The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  After supper they got together before the stove and rolled their cigarettes. The cold night wind, with its tang of mountain heights, made the fire most agreeable. Pan spread his palms to the heat.

  “Wal, pard, throw it off your chest before you bust,” advised Blinky shrewdly.

  “What kind of a day did you boys have?” countered Pan with a laugh.

  “Good an’ bad,” replied Gus, while Blinky shook his head. “Some hoss thieves have been runnin’ off our stock. We had some fine hosses, not broke yet. Some we wanted to keep.”

  “What’s the good news?” queried Pan, as Hans hesitated.

  “Pan, I’ll be doggoned if we didn’t see a million broomies today,” burst out Blinky.

  “No. Now, Blink, talk sense,” remonstrated Pan. “You mean you saw a thousand?”

  “Wal, shore a million is stretchin’ it some,” acknowledged the cowboy. “But ten thousand wouldn’t be nothin’. We tracked some of our hosses twenty miles an’ more over heah, farther’n we’d been yet. An’ climbed a high ridge we looked down into the purtiest valley I ever seen. Twice as big as Hot Springs Valley. Gee, it lay there gray an’ green with hosses as thick as greasewood bushes on the desert. Thet valley hasn’t been drove yet. It’s purty rough gettin’ up to where you can see. An’ there’s lots of hosses closer to town. Thet accounts.”

  “Blinky, is this talk of yours a leaf out of Lying Juan’s book?” asked Pan incredulously. “It’s too good to be true.”

  “Pan, I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles,” protested Blinky. “Ask Gus. He seen them.”

  “For onct Blinky ain’t out of his haid,” corroborated Hans. “Never saw so many wild hosses. An’ if we can find a way to ketch some of them we’ll be rich.”

  “Boys, you told me you’d been trapping horses at the water holes,” said Pan.

  “Shore, we’ve been moonshinin’ them,” replied Blinky. “We build a corral round a water hole. Make a wide gate we can shut quick. Then we lay out on moonlight nights waitin’ for ’em to come in to drink. We’ve done purty darn good at it, too.”

  “That’s fun, but it’s a two-bit way to catch wild horses,” rejoined Pan.

  “Wal, they’re all doin’ it thet way. Hardman’s outfit, an’ a couple more besides us. I figgered myself it was purty slow, but no better way come to me. Do you know one?”

  “Do I? Well, I should smile. I know more than one that’ll beat your moonshining. Back on the prairie where it’s all wide and bare there’s no chance for a small outfit. But this is high country, valleys, canyons, cedars. Boys, we can make one big stake before the other outfits get on to us.”

  “By gosh, one’s enough for us,” declared Blinky. “Then we can shake this gold-claim country where they steal your empty tin cans an’ broken shovels.”

  “One haul will do me, too,” agreed Pan. “Then Arizona for me.”

  “Ah-uh!… Pan, how aboot this gurl?”

  Briefly then Pan told his story, and the situation as it looked to him at the moment. The response of these cowboys was what he had expected. He knew them. Warmhearted, simple, elemental, they responded in different ways, but with the same fire. Gus Hans looked his championship while Blinky raved and swore.

  “Then you’re both with me?” asked Pan, tersely. “Mind, it’s no fair deal, my getting your support here for helping you with a wild horse drive.”

  “Fair, hell!” returned Blinky, forcibly. “It ain’t like you to insult cowboys.”

  “I’m begging your pardon,” replied Pan, hastily. “But we’d never been pardners and I hesitated to draw you into a scrap that’ll almost sure go to gun throwing.”

  “Wal, we’re your pardners now, an’ damn proud of it, Panhandle Smith.”

  Silently and grimly they all shook hands on it. Not half a dozen times in his range life had Pan been party to a compact like that.

  “This Blake fellar, now,” began Blinky, as he lighted another cigarette. “What’s your idea of gettin’ him out?”

  “I want a horse, a blanket, some grub and a gun. I’m to take them down to the jail at eleven o’clock.”

  “Huh! Goin’ to hold up the guard?” queried Blinky.

  “That was my intention,” replied Pan, “but I know that fellow Hurd, who’ll be on guard then. I’ll not have to hold him up.”

  “Hurd? I know him. Hard nut, but I think he’s square.”

  “Reckon Hurd will lose his job,” said Pan reflectively. “If he does, let’s take him with us on the wild horse deal.”

  “Suits me. An’ he’ll shore love thet job. Hurd hasn’t any use for Matthews.”

  “Blinky, do you know another man we can hire or get to throw in with us? We’ve got five now counting my dad, and we’ll need at least six.”

  “Why so many? It’ll cut out profits.”

  “No, it’ll increase them. One good rider means a great deal to us.”

  “Then let’s get thet miner, Charley Brown.”

  “But he’s working a gold claim.”

  “Wal, if I know anythin’ he’ll not be workin’ it any longer than findin’ blue dirt. Gus an’ me seen Jard Hardman with two men ridin’ out thet way this mawnin’.”

  “Ah!… So Hardman is here now.—We’ll hunt up Brown and see what he says. Suppose we walk downtown now.”

  “All right, but let me get a hoss up for Blake,” replied Blinky. “Gus, you find thet old saddle of mine, an’ a blanket. There’s an old canvas saddlebag an’ water bottle heah somewheres. Ask Juan. An’ get him to pack the grub.”

  The night of the sabbath was no barrier to the habitués of the Yellow Mine. But early in the evening it was not yet in full swing. The dance was on with a few heavy-footed miners and their gaudy partners, and several of the gambling tables were surrounded.

  Pan stalked about alone. His new-found cowboy friends had been instructed to follow him unobtrusively. Pan did not wish to give an impression that he had taken up with allies. He was looking for Charley Brown, but he had a keen roving eye for every man in sight. It was doubtful if Hardman or Matthews could have espied Pan first, unless they were hidden somewhere. He took up a position, presently, behind one of the poker games, with his back to the wall, so that he had command of the room. A stiff game was in progress, which Pan watched casually. Blinky and Gus lounged around, with apparently no more aim than other idle drinking visitors of the place.

  Gradually more men came in, the gaming tables filled up, and the white-armed girls appeared to mingle with the guests.

  Pan espied the girl Louise before she had become aware of his presence. She appeared to be more decently clad, a circumstance that greatly added to her charm, in his opinion. Curiously he studied her. Women represented more to Pan than to most men he had had opportunity to meet or observe. He never forgot that they belonged to the same sex as his mother. So it was natural he had compassion for this unsexed dance-hall, gambling-lure girl. She was pretty in a wild sort of way, dissolute, abandoned, yet not in any sense weak. A terrible havoc showed in her face for anyone with eyes to see beneath the surface. Pan noted a strange restlessness in her that at first he imagined was the seeking instinct of women of her class. But it was only that she could not sit or stand still. Her hawklike eyes did not miss anyone there, and finally they located him. She came around the tables up to Pan, and took hold of his arm.

  “Howdy, Handsome,” she said, smiling up at him.

  Pan doffed his sombrero and bade her good evening.

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “It irritates me.”

  “But, Louise, I can’t break a habit just to please you,” he replied smiling.

  “You could stay out of here. Didn’t I warn you not to come back?

  “Yes, but I thought you were only fooling. Besides I had to come.”

  “Why? You don’t fit here. You’ve got too clean a look.”

  Pan gazed down at her, feeling in her words and presence something that prompted him to more than kindliness and good nature.
/>   “Louise, I can return the compliment. You don’t fit here.”

  “Damn you!” she flashed. “I’ll fall in love with you.”

  “Well, if you did, I’d sure drag you out of this hell,” replied Pan, bluntly.

  “Come away from these gamblers,” she demanded, and drew him from behind the circle to seats at an empty table. “I won’t ask you to drink or dance. But I’m curious. I’ve been hearing about you.”

  “That so? Who told you?”

  “I overheard Dick Hardman tonight, just before supper. He has a room next to mine in the hotel here, when he stays in town. He was telling his father about you. Such cussing I never heard. I’m giving you a hunch. They’ll do away with you.”

  “Thanks. Reckon it’s pretty fine of you to put me on my guard.”

  “I only meant behind your back.—What has Dick against you?”

  “We were kids together back in Texas. Just natural rivals and enemies. But I hadn’t seen him for years till last night. Then he didn’t know me.”

  “He knows you now all right. He ran into you today?”

  “I reckon he did,” replied Pan, with a grim laugh.

  “Panhandle, this is getting sort of warm,” she said, leaning across the table to him. “I’m not prying into your affairs. But I could be your friend. God knows I like a man.”

  “That’s the second compliment you’ve paid me tonight. What’re you up to, Louise?”

  “See here, cowboy, when I pay any two-legged hombre compliments you can gamble they are sincere.”

  “All right, no offense meant.”

  “Do you resent my curiosity?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got you figured right when I say you’re in trouble. You’re looking for someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it,” she retorted, snapping her fingers. “And that’s Hardman and his outfit…I didn’t hear all Dick said. When he talked loud he cussed. But I heard enough to tie up Panhandle Smith with this girl Lucy and the Hardman outfit.”

  Pan eyed her steadily. She was encroaching upon sacred ground. But her feeling was genuine, and undoubtedly she had some connection with a situation which began to look complex. The same instinct that operated so often with Pan in his relation to men of the open now subtly prompted him. Regardless of circumstances he knew when to grasp an opportunity.

  “Louise, you show that you’d risk taking a chance on me—a stranger,” he replied, with quick decision. “I return that compliment.”

  The smile she gave him was really a reward. It gave him a glimpse of the depths of her.

  “Who’s this girl, Lucy?” she queried.

  “She’s my sweetheart, ever since we were kids,” returned Pan with emotion. “I went to riding the ranges, and well, like so many cowboys, I didn’t go back home. When I did go Lucy was gone, my family was gone. I trailed them here—to find that Dick Hardman was about to force Lucy to marry him.”

  “The —— —— ——!” she burst out. Then after her excitement cooled: “How’d he aim to force her?”

  Quickly Pan explained the situation as related to Jim Blake.

  “Aha! Easy to savvy. That’s where Jard Hardman and Matthews come in.… Panhandle, they’re a dirty outfit—and the dirtiest of them is Dick Hardman!”

  “What’s he to you, Louise?” inquired Pan gravely. “You’ll excuse me if I say I can’t see you in love with him.”

  “In love with Dick Hardman?” she whispered, hotly. “My God! I wouldn’t soil even my hands on him—if I didn’t have to.… He met me in Frisco. He brought me to this damned stinking rough hole. He made me promises he never kept. Not to marry me. Don’t get the wrong hunch. He has double-crossed me. And I had to sink to this!… Drunk? Yes, sure I was drunk. Don’t you understand I have to be drunk to stand this life? I’m not drunk now because you got here early.… Something deep must be behind my meeting you, Panhandle Smith.”

  “I hope to heaven it will be to your good—as I know meeting you will be to mine,” replied Pan fervently.

  “We’re off the track,” she broke in, and Pan imagined he saw a deeper red under her artificial color. “I despise Dick Hardman. He’s stingy, conceited, selfish. He’s low down, and he’s sinking to worse.”

  “His father ruined mine,” Pan told her. “That’s what brought Dad out here—to try to get something back from Jard Hardman. No use. He only got another hard deal.”

  “That cowboy who was in here with you last night—Blinky Moran. His claim was jumped by Hardman.”

  “Louise, how’d you know that?” asked Pan in surprise.

  “Don’t give me away. Blinky told me. He’s one of my friends and he’s a white man if I ever saw one.… He has been in love with me. Wanted me to marry him! Poor crazy boy! I sure had to fight—and get drunker—to keep from more than liking him. He spent all his money on me and I had to make him quit.”

  “Well, that little bow-legged cowboy liar! He’s as deep as the sea.”

  “Keep it secret, Panhandle,” she responded seriously. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.… To get back to the Hardmans. They’ve taken strong hold here. The old man owns half of Marco. He’s in everything. But it’s my hunch I’m giving you—that he’s in the straight deals only to cover the crooked ones. That’s where the money is.”

  “Yet Jard Hardman will not square up with Dad!” exclaimed Pan.

  “Now tell me why you come into the Yellow Mine. Is it to court trouble? You’re taking an awful chance. Every night or so some tipsy miner gets robbed or knifed, or shot.”

  “Louise, in dealing with men of really dangerous quality your only chance is to face them with precisely the same thing. As for the four-flushers like Matthews and men of the Hardman stamp, the one thing they can’t stand is nerve. They haven’t got it. They don’t understand it. They fear it. It works on their consciousness. They begin to figure on what the nervy man means to do before they do anything.… If I did not show myself in the street, and here, the Hardman outfit would soon run true to their deals. So by appearing to invite and seek a fight I really avoid one.”

  “So that’s why they call you Panhandle Smith?” queried the girl, meditatively. “I mean with the tone old man Hardman used. They call me Angel. But that doesn’t mean what it sounds, does it?”

  “I can’t figure you, Louise,” replied Pan dubiously.

  “I’m glad you can’t.… Hello, there’s Blinky and his pard Gus. What’re they up to?”

  “They are looking pretty hard, but it can’t be for you and me. They saw us long ago.”

  “There! Hardman and Matthews, coming from behind the bar. There’s a private office in behind. You can see the door.… Panhandle, let me tell you Hardman seldom shows up here.”

  Pan leisurely got to his feet. His eye quickly caught Matthews’ black sombrero, then the big ham of a face, with its drooping mustache. Pan could not see anyone with him until they got out from behind the crowded bar. Then Pan perceived that Matthews’ companion was a stout man, bearded, dressed like a prosperous rancher.

  “Louise, is that man with Matthews the gentleman we have been discussing?” asked Pan.

  “That’s the rich fat bloated —— —— ——,” replied the girl with eyes like a hawk. “You don’t talk straight, Panhandle.”

  “I’m not quite so free as you are with bad language,” replied Pan, smiling down on her. Then with deft movement he hitched his belt round farther forward on his hip. It was careless, it might have been accidental, but it was neither. And the girl grasped its meaning. She turned white under her paint, and the eyes that searched Pan were just then like any other woman’s.

  “Cowboy, what’re you going to do?” she whispered, reaching for him.

  “I don’t know exactly. You can never tell how actions are going to be taken. But I mean well.”

  “Stop!” she called low after him. “You smiling devil!”

  Pan moved leisurely in among the tables toward the bar and the two
men standing rather apart from the crowd. He maneuvered so that Matthews’ roving glance fell upon him. Then Pan advanced straight. He saw the sheriff start, then speak hurriedly to Hardman.

  Pan halted within six feet of both men. He might never have seen Jard Hardman so far as any recognition was concerned. He faced a man of about fifty years of age, rather florid of complexion, well fed and used to strong drink.

  “Excuse me,” spoke Pan, with most consummate coolness, addressing the shorter man. Apparently he did not see Matthews. “Are you Jard Hardman?”

  “Reckon I am, if that’s any of your business,” came a gruff reply. Light, hard, speculative eyes took Pan in from head to feet.

  “Do you recognize me?” asked Pan, in the same tone.

  “No, Sir, I never saw you in my life,” retorted Hardman, his bearded chin working up and down with the vehemence of his speech. And he turned away.

  Pan made a step. His long arm shot out, and his hand, striking hard Ml Hardman’s shoulder, whirled him round.

  “My name’s Smith,” called Pan, in vibrant loud voice that stilled the room. “Panhandle Smith!”

  “I don’t know you, Sir,” replied Hardman, aghast and amazed. He began to redden. He turned to Matthews, as if in wonder that this individual permitted him to be thus affronted.

  “Well, you knew my dad—to his loss,” declared Pan. “And that’s my business with you.”

  “You’ve no business with me,” fumed Hardman.

  “Reckon you’re mistaken,” went on Pan, slowly and easily. “I’m Bill Smith’s boy. And I mean to have an accounting with you on that Texas cattle deal.”

  These deliberate words, heard by all within earshot, caused little less than a deadlock throughout the room. The bartenders quit, the drinkers poised glasses in the air, the voices suddenly hushed. Pan had an open space behind him, a fact he was responsible for. He faced Matthews, Hardman, and then the length of the bar. He left the gamblers behind to Blinky and Gus, who stood to one side. Pan had invited an argument with the owner of the Yellow Mine and his sheriff ally. Every westerner in the room understood its meaning.

  “You upstart cowpuncher!” presently shouted Hardman. “Get out of here or I’ll have you arrested.”