Читать книгу Dan Barry's Daughter - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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To Hal Springer and Rudy Nichols, the setting of the sun was most welcome for when one has “broken ground” all day, and when the “ground” is hard quartz, fatigue becomes a thing which bites clear to the soul. And, as a matter of fact, they could not have sustained the burden as well as they had done had it not been for certain gleaming little threads of rich yellow in the stone which told them that their labor now meant rest in the days to come.

When they laid aside their double jacks and their drills, however, they did not instantly set about preparing supper. They were too wise for that. For they first sat down on a stone and lighted their pipes. To be sure the twilight would make the cooking of supper more difficult, more unpleasant, but this small interval was refreshing their muscles, their very hearts. They did not even waste strength in words, but from the mountainside they looked out with mild, tired eyes upon the progress of the shadows in the valleys.

They were of an age—perhaps forty-five—and although in body and feature they were as different as men could be, yet their expressions were so similar that they might have been taken for brothers. For each of them had spent twenty years wandering through the mountains, steering a course sighted between the ears of the burro which was driven ahead. They had chipped rocks with their hammers from Canada to Mexico.

Their minds were packed with all manner of information about strange trails and strange adventures, and strange as was their knowledge their hopes were even stranger. Each of them felt that he had rubbed elbows with huge fortunes time and again; each of them kept in the back of his mind precious information about spots where gold had to be; each of them had lived so long a solitary life that this association with two others seemed like existence in the midst of a roaring crowd.

The third partner, Harry Gloster, was absent hunting to stock their larder. And his absence was welcome. Not that they disliked him, but they preferred absolute solitude to any human company, and next to absolute solitude it was best to be near one of their own kind, calm, silent, gray as the stone, with eyes worn dull by searching for the spot where the rainbow touches the earth.

They began to hear, now, the sharp sound of shod hoofs striking the rocks below them, a noise which constantly climbed closer. They knew who it was. As a matter of fact, for the last two hours they had watched the rider working up the valley from far away, the distance diminishing his size although the clear mountain air let them see him distinctly enough.

They had watched him, from time to time, when they came out from the shaft to let the wind blow them cool. But neither had said a word to the other. As a matter of fact, they had not spoken a syllable since Gloster left them early that morning.

But as the noise of the horse came closer, Hal Springer went to the little shack, half cabin and half dugout, in which they bunked, and came back wearing his cartridge belt with revolver dragging the right side of it far down over the hip.

His companion appeared to take not the slightest note of this preparation. He seemed to be only intent upon certain light effects and climbing shadows which were blurring the harsh outlines of a southern peak. But after a dozen puffs of his pipe, he also arose and went to the shack and returned similarly accoutered.

He had barely appeared when the stranger came into view. He had been obscured for some time by the sharp angle of the mountainside, now he was seen to be a fellow in the prime of life, wide shouldered, long-armed, and sitting as lightly in the saddle as if he had not been riding hard through the entire day. He dismounted, throwing his reins, while the hungry horse, daring not to move, reached in a guilty fashion after a blade of grass which was near its head.

“Hello, Hal,” he said. “How’s things?”

“Things are tolerable well, Macarthur,” said Springer, and he took the hand of the other in a relaxed grip. It was plain that he was not nearly as well pleased to be seen as to see. “This is Rudy Nichols,” he said. “Make you known to Joe Macarthur, Rudy.”

The two shook hands, but Macarthur swung back to Springer. He wasted no time in preliminary remarks, but went directly to the point, which was what one would expect from his strong features and his steady, bright eyes.

“The damn, vein pinched out on me,” he said.

There was no response other than a puff of smoke from Springer’s pipe.

“Looked like the real thing,” went on Macarthur. “Then it faded. Never was worse fooled in my life. Showed the thing to old man Shaughnessy. He said the same thing.”

“Too bad,” drawled Springer, without interest.

“So your grubstake was throwed away,” went on Macarthur.

Springer shrugged his shoulders. He appeared to have found with his glance the same mountain which had so fascinated Nichols a short time before. He studied it as one stares at a picture of dubious merit, making a judgment.

“What I’m up here about,” went on Macarthur, smoothly, taking a seat on a rock which enabled him to face Springer, and at the same time sifting some tobacco into a brown cigarette paper, “what I’m up here about is another grubstake.”

The silence of Springer was as profound as the silence of the mountains around them.

“I’ve found the real thing at last,” went on Macarthur, as he twisted and licked his cigarette paper. He lighted it and turned his head to watch the match fall. “If I told you all the facts about where and what it was, you’d pack up your things and leave this here hole in the ground and come along with me.”

“Maybe,” said Springer.

“It’s rich!” cried Macarthur with a contagious enthusiasm. “All you got to do is to give the rock one clip with a hammer and you see enough to start you dancing!”

“I’ve done my dancing,” drawled Springer.

“Hal,” said Macarthur, leaning forward and speaking in the soft voice of persuasion, “you may have used up a lot of hope on me since that last job didn’t pan out, but take this from me: you’re a fool if you don’t try another try.

“I could of got backing a good many places with a specimen like this to show. But I wanted you to get your money back—and more too. So I come clear up here instead of showing this here ore to Milligan or to one of them other rich gents that ain’t got the guts to gamble on nothing but a sure thing. Take a look!”

He tossed a little fragment of rock to Springer.

“Take a look at your hoss,” said Springer.

Macarthur turned. The pony, straying away after a tempting bunch of grass, had been held back by the reins catching on a projecting rock. A strong jerk of the head had broken the head band and allowed the bridle to slip down.

“The darned old fool!” exclaimed Macarthur. “But he’ll stand without no bridle at all. What d’you think of that sample, Hal?”

“For a sample,” murmured Springer, “it looks like something.”

And he tossed it back.

The other pocketed the specimen in silence. His jaw had thrust out and his scowl was black.

“That means you don’t give a damn about making your fortune?” he asked.

There was another depressing interval of silence.

“Hal,” said Macarthur at last, “don’t you believe me?”

There was another little interval of dragging pause in which Nichols discovered something of interest some distance down the slope and rose and sauntered down.

“I don’t believe in you,” answered Springer at last, with all the deliberation of a matured judgment. “When I grubstaked you, I was drunk. You got me when I was in town drunk, and you worked on me until I handed over enough money for you to use as a grubstake, as you called it. That made us come up to this job short of everything that we needed.”

Macarthur bit his lip.

“Look at the sample, though,” he pleaded, fighting down his passion.

“Samples ain’t hard to get. Some buy ’em, and some borrow ’em.”

Macarthur arose to his feet. It was too direct an affront.

“Springer,” he said, “what d’you mean by that?”

“I mean just this,” said the other spelling out the words on his fingers, “I’ve looked you up, and what I’ve heard would make a dog sick. You ain’t no good, Macarthur. You skinned me out of one neat little bunch of money. You won’t skin me out of another. That’s the straight of it. I’m through with your kind. I’ve heard how you—”

He stopped. Something had happened in Macarthur like a silent explosion. His lips were trembling and his lean face seemed to have swollen.

“You damned old fool!” he whispered.

“Look here—” began Springer, but instead of finishing his sentence, with a grasp which let the pipe fall from between his teeth he reached for his gun.

It glided out of the scabbard with an ease which told of a skill which had at one time, perhaps, been great.

But fast as his movement was, it was like standing still compared with the flying hand of Macarthur. His gun spoke before the muzzle of Springer’s revolver was clear of the leather, and the miner, with a cough, twisted around and slumped over to one side. There was a yell from Rudy Nichols.

“You damned cutthroat!” he was screaming, his voice thrown into a high falsetto by his emotion, and he ran forward, pumping away with his revolver. Not a bullet hummed close to the mark. His aim was so wild that Macarthur raised his own weapon with the calm precision of one firing at a target, and Nichols pitched on his face while his gun rolled and clattered down the slope.

Macarthur waited until the echoes died down. He faced his horse, which had raised its head and was regarding the motionless bodies with a mild interest.

“This is hell,” breathed Macarthur. “I didn’t mean—”

However, the thing was done, and since it was accomplished only a fool would let a twinge of conscience drive him away before he had reaped the harvest of his crime. He went to the shack, searched it thoroughly, and found a little cash, a ten pound sack of gold which was a prize almost worth the shooting, he decided, and finally he took from the wall a bridle with which to replace his own broken one. In five minutes he was riding down the mountain again.

He paused at the first crossing of the river in the valley. He tied a heavy rock to his bridle and threw it in. After that, how was any human being to tell that he had been there? For not a soul in the world knew to what destination he had been riding that day and certainly the keenest eyes in the world could never trace him over the rocks on which he had been riding.

But before he reached that river, Harry Gloster returned to the mine and he returned leading his horse, which was loaded down with game. He was a poor shot. Practice had never been able to help the skill of the big fellow. But luck had been with him twenty times that day. It had seemed that he could not miss.

He came back, however, to the black and silent cabin, and when he lighted the lantern he carried it out and found the two dead men lying as they had fallen. The lantern shuddered in his hand. First he hurried back to the cabin.

The motive for the double killing was patent at once. For the gold was gone. He went back and carried the dead men to the same spot. And when they lay on their backs with the dirt brushed from their faces, they were wonderfully unchanged from the two he had left that morning.

They must be buried. And he buried them in miner’s fashion. He took them to the old shaft which they had begun to dig until the false vein disappeared. At the mouth of the hole he sank a drill a few inches, wielding a double jack with one hand and raining the blows as if he were swinging a carpenter’s hammer, for he was a giant of strength. Then he put in his stick of powder, lighted the fuse, and watched the explosion roll twenty tons of stone across the entrance.

Now for the ride to town! He saddled his horse, the only horse of the three which they pastured near the mine which was capable of bearing his weight. It was not until the saddle was in place that the other thought came to him. Suppose that he rode into town and told them what he had found. They would come pouring out to see the site of the tragedy.

But no sooner were they there than they would begin to ask questions, and those questions would be prompted by the discovery that the mine was paying in rich ore. A rich mine owned by three partners of whom two are suddenly and sadly killed! How fortunate, how extremely fortunate for the third member of the group!

It came sickeningly home to him. He was new to that land. No one knew him. No one would vouch for him. Strangers would compose the jury that tried him. A strange judge would advise them. A furious prosecutor would pour forth his eloquence about this dastardly crime—the murder of two honest, old prospectors!

Sweat stood upon his forehead. Sweat poured out at his armpits. And every mile that he traveled gave him time for thoughts. The beat of the hoofs of his horse turned into words, and they were the words of the charge of the judge to the jury pointing out all the damning evidence and, in summing up, showing that if such a crime went unpunished it would encourage other men to destroy their partners when a mine began to pay. For how simple was it, in the lonely mountains, to destroy a man, and how easy it was to put the blame upon an unknown stranger and say that one had been out hunting that day!

He went to the town, indeed, but he did not ride into the center of it. Instead, he left his horse at the outskirts, saddle and all. There he paused a moment to rub the nose of the honest mustang and murmur: “They’ll find you, old timer. They’ll give you some chuck. I know you’re hungry as sin!” Then he went on.

He sneaked through the village. He came to the railroad station, and half an hour later he was aboard a freight train and bound for parts farther south.

When the rattling wheels had spun beneath the train for two hours, he dropped off at a place where it had stopped for water. For he must leave a broken trail behind him, he decided, and he was already far, far away from the place of the double murder.

He cut across the country. In the gray of the dawn when day could hardly have been said to have begun he came to a ranch-house. There, in the barn, he found saddle and bridle. In the corral were a dozen horses.

He picked the stoutest, without regard for lines which might indicate speed, for his first requirement of a horse was the strength to bear up his unusual bulk. On the back of this animal he drew the saddle, lowered the bars, led the horse out, and then rode south, south at a steady jog. It would not do to use too much early speed, for the road was long which led across the desert. But somewhere ahead of him was Mexico, and there, unless men lied, the law sometimes slept.