THE SURPRISE AT JUNIPER JOE’S.
Buffalo Bill filled in the day by riding with Nick Nomad out to Eagle
Gap, for the purpose of looking over the scene of the hold-up.
Baron von Schnitzenhauser, his curiosity fired by what the scout told
him of the visit of Jackson Dane to the show girl called Vera Bright,
had determined that he would shadow the Casino, instead.
So the baron donned again his prospector’s suit of clothing,
discarded his little fore-and-aft cap for a miner’s slouch hat, and
sallied forth. It was one of the baron’s peculiar delusions that he
could disguise himself easily; it was a harmless impression, and
sometimes it yielded no end of excitement. But any one familiar with
the appearance of that round body and those pipe-stem legs did not
need to wait for the baron to open his mouth to know who he was.
The body of Austin had been brought in by some of the citizens of
Blossom Range; so there was nothing grewsome at Eagle Gap, when the
scout and trapper reached it.
They found the spot readily enough, from the descriptions which had
been furnished by the baron.
As said, it was a ragged crevice of rock, through which the winding
mountain trail ran. Beside it was the ridge over which the baron had
jumped, and the shaly slope down which his round body had plunged in
search of safety.
Buffalo Bill and Nomad looked the place over pretty thoroughly.
They found blood stains at the point where Austin had been killed
and Brown had been wounded. Near by they picked up empty cartridge
shells, apparently from the rifles of the outlaws. But they found
nothing else of much interest. The rocky surface held no tracks,
either of the men or the burros; so that trailing was out of the
question. Any of the several gullies leading off from the main one
might have taken the road agents away; yet which one, or whether they
had gone straight along the winding path when they disappeared from
the sight of Brown, could not be settled. The baron had not seen them
depart.
After spending a fruitless hour in their search, Buffalo Bill and
Nomad returned to town, as night was at hand.
On the way to the pass and back, they talked much of what had
happened, each presenting many theories for discussion. One of the
things they particularly discussed was the statement of Jackson Dane,
that the two road agents who had done the work had been Juniper Joe
and his new wife.
“Ef Dane didn’t act so quare hisself, some deependence might be put
in what he said,” averred Nomad.
“Very true,” the scout assented; “the difficulty lies just there.”
“Ef he wanted to be frank and aboveboard wi’ ye, why didn’t he make
some mention of thet gal, Vera Bright?”
“She may have no connection with the thing at all; in fact, I don’t
see how she could have.”
“So, thar ye air; jest whar ye was before,” said Nomad.
The lights of the town were glimmering across the rocky slopes as
they approached; and night had come.
“What ye goin’ to do to-night?” Nomad asked.
“I think I shall stick to my plan of watching Juniper Joe’s cabin
to-night.”
“Y’ ain’t had any sleep ter-day!” the trapper objected.
“That doesn’t matter. I can roll in some time before morning, and get
all I need. We’ll first see if the baron has jumped anything, in his
watching at the Casino.”
But the baron did not appear at the evening meal at the Eagle House;
nor had he showed up when the scout set out with the trapper for
Juniper Joe’s.
By a roundabout way, they reached the cabin, without being observed,
as they believed.
It was dark.
Juniper Joe, who had been downtown, came home about ten o’clock.
He locked the door after he went in. Then the light that had been
burning was put out, and darkness reigned in the cabin.
About four o’clock in the morning, Buffalo Bill and Nomad gave it up,
and went back to the Eagle House. They needed sleep and rest.
The baron had not returned; and the night clerk had not seen him.
“When ther baron gits onter a job, he’s like a dawg hangin’ ter a
root,” Nomad observed. “I opine thet he’s still hanging round ther
Casino.”
“If he doesn’t appear by morning we will investigate,” said the
scout, as he turned in.
In the morning, when he went down to the Casino and Gopher Gabe’s
saloon to inquire about the German, Buffalo Bill was told that he had
been seen in the vicinity of Juniper Joe’s cabin.
The scout’s informant was a disreputable, rum-soaked specimen, who
had heard him ask Gopher Gabe if the German had been there during the
previous evening.
“I know the Dutchman,” said the fellow. “He was wearin’ miner’s
clo’es, like he did when he piked out with them prospectors. I dunno
what he was doin’ up there.”
“What hour was this?” the scout asked.
“Now, I’ll tell ye how ’twas,” said the fellow, laying a hand on
the scout’s arm with confidential and offensive familiarity. “I was
boozin’ las’ night, and I had wandered up there for a snooze, to git
over it; there air trees growin’ along the slope by Juniper Joe’s,
an’ they make a dandy sleepin’ place. I camped down there early in
the evening; mebby ’twas nine o’clock; and I went to sleep at onct.
About four, er mebby five, in the mornin’. I awoke with a tur’ble
thirst; you know how ’tis! I was so thirsty it woke me.
“It was too early to git a drink. I knowed that; and I hadn’t tuck
any whisky up there with me. While I was wonderin’ how I was goin’ to
live out the time until Gopher Gabe’d open his shutters down here, I
seen the Dutchman; he come stealin’ along through the trees, right by
me. That’s all I know.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Hope I may die, if I didn’t!”
“Thanks!” said the scout, turning away.
The greasy loafer caught him by the coat.
“It’s wuth somethin’, ain’t it?” he whined. “Enough ter git a feller
a drink, anyhow.”
Buffalo Bill, disgusted, threw him a silver dollar, and hastened off.
He knew that the man’s statement had been overheard by Gopher Gabe,
if not others; which fact he disliked. And he wanted to get away from
him. Besides, if his story were true, it was worth investigating.
“What was the baron doing at Juniper Joe’s, when he set out to shadow
the people in the Casino?” was his thought. “I wonder if that rascal
is a liar?”
When Buffalo Bill reached Juniper Joe’s cabin, it was tightly locked.
As the hour was yet early, it seemed probable that the occupants were
not yet up. But at a venture the scout knocked.
A deep groan was the answer, within the cabin.
The scout knocked again, startled by that; and heard another groan.
After that, he did not stop to get help; but threw his weight against
the door, ramming it half off its hinges, splintering the wood round
the lock. Having struck it like a stone out of a catapult, he was
precipitated into the big front room when the door yielded.
The light of early morning streamed in, revealing an unexpected
sight. Juniper Joe lay on the floor in a corner, bound and gagged;
while not far from him lay Mrs. Joe, either dead or apparently
unconscious.
With a cry, the scout sprang to the woman first.
When he turned her, he saw that blood was clotted in her hair over
her forehead. She seemed unconscious, and it looked like a case of
murder.
Turning to the man, Buffalo Bill cut the cord that held the gag, then
severed those on his arms and ankles. The gag was made of a piece of
stick, smooth and round, held by strong cotton string; the wrist and
ankle cords were of the same sort of string.
Juniper Joe gasped and choked as the gag came out of his mouth.
“Mum--my wife!” he sputtered.
The scout went again to the woman, and lifted her head; then he got
out his flask and gave her some of the contents. It revived her; so
that she gasped and moved.
“She isn’t dead,” he told Juniper Joe.
The latter got heavily to his feet, and came over, kneeling beside
the scout, who was working over the woman.
“If you can walk,” said the scout, “you had better hustle out for
help and a doctor. How did this happen?”
“Bub--Benson!” Juniper Joe stuttered.
“He did it?”
“Sh--shore thing. How he got into the cabin, I dunno; but the first
thing I knowed I heard my wife screech out. It was before light; but
I was back in the mine. It brought me running. When I butted through
the door thar, not knowin’ what to expect, Benson tripped me, and
give me a side-winder behind the ear that done me up fer a while.
When I got my thinker to goin’ again, I was hawg-tied like you found
me.”
“Benson!”
“That gold you saw me have--he got it, every bit of it.”
“You saw him get it?”
“I was comin’ back to myself, and seen him take it; he done it up in
a bag that was over thar; then he let himself out by the door, which
he locked behind him.”
“If I hadn’t been gagged,” he added, “I might have hollered then,
when he opened the door; but I reckon even then ’twouldn’t done no
good, as nobody lives clost by.”
“Better get help for your wife,” Buffalo Bill advised.
Juniper Joe seemed either too anxious to leave her, or he did not
want to get a doctor; instead of following the scout’s advice, he
turned his attention to assisting in restoring her to consciousness.
Their combined efforts were soon rewarded.
When she came back to consciousness the woman lay on the bed, in the
rear room, where the scout had placed her; she looked round wildly.
“You are all right, now,” Buffalo Bill told her.
“B-b-but Benson!” she cried, as if frightened.
“He is not here now.”
“He struck me and knocked me down,” she stated.
She put out her hands, clinging to Juniper Joe.
“Thar--thar!” he said. “That’s all right; he ain’t hyer now.”
She stared round.
“He cut out,” he said; “but he tuck the nuggets I got out o’ that
pocket in the mine yisterday.”
“He didn’t shoot you?” Buffalo Bill asked her, as he again looked at
the wound and the caked blood round it. “It resembles a pistol wound.”
“He hit me with a pistol, I think,” she averred. “I reckon it was the
pistol hammer done it.”
“Very likely.”
As Juniper Joe still showed an unwillingness to get help, Buffalo
Bill soon left the cabin, and sent a physician, whose office he
passed on his hurried way back to the town.
“Of course, the hammer of a pistol could have made that wound,” he
thought; “but to me it looked mightily like a bullet wound, made some
hours before, though it had bled rather recently.”
He could not get away from the thoughts suggested by Jackson Dane’s
declaration that Juniper Joe and his wife were the two who had played
road agents and corraled the treasure guarded by the baron and the
prospectors.