He set about exploring the shed’s interior by the sense of touch, and was puzzled to find it empty. It ran the whole distance of the particularly long building, and its far end was closed by a large pair of pine board doors, held shut by a wooden bar. He raised the bar noiselessly, shoved one door open slightly and stepped through it.
He was back in the starlight now as he closed the door from the outside, and he looked around, to find himself in a horselot in which a half dozen animals stood.
And this end of the store had an entrance, just as the other end had—except that this end of the store was completely outside the hidden valley, alongside an open space beside the horselot.
Puzzled, Webster saw that the ground under his feet was not grassy, but had been churned up by hooves, indicating that it was a much-used space.
Looking farther around him he saw a few other buildings, and one long shed. He crossed the open space to the shed and found that it covered a small sawmill. There was a large pine log on the carriage beside the saw, and a dull glow was coming from the fire door of the small donkey engine which drove the saw. A pile of logs rested on the skid way beside the carriage, and the odor of fresh pine sawdust floated up from the sawdust pile a few feet down the slope. A stack of new yellow railroad ties told the story of the enterprise here. This was a busy tie camp, but now there wasn’t a light about the place, nor was there one showing from this end of the long store building from which came the music.
It was all dark, and all very puzzling to Jim Webster. He stood and surveyed this queer place, trying to picture in his mind the connection between the tie camp and the hidden valley. No legitimate tie cutter could be unaware of the valley, and to his mind, that store had been built as it had in the crotch of the rim-rock for the deliberate purpose of blocking entrance to the valley.
There were cows in the valley, but there was not room enough at the other entrance for men to have driven them in. Still more important no herd of cows ever came into this valley over that tiny deer trail that he had followed.
Then he got the picture. He had come into this hidden place by the back door, so to speak. This tie camp was the real entrance; it was the only way men could have got a herd of cows in there, or a wagon filled with the lumber to construct the houses.
They could have got in here through the doors of that lean-to through which he came.
It was perfect; it was clever! You drive a herd of cattle or a wagon load of stolen merchandise up the logging road, drive right into a lean-to shed alongside an old store building and—presto—you kept going, and the mountains had swallowed you up. You had disappeared into an almost impregnable fortress.
Why, a couple of men could have held that back door against an army, almost. And a half dozen men could hold this entrance against as many as wanted to try to breach it.
Webster had to admire the mind that had conceived this whole project by having made such clever use of the natural phenomenon of an old extinct volcanic crater.
And he knew of but one mind in this country which he could credit with what it took to conceive such a large and complicated project of this nature.
He went back to the entrance of the lean-to shed beside the building and blocked open one of the doors with a rock. It would be necessary for him to go back through the grove of woods in the valley and get his horse and come out this way, for he had to follow this logging road long enough to know where it led to, so that he could find it again. And he didn’t want to have to stop to open doors if he had to get out in a hurry.
He came out of the valley end of the shed and had made his way as far as the house in the trees where the poker game had been going on when he bumped squarely into one of two men who evidently were leaving the game and heading for the store.
He had collided with the man before he saw him, and the collision brought an ejaculation from the other. “Who’s that?” the man barked suspiciously as he backed away.
“Me,” Webster answered vaguely. “That you, Chock?” He hoped to drown the man’s suspicions.
But a match suddenly flared in the hands of the second man, and its feeble light came upon Webster’s face.
“That wagon driver,” the bandit exclaimed. “Get him.”
Webster struck as the dying match fell out of the man’s hand, making the blackness more deep than it had been. He lashed out toward the first man, using his pistol for a club, hearing the sound of it crack against the bone of his head. He heard the sound of the man’s tangled footsteps as he reeled backward.
Webster spun to shoot at the second, but changed his mind in a momentary thought of caution and, instead, darted forward toward him.
He overran the man, crowding the renegade just as he fired. The orange flash of muzzle flame spurted from the gun in the man’s hand just beside him, and burning powder scorched his face. But the man went down on his back.
And Webster broke into a run while the downed man emptied his gun in a swift fusillade of warning shots.
Webster made the place where his horse was tied, and was mounted and moving as he heard the answering cries of the others joining his attacker. He rode through the trees, encircling the accumulation of outlaws, and came right up to the rear porch of the store. He halted here in the trees watching the light pouring out through the open door until he was satisfied that everybody in the store had gone out into the grove to see what the trouble was.
Then Webster crossed the cleared area around the store, merged into the darkness under the lean-to and rode out of the valley.
At the outer end of the shed, where it opened into the lot where the skid mules and horses were kept, he stopped a moment to think. He did not know this road downward, and his pursuers probably knew it like the palms of their hands. And it was time that he needed, too.
He closed the door of the lean-to, then moved his horse out into the lot and started the skid mules milling. As he got one cornered in front of the door he shot the animal through the head.
The skid mule fell against the door and died there. Webster hazed the mules around again until another one was jammed up against the dead one, and a bullet piled that mule on the first one.
Now there were two thousand pounds or more of dead mules piled against the outside of the only door through which the renegade horsemen could get out of the valley. There was only one way they could remove the mules and open the door. That was for men to come through the store afoot, catch up another of the skid mules, and use the mule and a lariat to drag the dead animals out from in front of the door.
That would take time, time that Webster needed desperately.
Satisfied, he turned his horse down the logging road, to find out where it came from. This road he knew was the artery along which stolen cattle and merchandise found their way to a place where they could be kept until disposed of.
* * * *
At the time Webster was exploring the hidden valley, there was a bridal shower going on in the home of a Wade Miller, whose daughter was to be married shortly. Among the guests were Emory Dustin and Sonia Swanson.
After most of the festivities were over, and the guests were having cake and hot chocolate, Dustin who had just returned from a business trip up into the Territory was retailing the latest news.
“This one is really something for the books,” he said. “I reckon Woodbine has been visited—and made a fool out of—by one of the cleverest crooks that ever honored our town with his presence. And he’s had some pretty stiff competition, so he must really be good.”
“What is it?” they demanded. “What’s the news? A new Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the poor?”
“Nothing like that,” Dustin said. “He steals for himself alone, and he seems to know what he’s doing. Not just a plain man with a gun, like most of them. But a man who can use his noggin. Like the song about Jesse James, he seems to have a hand and a heart a
nd a brain. I don’t know about the heart, but he’s sure done a clever job of using his hands and his brains. That is—it looks that way.”
“Come on, Emory,” one of the men said. “Give us less editorializing and more facts. What’s he done?”
“Well,” Emory said thoughtfully, “I’m just piecing this whole thing together, and I may be wrong. But it strikes me that it makes a pattern, and a very clever one at that. Provided, of course, the man did everything he’s supposed to have done.”
“Well, what’d he do?” they insisted. “Stop theorizing.”
“All right, here’s the story as I piece together the known facts. A few days ago a stranger dropped into town, tall, square-jawed, not bad-looking. You know, clean-cut; you wouldn’t take him for a badman. Well, he hangs around the Red River Bar for a while, then starts a fight with one of Faulkner’s wagon drivers, that big ox by the name of Flint. Flint was the town bully, and nobody ever whipped him. He usually cripples somebody every time he gets drunk.
“Well, the other night, Flint was shooting off his mouth in the saloon, and this new fellow walks over to him, insults him, throws beer into his beard, and starts a fight with him. It was really something to see, hut the point is that this tall fellow actually whipped Flint. And that’s an event in the history of this town, itself.
“Well, Flint rode out of town, ashamed to hold his head up, I reckon. And Faulkner gives this new hombre Flint’s job. When the river went down, this new man drove up into the Territory with a load and a couple of passengers, and that was the last that was seen of him.”
“Where’s the crime there?”
“Here are some of the facts that you can now fit into that picture of what happened. Those two passengers, Faulkner now tells me, were officers, a Texas Ranger and a Territory Marshal, and they were carrying a special load of money up into the Territory for the Government Indian Agencies or something. Anyway, their business was supposed to be real secret. Their money was hid, Faulkner tells me, in a couple of packing crates, and nobody in the world except those two and Faulkner himself knew that they had money with them.
“Well, as I was on my way home from up in Antlers, I came across some people who had found an empty wagon on the mountain trail. It was Faulkner’s wagon, and the men and the money and merchandise and everything else including the driver was gone—were vamos.
“All right, what’s the answer? Don’t you see how clever it was? That hombre knew about that money. He came in on the stage along with the two officers, and he thus had an eye on them all the way up from Fort Worth.
“Now he’s got to figure a way to make sure of getting his hands on that money. He knows that those two men are officers and crack shots, and so he figures it is too risky to try to hold up Ike Flint and the two officers, so he has to think of something else.
“And here’s how clever he was then; he whips Flint, drives him out of town in disgrace, then goes and gets Flint’s job driving that load of money up into the Territory. Ever see anything so clever? Now he’s reduced the odds to two to one against him, and him being the driver sent along with them officers, they ain’t on their guard against him. Just like stealing candy from a baby, and twice as profitable.”
One of the men said, “Did they find the officers’ bodies?”
“No. He wouldn’t want that kind of evidence lying around against him. Naturally he’d hide the proof of his crime.”
“How do they know he did it?” one of the men asked logically. “Maybe some outsider killed all three of them and hid all three bodies. That man could have been a victim, himself.”
“Yes,” Dustin answered reasonably. “He could be. You can’t say for sure that he pulled the job unless you know he’s still alive, and know for sure that somebody else did it. But look at the evidence; why else would the man have done a thing like risking his neck in a fight with Flint if he wasn’t playing for big odds? Why else would he have asked Faulkner for Flint’s job? If some of those mountain renegades killed all three of the men, why did they bother to hide the bodies? Those hombres leave their victims where they fall. No, I may be wrong, but it sure points to that mysterious stranger. And you’ve got to give him credit for one thing, anyway. If that’s the way it was, then he’s sure got a brain in that think box of his.”
“Not the kind of brain I’d admire,” Sonia Swanson said.
“Nor me, neither, my dear,” Dustin answered. “I was just pointing out how far some people will go in planning a piece of crookedness. If they would use half that mental energy in planning some legitimate enterprise, they’d be so much better off.”
After the party broke up, Dustin drove Sonia to Mrs. Halsell’s where she had arranged to spend the night, and Sonia told Mrs. Halsell the story about the robbery. “It’s going all over town,” she added. “And Mr. Faulkner is in bed with a nervous breakdown. He was the one who had helped the officers plan to get through with the money, and he feels very upset that the robbery might cast some reflection on his caution in assisting the men to get through safely. After all, it was his wagon and his driver, and the government might be inclined to hold him responsible.”
Cora Halsell heard this news with a sense of shock. As she fixed a snack of pie and coffee for Sonia and herself, she thought with great depression of the effect this news would have on Eric Swanson. After all, it was at her insistence that Swanson had entered into the scheme to send for Webster, and she knew that Swanson was not entirely convinced that he was doing the right thing in hiring a man who was almost as notorious for his wild and often lawless ways of going about his business as were the thieves and murderers he was after.
It was commonly assumed in this raw country that a peace officer had to be as tough and merciless as the crooks with whom he dealt, and it was a proved fact that men who made their living by the gun were often indifferent as to which side of the fence they were on.
Many a famous outlaw gunman had made himself respectable merely by accepting a law badge, thus earning pay for doing the very thing that came naturally to him, the taking of human life. And many a man had started out wearing a star, had spent so much time in close contact with badmen, and had so got the taste of blood, that he had thrown off his badge and gone all out for outlawry on his own hook.
And still others, such as the notorious Henry Plummer, out in Virginia City, Nevada, who had worn a marshal’s badge, and had used the office and the information the badge brought in directing bands of cutthroats who preyed upon the people the officer was paid to protect.
In short, Cora Halsell thought, there was no simple answer to it. Jim Webster, no matter how many outlaw bands he had wiped out, was either good or bad in his own right, and not because of the work he was supposed to be doing. If he had hired out to help honest ranchers, and had turned that job to his own advantage, or if he had dropped it when tempted to go after quicker gains, that was the way things were here in this wild country, and it could not be helped.
She was saddened, though, and worried. She had liked the looks of Jim Webster—something in him, his strength of character as she read it in his face, the apparent forthrightness in him, and the independence and initiative with which he appeared to take on his job, asking nothing of no man. She was deeply disappointed in him; she felt somehow as if she had been betrayed by a friend whom she trusted.
Moreover she was worried about how this news would affect Eric Swanson. He had been under a terrible strain trying to save his investment and hers, and she had managed to instill some hope in him when she had at last got him to agree to employ Webster. Now that hope would be dashed, and she knew that though Eric would not mention the matter to her, he would not be able to forget the fact that he had got Webster against his better judgment because he wanted to please her.
Now, she felt, the effect of this would be to drive a wedge between them. Swanson would no longer feel the confidence in her judgment that she hoped he w
ould have. He would withdraw into himself with his troubles, become remote from her, instead of being drawn closer to her by their mutual interest in their enterprise.
This was a blow to her hopes for the peace and happiness that she had prayed for, and that she had seen being realized in the fine man that Eric Swanson was.
Sonia, seated across the table from her, looked up from her plate of dried-apple pie with a slice of yellow cheese on it.
“What is the matter, Cora?” she asked with a show of concern. “You look as though you didn’t feel well. You haven’t eaten a bite of pie, and I know you made it for me because you’re just crazy about apple pie. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, honey,” Mrs. Halsell assured her. “I don’t know. Rain and mud always did give me the blues, and it has rained so long, and the mud is so deep that I just get depressed. I’m sorry.”
Sonia started to take another bite of pie, then let her fork drop to the plate and stared at Cora Halsell with wide-eyed puzzlement. “Say,” she said. “That man who was here the other night talking to dad. You remember, Dick said that after he left here he went down to the saloon and whipped the town bully—”
“Sonia!” The words exploded out of Cora Halsell’s mouth. “Please! Remember. Your father asked you never to mention that man not to even remember that you saw him, or to speak to him on the street. Please, Sonia, don’t breathe a word of that; don’t speak of him again, even to your father, even to Dick, or to Emory Dustin—or even to me. Please, Sonia, try to do that for us.”
Cora Halsell had become worked up in her emotions, and Sonia stared at her for a long moment, her puzzlement growing deeper and deeper as the implications of the things said grew on her.
“All right, Cora, I’ll promise, if it will make you feel better. But I wish I knew what was going on here. It doesn’t smell right, somehow, that man being here in the house, and then going out and doing the things he did. I’m a member of the family, and it would seem that I should have a right to know.”
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