by Alan Lemay
"Look here," he said, "look here ...I've got to tell you something. I've got bad news."
"Steve, what's the matter?"
"The mine," he said, "the mine ...it isn't as good as you've been thinking, June, you and your grandfather."
"Are the assays finished?" she asked, almost inaudibly.
He rushed over that, anxious to be finished with what he was trying to do. "You remember," he said, "we staked three claims on the Lost Dutchman ledge, one in your name, one in mine, and one in the name of Dennis O'Riley?"
"But the understanding was," she said, "that we were to pool all three claims."
"I know," he said, "but I'm pulling out of that agreement."
"You mean you're selling out separately?"
"Yes." He made his face expressionless and hard lest it give him away, for at this point he had to leave the narrow path of facts as he saw them, and launch into the fiction for which he had sold his packs. "Now, as to the claim that is in your name.. .Harry Weir represents Catlin Mines, Incorporated. He's going to offer you six thousand for your rights."
"Six ...but 1 thought...?" June pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and stared at him wide eyed.
Never in his life had six thousand seemed so small, so foolishly inadequate. "1'm sorry, June," he said. "God knows, I'm sorry, but listen, June. Do you believe that 1 shoot square, and that 1 know these hills?"
"Of course, Steve," she said in a small voice.
"Then sell," he told her. "The six thousand seems like nothing, I know, but it's every cent your claim is worth, and more. And if you can bring yourself to think that it's anything at all" - unconsciously he slipped into her own remembered words - "anything at all, enough so that you can carry on for a little way.. .then maybe, after all, it wasn't a wasted trip."
They sat in silence while a great sense of vacant weariness overwhelmed Hunter.
"One thing more," said Steve. "Forget this million-marrya-million stuff. It's all wrong. I'm sorry we didn't find a mine that would put us all on the same money level as Wally Parker. 1 don't know how many millions he has, and 1 don't care, but get this... if he owns all there is, he still isn't good enough to saddle your horse. If you want him, take him, and never let the thought come into your head again that where you're concerned money counts."
Once more they sat silently. Steve, his hands on the wheel, was looking straight ahead. "I've got to take some fishermen into the upper basin after steelhead," he said. "I've got to go now, 1 guess, and, if I don't see you any more, God knows I'm sorry this thing came out like this. That's all I can say."
Somehow he could not bring himself to look at her. After a moment she left him, without a word, and still he did not look after her, but only sat there, staring at the dusk. Presently he smashed into gear and drove down to the assayer's office where Harry Weir was working in a crowded little room full of bits of rock, retorts, and acidulated smells.
"I've been looking for you all day," said Harry Weir.
"Listen," said Hunter, "this morning you promised to help me. Now I'm ready to tell you what you have to do."
"But first...," began Weir.
"Listen to me," Steve snarled at him. "1 have here a certified check for six thousand dollars. You're to take that check. You're going to buy the girl's claim from her in the name of an imaginary company... Catlin Mines, Incorporated. Get that? I've already talked to her. You...."
"If you'll let me get in a word edgewise...," begged Harry Weir.
"Listen! Above all, she's not to know I'm back of this. I'm out. I've...."
"I'm trying to tell you...," said Weir, raising his voice.
"Will you listen?" shouted Steve.
"No," yelled Harry Weir, "you big jug-head! These samples of yours are rotten with sylvanium!"
"And what the devil is sylvanium?" asked Steve.
"Gold, silver, telluride, you big ignoramus. Those little gray marks are twenty-four per cent gold and thirteen per cent silver!"
The breath went out of Steve Hunter as if by the kick of a mule. Harry Weir, enjoying himself hugely, rolled a cigarette in acid-stained fingers and sat back to watch his news soak in. If this was true, Steve Hunter was thinking, then June O'Riley and her old wowser of an ancestor had found Lost Dutchman's gold in truth.
"Some call that type of deposit graphic tellurium," Weir was saying. "Ever hear of it?"
Hunter had no trust in his luck. It was incredible that the senile old wowser had by a weird freak of chance - or was it? What if it was no freak of chance at all? Certain of Weir's words had a strangely familiar ring. Could it be that old O'Riley...?
"You mean.. .you mean to say...?"
"1 mean to say you've stumbled into something. Of course, if it's only a small intrusion...."
"There's a big long ledge of it," said Hunter faindy. "If there isn't ten thousand tons..."
"You're overestimating," said Weir.
"I was there, wasn't 1? 1 know what...," he broke off abruptly. "Good Lord," he whispered under his breath.
For the first time he saw exactly what he had done. June O'Riley was in possession of invaluable holdings, and he, through the name of an imaginary company, had tried to buy her rights for six thousand dollars. He stood silently while the blood drained from his head and a slow, cold sweat appeared upon his forehead.
"Don't take it so hard," said Weir. "You should have seen how coolly O'Riley took it, just as if he'd been sure all along."
"He was here?"
"He left just before you came in."
So, then, they knew all about it already - his trivial offer, and the true value of the Lost Dutchman's deceptive gold. He knew what June must be thinking of him now, and he wondered if Wally Parker was at her side.
"If it's an extensive ledge," he heard Weir saying, "I guess you've hooked into your millions, all right."
"Oh, he has, has he?" said a voice from the door. In the whirl of the moment they had not noticed Wally Parker's long blue car slide to a stop in front of the assayer's office. "So you've made your millions," Parker repeated. "Now, isn't that odd! That explains the rumor that you sold your outfit for six thousand dollars. Hunter, and it explains," he added deliber ately, "why you offered Miss O'Riley six thousand dollars for her rights."
O'Riley pushed in past Parker's elbow. His voice was shrill and enraged. "Trying to trim me!" he shouted. "Trying to trim me! Why, you damned...!" Words failed him, and he shook furious fists under Hunter's nose. "Graphite Delirium!" he got out at last. "Graphite delirium! And you made out you didn't know what it was!"
"So," said Steve, "that was what you meant. Graphic tellurium! Well, I'll be...."
It was worse than he thought. The discovery was not even the accidental coincidence he had supposed. Old Dennis O'Riley, however he had garbled his scientific terms, had yet known what he was about, and Steve Hunter had been the only one of them all who had been dead wrong, a fool who had made himself look like a crook.
"1 suppose," raged Dennis O'Riley, "that there's the check for six thousand that you was going to buy me and June out with?" Hunter had forgotten that the check was in his hand. He stared at it stupidly. "Oh, you big horse thief!" yelped O'Riley. "Oh, you big...!"
Steve Hunter rolled the check into a little ball and shoved it down into his pants pocket. "Out of the picture," he mumbled to himself. "Out of the picture, once and for all." Dazedly, without a word to the others, he turned to the door. Wally Parker still stood in the doorway, however, and made no move to get out of his way.
"Stand aside," said Steve, his voice very thick and low.
Parker did not obey. "I've had my eye on you," said Parker slowly. "The first time I saw you I recognized you for what you are...an ignorant, shifty, hill-billy crook."
Hunter stared at him. Perhaps he was still dazed by the overpowering significance of the assayer's report; perhaps he had not comprehended that Wally Parker was there at all.
"And yellow, too," said Parker. "1'd knock a man down who
said that to me."
Steve Hunter said: "For once you're right." Parker suddenly started back, throwing his arms in front of his face, but all Steve's unexpressed bitterness against the turn of the luck was in the right hand that he brought crashing through. Parker's feet flew from under him, so that he seemed to pivot in mid-air with the shock of the blow, and he lay where he fell, in the doorway, a stertorously breathing heap. Hunter hardly glanced at the fallen man as he stepped over him and out into the night.
Ordinarily it was not in this man to evade his fate, but it may be that he would have avoided June O'Riley then if he had seen her in time. He did not. A breathless figure came racing along the board walk to collide with Hunter with such force that she would have fallen if he had not caught her in his arms. For a moment or two June O'Riley clung to him, out of wind.
"Steve, what's happened?" June gasped.
Hunter cast a despairing glance at the door of the assayer's office. Too many explanations of what had happened were already waiting for her there - versions he was not going to be able to dispose of, he was sure. But Weir and old Dennis O'Riley had carried Wally Parker inside, and for the brief present June and Steve were alone on the Two Pine board walk.
"It isn't so," he said inanely. "June, it isn't so."
June O'Riley disengaged herself. "Steve, Granddad said he talked to the assayer, and that you were wrong... that Lost Dutchman's gold is real!"
"June, that's true."
"Then ...you were wrong all the time!"
"Yes, 1 was wrong."
"What makes me mad," said June, "is that Harry Weir tried to buy us out for next to nothing, when he must have known...."
"No," said Steve; "that wasn't Harry Weir. I just used his name."
"Steve! Are you trying to tell me that you were buying my share yourself? It's true you sold the Three Bar so that you could offer me six thousand for my claim?"
"Yes," he said.
"And what," she asked queerly, "have you got to say for yourself?"
He hesitated, then looked her in the eyes. "Nothing," he said. "Not one word!"
There was a silence in the Two Pine street.
"I think," she said slowly, "that you are the most generous man in the world."
Steve Hunter was struck dumb. For a long moment they stood looking at each other through the starlit dark. "You didn't think, then...?" he got out at last, "you didn't believe?..."
Suddenly he saw that she was laughing at him, and he paused. And now it occurred to him for the first time that he might have misread the light he had been seeing in her eyes, that his greatest error might have been in supposing that she would ever disbelieve in him at all. Inspiration swept him, overriding his insistent distrust of his luck.
"You come here a minute!" he said, and caught her in his arms.
Dennis O'Riley came stamping out of the assayer's office. "Graphite delirium!" he was yelling. "Tried to trim me! Tried to trim me!" He checked abruptly, and, as he spoke again, his voice was as if the unbelievable had seized him by the beard. "Well, I'll be...! Well, of all the...!"
"Oh, shut up," said June O'Riley.
You've heard how Emmett Corbin stood off twenty men at Mokelumne, and walked alone into the fire of Saul Bassett and his brothers at Steamboat Springs. You know how he made a name for himself as a peace officer all up and down the gold frontier, until at last he became a real power in his state.
But I've seen Emmett Corbin when he didn't have enough spirit left to prod a skunk out of a brush heap. Yes, 1 saw him in the lowest moment of his life.
Emmett Corbin was eighteen years old, and had got smashed up by a killer horse, so that he had to lay off riding. Tough luck stuck with him like a brother - he like to starved. And then he drifted into Spanish Crossing.
Here he stuck for a while, seemingly because of a girl named Virginia Mead, and here his hard luck took a final whack at him.
Emmett Corbin was standing in the Silver King Saloon, and near him at the bar stood Bill Andreen. This Andreen was a pretty tough hombre who herded with the gambler crowd. He never fooled with gun-quick men, but he sure liked to jump us common people, for he was fast, and had killed four men.
Bill Andreen was fairly well into his liquor and talking freely, and pretty soon 1 heard him mention the name of Virginia Mead. 1 don't know what he said, or what Emmett Corbin took offense at. But anyway, young Corbin spoke up now.
"I'd sooner," he said, "you wouldn't use that name."
Andreen couldn't believe it. "You spoke to me?" he asked.
"1 did," Corbin said. "I told you to stop using...."
"Dear God," said Andreen. Another man might have looked at Corbin and seen that he was just a half-starved kid. But not Andreen. "Why, you little squirt...!"
I never heard any man take such a dressing-down as Corbin got before Andreen was through. Corbin turned green and sick, and his hand moved toward his gun, but stopped, and kind of hovered, uncertain, over the butt. We ducked out of line, expecting to see gunsmoke drifting, and Corbin lying on the floor. Then Corbin's hand came away, slow, without the gun.
Andreen laughed, very ugly. He said: "I'll give you ten seconds to get out of my sight!"
Corbin went. He moved slow and unsteady, but he went.
We had a gun-toting law in Spanish Crossing, not enforced very much, but often used to head off trouble already begun, and Dogtown Smith, though a partner in the Silver King, was deputy marshal. So now Dogtown made Andreen check in his gun, and Dogtown put it on the back bar, with some others.
After Andreen was gone, Dogtown Smith sent for Corbin.
"How come you not to fight, Emmett?" Dogtown asked.
"Empty gun," Corbin said. "Swapped my lead for grub."
Dogtown Smith looked around the bar, and only one or two of us was there, and not a one but what hated Andreen. "Emmett," said Dogtown, "there's a yellow streak in Bill Andreen. I've got a scheme for bringing that yellow streak out. If it works, Andreen is through in Spanish Crossing. If it don't ... no harm done. Either way, you get ten dollars."
"1'm listening," Corbin said.
"I have Andreen's gun. I'll unload it. Then, when he comes in, I'll send for you. As you come in, I'll pass Bill his gun. You tackle him. His gun will seemingly miss fire. You step in with your own empty, and bend the barrel over his head."
"It won't work," Corbin said.
"Why won't it? In the confusion I'll put the load back in Andreen's gun. When he comes to, you'll be the boy that bucked his draw and downed him.. .with an empty gun."
Corbin didn't like it much. But he sure needed the ten.
"I'll send for you," Dogtown said, and told him where to wait.
Bill Andreen came back to the Silver King about three in the afternoon. "You've hit into it now!" Dogtown told him. "This morning that boy didn't have any lead in his gun. But now he's borrowed some. And he's on the hunt."
"Let him hunt!"
Dogtown Smith looked at Andreen with pity. "It's your funeral," he said, kind of queer.
Bill Andreen stood there at the bar, drinking by himself. Then we saw Emmett Corbin moving across the walk toward the door of the Silver King.
Dogtown Smith made a quick grab at the back bar, and slid iron across to Andreen. "Quick... holster your gun," he said. "By God, watch yourself! Or he'll kill you where you stand."
Andreen obeyed, and shoved the gun into the leather.
Emmett Corbin had slouched up to the door, looking terrible hopeless. But now, as he saw the gun go into Bill Andreen's hands, it seemed like something woke up. His face turned hard. He walked to within six feet.
"Draw, Andreen!"
Andreen had a poker face, and a good one, but, looking at Corbin again, I saw what had delayed Andreen's draw. I've seen some good, sure-handed gunfighters go into action, but 1 swear 1 never saw anybody look so confident, so deadly sure as Corbin looked now.
A second passed, two seconds - then five. Andreen said, kind of peculiar: "You gone crazy, kid?"
"Draw," Corbin ordered, and there was plenty quiet.
Then Andreen said: "1 don't want to kill you, kid."
Emmett Corbin stared. Then suddenly he laughed. "Ten seconds to get out of my sight.. .ten minutes to get out of town!"
I believe Bill Andreen took more than ten seconds. But he swung around slow, and went out the side door, walking very stiff. At the door he kind of lurched, as if he was dazed drunk, which he was not. And 1 never saw him again.
We turned to Dogtown, and 1 was fixing to praise him up on how good his little scheme had worked - better than anybody could have expected, better than it could possibly have worked. But now 1 saw that Dogtown Smith's face was a pale green color, and all sprinkled over with beads of sweat. "Good God!" he said.
"What's the matter?"
"I near got Corbin killed," he said, so shaky his teeth chattered. "I...1 give Andreen the wrong gun!"
My hair kind of raised, and I felt a cool breeze on my back.
But now - Emmett Corbin grinned! "Yes, 1 knew that."
"You knew...?"
"I saw you pass him the wrong gun...a loaded gun. But I thought 1'd go through with the play."
That was the turning point for Emmett Corbin. The week after, as a deputy marshal, he walked into the Steamboat Springs fight, alone against four guns, and made the beginning of his name.
Table of Contents
Foreword
The Wolf Hunter
Just a Horse of Mine
Hell on Wheels
Kindly Kick Out Bearer
The Biscuit Shooter
Guns Flame in Peaceful Valley
