by Steve Frazee
It occurred to him that he could get a present for Belle in Denver, something she couldn’t refuse in spite of her stiff pride. He was thinking of that when he started up the small green-edged stream on Trout Creek Pass.
His horses had come through the late spring in good shape. They were not fat and they were full of energy. They would get him to Denver half a day earlier than the ones he had left behind. They went up the winding stream among the rocks with a will, but after he had gone half a mile, the compression of limited distance ahead and behind began to worry him.
He turned up a sandy gulch and went to the top of a hill on the north side of the pass. From there he could look across the valley and clear on to the fold of the gulch he had left this morning.
With a coldly thoughtful expression he saw the dust of several riders just entering the grove where the freighters were. He waited and watched the riders break out soon afterward on the other side. He considered the idea of quick flight. Unless they had far better horses than he thought they had, he could increase the miles between them from here to Garo, where he could undoubtedly get fresh horses. By stripping everything from the pack horse but the gold, he could make a straight-out race of it without stopping anywhere to change horses, but there was the chance that the pursuers might change horses themselves.
With growing anger, Cushman watched the dust cloud. The horsemen might not be after him at all. He remembered a wagon train that had almost killed their oxen coming into Ruby Valley after mistaking dust devils for Indian smoke signals. Cushman was not going to run from nothing. In fact, he was not going to run at all.
He eased the cinch on his saddle. He dumped the camping gear from the pack horse and led the animal close to a high, flat rock and dragged the panniers of gold off it.
He saw the distant riders stop where his trail to the ranch met the fork of the pass road. They milled around for several minutes. Two riders went on toward the ranch. The rest came straight toward the pass.
Cushman left the camping gear. He dragged the gold back on the pack horse. For half a mile he made a hard run with the horses until he found the place he wanted, a narrow, sandy gulch with steep rocky sides. He dismounted to cross it. On the far side he turned to his left and went on up into the piñons and tied the horses.
With his rifle he settled down about sixty yards away from where he had crossed the gulch. He chose a sitting position between two rocks that were spaced with a narrow gap commanding the gulch. He had never run because of physical fear. When men thought they had you on the go they were like coyotes after a crippled deer.
Men had trusted him with their gold. He had accepted the responsibility and he would carry it. There was a bigger risk in running than in making his stand now.
When he heard them coming they were risking the legs of their horses in the rocks as if they thought they were closing in. He knew they had seen the abandoned camping gear and thought he was running for it. He heard a man say, “He’ll beat us to the park, all right, but we’ll change horses and run him down before he hits the Platte.”
They were crowding each other as they came into the narrow gulch. Augie Reynolds was in the lead, a tall, handsome man who owned a paying claim on one of the branches of Campanero Creek. He raised his hand in a cavalry signal and yelled, “Don’t rush it here, boys!” He looked up the gulch for a better crossing and for a time he was staring at the rocks where Cushman lay concealed. Then he swung down and began to lead his horse where Cushman’s tracks showed.
Close behind him was Ennis Judson, and this could have been expected, Cushman thought, for Judson hung around the saloons in Victory, watching the gambling tables and the size of the pokes of the miners who played there. There were three others whom Cushman had seen but did not know. One of them, the last one, hesitated before going down into the gulch, seeking out an easier route than the others had followed. Cushman waited a split second longer. He wanted them all dismounted if possible.
Then Reynolds saw the tracks turning northward. He said, “Hey! There’s something — ”
Cushman shot him through the chest. He tried then for the man still mounted, still hesitating on the right side of the gulch, and missed the snap shot. The rider wheeled his horse and in one lunge was out of sight. Cushman fired into the mass of animals in the gulch. A horse snorted and reared and fell. Cushman saw the man who had been trying to mount it go spinning backward against a rock.
Someone fired twice at Cushman but the sounds only added to the confusion in the gulch. A riderless horse lunged up the bank and trampled Reynolds as it bolted away. Judson tried to scramble up the right bank on foot, his pistol in his hand as he ran. Cushman shot again and saw him tumble back into the gulch.
It was over then and Cushman still had ammunition left. One man had led his horse between the narrow squeeze of rocks down gulch and was riding away. Cushman stood up and walked slowly toward the scene. Judson had a broken leg. He was lying on his back, blinking at the sun. With shock fogging his expression, he rolled his head and said, “Hello, Cushman,” as if they were old friends.
Augie Reynolds was dead. Cushman knew the horse that had trampled him must have tried to miss him as it surged away but it had crushed his face.
The man who had been hurled against a rock as he tried to mount his plunging horse now sat up and groaned, holding his back with both hands. He was gray in the face and he held his head down toward one shoulder as he rocked back and forth. Cushman took away his weapons and kicked him to his feet. “Who are the two that went toward the ranch?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Cushman cocked his rifle and held it stomach-high on the fellow.
“Bert Garvey and Len Ebersole,” the man said.
“And the two that got away right here?”
“Stub Manders and Mossy Brown.” The man looked down at Judson. “You killed Augie, and look what you did to Jud. You had no call to run hog-wild, Cushman. I’m beginning to think you don’t have the gold after all. I think, by God, we’ve been tricked!”
They were a sorry pair, the one gray and sick, and Judson lying in the hot sand with his leg twisted out from his body. These two and Reynolds were done. The two survivors most likely had their purpose jarred completely awry. To make sure, Cushman would stop again farther up the pass.
“Hey! You can’t leave me here with Judson hurt like that!”
“Tell that to your friends.”
When Cushman reached the horses he saw dust coming from the direction of the ranch — Garvey and Ebersole. He judged Garvey as the kind of man who lacked the guts to resume the chase once he found out what had happened to his friends. The other two, Brown and Manders, were of unknown mettle.
Cushman went on up the pass and set another trap. Anger carried him for a time and then a reaction set in. There was nothing pleasant about shooting men. If you had to you did so, but it was a brutal business.
He waited until he was sure that his savage ambush there in the narrow gulch had broken up the pursuit.
The remark the man had made about his not having the gold stuck in his mind. He had stopped with the freighters; the pursuers surely had found that out, and it must have made them wonder about his seeming lack of urgency. He went back to the horses. While he had been waiting he had hoisted the small leather panniers off the pack horse with a rope run over a tree limb.
Now he backed the horse under the weight again and let the panniers down. It was a lot of money that he was responsible for. What had made that fellow with the injured back doubt that he had the gold?
The poor quality of the horses originally provided for the trip … was that actually part of the ruse? Dunbar’s remark about not fighting too hard to protect the gold had been odd.
Cushman unstrapped the top of one of the panniers and removed several of the sacks. He knew at once that their weight was not right for that much bulk of gold. Fastened to the tie around the neck of each sack was a tag. Cushman opened the pouch with Handy Gr
imes’s name on it. He took a pinch from the inside.
Sand.
He dumped some of the contents into the palm of his hand. Sand. He spilled the pouch into the bunch grass at his feet.
One by one he tried half a dozen sacks. They were all filled with sand. He saw the faces of the men whose names were on them. A coldness settled in him and he knew that those men had used him as a decoy without telling him so. It had been shame, not nervousness, that had made Dunbar so edgy.
Cushman unloaded the panniers, tossing the sacks aside after he glanced at the names. There were several pouches with Dunbar’s name on the tags and several others with Belle Drago’s name. Cushman tossed both sets back into the panniers and left all the others on the ground.
All of them had let him risk his life for nothing. They had sent him out to kill men over sand. Dunbar and Belle were the ones that had hurt him most.
Dunbar should have told him, and then Cushman would have made a run for it, instead of stopping deliberately to kill men.
Cushman leaned against the pack horse and tried to fight down his blackness of spirit with reason. Dunbar had known that he was to be only the decoy and had tried to hint that it was so; maybe there were reasons why he could not tell Cushman the truth.
It didn’t work out: there were no reasons that Cushman could understand why, at the last moment, he could not have been told the truth — except that the miners had not trusted him. Even Dunbar had not trusted him. The few steps Cushman had taken toward faith in fellow human beings crumbled away. He was back where he had started, back to nothing; but now he knew the difference between nothing and what he had started to achieve.
He started back to Victory. For the second time he surprised the men who had pursued him. He came out of the rocks at the head of the narrow gulch where he had ambushed them and stopped with his rifle across his saddle, looking down on the scene for a few moments before they knew he was close.
Then they saw him. They stared up at him with sullen anger. Garvey and Ebersole were there and the two men who had got away during the shooting. They were trying to set Judson’s leg. None of them made any move toward their weapons.
When the group fell silent Judson rolled his head and saw the reason. He cursed Cushman bitterly.
Cushman rode away into the piñons and stopped again, screened by the trees, waiting to see if anyone was disposed to follow him. None of them moved; they had had enough of him. He heard Judson accuse Garvey. “You gave us a bum steer, Garvey. You didn’t know what you were talking about.”
Cushman went on toward Victory. He was not followed.
At the grove of cottonwoods where he had stopped to help the freighters he heard shouts and laughter. Apparently they had gone ahead with their barbecue. Cushman wondered at the childish pleasure he had taken in showing off his skill before them.
He rode wide around the grove and went on up the lonely valley.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT WAS DARK when Cushman rode into Victory. Russian Bob’s place was roaring and there seemed to be a larger crowd than usual in Big John’s saloon. He went on to the restaurant. Through the window he saw Belle Drago putting pans of bread in the warming oven. Her new helper was scrubbing the floor.
Cushman took the panniers from the pack horse and walked in without knocking. Belle swung around to stare at him. The swamper leaned on his mop, sensing Cushman’s mood instantly and afraid of it.
Cushman dumped the panniers on a work table. “I brought your gold back, Belle. Dunbar’s too.” He turned and started out.
“Ed!” Belle came swiftly across the room. She gave the sacks on the table a quick look. “Wait a minute, Ed.”
Cushman looked at her quietly. It was understandable that she didn’t care to marry him, but he had done his best to earn her trust.
“Go find Jake Dunbar and bring him here. Quick!” Belle said to her helper. The youth leaned his mop against the wall and hurried away, stepping carefully around Cushman.
The woman met Cushman’s dark look without flinching. There was no shame in her, no fear. He saw how tired she was from the day’s work. Her appraisal of him was gentle, almost sad.
“It was a bad trip?” she asked.
“I killed a man — over sand.”
“Who?”
“Augie Reynolds,” Cushman said. He knew now why he had brought back only the sacks marked with the names of Belle Drago and Dunbar. They were the two people in Victory who meant something to him.
“The miners hanged one of Reynolds’s friends here today, and ran several more of them out of camp,” Belle said. “They found out that — ” She saw that Cushman wasn’t interested. “I didn’t know that you were the one carrying the sacks of sand until Dunbar told me, long after you left.”
Cushman said nothing.
“Why aren’t you mad at the whole camp, Ed?”
“The whole camp doesn’t count” Cushman saw fine lines of strain around Belle’s mouth and eyes.
She said, “Sit down. I’ll get some coffee. Jake will be here in a minute.”
“What can he say?”
“Sit down and find out.”
Dunbar came in a few minutes later. He looked from Belle to Cushman and needed no explanation. “I see you changed horses, Ed. I had some of the boys take ’em over to the livery for you. All right?” He picked up one of the sacks on the table and tossed it down again. “I couldn’t tell you. It was part of the plan.”
“Sure,” Cushman said. He thought of the agony he had caused in that narrow gulch. That the pursuers deserved it was of no moment. Right now he felt more kinship for the men he had fought than for the miners who had tricked him.
“Why’d you come here to torment Belle?” Dunbar asked. “She didn’t know what was going on until I told her, after you left.” Once more he picked up a sack and let it drop on the table. For the first time since Cushman had known him, Dunbar was having trouble holding on to his temper.
Belle touched his arm. “Tell him everything, Jake.”
“By God, I will. We made up two sets of pouches, one bunch with sand and the other the real stuff. The committee was afraid of itself. They put the last of it on me, even to picking the time to make the run.
“One of the sets of sacks was Heads, the other Tails. Over in Big John’s back room, Frank Eddy and some of the boys flipped a coin. It came up Tails. That meant the runner going out by Trout Creek Pass was to carry the Tails panniers — the sand. That was you because we’d already flipped to see whether you or Volgamore went that way.”
Dunbar spoke quietly, but anger was growing in his voice as he went on. “Volgamore was to go up-river and over Weston Pass. The thing of it was, when they flipped that silver dollar in Big John’s place, nobody but me knew which set of sacks had the sand and which had the gold. That way none of the committee could be accused of tipping off the deal.”
Dunbar gave Cushman a bitter look. “Nobody but me, that is. There was seventeen men in the thing, including Big John and Belle. There was right close to eighty thousand dollars in dust involved. I was the son of a bitch who knew which one of you was carrying it.
“I sweated blood until I came back to town and found out that Garvey had gone trotting over to the west fork and that Augie Reynolds and his bunch had taken out after you.” Dunbar picked up Cushman’s cup of coffee and drained it. “I did my best to tell you what you were carrying, although I wasn’t even supposed to do that.”
Deep inside Cushman felt shame. It was Dunbar they might have pulled to pieces if something had gone wrong. The committee of five had given him supreme trust, but if anything had slipped he would have been a scapegoat in an instant. Cushman knew now what a social conscience was.
“If they had taken after Volgamore, we had four horses left,” Dunbar said, “but they were worse than the ones I gave you, and no match at all for the horses Reynolds’s outfit had. We might not have been much help.”
Cushman did not wish to face Belle’s quiet l
ook; it was enough to meet Dunbar’s expression directly. Dunbar lifted one of the sacks and let it drop and kept staring at Cushman.
“I made a fool of myself,” Cushman said.
“Yes, you did,” Dunbar said flatly. “Trust is a two-way deal. You — ”
“Never mind, Jake,” Belle said.
“By God, I got as much patience as the next man,” Dunbar said, “but when somebody — ”
“Never mind, Jake,” Belle said again gently, and Dunbar was silent, looking at Cushman with exasperation.
For the fourth time, Dunbar picked up one of the sacks and tossed it down hard in front of Cushman. It came through to Cushman then, something that he had missed when his anger crippled his normal perceptions when he was handling the sacks with Dunbar’s name and Belle’s name on the tags.
He hefted the sack in front of him. He looked quickly from Dunbar to the woman.
“Yes!” Dunbar said. “Yes, damn it!”
Cushman untied the sack. It bore Belle’s name, and it held gold. He did not need to look at the others or even lift them.
“We didn’t doubt that you’d go clear through to Denver,” Belle said. “We knew how you’d feel. All Jake asked me was whether I wanted you to carry my gold. That’s all he told me about the plan until afterward.”
They sat looking at Cushman.
“I’m sorry,” Cushman said. His face was solemn but he was so twisted up inside that he could say no more.
Belle rose suddenly. “I’ve got to watch my bread. I think my last batch of yeast was too strong.”
“I’ll check up to see they’re giving your horses the best,” Dunbar said, “and I’ll arrange for somebody to go down to that ranch and bring back the livery nags tomorrow.”
Out in the darkness of the street Dunbar said, “What about Reynolds?”
Cushman told him the bare details.