by Alan Lemay
"Well," said Silvertip slowly, "I'm right glad to hear he made it to town. He's had a right bad cough, Dad has. Me and him was just settlin' down in this here halfway cabin for the winter, when Dad took it in his head to go down to town. We moved here from above because this is more sheltered."
"Well, anyway," said MacShane, "I was glad to hear you fellers done so well up there."
Cautious, prying words that might draw gunfire pretty soon. MacShane expelled a deep breath of pure tension. He had come to the point at last. Whether or not Silvertip had killed Dad Young was legally his primary concern, but he realized now that he did not much care. Dad Young was dead, and nothing that he or the law could do would bring him back, or make Molly Young less alone. What remained in the balance was the wealth that might or might not have been yielded by the Magpie Mine.
"There was rumors," went on MacShane, "that you fellers got fooled on the Magpie. Maybe you know some fellers call it the Magpie Salt. 1 certainly was relieved to hear they was wrong."
"Well," Silvertip began, apparently feeling his way, "that was a funny thing.. .and seein' as you was...is...a friend of Dad's, 1 don't mind tellin' you how it was. 1 suppose he... said a little somethin' about it himself?"
Silvertip paused, obviously praying for some enlightenment from MacShane that would give him his cue.
"Oh," said MacShane with just as fervent a prayer, "he did say a little something."
"Me and him," said Silvertip - now at last, something was coming out! - "me and him...."
From the lean-to came a peculiar noise, a sound nearer and more arresting than the impersonal whistle and drone of the wind in the spruce - a long moan, too human to be the voice of the wind, yet hardly human enough to be the voice of a man. That long, quavering moan seemed to slide under the rickety door, fill the room, and press heavily against the throats of the three. Silvertip's voice choked off, and he froze motionless.
"Oh, holy gee!" moaned Old Snoop.
Silvertip's words came with more than usual deliberation. "What... was... that?"
"I didn't hear nothin'," said MacShane nonchalantly. Silently he was cursing Old Snoop and his baggage. "What were you saying?" the deputy prompted, his voice casual.
"1," said Silvertip slowly, "forget what 1 was saying."
"We were speaking of the Magpie Mine," MacShane suggested.
"Was we?"
Stalemate. Once more a long silence.
"I was talking to Molly Young," MacShane began all over again. He was groping his way through a game in which his only card was the puzzlement of Silvertip over his report of Dad's impossibly continued survival. In Silvertip's mind, and there only, was the information MacShane had to get at. "She's right worried over old Dad's state of health," he said. "He's a sick man, all right."
"Seem feverish?" Silvertip suggested.
"Might have been."
"Fever," Silvertip said vaguely, "sometimes puts fellers to rememberin' things that ain't happened."
"Yeah, that's so. Anyway, all of us fellers was glad to hear that Molly won't be left penniless, if old Dad makes a die of it."
"Well, come to that," said Silvertip, cautiously now, "1 guess she ain't goin' to be out in the cold at that, leastways not entire."
"That's what 1 gathered," said the deputy.
"Of course, it won't be much," said Silvertip.
MacShane could feel the scrutiny of Silvertip's hidden eyes. "Heard it would be considerable."
"You know how these old fellers are," said Silvertip. "They get a-hold of ideas. 1'd jest as soon tell you how it was."
Once more MacShane stirred inwardly. Something was coming to the surface again.
"Me and him...," said Silvertip, "we struck a...what was that?"
"Aw, a varmint nosing." With a great effort MacShane held his voice casual. "You struck a...?"
"Snoop," demanded Silvertip, "you hear somethin'?"
It was the first time Snoop had been noticed. He visibly inflated. "Well, sir, I reckon 1 did."
"You're crazy, Snoop," said MacShane.
"I guess 1 know when 1 hear hollerin', MacShane."
MacShane's eyes bored into Snoop with such a force that the old fool quailed. Too late, he rallied brazenly to undo the harm he had done.
"1 reckon," said the inspired Snoop, "that noise was my bear comin' to life. He was only shot in two, three places, and maybe lyin' outside in the refreshin' snow...."
Again from the lean-to came that long, half-human groan, but this time it broke at the end into an obscure gibbering of muttered words, half understood. The whiskey that Midnight Zachary contained was wearing off.
Silvertip leaped to his feet and snatched up his rifle. His big voice boomed. "Somethin's wrong around here! Something all-fired wrong!" There was a peculiar, ugly ring in the big miner's voice.
The big bear-like man was charging toward the lean-to door. MacShane shot up like a released spring, and passed him in the second stride. When he had passed Silvertip, and not before, his gun leaped into his hand. The cowboy deputy burst through the lean-to and hurled open the outer door beyond. Somehow... anyhow... Silvertip's attention must be distracted from the dark shadows within the lean-to.
Through the other door, as MacShane flung it open, came a whirl of snow, a deluge of cold, and the increased howl of the storm. Behind, in the cabin itself, the lantern wavered and dimmed, cowed by the strength of the blast, and the door at the front rattled as if someone were trying to break in. Half crouched, gun raised in fictitious readiness, MacShane pointed the outer emptiness with every muscle. He looked like a setter who knows exactly where the game is at last.
As MacShane had hoped, Silvertip was misled. He towered behind the deputy, rifle ready for attack upon the outer unknown. Silvertip suddenly raised his gun, aiming over MacShane's shoulder at an imagined something in the spruce. An instant panic shot through MacShane. If a rifle shot shattered the perturbed air inside the lean-to, and Midnight suddenly became aware of where he was...!
"Wait!" shouted MacShane into Silvertip's ear.
The rifle wavered but remained raised.
MacShane pretended to raise his gun as if aiming, hesitated, aimed again, and at last lowered his weapon. "Whatever it was is gone," he declared. He hauled the door shut. "Let's get back to the stove ...I'm froze!"
Old Snoop was already cowering over the stove again, but a long moment's hesitation passed before Silvertip followed MacShane into the lantern-lit room. The deputy knew without looking back that Silvertip was standing, puzzled, his eyes trying to pierce the lean-to's shadows. The deputy feared that Silvertip would come and get the lantern, and with it make a successful search for the unknown, but, when Silvertip followed him into the cabin at last, shutting the lean-to door behind him, the miner only stood vaguely with his back to that door, the rifle in his two hands.
"Somethin's wrong," said Silvertip slowly. "Somethin' queer's goin' on around here."
"You're nervous, Silvertip."
"Maybe," said Silvertip, "maybe 1 am. Maybe it makes a man nervous to have two snoopin' spies come into his diggin's and lie, and lie, while they know they lie...."
MacShane looked up sharply. "What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
"1 don't know what your game is, MacShane. Only that it's a damned queer one, the like of which 1 never see. 1 don't know what it is. Only, while I stand here, by God, I'm goin'. to find out."
MacShane stood up. "All right. I'll lay down my cards if you will."
Silvertip stood silent, waiting.
"Ask me a question," MacShane suggested.
"What do you want here?"
"First," said the deputy, "1'm here to find out what Dad Young has coming from the Magpie Mine. Dad is an old man. He may never prospect again. He may or may not know what he's talking about. I'm here to find out."
"What did he tell you?"
"There've been rumors," MacShane evaded, "that you salted the Magpie before you sold Dad half share."
; "Lies," said Silvertip.
"All right." MacShane knew that, but little time was left. "Then what did you do with the gold you and Dad took out of the Magpie?"
"You're a fool," said Silvertip again. "You think a shaft brings in greenbacks that a man can cart away and hide? If there was gold in the Magpie, it would mean months of hauling ore out or machinery in...one. What gold was in the Magpie is in there yet. But there ain't any.,,
"Then you did string Dad?"
"No. 1 bought back his share at the price he give for it just before he.. .before he went down to Underholt. He had the money on him."
"One more thing. I've been talking to the assayer." Mac Shane thought Silvertip's face changed ever so slightly. He dared not pause to be sure. "You've been bringing samples down. How come those samples were sand that you couldn't have got within five miles of the Magpie shaft?"
"Well, 1 was prospectin' 'round," said Hughes.
A terrific anger swayed MacShane. He was as certain now as anyone ever was to be that Silvertip had swindled Dad Young, or murdered him, or both. He saw through it all, the discovery of real value in a shaft that Silvertip had thought worthless. Silvertip's faking of the samples after the mine had proved good, and his forgery of a bill of sale after the death of Dad Young - perhaps by Silvertip's hand - to clear his skins and make the mine wholly his. Yet Silvertip's alibi was watertight, as far as MacShane could see.
"I can show you Dad Young's receipt," said Silvertip slowly, "for what 1 paid him back. And on him you'll find ...could 'a' found... what 1 paid him. That makes it my shaft. And, by God, no snoopin' spies...."
"Why," said MacShane, playing his last card, "did you leave Dad's body lying at the Magpie Mine?"
Silvertip appeared to relax. "If he turned back to the shaft, after he left me here and headed for town, and if he died up there," he answered smoothly, "then 1 know nothin' about that."
MacShane saw his only hope was a shot in the dark. "And why," he said softly, "did you put Dad out of the way by means o'...?"
He didn't know, even as he spoke, what means of murder he was going to accuse Silvertip of using. He didn't know, either, whether he was going to be able to divert the muzzle of Silvertip's rifle long enough to draw, or whether Snoop, in case of accident, would have guts enough to plug Silvertip after the deputy was dead.
"By means o'...?" He hesitated. He didn't know by what means.
From the lean-to came a formless scuffling noise, then, so suddenly and so violently that MacShane's hair stood on end, the night was shattered by a mad scream. It rang out terribly and unmistakably, and, though it came from beyond the leanto door, it took the opposed men with an almost physical impact.
For an instant the three - MacShane, Snoop, and Silvertip stood motionless, frozen like rabbits by sheer force of sudden sound.
Then Silvertip snatched the lantern from its hook in the upper beams. As he did so, the lean-to gave out a swift rending noise, and its outer door was heard to crash open as if charged by a steer. Silvertip shouldered into the lean-to with stiff steps, breasting the unknown. A blast of stinging snow whipped their faces, and made the lantern quiver. By the light of its wavering glow, they could see the tarpaulined bundle that Old Snoop had brought, but it was torn open now. Then the lantern crashed to the floor. In the last flash of light before the lantern died, MacShane had seen the miner's rifle swing upon him like a striking snake. He gripped the rifle barrel in the dark, and, though the smash of the rifle shot deafened him, and its flare seemed to scorch his face, he realized that he was not hurt. Silvertip's great strength wrenched the rifle from the deputy's grasp, and MacShane dropped to the floor. MacShane's six-shooter was out, now. In the moment of silence he deliberately turned his weapon to the roof, and fired twice.
Old Snoop, alone in the faint glow of the stove, and buttressed behind such protection as the hot iron afforded, heard the lantern fall, and saw its light go out. In the dark, the shock of sound exaggerated by the close walls, Snoop heard a muddle of shots - perhaps three or four. He wasn't interested in counting them accurately, just then.
After a long pause he heard two more reports, this time outside in the storm, and, muffled in the snow and wind, he thought he could distinguish the diminishing rush of galloping hoofs. Then silence for a long time, while Snoop shivered and wished he was far away.
At last a step sounded in the dark cabin. Snoop slumped behind the stove and closed his eyes.
MacShane, regarding Molly Young across the stew that she had set before him, was thinking she had stood very well the news of her father's death. She had stuff, he guessed. Because of certain investigations following the definite escape of Silvertip Hughes, MacShane had not returned to Underholt at once, and, of course, the news had preceded him.
There were a few things, though, that Molly did not yet know. "Is it true," she asked him levelly, "that Silvertip Hughes... killed my father?"
"1 guess we're not going to know," MacShane answered. "He could have...." He broke off. There was no use tormenting Molly with an account of the diverse means of murder that Silvertip might have employed. "Hughes is in old Mexico by now. We have Midnight Zachary to thank for that ...though it isn't likely that Midnight himself knows just how he turned the trick. Silvertip's run-out was pretty much luck for us all. It looks like an admission of guilt, but, if he were here, we'd be worse off than as it is. The way it is now, it's your mine, Molly, and the gold is there all right. How much, I don't know yet.. .enough to make you rich, 1 guess."
They looked at each other solemnly for a moment.
"There were things," MacShane continued, "that I aimed to speak to you about, before this come up. Now that you're rich, I guess they aren't suitable any more."
He shoved back his untouched stew. "I'll be seein' you sometime, I guess. I just want to say, if ever you need me, send for me. This is one hombre you can count on any old time, and no obligation, either."
"Why... where are you going?"
"Well," he told her vaguely, "I think I'll be moving on, for a little while, I guess...."
Molly let him get as far as the door. "Larry MacShane!"
He went back.
"I don't know," she told him, "if there'll ever be a time when I need you around any more than 1 do right now."
He stared blankly.
"Oh, get out!" she exploded, unexpectedly. "Go on away! I don't care if 1 never see you again!"
"No," he said, "I've changed my mind. I'm not going any place, not any place at all."
Just as a man is getting things going so that the future looks pretty good, Steve Hunter reflected, something always happens to take him down a peg. He had thought some pretty harsh things about himself from time to time, but he had never expected to be picked out as a come-on for one of the most frazzled, worn-out skin-games known to the West. Yet, there sat the man who called himself O'Riley, costumed as an oldtime prospector down to the last whisker - down to the last ore sample, Hunter had no doubt, in the pocket of O'Riley's pants.
"You must have heard your pa speak of Dennis O'Riley," the old reprobate was pleading.
"Never heard of him," Steve Hunter professed, making his face look blank.
It was true that the name of Dennis O'Riley had sometimes entered the thousand tall stories that had featured the declining years of Wild Bill Hunter, Steve's father. But finding the name of someone once known to Wild Bill - someone long since disappeared - would have been easy to any impostor, about as easy as looking up Wild Bill himself, as easy as finding a white granite mountain there in the high Sierras where Steve Hunter was now running his pack outfit.
"1 can't understand it," said the old man. "Wild Bill never mentioned Dennis O'Riley? Why, me and him...me and him... well, at least," the old man tried again, "you know about Lost Dutchman's gold!"
"Never heard of it," Steve declared.
The man who called himself Dennis O'Riley sat back, flabbergasted. "Never heard of...well, I'll be...." He pulled himself together. "Bac
k in the `Eighties," he proceeded sententiously, "a feller wandered into Buck Springs with his pockets full of the richest ore samples these here mountains ever seen. He had mountain fever...pretty near died. But when he pulled through, he knew that he was rich." O'Riley leaned forward. "He started back to his discovery. But Buck Springs picked up as one man and followed along, burro, pick, and pan, hundreds of 'em, and he took to twisting and turning in the hills, to shake 'em off. And in the end he did lose 'em, too. And then...." O'Riley hitched forward to tap Steve's collar bone with a gnarled forefinger "and then, what do you suppose?"
"He got mountain fever again."
"Eh?" said O'Riley. "No, sir! He found that he was lost, too!"
"You don't mean to tell me," said Steve, who had heard the story ninety times.
"Wait till you hear the next," said the old man. He drew himself up for his great effect. "1, Dennis O'Riley, am the Lost Dutchman himself!"
A shocked silence fell between them. Steve turned to his shaving mirror, a broken triangle tacked to the log wall. The face that looked back at him was cleanly shaved, lean and brown; from above high cheek bones comprehending blue eyes stared soberly. So this, he thought, is what a born come-on is supposed to look like.... He asked his visitor: "Are you of the Dublin Dutch, or one of the Amsterdam O'Rileys?"
"1 admit," said the infamous wowser testily, "it's a little peculiar that the original Lost Dutchman turns out to be of honest County Kerry blood. But what does a bunch of Westerners know about different nationalities, anyway? The sun had prob'ly bleached out my hair the color of winter hay, I expect is the root of the matter."
"That explains it," Hunter accepted. "And now where is your sample of most astoundingly rich ore?"
"Right here," said O'Riley, bringing it out with a flourish. "It was considerable larger in size, but it wore down by time."
"And where," Steve pursued, "is your picture of your penniless niece?"