by Lou Bradshaw
What was wrong was I didn’t take the time to check the runoff slope last evening when I should have. I had accepted what I saw and gave it no more than a passing thought. About fifteen feet above the canyon floor, the slope had crumbled and fallen into a pile of rocks and other debris. It had been cleaved off slicker than bear grease.
I could work my way up it with some difficulty, but Dog would never be able to climb it. And at about a hundred pounds, he’d be a load to haul up the face of that little drop. I was kicking myself for not figuring out another kind of dead fall trap to spring on those boys and kept the rope. But what’s done is done, and there ain’t no going back and undoing it. A body just has to move on and figure something else out.
The best I could come up with was, draping him over my shoulder and climbing around the sheer wall, but I’d also have to carry my gear as well. One missed step would mean that one or both of us could get seriously hurt. I reached under his belly and lifted him up to my chest. He was most uncomfortable with that and started squirming and kicking. Dog’s a canny critter and he figures most things out, but being carried was a whole new experience for him. I just didn’t see him tolerating it… I set him down.
“Well, old pal, we still have another option… let’s go do it”
Chapter 19
Retracing our steps, we walked back toward the canyon mouth and the breakfast fire. Well back out of earshot, I stopped and made sure my rifle was fully loaded with one in the chamber. I knew it was, but I hated the idea of clicking on an empty chamber, when I thought there was a cartridge there.
As we got closer, I could hear voices and the sounds of a camp. Sounds like a metal pot being set on a rock and a horse stamping to keep the flies away and the scraping of a tin plate with a fork. I almost hated to break up their little tea party, but Dog and me were coming out. I was in no mood for niceties or mercy. I had it in me to just take aim and cut loose. But although I’ve sent more than a few men to their own personal hells, I wasn’t a cold blooded killer.
“You men!” I yelled. “I’m coming out, so you’d best be ready to stand aside or die where you are… You just back off and don’t even think of touchin’ a weapon, or four of us will die right here in the morning sun.”
One man stepped out and put his hands on the top of his head. The second man followed shortly behind the first. The third man with his arm in a sling raised his other hand, was the last and the slowest to move.
Stepping out from behind the rocks, I walked toward the far side of the canyon. I whistled and Dog came out to walk beside me. My finger never left the trigger. I didn’t trust them one little bit, but until one of them made a mistake, I would walk away and we’d all start fresh.
As I drew abreast of them, the man who had stepped out first spoke up.
“Mister… we’re done… there ain’t much fight left, and I’m askin’ if your offer still holds… if I give up my guns can I go out with you…. Mister, can you show us the way out of here?”
“Cain… Just Cain’s the name.” I told him. “That go for all of you… or just you? And where’s the other one?”
“All of us… we’re all lost, and if you hadn’t left that deer carcass for us, we’d have been almighty hungry… After you killed Murdock with that chunk of wood, Polson left… He just turned his horse and went back down the hill.”
I didn’t tell him I’d left that carcass for the coyotes or bears… I just let him think what he wanted to think. My eyes went from number one to number two and he nodded his agreement. Number three didn’t seem to want to agree, but he finally nodded. I’d have to keep an eye on that one.
“The offer still holds.” I told them. “You lift your guns out of their holsters, drop them in front of you one at a time… then step back to the other side of the fire… Use real caution lifting them out… slow and easy.”
You never seen a person lift a two pound Colt so delicately with two fingers. You’d have thought they were taking ladies silk things out of a perfumed drawer. If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been comical.
Number one and number two were quick to comply in a slow and easy way, but I could tell that number three was still carrying a grudge. His eyes never left my rifle, which was loaded and cocked but not pointing at any of them. It was pointing down with my left hand on the trigger and my right holding the barrel.
Number three was calculating whether he could get that six-shooter out of his holster, cock it, point it, and pull the trigger pull before I could turn and pull the trigger… he would lose. All I did was turn and point it at him. He froze and then very carefully lifted it and dropped it on the ground.
“Mister,” I said, “I just saved your life… You’d have never made it.”
He stepped back away from his pistol, but not on the far side of the fire. He just stepped a few strides back and glared at me while he rubbed his broken left shoulder with his other hand. He hadn’t said a word, and I wasn’t one to gloat, so I didn’t say anything more to him. He still stared with a hatred that could almost be felt.
Next, he started adjusting his elbow in the sling. I reckoned he was still in some amount of pain, so I let it go. But I was prepared for him to come out of that sling with a knife ready to throw. I was confident that Dog had his eyes on the other two, so I could give number three my full attention.
When his right hand came out of the sling, the knife I was expecting wasn’t there, but a small lady’s pistol was. It was so small I almost missed seeing it in time. There was no time to think about it, all I could do was pull the trigger. If I was mistaken in what I thought I saw, I would surely be willing to apologize.
But there would be no apology coming because when that bullet hit him, the Derringer was flung halfway between him and me. He folded up and dropped to his knees before he fell and curled up like a baby. I knew he was still alive, but he wasn’t a threat. The other two, I wasn’t so sure of, so I swung around to cover them. There was no need, neither one had moved an inch. They just stood there thinking that number three had got them killed and expecting to die… I lowered my rifle, and they relaxed.
“He had to try.” I told them.
Number one looked at the ground and I believe he was saying a silent prayer of thanks. When he looked up he said, “Turlow was a grudge packer. He could tote a grudge around for weeks or even years, I s’pose. We hain’t known him that long. When Tom and me talked about givin’ ourselves up, he argued agin’ it but finally went along because he was just as lost as we was.”
I didn’t for one minute think these weren’t tough men because they were. But they were smart enough to know they were out of the fight. A town boy or a farm boy, unused to mountains and wilderness could roam around here in the High Sierras till they starved to death or got eaten by wolves, bears, or cougars. There was a difference between pulling iron on a fella in a barroom, where your skill could save you…and facing a full grown boar grizzly. You could put six shots in him and just make him mad.
The number three man was bad hit, and I knew he wouldn’t last long, I told number one and two to do what they could for him. I went about gathering up their weapons and tied them in my bedroll out of temptation’s reach. Between Dog and me, we could keep those boys walking the straight and narrow until I got them down out of the mountains.
While I was doing that, they were doing what they could to keep the critters from getting at Turlow’s remains. They wound up stuffing him into a crack and piling rocks on top. That wouldn’t keep the ants and worms out, but at least the coyotes wouldn’t scatter him all over creation.
Looking over the four saddled horses, I tied my gear on the best of the bunch, and then I stripped the rig off the poorest, which was a mare and set her free. She was welcome to come along with us, or she could go her own way. If she came across a wild bunch she could have a new life. I collected all the ammunition they had and put into one their saddlebags, which was tied to my mount.
When I was satisfied those two
were toothless and their claws had been clipped, we rode out. I kept them ahead of me, and gave directions when they were needed. They seemed relieved that someone was going to get them out of these mountains. I knew very little about this part of the Sierra Nevada’s, but I knew north from south and up from down, and that was all I needed to navigate. Oh sure, there were going to be times when I would have to turn around and backtrack, but I never found myself going around in circles.
The next day we were back down into the hills and out of the higher mountains. Those boys were feeling a lot better. To take any thoughts out of their minds of trying to get their weapons back and high tailing it out of here, I had a little man to men talk with them.
“You boys are almost home free… now, I’d hate to see you both get stupid and get dead. You’ll be leaving me soon enough, with my blessings. But until I say adios, you just mind your manners and you’ll be just fine…. But… you get anxious and I’ll kill you. If you take off without my blessings, I’ll track you down and kill you…I’ve purposely not learned your names because I may have to kill you, and I didn’t want to know anything about you… are we clear?”
They both nodded and I told them one thing more, “Tomorrow, I’m gonna show you what you been fighting for and what many of your pards have died for.”
They were both tough young men, who didn’t much like being talked to like a couple of schoolboys. But they were smart enough to know I could and would do exactly what I told them I would.
~~~~~ o ~~~~~
When breakfast was over the following morning, we saddled up and rode another five miles to the south and then to the west a couple of miles. That brought us to a hill overlooking a place that for all the world looked like it was an ant hill. All the ants were busy working. Some were digging and shoveling, while others were dragging carts and hauling sacks of dirt and rocks. The one thing that told us they weren’t ants was the fact they were all over five feet tall and walked upright.
“You boys see those Chinamen down there? They’re the same ones what came through a week or so back. They’re up here diggin’ Glazer’s gold mine… That’s why he wanted those loggers killed. He didn’t want anyone to know about this mine… he didn’t want a gold rush up here till he got all he could get and get out…. He wanted the ranchers run off so he could claim the land and stop the loggers from comin’ in.”
“And you boys were just a bunch of hired guns that would get the blame for all the trouble. If you lived through it, you’d get reputations for hardcases and killers… And maybe enough money to have a rippin’ time in Frisco.”
“How come we never knew about this?” Number two asked number one, who just shrugged .
“There were very few who knew about it… that’s why those Chinamen were kept in the barn when the wagons came in… and they left in the middle of the night…. I suspect your pal, Rodie knew about it…he was in on the killin’ at the loggin’ camp. That’s why I shot him cold. I’d a never done that if he wasn’t a snake. Ya gotta kill snakes where you find ‘em.”
They didn’t know what to make of the whole business. Hopefully, they got enough of an education over the last few days to change their minds about easy gun money. Of the thirty or so men Glazer had, I’d bet money there weren’t a half dozen still around.
“You boys seen enough?”
They both mumbled that they had. There was a lot more humility in ‘em than there was when they chased me up the south fork creek. They might just make it.
Chapter 20
Backing off a ways I led them away from the mine. I took them a couple of miles back to the northwest. My plan was to take them back to the wagon trail, so they could follow it back down to the north fork.
Along the way, they became more and more talkative, not that I encouraged any unnecessary communications. In other words if you ain’t one of my very few friends, and it ain’t something important, then don’t say it. But they were comfortable in their belief that I wasn’t planning to shoot either one of them.
Number two started it out with, “Mister Cain, we know you didn’t want to know our names, but we’re gonna tell ‘em anyway… I’m Tom Suthers and he’s Jesse Kwirk. I usually call him Quirky because he is… We don’t aim to give you call to shoot us, so it’s all right that you know our names.”
Well there it was… I’d heard their names. Now I’d sure regret having to shoot ‘em, unless they got to talking too much… then all bets were off. They went on to tell me how they were a pair of wild young bucks back in Wichita, Kansas. They got to drinking a little too much one night and landed in the city jail with no way to pay their fines.
After three miserable days, the marshal came in with one of the local business men, who needed a couple of tough fellas to act as body guards and see him safely to Los Angeles.
“We knew him and always figgered he was skittish, and was just scared of travelin’ alone. So we took the job and his wages… We rode in a fancy car with a cook and plenty of coffee… but no liquor.” Suthers said.
Quirky picked it up there and went on with, “We didn’t have a speck of trouble on the train, but as soon as we were out of the station in the City of Angels, we were jumped. It was a glorious scrap, and we wound up runnin’ them off. We stayed with him all the way to the bank… That’s when we found out that Old Scaredy Pants had been carryin’ almost fifty thousand dollars in his big portmanteau. I don’t reckon I’d have told us either, had I been him.”
“So, we took our wages and bid him fare thee well… we was on our way to Oregon when we got wind that Glazer was lookin’ for fightin’ men.”
We come to our splitting up place just in time to keep them from getting shot for excess talking. When we stopped up on a hill overlooking the wagon ruts, I reached back, took their saddle bags, and tossed them to the nearest man. I told him to sort ‘em out cause I didn’t know which was which. They looked inside and found their guns and gun belts.
“They’re loaded, so be careful you don’t shoot yourselves.”
Then I pulled their rifles from my bed roll and gave them the same advice. They were good youngsters, and I was hopeful they had learned something over the last few months. I was just about to swing around and go back to the mine… I had it in my mind to shut that place down, when I spotted movement down below coming through the trees.
“Quick! Get under cover.” I told them, but they were already on the move. The three of us, with rifles ready, waited for whoever it was to come out of the trees. I recognized Glazer by his pot belly and fancy clothes. I didn’t know the man with him. We didn’t have to worry about being seen because they were too busy watching their back trail and arguing.
When they had gone on by Quirky said, “Glazer and Lacy.”
“Who’s Lacy?” I asked
“He’s kinda like Glazer’s pet bulldog.” Suthers said. “The old man don’t go nowhere without him… He’s supposed to be like chain lightnin’ with a six-gun. All I know is, nobody gave him trouble.”
When the travelers had passed, we remounted and I told them, “Fellas, do yourselves a big favor, and keep on headin’ up to Oregon. And stay out of trouble because I don’t want to have to come lookin’ for ya.” They moved on down to the wagon trail with the mare following behind.
I swung around and took off for the mine. Glazer and Lacy were in no hurry, and I wanted to get there ahead of them so I gave that bronc a taste of spur and we took off with Dog bringing up the rear. We’d covered some rough ground in the past few days, but we took the miles slow and easy. So dog and horse had plenty left in them.
When I reached the hill above the mine, there was no sign of Glazer and Lacy, so I picketed the horse on a little grass and slipped down behind a couple of crude buildings. These were small and better built than the larger ones across the way. I could hear two men talking inside. The window was open, and when I got closer I could make out what sounded like someone pacing on the wood floor and slapping his leg with something. I’d seen
a big brute of a white man walking across the compound toward the buildings as I was coming down. So he hadn’t been there long.
One of the voices was saying, “What’s got you all worked up boss? We got them coolies workin’ hard… They ain’t showin’ much, but there ain’t nothin’ they can do about that.”
“That’s the problem, Clete. One of the boys from down below came through this mornin’ on his way to Nevada. He said things ain’t goin’ good down there. And he heard Glazer talkin’ to Lacy ‘bout comin’ up here and cleanin’ it out.”
“That ain’t no problem for me, I’m ready to haul my freight anyway… hell, we ain’t seen more’n a few specs of color in weeks… this thing’s a bust.”
“Don’t you get it, fool… Glazer mean’s to clean us out… He’ll take it all if he can.”
“But he cain’t do that! You’re his pardner… ain’t ya… Don’t he have to split with ya?”
“I found the gold, but he put up the money… and he’s a greedy bastard… and deadly as long as he’s got Lacy with him… You go get Murphy and Stoddard, and tell them to forget about the coolies. I want them close by…. With shotguns!”
“We’ll lay for ‘em and blow ‘em to hell. We can take what nuggets and dust we got and head for Mexico… Whoever finds this place in fifty years can have that ore… It’s no good to us without a bunch of equipment. We’ll take that little chest and hightail it out of here.”
It looked like I wasn’t going to have to do much to shut this place down. It was going to shut it’s ownself down. Then I heard something being set down on a table and some words that were so mumbled, they didn’t mean anything to me… I believed it to be just a man cussing his luck. I reckon we’ve all done that a time or two.