Silvertip (1942) (6 page)

The news he brought had entered the house. These vaqueros who stood on guard about him had endured the shock steadily enough, but there were women in the big, sprawling house, and now voices rang out here and there in wild peals of grief that came through the walls as though through compressed lips.

The vaqueros began to be moved by those audible signs of woe. Some of them started swaying a little from side to side. Voices rose half audibly, bubbling and moaning, struggling in their throats, wordlessly.

But other words came. He heard them say: "The gringo!" and again: "The gringo dog! The dog!"

He was the messenger of bad news, and that was enough to insure him a bad reception. Lucky for him if the reaction consisted of words only.

The hinges of a heavy door grated. And then a slow footfall came across the patio.

"It is Don Arturo-God help him! God be merciful to him!" Silver heard one of the men murmur.

All of the Mexicans drew back a little, as though in respect, and in sympathy, while an old man with sweeping silver hair and a pointed gray beard came out into the patio. Time had pinched his shoulders a little, and perhaps it was the flow of hair that made the head seem disproportionately large. All his features were accented, together with the whiteness of his hair, by a band of black cloth which passed across his forehead, to be lost immediately under the flow of his hair. He would be a more imposing figure seated than standing; but even as he stood, he was a man of mark. He walked with a slim cane in his hand, his meager fingers spread out on the round head of it. And as he came to a halt, he stood very straight, as if at attention.

The blow had fallen on him, and, like the girl, he had received it calmly. The weight of it had not broken him. No doubt there was a deeper shadow under his brows now than there had been a few moments before. Perhap
s
his lips were pressed more tightly together. But his voice was calm as he said:

"You are Senor Silver?"

"I am," said Silver.

"You come to tell me that Pedro Monterey is dead?"

"The man who rode that horse-a young man-dark, handsome-" began Silver.

But the other lifted his hand.

"What was the manner of his dying, Senior Silver?" he asked.

The girl had come out from the house. She stood in the shadow of the arcade that surrounded the patio. One fold of her linen skirt thrust forward, and flashed like snow in the sunshine that touched it. She looked like the dead youth; she must be his sister, in fact. But what manner of people were these, when a father and sister could take the news of a death in such a way?

"May I speak to you alone?" said Silver.

Arturo Monterey drew himself up a little.

"In twenty years," he said, "no American has entered this house. May it be another hundred years before one of your race passes through my door. You stand in my patio; and even that is very much, indeed! But come closer to me, if you will. My sons, fall back."

The vaqueros moved off a little distance, their spurs rattling. Silver moved forward until he was close to the older Monterey. And just at that moment the opening of a door, as it seemed, allowed a wild cry of lament to break out from the house, a single dreadful note of grief, shut away to dimness again, as though the door had been suddenly closed once more.

Silver saw the chin of the old man jerk up, as he endured the thrust of that keening. But nothing seemed able really to shock Arturo Monterey.

"It was in Cruces," said Silver. "Do you know the place?"

Arturo Monterey made a slowly sweeping gesture.

"The mountains of the Haverhill," he said, "are the boundaries of my life."

"It's a small town," said Silver, "fifty miles from here, beyond the mountains. I was there, and I met an enemy of mine, who was with your son."

"What was his name?" asked Monterey.

"Bandini."

"Bandini is an enemy of yours?"

"So much so, that we agreed to meet at a certain hour, and fight out our arguments together. At that time, I went into the street to find him. I saw a man wearing Bandini's cloak. I followed him, and stopped him. Senor, a man does not pause to ask many questions, at such a time. I was sure that it was Bandini. I challenged him with enough words to give him a chance to draw a gun. It seemed to me that he drew. Then I pulled my gun and fired. And the fire that spurted out of the gun showed me not the face of Bandini, but that of a stranger. He fell dead! I took his horse and his possessions, and traced him through the horse to this house. And what I wish to say is-" "Perez! Juan!" gasped Monterey. He gripped his walking stick with both hands, and leaned a little on it.

"Take him!" groaned Monterey through his teeth, as the men came running to him. "Take the cursed gringo! God told me, twenty-five years ago, that nothing but evil could come to me from them, and here is another proof! Take him-away from my eyes-out of my sight-where I shall not hear the death cry! Make of him what my son is-a dead thing!"

They closed on Silver from either side, suddenly. Many pairs of hands gripped him with a force that ground the muscles against the bones, and paralyzed the nerves. In an instant he was as helpless as though he had lain for a month in benumbing fetters.

What a savage joy there was in their eyes, in the twisting of their mouths as they grasped and shook him! The grip of their fingers on his body seemed to feed them, like so many dogs tearing at living flesh.

And then he heard the girl calling out, not loudly: "Uncle Arturo, what are you doing?"

"I am finding justice, justice, justice on the gringo!" cried Arturo Monterey. "Quickly, my sons-quickly! Juan Perez, you will take charge, for you have seen this man before, and know a little about him. No torments-let death kill with a sharp edge, suddenly!"

There was bunding joy in the eyes of Perez, as thoug
h
he looked upon a bright treasure, in beholding Silver.

They swung their prisoner about. They began to sweep him down the roadway that led up to the house.

Behind them, Silver heard the girl saying: "A man who trusted you, brought you the news of the death, and the horse of Pedro for the proof! Uncle Arturo, what has come of the honor of the Montereys?"

"Where is there honor among the gringos?" thundered Monterey in answer. His voice swelled out enormously, from that withering body. "Do you speak to a Mexican of honor in dealing with them? Honor, in handling a brute who brings me the horse of my dead boy, and the word that he has killed him? Honor?"

The Mexicans had come to the horse of Silver, and now they flung him upon it. They had taken his guns, his knife. Some held the bridle of the horse; others gripped the legs, the arms of the prisoner. Still more were riding up horses from the patio, coming on the gallop. But the voice of the girl, like a meager hope of salvation and life, still found the ears of Silver, dimly, through the tumult.

She was saying: "He had faith in you. If you betray faith, God will never forgive you. What a man does innocently is not done at all. Uncle Arturo, you have only this moment to decide. They are taking him away-it will be too late-you will be shamed-and you will let in the law on us all. If you let him be killed, it is murder in the eyes of Heaven, and in the eyes of the law, also. Oh, if the ghost of Pedro is near us, it is giving an echo to what I say!"

But now the cavalcade had formed, half on horseback and half on foot, bearing Silver with them resistlessly, carrying him forward toward the quick ending of his life.
He could see the big barrier of the mountains surging in steep-sided waves across the sky before him. His horse was shaking its head, and making the bridle ring. One of the Mexicans had a broad red stain on the shoulder of his white shirt. A wild jumble of detached observations came flooding into the brain of Silver. And through it, the voice of the girl, raised by desperation as distance made it fade.

Afterward, a dull cry reached them, calling Juan Perez. The man turned.

"She has persuaded him," said one of the escort. "Perez, what do you say? Shall we sweep him away? Aye, or kill him here in the roadway! Kill him here, and have it done?"

Perez, looking back up the road, saw something that made him fix on Silver the eye of a maniac. Then, with a gesture of despair, he halted the troop.

"Take him back!" he commanded. "The senor calls for him. The girl has won again. She always wins. We are only dogs to be barked back and forth. Perhaps this gringo fills her eyes; perhaps we shall have to lick his feet before long!"

The whole escort turned, gradually, and Silver could see again the stern old man standing as erect as ever, with his two hands resting on the head of his cane. The girl was beside him, withdrawn a little.

So they came straight back to confront Don Arturo. The passion was working in his face, still, and he was paler than before.

He cried out in that great voice which seemed to make his body smaller than ever, by contrast: "He has come to me, Juan Perez, and I must take thought before I put hands on him. But for his sake I shall forget the vow I made twenty-five years ago. He shall enter my house! He shall be taken into it now. Perez, carry him down to the cellar, to the lowest and the darkest room. There are irons to fit on him. Load him until his body is safely held. You, Perez, are his keeper, and shall answer to me for him!"
"Uncle Arturo-" cried out the girl. "Be still-be still!" exclaimed the old man. "Do you talk to me of honor and kindness? They have shamed me, they have dishonored my house, they have ravaged my lands, and now they have slain my son, and leave me a dry, dead stalk! Juan Perez, do as I command!"

Chapter
VIII

Imprisone
d
THEY carried Silver rapidly into the house. The last he heard from the sunlit outdoors was the voice of the girl, raised higher than before as she passionately implored Don Arturo to remember himself, and the loud, stern cry of the old man as he bade her be quiet.

Out of a big corridor, they turned through a high and narrow doorway down a steep flight of steps. Lanterns were carried. Their swinging light began to flash far ahead, glimmering along damp walls, or throwing a dull sheen across the water that lay on the stones they trod, as they penetrated story after story, deep and deeper into the rock.

Juan Perez went first. Of the crowd, perhaps only half a dozen remained to hustle Silver along. And it seemed as though they were not descending through the cellars of a house, but through the galleries of some old mine, that had been worked for centuries, drill and pick and shovel digging into the living stone to find the treasure. It was a wilderness. Silver had attempted to keep track of the turns, the descents, the stairs, the sloping passages, but he gave it up. And three or four times even Juan Perez, who seeme
d
to know the place well, came to a halt and swung his lantern from side to side before he made a choice between one gallery or another.

Once he stopped at a corridor hewn to a great size, and Juan Perez commented to his awed companions, that this was the place where the heart of the great lode had been found.

It was, in fact, through the galleries of an ancient mine that they were passing. But now they paused and took from a room a set of manacles brown with time. With these they went forward only a short distance until they came to another door, and opening this, the lantern light revealed a little room perhaps three steps by two in dimensions. On the irregular floor of it water had gathered, which had been scummed over with green; the air itself was very foul; and the odor of the slime was like a throttling hand on the throat.

There they fitted the irons to the body of Silver. Juan Perez, with a key, opened and locked them again. Then he stood back and lifted a lantern until the sheen of it fell upon the captive.

Half in dry stone and half in slime sat Silver, and met the eye of Juan Perez calmly. There was no word spoken. He heard only the softly inhaled breath of Perez, and saw the flash of his eyes and teeth as he grinned. Then the Mexicans left him. The door slammed shut with the booming noise of a cannon shot. And far away he heard the departing troop. They were laughing and shouting; even that laughter and derisive shouting seemed to Silver a precious thing to be harkened after with an eager ear. He strained his senses to hear every scruple of it; and when at last he could make out no more sound, the darkness was suddenly trebled about him, and a weight fell crushingly on his lungs.

It was the impure air that sickened him and made breathing almost futile. Presently he forgot the slime in which he lay, and, stretched flat on his back, did his best to calm the insane fear which was working in his brain.
Then began the first eternity, black, still, foul, breathless.
He secured hope out of one strange thought-that he had appointed himself to redeem the lost life of Pedro
Monterey, and that therefore he must suffer worse tha
n
death, and then be given the chance to use his hands and his brain. He must nearly die, but some life would surely be left to him.

When we are in bed, clean, clear reason departs from us. And it departed, now, from Silver, as he lay in the stifling black of that prison. His second occupation was to employ his mind with dreams of what the life of Pedro Monterey must have been in this house with the stern old man for a father, and with all the fierce vaqueros ready to ride or to fight at his bidding. The girl, however, was not his sister. She was merely a cousin, more or less distant.
And there was mercy in her which the pure strain of these Montereys seemed incapable of feeling.