They had made their packs--blankets, bacon and beans, coffee, frying
pan and coffeepot--and headed up into the mountains, riding the same
trails Torrance and Sally Dawn had so recently traveled. They camped
that night at the same deserted shack that had sheltered him and the
girl on the first leg of their journey, and were up and riding at
the first glint of a pale gray daybreak. No snow fell that day; by
mid-forenoon tattered streaks of clear sky were like pale-blue banners
above the far ridges. And when they came to the old mining camp high
above Pocket Valley, the mountains as far as they could see swam in
a diaphanous purple mist, and the western horizon was aflame with a
red-and-gold sunset.
“Now I’ll tell you boys all I know,” said Torrance, and hooked a leg
over the saddle horn while he reached for the makings. “Murdo and
somebody else camped here night before last. I could see Murdo through
the window; the other man was on a bunk in the corner and I couldn’t
see him. And I couldn’t hear what they were talking about. But I could
tell that the other man was giving orders and that Murdo was taking
them. So it’s a fair bet it was Bordereau.”
“Where’d they go to?” demanded Sam Pepper.
“Down trail toward Pocket. But they swung off where there’s a narrow
canyon. Then Murdo went down alone to Pocket, filled his grub bag and
went back up the canyon. So it’s my bet that that’s where Bordereau is
now, hiding out where nobody’d look for him, the same time he gets well
of a bullet hole somewhere in his carcass.”
“Me, I know that canyon like I know my hat,” said Bill Yarbo. “And I
know right where we’ll find Bordereau, sure. You see, Torrance, about
thirty year ago there was all hell to pay about the mines up here. And
Sally Dawn’s old gent, though he was a stock man first, last and all
the time, took an interest. He was in the money in them days. He come
up here; he bought up some mining properties; and he likewise grabbed
off a little valley all his own for a summer range. What’s more, he
built him a house, and he’d come up here when he felt like loafing, and
go hunting and fishing. That house stands there yet, quite a place, and
it’s up that canyon--and you couldn’t find a likelier place for a man
to hide out and lick his wounds.”
“And for once he ain’t lying!” said Sam Pepper, in a tone of awe.
“Far from here?” asked Torrance.
Bill Yarbo, having glared at Pepper, said, “Hell, no. If we poke right
along we’ll get there before it’s too dark to see the whites of their
eyes. Bordereau won’t be all alone, you know.”
“No,” admitted Torrance. “He’d have someone--”
“I know!” exclaimed Sam Pepper. “He’s got anyhow three-four, maybe
more men with him! There’s Hen Billings and Varney Slack and that
half-breed, Joe Tortillas; that’s three of ’em anyhow! And--let’s see--”
“How would _you_ know?” snorted Bill Yarbo.
“Me, I sort of notice things,” snapped Pepper. “When I go places, I
look around. Now since the night Bordereau got hurt I ain’t seen hide
nor hair of any one of them three, and they’re always hanging around
where Steve Bordereau is! Yep. And-- Say, I ain’t seen Turkey-trot
Smith or Andy Pollack, and they was both in Sundown when Bordereau got
shot! I’ll bet he’s got the whole gang up there!”
Torrance shrugged.
“There’s just one way to find out,” he said, and unhooked his leg from
the saddle horn.
“Hey, wait!” said Sam Pepper, and looked worried. “It’ll be dark--we
better camp here overnight, anyhow. And maybe--maybe--”
Bill Yarbo glared at him scornfully, then pretended spontaneous
laughter. Sam Pepper went red to the gills.
“I ain’t scared!” he sputtered. “I’m just using my brains. If only
three of us go jumping a crowd like Bordereau’s got--”
“There’s only two of us that counts,” said Yarbo. “Come ahead, Jim,
let’s get along.”
“There’s something else,” said Pepper hastily. “You can bet your
boots that Bordereau’ll be ready for us! Don’t you suppose Murdo got
word across to him in a hurry? Them two are playing this game close
together.”
“If Murdo or a messenger had passed us--”
“He wouldn’t have to. He could have come up by the Flats. Or he could
have sent some sort of signal. Me, I noticed some smoke standing up in
the sky back yonder over High Man’s Ridge; I wondered about it, too.”
“You would wonder,” guffawed Lying Bill Yarbo. “Come ahead, Jim. Let
the little rooster stick here or run back home to his old woman.” Then
he grinned very broadly, his eyes peering tauntingly at Pepper, as
he added, “Maybe Murdo and a bunch of cutthroats are following along
behind us now, Jim; maybe Mr. Sam Pepper, scooting back home, will run
smack-kerdab into them!”
Sam Pepper, from red, turned a pasty white, and his eyeballs rolled.
Then, when Torrance pushed on again and Lying Bill Yarbo fell in
behind, Sam Pepper knew a moment of dreadful doubt. It was soon going
to be dark. A timber wolf, perhaps the same hungry old fellow that
Sally Dawn and Jim Torrance had heard, howled after a fashion to make
the white solitudes seem ten thousand times more dreary and lonely.
It wasn’t that Sam was afraid of the wolf; a man in a haunted house
wouldn’t be afraid of the creak of a floor board; such sounds, however,
didn’t perk a man up. He shivered and spurred hastily along after
Torrance and Yarbo.
* * * * *
The old house that so long ago had been a sort of vacation home and
hunting lodge to that great-hearted gentleman, King Cannon, when first
glimpsed by Jim Torrance gave him a flick of surprise, despite what
Bill Yarbo had hinted of it. There was a small upland valley with a
round bit of a lake like a dusky mirror in its center; there was a
rushing stream pouring down into the lake; on a narrow bit of bench
land stood the building, massive and four-square, honest granite for
foundation, no less honest and rugged spruce logs for the rest of it.
Candlelight glimmered out through two or three windows.
There came a hushed bleat from Sam Pepper alternately holding back and
pressing up close to their heels.
“Listen!” he pleaded. “You damfools listen to me! Ain’t you got any
sense? Look how the place is lighted up! Say, there’s apt to be forty
men there! If we go running into that mess--well, we might’s well cut
us our own throats and save ’em the trouble!”
“Don’t listen to him, Jim,” muttered Bill Yarbo. And then in a
confidential tone, yet one raised loud enough to make sure Pepper
caught it, he demanded as though in wonder, “Why’d you bring him along
anyhow?”
“Funny they’ve got the place lighted up like that,” said Torrance. “If
it’s Bordereau, and he’s in hiding, you’d think--”
“Shucks,” said Yarbo. “He ain’t got the faintest idea that there’s
anyone on his trail. Up here, why a man might hang out all winter and
never have a nose poked in on him. We’ll take him clean by surprise.”
“You’re c-crazy!” stuttered Pepper. “Murdo’s sure warned him.”
“Come ahead, Jim,” said Yarbo.
The two started on again.
Sam Pepper stopped where he was.
“Me, I’ll guard the trail,” he said faintly. “In case anyone’s
following us, I’ll head him off.”
Yarbo laughed and Torrance grunted. Sam Pepper watched them ride on,
but himself sat where he was in the trail and shivered from head to
foot. He saw his two companions draw on closer to the house, then turn
off trail into a grove, then emerge on foot, moving on guardedly. He
was tempted then to turn and scurry back the way he had come, at least
as far as the mining camp, but the thought of being in that lonely
place all night--and of perhaps having some most unwelcome callers drop
in on him--gave him a fresh set of jitters. He dallied with the thought
of going back only as far as the main trail, then down to Pocket
Valley. But suppose he should meet Murdo and his gang coming up from
Sundown by way of the Flats?
He just shivered and stuck tight where he was.
Yet he’d have given anyhow a good left hand to know what was ahead
of Torrance and Yarbo, what they were going to find out and just how
things would happen to them.
“Maybe they’ll be dead inside ten minutes,” his dry lips whispered. His
spare shoulders twitched as he added: “Me, too, maybe. Why’n thunder
did I ever come along with two such crazy fools?”
* * * * *
Again Torrance led the way, watchful for some guard who might well
enough be posted outside. It appeared however that Bordereau, as Yarbo
had predicted, was confident that no one was likely to look in on him
here. For when the two men came stealthily up onto the front porch of
the old King Cannon mountain place and looked in at a window, they saw
that the men inside had no thought of anything but of their own affair.
There was Steve Bordereau on his feet and moving about restlessly,
carrying one shoulder stiffly yet beyond that seeming whole and
unharmed. With him were five other men.
“What’n hell are they doing?” whispered Lying Bill Yarbo. “Tearing the
house down?”
“Who are they?” asked Torrance. “Know them?”
“Sure. That little weasel Sam Pepper guessed it; somehow he’s apt to
guess right once in a while. They’re the fellers he said we’d run into.
And take it from me, Torrance, they’re tougher’n saddle leather. If it
comes along to a scrimmage, you better shoot damn fast and twice as
straight--or that little egg-sucking Pepper’ll have the laugh on both
of us.”
Bordereau’s men, under his orders, were making a wreck of the big
rude-timbered living room. With pick and crowbar and hand ax, they were
tearing up floor boards now, and had already demolished a considerable
section of one wall in a corner near the fireplace. One man, down on
his knees, was prying up stones from the hearth.
“There’s six of ’em altogether, and maybe more hanging around,” said
Yarbo. “There’s only two of you and me--”
“Better go back with your little friend Pepper,” said Torrance.
“Why, damn you!” growled Yarbo. “Me, I can handle that crowd alone and
single-handed. I was just going to say--”
“Sh! What do they think they’re doing in there? What are they looking
for?”
Sam Pepper could have told him, nailing the fact on the head; and Sam
would have been in an ecstasy of interest to mark whether they found
it or not. When this country had been filled years before with old
freelance miners, when King Cannon had come up here and looked around
and made him this place, he had grubstaked many a man, he had been a
friend to nearly all of them--and a lot of gold, both raw and minted,
had passed through his hands. Sam Pepper would have explained: “Why he
kept a lot of gold, King Cannon did, and he put it somewhere, didn’t
he? Here in this house, wasn’t it? And it’s never been found in all
these years. Somehow, Steve Bordereau’s got a hunch at last that he can
find it.”
But Sam Pepper, missing all this, wasn’t on hand to explain, and Bill
Yarbo didn’t know. He relieved himself of a ponderous, thick-shouldered
shrug.
“After all,” he suggested, “we come up here to gather Bordereau in,
didn’t we? Me, for a long while, I’ve wanted to see that bull dehorned.
Now while he’s busy, no matter what he’s looking for--”
“The door’ll be locked,” said Torrance. “If we start anything through
the window, they’ll scatter six ways, douse the glim and have us
guessing. Let’s slip around back and see if we can get in.”
“Fair enough,” agreed Yarbo, and they started to withdraw. Just then
however they were riveted in their tracks by a mighty uproar exploding
in the room on which they had only now turned their backs. There was
an excited yell in a high tenor voice, that of Joe Tortillas; there
was a triumphant, bellowing shout that came from an exultant Steve
Bordereau. And then a half dozen men were shouting like schoolboys.
Torrance and Yarbo whirled and ran back and peered in again. They saw
what the excitement was all about. Joe Tortillas was the man who had
been ripping up boards near the fireplace; he had come upon a small
wooden box, pretty well rotted away, and from it dumped on the floor
several rusted old tobacco cans--and thus proved that in old rumors
there could be a lot of truth. What gushed forth was gold, some of it
dust and knobby nuggets, some in minted coins.
“Looks like a million dollars!” gasped Bill Yarbo.-- And, oh, Sam
Pepper, where were you then?
“Looks like Bordereau’d got it for keeps,” snapped Jim Torrance,
“unless-- Come ahead, Bill! Now’s our chance! At the back door. They
won’t be thinking of anything but that King Cannon gold.”
He leaped down from the porch and ran, breaking through a deep
snowdrift at the corner of the house, and after him like a lumbering
plow horse came Lying Bill Yarbo.
They found the back door locked. They tried a window; it, too, was
fastened. They hunted farther, hoping to enter without any splintering
of wood or crash of glass. It was Yarbo who found a narrow door in a
corner and got it open. He was aquiver from stem to stern--just as
Sam Pepper shook through icy fear, so did Yarbo tremble with rage. He
muttered in his throat:
“Damn him, Jim! That belongs to Sally by rights. It might get her in
the clear again. And if Bordereau thinks for a split second--”
Again a stone-cold Jim Torrance gave him a soft “Sh!” to bring him back
to some degree of caution. It would be like Bill Yarbo to go bounding
in like a roaring lion.
“We ought to get the drop on them, Bill, but watch your step. Walk
light and have your gun ready.”
They entered directly into what had once been a large kitchen, the sort
of place where you’d expect to have the ox roasted whole, the sort of
kitchen a man like King Cannon was sure to dream into being. They saw
strips of light under two doors, both giving entrance to the living
room where Bordereau and his exultant followers were. Jim Torrance
jerked his thumb toward one of these doors, then pointed to the other,
and Bill Yarbo nodded. They’d burst in simultaneously from two points
of vantage upon seven unexpecting, loot-excited men.
Torrance stepped softly, tiptoeing, toward one of the doors. Bill Yarbo
went his lumbering way like an old bear toward the other. They had
enough light to guide them and to see each other by, due to the two
glass panels set over the two doors. Torrance began a slow opening of
the door to which he had stepped, drawing it inward toward himself.
Bill Yarbo turned a knob, had trouble because of a warped jamb, gave
an impatient tug, found that his door opened the other way, shoved at
it and--
Then of a sudden, as he remarked later, on regaining consciousness, it
seemed like all hell broke loose. Certainly these three things happened
simultaneously: The door flew open with a crack and a bang of a heavy
panel striking against a wall; the toe of Bill Yarbo’s boot caught on
the threshold and Bill plunged headlong, sprawling on all fours into
the living room--and from somewhere outside and near by there came the
rapid-fire explosions of gunfire. If every energy had been bent toward
giving Bordereau full warning that an attack was bearing down on him,
the thing couldn’t have been better done.
Bordereau experienced his instant of consternation; so did Torrance and
Bill Yarbo; not one of them had the least certainty of what those shots
outside meant.
But Sam Pepper knew!
* * * * *
Sam Pepper kept twisting his head this way and that like a little owl
sitting on a post; he wanted to watch for happenings at the old house,
and at the same time in desperate apprehension he kept watching the
trail along which they had ridden. When all of a sudden he saw two men
bulking big as they rode toward him, his heart pounded, fluttered,
threatened to stop for good and all, and the bones within him seemed to
melt. He had been scared many a time in his life but never like this!
He knew these oncomers for what they were--killers who’d make no more
of Sam Pepper than a cat would make of a mouse at breakfast time.
He wanted to scurry along to the house where Torrance and Yarbo were,
but he couldn’t move. He saw the two men closer; there was enough
light reflected from the white expanse to show him their bulky forms
and, even more clearly, the horses they rode. They were Barty Evans
and Butch Vorich, as sure as he was born, and if there were two more
merciless brutes within a hundred miles of Sundown, he didn’t know
them. He began to wilt and slide down out of his saddle. As he slid he
reached automatically for his belt gun, just as it is said that a man
will grasp at a straw.
Sam Pepper wore an old Colt forty-four that hadn’t been fired for
years; he wasn’t even dead sure that it was loaded! It was a wonder
that the thing could still shoot. Scared stiff and rigid as he was,
still there were certain uncontrollable, spasmodic jerkings of his
spare frame. A voice yelled at him; a gun roared and spat orange-yellow
flame; he was sure that he felt a lock of hair cut away.
His hands, despite the cold, were sweaty. That old gun of his got
itself into his grip, he never quite knew how. A slippery finger
slipped on the trigger. And, a wonder again, the bullet went on its way
as from a fresh cartridge. Finally, a thing that cannot altogether be
explained, an act of fate if you like--just one of those things--that
wild bullet took a man, none other than Barty Evans, square between the
small crafty eyes.
And Sam’s slippery finger kept on slipping. His gun, blazing away as of
its own accord, emptied itself--and a howl of pain shrilled through the
air as the man riding neck and neck with Barty Evans pitched headlong
from his saddle into the snow and lay there moaning and writhing and
trying to get up and falling back and lying where he fell, a black
formless blot on the white of the snow.
The gun slid out of Sam Pepper’s hand. Sam himself balanced drunkenly
as though he too had been shot, then melted from the saddle and slowly
settled down into a snow bank. He didn’t faint exactly, but for a few
moments he didn’t quite know what it was all about or where he was or
why. He felt sick.
* * * * *
He was only vaguely conscious of other shots being fired within the
house, of wild yells and scurryings. He heard more clearly a man
shouting, and recognized Steve Bordereau’s voice: “Get the hell out of
here! There’s a mob after us!” He heard a roar from Bill Yarbo, a roar
cut short off; he heard pistol shots until the world seemed to rock
with them; he heard Steve Bordereau shout again: “The gold, dammit! Get
the gold, Joe! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
And here came men rushing toward him on horseback, a hundred men he
would have sworn, though there were but half a dozen of them in all.
He cowered deeper in the snow and watched them race past; he saw Barty
Evans’ body trampled, saw stricken Butch Vorich try to wriggle out of
the way, screaming, and saw him too trampled, then lying a still black
spot emphasizing the whiteness around him. They were gone, gone with a
rush as they had come. And Sam Pepper, feeling more dead than alive,
was alone.
After a while he picked himself up and slunk into deeper shadows.
His brain began functioning again in its own peculiar way. He began
wondering just what had happened there at the house--what about Jim
Torrance? And Bill Yarbo? After Yarbo’s shout there hadn’t been a sound
from them.
So once again Sam Pepper was torn two ways. He wanted to scramble up
on his horse and get out of here on the dead run, get out and stay out
for good. Also he did want with all his heart and soul to know what had
happened at the house.
He began inching back into the trail.