Valley Thieves

by Max Brand

  Chuck was pushed into the background of the conversation by this blast. The old man went on:

  "You sound like you might have had a real business idea. But I dunno. It don't sound just right. You know you could 'a' got my cattle without ridin' clear up here. More'n once a year I send beef down to Blue Water and Belling Lake."

  "I only got the idea the other day," said I.

  The old man closed his eyes and smoked through a long moment.

  "No," he announced at last. "You're lyin'. Doggone me if I wouldn't almost like to believe you. But I don't. Now, you come clean and tell me what really brought you up here."

  "I've told you," said I.

  "Yeah? You told me? Put up your hand and swear."

  Well, I'm ashamed to say it, but I raised my right hand and swore. I think most of you would have done the same thing, if you'd been standing in my boots.

  When I finished, Grandpa said:

  "It ain't goin' to do. There's some folks, built along the lines of this gent, Chuck, that would rather put their hand into the fire than to swear a wrong oath, but he ain't quite that simple. No, sir, he's got more brains than that. He's got brains that I could talk to, I don't mind sayin'. But call in somebody. Call in Hugh, will you?"

  You can see that I was in for trouble, already. The old man had looked pretty thoroughly through me. However, worse trouble was just ahead. Before Chuck could leave the room or sing out, we heard a door slam, and voices and heavy footfalls came toward us. Then there was a rap on the inside door of the room.

  "Hey, Grandpa!" called the voice of Will Cary.

  No, there was no mistaking it. The fine, deep ring of that voice carried a lot of conviction.

  "Come in, Will," said the old man.

  The door opened, and Will heaved in sight, with his father behind him, and Will sang out:

  "Grandpa, what d'you think that we've landed for Barry—"

  He snapped his teeth shut. He had not seen me, but his father had, and had silenced his son by the simple expedient of striking him a sharp blow across the back of his head, jarring his teeth together.

  "Shut up, you dummy!" said Dean Cary, and pushed into the room, right toward me.

  "What's this thing doin' here?" he demanded.

  "Maybe you can help me out," said the old man. "I was just about to lock him up till I got some ideas about him."

  "I can give you the ideas," said Dean Cary. "He's up here on the trail—of Parade and Silver's wolf. And that man-poisoning snake of a Taxi is probably up here somewhere, also. And then there's Silver himself who may be in the gang, and a man and a half by the name of Clonmel. You hear what I say? Silver—Taxi —and another—you hear me?" he shouted.

  "Keep your voice down. I hear good, plenty," said the old man. "Seems like this one is tied up with important folks. But it always takes something big to make a man with brains get himself into trouble. You say there's a gent by name of Silver? Who might he be?"

  I was so astonished that I almost forgot my own danger. And then I saw that my own danger was more real than ever. For anything might happen in this place, this secluded valley where news of great Jim Silver had not arrived at the ears of the chief of the clan in all these years!

  Dean Cary's breath was taken, too, so that the old man had a chance to ask again:

  "And you talk about Parade, and Taxi, and Clonmel—even about a wolf. What have they to do with the Carys? And what did you start to say about Barry? Barry who? Barry Christian? Is that who you mean?"

  Dean Cary looked at me with a calm balefulness in his eye. I had heard so much that I suppose he thought I might as well hear the rest of it.

  "You know Barry Christian?" he said to his father. "Doggone me if I ain't surprised. It's a whole lot for you to have heard about Barry Christian."

  "Why, I've seen him, you fool," said the old man.

  "You've seen him, have you? And you talked to him, did you?"

  "Dean," said the head of the clan, "if I get any more of this kind of gab out of you, I'll have the whiskers tore off your face!"

  "Why," shouted Dean Cary, "if you know Barry Christian, don't you know that he's been driven a dozen times out of one place after another by a devil on earth by the name of Jim Silver? Don't you know that Taxi is the name of Silver's friend? Don't you know that the pair of them have walked through hell together, and that they're able to walk through it again? And this fellow was with Taxi and Clonmel. This fellow is the spy the rest of 'em have sent ahead to look over the lay of the land!"

  The old man rubbed his hands together, then took the pipe from his mouth.

  "Seems like things is lookin' up a trifle, boys," said he. "Maybe the old blood is goin' to be warmed up a bit, eh? But if Silver is man enough to chase Barry Christian, then he's got more sense than to send a batty, half-blind gent like Bill Avon ahead of him for a spy. We'll talk it all over. Will, you and Chuck put Avon away and keep him safe and close."

  CHAPTER XII

  Barry Christian

  THEY put me in the smoke-house, because it made as natural a prison as you'd wish to find. In order to keep the smoke in, it was windowless, with hardly a vent to it, and it was built of the heaviest sort of logs as though to make sure that the stocks of smoking meat could not be raised. It was a good-sized room, with a peaked roof and smoke-crusted crossbeams from which the cuts of meat could be hung. A side of bacon was still up there, I can't imagine why, and out of it seemed to come the reek of old curings and new that had soaked into the wood all around me. The smell was greasy. It seemed to fill the air like smoke until it made me breathless.

  I sat down on the floor, as the heavy door was shut and locked on me. Things were getting pretty bad. I tried to think, but thoughts wouldn't come. I could only see pictures—of my home ranch and the look of the kitchen, buzzing with warmth and sweet with the smell of Charlotte's gingerbread on a cold winter evening.

  There were a few chinks in the walls through which the light looked with eyes so small that the rays spread out in broken cones. But that light was a great deal better than the total darkness that began to gather as the day ended. For it made me think of my home ranch in another way, and of Charlotte stuffed and puffed with anger until her eyes were staring. She would never forgive me for this.

  It was about this time that I heard the voice of Will Cary outside the smoke-house and then Julie Perigord, talking to him.

  "He's in there. He's all right," said Will. "Come on away, Julie. I'd get the devil, if they knew that I'd showed you where he is."

  "You say he's there," said Julie Perigold, "but how do I know?"

  "D'you think that I'd lie to you?" asked Will.

  I'll never forget what Julie said in answer.

  "Oh, anyone would lie. We all lie. Half the things we say are lies. And this trouble is close to murder, Will. Of course you'd lie."

  "You can't ask me to unlock a door when I haven't a key to it," said Will.

  "You can let me rap on it and talk to him," said Julie.

  "I can't do that. We've been here too long. We've got to get away, or—"

  I heard a scuffling of feet, and then something bumped on the door of the smoke-house.

  "Bill Avon! Bill Avon!" called Julie.

  "Yes, Julie," said I.

  "Ah-h-h!" said the girl.

  "You see?" said Will Cary. "Now, come away, or there'll be the devil to pay. You don't know what a savage the old man is, up here. If he thinks—"

  "Bill, are you all right?" asked Julie. "They haven't hurt you?"

  "Not yet," said I, "but they may finish me before long."

  "I'll get word to Charlotte," said Julie. "It's all because I made trouble that this happened. I'll never forgive myself. Bill, I'm sorry! I'm going to try—"

  The voice of Will Cary struck in on her there, and I could hear him dragging her away, almost by force of hand.

  Though the darkness, just after this, plugged up the chinks of fading daylight, I felt a good deal better. One friendly
person in the world knew that I was locked up in that smoke-house, and, therefore, I could start building a few hopes. You may think that I was extravagant in my fears, but right up to that moment I had been expecting to find death just around the corner from me. You would understand if ever you could have seen the face and the eyes of the old man. But now I was a little comforted and lay out on the floor that was half sleeked down with grease and half roughed up with salt. I was hungry and thirsty, but the hope that was in me was better than a feather bed anywhere except in my own room at home.

  Time takes on different meanings, when a fellow is locked up like that. A quick mind will live a day in an hour, and my mind was not slow when it came to building up apprehensions and making terrible pictures.

  Anyway, it was a good bit after the darkness closed in around the house before footfalls came, and the door was unlocked, and men came in with lanterns.

  Several of them were Carys. I knew them by their hair, and their swarthiness, and their quick, bright eyes. But the most considered of the lot, the leader, was a tall fellow, almost as magnificently made as Jim Silver, with rather a long, pale face, and long white hands, and a voice as deeply musical as I've ever heard. When he spoke, it was a sound that you wanted to listen to and dwell over. It was a voice that would never be forgotten. I never heard such manliness and gentle sweetness of tones joined together, and when I first heard him speak, I simply lost all fear of the place that I was in. I knew that no harm could ever come from a man with such a voice.

  He was saying: "And that's Bill Avon? Poor fellow! I'm sorry to see him here. How are you, Bill?"

  "I'm well enough," said I. I got up to my knees and then to my feet. "I'm well enough, but, of course, a smoke-house isn't a first-class hotel."

  "Ah, no," said he. "No, it's not a first-class hotel."

  He shook his head at me in a sort of sad sympathy.

  "The trouble is that they want to know the plans you made with Jim Silver, and with Taxi, and that other man—Clonmel, they call him. They want to know what you planned with Silver and Taxi, most of all. Are they in the valley now?"

  I wondered why the Carys had brought this man with the gentle voice to talk to me. He was probably a minister who knew something about the badness of the Carys, but who persisted in ministering to them because he would not save his care for the good people of his flock only. And the Carys, perhaps, had brought him in to see if he could persuade me to talk —before they had to use other methods.

  "I can't talk about them," said I.

  "Ah, can't you?" said that pale man. "Think it over again, Avon. These people are rough men. They intend to give you a good deal of pain, I'm afraid, unless you'll talk to them and say what you know!"

  "I'd rather hang!" said I.

  For I thought of that noble and calm figure, Jim Silver, and dying for an honorable cause seemed a very little matter, just then.

  "He'd rather hang," said the tall man. "Ah, that's an idea that might be used then. Throw a rope over that central beam, will you ? We might even smoke him a bit when we've got him hung up."

  I was utterly amazed to hear soft, musical laughter flow out of the throat of the pale man. A rope was instantly flung over the main beam above. My hands were tied behind my back. The noose was pulled around my neck.

  "D'you know what you're doing?" I shouted. "You can strangle me, but I won't talk. Are you going to murder me, you snakes?"

  "He asks if you know what you're doin', Barry!" said one of the Carys, chuckling.

  The name hammered against my brain.

  "Barry?" I gasped. "Are you Barry Christian?"

  For, of course, the thing came over me with a sweep. The man who would pay the price for Parade. The man who would give up his right hand, surely, to gain some hold upon Jim Silver. Of course, it was Barry Christian! I had heard him described before, only no description could do justice to the marvelous sweetness of his voice. Even that quality was turned against him, when I knew his name. That gentle voice and manner made him more perfectly the fiend, not the man.

  In answer to my question, he smiled on me, more kindly than before. But that kindness always was a matter of the lips and the voice. The eyes, which I now stared into, showed the real soul of Barry Christian, and there was no more mercy in them than there would be in the heart of a wolf. A winter hunger for cruelty burned out at me. It sickened me. It made me faint.

  Then the rope tightened with a jerk that lifted me to my toes. Three men were ready to give the haul that would dangle me in the air.

  "If you twist your feet together and kick down with them," said Barry Christian, "I'll know that you're ready to talk. Pull him up, boys!"

  I was already drawn up to my toes, yet there seemed to be the weight of a ton to be added to the rope as I was wrenched into the air. The noose sank into my throat until it seemed to grip the spinal column. You may think that hanging is like holding the breath under water. It is not. For an instant, I saw the peering, frightened and delighted faces of the Cary men. I saw the eyes of Barry Christian. And then a whirl of black agony took me. I twisted my feet together and kicked down.

  I didn't realize that I had touched the floor, after that, or when the rope was loosed. The next I knew, I was listening to the horrible, tearing sound of my own breathing. I was biting at the air, unable to get my lungs full of it.

  Gradually I was able to see again. The face of Christian, quietly smiling, loomed greater than life-size. Then it receded to normal proportions, and I was able to see things as they were.

  "Well?" said Barry Christian. "You'll talk now?"

  "Yes," I gasped. "When Taxi and I found that Parade was gone, and the wolf dog, I went up to find Silver. Clonmel, of course, had located him before. We got together, all four of us. We wanted to find out if the horse was up here. We thought that Will Cary and his father might have brought it here. Taxi or Silver would be recognized. We thought that I might be able to get through and spot the horse, if it were here, and then get back and report."

  "Where were you going to meet them?" asked Christian.

  "Outside the valley," said I. "Down the trail there's a grove of big pines on one side, and some small spruce on the other side of the valley. They were to wait there for me."

  "I know the place!" said one of the Cary outfit.

  I could have thanked him with all my heart for remembering it. It seemed to give a body and a substance to the lie I had told. Christian stepped closer to me. His eyes hunted inside my mind, and something fled away within me, trying to escape like a hare followed by hounds.

  "Well," he said, "it may be a lie, but I'll have to put up with it. Terribly sorry that I had to use such strong measures on you, Avon, but you know how it is. People like Barry Christian can't afford to waste much time. If, by any chance you've been lying and I find out about it—"

  He wound up that speech with a snap of his fingers, and I knew that my life would end if the lie were spotted. That was the thought that remained with me when the door was shut and I was left in the thick darkness.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Another Prisoner

  I LAY there fingering my sore throat and staring with popping eyes at the blackness. I think I was almost more afraid of the fury that must be raging in Charlotte by this time, than I was afraid of Barry Christian and the Cary tribe.

  Then I began to wonder about things—about the way Old Man Cary and Christian must appear when they were together, and which of the pair would take the lead, and which would have the most evil mind. I wondered about Julie Perigord, too. If she had had any doubts about Will Cary before she met Clonmel, what must those doubts be now? Or did she take this whole brutal clan for granted?

  In the middle of that wondering, I fell soundly asleep. I wakened with an uproar, like a windstorm, working in my mind, and as my senses came slowly out of the house of sleep, I realized that it was not a wind at all, but the noise of many voices.

  There was a gay, happy ring to them. Men were calling and s
houting and laughing. They poured up to the smoke-house; a key jarred in the big steel lock, and then the door opened, and the staggering lantern light showed me the gigantic form of Harry Clonmel being thrust into the room.

  The others came after him. I got up to my feet with difficulty, because they had left me with my hands still tied behind me. And in the steadying lantern light, I had a better view of Clonmel.

  They had not taken him without a struggle. The clothes hung in tatters from him. Mud and blood were streaked across him. His whole right shoulder and half his chest were naked. Blood from a small tear in his neck gave out a wandering rivulet of crimson that made his skin whiter. His feet were hobbled. His hands and elbows were tied behind his back. But he stood as straight and proud as though he were the conqueror and the others were beaten.

  I never saw such a picture. He was big enough in body, but his spirit was so much larger still, that he overwhelmed me. He made me blink my eyes.

  Barry Christian was there. His own clothes looked as though he had been through a struggle. He was very cheerful, smiling, speaking in his gentle, soothing voice which I had come to detest. The poison of the man reeked in the very air, so long as my eyes were on him.

  "So," said Christian to me, "you lied about it, did you? But the lies of old men are easily found out. I told you what would happen to you if the lie came to the surface. Well, you can pick out your own sort of trouble. There'll be plenty of it, my friend!"

  I looked at him. I looked at that glorious figure, Clonmel, and suddenly—I don't know why—I wasn't afraid of death. My distrust and hatred for that fellow Christian choked out every other feeling.

  "You dog!" said I to Christian, and the sound of my own voice amazed me.

  He walked up to me and looked into my eyes. Nothing inside my soul ran away from him now. I was able to summon my strength and repel him and meet him half way, so to speak.

  "Well, well," said Barry Christian. "No matter how old we are, it appears that we can always grow up!"