BEN THURSTON, during the afternoon, seated in his big armchair, had
first nodded over a newspaper and then dropped off to sleep. He was
awakened by a touch on the shoulder—rudely awakened, for he jumped to
his feet, and in a dazed way glared at the disturber.
“Excuse me,” apologized Leach Sharkey, “but I want to remind you that
this is the afternoon when we are to meet that old Portugee I told you
about.”
“I need no reminder,” was the gruff reply. “I am ready to start when you
are. By the way, what’s the fellow’s name?”
“José, he said. He claims to know every nook and corner in the range.
Has lived in the mountains for many years; keeps goats and bees, and
shoots a mountain lion occasionally, earning the bounty as well as
getting the skin.”
“Shoots,” echoed Thurston, somewhat nervously.
“Oh, that was in his younger days mostly, I fancy. Today he is a
tottering old man who couldn’t hold a rifle straight if he tried. But
he’s well acquainted with the mountains, that’s the main thing. He tells
me he has known where Dick Willoughby is hiding since the very day after
he broke jail.”
“Then why didn’t he come to me?”
“Because he knew nothing about the reward. But at our very first chance
meeting among the hills I very soon made five thousand dollars look
mighty good to him. By gad, you should have seen his eyes pop and his
hands tremble.”
“It is a fortune for such a man.”
“That’s what got him. He has been supplying Willoughby with goats’
milk, but is paid only two bits a quart. So he grabbed at my bait like
a hungry coyote. You have the money ready, I suppose? Treasury
bills—that’s what he stipulated for, because he’s too frail to hump a
sack of gold around.”
“The money is in that wallet on my desk. You had better carry it.”
Sharkey stepped across the room and shoved a fat leather wallet into the
breast pocket of his coat.
“So frail, is he?” Thurston went on, musingly. “Well, I needn’t take a
gun.”
Sharkey smiled. He knew Ben Thurston’s timidity in even handling a
revolver, and the man’s abject reliance on his armed bodyguard.
“Not the slightest necessity,” assented the sleuth. “I’ve always got
my brace of bulldogs ready;” and the professional gunman, touching
the broad leather belt to which his holsters were attached, grinned
complacently.
“And no danger to be feared from Willoughby himself, you said?”
“None whatever. In fact, he don’t have a gun, José declares. So he only
sneaks out after dark for a constitutional. The old fellow will take us
to the spot where we can grab him by the neck.”
“That sounds like business,” replied Thurston, rubbing his hands. “And
shoot him down, Sharkey, if he runs.”
“He won’t give us the slip this time—you can bet dollars to doughnuts
on that. But of course he’s got to have the chance of hands-up before
I fire. Killing is killing, and I prefer the handcuffs. There is really
less trouble in the long run.”
“Well, perhaps I, too, would prefer to see him hanged,” murmured
Thurston, with gloating satisfaction. “But don’t forget that we must get
him this afternoon, dead or alive. I’m sick of this life of watching and
waiting.”
“The end’s in sight at last.”
“Then we’ll go back East—after I have had my revenge. It will be sweeter
to me after all the trouble we’ve encountered. And by God, we’ll drag
that Farnsworth girl, too, through the mire. Hell to all of them! I’ve
never had anyone but enemies around me here.”
While speaking, Thurston reached for his overcoat thrown across the back
of a chair.
“All right, we’ll start,” said Sharkey. “I’ll go and get the horses
ready.”
It was about half past three o’clock when the riders reached the base of
the mountain barrier not far from the entrance to Tejon Pass.
“We’ve got to make it on foot now,” remarked Sharkey, as he swung
himself from the saddle. “I’ll tether the horses to this manzanita.”
Thurston dismounted, and while his companion led the animals under the
trees, he gazed aloft at the precipice beetling in front of them.
“Damn it, I wish you had chosen any other place than Comanche Point,” he
exclaimed irritably.
“We had to come to the spot where we can find our man,” replied Sharkey
complacently. “It is on the ridge above that Willoughby has his place of
hiding. Come along, we have a good stiff climb before us.”
He led the way up the first slope of the winding trail and Ben Thurston
followed, reluctantly now, half doubting the wisdom of his having left
his home for such an adventure.
Meanwhile there had been two other riders on the range that afternoon,
mounted on little hill ponies. The one man was blindfolded; the other
rode in advance and guided the second pony by a leading rein. It had
been the usual experience to which Dick Willoughby had now become
accustomed—hour after hour along winding, maze-like trails. At last the
call had come to dismount, and the bandage had been removed from Dick’s
eyes. He saw that he was in a little box-like nook in the mountains.
“You will remain here,” said Pierre Luzon, “until I whistle for you—you
know my signal. Zen you will lead ze ponies along zis path. When
you come to me, I will put you on ze road for home, and we will say
good-bye.”
“I suppose I may smoke,” laughed Dick, philosophically. The day of
surprises had left him dulled to any further wonderment.
“Sure, smoke,” replied Pierre. “But remember ze forest regulations,” he
added with a chuckle, “and do not set ze brush on fire.”
“Oh, I’m no green tenderfoot,” laughed
Willoughby, as he drew his briar-root from his pocket. “And it’s quite a
balmy afternoon for October.”
He sat down and propped his back against a moss-grown rock.
“You must not stir from here,” continued Pierre. “Remember I have to
find you again.”
“Guess I’ve learned to obey orders. I’m quite comfortable where I am.”
And Dick started contentedly smoking.
Pierre, following the little path to which he had drawn Dick’s
attention, pushed through the brushwood and disappeared.
Just ten minutes later Pierre Luzon stood on Comanche Point and gazed
down the trail leading up from the pass below.
“Zey are coming, zey are coming!” he exclaimed eagerly to himself, with
finger outpointed in the direction of the two climbers on foot half
way up the ascent. Then he slipped back into the shadow of a clump of
stunted pines that grew close to the cliff.
Fifteen minutes or so passed. Then the heads of Ben Thurston and Leach
Sharkey showed above the final steep ascent that led directly on to the
projecting spur known as Comanche Point. Thurston was breathing hard
after the difficult climb.
“Here we are at last,” remarked Sharkey cheerfully, as he glanced
around.
Even as he spoke, a tottering figure came forth from among the pines. A
few minutes before, Pierre Luzon had been erect and vigorous and nimble
on his feet, but now he seemed to be indeed a frail and bowed old man.
“I have come,” he said, as he approached the figures on the cliff.
“Hands up, then,” cried the sleuth, half laughing. “You remember, I said
I would search you for a gun.”
“I have no gun,” Pierre answered, as he halted and elevated his arms.
Sharkey advanced and, without taking the trouble to draw either of his
own weapons, ran his fingers with the quick touch of experience over the
old man’s clothes.
“I knew you were on the square, José,” said the bodyguard, quickly
satisfied. “Well, I’ve brought the mazuma.”
He drew from his pocket the fat wallet, opening it for a moment to
display the wads of greenbacks. Then he put it back again.
“Now where is our man?”
“He is down here, just a little distance,” replied Pierre, in a cautious
whisper. “I am not strong enough to hold him. But you come. Ze boss, he
can remain here for ze present.”
Ben Thurston had turned away and was looking down into the valley.
“We’ll be back in a short time,” called out Sharkey.
But Thurston, if he had heard, made no reply.
“Now show the way, old fellow,” continued the sleuth, addressing his
guide.
A moment later Ben Thurston was alone.
Alone on Comanche Point—gazing over the broad sweep of lands that had
been his princely heritage, but which he had now lost forever! The
valley lay beneath him, bathed in the mellow evening sunshine. But his
eyes were riveted on a single spot. And what a transformation scene for
the erstwhile cattle king—this new city with its checkerboard of streets
and all around it new homes amid plots of young fruit trees and meadows
of alfalfa!
The whole picture was one of fascinating beauty—the city itself the
finishing touch that gave it human interest. But in Ben Thurston’s soul
there was nothing but bitterness and disgust. He had kept on complaining
that he had been unscrupulously plundered by the Los Angeles syndicate,
and with the realization now of what enterprise and enlightened progress
could achieve, he began to feel that he had been mercilessly stripped
of what was rightfully his. Greed and envy and vain regrets were all
commingled in his surge of envenomed thoughts. But avarice predominated.
“Good God, to think I parted with the rancho at a beggarly acreage
price, when I might have been selling town lots today. There will be a
dozen other towns springing up to follow this one.”
In his agony he groaned aloud and covered his eyes with his hands to
shut out the hateful sight.
Just at that moment the sound of a twig crackling underfoot smote his
ear. He turned round; into his face stole an ashen look of terror as he
watched an approaching figure wrapped in a Spanish cloak and crowned by
a broad-brimmed sombrero. His haggard eyes asked: “Is it man or ghost?”
He would have screamed aloud, but found himself voiceless from fear.
At last the figure stood before him with proudly folded arms.
“The White Wolf!” gasped Thurston, in a faint whisper.
“Yes, Don Manuel de Valencia—the White Wolf, as you choose to call him.
And now at last, Ben Thurston, we meet face to face, and alone—after
thirty long years, and without a woman’s tears this time to save you!”
Ben Thurston sank to the ground, a huddled heap, trembling in every
limb.