Silvertip's Roundup (7 page)

J
IM
S
ILVER
, leaving the boarding house, had merely said to Sally Creighton: “You can't tell. He's late, but he looks to me like the sort of fellow who may enjoy late hours.”

She shrugged her shoulders and kept her troubled eyes on him.

“I don't know, Mr. Silver,” she said. “I only know that I'm terribly worried. He's not like other people around here. He's more like Joe Feeley.”

Silver nodded and went out to look. The first place he looked in was the Round-up Bar, because he knew certain features of its repute. There was no one in it except Pudge, the veteran bartender.

He nodded his head and made his puffed, debauched eyes smile.

“Evening, Silver!” he said. “Step right in and have one on the house.”

“Thanks,” said Silver.

He took one finger of whisky and drank it slowly. The first taste was a critical one, to determine the possible presence of unknown substances in the drink. He finished and nodded to Pudge.

“Have a round on me,” he invited.

“I don't mind if I do,” said Pudge.

So the glasses were filled again.

“I'm looking for a fellow who may have been in here this evening,” said Silver. “About five ten. Slim-looking. Eastern style. Pale. Black hair.”

“Haven't seen him,” said Pudge. “Hold on a minute. Yes, I guess he was in here for a minute. Had a glass of beer.”

“That's right,” agreed Silver. “Beer is probably what he would drink. He didn't have the whisky eyes. When did he go out?”

“I wasn't looking at the clock,” said the bartender. “A while back, was all.”

“Anybody with him?”

“Not when he come in.”

“But when he went out?”

“Yeah. He'd hitched onto a party of two or three. Three there was.”

“Who were they?”

“I didn't place ‘em,” said Pudge. “All strangers to me, they looked like. Big fat feller was one of ‘em. He was talking about traps and bounties and cursing his luck this season. I guess he was a trapper, all right. There was one they called ‘Texas,' too. Had a star embroidered on the tops of his boots. And another was an old hand. About fifty, I'd say. Grizzled, kind of. Sort of down on their luck, all three of ‘em looked like to me.”

“Three of them, eh?” said Silver. “Heeled?”

“Heeled? Nothing on the outside, but they sort of
looked
heeled, if you know what I mean.”

“What were they talking about?”

“A game. I didn't hear everything they talked about. The gent you're after don't talk up very loud and bold. And you notice where there's one gent talks soft, it tames down the others, too.”

“It does,” agreed Silver. “They talked as though they were going off to start a game of cards, did they?”

“That's what they talked like.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Silver to the bar, rubbing the tips of his fingers over the smooth varnish. “Cards? Cards?”

In the profundity of his thought, as he tried to fit card playing into his optical and mental picture of the stranger, he lifted his head and looked toward the ceiling.

“Hello!” said he. “Somebody been shooting up the place?”

He pointed to a hole in the ceiling's plaster.

Pudge turned suddenly about. With his back to Silver, he bent his head until his fat red neck formed a dozen deep wrinkles above his collar.

“Oh, that?” asked Pudge, pointing in turn.

He turned around and faced Silver.

“That was weeks ago,” said Pudge. “That crazy gent, Larue, was in here. He's always pulling a gun and doing tricks when they ain't wanted. He gets to doing a double roll, and a gun goes off and I'm glad to tell it didn't nick anything but the ceiling.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh, I dunno. A long spell back. That Larue is a tough hombre, Silver.”

Pudge leaned a little across the bar, glanced toward the swing doors, and then lowered his voice to confidential tones.

“A gent like Larue is poison to a bartender, Silver. Plain poison. He's a bad one to have around. I don't dare to throw him out, but havin' him do his drinkin' here turns a terrible lot of people away from my bar. Peaceable gents don't like to have a wild cat like that rubbin' elbows with ‘em alongside a bar.”

“True,” said Silver. “They don't like it, and a lot of them won't have it.”

He turned and regarded, for the first time, a small dark spot on the floor. He rubbed it with his toe, and the spot spread a little.

“Blood on the floor, Pudge,” said he.

“Blood?” said Pudge, starting a little. His eyes grew very wide and round. Then he added: “How did that happen? Oh, sure. That gent — that grizzled old one — he gets a nosebleed, a regular spouter. Consumption, or something like that, I'd say. By the caved-in look of his chest, consumption, I'd say.”

“Would you?” said Silver, smiling.

The bartender regarded the smile and frowned. “Why, yes,” he said, “I'd call it the con. What would you call it?”

“Bunk,” said Silver.

“Hold on, Silver. I don't foller your drift,” said Pudge.

“Why, there are a lot of queer things,” said Silver, “around your bar to-night. There's blood that can fall all the way from a man's nose and hit the floor without spattering. And there's a bullet hole in the ceiling that still leaks a few grains of plaster from time to time, even though it was made three weeks ago. Two strange things, I'd say!”

Pudge grew, gradually, the deepest of crimsons. He dropped his head a little and began to polish the bar with a cloth which he picked up from the shelf beneath it.

“There might even,” said Silver, “be a little pile of plaster on the floor under that hole in the ceiling. Mind if I take a look behind the bar?”

“I do mind,” growled Pudge. “The public ain't welcome behind my bar, Silver.”

“Never make any exceptions?” asked Silver.

Pudge put back his towel beneath the bar. His hands remained out of sight.

“I don't make no exceptions,” said Pudge slowly. “Not even for a Silver.”

So Silver dropped his left hand lightly on the edge of the bar, and his right hand, with a light gesture, picked a Colt from beneath his coat. There were four extra inches on the long barrel of that gun, and yet it was a feather in the practiced grasp of Silver.

“Whatcha want?” asked Pudge, as the white came into his face in streaks, to take the place of the red.

“I want you to back up,” said Silver. “Back up slowly, Pudge. Keep your hands at your sides, and back up. Move carefully. You're an old-timer around here, and you know that accidents can happen. Don't die of self-defense.”

Something bumped with a metallic clank on the shelf below the bar. Gradually Pudge drew back against the row of bottles before his mirror. His hands were empty, and the fingers were twitching. His stomach worked in and out with his rapid breathing.

“This here is an outrage, Silver,” he said. “You been havin' your way too long, all over the map. Maybe it's about time for you to hold up a little! Maybe you're startin' to go too fast.”

“Maybe,” agreed Silver, and planting his left hand again on the bar, he leaped lightly over it.

One hand of Pudge had gone out to grasp the neck of a bottle as he saw the body of Silver in the air, but observing that he was still covered by that famous long-barreled gun, he relaxed his grip again.

Silver stood before him, laughing.

“You've got the old fighting stuff in you. You've got plenty of it, Pudge,” said he. “I like it, and I like you, in spots. You might hoist your hands over your head, though, while you're about it.”

“A plain holdup!” exclaimed Pudge.

Silver pointed to the floor.

“You let the dust lie on the floor for several weeks, Pudge, do you?” he asked, pointing to a scattered little heap of plaster. “You scrub up all the rest of the floor, but you leave that pile?”

He turned back on the bartender.

“And a gun under the bar, too. It's a rough town, Pudge, but not as rough as all that!”

“Your own business ought to keep your hands full,” snarled Pudge. “Edge away from mine, will you?”

“I can't do it,” answered Silver. “I'm sorry, Pudge, but I simply can't do it. Because I have an idea that you may know a few things that will do me good.”

He picked up the Colt that lay on the shelf beneath the bar, commenting: “Good old single-action, with a filed-off trigger, eh? Didn't know that you could fan a gun, Pudge!”

Pudge swore fervently.

“And here,” said Silver, “is something that looks as though you brushed your hair with the butt of this gun. Hold on, though. It's not the color of your hair. It's black!”

He pushed the gun slowly onto the bar. His face had turned rigid with anger. His eyes, for the moment, burned as pale and as bright as the fighting eyes of Taxi.

“The bit of hair that's caught on the butt of your gun, Pudge,” said he, “would fit in with the hair on the head of Taxi, that Easterner I'm looking for. Know that?”

Pudge growled: “Is there only one man in the world that has black hair?”

“You hit Taxi with that gun,” said Silver. “I've almost a mind to hit you with mine, Pudge. You're fat, and you're old, but even rats get gray and puffy, sometimes. And I've an idea that you're a rat.”

Pudge said nothing. It was not a time for speech, and he knew it.

“You hit Taxi. And then some people took him away. Was Charlie Larue in the party?”

The hit made Pudge wince a little. He moistened his lips and shook his head.

“No,” he said.

“You lie,” said Silver “Larue
was
in the gang. Who else?”

“I don't know,” said Pudge.

“That blood on the floor came from Taxi, did it?”

“I don't know,” said Pudge.

“Was he killed?”

“I don't know,” said Pudge.

Silver drew in a breath quick and deep.

“If you were only ten years younger, Pudge — ” He sighed.

He vaulted over the bar again. Pudge stood with his hands still above his head.

Silver turned and walked deliberately toward the door. The gun of Pudge lay right before him on the bar, and still he failed to lower a hand and grab at it.

Not until the swing doors had closed behind Silver did he bring down his hands.

There was a high stool behind the bar, and onto this he slumped. The starch had gone out of him. There were no muscles in his back. He folded his hands on the bar and dropped his forehead on his hands. His shoulders heaved with his breathing.

Silver, when he reached the street, glanced up and down the wide, empty thoroughfare. It was probably useless for him to ask questions. Besides, he knew that it was the work of Barry Christian's men. If Larue was in the game, then Christian had a hand in it, and that meant that the disappearance of Taxi was simply another act in the long drama of Silver's fight with the great outlaw.

He looked helplessly around him at the mighty sweep of the mountains against the stars. Barry Christian was not far away. He was reasonably sure of that. When men like Larue and Pokey and others of celebrity remained near the town, it was most highly probable that the great Barry Christian was himself close at hand. But in the great forests, in the rock nests of the higher mountains, in the entanglement of ravines that split the upper slopes, whole armies could be hidden. It was a true hole-in-the-wall country; that was one reason why Barry Christian was favoring it with his presence.

Silver went back to the boarding house and found that his hostess was in the kitchen.

She had finished washing the dishes. Now she was scrubbing out baking tins and frying pans, using sand soap and a heavy brush and a great deal of elbow grease.

Silver took a chair, leaned back against the wall, and surveyed her.

“Talk or work,” said the girl. “Don't just sit around and be the big chief.”

“I'll talk,” said Silver. “You sit down over there and talk, too.”

She turned around suddenly.

“I'd rather stand,” she said. “Have you found out anything at all? Has anything happened to him?”

“Sit down,” commanded Silver.

She sat down on a stool near the stove. Her eyes opened at him. Suddenly she became like a child. But the anger in Silver was too profound for him to have pity.

“He's blotted out — for the time being. Maybe for good and all,” he said.

She squinted her eyes shut. She gripped her hands suddenly together and shook them hard.

“I knew it!” she muttered. “I was sure, I was sure! I felt that something had happened to him!”

“He went into the Round-up Bar. Pudge knocked him out with the butt of a revolver. Larue was in the party. And now Taxi has disappeared. You have a right to know that. There are some other things. There was shooting in the Round-up Bar, this evening. I don't know why there should have been shooting when the butt of a gun had already done the work. But I'll find out other things later on. What I want now is information from you.”

She kept her eyes closed, and since they were closed, she was swaying a little on the stool.

“What's this Taxi Ivors to you?” snapped Silver.

“Nothing. I never saw him before today.”

“What's Taxi to you?” he insisted.

“Oh,” she cried out, “he's a lot. I never met any one like him. There
is
no one like him.”

“Is he a fast worker?” asked Silver.

“He didn't look at me, he didn't lift his eyes.”

“That's because he has eyes that can be too easily remembered,” said Silver. “But if he means something to you, we'll get on better. I have an idea that it wasn't murder. I don't know why I feel so sure. Barry Christian's men don't tap their victims over the head unless they want to take them alive. If they've taken him alive, he may soon wish himself dead. Unless we can find him. But you'll be able to help me.”