by Zane Grey
“Sydney ended it by swearing she despised you — that if I ever spoke to you again she’d leave me — and that for her you were dead.”
Kalispel sat mute. His consciousness could not get beyond the query— “Did she care so much for me?”
“But to come back to the money,” went on Blair. “I didn’t dare mention to Sydney that I wouldn’t put it beyond Leavitt to steal. I haven’t a leg to stand on, Kal. And I ought to be ashamed. All the same, I’ll be damned if I don’t believe he might have stolen it. No one else has been there — at least indoors.”
“Wal, there are two more men in camp who’d back you up. Jake an’ me,” declared Kalispel. “But that’s far-fetched, Blair.”
“Maybe. I’m finding out a good deal.... Leavitt has only a quarter share in that quartz mine. He had to give the other shares to mining-men of Boise to back the deal. He told Sydney that they had taken out about three hundred thousand dollars. Also that lately the vein panned out on solid granite. The engineer who was here claimed they’d strike the quartz again, but it would be necessary to pack in and install a hundred-ton stamp-mill. At enormous expense. Leavitt doesn’t believe the mine is worth it. And he confided further to Sydney that he’d be leaving Thunder City by spring. Wants her to go out with him and marry him.... All of which he asked her to keep strictly secret.”
“Queer deal from the start,” muttered Kalispel, as if he were alone. “But Leavitt is a deep lyin’ hombre.”
“Why would he want it kept secret? That about the quartz vein failing in solid granite is bound to leak out.”
“I reckon these minin’-men are all close-mouthed. Maybe Leavitt has other irons in the fire here. For instance, he’s a pardner of Borden in that saloon an’ dance-hall.”
“That’s news indeed. Wonder what Sydney will say.”
“Aw, she won’t believe it if she’s hipped about the fellow.”
“She’s strange these days. I’m afraid coming here has ruined her as well as it has me.”
“Blair, if that isn’t shore yet, it soon will be, unless I can find some good reason to kill Leavitt.”
“I should think you have reason enough.”
“Ump-umm! If I could force him to an even break where we had witnesses — that’d be fine. I’ll try it next time I meet him. But if he can’t dodge the meetin’ he’ll shore dodge the fight. An’ you see, if I kill him anyway, this gang of his will hang me.”
“Well, it’s a sickening mess. I have failed, my girl is drifting, and you have gone back to your old habits. You’ll break out presently and get shot or hanged. Then we won’t have a friend.”
“Wal, you could count on Leavitt,” replied Kalispel, with a sarcasm he was far from feeling.
“I’ve fallen low enough without accepting charity from him.”
“Hell, man! He sold you worthless claims — planted claims — at enormous prices. Borrow from him.”
“You said that about planted claims before. You mean he had gold dust stuffed in the sand and gravel so that it’d look like a natural deposit?”
“Shore, that trick is as old as minin’ gold.”
“There have been several other claims which panned out the same way, and every single one of them was bought by men who didn’t get here early in the stampede.”
“More damnin’ evidence.”
“Then — there’s no redress,” said Blair, with finality. “Nothin’ but red blood,” replied Kalispel.
Blair got up to slink away, bent and plodding, like a man overburdened.
“Tell Sydney I’ll be droppin’ in on you pronto,” called Kalispel. “An’ don’t you be surprised at anythin’.”
“Better not come. Sydney will — And what do you mean?”
“Wal, wait an’ see. An’, Blair, if you got any sense atall try to figure things out.”
Blair went on mumbling to himself. Then Kalispel set about making himself as dishevelled and drunken-looking as was possible, in accordance with the part he had to act. He meant to make the best of it, and thought that if he did get to see Sydney, it would be an adventure.
“Dog-gone!” he soliloquized, as he started out. “I been this way so often that actin’ it is just sorta natural. Gotta be extra good for Sydney!”
The porch of the Blair cabin was dark and the door was closed. Kalispel espied a crack of light, and stumbled up the steps, puffing like a porpoise, and staggered to the door.
“Ushed be — door round someplash,” he grumbled. After fumbling around he knocked loudly. The door opened swiftly enough to make him suspicious that Sydney, who opened it, had heard him before he knocked. She looked like an outraged queen, yet intensely curious. Kalispel lunged in, pushing her aside. The room was bright with lamp and fire, very colorful and cosy. Blair sat staring at this intruder in astonishment.
“Howdee, Blair,” said Kalispel, wiping his nose sheepishly. “Where is that lovely dotter of yours?”
“She let you in,” replied Blair, and suddenly he averted his face to hide a smile.
“Ish that you, Syd?” asked Kalispel, turning to the girl. “Get out of here,” she ordered, anger, disgust, and sorrow expressive in face and voice.
“Jush wanta tell you — ain’t gonna drink no more... turnin’ over new leaf.... An’ I’m comin’ back to you.”
“You are not.”
“Aw, Syd, be reasonable,” he begged, reaching for her with unsteady hands. She avoided him, as if his person was contaminated. “You ushed to be — turrible fond of me.”
“Yes, to my shame and regret,” she retorted, hotly. Yet he fascinated her.
Suddenly Kalispel ventured a dramatic transformation. “Say, girl... this talk buzzin’ round....You ain’t lettin’ this fellar Leavitt make up to you?”
“That’s none of your business, Mr. Emerson. But I am.”
“Should think you’d be ashamed.”
“Well, I’m not. Why should I be? Rand Leavitt is — is all that you are not.”
“By Gawd, Lady, you shore said it! Haw! Haw! Bad hombre as I am I wouldn’t be lowdown enough to make love to you — an’ then go straight to them dance-hall girls,” exclaimed Kalispel, passionately, forgetting the part he was playing. But all she got was the content of his words, not their delivery.
“Oh, you liar!... Get out! I will not listen to your insulting him in my own home.”
“I’m gonna kill him!” hissed Kalispel.
“Maybe you are,” she returned, bravely, though she shrank visibly. “I am not so scared about that as I was. You’re pretty much of a blowhard. And if what I hear is true, you will be arrested before you can do this mischief.”
That flayed Kalispel. There was no sense in acting with this girl. You had to stand for what you actually were, or be made out a fool. He wiped his wet face and brushed up his dishevelled hair, and swiftly dropping his rôle, he transfixed her with a gaze no drunken man could have managed.
“Miss Blair,” he said, in a voice like a bell, and made her a mocking bow. “I am shore indebted to a little trick to find out just what you think of me. An’ I’ll say that I’m as disappointed in you as you are in me. I thought you a wonderful fine girl, too wise to be made a fool of, too loyal to go back on your friends. But you’re just ordinary, after all. You’ve been easy for this lyin’ villain, Leavitt. It’d serve you right if I let him go on an’ ruin you as he has ruined your father. Maybe I will.... An’ as for insult, you can take this for yours to me.”
And he slapped her face, not brutally, nor yet gently. She gasped and swayed back, her hand going to the red mark across cheek and mouth, and her eyes widening with horror, fury, and utter incredulous amaze.
Kalispel stepped out, slamming the door behind him. In all his life he had never known such passion as had just waved over him.
“Oh, Daddy — he — he wasn’t drunk!” Sydney cried, wildly, inside the cabin. “He wasn’t drunk! Yet he struck me.... I don’t understand. There’s something — wrong — terribly wrong!... Oh, hi
s eyes! — He will kill Rand! He will. I saw that.... What can I do?”
“Daughter, it strikes me you can’t do anything,” Kalispel heard Blair answer. “Least of all save that rotten Leavitt’s life. Not from this Kalispel boy! And I wouldn’t raise my finger to avert it.”
“Oh, it’d be awful — if they hanged him!”
Kalispel passed down the steps out of hearing. What he had heard blew out his passion like a storm-wind a candle, and he went out in the open....
For a long time he sat on a log in the darkness. The upshot of his pondering was that Sydney’s amazing reaction to his denunciation of her seemed to be a divided fear that he would kill Leavitt and get hanged for doing it. Kalispel regretted his impulsive play-acting. His jealousy and his habit of trying to rouse her one way or another always got him into hot water. This last madness left him in torture. She still cared something for him or felt herself involved or responsible in some degree.
At length Kalispel, mindful of Masters’ game, passed on into the town. The familiar lights and sounds, the raw atmosphere in the street and smell of rum, smoke, and sawdust, the loud-voiced, rough-garbed, bearded miners and the pale, hawk-eyed gamblers all seemed to pall on Kalispel this night. Having resolved not to overdo his part, he probably underdid it this time. At any rate, he must have created the impression that he was out gunning for some man. Which, he reflected, was close to the truth. Borden he wanted particularly, and he certainly felt that he would go to extremes to make that individual fight. But as to Leavitt, there was always Sydney’s influence. She inhibited him. Like as not, he fumed, his absurd reluctance to increase her disgust for him would result in his letting Leavitt go entirely or getting shot himself.
For that night, at least, Kalispel gave up, and thought more of his growing idea of trying to work less obtrusively to gain the same end. He returned to his cabin and changed his boots for crude moccasins he had recently made. Passing by Blair’s cabin, he listened under the lighted windows. Some one was moving about within, but evidently the Blairs did not have company.
Kalispel decided upon a venture he had long cogitated — and that was to track Leavitt relentlessly, like an Indian bent upon revenge. He knew that there was always a guard on duty at the quartz mine, the shafted opening of which was only a step from Leavitt’s cabin. If occasion required, Kalispel could overpower the guard, but what he wanted was to act with caution until he would be rewarded by something to substantiate his suspicion that Leavitt was leaning toward the career of Henry Plummer, who, most notorious of all prominent officials of a frontier mining-town, had all the time been the leader of the most desperate and murderous band ever hanged on the frontier.
Kalispel confessed that he was a bull-headed cowboy who would never give up on a trail, if he had seen the slightest signs of tracks. In this instance the only track he had was the masked, hard brilliance of Leavitt’s eyes.
He made his way across the boulder-strewn bench to the edge of the bare slope. Once again he sustained a trenchant sense of what all the gold-mad inhabitants of Thunder City seemed to be blind to — that this vast mountain was actively threatening. The town lay directly in its way. Kalispel’s cabin, and many of the habitations along the stream to the east were out of line of even a tremendous avalanche. But the fact which came revealingly to Kalispel then was that if or when Thunder Mountain slipped, Thunder City would be destroyed and Thunder Valley would become an inland lake. The faint seep of sliding sand, the faint rolling of pebbles, always to be heard here in a quiet hour, attested to the instability of the mountain, and were indeed warning whispers of catastrophe.
Lights in the gloom marked the location of the mine, but the mill and adjacent buildings, and Leavitt’s cabin, could not be detected until Kalispel was right upon them. This sort of work was not new to him. Much of a cowboy’s labor had to be done at night, so that he learned to see in the dark like a cat. Moreover, Kalispel had himself been a fugitive more than once; and many times, alone and with posses, he had tracked rustlers. It was a familiar thing for Kalispel, this slow vigilance, this peering through the blackness, this listening with the ears of a deer. And now it became a deep-seated, exciting passion, prompted by suspicion and fostered by jealousy.
Step by step he proceeded until stopped by a high barbed-wire fence which surrounded Leavitt’s claim. The slanting shaft and the shacks on the slope loomed above him. He could not see the lights that had attracted him. Following the fence, Kalispel rounded the corner. Huge piles of boulders, cleared off the claim, afforded ample cover for him to approach the cabin. At length he passed the claim fence and faced the open. Leavitt’s big cabin sat apart, with bright flares streaming from door and window. Slow footfalls sounded on the porch; voices came from inside; the black shadow of a man barred the light.
Kalispel sank behind a boulder to listen and watch and decide upon further action. He could not distinguish what was being said inside that cabin. It would be necessary for him to get a position under the window. That seemed impossible in view of the fact that the guard patrolled the porch and the space in front of the claim. Kalispel watched for a long time, during which the guard left the porch twice to pass between Kalispel and the fence. It would have been easy enough to waylay him at the extreme limit of his beat, but that seemed of no importance at the moment and eventually would lead to making Leavitt aware he was being watched.
Waiting until the guard passed a third time, Kalispel crawled from his covert and wormed his way across the open ground. It was ticklish work, a risk very different from being on his feet, ready for any emergency. Still, he knew he could not be seen and would have to be stumbled over. He had just crossed the space when by one of the chances that rule events the guard turned back off the porch. Kalispel sank, silently flattening himself to the earth. He held his breath, his hand on his gun. The guard was smoking. He was talking to himself. He passed within ten feet of where Kalispel lay, and went on toward the end of his beat. Kalispel glided to the cabin and a point under the lighted window. When he got beyond the outflaring ray of lamplight he cautiously rose to his feet, with a sense of relief. He had the situation in hand.
“Mac,” came in Leavitt’s voice, “tell Leslie to keep off the porch.”
Heavy footsteps followed this order.
“Cliff, I don’t like this man Masters. To hell with Texans, anyway,” went on Leavitt, pounding a table with his fist.
Kalispel quivered. Borden and Leavitt together there in the cabin!
“Well, he’s after that damned meddling gun-slinger,” replied Borden.
“Bah! How much is he after him?” retorted Leavitt. “Masters is like the rest — afraid.”
“The miners say Masters is a real, sure-enough Texan of the old school.”
“Too much so, for us. If he isn’t afraid, why doesn’t he arrest Emerson?”
“I asked him,” replied Borden irritably. “He said, ‘Wal, I reckon I ain’t had reason yet.’ I said, ‘How about the rumpus he made in my place the other night?’ And he replied: ‘Borden, if I arrested Kalispel Emerson on a charge like thet, I couldn’t keep him jailed forever, an’ when he got out he’d shoot you shore.’”
“Like as not. The infernal cowboy has got us all buffaloed. It was he who took Nugget away. I’ll bet as much for his own pleasure as for that fellow, Sloan. Have you seen Nugget again?”
“Yes. No good. She’s brimstone and steel, that kid. Once off the drink, she can’t be handled.”
“Well, let her go,” returned Leavitt, roughly. “I’m through. Sydney has said a couple of queer things to me lately. She’s heard gossip. Or maybe Emerson put something in Blair’s head. He’s got leary of me.”
“All the better. You can’t be saddled with him, girl or no girl. I’ll gamble there’s no more to be squeezed from him.”
“We’d better let Nugget alone,” rejoined Leavitt, evasively. “I’m through. And if you know when you’re well off, you’ll do the same.”
“Hell!... Rand, the f
act is I didn’t know I was stuck on the girl. Maybe I wasn’t till she left. But you should see her now. She’s got your proud, dark-eyed beauty beaten to a frazzle. And I’m going to get her back to the place.”
“Look here. It’s not good business. I’m reminding you that I have a half share in your place. No kick coming as to returns. It’s a gold mine. But don’t press this case of yours over Nugget.”
“I’ll have her back,” clipped out Borden.
“How?”
“I’ve thought of a way, all right.”
“Risky. You’ve not a safe man to deal with, Borden. You might do away with Emerson without risk. But if you did the same by Sloan, it’d stir up the miners. They’ve stood for the hold-ups pretty reasonable. Plenty of gold dust. If you go to killing some of them, though, you look out.”
“I won’t take your advice,” replied Borden, sullenly. “Why not? I certainly have more brains than you. And I tell you, damn your stupidity, that Emerson will kill you. Lowrie told me you had clashed with Emerson before and only got off because of Sydney. The cowboy was crazy over her. And she had a soft place for him, believe me.... Why won’t you listen to me?”
“You run your own affairs. I’ll run mine.”
“I see. We’re not making as good a team as I thought we’d make.”
“Leavitt, excuse me for being blunt,” returned the other, hotly. “But you seem to be whole hog or none. I had a hunch you were head of this hold-up gang and —— —”
“Don’t talk so loud, you damned fool!” rejoined Leavitt, in a voice like the clink of cold metal. “You’ve hinted that before. Don’t do it again.”
“Well, here are the cards on the table,” returned Borden, insolently. “You are pretty smart, but you don’t know it all. Your right-hand man, Charlie March, loosens up a bit in his cups. And he told Sadie and Sadie told me.”
There followed a pregnant silence. Kalispel heard the soft tapping of pencil or some hard instrument on the table inside.
“What?” asked Leavitt, coolly.
“That your quartz vein was done. That you’re sore because your partners got most of the gold dug. That talk of a hundred-ton stamp mill was a bluff. That you meant to clean up here by spring and then leave.”