Читать книгу The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition - Max Brand - Страница 170

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Dawn cast about in his mind for an easy method of opening a rather difficult narrative. It was essential that he should not lose the respect of his new-found ally; for he sensed at once the vital truth that Ronicky Doone could not work for an instant with a companion whom he did not trust.

At length he hit upon a lucky beginning and pointed down the hillside.

“You see that old pine tree down there on the side of the hill among the rocks?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you see that other one on the level shoulder? Well, one of ‘em is packed in among rocks and hasn’t a square chance to grow; and even when it grows, it pitches out to the side, all crooked. And the other goes up big and straight as a king, eh? Ronicky, it’s the same way with humans. Take two men of the same kind and give one a chance and one a hard row. One of ‘em goes straight, the other goes crooked. Well, Ronicky, that’s my case.

“My father built that big house you saw last night, and I grew up in it. He was a moneymaker, an easygoing fellow, too, and he liked to spend money as well as he liked to make it. Mines were his meat, and you know how cheap you regard gold that you dig out of dirt. He treated me the same way he treated himself. I grew up just the way I felt like growing. He didn’t make me do anything. I didn’t feel like going off to school, and he didn’t make me. Result was that I just ran wild, got to be a man, married the finest girl that ever stepped, had a girl born—and then the mines went smash, and dad went smash with them. Left me stranded. I didn’t have any occupation. I didn’t know anything about ranch work, even. And how was I to support my family? Then came a hard winter. My father and my wife died and left me with the baby girl to take care of. That hit me pretty hard. When your wife goes hungry it’s bad enough; but when a kid cries for food, it sure cuts you up.

“I started out to get coin. And I got it! Tried my hand at gambling, and I had a beginner’s luck that lasted me two years. Then that luck petered out, and I was flat as ever—and nothing saved of all the money I’d made.

“When I was down and out, Jack Moon met me. He’d been watching me for a long time like the fox that he is. He saw me going downhill and he waited for the right time. When it came, he was ready. He put up his game to me, and I fell for it. I was desperate, you see? And the way he told me was that I wouldn’t have to ride with him more’n a couple of times a year. The only hard thing was that, once in the band, I had to stay with it all my life. But even that I was willing to do, because there was Jerry, nearly eight years old, pretty as a picture, and needing a pile of things to keep her happy. So I gave Moon my word and went in with him.

“He didn’t call on me for six months. Meantime, he gave me money, kept me easy, and built up a big debt that I owed him. End of the six months he called on me. It was a safe-blowing job. I rode with Moon and two others, and I didn’t do much but look on; but afterward I got a split on the profits. Well, Ronicky, that night when I saw the soup explode and the door of the safe blown off, it seemed to me I was seeing the whole power of the law blown to the devil. It was more’n I could stand. I got Moon aside and told him that I was pretty well tired of the whole thing and I wanted to turn in my share to pay off my debts to him and get myself out of the band. But Moon only laughed at me. He said that every man was a little hard hit his first time out, but afterward he got used to it. Besides, he said that I had the makings of a new leader, if anything happened to him; and he tried to flatter me into being happy.

“It didn’t work, but he said enough to show me that he’d never let me get out of his control. That started me thinking faster and harder than I’d ever thought before.

“About two months later he called on me. I can see now that he simply wanted to test me out. He said he knew that I was a hard rider and a good shot, and he said, too, that he was going to honor me by giving me the job of running down a skunk that had tried to double-cross his band. This was the story that Moon told me, and I’ll try to give you every point just as he gave ‘em to me.

“A good many years back, they made the gold strikes along the Jervey River—you’ve heard about ‘em?”

“Of course!” Ronicky nodded.

“Well, those strikes were about the richest ever made, according to what Moon told me. The boys dug out the gold like dirt. They got it by the millions. It was all surface stuff, and the claims gave out quick; but while they lasted —about two years and a half—they were mints. The chief trouble with the mines along the Jervey was that they wasn’t any railroad within three hundred miles, and the gold had to be carted out on mules and hosses along the trails across the mountains. Naturally there was a lot of robbing and holdups going on—such a pile of it that nobody could say how much gold was lost or how many men murdered in the business. But Jack Moon says that out of about sixty millions taken from the Jervey claims, not more’n twenty millions ever was got across the mountains by them that shipped it out!

“Forty millions was lost. Think of that! You’d think that losses like that would have brought out the whole United States army to look after things. But the whole army wasn’t very big in those days, and it was tolerable busy with the Indians. Besides, when the stories got East, they weren’t believed; or if they were believed, nobody cared very much. They were used to hearing all kinds of wild tales about gold coming out of the West, and most generally they figured that the gold diggers were a set of rascals, one about as bad as the other. So nothing was done till the miners done it.

“They bore up for a long time, until after a while pretty nigh none of the gold ever got across the mountains. Then they stopped digging and got ready to fight, and they were about as good at one thing as the other. They meant trouble, and they meant trouble in heaps. In a couple of weeks something broke. They sent out a fake gold convoy. There wasn’t any gold, but there were ten mules and only ten men—and behind the ten came close to fifty with rifles. Sure enough, the ten were jumped, there was a big fight, and half a dozen of the robbers were shot down. The miners were so mad that they didn’t leave ‘em live long. But one gent kept a spark of life, and he lived long enough to tell ‘em that the whole system of robbing was run under one head, and that that head was the gent that was sheriff of the district where the mines was! The skunk had worked a double game and won both ways. His name was Hampden.

“Them fifty men went back to the claims and rounded up Hampden. At first he put up quite a talk; but they faced him with the dying gent, and he weakened. He was smooth as oil, but there was some things that he couldn’t answer. When they searched his cabin and found under the flooring some guns that was known to belong to gents that had been murdered on the gold trails, they give that sheriff a short time for living.

“His nerve held good till they tied the knot around under his ear and got him ready for the swing, and then he buckled. He begged ‘em to give him a chance. He swore that he wasn’t any more than a tool, and that the gent that had planned all the organized robbery was really to blame, and that if they’d spare his life he’d take them to that gent and they could not only get him that was the root of the whole affair, but they could get the gold that had been stolen—a third or half of it, anyway, because that was the share, he said, that the master kept for himself.

“Of course the vigilantes figured this talk to be just plumb fear. Hampden wanted to live, and so he was lying and putting the blame on somebody that didn’t exist. Anyway, they cut him short by kicking the box from under him, and Hampden swung still trying to talk and explain as long as he had a breath in him.

“Now let’s go back to Jack Moon. He heard about this story; and he had an idea that they was something in it. Seems he hunted around for ten years trying to locate who the master mind had been, if there was such a man; and finally he hit on a gent named Boyd Cosslett that lived in a cabin right up on a cliff over the Cunningham River. He was a queer old gent with yards of white beard, and always packing the Bible around and living quiet. What started the suspicions of Moon was that no letters and no money ever come in for old Boyd Cosslett, but every now and then he went down to town and bought supplies, and what he paid down was always raw gold or dust!

“Well, Moon had him watched for nigh onto a year, trying to see if the old boy would ever leave his cabin and go out to his treasure—if he really had a treasure buried some place. But nothing happened, so one day he took a couple of the boys, Whitwell and another, and rushed Cosslett’s shack at night.

“The old miser must of had the ears of a fox. He heard ‘em coming. When they smashed through the door, they found him closing something into an iron box on the table. Moon shot him twice with his revolver, but Cosslett lived long enough to snap his box shut and throw it into the river. Then he turned around and laughed and shook his fist at Moon and dropped.

“They looked out the window and saw that the box must of fallen straight over the cliff and down into the lake, because that’s the place where the Cunningham River widens out and fills the ravine and makes Cunningham Lake.

“Cosslett lived about an hour, and Moon tried to make him talk; but the old boy just lay reading his Bible out loud and waiting for death.

“After he died, they buried him all proper. Moon’s a stickler for things like that. Then they went down and dragged the lake to get the iron box, because they figured that it must contain something they could use as a clue to finding the treasure. But the bottom of that lake was thick with mud, and they got nothing but tired arms for their work.

“Now, about a month after this Whitwell disappeared, and they didn’t find him for a long time. And he stayed away so long that Moon knew he had quit the band. After a while they pick up his trail and find him not far from Cosslett’s cabin. And there they find him dragging the lake!

“It’s easy to figure what he was doing. He was trying to get his hands on that iron box of old Cosslett’s and he wanted to get it for himself and not have to share up with the band. Moon let him stay on there for a month, hoping that maybe Whitwell would find the box; and then they’d kill Whitwell and take the box from him. But Whitwell didn’t have any luck, it seemed, so finally Moon came to me and gave me the job of killing Whitwell.

“I tried to beg out of it, but there was nothing to do but go and kill or else get killed myself. That was the rule under Jack Moon, and that’s the rule under him still.

“When I reached Cunningham Lake, I found that Whitwell was gone; but I picked up a fresh trail and followed it two days. It brought me up at last to an old deserted camp, and there I nailed Whitwell. There wasn’t anything to it. He was sound asleep in a chair. When he woke up, I had my gun shoved under his chin.

“Well, he didn’t even so much as blink. He just sat up and grinned at me. First thing he said was: ‘I’m ready to divvy up, if that’s what you want. ‘

“‘Divvy up on what?’ I asked him.

“‘The box, ‘ says he. ‘I found it.’

“That took my breath. I’d heard so much from Moon, he seemed so sure that that box held the clue to the treasure, that I gaped at Whitwell. He went on to talk smooth and easy. He figured that I’d come along for him. He admitted that I had him, and that I could blow his head off, but what was the good? I told him, and I told him true, that I couldn’t kill him, that the job had been forced on me, and that I hated Moon and the rest of his band. That was music to Whitwell. He told me the whole story right off. He’d found the box by dragging. But it was heavy; weighed forty pounds, even if it was small. He tried to break it open, but he didn’t have a sledge hammer; and while he was trying to smash the lock against a rock he saw somebody coming up the river road. He took his glasses and made out that it was me.

“He knew, of course, why I was after him. He saddled and jumped onto his horse. But he couldn’t take that heavy box with him, so he left it behind at Cosslett’s house and then tore off across the hills. What he intended to do was to shake me off the trail, get some giant powder, return and blow up the box, and then see what was to be seen.

“Now he offered to share everything with me. I thanked him, and we were shaking hands to seal the bargain when a gun was fired through the window, and Whitwell was shot out of his chair.

“Of course Moon had just been trying me out, and when he sent me on the trail he sent a tried man after me to see what I did. He had orders to simply kill me if I tried to dodge the work. And that was what his man tried to do, because the second Whitwell spilled out of his chair, another shot was sent at me and just clipped through my hair. I dropped to the floor beside Whitwell. My ear was close to his lips. I heard him whisper: ‘Under the veranda, ‘ and then he was dead.

“In the meantime, the front door of the cabin opened, and big Si Treat came in. He figured that he’d killed us both with those two shots, from the way we’d both dropped. There was nothing for it but to get him out of the way. I shot for his legs, saw him go down, and then I scrambled through the door and rode like mad for Cunningham Lake.

“But I never got there. Treat hadn’t come alone. Moon and two others were with him, and they rode like devils to cut me off. They did it and turned me into the south mountains. For a month they hunted me, and for a month I managed to keep out of bullet range. By that time I was away south, and I saw that the country was too hot for me. I could never get back to Jerry. They’d watch around her and lay for me. There was only one thing left and that was to get as far away as I could, start to work, and support Jerry.

“I couldn’t send for her, because the minute she left that devil Moon would trail her to me. I just had to live where I was and work and send her the money to live on. And that’s what I did. Ten years of it, lad, without ever seeing her face. But I gave her enough for an education. Then when she was independent I made up my mind that I’d come back and risk the chance to get Cosslett’s gold. I came back then, told Jerry simply that I was in danger from Moon and his band, and started to plan to get to Cunningham Lake and Cosslett’s old shack. But before I got well started, you know what happened. You arrived in time to drag me out to safety. You arrived in time to give me a fighting chance at that money—and give yourself a chance at the same thing!”

“And Jerry knows—”

“Only that we’re trying to get that iron box. She knows the story behind that, and how Moon killed the old man. She knows that I can’t call down the law on the head of Moon because there are complications; but just what those complications are, she can’t say. Is it all clear to you now, Ronicky, just how we stand?”

“All clear, I guess,” said Doone. “But it looks to me as though there’s a trail of crimson, spilled all around that gold of Cosslett’s. First men were killed so that he could get his hands on it. Then other gents were bumped off because they were his agents. Then Cosslett was killed because he had the gold; and then several other gents were killed because they were trying to find out where Cosslett hid the stuff. Now here we go, you and me, and take your girl with us; and all three of us walk up and rap at the same door. Well, Dawn, it looks like black business to me!”

“You’re losing heart, Ronicky?” asked the elder man gloomily.

“I’ll stay with it as long as the next man,” declared Ronicky. “One thing I’d like to know. Won’t Moon suspect that we’re heading for Cosslett’s old shack? Won’t he be apt to drive straight for that place and wait for us there?”

“It’s a chance,” said Hugh Dawn, “but that’s a chance we got to take. Moon don’t know Whitwell’s secret. I’m the only one that knows it except you and Jerry.”

“But if he strikes around blind for the trail and doesn’t find it,” said Ronicky, “he might start straight for Cosslett’s, and then we’d simply be running into the trap. Besides, maybe he guesses that you know something.”

“He guesses that Whitwell knew something, and that Whitwell told me. What it is, he can’t guess. But if he’s at Cosslett’s—then that’s fate. And if fate’s agin’ us, well be beat any way we look at it. But we won’t be beat, son. I feel lucky! We can get to Cosslett’s inside of two hours of hard riding. And Moon ain’t apt to get there as quick as that. Then a look under the veranda—”

“But what if somebody else has looked there in the last ten years?”

“Not a chance. That veranda was built close to the ground. If Whitwell put it there, he must have put it there because he knew nobody’d look there.”

“Then, Hugh, well start.”

“Yes. Jerry has rested enough by this time!”