Authors: Max Brand
He came closer to lights. A voice shouted, and then many others joined in a chorus. Men walked beside him, supporting him. Others led his horse. He tried to stare through the bright mist and make out faces vainly. Then he heard the shrill, musical cry of Julia Monterey as the peons lifted him tenderly to the ground.
At that his brain cleared suddenly.
He could not stand. His whole body below the shoulders was limp.
"The outer door at the bottom of the cliff-the cellar door-Bandini has unwalled it from the inside to-day! D'you hear me, Julia? Bandini, and the whole crowd of the Drummons are down there, or almost there. Call the men and turn them loose. Start Tonio-where's Tonio? Where's Juan Perez?"
There was a rush of the party for the house, a storming of footfalls wending down into the cool dimness of the cellars.
He saw Arturo Monterey come for an instant into sight, then disappear into the house, calling orders loudly to his men. He saw Julia Monterey from a corner of his eye, he hardly knew where.
Those who supported him had dropped his body to rush after their master, Monterey. He lay sprawling. He raised himself to his hands and shouted out the name of the one man who, he felt, might come to him before all others.
"Juan Perez! Juan Perez!"
There was no answer.
It seemed to Silver that all the vast effort had been in vain, and that the oath he had breathed silently above the dead man in Cruces had been taken to no end, for now that the greatest need of Pedro Monterey's aid had come, his substitute had to sit sprawling on the pavement of the patio of the house, helpless.
"Juan Perez!" he screamed.
Then he looked up and saw Perez standing by him.
Other feet were running close by. That was Julia Monterey. He looked at her face as through a fog. There was no need of women at a time like this. Men had died in this cause, and more men were about to die unless the premonition in his mind were very wrong indeed.
"Lift me, Perez-help me!" he said.
The strong hands of the Mexican raised him suddenly to his feet. Where the hands touched his wounded body, they burned him with fiery pain. But he was all one wound, and therefore the pain was not strange.
"I shall take you to a safe place," Perez was saying. "And I shall not leave you. Have no fear, senior!"
"Safe place?" groaned Silver. "Take me down into the cellars. Take me down into the old mine. I have a gun and I can still use it. Perez, lend me your strength and take me where I can help!"
"I shall!" cried Juan Perez. "Oh, that there should be such a man in the world!"
"Perez! He's dying now!" cried the voice of the girl.
She tried to break in between them.
"Leave him-only help me take him to a bed," she commanded.
"Away with her-she's only a woman-there's no place for 'em now!" shouted Silver. "While we talk the fighting has started!"
"He shall have his way!" cried Perez to Julia Monterey.
"It will be murder, not fighting, if you go down among the guns!" she pleaded, turning to Silver.
"I tell you," said Silver in a frenzy, "this is the time to die!"
"It is the time to die!" echoed Perez, and began to help Silver strongly forward.
More help came to that wounded, half-naked body from the other side. He looked in bewilderment, and saw that it was Julia Monterey who had passed an arm around him and placed her strong shoulder beneath his. A good part of his weight she was supporting.
They passed through the door of the house. She it was who picked up a lantern, never relaxing her efforts to help sustain the half-benumbed body of Silver.
Juan Perez pulled open the tall door that led to the cellar. Out from the dimness came a medley of departing shouts that sank deeper and deeper into the gloom.
"Go back, Julia!" commanded Silver. "You're not needed. I don't want you! Go back!"
"No," she said. "Steady, Juan Perez! The steps are slippery."
"Julia, go back!" shouted Silver.
"It is the time to die," she answered. "Heaven knows how willingly I come to that time!"
"Perez!" cried Silver as he was taken swiftly down the first flight of the steps and into the gloom of a great gallery.
"Yes, senior," said Perez, already panting.
"Send the girl back! It is no place for her."
"Alas, senior," said Juan Perez, "she is a Monterey, and their women are as the men, ever ready for death."
Before them, out of what seemed an infinite distance, came explosions that struck with rapid impacts against the ear of Silver. And he knew that he was too late to be in the forefront of the battle. The men of Drummon already had come through the river door, and the shooting had commenced.
Chapter
XXV
The Battl
e
As the sound of the firing stopped their progress, with a silent assent, Silver said: "Julia, you know a place, perhaps, where they're apt to come if there's a retreat of Monterey's men. Is there one place they're apt to pass?"
"Two places, where big shafts join together," she said. "Ah!"
She cried out at a nearer echo of a death yell that rang out far away.
"Take me to one of the two places. No, tell Juan Perez how to go there, and then run back!"
"Turn to the right-here," said the girl. "Quickly, Juan Perez! There may not be time. The Drummons are so many devils, and our men cannot stop them. Quickly- quickly-if we are to reach the place in time where we may fight. Now to the left-now down these steps."
"Julia, tell us the way and go back!" shouted Silver.
"Am I a child?" she panted. "I shall not leave you. If you die, there is one of the Montereys ready to die with you. Juan Perez-faster-faster!"
They reached the bottom of a long descent, and then hurried forward to a place where several galleries converged in a meeting point powerfully sustained by great buttresses of the living rock. The lantern light
glimmered brightly over the moisture that covered the stone.
"Now!" said the girl breathlessly. "If we place the lantern here in this gap-so!-the light shines down the passages they may come by. And we are left in shadow. Juan Perez, have you a second gun? I can shoot, also!"
They had placed Silver where he sat with his back against a wall, his legs sprawled out helplessly before him. With the lantern put in an adjoining corridor, it flung its light straight on down a mighty hall, where the pick marks showed on all sides, and left the three of them in the darker shadow.
"I have a second gun," said Juan Perez, "but that is for the senor. There is no way for you to help us now. Go back, senorita."
"Go back! Go back!" yelled Silver desperately.
"There is no way that you can help here. Go back to the house- they are coming, Julia! Are you to stay here and drive us mad?"
"I am going," answered the girl quietly. "Juan Perez, guard him with your life!"
She was gone from the sight of Silver.
He heard Perez murmuring: "I have already sworn it. My life for yours, senor, and your life for mine. And that is the way that dying is easy. They are coming! Now we shall mow them down!"
"Look sharp!" answered Silver. "It may be that they are the men of Monterey retreating. Listen!"
For wild cries in Spanish now broke on their ears as the approaching tumult swept around an adjacent corner of the tunnels. And then the lantern light struck on a mob of frantic faces-the men of the house of Monterey in headlong flight, reaching out their hands before them as they dashed through the gloom, screeching out the names of their patron saints.
"Curse them!" groaned Juan Perez. "Oh, dogs who betray the hand that fed them. Look-the master is among them-he beats them-but they will not turn and fight!"
For yonder was the silver hair and the white beard o
f
Monterey as he was borne headlong by the current of the flight.
From the rear came the bawling voices of the Drum-mons in the height of their victory.
Now, behind the place where Silver sat, with a gun in either hand, and Juan Perez kneeling beside him in desperate readiness, he heard the shrill voice of Julia crying:
"Turn back! There is help here! Senior Silver is here- and Juan Perez-and great help! The fight is ours! Turn back, cowards! Turn back and face the bullets with me! Senior Silver is here, and he cannot die alone!"
He heard the girl's shouting as the leaders of the Drummon throng poured around the next bend of the hallway. He saw their faces gleaming white in the dull light of the lantern, like sickly creatures of the sea seen deep down in the shadowy water.
Right into the faces of those charging men Silver and Juan Perez poured a deadly fire.
He saw one man fall. He saw another pitch sidewise. He saw a third leap upward like a wounded deer, yelling. And the whole rout slowed, wavered.
A gap opened. In the rear he had a glimpse of the great form of Hank Drummon, borne on his litter by several pairs of hands. He had stripped himself to the waist, naked, like a sailor going into action on a battleship of the old days, and as though he expected to bathe in blood. In his hands were weapons. About his head was the broad white bandage. He seemed like a pirate picture out of the past.
"Jose Bandini!" he was thundering. "Show these cowardly fools the way to go forward. Charge the dogs! Charge 'em home and they'll vanish. Come on, boys!"
Into the van leaped the brilliant form of Jose Bandini. If he were a thousand times a villain, he was a thousand times a hero, also. He ran straight forward to lead the rest, and as he ran he laughed with the joy of the conflict, and waved a revolver above his head.
Behind him, the men of the Drummons rallied and surged ahead in a wave.
Silver, leveling his revolver, was about to fire with a deadly aim at Bandini when another form intervened before him.
It was old Arturo Monterey, running straight at hi
s
enemy, with his white hair blown back from his head. He shouted a wordless battle cry as he ran.
The moment was lost to Silver. The next instant he saw vast forms bulking above him, and loosed the fire of his gun among them. Half lighted by the lantern, but only enough to make them jumping, swaying, whirling silhouettes, he saw the men of Drummon rush at him.
He saw the fine form of Jose Bandini lead the others. At that body he fired as Bandini leveled a gun and rushed at him, guided by the darting fires from the mouth of Silver's Colt.
It seemed a bitter shame to meet that moment seated.
With a vast effort, Silver struggled to one knee. A bullet struck his body, he knew not where. The weight of the impact flattened him back against the wall.
A swinging foot kicked the gun from his left hand- that in the right was already empty. He was caught by the hair of the head and jerked forward on his face. And, turning as he fell, he saw Bandini lift a revolver by the barrel. That gun must have been empty, also, but a stroke with the butt of it would crack his skull.
His own hands were empty. But beside him lay Juan Perez, senseless, his face covered with blood that poured from a scalp wound, his arms outflung; and in the nearer hand, held out as though it were an offering in time of need to his friend, there was a Colt lying.
Silver threw up his left arm. The falling heel of the gun that Bandini wielded crushed the flesh against the bone, and beat the whole arm heavily down against his face.
But at the same instant his right hand had caught the weapon from the hand of poor Juan Perez.
"Take that!" cried Bandini. "I wish there were a thousand lives in you that I could beat out one by one. Gringo -take this! And-"
Silver fired upward, the muzzle of his gun inches from the body of Bandini. And the man fell forward on him, a loose, soft, warm weight.
The brain of Silver reeled.
He could hear two voices. The first was that of the girl, who was still crying out to the men of Monterey. And they had rallied. That was the meaning of the trampling and the stamping all around him. That was the meaning of the curses in Spanish and in English, one mixed with the other.
And the second voice was wailing not far away: "The Alligator's dead-save yourselves! Hank Drummon's dead!"
It was that yelling voice of dismay that beat the Drummons more than the sudden, fierce, and unexpected rally of the Mexicans. The cry that one man had started was taken up by others. As Silver worked the weight of the dead Bandini from his body and sat up, he saw the gallery filled with the thronging flight of the Drummons, the big men fighting to get one past the other. After them ran the victorious men of Monterey, yelling insanely with their victory.
Behind them were the dead!
It was amazing that so few had fallen in a fight so close and hot. Bandini was dead, to be sure. And two of the men of Monterey. And yonder sat the great Drummon in his litter, bloodstained about the breast where a great cross had been slashed with a knife, and under it a wavering line-the brand of the Cross and Snake!
On the floor beside him was a small body, with a head of white hair, but that body stirred, moved, stood up, staggering.