Silvertip's Chase

by Brand, Max

  “And we?” asked Gregor hopefully. “We camp here?”

  “Camp here?” asked Christian, lifting his brows with a touch of surprise. “Are you out of your head, Gregor? Stay here in this shack as if we were in a trap, in case he manages to come up with the place? That would be pretty convenient for Jim Silver, Gregor. That would be about all that he would ask out of life — to find the pair of us lodged together in one house!”

  Gregor nodded.

  “Well, then,” he said, “you tell us what we’re to do. We go on with these horses, and they freeze in the cold unless they keep traveling, and then — ”

  Christian raised a hand, and the other was silent.

  “We have to do a little inquiring,” he said. “It’s as plain as can be that this dead man was a wolf trapper. It’s as plain as can be that he trapped a wolf and the wolf chewed him up. We’ll have to ask some one what that wolf was like.”

  Gregor stared helplessly.

  “You ain’t gone crazy, Barry, have you?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But look here. Who would know what that wolf is like? All wolves are about the same! Who could know what the wolf was like?”

  “Because,” said Christian, “he has a name — Frosty. And that means that he’s a celebrity. One wolf in a million raises enough devil to get a nickname from people. You’ll find that every man in these mountains knows something about Frosty, I suppose.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Pursuer

  BLUE-GRAY dusk settled down through the blackness of the trees. The falling snow pressed the evening close on the heads of the pines. In the great smother of the storm the wind whirled, above the forest, and made obscure pools of motion. It was very cold; it was growing momentarily colder, for the wind came off the higher peaks to the northwest.

  But Jim Silver kept Parade to his work.

  He had lost all sign of the two men he was trailing something over an hour before. He could only hope, as he had hoped so often before, that he had been able to read the minds of the fugitives, and that he could guess in what direction they were riding. He felt, on the whole, that the pair would try to cut straight across the Blue Water Mountains in a couple of marches.

  He must follow. He felt that it would be best to strike right across to the farther side, not trying to find trail on the way, and then, in the distance, attempt to pick up the sign again. It would be very hard on Parade to make that forced march, but the stallion was whalebone and finest spring steel, and he would not fail.

  This very night, they would have to camp far above timber line, in the lee of some bluff; else they would have to move slowly on, all during the night.

  Silver swung down from the saddle and ran ahead, throwing the lines of the hackamore over the pommel of the saddle and leaving the stallion to follow.

  In this manner he gained two advantages. One was that he took his weight off the back of the horse. The other was that he broke trail for the stallion, to a certain extent, for he could depend on Parade to step exactly where his master had trod before him.

  As for the burning up of Silver’s own strength, that did not matter. Nothing mattered except the horse. And it was this attitude of his, relentlessly enforced by practice all the way, that had enabled him to keep so close to the heels of men who were constantly picking up fresh relays of horseflesh to carry them away. Of the hundreds of miles they had traveled since the chase began — that great chase which men were never to forget — a good third of the distance had been covered by Silver on foot, with Parade following easily behind, like a dog at the heels of his master.

  In rough going, of steep ups and downs, Silver actually was on foot more than he was in the saddle. He had divorced himself utterly from the usual Western viewpoint, that man is helpless on his feet and must have a saddle to hold his weight. Like an Indian, patiently, Silver was accustomed to traveling over rough or smooth until exhaustion made his head swim. Then, and only then, he gave his weight to the saddle again.

  So it was that he ran down the near slope and then plodded steadily up the farther one with the head of the great horse nodding behind him. He used his eyes little, because the light was much too dim for them to be of much service. It was true that Christian and Gregor might at any moment have decided to turn back and waylay their enemy, but in that case he would trust to the wolfish keenness of the scent of Parade. The nostrils of Parade retained the wisdom they had picked up during the years when he had wandered as a wild horse through the mountain desert. And at the first suspicious sound or scent, he would give warning to his human companion.

  By night, also, it was better to have Parade at hand than any pair of human sentinels, no matter how keen of vision and hearing. There was a perfect partnership between the two. One was complementary to the other. Each had a perfect trust.

  Silver was well up the hillside before he came out of the trees into a little clearing at the very instant when the snort and stamp of Parade warned him that there might be danger ahead. And now, vaguely outlined through the falling snow of the twilight, Silver saw the silhouette of the shack.

  He held up his hand in a gesture which would force Parade to remain in place. Then he stole forward cautiously.

  The shack was probably uninhabited. Otherwise it would almost surely be lighted by a fire at this time of the day; since it was not likely that its occupant might be off on a trip in such weather as this. The greatest likelihood was that it had been thrown up by some prospector or trapper, and was long since abandoned.

  And yet no cautious wolf could have investigated the probable lair of a mountain lion with more care than Jim Silver showed as he advanced toward the place.

  He circled to the rear of it, first of all, and brought himself close to the wall, where he crouched, listening intently, shutting the noise of the storm out of his mind, and concentrating on any sound that might come out of the interior.

  He heard nothing, except those mysterious breathings which the wind makes through imperfect walls.

  After a time, he went to the front of the place, and found the door. It was latched, but not locked. There was a latchstring which he used, and then pushed the door open with a swift gesture and stepped inside.

  The thickness of the darkness was now perfect. And around him he found the odor of cookery which was not of a very ancient date. The fumes of fried bacon will linger for a long time on the walls of a shack.

  There was the smell of cookery, which proved that the shack was inhabited, or at least that it had been used not long before. That made it doubly strange to find the place empty and dark.

  He felt down the wall until his hand touched a lantern. That he took off its peg, raised the chimney, and lighted the wick. Even then he was so uneasy that he made a long stride back from the light.

  What he saw first was the shining white surface of the pine table on which he had placed the lantern. Next he was aware of the crazy little cast-iron stove, in the corner, with a rusted length of stovepipe rising above it through the roof. There were old traps piled in several places. There were battered clothes hanging along the wall. A saddle hung from a peg, a pack saddle from another. And on a bunk in a corner of the room was a man stretched out with a blanket pulled over his head, sleeping so hard, apparently, that even the noise of the lighting of the lantern had not wakened him.

  “Hello!” called Silver.

  Then an icy finger ran down his spine.

  He stepped to the bunk and gradually drew the blanket away from an unshaven, shaggy face. The eyes of the man were partially open. There was a faint, derisive smile on his lips.

  It seemed, as Silver drew the blanket completely away, that the smile of derision was directed toward the sleeper’s own body, for the clothes were torn to rags on it, the left arm was frightfully gashed at the wrist, and there was a powerful tourniquet above the wound.

  The right thigh was badly mangled on the inside of the leg, also, and there was another tourniquet above
that injury.

  The right hand lay on the chest. Silver touched it, and found it as hard and as cold as a stone. This sleeper would never waken again.

  He went back to the table. By the bloodstains he saw how the wounded man had slumped across it. A pencil lay on the earthen floor, which was marked by the imprint of small heels, like those of the boots of a cowpuncher, far different from the big shoes of the dead man. There were two sets of those imprints; therefore two men had been there. They had carried the burden to the bunk. Yes, for here were the deeper signs to indicate how they had lifted and borne the weight. They had stretched him on the bunk and covered his face. Then they had gone away. Two men — Barry Christian and Duff Gregor, perhaps. By the sizes of the footmarks, it could hardly have been any others who had visited here.

  Jim Silver turned hastily to the door to remount Parade and push ahead through the storm. He was about to extinguish the lantern when he thought of the dead man again, and paused.

  No matter how keen he was to pursue the trail, he could not leave the body to decay, unheeded. It might be years before another traveler penetrated to this obscure corner of the mountains.

  He carried the lantern outside. The snow was still falling rapidly, and through the dim pencilings that it made in the air, he saw a perfect place for a grave, a natural hollow in the side of the slope, with plenty of loose rock about it.

  He went back into the cabin, swathed the body in the blanket, and carried the rigid form outside. In the hollow he laid it with a decent gravity. He picked up a handful of gravel and let it fall gradually on the corpse.

  “Whoever you may be,” said Jim Silver, taking his sombrero from his head, “good hunting!”

  He began to push in the large rocks. Under a yard of heavy stones he buried the stranger. Then he went inside the cabin to put out the lantern and leave it. As he put the lantern on the table, however, he noticed a portion of a side of bacon hanging in the corner near the stove, tied up by a bit of twine, as though to keep it from rats. And the sight of this puzzled him greatly. For he had every reason to think that Gregor and Christian were hungry travelers. He had pushed them hard. It was long since they had had a chance to lay in new supplies of food, and yet they had overlooked this invaluable meat! Neither were they fellows who would spare the goods of a dead man!

  Deep in thought, he tapped his fingers on the white, shining surface of the table. It could not have been his coming that had frightened the pair away. They could not have seen him approaching. Something must have drawn their minds away from the thought of eating. But what is stronger in the mind of a hungry man than the desire for food?

  He considered the red stains on the table, the pencil on the floor. He picked it up. It was indelible, with a very hard lead. The table drawer was partly ajar, and there was writing paper in it. It seemed plain that the dead man had been found slumped forward on the table, writing.

  And that was strangest of all! For why should a man on the verge of death, so horribly torn by wolves or dogs, have sat down to spend his last moments writing? To a wife? Well, the haggard, savage face of the corpse had not been that of a sentimentalist.

  Silver sat down at the table and leaned his own body above the red stains. The sensitive tips of his fingers, at the same time, slipped over impressions which had been faintly grooved in the soft surface of the wood. He put his eye almost on a level with the table top, and now he saw the dim impression of writing which had registered through the paper on the tender pine.

  He went to the stove, got a bit of a charred ember of wood, and delicately drew it back and forth over the writing, until the depressions stood out as lines of white in the midst of the black shading. Letters, words, appeared, some dim, but all legible, and the opening phrases were enough to make his blood leap:

  DEAR ALEC: I’m done for. I got Frosty, and Frosty got me.

  I’ve tapped open the biggest vein of gold, to-day, that you ever seen.

  CHAPTER IX

  Alec Gary

  THERE was one bit of testimony which was important to Jim Silver, and that was an envelope which had been carelessly crumpled in the hand and thrown behind the stove. The address on it was “Alexander Gary, Newlands.” That name, since it was put down in the handwriting that had appeared upon the surface of the table, and since the “Dear Alec” of the table inscription suited the name on the envelope, convinced Jim Silver that he had found the man to whom the dead man had determined to make over the claim which he had discovered.

  It left Silver in a quandary.

  He had no doubt, now, that the great Barry Christian and his companion, Duff Gregor, were somewhere in the mountains trying to get their hands — or their guns — on a wolf sufficiently famous to have won a nickname among men. And if they succeeded, Christian would find, in a collar which had been strangely placed upon the neck of the animal by human hands, the secret of the claim’s location.

  In the meantime, in the town of Newlands, wherever that might be, was to be found the fellow to whom the dying man had willed his discovery.

  The great problem of Silver was to get at Christian. Now he had help on the trail, because if he could find Frosty, the wolf, he would probably find Barry Christian not far off. The two things worked together. And the only complication was the existence of this man Alexander Gary.

  It was no great pinching of the heart of Jim Silver to give up all hope of getting any of the gold for himself. It was not the first time that he had turned his back on fortune. Neither would it be the last. And besides, he was fascinated by the thought of that savage-faced wolf hunter, the dead man, who had sent abroad the message of his discovery tied to the neck of a wild wolf, and who, with the last of his strength, had striven to send word to this Alexander Gary, also.

  That was why Jim Silver left the upper Blue Waters and went to the little town of Newlands, on the edge of the range.

  In the town he learned that Alec Gary had an uncle, Bill Gary, who was well known as a ruffian and a wolf hunter. Alec Gary had, also, a job on the Chester ranch, not far from the town. The postmaster readily told him that, and Silver slipped out of the town, unobserved.

  He was lucky in doing so, he felt, for during recent days more and more men knew that the rider of a great chestnut stallion might be Jim Silver. And when they knew the name, they knew everything else. They knew all the long story of his exploits, and that meant public applause, questions, and a surrounding atmosphere of awe which always pinched the heart of Silver and made him wish, more than ever, for the quiet of the wilderness.

  He used to tell himself, over and over again, that the trail of Barry Christian was the last one that he would pursue. Once that was completed, Jim Silver would retire forever into the still peace of the mountains and live forever alone.

  He thought this more than ever on this day, as he rode out of Newlands toward the Chester ranch. He took off his sombrero and let the wind blow through his hair. At other times he dared not expose his head, if men were around, for fear that even the most casual eye would not fail to notice the two tufts of gray hair above his temples, like incipient horns beginning to thrust out. They knew his face, too often, as well. His picture had got into the newspapers, into the magazines. Some fool had written a life of him and told everything wrong, and gilded him brighter than gold. He had managed to wade far enough into the reading of that book to be bogged down with the lies that were told.

  In fact, he knew that he had become, in spite of himself, a public character. His reputation had even ridden farther than Jim Silver himself had gone.

  As he came in sight of the Chester ranch house — a long, low building of unpainted boards — he put the sombrero back on his head, and he was glad of a little pool of dust that whirled down on the wind and tarnished the brilliance of Parade with gray.

  When he got up to the ranch house, he tethered the horse, went to the kitchen door, and rapped.

  The door was jerked open, and a woman with a red, weary face, hot from cookery, appear
ed before him.

  She exclaimed: “Another one of you lazy, worthless rascals that calls yourselves cowboys! I’d fire every last one of you off the place, if I had my way about it. It’s a crying pity, I tell Will Chester, to waste good money on the feeding of them that are no better than tramps!”

  Silver had tipped his hat, and now he settled it slowly back on his head.

  He would have been glad to do away with the embarrassing notoriety of his celebrated name, but he hardly liked being called a tramp.

  “Mrs. Chester,” he said, “I’m not a tramp.”

  She thrust out her big red fist.

  “Lemme see your hand, young man!” she demanded.

  He surrendered his hand, and she rubbed a thumb over the palm of it.

  “Just as I thought!” she shouted. “Soft as the hand of a girl! And yet you call yourself a cow-puncher, do you? You got the nerve to stand there and call yourself a working man, an honest man?”

  “Well,” said Silver gently, “a fellow can be honest, even if he doesn’t punch cows, can’t he?”

  “Honest doing what?” exclaimed Mrs. Chester. “Honest, my foot! Honest men have calluses on their hands, or else they’re living on stolen money, is what I say. But fetch your lazy hulk in here and set down at the table, while I get you some food. A pity, I say, though, when a woman can’t be the boss in her own kitchen, but has to foller the crazy ways of her husband. Spendthrift is what he is. Spendthrift!”

  “I only want to see a man who’s working here,” said he. “I’d like to see Alec Gary, if you know where he can be found.”

  “How would I know where he could be found?” she demanded. “Hurry up and come inside before all the flies in the world get into the kitchen. Ain’t you got no sense at all?”