Silvertip's Strike

by Brand, Max

  “I see,” said Silver. “They were named after one of your tribe?”

  “Great-grandfather. Ever since his day there’s always been a Farrel on this ground.”

  He hooked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “It isn’t the house that matters. I don’t give a hang about that. It’s the ground that counts. I’ve gone away and worked on other places — places on the ledge of the desert, like this, with mountains close by that were a lot bigger and finer than those three outfits — but I never found a place that fitted into my head the way this one does. Every time I lay an eye on those mountains, it’s as though I’d daubed a rope on a maverick and added it to my herd. I tell you what, Silver — it may seem a funny thing to you, but it’s true — it seems to me that I know every wave of the ground off there to the south from the ranch house. I know just where the waves of the land are running, every one of ’em.”

  “How did the Farrels lose the place?” asked Silver.

  “My old man gambled it away to Wycombe’s old man, that’s the whole story.”

  “You hate to leave it?”

  “The way you’d hate to stop breathing.”

  “Well,” said Silver, “it looks as though you’d have to go.”

  “Does it?”

  “On account of the girl.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I’ve been talking to Wycombe, and he wants her. If he thinks you’re in his way, with her, he’ll cut your throat. He’ll fire you off the ranch, at least.”

  “What makes you think that there’s anything between the girl and me?” asked Dan Farrel.

  “I saw her turning white and pink, to-day in the kitchen. Farrel, you’ll have to move.”

  Farrel took off his hat, mopped his forehead, and then stood with the hat crushed in his two hands. Slowly his glance went across the mountains from the east to the west, until he was facing the last fire of the sunset. He said nothing but, after a moment, he walked away and left Silvertip in profoundly gloomy thought. Tragedy was not ten steps away from the Wycombe ranch, he felt, and it was probably even nearer than those expert gunmen, Morrie Delgas and Harry Rutherford; in fact, it probably was stepping in the boots of Dan Farrel.

  Nothing like this had ever come into the ken of Jim Silver.

  Through the open kitchen window, he saw the girl moving back and forth rapidly, with the haste of a cook who is making the last preparations for the service of a meal. He went to the window and leaned an elbow on the sill. The girl was pouring the water off a pot of boiled potatoes; a cloud of steam rushed up from the sink about her shoulders and head. Then she spilled the potatoes into a great dish.

  “Suppose,” said Silver, without an introductory word, “that a fellow had a good pair of hands, plenty of work anywhere he wanted to find it, and a girl willing to travel anywhere in the world with him; couldn’t he be happy off the home ground?”

  She had turned half toward him, though without looking into his face. It was as if his words had arrested her whole mind so that a greater and a greater tension was put on her. He saw it in the stiffening of her body, in the way her head lifted. Afterward, she came to the window to confront him closely.

  “How much has Danny told you?” she asked.

  “Not as much as I told him,” answered Jim Silver. “Do you know how close you are to trouble?”

  “From Steve Wycombe?” she asked.

  “He’s going to ask you to marry him. How long can you put him off? He’s used to having his own way.”

  She took a deep, quick breath. The shake of her head was a shudder through her entire body.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I can’t get Danny to leave the place.”

  “You’ll have to,” responded Silver. “You’ll have to persuade him fast, too. Wycombe wants you. He wants you as much as he can want anything. If you put him off, he’ll be suspicious. If he grows suspicious, he can’t help finding out that there’s something between you and Farrel. And if he guesses that — ” He paused.

  “I know,” said the girl. “He’d murder Dan in a moment, I suppose. I’m going to leave! I’ll leave tonight. I’ll leave now!”

  “You’d better,” said Silver. He pitied her, suddenly, more than he had ever pitied any other human being. The trouble which faced her seemed so totally unfair. “There’s only one other thing to do — and that’s to persuade Danny to live in another place.”

  “It’s no good. He has desert fever, and the only desert he can live in is this one. He’s tried to go away before this. But he came back looking like a ghost. It’s the sort of homesickness that doesn’t fade out.”

  “Have you got a horse of your own?” Silver asked her.

  “I have.”

  “Have you money?”

  “No. Only a little.”

  “I can help you out with some cash.”

  “If I have to step out of his life — out of Danny’s life — forever — ” she murmured.

  Then she straightened herself and smiled wanly at Silver.

  “I can’t even say good-by to him, I suppose,” she said.

  “No, I suppose not,” said Silver.

  He reached for his wallet and opened it.

  “Take this,” said he, and offered a sheaf of bills. But she only shook her head.

  “I can’t do it,” she told him. “I can manage with what I have.”

  Silver put the money back into the wallet, stared at her, and then walked away into the dusk. His thoughts were so baffled, so gloomy, that he kicked aimlessly at the ground over which he walked. He had been in tangles before, but none so thoroughly complicated as this one. The chief anger he felt was directed toward Farrel. The fellow looked as hard as nails, but his weakness was what is the strength of other men — an overmastering love for one place.

  Into the darkening north Silver looked, toward the mountains. They were new enough to him, and yet already they began to stand in his mind like old, familiar faces. He remembered how Farrel had pointed to them; he remembered the reverence and affection with which the voice of Farrel had uttered the names. After all, a man cannot be blamed for passions which are bigger than himself.

  He went to the pump and sloshed a tin pan full of cold water. There was soap, yellow and strong, to wash with, and a big, coarse scrubbing brush. He worked on his finger tips until he had got the leather grease out from under the nails. The rest of his washing took very little time. He managed to find a clean spot on one of the big roller towels and dried himself.

  The cow-punchers were all around him, sputtering in the water, swearing as the soap got into recent cuts. One of them was red-headed, the clown of the lot. He squared off in front of Silver, swaying thick shoulders.

  “He ain’t so big,” said “Red.”

  “I’ll take you on for a couple of rounds, big boy.”

  He began to dance on the tips of his toes, easing his hands back and forth in readiness to strike or to parry. Silver finished drying his own hands and smiled.

  “Come on!” said Red, as the others began to crow and whoop. “Come on!” said Red. “Nobody gets by on reputation in this man’s ranch. Let’s see what you’ve got, Jim Silver!”

  He was dancing, still swaying himself from side to side a little, when Silver made a flashing gesture with both arms and caught the two hands of Red. He kept on smiling as he crushed those hands until he could feel the supple bones springing and giving.

  “In my part of the world, we shake before we fight,” said Silver.

  He released the hands and stepped back. Red began to open and close his fingers, laughing.

  “In my part of the world, when a gent shakes hands like that, we don’t fight him,” said Red.

  The other punchers were laughing, too. The supper gong rang. Silver went in with the rest, and by the brightness of their eyes he knew that he would have no more signs of trouble from them. They had accepted him as something more than a large bubble of reputation.

  CHAPTER V

/>   GUNS IN THE DARK

  As the punchers entered, their employer was revealed walking up and down at the head of the dining room. He had dressed for dinner by buttoning his vest, sleeking the blond forelock with water, and slipping a pair of brilliant elastic garters over his sleeves to leave his wrists supple and free. As the spurs jingled and the heels thundered on the wooden floor, Mr. Wycombe made a movement of his hand that stopped every one. Then he said:

  “You waddies have gotta know that there are two thugs steering for this ranch, right now, and aiming to collect my scalp when they arrive. If they look in through the window and start blazing away while we’re having supper, they might smash up a lot of crockery. So one of you stand guard outside. Red, you take a turn. Ten or fifteen minutes and you can come back inside and somebody else will take the beat. The hombres I talk about are Morrie Delgas and that skinny little streak of murder, Harry Rutherford. If they start raising the devil, maybe my friend, Jim Silver, will help my song and dance. That’s all, boys. Set down and feed your faces.”

  Red took a handful of biscuits, wedged some butter into them, and left the room to stand guard. The other punchers sat down. The chairs rumbled like thunder. Dishes and cutlery began to clatter. Some one asked Wycombe what Delgas and Rutherford had against him.

  “Just old chums gone wrong,” said Wycombe.

  There were heaps of food — venison steaks, two great bowls of baked beans with a rich scum browned over the tops of them, heaps of biscuits with snowy flanks and crusty tops, mountains of potatoes, huge dishes of gravy. Forks and spoons dug into these treasures. Presently heads were seriously bent; the girl came in and filled the ponderous drinking cups from a pail of coffee. She wore a faint, fixed smile. She reminded Silver of a prize fighter sick with punishment but smiling to show that everything is all right.

  When she came by Wycombe, he lifted his head and smiled like a calf at her. Then he resumed his former position, his brow reclining in the palm of his left hand while with the right he casually and in the most disinterested fashion scooped food toward his face. A profound loathing began to work at the very roots of the soul of Jim Silver.

  The better the food, the swifter the eating on a Western ranch. Those punchers walked through the provisions on the table and then rolled cigarettes and sipped a second beaker of coffee. They said things to Esther as she went the round, pouring it out. “Regular good stuff,” said one, and another: “Where you cook, this cowboy camps.” Some of them said: “How’s things?” Every one muttered something; up to that time no one had seemed aware of her existence, except Wycombe.

  The second round of coffee was finished. Whirls, clouds, long streaks of cigarette smoke hung in the air as the punchers rose, one after another, and went out. Their footfalls boomed through the room, then grew dim and muffled in the dust outside. The smoke seemed to be collecting around the two lamps that stood on the table. There remained at the table only the foreman, Silver, and Wycombe, as the girl came in to clear the dishes away. When she went past Wycombe, he put out his arm and gathered her suddenly into the hollow of it.

  “How’s things?” asked Wycombe, smiling up at her.

  She only smiled down at him vaguely. Danny Farrel grew rigid in his chair.

  “I’ve got to finish my work,” said Esther Maxwell. “Please, Steve.”

  “Maybe you’re going to stop working, pretty soon,” said Wycombe. “Maybe there’s going to be a Chinaman or something for you to boss. Maybe — ”

  “Esther!” barked Farrel.

  Wycombe released her suddenly. She stepped back.

  “Eight o’clock and all’s well,” drawled the puncher who walked on guard outside the windows.

  Farrel and Wycombe were staring at one another, Farrel still rigid, and Wycombe leaning loosely forward. In the middle of a smile, his upper lip had caught again over his projecting teeth and stayed there in a snarl. The girl hurried out of the room with a pile of empty dishes. Silver folded his arms, because in that position his hands were close to his guns. It seemed strange to him that the girl should have left the room, unaware that there was murder in the air. He himself could hear the bumping of blood against his temples as his heart beat faster and stronger.

  “You’ve got the say with her, have you?” said Wycombe.

  Farrel was as straight as a stick and pale as a stone; he had his two hands on the edge of the table. The hands of Wycombe were out of sight.

  “I hate to see a girl mauled around,” said Farrel.

  “You hate to see it, do you?” answered Wycombe.

  He worked his lips until they closed; he moistened them with the swift red tip of his tongue.

  Farrel pushed back his chair.

  “I’ll be going on,” he murmured slowly.

  He stood up.

  “Wait a minute,” commanded Wycombe. “I’m going to find out something.”

  Farrel halted, halfway to the door.

  Wycombe had pushed back his chair and sat forward on the edge of it with his hands still out of sight.

  “I wanta know,” said Steve Wycombe, “what that girl is to you, Farrel.”

  “Never mind. Nothing!” said Farrel.

  “I’m not to never mind, eh?” said Wycombe. He laughed suddenly, turning all white around the mouth and with a devil in his eyes. “Why, Farrel, who are you?”

  Farrel said nothing.

  Wycombe gasped: “You’re going to tell me what to do and how to act in my own house, are you? You’re going to tell me how to treat a girl, are you? You dirty rat, what’s the girl to you?”

  “I’m going to marry her, that’s all,” said Farrel.

  The door opened. The girl came back, not in time to hear anything, but in time to see the attitudes of the two men. She cried out in fear.

  “Listen to me — you, Esther,” said Wycombe. “Have you been fooling me? Have you been making a fool of me? This bum of a secondhand foreman says that he’s going to marry you. Is that straight?”

  “Oh, Danny!” mourned the girl.

  The way she put out her hands toward Farrel told Steve Wycombe enough.

  “You sneaking thief!” he yelled, and came out of his chair with a gun in each hand. “I’m going to — ”

  “Back up!” called Silver, and shot the left-hand gun out of the grasp of Wycombe.

  “You? You, too?” screamed Wycombe. I’ll get you both. I’ll — I’ll — ”

  He dived under the table and heaved up the side of it with a lift of his shoulders. The whole mass of crockery went to the floor. The lamps were dashed out. Darkness blotted the room, and the scream of the girl made a red zigzag like lightning across the brain of Silver.

  It was not complete darkness. The flame of one lamp had ignited the oil that spread out from it in a thin layer on the floor. A blue welter of fire began to play, keeping the room awash with uncertain ebbing and flowing of shadows. Outside, the guard was shouting; the girl had not stopped screaming.

  Silver, flat on his stomach in a corner of the room, extended two guns before him and waited. A gun spat fire twice from close to the opposite wall. The voice of Farrel, near the windows, cursed briefly.

  “I’ve got one of you!” screamed Wycombe.

  There was the loose impact of a falling body against the floor. The guard was shouting, near the door:

  “What the devil’s up? What’s happening?”

  He was afraid to come in, of course.

  The gun of Wycombe flashed again, and Silver shot at the glint of the face that he saw behind the little red tongue of fire. He almost felt the impact of his bullet tearing through flesh and bone.

  A voice said, “Ah!”

  That was Wycombe. There was no vocal strength to the sound; he simply breathed the word out. “Light!” said Wycombe. And now his voice had a great weakness of shuddering in it. “Light! I’m dying! I’m sick — ”

  The screaming of the girl was ended. That was one good thing. Farrel said nothing. Perhaps he was dead.

&nbs
p; Silver went across the room to where Wycombe lay. The burning oil gave only the dimmest sort of a light, but it was enough for him to see that Farrel had been kneeling against the wall between the two windows; the body of the girl lay flat near the kitchen door; and Wycombe had slipped down with his head pressing at a breaking angle against the wall.

  “Get a lantern, Farrel,” said Silver.

  “Esther’s dead!” shouted Farrel. “Help! He’s murdered her.”

  Other voices, many footfalls were heard outside the door. Someone carried a lantern, its light swinging wildly across the windows and intercrossing swift shuttles of brightness over the ceiling.

  The lantern was brought into the room, and showed Farrel holding the limp body of the girl in his arms. Her head hung down; her arms and legs trailed toward the floor. The wave of cow-punchers advanced in a solid mass.

  “Wycombe, did you shoot at the girl?” murmured Silver.

  “No!” said Wycombe. “I wish I had. I’m dying. You got me, you sneak, you traitor! I wish I’d killed you all!”

  The lantern light came close and flooded over him. His whole breast was flowing with blood, it seemed. The blood ran down to the floor and gathered in two pools. The body of Wycombe was still. His arms lay limply at his sides, with the hands turned palm up. But his face was working violently, the lips covering and uncovering the gleam of the teeth.

  “Take Silver!” he said. “Red, Joe, Lefty, Mack, take Silver. He murdered me. He killed me right here. The skunk — he killed me! Shoot him to pieces!”

  They looked at one another; they looked at Silver; they looked vaguely back at their employer.

  One of the lot helped Farrel with the girl. She had only fainted, it appeared, and now she began to moan. They carried her out of the shambles.

  Silver said: “Wycombe found out that Farrel is going to marry Esther. He went crazy and pulled his guns on Farrel. I knocked one gun out of his grip. He threw the table over and tried to shoot up the lot of us. That was why I plugged him. A dirty business, but it had to be done.”