After awhile Lisha, he tunes up his old gitar and starts to play a might , and then we saw a feller coming up the slope. He looked a mighty rough customer and when he heerd our music he slowed up and looked us over. Then he come on up clost.
“Howdy!” he says. “Goin’ far?”
“To Sundance,” Burt says. “How fer is it?”
“Mebbe fifteen mile,” this gent says. “Luck!”
An’ he rides on. “Didn’t like the look o’ that hombre,” Burt says, “we better ride out o’ here, an’ not for Sundance!”
So we mounted up and took out south, holding east of Bald Mountain right along the Wyoming-South Dakota line. Sure enough, Son, that gent was no good. He headed hisself right for Sundance, warning folks at ranches as he rode. The Bloody Tremaynes was riding, he said.
We seen the first posse when we was heading to Lost Canyon, but there was no fight until they closed in on us from three directions at Stockade Beaver Crick. We fought her out there, kilt four of them and scratched up a few more, but we lost Burt. He had three bullets in him when he went down, kilt two men before he died. We buried Burt there on Stockade Beaver, and we made a marker for him, which you’ll see if you ever ride thataway.
We rode south and west with that there posse setting in the brush licking their wounds. We made the Hole-in-the-Wall and rode through and no posse would foller us. We’d no money, only the horses we rode. But we run into a short-handed cow outfit driving to the Buffalo Fork. They didn’t know who we was and didn’t give two boots in a rain barrel. We done our share like always, and we stuck to our own selves.
The hands, they was friendly cusses, and the boss he only asked for a man a day’s work. We drove to the Buffalo Fork and then the boss, he come over to us. “I’ll be payin’ you off in the mornin’. You boys better buy what ca’tridges we got,” he says, quiet-like, “you won’t find no place clost by to git ‘em.”
“That’s right friendly o’ you, Boss,” Lisha says, “we take it kindly.”
He stands there a mite, and then he says, “Never did b’lieve all I heerd, anyways,” he said, and then he smiled. “We’ll sure miss that music you boys make. Would you strike us up some singin’ afore you leave?”
So we done it. Lisha, he sung “Greensleeves,” and “Brennan on the Moor,” an’ “On Top of 0l’ Smoky” and some of the other old songs from the hills back yonder, songs our folks fetched from Scotland and Ireland. We sang for an evening, and then loaded up with grub and bullets, and took off.
Southwest across the Blackrock and camped at Lily Lake, and then on to the Gross Venture and into the Jackson Hole country.
Son, your Pa’s hands is mighty cold now. I guess this here letter’s got to end up. Johnny, he wanted to see Ellie Winters, and Lisha, he wanted to eat fresh melons from the patch, and I wanted to see your Ma again. I never knowed she loved me. I never even guessed she cared or thought of me. I just figured I’d like to see her some.
One night we was setting by the fire and Lisha he looked over at me and he says, “Boys, the melons’ll be ripe in the bottom land now, an’ the horses will be headin’ up from the flats for the high meadows.” So then we knowed we was heading home.
We rode down the Snake to the Grey and down the Grey to the Bear, and we followed her south to the border, staying clear of ranches and towns. Of a night we built our fires small and covered them well, and then at last we come riding down to the hills near Durango.
Lisha, he chuckles and says to me, “You all sure been a-talkin’ a lot in your sleep, boy. If’n you ever said those things to a girl awake she’d sure be bakin’ your corn pone from here on out.”
Me, I git all redded up. “Don’t give me that,” I say, “I never talked none. Anyway, it wouldn’t matter. What woman would care for me?”
Both Lisha and Johnny looked up sharp. “You damn fool!” they says, “they’d never git a better man, nowheres. An’ that Marge, she’s been eatin’ her heart out for years over you!”
Me, I just stood there … I never figured nothing like that. I sure thought they was wrong, but both them boys, they knowed a sight more about women than ever I would. Lisha, he rides off to town, and he ain’t gone an hour afore he comes back and then Ellie, she and Marge comes a-running, and with them is Betts Warner, Lisha’s girl.
Marge, she just stopped, took one look, and then run to me and went to crying in my arms. We made her a triple weddin’ just two days later, but folks heerd about it, and one morning Lisha come to the door for his horse and Dick Watson, his brother and four-five friends, they shot him down. Shot him down with him only getting one shot off.
Betts, she come a-running to warn us, thinking of us even when her heart was gone within her, her man laying dead back there full of Watson lead.
“Saddle up,” I says to Johnny, “I’ll be coming back soon.”
Me, I buckled on my guns. “I’m goin’ with you,” Johnny says, and I told him no. He’d have to git us packed and ready. Marge, she just looked at me strange and soft and proud. She says, “You go along, Boone, I’ll saddle up for you, and I’ll be awaiting here when you get back.”
Never a mite of complaining, never a word agin it. She was a man’s woman, that one, and she knowed my way was to ride for the man who fetched this trouble down upon us. It was bright noonday when I fetched up to town. I swung down from the saddle and I asked old Jake.
“You go along,” I said, “and you tell that Dick Watson I’m here to put him down.” Standin’ there, I wondered if it was I’d never have me a home, or see the light in my baby’s eyes, or see the sunlight on the green corn growing, or smell the hay from my own meadows. Them things was all I ever wanted, all I ever fixed to have, and now it seemed like all my life I toted a gun, shooting and being shot at. All I ever wanted in this here world was a bit of land and peace, the way man was meant to live. Not with no gun in his hand a-killing folks.
I seen Dick Watson step from a door down the way, and I seen him start, and I pulled down my hat and stepped out, stepped out and started walking to kill a man. Then Watson stopped and I looked across the forty paces at him and I made my voice strong in the street.
“Dick Watson, you brung hell to my family. You was sore because that black mare beat your horse! You lied about us stealing! You made us into outlaws and caused my brothers to be kilt and some other men too. It’ll be on your conscience whether you live or die.”
He stood there staring at me like he’d looked right in the face of death, and then he slapped leather. His gun came up and I shot him, low down in the belly where they die slow and hard. God forgive me, but I done it with hate in my heart. And then … I should have knowed he’d framed it, a half dozen of his friends stepped out and opened up on me.
Son, what come over me then I don’t know I guess I went sort of crazy. When I seen them all around me, I just tore loose and went to shooting. I went up on the porch after them, I followed one up the stairs and into his room. I chased another and shot him running, and then I loaded up and turned my back on both the dead and the living and I walked down that street to my horse.
I was halfway home before I knowed I’d a bullet in me. When I was patched up some we rode on and Betts went back to her folks, a widow almost afore she was a wife. We fetched up, final, in the Blue Mountains of Utah, and there we built us a double cabin and we ketched wild horses and hunted desert honey, just the two boys of us left from the five we’d been. We lived there and for months we was happy. Your Ma was the finest ever, Son. I never knowed what it could be like to live with no woman, nor to have her there, always know ing how I felt inside when nobody had ever knowed before. We walked together and talked together and day by day the running and shooting seemed farther and farther away. Johnny was happy, too. Them days his mouth organ laughed and cried and sang sweet songs to the low moon and the high sun, and he played the corn out of the ground and the good sweet melons. We hunted some and we lived quiet-like and happy. How long?
Three month
s, five months … and then Marge comes to me and says Ellie’s got to go where she can have a doc. She’s to have a baby and something, she’s sure, ain’t right about it. We knowed what it meant, but life must go on, Son, and you were to be born and I aimed to give you what start I could. The same for Johnny.
So we gathered our horses and we rode out to Salt Lake with the girls. We sold our horses for cash money to some Mormons, and then we drifted north. The girls had to stay with the Doc awhile, so we got us a riding job each. One day a gent comes into a bar where we was with a star on him and he sees me setting by the window. Marge’s time is coming nigh and we’re all awaiting like.
This man with the star he comes over and drops into a chair near Johnny and me. “Mighty hot day!” he says. “Too hot to hunt outlaws, especially,” he says, “when they size up like good, God-fearin’ folks.
“Like t’day,” he says, “I got me a paper says them Tremaynes is hereabouts. I’m to hunt ‘em up an’ arrest ‘em, what do you boys think about that?”
“We reckon,” Johnny says, very quiet, “them Tremaynes never bothered nobody if they was let alone.”
He nods his head. “I heard that, too,” he says. “Leastways, if they’ve been in town they sure been mighty quiet an’ well-behaved folks. Worst of it is”-he got up, wiping the sweat-band of his hat “I took an oath to do my duty. Now, the way I figure that doesn’t
mean I have to go r’arin’ out in the heat of the day. But come sundown”-he spoke slow and careful-“I’m gonna hunt them Tremaynes up “
That sheriff, Son, he looked up at Johnny and then over at me. “I got two sons,” he said quietly, “and if the Tremaynes left family in this town, they’d be protected as long as me and my sons lived.”
We didn’t take long about saying goodbye, although we never knowed it was our last. We never guessed we was riding out of town and right to our death. It was fifty miles east that we passed a gent on the trail. We never knowed him but he turned an’ looked after us. And that done, he high tailed it to the nearest town and before day a posse was in the saddle. At noon, from a high ridge, we drawed up and looked back. We seen four separate dust clouds.
Johnny, he looked at me and grinned. “I reckon we ain’t in no hurry no more,” he said, “they got us agin the mountains.” He looked up at them twelve, and thirteen thousand foot peaks. “I wonder if any man ever went through up there?”
“We can give her a try,” I said quiet. “Not much else we can do.”
“Horses are shot, Boone,” he replies, “I ain’t goin’ to kill no good horse for those lousy coyotes back yonder”
So we got down and walked, our saddlebags loose and rifles in our hands. Then we heard them on the trail behind and we drawed off and slipped our saddles from the horses and cached them in the brush.
Cow Hollow, Son, and that’s where we made our stand. We had a plenty of ammunition, and we weren’t wasteful, making shots count. We hunkered down among the rocks and trees and stood them off. Morning left us and the noon, and the high hot sun bloomed in the sky, but it was late fall, and as the afternoon drew on, a cold wind began to blow. They come then, they come like Injuns through the woods after us, and we opened up, and then suddenly Johnny was on his feet, he’s got that old Winchester at his hip and he shoots and then he jumps right into them clubbing with his rifle.
He went down, and I went over the rocks, both guns going, and that bunch broke and ran. I fetched Johnny back, and he lay there looking up at me. “Good old Boone!” he said. “Get the girls and get away. Go to Mexico, go somewheres, but get away!”
He died like that, and I sat right there and cried. Then I covered him over gentle and I slipped out of Cow Hollow and started up the trail toward the high peaks. It was cold, mighty cold. The sun came up and touched those white peaks and ridges ahead of me, then the clouds covered her over and it began to snow. I walked on, and the snow stopped but the wind blew colder and colder. We was getting high up, I passed the timberline here on Tokewanna and crawled into this here place.
Son, I can’t see to write no more, and there ain’t no more to say. I guess I didn’t say it well, but there she is. You can read her and make up your own mind. This here I’ve addressed to your mother, care of that sheriff down there. I even got a stamp to put on so’s it will be U.S. mail and no one’ll dare open her up. Be a good boy, Son, love your Ma and do like she tells you. And carry the name of Tremayne with pride. It was honest blood, no matter what you hear from anyone.
He was stiff from the cold, but he rolled over carefully and folded the letter and tucked it into an envelope. On it he placed his stamp, and then scrawled the name of his wife, in care of the sheriff. From his throat he took a black handkerchief and fastened it to a stick so its flapping would draw attention. Near it, held down by a rock, he left the letter. Then he crawled out and using his rifle as a crutch, got to his feet. He still had ammunition. He had no food. He discarded the almost empty canteen. For a long time he looked down the cold flank of the mountain into the dark fringe of trees.
Far away among those trees flickered the ghostlike fingers of fire, where men warmed themselves and talked, or slept. Something blurred his eyes. His head throbbed painfully. His side gnawed with pain and his leg was stiff. For how long he stood there he did not know, swaying gently, not quite delirious and yet not quite ratio nal. Then he turned slowly and looked up, two thousand feet, to the cold and icy peak, gleaming, silver and magnificent in solemn grandeur. He stared for a long time, and then he began to climb.
It was very slow, it was very hard. He pulled his old hat down, put the scarf lower around his ears. To the left there was a ridge, and beyond the ridge there would be a valley. He climbed and then he slipped, lacerating his hands on the icy rocks. He got up, pushing himself on. “Marge,” he whispered, “Son…”
He continued to move. Crawling … falling … standing … he felt the snow, felt his feet sink. He seemed to have enormously large feet, enormously heavy. “Never aimed to kill nobody,” he said. He climbed on … wind stirred the icy bits of snow over the harsh flank of the mountain. He bowed his head, and when he turned his face from the wind he looked down and saw the fires below like tiny stars. How far he had come! How very far! He turned, and looked up. There was the ridge, not far, not too far … and what was it he had thought just a moment ago? Beyond the ridge, there is always a valley.
Trap of Gold
Wetherton had been three months out of Horse head before he found his first color. At first it was a few scattered grains taken from the base of an alluvial fan where millions of tons of sand and silt had washed down from a chain of rugged peaks; yet the gold was ragged under the magnifying glass.
Gold that has carried any distance becomes worn and polished by the abrasive action of the accompanying rocks and sand, so this could not have been carried far. With caution born of harsh experience he seated himself and lighted his pipe, yet excitement was strong within him.
A contemplative man by nature, experience had taught him how a man may be deluded by hope, yet all his instincts told him the source of the gold was somewhere on the mountain above. It could have come down the wash that skirted the base of the mountain, but the ragged condition of the gold made that improbable.
The base of the fan was a half-mile across and hundreds of feet thick, built of silt and sand washed down by centuries of erosion among the higher peaks. The point of the wide V of the fan lay between two towering upthrusts of granite, but from where Wetherton sat he could see that the actual source of the fan lay much higher.
Wetherton made camp near a tiny spring west of the fan, then picketed his burros and began his climb. When he was well over two thousand feet higher he stopped, resting again, and while resting he dry-panned some of the silt.
Surprisingly, there were more than a few grains of gold even in that first pan, so he continued his climb, and passed at last between the towering portals of the granite columns. Above this natural gate were three smaller a
lluvial fans that joined at the gate to pour into the greater fan below. Dry-panning two of these brought no results, but the third, even by the relatively poor method of dry-panning, showed a dozen colors, all of good size. The head of this fan lay in a gigantic crack in a granitic upthrust that resembled a fantastic ruin.
Pausing to catch his breath, his gaze wandered along the base of this upthrust, and right before him the crumbling granite was slashed with a vein of quartz that was literally laced with gold! Struggling nearer through the loose sand, his heart pounding more from excitement than from altitude and exertion, he came to an abrupt stop.
The band of quartz was six feet wide and that six feet was cobwebbed with gold. It was unbelievable, but here it was. Yet even in this moment of success, something about the beetling cliff stopped him from going forward. His innate caution took hold and he drew back to examine it at greater length. Wary of what he saw, he circled the batholith and then climbed to the ridge behind it from which he could look down upon the roof.
What he saw from there left him dry-mouthed and jittery. The granitic upthrust was obviously a part of a much older range, one that had weathered and worn, suffered from shock and twisting until finally this tower of granite had been violently upthrust, leaving it standing, a shaky ruin among younger and sturdier peaks.
In the process the rock had been shattered and riven by mighty forces until it had become a miner’s horror. Wetherton stared, fascinated by the prospect. With enormous wealth here for the taking, every ounce must be taken at the risk of life. One stick of powder might bring the whole crumbling mass down in a heap, and it loomed all of three hundred feet above its base in the fan.
The roof of the batholith was riven with gigantic cracks, literally seamed with breaks like the wall of an ancient building that has remained standing after heavy bombing. Walking back to the base of the tower, Wetherton found he could actually break loose chunks of the quartz with his fingers. The vein itself lay on the downhill side and at the very base. The outer wall of the upthrust was sharply tilted so that a man working at the vein would be cutting his way into the very foundations of the tower, and any single blow of the pick might bring the whole mass down upon him.
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