by Max Brand
“Will you let me turn around and—take it in front?” asked Gregor. “Let me turn around and take it from in front, Barry. For the sake of everything that we’ve been through together, let me take it from in front. Don’t shoot me in the back, like a dog.”
“I’m going to shoot you in the back like a dog,” said Christian, “because a dog is what you are. It’s the only death that’s proper for you. Are you ready? Do you want to whine out one prayer before I let you have it?”
A supernatural acuteness came to the ears of Gregor then.
“Look out! They’re coming!” he cried.
Christian chuckled. “Are you going to try to make me turn my head with a silly old trick like that?” he asked.
“I hear them!” said Gregor. “I hear—”
And then, quite audibly, a small landslide rattled not far away onto the floor of the shaft. Christian expelled a gasping breath; a gun cracked. The lantern, smashed to bits, was flung to the floor. And then a great voice boomed in the shaft:
“Barry Christian, I’ve come for you!”
The voice of Christian rose to a scream, not like the scream of a man, but that of a tortured woman.
“Jim Silver!” he yelled.
CHAPTER 25
In the Dark
Gregor had no time to feel thankfulness for his deliverance. He knew, as the lantern was smashed, that Christian had dropped to the floor of the shaft. Gregor did the same thing. He stretched out his hand and touched the foot of Christian—crawling forward to meet the danger.
Gregor himself could not stir at all, for an instant. The thing was not clear in his mind. It seemed like the proceeding of madmen.
Why had they not called on Christian to surrender?
Well, there would have been no sense in that, perhaps. Barry Christian had been in prison before, waiting in the death house for the hangman, and it was said that he preferred death in any form to another spell of waiting in that grim chamber. No, Christian would not surrender. But since that was the case, why had not Silver driven a bullet through his body at once?
Because, perhaps, the prophecy which Christian had made was now about to be fulfilled. One of them was to die neither by knife or gun, but in the bare hands of the other.
Gregor, sick, stifled with fear, gradually forced himself forward. A thin ray of light struck him right in the face. He rolled over to get away from it, and tried a snap shot. Christian, almost beside him, fired at the same time.
The echoes thronged. There was the rattling of another little slide of rocks that had been loosed by the force of the reverberations.
Then the thick, black, damp darkness pressed down on them again. There was such an agony in the spirit of Gregor, such a terrible tenseness of fear, that he thought for a moment that he had been wounded. Only gradually he came to realize that the shuddering contractions of his muscles were not caused by a physical torture.
Out of that desperation came a natural reaction such as occurs in every man of strength and courage, when his back is against the wall. It was impossible that even Jim Silver could readily master the great Barry Christian. And, in the meantime, he, Duff Gregor, might be able to strike some sort of a blow in the dark. No doubt, since Silver was there, Taxi was with him. Well, that would be the meat for Duff Gregor. He knew the size of that slender fellow, and if once he could get his hands on Taxi, he was sure that he could give a quick accounting of him.
He hoped only one thing—that as he groped his way through the darkness, his hands might not encounter a body as large as his own, and enlivened by the spirit of a hunting tiger. He hoped only that he should not encounter Jim Silver, while Taxi fell to the share of Barry.
Gregor forced himself ahead, steadily. If he paused, he knew that the fear would sicken him and make him lie down, shuddering.
The thin ray came again and stabbed him right straight in the face. He wriggled aside from it, and fired instantly. Big Christian fired, also, and again the echoes in a double roar ran up and down the shaft and knocked several little landslides loose.
How did that devil, hidden in the darkness, know how to find a human face like that with the unshuttered ray of a lantern? How could he feel for and find it?
Then there was a stifled grunt just ahead of him on the right. That was the voice of Christian. The ray of the lantern split the dark again in a single flash, like the stroke of a sword, that cut across the dim picture of two huge men, the force of whose struggles was lifting them from the floor. One was Barry Christian. The other was Jim Silver. It must be he. Taxi was by no means of the same size, and, therefore, Gregor hurled himself forward through the darkness with a savage confidence. If he could beat the small form of Taxi out of his way, if he could dash forward into the open and seize a horse—well, better a life term in a penitentiary than five minutes more of this breathless hell!
So he half rose and dived forward, and a hard, compacted body of a man caught him.
The weight of his rush and the superior poundage of his body hurled the smaller figure before him. He yelled with triumph. He lifted the revolver over his head to bring it down on the other. And then the very superiority of his charge brought them both crashing to the ground. An instant later a vice clamped around Gregor’s throat. No, he had been caught in the crook of an arm, but it was an arm that knew its business. Red sparks struck across his vision in a whirl.
Well, he would settle the business of Taxi once for all. He twisted his right arm and the revolver in his right hand. And then his right wrist was caught. It was raised, and his hand was beaten down against the floor. The revolver spilled out of the nerveless fingers and rattled far away. Something hard struck big Duff Gregor behind the ear, and there was one red flash in his brain, then darkness.
He knew—sometimes the subconscious mind marks time for us—that his senses were gone hardly half a minute, but when he could see and think again, he was tied. His hands were bound behind his back, and his feet were lashed together. And he heard a panting voice that gasped out: “Keep away from him, Taxi! He’s mine. He’s all mine!”
Gregor, twisting his head to the side, could see the slender ray of the electric torch cutting again and again across the bodies that were locked together. They were on the floor of the shaft. They twisted this way and that. Then, tumbling once, suddenly they heaved to their feet again. Gregor saw the face of Barry Christian, and closed his eyes to shut out the picture.
While his eyes were dark, Gregor heard the sound of the blow. It was delivered with the fist, he knew. When he looked again, he saw Christian falling. Silver caught him in mid-air, turned him, dropped with him, crushing the inert body under his weight.
“All right,” said Silver. “It’s over, Taxi.”
“He almost got the knife into you, Jim,” said Taxi. “Are you hurt, man?”
“Not a scratch,” said Silver. “Let’s have the light while I tie him.”
He tied only the hands of Barry Christian, then he stepped over to Gregor and took him by the hair of his head and jerked the head back.
Gregor could understand. Big Jim Silver’s name had been blackened; he had almost lost his life because of Gregor’s play acting. And now, shuddering, Gregor waited for blows delivered with the heel of a heavy Colt, blows that would spoil that resemblance between them, blows that would make him a hideous mask forever.
Instead, Silver merely played the light on him for an instant and then said:
“I thought it must be you, Gregor.”
That was all. But the effect of the words kept reverberating through the mind of Duff Gregor until it seemed that his soul was a mighty chasm, a great emptiness.
He knew then that there would be no personal revenge. There would only be the law. And in spite of himself, no matter how he strained his mind, Gregor could not understand. It was wrong. It was all wrong, he felt.
He heard Christian come to, groaning, and the voice of Silver said:
“I wish you’d lasted half a minute longer, Barry.
There would never have been a need for a second wait in the death house, then!”
They got out of the mine and to the horses. The prisoners were not lashed hand and foot. Their hands were simply tied behind their backs. Their horses were attached to the horses of their captors, and the first thing that big Duff Gregor noted was the presence of both the canvas sacks.
One thing stuck strongly in Gregor’s mind. It was when Silver said:
“Look, Taxi. That’s the horse that they thought was Parade. That’s a bit of an insult, isn’t it? Poor old Parade!”
Well, it was in fact an insult, now that the two stallions stood side by side. Gregor could not have said wherein the great dissimilarities lay; he only knew that there was as much difference between the two as there is between painted and real fire.
For that matter, when he felt himself near to the real Jim Silver again, he wondered how even a five-year-old half-wit could have mistaken him for that famous man.
Barry Christian, from that moment, spoke not a word. He kept his head high, and stared at the moon. He looked like a poet drinking in inspiration.
It was Gregor who said: “Well, boys, you got us. But how’d you get at the sacks?”
“The wisest old man in this part of the mountains,” said Jim Silver, “told us about every inch of the country for ten miles around, and when he spoke about the old mine, I thought there might be just the ghost of a chance. When we came near enough to spot you, Gregor, we did a little circling about, and it wasn’t hard to find your trail down to the creek. I suppose you’d been down there several times a day to take a look at things. I don’t blame you, but it left a bit of a trail, and we found it. Afterward, when you went down the hill, we went inside and Taxi’s flashlight showed us the way to the rock in the floor of the shaft. It was luck that we lifted it.”
“And why,” asked Gregor, “didn’t you shoot us to bits while we were sitting out in the sun, in front of the mine?”
“Because,” said Jim Silver, “in this case it was more important to get the money than it was to get the men. We’ve had all the luck, though, and corralled you both.”
After that, they took the back trail toward far-off Crow’s Nest, going down first into the valley. What seemed strange to Duff Gregor was that the two men never congratulated one another on the success of their enterprise. Neither did they speak about any of the joys that they were to encounter in the future, when a shamed community would have to recognize its folly publicly. The trip was made almost entirely in silence, and yet that silence was big, for Gregor, not so much with the knowledge that years of prison life lay ahead of him, but because he was to be the eye-witness to the end of the great Silver-Christian feud, about which men had talked for years.
Well, even in a prison, Duff Gregor would now be a great man. There was no shame in being conquered by Taxi and Silver. Where the great Christian had fallen, he, Duff Gregor, could well afford to fall, also.
They rode out onto the narrow wooden bridge that spanned the river just above the waterfall. On clear, windless days, from the mine, Gregor had been able to hear the murmur of the distant cataract. He heard its more distinct roaring now, sleepily, and the hollow beating of the hoofs of the horses was unreal, like sounds in a dream, also.
Halfway across the bridge, Barry Christian showed what he was made of. He must have spurred his horse deep in both flanks, for the brute leaped suddenly ahead, with a side thrust that almost knocked Parade over the low railing on the opposite side. When that failed, as Silver reached out suddenly for his prisoner, Christian swayed forward, flipped himself out of the saddle, and in falling, struck the rail of the bridge.
The effect was to start his body spinning, and it spun all the way down until it reached the black, swift face of the water beneath.
Gregor, peering over the edge of the bridge, saw the water splash and leap under the impact. Afterward, they could all see the body of the man rise, spinning slowly in the twist of the current.
Taxi drew out a rifle, but Silver held out a forbidding hand.
“The rest has to be outside of our doings,” said Silver. “The waterfall will finish Barry Christian.”
They saw the body sweep down toward the rocks that fringed the edge of the cataract.
“Jim,” said Taxi, “there’s a chance that he could land on one of those rocks—and get ashore in some way!”
“There’s a chance,” said Silver. “About one chance in ten thousand. I wouldn’t take that chance away from him.”
He took off his hat. Taxi turned his quick, nervous glance toward his friend and shook his head.
“The murdering devil,” said Taxi. “My hat stays on, no matter how he dies. He ought to have been burned an inch at a time!”
Jim Silver said nothing, and Duff Gregor found himself staring at the big, handsome face of the man he had “doubled”; like a child he was staring and vaguely trying to grasp at the emotions that must be stirring in the great heart of Silver.
CHAPTER 26
The Return
It was early morning when the three rode into Crow’s Nest, but men are up early in the West, and the streets were already rather well-filled. They were quickly packed. Before the trio had gone a block, everyone down to the children had poured out of the houses. Even the crowd which had gathered at the house of Henry Wilbur in order to attend the auction, heard the word of what was happening in the main street and came flocking to witness the rare event.
And all was silence as fixed as that which had greeted Silver on his first coming into Crow’s Nest.
The explanation was there before their eyes. The “double,” who could only exist in fiction, was there before their eyes, riding the horse which was, indeed, a far cry from the greatness of the stallion, Parade.
There was such a crowding, a short distance from the bank, that the riders had to slow up; and then a few questions were fired and answered very briefly but very calmly by Jim Silver. Then the word flew wildly through the town that the night watchman had been no other than the great Barry Christian, and that Christian had been swallowed by the Kendal River, and whirled over the falls just above the town of Kendal.
At last, then, the great trail was ended, and the long and famous duel between Jim Silver and Christian had come to an end. Perhaps that was why the face of Silver was so calm, his eye so unlighted by any malice. No, the explanation seemed to be that the man knew how to forgive. His faint smile was as ready for the citizens of Crow’s Nest as, it seemed, for any other men in the world. But to many of the crowd the most interesting figure of the three was Taxi. He was younger than the others, and there was less that was impressive about him. For that very reason, when they measured him with their eyes against their knowledge of what he had done in that very town, he became a hero.
But Crow’s Nest was shamed. It was shamed to the heart. That was why there were no more than murmurs, here and there, in the crowd, as room was made for the procession.
It reached the jail, where Sheriff Dick Williams came out into the street and simply threw up his hands at the picture that greeted him. Then, before everyone, he went up to the true Jim Silver and grasped his hand.
“I’ve been a fool. Forgive me, Silver!” he said.
Silver said, so that a great many people could hear him: “How could you help going wrong, Sheriff? When Barry Christian built a plan, it always seemed as strong as a house. I’m the lucky fellow that I didn’t get my neck stretched. I had a lot of luck—and Taxi. That’s all that saved me, but I don’t blame anyone except a dead man.”
Duff Gregor went up the steps of the jail, and at the door he turned and looked down onto the street.
It reminded him of the days when he had sat at the entrance to the mine and considered honest men as toiling, stupid ants. Now he saw the toilers thronging about Silver. His last speech had started the shouting. The people waved their hats and yelled themselves hoarse for him, and still they did not know the best part of his story!
Well,
there was something to honesty, after all, thought Duff Gregor. As for himself, there was the darkness of prison days. As for Barry Christian, surely there was nothing but the darkness of the grave. But reputation, no matter how evil, had come to Gregor, increasing his stature. That was why his head was high as he stepped along through the door and heard it clang behind him with a deep and resonant echo that chimed through the steel forest of cells.
Down the street, riding slowly, Silver and Taxi found their way through the crowd, until they came to the bank. There they dismounted and took two big, heavy, well-filled canvas sacks with them into the place. At the entrance, Jim Silver paused and rubbed out with his handkerchief the words which Henry Wilbur had chalked up not long before—that promise to pay with all that he owned in the world.
Silver turned and said to the bystanders:
“Somebody please tell Mr. Wilbur that we have found the stolen stuff and it is all here with us. If there’s a safe place down here in the bank, he had better come and put it all away.”
Happiness makes more noise than anything else. It makes more noise even than hatred. Because hatred tears the throat with its roaring and is soon forced to silence, but happiness laughs and sings. And all of Crow’s Nest was laughing and singing.
That crowd flowed like a river to the Wilbur house. There it gave Henry Wilbur the news. It did more than that. It picked him up on its shoulders and cheered every step of the way that it carried him back to the bank. It picked up Ruth Wilbur, also, and with bad manners and much good nature, it swept her down to the bank, too.
“You saved Jim Silver’s neck,” they told her, “and Jim Silver saved the neck of Crow’s Nest.”
They brought her right into the bank; they presented her to Jim Silver with that speech; and then they began to recede, still shouting and roaring and applauding their act.
As the roaring of the crowd withdrew from the big room and beat on the outside of the building like a sea, Henry Wilbur knew that his life work was saved. He knew that his bank had gained fame which was strength that could not fall.
