Crowtown
JIM SILVER had hunted for trouble; he stepped into the path of events, and then they started to overwhelm him. But all was pleasant in the beginning.
It was spring as he came across the mountains, late spring. The wind through the pass was soft. It had been blowing several days, and flowers were blooming wherever it touched. It had dissolved the finger of ice which had been laid on the lip of every cataract all through the months of winter, and now steel-blue water slid down the slopes or poured like feathery snow from the higher rocks. The pain went out of the heart of “Silvertip,” also, and he began to sing as he rode. For it seemed to him that nothing was worth finding except adventure.
Now the trail grew dim. It became so steep that he dismounted to climb the rocks, while the golden stallion followed him like a dog, leaping cat-footed from one meager purchase to another. No man-trained horse could have gone safely over this way, but Parade was wild-raised and wild-caught. Even so, when his master passed out of sight among the rocks now and then, he whinnied anxiously, and Silvertip whistled in answer.
So they came to the top of the old pass and looked down to the new one that wound far below them into the ravine. There lay the little village of Crowtown, half on the floor of the valley, and half climbing one side of the gorge. Paint had never freshened it; it looked the color of dirt. Silvertip stared down at it with a casual eye, and the stallion glanced from the town, which meant sweet hay, grain, and the warmth of a barn, to his master, whose way was generally through the wilderness. Sun-beaten desert or storm-beaten mountains were usually his choice.
Silver would have turned away from the town on this occasion, also, because he felt that he had not yet penetrated far enough into the domain of Barry Christian. He wanted to get to the heart of the district before he ventured among men and tried his hand at the great task. But as he looked down the pitch of the slope, he saw a man riding a tough little mountain horse coming up the grade. Now and again the rider dismounted and led his horse up places where all the strong four legs of the mustang could hardly carry it. The mountaineer was in the saddle again and puffing from his climb before he came up to Silver. Then he threw up both hands in a gesture of astonishment.
“Arizona Jim!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Silver had recognized his man even at a distance. It was his business to remember faces, considering the number of armed men in this world who were constantly on the lookout for him. This was a new section for his exploration, but nevertheless he was on guard. The set of the heavy shoulders of the rider and something reckless and careless about the face made him remember the name.
“Hello, Granger,” he said. “Don’t fall off your horse.”
Granger rode up and shook hands with him.
“But what are you doing here?” asked Granger. “There’s a lot of room up here in the mountains, but there’s not enough room for you and Barry Christian. This is his roost, and you can’t perch on it. Don’t you know that? Some of his men may spot you, and then you’d have no more chance than a Federal marshal, say. Everybody that knows about you, Jim, knows that you spend your time hunting down the crooks. You wouldn’t last — why, you wouldn’t last twenty-four hours down in that Crowtown yonder.”
“Is that the name of it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ride down there with me, and see how long I last, Granger.”
“Not me,” answered Granger, screwing up his face. “I’ve got marching orders.”
“From whom?”
“One of the higher-ups. One of Christian’s lieutenants. I pinched the wrong man the other day. You see,” he explained, “I’m a deputy sheriff, and I pinched one of Christian’s workers last week. Got him into a lot of trouble — thought he was lying when he said that he belonged to the gang — and shipped him out into the hands of the real law and order.”
He waved his arm as though to indicate that far away, beyond these mountains, there was actually a realm where law and order existed in force.
“Result is,” went on Granger, “that I got marching orders. Had to pack up and leave the town — and my wife in it! That’s the devil!”
“You had to ride out — and leave your wife behind you?” demanded Silver. “Do they treat you like that, Granger?”
“Well,” said Granger, “I’m talking pretty freely, but the fact is that it’s a good enough life, all right. Only, when they tell you to toe the mark, you have to toe the mark. If I went back down there, I might be shot out of the saddle.”
“Still,” said Silver, “I think I might be able to look after you. Don’t you think so?”
“You?” said Granger. He eyed Silver curiously.
“What’s in your head?” he asked. “Are you planning to buck Barry Christian?”
His eyes and his gesture called in the mountains to bear witness to such folly.
“I have a special job,” said Silver. “And I’d like to talk to you about things, Granger. Do you think that you’d actually be in danger if you went down there with me and sat for a couple of hours over some beer and answered questions?”
Granger stared at him, turned, looked down toward the village, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“All right,” he said. “But you ought to remember that — Oh, well, I’ve had my marching orders, but, after all, they’ll give me a little more time. I don’t get a chance to talk with Jim Silver every day of the year. Come on, Jim. We’ll find that beer.”
“Well,” said Silver, “if there’s really danger for you down there in the village, perhaps we’d better talk up here? I want to know, for one thing, if Christian is in the habit of sending men off like this — making exiles of them?”
“It’s only for a month or two, I suppose,” said Granger. “But come along back to Crowtown, and we can talk there and have a beer. Hi! I could laugh when I think of what I know — Jim Silver here in the middle of Barry Christian’s country!”
He began to laugh, in fact, as he turned his mustang and went down the slope, but though the mustang was as active as a cat, the big stallion, Parade, fairly passed it on the way down.
Like thunder Silver came, scattering stones and boulders before him, until he galloped Parade into the single street of the town.
The loafers on the veranda of the hotel stood up to see him and the horse, for the flash of Parade was more to the eyes of a Westerner than the gleam of gold. In front of that hotel they paused. Silver slid to the ground, pulled off the light bridle, and told the horse to get a drink. Water was running constantly out of a rusted iron pipe into the double trough in front of the hotel, and Parade tried it with his nose, then plunged his face in almost to the eyes.
Silver stepped aside to watch Granger tie the mustang, and a tight little crowd gathered to look the stallion over. Stockinged in black silk, with a sooty muzzle, also, the rest of him was richest chestnut. The eyes of those mountaineers went over him like loving hands and never touched a fault.
The oldest man took from his mouth a pipe whose stem had been worried short.
“Too big for mountain work,” he said, measuring the seventeen hands of Parade.
“I seen him come down the west slope,” said a boy with horsehide boots. “I seen him come off the old trail that mostly goats has used for years. I reckon he’s a mountain hoss, all right.”
“He come over the old trail,” said two or three men, speaking together.
Parade had finished drinking. He lifted his head and laid back his ears, which was enough to spread out the circle of watchers. He whinnied and canted his head like a dog to hear an answer. The answer came in the form of a thin, piping whistle from inside the hotel; Silver had entered with Granger. Parade straightway went to find the master. He climbed the steps while the crowd hooted with joy. He crossed the rotten boards of the veranda with a crouching step. He was half through the doorway of the entrance when Silver appeared again.
He ordered Parade back into the street. The big stallion went. When he was off the boards at last, he showed his joy of having honest ground beneath him by frolicking like a colt up and down the street, and the size of his leaps made the weather-stained little houses look smaller still.
The crowd sifted up around Jim Silver. It was full of talk.
“Go on and have a chat with ’em, Jim,” said Granger, drawing apart.
It had been warm in the sun. Silver took off his hat to enjoy the shade and the soft spring wind, and the mountaineers studied that young face and the wisdom of the quiet eyes. They marked, above all, the two spots of gray in the hair above his temples, like a pair of horns breaking through; it gave, in short, a half inhuman cast to the face. With his hat on he was a big, brown, cheerful fellow twenty-five, say. With his hat off he looked capable of anything. He was such a man that every heart in that little assemblage instantly yearned to hear the news about him. And many wistful glances were thrown at the oldest man of the village.
He, however, continued to smoke his pipe and admire the golden chestnut, but after a time he pointed the stubby stem of his pipe at the horse and said:
“That’s a big un.”
“Big enough for two,” said Silvertip.
He produced a sack of tobacco with one hand, a pack of wheat-straw papers with the other. His ambidextrous fingers, unguided, unheeded by his eyes, built and rolled the cigarette with instant dispatch. The tip of his tongue sealed the loose lip of the cylinder; a match flared in the hollow of one hand, which mysteriously served as a windshield better than two hands would for most men. And now he was smoking, taking in generous breaths, letting thin wreaths escape while he talked.
“Prospecting, likely,” suggested the old man of the village. “I’ve knowed gents that stayed out two year at a time prospecting.”
His eyes, as he spoke, examined the long-fingered, brown hands of Silvertip, and he saw that the fingers had never been thickened and roughened by grasping the handle of a single jack or a double jack hour after hour.
“Or hunting,” said the old man, “will keep a gent out a long time now and then. I recollect old Si Waltham staying away a year and a half once, and he never — ”
Here a ten-year-old boy cut in with a shrill voice: “Tell us about yourself, mister! Tell us all the news!”
At this the people laughed, but they cut the laughter short in hope that an answer might come, after all.
Silvertip smiled at the lad, and his smile drew the youngster a sudden step or two closer.
“I’ll tell you the whole story of my life, friends,” said he. “I was born over there” — he waved to the northern horizon — ”and I’m going over there” — he indicated the south and west — ”and all the years in between I’ve been on my way.”
The people chuckled. The good nature, the smile, the gentle eyes of this man delighted them, no matter how he put off their inquiries. Besides, in the West it is considered undignified for a man to talk about himself.
“Whatcha going to get when you reach yonder?” asked the boy.
“I’m going to walk right out into the horizon,” said Silver, “and I’m going to dip up a bucket full of skyblue.”
“Hey, and what would you do with that?” asked the boy.
“I’d sell it for paint,” said Silver. “I’d come right back here to Crowtown and sell it for paint.”
They were still chuckling when the tragedy happened.
Silver had seen a man ride into the head of the street on a tough, low-built mustang, a true mountain horse. He had seen, not because there was anything particularly suspicious about the big shoulders and the shaggy beard of the rider, but because it was Silver’s business and necessity to use his eyes constantly. When he was among other men he had to watch faces — and hands! He had to sit in corners, if he could, and a corner near a window was the best place of all, for sometimes he might need a quick exit.
So he saw this fellow ride down the street, jouncing a little in the saddle on account of the harsh gait of the mustang, until he was just in front of the hotel. Then he turned in the saddle with a revolver in his hand and fired.
On the edge of the veranda stood Granger, waiting for Silver to free himself from the crowd. As the shot sounded, it was Granger who threw up his arms above his head and leaned slowly backward and outward, until he pitched off the edge of the veranda and landed in the street with a loose, squashing sound, like a skin of water.
Silvertip had drawn a gun the instant the shot was fired, but he could not shoot in reply, because all the villagers had huddled suddenly between him and the assassin, as though of a common purpose to keep him from using the gun.
“Butch Lawson!” cried several voices, groaning out the words.
“He’ll butcher no more men!” raged Silver, bursting through their ranks.
But “Butch” Lawson was out of sight; there was only a rattle of hoofs in the distance.
Some of the men of Crowtown started picking up the fallen body. Others stood about with clumsy, empty hands, staring at one another.
“Somebody tell Mrs. Granger,” said one.
“No, don’t tell her. She’s poorly, anyway. Don’t tell his wife.”
“She’s gotta be told.”
“Where’s Doc Wilson? I’ll fetch him.”
But not a soul in the assemblage made for a horse or pulled a gun, Silver noted.
A sickness of disgust rushed up from his heart into his throat. It was only owing to his safe conduct that Granger had been willing to return to Crowtown, and now he lay as if dead.
Silver ran to the golden stallion, leaped into the saddle, and turned the horse with a cry and a touch of his knee, while he reached out and tossed the bridle over the head of Parade.
Off to the side he saw the face of Granger as the poor fellow was lifted. The head fell loosely back from the shoulders; the long hair fell back, also; the face was white; the mouth sagged open.
“Death,” said Silver to himself, and raced the stallion down the street.
Except for him, Granger by this time would have been far away in the mountains, riding safely off to his temporary exile.
This thought dug like a knife between the ribs of Silver. He groaned and then drew his breath between his hard-set teeth. So he came out of town, and in view of the northwestern trail.