by E. R. Slade
She had a lot of thinking to do. Mainly she had to decide what to do with the gold. Until now she had been carrying on her father’s tradition of complete secrecy as to the whereabouts of it. It had been the most important thing to him, for some reason that she had never understood. She had often wondered if what people said about him was true: that he was crazy. But he had died committed to keeping the gold’s whereabouts a secret. And she had been determined to go on that way, merely to be loyal to him, though in fact she’d never actually seen it. Her father had told her often enough of its location, but never seemed interested in having her actually go look at it. Now the question was, how much did the gold matter? She didn’t really want it for herself. She had more than enough without it. Besides, that much wealth scared her. Her father had said it was worth many, many thousands. But he had never said why he was keeping its whereabouts a secret, why he was not using it himself. Perhaps he had been keeping it against a rainy day, not trusting banks. Should she do the same?
It was all very confusing. She wished she knew whether to tell the Littletons about it, so as to ask their advice about what to do. Well, she would decide that when she got there. Now she was being followed.
She had thought she had been very careful in looking up and down the street before going to the livery, but when she had come out of it, there they had been, the Riley gang, watching her. So she knew they had to be following her. Why they were not yet catching up to her was puzzling. Could she have lost them? She was not able enough to even try to trick them intentionally. Had she done so inadvertently? They said Riley was part Apache and could track better than a hound. He couldn’t possibly have lost her trail.
Yet she still did not see any sign of pursuers. Why?
She had ridden some way through the brush country, checking her back trail countless times, when the answer finally struck her.
Riley thought she was going to the gold, of course!
And she was leading them right to the Littleton’s door. Had she any right to wish this on them? No, she certainly hadn’t. So where should she go, then?
At that moment she faintly heard, carried to her on the light breeze, the sound of the old ship’s bell which had been imported by the Backous Bank and hung in a frame of cottonwood. It was used to announce the arrival of the stage with the mail.
The stage. If she could circle the town and be waiting by the roadside, she could stop the stage and ride out on it to safety. It might work. The stage would be in Golden Gap for half an hour or so. Long enough to change horses and mail pouches, and for Sourdough Pinky, the driver, to stop by the Nugget Saloon for a snort of whiskey. The stage returned to Weed Town after several stops. She could ride at least to the next town, possibly further. There was just about time enough, she thought, to reach the stage road in time to catch it. Anyway, she couldn’t bring herself to let Riley think the gold was at the Littleton ranch.
She spurred her mount along harder, swinging north, then east around town, and prayed she had enough time.
As the trail swung north, then east, Pirate began to look sour.
“She ain’t leadin’ us to the gold, not wanderin’ all over like this. If she was, she’d just take us right to the trap. Ain’t smart enough to pull tricky stuff, like make it look as if she’s just scared and wanderin’ around out here lost. No, I’ll tell you what: she is just scared and wanderin’ around out here. I’ll bet she don’t even know she’s changed course twice.”
Riley gave Pirate a hard look. “You figurin’ to outguess me? I’m gettin’ almighty tired of all your carpin’ and pickin’ fights and makin’ trouble generally. We’re goin’ to have it out once and for all one day. You want it now? I’d rather just get on with followin’ the girl, and findin’ the gold. But if’n you want it now, we’ll just have it out now.”
They glared at each other.
“Come on, let’s git goin’,” Baldy whined fretfully.
“We’ll have it out, once and for all, mate,” Pirate said. “But after we get the gold. I’m with you till then. I reckon that’ll be the time to settle the question for good.”
So with this uneasy peace, they went on as they had before.
~*~
Lee Calloway, following just barely within earshot of the gang ahead, did not hear the exchange, except as a faint mumble of voices. He paid it little attention, since his mind was at work trying to decide what Carmen might be doing, where she was going and why.
All right, he said mentally to himself, you’ve just ridden out of town with a whole passel of killers on your tail unexpectedly. Only they never seem to catch up, or be trying to. What do you think about that?
You figure they think you’ll lead them to the gold, of course. So what do you do? You change your mind about going to the gold, if that was where you were headed, and instead you go somewhere else, hoping for safety. Where? Back to town?
He had heard the bell announcing the arrival of the stage not long ago. Now that fact registered. Suppose you decided to leave by catching the stage on the road on the east side of town? You would take a route such as Carmen was taking. Of course, there might be a cabin or something else out in this brush country somewhere that she was heading for, but Lee felt pretty sure about the stage. It would be the best chance for rescue. And she would have made her first turn to the north at about the time of the stage arrival bell.
So, if that was true, where did it leave him?
The route she was taking would be across a series of gullies. He remembered having seen them when riding down into town from the rise between the two hills. It was likely that would be a tough route and a slow one. He had an idea that if he went south, almost into town, and then rode east across the brushland, he’d arrive ahead of Carmen at the point on the stage road she was likely to be heading for—a copse of thick brush by the roadside, where she and her horse could hide until the stage went by.
The advantage in doing this would be that he could set up a diversion to cover for Carmen until the stage arrived, should there be a wait, and be on hand to help her, should the stage have gone by before either of them got there. The disadvantage was that Riley might decide not to hang back any longer, and instead capture Carmen. Lee weighed one against the other, and then swung south off the trail.
~*~
Carmen sent the horse flying down the bank of the first gully, then nudged it up the other side and tore through a thicket which ripped still more shreds from her already tattered leggings. The sun was hot and the air stifling. The saddle seemed as hard as the paddle her father once used to punish her with, years ago.
Down another gully bank, up the other side, down yet another, up the opposite side. Through a thicket, and then suddenly the horse fell forward awkwardly and she went tumbling from the saddle onto a patch of stubbly dry grass.
The world swam before her eyes for a few moments. Then she gingerly picked herself up, aware that the spur wound in her side was full of sharp new pain.
The horse could not get up. One foreleg was twisted at an unlikely angle. Carmen felt a prickling at the back of her neck. She could hear the approach of the Riley gang now. What would they do to her? Should she hide? Or keep going?
She tried to think. She remembered that, if they had been keeping back purposely, they would not want to let themselves be seen now either. Hoping she would lead them to the gold. If she had correctly read their intentions. If they would still think she would go to the gold on foot. If, if, if, if.
Panic came back again as she realized she stood no chance of getting to the stage now. The walk to town would take twenty-five minutes, at least. She’d never be able to run that far, and in any case not fast enough to make any difference. The stage would be gone by the time she got anywhere near the road.
The horsemen kept coming. She took her small bag from the saddle of the horse and ran off into the nearest thicket.
Chapter Nine
Riley reined in and held up his hand to stop the men with him.
“Horse broke a foreleg. She must be in the brush down in the gully. We’ll back off a way and wait.”
Baldy, who was reaching the end of his endurance, spoke up. “Why don’t we just take her now and then go somewhere and sleep? We ain’t slept for three days. We can let her get away later, follow her to the gold.”
For the first time since Baldy could remember, his half brother looked at him as if he had said something that made sense.
“Baldy, I reckon you got a point. She won’t try to go for the gold on foot, and it might be a while before Calloway comes to see what’s happened. Besides, if they’ve got something going, like I think they do, then maybe we can trade. Come on, let’s take a look around. Spread out and start looking in the bushes.”
It wasn’t long before Pirate flushed her into the open. He rode into a thicket in the gully bottom, and out she ran on the far side. He went after her, reached down with a hairy arm to yank her up belly-down in front of him.
“Now then,” he said, “are you goin’ to ride nice and peaceful behind me? Or are you goin’ to make trouble and ride belly-down where you are?”
She chose riding behind sitting up.
~*~
Lee had stopped the stage and managed to hold it there for fifteen minutes. Old Sourdough Pinky was tugging impatiently at his beard.
“I cain’t wait no longer,” he said finally. “I’m never goin’ to catch up to my schedule now.”
“Just a few more minutes. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
“Sorry. Giddap.”
The stage went off in a billowing cloud of dust. Lee was cursing himself for misjudging where Carmen had been headed. Where was she now? If he’d stayed on the trail, he’d know. She might be anywhere. She might even be dead.
He rode hell-for-leather off through the brush country on a line which he thought would meet the trail she would have made, if she had gone through the gullies. In twenty minutes he reined in, looking down an embankment at the horse Carmen had been riding. It was still alive, but obviously waiting to die, foreleg twisted at an unnatural angle.
Lee dismounted and went cautiously down into the gully to look around. He was not long in discovering Carmen’s footprints. He followed them into the thicket to a place where it was obvious she had hidden, and then from there to the point where the tracks stopped. He knelt beside them. After a moment, he stood up weakly, shifted the position of the hat on his head and went back to the abandoned, crippled horse. He patted the animal’s neck, murmured a few words and then backed off, taking his pistol out.
The sound echoed off the hills in an odd way, and then all was still. Lee holstered the gun, feeling very played out, mounted and began following the tracks of Carmen’s captors.
He lost them among the many hoofprints on Main Street in Golden Gap but was not long finding out that the animals had been put in the livery. Somewhere in town they had Carmen. If they had given up hope of following her to the gold when her horse broke a leg, had they decided to try again to torture it out of her? It was hard to tell. They, like himself, were very likely tired, not having had any sleep two nights in a row. Perhaps they had simply captured her so that they could sleep, intending to let her escape later so they could follow her to the gold. But it was not something to count on.
He left his own horse at the livery in the care of a stable hand, and then went wearily out into the street, wondering vaguely where to start looking for Carmen.
He hadn’t yet decided, when a man he knew all too well walked up to him and drew his gun. There was a star on the man’s shirt front.
“You’re under arrest,” the big man said grimly. “Hands up.”
The door of the same cell he’d locked Riley in clanged after him; the sheriff of San Pablo jangled the keys in his hand and put away his gun.
“Well, Riley,” he said, “I figured if you came out of the desert alive, it would have to be here. So I came in on the stage. Next stage, three days from now, you and me’ll go on back to San Pablo so’s you can hang like you were supposed to in the first place. You jest get yourself a nice long rest.”
And he went out.
Lee shouted after him, but not with any hope. He had been able to get nowhere trying to explain that the man the sheriff wanted was loose in town right now, that a girl’s life was in danger. Sheriff Hawkins had not even granted him any time to talk to the doctor or anyone else in the hope of getting backing for his story.
“There ain’t no law in this town now,” he’d said. “So I ain’t got to talk to nobody. I’ve got the man I come for. Thursday, you and me’ll be on the stage. I’d ‘a’ brought horses, only one was shot from under me and the other was run off by Indians on the way down here, and so far I cain’t find nobody who’ll sell me a couple.”
Lee went to the rickety cot and lay down on his back. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do now. He might as well catch up on his sleep.
He did notice that the other cell had been sprung open and the guns and canteens were gone.
~*~
The selectmen’s meeting, held in the back of the General Mercantile, was attended by all five members. Philip Clay was as inebriated as always. Joe Kingston and Art Duggan conferred in low voices before Kingston opened the meeting formally. Spike Littleton, whose name belied his size and strength, owner of the Lazy L Ranch, was an outdoor type, given to few words and decisive action. He was a steadfast supporter of law and order and would always believe that the town should have a sheriff. He and Philip Clay were balanced by Duggan and Kingston. The swing vote was Walter Bingham’s. Bingham owned the Rocking B ranch. He was a bluff kind of man, with a face like a bulldog’s. He talked hard talk sometimes, but he was not usually very willing to tangle with trouble.
“Meeting called to order,” Kingston said. “Everybody’s here, so we can go ahead. We’re here to decide whether or not to elect a new sheriff.”
“No we ain’t,” Littleton said in a rumbly voice. “We’re here to decide who’s going to be the next sheriff.”
Kingston gave him a look. “That too, if we first decide to have one. Now, the way I see it, we’re asking for more trouble than we got already, if we hire a new sheriff. It’ll be provokin’ to Riley and his gang.”
“I hear tell that San Pablo sheriff has Riley all locked up,” Bingham said. “I was just in the Nugget a few minutes ago, and they was talkin’ about it in there.”
This caused a stir.
“Riley’s locked up?” Duggan said. “Are you sure?”
“I just heard it, is all.”
“That Calloway feller had ’im locked up earlier in the day,” Kingston said, “but they had got the Haversam girl away from ’im, and he traded Riley for the girl.”
“Who is that Calloway feller?” Duggan asked. “He some relation to the Haversam girl? Or is he a hired gun of hers or something?”
“Don’t rightly know,” Kingston said. “But I’d rather let ’im fight Riley and his gang than ask for trouble by puttin’ up another sheriff against ’em.”
“But if Riley’s locked up,” Bingham said, “then we don’t have to worry about it. This sheriff from San Pablo will take him away. The rest of the gang will probably split up or follow to San Pablo, without havin’ somebody to lead them.”
“And leave the gold behind?” Kingston said incredulously. “I don’t reckon so. There’s still Pirate.”
“Pirate? The sailorman?” Bingham mused over this. “I don’t know but what we can handle him. What worries me is Indians—Apaches. Riley’s an Apache. As long as he’s around, he can bring ’em in, raise hell with the town and with the ranches hereabouts, if’n he don’t get his way. But Pirate’s just a plain outlaw. If it’s only him and the rest of those coyotes, a go
od sheriff with some deputies ought to be able to drive ’em off.”
“Pirate’s a dangerous man,” Kingston warned. “Very dangerous. You ever see that dirk he carries around with him? Sent two men to Boot Hill just today with it. Shot another with his pistol. Three more the others got, Riley and the rest. Vaqueros, all of them, tryin’ to avenge the way Riley’s gang made another vaquero dance and shot his leg. They busted up my saloon a good deal too. Won’t be able to open until late tomorrow, at the earliest. I figure I’m on the right side of him now. I’d hate to be on the wrong side of him.”
“We can’t just let these here outlaws go runnin’ our town for us,” Littleton said soberly. “The longer we go without standin’ up to ’em, the harder it’ll get.”
“I vote we take a look in the jail,” Bingham said. “And talk to this sheriff from San Pablo, see what he intends to do. If he really has got Riley locked up, and plans to take him away from here, then I’m all for votin’ in a new sheriff, provided we can find one.”
“All right,” Kingston said, “how many in favor of this?” They all were, being curious.
A few minutes later, they entered the sheriff’s office. A lantern was alight on the desk, and the big sheriff from San Pablo sat back in the chair, feet next to the lantern, hat tipped down over his eyes, apparently taking a nap.
“Sheriff?” Kingston said. The man started awake, pushing back his Stetson. He smiled blandly at them. “What kin I do for you gentlemen?”
“We are the Board of Selectmen in this town. My name is Joe Kingston, chairman.” He introduced the others.
“The name’s Hawkins,” the sheriff said, nodding. “What kin I do for you gentlemen?” he repeated.
“We understand that you have Riley locked up in there,” Bingham said. “That true?”
“Sure is.”
“And you plan to take him back to San Pablo with you?”