Silvertip's Trap

by Brand, Max

  Once, with a crew of other youngsters, Bill Naylor ran down a wounded deer until it took to the rapid of a river that was more white water than blue. He remembered how the beautiful animal remained for an instant on the bank, pointing its nose at the sky and trailing the sweep of its horns over its back. Then, despairingly, it leaped. It swam well. Bill Naylor, from the bank, secretly hoped that it would safely make the ford. But his companions, savagely yelling, opened fire on the small, struggling head and shoulders.

  No bullets hit. No bullets were needed. In the center of the stream the current suddenly mastered the poor fugitive and sent it whirling down to the cascade.

  Well, this was very much like that. There was no real safety in the water, but treacherous currents were better than the rifles and the jails of savage men.

  So Naylor swung straight in toward the bank, crying:

  “This way or no way. Don’t be a fool, Gregor!”

  A stream of howling curses answered him, but Gregor obediently followed, driving his lamed horse right at the bank.

  It was not two feet above the top of the flood. The good mustang that carried Naylor knew water as well as land, and dipped one step down the bank, then lunged far out into the current. Slipping out of the saddle, he took the horse by the tail and swam with kicking feet and with the strokes of his other hand.

  He looked back. Already an immensity of water seemed to stretch between him and the shore. That water had the sheen of polished metal. But metal cannot give back such shifting and changing lights.

  He saw the lame horse of Duff Gregor swimming only a little to his rear. He could make out the head quite clearly, and the flaring of the nostrils and the pricking of the gallant ears. Lame or not, it seemed able to swim as well as Naylor’s horse. Behind it there was a good deal of threshing and foaming as Duff Gregor worked to get himself faster through the water.

  Then monsters came and danced with gigantic leaps along the shore, their double bodies heaving up and down against the stars. Those were the men of Crow’s Nest, of course. But they looked like creatures out of a fable, and larger, by far, than human.

  Naylor turned his face forward. It would not help his swimming to see the darting fires from the muzzles of the rifles. Therefore he turned, and worked steadily and strongly. His good mustang, in the meantime, had pointed its head a little upstream and was fighting like a Trojan.

  A whirling bit of driftwood swept by, its speed showing how well the horse was stemming the current of the stream. And now something like a great water serpent went by, rolling, making a swishing sound in the river. It was not a serpent. It was a great log whose branches had been stripped away far up the course of the river.

  Jets of water began to whip across the head and shoulders of Naylor as he swam. He knew they were driven by the impact of the rifle bullets that showered on the stream. He could hear the clangor of the guns. But death by bullets seemed less dreadful than the black coilings of the water in which he floated. Sometimes hands seemed to pluck at him and pull him down. And again and again big logs came hurtling, or low-flying bits of wreckage of one sort or another.

  Something approached him with the howling voice of a spirit from among the damned. He made out, at last, a flat bit of wreckage, like the door of a house, and on it a small dog complaining to the stars.

  Then, drawn by the shadow of oncoming danger, he glanced to the left and saw peril sweeping toward him straight as an arrow, a gigantic log that lifted a great blank face to beat him down into the dark confusion and death beneath the waters.

  CHAPTER X

  On the Island

  THERE was no way of dodging the log. The mustang, blind with effort, was unable to be controlled. Naylor could not pull himself forward quickly enough to get hand on the reins. All he could do was to watch that looming destruction grow greater and greater, until at the last it struck down the mustang into the depths. Naylor, casting himself free from the tail of the horse, caught at a broken bough that threatened him as with the point of a spear. For the tree trunk was coming down tip first.

  As he got his grip on the stub of the branch, the entire log turned rapidly. He was dragged through stifling darkness and brought up on top, where he dragged in a great breath of air and saw the whirling white lines of the stars steady again to single points of fire. Next he saw Duff Gregor in the very act of being overwhelmed by the log. The horse that helped Gregor through the river was struck by the irresistible weight of the log and knocked under.

  Bill Naylor thought seven long thoughts in the course of half a second. He cursed himself and his folly — then he twisted his legs around the branch by which he had been lifted to safety, and, stretching out to his full length, he grabbed blindly in the swirl of the current. He grabbed at a shadow and closed a hand on cloth. He pulled hard. The log, slowly turning, gained impetus and dragged him under. Still he maintained his hold. The tree trunk turned very slowly. The effort he was making made it impossible to hold his breath long. He was about to let go his hold when two frantic hands clutched his arm.

  “I’m done,” he said to himself. “I’m pulled under and gone like a water rat!”

  Then the log, slowly, slowly revolving, dragged him up dripping to the starlight once more, and to the incredible mercy of the sweet open air.

  Big Duff Gregor came with him and clutched the body of the tree trunk with frantic arms and legs. He groaned and gasped with every breath he drew. There was something so clumsy and desperate, at once, about the way Duff Gregor was clutching at his liberty that Naylor cursed him savagely, and then wanted to laugh.

  The log, as though it realized that turning and twisting would no longer get rid of the two human lives that clung to it, stopped rolling. Off to the side, Naylor saw the dark cavalcade of horsemen riding along the bank, still firing.

  He lay flat. He gripped the roughness of the bark and hoped the darkness would shelter him, because there was still a spasmodic rifle fire, and he could hear the bullets slash the water. One of the slugs thudded hard into the trunk of the tree inches from his hand.

  Before him, Gregor began to sit up straight.

  “Lie flat” demanded Naylor.

  Duff Gregor lay flat again.

  Naylor said: “Lie flat and don’t move. Who are you that everybody should make such a fuss to give you a hand? Who are you to be dragged out of trouble? Lie flat and keep flat.”

  Something urged and swelled in his soul as he saw the big man lie still. Naylor wanted to laugh. To think that he had such control over such a celebrated character as this Duff Gregor, who had the effrontery to play the part of Jim Silver!

  Jim Silver? Multiply this rascal by ten and he would still lack ten parts of being a Jim Silver. Size doesn’t make the man. Naylor thought greedily of that, taking comfort in his more abbreviated inches. Brains make the man. He himself was no colossus of the world of thought, but he had a brain, just the same. Barry Christian would testify to that.

  The rifle fire stopped suddenly, as if a command had been given. The dark silhouettes of the forms along the bank pooled together. Perhaps they had noticed that the horses were gone, and took it for granted that the riders were gone, also. Perhaps this was the end of the pursuit.

  A storm was blowing up. It was just conceivable that this might have something to do with influencing the minds of the men of Crow’s Nest. Already the stars to the northwest were wiped out. That might be the same storm which had filled the higher valley with surging torrents and started the river flooding. Now it loosed itself suddenly from its birthplace and rolled south and east across the sky. The wind that foreran it blew cold on the wet body of Bill Naylor.

  As he looked to the side, he saw that the troop was keeping pace with the drifting of the log. No, now it was turning and scattering. And just before him he saw the loom of the island, like a low-lying bank of mist. To either side of it the bright arcs of the river poured.

  “Get ready!” he called. “We’re going to swim for the island when we�
�re a little closer.”

  “Swim nothing,” answered Duff Gregor. “Ride the horse that knows the way home. Why not?”

  “Don’t argue, but do as I tell you!” commanded Naylor. He rejoiced tyrannically that he was able to command.

  But still Gregor was arguing.

  “We’re all right,” he said. “Why not stick to the log?”

  “Dummy! Because Barry Christian wants to meet us on the island.”

  “It’s a bad play,” said Gregor. “They’ve got the island spotted now. They’ll be sure to give it a search.”

  “They’ve gone home,” answered Naylor.

  “Only up the bank to get boats, maybe.”

  “Hey, d’you know better than Christian?’ answered Naylor furiously.

  Personally, he would like to meet any man in the world fit to argue a point or make a plan against Barry Christian.

  They were close in on the island now. Bill Naylor could see the individual trees come out from the mist of darkness and take shape. There was a little point that had been burned over, and the shapes of the trees were skeletons of horrible grotesqueness. Presently the log began to veer off into the deeper and stronger current.

  “Now!” called Naylor, and he dived away from the tree trunk.

  He swam strongly, and rejoiced to see that it was easy to make progress across the stream. Looking behind him, he saw Gregor hesitate, then follow with a floundering splash.

  “The clumsy fool!” thought Naylor.

  Suppose that sharp eyes watched them from the other bank and made out the glimmering of that splash?

  But as Naylor gained footing and waded through the softness of the mud through the shallows, and felt again the full weight of his body as he got to turf underfoot, big Duff Gregor came striding up beside him, and the sense of superiority which had been Naylor’s vanished at once.

  They went on through the trees. The water in their boots made squelching sounds. The forest thickened over them just as the rain commenced. It started with volleyings and crashings the way a heavy downpour in the mountains will often set out. Every time they got out from under the foliage of the evergreens, the strength of the rain whipped and stung their faces with the strength of bullets.

  Gregor paused suddenly.

  “This is hell,” he said.

  “Bullets are worse hell,” said Naylor. “Or maybe you’d rather have a nice warm jail?”

  Gregor walked on again, and Bill Naylor disliked him more and more. They came into a natural clearing in what must have been just about the center of the river island. Gregor paused.

  “We’ll have a fire here,” he said, “as long as we have to wait for Christian.”

  “No fire,” directed Bill Naylor. “What’s the good of showing people the way to us with a light? What’s the good of holding up a light for them to see by?”

  “You do as you please,” said Gregor. “I’m going to have a fire. No good being saved from jail today to die of pneumonia to-morrow.”

  “You’re all softened up. Or were you ever hard?” asked Naylor.

  Gregor turned on him with a savagery of gesture and voice that lighted him up, so to speak.

  “I’ve had your tongue before,” said Gregor. “I won’t have no more of it. Shut up and keep shut up!”

  Naylor drew back — to the proper distance for a full-arm smash. He had a long, whipping, overhand punch that did a lot of damage except to men who were expert boxers. He didn’t think that Gregor was much of a boxer, and felt that he might trust that overhand wallop. But Gregor did not press his point. He seemed to think that that shrinking back had meant a good deal. Therefore he turned abruptly away and could be heard tearing up brush. He had found some dead brush; it snapped and crackled under his grasp. A whole herd of horses could hardly have made so much noise.

  Where a big tree offered almost perfect shelter from the rain, Gregor built up his small heap of brush for the fire. Soon his voice growled:

  “Every match wet. Got any matches, partner?”

  “Not to light a fire,” answered Naylor.

  He was taking off his clothes, preparatory to wringing them as dry as possible. Wet clothes are all right, so long as they’re not slopping wet. Clothes only so wet that the heat of the body can dry them out are all right. That is, unless you have to sit still in a wind.

  “You got a match. Lemme have a match, will you, brother?” pleaded Gregor.

  “You big bum,” said Naylor. “What kind of a man are you? Jail has gone and softened you all up. Well, here’s a match for you. It’s on your own hook. I’m not guilty.”

  “Sure, it’s on my own hook,” said Gregor. “Nothing but a frog would come to this island on a night like this. We’re as safe as if we were on the other side of the mountains.”

  “Yeah, and that’s what you say.”

  But, finding the oiled silk that carefully wrapped his matches, Naylor handed over the small package. He felt a sulky discontent in surrendering his matches, but when the flame leaped up, yellow-red and cracking, and the first smoke cleared away from the blaze and rolled in low clouds under the wide branches of the tree, he began to change his mind. He finished wringing out his clothes and sat on a stump near the fire in order to empty his boots.

  “Yeah, and it ain’t so bad, eh?” said Gregor. “Another thing, if Barry Christian’s to meet us on the island here, he’ll have to have something to guide him, won’t he?”

  “Yeah? Well, all right,” said Naylor. “The only thing is, I’ve always gone on the idea that there’s nothing safer than playing safe.”

  “Aw, we’re all right,” insisted Gregor. “I’ll take the responsibility. It’ll be all on me.”

  “You won’t take the bullets, though. They won’t ask you which way they ought to travel.”

  “Who’ll shoot at you?” cried Gregor suddenly. “Who’ll even think of you? It’s me they’re after.”

  Bill Naylor lowered his head and looked from under the darkness of his brows at his companion. It was a big figure of a man that he saw, with really magnificent shoulders, and the head well-placed on them. The face was handsome, too. There had not been enough jail to fade all the sun-brown off the skin.

  More than once Naylor had seen pictures of Jim Silver, and he could understand how it might be that people would mistake this man for the famous fighter. There were even the two spots of gray over the temples, like incipient horns. They gave a sinister touch to the figure of the big fellow. He was stripping off his clothes now, and his body was big with muscle. But it was not quite the effect that one would expect to get from seeing the real Jim Silver stripped. There was not the same easy and stringy flow of muscles that gave speed to the bulk when it was in action. It seemed to Naylor that there was a touch of weakness about the mouth of this man, also.

  “All right,” said Naylor. “It’s you that they’re after, all right. I know that.”

  He got out his tobacco pouch, so well wrapped and waterproofed that not a drop had touched the contents. He loaded his short pipe, whose stem had been worried off to little more than a half of its original length, with a new hold for the teeth whittled into the hard rubber. He began to smoke, sucking hard at the tobacco until the flame was well spread and the coal tamped down.

  “Got any papers?” asked the other.

  “No.”

  “Can’t I have a smoke, then? Lemme have a whiff, will you, partner?”

  There was a slight whine in the voice. The lips of Naylor twitched.

  He removed the pipe from his mouth. He prided himself on a certain number of delicacies. Now he took out a clean handkerchief. It was soaked with the river water, of course, but that didn’t matter. He used it to cleanse the mouthpiece of the pipe, and then handed it over, stem first.

  Gregor grabbed it with a greedy hand and began to draw down great whiffs of the smoke. He started talking, his enunciation biting the exhalation of smoke to pieces.

  “Rotten strong stuff you smoke,” he said. “Rotten
cheap stuff!”

  Naylor said nothing. He registered the bad taste of this remark and said nothing whatever. Things like this helped him to place his companion. There was no use arguing about such a point. Except on a Monday morning, when one wants to get warmed up for a long, hard week.

  “Yeah, it’s strong,” he drawled finally.

  He watched Gregor consuming the pipe load rapidly. After a long time Gregor asked:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Naylor.”

  “Which Naylor?”

  “Bill Naylor.”

  Gregor chuckled.

  “You don’t like it, eh?”

  “That’s all right,” said Gregor.

  Naylor looked slowly away. The jump of the firelight gave him view of long vistas among the brown tree trunks. Shapes seemed to move with the toss and the swing of the fire.

  “I dunno,” he said as a bit of water was shaken from a bough above and went down his neck. “I dunno. Maybe it’s not all right.”

  “Don’t get the bulldog up, Shorty,” cautioned Gregor, lifting a threatening finger.

  Then a deep, soft voice, close to them said.

  “Hands up, please! Stick them right up, boys.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Jim Silver

  THE mind of Bill Naylor slashed through several reflections and one great regret as he heard that voice. He looked straight at Duff Gregor and saw the shock strike the big fellow like a bullet. It paralyzed Gregor. It froze him in mid-gesture, so to speak.

  “Right up, friends,” said the soft, deep voice.

  It seemed to Naylor like the sort of a voice that one would expect from the spirit of the island, half obscured and dark. There was music in it that went with the sound of the storm. And then the wind, following after, screeched suddenly through the near-by treetops.

  Gregor groaned.

  Naylor shoved up his hands slowly. Firelight is not good light to shoot by. If he took a dive backward, rolling on the ground, he could get himself into a tangle of brush, and from that behind the trees, and it would take very snappy and straight shooting to get him. Not every man can do much with a revolver in the daylight. Not one in a thousand is any good at night.