by Zane Grey
“All of which is true, Borden. This place will soon be played out. I got a — rather unsafe start for me. I’m sorry, because there’s plenty of placer gold yet, and no doubt more quartz veins to be opened.”
“Thanks,” returned Borden, gruffly.
At this juncture Kalispel heard men talking in front. They were walking up and down, directly across the only avenue by which he could escape. The cabin stood against the slope, which could not be scaled.
“Borden, you’re skating on thinner ice here than any man in the camp. Once more I tell you. Don’t trust this Masters. Lay off Nugget. Keep out of Emerson’s way.”
It appeared to be Borden’s turn to be silent. In the ensuing stillness Kalispel fought something almost too strong to be resisted, and that was a fierce impulse to confront Borden and Leavitt. He discarded this for the old reason that he could not prove sufficient motive to insure his safety from the large contingent of miners whom Leavitt influenced.
“Suppose I won’t take your advice?” queried Borden, presently.
“Then we split. Amicably, of course. You can pay me what you think square for my interest in your place.”
“All right, I’ll think it over,” concluded Borden, and stamped out. Kalispel heard his heavy boots crunching the gravel. Then came the scrape of Leavitt’s chair and the measured tread of a man locked in thought. This continued until the cabin was entered again, as it turned out to be, by the man who had gone out to see the guard.
“Mac, shut the door,” ordered Leavitt, suddenly.
“Boss, what’s up?” inquired the other, complying with the order. “Borden’s went off cussin’ mad. An’ you look kinda pale behind the gills.”
“March has been gabbing.”
“You don’t — say!” gasped Mac, in a sibilant whisper.
“I always distrusted Charlie where a combination of woman and liquor could get to him.”
“Wal, he has been runnin’ thet girl Sadie pretty strong.”
“He has talked to her and she told Borden. We can’t risk any more. Mac.”
“Hell no!”
“Where will he be now?”
“With the girl, shore.”
“All right. You and Struthers slip round to Borden’s by the back way. Hide by that side door. It’s dark there, you know. When he comes out, let him have it. And rob him!... Savvy? — Everybody knows he’s my right-hand man.”
“I savvy, boss. Not a bad idee,” replied the other, in a hoarse whisper, and he left the room and cabin with no uncertain steps.
Kalispel leaned sweating and shaking against the cabin wall. He had the thing in a nutshell. How raw and simple, after all! But what to do? He battled again with a temptation to hold up Leavitt and take him down to Masters. This idea was not tenable. Suddenly it occurred to him to intercept Leavitt’s men before they accomplished their work, and better, to get to Charlie March first. If he could convince March of this plot against him, he might make an ally out of that worthy. Kalispel decided on the attempt.
When it came to getting away unseen, however, Kalispel encountered difficulty. The guard hung close to the cabin. And another, who came to relieve him, offered no opportunity until Leavitt called the man in. Whereupon Kalispel was divided between his new project and a desire to hear more from Leavitt. Quickly he decided on the former and glided away in the darkness.
Once on the noisy, glaring street he strode rapidly downtown. The roar of Thunder City was in full blast — that sinister sound of revel which attended the pleasure and business of gold-miners in a bonanza camp.
A crowd of unusually large proportion stood in front of Borden’s resort. Kalispel had not before beheld so many persons grouped in that attitude of singular suggestiveness, but he had seen many a knot of somber men, heads together, talking low, with that unmistakable air of fatality about them.
“What’s happened?” queried Kalispel of the nearest men.
“Some fellar shot, comin’ out of the bird-cage,” was the reply.
“Killed?”
“Yes, an’ robbed, too.”
“Who was he?”
“Nobody seems to know.”
Kalispel mingled with the crowd and was not long in discerning the quality of its temper.
“Men, thet’s carryin’ this hold-up game too far,” said one.
“First shootin’, an’ ought to be the last,” replied another.
“Hell, if this keeps on it won’t be safe to come out after dark.”
“Thunder City ain’t nothin’. I was in both the Bannock an’ Alder Creek gold rushes. Plummer’s gang murdered a hundred miners before he was found out.”
“Wal, what we want hyar is a vigilante.”
Masters came out of the hall with several men.
“Sheriff, did you identify him?” asked a bystander.
“Yes. It’s Charlie March, foreman at Leavitt’s mine.”
“March! — That’ll shore make Leavitt hoppin’ mad.”
“Reckon he didn’t know thet March was hell on likker an’ wimmen.”
Masters, moving into the less-crowded street, encountered Kalispel.
“Howdy thar, cowboy,” he called in a voice markedly louder than his usual drawl. “Was you heah-aboots when this shootin’ came off?”
“Just got here, Sheriff,” replied Kalispel, not amiably. He did not relish attention being focused upon him at that moment.
“I heahed you was always around where there was dancin’ an’ fightin’ — an’ hold-ups.”
Kalispel was dumbfounded at this caustic, significant speech, and unable to understand it, or accept it in any way as friendly.
“Wal, Sheriff,” he retorted, bitingly, “when I am around such — usually the right man gets shot.”
Chapter Eleven
The crisp cool weather gave place to a warm threatening spell that according to Jake would end sooner or later in the equinoctial storms. The wholesale killing of elk for meat storage was not advisable until frost came again.
Discouraged and defeated gold-seekers took advantage of the mild days to leave the valley. The winding trail was now seldom vacant of pack-animals and plodding men, leaving without regret the El Dorado that had not glittered for them.
Kalispel noted, however, that none of the parasites left the valley. They would stay on, intensifying their leechlike endeavors upon the diminishing throng of miners. The next phase of Thunder City, therefore, could be expected to increase the activity of those who preyed upon the diggers.
Blair made it known to Kalispel that he had tried in vain to sell his claims back to Leavitt, for merely enough to hire some freighter to pack him and Sydney out of the valley.
Kalispel made no comment.
“How are you fixed for supplies?” asked Blair, as if forced.
“Can let you have flour, bacon, coffee, salt, some tinned fruit, but no sugar,” replied Kalispel.
“Help me pack it down to my cabin. There’ll be hell,” went on Blair, desperately. “I swore I’d starve before I’d eat any food that came through Leavitt. And Sydney swears she’ll leave me if I get any from you.”
“Ah-huh. Where would she go?”
“Once she said she’d go to Leavitt. And again that she’d become a dance-hall girl.”
“Bluff. Let’s call her.”
Wherewith they packed the supplies down to Blair’s cabin. Sydney stood silent upon the porch, watching them carry in the goods. She had grown thinner; her bloom had faded; and her large eyes were all the more wonderful for their tragic pride and scorn. Kalispel felt his heart soften. If she had only really loved him, only a little, he could have forgiven her incomprehensible affair with Leavitt.
“Sydney, do you want to leave here?” he asked, abruptly, as always carried away by her presence.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get some money somewhere.”
“Somewhere!” she echoed, scornfully.
“By gamblin’ or borrowin’ from Nugget or even holdin’ up a mi
ner,” replied Kalispel, with passion, driven to strengthen her miserable estimate of him.
She gazed at him in horror and wonder. Her woman’s intuition detected some insincerity about him, something baffling that repelled as well as fascinated her.
“My Gawd! Lady, I wouldn’t have as much to beg forgiveness for as you have — not for a million,” he mocked.
“Oh, is that so?”
“I reckon. But once more, Sydney, an’ the last time, so help me Gawd! For your father’s sake, for yours — for your honor an’ more than life — give up this man Leavitt.”
“Why?” she asked, as if leading him on.
“He’s not what he seems.”
“Are you?”
“No. But that’s no matter. I’ve lost power to influence you.”
“All men are liars.”
“Ump-umm. Not me, Sydney Blair. I might lie to tease you or keep you from bein’ hurt, but I wouldn’t tell you a black lie to save my life.”
“You lied about your little Nugget,” she returned, in a hot passion that would have betrayed jealousy but for his hopelessness. “You rescued her for your friend — from the vile dance-hall. How noble! How chivalrous!... Yes. But to share her with—”
“Shut up!... If you don’t close your catty lips I might — or you might say somethin’ no man could ever forgive.”
“You prate that word forgive,” she went on, furiously.
“Why, you conceited, stupid cowboy—”
“Never mind more of that. One word about Leavitt. Yes or No.”
“No,” she cried, violently. “And if you come here tonight a little before eight — and conceal yourself there — you shall see him kiss me.”
“Sydney! — Don’t — don’t say you ever let him—”
“I have not yet. But tonight I shall. That will end this farce. Brutal as you are, you could hardly murder him in my arms.”
“I’ll come — I’ll be here,” whispered Kalispel, spent and shaking. “An’ if you let that villain have you — Gawd help him — an’ Gawd help me!”
Kalispel, long before the appointed hour, hid in the dark shadow of the large rock upon which one end of the Blair porch rested. He leaned there, sick, desperate, his faith in Sydney fighting against utter hopelessness. It seemed he had never believed in an irrevocable step on her part. But to go so far as she had threatened — that would be staggering. Leavitt was a thief, a bandit, one of the frontier’s greatest criminals. Nevertheless, it was manifest that he was fascinating to women. Kalispel had seen a little of the magnetic influence exercised by complex men of dual nature, combining virile and physical force with suave and attractive personality. He did not imagine that he belonged to such a class. Kalispel had been in love often, once or twice so seriously that he knew he would never recover.
He had not only recovered, but lived to fall more deeply than ever — in this case, with Sydney Blair. The affair had turned out unhappily, and what hurt Kalispel so terribly was not Sydney’s failure in affection — for, after all, she really had cared — but her shallowness, her readiness to believe the worst said about him, or the slightest circumstantial evidence against him. Were she the loveliest and sweetest girl in the world — and she might be no longer conceded this point — he would not want her if she had no lasting ineradicable faith.
Blair left the cabin early, grumbling as usual, and disappeared in the blackness. Clouds obscured the stars and the air was warm. Nighthawks swept overhead, uttering melancholy cries; a wolf mourned from the heights; and the stream murmured on as if weary of its endless task. Miners strolled by on the trail, going down to the town, to drink and dance and gamble. Kalispel wondered over the fact that he had no desire to go with them. He felt no more need of that kind of expression. He did not feel old, yet he had changed and seemed to be weighed upon by long experience. Something waited for him, and it was not like anything he remembered. But it did resemble that mysterious, looming mountain, waiting there for the great hour of its existence, and surely its dissolution. Kalispel had no illusions about the brevity of life. He had seen too many accidents. Death might be lurking downtown for him at this very moment. For himself, all he asked was what his kind called an even break. For those he chose to serve, however, he demanded more — time and opportunity and luck. This Thunder City was undermined by deceit and intrigue and evil that struck straight at the hearts of the few people Kalispel loved.
His sensitive ear caught the beat of rapid footsteps coming along the trail. They sounded like the steps of a formidable man who would be hard to turn aside. And they came direct for Blair’s cabin.
Kalispel leaned out to see a tall dark form leap up on the porch. Leavitt! Kalispel sank back into the shadow. It was coming. The hot passion that leaped through his veins did not wholly drown the sick revolt of his soul.
“Hello, Sydney,” called Leavitt, in a low, eager voice as he knocked at the open door.
“Rand!... There you are. Late again!” replied Sydney. “It is after eight.”
Kalispel gaped in amaze. Sydney’s reply did not seem natural. But, he corrected, what did he know about the many sides of a woman?
“I’m — sorry,” replied Leavitt, breathing fast. “I took time while my man was away at supper — to hide some more gold. You see, I’m growing stingy. I want a lot of gold for you to help me spend.”
Sydney laughed — a curious little laugh without mirth. “Don’t come in. It’s cool outside.... Now, Rand!... I get so tired resisting your advances.”
“Stop then! You’ll never have any peace until you do,” he responded, with the ardor of a lover.
Kalispel saw the upper part of their forms silhouetted black against the frame of yellow light of the doorway. Leavitt had his arm around her waist. They walked out of the flare, and presently appeared at the porch rail, side by side, their faces indistinct in the gloom.
“You are always talking about gold,” she said. “If I were ever to — to care for you, I’d be jealous of your gold.”
“Ever! — Don’t you care now?”
“I’m afraid not — in the way you want. — Speaking of gold, father said you offered to lend him some today.”
“Yes. He refused it. Your dad has changed toward me in some unaccountable Way. I’ll have to buy back his claims to help him. And I’ll be glad to do it. I always regretted these claims failed to pan out. But they looked as good as any.”
“Thank you, Rand,” she murmured, gratefully. “Where do you hide your gold? Aren’t you afraid it will be stolen?”
“I hide mine under the floor of my cabin. A section of log slips out — it fits so perfectly that it could never be detected. Underneath there’s a space hollowed out in the base log.... There! I have trusted you. The only person I would trust.”
“Take care I don’t steal your riches, sir,” she retorted. Then in a grave voice: “Father thought he had a safe hiding-place for his money. But he would soon have gambled it away.”
“Emerson stole that money,” declared Leavitt.
“So you have said before. I should imagine it would be embarrassing to tell him.... Why do you think he took it?”
“Well, he has been seen with considerable gold lately. It is known he seldom pans for gold. And it is hinted that he is one of the bandits who are taking toll of us miners, more and more.”
“Better safeguard your own, then.”
“I seldom leave my cabin, except to come here. Then I have guards who patrol my claim.... I’m more afraid of a landslide than robbery.”
“Rand, are you not afraid of Kalispel Emerson?” she asked.
“No. But why should I risk gun-play with a notorious cowboy?” he replied, somewhat coldly. “I’m surprised that you ask.”
“Father said you and Borden were deathly afraid of the fellow.”
“That is not true, of me, at least. He has threatened me, I know. But there’s nothing for me to gain by fighting Emerson, and everything to lose.... You!”
“Bu
t how about your Western code of honor? As I understand it, when a man has an enemy and accuses him of something — and dares him to come out — if he fails to do so he is branded a coward.”
“That is true. Still, it can scarcely apply in my case. I am a man of affairs, with a future. Kalispel Emerson is a wild cowpuncher, a drinking gamester, a bully, proud of his gun record — and if he doesn’t get shot he’ll hang.”
“I understand. But still there it is — the man-to-man thing.”
“Sydney, you could not possibly want me to meet this gunman in a street fight?” demanded Leavitt, in great or pretended concern.
“No, I hate fighting. This blood-letting sickens me. A little more will send me back home.... Still, I’m a woman — and curious.”
“Indeed you are a woman — and glorious,” he replied, passionately, throwing his arms around her. “Sydney, I’m hungry for you.”
“Then you are a cannibal, too,” she rejoined, laughing. “Darling, this is the first time you have let me embrace you!” he exclaimed, in a transport.
“Why, so it is! You should not have told me.” And she drew away from him. Suddenly he grew bolder and snatched her to his breast.
“Sydney, don’t you love me?” he implored.
“I don’t think — I do,” she returned, faintly. “I’m afraid you fascinate me. But you should wait.... Oh!”
He had kissed her. Kalispel’s suffocating ears registered the soft contact of the man’s lips. Then for an instant Sydney’s pale face gleamed against his dark shoulder, and she drew away.
Kalispel staggered like a drunken man from his covert, and made his way round the corner of the cabin to the other side, where he headed for the open bench.
“Take your medicine, Kal,” he whispered, huskily. “It’s over — an’ not so tough!... Gawd! these women! They’re like snakes.... Yet in her heart she despises him.”
Suddenly into the hot hate and agony of the moment there flashed an idea that effected almost instant transformation of his feelings. He remembered Sydney’s strange luring from Leavitt the secret of the hiding-place of his gold. What had been Sydney’s motive — knowing Kalispel heard there in the shadow? Was it just woman’s deviltry? Whatever it was, Kalispel responded to it without doubt or hesitation.
