"The first half chance we get," whispered Deveril, guardedly, "we've
got to sneak out of this! Lie still; I can see them without moving.
That man with the hawk face is turned this way."
He could see neither Joe nor Taggart in the dugout. Gallup he could
see, barely across the threshold now, watching Taggart and the Mexican.
The man Shipton, evidently fagged from a hard day of it, had slumped
down on the log that served as door-step, and faced outward, save when
now and then he half turned to glance curiously at the sheriff and his
captive.
"So we nabbed you, eh, Mexico?" gibed Taggart. "You damn little tricky
shrimp! To think you could put one across on me!"
"Gatham you!" shrilled Joe. "You big t'ief, you try one time an' you
see! I ain't do nothin' to you; I got the right...."
"Oh, shut up!" muttered Taggart impatiently. "Dry your palaver for
once. I'll give you chance enough to spill over when I get good and
ready." Outside Lynette and Deveril heard a sound which, in their
hunger, they were quick to read aright; Taggart, also hungry, had
stepped to the stove and had dragged a heavy iron frying-pan to him,
investigating its content. "Phew!" growled Taggart. "You infernal
garlic hound! Well, the jerked meat ought to go all right. And coffee,
huh? Come on, boys; we'll feed up, and then we'll tell Joe what's in
the wind."
"I ain't got much grub," Joe shouted back at him. "An' I need it
mysel'. You go...."
There was the sound of a blow and of scuffling feet, the thudding of a
body against the wall.
"Take that," Taggart told him viciously. And, his ugly voice thick with
threat: "And thank your Dago saints I only used my fist! Next time, so
help me, I'll bash you with a rifle barrel. Say, Cliff...."
"Say it," drawled Cliff.
"Scare up some dry wood; the fire's near out. And, Joe, you dig up a
candle or lamp or something. I'd like a little light in this stinking
hole."
Joe, though with infuriated mutterings, did as bid. Slowly the gaunt
form of Cliff Shipton rose from the rough-hewn log.
"God, I'm tired," he said. And then, when no one thought to sympathize,
he demanded querulously: "Say, Mex, where's your wood-pile?"
Gallup laughed at him.
"Imagine the lazy hound having a wood-pile! Skirmish around, Cliff, and
pick up some dead sticks."
Joe had found a stub of candle, and now its pale light vaguely
illuminated the dugout's interior. Since there was but the one opening,
the squat door, Deveril still saw only Gallup. Gallup by now was
sitting upon the narrow bunk at the back of the room, his rifle between
his knees, the shadow of his hat hiding his face. Shipton set his own
rifle down against the outside wall and began groping with his feet for
bits of wood.
"It's getting awful dark for this kind of thing," he was telling
himself in his eternally complaining voice. "Ain't he got a box or a
chair or a table or something in there that'll burn?" he called.
No one paid any attention to him and Shipton, scuffling gropingly with
his feet, widened his search. And now Lynette and Deveril scarcely
breathed. For it seemed inevitable that he was coming straight toward
the brushy-fringed spring where they lay. Deveril was now on his left
elbow, his body raised slightly, his legs drawn up under him, so
that he could readily fling himself to his feet, his oak club in his
right hand. Lynette understood and was ready, too; if Shipton came
dangerously near, she knew that it was Deveril's intent to drop him in
his tracks. Then there would remain but the one thing to do; to leap up
and run for it, run blindly, plunging into the nearest shadows, to run
on and on while men shot after them.
Shipton came nearer. She felt Babe Deveril stir, ever so slightly. Her
only concern now was: Would he strike just at the very second that he
should? Would he strike a second too early, before it was necessary,
and thus needlessly give himself away? Would he strike just a second
too late, giving Shipton first the time to see and cry out?
"God, I'm stiff and sore," Shipton was muttering.
His foot struck something, and he reached down, thinking it was a bit
of wood. But it was a stone, dirt-covered, and he kicked at it and came
on. Now he was not two steps away. Again he stooped; as he stooped,
Babe Deveril raised himself an inch or two higher. But now Shipton
found a fragment of a pine log, half rotted and of little use as fuel.
But in his present mood it served him; he picked it up and turned back
to the dug-out. Lynette heard Deveril's slowly expelled breath.
Within there was a scraping of frying-pan on stove top. They saw a tin
plate handed to Gallup on his bunk; Gallup began eating, noisy about
it; eating like a dog. Shipton went in with his log. Taggart caught
it from him, broke it up by striking it against the hard-packed dirt
floor, and began stoking the stove. A fresh gush of sparks shot up from
Joe's chimney. Shipton was demanding to be fed ... and for God's sake
give him a shot of coffee.
"Now's our chance," whispered Deveril. "None too good, but the best
we're going to have! Ready?"
And her whisper came back to him, "Always ready!"
"Now," he whispered. "Off to the right; slow and quiet; if once we can
snake across this open place and into the timber over there...."
"And now, Señor Joe," came Taggart's voice, and they knew from the
sound that Taggart, mouth full, was eating ravenously, "we got you!"
"Sure you got me," Joe rasped out at him, and still there remained
defiance in little Mexicali Joe. "Fine! But what you do with me? You
can't eat me, an' nobody ever yet put any bounty on my hide, an' when
you got me ... you no got nothin'. An', _cabrone_, what I got I keep
him!"
Taggart laughed at him in Taggart's ugly style.
"Talk big, little hombre, while you can! And now let me tell you
something: To-night, right now, inside ten minutes, you're going to
tell me just exactly where you got that stuff you spilled out of your
pocket last night. And in the morning, bright and early, you're going
to take me there!"
"I die firs'!"
"You'll be a long time dying! Think I'm fool enough to kill you ...
now? Know what the third degree is, Joe?" Taggart's voice was terrible
with its insinuation. "Me, when I give the third degree to any man, he
spills his guts before I'm done with him! You'll cough up everything
you know and be damn glad afterward to crawl off in the woods and die!
That's me, Joe."
Gallup, who must have found amusement in watching Mexicali Joe's
expression, laughed. After him Cliff Shipton laughed like an echo. Joe
began cursing nervously.
"Ready?" whispered Lynette. Taggart's threats horrified her and set her
trembling.
"No!... Don't you see? Taggart will make him tell everything he knows,
if he has to knock his teeth out one by one and break every bone in his
body! And I'm going to hear!... You crawl ahead while there's a chance;
I can up and run for it after you if I have to."
She was silent. There was excitement in his utterance and another
quality which sent a sudden chill to her heart. She stared at him
through the dark as at a stranger; the gold fever was rampant in his
veins, and she knew that he would lie here, never lifting hand or
voice, while Taggart tortured his captive until Joe shrieked out his
golden secret.
Before Lynette could speak or move, Taggart's voice once more cut
harshly through the silence.
"You wouldn't know, Joe, unless you'd been sheriff as long as me, how
many nice little ways there are of making a man hurry up about spitting
up all he knows!" Taggart was steadily cramming into his mouth the
half-cooked dried beef stew, appearing to have entirely forgotten
his dislike for garlic. "Me, I'm a man of brains and what you call
invention; I look around and see what I've got handy, and out of it I
make what I need! Now, look here. You see us boys eating hearty, and,
if I know what that look means in a man's eye, you got an appetite
yourself? Well, you don't get a scrap to eat nor a drink to drink until
you open up."
Joe sought to laugh at him. Taggart, still stuffing, went on steadily:
"Next, you see the stove with its hot lids? All right, pretty quick we
hold you so the palms of your hands stick to the hot lids and the skin
burns off. Oh, I know that don't hurt so much a man can't stand it;
sure not. But it does sort to set him to thinking things over in a new
fashion! And then, what next?"
"Make him eat salt," put in Shipton with a snicker. "And don't give him
any water! Lots of salt does the trick, Jimmie."
Taggart, a man of no subtlety, snorted at him.
"Maybe you can tell gold when you see it, Cliff," he said briefly. "But
that's all you do know.... Listen to me, Mexico. We got our rifles,
ain't we? We stand you with your back to the wall and dare you to move!
Then we practise shooting; just to see how close we can come! We don't
hit you, us three being good shots. Anyway, we don't hit you often, and
then it's only grazes! We make a game out of it; every man takes a shot
and him that comes closest gets a dollar every time; him that draws
blood puts up two dollars in the pot. And, pretty soon.... What are you
looking so sick for, Joe? Nobody ain't hurt you yet!"
Joe's curses were suddenly faint, for Joe's mouth and throat were dry
and he had grown limp and dizzy and sick.
"You see, I got you, Joe. Got you dead to rights!"
"The brute!" whispered Lynette, her own flesh set twitching. "The
horrible brute!"
"Sh! Just listen!"
"I don't believe he'd actually do that! He is just frightening
Joe--bluffing...."
"You the sheriff!" cried Joe, desperate. "You the one bigges' robber in
all these mount'!"
"Call me robber, will you, you skunk!"
Again they heard the sound of the blow, struck fiercely by Jim Taggart,
who, as he let all men understand, was the last man to brook an insult.
And they heard Joe's slight body hurled back, so that he toppled and
fell. And, thereafter, Taggart's brutish laughter. To-night, Jim
Taggart, no matter how disgruntled he had been during so many hours,
was at last enjoying himself. For to-night he was secure in his
expectations.
"You bleed awful easy, Joe," he jeered. "Ought to go get your teeth
straightened up, too! Cup of coffee? No? Then I'll take one; _gracias,
mi amigo!_"
"I hope you burn in hell!" screamed Joe.
"So?" And Taggart, swinging heavily, knocked him down again, and then
reached out for the can that held sugar and sweetened his coffee.
Shipton sniggered.
"You're a corker, Jim!" he declared.
"Me," acknowledged Taggart heavily, "I am what I am. But I never laid
down for a Mex breed yet, and I ain't going to."
Joe lay where he had fallen. His body was pain-wracked, for when
Jim Taggart struck in wrath he struck mightily, being a mighty man
physically, and hard. Joe's swart skin had paled; his eyes started from
his head; he feared, and not without reason, that a third blow like
that would kill him. And he knew that Jim Taggart was no man to lie
awake because he had killed another man.
"I got thirs'," said Joe thickly. He was sitting up, on the floor.
"Give me cup water!"
"What did I tell you, Joe?" Taggart grinned at him. "I got you. Got you
right."
"I burnin' up," said Joe weakly. "Maybe you killin' me. Give me drink
water."
"I got you, Joe," said Taggart speculatively. No mockery now; just a
vast, deep satisfaction. "I half believe one good kick in the belly
would settle you and you'd tell all you know. I got a hunch...."
"Go slow, Jim." This from the avaricious Young Gallup. "No sense
killing him, seeing you haven't found out a thing."
"You're right, Gal. Well, give him a drink, then; half a cup of water
and let him think things over.... If he opens up then, O. K. If he
don't we'll find the way to open him up."
"Let me go to the spring," said Joe. By now he was on his feet. "I was
jus' goin' for water when you come. The spring, she's right there. You
can see I don't run away...."
"Go scoop him up a can of water, Cliff," said Taggart. "You sit tight,
Joe. You don't go out to-night unless we take you out to put you in a
hole!"
"_Now!_" whispered Deveril sharply. "Now we've got to crawl for it!"
But Cliff Shipton demurred, saying surlily:
"I'm tired out, and I'm sore and stiff and stove-up. Let him go without
his water."
"We were crazy for waiting so long!" complained Deveril. "Hurry!"
In the dugout Gallup was saying slowly, after his ponderous fashion:
"I'll go get him his water. After that, like you say, Jim, he'll
open up--wide! Or, if he don't, I'll break his jaw-bone with my boot
heel.... Where's a can?"
Already Babe Deveril had wormed his way out of the willows and began
creeping about the edge of the tiny thicket that was farthest from
Joe's cabin. Lynette, feeling weak and sick, followed him like his own
shadow. Thus they skirted the brushy fringe of the spring.
Then Gallup, carrying his can, came out. Deveril dropped flat and lay
motionless, his body hidden, at least to careless eyes, by the spring
willows. Lynette dropped flat just behind him. She knew that again
Deveril was ready to leap and strike, mercilessly hard, if Gallup came
too near. It was almost an even chance whether Gallup would come their
way or not.... Lynette, cold and tired and hungry and at last afraid,
shivered.
But, almost immediately, it became obvious to both of them that Gallup
had been here before and knew his way about. He turned, as they had
hoped that he would, to the right; they heard him reach the spring and
dip his pan and fill it and turn back to the dugout, slopping water
after him. They saw him step on the threshold; already Deveril was
crawling cautiously again, and, after him, Lynette.
It was like life in a nightmare. So tortuously slow. So great a need
for quiet, and, like jeering, mocking voices, there came so many
little sounds, loud in their ears--twigs snapping, leaves rustling,
tiny stones set rolling. At first, what with the dark and her sole
thought to be gone, Lynette failed to understand just how Deveril
was directing his course. When she did grasp, she wondered at him.
Instead of hurrying straight across the clearing toward the haven of
the timber-line, he was drawing nearer and nearer the west end of the
dugout! Now she dared not whisper to him; she could not come up with
him to catch warningly at his boot. So she followed, striving with all
her caution to overtake him. And before she could do so, she glimpsed
his purpose.
True to type, Joe's dugout had but the one door, and the rear of the
building was a sort of timbered hole in the mountainside. Deveril
planned that if he could gain the back of the dugout he could hear
what was going on and run little danger of being detected; further,
that in that direction, did he elect to up and run for cover, he and
Lynette would have as good a chance as any to get away in the rim of
the forest. If they moved with all possible silence, and especially if
Taggart and the others within kept up their noise-making, snapping
and snarling and knocking things about, it was more than an even
break that neither Taggart nor any of his companions would come to
suspect that they were being spied upon; and when did Babe Deveril
ever ask more than the even break? Then ... there remained one other
consideration, one of exceedingly great importance in Deveril's
estimation, of which as yet Lynette had no inkling: while in hiding
down by the spring Deveril had made a discovery, or believed that he
had, and no opportunity had been given him either to speak of it or yet
to investigate.
Clearly now was the moment when Taggart and Gallup and the complaining
Cliff Shipton concentrated every thought upon their captive; Joe showed
signs of weakening, and every man of them held that if only Joe could
be led to "open up" they would all be made rich at his expense.
Meanwhile Gallup had given Joe his water; Joe had drunk rapidly,
gulping noisily. Taggart and Gallup and Shipton were eying him eagerly.
Joe had taken a deep breath; again he started to drink. Taggart struck
the can away from his mouth, commanding: "No more. You've got to talk
first; fast and straight and no lies! Understand?"
"How you goin' tell if I lie?" muttered Joe, something of his
stubbornness restored.
"Right now you tell us where the gold is. In the morning you take us to
the place. And if you make a little mistake and don't take us straight,
I'll make you sorry you were ever born!"
Deveril and Lynette passed within a few yards of the dugout's nearest
front corner; they groped onward up the steep slope; they came in a
brief détour to the rear, where the rude timbers supporting the shed
roof were at this end embedded in the earth. Here they stopped and
lay flat and listened. And they heard Joe mumbling: "If I tell, I tell
true. But I don't think I tell. You kick me out; you steal everything;
you get rich an' me--I die poor. Maybe better I die and fool you!"
"Listen, Joe." Gallup speaking--Gallup, who feared that Joe might be
fool enough to die with locked lips rather than be robbed of his new
fortune; Gallup, a man who could understand another man doing anything,
standing any torture, rather than lose the one golden thing in life.
"We'll make you a fair proposition, us three men. You found the gold;
all right, you got a right to a share. You can't hog it anyhow; other
men will come rushing in as soon as you drop a pick in it; they'll
stake claims all around you; more'n likely they'll cop off the very
cream of it, and you'll have just a pocket that will peter out on you.
We brought Cliff along; he knows pockets and veins and all kind of gold
signs, from stock to barrel. Now, you show sense; you take us along;
we form a company, just us four. And you get one-fourth the rake-off.
And we got the money to develop it; to make a big thing out of it. You
ain't got the money and you ain't got the business brains, and you'd
lose on it sooner or later, anyhow."
Silence. A long silence while three men watched him and while Deveril
and Lynette listened. A long silence during which all that strangely
blended craft which flowed into Mexicali Joe's veins from a mixture of
Latin and Indian ancestry was hard at work ... though this no one could
guess now, so immobile was Joe's face, so guarded his tone when he
spoke.
"That sound fine, Gallup! But how I know you don't cheat me? For why
you don't hit me in the head with a pick when I tell? For why you don't
take all ... everything?"
"I'm telling you why!" cried Gallup. "Look here. Suppose we did that
and croaked you and dug a hole and stuck you in. All right. Next thing
we pop up with a new gold-mine! And there'll be men to say: 'That ore
looks like the ore Mexicali Joe showed that night down to Gallup's
house!' And they'll say: 'Where's Joe?' And they'll begin making
trouble, all kinds; they'll want to run us out. They'll have us up
for killing you. There'll be a lot of talk, and always the chance, as
long's we live, they might pin something on us. And what would we make
by that sort of work? _Only a one-quarter interest in your diggings!_
Why, man, it ain't worth it! We got too much sense to kill any man for
the sake of a little ante like that. Sure, Joe; dead on the level, if
you play square with us, we play square with you."
Silence again. A longer silence than before. Then, while Joe must have
appeared to hesitate, Taggart said abruptly:
"And if you don't take our proposition and talk fast and straight, I'm
going to _make_ you talk! And then you don't get no thanks but a kick
and a get-the-hell-out! That's my way, you little greaser."
"Give him time, Jim," pleaded Gallup.
"All right!" cried Joe, seeming eager now. "I take the chance! You boys
just tell me 'So help me God, I play square!' and I take the chance!"
"So help me God!" cried Young Gallup, first of all. "I play square with
you, Joe!"
And after him, while Joe waited, both Taggart and Cliff Shipton said,
with a semblance of deep gravity: "So help me God."
"We pardners now? Us four?" demanded Joe. And when he had had his three
immediate, emphatic assurances--Deveril misjudged him a fool--Joe
began, speaking rapidly: "_Bueno!_ Now we talk. An' in the mornin' we
start an' to-morrow I show you! I got the bigges' mine you can't beat
in all New Mexico an' Arizona an' Nevada, too! For why I care take on
three pardners? I tell you, we got the money to devil-him-up, we all
rich like hell!..."
"Get going, Joe," growled Taggart. "Where? Down Light Ladies' Cañon,
and not more'n three or four miles from Big Pine?"
Joe cackled his derision at Taggart's guess.
"Me, I fool ever'body!" he said gleefully. "Me, I'm damn smart man,
Señor Taggart! Nowhere near Light Ladies'. The other way. We go all day
to-morrow, way back up in the mountains. One long, hard day, walkin'.
Maybe day an' a half. You know where Buck Valley? All right; you know,
on other side, Big Bear Creek? An' then you know, little bit more far,
two-t'ree mile, Grub Stake Cañon? You know...."
"By the living Lord," broke in Taggart. "That's right square in Bruce
Standing's country!"
Again Joe cackled.
"You know whole lot; you don't know ever'thing! Timber-Wolf's lands run
like this." (One could imagine a grimy forefinger set in a dirty palm.)
"His line, here. My mine, she's just the other side. Nobody's land;
gover'ment land." He chuckled. "An' ol' big Timber-Wolf, he goin' cry
... _boo-hoo-hoo!_ ... when he find out we got gold not mile an' half
from his line!"
Deveril was twitching at Lynette's sleeve. He began edging away. When
she came up with him he was standing; she rose and, together they
hurried across the clearing, and in a few moments were in the deep dark
of the embracing forest land.
"I know that country like a map!" he told her excitedly. "We were
already headed that way, and on we go! Why, it was right up by Big
Bear Creek that I spent a night with Bruce Standing six years ago
and he robbed me of my roll!... They start in the morning; we start
to-night! We'll be there when they come; there are ten thousand places
to hide out; we'll have a place on a ridge where we can watch them. And
they'll never have the vaguest idea that any one, you and I least of
all, is ahead of them. Somehow, Lynette Brooke, our luck is with us and
this whole game is going to play into our hands."
"If a little food would only play into them!... The smell of that
coffee ... the meat cooking...."
"Wait! Right here, by this tree. Don't move a step, no matter what
happens. I'll be back with you in two shakes."
She was almost too tired and faint from hunger to wonder at him. She
saw him go, and then she sank down, her back to the big yellow pine.
He went as straight as a string toward the spring; she saw him walking
swiftly, though with footfalls so guarded that she could not hear him
when he had gone ten steps. She knew that he was recklessly counting
upon a deal of quick chatter in the dugout, secure in his own bravado
that no man of the four there would at this electrically charged moment
have thought of anything but gold. He disappeared in the dark; he was
gone so long that she jumped up and stood staring in all directions;
but at last he was back at her side, chuckling, and then she knew he
had not been away ten minutes.
"I struck it with my elbow, while we were hiding down there," he told
her triumphantly. "Mexicali Joe's real cache!"
He had a square tin biscuit-box in his hands. She put her hand in
quickly. The box, which had been half buried in the cool earth by the
spring, was half full of tins and small packages.
Fatigue fled out of them. Hurriedly they went up over the ridge, deeper
and deeper into the forest land. And when, in half an hour, they came
down into the dark, tree-walled bed of another ravine, they made them
their small fire and tumbled out into its light their newly acquired
treasure-trove--sardines, beans, tinned milk ... yes, coffee!