Silvertip's Strike (7 page)

“Nothing,” said Silver.

“Nothing?” cried Farrel.

“Not a thing — yet,” said Silver.

“Then you're not worth the powder it would take to blow you up!” shouted Farrel.

Silver closed his half-opened eyes again.

Farrel's footsteps strode to the door and halted there.

“I've said too much,” he growled. “You saved my hide, the other night. I forgot that for a minute. I remember it now. Silver, does it make any difference if I say I'm sorry?”

“Sure. It's all right,” said Silver. “Don't worry about me. Just tell me why Delgas and Rutherford should want to sell all the stock off at about half price, will you?”

He kept his eyes closed, but he could feel young Farrel coming back toward him. The voice of the foreman grew louder, more vibrant again.

“Because,” said Farrel, “if your share is thrown in with theirs and sold, they won't be losing so very much. Because fellows like that always prefer hard cash to anything else in the world. Finally, because, once the cattle are gone, they'll soon have
you
off the ranch — and they hate your heart. I've seen them looking at you when your back was turned. They hate your heart.”

Silver, without opening his eyes, took a sack of tobacco out of a breast pocket, together with a little battered pack of wheat-straw papers. Deftly and blindly he made his cigarette, a trick very worthwhile to one who often must ride at night. He crimped one end of his smoke, put the other between his lips, took out a cube of sulphur matches, and scratched one of them under the arm of his chair.

He allowed that match to burn for an instant so that the sulphur fumes would clear away. Then he lighted his cigarette and threw the match into the air. The flame fluttered out. The match left in the air a little irregular-curving streak of blue smoke. And still the eyes of Silver were not open as he smoked.

Farrel, biting his lips, took heed of all of these details.

“They want me out of the way?” said Silver. “How does having the cattle wangle that for them?”

“Don't you see?” argued the other. “That's your hold on them in this bargain about the leaving of the ranch?”

“I've got the house and the water rights.”

“The house doesn't matter. And the water rights don't matter if there aren't any cattle to need the water. You'll be stuck here with nothing on your hands except the hard cash that you pulled down in the deal. You'll have ho land; you'll have no cows; you'll have to clear out; and then they will manage to sell off the land. They'll pull the wool over the eyes of some fool of a tenderfoot buyer and make him think that he gets the water rights with the land. Isn't that clear?”

Silver whistled.

“I hadn't thought of all that,” said he.

“And now,” urged Farrel, “tell me what you're to do about it, will you?”

“I'm going to think,” said Silver, and continued to smoke with closed eyes.

Farrel endured the picture of indifference as long as he could. Then he turned without a word and strode out of the room.

• • •

Silver continued to lead the life of an idler, rarely leaving the house. He was in bed early. He was up very late. As he sat alone at his breakfast, he could sometimes feel the eye of the girl fixed upon him with a melancholy appeal, but neither she nor Farrel spoke a word to him about the subject of Farrel's anxiety.

It was two days after this that the next step was made toward tragedy. Farrel came into the house in the middle of the day.

Through the window of his room, where he lounged in the easy-chair, Silver saw the foreman come from the corral with bowed head. In the kitchen, Farrel paused for a moment, and Silver heard the girl cry out sharply with pain.

By that, Silver knew what had happened. He knew still better when Farrel stood before him in the room, looking years older, wrinkled about the eyes, drawn, battered of face like one who has faced a great storm for many hours.

“Delgas and Rutherford have fired me,” said Farrel. “They sent me to you for my pay.”

From the expression in the face of Silver, it seemed that he was hearing of a thing with which he had been long familiar.

He took out a wallet.

“What's owing?” he asked.

“I've had fifty from them. You owe me twenty-five.”

Silver passed out the amount and replaced his wallet in his pocket. Farrel went back to the door and made a farewell speech.

“I thought it might be that we could make a fight to save the herd,” he declared. “I thought you might be the one man in the world to beat those crooks. But I guess you're too tired. I'm thanking you for the life that I still walk around with — and — so long, Silver.”

He was half through the doorway when Silver, his hands folded beneath his head, his eyes lazy, turned a little in the chair and asked:

“Where you going, Danny?”

“Going?” answered Danny. “I don't know. I don't care. Just somewhere.”

“Why not stay here?”

“Here? I'm fired, I tell you. I've been paid off.”

“You've been paid off by the ranch. Now I hire you again at the same rate of pay,” said Silver.

At this, Farrel gripped the edge of the door so that the knob of it jangled suddenly. Then he made a quick step back inside the room. He pulled the door shut as carefully as though death were in the making of a sound, and there he stood before Silver, staring with incredulous eyes.

“Sit down and rest your feet,” said Silver.

“Tell me what's in the air?” asked Farrel.

“I'm retaining a good man because I might need him. You've got a room in the house. Go upstairs and use it.”

“How?”

“Go up and lie down and rest.”

“Rest? I don't need to rest.”

“Do what I tell you,” said Silver quietly. “There may be a time ahead when you won't rest for quite a spell. So long, Danny. Go take it easy while you can.”

Farrel looked at him with blazing eyes. “I might have known,” he said, with a trembling voice. “I might have known that you wouldn't lie down and take it — like a dog! I don't care what pops. I'm with you to the finish.” He went out of the room. The keen ear of Silver, afterward, heard the excited babbling of voices in the kitchen, and he smiled.

Delgas and Rutherford came in before supper time, and Delgas said carelessly: “That bum of a Dan Farrel, I gave him the rush to-day. He's no good.”

“He's a tramp,” said Rutherford.

Silver, reclined in his chair, looked over the two of them casually. The face of Rutherford, which generally was the color of a cellar-grown plant, was now patched with sunburn, and his lips were gray from the chapping wind raised by a galloping horse. Dust had reddened the eyes of both men. Delgas had fortified his greasy skin by letting a week's beard darken his face. They sat down uninvited in the room of Silver and lighted cigars.

“Not much cow sense — Farrel?” asked Silver gently.

“Cow sense? No sense at all,” said Delgas. “I been watching him. I been out and around, since I came onto this place. You been layin' low and takin' things easy. That's all right if it's your way, but I mean to make a real ranch out of this dump. Know that, Jim?”

“I'm glad of that,” said Silver.

“I even got Harry Rutherford interested,” said Delgas. “He thinks that some of my ideas are pretty good, eh, Harry?”

Rutherford shrugged his shoulders. He sat on the base of his spine and inhaled the strong smoke of the cigar and then blew it in a swift stream high toward the ceiling.

“What we gotta do is use some brains,” said Delgas. “That's what we gotta do. And I'll tell you the trouble with Farrel. Know what it is?”

“Well?” said Silver.

“No brains,” said Delgas. “Eh, Harry?”

“No brains,” said Rutherford.

“I'm sorry about that,” said Silver. “He looks to me like a decent sort.”

“Yeah. Clean hands,” said Delgas. “Yeah, clean hands and a washout for a brain, eh, Harry?”

“Washout,” said Harry Rutherford, coldly, to the ceiling.

“Just a dumb kind of an hombre,” said Delgas. “It's lucky that we been out and watched him workin' the men. That's the main trouble. The men don't care a thing about him. Eh, Harry?”

“Not a thing,” said Rutherford.

“He looks like something,” went on Delgas, clearing his throat, “and he stands like something, and he sticks out his chest like something. But he ain't nothing at all. He's a blank. So we gave him the bum's rush. Just thought we'd tell you, though.”

“Thanks,” said Silver. He made a cigarette in his unconcerned way.

“You're having a rest, Silver, eh?” said Rutherford, suddenly curious. “From what I knew about you, I thought you were the sort of an hombre that never ran dry, never got out of patience, never knew what it was to quit. That all wrong?”

“I only do what I have to do,” said Silver, smiling.

Rutherford was sitting straight up, his eyes lighted with keen concentration, a focused brilliance.

“You're different from what I thought,” admitted Harry Rutherford.

“Sorry,” said Silver, still smiling.

Rutherford's eyes were darkened by a frown.

“Unless you're putting on a front for me,” said Rutherford.

“Aw, quit tryin' to get behind everything,” protested Delgas, pulling out a flask and putting it to his lips for a long swig. “You take a bird like Harry, that's got brains, and the trouble with him is that he's always trying to use 'em. Know that? Never contented. Always got to keep hammerin' away at people. Give a gent a chance to rest, will you, Harry?”

“Shut up, will you?” answered Rutherford softly. And still he peered at Silver and at the steady, dull-eyed smile with which Silver looked back at him.

Suddenly Rutherford rose, went to the door, paused there, and finally left the room.

Delgas looked after him, his grin gradually widening on both sides of his cigar, his brown-stained lips shining with the juice from the tobacco.

“Funny, ain't he?” he said to Silver. “He's got something in his head, has that bird Rutherford. He
is
like a bird — just like a bird, always cocking his head around and looking at something. He don't give you no peace, not when you're his partner. Now I tell you what — I gotta go and corral him and find out what's made him so shifty on his pins, all at once. See you later, brother.”

He in turn paused at the door.

“You paid off your third to Farrel?” he asked.

“I paid him,” said Silver.

“Good riddance,” said Delgas. “Cheap at twice the price, I say.” He was smiling more broadly than ever as he turned and left the room.

Before supper time, as Silver lay quietly in his chair and watched the evening rise like blue water among the canyons of the mountains, Farrel tapped at the door and came in again. He said uneasily:

“There's going to be an explosion if I walk into that dining room after the pair of them have fired me off the place.”

“Well,” said Silver, couching his big head in his hands again, “there's got to be an explosion some time, and you've had a long rest, this afternoon.”

Farrel went to the window and looked out as though something had suddenly taken his eyes, but Silver knew that he was looking at nothing but the sweetness of life. It might well be that both of them were hardly an hour from the end of everything.

“There has to be a show-down,” said Silver.

“You told 'em that you'd keep me on?”

“No,” said Silver, and watched his man wince. Farrel stepped back from the window and turned a gray face to Silver.

“What's the good?” he asked. “Seven and two make nine. There's nine of 'em. Nine against two. That's not funny.”

“No, that's not funny,” said Silver lazily, yawning out the words.

Farrel suddenly pointed a hand at him and said: “I think you like this sort of a business! It's fun, for you.”

“I don't know,” said Silver. “It just has to be done. That's all.”

Farrel cleared his throat, made a turn through the room, confronted that placid face again.

“Two men can't kill nine. Not nine like them. Not in a closed room. There's no chance.”

“There's no chance,” said Silver, nodding.

“Then what the devil?” demanded Farrel.

“We've got to keep the devil out, I'd say. Keep the devil out of their heads and the guns out of their hands.”

“How?”

“You come in after everybody else has sat down. Will you do that?”

Farrel drew a long breath. His right hand doubled into a fist and then slowly relaxed again.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I'll come in — after everybody else is at the table.”

“Good boy,” said Silver. “You'll be heeled, eh?”

“I've got a gun. So have all the rest of those tramps.”

“Carry two guns, and then you'll be one up on some of them.”

“I thought you said the thing was for us to keep this from coming to a fight?”

“I did,” answered Silver. “But if the fighting starts, we want to scratch them up a little, eh? We want to make a few dents.”

“Silver,” murmured the other, “we may both be dead men, in half an hour!”

“We certainly may,” said Silver. “But there has to be a show-down, or else they're apt simply to pick us up and throw us off the ranch. If they once have us on the run, they'll keep us there.”

Farrel looked out the darkening window and muttered: “Well, it's better than chucking in our hand. I'll walk in — with two guns on me. And then?”

“Well,” said Silver, “after that we'll have to watch the play of the cards. That's all. Just see how they fall.”