GORILLA JAKE.
Tim Benson, having by some clever and careful climbing, got out of
the cañon gorge, and to the high ground beyond it, was hastening
along, hurrying so rapidly to put distance between himself and the
men he feared that he had not stopped even long enough to remove the
woman’s dress he wore, when he was brought to a sudden and gasping
halt by seeing a revolver poked at him over the top of a bush.
“Try ter draw a gun, and I’ll down ye!” came in warning from behind
the bush.
Benson’s hands, going involuntarily to the revolver he carried,
stopped on touching the dress, which at the moment he had forgotten
he was wearing.
“Hands up!” repeated the fellow behind the bush.
Grumbling, and still ready to fight, Benson complied; he did not
believe the man who spoke was one of Buffalo Bill’s followers, which
increased the likelihood that the man was an outlaw, like himself.
“Come out of that, and let me see you!” he said. “Likely I know you,
if you’ve been herding round here.”
The man came out, with his revolver leveled.
As soon as Benson saw him he dropped down with a breath of relief,
then began to laugh, as an understanding of the situation came to
him. Yet the man saw nothing to laugh at.
“I’ll jest take that there hand bag,” he said, “and any other
vallybles ye’ve got about ye.”
“Wow! Gorilla Jake!”
The man stopped with a grunt of surprise, but still kept the revolver
pointed at Benson.
“It’s funny, eh?” he said. “Well, explain it, so’s I can laugh with
ye.”
The fellow was a very giant, so far as stature went; but he seemed
an immense ape, or gorilla, rather than a man. His arms were so
abnormally long that the one which hung down at his side extended to
his knee. His legs, by comparison, were short. His body was long; his
shoulders big and thick. His head was small, with cunning, apelike
eyes, set in the midst of a hairy face. His clothing was rough; his
hat, a brimless thing, crowded down so tightly on his skull that the
small size of his head was clearly shown.
“Who--who do you think I am?” Benson gasped.
“I reckon you’re ther woman what let out the screech when I come up
to the stage over thar, after it whanged into the rock. I looked in
at ye; then you give out that clippin’ yell and streaked it; I never
see a female make sech a jump. And run! Well, you was runnin’ like
a locomotive. I seen you had a hand bag, and that the stage held
nothin’; so I piked out and follered ye. Now, I’ll take the hand bag.”
Tim Benson stared at the apelike man before him.
“When was this?” he asked.
“Waal, I’m figgerin’ that you know that jest as well as I do. I’ll
thank ye fer the hand bag.”
“Was it _this_ hand bag?”
“I’m sayin’ it was. Hand it over.”
“See here, you’re fooled.”
“Not on yer life, I ain’t. When ye hand that bag over, simply git rid
of all yer other vallybles, too; fer I want ’em. How you knowed I’m
called Gorilla Jake, I dunno; but it don’t make much difference. I’m
him. Knowin’ it, you ought to know that I’ve got an impatient temper.”
Tim Benson stood up, smoothed out his facial muscles and threw off
the dress he had drawn over his clothing. Then Gorilla Jake saw that
he had a man to deal with. When fuller recognition struck him like a
blow in the face, he fell back.
“Benson!” he howled.
“Needn’t yell it. There’s men on my trail; and they’ll be on yours in
a minute, if they ain’t already. You know ’em, too--Buffalo Bill and
his crowd.”
Gorilla Jake looked around, with a startled air.
“Was that the crowd that was up by the cañon?” he asked.
“You’re speakin’ it.”
“Gee-whittaker!”
“But you needn’t holler it. They’ll be hoppin’ along here soon
enough, without that. What are you doing here?”
“What air you? And what was you playin’ woman fer?”
Tim Benson stood up, listening for sounds of pursuit.
“Let’s hunt a safe hole somewhere; then we can talk things over. It
may be a lucky thing for both of us that we’ve met.”
“Not fer me--if you’ve got Buffalo Bill’s crowd follerin’ ye!”
But the apelike man followed Benson when the latter set out to seek a
safer stopping place.
It was found by and by, in a hole, after a careful climb across a
rocky slope.
“There’s a few bushes growing in the crevices here,” said Benson,
“and they’ll help to hide us; while this position, away up here,
gives us such an outlook that Cody’s crowd can’t come on us easy
without us seeing them. So we can talk things over.”
Gorilla Jake dropped down inside the hole with Benson.
“First,” said Benson, “what brought you here?”
“I might answer by sayin’ my feet,” the apelike man answered,
spreading his mouth in a horrid grin; “but that wouldn’t be
explainin’, would it? So I forks over the information that I was on
my way to Blossom Range, and was keepin’ out of the reg’lar trails
simply as a matter of habit.”
“Any sheriffs chasin’ you?”
Gorilla Jake hesitated.
“Not this trip.”
“The last I heard of you,” said Benson, ignoring the hesitation, “was
when it seemed you was going to hang for killing Nat Spargo, over in
Valley Falls.”
Gorilla Jake drew up his huge shoulders.
“I got out o’ that,” he explained, “by makin’ the jury believe that I
done the thing in self-defense; but it was a close squeeze.”
“What is your lay now?”
“Seems to me that I’m doin’ all the explainin’!” the apelike man
objected. “But, never mind--I’ll git my whack at you when I’m
through. Jest now I was goin’ to Blossom Range, where I thought I
might find some o’ my old pals. But the chief reason was the Utes,
that’s livin’ jest north of it.”
He pulled a package from his pocket. Opening it, he displayed a
number of brown tablets.
“Good trick,” he said; “I paid fifty dollars fer the recipe tellin’
how to make ’em. I never need to go road agentin’ no more, to git all
the cash I want. Feller that I bought the recipe of was a Chinaman.
Ordinary, I take the drugs in their raw state, and mix ’em in whisky.
But over in Virginny City I found a drug-store man what made it up in
that shape fer me; and I kin kerry a lot of it in a small compass.”
He held one of the brown tablets up in his fingers.
“Contains jest two grains,” he said. “Let a man mix one o’ them in
his whisky, and then let him drink it, and he’s jest got to have
more. After that, I’ve got him. It makes him see visions and have
the howlingest happy ole time, with adventures in clear joy, such as
never was; all fer a few cents. One tablet will do that. Give him
three; and he gits wild. Give him four er five, and he’d kill his
best friend fer a dollar. Give him as high as ten, and he jest lays
down and don’t know nothin’ fer twenty-four hours straight.”
Tim Benson became intensely interested.
He took the tablet and looked at it; felt it, smelled it, then tasted
it.
“Not much taste to it,” he remarked.
“It’s the effect what does the work.”
“You’ve tried ’em yourself?”
“Not any fer me, thank ye! If I did, I’d simply be eatin’ ’em all the
time; and it would be the end of me. It gits the best of ’em, after
a while, if they don’t stop it; and they can’t stop it so long as the
stuff is to be had. Start an Injun at it, and first he’ll trade ye
his gun; then he’ll pass over his ponies and his blankets; finally
he’ll give ye his squaws, if ye want ’em.”
“He might murder you to get the stuff, I should think.”
“It don’t work that way. When he’s the wildest, he’s still got sense
enough to pertect the man what furnishes him his means of happiness,
so’s he kin git more. See? So I always feel safe.”
“Is it an opium compound?”
“Thar’s opium in it, and Indian hemp; them’s the principal
ingrediments. Thar’s another thing called woolly loco; an’ some
jalpasca, which comes frum Ceylon. But--shucks, d’ye think I’m goin’
ter give ye ther recipe of how to make this?”
Tim Benson sat staring at the little tablets.
“How many you got of them?” he asked.
“More’n enough to set a hundred men crazier’n a band o’ bobcats.”
“That’s good!”
“See hyer,” snarled the apelike man, showing his fang-like teeth.
“Seems to me I’m doin’ all the talkin’--answerin’ all the questions!
You ain’t opened up any information about yerself, thet I’ve noticed.
No hawg bizness goes with me!”
“I was just thinking.”
“Didn’t I notice it. I want you should do some talkin’.”
“I think we can make this stuff highly useful.”
“I’m doin’ that already; it’s highly useful, to pull money in my
direction. That’s a secrit I ain’t goin’ to sheer with nobody.
Besides, you said we would have a confidential ixchange of
information personal. I’ve laid my cards on the table; put down
yours.”
“Oh, I see! You want to hear my story.”
“Prezackly.”
“It’s short--but not sweet. As I told you, Cody and his crowd are off
over there somewhere, looking for me. I came in the Calumet Wells
stage from Blossom Range this morning. In the stage with me was a
woman, that you don’t know--a show girl, who goes by the name of Vera
Bright. I thought a good deal of her at one time; in fact, me and a
gambler and road agent by the name of John Ward ran a close race for
a snug place in her affections. She allowed Ward was a better looker
than myself, and he won out.”
“I know him.”
“You mean that you once knew him. Right now he is dead.”
“Wow! What did he die of?”
“A bullet out of my pistol.”
The apelike man edged away, staring at Benson.
“Does that hit you in a tender spot?”
“Not p’ticklerly; he wasn’t no friend of mine.”
“I’m glad of it. This woman I’m telling you about never forgave
me for killing Ward; though, as I look at it, it was Ward for the
graveyard, or me. He would have killed me, only that I got him first.”
Then Benson related his adventures in Blossom Range in detail, and
when he had finished the apelike man sat staring in admiration at the
master villain.
“You’re shore a wonder!” he ejaculated.
The compliment pleased Benson, and he smiled.
“I got away, as I said; then I met you.”
“Jest so. Well, I heard a rumble and noise in the trail, and saw the
stage down there, with the horses snarled. Looked like nobody was in
it, er that they was all dead; so I slid down to investigate. When
I poked my nose in at the stage door thar was a woman layin’ on the
cushions. I reckon she thought I was the devil, fer which I ain’t
blamin’ her; I never did count much with women, ner in a beauty show.
She let out a yell, jumped out of the stage, and fair flew; and she
come in this direction.
“About that time I thought I heard men frum the cañon, and I kited;
fer I didn’t want to meet ’em. I run over in this direction, and then
I heard you. Thinkin’ it was maybe somebody that had follered me, I
got behind that bush. It was my intention, if the man was alone, as I
thought, to hold him up and rob him. But it was you.”
“So we understand each other.”
“Yes; now we understand each other.”
“Got any plans now?”
“I told you I was goin’ into the town, then to the Utes.”
“Better keep out of the town right now. As for the Utes, I want to
talk with you about them.”
Throughout their talk Tim Benson had not been at ease, owing to his
fear that Buffalo Bill’s party might come upon him unawares.
Now he got up and crept stealthily away, after telling the apelike
man that he wanted to look round, and would be back in a minute.
When he returned he had news.
“I got a look at ’em,” he announced, “from that hill out there.”
“Wow! Ye did?” said Gorilla Jake, sitting up straighter.
“They’ve found the woman that you scared away from the stage--the
woman I was telling you about--and they’re taking her back to it. I
reckon they’ll send her on to Calumet Wells with Elmore, or back to
Blossom Range.”
“Who’s Elmore?”
“Hank Elmore is the stage driver.”
“Oh!”
“Soon’s they’ve got the woman off their hands they’ll be up here,
follerin’ our trail.”
“They’ll find it hard work trailin’ us acrost them rocks.”
“I guess you don’t know Cody. He can smell out a trail just like a
bloodhound. He’ll find it.”
“Then I reckon we’d better be goin’ on.”
“Yes, after we’ve had a few more words. You said you were going into
the town.”
“It was my calc’lation.”
“But you didn’t tell me who is after you!”
The apelike man stared again--and the clever road agent saw that in
his guess he had hit the bull’s-eye.
“Who said anybody was after me?” said Gorilla Jake.
“Your manner told me. Who is it? Perhaps I can give you some
information.”
The apelike man looked round, then at Benson.
“Might’s well tell it, I s’pose. I was follered by them cussed Betts
brothers.”
“Jim Betts and Bill Betts, the Great Combination?”
“Edzackly. I see you know ’em.”
“Only too well. I saw ’em no longer ago than last night.”
Gorilla Jake stood up with a jump.
“But there’s no use getting scared about it--here!” assured the
crafty road agent. “It was down in Blossom Range that I saw ’em.”
Gorilla Jake sat down, his great frame shivering.
“I might’s well tell ye the whole of it.”
“I think it will be better, if you do,” said Benson, who had lied in
saying he had seen the Betts brothers in the town; the truth being he
had not seen them there or anywhere else recently, though he knew who
they were, and feared them almost as much as he did Buffalo Bill.
“I put a knife into the superintendent of the Goliath Mine, at
Soda Springs,” Gorilla Jake explained. “Hard luck had me by the
throat, and I was tryin’ to git the cash that was in the safe at
the mine office. The superintendent was in the office, and we come
together. He gripped me; and to git free I knifed him. It was only
ten days ago. The thing made me pick up my feet and git out o’ that
in a hurry. A reward was offered fer me alive er dead, by the mine
directors, and it put the Bettses hot on my trail; but I thought I
had shook ’em off.”
Benson concealed the feeling of satisfaction which this gave him.
“You won’t dare to go into the town now, at any rate,” he said.
“No, I reckon not.”
“And Buffalo Bill will help the Bettses, of course.”
“He allus does,” Gorilla Jake admitted, “when they happen ter be
workin’ in the same territory.”
“So it looks to me that the best thing we can do is to join forces.
And since you’ve told me about those tablets, and that you intended
to go to the Utes, an idea has come to me.”
“I was goin’ to sell the stuff to the Utes; but I’ve got to have
whisky as a basis, to soak the things up in; that’s why I was goin’
into Blossom Range--to git the whisky. Can’t do nothin’ without it.
I doctor the whisky with the tablets. A red jest naturally likes the
stuff, anyway; put that dope into it, and you couldn’t pry him away
from it with a crowbar. He’ll trade everything he’s got fer it. I’ve
heard them Utes have got some gold dust, and I know they’ve got furs
and pelts. So that was my lay. I thought I’d be safe there for a
time, and that maybe the Bettses would git tired, or lose the trail.”
Tim Benson sat thinking over this, forming his crafty plans. He knew
now that Buffalo Bill would “get” him unless he could hurl a force
against the scout’s party and crush it. That force might be the Utes.
“I’ve got the whisky,” he announced, “and I’ll go in with you in this
thing; it will make for the safety of both of us. I’ve been using
the Ute village as a hide-out on more than one occasion, and have
found it a mighty good place. But Cody has brought up Matt Shepard,
the sheriff, with a posse, and gone all through it, more than once
recently. And he’ll do it again. The Utes are afraid of the sheriff
and his posse; though without that posse backing him they wouldn’t
stand it. Iron Bow told me the last time I was with him that he
couldn’t hide me again; he’s afraid Shepard will lug him off to the
Blossom Range jail. So it’s not that the old scamp ain’t willing
enough to hide me; and he wants the whisky I give him for it.”
“Where do ye keep this whisky? Git it in the town every time?”
“I used to. Lately I had a burro load cached in the hills, as a thing
to fall back on, if I wasn’t able to get it in the town. Ye see, I
didn’t dare take it all to the Utes at once, and didn’t want to. The
most of it is in that cache now, in bottles.”
“Wow!”
“How does it hit you?”
“Great!”
“My idea is this; and you can tell if it will work. Give enough of
that stuff of yours, in that whisky, to a lot of the warriors, and
get them into a bloody humor; then make them think that Buffalo
Bill’s crowd is out here to make trouble for ’em. It ought to send
them out against Cody’s gang red-headed.”
The apelike man gurgled what he probably thought was a laugh.
“It’d do it.”
“Then, the thing is easy. If the stuff will do that we can simply
wipe that crowd off the face of the earth.”
Gorilla Jake stood up and looked across the rocky land.
“How fur is it to that whisky cache? Seems to me I’d like a drink
myself. But with no dope in it; none o’ that dope fer me!”
“The cache isn’t far from the Ute village.”
“If the reds has found it thar’ll be an empty cache when we git
thar.”
“I don’t think they could find it.”
“I reckon we ought to be movin’ out of this. If I understood you,
after Cody’s crowd put that woman back into the stage they’re likely
to come this way, follerin’ our trails.”
“They’re sure to.”
He stepped farther out, still looking about.
Suddenly he turned and dived back. As he did so a bullet plunked
against a rock right over his head.
“Gee-whiskers!” he sputtered. “That was a close call.”
No rifle or revolver report had sounded.
“_They_ ain’t in the town, you bet!”
His apelike face had changed in a moment to an ashen white, showing
terror. “It was from Bill Betts’ rifle,” he said.
Tim Benson was not a little startled.
“You saw Bill Betts out there?” he asked.
“I seen the swish of his umbreller; then that came at me.”
Sweat began to stream out of his face.
“Take a look out, and see! It was over by that big rock. But look out
fer yerself.”
A good deal puzzled, Tim Benson crept to the edge of the hole and
looked out. After staring hard he failed to locate the umbrella.
“I don’t see anything,” he called back in a whisper.
“Mebby she’s circlin’!”
“_She?_”
“I see that yuh don’t know much about ther Betts brothers. Jim, he’s
a tall, ganglin’ feller; while his brother is little; that’s Bill.
And Bill he does the female lay.”
“I see. One of my little tricks--plays woman.”
“Where they ain’t known they purtend ter be husband and wife, and
air gin’rally quarrelin’ about all ther time, jest to fool folks.
The woman--I’ve kinder got inter ther habit o’ callin’ Bill a
woman!--don’t carry any weepins that anybody knows of, but she is
allers packin’ about with her a big gray umbreller. It’s her rifle;
an air gun, that shoots wicked, yit don’t make a sound that you can
hear ten yards off. She whanged at me jest now with her air gun.
Which shows that she seen me. And o’ course she’s crawlin’ up. Ain’t
thar no way o’ gittin’ out o’ this infernal hole without rushin’ out
thar?”
“I don’t see her, or the umbrella,” Benson declared.
Gorilla Jake ventured to creep out at Benson’s side. As soon as he
could see across the rocks he dropped down, dragging at the sleeve of
his companion.
“Thar! Thar!” he said, shivering. “Don’t yer see it?”
“Blamed if I do.”
“That gray rock off thar; looks jest like a gray rock, anyhow. It’s
her umbreller. She’s squattin behind it, waiting fer me to show
myself. She’ll hold us hyer till Cody’s crowd comes up. It’s her
game. She thinks she has got me in a hole, and now she has plugged up
the hole.”
Tim Benson saw the “gray rock,” when Gorilla Jake pointed it out to
him; but even then could hardly believe that the gray object was not
a rock.
“If it’s an umbrella, a bullet through it ought to get Bill Betts,”
he said.
“Which goes ter show that you don’t know her. She is layin’ off to
one side, prob’ly, wi’ a rock coverin’ her, er coverin’ her head and
shoulders, so a bullet through ther umbreller wouldn’t git her.”
He worked a little higher, even at a risk, and tried to look round.
He was perspiring profusely, and his gray eyes glittered; while his
lips, drawn back, revealed his fanglike teeth. More than ever he
resembled an ape or gorilla, rather than a man.
Tim Benson was not slow in perceiving the desperate character of the
situation. Bottled up in the hole by that deadly air rifle, what was
to hinder the pretended woman from keeping them there until Buffalo
Bill’s party could come up? That would mean Benson’s capture, as well
as Gorilla Jake’s.
He drew back his head and studied the stones at the rear of the hole.
Then he looked at the long arms of the man-ape, and his powerful
shoulders. Benson himself was a small man; but this giant at his side
might do the thing he could not. He could furnish the brains which
Gorilla Jake lacked, and the man-ape could furnish the muscle which
he lacked. It was, it seemed, a fortunate combination.
“If you’ve got the courage, Jake,” he said, “there’s no reason why,
with your strength, you can’t push those two stones out of the way
back there. It would furnish us a means to get out of this hole.”
Gorilla Jake stared at the stones, licking his hairy lips.
“If she didn’t pot me while I was doin’ it!” he objected.
Benson looked round again.
“Here, we can up-end this stone,” he said, “and it will screen you
from her bullets while you turn the trick. But we’ve got to be quick
about it.”
“Quick’s the word! Cody’s crowd is comin’; I know it by the way she
jest sets down thar behind that umbreller.”
They up-ended the stone, a thing easy to do when the man-ape applied
his immense strength to the task.
Believing that this would screen him, Gorilla Jake now attacked the
stones at the rear of the nest, which Benson pointed out. It was a
wonderful exhibition of brute strength; the muscles on his arms and
shoulders corded themselves up like knotted ropes, his breast heaved
up and down convulsively, sweat rained from his face; but he moved
the heaviest of the stones, and with a great surge of his writhing
body threw it to one side. The next, which had lain under it, was not
so difficult, and a hole had been opened.
Through it they pulled themselves; then slid their bodies down the
slope on the other side.
They now had the rocky hill between themselves and the terrible
“woman” with the umbrella.
Gorilla Jake bounded to his feet like a huge ball of live rubber.
“Now fer the tall hills!” he panted.
“Yes; this is our chance. Poke your nose at that peak over there, and
keep going. I’ll try to hold you in sight. I guess we can give that
crowd the slip even yet.”
Then they began to run, with the peak as their first objective point,
being careful to keep to rocky and hard ground.