Back in the cabin Middleton faced Corcoran who still stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt, his fingers near his gun butts. A whimsical smile played on Middleton’s thin lips, and Corcoran smiled back; but it was the mirthless grin of a crouching panther.
“You can’t tangle me up with words like you did that big ox,” Corcoran said. “You let me walk into that trap. You knew your men were ribbin’ it up. You let ’em go ahead, when a word from you would have stopped it. You knew they’d think you wanted me killed, like Grimes, if you didn’t say nothin’. You let ’em think that, but you played safe by not givin’ any definite orders, so if anything went wrong, you could step out from under and shift the blame onto McNab.”
Middleton smiled appreciatively, and nodded coolly.
“That’s right. All of it. You’re no fool, Corcoran.”
Corcoran ripped out an oath, and this glimpse of the passionate nature that lurked under his inscrutable exterior was like a momentary glimpse of an enraged cougar, eyes blazing, spitting and snarling.
“Why?” he exclaimed. “Why did you plot all this for me? If you had a grudge against Glanton, I can understand why you’d rib up a trap for him, though you wouldn’t have had no more luck with him than you have with me. But you ain’t got no feud against me. I never saw you before this mornin’!”
“I have no feud with you; I had none with Glanton. But if Fate hadn’t thrown you into my path, it would have been Glanton who would have been ambushed in the Blackfoot Chief. Don’t you see, Corcoran? It was a test. I had to be sure you were the man I wanted.”
Corcoran scowled, puzzled himself now.
“What do you mean?”
“Sit down!” Middleton himself sat down on a nearby chair, unbuckled his gun-belt and threw it, with the heavy, holstered gun, onto a table, out of easy reach. Corcoran seated himself, but his vigilance did not relax, and his gaze rested on Middleton’s left arm pit, where a second gun might be hidden.
“In the first place,” said Middleton, his voice flowing tranquilly, but pitched too low to be heard outside the cabin, “I’m chief of the Vultures, as that fool said. I organized them, even before I was made sheriff. Killing a robber and murderer, who was working outside my gang, made the people of Wahpeton think I’d make a good sheriff. When they gave me the office, I saw what an advantage it would be to me and my gang.
“Our organization is airtight. There are about fifty men in the gang. They are scattered throughout these mountains. Some pose as miners; some are gamblers — Ace Brent, for instance. He’s my right-hand man. Some work in saloons, some clerk in stores. One of the regular drivers of the stage-line company is a Vulture, and so is a clerk of the company, and one of the men who works in the company’s stables, tending the horses.
“With spies scattered all over the camp, I know who’s trying to take out gold, and when. It’s a cinch. We can’t lose.”
“I don’t see how the camp stands for it,” grunted Corcoran.
“Men are too crazy after gold to think about anything else. As long as a man isn’t molested himself, he doesn’t care much what happens to his neighbors. We are organized; they are not. We know who to trust; they don’t. It can’t last forever. Sooner or later the more intelligent citizens will organize themselves into a vigilante committee and sweep the gulch clean. But when that happens, I intend to be far away — with one man I can trust.”
Corcoran nodded, comprehension beginning to gleam in his eyes.
“Already some men are talking vigilante. Colonel Hopkins, for instance. I encourage him as subtly as I can.”
“Why, in the name of Satan?”
“To avert suspicion; and for another reason. The vigilantes will serve my purpose at the end.”
“And your purpose is to skip out and leave the gang holdin’ the sack!”
“Exactly! Look here!”
Taking the candle from the table, he led the way through a back room, where heavy shutters covered the one window. Shutting the door, he turned to the back wall and drew aside some skins which were hung over it. Setting the candle on a roughly hewed table, he fumbled at the logs, and a section swung outward, revealing a heavy plank door set in the solid rock against which the back wall of the cabin was built. It was braced with iron and showed a ponderous lock. Middleton produced a key, and turned it in the lock, and pushed the door inward. He lifted the candle and revealed a small cave, lined and heaped with canvas and buckskin sacks. One of these sacks had burst open, and a golden stream caught the glints of the candle.
“Gold! Sacks and sacks of it!”
Corcoran caught his breath, and his eyes glittered like a wolf’s in the candlelight. No man could visualize the contents of those bags unmoved. And the gold-madness had long ago entered Corcoran’s veins, more powerfully than he had dreamed, even though he had followed the lure to California and back over the mountains again. The sight of that glittering heap, of those bulging sacks, sent his pulses pounding in his temples, and his hand unconsciously locked on the butt of a gun.
“There must be a million there!”
“Enough to require a good-sized mule-train to pack it out,” answered Middleton. “You see why I have to have a man to help me the night I pull out. And I need a man like you. You’re an outdoor man, hardened by wilderness travel. You’re a frontiersman, a vaquero, a trail-driver. These men I lead are mostly rats that grew up in border towns — gamblers, thieves, barroom gladiators, saloon-bred gunmen; a few miners gone wrong. You can stand things that would kill any of them.
“The flight we’ll have to make will be hard traveling. We’ll have to leave the beaten trails and strike out through the mountains. They’ll be sure to follow us, and we’ll probably have to fight them off. Then there are Indians — Blackfeet and Crows; we may run into a war party of them. I knew I had to have a fighting man of the keenest type; not only a fighting man, but a man bred on the frontier. That’s why I sent for Glanton. But you’re a better man than he was.”
Corcoran frowned his suspicion.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this at first?”
“Because I wanted to try you out. I wanted to be sure you were the right man. I had to be sure. If you were stupid enough, and slow enough to be caught in such a trap as McNab and the rest would set for you, you weren’t the man I wanted.”
“You’re takin’ a lot for granted,” snapped Corcoran. “How do you know I’ll fall in with you and help you loot the camp and then double-cross your gang? What’s to prevent me from blowin’ your head off for the trick you played on me? Or spillin’ the beans to Hopkins, or to McNab?”
“Half a million in gold!” answered Middleton. “If you do any of those things, you’ll miss your chance to share that cache with me.”
He shut the door, locked it, pushed the other door to and hung the skins over it. Taking the candle he led the way back into the outer room.
He seated himself at the table and poured whisky from a jug into two glasses.
“Well, what about it?”
Corcoran did not at once reply. His brain was still filled with blinding golden visions. His countenance darkened, became sinister as he meditated, staring into his whisky glass.
The men of the West lived by their own code. The line between the outlaw and the honest cattleman or vaquero was sometimes a hair line, too vague to always be traced with accuracy. Men’s personal codes were frequently inconsistent, but rigid as iron. Corcoran would not have stolen one cow, or three cows from a squatter, but he had swept across the border to loot Mexican rancherios of hundreds of head. He would not hold up a man and take his money, nor would he murder a man in cold blood; but he felt no compunctions about killing a thief and taking the money the thief had stolen. The gold in that cache was bloodstained, the fruit of crimes to which he would have scorned to stoop. But his code of honesty did not prevent him from looting it from the thieves who had looted it in turn from honest men.
“What’s my part in the game?” Corcoran asked abruptly.
Middleton grinned zestfully.
“Good! I thought you’d see it my way. No man could look at that gold and refuse a share of it! They trust me more than they do any other member of the gang. That’s why I keep it here. They know — or think they know — that I couldn’t slip out with it. But that’s where we’ll fool them.
“Your job will be just what I told McNab: you’ll uphold law and order. I’ll tell the boys not to pull any more holdups inside the town itself, and that’ll give you a reputation. People will think you’ve got the gang too scared to work in close. You’ll enforce laws like those against shooting up saloons, fighting on the street, and the like. And you’ll catch the thieves that are still working alone. When you kill one we’ll make it appear that he was a Vulture. You’ve put yourself solid with the people tonight, by killing those fools in the Blackfoot Chief. We’ll keep up the deception.
“I don’t trust Ace Brent. I believe he’s secretly trying to usurp my place as chief of the gang. He’s too damned smart. But I don’t want you to kill him. He has too many friends in the gang. Even if they didn’t suspect I put you up to it, even if it looked like a private quarrel, they’d want your scalp. I’ll frame him — get somebody outside the gang to kill him, when the time comes.
“When we get ready to skip, I’ll set the vigilantes and the Vultures to battling each other — how, I don’t know, but I’ll find a way — and we’ll sneak while they’re at it. Then for California — South America and the sharing of the gold!”
“The sharin’ of the gold!” echoed Corcoran, his eyes lit with grim laughter.
Their hard hands met across the rough table, and the same enigmatic smile played on the lips of both men.
* * *
5. THE WHEEL BEGINS TO TURN
CORCORAN stalked through the milling crowd that swarmed in the street, and headed toward the Golden Garter Dance Hall and Saloon. A man lurching through the door with the wide swing of hilarious intoxication stumbled into him and clutched at him to keep from falling to the floor.
Corcoran righted him, smiling faintly into the bearded, rubicund countenance that peered into his.
“Steve Corcoran, by thunder!” whooped the inebriated one gleefully. “Besh damn’ deputy in the Territory! ‘S’ a honor to get picked up by Steve Corcoran! Come in and have a drink.”
“You’ve had too many now,” returned Corcoran.
“Right!” agreed the other. “I’m goin’ home now, ‘f I can get there. Lasht time I was a little full, I didn’t make it, by a quarter of a mile! I went to sleep in a ditch across from your shack. I’d ‘a’ come in and slept on the floor, only I was ‘fraid you’d shoot me for one of them derned Vultures!”
Men about them laughed. The intoxicated man was Joe Willoughby, a prominent merchant in Wahpeton, and extremely popular for his free-hearted and open-handed ways.
“Just knock on the door next time and tell me who it is,” grinned Corcoran. “You’re welcome to a blanket in the sheriff’s office, or a bunk in my room, any time you need it.”
“Soul of gener — generoshity!” proclaimed Willoughby boisterously. “Goin’ home now before the licker gets down in my legs. S’long, old pard!”
He weaved away down the street, amidst the jovial joshings of the miners, to which he retorted with bibulous good nature.
Corcoran turned again into the dance hall and brushed against another man, at whom he glanced sharply, noting the set jaw, the haggard countenance and the bloodshot eyes. This man, a young miner well known to Corcoran, pushed his way through the crowd and hurried up the street with the manner of a man who goes with a definite purpose. Corcoran hesitated, as though to follow him, then decided against it and entered the dance hall. Half the reason for a gunfighter’s continued existence lay in his ability to read and analyze the expressions men wore, to correctly interpret the jut of jaw, the glitter of eye. He knew this young miner was determined on some course of action that might result in violence. But the man was not a criminal, and Corcoran never interfered in private quarrels so long as they did not threaten the public safety.
A girl was singing, in a clear, melodious voice, to the accompaniment of a jangling, banging piano. As Corcoran seated himself at a table, with his back to the wall and a clear view of the whole hall before him, she concluded her number amid a boisterous clamor of applause. Her face lit as she saw him. Coming lightly across the hall, she sat down at his table. She rested her elbows on the table, cupped her chin in her hands, and fixed her wide clear gaze on his brown face.
“Shot any Vultures today, Steve?”
He made no answer as he lifted the glass of beer brought him by a waiter.
“They must be scared of you,” she continued, and something of youthful hero-worship glowed in her eyes. “There hasn’t been a murder or holdup in town for the past month, since you’ve been here. Of course you can’t be everywhere. They still kill men and rob them in the camps up the ravines, but they keep out of town.
“And that time you took the stage through to Yankton! It wasn’t your fault that they held it up and got the gold on the other side of Yankton. You weren’t in it, then. I wish I’d been there and seen the fight, when you fought off the men who tried to hold you up, halfway between here and Yankton.”
“There wasn’t any fight to it,” he said impatiently, restless under praise he knew he did not deserve.
“I know; they were afraid of you. You shot at them and they ran.”
Very true; it had been Middleton’s idea for Corcoran to take the stage through to the next town east, and beat off a fake attempt at holdup. Corcoran had never relished the memory; whatever his faults, he had the pride of his profession; a fake gunfight was as repugnant to him as a business hoax to an honest business man.
“Everybody knows that the stage company tried to hire you away from Middleton, as a regular shotgun-guard. But you told them that your business was to protect life and property here in Wahpeton.”
She meditated a moment and then laughed reminiscently.
“You know, when you pulled me off of Conchita that night, I thought you were just another blustering bully like McNab. I was beginning to believe that Middleton was taking pay from the Vultures, and that his deputies were crooked. I know things that some people don’t.” Her eyes became shadowed as if by an unpleasant memory in which, though her companion could not know it, was limned the handsome, sinister face of Ace Brent. “Or maybe people do. Maybe they guess things, but are afraid to say anything.
“But I was mistaken about you, and since you’re square, then Middleton must be, too. I guess it was just too big a job for him and his other deputies. None of them could have wiped out that gang in the Blackfoot Chief that night like you did. It wasn’t your fault that Tom Deal got away that night, before he could be questioned. If he hadn’t though, maybe you could have made him tell who the other Vultures were.”
“I met Jack McBride comin’ out of here,” said Corcoran abruptly. “He looked like he was about ready to start gunnin’ for somebody. Did he drink much in here?”
“Not much. I know what’s the matter with him. He’s been gambling too much down at the King of Diamonds. Ace Brent has been winning his money for a week. McBride’s nearly broke, and I believe he thinks Brent is crooked. He came in here, drank some whisky, and let fall a remark about having a showdown with Brent.”
Corcoran rose abruptly. “Reckon I better drift down towards the King of Diamonds. Somethin’ may bust loose there. McBride’s quick with a gun, and high tempered. Brent’s deadly. Their private business is none of my affair. But if they want to fight it out, they’ll have to get out where innocent people won’t get hit by stray slugs.”
Glory Bland watched him as his tall, erect figure swung out of the door, and there was a glow in her eyes that had never been awakened there by any other man.
Corcoran had almost reached the King of Diamonds gambling hall, when the ordinary noises of the street were split by the crash of a he
avy gun. Simultaneously men came headlong out of the doors, shouting, shoving, plunging in their haste.
“McBride’s killed!” bawled a hairy miner.
“No, it’s Brent!” yelped another. The crowd surged and milled, craning their necks to see through the windows, yet crowding back from the door in fear of stray bullets. As Corcoran made for the door he heard a man bawl in answer to an eager question: “McBride accused Brent of usin’ marked cards, and offered to prove it to the crowd. Brent said he’d kill him and pulled his gun to do it. But it snapped. I heard the hammer click. Then McBride drilled him before he could try again.”
Men gave way as Corcoran pushed through the crowd. Somebody yelped: “Look out, Steve! McBride’s on the warpath!”
Corcoran stepped into the gambling hall, which was deserted except for the gambler who lay dead on the floor, with a bullet-hole over his heart, and the killer who half-crouched with his back to the bar, and a smoking gun lifted in his hand.
McBride’s lips were twisted hard in a snarl, and he looked like a wolf at bay.
“Get back, Corcoran,” he warned. “I ain’t got nothin’ against you, but I ain’t goin’ to be murdered like a sheep.”
“Who said anything about murderin’ you?” demanded Corcoran impatiently.
“Oh, I know you wouldn’t. But Brent’s got friends. They’ll never let me get away with killin’ him. I believe he was a Vulture. I believe the Vultures will be after me for this. But if they get me, they’ve got to get me fightin’.”
“Nobody’s goin’ to hurt you,” said Corcoran tranquilly. “You better give me your gun and come along. I’ll have to arrest you, but it won’t amount to nothin’, and you ought to know it. As soon as a miners’ court can be got together, you’ll be tried and acquitted. It was a plain case of self-defense. I reckon no honest folks will do any grievin’ for Ace Brent.”
“But if I give up my gun and go to jail,” objected McBride, wavering, “I’m afraid the toughs will take me out and lynch me.”
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 260