The next day he went to tell Marguerite good-bye and sat talking with her a long time upon her veranda. Las Plumas had noticed the frequency of his calls at the Delarue house on his last trip to the town, and when it saw him there again two days in succession it felt sure that a love story was going on under the roses and honeysuckles. The smoke of the engine which carried him away had scarcely melted on the horizon before people were saying to one another that it would be a splendid match and what a fine thing it was for Marguerite Delarue that so rich a man as Wellesly had fallen in love with her.
Judge Harlin at once drove out to Emerson Mead’s ranch in order that he might learn, from Mead’s own lips, exactly what had happened to Wellesly and what sort of a compact Mead had made with him concerning the finding of Will Whittaker’s body. They sat under the trees discussing Wellesly’s character, after Mead had told the whole story down to their parting at Muletown.
“By the way,” said Harlin, “they are saying, over in town, that Wellesly is stuck on Frenchy Delarue’s daughter, and that they are to be married next fall. She is a stunning pretty girl, and as good as she is pretty, but it seems to me rather odd for Wellesly to come down here to get a wife. He’s the sort of man you would expect to look for money and position in a wife, rather than real worth.”
* * *
CHAPTER XVI
When Thomson Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn reached the little canyon in the Oro Fino mountains they saw that the two would-be kidnappers must have been there since Wellesly’s departure for three of the four horses were quietly grazing, with hobbled feet, beside the rivulet. They speculated upon what the absence of the fourth horse might mean while they staked their own beasts and started on the trail of the two men. Up the larger canyon a little way they saw buzzards flying low and heavily.
“That looks as if one of ’em was dead,” said Nick.
“It would be just like the scrubs,” Tom grumbled, “for both of ’em to go and die before we get a pop at ’em. I want to see the color of their hair just once. Confound their measly skins, they might have got Emerson into a worse scrape than this Whittaker business.”
They were both silent for some moments, watching the buzzards as they swooped low over some dark object on the floor of the canyon. As they came nearer they saw that the dead thing on which the birds were feeding was the missing horse.
“They killed it for meat,” said Nick, pointing to a clean cut which had severed one hind leg from the body.
“Yes, and not so very long ago, either,” Tom assented, “or the buzzards wouldn’t have left this much flesh on it, and it would be dried up more.”
“Say, Tom, they brought this beast up here to kill it, and they sure wouldn’t have brought it so far away if they had wanted the meat down there in that canyon. They must have changed camp.”
“Then there’s water higher up. They’re in here yet, Nick, and we’ll find ’em. We must keep our eyes and ears peeled, so they can’t get the first pop.”
They picked their way carefully up the canyon, watching the gorge that lengthened beyond them and the walls that towered above their heads, listening constantly for the faintest sounds of human voice or foot, speaking rarely and always in a whisper. The floor of the canyon was strewn with boulders large and small, and its sides rose above them in rugged, barren, precipitous cliffs. Nowhere did they see the slightest sign of vegetation to relieve the wilderness of sand and rock and barren walls. Not even a single grass blade thrust a brave green head between forbidding stones. Above them was a sky of pure, brilliant blue, and around them was the gray of the everlasting granite. Except for the sound of their own footsteps, the canyon was absolutely silent. There was no call of animals one to another, or twitter of birds, or whirr of feathered wings, or piping of insects. Now and then a slender, graceful lizard darted silently out of the sunshine to hide beneath a stone, and far behind them in the canyon the buzzards wheeled in low, awkward flights above the carcass of the dead horse. But aside from these no living creature was to be seen.
The sun shone squarely down upon the canyon and the baking heat between its narrow walls would have dazed the brains and shaken the knees of men less hardy and less accustomed to the fierce, pounding sunshine of the southwest. Tuttle stole several inquiring glances at Nick’s face. Then he stopped and cast a searching look all about them, carefully scanning the canyon before and behind them and its walls above their heads. He looked at Nick again and then threw another careful glance all about. He coughed a little, came close to Nick’s side, wiped the sweat from his face, and finally spoke, hesitatingly, in a half whisper:
“Say, Nick, what do you-all think about Will Whittaker? Do you reckon Emerson killed him?”
Ellhorn shut one eye at the jagged peak which seemed to bore into the blue above them, considered a moment, and replied: “Well, I reckon if he did Will needed killin’ almighty bad.”
“You bet he did,” was Tom’s emphatic response.
They trudged on to the head of the canyon and explored most of the smaller ones opening into it. But no trace of human presence, either recent or remote, did they find anywhere. When night came on they returned to their camp somewhat disappointed that they had seen no sign of the two men. Early the next morning they started out again, and searched carefully through the remaining canyons that were tributary to the large one, climbed again to its head, and clambered over the ridge at its source. There they looked down the other side of the mountain, over a barren wilderness of jagged cliffs and yawning chasms, with here and there a little clump of scrub pines or cedars clinging and crawling along the mountain side. They examined the summit of the peak and walked a little way down the eastern slope, looking into the gorges and searching the scrub-dotted slopes until the sinking sun drove them back to their camp. But they found neither water, save some strongly alkaline springs, nor any trace of human beings. As they discussed the day’s adventures over their supper, Tom said:
“There must have been some reason why they killed that horse just where they did.”
“Yes,” said Nick, “if they had moved their camp to some other canyon higher up, or on the other side of the mountain, they might just as well have driven the beast farther up before they killed it.”
“If they had wanted the meat down here,” added Tom, “they wouldn’t have driven it so far away. They must have wanted it right there.”
They looked at each other with a sudden flash of intelligence in their puzzled eyes and Nick thwacked his knee resoundingly. Then he spoke the thought that had burst into each mind:
“There must be a trail up the canyon wall!”
“YOU’VE NOTHING TO FEAR FROM ME. I’LL BE DEAD IN TEN MINUTES.”—p. 206
Early the next morning they were examining more closely than they had done before the walls of the canyon near the carcass. On the right hand side, the same side on which was the canyon where they had their camp, they found a narrow ledge beginning several feet above the boulders which strewed the floor of the canyon at the base of the wall. They found that with care they could walk along it, although in some places it was so narrow that there was scarcely room for Tuttle’s big bulk. Nick was in constant fear lest his friend might topple over, and finally insisted that Tom should go back and wait until he reached the top of the wall or the end of the ledge. Tuttle blankly refused to do anything of the sort.
They were then in the narrowest place they had found, and it was only by flattening their bodies against the rock and clinging with all the strength in their fingers to the little knobs and crevices which roughened the wall that they could keep their footing. Nick, standing flat against the precipice with a hand stretched out on each side, looked over his shoulder at Tom, who was a few feet in the rear. He also was facing the wall, clinging with both hands and shuffling his feet along sidewise, a few inches at each step. Beyond, the ledge rose in a gradual incline to the top of the cliff, perhaps six hundred feet farther on. Below, the wall dropped abruptly a hundred feet to the boulde
r covered floor of the canyon.
“Tommy,” said Nick, “you-all better go back. It ain’t safe for a man of your size.”
“Go back! Not much!”
“Well, I shan’t go any farther until you do!”
“Then you’ll have to hang on by your eyelids till I get past you!”
“Tom, don’t be a fool!”
“Don’t you, neither.”
“Tom, you’re the darnedest obstinate cuss I ever saw in my life. You’ll tip over backwards first thing you know.”
“Nick, if Emerson was here it would sure be his judgment that we-all can get to the top of this cliff. So you shut up and go on.”
“I tell you I won’t do it till you go back! Darn your skin, I wouldn’t be as pig-headed as you are for a hundred dollars a minute!”
“Well, I wouldn’t be as big a fool as you are for a thousand!”
“Tommy, if you-all don’t go back, I’ll be no friend of yours after this day!”
“Well, if you don’t go on and shut up that fool talk I don’t want to be friends any longer with any such hen-headed, white-livered—”
“Tom!”
“Well, then, shut up and go on, or I’ll call you worse names than that!”
“You obstinate son of a sea-cook, I tell you I won’t go on unless you go back!”
“Nick, it will take me just about half a minute to get near enough to push you off. And I’m goin’ to do it, too, if you don’t hold your jackass jaw and go on.”
There was silence for the space of full twenty seconds while Ellhorn watched Tuttle edging his way carefully along the narrow shelf. Then he spoke:
“Well, anyway, Tom, don’t you try to take a deep breath or that belly of yours will tip the mountain over and make it mash somebody on the other side!” Then he turned his head and shuffled along toward the top of the cliff.
The shelf widened again presently and they found the rest of it comparatively easy traveling. At one place there were some drops of dried blood on the ledge and in another a bloody stain on the wall at about the height of a man’s shoulders. This confirmed their belief that Haney and Jim had found and climbed this narrow ledge with the meat and camp supplies on their backs. When they reached the top Nick held out his hand and said:
“Say, old man, I reckon we-all didn’t mean anything we said back there.”
Tom took the proffered hand and held it a moment:
“No, I guess not. I sure reckon Emerson would say we didn’t. Nick, what made you get that fool notion in your head that I didn’t have sand to get through?”
“I didn’t think you didn’t have sand, Tommy. I thought—the trail was so narrow, I thought you’d tumble off.” A broad grin sent the curling ends of his mustache up toward his eyes and he went on: “Tom, you sure looked plumb ridiculous!”
Shaking hands again, they turned to their work. They stood on the steep, sloping side of the mountain, which was cracked and seamed with a network of chasms and gulches. A ridge ran slantingly down the mountain and the intricate, irregular network of narrow, steep-sided cracks and gulches which filled the slope finally gave, on the right hand, into the deep, gaping canyon which had been their thoroughfare, and on their left into another, apparently similar, some distance to the south. Farther up, toward the backbone of the ridge, there seemed to be a narrow stretch, unbroken by the gulches, which extended to the next canyon. They made their way thither and walked slowly along, stopping now and then to scan the mountain side or to sweep with their eyes the visible portions of the canyons below and behind them. They had covered more than half the distance between the two canyons when Tom, who had been studying one particular spot far down the mountain, exclaimed:
“Nick, there’s water down there! See where the top of that pine tree comes up above the rocks, away down there, nearly to the divide?”
“You’re sure right,” said Nick, looking carefully over the ground which Tom indicated. A moment later he went on: “That’s the head of the spring in the canyon where our camp is! You can follow the course of the gulch right along. I reckon that’s where we’ll find what we’re looking for!”
They turned to retrace their steps, their faces eager and alert and their feet quickening beneath them, when through the silence came the dull, far-away thud of a pistol shot. It was behind them and seemed to come from the canyon toward which they had been walking. With one glance at each other they drew their pistols and ran toward its head. They clambered over the boulders and, with reckless leaps and swings, let themselves down to its floor. Pausing only a moment to reconnoiter, they hurried down the gulch, casting quick glances all about them for the first sign of a living being. After a little they stopped and listened intently, each holding a cocked revolver, but not the faintest sound broke the midday stillness.
“Do you reckon it was in this canyon?” said Tom in a hoarse whisper.
“Got to be,” Nick replied, poking out his lower jaw. “We’ve been sniffing the trail long enough. We’ll give them a bait now.”
He raised his revolver to shoot into the air, but even before his finger touched the trigger, a pistol shot resounded from down the canyon and its echoes rolled and rumbled between the walls. An instant later they saw the smoke curling upward and dissolving in the still, clear air, perhaps half way toward the canyon’s mouth. But they could see no sign of man, nor of any moving thing in its vicinity. They hurried on, cautiously watching the walls and the canyon in front of them, and now and then turning for a quick backward glance, to guard against attack in the rear. As they neared the point from which the smoke had risen, they saw that one of the narrow, deep chasms in the mountain side opened there, with a wide, gaping mouth, into the canyon. A mound of debris was heaped in front. Stepping softly, they peered around the pile of rocks and saw, lying in the mouth of the chasm, a man with a revolver gripped in his right hand. Blood stained his clothing and ran out over the rocks and sand. He was a tall man with a short, bushy, iron-gray beard covering his face. Tuttle and Ellhorn covered him with their revolvers and walked to his side. He put up a feeble, protesting hand.
“It’s all right, strangers. You’ve nothing to fear from me. I’ll be dead in ten minutes.”
“Who killed you?”
“Was it the two ornery scrubs we’re after?”
“I’ve put the last shot in myself. If you’d been half an hour earlier I might have had a chance.”
“What’s the matter? What’s happened? Tom, give him a drink out of the flask.”
“No, give me water,” said the man. “I emptied my canteen this morning.”
Nick lifted his head and Tom held their canteen to his lips. He drank deeply, and as he lay down again he looked at Tom curiously.
“Two days ago I had a fight with two men, and I’ve been lying here ever since. They did me up, so that I knew I’d got to die if no help came. And I knew that was just about as likely as a snowstorm, but I couldn’t help bankin’ on the possibility. So I laid here two days and threw rocks at the coyote that came and sat on that heap of stones and waited for me to die. This morning I drank the last of the water and I said to myself that if nobody came by the time the sun was straight above that peak yonder I’d put a bullet into my heart. I had two left, and I used one on the coyote that had been a-settin’ on that rock watchin’ me the whole morning. I was bound he shouldn’t pick my bones, he’d been so sassy and so sure about it. You’ll find his carcass down the canyon a ways. That tired my arm and I waited and rested a spell before I tried it on myself. But I was weaker than I thought and I couldn’t hold the gun steady, and the bullet didn’t go where I meant it to. But I’m bleedin’ to death.”
“The two men—what became of them? I reckon they’re the ones we’re lookin’ for!” exclaimed Nick.
“Are you? Well, I guess you’ll find ’em scattered down the canyon, or else up there,” and he pointed to the mountain side above. “They couldn’t get very far.”
“Did you kill ’em?” asked Tom anxiou
sly. “You’ve spoiled a job we’ve come here for if you did.”
The man scanned Tom’s face again and a light of recognition broke into his eyes. “I reckon I did,” he replied complacently. “Anyway, I hope so.”
“What was the matter? Did they do you up?”
“Well, I’ll tell you about the whole business. My name’s Bill Frank, and I’ve been here in the mountains since—well, a long time, huntin’ for the lost Dick Winter’s mine. I found it, too. It was right in here behind me, but he’d worked it clean out. I reckon it was nothin’ but a pocket, but a mighty big, rich one, and then the vein had pinched. So then I went to work and hunted for the gold he’d taken out. I found it all, or all he told me about. You see, I knew Dick. I was with him when he died, and he told me what he’d got. There was a Dutch oven and a pail and a coffee pot, all full of lumps, and two tomato cans full of little ones, and a whisky flask full of dust, and a gunny sack full of ore that was just lousy with gold. Much good it will do me now, or them other fellows, either, damn their souls! Well, I’d hid the coffee pot and the pail and the Dutch oven and the whisky flask and one tomato can down by the spring, where I had my camp. I knew pretty well where the rest of it was, after I’d found that much, and I came up here two days ago, in the morning, and looked around till I found the gunny sack. I brought it here and threw it inside this place, which poor Dick Winters had blasted out, never dreamin’ of such a thing as that anybody would show up. Then I went away again to find the other tomato can, and when I came back two men were here packin’ out my sack of ore.”
With Hoops of Steel Page 15