of his body to cast it open, shattered. But the door held and flung him flat down in a pool of the flaming oil.

  His shriek went upward shriller than the rest, as he rebounded to his feet.

  Other hands tore open the shutters of the window. One, and then another fugitive flung himself wildly out toward safety, and the first man began to roll on the ground like a dog, to rub out the fire that stung him.

  Then Silvertip swung himself through the open window and ran forward. He had no knife. But that which the Runt had been prepared to wield was in plain view on the table. He snatched it up and made Tonio a free man with a stroke.

  He heard
the names of saints come grunting from the throat of the Mexican. The oil already had caught on the woodwork, and snakes of the fire were working up the walls and creeping along the floor.

  They could not return by the window through which Silver had entered. Other men were fairly sure to be watching that exit. Tonio led the way toward the door that opened into the hall.

  He swerved out into it with Silvertip running at his heels. Before him Silver saw the length of a narrow corridor. Women were in it, running forward, carrying buckets of water. Men came, also. Voices and footfalls thundered. There were hands brandished, and frantic faces of rage. Silvertip fired three shots over the shoulder of Tonio as they ran forward.

  He fired above the heads of the Drummons, because the women were there; because of the women, too, those shots were enough. Panic takes faster than fire in dead grass. The whole rout turned and poured back, yelling. Into doorways, down the next hall, they ran, while Silvertip and Tonio held straight forward toward the opposite end of the hall.

  The window was open, there, and promised them escape. They dived through it as into water, tumbled on the ground, lurched to their feet again, and confronted a gun spitting fire, and a mighty voice that boomed through the night.

  It was the voice of Hank Drummon, and Silvertip knew it. Something in the greasy huskiness of the sound was unlike the speaking of any other man. Tonio knew it, also, and as though convinced that no human power could avail against the power of this man, he threw up his arms in despair.

  Silvertip, instead, was shooting.

  He intended the bullet for the heart; he thought, when the silhouette toppled, that he had struck his mark; but then he saw the form struggle on the ground, and leaped at it.

  He took Hank Drummon by the hair of the head, jammed it back against the ground and, in the dimness of the starlight, cut quickly, but surely. He felt the edge of the blade grate against bone.

  "The second branding, Drummon!" he shouted, and sped away with Tonio into the dark.

  There was no need for very great haste. Behind them, even the mighty voice of Drummon, shouting orders, could not bring order out of the chaos that had seized the household. Some of them ran here and there, probing a feeble distance into the darkness. But the majority, men and women, were laboring to extinguish the fire. Nothing, not even peril to human lives, seems as terrible and as important as the destruction which a fire works on a home. Bucket lines had been formed; both men and women, and children as well, were swaying the buckets forward, shouting to one another. The hiss of the water could be heard as it pulsed with a regular rhythm into the burning room. And huge clouds of steam and smoke, expressed through the-windows.

  From the shadows at the margin of the trees, the two watched the scene; and now and then a sudden flickering light within the house told that the flames were by no means conquered, as yet. Tonio, swaying from side to side, thumped his fists against his face and his breast.

  "Now for ten good rifles, and we shoot them by the light of their own fire. Ah, Senor Silver! Now we could sweep them away!"

  Silvertip said nothing. There was nausea in his heart and a tingling and shuddering up his arm; and still it seemed to him that he could feel the grating of the knife against the bone of Drummon's skull.

  But he had accomplished the second part of Pedrillo's threefold task. One step remained. He might have made that, also, before aid came to Drummon in the dark of the night. He might have literally cut the brand of Monterey into the heart of his old enemy. But he could not have done that. He felt that he never could do it. He would have been glad enough if his bullet had struck the heart of Drummon; but he could not murder a man already wounded.

  He brooded gloomily on that, as he stood beside Tonio watching the gradual subduing of the fire.

  Then he said: "We'd better go back, because they're putting out the fire, Tonio, and they'll come straight for the Monterey house like so many hawks. It's war to the finish, now. Because the Cross and Snake is on the forehead of Hank Drummon."

  They hurried back to the horses, mounted, and fled through the darkness, down the slope to the tarnished silver of the ford, with a few bright stars burning in the quiet waters of the margin. They put out those stars as they entered the stream. They came out on the farther bank and galloped, while Tonio shouted through the wind of the riding:

  "Is it true, senior? Have you put the mark on Drummon?"

  Silvertip waved his hand in acquiescence. He heard the Mexican break out into a wild, drunken song, swinging himself from side to side in the saddle with the rhythm of the music. It was a sort of laughing madman that accompanied Silver across the darkness and into the stern ravine which the house of Monterey overpeered, now, with a few lighted windows.

  Only when Tonio came near to the house did he master himself, and as he dismounted in the entrance patio, he was as calm as ever. The same two vaqueros who had helped Silver depart, were now on hand to welcome him. But they gave him hardly a glance. Their gaping, their startled eyes, were all for Tonio. They insisted on touching him with their hands.

  Then they heard the story of the brand that had been cut on the forehead of Drummon and seemed to go mad, as Tonio had been during the ride across the valley.

  Some of them began to dance and yell on the spot. A few more reckless ones burst open the wine cellar and rolled out a keg which they staved in, ladling out great dripping portions to all who asked.

  The sleeping children, wakened by the riot, began to run down into the patio. The domestics were already there.

  The fierce, slender vaqueros poured in. Some one began to ring the great wide-mouthed bell which gave the signal of alarm and joy to the lands and the people of Monterey. Festival rang through the air; and in the midst of it, Silver-tip saw the girl come out into the patio with Monterey.

  She had on a black mantilla. She had on a black dress, too, with a red rose at her shoulder. As Silver watched her, he thought she was coming toward him-that she had singled him out, so that she could praise him for what he had done. But she paused, meeting him with her eyes only.

  Monterey went to the first horse that stood near by, and swung up into the stirrup, standing there at ease in spite of the winceings and the prancing of the mustang which felt its withers wrung by the twisting weight.

  He called out, and the crowd fell silent.

  He was saying: "This is a good time for drunkenness and noise making! The brand is on Drummon now, and he'll be here soon. He has the law in his pocket. He can do as he pleases, unless the men of Monterey are wide awake. Tonio! Drive them out of the patio! Whip them out, if you have to. Get them back to watch posts. You fellows who have sworn you would die for me-you, Juan -you, Jose-Orthez-do you want the house knocked down about our ears? You knew there was reason to be on watch, today; there is a hundred times more reason now. A million times more!"

  They obeyed him suddenly and cheerfully. Nothing could cool their spirits now. They were like an army which has been trembling on the verge of defeat, and which is now restored to a hope of victory.

  Silvertip saw them scurry away, each to an appointed post, to take turn and turn about during the watch. For his own part, he felt that Mexican eyes and ears could be trusted more than his own.

  They went into the big hall together, Monterey, and Silver, and the girl. They entered the library, where two lamps threw yellow pools on the floor without really penetrating the gloom. The girl had paused by the door.

  "Come in, Julia," said Don Arturo.

  "I am going to bed," she said.

  "Going to bed before we hear from our friend the full story of what he has done?"

  She kept drawing back a little as though she were afraid. There was something about her that made Silver want to go straight up to her and look into her face. But an odd constraint held him back.

  "I don't think he'll talk about it," said Julia Monterey. "And I have to go to bed. I have a headache."

  "Headache?" exclaimed Monterey. "Headache? Where's the Mo
nterey blood in you? Now that you know the Drummon wears the mark-you talk of headache? Haven't you-"

  He broke off suddenly, and then added: "Well, my dear, go along then, and good night."

  "Good night," she said. "And Senior Silver, good night."

  She went out; the door closed noiselessly behind her.

  "What's the matter?" asked Silver. "There's something wrong with her. What is it?"

  Monterey shrugged his shoulders. "What does it matter? I want to talk with you of the great thing you have done, my son. I want to know every step you made, and every gesture of your hand. Tonio is telling the peons his story, and the vaqueros are there, too, listening. Let me sit here and listen to you? Glory comes back to my house, and you have brought it!"

  "I've told what happened," said Silver. "There's no more than that, and I'm no good at descriptions. But what's the matter with the Seniorita Julia? Do you know?"

  "She is afraid," said Monterey.

  "Afraid? Of what?"

  "Of you," said the old man.

  The body of Silver jerked straight in his chair.

  "You don't know why?" asked Monterey.

  "I've no idea. What have I done to her?"

  "Fair women, and brave men-that is the old story," said Monterey. "She has gone away for fear her eyes should tell you things that she would not speak with her lips. My friend, suppose that you seek her to-morrow, it would not be hard for you to learn what she knows."

  Silver sat like a stone, staring.

  Old Monterey stood up, moved to another chair, and sat again, leaning far forward.

  "You have no real name-you hardly seem to have a country. What is it that drives you around the world?" asked Monterey.

  "A hard thing to name," answered Silver. "The hope of what lies around the corner. You understand?"