Silvertip's Search (13 page)

Thunder sounded high up among the mountain peaks, as though to give an accent to the words of the Mexican. Santos, peering carefully over the edge of the abyss, began to laugh a little breathlessly. He had grown thin during the long pursuit. Some of his dignity had left him, and now that his face was unfleshed, the size of his nose made him look like a bird of prey.

“They're gone,” said Santos. “They can't escape from him, now that they're at such close range. Look at that, Señor Christian, and tell me!”

Christian looked back first at the girl. She was swaying in the saddle though the horse stood still, and in her face there was the blindness of one who is enthralled and totally occupied by nothing except physical suffering.

He squinted at her, weighing the amount of strength that remained to her. Then he looked down at the picture beneath. Right up to the little rough ravine rode Brender and Silver. Behind them Chinook and the golden stallion were on the lead.

“It's true!” exclaimed Christian. “He has them now. He can't miss Silver at the first shot, and he'll get Brender before he can turn and run! They're lost! They're gone!”

He shouted the words loudly, in exultation.

Then the noise died out. Murcio looked with wonder toward Christian and Santos, as though seeking for an explanation which neither of them could offer. For the two riders were now almost on top of the rock. Now they were abreast of it — and yet Blondy continued to aim the rifle down the canyon!

Here Silver swung to the left and reaching over the top of the rock, calmly took the rifle from Blondy, whose body now rolled loosely over on its back!

“Dead!” exclaimed Christian. Then he added in his usual voice of softness: “Ah, there was something in what I told him! That Silver would see whatever a hawk could see. As I said, so he did. Perhaps even from a distance he saw the glint of sunshine on the muzzle of the rifle, and his own rifle was instantly out of its holster — a snapshot from a distance and a bullet through the brain of Blondy! No wonder he lies there so still! Ah, well, that is the way it happens with the rash! One false step destroys them utterly.

“But we, my friends, have now learned something at Blondy's cost. We know how one pays by exposing so much as a bright coat button to a marksman like Silver! What a hand, what an eye, what a magnificent and fearless creature, gentlemen — pushing into the mountains on our trail, though he knows that we might be hidden in force behind any of a thousand rocks or buried in any of the thousand patches of brush!”

“We might be, but we won't,” Murcio said abruptly. It's all very well for a fool like Blondy to give us the proof, but after we have it, we know that life is better than a lot of money and a grave. We're going to keep straight on till we're in Mexico!”

“We are!” agreed Santos. “If she had six million dollars instead of six hundred thousand, we'd still head straight on for Mexico. If we can save her and the money by marching, very well. But as for fighting a devil who snoots by instinct and cannot miss — that, Señor Christian, would be foolish.”

“Very well,” said Christian calmly. “We shall keep on marching, as you suggest, and when it comes to the matter of fighting, then we'll see. Only, my friends, I shall not give up the game until I've been forced to it. It's a matter of principle. Merely a matter of business principle. I must keep the record of the man who never fails. Can I afford to have one black mark against me?”

For the moment, Barry Christian believed this. His hatred of Jim Silver, born of the fact that Silver was the only man who had ever foiled him, had even put black marks against him, was so rampant that the twisted mind failed to remember. What was past, was past, Christian to himself was invincible; only by that belief could he hope to prevail against his archenemy.

The Storm

T
EN
minutes later, they had turned into a pass that pointed through the heart of the mountains. Down that cleft through the range, like water along an immense flume, the storm wind poured and threatened to sweep them from their feet. It was as though the desert sun had lightened them until they were paper figures that the wind could lift and toss away. Such was the fluid weight of that blast that even the horses were again and again stopped or staggered by it.

And the girl was kept in the saddle only by the arm of Christian, who was constantly beside her.

Still they climbed. The ground turned white and slippery beneath them, and all progress was doubly difficult. The breath of the storm was constantly around them, thick as steam, with leaping ghosts and shrieking devils running through it.

The whole whirling mist became a dim conflagration at the time of sunset, when the ardent colors, rose and golden, turned the storm fog to rolling fire.

Murcio came close to Christian.

“We can't go on,” he declared. “Santos is almost ready to fall. So am I!”

“Fall then, my friend,” said Christian. “The snow will soon bury you!”

“We must turn back,” yelled Murcio, waving both arms. “Señor Christian, what good is the girl to you unless you know how to draw the money away from her? And I am the only one who can do that. Besides, she's dying! See her face! She's turning blue. She'd fall to the ground except for your help!”

Christian turned his head and stared for an instant at the swaying body of Rosa. Then he nodded.

“It's true,” he said. “We can't take her on into this gale. Besides, we've almost come to the river. And I know a place where we can spend the night as safely, Murcio, as though we were in Mexico City! You and Santos follow and hold up the girl. I'll go ahead on foot. We have to turn right off the pass. But don't worry. I know the way. Follow me closely. I know these mountains so well, amigo, that I could walk through them with my eyes blindfolded.”

He took the lead accordingly and, turning to the right between the roots of two tall peaks, moved around the side of the left-hand summit right into the fiercest teeth of the wind. It was now almost dark. The storm cloud was so dense as the twilight failed that it was a blindfold pressed close to the eyes. They had to call to one another to make sure that they were in touch, and at last Christian turned straight in through tall brush that grew on a slight shoulder of the mountain.

He found a dead bush, tore it up, beat the water from the leaves, and presently kindled the branches. Then he held up that torch, half flaming and half streaming smoke, and led the way through a cleft hardly three feet wide. It opened into a winding cavern that gained a good deal in width at once and presently rose to such a height that the top of the split was lost to that feeble light. It seemed that the crevice extended to the top of the peak.

For a good fifty feet Christian went on, until he had reached the point of the greatest width. There he paused.

“Take charge of the girl, Murcio,” he said. “Get her between blankets. Santos, unlimber the cooking pans. We can eat here. I'll rustle wood. We'll spend a snug night and when the wind's blown out, we'll go down and ford the river. Anything easier than that?”

By the time the fire was lighted and the fume of bacon and the steam of fragrant coffee was in the air, it seemed in fact that a pleasanter place could hardly be found. After the heat of the desert the sudden cold had bitten them all to the bone, but now they had the fire to warm them and the scent of cookery, and above all there was shelter from the wind. Now and then the storm put its lips to the mouth of the cave and thundered through it as through a vast horn, but as a rule the yelling of the wind was far away.

A great quantity of the brush had been carried in. Some of it had been used for the building of beds on the tops of which the blankets could be spread. More was reserved for fuel. For water they had lumps of snow brought in from the mountainside. There were only two sources of anxiety — could Silver manage to follow the trail they had left, through the darkness, and was the girl seriously ill?

Christian answered both questions in his soft voice.

He bared an arm to the elbow and put the naked flesh against the forehead of the girl.

“Over a hundred,” he said presently. “But not a great deal more. Food and rest from the sun will help her. In a few hours she'll be as sound as can be. That's what I hope at least. She's tough. We've had a chance to see that. She's lost hardly five pounds on the trip, and the rest of us are scarecrows. About Silver — well, I suppose that through the storm and the darkness only one man in ten thousand would even attempt to follow a trail. Let's say that he's the one man in ten thousand. But in addition to the darkness, he'll find that the blowing snow has filled most of the tracks. The cold will begin to freeze them, too. I think that Brender will not be able to hold up, no matter what strength there may be in Silver. Silver will be halted by Brender's weakness. Trust my word when I say that the girl means nothing to Silver, compared with the welfare of his friend.”

He laughed his silent laugh. Then he added:

“For in Señor Silver, my dear friends, we meet the man of the gentle heart which feareth not, the noble soul which quaileth not, and whose love surpasseth the love of man for woman!”

In the bleak grip of the wind, Silver and Brender had actually gained the throat of the pass down which the others had proceeded before them. Flurries of snow or heavy-handed hail beat at them; the wind itself was a hand that thrust into their mouths and made straining pockets of their cheeks when they strove to speak. But still they went on, Silver on foot, Brender in the saddle on the golden stallion, fallen far forward so that his head and shoulders could break the force of the wind and keep it from cutting like a sword through his weakened body.

The other three horses had been abandoned at the mouth of the pass. Chinook was very badly done in. The two mustangs they had secured from Cross-eyed Harry Trench had been ridden out in the last strain of crossing the desert and of staggering up the exhausting face of the mountains. Only Parade remained capable of action. And at last Silver had helped the sinking body of Brender into the saddle on the stallion. It was not easy to keep him there. Parade could hardly be held from bucking the weight of the stranger from the saddle. It was only the hand and the voice and the eye of his master that kept the great stallion from beginning to rear and plunge.

But Silver would not give up the quest. And as long as he went on, Brender would not turn back.

Yet it seemed worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. Now and again, sitting on the ground with legs spread out, Silver would light a match and scan the center of the trail.

That feeble flicker of light would show to Brender the bare head, the starved face of his friend, and the body of Silver wrapped in a saddle blanket as in a cloak, and then the tattered cotton trousers, and the naked shanks, looking absurdly weak and thin, and the blood-stained sandals on the feet.

To Silver, the light was showing no more than the trail itself and the possible imprint of hoofs or of boots. Now and again, when the light showed nothing but drifted snow, with his freezing fingers he could brush off the top of the drift and so find the depressions which the marching feet had left.

And so he would be up and on again.

Sometimes the voice of Brender cried out to him that it was madness and death for them both, but Silver went on.

Then, after long labor, the storm melted out of the sky. In an hour the zenith was clear, and a half moon, standing up in the east, showed them a world of dazzling white summits set against a sky of dark-gray, pointed with the glistening stars.

Brender, wonderfully cheered, seemed to recover half of his lost strength the instant that the wind no longer tore at him.

He climbed down from the saddle and joined Silver in the hunt for a sign.

But not a trace of a track could be found.

They had come too far, and the fugitives must have turned off the course at some point.

So they went back, halting every hundred yards or so to hunt for the impressions of hoofs and feet, until at last they picked up the trail again at a point where a sort of cross pass cut into the main one.

Here they worked on hands and knees, patiently. The cold had increased strangely with the fall of the wind. If it did not bite so deep, it paralyzed the hands and the feet more quickly. They had to stop every moment to stamp and beat their hands together.

But search as they might, they could not find the point at which the sign recommenced. Perhaps the wind had filled all the tracks with a more compacted snow. Perhaps the beating of a flurry of hail had here jammed the snow together into a solid mass.

Silver said at last, and though his voice was quiet, it sounded deep and preternaturally loud in the uncanny silence of that high, white world: “Rap, we'll have to split here. It may be that they've turned off up this canyon — or down it. Or it may be that they've gone a long distance ahead before they turned. Or, for that matter, they may have gone all the way through the pass. But this is where the sign stops, and we'll have to try here to pick up the sign. You turn to the left there. I'll go to the right between the roots of these two mountains. If you find any sign, come back and wait for me here. If I find any sign, I'll come back and wait for you.”

He took the ice-cold hand of Brender. Under the white moon each man looked into the drawn, dark face of the other. Then they parted in silence, and the stallion followed closely behind the footsteps of Silver. He found himself rounding the steep side of the mountain on his own left, presently, for a little gorge opened between this and the adjoining mountain. He came out on a narrow shoulder. Looking down from it, he saw the lofty walls of a canyon, and in the bottom, around one bend, the moon looked in on the rush of a river.

For a moment, in spite of his quest and in spite of the cold, Silver paused there and let the beauty of the place freeze into his soul. And he heard a voice come up to him out of the vast distance, like a tremor running up from the earth into his body. It came from the wide bend where the water frothed white in a cataract.

He swung around to continue on his way, when another voice came to him out of the heart of the rocky mountain — and the sound was that of human laughter!

Something more than cold helped to freeze him now. Then he turned and walked straight into the tall brush that grew here all along the steep. A faint aroma of cookery reached him, and half his fear dissolved at a stroke. If ghosts cooked bacon, he wanted to meet the spirits of that ilk!

Then he found the cleft in the wall of the mountain. It was merely a grayness of light in the solid blackness, a hint rather than an actual gleam of radiance that caught his eye, but it was enough to lead him one step into the gloom.

Then voices and footsteps came toward him. He drew rapidly back. The stallion, at a gesture from the master, turned into a shrinking, cat-like monster, stealing back into the brush. And there, shrouded beside the horse, Silver heard the voice of Murcio, of Santos, and of Christian.

The outlaw was saying: “Go straight on down the shoulder of the mountain. You'll find a pretty steep drop toward the river below. A steep drop, but they say that one wild devil of an Indian actually rode it with a horse, one day. Go down there and hunt for a boat. Look carefully. Somewhere under brush by the bank of the stream you can usually find an old rowboat or a canoe laid up. The rustlers and the smugglers leave them.

“If you find a boat, light two fires in the hollow. Small ones. They'll be enough for me to see. In half an hour I'll come out and look, and if I see the lights, I'll know that you have the boat. And I'll get the girl tied onto one of the horses. She's a lot better now. I'll take her down, and in an hour we'll be on safe soil.”

“He has the moon now, Señor Christian,” said the voice of Murcio, “and with that light he will find anything that can be found.”

“Unless the sight is frozen out of his head,” answered Christian. “Forget about him. There is not one chance in a thousand that he is still on the trail, and a thousand-to-one trail is a long-enough shot to be worth our money, amigos.”

Santos said calmly: “Now that we are in sight of the Mexico we love, I feel a calmness and a surety, Señor Christian. And if we win through, Murcio and I shall never forget what you have done. We shall never forget, Christian, that you have managed to draw us through the pinch. My own heart was water, I know! Adios for a few moments. Come, Murcio. This will be a night to talk of hereafter. The cursed wind, the cold. And most of all, how the poor Blondy lay dead on the rock! Ah! It puts more cold in me to think of that!”

Murcio and big Santos strode off.

“And all the horses?” called Santos from a little distance.

“I'll bring them all,” said Christian. “Don't worry about them. I'll bring them all. The boat's the thing that we want now!”

Santos and Murcio disappeared. Their footfalls passed beyond hearing, and even the noise of their voices went out.

Then Silver came out of his hiding and entered the cave.

Those few moments of standing idle had completed the work of the cold on his body. His very knees seemed frozen stiff.

Slowly he went on, until a turn of a corner brought him blinking into view of the fire. He shrank back against the wall and stared.

He saw the girl lying on a bed of brush near the heat of the fire, wrapped in blankets, her head turning restlessly back and forth, a vague murmur coming from her lips now and then. Her face was foreshortened. It seemed to Silver like the face of a child.

Other beds of brush had been made, but that was no doubt because they had intended to spend the entire night in the cave. The falling of the wind and the clearing of the sky had been enough to bring them out for action, however.