Silvertip's Strike

by Brand, Max

  Farrel said nothing. He saw Delgas swing back a fist and how the punch traveled right at his head. He had an idea that he might be able to duck the blow, but if he avoided it, he was reasonably sure that he would be murdered. It was what Delgas wanted — the least additional excuse so that he would not be killing a helpless man in cold blood. So Farrel stood still and let the fist strike him in the face.

  Once he had been struck down when the massive shoulder of a hay wagon nudged him. The fist of Delgas was like that. It seemed to be faced with brass and to have a ton of driving weight behind it. It took him right off his feet and slammed him down on the back of his head. He could hear the whack of the fist against his flesh as though two hands had been clapped together. Afterward, he heard his head pound solidly against the rock.

  When his wits cleared, a second later, the left side of his face was numb, with liquid trickling over the skin, tickling it. Then he realized that his cheek bone had been laid open and the blood was running down from that.

  Big Morris Delgas got him by the hair of his head and jerked him to a sitting posture. He swung back his other fist.

  “I asked you, was you being noble?” shouted Delgas. “I asked you was you a dirty hound that was being noble, shooting a gun by a kick of your foot, giving Jim Silver warning. I asked you was you a dirty rat, a dirty noble rat? Was you?”

  He kept jerking the head of Farrel back and forth, and his right hand oscillated with terrible eagerness to beat again into the face of the prisoner.

  Red broke in suddenly: “Aw, back up, Delgas. Let him be.”

  Delgas dropped Dan Farrel and whirled about.

  “You want something?” he yelled.

  Red had backed up a little. He had his hand behind him again, and Farrel could see how the fingers were looped over the handle of a knife. He seemed to mean business, though he kept on backing up, slowly, before the truculent advance of Delgas.

  “I won’t take water from you, Delgas,” he said.

  “You’re butting in, you fool!” shouted Delgas, wavering with the wind of his fury. “You’re butting in and you’re tryin’ to tell me what’s what. I’m goin’ to smash you!”

  Red kept on backing up, more and more slowly.

  “I won’t take water from nobody,” he said.

  He stood still, suddenly.

  “I won’t take water from you, Delgas,” he said.

  His hand came around from the small of his back. The moonlight winked along the blade of the sharpened steel.

  Delgas strode close and measured himself against Red. He was so big that he had only to throw out his arms in order to embrace the smaller man. The whole body of Delgas worked in his passion, just as the entire body of a vast cat might work, as it sharpens its claws.

  “You poor fool,” said Delgas, “d’you think your toad sticker can stop me?”

  “I don’t think nothing,” said Red. “I just think that I won’t take water from nobody.”

  “I got a mind to bash your head in,” said Delgas.

  “All right. I guess you’re big enough to bash me,” said Red, “but you gotta prove it. I ain’t taking water from nobody.”

  “What’s the matter with you, kid?” demanded Delgas. “Are you nutty or something? What you butting in for?”

  “I don’t care about him,” said Red. “You can take and drill him through the head, for all I care, or open him up with a knife, and it’s Jake with me. But I hate you to be beating up a bird that can’t lift his hands.”

  “What’s the matter with you? You ain’t takin’ the socks, are you?” asked Delgas.

  “I dunno. It sort of makes me sick,” said Red.

  Delgas laughed. “You are funny,” he said. “That is what you are. You’re just a funny hombre. I bang him in the mug and you take and get sick. You’re just a funny hombre, is what you are, Red.”

  “All right,” said Red. “I can’t help it.”

  “Sure you can’t help it, if you’re built that way,” said Delgas. “Besides, I dunno that it’s a good idea to smear up this gent too much. Maybe it’s better to wait till Harry Rutherford has a look at him. Harry might have some ideas about the way to handle him, I guess.”

  “Sure he might,” agreed Red. “Now you’re talking, old son. We’ll get him back to Rutherford, down yonder, and see what Harry has to say about him.”

  Delgas nodded. He concluded the argument on which the life of Farrel had depended by saying: “He thought he was being noble, was what made me sore. Reaching out and shooting the gun to warn his friend — you know, kind of being noble and giving himself away to the Injuns for the sake of his partner — you know, regular story stuff. That was what made me sick, him playing noble, like that. That’s why I asked him was he trying to be noble. If he’d said yes, I would ‘a’ bashed him to a pulp!”

  They mounted Farrel on his horse, tying its lead rope to the pommel of Delgas’s saddle, after the other two climbed on their own horses, which had been left a little down the slope. And Farrel found himself looking down to a great wave of turmoil that swept up through the valley gradually.

  Over it, a great billowing mist came up in waves. There seemed to be no wind, and yet the dust kept on rising. The acrid taint of it began to stain the air around Farrel. He could look down into the thin fog and see through it the swaying, pouring multitudes of the herd. Right across the valley they spread.

  They moved as a front of water moves. Sometimes a pressure of some sort caused one section to roll swiftly out ahead of the rest of the front, and then that section was delayed, as though the dry sands were drinking up the current, and another portion of the front lurched into the lead. Waves like those of water passed through the herd, also; vague perturbations and disturbances of the living mass. And the clatter and rattle of the clashing hoofs and the striking horns beat up to Farrel like a vast cymbal chorus, while the calves bawled high and the bulls roared low.

  And he was the maker of that great herd. He could remember the day when he talked to old Wycombe, that cunning fox who had been the father of the dead man. He had said: “Mr. Wycombe, I’m fifteen. That’s why I’m willing to start small and work big. You wait and see. I know the right sort of a steer to run on this sort of land. I can breed ’em, and I can buy ’em, too. I know beef as I know the flat of my own hand.”

  Old Wycombe had listened, and smiled, and listened. That was the day Farrel began to be a slave to an idea, and to the Wycombe family, and finally he had built up his herd, in actual fact. The size of it seemed to be magnified by the moonlight. It was flooding through his heart and soul. The mountains seemed to be trembling with the thunder of the multitude. He kept on saying to himself soundlessly: “I did all of that. I raised that herd. And now it’s going to be wasted. Now it’s going to be wasted.”

  Big Delgas, reining close to him, said: “Your face is all swelling up, kid. I’m sorry that I socked you like that. But you made me sore. It makes me sore to see a gent trying to be noble. It makes me mad, is all it does.”

  Farrel shrugged his shoulders.

  “He’s thinking about the beef. He’s not thinking about himself,” remarked Red, with a touch of both curiosity and of sympathy in his voice.

  “What you mean, he’s thinking about the beef?” said Delgas.

  “Down there,” said Red, gesturing. “He’s not so sorry for the beating he got, but he’s sorry to see his herd break up.”

  “He never owned no part of it,” answered Degas.

  “He built it, brother, is what I mean,” said Red. “You gotta understand how you’d feel if you’d built something and seen it go smash.”

  “Like a toy house. I know,” said Delgas. “My big brother built a kind of a toy house, one day. I come along and took and give it a shove, and it goes in a pile. Was he sore? He was sore, lemme tell you. He up and after me. And I went high-tailin’ through the house and outside, and he took and made a high dive off the back porch and caught me, and then did he pretty near kill me? I’ll t
ell a man he done just that. He was kind of sore because I’d spilled his house. But this guy is funny, that wants to cry when he sees his herd break up — his herd that he don’t own no hair of.”

  Suddenly Farrel found himself, quite outside of his own expectations, making an explanation.

  “Suppose you had a big stretch of land,” he said. “Suppose you have a big stock of water behind a dam. Feed it out slow, and you’ve got water for the whole year through. Bust the dam, and it’s all gone in a day, and the ranch is thrown away. That’s the way I feel. Those cows are going to spill away through the hills and split up into a hundred different sections. Who’s buying them? Sam Waring?”

  The heads of both Red and Delgas jerked suddenly.

  “Never mind who’s buying them,” said Delgas. “Worry about the coin that’s comin’ into your own pocket, not what’s comin’ into mine!”

  CHAPTER XVII

  SAM WARING

  They talked for a moment as to which end of the herd they should aim at — the rear of it or the point. Because the cattle were not being pushed ahead into the mountains. There was no very great hurry, for that matter, and, since the herding by daylight would be more assured work than herding them by night, perhaps the herd would be kept here until close to daylight, which was not very far off in any event.

  Finally it was decided to go down the slope to the point of the herd, where it was held by several riders at the head of the valley. They descended rapidly, and, coming out into the open, they were assailed by angry cries that ordered them to get to work. The punchers were working short-handed, in trying to hold that confused mob of steers. But one puncher, coming near enough to identify faces, raised a whoop of exctied triumph at the sight of Farrel. He went off, waving his hat in circles and yelling like a wolf.

  “Your punchers don’t seem to think much of you, kid,” said Delgas, laughing.

  Farrel made no answer. Now that he was at close range, even through the rolling and thick, fog-white outpouring of the dust, he could recognize steer and cow and calf that he had handled himself. And he ran his eyes with a strange love over the long shanks of the cattle, and the straight, lean bellies, and the high, lean backs. No sign of roaching in those backs, and no sign of weakness in the quarters. They were built like deer. They could move to forage. They could run a whole day for water after they had lived on dry feed for two days.

  That line of cattle was not his discovery. The Spanish had bred it in a small version centuries before; the Texans had bred it big in more recent times; but he knew the particular brand and type that suited this special bit of desert range. He knew it like a book, and he had made it. Now it was to go. It was to pour away through the mountain canyons and be dissipated like water running through a sieve. He turned his head away. He could not face the wretched thought of all that wasted labor.

  He knew now, suddenly, that a man lives not for the sake of putting hard cash into his own pocket, but for the sake of some sort of creation — a store, a poem, a herd of cows. It was all the same. To build up something where there was nothing before — that was the feeling that drove decent men. And now, in stealing the herd, they were stealing a portion of his life that could never be returned to him. The dollars could go to the devil. But time is more priceless, and it was time which they would be wasting.

  Delgas aimed for a flicker of firelight that was visible at the very point of the valley, where the foot of a hill was splintered into a great shagginess of rocks. When they drew closer to the firelight, a man stood up, and they saw the sheen of the long barrel of a rifle.

  This fellow, who seemed to be a guard, sang out:

  “Yeah? Yeah? Which way, waddies?”

  “Delgas speakin’!” called Delgas.

  “That don’t mean nothin’ to me,” said the other.

  “One of the others,” said Red. He added loudly: “Is Rutherford around?”

  “Rutherford is here,” said the puncher with the rifle. “If that means much to you, he’s here and he’s busy.”

  “Take this hombre,” said Delgas.

  He dismounted, threw the reins of his horse to Red, and walked ahead. After a few words with the guard, he called for the others to come, and Red led in Farrel to the verge of the rocks.

  The fire was blazing merrily behind them. A pair of unshaven fellows had drawn off portions of the main blaze, and on these smaller fires they were frying bacon and bringing coffee to a boil. The scent of the food was good in the nostrils of Farrel. He told himself that he would remember this — that even in the midst of misery he was able to feel hunger and desire food as though he had simply come to the end of a long, hard, successful day’s work.

  Tethered close by, here and there, stood several good-looking horses, and a mule whose pack was being unloaded.

  “Go easy with that pack, you fool!” sang out a voice.

  “There’s dynamite in that!”

  Everyone raised a shout at the word.

  Rutherford alone did not stir. He was sitting cross-legged in front of a flat slab of rock, counting out stacks of greenbacks and weighing them down, one after another, with stones. Beside him stood the big, rounded paunch and the fat face of Sam Waring, crook extraordinary.

  After the confusion caused by the word about dynamite had died down, Delgas came close up and leaned over Rutherford.

  “We’ve got Danny Farrel,” he said. “We nearly got Silver, too.”

  “You nearly got hell,” said Rutherford, without looking up, continuing his count.

  “Farrel was signaling him,” said Delgas. “We waited, and Silver came right up the hill, but Farrel managed to kick the hammer of my gun, and the shot scared Silver away like a wild duck.”

  “You talking about Arizona Jim? You talking about Jim Silver?” demanded Waring, shifting the butt of his cigar rapidly across his wide mouth.

  “That’s the hombre,” said Delgas.

  “I don’t want any part of him!” said Sam Waring hastily.

  He threw out both hands in a great gesture to emphasize his point.

  “I don’t want any part in him at all!” he shouted.

  “I told you he was on deck,” said Rutherford.

  “You told me you’d have him under cover,” answered Waring.

  “The fool ought to be,” said Rutherford. “We left him under cover, and he should have stayed there; but — well, I’ve felt in my bones that I’d have it out with him, before long.”

  “Have it out with him by yourself,” remarked Waring. “I don’t want any part of him. He’s ‘Mr. Silver,’ and ‘your honor,’ and anything he wants, so far as I’m concerned.”

  “Oh, shut up, Waring,” said Rutherford. “You’re not going to pull out because of Jim Silver.”

  “If I’d known he was to be on the loose,” said Waring, “I’d never ‘a’ worked into this here deal. I’m a peaceable man. I don’t want any hell for pepper in my soup, thanks. I’m no fightin’ man, Rutherford, and you know it.”

  “You’ve got plenty of thugs along to do your fighting for you,” said Rutherford.

  “I’m an old man,” answered Waring, who looked about fifty by the gray of his hair and the lines in his face. “But there’s still a mite of life in me, and I don’t want to drain it out. One small bullet hole will let a million dollars’ worth run out and go to waste in half a second, brother. And I know it.”

  Something else took the attention of Waring, a moment later, and, before any one could comment on his last speech, he pointed silently at Farrel.

  “That! Who brought that man in here?” said Waring.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Delgas.

  “He’s not in on the deal!” exclaimed Waring. “What are you fellows trying to do? Advertise me in the newspapers?”

  He was very excited, and began to beat a fist into the fat palm of his hand.

  “Keep your hat on,” advised Delgas. “He ain’t goin’ to do you no harm.”

  “What’s the matter,
Sam?” asked Farrel.

  “It’s Danny Farrel,” said Waring, “and he knows me as well as I’d know my own father. You fellows are crazy loons! Why’d you bring him in here, anyway?”

  Rutherford looked up from his counting.

  “Maybe he knows too much, anyway, before he saw you. If he knows too much, maybe we’ll have to make him forget it, Sam.”

  “What you mean?” asked Waring.

  Rutherford slid a forefinger, slowly, across his scrawny neck.

  “Oh,” groaned Waring, “do we have to have that kind of dirty work?”

  “Yeah?” said Delgas. “It’s your laundry that we’re wor-ryin’ about, Sam.”

  Waring snapped his fat fingers high above his head. He was very impatient.

  “It’s a bad business,” he said.

  “Worse for Farrel than for you,” added Delgas.

  Waring turned his back and began to walk up and down, puffing rapidly at his cigar until a veil of white formed about his head, and he kept striding back and forth through it, making gestures of protest and annoyance.

  Rutherford continued his counting, laying small stones on the heaps that he put out on the rock.

  “That’s a lot of kale you been carrying around with you, Waring,” observed Delgas.

  “Cash is better than carry,” said Waring shortly.

  He stopped in his pacing and pointed at Farrel.

  “Something’s gotta be done,” he said.

  “Do it yourself, then. I guess that nobody would stop you,” said Delgas. “I don’t love him none. My knuckles are what cut him up, the poor sucker.”

  “Come out with it,” urged Rutherford. “You want him bumped off now, Waring?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Waring. “Let’s think it over. Maybe something can be done with him.”

  The heart of Farrel, which had turned to ice, began to beat again.

  “Get that canvas sack away from the fire!” suddenly shouted some one. “That’s the dynamite, you fools!”

  The man who was carrying the tarpaulin almost dropped it, and when he had lowered it to the ground, he jumped a rod.