Silvertip's Roundup (4 page)

T
AXI
did not “go crazy.” Just that one spark leaped and was delivered out of his fist into the brain of Pokey. Then he was master of himself again.

He saw that these four were as tough a lot as he had ever seen. That went for anywhere. They had brains and they had hands and they knew how to use them. Even Pokey had not come in wide open. He had used a beautiful long straight left that would have torn Taxi's head off his shoulders if it had found a mark. But even far better men than Pokey never could fathom the crooked wiles of that right hook which was partly Paddy's teaching and partly the evil genius of Taxi himself.

Now Taxi could not help wondering what manner of man Barry Christian might be, at whose feet these lesser people sat. And what manner of man, then, was that fellow Silver who made the hunting of Christian his “hobby”?

Silver had lied. That was all. Silver was probably simply another cog in the machine.

The wits of Taxi were moving so fast that he kept seeing everything. It was always like that when he came to a life-and-death moment. He saw everything. Just as he had seen every black wrinkle on the face of the East River that night when the gang left him for dead.

Now he saw the five faces clearly enough to paint them from memory afterwards. He saw the bottles and their images behind them in the long mirror. He saw the one crack in the face of the mirror. He saw the slow hand of Pudge automatically polishing the top of the bar with a stained cloth. He saw how the varnish had been worn off the bar at the inner edge.

“He seems to want some trouble,” said Larue, and smiled.

He kept looking at Taxi as he smiled. And Taxi for the first time looked up with his pale, bright eyes. It was more than a smile that came over his face. It was like silent laughter which did not shake his body. He felt that he was about to die or to kill others. And that cold ecstasy always came over him, like that.

“You're out to get me, boys,” he said. “Isn't that the low-down?”

“Look out the door, Babe,” said Larue.

Babe went to the door and looked out into the street. Pudge threw the polishing cloth away and leaned and picked up something from the shelf under the bar. Taxi knew what it was.

“You wanted to do a good job, and so you brought down three more to help you, Larue,” said Taxi. He laughed a little, making a whispering sound with his breath. “You're such a rat, Larue,” he said, “that it's not going to be much fun to lay you out cold!”

He made a little gesture. He was showing his empty hand, but perhaps they would not understand the gesture. He wanted to keep the laughing madness out of his brain, but he knew that he couldn't manage that. In another moment it would take possession and then —

Well, he'd wake up in hell or a bed. Things would be a little blurred in his memory, if he were alive, and the wounds would hurt like the devil.

“Your pals may get me, afterward,” said Taxi, “but you can bet on one thing. You're dead.
You
are dead, Charlie. You're in your grave. No matter what happens to me, I can get out a gun faster than any of the rest of you, and I could kill one man while I'm falling dead.”

He laughed again. He heard the whispering sound of his own breath. They all had their heads down, watching him from under their brows.

“The street's clear,” Babe said.

“All right, boys,” said Larue. “You think I've come to get you, stranger, and I have. I'm going to do it. Right here and now. Unless you want to put up your hands and promise to be good. Then we'll take you along with us. That's our job. Not to kill you unless we have to kill you. We want to take you along. Pudge, is that back door locked?”

“Yeah,” said Pudge, “it's locked, all right.”

The glance of Taxi wandered carefully over the face of Larue. From the corner of his eyes he saw all the rest of them, but he chiefly fed his eyes with the sight of Larue. The man's cheeks were hollowed out, and his nose was reddened toward the tip. His eyes stuck out a little, too. A mop of black hair hung down across his forehead from under the band of his hat.

“But,” said Larue, “if you think I need help to knock you over, you're a fool.”

“Listen, Charlie,” said Scotty. “Don't be a fool. Remember orders and don't get away from yourself.”

“You leave this to me. This is my job,” said Larue. His lips curled back from his teeth.

“You sneakin' fool!” he shouted at Taxi. “D'you think I ain't able to handle you?”

“Start!” said Taxi.

With that flashing double gesture he showed again that his hands were empty. To their tips, his fingers were tingling.

He waited. Charlie Larue had not moved for a gun. The others were ready, but they had not made a move, either. They were watching Taxi and keeping one eye on their leader for the evening.

What was Barry Christian like, if his servants were like this?

“Looks to me,” said Pudge, “as though this hombre wanted to make a little match of it, Charlie.”

“Yeah,” drawled Charlie, “the fool wants to take something. Well, I don't care.”

The voice of Babe boomed from the floor, as it were.

“You got different orders,” said Babe. “Mind what the orders was when we left, Charlie.”

“I'm goin' to blow him up,” said Charlie Larue thoughtfully. “What do I care about orders? He's askin' for something, ain't he?”

“He's asking for something,” said Scotty.

“Yeah,” said Babe, “he's asking for something, all right.”

Babe and Scotty nodded. They considered Taxi with curious eyes.

“Stand back, boys,” said Larue.

They stood back. Scotty dragged the yet senseless body of Pokey for a slight distance and then dropped him with a crash on the floor.

“You're askin' for it,” said Charlie Larue.

“I am,” said Taxi. “You bumped off Joe Feeley and crowded a gun into his fist afterward to make it look like a square fight. But you can't do that with me. It's no good, Larue.”

“Who told you that we pushed a gun into his fist afterward? Did Arizona Jim tell you that?” asked Larue.

“Who's Arizona Jim?” asked Taxi.

Pudge laughed very briefly. His eyes were so busy wavering from side to side, taking in every detail, that he had no time to laugh his fill.

“You don't know who Jim Silver is, eh?” asked Larue. “You never met him, even?” He was sneering.

“I met him once,” said Taxi. “He told me nothing. I simply know that Joe Feeley would eat a whole pack of the sort of cards you boys are.”

“Would he?” said Babe, and chuckled in a profound bass. “This guy is askin' for something,” he added, more softly.

“I'll tell you, brother,” said Larue, smiling. “Feeley was good. He made a good try. But he was slow. Matter of fact, he got his hand on his gun, but his wishbone was split before he had it out in the open. There was a fair start in that match, too; and there's goin' to be a fair start in this one. I'm going to show you what kind of chance a dirty gunman out of the Big Noise has when he's up agin' real work. Are you ready?”

“Ready,” said Taxi.

He made a gesture with his left hand.

“Get over on the same side of the room, will you? I don't want you all around me.”

Deliberately Babe crossed the room with his waddling stride and stood beside Scotty.

“Stand up alongside the bar,” suggested Pudge. “Then you boys'll both have the same kind of light.”

There was a powerful oil lamp hanging from the ceiling just above the bar. The inside of its green shade was a highly polished reflector that threw a dazzling image on the varnish of the bar.

Charlie Larue moved backward gradually.

“Come on up,” he invited.

Taxi came up.

“Look at him,” said Pudge. “This hombre has been there before, and he likes it. He's a laughin' fool, and he likes it!”

“I like it,” said Taxi, with that silent laughter still on his lips. “Somebody give a sign.”

“I'll say ‘Scat,' “ said Pudge.

“That's all right,” said Taxi.

“That'll do,” agreed Larue.

A genial warmth spread through the very heart of Taxi. He had heard about such things in the West. Men made a point, sometimes, of fighting fair. It was not the same process of hunt, find in the dark, shoot that he had been accustomed to. In the Big Noise it was useful to kill a man; it was rarely an honor. Out here — why, a man might build a reputation with his guns!

No wonder he laughed. A sudden glory came over him. He wondered why he had never been west of the Mississippi before.

The light from above was very strong. He bent his head a little to give shadow to his eyes. Charlie Larue had bent his head, also, but the prominence of his eyes seemed to make them catch an extra portion of light.

The seconds fell on the soul now like drops of acid. Pudge must have known it because he started to talk and kept on talking.

“Take it nice and easy, boys,” he said. “When I say the word, you can make your guns jump. Shoot straight, and remember that old Pudge ain't far out of the line of fire. I'm close enough to be hit by the splash of the blood, maybe. A head shot is the best trick in a game like this. Between the eyes ain't bad. A man socked through the body may still keep on shooting, if he's got the real poison in him.”

Pudge was enjoying this scene. He kept turning his head from one of them to the other.

And Taxi stood there under the light, laughing. Sometimes that laughter was an audible whisper.

“He likes it!” said the Babe, from an infinite distance.

“Shut — shut up your mouths!” said Charlie Larue.

There was not a great tremor in his voice, but there was enough. Amazement and disgust poured through Taxi.

“Are you breaking up, Larue?” he asked.

The mouth of Larue opened as if to answer, but he merely licked his lips. His mouth remained open. He began to pant.

He was dead already. No man could handle a gun when his nerves were breaking up like that.

“All right, boys,” said Pudge. “Now I want to tell you a last thing before — ”

Even the omniscient eyes of Taxi had been fastened on the face of Larue to the exclusion of all other things, and now he guessed rather than saw a swift movement on the part of Pudge. He allowed his attention to flicker to the side and then he saw the blow coming. Pudge had taken a Colt by the barrel and swung it for the head. The iron-weighted butt was hardly a foot from Taxi's head when he saw it coming. Even then he had time partially to dodge. Instead of smashing in his temple, the blow landed higher up on his head and knocked him into darkness.

Yet, as he had promised, even while falling, his guns were in his hands. As he slued sidewise toward the floor, he fired from either gun. The left-hand bullet ripped through the ceiling. The right-hand bullet knocked the hat off the head of Charlie Larue.

But Taxi knew nothing about that. He had fired out of darkness with the last flicker of consciousness, as a man might point in the night.

T
AXI
came to his senses with a feeling that a tack hammer was being rapped against the base of his brain and a pair of cymbals crashed in his ears. Then he found that he was lying on his back on the floor of a wagon of some sort, jolting rapidly over an unknown road. His ankles and knees were tied together. His wrists were tied together behind his back. His weight lay on his arms, and they were numb to the shoulders. Something tickled the side of his face. It was blood that ran in a slow, tantalizing stream from a wound that was high on his head.

Above him appeared vague figures, four of them, two on the front seat and two on the rear seat. A chain jingled continually. It ran from his neck to the wrist of one of the men on the rear seat. The driver kept snapping a whip, swearing at the horses. He spoke in the voice of Scotty, saying:

“Come on, Bec. Come on, Bird. Bec, climb into that collar. I'm going to tear the outside lining off you, Bird, and don't you forget it. Giddap, girls.”

He kept saying these things in a soft voice. Finally a high-pitched snarl came from the rear seat; it was Pokey, saying:

“Shut up your mouth, Scotty; I'm tired of hearing you yap at the plugs. Leave ‘em be! Beat the devil out of ‘em if you wanta. But stop yapping, will you? That doesn't matter to me.”

Scotty said: “He's tired of hearing me yap, says the young man. He doesn't like the way his Uncle Scotty talks to the horses. I wonder how he'd like to hear Scotty talk to a man, eh?”

“Quit the yipping!” exclaimed the voice of Charlie Larue.

“All right, Charlie,” answered Pokey, suddenly subdued.

“All right, Charlie,” said Scotty soothingly.

They spoke as though to a sick child that must be handled with the most tender care. This amazed Taxi. But after a time he thought that he could understand. They had seen Charlie Larue weaken under the barroom light and the fixed stare of Taxi. They had seen him go to pieces until his mouth had fallen open and he had panted like a spent runner. They had seen his lithe, strong body begin to shudder with an ague spell. It was a great deal better to watch a man go to his death than to watch a man's self-respect and confidence die out of him like that.

Even Taxi, remembering, felt a bit sick for the sake of Larue. The whole human race was shamed when a thing like that happened. And as for Joe Feeley, he was sufficiently revenged, no doubt. No matter what deeds of heroism Larue might perform, from now on, men would never forget how, on an occasion, he had grown weak and melted away and become a shuddering girl in the face of danger. The story would be told. Wherever men heard of Larue, they would hear of the hideous ordeal under which he had weakened in the barroom back there in Horseshoe Flat. It was the sort of thing that men linger over and dwell on, because each man knows that his strength is no greater than that of his nerves.

Thinking of that, Taxi looked up at the figures in the rear seat, the bulky shoulders swaying against the stars. The night was clear. By the angle of the wagon bed, they were climbing a stiff slope. The horses pulled with a regular, rhythmic jerk, keeping step, taking the buckboard haltingly along behind them. They already had gone up to a considerable height, because the air was sweet, crisp and cold, and heavily perfumed with the smell of the pine trees.

Taxi told himself that he was about to die. That didn't matter so much. He had spent most of his years in the expectation of death at any moment — except during the times when he was in prison. He had one very ardent wish before the final blow should be struck. He wanted to see Barry Christian who was the master of these four strong men.

Four stronger ones, in a group, Taxi felt that he had never met in one encounter. Even Charlie Larue was strong — perhaps there was more steel in him than in any of the others. Taxi wondered if Charlie would have been the first to weaken if it had not been that the laughing madness had come upon Taxi and perhaps made him seem more demon than man. Besides, the light had shone at a troublesome angle into the prominent eyes of Charlie Larue. Perhaps the angle of that light was sufficient to account for the way his nerves had gone to pieces. People are like that. They'll stand a lot of rubbing, but finally with one touch the fine tissue of the soul gives way and lets the darkness enter.

Some one called out. Scotty halted the horses.

“It's all right, Bud. I'm Scotty.”

“I hear you say it,” said “Bud” gruffly. “Flash a light on your face.”

A ray of light bent across the night in a swift arc.

“All right,” said the voice of Bud.

Scotty started the horses on again. One wheel, going over a high bump, rolled Taxi on his side, and he felt in the seam pockets of his coat some of the narrow tubings of his burglar set. He was amazed. He was almost more amazed than delighted to think that these clever fellows had not been able to find the tools of his trade on his person.

But, after all, a man finds only what he expects to find. That's always the way. These people probably had not heard anything about his past record. They had taken the guns away from him and they thought that was the end of his equipment, just as it would be the end of theirs. Perhaps they had felt for a knife and found none and considered the necessity of their search at an end.

Now they climbed down from the seats.

Only Pokey remained. His high, sharp voice said: “Hey, wake up!” And he kicked Taxi in the head.

The blow fell right on his fresh scalp wound. The pain made him hold his breath for an instant. Then he was able to say calmly:

“I'm awake, Pokey.”

“Sit up, then,” said Pokey. “Tryin' to delay the game?”

He caught Taxi by the hair of the head and jerked him into a sitting posture.

“Use your legs. Climb down out of this!” said Pokey.

Taxi rose to his feet by a difficult act of balancing.

“Now jump down,” commanded Pokey.

Taxi jumped. He managed to clear the side of the buckboard and the wheels, but then of course he fell helplessly forward on his face. Luckily he had dropped on grass.

Pokey was laughing. His laughter was high-pitched and long-drawn. It sounded like the neighing of a horse at a little distance.

He got hold of the hair of Taxi's head again.

“Somebody take his feet,” said Pokey.

“I'll do it,” said Scotty. “Lay off him a little, Pokey. He ain't a dog; he's two parts man, anyway.”

“Shut your mouth,” answered Pokey. “Don't try to tell me how to handle him. I'm goin' to kill him! I'm goin' to eat him alive. I'm just getting a few tastes of him now.”

“All right,” said Scotty carelessly. “I don't care what you do. Come on!”

Charlie Larue and Babe had gone ahead. Now Taxi was carried under the sweet gloom of pine trees, with glimpses of the stars in between. A door opened. They passed into a very dimly lighted hall, and then into a big room.

Down in Horseshoe Flat the air had been hot and still. Up here the air was so cold that it touched his wound with fingers of aching ice. In the big room he heard the fluttering of flames. The place was pleasantly warmed. He saw wreathings of pipe smoke gathering toward the rafters. It was the smoke from a pipe because it was a heavier smell and not so sharp as that of cigarettes.

“Sit him up in that chair,” said a deeply musical voice. “Hold on there — has he been hurt? Too bad, too bad! That's not a way to carry a man. By the hair of the head? Pokey, you're a cruel devil. Never let me see you do that! Never again.”

“Sorry, chief!” said Pokey.

They sat Taxi up in a comfortable canvas chair.

By the way they had been speaking, he was reasonably sure that he was at last in the presence of that great personage, Barry Christian. And he saw before him a man whose looks were worthy of his repute.

He was tall, well-made, with a good thickness of throat and the muscles stuffing out his coat across the breast and over the tips of the shoulders exactly as they should do in a perfect athlete. He was strong. He was very strong. There was not in him quite the suggestion of feline strength and speed that Taxi had felt about “Arizona Jim” Silver, but there was ample muscle about the man.

Yet after a glance, his body disappeared, and only the face remained, for plainly the empire of this fellow was ruled by the brain alone, rather than by hand and brain together. It was a lean, pale, handsome face. The texture and the color of the skin were that of one who leads a life sheltered from wind and rain and sun. The nostrils and mouth were very sensitive. The brow was magnificent, the eyes deeply set in big hollows. And this handsome face, this face that had the sensitive beauty of an artist's, was framed by a soft flow of hair that was worn long.

He wore a long brown smoking jacket of velvet. A heavy cord of braided silk was tied loosely around it. The broad collar fell wide on his shoulders. His feet were incased in slippers of soft red morocco. He looked, in short, like some landscape painter, say, who had retired to the mountains to find the scenes he loved to put on canvas. But Taxi knew that he was in the presence of one of the great criminal minds of the world.