WE LOSE AGAIN.
Three days later MacRae and I scaled the steep bank at the west end of
the cliff and threw ourselves, panting, on the level that ran up to the
sheer drop-off. When we had regained the breath we'd lost on that
Mansard-roof climb we drew near to the edge, where we could stare into
the valley three hundred feet below while we made us a cigarette apiece.
We were just a mite discouraged. Beginning that first morning at the
east end of the Writing-Stone we had worked west, conning the
weather-worn face of it for a mark that would give a clue to the
_cache_. Also we had scanned carefully the sandy soil patches along the
boulder-strewn base, seeking the tell-tale footprints of horse or man.
And we had found nothing. Each day the conviction grew stronger upon us
that finding that gold would be purely chance, a miracle of luck;
systematic search had so far resulted in nothing but blistered heels
from much walking. And unless we did find it, thereby giving the
gentlemen of the mask some incentive to match themselves against us once
more, we were not likely to have the opportunity of breaking up a nervy
bunch of murdering thieves.
We reasoned that the men whose guns we had looked into over Rutter's
body and those who robbed the paymaster on the MacLeod trail were tarred
with the same stick; likewise, that even now two of them ate out of the
same pot with us three times daily. The thing was to prove it.
Personally, the paymaster's trouble was none of my concern; what I
wanted was to get back that ten thousand dollars, or deal those hounds
ten thousand dollars' worth of misery. Not that I wasn't willing to take
a long chance to help Lyn to her own, but I was human enough to remember
that I had a good deal at stake myself. It was a rather depressed
stock-hand, name of Flood, who blew cigarette smoke out over the brow of
Writing-Stone that evening.
Mac finished smoking and ground the stub into the earth with his heel.
For another minute or two he sat there without speaking, absently
flipping pebbles over the bank.
"I reckon we might as well poke along the top to camp," he said at last,
getting to his feet. "I sent that breed back, down there, so we could
talk without having to keep cases on him. This is beginning to look like
a hopeless case, isn't it?"
"Somewhat," I admitted. "I did think that Rutter's description would put
us on the right track when we got there; but I can't see much meaning in
it now. I suppose we'll just have to keep on going it blind."
"We'll have to stay with it while there's any chance," he said
thoughtfully. "But I've been thinking that it might be a good plan to
take a fall out of those two." He jerked his thumb in the direction of
camp. "If we have sized things up right, they'll make some sort of move,
and if we're mistaken there will be no harm done. I'll tell you an idea
that popped into my head a minute ago. We can pretend to locate the
stuff. Fix up a couple of dummy sacks, you know, and get them to camp
and packed on the horse without letting them see what's inside. If Lyn
gave Lessard the right figures, there should be between a hundred and
forty or fifty pounds of dust. It's small in bulk, but weighty as a bad
conscience. If we had a couple of little sacks we could get around that
problem, easy enough--this black sand along the river would pass for
gold-dust in weight. We could make the proper sort of play, and give
them the chance they're looking for. If they make a break it'll be up to
us to get the best of the trouble."
"It might work," I replied. "If you think it would make them tip their
hand, I'm with you. This watch-the-other-fellow business is making me
nervous as an old woman. Once we had those two dead to rights they might
let out something that would enable us to land the whole bunch, and the
plunder besides; once we had them rounded up we could come back here and
hunt for Hank Rowan's gold-dust in peace."
"You've got the idea exactly, and we'll see what we can do in the
morning," Mac returned. "But don't get married to the notion that
they'll cough up all they know, right off the reel. Hicks might, if you
went at him hard enough. But not the other fellow. Gregory's game clear
through--he's demonstrated that in different ways since I've been in the
Force. You could carve him to pieces without hearing a cheep, if he
decided to keep his mouth shut. And he's about as dangerous a man in a
scrimmage as I know. If there's a row, don't overlook Mr. Gregory."
We hoofed it toward camp as briskly as our galled feet would permit, for
the sun was getting close to the sky line, and talked over Mac's scheme
as we went. There was no danger of being overheard on that bench. As a
matter of fact, Hicks and Gregory didn't know we were up there; at
least, they were not supposed to know. MacRae had made a practice of
leaving one or the other in camp, in case some prowling Indians should
spy our horses and attempt to run them off. That afternoon Hicks had
been on guard. When Mac started Gregory back he told him that we would
be along presently, then sat himself down on a rock and watched the
breed. When he was far enough up the flat to lose track of our movements
we dropped into a convenient washout and sneaked along it to the foot of
the bank, where a jutting point of rock hid sight of us climbing the
hill.
We had no thought of spying on them, at first--it was simply to be rid
of their onerous presence for a while, and getting on the bench was an
afterthought. But as we came opposite camp, MacRae took a notion to look
down and see what they were about. At a point which overlooked the
bottom some two hundred yards from the east end of the Stone, we got
down on our stomachs and wriggled carefully to the naked rim of the
cliff. For some time we laid there, peering down at the men below. Hicks
was puttering around the fire, evidently cooking supper, and Gregory was
moving the picket rope of his horse to fresh grass. There was nothing
out of the ordinary to be seen, and I drew back. But MacRae still kept
his place. When he did back away from the edge, he had the look of a man
who has made some important discovery.
"On my soul, I believe I've found it," he calmly announced.
"What!"
"I believe I have," he repeated, a trace of exultation in his tone. "At
least, it amounts to the same thing. Crawl up there again, Sarge, and
look straight down at the first ledge from the bottom. Hurry; you won't
see anything if the sun has left it. And be careful how you show your
head. We don't want to get them stirred up till we have to."
Cautiously I peeped over the brink, straight down as Mac had directed.
The shadow that follows on the heels of a setting sun was just creeping
over the ledge, but the slanting rays lingered long enough to give me
sight of a glittering patch on the gray stone shelf below. While I
stared the sun withdrew its fading beams from the whole face of the
cliff, but even in the duller light a glint of yellow showed dimly, a
pin point of gold in the deepening shadow.
Gold! I drew back from the rim of Writing-On-the-Stone, that set of
whispered phrases echoing in my ears. Mac caught my eye and grinned.
"_Gold--raw gold--on the rock--above._" I mouthed the words parrotlike,
and he nodded comprehendingly.
"Oh, thunder!" I exclaimed. "Do you reckon _that's_ what he meant?"
"What else?" Mac reasoned. "They'd mark the place somehow--and aren't
those his exact words? What dummies we were not to look on those ledges
before. You can't see the surface of them from the flat; and we might
have known they would hardly put a mark where it could be seen by any
pilgrim who happened to ride through that bottom."
"Hope you're right," I grunted optimistically.
"We'll know beyond a doubt, in the morning," Mac declared. "To-night we
won't do anything but eat, drink, and sleep as sound as possible, for
to-morrow we may have one hell of a time. I prefer to have a few hours
of daylight ahead of us when we raise that _cache_. Things are apt to
tighten, and I don't like a rumpus in the dark. Just now I'm hungry. If
that stuff is there, it will keep. Come on to camp; our troubles are
either nearly over or just about to begin in earnest."
We followed the upland past the end of the Stone till we found a slope
that didn't require wings for descent. If Hicks or Gregory wondered at
our arrival from the opposite direction in which we should have
appeared, they didn't betray any unseemly curiosity. Supper and a
cigarette or two consumed the twilight hour, and when dark shut down we
took to our blankets and dozed through the night.
At daybreak we breakfasted. Without a word to any one MacRae picked up
his carbine and walked out of camp. I followed, equally silent. It was
barely a hundred yards to the ledge, and I caught myself wishing it were
a good deal farther--out of range of those watchful eyes. I couldn't
help wondering how it would feel to be potted at the moment of
discovery.
"I thought I'd leave them both behind, and let them take it out in
guessing," Mac explained, when we stood under the rock shelf upon which
we had looked down the evening before. "We're right under their noses,
so they won't do anything till the stuff's actually in sight."
He studied the face of the cliff for a minute. The ledge jutted out from
the towering wall approximately twenty feet above our heads, but it
could be reached by a series of jagged points and knobs; a sort of
natural stairway--though some of the steps were a long way apart.
Boulders of all shapes and sizes lay bedded in the soft earth where we
stood.
"You shin up there, Sarge," Mac commanded, "and locate that mark. It
ought to be an easy climb."
I "shinned," and reached the ledge with a good deal of skin peeled from
various parts of my person. The first object my eye fell upon as I
hoisted myself above the four-foot shelf was a dull, yellow spot on the
gray rock, near enough so that I could lean forward and touch it with my
fingers. A two-inch circle of the real thing--I'd seen enough gold in
the raw to know it without any acid test--hammered into the coarse
sandstone. I pried it up with the blade of my knife and looked it over.
Originally it had been a fair-sized nugget. Hans or Rowan had pounded it
into place with the back of a hatchet (the corner-marks told me that),
flattening it to several times its natural diameter. I threw it down to
MacRae, and looked carefully along the ledge. There was no other mark
that I could see; I began to wonder if we were as hot on the scent as we
had thought.
"Is there a loose piece of rock up there?" Mac called presently. "If
there is, set it on the edge, in line with where this was."
I found a fragment about the size of my fist and set it on the rim of
the ledge. He squinted up at it a moment, then nodded, smiling.
"Come on down now, Sarge," he grinned; and, seating himself on a rock
with the carbine across his knees, he began to roll a cigarette, as if
the finding of Hank Rowan's gold-_cache_ were a thing of no importance
whatever.
"Well," I began, when I had negotiated that precarious succession of
knobs and notches and accumulated a fresh set of bruises, "why don't you
get busy? How much wiser are you now? Where's your gold-dust?"
He took a deliberate puff and squinted up at the ledge again. "I'm
sitting on it, as near as I can figure," he coolly asserted.
"Yes, you are," I fleered. "I'm from Missouri!"
"Oh, you're a doubting Thomas of the first water," he said. "Stand
behind me, you confounded unbeliever. Kink your back a little and look
over that stone you set for a mark. Do you see anything that catches
your attention?"
Getting in the position he suggested, I looked up. Away back in the days
before the white man was a power to be reckoned with in the Indian's
scheme of things, some warrior had stood upon that self-same ledge and
hacked out with a flint chisel what he and his fellows doubtless
considered a work of art. Uncanny-looking animals, and uncannier figures
that might have passed for anything from an articulated skeleton to a
Missing Link, cavorted in a long line across that tribal
picture-gallery. Between each group of figures the face of the rock was
scored with mysterious signs and rudely limned weapons of war and chase.
Right over the stone marker, a long-shafted war-lance was carved--the
blade pointing down. MacRae's seat, stone-marker, and aboriginal
spearhead; the three lined up like the sights of a modern rifle. The
conclusion, in the light of what we knew from Rutter, was obvious, even
to a lunkhead like myself.
"It looks like you might have struck it," I was constrained to admit.
Mac threw away his cigarette. "Here and now is where we find out," he
declared.
Worming our fingers under the edge of the boulder, we lifted with all
the strength that was in us. For a second it seemed that we could never
budge it. Then it began to rise slowly, so slowly that I thought the
muscles of my back would snap, and MacRae's face close by mine grew red
and then purple with the strain. But it moved, and presently a great
heave turned it over. Bedded in the soft earth underneath lay the slim
buckskin sacks. Our fingers, I remember, trembled a bit as we stood one
on end and loosened its mouth to make sure if we had found the treasure
for which two men had already lost their lives.
[Illustration: BEDDED IN THE SOFT EARTH UNDERNEATH LAY THE SLIM BUCKSKIN
SACKS.
_Page 159._]
"Here"--Mac handed me his carbine--"you stay with the yellow temptation.
From now on we'll have to keep a close eye on this stuff, and likewise
have our guns handy. I'll make those fellows pack up and bring the
horses here. Then we'll load this and pull for Walsh."
His first move was to saddle his black horse and my dun. These he led to
the fire, and thereafter stood a little to one side, placidly consuming
a cigarette while the other two packed the camp-outfit and saddled their
own mounts. Then they trailed across the flat toward me, MacRae blandly
bringing up the rear. He wasn't taking any chances.
Half an hour later, with the sacks of gold securely lashed on the
_aparejos_ of the pack-horse, we climbed out of Writing-Stone bottom and
swung away over the silent tablelands.
With Writing-on-the-Stone scarcely three miles behind, the
long-abandoned burrow of a badger betrayed us into the hands of the
enemy. (What a power for thwarting the plans of men little things
sometimes exercise!) We had contrived that Gregory should lead the
pack-horse, which gave MacRae and me both hands to use in case of a
hostile demonstration; that there would be such, neither of us doubted
from the moment those two laid eyes on the buckskin sacks. The sidelong,
covetous glance that passed between them bespoke what was in their
minds. And from that time on the four of us were like so many
open-headed casks of powder sitting by a fire; sooner or later a spark
would bring the explosion. We had them at a disadvantage trotting across
the level upland, Gregory in the lead and Hicks sandwiched between Mac
and myself--until MacRae's horse planted his foreleg to the knee in an
old badger-hole hidden under a rank accumulation of grass. The black
pitched forward so suddenly that Mac had no time to swing clear, and as
he went down under the horse Gregory's agile brain grasped the
opportunity of the situation, and his gun flashed out of its scabbard.
My hand flew to mine as I jerked the dun up short, but I wasn't fast
enough--and Hicks was too close. It was a trilogy of gun-drawing.
Gregory drew his and fired at MacRae with the devilish quickness of a
striking rattler; I drew with intent to get Mr. Gregory; and Hicks drew
his and slapped me over the head with it, even as my finger curled on
the trigger. My gun went off, I know--afterward I had a dim recollection
of a faint report--but whether the bullet went whistling into the blue
above or buried itself in the broad bosom of the Territory, I can't say.
Things ceased to happen, right then and there, so far as I was
concerned. And I haven't satisfied myself yet why Hicks struck instead
of shooting; unless he had learned the frontier lesson that a bullet in
a vital spot doesn't _always_ incapacitate a man for deadly gun-play,
while a hard rap on the head invariably does. It wasn't any scruple of
mercy, for Hicks was as cold-blooded a brute as ever glanced down a
gun-barrel.
When my powers of sight and speech and hearing returned, MacRae stood
over me, nowise harmed. The black horse lay where he had fallen. I sat
up and glanced about, thankful that I was still in the flesh, but in a
savage mood for all that. This, thought I, is a dismal-looking
outcome--two men and a dead horse left high and dry on the sun-flooded
prairie. And a rampant ache in my head, seconded by a medium-sized gash
in the scalp, didn't make for an access of optimism at that moment.
"Well," I burst out profanely, "we lose again, eh?"
"Looks like it," Mac answered laconically. Then he whirled about and
walked to a little point some distance away, where he stood with his
back to me, looking toward Lost River.