Authors: Max Brand
It was dark, and the chief of the Drummon clan had not yet chosen definitely among the thousand schemes of torture which had been drifting through his mind.
Many a rare device had made him grin and smack his thick lips with laughter; but when he stared again at the big body of Silvertip and thought of what this man had accomplished already in the Haverhill Valley, besides uncounted exploits in other places, it always seemed to Drummon that his best ideas were inadequate.
Besides, there was no hurry.
There was no danger from the Montereys, for he had tied their right hand; he had paralyzed them by taking Silvertip.
Now he could sit back at his ease, like a spider that has lashed its victims in the sticky silk from its spinerets, and contemplate in advance the joy that would be his.
He was still contemplating when Bandini arrived, at the very moment when the supper gong was booming like a church bell, calling the Drummons to their food.
Silvertip, turning his head, saw the slender Mexican walk into the room, laughing, and, still laughing, come to stand over the prisoner.
"You see?" said Drummon to the traitor. "Silvertip's wearin' out. I been waitin' a good long part of the day for him to give up and start groanin', but he ain't quite weak enough yet. When we washed him in salt water, you could see the flash of his eyes as he rolled 'em from side to side.
But all he's been doin' since then is to open his hands and shut 'em, like a fish workin' its gills. He's in hell, Bandini."
"That's where he belongs," said the Mexican. "That's where he'll stay. But what do you mean by letting him stay alive this long?"
"What do I mean by-" began Drummon, his voice rousing to a roar of anger. Then he stopped himself and sat with his swollen face, puffing and glaring. "Well, Bandini," he said, "you've done your share of work for me, and you been useful. But don't start tellin' me what to do. I ain't used to it, and I won't stand it."
"You'd better stand more than that," said Bandini. "I can tell you things about this devil that you won't believe. I can tell you that where a snake can slip, he'll pass, also. I can tell you of pinches he's been in that would have cost the lives of twenty men, but he always gets out. The harder you shut your hand on him, the farther he pops away-like a wet watermelon seed."
"Yeah?" growled Drummon.
He swung his heavy head and glowered at the captive.
"Silver!" he commanded.
"Well?" said Silvertip.
"Your legs is free enough. Stand up," directed Drummon.
There was no point in opposing him. Silvertip swung his legs from the couch and put them on the floor. The move was an agony. He rose half to his feet, but there his bruised leg muscles refused to support him, and he pitched to the floor on his hands. His arms were strong enough, but the rest of his body was inert as a worm.
Both Drummon and the Mexican laughed loudly. "You see?" said Drummon in triumph.
"I see," said Bandini. "It's all right if it's real, if he's not pretending."
"I'll answer for that," said Drummon. "If he wasn't made of whalebone and India rubber, every bone in his body would 'a' been busted by the dragging that they gave him on the way here. He's done for. He's as good as in a grave. All it needs is for me to pick out the right way of layin' on the finishin' touches."
"Lay them on soon," advised Bandini, shaking his hea
d
and frowning. "His hands are still strong enough, and there's magic in them."
"You been useful to me," said Drummon, "but advice is something that I don't like and I don't want, no matter what you done for me."
"What I've done is nothing," said the Mexican. "What I'm going to do is the important thing."
"More important than catching that piece of wildfire?" asked Drummon, pointing to Silvertip.
The captive turned his head as he lay on the floor, and regarded Bandini. The Mexican stepped to him and kicked the prostrate, helpless body, not hard, but as a gesture of infinite contempt.
"Aye, Silver," he said. "I can do more than handle you. Brains, Silver; brains, Senior Silver. That's what a man needs to beat you. You have a fairly good head-but not strong enough in brains, Silvertip. And that's why I've picked you up in the hollow of my hand and closed the fingers on you one by one. You can listen to what my brains are working on now. Monterey-you came to fight for him. You'd take the place of his son. You'd be the hero, eh? Oh, you're a hero, well enough-but Bandini undoes all that you've tried to do-in one day!"
He turned back to Drummon, who was leaning forward in his chair, scowling with incredulity.
"I give you the Monterey house and all the people in it-at my own price! You understand?" said Bandini.
"Price?" shouted Drummon. "Price? I'll sell my soul and give you the price of that! Open the house of Monterey to me? Can you do that?"
"Aye," said Bandini, "and all that I want is part of the price of the things that are inside."
"Tell me what," said the other. "Speak out, you fool, before I burn up!"
"The price," said Bandini, "is all in one room. An old safe, Drummon. I want the lining of it!"
"You'll have it," said Drummon. He paused suddenly with a groan of distress.
"I know what you mean," he said. "It's the safe where the old man has piled up his money for twenty-five years. And you're to get that? It'll make you rich-it would make the whole Drummon tribe rich, too. But that's no matter.
What I want is to put an end to twenty-five years of waitin'. And the end may be comin' now! You mean what you say? You can open the house to us?"
"You give your word?" demanded Bandini.
"Give my word? Yes, and my hand with it! Here!"
Drummon stretched out his massive arm, but the other pushed it aside rudely.
"Call in the rest," he demanded. "I want witnesses. I want the crew of 'em to be witnesses."
Drummon's voice rose to the bellow of a bull; and all the pattering of feet and the noise of voices that had moved toward the house at the summons from the supper gong now focused like the sound of a storm toward the chief's room.
They came in a flood to answer him, the big, burly, heavy-faced men standing shoulder to shoulder, thronging around their wounded leader. And they stared hungrily down at Silvertip, stretched on the floor.
They seemed to think that the moment for ending him had surely come at last.
But Hank Drummon was shouting: "Here's Bandini wants witnesses that I swear to give him the safe of Monterey and every dollar that's in it, and I swear it now, in front of the whole of you. You hear me talk? Here's my right hand!" He raised it. "I'll give the safe to Bandini if he shows us the way into the Monterey house!"
"Into the house?" rumbled the chorus.
"Yes, into the house!" said Bandini. "There's an old door that leads to the cellar at the bottom of the cliff. It was walled up. But it's not walled up now, my friends. It's ready to be opened from the outside. I worked a few hours to-day, and the wall that used to block it up is gone."
They shouted. They smote each other on the shoulders. They looked about them with glimmering, drunken eyes. And the outcry which they had raised spread as if in strangely distorted echoes through the house, where women and children began to laugh and shout.
Presently Drummon cried: "We'll start now!"
"It's the best time," said Bandini. "They're weak as ' children over there at the Monterey house. They're expecting the sky to fall, and they're ready to run at a whisper since they've lost this Silvertip, this Senior Silvertip, as they love to call him. Bah! The girl's white as a sheet, and shaking. Loves you, Silver, does she? Lost her heart to the great gringo, eh? Well, if you ever see her again, it will have to be in another world. Because you'll kill him before we start?"
He turned to Hank Drummon as he spoke the las
t
words.
But Hank Drummon pursed out his lips and then shook his head.
"There ain't time to do the job right, and when this gent dies, he's goin' to die right."
He added, rolling from side to side in the chair:
"Take me out of this. Rig that litter up. I'm goin' to be on hand when the Monterey house goes down. I'm goin' to be there. Here, Runt. You stay and take care of this gent- this Silvertip. Make sure of him."
"And leave me out of the big party?" shouted the Runt.
"Listen, Senor," said Bandini to the Runt. "To take care of Silvertip might be a harder job than to capture the Monterey house."
Chapter
XXIV
The Time to Di
e
THE rage and the despair of Runt was a thing frightful to watch when he saw the rest of the Drummons throng out of the room. Hank Drummon himself could be heard cursing violently all the way to the outside of the house, where the horse litter was brought up for him, and the yelling of the Drummons went up through the brain of Silvertip like so many towering columns of flame.
It was the end of the Montereys, he knew. Suddenly he looked up to the ceiling of the room and wondered, desperately, how Heaven could permit him to lie there helpless while the Drummons rolled on, like so many wild beasts, to the accomplishment of their purpose.
The Runt stood over him with hands that moved and twisted like two great, hairy spiders.
"I ain't goin' to stay here!" said the Runt. "I won't be left out of the killin' of the Montereys! I'm goin' to get over there if I gotta wring your neck before I go-your damn neck!" he repeated through his teeth, and, leaning, he fixed his grasp on the throat of Silvertip.
The whole massive body of Silver was lifted lightly in the frightful grasp of the Runt.
But as the shoulders of Silvertip were heaved high, his long arms gave him the chance he wanted. Too late, the Runt felt the weight of the revolver slipped out of the holster on his thigh.
He released his hold, and Silvertip fell heavily back upon the floor. A shower of red sparks flashed in front of his eyes, but through them he was seeing the Runt and covering him carefully. And the Runt moaning, trembling with eagerness to attack, hung on tiptoe, controlled by the small, dark mouth of the gun.
"Pick me up," said Silvertip.
"You mean it?" asked the Runt.
"I mean it. Pick me up and carry me in your arms."
"I'll see you damned first," said the Drummon.
"D'you think I'll hesitate about shooting, Runt?" said Silvertip. "Pick me up, and handle me with care. You're strong enough for the job. Put me astraddle on your back, because I can't stand. And move slowly-my finger's on the trigger all the time."
Cursing through his teeth in long, whispering, frothing sounds, the Runt lifted that burden and shuddered under it. But the pressure of the muzzle of the gun against his body ruled him.
He opened the side door and carried Silvertip out into the open night.
There was little danger for the moment.
The men of the Drummons were, without exception, journeying through the night; slowly, because the horse litter that supported Hank Drummon could not be moved rapidly. And as for the women and children, they were gathered inside the big house, celebrating in anticipation of the ending of the long feud.
So the Runt got Silvertip safely to the barn. His back against the manger, Silver directed the choice of a horse and the saddling of it, and finally he was lifted up and his feet fitted into the stirrups, and then tied there, and the rope passed beneath the belly of the horse.
If there were a fall, he would be killed by the rolling of the horse; but there must be no fall.
At the door of the barn he gathered the reins and let the Runt step back.
"Don't follow me, Runt," he said. "It's no use. I'll b
e
safely off before you can have a nag saddled and get a gun. Run for your own life, because when Hank Drummon knows that you've let me get away, he'll flay you again the way you were flayed once before. But this time you won't live through it."
Then he loosed the reins, and the horse fled through the dark.
Every swing of that gallop was a torture to the rider. And his battered legs refused to take and sustain a hold, so that his weight kept slipping to one side and then to the other. With his hands on the pommel, he had to right himself, and the strength even of his arms began to give way.
He reached the river. Its bright face was a blurred flash, tarnished by the pain he endured.
The dashing of the water wet him to the shoulders, and was a blessing of assuaging coolness.
And then he went on, until faintness kept him gasping for breath. Twice he lurched far to the side, and the exquisite pain that he felt was all that rallied his senses.
But his head was bowed on the mane of the horse when, at last, he heard voices not far away, and looked up with amazement to find himself directly before the house of Monterey.
It seemed to him that there was a roaring of tumult in the air, and he thought that the battle must be in progress. But then he realized that it was only the pounding and the thundering of the blood in his own ears.