by Max Brand
“Glad to see you, pal,” said Silas Treat, advancing across the circle until he loomed huge above Ronicky, and he stretched forth his hand. It was not taken, and Treat drew himself back a pace.
“Gents,” said Ronicky, “I sure appreciate being taken in. But you don’t know me yet. Wait till you’ve found out what I am. If you feel the same way then—why, we’ll shake hands. But you can’t tell in the beginning of some things how they’re going to end. Just leave this up in the air. Later on—well, we’ll know each other a pile better!”
The speech was well received, particularly by Silas Treat.
“That sounds like more sense than I figure on hearing out of a gent ten years older than you, son,” he declared. “All right. We’ll try you out, but I aim to say that I think you’ll live up to standard fine! How about it, boys?”
There was a growl of assent. The bright eyes still probed suspiciously at Ronicky, but there was a willingness now to find some measure of good in him. But Ronicky was delighted because he had avoided giving his hand to the whole circle. That would have tied him down. Now he was frankly on trial with the band and the band was on trial with him. He glanced at Moon and saw that the leader was biting his lips in vexation. He, at least, was clever enough to understand the meaning of Ronicky’s maneuver.
In the meantime, Ronicky sat down, withdrawing a little from the intimate, inner circle about the fire. He looked squarely across at the girl. She was talking quite gayly with her father. Now and then some one of the men addressed a remark to her, and she answered. But always, in flitting here and there, her glance became a blank when it passed over the spot where Ronicky was sitting.
This hurt him; and the injustice was inclined to make him sulk. Yet he could not help admiring her, even impersonally. Here, playing her part among men who might, within two or three days, be the murderers of her father, striving with all her force to gain such a hold upon them that in the crisis she might be able to turn them from their purpose, she was at her very best. Firelight had turned the sand-colored hair to a rich gold; excitement brought color to her cheeks and set her eyes gleaming.
“Look here,” said a voice from the far side of the circle. “Ain’t you going to change seats after a while, Treat? D’you sit beside the lady all evening?”
“I ain’t heard her shouting out loud for you to come and rescue her,” said Treat.
“You see,” explained the girl, “I plan to take Si back with me.”
“And why not me, too?” came a chorus.
“Because you’re all known men,” she answered. “But Si carries his mask about with him.”
Silas Treat stroked the dense mustaches and beard which had inspired the remark and grinned down at the girl. As the laughter died, Baldy McNair slipped into a place beside Ronicky.
“You were lying up in the barn the other night,” he said. “You heard me and Marty talking, I understand?”
“That’s it.”
“And that was what started you going?”
“Yep.”
Baldy McNair sighed.
“Well,” he murmured at length, “you started on the trail of doing a pretty good thing. I’m sort of sorry, partner, to see you wind up in this joint. But—that ain’t my business.”
Ronicky looked steadily into the open eyes of the ruddy-faced man.
“I’ll get to know you better,” he said. “I’d like to, a pile.”
In the meantime, the outlaw chief had taken a place just behind Jerry Dawn, and gradually he drew her attention away from the circle and into earnest conversation with himself. Ronicky noted the changes from positive distaste, which she could barely conquer at first, to interest and then even to excitement. What they said was pitched well beneath the sustained chatter of the men, but by the expression of the girl Ronicky knew that she was by no means unhappy in the company of Moon.
He shook his head in wonder. It seemed utterly impossible that she could stay near him for an instant—near this man whose known crimes were too numerous for memory, and whose unknown deeds made probably an even blacker record. But he knew that women have strange powers of forgetfulness. The past of Jack Moon no doubt was beginning to grow dim in her mind. The present was all she was capable of knowing. Even the future danger impending over her father was probably forgotten for the moment. All she saw, all she heard, were the handsome face, the smooth voice of Jack Moon, leader of men.
Indeed, between a king and the ruler of a pirate crew there is a similarity. To be a single robber is a despicable thing; to be a mighty leader of robbers is to be—a Tamerlane, perhaps. And if Jack Moon were not in the latter class, he was certainly not in the first. An air of superiority clothed him. Among such fellows as these, he seemed a giant. When the thought of his crimes obtruded, might she not be tempted to a greater pity than condemnation? Hitherto he had struck no one of hers. Her father was still safe. And as to what he had done in the rest of the world, were not all women full of forgiveness for handsome, smooth-tongued rascals?
Sick at heart, finally he turned away and stepped out into the darkness of the trees. This, then, was the reward of service!
Ronicky could gladly have walked on through the forest and the night, and left it all behind him. What had happened to Jerry Dawn? What had become of her trust in him, her enthusiastic admiration? Now she seemed to regard the outlaw chief, terrible Jack Moon, as a friend!
If that were her attitude, was it not better to shake the whole matter from his attention and let Hugh Dawn and his daughter solve their own problem? One thing held him, and that a potent chain—his word passed to Dawn to see him through the trouble.
Accordingly he came back and entered the clearing. Things were rapidly settling down for the night, since most of the men were worn out by the labors of the day. Half a dozen were already preparing their bunks in the shacks. Moon stood in front of the little hut which had been reserved for Jerry Dawn, and he was talking with the girl before she went in to sleep. Her father sat entirely alone—but watched by how many wolfish eyes!—near the fire.
Ronicky went straight to him and sat down at his side.
“Hugh,” he said, “what’s come over Jerry? Has she lost her head? Has she gone mad, talking to Moon like that? Look at ’em over there! You’d think he wasn’t himself. You’d think he wasn’t planning to get your scalp if he can! You’d think he was an old family friend or a suitor, or something like that!”
Hugh Dawn did not turn his head. But he smiled sorrowfully at the younger man.
“It’s Moon getting in his work,” he said. “You can’t beat Jack Moon! No way of doing it!”
“That’s foolish talk! Anybody can be beaten!”
“Can they? Well, maybe. I don’t pretend to know everything.”
“Moon has the strength of twelve men behind him. Thirteen to two is the odds against us. Little more than six to one is hard odds, but it’s been beat before.”
“He’s got more than that on his side, son. He’s got our weaknesses.”
Ronicky Doone, after all, was very young, very impetuous, and not extremely thoughtful. “I don’t follow that,” he admitted.
“I’ll show you,” said Hugh. “What’s your weakness and Jerry’s weakness, far as Jack’s concerned? Your honor. Your word’s good, and so’s hers. He’s made you promise something—I don’t know what. Anyway, he’s brought you in here, and he’s keeping you. And he’s got Jerry to promise not to try to run away.”
“But what could he do if she did run away? What could I do? How can we bring help? The minute outsiders come, Moon would put a bullet through your head. She knows it; I know it.”
“Sure. Maybe that’s what Moon’s worked on. Anyway, he’s done it. He’s tying your hands with your weaknesses.”
“But Moon’s own word is good as gold. You told me so yourself.”
“Sure it is. Because his price has never been bid.”
“But doesn’t Jerry realize what you understand—that though I seem to be down he
re as one of Moon’s men—”
He stopped, realizing that his promise to Moon kept him from explaining.
“She ain’t the reasoning kind,” said the older man. “She jumps to a conclusion the way a hoss jumps a fence into a new pasture. All she knows is that you’re here, and that you seem to be one of Moon’s men.”
“But she talks to Moon like a friend, yet she sure knows that he’s a murderer a hundred times over!”
“She’s never seen him do a murder. And the things that count with women are the things they’ve seen. They’re a practical lot, and you can lay to that. She thought Moon was a skunk at first. That was because she liked you. Now she thinks you’re one of Moon’s men, and so you’re worse than Moon. How Jack got you, I don’t ask. You’re here and that’s the main point.”
“But, man, will you put in a word with her for me?”
“It’s no good. Moon’s got her all trained against you.” It was strange to see the big fellow surrender so entirely to the very presence of the outlaw chief. All hope seemed to have left.
“It’ll come out right in the end,” insisted Ronicky. “You have his word that if the gold’s found, you go free.”
“His word? He’ll find a way to keep me. Think he’ll give me up, knowing that when I leave Jerry goes with me and he sees the last of her?”
Ronicky gasped.
“You think he wants to—to marry her?”
“I dunno. I’ve never known him to waste time on a girl before. Jerry’s the first.”
Sweat stood out on the forehead of Ronicky. At last he muttered: “Anyway, you’re safe as long’s she’s with you here!”
“Safe?” Hugh Dawn laughed without mirth. “You wait and see. A gun’ll go off by accident, in the end—or a rock’ll roll down a hill as I’m walking beneath it. That’s the way it’ll happen.”
“Then,” cried Ronicky, “let’s you and me pull out guns and grab the girl and make a break for it! Are you going to stay and get murdered?”
“No use,” and Hugh Dawn sighed. “I’m watched. I couldn’t run a step without getting dropped. Same way with you. You can’t beat Jack Moon!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gold!
The little camp awakened to a swirl of activity in the morning. Whatever were the problems of Dawn and Ronicky, the rest of the crowd was interested in gold. Gold had haunted their dreams. Gold wakened them in the first gray of dawn. Gold drove them through a hasty breakfast, and for the sake of gold their picks and shovels were deep in the dirt in the hollow well before sunrise.
Their united efforts had rolled away the boulders which were scattered over the surface of the designated spot. Below, they found a soft soil, and the hole sank rapidly. Five feet down, however, they struck a dense layer of clay, which had to be chewed out bit by bit with picks.
The laborers paused, growling, but Jack Moon himself leaped down into the pit and caught up a pick. The others now fell to with a will, and an hour of terrific labor pierced the clay and let them down again into gravel and sand.
They had driven through the depth of the mound which the landslide had tumbled over the place, when the sun rose red through the eastern trees, and now, warming to the work, they pushed the hole deeper and deeper.
Learning from the experience of the first pit, they made the excavation this second time much wider at the top and sank it in two steps, from each of which, when the bottom was reached, they could pass the soil in relays to the surface. By noon they were down a full fifteen feet below the true surface of the ground, and now the entire crowd was at work at the same time. The pace was slower than when they worked in shifts, but the progress downward was more steady, a continuous stream of sand and gravel pouring over the lip of the pit as it was deepened below.
Two men brought down provisions for a quick lunch, and in ten minutes the work was resumed. For there was great need of haste. Never before had the band of Jack Moon been retained so long in one place. The long immunity which Moon and his followers had enjoyed was indubitably owing to the swiftness with which they gathered, worked, and dispersed, each man to a separate quarter. One day together was comparatively safe. Two became rash. And to spend three days together was actually putting one’s head in the noose. This being the third day of their assemblage, and the second they had camped on one spot, there was not only love of gold but fear of death to spur them on.
Midafternoon saw them down to twenty feet; but now they were working through a dense stratum, and the progress was slow. Besides, the whole crowd, from Hugh Dawn to Ronicky, was exhausted.
Suddenly there was a yell from little Bud Kent as he jerked something from the ground with his shovel. He had pried up an ancient pick, and now he raised it above his head, the iron a mass of black rust, and the haft sadly decayed. But it was proof positive that they were not on a blind trail. Some one had dug here before!
Who thought of weariness now? On they went with a shout and a roar. The gravel and sand flew up in a ceaseless shower. A dozen backs were rising and falling swiftly. The pebbles chimed and rang as they whipped up from the polished shovel blades.
It was exactly half past four when the next sensation came. They were down a shade more than twenty-two feet when Jack Moon, again in the pit, raised, without a word, poising it high on his shovel—the blackened skull of a man.
That hideous specter cast a blanket of silence over the group, then a groan of disappointment. Jerry had turned away, sick.
“Nothing more!” Bud Kent remarked in disgust. “Maybe old Cosslett did dig this hole and dug it deep; but it was only because he wanted to get this gent out of sight. It’s a burial ground, not a treasure cache. Boys, we’re through!”
“Wait a minute, Bud,” called Jack Moon. “Look here. There’s a nice little hole drilled through this skull between the eyes. Took a bullet to do that, son. What did somebody say awhile back? That Cosslett might of had a couple of gents dig this hole and then shot them into it and covered the bodies up? Well?”
That possible explanation at least gave them renewed hope. Labor began again. And in ten minutes they had uncovered and removed two complete skeletons!
Still the hole sank to twenty-three feet, twenty-three and a half, twenty-four, twenty-four and a half! Not a word had been spoken, now, for an hour. Lanterns had been brought and were lighted, ready for use as the evening came on. And already their glow began to be as bright as the twilight.
Presently from Corrigan, a big brute of a man, wielding a shovel with steady might, came a dull roar of excitement. The gravel flew up from his blade as the others in the narrow pit stood back. Then, from the three workers in those cramped quarters, came a single-throated wail of excitement. The scraping shovel had cleaned off the top of an iron-bound chest!
The yelling from the bottom of the hole was redoubled by the echoes along the sides of the pit and raised again by the men working at the mouth. They crowded about it as Jack Moon, with a hoarse shout, called to those below to make way for him.
Next instant he was down into the bottom of the pit, he wrenched a pick from the hands of one of the diggers, and, sinking it through the top boards of the chest, he tore one of them up. Below was a quantity of cloth or canvas. One slash of his knife divided it. Then by the light of the lanterns which had been lowered from the surface as far as possible, every eye at once caught the gleam and glitter of yellow—the unmistakable shimmer of gold!
The heart of the girl swelled until she could hardly breathe as she waited for the shouts of rejoicing. But not one came. Men were trembling, wild of eye, but their loudest voice was a husky whisper. Only Jack Moon was speaking aloud, and he was ordering them to pass the stuff up to the surface. It rose from shaking hand to shaking hand, and up on the lip of the pit came a gathering heap of gold spilling at the feet of the girl. She gazed on it, incredulous.
There was power, happiness, freedom in that growing heap of yellow. It was an arm to pursue and a strong hand to support. It could reward and punish. It
could actually buy a life. How many, indeed, had already been paid down freely to win this same metal from the earth, to take it again from the rightful owners, and, last of all, to hide it?
Her father, frantic with joy, clambered from the pit, kneeled by the mass, buried his hands in it, and then looked up to her with a maniacal laugh! Others were coming up. The chest had been gutted of its contents. And as fast as they reached the top of the ground, hand after hand, shaking with joy, was buried in the treasure. Then Baldy McNair broke the charm.
“Get down again, boys!” he cried. “This is only the beginning. There’s a ton of gold here. But what’s that? Not seven hundred thousand dollars! There must be more—ten times as much—maybe twenty times as much! Who knows? Come down again and dig!”
But the heavy voice of the leader answered him as Jack Moon climbed up from the pit.
“Hold the lanterns out. Look down yonder,” he commanded.
They obeyed. The chest had been smashed to pieces by Moon and put to one side, and in the clear place below it they saw the wet glimmer of bedrock.
“There’s no more,” explained Moon. “One dollar of gold always makes ten dollars’ worth of talk. And there you are! You’ll find no more treasure. That’s what Cosslett put down under ground, and that’s all he got. The rest is just talk—that I believed like a fool. But ain’t this enough? Over six hundred thousand dollars, boys. Split that by twenty for example—there you have thirty-three thousand dollars apiece. Is it enough?”
They had been promised ten times that much before. But half a million in talk did not equal the actuality of less than a tenth of that in sheer gold. On the damp pile of sand on the edge of the pit they apportioned the loot, with the aid of a pocket scales. There was a share for each of Moon’s twelve men, and for the leader himself three shares. To Ronicky and Dawn went also a share apiece. Seventeen shares, then, were apportioned.
Full darkness came while Moon still weighed and apportioned the gold with his scales. The dust had been hammered into small bars of every conceivable shape for the sake of security in handling, and now the men put their shares away in saddlebags or pieces of the canvas which had been used to cover the treasure in the chest, and some even divided the loot in small pieces and put it in their pockets.