by Zane Grey
‘Well, Bettins?’ called Howard abruptly.
‘What about you? Are you coming over?’
Bettins was silent a moment. The light flickered on the gun in his hand. Presently he raised his voice to inquire anxiously:
‘Hurt much, Monte? And you, True?’
No answer from Monte. True shrieked at him: ‘Come, over and plug him, Bettins. For God’s sake, plug the damn cowman.’
Still Bettins hesitated.
‘Monte dead?’ he demanded.
‘How the hell do I know?’ complained True.
‘Come, plug him, Bettins.’
This time Bettins’ reply was lost in a sudden shout of voices rising from the lower end of the flat. The vague forms of several horsemen appeared; there came the thunderous beat of flying hoofs. Howard’s lips grew tight-pressed. True lifted himself on his elbow.
‘It’s Jim coming back!’ he called triumphantly.
‘This way, Jim!’
But the answering shout, closer now, was unmistakably the voice of Yellow Barbee. And with him rode half a dozen men and, among them a girl.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Town is Born
The fire, spreading and burning brightly now, shone on the faces making a ring about Alan Howard and the two men lying on the ground. With Yellow Barbee had come John Carr, Longstreet and Helen, and two of the Desert Valley men, Chuck Evans and Dave Terril. They looked swiftly from Howard to the two men whom he had shot, then curiously at Howard again.
‘Jim Courtot, Al?’ asked Carr, for Monte Devine’s face was in shadow.
Howard shook his head.
‘No such luck, John,’ he said briefly. ‘Just Monte Devine and Ed True. Bettins is over yonder; he didn’t mix in.’
‘I hope,’ said Longstreet nervously, ‘that you haven’t started any trouble on my account.’
‘No trouble at all,’ said Howard dryly. Yellow Barbee laughed and went to look at Devine. Ed True was still cursing where he had propped himself up with his back to a rock.
‘This is apt to be bad business, Al.’ It was John Carr speaking heavily, his voice unusually blunt and harsh. ‘I saw Pony Lee, and he told me that Longstreet here hasn’t a leg to stand on. Devine filed on the claim; he and his men got here ahead of us; neither Miss Helen nor I nor any one but you can go into court and swear that Longstreet ever so much as said that he had made a find. I was hoping we would get here before you started anything.’
Howard looked at his friend in amazement. He knew that the discovery was Longstreet’s by right; to his way of thinking the simplest thing in the world was to hold and to fight for the property of his friends. He would have said that John Carr would have done the same thing were Carr in his boots. He had taken another man’s quarrel upon his own shoulders to-night, and asked no questions; he had plunged into a fight against odds and had gotten away with it and no help asked; the fighting heat was still in his blood, and it seemed to him that his old friend John Carr was finding fault with him.
They had all dismounted by now. Longstreet had slid to the ground, let go his horse’s reins and was fidgeting up and down, back and forth, in an access of nervous excitement. Now he began talking quickly, failing to understand in the least what effect his rushing words would have on the man who had taken up his fight.
‘The thing is of no consequence, not the least in the world. Come, let them have it. It is only a gold mine, and haven’t I told you all the time that for me there is no difficulty in locating gold? I am sorry all of this has happened. They’re here first; they have filed on it; let them have it.’
Howard’s face no longer showed amazement. In the flickering light his mouth was hard and bitter, set in the implacable lines of stern resentment. Between Carr and Longstreet they made it seem that he had merely made a fool of himself. Well, maybe he had. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
‘I know you did it for me,’ Longstreet began, having a glimpse of the bitterness in Alan’s heart.
‘And you mustn’t think——’
Howard wheeled on him.
‘I didn’t do it for you.’ he snapped irritably. ‘I tried the only way I knew to help save the mine for Helen. We’d do it yet if you weren’t a pack of damned rabbits.’
He pushed by and laid his hand on the mane of the horse Dave Terril rode.
‘Give me your horse, Dave,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m on my way home. You’ll find Barbee’s down under the cliff.’
Dave Terril was quick to obey. But before his spurred boot-heel had struck the turf Helen had came running through the men about Howard, her two hands out, her voice thrilling and vibrant as she cried:
‘There is only one man among you, one real man, and that is Alan Howard! He was not wrong; he was right! And no matter what happens to the gold, I had rather have a man like Alan Howard do a thing like that for me than have all of the gold in the mountains!’
Her excitement, too, ran high, her words came tripping over one another, heedless and extravagant. But Howard suddenly glowed, and when she put her hands out to him he took them both and squeezed them hard.
‘Why, God bless you, you’re a brick!’ he cried warmly. ‘And, in spite of the rest of ’em, I’m glad I did make a fool of myself!’
From his wounded arm a trickle of blood had run down to his hand. Helen cried out as she saw the smear across the sleeve of his shirt.
‘He’s hurt!’ she exclaimed.
He laughed at her.
‘It would be worth it if I were,’ he told her gently. ‘But I’m not.’ He slipped his foot into the stirrup. ‘Dave,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘you and Chuck had better look at Monte. I don’t know how bad his hurt is. Do what ever you can for him. If I’m wanted, I’m at the ranch.’
But Helen, carried out of herself by the excitement of the moment and unconscious that she was clinging to him, pleaded with him not to go yet.
‘Wait until we decide what we are going to do,’ she told him earnestly. ‘Won’t you, please?’
‘You bet I will!’ he answered, his voice ringing with his eagerness to do anything she might ask of him. ‘If you want me to stay, here I stick.’
He dropped the reins and with her at his side turned back to the others. Already two men were kneeling beside Monte Devine. Chuck Evans, who had got there first, looked up and announced:
‘He’s come to, Al. He looks sick, but he ain’t hurt much, I’d say for a guess. Not for a tough gent like him. How about it, Monte?’
Monte growled something indistinct, but when at the end of it he demanded a drink of whisky his voice was both clear and steady. Chuck laughed. Thereafter those who knew most of such matters looked over both Monte’s and Ed True’s injuries and gave what first-aid they could. It was Chuck’s lively opinion that both gents were due for a little quiet spell at a hospital, but that they’d be getting in trouble again inside a month or so.
‘You can’t kill them kind,’ he concluded lightly. ‘Not so easy.’
They called to Bettins, but he held back upon the far side of the gulch and finally withdrew and disappeared. Then Longstreet, who had been restless but quiet-tongued for ten minutes, exclaimed quickly:
‘We must get these two men over to our camp right away, where we can have better light, and put them into bed until a physician can be summoned. Think of the horrible situation which would arise if they died!’ He shuddered. Then he turned to Howard and extended his hand. His voice shook slightly as he said hurriedly: ‘Old chap, don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you have attempted for us; it was quite the most amazingly splendid thing I ever heard of! But now, with matters as they stand, there is nothing for us to do but withdraw. Let them have the mine; it is blood-stained and ill-starred. I wouldn’t have a thing to do with it if they returned it to me.’
‘My dear,’ cut in Longstreet sternly, ‘I trust that you will say nothing further about it. I have made up my mind; I am a man of the world and an older and cooler mind than you. Leave this to me.’
Howard heard her deep breath, slowly drawn, slowly expelled, and saw her face looking white and tense; he knew that her teeth were set, that her heart was filled with rebellion. But she made no answer, knowing the futility of mere words to move her father in his present mood. Instead, she turned away from him and looked out across the gulch along both banks of which the fires were now raging. Nor did she turn again while Monte and True were placed in the saddles which were to carry them to the camp.
‘A moment, Mr. Longstreet,’ said Howard, as they were starting. ‘Am I to understand that you absolutely refuse to make a fight for your own rights?’
‘In this particular instance, absolutely!’ said Longstreet emphatically.
‘Then,’ pursued Howard, ‘I have a suggestion to make. We are all friends here: suppose that each one of us stakes out a claim just adjoining the ones you have lost. Certainly they might have some value.’
But Longstreet shook his head impatiently.
‘I am through with the whole mess,’ he declared, waving his hands. ‘I won’t have a thing to do with it, and I won’t allow Helen to touch it. Further, the other claims would have no value in my eyes; the spot that has been stolen from me is the only spot in the gulch that I would give a dollar for. Come on, Helen.’
‘We’ll follow you,’ said Helen quietly.
The others moved away. John Carr, who had not spoken since his first words, stood hesitatingly looking at the two figures silhouetted against the fire. Then he too moved away, going with the others and in silence.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Helen. She dropped down and sat with her chin in her hands, her eyes moody upon the rushing flames. ‘Just what happened.’
He sat by her and told her. His heart was still filled with his bitterness and his voice told the fact. Presently she withdrew her gaze from the gulch and turned it upon him; she had never seen him so relentlessly stern. Almost he frightened her. Then she noticed again the stain upon his shoulder and this time insisted upon helping him make a bandage. With his knife she slit the shirt sleeve; together they got a handkerchief bound about the wound. It was not deep nor was it in any way dangerous, but Helen winced and paled before the job was done. Then their eyes met and clung together and for a little while they were silent, and gradually the colour came back into the girl’s cheeks.
‘Are you tired?’ he asked presently. ‘Or hungry? If not, and you care to sit here with me for an hour or two, maybe a little more, I can promise to show you a sight you will never forget.’
‘What is it?’ she asked curiously, wondering if he meant a moonrise over the far desert mountains.
‘It is the birth of a mining camp. For there will be one here before morning.’
‘Surely not so soon? Who will know?’
‘Who?’ he grunted disgustedly. ‘Everybody! Down in San Ramon Pony Lee knows; at the court-house it is known. Men give tips to their friends. Courtot’s crowd knows. Out here my men know; Carr and Barbee know. Already there are a hundred men, maybe several times a hundred, who know. And you may be sure that already they are coming like a train of ants. Once gold has been uncovered the secret is out. Pony Lee swears the desert winds carry the news.’
Howard was entirely correct in his surmise, saving in the time he judged they must wait. Less than an hour had passed and the grass fire was still spreading with a fierce crackling sound and myriad sparks, when the vanguard of the gold-seekers came. Helen and Howard heard horses’ hoofs, rattling stones, impatient voices, and withdrew a hundred yards from the gulch and into the shadows of a ring of boulders.
With the first came Bettins. His voice was the loudest, coming now and then distinctly; he employed the name of Howard and cursed it; he said something about his ‘pals’ Devine and True. A man to whom he was talking laughed at him. Thereafter half a dozen forms swarmed down into the gulch; the fire on either side of them was dying out along the gulch’s edge; they cursed its heat when it offended them, took advantage of its light at all times, and more like ants than ever appeared to be running back and forth foolishly and aimlessly. But, apparently, Bettins got his stakes and his friends’ back and the men with whom he had returned hastily staked out their own claims, all feverishly and by crude guesswork. There was perhaps not a man among them who knew the first thing about mining. Helen watched them in sheer fascination. Down there half in light, half in shadow, darting this way and that, they were like little gnomes playing some wild game of their own.
‘They act like madmen,’ she whispered. ‘They run about as if everything had to be done in a minute.’
‘Between them the crowd down there don’t own, I’d say, fifty dollars. Each one is figuring that he has his chance to be a millionaire to-morrow. And they know that more men are coming. That’s the way men think when they’re in the gold rush. Look, there come some more!’
This time there were three men. They broke into a run when they heard voices; perhaps they had hoped to be first. Down into the bed of the gulch they plunged; one of them slipped and rolled and cursed; men laughed, and with the laughter dying in their throats broke off to yell a warning to some one to keep his feet off a claim already staked out. Within an hour after the return of Bettins there were a score of men on the spot; again and again rose sharp words as every man, alert to protect his own interests, was ready for a quarrel. They dragged stones to mark their boundaries; they cut and hammered stakes, they left their chosen sites now and then and altered their first judgments and restaked somewhere else. They swarmed up the banks of the gulch on both sides, they hastened back and forth, they staked everywhere. As the time passed more and more came plunging into the orgy of gold until at last the night was never quiet. Harsh words passed and once blows were struck and a man went down and lay still. Another time there was the report of a gun and a boom of many voices commanding order and that quarrels be taken to a safe distance and out of the way of busy men.
‘It’s dreadful,’ whispered Helen. ‘They’re like wild animals.’
‘It’s just the gold fever,’ he returned. ‘Poor devils! they are drunk with their visions.’
But Helen wondered if they were capable of visions. Down in the shadow-filled sink they were to her imagination like so many swine plunging into a monster trough. When Alan suggested, ‘We’ve seen, and now maybe we had better be going,’ she rose without a word or backward glance and went with him. But Howard, looking over his shoulder, saw still other men coming. He himself began to wonder whence they had come: by now, it seemed to him, both Big Run and San Ramon must have emptied themselves like bags of wheat slashed with a knife.
They walked swiftly until the din of the gold-seekers was lost to their ears. Then slowly they strolled on, silence enwrapping them, Helen’s eyes wandering away to the glory of the stars, Howard’s contented with the girl’s face. After a while Helen, feeling the intentness of his look, turned toward him with a strange little smile which came and went fleetingly. She stopped a moment, still looking at him.
‘Your country has done something to me,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘even though I have been out here only a few weeks. For one thing, when I first came I thought that I knew all about men and that they were pretty much all alike. I am finding out that they are not at all alike and that I don’t understand them.’
‘No, they are not all alike, and some men are hard to make out, I suppose,’ he said when she paused.
‘Men are more violent than I thought men were nowadays,’ she added. ‘They are stronger; they are fiercer. I used to think that a girl was a wretched little co
ward to be afraid of any man. Now I would be afraid of many of them I have seen in this land that you like to call your country.’
He understood that in her brain had formed a vision of his fight with Devine and Ed True, and that, blurring that image, she was still seeing the picture of the dark forms rushing down into the gulch. She began to move on again, and he went at her side making no reply and communing with his own thoughts. She did not stop again until they came close to the canvas-walled cabin and saw the light shining wanly through and the shadows of the men inside. Then she lifted her face so that it was clear to him in the starlight and said to him slowly:
‘I am going in and see if I can help with the wounded men now. I should have gone at first, I suppose. Maybe there is something I can do. You wouldn’t want them to die, would you?’
‘No,’ he returned, ‘I would not want them to die.’
In the silence which followed he could see that she was seeking to read his face and that she was very, very thoughtful.
‘Tell me something,’ she said abruptly. ‘If one of them were Jim Courtot—would you want him to die?’
At the mention of Courtot’s name she made out a quick hardening of his mouth; she even saw, or fancied, an angry gathering of his brows. To-night’s work was largely the work of Jim Courtot, and because of it Dry Gulch, which might have poured great heaps of gold at Helen’s feet, was being wrangled over by a hundred men. He thought of that and he thought of other things, of how Courtot had fired on him from the dark long ago, of how Courtot was hunting him after Courtot’s own tenacious fashion.
‘Why do you ask that?’ he demanded sharply.
She did not reply. Instead she turned from him and looked at the stars. And then she withdrew her eyes and turned them toward the light gleaming palely through the walls of canvas. But at last she lifted her face again to Howard.