CHAPTER XIVThe Heart of the Hills
JIM PRYSE was leaning against one of the verandah posts of his home in the Valley of Hope. And, just behind him, lounging in a low-seated chair, was a red-headed creature, freckled, clean-shaven. He was a man of perhaps thirty years. Certainly not more. And he was dressed in somewhat similar fashion to Pryse himself. The difference lay in the fact that he wore no coat or waistcoat over the yellowish silk shirt, whose sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and revealed forearms which suggested tremendous physical strength.
“Talk it out, Larry,” Jim said, as the other broke off from his half-laughing, wholly serious protest, and helped himself to a drink from the Rye whisky and water that stood on the small table close beside him. “Notions stick with me when I get ’em into my fool head. They take a deal of shifting. Still, I always reckon there’s things other folks can see that I’m mostly blind to, and I like to know about ’em.”
He gazed out over the shadowed, evening scene. It was as though the wand of some magician had passed over the valley he had known some two years back, when Hope and Despair had fought out their long battle in his half-starved soul.
The mighty background of it all was unchanged. There lay the shadowed forests sweeping up and about the giant hill-slopes, which helped to hold secret the sweet grass pastures which flooded the heart of the valley. There lay the calm, silvery winding path of the river that had once provided him with his principal means oflife. There lay the unending pastures that had first inspired his imagination. It was all there, just as he had known it in the days when Dan Quinlan’s ministering visits had meant his moral as well as physical salvation. But it was no longer simply a splendid picture of Nature’s handiwork. A complete transformation had been wrought.
The outline of it all was still clearly visible in the last of the daylight. Night shadows were gathering, and a few twinkling lights dotted the fringe of the forest beyond the river. There were buildings in almost every direction within half a mile of where he stood. They were low, squat buildings of green logs and skilful thatch, and represented human habitations for the unfortunate freight that had come to people the valley. Nearer by stood a number of larger buildings. They were barns standing in the vicinity of the corrals, which were many and stout. Beyond these lay the rectangular outlines of fenced pastures, which seemed to extend so far into the distance that they became completely lost to view. Beyond that were several hundred acres of fenced ploughing that were beyond his view.
The lowing of cattle came back to him from the corrals and the far pastures. The night sounds of the river, where the frog chorus was unceasing, no longer emphasised the desolation he had once known. The whole valley was alive with all that which the human mind delights in. There were occasional echoes stirred by human voices, and the friendly yelp of dogs. And then there, where he was standing, was his own beautiful log-built home, furnished as civilisation demands, and full of human companionship.
His had been the controlling mind that had brought it all about. His had been the wealth that had made it possible. And in the work of it all he had been supported without stint by the loyalty of his sister, and thischeerful, freckled creature who was revelling in one of his occasional cautionary protests.
Laurence Manford laughed as he set his glass back on the table and lit a fresh cigar.
“It’s not a deal of use, Jim,” he declared. “I haven’t a thing to say against the notion of it all. It’s the sort of notion any feller who knows you right would look for. It seems to me there’s boys born into this pretty swell old world of ours with most of the juice you ought to find in their heads running around the valves of their foolish hearts. It’s not reasonable to figger a feller’s heart can think right with the things inside it that don’t belong there. That’s your trouble. Guess you were born with a heart that’s short-circuited your thinking machine. Now, I’m the other way about. I start in to think at the right end of me, and, when anything else butts in, just beat it over the head till it quits. Being that way, I got a pretty wide view of this enterprise of yours, and find myself guessing darn hard about the way it’s going to end. We got forty crooks around this layout,” he finished up significantly, “and some of ’em are pretty tough.”
“Well?”
Jim moved back to a chair and sat himself opposite his fiery-headed friend. He was smiling contentiously, and Larry recognised that he must make good his argument.
“If I know a thing, that’s just what it isn’t,” he said, sending the ash of his cigar sprawling. “The forty-first blew in to-day with the record of a sewer.”
“But we don’t take in folks with that sort of record,” Jim protested. “Who sent him?”
“Your man in Vancouver.”
“Richards?”
“Sure.”
“What’s his trouble?”
“Smuggling Chinks. And with that goes the dopetrade, if I know a thing, though he don’t admit it. Then he beat the boy who arrested him over the head with a lead pipe, and made his getaway. He didn’t kill the feller, but—it wasn’t his fault. Richards reckoned because he hadn’t killed him he could send him along. It looks like Richards stretched a point in this boy’s case. And when that sort of thing happens it seems to me there’s an ugly look in it. Do you get me? This boy’s a real tough. You’ll see him in awhile.”
Pryse remained silent, and Larry went on. He pointed out across the valley where the twinkling lights were shining.
“I took a walk around those bunk-houses just after the dinner hour, and happened on some knife-play. You know that boy, Dago Naudin? Reckons he’s French, ’an stinks of sage brush. He’d chewed off Slattery’s right ear, and was yearning to disembowel him with a ten-inch knife that I’ll swear has tasted the job before. Here’s the knife.”
He drew a vicious-looking weapon out of a sheath slung at the back of his belt, and touched the edge of it with his thumb. It was horn handled, and studded with inlays of what looked like gold and silver.
“Mexican,” he said, passing it across to the other. “And I guess that’s his country, too. I jumped in to save murder, and nearly broke his wrist to get that knife. He cursed me and mine, and you and yours, in bastard Spanish. We’re going to get trouble with that tough. And Slattery’s not a deal better. Say, did you ever figger just how we stand right here? Do you ever remember Blanche? Oh, yes, I know. We got boys around here who’re mighty glad and pleased to be here. They’re boys we can count on good, in a way. There’s the Doc—Peter Lennox. There’s that boy Lovell Taylor, who tripped up in his bank in Toronto, and hashated himself for it ever since. There’s Jock Smith, who did what he did to save a woman from the husband who reckoned to kill her. There’s that queer soul Fingers, who, if he’s a crook at all, is a merry son-of-a-gun, anyway. Oh, yes. There’s boys who deserve all we can do for them. But there’s others——” He spread out his hands. “Dago Naudin’s the worst of the bunch. And Slattery’s darn bad, too.”
“And what d’you think they can do?”
“Why, every sort of old devilment you ever heard of, from giving this layout away to highway robbery, and murder of one Jim Pryse. And—there’s your sister, Blanche.”
“And what are we doing when that play starts?”
“Why, bucking a game, with the chances ten and more to one with the other feller.”
Pryse shook his white head, and smiled derisively.
“You know, Larry, one of the reasons—only one, mind—I was so almighty glad when you wouldn’t stand for me running this layout without taking a hand in the play yourself was that you’re the sort that looks all round and through a thing, and, having looked that way, makes up his mind and never shifts it. You’ve got a faculty I don’t know a deal about, and I’m glad to have you hand out the things that faculty suggests to you. But I want to say right here you’re seeing things just now I can’t get a glimpse of. There’s going to be no highway robbery and murder, with me for the victim. When it comes to that, I guess I’ve a real good hand to play. And I’ll play it to the limit. But you’re not thinking of Jim Pryse, boy. You’re just about as certain as I am that I can beat the game at a show-down, especially with Larry Manford at my elbow. It’s Blanche you got on your mind.”
Larry nodded, and there was no laughter in his eyes.
“I know,” Jim went on earnestly, “and I think the more of you for it. Blanche is dead game to the bone, and—and she’s worth the love of the best man in the world. And I want to say right here that when you and she fix things to get married you’ll get nothing in the world from me but my best goodwill and any old thing I can do to make things the way you’d have ’em. I allow there’s quite a big chance that we’re taking for Blanche. I saw that from the start—or, anyway, when I saw, and began to realise, the make-up of the crook. Now I’m ready, with you, to persuade her to beat it back to our home city. Do you guess she’ll quit us? Not if we both wear out our knee-caps crawling at her feet. She’s red-hot on this thing, and we’ve got to take the whole darn blame if things should turn amiss for her. You can’t impress me a thing more than I am impressed on this. I’m guessing all the time. And with men like Dago, and Slattery, and this new boy you tell me of, your best warning isn’t any too much. Knowing Blanche the way I know her, we’ve just got to do the best we both know.”
Larry re-lit the cigar he had permitted to go out and finished his drink.
“Sometimes I thought you didn’t realise, Jim,” he said. “You haven’t said a deal before. But you do, and I’m glad. You’re right. But for Blanche the worst of ’em wouldn’t matter a whoop in hell. But I’m crazy for Blanche, an’ I’d go stark, raving mad if things happened to her. No,” he finished up regretfully. “She wouldn’t quit. That’s the worst of it. That’s what——”
“Sets you so almighty crazy for the greatest woman I’ve ever known.”
Larry’s eyes shone responsively as Jim stood up. He pulled out his watch and looked at it. Then he, too, stood up, and for a moment gazed out into the twilit valley.
“I’ll round up that ‘stray’ for you, Jim,” he said, and stepped off the verandah.
Now a swinging oil lantern was shedding its warm light on the verandah. Jim Pryse was sitting at the table which the whisky decanter had recently occupied. A book like a ledger lay open before him. And Larry Manford was in occupation of a chair near by.
A shortish, stocky man, clad in a city suit, was standing before the table. He was black-eyed, with nearly a month’s growth of dark beard and whisker on his face. His eyes were small and narrow, and twinkled alertly, but without any amiability of expression.
“Name?” Pryse prepared to write. Then he added: “You don’t need to hand any name but that by which you wish to be known.”
“It don’t matter a curse, boss,” the man retorted sharply. “If this is the right joint folk reckon, names don’t need to worry. Richards knows me, anyway. Pike—Jack Pike. That’s the name I’ve carried fer most of ten years.”
“Wanted for?”
The man laughed softly.
“Yeller traffic, an’ spreadin’ out the cop who jumped in on me.”
“Richards sent you along?”
“Sure. He told me to make these hills, where I’d find the shelter I needed fer awhile. I hoofed the railroad to Raeburn, as the feller said, an’ waited around. Then I picked up a boy who put me wise.”
“Yes. Picked you up outside the depôt.”
“By the water-tank. That was how Richards said. I went there each day at noon till he came.”
Jim took down the details, and the crook looked on with a shade of anxiety.
“Say, what’s the game?” he asked sharply, eyeing the book and the man beyond it without friendliness. “Ther’ ain’t no trick in this? If ther’s cross work, I guess——”
“There’s no trickery.” Jim looked squarely into the man’s eyes, which shone fiercely in the lamplight. His own were smiling without warmth. There was something very compelling in them, and the man calmed at once under their regard. “You best understand just how things are here. Any man who’s up against the law in an ordinary way can get shelter here for just as long as he fancies—under conditions. There’s crimes I guess this place is no shelter for. Yours, as Richards has warned me, don’t rank with those crimes. This book is a roaster of the folks who come along. If you need our shelter—and you’re free to come or go when you choose—you’ve got to work for your keep, and will be paid for that work at the ordinary rate of pay. It’s farm and ranch work, cattle raising and grain. If you need to hide years you can stop right here on those terms. If you choose to quit to-morrow you’ll be guided clear, after being blindfold, same as you were brought here. You can go east or west or across the United States border. You’ll have to part with those two guns you’ve got in your pants if you fancy stopping around, though. There’s no need for guns here.”
The crook was on the point of sharp protest, but Jim’s voice anticipated him.
“There’s no argument. You can’t shelter here one night with those guns in your pants. Further, you’ll need to convince us you’ve no weapon of offence on you. That’s all.”
“If I hand ’em over, will I get ’em again when I quit?”
“Surely. This is a shelter for boys like you, not a ‘hold up.’”
The stranger reluctantly drew a pair of heavy automatic pistols from the two hip-pockets of his trousers, and still more reluctantly passed them across the table, butt first. The latter detail had a significance by no means lost upon those watching him. Jim took possession of them, and placed them in the drawer of the table.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Now, just oblige by showing me the linings of all your pockets—unless you are willing for my friend here to go through them. We take no chances.”
The man laughed bitterly.
“No, you surely don’t.”
“No,” agreed Jim calmly. “Those pockets?”
The man turned them out. There was nothing it was necessary to relieve him of, except some cartridge clips for his pistols. And he returned his goods to their places, his narrow eyes twinkling with something intended for a smile. As the last of the collection was replaced Larry cleared his throat.
“You best unfasten your vest, boy, and hand over that knife,” he said quietly.
The man turned like a tiger on the red-headed man, whom he had almost forgotten.
“What d’you mean?” he cried.
“Just what I say. That knife,” Larry said, without moving.
“Do you think I’m going to herd around with a bunch like you got here without——”
“We need that knife.”
Larry had risen from the chair, and the newcomer measured him with no friendly eyes. Then, as though his estimate was conclusive argument, he opened his cloth vest and produced a long sheath-knife and laid it on the table, hilt towards Jim.
Jim nodded and glanced across at Larry. Perhapsthere was a sign passed between them. At any rate, Jim turned on the crook.
“I think we’re through. My man Despard’ll pass you on to your right bunk-house, and see you get the blankets, and feed, and anything in reason you need. You can buy smoke and most anything else you need from him. Even a certain limit of booze. Work starts at daylight. You’re welcome here so long as you behave like a reasonable citizen. And if any danger from outside comes along, you’ll get ample warning. I want you to get this, and get it good. This layout is run dead right. It’s a sheer shelter from the things that worry you outside. We guarantee that. We call it the ‘Valley of Hope’ because it gives folks like you a chance of a getaway from what’s chasing you, and the chance of a fresh start. What we ask in return is work, and that you can act the reasonable man while you’re here. If you don’t, we can deal with any breaking of our rules. Stop around as long as you fancy, and you’re welcome.”
Completely disarmed, Pike’s whole attitude seemed to undergo a change. He drew a deep breath, and glanced from Jim’s snow-white head to the fiery red of Larry Manford. And quite suddenly his eyes twinkled with genuine good-nature.
“You two guys are pretty bright,” he grinned, “an’ someways I don’t feel sore about it. Well, you got me wher’ you need. I don’t guess I could put up a scrap worth callin’ with a skippin’ lamb. I’m to get right after mossbackin’. I’m goin’ to run a binder, an’ cut hay, an’ cordwood. Gee! Me! I want to laff. But it’s good, too. It surely is to a boy whose spent most of his time in the dark corners of the city, and only works overtime when there’s no moonlight to worry with. I’m only lookin’ fer shelter till the noise dies down. Then I’ll beat it over the United States border. Meanwhile I’ll chew those reg’lations good, an’ put ’em through. I’msurely goin’ to be a real peaceful mossback in this layout. Say——”
Jim waited. He wanted the man to talk. The psychology of the crook was a never-failing source of interest to him. The man flung out an arm, and the gesture was comprehensive.
“It kind of leaves me guessing, this,” he declared, and his eyes took in the wide, single-storied house, and passed on to the remotenesses of the valley. “You boys ain’t any religious bunch. You don’t seem the kind of junk them queer folks who run fancy societies are made of. This gent here,” he went on, indicating Larry, who was still standing, “looks the sort that belongs around a prize-ring. I’ve seen a deal worse’n him in a first-class sluggin’ match.” He chuckled in his throat. “I’d surely need all that knife, an’ them guns, if I got up agin’ him.” He shook his bullet head. “No. It beats me. You ain’t askin’ dollars. Only work. An’ you reckon to pay for that right. Well, what then? You got a swell ranch place. I’ve seen it in daylight. I guess it’s a business proposition of sorts.”
“Yes. It’s a sheer business proposition, and needs to pay.”
“Then why in hell get boys on the crook around to run it?”
The man’s question came sharply. Jim smiled up into the furtive eyes.
“That’s our business,” he said. “Your concern is, it’s a safe shelter just when you need one. You’ll be up with the daylight and in your blankets before ten o’clock. And you’ll be well paid for the work you do. You’ll eat good, and just live the way you feel, and, after awhile, the air and work’ll have cleaned out your vitals and made life seem good to you. For the rest, it doesn’t matter to you. There’s Despard waiting behind you. I’ll say good-night.”
Jack Pike glanced over his shoulder and discovered a burly white man standing immediately behind him. He had approached without a sound, and the stranger was unpleasantly startled at the vision. He looked into the man’s face, studying him with suspicion uppermost. But he said no word. Then he turned back to the man at the table, and his eyes were full of unvoiced questioning. He glanced round at the silent vision of the red-headed Larry. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
“So long,” he said curtly. And to the man behind him; “Lead the way, boy. This is the queerest joint I’ve lit on in years. But it don’t matter.”