Silvertip's Roundup Page 14

  To bait the lion was one thing, but to run straight into the lion’s mouth was quite another, and to go back near that house would be to put one’s head in the lion’s mouth with a vengeance. In Silver’s mental picture of the world, this spot was preeminently marked “Danger.”

  Then he let Parade drift ahead. He swore through his set teeth. He told himself that to have beaten Barry Christian once on such a spot of home ground was enough. To try it twice was suicide. But as he reached these very reasonable conclusions, he could not help remembering other things, such as the faint, dubious smile that used to appear in the face of Taxi, and the pale, almost inhuman brightness of his eyes when they looked up with a question, perhaps once a day.

  So he kept to the trail. For he felt that whatever Taxi was, he was a most remarkable human machine. What that machine could accomplish he was unable to tell, but he guessed at great things.

  Women have an instinct about men unless they are outright blind with love. And Sally Creighton, a most level-headed young lady, thought a good deal of Taxi. So Silver decided that he would trust to his own cold judgment and to Sally Creighton’s instinct and therefore call Taxi a risk worth taking.

  It was well after dark before he got to the vicinity of the Christian place. And it was long after that before he had worked his way with infinite caution through the night and come close to the house.

  When he left the back of Parade, he felt as though he were leaving a secure ship at sea and committing himself to stormy waters. He went around the cabin first, with a soundless step, keeping very close to the wall, listening, listening, destroying all other faculties so that his sense of hearing could be more acute.

  He heard nothing.

  There was no moon, as yet, but the sky was speckled with the brightness of the stars that showed their faces as they only will to mountain dwellers. Against those stars he saw the trees go up, the pines making black, jagged points, like the heads of fish spears, barbed.

  He saw nothing else. The air was cold. The world was frozen still. Not a wolf howled, not a coyote dared to bark in the distance. There was not even the still, small crackling sounds that, to the attentive ear, are usually heard around a house by day and night, from the warping timbers.

  There was nothing present, he could safely say. But when he ventured on opening a door, he was by no means sure. For the slight draft that entered ahead of Silver sent long, ominous whispers down the space inside.

  He forced himself to step into what he still felt might be a trap. And as he passed down the hall, he felt along the wall with his hand on this side, and then on that. He walked with steps more careful than those of an Indian. There was not a sound except that of his own breathing.

  He found a door to the left.

  When he opened it, he was sure, from the naked presence of the unseen chamber, that it was a big room. Something about the air told him that.

  He stepped across the threshold and immediately to the right. Instinct made him do it, because when a man enters a place of danger, it is generally better to get away from the threshold and the straight line toward the door as soon as possible.

  After he had managed to put a little distance between himself and the door, he again went forward in his original line.

  He encountered a chair. With the soft touches of his hands, he circumnavigated it and went on. And all the while small worms of fear were crawling in his flesh and in his brain telling him of danger, danger, more terrible because so unseen. The cold poison of fear worked in his soul.

  Then something hardly stronger than a spider’s thread touched his breast.

  He knew what it was with a swift and peculiar prescience. It was a thin silken thread stretched there for the very purpose of detecting the presence of a stealthy marauder like himself. He tried to leap back, catching at his gun at the same time. But a rope hissed in the air, a noose gripped him, pinning his arms to his sides, and the voice of Pokey went screeching, screaming through the darkness:.

  “Lights! I’ve got him! Lights!”

  XXIII

  Dynamite

  THE strong pull on the rope jerked Silver off his feet. He tried to regain them, whirling over on his face, but now lights were unshuttered on either side of the room and streamed at him. In the path of them, men ran in at Silver, pinned him down, bound him with precise and rapid skill, hand and foot.

  He was placed in a chair beside the cold hearth at the end of the room; he was tied strongly into that chair.

  As his spinning brain steadied and settled, he could see all around him the men of the great Barry Christian. He saw Scotty’s glistening black mustache, and the infantile brutality of Babe, and above all the whining, snarling devil, Pokey, who was in an ecstasy because of the success of the device that had been his suggestion.

  It was nothing new — simply a cord with which Pokey was in touch, and a noosed rope suspended in the air with one end of it secured in Pokey’s hand.

  “When the door opened,” yelled Pokey, “I knew that I had him. I knew it — I knew it! I laughed to myself. I’ve got him, I says to myself. Silver or Taxi, I’ve got him. And then — bingo! I noosed him. Can I fish in the dark? I ask any of you, can Pokey fish in the dark?”

  He kept on laughing and exclaiming about his prowess, until Charlie Larue said:

  “Aw, shut up, will you? You’ve talked enough.”

  “Let him talk,” broke in the soothing voice of Barry Christian. “When a man of mine has turned a trick like that, I like to hear him talk. It does me good to hear him talk. Here, John, light the fire. Build it big and light it. It’s the last fire that we’ll ever warm ourselves in front of in this house, John.”

  The Chinaman came trotting, his braided queue jerking up and down behind him, his pock-marked face grinning. His face, it seemed to Silver, was the physical index to the ugliness of all their souls. Nature had put no mask on him, and his reality was almost a relief.

  The fire blazed very soon. Barry Christian pulled up a chair opposite that of Silver and lighted a cigarette. It was not a handmade smoke, but the finest Turkish that money could buy. And the great Christian drew every breath of it deeply into his lungs before he let it slowly perfume the air of the room.

  The men stood by as at a moment of historical importance which each strove to record in his memory. They kept looking from the face of Silver to that of Christian, and back again. They were still. Their eyes were bright and unsmiling. Every gesture, every word, they drank in to the utmost.

  “Babe, go out and walk the rounds of the house,” said Christian.

  “Me? Not me, chief!” exploded Babe.

  Christian looked up with an eye of cold gray steel, but then he understood and merely laughed.

  “All right, Babe,” he said. “You’ve had some hard work to do in the cellar, not so long ago. Somebody else can take a turn at doing the dirty work.”

  He was about to tell off another man for the task of walking guard when a voice called far away through the night.

  It was Charlie Larue who got to a window first and threw it open, while Christian stood over Silver with a gun loaded, ready to end him in case they were forced to run for it.

  The voice in the night called again. And Larue shouted instantly:

  “Come on, Pudge!”

  He closed the window and turned with a broad grin.

  “It’s old Pudge,” he said. “I know the roar that walrus has.”

  “Go let him in,” said Christian, and Larue disappeared.

  A brief silence followed, with Christian running his eyes slowly over the face of Silver, and Jim Silver calmly eyeing Christian. Their hatred had reached the point of perfection; it was calm.

  Pudge came in. They could hear the rumbling heartiness of his voice from the distance, and the weight of his step. Then he entered, panting.

  “I come up to give you boys some news,” he said. “Taxi’s gone.”

  Silver lifted his head a little. That news made the moment perfect. Hi
s whole adventure had been foolishly in vain and Taxi was dead before he had started, perhaps!

  “Gone? You mean dead?” asked Charlie Larue anxiously.

  Pudge turned his head to Larue and shrugged his fat shoulders.

  “Better than dead,” said Pudge. “He’s on the way to jail. He’s on the Overland, headed East. They’re going to put him away for keeps. Maybe it’ll be Salt Creek. Maybe it’ll be twenty years. I dunno. They got him framed, and the beauty of it is that he didn’t do the job he’ll do time for!”

  Pudge was so pleased by this picture of the future of Taxi, that he broke out into hearty laughter. The others were silent.

  “Twenty years won’t kill him,” said Charlie Larue thoughtfully. “It’ll only make him harder.”

  “Quit grouching, Charlie,” said Pudge. “I know you don’t like that hombre, and you got plenty reason, but — ”

  Here, for the first time, he saw through the men who had gathered about him the form of Silver, lashed into the chair.

  “Holy smoke!” shouted Pudge. “It ain’t Jim Silver? You mean to say that all our troubles are going to be finished on one day?”

  “This trouble, Pudge,” said Christian, “is going to vanish away!”

  And he waved a graceful hand toward Silver.

  Pudge came slowly forward. He dragged off his hat with a gesture that caused a long lock of his hair to tumble forward on his face.

  “Silver,” he said, “I’ve wished it. I’ve laid awake at nights and wished it. But I never hoped to see it. Honest, I never hoped to see you tied up like a pig for market! Barry, what’s going to happen?”

  “You can’t guess, Pudge?” asked the gentle voice of Christian.

  “Aw, sure. I can guess,” said Pudge. “But what way?”

  “That’s it,” said Christian. “We want to determine the way of Silver’s exit. Because there ought to be a celebrated finish for a celebrated man. Am I wrong, boys? How about it?”

  “You’re right,” they muttered.

  “Start your minds working,” said Barry Christian. “I want to talk to you a little about this man. All of you know a little about him, but none of you really know enough. Not really enough. Sit down, make your smokes, and give me some attention.”

  They obeyed these instructions. Pudge had a habit of wiping his hands even when they were not moist from his duties behind the bar. Now he sat very still, not smoking, but wiping his hands as he looked with awe and with content toward Jim Silver. The others made themselves comfortable.

  “There was a time, boys,” said Christian, “when the West was the West. By that I mean, there was a time when it was free. A fellow could follow his own fancy. There were a few sheriffs and deputies and federal marshals scattered about, but not enough of them to bother a man, really. It was a golden age, boys. A fellow could spread his elbows at the board — and when the board got a little too hot for his elbows, he could ride off into the hills and wait for things to cool down a little, and then he could return and try his luck again. Am I right?”

  “You’re right, chief,” said Pudge, who being the oldest man took it on himself to answer.

  “We were not bothered a great deal. It was a happy time. And then a man who wasn’t a sheriff or a marshal, a man who had no business interfering, started on our trails.”

  Christian turned and looked at Silver. “He wanted trouble. He loved it. He ate trouble and he drank trouble. If he’d had the nerve of the rest of us, he would have gone against the law and taken his fun where he found it. But he didn’t dare to do that. He was afraid. He was yellow, really, in his heart, because he was afraid of the law.”

  “Sure he was!” said Scotty, with a sudden acid anger.

  Christian paused, controlling the passion that began to make his eyes burn. Then he continued:

  “As a matter of fact, Silver wanted the pleasure of man hunting, and he didn’t want the penalties. So he crawled over to the safe side of the fence. When he was on the side of the law, of course every time he managed to sneak a bullet into one of us, the people applauded. They cheered for him. I’ve seen in a newspaper, and a big newspaper that has a lot of authority and influences a lot of minds, the remark that one man like Jim Silver was worth more to the cause of law and order than any hundred sheriffs in the land. It’s stuff like that, out of the papers, that makes Silver’s life happy. That’s what he lives for — newspaper gabble of that sort. And he’s distinguished himself up and down the land by running us down. There’s been no more mercy in him than there has been in a greyhound after rabbits.”

  He paused again, for again his emotion began to master him. But at last he was able to continue:

  “I want you to remember that there was a time when I had a system that couldn’t be beaten. I had you boys around me, and we lived a happy life. I had other men, too. There wasn’t a one of them that I couldn’t trust. And everything was done in secrecy, quietly, without a fuss. We did no real harm. We didn’t settle down on one part of the range till we broke the back of it. We moved around here and there. We had friends among all the ranchers, all the little fellows with places scattered around through the hills.

  “When they saw one of us, they took us in. They knew that we meant ready cash for our meals and everything that we took. They knew that when we came by in a pinch and needed a horse, it was worth while for them to trot out the best horses they had and give us a pick. The bill might not be paid till a month later, but it would be paid in hard cash then, and they could charge two times the real price of the horses. There were hundreds of men squatted around through the mountains, decent, honest fellows, who would have laid down their lives for us. Am I wrong?”

  “I remember those days,” said Scotty, with a sigh. “A man could live then. It was a gentleman’s life. That’s what it was. Then this hound came along and busted everything up!”

  “And in those days,” said Barry Christian, “there was nothing known. Not one man in twenty thousand knew what I looked like. There was just the name of Barry Christian that boys who were on the make knew was worth hitching to. And the people who worked with us didn’t know me. It was simply a name, a sort of a trademark that told every one our work was going to be clean. Sheriffs hated the thought of us. Posses couldn’t be raised to chase us, because they caught hell when they got close. And then everything changed. Everything!”

  He turned back to Silver.

  “Silver,” he said, “when I look at you, I can hardly keep my hands off you!”

  “Thanks,” said Silver. “From my way of thinking, old son, that’s a compliment.”

  Christian went on: “He chose to walk in on me, and life has been hell for all of us, ever since. The ranchers suspect us now. Too much has been published about us. And as for me, my face has been published all up and down the land — with a reward stacked on the top of my head, so that I hardly dare to trust the men of my own crowd!

  “But now, boys, there is going to be a change. We’ve come to the end of the trail and after tonight we’re going to be able to turn back to the old days. We’re going to build ourselves the same reputation we had before. We’re going to make sheriffs turn sick at the thought of us. We’re going to find clients here and there in the mountains. A new deal for every one all around, and the past forgotten and bygones gone forever. Because to-night Jim Silver dies!”

  It seemed to Silver, as he listened, that there was in reality a golden age of happiness and careless, secure adventure in the picture which the leader had painted. He could see the reflection of it in the bright eyes of the men before him.

  “How?” asked Pudge. “That’s what I wanta know. How?”

  “This way!” said the squeaking voice of the Chinaman.

  He came in carrying a heavy tarpaulin bundle in each hand.

  “Hey, you fool, get out of here with that!” yelled Charlie Larue. “The Chink has the dynamite!” he explained.

  No explanation was needed. The gang scattered in haste as John walked up
to Silver and slid the two big bundles under his chair. Then he undid a long coil of fuse that had not been cut and snaked it out in a curving pattern upon the floor, until it was all distributed.

  Then he said, with appropriate gestures: “You light here. Jim Silver watch the fire come. We wait outside. Poom! Jim Silver gone.”

  Christian went on: “And then the fire burns the house and sends the bits of Silver up in smoke — and there you are! He’s a famous man, boys, and if he disappears, there’ll be a search down to bed rock. But that won’t bring them to smoke and ashes, I think! John, I always knew that you were something more than a cook and a smuggler. Now I know how much more!”

  The full beauty of the idea seemed to be dawning on the others, little by little.

  Babe bawled out: “And there Jim Silver sits like a king on a throne, and he sits and watches the fire come snakin, along the fuse at him. And he counts the seconds, and the time goes pretty fast and then — boom! That’s the end of Silver.”

  He began to laugh, thundering his mirth through the place.

  “Fix the fuse,” said Christian. “John, you had the idea, and you can have the glory and the fun, too. Fix the fuse and light the far end of it.”

  The cook was instantly at work, singing a queer little tuneless song as he busied his hands.

  Christian lingered near Silver.

  “I hate to leave you, Jim,” he said. “In a sense, this will be a rather empty world, with you out of it. It will be too simple. There will be no one to match my brain against. And yet I’ll have to struggle along as well as I can. I wish I could be here till the last, Jim, and see you sitting on your throne, as Babe calls it, until you’re taken at one step to hell. Jim, I almost feel like shaking hands. Good-by, Silver!”

  Silver said nothing, but lifting his head, he looked calmly into the face of Barry Christian. And Christian, running his fingers through the long silk of his hair, stared down at his victim and smiled.

  Then he turned on his heel.