Valley Thieves (11 page)

The door snapped open. Lights came in. Those fellows paid little attention to me. One man simply backed me into a corner with his gun, but five or six of them piled on Clonmel. Even then they had a terrific job of it until someone managed to slip the noose of a rope over his arms. After that they were able to hold him and lash him, while the noise of his breathing sounded like that of a bull. Right through the trampling, panting, and cursing, I could hear the labor of his lungs, while they rolled him in enough ropes to have compressed a bale of hay.

They tied me up again, too. Will Cary had charge of the entire job, and he did a good one, you can be sure.

When we were tied up, and when wires had been used to make sure what ropes apparently were not able to accomplish, Will Cary stood over Clonmel where the giant was stretched on the floor, unable to stir.

"I've got you—and I've got her!" said Will Cary.

I wondered, for a moment, what he was talking about, and then I heard Clonmel laugh.

"You haven't got her," he declared. "You haven't even got the ghost of her. She's seen the truth about you, Cary, and she smiles when she thinks about you!"

Cary pulled back his foot and kicked Clonmel in the face. I saw blood come to answer the blow, but Clonmel kept on laughing. Cary stood trembling and cursing over his man, for a moment, and then went out and ordered the others out ahead of him. When it came to the killing of Clonmel, at the will of the old man, I had an idea that Will Cary would have the ordering of it. If superior hate counted, he would certainly be selected for the job.

We could hear the voices muttering outside the smoke-house, now, and there was an occasional glinting of a lantern through one of the chinks as a guard walked up and down, carrying his light with him.

"I'm sorry," said Clonmel, "but better to have tried that than to be twiddling our thumbs. Talk to me, Bill. Talk to me about Will Cary. Fine, upstanding fellow to look at, isn't he?"

"As handsome as I ever saw, barring one," I answered. I did not tell him that the exception was himself. "I hated to see what he did to you, Harry."

Clonmel actually laughed again. What a man he was!

"I'm going to sing a little serenade for my girl. D'you think she cares a rap about me, Bill?"

"Cares about you? She's dizzy about you. But she's not for you, maybe."

"She's up here, I think," said Clonmel, "and if she is, she has to know that I'm out here."

He rolled over and put his mouth close to one of the chinks through which the lantern light glowed, now and again. Then he opened his throat and sang such a rollicking, thundering, ringing song as I'd never heard come out of a human being before.

A hand beat on the door of the smoke-house almost at once.

"Be still!" called Will Cary.

Clonmel kept on with his song until it ended. But by that time Cary had torn the door open and rushed in with his lantern in one hand and a gun in the other. He was a raging devil.

"I ought to empty the lantern on you and let you burn for a wick!" said Cary. "By thunder, I think I'll do it."

"Tell her that I was singing for her when you murdered me, Will," said Clonmel. "No, you won't have to tell her. She's heard me and the song both, by this time."

Cary swung up the lantern. I thought he would bring it down with a crash across the face of Clonmel, but instead he held his hand and stepped back. Whatever was in him for utterance, he could not get it past his lips, and he turned and walked slowly back through the open door. It slammed heavily behind him. The key ground in the lock, and I heard it rattle as it was withdrawn again.

"What possessed you?" I asked Clonmel.

"She had to know that I'm here," said Clonmel. "If she cares a rap about me, it'll keep her from mating with any Cary after I'm gone. Even if she doesn't care about me, she may ask a few questions that'll make them tell a few lies. And so, something of me lives after me."

I thought that over. There was a good deal in what he said, though his mind was not like the minds of others. I was still lying there, pondering him even more than I thought about our danger, when I thought I heard a very light, scratching sound, as though a cat were sharpening its claws against the wall outside. But this noise progressed steadily up the logs toward the roof.

AFTER a moment, I rolled myself over toward Clonmel and whispered to him what I thought I heard. He agreed. He had heard the same thing. He pointed out that the sound now seemed to be coming forward along the roof.

"Is it Silver?" he murmured.

"I don't know," I said. "Unless he has more than one man to help him, what can he possibly manage to do here?"

"He doesn't doubt himself as much as you doubt him!" suggested Clonmel. "But they can't work up the logs of that roofing—not without crowbars and a lot of noise. What'll they do ? They'll simply try the front door."

"While a man's walking up and down in front of it, on guard?" said I.

"That's all right," answered Clonmel, still in a whisper. "Jim Silver won't give up the ship, old son."

I could feel my pulse in my forehead and in my lips. There's nothing more exhausting than long fear, long expectation, and I felt as though my endurance had rubbed thin as a shingle, ready to break at a touch. I rolled over to the front wall and put my eye at the largest chink I could find between the floor and the edge of the wall.

I could see the guard pacing up and down. His lantern was hung on the side of a tree. The light of it stretched his shadow long or short along the ground.

He was a fellow I had not noticed before. He was close to forty, big and splendidly made, like all of the Carys, and wearing a short beard that was trimmed to a point. It was stiffly curling and such a glossy black that in certain lights it glistened like colored glass. The sheen of his eyes, under the deep brim of his hat, matched the gloss of his beard. He made a romantic figure, as he strode along there with a fine swing, but it wasn't his magnificence that impressed me. It was the rifle that he carried under his arm, and the pair of revolvers that weighted his cartridge belt. He had an air of authority. He had the air of one who would astonish himself if he missed a shot.

When he came to the end of his beat, though he was out of sight, I could hear him speak, each time. He said softly: "Hi!" or "Here!" as he turned to swing back past the front of the smoke-house once more. Now that I was listening for the sounds, with my ear close to the chink, I could hear dim answers, and I knew that other men were walking on at least two other sides of the building.

If those were friends of ours on the top of the house, how had they managed to climb there, unobserved? That was what baffled me. I gave up hope at once and decided that they could not be friends, but must be another pair of guards. It seemed that the Carys were ready to treat Jim Silver and Taxi as though they were a pair of hawks that were apt to drop down out of the sky!

That metaphor had just occurred to me when my bearded man came striding along about opposite the door. He stopped, looked up suddenly, so that I saw the strange white of his throat beneath the beard. And that was the moment that the blow struck him.

The object moved so fast that I could not tell what it was, for an instant. Then I saw the guard lying on the ground, and a big man rising from the prostrate form. That big man was Jim Silver!

My heart gave one great stroke, then all the blood in my body ran warmly and easily through the channels. For, if Silver was there, only a fool would stop hoping.

As Silver rose, the big guard threw up his hands. Silver leaned and struck him behind the ear. I heard the dull, clicking noise as though the knuckles sounded through the thin flesh against the bone of the skull. The guard turned limp. Silver straightened, and caught out of the air another form, softening the fall so that the man alighted noiselessly on the ground. That was Taxi, who sprang instantly out of my field of vision toward the door, while Silver scooped the hat of the fallen man off, jerked it over his own head, and caught the rifle up under his arm.

Then he in his turn stepped out of my line of sight, and a moment later I heard him say softly: "Hi!" at the next corner of the building.

At the same time, a light, scratching sound of metal against metal began in the lock of the door.

I could understand the idea then, though it was the sort of a thought that only the calmest brain in the world could have conceived in the beginning, or the steeliest nerves have attempted to execute. Somehow, the pair of them had managed to get up the rear of the smoke-house, and, working across the roof, Silver had dropped out of the air and had flattened the guard on duty there. Besides, he was to walk up and down and give a glimpse of himself at the alternate corners, repeating the single word each time, as the others were doing. And while he in this manner kept up the face of things, Taxi was to pick the lock and set us free.

I could remember more stories about Taxi now. It was said that, before he joined Silver, he had made his living by his mastery of that same art of picking locks. Well, I wished him millions of dollars' reward, no matter how he came by it, if only he could succeed in mastering the intricacies of that big steel lock which secured the smoke-house against thieves.

Just there, when my hopes were beginning to gallop like horses, I heard a voice from the rear of the cabin sing out loudly:

"Pete? Pete?"

"Hi?" called the guarded voice of Jim Silver.

"That you, Pete?" asked the other.

"Oh, the devil—" said Silver, not loudly, and again appeared to me, stepping calmly past the front of the cabin.

I waited, on edge, but there was no repetition of the question from the rear of the smoke-house. That casual answer had soothed the suspicions of the other guard, and I suppose the words were sufficiently natural to cover up any dissimilarity of voices. As a matter of fact, all bass voices have a faculty of sounding more or less alike.

Still the light, scratching sound continued at the door until I heard a heavier noise, though still very subdued, and then the door swayed open. A broad, truncated cone of lantern light appeared in the room, and showed me the broken beam on which I had stood with Clonmel.

Through that light slithered Taxi, with a winking bit of steel in his fingers.

He got to big Clonmel and freed him. I heard the slash of the sharp edge as it went through the ropes. He sprang to me, afterward. And I give you my word that his coming was as soundless as a shadow. An owl could not have moved more softly through the air. It seemed to be a bodiless thing that leaned over me, but it was no ghostly unreality—the fact that I was free, a moment later, from the grip of the ropes.

I got to my feet and swung my arms and flexed my knees to get the blood going and the sense back into my nerves.

Outside, I could hear Jim Silver saying: "Hi!" at a corner of the smoke-house, as he turned on his fake beat. Taxi, gripping me with one hand, and big Clonmel with the other, was saying in a whisper:

"Don't run, but walk. Walk straight out the door, past the trees, around the side of the smoke-house. Walk steadily. Jim and I will be behind you."

I led the way. I suppose it was hard for Clonmel to turn his face for flight before he had had a chance to get his grip on one of those rascals.

However, I could clearly feel and hear him striding behind me as we went out of the door of the smokehouse.

There were clouds in the sky, but there were stars, too, and the look of them was the finest thing that ever came to my eyes, I can promise you. And if I looked at the stars, the stars seemed to be looking right back at me!

I stepped past the motionless length of the bearded man, Pete. His arms were stretched straight out at his sides. His mouth was open, and he looked more dead than stunned.

I went beneath the big hood of the branches of the tree where the lantern was hung, and then into the cone of shadow on the farther side of the tree. It certainly felt good to me, that shadow.

The big, sprawling house of the Carys was before me now. I went around the corner of it with Clonmel now stepping at my side. Indoors, we heard voices, and then a hearty burst of laughter startled me. It was oddly as though someone had been watching us all the time and now were deriding our silly little efforts to escape.

I had to think back with a start to Jim Silver. I had to remember that Jim Silver never did silly things.

Except, somehow, that he had let Clonmel take Parade and Frosty!

Then we were in front of the house, where a full dozen of saddled horses were tied to two long hitch racks.

A light footfall came up from behind me. That was Taxi, whispering:

"Take every horse. Tie the reins together. We've got to delay 'em, old man. Don't be rattled. Steady, old man!"

Steady? Yes, if I could make my fingers behave like flesh and blood instead of like frozen pieces of nerveless wood. But I began to untie the horses, one after another. One of them threw up his head suddenly, and the rattling of the bridle made my heart jump. It seemed to me louder than the chiming of heavy church bells.

Then from the rear of the house came the thing that I was set for, that my whole soul was ready and opened by dread to perceive, so that the echoes of the noise ran through me and set all the nerves tingling like responsive wires. It was the short, heavy bark of a revolver!

I had four of the horses linked up. I got into the first saddle with one jump. A trained circus athlete could never have mounted faster. I pulled the head of the mustang around, and it seemed to me that it took a whole minute to get the iron-mouthed brute turned.

If only I had had spurs! Whereas I had only heels to grind into the ribs of the horse!

The sound of the gun had echoed through my soul; it had echoed through the house, too, and started doors banging and heavy feet bumping here and there. More gunshots followed, and then voices began to yell the alarm.

I tried to untangle the sounds in my memory and recall what they were, but I can only remember one word, over and over again: "Silver! Silver! Silver!"