Silvertip's Strike (2 page)

“I don't know,” commented Wycombe. “Take a slick horse like that, and it's like a slick woman. Needs a lot of caring for. I don't know that it's worthwhile. Take a mustang, you throw a rope and climb on and ride as far as you want. If the bronc is used up, throw it away; it doesn't cost anything.”

“Parade will stand the rough use, too,” answered Silver. “But a horse is like a gun. It's better clean.”

“Yeah. But when you need a gun, you need it,” observed Wycombe.

“Times when I've needed Parade,” said Silver, smiling.

Wycombe looked at him with a sudden seriousness, his upper lip crookedly suspended on his buckteeth.

“You've been through it, all right,” he said. “You've seen everything that a man can see.”

He added, rather sharply: “You used to hate my heart. What about it, Jim?”

“We can all be wrong, Wycombe,” said Silver coldly.

They went back to the house in a silence, with a shadow between them; but when they reached the place, Wycombe winked and nodded.

“Want you to see something,” he said, and opened the door to the kitchen.

The girl with the bright hair sat in a corner by the window, peeling potatoes. She had one pan in her lap, another on the floor beside her. She stood up, holding the pan between her elbows, smiling at the stranger the way Western girls are supposed to do. She had a good, straight smile, and her eyes were a stain of blue in her face. To Silver she seemed almost beautiful, which was as much as he seemed able to say about any woman.

“This is Esther Maxwell,” said Wycombe. “Shake hands with her, Jim. She don't need an introduction to you. She knows about Jim Silver. Everybody knows about you. How big does he look to you, Esther?”

She kept right on smiling at Silver, as he stepped forward.

“My fingers are all sloppy from the potatoes. I can't shake hands,” she said.

“How big does he look to you?” insisted Wycombe.

Silver glanced sidelong at his host.

“He looks
so
big,” said the girl.

Wycombe, laughing, led the way into the next room, put his back against the door as he closed it, and winked and nodded at Silver.

“That doesn't wear the Wycombe brand, yet,” he murmured, “but it's going to, boy! Pretty slick, eh? You see her dolled up for a dance and you see something. Works like a Chinaman, too.”

He walked on, tapping himself on the chest, his teeth flashing.

“All for me, brother,” he said.

He led the way into the next room.

“Office,” he said. “All the papers and everything. Here's where little Steve works the brains; the cowboys have to work the hands.”

He kept on laughing as Silver ran his glance over the square box of a room. There was one overstuffed chair in it that looked out of place, like a fur coat on a summer day.

“Sit down there while I crack open the hooch,” said Wycombe. “It's going to open your eye for you, brother. But tell me first what you think of
that
.“

He hooked his thumb over his shoulder.

“She's a pretty girl,” said Silver.

“She's pretty
and
she's handsome. She's a performer, is what she is. All mine, brother. All for me!”

He continued to chuckle as he took a bottle out of a cupboard and filled two whisky glasses. “Just take a sock at this,” he said.

Silver tasted it with his eyes studiously aslant. He smiled in honor of that noble liquor, not of his host; then they drank together.

“Now what?” asked Silver. “This is good stuff. But now what?”

Wycombe slowly thrust out his lower jaw as he answered: “Two hombres want to lift my hair. Two real bad boys. They've already started on the way. They might arrive here any old time. But when they come, they're going to find your guns working for me!”

Wycombe held the glass in his right hand with his forefinger pointing out from it at Silver, fixing him in place, preventing speech.

“Don't talk,” he said. “Wait till I get finished. Don't say ‘No' till you understand why you ought to say ‘Yes'! You remember me out of the old days. But I'm different now. I'm no tinhorn gambler, these days. I can play for
stakes
. And what do you think that life is worth to a rich man?”

“You're handy with a gun,” said Silver. “Take care of yourself.”

“I'm handy. You bet, I'm handy. But I'm bright, too. I'm so bright that I know when the other fellow has the high hand. And
two
high hands are going to be sitting in against me, before long.”

“How high?” asked Silver.

“Straight flushes!” said Wycombe.

Silver sat up in his chair a little.

“I'm all right in a fight, but I'm not that right,” said Wycombe. “I know it, and they know it. That makes it bad. I know they can beat me, and they know it, too. None of us are in the dark. That's what makes it bad.”

“That makes it bad,” said Silver.

“They're coming for me with all the cards in the world,” went on Wycombe, “and they think that they've got the pot already; but I'm switching things on 'em. They're going to find me sitting against their two straight flushes with a
royal
flush. And that's you!”

He kept on jabbing his forefinger in the direction of Silver.

“If you see white water ahead, take a trip,” said Silver. “For my part, I'm busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“I'm traveling.”

“You are always traveling. Where?”

“Up the line,” said Silver, with a vague gesture.

“No, you're not. I've got it in my pocket.”

“What?”

“Your price.”

“Perhaps you have,” said Silver coldly.

“First, I've got you because you love a fight,” said Wycombe. “I'm talking right out at you, you see? You love a fight for the fight's sake. A lot of people say that you're never in trouble till fools put you in it. But nobody ever killed your list without liking the feel of that last part of a second before the guns are going to be pulled. Answer me straight in the eyes. Do you like it? I mean, when the other fellow's eyes turn red, and he begins to show his teeth at you, and bunch his shoulders over, and his hands start working. Do you like that?”

Silver sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

“Go on with it,” he said.

“Well, I'm going to hook you with the names of the hombres that are coming to lift my hair. Because, when you hear those names, your mouth is going to water. It's the sort of meat you like. It's high! The two of 'em are crooks from away back. They've both done their killings and plenty of 'em. They're stake runners. They start from scratch when it comes to guns, and one of 'em is Morris Delgas. You know Delgas?”

“I know him,” said Silver.

“He killed Rex Walters and Lefty Markham; those are about the best two he killed. But there's others.”

“I know what Morrie Delgas has done,” answered Silver.

“A nice fly for a trout to rise at, eh? But the other's a shade better, even. The other's that devil of a Harry Rutherford! I don't need to ask if you know that little drink of poison! It wouldn't be healthy for you
not
to know! A little left-handed streak of misery, is what he is. Some people say he's the slickest hand with a gun that ever fanned a Colt. That's what a lot of people say. I don't know. I'd back you against him. That's all I know. And the money I put down goes into your pocket. Listen to me, Silver. When I say money, I mean it.
Big
money.”

Silver shook his head and stood up slowly.

“Hey!” cried Wycombe. “Don't act that way. Wait a minute. Listen.”

“I don't want to listen,” said Silver.

“Wait! I'm talking something like this — five thousand apiece. I know you, Jim. You're not small time. For each one of those hombres, five thousand bucks paid on the spot.”

“I don't want it,” said Silver.

A moment of silence struck between them. Silver heard the ticking of a clock that was not in the room. He heard the buzzing of a big bluebottle that circled around and around the room. He smelled the aromatic sharpness of hot varnish, and knew that his body was covered with sweat, also. Wycombe was staring at him.

“Have I banked on a lame horse? Have you lost your nerve?” whispered Wycombe.

Then his voice came out with a bang. “I said five thousand. I mean it. I'll give you five thousand on account, Jim! Those hombres mean to murder me, I tell you. I'll pay you five thousand advance just to be the bodyguard!”

“I don't want the money,” said Silver.

“You mean,” shouted Wycombe, “that you don't want any part of my game. You don't want me!”

Silver was silent. He knew that anything could happen now, and he was ready for it, looking fixedly into the eyes of Wycombe and watching the trembling of the upper lip that hung crookedly over the buckteeth.

“I've missed!” whispered Wycombe. He cried out suddenly: “Listen to me. I can't slip up. Listen to me, Jim. I've got ten thousand dollars right here in this room. It's yours!”

Silver shook his head. A whole storm of rage and darkness poured over the eyes of Wycombe. His body trembled. His mouth kept working vainly around the prominence of those big front teeth.

“All right,” he said at last, and, turning on his heel, he walked out of the room.

Silver followed him, looking left and right as he stepped cautiously through each doorway. As he went toward the back of the house, he heard the voice of Wycombe ring out ahead of him:

“What the devil do you mean by coming up here and hanging around the kitchen? Get out on the range, where you belong. Foreman? You're no foreman. You're no good. I've got a mind to fire you on the spot. I'm sick of the pretty face of you.”

Silver, stepping into the kitchen, saw Wycombe in the middle of the floor, shaking his fist at a tall, brown-faced youth who stood with his sombrero in the tips of his fingers, his back to the door. On the floor he had just laid the quarters of a deer. Anger had marked the cheeks of this fellow with white, and pure rage was about to burst out of his lips when the girl intervened. She was behind the back of Wycombe, so that only Silver saw her frightened gesture of entreaty. Both hands remained for an instant pressed against her throat while her eyes talked to the foreman.

He took a great breath.

“I thought you folks might want some fresh venison, was all,” said he.

He began to turn toward the door. It was very hard for him, Silver could see that, to swallow the string of insults that had just been poured at him. In a sense, Silver felt guilty, because it was plain that Wycombe felt himself enough of a gun fighter to handle this honest cow-puncher, and the wrath which he had accumulated during his interview with Silver was to be poured out now.

It was the girl who had stopped the retort that might have meant gunfire. And, if she had stopped it, most assuredly it had not been because her great concern was for Wycombe.

“I'm going to teach you,” shouted Wycombe, beside himself with rage as he saw the other giving way, “I'm going to teach you that your place is out where — ”

“Wait a minute, Wycombe,” said Silver.

Wycombe spun about with his shoulders suddenly against the wall, the very attitude of a man who fears that he may be attacked from two sides at once.

“Hey — well, what you want?” he barked.

“I've been thinking things over,” said Silver.

He felt the eyes of the girl suddenly on his face; he felt the wonder in them.

Wycombe was instantly changed. He seemed to forget his foreman in a flash.

“You mean that, Jim?” he cried. “You're going to stand by me and take a chance to — ”

“I'll stand by you, I suppose,” said Silver.

“Come on back in that room,” urged Wycombe. “I'm going to pay you now to — ”

“Wait a moment,” said Silver.

He walked slowly toward the young foreman, who was closing the door. The latter paused, opened the door again.

“Wycombe's temper is not worth much,” said Silver, “and sometimes he talks a lot.”

He held out his hand with a smile.

“My name is Jim Silver,” he said.

The white face of the foreman turned crimson. He knew, it was clear, that this gesture on the part of Silver was purely in token that the stranger had overheard but had not lost respect for the foreman because he had taken water in the row. Never was a stronger grasp laid on the hand of Silver.

“I'm Dan Farrel,” said he. “And — thanks. It's great to meet you, Silver. It's great!”

He went out, closing the door hastily behind him, as though he wished to conceal something that was coming into his face.

Silver, turning, saw Wycombe beckoning impatiently at the other door of the kitchen. He saw, also, one flash of gratitude and astonishment in the eyes of the girl. Then he went on through the door with Wycombe and back into the study.

“You gave me a turn, Silver.” Steve Wycombe laughed. “You can throw a bluff with anybody I ever saw. I thought for a minute that you meant what you said. Wait a minute. Ten thousand, I said, and ten thousand it's going to be.”

He started to unlock the door of a big square-faced safe that filled a corner of the room.

“No,” said Silver. “I don't want the cash.”

“You don't want what?” shouted Wycombe.

“I don't take blood money,” said Silver.

Wycombe straightened his body with jerks and finally faced his guest with a frown.

“I never was able to figure you out,” he said. “You beat me — but that's all right. As long as you're with me, anything's all right! Only — ”

He paused, and then shrugged his lean shoulders twice.

“About that fellow Farrel,” he said. “Why did you make that funny play about him? Going up and shaking hands with the bum when he'd just backed down and taken water like a cur?”