The False Rider

by Max Brand

  Duff Gregor stared down at his split of the plunder and drew in a breath. Then, without a word, he put away his loot in his clothes.

  “But,” explained the outlaw, “I only want you if you feel that you’re my man.”

  “Why, Christian,” said Gregor, “how can I help being your man? We’re together if you say the word. I’m not such a fool as to turn you down. I know your record, man—part of it, anyway.” Then he added: “But what makes you want me in? You don’t know me.”

  “I can read a man pretty well when I have a chance to look at him down the sights of a gun,” answered Christian.

  He ran his long fingers through the flowing silk of his hair. As the cold of the evening began, he had wrapped a scarf around his throat, and he seemed, now, a very romantic figure, indeed. Gregor thought that he had never seen a more handsome or capable face.

  Christian went on: “There’s another reason. No man could look so much like Jim Silver without having a brain in his head.”

  “Has Silver a lot of brains?” asked Gregor.

  Christian looked sharply at him, as though suspecting that he was being drawn on.

  “Silver’s beaten me twice,” he said simply. “That’s enough brains for any man’s nut to hold.”

  “But what does he make out of beating you?” asked Gregor. “He travels around like a lone wolf that’s been thrown out of the pack. He eats like a beggar and dresses like a tramp; and he’s in as much danger, when he goes to a town, as anybody who’s outside the law. What does he get out of life?”

  “Well,” said Barry Christian, “no matter what the danger, he goes where he pleases. He follows his own wish around the world. He rides the finest horse in the West, and tucked away, here and there, are rich men and poor men he can bank on if he needs them—fellows who would die for him if he gave them a chance and a call.”

  “But he never gives ’em a chance,” said Gregor. “He plays his hand all alone. I’d call it a fool’s life.”

  “Because you and I,” said Christian, “don’t like what’s meat to him.”

  “He hasn’t even a woman he’s fond of,” said Gregor, “according to what people say.”

  “The girl he’s in love with,” answered Christian, “is a lady with very bright eyes, old son—eyes so bright that they dazzle most of us more than diamonds. Danger is her name, and she’s what Silver lives for.”

  Gregor was silent, brooding on the matter.

  “Silver’s done so much,” said Christian, “that his name is known all over the West. And in the East, too, I suppose. Not many people have seen him, because of the way he lives, but he’s a man whose name is strong enough to move mountains.”

  “How?” asked Gregor.

  Christian was silent, smoking, thinking. Then he asked: “Gregor, are you with me?”

  “Till the last card falls,” said Gregor.

  “We’ll shake on that.”

  Their hands closed together. The eyes of Gregor blinked under the stare of Christian, and he knew, as he confronted the man, that that handshake was a turning point in his life. He had lived very much as he pleased before this. Now he felt that he had hitched himself to a comet that might snatch him to death in an instant. But there was the sort of manhood in Gregor that responded to the challenge and thrilled with it.

  “Now listen to me,” said Christian. “You have the general build of Silver. You’re not quite so much in the shoulders and not quite so lean in the hips. You don’t look so much like a panther in good training. But there’s a big resemblance. Your face isn’t the same, aside from the scars, but the features are very much alike. Enough for me to make a mistake in the half light at the end of today, and that’s one face in the world that should be familiar to me. If you can pass me in a half light, you can pass nearly everybody else in the full light of day. And out of that resemblance, you ought to be able to move mountains.”

  “How?” asked Gregor.

  “We’ll need to touch you up a bit,” said Christian. “For one thing, a couple of gray spots have to appear in your hair above the temples. For another thing, we’ll need to make a few scars appear on your face. I can manage both things in a couple of hours so that it would take a microscope to tell that it’s a fake. You need one other thing—you need a horse like Parade.”

  “Then I’m beaten,” said Gregor. “I’ve seen that big chunk of lightning, and I know there’s no other like him.”

  “You’re wrong,” answered Christian. “I can put my hand on a thoroughbred chestnut stallion with the whole look of Parade about him. Not half an inch smaller, not fifty pounds lighter, and carries himself like a champion. He’s on a ranch, not far from here—not twenty miles from here, in fact.”

  “Four black stockings all around?” demanded Gregor.

  “Only one. But what are dyes for, Gregor? I tell you, I can get that horse for two or three thousand dollars, and with you on his back—after you and the horse have been touched up—you can ride into any town in the West and open it up like a nutshell. Along with you will be Barry Christian, looking like a tired old man, and between us we’ll take the golden lining out of any place we name. What’s the matter with Crow’s Nest, with one of the biggest banks in a thousand miles of us?”

  The light had dawned in the eyes of Gregor. Now he threw up his hands with a whoop.

  “By jove, you’re right, and the world’s our oyster!” he shouted.

  CHAPTER 5

  At Crow’s Nest

  Not many days after that, a thrill went through Crow’s Nest, from its smallest outlying shack to the new, big stone buildings of its main street, and then up the slopes on either side to the huge hotel on the one hand and to the hotel-casino-bathing establishment on the other, where the invalids from the North, South, and East came to be “cured.” There was not very much to be said in favor of that spring water, but it had a taste of sulphur and a few other minerals in it, and a few quack doctors and a great deal of faith now and again worked marvelous cures. Where the faith is strong, the flesh can never be very weak.

  The excitement that ran like a flame through Crow’s Nest and brought tradesmen away from their counters, and every boy and girl into the street, and men and women crowding into doors and windows, was all centered around two horsemen who came slowly up the main street.

  One of them was a fellow with long white hair and a face set off by beetling black brows and a short-cropped black mustache. A scar pulled one cheek and twisted his mouth a little toward a sneering smile, and yet it was a handsome face, after all, and the texture of the skin was surprisingly young for one wearing white hair. He was dressed in a battered old gray suit, and he rode a dusty mule, his body slumping forward in the saddle and his chin thrusting outward a little. When the mule trotted, his elbows flapped up and down, as a proof that he was not at all at home in the saddle.

  He was not the attraction, however. In fact, he won hardly a glance. What counted was the magnificent figure of the man on the prancing chestnut stallion, which sweated and danced all over the street and thereby enabled the rider to show off to better advantage the graces of his horsemanship.

  He was a big young man with a brown, handsome face that was streaked here and there with the silver of old scars. All around him poured the boys of the town. They swirled about him, shouting and leaping. Their more tardy companions, who had the news at a greater distance, were bringing dust clouds down the street as they rushed to join the procession. Some of the smaller boys reached for the stirrups of the rider. They seemed fearless even of the dancings of the horse.

  The older people in the community were hardly less enthusiastic. The men of the West seldom shed their dignity, but dignity was forgotten now. Here and there an enthusiast fired a gun into the air and gave a cowboy yell.

  An old man came hobbling on crutches to the gate of his front yard and waved his hat and shouted: “Jim Silver! Three cheers for Arizona Jim!”

  At this, the rider took off his hat and made a bow over
his saddle, and there was more cheering, and a woman’s shrill voice yipped:

  “It’s Silver! I seen the gray spots, just like little horns! But there’s no devil in Jim Silver!”

  The whole street was washed by a wave of greater tumult, every moment, but all of the excitement was not exactly happy.

  Out of the hotel doorway ran a tall man with a sweeping black mustache. He carried a half-rolled blanket which he threw over the withers of a horse, and, mounting, with the tails of his long coat flapping behind him, he galloped hastily up the street, away from the disturbance. His big-brimmed gray Stetson blew off, but he did not pause to pick it up. He made tracks as fast as his horse could carry him.

  There were others who took horses here and there and seemed to be answering an inaudible summons that took them toward the tall timber. Gamblers, confidence men, thugs of various sorts had heard the cheering for Jim Silver, and to every one of them it seemed that a gun had been pointed at his head. For no man could tell on what errands Silver rode, except to be sure that the end of his trail would be the punishment of crime of one sort or another. It was best to take no chances with him. Chances taken with Jim Silver were too apt to end in fatalities.

  The impersonation given by the rider of the brilliant chestnut stallion was not perfect, however. As he went on, the white-haired man found a chance to swing his mule close to the chestnut and say, under his breath:

  “Don’t stick out your chest like a fool! Remember Jim Silver’s the most modest man in the world, Gregor!”

  “All right, Barry,” said Gregor, and promptly brought the pace of his horse down a bit, and sat a shade less like a conqueror in the saddle.

  The pair of them drew up in front of the hotel, where the horse and mule were tethered.

  A man hurried up to them, saying: “Say, Jim Silver, you know that the big hotels are up on the hill. You go up there. This here ain’t the best that Crow’s Nest can offer you.”

  “Thanks, partner,” Gregor answered, “but you take a big hotel and it always means a big bill. I ain’t so flush with coin, d’you see? I guess this place is going to suit me pretty well.”

  The proprietor of the hotel had managed to get out to the sidewalk all in a sweat, by this time. He was a fat little man, now flushed with excitement, and he grabbed the arm of Gregor and escorted him proudly into the lobby.

  He called out, as he came in: “Hey, Mr. Watson, if you don’t mind moving, I’m going to give your corner room to Jim Silver and move you to the back. Mind?”

  “No, sir,” said Watson, standing up, tall and gangling, from his chair. He grew bright red with pleasure. “It ain’t much that a gent ever has a chance to do for Jim Silver, and if I had ten rooms, I reckon that he could have them all.”

  Gregor had turned with a grin toward Watson, when Christian kicked him sharply on the ankle, muttering:

  “Refuse, you fool!”

  “Thanks, Mr. Watson,” said Gregor; “I can’t take your room. About the best place for me is going to be a back room somewhere. I don’t much care where. Quiet—and not too many windows—is what I’d rather have.”

  “And that’s a pity,” said the proprietor. “Watson’s room has three windows and—”

  “You know, partner,” said Gregor, breaking in, “that three guns can look in through three windows, and a gent can only look out of one window at a time.”

  There was a big laugh at this. Gregor joined heartily in the mirth until Christian stepped on his toes. Then he bit his lip and subsided.

  They registered as James Silver and Thomas Bennett, then they were taken upstairs to pick out their room. A little back room with two cots in it was selected by Gregor after he had received a warning look from Christian. A moment later they were alone together, after the proprietor had assured them that there would be no charge to Jim Silver and company so long as they cared to stay, an offer which Gregor was again forced to refuse by a nudge from Christian.

  Now that they were alone, Christian locked the door and slumped into a chair. With a cold, bright eye he stared at his companion.

  “What’s the matter, Barry?” asked Gregor. “You look as though I’d missed in the spelling bee.”

  “No,” said Christian slowly. “No, you haven’t failed. It’s all right. Almost anything would be all right so long as you’re the fellow who’s doing it. You could marry any girl in the town if you cared to smile at her twice. You could have any man’s horse, dog, gun, or money for the asking. You could stay on forever in the best hotel and never have a bill sent in to you. You could sit in a corner the rest of your days and still be looked on as a public benefactor. And why? Because you’re made up to look like Jim Silver, and because Jim Silver has used his guns on the side of the law.”

  He left his chair and paced rapidly, softly, back and forth through the room. Plainly, he was smoking with subdued passion.

  “They’d die for him in a crowd,” said Barry Christian. “They love the ground he walks on. But maybe they’ll feel a little more sketchy about the wonders of Jim Silver before you and I are through with them. Maybe they’ll understand that a name can cover more than one face. Man, how I hate them all! Every time they yelled for Silver it was just like a knife stuck into me.”

  He leaned on the window sill and stared at the sweep of the great pine trees that climbed up the mountainside toward the glittering white of the health resort at the top of the slope.

  “I know,” said Gregor, nodding. “It makes a gent sick to see people go nutty about some bum. Barry, I’m the king of this here town for a while. How’d I take the job?”

  Christian turned back on him. He controlled himself for an instant before he spoke.

  “I’ve told you that you did well enough,” he said, “but you forget a great many of the things that I told you. Silver speaks grammatical English. You’re apt to talk like a cross between an ignorant cowhand and a schoolteacher. Silver has the manner of a fellow who’s almost afraid of a crowd; you act like an actor waiting for a curtain call. You keep your head in the air and look around with a silly grin. Silver looks at the floor and hardly smiles at all. When he looks a man in the eye, the man is apt to remember the hour and the day the rest of his life. Silver acts like a modest man.

  “You have to remember, all the time, that you’re not yourself. You have to try to force yourself into a new frame of mind. You have to try to enlarge your heart and soul, and make yourself think that you’re both brave and gentle. Silver is a man who wouldn’t take a penny from the Bank of England; he’d fight a lion with his bare hands; and he’d die for any cause that seemed the right thing to him. Brother, you and I are not men of that type, but you’ll have to try to expand to an extra size. Understand?”

  “I understand,” said the other gloomily.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Christian waved the fake Jim Silver aside and unlocked the door. The proprietor was standing there holding a note, wanting to know if everything was all right.

  “There’s a gent downstairs that wrote this out. Wants to see Jim Silver,” he said.

  “Silver’s all knocked out,” said Christian loudly, after he had read the note. “Jim is lying down, resting. It’s the first sleep he’s had in a long while, and he needs it. Tell Taxi that he wants to see him, that he’s wild to see him—tell him that from me, but say that I won’t let anybody near Jim Silver till he’s had at least a couple of hours’ rest.”

  “I’ll tell him. I’ll satisfy him. Is he a friend of Jim Silver?”

  “He is. He’s an old friend, I guess,” said Christian.

  “Then he can have the whole house if he wants it,” said the proprietor, and departed.

  Christian turned from the newly locked door with a groan.

  “Trouble right at the start,” said Christian. “Everything’s ruined, I guess.”

  “Why? Who’s this Taxi, anyway? Is he someone who knows Silver?”

  “Knows him? Taxi knows him like a brother. Taxi is the cro
ok who came out of the East with the soul of a wild Indian, the manners and the kindness of a wildcat, and a crooked reputation as long as your arm. Silver reformed him. Silver took him out of my hands, and then when I had Silver tied and as good as dead, Taxi cut him loose from me. I won’t go into that yarn. I’ll simply tell you that we’ve got our backs against the wall, flat! Taxi is only a split second slower than Silver on the draw and a shade quieter in the brain, but he’s fast enough both ways to keep us both on the run. Gregor, you have a brain and a good pair of hands. So have I. Let’s get ready to use everything we own!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Taxi Calls

  Christian got to the window in a stride and pulled down the shade. He picked up the hat he had thrown down and drew it well over his eyes, saying, in the meantime: “Kick off your boots, throw off your coat, pull off your trousers, pile into that bed.”

  Gregor obeyed with speed, merely asking:

  “What’s the main line of Taxi?”

  “He can fade through any lock that was ever made,” answered Barry Christian. “He can read the mind of nearly any safe, but if he can’t read its mind, he can crack it just as easily as he can crack his fingers.”

  He caught up a pillow and wedged it in close beside the head of Gregor to cast a darker shadow over his face.

  “Tell Taxi,” said Christian, “that you’re in a big job. You want him, but not right away. Tell him to get out of town and wait till you send for him.”

  “Will he do that?”

  “He’ll do anything except jump off a cliff for you, so long as he thinks you’re Jim Silver.”

  Christian added: “Don’t look him in the eyes. He can see in the dark, like a cat. Keep looking down. Play you’re dead tired. He can tell you by a touch. He’s got eyes in his fingers. No, we can’t risk him even shaking hands with you. Here—here are your gloves. Pull them on and——”