Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  According to Slinger the tracks around the cabin site and pile of charred logs were old, and probably had been made the day after the Diamond rode home to Flagerstown before Christmas.

  “Which means the Hash-Knife had a scout watching us,” asserted Jim, quickly.

  “Boss, you shore hit it on the haid,” remarked Curly, admiringly.

  “Dog-gone if he ain’t gettin’ bright,” agreed Bud.

  “Speaks kinda bad fer me, but I shore do think jest thet,” went on Slinger.

  “Slinger, all you could hope to do heah is watch the trails down in the canyon,” said Curly. “Thet greaser of Jed Stone’s, the sheep-herder Sonora, has been keepin’ tab on us from the rim.”

  Jim drew a deep hard breath that actually hurt his lungs. “God, it is hell — to wake up to this!...Boys, my softy days are past. We’ll start this long job slow, and watch as much as we work. Slinger, your job is the same as before, only it’s more. Bud, you hunt meat for camp, and I don’t need to tell you what else.”

  Slinger spied upon the Hash-Knife camp, reporting several of their number absent. They were inactive, waiting for spring. “I couldn’t get no closer than top of a rock wall,” said Slinger. “But I seen Stone, walkin’ to an’ fro, his haid bent, as if he had a load on his back. Couldn’t make out Malloy, an’ reckon he’s away. Same aboot the greaser.”

  “Take my field-glasses next time,” said Jim, tersely. “We want to know who’s there and what they’re doing.”

  When more days, that lengthened into weeks, passed without any sign on the part of Stone’s gang that they were even aware of the return of the Diamond to Yellow Jacket, Jim felt the easing of a strain.

  “Wal, we’ll heah from them when Malloy comes back,” said Curly, meditatively. “He’ll come. I cain’t conceive of thet hombre bein’ daid or quittin’ this range. Can you, Slinger?”

  “Not till he raises some more hell,” returned the backwoodsman. “Malloy an’ thet Texan an’ the greaser must be down-country, hatchin’ up somethin’, or huntin’ up cattle to rustle in the spring.”

  “Wal, spring will be heah some fine mawnin’,” replied Curly. “An’, dog-gone-it, Jim, your uncle will be shovin’ all thet stock down in heah. He’s in too darn big a hurry.”

  “Anyway, Uncle can’t be stopped,” rejoined Jim. “This rustler nest has long been a sore spot with him. And really, he doesn’t see any more than a scrap or two for us, like we had with the Cibeque. The Hash-Knife outfit simply doesn’t faze Uncle Jim.”

  “He’s shore a tough old cattleman an’ he’s been through the mill. But I cain’t agree with him aboot only a little scrap or two. Shore there may be aboot only one.”

  Besides Spring, March also brought the vanguard of Mexican labourers to blast out and grade the road down into Yellow Jacket. Already the road was cut and levelled through the forest to the rim. And at the nearest ranch lumber and framework, cement and pipe, bricks and hardware, had begun to arrive.

  Coincident with this arrived also more food supplies, and mail and news, all of which were avidly devoured by the cowboys. Curly had received a letter which rendered him oblivious to his surroundings, even to Bud’s sly intrusions into his dream. Jim’s uncle had taken Gloriana to California, while Molly went to stay with Mrs. Locke and diligently pursued her studies.

  “Jim, lemme see thet letter from Miss Glory,” asked Bud, casually, “I jest want to admire thet lovely handwritin’.”

  And the innocent Jim handed over the letter.

  “I knowed it,” declared Bud, after a quick glance, but on the moment he did not explain what it was he knew. Jim guessed readily enough that Bud had seen the handwriting on Curly’s letter, and now he was in possession of the secret of Curly’s trancelike abstraction.

  News from Uncle Jim and Ring Locke, from friends of the cowboys, from the weekly newspaper recently started in Flagerstown, furnished debate, not to mention endless conversation, for many a camp-fire.

  Bambridge had sent his family away from Flagerstown, no one knew where, and had moved to Winslow to conduct his cattle business. Darnell had not been seen in town since Christmas, when he boarded a late east-bound train, after buying a ticket for Denver. But a cowboy friend of Uphill’s had seen Darnell in Holbrook right after the New Year, and hinted that he kept pretty well hidden there. Croak Malloy had shot a man in Mariposa, according to range rumour. Blodgett, who operated a ranch south of the brakes, complained of spring rustling.

  “Uncle Jim says to expect our five thousand head of cows and calves, with a sprinkling of steers, just as soon as the road dries up...Darn his stubborn hide!”

  The road came on down into Yellow Jacket, and all too soon the horde of bawling cattle followed, to spread over the great wild canyon and to go on down into the brakes below, and on their heels rolled the wagons with materials for Jim’s ranch-house. It took days to transport the lot. And meanwhile the two builders Jim’s uncle had sent down drove the cowboys to desperation with log-lifting. Jim laboured mightily with them, and had the joy of the primitive pioneer, in seeing his habitation go up in the wilderness. Bud ran a pipe-line from Yellow Jacket spring, and had water on the place before the house was up. The canyon had never resounded to such unfamiliar noise. Its tranquillity had been disrupted. And this kept on while the log-house grew, one log above the other, and the high-peaked, split pine-shingle roof went on, with its wide eaves sloping out over wide porches. Then while the carpenters were busy with the floors and windows and inside finish, the big barn was started, and long slim poles cut and hauled for corrals.

  It was well on in May when the expert workmen left to go back to Flagerstown, leaving Jim possessed of a spacious new pine-house that flashed yellow in the sunlight. But much labour there was still, and Jim realised it would take months before that habitation coincided with the picture in his mind.

  “Jim, heah you have a log-cabin palace aboot ready,” drawled Curly, and did not add whether he meant ready for furniture or a bride or for another bonfire for the rustlers.

  “Wal, the longer thet Hash-Knife waits the wuss they’ll ride over us,” summed up the pessimistic Bud.

  “Boss, it’s shore the range twenty miles an’ more down in the brakes that’ll take our cattle,” added Curly. “You can pen up a few hundred haid heah in the canyon. But your range is below. An’ thet damned country is big, an’ lookin’ for a lost cow will be huntin’ fer a needle in a haystack. It’s yours, though, an’ worth fightin’ fer. You can double your stock in two years. Grass an’ water mean a fortune to a rancher. To find ’em an’ hang on to ’em — thet’s the ticket.”

  “Aw, you gotta hang on to the cattle,” rejoined Bud. “I’ve known many a rancher who’d made his pile — if he could only have hanged on.”

  “Wal, it’s lucky fer Jim thet the Hash-Knife is peterin’ out.”

  “Shore...Say, did you fellars heah a rifle-shot?” Curly threw up his head like a listening deer.

  “By gum, I heerd somethin’,” replied Bud. “What’s strange about it — if you did?” queried Jim, uneasily.

  “Get back under the porch,” ordered Curly, sharply. “We made one mistake aboot buildin’ this cabin. A good rifle could reach you from thet cliff.”

  “Wal, it’s a safe bet Hump heerd some-tin’. Look at him.”

  The cowboy designated by Bud’s speech and finger appeared hurrying under the pines toward the cabin.

  “Shot came from high up,” observed Curly, warily. “Back a ways from the rim. I wonder would Slinger be up there?”

  “Slinger’d be anywhere he ought to be,” said Lonestar.

  They waited for Hump.

  “Fellars,” he said, sharply, running up on the porch, “I heerd a forty-four crack up on the rocks.”

  “We heahed a rifle-shot, Hump. But I couldn’t swear to it’s bein’ a forty-four...Thet would be Slinger.”

  “Mebbe shot a deer on the way to camp.”

  “An’ pack it around an’ down? Not much. Somethi
n’ wrong. You could hear it in thet shot.”

  The Diamond waited, with only one member absent; and every moment increased speculation. When Slinger appeared down the trail there was only one exclamation, which was Curly’s “Ahuh!”

  They watched the backwoodsman glide along. He had the stride of the deer-stalker.

  But there seemed to be force and menace, something sinister, in his approach.

  “Packin’ two rifles,” spoke up the hawk-eyed Curly. “An’ what’s thet swingin’ low?”

  “Pard, it’s a gun-belt,” declared Bud.

  “By Gawd! so it is!” ejaculated Curly, and then, as they all watched Slinger come on, he sat down to light a cigarette. “Boss,” he said, presently, now with his lazy drawl, “I reckon you have one less of the Hash-Knife to contend with.”

  “Wal, it’s been some time comin’,” added Bud, as if excusing a flagrant omission.

  Slinger soon reached the porch. His dark face betrayed nothing, but his glittering eyes were something to avoid. He laid a shiny worn carbine on the ground, muzzle pointing outward. It was the kind of rifle range-riders liked to carry in a saddle sheath.

  “Wal, Slinger, what’d you fetch it heah thet way fer?” demanded Curly, sharply.

  “Dog-gone if it ain’t cocked!” exclaimed Bud. Jim, too, had just made this discovery.

  “Jest the way he left it,” replied Slinger. “I wanted to show you-all how near somethin’ come off.”

  He went over to touch the trigger, which action discharged the rifle with a spiteful crack.

  “Funny it didn’t go off up there,” observed Slinger. “Hair trigger, all right.” Then he laid a gun-belt full of shells, and also burdened with a heavy bone-handled gun, at Jim’s feet on the edge of the porch. But Jim did not have any voice just then. He sensed the disclosure to come.

  “Slinger, whose hardware are you packin’ in?” demanded Curly.

  “Belonged to thet Hash-Knife greaser, Sonora,” replied Slinger, who now removed his cap and wiped his wet face. “I struck his fresh track this mawnin’ down the trail, an’ I followed him. But I never seen him till a little while ago, up heah on the rim. He was lyin’ flat on his belly, an’ he shore had a bead on Jim. Pretty long shot for a greaser, but I reckon it was aboot time I got there.”

  Jim stood stricken, as he gazed from the porch steps where he had been sitting up to the craggy rim. Surely not a long shot! He could have killed a deer, or a man, at that distance. He suddenly felt sick. Again a miraculous accident, or what seemed so to him, had intervened to save his life. Would it always happen? Then he became conscious of Curly’s cold voice.

  “You —— !” cursed that worthy, red in the face, and with a violence that presupposed a strong emotion. “Heah I’ve been tellin’ you to keep under cover! Is it goin’ to take a million years of Arizona to teach you things?...My Gawd! boy — thet greaser shore would have plugged you!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ED STONE REGARDED his Texas confederate with a long, unsmiling stare of comprehension.

  “Shore, Jed,” repeated Pecos, “you’re goin’ to draw on Croak one of these days. You cain’t help yourself...I’d done it myself if I hadn’t been afeered of him.”

  “Pecos, you tell me thet?” queried Stone, harshly. “You know then? He’s got you beat on the draw? You’re not hankerin’ to see?”

  “Not a damn hanker, Jed,” drawled Pecos. “I’d shore like to see him daid — the crooked little rattlesnake — but I still love life.”

  “Ahuh...An’ thet’s why you’re leavin’ the Hash-Knife?”

  “Not by a long shot, Jed. I’d gone with Anderson, but for you. An’ I’d gone when Malloy killed thet cowboy Reed, who throwed in with us. But I stuck on, hopin’ Malloy had spit out his poison. I’m goin’ because I reckon the Hash-Knife is done. Don’t you know thet, too, Jed?”

  “Hell! If we are done, what an’ who has done us?”

  “Reckon you needn’t ask. You know. Malloy was the one who took up Bambridge. Arizona will never stand a cattle thief like Bambridge. She shore hates him most as bad as Texas. It’s Bambridge’s pretence of bein’ honest while makin’ his big cattle deals thet riles Jim Traft, an’ other ranchers who are the real thing. Mark my words. Bambridge won’t see out this summer.”

  “Huh! If he doesn’t fork over the ten thousand he owes me he shore won’t, you can gamble on thet,” returned Stone.

  “Wal, all those deals thet have brought us up lately were instigated by Bambridge. Runnin’ off the Diamond brand up at Yellow Jacket an’ shippin’ the stock from Winslow — of all the damn-fool deals, that was the worst. We could have gone on for years heah, appropriatin’ a few steers now an’ then, an’ living easy. No, Malloy has done us. These last tricks of his — they make me sick an’ sore.”

  “You mean thet cattle-drive in April, without me knowin’?”

  “Not thet particular. I mean buildin’ this heah cabin, fer one thing. Shore it’s a fort. An’ only twenty miles from Yellow Jacket!”

  “Ha ha! — Croak runs up this cabin, he said, because he liked the view down over the brakes, an’ the wall of the Mogollans standin’ away there so beautiful.”

  “Wal, I ain’t gainsayin’ the view. But to take Malloy serious, except regardin’ life an’ death, is sheer nonsense. He aims to hang on heah whether you like it or not.”

  “Mebbe he will hang — an’ from a rope,” muttered the outlaw.

  “Not Croak Malloy! He’ll die with his boots on, sober an’ shootin’. Don’t have vain hopes, Jed...Malloy will run the Hash-Knife — an’ run it to hell. Take, for instance, these two hombres he’s lately rung in on us. Just a couple of town rowdies, drinkin’ up what they steal. No stuff for the Hash-Knife!”

  “I had the same hunch when I seen them,” said Stone, pacing to and fro.

  “Wal, heah’s Lang an’ Madden, both scared of Croak, an’ they’d double-cross you any day. An’ Sonora, he’s Croak’s man, as you know. Right now, Jed, the Hash-Knife, outside of you an’ me, is done.”

  “I reckon so. It’s been keepin’ me awake nights.”

  “Wal, then, shake the ornery outfit an’ come away with me?”

  “Where you goin’, Pecos?”

  “Reckon I’ll lay low fer a spell.”

  “Shore. But where? I want to know.”

  “Jed, I’ll ride straight for the haid of the Little Colorado. I told you I had word last fall from an old Texas pard who’s layin’ low up there.”

  “Uh-huh, Pecos, have you got any money?”

  “Shore. Malloy hasn’t won all I had.”

  Stone turned with a jerk of decision. “All right, Pecos, if I don’t join you up there before the snow flies, you can reckon Malloy’s done fer me, as he has fer the Hash-Knife.”

  “Jed, shore there’s no call fer you to risk an even break with Croak,” said the Texan, gravely. “He’s no square gunman. He’d have murdered young Traft over there at Yellow Jacket thet day.”

  “Yes, I remember. An’ my kickin’ his gun up made him hate me...Honest to Gawd, Pecos, the only reason I’d ever risk an even break with Croak — if I did — would be just to see if he could beat me to a gun.”

  “I savvy. I had the same itch. It’s the one weakness of a gunman. It’s plain vanity, Jed. Don’t be a damn fool. Come away with me now.”

  Stone thought for a long moment. “No, not yet. I’m broke. I want thet money from Bambridge. An’ I want to—” His pause and the checking of his thought suggested an ominous uncertainty of himself rather than meaning not to confide in the Texan. “But, Pecos, I’ll promise you, barrin’ ordinary accidents, thet I’ll meet you at the haid of the Little Colorado sometime before the summer’s over.”

  “Thet shore sounds good,” replied Pecos, rising to his lofty stature. “Shake on thet.”

  Stone gripped his lieutenant’s hand, and their eyes locked as well. It was one of the moments that counted with men of the open. Then Pecos strode out to his horse, and wh
ile he mounted Stone untied the halter of the pack-mule.

  “Reckon you’d better work out through the woods,” he said casually. “If Croak happened to meet you on the trail he’d be curious. He took Anderson’s desertion as a slap in the face...Good luck, Pecos.”

  “Same to you, Jed. I’ll shore be countin’ the days.”

  Malloy had certainly selected this site for a cabin with more than its superb view in mind. It stood high up, above a long fan-shaped bare slope of grass, and had been built in a notch of the great wall of rock. It could only be approached from the front, facing downhill. The spruce logs, of which it had been constructed, had been cut right on the spot. They were heavy, too green to burn for a long time, and significant indeed were the narrow chinks left open between the logs, some close to the floor, others breast high, and not a few in the loft. A spring of clear cold water ran from under the cliff, and the cabin had been erected right over it. The wall above bulged far out, so far that neither avalanche nor bullets from any point above could reach the cabin. With store of meat and provisions a few vigilant and hardened outlaws could hold that cabin-fort indefinitely. No Arizona posse of sheriff’s sworn-in deputies, or any reasonable outfit of cowboys, were going to rush that retreat, if it sheltered the Hash-Knife. Stone conceded Malloy’s sagacity. But it was a futile move, simply because he and his new accomplices would spend very little time there. They had made three cattle-drives already this spring, one of which was as bold and as preposterous as the raiding of the last of the Diamond stock on Yellow Jacket. Bambridge, with his new man, Darnell, was back of these. Stone had not needed to meet Darnell more than once to get his status. Darnell would hardly bother the Hash-Knife long. He was too sharp a gambler. Presently, if he won too much from Croak Malloy, very suddenly he would turn up his toes.

  But it was Malloy who stuck in Jed Stone’s craw. Jed had never before admitted even to himself that he meant to kill the gun-thrower. When, however, he had intimated so much to Pecos, he realised the grim thing that gripped him. He did mean to kill Malloy. It had been in his dreams, in that part of his mind which worked when he was asleep, and now it possessed him. How and when to do the deed were matters of conjecture; the important thing was the decision, and Stone imagined he had arrived at it. Nevertheless, conscience awakened a still small voice. Bad as Malloy was, he trusted Stone, had fought for him, would do so again at the drop of a card, and that meant, of course, he stood ready to die for him. Stone faced the issue uneasily.