by Brand, Max
If he killed Barry Christian, it would have to be as they stood face to face!
The very thought took his breath. He tried, in desperate silence, to conquer the impulse which was controlling him, but in another moment he knew that he was enslaved by it. He would have to stand before Barry Christian and endure that unendurable eye, and stare into that pale face, and wait for the action of that slender hand.
Silver, slipping the revolver back into its spring holster under his arm, began with powerful fingers to knead the muscles of his right forearm and his wrist. He passed his hand up to the shoulder, still working at the flesh. It did not matter what the condition of the rest of his body might be. What counted was no more than the freedom and the strength of his right arm, for the ordeal that must come.
A shadow swept down the cavern. It was Barry Christian who had risen and was walking down the length of the cave. Silver, rising, covered him with the Colt.
He had dreamed that Christian would make a flashing movement to get at a gun, and that movement would be Christian’s passport to another world. But he was wrong. For an instant, halted in mid-stride, Christian balanced on his toes, as though he were contemplating hurling himself straight at the enemy. Then he settled back on his heels and nodded.
“It’s Silver, I suppose?” said he.
“It is,” said Silver.
“Before you put the bullet through me, Silver, let me have a look again at the face of the man who’s to kill me, will you?”
He moved back, as he spoke, putting his hands on his hips as though to give mute assurance that he would attempt no sudden effort to get at a weapon.
Silver followed.
They stood on opposite sides of the fire, considering one another as two men in this world have rarely surveyed enemies.
Silver said: “I might as well make you easy, Christian. I’m not going to murder you.”
“Ah, and certainly not,” said the soft voice of Christian. “It isn’t murder but the act of justice, long delayed.”
“No,” said Silver. “It may be justice, but I’m not the fellow who can be judge and jury and hangman, all at once. We’ll fight this out, Christian, with a fair break for both of us.”
“A fair break? Your gun in your hand and an invitation for me to go for mine — to fill my hand before I die. Well, that’s the ripe old Western custom, at that.”
Slowly Silver shook his head.
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “I’ve got to keep you covered until my right arm thaws out. I’m a little chilled, Christian. But when the life is back in my right hand, I’ll put up this gun, and we’ll start from an even break.”
“Ah, Silver,” said Christian, “you’re an honest man! You’re so honest that I could almost trust you to mean everything that you say.”
He flung out one of his hands to the side as he said this. And the horses which stood along the side of the cave tossed up their heads. They made Silver think of the great stallion which stood outside in the snow.
Then the voice of the girl broke in rapidly: “Keep climbing till you get to the heart of the whirlwind, where the ice is. Keep climbing. The cold takes you by the throat. Keep climbing. Then you come to a turn. I don’t know whether it’s right or left. You come to a turn. After that there is fire and rest. You have to climb up. You have to keep on climbing — ”
Silver indicated her with a pointing finger. And the great Barry Christian nodded.
“I know,” he said. “That’s the reason why I have to die.”
“Are you ready?” said Silver.
“Yes,” said Christian.
He began to smile in a singular small way, while his eyes ran eagerly over and over the face of Silver, as though he had to read it thoroughly and learn it by heart, because it was a thing that soon would be seen no more.
An active chill of dread worked like worms of ice through the spinal marrow of Silver, for he knew that to Christian the battle was already as good as ended. The sublime self-confidence of this man was like a tower of brass that no force in the world could budge.
“Very well,” said Silver. He slid the gun he held into the spring hoster that was under his left armpit.
“That’s the way,” said Christian. “Much better than a hip holster, eh?”
“Much better,” agreed Silver, steadily looking into the strange eyes of Christian.
Christian threw back his head, and the long hair lifted a little over his shoulders.
“And when they ask for ‘Hands up,’ if they see your hands go up past the hip holsters, they’re not expecting a draw from under the coat, eh?”
Silver said nothing.
“I’ll look at the girl first,” said Christian. “Perhaps I can do something for her comfort before we have the little fight over.”
It was a lie, and Silver suddenly recognized the lie. It was not about the girl that Christian was thinking, but of some device by which he could gain an advantage. And that was why Silver watched and waited, and strung his nerves on a hair trigger. That was why he noted, as Christian turned, leaning a little over the girl in the bed, that the hand of the outlaw was moving, his right shoulder hunching up a trifle. At that very moment, as he turned his back, Christian was drawing his gun, and then he would spin swiftly to —
It was exactly so. As a frightened cat turns, so did Christian. His hand was a flash of white. His revolver was a flash of steel-blue light. But Silver had moved, also. And his gesture was like the snapping end of a whiplash. On the tips of his flying fingers the heavy Colt seemed to come forth, with the thumb jerking across the hammer.
The guns exploded, but Silver’s a fraction of a second first. He knew he had won. He knew it by the fact that the weapon in Christian’s hand was a trifle out of line. Therefore the spurt of fire was not a finger aimed at the heart of Silver. Instead, the bullet struck one of the line of mustangs and ripped through the haunch of the poor beast. And Silver’s bullet, striking the gun from Christian’s hand, flung it back against his breast, unbalanced him, and sent him sprawling backward.
That fall was why the second shot from Silver’s gun missed the forehead of his enemy.
He heard the cry; he saw the astonished face of Christian, staring as though at a ghost. And as the man fell, the wounded mustang leaped straight across the fire, stumbled, kicked a shower of flaming brands in all directions, and drew with it the rest of the horses in a whirling mill.
What happened to Christian became of no moment for the instant. Silver sprang for the girl and caught her up out of harm’s way as the mill of wheeling horses straightened out and bolted for the mouth of the cave.
Over that thunder of snorting, of stamping, of pounding hoofs, he heard the quiet voice of the girl saying:
“To keep on climbing — you get to the heart of the whirlwind, where the ice is. Keep on climbing — ”
She spoke calmly, and her glance rested on his face with a grave abstraction. Silver put her back on one of the heaps of brush that had been laid down for a bed. Christian was not there in the cave. Christian was gone!
CHAPTER XIX
The Avalanche
HE had thought that the great outlaw must surely have been trampled into the ground by the hammering hoofs of the fear-maddened mustangs, but Christian was gone — crouching, perhaps, just outside the cave mouth, or around the curve of the wall.
There was no time to feel fear or to hold back. Silver ran like a madman out of the cave into the icy breath of the outer night — right out across the shoulder of the mountain, where the stars seemed to be sweeping in toward his face. The horses were in full flight still, crashing around the side of the mountain to the right. But off to the left he thought he saw a smaller shadow, and heard a smaller sound.
From the edge of the shoulder of the mountain he looked down and saw the figure descending, a shadow picked out by starlight against the white sheen of the snow. He fired. The form disappeared.
Silver craned his neck and tilted his head to li
sten to the fall of the body, and waited to see it appear again, caroming down the slope like a loosened stone, for the angle of the descent was extremely sharp.
But he heard no fall; he saw no loose, bouncing body. Only, in the valley beneath him, he marked two small red eyes, where fires had been lighted, side by side.
Murcio and Santos were down there, then, beside a boat that was ready to cross the stream. And now, far, far down the slope, he saw a flying shadow — a man running, sliding — Christian, hastening on his way to freedom.
And no human being could on foot make up the ground that the man had gained!
But Christian had said that a wild Indian once rode his mustang down that slope!
Where a mustang could go by sunlight, Parade could follow by the moon. Where a mustang could go in full summer, Parade could follow over the winter snows. Cat-footed, eagle-eyed, it was not for nothing that he had run wild in his youth over the Sierra Blanca, and for Silver he would give the heart out of his body unhesitatingly.
If only he were now fit and well and strong!
But as he stood, he was the one engine that could carry Silver onto his quarry. And remembering that pale face of Christian, that strange eye, it seemed to Silver that half the evil in the world was concentrated in the monster.
He ran like mad to the stallion. Before he was in the saddle, Parade was crouching, trembling for the start. One electric flash of sympathy leaped between them and made them a unit as Silver headed him across the shoulder and to the head of the long devil’s slide that descended with few breaks toward the river far beneath them.
If the snow were firmly crusted — if it did not start into an avalanche!
He put the big horse at the brink of the slope. Parade thrust his head out and down, read his task like a mountain goat, and then tipped over the edge.
Nothing could stop him after that. Irresistible force of gravity dragged him down with increasing speed. He threw up his forehoofs again and again, and stamped them down into the snow. It loosened, skidded. They began to swerve to the side — once fully sidewise, they would topple over and over, and come in a red mass of ruin to the bottom of the pitch.
Silver threw his weight far to the other side. As though he were bearing on a rudder when a boat is in a strong current, he felt the chestnut right himself. Behind them there was a roar like a rising wind, though the only breath of wind was the sweeping current of the gale that the speed of the horse raised, the storm that seemed to be blowing the stars straight up into the sky faster and faster.
Silver looked back. What he saw looked like a dozen white horses galloping close together, with manes flying high. It was the forefront of an avalanche that he had started in his own descent with Parade, and now it came after him springing, vaulting, gathering headway and width of front. He veered Parade to the side, swaying his own body. He looked back again, and twenty more white horses were plunging downward on an ever-broadening front.
Well to the side he drew. There was a rushing that seemed to fill all the air about him. A spray of powdered snow struck him like the wings of gigantic moths beating impalpably, but with weight. He was covered by a swirl of ruin. Then the thing cleared, and to his right lay the dark path of the snow slide, and in front of him it roared on its way, leaving the ground swept and dug clean behind.
In the scar that it had left, Parade went nimbly, securely down the step as the avalanche reached the river and rushed far out into it.
The waters dashed up in a mad white tumult. Then the sound smote the ears of Silver like the booming of a volley of great guns, and afterward there were the roaring echoes that thundered up and down the ravine.
He could look at something except his own progress down the hillside now. He could see the boat put out from the shore with three men in it. He could see the swirl which the avalanche had started in the river catch hold of the skiff and start it spinning helplessly, borne rapidly down the stream.
Another sound reached him, thin and small as the crying of sea birds on a wind, and he knew that it was the screaming of the frightened Mexicans in the boat as they were carried down toward the cataract.
Silver himself braced out along the shore of the stream on the back of Parade.
All was confusion in the little boat.
He saw two men rise in it. One was Santos; the slender form was Christian. And then Alonso Santos dropped.
He fell over the gunwale. Christian took his legs and upended them. That was the end of Alonso Santos, gentleman, borne like a log down toward the white thrashing of the cataract.
Now Christian was himself at the oars, bending his back almost double with effort. Murcio, also, in the bow of the boat, was laboring, his head blindly down as he strained.
Either it was the brain or the hand of Christian that aided, or else the great swirl that had caught them had now diminished in strength, for the boat no longer spun about. It straightened. It pointed its prow for the farther shore.
Murico stopped rowing for an instant and pointed toward the nearer bank. Silver knew what his plea was — to turn back to the nearer bank and gain it before the sweep of the river had them among the rocks. And Silver knew why Christian would not turn back — for when he landed it would be under the guns of his enemy. Death or freedom for Christian now, it seemed!
They went on rapidly across the stream, the oars striking in steady time. But they gained less and less steadily, and the roar of the cataract, as Silver followed down the, stream, deafened him. The cliffs above took up the sound and hurled it back and down. Exactly like a deluge of thunder it fell from the sky.
They had ceased gaining. They were pointing the nose of the boat up the stream, and even so the draw of the shooting current pulled them slowly down!
They began to go with redoubled speed. Silver saw the head of Murcio tip back. He could guess the agony on that fat, evil face as the man fought against sure death. And there was the great Christian throwing the oars from him, rising in the stern of the boat, his arms folded, his long hair blown back from his head, meeting the last moment like a man.
Another thought seemed to strike the outlaw. He turned and waved his hand in farewell to the enemy who had driven him to the last disaster.
Silver, by that time, had ridden into the stream so far that the swift water was boiling above the stirrups. Now he whirled the heavy rawhide lariat around his head as he plucked it off the saddlebows. With all his might he flung it. Like liquid lead the weighty coils shot out. The small noose darted like the head of a snake and struck the moon-silvered water — feet short of the mark!
But not too short for Christian to make one final effort. From the gunwale of the boat he leaped with all his might and struck the face of the river on the very brink of the place where the cataract kept flinging up its insane, white arms.
Had he reached the end of the lariat?
Murcio shot into the white mist. The last Silver saw of him, the Mexican had dropped his oars and thrown both arms up above his head. It was a gesture of utter terror and despair, as though on the brink of death he saw all hell opening before him.
Then, on Silver’s rope, came a heavy tug that staggered Parade. He turned the horse and rode the stallion up the bank of the stream. He looked back, and there saw something like a long, dark fish being drawn into the shallows.
It was a limp, half-lifeless body that Silver drew out of the river. There was no strength left except in the hands of Christian, which had frozen a mighty grip on that meager little loop of salvation.
Afterward he sat up with a sudden sigh and looked up into the face of Silver with strange, unfathomable eyes.
His voice was as soft and calm as though he had been sitting all his while at a dinner table.
“It was the silly little trick, Silver,” he said. “I should not have pretended about the girl. It gave you a tenth part of a second to read my mind, and a tenth part of a second is a long, long time for such a man as you. Long enough, Silver, to take a soul to heaven —
or to hell with poor Murcio, and that Santos!”
They spent three days up in the cave nursing the girl. During that time Christian seemed to identify himself perfectly with the interests of his captors. In fact, from the moment when he was taken out of the water, he spoke a bitter word only once. That was right at the end.
When the three days were up, the fever left the girl as quickly as it had taken her, and they started back by slow marches. Time was of no importance, so they went edging along the river in easy stages until they reached the town of Medinos. That was where the law gathered them in.
It wanted the girl and Jim Silver as witnesses. It wanted Rap Brender to lodge behind the bars on several counts. But, above all, it wanted Barry Christian.
To a great many people the excitement began only then, in the time when two strong posses entered the region over which Barry Christian had been as a king and overthrew his reign. They hauled in plenty of crooks who were wanted in all parts of the country, but for every one captured, ten dispersed. Not without fighting. There were two or three pitched battles, but without a leader, the outlaws could not trust one another. The whole range was cleaned out in surprisingly short order.
But when the first outfit of hard riders reached the oasis of Tom Higgins, they found on it nothing but the Mexicans — who knew nothing! Higgins was gone. Stew and his fellow gunman had disappeared, transported, in spite of their wounds, no one could say where. The clever old brain of Doc Shore had attended to those details. And Doc Shore himself had dissolved just like morning mist.
Copper Creek needed the burning of some gunpowder before it was cleaned out. There was one item that Jim Silver had asked for and which was brought back to him, and that was a gold watch out of the stock of Shore’s shop. It was the gold watch on the back of which Butch Lawson had carved the scroll with the point of his knife, that scroll which was to Shore as a message that said “Kill the bearer!” Silver looked for a long time on that scroll when he received the watch.