Silvermane Read online

  “Ahuh…you’re welcome here, stranger,” replied Tappan. “I’m Tappan.”

  “Ha! Heard of you. I’m Jess Blade, of anywhere. An’ I’ll say I was an honest man till I hit the Tonto.”

  His laugh was frank for all its note of grimness. Tappan liked the man and sensed one who would be a good friend and bad foe.

  “Come an’ eat. My supplies are peterin’ out, but there’s plenty of meat.”

  Blade ate, indeed as a man starved, and did not seem to care if Tappan’s supplies were low. He did not talk. After the meal, he craved a pipe and tobacco. Then he smoked in silence, in slow-realizing content. The morrow had no fears for him. The flickering, ruddy light from the campfire shown on his strong face. Tappan saw in him the drifter, the drinker, the brawler, a man with good in him, but over whom evil passion or temper dominated. Presently he smoked the pipe out, and with reluctant hand knocked out the ashes and returned it to Tappan.

  “I reckon I’ve some news thet’d interest you,” he said.

  “You have?” queried Tappan.

  “Yes, if you’re the Tappan who tried to run off with Jake Beam’s wife.”

  “Well, I’m that Tappan. But I’d like to say I didn’t know she was married.”

  “Shore. I remember. So does everybody in the Tonto. You were just meat for thet Beam gang. They had played the trick before. But accordin’ to what I hear, thet trick was the last fer Madge Beam. She never came back to this country. An’ Jake Beam, when he was drunk, owned up thet she’d left him in California. Some hint at worse. Fer Jake Beam came back a harder man. Even his gang said thet.”

  “Is he in the Tonto now?” queried Tappan, with a thrill of fire along his veins.

  “Yep, thar fer keeps,” replied Blade grimly. “Somebody shot him.”

  “Ahuh!” exclaimed Tappan with a deep breath of relief. There came a sudden check to the heat of his blood.

  After that, there was a long silence. Tappan dreamed of the woman who had loved him. Blade brooded over the campfire. The wind moaned fitfully in the lofty pines on the slope. A wolf mourned as if in hunger. The stars appeared to obscure their radiance in haze.

  “Reckon thet wind sounds like storm,” observed Blade presently.

  “I’ve heard it for weeks now,” replied Tappan.

  “Are you a woodsman?”

  No, I’m a desert man.”

  “Wal, you take my hunch and hit the trail fer low country.”

  This was well-meant and probably sound advice, but it alienated Tappan. He had really liked this hearty-voiced stranger. Tappan thought moodily of his slowly in-growing mind, of the narrowness of his soul. He was past interest in his fellow men. He lived with a dream. The only living creature he loved was a lop-eared lazy burro, growing old in contentment. Nevertheless, that night Tappan shared one of his two blankets.

  In the morning the gray dawn broke, and the sun rose without its brightness of gold. There was a haze over the blue sky. Thin, swift-moving clouds scudded up out of the southwest. The wind was chilled, the forest shaggy and dark, the birds and squirrels were silent.

  “Wal, you’ll break camp today,” asserted Blade.

  “Nope. I’ll stick it out yet a while,” returned Tappan.

  “But, man, you might get snowed in, an’ up hyar thet’s serious.”

  “Ahuh. Well, it won’t bother me, an’ there’s nothin’ holdin’ you.”

  “Tappan, it’s four days’ walk down out of this woods. If a big snow set in, how’d I make it?”

  “Then you’d better go out over the rim,” suggested Tappan.

  “No. I’ll take my chance the other way. But are you meanin’ you’d rather not have me with you? Fer you can’t stay hyar.”

  Tappan was in a quandary. Some instinct bade him tell the man to go, not empty-handed, but to go. But this was selfish and entirely unlike Tappan, as he remembered himself of old. Finally he spoke. “You’re welcome to half my outfit…go or stay.”

  “Thet’s mighty square of you, Tappan,” responded the other feelingly. “Have you a burro you’ll give me?”

  “No, I’ve only one.”

  “Ha! Then I’ll have to stick with you till you leave.”

  No more was said. They had breakfast in a strange silence. The wind brooded its secret in the treetops. Tappan’s burro strolled into camp and caught the stranger’s eye.

  “Wal, thet’s shore a fine burro,” he observed. “Never seen the like.”

  Tappan performed his camp tasks. Then there was nothing to do but sit around the fire. Blade evidently waited for the increasing menace of the storm to rouse Tappan to decision, but the graying over of sky and the increase of wind did not affect Tappan. What did he wait for? The truth of his thoughts was that he did not like the way Jenet remained in camp. She was waiting to be packed. She knew they ought to go. Tappan yielded to a perverse devil of stubbornness. The wind brought a cold mist, then a flurry of wet snow. Tappan gathered firewood, a large quantity. Blade saw this and gave voice to earnest fears, but Tappan paid no heed. By nightfall, sleet and snow began to fall steadily. The men fashioned a rude shack of spruce boughs, ate their supper, and went to bed early.

  It worried Tappan that Jenet stayed right in camp. He lay awake a long time. The wind rose and moaned through the forest. The sleet failed, and a soft steady downfall of snow gradually set in. Tappan fell asleep. When he awoke, it was to see a forest of white. The trees were mantled with blankets of wet snow—the ground covered two feet on a level. The clouds appeared to be gone, the sky was blue, the storm over. The sun came up warm and bright.

  “It’ll all go in a day,” said Tappan.

  “If this was early October, I’d agree with you,” replied Blade. “But it’s only makin’ fer another storm. Can’t you hear thet wind?”

  Tappan only heard the whispers of his dream. By noon the snow was melting off the pines, and rainbows shone everywhere. Little patches of snow began to drop off the south branches of the pines and spruces, and then larger patches, until by midafternoon white streams and avalanches were falling everywhere. All of the snow, except in shaded places on the north sides of trees, went that day, and half of that on the ground. Next day it thinned out more, until Jenet was finding the grass and moss again. That afternoon the telltale thin clouds raced up out of the southwest, and the wind moaned its menace.

  “Tappan, let’s pack an’ hit it out of hyar,” appealed Blade anxiously. “I know this country. Mebbe I’m wrong, of course, but it feels like storm. Winter’s comin’ shore.”

  “Let her come,” replied Tappan imperturbably.

  “Say, do you want to get snowed in?” demanded Blade, out of patience.

  “I might like a little spell of it, seein’ it’d be new to me,” replied Tappan.

  “But, man, if you ever get snowed in hyar, you can’t get out.”

  “That burro of mine could get me out.”

  “You’re crazy. Thet burro couldn’t go a hundred feet. What’s more, you’d have to kill her an’ eat her.”

  Tappan bent a strange gaze upon his companion, but made no reply. Blade began to pace up and down the small bare patch of ground before the campfire. Manifestly he was in a serious predicament. That day he seemed subtly to change, as did Tappan. Both answered to their peculiar instincts, Blade to that of self-preservation, and Tappan to something like indifference. Tappan held fate in defiance. What more could happen to him?

  Blade broke out again, in eloquent persuasion, giving proof of their peril, and from that he passed to amaze, and then to strident anger. He cursed Tappan for a Nature-loving idiot. “An’ I’ll tell you what,” he ended. “When mornin’ comes, I’ll take some of your grub an’ hit it out of hyar, storm or no storm.”

  But long before dawn broke that resolution of Blade’s became impracticable. Both were awakened by the roar of a storm through the
forest, no longer a moan, but a marching roar with now a crash, and then a shriek of gale. By the light of the smoldering campfire Tappan saw a whirling pall of snow, great flakes as large as feathers. Morning disclosed the setting in of a fierce mountain storm, with two feet of snow already on the ground, and the forest lost in a blur of white.

  “I was wrong!” called Tappan to his companion. “What’s best to do now?”

  “You damned fool!” yelled Blade. “We’ve got to keep from freezin’ an’ starvin’ till the storm ends an’ a crust comes on the snow.”

  For three days and three nights the blizzard continued, unabated in its fury. It took the men hours to keep a space cleared for their campsite, which Jenet shared with them. On the fourth day the storm ceased, the clouds broke away, the sun came out, and the temperature dropped to zero. Snow on the level just topped Tappan’s lofty stature, and in drifts it was ten and fifteen feet deep. Winter had set in with a vengeance. The forest became a solemn, still, white world. But now Tappan had no time to dream. Dry firewood was hard to find under the snow. It was possible to cut down one of the dead trees on the slope, but impossible to pack sufficient wood to the camp. They had to burn green wood. Then the fashioning of snowshoes took much time. Tappan had no knowledge of such footgear. He could only help Blade. The men were encouraged by the piercing cold forming a crust on the snow. But just as they were about to pack and venture forth, the weather moderated, the crust refused to hold their weight, and another foot of snow fell.

  “Why in hell didn’t you kill an elk?” demanded Blade sullenly. He had changed from friendly to darkly sinister. He knew the peril, and he loved life. “Now we’ll have to kill an’ eat your precious Jenet. An’ mebbe she won’t furnish meat enough to last till this snow weather stops an’ a good freeze’ll make travelin’ possible.”

  “Blade, you shut up about killin’ an’ eatin’ my burro Jenet,” returned Tappan in a voice that silenced the other.

  Thus instinctively these men became enemies. Blade thought only of himself. For himself Tappan had not one thought. Tappan’s supplies ran low. All the bacon and coffee were gone. There was only a small haunch of venison, a bag of beans, a sack of flour, and a small quantity of salt left.

  “If a crust freezes on the snow an’ we can pack thet flour, we’ll get out alive,” said Blade. “But we can’t take the burro.”

  Another day of bright sunshine softened the snow on the southern exposures, and a night of piercing cold froze a crust that would bear the quick step of a man.

  “It’s our only chance…an’ damned slim at thet,” declared Blade.

  Tappan allowed Blade to choose the time and method and supplies for the start to get out of the forest. They cooked all the beans and divided them in two sacks. Then they baked about four pounds of biscuits for each of them. Blade showed his cunning when he chose the small bag of salt for himself and let Tappan take the tobacco. This quantity of food and a blanket for each, Blade declared, was all they could pack. They argued over the guns, and in the end Blade compromised on the rifle, agreeing to let Tappan carry that on the possible chance of killing a deer or elk. When this matter had been decided, Blade significantly began putting on his rude snowshoes that had been constructed from pieces of Tappan’s boxes and straps and burlap sacks.

  “Reckon they won’t last long,” muttered Blade.

  Meanwhile, Tappan fed Jenet some biscuits, and then began to strap a tarpaulin on her back.

  “What ya doin?” queried Blade suddenly.

  “Gettin’ Jenet ready,” replied Tappan.

  “Ready…fer what?”

  “Why, to go with us.”

  “Hell!” shouted Blade, and he threw up his hands in helpless rage.

  Tappan felt a depth stirred within him. He lost his late taciturnity and his silent aloofness fell away from him. Blade seemed on the moment no longer an enemy. He loomed as an aid to the saving of Jenet. Tappan burst into speech. “I can’t go without her. It’d never enter my head. Jenet’s mother was a good faithful burro. I saw Jenet born way down there on the Río Colorado. She wasn’t strong, an’ I had to wait for her to be able to walk. She grew up. Her mother died, an’ Jenet an’ me packed it alone. She wasn’t no ordinary burro. She learned all I taught her. She was different. But I treated her same as any burro, an’ she grew with the years. Desert men said there never was such a burro as Jenet. Called her Tappan’s burro, an’ tried to borrow an’ buy an’ steal her. How many times in ten years Jenet has done me a good turn I can’t remember. But she saved my life. She dragged me out of Death Valley. An’ then I forgot my debt. I ran off with a woman an’ left Jenet to wait as she had been trained to wait. I knew she’d wait at that camp till I came back. She’d have starved there! Well, I got back in time…an’ now I’ll not leave her here. It may be strange to you, Blade, me carin’ this way. Jenet’s only a burro. But I won’t leave her.”

  “Man, you talk like thet lazy lop-eared burro was a woman,” declared Blade in disgusted astonishment.

  “I don’t know women, but I reckon Jenet’s more faithful than most of them.”

  “Wal, of all the stark starin’ fools I ever run into, you’re the worst.”

  “Fool or not, I know what I’ll do,” retorted Tappan. The softer mood left him swiftly.

  “Haven’t you sense enough to see thet we can’t travel with your burro?” queried Blade, patiently controlling his temper. “She has little hoofs, sharp as knives. She’ll cut through the crust. She’ll break through in places, an’ we’ll have to stop to haul her out…mebbe break through ourselves. That would make us longer gettin’ out.”

  “Long or short, we’ll take her.”

  Then Blade confronted Tappan as if suddenly unmasking his true meaning. His patient explanation meant nothing. Under no circumstances would he ever have consented to an attempt to take Jenet out of that snow-bound wilderness. His eyes gleamed. “We’ve a hard pull to get out alive. An’ hard-workin’ men in winter must have meat to eat.”

  Tappan slowly straightened up to look at the speaker. “What do you mean?”

  For answer, Blade jerked his hand backward and downward, and, when it swung into sight again, it held Tappan’s worn and shining rifle. Blade, with deliberate force that showed the nature of the man, worked the lever and threw a shell into the magazine, all the while his eyes fastened on Tappan. His face seemed that of another man, evil, relentless, inevitable in his spirit to preserve his own life at any cost. “I mean to kill your burro,” he said in voice that suited his look and manner.

  “No!” cried Tappan, shocked into an instant of appeal.

  “Yes, I am, an’ I’ll bet, by God, before we get out of hyar you’ll be glad to eat some of her meat!”

  That roused the slow-gathering might of Tappan’s wrath. “I’d starve to death before I’d…I’d kill that burro, let alone eat her.”

  “Starve and be damned!” shouted Blade, yielding to rage.

  Jenet stood right behind Tappan, in her posture of contented repose, with one long ear hanging down over her gray, meek face.

  “You’ll have to kill me first,” answered Tappan sharply.

  “I’m good fer anythin’…if you push me,” returned Blade stridently.

  As he stepped aside, evidently so he could have unobstructed aim at Jenet, Tappan leaped forward and knocked up the rifle as it was discharged. The bullet sped harmlessly over Jenet. Tappan heard it thud into a tree. Blade uttered a curse. As he lowered the rifle, in sudden deadly intent Tappan grasped the barrel with his left hand. Then, clenching his right, he struck Blade a sudden blow in the face. Only Blade’s hold on the rifle prevented him from falling. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth. He bellowed in hoarse fury: “I’ll kill you fer thet!”

  Tappan opened his clenched teeth. “No, Blade…you’re not man enough.”

  Then began a terrific struggle for possession of
the rifle. Tappan beat at Blade’s face with his sledge-hammer fist, and the strength of the other made it imperative that Blade use both hands to keep his hold on the rifle. Wrestling and pulling and jerking, the men tore around the snowy camp, scattering the campfire, knocking down the brush shelter. Blade had surrendered to a wild frenzy. He hissed his maledictions. His was the brute lust to kill an enemy that thwarted him. But Tappan was grim and terrible in his restraint. His battle was to save Jenet. Nevertheless, there mounted in him the hot physical sensations of the savage. The contact of flesh, the smell and sight of Blade’s blood, the violent action, the beastly mien of his foe changed the fight to one for its own sake. To conquer this foe, to rend him and beat him down, blow on blow!

  Tappan felt instinctively that he was the stronger. Suddenly he exerted all his muscular force into one tremendous wrench. The rifle broke, leaving the steel barrel in his hands, the wooden stock in Blade’s. It was the quicker-witted Blade who used his weapon first to advantage. One swift blow knocked down Tappan. As he was about to follow it up with another, Tappan kicked his opponent’s feet from under him. Blade sprawled in the snow, but was up again as quickly as Tappan. They made at each other, Tappan waiting to strike, and Blade raining blows aimed at his head, but which Tappan contrived to receive on his arms and the rifle barrel he brandished. For a few minutes Tappan stood up under a beating that would have felled a lesser man. His own blood blinded him. Then he swung his heavy weapon. The blow broke Blade’s left arm. Like a wild beast he screamed in pain, and then, without guard, rushed in, too furious for further caution. Tappan met the terrible onslaught as before and, snatching his chance, again swung the rifle barrel. This time, so supreme was the force, it battered down Blade’s arm and crushed his skull. He died on his feet—ghastly and horrible change!—and, swaying backward, he fell into the banked wall of snow and went out of sight, except for his boots, one of which still held the crude snowshoe.

  Tappan stared, slowly realizing.

  “Ahuh, stranger Blade!” he ejaculated, gazing at the hole in the snowbank where his foe had disappeared. “You were goin’ to kill an’ eat…Tappan’s burro!”