by Zane Grey
As he approached the last few rods of the ascent to the summit of the divide he slowed down to let Sydney catch up. The burros passed on over out of sight. On the left rose the bulk of a bronze peak, and on his right towered the mighty half of the stupendous slope of defaced mountain-side.
“Oh, how wild and ghastly... but beautiful!” panted Sydney as she joined him. “Kal, I shall hug you — maybe — for fetching me here — giving me this — this tremendous experience.”
“Kal?” he echoed, in a transport.
“Yes, Kal,” she retorted, archly.
“Let me tell you somethin’,” he pleaded.
“Well, you’ve been pretty good lately — for you,” she temporized, but her eyes were eloquent and warm.
“Sydney, in a moment more we’ll be lookin’ down into my valley. An’ it’ll be the happiest moment of my life.”
“Little boy, why so pale and solemn? It certainly will not be the unhappiest of mine.” She stretched a gloved hand to him. They went on.
Kalispel saw the fringed tip of the south slope rise about the divide.
“I smell smoke,” said Sydney.
“So do I,” replied Kalispel, in surprize. “That’s strange.”
The horses stamped up on top. Kalispel swept his eager gaze downward to the gray valley of rocks, the silver winding stream, the grand bare slope looming sinisterly beyond. But what was it that flashed and moved? White tents! Columns of blue smoke rising! Men wading in the stream!
“My Gawd!” burst out Kalispel, his heart contracting.
“Oh! Your valley is full of people!” cried Sydney, in dismay.
Chapter Five
Kalispel stared down into the valley with a terrible sickening realization that the spectacle below represented a stampede of miners. Long before Jake could have gotten to Boise and back the gold-diggings had been discovered.
“Smoke! Tents! Men puttering in the brook! What does it all mean?” exclaimed Blair, in amazed consternation.
“Look! There’s a pack-train coming down the valley,” cried Sydney.
“Of all the cursed luck!” exclaimed Kalispel, in bitter passion. His sweeping gaze took in a new and well-defined trail coming in from the south. Heavily laden mules wagged their canvas packs, bristling with shovels and picks, along this trail. Prospectors swung behind them, with the stride of men who had found the pot at the foot of the rainbow. Kalispel at last turned to his friends.
“Folks, I’m so sorry I want to die,” he said, huskily. “Our diggin’s have been discovered... an’ the stampede has begun.”
“Oh, Kalispel — don’t look — so — so dreadful!” entreated Sydney. “We know it couldn’t be your fault.”
“Hell, boy! If what you say is true — and, by golly! it looks like it — why, there’s enough gold for all,” added Blair, manfully swallowing his disappointment.
“Let’s rustle down,” replied Kalispel. But he was inconsolable. He divined a blow, the crushing extent of which he could not grasp. Sam would tell him.
He urged his horse down after the burros. The Blairs followed. As Kalispel descended his gaze sought to encompass all the activity in that valley. Tents glanced white and gray in the afternoon sunlight. They appeared to run in two long lines down the middle of the bench, leaving a lane between. That lane was a street. Already a town had been laid out. A keener survey gathered even more dismaying facts. Camps had been located close together all the way down the stream as far as he could see. That meant claims. All available gold-bearing ground could not have been taken up yet, but no doubt the rich claims had been staked.
The descent of that pass seemed interminable to Kalispel. He never looked back once at Sydney. He pushed the string of burros at a pace that threatened slipping of their packs. At last he drove them out on the level bench, not far from the stream, where they began to crop the green grass. Kalispel dismounted. Whatever he had to encounter here he wanted to face on foot. Thought of Sam’s rich quartz claim somehow did not mitigate his queer misgivings. As he threw his saddle, a familiar low deep rumble brought him up with a start. The old bald-faced mountain had growled ominously.
“Hear that, Blair?” he asked, as his followers arrived.
“Hear what?”
“Oh, I did. Thunder!” cried Sydney. She was wide-eyed and agitated, and gray of face from fatigue. She reached out her hands for Kalispel to lift her down, and as he leaped to her side she almost fell into his arms.
“You poor kid!” he said, thickly. “Set here an’ rest.... Blair, you watch the burros while I go see what’s what.” Kalispel strode over the rocky bench down to the stream to the nearest camp. Bed-rolls, packs, utensils and stone fireplaces, picks, and shovels, piles of wood, all kinds of camp paraphernalia, appeared to line the stream. Of the two nearest miners one was bending over a rock in the stream, and the other, a tall, bearded, wet and dirty young man, evidently having espied Kalispel, advanced a little to meet him.
“Howdy, stranger. See you found a new way in,” he replied, genially.
“That’s the way I went out two weeks or so ago,” replied Kalispel, curtly.
“Was you in hyar — two weeks ago?” queried the other, incredulously.
“Yes. Me an’ my two brothers.”
“Wal, it’s a pity you didn’t stay on. Mebbe one of you fellars was responsible for the news of a gold strike that hit Challis about a week ago.”
“I wasn’t. I went out with my brother to pack in supplies. Maybe he got drunk an’ gave the snap away.”
“Rand Leavitt got wind of it first, an’ a stampede rustled after him. Leavitt beat us all to it. Bonanza! He struck a quartz vein packed with gold. The rest of us are placer minin’. An’ believe me, stranger, no kick cornin’.”
“Shore you know my brother, Sam Emerson?”
“Nope. Not by name, anyhow.”
“Sam found that rich quartz vein, an’ Jake an’ I packed out a piece worth five hundred dollars.”
“What? — Stranger, are you drunk or crazy?”
“Neither. But I’m most damn curious,” snapped Kalispel. “Bill, come out hyar,” yelled the young miner. His call fetched the big, bearded, red-shirted man on the run. “Say, Bill, listen to this. Hyar’s a fellar who says his brother made a gold strike hyar weeks ago, an’ thet he an’ another brother packed out a chunk of quartz worth five hundred.”
“It’s true. Do you know my brother, Sam Emerson?” flashed Kalispel. “We left him here, located on the quartz vein.”
“Sam Emerson? Don’t know him. An’ he’s shore not located on the quartz vein now, for Leavitt staked thet. He got in hyar first with Selback an’ outfit. You’re shore haidin’ fer trouble, young man, if you make thet claim to them.”
Kalispel abruptly wheeled and almost ran across the bench toward the location of Sam’s quartz vein. As he neared it he slowed up to catch his breath and to take the lay of the land. In the first place he had difficulty finding the outcropping ledge under the looming bare slope. It appeared to be hidden by tents and a large framework of peeled logs, which manifestly was a cabin in course of construction. Kalispel heard the blows of an ax. He passed the end of the lane between the tents. It ran west the remaining distance of the bench. He heard the crash of falling timber and the hoarse voices of men. These came from behind him, down by the stream. The tent town appeared deserted, except at this end, where he espied men actively engaged in labor around the cabin.
In another moment Kalispel stalked upon the scene of Sam’s strike. He did not need to look twice at the long outcropping ledge. A tall man with a rifle across his knees sat significantly in the foreground.
“Are you Rand Leavitt?” called Kalispel, in a voice that rang, as he passed the open tent to confront this guard.
The man rose quickly. He stood coatless and hatless, young, bullet-headed, swarthy-faced, and his deep-set eyes appeared to start.
“No, stranger. My name’s Selback. The boss is down town,” replied the man. “An’ who
might you be, bustin’ up hyar like a bull out of a corral?”
Kalispel was slow to answer, but swift and sure in his estimate of this guard, Selback. There was something expected, furtive, cold, and calculating in the man’s eyes, yet no gleam of intuitive sense of Kalispel’s status.
“I’m Kalispel Emerson — brother of Sam... Where is Sam?”
“Are you askin’ me? I don’t know your brother — or you, either.” —
“Shore you haven’t seen Sam Emerson?” rang Kalispel, piercingly. The builders had ceased their tasks to come down on the ground.
“There are a lot of miners hyar whose name I never heard.”
“Name or not, you shore seen Sam when you hit this valley... because he was here on this claim. He found this quartz. I was with him when he struck it. So was Jake, my other brother.”
“Man alive! You’ve gone gold mad,” declared the guard, with a gruff laugh. But there was no sincerity in word of mirth. He did not ring true.
“By Gawd!” cried Kalispel, “this has a queer look!”
“An’ so have you, stranger!” retorted Selback, probably misled by Kalispel’s poignant exclamation. “Just you rustle along or Leavitt will run you out of Thunder River.”
“We Emersons don’t run.”
“Wal, walk, then, an’ be quick about it,” ordered the guard, making a move to swing the rifle around.
“Hold on!” cut out Kalispel.
But Selback did not heed the warning. The rifle barrel continued to swerve beneath the man’s paling visage. In a flash Kalispel drew and fired. The guard’s head sank, and, stumbling, he fell forward over his clattering rifle.
Rapid footfalls cracked on the rocks. Kalispel wheeled to confront a man who yelled as he cleared the tent. He ran almost into Kalispel’s smoking gun.
“Line up with your gang. Pronto!” ordered Kalispel, with a wave of the gun. He knew his man. This was Leavitt, who lost no time lining up beside the three laborers, but he did not put up his hands.
“You see I’m unarmed,” he said, coolly. “What’s the deal?” and he swept a glittering gray glance from Kalispel to the man on the ground and back again.
“You’re Rand Leavitt,” confirmed Kalispel as he instinctively recognized a shrewd, nervy, resourceful leader. Leavitt was under forty, a man of lofty stature, whose pale, cold, boldly-chiseled face denoted intelligence and force.
“Yes, I’m Leavitt. What’s this hold-up mean?”
“Wal, your man Selback didn’t get a hunch, as you see,” returned Kalispel, sarcastically.
“If you’re a bandit, hold up the miners. We’ve got a quartz vein. No gold yet. I’ve sent out for a stamp mill.”
“Fm no bandit, an’ damn well you know it.”
“How the hell do I know who and what you are?” demanded the other, in pale anger. “What’d you kill Selback for — if it’s not a hold-up?”
“The damn fool tried to throw his rifle on me, after I warned him.”
“Who are you?”
Kalispel did not answer. He backed against the wall of the tent. Miners, led by the couple whom he had accosted upon his arrival, were hurrying to the scene, drawn, no doubt, by the gunshot. Kalispel fought down his fury and despair.
Whatever the justice of his claim, it would never be recognized. He was too late. He had to decide whether or not to kill this man Leavitt.
“Boss, he said his name was Kalispel Emerson,” spoke one of the laborers, hurriedly. “Thet he was brother to a Sam Emerson, whom he swore had located this quartz vein.”
“Sam Emerson!” shouted Leavitt, loud-voiced and protesting. “Where in the hell was he, then? I found this claim, opened up to be sure, gold shining in the sun, pick and shovel, camp duffle and stuff lying around. But no miner!”
“You lie!” hissed Kalispel.
“No I don’t lie,” stormed Leavitt. “There wasn’t any miner here. I swear that. I could have proved it by Selback.”
“You made away with my brother an’ jumped his claim.”
“I jumped it, yes. I had a perfect right to. But it had not been worked for days.... When you accuse me of making away with your brother you’re the liar — or you are out of your head.”
He was steady of hand, pale-faced, but fire-eyed, and his voice and demeanor carried conviction, if not to Kalispel, to the others present, a constantly growing crowd.
“Leavitt, I reckon I’ll bore you.”
“You’ll murder an innocent man, then,” replied Leavitt. “I’m not threatening you, as was Selback. You’ve no excuse to kill me, except your suspicion, which is rank injustice.... And these miners will lynch you.”
Kalispel had put him to a crucial test. But Leavitt had not weakened. If he was guilty, as Kalispel believed, he was too shrewd, too quick-witted and iron-nerved, to betray himself to Kalispel or lose his prestige with the crowd. Besides, there was a remote possibility that Sam had wandered out of the valley or had met some inexplicable tragic end. Kalispel felt that he was not omnipotent. In his torturing disappointment and frenzy he might have erred in judging Selback. He dared not force the issue here and lose forever any chance of reclaiming the mine. Jake would return with proofs that he had packed out the gold-veined quartz.
“Leavitt, I’ll let you off because men like you hang themselves,” declared Kalispel, bitterly. “But I’m accusin’ you before this crowd. You’re crooked, you made away with my brother an’ jumped his claim. I call on all here to witness my stand against you an’ my oath that I’ll live to prove it.” Kalispel backed away from the tent and from the gaping miners. He was keen enough to see even in that moment that sentiment of these men was divided. Turning presently, he sheathed his gun and had headed for the spot where he had left his burros, when he remembered Sydney. In that exceeding bitter moment of hopeless despair it seemed he could not face her with blood on his hands, with the fear that these miners, and surely Leavitt, would convince her that he was a murderer. As truly as that had his hasty deed made him an outcast! Plunging away in the other direction, he leaped the creek and hid far across the valley, in a clump of firs, and there lay like a deer mortally wounded and seeking to die alone.
Long after darkness fell he went back to the place where he had left the Blairs and the burros. He found only his own packs. The Blairs, with their supplies and equipment, had left. Kalispel welcomed that fact. He searched in his pack for a flask of whisky and finding it he sought to kill the cold, sick misery in his marrow and to blot out the insupportable loss of brother, fortune, love.
When Kalispel recovered a consciousness with which he could remember, it was another day, and he believed the second or third after his arrival. The sun had blistered his face as he lay unprotected in the open. Ill, shaken, in a horrible mental state, he drank the last swallow of liquor.
Then he looked about him. The packs were intact, his saddle lying on the ground, his bed unrolled. The horse and burros were gone from the grassy bench. This location was as good as any, he thought, and after a survey of the bench he concluded he could not do better. He was far back, close to the base of the divide, and over a half-mile from Leavitt’s camp, which stood about even with where the great bare slope began its terrifying rise to dominate the valley. The new trail coming down the stream forked into the one he had made up the divide just below where he elected to camp. Forthwith he spread his tarpaulin across a narrow space between two high boulders, and moved in his supplies. Behind him and up the gradual slope were quantities of dead and fallen lodge-pole pines. He could not eat, though his thirst was intense, and in a mood to drive himself to exhaustion, he packed down one tree after another until he had a huge pile of them. Then, spent and wet and hot, he flung himself down and importuned heart and consciousness with hopeless query — what was it that had happened and what could he do? Footsteps roused him to sit up, braced against a boulder. Blair confronted him.
“How are you, Kalisper?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Mornin’, Blair — or is it af
ternoon?... I’d be better off dead,” replied Kalispel.
“Don’t say that, lad. It’s not like you at all. You must pull yourself together and shake the terrible passion you must have had — and the debauch afterward.”
“Blair, am I still drunk, or are you speakin’ kindly to me?” queried Kalispel.
“I am, son, and I mean it,” went on the elder man, taking a seat near Kalispel.
“Wal, if I can be grateful for anythin’, I’m thanking you.”
“Listen, cowboy. I’ve seen a good deal of life, and life anywhere, east or west, is the same when it comes to misfortune, loss, grief. If ever a young fellow had a tough thing to face, you certainly had. But you gave in to it in wild West fashion and it has ruined you. Leavitt stands high with these miners. They elected him judge of the camp — an office, as I understand it, to determine gold claims and all the accepted rules of mining-camps. Your denouncing him apparently hurt you more than killing Selback. For as I got it, Selback was a hard, grasping man, not at all liked. Then to make the situation worse for you, our friends Pritchard, Selby and Haskell rode in yesterday morning. They made friends at once with Leavitt. I heard them, especially Pritchard, denounce you as Kalispel Emerson, notorious gunman from Montana, a bad hombre in every way.”
“Interestin’ — an’ about to come true, I reckon,” replied Kalispel, with the ice in his soul cutting his voice. “An’ I’m calculatin’ that you come out to give me a hunch to leave?”
“No,” declared Blair, emphatically. “I might have felt that way a couple of days ago. But not now. Something has changed me. I’d stay.... You see, I’m convinced of your honesty, Kalispel. I believe you and your brothers have been robbed of this claim. Probably I’m the only man in camp who does. I’ve always been a contrary cuss, prone to take the under dog’s side. By heaven! I’d stay and find out.”