Silvertip's Roundup (6 page)

B
ABE
could not hit Taxi. He could land on him, but never solidly. Babe tried everything he knew, and he knew a good deal. He shadow-boxed, with Taxi as the ideal target. He tried shifts and double shifts, one-two punches, overhand wallops, swinging, chops, jabs, half-arm and full-arm uppercuts. He feinted and hit; he double and triple-feinted and hit; and always he was either having his punches muffled while they were still in the air, or else Taxi rode with the blows to rob them of force.

In the meantime, Taxi was doing execution of his own. He did not hit many times, comparatively, but his strokes counted. He played on the loose lips of Babe. He played at the bony ridges which covered his eyes, and thumped him on the abortive nose which was like a shapeless lump of gristle in the middle of Babe's face. He drew streams of blood from Babe before at last the gorilla decided that man-made methods of war were not for him.

He simply waded in through Taxi's attack and crushed him to numb helplessness. Then he trussed Taxi under one enormous arm. He held Taxi close and beat him with a deliberate enjoyment with the other fist. It was like a lump of lead incased in a bit of rubber hose. Wherever it fell, it bruised. When he was satisfied with what he had done to Taxi's face, he turned him over and beat him across the kidneys and lungs. Blows there hurt ten times as much as blows struck to the head.

After a while Taxi could not move. Then Babe took him by one foot and dragged him into the big room at the front of the cabin, where Barry Christian looked up from a book.

“He can still listen to you,” said Babe. “Wanta talk to him?”

“Let me have a look at him,” said Christian.

Babe took up Taxi by the nape of the neck and muscled him out at arm's length. Taxi tried to stand straight, but his legs wobbled beneath him as though they were adrift in a troubled current of water. He tried to hold up his head, but Babe had beaten the base of his neck, and the nerves wouldn't work. His head fell over on his shoulder.

“Sit him down by the fire, the poor fellow,” said Christian. “No, please not in that chair, Babe. We don't want the blood to stain everything, do we? Just leave him there. I don't imagine that he'll get up and run away.”

Babe laughed. “He won't run away,” he said. “I done it scientific. He won't get up and run away.”

Taxi looked at him. He could almost sympathize with the immense contentment of Babe.

“It looks to me,” said the gentle voice of Barry Christian, “that he did a little scientific work on you, too, Babe.”

“Does it?” asked the Babe cheerfully. He took a forefinger and collected the blood off his face and flicked it into the fire. Babe began to laugh. “Yeah, he's scientific. You take a little fist, like his, and it cuts, is what it does. But I never had a better time in my life. It was like shadow boxin', and the shadow couldn't be hit. It was like punchin' at a dead leaf, and the wind of your punches keeps knocking that leaf out of the way. I never had a better time. It was exercise, was what it was.”

“A little more exercise like that, and perhaps you won't have much of a face left,” suggested Christian.

“Well,” said the Babe, “the good thing about a mug like mine is that it'll stand wear. It ain't pretty but it'll stand wear. I'll plant a beefsteak on it after a while, and it'll be all right. Maybe Scotty will have to take a couple of stitches over this here eye. I don't know. If you got some good material, it'll stand patches.”

“Get some vinegar,” said Barry Christian.

“Not for me,” said Babe.

“Get some vinegar,” said Christian.

Babe went for some vinegar and came back with a glass half-filled with it.

“That's all the chink says that he can spare,” observed Babe.

Christian held the glass in his hand and closed his eyes as he inhaled the strong fumes.

“Now, Taxi,” said he, “can you talk?”

“Yes,” said Taxi.

“Perhaps you've observed,” said Christian, “that we are people who mean what we say. For my part, I've allowed this to be done with regret. A quick and merciful killing would have served my end, but Babe thought that he could soften you a little, to use his exact words, which you'll remember hearing. Therefore I've allowed him to try his hand. And after all, Taxi, isn't it better for us to endure a little pain on earth than for us to rush straight into hellfire? Or will you go to a pleasanter place?”

Taxi smiled.

“A sense of humor, too,” said Christian. “And what could be better than that? What could be more humanly useful? It proves that a man has capacities for tact and contact, humanly speaking, when he shows a sense of humor. I hope you will prove to have sufficient sense, Taxi, to understand by this time that it would be much wiser for you to talk to me?”

“Well?” said Taxi.

“I mean to say, it would be wiser for you to tell me what I want to know — why Silver asked you to come out here and what Silver has in mind to do. What clews he picked up about — well, let's call it about Feeley's little game. Are you ready to talk?”

It seemed to Taxi a fortunate thing that this was a subject on which he did not need to make a decision. The decision was already made by that code according to which he had to live or die. The code says that a man in the final pinch does not talk. He takes his medicine and does not talk because talking eventually turns a man into something worse than a dog.

“No,” said Taxi. “I'm not talking.”

“Listen to him,” said the Babe, with enthusiasm. “He's all right, ain't he? He can take it. He likes to take it, I tell you.”

Christian sighed, rose from his chair, and leaning over Taxi, began to separate with his fingers the lips of the wounds on Taxi's face. Into those wounds he poured vinegar. The effect was incredible. In each case it was like having the flesh seared with red-hot iron.

One groan swelled the throat of Taxi and could hardly be stifled. After that his swiftly-working brain paralyzed his entire body. It takes practice and a will of steel to be able to do that. But when one knows that the other gang is about to take possession of one's body, it is well to will the body out of existence. That was what Taxi had learned to do. He had gone through the third degree half a dozen times, also, at the hands of those earnest inquirers, the police. Therefore there was very little about the enduring pain that he did not understand.

With all the might of his brain he gripped himself, numbed himself, and withstood this torture.

Finally Christian stepped back. His nostrils were quivering as though he were inhaling a delicious fragrance. His eyes shone with the light that Taxi had seen in them once before.

“Look at that bird!” said the Babe. “Can he take it? He can!”

“There remain the eyes,” said Christian.

“Yeah. There's still the eyes,” agreed Taxi.

“And you're not talking?” urged Christian.

“No.”

Christian leaned over him once more. He plucked up the swollen lid and allowed the vinegar to run in on the tender ball of the eye. The burning seemed to pass right on into the center of the brain. It seemed to eat away at the very core of that nerve power which had been ruling out the sensation of pain. One great shudder ran through the body of Taxi. He told himself that he was about to scream out. And then, by the grace of mercy, he fainted.

When he recovered, he was lying on a damp, cold floor of beaten earth. The lantern on the wall burned obscurely through the mist in the air that was half water vapor and half smoke.

He could see that through the slits that remained to him. It seemed strange that there was still the power of sight in his eyes. But he could see the smoking light of the lantern, and he could also see the face of Babe, who sat in a chair at a side of the room. There was no window. There was a short flight of steps leading up to a door which was flush, at the top, with the ceiling. Some small buckskin sacks were piled in the corner of the room. There was nothing else to see. Gradually he understood that he was in a cellar beneath the cabin.

He pushed himself to a sitting posture. His wrists were manacled behind his back. His legs were manacled at the knees and the ankles. His coat lay beside him on the ground.

Babe now looked up from his newspaper. He sat slued to the side in order to bring his paper into a better relation with the lantern light. Now he folded the paper and turned his battered face toward Taxi.

“How feeling, boy?” he asked.

“Fit as a fiddle,” said Taxi weakly.

“That's good,” said the Babe. He asked anxiously: “Feeling like talking yet?”

“No,” said Taxi.

Babe sighed with relief. “I knew you wouldn't,” he remarked, almost fondly. “I had a kind of a faith and a trust in you, like a baby. I knew that you wouldn't buckle and knuckle under like a cur. There's stuff in you, kid, that I been countin' on. I suppose we better take our little exercise. Kind of just a matter of form that I had to ask you, first, if you wanted to talk.”

He came to Taxi and lifted him from the ground and beat him, holding him with one hand, hammering him with the other.

On every bruised place Babe's fists fell with a redoubled force. The whole nervous system seemed to have been multiplied by a thousand in order to register the force of that agony. The weight of the blows drove out the breath in gasps, whistling through the clenched teeth of Taxi. But those breaths never became vocal.

After a while he knew that his senses were fading out of him. He felt that another endurance test, like this, would be the end of life in his body. Then the lantern light began to darken and ceased.

When he wakened again, he was alone in darkness. He told himself, at first, that he was simply blind, but when he spoke the name of Babe, he received no answer. He was actually alone. In addition, he felt that he was dying.

Thirst was a greater pain than the bruises which covered his body. Besides, he lay in a stinging fire of fever that consumed him.

After a while, he found that he was breathing more easily. He began to forget all the pains in his body as he concentrated on the faces of these men. He called up Barry Christian, Babe, Larue, Pudge, Scotty, Pokey. He called them up as judge and as executioner. He began to apportion deaths for them.

So it was that after a time he found that his own pains were disappearing. If he allowed his mind to turn to them, the agony rushed back over his brain in a wave. So he calmly turned his mind from the pain, and therefore it was no more.

They had left him in darkness, trusting to the irons and the effects of the beatings that had stretched him senseless to keep him quiet. Nobody in the know back East would have been so foolish, but of course these fellows could not understand what he was able to do.

He started to slip the cuff off his left hand. That was why he went, each day, through exercises which made that left hand supple. It was a painful job, but he knew all about the pain. He could draw the hand through the steel grip for a little distance, but then it stuck. And now he found that his strength was so limited that after each effort the dizzy sickness spread over his mind again.

He had to relax and devote his attention to deep breathing. Then pain would leap at him and have to be ruled away. When that was gone, he would try again. Finally he got his left hand free. The skin on the backs of the knuckles and the thumb was scraped away, but that made no difference. His left hand was free!

Next, he sat up. It was not easy. His arms were strong, but his back seemed to have been broken. Every time he stirred, he discovered that the wave of agony swept him to the verge of the abyss of darkness. So he had to handle himself very daintily.

He was a brain with a pair of able hands. He had no body at all; he had no legs, either. Babe had attended to that. Babe was thorough.

First Taxi got out the slender pencil of his flashlight and cut the darkness with the ray. In an instant he had seen all that was present.

Then he took out a picklock and almost in three touches he solved the three locks which held him. He was free — except for the weights and chains which the torture laid upon him.

C
RAWLING
was hard. Rolling was much better, except that half of it which brought his back against the ground. With greater and greater frequency he was threatened with fainting spells. Each time he found himself lying on his face he paused to breathe a while.

When he came to the heap of little buckskin sacks, he indulged in another moment of rest, which he employed by making his hands fumble at the sacks. They were filled with something loose but so heavy that it was very hard and compact. He unknotted the ear of one sack and onto the ground poured out a stream of the contents. He put the spot of light from the torch on it and saw that it was a current of gold dust, still ebbing out rapidly. It built a glistening pyramid that pushed its head against the open place in the sack; then the fine dust ran no more.

It seemed to Taxi that everything was explained now. Where there is raw gold, men will become beasts. These fellows in the cabin were all animals because under their feet was a treasure. Mere blood is nothing. The sight of it may make a sensitive fellow a bit sick. But the sight of gold will make the same man into a ravening mad dog.

Taxi smiled, and then he went on until he was at the foot of the steps. He could not roll up them, of course. He had to lay hold on the steps one by one with his hands and edge himself higher and higher. He could only move his body with a slight serpentine wriggling in order to help his arm power. And each time he planted his chin on a higher step, he shut his bruised, burning eyes and breathed again.

When he got to the top of the stairs, there was a shallow landing. He lay there for a long time, breathing, waiting. After that, he was able to reach the knob of the door and with an effort pull himself to his knees.

Then all the strength seemed to go out of his arms. A shuddering fit of weakness threatened to let him fall. That, however, he endured.

He got out the picklock again, and worked with it in the lock. He felt almost a touch of regret as he solved the thing. It was strange that a great man such as Barry Christian should trust to such simple locks. But even the greatest of us have our weak or our careless moments.

The door pressed open. A hand from without seemed to be working it. Then he realized that it was the hand of the wind. The sweet, pure air entered his body and gave him a new soul. The old one blew away and a confident, more living soul was in him.

High above, he could see the bright glittering of the stars, dancing with the eternal life. On this dark, low earth we cannot hide our actions.

There were more steps to climb now. He went up them in the same manner, using his chin as a pry against his weight, pulling with his arms, wriggling his body a little, snakelike.

And so he came to the top and lay among leaves and pine needles that had drifted over the surface of the ground.

Out of the night the rows of big pines seemed to be slowly crowding toward him, saying: “We will shield you from observation.”

He had been wrong, he decided, about open country. Wherever there are men, there is pain to endure; only in the open country can one find the gentleness of nature and the peace. As for himself, he had lived among men as a wolf lives among sheep. That was the only reason why they had seemed necessary to him.

Now he could work his body sidewise and commenced the rolling. Gradually he hitched around and started turning himself. It was not so painful, out here. The needles that cushioned the ground gave him ease. He had gone perhaps ten turns of his body. He was almost among the trees when a door of the house slammed and a great ocean of lantern light began to sweep across the ground. It came in waves, measured out by the beat of the steps of the man who carried the lantern — a low, squat man. That was Babe!

He went straight on to the head of the cellar steps, humming in the depths of his throat. Then, with a shout, he whirled about. He came straight at Taxi and flopped him on his back. Taxi closed his eyes against the agony of that sudden turn. But, instantly mastering that weakness, he smiled straight up into the eyes of the giant.

“By the dear old hind hinges of hell's gate,” said Babe, greatly moved.

He raised his voice to a thunderous roar.

“Hey! Come on!” he yelled. “Hey, everybody come out! Everybody come on out! You hoboes, come out here and see a gent that has a brain in his head.”

Pokey got there first, racing like a greyhound. He leaned over Taxi and cursed with wonder. The others came streaming after.

“You seen him,” said Babe, making a speech of a sort of proud despair. “You seen that he couldn't walk. He can't walk now. He can't even crawl. He can only snake along. But he takes off three sets of the irons and he opens the locked door and he comes up here to take a little crawl and get the air. A kind of a constitutional was what he wanted. He sort of needed to work up an appetite, I guess. Now, you gents seen him before and right here you can see him this minute. If anybody told me this, I'd bust him on the jaw and call him a liar.”

He took Taxi by one foot and dragged him back to the head of the cellar stairs. He jerked him to his feet and swung back one ponderous fist.

“Get back where you belong!” said Babe, and smashed Taxi in the face with his full force.

The blow picked Taxi off his feet, hurled him backward. He struck on the steps below. A great red flame burst up before his mind. Then he lay at peace, perfectly still.