“What did they look like?” Nick exclaimed.
“One was tall and thin and youngish like, with a bad look, and the other was short and stout and a good deal older, and he had a red, round face.”
“The damned, ornery scrubs! They’re the ones we’re after,” Tom exclaimed, jumping up. “You didn’t kill ’em, stranger?” he added pleadingly.
“I guess I did. I sure reckon you’ll find ’em scattered promiscuous down the canyon. I drew my gun and told ’em to drop it, that it was mine. They began to shoot, and so did I, and I backed ’em out, and made ’em drop the sack, and started ’em on the run. They couldn’t shoot as well as I could, and I know I hit one of ’em in the head and the other one mighty near the heart. I poked my head out for a last blaze at ’em, to make sure of my work, and the short one, he let drive at me and took me in the lung, and that’s the one that did me up. But they’d broken one leg before.”
“Can’t you-all pull through if we tote you out of here?” asked Nick.
Bill Frank shook his head. His breath was beginning to fail and his voice sank to a whisper with each sentence.
“No; I’m done for. You can’t do nothin’ for me.” Then he turned to Tom. “Pardner, I did you a bad trick when I saw you before, though I had to do it. And when I told you good-bye I said I hoped that if I ever saw you again I could treat you whiter than I did that time. Well, I’ve got the chance now. That tomato can and that gunny sack are over there behind your pardner, and you and him can have ’em. The other tomato can and the whisky flask and the coffee pot and the pail and the Dutch oven are under some big rocks behind a boulder south from the spring, if them two thieves didn’t carry ’em away, and you and your pardner can have it all. The trail takes you to the spring.”
Tom was staring at him in wide-eyed amazement, trying to recall his face. Nick exclaimed hurriedly:
“Hold on, pard! Ain’t you-all got some folks somewhere who ought to have this? Tell us where they are and we’ll see that they get it.”
The man shook his head. His breath was labored, and he spoke with difficulty as he whispered: “There ain’t anybody who’d care whether I’m dead or alive, except to get that gold, and I’d rather you’d have it. You’re white, anyway, and you’ve treated me white, both of you, and I’ve always been sorry I had to play Thomson Tuttle here that mean trick, because he was a gentleman about it, and sand clean through.”
Tom was still staring at him. “Stranger,” he said, “you’ve got the advantage of me. I can’t remember that I’ve ever set eyes on you before.”
The death glaze was coming in the man’s eyes and his failing whisper struggled to get past his stiffening lips.
“I held you up, and held a gun on you-all one night, last spring, up near the White Sands.”
“Oh, that time!” Tom exclaimed. “That was all right. I reckoned you-all had good reason for it.”
Bill Frank nodded. “Yes,” he whispered, “we had to—in the wagon—” Some of his words were unintelligible, but a sudden flash of inspiration leaped through Nick’s mind.
“Did you have Will Whittaker’s body? Who killed him? Tom, the whisky, quick! We must keep him alive till he can tell!”
The man’s lips were moving and Nick put his ear close to them and thought he caught the word “not,” but he was not sure. Bill Frank’s head moved from side to side, but whether he meant to shake it, or whether it was the death agony, they could not tell. Tom put the flask to his lips, but he could not swallow, and in another moment the death rattle sounded in his throat.
They waited beside the dead man’s body until every sign of life was extinct. They closed his eyes, straightened his limbs, and folded his hands upon his breast. Then said Tom:
“Nick, he was too white a man to leave for the coyotes. We must do something with him.”
“You’re sure right, Tommy. But what can we do? This sand ain’t deep enough to keep ’em from diggin’ him up, even if we bury him.”
Tom looked about him and considered the situation a moment. “We’ll have to rock him up in here, Nick, in Dick Winters’ mine.”
At one side of the wide, blasted out mouth of the deep crack in the mountain from which Dick Winters had taken his gold, and level with the bottom of the crevice, there was a long, oval hollow, half as wide as a man’s body. The solid rock had cracked out of it after some giant-powder blast. They laid the body of Bill Frank in this shallow crypt and began to pile rocks around it. Suddenly Tom stopped, looked at Nick inquiringly, hesitated and cleared his throat.
“Say, Nick,” he blurted out, “it ain’t a square deal to put a fellow away like this. Somebody ought to say something over him.”
“No, you bet it ain’t a square deal,” said Nick. “We wouldn’t like it if it was one of us. But what can we do? There ain’t no preacher here.”
“I was thinkin’, Nick,” Tom hesitated and blushed a deep crimson, “I was sure thinkin’ that maybe—well, I thought—that you-all could say something. You know you always can say something. You-all better say it, Nick.” And without waiting for denial or protest Tom took off his hat and bent his head. Nick flashed a surprised look at his companion, waiting in reverent attitude, hesitated an instant, and then doffed his hat, bent his head and began. And the good Lord who heard his prayer did not need to ask his pedigree, for the Irish intonation with which he rolled the words off his tongue in honey-like waves told his ancestry:
“Good Lord, sure and Ye’ll rest this poor man’s soul, for he was white clean through. Sure, and he was no coward, and no scrub, neither. But the other two—Ye’d better let them fry in their own fat till they’re cracklin’s. You bet, that is what they deserve, and we can prove it. Amen.”
They built a close wall of rock around Bill Frank’s resting place high enough to reach the over-hanging rock, and so heavy and secure that no prowling coyote could reach the body, or even dislodge a single stone. After it was all finished they decided that there ought to be something about the grave to show whose bones rested within it. Nick Ellhorn tore some blank paper from the bottom of a partly filled sheet which he found in his pocket and wrote the inscription:
“Here lies the body of Bill Frank, who was white clean through. He was done up by two of the damnedest scrubs that ever died lying down. He killed them both before Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn got sight of the color of their hair, which is the only thing we can’t forgive him.
“P. S. and N. B.—This is the lost Dick Winters’ mine, and there is nothing in it, except Bill Frank’s body.”
They emptied the nuggets of gold from the tomato can and put them in their pockets. Then they folded the paper and put it in the can, with a small stone to hold it in place. Tom found an unused envelope in his pocket, and Nick printed on it, in big capitals, “Bill Frank,” and they pasted it, by means of the flap, on the front of the can. Then they made a place for the can midway of the stone wall, and fastened it in so that it would be held firmly in place by the surrounding stones.
There was an easy trail down one side of the canyon, which Dick Winters had made long before by removing the largest stones. A dribble of blood, dried on the sands, marked it all the way. Perhaps a mile down the gulch it came to a sudden stop in a great heap of debris, and a zigzag path started up the side of the canyon. The two men stopped, following the course of the shelving trail with their eyes, and as they looked there was a rattle of loose stone and sand, and some dark body rolled over the side of the gulch from the top of the path. Their hands flashed to their revolver butts, and stopped there, as they watched its downward course in wonder. They saw the arms and feet of a human form flung out aimlessly as the thing rolled from ledge to ledge, and they tried to catch a glimpse of the face as now and again the head hung over a rock and disclosed for a second the ghastly features. Down it came, with the cascade of loose pebbles before it, and lay still in the hot sand at their feet. It was Jim’s lifeless and mangled body. Nick glanced to the rim of the canyon wall and saw the head o
f a coyote peering over.
“There’s the beast that tumbled him down,” he whispered, and raised his revolver, but before he could shoot, the thing disappeared.
At this point the canyon walls began to grow less steep, and Dick Winters had taken advantage of the sloping, shelving side to make a zigzag trail to the summit, in some places blasting the solid rock, and in others building out the pathway with great stones. Nick and Tom followed the path to the mountain side above, where little pools of dried blood made a trail which showed the way a wounded man had taken. A little farther they found the body of Bill Haney, flat on its face, with arms spread out on either side. A coyote slunk away as they appeared, dragging its hinder parts uselessly.
“I reckon that’s the one Bill Frank thought he killed,” said Nick, as he put a bullet through its head.
They turned the body of Bill Haney over on its back and regarded it silently for some moments.
“Tommy,” said Nick, “we ought to put these poor devils where the coyotes can’t get ’em.”
Tom looked away with disfavor in his face. “They might have got Emerson into a hell of a scrape. Suppose anybody but us had found Wellesly the other day! Everybody would have believed that Emerson had ordered these two measly scamps to do what they did!”
“That’s so,” Nick replied, “but that’s all straight now, and they are past doin’ any more harm, and it ain’t a square deal to let a fellow be eat up by coyotes.”
Tom looked down into the dead, staring eyes and soberly replied: “I guess you’re right, Nick, and I sure reckon Emerson would say we ought to do it.”
They carried both bodies to the bottom of the canyon and up the bloody trail until they came to a steep-sided, narrow chasm which yawned into the wider gulch. There they put their burdens down, side by side, and decently straightened the limbs, folded the hands, and closed the eyes of the two dead men.
“Now,” said Nick, “we’ll pile rocks across the mouth of the gulch, and then they’ll be safe enough, for no coyote is going to jump down from the top of these walls.”
Tom made no answer. He was standing with his hands in his pockets looking at the two bloody, mangled corpses.
“Nick, don’t you-all think we’d better say something over these fellows, too? It ain’t the square deal to put ’em away without a word, even if they were the worst scrubs in creation. You-all better say something, Nick, like you did before.”
Tom took off his hat, without even a glance at his companion, and bent his head. Ellhorn also doffed his sombrero and bent forward in reverent attitude, ready to begin.
“Good Lord,” he said, and then he stopped and hesitated so long that Tuttle looked up to see what was the matter. “Go on, Nick,” he urged in a low tone.
“Good Lord, Ye’d better do as Ye think best about lettin’ ’em fry in their own fat—so long. They were scrubs, that’s straight, but they’re dead now, and can’t do any more harm. Good Lord, we hope—Ye’ll see Your way to have mercy on their souls. Amen.”
They began piling rocks across the mouth of the narrow chasm, and worked for some moments in silence. Nick glanced inquiringly at Tom several times, and finally he spoke:
“Say, Tommy, that was all right, I guess, wasn’t it?”
“Nick, I sure reckon Emerson would say it was.” And Ellhorn knew that his companion could give no stronger assent.
They built a wall high enough to keep the coyotes away from the two bodies, and then followed the trail upon the canyon wall and across the mountain side to the spring. There they found Bill Frank’s camping outfit and the few things that Jim and Haney had transferred from the canyon below. They found, also, the pan and the hand mortar, rusty and battered by the storms of many years, with which Dick Winters had slowly and with infinite toil beaten and washed out the gold he was never to enjoy. After an hour’s search they found the store of nuggets where Bill Frank had hidden them. Haney and Jim had never guessed how near they had come to the wealth for which they were searching.
The two men looked over the contents of pail, coffee pot, oven and cans and talked of the long, wearisome, lonely labor Dick Winters must have had, carrying the sacks of ore on his back, from his mine down the canyon, up the trail, and across the mountain side, to this little spring, where he had then to pound it up in his mortar and wash out the gold in his pan.
“It’s no wonder the desert did him up,” said Nick. “He had no strength left to fight it with. It’s likely he was luny before he started.”
“Nick, you don’t reckon there’s a cuss on this gold, do you? Just see how many people it has killed. Dick Winters and Bill Frank and Jim and Haney, besides all the prospectors that have died huntin’ for it. You-all don’t reckon anything will happen to us, or to Emerson, if we take it?”
The two big Texans, who had never quailed before man or gun, looked at each other, their faces full of sudden seriousness, and there was just a shadow of fear in both blue eyes and black. The silence and the vastness of an empty earth and sky can bring up undreamed of things from the bottom of men’s minds. Ellhorn’s more skeptical nature was the first to gird itself against the suggestion.
“No, Tommy, I don’t reckon anything of the sort. Bill Frank gave it to us, and Dick Winters gave it to him, or, anyway, wanted him to find it and have it, and I reckon Dick Winters worked hard enough to get it to have a better right to it than God himself. It’s sure ours, Tom, and I reckon there won’t be any cuss on it as long as we can shoot straighter than anybody who wants to hold us up for it.”
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
Emerson Mead heard the story which Ellhorn and Tuttle told and looked at the heap of yellow nuggets without enthusiasm. His face was gloomy and there was a sadness in his eyes that neither of his friends had ever seen there before. He demurred over their proposal that he should share with them, saying that he would rather they should have it all and that he had no use for so much money. When they insisted and Tom said, with a little catch in his voice, “Emerson, we can’t enjoy any of it if you-all don’t have your share,” he replied, “Well, all right, boys. I reckon no man ever had better friends than you are.”
Judge Harlin was still at the ranch, and while he and Nick and Tom were excitedly weighing the nuggets, Mead slipped out to the corral, saddled a horse and galloped across the foothills. Tuttle watched him riding away with concern in his big, round face.
“Judge,” he said, “what’s the matter with Emerson? Is he sick?”
“I guess not. He didn’t say anything about it.”
“Did you bring him any bad news?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have them fellows over in Plumas been hatchin’ out any more deviltry?”
“N-no, I think not. Oh, yes, I did hear that Colonel Whittaker and Daniels and Halliday were going over to the White Sands to hunt for Will Whittaker’s body. I told Emerson so. That’s the only thing I know of that would be likely to disturb him.”
A quick glance of intelligence flashed between Tuttle’s eyes and Ellhorn’s. Each was recalling Mead’s promise to surrender if Will Whittaker’s body could be produced. Tuttle stood silent, with his hands in his pockets, looking across the foothills to where Mead’s figure was disappearing against the horizon. Then without a word he walked to the corral, saddled a horse, and went off on the gallop in the same direction.
He came upon his friend at Alamo Springs, ten miles away. This was the best water hole on Mead’s ranch, and, indeed, the best in all that part of the Fernandez mountains, and was the one which the Fillmore Company particularly coveted. Its copious yield of water never diminished, and around the reservoir which Mead had constructed, half a mile below the spring, a goodly grove of young cottonwoods, which he had planted, made for the cattle a cool retreat from midday suns.
Tuttle found Mead standing beside the reservoir, flicking the water with his quirt, while the horse, with dropped bridle, waited meekly beside him. Tom dismounted and stood by Mead’s side
, making some remark about the cattle that were grazing within sight.
“Tommy,” Emerson said abruptly, “I’ve about decided that I’ll give up this fight, let the Fillmore folks have the damned place for what they will give, and pull my freight.”
Tom looked surprised at this unheralded proposition, but paid no further attention to it. Instead, he plunged at once into the subject that concerned him.
“Emerson, what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Mead replied, looking at the horizon.
“Emerson, you’re lying, and you know it.”
“Well, then, nothing that can be helped.”
“How do you know it can’t?”
Mead shrugged his shoulders and rested his hand upon his horse’s neck. It straightway cuddled its head against his body and began nosing his pockets. Mead brought out a lump of sugar and made the beast nod its age for the reward. Tom watched him helplessly, noting the hopeless, gloomy look on his face, and wondered what he ought to do or say. He wished Nick had come along. Nick never was at a loss for words. But his great love came to his rescue and he blurted out:
“Have you tried to do anything?”
“It’s no use. There’s nothing to be done. It’s something that can’t be helped, and I’d better just get out.”
“Can’t I—can’t Nick and me do anything?”
“No.”
Tom Tuttle was discouraged by this answer, for he knew that it meant that the trouble, whatever it was, must be beyond the help of rifles and revolvers. Still, he thought that it must have some connection with the Whittaker murder, and he guessed that Mead was in fear of something—discovery, apprehension, the result of a trial—that he meant to get rid of the whole thing by quietly leaving the country. Tom’s brain required several minutes in which to reach this conclusion, but only a second longer to decide that if this was what Emerson wanted to do, it was the right thing and should have his help.
With Hoops of Steel Page 16