Silvertip (1942)

by Brand, Max

  "Take him back!" he commanded. "The senor calls for him. The girl has won again. She always wins. We are only dogs to be barked back and forth. Perhaps this gringo fills her eyes; perhaps we shall have to lick his feet before long!"

  The whole escort turned, gradually, and Silver could see again the stern old man standing as erect as ever, with his two hands resting on the head of his cane. The girl was beside him, withdrawn a little.

  So they came straight back to confront Don Arturo. The passion was working in his face, still, and he was paler than before.

  He cried out in that great voice which seemed to make his body smaller than ever, by contrast: "He has come to me, Juan Perez, and I must take thought before I put hands on him. But for his sake I shall forget the vow I made twenty-five years ago. He shall enter my house! He shall be taken into it now. Perez, carry him down to the cellar, to the lowest and the darkest room. There are irons to fit on him. Load him until his body is safely held. You, Perez, are his keeper, and shall answer to me for him!" "Uncle Arturo-" cried out the girl. "Be still-be still!" exclaimed the old man. "Do you talk to me of honor and kindness? They have shamed me, they have dishonored my house, they have ravaged my lands, and now they have slain my son, and leave me a dry, dead stalk! Juan Perez, do as I command!"

  Chapter VIII

  Imprisoned THEY carried Silver rapidly into the house. The last he heard from the sunlit outdoors was the voice of the girl, raised higher than before as she passionately implored Don Arturo to remember himself, and the loud, stern cry of the old man as he bade her be quiet.

  Out of a big corridor, they turned through a high and narrow doorway down a steep flight of steps. Lanterns were carried. Their swinging light began to flash far ahead, glimmering along damp walls, or throwing a dull sheen across the water that lay on the stones they trod, as they penetrated story after story, deep and deeper into the rock.

  Juan Perez went first. Of the crowd, perhaps only half a dozen remained to hustle Silver along. And it seemed as though they were not descending through the cellars of a house, but through the galleries of some old mine, that had been worked for centuries, drill and pick and shovel digging into the living stone to find the treasure. It was a wilderness. Silver had attempted to keep track of the turns, the descents, the stairs, the sloping passages, but he gave it up. And three or four times even Juan Perez, who seemed to know the place well, came to a halt and swung his lantern from side to side before he made a choice between one gallery or another.

  Once he stopped at a corridor hewn to a great size, and Juan Perez commented to his awed companions, that this was the place where the heart of the great lode had been found.

  It was, in fact, through the galleries of an ancient mine that they were passing. But now they paused and took from a room a set of manacles brown with time. With these they went forward only a short distance until they came to another door, and opening this, the lantern light revealed a little room perhaps three steps by two in dimensions. On the irregular floor of it water had gathered, which had been scummed over with green; the air itself was very foul; and the odor of the slime was like a throttling hand on the throat.

  There they fitted the irons to the body of Silver. Juan Perez, with a key, opened and locked them again. Then he stood back and lifted a lantern until the sheen of it fell upon the captive.

  Half in dry stone and half in slime sat Silver, and met the eye of Juan Perez calmly. There was no word spoken. He heard only the softly inhaled breath of Perez, and saw the flash of his eyes and teeth as he grinned. Then the Mexicans left him. The door slammed shut with the booming noise of a cannon shot. And far away he heard the departing troop. They were laughing and shouting; even that laughter and derisive shouting seemed to Silver a precious thing to be harkened after with an eager ear. He strained his senses to hear every scruple of it; and when at last he could make out no more sound, the darkness was suddenly trebled about him, and a weight fell crushingly on his lungs.

  It was the impure air that sickened him and made breathing almost futile. Presently he forgot the slime in which he lay, and, stretched flat on his back, did his best to calm the insane fear which was working in his brain. Then began the first eternity, black, still, foul, breathless. He secured hope out of one strange thought-that he had appointed himself to redeem the lost life of Pedro Monterey, and that therefore he must suffer worse than death, and then be given the chance to use his hands and his brain. He must nearly die, but some life would surely be left to him.

  When we are in bed, clean, clear reason departs from us. And it departed, now, from Silver, as he lay in the stifling black of that prison. His second occupation was to employ his mind with dreams of what the life of Pedro Monterey must have been in this house with the stern old man for a father, and with all the fierce vaqueros ready to ride or to fight at his bidding. The girl, however, was not his sister. She was merely a cousin, more or less distant. And there was mercy in her which the pure strain of these Montereys seemed incapable of feeling.

  She kept moving across the close velvet blackness that filled the eyes of Silver. She moved like a light before him, and filled his mind with a singular happiness.

  Now, at the end of that eternity, there was the faint sound of footfalls. The lock of the door turned. A lantern flashed, blinding bright, throwing intolerable diamonds of brilliance into the eyes of Silver. By that light, dimly, he saw a jug put down beside the door, and a lump of bread was thrown toward him. It splashed in the slimy water. A voice laughed, and the door shut heavily again.

  But he found himself forgetful of the spoiling of the bread, and of the contents of the jug, though he was starving for food, and famished for water. All that he bent his attention on was the noise of the retreating footfalls.

  When it had dissolved, still a faint echo worked in his brain, as though to reassure him that there were human beings left in the world. Then he started toward the door, dragging his body along with great difficulty. He found the jug and sniffed at it. He had hoped for something better than water, but when he lifted the pitcher with his manacled hands, it was water alone that he tasted. Yet it flooded his hot throat with wonderful relief.

  When he had drunk, hunger returned to him with new force. He had seen the bread fall into the rotten slime, but revolting as the sight had been, he sought for that bread now, and found it, and tried to eat it, but the repulsive taste made the walls of his stomach close together in nausea. He threw the food from him and stretched himself again to wait.

  The cold of the stone was sinking into his body, reaching the bone. He knew that weakness caused by lack of food was making him more and more susceptible to the cold. He must use his muscles to gain heat from them, no matter how the efforts increased his hunger. So he devised a regular system, getting painfully to his feet, bowing, forward and backward, swaying to the side, stretching his loaded arms as far as the chains permitted, then squatting and rising, squatting and rising until he was numb with the efforts.

  Those exercises kept his blood coursing in the veins. And afterward it was easier to sleep. But sleep occupied only a small portion of the second infinity of darkness be- -fore he saw more light. When he wakened, there was a new, pungent, horrible odor in the air, a sort of sickening sweetness, and a moment later he heard the pattering of infinitely light feet, the squeak and gibbering of sharp voices. Rats were in the room with him! He felt a sudden blind horror, a horror of squeamish-ness. He actually parted his lips to scream out; but the man in him came to his rescue and sternly throttled back that weakness. Yet what would he be in the course of a few weeks or months? But were there not men who had lain for long years in darkness, like beasts, and still endured? Hope came to him with the rats. If they had entered, it was by some hole, and if there were a small hole, he might enlarge it. He began to work with his finger tips across the entire surface of the wall, knowing that touch would give to him the effect of sight, in a sense.

  What he found, at last, was a narrow crevice, so sm
all that it seemed impossible that even a mouse could have come through. But it was not in masonry that might be crumbled gradually away from this small start; it was a rift in the living stone, strong as iron on either side of the little aperture.

  He gave up that hope slowly, and his spirits and his strength seemed to ebb away from him for a long time afterward.

  He went through the exercises again, as he had devised them. And now he sat in a dry corner and waited.

  At last the steps came again, the door opened, and again a light shone on him. The lantern was raised high; he saw the face of the girl beneath it, as she saw him.

  "Phaugh!" she cried. "Rats, and slime, and filth for a Christian man. In the name of mercy, Juan Perez, what-"

  The voice of Perez answered sullenly: "Any sort of life is too good for him. The rats keep him company. Some day I hope they'll eat him!"

  She stepped in, and pushed the door shut behind her. And her coming poured upon Silver wave after wave of incredible comfort and joy. He had hardly thought her more than pretty in the sunlight; in the dark, damp room she seemed to have the radiant beauty of an angel.

  Perez was calling out, beyond the door. She silenced him with two or three sharp words of command. Then she came closer, picking her way between the puddles of slime. Silver struggled, and rose to his feet with a clanking of chains.

  He towered above her, and she with a lifted face looked at him with pity and with pain.

  "Have they given you food?" she asked.

  "They threw one lump of bread-into the slime," he said. "They knew I could not eat it, after that."

  "No food, then? Three days without food?" she cried. "Three days?"

  "Three years, it seems to me," said Silver, "of this darkness."

  She hurried to the door and pulled the weight of it open.

  "Perez," she gasped, her voice shaking with anger. "Quickly! Run to the kitchen. Bring meat-a good meal- a huge meal-and wine-and bring it with your own hands-quickly!"

  Juan Perez snarled like a dog, but his footfall departed.

  Chapter IX

  Senorita Julia SHE came slowly back, a step or two, and then paused. "They have treated you like a dog," she said, "and I knew when I first saw you, that you are an honest man. You're weak. Sit down and-Great heavens, you've nothing to sit on but the damp of the stone! Phaugh! The rats want to come back!"

  They had scampered through the crevice in the wall, as she entered with the light, their naked tails flicking like whiplashes out of view. Now their eyes glittered from the-mouth of the covert again.

  "God forgive Uncle Arturo," she said. And then she broke out: "Yet there's no kinder or more gentle man in the world. But his son is dead, and his hope is dead, too, and he's half insane with grief. He had to put his hands on something, and there were you in his grasp! And then Drummons-what's left to him now for the fight with them? Only his own hands, and mine, and only half my blood is that of the Montereys! You can understand him a little, and forgive him a little?"

  He said nothing.

  "I came to ask you one definite thing," she said, when she saw that he would not speak on the other subject. "What was in your mind when you came to this house to tell us that you had killed poor Pedro?"

  "Have they sent for his body? Will he be buried here?" asked Silver.

  "They have sent for him," she answered.

  "When I saw by the flash of my own gun that I had shot the wrong man," said Silver, "I don't think I would have cared so much if he had been older. But he was at the start of everything. He hadn't had a chance to prove himself. And-well, it's a hard thing to talk about. I really can't tell you what I thought."

  He ended abruptly, but she was watching him with such studious and yet such gentle eyes that presently his words began again, as if of their own accord.

  "I thought," said Silver, "that I could try to fill in some of the gap left by his death. I was a fool. I couldn't tell that he was the only son of this old man. I thought that I could do something about him. And somehow," he added, his voice swelling as the old resolution burned back into his brain hotter than ever, and more inwardly bright, "and somehow, I think I'll manage to put my hands on something that he left unfinished, and complete it for him. I suppose this sounds like crazy talk to you. And I won't beat about the bush. I've killed other men-more than one or two! But this time it was different. To kill a man is bad enough; but to finish a life that's hardly begun to cut its own way through the world-that was what made me sick, then! And-"

  He paused, with a gesture. He felt that he had talked absolutely in vain.

  She merely said: "I believe you, and I understand you. And for that bigness of heart, you've been thrown into this blackness and treated like a murderer! Ah, but my uncle shall hear about it from me! I'll make him understand!"

  Then, turning, she exclaimed: "Here's Juan Perez back again. You shall eat, now!"

  The door was pushed open, and it was Juan Perez indeed. He carried a small half loaf of bread in one hand and a jug of water in the other. He put down the jug, laid the bread across the mouth of it, and then straightened to face the girl with a grin.

  That smile made him look more like a hungry tiger than ever.

  "Senorita Julia," he said, "the senor forbids the prisoner to have more than bread and water."

  "You went to him?" exclaimed the girl. "You went to him, after I had given you my orders?"

  "We serve you, senorita," said the politely sneering Perez, "as we would serve an angel. But there is only one master in the house of Monterey!"

  He made a little bow to her, and lifting his head again, he stared not at her but at Silver, with unabated hatred. The girl was instantly calm.

  "I shall see my uncle," said she. "And some changes will be made. You shall have a bed. I think I can make him change your room. Perhaps there will be decent food, after a little while."

  She went to the door and turned suddenly. Her eyes flashed. Her voice flared up. Color burned into her face. "Day and night," she exclaimed, "I shall try to serve you, senor!"

  She was gone. Perez, lantern in hand, looked after her, toward the door, and then shook his forefinger in the air. He began to laugh, in a silent convulsion of mirth.

  "Those words will undo everything else she may say to the master," he told Silver. "Day and night she will serve you, gringo. Is that the truth? Senor Monterey shall hear what she said. I shall see to that. And afterward-hai! You'll feel the spur as well as the toe of the boot!"

  He laughed again, this time out loud, and left Silver in the black darkness.

  And there Silver crouched, chewing eagerly at the bread, while the rats swarmed over his feet, leaped up on his clothes, in their eagerness to come at the food. The air was foul with the smell of their vile bodies, but the ravenous hunger of Silver stilled all the other senses. He ate, drank the water to the last drop, and then lay down and slept. Something would be done for him. The girl had promised. And he would believe her more than the oaths of a hundred men.

  But nothing was done!

  Bread and water were brought to him regularly, once a day, and that was all. The cell was not changed. Not one item of comfort was added to him. And two days later, Juan Perez came again, alone. He unlocked the door, put the lantern on the floor, and made a cornucopia-shaped cigarette, which he lighted, and then blew the smoke toward Silver, to make sure that the full flavor of the tobacco would reach him. The very heart of Silver quaked with yearning, but he made his eye calm, and kept it fixed on the Mexican.

  "So I repeated the kind words of the Senorita Julia to the master," said Juan Perez. "And you see what has happened? You see the comfortable bed you lie on? You see the warm sunshine that streams through your window? You taste the good tobacco that is given you to smoke? You breathe the pure air? You relish the fine roasts and the stews and the dried meats that are brought to you? For all of those things, Senior Fool, Senior Dog, you can thank Juan Perez!"

  Silver slowly dragged up his legs until they
were half doubled under him. A plan was forming dimly in his brain. Now he merely smiled at Perez. That smile seemed to strike the Mexican like a blow. He started, and then scowled.

  "You think that you've tormented me, Perez," said Silver. "As a matter of fact, I have to stay here for another day or two. That is all. Then I shall leave. Before I go, I shall have certain words to say to you, certain blows to strike you with a whip, certain speeches that I shall listen to you making on your knees, while you grovel before me, and beg for your life."

  "Dog!" breathed Juan Perez. "You mean that I, Perez, shall be on my knees before you? You mean that in a day or two you'll be gone? Ah, I see-your mind is touched, you are losing your wits in the long darkness!"

  "Poor Perez!" said Silver. "You cannot understand?"

  "Understand?" said the Mexican, coming a stride closer. "What is there to understand?"

  "That you have been a fool from the first! You can't understand that?" said Silver.

  "I? I a fool? I who walk with free feet and eat and sleep as I will, and breathe the fresh air-I am the fool-and you are the wise man?"

  He drew a shade closer.

  Silver leaned his head and shoulders back against the wall. And he smiled at Juan Perez as if out of the deeps of a profound contentment.

  "Poor Juan Perez!" he said, and shook his head a little, as though words could not fit the matter.

  "Gringo beast!" gasped Perez suddenly, and striding one step nearer, he struck Silver full in the face.

  The next instant the legs of the Mexican were knocked from under him, for the two manacled feet of Silver had shot out with a true aim and a desperate vigor. Perez, falling, pitched straight forward at the prisoner. Silver, with both hands raised, met the dropping body with a club stroke over the head. The weight of the irons on his wrists helped home that blow, and Juan Perez lay face down on the stones, without a quiver.

  Silver went through the man's pockets. He knew, he thought, the very look and face of the key that fitted into his manacles. And he found it in the pocket of the deerskin vest of Perez. It was clumsy work to fit that key into the lock of the hand irons, and it was impossible to turn it with his fingers. He had to go to the little crevice in the wall, and there laboriously fit the handle of the key into the base of the crack, and then turn his arms until the lock was sprung. But a moment later he was free, both In arms and hands and feet.