by Brand, Max
Near the mouth of the ravine, the party halted at a place where a fresh spring bubbled sparkling out of the ground and ran brimful a little crater of rock. The big mountains shoved their naked heads up into the sky upon all sides. There was not a tree in sight.
There they halted, loosened the cinches of the horses, let them dip in their heads almost to the eyes to drink of the pure water. They sloshed water over the legs of the animals. At the direction of Barry Christian they led them up and down and gave them a good breathing spell.
For Christian pointed out that they had only won one lap in the race — unless by the fortune of war a bullet had happened to tag Jim Silver.
He even kept one man posted at the mouth of the ravine to give warning in case any one of a suspicious nature should advance toward them during the rest period.
It was a very jovial pause. Every one of the men, with a single exception, seemed as light hearted as a cricket. For when had criminals before this day ever managed to make the men of the law fight one another for the sake of a band of plunderers?
The one exception was Bill Naylor, and as he stood with gloomy head, watching his gray mustang, he suddenly looked up and felt the cold, bright eyes of Barry Christian fixed upon him.
With a shudder, Naylor looked away, for he felt that the cold, bright thrust of that glance had found his heart and opened up all the dark secrets of it.
Then, amazing them all, the guard who had been posted at the mouth of the ravine ran back, shouting:
“Jim Silver! Jim Silver! He’s coming, with half a dozen men behind him! Jim Silver!”
The name rang magically on the ear of Naylor. He looked at Christian, and for the first time he saw the face of the great outlaw blanch. Was it surprise or fear that had unnerved him?
CHAPTER XXV
The Trap
THERE was reason enough for Christian to be dismayed. What had happened? How had Silver managed to disentangle himself from the fight on the farther side of the town? How had he managed to sift through so quickly with a chosen band of the pursuers?
Then Christian came to himself and said calmly: “Boys, this puts the crown on everything. Scatter back on both sides. Get those horses out of sight among the rocks. You hear me? Get everything out of sight, and see that your rifles are loaded. Every man pick his target — but leave Jim Silver to me! I’ll take care of him!”
He made a brief pause as he shot home the last order with a stern glance of his eye.
Then he added: “Now move!”
They moved on the jump. One glance around the place showed them that it was a perfect trap. Even if Jim Silver had led his original two or threescore men from Elsinore straight into the mouth of this funnel among the mountains, it seemed likely that the dozen sure rifles could curl them up in a red ruin and thrust them back.
Naylor, automatically taking shelter behind a great black boulder, found none other than Duff Gregor beside him. And with Duff Gregor was the horse that carried the treasure.
They were well up the side of the mountain; they had a good slant to look beyond the mouth of the ravine out onto the lower ground from which Silver must approach. And Naylor heard Gregor snarling:
“There’s one thing that makes me sour, and that’s Christian reserving Silver to himself. I’d like to sink some lead of my own into Jim Silver. I could ride the real Parade as well as the next man.”
“Christian’s a funny guy,” said Naylor slowly. “Maybe he thought that you’d feel sort of kindly about Silver since he saved your life for you and turned you loose from the men of Crow’s Nest.”
Gregor growled: “That what you say? I’m goin’ to have words with you after this little job’s over and we’ve mopped up Silver and his gang of fools.”
Suddenly curses streamed out of the lips of Naylor. He said savagely: “It ain’t words that you’re goin’ to have with me, you swine!”
Gregor, unexpectedly, said nothing at all.
And then, through the gap in the mouth of the valley, Naylor had a sudden glimpse of the advancing party.
There were not six men. There were only five men — and a bare-legged youngster who rode without a saddle on a tireless little mustang. The very boy who had discovered them and had carried the alarm!
He was one. There were four others, of whom one, from his size and the way he kept close to Jim Silver, was probably that other famous man of battle, Taxi. But most of all, foremost in the lot, magnificent on his great, shining stallion, came Jim Silver himself.
Something stood up in the heart of poor Bill Naylor and called that hero his master. And something told him that it was better to die a thousand times on the side of such a warrior than to live forever surrounded by Christian and his crew.
Suddenly Naylor rose.
“Hey! Don’t show yourself, you fool!” cried Gregor. “They’re almost where they can see — ”
Naylor laid the barrel of a Colt along the head of Gregor, and with satisfaction listened to the ring of the hollow steel. He watched Gregor drop, and then he deliberately flung himself into the saddle of the horse that carried the treasure and started as wild, as desperate, as hopeless a charge as ever a man attempted in this world. For he made the mustang bolt, under frenzied spurring, toward the mouth of the ravine, straight out to give warning to Jim Silver of the deadly trap which he was approaching.
His horse had not taken three strides before a voice was shouting:
“Hey, you crazy fool!”
That was Cassidy. No other voice had the bull-terrier, whining note of battle as did the voice of Cassidy.
Then the stentorian shout of Barry Christian bellowed through the air: “Shoot the traitor! Shoot him!”
And the rifle fire began.
• • •
Down the steepness of the slope the flying mustang ran as a torrent of water runs, plunging from side to side, angling away from projecting rocks, dodging like a snipe in flight from the hunter, and not a single bullet struck lucky Bill Naylor.
Well, bullets didn’t matter. If he could let some blood, it would carry away in its flowing some of the sins of his life, and help to wash his soul clean.
The horse hit the level of the valley floor beneath. The gunfire increased. The thunder of it rang all about him, until it seemed from the echoing that a thousand guns were working.
Then a blow struck him on the back between the shoulders, not like a bullet, but like a club. The weight of the shock knocked him forward over the pommel of the saddle. His whole back was benumbed. Afterward there was a shooting thrust of pain right up into his head; and after that the pain spread inward toward his heart.
“They’ve shot me through the heart,” his numb lips said to him. “Why don’t I die? Heaven won’t let me die till I’ve warned Jim Silver!”
Aye, but Jim Silver was already warned, surely, by the clamor of guns inside the death trap that he had so nearly entered. Then why could not Bill Naylor stop the mustang and slide down from the saddle and stretch himself on the ground?
To lie there, stretched on the ground, for a moment’s respite from the agony that was wearing away the strength of his soul!
Then he understood why he must keep on riding. It was because he was carrying with him, back to the hands of the law, the treasure for which one man had died already.
He was going to die, too, he told himself. He wanted only to die like Dick Penny. That was the way to meet the end!
But the best he could do was to scurry away like a frightened rabbit with a bullet through his back!
Well, a man like Jim Silver would understand.
The mustang staggered suddenly and almost flung him from the saddle. The horse had been hit. And as Naylor righted himself in the saddle with dreadful labor, there was another shock and numbing blow as a rifle bullet struck him at the hip from behind and tore through his flesh, and glanced around the thigh bone, and came out above the knee.
“What kind of luck is this?” said Bill Naylor. “They’re going t
o shoot me out of the saddle — but I got the hoss pretty near to the mouth of the ravine already.”
A wave of darkness washed across his brain.
Another shock, another club stroke. He didn’t know where that blow had fallen, but now there was warm blood flowing down over his face.
“I can’t feel nothing no more,” said Bill Naylor, “except my heart — except my heart.”
That agony devoured all that was inside him, all the heart, all the spirit, all the courage.
Then, like the opening of a door, he was through the mouth of the valley, and on either side of him the bright-green of the outer plain extended. He saw a group of riders halted. He saw the brilliant sheen of Parade. That was, in fact, all that he could see very clearly.
Jim Silver would have to be in the saddle on that horse.
So he made for Silver.
He saw the wink of light along leveled gun barrels, and he heard voices shouting to him to halt, and then the cry of Silver bidding the others to hold their hands. Then, suddenly, he was drawing rein, or trying to, beside Silver.
But he could not draw rein slowly enough. The wounded mustang came to a pitching halt that slewed Bill Naylor out of the saddle and rolled him on the grass. Every time he rolled he left a spot of blood. He rolled over and over twenty times, and when he looked to the side he could see the crimson trail that he had made on the grass.
Better on grass than on rocks. Far better on grass than on rocks!
The blue sky was revolving around him like a spinning wheel. He was being lifted up into the blue. He was somewhere high up, among the bright drifting of the clouds.
Then a voice boomed in his ears. He looked with a vast effort.
“Silver,” he said. “Is that you?”
He could see nothing, only the whirl of the blue; but the voice of Jim Silver, wonderfully deep and gentle, was saying:
“I’m Jim Silver, partner.”
A faint smile pulled at the numb lips of Naylor. Partner? Well, it was just as well that Silver did not know the darkness of his past! And for five minutes to be esteemed noble by such a man, was not that enough?
“Silver,” he said, “they’re in there, waiting, I seen you coming, and couldn’t stand it. I got on the hoss that carried the loot from the train. It’s all there. Watch yourself. They’re all in there. Barry Christian and ten more!”
“Barry Christian!” cried Silver. “Barry Christian?”
“Yes,” murmured Naylor.
Then, distantly, he heard the voice of Silver saying: “Taxi, stay here with him. Watch him as if he were yourself. Keep the kid with you. I’ll scout on ahead.”
CHAPTER XXVI
The Way to Go
IT WAS the sort of a thing that every one knows how to appreciate, for it was the sort of thing that every man of us hopes may be possible in himself — a change forever from the bad to the good.
They found out all about Bill Naylor while he lay flat on his back in the hotel room in the little, grimy town of Benton Corner. The newspapers found out; they lived on the trail until they had located his associates of older days — most of them in prison, and most of them willing to talk. They found the marshals and sheriffs who had arrested him in the past and the posses that had assisted on occasion. Some of these informants grinned and shook their heads, but most of them had pleasant things to say. A crook? Sure, Bill Naylor had been a crook, but he had always been the sort of stuff that can turn straight when the right time comes for turning.
Honest men, reading their newspapers of a morning, shook their heads and smiled, also. They were pleased. We have all done shady things, cruel things, evil things; and we all hope that we will never do them again. The story of Bill Naylor helped every man to believe in himself a little more, to have faith in that higher self which obscurely struggles with the baser.
But Bill Naylor, as he lay in his bed in the hotel room in Benton Corner, knew very little about all of this for many days.
The first thing that he was aware of when he opened his eyes and discovered with bewilderment that a weak pulse of life was still throbbing in him, was the almost handsome face of Taxi. The pale, bright, dangerous eyes were fixed steadily upon him.
“By thunder, Taxi,” said Naylor unevenly, “how come you’re here?”
“I’m the wake,” said Taxi with a faint smile. “I’m waiting — and it seems as though you’re going to wake up and live out the rest of your days. You’ve got to. If you don’t, Silver will hound me around the world.”
Naylor looked at the ceiling. He wanted to shake his head, but there was hardly enough strength for even that gesture.
“That’s funny,” he said. “Jim Silver, he wants me to pull through?”
“Jim Silver’s not a hound,” said Taxi. “He wants you to live through. Because — I’ll tell you a queer thing — Jim Silver is sort of fond of a man who’s saved his life twice in a row!”
Naylor considered this thing curiously with a detached mind.
“Jim Silver’s still on the out trail, I suppose?” he asked.
“And he’ll never leave it,” said Taxi. “Not till he’s run Barry Christian to the ground. If Barry Christian were the devil and could take a thousand forms, I think Silver would find ‘em one by one and strangle them all. It’s the end for Christian.”
Taxi sat close beside the bed. His eyes were set back in deep, dark hollows. His face was drawn.
“You go to sleep again,” he said. “Because now I’m going to have a chance to do a little snoozing on my own account.”
And Naylor, dreamily smiling, went back to sleep.
It was a long time after that when he wakened again. Then he heard a girl’s voice saying:
“I wouldn’t bother him none. I just wanted to look at him.”
That was the voice of Sally Townsend, and the voice of her father muttered:
“Don’t you be a fool, Sally. He’s gone and got himself famous now. He wouldn’t be wanting to see you.”
“Sally!” said Bill Naylor.
There was a whispering of clothes. She stood above him.
She looked better in overalls than in store clothes, with a foolish hat perched high on her head, and her hair pulled back so tight that her eyebrows were raised a little.
She looked like a small girl dressed as a grown-up. He had to squint and glance back into his memory before he could recall her to his mind as she was before — as she really was.
She was frightened. Her eyes were too big for the pupils. They showed a lot of white all around. And she had gloves on her strong brown hands. Suddenly he wanted to get her away from the sight of every one. Out on the range — that was where she belonged.
“Hey, Bill!” she said in a husky whisper.
“Hey, Sally!” said he.
“Shall I get out of here?” asked the soft voice of Taxi.
“Wait a minute,” said Naylor. “Meet Sally Townsend. How I wish that Jim Silver was here to meet her, too.”
“Jim would like to be here, I know,” said Taxi.
“This is Taxi,” said Naylor. “And this is Sally Town-send, who’s promised that she’ll marry me.”
“Jiminy!” said the girl. “Are you Taxi? Are you the Taxi?”
Taxi took her hand. He said that he was happy to meet her. He only wished that Jim Silver were there, too, because he said that Jim Silver thought a great deal of Bill Naylor and would want nothing so much as to see the girl he was going to marry. He said that they would all have to be good friends, because they all belonged to Silver’s side of everything. It was quite a speech, quite a pretty speech. Taxi was capable of them, now and again.
Then he got out of the room, but big Townsend came and stood at the foot of the bed. He had shaved off his ragged beard, and his face looked boyish and rather pale, except for the dark tan around the eyes. And he had on a high stiff white collar that choked him. The necktie had worked down and showed the brass sheen of the collar button.
“Well, Town
send, I’m lucky I’m not up,” said Bill Naylor.
“Why?” asked Townsend, gaping a little.
“Well,” said Naylor, “if I was up, you’d lick me because I’m trying to get Sally. I’m a lot safer in bed.”
Townsend grinned. Sally sat down on the edge of the bed and took Naylor’s hand.
“You’ve talked enough,” she said. “Dad, go on away.”
Townsend went away.
“When you get better, we’ll talk a lot about things to come and the way we’re going,” she concluded firmly.
“There’s only one way to go,” said Naylor.
“What way is that?” asked the girl.
“Straight,” said Bill Naylor.
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Copyright © 1933 by Frederick Faust. Copyright © renewed 1960 by Dorothy Faust. The name Max Brand® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission. Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.
Cover Images ©www.Clipart.com
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4985-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4985-4
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4983-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4983-0
