So this was the end. After all his effort, the drive over the mountains and desert, the long struggle to get back, and then this ride, and all for nothing. Back there in the Paiute the people he had left behind would be trusting him, keeping their faith. For no matter how much they were sure he would fail, their hopes must go with him. And now he had failed.
Wearily he staggered into the bunkhouse and dropped into his chair. He fumbled with the coffee pot and succeeded in pouring out a cupful. His legs and feet felt numb, and he had never realized a man could be so utterly, completely tired.
The young man in the checkered shirt looked around from his poker game.
“No luck, eh? You’ve come a long way to lose now.”
Steve nodded bitterly. “That money belongs to my friends as well as me,” he said. “That’s the worst of it.”
The blond young fellow laid down his hand and pulled in the chips. Then he picked up his pipe.
“My sorrel out there in the barn,” he said, “is the best hoss on the Trinity. You take it and go, but man, you’d better get yourself some rest at Scott Valley. You’ll die.”
Mehan lunged to his feet, hope flooding the weariness from his body.
“How much?” he demanded, reaching for his pocket.
“Nothin’,” the fellow said. “Only if you catch that thief, bring him back on my hoss, and I’ll help you hang him. I promise you.”
Steve hesitated. “What about the horse?”
“Bring him back when you come south,” the fellow said, “and take care of him. He’ll never let you down.”
Steve Mehan rode out of Trinity Creek ten minutes later, and the sorrel took to the trail as if he knew all that was at stake, and pressed on eagerly for Scott Valley.
The cold was increasing as Steve Mehan rode farther north, and the wind was raw, spitting rain that seemed to be changing to snow. Head hunched behind the collar of his buffalo coat, Steve pushed on, talking low to the horse, whose ears twitched a response and who kept going, alternating between a fast walk and a swinging, space-eating trot.
Six hours out of Trinity Creek, Steve Mehan rode into Scott Valley.
The stage tender took one look at him and waved him to a bunk.
“Hit it, stranger,” he said. “I’ll care for your hoss!” Stumbling through a fog of exhaustion, Steve made the bunk and dropped into its softness… .
*
Steve Mehan opened his eyes suddenly, with the bright sunlight in his face. He glanced at his watch. It was noon.
Lunging to his feet, he pulled on his boots, which somebody had removed without awakening him, and reached for his coat. The heavy-set red-haired stage tender walked in and glanced at him.
“See you’ve got Joe Chalmers’s hoss,” he remarked, his thumbs in his belt. “How come?”
Steve looked up. “Chasing a thief. He let me have it.”
“I know Chalmers. He wouldn’t let Moses have this hoss to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Not him. You’ve got some explainin’ to do, stranger.”
“I said he loaned me the horse,” Steve said grimly. “I’m leaving him with you and I want to buy another to go on with. What have you got?”
Red was dubious. “Don’t reckon I should sell you one. Looks mighty funny to me, you havin’ Joe’s hoss. Is Joe all right?”
“Well,” Steve said wearily, “he was just collecting a pot levied by three treys when I talked to him, so I reckon he’ll make out.”
Red chuckled. “He’s a poker-playin’ man, that one. Good man, too.” He hesitated, and then shrugged. “All right. There’s a blaze faced black in the stable you can have for fifty dollars. Good horse, too. Better eat somethin’.”
He put food on the table, and Steve ate too rapidly. He gulped some coffee, and then Red came out with a pint of whiskey.
“Stick this in your pocket, stranger. Might come in handy.”
“Thanks.” Mehan wiped his mouth and got to his feet. He felt better, and he walked to the door.
“You ain’t got a rifle?” Red was frankly incredulous. “The Modocs will get you shore.”
“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of one yet,” Steve said, smiling. “I’m beginning to think they’ve all gone East for the winter.”
“Don’t you think it.” Red slipped a bridle on the black while Steve cinched up the saddle. “They are out, and things up Oregon way are bad off. They shore raised ructions up around Grave Creek, and all the country around the Klamath and the Rogue is harassed by ’em.”
Somewhere out at sea the steamer would be plowing over the gray sea toward Astoria and the mouth of the Columbia. The trip from there up to the Willamette and Portland would not take long.
The black left town at a fast lope and held it. The horse was good, no question about it. Beyond Callahan’s, Steve hit the old Applegate wagon trail and found the going somewhat better and pushed on. Just seventy hours out from Knights Landing he rode into Yreka.
After a quick meal, a drink, and a fresh horse, he mounted and headed out of town for the Oregon line. He rode through Humbug City and Hawkinsville without a stop and followed a winding trail up the gorge of the Shasta.
Once, after climbing the long slope north of the Klamath, he glimpsed a party of Indians some distance away. They sighted him, for they turned their horses his way, but he rode on, holding his pace, and crossed Hungry Creek and left behind him the cairn that marked the boundary line of Oregon. He turned away from the trail then and headed into the back country, trying a cut-off for Bear Creek and the village of Jacksonville. Somewhere, he lost the Indians.
He pushed on, and now the rain that had been falling intermittently turned to snow. It began to fall, thick and fast. He was riding out of the trees when on the white-flecked earth before him he saw a moccasin track with earth just tumbling into it from the edge.
Instantly he whipped his horse around and touched spurs to its flanks. The startled animal gave a great bound, and at the same instant a shot whipped by where he had been only a moment before. Then he was charging through brush, and the horse was dodging among the trees.
An Indian sprang from behind a rock and lifted a rifle. Steve drew and fired. The Indian threw his rifle away and rolled over on the ground, moaning.
Wild yells chorused behind him, and a shot cut the branches overhead. He fired again and then again.
Stowing the Smith & Wesson away, he whipped out the four barreled Braendlin. Holding it ready, he charged out of the brush and headed across the open country. Behind him the Modocs were coming fast. His horse was quick and alert, and he swung it around a grove of trees and down into a gully. Racing along the bottom, he hit a small stream and began walking the horse carefully upstream. After making a half mile, he rode out again and took to the timber, reloading his other pistol.
Swapping horses at every chance, he pushed on. One hundred and forty-three hours out of Knights Landing, he rode into Portland. He had covered six hundred and fifty-five miles. He swung down and turned to the stable hand.
“That steamer in from Frisco?”
“Heard her whistle,” said the man. “She’s comin’ up the river now.”
But Steve had turned and was running fast.
The agent for the banking express company looked up and blinked when Steve Mehan lurched through the door.
“I’m buying cattle,” Steve told him, “and need some money. Can you honor a certificate of deposit for me?”
“Let’s see her.”
Steve handed him the order and shifted restlessly. The man eyed the order for a long time, and then turned it over and studied the back. Finally, when Steve was almost beside himself with impatience, the agent looked up over his glasses at the bearded, hollow-eyed young man. “Reckon I can,” he said. “Of course there’s the deduction of one half of one percent for all amounts over a thousand dollars.”
“Pay me,” Steve said.
He leaned over the desk, and suddenly the deep-toned blast of the steamer’s whistle rang through
the room. The agent was putting stacks of gold on the table. He looked up.
“Well, what do you know? That’s the steamer in. I reckon I better see about… .”
Whatever he was going to see about, Steve never discovered, for as the agent turned away, Steve reached out and collared him. “Pay me,” he said sharply. “Pay me now.”
The agent shrugged. “Well, all right. No need to get all fussed about it. Plenty of time.”
He put out stacks of gold. Mentally Steve calculated the amount. When it was all there, he swept it into a sack—almost fifty pounds of gold. He slung the sack over his shoulder and turned toward the door.
A gun boomed, announcing the arrival of the steamer, as he stepped out into the street. Four men were racing up the street from the dock, and the man in the lead was Jake Hitson.
Hitson skidded to a halt when he saw Steve Mehan, and his face went dark with angry blood. The blue eyes frosted and he stood wide-legged, staring at the man who had beaten him to Portland.
“So!” His voice was a roar that turned the startled townspeople around. “Beat me here, did you? Got your money, have you?” He seemed unable to absorb the fact that he was beaten, that Mehan had made it through.
“Just so you won’t kick anybody out of his home, Jake,” Steve said quietly, “and I hope that don’t hurt too much.”
The small man in the black suit had gone around them and into the express company office. The other men were Pink Egan and a swarthy-faced man who was obviously a friend of Hitson’s.
Hitson lowered his head. The fury seemed to go out of him as he stood there in the street with a soft rain falling over them.
“You won’t get back there,” he said in a dead, flat voice. “You done it, all right, but you’ll never play the hero in Paiute, because I’m goin’ to kill you.”
“Like you killed Dixie and Chuck?” challenged Steve. “You did, you know. You started that landslide and the Mojaves.”
Hitson made no reply. He merely stood there, a huge bull of a man, his frosty eyes bright and hard under the corn-silk eyebrows.
Suddenly his hand swept down.
When Steve had first sighted the man, he had lowered the sack of gold to the street. Now he swept his coat back and grabbed for his own gun. He was no gunfighter, and the glimpse of flashing speed from Hitson made something go sick within him, but his gun came up and he fired.
Hitson’s gun was already flaming, and even as Steve pulled the trigger on his own gun, a bullet from Hitson’s pistol knocked the Smith & Wesson spinning into the dust! Steve sprang back and heard the hard, dry laugh of triumph from Jake Hitson’s throat.
“Now I’ll kill you!” Hitson yelled.
The killer’s eyes were cold as he lifted the pistol, but, even as it came level, Steve hurled himself to his knees and jerked out the four barreled Braendlin.
Hitson swung the gun down on him, but, startled by Steve’s movement, he swung too fast and shot too fast. The bullet ripped through the top of Mehan’s shoulder, tugging hard at the heavy coat. Then Steve fired. He fired once, twice, three times, and then heaved himself erect and stepped to one side, holding his last shot ready, his eyes careful.
Hitson stood stockstill, his eyes puzzled. Blood was trickling from his throat, and there was a slowly spreading blot of blood on his white shirt. He tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, blood frothed there, and he started to back up, frowning.
He stumbled and fell. Slowly he rolled over on his face in the street. Blood turned the gravel crimson, and rain darkened the coat on his back.
Only then did Steve Mehan look up. Pink Egan, his face cold, had a gun leveled at Hitson’s companion. “You beat it,” Pink said. “You get goin’!”
“Shore.” The man backed away, staring at Hitson’s body. “Shore, I’m gone. I don’t want no trouble. I just come along, I …”
The small man in black came out of the express office.
“Got here just in time,” he said. “I’m the purser from the steamer. Got nearly a thousand out of that bank, the last anybody will get.” He smiled at Mehan. “Won another thousand on your ride. I bet on you and got two to one.” He chuckled. “Of course, I knew we had soldiers to put ashore at two places coming north, and that helped. I’m a sporting man, myself.” He clinked the gold in his sack and smiled, twitching his mustache with a white finger. “Up to a point,” he added, smiling again. “Only up to a point.”
West Is Where the Heart Is
Jim London lay face down in the dry prairie grass, his body pressed tightly against the ground. Heat, starvation, and exhaustion had taken a toll of his lean, powerful body, and, although light-headed from their accumulative effects, he still grasped the fact that to survive he must not be seen.
Hot sun blazed upon his back, and in his nostrils was the stale, sour smell of clothes and body long unwashed. Behind him lay days of dodging Comanche war parties and sleeping on the bare ground behind rocks or under bushes. He was without weapons or food, and it had been nine hours since he had tasted water, and that was only dew he had licked from leaves.
The screams of the dying rang in his ears, amid the sounds of occasional shots and the shouts and war cries of the Indians. From a hill almost five miles away he had spotted the white canvas tops of the Conestoga wagons and had taken a course that would intercept them. And then, in the last few minutes before he could reach their help, the Comanches had hit the wagon train.
From the way the attack went, a number of the Indians must have been bedded down in the tall grass, keeping out of sight, and then, when the train was passing, they sprang for the drivers of the teams. The strategy was perfect, for there was then no chance of the wagon train making its circle. The lead wagons did swing, but two other teamsters were dead and another was fighting for his life, and their wagons could not be turned. The two lead wagons found themselves isolated from the last four and were hit hard by at least twenty Indians. The wagon whose driver was fighting turned over in the tall grass at the edge of a ditch, and the driver was killed.
Within twenty minutes after the beginning of the attack, the fighting was over and the wagons looted, and the Indians were riding away, leaving behind them only dead and butchered oxen, the scalped and mutilated bodies of the drivers, and the women who were killed or who had killed themselves.
Yet Jim London did not move. This was not his first crossing of the plains or his first encounter with Indians. He had fought Comanches before, as well as Kiowas, Apaches, Sioux, and Cheyennes. Born on the Oregon Trail, he had later been a teamster on the Santa Fe. He knew better than to move now. He knew that an Indian or two might come back to look for more loot.
The smoke of the burning wagons bit at his nostrils, yet he waited. An hour had passed before he let himself move, and then it was only to inch to the top of the hill, where from behind a tuft of bunch grass he surveyed the scene before him.
No living thing stirred near the wagons. Slow tendrils of smoke lifted from blackened timbers and wheel spokes. Bodies lay scattered about, grotesque in attitudes of tortured death. For a long time he studied the scene below, and the surrounding hills. And then he crawled over the skyline and slithered downhill through the grass, making no more visible disturbance than a snake or a coyote.
This was not the first such wagon train he had come upon, and he knew there was every chance that he would find food among the ruins as well as water, perhaps even overlooked weapons. Indians looted hastily and took the more obvious things, usually scattering food and wasting what they could not easily carry away.
Home was still more than two hundred miles away, and the wife he had not seen in four years would be waiting for him. In his heart, he knew she would be waiting. During the war the others had scoffed at him.
“Why, Jim, you say yourself she don’t even know where you’re at. She probably figures you’re dead. No woman can be expected to wait that long. Not for a man she never hears of and when she’s in a good country for men and a bad one for
women.”
“She’ll wait. I know Jane.”
“No man knows a woman that well. No man could. You say yourself you come East with a wagon train in ’Sixty-One. Now it’s ’Sixty-Four. You been in the war, you been wounded, you ain’t been home, nor heard from her, nor she from you. Worst of all, she was left on a piece of ground with only a cabin built, no ground broke, no close up neighbors. I’ll tell you, Jim, you’re crazy. Come, go to Mexico with us.”
“No,” he had said stubbornly. “I’ll go home. I’ll go back to Jane. I came East after some fixings for her, after some stock for the ranch, and I’ll go home with what I set out after.”
“You got any young ’uns?” The big sergeant had been skeptical.
“Nope. I sure ain’t, but I wish I did. Only,” he had added, “maybe I have. Jane, she was expecting, but had a time to go when I left. I only figured to be gone four months.”
“And you been gone four years?” The sergeant had shook his head. “Forget her, Jim, and come with us. Nobody would deny she was a good woman. From what you tell of her, she sure was, but she’s been alone and no doubt figures you’re dead. She’ll be married again, maybe with a family.”
Jim London had shaken his head. “I never took up with no other woman, and Jane wouldn’t take up with any other man. I’m going home.”
He had made a good start. He had saved nearly every dime of pay, and he did some shrewd buying and trading when the war was over. He started West with a small but good train, and he had two wagons with six head of mules to the wagon, knowing the mules would sell better in New Mexico than would oxen. He had six cows and a yearling bull, some pigs, chickens, and utensils. He was a proud man when he looked over his outfit, and he hired two boys with the train to help him with the extra wagon and the stock.
Comanches hit them before they were well started. They killed two men, and one woman and stampeded some stock. The wagon train continued, and at the forks of Little Creek they struck again, in force this time, and only Jim London came out of it alive. All his outfit was gone, and he escaped without weapons, food, or water.
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