by Brand, Max
“He didn’t come here,” said Brender.
“Ah, he didn’t come? He deserted you, Rap? Well, well, I should not have expected that of the great Silver. Not the sort of a fellow who would desert a friend when the friend is apt to get into trouble.”
“He didn’t run away from me,” said Brender. “But I knew that I’d be running into a lot of trouble, before long.”
“You knew it?” said the soft voice of the chief.
“I knew it. I knew that I couldn’t beat you, chief. I knew that you’d presently run me down. I thought there was no use putting Silver in the bag with me. And that when you caught me, there was no use in Silver being shot to pieces fighting for my hide. So I pulled out away from him, in the middle of the night, and came on by myself. He doesn’t know this part of the world very well, and he’ll never find me here.”
“Ah,” said Christian, “you guessed that we’d be a lot keener to get at you than to get at Silver, didn’t you?”
“Well, you’d call me a traitor. I knew that,” said Brender. “I knew that I’d get the red mark on my name.”
“He knew that,” said Christian to the others, without the slightest emphasis.
“Are you going to keep talking to him? Ain’t you going to let me get at him?” demanded Stew.
The leader silenced Stew with a gesture.
“We guessed that you’d come here,” said Christian. “I don’t know how. When I thought of your happy nature, Rap, and your jolly, carefree ways, I suddenly had a picture of you sitting in the cool of Higgins’s patio and drinking his liquor and taking your ease. So we came here and saw Higgins, who kindly took us up to your room. But you were not there. However, when we found your horse in the stable, we could guess that you had not actually left the place. So we waited. And first came the pretty girl, and then came our handsome Rap Brender.
“I’m sorry that Stew hit you so hard. I would have handled the job myself, but my hands were full, just then, managing the girl, and keeping her silent. Valiant little thing, Rap. She kept struggling, and fighting, and trying to free herself, and shout a warning to you. How her heart beat! How she moaned, deep in her throat. It was touching. I pitied her. I envied you, Rap, too. Lovely little thing. Delightful hands. Delicate hands!”
He smiled at Brender after a fashion that he had, tilting his head back, and half closing his eyes, and letting his lips part a little, slowly, until the white of his teeth flashed through. Brender had seen that smile on the face of the chief when he knew that death was in his heart.
“Where is she now?” asked Rap Brender. “Was she hurt? Was she harmed?”
“Look, Stew,” said the chief with a sort of tender amusement. “Rap is all of a tremble, afraid that the girl was hurt. No, no, she was as safe in my hands as a small bird in its nest. Just as safe, I give you my word. And then I just turned her over to her guardian. Ah, Rap, a bad business that, taking young girls away from their lawfully appointed guardians.”
“He’s not!” exclaimed Brender. “The fellow lied to you, chief. I swear that he lied! She ought to be a free citizen of our country. She’s American, and they’re going to take her south to Mexico, and make her do what they please, and crush the money out of her! She’s rich, and they want to get her money. It’s an outrage! If you stop them, she’ll reward you!”
“She’ll reward me? Well, well,” said the chief. “Perhaps she would, after all. Though I suppose that good actions should reward themselves. But she’s rich, is she? Ah, ah — rich and an orphan, and so brave, and so fierce to save Rap Brender from harm! It’s a touching case, and I think that I shall have to do something about it. I’m sure that I shall. I give you my word that you may rest assured, Rap — that I’ll do something about it. Just what, I don’t know — but certainly Mr. Murcio shall hear from me!”
“And this here skunk?” asked Stew.
Buck turned his pale, hungry eyes on Brender at the same moment.
“What would you have me do?” asked Barry Christian.
“I’d have you back out and leave him to me for a coupla hours,” said Stew. “These here walls are pretty thick. We wouldn’t disturb nobody very much while we was working on him.”
Buck swallowed, then he licked his dry lips and continued to run his eager eyes over and over the body of Brender.
“But would it be wise?” said Barry Christian. “You must remember that as long as we hold Rap in our hands, Silvertip is drawing closer and closer to us. He is searching for his vanished friend. He is combing the desert, on that matchless horse of his, like a hawk in the air, hunting, hunting, never at rest. Such a man as Silver, you know, will never give up, so long as sacred friendship is in his mind, so long as a sacred obligation remains to be discharged. No, he’ll continue hunting until he finds Rap Brender, and when he finds Rap, then, lads, we close our hands over the most interesting man in this entire world; we close our hands over Silver himself.”
He stood up suddenly. His thoughts for an instant struck through the profound mask of his hypocrisy like white fire through a storm cloud. And the keen, penetrating light shot from his eyes.
Stew and Buck looked at their chief, aghast.
“He had the world before him. He could wander where he pleased,” said Christian. “But he chose to interfere with me — and therefore, he is dead! He is a ghost already. He throws no shadow on the sand!”
The passion faded suddenly out of his eyes.
“To catch this priceless Silver,” said the chief, “would be more than our united talents might be able to accomplish, my friends. But now, on account of Mr. Brender, we don’t need to plan and scheme and wear out our horses pursuing him. We may simply wait here until the profound mind of Silver has solved the problem and located the man. We then pull the trigger, and the trap falls, and Silver is ours, taken like an eagle out of the sky.”
He dropped an affectionate hand on the shoulder of Stew.
“And after that happens, Stew,” he said, “after that happens, we may perhaps be able to do something about Rap Brender himself. Because I know what you have in mind, Stew, and I have such an affection for you that it would pain me to disappoint you.”
He smiled at Stew, at Buck, and, last of all, and most lingeringly and tenderly, on Rap Brender himself.
So that Rap, bowing his head suddenly, felt the ice of despair slipping like a bitter steel edge into his heart.
CHAPTER XII
Higgins’s Barroom
THERE was only one part of his estate where Tom Higgins was perfectly at home. When he walked through the green of his flourishing fields and groves, he always felt a little incredulous of his good fortune; when he wandered through his house, he could not believe that Tom Higgins had built it, but when he worked as bartender in his own saloon, he was thoroughly content.
He had furnished the place carefully. The bar itself was a ponderous structure with a good, heavy brass rail running in front of it to uphold the boots of customers, and no matter what other work was performed on the place each day, that brass rod had to be burnished until it shone like a flame.
Across the wall behind the bar ran a great mirror, in three neatly joined sections, and in front of that mirror stood three ranks of parti-colored bottles. They had been collected for their colors, in fact, rather than for their contents. They all contained liquor of one sort or another, but even Tom Higgins had forgotten what was in most of them. What delighted him was the number and the variety of the host.
He was swabbing off the surface of his bar, on this day, not because it needed swabbing, but because out of his youth he retained mental pictures of competent bartenders swabbing off their bars with a fine, broad flourish of the arm. Besides, he liked to throw a little water on the bar and then polish it off, because he felt that the red-brown of the surface came up with a smoother polish, that reflected the window lights more deeply and clearly, as well as the dim golden lettering that ran across the mirror behind him.
Tom Higgins would have
been glad to chat, but there was in the room only the tall and military form of the big Mexican, Alonso Santos. The other Mexican, the real leader of the strange party, Murcio, had just been called out of the saloon by Barry Christian.
It was while Tom was rubbing up his bar that a flash of gold gleamed beyond his swinging doors. And a moment later, when the doors were pushed open, he saw what was in fact a golden stallion, stockinged in black to the knees and the hocks.
There was only a flash of the horse, but that glimpse made the heart of Tom Higgins jump. Then he took heed of the man who was entering. For he was worth a look. He might be twenty-five. He might be thirty. But plainly he was in the very prime of life. The face was brown, deeply sun-tanned, and aggressive in cut of features, and yet with a comfortable solidity about the bony frame that suggested that this man could endure a battering. But, above all, the watchful Tom Higgins was delighted with the fellow’s build. For about the neck and arms and shoulders there was the weight of luxurious power, and then the rest of the body ran away to the lean, stringy hips of the perfect athlete. Merely to watch the man walk was a thing to light the eyes, there was such a rising on the toes, such suggestion of speed and grace and strength combined.
The stranger paused just inside the door and knocked from his clothes some of the desert dust that had accumulated in every wrinkle. He took off his sombrero and dusted that, also, exposing at the same time the massive size of his head, and two singular markings of gray above the temples, ridiculously like incipient horns about to break through the hair. That suggestion of horns was perhaps the thing that made the man seem formidable, crafty, full of devices.
Had not Tom Higgins heard of such a man, not long before? The gray spots in the hair — and a golden stallion?
“Glad to see you, brother,” said Tom Higgins.
“How’s things?” responded the other, coming to rest at the bar with his left elbow on it, and a shoulder slumping as one foot was fitted upon the brass rail beneath.
“Pretty fair — pretty fair,” said Higgins.
“Beer, please,” the stranger ordered.
“You’ll find it cold, too,” said Higgins. “Same cold as spring water. I got a pipe running here from deep in the spring, and that water it flows around the beer bottles day and night and never stops cooling ’em off.”
“Have some with me,” suggested the stranger.
Higgins pursed his lips. There was no room in his small face for more than one large feature, and this was the mouth, wide and thick as the lips of a Negro. When Higgins laughed, one could see of him no more than the gaping mouth, the teeth, and a few wrinkles around the margin of the picture.
“It ain’t my time of day for beer,” he asserted. “But I’ll have a shot of red-eye with you. Real rye, boy, and ten years old.”
He dumped a finger of the rye into the bottom of a whisky glass and raised it with one hand, while with the other he poured the frothing beer into a tall glass for his client and approved with his eye of the dew that gathered on the sides of the glass.
“And here’s how,” said the stranger.
“How!” said Higgins.
He tossed off his drink, and then grinned as he saw the big fellow slowly draining the contents of his glass until he put it down half empty, and sighed with pleasure.
“Who’s been through here lately?” asked the stranger.
“Why, just the ordinary string of folks that cross the desert and wanta stop over,” said Tom Higgins, instantly cautious. “Know many folks around this part of the world?”
“Not many,” said the stranger. “There’s a fellow called Rap Brender, though.”
Tom Higgins started. He looked suddenly down, as though he might betray something with his face.
“Brender,” he said. “Lemme see. Youngish, sort of. Dark and mighty good-looking.”
“That’s it.”
“Well,” said Tom Higgins, “he’s been here, all right. Matter of fact, he was here the other day. And matter of fact, he’s coming back!”
“When?”
“Why, I dunno. I think he said in a day or so. Maybe this evening.”
“Well,” said the stranger, “I’ll take another bottle of beer into your back room and sit there in the cool for a moment, if you don’t mind.”
“Help yourself,” answered Higgins.
He went as far as the door and made a hospitable gesture.
“Just make yourself at home,” said Higgins.
He saw the other seated, and then went back to the bar.
He found that the big head of the Mexican was nodding at him.
“That’s the man!” said Santos, very softly. “That must be the man that Mr. Christian wants and that we’re all to look out for. That must be Silvertip!”
“It’s him!” whispered Higgins.
Silvertip, in the meantime, sat in the back room of the saloon, by no means free from apprehension. He was by force of long-endured dangers about as suspicious as a hunting wolf, or a fleeing moose, and he had not failed to notice the start with which the bartender had heard the mention of the name of Rap Brender.
Silver tried to diagnose the case as he sat in the dimness of the little room. Huge, round-headed trees covered the field before his eyes. Between the trunks, he could see the sunset colors begin to tarnish the bright edge of the sky. And back and forth under the trees two men were walking, one tall, with a pale face and long black hair, and the other short, stodgy, with tightly puffed cheeks and a bristling little mustache.
Silver noted them as they wandered here and there, conversing busily. The short man was arguing with fierce heat. The tall man spoke in conciliatory tones, in a gentle voice, with graceful and soothing gestures. Yet his companion refused to be soothed.
But there was the problem of the bartender to be solved for Silver himself. The man knew Rap Brender. And why the start? Well, perhaps the bartender might think that he was an officer of the law, pursuing Brender. Or perhaps it was simply that the man was afraid of Rap.
In any case, it was strange that such a direct inquiry had received such a direct answer. People who knew an outlaw like Rap Brender were more apt to fence for a time before they admitted their acquaintance. But the bartender had spoken as though he were stuttering through a memorized piece.
That was the thing on which the suspicions of Silver centered. The peculiarity of voice and manner, the total lack of normalcy, the sudden change from a hearty bartender to the stuttering hulk of a man that had to look down to the floor, utterly embarrassed.
It was a small thing perhaps, but Silver knew that the greatest causes might be wrecked by a failure to explore just such small reefs as this seemed to be.
Slowly, carefully, he recalled every feature of the conversation. His mind reverted to the big, dignified Mexican who had been sitting at the side table. There was probably a story worth the telling behind that fellow, too, with his military bearing, and his costly clothes, and his air of command. He was no random prospector or cow-puncher or cattle dealer who had made the short cut across the desert and stopped off at this oasis.
In fact, an air of guilty mystery began to gather about the place, in Silver’s mind, and he slid his hand quickly up under his coat, to enjoy the reassuring touch of his fingers against the rough butt of the weapon.
His thoughts were taken from his own position and Brender by the approach of the tall man and the fellow with the brown, puffed cheeks. When they got nearer, Silver knew what he had suspected before — the tall one was Barry Christian!
The little fellow was saying: “This is the end of the argument — señor, it is the end! The point of it is — what I have done, I have done without you. That is true, no? Until last night you gave me a little help!”
“Ah, Murcio,” said the other, in his wonderfully gentle, rather sad voice. “Ah, Murcio, will you tell me that it was nothing? Only a little help when you were about to lose your prize, when it was about to slip away?”
“They could
not have gone far,” argued Murcio. “They could have been tracked. Not even the desert could have swallowed them. I should have found them again!”
“Stubborn fellow — stubborn Murcio,” said the tall man gently. And he laid his hand lightly on the shoulder of the Mexican.
“A woman could not have ridden very far — not through the heat of the desert. She would have failed. We would have recaptured her!”
“Ah, but she’s a strong little thing,” said the other. “Full of strings and fibers of strength. She would endure like a mustang. Never trust to her weakness, or you’ll be sadly surprised. No, never trust to that! But what I ask from you, Murcio, I ask against my will. It is simply that I am a business man.”
“A business man? Do you call it business? Blackmail!” exclaimed Murcio.
“A business man,” said the soft, steady voice of the American. “A business man, like yourself, eh?”
Murcio stuck his hands together above his head and groaned.
“But for a reward — yes, yes, I shall pay you the reward — a good, fat sum. But you are asking for a fortune!”
“She has a great fortune. I’m asking only for a bit of it,” said the American. “You must understand that. She is very rich. You won’t need all of that money for yourself.”
“I never meant to take it all!” groaned Murcio. “There must be something left for her!”
“For her?” said the tall man. “Ah, Murcio, what is her need of money? With her sweet face and her charming smile, she cannot help but find an easy way through the world. All the more delightful if she knows that men are not hunting her down for her money.”
“Still you have words — still you argue!” said Murcio, staring suddenly up at his companion. “What a terrible man you are, Señor — ”
Before the name was spoken, the forefinger of the tall man was lifted in a warning gesture, and Murcio snapped his teeth on the unspoken word, while the American glanced suddenly around him, and over his shoulder, straight at the open window behind which Silver was sitting.
