Читать книгу Gunman's Gold - Max Brand - Страница 4

Table of Contents

A SNEER of almost fierce contempt curled the lips of Lee Swain, as he heard Reynolds speak. It was the flamboyant generosity of a born fool. It was an absurdity even to conceive of such a folly!

"You fellows worked for it, and sweated for it. I know the Owens Desert," said Reynolds. "I wouldn't grab what you've found."

"Look, you crazy man," said Chad Powell. "Don't you see the lay of the land? There's room for a dozen gents to file their claims, maybe. I dunno. Maybe there's room for a hundred gents to file their claims. And lemme tell you, the three of us will find the cream. We're goin' to find the proper cream, and file, and then we'll pick out the gents we got that are worth a hand, and we're goin' to go and send them invitations to come out and file, and they'll be rich with us. And we'll go and raise the devil all over—we're goin' to all be rich—we can go and waller in gold and—"

"Keep cool, boy," said Halpin.

"Look, partners," said Jack Reynolds, with a proud carelessness in his voice, "I take what comes my way, when I've a right to it. I loaned you boys a few hundreds. I won't come in for a few hundreds of thousand in exchange. I'd feel like a swine!"

"Why would you?" said Halpin gravely. "You know what the facts are. We were just a pair of bums, floating around. We didn't have a bean. You knew about us. You knew that we were a pair of jailbirds—"

"Shut up, Doc!" broke in Powell.

"I say, he knew all about us," said Halpin. "I know. I heard the sheriff tell him. But he didn't care. I remember what you said, Reynolds. You said you'd had some luck that cost you mighty little, and here was part of it. That's what you said, when you handed us the coin. I don't forget things like that."

"Neither do I!" said Chad Powell.

"Neither do none of us," said Halpin. "You're with us, Jack. And I'm a happy man, and Chad's happy, too, that we can show white for white!"

He banged on his table. Lee Swain jumped a little.

"We start tomorrow morning, and you start with us," said Powell.

"I don't know," muttered Jack Reynolds. "I'll tell the truth—I'm excited. I'll go along, then, if you want me to—only, I don't like to cut in and spoil the game of a friend of mine."

"Spoil it? You'll only make what we haven't hands to hold, that's all," declared Halpin.

Powell exclaimed: "Here's some samples. Look!"

There was a rattle of rocks, a clatter of them falling to the floor.

Then rapid-fire curses flowed from the lips of Halpin.

"What you trying to do?" he demanded in a fierce whisper. "Tell the whole world?"

"Get that stuff under cover," said Jack Reynolds. "Quick! The gleam of that gold in the rock is enough to burn the brain out of a man!"

They scraped up the fragments; then, hastily, they departed.

It was a half hour later that Lee Swain sauntered into the front of the saloon. "I forgot to pay for a drink, Slim," said he.

"That's all right, Swain," said the grinning proprietor. "You don't need to worry about bills in this saloon. Have another?"

"Here you are," said Swain, putting the money on the bar. "I'll take the other one back there, if the room's free. It's a good place to sit and think."

"Yeah, it's cool and easy in there," said Slim.

He himself carried the glass of foaming beer into the back room, needlessly mopped off the top of the table, and drew back a chair for Lee Swain. Then Slim left, and Swain was instantly on his hands and knees.

He found what he wanted almost at once. With a glittering eye it called his attention, and he picked up a mere splinter of rock that had embedded in the face of it a design like a rudely sketched tree—a child's sketch of a tree, and the outline was done in little wires of gold!

Lee Swain went back to his chair, and sat there for a long time, with closed eyes. The world, he felt, had finally rewarded his cunning, his keenness, his patience in running down every favorable opportunity. Now it had poured into his hands a chance to win incalculable treasure.

Only one thing bit him to the heart—that he would have to share the treasure with at least three other men!

He felt savage about it. They were three wastrels. Two were self-confessed jailbirds. The other was known as a gunman.

The pity of it, when there was Lee Swain, a practical man, able to turn everything to the best advantage, able to make the most of every ounce of that valuable ore!

He pushed back his chair and left the saloon.

He had hardly turned into the street when the voice of the saloon keeper wailed from the interior of the building:

"Hey, Swain! You didn't drink your beer. What's the matter? Wasn't there no head on it?"

He walked on, heedless.

Of such small things are our vital mistakes made. He should have remained to drink the beer. Great and strange things were to come upon Lee Swain for that simple omission!

But, when he got to the hotel, he started at once building his kit, and the first thing that he put out for the journey were two good Colt revolvers, caliber .45, double-action, and a repeating Winchester.

He had not been a good shot when he came West, but by conscientious practice he had made himself one in the interim!

When he had finished building the pack, he sat down and considered his plans.

After that, he entered the little lobby of the hotel and talked to the clerk behind the desk.

"Over there in the Willejee Mountains," he said, "I hear there are plenty of signs of gold—silver, too."

"Lemme tell you something, Mr. Swain," said the clerk. "The minute that I get a stake ahead, I'm goin' to go to the Willejee in a bee line. You take it from me, there's billions over yonder!"

"I'm starting tomorrow," said Swain, "and I'm crossing the Owens Desert. That's the straightest line."

"It's the hottest line, too," said the clerk. "You take it from me, the Owens is hot. I wouldn't go that way."

"The Owens may be hot," said Swain, "but if there's as much in the Willejee peaks as I've been led to believe, it's worth a little heat to get there before the rush!"

He went back to his room, and lay all night sleepless looking up into the darkness. He had always told himself that the time might come when he would have to step outside of the law. Perhaps that time had come now! If it had, he would be prepared. All night long he lay with jaws gripped hard together, and told himself that he must be prepared.

When the morning came, he rose with the dawn, strapped his pack on a mule, mounted his horse, and rode out of the town on the trail to the Owens Desert.

A mile out, he pulled back behind some brush, and when the trio of Reynolds, Halpin, and Powell passed him on that trail, he fell in well behind them. He did not wish to get close enough to be seen, and he had an excellent pair of glasses for picking out his leaders along the trail.

All that day he followed them, slowly, never gaining, keeping the same discreet distance, until they had entered into the wide- spread furnace of the desert.

Still he followed them. He wondered why the sweat ran down his face, drying in streaks of salt. For his own part, he felt no heat. He had no feeling at all, for he believed that he was at the door of the Promised Land.

Late in the afternoon they encamped in a region where the gigantic boulders were scattered far and wide over the land.

Crouched behind a boulder half a mile away, Swain studied with his glasses the movements of the three men, and saw them delving steadily.

They were at the mine, then. They were opening up the fabulous vein. They were reveling, as they counted untold millions!

It was toward evening that one man took the two horses of his companions, and with his own set off into the distance, riding, no doubt, toward the patch of water that ran twenty steps, according to the prospectors, and then dived into another hole in the ground, like a squirrel.

Carefully Swain studied with his glasses the retreating horseman, and made out, finally and surely, that it was Jack Reynolds.

Swain's mind was instantly made up. It was as clear as a bell, and he acted upon the impulse as though he had known from the first what he would do.

Straightway he stalked the hole of the shaft in the ground. He came to within ten steps of it, and lay quietly in the shelter of a rock, staring.

Presently Powell, a fat-faced fellow, came up, took off his hat, and mopped his forehead.

"Hotter up here than it is down there, boy!" he exclaimed. "And it's—"

That was his last word on earth. Lee Swain had drawn his bead with care, and now he shot his man fairly and squarely between the eyes.

Powell dropped, and lay still, without a struggle.

"Hey, what was that?" called the voice of Halpin, muffled and distant.

Then he was heard scrambling out of the hole on the ground. He, also, appeared, and stood for an instant, frozen.

That instant was enough for Lee Swain. He put a second bullet squarely between the eyes of his victim, and saw the body of Halpin fall on that of his friend.

Everything worked perfectly. It was the plan that had flashed upon his mind.

If he got the two weaker members, he could wait for the famous Reynolds and shoot that unsuspecting man when he returned with the water.

He would stow the two bodies in the shaft, in the first place.

But he would treat himself to a sight of the wire gold, before all else.

With that in mind, he entered the shaft, and was amazed to discover that it was a dead hole! There was not a sign of gold—there was only a certain surface of perfectly uninteresting rock exposed before him!