by Brand, Max
“Bandini,” he said, “get your horse, I’ll saddle mine. And in two hours one of us will be finished!”
CHAPTER XXI
Tonio’s Warning
OUT in the corral, the horses swept in waves, back and forth, as Silvertip advanced on them with his rope. He singled out the one he wanted, that same long, low-built bay which had carried him so well before, and dropped the rope on it at the first gesture.
Tonio came to him as he was saddling the broncho. There was concern in the big, round face, and the wise brow of the Mexican.
“You and Bandini, señor, you are riding out together?” he said.
“Yes,” said Silvertip. “What’s the matter?”
“He hates you so much that he groans when he hears your name,” said Tonio.
“I know it,” answered Silver.
“Hatred,” said Tonio, “is a food that breeds thought. A great hate will make a fool wise. And Bandini is not a fool. I shall ride out with you.”
“No,” said Silver.
“Then keep eyes in the back of your head,” went on Tonio. “I saw the face of Bandini, just now, and he was laughing to himself.”
That warning from Tonio should have put Silvertip on guard, but the thought that he was about to confront Bandini face to face and so accomplish a great purpose, or end all things in the effort, worked like fire in his brain, and clouded and smoked over his better judgment.
He joined José Bandini, therefore, and they cantered side by side down the narrow ravine below the house of Monterey.
It was easy to believe that Bandini had been laughing before. He was still in the midst of a smiling humor, and when he turned his glance toward Silvertip, repeatedly there was a gleam in his eye and a chuckle from his throat.
“You gringos,” he said to Silver, “think that you are the greatest fighting men in the world; and you, Silver, think that you are in the front rank of them. Now I’m not a distinguished man among my people, particularly, but — ”
“No,” said Silvertip. “Only distinguished for murder, not for fighting!”
“I am not particularly distinguished,” went on Bandini, smoothly overriding the insulting interruption of his companion, “and yet, Señor Silver, this day I am going to eat your heart!”
“You’re sure, Bandini,” said Silvertip, “because you’ve learned a new trick in the pulling of a gun. Or you have a better revolver, and think that it’ll act of its own accord. But that is only how you feel before we fight.”
“Another lie!” said Bandini.
“No, it’s true,” said Silver. “The fact is that when you stand up to me, José, you’ll turn into a snowman, and melt the strength out of your knees, and your hands will be shaking, and your heart will be beating in the hollow of your throat. How many times have you really stood up to a fighting man? You have a little reputation, but how many times have you earned it?”
He was amazed when José Bandini answered, with perfect cheerfulness:
“Never once! I’ve never had to. Most of the men I’ve met could be outmaneuvered. And any fellow’s a fool if he thinks that it’s dishonorable to take an enemy from behind. What does the lion do, for that matter?”
Bandini made a sweeping gesture to the sky.
“As the lion, so is Bandini,” he said.
“And you’re the rat that Monterey hired to teach his son how to fight?”
“If I’m a rat,” said Bandini, who seemed willing to endure any epithet, “Pedro was only a mouse. He thought me a hero. I laughed continually behind his back.”
They came out of the Monterey ravine, and thence rode across the valley of the Haverhill. Suddenly Bandini pointed out a group of low hills, though that was too large a name for them — they were mere swales of land, and over them grew entanglements of shrubbery.
“There’s the place for us,” he said to Silvertip. “When we get into that scrub, no one will be able to see us, and we can fight it out. Not an eye will fall on us, and afterward I can ride back to Monterey and tell him that unlucky Silvertip has been killed by sneaking, murdering assassins.”
Silvertip said nothing. He merely smiled, and looked straight ahead as though already he were seeing a death — and not his own!
So, at the side of Bandini, he entered the brush and found himself in the midst of a small hollow around which the shrubbery gathered in what was almost a wall.
“Now!” cried Bandini, cheerfully, and sprang down from his horse. Silver followed that example, instantly.
“What’ll you have?” demanded Silvertip. “Turn back to back and take ten steps? Or fire at the drop of a handkerchief? Take your choice — one way or the other — or anything else that pleases you better?”
“The first idea is a good idea,” said the Mexican. “We turn back to back, and take ten steps.”
“I take ten steps, and you turn at the fifth and shoot me through the back,” said Silvertip. “That would be the way of it, and you know it, you yellow rat.”
Again the insult slipped away from the easy mind of the Mexican.
“Well, then,” he said, “you can tell me what next way you want. We can face each other — and the first man to go for his gun gives the signal?”
“Perfect!” said Silvertip.
He stood back a little. His shoulders dropped forward; his body flexed a trifle; a smile twitched at his lips, was gone, returned again; and his eyes shown.
“Are you ready, Bandini?” he demanded.
To his amazement, Bandini laughed loud and long, once more.
“Ready for what?” asked Bandini.
“Ready to stand your ground?” asked Silvertip, bewildered.
“But why should I stand my ground?” asked Bandini. “You fool, do you think that I brought you out here to put my life in your hands?”
And still he laughed, putting his hands on the red and yellow scarf that was bound about his slender hips, and swaying rhythmically from side to side.
Silvertip stared for one more moment. Then a shudder of apprehension went with electric suddenness up his spine. He turned his head, slowly, and saw, standing head and shoulders above the line of brush behind him, the grinning faces of four men — a Drummon every one. Two held at the ready double-barreled shotguns, one of them with sawed-off barrels. The others covered him with rifles.
And still the laughter of Bandini rang and beat against his ears.
In a dream, Silver turned his body toward the line of guns. He heard one of the men say:
“Take him from behind, Bandini. Rope him, boy!”
And the thin shadow of a falling noose flicked past Silvertip’s eyes; the lariat drew taut, and he was jerked to his back.
CHAPTER XXII
Doomed!
THEY dragged Silvertip at the end of the lariat. Through the brush, they pulled him, while the thorns and the tips of the sharp branches ripped his clothes, and the flesh beneath them.
Then they paused to confer with Bandini, and let Silver get to his feet.
The conference was not long.
“Here’s half your money,” said one of the Drummons. “You get the rest from Hank, when you come to the house.”
He was counting out greenbacks into the hand of Bandini.
“It’s a pity to take the money,” said Bandini, still chuckling. “I ought to pay you for this job. But now I have to ride back to the Monterey house like mad, and give the alarm: ‘Silver is taken! The Drummons came down in force and mobbed him. I tried to help. But it was no good.’ Here — put a few bullets in this!”
He pulled off his jacket and tossed it into the air. Three rifles cracked before he caught the garment again. Holding it up, he exhibited three holes that had been drilled through it by the volley.
“That is how bravely Bandini stayed and fought,” said the Mexican. “Monterey will thank me for that. There is only one trouble — that flat-faced Tonio loves the gringo so much that he’ll be apt to suspect that I had a hand in his taking. However, we have to tak
e these small chances. For I have to keep the confidence of Monterey, friends, if I’m to do the important work for you.”
They spoke little more. Bandini merely lingered to say: “Keep him alive until I get there. I want to see the finish of him. To-night, if I can, I’ll go out by myself, like a hero” — he still was laughing — ”and go all alone into that dangerous house of the Drummons — to rescue Silver, or die for him!”
The Drummons could appreciate a joke of this nature. They greeted it with a hoarse thundering of mirth. And as Bandini rode off, they started toward their own place, in triumph.
Like a band of wild Indians they galloped, dragging Silvertip on the ground behind them; and when they slowed enough to enable him to regain his feet, they were soon off again, jerking him flat.
His body was raw, his wits half senseless, by the time they reached the river. Through it they dragged him, and brought him senseless indeed to the farther bank.
When he recovered, they were working his arms and his legs to get his breathing started again. And he heard one say:
“If old Hank gets a dead man, out of this, instead of a gent that he can work on, he’s goin’ to skin us, and don’t you forget it. Throw him up there on a horse, will you?”
They flung Silvertip into the saddle of the bay gelding which he had ridden from the house of Monterey. The lariat still bound his arms. His feet were tied into the stirrups. And gradually his mind cleared.
It was the end, he was sure. There was a sense of perfected doom that gathered over him. He had known in the beginning, he felt, that he would find his death in the Haverhill Valley. Julia Monterey had told him the same thing in clear words. He had guessed at defeat and at death when he was first in the village of Haverhill and endured the jests of the brutal clansmen.
Now they were gathered around him. His body was covered with a thousand cuts and bruises the sting of which set him on fire; and the warmth of his own blood covered him. His clothes were practically ripped from his body. He was a ragged statue, soaked in crimson, as they led him up the trail toward the Drummon house.
Their yells and the noise of their gunshots sounded far before them. A flight of hard riders came lurching down the way, men first, and then a scattering of half-naked boys riding bareback, all screeching like Indians.
They swarmed about the captive and the captors. They were like the creatures of a lost and barbaric age. One lad came near enough to plaster the blood of Silvertip over his hands; instantly all the others had to da the same. Here and there they galloped, yelling, waving their bloodstained hands, filling the air with their ecstasy.
And so Silvertip was brought over the brow of the hill and into sight of the house of Drummon.
The whole corner of it was blackened and charred by the fire which he had kindled. That in itself was a warning of what might happen to him at the hands of these savages.
He was dragged from the horse and hauled into the house to a room where Hank Drummon himself sat in a chair, with his wounded leg extended on another. Silvertip stood wavering before him, while Drummon ran his eyes little by little over the battered figure.
He was very angry, this chief of the clan.
“You done this for yourselves, eh?” said he. “You took and helped yourselves to him, did you? Why, you might ‘a’ knowed that it wouldn’t be enough for me if there was twenty of him. I got that in me that could eat twenty like him! But you helped yourself to the cream, did you? You bring him in here half dead? Well, I’ll see that you pay for it! Here — some of you throw him on the couch there, and some of the rest of you go and get cloth for bandages. Are you goin’ to let the lifeblood all run out of him before I have my chance at him?”
It was done as he commanded, briefly and with rough-handed speed. They brought water to wash his wounds. Some thoughtful spirit had poured a cupful of salt into the dishpan, and the brine searched every crevice of the wounds with bitter fire. The sweat of agony rolled from Silvertip, as he endured, his jaws locked.
Then the wounded flesh was bandaged, and he was allowed the privilege of stretching out on the couch. His head rang still; and a hammer seemed to be tapping regularly at the base of his brain.
“Give him a shot of whisky,” ordered Drummon. “I’m goin’ to talk to this hombre. He oughta be worth talkin’ to before he’s bumped off. Hey, sheriff!”
For the front door had slammed, and now the grizzled, sodden face of the sheriff appeared in the doorway. He came in slowly, his eyes fixed on the swathed body of Silver.
“Here’s the one that the greasers call Señor Silver,” said Drummon. “Take a look at the murderin’ hoss thief, sheriff, will you?”
The sheriff stood over Silver with his hands on his hips, and grinned and chuckled. “Kind of had an accident, brother, eh?” said he.
Silver looked up into the face of the man of the law, and said nothing. There was no help to be expected here, of course.
“I been lookin’ into his record,” said the sheriff. “It’s a long one, Hank.”
“What’s he been and done, outside of the trouble he’s made in the Haverhill?” asked Hank Drummon, and pressed his hand lightly against the white bandage that ran around his wounded forehead.
One of the younger men lifted the head of Silver and poured a glass of whisky down his throat.
He heard the sheriff saying: “He’s one of these here self-defense boys. When trouble’s in the air, he never makes the first move. He don’t have to. One of them chain-lightning gun-trick boys. You pick your hand, and he fills it for you — with lead. One of them gents that are outside the law except on Sundays and holidays. One of them that keep movin’, and move alone. That’s the sort of a bird that you’ve caught here, Hank. How’d you get him?”
“Brains,” said Hank Drummon, who never moved his eyes from the face of Silvertip. “Brains, and a little spot cash, and a dirty sneak of a traitor to deal with.”
“You pry one of the greasers loose from Monterey?” asked the sheriff, astonished. “That’s about the first time that was managed, ain’t it?”
“The first time, but it ain’t a Haverhill Mexican. It’s that slick greaser from the outside, that one called Bandini.”
“I know him,” said the sheriff. “I’d like to have the hangin’ of him one of these days.”
“Maybe you will,” said Drummon. “But take ’em one at a time. I ain’t through usin’ Bandini. That lad’s bright. He’s goin’ to show us the easy way into Monterey’s house, I reckon, sheriff. And once we get inside that place, we’re goin’ to wash down the walls with blood! Understand?”
“I hear you talk, Hank,” said the sheriff, “but you take an honest sheriff like me, and I can’t listen to talk of killin’ like that. It kind of rankles inside of me, to hear you talk like that, Hank!”
He roared with hearty laughter as he said this. Every one in the room joined in the pleasant jest.
And Silver, looking up at the ceiling, drew a slow, deep breath.
It was going to be hard, and very hard; but he kept his mind fixed far forward upon the future, when they would be bringing him toward the moment of his death.
He would have been sure of himself even if there were wild Indians to complete the tortures, he thought. But these devils were different. He could remember the Runt standing over the horrified face of Tonio; he could remember the frightful yell that had burst from the lips of the stolid Mexican at the mere thought of the thing that was about to be done to him. And how would he endure? He feared death far less than he feared the loss of his self-control.
“How many laid up?” asked the sheriff of Drummon.
“Five,” said Drummon. “There’s two of ’em down bad. The oil soaked into the clothes and kept the fire burnin’ right into the skin, and down deep. And there’s three more that’s burned enough so’s bein’ up and around is pretty miserable. Arid there’s me that’s down, besides!”
He leaned forward a little and stared heavily at Silvertip.
&nbs
p; “Yeah,” said the sheriff. “He’s done a job, all right. I dunno, Hank, but what we could make a law case out of this agin’ him, except that you boys was about to skin Tonio, the greaser. That would kind of stand out agin’ you in a court of law.”
“To the devil with the law,” said Hank Drummon. “The cursed Cross and Snake has been carved on my hide, sheriff. It’s carved on there so deep that it ain’t goin’ to come off. And old Monterey is goin’ mad with pleasure every time he thinks that two of the things he promised to me twenty years ago has been done. There’s one more left to go!”
“Yeah,” said the sheriff. “The door, the forehead, and the heart. I know!”
He looked suddenly over his shoulder, and his face puckered with horror and with disgust.
“I been shamed,” said Hank Drummon slowly, the words bubbling huskily up out of his throat. “I been shamed and made a fool of, and every Drummon in the Haverhill has been shamed and made a fool of alongside of me. And it’s been a swine of a white man that sides with greasers that’s done it to me. When I start thinkin’ about it, I pretty nigh lose the head off of my shoulders!”
“You’ll keep your head on your shoulders,” declared the sheriff, “until you’ve had your chance at workin’ on him.” He added: “What kind of ideas might you use, Hank?”
“I dunno,” said Hank Drummon with a sigh.
He touched the bandage that made the round of his head, and sighed again.
“I dunno,” he repeated. “Fact is, sheriff, that for twenty-four hours I been turnin’ the thing around and around in my head. It might be that I could set by and see him stretched out on an ant heap. We got some red ants around here that sting like poison. They might start and work on him.”
“Well,” said the sheriff, “I always held to the idea that a gent sewed up in green rawhide, and left to be squeezed as the stuff started shrinkin’ in the sun, would sure know he was dyin’ for a long while before he finished off.”
“It’s an idea,” agreed Hank Drummon almost tenderly. “I didn’t think of that one, but I thought of other things, all right. I thought of leavin’ him out where the bluebottles would get at him. I wouldn’t mind seein’ him turned into a pile of fly-blowed meat.”
