“What are you talking about?”
“Get off your horse a minute,” suggested Whispering Smith, dismounting, “and step over here toward the creek.” The man, afraid to refuse and unwilling to go, walked haltingly after Smith.
“What is it, Rockstro?” asked his tormentor. “Don’t you like this country? What do you want to go back to the penitentiary for? Aren’t you happy here? Now tell me one thing––will you give up the trail?”
“I don’t know the trail.”
“I believe you; we shouldn’t follow it anyway. Were you paid last night or this morning?”
“I ain’t seen a man hereabouts for a week.”
“Then you can’t tell me whether there were five men or six?”
“You’ve got one eye as good as mine, and one a whole lot better.”
“So it was fixed up for cash a week ago?”
“Everything is cash in this country.”
“Well, Rockstro, I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take you back with us.”
The rancher whipped out a revolver. Whispering Smith caught his wrist. The struggle lasted only an instant. Rockstro writhed, and the pistol fell to the ground.
“Now, shall I break your arm?” asked Smith, as the man cursed and resisted. “Or will you behave? We are going right back and you’ll have to come with us. We’ll send some one down to round up your horses and sell them, and you can serve out your time––with allowances, of course, for good conduct, which will cut it down. If I had ever done you a mean turn I would not say a word. If you could name a friend of yours I had ever done a mean turn to I would not say a word. Can you name one? I guess not. I have left you as free as the wind here, making only the rule I make for everybody––to let the railroad alone. This is my thanks. Now, I’ll ask you just one question. I haven’t killed you, as I had a perfect right to when you pulled; I haven’t broken your arm, as I would have done if there had been a doctor within twenty-five miles; and I haven’t started you for the pen––not yet. Now I ask you one fair question only: Did you need the money?”
“Yes, I did need it.”
Whispering Smith dropped the man’s wrist. “Then I don’t say a word. If you needed the money, I’m not going to send you back––not for mine.”
“How can a man make a living in this country,” asked the rancher, with a bitter oath, “unless he picks up everything that’s going?”
“Pick up your gun, man! I’m not saying anything, am I?”
“But I’m damned if I can give a double-cross to any man,” added Rockstro, stooping for his revolver.
“I should think less of you, Rockstro, if you did. You don’t need money anyway now, but sometime you may need a friend. I’m going to leave you here. You’ll hear no more of this, and I’m going to ask you a question: Why did you go against this when you knew you’d have to square yourself with me?”
“They told me you’d be taken care of before it was pulled off.”
“They lied to you, didn’t they? No matter, you’ve got their stuff. Now I am going to ask you one question that I don’t know the answer to; it’s a fair question, too. Was Du Sang in the penitentiary with you at Fort City? Answer fair.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Behave yourself and keep your mouth shut. I say nothing this time. Hereafter leave railroad matters alone, and if the woman should fall sick or you have to have a little money, come and see me.” Smith led the way back to the horses.
“Look here!” muttered Rockstro, following, with his good eye glued on his companion. “I pulled on you too quick, I guess––quicker’n I’d ought to.”
“Don’t mention it. You didn’t pull quick enough; it is humiliating to have a man that’s as slow as you are pull on me. People that pull on me usually pull and shoot at the same time. Two distinct movements, Rockstro, should be avoided; they are fatal to success. Come down to the Bend sometime, and I’ll get you a decent gun and give you a few lessons.”
Whispering Smith drew his handkerchief as the one-eyed man rode away and he rejoined his companions. He was resigned, after a sickly fashion. “I like to play blind-man’s-buff,” he said, wiping his forehead, “but not so far from good water. They have pulled us half-way to the Grosse Terre Mountains on a beautiful trail, too beautiful to be true, Farrell––too beautiful to be true. They have been having fun with us, and they’ve doubled back, through the Topah Topahs toward the Mission Mountains and Williams Cache––that is my judgment. And aren’t we five able-bodied jays, gentlemen? Five strong-arm suckers? It is an inelegant word; it is an inelegant feeling. No matter, we know a few things. There are five good men and a led horse; we can get out of here by Goose River, find out when we cross the railroad how much they got, and pick them up somewhere around the Saddle peaks, if they’ve gone north. That’s only a guess, and every man’s guess is good now. What do you think, all of you?”
“If it’s the crowd we think it is, would they go straight home? That doesn’t look reasonable, does it?” asked Brill Young.
“If they could put one day between them and pursuit, wouldn’t they be safer at home than anywhere else? And haven’t they laid out one day’s work for us, good and plenty? Farrell, remember one thing: there is sometimes a disadvantage in knowing too much about the men you are after. We’ll try Goose River.”
It was noon when they struck the railroad. They halted long enough to stop a freight train, send some telegrams, and ask for news. They got orders from Rooney Lee, had an empty box car set behind the engine for a special, and, loading their horses at the chute, made a helter-skelter run for Sleepy Cat. At three o’clock they struck north for the Mission Mountains.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SUNDAY MURDER
Banks’s posse, leaving Medicine Bend before daybreak, headed northwest. Their instructions were explicit: to scatter after crossing the Frenchman, watch the trails from the Goose River country and through the Mission Mountains, and intercept everybody riding north until the posse from Sleepy Cat or Whispering Smith should communicate with them from the southwest. Nine men rode in the party that crossed the Crawling Stone Sunday morning at sunrise with Ed Banks.
After leaving the river the three white-capped Saddles of the Mission range afford a landmark for more than a hundred miles, and toward these the party pressed steadily all day. The southern pass of the Missions opens on the north slope of the range into a pretty valley known as Mission Springs Valley, and the springs are the head-waters of Deep Creek. The posse did not quite obey the instructions, and following a natural instinct of safety five of them, after Banks and his three deputies had scattered, bunched again, and at dark crossed Deep Creek at some distance below the springs. It was afterward known that these five men had been seen entering the valley from the east at sundown just as four of the men they wanted rode down South Mission Pass toward the springs. That they knew they would soon be cut off, or must cut their way through the line which Ed Banks, ahead of them, was posting at every gateway to Williams Cache, was probably clear to them. Four men rode that evening from Tower W through the south pass; the fifth man had already left the party. The four men were headed for Williams Cache and had reason to believe, until they sighted Banks’s men, that their path was open.
They halted to take counsel on the suspicious-looking posse far below them, and while their cruelly exhausted horses rested, Du Sang, always in Sinclair’s absence the brains of the gang, planned the escape over Deep Creek at Baggs’s crossing. At dusk they divided: two men lurking in the brush along the creek rode as close as they could, unobserved, toward the crossing, while Du Sang and the cowboy Karg, known as Flat Nose, rode down to Baggs’s ranch at the foot of the pass.
At that point Dan Baggs, an old locomotive engineer, had taken a homestead, got together a little bunch of cattle, and was living alone with his son, a boy of ten years. It was a hard country and too close to Williams Cache for comfort, but Dan got on with everybody because the toughest man in th
e Cache country could get a meal, a feed for his horse, and a place to sleep at Baggs’s, without charge, when he needed it.
Ed Banks, by hard riding, got to the crossing at five o’clock, and told Baggs of the hold-up and the shooting of Oliver Sollers. The news stirred the old engineman, and his excitement threw him off his guard. Banks rode straight on for the middle pass, leaving word that two of his men would be along within half an hour to watch the pass and the ranch crossing, and asking Baggs to put up some kind of a fight for the crossing until more of the posse came up––at the least, to make sure that nobody got any fresh horses.
The boy was cooking supper in the kitchen, and Baggs had done his milking and gone back to the corral, when two men rode around the corner of the barn and asked if they could get something to eat. Poor Baggs sold his life in six words: “Why, yes; be you Banks’s men?”
Du Sang answered: “No; we’re from Sheriff Coon’s office at Oroville, looking up a bunch of Duck Bar steers that’s been run somewhere up Deep Creek. Can we stay here all night?”
They dismounted and disarmed Baggs’s suspicions, though the condition of their horses might have warned him had he had his senses. The unfortunate man had probably fixed it in his mind that a ride from Tower W to Deep Creek in sixteen hours was a physical impossibility.
“Stay here? Sure! I want you to stay,” said Baggs bluffly. “Looks to me like I seen you down at Crawling Stone, ain’t I?” he asked of Karg.
Karg was lighting a cigarette. “I used to mark at the Dunning ranch,” he answered, throwing away his match.
“That’s hit. Good! The boy’s cooking supper. Step up to the kitchen and tell him to cut ham for four more.”
“Four?”
“Two of Ed Banks’s men will be here by six o’clock. Heard about the hold-up? They stopped Number Three at Tower W last night and shot Ollie Sollers, as white a boy as ever pulled a throttle. Boys, a man that’ll kill a locomotive engineer is worse’n an Indian; I’d help skin him.”
“The hell you would!” cried Du Sang. “Well, don’t you want to start in on me? I killed Sollers. Look at me; ain’t I handsome? What you going to do about it?”
Before Baggs could think Du Sang was shooting him down. It was wanton. Du Sang stood in no need of the butchery; the escape could have been made without it. His victim had pulled an engine throttle too long to show the white feather, but he was dying by the time he had dragged a revolver from his pocket. Du Sang did the killing alone. At least, Flat Nose, who alone saw all of the murder, afterward maintained that he did not draw because he had no occasion to, and that Baggs was dead before he, Karg, had finished his cigarette. With his right arm broken and two bullets through his chest, Baggs fell on his face. That, however, did not check his murderer. Rising to his knees, Baggs begged for his life. “For God’s sake! I’m helpless, gentlemen! I’m helpless. Don’t kill me like a dog!” But Du Sang, emptying his pistol, threw his rifle to his shoulder and sent bullet after bullet crashing through the shapeless form writhing and twitching before him until he had beaten it in the dust soft and flat and still.
Banks’s men came up within an hour to find the ranch-house deserted. They saw a lantern in the yard below, and near the corral gate they found the little boy in the darkness, screaming beside his father’s body. The sheriff’s men carried the old engineman to the house; others of the posse crossed the creek during the evening, and at eleven o’clock Whispering Smith rode down from the south pass to find that four of the men they were after had taken fresh horses, after killing Baggs, and passed safely through the cordon Banks had drawn around the pass and along Deep Creek. Bill Dancing, who had ridden with Banks’s men, was at the house when Whispering Smith arrived. He found some supper in the kitchen, and the tired man and the giant ate together.
Whispering Smith was too experienced a campaigner to complain. His party had struck a trail fifty miles north of Sleepy Cat and followed it to the Missions. He knew now who he was after, and knew that they were bottled up in the Cache for the night. The sheriff’s men were sleeping on the floor of the living-room when Smith came in from the kitchen. He sat down before the fire. At intervals sobs came from the bedroom where the body lay, and after listening a moment, Whispering Smith got stiffly up, and, tiptoeing to still the jingle of his spurs, took the candle from the table, pushed aside the curtain, and entered the bedroom.
The little boy was lying on his face, with his arm around his father’s neck, talking to him. Whispering Smith bent a moment over the bed, and, setting the candle on the table, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He disengaged the hand from the cold neck, and sitting down took it in his own. Talking low to the little fellow, he got his attention after much patient effort and got him to speak. He made him, though struggling with terror, to understand that he had come to be his friend, and after the child had sobbed his grief into a strange heart he ceased to tremble, and told his name and his story, and described the two horsemen and the horses they had left. Smith listened quietly. “Have you had any supper, Dannie? No? You must have something to eat. Can’t you eat anything? But there is a nice pan of fresh milk in the kitchen.”
A burst of tears interrupted him. “Daddie just brought in the milk, and I was frying the ham, and I heard them shooting.”
“See how he took care of you till the last minute, and left something for you after he was gone. Suppose he could speak now, don’t you think he would want you to do as I say? I am your next friend now, for you are going to be a railroad man and have a big engine.”
Dannie looked up. “Dad wasn’t afraid of those men.”
“Wasn’t he, Dannie?”
“He said we would be all right and not to be afraid.”
“Did he?”
“He said Whispering Smith was coming.”
“My poor boy.”
“He is coming, don’t be afraid. Do you know Whispering Smith? He is coming. The men to-night all said he was coming.”
The little fellow for a long time could not be coaxed away from his father, but his companion at length got him to the kitchen. When they came back to the bedroom the strange man was talking to him once more about his father. “We must try to think how he would like things done now, mustn’t we? All of us felt so bad when we rode in and had so much to do we couldn’t attend to taking care of your father. Did you know there are two men out at the crossing now, guarding it with rifles? But if you and I keep real quiet we can do something for him while the men are asleep; they have to ride all day to-morrow. We must wash his face and hands, don’t you think so? And brush his hair and his beard. If you could just find the basin and some water and a towel––you couldn’t find a brush, could you? Could you, honestly? Well! I call that a good boy––we shall have to have you on the railroad, sure. We must try to find some fresh clothes––these are cut and stained; then I will change his clothes, and we shall all feel better. Don’t disturb the men; they are tired.”
They worked together by the candle-light. When they had done, the boy had a violent crying spell, but Whispering Smith got him to lie down beside him on a blanket spread on the floor, where Smith got his back against the sod wall and took the boy’s head in his arm. He waited patiently for the boy to go to sleep, but Dan was afraid the murderers would come back. Once he lifted his head in a confidence. “Did you know my daddy used to run an engine?”
“No, I did not; but in the morning you must tell me all about it.”
Whenever there was a noise in the next room the child roused. After some time a new voice was heard; Kennedy had come and was asking questions. “Wake up here, somebody! Where is Whispering Smith?”
Dancing answered: “He’s right there in the bedroom, Farrell, staying with the boy.”
There was some stirring. Kennedy talked a little and at length stretched himself on the floor. When all was still again, Dannie’s hand crept slowly from the breast of his companion up to his chin, and the little hand, feeling softly every feature, stole over the strange fac
e.
“What is it, Dannie?”
“Are you Whispering Smith?”
“Yes, Dannie. Shut your eyes.”
At three o’clock, when Kennedy lighted a candle and looked in, Smith was sitting with his back against the wall. The boy lay on his arm. Both were fast asleep. On the bed the dead man lay with a handkerchief over his face.
* * *
CHAPTER XXIX
WILLIAMS CACHE
Ed Banks had been recalled before daybreak from the middle pass. Two of the men wanted were now known to have crossed the creek, which meant they must work out of the country through Williams Cache.
“If you will take your best two men, Ed,” said Whispering Smith, sitting down with Banks at breakfast, “and strike straight for Canadian Pass to help Gene and Bob Johnson, I’ll undertake to ride in and talk to Rebstock while Kennedy and Bob Scott watch Deep Creek. The boy gives a good description, and the two men that did the job here are Du Sang and Flat Nose. Did I tell you how we picked up the trail yesterday? Magpies. They shot a scrub horse that gave out on them and skinned the brand. It hastened the banquet, but we got there before the birds were all seated. Great luck, wasn’t it? And it gave us a beautiful trail. One of the party crossed the Goose River at American Fork, and Brill Young and Reed followed him. Four came through the Mission Mountains; that is a cinch and they are in the Cache––and if they get out it is our fault personally, Ed, and not the Lord’s.”
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