Devil's Manhunt (Stories from the Golden Age)

by Hubbard, L. Ron

He rolled backward through the thicket, torn by twigs, clawing at his eyes to get them free of the hot slippery flow of his own blood. The wild animal smell of Sven beat against him in waves. Something struck against his foot and moved, then there was silence.

  Tim cleared his vision and drew backward. At his feet lay Sven, breathing heavily. His shirt and side were torn by the first knife; the hilt of the second still protruded from his stomach.

  Tim started to wriggle away, thought better of it and approached his fallen enemy. He wrestled the second knife out of the stomach and wrenched the first from the tree. The sweet smell of crushed greenery was heavy in the thicket, stronger than Sven’s stench or the salty odor of new blood. Sven’s breath came in hoarse gasps.

  Shaking with anxiety lest Bonnet come up, Tim worked himself out of the thicket. He shortly emerged from the far side of it, his clothing torn, his face a caked mass. He clawed his way up the side of the ravine.

  Tim vaulted the ridge and slid down the far side. He turned quickly up this ravine and in a few minutes was zigzagging amongst boulders. He was headed toward a grove of tall sighing pines. He ran noiselessly over the mat of dead needles. The sough of trees covered the slight noise of his going.

  Chapter Three

  NIGHT found him hidden and panting. He was between two rocks, voraciously gnawing at the packet of dried meat that Bonnet had furnished.

  He had eaten the packet of food halfway before he felt nausea; it was not an immediate thing and he attributed it to the starvation he had suffered. But when he took his next bite he realized that there was a metallic taste to the meat which should not be there. He chewed it experimentally, then the vision of Mr. Bonnet’s eyes glittered before him. In a sudden suspicion he looked at the meat.

  It was a piece of venison and it had expertly been slit through the center. Laying it open, he found tiny granules of a white something. He had only just started into the area.

  Tim was a mining man; he was too well trained by his hard old master not to recognize arsenic when he saw it.

  At first he could not lose what he had eaten, so starved and shrunken was his stomach. Then, when he finally managed it, the raw tissues of his stomach and throat lining churned into one spinning agony. He lay half-fainted and gasping on the rocks.

  About midnight he was able to drag himself to water and rinse his stomach. After that he crawled painfully upwards into the cliffs where hunger waited but where no man could track.

  For three days Tim huddled amongst the crags, dazed and sick. But when his illness passed his hunger returned and all one morning he lay watching game on the lower slopes. The sight of it maddened him; debating his course for hours, he at last succumbed.

  Slowly, watchfully, he crept from the heights, down the cliffs and into the green meadows.

  He tried to make a snare but could not, so badly were his hands shaking. The squirrels and the birds mocked him and he wandered here and there, watchful for pursuit but more watchful for his food. Dried grass would not stay his hunger.

  At about five o’clock, knife in hand, he began to trail a rabbit. The rabbit would hop a few paces then turn to look back to the man who followed him. When Tim approached, the rabbit would hop further, sit up again and wait, curious.

  For about an hour Tim gave no attention whatever to his immediate whereabouts. The rabbit would run off a short distance and wait. Tim would follow on, hoping to get within knife-throwing distance.

  Ahead were two large boulders crouched on the slope. Some hidden sense, clarified by his hunger-attuned mind, caused him to look toward the rocks. It was a very small spot of reflected light, but the sun was glancing there from a gun barrel! He was within four hundred yards!

  The rabbit was in a slight gully, out of sight now from the rocks. Tim, pretending that his game had gone elsewhere, continued to go through the same evolutions as before, stopping and creeping on as though he still hunted his game. He turned his course at right angles and insensibly drifted lower on the slope toward the stand of pines.

  Tim even slowed his pace, his spine crawling as though it already felt the impact of a Winchester’s soft-nosed slug. He dropped on all fours as though to examine tracks on the ground. The rabbit had vanished some time since, but such was the terrain that the rifleman would not be able to see this. Once or twice Tim even started back toward the rocks for a few yards to raise the hope for a certain and easy shot at him.

  It was very hot. He was near the base of Desperation Peak. A quarter of a mile below and away, the alkali sink stretched out like a white-hot frying pan. Heat waves and dust devils leaped together in a hellish turmoil above its surface.

  Tim again adventured toward the rocks, then veered off imperceptibly in the direction of the trees. He studied the ground, now and then looking up to examine the vacant hillsides. Perspiration was rolling like a cold bath under his shirt.

  Just this side of the trees were a number of small shrubs in which one could find cover. Tim reached their outskirts.

  Suddenly he dived behind a clump of sumac, then lifted himself and sprinted to the next cover. For an instant the rifleman held his fire. Then, as Tim rushed toward the trees, he began to shoot with hysterical rapidity.

  Tim was almost to thick cover when the shot struck him; he spun round and tumbled, rolling over and over through the trees of the hillside. The rifleman jumped up better to see the effect of his hit. Tim, deep in cover now, his shoulder numb with bullet crease, crouched behind a pine and stared back.

  Sven blundered out into the clear and came down the slope in long, lumbering strides. There was a white patch on him that would be a bandage.

  Tim began to shake. He screamed and sprang into full view, sprinting down the hill and through the trees. The Winchester yapped excitedly behind him. Bark and branches showered him.

  Tim emerged from the other side of the woods to plunge further. There was nothing between him and the desert now but odd blue gray boulders. Now and then the rifle behind him sounded as he flung himself from cover to cover in his flight.

  Then he began to hear shots from another angle. Lingering for an instant he looked up the mountain and saw Bonnet, seated on a rock as though in target practice, patiently waiting for his game to come again into view. Tim now had to flee directly toward the alkali waste.

  Below and before him a canyon mouth gaped into the blast furnace of the desert, weirdly shadowed in the slanting sunlight. Wind devils played and reeled, and the heat was like a magnet sucking moisture from the body.

  Tim, stumbling and footsore, left the canyon and issued into the wind-torn flats, sinking to his ankles in the acrid dust.

  The heat which was contained in the powdery alkali was incredible. He felt as though his stumbling legs were being cooked in ovens. Snowshoes alone would have made this white substance passable. The thought of them and the thought of the contrast of temperature was such that Tim looked instinctively to his right to the far-off range, across this waste, where winter’s snow still lingered.

  His startled glance stayed fixed in that direction for a minute. Tim veered, his objective hidden now and then by sighing dust devils which seemed to grow in number. There was something lying out there in the desert.

  There was very little left of the man, despite the fact that he had been there only a few weeks. He was mummified, for no wolf had adventured here to feed. His burro was lying dead beside him, its legs stretched out stiffly, its fur white with the salts of the alkali.

  The man was lying on his side, eyes open, skin so much parchment. Tim stepped beyond him and saw a bullet hole through the back of his head.

  This then was one of Bonnet’s companions. The body was partially sunken into the alkali and Tim yanked it out, scrabbled beneath it in a wild search for a weapon. There was nothing there but the man’s worn clothes and the tattered shoes on his feet.

  Tim crouched and looked back to the canyons which led up to the cool lush heights of Desperation Peak. He could see something moving now, eigh
t hundred yards above and beyond the canyon’s mouth. A feverish prayer sprang to his lips and he glanced beseechingly at the sky. He gripped his knife and sought to posture the burro in such a way that it might act as a shield. Whenever he moved the mummy, the sharp dust bit into his eyes and his nostrils, and the alkali salt settled over him and caked his hands and his face and his clothes.

  Then, for the first time, he noticed how long the shadows were. He glanced toward the sun and found, with a shock, that he could not see it. There was a sighing in the air. It was not like the sibilance of the wind in the pines, but more vicious, like the hiss of a poisonous snake. Then a dust devil was all about him, filling his mouth and eyes with the hot acridness of alkali.

  His lungs, already inflamed with running, began to shrivel within him. Over him, remorselessly played the gigantic column of dust, scorching him and suffocating him. It lessened and whipped back. Clearing his eyes for an instant as it receded, Tim had seen that the entire area about him was alive with these freakish whirlwinds. They filled the air with a fog which made sight impossible. He was smothered again then; choking darkness drifted down around him.

  Chapter Four

  FOR the better part of the night Bonnet and Sven ranged the flat, adventuring out upon it as far as a mile; then Bonnet returned to a spur of Desperation Peak immediately below their camp, to await Sven who still searched. At dawn Sven found Bonnet sleeping comfortably. Sven shook his shoulder.

  “Coom up now, Mr. Bonnet. He vas dead, Aye think.”

  Bonnet sat up and rubbed his eyes; he replaced his hat, smoothed out his corduroy, blew a speck of dust out of the muzzle of his rifle, and looked out across the expanse already scorching in the morning sun. A fresh dust devil was spinning, a small one. As the day progressed they would grow larger and larger until at sunset the contrary and buffeting winds would entirely populate this hell with them. It was a bleak and depressing sight.

  Bonnet sighed.

  “He coom to his finish,” said Sven. “It vas impossible to cross him until November. Huh, Mr. Bonnet?”

  “Too bad,” said Bonnet. “Sven, I feel like the buzzard denied of his prey, the jackal robbed of his carcass, the wolf cheated of his kill. Ungrateful of him, isn’t it?”

  “Three, four days he coom up with much sport,” said Sven, scowling at Bonnet.

  “Ah yes, Sven. But the kill, man, the kill. We yelled ‘tallyho’ and then didn’t bring him to bay. We have no brush to show. Regrettable.”

  “Vat you mean, Mr. Bonnet?”

  “Fox hunting,” said Bonnet. “First one to the kill gets the fox’s tail.”

  “It vas like mine head,” said Sven, heavily.

  “Ah yes, just like your head, Sven. Quite so.” Bonnet looked out across the alkali flats and then sighed again. “The hunting is all well and good, Sven. But what’s a hunt unless you come in at the end? He had us after all.”

  “He vas dead. Aye am sure,” said Sven.

  “But the alkali got him, we didn’t,” said Bonnet. “That’s the difference.”

  “So long as he vas dead,” said Sven. “All dot Aye vas interested in vas de gold. Coom up, Mr. Bonnet. Aye am hongry.”

  Bonnet rose languidly, stretched, put his rifle across his wrist and put his hands in his pockets. He sauntered up the slope after Sven, toward a greener elevation. Now and then Bonnet would look backward at the alkali flats which had cheated him. At last he resigned himself to it and grudgingly assigned to the desert its dead.

  Sven quickened his pace as the music of the creek came to him. He trotted down into the bottom, crashed through some alder and floundered up to his knees in the stream. He bent and ducked himself, head and shoulders, into the reviving water. He came up and instantly grabbed at his gun.

  Mr. Bonnet’s howl of anger still echoed in the ravine. Sven looked every place for the source of annoyance, then stared at his master.

  Bonnet was tearing through the rubble of his camp, throwing buckskin sacks left and right. Sven struggled up the slippery bank from the sluice and looked stupidly on.

  “Do something!” Bonnet screamed at him. “Do something, you condemned fool! It’s gone! It’s gone, I tell you! Gone! Gone! Gone!” And Bonnet tore again at the empty buckskin sacks.

  Sven walked to the shallow cache where the gold had lain in the forty sacks. It was empty. Bleak bewilderment came over him. He looked from the sluice to his master and back again.

  Bonnet was running back and forth like a hound, rifle held so tight that his knuckles, like his face, were pasty gray. Every now and then he would stop and shout at Sven, “Do something!”

  Bonnet’s circles were growing wider and his actions wilder. He turned and threw his hat at Sven. “Circle out and pick up his track!” he shouted.

  Sven picked up the two remaining canteens. “He vas took vater, yes.”

  Bonnet came back, quivering, and then halted, staring at a plain footprint in the damp bank. Beside it was the impression of Sven’s huge sole. Mr. Bonnet pointed at it. Sven came up and looked at it thoughtfully.

  “It vasn’t him,” said Sven. He scratched his head. “It vasn’t me and it vasn’t you and it vasn’t him.”

  Bonnet’s face was becoming dark. “It was Sims, you bungler. I leave you to do a thing and you botch it; you’d be dead if it weren’t for me!”

  Sven looked stupidly at the footprint. “But he vas hit over the ear with my fist. It vas a hard blow. Aye tell you. His skull vas cracked. He vas in the middle of the desert vithout vater!”

  “It was Sims!” shouted Bonnet. “He followed us through and he’s waited here, laughing at us. He just waited until we were gone long enough so he could take the gold!”

  “Maybe it vas that Cormoree half-breed,” said Sven.

  “No! No! No!” said Bonnet, impatiently. “It wasn’t Cormoree. I blew his brains out myself. I tell you it’s that Sims. Spread out. Pick up his trail. It ought to be easy to follow him while he’s carrying all that gold.”

  Sven looked at the track. “It vasn’t the young one. His heel tore off. Yah, it must be Sims. Aye vas hitting a veak blow; forgive me, Mr. Bonnet.”

  But Bonnet wasn’t paying any attention to Sven. A yip of elation came from him. He had moved down the ravine. Sven lumbered down to where Bonnet was and found him bending over a track. There were the footprints again across a wet place; beside them, deeply sunken, were the hoof-marks of a jenny.

  “Look,” said Bonnet. “It’s like I tell you. He got back to the other side after you hit him. And he came on through with a burro. He’s been waiting here, watching us while we wasted our time hunting that young fool of a miner. Sims actually made it back despite the desert all around here; he brought a burro!”

  “Yah,” said Sven. “The burro vas carrying a heavy load.”

  “He was carrying two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold,” said Bonnet. “Come along. Be quick now. He can’t be very far ahead. If he tried to head back across the sink, we may catch up to him. He won’t go fast through that soft alkali. Not with a cargo like that burro’s carrying. Oh, we’ll get you, Mr. Sims! Fill up the canteens!”

  Sven rushed back and dipped the two remaining canteens in the stream, capped them and looked up to find that Bonnet was already well down the mountain. Sven lumbered after him.

  From rise to rise, bending his eyes always toward the desert, blazing now under the morning sun, Bonnet made his excited way. He cut off all the angles of the trail which would have been made necessary by the zigzagging of a burro down a steep grade. Now and then he and Sven would lose the spoor entirely, only to pick it up further on.

  They were content to catch it in spots because the course obviously tended toward the desert, and they knew that the alkali dust would reveal much. Sims, they knew, would have to cross desert to get out of here and it didn’t matter where he entered it. They would find the track.

  At last they came to the place where the boulders thinned and the sinks began. Out there in that boiling h
ell lay certain death unless they were extremely careful of their water. This place could drink a man dry in six hours, squeeze him to death. It could suck out his juice and leave him a mummy in less than a day.

  Sven, snuffling eagerly, found the place where the tracks led out. And with Bonnet close beside him, face muffled to the eyes with a scarf, Sven struck off into the alkali. The canteens banged together. Bonnet floundered through the powder, watching the spoor ahead, eyes lifting eagerly to find his game.

  For three hours they traveled on the trail, conserving their water. Then, anxiety dying through the toil of walking, they rested for a moment.

  “He can’t be far,” said Bonnet.

  “Ve’ll coom up with him,” said Sven, “und then you vas get your kill. Huh, Mr. Bonnet?”

  Bonnet grinned and reached for the canteen. It was curiously light in his hand and he stared at it. He pulled out the cork and excitedly uptilted it. A solitary drop came out.

  Sven, in the sudden nausea of terror, uncorked the other canteen. It was empty as well. They stood up. Bonnet looked out into the desert and then turned slowly to look back at Desperation Peak, three hours of fast travel behind them—twelve miles!

  But they couldn’t travel as fast on the return, and they had not drunk on the way out. The hottest, most aching part of the day remained. The desert sun and the alkali were drinking heavily from Bonnet’s body, till the extraction of water was a physical sensation. He looked at the empty canteen in his hand and then turned it up to examine it.

  It did not matter now, nothing mattered now, but there was a small hole made by the point of a knife in the canteen’s bottom from which the water had drip, drip, dripped, to evaporate before it ever struck the ground.

  Bonnet stared at Desperation Peak. Sven was already beginning to lumber back toward the first spur of the distant mountain. It was so deceptively near, the green meadows, the green trees, so cool and inviting. Sven stumbled on, faster now, floundering, blowing hard as he lumbered through the alkali, surging back in animal desperation for a life which his mind knew was already forfeited.