by Short, Luke;
Back at his cave, Pick waited. He resolved to give Johnny another week before he rode over to the other side of the county and asked for news. If Johnny’s self-made laws had stuck, then Pick’s test was finished.
But while Pick was waiting, something happened. Days ago he had given up hope of ever finding the claim jumper again. Pick surmised that the man would take the ore down to Hugo and, when a less than mediocre report was handed him, he would forget the whole matter. Pick never expected to see the man again.
But one morning, several days back, at the very crack of dawn, when Pick pulled himself up to the rock rim and glanced down at the canyon bottom, he saw a campfire. Quickly Pick hid his rope, then made a wide circle up the canyon and took the trail to the bottom. By clean sunup, he was hidden in the brush a hundred yards away from the campfire.
He counted six men, none of whom he recognized, but he did recognize what they set about doing just as soon as the light permitted. They were erecting claim monuments, piling rock, flattening poles, writing names and dates on these poles.
Pick observed it all with quiet amazement, noticing that the leader carefully consulted a paper. When they were finished, they had his test pits blanketed with their claims. Moreover, they had the canyon bottom well blanketed, too.
As soon as they were finished, they broke camp, gathered their horses, and moved out of the canyon down the mountain. Pick, after giving them ample time to be out of sight, came out of his hiding-place and examined the monuments. His leathery old face was grave, puzzled, and his bewilderment increased as he read all the names and found none of them familiar. Finished, he packed his pipe and squatted against a rock, sucking the rank fragrance of the smoke into his lungs.
This could mean just one thing. Whoever the man was who took the ore samples had convinced these men that there was considerable gold here. He had sold them worthless claims.
“The fools,” Pick said aloud, contemptuously. “The poor fools.” Raised in the rough-and-ready school of the desert, Pick had no criticism for the man who sold the claims; it was for these poor misguided fools who had bitten on sucker bait that he felt contempt and scorn. Once, long ago, when he was starved and broke and sick, Pick himself had resorted to this very business of selling fools worthless claims. But in those days, Pick had taken the trouble to salt his ore with gold dust, so that the assay was good.
And remembering this, Pick had an idea. It made him smile, even laugh, so that his lean old body shook with silent mirth. Rising, he walked over to the test pits and looked down into them. He knew almost every rock and pebble down there. Outside of a tiny show of color which would not net a man a day’s working wages, the stuff was worthless.
Again Pick laughed, his eyes musing. “Danged if I won’t,” he murmured. “An old man like me deserves some fun. Besides, this settin’ is gettin’ on my nerves.”
He returned to his cave, packed a meager two days’ food in his rucksack, and then struck off up the mountains toward the south.
Two days later he returned, his long and easy stride just as tireless and steady as it had been the hour he left. He went immediately to the cave, after first looking down at the canyon floor to see if the prospectors had returned. They hadn’t.
Once in the cave, he slung off his flat rucksack and drew from it five soft doeskin bags. These were filled. Then he took up his shotgun derringer and his ten remaining shells, stuffed them all in his pockets and climbed up to the rock rim.
Twenty minutes later he stood beside the test pits again, that same smile still on his face.
Then he began his preparations. From the bottom of one of the test pits, he brought up a quarter hatful of the loose volcanic breccia that made up this dike. With the butt of his derringer, he granulated a quantity of it on a flat rock. Finished, he emptied the contents of the five doeskin sacks into this heap of rubble and mixed it thoroughly. The doeskin sacks contained tiny nuggets of pure gold, which he had taken from his secret claims high up in the Calicoes.
Next, he turned his attention to the shotgun shells. From each, he pulled out the wadding and dumped the shot in his pocket. And each one, he filled with this mixture of gold and volcanic rock, and the smile on his face was broad and amused. Once the wadding was back in the gold-loaded shells, Pick cleaned up around him, so that not a sign of his activity was left.
Then he walked to the first test pit, loaded the derringer, aimed it at the pit and fired. He knew that the force of the shot would imbed the gold in the bottom and sides of the pit, and scatter it so that it would look as if it had been distributed by nature. At each of the other five pits, he did the same thing. With four shells left, he cast about, looking for a likely place to spend them. The dike continued on past the last test pit for about a hundred feet, and Pick, his gun held slanting toward the ground, covered it conscientiously with the rest of his shells.
His work done, he surveyed the job, an image in his mind of what would happen now. “They’ll find color, have an assay, get a good report, and on the strength of it, they’ll move a lot of equipment in. They’ll tell their friends, and there’ll be that many more suckers.” And he laughed again, for Pick was a jealous old man. He had given a lifetime to gold seeking; he hated to see fools degrade a proud profession, and this was his revenge. The fact that it was costing him a thousand dollars did not matter.
Once that was done, Pick left that canyon for another one closer down to the foothills where his horse was staked out. That day and the following night, Pick rode straight for the north side of the county.
This time the first person he met was a woman driving a buckboard, a child on the seat beside her. Pick hailed her, and they gossiped, and casually Pick learned what had happened to Johnny. “You mean they claim he blew the bank?” Pick asked incredulously after the woman finished her recital.
“They did, and it was a cryin’ shame,” the woman said grimly. “It means that sooner or later all decent folks will move out of the county. Why, just this mornin’ my boy come in with news that some of our beef had been run off durin’ the night. That’s where I been, to tell Baily Blue about it.”
Pick said nothing, his face hard and pensive. He was not listening to her.
“He didn’t do nothin’ about it except give promises,” the woman continued.
“What?” Pick said, jerked out of his reverie.
“I say, he only promised me he’d tend to it.”
“Who?”
“Baily Blue.”
“Tend to what?”
“My cows that was stole.”
Pick looked at her blankly, almost irritably. “Cows stole?”
The woman regarded him with mild exasperation and shook the reins of the team. “Pop, you been livin’ alone too long,” the woman told him, gently but firmly. “In another year, you won’t be fit to run around loose. Go see folks. Get acquainted. Have company. Why, you know you—”
Pick gulped miserably, wheeled his horse, and headed off into the wayside brush, with the woman watching his departure in grim disapproval. “Cranky old devil,” she muttered at his back and whipped up the team.
Pick’s prank with the shotgun shells started something that he was to not fully understand for some time to come. The day after Pick left for the north end of the county, Big Westfall, Fitz’s man from Warms, returned to the canyon and his claim with his five men and the pack train of supplies and lumber and tools.
The first thing Westfall spotted when he entered the canyon was a small tent at its head. The rap, rap of a pick came to him, and he reined up and threw a leg over the saddle horn and waited for his companions. Westfall had come by his nickname rightly; he was a giant of a man with a broad, aggressive jaw and fists that were massive and work-worn. Even motionless he had an air of command, and when he spoke, his voice was soft, low-pitched, as if men were used to listening to him and heeding what he said.
“Company,” he said mildly, as one of his companions drew up beside him.
“Now how
did that happen?” the other asked.
“Bud shot off his mouth considerable in Cosmos. Maybe somebody heard him.”
“It don’t matter, does it?”
“Not a hoot. I’ll go talk to him.”
While the others unpacked the mules, Westfall rode on up the canyon until he was by the tent.
Tip Rogers saw him and waved and left his work to come over.
“How’d you stumble on this?” Westfall asked, indicating the workings. He saw already that the monuments were up on Tip’s claim. Tip grinned up. “Through your men. One was drunk, I believe.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I figured even a drunk can tell the truth. According to what I heard, you thought you had a good thing.”
“We have. What have you got?”
“A blamed good thing!” Tip said excitedly. “I haven’t put an awful lot of work on it, but it sure looks good.” He went on to say that while eating his lunch today, he had idly picked up his shovel and found flecks of loose gold on it. This of course was the result of Pick’s salting.
“I believe it,” Westfall said. “I’m glad you’ve run into it, too. There ought to be enough to pass around.”
They chatted a moment longer, and Westfall went back to his claims. Tip returned to work. He was sacking ore now, taking samples from a dozen different places along the dike. It was hard to work here, knowing that each hour he put in here in the canyon would postpone just that much longer telling Nora about his luck. For Tip, sober mining man that he was, felt deep within him that he had struck it at last, and that riches were in sight.
That night he fell into his blankets, exhausted, and early next morning he was on the trail, his five pack horses loaded with the sacks of ore for assaying. Next night, weary and footsore, he entered Cosmos, and the first place he stopped was at Hugo’s assay office.
Hugo was working in the rear, but at Tip’s knock, he came out and helped him unload the horses.
“So you’ve got the gold bug now?” Hugo observed mildly as he carefully marked each heavy sack at the table inside. He turned up the lamp wick, and Tip sat down.
“I’ve always had it,” Tip said, and the excitement in his voice made Hugo look up to regard him.
“You sound excited,” Hugo said.
“Man, I am. Open one of the sacks and take out a handful of that stuff.”
“Come off it,” Hugo scoffed. “What kind of a bonanza do you think you’ve discovered?”
“See for yourself. Open a sack.”
Hugo, tolerantly grinning, did. And he drew out a handful of volcanic breccia, that ore which he had been looking for these many days now. This was the ore—unmistakably identified by the presence of volcanic breccia—that Hugo and Johnny Hendry had hoped would lead them to Picket-Stake’s killer. And hoping to attract that killer, Miller had doctored up his assay report. But the plan hadn’t worked out. The bushwhacker had disappeared, and Hugo’s tricked-up assay started a false gold rush.
He stared at it for a long time, composing his face, and then he looked up at Tip. If there was any suspicion in his mind—and there was—it did not show in his face.
“It looks good, Tip,” he said mildly. “Where’d it come from?” Tip told him, but that meant nothing. “How long have you been working on this?” Hugo asked.
“Four days.”
“Find it yourself?”
Tip only grinned and shook his head. “That’s what’s funny,” he said, and he proceeded to tell Hugo about MacMahon’s overhearing the drunk in Bledsoe’s store. As he went on, Hugo breathed a quiet sigh of relief, for he had always liked Tip Rogers, and he did not want to believe that Tip was Pick’s killer and claim jumper. But this man at Tip’s diggings surely was the killer, the man Johnny Hendry would have given his soul to lay hands on. As Tip talked, Hugo began to wonder about this ore. When a sample of it had last been in his hands, it showed itself practically worthless, but now that it appeared again, it was obviously shot with gold. He frowned and scratched his head wearily.
Hugo heard Tip say, “But why am I wasting time telling you this, Hugo? I’ve got somebody else that’ll be less coldblooded than you. Good night, Hugo.”
“So long, Tip.” Hugo watched him leave, and for several minutes afterward, did not move. He felt his heart pounding steadily with the excitement in his blood. Right here he held the secret to Pick’s death.
But where was Johnny? Where had he been for five days? Hugo didn’t know, and behind the thought, there was a fear that he would not admit. Perhaps Johnny Hendry was dead. If not, why didn’t he come?
Chapter Nineteen: TROUBLE FOR LEACH WIGRAN
Always a light sleeper, Hank was roused by the sound of crunching gravel. For a moment, he raised himself in his blankets and listened, then recognized the sound as that of two approaching horses. He knew this would be Johnny Hendry and Turk Hebron back from Warms, and he rolled out of the blankets and had a fire going by the time they pulled into the camp among the malpais.
Both were drawn and gaunt, but Turk was smiling. He met Hank with a shout. Johnny’s greeting was more reserved, but Hank had become used to that these last few days. Johnny rarely smiled any more, not since that night he had last met Nora up above town, Hank remembered.
Hank helped them unsaddle and turn the horses into the tiny corral; then they all came back to the fire. Putting on the pot of coffee, Hank looked at Johnny, squatting over the fire warming his hands. His face was smeared with a quarter-inch stubble of black beard, and his cheekbones were wind-reddened and prominent. A week in the saddle had leaned him down until he was as fine-drawn and taut as a wire; his eyes were quick and feverish and, somehow, dangerous.
“Well, what happened, Hank?” Johnny asked curtly. “What did Leach Wigran do? Tell us about it.”
Turk was standing behind Johnny, his hat cuffed off his untidy red hair. There was an arrogant, daredevil look to Turk, as if he were enjoying every moment of this, which he was.
Hank regarded Johnny soberly. “I’ve finally got all the proof you want, Johnny.”
Johnny yanked his gaze up from the fire. “On Fitz?”
“He’s not only a rustler but a killer.”
Turk ceased rolling his smoke, his attention riveted on Hank, who was talking now. “I hung around the box canyon until a Runnin’ W rider come along. That took two days. This rider didn’t waste no time. He beat it back to the Runnin’ W that night. Next mornin’, him and two others and Leach rode up. They picked up the trail of the cattle, but I knew they wouldn’t get far because of that last rain. Sure enough, they come back before dark and I trailed ’em back to the house. Later, Mickey Hogan rode in with five of the boys. Him and Leach talked a long while that night. I know that because I sneaked up to the window and—”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“No. I couldn’t get clost enough, but I didn’t need to. I saw Leach was mighty worried. Next mornin’, Mickey rode over to Major Fitz’s. But first he hung around Cosmos a few hours gettin’ enough whisky to face the major, I reckon. Anyway, along toward afternoon, he lit out for the Bar 33, and I picked him up at the other side of town. It was dark when he got there.” He paused, watching Johnny. “I did hear what he said to Fitz. I got right up to the window in Fitz’s office.”
“Well, what did he say?” Johnny asked impatiently.
“He told Fitz that he’d found the big bunch of Bar 33 cattle. Him and Leach tracked them up the mountain and found that Cass Briggs and the Winkler boys had stole them. They fought with Cass and the Winklers and cleaned them out. Then him and Leach got to worryin’ about drivin’ all them cattle back to Fitz, and they decided it would be safer to drive ’em—along with Fitz’s first herd—over to Warms and sell ’em. That’s what they did, Mickey said, and he come over and laid the money on Fitz’s desk.”
“Well?”
“Fitz never said anything for a spell, and then he said, real quietlike, ‘Does Leach expect me to swallow that, Mickey
?’ And right then, Mickey made his mistake. He was a little drunk, I reckon. He said, ‘He don’t care much whether you believe it or not, Fitz. It’s the truth.’ I heard a chair scrape then and all of a sudden Mickey made a funny kind of noise in his throat and there was a shot. I pulled back in the bushes then, and Fitz come out. He went over and got Carmody, and Carmody brought Mickey’s body over to the horse and staked it on and rode off. I followed him. He camped in the Calicoes, come day. Next night he started out. At midnight he rode up to the Runnin’ W, stood Mickey against Leach’s door, knocked, and rode off back toward Bar 33.”
“And what did Leach do?”
“Ten minutes later, he rousted out all hands and put guards around the place. He never moved until the next afternoon, then he saddled up and rode into Cosmos.”
Johnny sat down and pulled out his tobacco sack, but he forgot to roll the cigarette. Hank watched him, looking occasionally at Turk, who was also waiting for Johnny to speak. Now that his suspicions were confirmed, Johnny was almost astonished. Believing Fitz a rustler and knowing it were two different things, and Johnny thought bitterly of what Nora had said to him that last night. For days now, he had ridden with a stubborn feeling of guilt, thinking, almost hoping, that perhaps he had been wrong. But now that he was proved right he did not feel any better. He didn’t feel anything except bitterness at Nora—that, and the grave responsibility of seeing Major Fitz punished.
“I’m hungry,” he said quietly at last and Hank quit looking at him. He knew they would talk of this later. Pan bread and bacon and coffee were set out, and the three of them ate ravenously. Finished, a smoke rolled, Johnny leaned back against his saddle.
“What’s the best plan?” he said abruptly. “We’re three. Fitz and his crew are thirty, Leach and his outfit about twenty. We can’t fight ’em all, can we? Why not play ’em against each other, like we have done?”
Hank said, “That’s my idea.”
“What about you, Turk?”
“Let ’em whittle each other down till they’re our size,” Turk said.