Читать книгу Jackson Gregory: Collected Works - Jackson Gregory - Страница 97

Table of Contents

Before he climbed down the way Watson had gone, Dick Farley again turned his eyes along the trail which was to lead him tomorrow to the Cup of Gold. His wandering fancies built a golden dream future. Then he turned back and climbed slowly down to the trail.

The fire was dying upon the little rocky ledge where he had built it an hour ago. Beyond the camp-fire, where he had flung his blanket at the base of the cliff, Johnny Watson was already lying. Farley swept up his own blanket from the ground and, stepping around the fire, flung it down close to Watson’s.

“I don’t believe in your premonitions, pardner,” he said with a little laugh. “But if they get one of us they’ll have to take two. Here’s where I pitch my tent.”

Johnny Watson made no answer. He was already asleep. Johnny never wasted time in wakefulness when he had turned in.

Farley straightened out his blankets, jerked off his heavy boots and socks and lay down, his elbow close to Watson’s. And so he went to sleep.

Something awoke him; it might have been the moon, shining full in his face. He rolled over upon his side, shifted his wide-brimmed hat to shield his face from the light, and still he did not go back to sleep. He felt restless, uneasy—inexplicably uneasy. Those confounded things Johnny had said last night wouldn’t leave him. There was no sound; not a ripple upon the surface of the night’s silence save the murmur and trickle of the water. He should be able to hear the horses—the chain on old Shaggy’s halter.

He sat up. Doing so, he put his right hand on the ground beside him, beside Johnny Watson. He felt something damp, spongy, and sticky. He lifted his hand, staring at it in the moonlight. There was a dark stain. He put it to his nostrils.

“Good God!” he cried aloud. “Johnny! Johnny!”

And then when Johnny Watson did not answer, he did not need to look. He knew Johnny Watson was dead—dead at the side of his partner who had slept!

The young man staggered to his feet and stared wildly around. Each rock and tree and bush stood out clearly in the moonlight with its shadow flung out very dark and very distinct. His revolver was rigid in the tense steel of his grip. There was nothing, there was no one. And yet, while he slept, some one had crept upon his partner.

He turned to where Watson lay. And suddenly, as he saw how the man was lying, the way an arm lay at his side, the other arm flung out, the truth came upon him; and without looking at the wound he knew that death had not come upon Watson while the two men lay side by side.

It had come while Farley stood alone upon the top of the cliff staring out into Devil’s Pocket, dreaming! For as Watson lay now, so had he lain when Farley came down to him. He had been dead when his partner called to him, saying they would sleep side by side!

“While I was up on the rock,” Farley muttered dully, “they got him.”

He stooped low over the prostrate body and gently, tenderly, he moved it so that it lay face-up. The moonlight showed well how Johnny Watson’s death had found him. At the side of his bared neck was a cut such as a broad-bladed knife would make, a great gash, two inches long. Just one blow had been struck, just one such blow needed.

Farley got slowly to his feet and for a little stood looking down into the dead man’s face. And the face of the man who looked into the dead eyes was as oddly quiet and calm.

“They got you, Johnny,” Farley was saying in a voice void of expression, “with me in calling distance—Oh, Johnny!”

For a moment he stood, his face sunk into his two brown hands. And then suddenly he whirled about, his head lifted, his arm dung out, shaken with a frenzy of rage.

“My pardner—you’ve murdered my pardner!” he shouted. “And I’m going to find you out! I’m going to kill you!”

Then he suddenly calmed as he realized that he was alone in the mountains, a week’s travel from the nearest mining-camp, alone with his dead partner. He moved back from the ledge and into the shadow, where he sat down upon a broken boulder. All at once a thing which he had forgotten swept back over him—the horses! He had missed the noise of their crunching, he had failed to hear the jingle of old Shaggy’s tie-chain!

He sprang to his feet and ran down into the little clearing where they had tied the two pack-animals. They were gone, both gone. He stumbled over one of the pack-saddles with its load. There had been no time to take that. But the other, old Shaggy’s saddle, was missing.

Slowly he made his way back to the little ledge where Johnny Watson lay. Again he sat down upon the bit of boulder, and lighting his pipe pulled at it steadily, staring down into the quiet cañon. He could not follow tracks until morning.

With the first glint of the new day he buried Johnny Watson.

For a moment Dick stood hat in hand, looking at the little mound of earth which he had made and piled high with stones. And then he turned and, walking swiftly, strode back to the spot where the horses had been staked.

There was no difficulty in picking up the trail. Upon that rugged, rocky mountainside the murderer, if he had taken the two horses with him, must have moved eastward and into the Devil’s Pocket, or in a direction leading southwesterly over the trail which Farley and Watson had come yesterday. He could not have scaled the cliffs above, he could have made no progress through the dense brush of the deep-cut ravine below.

For a moment Farley hesitated between going forward toward the little mountain valley and turning back. Then the thought came to him that he could hope to learn what he sought to know by going forward, quicker than by swinging back toward the southwest. For if the two horses had gone eastward, it would be easier to pick up their trail than upon the path which they had cut up yesterday. If there should be any fresh tracks leading into the Devil’s Pocket, that would settle it. And not ten minutes later, having followed the stony trail until it dipped a little into a bit of soft soil in a hollow, he found the tracks—fresh tracks made by two shod horses.

Then he went back to last night’s camp, made himself a small pack of bacon and coffee and flour; and taking no useless thing, no blanket even to interfere with the free swing of his body, he turned east and struck out swiftly.

He followed the trail for a mile, saw how it wound in and out, climbing and dipping, worming slowly toward the pocket. And then, when he had been assured that the two horses were ahead of him, he left the trail and fought his way due east, up the face of a steep bank and to the crest of the bleak mountains. He remembered Watson had told him that following the trail they would have to go a good fifteen miles to travel ten, and now he sought a short-cut to head off the man he followed. He knew that he would pick up the trail again in the valley.

Hour after hour he trudged on, his face whipped by tangled brambles in the cañons, his hands torn by the crags over which he continued to climb toward the top of the ridge.

At last, about the middle of the forenoon, he came to the top of the narrow divide. From an outjutting crag he looked down into the valley before him, seeing again the winding course of the creek, the little lake, the steep mountain walls and gorges. Here he stopped long enough to choose the way he must go to make the best time. And then with one long look back toward the slope where the lone cedar flung its twisted branches over his partner, he turned again eastward and plunged down into the steep cañon, down into the Devil’s Pocket.