The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  “But I shall—always. We’ll keep that bandit suit always. You can dress up sometimes to show off—to make me remember—to scare the—the kids—”

  “Jim Cleve!”

  “Oh, Joan, I’m afraid to be happy. But I can’t help it. We’re going to get away. You belong to me. And I’ve sacks and sacks of gold-dust. Lord! I’ve no idea how much! But you can never spend all the money. Isn’t it just like a dream?”

  Joan smiled through tears, and failed trying to look severe.

  “Get me and the gold away—safe—before you crow,” she said.

  That sobered him. He led her out again into the dark street with its dark forms crossing to and fro before the lights.

  “It’s a long time before morning. Where can I take you—so you can sleep a little?” he muttered.

  “Find a place where we can sit down and wait,” she suggested.

  “No.” He pondered a moment. “I guess there’s no risk.”

  Then he led her up the street and through that end of camp out upon the rough, open slope. They began to climb. The stars were bright, but even so Joan stumbled often over the stones. She wondered how Jim could get along so well in the dark and she clung to his arm. They did not speak often, and then only in whispers. Jim halted occasionally to listen or to look up at the bold, black bluff for his bearings. Presently he led her among broken fragments of cliff, and half carried her over rougher ground, into a kind of shadowy pocket or niche.

  “Here’s where I slept,” he whispered.

  He wrapped a blanket round her, and then they sat down against the rock, and she leaned upon his shoulder.

  “I have your coat and the blanket, too,” she said. “Won’t you be cold?”

  He laughed. “Now don’t talk any more. You’re white and fagged-out. You need to rest—to sleep.”

  “Sleep? How impossible!” she murmured.

  “Why, your eyes are half shut now.… Anyway, I’ll not talk to you. I want to think.”

  “Jim!… kiss me—good night,” she whispered.

  He bent over rather violently, she imagined. His head blotted out the light of the stars. He held her tightly for a moment. She felt him shake. Then he kissed her on the cheek and abruptly drew away. How strange he seemed!

  For that matter, everything was strange. She had never seen the stars so bright, so full of power, so close. All about her the shadows gathered protectingly, to hide her and Jim. The silence spoke. She saw Jim’s face in the starlight and it seemed so keen, so listening, so thoughtful, so beautiful. He would sit there all night, wide-eyed and alert, guarding her, waiting for the gray of dawn. How he had changed! And she was his wife! But that seemed only a dream. It needed daylight and sight of her ring to make that real.

  A warmth and languor stole over her; she relaxed comfortably; after all, she would sleep. But why did that intangible dread hang on to her soul? The night was so still and clear and perfect—a radiant white night of stars—and Jim was there, holding her—and tomorrow they would ride away. That might be, but dark, dangling shapes haunted her, back in her mind, and there, too, loomed Kells. Where was he now? Gone—gone on his bloody trail with his broken fortunes and his desperate bitterness! He had lost her. The lunge of that wild mob had parted them. A throb of pain and shame went through her, for she was sorry. She could not understand why, unless it was because she had possessed some strange power to instil or bring up good in him. No woman could have been proof against that. It was monstrous to know that she had power to turn him from an evil life, yet she could not do it. It was more than monstrous to realize that he had gone on spilling blood and would continue to go on when she could have prevented it—could have saved many poor miners who perhaps had wives or sweethearts somewhere. Yet there was no help for it. She loved Jim Cleve. She might have sacrificed herself, but she would not sacrifice him for all the bandits and miners on the border.

  Joan felt that she would always be haunted and would always suffer that pang for Kells. She would never lie down in the peace and quiet of her home, wherever that might be, without picturing Kells, dark and forbidding and burdened, pacing some lonely cabin or riding a lonely trail or lying with his brooding face upturned to the lonely stars. Sooner or later he would meet his doom. It was inevitable. She pictured over that sinister scene of the dangling forms; but no—Kells would never end that way. Terrible as he was, he had not been born to be hanged. He might be murdered in his sleep, by one of that band of traitors who were traitors because in the nature of evil they had to be. But more likely some gambling-hell, with gold and life at stake, would see his last fight. These bandits stole gold and gambled among themselves and fought. And that fight which finished Kells must necessarily be a terrible one. She seemed to see into a lonely cabin where a log fire burned low and lamps flickered and blue smoke floated in veils and men lay prone on the floor—Kells, stark and bloody, and the giant Gulden, dead at last and more terrible in death, and on the rude table bags of gold and dull, shining heaps of gold, and scattered on the floor, like streams of sand and useless as sand, dust of gold—the Destroyer.

  CHAPTER 18

  All Joan’s fancies and dreams faded into obscurity, and when she was aroused it seemed she had scarcely closed her eyes. But there was the gray gloom of dawn. Jim was shaking her gently.

  “No, you weren’t sleepy—it’s just a mistake,” he said, helping her to arise. “Now we’ll get out of here.”

  They threaded a careful way out of the rocks, then hurried down the slope. In the grayness Joan saw the dark shape of a cabin and it resembled the one Kells had built. It disappeared. Presently when Jim led her into a road she felt sure that this cabin had been the one where she had been a prisoner for so long. They hurried down the road and entered the camp. There were no lights. The tents and cabins looked strange and gloomy. The road was empty. Not a sound broke the stillness. At the bend Joan saw a stage-coach and horses looming up in what seemed gray distance. Jim hurried her on.

  They reached the stage. The horses were restive. The driver was on the seat, whip and reins in hand. Two men sat beside him with rifles across their knees. The door of the coach hung open. There were men inside, one of whom had his head out of the window. The barrel of a rifle protruded near him. He was talking in a low voice to a man apparently busy at the traces.

  “Hello, Cleve! You’re late,” said another man, evidently the agent. “Climb aboard. When’ll you be back?”

  “I hardly know,” replied Cleve, with hesitation.

  “All right. Good luck to you.” He closed the coach door after Joan and Jim. “Let ’em go, Bill.”

  The stage started with a jerk. To Joan what an unearthly creak and rumble it made, disturbing the silent dawn! Jim squeezed her hand with joy. They were on the way!

  Joan and Jim had a seat to themselves. Opposite sat three men—the guard with his head half out of the window, a bearded miner who appeared stolid or drowsy, and a young man who did not look rough and robust enough for a prospector. None of the three paid any particular attention to Joan and Jim.

  The road had a decided slope downhill, and Bill, the driver, had the four horses on a trot. The rickety old stage appeared to be rattling to pieces. It lurched and swayed, and sometimes jolted over rocks and roots. Joan was hard put to it to keep from being bumped off the seat. She held to a brace on one side and to Jim on the other. And when the stage rolled down into the creek and thumped over boulders Joan made sure that every bone in her body would be broken. This crossing marked the mouth of the gulch, and on the other side the road was smooth.

  “We’re going the way we came,” whispered Jim in her ear.

  This was surprising, for Joan had been sure that Bannack lay in the opposite direction. Certainly this fact was not reassuring to her. Perhaps the road turned soon.

  Meanwhile the light brightened, the day broke, and the sun reddened the valley. Then it was as light inside the coach as outside. Joan might have spared herself concern as to her fellow-passengers.
The only one who noticed her was the young man, and he, after a stare and a half-smile, lapsed into abstraction. He looked troubled, and there was about him no evidence of prosperity. Jim held her hand under a fold of the long coat, and occasionally he spoke of something or other outside that caught his eye. And the stage rolled on rapidly, seemingly in pursuit of the steady roar of hoofs.

  Joan imagined she recognized the brushy ravine out of which Jesse Smith had led that day when Kells’s party came upon the new road. She believed Jim thought so, too, for he gripped her hand unusually hard. Beyond that point Joan began to breathe more easily. There seemed no valid reason now why every mile should not separate them farther from the bandits, and she experienced relief.

  Then the time did not drag so. She wanted to talk to Jim, yet did not, because of the other passengers. Jim himself appeared influenced by their absorption in themselves. Besides, the keen, ceaseless vigilance of the guard was not without its quieting effect. Danger lurked ahead in the bends of that road. Joan remembered hearing Kells say that the Bannack stage had never been properly held up by road-agents, but that when he got ready for the job it would be done right. Riding grew to be monotonous and tiresome. With the warmth of the sun came the dust and flies, and all these bothered Joan. She did not have her usual calmness, and as the miles steadily passed her nervousness increased.

  The road left the valley and climbed between foot-hills and wound into rockier country. Every dark gulch brought to Joan a trembling, breathless spell. What places for ambush! But the stage bowled on.

  At last her apprehensions wore out and she permitted herself the luxury of relaxing, of leaning back and closing her eyes. She was tired, drowsy, hot. There did not seem to be a breath of air.

  Suddenly Joan’s ears burst to an infernal crash of guns. She felt the whip and sting of splinters sent flying by bullets. Harsh yells followed, then the scream of a horse in agony, the stage lurching and slipping to a halt, and thunder of heavy guns overhead.

  Jim yelled at her—threw her down on the seat. She felt the body of the guard sink against her knees. Then she seemed to feel, to hear through an icy, sickening terror.

  A scattering volley silenced the guns above. Then came the pound of hoofs, the snort of frightened horses.

  “Jesse Smith! Stop!” called Jim, piercingly.

  “Hold on thar, Beady!” replied a hoarse voice. “Damn if it ain’t Jim Cleve!”

  “Ho, Gul!” yelled another voice, and Joan recognized it as Blicky’s.

  Then Jim lifted her head, drew her up. He was white with fear.

  “Dear—are—you—hurt?”

  “No. I’m only—scared,” she replied.

  Joan looked out to see bandits on foot, guns in hand, and others mounted, all gathering near the coach. Jim opened the door, and, stepping out, bade her follow. Joan had to climb over the dead guard. The miner and the young man huddled down on their seat.

  “If it ain’t Jim an’ Kells’s girl—Dandy Dale!” ejaculated Smith. “Fellers, this means somethin’.… Say, youngster, hope you ain’t hurt—or the girl?”

  “No. But that’s not your fault,” replied Cleve. “Why did you want to plug the coach full of lead?”

  “This beats me,” said Smith. “Kells sent you out in the stage! But when he gave us the job of holdin’ it up he didn’t tell us you’d be in there.… When an’ where’d you leave him?”

  “Sometime last night—in camp—near our cabin,” replied Jim, quick as a flash. Manifestly he saw his opportunity “He left Dandy Dale with me. Told us to take the stage this morning. I expected him to be in it or to meet us.”

  “Didn’t you have no orders?”

  “None, except to take care of the girl till he came. But he did tell me he’d have more to say.”

  Smith gazed blankly from Cleve to Blicky, and then at Gulden, who came slowly forward, his hair ruffed, his gun held low. Joan followed the glance of his great gray eyes, and she saw the stage-driver hanging dead over his seat, and the guards lying back of him. The off-side horse of the leaders lay dead in his traces, with his mate nosing at him.

  “Who’s in there?” boomed Gulden, and he thrust hand and gun in at the stage door. “Come out!”

  The young man stumbled out, hands above his head, pallid and shaking, so weak he could scarcely stand.

  Gulden prodded the bearded miner. “Come out here, you!”

  The man appeared to be hunched forward in a heap.

  “Guess he’s plugged,” said Smith. “But he ain’t cashed. Hear him breathe?… Heaves like a sick hoss.”

  Gulden reached with brawny arm and with one pull he dragged the miner off the seat and out into the road, where he flopped with a groan. There was blood on his neck and hands. Gulden bent over him, tore at his clothes, tore harder at something, and then, with a swing, he held aloft a broad, black belt, sagging heavy with gold.

  “Hah!” he boomed. It was just an exclamation, horrible to hear, but it did not express satisfaction or exultation. He handed the gold-belt to the grinning Budd, and turned to the young man.

  “Got any gold?”

  “No. I—I wasn’t a miner,” replied the youth huskily.

  Gulden felt for a gold-belt, then slapped at his pockets. “Turn round!” ordered the giant.

  “Aw, Gul let him go!” remonstrated Jesse Smith.

  Blicky laid a restraining hand upon Gulden’s broad shoulder.

  “Turn round!” repeated Gulden, without the slightest sign of noticing his colleagues.

  But the youth understood and he turned a ghastly livid hue.

  “For God’s sake—don’t murder me!” he gasped. “I had—nothing—no gold—no gun!”

  Gulden spun him round like a top and pushed him forward. They went half a dozen paces, then the youth staggered, and turning, he fell on his knees.

  “Don’t—kill—me!” he entreated.

  Joan, seeing Jim Cleve stiffen and crouch, thought of him even in that horrible moment; and she gripped his arm with all her might. They must endure.

  The other bandits muttered, but none moved a hand.

  Gulden thrust out the big gun. His hair bristled on his head, and his huge frame seemed instinct with strange vibration, like some object of tremendous weight about to plunge into resistless momentum.

  Even the stricken youth saw his doom. “Let—me—pray!” he begged.

  Joan did not fault, but a merciful unclamping of muscle-bound rigidity closed her eyes.

  “Gul!” yelled Blicky, with passion. “I ain’t a-goin’ to let you kill this kid! There’s no sense in it. We’re spotted back in Alder Creek.… Run, kid! Run!”

  Then Joan opened her eyes to see the surly Gulden’s arm held by Blicky, and the youth running blindly down the road. Joan’s relief and joy were tremendous. But still she answered to the realizing shock of what Gulden had meant to do. She leaned against Cleve, all within and without a whirling darkness of fire. The border wildness claimed her then. She had the spirit, though not the strength, to fight. She needed the sight and sound of other things to restore her equilibrium. She would have welcomed another shock, an injury. And then she was looking down upon the gasping miner. He was dying. Hurriedly Joan knelt beside him to lift his head. At her call Cleve brought a canteen. But the miner could not drink and he died with some word unspoken.

  Dizzily Joan arose, and with Cleve half supporting her she backed off the road to a seat on the bank. She saw the bandits now at business-like action. Blicky and Smith were cutting the horses out of their harness: Beady Jones, like a ghoul, searched the dead men; the three bandits whom Joan knew only by sight were making up a pack; Budd was standing beside the stage with his, expectant grin; and Gulden, with the agility of the gorilla he resembled, was clambering over the top of the stage. Suddenly from under the driver’s seat he hauled a buckskin sack. It was small, but heavy. He threw it down to Budd, almost knocking over that bandit. Budd hugged the sack and yelled like an Indian. The other men whooped and ran toward him.
Gulden hauled out another sack. Hands to the number of a dozen stretched clutchingly. When he threw the sack there was a mad scramble. They fought, but it was only play. They were gleeful. Blicky secured the prize and he held it aloft in triumph. Assuredly he would have waved it had it not been so heavy. Gulden drew out several small sacks, which he provokingly placed on the seat in front of him. The bandits below howled in protest. Then the giant, with his arm under the seat, his huge frame bowed, heaved powerfully upon something, and his face turned red. He halted in his tugging to glare at his bandit comrades below. If his great cavernous eyes expressed any feeling it was analogous to the reluctance manifest in his posture—he regretted the presence of his gang. He would rather have been alone. Then with deep-muttered curse and mighty heave he lifted out a huge buckskin sack, tied and placarded and marked.

  “One hundred pounds!” he boomed.

  It seemed to Joan then that a band of devils surrounded the stage, all roaring at the huge, bristling demon above, who glared and bellowed down at them.

  Finally Gulden stilled the tumult, which, after all, was one of frenzied joy.

  “Share and share alike!” he thundered, now black in the face. “Do you fools want to waste time here on the road, dividing up this gold?”

  “What you say goes,” shouted Budd.

  There was no dissenting voice.

  “What a stake!” ejaculated Blicky. “Gul, the boss had it figgered. Strange, though, he hasn’t showed up!”

  “Where’ll we go?” queried Gulden. “Speak up, you men.”

  The unanimous selection was Cabin Gulch. Plainly Gulden did not like this, but he was just.

  “All right. Cabin Gulch it is. But nobody outside of Kells and us gets a share in this stake.”

  Many willing hands made short work of preparation. Gulden insisted on packing all the gold upon his saddle, and had his will. He seemed obsessed; he never glanced at Joan. It was Jesse Smith who gave the directions and orders. One of the stage-horses was packed. Another, with a blanket for a saddle, was given Cleve to ride. Blicky gallantly gave his horse to Joan, shortened his stirrups to fit her, and then whistled at the ridgy back of the stage-horse he elected to ride. Gulden was in a hurry, and twice he edged off, to be halted by impatient calls. Finally the cavalcade was ready; Jesse Smith gazed around upon the scene with the air of a general overlooking a vanquished enemy.