THE HILL OF LURKING DEATH
I
“OLD Leather Face seems to be peeved about it, doesn’t he?”
It was Sandy Macdougal who spoke. He had returned from the cook-house
unnoticed by Hammond and had evidently been an amused spectator while the
dialogue was going on between Hammond and Ogima Bush.
“Did you get what he croaked at you, Hammond?” he asked.
“I caught something about him ‘taking what he wanted’ or words to that
effect.”
“He said: ‘Ogima takes what he wants,’ and then he asked, ‘_Kaw-gaygo
esca-boba_?’ That’s Indian for ‘Have you got nothing?’ Sounds foolish,
but when an Indian asks it the way he did—that way, look out! He’s
either looking for whiskey or trouble.”
“Well, he’s rapping at the door of the goat’s house for wool this time,”
laughed Hammond. “I haven’t seen anything that looked like good whiskey
in a blue moon, and, as for trouble, I can usually locate plenty of it
without seeking it from a red-skin.”
“Speakin’ of whiskey,” Sandy’s eyes crinkled, “how’d you like a little
nip right now?”
“A drink?”
“Sure. You’re lookin’ sort of all bowled over about something, and a
little snort will brace you up. Come on in the shack.”
Inside the cabin Macdougal closed the door and hooked it on the inside.
He lifted some loose flooring in the corner and brought up a black
bottle. “You needn’t be afraid of it,” he assured Hammond as he poured
him a draught in a metal cup. “This is sealed rye goods I got on a
doctor’s prescription. But I got to keep it dark because there’s two
things the Big Boss is death on any of us totin’ around camp; the one is
six-guns and the other is whiskey. . . . Here’s how!”
Macdougal guzzled a generous cupful straight. Hammond perforce had to
take his neat too.
The cook made to fill the two cups again.
“No, thanks,” declined Hammond. “I don’t indulge as a general thing, but
I’ll admit that’s fairly smooth stuff.”
Sandy tossed off another stiff one. Then he sat down smacking his lips
as though it agreed with him immensely. “You never met that copper-faced
old rat before you came out here?” he asked presently.
“Who—Ogima Bush? No, I never before set eyes on him until that morning
he wandered in while I was at breakfast.”
“H’m—h’m—well!” Macdougal studied his cup reflectively one minute. “You
know, I thought at first maybe you and him might be cahoots on something.
One don’t know who’s who out in this queer dump. But I’ve sized you up
as a decent head, no matter what your business might be, and you takin’ a
nip with me now and then has raised you a bit more in my notions of you.”
“Good heavens,” smiled Hammond, “you surely didn’t think I was in league
with that near-agent of Satan?”
“I ain’t sayin’ I was sure of anything,” cut back Macdougal slightly
irritated. “Only, I had one of my flash hunches that first morning he
dropped into the diner that there was something between him and you. It
was the way he looked at you, I guess. Since then, I’ve been figurin’
out it’s all on his side and maybe you don’t know anything about it.
“However,” he followed up deliberately, “what I been debatin’ in my own
mind the past day or so was about tellin’ you something for your own
good.”
Macdougal appeared to be in the throes of that mental debate as he sat
with eyes glued on his empty cup. He seemed to arrive at two decisions
suddenly. The first was to have another tidy drink.
“Great hootch that.” He grimaced gratefully. “Now, look here, Hammond,
it’s this: That old, red-skinned side-wheeler don’t mean you no good,
and, if you’ll take it from me, I think he’s figurin’ on how much of a
boost it’d take to shoot you over one of them steep cliffs back in the
bush if you happened to be near the edge.
“Now wait—I ain’t given to guessin’ nor romancin’ either. I got a sharp
eye that sees more’n most people gives it credit for. Every time you
ain’t lookin’ that Indian is a-watchin’ you out of the corners of his
wicked old lids in a queer, creepy way, just like a weasel watches a
chipmunk he’s figurin’ on for breakfast. Besides, sometimes you go out
in the bush and he slips out a little later in the same direction. At
first I tells myself: ‘The two of them has a date on to meet out there on
some scheme they’re hatchin’ up—maybe bootleggin’.’ But I hunched it
later there was nothin’ to that. He’s layin’ for you for some reason I
don’t know anything about; that’s what I wanted to tell you.”
II
Hammond lit a cigarette to cover up any concern he might have felt.
“That’s certainly interesting to me, Sandy,” he acknowledged, “and it’s
deucedly good of you—”
“Nothin’ of the kind!” interposed the other. “And that ain’t all. _Acey
Smith’s got another Indian trailin’ you_.”
“Trailing me? The deuce you say!”
“I said it.”
“But what makes you think Acey Smith’s got anything to do with it?”
Macdougal shrugged. “Who else?” he asked. More whiskey than was
discreet had loosened up his tongue. “Who else do you think? Who else
but Acey Smith keeps every straw-boss in the camp jumpy all the time just
so they won’t get too busy comparin’ notes and find out what’s what?
That man’s a devil, and there ain’t two ways about that.
“I got next to this stunt through an accident,” the cook went on. “Was
over hidin’ in some green stuff on the side of the Second Hill the other
morning figurin’ on snipin’ a couple of partridge when I sees you go by
on the tote road. Then I see a long, skinny-lookin’ Indian slippin’
through the brush close to my hide after you. A couple of minutes more
and along comes old Leather Face, the Medicine Man, as pompous as you
please, but it ain’t long before I discovers that his nibs is a-watchin’
both of you, though he makes a big face of bein’ unconcerned and about
his own business. Now, what do you think of that layout, son?”
Hammond was thoughtful. If he were to admit the truth his breath was
literally taken away by the revelation. “Smith must attach a lot of
importance to me to hire two of them to watch me,” was what he said.
“I ain’t so sure _both_ of them is hired to watch you,” observed his
friend. “Medicine men are too stuck on themselves to do shadowin’ jobs.
They go after bigger stuff. Smith uses them to put the fear of the Lord
into the Indian workers when he needs them. That’s one of the reasons
why he lets old fakirs like Bush loaf around the camp and do what they
please. No Indian gives any back talk about what the Medicine Man says
or does, because they think he can make a _Windigo_ any time he feels
like it to bring them bad luck.”
“Well, then, Sandy,” urged Hammond, “what’s your theory? I’ll admit it’s
got me beaten.”
“I got it figured out as one of two things,” replied the cook. “Either
you’re hired by outside parties to get something on Smith or the North
Star he’s afraid you’ll find out, and he’s havin’ you shadowed—or else,
well, don’t take offence if I say it plain that this looks to me more
like it: you’ve been sent out here by some of the higher-ups for him to
take care of you and he has that Indian guy watchin’ to see that nothin’
happens to you.”
“Good heavens,” Hammond expostulated, “I’m not a child or a green-horn in
the woods that I can’t look after myself. Smith knows that. No, no,
Sandy, you’re away out on your theories this time.”
“Am I now?” ruffled the cook. “Let me tell you Smith knows too that you
ain’t any smarter than some of the other fellows who paid for their
smartness by cashin’ in to some kind of a lurkin’ death out there in the
sticks that comes down on a man without any warnin’ and lets him into
Kingdom Come without even a yelp bein’ heard from him.”
Hammond was convinced the liquor in Sandy was doing the talking now. But
he tactfully asked: “Ever know of anything like that happening to any
one, or is it just some of that camp gossip about spooks over on the
mountain?”
“Camp gossip and spooks me eye!” derided the other. “Ain’t there been
men disappeared around here just as if they was swallowed up bones and
all by something roamin’ round the hills? Yes, I know what you’re goin’
to say next about accidents happenin’, and all that sort of thing.
‘Course there’s muck-holes in the muskegs that they might have walked
into or been pushed into and never be seen again. But nobody here thinks
that’s just what happened. No, sir, you couldn’t tell them that. There
ain’t an Indian will go up in them hills west of here after sundown for
life nor money, and whites that are wise won’t do it neither.
“Listen. This much I know from what I saw myself. Last summer there was
a pale-faced city gink come out here on a loafin’ holiday. He came
pretty much like you did and nobody knew anything about him unless it was
the super., who keeps what he knows to himself. This lad put in his time
makin’ pictures on pieces of card-board on a frame of sticks he took
around with him. The Big Boss warned him and everybody else warned him
if he left the camps not to wander off the tote roads, and to keep away
from the hill they call the Cup of Nannabijou. But it didn’t do any
good.
“One morning they finds his hat floatin’ in the lake back of the beaver
dam on Solomon Creek. That’s the creek that runs down the hill into the
river and has the rapids in it. They never found anything else, not a
hair or a bit of the hide of him. D’you get that?”
“Likely slipped and fell into the rapids,” suggested Hammond.
“That’s what one of them coroner’s juries would say,” agreed the cook,
“but you couldn’t make any old timers out here believe it. Besides, his
picture-drawing outfit was found a couple of hundred yards away from the
creek all set up the way he’d been workin’ on it when he got his. The
Indians always said there was one of their ancient devils lived up in The
Cup on the hill, and the rest of us is prepared to believe there’s
something uncanny there it ain’t good business to monkey with.”
Macdougal fished out his watch. “Cripes,” he exclaimed, “it’s eleven and
I should’ve been back at the cook-house half an hour ago.”
He put his bottle back under the boards after a final rejuvenator. At
the door of the cabin he paused unsteadily as though gripped by an
after-thought. “Anyway, Hammond, I’d pack a gun if I was you,” he
advised. “If you ain’t got a gat. of your own, there’s an army six-gun
and some shells to fit it in that pack of mine on the wall, and you’re
welcome to the loan of it.”
Before Hammond could thank him he was gone and soon there resounded from
the cook-house a mixture of expletives and highly ornamented opinions in
general on “worthless, soldierin’ bull cooks” which proved that Sandy,
plus dispensary whiskey, was trying to make up for lost time over the
pots and pans.
III
That afternoon Hammond wandered out into the woods to quietly think
things over. He selected a spot at the top of a bald hill where any one
shadowing him would have difficulty in finding sufficient cover within a
hundred yards in any given direction. Lighting his pipe, he started
piecing things together as they had occurred since he made that
extraordinary bargain with Norman T. Gildersleeve on the night of
September the twenty-third. First, Gildersleeve had engaged him to come
out here and put in his time any old way he cared to so long as he did
not disclose his identity or the facts of his bargain with Gildersleeve.
Secondly, Gildersleeve had confided nothing to him as to the object of
his mission and had not even told him that he, Gildersleeve, was the head
of the corporation that financed the company that had gained the cutting
rights on the Nannabijou Limits over the head of the North Star Towing
and Contracting Company now in control. In the third place, there was
the cold fact that Gildersleeve had almost immediately disappeared and
Hammond was left in the air out at the pulp camp, an object of suspicion
constantly shadowed and still left totally at sea as to what he was to do
next.
He initiated some of the methods he had used with considerable success in
his old police court reporting days to devise plausible theories for
crime mysteries, but none of them seemed to work. Gildersleeve for one
thing was a keen, hard-headed business man. If he wasn’t he could never
have reached and maintained a place at the head of a big financial
corporation. He had certainly shown no symptoms of mental derangement
while Hammond had been talking to him, and, if he had been stricken with
aphasia, as the papers said, it must have been after he left the train at
Moose Horn Station. Therefore, when he engaged Hammond, a total stranger
to him previously, at one thousand dollars a month plus his keep and a
hundred dollars as a camouflage salary, he must have had some deep,
important motive. It could not have been for espionage work; in fact,
Hammond remembered, Gildersleeve had emphasised the point that he,
Hammond, would not be asked to do anything more than hold down any job
that was assigned to him and keep his identity concealed.
There was every reason to conclude, Hammond theorised, that the whole
object of his residence at the pulp camp was to make himself a mystery.
Perhaps he was thus unconsciously impersonating some one else for a
purpose that only more knowledge of the situation would disclose. This
theory was plausible enough when he sized the thing up from the angle of
his agreement with Gildersleeve alone.
There had been surrounding circumstances, however, that led him mentally
around in circles and up against baffling blank walls. There had been
the strange perturbation of Eulas Daly, the U. S. consul, when the latter
had broached Hammond regarding meeting Gildersleeve, and the appearance
of the dark-eyed woman wearing the sable furs on the platform of Moose
Horn Station after Gildersleeve had gone out wearing his overcoat and
carrying his bag with no apparent intention of returning to catch the
train. A woman does not get off a train at a wilderness station in the
dead of the night merely to look around for pleasure, and the mystery of
her performance was heightened by her subsequent appearance at the pulp
camp in search of Acey Smith. She was known there, for Sandy Macdougal
had spoken familiarly of her as “Yvonne,” but had afterwards refused to
discuss her.
Acey Smith’s question about aphasia that first night he had arrived at
the Nannabijou Limits struck Hammond as a very, very odd coincidence—if
it was a coincidence. Still, Acey Smith could not have had definite
knowledge of the manner of Gildersleeve’s disappearance at that stage of
proceedings. So Hammond discarded that incident as unsolvable for the
present and therefore an impediment to clear thinking.
The Girl with the High-arched Eyebrows constantly limned up in the
background of all his conjectures, a beautiful, distracting presence, but
Hammond could not bring himself to the point of concluding she was in any
way consciously connected with this queer business. She might be
Gildersleeve’s private secretary, or even his daughter, which
circumstances might explain her visit to the camp as one in quest of
possible information as to Gildersleeve’s whereabouts. But the articles
in the papers made no mention of any one accompanying Gildersleeve on his
journey, and, if there had been, that point would scarcely be overlooked,
though it sorely puzzled Hammond on that same score how it was no mention
was made of Eulas Daly being with the magnate. Why was it that Daly
didn’t tell what he knew about the matter?
Finally, there was Gildersleeve’s instruction to Hammond to stick to his
post at the pulp camp no matter what happened until such time as he was
communicated with. Possible happenings in Gildersleeve’s mind could not
have included his dropping out of sight.
Out of it all Hammond could sift but two simple conclusions that would
stand analysis, one of which was that Gildersleeve had actually been
stricken and was wandering about the West somewhere without knowledge of
who he was, and the other that Gildersleeve must have met with foul play
and the man who was seen above Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, was some one
else so afflicted, or feigning such affliction, who strongly resembled
him.
In the first case, Hammond’s remaining at the camp would be useless
unless Gildersleeve suddenly recovered and returned to his duties. The
second possibility would make it incumbent upon Hammond to tell the
authorities what he knew with the least possible delay.
It all left him in a dilemma as to how he should act and take no chances
on making a blunder of things. But wait—there was one link in the
mystery, one of the first links at that that he had so far overlooked in
the matter of its possibilities. That link was Eulas Daly, U. S. consul
at Kam City, the man who had brought about his meeting with Gildersleeve.
Why not slip over to the city and see Daly? Daly might be able to throw
new light on the situation without Hammond disclosing anything that was
confidential between himself and Gildersleeve. He would see about that
at once anyway.
Hammond glanced at his watch and sprang to his feet. A tug would be
pulling out for Kam City in less than an hour. That would just give him
time to get back to camp and change his clothes for the trip. He planned
to spend the night and the following day in the city if Daly’s
information were re-assuring. If it were not he felt he must immediately
see the police and tell them what he knew.
The young man hurried over the trail quite unconscious of the lithe, dark
figure that rose from its hiding place at the edge of the bush and stole
along in his wake as silent as a shadow. He reached the camp, changed
his clothes, had a bite to eat in Sandy Macdougal’s kitchen and hurried
to the superintendent’s quarters in search of a pass over on the tug.
Hammond was due to run into two new surprises, the first of which was a
galling disappointment and the second of such a thrilling nature from a
purely speculative standpoint that, for the time being, he forgot all
about the first.