by Zane Grey
“Rand Leavitt got wind of it first, an’ a stampede rustled after him. Leavitt beat us all to it. Bonanza! He struck a quartz vein packed with gold. The rest of us are placer minin’. An’ believe me, stranger, no kick cornin’.”
“Shore you know my brother, Sam Emerson?”
“Nope. Not by name, anyhow.”
“Sam found that rich quartz vein, an’ Jake an’ I packed out a piece worth five hundred dollars.”
“What?—Stranger, are you drunk or crazy?”
“Neither. But I’m most damn curious,” snapped Kalispel.
“Bill, come out hyar,” yelled the young miner. His call fetched the big, bearded, red-shirted man on the run. “Say, Bill, listen to this. Hyar’s a fellar who says his brother made a gold strike hyar weeks ago, an’ thet he an’ another brother packed out a chunk of quartz worth five hundred.”
“It’s true. Do you know my brother, Sam Emerson?” flashed Kalispel. “We left him here, located on the quartz vein.”
“Sam Emerson? Don’t know him. An’ he’s shore not located on the quartz vein now, for Leavitt staked thet. He got in hyar first with Selback an’ outfit. You’re shore haidin’ fer trouble, young man, if you make thet claim to them.”
Kalispel abruptly wheeled and almost ran across the bench toward the location of Sam’s quartz vein. As he neared it he slowed up to catch his breath and to take the lay of the land. In the first place he had difficulty finding the outcropping ledge under the looming bare slope. It appeared to be hidden by tents and a large framework of peeled logs, which manifestly was a cabin in course of construction. Kalispel heard the blows of an ax. He passed the end of the lane between the tents. It ran west the remaining distance of the bench. He heard the crash of falling timber and the hoarse voices of men. These came from behind him, down by the stream. The tent town appeared deserted, except at this end, where he espied men actively engaged in labor around the cabin.
In another moment Kalispel stalked upon the scene of Sam’s strike. He did not need to look twice at the long outcropping ledge. A tall man with a rifle across his knees sat significantly in the foreground.
“Are you Rand Leavitt?” called Kalispel, in a voice that rang, as he passed the open tent to confront this guard.
The man rose quickly. He stood coatless and hatless, young, bullet-headed, swarthy-faced, and his deep-set eyes appeared to start.
“No, stranger. My name’s Selback. The boss is down town,” replied the man. “An’ who might you be, bustin’ up hyar like a bull out of a corral?”
Kalispel was slow to answer, but swift and sure in his estimate of this guard, Selback. There was something expected, furtive, cold, and calculating in the man’s eyes, yet no gleam of intuitive sense of Kalispel’s status.
“I’m Kalispel Emerson—brother of Sam...Where is Sam?”
“Are you askin’ me? I don’t know your brother—or you, either.”
“Shore you haven’t seen Sam Emerson?” rang Kalispel, piercingly. The builders had ceased their tasks to come down on the ground.
“There are a lot of miners hyar whose name I never heard.”
“Name or not, you shore seen Sam when you hit this valley... because he was here on this claim. He found this quartz. I was with him when he struck it. So was Jake, my other brother.”
“Man alive! You’ve gone gold mad,” declared the guard, with a gruff laugh. But there was no sincerity in word or mirth. He did not ring true.
“By Gawd!” cried Kalispel, “this has a queer look!”
“An’ so have you, stranger!” retorted Selback, probably misled by Kalispel’s poignant exclamation. “Just you rustle along or Leavitt will run you out of Thunder River.”
“We Emersons don’t run.”
“Wal, walk, then, an’ be quick about it,” ordered the guard, making a move to swing the rifle around.
“Hold on!” cut out Kalispel.
But Selback did not heed the warning. The rifle barrel continued to swerve beneath the man’s paling visage. In a flash Kalispel drew and fired. The guard’s head sank, and, stumbling, he fell forward over his clattering rifle.
Rapid footfalls cracked on the rocks. Kalispel wheeled to confront a man who yelled as he cleared the tent. He ran almost into Kalispel’s smoking gun.
“Line up with your gang. Pronto!” ordered Kalispel, with a wave of the gun. He knew his man. This was Leavitt, who lost no time lining up beside the three laborers, but he did not put up his hands.
“You see I’m unarmed,” he said, coolly. “What’s the deal?” and he swept a glittering gray glance from Kalispel to the man on the ground and back again.
“You’re Rand Leavitt,” confirmed Kalispel as he instinctively recognized a shrewd, nervy, resourceful leader. Leavitt was under forty, a man of lofty stature, whose pale, cold, boldly-chiseled face denoted intelligence and force.
“Yes, I’m Leavitt. What’s this hold-up mean?”
“Wal, your man Selback didn’t get a hunch, as you see,” returned Kalispel, sarcastically.
“If you’re a bandit, hold up the miners. We’ve got a quartz vein. No gold yet. I’ve sent out for a stamp mill.”
“I’m no bandit, an’ damn well you know it.”
“How the hell do I know who and what you are?” demanded the other, in pale anger. “What’d you kill Selback for—if it’s not a hold-up?”
“The damn fool tried to throw his rifle on me, after I warned him.”
“Who are you?”
Kalispel did not answer. He backed against the wall of the tent. Miners, led by the couple whom he had accosted upon his arrival, were hurrying to the scene, drawn, no doubt, by the gunshot. Kalispel fought down his fury and despair. Whatever the justice of his claim, it would never be recognized. He was too late. He had to decide whether or not to kill this man Leavitt.
“Boss, he said his name was Kalispel Emerson,” spoke one of the laborers, hurriedly. “Thet he was brother to a Sam Emerson, whom he swore had located this quartz vein.”
“Sam Emerson!” shouted Leavitt, loud-voiced and protesting. “Where in the hell was he, then? I found this claim, opened up to be sure, gold shining in the sun, pick and shovel, camp duffle and stuff lying around. But no miner!”
“You lie!” hissed Kalispel.
“No I don’t lie,” stormed Leavitt. “There wasn’t any miner here. I swear that. I could have proved it by Selback.”
“You made away with my brother an’ jumped his claim.”
“I jumped it, yes. I had a perfect right to. But it had not been worked for days....When you accuse me of making away with your brother you’re the liar—or you are out of your head.”
He was steady of hand, pale-faced, but fire-eyed, and his voice and demeanor carried conviction, if not to Kalispel, to the others present, a constantly growing crowd.
“Leavitt, I reckon I’ll bore you.”
“You’ll murder an innocent man, then,” replied Leavitt. “I’m not threatening you, as was Selback. You’ve no excuse to kill me, except your suspicion, which is rank Injustice....And these miners will lynch you.”
Kalispel had put him to a crucial test. But Leavitt had not weakened, if he was guilty, as Kalispel believed, he was too shrewd, too quick-witted and iron-nerved, to betray himself to Kalispel or lose his prestige with the crowd. Besides, there was a remote possibility that Sam had wandered out of the valley or had met some inexplicable tragic end. Kalispel felt that he was not omnipotent. In his torturing disappointment and frenzy he might have erred in judging Selback. He dared not force the issue here and lose forever any chance of reclaiming the mine. Jake would return with proofs that he had packed out the gold-veined quartz.
“Leavitt, I’ll let you off because men like you hang themselves,” declared Kalispel, bitterly. “But I’m accusin’ you before this crowd. You’re crooked, you made away with my brother an’ jumped his claim. I call on all here to witness my stand against you an’ my oath that I’ll live to prove it.”
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br /> Kalispel backed away from the tent and from the gaping miners. He was keen enough to see even in that moment that sentiment of these men was divided. Turning presently, he sheathed his gun and had headed for the spot where he had left his burros, when he remembered Sydney. In that exceeding bitter moment of hopeless despair it seemed he could not face her with blood on his hands, with the fear that these miners, and surely Leavitt, would convince her that he was a murderer. As truly as that had his hasty deed made him an outcast! Plunging away in the other direction, he leaped the creek and hid far across the valley, in a clump of firs, and there lay like a deer mortally wounded and seeking to die alone.
Long after darkness fell he went back to the place where he had left the Blairs and the burros. He found only his own packs. The Blairs, with their supplies and equipment, had left. Kalispel welcomed that fact. He searched in his pack for a flask of whisky and finding it he sought to kill the cold, sick misery in his marrow and to blot out the insupportable loss of brother, fortune, love.
When Kalispel recovered a consciousness with which he could remember, it was another day, and he believed the second or third after his arrival. The sun had blistered his face as he lay unprotected in the open. Ill, shaken, in horrible mental state, he drank the last swallow of liquor.
Then he looked about him. The packs were intact, his saddle lying on the ground, his bed unrolled. The horse and burros were gone from the grassy bench. This location was as good as any, he thought, and after a survey of the bench he concluded he could not do better. He was far back, close to the base of the divide, and over a half-mile from Leavitt’s camp, which stood about even with where the great bare slope began its terrifying rise to dominate the valley. The new trail coming down the stream forked into the one he had made up the divide just below where he elected to camp. Forthwith he spread his tarpaulin across a narrow space between two high boulders, and moved in his supplies. Behind him and up the gradual slope were quantities of dead and fallen lodge-pole pines. He could not eat, though his thirst was intense, and in a mood to drive himself to exhaustion, he packed down one tree after another until he had a huge pile of them. Then, spent and wet and hot, he flung himself down and importuned heart and consciousness with hopeless query—what was it that had happened and what could he do? Footsteps roused him to sit up, braced against a boulder. Blair confronted him.
“How are you, Kalispel?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Mornin’, Blair—or is it afternoon? ... I’d be better off dead,” replied Kalispel.
“Don’t say that, lad. It’s not like you at all. You must pull yourself together and shake the terrible passion you must have had—and the debauch afterward.”
“Blair, am I still drunk, or are you speakin’ kindly to me?” queried Kalispel.
“I am, son, and I mean it,” went on the elder man, taking a seat near Kalispel.
“Wal, if I can be grateful for anythin’, I’m thanking you.”
“Listen, cowboy. I’ve seen a good deal of life, and life anywhere, east or west, is the same when it comes to misfortune, loss, grief. If ever a young fellow had a tough thing to face, you certainly had. But you gave in to it in wild West fashion and it has ruined you. Leavitt stands high with these miners. They elected him judge of the camp—an office, as I understand it, to determine gold claims and all the accepted rules of mining-camps. Your denouncing him apparently hurt you more than killing Selback. For as I got it, Selback was a hard, grasping man, not at all liked. Then to make the situation worse for you, our friends Pritchard, Selby and Haskell rode in yesterday morning. They made friends at once with Leavitt. I heard them, especially Pritchard, denounce you as Kalispel Emerson, notorious gunman from Montana, a bad hombre in every way.”
“Interestin’—an’ about to come true, I reckon,” replied Kalispel, with the ice in his soul cutting his voice. “An’ I’m calculatin’ that you come out to give me a hunch to leave?”
“No,” declared Blair, emphatically. “I might have felt that way a couple of days ago. But not now. Something has changed me. I’d stay....You see, I’m convinced of your honesty, Kalispel. I believe you and your brothers have been robbed of this claim. Probably I’m the only man in camp who does. I’ve always been a contrary cuss, prone to take the under dog’s side. By heaven! I’d stay and find out.”
“I’ll stay, all right,” returned Kalispel, grimly. “Blair, set me right. How long have we been here?”
“This is the third day.”
“Where did you an’ Sydney go? What did you do?”
“Well, after you left us we heard the shooting and followed the crowd into camp. There we met Leavitt. He was very agreeable and helpful. Asked us to supper. Pretty much taken with Sydney, of course. He gave us a tent, sent out for our packs, made us comfortable. Yesterday I bought my gold claim from him. It’s one of the best, they say. Twenty dollars a foot. One hundred feet. All the claims are divided into sections of that size.... I’ve been panning gold. Dug two ounces of dust today before I gave out. It’s the hardest work I ever undertook. But great fun. Sydney is crazy about it. Leavitt showed her how.”
“Wal, that doesn’t improve his chances of long life,” muttered Kalispel, somberly. “It’s hell enough to lose her—without——”
“Kalispel,” interrupted Blair, hurriedly, “we were out here yesterday. Sydney wanted to see you. She seemed driven. I caught her looking out this way often. She was pretty hard hit, son....Well, we came, and found you dead drunk, lying there—not a pleasant sight. Sydney was horrified. And then disgusted. I wanted her to stay—help me do something for you. She wouldn’t .... Fm going to tell you what she said, because I believe it will do you good. ‘Dad, I—I cared for that cowboy, Kalispel!-But this isn’t he. Or if it is I am disillusioned....To protest love for me—then, scarcely out of my sight—give way to his terrible passion to kill—and drink....To lie here like a sodden beast....He did not love me.’”
“Aw, Gawd!” groaned Kalispel, hanging his head. This was the last, the most exceeding bitter drop of his cup of gall.
“Kalispel, that’s tougher than loss of your mine. I don’t share Sydney’s disillusion. She is young and this is her second hurt. By far the deepest, I am sure. If I know the Blairs, she won’t soon get over this one.... Now, boy, a last word, then I’m through this painful talk. Adversity either beats us down or brings out the latent in us, the unquenchable spirit of manhood. This is not a question of your physical courage. It seems you are notorious for that. But a question of whether or not you are going to succumb to drink—and such abasement as that in which we found you.”
“Blair, don’t say any more, please,” replied Kalispel, hoarsely. “Only tell me, why did you talk this way?”
“I like you and I think you have had a rotten deal. Besides, I know the horror of the bottle, myself.”
“Were you ever a drinker?”
“Yes, I was. And I have never been safe.”
Kalispel recalled what Sydney had betrayed to him about her father’s conviviality.
“Ah-huh. So that’s why....Wal, red liquor never had me down till this time....Blair, you’ve got another rea son for all this plain, kind talk.”
“Yes. I’ve taken a sudden dislike to Leavitt.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know, except what revealed it to me. And that was a look I saw him give Sydney when she was unaware of it. If I were your kind, Kalispel, I’d pick a fight with him and shoot him. This illustrates my peculiar streak. But as I look back over my life I find that seldom or never has my distrust of a man been unjust. Or my faith wrong. It’s a gift.”
“Wal, I had the same hunch about Leavitt. Yet I couldn’t lay a single proof of its being fair.”
“Leavitt has a powerful personality,” declared Blair. “He might have that two-sided nature so common to many men. If he is crooked he’ll never fool me. But he could Sydney. She thinks he is handsome, well educated, fascinating, the biggest Westerner she has met yet.�
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“I reckon that’s easy for me to see, but most damn sickenin’ to swallow.”
“Leavitt is taken with her. He may get her on the rebound. Funny how strange and weak women are that way. Perhaps it is self-perservation. It worries me. I tried to give Sydney a hint of my suspicions. She shut me up pronto.”
“Wal, Blair, don’t talk against the man. That’ll only make Sydney contrary. Women are shore strange an’ weak. But sometimes strange an’ wondrous strong, too. I’d class Sydney among the last. An’ if she really cared for me I can’t conceive of her goin’ to Leavitt, whether or not I’m a bloody gunman an’ beast. Rebound or no rebound!”
“She did care for you. She said so, right out. And that implies more than she confessed.”
“My Gawd, man! Stop torturin’ me.”
“I’m sorry,” rejoined Blair, hastily, as he arose. “But she is my daughter. And she was your sweetheart.... Hell! don’t glare at me like that. I know her better than you....You can’t get out of this fact. We had a common cause. This West is hell. I can’t go back. I must meet what comes. And I’m scared....I took a shine to you, Kalispel, and I felt I could lean on you.”
“You can—so help me Gawd!” cried Kalispel, fiercely. The father of the girl he loved had called to the best in him—to what had seemed utterly destroyed. But—for her sake he might perform a miracle.
“Atta boy! That’s the talk,” ejaculated Blair, warmly.
“But how—Blair? How?” gasped Kalispel, haggardly. “Pll be an outlaw now. Every miner’s opinion, if not his hand, will be against me. Leavitt will see to that. He stole our mine. An’ he’ll be crafty as hell.”
“Yes. But this camp will grow like a mushroom, overnight,” declared Blair, earnestly. “In a month there’ll be thousands of people here. They are streaming in. Twelve pack outfits yesterday. Old-timers here say Thunder Mountain will bring the biggest gold rush Idaho ever saw....A tent town, a saw-log, clapboard town full of miners, gamblers, adventurers, women, merchants, pack-drivers, freighters. All bent on gold. An awful mess, they say. It’s fascinating to think of. Pd like the idea but for my daughter.... Well, you lay low. Dig gold yourself. Cut the drink and don’t use your gun except in case of self-defense. Wait for your brother Jake to come back. He may shed some light on this stampede. And all the time you will be working for proof of Leavitt’s guilt. But that will not be your main objective.”