Brand, Max - Silvertip 06

by The Fighting Four

  "Chief! Lister! Mantry! I'm gone! The mare is dyin’ under me!"

  Bray reined up his horse, though Lister said savagely, curtly:

  "We can spare Lovell the best of the lot. Better let him go than have all of us snagged."

  But Bray, swinging in beside Lovell, motioned him to climb up behind him.

  "All for one, and one for all!" said Bray.

  He had read that in a book—he forgot where—and he liked the sound of it. It had a special meaning for him.

  "All for one, and one for all!" he thundered again, and got his horse under way once more.

  But in half a mile the extra weight, the up grade, and the approach of sounds of the pursuit from behind them told all four that Bray's horse could carry double no longer.

  Mantry was the lightest of the riders, except little Lovell himself. So Mantry took up the handicap, and managed very well with it, because Mantry was a genius when it came to handling horseflesh.

  But, inside of another mile or so, Mantry's own horse was stopping to a walk, and the men from Elkdale were thundering along closer.

  It was clear that the carrying of Jimmy Lovell might ruin all four of the men. And as Dave Lister took Lovell up behind him in turn, he shouted to Bray:

  "Name one of us! Let's make a choice. One of us had better go down than all of us. We're all lost if we try to pack extra weight. We're all done for—and there's a dead man back there in Elkdale! Mantry killed a man for us back there! Think, Phil! It's life or death!"

  Phil Bray gripped his horse hard with his knees and rose in the saddle, shouting:

  "All for one, and one for all, and damn the traitors what leave a partner in a pinch!"

  He added: "Can we duck down one of these side canyons, Dave?"

  For narrow ravines branched off on either side from the course of the valley down which the horses were straining.

  "Half of 'em are box canyons that'd bring us up agin' a solid wall," answered Lister. "I don't know which are which, but this one oughta be all right!"

  He swung to the right as he spoke, and rushed his tiring horse down the canyon. It opened big and wide and deep before them at the start. At the first turning it narrowed. At the next turn they saw before them a fifty-foot wall of almost sheer rock, and over it a thin flag of spray was falling and fanning out into a mist.

  That was the prospect before them. Behind them they heard the uproar, as of an advancing sea, when the posse from Elkdale swarmed into the head of the ravine that held them.

  They were bottled up. Surrender was all they had before them. And when they surrendered, they could contemplate the death of Hal Parson back there in Elkdale.

  Joe Mantry was not the only man who would hang for that murder. The entire quartet would be strung up.

  The shrill, piercing voice of Jimmy Lovell was heard yelling: "Lister, you got us into this blind pocket, damn you!"

  Lister turned in the saddle and jerked his elbow into the face of Lovell, knocking him headlong from the saddle.

  He got up with a great red streak across his features, silenced.

  Bray was akeady climbing the talus of broken rock at the base of the cliff, calling out:

  "We'll make a try, boys. There may be a chance here. One for all, all for one!"

  They scanned the height and the sheer, glistening face of the cliff with despair, but it was better to try something than to surrender.

  Up the talus they ran. Bray, leading, found a way of working up a cleft in the rock to the left that brought them within some seven or eight yards of the top. Farther it was absolutely impossible for any human being to mount the rock.

  But Bray shouted: "We'll make a ladder, boys! I'll be the first round. Here, Lister. Climb up over me. Come on, Mantry, and stand on Lister's shoulders. Now, Jimmy Lovell. You don't weigh anything. Up you go, boy. Up like a squirrel. If one of us can get away—and the loot with him—he can buy us out with a smart lawyer, maybe. Up with you!"

  They formed the living ladder as their chief commanded.

  Bray was the base of it, standing with bent head, submitting to weight after weight as Lister first clambered up and stood on his shoulders. Lister found a handhold on the rock to steady the pile as Joe Mantry in his turn climbed up the ladder and stood on the shoulders of Lister. Last of all came Jimmy Lovell, whining, clumsy with fear. And as at last he stood on top of the living ladder, he cried: "I can't reach it!"

  "Jump!" commanded Joe Mantry.

  "I can't—I'll fall and break my neck," groaned Jimmy Lovell.

  "Jump, or I'll throw you down with my own hands!" threatened Joe Mantry.

  So threatened, Lovell finally gathered courage enough to leap up. The force with which he sprang nearly tore the clinging fingers of Mantry from the rock. But Lovell had hooked his hands over the upper ledge, and now he scrambled to safety on the ledge above, while a bullet thudded against the cliff close to Phil Bray's face.

  Down came Mantry and Dave Lister, while Bray grabbed that precious canvas sack and, with a whirl, hurled it high up into the air, where the hands of Jimmy Lovell reached out. Then Lovell disappeared among the rocks and brush of the upper floor of the valley.

  Below came the men of Elkdale, with pale-faced Oliver Wayland riding at the head of them all. He was no expert with horses, but the consuming passion of his shame and his desire to strike one blow on behalf of the bank had brought him finally to the lead. It was his own quick guesswork rather than anything he saw or heard that had led him down this canyon from the main valley, and the rest of the hunt had streaked in behmd him.

  They saw the canvas sack disappear. They saw the three criminals who were brought to bay stand with then: hands raised above their heads in surrender.

  Joe Mantry, who saw red when there was a chance to fight, was snarling imprecations and wishing to get at his guns, but Phil Bray had commanded:

  "Jimmy Lovell will get us a lawyer who'd argue us out of the gates of hell. Don't go and make a fool of yourself, Joe, and let the rest of us into the hot soup. Take your time."

  "Suppose that Lovell decides to forget us and grab that coin for himself?" demanded Joe Mantry.

  "He knows the rule of the gang," said Bray. "One for all, and all for one. He won't forget that we carried him along to-day, and put ourselves into the soup for his sake. He looks like a rat, but he's a man, after all."

  That was why they stood there with their hands over their heads, while the men of Elkdale swarmed about them and put the handcuffs over their wrists.

  Two thirds of the party followed Wayland when a way had been found so that they could clamber to the upper level of the valley above the cliff. For three days Wayland hunted through the mountains. But he did not even know the face of the man he was pursuing. He merely had vague ideas about the build of him. The rest of the men from Elkdale gave up the chase, and at last Wayland himself surrendered the hunt and came gloomily back to Elkdale.

  There he found the doors of the bank closed, and the significant sign which he had known he would find was posted over the doors.

  Unshaven, haggard, he went to the house of Rucker. The banker himself, almost as unkempt as his cashier, opened the door and stood staring at him with a frozen face.

  "Well," said Wayland foolishly, "I didn't catch him."

  "No?" said Rucker, and a sardonic smile pulled at his lips.

  He kept his hand on the door, blocking the way, staring.

  "I suppose you're through with me?" asked Wayland.

  Rucker smiled again.

  And as the world spun about the eyes of Wayland, he said, "Can I see May?"

  After a moment, still blocking the way, Rucker turned his head and called out:

  "May!"

  A voice answered far off. Footsteps came hurrying. A door opened, and there she was, moving through the dimness of the hall.

  "Here's Wayland, wanting to know if he can see you," said Rucker.

  The girl halted. Like her father, she said nothing. She was white. In the d
ark of the hallway it seemed to Wayland that the white of her face was like a pearl shining against black velvet.

  The silence held for a frightful moment, and then Rucker slammed the door in Wayland's face.

  He turned and went down the steps to the street. It was not empty. Children were playing half a block away, running through the dust and yelling and laughing. In the solemn chamber of his soul the voices echoed mournfully.

  It was a good, brisk trial. The evidence was all there, laid out smoothly. But Wayland was not attending the sessions of the court. He was sitting in the little one-story hospital at the edge of the town, tending to Hal Parson, who was dying. The doctors had said that Parson could not live a day. He ended by living ten. But he could not eat. And gradually the strength went out of him.

  He endured a constant agony with wonderful courage. He seemed to have only one regret.

  "I let you down," he said to Wayland. "If I hadn't been slowed up with the booze, I would 'a' got that gun out and plastered one of the thugs. Maybe I would 'a' got the whole gang of 'em on the run. You can't tell. But I fell down on you after you trusted me!"

  "If I'd put up a man's fight," Wayland told him, "there wouldn't have been a need of you. I'm not a man. I'm a yellow dog. That's all!"

  "You?" said Hal Parson. He tried to laugh, but the pain stopped him. "You're a better man than you know your own self," he managed to gasp at last.

  Ten days after the robbery they buried Hal Parson.

  Rucker came to the funeral, and May Rucker brought flowers for the grave. Neither she nor her father would look at the white, drawn face of Wayland, who had arranged everything.

  He saw the earth heaped over the grave, and then stalked back into the town to the courtroom, where he could barely find standing room to squeeze himself in. He heard the last piece of evidence. He heard the faltering, rather casual appeal of the lawyer who had been appointed by the judge to defend the criminals. The result was a foregone conclusion.

  For Jimmy Lovell, after all, had proved himself more of a rat than he was a man; he had not come to the aid of his friends in need as they had come to his.

  Wayland, standing with a cold stone for a heart, saw the judge put on the black cap, heard him pronounce the words, "To be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!"

  All three of the men were to hang. That made little difference to Wayland. It seemed to him as though he were himself already dead and ready for the grave.

  IV—IN THE DEATH HOUSE

  The death house in the Atwater prison should be celebrated for its view. It stands above the rest of the building, rising Uke a tower between the inner and the outer yard. The windows peer down on the outer walls and look beyond them at the Ballater Mountains. That being the southeastern face of the Ballater Mountains, there isn't a tree or a shrub in sight; they are nothing but wind-sculptured rock whose flutings and hollows are painted blue, or brown, or rosy-gold, according to the time of day. There is a moment before noon where hardly a shadow is seen, for the sun strikes right against the average slope of the range and sets the crystals of the granite gleaming like intolerably bright little stars.

  The beauty of the mountains was generally unnoticed by the men who were spending time in the death house, but on this occasion one of the prisoners was an aesthete who could not overlook scenery. As the evening crept up from the plain like water, submerging the feet of the peaks, Dave Lister had summoned his companions. They crowded their heads beside his in order to look out through the little barred window.

  "A perfect picture, and a perfect evening to remember this earth by," said Dave Lister. "I hope you fellows will appreciate it."

  Joe Mantry, the jokester, and Phil Bray, the leader, looked grimly on their companion. The three should not have been permitted to occupy one cell, but Jefferson Bergman, the warden, knew that no man had ever escaped from the death house, and it seemed pretty apparent ttiat no man ever would escape. So the warden decided to reward these three for the unanimity of mind and the resolution of spirit with which they had stood together during the chase in which they had been captured, and the trial in which they had perjured themselves with a perfect singleness of heart. Since they were to hang at dawn, Jefferson Bergman was pleased to allow them to spend the last night of their lives in the same cell in the death house. That was the reason they were able to crowd their heads together at one window and listen to the slow, emotional voice of David Lister.

  Joe Mantry laughed.

  "Are you going to enjoy the scenery we'll have in hell?" he asked. "Are you going to call us to admire down there, Dave?"

  Phil Bray did not laugh. He never laughed. But his big mouth stretched a little in a grin.

  "No matter what the scenery is," he said, "we're going to have a chance to enjoy it together."

  "To the devil with the mountains, and let's get back to seven-up," said Joe Mantry. He was handsome, and dark, and slender, and a little too sleek. "But why," he added, "d'you think that we'll all stick together in hell? Won't we be shuffled apart?"

  "They can't," said Phil Bray. "Even in hell they can't pry partners loose."

  Dave Lister had gone back to his end of the table, where he was writing his last words with careful phraseology and with a still more careful pen. Dave was a forger of note, and he had selected at his hand for these last important words, the exact script of a celebrated traveler, millionaire, and poet whose handwriting Dave had studied long ago, and not in vain. That study had enabled Dave Lister to cash several important checks in the past; now it was permitting him to express himself in the strong, flowing characters of a poet of some note. But he suspended his pen above the paper and ran his pale fingers through the silken length of his hair while he answered the last remark.

  "Yes," he said, "we'll all be together in hell. Each of us is just as bad as the other. We weigh the same, and we'll sink to the same level."

  "No," said Phil Bray. "The kid, here, don't belong with us. He ain't done much. He's only been careless." Dave Lister tilted back his head and half closed his eyes.

  "Joseph Mantry," he said, "the murderer? Careless? How many men have you killed, Joe?" "Aw, shut up," said Mantry.

  "Twenty-one years old. Seven dead men behind him. Yes, he's been a little careless. Just a little careless. Matter of fact, you've never been happy except when you were careless, Joe. Am I right about that?"

  "I got a mind to sock you on the chin," said Joe Mantry.

  Dave Lister caressed his long, pointed, fragile chin. He smiled at Mantry.

  "That's all right, boy," he said.

  "But count the chief out," said Mantry. "Phil looks hard, but he's got a heart as big as a mountain."

  "Of course he has," said Lister, "and made of what makes mountains, too. Rock! Phil Bray is a lion; you're a murdering fox, Joe."

  "And what about yourself?" asked Mantry.

  "I'm a snake," said Lister.

  "Yeah, with a lot of poison in your tooth, too," accused Mantry.

  "Of course," said Lister, growing absent-minded. "Of course, plenty of poison."

  He turned his attention to his writing, doing a word at a time, sprawling out the letters with a fine dash and flourish, and then pausing until he had the next word in mind and had moved his pen for a moment in the air in order to prepare his hand for the next stroke on the paper.

  He continued to write for some time, while Joe Mantry, growing tired of the card game, pushed back his chair, left the table, and sauntered to the bars of the cell. Two guards were on duty in the corridor. Mantry said:

  "Hello, Bill. Want a drink?"

  The three had asked for whisky for their last night, and they had two bottles of it at hand.

  Bill licked his lips, started to rise from his chair, and then slumped back into it. He shook his head.

  "You know I can't take a shot while I'm on the job," he said.

  "I'm sorry," said Joe. "I'd like to have a drink with you, Bill, and talk about your family."

 
"You know my family?" asked Bill innocently.

  "Sure," said Joe Mantry. "I met your father in New York, where he was shoveling coal with a lot of other cross-eyed dumb-bells, and I saw your greaser mother down in Mexico City, where she was scrubbing floors on her hands and knees."

  Bill got up from his chair with a howl of anger.

  "Joe!" called Philip Bray. "Quit it!"

  "Aw, all right, all right," said Joe Mantry. He turned his reckless head toward Bray. "Why can't you leave me alone while I stir up this blockhead?"

  "It's because of Jeff Bergman," said Phil Bray. "He's given us a break, letting us spend the last night together. If you start a brawl up here, you're double-crossing him. What good would it do? There ain't any use double-crossing a bird unless you can get something out of it."

  Joe Mantry listened to this bit of philosophizing with a grin. He cast a lingering glance toward Bill, the guard, who was still cursing, and then shrugged his shoulders.

  "All right, Phil," said Mantry. "But I'm tired of cards. Tell me a story to pass the time of day, will you?"

  "Sure," said Phil Bray, nodding. "What kmd of a story?"

  "A fairy story."

  "Good fairies or bad?" asked Bray, grinning.

  "Good fakies. That's the kind I need just now. Tell me a story about Jim Silver and Parade."

  "I never seen him," said Bray. "What would a mug like me get out of Jim Silver except a rap on the chin or a chunk of lead through the bean?"

  "Look, Phil," said Joe Mantry; "you're a handy gent with your hands. You got plenty of size and plenty of nerve, and you know the game. Would you be scared of big Jim Silver if you got into a fist fight with him? I mean, suppose guns was barred, would you be scared of him?"

  "I remember a gent by name of Cyclone Ed Guemey," said Phil Bray. "The Cyclone was two hundred and twenty, and all of it mean. He was right in there with the best of 'em, and only the booze parted him from the headliners in the end. But Cyclone Ed got himself back into training to take a crack at Jim Silver with his fists, and when he was in good shape again, and could do an hour of shadow boxing and still breathe clean, he picked on Jim Silver one day."