Silvertip (1942) (11 page)

Silver closed the door, stripped, took a sponge bath in cold water, and went to bed. The coolness of the sheets soothed him. All the blood of his body seemed to be gathered in his head, and to be whirling and churning there.

He looked to the side out the window. Now that the room was thoroughly darkened, the stars were both brighter and more distant. He watched the patterning in which they were set. By degrees it grew confused. The points of light seemed to be moving a little. They softened, blurred, and Silver was asleep.

Chapter
XIV

The Sherif
f
THE sheriff came up with the sun, so to speak, and old Arturo Monterey and Silver had to go out and meet him on the terrace garden behind the house. Silver had risen to find that fresh clothes were laid out on a chair beside his bed. When he had shaved, he looked at a face four shades paler than it had been for years, and chiseled lean and hard by pain. And then he tried on the clothes and found that they fitted almost miraculously.

But they were Mexican type. There was a tightly fitted jacket, with his big shoulders exploding out above the narrowness of the waist, and there was a sash that went about the hips, and all the middle of his body was incased as in armor, though the trousers flared out at the bottom a little. His own old sombrero looked sadly out of place with such an outfit. There was another hat with the clothes, one with a silver band of Mexican wheelwork girdling the crown, but he could not induce himself to put this on. It was bad enough to be Mexican to the neck; his head had to remain in an American fashion.

He had barely finished dressing when he received the summons to join Monterey in the terrace garden behin
d
the house. He went uneasily, wondering about the cat-footed one who had been able to enter his room unheard during the night and place that outfit at his hand. There the body of Chuck Terry was laid out among the tall flowers exactly where the imprint of it had fallen the night before.

The sheriff considered the situation with a sour eye. He was a true Haverhill man, with the jowls, the blunt jaw and nose, the huge brows that kept the eyes in shadow. And, like the rest of the tribe, it seemed as though the sun could have no power to influence his skin; very few of those men were tanned. The majority, and the sheriff was one of them, kept an unhealthy white, like that of things which seldom see the day. Those Haverhill men all looked as though they were freshly out of prison.

He listened to the story with angry eyes that shifted from the face of Monterey to that of Silver.

"How would you know?" challenged the sheriff. "How would you know that poor Chuck here wasn't just comin' up to make a friendly call?"

"Perhaps that was all he was doing. In that case, we made an unhappy mistake," said Monterey.

The profound irony of this remark influenced even the mind of the sheriff. He kicked the ground and stamped on it impatiently.

"You gents," said the sheriff, "oughta take your time about things. There's been too much shootin' around the Haverhill. And it's gotta stop. I'm goin' to stop it. You all hear me? Here comes Chuck. Just kind of curious. He was only a kid. He was younger than his years. Everybody knew that. Just a great big, open-hearted, fine kid. Just curious. Like the way an antelope is curious, the poor fool! And he comes up here with a friend, and they wanta have a look at the great Arturo Monterey. That's all they wanta do. And by thunder, I'm goin' to jail the pair of you for murder, is what I'm goin' to do! There ain't any sense. There ain't right in it. There ain't any judge, and there ain't any jury that wouldn't call it murder!"

"When a fellow's so curious that he and his pal start sneaking up behind a man at night," said Silver, "and when they start shooting as soon as they hear some one behind them sing out-"

"Just kind of startled, maybe," suggested the sheriff.

But presently he was scowling at the ground.

Monterey, in that moment, let his eyes run over th
e
new clothes on the body of Silver, and at the new fac
e
which had been revealed by the shaving away of th
e
shaggy growth of beard. He seemed to find much tha
t
was worth seeing, and his glance wandered intently fro
m
feature to feature.
To Silver, aware of the survey, i
t
seemed as though the old man were weighing him in
a
fine balance and accepting him as a thing of price.

"All right," said the sheriff. "I oughta take up the two of you, but there's enough trouble already, and this'll just make more. I'll leave you go free. You, Monterey-and you're the gent called Silver?"

"Yes," said he.

"You're the one with the white horns, are you?" said the sheriff. "Well, young feller, if you'd keep your horns out of this business here in Haverhill Valley, you'd be a lot better off, and so would we. You been makin' trouble, and you're goin' to make a lot more trouble, and before the end, maybe you'll wish that you never seen the Haverhill River, or the Haverhill men that the whole valley had oughta belong to!"

After that he had the body of the dead man placed in his buckboard and drove off, but his venomous eyes dwelt continually on Silver all the time that the preparations were going on; particularly after he had stared for a time at the red spot on the left breast of the coat of Chuck Terry.

"They've laid their eyes on you now, senor," said Monterey, "and that means that the air you breathe in this valley is poisoned from this moment on. But you have a horse, and yonder is the nearest way to the first pass. And in two hours you can be safely over the hills. Think carefully, my friend. Every chance is against us. They have numbers. They have craft. They have the cruelty of devils and the persistence of hungry beasts. Nothing but the last chance is left to you if you remain!"

It was not half-hearted persuasion. As in the eyes of the girl now and again, so in the eyes of Monterey, something came up from the spirit and spoke to Silvertip.

But he slowly shook his head and smiled.

Julia came suddenly out to them from the house. He
r
glance found Silver and dwelt on him with a smile. He knew that she had picked the outfit, by the look she gave it.

"I have stopped trying to persuade him," said Monterey. "If he is to stay here, Heaven knows it is of his own free will; and like a gift from Heaven I take him. You have news in your face, Julia. What is it?"

"Juan Perez is a madman," said the girl. "He has bitten his lips till they bleed. I tried to speak to him. But he lay on a bed and kept beating his head with his hands. He says that he is shamed forever. Something will have to be done about him. You must go to him, Uncle Arturo."

"No," said Silver. "I'll go myself."

"You?" she cried. "He will try to kill you! There is a wild devil in him. It's more dangerous to rob a man of his self-respect than to take the cubs from a she-bear."

"I'm the man to see him," said Silver. "Let me go to him."

"Perhaps," said Arturo Monterey. "But I shall go with you. Juan Perez is the most faithful of the faithful, but there never was a more dangerous man."

"Show me to the door of his room," said Silver. "Then leave me there."

The two of them conducted him. They went across the ' patio and into the long wing where the servants were housed. At the end of the long and narrow upper hall, Arturo Monterey stopped before a door.

"Go back now," said Silver. "Or else stand here quietly. I know how to handle this case. And if I don't manage him now, he'll put a knife in my back later on. Stand quietly, and don't argue. I have to have my way about this."

He knocked at the door. A faint groan answered him. He opened the door and stepped into a naked little room with only the mask of a grizzly hanging on the wall, and the claws of the great bear strung on a half necklace below the head. On a cot lay the tall form of Perez, face down.

"Juan Perez!" said Silver.

The Mexican came to life with a bound. He said nothing. The devil that was in him needed no sound for expression. The writhing face of Juan Perez expressed him fully enough.

The Mexican had thrown off his belt. Now he caught from it the long hunting knife whose handle projected from a leather sheath. The steel flashed in the dim room as Perez leaped.