Silvertip's Search

by Brand, Max

  Brender led by a little, then by more. And Silver called on Parade. There was the usual magnificent response. He drew near Brender, and there he hung, with the tail of the other horse snapping straight out, almost in his face.

  Amazement came over Silvertip. He felt that he was matched or overmatched by the generous, great heart of Brender, but it was a prodigy that Parade should be matched, also!

  They shot out of the widening mouth of the valley onto the wavering flat of the desert, and a warm wind blew on them. No sound of pursuit echoed through the ravine behind them, yet Brender was jockeying his horse forward, riding as if in a race.

  Suddenly Silver understood. It was a race, and with all the dangers of the present or of the future forgotten, this light-hearted fellow was lost in the contest of horse with horse. Once more Silver leaned forward, edging his weight toward the withers, and this time Parade drew slowly level with the other; then, with a sudden rush, he went away, for the smaller horse was stopping with exhaustion.

  Silver drew up to a trot, to a walk; Brender rode beside him, shouting out in bewilderment:

  “You beat Chinook! Great thunder, Silver, your horse beat Chinook! She’s beaten, and it’s the first time!”

  “She’s a grand mare,” said Silver. “She’s the fastest that ever ran against Parade — except one.”

  “Except what one?” exclaimed Brender.

  “His old father — Brandy. Old Brandy can still hold even or beat him for a mile or so. But Parade doesn’t get tired. That’s where he wins.”

  “If I’d known there was a horse that could move away from Chinook like this — ” groaned Brender, and paused.

  “Nothing else will be apt to catch her,” said Silver.

  “I’d still be back home at the old man’s shoulder; running the ranch,” said Brender. “But she’s what took me away. I watched her grow up. When she was a yearling, she could leave the bunch when they ran for water or came in from the field to the corral. I spotted her for mine. I gentled her. I broke her. And when I rode her, Silver, it seemed to me that there was nothing in the world that I couldn’t catch, and that nothing could catch me. That’s what started me. I was a fool. She made me feel safe. And I went to the devil at a touch. Christian didn’t have to persuade me. Chinook had done the persuading already. You know. The fine, brave, free life — and no work — and all the men heroes, and all the women beautiful, and all the liquor old, and nothing but hard riding, and excitement, and — oh, you know what I mean! I rode right into hell on Chinook’s back. But there’s not a gamer, truer horse in the world, Silver.”

  It seemed to Silvertip that the whole soul of the youth had, somehow, spilled out in this one speech. There was the picture of his past, of his nature, of his raising, and of his temptation and fall.

  “No,” went on Brender thoughtfully, “you wouldn’t even understand. You live the free life, all right. But people know that you’ve never been crooked. I’ve been crooked, Silver. I know what it means to stick a gun under the nose of a man. I’ll tell you another thing — I’ve enjoyed doing it. I’ve liked it, and getting into brawls, and having a fight right out to the finish. I’ve been nearly finished a couple of times. But I’ve liked the life a whole lot.”

  He looked suddenly behind him, swinging half around in the saddle.

  “I understand,” said Silver.

  “I like this, too,” said Brender. “I know that they’re going to get me. Christian never fails. Sooner or later the men he marks off are dead. And it doesn’t take very long. But in spite of that, I sort of like this — being done with the dirty part of the old life, you know. And riding out here toward we don’t know what, riding over the rim of the world — you know what I mean. And you along with me! Silver, you’re a man — I don’t mean just batting that fellow over the head in the barn, and I don’t mean simply shooting one of that other pair out of the saddle, but I do mean the way you sat there in the restaurant, and waited for the music to start!”

  “Rap,” said Silver, “I don’t want to talk about myself. What’s important is the thing you’ve done. I was as dead as a fish out of water. And you put me back in the swim. You say that you’re sure that Christian will get you. But suppose that the two of us stick together? Two men that work together and fight for one another could stand off the devil himself.”

  “We could beat the devil — but not Christian,” said Brender.

  CHAPTER VII

  A Cry in the Night

  A MOON came up, yellow like a winter sun in the far North. By the wan light of it they rode on, until Chinook was stumbling with weariness, and all of that time the high spirits of Rap Brender failed to cool. He laughed, he sang, he whistled, he rattled off cheerful anecdotes in endless succession, but he refused consistently to tell Silver what Silver most wanted to know — the ways and the habits and the numbers of the Christian gang.

  He would exclaim, in answer to the questions: “Tomorrow we’ll talk over everything. To-night I want to forget.”

  But he could plan the great party which they would indulge in before catastrophe overtook them. He laid the scene of it all the way from Mexico City to Denver, and named the drinks, and roasted the birds. It was only when Chinook began to give out that they halted.

  The desert was as flat as the palm of a hand. Cactus growths stood up like men or crouched like beasts all around them, and a hunting party would not have to be as cunning as wild Indians in order to use such cover in stalking the quarry. Therefore, while Rap Brender slept three hours, Silver stood on guard, walking around and around the camp in a great circle, sometimes making a halt in order to scan all the environs of the camp, and sometimes lying down so that with his ear to the ground he could hear every vibration. He made such a business of this standing watch that sleepiness did not trouble him. He allowed not one instant for his own thoughts, except for a moment when he stood close to Brender, just before waking him up.

  However gay Rap had been before twisting himself into his blanket, he suffered now in his sleep, his forehead clouding, his head twisting over against his shoulder, as though forced by the hangman’s knot. Then it seemed to Silver that this was a life foredoomed to waste. It was no more than a glass of liquid held in a trembling hand. It would be flung away. Perhaps already young Brender had come many times within an inch of death. He would try danger once more, and that time would be the last. He had outraged the law; now he had defied the outlaws. He was more perfectly isolated than any man that Silver could conceive of.

  For all of that picture which rolled suddenly and sadly into his mind, Silver determined to stand with him, shoulder to shoulder, through every crisis.

  He roused him with a word. That hair-trigger nature responded instantly, as a fine gun responds to a touch. He was out of his blanket and up, and looking around him with cool, calm eyes.

  “Seen anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Silver. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Like a top. Dreamed that I was in a castle on the edge of the world, sitting at a silver table, and eating off a golden plate. Turn in, Silver.”

  Silver turned in, smiling at Rap’s account of his visions. He could remember the tortured face and the head pressed over on one shoulder.

  Then, with one twist of the blanket around him, Silver turned his own face from the moon and went to sleep.

  And, just as he had looked down at the handsome, sharply defined face of Brender, so Rap Brender now looked down on him, and saw the jaw gripped harder in sleep, and the fine shadows of resolution form in the center of the brow.

  Then, with a sigh, Brender stepped back and began his circling of the camp, his lookout for any sign of life. An owl passed like a dark gesture, shooting over his head in its hunt for mice or some other little warm-blooded life that might have ventured out in the moonlight. But there was absolutely no sign of horsemen moving across the flats, far or near.

  Brender sat down cross-legged. He pulled out a pencil and a small notebook, in wh
ich he scribbled:

  DEAR SILVER: I’m leaving you. I’m going to lose myself in a way you won’t be able to follow.

  I know that you’ll try to find my trail. You feel under an obligation because I kept the thugs from murdering you, and now that I’m outside the law and the Christian gang, both, you’ll want to back me up against the world.

  But that’s no go, Silver. If you cut loose from me, you can win through, maybe. You may be able to keep away from Christian because the law isn’t hunting you. But if you stay with me, you’ll surely be snagged. That’s why I’m cutting off by myself. I’m leaving now and taking the chance that even Christian’s bloodhounds won’t be able to follow our trail by moonlight.

  If you think that you’re under any obligation to me, you’re wrong. It was simply a lucky thing for me that you happened along to-day. Otherwise I might still be with the Christian outfit of man-killers and crooks. Whatever else the world may have against me, it can’t call me a murderer, and if I had stood by while those fellows were shooting you up, murder would have been the charge against me. The moment I came into the restaurant and saw you, I knew that I didn’t want to go through with the dirty job. And when I watched you face the three of them, I knew I’d have to fight on your side.

  You can see that you don’t owe me a thing. I owe you the chance that made me be white for once.

  Don’t try to follow my trail. You couldn’t do me any good and you’d simply get yourself into trouble too deep for even Silver to wade through. Leave the Christian gang to itself. Nobody can beat that crowd. Not while the brains of Christian are running it. If I were you, I’d slide out of this country and go to South America until the Christian outfit has had a chance to cool off.

  I would have told you all about the workings of the gang, but I knew that if I gave you a lot of information you never would have stopped until you’d tried to break up that machine. And believe me, nobody is going to be able to smash that outfit.

  Meeting you was a great thing. Of course I’d heard a lot about you, but meeting you was a lot bigger and better than anything I had heard.

  The best of every luck to you.

  RAP BRENDER.

  When he had finished writing this, he tore the pages out of the book, taking care that he made no loud sound in the ripping. Then he picked up saddle and bridle, muffling the iron of the bridle with his hand, and carried his outfit a full hundred yards from the camp.

  Chinook was up and grazing, though Parade was still lying down. He led the mare to the saddle, pulled it over her back, and in another moment was leading her away.

  He went on for a full quarter of a mile before he ventured to mount, in fear lest the wolf-sharp ears of Silver might hear the squeak of the saddle leather. Then he rode steadily on, keeping the line that he had held to since they left Copper Creek side by side. He maintained the direction while the moon began to climb to the zenith, but as the dawn began he altered his course.

  He had entered a district of lava flow before he changed his direction. All around him the ground was covered with glass-hard slag, or cinders crumbling slowly to dust, or heaps of fragments like great black shocks of hay.

  He kept to places where the black slag extended like ice, and where the hardest stampings of the mare would make little or no impression. Still clinging to that sort of going, he managed to snake his way through the miles of the lava flow and come out into the desert on the other side with the surety that Silver would not be able to stick to his trail.

  That surety made him half melancholy and half gay. He felt that it was his duty to shake off Silver; but he felt, also, that it was the greatest loss in his life. And now he wanted forgetfulness at any price.

  The sun was well up. The heat of the day had commenced to burn him, and he kept Chinook to a slow dogtrot that gradually drifted the miles behind them. He knew the way he wanted to keep, but he had to change direction twice in order to get to two water holes. It was the very end of the afternoon before he came in sight of what he wanted. He was then facing due west, and against the red blaze of the horizon fires he saw tall trees etched, and the sharp wedges of several roofs. It was well after sunset before that black series of silhouettes turned into green under his eyes, a dusky green overdrawn with night shadows.

  But this was the place he wanted. Chinook, with the smell of green grass in her nostrils, lifted her dainty head and went eagerly forward. And so they passed into the oasis.

  There was no other name for it. Thirty years before, Tom Higgins, in his youth, had fled across the desert and found three trees growing close beside a little spring that bubbled up in the sand, ran a pace or two, and was drunk up by the desert.

  To Tom Higgins, half dead with thirst, the crystal shining of that water was the most beautiful thing in the world. So he filed on the half section that contained the spring, and went back to live there. In his equipment were tools for digging, some seed grain, and a few tough little saplings, a foot high, which he had dug up, roots and all, packed in moss, and brought with him. He began to enlarge the vent of the spring. For a year, off and on, he dug down and down until he had drilled through the bed rock, and then he was rewarded by a thousandfold welling of the water. It would not rise above the surface, but it made a great source of supply that was more than sufficient for his three or four hundred acres.

  So he settled down there permanently. By degrees he planted trees in lines and in groves. He established well-leveled fields of alfalfa, of oats, of wheat. He made a truck garden. He fed all his hay and grain to pigs, horses, cattle, sheep, and once a year herded the drove across the desert to the nearest market. He could employ servants now, and with their help he turned his entire oasis into a garden.

  He took out a hotel license, and Higgins’s hotel and bar became a famous legend. Not many men ever got to it, because the way was across bitter leagues of desert, but those who finally achieved the place by design or accident, always felt that their trip had been worth while.

  Brender, coming in, first heard the lowing of the cattle, and as he drew toward the center of the oasis, he heard also the clank and whirring of the windmills which by day and night used every breeze to pump out of the source the life-giving water for the soil. He came through a great grove of round-headed trees into a second view of the hotel of Tom Higgins.

  It was backed by sharp-roofed barns, but the house itself was in the Spanish style, and built of bed rock that had been blasted free and roughed into shape by Mexican stone cutters. A tide of green climbing vines swept up over it, and even over the four stories of the tower which Tom Higgins had built, and on top of which, men said, he took his stand every day at noon, to scan the horizon with a strong glass, as though he were a sailor once more, and on the bridge to find the position of a ship.

  One thing was certain: there was that in the past of Higgins which made him expect, some day, a very important visitor. His expectation was so great that he constantly had about him a troop of the most experienced cutthroats. Their value as farm laborers was not great, but their skill with weapons was well known, and if Tom Higgins had been a sailor in his youth, now he lived like a sort of land pirate, accumulating a more and more unsavory reputation.

  It mattered little to young Rap Brender that there were strange things in the air of the place. What was important to him was that there were green things to look upon, good liquor to drink, and perhaps one day of respite before Barry Christian and his gang swept over him like a black wave.

  He rode into the patio, where a big man was lighting the three lanterns that illuminated the court. He had a silhouette like the shadow of an egg, for his hips and stomach were enormous, and he sloped above the waist to a comparatively narrow pair of shoulders, a vast pyramid of a neck, and a wonderfully small head which was as bald as glass.

  That was Tom Higgins.

  He wore a pair of old overalls, some Mexican hua-rachos to cool his feet, and a flannel undershirt whose sleeves had been cut off at the shoulders.

&n
bsp; He turned to Brender a face puffed and reddened by whisky bloat, and waved a hand of greeting.

  At his shout, a spindling boy of sixteen came slowly out and took the mare, after Brender had stripped the pack from behind the saddle.

  “You come in here,” shouted Tom Higgins. “I ain’t seen you for two years, Rap. We’re going to have a drink, and I know what the drink’s going to be. We’re going to have some eighteen-year-old rye that’s been cooking in a barrel for all of that time, and if it ain’t a hundred and fifty proof, I’m a sucker.”

  Brender thanked him, but said he needed sleep. Three hours of sleep and he would be on deck again, but now he was too tired to enjoy even good liquor.

  He sat with Tom Higgins in the big, empty dining room, and ate roast kid and baked potatoes. Then Higgins, in person, conducted him to a bedroom that faced away from the patio, and looked out upon green alfalfa fields to the east. Brender struck the bed without so much as pulling off his boots. He was asleep before the springs had stopped creaking.

  When he wakened, the white hand of the moonlight lay on the floor beside the bed, and in his ears a woman’s scream was still ringing.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Girl

  HE listened in incredulous silence for another moment, half expecting the sound to be repeated. It was not a cry of pain, but one of fear. It came from a young throat, for there had been music in the treble of even that shriek.

  Then he flashed to the door, turned the knob, and found it stuck. He tried it with hand and shoulder, and heard the bolt clank back and forth in its slot. He had been locked in!

  He dropped to one knee, with a gun in his hand instinctively. Something was happening from the sight of which he was to be barred. It must be a matter of great importance, for Tom Higgins well knew that his guest had been with Barry Christian, had been one of his gang, and Tom could hardly know so soon that there had been a breach between Rap and the great chief. Or had Christian, with his usual uncanny prescience, guessed the resort to which Rap Brender would flee? Had a swift rider come across the desert, and was Brender now caught in an easy trap?