Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Weird Warning; Or, Dauntless Dell's Rival - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 4

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Sun Dance was a very small mining-camp, perched on a shelf up the side of Sun Dance Cañon. “Six ’dobies stuck on a side hill,” was the trite and not very elegant way the camp was often described.

The sort of mining indulged in was both quartz and placer—placer-mining in the gulch and quartz-mining in the neighboring hills. Only the placer-miners lived in the camp; the quartz-miners had camps of their own, and only came to Sun Dance for supplies.

The camp could be reached in two ways: From the bottom of the cañon by a steep climb, and from the top by a stiff descent.

The stage from Montegordo reached camp by way of the cañon’s rim, which was its only feasible route; but Wild Bill and Crawling Bear came from below, and gained the settlement by spurring their horses up the slope.

Just where the trail crawled over the edge of the flat, there was a sign-board with the rudely lettered words: “No Shootin’ Aloud in Sun Dance.” As an indication of how seriously the sign was taken, it may be mentioned that the lettering could hardly be read for bullet-holes.

By day the camp was practically dead, all the miners being at work on their placers, and only storekeepers, gamblers, resort proprietors, and the man who “ran” the hotel being visible. For the most part, these worthies smoked their pipes and cigarettes during the day, or played cards among themselves merely to pass the time.

With night everything changed. The camp became a boisterous, rollicking place.

Miners flocked in, bet their yellow dust on the turn of a card or a whirl of the wheel, sampled the camp’s “red-eye,” and very often forgot the warning of the sign, and indulged in shooting that was very loud and occasionally fatal.

The name of the one hotel in the camp was the “Lucky Strike.” The proprietor was one Abijah Spangler, a leviathan measuring six foot ten, up and down, and ten foot six—or so it was said—east and west at his girth-line. Anyway, Abijah Spangler weighed 300 pounds, and when he sat down it took two chairs to hold him.

When Wild Bill and Crawling Bear halted in front of the Lucky Strike, Bije Spangler was sitting down, dripping with perspiration and agitating the air with a ragged palm-leaf fan.

“You the boss of this hangout?” inquired Wild Bill, surveying Spangler’s huge bulk with much interest.

“I run it, you bet,” answered Spangler, ruffling his double-chin and wondering at the red handkerchief about Wild Bill’s arm.

“Got accommodations for two?” queried the Laramie man.

“Fer two whites, yes—meals, four bits, and a bed, a dollar. But”—and here Bije Spangler cast a disapproving eye on the Ponca—“I don’t feed or house Injuns fer no money. Not meanin’ any disrespect fer yerself, neighbor,” added Spangler hastily, noting the glint that rose in Wild Bill’s eye, “but I couldn’t keep open house fer reds without sp’ilin’ the repertation o’ my hotel.”

The Ponca sat up stiff and straight on his horse.

“Where I stay, he stays,” averred Wild Bill; “what’s good enough for him is good enough for me. He’s plum white, all but his skin.”

“So’s a Greaser,” grunted Spangler, “or a Chink. Sorry to appear disobligin’, ’specially as you-all seems to have run inter trouble somewheres. You’re welcome to stop, but the Injun’ll have ter camp out in the chaparral.”

Wild Bill was in no mood for arguing the case, and he was about to ride on, when the Ponca leaned forward and stopped him.

“You want um Ponca take paper-talk to Pa-e-has-ka, hey?” he asked.

“Sure I do, Crawling Bear,” replied Wild Bill, “but I don’t want you to start for Sill until you have rested yourself and your horse.”

“Ugh! no want um rest. Feel plenty fine. Me take um paper-talk now.”

Wild Bill saw that Crawling Bear meant what he said. The camp not appearing to be a very safe place for a red man, anyhow, the Laramie man decided to let his companion have his way.

“Got a place where I can write?” inquired Wild Bill.

“Go through the office an’ inter the bar,” replied Spangler. “You can write on one of the tables, an’ I reckon the barkeep can skeer up a patchin’ o’ paper and a lead-pencil.”

Leaving his horse with the Ponca, Wild Bill went into the barroom, and had soon written a few words to Buffalo Bill, asking him to come to Sun Dance as soon as possible. Returning to Crawling Bear, Wild Bill handed him the folded note and a dozen silver dollars.

“Why you give um Ponca dinero?” asked the Indian.

“That’s for carrying the message to Buffalo Bill,” said the Laramie man.

“Buffalo Bill?” wheezed Spangler, stirring a little in his chair. “You a friend of Buffalo Bill’s?”

“Yes,” answered Wild Bill, whirling on the fat man. “My name’s Hickok.”

“Wild Bill!” muttered Spangler. “Say, that’s different. Any Injun friend o’ Wild Bill’s can stop with me. I’ll break my rules for you, and——”

Hoofs clattered. Crawling Bear, not waiting further, was off for the edge of the “flat” on his return journey to Sill.

“You’re too late,” said Wild Bill curtly. “What’s your label.”

“Spangler is my handle.”

“Any strangers in town, Spangler?”

“Only you.”

“When’s the next stage due from Montegordo?”

“To-morrow afternoon.”

“Well, I’m going to stay with you until to-morrow afternoon, anyhow. Call some one to take care of my horse; and if I can have a room all to myself, I want it.”

“That’ll cost extry,” said Spangler. “If ye’re goin’ to throw on style with a private room, you’ll have to bleed ten dollars’ worth.”

“That’s the size of my stack. Hustle, now. I’m fagged, and want to lie down.”

Spangler lifted his voice and gave a husky yell. In answer to the signal, a Mexican showed himself around the corner of the house, who took Wild Bill’s horse. Then once more Spangler indulged in a wheezy shout. This was the signal for a Chinaman to present himself. After a few words with Spangler, the Chinaman led Wild Bill into the house, through the office and the drinking-part of the establishment, and into a small, corner room, with a window looking out upon the street.

There was a cot in the room, and Wild Bill flung himself down wearily upon it. In a few minutes he was fast asleep.

He awoke in time for supper, put a fresh bandage around his arm, and went out into the hotel dining-room. Everything about the Lucky Strike was exceedingly primitive, and the table, the service, and the food were about what one would expect in a pioneer mining-camp. Wild Bill, however, was used to such accommodations and fare.

Following the meal, he smoked a couple of pipes in front of the hotel, saying nothing to anybody, but keeping up a lot of thinking.

The Forty Thieves—so ran the current of his thoughts—was a played-out mine. Those five men, under orders from one Captain Lawless, were salting it. The name of the mine was suggestive, and so was the name of the man who was engineering the salting operations.

“Captain Lawless, of the Forty Thieves!” said Wild Bill to himself. “That has sure got a regular rough-house sound. When Pard Cody hears it, I’ll bet money it will ruffle his hair the wrong way. Crawling Bear will get that paper-talk through some time to-night, and Cody will be here to-morrow afternoon. When he arrives, we’ll prance out to the Forty Thieves and snake those five trouble-makers out of that hole in the ground; then, if Captain Lawless wants to take a whack at us, he’s welcome.”

Wild Bill took no part in the hilarious doings of the camp that night. By 10 o’clock he had locked himself in his room and got into bed. His arm was a bit painful, so that he was an hour or more in getting to sleep. When he was once asleep, however, he did not wake until morning.

His arm felt better. He could use his hand as well as usual. There was some pain in the arm, but it was not severe.

Following breakfast, he went to one of the general stores and bought a new flannel shirt, a pair of boots, and a bowie, to take the place of the one he had lost in the mine.

After that, he sat in front of the Lucky Strike and smoked until dinner-time; and, after dinner, he smoked until four-thirty, when the stage pulled over the rim of the cañon and slid down the slope with the hind wheels tied.

The stage drew up in front of the hotel, and a mail-bag was thrown off. There was one passenger, a man in a linen duster, and clearly a stranger.

“He’s the one,” said Wild Bill to himself, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and getting out of his chair. “The chap doesn’t look much like an easy mark, though. I wonder if he has any notion he’s taking long chances with that hundred thousand of his?”

Just then Wild Bill experienced something like a jolt. A man rode up along the trail that led from the cañon bottom, drew rein in front of the hotel, dismounted, dropped his bridle-reins over a hitching-post, and followed the stranger into the Lucky Strike.

The man had his right arm in a sling, and it didn’t take two looks to inform Wild Bill that the fellow was none other than Clancy! Clancy, the man who had been blowing gold into the Forty Thieves with a shotgun! Clancy, the man Wild Bill had left, with four others, bottled up in the Forty Thieves’ shaft!

Clancy did not pay any attention to Wild Bill. It seemed very probable that neither Clancy, nor any of those with him in the mine, had been able to see Wild Bill distinctly enough to recognize him in another place and in broad day.

Then, too, the Laramie man had a new shirt of a different color from the blue one he had worn in the mine, and he showed no sign of injury. All this would help to keep Clancy from recognizing him, even if he had got a tolerably good look at him in the Forty Thieves.

Reassured on this point, Wild Bill fell to canvassing another. How had Clancy managed to escape from the shaft?

Clancy and the rest must have had help. Some other member of the gang must have been abroad in the cañon, and no doubt happened along and gave his aid.

Wild Bill was disappointed. He had hoped the five would be kept in the Forty Thieves until Buffalo Bill reached Sun Dance.

Strolling into the office of the hotel, Wild Bill saw Clancy in close conversation with the man in the linen duster. They were off by themselves in one corner, and were conversing in low, animated tones.

“Clancy is going to hold the man until this Captain Lawless shows up,” thought Wild Bill. “I must have a word with that tenderfoot and show him how he is going to be gold-bricked. I’d hate myself to death if I ever allowed that gang of robbers to get away with his hundred thousand.”

Wild Bill, having settled the situation in his mind, strolled out to the front of the hotel, filled his pipe again, and seated himself in the chair he had occupied for most of the day.

He was waiting for the stranger, and he had not long to wait. Clancy came out, unhitched his horse, climbed into the saddle, and clattered back toward the bottom of the cañon. A few minutes later the stranger followed, pulled up a chair a few feet from Wild Bill’s, and seated himself.

“Howdy,” said Wild Bill, with a friendly nod, by way of breaking the ice.

“How do you do, sir?” answered the stranger, with all the elaborate courtesy of an Easterner. “Will you try one of these?”

He offered Wild Bill a cigar, and the latter accepted it amiably.

“Stranger, I take it?” pursued Wild Bill.

“Well, yes,” answered the other. “I came in on the afternoon stage from Montegordo.”

“Looking up the mines?”

A suspicious look crossed the stranger’s face.

“Figuring on examining the Forty Thieves,” pursued Wild Bill, “with the intention of handing out one hundred thousand cold plunks for the same?”

The stranger laughed.

“You seem to be pretty well informed,” he remarked. “I haven’t told a soul about my business here, but you reel it right off, first clatter out of the box.”

“Steer wide of the Forty Thieves, pilgrim,” said Wild Bill earnestly. “That proposition is a trap for the unwary. I know. It cost me some trouble to find out what I’m telling you, but you take my word for it, and let the property alone.”

“Who are you?” inquired the stranger, with sudden interest.

“My name’s Hickok, William Hickok.”

The stranger hitched restlessly in his chair.

“The man I’ve heard so much about under the sobriquet of Wild Bill?” he asked.

“Tally! That’s the time you got your bean on the right number.”

The stranger fell silent for a space.

“My name is Smith,” said he finally; “J. Algernon Smith, of Chicago, and what you tell me is mighty surprising.” He drew his chair closer. “Would you mind telling me just what you have found out?”

“Sure I wouldn’t mind. I’m hungry to cut into this game, and even up with the pack of tinhorns that gave me a hot half-hour yesterday.”

And thereupon Wild Bill began telling what he had seen and heard in the level of the Forty Thieves. When he had finished, J. Algernon Smith was wide-eyed and staring.

“Really,” he managed to gasp, “this is most astounding.”

“I reckon it’s all that,” mildly answered Wild Bill. “The very name of that mine, though, is enough to make a man think some. Who’s the fellow you’re going to deal with?”

“His name, I believe, is James Lawless.”

“That’s another name that’s bad medicine.”

“I’d never thought of the names in that light.”

“That fellow that was talking with you, right after you got out of the stage, was Clancy, the scoundrel that was blowing gold into the rock with a shotgun. What did he want?”

“Why, he was telling me that Lawless hadn’t got here yet, and he was warning me not to say anything to anybody about my business in Sun Dance.”

“You couldn’t blame him for that,” remarked Wild Bill dryly.

“He asked me to meet him at the foot of the slope, in the bottom of the cañon, immediately after supper,” went on the stranger, “so we could have a quiet talk.”

“You can see how they’re working it, can’t you?” returned Wild Bill. “They’re trying to keep this business dark until Lawless shows up, and meanwhile Clancy is going to keep your interest at fever-heat by all kinds of stringing. Any objection to my going along with you when you meet Clancy?”

“No, indeed, Wild Bill. I was about to suggest that myself. I am sure I’m very much obliged to you for your interest in me, and——”

“Stow that,” interrupted Wild Bill. “It isn’t my interest in you, particularly, that leads me to take a hand, but it’s more a desire to see every man get what’s coming to him. Sabe?”

At that moment the Chinaman came out in front of the hotel and pounded on a gong.

“Suppa leddy!” he announced.

The stranger did not remove his linen duster. It covered him from his neck to his heels, and Wild Bill thought he kept it on so as not to soil his Eastern clothes. He and the Laramie man sat at the same table, and next to each other.

When the meal was over, J. Algernon Smith excused himself for a minute, and said he would rejoin Wild Bill in front of the hotel, and they would at once take their way down the slope to the bottom of the cañon.

Wild Bill waited for five minutes before J. Algernon Smith rejoined him, and they started across the “flat” toward the top of the slope.

“A tenderfoot has got to keep his eyes skinned,” said Wild Bill, “or he’ll collide with more trouble, in this western country, than he ever dreamed was turned loose.”

“I presume you are right,” said J. Algernon Smith. “Only fancy blowing gold into a mine with a shotgun!” He laughed a little. “If they knew that, back in Chicago, they’d make game of me,” he added. “You haven’t told any one about this, have you?”

“Not a soul but you.”

“I’m glad of that, I can tell you. I’d hate to have the business get out. Of course, I hadn’t bought the mine yet. I was going to take samples, you know, and have them assayed; then, if the assays showed up well, the deal would have been made.”

It was very dark, at that hour, on the slope leading down into the cañon. Bushes fringed the horse-trail, in places, and there was quite a patch of chaparral at the foot of the slope.

Here Wild Bill and J. Algernon Smith came to a halt.

“Clancy doesn’t seem to be around,” said Wild Bill. “Maybe you’d better tune up with a whistle, or a yell, so that he’ll know where you are.”

J. Algernon Smith stared into the depths of a thicket.

“It looks to me as though there was a man in there,” said he. “Can you see any one, Mr. Hickok?”

Wild Bill took a step forward. His back was to his companion, and, while he was peering into the bushes, he heard a hasty step behind him.

He started to turn; and, at that precise instant, a heavy blow, dealt with some hard instrument, landed on the back of his head.

He staggered, but, with a fierce effort, rallied all his strength, and turned around. In the darkness he saw the yellow duster pressing upon him. It was Smith, and Smith was about to land another treacherous blow.

Wild Bill’s head was reeling, but he had sense enough left to understand that he had made some sort of a mistake, and that Smith was other than he had seemed.

Evading the blow aimed at him, the Laramie man gripped Smith by the throat. Ultimately, in spite of his unsteady condition, Wild Bill might have got the best of his antagonist had not Clancy taken a part in the struggle.

The latter plunged through the bushes and assaulted Wild Bill from behind.

At Clancy’s second blow, Wild Bill’s reason fled, and he dropped helplessly on the rocks.