The 8th Western Novel

by Dean Owen

  “Can’t draw her into a death trap,” Gary thought, and his head slowly sank. “Can’t let her pay for—for my mistake. I bargained for this. I stayed here. If it has to be—for me… But that damned Siwash won’t shoot her down. He’d do it without blinking an eye, the devil!”

  As he waited through the slow-dragging minutes, it came home to him that he had indeed found out whether Hugh Ludlow’s ultimatum had been a bluff or not! Hugh had meant that warning; meant it to the hilt. The man must be half crazed about Leda and the cache of gold. In sending a bush-sneak to kill a personal enemy, with no grounds save jealousy, he had taken a fearful risk. Under pressure he was going morally to pieces, was stooping to murder, to have his way. For all his money and education and social eminence, in his trampling on the rights and lives of other people he was not unlike that old killer of Little Saghelia, the brutal Chilcote Rusk…

  In the nerve-racking silence he heard, or thought he heard, a faint scratching noise somewhere along the rim-rock and not far away. Pressing his ear against the cold stone, he listened intently, and heard the noise a bit more clearly. What it was, where it was coming from, what it meant, he could not guess.

  Though his senses were reeling and he was still groggy from pain, he began flexing his arms and legs, trying feebly to get ready for Skunk-Bear’s next move and stave off whatever brand of death the Indian was about to launch.

  He had no hope. He felt himself doomed. His terrible physical helplessness was the worst of it. His arms were limp and useless, his shoulders numbed. If a hundred rifles, loaded and cocked, were lying beside him, he could not lift one and squeeze a trigger at the Siwash.

  The faint scratchy noise stopped. In the dead silence he heard the swish and rustle of fern fronds, not above him, but on the ledge itself.

  Through a crook in his arm he looked around, looked out along the narrow shelf, and saw the Indian.

  With a long-shafted knife in his hand, the man was cautiously stalking nearer, his glinting eyes fixed upon his wounded and helpless enemy. Somewhere along the cliff he had found a place where he could clamber down; and now he was walking up to tumble the stricken white man off the ledge and send him hurtling to the rocks one hundred and seventy feet below.

  For all the fright and panic of those moments, Gary understood at last why the Indian had not shot him. Hugh Ludlow had ordered that there should be no shooting. Afraid of the law, young Ludlow had ordered the Indian to disguise the killing in such a way that Rhodes or the devil himself would have no evidence of murder. With superlative cunning from first to last, Skunk-Bear was carrying out those instructions. This death would seem altogether an accident—a stumble and fatal fall from a high dangerous trail. The signs of that figure-4 trap could all be smoothed out; there would be no tag or wisp of court-sure evidence; nothing but a broken and lifeless body lying at the foot of a cliff.

  It seemed bitterly ironic to Gary that after coming through that man-hunt storm, after outwitting the Police of several provinces and successfully running a gantlet of two thousand miles, he should meet death at the hands of a degraded bush-slinker like this Skunk-Bear.

  Motionless and quiet, except for drawing his legs up a little, he watched through the crook of his arm and let the Indian come on. He knew that Skunk-Bear would have to come close and take hold of him to tumble him over the rock; and he gathered all his feeble strength and tensed every nerve in his aching body for one desperate effort to save himself. The ledge was narrow, the footing precarious. If Skunk-Bear came close enough and bent down…

  Step by cautious step, the Indian drew near, crouching a little, his dark face like a mask of stone, and only his beady eyes alive. Almost over Gary, he stopped and looked down at the white man, alert against any trickery or sudden move. But he was reassured by Gary’s hoarse breathing and blood-smeared face and that telltale limpness of arms and shoulders; and at last he stooped down, slowly, to seize Gary’s foot.

  With his back braced against the rock, Gary lashed at him with both feet, suddenly, an unexpected smash, with all the power of his body behind it. Through the last minute, the longest minute of his life, he had known that this one smash would be all he would get, his one hope against death; and into the thrust he put everything he had of steadiness and coolness and strength. It was a swifter and harder thrust than he believed he could muster up.

  His feet caught the crouching Indian squarely in the stomach. With a yell of surprise, a yell that changed to terror as he lost his balance, Skunk-Bear toppled backwards, grabbing frantically at the bracken fronds. On the lip of the ledge he hung poised for an instant, his right hand clutching a big bracken, his left hand clawing futilely at the bare rock—till the bracken snapped and he shot out of sight, cart-wheeling down that hundred and seventy foot drop to the jagged boulders of the slope.

  Minutes after he had heard the heavy th-uu-dd below the cliff, Gary raised himself on an elbow, cursing the pain when he drew breath; and started calling.

  It was safe now to call. Safe for Leda to come up the mountainside and help him. Skunk-Bear had laid his last ambush.

  Because of the roaring in his ears, he could hardly hear his own voice as he called Leda’s name. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he shouted twice, and then paused, listening to his shouts drift down the slope, and watching the cabin.

  At his third call he saw a tiny far-away figure coming out of the cabin and run over to the meadow edge and stand stock-still, listening, trying to locate him.

  He shouted once more. “Lee-da… Here… Bring rope—with you.”…

  As he saw Leda fly back to the cabin and then come running up the mountain slope, he sank back, fighting oblivion again, praying that he could hold out till his girl partner got there.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  With a great show of unconcern about her, Leda crossed the river bridge and started up the sidewalk into Saghelia, with Jinny ambling along at her heels.

  Beneath her air of indifference she was trembling with uncertainty and fears. This visit, she knew, was going to be a critical day in her life. What sort of reception would Saghelia give her? If the talk about her had not died down in the three months since she had fled to old Nat’s cabin, it never would. If her summer of lonely exile back in the mountains had not shamed people and given the lie to those whispered slanders, then nothing she could ever say or do would change the town’s opinion of her.

  She had come in to Saghelia only because she had been forced to—for food and other necessities. Gary was not quite well enough yet to come; old Nat had foolishly stayed out all day in a cold drenching rain and given his “rhoo-maticks” a chance at him; and so the trip had fallen to her.

  Besides the prosaic food items, Leda intended to do a little personal shopping. She had suddenly grown conscious that her clothes, which she had not bothered her head about all summer, were very old and unbecoming. She had set her heart on a new dress and slippers to wear of evenings at the cabin, and on a dozen smaller purchases, if her money held out.

  In the past two weeks all the time which she could spare from nursing Gary had been spent down at the diggings, tom-rocking, with a picture of the Miranda Shoppe, its frocks, wall mirrors and shaded lights, putting strength into her tired arms.

  As she went up the sidewalk, her impressions of the town, after a three-month absence, surprised her own self. The place was so dreary and dingy—and dead. For all its noises and stir, it seemed as dead as the gray lifeless waters of Big Saghelia, surging under the bridge.

  With a whole wide mountain valley to spread out in, the town had gathered itself tightly around the business section and those ore mills, as unthinkingly as iron filings around a magnet, without parks or playgrounds, with no room for gardens or lawns around the homes.

  But it was the dreariness of the town that oppressed her the worst. Scrawny shade trees, few birds or flowers, no vistas of greenery, no tang of pine on the breeze,
the streets dusty under the hot August sun, the steady inescapable scrunch and rumble of the mills, and coal soot everywhere. Even the garrulous sparrows were several shades darker than natural from the soot.

  At the first business corner a small group of loiterers were watching a steam shovel at an excavation job. To pass them was a real gantlet with Leda. Most of them knew her, at least as “Mamie Barton’s girl”; and several of them had been schoolmates of hers. She affected to pay no attention but surreptitiously she watched them closely.

  As she went by, they nudged one another, turned, stared at her and grinned; and two or three of them passed remarks.

  The noise of the shovel kept Leda from hearing what was said, and she was not dead-positive but what they might be grinning as much at Jinny as at herself—the usual condescension of townspeople toward prospectors or anybody in from the mountains. But no one gave her a friendly nod or word. No one wanted to appear acquainted with her. Even Buddy Lerrick, who used to get into fights for her with the school crowd, would not give her a nod of recognition.

  With her secret hopes badly shaken by this omen, she hurried past.

  The spectacle of those men watching a monotonous steam shovel with such a curious mixture of fascination and boredom reminded her, forcefully, of something Gary had said to her last evening, in the moon-shadows of a balsam. “Lee, this silly gossip is largely a result of the fact that those people down there haven’t got much else to do. I mean, they haven’t any wholesome adventure or zest or excitement in their lives. That’s a pretty dreadful lack. It isn’t human nature to be caged up, any more than with a bird or animal.”

  She suddenly understood, now, the deep truth which Gary had been driving at. These people were bored. Their lives did lack wholesome activities and outlets. From sheer want of anything better, they watched steam shovels, seized on gossip with a kick to it; and she knew two youngsters of that group who were taking up with petty crime, because it had a thrill for them.

  At the next corner she unexpectedly ran into Sergeant Rhodes. He had taken a stray little métis tot, one of Alec Bergelot’s children, in tow, and calmed it with a peppermint stick and was waiting for Alec or Regina Bergelot to show.

  With a friendliness that he rarely exhibited toward anybody, the gray-eyed officer touched his hat to her, courteously. “How’d you do, Leda.”

  Coming from him, Leda thought, that was a very loquacious speech. Though she wanted to linger a moment and talk, she was trembling afraid of him, because of Gary; and she merely, returned his greeting and started on.

  “May I inquire how the cave hunting is coming along?” Rhodes asked, and Leda had to stop, willy-nilly.

  “Why, we haven’t found the cache yet,” she answered, trying to meet that gray searching gaze with no betraying uneasiness. “But Gary has reasoned out the general location of that old camp—I mean, where it ought to have been; and I think he’s correct. In a couple of days we’re going to start searching from this new angle.”

  Rhodes eyed her, toying with his swagger stick. “Well, I wish you a pleasant hunt,” he remarked.

  Despite herself, Leda flushed and looked away. There were overtones in that word “pleasant.” Plainly Rhodes was aware, somehow, that a good deal of water had flowed under the bridge, between her and Gary.

  If he knew this, then surely he did not know who Gary was. Surely he could not stand there and regard her so calmly and impassively, if he knew that one of these days he would come up to the cabin and take Gary away.

  “I hear,” Rhodes said, “that your friend met with an accident, Leda.”

  “Yes, he did. He was pretty seriously hurt, and was out for two whole weeks. But he came through all right, and in a day or two more he’ll be entirely well.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Why, uh,” Leda explained, caught unprepared, “he had a bad slip and fall from a rock.”

  Rhodes merely looked at her, silent, inscrutable; but Leda knew that he did not believe her faltering explanation. His searching gaze frightened her badly. Not until that moment did she fully realize that Gary had killed a person and that this might have disastrous consequences for him. He had killed Skunk-Bear in dire self-defense, and he could probably clear himself of murder guilt; but any investigation or trial would bare his identity, would be fatal to him.

  How did Rhodes know anything about this “accident”? Who had told him? Hugh Ludlow? Did Hugh suspect that Gary was a wanted man?…

  As she excused herself and hurried on up the sidewalk, she noticed that three more of the Ludlow shafts against the south range had closed down—mute sign that old Hugh Ludlow was in most desperate financial straits.

  At first thought she was glad. All his life old Hugh had been wolfish and cruel to others, and it was about time for him to get a dose of his own medicine. He deserved to lose every mine, mill and stick of timber he owned. He himself had started this ruthless war; and it’d be a good thing if Marl Casper crowded him to the wall—and over it!

  But these shafts closing down one after another, like lights going out; and this whole Casper-Ludlow struggle, rushing swiftly toward its inevitable explosion—all this was going to have repercussions for her and Gary. Young Hugh couldn’t stave off his decision much longer. He’d have to act. Maybe he was acting, already! Under pressure from his dad and goaded by this threat that the whole Ludlow fortune would crash in bankruptcy, maybe he had some unpredictable move on foot which she and Gary knew nothing about.

  She came to Lafe Nottingham’s general store. With Jinny waiting complacently on the sidewalk, she hurried inside, glad to escape the stares and offensive remarks of a little group across the street.

  She had hoped to find the store empty; but three timber cruisers, several children and half a dozen women customers were there, making their Saturday purchases. At her entrance the talk broke off abruptly, the women gave her a long hostile stare, then glanced knowingly at one another; and in a frigid silence they went on with their buying.

  Defiant and yet miserable, Leda edged over into an inconspicuous corner and waited, trying hard to keep the women from seeing that their holier-than-thou attitude affected her at all.

  She thought it significant and ominous, like a weather vane in a strong wind, that Lafe Nottingham should give her merely a hasty glance and nod, without speaking. In the years past, “Uncle Lafe” had done her many a kindness, had comforted her with candy and encouraging words at times when things were particularly black. Secretly he was her good friend still, but with those women customers present he did not dare appear friendly.

  “He knows what’s being said about me,” Leda thought. “It must be pretty dreadful if he won’t even say ‘Good morning’ in public.”

  In her misery, as she felt the eyes of those eight or nine people upon her, she wished she were back in the sheltering haven of Gary’s strong understanding comradeship. To run the three-block gantlet on to the Miranda Shoppe, through stares and jeering remarks, and then endure more frozen silence and possibly a worse scene even than this—nothing but her longing for the dress and slippers and all, nerved her to the ordeal.

  Hoping that maybe she had just happened to meet the very worst of her critics so far, she waited till the customers were gone, then moved over to the counter and produced her two goose-quills full of dust.

  “How much is this worth, Uncle Lafe?”

  Nottingham took his gold scales from their glass cage, poured the precious dust into the ivory pan, weighed it, pretended to inspect it carefully through a hand lens.

  “Why, I figure it a mite over twenty dollars, Leda. Say, twenty and a quarter. That all right?”

  Leda nodded. She knew that “Uncle Lafe” was giving her several dollars too much, just as he used to give her candy and oranges when she was the town’s waif. She hated to take the extra money; it was perilously close to charity; but she pocketed her pride, with
a mental vow to repay him at her first chance. After squaring for old Nat’s previous bill and today’s purchase, her funds would be woefully short for all the things she needed at the Miranda.

  As he was putting up her grocery list, Nottingham remarked: “I hear rumors that you’ve acquired yourself a real close friend, Leda. No, now, don’t fly off the handle and sass me. You know how I mean it. I wouldn’t blame you for liking him. I saw him that day he had the fight with Hugh Ludlow.”

  “But I don’t like him!” Leda denied vehemently. “You don’t understand. We’re just good friends.”

  “Hmmm. That’s too bad. After all the first-class hating you’ve had to do, it’d be a good idea if you did like somebody. ’Specially if he’d put you in his coat pocket and take you a thousand miles away from Saghelia. Doesn’t he like you, then?”

  “No! I tell you, we’re just friends. Why, he doesn’t even seem to know I’m a girl at all! He treats me exactly like a—a partner.”

  “Hmmm! He must be blinder’n a bat,” Nottingham commented. He finished getting up her list, wrapped the packages securely in burlap, leaned his elbows on the counter and asked, confidentially, “Say, Leda, isn’t Hugh Ludlow putting up a terrific kick about this Gary staying up there at the cabin with you?”

  Leda merely nodded. The Skunk-Bear incident was so dangerous, so full of dynamite for Gary, that she refused to say a word about it to anyone.

  “Well,” Nottingham advised, “Gary had better watch his step close, Leda. Those men in Hugh’s party don’t average very high in some respects. A couple of ’em ’ud plug a man for a mus’rat pelt, and the others aren’t much better. Gary’s a cheechako, while they’re bush-lopers from ’way back.”