Silvertip (1942)

by Brand, Max

  He made a cigarette, lighted it, began to inhale smoke in great whiffs.

  He laughed, threw his hat in the air, and caught it again in spite of the frantic dodging and bucking of the mustang beneath him. He had changed from saddle to saddle all the way during the night. The horses were still fresh, especially that deer-shaped, wing-footed bay mare; so he made no longer halt, but rode down the trail toward the little village that lay at the side of the stream in the central valley beneath.

  The trail was very winding, and he never could endure to push a horse going downhill. It meant ruined shoulders too often. So it was nearly prime of the morning before he came off the trail onto a beaten road near the town.

  A man in a buckboard came past him from the village. Silvertip lifted his hat and called good morning.

  The fellow kept his reins in one hand and his stub of a buggy whip in the other. He kept jerking at the reins constantly, and tapping at the down-headed span of mustangs with the other, without in the slightest degree altering their gait. He returned no salute or gesture or word. The wind tipped the brim of his felt hat up and down, but there was not even a nod of actual greeting.

  Silver turned in the saddle and looked back. The stranger had turned also, and was staring. He was a gaunt man, of late middle age. The stubble of his beard gave a gray sheen to his face. His eyes were set in dark hollows. It was a craggy face. It was to the faces of other men as a rocky upland farm is to the rich green acres of a smooth river bottom.

  At length Silver faced the town again, frowning. He had been through a great part of the West, and he had been through it on horseback or on foot. He had used his eyes, too, simply because he had to use them to save his scalp. But he could never remember encountering behavior like this.

  All that he had heard of the Haverhill country swept over his mind again like clouds across a sunny day.

  He rode on at a walk, because he wanted to digest this town as well as he could with his eyes before he entered it.

  It looked like any of a thousand other Western villages. There were the same flimsy shacks that seemed to have been thrown together at random-mere tents to be occupied by an army that would soon pass on. For Westerners have had something to do other than lavish time on places to eat and sleep and sit. They have had business to do, and their business has been the whole outdoors.

  This was like all the rest, in so far as Silvertip could see, and there was little that his keen eye missed. He hunted every board, every shingle, every window like a hawk searching for game.

  As he came into the single winding street, he heaved a sigh of relief. Everything was the same. The signs in front of the shops, and the stores, and the hotel, and the saloons -all were the true Western pattern.

  Then he saw a small boy of eight standing in an open doorway with a grown-up's shotgun in his hands.

  "Hello, son!" called Silvertip.

  The boy made no answer. He turned his grave face to stare after Silvertip, but he spoke not a word, made not a gesture. It was a broad, roughly made face with an expression far older than the possible years. And the eyes were set in deep hollows filled with shadow!

  The chill struck again through the blood and up the spinal marrow of Silvertip.

  Men may be different in varying parts of the world, but the children should all be the same.

  Then he heard the cheerful beating of hammers on an anvil. Yonder was a blacksmith's shop with horses tethered before it, waiting to be shod. And through the open doors drifted thin puffs of blue coal smoke.

  Silvertip breathed more easily again. The noise of the hammers rejoiced him, at that moment, as much as the sound of human voices could have done.

  He halted in front of the shop, dismounted, and looked inside. A cow-puncher sat just inside the door, making a cigarette as he sat on an upturned tempering tub. The elderly blacksmith was holding a bar of iron with a large pair of pincers, and as he turned it and tapped it with his light hammer, a powerful striker banged on the indicated spots with a twelve-pound sledge.

  The head blacksmith spoke two words, or three-no more. And then both turned full on Silvertip. He saw their faces were broad, their eyes set in deep, shadowy hollows!

  Chapter V

  The Silent Men THERE had been something of a nightmare ghastliness about the passing of that farmer down the road silently, and the sight of that silent lad on the porch, gun in hand, silent, also. But now the dreamlike quality departed from the scene and left to Silvertip a most absolute sense of reality. A grim reality, but one with the full sun of truth playing on it. He had simply run into a backward lot of sour men who had migrated, no doubt, from some single section of the East or of the Old World, and had developed a common surliness of manner just as they had grown to be similar in features. That cow-puncher who sat by the door, at least, was a distinct type. He was small, wizened, with a birdlike beak of a nose and birdlike eyes. But there was no more friendliness in him than in the others.

  "Morning to you all," said Silvertip cheerfully.

  A nod of greeting is an inclination of the head; the head blacksmith merely jerked his up a trifle. His striker did not move at all. Their heavy, obstinate, unlighted eyes weighed down upon the face of Silvertip in silence.

  He ran on briskly: "I've got a mare out there with a brand that I've heard called the Cross and Snake brand. I've heard that the brand comes out of this valley. Is that right?"

  He was incredulous when silence greeted this direct question. Anger burned up in him with a gust, like flame through dry tinder. He mastered it at once. He had learned, by hard lessons, that a quick temper must not be allowed to flare-no, never!

  However, there is such a thing as standing up for one's rights. And he said coldly: "I asked a question. Did any of you hear me?"

  He smiled as he said that. There was something about that smile of Silver's that cut like a knife edge through the most obdurate stupidity and the most sullen resentment. It never failed to point his words.

  The elder blacksmith jerked a thumb toward the cow-puncher who sat by the door.

  "You talk to him, Ed," he said.

  The little man by the door pushed back his sombrero, scratched his head until a bushy forelock fell down across his eyes, lighted a cigarette, threw the match away, inhaled and exhaled the first smoke cloud.

  "I dunno much about brands here," said Ed.

  "Well," answered Silvertip, "suppose you come out and take a look, partner?"

  "I dunno that looking would do much good," said Ed. "I ain't a brand expert."

  He became aware, then, of the small, cold smile of Silvertip, and rose slowly to his feet.

  "Ain't any harm in taking a look, I guess," said he.

  He stood by the mare. The sight of the brand did not seem sufficient to him. He had to run a forefinger across the lines of it. Then he had to thumb up the gloss of the hair to see the print of the scars on the hide.

  At last he stood back and shook his head.

  "Never saw that brand before?" asked Silvertip.

  "A man sees a lot of brands here and there," said Ed, looking at his cigarette.

  "How long have you been living in Haverhill Valley?"

  "Why, quite a spell," said Ed.

  "What do you mean by 'quite a spell'?" asked Silvertip.

  "Why, quite a heap," said Ed.

  "Oh, you've stayed here quite a heap, have you? Ever heard of a Mexican called Arturo Monterey?"

  "Arturo Monterey?" asked Ed, looking still at the fuming point of his cigarette.

  "Yes, Arturo Monterey."

  "Well, it seems to me," remarked Ed, "that I've heard the name somewheres. I ain't well acquainted around Haverhill Valley."

  He turned and walked back into the blacksmith shop slowly, dragging the heels of his boots in the dust, and sat down again in the shadow within the door.

  Silvertip took a deep breath and let curses flow out silently with the exhalation. It was a new experience for him. He had been through many difficult times
, and through many dangers among savage and brutal men; but he had never been badgered like this before. Something about him usually prevented light treatment at the hands of others.

  He went back to the door of the blacksmith shop and made for himself a new cigarette. The clangor of the hammers on the iron had recommenced, and every beat of the metal on metal sent a savage pulse through his body and through his brain.

  Slowly he made the cigarette, and slowly he lighted it. He was aware-as if through the back of his head- that Ed had smiled at the blacksmith, and that the blacksmith had smiled at Ed. The poison of anger invaded every portion of Silvertip's being.

  And yet his hands were tied. Besides, he had been forewarned. Men had told him that there was danger and death in the very air of the Haverhill Valley. He could understand that now. He had a strong feeling, amounting to surety, that if he attempted to discipline any one of 'these three, they would all be at him, like so many wolves of a pack. No matter what else could be said of them, they seemed all capable of giving a good account of themselves with their hands. They were made to endure shocks and to give them.

  So he stood there, trying to think, but unable to connect one idea with another.

  And then he told himself, suddenly and grimly, that this was as it should be. He was trying to find the unfinished life of a, dead man and complete it, and therefore every step of the way, from the beginning, was sure to be hard. It was better so. Only with pain could he pay his debt, and far bitterer pain than this must be his before the end.

  Ed stood up presently, and sauntered out of the shop and up the street. A butcher-wearing the badge of a red-stained apron-walked out with a bucket of slops, which he threw into the dust of the street. It made a great black triangle of mud in the midst of the white.. Ed paused by him, spoke to him. And the butcher turned sharply around to stare at Silvertip.

  Then he laughed.

  That whip cut made Silvertip tremble as though a cold wind had struck him.

  Ed and the butcher went into the shop door together, the butcher still laughing. The sound of his laughter came braying down the street even when he was inside his shop again.

  Silver turned his head. The blacksmith was grinning, too. He looked steadily back at Silver, all the while busy with both hands at his work, and continued to grin. Silver glanced quickly back at the street.

  Out of the distance a sound of a herd of cattle driven on a narrow trail had been growing, a thunder of lowing mingled with sharp, clashing sounds, such as horns make against horns, or splay hoofs clacking together. Now the river of noise entered the street, was confined by the houses, and doubled and redoubled suddenly.

  He looked back and saw the swaying fronts of the steers coming, big, wide-shouldered, deep-bodied animals. Two Mexicans rode before them, slender, graceful fellows with enormous hats set over the darkness of their faces. They rode proudly, as all Mexicans ride.

  They went by. The steers followed. The wide wash of that crowded herd almost scraped against fences and posts on either side of the roadway. They came in a thin smother of dust, like a blowing sea mist that rolls over the waves. Silvertip saw the red shining of the eyes, the sheen of the long, lyre-shaped horns, the glistening of the wet noses.

  They were fat, these great brutes. They showed the green grass they had been battening on. Rolls of heavy flesh were bouncing up and down their flanks. Their tails swung like great flails. They beat up a clashing uproar with their feet, and the dust squirted out in thickening clouds.

  But in a moment more Silvertip saw something else to take his eye. For on one of the quarters of every one of these animals there was the big pattern of a very distinct brand-a cross with a wavering line beneath it!

  This was the brand about which Ed was not sure-not sure whether he had seen it or not-not sure that it belonged to the herds of Arturo Monterey or no!

  He turned and saw the blacksmiths laughing in unison, boldly, openly, laughing Silvertip to scorn, laughing in his very face. And still he controlled himself.

  The end of the herd poured past in thick dust masses; the mouths of the steers were hanging open; they crowded against those in the lead, just like fish swarming in a shoal. Close behind them came more riders.

  Silvertip stepped out through the billowing mist and waved his hand before a rider. The man drew up with a jerk. His gray-powdered face turned impatiently toward the questioner.

  "Partner," said Silvertip, "I want to know where I can find the house of Arturo Monterey?" The teeth of the Mexican flashed. "Gringo swine!" he yelled, and sent his mustang ahead again with a slash of the quirt.

  Silver turned, and saw that the blacksmith and his helper were both standing hi the door of the shop, swaying with delighted laughter.

  Another rider galloped up the street, the last of the lot. Silver sprang before him with raised hand. The horse dodged.

  "Out of my way, gringo!" yelled the Mexican with a curse.

  The refined steel of Silvertip's patience parted with a snap. With one long bound he reached that Mexican's side and caught him by the wrist and the collar. The speed of the horse did the rest. It tore the Mexican from his saddle and rolled him with Silvertip in the deepness of the dust. Something winked before Silver's eyes. He reached at the flash and caught the wrist of the Mexican's knife hand.

  One twist and the knife dropped. Silver stood up, lifting the cow-puncher with him. Dust poured down like water from the clothes of both of them. The roar of the herd departed; the shouted laughter of the blacksmiths began to predominate.

  Suddenly that laughter had increased, not diminished in volume, and Silvertip was more bewildered than ever. Was it a common thing to the people of these parts to see a dashing Mexican caballero, a man with the shoulders of a bull, plucked from his horse and disarmed as he drew a knife? .

  He laid the point of that knife against the shirt of the herdsman.

  "Now, amigo," said Silvertip, "we talk."

  The Mexican glanced over his shoulder at the diminishing cloud of dust that was the herd. And Silver could read the thought. How long before the fellow's companions saw a riderless horse coming after them and turned back to learn the fate of their companion?

  "We talk," said Silvertip. "I ask you, first, if the Cross and Snake brand belongs, really, to Arturo Monterey?"

  The vaquero stared into his face with eyes yellow and red-stained by fury. He said nothing.

  "Tell me," said Silver.

  The body of the Mexican was shaking with rage. His hands kept flexing and unflexing.

  "Yes," he said at last.

  "Very well," said Silver: "And where is the house of Monterey?"

  Even fear of the knife could not prevent the Mexican from shouting savagely: "In it's own place, gringo!"

  And he swayed forward a little, as though expecting the thrust of the knife.

  "Look at that bay mare," said Silvertip. "Did you ever see her before?"

  The Mexican glanced at the high-headed beauty. His eyes widened; his jaw dropped; his very color changed, it seemed to Silvertip. Then the big head of the man swung back, and he scowled at his questioner.

  It was plain to Silvertip that he had reached the end of the rope, that he could extract no more words from this fellow. It was equally plain that the mare was known to the Mexican intimately. Yet it seemed that all the men of the Haverhill Valley would rather die, almost, than talk.

  "All right, hombre," said Silvertip, and tossed the knife to him carelessly. The Mexican caught it out of the air with a hungry hand. He had the air, for an instant, of one about to leap forward; but again there was something in the faint smile and the steady eyes of Silvertip that discouraged attack. Presently the big man turned and strode off down the street, making violent gestures, cursing volubly to himself.

  The two blacksmiths had stopped their laughter. They remained in the doorway and watched with brutally inexpressive faces while Silver remounted and rode down the street to a hotel. He found stable room behind the place; when he en
tered the hotel itself, a lowering clerk seemed unwilling to give him a room at first, but eventually he was shown to a dingy corner apartment that overlooked a side lane and the back yard. There he sat down and took his head between his hands. He was sleepy from his all-night ride, but the jumping of his nerves kept him from lying down.

  He was half beaten within an hour of his arrival in the Haverhill Valley. All the self-confidence had melted from him, and he felt that he was leaning the weight of his mind against an impenetrable wall.

  Chapter VI

  The House of Monterey HE STRETCHED on the bed at last, for he could find no solution to his problem, and he knew that he needed sleep. When he wakened, a few hours later, a whispering air fanned his face, and he saw the door slowly swinging open.

  When it was wide, Silvertip was already sitting up, at watch, and he observed on the threshold a man whose face was of the brutal type which he had seen so often before this in the Haverhill Valley. He was making a cigarette, leaning one shoulder against the jamb, and dripping tobacco unconcernedly over the floor. He was big, like most of these Haverhill men; and, like the rest of them, he stared heavily and steadily, without a shift in his eyes.

  "You're the gent that slammed Juan Perez, are you?" asked the stranger.

  "Who are you, brother?" asked Silvertip.

  "Chuck Terry. Alligator sent me down to get you."

  "Get me for what?" asked Silvertip.

  "For the ranch."

  "I'm not looking for a job."

  "Sure you ain't," agreed "Chuck" Terry. "The job's looking for you. Grade-A pay, and the best eats in the land. Is that the sort of a picture you wanta step into?" Silvertip stood up.

  "Look here," said he. "Who's the Alligator? I never heard of him."