Mountain Riders

by Brand, Max

  “Why?” asked Derry. “He wouldn’t have shot at you, would he?”

  “Maybe not,” said Cary, “but you might ‘a’ noticed that the Carys are kind of wild and free and do as they please, no matter what toes they step on. And Jim Silver don’t like that sort of thing. He’s best pleased by them that keep their own places. Wildness he don’t like, and every man that does wrong is kind of a private enemy, for Silver. It ain’t no business of his, but he makes it his business. Understand?”

  “I begin to understand,” said Derry gloomily.

  “And no man could stand agin’ him,” said Hugh Cary, with awe in his voice, “except that lies and meanness is things that Silver don’t understand, and that’s why Barry Christian is still got two legs to walk on the earth, instead of bein’ dead and under the ground. Here comes M’ria driftin’ back, and I reckon she wants to talk to you. Be seein’ you ag’in, partner.”

  There was something about this interview that cleared the mind of Derry of many obscurities. It made of Buck Rainey, for one thing, a complete and perfect liar, for Derry remembered every word of Rainey’s first description of Silver as the incarnation of evil. It made of Rainey the type of the lying, shifting enemy who managed to exist against Silver by sheer force of trickery, and not of strength.

  It made of Silver himself that brightness and greatness at which Derry had been able to guess when he was still in the hands of the strange man.

  Then “Molly” Cary was back beside him. She, too, dropped from the saddle to the ground and stepped lightly along with him. The whip welt that ran off the bare of her shoulder under the deer-skin jacket had grown and swollen; it was a bright crimson now. But when Derry asked her about it, she merely smiled. She said not a word. And then she examined him with her eyes, brightly and carefully.

  “The whip cuts are stinging you pretty bad, Tom,” she remarked, “but as long as they don’t make you sick, it’s all right. Pain doesn’t matter. Not till it makes you sick. What was Hugh saying?”

  “Asking me to teach him boxing.”

  “He’s the best of the lot — except the old man. He’s more like what the old man must have been.”

  Derry squinted ahead at the drawn skeleton that was now the old man, but if that frame were stuffed out with young power and sleeked over with young flesh, it might well have been closely similar to the bulk of Hugh.

  He asked the girl where they were heading.

  “For Wool Creek,” she said.

  “And for what?”

  “Gold,” she answered. “Christian has news about a gang of men that went up through the old diggings on Wool Creek. Tenderfeet, mind you! Away up there, to have a vacation and shoot at deer they couldn’t hit, and fish for trout they couldn’t catch, and then one of them finds an old pan and washes out some mud — and there’s gold in the pan! Well, that’s the story — and at that the whole crowd went wild, and started washing, and they’ve been there washing gold for a couple of months, and they’ve found tons of it.”

  “Tons?” exclaimed Derry.

  “A whole lot of it,” she answered. “Enough to load a lot of mules, anyway. They’ve started coming up Wool Creek, now, to head through the pass and get back to civilization and all be rich, but I guess they’ll have to go through without the gold. It’ll stick to Christian and Cary fingers!”

  She laughed as she said this.

  “How does that strike you, Molly?”

  “Why, it strikes me good,” she answered, surprised. “Why not?”

  “Robbery?” he asked. “That strikes you good, does it?”

  “Robbery?” she answered, frowning. “No, you wouldn’t rob anyone you know. You wouldn’t rob a friend. You’d die first. But robbing strangers — what’s wrong with that?”

  Derry looked blankly ahead of him, and stumbled over a rock. He was amazed. No matter how long he was with this odd clan, he still was very far from coming to any clear understanding of them. Their habits of living were queer, but their habits of thinking were yet more odd.

  “We’ll clean ’em out,” said the girl, with enthusiasm, “and then the Cary share of it, along with the money the old man got for setting Christian free, will be enough to buy us another valley, somewhere off in the mountains — a bigger and better valley than we had before, somewhere that the winters won’t be so cold and freeze so many cows, every now and then. We’ll have enough money to stock the new place, too, they say. And you’ll move in with the rest of us and settle down with me.”

  Her eyes shone as she visualized the future.

  Derry spread out his hands.

  “Look, Molly,” he said. “I’ve always lived off the thick of the skin of my hands. I’ll keep on living that way. Stolen money may be all right for the Carys, but it’s no good for the Derrys.”

  “You’ve got some funny ideas,” she told him. “I don’t like that one.”

  “Don’t you?” asked Derry, setting out his jaw. “I’ll tell you a funnier idea than that one, though. When you and I settle down, you won’t be a Cary any longer. You’ll be a Derry.”

  “Will I? Well, it sounds about the same.”

  “It won’t be the same, though. The Derrys are straight. They don’t live on loot.”

  She flew into a passion. “What do I care about you and your ideas?” she exclaimed. “Gold was made to be taken, and only fools won’t try to get their share. You’re too good for the Carys, are you? Then you’re too good for me!”

  So she whipped into the saddle and rode hastily back to rejoin the old man.

  22

  THE TRAP

  THE latter part of the day’s march was along tremendously difficult terrain, labouring up and down the ridge of a high range; and in the evening they came within sound of the voice of falling water and defiled on a broad, flat shoulder of rock with only enough earth on it to support a scattering growth of grass and of shrubbery. Opposite them there was a similar shoulder of rock, with the mountains climbing above it. In between was the cleavage of a narrow gorge through which poured and leaped the thundered waters of Wool Creek.

  From these narrows, the valley widened immediately to the north, the mountains sloping gently down from the height on which the Carys were posted. To the south, there were cliffs two or three hundred feet tall. Whoever went down Wool Creek from the south to the north found himself compelled to pass through a very narrow gorge, along a ledge of stone which seemed to have been carved out of the rock on purpose to make a path. Looking down at it from the edge of the dizzy cliff, it seemed to the eye of Derry, in most places, hardly wide enough for a single rider, but perhaps it was more spacious than it seemed.

  It was plain that the old man and Christian had hit upon the most logical place for committing the robbery of the gold caravan. The men who were carrying the treasure would have to pass through those narrows — into a trap. If they came by Wool Creek, there was no other way for them to go except on that narrow place.

  Here camp was made. A small rivulet of water was of great use for horse and man, but no fire was made. The orders of the old man were strictly against any rise of smoke to betray their position. On jerked meat and parched corn and cold water, the Carys could subsist until they had made sure of their prey. To Derry, the plan seemed flawless, but he wondered at the approach to the place.

  He managed to say to Hugh Cary: “Why did we have to wind around through the rocks and the mountains, along the crest, when we might have cut across the hills and got into the upper valley of Wool Creek long ago?”

  “We’ve got Silver on our trail, ain’t we?” said Hugh Cary. “Maybe you know that a lot better than I do, but you don’t know it better than the old man, and Christian. And we’ve laid a trail across rocks where the sun will burn up the scent and not even Frosty can follow it. We’ve laid a trail problem that’s taken us a good long while, but we’ve beat Jim Silver off the trail!” And he laughed triumphantly.

  Before darkness came, Derry was tied, and very cleverly. He was all
owed to have his hands before him, but around each wrist, fitted snugly, was a bracelet made of many twists of baling wire, big, heavy, soft strands of it which were worked afterward through links of a light chain, and the chain had, in the first place, been passed around the trunk of the only tree of any size that stood on the rock shoulder.

  That seemed to fasten him securely enough. Afterward, lookouts were placed on the edge of the northern slope and the southern cliff, and the party was ready to wait for its game.

  As the stars came out, Buck Rainey sauntered up to Derry and sat down beside him.

  “How does the layout look to you, Tom?” he asked cheerfully.

  “For crooks and robbers,” answered Derry deliberately, “it looks like a fine job.”

  “You’re not insulting me,” replied Rainey. “Whatever you say about crooks and robbers goes with me. I’ve been one for a good long spell, Tom.”

  “Let that go!” broke out Derry. “But, ah, man, man, we were friends, and yet you didn’t lift a hand to help me!”

  There was a silence. Then Tom added: “Seems to me that if I’d seen you under the whips, as I was, I would have tried to do something. I would have tried to say something!”

  “It would have been no good,” said Rainey. “Barry decided that you had to be blotted out of the picture, just then. I argued with him about it. I told him that you’d do no harm. But he hates Silver so much that he’s a little blind on the subject. Couldn’t budge him.”

  “What did he say? What have I ever done to him except save his neck at Blue Water?” demanded Derry.

  “You’ve never did him anything but good,” said Rainey, “but that hardly matters. You’ve been in the hands of Silver, and you’ve come out of them safe. To Christian’s eye that means you’re the friend of Silver now. And that means that you’re better dead than living. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “I understand,” said Derry. “Suppose I tell you something, Buck. I’ve been in Silver’s hands. I got away from him — he let me go. And I swear that he didn’t make me promise to help him against anyone. He didn’t even talk to me against Christian. But when Taxi wanted to do me in, Silver simply said that I could go free, because no honest man would be useful in the long run to Christian.”

  “Ay, did he say that?” asked Rainey.

  “He did.”

  “Perhaps he’s right,” agreed Rainey. “Perhaps he could turn you loose blindly and trust you to make trouble for Christian. But even if Silver’s no smart trickster, there’s something deep about him. No crook in the world would ever have thought that far ahead. If Silver had tried to persuade you to double-cross Christian and me — why, perhaps he would have had to buy you high!”

  “There’s no money in the world to buy me,” said Derry.

  “No?” murmured Rainey. “How the devil does that come?”

  “I’ll tell you how. I was crooked once at cards. I got eighteen dollars off a shipmate. When I say I was crooked, I mean I played with that Swede when he was too drunk to have sense. I went and blew in the eighteen dollars on a drunk of my own. But afterward, the thing kept boring into me. I couldn’t look the Swede in the face. And when the next pay-off came, I gave him back his eighteen bucks. That taught me that crooked money was worse than nothing to me.”

  Rainey listened to this explanation with faint exclamations of wonder.

  “People are made in two ways, Tom,” he said at last, “and you were made in the right way. I was made in the wrong way. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You weren’t made wrong,” said Derry. “But Christian may keep you wrong. You saved my life — twice. Nobody ever did a better thing. You didn’t even know me, but you ate lead to help me in a pinch.”

  “I don’t say I’m all devil,” admitted Rainey. “I like you, Tom. I still like you; I’d do anything I could for you. But Christian — ”

  His voice fell away.

  “What do you get out of Christian?” asked Derry.

  “The chance to kick down the old walls and see new chances,” said Rainey thoughtfully. “The chance to play for long odds — and win right along. The chance to live as other men can’t live. Look at it this way: I knew about those miners on Wool Creek and that they were about to head back for civilization with their loot. A dozen, or fifteen of ’em in all. Tenderfeet, but able to shoot straight enough. Tough and hard from the work they’d been doing. Keen as mustard, the whole lot. I needed help to get their gold. What help? Who could I trust to give me a hand in robbing them without robbing me of my share, afterward? Christian! I mortgaged my soul to get a lot of hard cash. I sent word to Stan Parker because I knew I could trust that muttonhead to carry the coin for me. You stepped by chance into Parker’s shoes — because you were a good fellow. Sort of romantic, but the best fellow in the world. And so the game worked out, and there’s Christian over there, using his brain, working out the deal that’s sure to put us all in clover!”

  Dimly Tom Derry could follow the workings of the brain of Rainey.

  “When the whip was on me, what about that?” he asked finally.

  “I made my horse raise a ruction. Then, when the flogging began, I stuffed my fingers in my ears, and only took them out when the girl showed up. She’s a queer, pretty devil of a girl, Tom. What are you going to do with her?”

  “Marry her, when she’s a brace of years older.”

  “She’s coming now,” said Rainey. “She’s been taking care of the old man. Tough old hombre he is, but he’s wax in her hands. I’ll leave you alone with her.”

  As Rainey left, she came up, stood for a moment above Derry, then sank down to the ground beside him.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well?” said Derry tersely.

  “You still full of fool ideas?” she asked.

  “What ideas?”

  “That you’re better than the Carys?”

  “I’m better than any gang of thieves,” said Derry.

  “Wait a minute,” said the girl. “You see a deer, and you’re hungry. Do you shoot the deer?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s stealing the deer’s life, isn’t it? Then why not see a man with gold and take the gold, if you’re strong enough to do it?”

  He gaped at her through the darkness.

  “Go on and answer me if you can,” said the girl.

  “All I know is what I feel is right,” said Derry.

  “All I know is that I like your ugly mug,” said the girl. “What’s the use of thinking such a lot about right and wrong? Being happy is the main chance. Look at the deer. It’s happy on good grass and sweet water. But along comes a man with a gun and turns that deer into venison. The deer was right to be happy as long as it could. The man was right to eat when he could. You can’t get behind that, Tom.”

  “Maybe not,” he answered. “It sort of makes my head ache to think of it.”

  She put her hand on his forehead.

  “Ay,” she said, “your head’s hot. I’ll get a cold rag and put it on it.”

  “No, but keep your hand there. Now look up yonder. See that big yellow star? There’s five stars spread out ahead of it. See it?”

  “Yes,” said the girl.

  “I’ve steered by that star. There was hell blowing at sea, that night. But the sky was clear, and I steered the old ship by Arcturus. Well, old girl, it’s like that all the time. Sometimes we get into a blow, and then we want to turn and run with the wind. But it’s better to steer for the right things, no matter how small and far away and useless they look. Understand that?”

  “I sort of understand,” she said.

  “There’s another thing,” he said. “Some men are hellions on shore but good shipmates in a storm. No matter what ideas you got in your head, you’re a good shipmate in a storm, Molly.”

  “Well,” she said, after a pause, “what else matters?”

  “Nothing much,” said Derry.

  23

  THE GOLD CARAVAN

 
THEY spent that night and the next morning in freezing cold until the sun rose, and in burning heat thereafter. The girl brought news at noon.

  “The old man says that after this job’s done, and Silver’s surely off the trail, then maybe he can turn you loose,” she told Derry. “But are you going to want to be turned loose? There’s a lot of the men that feel pretty friendly about you, Tom. Hugh’s always got a good word for you. And that’s hard on him, because he wants me for his wife, you know. Suppose you stayed on with us! The old man would have you, all right. He’d have you, for my sake.”

  Derry shook his head stubbornly.

  “All there is to it, I’ve got to live by my own hands and my own head,” he told her.

  And she went gloomily away.

  The sun sloped off into the west, and a kind mountain-top reached up a shadow that blotted away the steady rain of fire, at last. It was just after that, that the northern look-out came hurrying to the rest with word that a dust cloud was travelling slowly up the side of Wool Creek. It might be the gold caravan.

  The rest hurried off to look down the valley. And Derry, standing on tiptoe beside his tree, was able to see the cloud of dust turn into a string of little figures, some mounted men, and others pack animals, going ahead at a steady pace.

  They halted not half a mile from the entrance to the gorge and rapidly began preparations for the camp. It was the gold caravan! Buck Rainey, using a strong glass, had actually identified some of the men and the animals. And yet, as the jubilation started in the Cary camp, a sudden report from the watcher on the southern cliff checked all rejoicing.