The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2

by Robert E. Howard

  “What do you want?”

  “We aim to try your prisoner!” shouted the leader. “We come in the due process of law. We’ve app’inted a jedge and panelled a jury, and we demands that you hand over the prisoner to be tried in miners’ court, accordin’ to legal precedent!”

  “How do I know you’re representative of the camp?” parried McNab.

  “ ’Cause we’re the only body of men in camp right now!” yelled someone, and this was greeted by a roar of laughter.

  “We come empowered with the proper authority –” began the leader, and broke off suddenly: “Grab him, boys!”

  There was the sound of a brief scuffle, McNab swore vigorously, and the leader’s voice rose triumphantly: “Let go of him, boys, but don’t give him his gun. McNab, you ought to know better’n to try to oppose legal procedure, and you a upholder of law and order!”

  Again a roar of sardonic laughter, and McNab growled: “All right; go ahead with the trial. But you do it over my protests. I don’t believe this is a representative assembly.”

  “Yes, it is,” averred the leader, and then his voice thickened with blood-lust. “Now, Daley, gimme that key and bring out the prisoner.”

  The mob surged toward the door of the jail, and at that instant Corcoran stepped around the corner of the cabin and leaped up on the low porch it boasted. There was a hissing intake of breath. Men halted suddenly, digging their heels against the pressure behind them. The surging line wavered backward, leaving two figures isolated – McNab, scowling, disarmed, and a hairy giant whose huge belly was girt with a broad belt bristling with gun butts and knife hilts. He held a noose in one hand, and his bearded lips gaped as he glared at the unexpected apparition.

  For a breathless instant Corcoran did not speak. He did not look at McBride’s pallid countenance peering through the barred door behind him. He stood facing the mob, his head slightly bent, a somber, immobile figure, sinister with menace.

  “Well,” he said finally, softly, “what’s holdin’ up the baile?”

  The leader blustered feebly.

  “We come here to try a murderer!”

  Corcoran lifted his head and the man involuntarily recoiled at the lethal glitter of his eyes.

  “Who’s your judge?” the Texan inquired softly.

  “We appointed Jake Bissett, there,” spoke up a man, pointing at the uncomfortable giant on the porch.

  “So you’re goin’ to hold a miners’ court,” murmured Corcoran. “With a judge and jury picked out of the dives and honky-tonks – scum and dirt of the gutter!” And suddenly uncontrollable fury flamed in his eyes. Bissett, sensing his intention, bellowed in ox-like alarm and grabbed frantically at a gun. His fingers had scarcely touched the checkered butt when smoke and flame roared from Corcoran’s right hip. Bissett pitched backward off the porch as if he had been struck by a hammer; the rope tangled about his limbs as he fell, and he lay in the dust that slowly turned crimson, his hairy fingers twitching spasmodically.

  Corcoran faced the mob, livid under his sun-burnt bronze. His eyes were coals of blue hell’s-fire. There was a gun in each hand, and from the right-hand muzzle a wisp of blue smoke drifted lazily upward.

  “I declare this court adjourned!” he roared. “The judge is done impeached, and the jury’s discharged! I’ll give you thirty seconds to clear the court-room!”

  He was one man against nearly a hundred, but he was a grey wolf facing a pack of yapping jackals. Each man knew that if the mob surged on him, they would drag him down at last; but each man knew what an awful toll would first be paid, and each man feared that he himself would be one of those to pay that toll.

  They hesitated, stumbled back – gave way suddenly and scattered in all directions. Some backed away, some shamelessly turned their backs and fled. With a snarl Corcoran thrust his guns back in their scabbards and turned toward the door where McBride stood, grasping the bars.

  “I thought I was a goner that time, Corcoran,” he gasped. The Texan pulled the door open, and pushed McBride’s pistol into his hand.

  “There’s a horse tied behind the jail,” said Corcoran. “Get on it and dust out of here. I’ll take the full responsibility. If you stay here they’ll burn down the jail, or shoot you through the window. You can make it out of town while they’re scattered. I’ll explain to Middleton and Hopkins. In a month or so, if you want to, come back and stand trial, as a matter of formality. Things will be cleaned up around here by then.”

  McBride needed no urging. The grisly fate he had just escaped had shaken his nerve. Shaking Corcoran’s hand passionately, he ran stumblingly through the trees to the horse Corcoran had left there. A few moments later he was fogging it out of the Gulch.

  McNab came up, scowling and grumbling.

  “You had no authority to let him go. I tried to stop the mob –”

  Corcoran wheeled and faced him, making no attempt to conceal his hatred.

  “You did like hell! Don’t pull that stuff with me, McNab. You was in on this, and so was Middleton. You put up a bluff of talk, so afterwards you could tell Colonel Hopkins and the others that you tried to stop the lynchin’ and was overpowered. I saw the scrap you put up when they grabbed you! Hell! You’re a rotten actor.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that!” roared McNab.

  The old tigerish light flickered in the blue eyes. Corcoran did not exactly move, yet he seemed to sink into a half crouch, as a cougar does for the killing spring.

  “If you don’t like my style, McNab,” he said softly, thickly, “you’re more’n welcome to open the baile whenever you get ready!”

  For an instant they faced each other, McNab black-browed and scowling, Corcoran’s thin lips almost smiling, but blue fire lighting his eyes. Then with a grunt McNab turned and slouched away, his shaggy head swaying from side to side like that of a surly bull.

  VII

  A VULTURE’S WINGS ARE CLIPPED

  Middleton pulled up his horse suddenly as Corcoran reined out of the bushes. One glance showed the sheriff that Corcoran’s mood was far from placid. They were amidst a grove of alders, perhaps a mile from the Gulch.

  “Why, hello, Corcoran,” began Middleton, concealing his surprise. “I caught up with Brockman. It was just a wild rumor. He didn’t have any gold. That –”

  “Drop it!” snapped Corcoran. “I know why you sent me off on that wild-goose chase – same reason you pulled out of town. To give Brent’s friends a chance to get even with McBride. If I hadn’t turned around and dusted back into Wahpeton, McBride would be kickin’ his life out at the end of a rope, right now.”

  “You came back –?”

  “Yeah! And now Jake Bissett’s in hell instead of Jack McBride, and McBride’s dusted out – on a horse I gave him. I told you I gave him my word he wouldn’t be lynched.”

  “You killed Bissett?”

  “Deader’n hell!”

  “He was a Vulture,” muttered Middleton, but he did not seem displeased. “Brent, Bissett – the more Vultures die, the easier it will be for us to get away when we go. That’s one reason I had Brent killed. But you should have let them hang McBride. Of course I framed this affair; I had to do something to satisfy Brent’s friends. Otherwise they might have gotten suspicious.

  “If they suspicioned I had anything to do with having him killed, or thought I wasn’t anxious to punish the man who killed him, they’d make trouble for me. I can’t have a split in the gang now. And even I can’t protect you from Brent’s friends, after this.”

  “Have I ever asked you, or any man, for protection?” The quick jealous pride of the gunfighter vibrated in his voice.

  “Breckman, Red Bill, Curly, and now Bissett. You’ve killed too many Vultures. I made them think the killing of the first three was a mistake, all around. Bissett wasn’t very popular. But they won’t forgive you for stopping them from hanging the man who killed Ace Brent. They won’t attack you openly, of course. But you’ll have to watch every step you make. They’ll kill
you if they can, and I won’t be able to prevent them.”

  “If I’d tell ’em just how Ace Brent died, you’d be in the same boat,” said Corcoran bitingly. “Of course, I won’t. Our final getaway depends on you keepin’ their confidence – as well as the confidence of the honest folks. This last killin’ ought to put me, and therefore you, ace-high with Hopkins and his crowd.”

  “They’re still talking vigilante. I encourage it. It’s coming anyway. Murders in the outlying camps are driving men to a frenzy of fear and rage, even though such crimes have ceased in Wahpeton. Better to fall in line with the inevitable and twist it to a man’s own ends, than to try to oppose it. If you can keep Brent’s friends from killing you for a few more weeks, we’ll be ready to jump. Look out for Buck Gorman. He’s the most dangerous man in the gang. He was Brent’s friend, and he has his own friends – all dangerous men. Don’t kill him unless you have to.”

  “I’ll take care of myself,” answered Corcoran somberly. “I looked for Gorman in the mob, but he wasn’t there. Too smart. But he’s the man behind the mob. Bissett was just a stupid ox; Gorman planned it – or rather, I reckon he helped you plan it.”

  “I’m wondering how you found out about it,” said Middleton. “You wouldn’t have come back unless somebody told you. Who was it?”

  “None of your business,” growled Corcoran. It did not occur to him that Glory Bland would be in any danger from Middleton, even if the sheriff knew about her part in the affair, but he did not relish being questioned, and did not feel obliged to answer anybody’s queries.

  “That new gold strike sure came in mighty handy for you and Gorman,” he said. “Did you frame that, too?”

  Middleton nodded.

  “Of course. That was one of my men who poses as a miner. He had a hatful of nuggets from the cache. He served his purpose and joined the men who hide up there in the hills. The mob of miners will be back tomorrow, tired and mad and disgusted, and when they hear about what happened, they’ll recognize the handiwork of the Vultures; at least some of them will. But they won’t connect me with it in any way. Now we’ll ride back to town. Things are breaking our way, in spite of your foolish interference with the mob. But let Gorman alone. You can’t afford to make any more enemies in the gang.”

  Buck Gorman leaned on the bar in the Golden Eagle and expressed his opinion of Steve Corcoran in no uncertain terms. The crowd listened sympathetically, for, almost to a man, they were the ruffians and riff-raff of the camp.

  “The dog pretends to be a deputy!” roared Gorman, whose blood-shot eyes and damp tangled hair attested to the amount of liquor he had drunk. “But he kills an appointed judge, breaks up a court and drives away the jury – yes, and releases the prisoner, a man charged with murder!”

  It was the day after the fake gold strike, and the disillusioned miners were drowning their chagrin in the saloons. But few honest miners were in the Golden Eagle.

  “Colonel Hopkins and other prominent citizens held an investigation,” said some one. “They declared that evidence showed Corcoran to have been justified – denounced the court as a mob, acquitted Corcoran of killing Bissett, and then went ahead and acquitted McBride for killing Brent, even though he wasn’t there.”

  Gorman snarled like a cat, and reached for his whisky glass. His hand did not twitch or quiver, his movements were more catlike than ever. The whisky had inflamed his mind, illumined his brain with a white-hot certainty that was akin to insanity, but it had not affected his nerves or any part of his muscular system. He was more deadly drunk than sober.

  “I was Brent’s best friend!” he roared. “I was Bissett’s friend.”

  “They say Bissett was a Vulture,” whispered a voice. Gorman lifted his tawny head and glared about the room as a lion might glare.

  “Who says he was a Vulture? Why don’t these slanderers accuse a living man? It’s always a dead man they accuse! Well, what if he was? He was my friend! Maybe that makes me a Vulture!”

  No one laughed or spoke as his flaming gaze swept the room, but each man, as those blazing eyes rested on him in turn, felt the chill breath of Death blowing upon him.

  “Bissett a Vulture!” he said, wild enough with drink and fury to commit any folly, as well as any atrocity. He did not heed the eyes fixed on him, some in fear, a few in intense interest. “Who knows who the Vultures are? Who knows who, or what anybody really is? Who really knows anything about this man Corcoran, for instance? I could tell –”

  A light step on the threshold brought him about as Corcoran loomed in the door. Gorman froze, snarling, lips writhed back, a tawny-maned incarnation of hate and menace.

  “I heard you was makin’ a talk about me down here, Gorman,” said Corcoran. His face was bleak and emotionless as that of a stone image, but his eyes burned with murderous purpose.

  Gorman snarled wordlessly.

  “I looked for you in the mob,” said Corcoran, tonelessly, his voice as soft and without emphasis as the even strokes of a feather. It seemed almost as if his voice were a thing apart from him; his lips murmuring while all the rest of his being was tense with concentration on the man before him.

  “You wasn’t there. You sent your coyotes, but you didn’t have the guts to come yourself, and –”

  The dart of Gorman’s hand to his gun was like the blurring stroke of a snake’s head, but no eye could follow Corcoran’s hand. His gun smashed before anyone knew he had reached for it. Like an echo came the roar of Gorman’s shot. But the bullet ploughed splinteringly into the floor, from a hand that was already death-stricken and falling. Gorman pitched over and lay still, the swinging lamp glinting on his upturned spurs and the blue steel of the smoking gun which lay by his hand.

  VIII

  THE COMING OF THE VIGILANTES

  Colonel Hopkins looked absently at the liquor in his glass, stirred restlessly, and said abruptly: “Middleton, I might as well come to the point. My friends and I have organized a vigilante committee, just as we should have done months ago. Now, wait a minute. Don’t take this as a criticism of your methods. You’ve done wonders in the last month, ever since you brought Steve Corcoran in here. Not a hold-up in the town, not a killing – that is, not a murder, and only a few shootings among the honest citizens.

  “Added to that the ridding of the camp of such scoundrels as Jake Bissett and Buck Gorman. They were both undoubtedly members of the Vultures. I wish Corcoran hadn’t killed Gorman just when he did, though. The man was drunk, and about to make some reckless disclosures about the gang. At least that’s what a friend of mine thinks, who was in the Golden Eagle that night. But anyway it couldn’t be helped.

  “No, we’re not criticizing you at all. But obviously you can’t stop the murders and robberies that are going on up and down the Gulch, all the time. And you can’t stop the outlaws from holding up the stage regularly.

  “So that’s where we come in. We have sifted the camp, carefully, over a period of months, until we have fifty men we can trust absolutely. It’s taken a long time, because we’ve had to be sure of our men. We didn’t want to take in a man who might be a spy for the Vultures. But at last we know where we stand. We’re not sure just who is a Vulture, but we know who isn’t, in as far as our organization is concerned.

  “We can work together, John. We have no intention of interfering within your jurisdiction, or trying to take the law out of your hands. We demand a free hand outside the camp; inside the limits of Wahpeton we are willing to act under your orders, or at least according to your advice. Of course we will work in absolute secrecy until we have proof enough to strike.”

  “You must remember, Colonel,” reminded Middleton, “that all along I’ve admitted the impossibility of my breaking up the Vultures with the limited means at my disposal. I’ve never opposed a vigilante committee. All I’ve demanded was that when it was formed, it should be composed of honest men, and be free of any element which might seek to twist its purpose into the wrong channels.”

  “That�
�s true. I didn’t expect any opposition from you, and I can assure you that we’ll always work hand-in-hand with you and your deputies.” He hesitated, as if over something unpleasant, and then said: “John, are you sure of all your deputies?”

  Middleton’s head jerked up and he shot a startled glance at the Colonel, as if the latter had surprised him by putting into words a thought that had already occurred to him.

  “Why do you ask?” he parried.

  “Well,” Hopkins was embarrassed. “I don’t know – maybe I’m prejudiced – but – well, damn it, to put it bluntly, I’ve sometimes wondered about Bill McNab!”

  Middleton filled the glasses again before he answered.

  “Colonel, I never accuse a man without iron-clad evidence. I’m not always satisfied with McNab’s actions, but it may merely be the man’s nature. He’s a surly brute. But he has his virtues. I’ll tell you frankly, the reason I haven’t discharged him is that I’m not sure of him. That probably sounds ambiguous.”

  “Not at all. I appreciate your position. You have as much as said you suspect him of double-dealing, and are keeping him on your force so you can watch him. Your wits are not dull, John. Frankly – and this will probably surprise you – until a month ago some of the men were beginning to whisper some queer things about you – queer suspicions, that is. But your bringing Corcoran in showed us that you were on the level. You’d have never brought him in if you’d been taking pay from the Vultures!”

  Middleton halted with his glass at his lips.

  “Great heavens!” he ejaculated. “Did they suspect me of that?”

  “Just a fool idea some of the men had,” Hopkins assured him. “Of course I never gave it a thought. The men who thought it are ashamed now. The killing of Bissett, of Gorman, of the men in the Blackfoot Chief, show that Corcoran’s on the level. And of course, he’s merely taking his orders from you. All those men were Vultures, of course. It’s a pity Tom Deal got away before we could question him.” He rose to go.