Valley Thieves (13 page)

I must say that he was a picture to fill the eye of any barbarian, by this time. He had washed himself in the cold water of the creek, and had then thrown a slicker over his shoulders, and it looked like an Indian blanket. If Indians ever had white skins, he could have stood for the perfect picture of one of them. He looked thewed and sinewed and handed for anything.

The old man pointed to a flat-topped rock. The girl helped him to it and fetched out his pipe for him and filled it. She put the string-wound bit of the stem between his toothless gums and lighted a match and held it for him. He puffed a minute and then he said:

"Kind of comforts a man, tobacco does. You— you're Jim Silver?"

Silver was the one he had picked out and he kept pointing his scrawny arm, till Silver said:

"Yes, my name is Jim Silver."

"Your name ain't Jim Silver, but that's what you're called," said the old man.

"You can put it that way," said Silver.

He came up and sat on a rock, facing the chief of the Cary clan, the one man of the lot, he had said, who deserved killing.

The point came to that right away.

"Why didn't you boys plaster some of us when we was comin' up?" asked Cary.

"I haven't a grudge against the rest of them," said Silver. "They only do what they've been taught to do."

The old man cackled in his husky voice. Then he said: "That means me?"

"That means you," said Silver.

"Appears to me," went on Cary, "that you're kind of a biggish sort of a man, Silver. The kind that I used to do business with out here in the old days. The race of them has died out. I'm the only one left, pretty near. Biggish men. Not the pounds. That wasn't what counted. Nerve. They all had nerve! They was all nerve! Nerve and brains, like you and me."

It didn't seem to bother Silver, to be classed like that along with Cary.

"You've come here to say something," said Silver. "Why not say it? You fellows keep an eye around you. Watch the top of the rocks," he said to us.

"Oh, naw, naw, naw!" said Cary. "There ain't any trick about this here. I don't aim to get my gullet sliced open by talking to you boys till my gang gets into place for shootin'. M'ria, come back here!"

Maria had walked straight up to Clonmel and was talking to him, her body swaying back a little as she tilted her head to face him.

"I'll come when you need me," she said, without turning. And her voice began to run on, very softly, as she talked to Clonmel.

The old man was not angry. He merely chuckled, and there was that tearing sound in the bottom of his throat.

"She's seen a man for herself, and she's goin' prospectin' for him," said Cary. "Gals is like that."

He puffed at his pipe, smacking his loose lips loudly.

"Now I wanta to make a deal with you, Silver," he said. "We got all the four of you, and we got you good. But the facts is that we don't wanta waste all the time we need for roundin' you up, and climbin' the mountains, and shootin' you down. We got all the four of you, but blottin' out four men ain't four times worse than blottin' out one. It's four thousand times worse. One of you gents has got a wife and a ranch behind him. People raise hell when a rancher is wiped out. I dunno why. They ain't no better than nobody else. But posses is raised, and the State militia is called out on jobs like that. So what I mean to say is that while we got the four of you, good and proper, the only one we aim to collect is you, Silver. You walk out of here with me, and the rest of 'em can go free."

"Christian wants me rather badly, eh?" said Silver calmly.

"He right well hankers after you," said the old man. "I recollect once I was out in the mountains froze near to death above timber line and a storm raisin' the devil in the sky, and me in a cave freezin' and starvin' for three days, and the best that I could do was wait for that storm to blow over. And I got to thinkin', along toward the end of the second day, and what I thought about was corn fritters. And doggone my heart, Silver, if I didn't hanker after 'em so bad that I pretty nigh walked out into the storm, that third day. And I'll tell you what—Christian, he hankers after you the way I hankered after them corn fritters."

Silver turned a little.

"Bill Avon is the man to answer you. Shall I walk out with him, Bill?"

I would like to say that I answered right up, that I shouted it, that I cried out that I would rather die than see Jim Silver done in on account of the rest of us. But the fact is that for a second I thought about the shack on the ranch, and the smell of the coffee in the kitchen, and the sound of Charlotte singing quietly over her sewing, and the way the taste of coffee and tobacco mixes in the mouth.

I came to with a gasp and said: "No, no, Jim! We stand together. You can't go."

"I'm sorry I asked you," said Silver.

"Hey, wait a minute and ask the others," said the old man.

"I don't need to ask them. I know them well enough to leave the question out," said Silver. "I could have answered for Bill, too, except as a matter of form." I was glad he said that.

"You take a lot on yourself," said Old Man Cary. "Are you scared to come?" he asked curiously.

He tilted his evil old head to one side and stared at Silver.

"Men aren't made of the stuff you think," answered Silver. "You've raised a lot of beef up here, partly on four feet and partly on two. You call them men, but they're not. They're a worthless lot, Cary, and you shouldn't judge other men by them. These fellows I'm with would rather lose their blood than have me walk out with you."

"Now, what the devil do you mean by all that?" asked Cary.

He was frankly bewildered.

"Why, I mean that the job can be bigger than the men in it," said Silver.

"I don't understand," said Cary.

"I didn't think that you would," said Silver. "But we're doing something together, not one by one."

"And that means?"

"It means that it's time for you to go back."

The old man stood up.

"Come here, M'ria," he called.

She came back to him slowly, her head turned a little toward Clonmel. Obediently she helped her grandfather to straighten. Then he exclaimed:

"The rest of you heard him talk. Ain't he talkin' through his hat? If he walks out, I'll tell you what, there ain't a hair on the heads of the rest of you that would be hurt."

Taxi laughed a little. He said: "Will you swear that, Cary?"

"Yes, sir. Sacred word of honor and cross my heart if I don't swear it."

"Honor?" said Taxi. "Cary honor?" He laughed again.

"Well, sir, I'll be doggoned!" murmured the old man. "You boys not having opened up and socked lead into us, I sort of figgered that there was need of talk between us. But I reckon I was wrong."

He turned his back and laid hold on the mule's withers and the cantle of the saddle.

"Have a hand?" asked Silver suddenly, seeing that the girl made no gesture to help the old man.

"Keep off!" snarled Cary. "When I can't climb a hoss on my own hands and feet, I'm goin' to be ready to plant."

He had to struggle with all his might, nevertheless. Half-way up, his whole body was shaking, and I thought his left foot would tremble out of the stirrup. But he made it, falling breathlessly and gasping, forward into the saddle.

He erected himself, after that, with the strength of his arms.

"See you later, boys," he said. "I'll see
all
of you later on."

I'M ashamed to confess that I felt pretty blue as I watched the backs of that pair go out of the mouth of the ravine and turn from view behind the rock. Silver said to me:

"Thanks, Bill."

"Jim," I answered him, "don't thank me. I'm sorry that I seemed to hesitate!"

"Tut, tut!" said Silver. "You couldn't do the wrong thing. I know that!"

Why, I can't tell you how that warmed my heart! No man can believe entirely in himself. That's the greatest value of friends. That's why their belief makes us better than we are, and that's why enemies make us worse.

I had just registered that idea in my brain, when Clonmel said:

"There's some way of doing something. I can't stand here like an ox and wait for the ax."

"You'll probably have to, though," answered Silver.

Clonmel did a strange thing. He threw back his head and made a two-handed gesture.

"Anyway, we'll be together, Jim."

"Aye, we'll be that," said Silver. But there was bitterness in his voice.

Almost more than freedom and safety, I wished then that I could know what lay behind those two. Silver sat there on the rock with Frosty lying across his feet, his head, free from the muzzle at last, raised and turned a little so that he could constantly watch the face and the gestures of his master. I noticed that when Frosty was with him, Silver rarely moved a hand, and the reason was, I dare say, that those movements were apt to have particular meanings for the wolf. There was a peculiar and complicated language that had developed between the pair of them. The lifting of a finger could make Frosty jump and run.

You've seen fine hunting dogs work difficult country directed in and out and back and forth by the gestures of the hunter, and those dogs are generally trained in a few weeks or months, and given practice only a small number of hours each year. So when you can consider what might happen when an animal with a brain like Frosty's lived every hour of every day with a master whose companion he was on life trails and death trails, it was no wonder that word of voice or word of hand had instant meanings to the great brute.

With his return, Silver had half of his usual pair of companions, and I knew that his mind was constantly turning to the other half. I knew he was being tormented almost more by concern on account of Parade than by concern on account of himself. If he died, Barry Christian would ride the golden chestnut. The thought must be eating Silver's heart.

Another thing that I noticed was that Silver and Taxi rarely spoke to one another, but even by moonlight it was possible to see the expression change and soften when their glances crossed at any moment. They didn't need to talk to one another. They had been through too much together.

We had fallen into a silence, while the wind began to whisper secretly through the long, dry grass that covered the ravine. The tops of the slender trees swayed a little in the breeze. And always the moon was climbing, shrinking the shadows, brightening the center of the sky until the stars dwindled away.

Into that quiet a rifle report smacked against my ears like the flat of a slapping hand. I heard the whir of the bullet; I saw Silver spring sidewise to his feet, with Frosty bristling, on guard before his master; but it was Taxi who turned the trick.

At the sound of the gun, he had an automatic in his hand and he fired a burst of three or four shots in rapid succession. It was such rapid work that I couldn't see, easily, whether he was shooting high or low. But then I heard a clattering high up the cliff, toward the mouth of the ravine and on the right-hand side of it. I saw a rifle sliding down the rock, slithering here and there, then arching out from the cliff and falling sheer down until it smashed on the stones below. I thought I had an impression of a figure dropping behind the parapet of rocks up there, but I wasn't sure.

We got to cover in an instant, and as I stretched out behind a boulder with a feeling that death was already chilling me for the grave, we heard a wailing voice cry, beyond the valley:

"Chuck! Chuck! Are you there?"

"I'm here!" shrilled the answering voice of Chuck. "I missed; they winged me."

"Can you come down?"

"They're watchin' the place now. I can't come down."

That was true. I could see now what the daring young rat had done. He had sneaked in through the mouth of the ravine, edging along the ground, I suppose, and then he had managed to climb up along a series of crevices to the top. Any one of us could do the same thing, but we would be exposed to the guns of the men outside the valley. However, it was a good example.

"Are you bleedin' much, Chuck?" yelled the voice outside the valley.

"Naw, I got it stopped!" shouted Chuck. "I'm all right. I can see 'em down there. I scared hell out of 'em, too. I can see every jump they make, while I'm up here."

"Good kid. Stay there and watch 'em! Got a revolver?"

"No. And my rifle dropped when they plugged me."

There was a yell of anger from outside the valley.

Silver stood up from the shelter he had taken. If Chuck lied, bullets might begin to fly at us again, but apparently he had told the truth. There were no more shots from the top of the rock. We were safe again for a little while, at least, until those restless devils of Cary's managed to think out some new ways of plaguing us.

Silver and Taxi went the round of the ravine, looking for crevices similar to those which had enabled Chuck to climb to his crow's nest. They came back after a time and reported no luck.

Silver said: "But we've found one good chance for climbing out of this place."

"What chance did we find?" asked Taxi curiously.

"Those trees—some of them are near the edge of the cliff," said Silver.

"Use one of 'em for a ladder?" I asked.

"Yes," said Silver.

"That would be all right if we could chop one of 'em down," said Clonmel, "and lean it against the rock."

"There's not even a hand ax in the lot of us," said Taxi. "And who can jump thirty feet from a standing start?"

"We could girdle the easiest tree with fire and burn it down," I suggested.

"That would take hours," said Silver, "and we haven't hours. We may not have more than a few minutes before the Carys have another set of riflemen up there on the edge of the cliffs. They've been marching up through the hills—you can depend on it—ever since we came in here."

"No way of chopping the tree down," said Clonmel. "No way of burning it down in time—then how
can
you make a ladder of it, Jim?"

"We'll try another dodge," said Silver. "Bill, are you good with a rope?"