Valley Thieves (15 page)

"What are you thinking of, Jim?" asked Clonmel.

"You tell me, Harry," said Silver.

"You're thinking about Parade. And Christian."

Silver nodded.

"They're over there now," he said.

"They're swarming up the canyon behind us," suggested Taxi suddenly, almost angrily.

Neither Clonmel nor Silver turned to him. Clonmel simply shook his head.

"They've had enough for one night," he declared. "They've got two wounded men, and a bullet through the arm of Chuck. They've missed us, and they won't want to try their luck until they have daylight to shoot by."

I saw Taxi start. I saw his hands grip hard. He was angry because of the calm surety with which Clonmel attempted to read the minds of the Cary outfit. I sympathized with him more than a little.

Silver said: "I don't think they'll press us very closely again tonight. The question is: What do they expect of us now?"

"They expect us to get back to civilization and horses as fast as we can," said Clonmel, "where we'll gather a posse and come storming up here to make trouble for 'em."

"By the time we arrived," said Silver, "they'd have everything smoothed out. Parade would be gone, and Barry Christian on him. And—perhaps Christian has gone already."

"Of course he's gone," said Taxi.

"No," answered Clonmel, "Christian is still there with them. He thinks that he has plenty of time before he makes his start for the tall timber. Nobody can follow the man who rides Parade, and Christian knows it."

There was good sense in that remark, but again I could see that Taxi was angered.

"You're right, Harry," said Silver. "Christian and Parade—they're both together somewhere inside that clump of trees. What are we going to do about it?"

There was a silence after this. The question seemed to me to have an answer that was too obvious. Of course, we would all go home and give thanks, the rest of our lives, that we had escaped from so much danger between sunset and dawn of one night.

But then the voice of Taxi said sharply, bitterly: "We'll go back there and try to get Christian. We'll go back there and try to get Parade."

I looked at him and started to laugh. The laughter broke down suddenly. Silver and Clonmel had turned toward Taxi, and Silver said:

"That's what I'll have to do, of course. But I'm going alone."

"Oh, bah!" answered Taxi. "You know that we'll have to trail along."

I stared till my eyes ached and I forgot the pain of my burned face. Go back to the Cary house ? Go back to that den of snakes and lions?

"Something's upset you, Taxi," said Silver. "What's the matter?"

"Honor!" sneered Taxi. "For the honor of Jim Silver we're going back there to try to take another fall out of Barry Christian—and to get a horse! Honor be damned—it's murder, and you know it!"

A good long silence followed that remark. Finally, Clonmel said:

"Jim, you can let that pass, if you want to, but
I
won't let it pass."

"
You
won't let it pass?" snarled Taxi softly.

Great Scott, how my flesh crawled when I heard that voice of his!

"I won't let it pass," said Clonmel. "I never knew a small man in my life that ever had a big heart in him. Stay here behind, Taxi. I'll go with Jim."

"He might as well take a side of beef with him," said Taxi. "What have you ever done except steal his horse and Frosty? What have you ever done except go ahead and get yourself into trouble so that he could risk his neck getting you out?"

"Does it look like that to you?" said Clonmel. "I'll tell you something—you've said enough tonight, and it's your turn to shut up!"

Taxi cried: "I hated the sight of you when I first laid eyes on you, and I've hated the sight of you ever since. You're a fathead and a fool. If you don't like what I say, you've got a gun—fill your hand and—"

"Taxi!" said Silver calmly.

"Are you calling me right or wrong?" demanded Taxi.

"I'm calling you wrong," said Silver.

I heard Taxi panting. I saw the panting of his quick breath. He swayed a little from side to side, and I could watch the shuddering of his body. He was for all the world like a bull terrier before it springs at a throat. And I knew that this man had killed more than once. If his hand went for a gun, he would kill again, before this night was over.

And then something told me clearly, like a bursting vision of light, that if Taxi killed Clonmel, he would most certainly be slain in turn by Jim Silver. I don't know why I had such surety.

"The time's come," said Taxi, "when you pick up with every big idiot that comes across your path. You want people who'll look up to you and flatter you. You've started to be as vain as a sixteen-year-old girl, proud of her curls. Now you choose between Clonmel and me. I'll not take another step with the pair of you!"

"If that's what he means, I'll go," said Clonmel. "I'm sorry, but he's worth a lot more to you than I am."

"Wait a moment," said Silver.

We all waited. It was a horrible suspense. Silver was staring straight at Taxi, not speaking a word, and Taxi, his body still wavering and uncertainly poised by the greatness of his emotion, stared back at Silver.

"I'll go," said Clonmel suddenly. "So long, Jim!"

He held out his hand. Instead of taking it, Silver laid his touch lightly on the arm of the giant.

"Stay here with me," he said, looking always not at Clonmel but at Taxi.

Well, that was it then—he had made his choice!

I admit that I was staggered. Silver was the man who could do no wrong—and yet he was casting aside for the sake of a stranger the devotion that Taxi had given to him so many times!

"Well," said Taxi, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper, "that's about enough. I'll be getting along. So long, boys. Good luck to you!"

He turned his back and walked slowly away up the gulch.

"Tell him, Jim!" cried Clonmel. "Tell him—"

"Be quiet," said Silver, with iron in his voice. "I won't speak a word to persuade him."

"But don't let him go thinking that—" began Clonmel.

"It's better this way," answered Silver.

He stood there calm and still, and I saw Taxi disappear around the first elbow turn.

All of this had been quiet enough, but somehow it seemed to me a lot more terrible than all that had happened since we first entered the Cary Valley and Chuck Cary had made a prisoner of me.

There was something wrong about it all, and my heart ached right up in my throat.

"Ah, Jim," muttered Clonmel, "why did you do it? Why did you do it to Taxi of all the men in the world?"

"Because," said Silver, "he should not have suspected me. If there's suspicion in a friend, there's lead in gold. There are other reasons, too."

"Tell me what they are then!" I exclaimed. "People have a right to know the truth about you, Silver!"

"I'll tell you what they are," said Silver. "That man has followed me through hell-fire. He'll still follow me if I give him the right word. But I won't give him the word. There may be safety for one man, on the trail that I have to follow, but there can't be safety for two. Not in the end. And it's better for Taxi to leave me now."

"Ah, Jim, but it's hard," said Clonmel. "It's breaking my heart to think of Taxi going off like that!"

"Your heart, Harry?" said Silver, in a curiously calm voice. "Is it breaking
your
heart?"

"I mean," explained Clonmel, "that if—"

"Let's not talk," answered Silver, more gently than ever. "I'd rather not talk for a while."

I was glad of the silence. As it lasted, it gave me a chance to expand all the ideas that I had of Jim Silver. It gave me a chance to look at him and realize what he was. And all the long moment that followed he kept growing in my conception until I could see him for what he was—a man without cruelty or unkindness or selfishness or smallness in his heart.

No wonder that Taxi at last had broken away, I thought. To associate even for a short time with Jim Silver was to realize before long all of one's faults, set off by all the greatness of his soul.

It still seems a strange thing to me, when I consider that scene—and the strangest part of it all, at the time, was the quiet of Silver. I did not know him so well then. I thought that Silver, like all men, would have to make a noise when he was greatly moved. But I was wrong.

After a time, he turned about and looked across the plain toward the house of Cary.

"I'm going over there," he said. "I think one man could do what three could not. But if there's something inside you that makes you want to come along, I can't honorably send you back. You'd better say so long, though."

He waved his hand to both of us, and then started along the edge of the cliff, toward a gap in the distance that promised an easy way of getting down to the level of the plain below.

Big Clonmel, without more than a moment's hesitation, strode out after Frosty and the master, but I waited until all three were out of sight among the rocks.

Then it seemed to me that the dying noise of the footfalls was striking right in upon my heart. I pulled myself together with a jump, and ran suddenly after them.

WE went down off the highland to the plain. We went down like pigeons among hawks, like small boats into a sea of pirates. We went down on foot into that land where savages worse than Indians might be cruising about on their swift horses. And if a rasher act were ever undertaken, at least I've never heard of the attempt.

You may say that all of us had our eyes open, though as a matter of fact I think it is only fair to state that no mind was working calmly and clearly except that of Jim Silver.

He knew the odds and he had suggested the expedition. The rest of us followed him simply because pride and shame are stronger than fear, in most of us. But I know that I went with the feeling that a knife was pressed against my throat every step of the way.

There was no such thing as skirting about the plain and trying to get at the house from a favorable angle. Silver seemed to trust everything to chance, in this stage of the business. He simply headed straight forward toward the trees, and the only precaution he took was that Frosty was sent out perhaps a hundred yards in the lead.

We were half-way over the plain when Frosty came racing back toward us. He stopped and whined in front of Silver, and Silver looked carefully down at him, as though he were listening to words. My hair fairly lifted when Silver straightened and actually laughed.

"Rabbits!" he said. "Frosty has spotted a warren —that's all!"

It was as though he had understood the whined language of the beast, but, of course, it was no such matter. I dare say that since there are not so many species of game, the action of Frosty in reporting them, his degree of excitement, and his whole behavior would tell his master just about what his nose had read on the ground.

At any rate, we went straight on, with Frosty again leading up, and we came without a halt closer and closer to the trees, until we could see the glints of lamplight that reached out from the house. So we entered the region of shadow and halted there for a moment.

I was wishing for Taxi more than for anything else. Taxi could open a lock as any other man could crack a walnut. Taxi knew how to make his feet travel over dead leaves with scarcely a rustle. For night work how could there be another man in the world to compare with him?

That was what I was thinking when I stood with the other two inside the rim of trees.

Silver said in a lowered voice: "They're inside, having a good time. But a few of them are behind the house. You hear their voices sounding in the open air? Well, those are probably the ones who are guarding Parade. Christian knows enough not to take any chances, and that means that perhaps they're keeping a strict watch on their whole house as well as on the corral where Parade may be."

As he read off the sounds and diagnosed the character of them, I listened more intently. It was true that there were voices sounding muffled, from inside the house, and others that came to us more largely and freely from the open air behind the house. When we went on, we found it was exactly as Silver had suggested. We rounded the house, still keeping safely back in the trees, and behind it we saw a corral with four lanterns put up on corner posts, hanging just inside them so that the flames were throwing shadows toward the outside and light toward the inside. And inside the corral they picked out and flared over the body of the chestnut stallion.

I saw that horse as I never saw a horse before or afterward. Because the question I asked myself at the time was: Should three sane men risk their lives in order to redeem a stolen animal? But as I stared at the glorious beauty and strength of the stallion, I decided that we were not foolish and that it was almost better that the three of us should die than that Barry Christian should continue to own the horse.

But how were we to get to it?

Silver drew us back into the trees. Then, when it was safe for him to speak, he said:

"You see how it is. Even if we were thirty instead of three, it would be almost ridiculous for us to try to get at Parade. They've arranged it very cleverly. The light of the lanterns only hits the horse. The guards are posted away from the corral in the shadow. If we try to rush Parade, we'll get nothing but bullets. I could whistle to him and bring him out here in three jumps, but they've hobbled his feet!"

That was true. As Silver himself confessed the impossibility of doing anything by a direct raid on the horse, I felt a greater and greater relief. It was almost like getting permission to go home. As he made his pause, I even said:

"Well, then we'd better get out of here!"

"I think you had," said Silver. "What comes next is a thing that silence will help along more than numbers. You'd better go back, Avon. Good-by. Good-by, Harry."

"What's up now?" asked Harry.

"I'm not sure. But it's nothing that you could help in," said Jim Silver. "Good-by to both of you. I'll be seeing you later."