Silvertip

by Brand, Max

  He ground his teeth together at the thought. Silver dropped a hand on his shoulder.

  “This is the beginning, brother,” said he. “Before the end of the trail, we shall have ridden through some strange places together. Come when you wish. Call for me if you please. I am in your service and you are in mine, and we shall fight for the same master. Adios!”

  He went out of the room, and down the hall he saw the Montereys standing side by side. To their astonished eyes, he smiled and waved; and when he joined them, old Monterey exclaimed:

  “What has happened?”

  “We have shaken hands,” said Silver. “We are now brothers. We shall go to one another whenever we are called, and we shall serve one master.”

  He went down the stairs before them. And he heard Monterey saying:

  “You understand, Julia? As I said before, it is not chance. There is fate in it. If Juan Perez is won over, then all the others will be ready to follow him. They will ride behind him just as though he were my own son and wore my proper name!”

  Silver went back to his own room, and there a servant brought him fresh chocolate, and bread, baked in small brown loaves, with butter. He ate and drank hungrily. There was a full pot of frothed chocolate, and he drained it to the last sip. Then he smoked a cigarette and watched the wreaths of blue-white rising up against the ceiling. He could think of nothing except the round, brown face of Tonio for the purpose he had in mind. Tonio to-day — Juan Perez on other occasions.

  So he went out into the patio and sent for Tonio. The minute the man appeared, Silver knew that his interview with Perez had become known, for there was no hostility in the big eyes.

  The eyes of Tonio were pale and a little prominent. They blinked twice as he greeted Silver. Then he began to smile.

  “Tonio, will you help me to-day?” asked Silver.

  “There is nothing every one on the place wishes except to serve the señor,” said Tonio. “For my part, no trouble would be too great; we know what service was done the night before in the garden terrace.”

  “You’ll help me then, Tonio?” asked Silver. “The first thing is to take me out riding and show me the way to the house of Henry Drummon. Will you do that?”

  Tonio’s round fat face wrinkled like the skin of an overripe apple.

  Then he sighed and nodded. But he added: “This is war now, señor.”

  He waved his hand at the breadth of the valley, the pale-green of the grass, with the wind and the sun giving it a shimmering life, and the trees rolling in darker clouds across it.

  “War now,” said Tonio. “There has been almost peace for these last years, but now there is another death, and the war commences once more. If we go to look at the Drummons, be sure that the Drummons are coming to look at us. There will be cattle rustling, horse stealing, and every rock, and every stump, and every bush will have a rifle behind it, perhaps. But if you wish to ride to see the Drummons, I’ll show you the way.”

  They went to the stable, where Silver found his mustang. In the patio, the girl came out to watch them leave. She had on a wide-brimmed straw hat, tipped so that the brim was a halo for her face; and she wore a blue dress with yellow Mexican embroidery spilling across it.

  Silvertip waited for her to say something, but she said nothing at all. She merely came out to the patio entrance and watched them go through the arch. The sun flamed on the whitewash of the wall behind her as she watched them pass. Silver turned suddenly to speak to her; the words stuck in his throat; he rode on silently. There was something fixed and still about her smile, and a pallor around the mouth that told him she was smiling merely as a soldier smiles when he faces the firing squad. Perhaps she was guessing what errand he rode on with Tonio. Perhaps she was assuring herself that neither of them would ever come back again.

  Juan Perez was gone with Monterey; Tonio was with Silver; no one remained in the house to give guidance to the ignorant, clumsy peons, and the unruly vaqueros who could protect her in case the Drummons, in fact, were reaching out at that moment toward the house of Monterey.

  But he went on.

  “Gallop, Tonio!” he called, and they raced down the slope and swung down the easy pitch toward the middle of the valley, then out from it into the broader expanse of the Haverhill Valley itself.

  Presently, when their horses were black with sweat, they drew rein at a signal from Tonio. His lifted hand pointed toward a group of cattle that seemed to Silver a smaller and a scrawnier breed, less square in the quarters than the stock of Monterey.

  “You see the brand? You know it?” asked Tonio.

  Silver singled out a steer and drifted slowly down toward it, until he made out the loom and strike of the brand against the skin of one of the quarters.

  “Bar 17 Bar?” called he to Tonio. “Is that the brand?”

  “That’s it. That’s the Drummon brand.”

  Silver looked around him with an appreciative eye. He could understand that in the Drummon range it was necessary to go on more carefully.

  “Where did the men of this valley come from?” he asked.

  Tonio made a great gesture toward the east.

  “A long time ago they were in England, some people that looked like beasts, I suppose,” said Tonio. “Then they move out and go to Carolina. They go back up into mountains. They stay there till their neighbors begin to hunt them like beef. They leave that country and they go West. They come to the valley here. They kill the Haver-hills, who own half the valley. They start fighting the Montereys. They keep on fighting the Montereys. Now there is one old man left to us, and there are plenty of Drummons remaining. They stay all the same. When strangers come into the valley, the Drummons ride them down. They burn the houses the squatters build. Sometimes they burn the squatters with the houses.”

  “And nothing is done to ’em?” asked Silver.

  “The sheriff is Drummon, the jury is Drummon, the judge is Drummon,” said Tonio calmly.

  Then his eyes rolled, and his teeth flashed in something that was not a smile.

  “Before I die, I shall do something!” said Tonio. “I have already done a little bit in my life!”

  He held up one finger as he spoke, and drew in his breath through his teeth, as though he were drinking.

  He had killed at least one Drummon; that was fairly clear.

  “How many have gone down in the fighting?” asked Silvertip. He took off his hat and ran his hand over his head as he waited for the answer.

  “Who knows?” asked Tonio cheerfully. “Fifty years — and who knows? When I was a boy there were two other little towns in the valley. They were both Mexican towns. Now they are gone. The fire caught hold of them on windy nights, and they’re both gone. Look there — by the edge of the river — yonder!”

  Silver could see it — a curious dark smudge, covered with small mounds.

  “That was one of them. That was the last one. The grass hasn’t begun to grow on them yet,” said Tonio. “There is only Haverhill now. But who can tell? Some night the wind may blow up the valley, and there may be fire in that wind; and then there will be no Haverhill town, either.”

  He began to laugh and nod. And Silvertip saw the picture of the flames whirling, and the houses dissolving, and the people running into the night, dragging with them what they were trying to save from the ruin, and clouds of sparks exploding up into the sky.

  Perhaps he would have to see that picture painted brightly in before he came to the end of his days.

  CHAPTER XV

  The Drummon Place

  THEY came to the verge of the bright water, with its currents running like half-luminous shadows beneath the surface.

  “This is the limit,” said Tonio. “This is as far as we can go. Over there is the home of Henry Drummon — beyond that hill, with the trees covering it. If any of the men of Monterey are found across this river, we are shot like dogs. It is the dead line.”

  “We could ford the stream right here, I think,” said Silver.

/>   “Yes,” said Tonio, “and we could be shot on the other bank.”

  Silver scanned the wooded head of that hill and knew perfectly that he would have to cross to the other side of it. He knew, rising in him, the peculiar force of the temptation, and he set his teeth against the surge of it in vain.

  At last he said: “We’d better go over to have a bit of a look, Tonio, don’t you think so?”

  Tonio stared at him.

  “This,” he said, making an appropriate gesture, “is the dead line.” He indicated the river with the sweep of his hand, and continued by drawing the edge of the hand across his throat suddenly. “Besides,” he said, “this is the daylight. And they are all hawks and owls. They can see miles and miles even in the half light. What do you wish to do, señor?”

  Silver drew up his belt a notch, as though he were hungry.

  “I’ll go over and take a look at the house,” he said. “Go back in there among those trees, Tonio, and wait for me. If you hear guns, and don’t see me come pelting back over the head of that hill, you’ll know that they’ve got me, and you won’t have to wait any longer.”

  Tonio shouted in rapid protest, but Silver was already riding into the water. He would not look back, in spite of the heated arguments that Tonio poured into his ears from a distance. But when he gained the farther bank, he turned and waved his hand. Tonio, with both arms moving, was indicating to heaven and earth that he abandoned the cause of a madman. Silver cantered his mustang up the easy slope and made straight at the hill.

  As he came to it, he swung the horse to the side, and well away from a road that cleft through the trees. He had barely changed direction when he heard the beating of many hoofs, the creaking of leather, the notes of raised voices. And as the trees began to spread their branches above him, he saw a cavalcade of half a dozen riders sweep over the top of the hill, with a cluster of dogs racing about the horses, or frolicking in the lead.

  It was a group of the Drummons. He could have known them at a greater distance by the way the big, blocky heads were set on the thick necks, and by the way the necks grew out of the shoulders. He could have judged, too, by something devil-may-care in the free swing of their riding. The very dogs had a look that to Silver seemed harmonious in the entire picture. They were huge brutes, all of a type, and the type something between wolfhound and mastiff.

  When he came to a good thickness of brush, Silver dropped from the saddle, threw the reins, and made sure that he was well hidden from the eye of any observer. With a rattle and a roar, the group went by down the road. He breathed more easily, and was about to toss the reins over the head of the sweating mustang again when a hound gave tongue on a note that approached him rapidly.

  A voice yelled out of the distance: “Belle! Hey, Belle, you brindle-faced fool, stop running that rabbit track! Come back here, Belle!”

  But the baying of the dog still approached, and now a great brute with a brindled head and a white-and-tan body broke through the shrubbery, hesitated, then hurled itself straight at Silver.

  He aimed at the head of Belle a kick that missed but made her swerve. Her bared teeth almost gripped his leg. As he turned, she was swerving, leaping full at his head. Instinct made him reach both hands forward, and luck gave him a double handhold just under the jaws. He let the big dog swing with the impetus of its own leap and flung her heavily on her back, his own weight behind the fall.

  She lay still, on her side, with her long red tongue lolling out onto the dust and no sign of motion in her sides. He was afraid for an instant that she was dead, and if her master found her stretched out, he would not pause until he had found the cause that had brained her.

  Through the trees, through the shrubbery, a horse was crashing its way, and the voice of the master was roaring:

  “Belle, you woodenheaded fool! Belle! Come here! Hey, Belle! I’m going to have the hide off you; I’m going to have it off with a whip!”

  The dog revived all in an instant. Once on her feet, she stood swaying for a moment, her red eyes fixed eagerly on Silvertip; then she swung to the side and went hurtling away toward the calling voice.

  Silver heard the man cursing. They were so close that he could even make out the whistling of the whip with which he struck at the dog. Then all those noises receded. He heard the pounding of hoofs, and the high-pitched halloo of the rider, hastening after his mates.

  Silvertip took the loop of the reins over his arm and walked on among the trees slowly, scanning the vistas which opened among the trunks, and swerved away and closed to either side. He went on until he reached the brow of the hill. The trees stopped there suddenly. Through the verge of them he glimpsed a picture still obscured and brown-striped by the tree trunks which intervened between him and the open.

  He saw a shallow valley, with a crooked flash of water streaked across the center of it, trees clustering here and there, and a long, low-fronted house that had once been painted white, though now the weather had scraped the wood bare in most places, and left merely a look of wet dust. The tramping of many hoofs had worn away all grass near the house, and across the face of the building stretched a hitch rack whose beams had been gnawed thin in many places. The front door was set off by an ornamental hood of carved wood, and there was a brass knocker that looked foolishly out of place.

  Silvertip left his mustang and rounded to the rear of the house. A narrow veranda ran along it. A workbench had been rigged here by laying a few long boards across two sawbucks. On the bench appeared the keel and the ribs of a sharp-ended rowboat which was probably intended for the stream that ran down the hollow near the house, and not for the Haverhill Valley itself. There was a litter of wood shavings on the floor, and spilling off onto the ground. From pegs along the outer wall hung bits of harness, and coats and hats mostly green with age, as though they had been hung up one day and then forgotten during years.

  Silvertip tapped at the open kitchen door. He could see no one inside — only the worn tatters of some linoleum on the floor, and a broom with half the straw scrubbed from it, and a big rusty range on which a few pots were steaming idly. But a stifled voice called from an unseen corner of the room, and Silver went in.

  In a corner near the sink, at a little kitchen table, sat a lad of fifteen, chewing at a big mutton bone, ripping off the shreds of flesh, or gnawing at the knuckle with strong, white teeth. He kept on gnawing, his eyes half closed with content, half buried by the upward snarling of his face muscles. Even at fifteen, he had the perfect Drummon features beneath a ragged mop of hair. He continued to chew at the bone, mumbling around it:

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m a new man,” said Silver, and walked over to the stove, where he lifted the lid, replenished the fire box with wood, and thrust the heavy poker into the rising of the flames. With the lids replaced, except one which the poker shaft lifted askew, Silver turned toward young Drummon and found that the latter, having put down his bone for a moment, was licking his chops and staring with insolent eyes. He looked as dangerous as a half-grown mountain lion; and one could be sure that he was far more formidable than that.

  “You’re the new man, are you?” asked young Drummon.

  “Yes. I’m the new man.”

  “The devil you are. There ain’t any new man.”

  “You ask your old man,” said Silver.

  “Whatcha mean? That a way of telling me to go to the devil?”

  “Why? Is he dead?” said Silver.

  “Yeah. Sure, he’s dead. The greasers got him. But I’m goin’ to get me a coupla yaller skunks to make up before I’m a lot older. What’s your name? Who are you?”

  “I’m a fellow that keeps my mouth shut,” said Silver, “and never asks a lot of questions, and doesn’t answer ’em, either.”

  “You don’t, don’t you?” asked the lad, rising.

  He showed six feet and an inch of tough muscle laid over a burly frame. His neck was already as thick as a wrestler’s; and his pale Drummon eyes glared at Sil
vertip.

  “You’re goin’ to talk, or you’re goin’ to get out,” said young Drummon. “If Alligator Hank was here, he’d know if you was one of the real men. But he ain’t far away, and I could call him. But I don’t need to call him. Whatcha doin’ with that poker? Back up and lemme hear you chatter! I mean it. Turn around here and talk or I’m goin’ to sock you.”

  The voice of the lad was rising as he spoke. It reached a high-pitched snarl at this moment, and he leaped with no further warning at Silver. Silver was loath to strike. But it was not defending himself against a boy so much as against a dangerous young beast of prey. He let the hard-driven fist of Drummon go past his head, and clipped him on the chin as he swayed forward.

  The hair flew up on the head of the youth. He stood rocking, with blank eyes. Silver took him under the armpits, led him to the door, and thrust him outside. He walked away with drunken, fumbling steps, and Silver, turning back to the stove, drew out the poker.

  It was white-hot, throwing out a shower of coruscations. He went through the house and opened the front door. On the solid face of it he fulfilled the first vow of old Arturo Monterey by searing into the wood the sign of the Cross, with the wavering line of the Snake underneath it.

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Pursuit

  HE RETRACED the line of the Snake with the tip of the poker, now a dull red, and heard from the rear of the house a loud shouting, answered from not far off. Silver threw the poker away and ran for the woods where his mustang was left. He had hoped that all the Drummon men would be in the party which he had watched ride out hunting. But, as in a hornet’s nest, there appeared to be a continual reserve of warriors about the camp. For now he heard the thudding of hoofs, and he looked back as the big youngster, running on foot, turned the corner of the house with three horsemen sweeping up behind him.