by E. R. Slade
“Mr. Calloway?”
“Call me Lee.”
“All right, Lee. I want to make an agreement with you.”
“What?”
“I think you have been after the gold. Well, I want to give it to you. I’m afraid I don’t really care about it anyway. So, I want you to have it. I’ll show you where it is. You take it. But there’s one condition.”
“Yes?” He felt cool towards her now, annoyed that she still thought he was a gold hunter.
“That you either take care of Riley and Pirate and the others, or at least let them know you have the gold, so they will chase you and not me. That’s blunt. But I’m afraid. It’s my only way out.”
He sat silent a long time. The wagon rattled ceaselessly along the rough track.
“I am going to tell you once more, and for the last time. I don’t want your gold. I want your trust. I started a thing, and I plan to finish it. Now I really have to finish it. Bringing Riley to San Pablo and letting the eyewitness who swore in court that I was the one who killed that man see Riley is my only chance to go free, unless I just hightail it for Mexico. I’ve done all the runnin’ I plan to do in my whole life already. From here on out it’s face down my troubles or cash in my chips. I ain’t plannin’ to cash in my chips for quite some time. That leaves facing down my troubles. So all I want you to do is stay put at the Littletons and trust me enough to back my hand when I need it. That’s all. I don’t care about your gold. I don’t want it.” He recalled with detached interest that he had come all the way out here to the west just to find gold and get rich. Now that he had a real chance at a whole pile of gold, he found out he didn’t want to touch it. It didn’t matter as much as other things did.
What those other things were he didn’t attempt to define to himself.
They were silent again for a long time. Carmen searched his impassive face earnestly. Finally she spoke.
“I’m very sorry I misjudged you. I think I’ll do whatever you say I should. And, Lee?”
She looked up at him steadily. “Lee,” she said again, “I think perhaps I like you a whole lot.”
Chapter Twelve
Riley examined the shed roof, then pulled himself up onto it. In another moment he was through the window and inside. After checking the second floor, he went downstairs and looked around. He found nothing of interest, and went out the front door into the street.
An examination of the ground did not reveal the footprints he was looking for. Puzzled, he checked under every window all around the building, and still found nothing. He went back inside and looked more carefully. Still he found nothing.
Frowning heavily, he went out and looked up and down the street. Then an idea occurred to him. He went back to the junk pile behind the carpenter’s shop to look again for footprints. He thought his quarry might have hidden in the carpenter’s shop until he’d gone out the front door, and then escaped out the rear. But still he discovered no sign of their tracks leaving the area.
That left one further remote possibility. He returned to the area of dusty ground just before the steps and once again examined the ground. This time he straightened up, thinking he might have something, and also thinking that, if he did, Calloway was no fool.
He followed the two sets of tracks he’d discovered down the street to the livery. It was not difficult to do, because there had been little activity this morning as yet. He walked up to the stable hand who was scattering bedding for the horses. The stable hand broke out in a sweat upon seeing Riley.
“Seen a man and a girl this mornin’? Girl had long brown hair.”
“No, I ain’t seen nobody like that,” the stable hand said, obviously eager to cooperate.
“Who have you seen this mornin’?”
“Just a couple of carpenters goin’ out to work on Walter Bingham’s roof. Rented a wagon with a team.”
“Bingham’s place, is that the first ranch to the west of here?”
“Sure. Takes about an hour to get there.”
“Saddle our horses,” he told the stable hand and went trotting up the street to the hotel. Calloway was one hell of a smart man, he was thinking. In one move he throws the hounds off the scent and gets a wagon out of town to carry the gold in.
~*~
Sheriff Hawkins was discovered less than an hour after being left in the jail cell. Doctor Morris, having heard about Calloway being locked up, came to see him and found Hawkins instead.
“What in tarnation,” he said, and then began looking for the keys. Not finding them, he found a heavy pry bar and a small sledgehammer slung in a corner. With these he was able, after many attempts, to spring the locking bar enough to open the cell door. He wasted little time getting Hawkins out of his bonds.
“Riley,” Hawkins said grimly, rubbing his numbed wrists. “You call him Calloway hereabouts. The Haversam girl held me up and let him out. Much obliged for comin’ by.”
“I came to see Calloway. You sure you’re wantin’ him, and not Riley?”
“I’m sure. Eyewitness testified in court. Now, if’n you’ll pardon me, I’ll be gettin’ along after them two.
“The Haversam girl wouldn’t do anything wrong. She’s been having a hard time, what with Riley and Pirate after her for her gold. They killed her father, you know. Tortured him before her eyes. He tellin’ her not to give in. He tried to escape while Riley took a break, and was shot dead. Quite a man, he was, even if he had some pretty strange ways. Believed in the fountain of youth and all that.”
“Well, I know one thing: she held me up so’s my prisoner could go free. That’s a thing I don’t take lightly a-tall. I’ll bring her back to San Pablo to stand trial.”
“You’ve got no authority here, sheriff. This isn’t your town.”
“The way I hear, you got no law in Golden Gap at all. That pretty much lets me do what I please, don’t it? Sorry, mister. Thanks again for lettin’ me out.”
“You’ll never get a conviction of the Haversam girl because a dozen witnesses will show up from here to testify to her character, including me.”
“I’ll take her to trial anyway.”
With that, Hawkins stomped out, heading for the livery to see if he could do two things: one, find out if they’d left town and, if so, which way they went; two, get a horse.
~*~
They were riding along the river bank, Lee guiding the team among the rocks that were strewn there. They had been silent for some while. The Rocking B Ranch buildings were not too far off now. Lee had been deep in thought. He pulled up next to a pile of rocks.
“What are you doing?”
“Help me get some of these into the wagon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let’s hope Riley doesn’t either, and figures we got the gold in the wagon instead of rocks.”
“You think he’ll follow?”
“Eventually. Let’s hope not for an hour or so.”
They stayed for fifteen minutes, loading rocks. By the time they had finished they had quite a pile in the wagon bed, and Lee had worked up a sweat from heaving in the heavier stones. Carmen, puffing, brushed her hands together to knock the dirt off, as they got moving again.
“We’ll go more slowly,” she said.
“We’ll make deeper tracks.”
“Why do you want to make him think we have the gold? Won’t that be even more dangerous?”
“Not for you. You wanted me to take the gold so they’d chase me instead of you for it. That was a pretty good idea.” He drove on in silence, apparently unaware of the many sidelong looks she gave him. They passed the Rocking B, continued on to the Lazy L Ranch. Lee pulled the lathered horses to at halt some distance away from the ranch buildings in a thicket.
“Come on,” he said, getting down. He led the way along a creek bottom that brought them to within thirty yards of the front door of the main house. Then, after he’d had a good look around, he took her by the hand and hurried across to the door.
�
��I’ll be,” said a woman in her middle thirties, when she opened to them. She looked at them in perplexity. Carmen had removed the hat, and her hair flowed around her shoulders. “Whatever are you doing in that get-up, Carmen? And who’s your friend?”
“Well, Mandy, it’s a long story ...”
“You take care, now,” Lee interrupted. “I’ll be back, but not for a while. I don’t know how long.”
And with that he trotted away to the creek bed again and disappeared from view.
~*~
Lee drove the wagon as hard as any mule skinner, jouncing on across the Lazy L Ranch and out into the drier, more barren part of the desert beyond the western end of the valley between the two hills. The sun was hot on his neck, and he sweated heavily, even with the overalls off. He wished like the devil that he had his own hat. It was a basic necessity out here. He took a mouthful of water from the canteen, held it, resisting the impulse to swallow, and then let it go back into the canteen. He felt better after that.
He looked over his shoulder and saw nothing. He was raising a great cloud of dust. If Riley was within a radius of a couple of miles or so, he would have no difficulty figuring out where the wagon was.
Once well out into the desert he swung south, away from the dwindling stream, and then back towards the east, heading for the hill south of Golden Gap. Now he slowed down, moving at a pace that raised less dust. He had overheard talk in town that the mines were located in and around South Hill, especially the south side of it. Gold was reputed to be lying about in nuggets in one or two of the mines; but it wasn’t the mines themselves that interested Lee. It was the fact that the hill was partially forested and would provide cover, perhaps even an abandoned encampment where the ore had been played out. Many of these old encampments were built of stone or logs and would provide a place for him to fight from.
By noon he had reached the southern side of the hill and was starting up a rough track that didn’t appear to have been used in some time. The track wound up the ever-steepening hillside between juniper, live oaks and pines. The pines grew taller and thicker as he went on under them, the horses snorting and lathering in the heat and under the strain of the load of rocks they were hauling. A small canyon dropped away on the right, and he saw a coyote trotting along the bank of the little stream which trickled at the bottom. Wild roses grew down there, and the vegetation was generally more lively and greener near the water. Lee was grateful for the shade of the trees in the midday heat, and now drank freely of his water, more being easily obtainable. But he still wished he had his Stetson. He felt half naked and unprepared without it. The old visored cap which belonged to the carpenter was no substitute.
The wind blew in the trees. The grade grew more level for a while, then angled very steeply up a final stretch to a small clearing. A pleasant, if sparse, meadow lay at the foot of a large outcropping of rock that towered the height of a three-story building above it. Lee took a glance around, having pulled the team to a stop in the middle of the little meadow. To the left, against the base of the rock, was an old miner’s cabin, made of logs and stone. The door was off its hinges and lying on the ground in front of the doorway, and the single, loophole-like window was at the present moment occupied by a curious squirrel, which sat the sill on its haunches and chattered at him.
Lee climbed down from the wagon and went into the cabin. An old stove sat canted in one corner, a wooden bench and table occupied the center of the floor and a bunk, on which the squirrel had nested, was along the left wall. An old slouch hat lay on the dirt floor. Lee pounced on it, shook out the leaves, brushed off the spiders and grit and clapped it on his head. It was not the equal of his own, but he no longer felt half naked.
Lee led the team to the door of the cabin and carried the rocks inside. Then he unhitched the animals and let them roll in the grass and graze. He would have to water them before long, but water wasn’t far off. To the left of the cabin was a cleft in the rock outcropping, and through it flowed spring water, which collected in a sparkling pool thirty feet below the level of the cabin in the woods and then ran off down the hillside, presumably to wind up eventually in the little canyon yonder.
First, though, Lee wanted to get prepared. He piled the rocks in the door frame to a height that would allow him to shoot over them, and then pushed the wagon over in front of that for extra cover. Then he climbed out and up the cleft in the rock immediately next to the cabin wall, walking barefoot in the stream, feeling the coolness of the water on his feet. He lay flat on the broad top of the outcropping in the shadow of a stunted live oak. The sun reflecting off the rest of the rock caused him to squint as he made a slow, thorough survey of the desert to the south and west. He looked down the hill after checking the desert and saw no one on the parts of the track visible from where he was. But that was useless information. He decided to figure on Riley showing up out in the desert first, gambling that he’d really been that far behind, and that he had not caught on to the U-shaped course and decided to go over the hill or tight around the base of it to cut the trail in the pines.
He led the animals down a rocky incline and around to the little pool below the cleft in the rock. They drank their fill, and then he returned them to the meadow. He decided to use some of the time he had to do some exploring of the area, keeping an eye on the desert at all times.
Above the rock outcropping, the hill, with trees thinning out in the barren soil, went up steeply for perhaps two hundred yards, then leveled off on the top. He did not climb all the way up there, but got near enough to the hilltop to be sure he was looking at it. Then he went angling east and down along the slope until he reached a point from which he could see the mines. Gashes in the hillside marked places where the veins of ore had come near the surface and had been dug out to be carried away in wagons down precipitous drops on treacherous roads. He could see a convoy of five wagons making their way down, going slowly, like a caterpillar. Between himself and the nearest of the mines was the upper fork of the canyon he’d driven along on the way up here. It cut into the hillside like another mine, only many times the size of the relatively puny ones that man had made. Out there over the canyon hung a lone eagle, turning its head this way and that, looking for prey with its sharp eyes.
Beyond the canyon was a barren section of ground, on which it would be dangerous to try to escape flying lead, since there was very little in the way of cover. Then came a few scattered trees, and below that a steep slope down to the mine shaft head frame. Men were down there loading wagons under the chute.
He looked left to the headwall of the upper fork of the canyon, saw that it rose beyond the rim of the canyon in a sheer cliff perhaps a hundred and fifty feet high. It might be possible to find a way along it, between it and the rim, but then maybe not. It appeared that the best bet would be to go up to the ridge and then down on the far side of the cliff.
He was not exactly sure how all this was going to work. He had several different plans worked out, in case different things happened. The first plan consisted of holing up in the cabin and killing off his attackers, then hauling Pirate’s and Riley’s bodies back in the wagon to show Hawkins, and afterwards to the eyewitness. The hope was that the witness would realize his mistake and change his testimony. If not, then Lee would be facing a hangman’s noose.
The second plan was to have an escape route from the cabin up over the rock, along the rim and down to the nearest mine, where he hoped he would be able to get some help, either in the form of a horse, or a ride in an ore wagon. This was a backup plan he would put into action if he could see he wasn’t going to make it through a fight. He would set the cabin on fire and go out through an opening he’d noticed in the rear of it against the rock which served as its back wall. The cleft where the spring water ran down from near the top of the rock was close by the cabin and quite deeply recessed. With the cabin on fire, he stood a good chance of escape up that cleft—unless of course one or two of Riley’s men occupied it.
A th
ird plan which he toyed with still, though he had pretty well rejected it, was to lay in wait above the cabin, and let them attack it, thinking he was there. The difficulty was, he could see no way of convincing them for long that he was indeed in the cabin. They would approach, perhaps fire and get no response. They would get bold, storm the place and find it empty. And no gold. He could then possibly roll down onto the cabin a huge boulder which he’d noticed sitting on the ledge above. And if they didn’t get out of its way in time, they’d be finished. But then there would be no recognizable bodies to bring back to show the eyewitness. And besides, he had an uncomfortable feeling it wasn’t a fair fight that way. Shoot it out with a man or men, that he could do, but to simply trick them into a death trap—that bothered him. Why this should be he didn’t know. It amounted to much the same thing, yet it wasn’t the same.
By this time he had reached the flat top of the rock above the cabin again, from which he could see west as well as south. He made another careful survey of the desert. There was still no sign of pursuit. What was taking them so long?
Chapter Thirteen
Riley reined in and held up his hand. The riders behind him stopped. Riley pointed at the ground.
“Them wagon ruts is deeper all of a sudden,” he said, his voice tense. The words sent murmurs of greatly renewed interest amongst the motley band of outlaws. They all came jostling up to see.
“Stopped here,” Riley went on, pointing. “You can see where the horses stood around, even left some dung behind.”
“Where do you reckon the weight came from?” Baldy Al asked excitedly. Tremors ran through him as if he had gotten the shakes.
“Where do you reckon?” Riley said. They looked at each other, grins slowly spreading across both their faces. Pirate peered at the ground around them, his single eye burning with greed, as if expecting to see a pile of gold bars sitting out in the open.