Brand, Max - Silvertip 13

by The False Rider

  “There comes the wave of ‘em after Taxi! He’s turning around to fight back. He can’t run any more on that dead-beat horse. Now Silver comes sweeping back to him. He waves his arm at Silver to send him away. What man in the world would do that except a fool like Taxi? He’s waving Silver away, but Silver comes on in between Taxi and the posse—and the posse scatters. Why do the fools scatter?”

  “Why shouldn’t they scatter?” asked Duff Gregor. “Ain’t Silver the sort that doesn’t know how to miss?”

  No matter how interested he was in the moving picture beneath them, Christian was too annoyed by the last remark of his companion to let it pass. He lowered the field glasses suddenly and turned his handsome face toward Duff Gregor.

  “Gregor,” he said, “you know something about Jim Silver, and you’ve heard a good deal about him from me. Don’t you understand that the law-abiding are as safe from him as sheep are from a sheep dog? If that were a mob of thugs riding up the valley after him, or if your own precious person were in the lot, you can be sure that his bullets would be biting flesh long before this. But those fools are riding on behalf of the law, as they think, and they’re perfectly safe from him. They ought to know it—but they won’t know it. They’ve got their own ideas and they’ll stick by them.”

  He clapped the glasses back to his eyes again. Then he laughed.

  “Silver’s shooting the gravel away in front of their horses. He’s kissing the air beside their heads. I can see them duck. Now Taxi and Silver are running for it again.”

  He lowered the glasses a second time as the fugitives passed into a dark cloud of trees. The posse men herded in pursuit.

  “They’ve got ‘em!” exclaimed Duff Gregor. “That’s the end of Mr. Jim Silver. That’s the end of Taxi, too. That’s the finish of the pair of ‘em.”

  He observed that Christian was shaking his head, slowly, with an air of grave doubt.

  “Come on, Barry,” urged Gregor. “What else can happen? Silver is too crazy to leave Taxi. Taxi’s horse is dead spent, and a lot of those horses in the posse look full of running. They’ve got fifteen to one. How can they fail to catch Silver and Taxi?”

  “I don’t know,” said Christian. “It simply isn’t in the books.”

  Gregor started to laugh, but something of suffering and a sternness of pain in the face of Barry Christian dried up the mirth on his lips.

  “Listen, Barry,” said Gregor. “Are you believing what you say?”

  “Silver can’t be run down like a dog. A lot of house dogs can’t run down a wolf like Jim Silver,” said Christian. “When he dies, it’ll be because another sort of man has come to grips with him.”

  “A man like Barry Christian?” hazarded Gregor suddenly.

  “Well, perhaps.”

  “D’you think that you are fated to wipe Jim Silver off the face of the earth?” asked Gregor, half sneering.

  Christian looked at him without anger, answering: “I don’t think a great deal about it. It’s simply a feeling in my bones that one day Silver will be the death of me or I’ll be the death of him.”

  “Why, it’s working out like that now,” declared Gregor. “You do a big job and saddle the blame of it on Silver, and the crowd runs him down. It’s your work that’s finishing off Jim Silver right down there in the pines.”

  Christian answered: “You don’t understand. When the finish comes, we’ll be hand to hand. I don’t even think that there’ll be knives or guns. Just hand to hand!”

  He turned his right hand palm up and looked down at it. This curious mood of detachment, Gregor had observed in his famous companion more than once before this, and it always troubled him. There were times when it seemed that Christian was listening to unearthly voices, and this was one of the times.

  Christian began to walk up and down before the mine, deep in thought, and Duff Gregor followed him with a calculating eye. Trouble, he felt, was in the air. He was not surprised when he heard Christian say:

  “Well, we’ll have to get out of this.”

  “You don’t mean that we’re going to move?” demanded Gregor.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because we’re perfectly fixed, up here. Nobody dreams that we’re staying put like this. Nobody thinks that we’re tucked away with all that money in a hole in the ground. We’re fixed here, Barry. We’re safe. We’d be fools if we stirred away from here before we had to!”

  Christian looked far away, and shook his head. “I don’t like it!” he said. “You don’t like what?”

  “Silver. He’s too near us. If he’s as near as that, he’ll get the wind of us.”

  “How can he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me how Silver does things. Ask me how he got out of jail when a mob was trying to lynch him.”

  “Why, Taxi did that job.”

  “All right. But it was more impossible for him to get out of that jail than it is for him to find us.”

  “Barry,” said Gregor suddenly, “tell me something. Are you afraid of Silver?”

  Christian pointed solemnly at the sky.

  “Are you afraid of lightning?” he asked.

  “Yeah. But what’s that got to do with it?” demanded Gregor.

  “I don’t know. I feel about Silver the way I do about lightning. That’s all. I feel that he may strike at any time. He’s near us. We’ve got to move.”

  “It’s a crazy thing to do,” groaned Gregor, knowing that he would have to give way to his leader. “When do we start?”

  “Now,” said Christian.

  “Now? Right out in the broad daylight, where these manhunters can get a look at us?”

  “The day helps the other fellow to see you, but it also helps you to see the other fellow. We’d better start now.”

  Duff Gregor snapped his fingers and whistled to express the wordless vastness of his condemnation of the proposal.

  “It’s the craziest thing that I ever heard of,” he declared. “I never heard anything to beat it. Listen to me, Barry. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll toss a coin to see whether we start now or at moonrise tonight.”

  “All right,” said Christian. “Toss the coin.”

  He smiled a little as he said it, for he knew that Gregor was fond of appealing to the deathless love of the gambling chance that was part of Christian’s nature.

  Gregor pulled out a coin and threw it high into the air. At the top of its rise it hung for an instant, spinning so fast that it was reduced to a single twinkling eye of light.

  “Heads,” said Christian.

  The coin came down with a spat on the flat of the ground. Christian and Gregor leaned over it.

  “All right,” said Christian. “We start at moonrise.”

  “It’s better that way, isn’t it?” Gregor said.

  Christian shrugged his big shoulders as he said: “I don’t know. There’s something like frost working in my blood. But let’s forget it.”

  So they forgot about it. At least, Christian seemed to have abandoned all care about the future, for he stretched out and slumbered heavily during most of the day. Gregor observed him with a good deal of awe and envy. He could understand that sheer power of will had enabled Christian to abandon fear for the time being and discard all forethought. So Christian slept, and Gregor daydreamed of the future, until sunset.

  In that hour between day and dark Christian wakened and with Gregor ate a cold supper. He absolutely refused to light even the smallest of fires for fear that either the smoke or the red eye of the blaze should be seen.

  The sunset colors went out. The mountains stood like black islands, for a time, in a sea of fading green. Then the night shut closely in. The stars burned lower and lower until they reached their full brightness, and not long after, the moon rose.

  They had brought the horses up out of the mine, before this, and saddled them and rolled their blankets. Now they tethered the pair to a sapling and went down the hill to get the canvas sack of treasure whi
ch they had buried near the bank of the creek.

  The nerves of Christian were so finely strung, by this time, that he stopped short when a twig crackled a little distance up the slope.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Gregor.

  “Hush!” whispered Christian. “Something alive stepped on a twig, up there. A man?”

  “Men ain’t the only things that walk through the wood,” answered Gregor. “Don’t get nervous, Barry.”

  He wondered at himself, giving advice like that to a creature made of steel springs, like Christian.

  Still, for a long moment, Christian listened. He stood where a spot of moonlight struck him through the branches of a pine; now he shifted out of this light, making no noise as he stirred. At last he murmured:

  “All right. We’ll go ahead. But keep your ears open.”

  They went on down to the bank of the creek, where the moonlight broke through the shrubbery in the midst of which they had buried the first canvas sack. Christian had brought down from the mine the same broken-handled shovel with which he had dug the hole in the first place. The earth turned easily, but as the hole opened, and he drove the shovel blade strongly down, he uttered a faint exclamation of astonishment.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Gregor.

  In place of answering, Christian fell to work digging furiously. After a few moments he stopped. Gregor could hear him panting, but more than the sound of the heavy breathing was the sight of the long-barreled Colt that was leveled at him suddenly in the moonlight.

  “You know what’s the matter, you thieving dog!” said Christian. “You’ve stolen the sack away from this place!”

  XXIV. — MISSING LOOT

  Gregor stared at the hole in the ground and then at the gun, lifted his eyes last of all to the set, grim face of Barry Christian. He knew that there was as little mercy in the soul of that man as in a piece of hard-tempered steel.

  “Stolen?” gasped Gregor. “The sack stolen? Gimme the shovel!”

  He took the shovel and fell to work furiously, enlarging and deepening the excavation until the shovel began to bite into the clay hardpan. Then he stepped away from his work with a groan.

  “Not possible!” said Gregor.

  “Possible? Anything’s possible for a rat with a yellow, sneaking heart!” said Christian. “Now just double-quick to the place where you hid the stuff out for yourself.”

  The brain of Gregor spun.

  “But I didn’t touch it. I don’t know where it is,” he said.

  “You will know in a minute,” said Christian. “Do your thinking while I count to ten. You can stop me any time by telling me that you remember.”

  “Barry,” said the other, “are you clean out of your head, man? If I wanted to get everything for myself, I could have brained you today while you were asleep.”

  “You know I sleep light,” answered Christian.

  “Do you think I would have stood by here,” said Gregor, “knowing you were digging down to something that wouldn’t be there and that you’d accuse me of stealing? Barry, man, have sense. I could have filled you with lead while you were digging the hole just now.”

  Christian hesitated, as though he hated to believe what he heard or give up the grim purpose which had already hardened his mind.

  At last he said: “There’s something in what you say.”

  “Of course there is. There’s everything in it,” groaned Gregor, sighing with relief.

  “Then who could have taken it?” demanded Christian.

  “The devil, for all I know,” said Gregor. “It’s the craziest thing that I ever heard.”

  “The name of the devil is Jim Silver,” said Christian, “and he can hardly have been here. But the woods are full of soft-footed mountaineers, all eyes and ears. One of ‘em might have seen us bury the stuff. In that case, he’d just dig up the loot and cart it away. Of course, he wouldn’t inform the sheriff.”

  “But why should he fill in the hole again?” asked Gregor.

  “So that we wouldn’t start looking for his trail, if we happened down here soon to look at the spot where the stuff was hidden,” said Christian.

  “Aye, and that must be it,” admitted Gregor.

  “That’s it, and little good it does us!”

  They stared at one another. Slowly, with small, jerky, uneasy moves, Christian put away the gun. There had been murder in his mind, and it was hard for him to discard the temptation in a single gesture. If a killing were to be done, Gregor knew that Christian would go about it as calmly and as methodically as he had gone about the blowing of the safe in the bank.

  “We’ll go back to the shaft and get the second sack,” said Christian finally.

  Gregor nodded. He knew, as he turned up the hill, that he would not get half of what remained of their loot. The generosity of Barry Christian had appeared in the first division of the spoils; now that he had satisfied his superstition, it was unlikely that he would give his companion more than one part in five of what remained. And the great, bright dreams of Gregor grew suddenly dim, and the music of the violins sounded cold and far away.

  If he got as much as forty or fifty thousand dollars, he would not blow in a penny of it. He would simply buy an annuity. A man was a fool not to make sure of a steady income. What turned a crook into a drunken bum was going broke so often—having to endure frost without a penny in his pockets. Then there was the terror of old age when the prison shakes made it impossible for a man to pick a lock or a pocket. No, every sensible fellow should put aside a nest egg. That was what Duff Gregor would do with his split in this game.

  He thought of that as they went up the hill.

  Christian, half a step ahead, twice stopped the progress by holding out his hand while he listened.

  “What’s the matter?” whispered Gregor impatiently.

  “There’s something in the air,” muttered Christian.

  “Yeah? You’re getting instinctive again,” growled Gregor.

  They came up to the mouth of the mine, and there Christian waited for as much as five minutes, lying stretched out with his ear to the ground at the entrance to the shaft.

  “Listenin’ for ghosts?” demanded Gregor.

  Christian got to his knees and gave his companion a single silent glance. It was enough to make Gregor decide that he would certainly make no further insolent comments on the state of mind that was now troubling the great criminal. “All right,” said Christian calmly. “Give me the lantern. Light that lantern and give it to me.”

  They had found at the mine a rusted old lantern and a bit of oil in a five-gallon can. They had furbished up the lantern, and now Gregor lighted it and silently handed it to Christian.

  “Walk ahead of me,” said Barry Christian.

  “Hold on!” exclaimed Gregor. “You think that I’d try anything?”

  “I don’t know,” said Christian.

  He shifted the lantern into his left hand.

  “Walk ahead of me!” he repeated.

  “Barry, what do you mean to do to me, in there?”

  “Nothing,” said Christian, “because I hope that we’re going to find the second sack. I hope nothing is going to happen to you!”

  “You mean,” said Gregor, trembling, “that if we don’t find the sack, you’ll think I’ve swiped it?”

  “Somebody might have seen us bury the first sack down there by the creek,” said Christian, “but nobody could have seen us bury the sack in the mine. Go ahead. Get to the stone and lift it.”

  Gregor stared, trying to penetrate the mist of brightness that sprang up from the lantern. But all he could see of the face of Christian was as harshly forbidding as a carved stone.

  He remembered, then, how many murders had been laid at the door of Barry Christian. Murder of all kinds. He was one who could enjoy the sensations of a gentlemanly duel. Pace off a distance under the eyes of impartial witnesses, turn at a call, shoot. Christian had done that more than once, and always killed his man, though
not without collecting some lead in his own person. But he was also ready for other sorts of slaughter. Shooting through a window into a lighted room was something he was not a whit above. Nothing, in fact, that had a practical value to him, would be beneath his pride.

  That was the tiger who was to walk behind Gregor into the darkness of the mine. But there was nothing for Duff Gregor to do except shut his teeth so hard together that the shuddering of his jaws ceased. He stepped right into the mine, so briskly that Christian had to caution him to go more slowly.

  They came to the first turn on the left and went down the long, ancient shaft. The timbering bulged at the knees. It was green with mold below and cracked with weight above. Water seeped through, here and there. Before their approach, rats squeaked and fled.

  Gregor kept drawing in his breath. But there seemed to be no good air, there underground. He could not get enough oxygen. He was stifling.

  He found himself standing over the stone. Of course the sack would be under it. And yet—

  He laid hold of the edge of the rock, gripped it, and gave a hard pull, for the rock weighed close to two hundred pounds. Up came the stone slab and exposed beneath it a cavity quite large enough to have held the sack—but there was no sign of the treasure.

  Duff Gregor knew that death was only a fraction of a second away from him. He sagged forward in the middle of his body, because he expected the bullet to strike him in the middle of the spine.

  “Oh, Barry!” he breathed. “You took both sacks, and now you’re going to murder me to have me out of the way! Listen to me—”

  “‘You dog, if you could talk like an angel in heaven,” said Christian, “I wouldn’t listen to you. Gregor, you’re a dead man!”

  “I want you to listen to me,” said Gregor. “I don’t care about the money. You can have it. I never expected half of it, and you can have the whole lot, if you want it. I never laid claim to a half of it. You know that. You gave me a half, when I didn’t expect it. You know that, Barry. Man, what good’ll it do you to murder me? You’ve got all the money; why d’you want to kill me? I’ll never get on your trail, because I know that your kind of medicine is no good for me!”