Читать книгу Curse of Texas Gold: A Walt Slade Western - Bradford Scott - Страница 6

FROM WHERE THE CHIHUAHUA TRAIL crossed the old Spanish Trail, northwest to the eastern fringe of the Guadalupe Mountains, is a region that has never been—and doubtless never will be—disturbed by the plough. It is a land of canyon and mesa, of desert and chimney rock. Here the prevailing vegetation is greasewood, coarse chino grass, sotol and other yucca, white and yellow mescal and thorny brush.

Here, too, however, are great reaches of splendid grazing land where the tall grasses of the prairie region grow, needle and wheat grasses, the coarse bunch grass the Panhandle calls buffalo grass and the curly mesquite rich in the distilled spirit of the blazing Texas sun and the sweet rain of the dry country.

It is a land of the deer, the javelina, the panther and the bear. It is a land, too, of men, many of whom have gathered unto themselves the attributes of the fierce, wild, treacherous but courageous creatures with whom they share the danger and the beauty, the loneliness and the grandeur of the desolate wastes which are their home.

It is a land of legends and stories, of lost mines, of fabulous “mother lodes”, of hidden treasure grimly guarded by bones of murdered men. It is the home of the vicious little sidewinder, the pygmy rattlesnake of the desert that strikes without warning, lashing out in the blurry sideways motion from which it gets its name. The home, too, of the giant rattler of the mountains, its cheeks fat with venom that drips like brown ink from its curved fangs. Here is seen the vingaroon, a large whip scorpion that smells like old vinegar when alarmed and which is popularly supposed to be exceedingly venomous, but isn’t. The evil looking little hellion is often the prey of the Gila Monster whose bite really is as poisonous as its orange and black “wampum” coat is beautiful.

Among the eastern spurs of the Guadalupes, tradition places the legendary Sierra de Cenizas—Ashes Mountains—from where the Spaniards under Captain de Gavilan took loads of nuggets and “wire” gold. But de Gavilan and his men perished in the great Pueblo uprising of 1680 and the secret of their golden hoard died with them, or so tradition says.

These jagged eastern spurs of the Guadalupes send out long granite claws, running down into the lowlands and dividing them into deep and rugged stretches of valley where sometimes white water foams against the black rocks.

This is cattle country and always will be. And because it is cattle country, the cowtown of Sotol drowsed sleepily in the late spring sunshine as a horseman fogged it down the trail that wound like a gray ribbon into the northwest.

Sotol wasn’t much of a town. It wouldn’t have been there at all if it weren’t for the spreads to the north and east. The spread owners and their cowboys had to have some place where they could enjoy themselves and Sotol was the result.

The permanent residents of Sotol built dobes, cabins and false-fronts. Gentlemen with business instincts housed general stores, saloons and gambling halls behind the false fronts. By some process, never definitely understood, Sotol became the county seat of a county which was about the size of an average eastern state and had a population which would compare favorably with that of a well-settled city block.

There were a number of interesting things about Sotol, but the town’s proudest boast was the Dun Cow saloon, which squatted among the dobes and cabins and false-fronts like a fat and amiable sow in the midst of a litter of many piglets.

Old Sam Yelverton, with more money than he could possibly spend for whiskey, conceived, planned and began building the Dun Cow when he was drunk. When he sobered up, pride—and the necessity of upholding the fable that he, Sam, never got drunk—obliged him to finish the darn thing. When it was finished, the Dun Cow was high, wide and not handsome. Cowboys rode a hundred miles out of their way to view the huge-beamed and ceilinged room, the hanging lamps and the mirror-blazing back bar. The Dun Cow was something to see and talk about!

But the crowning glory of the Dun Cow was neither lamps, beams nor mirrors. While on his extended spree, which took him as far east as the capital, old Sam had viewed and admired a set of French windows. Nothing would do for Sam but those windows, but French windows necessitated a building in which to place them. The Dun Cow was the result.

Anything more incongruous and out of place than those tall, hinged windows extending from floor to ceiling would be hard to imagine. Many-paned French windows don’t go well with warped board sidewalks and lanterns hung on poles to serve as street lights.

Those windows greatly intrigued old Ben Sutler. He would sit forking his rangy skewbald and stare at them, shaking his white head and rumbling in his awesomely deep bass voice. Ben was a desert rat who had been prospecting for gold for more than half a century, and not finding it. He was nearing seventy and he and the black- and -white horse had been part of the scenery around Sotol for so long that nobody could recall the town without them.

The skewbald was Ben Sutler’s joy and pride. It had fire in its eye and the devil in its heart. It was a killer to everybody else, but in Ben’s hands it was as gentle as a lamb is supposed to be. It would do anything Ben told it to do, go anywhere he told it to go.

Ben Sutler had a way with all critters. Squirrels would eat out of his hands, coyotes crouch within the circle of his campfire light, Gila Monsters crawl around him without swelling up like pizened pups. Beansoup Perkins once told an awed audience in the Dun Cow, “And there was that old hellion settin’ on a rock with a dadblamed rattlesnake big ’round as my leg creepin’ up his arm. Snake reared up and looked Ben Sutler square in the eye and, gents, I’ve always heard tell that a snake can’t smile—but, gents, that snake was smilin’, or I’m a sheepherder!”

Beansoup Perkins was a person whose statements were not generally believed, but folks who had seen hummingbirds take crumbs from between Ben Sutler’s bearded lips were inclined to feel that for once Beansoup had made a mistake and told the truth.

Sotol drowsed sleepily in the early spring sunshine, and the skalleyhootin’ horseman hit the main street with a crash and a clatter and a yell like a panther with his tail caught in a crack. Up the street he bulged, white hair and white whiskers fanning it in the wind. Directly ahead was the Dun Cow, the panes of the French windows glinting in the sunlight.

Opposite the Dun Cow, the rarin’ skewbald made a fishhook turn. Old Ben Sutler howled like a Comanche with a new scalp that didn’t fit his own head. The skewbald answered with a ten-pig squeal—and old Ben sent him straight for the nearest pair of French windows.

There was a crash like a fair-sized mountain turning over onto a crockery store. The French windows went to blazes in a regular blizzard storm of smashed glass and splintered frames. Old Ben and the skewbald never stopped for so much as a splinter or a toothpick. The skewbald’s irons chugged on the hardwood floor, skittered, clawed. Clean across the room he skated, bringing up smack against the bar, snorting and foaming.

“Whoo-o-o-pee!” remarked old Ben, and mountain lions two miles back in the Guadalupes slunk for cover.

Old Sam Yelverton spouted out of the back room like a boiling over coffee-pot. “You spavin-hocked blankety-blank-blank!” he yelled. “You can’t bring that horse in here!”

“The heck I can’t” howled old Ben. “He’s here, ain’t he?”

“You mangy pelican! You’re crazy as popcorn on a hot stove!” screeched Sam. “Get him out of here! Look at my window!”

“To blazes with your window! I’ll buy you all the windows ’tween here and Heaven! Give me whiskey!”

“You couldn’t buy the foam off a glass of beer!” bawled Yelverton. “You ain’t seen a dollar for so long you forgot what an eagle looks like! Somebody hand me a shotgun!”

But old Ben let out another whoop, hauled a big buckskin sack from his saddle pouch, whirled it around his head and dumped it on the bar. A second later and you could have heard a pine needle drop on the roof of the Dun Cow.

The whole end of the bar was covered with big nuggets and hunks of “wire” gold!

There’s something about raw gold that sets men’s pulses to pounding. Men who are unmoved by a handful of minted double-eagles will grow deliriously excited over an equal amount of nuggets or dust. Here is something primal, elemental, the treasure of the dark places of the earth, born of fire and the travail and the awful shudderings of terrestrial upheavals. The molten yellow blood of the young world now frozen by the cold breath of years, ages and eons beyond number.

The bartender goggled at the pile. He choked, gurgled and finally broke the silence. “G-good gosh! Ben, where’d you get it?” he squeaked.

“Whiskey!” roared Mr. Sutler, uncompromisingly.

The barkeep scooped up a bottle, and his hand shook. Old Ben grabbed the bottle, knocked off the neck, clean as a diamond-cut, with his hand, and poured half of its contents down his throat.

“Whoo-o-pee!” he said again, and the hanging lamps jumped and jingled.

The barkeep scooped another quart. “Have another drink, old-timer, have two drinks!” he invited. “Belly up, gents, have one on the house!”

There was a concerted rush for the bar. Old Sam Yelverton voiced a thin wail of protest, but nobody heard or heeded him. They crowded around Sutler, sloshing glasses held high.

“Here’s to good old Ben!” they whooped. “Have one on me, Ben! Have another one!”

Old Ben gulped a swig from his bottle. His white beard wagged, opened in a grin of pleased content. His filmy little blue eyes gleamed and watered.

“Friends!” he opined. “All friends! Ev’body my friends!” He took another drink, looked mysterious, beamed on everybody present. “Going to let you all in on secret,” he declared. “Going to tell you where I got gold!”

The crowd drew closer, eyes flickering from the heap of nuggets on the bar to old Ben’s face.

“The sun shines bright on my ol’ Kaintucky home!” boomed Mr. Sutler, beating time with his nearly empty bottle. The crowd gave a hollow groan. Mr. Sutler smiled happily. “Gents, you’d never guess!” he chortled. “No, sir, you’d never guess!”

“We ain’t good at guessing, Ben,” somebody pleaded.

“Reckon that’s right,” Mr. Sutler agreed unexpectedly. “Ain’t going to make my friends guess, nohow. Gents, I got this gold out of the darndest hole in the Guadalupes. She come from Jericho Valley!”

There was a stunned silence. “But, Ben!” somebody protested at length, “there ain’t nothing in Jericho Valley but snakes and arsenic springs and falling rocks. Ain’t safe to even walk through there.”

“She come out of Jericho Valley,” old Ben reiterated stubbornly. “That’s where I got her. And there’s plenty more—more’n plenty more. Enough for the whole town, and then some. Rec’lect them shale banks down underneath the cliffs? Well, them shale banks are as thick with gold as a John Chinaman pudding is with raisins. That’s where I got her, gents. Help yourselves!”

The bartender suddenly shucked off his apron and tossed it under the bar. He went over the bar in one jump.

“Gents,” he bawled as he went through the swinging doors so fast the paint smoked, “gents, I’m resigning! Help yourselves!”

A wild yell greeted this announcement—and the stampede was on!

It was a humdinger. Old Ben Sutler didn’t exaggerate when he declared the shale banks in Jericho Valley were as thick with nuggets and “wires” as a cow cook’s pudding with raisins. Getting it out was hard and dangerous work, but the claims men staked were unbelievably rich.

In consequence, things happened to Sotol. The sleepy cowtown, drowsing in the sun, awoke with a screech and a yowl. Its population doubled, tripled, quadrupled and kept growing. New buildings went up so fast a gent who had been plumb at home on Sunday night got lost in the same section on Tuesday morning.

Old Sam Yelverton, to his utter dismay, found himself the owner of the most prosperous business in the county. He had to hire new bartenders, many of them, more dance-floor girls, waiters and dealers. In despair he hired a head dealer to look after the games and keep order. The head dealer, Crane Arnold by name, was a lean, sinewy individual with an affable manner, a pleasant word for everybody, whether the individual had a hundred dollars to spend or only a dollar, and a genius for stopping trouble before it really got started. He could be hard, if necessary, and his mild blue eyes could turn flinty when the occasion warranted. But he seemed to prefer to be quiet and courteous and friendly at all times. He got himself a reputation and the admiration of old Sam his first night in town by easily outplaying Yelverton and several of his cronies at stud poker—which was no light thing for any man to do. That’s why Sam hired him.

Under Crane Arnold’s hand, the games were absolutely straight. A man was safe in the Dun Cow no matter how much gold he had on him or how drunk he got, more than could be said for some other of the town’s places of entertainment. Arnold’s reputation as a square-shooter grew and business in the Dun Cow got better and better. Sam Yelverton, who couldn’t begin to spend what he already had, found himself making more money hand over fist, and collecting added worries and responsibilities with every dollar that plunked into his tills. Finally, in despair and disgust, he sold out to Crane Arnold, on long time payments. Henceforth, happy and satisfied, Sam Yelverton drank and played poker in the Dun Cow as of old, and had nothing to worry about.

Crane Arnold also appeared to have nothing to worry about. The Dun Cow continued to prosper and Arnold had no trouble meeting his notes when they fell due. His face habitually wore an expression of peace and content.

But there wasn’t much peace in Sotol and its environs, and there were plenty who were not contented. There were killings in the streets of Sotol and killings, some of them mysterious, in arid, heat-scorched Jericho Valley. Fights and killings, however, were to be expected in a gold-rush town. What gave the reputable business men and the sheriff more concern were holdups and killings along the formerly little-traveled Mojo Trail. The Mojo was the shortest route, and the one always open, no matter what the season or the weather, to Boraco, the railroad town. Before the gold discovery, only shipping herds and supply wagons used the Mojo frequently. Now things were different. The supply wagons, many more of them, freighting wares to take care of the greatly increased demand for merchandise, still rumbled down the mountainside, and the trail herds still used it. But in addition there was the transportation of precious metal from Sotol and all too often the metal never reached its destination. Gentlemen with no respect for property rights took care of that, often in a daring and ingenious manner.

All sorts of schemes were tried to thwart the robbers, but all too frequently the robbers saw through the strategems and set them at naught. The businessmen, gold shippers and other honest citizens howled to the unresponsive Heavens and showered maledictions on the hapless head of Sheriff Clem Baxter who added to his force of deputies, to no avail.

And in the course of the weeks and months, Sotol developed another less sinister and more intriguing mystery—the mystery of Ben Sutler’s gold.

Old Ben staked no claims, nor was he ever seen to toil under the ever-present menace of the overhanging cliffs and slopes that towered over the shale banks. But Ben continued to bring in gold. None of the Jericho Valley claims, rich though they were, ever produced such nuggets and “wires” as old Ben poured upon the bar of the Dun Cow. When asked where he got them he’d chuckle creakily and twinkle his filmy blue eyes. For days at a time he would loaf about town drinking and gambling and giving away money. Then one night he would vanish. Weeks might pass, or only days, and he would reappear, always with a plump poke.

Men tried to trail Sutler to his hidden mine, but the old prospector was wily and nobody knew the hills as he did. While the baffled searchers were still combing the brakes and canyons Ben would reappear with his creaky chuckle and his filled poke.

And then Ben Sutler disappeared and did not return. Days grew to weeks, to months. There was a chill of early autumn in the air at night and the season was fast approaching when mining in Jericho Valley would be impossible.

A howl, louder and more indignant than even those of the harrassed gold shippers, went up. Men felt they had been defrauded. Something had happened to Ben Sutler, and with it something had happened to the secret of Ben Sutler’s gold. A fresh storm of wrath descended on the grizzled head of Sheriff Clem Baxter. In desperation the sheriff wrote an urgent letter to Captain Jim McNelty, imploring Rangers to police the section and clean out the owlhoots.

And then, some days later, Sheriff Baxter learned something. Just what he learned nobody ever knew for sure. For Clem Baxter was a secretive man and did not see fit to take anybody into his confidence. He merely told Clifton Yates, his newly-appointed chief deputy, that he was taking a ride and would see him later. Alone, the sturdy old peace officer rode to sinister Jericho Valley to keep his rendezvous with death.