by Max Brand
Between each step he paused and listened. He put forth a foot and felt the ground carefully with it, for fear of a pebble which might roll beneath his weight, or a twig which might snap. His progress was so painfully slow that he could not even estimate distances in the pitch-dark. The passage grew higher and wider — it turned sharply to the right — a faint light shone.
Pete crouched lower and the grin of expectancy twisted at his lips. At every step, until this moment; he had scarcely dared to breathe, for fear of the bullet which might find him out. Now all the advantage was on his side. Behind him was the dark. Before him was the light which must outline, however faintly, the figure of any one who lurked in wait. With these things in mind he went on more rapidly. The passage widened again and turned to the left. He peered cautiously around the edge of rock and looked into as comfortable a living-room as he had ever seen.
The rock hung raggedly from the top of the cave, but the sides were smooth from the action of running water through long, dead ages. The floor was of level-packed gravel. Silver Pete remained crouched at the sharp angle of the passage until he heard the stamp and snort of a horse. It gave him heart and courage to continue the stealthy progress, inch by inch, foot by foot, pace by pace toward the light, and as he stole forward more and more of the cave developed before him.
A tall and sinewy horse was tethered at one end, and at the opposite side sat a man with his back to Pete, who leveled his revolver and drew a bead on a spot between the shoulder blades. Yet he did not fire, for the thought came to him that if it were an honor to track the Ghost to his abode and kill him, it would be immortal glory to bring back the bandit alive, a concrete testimony to his own prowess.
Once more that catlike progress began until he could see that the Ghost sat on his saddle in front of a level-topped boulder in lieu of a table. The air was filled with the sweet savor of fried bacon and coffee. Pete had crawled to the very edge of the cave when the horse threw up its head and snorted loudly. The Ghost straightened and tilted back his head to listen.
“Up with yer hands!” snarled Silver Pete.
He had his bead drawn and his forefinger tightened around the trigger, but the Ghost did not even turn. His hands raised slowly above his shoulders to the level of his head and remained there.
“Stand up!” said Pete, and rose himself from the ground, against which he had flattened himself. For if the Ghost had decided to try a quick play with his gun the shot in nine cases out of ten would travel breast-high.
“Turn around!” ordered Pete, feeling more and more sure of himself as he studied the slight proportions of the outlaw.
The Ghost turned and showed a face with a sad mouth and humorous eyes.
“By God!” cried Silver Pete, and took a pace back which brought his shoulders against the wall of rock, “Geraldine!”
If the Ghost had had his gun on his hip he could have shot Pete ten times during that moment of astonishment, but his belt and revolver hung on a jutting rock five paces away. He dropped his hands to his hips and smiled at his visitor.
“When they put you on the job, Pete,” he said, “I had a hunch I should beat it.”
At this inferred compliment the twisted smile transformed one side of Silver Pete’s face with sinister pleasure, but there was still wonder in his eyes.
“Damn me, Geraldine,” he growled, “I can’t believe my eyes!”
Geraldine smiled again.
“Oh, it’s me, all right,” he nodded. “You got me dead to rights, Pete. What do you think the boys will do with me?”
“And you’re — the Ghost?” sighed Silver Pete, pushing back his hat as though to give his thoughts freer play. He had met many a man of grim repute along the “border,” but never such nonchalance as he found in the Ghost.
“What’ll they do with you?” he repeated, “I dunno. You ain’t plugged nobody, Geraldine. I reckon they’ll ship you South and let the sheriff handle you. Git away from that gun!”
For Geraldine had stepped back with apparent unconcern until he stood within a yard of his revolver. He obeyed the orders with unshaken good humor, but it seemed to Silver Pete that a yellow light gleamed for an instant in the eyes of the Ghost. It was probably only a reflection from the light of the big torch that burned in a corner of the cave.
“Gun?” grinned Geraldine. “Say, Pete, do you think I’d try and gunplay while you have the drop on me?”
He laughed.
“Nope,” he went on. “If you was one of those tinhorn gunmen from the town over yonder, I’d lay you ten to one I could drill you and make a getaway, but you ain’t one of them, Pete, and, seeing it’s you, I ain’t going to try no funny stuff. I don’t hanker after no early grave, Pete!”
This tribute set a placid glow of satisfaction in Pete’s eyes.
“Take it from me, Geraldine,” he said, “you’re wise. But there ain’t no need for you to get scared of me so long as you play the game square and don’t try no fancy moves. Now show me where you got the loot stowed and show it quick. If you don’t—”
The threat was unfinished, for Geraldine nodded.
“Sure I’ll show it to you, Pete,” he said. “I know when I got a hand that’s worth playing, and I ain’t a guy to bet a measly pair of treys against a full house. Take a slant over there behind the rock and you’ll find it all.”
He indicated a pile of stones of all sizes which lay heaped in a corner. Pete backed toward it with his eye still upon the Ghost. A few kicks scattered the rocks and exposed several small bags. When he stirred these with his foot their weight was eloquent, and the gun-fighter’s smile broadened.
“Think of them tin-horns,” he said, “that offered all your pickings to the man that got you dead or alive, Geraldine!”
The Ghost sighed.
“Easy pickings,” he agreed. “No more strong-arm work for you, Pete!”
The jaw of Silver Pete set sternly again.
“Lead your hoss over here,” he said, “and help me stow this stuff in the saddlebags. And if you make a move to get the hoss between me and you—”
The Ghost grinned in assent, saddled his mount, and led him to Pete. Then in obedience to orders he unbuckled the slicker strapped behind the saddle and converted it into a strong bag which easily held the bags of loot. It made a small but ponderous burden, and he groaned with the effort as he heaved it up behind the saddle and secured it. Pete took the bridle and gestured at the Ghost with the revolver.
“Now git your hands up over your head agin, Geraldine,” he said, “and go out down the tunnel about three paces ahead of me.”
“Better let me take the torch,” suggested the Ghost, “it’ll show us the way.”
Pete grunted assent, and Geraldine, on his way toward the torch, stopped at the boulder to finish off his coffee. He turned to Pete with the cup poised at his lips.
“Say, Pete,” he said genially. “Anything wrong with a cup of coffee and a slice of bacon before we start back?”
“By God, Geraldine,” grinned the gun-fighter, “you’re a cool bird, but your game is too old!”
Nevertheless his very soul yearned toward the savor of bacon and coffee.
“Game?” repeated the Ghost, who caught the gleam of Pete’s eye. “What game? I say let’s start up the coffee-pot and the frying-pan. I can turn out flapjacks browner than the ones mother used to make, Pete!”
Pete drew a great breath, for the taste of his flour and water diet of the past few days was sour in his mouth.
“Geraldine,” he said at last, “it’s a go! But if you try any funny passes I ain’t going to wait for explanations. Slide out the chow!”
He rolled a large stone close to the boulder which served as dining-table to the bandit, and sat down to watch the preparations. The Ghost paid little attention to him, but hummed as he worked. Soon a fire snapped and crackled. The coffee can straddled one end of the fire; the frying-pan occupied the other. While the bacon fried he mixed self-rising pancake flour in a tin pla
te, using water from a tiny stream which trickled down from the rocks at one side of the cave, disappearing again through a fissure in the floor. Next he piled the crisp slices of bacon on a second tin plate and used the fried-out fat to cook the flapjacks.
“What I can’t make out,” said Geraldine, without turning to his guest, “is why you’d do this job for those yellow livers over in the town.”
Pete moved the tip of his tongue across his lips, for his mouth watered in anticipation.
“Why, you poor nut,” he answered compassionately, “I ain’t working for them. I’m working for the stuff that’s up there behind the saddle.”
Geraldine turned on him so suddenly that Pete tightened his grip upon the revolver, but the Ghost merely stared at him.
“Say,” he grinned at last, “have you got a hunch they’ll really let you walk off with all that loot?”
The face of the gunman darkened.
“I sure think they’ll let me,” he said with a sinister emphasis. “That was the way they talked.”
Geraldine sighed in apparent bewilderment, but turned back to his work without further comment. In a few moments he rose with the plates of bacon and flapjacks piled on his left arm and the can of coffee in his right hand. He arranged them on the boulder before Silver Pete, and then sat on his heels on the other side of the big stone. The gun-fighter laid his revolver beside his tin cup and attacked the food with the will of ten. Yet even while he ate the eye which continually lingered on the Ghost noted that the latter stared at him with a curious and almost pitying interest. He came to a pause at last, with a piece of bacon folded in a flapjack.
“Look here,” he said, “just what were you aiming at a while ago?”
Geraldine shrugged his shoulders and let his eye wander away as though the subject embarrassed him.
“Damn it!” said Pete with some show of anger, “don’t go staring around like a cross-eyed girl. What’s biting you?”
“It ain’t my business,” he said. “As long as I’m done for, I don’t care what they do to you.”
He stopped and drummed his finger-tips against his chin while he scowled at Pete.
“If it wasn’t for you I’d be a free bird,” he went on bitterly. “Do you think I’m goin’ to weep any of the salt and briny for you, what?”
“Wha’d’ya mean?” Pete blurted. “D’ya mean to say them quitters are going to double-cross me?”
The Ghost answered nothing, but the shrug of his shoulders was eloquent. Pete started up with his gun in his hand.
“By God, Geraldine,” he said, “you ain’t playin’ fair with me! Look what I done for you. Any other man would of plugged you the minute they seen you, but here I am lettin’ you walk back safe and sound — treating you as if you was my own brother, almost!”
He hesitated a trifle over this simile. Legend told many things of what Silver Pete had done to his own brother. Nevertheless, Geraldine met his stare with an eye full as serious.
“I’m going to do it,” he said in a low voice, as if talking to himself. “Just because you come out here and caught me like a man there ain’t no reason I should stand by and see you made a joke of. Pete, I’m going to tell you!”
Pete settled back on his stone with his fingers playing nervously about the handle of his gun.
“Make it short, Geraldine,” he said with an ominous softness. “Tell me what the wall-eyed cayuses figure on doin’!”
The Ghost studied him as if he found some difficulty in opening his story in a delicate manner.
“Look here, Pete,” he said at last. “There ain’t no getting out of it that some of the things you’ve done read considerable different from Bible stories.”
“Well?” snarled Silver Pete.
“Well,” said the Ghost, “those two-card Johnnies over to town know something of what you’ve done, and they figure to double-cross you.”
He paused, and in the pause Pete’s mouth twitched so that his teeth glinted yellow.
“Anybody could say that,” he remarked. “What’s your proof?”
“Proof?” echoed the Ghost angrily. “Do you think I’m telling you this for fun? No, Pete,” he continued with a hint of sadness in his voice, “it’s because I don’t want to see those guys do you dirt. You’re a real man and they’re only imitation-leather. The only way they’re tough is their talk.”
“Damn them!” commented Pete.
“Well,” said Geraldine, settling into the thread of his narrative, “they knew that once you left the town on this job you wouldn’t come back until you had the Ghost. Then when you started they got together and figured this way. They said you was just a plain man-killer and that you hadn’t any more right to the reward than the man in the moon. So they figured that right after you got back with the Ghost, dead or alive, they’d have the sheriff pay you a little visit and stick you in the coop. They’ve raked up plenty of charges against you, Peter.”
“What?” asked Pete hoarsely.
The Ghost lowered his voice to an insinuating whisper.
“One thing is this. They say that once you went prospecting with a guy called Red Horry. Horace was his right name.”
Silver Pete shifted his eyes and his lips fixed in a sculptured grin.
“They say that you went with him and that you was pals together for months at a time. They say once you were bit by a rattler and Red Horry stuck by you and saved you and hunted water for you and cared for you like a baby. They say you got well and went on prospecting together and finally he struck a mine. It looked rich. Then one day you come back to Truckee and say that Red Horry got caught in a landslide and was killed and you took the mine. And they say that two years later they found a skeleton, and through the skull, right between the eyes, was a little round hole, powerful like a hole made by a .45. They say—”
“They lie!” yelled Silver Pete, rising. “And you lie like the rest of them. I tell you it was — it was—”
“Huh!” said Geraldine, shrugging away the thought with apparent scorn. “Of course they lie. Nobody could look at you and think you’d plug a pal — not for nothing.”
Pete dropped back to his stone.
“Go on,” he said. “What else do they say?”
“I don’t remember it all,” said the Ghost, puckering his brows with the effort of recollection, “but they got it all planned out when you come back with the loot they’ll take it and split it up between them — one-third to Collins, because he made the plan first.
“They even made up a song about you,” went on Geraldine, “and the song makes a joke out of you all the way through, and it winds up like this — you’re supposed to be talking, see?
“I don’t expect no bloomin’ tears;
The only thing I ask
Is something for a monument
In the way of a whisky flask.”
“Who made up the song, Geraldine?” asked Pete.
“I dunno,” answered the Ghost. “I reckon Collins had a hand in it.”
“Collins,” repeated the gun-fighter. “It sounds like him. I’ll get him first!”
“And it was Collins,” went on the Ghost, leaning a little forward across the boulder, while he lowered his voice for secrecy. “It was Collins who got them to send out three men to watch you from a distance. They was to trail you and see that if you ever got to the Ghost you didn’t make off with the loot without showing up in town. Ever see anybody trailing you, Pete?”
The gun-fighter flashed a glance over his shoulder toward the dark and gaping opening of the passage from the cave. Then he turned back to the Ghost.
“I never thought of it,” he whispered. “I didn’t know they was such skunks. But, by God, they won’t ever see the money! I’ll take it and line out for new hunting grounds.”
“And me?” asked the Ghost anxiously.
“You?” said Silver Pete, and the whisper made the words trebly sinister. “I can’t leave you free to track me up, can I? I’ll just tie you up and leave you
here.”
“To starve?” asked the Ghost with horror.
“You chose your own house,” said Pete, “an” now I reckon it’s good enough for you to live in it.”
“But what’ll you do if they’re following you up?” suggested the Ghost. “What’ll you do if they’ve tracked you here and the sheriff with them? What if they get you for Red Horry?”
The horse had wandered a few paces away. Now its hoof struck a loose pebble which turned with a crunching sound like a footfall.
“My God!” yelled the Ghost, springing up and pointing toward the entrance passage, “they’ve got you, Pete!”
The gun-fighter whirled to his feet, his weapon poised and his back to the Ghost. Geraldine drew back his arm and lunged forward across the boulder. His fist thudded behind Silver Pete’s ear. The revolver exploded and the bullet clicked against a rock, while Pete collapsed upon his face, with his arms spread out crosswise. The Ghost tied his wrists behind his back with a small piece of rope. Silver Pete groaned and stirred, but before his brain cleared his ankles were bound fast and drawn up to his wrists, so that he lay trussed and helpless. The Ghost turned him upon one side and then, strangely enough, set about clearing up the tinware from the boulder. This he piled back in its niche after he had rinsed it at the runlet of water. A string of oaths announced the awakening of Silver Pete. Geraldine went to him and leaned over his body.
Pete writhed and cursed, but Geraldine kneeled down and brushed the sand out of the gun-fighter’s hair and face. Then he wiped the blood from a small cut on his chin where his face struck a rock when he fell.
“I have to leave you now, Pete,” he said, rising from this work of mercy. “You’ve been good company, Pete, but a little of you goes a long way.”
He turned and caught his horse by the bridle.
“For God’s sake!” groaned Silver Pete, and Geraldine turned. “Don’t leave me here to die by inches. I done some black things, Geraldine, but never nothing as black as this. Take my own gun and pull a bead on me and we’ll call everything even.”
The Ghost smiled on him.
“Think it over, Pete,” he said. “I reckon you got enough to keep your mind busy. So-long!”