CHAPTER XXIV.GORILLA JAKE.
Tim Benson, having by some clever and careful climbing, got out of the cañon gorge, and to the high ground beyond it, was hastening along, hurrying so rapidly to put distance between himself and the men he feared that he had not stopped even long enough to remove the woman’s dress he wore, when he was brought to a sudden and gasping halt by seeing a revolver poked at him over the top of a bush.
“Try ter draw a gun, and I’ll down ye!” came in warning from behind the bush.
Benson’s hands, going involuntarily to the revolver he carried, stopped on touching the dress, which at the moment he had forgotten he was wearing.
“Hands up!” repeated the fellow behind the bush.
Grumbling, and still ready to fight, Benson complied; he did not believe the man who spoke was one of Buffalo Bill’s followers, which increased the likelihood that the man was an outlaw, like himself.
“Come out of that, and let me see you!” he said. “Likely I know you, if you’ve been herding round here.”
The man came out, with his revolver leveled.
As soon as Benson saw him he dropped down with a breath of relief, then began to laugh, as an understanding of the situation came to him. Yet the man saw nothing to laugh at.
“I’ll jest take that there hand bag,” he said, “and any other vallybles ye’ve got about ye.”
“Wow! Gorilla Jake!”
The man stopped with a grunt of surprise, but still kept the revolver pointed at Benson.
“It’s funny, eh?” he said. “Well, explain it, so’s I can laugh with ye.”
The fellow was a very giant, so far as stature went; but he seemed an immense ape, or gorilla, rather than a man. His arms were so abnormally long that the one which hung down at his side extended to his knee. His legs, by comparison, were short. His body was long; his shoulders big and thick. His head was small, with cunning, apelike eyes, set in the midst of a hairy face. His clothing was rough; his hat, a brimless thing, crowded down so tightly on his skull that the small size of his head was clearly shown.
“Who—who do you think I am?” Benson gasped.
“I reckon you’re ther woman what let out the screech when I come up to the stage over thar, after it whanged into the rock. I looked in at ye; then you give out that clippin’ yell and streaked it; I never see a female make sech a jump. And run! Well, you was runnin’ like a locomotive. I seen you had a hand bag, and that the stage held nothin’; so I piked out and follered ye. Now, I’ll take the hand bag.”
Tim Benson stared at the apelike man before him.
“When was this?” he asked.
“Waal, I’m figgerin’ that you know that jest as well as I do. I’ll thank ye fer the hand bag.”
“Was itthishand bag?”
“I’m sayin’ it was. Hand it over.”
“See here, you’re fooled.”
“Not on yer life, I ain’t. When ye hand that bag over, simply git rid of all yer other vallybles, too; fer I want ’em. How you knowed I’m called Gorilla Jake, I dunno; but it don’t make much difference. I’m him. Knowin’ it, you ought to know that I’ve got an impatient temper.”
Tim Benson stood up, smoothed out his facial muscles and threw off the dress he had drawn over his clothing. Then Gorilla Jake saw that he had a man to deal with. When fuller recognition struck him like a blow in the face, he fell back.
“Benson!” he howled.
“Needn’t yell it. There’s men on my trail; and they’ll be on yours in a minute, if they ain’t already. You know ’em, too—Buffalo Bill and his crowd.”
Gorilla Jake looked around, with a startled air.
“Was that the crowd that was up by the cañon?” he asked.
“You’re speakin’ it.”
“Gee-whittaker!”
“But you needn’t holler it. They’ll be hoppin’ along here soon enough, without that. What are you doing here?”
“What air you? And what was you playin’ woman fer?”
Tim Benson stood up, listening for sounds of pursuit.
“Let’s hunt a safe hole somewhere; then we can talk things over. It may be a lucky thing for both of us that we’ve met.”
“Not fer me—if you’ve got Buffalo Bill’s crowd follerin’ ye!”
But the apelike man followed Benson when the latter set out to seek a safer stopping place.
It was found by and by, in a hole, after a careful climb across a rocky slope.
“There’s a few bushes growing in the crevices here,” said Benson, “and they’ll help to hide us; while this position, away up here, gives us such an outlook that Cody’s crowd can’t come on us easy without us seeing them. So we can talk things over.”
Gorilla Jake dropped down inside the hole with Benson.
“First,” said Benson, “what brought you here?”
“I might answer by sayin’ my feet,” the apelike man answered, spreading his mouth in a horrid grin; “but that wouldn’t be explainin’, would it? So I forks over the information that I was on my way to Blossom Range, and was keepin’ out of the reg’lar trails simply as a matter of habit.”
“Any sheriffs chasin’ you?”
Gorilla Jake hesitated.
“Not this trip.”
“The last I heard of you,” said Benson, ignoring the hesitation, “was when it seemed you was going to hang for killing Nat Spargo, over in Valley Falls.”
Gorilla Jake drew up his huge shoulders.
“I got out o’ that,” he explained, “by makin’ the jury believe that I done the thing in self-defense; but it was a close squeeze.”
“What is your lay now?”
“Seems to me that I’m doin’ all the explainin’!” the apelike man objected. “But, never mind—I’ll git my whack at you when I’m through. Jest now I was goin’to Blossom Range, where I thought I might find some o’ my old pals. But the chief reason was the Utes, that’s livin’ jest north of it.”
He pulled a package from his pocket. Opening it, he displayed a number of brown tablets.
“Good trick,” he said; “I paid fifty dollars fer the recipe tellin’ how to make ’em. I never need to go road agentin’ no more, to git all the cash I want. Feller that I bought the recipe of was a Chinaman. Ordinary, I take the drugs in their raw state, and mix ’em in whisky. But over in Virginny City I found a drug-store man what made it up in that shape fer me; and I kin kerry a lot of it in a small compass.”
He held one of the brown tablets up in his fingers.
“Contains jest two grains,” he said. “Let a man mix one o’ them in his whisky, and then let him drink it, and he’s jest got to have more. After that, I’ve got him. It makes him see visions and have the howlingest happy ole time, with adventures in clear joy, such as never was; all fer a few cents. One tablet will do that. Give him three; and he gits wild. Give him four er five, and he’d kill his best friend fer a dollar. Give him as high as ten, and he jest lays down and don’t know nothin’ fer twenty-four hours straight.”
Tim Benson became intensely interested.
He took the tablet and looked at it; felt it, smelled it, then tasted it.
“Not much taste to it,” he remarked.
“It’s the effect what does the work.”
“You’ve tried ’em yourself?”
“Not any fer me, thank ye! If I did, I’d simply be eatin’ ’em all the time; and it would be the end of me.It gits the best of ’em, after a while, if they don’t stop it; and they can’t stop it so long as the stuff is to be had. Start an Injun at it, and first he’ll trade ye his gun; then he’ll pass over his ponies and his blankets; finally he’ll give ye his squaws, if ye want ’em.”
“He might murder you to get the stuff, I should think.”
“It don’t work that way. When he’s the wildest, he’s still got sense enough to pertect the man what furnishes him his means of happiness, so’s he kin git more. See? So I always feel safe.”
“Is it an opium compound?”
“Thar’s opium in it, and Indian hemp; them’s the principal ingrediments. Thar’s another thing called woolly loco; an’ some jalpasca, which comes frum Ceylon. But—shucks, d’ye think I’m goin’ ter give ye ther recipe of how to make this?”
Tim Benson sat staring at the little tablets.
“How many you got of them?” he asked.
“More’n enough to set a hundred men crazier’n a band o’ bobcats.”
“That’s good!”
“See hyer,” snarled the apelike man, showing his fang-like teeth. “Seems to me I’m doin’ all the talkin’—answerin’ all the questions! You ain’t opened up any information about yerself, thet I’ve noticed. No hawg bizness goes with me!”
“I was just thinking.”
“Didn’t I notice it. I want you should do some talkin’.”
“I think we can make this stuff highly useful.”
“I’m doin’ that already; it’s highly useful, to pullmoney in my direction. That’s a secrit I ain’t goin’ to sheer with nobody. Besides, you said we would have a confidential ixchange of information personal. I’ve laid my cards on the table; put down yours.”
“Oh, I see! You want to hear my story.”
“Prezackly.”
“It’s short—but not sweet. As I told you, Cody and his crowd are off over there somewhere, looking for me. I came in the Calumet Wells stage from Blossom Range this morning. In the stage with me was a woman, that you don’t know—a show girl, who goes by the name of Vera Bright. I thought a good deal of her at one time; in fact, me and a gambler and road agent by the name of John Ward ran a close race for a snug place in her affections. She allowed Ward was a better looker than myself, and he won out.”
“I know him.”
“You mean that you once knew him. Right now he is dead.”
“Wow! What did he die of?”
“A bullet out of my pistol.”
The apelike man edged away, staring at Benson.
“Does that hit you in a tender spot?”
“Not p’ticklerly; he wasn’t no friend of mine.”
“I’m glad of it. This woman I’m telling you about never forgave me for killing Ward; though, as I look at it, it was Ward for the graveyard, or me. He would have killed me, only that I got him first.”
Then Benson related his adventures in Blossom Range in detail, and when he had finished the apelike man sat staring in admiration at the master villain.
“You’re shore a wonder!” he ejaculated.
The compliment pleased Benson, and he smiled.
“I got away, as I said; then I met you.”
“Jest so. Well, I heard a rumble and noise in the trail, and saw the stage down there, with the horses snarled. Looked like nobody was in it, er that they was all dead; so I slid down to investigate. When I poked my nose in at the stage door thar was a woman layin’ on the cushions. I reckon she thought I was the devil, fer which I ain’t blamin’ her; I never did count much with women, ner in a beauty show. She let out a yell, jumped out of the stage, and fair flew; and she come in this direction.
“About that time I thought I heard men frum the cañon, and I kited; fer I didn’t want to meet ’em. I run over in this direction, and then I heard you. Thinkin’ it was maybe somebody that had follered me, I got behind that bush. It was my intention, if the man was alone, as I thought, to hold him up and rob him. But it was you.”
“So we understand each other.”
“Yes; now we understand each other.”
“Got any plans now?”
“I told you I was goin’ into the town, then to the Utes.”
“Better keep out of the town right now. As for the Utes, I want to talk with you about them.”
Throughout their talk Tim Benson had not been at ease, owing to his fear that Buffalo Bill’s party might come upon him unawares.
Now he got up and crept stealthily away, after telling the apelike man that he wanted to look round, and would be back in a minute.
When he returned he had news.
“I got a look at ’em,” he announced, “from that hill out there.”
“Wow! Ye did?” said Gorilla Jake, sitting up straighter.
“They’ve found the woman that you scared away from the stage—the woman I was telling you about—and they’re taking her back to it. I reckon they’ll send her on to Calumet Wells with Elmore, or back to Blossom Range.”
“Who’s Elmore?”
“Hank Elmore is the stage driver.”
“Oh!”
“Soon’s they’ve got the woman off their hands they’ll be up here, follerin’ our trail.”
“They’ll find it hard work trailin’ us acrost them rocks.”
“I guess you don’t know Cody. He can smell out a trail just like a bloodhound. He’ll find it.”
“Then I reckon we’d better be goin’ on.”
“Yes, after we’ve had a few more words. You said you were going into the town.”
“It was my calc’lation.”
“But you didn’t tell me who is after you!”
The apelike man stared again—and the clever road agent saw that in his guess he had hit the bull’s-eye.
“Who said anybody was after me?” said Gorilla Jake.
“Your manner told me. Who is it? Perhaps I can give you some information.”
The apelike man looked round, then at Benson.
“Might’s well tell it, I s’pose. I was follered by them cussed Betts brothers.”
“Jim Betts and Bill Betts, the Great Combination?”
“Edzackly. I see you know ’em.”
“Only too well. I saw ’em no longer ago than last night.”
Gorilla Jake stood up with a jump.
“But there’s no use getting scared about it—here!” assured the crafty road agent. “It was down in Blossom Range that I saw ’em.”
Gorilla Jake sat down, his great frame shivering.
“I might’s well tell ye the whole of it.”
“I think it will be better, if you do,” said Benson, who had lied in saying he had seen the Betts brothers in the town; the truth being he had not seen them there or anywhere else recently, though he knew who they were, and feared them almost as much as he did Buffalo Bill.
“I put a knife into the superintendent of the Goliath Mine, at Soda Springs,” Gorilla Jake explained. “Hard luck had me by the throat, and I was tryin’ to git the cash that was in the safe at the mine office. The superintendent was in the office, and we come together. He gripped me; and to git free I knifed him. It was only ten days ago. The thing made me pick up my feet and git out o’ that in a hurry. A reward was offered fer me alive er dead, by the mine directors, and it put the Bettses hot on my trail; but I thought I had shook ’em off.”
Benson concealed the feeling of satisfaction which this gave him.
“You won’t dare to go into the town now, at any rate,” he said.
“No, I reckon not.”
“And Buffalo Bill will help the Bettses, of course.”
“He allus does,” Gorilla Jake admitted, “when they happen ter be workin’ in the same territory.”
“So it looks to me that the best thing we can do is to join forces. And since you’ve told me about those tablets, and that you intended to go to the Utes, an idea has come to me.”
“I was goin’ to sell the stuff to the Utes; but I’ve got to have whisky as a basis, to soak the things up in; that’s why I was goin’ into Blossom Range—to git the whisky. Can’t do nothin’ without it. I doctor the whisky with the tablets. A red jest naturally likes the stuff, anyway; put that dope into it, and you couldn’t pry him away from it with a crowbar. He’ll trade everything he’s got fer it. I’ve heard them Utes have got some gold dust, and I know they’ve got furs and pelts. So that was my lay. I thought I’d be safe there for a time, and that maybe the Bettses would git tired, or lose the trail.”
Tim Benson sat thinking over this, forming his crafty plans. He knew now that Buffalo Bill would “get” him unless he could hurl a force against the scout’s party and crush it. That force might be the Utes.
“I’ve got the whisky,” he announced, “and I’ll go in with you in this thing; it will make for the safety of both of us. I’ve been using the Ute village as a hide-out on more than one occasion, and have found it a mighty good place. But Cody has brought up Matt Shepard, the sheriff, with a posse, and gone all through it, more than once recently. And he’ll do it again. The Utes are afraid of the sheriff and his posse; though without that posse backing him they wouldn’t stand it. Iron Bow told me the last time I was with him that he couldn’t hide me again; he’s afraid Shepard will lug him off tothe Blossom Range jail. So it’s not that the old scamp ain’t willing enough to hide me; and he wants the whisky I give him for it.”
“Where do ye keep this whisky? Git it in the town every time?”
“I used to. Lately I had a burro load cached in the hills, as a thing to fall back on, if I wasn’t able to get it in the town. Ye see, I didn’t dare take it all to the Utes at once, and didn’t want to. The most of it is in that cache now, in bottles.”
“Wow!”
“How does it hit you?”
“Great!”
“My idea is this; and you can tell if it will work. Give enough of that stuff of yours, in that whisky, to a lot of the warriors, and get them into a bloody humor; then make them think that Buffalo Bill’s crowd is out here to make trouble for ’em. It ought to send them out against Cody’s gang red-headed.”
The apelike man gurgled what he probably thought was a laugh.
“It’d do it.”
“Then, the thing is easy. If the stuff will do that we can simply wipe that crowd off the face of the earth.”
Gorilla Jake stood up and looked across the rocky land.
“How fur is it to that whisky cache? Seems to me I’d like a drink myself. But with no dope in it; none o’ that dope fer me!”
“The cache isn’t far from the Ute village.”
“If the reds has found it thar’ll be an empty cache when we git thar.”
“I don’t think they could find it.”
“I reckon we ought to be movin’ out of this. If I understood you, after Cody’s crowd put that woman back into the stage they’re likely to come this way, follerin’ our trails.”
“They’re sure to.”
He stepped farther out, still looking about.
Suddenly he turned and dived back. As he did so a bullet plunked against a rock right over his head.
“Gee-whiskers!” he sputtered. “That was a close call.”
No rifle or revolver report had sounded.
“Theyain’t in the town, you bet!”
His apelike face had changed in a moment to an ashen white, showing terror. “It was from Bill Betts’ rifle,” he said.
Tim Benson was not a little startled.
“You saw Bill Betts out there?” he asked.
“I seen the swish of his umbreller; then that came at me.”
Sweat began to stream out of his face.
“Take a look out, and see! It was over by that big rock. But look out fer yerself.”
A good deal puzzled, Tim Benson crept to the edge of the hole and looked out. After staring hard he failed to locate the umbrella.
“I don’t see anything,” he called back in a whisper.
“Mebby she’s circlin’!”
“She?”
“I see that yuh don’t know much about ther Betts brothers. Jim, he’s a tall, ganglin’ feller; while hisbrother is little; that’s Bill. And Bill he does the female lay.”
“I see. One of my little tricks—plays woman.”
“Where they ain’t known they purtend ter be husband and wife, and air gin’rally quarrelin’ about all ther time, jest to fool folks. The woman—I’ve kinder got inter ther habit o’ callin’ Bill a woman!—don’t carry any weepins that anybody knows of, but she is allers packin’ about with her a big gray umbreller. It’s her rifle; an air gun, that shoots wicked, yit don’t make a sound that you can hear ten yards off. She whanged at me jest now with her air gun. Which shows that she seen me. And o’ course she’s crawlin’ up. Ain’t thar no way o’ gittin’ out o’ this infernal hole without rushin’ out thar?”
“I don’t see her, or the umbrella,” Benson declared.
Gorilla Jake ventured to creep out at Benson’s side. As soon as he could see across the rocks he dropped down, dragging at the sleeve of his companion.
“Thar! Thar!” he said, shivering. “Don’t yer see it?”
“Blamed if I do.”
“That gray rock off thar; looks jest like a gray rock, anyhow. It’s her umbreller. She’s squattin behind it, waiting fer me to show myself. She’ll hold us hyer till Cody’s crowd comes up. It’s her game. She thinks she has got me in a hole, and now she has plugged up the hole.”
Tim Benson saw the “gray rock,” when Gorilla Jake pointed it out to him; but even then could hardly believe that the gray object was not a rock.
“If it’s an umbrella, a bullet through it ought to get Bill Betts,” he said.
“Which goes ter show that you don’t know her. Sheis layin’ off to one side, prob’ly, wi’ a rock coverin’ her, er coverin’ her head and shoulders, so a bullet through ther umbreller wouldn’t git her.”
He worked a little higher, even at a risk, and tried to look round. He was perspiring profusely, and his gray eyes glittered; while his lips, drawn back, revealed his fanglike teeth. More than ever he resembled an ape or gorilla, rather than a man.
Tim Benson was not slow in perceiving the desperate character of the situation. Bottled up in the hole by that deadly air rifle, what was to hinder the pretended woman from keeping them there until Buffalo Bill’s party could come up? That would mean Benson’s capture, as well as Gorilla Jake’s.
He drew back his head and studied the stones at the rear of the hole. Then he looked at the long arms of the man-ape, and his powerful shoulders. Benson himself was a small man; but this giant at his side might do the thing he could not. He could furnish the brains which Gorilla Jake lacked, and the man-ape could furnish the muscle which he lacked. It was, it seemed, a fortunate combination.
“If you’ve got the courage, Jake,” he said, “there’s no reason why, with your strength, you can’t push those two stones out of the way back there. It would furnish us a means to get out of this hole.”
Gorilla Jake stared at the stones, licking his hairy lips.
“If she didn’t pot me while I was doin’ it!” he objected.
Benson looked round again.
“Here, we can up-end this stone,” he said, “and it willscreen you from her bullets while you turn the trick. But we’ve got to be quick about it.”
“Quick’s the word! Cody’s crowd is comin’; I know it by the way she jest sets down thar behind that umbreller.”
They up-ended the stone, a thing easy to do when the man-ape applied his immense strength to the task.
Believing that this would screen him, Gorilla Jake now attacked the stones at the rear of the nest, which Benson pointed out. It was a wonderful exhibition of brute strength; the muscles on his arms and shoulders corded themselves up like knotted ropes, his breast heaved up and down convulsively, sweat rained from his face; but he moved the heaviest of the stones, and with a great surge of his writhing body threw it to one side. The next, which had lain under it, was not so difficult, and a hole had been opened.
Through it they pulled themselves; then slid their bodies down the slope on the other side.
They now had the rocky hill between themselves and the terrible “woman” with the umbrella.
Gorilla Jake bounded to his feet like a huge ball of live rubber.
“Now fer the tall hills!” he panted.
“Yes; this is our chance. Poke your nose at that peak over there, and keep going. I’ll try to hold you in sight. I guess we can give that crowd the slip even yet.”
Then they began to run, with the peak as their first objective point, being careful to keep to rocky and hard ground.