Silvertip's Search

by Brand, Max

  A moment later, from those very eaves he slipped. His handhold hardly delayed his fall.

  But he had wit enough to loosen his body, and when he struck the pavement, it was lightly, on his feet. The impact crumbled the power out of his legs. He bunched up on hands and knees, then rose, unhurt, and saw the girl fleeing, a shadow within shadows, under the arcade.

  For his own part, he disregarded the advice which he had given to her, and raced straight across the patio, taking extra chances, for it seemed to him that the entire house must waken at any moment. He should have bound Murcio to the foot of the bed. By this time he must have rolled across the floor and begun to kick at the door with his feet.

  Brender and the girl reached the heavy, closed gate of the patio at the same time. She was panting, but her face was not strained by fear. She gave him one glance of companionship, and trust, and gratitude, and then started to climb.

  Instantly a voice said, outside the patio gate: “Now what fool is shaking the gate at this time of night?”

  CHAPTER X

  In the Dark

  THE girl dropped noiselessly back to the ground. Fear had struck her this time, and she spilled loosely against the side of Brender, shuddering.

  “Who’s there?” bawled the voice outside the gate.

  In spite of fear, she managed to whisper:

  “Alonso Santos!”

  “Alonso Santos,” said Brender. “To test the lock of the gate.”

  “Señor Santos?” exclaimed the guard outside. “I should never have known your voice. Will you open the gate and speak to me, señor?”

  “Stand your guard,” said Brender, deepening his voice a little. “Keep your eyes open and your wits about you. I have other things to do than waste time.”

  He heard the other muttering some sort of protest, for it seemed that the second voice of Brender had been no more like the accents of Santos than his first speech. In the meantime, he was stealing back under the arcade with the girl.

  He had to keep an arm around her. Sickening fear made her waver and stumble as she walked.

  When they were deep in the shadow he took the softness of her chin between thumb and forefinger and gave it such pressure that he felt the sharp edge of the bone beneath that velvet of flesh. She gasped at the pain, and he dropped his hand. She had thrown her head back to escape from the torment, and she kept it back now, staring at him. The shuddering of her body had stopped.

  “It’s your happiness and my life,” said Brender in a murmur. “If you fail yourself now, you fail both of us.”

  “Go on by yourself,” she said. “I’m better now, but I can’t trust myself. I may give way. I’m afraid when the test comes that I’ll crumble inside, as I did just now. Go on and get yourself out of trouble. Because if they find you, they’ll murder you instantly! There’s no mercy in them. I mean wealth to them if they can force me south over the border. They’d blot out twenty men to take me back, and they’d kill you like a dog. Go, go!”

  “You’re over the panic now,” he told her. “Grit your teeth. You’ve got to come through with me.”

  “I’ll wilt again, as I did just now,” she gasped. “When I heard the voice of him, everything went to pieces in me. Go by yourself. God bless you! I’m not worth the saving.”

  He looked desperately away from her. What he saw was printed forever in his mind, though the picture of the moon-whitened face of the hotel on one side and the black wall on the other, with blacker windows let into it meant nothing to him. Beyond, there was the night blue of the sky, washed by moonlight, and one yellow planet swimming in it. He saw that picture while he thought of the next chance. There was a corner door, he remembered, that opened off the patio and led through a crooked hallway back to the stable. In the stable they could get horses, saddles — and then away!

  Once clear of this little green paradise in the middle of the desert, with horses galloping, with this girl beside him, the most blasting heat on the widest alkali waste would be a heaven to him.

  And still she was telling him to go, urging him away with her hands.

  He took her by both wrists.

  “We give them the slip together, or we’re caught together,” he said. “You understand? Quick, now, and come with me! There’s only one end for the two of us!”

  The next moment she was running beside him around the shadowy arcade, their feet whispering over the tiles. And as she ran, he saw that her hands were balled into small, tight fists. But the weakness had gone out of her, and her step was full of springing lightness.

  They came to the corner door, where he paused and tried the knob. It stuck. He pressed with the weight of his shoulder and heard the bolt of the lock clink lightly against metal. That way was closed to them!

  Should they try to climb the wall to the window above and so work through the house to a different exit?

  The thought seemed impossible.

  He tested the next window. It resisted his effort to raise it. He stepped back with a faint groan. And he heard the girl say:

  “Are you trapped? Is there no way out? Are you lost?”

  If he smashed in the window-pane, turned the catch, perhaps they could run through the room, get into the crooked hallway, and so to the stable — and the first step toward freedom. His mind was beginning to blur. The terrible cold mist of fear began to draw into his lungs with every breath he took. Hardly knowing what he did, he tried the window again with all his might.

  It yielded suddenly! It made a deep, grunting noise, like that of a startled pig. And a moment later he had worked it up and was helping the girl through into the thick blackness of the interior.

  He joined her there. The warm, stale air closed about him like imprisoning hands. He had made another step toward freedom and escape, with her, but still the goal seemed to be at a great distance away.

  He lighted a match. The light that spurted out of the shielding hollow of his hands struck the wall, trailed across a bed, a table, two chairs, and then glinted on the knob of a door.

  It was not locked and it opened on thick blackness. With the last of the light on the match he discovered the narrow, winding corridor which, he knew, led to the stable. And now, for the first time, he felt real hope.

  “We’re almost to horses — almost at the door of escape!” he told the girl. “Now, soft and steady. Not a whisper. We’ll soon be there. Keep hold on my coat. Walk right behind me!”

  He started through the darkness, stretching out his hands so that he was in touch with the walls on either side, and at his back was the hand of the girl, as she followed. Yet he almost struck his forehead heavily against the door that ended the corridor.

  This, in turn, was unlocked, and when he pushed it open, the pungent stable odor came up to his nostrils, mixed with the sweetness of well-cured hay. Some of the horses had not finished with their well-filled mangers, and he could hear the whispering sound as the hay was gathered under their lips, and the steady, rhythmical grinding of the great jaws.

  Peace, surety came flooding over Brender’s soul.

  A few moments more, and they would be in the open, racing side by side toward freedom!

  One lantern was burning. Its wick was turned so low that it made all the interior of the big stable look like a shapeless mass of shadows, but he knew the way to his mare, and found Chinook at once, with her saddle hung up on the peg behind her.

  “Go to the door — that one yonder,” he whispered to the girl. “Go like a snake in grass, because it may be guarded. If you find any one, come back to me. If you don’t find any one, wait there, and I’ll bring on the horses. Quickly!”

  She was gone, instantly fading out, then looming again, dimly, against the moonlight that filled in the square of the open door.

  He saddled the mare and bridled her. Near by he saw a big, rangy animal. He could not venture on lighting a candle, but with his wise hands, in the darkness, he read the slope of the shoulders, and got the hard, clean feel of the bone in the cannon.


  That horse he saddled for the girl, untied the pair, and led them cautiously back down the aisle between the stalls. She had not returned, and therefore the way was clear.

  Stepping into the doorway, he was amazed that she was not standing there!

  “Rose!” he whispered. “Rose?”

  Something whispered in the air just behind him. Chinook threw up her head with a grunt. And as he turned about, he saw the shadow of a man’s form in the darkness, and the shadowy loom of the blow that was aimed at his head. It came home. A wave of fire burst across his brain, and he fell on his face.

  CHAPTER XI

  Christian’s Scheme

  WHEN Brender opened his eyes again, he was in a lamplit room, where the air was very warm. And a voice was drawling:

  “Put in some more coffee. I want a hot shot. I’m sleepy, the way we been riding!”

  Brender closed his eyes again. The pain that shot through his head with every pulse of his blood made him squint. The voice was familiar. He had heard it somewhere, and many times.

  “That coffee’s going to be like lye,” said another voice.

  It was “Buck.” It was he of the prominent teeth and the smile that was continually enforced by their projection. Brender forgot his pain, and looking wildly around him, he discovered that he was stretched on the kitchen floor. Its surface had been newly scrubbed, and was still dark with moisture in places. There were worn spots ground deep in the tiling near the stove and by the sink. Two men sat at the table. Another was at the stove, and as the latter turned, Brender recognized “Stew.”

  That fleshy forehead and brutal face made Brender’s heart sink. Only on the most savage missions did Christian use Stew. Where a death was wanted, that gun artist was employed, but not in lesser things.

  And his presence here meant, with that of Buck, that Christian’s men had successfully followed the trail — in the moonlight! Or had they merely guessed at the destination of the fugitive?

  He groaned involuntarily.

  “Hullo!” said the voice of Buck.

  And the tall, cranelike form leaned from a chair.

  “He’s come to,” said Buck. “Here he is, chief!”

  The chief?

  Yes, there was Christian with that pale, lean, handsome face and the hair worn long, like an artist’s. There was the half-thoughtful look of the artist about all his features, too, and the same sensitive mouth, the same slight stiffness of the upper lip. When he spoke, his nostrils were continually pinching in, or flaring a little. The whole face became fluid and expressive, from the mouth to the supple eyebrows, and the wrathful or quizzical brow. Every emotion could be registered there, or else every show of emotion could be banished from his face.

  Barry Christian stood up and made a movement with his hand.

  “Put him on the table,” he said.

  Buck and Stew lifted the trussed body of Brender and sat him on the edge of the table, so that his eyes were level with those of Christian, who passed delicately sensitive fingers over the head of his captive and drew in a deprecatory breath.

  “Too hard, Buck,” he said. “You have no sense of touch. Much too hard. A little farther back — here, you see — and that blow would have smashed the skull like a shell. A very hard blow! Much too hard.”

  “Sorry,” said Buck gloomily. And his big, pale eyes looked at Brender with deathless venom.

  Another voice said: “Well, well, well, and here you are, Rap! Here you are, my poor, misguided lad! Ha, ha, ha! Poor Rap! You see that I was right, Barry?”

  That was Doc Shore, brushing dust from his divided beard with the tips of his fingers and peering down at the captive out of his pink-rimmed eyes.

  “You’re always right, Doc,” said Barry Christian.

  “It’s worth the ride out here, to be in at the death — and to know that I was right when I guessed that he would come to Higgins’s place. Oh, Barry, I know the heart of a young man. My body is old, perhaps, but my heart is still young.”

  He laughed again, and then waved his hand.

  “So long, Rap,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you later.”

  And he walked out of sight.

  “How are you, Rap?” asked Christian tenderly. “Are you in much pain?”

  Hope shot up in the breast of Brender. That gentle voice might mean nothing. The hypocrisy of Christian was a bottomless pit. And yet who could read his mind beforehand? He might choose to regard this whole affair as a mere explosion of boyish enthusiasm and make light of the escapade.

  “I’m a bit dizzy,” said Brender. “That’s all. There’s not much pain.”

  “Good!” said Christian. “I’m glad of that. I wouldn’t want you to be out of your head with pain, because I have to talk to you a little, my boy.”

  He added: “Here, Stew. Give Rap a swallow of coffee. Coffee is great stuff to clear the head, eh?”

  “I’d rather give him a swaller of boiled lead,” said Stew.

  “Hush, Stew!” said Christian. “Boiling lead?”

  He laid his hand over his breast, the delicately tapered fingers moving slowly.

  “Boiling lead! You’re a rough fellow, Stew,” said the chief.

  “Rough?” said Stew. “I’d like to use a rasp on him and rub him down to the bone, I would. You dirty snake!” he added to Brender, as he brought the coffee cup.

  “Be quiet, Stew,” said the gentle voice of Christian. And he took the cup and put it to the eager lips of Brender, saying: “A young chap like Rap is sure to boil over, now and then. Too much enthusiasm. Too much spirit. A little too mercurial. But on the other hand, think of the many good turns he’s done for us all. There’s hardly been a more valuable man for all of us, than Rap has been since he joined our little company.”

  “Are you going to talk like that about him?” asked Stew, thrusting out his bulldog face.

  “And why not?” said Christian. “Why shouldn’t I talk about him like this?”

  There was just the slightest elevation of his head, the slightest change and hardening of his voice, but it was enough to make Stew wince back half a step and hold his tongue.

  If the men of Christian knew nothing else, they knew how to read the face of their master carefully and tell when trouble was in the air. For this soft-spoken devil had struck men dead with a smile still on his lips and then wiped the blood from his hands and carried on from that point in his sentence where he had been interrupted.

  “There!” said Christian soothingly. “There, Rap. Isn’t that better, now that you have a little hot coffee under the belt?”

  “A lot better. Thanks!” said Brender.

  Lifting his eyes, he looked earnestly into the face of the chief. An unfathomably angelic smile answered him, a softening of the eyes, a tenderness about the mouth. There was something fatherly and protective in the whole semblance of the man.

  If only he could trust to that expression, all was well! All that had happened was as nothing!

  “I’m glad you feel better,” said Christian. “Are you well enough to talk to me a little, Rap?”

  “Yes,” said Brender. “All you want. I wanted to tell you, too, about Silvertip and the restaurant, back there in Copper Creek.”

  “Ah, I understand, I understand!” said the outlaw chief. “What? A young lad — clean-cut young one. Murder! He thought that as he walked in, didn’t you, Rap? And murder of whom? Why, of a famous man — of the great Silver, himself. And a fine-looking fellow Silver is, with an eye that men won’t forget. A man of character, a man of sense and decency. Isn’t that the look of him, Rap?”

  “It is,” said Rap. His enthusiasm swept up and controlled him. “He saw what was coming to him, chief. He saw what was coming, and he got ready to take it, like a man. If you’d been there, you would have called the deal off. There was no yellow in Silvertip. He just turned in his chair and looked around him. He saw there were four of us. He saw we were planted on him. But he didn’t buckle under. And all at once I couldn’t go
ahead with the thing.”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” murmured Christian. “My dear boy, of course you couldn’t. It seemed rotten and low, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, it did,” agreed Brender.

  “And since it seemed rotten and low, of course you couldn’t go ahead with it. To have tackled him alone, now — that would have been better for you. You wouldn’t have minded that so much, of course. It would have seemed more gentlemanly. A duel, not a massacre.”

  “A duel and a massacre,” said Brender with a wry smile. “I wouldn’t have a chance in front of him. Nobody would. He’s fast as lightning, and he can see in the dark, pretty near.”

  “Nobody would have a chance with him?” murmured Christian, lifting those mobile brows of his in an expression of almost childish wonder. He chose to ignore his former contests with Silver, keeping within his own breast the hatred and admiration he felt for him. Those of his men who knew of the past dared not open their lips. Almost by sheer force of his determination, Christian had erased from men’s minds the defeats of the past. “Nobody?” repeated Barry Christian.

  “Except you,” said Brender hastily, remembering certain things that he had seen, and many others that he had heard about.

  “Ah, don’t flatter me, Rap,” said Christian gently. “Whatever you do, don’t flatter me. Flattery is the worst mental poison in this world. The worst of all. The greatest men have gone down before the flattery of their friends, when the swords and the guns of their enemies couldn’t destroy them! No, no, flattery is the worst of all! You won’t flatter me, Rap, will you?”

  Brender shook his head.

  “Are you laughing at me, chief?” he asked. “You know that nobody in the world can stand up to you.”

  “Nobody? Ah, ah, the world is larger than we are,” said the criminal. “I should never pretend that nobody can stand up against me. All I know is that I keep myself in practice, patiently, every day, working away my hours.” He sighed. “A little natural talent, and constant preparation. That’s all it needs. You fellows are my equals, every one of you. Taking a little pains is all the difference between us. But now, Rap, to return to your friend Silvertip. Where did he hide out when he came to the Higgins place with you?”