The 8th Western Novel

by Dean Owen

  As he reached the door, one of the nondescript whites, swinging a clubbed rifle, came lunging out of the stormy blackness and leaped across the threshold, leading the rush. The red mass of coals, fanned by the wind that was swirling into the cabin, lit the man up, dimly—a strange reddish figure that seemed scarcely human.

  With one swing Gary took him—smashing him so hard that the man wilted in his tracks, collapsed and spread-eagled on the floor without a grunt.

  Like a hostile wave the others came surging in, leaping over the sprawly form in the doorway. Cézar, brandishing a rifle. The second nondescript white, who had been wounded at the Ludlow camp, with one arm in a sling, and a broken ski staff in his good hand. The two swart-faced and brutal Siwash, each with a long-bladed kiliutok in one hand and a short heavy club in the other.

  One of the Indians, a jump ahead of the rest, leaped at Gary and slashed at him with the knife. In the blind fierce melee the Siwash seemed to forget that a dead man would never lead them to that gold; and his knife slash was aimed at Gary’s heart. Gary flung up his left arm and warded off the deadly thrust; but the steel cut through the leather of his jacket and burned into his forearm like a hot stab of pain.

  Above the oaths and yells Cézar cried out: “Shushaugh! Drop dat kiliutok! Grab heem!”

  But the Indian was given no chance to grapple or to slash again with the knife. With a jab of an elbow Gary fended him off, swung on him with the bootjack, and took him a solid smash along the temple. The Indian’s knife and club dropped from his nerveless hands, he reeled backward against Cézar and fell like a poled ox.

  Before Gary could swing again the other Siwash leaped in, seized the bootjack, tried to wrench it away; and the crippled white man whipped up the broken ski staff one-handed and struck Gary a glancing blow on the head. Instead of wrestling for the bootjack with the Indian, Gary let go of it, lunged at the crippled white man and tore the ski-staff out of his hand, and swung at the Indian.

  The swishing murderous blow missed the Siwash but struck the crippled white across the face and knocked him backward, stunned and limp. Clutching futilely at the door jamb, he slumped down across the threshold stone.

  The doorway was clear at last—clear for a leap outside and a dash into the swirling black storm. But Gary did not notice. Battling for his life, he was fighting in a blind unthinking fury, swinging to smash and kill. In less than twenty seconds he had put out three of his enemies, knocking them so cold that they lay where they had tumbled. Escape did not even occur to him. He was thinking only to smash those other two before one of them got in a solid blow.

  The Indian had grappled him around the waist, and was struggling to drag him down, but Gary’s eyes were upon the ’breed Cézar. The ’breed had arched his rifle up for a swing, then checked himself, and now was backing away, backing out of the fight, and ramming a cartridge into the chamber of his gun. Tearing loose from the Siwash, Gary kicked at the Indian, knocked him aside against the cabin wall, and lunged at Cézar.

  He closed with the ’breed just as the latter was whipping up the rifle.

  With a twist and a violent wrench he tore the weapon away from Cézar, flung it to the floor, and then bore down on the ’breed bare-handed, like an avenging annihilation. Dazed by this calamitous turn to the battle, Cézar shrank back, with a yell of fear and panic, and headed for the doorway. Blocking him, Gary reached out and grabbed him by the jacket front with his left hand, held him at arm’s length, and swung at him, once—a terrific fist smash…

  * * * *

  As he tied up the Indian who was not unconscious, and threw him beside Cézar, and then dragged the crippled white man back into the red glow of the coals, Gary cursed at his enemies, jerking the words out pantingly:

  “You’ll listen to me now, by God! I’ll do the talking now, you killers, you throat-slashing carcajous! I’ll go get Leda and the old man; and then I’ll tell you who took your damned gold; and when Rhodes comes he’ll have some pug-ugly customers for his butter-tub! And I’ll have a showdown right tonight with the big cowardly hunk, down there at camp, that sent you here!”

  When he had finished tying them up and had pushed the coals back on the tin shield to keep the cabin from catching fire, he stood for a few moments looking down at the men he had whipped, at the pack who had made the mistake of trying to take him alive. His fury and blind anger had ebbed; he was beginning to see beyond this battle; and a cold wrath was mounting in him at a man not there at all—a man sitting safe at camp down Little Saghelia.

  As he gazed at the bleeding Shushaugh and the crippled white, at limp Cézar and that first man, writhing and moaning in pain, something near to pity stirred in him. Ignorant and poor and easily swayed, these men, whatever their weaknesses and their bush-sneak crimes, were hardly to be held responsible for this month-long feud and the brutal murder which had barely been averted here tonight. They had been but tools for another man. If evil had fallen upon them, it was because Hugh Ludlow, as Leda said, brought evil to every one whose life he touched…

  * * * *

  In his tent at the camp down valley, Hugh was waiting for his men to return. Waiting impatiently, and yet confidently—certain that tonight his enemy would die.

  The black woods, the screech and howl of the storm, the nameless fears which had been haunting him since he killed Eutrope, had shattered his nerves badly; and in front of his tent he had built a huge bright fire, as though to drive away the dark specters of his overwrought imagination.

  Above the storm he had heard a hollow reverberating kr-oo-mm, almost two hours ago. He had known what the explosion meant, and it had banished his last small uneasiness that his plan might miscarry.

  He was wondering now whether those men had finished yet with Gary. For all his jealousy and hatred, he himself shuddered as he pictured their methods of trying to make Gary tell them a secret which Gary did not know.

  Through the black tossing timber he saw the twinkle of several flashlights up the valley trail; and he sprang to his feet. His men! Coming back! They had finished with Gary!

  Utterly unaware of the wind and slashing rain, he hurried out of his tent and started across the small open quadrangle.

  At the edge of the woods he met them—and at the sight of that little procession he stood rooted in his tracks.

  His men, his own men, returning; but not as his feverish imagination had been visioning. It was no triumphant procession that he saw. Two of the party had their heads bandaged; the Indian Shushaugh was being helped to walk; the other two were limping along… All five of them looked like wrecks—a wreckage of the party which had left camp at twilight.

  And at the head of those men, his own men, leading them to this camp, came the man Gary—with his head bandaged and his left arm in a crude bloodstained sling.

  One look at their faces, at the grim and vengeful faces of those six, and Hugh realized, in a moment of paralyzing fear, that his plan had smashed to pieces; that the avalanche of fury and hot-blooded passion which he had launched at Gary, had somehow been turned back upon himself.

  He stayed to see no more. That one look and one moment were enough. As the men caught sight of him and a yell burst from them, he whirled and started to flee, blindly—to escape the avenging wrath of those hard faces.

  In his panic-stricken terror he headed back across the brightly-lighted quadrangle instead of leaping into the dark woods just at hand. Stumbling, crying out something inarticulate, he dragged out his automatic as he ran, but he was too stunned and terrified to whirl and shoot.

  At the sight of him getting away, four of the men—even the staggering Shushaugh—broke out of the woods, and surged after him, across the quadrangle. But Cézar did not. With a snarling oath the ’breed tore Leda’s rifle out of Gary’s hand, sprang ahead to the edge of the open, and whipped the rifle to his cheek.

  “Cézar!” Gary yelled frantically at the ’br
eed. “Hold that! The gold! The cache! He knows where it is! He’s the only man on earth—”

  He got no farther. In the moment that he lunged at the ’breed, the sharp kr-ii-ng of Cézar’s rifle rang out, and a bullet screamed across the camp clearing.

  At the woods edge beyond the huge bright fire, Hugh Ludlow stumbled, clutched at his breast, slumped over against a boulder, and slid slowly to the rain-soaked moss, with a bullet through his heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  For a second time Gary found himself a visitor at Sergeant Rhodes’ green-and-white cottage, where once the whole course of his life had hung on a word from the gray-eyed officer.

  As he chatted with Rhodes, he glanced through the window occasionally at the cement-steel butter-tub. Vividly all the details of that previous visit—that somber rainy morning, his meeting with Hugh Ludlow’s father, his story to Rhodes and the long grilling which Rhodes had given him came trooping into his mind. He was still so unaccustomed to his new-found freedom that the stern forbidding cell disquieted him whenever he looked at it.

  “If it hadn’t been for you, Rhodes,” he thought silently, “I’d be back in Winnipeg, staring doom in the face.”

  Beyond his profound gratitude to the man across the desk, he was thankful now for having had the courage, in that hour, to turn on his outlawry and fight it, instead of trying hopelessly to get away.

  It was mid-afternoon of an early September day, two weeks after the tempestuous night of the battle at the cabin and Hugh Ludlow’s death. The first faint kiss of autumn was in the air; the wild-rose briar that brushed against the window had dropped its petals, and the high aspen drogues on the surrounding ranges were turning yellow. But the sun was still warm and lazy, and up Little Saghelia the mountain meadows and berry thickets were at their lush height.

  Somewhat awkwardly, in a man’s way, Rhodes had prepared his cottage for the company and the occasion which he and Gary were awaiting. He had draped the steel filing case with an Indian narhkin, placed some ferns in the windows, spread a green plush cloth over the desk, with a simple small vase of asters in the center; and in an adjoining room the Chinese cook for the Mounted detachment was setting out tea for several guests.

  Through the south window Rhodes glanced at the pass where the narrow-gauge led out to the Grand Trunk.

  “I’m sorry to see you leaving Saghelia, Frazier,” he remarked, in the constrained manner of a person who felt more than he spoke. “I was rather wishing that you might put down roots and stay here. Marl Casper could and would offer you something worthwhile. I was talking to him yesterday, and he seemed more than interested in you.”

  Gary shook his head. “I like Saghelia; I’d like to stay, myself; but Leda simply must get away. Here she’ll be eternally encountering those lies and slanders. I wouldn’t let her live any place where she can’t hold her head as high as the next person. This town is her home, and she wanted its good opinion desperately, but that’s something she just can’t ever have.”

  Rhodes nodded. “I believe you’re right. May I inquire, just where are you going?”

  “We don’t exactly know,” Gary confessed. “We haven’t figured very far ahead. That is, definitely. We’re going to step across to the Coast and knock around a while up and down the Inside Passage; then I’ll probably go to bat with a forestry school and learn something about woods besides how pretty they are. After that,”—He made a little gesture which seemed to say their plans were wide-open.

  “I envy you your freedom—among other things,” Rhodes commented. He lit a cigarette, and inquired, casually, “By the way, how are you fixed for money, Frazier?”

  Gary suspected the motive behind that question, and he answered evasively. “Well, I’m leaving this town in a whale of a better financial condition than when I landed here. I had exactly a nickel then, Rhodes—one of those dinky little thin nickels, at that!”

  Rhodes smiled but refused to be sidetracked. “I don’t imagine you’ve got a great deal more than a nickel now. You yourself could make out, I presume, at boiling cabbage under a railroad bridge, but after this afternoon it won’t be you by yourself. It’s none of my business, but do you have enough to get along on?”

  “I think so. We could have more, of course, but we have enough. The dust we brought away from the cache amounted to eleven hundred and sixty-odd dollars. That’s sure been a life-saver, Rhodes. When I stuck that little blob into my knapsack—just on second thought, to show old Nat—I never imagined how important it would turn out to be. After paying the royalty on the dust, we put Nat’s cabin back in shape, refurnished it, and added some conveniences he needed. Besides that, we salted him down a little nest egg against a rainy day. Then I made Leda go to the Miranda Shoppe and buy herself the clothes and so on that she’s been wanting and needing a long time; and I snagged myself enough of an outfit to look respectable in. We sure squeezed that eleven hundred till it squawked.”

  “So it would seem. But tell me, in plain language, have you got any of it left?”

  “Almost two hundred.”

  “Humph! Two hundred dollars, for two people, no job, a honeymoon and this school business.” He thrummed on the desk, looked at Gary, and ventured hesitantly: “If you’d care for a loan, Frazier, you merely have to say so. It might smooth things a bit for you.”

  Gary stopped him. “I thought you were coming around to that. Gosh, Rhodes, it’s mighty fine of you, but after all you’ve done for me, if I’d take a loan from you to boot—well, I just wouldn’t think of it. Two hundred will be plenty till I wangle myself a job somewhere. In fact, that’s more money than Leda or I either ever had in our lives.”

  “As you wish,” Rhodes agreed. “But you needn’t feel obligation to me about this Winnipeg matter. Sergeant Spencer did the real work and deserves the credit.” He toyed musingly with the buckle of his gun belt. “Personally, I have to arrest so many people and do so many distasteful jobs that I’m glad of the occasional chance like this to give a person a little lift.”

  Gary thought of those nightmare weeks of his outlawry. “Is that what you call it—‘a little lift’? Well, I’ve got another word for it! I’m obliged to Spencer, naturally; but you’re the person who believed in me.”

  Rhodes waved his gratitude aside. “One thing more about the Winnipeg matter, and then we’ll drop it. This Calloway boy’s confession takes you off the blotter, of course, and I’ll wager that Spencer will have those other three before the month is out. But headquarters has directed me to see that you are available if you’re needed at the trial. So I wish you would keep in touch with me.”

  “Why, sure. I’ll write you often, Rhodes. I was intending to anyhow.”

  Rhodes regarded him a moment. “You don’t seem entirely pleased about this business over East, Frazier. If you’re worrying at all about yourself, you can dismiss it. You’re cleared of any implication whatsoever.”

  Gary did not answer. It was not himself he was thinking about but those four men in Manitoba. One of them was already in the dread power of the law, and the other three were enduring the hunted existence, the torturing fears, which once had been his own. Guilty though those men were, he could feel for them.

  Through the open door Rhodes glanced down the street, looking for the other four guests, but they were not in sight. From the street and the town his gaze traveled across the main valley to Little Saghelia, half veiled with a blue-misty haze that presaged Indian summer.

  “I suppose you feel pretty keenly, Frazier, about having that Rusk cache right in your hands and then losing it. Don’t you think you’re giving up the hunt a bit hastily?”

  “Leda and I did hunt some, but we hadn’t much hope. There’s no telling where Hugh cached that stuff. He was skating on mighty thin ice, and he hid the gold plenty tight. He and Eutrope toted it out of the cave—we studied their tracks and made sure; but where they took it, only the Lord knows.
And it’s my hunch that only the Lord ever will know.”

  “But you and Leda found it once. You ought to be able to find it again.”

  “I don’t think so. Originally it was stowed in a cave, a place large enough for a pack of men to live in; but now it might be anywhere. It’s not very big in bulk. Hugh could have stuck it anywhere—into a rock crack, or under any old log, or even in a hole in the ground. We found it by plain luck—that storm—the first time; and it’d take a miracle of luck to find it now.”

  “It’s half a million dollars,” Rhodes reminded.

  “I know, and I’m not sneezing at it. But a person might comb Little Saghelia for a lifetime and never find a trace of that dust. Besides, it’s tainted gold, and it seems to bring bad luck to everyone who touches it.”

  “‘Tainted’—?”

  “Worse! It’s soaked with blood. And if you don’t think it brings bad luck, look at its story. The prospectors who panned it in the Saghelia headwaters were murdered, on old Paradise Trail. Then Chilcote and all his men got wiped out. Then Hugh and Eutrope had it next, and they both were killed. I don’t want to sound superstitious, but when Leda and I found the stuff, a dead man was guarding it; and unless I miss my guess, there’s a dead man guarding it again.”

  “Eutrope?”

  “Yes. Whether they had a quarrel or Hugh wanted all that fortune for himself, I don’t know; but he killed Eutrope, after they’d cached the stuff, and the chances are that he tumbled Eutrope’s body in on top of it, rather than waste time and run risks of hunting another hiding place. Isn’t it odd, Rhodes?—in the end it’s a dead man who’s got that gold! Well, he can keep it, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Down the graveled walk Rhodes caught a glimpse of his other guests—Régina Bergelot and Leda, big Alec Bergelot and old Nat Higgens—turning into the Police quadrangle. As he stood up, to go and receive them, he commented: