The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  Dan Younge said: “I’ll go with him.”

  “I think not,” Lieutenant Beer said. “That white packhorse couldn’t keep up with a cavalry mount, and I’ve no intention of detaching one of my horses permanently. Anyway, Younge, I’m curious to know why you were so anxious to get away from Rock Spring.”

  “It’s a reason they never taught you at West Point,” Dan Younge said, and grinned again.

  The lieutenant wrote his note and gave it to the corporal and Rylan moved the detachment out. Dan Younge rode the white horse now, and seemed content enough.

  CHAPTER IX

  Rock Spring had quieted down some after Romayne and Dan Younge rode out. Sydnor sat around the sheriff’s office a few minutes, tossing the deputy’s badge in the palm of his hand, then tossed the badge to Wellman. “You’re deputy,” he said. “You like that sort of thing.” He walked to the door of the office, his firm steps and heavy weight shaking the wind-dried building. “Consider yourself sworn in.” He left.

  Wellman looked after him. “Charley’s mighty sudden acting,” he said. “I don’t think it’s legal for a representative to hold county office.”

  Hostetter shrugged. “Won’t do any great harm,” he said. “Not much sheriffing to do. Wasn’t that your gambler that rode out with Romayne?”

  Wellman said: “I wasn’t looking. Dan Younge, you mean? It don’t seem likely.”

  “That gambler’s pretty smart,” Shurtz said. He fumbled in his pocket till he found one of his constant hoard of licorice drops, popped it into his mouth, rolled it around. “Maybe Jack Romayne’s not so dumb, either. They’ve gone off looking for the gold, of course.”

  It was a new thought. Wellman and Hostetter stared at him.

  Shurtz nodded. “Sure. Romayne didn’t want to go, then he went, awful quiet, for him. Gold, that’s what come into his mind. Came into mine, too. I may take a crack at it, yet.”

  Hostetter said: “Shurtz has a plan.”

  “Well, I been thinking,” Shurtz said. His voice had risen a little. “Supposing I was to say I’d figured out where this gold strike is?”

  At once he had their interest.

  He said: “Now. It ain’t on the part of the reservation that touches town; if it was, the wagon couldn’t a come in the way it did. It came in over the school section, and that’s not Indian land, out that way, not till you’ve gone six, eight miles. All right. Now for awhile, it’s all smooth going there, rolling prairie, like, no rocks, no trees, no anything. There could be gold there, sure, but who’d know where to look for it? Miners look for gold where two kinds of rocks come together. You know that?”

  “We do now,” Hostetter said.

  “The malapie!” Shurtz said. “The lava beds out on the reservation!” He raised his arms like a senator unveiling a statue, “Lots of rocks, lots of broken country—and if you can believe what you hear, lots of hideouts for fellas the law’s lookin’ for one place or another.”

  Wellman said at once: “I don’t want to end up like those men in that wagon.”

  “All right,” Shurtz said. “Not now. I don’t want to get killed, neither. But if the Army comes in, or U.S. Marshals, if the reservation’s opened to claims and settlements—we’re in it together, the three of us. We claim on the malapie, first.”

  Hostetter slowly nodded, and the three men shook hands.

  * * * *

  The only customer in the store when Sydnor got there was an Indian, one of the lower members of the tribe, a man they called Blanket Moe whose reservation seemed to be on Sydnor’s porch. Someone had given him a dime, and he was buying a bottle of citrate of magnesia with it; the favorite drink of the town’s Indians, a circumstance that Dr. Arnall had frequently threatened to write up for the Journal of American Medicine.

  Sydnor grunted at him, and Blanket Moe shuffled back out to the porch and his favorite post, leaning near the door begging for change and candy.

  “Much business, Ellen?”

  The girl said: “Quite a bit, Mr. Sydnor.”

  Sydnor grunted again, and went over to the cash box. He lifted the bunch of sales slips Ellen had made out in his absence, lifted them as though they had personally insulted him. He started at the bottom, looking for a running story on how his store had done in his hour’s absence.

  “What’s this, what’s this? Forty dollar’s worth of goods charged to the county? Who’s going to pay it, Ellen?”

  Ellen Lea’s voice was patient; there weren’t many jobs for women in Rock Spring. “Jack Romayne charged those, Mr. Sydnor. Groceries for his trip.”

  Sydnor said: “He had no right. He gets a salary from the county. That’s plenty.”

  Ellen Lea said, demurely: “I could hardly stop him, Mr. Sydnor. An armed man, and an officer of the law!”

  “You could have sent for me!”

  “He said he’d just come from you, and naturally, I thought you’d told him…”

  “I’d done no such thing,” Sydnor said, but his tone was milder. He was looking over the other slips. “Quite a run on the hardware department,” he said. “See where Nat Palmer bought a shovel and a pick. Maybe he’s going to fix the walk in front of his house after all. Another pick for Woodward. Brister bought a three pound hammer. Picks for Glidden and Patten, and a shovel for…”

  He slammed his hand down on the slips, suddenly getting a picture from the purchases. “Those idiots,” he said. “Want to get themselves scalped. Doc Beals should have kept his mouth shut. News of the gold strike’s all over town.”

  Ellen Lea said nothing for a moment. Then she said: “Maybe they’re not going out now. Maybe they’re just buying the tools so they’ll be sure to have them when it’s safe on the prairie.”

  Sydnor turned his huge bulk to stare at her. “Would have thought of that myself in a minute.” He stamped over to the hardware part of the store, bent down. From his vest pocket he took a pencil, began working on the price tags, wheezing slightly.

  Lize Fisher came in from the street, said: “Hi, Miz’ Lea,” and went straight to the hardware corner, hefted a shovel and then picked up the price tag, read it in the light from the front door. “Twenty dollars for a shovel. Man, they’s something wrong here, Charley, mighty wrong.”

  Charley Sydnor said: “Take it or leave it. You can pay Ellen there.”

  Lize Fisher went across to Ellen, pulled out his wallet, untied the end and counted out the greenbacks. Then he stamped out of the store.

  Sydnor came as dose to laughing as he ever did. “Good work, Ellen,” he said. The shovel had been three dollars and a half a few minutes before. “You finish changing those tags, now. I’m going home to lunch.”

  When he passed the sheriff’s office, Wellman was in the door. “Hey, Charley, you’ve got the keys to this place. I want to lock up. I got some bookkeeping and so on to do over at the Great Chance.”

  “You’re going out on the prairie,” Sydnor said. “You’re going gold hunting and get yourself scalped. I thought you had more sense, Wellman!”

  “Well, no,” Wellman said. His deference slipped a little and his voice flared. “But maybe I would, if I could leave the business. But my poker dealer quit on me, rode off with Jack Romayne, and I’m looking for another. There’s three, four men I want to see, Lee Patten, if he’s sober and…”

  “He’s probably gone,” Sydnor said. “Bought gold digging tools in my store.”

  Wellman said: “Well, you can’t blame him, Charley. A man who wouldn’t risk his life to get rich maybe deserves to die poor. But I’ve got to find a poker dealer.”

  “If you change your mind,” Sydnor said, “I’ll be glad to sell you a shovel.”

  Wellman smiled politely, and Sydnor was free to go on to his house. He was very hungry, with a heavy man’s hunger; his body didn’t want food, it demanded it, furiously and with anger.

  He
walked faster.

  When he opened the front door of his house he could smell the fine smell of onions frying, and his stomach surged with relief. He hung up his hat and walked fast into the dining room. This house didn’t shake with his heavy stride.

  From the kitchen Phyllis’ voice called: “It’ll be ready in a minute. Liver and onions, canned tomatoes with bread in them; baked potato with cheese, hot biscuits. For dessert I made floating island.”

  This was the routine of their noons. Next to making money he liked to eat, and next to eating he liked to talk about food, to hear about it.

  Down at the store Ellen Lea finished changing the price tags and spread her lunch on the back counter. Two sandwiches—slightly gritty from being exposed to Rock Spring’s climate all morning—a piece of cake and a pickle.

  CHAPTER X

  By drumming his heels hard on the white horse’s side, Dan Younge got up alongside the lieutenant. “I don’t know whether you noticed, Beer.” He pointed a long finger. “That isn’t smoke and it isn’t rain coming up.”

  “It’s dust,” the lieutenant said. “I noticed a long time ago.”

  “Indians?”

  “Could be.”

  Behind them, Rylan was passing the word to the troopers to check their guns. The white horse began lagging again, and Dan drummed at his ribs, but started falling back anyway. The lieutenant turned his head. “Do you speak Shoshone, Younge?”

  “Hell, no,” Dan Younge said. “Do you, Beer? You know that’s a tantalizing name you got, out here on the dusty prairie.”

  “I never thought of it. No, I don’t speak any of the Indian tongues. I had some Spanish at the Academy, but I guess we are too far north for the Indians to speak Spanish.”

  Rylan passed a quiet order, and one of the troopers turned out of column and dismounted. The one who had been clinging to a stirrup mounted quickly, sighing: “I never thought a McClellan would feel like my old grandmother’s lap to me.” He trotted back into column with the new runner clinging to his stirrup.

  Watching this, Dan Younge had let the slow-walking pack horse pick his own gait again, and he was moving back along the column. Rylan called to him: “Stay somewhere around the middle of the column, Mr. Younge. Alongside the sheriff.”

  “All right, sarge.”

  Satisfied that he had other horses to follow, the pack horse kept up now, went in alongside Jack Romayne as Dan Younge swung the hackamore. “How you doing, Jack?”

  The sheriff sat up on his high troop horse, shoulders bent, taking the shock off his creased and tied up ribs. “Is that another column of troops we’re meeting?”

  “Shoshone, the lieutenant thinks.”

  Romayne said: “Ah,” and was silent a moment. “Well, if they are Indians we may find out what we came out here to find out.”

  “Yeah. You speak Indian? The officer was asking.”

  “No,” Jack Romayne said. “About three words, all of them dirty. Dan?”

  The dust cloud was coming closer. The two lines of travel would meet in a few minutes. Dan Younge watched, and automatically felt for his rifle under his leg, the rifle Romayne had brought from the sheriff’s office. But Romayne was saying his name again, and he turned his head and said: “Yeah?”

  “You don’t have much use for me anymore, do you?”

  Dan Younge said: “It’s customary for gamblers and sheriffs not to get along.”

  The hand holding the Army reins beat on the hollow pommel of the saddle. “That is not so. It’s just not so, Dan. We always got along fine, you and I. We were getting along-fine when I got shot. Then you figure I went yellow.”

  “It could happen to anybody. Shock. Surprise.”

  “Yes, it could. Till something like this hits you, you don’t know what it’s like. I…”

  “Forget it, kid. I’ll keep my mouth shut back in Rock Spring. If we’ ever get there. Here come your little red brothers.”

  It was only from a distance that the prairie looked flat. It was level only as a rough sea is level; nearby it would rise to smooth topped heights higher than a man’s head, but from one height to another the hollows disappeared in the near distance.

  Lieutenant Beer, trying to get a wounded man back to Rock Spring, had kept his patrol along a hollow. The Shoshone had been following another.

  Now the two shallow canyons came together, and the lieutenant was face to face with the Indians.

  There were a slew of them, Dan Younge realized. More Indians than he had ever seen together, even at beef issue time on reservations. More Shoshone than Rock Spring thought lived on the whole reservation.

  The lieutenant up ahead had pulled his column to a halt, had raised his hand in the traditional gesture of goodwill to the first of the Shoshone. The Indians were coming to a shuffling, disordered halt themselves, and as the dust settled and the Shoshone fanned out, Dan Younge saw that there were women and children in the mob, and the sight made him breathe easier.

  Not that there weren’t still twenty or thirty braves to each soldier, but the Indian men were not on the warpath.

  But they might be when they saw where the patrol was.

  The Indian leader on the right of a group of three said; “I speak English. Pretty good English.”

  Dan Younge eyed the man more closely. He was as dark as any of the Shoshone, but his hair was cut short above the collar of his coyote skin jacket, and his features lacked the clear definition of the Indian. Probably a half breed, or maybe less. Maybe just plain squaw man.

  The lieutenant said: “Good. You will tell your people what I say. We are on our way to Rock Spring. Behind, in our party, is the sheriff of Rock Spring. Some men were killed, out here on the reservation. The sheriff was looking for the killers; somebody shot him. We are taking him back to Rock Spring.”

  The interpreter grunted. He said: “I’ll tell him all that, lieutenant. Sho. And then he’ll say what’s that to the Shoshone? They didn’t kill nobody.”

  Lieutenant Beer said: “I haven’t said they have. On the other hand, the Indian agent, Major Miles, has sent for troops. He may know something.”

  The interpreter nodded again. Unexpectedly he said: “I’m Nate Allen,” and then turned to the two old men with him. He talked awhile and then waited. The old man in the middle talked awhile too, and then the old man on the left. Nate Allen gave his grunt again, and said some more in the strange tongue. Both old men shrugged.

  Nate Allen said: “Lieutenant, I told ’em all you had to say. They’re going to Rock Spring, too, to see Miles. They’re mad. Men are on the reservation, men who got no right there. Mining men. Some of the people have been killed. They say…” He broke off.

  Beer’s voice was sharp: “Yes, go on, what do they say?”

  “They say if you’re such a hell of a soldier, go get the men who killed our people. I told ’em you wouldn’t like it, but they don’t seem to care.”

  Beer grinned, and one of the old men chuckled, wickedly. Then the lieutenant’s face sobered. “One of your people, Allen? You’re no Indian.”

  “I’m quarter breed.”

  The lieutenant said: “If the agent asks me to, I’ll do my best to rid the reservation of trespassers.” Some of the young bucks huddling their ponies up behind the leaders were grumbling, there was a lifting of rifles and knives.

  Nate Allen stared at the army officer from under his dark brows. He was frowning now. He said clearly and coldly, “Sometimes I think half the troubles of the West could get themselves solved if they’d shut up that school at West Point,” and then he turned and talked in the Indian tongue awhile, and when he finished both old men were frowning, too.

  This time only the old man in the middle answered. The other one merely nodded his head.

  Nate Allen said: “Two Eagles says it was always this way. They have tried to do what the white men wanted, wh
at the guv’ment wanted. In return, Washington sends ’em men like you and Major Miles. Take off, now, soldier. Git them…trespassers today.”

  Lieutenant Beer said harshly: “I’ll run my patrol my own way.”

  Nate Allen said: “You fool! Git outa here! Git to Miles, tell him how many we are, how mad we are. Try and get some sense into his fat head.”

  Lieutenant Beer was breathing hard now. But his voice was controlled and firm and he turned to Sergeant Rylan and gave his order. “Column left, march.”

  When Rylan raised his arm to give the signal, several of the young Shoshones brought their rifles up. But when they saw the troops were moving out, they held their fire.

  Lieutenant Beer marched his men along the massed front of the Indian mob before making another left turn and heading for Rock Spring. It took him two or three minutes to pass all the Indians, though the troop horses were fast walkers.

  It was not much of a show of strength.

  Then the column moved across the prairie at a trot, Jack Romayne cursing as he rode.

  The Shoshone were soon left behind.

  CHAPTER XI

  Wellman, Shurtz and Hostetter, those sachems of Rock Spring, had made a survey. Twelve men had left town, moved out by the rumor of gold. Remaining were a hundred and fourteen reasonably able-bodied men, ninety-odd women and some kids.

  This was reinforced, presently, by two ranch families, three men and a nearly grown boy, plus women and children. Somebody had shot at them as they worked their fields. No dead, no wounded, but they took it as fair warning and skedaddled for town.

  They demanded action, and sheriff action. Since Sydnor was acting sheriff, with Wellman as his almost legal deputy, they got a promise that Jack Romayne would look after them as soon as he returned, if he did.

  The farmers screamed loudly of taxes paid and services not received, of writing to the State Legislature, to Washington, to heaven itself. Then they settled down near the big spring to await the sheriff.

  Afternoon was wearing out when a rancher’s kid, name of Gresham, larruped into town on a pretty good cutting pony, flinging himself off in front of the sheriff’s office, pounding on the locked door, his eyes too bloodshot to read the notice telling him to come to Sydnor’s store.