WILLIAMS CACHE
Ed Banks had been recalled before daybreak from the middle pass. Two
of the men wanted were now known to have crossed the creek, which
meant they must work out of the country through Williams Cache.
"If you will take your best two men, Ed," said Whispering Smith,
sitting down with Banks at breakfast, "and strike straight for
Canadian Pass to help Gene and Bob Johnson, I'll undertake to ride in
and talk to Rebstock while Kennedy and Bob Scott watch Deep Creek. The
boy gives a good description, and the two men that did the job here
are Du Sang and Flat Nose. Did I tell you how we picked up the trail
yesterday? Magpies. They shot a scrub horse that gave out on them and
skinned the brand. It hastened the banquet, but we got there before
the birds were all seated. Great luck, wasn't it? And it gave us a
beautiful trail. One of the party crossed the Goose River at American
Fork, and Brill Young and Reed followed him. Four came through the
Mission Mountains; that is a cinch and they are in the Cache--and if
they get out it is our fault personally, Ed, and not the Lord's."
Williams Cache lies in the form of a great horn, with a narrow
entrance at the lower end known as the Door, and a rock fissure at the
upper end leading into Canadian Pass; but this fissure is so narrow
that a man with a rifle could withstand a regiment. For a hundred
miles east and west rise the granite walls of the Mission range,
broken nowhere save by the formation known as the Cache. Even this
does not penetrate the range; it is a pocket, and runs not over
half-way into it and out again. But no man really knows the Cache; the
most that may be said is that the main valley is known, and it is
known as the roughest mountain fissure between the Spanish Sinks and
the Mantrap country. Williams Cache lies between walls two thousand
feet high, and within it is a small labyrinth of canyons. A generation
ago, when Medicine Bend for one winter was the terminus of the
overland railroad, vigilantes mercilessly cleaned out the town, and
the few outlaws that escaped the shotgun and the noose at Medicine
Bend found refuge in a far-away and unknown mountain gorge once named
by French trappers the Cache. Years after these outcasts had come to
infest it came one desperado more ferocious than all that had gone
before. He made a frontier retreat of the Cache, and left to it the
legacy of his evil name, Williams. Since his day it has served, as it
served before, for the haunt of outlawed men. No honest man lives in
Williams Cache, and few men of any sort live there long, since their
lives are lives of violence; neither the law nor a woman crosses Deep
Creek. But from the day of Williams to this day the Cache has had its
ruler, and when Whispering Smith rode with a little party through the
Door into the Cache the morning after the murder in Mission Valley he
sent an envoy to Rebstock, whose success as a cattle-thief had brought
its inevitable penalty. It had made Rebstock a man of consequence and
of property and a man subject to the anxieties and annoyances of such
responsibility.
Sitting once in the Three Horses at Medicine Bend, Rebstock had talked
with Whispering Smith. "I used to have a good time," he growled. "When
I was rustling a little bunch of steers, just a small bunch all by
myself, and hadn't a cent in the world, no place to sleep and nothing
to eat, I had a good time. Now I have to keep my money in the bank;
that ain't pleasant--you know that. Every man that brings a bunch of
cattle across Deep Creek has stole 'em, and expects me to buy 'em or
lend him money. I'm busy with inspecters all the time, deviling with
brands, standing off the Stock Association and all kinds of trouble.
I've got too many cows, too much money. I'm afraid somebody will shoot
me if I go to sleep, or poison me if I take a drink. Whispering Smith,
I'd like to give you a half-interest in my business. That's on the
square. You're a young man, and handy; it wouldn't cost you a cent,
and you can have half of the whole shooting-match if you'll cross Deep
Creek and help me run the gang." Such was Rebstock free from anxiety
and in a confidential moment. Under pressure he was, like all men,
different.
Whispering Smith had acquaintance even in the Cache, and after a
little careful reconnoitring he found a crippled-up thief, driving a
milch cow down the Cache, who was willing to take a message to the
boss.
Whispering Smith gave his instructions explicitly, facing the
messenger, as the two sat in their saddles, with an importunate eye.
"Say to Rebstock exactly these words," he insisted. "This is from
Whispering Smith: I want Du Sang. He killed a friend of mine last
night at Mission Springs. I happened to be near there and know he rode
in last night. He can't get out; the Canadian is plugged. I won't
stand for the killing, and it is Du Sang or a clean-up in the Cache
all around, and then I'll get Du Sang anyway. Regards."
Riding circumspectly in and about the entrance to the Cache, the
party waited an hour for an answer. When the answer came, it was
unsatisfactory. Rebstock declined to appear upon so trivial a matter,
and Whispering Smith refused to specify a further grievance. More
parley and stronger messages were necessary to stir the Deep Creek
monarch, but at last he sent word asking Whispering Smith to come
to his cabin accompanied only by Kennedy.
The two railroad men rode up the canyon together. "And now I will show
you a lean and hungry thief grown monstrous and miserly, Farrell,"
said Whispering Smith.
At the head of a short pocket between two sheer granite walls they saw
Rebstock's weather-beaten cabin, and he stood in front of it smoking.
He looked moodily at his visitors out of eyes buried between rolls of
fat. Whispering Smith was a little harsh as the two shook hands, but
he dismounted and followed Rebstock into the house.
"What are you so high and mighty about?" he demanded, throwing his hat
on the table near which Rebstock had seated himself. "Why don't you
come out when I send a man to you, or send word what you will do? What
have you got to kick about? Haven't you been treated right?"
Being in no position to complain, but shrewdly aware that much
unpleasantness was in the wind, Rebstock beat about the bush. He had
had rheumatism; he couldn't ride; he had been in bed three weeks and
hadn't seen Du Sang for three months. "You ain't chasing up here after
Du Sang because he killed a man at Mission Springs. I know better than
that. That ain't the first man he's killed, and it ain't a' goin' to
be the last."
Whispering Smith lifted his finger and for the first time smiled. "Now
there you err, Rebstock--it is 'a goin' to be' the last. So you think
I'm after you, do you? Well, if I were, what are you going to do about
it? Rebstock, do you think, if I wanted _you_, I would send a message
for you to come out and meet me? Not on your life! When I want you
I'll come to your shack and drag you out by the hair of the head. Sit
down!" roared Whispering Smith.
Rebstock, who weighed at least two hundred and seventy-five pounds,
had lifted himself up to glare and swear freely. Now he dropped
angrily back into his chair. "Well, who do you want?" he bellowed in
kind.
A smile softened the asperity of the railroad man's face. "That's a
fair question and I give you a straight answer. I'm not bluffing: I
want Du Sang."
Rebstock squirmed. He swore with shortened breath that he knew nothing
about Du Sang; that Du Sang had stolen his cattle; that hanging was
too good for him; that he would join any _posse_ in searching for him;
and that he had not seen him for three months.
"Likely enough," assented Whispering Smith, "but this is wasting time.
He rode in here last night after killing old Dan Baggs. Your estimable
nephew Barney is with him, and Karg is with him, and I want them; but,
in especial and particular, I want Du Sang."
Rebstock denied, protested, wheezed, and stormed, but Whispering Smith
was immovable. He would not stir from the Cache upon any promises.
Rebstock offered to surrender any one else in the Cache--hinted
strongly at two different men for whom handsome rewards were out; but
every compromise suggested was met with the same good-natured words:
"I want Du Sang."
At last the smile changed on Whispering Smith's face. It lighted his
eyes still, but with a different expression. "See here, Rebstock, you
and I have always got along, haven't we? I've no desire to crowd any
man to the wall that is a man. Now I am going to tell you the simple
truth. Du Sang has got you scared to death. That man is a faker,
Rebstock. Because he kills men right and left without any provocation,
you think he is dangerous. He isn't; there are a dozen men in the
Cache just as good with a gun as Du Sang is. Don't shake your head. I
know what I'm talking about. He is a jay with a gun, and you may tell
him I said so; do you hear? Tell him to come out if he wants me to
demonstrate it. He has got everybody, including you, scared to death.
Now, I say, don't be silly. I want Du Sang."
Rebstock rose to his feet solemnly and pointed his finger at
Whispering Smith. "Whispering Smith, you know me--"
"I know you for a fat rascal."
"That's all right. You know me, and, just as you say, we always get
along because we both got sense."
"You're hiding yours to-day, Rebstock."
"No matter; I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you all the
horseflesh you can kill and all the men you can hire to go after him,
and I'll bury your dead myself. You think he can't shoot? I give you a
tip on the square." Whispering Smith snorted. "He'll shoot the four
buttons off your coat in four shots." Smith kicked Rebstock's dog
contemptuously. "And do it while you are falling down. I've seen him
do it," persisted Rebstock, moist with perspiration. "I'm not looking
for a chance to go against a sure thing; I wash my hands of the job."
Whispering Smith rose. "It was no trick to see he had you scared to
death. You are losing your wits, old man. The albino is a faker, and I
tell you I am going to run him out of the country." Whispering Smith
reached for his hat. "Our treaty ends right here. You promised to
harbor no man in your sink that ever went against our road. You know
as well as I do that this man, with four others, held up our train
night before last at Tower W, shot our engineman to death for mere
delight, killed a messenger, took sixty-five thousand dollars out of
the through safe, and made his good get-away. Now, don't lie; you know
every word of it, and you thought you could pull it out of me by a
bluff. I track him to your door. He is inside the Cache this minute.
You know every curve and canyon and pocket and washout in it, and
every cut-throat and jail-bird in it, and they pay you blood-money and
hush-money every month; and when I ask you not to give up a dozen men
the company is entitled to, but merely to send this pink-eyed lobster
out with his guns to talk with me, you wash your hands of the job, do
you? Now listen. If you don't send Du Sang into the open before noon
to-morrow, I'll run every living steer and every living man out of
Williams Cache before I cross the Crawling Stone again, so help me
God! And I'll send for cowboys within thirty minutes to begin the job.
I'll scrape your Deep Creek canyons till the rattlesnakes squeal. I'll
make Williams Cache so wild that a timber-wolf can't follow his own
trail through it. You'll break with me, will you, Rebstock? Then wind
up your bank account; before I finish with you I'll put you in stripes
and feed buzzards off your table."
Rebstock's face was apoplectic. He choked with a torrent of oaths.
Whispering Smith, paying no attention, walked out to where Kennedy was
waiting. He swung into the saddle, ignoring Rebstock's abjurations,
and with Kennedy rode away.
"It is hard to do anything with a man that is scared to death," said
Smith to his companion. "Then, too, Rebstock's nephew is probably in
this. In any case, when Du Sang has got Rebstock scared, he is a
dangerous man to be abroad. We have got to smoke him out, Farrell.
Lance Dunning insisted the other day he wanted to do me a favor. I'll
see if he'll lend me Stormy Gorman and some of his cowpunchers for a
round-up. We've got to smoke Du Sang out. A round-up is the thing.
But, by Heaven, if that round-up is actually pulled off it will be a
classic when you and I are gone."
Thirty minutes afterward, messengers had taken the Frenchman trail for
Lance Dunning's cowboys.