Silver had lighted several more matches. Now he mounted Parade and returned to Lovell. He reported: “That horse was travelling on a dead run. A bullet hit it. It began to sag. Its strides shortened back there. The rider dismounted and ran on ahead. That rider was Wayland, or Frosty would not be so keen to follow him. Come on!” Silver called. The wolf once more sprang out on the invisible trail, and passing down the ravine for a short distance, he then made a sharp turn to the right, into the black mouth of a narrow valley. Silver whistled. Frosty went on at a skulking walk until they came out of the utter blackness of that entrance into a wider valley inside. Before them they saw the dim outlines of a rocky hummock.
Silver dismounted at once.
“That’s the sort of a place that a man might use as a fort,” he said. “I’m going to take a look at it.”
Take a look at it, thought Lovell, in the black of the night, not knowing what danger or desperate men might be concealed? He himself remained well to the rear while Silver ran ahead with Frosty. They slowed as they came near to the rocks. Then they disappeared from view.
Lovell gradually let his mustang drift in pursuit. And after a moment, Silver and the wolf came in sight, once more, rounding the side of the hummock. Silver mounted Parade; Frosty turned off to the side.
“More than on trail goes away from here,” said Silver. “Only one trail came up to it, so far as we know. Now watch Frosty go through the night!”
The wolf, in fact, no longer held to any settled direction, but repeatedly shifted to this side and to that, eventually settling down on one trail, as it appeared.
When the pursuers came to a place where the grass was thin and the ground soft, Silver dismounted again, and lighted more matches. His survey was quickly made.
He said, as he remounted: “The line that Frosty is following is that of a man on foot. There are two men on foot, in fact. And there are two horse trails through the grass. Three men, and they’ve got Wayland. Three men that he ran away from, I suppose.”
“Three?” cried Lovell, in an agony of excitement and of fear.
“That’s the way I make it. Is three the right number?”
“They’ve got him,” groaned Lovell. “They’ll slit his gullet and take the coin. Listen to me, Jim Silver. You’re the fellow that’s famous for doing right by innocent men. Well, here’s a good chance for you. Here’s Wayland. He’s innocent, all right. He’s never done any harm—except to me—and now three of the worst thugs in the world have him. They’ve cut his throat by this time—if they have half the brains that they used to own. He’s a dead man. There’s my money to get back, and there’s the blood of an honest man on this trail. You hear, Silver? Does that make you cock your ears?”
Silver said nothing at all, for a moment. Then he asked:
“Are the three of them cronies of yours? Old cronies that you’ve broken with?”
“They’re a flock of jailbirds,” said Lovell savagely.
“Well,” said Silver, “you’ve been in prison yourself, I’ve seen.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s a down twist to the mouth and a way of whispering that men learn only from a few years of the lock step,” said Silver.
“I don’t talk like that,” exclaimed Lovell.
“No, you don’t talk like that. But when you’re thinking a thing out, you whisper to yourself that way.”
A bubbling sound arose in the throat of Lovell. He thanked his stars that Jim Silver had not reached out a hand for him, no matter from what distance. All possibilities of conversation were dried up in the throat of Lovell. He could merely gasp out:
“I tell you, Silver, even if you can see in the dark, the way some people say that you can, you’ll certainly have your hands full with the three of ‘em.”
“Ay, but there’s you, Lovell,” said Silver dryly. “You’ll be up there in the thick of the fight, I suppose.”
“Me?” snarled Lovell. “I’ll put a tooth in ‘em if I get a good chance—but my way might not be your way. You’ve got to remember that.”
“True,” said Silver. “We may have different ways of going about things.”
He led on, following Frosty, for the wolf had now disappeared in the trees and was traveling up the mountainside. Presently Frosty led them in a small detour, and they found him, half faded into the shadows, erect, with head thrown high.
“He’s lost the scent!” groaned Lovell. “The fool has brought us all this way and lost the scent for us!”
“He’s taking it out of the wind instead of off the ground,” answered Silver softly. “Dismount, and walk on your toes. Don’t rustle as much as a blade of grass. We’re close to whatever trouble we’re going to have. Tether that mustang, unless it can move the way Parade does.”
But what other horse could move as Parade moved in a time of danger? What other by years of a wild, free life, and then by long training with such a master, had learned to drift through a forest as silently as the great moose that goes in and out of the northern woods like a strange image of the mind?
Lovell tied the mustang and followed on foot, until he saw before him, through the trees, the vague shudder and tremor and lifting of shadows around a small camp fire. He knew then that he was coming close to the great moment.
XXI—IN THE BANDITS’ CAMP
There on the verge of the trees the two of them paused. The whole scene was decipherable, though the tone of it was very dull and low. The waver of the flame of the camp fire cast as much confusion as light. But they could see the three seated near the fire, one with his hands bound behind him, and they could mark the figure that walked back and forth on guard.
“They have brains,” said Silver. “They know how to choose a camp, and that’s the most important knowledge that a man can have—for this sort of a business!”
“If we take the guns,” murmured Lovell, “we could pick ‘em off!”
“We could kill or hurt a pair of ‘em,” said Silver quietly. “But that’s no good. I don’t even know that they need killing.”
“You don’t know? Ain’t I told you that they’re all a lot of thugs?” demanded Lovell.
“You’ve told me that,” answered Silver shortly.
Lovell was silent. His hatred of Silver waxed a little greater in the interval of pause.
“That other one—with his arms tied—is that the fellow who stopped you and took the saddlebags?”
“I can’t make out his face. Yes, that must be Wayland.”
“If we start shooting and the three of them are thugs, they’ll slit Wayland’s throat for him before they answer our fire. We can’t bombard them from a distance.”
“It’d be a lot more polite if we went up and introduced ourselves first and asked them for the saddlebag,” said Lovell, with his sneer.
“Yes,” said Silver absently, “that would be more polite.”
Lovell’s whisper screamed high against his palate:
“What are you talking about? Silver, those three are all out of the pen. They’re out of the death house. You’d be admired for killing them! Robbery and murder in Elkdale. They’ve all gotta swing for it.”
“Is that money in the saddlebag,” said Silver, “is that part of the Elkdale loot?”
Lovell was silent, but his breathing could be heard. His distress was more eloquent than words could make it.
Silver permitted the silence, and at last he said: “There are three thugs, over there—three fellows out of the death house—poor devils! And Wayland. You say that Wayland is a thug, too?”