Valley Thieves (3 page)

We got back to the house, and Charlotte made us some coffee. We sat in the kitchen, as usual, and watched Charlotte mix up the batter for a cake. She'd started baking cake a lot after Harry came out to us.

It was warm and pleasant, sitting in there with the storm yelling louder all the while, drawing back, and then charging us, and laying hands on the shack until the pans started shivering and rattling against one another along the kitchen wall. I remember saying that we would have to dig the foundations and get ready to build another place—not of boards, but of logs. Harry and I would start felling the trees right away.

"Dad," Al said, "you always talk about building a house, but we're never going to have a good one."

"Why not?" I asked him.

"Because Ma wants a cave or a palace; she don't want nothing in between," said Al.

I looked down at the floor to cover my grin, because what Al said of Charlotte was just about true. She remarked :

"I don't want you to refer to me as 'Ma,' and how does 'don't want nothing' sound to your own ears, Alfred?"

"Is it wrong?" asked Al.

She was so angry at that, that she began to breathe last and hard.

"You know perfectly well it's wrong," she said. "If It's the last act of my life, I'm going to insist on good grammar from you, Alfred. It takes just as much breath to speak incorrectly as it does to use proper words."

"I heard old Pie Jennings talk the other day," said Al. "He don't have to stop when he draws in his breath. It's like whistling, the way he talks. He was swearing at his off leader, and the way he burned that gray mule was enough to—"

"Oh, Bill Avon," said Charlotte to me, "do you see what's happening to my son? Do you see how rude, rough, vulgar men are going to—"

She came to a stop, her voice all trembling.

I was uncomfortable. Al looked at Harry Clonmel, and Clonmel looked back at Al with an empty eye. Just then the wind whistled on its highest pitch, a blow fell against the kitchen door, it was jerked open, and Julie Perigord came into the room with a sway and a stagger. The draft went rattling off through the house as Clonmel reached the door and shoved it shut.

"Wow!" said Julie. "What a zipper this one is!"

She was very cold. The white of it had fingered her face, here and there, and the blue shadow was around her mouth.

I asked her where her horse was; she said that she'd put it up herself before she came into the house. That touched me. She was such a headlong, wild girl, that one didn't expect her to show so much consideration.

Charlotte pulled off the dripping slicker and wrapped Julie in a big blanket. It made her look like an Indian, what with her black hair and brown-black eyes and her swarthy skin—before the color came up in her cheeks.

"What brought you up here in this sort of weather ?" asked Charlotte. "The storm must have been in sight for some time before you ever started through the pass."

"Of course it was," said Julie. "But Will Cary told me not to start and he was so proud and strong and sure of everything that I just came along anyway, to put him in his place." She explained to Harry Clonmel:

"Will Cary's the fellow who's going to marry me. That's what he says, anyway."

Clonmel said nothing. He just got hold of the coffee pot and poured her a cup of the coffee. Then he stood by and watched her sipping the hot stuff, and his eyes kept drifting contentedly from the cup to her face and back again. It was easy to see that he could keep on looking for a long time. That was no wonder. Julie was the sort of a girl who knocks the spots out of a crowd of other girls as soon as she appears. She trailed a dust cloud over all the other females every time she rode by. The brightness of her seemed to put Charlotte, for instance, right out of the room.

I remember thinking, as I looked at her, that it would take somebody like Will Cary to rouse her even to disobedience. She had the daring of any man, the strength of most men, and a spirit, in addition, that could have been the admiration of arch fiend or arch-angel. Clonmel was feeding his eyes on her. I knew, somehow, that the results of this day would be more than apparent later on.

The first effects were not long in showing.

Charlotte was saying: "You know, Julie, that you can't trifle with Will Cary."

"Will can't trifle with me," said Julie. "He has to know that, too. I'm not the sort to marry a man and leave him."

That was rather neatly put. She would do her finding out before she took the step that might be irrevocable in her eyes. It was always that way with Julie. She might do a great deal of balking and shying, but always because she thought she saw something wrong.

"Commands are a temptation—to some people," I said. "Will ought to know by this time."

She paid no attention to me, for a moment. She had found Harry Clonmel with her mind as well as with her eyes, and she was staring at him with a frank interest, half smiling with pleasure to see such a sight.

"That's a lot of man to find inside of one skin," she said. "Why don't you introduce me, Bill?"

WHEN I introduced them, they each wore a faint smile, faintly shining eyes, as though each understood that a good deal was being seen at that moment.

"You've tucked yourself into a quiet corner," said Julie. "Who are you going to scare when you pop out?"

He kept on smiling at her, as though answering with words would be no good at all. But Al piped up:

"He's the strongest man you ever saw, Julie."

"Well, I've seen some strong ones," said Julie. "That's why riding through the pass into the storm was worth while. You know who I saw in the narrows of the pass, Charlotte?"

My wife gaped and waited.

"I saw the last man in the world that you'd expect. I saw Jim Silver," said Julie.

That famous name came home to me with a shock. It always did. I never had seen him, but he had been in the Blue Waters almost more than in any other part of the West, and, of course, I had heard plenty of stories about him. Charlotte had actually met him, and she told us how gentle and kind he was.

"You saw Jim Silver?" she cried now.

"I did. I saw Jim Silver, and Parade, and Frosty, too. That's the biggest dog I ever saw, Charlotte. He's a whale. If he isn't a wolf, he's first cousin of a wolf."

"Frosty
is
a wolf," said I.

"Nonsense," said my wife. "No wolf was ever tamed."

"This one is only tame for Silver," said I.

"Don't split hairs," said Charlotte testily. "Go on, Julie. You saw Jim Silver? My goodness, when I saw him— But you'd seen him before?"

"I hadn't. Not with my own eyes. I've heard so much about him, though, that I should have recognized him. But it was only Parade and Frosty that spotted him for me. That stallion is big enough to carry even you, Harry Clonmel, as easily as a feather."

"Maybe I'd better get that horse, then," said Clonmel.

The girl laughed. So did Charlotte and I. Other men had tried to get the big golden stallion from Jim Silver. What happened to them was enough to fill a book.

"When you get Parade, get Frosty, too," said Julie Perigord. "Silver has made a team of them. You might as well do the same thing."

"Why not?" said Clonmel.

"Well, when you get 'em, come ask me to go riding with you, will you?" said Julie. She went on to say to my wife: "I could see Parade shine through the clouds! The fog was blowing through the pass, and I saw Parade shine as though he were a horse of gold. And then I spotted Frosty, running back like a wisp of the gray mist to report to his master, I suppose. Afterward, I lost sight of them. The mist was closing in. When it cleared again, close by me, Jim Silver came breaking out of the cloud, with Frosty showing the way and snarling up at me. I mean, Frosty was doing the snarling."

She laughed in her excitement.

Then she went on: "He looked younger than I had expected. I don't think that he's more than thirty. He came right up to me and lifted his hat, and I saw the tufts of gray hair over his temples, like the beginning of little horns. He's handsome. I never knew that. Very brown and handsome, and he has a smile that warms the heart. He told me that I should know that it's dangerous to be up in the pass when the wind blows out of the northwest. I told him that I was all right. He said that I ought to let him come along with me until I was in a safe place. And I wanted to have him come, too, but all at once I thought what a little coward and worthless fool I was, if I took Jim Silver off his trail."

"He was probably hunting Barry Christian again, for all that I knew. I couldn't turn him aside. I swore that I was all right. He told me if I grew confused and couldn't find shelter, if the storm grew any worse, I was to keep on up the mountain along the side of the creek, and I'd find his camp. He'd take care of me. That was romantic enough. Think of sitting at Jim Silver's campfire and having him tell stories to you— about Parade and Frosty, and the trail of Barry Christian. Do you think, Bill, that Barry Christian can be in this part of the world now, since his jail break? Is that why Jim Silver has appeared?"

I shrugged my shoulders and said what everyone knows—that Jim Silver has other reasons for his strange migrations than the trail of Barry Christian. As well to ask a swallow why it flies south for the winter and north for the summer as to ask why Jim Silver appeared and disappeared.

"I've heard of Jim Silver," said Clonmel. "He's a lot of man, I've heard."

"Have you
really
heard of Jim Silver?" said Julie Perigord, mockingly. "You're a real Westerner then, Harry. You must live right on this earth with the rest of us. He's even heard of Jim Silver, Charlotte," she ran on. "Isn't that wonderful? He can probably fry bacon and eat eggs, too. He's not a tenderfoot, after all."

Clonmel smiled right through this bantering, but he was not very amused by it. His color grew a little warmer.

The wind had stopped screaming so loudly by this time. The girl said that she ought to think of starting back, and Clonmel suggested that he should go with her.

"And take me home—where Will. Cary could see you?" asked Julie, who was a little too frank at all times. "You may be so hardy that you've heard of Jim Silver, but I wouldn't have you meet Will Cary at the end of a trail. No, I'll be able to take care of myself."

It was a cruel speech. I blushed for Julie. I blushed for poor Harry Clonmel because he had to listen to it. I saw his jaw set and knew that he meant to make trouble, because of this.

But what trouble could he make? He was a fighting man, a fearless man, but he simply was not familiar with the language of knives and guns that savages like Will Cary spoke. And why ask a man to go to Mars unless he knows the language of the Martians, or can stay long enough to learn it? My big friend Clonmel had done very well, indeed. He was almost at the level of my son Al, with a rifle, and already he was better than Al when it came to handling a man-sized .45 Colt. But that meant that, in mountain parlance, he had exactly a small boy's chance against such warriors as Will Cary. The brutal unfairness of the system against which Clonmel had to compete, struck me hard, just then.

The wind started whistling again.

"If you don't want me to take you home," said Clonmel, "perhaps I'd better go ahead and warn them that you're spending the night here?"

"Oh, they won't care where I am," said Julie. "Dean Cary would be glad to have me blown away for good and all. And if Will gives a rap—well, it will teach him not to give me orders next time. He can let me do as I please!"

There was a good deal of the savage in Julie, all right. I started to protest. Then the wind yelled louder than before. Clonmel said:

"I'd better go tell the Carys that she's staying over night. Hadn't I?"

"Nonsense!" cried Julie. "I'll ride back by myself. If
he
can ride through this weather, I can, too. I'll be my own messenger—and get laughed at for the news I bring!"

She was in a bitter, irritated humor. I suppose she saw that she had put herself in a foolish position, and it was hard for her to feel humble as a result.

There was no need for her to tag her last speech by exclaiming, finally: "A fine thing if I let a tenderfoot get frost-bitten running errands for me!"

She laughed a little as she said that. Clonmel closed his eyes. I think he wanted to break her pretty neck, just then. So did I.

"Tie up your tongue, Julie," I said. "You can see this is no laughing matter. You can't go back through this sort of weather. Listen to that wind!"

"Oh, can't I go back?" she asked dangerously.

"No. I won't let you," said I.

"Don't talk that way to me, please," said Julie, with a good deal of devil in her eyes.

She was acting like a five-year-old. She knew it, and that didn't make it any better.

Charlotte laughed a little and said:

"The Carys are going to be worried because you're gone, but I don't know what we can do, until the wind drops a little. Certainly you can't go back there alone."

"Oh, can't I? I'm going, though," said Julie, and stepped to the door.

I was too amazed by her to interfere. Big Clonmel made one step and caught her wrist.

"Don't be a little fool," he said.

It hit me like a fist. It seemed to hit Julie, too. She turned slowly away from the door. Her face was frozen, she was so moved. She said:

"I
have
been making a fool of myself. Excuse me, Charlotte. Someone had to tell me sooner or later, I suppose."

The wind whistled "Yes" outside the shack. Hail rattled in a volley against the walls of the house, and Charlotte tried to get the talk away to more agreeable tracks. She said that we would simply have to wait until the weather cleared a little. If it got much better, then one of the men would take Julie home—it was only an hour or so through the pass. The one who took her could stay the night at the Cary house. Otherwise, if it were possible, one of us must press through and tell the Cary family that she was safe at our house.

"I'd like to see this Jim Silver," Clonmel said. "What's the look of him?"