The Killer

by Stewart Edward White

  CHAPTER II

  Nearly a year passed. If it had not been for the very tangible loss of ahundred and fifty thousand dollars, the little community at Bright'sCove might almost have come to doubt the evidence of their senses andthe accuracy of their memories, so fantastic on sober reflection did allthe circumstances become. Even the indisputable four hundred pounds ofgold could not quite avert an unconfessed suspicion of the uncanny.Miners are superstitious folk. Old Man Bright remembered the parting andinvolved curses of his squaw before she went back to her acorns and pinenuts. To Tibbetts alone he imparted a vague hint of the imaginings intowhich he had fallen. But he brooded much, seeking a plausible theorythat would not force him back on the powers of darkness. This he did notfind.

  Nor did any other man. It remained a mystery, a single bizarre anomalyin the life of the camp. For some time thereafter the express wentheavily guarded. The road was patrolled. Jimmy or George Gaynes inperson accompanied each shipment of dust. Their pay streak held out,increased steadily in value. They would hire no assistance for theactual mining in the shaft, although they had several hands to work atthe mill. One month they cleaned up twelve thousand dollars.

  "You bet I'm going," said Jimmy, "I don't care if it is only a littlecompared to what Bright and you fellows are sending. It's a heap sightto us, and I'm going to see it safe to the city. No more spooks in mine.I got my fingers crossed. Allah skazallalum! I don't know what a ghostwould want with cash assets, but they seemed to use George's and mylittle old five hundred, all right."

  Twelve months went by. Two expresses a month toiled up the road. Nothinghappened. Finally Jimmy decided that four good working days a month werea good deal to pay for apparently useless supervision. Three mencomprised the shot-gun guard. They, with the driver, were consideredample.

  "You'll have to get on without me," said Jimmy to them in farewell. "Begood boys. We've got the biggest clean-up yet aboard you."

  They started on the twenty-fifth trip since the hold-up. After a time,far up the mountain was heard a single shot. Inside of two hours theexpress drew sorrowfully into camp. The driver appeared to be alone. Inthe bottom of the wagon were the three guards weak and sick. The goldsacks were very much absent.

  "Done it again," said the driver. "Ain't more than got started afore thewhole outfit's down with the belly-ache. Too much of that cursed salmon.Told 'em so. I didn't eat none. That road agent hit her lucky this tripsure. He was all organized for business. Never showed himself at all.Just opened fire. Sent a bullet through the top of my hat. He's either adamn good shot or a damn poor one. I hung up both hands and yelled wewas down and out. What could I do? This outfit couldn't a fit a bumblebee. And I couldn't git away, or git hold of no gun, or see anything toshoot, if I did. He was behind that big rock."

  The men nodded. They were many of them hard hit, but they had lived toolong in the West not to recognize the justice of the driver's impliedcontention that he had done his best.

  "He told me to throw out them sacks, and to be damn quick about it,"went on the driver. "Then I drove home."

  "What sort of a lookin' fellow was he?" asked someone. "Same one as lastyear?"

  "I never seen him," said the driver. "He hung behind his rock. He wasorganized for shoot, and if the messengers hadn't happened to' a' beenout of it, I believe he could have killed us all."

  "What did his hoss look like?" inquired California John.

  "He didn't have no horse," stated the driver. "Leastways, not near him.There was no cover. He might have been around a p'int. And I can sw'arto this: there weren't no tracks of no kind from there to camp."

  They caught up horses and started out. When they came to the Lost Dog,they stopped and looked at each other.

  "Poor old Babes," said Simmins. "Biggest clean-up yet; and first timeone of 'em didn't go 'long."

  "I'm glad they didn't," said Tibbetts. "That agent would have killed 'emshore!"

  They called out the Gaynes brothers and broke the news. For once thejovial youngsters had no joke to make.

  "This is getting serious," said Jimmy, seriously. "We can't afford tolose that much."

  George whistled dolefully, and went into the corral for the mules.

  The party toiled up the mountain. Plainly in the dust could be made outthe trail of the express ascending and descending. Plain also were thesigns where the driver had dumped out the gold bags and turned around.From that point the tracks of a man and a horse led to the sheet ofrock. Beyond that, nothing.

  The men stared at each other a little frightened. Somebody swore softly.

  "Boys," said Bright in a strained voice, "do you know how much was inthat express? A half million! There's nary earthly hoss can carry overhalf a ton! And this one treads as light as a saddler."

  They looked at each other blankly. Several even glanced in apprehensionat the sky.

  In a perfunctory manner, for the sake of doing something, those skilledin trail-reading went back over the ground. Nothing was added to thefirst experience. At the point of robbery magically had appeared a manand--if the stage driver's solemn assertion that at the time of thehold-up no animal was in sight could be believed--subsequently, whenneeded, a large horse. Whence had they come? Not along the road ineither direction: the unbroken, deep dust assured that. Not down themountain from above, for the cliff rose sheer for at least three hundredfeet. Jimmy Gaynes, following unconsciously the general train ofconjecture, craned his neck over the edge of the road. The broken jaggedrock and shale dropped off an hundred feet to a tangle of manzanita andsnowbrush.

  California John looked over, too.

  "Couldn't even get sheep up that," said he, "let alone a sixteen-handhorse."

  Old Man Bright was sunk in a superstitious torpor. He had lost hundredsof thousands where he would have hated to spend pennies; yet thefinancial part of the loss hardly touched him. He mumbled fearfully tohimself, and took not the slightest interest in the half-heartedattempts to read the mystery. When the others moved, he moved with them,because he was afraid to be left alone.

  After the men had assured themselves again and again that the horse andthe man had apparently materialized from thin air exactly at the pointof robbery, they again followed the tracks to the broad sheet of rock.Whither had the robber gone? Back into the thin air whence he had come.There was no other solution. No tracks ahead; an absolute and physicalimpossibility of anything without wings getting up or down the flankingprecipices--these were the incontestable facts.

  After this second robbery a gloom descended on Bright's Cove whichlasted through many months. Old Man Bright hunted out the squaw withwhom he had first discovered the diggings, and set her up in anestablishment with gay curtains, glass danglers and red doileys. Eachmonth he paid for her provisions and sent to her a sum of money. In thismanner, at least, the phantom road agent had furthered the ends ofjustice. The sop to the powers of darkness appeared to be effective inthis respect: no more hold-ups occurred; no more mysterious tracksappeared in the dust; gradually men's minds swung back to the balancedand normal, and the life of the camp went forward on its appointed way.

  Nevertheless, certain effects remained. Each express went out heavilyguarded, and preceded and followed by men on horseback. Strangely enoughthe gamblers left camp. In a little more than a year Old Man Bright fellinto a settled melancholia from which his millions never helped him tothe very day of his death a little more than a year later.

  In the meantime, however varied the fortunes of the other mines andprospects, the Lost Dog continued to work toward a steadily increasingpaying basis. It never reached the proportions of the Clarice, butturned out an increasing value of dust at each clean-up. The Gaynes boystwo years before had been in debt for their groceries. Now they weresaid to have shipped out something like three or four hundred thousanddollars' worth of gold. Their friends used to wander down for theregular clean-up, just to rejoice over the youngsters' deserved goodluck. The little five stamp-mill crunched away steadily; the waterflowed; and in the riffles
the heavy gold dust accumulated.

  "Why don't you-all put up a big mill, throw in a crew of men, and getbusy?" they were asked.

  "I'll tell you," replied George, "it's because we know a heap sight moreabout mining than we did when we came here. We have just one claim, andfrom all indications it's only a pocket. The Clarice is on a genuinelode; but we're likely to run into a 'horse' or pinch out most anyminute. When we do, it's all over but a few faint cries of fraud. And wecan empty that pocket just as well with a little jerkwater outfit likethis as we could with a big crew and a real mill. It'll take a littlelonger; but we're pulling it and quick enough."

  "Those Babes have more sense than we gave 'em credit for," commentedCalifornia John. "Their heads are level. They're dead right about it'sbein' a pocket. The stuff they run through there is the darndest mixture_I_ ever see gold in."

  Two months after this conversation the Babes drifted into camp toannounce that the expected pinch had come.

  "We're going," said Jimmy. "We have a heap plenty dust salted away; andthere's not a colour left in the Lost Dog. The mill machinery is forsale cheap. Any one can have the Lost Dog who wants it. We're going outto see what makes the wheels go 'round. You boys have a first claim onus wherever you find us. You've sure been good to us. If you catch thatspook, send us one of his tail feathers. It would be worth just twelvethousand five hundred to us."

  They sold the stamp-mill for almost nothing; packed eight animals withheavy things they had accumulated; and departed up the steep white road,over the rim to the outer world whence came no word of them more. Thecamp went on prospering. Old Man Bright died. The heavily guardedexpress continued to drag out yellow gold by the hundredweight.

  About six weeks after the departure of the Babes, California Johnsaddled up his best horse, put on his best overalls, strapped about himhis shiny worn Colt's .45 and departed for his semi-annual visit to thevalleys and the towns. A week later he returned. It was about dusk. Atthe water trough he dismounted.

  "Boys," said he, quietly, "I've been held up." He eyed them quizzically."Up by the slide rock," he continued, "and by the spook."

  "Who was he?" "What was it?" they cried, starting to their feet.

  "It was Jimmy Gaynes," replied California John.

  "The Babe?" someone broke the stunned silence at last.

  "Precisely."

  "Well, I'll be damned!" cried Tibbetts.

  "Did he get much off you?" asked a miner after another pause.

  "He never took a thing."

  And on that, being much besieged, California John sat him down and toldof his experience.