Silvertip's Strike

by Brand, Max

  He heard the girl say: “I know what you’ve done, and no man ever did more for a friend. I’ve prayed for you when I prayed for Danny.”

  “Hush!” breathed Silver, as he heard a footfall coming up the stairs.

  It was a heavy step, stamping down on the boards, making the flimsy wood groan and squeak under the pressure.

  Delgas beat once on the door, heavily, and then flung it open.

  “Hello. What’s in here?” he roared.

  He came thumping into the room with the jingle of the spurs at his heels. The reek of his cigar was instantly in every corner.

  “Just takin’ a quiet little minute by yourself, eh?” said Delgas to the girl. “You ain’t seen nothing of a long streak of poison called Jim Silver, have you?”

  She said nothing. She must have been shaking her head.

  “Scared stiff, eh?” said Delgas. “So doggone scared that she dunno what to do about it? Can’t talk? Just stand there and wag your head? Well, I guess he ain’t in here, unless he’s under the bed.”

  The big feet of Delgas crossed the room, and he kicked at the empty space under the bed. That maneuver came so unexpectedly that Silver barely flinched his face back in time enough to escape from catching the blow.

  Delgas turned again.

  “There ain’t anything for you to be so shakin’ about,” said Delgas. “He can’t do you no harm, this gent Silver. Not while gents like me are around. You know why? Because I’d take care of you. You’re an uncommon pretty girl, Esther, and I been noticin’ you. You’d be a help to a gent. There’s only one funny thing about you, and that’s why you cotton to a doggone common gent like poor Danny Farrel. I’ll tell you why. It’s because there ain’t anything to a feller like that. There ain’t any sand to him, and there ain’t any brains. He’s in the soup, and the best way for you is to forget him and take a look around for something else in the way of a man. And when you’re lookin’, stop your eye a minute on Morrie Delgas. He ain’t pretty, but he’s got a silver lining!”

  When he finished, he broke into a great, bawling laughter that filled the room and half deafened Silver. Then, still braying, Delgas went out of the room and creaking down the stairs, slamming the door behind him.

  Through the flimsy partitions, Silver could hear Delgas saying: “No sign of him up there. No sign of nobody. It ain’t likely he’d be fool enough to come into this house anyway, is it?”

  “When you know enough,” answered the voice of Rutherford, “to read the mind of Jim Silver and say what he’s likely to do and what he’s not likely to do, I’ll take my hat off to you and go to work for you, Morrie. You weren’t long enough in that room to search it.”

  “That’s a lie,” answered Delgas. “I was long enough to search the room and kiss the girl and come back again.”

  And the long uproar of his laughter went quivering through the house once more.

  “Steady, now!” whispered Silver. “That’s Rutherford coming, and he’s twice the danger that’s in Delgas.”

  There was a polite rap at the door.

  “Come in!” called the girl.

  The door opened.

  “Sorry to bother you, Esther,” said Rutherford, “but I ought to glance over this room. Delgas is a little careless.”

  “I’ve been right here,” said the girl.

  “He was in the house before you went up to your room,” answered Rutherford.

  He paused.

  “I don’t see where he could be, though,” said Rutherford. There was another pause.

  Then he asked: “Writing letters through all the excitement, Esther?”

  “I had to do something,” said the girl. “I’ve been half hysterical. Is Jim Silver in the house?”

  “Excuse me a moment,” said Rutherford. “I hate to do this, but little things are sometimes important.”

  Paper rustled. He read:

  “DEAREST MOTHER: It’s high time that I should write you a letter because I haven’t written for a long time and if — ”

  There was another pause.

  “Yes,” said Rutherford quietly. “I should say that you have been half hysterical — or else that you were simply scratching words down on paper for the sake of seeming occupied. It isn’t that, my dear, is it?”

  “Seeming occupied?” the girl stammered.

  “There’s nothing but the bed that could hide anything,” said he.

  And he walked straight toward it.

  Silver hesitated a tenth part of a second. He could kill Rutherford, easily enough, but the report of the gun would bring the others, and nothing in the world could save him then.

  He hooked his toes inside the cross rod at the head of the bed; he grasped the cross rod at the foot of the bed; and in that manner he was able, with a great effort, to heave himself up until his back touched the springs.

  He saw the slender, pointed toes of the boots of the great Rutherford approach, shining like quicksilver. The boots paused. There was the deadly gleam of a Colt six-gun beneath the hanging edge of the coverlet. Then he saw the shadow of Rutherford sweep over the floor as he bent down.

  He tensed himself to receive the shock of the bullet.

  Instead, Rutherford straightened again, and walked back across the room.

  “Well,” said he, “I’m sorry that I’ve bothered you, Esther. In a time like this, with a fellow such as Silver in the offing, I have to take precautions. You understand that?”

  She failed to answer. And he laughed as he said:

  “You look as though a glance under your bed was worse than murder, my dear.”

  He went out; the door closed; and Silver relaxed once more on the floor beneath the bed.

  He could not believe his escape. His brain was still spinning with the sensation of imminent death, as he watched the feet of the girl go stumbling to a chair into which she fell.

  He whispered. There was no answer for a long moment.

  Then, very dimly, from the outside of the house he heard a man exclaiming: “He’s a regular Robinson Crusoe, old Slim is. He seen a footprint in the dust and he went and raised hell about it, was what he did. Good old Slim, he’s the kind of a gent that don’t let none of the small change slip.”

  There was laughter, after this, and then the small voice of the girl close to Silver murmured:

  “We’re saved, Jim Silver.”

  Silver slid out from beneath the bed and got to his feet.

  “You’ll be safe here,” she said. Her face was shining. “And in the morning when they start the herd, you can get out of the house with no trouble at all.”

  Out of the distance, as though fulfilling a part of her words, he heard the bawling of cattle.

  “And Danny?” he asked her.

  The joy was struck out of her face. But she shook her head, answering: “You’ve tried to do more than any other man in the world would try. You can’t do more. You’ve got to hide and be quiet.”

  He looked at the narrow windows.

  There was no way through them, of course. There was no possible exit from the room except down the narrow, squeaking stairway. But he was determined, in some manner, to get to Danny Farrel on this night.

  “There’s nothing more you can do,” whispered the girl urgently. “Don’t try anything.”

  “I’ve got to think,” said Silver.

  He sat down in a chair, made a cigarette, remembered himself, and dropped the makings of it into his pocket. There was a wall of darkness before his brain, and it would not lift.

  He looked at the girl.

  She had grown older. She had been very pretty, before, but she was almost ugly, now, to the eye. What she had gained for Silver was a touch of inward beauty. If she were doddering in wrinkled age, she would never be less than beautiful to him, knowing what he knew of her.

  And he whispered to her suddenly: “I think that I’ll have luck. I don’t know how. But I think that I’ll have luck.”

  One of the cow-punchers on guard outside the
house began to sing loudly. Another sentinel exclaimed:

  “Shut up! Don’tcha know some of the boys are tryin’ to get a wink of sleep now?”

  Silver stood up from the chair. He took the hand of the girl in silence.

  “Don’t make a noise,” he told her. “I understand what I’m about. Nobody can do anything without luck, anyway, and I’m just going to ask for an extra slice of luck now.”

  Then he opened the door and looked down into the black well of the hallway.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  RUTHERFORD’S OPINION

  The girl came after him. She dared not so much as whisper, now that the door of her room was open, but she grasped his arm with both hands.

  He removed her grip and closed the door in her face. Then he lay down on his side, close to the wall, and began to work his way down the stairs, feet first. In that way, his weight was distributed over a number of the steps. He was close to the wall where his poundage would exercise the least leverage on the supporting brackets. And so, inch by inch, he wormed his way down toward the hall below.

  He was nearly to the bottom when a door swung open, a broad flash of light entered the hall and streamed into the eyes of Silver. On the threshold stood Red, the light glancing through his tousled hair. After a moment he closed the door softly.

  What had he heard to bring him there? What had he seen when he looked through?

  Silver, standing now on the floor of the hall with a gun in each hand, waited breathlessly, but he heard no alarm given, no lifting of voices, no scurrying of quick feet. Red, it seemed, had seen nothing. Once more it was proved that a man sees only what he expects to see, and a man prone on the stairs was not what a man expects to see.

  Silver went to the door of that room which he had used for lounging while he was in the house. The voices inside were those of Waring, Delgas, Rutherford, and young Danny Farrel.

  They were still talking about the print of the naked foot, with Waring saying:

  “The way I aim to live, gents, I don’t get no dyspepsia about things that don’t bother me none and ain’t in my way. If there was ten thousand footprints in the dust and a chance to grab ten bucks off a table, I’d take the ten bucks and let the ten thousand footprints go.”

  Delgas laughed at this viewpoint, heartily.

  “I say the same,” said he.

  “Look here, Farrel,” said Rutherford. “You’re a lad with a brain. Whatever you think, you can’t help your partner, Silver. Suppose you tell me what you think made that footprint.”

  “One of your own men trying to string the rest of you along,” said Farrel instantly.

  “You’re all against me then,” answered Rutherford. “And I’ll tell you what I think.”

  “Blaze away,” said Delgas.

  “I think,” said Rutherford, “that Jim Silver made the mark.”

  “Hey!” said Delgas. “Watcha mean, Harry? You mean that Jim Silver’s been that close to the house and not come inside? What kind of reason have you got for it, anyway?”

  “I know something about Silver,” said Rutherford. “I have to study fellows like that. And it’s an old saying with every man West of the Mississippi who has to live by his wits that it’s better to have a sheriff and his posse after you than it is to have Jim Silver on your trail. I’ve thought that I’d always be clever enough to keep out of his way — but this time he’s after me!”

  “You don’t like it, Harry, do you?” asked Waring.

  “I hate it like the devil,” answered Rutherford frankly.

  “Got the wind up?” asked Waring, chuckling.

  “I have,” said Rutherford. “So would the rest of you, if you had any sense.”

  “Go on, brother, and clear that up for us,” suggested Delgas. “Why ain’t we got any sense?”

  “Because if you knew Silver, you’d be as sure as I am that he left that footprint behind him.”

  “Go on and open up,” urged Waring.

  “Silver’s like a sailor,” said Rutherford. “When there’s dangerous work ahead, he likes to go at it with bare feet. Bare feet are the best on a slippery deck. They’re more silent than shoes, too.”

  “They ain’t so good in a fire.” Waring chuckled.

  “Silver’s are,” said Rutherford.

  “Wait a minute,” broke in Delgas. “You mean, Harry, that Silver has the habit of going around in bare feet when he’s about to raise the devil?”

  “If he’s going to enter a house where he wants to be as quiet as a moving shadow — yes, he’d be in bare feet.”

  “But he’s not in the house, Harry.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “Why, man,” said Waring, “ain’t we looked the place over from head to heel? We ain’t seen a thing!”

  “Not a thing,” echoed Delgas. “Not a thing, and I looked over every inch of the house myself.”

  “Nobody has seen anything,” answered Rutherford. “Nobody saw a man come up to the house. There were four guards out there and plenty of lantern light. But one minute that dust was clear, except for horse tracks, and the next minute, there’s the print of a naked foot. Do you think it was a ghost that made the mark, Delgas?”

  “I dunno,” said Delgas. “It beats me, is what it does.”

  “Somebody came up to this house and made that mark before he got through the window — or climbed up to the roof!

  “Aye, the roof!” cried Delgas. “I never thought of that!”

  “I did, though,” said Rutherford. “I thought of the roof and ran a ladder up and climbed up to the top, but there’s nothing to see on the top of the house.”

  “He’s not on the roof, and he’s not in the house. And if he came up and made his mark in the dust, then he went off again the same way he came,” said Delgas. “That’s the long and the short of it.”

  “It’s the long of it and the wrong of it,” answered Rutherford. “A fellow like Silver went through a lot of danger to get that close to the house, and he wouldn’t turn away again before he’d accomplished something. You fellows ought to see that.”

  “I don’t get what you’re drivin’ at. You have me beat,” said Waring. “It kind of sounds like geometry to me, and I never was no good in funny things like that.”

  “Well,” said Delgas, “let Harry blaze away and tell us what’s what. He’ll be talkin’ about ghosts walkin’, before long. Even Harry can be wrong, I guess.”

  “You think that Silver is a ghost?” asked Rutherford.

  “I don’t say that I think that,” answered Delgas.

  “Well,” said Rutherford, “I can’t tell you any more reasons, unless you count the feeling in my marrow bones as a reason, but I’ll tell you that I’m sure that Jim Silver is in this house at this moment!”

  “Hi!” yelled Waring.

  Somebody started up out of a chair and crossed the room with heavy steps and stood at the door.

  “You mean that, Harry?” said Delgas. “What makes you say so?”

  “I’ve told you my reasons, and you say they’re no good. I say that Jim Silver made that print in the dust, and that Jim Silver made that print just before he slipped through the open window into the house. We searched the place and we couldn’t find him, any more than our guards outside were able to see him walk right up to the house through the lantern light. But in spite of that, he’s somewhere in this house.”

  “Where?” shouted Delgas.

  “I don’t know. Outside that door, perhaps — from the feeling that’s inside my spine!” said Rutherford.

  “Doggone if it don’t begin to scare me — it’s a regular ghost story!” exclaimed Waring. “It makes me sweat, though I feel pretty cold. Is that fellow in on it? Farrel, have you got a hand in this?”

  “How could he have a hand in it?” asked Delgas. “Waring, you’re nutty.”

  “What Harry says is enough to make any man nutty,” cried Waring. “We been over this place with a fine-toothed comb, and now we start in talkin’ about
ghosts. I ain’t no hero even when it comes to fightin’ men, and I lay off when it comes to ghosts. I don’t want no part of ’em!”

  “If you got this idea in your head,” said Delgas, “what you want us to do about it, Harry?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rutherford. “We’ve got the house guarded. There’s nobody asleep except in the bunk house, and they’re ready to turn out and ride at any minute. I don’t very well know what more we can do.”

  “Except to keep our eyes open,” suggested Delgas.

  “That’s it,” said Rutherford. “We’ve got to keep on the alert, my friends.”

  “It makes me nervous, though,” said Waring. “Delgas, get away from that door. You act like you was afraid that somebody would walk in through it. If Jim Silver can do what you gents say, he don’t need to open the door. He’ll slide in through the keyhole, and turn out of a mist into a man, like they do in the fairy tales.”

  “Yeah?” said Delgas. “I dunno.”

  The door jerked open so rapidly that the gesture was almost too fast for Jim Silver, even. He had barely time to snatch out a revolver as the door pulled wide and Delgas stood scowling on the threshold.

  Silver beat the heavy butt of a revolver into the center of that scowl. As Delgas fell senseless on his back, Silver stepped over the body and took the remaining pair under the muzzles of his guns.

  CHAPTER XXV

  A BEATEN CREW

  Rutherford’s first gesture was a flick of the fingers that nearly touched the handles of his gun beneath his coat. But his thought was faster still. It saw that he was well-covered, and his second thought brought the hand away again. He sat leaning forward a little in his chair, looking not at the leveled Colt but into the steady, gleaming eyes of Silver. They were worth seeing. A changing yellow light glowed and sank and rose again in them.

  Big Waring had got his hand as far as the gun on his hip, and there his grasp froze.

  It was strange that a face could change so suddenly. All his jowls and the hanging flap of the flesh beneath his chin were struck stone-white, and all about his mouth was white, too. His upper lip began to work. And his great red nose stood out like a thing painted with blood, and his eyes were as bright as the eyes of a hawk. One could tell by the look of them that the spirit in the man was greater than any professions he made of courage. Whatever his faults were, he was a fighting machine.