Mountain Riders
Page 15
“Your hands are badly used up. You’d better stay here, Derry,” said Silver.
“Maybe I’d let the tenderfeet go hang,” said Derry, “but I told you about the girl who cut the wires off my wrists. When I got down the cliff, I lighted a match to let her know that I was safe. But a match light isn’t all she wants to see. I’m going with you, Silver.”
Silver, for a moment, said nothing. It was Taxi who finally murmured:
“You’ve read a man right at last, Jim, have you? Well, I’m sorry for it, because, after this, you’ll trust your judgment every time, and your judgment is always that men are honest. Derry, because you turn out a white man, you’re shortening Jim’s life for him!”
25
FROSTY’S FANGS
TAXI’S horse they left behind them. Parade they brought along, to the surprise of Derry, but not until the hoofs of the great horse had been carefully muffled in soft wrappings of leather. When they came to the entrance of the gorge, they paused, and Silver put a hand on the shoulder of Taxi and the shoulder of Derry.
He said: “I’m going first, with Frosty ahead of me. He’s been our lead horse more than once, and he’s going to lead again tonight. You come after me, Taxi. Derry follows, and Parade will crowd you a little, because he’ll want to get close to me. We don’t know where we’ll find the gorge blocked with the Carys. Frosty will find them for us. It’s going to be dark in there, but not too dark for shooting, I suppose. That means we have to upset them before they have a look at us. And after Frosty has found them for us, I think he might upset them, too. If he does, I want you to remember that when it comes to close quarters, clubbed guns are apt to be better than bullets.”
“Jim,” said Taxi mournfully, “are you trying to spare the blood again? They’re waiting ready to shoot us full of holes. Are you going to tie our right hands behind our backs before we go after them?”
“Even if they were wild Indians,” said Silver, “there’s no need to do more than our own safety calls for. The chances are that Frosty will fail. In that case, we’ll have a shower of lead to walk through — and that means we have to shoot as fast and straight as we know how. But luck may help us though. I feel luck in the air, just now!”
They entered the gorge in the single file which Silver had indicated. To Derry, as he went watchfully along, the movements of the men were not particularly worth noticing; and even Frosty was not particularly to be wondered at as he scouted ahead. Any good dog could have been taught to do the same, perhaps. But Parade astonished Derry, for the great horse moved like a hunting cat, stealthily, putting down his feet with care, bending his knees to make the shock of the hoof fall less. And when Derry turned and saw those shimmering eyes of the stallion by the starlight, he felt, in fact, that they could not fail, but that Silver had harnessed together uncanny power of dumb creation to work his will.
They went more than half-way down the ravine without the slightest pause, but where the waterfall lunged suddenly over a twenty-foot drop and hurled spray three times that height into the air, Silver halted the procession.
He drew Derry and Taxi close to him and shouted in their ears above the thunder of the falling water:
“Frosty’s found something, and it must be men. I can tell by the way he’s acting. They’re down there at the foot of the fall somewhere, waiting. Taxi, you have the eyes of a cat and you can see in the dark. Go take a look. Be careful, but see what you can.”
Taxi, accordingly, went forward, and Derry waited at the side of Silver for a few moments, feeling the wet of the spray settling on his hair and his face.
Then Taxi returned.
“They’re down there,” he said, “but they’re covered up behind rocks. I saw one man move. I got a glimpse of his head and shoulders. That was all. They’re down there in cover. We’ve got to get over a twenty-foot drop of rock that slopes so fast you could almost slide on it. Jim, there’s no use going ahead. They’re able to blow the tar out of a hundred men, as fast as the hundred show their heads. This way is blocked!”
“I think I know how to unblock it,” answered Silver. “It’s a savage way, but we’ve got savages against us. Follow on close behind me, but not too close.”
He made a gesture, and Frosty came to his feet.
“Let him smell the blood on your hands, Derry,” directed Silver.
Derry held out his hands, and saw the shimmering white fangs of Frosty as the wolf crouched and snarled savagely. Then Silver kneeled by the wolf, talking to him words that Derry could not understand.
After that, he took Frosty gradually forward until they were close to the edge of the rock. For a moment, even in the dimness of the starlight, Silver could be seen restraining the great wolf by the ruff of his mane. When he loosed the animal, it was like letting go of a stone at the edge of a cliff. Frosty leaped over the edge of the declivity. An instant later, Silver waved his long arm to the others, and followed the way down the sloping rock.
Derry had received a revolver from Silver before they started to march. He had no chance to use it, however, for as he lurched, staggering down the sharp descent of the rock, he saw three men springing up before the furious assault of Frosty, and even above the roaring of the cataract, Derry could hear the screaming voices that shouted:
“Mad wolf! Mad wolf!”
They saw the charging form of Jim Silver then, and turned and fled, throwing their rifles this way and that.
The thing was over in a moment. The shrilling whistle of Silver called back Frosty. Three disarmed Carys were racing down the gorge — and the way had been cleared.
The three men — Silver, Taxi, and Derry — took it at a run, and came out into the open of the wider valley beyond.
They could see the three shadowy forms of the fleeing men leaping before them, head and shoulders against the stars. They could see, in the east, the brightening pyramid of light that announced the rising of the moon, and directly in front of it was the huddle of shadows that was the camp of the tenderfeet. At that same time, from this side and that of the encampment, out of the rocks and the shrubbery that surrounded it and under the bright eye of the rising moon itself, shadows of men sprang out, yelling like fiends.
Silver turned, flung himself into the saddle of Parade, and raced the horse forward, firing into the air as he went, shouting in a tremendous voice. And after him ran Derry and Taxi, firing in the same way into the air.
In the camp there was a wild tumult at once, but that rear charge was too much for the Carys, fighting men though they were.
Those directly in front of Silver’s advance split to the right and to the left, yelling that they were sold. They ran with wings on their heels. The panic spread. That rush which should have wiped out the tenderfeet in a welter of blood turned into a mere ghostly gesture of danger that recoiled; and those wild men of the mountains swiftly were lost in the brush and the rocks. Their shouting and the occasional sound of gunfire were all that remained of the danger.
It had been finished in so brief a time that Derry was hardly in the camp before there was no further need of guns.
The moon came up in its full brightness to show those frightened gold-miners the termination of a scene that should have been the end of them.
They were not all tenderfeet, at that, for one grizzled old fellow who leaned on a long rifle in the middle of the encampment, where the fire had been built the evening before, said to the rest of the crew:
“Keepin’ ward and watch was what I been preachin’ to you, and keepin’ ward and watch was what I was doin’ when them scalawags jumped out of the brush yellin’ their heads off. But one gun in one pair of hands wasn’t no good agin’ them. And before the rest of you had got the sleep out of your eyes, you’d ‘a’ been dead men. You’d ‘a’ been with the angels, my lads. And then come Jim Silver out of the gorge, and Parade leggin’ it toward us, and then these other two, here. Like three wolves after a pack of hound dogs, and you can hear them hound dogs still howlin’ and yappin’,
and brawlin’ off there in the night!”
Those startled miners gathered with awe around their rescuers, but Derry was already gripping the arm of Silver and saying:
“Leave part of them here to guard their camp. Ask the rest of them to come with us, Jim. Up yonder I left the girl who gave us all the chance we had to do this. Will you ask them to ride with us, Jim?”
Ride with their saviours?
They yelled their pleasure. Saddles were jerked on to the backs of horses. In two minutes they were under way, with Derry thumping the ribs of an earnest little mustang as he strove vainly to catch up with the mighty, bounding strides of Parade.
So they stormed over the slope and over the edge of plateau. Here and there they searched, and the voice of Derry rang with agony as he called for Molly.
But all they could find of the Cary encampment were a few scattered and forgotten articles of clothing. The men were gone, and with them they had taken Molly. She was nowhere to be found.
Up there in the ragged mass of the mountains, perhaps, they were hurrying her along. And who could follow through the naked rocks over which the clan was fleeing?
Silver gripped the shoulder of Derry.
“There are three of us, and Frosty,” he said. “We can’t expect the rest of these men to go. Numbers will never catch that outfit, anyway. But we’ll hang on their trail till they can wish that they had wings to get away from us!”
26
THE PURSUIT
IT was arranged and started before the gold hunters had a chance to be well aware of what was happening. Whatever thanks they had to offer went unspoken, for the only thing that Silver asked was two saddled horses. They were his as soon as he had spoken. Down the valley, beyond the gorge, the tenderfeet were told, they would find Taxi’s horse — and keep it until called for.
Then the three men, with Frosty to guide them faultlessly on the way, entered the great rock wilderness of the mountain summits. They had the moon to help them, but the same moon was up there to help the Cary marksmen. The hat was lifted off Jim Silver’s head by one well-directed shot. Another cut through the shirt of Derry, under the pit of his arm. But most of the time they managed to keep to shelter, while pressing in.
Now and again they saw dim forms pelting away from one rear post to another.
Why do twenty men let three drive them, was the question in the mind of Derry. But one of the three was Silver, and even Barry Christian did not have money or persuasion enough to send the Carys back to face the rifle of Silver. Or perhaps Christian was no longer with the crew. That failure of the raid may have induced them to throw him off, and he, with an angling flight, might be working away in another direction through the uplands, while the Carys brought after them the effects of the attempt.
In the pink of the dawn, they were well above timber line and passing through a rolling plateau covered with mosses and lichens more than with grass. Small lakes lay here and there, looking up to the sky with far bluer eyes than the colour they were drinking up in return. And as they approached a badlands of broken rock again, Derry saw a woman sitting on a stone at the edge of a little creek.
She sat with her hands clasped around one knee, the posture of a man. Her arms were bare to the shoulders. When she turned her head, he could see the long gleam of the dark, braided hair that fell down her back.
He waved an arm and tried to shout. His voice slowly died in his throat.
Then: “Molly!” he thundered, and drove the mustang into a frantic gallop.
She waited till he was almost up to her before she got up from the stone. She was neither laughing nor weeping. She was as calm as the mountains around her when he flung himself from the back of the bronco and caught hold of her.
Something that was not indifference, but as quiet looked up at him from her eyes.
“The old man turned me loose,” she said. “Some of ’em wanted to hang me up by the hair of my head, because I’m a traitor. But the old man said it wasn’t to be. He told me to tell you that I’m a present to you, and the devil with you, he said.”
“Molly, you don’t care a whole heap, it looks like,” said Derry.
“Don’t I?” said she. “Well, if you’ll finish off mauling me around, your friends can stop pretending that they’ve got saddle girths to tighten. They can come on up. And I want to meet Jim Silver. I want to look him in the face.”
She looked at Derry and added: “And now that you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?”
“How old are you, Molly?” he asked.
“I’m not quite twenty,” she answered.
“How much is ‘quite’?”
“Oh, a year or so.”
“Molly, cross your heart to die if you’re more than — than — ” He hesitated, staring closely into her eyes. “By the leaping thunder, you’re not more than sixteen years old. Tell me I’m a liar if you dare!”
She said nothing. Trouble came into her eyes.
“It isn’t the years that matter,” she said. “It’s the kind of years that really count. Now you’ve hounded the Carys — you and your Jim Silver — into turning me out of the clan, what are you going to do with me, Tom?”
“I’m going to send you to school,” said he grimly. “You can stand some teaching, I guess.”
“Maybe the school will learn something, too,” said Molly.
He stared at her again. Wonder began to grow in him that she had told him the truth about her age. and that she had accepted his decision for her future.
“Molly,” he said, “how do you feel?”
“Sort of still and quiet,” she said. “How would you feel if you had twenty men in your family one minute, and only one the next?”
THE END
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Copyright © 1933 by Frederick Faust. Copyright © renewed 1960 by Dorothy Faust. The name Max Brand® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission. Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction.
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ISBN 10: 1-4405-4928-1
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