by Max Brand
At the edge of the skylight, Taxi said: “Here’s the rope. Wait till I fasten it around the door, then swing along it to the tree, Jim. This is the way I got to the jail.”
His flying hands had already reached down into the skylight and noosed the rope around the door.
“Go first,” said Silver.
“No, no! It’s you that they want. They wouldn’t stretch my neck, Jim. You’re the bird they’re after.”
“Go first,” said the calm voice of Silver.
Taxi gave him one despairing glance. But he knew that there was no use arguing against that unruffled insistence. He slipped off the edge of the roof, worked down the slack of the rope to the bight of it, and began to hand over hand himself up the farther end to the tree.
As he went, he had glimpses of the crowd below. It seemed to him that all the faces were turned up toward him. The black masks on them made them like figures in a dream, those misty countenances that never can be resolved into features, mere blank sketches of the imagination.
One thing more he saw in the distance, in the middle of the street, and that was the shining picture of Parade. It was strange that he should have been led out, as though it were part of the cruel plan of the mob to make the poor horse see the death of his master. But there he stood, with his head high and his tail arching, looking apart from the crowd and free of it and above it in the perfection of his beauty.
Now, in the dark of the tree, Taxi reached the trunk, looked down through the branches, made sure that no one had, in fact, marked his escape, and jerked several times on the slack of the rope to let Silver know that the way was open.
It was high time, for the uproar in the jail was rising upward in it, a sure sign that a ladder had been placed already against the trap. Now and then a gun exploded, but it was plain that no violence had been used on Dick Williams or the guards. Taxi had time to be glad of that, and then he saw the big form of Silver come swinging across the rope, the top of the tree bending far over, the slack of the rope hanging down in a deep loop.
A moment more and he was among the branches. He was safe for the present, clinging to the trunk of the spruce tree. The rope, unknotted, swung outward and dangled like a great snake down the side of the jail.
“Masks! Masks!” called Silver. “Your coat lining, Taxi!”
It was like Silver to remember every detail even in the pinch of fast action. Taxi ripped out a great section of lining from the back of his coat, thrust his thumb through it twice to make eyeholes, and put the cloth over his head. It made a sufficient mask, though a clumsy one. Glancing up, he saw that Silver had completed his preparations before him and was now descending.
Taxi went down the trunk of the tree, hung from the lowest branch an instant, and then dropped to the ground. Hands were instantly gripping him.
“Who are you?” shouted a voice at his ear.
“Silver’s on the roof of the jail!” cried Taxi. “Think I’d stay there in the tree till I was shot out of it like a partridge? Silver’s on the roof of the jail!”
“The roof!” yelled the men around Taxi, instantly letting him go. “Silver’s on the roof of the jail!”
They gave back, scattering this way and that, preparing their guns to fire at random at any target.
Jim Silver himself slid down the trunk of the tree and stepped beside Taxi.
“Now!” said Silver, as they edged away through the thick of the crowd. “Where’s your horse?”
“Tied to a hitch rack a block from here.”
“Go get him. Which way?”
“First turn to the right, next to the main street.”
“Go get your horse.”
“And what’ll you do for a horse, Jim?”
“They can’t keep Parade,” said Silver. “Not after he hears me whistle. He’ll come through them like a wind through dead leaves. Hurry, Taxi. These fellows are beginning to go wild.”
It was true, for just now the manhunters who had climbed up through the attic of the jail came out on the roof and were dimly seen from the ground. A number of men raised their guns to shoot, until it was made out that there were not merely two, but a whole stream of men issuing from the skylight. Voices yelled back and forth from the ground to the roof. Advice was given; oaths went barking through the night. And then the whole body of the men who had first entered the jail began to swarm out of it.
Taxi already had wormed his way through the crowd; now he walked rapidly toward the place where he had left the mustang. He could bless the mask that covered his face, for there were men carrying lanterns everywhere.
When Taxi had reached his mustang, he was instantly in the saddle and rode back to the corner from which he could see the throng around the stallion. People were shouting from the direction of the jail:
“Saddle! Saddle! Get your horses, boys. Silver’s gone. Watch Parade!”
There was sense in that, because every man of the lot knew that Jim Silver would sooner leave his right arm behind him than the great stallion.
Off on the edge of the sidewalk, wrapped in a cloak and staring toward the jail, Taxi saw Ruth Wilbur standing quietly.
Then, shrilling over the thicker, heavier noises of the crowd, Taxi heard the signal whistle of Jim Silver. It rang like a bugle call in the soul of Taxi, because he had heard that summons before. It almost caused him to turn the head of his horse and drive straight toward the point from which the signal had come. But he knew that that call was not for him, now.
It was the call for Parade, and the big horse suddenly went mad. He became the center of a whirling tumult. Men yelled in terror as he tried to get at them with his heels and his teeth. And suddenly he was fleeing with two ropes flinging out from his neck, uselessly. If only one of those ropes did not become entangled with his legs and drop him like a shot!
“Kill the horse!” yelled someone. “Silver’s only half himself without his horse! Kill Parade!”
But that was not so easy. Parade ran dodging through the crowd, and it would have taken a sure and daring hand to fire at him without fear of sending the bullet into human flesh. Yet there were actually shots fired, and Taxi’s heart stood still. It was as if he were watching a human running the gantlet, instead of the flight of a horse.
Then, on the verge of the crowd, the whistle sounded again. A big, panther-swift man leaped into the saddle, flattened along the back of the stallion, and sent Parade racing straight for the corner where Taxi waited. It came to Taxi, as an afterthought, that he was a partner in that flight. He pulled his mustang around and spurred; together they rushed down the dusty length of the street.
CHAPTER 22
Two Fugitives
Duff Gregor felt like a boy who has stolen a great wedge of pie and does not know where to bite into the treasure.
Barry Christian was taking a siesta in the cool entrance shaft of the old deserted mine which was the hiding place of the pair since they had fled from Crow’s Nest. Duff Gregor, seated on the side of the old, grass-grown dump of the mine, looked over the heads of the pine trees down the mountain slope to the flash of creek water near which they had buried one of the canvas sacks of the treasure. The other sack they had sunk in the floor of the first shaft that branched to the left of the entrance.
It seemed to Gregor that he was seated on a throne from which he could view half the world. He could see the river in the bottom of the valley into which the creek flowed. He could see the smudge of distant smoke which announced the existence of the town of sawmills. He could see the thin span of the bridge that crossed the river above the waterfalls. He could see the road that wound up through the green valley bottom.
It was a world in which the fools labored, and the wise men, like Duff Gregor and Barry Christian, sat on thrones and looked at the ant-like toil of lesser humans, now and again descending from their higher level to take away some of the accretions of wealth which the poor drudges had heaped up.
It was a delightful existence, thought Duff Gregor. It was f
or this that man was designed and made strong, with two hands equipped for snatching away the spoils of lesser folk. It was delightful, and it was kingly. Duff Gregor was new to a throne, but he felt that the role would grow increasingly natural to him. He only needed robes.
He could tell what those robes would be—long-tailed coats and white shirt fronts, with white ties and the great, rich flash of a jewel, here and there. In his ears, in his blood, there was continually running, not the music of mountain winds and mountain waters, but the song of violins and the whispering of feet over the floors of ballrooms. It seemed to Duff Gregor that he had always had a way with women. Now he wanted to use it, politely, in the best society. He felt that he knew just how to overwhelm the feminine brain by his free spending.
When he had finished surveying the world before him, this world which he was about to leave for the joy of great cities, he turned his attention to the newspaper which was a portion of the spoils that Barry Christian had brought back from his raid of the night before.
When they needed either provisions or information, they raided, not together but singly, because they felt that it would be a shame if both of them should be captured, and all of the good money from the bank in Crow’s Nest be left to rot for many years in the ground. They would go down singly, therefore, and bring back from their excursions all the information that they could pick up, together with necessary provisions. For, though in retirement, they lived very well up here at the entrance to the old mine.
The mountains, though it was many days since the robbery of the bank, continued to be filled with searching parties, for the rage of the people against “Jim Silver” passed all bounds.
That was the beauty of the affair. That was what the masterful brain of Barry Christian had provided. They had committed a crime, they had “inherited” a fortune, and all they needed to do in order to escape from the dangers of the pursuit was to step back into their old selves. That is to say, all they needed was to make this change as soon as the public excitement had abated a little. Soon the little toiling parties of manhunters would no longer be observed from the aerie, and then the two could drift away into the larger world of men and be seen no more.
Christian was especially fond of referring to honest men as the “ants,” and he called the hunting parties the “soldiers.” Gregor smiled, as he thought of that, and shaking out the newspaper, he scanned the headlines with a calm eye of interest.
It was the Crow’s Nest Sentinel that Christian had brought, and it was still crammed with details that concerned the great bank robbery. It pleased Gregor to find the phrase “great bank robbery.” The crime was historical. It would never be forgotten. It was a monumental affair both on account of its size and because of the skill with which the criminals had worked. It was, in short, a perfect bit of work, and to be connected with such an event was worth some years in prison, even.
“Was Jim Silver the Robber?” said the top headline, in red letters. The article below it read:
Was Jim Silver the robber?
If so, who were the two men who were hunted out of Crow’s Nest immediately after the crime and who were almost overtaken in the act of riddling with bullets the shack five miles from Crow’s Nest where the celebrated character, Taxi, was fighting for his life?
Would Jim Silver permit an attack on Taxi, his best friend, his most celebrated admirer and faithful follower?
If Jim Silver robbed the bank, would he have been foolish enough to re-enter the town immediately after the crime was committed? Common sense tells us that this could not be.
People are ready to swear, now, that the man who was jailed in Crow’s Nest for the crime and who was delivered by the frantic devotion and the incredible daring and skill of Taxi was, in fact, not the man who had been employed as watchman at the bank.
Miss Ruth Wilbur, who risked her life to save the poor fellow from the hands of the crowd, vows that it was not the same man. There are many others willing to swear to the dissimilarity, now. Unfortunately, on the day of the excitement they did not dare to lift their voices because the majority of the citizens were too enraged to listen to calm reason.
It seems that we have been hoaxed by a cunning actor who “doubled” for the famous Jim Silver. If so, how can the injustice be undone?
Hundreds or even thousands of men are working through the mountains in an attempt to spot the criminals. Will they be able to tell the real from the unreal?
We need the real Jim Silver to help us find the false one. But could the real Jim Silver venture back to offer his services to us without running the risk of being shot down at a distance?
The whole affair is confused, and in the meantime every moment that passes makes it more and more unlikely that the two desperadoes will be apprehended. Certainly they must have found means of disposing of most of their stolen wealth before this day.
Duff Gregor read over this article several times. He licked his lips as he read.
There were other things in the paper to which he gave a more casual attention. There was the notice at length, for instance, that Henry Wilbur, the banker, having almost entirely recovered from his collapse on the morning of the robbery, was pushing ahead plans for the sale of all his property in order to pay back what promised to be about ninety cents on the dollar to every depositor in the bank.
There was a long editorial comment on the nobility of Mr. Wilbur’s action, and the editor remarked that Mr. Wilbur was not really a banker at all, but the father of his community, preferring to surrender his own welfare to that of his children.
Duff Gregor grinned.
Barry Christian, he felt, was entirely right. They were just ants, those others. The little spot of their labors was their entire existence, and one of them would shed his precious blood to secure the good of the community.
His thought drifted from Henry Wilbur to the character of the banker’s daughter, and at this point Duff Gregor’s self-content began to rub thin.
He said, finally: “Aw, it ain’t the first time that I was a fool! I’ll forget it, like I forgot the other times.” Lifting his eyes from the newspaper, he looked down into the bottom of the valley and became aware that there was a scene of violent action down there. Yes, there was a faint, far sound, smaller than the noise of bees, and it was composed of the rattle of firearms.
Two men were being chased up the valley by more than thirty riders, and one of the fugitives was mounted upon a horse that shone like gold.
“It ain’t Jim Silver. It can’t be Jim Silver,” said Duff Gregor to himself.
He snatched out a pair of field glasses and peered through the strong lenses until the scene was drawn up closer to him. Then he was sure. He was sure not only because he could see more of the matchless running of the golden horse, but he could understand why it was that so patently glorious an animal did not draw away from the hunt. It was because the rider preferred to risk his own neck by returning again and again to defend his companion, who was not nearly so well-mounted.
That companion was a smaller man and he was riding like a jockey, bent far forward in the saddle; but though his weight must have been slight, still he could not draw away from the best riders of the pursuit. They would have closed in on him like hounds on a tired deer, had it not been that the rider of the golden horse turned back time after time and opened fire on the posse with his rifle.
Each time, the posse fanned out, scattered, and returned the bullets with a great, random spread of fire. But always the daring hero on the golden horse swung away again, unharmed.
“Barry! Barry!” called Duff Gregor. “Come out here!”
“What’s the matter?” asked the sleepy voice of Christian, from inside the mine.
“There’s a thing out here that’ll do you more good than anything else you ever seen in your life,” answered Gregor. “Come out here and take a look.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not worth spoiling my sleep,” said Christian angrily. “Duff, will you ever grow up and have
sense?”
“Is that so?” answered Gregor.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“You wouldn’t come out here and look, I suppose,” said Gregor, “if Jim Silver and Taxi were down there in the hollow, being run to death by about thirty gents?”
“Don’t bother me,” answered Christian.
“Because,” shouted the other, “that’s exactly what’s happening down there, or else I’m blind as a bat and a fool besides.”
Christian, suddenly, stood beside him, gave one glance into the green hollow of the valley, and then snatched the field glasses. He held them in his steady hand for only an instant before he exclaimed:
“You’re right. And it is Jim Silver. The other fellow—can that be Taxi? Duff, am I going to see the end of both of ’em on one day?”
CHAPTER 23
The Gambling Chance
Duff Gregor stared with incredulous joy. “You know Silver by the horse,” he exclaimed, “but what makes you sure of Taxi? You ain’t sure!”
Christian answered as he followed with his eyes the action in the valley beneath him, saying:
“There comes the wave of ’em after Taxi! He’s turning around to fight back. He can’t ran any more on that dead-beat horse. Now Silver comes sweeping back to him. He waves his arm at Silver to send him away. What man in the world would do that except a fool like Taxi? He’s waving Silver away, but Silver comes on in between Taxi and the posse—and the posse scatters. Why do the fools scatter?”
“Why shouldn’t they scatter?” asked Duff Gregor. “Ain’t Silver the sort that doesn’t know how to miss?”
No matter how interested he was in the moving picture beneath them, Christian was too annoyed by the last remark of his companion to let it pass. He lowered the field glasses suddenly and turned his handsome face toward Duff Gregor.
