Silvertip's Strike (8 page)

Farrel smiled a twisted smile, saying: “And follow the lead?”

Silver sat up and suddenly caught the hand of the cow-puncher.

“That's it, Danny,” he said. “Play all your cards — and follow the lead!”

Trouble was so thick in the air of the dining room, that night, that the girl seemed to sense it long before the men came in. Perhaps she had been watching their faces through the window, and listening to their voices. At any rate, she had a sick, pale face when Silver walked through the kitchen as the gong sounded. She stood back with a great platter of corn bread to let him pass, and her frightened eyes turned up silently to his face.

“What's the matter, Esther?” he asked her.

She shook her head.

“Say it,” persuaded Silver. “It's better to talk a thing out.”

“What will happen?” she breathed, with a tremor of hysteria in her voice. “What will they do to Danny — and you?”

“What does Danny think?”

“He hasn't said anything. But I know he was fired, and that you took him on again. You don't think — ”

“Everything is going to be all right,” said Silver. “Enough has happened in that dining room already. It ought to be peaceful the rest of its life.”

He walked on into the dining room, where there was a great scuffling of feet and groaning of chair legs as the punchers took their places. One thing was instantly noticeable: Delgas sat at the top of the table, which hitherto had been Silver's place, not because he had any essential right to that chair but because the weight of his name was greater than the repute of either of the other owners of the ranch. Now Delgas was there, squaring his great shoulders.

Silver went down toward the foot of the table and took a vacant chair. Delgas looked at him flat in the eye, saying:

“Turn and turn about, eh, Jim? I thought I'd try the fit of this place.”

All eyes flashed toward Silver. When they saw him merely smile, one of the men burst out with loud laughter. He choked it off suddenly.

It was Red, who was in the act of hanging his sombrero on a peg of the wall; now he changed his mind and put the hat on the back of his head before he sat down. He sat a little sidewise, as though he were ready to talk rather than to eat. And his mischievous, bright eyes went back and forth across the other faces around him.

The clatter of the crockery and the clashing of the knives and forks had begun in another moment when tall Dan Farrel walked quietly through the door.

“Hey! There's the big stiff now!” shouted a puncher.

Farrel got to the vacant chair which had not been noticed before. He was pale. He wore a wooden, brittle smile that made Silver bite his lip. For, without help, he knew that he could never win through the scene that was to come.

All the banter had disappeared from the eyes of the men about the table, as they saw Farrel sitting down. Rutherford looked straight at Silver, and seemed to wait. It was Delgas who heaved himself to his feet and bellowed:

“You bum, you ain't wanted. Get out of that chair! You're fired. Get off the ranch, you namby-pamby blockhead! You ain't wanted. Get out before I throw you out!”

“I'm hired again,” said Farrel, with a barely audible voice. He cleared his throat.

“Hired? You lie!” yelled Delgas, throwing his head from side to side. “You lie and you lie loud! Who hired you again?”

“Jim Silver,” said Farrel, sitting stiffly erect on the edge of his chair.

The words struck a silence through the room. Every man at the table stirred a little, and all eyes centered on Silver, as though Farrel no longer existed.

“You?” called Delgas in a mighty voice. “You hired that fool again?”

“You know, Morrie,” said Silver, “that what's a fool to you might be a wise man to me. We don't all want the same things.”

Delgas looked aside at Rutherford, but Rutherford stared only at Silver, like a hungry cat. He was not paler. He was simply set and ready. Silver folded his arms. He smiled straight back at Delgas.

“We don't want the same things, eh?” said Delgas. “I wanta know what there is around here that you'd like to change?”

The arms of Silver unfolded, and two oversized Colts winged in his hands. One of them pointed at Rutherford. With the left-hand gun he shot the hat off the head of Red.

From the corner of his eye he saw that two guns were now in the hands of Farrel, and he breathed more easily. With that backing, he might win.

Out of the kitchen came a scream, and Silver surmised that the girl was watching through the dining-room doorway. Rutherford sat with his right hand deep beneath his coat, motionless. He had been fully prepared, and yet he was a thousandth part of a second too late, and knew it. Delgas, too, had flung a hand back to his hip and kept it there. Not a man at the table that had failed to make a move toward a gun, only to have the firing of the shot make each one realize that he was too late and that he, perhaps, would be the next target.

As for Red, he had ducked his head forward and looked at Silver as if at a hangman who was about to drop the trap.

All of this Silver saw by the time the hat of Red had flown into the air, struck the wall, and flopped loudly against the floor. All noises were loud now. With a little care, one could distinguish the breathing of every man at the table.

“One thing I'll change at the start,” said Silver, “is the wearing of hats at the table. The second thing I'll change is cursing out any man that works for me. Delgas, watch yourself!”

For the shoulder of Delgas had twitched a little.

“All right,” said Morris Delgas in a barely audible voice.

Silver stood up slowly. If he made a swift move, he knew that every man at the table would grab at a gun. So he rose slowly. He seemed to be watching everybody, but in reality he had his eye on Delgas and Rutherford only. Rutherford, he knew, was his chief care. However formidable Delgas might be as a great brute of a man, he was nothing compared to the catlike speed and surety of Rutherford.

“Stand up, Farrel,” commanded Silver. “Start at the end of the table with Delgas and go around the line. See how much hardware you can collect and pile it on the floor.”

“If you do that — ” began Rutherford, and then stopped himself. He was pale enough now. All the heat and color of his body had gone into his eyes as he stared at Silvertip, and Jim Silver knew that before the end of the game one of the two of them would have to die. This moment in the dining room was only the first trick. Others would inevitably follow.

“I'm going to do that,” said Silver. “Start in, Danny. I'll try to entertain the rest of you boys while you wait. Go slow and be sure, Danny. We ought to collect quite a lot of valuable stuff, this way. Anybody would be glad to see it — a sheriff particularly. Now, the rest of you fellows, I know that you're only a lot of cheap rats. You've followed Rutherford and Delgas, and you've burned your fingers with the first trick. Other tricks are going to come. Perhaps I'll have a chance to see the lot of you dead or jailed as a pack of dirty cattle rustlers and horse thieves. I don't know; I'm just hoping. Keep your hands on the table; make no quick moves; and you can start eating as soon as you've let Danny take a weight off your mind.”

Farrel had reached a long-drawn, lean-faced cow-puncher who said gently:

“I'm goin' to cut your heart out for this, Farrel.”

Farrel said nothing. He went on with his collection. There was not a man at the table who carried less than one revolver. A good many had knives, also. The collection went on gradually.

“Come down here and take my place,” said Silver. “Down here, Delgas. I thought you might fit at the head of the table, but I see you're not man enough.”

Delgas, breathing like a steam engine, walked silently down the room.

“I ain't hungry,” he said. “I'm goin' to go outside.”

“To get a rifle and start shooting through the door?” asked Silver, smiling. “No; wait a while, and maybe your appetite will come back.”

Delgas took the vacated place where Silver had been sitting. The man seemed to be suffering from a fit that contracted the muscles of his body and twisted his face into a horror. He was insane with a rage which he dared not express in action, but his hands gripped the edge of the table so hard that his arms shuddered with the might of that grasp.

When the crew had been disarmed thoroughly, from first to last, Silver said:

“Some of you boys may have a decent streak in you. If you have, stay in the room after the rest go out. That's all. I can use a right man who thinks that he can use me. Now those of you who want to finish supper, stay right in your places. The rest of you can file out. Danny, pull down the blinds of those windows and watch the door.”

He paused. Every man arose. Only Red seemed to find it hard to get out of his chair, as he kept his fascinated eyes upon the face of Silver. But Delgas, in passing, spoke one word to him, and Red nodded and followed.

They went out the door with Rutherford, as might have been expected, the last one through — a rear guard to see that the rest did the right thing for him.

For his own part, he turned and bowed to Silver, a little, short jerk of head and body, as though he were acknowledging an introduction.

“Silver, you're quite a fellow,” he said. “When the time comes for the finish of you, it ought to be a party I'll want to remember. So long!”

And he stepped out into the dark of the night.

Routed troops need a time for rallying, even if they have fallen back without loss. After the sinister face of Rutherford had disappeared from the doorway, the two men and the girl inside the house could hear the scattering of voices drawing gradually together, increasing in loudness. It left one moment for consultation to the three.

Silver, as he turned toward the frightened girl, saw that she was carrying a double-barreled shotgun that dragged down her arm with its weight. But, no matter how white her face or how big her eyes, it was clear that she was not near fainting. She had meant business with that powerful weapon so long as her lover was in danger.

Tall Dan Farrel locked the door swiftly. As he turned, he was saying:

“Silver, if we get into the kitchen side of the house, we could stand a siege, maybe. They're not through with us. There are other guns they'll get their hands on. This heap isn't all that they have. They'll come back at us.”

Silver was gathering the weighty heap of revolvers; he let the big knives lie.

“You're right,” he told Farrel. “They may try to rush us, but I doubt it. There's no use in trying to watch all sides of the house. We can't do it. Better get into the kitchen and wait there. It has windows looking on two sides.”

What he said was law. They got into the kitchen, locked and braced chairs against the doors from it leading into the dining room and the main body of the house, and hastily threw open the windows to either side and the kitchen door which faced the big shed.

For, as Silver said, it was necessary for them to look out on the ground nearby. The lamp in the kitchen was out. The girl sat in a chair against the wall, facing the stove. Silver had for his province the window and door toward the big corral. Farrel had the surveillance of the opposite window.

Farrel sat in a chair near the window with a rifle across his knees. Silver lay flat on the floor with another rifle beside him. The girl still kept her double-barreled shotgun. If it came to a sudden rush, that weapon might do more execution than a dozen rifles. Silver expected no mass attack simply because there was little practical value behind such a move. It would gratify the spite of the offended men, but it would put no hard cash into the pockets of their leaders.

Inside, a big-lidded kettle was muttering and hissing on the stove, from which red pencils of light flowed through the darkness. But the outer night was more fully illumined. Silver could see the upward flow of the mountains against the northern stars, and the gaunt legs of the windmill, and the great, rounded mass of the iron tank which seemed suspended in the air without support. He could make out portions of the fence, also, and guess at the position of the two haystacks. The shed itself was, of course, clearly discernible as to the roof, but the rest of it merged toward the shadows of the ground. It seemed easier to look into the distance and make out the objects near the horizon than to study things close at hand.

There seemed to be a motion of the ground toward the house. The surface seemed to be pouring slowly toward his watchful eyes.

He tried his rifle sights at big objects and small. He drew a bead on the wavering streak of a fence post, even; but the star sheen along the barrel troubled him a little. He went to the stove, got some of the blacking on his fingers, and smeared that along the top of the rifle barrel. He went back and lay down.

“If they put fire to the house — ” said the girl.

“Silence!” commanded Silver.

She was quiet. Farrel cleared his throat softly, very softly.

Out of the distance, now, they heard outbreaks of loud, arguing voices. These noises were interspersed with moments of silence; there followed a considerable time when not a sound was heard except from the windmill. A breeze was turning the wheel slowly; at intervals the stream from the pump dropped. The water in the tank was so low that the water fell like a hand on a brazen drum, with splashings and reverberations. This noise seemed to grow louder and louder. Sometimes it was as if the windmill and tank were moving toward the house. Silver kept on taking sights at everything he could see, making his vision small enough to grasp the least possible targets.

Then a tumult broke out in the dining room. The door went down with a crash — that door, it seemed, which communicated with the outside. Footfalls boomed on the floor. A ray of light worked fitfully around the edges of the door that closed the kitchen away from the dining room. A hand shook that door. Silver promptly put a bullet high up through the woodwork.