by Brand, Max
Next, he sat up. It was not easy. His arms were strong, but his back seemed to have been broken. Every time he stirred, he discovered that the wave of agony swept him to the verge of the abyss of darkness. So he had to handle himself very daintily.
He was a brain with a pair of able hands. He had no body at all; he had no legs, either. Babe had attended to that. Babe was thorough.
First Taxi got out the slender pencil of his flashlight and cut the darkness with the ray. In an instant he had seen all that was present.
Then he took out a picklock and almost in three touches he solved the three locks which held him. He was free — except for the weights and chains which the torture laid upon him.
XI
Raw Gold
CRAWLING was hard. Rolling was much better, except that half of it which brought his back against the ground. With greater and greater frequency he was threatened with fainting spells. Each time he found himself lying on his face he paused to breathe a while.
When he came to the heap of little buckskin sacks, he indulged in another moment of rest, which he employed by making his hands fumble at the sacks. They were filled with something loose but so heavy that it was very hard and compact. He unknotted the ear of one sack and onto the ground poured out a stream of the contents. He put the spot of light from the torch on it and saw that it was a current of gold dust, still ebbing out rapidly. It built a glistening pyramid that pushed its head against the open place in the sack; then the fine dust ran no more.
It seemed to Taxi that everything was explained now. Where there is raw gold, men will become beasts. These fellows in the cabin were all animals because under their feet was a treasure. Mere blood is nothing. The sight of it may make a sensitive fellow a bit sick. But the sight of gold will make the same man into a ravening mad dog.
Taxi smiled, and then he went on until he was at the foot of the steps. He could not roll up them, of course. He had to lay hold on the steps one by one with his hands and edge himself higher and higher. He could only move his body with a slight serpentine wriggling in order to help his arm power. And each time he planted his chin on a higher step, he shut his bruised, burning eyes and breathed again.
When he got to the top of the stairs, there was a shallow landing. He lay there for a long time, breathing, waiting. After that, he was able to reach the knob of the door and with an effort pull himself to his knees.
Then all the strength seemed to go out of his arms. A shuddering fit of weakness threatened to let him fall. That, however, he endured.
He got out the picklock again, and worked with it in the lock. He felt almost a touch of regret as he solved the thing. It was strange that a great man such as Barry Christian should trust to such simple locks. But even the greatest of us have our weak or our careless moments.
The door pressed open. A hand from without seemed to be working it. Then he realized that it was the hand of the wind. The sweet, pure air entered his body and gave him a new soul. The old one blew away and a confident, more living soul was in him.
High above, he could see the bright glittering of the stars, dancing with the eternal life. On this dark, low earth we cannot hide our actions.
There were more steps to climb now. He went up them in the same manner, using his chin as a pry against his weight, pulling with his arms, wriggling his body a little, snakelike.
And so he came to the top and lay among leaves and pine needles that had drifted over the surface of the ground.
Out of the night the rows of big pines seemed to be slowly crowding toward him, saying: “We will shield you from observation.”
He had been wrong, he decided, about open country. Wherever there are men, there is pain to endure; only in the open country can one find the gentleness of nature and the peace. As for himself, he had lived among men as a wolf lives among sheep. That was the only reason why they had seemed necessary to him.
Now he could work his body sidewise and commenced the rolling. Gradually he hitched around and started turning himself. It was not so painful, out here. The needles that cushioned the ground gave him ease. He had gone perhaps ten turns of his body. He was almost among the trees when a door of the house slammed and a great ocean of lantern light began to sweep across the ground. It came in waves, measured out by the beat of the steps of the man who carried the lantern — a low, squat man. That was Babe!
He went straight on to the head of the cellar steps, humming in the depths of his throat. Then, with a shout, he whirled about. He came straight at Taxi and flopped him on his back. Taxi closed his eyes against the agony of that sudden turn. But, instantly mastering that weakness, he smiled straight up into the eyes of the giant.
“By the dear old hind hinges of hell’s gate,” said Babe, greatly moved.
He raised his voice to a thunderous roar.
“Hey! Come on!” he yelled. “Hey, everybody come out! Everybody come on out! You hoboes, come out here and see a gent that has a brain in his head.”
Pokey got there first, racing like a greyhound. He leaned over Taxi and cursed with wonder. The others came streaming after.
“You seen him,” said Babe, making a speech of a sort of proud despair. “You seen that he couldn’t walk. He can’t walk now. He can’t even crawl. He can only snake along. But he takes off three sets of the irons and he opens the locked door and he comes up here to take a little crawl and get the air. A kind of a constitutional was what he wanted. He sort of needed to work up an appetite, I guess. Now, you gents seen him before and right here you can see him this minute. If anybody told me this, I’d bust him on the jaw and call him a liar.”
He took Taxi by one foot and dragged him back to the head of the cellar stairs. He jerked him to his feet and swung back one ponderous fist.
“Get back where you belong!” said Babe, and smashed Taxi in the face with his full force.
The blow picked Taxi off his feet, hurled him backward. He struck on the steps below. A great red flame burst up before his mind. Then he lay at peace, perfectly still.
XII
Two Strange Things
JIM SILVER, leaving the boarding house, had merely said to Sally Creighton: “You can’t tell. He’s late, but he looks to me like the sort of fellow who may enjoy late hours.”
She shrugged her shoulders and kept her troubled eyes on him.
“I don’t know, Mr. Silver,” she said. “I only know that I’m terribly worried. He’s not like other people around here. He’s more like Joe Feeley.”
Silver nodded and went out to look. The first place he looked in was the Round-up Bar, because he knew certain features of its repute. There was no one in it except Pudge, the veteran bartender.
He nodded his head and made his puffed, debauched eyes smile.
“Evening, Silver!” he said. “Step right in and have one on the house.”
“Thanks,” said Silver.
He took one finger of whisky and drank it slowly. The first taste was a critical one, to determine the possible presence of unknown substances in the drink. He finished and nodded to Pudge.
“Have a round on me,” he invited.
“I don’t mind if I do,” said Pudge.
So the glasses were filled again.
“I’m looking for a fellow who may have been in here this evening,” said Silver. “About five ten. Slim-looking. Eastern style. Pale. Black hair.”
“Haven’t seen him,” said Pudge. “Hold on a minute. Yes, I guess he was in here for a minute. Had a glass of beer.”
“That’s right,” agreed Silver. “Beer is probably what he would drink. He didn’t have the whisky eyes. When did he go out?”
“I wasn’t looking at the clock,” said the bartender. “A while back, was all.”
“Anybody with him?”
“Not when he come in.”
“But when he went out?”
“Yeah. He’d hitched onto a party of two or three. Three there was.”
“Who were they?”
“I didn’t place ‘em,” said Pudge. “All strangers to me, they looked like. Big fat feller was one of ‘em. He was talking about traps and bounties and cursing his luck this season. I guess he was a trapper, all right. There was one they called ‘Texas,’ too. Had a star embroidered on the tops of his boots. And another was an old hand. About fifty, I’d say. Grizzled, kind of. Sort of down on their luck, all three of ‘em looked like to me.”
“Three of them, eh?” said Silver. “Heeled?”
“Heeled? Nothing on the outside, but they sort of looked heeled, if you know what I mean.”
“What were they talking about?”
“A game. I didn’t hear everything they talked about. The gent you’re after don’t talk up very loud and bold. And you notice where there’s one gent talks soft, it tames down the others, too.”
“It does,” agreed Silver. “They talked as though they were going off to start a game of cards, did they?”
“That’s what they talked like.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Silver to the bar, rubbing the tips of his fingers over the smooth varnish. “Cards? Cards?”
In the profundity of his thought, as he tried to fit card playing into his optical and mental picture of the stranger, he lifted his head and looked toward the ceiling.
“Hello!” said he. “Somebody been shooting up the place?”
He pointed to a hole in the ceiling’s plaster.
Pudge turned suddenly about. With his back to Silver, he bent his head until his fat red neck formed a dozen deep wrinkles above his collar.
“Oh, that?” asked Pudge, pointing in turn.
He turned around and faced Silver.
“That was weeks ago,” said Pudge. “That crazy gent, Larue, was in here. He’s always pulling a gun and doing tricks when they ain’t wanted. He gets to doing a double roll, and a gun goes off and I’m glad to tell it didn’t nick anything but the ceiling.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, I dunno. A long spell back. That Larue is a tough hombre, Silver.”
Pudge leaned a little across the bar, glanced toward the swing doors, and then lowered his voice to confidential tones.
“A gent like Larue is poison to a bartender, Silver. Plain poison. He’s a bad one to have around. I don’t dare to throw him out, but havin’ him do his drinkin’ here turns a terrible lot of people away from my bar. Peaceable gents don’t like to have a wild cat like that rubbin’ elbows with ‘em alongside a bar.”
“True,” said Silver. “They don’t like it, and a lot of them won’t have it.”
He turned and regarded, for the first time, a small dark spot on the floor. He rubbed it with his toe, and the spot spread a little.
“Blood on the floor, Pudge,” said he.
“Blood?” said Pudge, starting a little. His eyes grew very wide and round. Then he added: “How did that happen? Oh, sure. That gent — that grizzled old one — he gets a nosebleed, a regular spouter. Consumption, or something like that, I’d say. By the caved-in look of his chest, consumption, I’d say.”
“Would you?” said Silver, smiling.
The bartender regarded the smile and frowned. “Why, yes,” he said, “I’d call it the con. What would you call it?”
“Bunk,” said Silver.
“Hold on, Silver. I don’t foller your drift,” said Pudge.
“Why, there are a lot of queer things,” said Silver, “around your bar to-night. There’s blood that can fall all the way from a man’s nose and hit the floor without spattering. And there’s a bullet hole in the ceiling that still leaks a few grains of plaster from time to time, even though it was made three weeks ago. Two strange things, I’d say!”
Pudge grew, gradually, the deepest of crimsons. He dropped his head a little and began to polish the bar with a cloth which he picked up from the shelf beneath it.
“There might even,” said Silver, “be a little pile of plaster on the floor under that hole in the ceiling. Mind if I take a look behind the bar?”
“I do mind,” growled Pudge. “The public ain’t welcome behind my bar, Silver.”
“Never make any exceptions?” asked Silver.
Pudge put back his towel beneath the bar. His hands remained out of sight.
“I don’t make no exceptions,” said Pudge slowly. “Not even for a Silver.”
So Silver dropped his left hand lightly on the edge of the bar, and his right hand, with a light gesture, picked a Colt from beneath his coat. There were four extra inches on the long barrel of that gun, and yet it was a feather in the practiced grasp of Silver.
“Whatcha want?” asked Pudge, as the white came into his face in streaks, to take the place of the red.
“I want you to back up,” said Silver. “Back up slowly, Pudge. Keep your hands at your sides, and back up. Move carefully. You’re an old-timer around here, and you know that accidents can happen. Don’t die of self-defense.”
Something bumped with a metallic clank on the shelf below the bar. Gradually Pudge drew back against the row of bottles before his mirror. His hands were empty, and the fingers were twitching. His stomach worked in and out with his rapid breathing.
“This here is an outrage, Silver,” he said. “You been havin’ your way too long, all over the map. Maybe it’s about time for you to hold up a little! Maybe you’re startin’ to go too fast.”
“Maybe,” agreed Silver, and planting his left hand again on the bar, he leaped lightly over it.
One hand of Pudge had gone out to grasp the neck of a bottle as he saw the body of Silver in the air, but observing that he was still covered by that famous long-barreled gun, he relaxed his grip again.
Silver stood before him, laughing.
“You’ve got the old fighting stuff in you. You’ve got plenty of it, Pudge,” said he. “I like it, and I like you, in spots. You might hoist your hands over your head, though, while you’re about it.”
“A plain holdup!” exclaimed Pudge.
Silver pointed to the floor.
“You let the dust lie on the floor for several weeks, Pudge, do you?” he asked, pointing to a scattered little heap of plaster. “You scrub up all the rest of the floor, but you leave that pile?”
He turned back on the bartender.
“And a gun under the bar, too. It’s a rough town, Pudge, but not as rough as all that!”
“Your own business ought to keep your hands full,” snarled Pudge. “Edge away from mine, will you?”
“I can’t do it,” answered Silver. “I’m sorry, Pudge, but I simply can’t do it. Because I have an idea that you may know a few things that will do me good.”
He picked up the Colt that lay on the shelf beneath the bar, commenting: “Good old single-action, with a filed-off trigger, eh? Didn’t know that you could fan a gun, Pudge!”
Pudge swore fervently.
“And here,” said Silver, “is something that looks as though you brushed your hair with the butt of this gun. Hold on, though. It’s not the color of your hair. It’s black!”
He pushed the gun slowly onto the bar. His face had turned rigid with anger. His eyes, for the moment, burned as pale and as bright as the fighting eyes of Taxi.
“The bit of hair that’s caught on the butt of your gun, Pudge,” said he, “would fit in with the hair on the head of Taxi, that Easterner I’m looking for. Know that?”
Pudge growled: “Is there only one man in the world that has black hair?”
“You hit Taxi with that gun,” said Silver. “I’ve almost a mind to hit you with mine, Pudge. You’re fat, and you’re old, but even rats get gray and puffy, sometimes. And I’ve an idea that you’re a rat.”
Pudge said nothing. It was not a time for speech, and he knew it.
“You hit Taxi. And then some people took him away. Was Charlie Larue in the party?”
The hit made Pudge wince a little. He moistened his lips and shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“You lie,” said Silver “Larue wa
s in the gang. Who else?”
“I don’t know,” said Pudge.
“That blood on the floor came from Taxi, did it?”
“I don’t know,” said Pudge.
“Was he killed?”
“I don’t know,” said Pudge.
Silver drew in a breath quick and deep.
“If you were only ten years younger, Pudge — ” He sighed.
He vaulted over the bar again. Pudge stood with his hands still above his head.
Silver turned and walked deliberately toward the door. The gun of Pudge lay right before him on the bar, and still he failed to lower a hand and grab at it.
Not until the swing doors had closed behind Silver did he bring down his hands.
There was a high stool behind the bar, and onto this he slumped. The starch had gone out of him. There were no muscles in his back. He folded his hands on the bar and dropped his forehead on his hands. His shoulders heaved with his breathing.
Silver, when he reached the street, glanced up and down the wide, empty thoroughfare. It was probably useless for him to ask questions. Besides, he knew that it was the work of Barry Christian’s men. If Larue was in the game, then Christian had a hand in it, and that meant that the disappearance of Taxi was simply another act in the long drama of Silver’s fight with the great outlaw.
He looked helplessly around him at the mighty sweep of the mountains against the stars. Barry Christian was not far away. He was reasonably sure of that. When men like Larue and Pokey and others of celebrity remained near the town, it was most highly probable that the great Barry Christian was himself close at hand. But in the great forests, in the rock nests of the higher mountains, in the entanglement of ravines that split the upper slopes, whole armies could be hidden. It was a true hole-in-the-wall country; that was one reason why Barry Christian was favoring it with his presence.
Silver went back to the boarding house and found that his hostess was in the kitchen.
She had finished washing the dishes. Now she was scrubbing out baking tins and frying pans, using sand soap and a heavy brush and a great deal of elbow grease.
