by Max Brand
In fact, Elias Johnston was for returning the letter unopened.
“A big-handed gent like Al,” he said, “wouldn’t push a pen as plumb pretty as that.”
“We ain’t missin’ no chances,” said Jardine, “though it’s a cinch that a girl must of wrote this.”
So they steamed open the flap and drew out the contents and read:
Dear Frank: Jim thinks that it’s better for me to write to you because his handwriting might be known in El Ridal. This is to let you know that we are safely in the mountains. Jim is happy and looks very well.
It seems at present that we are to come down toward El Ridal before long. Not to stop there, but passing near by it. In case we do, one of us or both of us will try to come to the town to see you. That is, if we are passing during the night. If you hear two short whistles and then two long ones, you’ll know that one of us is beside the hotel. Then if you’ll come down from the hotel the back way you’ll find one of us or both of us waiting behind the sheds among the brush. Yours faithfully, Al.
Jim misses you a lot and talks about you all the time.
The treasure was in their hands, it seemed, at last, and a great recompense for their long torture and their long waiting.
“But it sure don’t look like he would bust himself wide open to get down,” said Walter Jardine. “Love? That don’t have no sound like love to me, Johnston. ‘Yours faithfully’ is a devil of a way to wind up a letter from a gent to the girl he loves. Ain’t that so?”
“Have you ever wrote one?” asked Johnston, grinning.
“I have,” said Jardine brazenly. “I’ve wrote a pile of ’em. And the finish of the dog-gone worst of the lot was hot as lightin’ compared with the finish of that there letter. If that’s love, I’m simple in the head. Look at the wind-up. ‘Jim misses you a lot.’ Sounds like the letter was dictated by Jim, not wrote out of the head of Al. Sounds just about as warm an’ kind-hearted as a letter that a brother would write to his sister.”
Upon these observations Elias Johnston brooded for a time. But he said finally: “You can’t tell. This here love is a queer kind of a disease. Sometimes it makes a gent laugh. Sometimes it makes him cry. Sometimes it makes him talk like a fool. Sometimes it makes him shut up like an owl. There ain’t no way of figuring it. I’ve tried before. What he says about Jim missin’ her most likely is meant for himself.”
“You do a pile of guessin’. It don’t buy nothin’,” insisted Walter Jardine. “Leastwise, we can lay and wait for ’em and they’s one chance in ten that it’ll be the gent we want. Even if it was only Jim Jones, it’d be a lot better’n nothin’.”
“It would,” admitted Elias. “But I’m here to state that I’ll lay ten to one that the gent that shows up will be young Al himself. Will you take that?”
Walter Jardine regarded the other calmly out of his bull eyes. Then he rose from his chair, crossed the room, and from his coat plucked forth a wallet.
“I got five hundred here,” he said. “You can cover that with five thousand if you got it, partner.”
16. CHRISTOPHER HOLDS A GRUDGE
THE PROBLEM WHICH lay before Harry Christopher and his men, though on the face of it simple, had complications which were most severe. At the town of Gully, Tom Morris was to become one of the guards. Between that point and the town of Cranston, there was a district of low, rolling hills. Beyond Cranston, the train descended into the flat, open country. If the train were not held up before Cranston, the robbery would have to be performed in the midst of a country where towns were comparatively thick and populous and where a complicated network of telephone and telegraph would carry the tidings from one place to another and a hundred bands of pursuers would have an excellent opportunity of cutting off the retreat of the plunderers, supposing that all went well with them in the actual robbery. It was necessary, therefore, that the holdup should take place between Gully and Cranston.
This was in itself a considerable stretch, but even here there were difficulties. It was a farming rather than a herding country. Little villages were numerous. The same difficulties, in short, which threatened the robbers in the flat lands beyond Cranston, were still a danger between Cranston and Gully, though those dangers were to a certain extent lessened because the ground was rougher and because there were, here and there, bits of forest to shroud the pursued and in which they could take at least momentary refuge if they were too closely pursued. Still, if an alarm went forth, from many and many a farm, units would ride forth to swell the posses, which were sure to be both numerous and determined. There were reasons behind this surety. In the first place, half a dozen crimes of some magnitude, including a train robbery of the first importance, had actually occurred in the region within the past two years and the men had been given an opportunity to learn how to work together to cover their district. More than that, they had not only been trained, but the pack had been well blooded. For of the half- dozen crimes, in four cases the pursuers had overtaken the miscreants and run them to the earth. They were naturally proud, therefore, of such a high percentage. They boasted that the crime wave had died out in their vicinity and that criminals sought other and easier hunting grounds.
Besides, the people of Cranston County were capable men of action quite beyond the average of the usual agrarian populations. They lived in a foothill district as has been said, with streaks and stretches of forest hither and yon, and just above them the mountains swelled up to great heights, with the big Cranston River rushing down toward the plains. Over those rough foothills and through the upper mountains, the men of the county hunted in the autumn every year. They were men born with rifles in their hands, so to speak, and their marksmanship was as keen as their hunting trips were frequent.
Yet it was in this district that the train must be intercepted. There was no help for it, and Harry Christopher frankly warned his associates in the band that with their work they were almost sure to raise up a most formidable nest of hornets that might sting them all to death. Neither were his followers so foolhardy as to consider the risk small. They were all of sufficient experience to realize the danger that lies in the strength of honest men and supporters of the law banded together even against the wits of the most expert and hardened lawbreakers. But the prize was great. There was three-quarters of a million dollars in hard cash to be distributed among them if they won.
That sum would be divided, all told, among about nineteen men. These were Tom Morris, who would be aboard the train as a guard, Jeff Stevens, who would board the train at Gully, ride as blind baggage toward Cranston, and on the way, at the appointed place, climb over the tender, and hold up the fireman and the engineer; and in addition to these and the five men who were with Harry Christopher, Steve Yerxa was bringing up ten old adherents of Christopher from the south and these would draw to a head at a convenient place where they could await the last-minute instructions of the chief out of whose brain the entire scheme had been born. Nineteen men made a considerable band, but to attempt the holdup with fewer might be difficult, considering that there were heavily armed guards in the treasure car and that the train might well have aboard it thirty or forty Westerners, each with a revolver which he knew how to use and, if occasion offered, would use. The passengers would have to be marched out of the cars and lined up, partly that they might be plundered in detail and partly that they might be under the eyes of the robbers, every man, while a detail of the assailants sacked the rich booty in the express car.
Nineteen men, under these considerations, would not be too many. And there was really plenty of spoil for them all. To the leader, Harry Christopher, there was to be assigned no less than a quarter of the entire proceeds, and even after he volunteered to pay off the expenses of the expedition which had to be met before the robbery was so much as attempted, he would still have no less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as his single portion! But to every one of the others who were joined in the attempt, there would accrue a magnificent reward of more than fo
rty thousand dollars in money!
To poor Vincent Allan, the very attempt to conceive such a sum was an effort which strained his mental powers. He had been accustomed to think of money in an impersonal manner. While he often handled large sums in the bank in Manhattan, still those sums had little more meaning than if he had read of them in a book. They had no relation to him. All that he knew of coin was the beggarly small stipend which he received at the end of each week in an envelope. But the prospect of receiving forty thousand dollars — and more — was a dazzling thing.
Not that he would keep it. Of course he could not do that. But if the daring scheme succeeded, which he greatly doubted, he would take his portion of the profits and send them back to the company which would have been so boldly robbed. Not if the prize had been a million would it tempt him for an instant. For honesty had been ingrained in his nature as deep as his simplicity.
He had only one purpose and that was to stay as close by the side of Jim Jones as possible throughout this affair and protect him in every manner. That would be a small answer in the eyes of the law, he knew. But it would be a great thing in the eyes of Frances, and it would be a great thing in his own eyes, for he had come to love Jim.
Thinking thus of the possibilities of the action that lay before them and of what it might mean to him in the end, he was amazed to see men so hardheaded and so experienced as “Lefty” Bill, for instance, now most lightheartedly calculating in what fashion he could spend his portion of the loot. He and all the others were as confident as though the money was already actually in possession. They talked almost as though the deed had already been performed. There was only a single exception, and that was Harry Christopher. The captain never varied in his gravity. And sometimes it seemed to Allan that he could detect the leader sitting back, as it were, and studying and judging with contempt these lesser creatures who did his bidding-and whom he despised for their obedience and their blindness to the dangers which were before them. Once, indeed, that flash of insight was confirmed in a startling manner by Christopher himself who took Allan aside and said to him:
“Now, Vincent, what’s your plan for the spending of this here forty thousand that you got—”
“I haven’t seen it,” said Allan.
“You’ll see it, old son. There ain’t no doubt about that!”
Allan shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not counting on it until I see it,” he said.
The chief scowled at him, “If they was all like you,” he declared, “there wouldn’t be no holdups; there wouldn’t be nothin’ done exceptin’ sittin’ tight at home and sleepin’ and eatin’.”
It was plain that he did not approve of such reserve on the part of his assistants. What he wanted was a number of headlong adventurers, willing to confidently undertake any risk, no matter how great, and out of their confidence he could find an energy which would turn his schemes into real action. There could not be more than one doubter in any party. But in Allan a second conservative was provided. And, from that moment, Harry Christopher looked upon him with a dark eye. He disliked his new follower for some of the very qualities which he most prized in himself!
At this Allan could only partly guess. But to actually understand and appreciate the mind of Harry Christopher he felt was a task for too great for his powers. The brigand was like a star; and Allan conceived him only by glances at very clear moments and could not even follow him for a moment at other times.
They started for the work when there still remained a week before the appointed day of the robbery. They had a considerable distance to cover, however, and the leader was strict that the horses should not be tired out by a forced march to the scene of the crime when the full strength of every animal might be needed to take them to safety afterward. They did not proceed in a solid body. Instead, each man went by himself, and the routes they followed all differed according to the taste of the individuals. There was only one couple, and that consisted of Jim and Allan, who were linked together partly at the request of Jim and partly because Allan really needed a guide through the unknown districts through which he was expected to journey. They parted, then, with little ceremony. The captain, as he dismissed his men, made them a little speech. It was not at all polished and it was not at all emphatic, but it was to the point.
“Gents,” he said, “you got seven days to get to the place where you’re goin’ to meet me. What happens to you in between is your business. You pick out your own trails. If you get into trouble on the way, of course you don’t figure in on this game. And a gent that gets into trouble before a party is pulled off, I don’t want to ever have with me ag’in. When I see you come in at the right place and at the right time, I ain’t goin’ to look at you at all. I’m goin’ to look at your hosses. If they look plumb fresh, I’ll know that you’ve took your time, made a good easy march every day, and that you’re goin’ to be in shape to work for yourselves and the rest of us after we’ve done the job on the train. But if I see a man of you comin’ in with a hoss that looks all ga’nted up and tuckered out, he don’t figure in on the party at all. I don’t care if he’s my brother, I’d tell him to start ridin’ and get out of the neighborhood because I didn’t want to have him around me any more. Well, so long gents, and good luck to the whole of you!”
With that, he had left them, riding off down a trail on his finely shaped brown mare which had been his companion in every adventure of the past five years, during which he had made his fortune. She was as famous, well-nigh, as was he. Allan went off at the side of Jim, thinking over the speech of the leader.
“One would think,” he said at last, “that Christopher didn’t care whether his men showed up or not.”
“He don’t,” answered Jim promptly.
“Suppose that so many of them disappoint him that he can’t hold up the train?”
“Then he’ll lose his time, his twenty thou’ that he’s soaked into the job, and all his hopes. But he’d rather have a loss like that, I’ve heard him say, than have a whole bunch of blockheads around him that he can’t depend on. You understand? If he’s got a man around him that’s weak, he says that it’s like having a weak link in a chain — it may drop the whole load one of these times! He wants nothin’ around him but men that he knows are the true steel, old- timer!”
He added suddenly: “What’s wrong between you and Harry?”
“I don’t know,” said Allan. “Nothing, I hope. I’ve followed orders.”
“Something is wrong, though.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I’ve watched him looking at you sometimes and I could of swore that he was tryin’ to study you out and not bein’ able to understand. I could of swore, Al, that he was sort of afraid of you!”
Allan pondered this remark quietly. And then he thought of a solution which was amusing and simple at the same time. It might very well be that the chief could not understand because, for the first time in his life, he had in his band an honest man. At least, the thought was pleasant. He wondered if this was the explanation.
The next remark of Jim’s was not nearly so pleasing.
“And if I’m right,” said Jim, “you want to look out. If Harry Christopher is afraid of you or any other man he won’t rest until he’s done ’em up. That’s his way!”
17. AL DARES DANGER
THE COURSE TOWARD Gully which Jim mapped out carried close past El Ridal, as Allan had hoped it would, but when Jim himself said nothing of attempting the dangerous visit to the town in order to see his sister, Allan had not the courage to make the suggestion. It was the third evening of their journey when they pitched their camp on the lip of the gorge and looked down through the trunks of the pines to where the yellow lights were beginning to shine in the blue heart of the valley. How Jim could see those lights without feeling an impulse like a whip urging him down toward the hollow, Allan could not understand until he remembered that after all Jim was only her brother.
In fact, young Jim had not a word to say concern
ing his sister while they pitched camp and hobbled the horses and cooked their supper over a fire of the most gingerly small proportions. His own thoughts were so firmly fixed upon that topic, and that topic alone, that he heard what Jim had to say only dimly.
Coming so close to El Ridal, naturally enough, Jim was thinking and talking of those two famous men of battle from whose hands he had been torn by Allan. So he sat with his shoulders cradled against a hummock of earth and told tales of great deeds which each had done singly and of the still greater things which they had accomplished by working together.
“But the queerest thing of all,” declared Jim, “is that here we set as pretty as you please on the top of the house laughin’ down at the both of ’em!”
“Maybe they’re trailing us now?” suggested Allan.
It brought a shudder from Jim; he could not help glancing suspiciously at a stir among the moon shadows which lay thick and soft beneath the pines. But it was only the sway of a sapling, cuffed by the wind.
“They ain’t after us,” breathed Jim. “Old Christopher is keepin’ tab on ’em, and he gets word regular from El Ridal. They’re still there settin’ quiet and turnin’ their thumbs one around the other. What’s in their heads? What’s their little game?”
But Allan was now so lost in the contemplation of another subject that the last questions had to be repeated and with violence before he said: “Perhaps they’re afraid, Jim.”
It was a random answer, spoken because he did not wish to bother his head with the subject, but the effect was to make Jim gape at him.
“Afraid?” echoed Jim, “Them two dunno what fear is. That word ain’t got any meanin’ for ’em! Afraid? Of us? Listen to me, old son; they’d eat a dozen like the two of us and figger that they hadn’t had a fight.”
But even this threat could not disturb the mind of Allan for very long. In another moment he had returned to his meditations; and Jim, giving up all effort at speech with such an unsociable companion, at length twisted himself in his blanket and lay down to sleep on a bed of thickly heaped pine needles.