Brand, Max - Silvertip 06

by The Fighting Four

  Frosty, at that moment, reappeared, trotted straight up to the stump on which the knife was lying, and picked it up gingerly by the handle, his lips writhing away from the detested and terrible nearness of the sharp edge of the steel.

  He carried that knife across to his master, laid it cautiously down at his feet, and then sprang back and shook out his mane with a strong shudder of his whole body. He did not need to speak words in order to express his strong detestation for work of this nature.

  Lovell stood up and swore in admiration, astonishment, and some regret.

  "That's the damnedest thing I ever saw," he admitted. "What else had he got in that book of his?"

  "Well, here's Parade," said Silver. "K he smells this bit of a leather rein, he'll go out and lead in Parade for me. That saves me a good many steps and a lot of time. I can let Parade range farther when I have Frosty to help me with him. I can let him range out of the distance of my whistle. He gets better grass a lot of the time that way. Want to see him bring in Parade?"

  "No," said Lovell, scowling. "But you said that he'd run deer for you. I might mention that we ain't got any fresh meat on deck, and there's deer up there in the woods, or else I'm a liar. Did you say that he'd run in deer for you?"

  "Not every time. Sometimes he can't find 'em, and sometimes they sprint away too fast for him and turn off to one side or the other, if they suspect that he's trying to drive them in a distinct direction. A wolf isn't very fast, you know. Frosty can't keep close to a stag that's under full way."

  "Well," said Lovell, "I'd like to see what Frosty can do with the job. If he shows me one deer out of those woods —well, I'll eat my hat."

  Silver regarded his companion for a moment out of narrowed eyes. Then he remarked:

  "I don't want you to eat your hat. I'd rather see you eating venison. Come on. Frosty!"

  He led the way with the wolf out of the camp to the edge of the woods, from which broad meadows extended toward a distant cloud of forest half a mile away. Now Silver showed Frosty and let him sniff at a strip of fur on the key ring, and waved him straight ahead.

  Frosty made off in a line at a wolf's lope. On the edge of the trees he paused to look back. Silver waved to him again, and the wolf disappeared straightway.

  "We'll get down behind this brush and wait," said Silver, and dropped down to a comfortable position, with his rifle in hand. Lovell grinned dubiously and took up a position beside his companion, his own Winchester at the ready.

  "Kind of hot here," said Lovell. "But maybe we'll only be half baked before we get tired of waiting for Frosty to turn up something out of those trees. There! Look there! He's out in that patch of clearing, running down the slope, not straight ahead through the trees. Now he's out of sight again!"

  "He has to round in behind the wind, you see," suggested Silver.

  "You mean that he's got brains enough to do that?" exclaimed Lovell almost angrily.

  "You see," said Silver, "he hunted for himself for a long time, and he never came near starvation. I suppose there isn't much about deer hunting that he doesn't know. We'll wait a while and see!"

  The minutes went on slowly. And after a time Lovell lifted his nasal but not unmusical voice in a song. It was barely ended before he heard Silver say:

  "There you are!"

  Looking across toward the opposite trees, he saw a fine stag dash out into the sunshine, slow up, and then bolt straight ahead as Frosty came bounding out in a hot pursuit.

  Not straight toward the brush, but a little to the left of the two men the deer was fleeing.

  "You take the shot," said Silver.

  Lovell, widely agape, got to his knees. The nearest the deer would come, on its present line of flight, was some hundred yards away from the brush. When it came to about that range, Lovell tried for it. But perhaps his excitement unsteadied his hand. At any rate, he missed. The deer, at the report of the rifle, merely lengthened its strides for the trees which were just ahead. As it reached them. Silver fired in turn, but the deer at once bounded out of view.

  "Too bad!" said Lovell. "Too bad that we both missed him so clean. Maybe we had too much wolf in our eyes. Going to call in Frosty? Or will he come in off a blood trail as hot as that one?"

  "He'd come in fast enough," said Silver. "But there's no need to call him. The deer is dead just inside the trees."

  "Dead?" said Lovell. "It was running faster than ever, the last I seen."

  "The last leap was the death leap," said Silver. "Come and see."

  It was as he said. His bullet had clipped the stag right through the shoulder and the heart, and the deer lay dead, with lolling tongue and glassy eyes, just within the rim of the trees. Frosty sat panting at the head of the kill; he had not touched the fresh meat.

  A new sort of awe came over Lovell.

  "Silver," he said, "no wonder that folks are scared of you. If you can make horses think for you and wolves hunt and fetch and carry for you!"

  "You'll see harder things done in any circus," answered Silver. "And I have a lot of spare time on my hands for the teaching."

  "Then teach Frosty to like me, and to do what I tell him to do," suggested Lovell. "Every time I happen to come too close to him he acts as though he wanted to take my leg off!"

  Silver shrugged his houders.

  "I forgot to tell you one thing," he said. "Frosty learned to trust me against his will. I had the luck to find him down and out, and while he was getting his strength back, I managed to teach him that he could lean on me. Teach him the same thing, Lovell, and he'll be as good a friend to you as he ever was to me."

  "Otherwise," said Lovell, "he's going to keep on looking at me like venison on the hoof?"

  "Well," said Silver, "poor Frosty can only know a man by what he's seen him do."

  There was enough in that speech to make Lovell suddenly stop talking and mind his business of cutting up the deer.

  XII—WAYLAND'S QUEST

  High up on Iron Mountain, high above the forests that dwindled to a low wall of green, high above the iron-colored rocks that extended beyond the timber line, high above the little lakes, in the region of perpetual snow, Oliver Wayland had travelled steadily on for several days, searching every recess, patient, enduring cold hunger, doing without sleep by night and with very little food or rest by day.

  He accepted all of this pain naturally and simply, because he felt assured that punishment of this sort must follow when a man has failed in his duty as he had failed on that day when three robbers with guns walked into the Elkdale bank. The thought that there was fate in the thing—above all, that he should hardly have finished hanging on the wall the picture of fearless Jim Silver before his own reign of terror began! Wayland kept the calm and smiling face of that man before him now. He knew that he could not be what Silver was, but he also knew that he could strive to lengthen his steps in the right direction. That was what he was doing now.

  He descended, at last, not to actual timber line, but into the lower hollows, where the tough mountain shrubs were growing in specially favorite dells. There he had camped on this night, building a fire, putting at hand a sufficient quantity of fuel to refresh it, and then lying down.

  He fell into a sound sleep. He was so exhausted that he could have slept on the back of a pitching mustang. But he wakened in the first gray of the morning, stiff with cold.

  He got up, stamped to get the blood back into his feet, and then lay down to try to get another hour of sleep. But the bitterness of the cold, driven through him by the wind, refused to let him rest. He had to sit up. dizzy with weariness, and fairly hug the fire in order to get some of its heart into his shuddering body.

  He was in that posture still when his burro—he was making his search for the robber on foot—jerked up its head from the scanty grass where it was browsing, and looked steadily toward its master and beyond him. At the same time a voice behind Wayland said:

  "Take it easy, stranger. We want some of your chuck. We don't want anything
else you've got. Stick up your hands!"

  Wayland stuck them up. He wanted to laugh. He, the hunter after the bandit who had the loot of the Elkdale First National, was again held up, and sat like a fool with his arms above his head, at the mercy of more robbers.

  He turned his head and saw three men standing in the gray of the morning Ught. They had led their horses around the corner of the bluff that should have given shelter to Wayland and his fire. But the wmd had seemed to blow all night right out of the heart of the sky. These three men, with the morning mist about them, and in the dull-gray light of the dawn, looked larger than human to Wayland. The tallest of the three advanced &st, saying:

  "You fool, why didn't you build two fires and sleep between 'em?"

  Oliver Wayland said nothing. He merely gaped. It was the simplicity and the comfort of the idea that stung him to the bone.

  "Is he heeled?" asked the deeper and heavier voice that came from the second of the trio.

  The tall man came closer to Wayland, ran his hands over his clothes, and removed a Colt .45 that hung from his belt. He slept with that gun, as part of the necessity of getting used to it. He had never done much with weapons of any kind in his entire life. But he had had to bring along with him a weapon of some sort when he advanced along the trail of his present quarry. He had practiced with it every day, pointing it quickly, then leaning to see how closely it was aimed at the target. He blazed away a few rounds daily, also, and told himself that his marksmanship was constantly improving.

  "Yeah. He's heeled," said the man who had fanned Wayland.

  "Boys, it's Wayland! It's the cashier!" said the second man.

  The mention of his own name peeled a veil from across the eyes of Wayland. He looked at the three and knew them, suddenly, to be PhU Bray, Joe Mantry, and Dave Lister, who had escaped from the prison on the very night when he had gone there to try to persuade them to betray their own treacherous fourth companion, who had disappeared with the bank loot.

  If he had picked over aU the men of the world, he could hardly have chosen three more dangerous ones for encounter. They knew him, and he knew them. That was enough to make three men of their type murder him to insure his silence.

  Something more than the cold of the wind ate into him.

  "Yeah, it's Wayland, all right," said Lister, who had taken the gun. "Whatcha know about that. Wayland!"

  "He's out of luck," said Joe Mantry casuaUy. "But Where's his chuck?"

  "Where's your chuck, Wayland?" asked Bray.

  "There," said Wayland, nodding. "In that tarpaulin."

  Mantry instantly uncovered it.

  "A rind of bacon; some hard-tack; no coffee. Nothin' but tea. The food ain't fit for a dog!"

  "I thought I'd better travel light," explained Wayland.

  "Put down your hands," said Bray. "You're not dead yet—and we've got your gun. You're not dead yet."

  "No, he's only dying," said Joe Mcintry, taking a kick at the tarpaulin that he had thrown back over Wayland's provisions.

  Wayland turned his pale, handsome face toward Mantry and said nothing. Joe Mantry, of aU the three, had the convincing record as a man-killer.

  "Why is he dying?" asked Bray.

  "Look, chief," answered Dave Lister, the penman, "you wouldn't turn him loose, would you? After he's seen us up here? After he's spotted us? You wouldn't turn him loose to ask for trouble, would you?"

  "Yeah. The whole regular army would be up here after us in a coupla shakes," suggested Mantry. "What good is he, anyway?" he added bitterly. "There ain't any blood in him. And he eats dog food. Gosh, but my stomach's empty!"

  "You kill him and you gotta kill a thousand," said Bray.

  "We're not going to kill a thousand," agreed Lister. "But look the facts in the eye. He knows us. He'll spread the news that we're up here."

  "You kill him and you gotta Idll a thousand," said Phil Bray.

  "You ought to put an article in the paper," suggested Mantry sardonically. "You ought to send it in to the society editor somewhere. 'Up on Iron Mountain, enjoying a few weeks of rest, are Philip Bray, Joe Mantry, and Dave Lister, the murderers and bank robbers, recently of Atwater prison.' That's the sort of news you ought to publish. As good publish it as turn Wayland loose."

  Wayland said nothing. Instead, he stared fixedly at the face of Bray, who seemed puzzled and kept shaking his head.

  Suddenly Bray reached a decision.

  "You can't go around murdering everybody you see that knows you," he declared. "You kill him and you've gotta kill a thousand," he reiterated for the third time. He waved his hand. "Get the idea out of your heads, boys," he concluded.

  "This is the devil of an idea," agreed Joe Mantry lowering his head in a significant manner and glowering at his chief.

  Dave Lister jabbed an elbow into Mantry.

  "Quit it, Joe," he said. "Quit it, will you? The chiefs always right. He's gotta be right."

  "All right," agreed Mantry. "We'll say he's right again, but "

  He wound up by shrugging his shoulders.

  Bray answered: "When you think I'm wrong, you can vote me down, the pair of you. There's certainly more than one way of crossing a mountain."

  Joe Mantry, however, argued no more. He merely said: "Wayland, you ought to be dying, but Bray's brought you back to life."

  Wayland felt it would be foolish to offer any thanks. In the meantime, the three set about cooking up the meager provisions of Wayland for a breakfast. They worked with remarkable speed and precision. No orders were given by Bray. Every man knew exactly where to turn his hand. And presently Wayland was being asked to sit down at his own fire and partake of his own food.

  He did so, still in a silence.

  The three ate ravenously, rapidly. Then they lay back and smoked cigarettes. There had been practically no conversation for nearly an hour before Joe Mantry asked:

  "What brings you up here, Longlegs?"

  "I'm up here for my health," said Wayland calmly.

  "You he!" said Mantry, his fine, insolent eyes dwelling on Wayland with a leisurely contempt. "You lie. You're up here on a man trail and a treasure hunt."

  Wayland said nothing.

  Mantry turned to Bray.

  "What about it, Phil?"

  Phil Bray grinned and nodded. "Sure," he said. "The boy cashier, honest Oliver—he's up here trying to find the stolen money. Trying to find the man who has the loot. Going to give it back to the bank—going to open that bank up again, and get his job back, and everything." He sat up suddenly. "You—Wayland!" he barked. "What makes you think that you'll find your man up here?"

  "What makes you think that you'll find him here?" asked Wayland.

  Bray stared. "You won't talk, eh?" he asked with dan-I gerous calm,

  I "What's the use?" said Wayland. "If I really knew ; where the man was, I wouldn't be camping out here in the middle of the sky, would I?"

  Dave Lister laughed suddenly. "That's a pretty good one," he remarked. "Out in the middle of the sky is about where he's camped, too! Hey, Wayland, you don't even know his name; and you never saw his face."

  "No," admitted Wayland. "I never saw his face, and I don't know his name."

  "What do you know?" asked Mantry angrily. "I know the look of him when he's bent over a horse, riding fast," said Wayland. "That's all." "Not a lot, is it?" demanded Bray. "No. Not a lot. But better than nothing," answered Wayland.

  "I kind of like this hombre," said Bray. "He means something when he says it." Then he added. "Look at here, Wayland. Open up and tell us why you picked on Iron Mountain for your hunt?"

  "I've tried plenty of other places," answered Wayland, "But I've always thought, ever since the robbery, ever since that fourth man got away, that he must have known ° this part of the world pretty well. I thought that because of the way he was able to fade out of the picture. We were right on his heels, but he got clean away from us. Then I thought that he would probably keep in hiding for a while."

  "Why? Why
shouldn't he step right out for the East?"

  "For fear somebody had recognized him during the chase," said Wayland. "I thought he'd lie low—for months, even, until all talk about the robbery was forgotten. And then he'd start on his long trip. Half a million dollars is worth a lot of care, I suppose. And if he were lying low in the mountains, he might pick Iron Mountain sooner than any other. Iron Mountain is cut to pieces with ravines. You could hide half a million men around here, let alone half a million dollars."

  "He has brains," said Bray, nodding. "He's got brains, and he uses them. Just the same, you're wrong, partner. He didn't duck for cover—^not right away. He took a chance on his face being known. But—well, we're up on Iron Mountain for the same reasons you are, take it all in all. That's a good reason for you to hit off on another traa, ain't it?"

  Wayland waited, silent.

  "I might even say," went on Bray, "that you have some reasons for starting off in a new direction—and keeping your mouth shut about seeing us up here."

  "You think you could trust him that far?" Mantry sneered.

  "I'm taking the chance," said Phil Bray.

  Joe Mantry began: "Well, you're a "

  He left the word unsaid.

  Wayland, rising, said:

  "111 get off Iron Mountain, and I'll keep my mouth shut. Besides, you can trust me. Bray. I know a white man when I see one."

  He stood up.

  Bray took Wayland's gun and gave it back.

  "Can you use it?" he asked with a twisting grin.

  "If I'm close up and have a lot of time," said Wayland.

  Bray laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

  "A bird like you," he said, "can always do a lot more than he thinks, or than other folks think. Now get out of here."

  Wayland got out.

  XIII—AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER

  Wayland went straight down the side of Iron Mountain. In his heart there was a vast temptation to turn back and attempt to trace the three criminals in their pursuit of their treacherous fugitive, but Wayland had given his promise, and his word was sound as steel. So he went down the mountainside when the sun was rising and the forests were shut from view under a wavering set of clouds all burning with the morning light.