Kitabı oku: «Stepsons of Light», sayfa 6
VII
“May God be merciful to him and to us all.”
– The Advocate of Arras.
“Better come along and share my guilty splendor,” urged Adam Forbes, toe to stirrup.
Charlie See shook his head. “Not none. Here I rest. Gold is nothing to me. I’ve got no time for frivolity. I want but little here below and want that little now. Say, Adam – don’t you never carry a gun?”
“Naw. I take a rifle, of course, for reindeer, snow dear, dear me and antelope – but I haven’t packed a gun for two years. No need of it here. Well, if you won’t side me, you won’t. I’m sorry, but you see how it is about me going right now,” said Adam, swinging into the saddle. “The water in that little tank of mine won’t last long, and there may not be any more rains this fall. So long! You just make yourself at home.”
“Good luck, Adam. And you might wish me the same. While you’re gone, I may want to make a little journey from bad to worse.”
Adam gathered up his lead rope. “Good luck, Charlie.” But a troubled look came to his eyes as he passed through the gate; in his heart he thought his friend rode late and vainly from Selden Hill.
The pack horse jogged alongside, his friendly head at Adam’s knee. It was earliest morning and they were still in the fresh cool shadow of the low eastern hills. Farther north the enormous bulk of Timber Mountain loomed monstrous in the sky, and there the shadows were deep and dense, impenetrably black; there night lingered visible, brighter than in all the wide arc to westward, bench-land and mighty hill were drenched with sparkling sun.
Adam rode with a pleasant jingling of spurs. He passed through Garfield town, or town-to-be, remodeled from the old San Ysidro, the bare and grassless Mexican plaza changed to the square of a Kansas town, by tree and hard-won turf; blacksmith shop and school, with a little store and post office, clustered for company on one side: business would fill up the three blank sides – like Columbus or Cherryvale. For there is no new thing beneath the kindly sun. Not otherwise, far from the plains of windy Troy, did Priam’s son build and copy, in the wild hills of Epirus:
The little Troy, the castle Pergamus,
The river Xanthus, and the Scæan gate.
Fringing the townlet, new gristmill and new factory stood where the mother ditch was bridged. Beyond the bridge the roads forked. From the right hand a steep cañon came plunging to the valley, winding dark between red-brown hills. This cañon was Redgate; here turned the climbing road to Upham; and Adam Forbes followed the Redgate road.
At the summit he turned to the left across a corner of MacCleod’s Park; he crossed a whorl of low ridges at the head of Apache Cañon and came to Hidden Tanks – a little limestone basin, now brimming with rainwater, perhaps a dozen barrels in all. Adam had fenced this in with a combination of stone wall and cedar brush, to keep cattle out. He now climbed to a little low cliff near by. There he had cached his outfit in a little cupboard of a cave, the floor of it shoulder high to him where he stood. Here he unpacked. He added to the cache his little store of sugar, coffee, rice, bacon and flour, all packed in five or ten pound baking-powder cans against the ravages of mice, gray squirrels and trade rats. The little deep cave gave protection against larger pests and shelter from rain. He rolled up his bedding, lifted it into the mouth of the cave and shoved it back.
Two empty five-gallon kegs were left of his pack; he had not dared to leave them in the cache, to fall apart in the dry and sun-parched air. These kegs he filled at the tanks and slung on the pack saddle; with them he made his way to the hill of his hopes. It was close by; he had hidden there his pick, shovel and the broad shallow basin used for panning gold. He hobbled the horses; by ten o’clock, or a little later, he was deep in the interrupted task of a month before.
Freakish chance had timed that interruption to halt him on the very brink of success. Before he had taken out a dozen pans he was in rich dirt. Noon found him shaken from the poise and mastery of years. Abandoning the patient and systematic follow-up system, he pushed on up the hill, sampling at random, and finding each sample richer. The scant supply of water was nearly gone, the gold frenzy clutched at his heart. By sighting, he roughly developed the lines showing the probable limit of pay dirt, as marked by the monuments of his earlier labor; he noted the intersection of those lines, and there began a feverish panning with his remnant of water. He found gold in flakes, in scales, in millet-seed grains – in grains like rice at last! He had tracked down a pocket to make history with, to count time from. And the last of his water was used.
Adam sat down, trembling to think his find had been unprotected by the shadow of a claim for the last month; reflected then that it had lain unclaimed for some thousands of years, and with the reflection pulled himself together and managed a grin at his own folly.
He went back to his saddle. Tucked in the saddle pockets was a goodly lunch, but he did not touch that. He untied his coat and took out two printed location notices, several crumply sheets of blank paper and a pencil. He filled in the blanks as the location notice of the Goblin Gold Mine – original notice and copy. On the blank paper he wrote out four more notices, two originals and two copies, for the Nine Bucks Placer Claim and the Please Hush. For the Goblin Gold he wrote himself as locator, Charles See and Howard Lull as witnesses; he reserved this for the highest and richest claim. For the next below, Charles See was locator, Forbes and Lull were witnesses; and the third was assigned to Howard Lull, with See and Forbes to bear witness.
Adam paced off the three claims adjoining each other and built a stone monument at each corner, with a larger monument for the location-papers at the center of each claim; the central monument of the Goblin Gold about where he had made the last panning. And then, even as he started to slip the first location notice in its monument, he lifted up his eyes and saw, across the tangled ridges, three men riding up from the deeps of Apache Cañon.
The cool judgment that had brought him safe through a thousand dangers was warped now by the fever and frenzy of gold lust; his canny instinct against disaster failed him in his need. There must be no shadow of irregularity on these claims, his hot brain reasoned; his find was too rich for chance-taking in the matter of mythical witnesses; yonder, by happy and unlooked for chance, were witnesses indeed; he must have their names to his location notices, and then he would get the copies to Hillsboro for recording at the earliest; he would mail them in Garfield post office that very afternoon.
He reversed his pencil and erased the names of his fictitious witnesses; he saddled his horse and rode to intercept the three horsemen, half a mile away now, trailing slowly across the park toward MacCleod’s Tanks. He waved them to stop. As he drew near he knew two of the men – Jody Weir, of Hillsboro, and Big Ed Caney, a deputy sheriff from Dona Ana County; two men he trusted not at all. Time was he would have deemed this conjunction sinister; to-day, madness was upon him. The third was a stranger. Each man had a blanket and a bulging slicker tied behind his saddle. Evidently they carried rations for several days’ camping.
“Hello, Adam!”
“You’re another – three of ’em. Got any water in those canteens? If I was to do a piece of wishin’, right now, I’d mention water first off. This is sure one old scorcher of a day! She’s a weather breeder. Rain before morning, sure as snakes. I see thunder-heads peeping up over the Black Range, right now.”
Caney handed over a canteen. “Drink hearty! You shore look like you’d been working, Adam.”
Adam drank deep before replying.
“Working is right. Prospecting. Tired of farming – need a change. Say, I want you fellows to witness some location notices for me. Ride over on the next ridge and I can point out where the claims lay so you can swear to ’em – or ride over with me if you got time. I was just doing a little forgery when I saw your dust, for I wasn’t expectin’ to see a man up this way – not ever. I do reckon this is the lonesomest place in the world.”
“Adam, meet my friend,” said Jody. “Mr. Forbes, Mr. Hales. Now, Adam, no need for us to go over to your layout, is there? We can see your silly monuments. That’s enough. No particular odds anyway, is it? I reckon half the notices on record have ghost signatures to ’em. Just as good as any. Nobody’ll ever know the difference.”
“Sure, that’s all right – but seein’ you happened along so slick, I thought I’d get your John Hancocks. Sign on the dotted line, please – where I rubbed out my forgeries.”
“Any good, your mines?” asked Jody as they signed.
“Might be – will be, likely enough. Just struck pay dirt to-day. Lots of room if you want to try a whirl – all round my claims, any direction except down.”
“Not to-day, I guess. Say, Forbes – you ain’t seen any strangers this way, have you? Mexicans, mebbe?”
“Not any. But I just come up from the river. Hills might be full of people, for all I know. Water all round, after these rains.”
“Look, now,” said Jody. “We’re doin’ a little man hunt – and if you’re hangin’ round here prospectin’, you may be able to give us a straight tip. Keep your eye peeled. There’ll be a piece of money in it for you if you can help us out.”
“Give it a name. But see here, Caney – this isn’t Dona Ana County, you know. You’re over the line.”
“I’m not doing this official,” said Caney. “Neither is Hales, here, though he is a deputy in Socorro County. We’re private cits in this man’s county – playin’ a hunch. Here’s the lay: There’s been a heap of stealing saddles for a business lately – saddles and other truck, but saddles, wholesale, most particular. Got so it wasn’t safe for a man to leave a saddle on a horse at night, down round Las Cruces.”
“They got Bill McCall’s saddle in Mesilla three months ago,” broke in Jody, laughing. “So Bill, he went and broke a bronc backward. Yes, sir! Broke him to be saddled and mounted from the wrong side. Only left-handed horse in the world, I reckon. Then Bill slips off down to Mesilla, ties his horse in front of Isham Holt’s house about dark, and filters inside to jolly Miss Valeria. Pretty soon Bill heard a tur’ble row outside, and when he went out he found a Mex boy rollin’ round in the street and a-holdin’ both hands to his belly. Claimed he had the cramps, he did – but that’s why we’re rather looking for Mexicans.”
“We figured they were a regular gang, scattered up and down, hurrying the stuff along by relays, and likely taking it down in old Mexico to dispose of,” said Caney. “Then we hear that saddles are being missed up in Socorro County too. So Hales and me gets our wise heads together. Here is our hugeous hunch: This is lonesome country here, the big roads dodge the river from San Marcial to Rincon, ’count of it being so rough, so thieves wouldn’t go by the Jornada nor yet take the big west-side roads through Palomas or Hillsboro. No, sir. They just about follow the other side of the river, where nobody lives, as far down as Engle Ferry. There or thereabouts they cross over, climb up Mescal Cañon and ooze out through the rough country east of Caballo Mountain. Then they either come through by MacCleod’s and cross the river here again, or they keep on down below Rincon to Barela Bosque. Maybe they save up till they get a wagonload of saddles, cover them up with a tarp or maybe some farm truck, and drive whistlin’ down the big road to El Paso.”
“Anyhow,” said Hales, “the Cattle Association has offered an even thousand for information leading to conviction, and we’re going to watch the passes and water holes – here and at Hadley Spring and Palomas Gap. If you help get the thousand, you help spend it. That’s right, ain’t it, boys?”
The others nodded.
“Go with you, you mean?”
“No. You stay here – so long as you’re here anyway – while we ride up the line. That way, one of us can go on and watch Mescal. We was one man shy before,” said Caney. “Does it go?”
“It goes.”
“Take your silly location papers then, and we’ll ride. We’re going across to have a look for tracks in Deadman first.” He jerked his chin toward a notch in the hills, halfway between the head of Apache Cañon and the head of Redgate. “Then we’ll go up by MacCleod’s Tank and on through to the Jornada and up the east side of Timber Mountain.”
“Me, I reckon I’ll post my notice and then go mail the copies to the recorder’s office,” said Adam. “Thank’ee, gentlemen. Adios!”
Jody Weir pulled up his horse behind the first hill.
“Fellers, that man has made a strike! Didya see his face – all sweat and dust? Adam Forbes is not the man to rustle like that in this broiling sun unless he was worked up about something. He didn’t act natural, nohow. He drawls his talk along, as a usual thing – but to-day he spoke up real crisp and peart. I tell you now, Forbes has found the stuff!”
“I noticed he didn’t seem noways keen for us to go help post his papers,” said Caney.
“Humph! I began noticin’ before that,” said Toad Hales. “Us signing as witnesses – that got my eye. Usually it makes no never minds about a witness to a mining claim. They sign up John Smith, Robinson Crusoe or Jesse James, and let it go at that. Mighty strict and law-abiding all of a sudden, he was! And going to record his papers the day of discovery – when he has ninety days for it? It’s got all the earmarks of a regular old he-strike! I move we take rounders on him and go look-see.”
“Cowboy – you done said something.”
They slipped back furtively, making a detour, riding swiftly under cover of shielding hills; they peeped over a hill crest beyond Adam’s claims just in time to see him riding slowly away in the direction of Redgate.
“Gone to mail his notices to Hillsboro!” snarled Jody. “Some hurry! Come on, you – let’s look into this.”
They found pick and pan, stacked with the empty water kegs by the location monument of the Goblin Gold; they scraped up a small pan of dirt from one of the shallow holes of Adam’s making; they poured in water from their canteens; Caney did the washing. He poured off the lighter dirt, he picked out the pebbles, he shook the residue with a gentle oscillating movement; he poured the muddy water cautiously, he shook the pan again.
“Sufferin’ tomcats!” yelled Hales. “Gold as big as wheat!”
Caney’s face went whitey-green; he completed the washing with a last dexterous flirt and set down the pan with trembling hands.
“Look at that!”
Jody’s eyes were popping from his head. “A pocket! Even if it plays out in a day – a day’s work would make us rich for life!”
“Us – hell!” said Caney. “We get the crumbs and leavings. Adam Forbes knows what he’s about. He’s got the cream. Outside of his claims the whole damn mountain won’t be worth hell room!”
Jody turned his eyes slowly toward Redgate. “If we’d only known we might have horned in. Three of us – why, sooner than lose it all and get himself killed to boot, we might have split this fifty-fifty.”
“We’ll split this thirty-thirty!” Caney sprang to his feet. “Have you got the guts for it? Jody, this is your country – can we head him off?”
“If he goes round by the head of Redgate Cañon – and if we don’t stay here talking – we can cut across through Deadman. There’s a pass where Deadman and Redgate bend close together. It won’t be a long shot – two hundred yards.”
“Three shots! Come on!” Hales swung on his horse. “We’ve all got our rifles. Three shots! Come on!” He jabbed the spurs home.
It was not until they had passed the park that the others overtook Hales.
“Here, you, Hales – don’t kill your horse!” said Jody Weir. “If he beats us to the pass we’re not done yet. He’ll come back to-night. He said so.”
“You cussed fool! If he once gets those location notices in the mail we might as well let him go. We couldn’t take the chances and get by with it.”
“That’s just it,” said Jody. “Hi! Caney! Ride up alongside. Slow up, Hales! Listen, both of you. Even if he gets those papers in the mail, the recorder need never see them. All I have to do is to say the word. I’m on the inside – sure and safe.”
“Sure?”
“Sure and safe. If he beats us to the gap and comes back – well, you stop Adam’s mouth and I’ll be responsible for the papers. They’ll never be recorded in this world!”
“Where’s your stand-in? At Garfield?”
“Never you mind my stand-in. That’s my lookout. A letter posted at Garfield to-night goes to Rincon by buckboard to-morrow; it lays over in Rincon to-morrow night, goes out on the High Line to Nutt on the nine-fifteen day after to-morrow, takes the branch line to Lake Valley, and goes from Lake to Hillsboro by stage. It don’t get to Hillsboro till two in the afternoon, day after to-morrow. It takes as long from Garfield to Hillsboro as from Chicago. After – after – if we turn the trick – we can come back and post location notices for ourselves. Then we can beat it on a bee line for Hillsboro and record ’em.”
“Aha! So it’s at Hillsboro post office you’re the solid Muldoon, is it?”
Weir’s gun flashed to a level with Caney’s breast. “That will be all from you, Caney! Your next supposing along those lines will be your last. Get me? Now or ever! Keep your mouth closed, and Adam Forbes’ mouth. That’s your job.”
“Put up your gun, kid. I can’t afford to be killed. I’m going to be a howlin’ millionaire. I’ll say no more, but I’m not sorry I spoke. You bein’ so very earnest that way, I’m satisfied you can deliver the goods. That is what I want to know – for I tell you now, I don’t expect to head Forbes off here. He had too much start of us – unless he dilly-dallies along the road or is delayed.”
“If he comes back, won’t he bring a gang with him? If he does we’re done,” said Hales. “That’s why I’m willing to kill my horse to beat him to it. You two seem more interested in chewing the rag.”
“O, that’s all right! Jody and me, we’ve come to a good understanding,” said Caney smoothly. Jody Weir glanced carelessly at the back of Hales’ head, his eyes wandered till they met Caney’s eyes and held steadily there for a moment; his brows arched a trifle.
“Well, here we are,” announced Jody. “We’d better make the climb afoot. The horses are about done and they’d make too much noise anyway – floundering about. It’s all slick rock.”
They took their rifles from the saddles, they clambered up the steep pass, they peered over cautiously.
“Hell! There’s two of them!” said Caney. “Get ’em both! Big stakes! This is the chance of a lifetime!”
Below them on a little shelf of promontory stood a saddled horse, a blue horse. A yearling was hog-tied there, and a branding fire burned beside. As they looked, a young man knelt over the yearling and earmarked it. Close by, Adam Forbes slouched in the saddle, leaning with both hands on the horn. He gave a letter to the young man, who stuck it into his shirt and then went back to the yearling. He loosed the hogging-string. The yearling scrambled to his feet, bawling defiance, intent on battle; the young man grabbed the yearling’s tail and jerked him round till his head faced down the cañon. Adam Forbes made a pass with his horse and slapped with his hat; the yearling fled.
“Wait! Wait!” whispered Jody. “I know that man! That’s Johnny Dines. Wait! Adam wants to get back and feel that gold in his fingers. Ten to one Dines is going across the river; I can guess his business; he’s hunting for the John Cross. Adam gave him the location-papers to mail. If Adam goes back – there’s your scapegoat – Dines! He’ll be the man that killed Forbes!”
“Friend of yours, Jody?”
“Damn him! If they both start down the cañon, you fellows get Forbes. I’ll get Dines myself. That’s the kind of friend he is. Get your guns ready – they’ll be going in a minute, one way or the other.”
“Curiously enough, I know Johnny Dines myself,” muttered Hales. “Very intelligent man, Dines. Very! I would take a singular satisfaction in seeing young Dines hung. To that laudable end I sure hope your Mr. Forbes will not go down the cañon.”
“Well, he won’t! Didn’t you see him give Dines the papers?” said Caney. “Lay still! This is going to match up like clockwork.”
The men below waved their hands to each other in friendly fashion; Forbes jogged lazily up the cañon; Dines stamped out the branding fire and rode whistling on the riverward road.
“Weir, you’re dead sure you can pull the trick about the papers? All right, then – you and Hales go over there and write out joint location papers in the names of the three of us. Got a pencil? Yes? Burn the old notices, and burn ’em quick. Burn his kegs and turn his hobbled horse loose. We will bring his tools as we come back, and hide ’em in the rocks. Any old scrap of paper will do us. Here’s some old letters. Use the backs of them. After we get to Hillsboro we’ll make copies to file.”
These directions came jerkily and piecemeal as the conspirators scrambled down the hillside.
“Where’ll we join you?”
Caney paused with his foot in the stirrup to give Jody Weir a black look.
“I’ll join you, young fellow, and I’ll join you at our mine. Do you know, I don’t altogether trust you? I want to see those two sets of location papers with my two eyes before we start. So you’ll have lots of time. Don’t you make no mistakes. And when we go, we go together. Then if we happen to find Adam Forbes by the fire where he caught young Dines stealin’ a maverick of his – ”
“How’ll you manage that? Forbes is halfway to the head of the cañon by now.”
“That’s your way to the left, gentlemen. Take your time, now. I’m in no hurry and you needn’t be, and our horses are all tired from their run. And you want to be most mighty sure you keep on going. For the next half hour nobody’s going to know what I’m doing but me and God – and we won’t tell.”
Caney turned off to the right. Fifteen minutes later he met Adam Forbes in a tangle of red hills by the head of Redgate.
“Hi, Adam! We got ’em!” he hailed jubilantly. “Caught ’em with the goods. Two men and five saddles. Both Mexicans.”
“They must have given you one hell of a chase, judging from your horse.”
“They did. We spied ’em jest over the divide at the head of Deadman. There wasn’t any chance to head ’em off. We woulda tagged along out of sight, but they saw us first. They dropped their lead horses and pulled out – but we got close enough to begin foggin’ lead at ’em in a straight piece of cañon, and they laid ’em down.”
“Know ’em?”
“Neither one. Old Mexico men, I judge by the talk of ’em. Hales and Jody took ’em on down Deadman – them and the lead horses – while I come back for you.”
“Me? Whadya want o’ me?”
“Why, you want to go down to represent for yourself. You know that odd bit of land, grown up to brush, that you bought of Miguel Silva?”
“Took it on a bad debt. What of it?”
“Why, there’s an old tumbledown shack on it, and they’ve been using that as a store house, tha’sall. By their tell they got eighteen assorted saddles hid there.”
“Well, I’m damned!” said Adam, turning back. “That’s a blame fine howdy-do, ain’t it? How long have they been at this lay?”
“Four or five months. More’n that south of here. But they just lately been extendin’ and branchin’ out.”
“Making new commercial connections, so to speak. Any of the Garfield gente implicated?”
“One. Albino Villa Neuva.”
Adam nodded. “Always thought he was a bad hombre, Albino.”
“They’re going to come clean, these two,” said Caney cheerfully. “We told ’em if they’d turn state’s evidence they’d probable get off light. Reckon we’re going to round up the whole gang. Say, I thought you’d hiked on to Garfield. I started back to your little old mine, cut into your sign, and was followin’ you up.”
“Yes, I did start down all right. But I met up with a lad down here a stretch and give him my papers and shackled on back. Damn your saddle thieves, anyway – I sure wanted to go back and paw round that claim of mine. My pack horse is back there hobbled, too.”
“Aw, nemmine your pack horse. He’ll make out till mornin’.”
Ahead of them the wagon road was gouged into the side of an overhang of promontory, under a saddleback pass to northward. A dim trail curved away toward the pass. Adam’s eye followed the trail. Caney’s horse fell back a step.
“There’s where I found my mail carrier,” said Adam; “up on top of that little thumb. A Bar Cross waddy, he was – brandin’ a calf.”
Caney fired three times. The muzzle of his forty-five was almost between Adam’s shoulders. Adam fell sidewise to the left, he clutched at his rifle, he pulled it with him as he fell. His foot hung in the stirrup, his horse dragged him for a few feet. Then his foot came free. He rolled over once, and tried to pull his rifle up. Then he lay still with his face in the dust.
