Silvertip's Roundup Read Online Free Page A

Silver.
    â€œAnd where do you stand about Christian?” he asked.
    â€œI’m different,” said Silver. “Barry Christian is my hobby. Every man has to have a hobby, you know.”
    On that speech, he left the room, and as the door closed noiselessly behind him, Taxi was willing to wager a great deal of money that Barry Christian would have preferred to be anything in this world other than the hobby of Mr. Silver.
    Taxi lay down on the bed. He could think better when he was lying down. He folded his hands under his head and put his mind on the task before him. The job he had come out to do had seemed very simple. He was merely going to kill a man named Charlie Larue. Now the job seemed to be expanding. It was growing large like the mountains around him.
    He got up from the bed and went to sit on the window sill and look at the golden horse that grazed in the nearby field.
    As he sat in the window, he could hear beneath him, very dimly, the murmur of the girl’s voice, saying:
    â€œI don’t care. He may be what you say. But I don’t care how much of a fighting man he is — I don’t want him to come to any trouble on account of his friendship for Joe Feeley. I was at the bottom of what happened to poor Joe Feeley. Mr. Silver, I’m going to beg you to do something.”
    â€œI’ll do whatever I can,” said Silver.
    â€œThen — Oh, I know that your hands are full. I know that you’re after Barry Christian. Everybody knows that. I know that you’re in danger of your life every minute. But please keep an eye on the stranger. Or else I’ll have his death laid at my door.”
    Taxi had to lean out from the window to hear what followed. He could barely hear the voice of Silver saying:
    â€œWell, I’ll take care of him if I can.”
    Taxi stood up. He wanted to laugh. It struck him as almost the most amusing thing that he had ever heard — that somebody should try to take care of him!
    There were other things for him to think about, however. Most people, at first sight, took him for a harmless fellow, but this man Silver had apparently seen that he was a fighting man. Of that fighting man he had consented to take care.
    This was a thing to be heard but not to be believed.
    Then, looking out the window, as he heard a sharp whistle, Taxi saw the golden stallion gallop to the fence, where Silver waited for him. He saw the hand of the master sleek the shining throat of the horse. He saw the stallion nosing at the pockets of the man. And it seemed to Taxi that the two of them, in the suggestion of strength and speed and exhaustless power, were of a type — that he should have known beforehand that they fitted together to make a unit.

IV
The Round-Up Bar
    T HERE were not many occasions when Taxi had to spend time thinking, unless it were some such problem as to how to crack a safe or get at an enemy. The values in his accepted world were fixed, and men were known by what they contributed. All policemen were “hard” or “crooked”; all women were “soft”; all children were “worthless and useless”; and, as for men, they were all on the “make.”
    Joe Feeley was a little different. If one had asked Taxi why he had come out West to avenge the death of Feeley, he would have been hard put to it to answer. He would have said, perhaps, that there was something about Feeley. Just something about him. That was all. He had a good grin. He knew how to tell a story. He wasn’t a welsher.
    But it would hardly have occurred to Taxi to call Feeley a friend. That word was an abstraction to be found in books but not in life, so far as he was concerned. Life was steel, and the “wise guy” was the fellow who had a diamond-drill point that would cut the steel of existence and open a way through it.
    So Taxi, after he had reflected for a few moments, discarded the first wild flights of his fancy about big Silver, and