by Max Brand
They couldn’t hear her. The men in front were pausing for the instant. Those behind were driving forward, yelling like thunder. Words would mean nothing to them. Ruth pressed her mustang beside the towering stallion. She threw her arm around Jim Silver and still, with her quirt, slashed at the men who were too close.
The sheriff climbed into the saddle behind Silver. He snapped a pair of handcuffs over the wrists of an unresisting prisoner. Then he forced the hands into the air so that the steel could be seen holding the hands of Jim Silver.
That might make some difference to the crowd.
But they forged ahead; no one understood. It seemed to that crowd that a woman had come to her lover in his time of danger, and the edge of their murder lust was turned and blunted. Besides, there was the man of the law, and his steel cuffs were on the robber, as they thought. They fell back from the angry leaping of the quirt. They opened a channel through which the sheriff and the girl and Jim Silver passed.
They pressed across the street, turned a corner where only a scattering of excited men stood in the way, and then stopped in front of a low, squat building—the jail. The door of it opened. They sprang down from their horses. And that was how Jim Silver managed to reach shelter from the mob.
The girl saw the big, swinging shoulders pass through the doorway into interior darkness. She saw the door close again; then she turned the mustang and rode hard to get the doctor.
CHAPTER 18
A Gathering Storm
Henry Wilbur was still stretched on the library carpet when Ruth got the doctor to the house. They had wound a cold towel around his head, put a pillow under his shoulders, and another under his feet. His eyes and his mouth were slightly open. He looked like a dead man, but now and then he could be heard to draw a breath. The breathing had a bubbling sound and seemed, every minute, about to stop.
With the doctor there, they got Wilbur into bed. He lay in a semi-coma. The doctor said that he might lie that way for twenty-four hours and after that—well, no one could tell. The heart was weak—very weak—but it was not a stroke of paralysis. Overload this human soul and the fine steel of it may snap; that was all the doctor could say.
The girl sat for hours and hours at the side of her father. Now and then he would say: “Sell everything.” Then she would press his hand and answer: “Everything’s all right.” She tried to think of something else to say, but that phrase was all that she could use, and every time he heard it, the gathering cloud would pass out of the forehead of the sick man. His breathing became steadier. Late in the afternoon his eyes suddenly opened wide, and he knew what was happening around him.
“Has everything been sold?” he asked.
“Everything is going to be sold,” she told him.
He considered the ceiling, and remarked: “I seem to have crashed.”
“No one could help crashing,” she assured him. “Nobody could blame you for crashing. Don’t you understand that?”
“All right,” he said, “but listen to me. You’re my witness. If I pass out—which I’m not going to do—but if I pass out, I want everything sold to help pay back the investors. Listen to me—if everything is sold, I can pay them eighty-five cents on the dollar. Don’t let your mother talk you out of the truth. Eighty-five cents on the dollar. I made that money and I also made a good name. A good name is a lot better than money. I want to spend the money to save the name. I’m selfish. You and your mother may starve—but your name will be clean. I don’t have to tell you this because you already know it! This is my last will and testament. Now, try to get the lawyer, and I’ll get that will into writing.”
She got the lawyer. Then she went in and sat beside her mother for a time. The little gray-haired woman lay in a darkened room, moaning softly, and weeping continually.
“It’s ruin!” she kept saying, over and over. “It’s ruin, ruin, ruin! He’s going to turn us out into the street. I’ll fight. It’s not legal. He’s not in his right mind! Oh, Ruth, my poor darling!”
The girl went back into the library, and sat there alone, trying to think.
Craig came hobbling in, bringing a letter.
He said, as he gave it to her: “I lost my head when your father fainted. I said some things to you. I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be sorry,” said the girl. “I like you better, because you said those things.”
Craig shook his head. He hesitated, trying to get out the words that stuck in his throat.
“You’re the only one that matters to him,” he said sharply, and turned about and went hastily out of the room.
It was a very strange thing, she thought, that she should be able to pity Craig, that she should be able to spare that much thought to anyone other than her father, and to the real Jim Silver, who was safely lodged in the jail.
She opened the letter, and it was from Silver. It ran:
Dear Miss Wilbur:
No one can tell how things will turn out. In any case, I want you to have a few words from me before the finish, whatever it may be. I want to tell you, above all, that you did what nobody else in the world could have done.
The sheriff tells me that you were on your way to get the doctor for your father, who was close to death. But that hardly makes what you did for me any more wonderful.
I’ve never known a man who was the pure steel all the way to the heart, but I can say, now, that I’ve known one such woman.
They were going to kill me with their bare hands. They were going to smash me up. It would have started in a few seconds. Nothing but a woman could have stopped them. And no woman but you would even have tried.
I have to keep remembering that I’m a stranger to you. It was perfect before, but that makes it more perfect.
Yours,
Jim Silver
She began to smile at the letter, the swiftly running, small writing. One thing in the letter was untrue entirely. They were not strangers.
She went out and found Craig.
“I want to talk to you about Jim Silver,” she said. “Why is he still in the jail?”
“Because he can’t get out,” said Craig.
“Can’t get out? Why not?”
Craig began to breathe hard.
“You want him free?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” said the girl.
“The scoundrel that ruined your father?” shouted Craig. “You want him free?”
“Hush,” said the girl. “Father will hear you.”
“I hope he does!” said Craig. “I hope he finds out, before he dies, that his girl loves a bank robber more than she loves her father! I hope that he finds out the truth about you!”
“Do you really think the man in jail is the robber?” she asked.
“Are there two Jim Silvers in this world? Are you completely out of your head, Ruth?”
“Do you know,” said the girl, “that the man the mob was trying to kill was not the man who was working for my father?”
“What?” said Craig.
“I’ve seen him. I know.”
“I heard some sort of nonsense to that effect,” said Craig. “The whole town knows that there’s a plot on foot to bamboozle the authorities and get the robber out of the hands of justice. But that plot is going to be baffled, even if some wise young women like Ruth Wilbur have been convinced. The townspeople have not been convinced, and the sheriff has not been convinced, either. You can be sure of that because I’ve seen and talked with him.”
“You mean that Dick Williams really thinks that he has the right man there in jail?” she demanded.
“Ruth, Ruth,” said the cripple, easily exasperated, “anyone but a woman, and a silly woman at that, would realize that of course we have the right man down there in the jail. And the sheriff will keep him there. At least Williams will manage to keep him there until the mob tears down the building and takes the rascal away.”
“Do you think that the mob will attack the jail?” she asked.
“Will they?
I don’t know. They ought to, certainly. They’ve heard something about this same nonsense that has reached your ears, and they are not going to be put off by a ridiculous story of double identity. The people in this town are pretty much worked up, young lady. They know, now, that your father intends to give up his fortune to pay most of the losses of the robbery. They know, besides, that your father is at the point of death, and that’s why they want Jim Silver—not for robbery only, but for murder. And they’re right.”
He was just finishing this tirade when word was brought to the girl that a man wanted to see her.
“Go back to your father,” said the bitter cripple. “I’ll go and see the man, whoever he is. It’s probably another one of the rascals who’ve been talking nonsense to you.”
He went hobbling away to the front door where, outside the screen, he saw a dapper youth in his early twenties, wearing a very neat blue suit with a white flower in his buttonhole. He had on a pair of good chamois gloves that folded down over the backs of his hands, and he was resting one of these hands on a very slender and supple walking stick. He seemed to have walked over the street on winged feet, for there was not a sign of dust on his well-polished shoes. His gray felt hat was tucked jauntily under his arm; and what offended the savage little cripple more than all else was the flawless part and the glossy sleekness of the black hair of this man, who said:
“I believe this is the house of Henry Wilbur, the banker?”
“Do you?” said Craig, openly snarling.
“In that case,” said the stranger, “will you be good enough to ask Miss Wilbur if I may have the pleasure of speaking with her for a few minutes?”
“I will not be good enough, and you won’t have the pleasure,” answered Craig.
The man on the porch suddenly lifted the thick black veil of his lashes and gave Craig a glimpse of eyes strangely pale and bright. If this fellow was a dandy, he was something more, in addition. Craig was sure of it after one flash of those eyes. Suddenly he hesitated.
“Her pa’s sick,” said Craig. “Her pa’s very sick, and she’s gotta take care of him.”
“I know her father is ill,” said the stranger. “That’s why I only ask a few seconds of her time, if you think that she can see me.”
Craig hesitated, growling. Then he said that he would see, and went off to Ruth Wilbur.
“There’s a smart young fashion plate at the front door,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to go and smile at him, eh? I guess he’d be ready to smile back!”
Ruth went to the door and found the dapper young man still waiting. His hat he tucked under his arm again, and he bowed at the sight of her. She pushed open the screen door and told him to come in. He passed by her with an alert step so soundless that it startled her. He was not wearing rubber heels, either, for no dusty mark was left on the surface of the floor paint. He stood in the hall, bowing to her again. He had the supple grace of a fencer.
“Miss Wilbur,” he said, “I’ve come to tell you that I’m a friend of the real Jim Silver, and I’ve learned what you did for him today. When I say that I’m a friend of Silver’s, I mean that I’m a man whose life he has saved as surely as you saved his today. He’s not out of trouble yet, but if he has a ghost of a chance, it’s because you fought for him.
“I’ve come here to thank you. I’m not the only one. When the people know the whole truth, there are plenty of other friends of Silver scattered all through the mountains, and they’ll all be ready to die for you. I’ve come to tell you, as the first of the lot, that if there’s ever a thing that you need or if you’re ever in trouble, I’ll hear you whistle from the ends of the earth and come to help. My real name doesn’t matter. People usually call me Taxi.”
She thought it was a strange and simple speech, and it was given point by his name. She knew about Taxi, too. It surprised her to see that he was so young, because his was one of the great names in the legend of Jim Silver. And though Silver himself was not more than between twenty-eight and thirty-five, she never thought of him except as a hero gray with time. Taxi was the man, it was said, in whom Silver had more implicit faith than in any other person in the world.
She broke out: “I’ve heard that there’s danger to him, now, from the town mob! What’s to be done about it, Taxi? I don’t need thanks for what I’ve done. The whole world owes something to the real Jim Silver. But tell me if it’s possible that the crowd may smash the jail?”
Taxi looked no higher than her hands. It was his habit, when he was talking with a person, unless that person was Jim Silver. He said:
“They’ve built a battering-ram that ought to be strong enough to beat in the doors of the jail. The town’s full. People have come in from the whole countryside. The Easterners who have been taking the cure up in the hotel at the springs have rented window space overlooking the jail. Everybody seems to know for sure that there’ll be a lynching party tonight.”
“We’ve got to mix with the crowd and explain that it is not the robber that’s now in the jail,” said the girl. “We’ve got to explain to the sheriff, first of all.”
“I’ve mixed with the crowd already,” said Taxi, “and tried to make some suggestions like that, and I had to dodge a few punches and get away from a gun play. The people in this town are pretty much worked up, and they’re not soothed by knowing that your father is a very sick man. They attribute that to Jim Silver, too, and they feel that they’re in honor bound to make an end of the man in jail. Nothing can influence ’em. They’re only waiting for night.”
“Can we do nothing?” cried the girl.
“I’m going to try,” said Taxi, “but my hand has to be played alone.”
CHAPTER 19
Taxi’s Lone Hand
Taxi walked up to the top of a hill that overlooked the town of Crow’s Nest. He sat down on a rock and took out of his clothes the various parts of a little spyglass and screwed them together. It was small, like most of the tools that Taxi employed, but it had as fine a lens as money could buy.
First, he scanned the town with his naked eye, and glanced out of the wooded hollow that contained Crow’s Nest to the profound depths of the valley beyond, now misting over with the shadows of the evening, like a slowly rising tide of thin water.
The glass changed all of this. He could penetrate the mists of the valley and see the sheen of the river that ran through the bottom lands, a bright, golden sheen as the sun walked farther down the bow of heaven toward the west. In the town itself he could pick out figures walking the streets, and presently he caught the jail itself in clear focus.
It was set in the midst of an open stretch. No other building was within half a block of it, and that was why he was able to see the cordon which had been drawn around the prison by the townsmen. There seemed to be three or four hundred already on the job. Traffic had been blocked. It was like an established battle line.
When he was sure of the setting, he examined the building itself. When the rest of the ground had been cleared, the builders had remembered the fierce heat of the summer, and they had allowed several big trees to stand close to the jail. The shadows of these, from the west, poured across the roof of the building, and it was only after much searching that he was able to detect the presence of the skylight. It was small, and it was hardly raised at all above the surface of the roof.
When Taxi was sure of that, he spent a few more minutes studying the windows of the jail as they appeared from this side, and the big door. Then he unscrewed the assembled spyglass and put it away in his clothes. The lens fitted into a velvet-lined, small pocket on the inside of his belt. He stood up, dusted his clothes with care, and then walked slowly down to the town.
He went into a restaurant, got a corner table, and ate a light meal. By the time he had finished, it was almost completely dark. He saw the big Negro dishwasher throw off his wet apron, grab a hat, and hurry out of the place. The cook followed. There was only the waiter remaining, and he seemed discontented to be left behind.
The next problem was to pass the cordon that was stretched around the jail. No one was allowed to go through, and a number of lanterns had been supplied, and, carrying them, men were constantly walking up and down the line. That was what gave Taxi his idea.
He found the source of the lantern supply at one corner of the cordon, where they were being filled and passed out. He saw a big fellow with a face made grim by a saber-shaped mustache, who seemed to be in charge of the lanterns. But without asking permission, Taxi filled one from the five-gallon kerosene can, trimmed the wick, and lighted it. Then he went off down the back of the crowded line of the cordon.
No one paid any attention to him until he turned through the line and walked straight across the open ground toward the jail. Instantly voices hailed him, then.
“Who’s that? Who’s going there?”
Taxi turned around without haste.
“D’you think I’m going for fun?” he asked.
At that remark someone laughed out loud.
“You fool,” said another, “d’you think he’d be carrying a light to show himself if he was sneaking for the jail on any business except ours?”
That was apparently in answer to some suspicious suggestion. Taxi walked straight on, slowly, and more slowly, taking his leaping nerves in hand and forcing them to be quiet.
When he was very close to the jail, he simply turned down the wick, and with one jouncing movement of the lantern caused the flame to sicken and die.
The darkness that followed would hide him from the observation of the men of the cordon.
He turned down the side of the building until he came to the big trees at the western end of it. A spruce was the one he wanted, a grand fellow with wide, shaggy arms. He went up the trunk of that tree like a monkey. A wind was rising. The noise of it in the tree he climbed was like the rushing sound of the sea on a beach, and its noise in the neighboring trees was like the noise of distant beaches.