Brand, Max - Silvertip 10

by Valley Thieves

  We stopped our horses and looked around us. We could hear the panting of the horses, the saddle leather creaking a good deal as the mustangs heaved their sides. And I could hear the unspoken words of the men who were condemning me for pointing out a blank trail.

  Then we swung around and hurried back to the mouth of the shallow little box canyon.

  It was a whole lot too late to do anything in that direction, for the moon was brightening all this while and shaking silver dust over the grass of the plain. And in the middle of the plain came the men of the Cary clan.

  They looked more terrible to me than wild Indians. Wild as Indians they were, and more cruel, and more formidable in wits. And the numbers of them! There was a cluster of twelve or fifteen at the head of the search, and others kept ripping out of the woods with whoops. Even at that distance, I could hear the thin yells walking across the air of the night. A fine sight, a stirring picture—to be looked at in a book!

  I glanced aside at Jim Silver, sitting very still on his’ horse, with a hand on his hip. The moon fell full on his face, so that I could see the tranquillity of it, and I knew the meaning of the phrase “ready to die.” He was ready. He must always have been ready. Perhaps that was why he had rubbed shoulders with death so many times and escaped. But most of the time he had had with him a horse that nothing could match, or that wise devil of a Frosty. Now he was stripped of his tools—and Clonmel had stripped him.

  It would not have been strange, when he saw how we were bottled up, when he saw that we could not venture out of our hole in the ground without being rushed by the hunters, if he had turned and cursed Clonmel heartily. Instead, I saw him put out his hand casually and drop it on the huge shoulder of that tattered figure. I heard Clonmel say in a choking voice: “Jim—” And Silver answered gently: “Hush, old son!”

  There was something between the pair of them, something that would make Silver give more than horse or wolf, or even life, to this young giant.

  “They’re working the trail with Frosty. They’ll soon be here,” said Silver, after that.

  I had not seen at first, but now I could make it out. I could see the figure of the big lobo on the end of the lariat, straining forward across the plain, and the riders cantering easily after him. They had brought out Frosty, knowing that he would follow the trail of his master with a perfect certainty. A horrible thought, it seemed to me, that the love of the beast for the man should have been used to kill Silver. And that was what they meant. The rest of us didn’t count. Not even Taxi, not even the hugeness of Clonmel counted. Jim Silver was the man they wanted. If they got him, Barry Christian would flood their wallets with hard cash. Barry Christian himself, with that invincible enemy removed, would go on to build up for himself a new and greater empire of crime.

  I could see one rider far loftier than the others, on a gleaming horse. That was Barry Christian, I had no doubt, on the silken brightness of Parade. And the whole current of fighting men was set directly toward us.

  Silver said: “We’d better pull back from this.”

  Taxi broke out: “We can slip out and ride along the cliffs and, if they see us, we can make a running fight of it.”

  Silver simply said: “That won’t do.”

  He didn’t advance any arguments, and no arguments were needed. Cary rifles would not miss, even by moonlight, and all of us knew it.

  Silver dismounted. We all did the same. He told me to take the horses back up the canyon. I did that and tethered them to trees. Then I hurried back.

  We all had rifles from saddle holsters of the Cary clan. We had plenty of ammunition. If it came to a matter of siege, we could eat horseflesh and cut down trees to make fires, and there was water flowing through the ravine. But before long the Carys would be on the heights above us, as well as plugging the mouth of the ravine, and they would pick us off at their leisure. It seemed improbable that they would be able to scale the cliffs on either side of the ravine directly, but they could send back a party through the mountains, to come down from the headwaters of the little creek, and get at us in that way. I thought that out as I stood there, and saw the others ready with their guns.

  Silver said: “I don’t think there’s any purpose in murdering them. There’s only need to shoot one shot to turn them away from a charge.”

  “Murder?” broke out Clonmel. “Man, it wouldn’t be murder—just plain justice!”

  “There’s only one Gary out there who deserves killing, probably,” said Silver, “and that man is too old to be shot. He’s trained the others up to be what we’ve found them. We might butcher half a dozen of them as they come on—but I won’t have it.”

  I could see the point of it. We couldn’t kill enough of them to clear our path; the death of a few would simply make the rest more savagely bent on ending our lives. But more than these practical reasons, Silver would not shed blood without a more bitter necessity than this. I felt a cold sense of awe as I looked at him. There was no one like him. There would never be another cut out of the same metal. His ascendancy over us was so complete that there was no argument about it, whatever.

  He was to fire one shot, and I wondered how he would direct it. I saw the sweep of the coming horsemen. We gathered in the thick of the shadow that slanted across the throat of the valley. Silver stood at wait, his rifle ready.

  The riders were so close that I could make them all out—Christian riding at the front, and a man I couldn’t name beside him. Yes, I could name him. It was Pete, who had stood guard and who had been knocked silly by Silver earlier in the night. He was the one who had Frosty on the lariat, holding the rope in one hand, with a loop of the slack around his arm.

  I distinctly heard Silver mutter: “I’m sorry!”

  Then he brought the butt of the rifle into the hollow of his shoulder and, the instant it settled there, fired. It was as casual a shot as though he had been firing at a stump, but it made Pete’s mustang pitch on its nose. Pete himself sailed through the air in a clumsy spread-eagle. He lighted, rolled, actually came to his feet, staggering straight on toward us, though the rest of the cavalcade had split to this side and that, running for cover.

  Frosty, in the meantime, had leaped on ahead and had come to the end of the rope. One lunge more untwisted the rope from the arm of Pete. Frosty came to his master’s whistle so fast that the rope stood out in the air in a straight line behind him. And Pete, swerving, sprinted for shelter.

  Clonmel jerked up his rifle to fire. Silver struck it down again.

  “No murder!” he said.

  That was the only reason the Carys were able to bottle us up without spending human blood.

  XVII. — CARY’S OFFER

  Now that we were safely bottled up—of course the Carys knew that they had us—the yelling of those devils ran chills through me, and fevers, too. I could hear them laughing and shouting. They began to howl filthy insults at us. They were ready to run amuck with the sense of power. They had helpless things to handle now, and they wanted to get at the work of torment.

  But after a time, I heard a voice calling out: “Hey, Silver! Hey, Jim Silver!”

  Silver answered instantly.

  Said the other: “The old man wants to talk to you. Can he come in?”

  “Why not?” asked Silver.

  “You gotta give your word that nothin’ is goin’ to happen to him or the gal with him.”

  “All right. I’ll give you my word,” said Silver.

  “All right, Grandpa. You can go in!” shouted the voice.

  It staggered me, that. I mean, for those savages to be willing to take the word of Jim Silver at a time like that! It might be that the old man had not known about Silver the day before, but he certainly had had a chance to learn more about his character in the meantime.

  We would not have trusted the Bible oaths of the whole gang, but they were ready to risk their lives if Silver gave his casual word! In a sense, I’ve always thought that that was the finest tribute that any man could have re
ceived.

  A little after this, Old Man Cary came into view, riding along with his long legs dangling down on either side of the little mule that carried him. He looked a good deal bigger than the mule. Half a length behind him was Maria on a mustang as pretty as a deer and just as wild. It minced and danced and curvetted in great style, and she sat it out like an old-timer.

  When Old Man Cary was well inside the mouth of the valley, he saw us and held up his hand, pushing the flat of it forward, like an Indian.

  “How!” said he.

  “How are you, Chief?” asked Silver calmly.

  The old villain slid down from his mule. He was strong enough in the riding muscles to keep his place in a saddle, but he was not so sure when he stood on the ground again. The girl frisked off the back of her pony, threw its reins, and slipped under the extended, limp arm of her grandfather.

  I hardly ever had had a chance to see her except in these attitudes of filial devotion, but I never suspected her of any special love for Old Man Cary. I dare say that her father and her mother were glad to have her near the old devil, because he probably handed out choice presents in the way of lands and opportunities to the couple on account of Maria, but the girl herself simply accepted the job and did it skilfully, calmly, like a doctor. While she supported the arm of her grandfather over her shoulders, her head kept turning, her bright eyes kept glinting at us, one after the other, until the gaze landed on Clonmel. That was enough for her. She ate him up steadily.

  I must say that he was a picture to fill the eye of any barbarian, by this time. He had washed himself in the cold water of the creek, and had then thrown a slicker over his shoulders, and it looked like an Indian blanket. If Indians ever had white skins, he could have stood for the perfect picture of one of them. He looked thewed and sinewed and handed for anything.

  The old man pointed to a flat-topped rock. The girl helped him to it and fetched out his pipe for him and filled it. She put the string-wound bit of the stem between his toothless gums and lighted a match and held it for him. He puffed a minute and then he said:

  “Kind of comforts a man, tobacco does. You— you’re Jim Silver?”

  Silver was the one he had picked out and he kept pointing his scrawny arm, till Silver said:

  “Yes, my name is Jim Silver.”

  “Your name ain’t Jim Silver, but that’s what you’re called,” said the old man.

  “You can put it that way,” said Silver.

  He came up and sat on a rock, facing the chief of the Cary clan, the one man of the lot, he had said, who deserved killing.

  The point came to that right away.

  “Why didn’t you boys plaster some of us when we was comin’ up?” asked Cary.

  “I haven’t a grudge against the rest of them,” said Silver. “They only do what they’ve been taught to do.”

  The old man cackled in his husky voice. Then he said: “That means me?”

  “That means you,” said Silver.

  “Appears to me,” went on Cary, “that you’re kind of a biggish sort of a man, Silver. The kind that I used to do business with out here in the old days. The race of them has died out. I’m the only one left, pretty near. Biggish men. Not the pounds. That wasn’t what counted. Nerve. They all had nerve! They was all nerve! Nerve and brains, like you and me.”

  It didn’t seem to bother Silver, to be classed like that along with Cary.

  “You’ve come here to say something,” said Silver. “Why not say it? You fellows keep an eye around you. Watch the top of the rocks,” he said to us.

  “Oh, naw, naw, naw!” said Cary. “There ain’t any trick about this here. I don’t aim to get my gullet sliced open by talking to you boys till my gang gets into place for shootin’. M’ria, come back here!”

  Maria had walked straight up to Clonmel and was talking to him, her body swaying back a little as she tilted her head to face him.

  “I’ll come when you need me,” she said, without turning. And her voice began to run on, very softly, as she talked to Clonmel.

  The old man was not angry. He merely chuckled, and there was that tearing sound in the bottom of his throat.

  “She’s seen a man for herself, and she’s goin’ prospectin’ for him,” said Cary. “Gals is like that.”

  He puffed at his pipe, smacking his loose lips loudly.

  “Now I wanta to make a deal with you, Silver,” he said. “We got all the four of you, and we got you good. But the facts is that we don’t wanta waste all the time we need for roundin’ you up, and climbin’ the mountains, and shootin’ you down. We got all the four of you, but blottin’ out four men ain’t four times worse than blottin’ out one. It’s four thousand times worse. One of you gents has got a wife and a ranch behind him. People raise hell when a rancher is wiped out. I dunno why. They ain’t no better than nobody else. But posses is raised, and the State militia is called out on jobs like that. So what I mean to say is that while we got the four of you, good and proper, the only one we aim to collect is you, Silver. You walk out of here with me, and the rest of ‘em can go free.”

  “Christian wants me rather badly, eh?” said Silver calmly.

  “He right well hankers after you,” said the old man. “I recollect once I was out in the mountains froze near to death above timber line and a storm raisin’ the devil in the sky, and me in a cave freezin’ and starvin’ for three days, and the best that I could do was wait for that storm to blow over. And I got to thinkin’, along toward the end of the second day, and what I thought about was corn fritters. And doggone my heart, Silver, if I didn’t hanker after ‘em so bad that I pretty nigh walked out into the storm, that third day. And I’ll tell you what—Christian, he hankers after you the way I hankered after them corn fritters.”

  Silver turned a little.

  “Bill Avon is the man to answer you. Shall I walk out with him, Bill?”

  I would like to say that I answered right up, that I shouted it, that I cried out that I would rather die than see Jim Silver done in on account of the rest of us. But the fact is that for a second I thought about the shack on the ranch, and the smell of the coffee in the kitchen, and the sound of Charlotte singing quietly over her sewing, and the way the taste of coffee and tobacco mixes in the mouth.

  I came to with a gasp and said: “No, no, Jim! We stand together. You can’t go.”

  “I’m sorry I asked you,” said Silver.

  “Hey, wait a minute and ask the others,” said the old man.

  “I don’t need to ask them. I know them well enough to leave the question out,” said Silver. “I could have answered for Bill, too, except as a matter of form.” I was glad he said that.

  “You take a lot on yourself,” said Old Man Cary. “Are you scared to come?” he asked curiously.

  He tilted his evil old head to one side and stared at Silver.

  “Men aren’t made of the stuff you think,” answered Silver. “You’ve raised a lot of beef up here, partly on four feet and partly on two. You call them men, but they’re not. They’re a worthless lot, Cary, and you shouldn’t judge other men by them. These fellows I’m with would rather lose their blood than have me walk out with you.”

  “Now, what the devil do you mean by all that?” asked Cary.

  He was frankly bewildered.

  “Why, I mean that the job can be bigger than the men in it,” said Silver.

  “I don’t understand,” said Cary.

  “I didn’t think that you would,” said Silver. “But we’re doing something together, not one by one.”

  “And that means?”

  “It means that it’s time for you to go back.”

  The old man stood up.

  “Come here, M’ria,” he called.

  She came back to him slowly, her head turned a little toward Clonmel. Obediently she helped her grandfather to straighten. Then he exclaimed:

  “The rest of you heard him talk. Ain’t he talkin’ through his hat? If he walks out, I’ll tell you
what, there ain’t a hair on the heads of the rest of you that would be hurt.”

  Taxi laughed a little. He said: “Will you swear that, Cary?”

  “Yes, sir. Sacred word of honor and cross my heart if I don’t swear it.”

  “Honor?” said Taxi. “Cary honor?” He laughed again.

  “Well, sir, I’ll be doggoned!” murmured the old man. “You boys not having opened up and socked lead into us, I sort of figgered that there was need of talk between us. But I reckon I was wrong.”

  He turned his back and laid hold on the mule’s withers and the cantle of the saddle.

  “Have a hand?” asked Silver suddenly, seeing that the girl made no gesture to help the old man.

  “Keep off!” snarled Cary. “When I can’t climb a hoss on my own hands and feet, I’m goin’ to be ready to plant.”

  He had to struggle with all his might, nevertheless. Half-way up, his whole body was shaking, and I thought his left foot would tremble out of the stirrup. But he made it, falling breathlessly and gasping, forward into the saddle.

  He erected himself, after that, with the strength of his arms.

  “See you later, boys,” he said. “I’ll see all of you later on.”

  XVIII. — A CHANCE

  I’m ashamed to confess that I felt pretty blue as I watched the backs of that pair go out of the mouth of the ravine and turn from view behind the rock. Silver said to me: