Valley Thieves

by Max Brand

  That was one of the chief parts of the marvel—that Silver could have been surprised, for with Parade and Frosty on guard, it was popularly supposed that every scent and sound of approaching danger must instantly be translated for the benefit of the master. Yet it must have been by surprise that Clonmel had managed to overwhelm that famous fighter. Once his grasp was well lodged on Jim Silver—yes, then it would be understandable that any man in the world might have become helpless!

  Gloomily I regarded the manner in which Parade went gently along under the girl. She made no effort to keep him firmly in hand, but let him move under a free rein, his head turning here and there as he took note of all around him, his splendid body shimmering in the morning light as he danced along.

  "You don't like the look of Julie on Parade?" asked Clonmel of me.

  "It makes a pretty picture. I hope it's not spoiled before long," said I. "But isn't that the Cary house, yonder?"

  It was the Cary place, all right, distinguished by the number of big trees that grew around it—so many that the ax had not been able to clear away the majority of them for firewood. As we came up the trail through the trees, a dozen or so boys from Blue Water rattled out of town on their ponies and stopped with a yell, to look after Parade and Frosty like so many Indians. They did not follow on, which surprised me till I remembered the rather grim reputation which the Cary family had all through the mountains. They were people who kept to themselves and demanded their privacy.

  We got through the trees and saw the ranch house, as ugly and sprawled out and shapeless and unpainted as most of our ranch houses are. The rough-hewn stumps of many trees surrounded the place; the ground was littered with chips, big and small, rotten-yellow or gleaming white. One monster of a tree had been felled not long before and had been only half worked up for firewood. Part of the trunk was propped up on a section of log, and a big crosscut saw had been left sticking in a new cut. You could tell that the Cary outfit did only as much work around the place as had to be done; they were people to labor with their cattle, not with their homes.

  Dean Cary sat on a stump near the door of the house. He was as big, almost, as Harry Clonmel, and the shaggy gray of his fifty years made him seem even larger. There were tales about Dean Cary that cooled the blood a good deal, but those tales dealt with a time two decades away, which in the West is enough to quite bury an old life and let a new growth spring out of the wreckage.

  He was smoking a long-stemmed pipe with a bowl of the red Indian pipe stone, and he kept on puffing and looking at us and through us, while we came up. He did not rise. He gave us no greeting. When we were almost on him, he simply took the pipe from his mouth and bellowed:

  "Will!"

  We halted and got off the horses as Will Cary came out from the house. What a man he was, big as an elk and as fit for speedy motion! He was a handsome man. You would have said that there was a strong dash of Indian blood in him, to judge by the swarthy glow of his skin. He was so handsome in feature that he possessed a certain nobility which might degenerate later on, if one could judge by the indications about the eyes.

  Will Cary walked out to us two steps, saw Parade and Frosty, and turned to stone. That's exactly the word for it—he changed to a statue in the act of striding, about to lift foot from the ground. That was a fine picture to see—the amazement in that big fellow so great that it resembled fear. Perhaps it was fear, because I could understand why he turned his head and his eyes probed swiftly, guiltily, among the trees. He was looking for the sign of the master, Jim Silver. He could only get hold of himself little by little.

  Dean Cary did not want peace in the air, it seemed, because he growled: "Here's a couple of strangers bringin' home your girl to you, Will!"

  But that leading remark was wasted for the moment. Will Cary gave hardly a glance at the girl except to exclaim:

  "Parade and Frosty! Where did they come from?"

  "From Jim Silver, of course," answered Julie Perigord. "Harry Clonmel, here, got them away from Silver."

  "Got them away—from Jim Silver!" breathed Will Cary.

  His eyes stared at the heels of Clonmel and they widened slowly as he looked up toward the head of the giant. After all, there was not such a deal of difference in the size of that pair, but what Will Cary had just heard was enough to make him see nightmares in the flesh. I could sympathize with that feeling.

  But old Dean Cary exclaimed: "That's a lie! That young feller never took nothin' from Jim Silver. If he got the hoss and the wolf, he got 'em by a cheat!"

  Clonmel turned quickly, saw the gray hair of the speaker, and then shrugged his shoulders. Will Cary was greatly embarrassed. He said:

  "Stop that sort of talk, will you, Dad? You folks come in a while. We'll put Parade in the barn, and Frosty along with him. Jumping thunder, what a horse! I never saw him as close as this. Look at those quarters, Dad. He could carry three hundred pounds all day long. Carry it like a feather in the wind. Come on back and we'll put Parade in the barn."

  We went around behind the house. There was a haze over my mind. I walked in a dream. Something bad was going to happen—I couldn't tell what. Pretty soon, Will Clary would stop wondering about the stallion and Frosty and begin to realize that his girl had been brought home by another man. Then action was apt to start. And if Clonmel was the bigger of the two, Will Cary knew ways of cutting almost any man down to his own size. And as I walked along with the rest and heard them chattering, my mind turned back to Jim Silver and the surety with which Dean Cary had said that no man could take anything away from Silver. It was the feeling that everyone seemed to have—that Silver was invincible.

  How, then, had Clonmel taken that horse away from the fighter? If it had been a trick, how had he managed to trick that crafty veteran of a thousand battles?

  I decided that the best thing was to stop thinking and let the future take care of itself, but every moment, I expected to hear the noise of a galloping horse and to see Jim Silver breaking out from the big, dark circle of the trees.

  We put Parade in a stall in the barn. Frosty lay down exactly under the feet of the stallion and dropped his head on his paws. He looked like a perfectly tame dog, except that the eyes which watched us were green. Looking at the size of him and at his eyes, it was easy to remember that once a bigger price had been put on the scalp of that cattle killer than was usually laid on the head of a human murderer.

  Will Cary stood back to admire the picture the two made, for a moment.

  "Look at 'em!" he said under his breath, after he had poured some crushed barley into the feed box. "Parade won't eat the stuff I offer him. The grain and the hay don't mean a thing to him unless his boss is around to see him eat it. Think of having a pair like that ready to die for you, watch for you, fight for you! Think of it!"

  Well, I was already thinking of it, dizzily.

  Will took us back into his house. He brought out a jug of moonshine that I wouldn't drink, but Clonmel took a big swig of it.

  "How did you do it, partner?" asked Will Cary. "How did you get 'em away from Silver?"

  "Silver's not dead," answered Clonmel, "and according to your father, it must have been a cheat."

  Cary frowned. He leaned forward in his chair and stared at Clonmel for a moment, with doubt in his eyes.

  Then he said: "And how do you happen to be gadding around with strangers, Julie?"

  "That's my business," said the girl calmly.

  Her eyes flashed from one of those big men to the other. I had been liking her a good deal, up to that time, but now it seemed to me that I could see a big touch of animal in her—the sort of thing that makes a woman glad to see two men fighting for her. Like a she-wolf, she might go to the stronger.

  I commenced to say that we'd better be starting on home, when old Dean Cary walked into the room, his cowhide boots creaking, and muttered:

  "Come out with me for a minute, Will'!"

  Will got up and followed his father from the room. The rest of us sat
there in a silence that thickened and deepened, and I knew that the trouble I had been dreading was only moments away.

  CHAPTER VII

  Silver's Friend

  IN those moments that followed, my eyes went vaguely around the room. It had been a parlor once. It had been that in the days of Mrs. Cary, no doubt, and there was still a faded, flowered carpet on the floor, and a round mahogany table in the center of the room, and a few family photographs growing dim behind their glass along the wall; but harness hung from pegs, fishing rods leaned in a corner, initials had been whittled into the edge of the table, and spurs had scarred the top of it. It was woman-made, that room, but it had been manhandled.

  Julie said, with a darkening face, finally: "There's something in the air. What is it?"

  "There's something in the air. We'd better get out of here," said I. "We'd better go home."

  "No," broke in Clonmel, "I'm not leaving for a while."

  He looked at the girl. She flushed under his eye and was about to speak, but before a word came from her, a shadow stepped noiselessly into the open doorway at the front of the room. I thought for a dizzy moment that it might be Silver himself. Then I saw that it was a fellow of only average height, very slenderly made—a wonderfully handsome, dark-eyed man with a pale skin and black hair. The lids drooped over his eyes. He had less the appearance of one looking at us than of one listening to distant sounds.

  But I knew instantly that he was keenly aware of all of us. An air of the town clung to him. He wore an ordinary range outfit, but it was not in place on him. It looked as though it had been hand-worked by an expensive tailor in imitation of the swaggering clothes of the range.

  . "You rode in on Parade," said he to Julie, without any form of greeting. "Where did you get him?"

  I glanced at the girl and saw that she was out of her chair and standing stiff and straight without a whit of color in her face. She was frightened out of her breath, and that was plain. But five minutes before, I would have sworn that not even the charge of a grizzly bear would trouble her.

  "I don't know," she stammered. "I don't know where I got him—Taxi!"

  The name ripped right through me. I stared again at him and saw his eyes lift a little. They were pale eyes, brighter than any I had ever seen. People said that once a man had looked into the eyes of Taxi, he would never forget them. I could understand that now. At that instant, with a quiet fury rising in him, he looked like a pale and dressed-up devil, ready for a kill.

  And that was what he was ready for—murder! You could tell it in the stillness of his attitude, in something about the slender, nervous hands, and above all, in the pale glare of his eyes. Murder—because we had crossed the trail of Jim Silver, and Silver was his friend. Men said that Taxi had come out of the underworld and had been caught and changed and made over by Silver. At any rate, it was true that the friendship between them was legendary all through the mountain desert.

  "You don't know where you got Parade?" asked Taxi, in his soft, gentle, deadly voice.

  "Here!" exclaimed Clonmel. "I gave her Parade to ride, and what the devil of it?"

  "Ah," said Taxi. "You got Parade for her, did you?"

  "Yes, I got him, and—"

  "Harry, be still!" said the girl. "You don't know what you're doing. It's Taxi—"

  "He knows what he's doing. Any man who can get Parade knows exactly what he's doing. He's stealing."

  Then he added, his voice even gentler than before: "He a low, sneaking thief, to begin with."

  "Why, you little rat," said Clonmel, "if you were a foot taller and twice your weight, I might have to take a fall out of you for that!"

  "I suppose you might," said Taxi. "I'm standing here waiting for you to try."

  He smiled, and the red tip of his tongue slid across his lips. Oh, if ever I saw a calm devil, Taxi was the man at that moment.

  "Don't budge, Harry!" shrilled the girl.

  She jumped in front of him and hooked her arms back through his, while she faced Taxi. Up over her her shoulder she pleaded with Clonmel.

  "Don't move a hand, or he'll kill you, Harry. He's Silver's best friend!"

  "Steady, Taxi," said I. "I'm with Clonmel. I want to explain—"

  "Then I'll have to take my chances with the pair of you," said Taxi. "A horse thief is my idea of a snake. I'm telling you that, whoever you may be."

  Taking chances with the pair of us? Why, men said that there was hardly a hair's-breadth of difference between the skill of Silver and Christian and Taxi, when it came to guns. We were as good as dead the instant that a gun was drawn.

  Therefore, guns must not be drawn, in spite of the fact that Clonmel was saying through his teeth:

  "Julie, stand away from me, or I'll have to lift you away."

  "Don't move!" she begged. "The instant I'm away from you, he'll kill you, Harry. It's Taxi! It's Taxi! Can't you understand that?"

  "Julie," said Clonmel, "if you don't—"

  At that, far, far away, like a trumpet blowing small on the horizon, a stallion neighed. The sound was not muffled by walls, but by thin distance alone.

  The effect on Taxi was like the blow of a whip. He literally jumped.

  "It's Parade!" he exclaimed. "Who's got him now?"

  "It can't be Parade. He's safe in the barn," said Clonmel.

  "Safe in the barn? Safe for Barry Christian in the barn, I suppose you mean," said Taxi savagely. "You are with the Cary outfit. You've all thrown in with Christian. But two of you are going to step out of the picture this minute. Fill your hands!"

  Without lifting his voice he had put the cold acid right on my heart. I made a vague gesture, tugging at my Colt. Big Clonmel swept the girl away from before him with a single motion. She was screaming, and Clonmel was leaning to rush bare-handed at the gunman, while Taxi, with an automatic hip-high, was covering me and ready to fire.

  He wanted to shoot, mind you. I never saw a more devilish eagerness to kill in any face. But he checked himself. The violence of his impulse was so great that lit swayed his entire body forward. What it was that stopped him, I could not make out at first, but instead of trying to free my own gun, I let it lie, half exposed, and heard Taxi snarl :

  "You half-wit, where's your gun!"

  "Damn a gun!" said Clonmel, and charged like a bull.

  My own Colt fell to the floor. I simply made a dive at Clonmel and hit him low enough to knock him off balance, so that the pair of us crashed in the corner.

  When my wits cleared, the girl was in front of Taxi, begging. Clonmel was getting up slowly, and he pulled me to my feet by the nape of my neck. It was the queerest scene I ever saw, and the most nervy. But somehow, I knew that my dive at Clonmel had kept him from being shot through the head.

  He knew it, too, now that he had been given a few seconds to think things over. I heard Taxi saying to the girl:

  "I'm not going to shoot the fool! But—where's Parade now? Where have the Cary outfit put him?"

  "He's in the barn. With Frosty. They're both out there," said Julie.

  "We're going out to have a look," remarked Taxi. "The rest of you walk ahead of me."

  We went ahead of him, fast enough. I was hurrying, but I couldn't keep up with the huge strides of Clonmel, who kept muttering:

  "Suppose he should be gone! Suppose he should be gone!"

  He reached the door of the barn and almost tore it off its running rail in his haste to get it open. We looked into the dimness and the pungency of the interior, and there was no trace of the glimmering beauty of Parade, no token of the dusty gray of the wolf.

  "He's gone!" said Clonmel. His voice rose with an agony. "Bill, what can I do about it? Where have they taken him?"

  "To Barry Christian," answered Taxi. "They need money, and they know that Christian will pay the price they ask if he can put his hands on the stallion and the wolf."

  He turned around on Clonmel and said to him:

  "You've cut the heart out of Jim Silver—you've stolen his ea
rs and his eyes and the speed that used to snake him across the mountains like a bird through the sky. You've sunk a knife in him—and I can't pay you off for it! I've got to stand here and look at a fool and let him live!"

  He was sick with rage; he looked sick. So did big Clonmel, for one thing. But Harry Clonmel made a gesture to the sky and shook his fist at the clouds.

  "I'll keep the trail till I get Parade back!" he said. "I'll keep it till I've brought him safely back to Jim Silver!"

  "Safely back—for Silver?" asked Taxi. "Did you say that?"

  "I said that," answered Clonmel. "D'you think that I'd get him for myself? If you know Jim Silver, don't you know well enough that he's only a borrowed horse?"

  "Borrowed horse!" shouted Taxi. "I'm going crazy! You might get Parade from Silver by fighting or by stealing—but whoever heard of borrowing a man's hands and feet, and his ears and eyes? Because that's what Parade and Frosty have been to Jim. Borrowed Parade?"

  "Yes," said I. "That's exactly what he must have done."

  "Then I'm out of my wits," muttered Taxi, "and the world's not what it used to be. But—you're telling the truth—you've borrowed him! Well, go borrow Jim Silver to help us out on the trail. We're apt to need him."

  "Go and confess that I've lost his horse for him?" groaned Clonmel, in such a voice that I was shamed with him. "Well, I'll even do that, if I have to. Bill, are you going to help me?"

  "I'll help you," I said gloomily, because I dreaded the future that was breathing cold down my spine already.