Silvertip (1942) (3 page)

A voice broke in upon him. He looked up. People were staring at him, not at the dead man, for there was something in the face of Silver that filled them with awe.

It was the sheriff speaking.

"Silvertip, can you tell us about this?"

"I found the dead body in the alley one block down from the restaurant," said Silvertip.

"Bandini!" cried the voice of young Piero Martinelli. "Jose Bandini was with him all the evening, right here in this room. Bandini did it."

"Bandini?" said the sheriff. "Where is he?"

"Not Bandini," said Silvertip firmly. "I saw him going down the street a minute or two before the shot was fired. It certainly wasn't Bandini."

"No," said the bartender. "It couldn't have been Bandini. He may have been arguing with this poor kid, but he stopped the arguing before they left the barroom. I seen them make up and shake hands. I seen Bandini go and take off his cloak and put it around the shoulders of this dead kid. I seen him do it, kind of like a gift, to show that he meant to be friends, honest and straight."

Silvertip looked up, slowly, into the eyes of the bartender. The trick of Bandini had been too simple for belief. By that simple change of dress he had made another man walk in his own footsteps to meet a death that should have been his own.

It was not just chance that had killed this victim. It was not the hand of Silvertip, either, though he had fired the shot. It was Bandini's craft that had performed the murder!

Silvertip drew in a great, slow breath.

The sheriff said again, slowly: "Silver, I know that it ain't like you to be shootin' gents in dark alleys. It ain't your style or your cut. But you've used guns, plenty. Where was you, all the evening?"

"He was in there in the barroom," said the bartender. "When the gun went off, I heard the shot. I heard it, but I didn't think much about it. Silvertip hadn't hardly got through the door."

Silvertip looked into the broad, red face of the bar-
t
ender and silently thanked him for that lie.

"It's goin' to be one of them mysteries," said the sheriff sadly. "Does anybody know who he is?"

No one knew. So the sheriff started a careful examin-ation of the pockets.

They revealed very little. There was a small pearl-handled pocket-knife which made some of the men smile a little. There was a little .32-caliber revolver of a bulldog model that would fit neatly into almost any pocket. Ther
e
was a bill fold containing a hundred and forty-seven dol-
l
ars. There was a gold watch of a fine Swiss make, with
a
delicately worked gold chain that had been simply dropped into the pocket that held the watch.

The sheriff pried open the back of the watch, examined it with care, and replaced it with the little heap of belongings.

He turned his baffled eyes upon Silvertip. "Silver," he said, "you look kind of cut up. Wasn't he a friend of yours?"

"No," said Silvertip. "He's just so young-that's all!" He added: "Have you looked at his horse?" They trooped out to the stable and found the horse. "It was a high-headed queen of a mare, a blood bay with
four black silk stockings on her legs and eyes like liquid diamonds that turned and shone in the lantern light. On of her quarters was burned a cross with a wavering under it. That's the Cross and Snake brand of old Arturo Monterey, down in the Haverhill River country," said the sheriff. "I know that brand! Maybe down there I could pick up a clew to the name of this gent. Why, it's a fifty-mile ride."

Silvertip touched the sheriff's shoulder.

"I'll go," he said. "I've never been down there, but I know the way. I'll take the outfit of that poor fellow; I'll take his horse along, too."

"Would the outfit and the horse arrive if you started with 'em?" asked the sheriff tersely.

Then, under the steady eye and the faint smile of Silvertip, he flushed.

"I didn't mean that. It just sort of come popping out," he explained. "Silver, no matter what some say about you, I'll trust you around the world and back. When will you start?"

"Now," said Silvertip.

"You mean in the morning?"

"I mean-now!"

The sheriff nodded slowly. "Something about this job has sort of burned you up, Silver, eh? Take the lot and start now, then, if you want to. Find old Arturo Monterey if you can. They say he's a hard case; I dunno in what way. But find out if he remembers selling a hoss like this to anybody, and the name of the hombre that got it. That's all. Then you'll come back here and let me know?"

"I'll come back," said Silvertip.

He was lifting his saddle off a peg as he spoke, and the sheriff, after pausing for a last glance at his messenger, went back to the restaurant and the dead body, the curious crowd following him. Only the red-faced bartender remained.

"I would have been in the soup," Silvertip told him curtly. "Thanks for that lie."

"You did the job, eh?" said the bartender, leaning against the manger on one hand and peering into the face of Silver.

"I did the job."

"Thinking it was Bandini?"

"Yes."

The bartender nodded his head slowly. "A kind of an idea come over me," he said. "A kind of an idea that there was a dirty trick in the brain of Bandini when he give that kid his cloak. He ain't the kind that gives something for nothing."

"You saved my neck," said Silver.

"That's all right," said the bartender. "But I'd kind of like to ask you a question."

"Anything you like."

"You got something in your mind, Silver. What's dragging you down into that hell hole, the Haverhill?"

"Because there's a brand on the boy's horse; and the brand come out of the Haverhill Valley, they say."

"Yeah, that's all right. But there's something more o
n
your mind than that.
What's
on your mind,
Silver?"

"I've killed a man," said Silver.

"According to yarns, he ain't the first."

"I've had fights with men who were born with guns i
n
their hands," said Silvertip. "I've fought in the dark, too, as far as that goes. But this was no fight. It wasn't murder, either. There can't be a murder except when there's murder in your mind. I was sure he had drawn on me. What was it, then?"

"It was just a kind of a wiping out of the poor youn
g
gent" suggested the bartender.

I wiped him out," said Silvertip slowly. "And by the look of him, he was a better man than I'll ever be. What can I do? Two things, partner, and, by heavens, I'm going to do them!"

"Two things?" said the bartender.

"If I can find out his name and the lives that he fitted into, I can find out at the same time what he was meant to do in the world. By the look of him, that would be something too fine for my hands. But whatever his job was, I can try to do it, partner."

The bartender shrugged.

"I see what you mean, Silver," said he. "And a doggone strange thing it seems to me. Now, supposing that this here gent, maybe, has got a wife and a coupla brats stowed somewhere? What would you do? Marry the widow?"

"Work for her and the youngsters," said Silvertip solemnly, "till I rubbed the flesh off the bones of my hands."

"Would you?" said the bartender. "Well, you beat me. But that ain't queer. You beat most people. Well, that's the first thing you wanta do. Mind telling me the second?"

"I'll tell you," said Silvertip, through his teeth, and suddenly in a cold rage. "You ought to be able to guess, though."

"I know," agreed the bartender, "Bandini is the bird that fixed up this job on you. You never would 'a' picked out the kid for a gun play except that he was wearing the cloak-and Bandini must 'a' known that. Are you going after him?"

"Before I die," said Silvertip, "I'll see Bandini in fron
t
of me, and I'll get at him with a gun or a knife or my bare hands."

"Yeah," said the bartender. "You will! I can see it like a picture in a book, Silver, I'm goin' to wish you luck. You're a cut different from all the rest of us-but I'm goin' to wish you luck. But fit yourself into the skin of another gent's life? Man, man, nobody in the world ever had an idea like that!"

That was all he said before he went out from the barn.

Silvertip, in the meantime, finished saddling and bridling. He saddled and bridled the bay mare, also, and tied her lead rope to his pommel. Then he brought the two horses out into the open and mounted.

He wanted, above all else, to go back into the restaurant and look once more at the delicate, olive-skinned beauty of that dead face, but he kept that impulse in check.

He gathered the reins for the start; inside the house he could hear the high-pitched, excited voice of Mrs. Marti-nelli, babbling out her woes.

The broncho moved suddenly and set jingling all the possessions of the dead man, which the sheriff had poured into one of the saddlebags. So Silvertip rode from Cruces into the night.

Chapter
IV

The Haverhill Countr
y
IT WAS early morning when he got through the Haverhil
l
pass and looked down along the valley of the Haverhil
l
River. As far as his eye could reach, from the height, th
e
bright water was running in wide, sweeping curves, silver-
c
lear just below him, and a dull-blue sheen far off, wit
h
winkings of high lights on it now and then.

Men had told him that there was a curse on this country, and, in fact, he had always heard strange tales of it.

So had every one. Very few exact reports came through
,
But there were mysterious murmurings. Now and then some one was pointed out as a "Haverhill man," and that fellow was sure to be avoided by all other people on the range. At least, until he had proved himself anew.

There was always talk about the Haverhill country, ye
t
it was odd that so few people had accurate knowledge.

It was not simply that the high mountains encircled it.

Mountains cannot fence any place from a Westerner. Bu
t
those who went into the valley seldom came out, and if they did, they were not easily drawn into talk. One migh
t
have thought that it was a hellish place-but never had silvertip looked on pleasanter country.

There was plenty of water, for one thing. He had ridden up out of a plain where the grass was all dust-gray, but what he looked on now was a soft green comfort to the eye. And from the highlands on both sides he had glimpses of brooks running silver and white down the slopes to the Haverhill River below. Moreover, there were trees. There were big, roundheaded trees in groves that hung against the more brilliant green of the grass hillsides like dark clouds against the blue sheen of the sky. A heavenly place altogether, he decided. Nothing but gossip could poison it.

He made a cigarette, lighted it, began to inhale smoke in great whiffs.

He laughed, threw his hat in the air, and caught it again in spite of the frantic dodging and bucking of the mustang beneath him. He had changed from saddle to saddle all the way during the night. The horses were still fresh, especially that deer-shaped, wing-footed bay mare; so he made no longer halt, but rode down the trail toward the little village that lay at the side of the stream in the central valley beneath.

The trail was very winding, and he never could endure to push a horse going downhill. It meant ruined shoulders too often. So it was nearly prime of the morning before he came off the trail onto a beaten road near the town.

A man in a buckboard came past him from the village. Silvertip lifted his hat and called good morning.

The fellow kept his reins in one hand and his stub of a buggy whip in the other. He kept jerking at the reins constantly, and tapping at the down-headed span of mustangs with the other, without in the slightest degree altering their gait. He returned no salute or gesture or word. The wind tipped the brim of his felt hat up and down, but there was not even a nod of actual greeting.

Silver turned in the saddle and looked back. The stranger had turned also, and was staring. He was a gaunt man, of late middle age. The stubble of his beard gave a gray sheen to his face. His eyes were set in dark hollows. It was a craggy face. It was to the faces of other men as a rocky upland farm is to the rich green acres of a smooth river bottom.

At length Silver faced the town again, frowning. He had been through a great part of the West, and he ha
d
been through it on horseback or on foot. He had used his eyes, too, simply because he had to use them to save his scalp. But he could never remember encountering behavior like this.

All that he had heard of the Haverhill country swept over his mind again like clouds across a sunny day.

He rode on at a walk, because he wanted to digest this town as well as he could with his eyes before he entered it.