by Brand, Max
“Buck” kicked a chair out of his path. It caromed across the floor and crashed against the wall.
“That’s what you say, you square-headed fool of a beer-drinking Dutchman!” cried Buck. “But I say different. And I got in mind right now to ask Mr. Kenyon to up and say is he a sneaking skunk or ain’t he?”
Ned Kenyon turned around slowly. Silver half expected him to bolt for the door. Instead, his voice came out thin and sharp through the nose, but with a tone steady enough.
“I don’t know you, Buck,” said Ned Kenyon. “And I guess you don’t know me. But anyway you look at it, I’m a peaceable fellow. I don’t want trouble.”
“I’m askin’ you,” said Buck, “are you a hound, or ain’t you a hound? And if you ain’t a hound, how you goin’ to prove that to me? Hey?”
He thrust out his head. His lips twitched back to show the yellow line of his teeth. He was cold sober, and he was doing his best to work himself into a fighting rage.
Kenyon sighed very audibly.
“Well,” he said, “I take everybody to witness that I’m not hunting for a fight. I never have in my life. I never so much as pointed a gun at any man. But on the other hand, I guess I never took water, that I can recollect, and I don’t aim to start taking it now.”
Silver, bewildered and delighted, could hardly believe his ears. Buck, also, was so amazed that he halted for an instant. Then a swift flash of joy crossed his face. For after this speech of Kenyon’s, the fight that was to be would be in the nature of a fair battle, fairly accepted — the sort of thing which too often passes as “self-defense” west of the Mississipi.
At the same time, the men along the bar who had been looking on curiously, now scattered rapidly back toward the wall, to be out of the line of a possible gun play. The bartender prepared to duck.
It was strange to see how calmly every one took this incident. Mustang, to be sure, was “wide open”; but even if the inhabitants had not seen gun fights before, they had heard of them often enough to brace their nerves for the shock.
Ned Kenyon stood straight and stiff. The straightness pleased Silver. The stiffness told him beforehand that his friend would die.
He took Kenyon by the shoulder and gently, irresistibly, pulled him out of the way. His left elbow was leaning on the bar. He continued to lean there, at ease, with his right hand resting on his hip.
“Buck,” said Silver, “if you want to talk, talk to me, will you?”
“There ain’t anybody that I won’t talk to,” said Buck. “Who in the devil are you?”
“I’ll tell you a part of what I am,” said Silver. “In a way, I’m your sort of an hombre, Buck. I spend a lot of time every day practicing with my guns, just as you do. I’m an expert. I’m such an expert that I know the average fellow, who does honest work with his hands, can’t possibly stand up to me. Ned Kenyon, for one instance, probably couldn’t stand up to me, any more than he can stand up to you.”
It was perhaps the oddest speech that was ever heard in a Western barroom. It struck every whisper out of the air. Winter frost could not have stilled all life more completely. Only the mouth of the bartender gaped and closed again, like a fish on dry land, making its last gasp for air.
“You’re goin’ to put yourself in his boots, are you?” said Buck. “You’re goin’ to prove that he ain’t a skunk? You’ll have some proving to show me what you are!”
“Wait a minute, Arizona,” said Ned Kenyon. “This here is mighty fine of you, but I aim to fight my own fights when they come my way.”
“Take your hand away from my shoulder!” snapped Silver, sharply, so that Kenyon jumped back. “And don’t speak to me again. This rat here is likely to try his teeth on me the first instant he thinks that I’m off guard. Do you hear me, Buck?”
“Hear you? Well, yes!” shouted Buck. He smote the floor with the flat of his foot and swayed forward a little. Then curses began to spill out of his mouth.
“Were you hired to do this?” asked Silver.
The cursing stopped.
“Because,” said Silver, “every time you swear, it’s going to be harder on you. I thought at first that I might have to pull a gun and put you to sleep, Buck. But I can see now that I won’t have to go that far, because you’re only cursing to keep yourself warm, and you wish, this minute, that you were out there in the street in the kind darkness.”
Buck tried to laugh. “Just a big bluff and a blowhard,” he cried. “And when I break him in two, you’ll all see yaller!”
But no one nodded. No one smiled in sympathy with Buck’s laugh. It had been too hollow and manifestly false.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions,” said Silver. “If you don’t answer them, I’ll give you a quirting. But in the first place, I’ll have to take your gun away from you. Put up your hands, Buck.”
He said this so quietly, with such assurance, that the spectators gaped and craned their necks, and could hardly believe that Silver did not have his man covered.
“Why, you fool!” shouted Buck. “You think I’m crazy?”
“You don’t think that,” said Silver. “You know I’m right, and that I’ll do what I say. You know that I’m a faster hand and a surer shot than you are, Buck. And your poor little soul is shrinking and dying in you. There’s a sort of pity that grows up in me when I see you turn white around the mouth, as you’re doing now. And a disgust when I see your eyes begin to roll.”
He stood straight, and commanded in a harsher voice.
“Put up your hands!”
It was a frightful thing to see that armed man, that gun fighter, that slayer of men — Buck — standing wavering as though a whole regiment of soldiers had drawn a bead on him. But all that threatened him was the empty hand and the pointing finger of Silver.
“You hear me?” said Silver, and took a half step forward.
A queer, bubbling sound broke out of the throat of Buck. His mouth yawned. His lips started to frame words, and could make only a hideous gibberish.
And before the eyes of the crowd the miracle happened, and his hands started to rise from the level of his pearl-handled revolver to his hips — would he try to whip out some hidden weapon, then? — and so on to his breast, and up to his shoulders, where they fluttered for an instant in feeble revolt, but then continued until they were above the top of his head.
The sickening thing was not finished. Silver stepped forward and pulled the pearl-handled gun out of its sheath, and as he drew it, a great groan of despair came from Buck. He had allowed an act of shame to be performed on him that would make him a very legendary figure of shame, a horror of which no man would gladly speak.
Yet all of those men who watched with pale, fascinated eyes, stared less at Buck in his disgrace than at the terrible face of Silvertip as he pulled that gun out, and then laid it on the bar. And more than one man wondered, if the face of Silver were before him, if he would have had the nerve to do anything other than Buck had done.
Hypnotism was what it seemed like. No man exchanged glances with his neighbor. Each man hoped that his own horror was not being observed, and each knew that the coldness of his skin meant a definite pallor.
“You can get the gun afterward,” said Silver. “I’m not going to take it and keep it. And I’m not going to harm you in any way, Buck, so long as you tell me, frankly, the name of the man who hired you for this job. You were hired, I take it?”
The jaw of Buck dropped. He gasped, “Yes! Hired! Oh — yes, I was — ”
One long breath was drawn by all the men in that room. The bartender stood straight for the first time since Silver had begun speaking.
“Who hired you?” demanded Silver. “Who? A gent by the name of Alec Wilson.”
“You lie!” said Silver. “Kenyon, get me your quirt, will you?”
“Not Wilson!” groaned Buck. “What I meant was, the gent that hired me was really — ”
There was an open window at the side of the room. A gun glinted beyond the sill, now, and the
explosion of the shot tossed the mouth of the revolver a little up into the air.
The head of Buck dropped over on his shoulder. He slumped into the arms of Silver, slipped out of them, and spilled onto the floor.
Chapter 5
Silver went out of that room like a cat after a bird, but as he turned the front corner of the building he heard the rapid beating of hoofs begin behind the saloon, and knew that the quarry was on the wing.
Oh, for five minutes of Parade, then -to loose the golden stallion like an arrow at the mark — or for any horse, for that matter. But there were none except down the street, at the hitch rack on the farther side of the hotel, and that was too far away.
He went gloomily back into the saloon. Half the men had scattered to look for the murderer; half had remained to look at the victim.
He was dying, beyond doubt. The bullet had cut straight through his lungs, and Buck was already in his death agony. He kept rising on one hand, and turning his swollen face and his terrible, starting eyes from one man to another, mutely asking help.
But there was no help to be given. The finest doctor in the world could not assist, though messengers had gone to fetch all the physicians in Mustang. Buck himself seemed to realize that there were only seconds to him. Then he tried to speak, and that was the worst of all.
Silver, the indirect cause of his death, was the man he wanted most to talk to. He came clawing across the floor and reached up and caught Silver’s hand in his. He tried to speak, but only a rapid succession of red bubbles burst on his lips. He was strangling. He was biting at the air, and getting none down to his lungs.
Others drew back from that sight of agony, but Silver slipped to the floor and sat by the struggling body.
“Write it, Buck!” he called loudly. “Write it on the floor! Write the name, and I swear that I’ll try to get him for you!”
Buck was beating on the floor with his feet and hands, in the last struggle between death and life, but he understood Silver. He flopped heavily over on his side, dipped his right forefinger into the thick pool of his own blood, and commenced to write. Then death caught back his redstained hand and turned him on his back. He seemed to be making a last effort to speak as he died. One long shudder ran through his body, and he was gone.
On the floor beside him was written: “Nel—” followed by the sweeping stroke of crimson where his finger had been snatched from the writing.
Silver folded the hands of the dead man across his breast and closed the half-open eyes. When he looked up, he saw that men were standing by with their hats in their hands, and with sick faces.
He stood up and took off his own hat.
“Does anybody here know a woman named Nell, or a man named Nelson?” he asked.
“There’s a woman that does laundry,” said the bartender, instantly.
Silver shook his head.
“There’s Digger Nelson, the prospector,” said another in the room.
“What sort of a man?” asked Silver.
“A regular rock chipper. He patches the seat of his pants with flour sacks and—”
“No!” said Silver. “He’s not the man I want. He’s not the man who hired Buck to pick a fight with Ned Kenyon, and shoot it out. He’s not that sort.”
The first of the doctors came hurrying in. The sheriff was just at his heels. Silver took Ned Kenyon by the arm and led him out of the barroom into a back room, closing the door behind them. They sat down at a table.
Mustang was now well awakened. Scores of footfalls were padding up the street, or pounding loudly over the board sidewalks. Horses snorted in the distance under the spur. Voices were gathering toward the saloon like buzzing bees toward the hive. Presently the sheriff would be sure to want both Silver and Kenyon, but Silver used this interim to pump Kenyon as well as he could.
“Ned,” he said, “do you know what to make of all this?”
“I’m flabbergasted,” said poor Kenyon. “I can’t make head or tail of it. But it looks as though you know the inside workings of everything!”
“I wish I did! I’m only guessing. I’m reaching into the dark and getting at nothing. That’s all! Nothing! Ned, listen to me!”
“The way I would to a preacher,” said Kenyon, with a naïveté that made Silver faintly smile.
“What does this fellow Buck hitch with?”
“I don’t make that out, either. I never saw him before. I don’t suppose that he ever saw me. He says that he was hired — ”
Into this stream of meaningless words Silver broke sharply.
“What’s the thing we can catch on?” he asked. “There’s something you have, or that you’re about to have, that other people want — or want to keep you from. Now tell me out and out — have you anything worth money?”
“Not even a horse,” said the stage driver sadly. “Not even Jerry, now!”
“You have some land, somewhere,” suggested Silver.
“Father has a patch — a quarter section. That’s all there is in the family.”
“Where? In the mountains? Some place where pay dirt may be found? Gravel, for instance? Near an old creek bed, perhaps?”
“Pay dirt? The clay runs down about a thousand feet. The old man works that ground about sixteen hours a day, and he hardly makes a dollar a day, clear. I never saw worse clay. We’ve dug wells. We know how far that clay goes down.”
“Wait a moment,” said Silver. violently readjusting the course of his suspicion. “There’s another chance. You’ve been around the world a good deal, partner. And you’re sure to know a good lot. You’ve looked in on some queer things in your time. You’ve seen men in odd positions. You have up your sleeve something that someone would be pretty glad to hush up. Think, now. It must be that!”
Kenyon thought. After his fashion, he took his time, fixing his eyes on distance, and thoroughly combing his memory. At last he said: “No. There’s nothing that I can put a finger on.”
“There must be,” insisted Silver. “There has to be something! Think again.”
“No, Arizona — or Jim, if I can call you that — there’s nothing. Nothing ever happens to me — or nothing ever did happen until — ”
“All right,” said Silver. “That brings us back to Edith Alton, as far as I can see. You’re going to marry her tomorrow morning. And some one hates the idea of that. Somebody wants to stop you. Somebody with a first or a last name beginning with Nel. Who could it be?”
Again Kenyon shook his head. “I don’t know. It beats me.”
“It beats you? It’ll kill you before you’re many days older!” said Silver. “Man, man, are you sure that you don’t know anyone whose name begins with those three letters?”
“Well, Jim,” said Kenyon, “don’t be mad at me. I’m trying to think, but there are not many people whose name begins with those letters.”
“No,” said Silver. “There are not many. That’s good point in the deal. It’ll narrow down the hunting field.”
“You look like a hunter,” said Kenyon, rather overawed. “But by the jumping thunder, Jim, I’d hate to have you on my trail with that look in your eye and with that set to your jaw!”
“I’m not on your trail. I’m on the trail of murder,” said Silver. “I can smell the murder inside my nostrils. I can taste it against the roof of my mouth. Murder — phaugh!”
The door opened. There stood on the threshold a man with a stocky body and a long, triangular face.
“Murder is what we been talking about, in there,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to you two boys in here about the same thing.”
Others were about to follow this stranger inside the room, but he closed the door in their faces, and they did not try to open it behind his back.
He came across the floor, opening his coat to show the badge that was pinned inside it.
“Name of Philips,” he said. “Or maybe you’ll introduce me, Ned?”
Kenyon started up and sawed the air with his hand, embarrassed.
“This here is Sheriff Philips. Bert Philips,” he said. “And this is a friend of mine that’s got into a lot of trouble on my account, this day. He’s Arizona Jim, sheriff. And he — ”
He paused. The inadequacy of that nickname seemed to fill the throat of Kenyon, at the moment that he spoke to the man of the law.
“Glad to know you, Arizona,” said the sheriff. “Ned, who killed Buck?”
“I don’t know. I wish — ”
“Ever had a grudge between you?”
“Never. I never saw him before he — ”
“Ned, you walk out and buy yourself a drink. I want to talk with Arizona.”
Ned Kenyon went out hesitantly, as one who feels that he may be deserting a friend in a time of need, but the calm smile of Silver reassured him until the door was opened and closed again.
Then the sheriff pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Silver. He said: “You know what I’ve got on my knee?”
“Yes,” said Silver. “A gun.”
“Does that mean anything to you?”
“It means that you’re rather young,” said Silver.
The sheriff frowned. Then, suddenly, he grinned.
“You’re all they say about you, — Silver,” he said.
Silver said nothing at his identification by the man of the law.
“A dead cool one,” continued the sheriff. “Now, you tell me who killed Buck.”
Silver smiled.
“Go on!” urged the sheriff.
“Otherwise you’ll shoot?”
Suddenly Philips raised the gun into view and shoved it back inside his coat.
“Maybe I’ve been a fool,” he said. “I thought for a minute that I’d call your bluff. But now I almost think you mean what you’ve been saying. That right?”
“It is.”
“You’re Kenyon’s friend?”
“Yes.”
“Do you make anything out of this mess, then?”
“Only guesses.”
“Let’s have them, Silver. I don’t know just how to take you. There’s some call you a crook and a man-killer, and others say that you’re the whitest man on earth. Anyway, you have brains, and you’ve been a friend to poor Ned Kenyon. Now, tell me everything you think.”
