The False Rider

by Max Brand

  He got for a reward a yelp of pain and fear. The rifle disappeared. There was a sound of crashing in the brush.

  “Up high!” yelled the voice of Christian’s friend. “Up high. He’s up near the top of the roof.”

  “Did he get you?” asked Christian.

  “He scraped my shoulder for me. I’m goin’ to boil him in oil before I’m finished with him!”

  Immediately, the fire centered high on the walls, and Taxi heard the intimate humming of the bullets about his head and body. Another bullet clipped his clothes, drilling through the flap of his trousers leg. He dropped flat to the floor.

  It seemed that Christian must have heard the noise, nevertheless, for now a bullet from his side of the house struck the earth and threw a stinging shower of it into the face of Taxi.

  He leaped to a far corner of the shack. The eyes of the devil seemed to be following him, looking through the solid wood with ease, for another bullet instantly clipped a lock of hair from his head. It was the end. They had him on the run, and they would beat the life out of him with the flying lead in a few moments, he knew.

  And then the voice of Christian’s companion loudly yelped: “They’re comin’! They’re right in the pass, now. Get out of here, Barry!”

  A terrible oath ripped out of the throat of Christian. He fired six shots, high and low, in rapid succession. Perhaps he was emptying his rifle. Then there was silence.

  Taxi counted to twenty before he ventured to the door of the shack. It was not a sham to draw him outside, for now he could hear the distant muttering of the hoofs of many horses, and immediately afterward there was the galloping beat of a pair receding from the neighborhood of the cabin.

  There was no use mounting his own horse to pursue Barry Christian and one other through mountains that Barry knew like a book. And, therefore, Taxi sat down at the lock and began to work over it with the bit of watch-spring steel!

  He was lost in the problem. He was still very deep in it when the noise of the horses increased to a thundering that shook the earth and made the stove jingle softly in the corner of the shack. With the tenth part of his mind, Taxi was aware of these things. The rest of his wits were entirely concentrated on the problem of the lock, when the squeaking of saddle leather announced that men were dismounting near the cabin.

  Then they came pouring in.

  He gave another twist to the picklock. It would not work—yes, something was yielding.

  “It’s Taxi,” said a loud voice. “It’s his side kicker, Taxi.”

  Another said: “Taxi, what—”

  “Shut up,” said Taxi. And suddenly the lock had yielded to his hands. He pulled it open. It lay mastered before him. In ten seconds, on the next try, he would know how to master that delicate combination. After all, it had been simple—but unexpected—the way all good brain work is apt to be.

  At last he looked up as a big fellow in a checkered flannel shirt came up to him, smelling strongly of horse sweat, and dropped a hand on his shoulder.

  “We want some talk out of you!” said the stranger.

  Taxi raised his pale, overbright eyes and stared into the other’s face.

  “Take your hand off my shoulder!” he commanded.

  The hand was instantly taken away as one of the other men said:

  “Look out, Mack! He’s poison.”

  Mack stood back a little, but he spread his legs as though bracing himself to endure a shock.

  “I’ll take my hand off you, but maybe not for long. Your dirty skunk of a partner, Jim Silver, has been up here, and we want—”

  He dodged, but too late. Taxi, coming out of his chair like a cat, lodged the bony ridge of his knuckles on the point of Mack’s jaw and dropped him staggering back into the arms of some of his friends.

  Then, for a split part of a second, Taxi expected death to spout from the muzzles of a dozen leveled guns. Yet not a shot was fired, for another man said:

  “Mack’s been rushin’ things too fast. Wait a minute. Here, you, Taxi. Open up and talk. You talk, or we will raise hell with you. You know that Silver’s been play actin’ watchman down at Henry Wilbur’s bank in Crow’s Nest. Now he’s robbed the bank and gone—he and his side kicker. They’ve been up here to see you. Likely they’ve left some of the loot with you. If they have, we’re goin’ to get it. And we wanta know where they told you they were headin’.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Silver’s Arrival

  There are times when words won’t serve. Taxi felt that one of these times had come. He never liked the weight of many eyes on him. There was a guilty something in him that made him prefer dark loneliness to the public gaze. The same instinct, from a different and a guiltless cause, worked in Jim Silver, and that had helped to make the two men friends. They knew how to spend a silent day and night together without thinking hostile thoughts of one another.

  Taxi could only say the first and the greatest truth, about this matter, that sprang into his head, which was simply:

  “Jim Silver would never take a job as the watchman of a bank.”

  Someone laughed loudly.

  “Sure he didn’t. But he took a job as the robber! He walked right in there and made fools of us, and he walked off again with the coin. He’s been up here. He’s seen you, Taxi, and he’s told you about his plans. There ain’t any doubt about it.”

  “There’s a doubt that it was Jim Silver,” said Taxi.

  “What?” came the shout. “Doubt, d’you say? Even down to the silver spots over his temples and the gold and shine of Parade, it was Jim Silver, all right!”

  Taxi considered.

  “We’re losin’ time,” said Mack, rubbing his swollen jaw and staring hungrily at Taxi. “I vote that we count to ten, and then, if he don’t speak, see if we can drag some talk out of him at the end of a lariat!”

  “You can’t drag nothin’ out of him,” doubted another speaker. “Not if Jim Silver is in the case. You can’t drag nothin’ out. Not even Barry Christian was able to do that, and Barry had time to work on him, they say!”

  “Are we goin’ to stand around here and let a little crook out of the East gum up the deal for us?” shouted Mack.

  “I say it wasn’t Silver,” said Taxi quietly. “Silver’s my friend. Would he do work like this?”

  He pointed at the walls of the shack, through which eyeholes had been recently drilled by bits cleaner than ever an auger bored.

  “What does that prove?” Mack said. “Taxi just stepped outside, and they drilled a few holes through the house to prove that they wasn’t his friends. But it’s all a lie, and you’ll find that the whole bunch of loot has been cached here with Taxi. Don’t that make a plan for you? The pair of ’em do the dirty work down there in Crow’s Nest, and Taxi waits up here to take the loot! What’s simpler than that?”

  “Would he be fool enough to start a cannonade that was sure to lead the lot of you right up on his trail?” asked Taxi.

  This gave even Mack pause, but only for an instant.

  “He knew that we was comin’ right up the pass after him, anyways. It didn’t take much time. One of ’em did the shootin’ while you and the other one hid the loot. Taxi, walk us to that stuff.”

  “I’ll tell you one reason why you’re wrong,” said Taxi. He pointed to the hole that had been shot in his shirt. The skin had been barely pricked, enough to let out a red stain of blood.

  There was a sudden grunt of interest, a sound such as a man makes when a blow lands on him solidly.

  Taxi leaned down and pointed to the flap of his trousers. There was another hole bitten through the cloth, there.

  One by one, the men crowded nearer. There were thirty of them filling up all the available space. Gloomy conviction appeared in their faces, though Mack now cried out:

  “All part of the fake! They shoot a coupla holes in the clothes of Taxi—”

  “Close enough to cut his skin, eh?” said one of the men. “Don’t be a fool, Mack! Boys, we gotta ride! Whate
ver Taxi is, he ain’t in on this deal. If Jim Silver is mean enough to turn crooked, he’s mean enough to double-cross a friend of his like Taxi, too.”

  “You talk like a half-wit,” said the calm, gentle voice of Taxi. “Tell me this—would Jim Silver and Barry Christian be riding together?”

  “Who said they were? It’s Silver and Tom Bennett,” answered a posse man.

  “Bennett is Barry Christian,” said Taxi, “and your Jim Silver is some crook made up to look like my friend.”

  Incredulous heads were shaken. Only in one or two pairs of eyes appeared the least flicker of doubt.

  “There’s nothing here,” urged a number of the men. “Let’s get out and start moving. Silver’s gaining ground on us at every jump!”

  “Let him get a lead. Who could catch Parade, anyway?” asked another.

  “That’s true,” said another. “But we gotta keep travelin’. They ain’t both got a Parade under ’em.”

  They streamed out of the shack, and Mack, still scowling at Taxi, called out as he mounted his horse:

  “Keep out of my path, brother. And, if you’ve got much sense, you won’t bother around the town of Crow’s Nest, neither. Jim Silver is wanted there, right now, but his friends ain’t!”

  That was the last warning, as the cavalcade poured back through the trees to take the main road across the pass.

  It was not the direction which Christian and his companion had taken, but Taxi did not try to correct the men, for he knew that his advice was wanted no more than he had wanted the advice of Mack.

  One thing was perfectly clear to him, and this was that he must ride at once for the town of Crow’s Nest. If the false Jim Silver had done harm there, if the crime had actually been the robbing of the famous bank, then it was high time for the friends of the real Jim Silver to appear on the scene to discover what had actually happened.

  It was at about this time that the true Jim Silver sent Parade up the last slope toward the town of Crow’s Nest. It had been a hard ride from the forest of yellow birches, where the bearded man with the bright eyes had given him the information that made him speed toward the town. He had made a quick trip. Parade had traveled as only Parade knew how to move over rough and smooth, and yet, for all his speed, Jim Silver was arriving late by a few vital hours.

  He was very weary, but weariness was a thing to which he was accustomed, and which he knew how to master so as to leave his mind fresh and his body prepared for hard action. Out of the power of his will he could refresh himself sufficiently.

  He was not received, now, as his alias had been welcomed not many days before. He was well into the town, in fact, before he was sighted. And then it was the solitary, shrill voice of a woman that sent the news pealing down the main street of Crow’s Nest:

  “Jim Silver’s come back! Jim Silver’s come back!”

  After that, men began to appear. There was no cheering. Every man who appeared had a gun in his hand, a sight so strange that Silver could hardly believe his eyes. No one called out to him. There was no waving of hands.

  The heart of Jim Silver was so free from vanity that he felt no real pain at this lack of a reception, but he was puzzled by the grimness of the faces that stared at him.

  If the grown-ups were so silent, at least the little boys and girls should have been running out, clapping their hands and yelling with pleasure at the sight of the great Parade. But, instead of giving him the slightest greeting, the children remained in the background, agape, silent, and mothers could be seen gathering in their offspring as though there had been danger of an approaching storm.

  As Silver rode on, he was aware that men were swarming out into the street behind him. Others had gathered ahead of him, along the sidewalks, and still he made out that every man of the lot was heavily armed!

  It was stranger than a dream. If he had ridden into a bandit city where every man was wanted by the law, he might have expected some such greeting as this, but he could not be prepared for it among the law-abiding.

  Then, as though at a signal given, the men ahead of him poured out into the street and entirely blocked his way.

  Parade stopped, unbidden, and lifted his magnificent head. Silver, without glancing back, felt the pressing forward of the crowd at his rear. There were at least three hundred men, all armed, now ahead of him or behind him. The silence was deadly. Other men were coming in the distance, on the run. And now, as he sat in the saddle, he found the crowd edging closer, becoming more compact. He would have been worse than a blind man if he had not known that they meant trouble for him.

  “Well, boys, what’s in the air?” he said calmly.

  There was no response to this, for an instant. Then an old, leaning fellow with a trapper’s fur cap on his head, and a double-barreled shotgun in his hands, stepped out a little in advance of his fellows and said, in a drawling voice:

  “Jim, I dunno what to make of you. I always been told that you was right bright. You was bright enough to pull the wool over the eyes of everybody for a long spell. But d’you really think that we’re such doggone fools that we’d let you come back to town now and bluff us out after you been and robbed the bank?”

  And another voice, far back in the crowd, yelled out suddenly: “Silver, ain’t you been seen ridin’ out of Crow’s Nest with your partner, Bennett?”

  Silver looked them over with a grim thrill of understanding. All was reasonably clear to him now. These people had all been robbed! And the blame was thrown on him! Whoever it was that had worn his name must have been made up marvelously well in his likeness. He had come down here to prevent a great fraud from being practiced. It seemed that he had only arrived in time to be punished for the crime of another man.

  He was not frightened, simply because fear did not know the way into his great heart, but he was shocked and awed by a thing that he had never encountered before in all the days of his life—the seasoned and grim hatred of law-abiding men.

  He had heard it said, more than once, that no crowd of thugs is ever half so unreasoning, so ferocious, as a throng of the honest citizens, because the mere consciousness of honesty is apt to make the members of the crowd feel that every emotion in the heart is justifiable and should be followed with safety. These fellows before him had seemed at first merely antagonistic. Now he saw that they meant murder or its equivalent.

  “Friends,” he said, “this is a cheat that has been worked on you. Some man has been here in my name, but I swear that this is the first time that either I or Parade have been on the streets of your town. I’ve never been in Crow’s Nest before!”

  A loud yell of incredulity and rage answered him.

  “Partner,” said the old trapper, “can I believe that you’re goin’ to try to tell us that the Jim Silver who was here before was just a kind of a shadder of you? That he was made up like a play actor to look like you? Is that what I gotta listen to? Jim, I’m an old man to listen to that—and when you robbed that bank so doggone clean, you took fifteen hundred dollars of money that it cost me twenty years to save! That was the money to bury me, and now I’m goin’ to have it back from you, or else I’m goin’ to have that much of your hide!”

  This was a long speech, but perhaps it was needed for the sake of rousing the crowd to a fever heat. The anger and the desire to act had been there before in every heart. There was hardly a man in the lot that had not been robbed in the looting of the bank. These were men accustomed to the face of action and ready for it now.

  Still the tremendous reputation of this man overawed and held them back with the recollection of the thousands of deeds of heroism with which he had ennobled his own name and the whole West. They could not lift a hand against the greatness of his fame, no matter how much their pocketbooks had suffered.

  Then came the speech of the old trapper who, starting calmly, had built up to a shouting climax in which he shook his shotgun at the head of Silver.

  One man cried: “But that don’t look to me like the gent that’s been
around town here claiming to be Jim Silver!”

  There was a yell of rage at the mere suggestion. Two or three of the crowd—neighbors of that unfortunate speaker—picked him up and hoisted him on their shoulders.

  “Here’s a fool that says it ain’t the same as the other Jim Silver!” called one.

  “Boys!” screamed the unlucky fellow. “I swear that don’t look to me the same as the other chestnut, either. It’s bigger and more to it, and—”

  He was dropped to his feet, a hard fist knocked him flat, and the crowd trampled over his body as it pressed in on Jim Silver.

  If they would do that much to a man who merely dared to lift his voice in defense of what honest eyes saw, what would they do to a man against whom they really had a murderous grudge? Jim Silver saw the workings of their fingers, and it seemed to him that his flesh was already under their hands. It seemed to him that he was already being torn.

  CHAPTER 16

  Wilbur’s Declaration

  There was another man in that town who had been torn, though not by physical hands, a little earlier in the morning. That was Henry Wilbur, who sat, not in his ransacked bank, where the work of his life had been swept away, but in his house.

  He had gone down to the bank and had written in chalk with his own hand across the front door:

  I shall sell all my personal property and apply the proceeds to the payment of the losses incurred by the robbery of this bank. Every depositor shall receive something on every dollar of his deposits.

  (Signed) Henry Wilbur

  Even that gallant declaration had not brought a single cheer from the crowd which watched him. They looked on him, rather, with hostile eyes. They began to remember ugly tales that they had heard about bankers in other days. Perhaps men are fools if they intrust their money to banks, they thought, and a hole in the ground would be a better place.

  With mute hostility, then, they had stared after poor Wilbur as he walked with a high head through the crowd and climbed the hill to his house. He kept a bright face. He was trying to strip away from his mind the dreadful sense of loss. He was trying to say to himself that every blow may be endured.