The False Rider

by Max Brand

  When he gained the top of the tree, he was well above the level of the roof of the jail. He could mark the dim outline of the skylight that projected a little above the roof line. It had seemed close to the trees, when he was looking down from the top of the hill. Now it seemed far away.

  He took the rope, built a small noose in it, and suddenly wished for the skill that was possessed by ten thousand cowpunchers on the range. But that skill was not his, and he knew from experience of old what he would have to use as a substitute—patience.

  That was what sustained him as, time and again, he made the cast from the treetop, and once in five times the noose would fall true over the little skylight, but every time, no matter how carefully he drew the rope taut, the noose slipped over the projection of the skylight, and his bag was emptiness.

  Then a certain change in the voice of the crowd made his heart leap. There was not much that his eye could see, except a greater collection of people at one point in the cordon, and an assembling of lanterns, there. Those lanterns did not flash on the pallor of shining faces; he saw that the crowd, at least in this section, had been masked. That meant that the ringleaders had appeared on the scene, that the striking force had been assembled, and that the assault on the jail would presently follow.

  Taxi climbed down the tree, found half a dozen small stones, and tied them to one side of the noose of the rope. Then he returned to the top of the tree, and made the cast. The stones fell with a distinctly audible thud on the roof near the skylight. How the noose had flopped he could not be sure, but he hoped that it had fallen down the slope of the roof, over the skylight and that the weight of the little stones would hold the rope flat until the drawn noose caught on something.

  Gingerly he drew in on the rope, little by little, like a fisherman most delicately playing a small fish. Then from beneath him and around the corner of the jail, he heard the pounding of a hand against the door.

  “Hey, Sheriff Williams! Hey, Dick!” called a voice. “I wanta talk to you!”

  Then a voice, half hollow from confinement inside the building and half freely issuing into the night, rejoined: “I know you, Nick, I know your voice. I hope that you ain’t mixed up in this rotten business.”

  “Dick,” said Nick, “I’m mixed up in it, all right. We want the dirty crook and bank robber, Jim Silver. We want the rat who smashed the bank and killed Henry Wilbur, and we’re goin’ to have him.”

  “Is Wilbur dead?” cried the sheriff.

  “He’s pretty nigh to it. If he ain’t dead, it ain’t the fault of Jim Silver. Dick, don’t you be a fool now.”

  “I ain’t a fool,” said the sheriff. “I just got a job to do, and I’m goin’ to do it.”

  “Dick,” urged the other, “you know me very well and you know that I don’t go in for crooked work, don’t you?”

  “You’re in a crooked deal if you try to smash this jail,” said the sheriff, “and I’ll have you in the pen for your share in it—if I live to talk tomorrow.”

  “It’s a thing that maybe you ain’t sure to do,” said Nick grimly. “I’m telling you, man to man, that we got this jail like a nut in a nutcracker. We can split it open any time we want to. The boys are spoiling for action, and they’re going to have it.”

  “You tell the boys,” shouted the sheriff, “that if they try to rush this jail, I’ll open up on ’em, and that I’ll shoot to kill.”

  There was a pause. Then: “Dick, do you think Jim Silver is guilty?”

  “I ain’t a fool,” said the sheriff. “I know that he’s as guilty as anything.”

  “You know the talk they’re makin’ about a false Jim Silver, a counterfeit Jim Silver—you know that that is fool talk, don’t you?”

  “Sure it’s fool talk,” agreed the sheriff, “but that don’t mean that I’m goin’ to let you boys have what you want.”

  “Dick, will you kill honest men to keep them from lynching a dirty, bank-robbing crook?”

  “I’ll do my duty—that’s certain!” shouted Dick Williams, and a window slammed shut.

  CHAPTER 20

  Inside the Jail

  Time was short. Oh, time was very short indeed. When Nick brought the sheriff’s final answer back to the crowd, there might be an instant rush for the jail. The whole mob might break loose in a mighty wave.

  Taxi pulled in on his rope. It seemed to catch, then it slipped. He groaned as he made sure that it had failed once more, but then he found it holding again. He put his weight on the rope, and still it held, trembling with tautness.

  At last he ventured on tying it fast around the trunk of the tree and swinging out along the rope. The treetop instantly swayed far over. He found himself in the bight of the rope, hauling himself uphill toward the edge of the roof.

  Now his grip was on the eaves, and soon he was on the roof. The tree, springing back, released from the strain, caused the rope to snap against him, almost knocking him off his feet.

  Then he discovered that the rope was not holding by the edges of the skylight. It had caught on a single nail that was half buried in the edge of the window frame. He took one deep breath as he thought of what might have happened; then he fell to work on the lock of the skylight.

  The glass was heavy, very thick, and very strong. Nevertheless, he worked a glass cutter noiselessly through it, cut out a hand hole, and pulled back the spring lock. After that he raised the skylight and cut into the darkness beneath him with a few slashing strokes of his flashlight. It showed to him a long and empty attic room, with a low ceiling and naked rafters. There were some dust-covered boxes here and there. That was the only furniture.

  Taxi went down the rough wooden steps from the skylight to the attic floor. Out of the darkness of that floor he could see a single thin ray of light standing up like a polished rapier. He came to the hole in the floor and put his eye to the crack. The whole cell room lay beneath him. He was in the exact center of the big room, lying on top of a trap-door which opened down.

  With one hand he took off his shoes, as he stared. It was just the sort of a picture that he had expected. There were two blocks of the little steel cells, and two aisles that ran between them. In each of those aisles, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, a guard was striding up and down. The sheriff sat in a chair at the front of the room, nervously smoking a cigar. Now and again he jumped up and walked a few steps, peered down one or the other of the aisles, and returned to his chair again.

  After a moment he came up to the guard who slouched up and down the aisle, just below Taxi.

  “How’s things, Pete?” he asked.

  The guard halted and swung his shotgun to the hook of his left arm. He settled one hand flat on the hip of the overalls which covered him.

  “How do I know how things are?” he asked, and then jerked the brim of his big slouch hat still lower over his eyes. “Things are the way the gents outside are goin’ to make ’em,” he declared.

  The sheriff nodded.

  “Keep your eye on Silver,” he added. “There ain’t anybody else in this aisle to bother you. There’s only Silver. Keep watching his hands and see that the irons are always on him. He’s a tricky devil.”

  “There ain’t any trick in the world as good as the buckshot that I poured into this here gun and stopped up with wadding,” said the guard, patting the double barrels of the shotgun. “I got enough in each barrel to wash a whole crowd off a street!” He laughed with a long, drawling, nasal intonation of joy in his voice.

  The sheriff looked him up and down curiously.

  “I kinda think you hope that the gang breaks in here and tries to rush you, Pete,” he suggested.

  “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’, but I’ve shot a pile of ducks in my day,” remarked Pete.

  The smile of the sheriff was turned to a grimace by a deep, muttering uproar that started outside the jail and swept more and more loudly through the air.

  “They’re coming!” said the sheriff. “I’m going into the office and see what things are
like on that side. Pete, it may be guns and a fight to the finish, for all I know.”

  He turned and was gone, running. Pete looked after him for a moment, and then slowly strode up the length of the aisle, paused to stare into the one cell whose door was shut, and then went gradually on.

  It was Taxi’s moment, and he used it by opening the catch that secured the trap-door and letting it hang down. He himself was instantly through the opening, hanging from the under edge of the swinging door. Luckily the hinges did not creak. Then he dropped, and there was only the softest of thudding sounds as his stockinged feet struck the cement floor.

  The guard was already at the far end of the aisle, where he half turned to the side and said to the man who paced the next aisle:

  “The soup’s goin’ to be hot pretty soon.”

  “Yeah, pretty hot, pretty soon,” said the other guard.

  “Hope you don’t burn your tongue on it,” remarked Pete, and chuckled.

  Taxi, in the meantime, was gliding rapidly up the aisle, and there, to his left, behind the bars of the closed cell in the center of the block of cells, he saw Jim Silver.

  The big man was sitting on the edge of his cot, his legs, his arms, loaded with irons. As Taxi went by, the great head lifted a little. That was all. But Taxi saw the sheen of the eyes and the glint of light on the gray spots above the temples of the prisoner. Those spots looked more like horns than ever.

  Pete, finishing his conversation, started to turn back to resume his beat. As he turned, Taxi, leaping the last of the distance, struck with the heel of his gun. It was not the first time he had bludgeoned a man, and he knew the force required to knock a man flat without shattering the skull.

  He used the right force now, but, to his amazement, Pete did not fall. He only took one half-step back, and braced himself, the shotgun starting to slip out of his hands.

  Taxi snatched that gun away. He raised the automatic to strike with the heel of it again, and then he saw that the eyes of the guard were totally lifeless. The man was unconscious on his feet.

  Taxi rammed a shoulder against Pete’s stomach and folded him over like a half-filled sack. Then, almost running, he returned to the cell of Jim Silver. At the same time, from the outside of the jail, the growing wave of uproar washed suddenly around the building.

  Taxi spilled the guard to the floor and thrust his picklock into the keyhole of the cell door. They might be very difficult, those locks. He heard the sheriff shouting from the front part of the jail, perhaps threatening the crowd. In the whirling brain of Taxi there was no chance to sort out the sounds and recognize the words.

  Now the bolt yielded, suddenly, and the door was open. He flung the guard inside, caught at the irons on the wrists of Silver.

  “It’s a bad lock, Taxi,” said Silver. “It’ll take time to do it.”

  Taxi stifled a groan behind the click of his teeth. If he needed time, there was only one way to get it. He turned to the guard, stripped the overalls from the limp body, and jumped into them. They covered his own clothes from head to foot. The boots of Pete were big and loose. He had them off and on his own feet instantly, jammed the slouch hat of Pete on his head, caught up the shotgun, and, tossing his automatic to Silver, stepped out into the aisle.

  That instant the office door was flung open, and the sheriff rushed out, shouting:

  “They’ve got a big battering-ram, boys! They’re goin’ to beat down the front door. I can’t find it in my heart to shoot at ’em! I can’t murder ’em because they want to hang a crook!”

  “Bird shot!” called the other guard. “Give ’em bird shot, Dick.”

  “There ain’t any bird shot, you fool!” cried the sheriff.

  The moment he was out of view, Taxi turned back into the cell. He dropped to his knees and began to toil at the lock of the handcuffs. Seconds counted. Every second might be the end of it all, and yet he could not hurry. He had to take hold of himself with the full grasp of his will. He had to control himself as though he were frozen to attention, listening to a very distant sound.

  As a matter of fact, he kept himself oblivious of the uproar around him. The battering-ram struck its first blow against the front door of the jail. The whole building seemed to quiver with the weight of the stroke. There was a sound of splintering wood.

  With a tenth part of his mind, Taxi heard that telltale sound and registered the meaning of it. Then the handcuffs sprang open!

  “Good work! Wonderful work! Back into the aisle for a breather,” said the calm voice of Jim Silver.

  What a man was that! The calm for which Taxi had to fight with hysterical intentness was merely the gift of God to Jim Silver. There was not a tremor in his body that Taxi could feel. His hand under the manacle had been steady as a stone.

  “The leg irons another time,” said Silver. “Leave me the picklock. I may be able to work them.”

  Taxi gave him the picklock and stepped out into the aisle again. He was only the flicker of an eyelash ahead of the reappearance of the sheriff, who shouted to him:

  “This way, Pete. Help me hold ’em at the door.”

  Taxi, turning his back, walked resolutely down the aisle. He tried to force the nasal drawl of Pete into his voice as he shouted in answer:

  “My job’s here, and here’s where I stay.”

  “You stubborn fool!” yelled the sheriff. Then he turned and fired a revolver bullet through the upper part of the big door. There was a great outcry and a scrambling of feet and stamping outside, on the steps.

  “Keep away from that door, or I’ll drill some of you!” yelled Dick.

  Then through the crack of the door a voice came booming, half stifled: “Williams, if you fire another shot, we’re goin’ to pull you apart and break your wishbone in two. Don’t be a fool!”

  Taxi was already back in the cell with his friend, for Silver had abandoned the little picklock to him with a despairing shake of the head.

  On the floor, Pete was beginning to stir and groan softly.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Mob

  Dick Williams, frantic with fear and excitement, and savage with desire to do his duty, was yelling from the front of the jail that he would let a streak of light into the first man who dared to dash open the front door of the building, when there was a sudden heavy crash against the rear door of the jail. The mob had wrecked the front entrance so that a child could knock down the flimsy ruin that remained standing. Now it had gone behind the jail and was splintering the rear door. They yelled in rhythm and chorus as they swung the heavy timber that served them as a battering-ram.

  The sheriff, when he heard this new outbreak, began to turn around in a blind and helpless circle, crying out orders where there were no men to help him perform the work in hand.

  Taxi, in this moment, had made Jim Silver free. Instead of an incubus, he had loosed a force that would be felt far away, and before long. From the fallen guard, Silver took a pair of revolvers that Taxi had not searched for. As that unlucky Pete recovered his wits, Silver was saying to him:

  “Wait thirty seconds, Pete. Then you can make all the noise you want.”

  Silver then stepped behind Taxi into the open aisle of the jail and closed the door behind him.

  Forward, Taxi saw Dick Williams shooting through the top of the front door of the jail.

  “That way!” said Taxi to his friend, and pointed toward the little trap-door that hung from the ceiling. How they would get through it he could not tell. Better brains and stronger hands than his own could struggle with the problem now. Silver went forward at a halting run, measured his distance, bounded high, and caught the trap-door with his hands. He swung like a pendulum through half a vibration, shifted his grip higher, and now hung from the edge of the attic floor. He was through the opening in a moment, and now he appeared, hanging down from the waist, his long arms dangling, his hands in the air, reaching far down.

  “Jump, Taxi!” he called quietly.

  Taxi knew that he could n
ot reach the lower tip of the trap-door, but it was an easy jump for him to catch hold of the hands of Silver. The force of his leap swung him backward and forward, while the voice of Pete, the guard, went yelling through the jail:

  “Dick! Dick! Hi, Dick Williams! The devil’s come and took Jim Silver away!”

  Dick Williams had something else to think about, for the rear door of the jail went down with a crash as Taxi’s body disappeared through the trap in the ceiling, drawn strongly upward by Jim Silver’s grasp.

  The door itself Silver closed again and left the lower floor of the jail to the guards who had been set to keep him for the law, and the mob which had come to hang him with its own hands. Silver could not help smiling a little when he considered how perfectly Taxi had performed the impossible and caused him to disappear at the crucial moment.

  It was a proof that Jim Silver did not need, a certainty that the affection of Taxi would endure while there was breath in his body.

  They were fumbling in the darkness toward the stairs that led up to the skylight. Beneath them the building roared and shook with the entrance of the mob. Outside of the building the angry men of the town were gathered. Certainly the two were far from safe, but they were together, and, therefore, the strength of each was multiplied; they were armed, and the terrible hands of Jim Silver were free.

  “They’ll be after us as fast as they can fetch a ladder to the trap-door,” said Taxi. “But I’ve got a bridge that may snake us off the roof.”

  “A bridge into what?” asked Silver. “Into the sky?”

  They came out onto the roof. Above them, the sky was closely powdered with the stars; below them down the sharp slant of the roof, they could see the whole male population of Crow’s Nest swarming in to take part in the lynching, or to be witnesses of it. Lanterns tossed here and there, and long yellow splashes of light streaked across the roof. If the two men on top of the jail were not seen, it was only because no eyes thought of looking up there.