242CHAPTER XXVTHE MAN ON THE FRENCHMAN
Sinclair’s place on the Frenchman backed up on a sharp rise against the foothills of the Bridger range, and the ranch buildings were strung along the creek. The ranch-house stood on ground high enough to command the country for miles up and down the valley.
Only two roads lead from Medicine Bend and the south into the Frenchman country: one a wagon-road following Smoky Creek and running through Dale Canyon; the other a pack-road, known as the Gridley trail, crossing the Topah Topah Hills and making a short cut from the Dunning ranch on the Crawling Stone to the Frenchman. The entire valley is, in fact, so difficult of access, save by the long and roundabout wagon-road, that the sight of a complete outfit of buildings such as that put up by Sinclair always came as a surprise to the traveller who, reaching the crest of the hills, looked suddenly down a thousand feet on his well-ordered sheds and barns and corrals.
The rider who reaches the Topah Topah crest243on the Gridley trail now sees in the valley below only traces of what was so laboriously planned and perfectly maintained a few years ago. But even the ruins left on the Frenchman show the herculean labor undertaken by the man in setting up a comfortable and even an elaborate establishment in so inaccessible a spot. His defiance of all ordinary means of doing things was shown in his preference for bringing much of his building-material over the trail instead of around by the Smoky Creek road. A good part of the lumber that went into his house was packed over the Gridley trail. His piano was brought through the canyon on a wagon, but the mechanical player for the piano and his wagons themselves were packed over the trail on the backs of mules. A heavy steel range for the kitchen had been brought over the same way. For Sinclair no work was hard enough, none went fast enough, and revelry never rose high enough. During the time of his activity in the Frenchman Valley Sinclair had the best-appointed place between Williams Cache and the Crawling Stone, and in the Crawling Stone only the Dunning ranch would bear comparison with his own. On the Frenchman Sinclair kept an establishment the fame of which is still foremost in mountain story. Here his cows ranged the canyons and the hills for miles, and his horses were known from244Medicine Bend to Fort Tracy. Here he rallied his men, laid snares for his enemies, dispensed a reckless hospitality, ruled his men with an oath and a blow, and carried a six-shooter to explain orders and answer questions with.
Over the Gridley trail from the Crawling Stone Marion and Dicksie Dunning rode early in the morning the day after McCloud and his men left the Stone Ranch with their work done. The trail is a good three hours long, and they reached Sinclair’s place at about ten o’clock. He was waiting for Marion––she had sent word she should come––and he came out of the front door into the sunshine with a smile of welcome when he saw Dicksie with her. Dicksie, long an admirer of Sinclair’s, as women usually were, had recast somewhat violently her opinions of him. She faced him now with a criminal consciousness that she knew too much. The weight of the dreadful secret weighed on her, and her responsibility in the issue of the day ahead did not help to make her greeting an easy one. One thing only was fixed in her mind and reflected in the tension of her lips and her eyes: the resolve to keep at every cost the promise she had given. For Dicksie had fallen under the spell of a man even more compelling than Sinclair, and felt strangely bounden to what she had said.
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Sinclair, however, had spirit enough to smooth quite away every embarrassment. “Bachelor’s quarters,” he explained roughly and pleasantly, as he led the two women toward the house. “Cowmen make poor housekeepers, but you must feel at home.” And when Dicksie, looking at his Indian rugs on the floors, the walls, and the couches, said she thought he had little to apologize for, Sinclair looked gratified and took off his hat again. “Just a moment,” he said, standing at the side of the door. “I’ve never been able to get Marion over here before, so it happens that a woman’s foot has never entered the new house. I want to watch one of you cross the threshold for the first time.”
Dicksie, moving ahead, retreated with a laugh. “You first, then, Marion.”
“No, Dicksie, you.”
“Never! you first.” So Marion, quite red and wretchedly ill at ease, walked into the ranch-house first.
Sinclair shone nowhere better than as a host. When he had placed his guests comfortably in the living-room he told them the story of the building of the house. Then he made a cicerone of himself, and explained, with running comments, each feature of his plan as he showed how it had been carried out through the various rooms. Surprised at the attractiveness of things, Dicksie found246herself making mental notes for her own use, and began asking questions. Sinclair was superb in answering, but the danger of admiring things became at once apparent, for when Dicksie exclaimed over a handsome bearskin, a rich dark brown grizzly-skin of unusual size, Sinclair told the story of the killing, bared his tremendous forearm to show where the polished claws had ripped him, and, disregarding Dicksie’s protests, insisted on sending the skin over to Crawling Stone Ranch as a souvenir of her visit.
“I live a great deal alone over here,” he said, waving Dicksie’s continued refusal magnificently aside as he moved into the next room. “I’ve got a few good dogs, and I hunt just enough to keep my hand in with a rifle.” Dicksie quailed a little at the smile that went with the words. “The men, at least the kind I mix with, don’t care for grizzly-skins, and to enjoy anything you’ve got to have sympathetic company––don’t you know that?” he asked, looking admiringly at Dicksie. “I’ve got another skin for you––a silver-tip,” he added in deep, gentle tones, addressing Marion. “It has a fine head, as fine as I ever saw in the Smithsonian. It is down at Medicine Bend now, being dressed and mounted. By the way, I’ve forgotten to ask you, Miss Dicksie, about the high water. How did you get through at the ranch?”
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Dicksie, sitting on the piano-bench, looked up with resolution. “Bravely!” she exclaimed. “Mr. McCloud came to our rescue with bags and mattresses and a hundred men, and he has put in a revetement a thousand feet long. Oh, we are regular river experts at our house now! Had you any trouble here, Mr. Sinclair?”
“No, the Frenchman behaves pretty well in the rock. We had forty feet of water here one day, though; forty feet, that’s right. McCloud, yes; able fellow, I guess, too, though he and I don’t hit it off.” Sinclair sat back in his chair, and as he spoke he spoke magnanimously. “He doesn’t like me, but that is no fault of his; railroad men, and good ones, too, sometimes get started wrong with one another. Well, I’m glad he took care of you. Try that piano, Miss Dicksie, will you? I don’t know much about pianos, but that ought to be a good one. I would wheel the player over for you, but any one that plays as beautifully as you do ought not to be allowed to use a player. Marion, I want to talk a few minutes with you, may I? Do you mind going out under the cottonwood?”
Dicksie’s heart jumped. “Don’t be gone long, Marion,” she exclaimed impulsively, “for you know, Mr. Sinclair, wemustget back by two o’clock.” And Dicksie, pale with apprehension,248looked at them both. Marion, quite composed, nodded reassuringly and followed Sinclair out of doors into the sunshine.
For a few minutes Dicksie fingered wildly on the piano at some half-forgotten air, and in a fever of excitement walked out on the porch to see where they were. To her relief, she saw Marion sitting near Sinclair under the big tree in front of the house, where the horses stood. Dicksie, with her hands on her girdle, walked forlornly back and forth, hummed a tune, sat down in a rocking-chair, fanned herself, rose, walked back and forth again, and reflected that she was perfectly helpless, and that Sinclair might kill Marion a hundred times before she could reach her. And the thought that Marion was perhaps wholly unconscious of danger increased her anxiety.
She sat down in despair. How could Whispering Smith have allowed any one he had a care for to be exposed in this dreadful way? Trying to think what to do, Dicksie hurried back into the living-room, walked to the piano, took the pile of sheet-music from the top, and sat down to thumb it over. She threw song after song on the chair beside her. They were sheets of gaudy coon songs and ragtime with flaring covers, and they seemed to give off odors of cheap perfume. Dicksie hardly saw the titles as she passed them over, but of a249sudden she stopped. Between two sheets of the music lay a small handkerchief. It was mussed, and in the corner of it “Nellie” was written conspicuously in a laundry mark. The odor of musk became in an instant sickening. Dicksie threw the music disdainfully aside, and sprang up with a flushed face to leave the room. Sinclair’s remark about the first woman to cross his threshold came back to her. From that moment Dicksie hated him. But no sooner had she seated herself on the porch than she remembered she had left her hat in the house, and rose to go in after it. She was resolved not to leave it under the roof another moment, and she had resolved to go over and wait where her horse was tied. As she reëntered the doorway she stopped. In the room she had just left a cowboy sat at the table, taking apart a revolver to clean it. The revolver was spread in its parts before him, but across the table lay a rifle. The man had not been in the room when she left it a moment before.
Dicksie passed behind him. He paid no attention to her; he had not looked up when she entered the room. Passing behind him once more to go out, Dicksie looked through the open window before which he sat. Sinclair and Marion sitting under the cottonwood tree were in plain sight, and the muzzle of the rifle where it lay covered them.250Dicksie thrilled, but the man was busy with his work. Breathing deeply, she walked out on the porch again. Sinclair, she thought, was looking straight at her, and in her anxiety to appear unconscious she turned, walked to the end of the house, and at the corner almost ran into a man sitting out of doors in the shade mending a saddle. He had removed his belt to work, and his revolver lay in the holster on the bench, its grip just within reach of his hand. Dicksie walked in front of him, but he did not look up. She turned as if changing her mind, and with a little flirt of her riding-skirt sat down in the porch chair, feeling a faint moisture upon her forehead.
“I am going to leave this country, Marion,” Sinclair was saying. “There’s nothing here for me; I can see that. What’s the use of my eating my heart out over the way I’ve been treated? I’ve given the best years of my life to this railroad, and now they turn me down with a kick and a curse. It’s the old story of the Indian and his dog, only I don’t propose to let them make soup of me. I’m going to the coast, Marion. I’m going to California, where I wanted to go when we were married, and I wish to God we had gone there then. All our troubles might never have been if I had got in with a different crowd from251these cow-boozers on the start. And, Marion, I want to know whether you’ll give me another chance and go with me.”
Sinclair, on the bench and leaning against the tree, sat with folded arms looking at his wife. Marion in a hickory chair faced him.
“No one would like to see you be all you ought to be more than I, Murray; but you are the only one in the world that can ever give yourself another chance to be that.”
“The fellows in the saddle here now have denied me every chance to make a man of myself again on the railroad––you know that, Marion. In fact, they never did give me the show I was entitled to. I ought to have had Hailey’s place. Bucks never treated me right in that; he never pushed me in the way he pushed other men that were just as bad as I ever was. It discouraged me; that’s the reason I went to pieces.”
“It could be no reason for treating me as you treated me: for bringing drunken men and drunken women into our house, and driving me out of it unless I would be what you were and what they were.”
“I know I haven’t treated you right; I’ve treated you shamefully. I will do anything on earth you say to square it. I will! Recollect, I had lived among men and in the same country252with women like that for years before I knew you. I didn’t know how to treat you; I admit it. Give me another chance, Marion.”
“I gave you all that I had when I married you, Murray. I haven’t anything more to give to any man. You would be disappointed in me if I could ever live with you again, and I could not do that without living a lie every day.”
He bent forward, looking at the ground. He talked of their first meeting in Wisconsin; of the happiness of their little courtship; he brought up California again, and the Northwest coast, where, he told her, a great railroad was to be built and he should find the chance he needed to make a record for himself––it had been promised him––a chance to be the man his abilities entitled him to be in railroading. “And I’ve got a customer for the ranch and the cows, Marion. I don’t care for this business––damn the cows! let somebody else chase after ’em through the sleet. I’ve done well; I’ve made money––a lot of money––the last two years in my cattle deals, and I’ve got it put away, Marion; you need never lift your hand to work in our house again. We can live in California, and live well, under our own orange trees, whether I work or not. All I want to know is, will you go with me?”
“No! I will not go with you, Murray.”
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He moved in his seat and threw his head up appealingly. “Why not?”
“I will never be dishonest with you; I never have been and I never will be. I have nothing in my heart to give you, and I will not live upon your money. I am earning my own living. I am as content as I ever can be, and I shall stay where I am and do what I am doing till I die, probably. And this is why I came when you asked me to; to tell you the exact truth. I am not a girl any longer––I never can be again. I am a woman. What I was before I married you I never can be again, and you have no right to ask me to be a hypocrite and say I can love you––for that is what it all comes to––when I have no such thing in my heart or life for you. It is dead and gone, and I cannot help it.”
“That sounds pretty hard, Marion.”
“It is only the truth. It sounded fearfully hard to me when you told me that woman was your friend––that you knew her before you knew me and would know her after I was dead; that she was as good as I, and that if I didn’t entertain her you would. But it was the truth; you told me the truth, and it was better that you told it––as it is better now that I tell it to you.”
“I was drunk. I didn’t tell you the truth. A man is a pretty tough animal sometimes, but you254are a woman and a pure one, and I care more for you than for all the other women in the world, and it is not your nature to be unforgiving.”
“It is to be honest.”
He looked suddenly up at her and spoke sharply: “Marion, I know why you won’t go.”
“I have honestly told you.”
“No; you have not honestly told me. The real reason is Gordon Smith.”
“If he were I should not hesitate to tell you, Murray, but he is not,” she said coldly.
Sinclair spoke harshly: “Do you think you can fool me? Don’t you suppose I know he spends his time loafing around your shop?”
Marion flushed indignantly. “It is not true!”
“Don’t you suppose I know he writes letters back to Wisconsin to your folks?”
“What have I to do with that? Why shouldn’t he write to my mother? Who has a better right?”
“Don’t drive me too far. By God! if I go away alone I’ll never leave you here to run off with Whispering Smith––remember that!” She sat in silence. His rage left her perfectly quiet, and her unmoved expression shamed and in part silenced him. “Don’t drive me too far,” he muttered sullenly. “If you do you will be responsible, Marion.”
She did not move her eyes from the blue hills255on the horizon. “I expect you to kill me sometime; I feel sure you will. And that you may do.” Then she bent her look on him. “You may do it now if you want to.”
His face turned heavy with rage. “Marion,” he cried, with an oath, “do you know how close you are to death at this moment?”
“You may do it now.”
He clinched the bench-rail and rose slowly to his feet. Marion sat motionless in the hickory chair; the sun was shining in her face and her hands were folded in her lap. Dicksie rocked on the porch. In the shadow of the house the man was mending the saddle.
256CHAPTER XXVITOWER W
At the end of a long and neglected hall on the second floor of the old bank block in Hill Street, Whispering Smith had a room in which he made headquarters at Medicine Bend; it was in effect Whispering Smith’s home. A man’s room is usually a forlorn affair in spite of any effort to make it home-like. If he neglects his room it looks barren, and if he ornaments it it looks fussy. Boys can do something with a den because they are not yet men, and some tincture of woman’s nature still clings to a boy. Girls are born to the deftness that is to become all theirs in the touch of a woman’s hand; but men, if they walk alone, pay the penalty of loneliness.
Whispering Smith, being logical, made no effort to decorate his domestic poverty. All his belongings were of a simple sort and his room was as bare as a Jesuit’s. Moreover, his affairs, being at times highly particular, did not admit of the presence of a janitor in his quarters, and he was of necessity his own janitor. His iron bed was spread257with a pair of Pullman blankets, his toilet arrangements included nothing more elaborate than a shaving outfit, and the mirror above his washstand was only large enough to make a hurried shave, with much neck-stretching, possible. The table was littered with letters, but it filled up one corner of the room, and a rocking-chair and a trunk filled up another. The floor was spread with a Navajo blanket, and near the head of the bed stood an old-fashioned wardrobe. This served not to ward Whispering Smith’s robes, which hung for the most part on his back, but to accommodate his rifles, of which it contained an array that only a practised man could understand. The wardrobe was more, however, than an armory. Beside the guns that stood racked in precision along the inner wall, McCloud had once, to his surprise, seen a violin. It appeared out of keeping in such an atmosphere and rather the antithesis of force and violence than a complement for it. And again, though the rifles were disquietingly bright and effective-looking, the violin was old and shabby, hanging obscurely in its corner, as if, whatever it might have in common with its master, it had nothing in common with its surroundings.
The door of the room in the course of many years had been mutilated with keyholes and reënforced with locks until it appeared difficult to258choose an opening that would really afford entrance; but two men besides Whispering Smith carried keys to the room––Kennedy and George McCloud. They had right of way into it at all hours, and knew how to get in.
McCloud had left the bridge camp on the river for Medicine Bend on the Saturday that Marion Sinclair––whose husband had finally told her he would give her one more chance to think it over––returned with Dicksie safely from their trip to the Frenchman ranch.
Whispering Smith, who had been with Bucks and Morris Blood, got back to town the same day. The president and general manager were at the Wickiup during the afternoon, and left for the East at nine o’clock in the evening, when their car was attached to an east-bound passenger train. McCloud took supper afterward with Whispering Smith at a Front Street chop-house, and the two men separated at eleven o’clock. It was three hours later when McCloud tapped on the door of Smith’s room, and in a moment opened it. “Awake, Gordon?”
“Sure: come in. What is it?”
“The second section of the passenger train––Number Three, with the express cars––was stopped at Tower W to-night. Oliver Sollers was pulling; he is badly shot up, and one of the messengers was259shot all to pieces. They cracked the through safe, emptied it, and made a clean get-away.”
“Tower W––two hundred and seventy-six miles. Have you ordered up an engine?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Kennedy?”
A second voice answered: “Right here.”
“Strike a light, Farrell. What about the horses?”
“They’re being loaded.”
“Is the line clear?”
“Rooney Lee is clearing it.”
“Spike it, George, and leave every westbound train in siding, with the engine cut loose and plenty of steam, till we get by. It’s now or never this time. Two hundred and seventy-six miles; they’re giving us our money’s worth. Who’s going with us, Farrell?”
“Bob Scott, Reed Young, and Brill, if Reed can get him at Sleepy Cat. Dancing is loading the horses.”
“I want Ed Banks to lead apossestraight from here for Williams Cache; Dancing can go with him. And telephone Gene and Bob Johnson to sit down in Canadian Pass till they grow to the rocks, but not to let anybody through if they want to live after I see them. They’ve got all the instructions; all they need is the word. It’s a long chance,260but I think these are our friends. You can head Banks off by telephone somewhere if we change our minds when we get a trail. Start Brill Young and a good man from Sleepy Cat ahead of us, George, if you can, in a baggage car with any horses that they can get there. They can be at Tower W by daybreak and perhaps pick up a trail before we reach there, and we shall have fresh horses for them. I’m ready, I guess; let’s go. Slam the door, George!” In the hall Whispering Smith threw a pocket-light on his watch. “I want you to put us there by seven o’clock.”
“Charlie Sollers is going to pull you,” answered McCloud. “Have you got everything? Then we’re off.” The three men tiptoed down the dark hall, down the stairs, and across the street on a noiseless run for the railroad yard.
The air was chill and the sky clear, with a moon more than half to the full. “Lord, what a night to ride!” exclaimed Whispering Smith, looking mournfully at the stars. “Well planned, well planned, I must admit.”
The men hastened toward the yard, where lanterns were moving about the car of the train-guards near the Blue Front stables. The loading board had been lowered, and the horses were being carefully led into the car. From a switch engine behind the car a shrill cloud of steam billowed261into the air. Across the yard a great passenger engine, its huge white side-rod rising and falling slowly in the still light of the moon––one of the mountain racers, thick-necked like an athlete and deep-chested––was backing down for the run with the single car almost across the west end of the division. Trainmen were running to and from the Wickiup platform. By the time the horses were loaded the conductor had orders. Until the last minute, Whispering Smith was in consultation with McCloud, and giving Dancing precise instructions for theposseinto the Cache country. They were still talking at the side door of the car, McCloud and Dancing on the ground and Whispering Smith squatting on his haunches inside the moving car, when the engine signalled and the special drew away from the chute, pounded up the long run of the ladder switch, and moved with gathering speed into the canyon. In the cab Charlie Sollers, crushing in his hand the tissue that had brought the news of his brother’s death, sat at the throttle. He had no speed orders. They had only told him he had a clear track.
262CHAPTER XXVIIPURSUIT
Brill Young picked up a trail Sunday morning at Tower W before the special from Medicine Bend reached there. The wrecked express car, which had been set out, had no story to tell. “The only story,” said Whispering Smith, as the men climbed into their saddles, “is in the one from the hoofs, and the sooner we get after it the better.”
The country around Tower W, which is itself an operating point on the western end of the division, a mere speck on the desert, lies high and rolling. To the south, sixty miles away, rise the Grosse Terre Mountains, and to the north and west lie the solitudes of the Heart range, while in the northeast are seen the three white Saddle peaks of the Missions. The cool, bright sunshine of a far and lonely horizon greets the traveller here, and ten miles away from the railroad, in any direction, a man on horseback and unacquainted with the country would wish himself––mountain men263will tell you––in hell, because it would be easier to ride out of.
To the railroad men the country offered no unusual difficulties. The Youngs were as much at home on a horse as on a hand car. Kennedy, though a large and powerful man, was inured to hard riding, and Bob Scott and Whispering Smith in the saddle were merely a part––though an important part––of their horses; without killing their mounts, they could get out of them every mile in their legs. The five men covered twenty miles on a trail that read like print. One after another of the railroad party commented on the carelessness with which it had been left. But twenty miles south of the railroad, in an open and comparatively easy country, it was swallowed completely up in the tracks of a hundred horses. The railroad men circled far and wide, only to find the herd tracks everywhere ahead of them.
“This is a beautiful job,” murmured Whispering Smith as the party rode together along the edge of a creek-bottom. “Now who is their friend down in this country? What man would get out a bunch of horses like this and work them this hard so early in the morning? Let’s hunt that man up. I like to meet a man that is a friend in need.”
Bob Scott spoke: “I saw a man with some264horses in a canyon across the creek a few minutes ago, and I saw a ranch-house behind those buttes when I rode around them.”
“Stop! Here’s a man riding right into our jaws,” muttered Kennedy. “Divide up among the rocks.” A horseman from the south came galloping up the creek, and Kennedy rode out with an ivory smile to meet him. The two men parleyed for a moment, disputed each other sharply, and rode together back to the railroad party.
“Haven’t seen any men looking for horses this morning, have you?” asked Whispering Smith, eying the stranger, a squat, square-jawed fellow with a cataract eye.
“I’m looking for horses myself. I ain’t seen anybody else. What are you looking for?”
“Is this your bunch of horses that got loose here?” asked Smith.
“No.”
“I thought,” said Kennedy, smiling, “you said a minute ago they were.”
The stranger fixed his cataract on him like a flash-light. “I changed my mind.”
Whispering Smith’s brows rose protestingly, but he spoke with perfect amiability as he raised his finger to bring the good eye his way. “You ought to change your hat when you change your mind. I saw you driving a bunch of horses up that canyon265a few minutes ago. Now, Rockstro, do you still drag your left leg?”
The rancher looked steadily at his new inquisitor, but blinked like a gopher at the sudden onslaught. “Which of you fellows is Whispering Smith?” he demanded.
“The man with the dough is Whispering Smith every time,” was the answer from Smith himself. “You have about seven years to serve, Rockstro, haven’t you? Seven, I think. Now what have I ever done to you that you should turn a trick like this on me? I knew you were here, and you knew I knew you were here, and I call this a pretty country; a little smooth right around here, like the people, but pretty. Have I ever bothered you? Now tell me one thing––what did you get for covering this trail? I stand to give you two dollars for every one you got last night for the job, if you’ll put us right on the game. Which way did they go?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Get off your horse a minute,” suggested Whispering Smith, dismounting, “and step over here toward the creek.” The man, afraid to refuse and unwilling to go, walked haltingly after Smith.
“What is it, Rockstro?” asked his tormentor. “Don’t you like this country? What do you want to go back to the penitentiary for? Aren’t you266happy here? Now tell me one thing––will you give up the trail?”
“I don’t know the trail.”
“I believe you; we shouldn’t follow it anyway. Were you paid last night or this morning?”
“I ain’t seen a man hereabouts for a week.”
“Then you can’t tell me whether there were five men or six?”
“You’ve got one eye as good as mine, and one a whole lot better.”
“So it was fixed up for cash a week ago?”
“Everything is cash in this country.”
“Well, Rockstro, I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take you back with us.”
The rancher whipped out a revolver. Whispering Smith caught his wrist. The struggle lasted only an instant. Rockstro writhed, and the pistol fell to the ground.
“Now, shall I break your arm?” asked Smith, as the man cursed and resisted. “Or will you behave? We are going right back and you’ll have to come with us. We’ll send some one down to round up your horses and sell them, and you can serve out your time––with allowances, of course, for good conduct, which will cut it down. If I had ever done you a mean turn I would not say a word. If you could name a friend of yours I had ever done a mean turn to I would not say a word.267Can you name one? I guess not. I have left you as free as the wind here, making only the rule I make for everybody––to let the railroad alone. This is my thanks. Now, I’ll ask you just one question. I haven’t killed you, as I had a perfect right to when you pulled; I haven’t broken your arm, as I would have done if there had been a doctor within twenty-five miles; and I haven’t started you for the pen––not yet. Now I ask you one fair question only: Did you need the money?”
“Yes, I did need it.”
Whispering Smith dropped the man’s wrist. “Then I don’t say a word. If you needed the money, I’m not going to send you back––not for mine.”
“How can a man make a living in this country,” asked the rancher, with a bitter oath, “unless he picks up everything that’s going?”
“Pick up your gun, man! I’m not saying anything, am I?”
“But I’m damned if I can give a double-cross to any man,” added Rockstro, stooping for his revolver.
“I should think less of you, Rockstro, if you did. You don’t need money anyway now, but sometime you may need a friend. I’m going to leave you here. You’ll hear no more of this, and I’m going to ask you a question: Why did you go268against this when you knew you’d have to square yourself with me?”
“They told me you’d be taken care of before it was pulled off.”
“They lied to you, didn’t they? No matter, you’ve got their stuff. Now I am going to ask you one question that I don’t know the answer to; it’s a fair question, too. Was Du Sang in the penitentiary with you at Fort City? Answer fair.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Behave yourself and keep your mouth shut. I say nothing this time. Hereafter leave railroad matters alone, and if the woman should fall sick or you have to have a little money, come and see me.” Smith led the way back to the horses.
“Look here!” muttered Rockstro, following, with his good eye glued on his companion. “I pulled on you too quick, I guess––quicker’n I’d ought to.”
“Don’t mention it. You didn’t pull quick enough; it is humiliating to have a man that’s as slow as you are pull on me. People that pull on me usually pull and shoot at the same time. Two distinct movements, Rockstro, should be avoided; they are fatal to success. Come down to the Bend sometime, and I’ll get you a decent gun and give you a few lessons.”
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Whispering Smith drew his handkerchief as the one-eyed man rode away and he rejoined his companions. He was resigned, after a sickly fashion. “I like to play blind-man’s-buff,” he said, wiping his forehead, “but not so far from good water. They have pulled us half-way to the Grosse Terre Mountains on a beautiful trail, too beautiful to be true, Farrell––too beautiful to be true. They have been having fun with us, and they’ve doubled back, through the Topah Topahs toward the Mission Mountains and Williams Cache––that is my judgment. And aren’t we five able-bodied jays, gentlemen? Five strong-arm suckers? It is an inelegant word; it is an inelegant feeling. No matter, we know a few things. There are five good men and a led horse; we can get out of here by Goose River, find out when we cross the railroad how much they got, and pick them up somewhere around the Saddle peaks,ifthey’ve gone north. That’s only a guess, and every man’s guess is good now. What do you think, all of you?”
“If it’s the crowd we think it is, would they go straight home? That doesn’t look reasonable, does it?” asked Brill Young.
“If they could put one day between them and pursuit, wouldn’t they be safer at home than anywhere else? And haven’t they laid out one day’s work for us, good and plenty? Farrell, remember270one thing: there is sometimes a disadvantage in knowing too much about the men you are after. We’ll try Goose River.”
It was noon when they struck the railroad. They halted long enough to stop a freight train, send some telegrams, and ask for news. They got orders from Rooney Lee, had an empty box car set behind the engine for a special, and, loading their horses at the chute, made a helter-skelter run for Sleepy Cat. At three o’clock they struck north for the Mission Mountains.
271CHAPTER XXVIIITHE SUNDAY MURDER
Banks’sposse, leaving Medicine Bend before daybreak, headed northwest. Their instructions were explicit: to scatter after crossing the Frenchman, watch the trails from the Goose River country and through the Mission Mountains, and intercept everybody riding north until thepossefrom Sleepy Cat or Whispering Smith should communicate with them from the southwest. Nine men rode in the party that crossed the Crawling Stone Sunday morning at sunrise with Ed Banks.
After leaving the river the three white-capped Saddles of the Mission range afford a landmark for more than a hundred miles, and toward these the party pressed steadily all day. The southern pass of the Missions opens on the north slope of the range into a pretty valley known as Mission Springs Valley, and the springs are the head-waters of Deep Creek. Thepossedid not quite obey the instructions, and following a natural instinct of safety five of them, after Banks and his three deputies272had scattered, bunched again, and at dark crossed Deep Creek at some distance below the springs. It was afterward known that these five men had been seen entering the valley from the east at sundown just as four of the men they wanted rode down South Mission Pass toward the springs. That they knew they would soon be cut off, or must cut their way through the line which Ed Banks, ahead of them, was posting at every gateway to Williams Cache, was probably clear to them. Four men rode that evening from Tower W through the south pass; the fifth man had already left the party. The four men were headed for Williams Cache and had reason to believe, until they sighted Banks’s men, that their path was open.
They halted to take counsel on the suspicious-lookingpossefar below them, and while their cruelly exhausted horses rested, Du Sang, always in Sinclair’s absence the brains of the gang, planned the escape over Deep Creek at Baggs’s crossing. At dusk they divided: two men lurking in the brush along the creek rode as close as they could, unobserved, toward the crossing, while Du Sang and the cowboy Karg, known as Flat Nose, rode down to Baggs’s ranch at the foot of the pass.
At that point Dan Baggs, an old locomotive engineer, had taken a homestead, got together a273little bunch of cattle, and was living alone with his son, a boy of ten years. It was a hard country and too close to Williams Cache for comfort, but Dan got on with everybody because the toughest man in the Cache country could get a meal, a feed for his horse, and a place to sleep at Baggs’s, without charge, when he needed it.
Ed Banks, by hard riding, got to the crossing at five o’clock, and told Baggs of the hold-up and the shooting of Oliver Sollers. The news stirred the old engineman, and his excitement threw him off his guard. Banks rode straight on for the middle pass, leaving word that two of his men would be along within half an hour to watch the pass and the ranch crossing, and asking Baggs to put up some kind of a fight for the crossing until more of thepossecame up––at the least, to make sure that nobody got any fresh horses.
The boy was cooking supper in the kitchen, and Baggs had done his milking and gone back to the corral, when two men rode around the corner of the barn and asked if they could get something to eat. Poor Baggs sold his life in six words: “Why, yes; be you Banks’s men?”
Du Sang answered: “No; we’re from Sheriff Coon’s office at Oroville, looking up a bunch of Duck Bar steers that’s been run somewhere up Deep Creek. Can we stay here all night?”
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They dismounted and disarmed Baggs’s suspicions, though the condition of their horses might have warned him had he had his senses. The unfortunate man had probably fixed it in his mind that a ride from Tower W to Deep Creek in sixteen hours was a physical impossibility.
“Stay here? Sure! I want you to stay,” said Baggs bluffly. “Looks to me like I seen you down at Crawling Stone, ain’t I?” he asked of Karg.
Karg was lighting a cigarette. “I used to mark at the Dunning ranch,” he answered, throwing away his match.
“That’s hit. Good! The boy’s cooking supper. Step up to the kitchen and tell him to cut ham for four more.”
“Four?”
“Two of Ed Banks’s men will be here by six o’clock. Heard about the hold-up? They stopped Number Three at Tower W last night and shot Ollie Sollers, as white a boy as ever pulled a throttle. Boys, a man that’ll kill a locomotive engineer is worse’n an Indian; I’d help skin him.”
“The hell you would!” cried Du Sang. “Well, don’t you want to start in on me? I killed Sollers. Look at me; ain’t I handsome? What you going to do about it?”
Before Baggs could think Du Sang was shooting275him down. It was wanton. Du Sang stood in no need of the butchery; the escape could have been made without it. His victim had pulled an engine throttle too long to show the white feather, but he was dying by the time he had dragged a revolver from his pocket. Du Sang did the killing alone. At least, Flat Nose, who alone saw all of the murder, afterward maintained that he did not draw because he had no occasion to, and that Baggs was dead before he, Karg, had finished his cigarette. With his right arm broken and two bullets through his chest, Baggs fell on his face. That, however, did not check his murderer. Rising to his knees, Baggs begged for his life. “For God’s sake! I’m helpless, gentlemen! I’m helpless. Don’t kill me like a dog!” But Du Sang, emptying his pistol, threw his rifle to his shoulder and sent bullet after bullet crashing through the shapeless form writhing and twitching before him until he had beaten it in the dust soft and flat and still.
Banks’s men came up within an hour to find the ranch-house deserted. They saw a lantern in the yard below, and near the corral gate they found the little boy in the darkness, screaming beside his father’s body. The sheriff’s men carried the old engineman to the house; others of thepossecrossed the creek during the evening, and at eleven o’clock276Whispering Smith rode down from the south pass to find that four of the men they were after had taken fresh horses, after killing Baggs, and passed safely through the cordon Banks had drawn around the pass and along Deep Creek. Bill Dancing, who had ridden with Banks’s men, was at the house when Whispering Smith arrived. He found some supper in the kitchen, and the tired man and the giant ate together.
Whispering Smith was too experienced a campaigner to complain. His party had struck a trail fifty miles north of Sleepy Cat and followed it to the Missions. He knew now who he was after, and knew that they were bottled up in the Cache for the night. The sheriff’s men were sleeping on the floor of the living-room when Smith came in from the kitchen. He sat down before the fire. At intervals sobs came from the bedroom where the body lay, and after listening a moment, Whispering Smith got stiffly up, and, tiptoeing to still the jingle of his spurs, took the candle from the table, pushed aside the curtain, and entered the bedroom.
The little boy was lying on his face, with his arm around his father’s neck, talking to him. Whispering Smith bent a moment over the bed, and, setting the candle on the table, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He disengaged the hand277from the cold neck, and sitting down took it in his own. Talking low to the little fellow, he got his attention after much patient effort and got him to speak. He made him, though struggling with terror, to understand that he had come to be his friend, and after the child had sobbed his grief into a strange heart he ceased to tremble, and told his name and his story, and described the two horsemen and the horses they had left. Smith listened quietly. “Have you had any supper, Dannie? No? You must have something to eat. Can’t you eat anything? But there is a nice pan of fresh milk in the kitchen.”
A burst of tears interrupted him. “Daddie just brought in the milk, and I was frying the ham, and I heard them shooting.”
“See how he took care of you till the last minute, and left something for you after he was gone. Suppose he could speak now, don’t you think he would want you to do as I say? I am your next friend now, for you are going to be a railroad man and have a big engine.”
Dannie looked up. “Dad wasn’t afraid of those men.”
“Wasn’t he, Dannie?”
“He said we would be all right and not to be afraid.”
“Did he?”