What else could Lovell offer to tempt the man?
He stared helplessly at Jim Silver, and marked the faint smile that continued habitually on the lips of the big, big man. It was neither a sardonic nor an amused smile, but a mysterious expression of content, perhaps.
Suddenly Lovell exclaimed: “I was going to give you a good reason for wanting to see you. But there’s no good trying to buy you, Jim Silver. I’ll tell you plain and flat why I’ve come chasing to you—I’m afraid for my life!”
“Are you?” said the gentle voice of Silver.
“Three men are after me, and every one of ‘em is full of guns and wants my hide.”
“Why?”
“Three crooks. They broke out of jail a time back. I used to work with them, and they want me to work with ‘em still. That’s all. They want my scalp because I’m through with crooked business. They want my hide because I’ve made up my mind to go straight!”
He waited for the lie to take effect on the big man.
Silver said: “I’ve heard of things like that happening. Who are they?”
“Phil Bray, Dave Lister, the forger, Joe Mantry, the gunman. But Phil Bray is the dangerous one. He’s the brains of the lot, and the best hand, too.”
“Bray—Lister—Mantry,” murmured Silver. “I don’t think that I’ve seen them or heard of ‘em before.”
He sat down on a log. The wolf sat down at his feet and faced Lovell with eyes green with danger. If Lovell came a step too near, he was favored by a glimpse of long, needle-sharp fangs.
So Lovell kept back. He was glad, after all, to have an excuse for remaining at a little distance. He had an idea that Silver might otherwise detect the lies by watching the face of the man that conceived them.
In the background, Parade waited patiently, now and then turning his head to listen to a sound among the trees, now tossing up his mane as he sniffed at the wind that carried to him all manner of tidings beyond human perceptions.
“What do you want out of me?” asked Silver finally.
“My life!” exclaimed Jimmy Lovell.
Silver made a slow gesture, as though to indicate that life and death could not be in the range of his bestowal.
At last he said: “I’m staying on Iron Mountain for about ten days. I’ll be glad to have you with me for that time.”
“Thanks!” breathed Jimmy Lovell. “And after that, will you let me tag along, Silver? You’ll find I’m not a bad hand around a camp, and I can hunt meat for you. I’ll keep you in fresh meat. I’ll do the cooking and the cleaning up. I ain’t proud. I’ll take more than my half of the work, and when anything’s wanted, I’ll fetch and carry. If we get near a town, I’ll buy what you want, and pay for it out of my own pocket. I won’t be no burden to you. What about it?”
Silver ran his hand thoughtfully over the head of the wolf. The eyes of Frosty rolled back in acknowledgement of the caress. Then he ducked away from it, as though he feared that he might be blinded by the trailing fingers, and so prevented from maintaining his watch every instant upon the stranger.
Then Jim Silver said: “After about ten days, I’ll have to start away. I don’t know exactly where I’ll have to go, but it will be away from Iron Mountain, and I’m afraid that I’ll have to travel alone. I don’t want to seem to turn you down. But I’ve got to admit that I’ll have to travel by myself. If I can be on any use to you during the next ten days, I’m your man. After that I guess our trails will have to split up. I’m sorry.”
There was no use appealing to him. The very gentleness of his voice was an assurance that he would not alter his mind in the least.
Jimmy Lovell nodded. Perhaps, during the ten days, by constantly watching his step, by entertaining with song and dance, by being useful on all occasions, he might, at the end of that period of probation, have attached himself to Jim Silver as the pilot fish is attached to the shark.
“Whatever you say goes for me,” he said. “Ten days of life is better than ten days of lying dead, and that’s where I’d be, except that I’ve run into you. Silver. And if I’ve got any luck, the three devils will tackle me while I’m with you—and after we’ve finished, maybe there won’t be enough pieces of ‘em left to put together and make one whole man.”
XI—FROSTY
For ten days there was nothing for Jimmy Lovell to fear, and he began to relax and enjoy himself in the presence of the strangest society that ever it had been his luck to know—a horse, a man, and a wolf, living together as a happy family.
That was all that Lovell could think of when he saw the three together. It was a family bound together by the love of both animals for the man, and the love of the man for the pair of them. But there was a bitter animosity within that circle, also. There was never a time when the stallion ceased feeling fear and disgust for the wolf; there was never a time when the wolf ceased wishing to slit the throat of the great horse. So much was this true that Lovell said to Silver, on the second morning:
“How come that you ain’t afraid to leave Frosty near that horse all the time?”
“They’re not together all the time,” answered Silver. “They have a rest from one another every now and then, and I watch them carefully. But if I were away for three days, I think that Frosty would murder Parade if he could catch him.”
“Think of havin’ a dog like Frosty around!” exclaimed Lovell enviously. “Better than a hired guard, I’d say he is. No hired guard would hunt around in the brush all day long and find out if trouble is walking your way.”
“No,” said Silver. “And he’s useful in other ways. He has a book of things to do. You show him the page and he’ll read it, all right.”
Lovell gaped. It would not have surprised him a great deal to hear that the wolf actually was able to understand print. But now Silver, with a smile, pulled out a key ring that had on it a queer collection of ragged trifles. There was a bit of rabbit’s foot, several pieces of metal, strips of leather, some bits of cloth, other odds and ends.
“That’s the book of Frosty,” said Silver. “He knows every page. Here’s rabbits. If you want rabbit meat, Frosty will trot out and try to hunt for nothing else. If you want venison, here’s a strip of the ear of a stag, and after Frosty scents that and gets the sign to start hunting, he’ll go off and work all day, rounding through the country and trying to drive game to your gun.”
“Hold on!” exclaimed Lovell incredulously.
Silver nodded. “He’ll do that,” he said. “It’s hard for a wolf to catch a deer, but it’s not so hard for a wolf to run it somewhere close to the direction that he wants to send it in. Here are other pages in his book. This leather off the pull straps of my boots. Here’s my knife; here’s my left-hand Colt, and here’s my right-hand one. Here’s my hat, my coat, my trousers. When he sniffs any of these things he knows that I want ‘em.”
Lovell had begun to frown. He tried to banish the frown from his face, but it kept on returning. He felt that his leg was being pulled more than a little.
Then he said: “Well, Silver, here’s your knife right over here. It’d be quite a sight to me to see a wolf—or a dog —handle a knife.”
Silver lifted a finger, and Frosty came to him. Under his nose, Silver displayed a single item on the odds and ends on the key ring, and Frosty immediately backed away with his nose in the air and his mane ruffing out.
It was plain that he detested everything connected with that knife.
He approached his master again.
“You’re going to lose out on this,” said Lovell, with a keen touch of pleasure in the thought that he might have found Silver out in an exaggeration. He could hear himself, later on, telling other men that Jim Silver could tell a lie, just like any other fellow in the world. He would let people know that Jim Silver was not a whit better than ordinary mortality, and he would take a pleasure in letting them know it. “You’re going to have your wolf miss—even if you point out where the knife is lying and tell your man to fetch it in!” He chuckled as he made this suggestion.