Valley Thieves

by Max Brand

  A good long silence followed that remark. Finally, Clonmel said:

  "Jim, you can let that pass, if you want to, but I won't let it pass."

  "You won't let it pass?" snarled Taxi softly.

  Great Scott, how my flesh crawled when I heard that voice of his!

  "I won't let it pass," said Clonmel. "I never knew a small man in my life that ever had a big heart in him. Stay here behind, Taxi. I'll go with Jim."

  "He might as well take a side of beef with him," said Taxi. "What have you ever done except steal his horse and Frosty? What have you ever done except go ahead and get yourself into trouble so that he could risk his neck getting you out?"

  "Does it look like that to you?" said Clonmel. "I'll tell you something—you've said enough tonight, and it's your turn to shut up!"

  Taxi cried: "I hated the sight of you when I first laid eyes on you, and I've hated the sight of you ever since. You're a fathead and a fool. If you don't like what I say, you've got a gun—fill your hand and—"

  "Taxi!" said Silver calmly.

  "Are you calling me right or wrong?" demanded Taxi.

  "I'm calling you wrong," said Silver.

  I heard Taxi panting. I saw the panting of his quick breath. He swayed a little from side to side, and I could watch the shuddering of his body. He was for all the world like a bull terrier before it springs at a throat. And I knew that this man had killed more than once. If his hand went for a gun, he would kill again, before this night was over.

  And then something told me clearly, like a bursting vision of light, that if Taxi killed Clonmel, he would most certainly be slain in turn by Jim Silver. I don't know why I had such surety.

  "The time's come," said Taxi, "when you pick up with every big idiot that comes across your path. You want people who'll look up to you and flatter you. You've started to be as vain as a sixteen-year-old girl, proud of her curls. Now you choose between Clonmel and me. I'll not take another step with the pair of you!"

  "If that's what he means, I'll go," said Clonmel. "I'm sorry, but he's worth a lot more to you than I am."

  "Wait a moment," said Silver.

  We all waited. It was a horrible suspense. Silver was staring straight at Taxi, not speaking a word, and Taxi, his body still wavering and uncertainly poised by the greatness of his emotion, stared back at Silver.

  "I'll go," said Clonmel suddenly. "So long, Jim!"

  He held out his hand. Instead of taking it, Silver laid his touch lightly on the arm of the giant.

  "Stay here with me," he said, looking always not at Clonmel but at Taxi.

  Well, that was it then—he had made his choice!

  I admit that I was staggered. Silver was the man who could do no wrong—and yet he was casting aside for the sake of a stranger the devotion that Taxi had given to him so many times!

  "Well," said Taxi, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper, "that's about enough. I'll be getting along. So long, boys. Good luck to you!"

  He turned his back and walked slowly away up the gulch.

  "Tell him, Jim!" cried Clonmel. "Tell him—"

  "Be quiet," said Silver, with iron in his voice. "I won't speak a word to persuade him."

  "But don't let him go thinking that—" began Clonmel.

  "It's better this way," answered Silver.

  He stood there calm and still, and I saw Taxi disappear around the first elbow turn.

  All of this had been quiet enough, but somehow it seemed to me a lot more terrible than all that had happened since we first entered the Cary Valley and Chuck Cary had made a prisoner of me.

  There was something wrong about it all, and my heart ached right up in my throat.

  "Ah, Jim," muttered Clonmel, "why did you do it? Why did you do it to Taxi of all the men in the world?"

  "Because," said Silver, "he should not have suspected me. If there's suspicion in a friend, there's lead in gold. There are other reasons, too."

  "Tell me what they are then!" I exclaimed. "People have a right to know the truth about you, Silver!"

  "I'll tell you what they are," said Silver. "That man has followed me through hell-fire. He'll still follow me if I give him the right word. But I won't give him the word. There may be safety for one man, on the trail that I have to follow, but there can't be safety for two. Not in the end. And it's better for Taxi to leave me now."

  "Ah, Jim, but it's hard," said Clonmel. "It's breaking my heart to think of Taxi going off like that!"

  "Your heart, Harry?" said Silver, in a curiously calm voice. "Is it breaking your heart?"

  "I mean," explained Clonmel, "that if—"

  "Let's not talk," answered Silver, more gently than ever. "I'd rather not talk for a while."

  I was glad of the silence. As it lasted, it gave me a chance to expand all the ideas that I had of Jim Silver. It gave me a chance to look at him and realize what he was. And all the long moment that followed he kept growing in my conception until I could see him for what he was—a man without cruelty or unkindness or selfishness or smallness in his heart.

  No wonder that Taxi at last had broken away, I thought. To associate even for a short time with Jim Silver was to realize before long all of one's faults, set off by all the greatness of his soul.

  It still seems a strange thing to me, when I consider that scene—and the strangest part of it all, at the time, was the quiet of Silver. I did not know him so well then. I thought that Silver, like all men, would have to make a noise when he was greatly moved. But I was wrong.

  After a time, he turned about and looked across the plain toward the house of Cary.

  "I'm going over there," he said. "I think one man could do what three could not. But if there's something inside you that makes you want to come along, I can't honorably send you back. You'd better say so long, though."

  He waved his hand to both of us, and then started along the edge of the cliff, toward a gap in the distance that promised an easy way of getting down to the level of the plain below.

  Big Clonmel, without more than a moment's hesitation, strode out after Frosty and the master, but I waited until all three were out of sight among the rocks.

  Then it seemed to me that the dying noise of the footfalls was striking right in upon my heart. I pulled myself together with a jump, and ran suddenly after them.

  CHAPTER XXI

  The Revelation

  WE went down off the highland to the plain. We went down like pigeons among hawks, like small boats into a sea of pirates. We went down on foot into that land where savages worse than Indians might be cruising about on their swift horses. And if a rasher act were ever undertaken, at least I've never heard of the attempt.

  You may say that all of us had our eyes open, though as a matter of fact I think it is only fair to state that no mind was working calmly and clearly except that of Jim Silver.

  He knew the odds and he had suggested the expedition. The rest of us followed him simply because pride and shame are stronger than fear, in most of us. But I know that I went with the feeling that a knife was pressed against my throat every step of the way.

  There was no such thing as skirting about the plain and trying to get at the house from a favorable angle. Silver seemed to trust everything to chance, in this stage of the business. He simply headed straight forward toward the trees, and the only precaution he took was that Frosty was sent out perhaps a hundred yards in the lead.

  We were half-way over the plain when Frosty came racing back toward us. He stopped and whined in front of Silver, and Silver looked carefully down at him, as though he were listening to words. My hair fairly lifted when Silver straightened and actually laughed.

  "Rabbits!" he said. "Frosty has spotted a warren —that's all!"

  It was as though he had understood the whined language of the beast, but, of course, it was no such matter. I dare say that since there are not so many species of game, the action of Frosty in reporting them, his degree of excitement, and his whole behavior would tell
his master just about what his nose had read on the ground.

  At any rate, we went straight on, with Frosty again leading up, and we came without a halt closer and closer to the trees, until we could see the glints of lamplight that reached out from the house. So we entered the region of shadow and halted there for a moment.

  I was wishing for Taxi more than for anything else. Taxi could open a lock as any other man could crack a walnut. Taxi knew how to make his feet travel over dead leaves with scarcely a rustle. For night work how could there be another man in the world to compare with him?

  That was what I was thinking when I stood with the other two inside the rim of trees.

  Silver said in a lowered voice: "They're inside, having a good time. But a few of them are behind the house. You hear their voices sounding in the open air? Well, those are probably the ones who are guarding Parade. Christian knows enough not to take any chances, and that means that perhaps they're keeping a strict watch on their whole house as well as on the corral where Parade may be."

  As he read off the sounds and diagnosed the character of them, I listened more intently. It was true that there were voices sounding muffled, from inside the house, and others that came to us more largely and freely from the open air behind the house. When we went on, we found it was exactly as Silver had suggested. We rounded the house, still keeping safely back in the trees, and behind it we saw a corral with four lanterns put up on corner posts, hanging just inside them so that the flames were throwing shadows toward the outside and light toward the inside. And inside the corral they picked out and flared over the body of the chestnut stallion.

  I saw that horse as I never saw a horse before or afterward. Because the question I asked myself at the time was: Should three sane men risk their lives in order to redeem a stolen animal? But as I stared at the glorious beauty and strength of the stallion, I decided that we were not foolish and that it was almost better that the three of us should die than that Barry Christian should continue to own the horse.

  But how were we to get to it?

  Silver drew us back into the trees. Then, when it was safe for him to speak, he said:

  "You see how it is. Even if we were thirty instead of three, it would be almost ridiculous for us to try to get at Parade. They've arranged it very cleverly. The light of the lanterns only hits the horse. The guards are posted away from the corral in the shadow. If we try to rush Parade, we'll get nothing but bullets. I could whistle to him and bring him out here in three jumps, but they've hobbled his feet!"

  That was true. As Silver himself confessed the impossibility of doing anything by a direct raid on the horse, I felt a greater and greater relief. It was almost like getting permission to go home. As he made his pause, I even said:

  "Well, then we'd better get out of here!"

  "I think you had," said Silver. "What comes next is a thing that silence will help along more than numbers. You'd better go back, Avon. Good-by. Good-by, Harry."

  "What's up now?" asked Harry.

  "I'm not sure. But it's nothing that you could help in," said Jim Silver. "Good-by to both of you. I'll be seeing you later."

  As he talked, I saw a shadowy something move behind a tree. I snatched up my rifle to the level and aimed at the spot where I had seen the ghost stir.

  "There's something—there!" I gasped.

  Even with the moonlight from above and the thin rays of lamplight from the side, there was still only the faintest hint at illumination. The three of us stood rigid, while Silver, with a sweep of his hand, sent Frosty forward.

  I saw the great beast drop on his belly and crawl toward the tree. I was certain that something was concealed behind the trunk. There had been no opportunity for it to escape, whatever it was. I waited, bracing myself, to hear the savage snarl and see the leap of the wolf. Instead, as Frosty slid around the tree, I saw him straighten to his feet and then heard him whine, a guttural sound that was as close to kindness as he knew how to make.

  Immediately after that, the voice of Taxi said, with what seemed to me unnecessary loudness: "I couldn't keep away from the party, Jim."

  He stepped out before us. I never was so glad to hear a voice, never so glad to see a form, in all my days.

  "Ah, Taxi—" said Silver, starting forward.

  "Stay where you are!" commanded Taxi sharply. "I'll come all the way."

  Silver halted. Taxi walked up to him and held out his hand.

  "I was wrong, Jim," he said. "It was Clonmel. And I was wrong. If you think more of him than you do of me, it's because he's the better man. I want you to take me back."

  Jim Silver gripped the hand quickly. Then he said:

  "Clonmel is not a better man. There's no better man in the world than Taxi. But he's my brother."

  "Brother?" gasped Taxi.

  "Brother?" I breathed.

  "I would have told you both before," said Silver, "but I've been having an idea that if people know he's my brother, they'll be apt to follow him with some of the hate that they owe me."

  "I guessed it!" groaned Taxi. "At the start I guessed it. Not that he was your brother. But I saw the flash of the likeness. Something jumped like a spark inside me! Ah, what a fool I am. Clonmel, I beg your pardon for the talk I handed out to you."

  Clonmel chuckled a little.

  "You could say worse than that, and I'd take it with a smile," he said. "I'm that glad to have you back with us, Taxi. Tell Jim that whatever idea he has in mind, he's wrong, and ought to forget it!"

  Just then, a braying sound of laughter came out of the house with such a raucous blast that it sounded as though mocking voices were moving toward us through the trees.

  Taxi merely said: "What Jim decides is what I decide."

  Silver went on: "I can't hold back. I've got to go ahead. I'm going into the house and try to kill Christian. He's in there with the men who are laughing."

  "All right," said Taxi, after a moment. "I go with you. You may need me to open the doors."

  "And I go," said Clonmel.

  "You stay away," said Silver. "An open-air raid to get Parade, that's one thing. To tackle that house with all the poison inside it, that's a different matter altogether!"

  "I go!" said Clonmel.

  "Harry," said Silver, "you have a father and a mother."

  "The same ones that you have," answered Clonmel.

  "I've been the same as dead to them these many years," said Silver.

  "There's never a day that they're not praying for you! Why else was I sent out to try to find you?" said Clonmel.

  "God forgive me if I bring you to the end of your trail!" groaned Silver. "But I think that this may be the last night for either Christian or me! I'm going straight on to the house and take the luck that's planned for me. Any one of you can follow me that wishes."

  He turned about sharply. A wave of his hand brought Frosty to his heels. And so Silver walked ahead of us through the trees. I saw Taxi and Clonmel walk on behind him, side by side. For my part, I wanted to remain behind, but a devil of the perverse inside me drew my heavy feet after them once more.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Den of Danger

  SUPPOSE you were to walk up to a lion which is wide awake, but whose glances, so far, have failed to notice you? That was the way I felt when I walked up with the other three, and Frosty, toward the Cary house. It was like a face, the face of a monstrous and dangerous beast. And though some windows and doors were blank, others were rimmed about or lighted over from the inside. And the whole place swelled and stirred and hummed with life, and every atom of that life was poisonous to us.

  We went up to a door at the side of the first wing, where not a light was showing, and Taxi bent over the heavy steel lock for only a moment. Then that door opened soundlessly. He pulled out a little pocket torch and flashed the ray of light like knife strokes across and across the darkness inside. Two or three glimpses and he seemed to know where everything was. But as for me, it was a question of following a leader, wh
en we got inside that room. Clonmel came last and shut the door behind us.

  At once I was breathing the hot, still air of the house, defiled with odors of cookery. There was the exact sense of having been shut into the lions' den— not sleeping lions, mind you, but beasts which simply had failed to notice us, so far. There was only one comfort, which was that the floor was the naked earth, and there were no creaking boards to trouble us.

  A footfall ran like thunder through the second story, clumped down some stairs, and thudded quietly over the ground.

  By the sound the runner made, I could conjure up the picture of the man—tall, wide-shouldered, powerful, dark-eyed—a true Cary. Every man of them all was fit to tie me into knots, I felt sure.

  We went through two or three more dark rooms with only an occasional flash from the torch of Taxi to show us the way, then leaving us to struggle through the murk, trusting our hands more than our memories to guide us past the clumsy, home-made furniture.

  We were making on toward a center of much noise. The last flash of the electric torch had showed me Frosty slinking at the heels of his master—and then a door before us was jerked open, and a great tide of light poured over us.

  I was blinded, stunned by the brightness. Then a grip on my arm called me back to myself and drew me slowly aside. And now I could see that a tall young Cary was standing there in the doorway with his head turned, looking back toward his companions who were scattered about a long table, drinking and smoking. The big earthenware jugs held moonshine whisky, I could guess; and the water-colored liquid that stood in the glasses was faintly stained with yellow. Three or four lanterns were scattered irregularly down the table which was composed of big ax-hewn planks laid over heavy trestles. The feet of the trestles had sunk, with weight and time, into the ground. So the table was rather low and made it easy for the Carys to spread their elbows at the board, or for some of them to lean back in their chairs and rest their spurred heels on the wood.

  They looked to me like a gang of pirates before, not after, sacking a town. Money or blood—they had an equal thirst for both.