278
“He said Whispering Smith was coming.”
“My poor boy.”
“He is coming, don’t be afraid. Do you know Whispering Smith? He is coming. The men to-night all said he was coming.”
The little fellow for a long time could not be coaxed away from his father, but his companion at length got him to the kitchen. When they came back to the bedroom the strange man was talking to him once more about his father. “We must try to think how he would like things done now, mustn’t we? All of us felt so bad when we rode in and had so much to do we couldn’t attend to taking care of your father. Did you know there are two men out at the crossing now, guarding it with rifles? But if you and I keep real quiet we can do something for him while the men are asleep; they have to ride all day to-morrow. We must wash his face and hands, don’t you think so? And brush his hair and his beard. If you could just find the basin and some water and a towel––you couldn’t find a brush, could you? Could you, honestly? Well! I call that a good boy––we shall have to have you on the railroad, sure. We must try to find some fresh clothes––these are cut and stained; then I will change his clothes, and we shall all feel better. Don’t disturb the men; they are tired.”
279
They worked together by the candle-light. When they had done, the boy had a violent crying spell, but Whispering Smith got him to lie down beside him on a blanket spread on the floor, where Smith got his back against the sod wall and took the boy’s head in his arm. He waited patiently for the boy to go to sleep, but Dan was afraid the murderers would come back. Once he lifted his head in a confidence. “Did you know my daddy used to run an engine?”
“No, I did not; but in the morning you must tell me all about it.”
Whenever there was a noise in the next room the child roused. After some time a new voice was heard; Kennedy had come and was asking questions. “Wake up here, somebody! Where is Whispering Smith?”
Dancing answered: “He’s right there in the bedroom, Farrell, staying with the boy.”
There was some stirring. Kennedy talked a little and at length stretched himself on the floor. When all was still again, Dannie’s hand crept slowly from the breast of his companion up to his chin, and the little hand, feeling softly every feature, stole over the strange face.
“What is it, Dannie?”
“Are you Whispering Smith?”
“Yes, Dannie. Shut your eyes.”
280
At three o’clock, when Kennedy lighted a candle and looked in, Smith was sitting with his back against the wall. The boy lay on his arm. Both were fast asleep. On the bed the dead man lay with a handkerchief over his face.
281CHAPTER XXIXWILLIAMS CACHE
Ed Banks had been recalled before daybreak from the middle pass. Two of the men wanted were now known to have crossed the creek, which meant they must work out of the country through Williams Cache.
“If you will take your best two men, Ed,” said Whispering Smith, sitting down with Banks at breakfast, “and strike straight for Canadian Pass to help Gene and Bob Johnson, I’ll undertake to ride in and talk to Rebstock while Kennedy and Bob Scott watch Deep Creek. The boy gives a good description, and the two men that did the job here are Du Sang and Flat Nose. Did I tell you how we picked up the trail yesterday? Magpies. They shot a scrub horse that gave out on them and skinned the brand. It hastened the banquet, but we got there before the birds were all seated. Great luck, wasn’t it? And it gave us a beautiful trail. One of the party crossed the Goose River at American Fork, and Brill Young and Reed followed282him. Four came through the Mission Mountains; that is a cinch and they are in the Cache––and if they get out it is our fault personally, Ed, and not the Lord’s.”
Williams Cache lies in the form of a great horn, with a narrow entrance at the lower end known as the Door, and a rock fissure at the upper end leading into Canadian Pass; but this fissure is so narrow that a man with a rifle could withstand a regiment. For a hundred miles east and west rise the granite walls of the Mission range, broken nowhere save by the formation known as the Cache. Even this does not penetrate the range; it is a pocket, and runs not over half-way into it and out again. But no man really knows the Cache; the most that may be said is that the main valley is known, and it is known as the roughest mountain fissure between the Spanish Sinks and the Mantrap country. Williams Cache lies between walls two thousand feet high, and within it is a small labyrinth of canyons. A generation ago, when Medicine Bend for one winter was the terminus of the overland railroad, vigilantes mercilessly cleaned out the town, and the few outlaws that escaped the shotgun and the noose at Medicine Bend found refuge in a far-away and unknown mountain gorge once named by French trappers the Cache. Years after these outcasts had come to infest it came one desperado283more ferocious than all that had gone before. He made a frontier retreat of the Cache, and left to it the legacy of his evil name, Williams. Since his day it has served, as it served before, for the haunt of outlawed men. No honest man lives in Williams Cache, and few men of any sort live there long, since their lives are lives of violence; neither the law nor a woman crosses Deep Creek. But from the day of Williams to this day the Cache has had its ruler, and when Whispering Smith rode with a little party through the Door into the Cache the morning after the murder in Mission Valley he sent an envoy to Rebstock, whose success as a cattle-thief had brought its inevitable penalty. It had made Rebstock a man of consequence and of property and a man subject to the anxieties and annoyances of such responsibility.
Sitting once in the Three Horses at Medicine Bend, Rebstock had talked with Whispering Smith. “I used to have a good time,” he growled. “When I was rustling a little bunch of steers, just a small bunch all by myself, and hadn’t a cent in the world, no place to sleep and nothing to eat, I had a good time. Now I have to keep my money in the bank; that ain’t pleasant––you know that. Every man that brings a bunch of cattle across Deep Creek has stole ’em, and expects me to buy ’em or lend him money. I’m busy with inspecters284all the time, deviling with brands, standing off the Stock Association and all kinds of trouble. I’ve got too many cows, too much money. I’m afraid somebody will shoot me if I go to sleep, or poison me if I take a drink. Whispering Smith, I’d like to give you a half-interest in my business. That’s on the square. You’re a young man, and handy; it wouldn’t cost you a cent, and you can have half of the whole shooting-match if you’ll cross Deep Creek and help me run the gang.” Such was Rebstock free from anxiety and in a confidential moment. Under pressure he was, like all men, different.
Whispering Smith had acquaintance even in the Cache, and after a little careful reconnoitring he found a crippled-up thief, driving a milch cow down the Cache, who was willing to take a message to the boss.
Whispering Smith gave his instructions explicitly, facing the messenger, as the two sat in their saddles, with an importunate eye. “Say to Rebstock exactly these words,” he insisted. “This is from Whispering Smith: I want Du Sang. He killed a friend of mine last night at Mission Springs. I happened to be near there and know he rode in last night. He can’t get out; the Canadian is plugged. I won’t stand for the killing, and it is Du Sang or a clean-up in the Cache all285around, and then I’ll get Du Sang anyway. Regards.”
Riding circumspectly in and about the entrance to the Cache, the party waited an hour for an answer. When the answer came, it was unsatisfactory. Rebstock declined to appear upon so trivial a matter, and Whispering Smith refused to specify a further grievance. More parley and stronger messages were necessary to stir the Deep Creek monarch, but at last he sent word asking Whispering Smith to come to his cabin accompanied only by Kennedy.
The two railroad men rode up the canyon together. “And now I will show you a lean and hungry thief grown monstrous and miserly, Farrell,” said Whispering Smith.
At the head of a short pocket between two sheer granite walls they saw Rebstock’s weather-beaten cabin, and he stood in front of it smoking. He looked moodily at his visitors out of eyes buried between rolls of fat. Whispering Smith was a little harsh as the two shook hands, but he dismounted and followed Rebstock into the house.
“What are you so high and mighty about?” he demanded, throwing his hat on the table near which Rebstock had seated himself. “Why don’t you come out when I send a man to you, or send word what you will do? What have you286got to kick about? Haven’t you been treated right?”
Being in no position to complain, but shrewdly aware that much unpleasantness was in the wind, Rebstock beat about the bush. He had had rheumatism; he couldn’t ride; he had been in bed three weeks and hadn’t seen Du Sang for three months. “You ain’t chasing up here after Du Sang because he killed a man at Mission Springs. I know better than that. That ain’t the first man he’s killed, and it ain’t a’ goin’ to be the last.”
Whispering Smith lifted his finger and for the first time smiled. “Now there you err, Rebstock––it is ’a goin’ to be’ the last. So you think I’m after you, do you? Well, if I were, what are you going to do about it? Rebstock, do you think, if I wantedyou, I would send a message for you to come out and meet me? Not on your life! When I want you I’ll come to your shack and drag you out by the hair of the head. Sit down!” roared Whispering Smith.
Rebstock, who weighed at least two hundred and seventy-five pounds, had lifted himself up to glare and swear freely. Now he dropped angrily back into his chair. “Well, who do you want?” he bellowed in kind.
A smile softened the asperity of the railroad man’s face. “That’s a fair question and I give287you a straight answer. I’m not bluffing: I want Du Sang.”
Rebstock squirmed. He swore with shortened breath that he knew nothing about Du Sang; that Du Sang had stolen his cattle; that hanging was too good for him; that he would join anypossein searching for him; and that he had not seen him for three months.
“Likely enough,” assented Whispering Smith, “but this is wasting time. He rode in here last night after killing old Dan Baggs. Your estimable nephew Barney is with him, and Karg is with him, and I want them; but, in especial and particular, I want Du Sang.”
Rebstock denied, protested, wheezed, and stormed, but Whispering Smith was immovable. He would not stir from the Cache upon any promises. Rebstock offered to surrender any one else in the Cache––hinted strongly at two different men for whom handsome rewards were out; but every compromise suggested was met with the same good-natured words: “I want Du Sang.”
At last the smile changed on Whispering Smith’s face. It lighted his eyes still, but with a different expression. “See here, Rebstock, you and I have always got along, haven’t we? I’ve no desire to crowd any man to the wall that is a man. Now I am going to tell you the simple truth. Du Sang288has got you scared to death. That man is a faker, Rebstock. Because he kills men right and left without any provocation, you think he is dangerous. He isn’t; there are a dozen men in the Cache just as good with a gun as Du Sang is. Don’t shake your head. I know what I’m talking about. He is a jay with a gun, and you may tell him I said so; do you hear? Tell him to come out if he wants me to demonstrate it. He has got everybody, including you, scared to death. Now, I say, don’t be silly. I want Du Sang.”
Rebstock rose to his feet solemnly and pointed his finger at Whispering Smith. “Whispering Smith, you know me––”
“I know you for a fat rascal.”
“That’s all right. You know me, and, just as you say, we always get along because we both got sense.”
“You’re hiding yours to-day, Rebstock.”
“No matter; I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you all the horseflesh you can kill and all the men you can hire to go after him, and I’ll bury your dead myself. You think he can’t shoot? I give you a tip on the square.” Whispering Smith snorted. “He’ll shoot the four buttons off your coat in four shots.” Smith kicked Rebstock’s dog contemptuously. “And do it while you are falling down. I’ve seen him do it,” persisted Rebstock,289moist with perspiration. “I’m not looking for a chance to go against a sure thing; I wash my hands of the job.”
Whispering Smith rose. “It was no trick to see he had you scared to death. You are losing your wits, old man. The albino is a faker, and I tell you I am going to run him out of the country.” Whispering Smith reached for his hat. “Our treaty ends right here. You promised to harbor no man in your sink that ever went against our road. You know as well as I do that this man, with four others, held up our train night before last at Tower W, shot our engineman to death for mere delight, killed a messenger, took sixty-five thousand dollars out of the through safe, and made his good get-away. Now, don’t lie; you know every word of it, and you thought you could pull it out of me by a bluff. I track him to your door. He is inside the Cache this minute. You know every curve and canyon and pocket and washout in it, and every cut-throat and jail-bird in it, and they pay you blood-money and hush-money every month; and when I ask you not to give up a dozen men the company is entitled to, but merely to send this pink-eyed lobster out with his guns to talk with me, you wash your hands of the job, do you? Now listen. If you don’t send Du Sang into the open before noon to-morrow, I’ll run every290living steer and every living man out of Williams Cache before I cross the Crawling Stone again, so help me God! And I’ll send for cowboys within thirty minutes to begin the job. I’ll scrape your Deep Creek canyons till the rattlesnakes squeal. I’ll make Williams Cache so wild that a timber-wolf can’t follow his own trail through it. You’ll break with me, will you, Rebstock? Then wind up your bank account; before I finish with you I’ll put you in stripes and feed buzzards off your table.”
Rebstock’s face was apoplectic. He choked with a torrent of oaths. Whispering Smith, paying no attention, walked out to where Kennedy was waiting. He swung into the saddle, ignoring Rebstock’s abjurations, and with Kennedy rode away.
“It is hard to do anything with a man that is scared to death,” said Smith to his companion. “Then, too, Rebstock’s nephew is probably in this. In any case, when Du Sang has got Rebstock scared, he is a dangerous man to be abroad. We have got to smoke him out, Farrell. Lance Dunning insisted the other day he wanted to do me a favor. I’ll see if he’ll lend me Stormy Gorman and some of his cowpunchers for a round-up. We’ve got to smoke Du Sang out. A round-up is the thing. But, by Heaven, if that round-up is291actually pulled off it will be a classic when you and I are gone.”
Thirty minutes afterward, messengers had taken the Frenchman trail for Lance Dunning’s cowboys.
292CHAPTER XXXTHE FIGHT IN THE CACHE
A clear night and a good moon made a long ride possible, and the Crawling Stone contingent, headed by Stormy Gorman, began coming into the railroad camp by three o’clock the next morning. With them rode the two Youngs, who had lost the trail they followed across Goose River and joined the cowboys on the road to the north.
The party divided under Kennedy and Smith, who rode through the Door into the Cache just before daybreak.
“I don’t know what I am steering you against this morning, Farrell,” said Whispering Smith. “Certainly I should hate to run you into Du Sang, but we can’t tell where we shall strike him. If we have laid out the work right I ought to see him as soon as anybody does. Accidents do happen, but remember he will never be any more dangerous than he is at the first moment. Get him to talk. He gets nervous if he can’t shoot right away. When you pull, get a bullet into his stomach293at the start, if you possibly can, to spoil his aim. We mustn’t make the mistake of underestimating him. Rebstock is right: he is a fright with a revolver, and Sinclair and Seagrue are the only men in the mountains that can handle a rifle with him. Now we split here; and good luck!”
“Don’t you want to take Brill Young with you?”
“You take both the Youngs, Farrell. We shall be among rocks, and if he tries to rush us there is cover.”
Stormy Gorman with four Crawling Stone cowboys followed Whispering Smith. Every rider on the range had a grievance against Williams Cache, and any of them would have been glad to undertake reprisals against the rustlers under the wing of Whispering Smith.
Just how in the mountains––without telegraph, newspapers, and all ordinary means of publicity––news travels so fast may not certainly be said. The scattered lines of telephone wires help, but news outstrips the wires. Moreover, there are no telephones in the Mission Mountains. But on the morning that the round-up party rode into the Cache it was known in the streets of Medicine Bend that the Tower W men had been tracked into the north country; that some, if not all, of them were in Williams Cache; that an ultimatum294had been given, and that Whispering Smith and Kennedy had already ridden in with their men to make it good.
Whispering Smith, with the cowboys, took the rough country to the left, and Kennedy and his party took the south prong of the Cache Creek. The instructions were to make a clean sweep as the line advanced. Behind the centre rode three men to take stock driven in from the wings. Word that was brief but reasonable had been sent everywhere ahead. Every man, it was promised, that could prove property should have a chance to do so at the Door that day and the next; but any brands that showed stolen cattle, or that had been skinned or tampered with in any way, were to be turned over to the Stock Association for the benefit of owners.
The very first pocket raided started a row and uncovered eighty head of five-year-old steers bearing a mutilated Duck Bar brand. It was like poking at rattlesnakes to undertake to clean out the grassy retreats of the Cache, but the work was pushed on in spite of protests, threats, and resistance. Every man that rode out openly to make a protest was referred calmly to Rebstock, and before very long Rebstock’s cabin had more men around it than had been seen together in the Cache for years. The impression that the whole jig was295up, and that the refugees had been sold out by their own boss, was one that no railroad man undertook to discourage. The cowboys insisted on the cattle, with the assurance that Rebstock could explain everything. By noon the Cache was in an uproar. The cowboys were riding carefully, and their guards, rifles in hand, were watching the corners. Ahead of the slowly moving line with the growing bunch of cattle behind it, flourished as it were rather conspicuously, fugitive riders dashed back and forth with curses and yells across the narrow valley. If it had been Whispering Smith’s intention to raise a large-sized row it was apparent that he had been successful. Rebstock, driven to desperation, held council after council to determine what to do. Sorties were discussed, ambushes considered, and a pitched battle was planned. But, while ideas were plentiful, no one aspired to lead an attack on Whispering Smith.
Moreover, Williams Cache, it was conceded, would in the end be worsted if the company and the cowmen together seriously undertook with men and unlimited money to clean it out. Whispering Smith’s party had no explanation to offer for the round-up, but when Rebstock made it known that the fight was over sending out Du Sang, the rage of the rustlers turned on Du Sang. Again, however, no man wanted to take up personally with296Du Sang the question of the reasonableness of Whispering Smith’s demand. Instead of doing so, they fell on Rebstock and demanded that if he were boss he make good and send Du Sang out.
Of all this commotion the railroad men saw only the outward indications. As the excitement grew on both sides there was perhaps a little more of display in the way the cattle were run in, especially when some long-lost bunch was brought to light and welcomed with yells from the centre. A steer was killed at noon, everybody fed, and the line moved forward. The wind, which had slept in the sunshine of the morning, rose in the afternoon, and the dust whirled in little clouds where men or animals moved. From the centre two men had gone back with the cattle gathered up to that time, and Bill Dancing, with Smith, Stormy Gorman, and two of the cowboys, were heading a draw to cross to the north side of the Cache, when three men rode out into the road five hundred yards ahead, and halted.
Whispering Smith spoke: “There come our men; stop here. This ground in front of us looks good to me; they may have chosen something over there that suits them better. Feel your guns and we’ll start forward slowly; don’t take your eyes off the bunch, whatever you do. Bill, you go back297and help the men with the cattle; there will be four of us against three then.”
“Not for mine!” said Bill Dancing bluntly. “You may need help from an old fool yet. I’ll see you through this and look after the cattle afterward.”
“Then, Stormy, one or two of you go back,” urged Whispering Smith, speaking to the cowboy foreman without turning his eyes. “There’s no need of five of us in this.”
But Stormy swore violently. “You go back yourself,” exclaimed Stormy, when he could control his feelings. “We’ll bring them fellows in for you in ten minutes with their hands in the air.”
“I know you would; I know it. But I’m paid for this sort of thing and you are not, and I advise no man to take unnecessary chances. If you all want to stay, why, stay; but don’t ride ahead of the line, and let me do all the talking. See that your guns are loose––you’ll never have but one chance to pull, and don’t pull till you’re ready. The albino is riding in the middle now, isn’t he? And a little back, playing for a quick drop. Watch him. Who is that on the right? Can it be George Seagrue? Well, this is a bunch. And I guess Karg is with them.”
Holding their horses to a slow walk, the two298parties gingerly approached each other. When the Cache riders halted the railroad riders halted; and when the three rode the five rode: but the three rode with absolute alignment and acted as one, while Whispering Smith had trouble in holding his men back until the two lines were fifty feet apart.
By this time the youngest of the cowboys had steadied and was thinking hard. Whispering Smith halted. In perfect order and sitting their horses as if they were riding parade, the horses ambling at a snail’s pace, the Cache riders advanced in the sunshine like one man. When Du Sang and his companions reined up, less than twelve feet separated the two lines.
In his tan shirt, Du Sang, with his yellow hair, his white eyelashes, and his narrow face, was the least impressive of the three men. The Norwegian, Seagrue, rode on the right, his florid blood showing under the tan on his neck and arms. He spoke to the cowboys from the ranch, and on the left the young fellow Karg, with the broken nose, black-eyed and alert, looked the men over in front of him and nodded to Dancing. Du Sang and his companions wore short-armed shirts; rifles were slung at their pommels, and revolvers stuck in their hip-scabbards. Whispering Smith, in his dusty suit of khaki, was the only man in either line who299showed no revolver, but a hammerless or muley Savage rifle hung beside his pommel.
Du Sang, blinking, spoke first: “Which of you fellows is heading this round-up?”
“I am heading the round-up,” said Whispering Smith. “Why? Have we got some of your cattle?”
The two men spoke as quietly as school-teachers. Whispering Smith’s expression in no way changed, except that as he spoke he lifted his eyebrows a little more than usual.
Du Sang looked at him closely as he went on: “What kind of a way is this to treat anybody? To ride into a valley like this and drive a man’s cows away from his door without notice or papers? Is your name Smith?”
“My name is Smith; yours is Du Sang. Yes, I’ll tell you, Du Sang. I carry an inspector’s card from the Mountain Stock Association––do you want to see it? When we get these cattle to the Door, any man in the Cache may come forward and prove his property. I shall leave instructions to that effect when we go, for I want you to go to Medicine Bend with me, Du Sang, as soon as convenient, and the men that are with me will finish the round-up.”
“What do you want me for? There’s no papers out against me, is there?”
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“No, but I’m an officer, Du Sang. I’ll see to the papers; I want you for murder.”
“So they tell me. Well, you’re after the wrong man. But I’ll go with you; I don’t care about that.”
“Neither do I, Du Sang; and as you have some friends along, I won’t break up the party. They may come, too.”
“What for?”
“For stopping a train at Tower W Saturday night.”
The three men looked at one another and laughed.
Du Sang with an oath spoke again: “The men you want are in Canada by this time. I can’t speak for my friends; I don’t know whether they want to go or not. As far as I am concerned, I haven’t killed anybody that I know of. I suppose you’ll pay my expenses back?”
“Why, yes, Du Sang, if you were coming back I would pay your expenses; but you are not coming back. You are riding down Williams Cache for the last time; you’ve ridden down it too many times already. This round-up is especially for you. Don’t deceive yourself; when you ride with me this time out of the Cache, you won’t come back.”
Du Sang laughed, but his blinking eyes were as301steady as a cat’s. It did not escape Whispering Smith’s notice that the mettlesome horses ridden by the outlaws were continually working around to the right of his party. He spoke amiably to Karg: “If you can’t manage that horse, Karg, I can. Play fair. It looks to me as if you and Du Sang were getting ready to run for it, and leave George Seagrue to shoot his way through alone.”
Du Sang, with some annoyance, intervened: “That’s all right; I’ll go with you. I’d rather see your papers, but if you’re Whispering Smith it’s all right. I’m due to shoot out a little game sometime with you at Medicine Bend, anyway.”
“Any time, Du Sang; only don’t let your hand wabble next time. It’s too close to your gun now to pull right.”
“Well, I told you I was going to come, didn’t I? And I’m coming––now!”
With the last word he whipped out his gun. There was a crash of bullets. Questioned once by McCloud and reproached for taking chances, Whispering Smith answered simply. “I have to take chances,” he said. “All I ask is an even break.”
But Kennedy had said there was no such thing as an even break with Whispering Smith. A few men in a generation amuse, baffle, and mystify other men with an art based on the principle that302the action of the hand is quicker than the action of the eye. With Whispering Smith the drawing of a revolver and the art of throwing his shots instantly from wherever his hand rested was pure sleight-of-hand. To a dexterity so fatal he added a judgment that had not failed when confronted with deceit. From the moment that Du Sang first spoke, Smith, convinced that he meant to shoot his way through the line, waited only for the moment to come. When Du Sang’s hand moved like a flash of light, Whispering Smith, who was holding his coat lapels in his hands, struck his pistol from the scabbard over his heart and threw a bullet at him before he could fire, as a conjurer throws a vanishing coin into the air. Spurring his horse fearfully as he did so, he dashed at Du Sang and Karg, leaped his horse through their line and, wheeling at arm’s length, shot again. Bill Dancing jumped in his saddle, swayed, and toppled to the ground. Stormy Gorman gave a single whoop at the spectacle and, with his two cowboys at his heels, fled for life.
Wheeling at arm’s length, shot again.
Wheeling at arm’s length, shot again.
303
More serious than all, Smith found himself among three fast revolvers, working from an unmanageable horse. The beast tried to follow the fleeing cowboys, and when faced sharply about showed temper. The trained horses of the outlaws stood like statues, but Smith had to fight with his horse bucking at every shot. He threw his bullets as best he could first over one shoulder and then over the other, and used the last cartridge in his revolver with Du Sang, Seagrue, and Karg shooting at him every time they could fire without hitting one another.
It was not the first time the Williams Cache gang had sworn to get him and had worked together to do it, but for the first time it looked as if they might do it. A single chance was left to Whispering Smith for his life, and with his coat slashed with bullets, he took it. For an instant his life hung on the success of a trick so appallingly awkward that a cleverer man might have failed in turning it. If his rifle should play free in the scabbard as he reached for it, he could fall to the ground, releasing it as he plunged from the saddle, and make a fight on his feet. If the rifle failed to release he was a dead man. To so narrow an issue are the cleverest combinations sometimes brought by chance. He dropped his empty revolver, ducked like a mud-hen on his horse’s neck, threw back his leg, and, with all the precision he could summon, caught the grip of his muley in both hands. He made his fall heavily to the ground, landing on his shoulder. But as he keeled from the saddle the last thing that rolled over the saddle, like the flash of a porpoise fin, was304the barrel of the rifle, secure in his hands. Karg, on horseback, was already bending over him, revolver in hand, but the shot was never fired. A thirty-thirty bullet from the ground knocked the gun into the air and tore every knuckle from Karg’s hand. Du Sang spurred in from the right. A rifle-slug like an axe at the root caught him through the middle. His fingers stiffened. His six-shooter fell to the ground and he clutched his side. Seagrue, ducking low, put spurs to his horse, and Whispering Smith, covered with dust, rose on the battle-field alone.
Hats, revolvers, and coats lay about him. Face downward, the huge bulk of Bill Dancing was stretched motionless in the road. Karg, crouching beside his fallen horse, held up the bloody stump of his gun hand, and Du Sang, fifty yards away, reeling like a drunken man in his saddle, spurred his horse in an aimless circle. Whispering Smith, running softly to the side of his own trembling animal, threw himself into the saddle, and, adjusting his rifle sights as the beast plunged down the draw, gave chase to Seagrue.
305CHAPTER XXXITHE DEATH OF DU SANG
Whispering Smith, with his horse in a lather, rode slowly back twenty minutes later with Seagrue disarmed ahead of him. The deserted battle-ground was alive with men. Stormy Gorman, hot for blood, had come back, captured Karg, and begun swearing all over again, and Smith listened with amiable surprise while he explained that seeing Dancing killed, and not being able to tell from Whispering Smith’s peculiar tactics which side he was shooting at, Gorman and his companions had gone for help. While they angrily surrounded Karg and Seagrue, Smith slipped from his horse where Bill Dancing lay, lifted the huge head from the dust, and tried to turn the giant over. A groan greeted the attempt.
“Bill, open your eyes! Why would you not do as I wanted you to?” he murmured bitterly to himself. A second groan answered him. Smith called for water, and from a canteen drenched the pallid forehead, talking softly meanwhile; but his efforts to restore consciousness were unavailing.306He turned to where two of the cowboys had dragged Karg to the ground and three others had their old companion Seagrue in hand. While two held huge revolvers within six inches of his head, the third was adjusting a rope-knot under his ear.
Whispering Smith became interested. “Hold on!” said he mildly, “what is loose? What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to hang these fellows,” answered Stormy, with a volley of hair-raising imprecations.
“Oh, no! Just put them on horses under guard.”
“That’s what we’re going to do,” exclaimed the foreman. “Only we’re going to run ’em over to those cottonwoods and drive the horses out from under ’em. Stand still, you tow-headed cow-thief!” he cried, slipping the noose up tight on George Seagrue’s neck.
“See here,” returned Whispering Smith, showing some annoyance, “you may be joking, but I am not. Either do as I tell you or release those men.”
“Well, I guess we are not joking very much. You heard me, didn’t you?” demanded Stormy angrily. “We are going to string these damned critters up right here in the draw on the first tree.”
Whispering Smith drew a pocket-knife and walked to Flat Nose, slit the rope around his neck,307pushed him out of the circle, and stood in front of him. “You can’t play horse with my prisoners,” he said curtly. “Get over here, Karg. Come, now, who is going to walk in first? You act like a school-boy, Gorman.”
Hard words and a wrangle followed, but Smith did not change expression, and there was a backdown. “Have you fellows let Du Sang get away while you were playing fool here?” he asked.
“Du Sang’s over the hill there on his horse, and full of fight yet,” exclaimed one.
“Then we will look him up,” suggested Smith. “Come, Seagrue.”
“Don’t go over there. He’ll get you if you do,” cried Gorman.
“Let us see about that. Seagrue, you and Karg walk ahead. Don’t duck or run, either of you. Go on.”
Just over the brow of the hill near which the fight had taken place, a man lay below a ledge of granite. The horse from which he had fallen was grazing close by, but the man had dragged himself out of the blinding sun to the shade of the sagebrush above the rock––the trail of it all lay very plain on the hard ground. Watching him narrowly, Smith, with his prisoners ahead and the cowboys riding in a circle behind, approached.
“Du Sang?”
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The man in the sagebrush turned his head.
Smith walked to him and bent down. “Are you suffering much, Du Sang?”
The wounded man, sinking with shock and internal hemorrhage, uttered a string of oaths.
Smith listened quietly till he had done; then he knelt beside him and put his hand on Du Sang’s hand. “Tell me where you are hit, Du Sang. Put your hand to it. Is it the stomach? Let me turn you on your side. Easy. Does your belt hurt? Just a minute, now; I can loosen that.”
“I know you,” muttered Du Sang thickly. Then his eyes––terrible, rolling, pink eyes––brightened and he swore violently.
“Du Sang, you are not bleeding much, but I’m afraid you are badly hit,” said Whispering Smith. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Get me some water.”
A creek flowed at no great distance below the hill, but the cowboys refused to go for water. Whispering Smith would have gone with Seagrue and Karg, but Du Sang begged him not to leave him alone lest Gorman should kill him. Smith canvassed the situation a moment. “I’ll put you on my horse,” said he at length, “and take you down to the creek.”
He turned to the cowboys and asked them to help, but they refused to touch Du Sang.
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Whispering Smith kept his patience. “Karg, take that horse’s head,” said he. “Come here, Seagrue; help me lift Du Sang on the horse. The boys seem to be afraid of getting blood on their hands.”
With Whispering Smith and Seagrue supporting Du Sang in the saddle and Karg leading the horse, the cavalcade moved slowly down to the creek, where a tiny stream purled among the rocks. The water revived the injured man for a moment; he had even strength enough, with some help, to ride again; and, moving in the same halting order, they took him to Rebstock’s cabin. Rebstock, at the door, refused to let the sinking man be brought into the house. He cursed Du Sang as the cause of all the trouble. But Du Sang cursed him with usury, and, while Whispering Smith listened, told Rebstock with bitter oaths that if he had given the boy Barney anything but a scrub horse they never would have been trailed. More than this concerning the affair Du Sang would not say, and never said. The procession turned from the door. Seagrue led the way to Rebstock’s stable, and they laid Du Sang on some hay.
Afterward they got a cot under him. With surprising vitality he talked a long time to Whispering Smith, but at last fell into a stupor. At nine o’clock that night he sat up. Ed Banks and310Kennedy were standing beside the cot. Du Sang became delirious, and in his delirium called the name of Whispering Smith; but Smith was at Baggs’s cabin with Bill Dancing. In a spasm of pain, Du Sang, opening his eyes, suddenly threw himself back. The cot broke, and the dying man rolled under the feet of the frightened horses. In the light of the lanterns they lifted him back, but he was bleeding slowly at the mouth, quite dead.
The surgeon, afterward, found two fatal wounds upon him. The first shot, passing through the stomach, explained Du Sang’s failure to kill at a distance in which, uninjured, he could have placed five shots within the compass of a silver dollar. Firing for Whispering Smith’s heart, he had, despite the fearful shock, put four bullets through his coat before the rifle-ball from the ground, tearing at right angles across the path of the first bullet, had cut down his life to a question of hours.
Bill Dancing, who had been hit in the head and stunned, had been moved back to the cabin at Mission Spring, and lay in the little bedroom. A doctor at Oroville had been sent for, but had not come. At midnight of the second day, Smith, who was beside his bed, saw him rouse up, and noted the brightness of his eyes as he looked around. “Bill,” he declared hopefully, as he sat beside the311bed, “you are better, hang it! I know you are. How do you feel?”
“Ain’t that blamed doctor here yet? Then give me my boots. I’m going back to Medicine Bend to Doc Torpy.”
In the morning Whispering Smith, who had cleansed and dressed the wound and felt sure the bullet had not penetrated the skull, offered no objection to the proposal beyond cautioning him to ride slowly. “You can go down part way with the prisoners, Bill,” suggested Whispering Smith. “Brill Young is going to take them to Oroville, and you can act as chairman of the guard.”
Before the party started, Smith called Seagrue to him. “George, you saved my life once. Do you remember––in the Pan Handle? Well, I gave you yours twice in the Cache day before yesterday. I don’t know how badly you are into this thing. If you kept clear of the killing at Tower W I will do what I can for you. Don’t talk to anybody.”
312CHAPTER XXXIIMcLOUD AND DICKSIE
News of the fight in Williams Cache reached Medicine Bend in the night. Horsemen, filling in the gaps between telephones leading to the north country, made the circuit complete, but the accounts, confused and colored in the repeating, came in a cloud of conflicting rumors. In the streets, little groups of men discussed the fragmentary reports as they came from the railroad offices. Toward morning, Sleepy Cat, nearer the scene of the fight, began sending in telegraphic reports in which truth and rumor were strangely mixed. McCloud waited at the wires all night, hoping for trustworthy advices as to the result, but received none. Even during the morning nothing came, and the silence seemed more ominous than the bad news of the early night. Routine business was almost suspended and McCloud and Rooney Lee kept the wires warm with inquiries, but neither the telephone nor the telegraph would yield any definite word as to what had actually313happened in the Williams Cache fight. It was easy to fear the worst.
At the noon hour McCloud was signing letters when Dicksie Dunning walked hurriedly up the hall and hesitated in the passageway before the open door of his office. He gave an exclamation as he pushed back his chair. She was in her riding-suit just as she had slipped from her saddle. “Oh, Mr. McCloud, have you heard the awful news? Whispering Smith was killed yesterday in Williams Cache by Du Sang.”
McCloud stiffened a little. “I hope that can’t be true. We have had nothing here but rumors; perhaps it is these that you have heard.”
“No, no! Blake, one of our men, was in the fight and got back at the ranch at nine o’clock this morning. I heard the story myself, and I rode right in to––to see Marion, and my courage failed me––I came here first. Does she know, do you think? Blake saw him fall from the saddle after he was shot, and everybody ran away, and Du Sang and two other men were firing at him as he lay on the ground. He could not possibly have escaped with his life, Blake said; he must have been riddled with bullets. Isn’t it terrible?” She sobbed suddenly, and McCloud, stunned at her words, led her to his chair and bent over her.
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“If his death means this to you, think of what it means to me!”
A flood of sympathy bore them together. The moment was hardly one for interruption, but the despatcher’s door opened and Rooney Lee halted, thunderstruck, on the threshold.
Dicksie’s hand disappeared in her handkerchief. McCloud had been in wrecks before, and gathered himself together unmoved. “What is it, Rooney?”
The very calmness of the two at the table disconcerted the despatcher. He held the message in his hand and shuffled his feet. “Give me your despatch,” said McCloud impatiently.
Quite unable to take his hollow eyes off Dicksie, poor Rooney advanced, handed the telegram to McCloud, and beat an awkward retreat.
McCloud devoured the words of the message at a glance.
“Ah!” he cried, “this is from Gordon himself, sent from Sleepy Cat. He must be safe and unhurt! Listen:
“Three of the Tower W men trailed into Williams Cache. In resisting arrest this morning, Du Sang was wounded and is dying to-night. Two prisoners, Karg and Seagrue. G. S.
“Three of the Tower W men trailed into Williams Cache. In resisting arrest this morning, Du Sang was wounded and is dying to-night. Two prisoners, Karg and Seagrue. G. S.
“Those are Gordon’s initials; it is the signature over which he telegraphs me. You see, this315was sent last night long after Blake left. He is safe; I will stake my life on it.”
Dicksie sank back while McCloud re-read the message. “Oh, isn’t that a relief?” she exclaimed. “But how can it be? I can’t understand it at all; but heissafe, isn’t he? I was heartbroken when I heard he was killed. Marion ought to know of this,” she said, rising. “I am going to tell her.”
“And may I come over after I tell Rooney Lee to repeat this to headquarters?”
“Why, of course, if you want to.”
When McCloud reached the cottage Dicksie met him. “Katie Dancing’s mother is sick, and she has gone home. Poor Marion is all alone this morning, and half dead with a sick headache,” said Dicksie. “But I told her, and she said she shouldn’t mind the headache now at all.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“I am going to get dinner; do you want to help?”
“I’m going to help.”
“Oh, you are? That would be very funny.”
“Funny or not, I’m going to help.”
“You would only be in the way.”
“You don’t know whether I should or not.”
“I knowIshould do much better if you would go back and run the railroad a few minutes.”