“You—you spoke of murders?”
“Yes, I certainly did. About a year ago Morgan had trouble with a man named Ad Tolbert. A few days later a cowhand found Tolbert’s body not far from Morgan’s cabin. He had been shot in the back.”
“And that was only one of them!” Em Shipton declared. “Tell her about the pack peddler.”
“His name was Ned Weisl. He was a harmless old fellow who had been peddling around the country for years. On every trip he went into Buckskin Run, and that seemed strange, because until Morgan moved there nobody lived in the Run country. He had some wild story he told about gold in Buckskin Run, some gold buried there. About a month ago they found his body, too. And he had been shot in the back.”
“You mark my words!” Em Shipton declared. ‘That Rod Morgan’s behind it all!”
The fourth passenger , a bearded man, spoke for the first time, “It appears to me that you’re condemning this young man without much reason. Has anybody seen him shoot anybody?”
“Who would go into that awful place? Everybody knows it’s haunted. We warned young Morgan about it, but he was too smart, a know-it-all. He said all the talk about ghosts was silly, and even if there were ghosts he’d make them feel at home!
“We thought it was strange, him going into that dark, lonely place! No wonder. He’s deep, he is! With a sight of crime behind him, too!”
“Thats not true!” Lorna said. “I’ve known Rod Morgan for years. There isn’t a nicer boy anywhere.”
Em Shipton’s features stiffened with anger. A dictator in her own little world, she resented any contradiction of her opinions. “I reckon, young lady, you’ve a lot to learn, and you’ll learn it soon, mark my words!”
“There is something to what Mrs. Shipton says,” Brewer commented. “Morgan does have a bad reputation around Cordova. He was offered a good riding job by Henry Childs when he first arrived, but he refused it. Childs is a pioneer, and the wealthiest and most respected man in the country. When a drifter like Morgan refused such a job it aroused suspicion. Why would a man want to live in that canyon alone, when he could have a good job with Childs’?”
“Maybe he simply wants to be independent. Maybe he wants to build his own ranch,” the bearded man suggested.
“A man never gets anywhere working for the other man.”
Mark Brewer ignored the comment. “That canyon has always had an evil reputation. Vanishing wagon trains, mysterious deaths, and even the Indians avoid the place.” He paused. “You’ve only one life to live, Miss Day, so why don’t you wait a few days and make some inquiries before you commit yourself? After all, you do admit you haven’t seen the man for two years.”
Lorna Day stared out over the desert. She was angry, but she was frightened, also. What was she getting into? She knew Rod, but two years is a long time, and people change. So much could have happened. He had gone west to earn money so they could be married, and it seemed unlikely he would think of building a home for her in a haunted valley. He was, she knew, inclined to be hot-headed and impulsive. But murder? How could she believe that of him?
“It doesn’t make a man a murderer because he lives in a nice little valley like Buckskin Run,” the bearded man said. “You make your inquiries, ma’am, that’s a sensible suggestion, but don’t take nobody’s word on a man on evidence like that. Buckskin Run is a pretty little valley.”
Mark Brewer gave the man his full attention for the first time. “What do you know about Buckskin Run? Everybody agrees it’s a dangerous place.”
“Nonsense! I’ve been through it more than once. I went through that valley years ago, before your man Childs was even out here.
“Pioneer, is he? I never heard of him. There wasn’t a ranch in the country when I first rode in here. As far as Indians are concerned, Buckskin Run was medicine ground. That’s why they never went there.”
“How do you explain the things that have happened there?”
“I don’t explain ‘em. There’s been killings all over the west, and will be as long as there’s bad men left. There were white men around when I first came in here, renegades most of ‘em, but nobody ever heard any talk of haunts or the like. Men like Tarran Kopp camped in there many’s the time!”
“You were here,” Brewer asked, “when Tarran Kopp was around?”
“Knowed him well. I was through this here country before he ever seen it. Came through with Kit Carson the first time, and he was the one named it Buckskin Run. Favorite camp ground for Kit, that’s what it was.
“My name’s Jed Blue, and my feet made trails all over this country. I don’t know this man Morgan, but if he’s had the sense to settle in Buckskin Run he’s smart. That’s the best growing land around here!”
Em Shipton glared at Jed Blue. “A lot you know about it! That valley is a wicked place! It’s haunted, and everybody from Cordova to Santa Fe knows it. What about the wagon trains that went into it and disappeared?
“What about the graves? Three men buried side by each, and what does it say on their markers, ‘No visible cause of death on these bodies.’ “
The Concord rumbled through a dry wash, then mounted the opposite bank with a jerk, bumped over a rock in the trail, and slowed to climb a steep, winding grade. Talk died as suddenly as it had begun, and Lorna clenched her hands in her lap, fighting back the wave of panic that mounted within her. If Rod had become what they said, what would she do? What could she do? Her money was almost gone, and she would be fortunate if she had enough to last a week. Yet, what would have happened had she remained in the East? To be without money in one place was as bad as another. Yet, despite the assurance with which they spoke, she could not believe Rod was a murderer. Remembering his fine, clean-cut face, his clear, dark eyes, and his flashing smile, she could not accept what they said.
The Concord groaned to the top of the grade, and the six horses swung wide around a curve and straightened out, running faster and faster. Suddenly there was a shot, a sharp yell, and the stage made a swerving stop so abruptly that Lorna was thrown into Em Shipton’s lap. Recovering, she peered out of the window. A man lay flat in the middle of the trail, blood staining the back of his vest. Beside his right hand lay a six-shooter. To the left of the road were four riders, sitting their horses with hands uplifted. Facing the four from the right side of the road was a young man with dark, wavy hair blowing in the wind. He wore badly worn jeans, scuffed star boots and a black and white checkered shirt. There was an empty holster on his hip, and he held two guns in his hands.
“Now pick up your man and get out of here! You came hunting it, and you found it.”
Lorna stifled a cry. “Rod!” she gasped. “Rod Morgan!”
Her voice was low, but Jed Blue overheard. “Is that your man?” he asked.
She nodded, unable to speak. It was true then, she thought. He was a killer! He had just shot that man.
One of the horsemen caught the riderless horse and two of the others dismounted to load the body across the saddle. The other man sat very still, holding his hand on the pommel of his saddle. As the other riders remounted he said, “Well, this is one you won’t bury in Buckskin Run!”
“Get going!” Morgan said. “And keep a civil tongue in your head, Jeff, I’ve no use for you or any of your rustling, dry-gulching crowd.”
Lorna Day drew back into the stage, her hands to her face. Horror filled her being. That limp, still body! Rod Morgan had killed him!
“Well!” Em Shipton said triumphantly. “What did we tell you’?”
“It’s too bad you had to see this,” Brewer said. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“That’s a right handy young feller!” Blue said admiringly. “Looks to me like you picked you a good one, ma’am. Stood off the five of them, he did, and I never seen it done better. Any one of them would have killed him had they the chance, but he didn’t even disarm them. And they wanted no part of him!”
The stage started to roll. “Hey’” Blue caught at Lorna’s arm. “A
in’t you even goin’ to call to him? Ain’t you goin’ to let him know you’re here?”
“No! Don’t tell him! Please, don’t!”
Blue leaned back, shaking his head admiringly. “Handy, right handy! That gent who was down in the road was drilled plumb center!”
Lorna did not hear him. Rod! Her Rod! A killer!
As the stage swung back into the road and pulled away, Rod Morgan stooped and picked up the dead man’s six-shooter. No use wasting a good gun, and if things went on as they had begun he would have need of it. He walked back to where his gray mustang was tethered, and swung into the saddle. A brief glance around and he started back up the canyon. There was so much to do, and so little tfme. Perhaps he had been wrong to oppose the ingrained superstition and suspicion of the Cordova country, but working as a cowhand would never allow him to save enough to support a wife or build a home.
Buckskin Run, from the moment he had first glimpsed it, had seemed the epitome of all he had dreamed. The stream plunged happily over the stones, falling in a series of miniature cascades and rapids into a wide basin surrounded by towering cliffs. It flowed out of that basin and through a wide meadow, several hundred acres of good grassland. High cliffs bordered the area on all sides, and there were clumps of aspen and spruce. Below the first meadow lay a long valley also bounded by sheer cliffs, a valley at least a half-mile wide that narrowed suddenly into a bottleneck that spilled the stream into another series of small rapids before it swung into the timbered land bordering the desert.
When Rod Morgan had found Buckskin Run there had been no tracks of either cattle or horses. Without asking questions, he chose a cabin site near the entrance and went to work. Before he rode out to Cordova on his first trip to town his cabin was built, his corrals ready. In Cordova he ran into trouble with Em Shipton.
Em’s entire life was ruled by prejudice and superstition. She had come to Cordova from the hills of West Virginia by way of Council Bluffs and Santa Fe. In the Iowa town she married Josh Shipton, a teamster freighting over the Sante Fe Trail. She had already been a widow, her first husband dropping from sight after a blast of gunfire with his brother-in-law.
Josh Shipton was more enduring, and also somewhat faster with a gun, than Em’s previous spouse. He stood her nagging and suspicion for three months, stood the borrowing and drunkenness of her brother for a few days longer. The two difficulties came to a head simultaneously. Josh packed up and left Em and, in a final dispute with her quarrelsome, pistol-ready brother, eliminated him from further interference in Em’s marital or other affairs. But Josh kept on going.
Em Shipton had come to Cordova and started her rooming and boarding house while looking for a new husband. Her first choice, old Henry Childs himself, was a confirmed bachelor who came to eat once at her table. Wiser than most, he never came again. She was fifteen years older and twenty pounds heavier than slim, handsome Rod Morgan, but he was her second choice.
“What you need, she told him, is a good wife!”
Unaware of the direction of the conversation, Rod agreed that he did.
“Also,” she said, “you must move away from that awful canyon. It’s haunted!”
Rod laughed. Sure, and I’ve seen no ghost, maam. Not a one. Never seen a prettier valley, either. No, I’m staying.”
Em Shipton coupled her ignorance with assurance. Women were scarce in the West, and she had come to consider herself quite a catch. She had yet to learn that women were not that scarce.
“Well,” she said definitely, “you can’t expect me to go live in no valley like that.”
Rod stared, mouth open in astonishment. “Who said anything—“
He swallowed, trying to keep a straight face but failing. He stifled the laugh, but not the smile. “I’ m sorry. I like living there, and, as for a wife, I’ve plans of my own.”
Em might have forgiven the plans, but she could never forgive that single, startled instant when Rod realized that Em Shipton actually had plans for him herself, or the way he smiled at the idea. That was only the beginning of the trouble. Rod Morgan had walked along to the Gem Saloon, had a drink, and been offered a job by Jake Sarran, Henry Childs’ foreman. He refused it.
“Better take it, Morgan,” Sarran advised, “if you plan to stay in this country. We don’t like loose, unattached riders drifting around.”
“I’m not drifting around. I own my own place on Buckskin Run.”
“I know,” Sarran admitted, “but nobody stays there long. Why not take a good job when you can get it?”
“Because I simply don’t want a job. I’ll be staying at Buckskin Run.”
As he turned away a thought struck him. “And you can tell whoever it is who wants me out of there that I’ve come to stay.”
Jake Sarran put his glass down hard, but whatever he intended to say went unspoken. Rod left the saloon, his brow furrowed with thought and some worry. On this first visit to town he had come to realize that his presence at Buckskin Run was disturbing to someone.
For a week he kept busy on the ranch, then he rode south, hired a couple of hands, and drove in three hundred head of whiteface cattle. With grass and water they would not stray, and there was no better grass and water than that in Buckskin Run. He let the hands go. But the thought worried him. Why, with all that good pasture and water, had Buckskin Run not been settled?
When next he rode into Cordova he found people avoiding him. Yet he was undisturbed. Many communities were clannish and shy about accepting strangers. Once they got acquainted it would be different. Yet he had violated one of their taboos. It was not until he started to mount his horse that he discovered his troubles were not to stop with being ignored. A sack of flour tied behind his saddle had been cut open, and most of the flour had spilled on the ground.
Angered, he turned to face the grins of the men seated along the walk. One of them, Bob Carr, a long, rangy rider from Henry Childs’s Block C, had a smudge of white near his shirt pocket, and another smudge near his right-hand pants pocket, the sort of smear that might have come from a man’s knife if he had cut a flour-sack open, then shoved the knife back in his pocket.
Rod had stepped up on the walk. “How’d you get that white smudge on your pocket?”
The rider looked quickly down, then, his face flushing, he looked up. “How do you think?” he said.
Rod hit him. He threw his fist from where it was, at his belt, threw it short and hard into the long rider’s solar plexus. Bob Carr had not expected to be hit. The blow was sudden, explosive and knocked out every bit of wind he had.
“Get him, Bob!” somebody shouted, but as Bob opened his mouth to gasp for air, Rod Morgan broke his jaw with a right.
Rod Morgan turned, and mounted his horse. From the saddle he looked back. “I didn’t come looking for trouble, and I am not asking for it. I’m a quiet man, minding my own affairs.”
Yet when he rode out of town he knew he had opened a feud with the Block C. It was trouble he did not want, and for which he had no time, but whether he liked it or not he had a fight on his hands. When he returned to his cabin a few days later, after checking some cattle in the upper canyon, there was a notice nailed to his door to get out and stay out. Then his cabin was set afire and much of his gear burned. Tolbert picked a fight with him and got soundly whipped, but a few days later Tolbert was murdered in buckskin Run.
Rod Morgan took to packing a gun wherever he went. As is the case with any person who lives alone, or is different, stories were circulated about him, and he became suspect to many people who did not know him and had never so much as seen him. Behind it there seemed to be some malignant influence, but he had no idea who or what was directing it.
Two things happened at once. A letter came from Lorna Day, and Ned Weisl came into the canyon. He had hesitated to suggest that Lorna come west with the situation unsettled as it was, yet from her letter he understood what her situation must be. He had written, explaining what he could and inviting her to come.
Weisl was a strange little man. Strange, yet also charming and interesting. From the first he and Rod hit it off well, and so he told Rod about the gold.
“Three men came west together,” Weisl explained. “Somewhere out in Nevada they struck it rich. The story was they had a hundred and twenty thousand in gold when they started back. They built a special wagon with a false bottom in it, where they hid the gold. Then, with three wagons in all, they headed east.
“They got as far as Buckskin Run, and there, according to the story, Tarran Kopp and his gang hit them. The three men were killed, and that was the end of it, only there was another story.”
“With gold there nearly always is.”
“One of Kopp’s gang was a friend of mine years later, and when asked about it he claimed they had killed nobody in Buckskin Run, nor had they stolen any gold. At the time it all took place they were in Mexico, and he showed me an old newspaper story to prove it.”
“So what became of the gold? And who did kill the people in Buckskin Run?”
“Nobody knows who killed them or how. Nobody knows what became of the gold, either. A hundred and twenty thousand in gold isn’t the easiest thing to carry around in a country where people are inclined to be curious. According to the prices at the time, that would be right around three hundred pounds of gold. There are people who were right interested in that gold who claim it never left Buckskin Run!
“There’s others who declare nobody went into the canyon from the lower end, and nobody knows who buried the three who died there. Markers were set over the graves, and on each one those words ‘No visible mark of death on these bodies.’ “
“What do you thinks”
“That,” Weisl said, smiling with puckish humor, “is another question. I’ve an idea, but it’s a fantastic one. You hold the land now. Will you let me look around? I will give you one-third of whatever I find.”
“Make it half?”
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