by Zane Grey
“Who put you on that trail?” she asked, piercingly.
“Jack, hyar. He found it fust, an’ rode to Kremmlin’ fer me.”
“Jack! Jack Bellounds!” she cried, bursting into wild and furious laughter. Like a tigress she leaped at Jack as if to tear him to pieces. “You put the sheriff on that trail! You accuse Wilson Moore of stealing dad’s cattle!”
“Yes, and I proved it,” replied Jack, hoarsely.
“You! You proved it? So that’s your revenge?… But you’re to reckon with me, Jack Bellounds! You villain! You devil! You—” Suddenly she shrank back with a strong shudder. She gasped. Her face grew ghastly white. “Oh, my God!…horrible—unspeakable!”… She covered her face with her hands, and every muscle of her seemed to contract until she was stiff. Then her hands shot out to Moore.
“Wilson Moore, what have you to say—to this sheriff—to Jack Bellounds—to me?”
Moore bent upon her a gaze that must have pierced her soul, so like it was to a lightning flash of love and meaning and eloquence.
“Collie, they’ve got the proof. I’ll take my medicine.… Your dad is good. He’ll be easy on me!”
“You lie!” she whispered. “And I will tell why you lie!”
Moore did not show the shame and guilt that should have been natural with his confession. But he showed an agony of distress. His hand sought Wade and dragged at him.
It did not need this mute appeal to tell Wade that in another moment Columbine would have flung the shameful truth into the face of Jack Bellounds. She was rising to that. She was terrible and beautiful to see.
“Collie,” said Wade, with that voice he knew had strange power over her, with a clasp of her outflung hand, “no more! This is a man’s game. It’s not for a woman to judge. Not here! It’s Wils’s game—an’ it’s mine. I’m his friend. Whatever his trouble or guilt, I take it on my shoulders. An’ it will be as if it were not!”
Moaning and wringing her hands, Columbine staggered with the burden of the struggle in her.
“I’m quite—quite mad—or dreaming. Oh, Ben!” she cried.
“Brace up, Collie. It’s sure hard. Wils, your friend and playmate so many years—it’s hard to believe! We all understand, Collie. Now you go in, an’ don’t listen to any more or look any more.”
He led her down the porch to the door of her room, and as he pushed it open he whispered, “I will save you, Collie, an’ Wils, an’ the old man you call dad!”
Then he returned to the silent group in the yard.
“Jim, if I answer fer Wils Moore bein’ in Kremmlin’ the day you say, will you leave him with me?”
“Wal, I shore will, Wade,” replied Burley, heartily.
“I object to that,” interposed Jack Bellounds, stridently. “He confessed. He’s got to go to jail.”
“Wal, my hot-tempered young fellar, thar ain’t any jail nearer ’n Denver. Did you know that?” returned Burley, with his dry, grim humor. “Moore’s under arrest. An’ he’ll be as well off hyar with Wade as with me in Kremmlin’, an’ a damn sight happier.”
The cowboy had mounted, and Wade walked beside him as he started homeward. They had not progressed far when Wade’s keen ears caught the words, “Say, Bellounds, I got it figgered thet you an’ your son don’t savvy this fellar Wade.”
“Wal, I reckon not,” replied the old rancher.
And his son let out a peal of laughter, bitter and scornful and unsatisfied.
CHAPTER XVII
Gore Peak was the highest point of the black range that extended for miles westward from Buffalo Park. It was a rounded dome, covered with timber and visible as a landmark from the surrounding country. All along the eastern slope of that range an unbroken forest of spruce and pine spread down to the edge of the valley. This valley narrowed toward its source, which was Buffalo Park. A few well-beaten trails crossed that country, one following Red Brook down to Kremmling; another crossing from the Park to White Slides; and another going over the divide down to Elgeria. The only well-known trail leading to Gore Peak was a branch-off from the valley, and it went round to the south and more accessible side of the mountain.
All that immense slope of timbered ridges, benches, ravines, and swales west of Buffalo Park was exceedingly wild and rough country. Here the buffalo took to cover from hunters, and were safe until they ventured forth into the parks again. Elk and deer and bear made this forest their home.
Bent Wade, hunter now for bigger game than wild beasts of the range, left his horse at Lewis’s cabin and penetrated the dense forest alone, like a deer-stalker or an Indian in his movements. Lewis had acted as scout for Wade, and had ridden furiously down to Sage Valley with news of the rustlers. Wade had accompanied him back to Buffalo Park that night, riding in the dark. There were urgent reasons for speed. Jack Bellounds had ridden to Kremmling, and the hunter did not believe he would return by the road he had taken.
Fox, Wade’s favorite dog, much to his disgust, was left behind with Lewis. The bloodhound, Kane, accompanied Wade. Kane had been ill-treated and then beaten by Jack Bellounds, and he had left White Slides to take up his home at Moore’s cabin. And at last he had seemed to reconcile himself to the hunter, not with love, but without distrust. Kane never forgave; but he recognized his friend and master. Wade carried his rifle and a buckskin pouch containing meat and bread. His belt, heavily studded with shells, contained two guns, both now worn in plain sight, with the one on the right side hanging low. Wade’s character seemed to have undergone some remarkable change, yet what he represented then was not unfamiliar.
He headed for the concealed cabin on the edge of the high valley, under the black brow of Gore Peak. It was early morning of a July day, with summer fresh and new to the forest. Along the park edges the birds and squirrels were holding carnival. The grass was crisp and bediamonded with sparkling frost. Tracks of game showed sharp in the white patches. Wade paused once, listening. Ah! That most beautiful of forest melodies for him—the bugle of an elk. Clear, resonant, penetrating, with these qualities held and blended by a note of wildness, it rang thrillingly through all Wade’s being. The hound listened, but was not interested. He kept close beside the hunter or at his heels, a stealthily stepping, warily glancing hound, not scenting the four-footed denizens of the forest. He expected his master to put him on the trail of men.
The distance from the Park to Gore Peak, as a crow would have flown, was not great. But Wade progressed slowly; he kept to the dense parts of the forest; he avoided the open aisles, the swales, the glades, the high ridges, the rocky ground. When he came to the Elgeria trail he was not disappointed to find it smooth, untrodden by any recent travel. Half a mile farther on through the forest, however, he encountered tracks of three horses, made early the day before. Still farther on he found cattle and horse tracks, now growing old and dim. These tracks, pointed toward Elgeria, were like words of a printed page to Wade.
About noon he climbed a rocky eminence that jutted out from a slow-descending ridge, and from this vantage-point he saw down the wavering black and green bosom of the mountain slope. A narrow valley, almost hidden, gleamed yellow in the sunlight. At the edge of this valley a faint column of blue smoke curled upward.
“Ahuh!” muttered the hunter, as he looked. The hound whined and pushed a cool nose into Wade’s hand.
Then Wade resumed his noiseless and stealthy course through the woods. He began a descent, leading off somewhat to the right of the point where the smoke had arisen. The presence of the rustlers in the cabin was of importance, yet not so paramount as another possibility. He expected Jack Bellounds to be with them or meet them there, and that was the thing he wanted to ascertain. When he got down below the little valley he swung around to the left to cross the trail that came up from the main valley, some miles still farther down. He found it, and was not surprised to see fresh horse tracks, made that morning. He recognized those tracks. Jack Bellounds was with the rustlers, come, no doubt, to receive his pay.
Then
the change in Wade, and the actions of a trailer of men, became more singularly manifest. He reverted to some former habit of mind and body. He was as slow as a shadow, absolutely silent, and the gaze that roved ahead and all around must have taken note of every living thing, of every moving leaf or fern or bough. The hound, with hair curling up stiff on his back, stayed close to Wade, watching, listening, and stepping with him. Certainly Wade expected the rustlers to have someone of their number doing duty as an outlook. So he kept uphill, above the cabin, and made his careful way through the thicket coverts, which at that place were dense and matted clumps of jack-pine and spruce. At last he could see the cabin and the narrow, grassy valley just beyond. To his relief the horses were unsaddled and grazing. No man was in sight. But there might be a dog. The hunter, in his slow advance, used keen and unrelaxing vigilance, and at length he decided that if there had been a dog he would have been tied outside to give an alarm.
Wade had now reached his objective point. He was some eighty paces from the cabin, in line with an open aisle down which he could see into the cleared space before the door. On his left were thick, small spruces, with low-spreading branches, and they extended all the way to the cabin on that side, and in fact screened two walls of it. Wade knew exactly what he was going to do. No longer did he hesitate. Laying down his rifle, he tied the hound to a little spruce, patting him and whispering for him to stay there and be still.
Then Wade’s action in looking to his belt-guns was that of a man who expected to have recourse to them speedily and by whom the necessity was neither regretted nor feared. Stooping low, he entered the thicket of spruces. The soft, spruce-matted ground, devoid of brush or twig, did not give forth the slightest sound of step, nor did the brushing of the branches against his body. In some cases he had to bend the boughs. Thus, swiftly and silently, with the gliding steps of an Indian, he approached the cabin till the brown-barked logs loomed before him, shutting off the clearer light.
He smelled a mingling of wood and tobacco smoke; he heard low, deep voices of men; the shuffling and patting of cards; the musical click of gold. Resting on his knees a moment the hunter deliberated. All was exactly as he had expected. Luck favored him. These gamblers would be absorbed in their game. The door of the cabin was just around the corner, and he could glide noiselessly to it or gain it in a few leaps. Either method would serve. But which he must try depended upon the position of the men inside and that of their weapons.
Rising silently, Wade stepped up to the wall and peeped through a chink between the logs. The sunshine streamed through windows and door. Jack Bellounds sat on the ground, full in its light, back to the wall. He was in his shirt-sleeves. The gambling fever and the grievous soreness of a loser shone upon his pale face. Smith sat with back to Wade, opposite Bellounds. The other men completed the square. All were close enough together to reach comfortably for the cards and gold before them. Wade’s keen eyes took this in at a single glance, and then steadied searchingly for smaller features of the scene. Bellounds had no weapon. Smith’s belt and gun lay in the sunlight on the hard, clay floor, out of reach except by violent effort. The other two rustlers both wore their weapons. Wade gave a long scrutiny to the faces of these comrades of Smith, and evidently satisfied himself as to what he had to expect from them.
Wade hesitated; then stooping low, he softly swept aside the intervening boughs of spruce, glided out of the thicket into the open. Two noiseless bounds! Another, and he was inside the door!
“Howdy, rustlers! Don’t move!” he called.
The surprise of his appearance, or his voice, or both, stunned the four men. Bellounds dropped his cards, and his jaw dropped at the same instant. These were absolutely the only visible movements.
“I’m in talkin’ humor, an’ the longer you listen the longer you’ll have to live,” said Wade. “But don’t move!”
“We ain’t movin’,” burst out Smith. “Who’re you, an’ what d’ye want?”
It was singular that the rustler leader had not had a look at Wade, whose movements had been swift and who now stood directly behind him. Also it was obvious that Smith was sitting very stiff-necked and straight. Not improbably he had encountered such situations before.
“Who’re you?” he shouted, hoarsely.
“You ought to know me.” The voice was Wade’s, gentle, cold, with depth and ring in it.
“I’ve heerd your voice somewhars—I’ll gamble on thet.”
“Sure. You ought to recognize my voice, Cap,” returned Wade.
The rustler gave a violent start—a start that he controlled instantly.
“Cap! You callin’ me thet?”
“Sure. We’re old friends—Cap Folsom!”
In the silence, then, the rustler’s hard breathing could be heard; his neck bulged red; only the eyes of his two comrades moved; Bellounds began to recover somewhat from his consternation. Fear had clamped him also, but not fear of personal harm or peril. His mind had not yet awakened to that.
“You’ve got me pat! But who’re you?” said Folsom, huskily.
Wade kept silent.
“Who’n hell is thet man?” yelled the rustler It was not a query to his comrades any more than to the four winds. It was a furious questioning of a memory that stirred and haunted, and as well a passionate and fearful denial.
“His name’s Wade,” put in Bellounds, harshly. “He’s the friend of Wils Moore. He’s the hunter I told you about—worked for my father last winter.”
“Wade?… What? Wade! You never told me his name. It ain’t—it ain’t—”
“Yes, it is, Cap,” interrupted Wade. “It’s the old boy that spoiled your handsome mug—long ago.”
“Hell-Bent Wade!” gasped Folsom, in terrible accents. He shook all over. An ashen paleness crept into his face. Instinctively his right hand jerked toward his gun; then, as in his former motion, froze in the very act.
“Careful, Cap!” warned Wade. “It’d be a shame not to hear me talk a little.… Turn around now an’ greet an old pard of the Gunnison days.”
Folsom turned as if a resistless, heavy force was revolving his head.
“By Gawd!… Wade!” he ejaculated. The tone of his voice, the light in his eyes, must have been a spiritual acceptance of a dreadful and irrefutable fact—perhaps the proximity of death. But he was no coward. Despite the hunter’s order, given as he stood there, gun drawn and ready, Folsom wheeled back again, savagely to throw the deck of cards in Bellounds’s face. He cursed horribly.… “You spoiled brat of a rich rancher! Why’n hell didn’t you tell me thet varmint-hunter was Wade.”
“I did tell you,” shouted Bellounds, flaming of face.
“You’re a liar! You never said Wade—W-a-d-e, right out, so I’d hear it. An’ I’d never passed by Hell-Bent Wade.”
“Aw, that name made me tired,” replied Bellounds, contemptuously.
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” bawled the rustler. “Made you tired, hey? Think you’re funny? Wal, if you knowed how many men thet name’s made tired—an’ tired fer keeps—you’d not think it so damn funny.”
“Say, what’re you giving me? That Sheriff Burley tried to tell me and dad a lot of rot about this Wade. Why, he’s only a little, bow-legged, big-nosed meddler—a man with a woman’s voice—a sneaking cook and camp-doctor and cow-milker, and God only knows what else.”
“Boy, you’re correct. God only knows what else!… It’s the else you’ve got to learn. An’ I’ll gamble you’ll learn it.… Wade, have you changed or grown old thet you let a pup like this yap such talk?”
“Well, Cap, he’s very amusin’ just now, an’ I want you-all to enjoy him. Because, if you don’t force my hand I’m goin’ to tell you some interestin’ stuff about this Buster Jack.… Now, will you be quiet an’ listen—an’ answer for your pards?”
“Wade, I answer fer no man. But, so far as I’ve noticed, my pards ain’t hankerin’ to make any loud noise,” Folsom replied, indicating his comrades, with sarcasm.
The red-beard
ed one, a man of large frame and gaunt face, wicked and wild-looking, spoke out, “Say, Smith, or whatever the hell’s yore right handle—is this hyar a game we’re playin’?”
“I reckon. An’ if you turn a trick you’ll be damn lucky,” growled Folsom.
The other rustler did not speak. He was small, swarthy-faced, with sloe-black eyes and matted hair, evidently a white man with Mexican blood. Keen, strung, furtive, he kept motionless, awaiting events.
“Buster Jack, these new pards of yours are low-down rustlers, an’ one of them’s worse, as I could prove,” said Wade, “but compared with you they’re all gentlemen.”
Bellounds leered. But he was losing his bravado. Something began to dawn upon his obtuse consciousness.
“What do I care for you or your gabby talk?” he flashed, sullenly.
“You’ll care when I tell these rustlers how you double-crossed them.”
Bellounds made a spring, like that of a wolf in a trap; but when half-way up he slipped. The rustler on his right kicked him, and he sprawled down again, back to the wall.
“Buster, look into this!” called Wade, and he leveled the gun that quivered momentarily, like a compass needle, and then crashed fire and smoke. The bullet spat into a log. But it had cut the lobe of Bellounds’s ear, bringing blood. His face turned a ghastly, livid hue. All in a second terror possessed him—shuddering, primitive terror of death.
Folsom haw-hawed derisively and in crude delight. “Say, Buster Jack, don’t get any idee thet my ole pard Wade was shootin’ at your head. Aw, no!”
The other rustlers understood then, if Bellounds had not, that the situation was in control of a man not in any sense ordinary.
“Cap, did you know Buster Jack accused my friend, Wils Moore, of stealin’ these cattle you’re sellin’?” asked Wade, deliberately.
“What cattle did you say?” asked the rustler, as if he had not heard aright.
“The cattle Buster Jack stole from his father an’ sold to you.”
“Wal, now! Bent Wade at his old tricks! I might have knowed it, once I seen you.… Naw, I’d no idee Bellounds blamed thet stealin’ on to anyone.”
