Valley Thieves (16 page)

As he talked, I saw a shadowy something move behind a tree. I snatched up my rifle to the level and aimed at the spot where I had seen the ghost stir.

"There's something—there!" I gasped.

Even with the moonlight from above and the thin rays of lamplight from the side, there was still only the faintest hint at illumination. The three of us stood rigid, while Silver, with a sweep of his hand, sent Frosty forward.

I saw the great beast drop on his belly and crawl toward the tree. I was certain that something was concealed behind the trunk. There had been no opportunity for it to escape, whatever it was. I waited, bracing myself, to hear the savage snarl and see the leap of the wolf. Instead, as Frosty slid around the tree, I saw him straighten to his feet and then heard him whine, a guttural sound that was as close to kindness as he knew how to make.

Immediately after that, the voice of Taxi said, with what seemed to me unnecessary loudness: "I couldn't keep away from the party, Jim."

He stepped out before us. I never was so glad to hear a voice, never so glad to see a form, in all my days.

"Ah, Taxi—" said Silver, starting forward.

"Stay where you are!" commanded Taxi sharply. "I'll come all the way."

Silver halted. Taxi walked up to him and held out his hand.

"I was wrong, Jim," he said. "It was Clonmel. And I was wrong. If you think more of him than you do of me, it's because he's the better man. I want you to take me back."

Jim Silver gripped the hand quickly. Then he said:

"Clonmel is not a better man. There's no better man in the world than Taxi. But he's my brother."

"Brother?" gasped Taxi.

"Brother?" I breathed.

"I would have told you both before," said Silver, "but I've been having an idea that if people know he's my brother, they'll be apt to follow him with some of the hate that they owe me."

"I guessed it!" groaned Taxi. "At the start I guessed it. Not that he was your brother. But I saw the flash of the likeness. Something jumped like a spark inside me! Ah, what a fool I am. Clonmel, I beg your pardon for the talk I handed out to you."

Clonmel chuckled a little.

"You could say worse than that, and I'd take it with a smile," he said. "I'm that glad to have you back with us, Taxi. Tell Jim that whatever idea he has in mind, he's wrong, and ought to forget it!"

Just then, a braying sound of laughter came out of the house with such a raucous blast that it sounded as though mocking voices were moving toward us through the trees.

Taxi merely said: "What Jim decides is what I decide."

Silver went on: "I can't hold back. I've got to go ahead. I'm going into the house and try to kill Christian. He's in there with the men who are laughing."

"All right," said Taxi, after a moment. "I go with you. You may need me to open the doors."

"And I go," said Clonmel.

"You stay away," said Silver. "An open-air raid to get Parade, that's one thing. To tackle that house with all the poison inside it, that's a different matter altogether!"

"I go!" said Clonmel.

"Harry," said Silver, "you have a father and a mother."

"The same ones that you have," answered Clonmel.

"I've been the same as dead to them these many years," said Silver.

"There's never a day that they're not praying for you! Why else was I sent out to try to find you?" said Clonmel.

"God forgive me if I bring you to the end of your trail!" groaned Silver. "But I think that this may be the last night for either Christian or me! I'm going straight on to the house and take the luck that's planned for me. Any one of you can follow me that wishes."

He turned about sharply. A wave of his hand brought Frosty to his heels. And so Silver walked ahead of us through the trees. I saw Taxi and Clonmel walk on behind him, side by side. For my part, I wanted to remain behind, but a devil of the perverse inside me drew my heavy feet after them once more.

SUPPOSE you were to walk up to a lion which is wide awake, but whose glances, so far, have failed to notice you? That was the way I felt when I walked up with the other three, and Frosty, toward the Cary house. It was like a face, the face of a monstrous and dangerous beast. And though some windows and doors were blank, others were rimmed about or lighted over from the inside. And the whole place swelled and stirred and hummed with life, and every atom of that life was poisonous to us.

We went up to a door at the side of the first wing, where not a light was showing, and Taxi bent over the heavy steel lock for only a moment. Then that door opened soundlessly. He pulled out a little pocket torch and flashed the ray of light like knife strokes across and across the darkness inside. Two or three glimpses and he seemed to know where everything was. But as for me, it was a question of following a leader, when we got inside that room. Clonmel came last and shut the door behind us.

At once I was breathing the hot, still air of the house, defiled with odors of cookery. There was the exact sense of having been shut into the lions' den— not sleeping lions, mind you, but beasts which simply had failed to notice us, so far. There was only one comfort, which was that the floor was the naked earth, and there were no creaking boards to trouble us.

A footfall ran like thunder through the second story, clumped down some stairs, and thudded quietly over the ground.

By the sound the runner made, I could conjure up the picture of the man—tall, wide-shouldered, powerful, dark-eyed—a true Cary. Every man of them all was fit to tie me into knots, I felt sure.

We went through two or three more dark rooms with only an occasional flash from the torch of Taxi to show us the way, then leaving us to struggle through the murk, trusting our hands more than our memories to guide us past the clumsy, home-made furniture.

We were making on toward a center of much noise. The last flash of the electric torch had showed me Frosty slinking at the heels of his master—and then a door before us was jerked open, and a great tide of light poured over us.

I was blinded, stunned by the brightness. Then a grip on my arm called me back to myself and drew me slowly aside. And now I could see that a tall young Cary was standing there in the doorway with his head turned, looking back toward his companions who were scattered about a long table, drinking and smoking. The big earthenware jugs held moonshine whisky, I could guess; and the water-colored liquid that stood in the glasses was faintly stained with yellow. Three or four lanterns were scattered irregularly down the table which was composed of big ax-hewn planks laid over heavy trestles. The feet of the trestles had sunk, with weight and time, into the ground. So the table was rather low and made it easy for the Carys to spread their elbows at the board, or for some of them to lean back in their chairs and rest their spurred heels on the wood.

They looked to me like a gang of pirates before, not after, sacking a town. Money or blood—they had an equal thirst for both.

Women were going about in the room. There was one for almost every man, and each was tending the wants of a male, pouring his whisky, or fetching him what he wished to eat. Some of the men tore at joints of meat; others were eating bread and cheese. And I noticed that none of the women sat down in the presence of their masters.

The fellow at the door was calling out something— I forget what—to one of his friends, and there was a general roar of laughter that beat and thundered against my ears. Then the man turned and walked right through the darkness of the room in which we were ranged back against the walls. He was carrying an unlighted lantern. He was still chuckling to himself over his last remark. And though we could see him so clearly, he could not make us out. Once he turned his head and looked straight at me, but I suppose that the glare from which he had just come dimmed his eyes a good deal. At any rate, he stumbled against a chair before he got out of the room, so he paused, and lighted his lantern then and there.

As I saw the spurt of the match flame, and heard the lantern chimney pushed screeching up on its guards of rusted wire, I made sure that we would be discovered the next instant. I saw then that Taxi's automatic was out and covering the fellow. He had only to turn in order to see us now—and die before us!

But instead of turning, he rubbed his shin where he had collided with the chair, swore a little, and then opened the next door and went on, the lantern swinging at his side and his great shadow sweeping back and forth across the opposite wall.

He was gone from view and hearing in another moment, but now we were left in an open throat of danger, so to speak.

That passer-by had left wide the door into the dining room. He had gone on, I couldn't tell where, and he might return at any moment. And in the meantime, fifteen or more armed men were sitting there in the lantern light, ready to answer any alarm. Furthermore, they were all descendants of the old man, and they all looked worthy of the name.

I picked out young Chuck at once. He was sitting at the head of the table, facing the door, and this was evidently a place of honor that was accorded him for what he had done—or tried to do—that day. In fact, if Taxi's snap shot had not made him drop his rifle after he fired his first bullet, it was plain enough that young Chuck would have easily held all our lives in the hollow of his hand.

He had one arm tied up in a bood-stained sling, and he was drinking his moonshine and smoking a pipe like any of the grown men. Apparently he was considered to have gained his place among the ranks of the mature warriors.

But what were we to do ?

I kept waiting for Silver to give a signal of some sort, either to charge forward through the doorway —a crazy proceeding—or to withdraw as stealthily as possible through the other open door. However, Silver crouched quietly in a corner, with the dim glimmer of the gray wolf beside him. I was on the opposite side of the room with Taxi, and I could see the green, glowing eyes of Frosty.

There was a pounding of hoofs outside, and then, through another entrance out of my ken, Will Cary and four other men walked into the room.

Some of the others jumped up. A volley of questions rained around the head of Will Cary.

He stood up there at the head of the table, near Chuck, and faced that crowd frankly and fearlessly.

"I didn't get hands on them, if that's what you want to know," he said. "I'll tell you the reason why I didn't lay hands on them. I was too scared. So were the boys with me. We were five, and they were four. Two of that four were Silver and Taxi. We didn't have the nerve to face 'em."

He made a pause and looked boldly around the table.

"Do I hear anybody sound off with the idea that they would have done differently?"

Heads turned a bit this way and that, but the side glances did not last long. The Carys looked back at Will, and after a moment there was a sort of general grunting. Whatever they were thinking, no one cared to stand up and blame Will for what he and his companions had done in the way of flinching from duty.

Will Cary said, when he saw that he had made his point: "I'm sorry about it. I've got reasons for wanting them all wiped out. Better reasons than the rest of you, maybe. But the fact is, they're too good for us unless we've got numbers on 'em. Jim Silver didn't get a reputation for nothing. Neither did Taxi. When I saw that we weren't going to get any advantage of them, with that wolf sneaking on ahead of 'em to spy us out, I decided to quit. And even if I had decided to go ahead, the boys with me wouldn't have budged. They'd seen how Silver could shoot by starlight. They didn't hanker to see how he could shoot by moonlight."

He broke off to ask: "How's Bud and Cleve?"

His father, Dean Cary, spoke up before the others, saying: "Bud's laid out with a slug through his right hip. Cleve's down with a bullet through both legs."

"There you've got it," said Will Cary. "You fellows may think that it's chance, but my idea is that Silver
aimed
low. He doesn't take life till he has to. That's what people say about him. And it's true. If he'd wanted to take life, Bud and Cleve would have some lead inside them, by this time, and I guess you all know that I'm right!"

Any way you take it, that speech of Will Cary's was pretty free and easy, and he finished it off by lifting a big jug of moonshine, pouring out a shot, and tossing off the drink. He coughed and choked over it a little, afterward.

"It takes a strong man to be a Cary!" he said, and laughed a little.

I rather liked Will Cary, just then. I mean I liked his frankness, and the suggestion that he saw some of the faults of the clan as clearly as I could, even.

But trouble came down on Will's head, a minute later, when a door squeaked open and I heard the voice of the old man.

He said huskily, with a sort of ironic cheer: "Well, boys, here you all are, all kind of spread out havin' your good time. Havin' your nip of whisky and your eats. Well, well, them that work hard has gotta eat hard, too. And look at the work you've all been and done today! Look at what you've put behind you! Look at all the brave things you've done! You've caught old Bill Avon and Clonmel and locked 'em up—and lost 'em! You've had your hands on Frosty and Parade—and you've lost Frosty. You've had Jim Silver and Taxi and the other two lying in the palms of your hands—and you've lost 'em all. And after all of that work, it ain't no wonder that you gotta kind of relax for a minute and take things easy and remember that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I don't wonder that you're sittin' here and makin' your fingers all thumbs with booze, in spite of the fact that Silver and Taxi are right here in the house this minute!"

When he said that, a shooting chill went up out of my eyes and froze my forehead. Every one of those Carys came to his feet with a shout, and the squeals of the women tingled over the noise.

The old man came swaying into my view, leaning his arm over the shoulder of Maria and peering around at the men.

With the bright wet stem of his pipe, he kept pointing to this man and that.