Valley Thieves (17 page)

"I mean, there ain't no reason why Silver shouldn't be here!" he said. "There ain't no good guard put out. There ain't any preparations made to catch him."

A gray-headed, greasy-faced Cary of the second generation said: "Pa, not even Jim Silver is comin' back here. Even Silver has had enough of the Carys to last him for a while. If he
does
come back, he'll come for Parade, and we got that hoss plastered all around with guards. What more d'you ask?"

"That's right, Danny," said the terrible old man. "You tell us what Jim Silver is thinkin' about. You figger and plan on what's in his head, because you oughta know. It's brains like yours that knowed he couldn't get into the smoke-house. You didn't see that the tree behind the smoke-house give him his chance of climbin' up on top of the roof, but outside of that, you figgered everything out fine to keep them two in the smoke-house. All you done was to let 'em get away."

"And right this minute, if he's got the brains of a gnat, Silver oughta be back here in this house listenin' to what I say and laughin' up his sleeve at you. Because he oughta be able to see that the Carys ain't what they used to be. They used to be men, but they've fell off from that a whole lot. And Silver ain't quite blind. He's able to see a few things, I take it. He's got the name of havin' eyes. Maybe he's right here in the house now, in that west room in the top story, layin' a knife into Barry Christian that's done us the honor of comin' here and chummin' with us and trustin' his life in our hands. M'ria, close that their door. They's a draft blowin' in on me."

Maria slipped from under his arm and came to our open door. She stood there for an instant, staring—and her eyes were fixed full on the huge figure of Clonmel, who stood pressed into a corner. By the wideness of her eyes, by the ripple that ran through her body, I knew that she saw him clearly. I waited for the yell of terror and the rush of the armed men.

Instead of that, she stepped back and quietly closed the door so that the darkness was suddenly thick through the room.

I heard the whisper of Taxi saying: "Get ready to meet 'em with lead."

Taxi had noticed what I had noticed, then!

But the whisper of Jim Silver added instantly: "She saw Harry—and she won't tell!"

I could not believe it, but the long moment was drawn out and out and still there was no outbreak in the next room. I heard the voice of the old man begin to drawl on, once more. Then I knew it was true, and that the girl was holding her hand!

When we had worked our way out of that room, I felt as though we had seen the fire and had been in the flames, and that we would certainly get out of the house as fast as possible. But, of course, that was not in the mind of Silver. Taxi, with a couple of glints of light, gave us our location in the next room, and I heard Silver say to him:

"Christian's in the west room, on the second floor —that's this way, Taxi. Go first. You've got the quietest feet."

That was true. Taxi could move like a shadow. He went before us, lighting what lay ahead of us with the thin, quick winkings of his torch. And we followed. Silver was, of course, next in line, with Frosty beside him; Clonmel followed, and I was the last in place as in importance. I was badly frightened, but I remember wondering at the noiselessness of the wolf. The big claws on his feet never scratched or rattled on the steps.

We got up into the hallway above, and it was as crooked a passage as I ever saw. I suppose that was because the additions to the first cabin had been made so irregularly. The hall twisted this way and that and dodged up and down repeatedly as it rose or fell to new levels.

We were well down that hall towards the west end of the crazy building when a door opened right at the foot of the hall and the figure of a tall man stepped out.

It was Christian. I knew him by an indescribable something connected with his carriage of head and shoulders, something proud and confident that distinguished him for all other men I've ever seen.

He came straight down into the blackness of the hallway, after he had shut his door. And I braced myself for the shock when he reached us and Silver should strike him down. Or would Jim Silver take even Christian by surprise and in the darkness, like this?

The footfalls of Christian stopped. He knocked at a door, apparently, and a woman's voice sang out for him to enter.

He pulled the door open, and the light from within streamed out against him.

"Hello, Julie," said Christian. "Hello, Sue."

Not the voice of Julie Perigord answered, but another woman saying harshly:

"I thought you'd be turning up to have a look at the beauty. She's got the looks and the eyes to snag even Barry Christian, eh?"

"Run along, Sue," said Christian. "I want to talk with her."

"So I run along, do I?" said Sue. "And how am I to know that you won't be running the opposite way, pretty quick, and the gal along with you? I've seen you giving the eye to her. I ain't blind, Christian."

"Do you think, Sue," said Christian, "that we would run away from the Carys? Do you think that we'd be such fools?"

"I'll trust a man as far as I can keep a forty-foot rope tied to him," said Sue. "When there's a gal with a face like Julie's mixed up in it, I won't even trust him that far. Understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand," said Christian. "And you don't remember, do you, that Julie Perigord is engaged to Will Cary? What's the matter with you, Sue? You're a bit rattled, aren't you?"

"Her and Will Cary—that was calf love—or no love at all," said Sue. "Well, I'm going to get out and leave you two alone, but I'll bet I catch the devil for it, in the wind-up."

I HEARD a chair pushed back in that room, and the flashlight of Taxi at the same instant glinted on the knob of a door just beside him. He pushed that door open, and we faded into the dark of a room, all of us, while the firm footfall of Sue came out of the next door and turned down the hall.

She kept on talking as she moved.

"Treat him good, Julie," she called. "It ain't every gal in this world that gets a smile from Barry Christian. Mostly he don't smile except on gents with loaded wallets."

She laughed. The sound of her laughter passed away down the hall, and went suddenly dim around a corner. The creaking of her footfall still sounded clearly, moving out of hearing only step by step.

There was only a thin partition between our room and the next. When Christian spoke, it was startlingly as though he were in the darkness on our side of the wall.

"Here we are at last, Julie," he said.

A thickness of silence followed that remark.

"Just thinking things over, or damning me a little, Julie?" he asked.

"Not a little," said the voice of the girl, speaking for the first time.

A breath was caught somewhere close to me. That would be Clonmel, I could imagine.

"And yet," said Christian, "the fact is that you ought to be leaning on me, Julie. There's no good chance for you here. Do you know just how bad your chance really is?"

"I'd like to know," said Julie Perigord.

I liked the way she talked, quietly, with a world of that composure which is like a reserve of strength.

"You'll have to marry a Cary," said Christian. "Does that sound good to you?"

"I won't have to marry a Cary," said the girl. "They know that I've come up here for a different reason."

"Because of that big fellow? Because of Clonmel? Yes, they realize that, and that's the reason they have to make sure of you. You've seen a great deal too much, and you know a great deal too much. You've got to be a Cary—or else you're not going to be anything at all!"

"You think that they'd knock me over the head?" asked Julie.

"No, I don't think that. The old man doesn't like killings. Just a few, now and then, to show that his young men are the right stuff. And he wants most of those killings to take place a good distance from home. But there are ways of persuading a girl to change her mind."

"Are there?" asked Julie.

"For instance—" began Christian.

"I don't want to know what they are," she declared.

"Let it drop, then. I simply want to make sure that you understand."

"I understand they're savages," said Julie.

"Then that leads me straight on to a logical conclusion," said Christian. "I'm rather tired of a lonely life. There's only one way you can dodge out of this place—and that's with my help. What do you think of the idea?"

"Elope with Barry Christian?" said Julie.

"That's the idea. You may have some bad ideas about me, Julie. I deserve a good many of the bad ideas, at that. But there are some decent streaks in me, too. What do you say?"

"On the whole," said Julie, "I suppose I ought to thank you."

"I don't ask for thanks."

"I'm afraid you won't get them, either," said the girl.

"You're going to be hard on me, are you?" asked Christian. It was a wonderful thing to hear the plaintiveness creep into his voice. And what a voice it was! Listening to him on the far side of the wall, I could not help forgetting what I knew about him. Even the nearness of Silver to me in the dark was not entirely enough to keep the truth about Barry Christian in my mind.

"I won't be hard on you," said Julie. "It simply can't be that way. You see?"

"You'd rather stay with the Cary tribe? Is that the truth?"

"That's the truth."

"What makes you detest me so, Julie?"

"Why, I've heard a good deal about you. At secondhand, so to speak."

"How do you mean that?" asked Christian.

"I mean, I've heard what Jim Silver has been through on your trail."

"He's a head-hunter," said Christian. "Are you going to believe all the fairy tales that they tell about Silver?"

"If I couldn't believe in Jim Silver," said Julie, "I don't think that I'd want to believe in
anything
."

"Ah, there's your handsome giant—there's Clonmel," said Christian. "What about him?"

"I love him," said Julie, so quietly that the force of what she said only struck me afterwards. "And love isn't exactly the same as belief. I don't know Harry Clonmel. But I know Jim Silver. Every decent person in the mountains knows Jim Silver and has to believe in him."

"Are you going to throw me out like this?" said Christian. "Isn't it being a little foolish?"

There was a sound like a whispering. My friends were rising from the floor where we had been crouching. The ray from Taxi's torch showed us the door. Taxi opened it. We passed out into the hall, arranged ourselves in a half moon, and then Taxi opened the next door, softly but suddenly.

It made a soft, rushing noise of wind as the draft sucked out after the door. That whispering noise made Christian turn his head and see Jim Silver on the threshold.

RIGHT behind Silver, looming above him, was the half-naked giant, Clonmel. And on the other side of Silver stood the slender form of Taxi. As for me, I didn't count, and I was about out of sight, anyway. But those three must have looked to Christian like three devils out of hell.

The sight lifted him to his feet, slowly, as though an invisible hand had grabbed him by the hair of the head and raised him. I think there was hardly a man in the world with a colder nerve than Barry Christian, but now he turned white. His face was always pale; now it became like clear stone, and his eyes were dark streaks.

Against these odds, he was perfectly helpless.

Julie Perigord got up from the table, also. She looked at the trio in the doorway, and I saw her smile. There were not three men there. For her, there was only Clonmel.

Silver said: "You can put your hands up, Barry."

"Thanks, Jim," said Christian. "I must tell you that if you take another step, I'll yell. You'll have me dead, but the Cary tribe will be picking your bones before my body is cold."

That was true enough. I could see that with a fellow as cool as Christian there was only one thing to do.

And then I heard Silver saying: "Do you think that I'll back out of the house without you, Barry?"

"Why not?" answered Christian. "You'll have the girl. To a fellow of your character, Silver, the righting of a wrong ought to be enough. Tut, tut! You won't leave the poor child here in the hands of the brutal Carys, will you? Not if I know the noble character of Jim Silver."

You see, he was entire master of himself again, after the first deadliness of the shock. There he stood and sneered at his great enemy. I could understand then why Christian had been able to stand out so long against Silver. It was because the man was as great a power for evil as Silver was for good.

"Besides," said Christian, "you have to think about your friends. A young hero, there—Clonmel—and my old companion, Taxi—the lad you saved from the underworld and brought right up into the honest sunshine of life—to say nothing of that flat-faced mug of a Bill Avon, that I see in the rear of the trouble—you don't want to throw them all away, Jim. And most assuredly they'll die with you, if you take another step. I shout, Jim—and the final battle begins!"

It was convincing. Not so convincing as I write it down, but utterly convincing if you had been there to see the flash of his eye and the sneer of his lip.

But Silver took the step forward!

"Better wait there, hadn't you?" said Christian.

The calmness of the pair was what drove knives of ice through me.

"You're a very intelligent fellow, Barry," said Silver, "and you might win out with most people. There's only one valuable thing that I know about you—that is that you value your hide. But if the girl has to become a Cary; if Taxi and Clonmel and poor Bill Avon have to die with me—it's worth the price to wipe you off the earth!"

And he went straight up to Christian.

I saw the lips of Christian part. I saw his chest heave as he drew in a breath. I squinted my eyes against the shock of hearing the cry that would be the death signal for all of us. But the cry did not come. Silver simply took hold of Christian by the wrist and held in his other hand a Colt revolver, by the barrel, so that it would make an efficient club.