THE spell of restraint that resulted from Buck Ashley’s story was at
last broken by the cowboy, Jack Rover.
“Look here, Dick,” he exclaimed, “I’ll give a month’s salary if you will
let me take a chance and follow old Guadalupe. I’ve simply got to find
out and locate that sand-bar in some mountain stream from which she
brings in all this gold. This is the third time I’ve seen our friend
Buck Ashley collect a grocery bill from the old squaw, and the whole
business, gold nuggets and all, is getting on my nerves. Why, I dreamed
about it for a week last time I saw her forking out whole handfuls of
gold.”
“Very well,” replied Willoughby, “if you want to take the chance, Jack,
go ahead. But it is a mad project which will end in my expressing your
remains back East or else planting you in the cemetery on the hill. It’s
up to you to make your choice before you tackle the job. You certainly
know what happened to four or five others who attempted to follow the
old squaw. Each mother’s son of them was buried the next day.”
“Oh, that’s ancient history,” Jack retorted.
“Not such very ancient hist’ry,” remarked Tom Baker. “I myself saw young
Bill McNab drilled through the heart with a bullet that seemed to come
from nowhere. After that I’ll allow I wasn’t filled up with too much
curiosity as to where Guadalupe hiked over the mountains.”
“There was a regular sharp-shootin’ outfit,” concurred Buck Ashley.
“And there wasn’t a sheriff in the country would have led a posse into
that damned ambush,” Tom went on. “There wasn’t a sportin’ chance along
that narrow ledge round which Guadalupe always disappeared. And with all
them outlaws in the mountains!”
“But the outlaws have been wiped out years ago,” persisted Jack Rover.
“Mebbe,” said Tom Baker, sententiously.
“You forget the White Wolf,” added Buck Ashley.
“Which white wolf?” asked Jack. “I put that question before but got no
answer.”
“Both,” replied Tom. “To begin with I don’t believe that Don Manuel is
dead at all. That was only a newspaper story. You may take it from me
that the bandit won’t pass in his checks till he gets old Ben Thurston.
I’m allowin’ as how Ben Thurston would quick enough give a thousand head
of his fattest beeves just to rest easy in his mind on that score. He’ll
find out, sure enough, some day.”
“Yes, when the White Wolf finds him,” interjected the storekeeper with a
terse emphasis.
“What’s that old feud anyway?” queried Lieutenant Munson. “Tell me,
Tom.”
“Oh, it is an old story,” the sheriff answered. “I thought everybody
knew about it, but of course you’re a newcomer. Well, you see,”
he continued, clearing his throat and expectorating a copious and
accurately aimed pit-tew of tobacco juice toward a knot-hole in the
floor, “the White Wolf’s father, Don Antonio de Valencia, a reg’lar
high-toned grandee from Spain, had settled in these here parts away
back longer than anyone could remember. He claimed this whole stretch of
country from horizon to horizon. Then came the Americans, among them
a government surveyor named Thurston. He had a pull at Washington and
managed to get a legal grant to the San Antonio property. Of course the
old Spaniard had no real title—his was just a sort of squatter’s claim.
But they do say as how he had lived in this here valley more than half a
century, so it was mighty hard luck to lose the land. And the boy Manuel
never would admit the Thurstons had any right to call it theirs.”
“Don Manuel had a younger sister,” interposed Buck Ashley. “Rosetta,
a beautiful girl—looked like a morning-glory. Gad! but she sure had a
purty face. You remember, Tom, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Tom Baker, “it’s not likely I should forget the poor
girl. It was ‘cause of her the quarrel became a bitter blood feud—the
Vendetta of the Hills, as we got to calling it. You see,” he went on,
resuming the thread of his story, “old man Thurston’s son, Ben, the
present owner of the rancho, was in his younger days a gay Lothario
scamp, and he came from the East to his new home in California loaded
down with a college education and a mighty intimate knowledge of
the ways of the world that decent folks don’t talk about, much less
practice. He had not been here a month until he commenced makin’ love
to little Senorita Rosetta. Before the second sheep-shearin’ time came
around, she was—well, in a delicate condition. To save himself and,
as he thought, cover up the disgrace—you see he was engaged to a rich
Eastern girl of prominent family—why, the young scoundrel conceived the
hellish plot of lurin’ little Rosetta to Comanche Point one dark night.
And when he got her there he threw her over the cliff—at least that’s
the way the story goes. Guess Don Manuel was about twenty-five years old
at that time, and Ben Thurston two or three years his junior. Well,
the disgrace killed Rosetta’s father and mother. They died of grief
and shame soon after the affair, almost on the same day, and Don Manuel
buried them together in the old churchyard on the hill by the side of
his murdered sister. And it was there and then, they say, that he took
an oath to kill Ben Thurston. That was mor’n thirty years ago and the
feud has been on ever since, and all us old-timers know hell will be
poppin’ ‘round here one of these days.”
“But nobody ever sees the White Wolf, Don Manuel,” added Buck Ashley.
“That’s the ex-tr’ornery part of it.”
“Oh, you yourself are likely to see him one of these dark nights, Buck,”
laughed Jack Rover, as he winked at the other boys. “A storekeeper
that’ll work night and day stacking up money year in and year out is
liable to have a call sooner or later from the bandit and his friends.”
“Oh, hell!” was the laconic response of Buck Ashley. “Guess I sure can
take care of myself.”
“But Don Manuel may not be alive,” suggested the young lieutenant.
“He’s alive right enough, make no mistake,” said Tom Baker, “although
I’ll allow I don’t know a single soul who has actually seen him
personally for more’n twenty years. He is a kind o’ shadowy cuss.
Everybody knows him by his old-time deeds of high-way robbin’ and
all-round murderin’ for golden loot. I heard of a feller last year who
claims to have seen the White Wolf when he was makin’ that last big
stage delivery over by Tulare Lake. He was masked, and had all the
passengers out on the roadside with their hands thrown up over their
heads while he was takin’ their valuables away from them.”
“It’s a dead cinch,” Buck Ashley observed, “that whenever there was a
hold-up or a robbery, or a murder in cold blood for money, why everybody
knew that the White Wolf was again in the hills and playin’ his
cut-throat game for pelf and plunder, or mebbe just for revenge against
the gringos, whom he hated like hell. Sometimes he was not heard of
in these parts for two or three years, and then he showed up more
blood-thirsty than ever. His hand was agin every man, and it looked like
as every man’s hand was agin him.”
“I’ve been told,” said Dick Willoughby, “that when the White Wolf was a
boy he saved the life of the old highwayman, Joaquin Murietta.”
“Yes, them are facts,” replied Tom Baker. “Leastways I’ve heard say so.
They claim that he saved Murietta’s life from a posse of deputies one
night, and altho’ the White Wolf was only a boy at that time, yet a heap
of people think he’s the only livin’ soul who knows the whereabouts and
location of the secret cavern where Joaquin Murietta planted his loot,
amountin’, they say, to millions of dollars in gold and jewels and
valuables of all kinds. The retreat always proved a safe one for the
murderin’ gang, and now they’re gone no one even to this day can find
the place. It’s somewhere on San Antonio Rancho, but where? The White
Wolf kept his secret well.”
“If old Pierre Luzon ever gets out of San Quentin,” remarked the
storekeeper, “I guess he could tell, but he’s up for life. He was nabbed
in that same Tulare Lake affair ‘bout which Tom had been talkin’.”
“Yes,” said the sheriff, “two others were shot dead before they got back
to the mountains. The White Wolf and Pierre were ridin’ alone when the
Frenchie’s horse stumbled. They picked him up insensible, a broken leg
and concussion of the brain, and he was the only one of the gang who
ever went to jail.”
“God ‘lmighty,” exclaimed Buck, “old Pierre used to sit around in this
here store day after day, smokin’ an old foreign-lookin’ pipe, and
hardly speakin’ a word. He used to pretend he knew no English. We never
once suspected that he was one of Don Manuel’s bunch—always thought
of him as an old sheepherder, a bit off his nut, who had saved a few
dollars and was takin’ things easy. And hell, all the time he was the
White Wolf’s look-out man, makin’ note of everything and passin’ the
word o’ warnin’ when there was talk of the sheriff gettin’ busy.”
“I’ll allow Pierre Luzon fooled me proper,” concurred Tom Baker.
“However, he got what was cornin’ to him all right, a life sentence,
though he ought to have been hanged. Well, perhaps it is only the White
Wolf and Pierre Luzon who now know the cave where Joaquin Murietta
cached his treasure.”
“And Guadalupe perhaps as well,” remarked Buck Ashley.
“Yes, perhaps Guadalupe also,” assented the sheriff. “But the White Wolf
keeps guard over her.”
“That’s the real White Wolf this time,” laughed
Dick Willoughby, with a nod toward the young lieutenant, who had been
listening intently to the tale of weird romance.
“The real White Wolf?” replied Munson, enquiringly. “You’ve got me all
tangled up. What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know how Don Manuel came by his name of the White Wolf?”
asked the sheriff.
“No, all this folk lore is new to me.”
“Why, gosh all hemlock! He is named because of a darn big white wolf
that has been seen at different times in this here country for a hundred
years.”
“Wolves don’t live so long,” protested the lieutenant incredulously.
“Well, this one does,” retorted Tom, curtly. “Leastwise he’s been seen
from time to time since ever I can remember. In the old days they named
the White Wolf Rancho after this monster animal. It has a charmed life.
No one can kill this big fellow, altho’ lots of shots have been fired
at him. And the same was true of Don Manuel de Valencia. He escaped so
often that folks believed his life a charmed one. And so they called him
the White Wolf.”
“I saw the white wolf once myself,” said Buck Ashley, “the real white
wolf that even now, as Tom says, guards old Guadalupe and makes it best
for young fellows like you, Jack Rover, to leave the squaw alone when
she makes back for her hidin’ place in the mountains. I’ll never forget
that morning, although it’s more or less twenty years ago. The great
shaggy brute was following Guadalupe along the trail like a Newfoundland
dog. In those days I was out on the hills roundin’ up some mavericks.
One of the calves broke from the herd and scampered along a trail that
led directly in front of the old squaw. And say, boys, would you believe
it? From less than half a mile away I saw with my own eyes that monster
devil of a white wolf—white as the driven snow—make one terrific mad
leap and grab that yearlin’ by the neck. Guadalupe spotted me and
disappeared, and the white wolf trotted after her round the bend,
carryin’ the dead calf in its jaws as a cat carries a mouse.”
“Did you not shoot at the wolf?” excitedly asked Lieutenant Munson.
“Shoot, hell! What would have been the use? Didn’t you hear what Tom
Baker said? White wolves have charmed lives whether they go on two legs
or four.”