Silvertip (1942) Read Online Free Page B

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.
    It looked like any of a thousand other Western villages. There were the same flimsy shacks that seemed to have been thrown together at random-mere tents to be occupied by an army that would soon pass on. For Westerners have had something to do other than lavish time on places to eat and sleep and sit. They have had business to do, and their business has been the whole outdoors.
    This was like all the rest, in so far as Silvertip could see, and there was little that his keen eye missed. He hunted every board, every shingle, every window like a hawk searching for game.
    As he came into the single winding