Wild Western Tales 2: 101 Classic Western Stories Vol. 2 (Civitas Library Classics)

by Various

  "He'll tell you himself," said a voice, and a laugh followed.

  Silver Pete scowled in the direction of the laugh, and his right hand caressed the butt of his gun, but two miners rose from the crowd holding a slender fellow between them.

  "It's only Geraldine," said one of them. "There ain't no call to flash your gun, Pete."

  "Take the drunken fool away," ordered Collins angrily. "Who let him in here? This is a place for men and not for girl-faced clowns!"

  "Misher Collins," said Geraldine, doffing his broad-brimmed hat and speaking with a thick, telltale accent--"Misher Collins, I ask your pardon, shir."

  He bowed unsteadily, and his hat brushed the floor.

  "I plumb forgot I was in church with Silver Pete for a preacher!" he went on.

  The audience turned their heads and chuckled deeply.

  "Take him out, will you?" thundered Collins. "Take him out, or I'll come down there and kick him out myself!"

  The two men at Geraldine's side turned him about and led him toward the door. Here he struggled away from his guides. "Misher Collins!" he cried in a voice half-whining and half-anger, "if I capture the Ghost do _I_ get the loot?"

  A yell of laughter drowned the reply, and Geraldine staggered from the room.

  "What do you say, men?" roared Collins, enraged by these repeated interruptions. "Is Silver Pete the man for us?"

  There was no shout of approval but a deep muttering of consent.

  "I'd hire the devil himself," murmured one man, "if he'd get rid of the Ghost."

  "All right," said Collins, and he turned to Pete. "You're in charge here, and it's up to you to tell us what to do. You're the foreman, and we're all in your gang."

  The crowd was delighted, for Pete, finding himself deserted before the mass of waiting men, shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and kept changing the angle of the hat upon his mop of gray hair.

  "Speech!" yelled a miner. "Give us a speech, Pete!" Silver Pete favored the speaker with a venomous scowl.

  "Speech nothin'," he answered. "I ain't here to talk. I ain't no gossipin' bit of calico. I got a hunch my six-gun'll do my chatterin' for me."

  "But what do you want us to do, Pete?" asked Collins. "How are we going to help you?"

  "Sit tight and chaw your own tobacco," he said amiably. "I don't want no advice. There's been too many posses around these diggin's. Maybe I'll start and hunt the Ghost by myself. Maybe I won't. If I want help I'll come askin' it."

  As a sign that the meeting had terminated he pulled his hat farther down over his eyes, hitched his belt, and stalked through the crowd without looking to either side.

  Thereafter Murrayville saw nothing of him for a month, during which the Ghost appeared five times and escaped unscathed. The community pondered and sent out to find Pete, but the search was vain. There were those who held that he must have been shot down in his tracks by the Ghost, and even now decorated some lank hillside. The majority felt that having undertaken his quest alone Pete was ashamed to appear in the town without his victim.

  On the subject of the quest Geraldine composed a ballad which he sang to much applause in the eight saloons of the town. It purported to be the narrative of Silver Pete's wanderings in search of the Ghost. In singing it Geraldine borrowed a revolver and belt from one of the bystanders, pushed back his hat and roughed up his hair, and imitated the scowling face of Pete so exactly that his hearers fairly wept with pleasure. He sang his ballad to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," and the sad narrative concluded with a wailing stanza:

  "I don't expect no bloomin' tears; The only thing I ask Is something for a monument In the way of a whisky flask."

  Geraldine sang himself into popularity and many drinks with his song, and for the first time the miners began to take him almost seriously. He had appeared shortly after old John Murray struck gold six months before, a slender man of thirty-five, with a sadly drooping mouth and humorous eyes.

  He announced himself as Gerald Le Roy Witherstone, and was, of course, immediately christened "Geraldine."

  Thereafter he wandered about the town, with no apparent occupation except to sing for his drinks in the saloons. Hitherto he had been accepted as a harmless and amusing man-child, but his ballad gave him at once an Homeric repute, particularly when men remembered that the song was bound to come sooner or later to the ear of Silver Pete.

  For the time being Pete was well out of ear-shot. After the meeting, at which he was installed chief man-hunter of the community, he spent most of the evening equipping himself for the chase. Strangely enough, he did not hang a second revolver to his belt nor strap a rifle behind his saddle; neither did he mount a fleet horse. To pursue the elusive Ghost he bought a dull-eyed mule with a pendulous lower lip. On the mule he strapped a heavy pack which consisted chiefly of edibles, and in the middle of the night he led the mule out of Murrayville in such a way as to evade observation. Once clear of the town he headed straight for Hunter's Cañon.

  Once inside the mouth of the cañon he began his search. While he worked he might have been taken for a prospector, for there was not a big rock in the whole course of the cañon which he did not examine from all sides. There was not a gully running into Hunter's which he did not examine carefully. He climbed up and down the cliffs on either side as if he suspected that the Ghost might take to wings and fly up the sheer rock to a cave.

  The first day he progressed barely a half-mile. The second day he covered even less ground. So his search went on. In the night he built a fire behind a rock and cooked. Through four weeks his labor continued without the vestige of a clue to reward him. Twice during that time he saw posses go thundering through the valley and laughed to himself. They did not even find him, and yet he was making no effort to elude them. What chance would they have of surprising the Ghost?

  This thought encouraged him, and he clung to the invisible trail, through the day and through the night, with the vision of the outlaw's loot before him. He ran out of bacon. Even his coffee gave out. For ten days he lived on flour, salt, and water, and then, as if this saintly fast were necessary before the vision, Pete saw the Ghost.

  It was after sunset, but the moon was clear when he saw the fantom rider race along the far side of the valley. The turf deadened the sound of the horse's hoofs, and, like another worldly apparition, the Ghost galloped close to the wall of the valley--and disappeared.

  Peter rubbed his eyes and looked again. It give him a queer sensation, as if he had awakened suddenly from a vivid dream, for the horse, with its rider, had vanished into thin air between the eyes of Peter and the sheer rock of the valley wall. A little shudder passed through his body, and he cursed softly to restore his courage.

  Yet the dream of plunder sent his blood hotly back upon its course. He carefully observed the marks which should guide him to the point on the rock at which the rider disappeared. He hobbled the mule, examined his revolver, and spun the cylinder, and then started down across the cañon.

  He had camped upon high ground, and his course led him on a sharp descent to the stream which cut the heart of the valley. Here, for two hundred yards, trees and the declivity of the ground cut off his view, but when he came to the higher ground again he found that he had wandered only a few paces to the left of his original course.

  The wall of the valley was now barely fifty yards away, and as nearly as he could reckon the landmarks, the point at which the rider vanished was at or near a shrub which grew close against the rock. For an instant Pete thought that the tree might be a screen placed before the entrance of a cave. Yet the rider had made no pause to set aside the screen. He walked up to it and peered beneath the branches. He even fumbled at the base of the trunk, to make sure that the roots actually entered the earth. After this faint hope disappeared, Pete stepped back and sighed. His reason vowed that it was at this point that the horse turned to air, and Pete's was not a nature which admitted the supernatural.

  He turned to the left and walked along the face of the cliff
for fifty paces. It was solid rock. A chill like a moving piece of ice went up Pete's back.

  He returned to the shrub and passed around it to the right.

  At first he thought it merely the black shadow of the shrub. He stepped closer and then crouched with his revolver raised, for before him opened a crevice directly behind the shrub. It was a trifle over six feet high and less than half that in width; a man could walk through that aperture and lead a horse. Pete entered the passage with cautious steps.

  Between each step he paused and listened. He put forth a foot and felt the ground carefully with it, for fear of a pebble which might roll beneath his weight, or a twig which might snap. His progress was so painfully slow that he could not even estimate distances in the pitch-dark. The passage grew higher and wider--it turned sharply to the right--a faint light shone.

  Pete crouched lower and the grin of expectancy twisted at his lips. At every step, until this moment; he had scarcely dared to breathe, for fear of the bullet which might find him out. Now all the advantage was on his side. Behind him was the dark. Before him was the light which must outline, however faintly, the figure of any one who lurked in wait. With these things in mind he went on more rapidly. The passage widened again and turned to the left. He peered cautiously around the edge of rock and looked into as comfortable a living-room as he had ever seen.

  The rock hung raggedly from the top of the cave, but the sides were smooth from the action of running water through long, dead ages. The floor was of level-packed gravel. Silver Pete remained crouched at the sharp angle of the passage until he heard the stamp and snort of a horse. It gave him heart and courage to continue the stealthy progress, inch by inch, foot by foot, pace by pace toward the light, and as he stole forward more and more of the cave developed before him.

  A tall and sinewy horse was tethered at one end, and at the opposite side sat a man with his back to Pete, who leveled his revolver and drew a bead on a spot between the shoulder blades. Yet he did not fire, for the thought came to him that if it were an honor to track the Ghost to his abode and kill him, it would be immortal glory to bring back the bandit alive, a concrete testimony to his own prowess.

  Once more that catlike progress began until he could see that the Ghost sat on his saddle in front of a level-topped boulder in lieu of a table. The air was filled with the sweet savor of fried bacon and coffee. Pete had crawled to the very edge of the cave when the horse threw up its head and snorted loudly. The Ghost straightened and tilted back his head to listen.

  "Up with yer hands!" snarled Silver Pete.

  He had his bead drawn and his forefinger tightened around the trigger, but the Ghost did not even turn. His hands raised slowly above his shoulders to the level of his head and remained there.

  "Stand up!" said Pete, and rose himself from the ground, against which he had flattened himself. For if the Ghost had decided to try a quick play with his gun the shot in nine cases out of ten would travel breast-high.

  "Turn around!" ordered Pete, feeling more and more sure of himself as he studied the slight proportions of the outlaw.

  The Ghost turned and showed a face with a sad mouth and humorous eyes.

  "By God!" cried Silver Pete, and took a pace back which brought his shoulders against the wall of rock, "Geraldine!"

  If the Ghost had had his gun on his hip he could have shot Pete ten times during that moment of astonishment, but his belt and revolver hung on a jutting rock five paces away. He dropped his hands to his hips and smiled at his visitor.

  "When they put you on the job, Pete," he said, "I had a hunch I should beat it."

  At this inferred compliment the twisted smile transformed one side of Silver Pete's face with sinister pleasure, but there was still wonder in his eyes.

  "Damn me, Geraldine," he growled, "I can't believe my eyes!"

  Geraldine smiled again.

  "Oh, it's me, all right," he nodded. "You got me dead to rights, Pete. What do you think the boys will do with me?"

  "And you're--the Ghost?" sighed Silver Pete, pushing back his hat as though to give his thoughts freer play. He had met many a man of grim repute along the "border," but never such nonchalance as he found in the Ghost.

  "What'll they do with you?" he repeated, "I dunno. You ain't plugged nobody, Geraldine. I reckon they'll ship you South and let the sheriff handle you. Git away from that gun!"

  For Geraldine had stepped back with apparent unconcern until he stood within a yard of his revolver. He obeyed the orders with unshaken good humor, but it seemed to Silver Pete that a yellow light gleamed for an instant in the eyes of the Ghost. It was probably only a reflection from the light of the big torch that burned in a corner of the cave.

  "Gun?" grinned Geraldine. "Say, Pete, do you think I'd try and gunplay while _you_ have the drop on me?"

  He laughed.

  "Nope," he went on. "If you was one of those tinhorn gunmen from the town over yonder, I'd lay you ten to one I could drill you and make a getaway, but you ain't one of them, Pete, and, seeing it's you, I ain't going to try no funny stuff. I don't hanker after no early grave, Pete!"

  This tribute set a placid glow of satisfaction in Pete's eyes.

  "Take it from me, Geraldine," he said, "you're wise. But there ain't no need for you to get scared of me so long as you play the game square and don't try no fancy moves. Now show me where you got the loot stowed and show it quick. If you don't--"

  The threat was unfinished, for Geraldine nodded.

  "Sure I'll show it to you, Pete," he said. "I know when I got a hand that's worth playing, and I ain't a guy to bet a measly pair of treys against a full house. Take a slant over there behind the rock and you'll find it all."

  He indicated a pile of stones of all sizes which lay heaped in a corner. Pete backed toward it with his eye still upon the Ghost. A few kicks scattered the rocks and exposed several small bags. When he stirred these with his foot their weight was eloquent, and the gun-fighter's smile broadened.

  "Think of them tin-horns," he said, "that offered all your pickings to the man that got you dead or alive, Geraldine!"

  The Ghost sighed.

  "Easy pickings," he agreed. "No more strong-arm work for you, Pete!"

  The jaw of Silver Pete set sternly again.

  "Lead your hoss over here," he said, "and help me stow this stuff in the saddlebags. And if you make a move to get the hoss between me and you--"

  The Ghost grinned in assent, saddled his mount, and led him to Pete. Then in obedience to orders he unbuckled the slicker strapped behind the saddle and converted it into a strong bag which easily held the bags of loot. It made a small but ponderous burden, and he groaned with the effort as he heaved it up behind the saddle and secured it. Pete took the bridle and gestured at the Ghost with the revolver.

  "Now git your hands up over your head agin, Geraldine," he said, "and go out down the tunnel about three paces ahead of me."

  "Better let me take the torch," suggested the Ghost, "it'll show us the way."

  Pete grunted assent, and Geraldine, on his way toward the torch, stopped at the boulder to finish off his coffee. He turned to Pete with the cup poised at his lips.

  "Say, Pete," he said genially. "Anything wrong with a cup of coffee and a slice of bacon before we start back?"

  "By God, Geraldine," grinned the gun-fighter, "you're a cool bird, but your game is too old!"

  Nevertheless his very soul yearned toward the savor of bacon and coffee.

  "Game?" repeated the Ghost, who caught the gleam of Pete's eye. "What game? I say let's start up the coffee-pot and the frying-pan. I can turn out flapjacks browner than the ones mother used to make, Pete!"

  Pete drew a great breath, for the taste of his flour and water diet of the past few days was sour in his mouth.

  "Geraldine," he said at last, "it's a go! But if you try any funny passes I ain't going to wait for explanations. Slide out the chow!"

  He rolled a large stone close to the boulder which served as dini
ng-table to the bandit, and sat down to watch the preparations. The Ghost paid little attention to him, but hummed as he worked. Soon a fire snapped and crackled. The coffee can straddled one end of the fire; the frying-pan occupied the other. While the bacon fried he mixed self-rising pancake flour in a tin plate, using water from a tiny stream which trickled down from the rocks at one side of the cave, disappearing again through a fissure in the floor. Next he piled the crisp slices of bacon on a second tin plate and used the fried-out fat to cook the flapjacks.

  "What I can't make out," said Geraldine, without turning to his guest, "is why you'd do this job for those yellow livers over in the town."

  Pete moved the tip of his tongue across his lips, for his mouth watered in anticipation.

  "Why, you poor nut," he answered compassionately, "I ain't working for them. I'm working for the stuff that's up there behind the saddle."

  Geraldine turned on him so suddenly that Pete tightened his grip upon the revolver, but the Ghost merely stared at him.

  "Say," he grinned at last, "have you got a hunch they'll really let you walk off with all that loot?"

  The face of the gunman darkened.

  "I sure think they'll let me," he said with a sinister emphasis. "That was the way they talked."

  Geraldine sighed in apparent bewilderment, but turned back to his work without further comment. In a few moments he rose with the plates of bacon and flapjacks piled on his left arm and the can of coffee in his right hand. He arranged them on the boulder before Silver Pete, and then sat on his heels on the other side of the big stone. The gun-fighter laid his revolver beside his tin cup and attacked the food with the will of ten. Yet even while he ate the eye which continually lingered on the Ghost noted that the latter stared at him with a curious and almost pitying interest. He came to a pause at last, with a piece of bacon folded in a flapjack.

  "Look here," he said, "just what were you aiming at a while ago?"