by Dean Owen
After they had glanced around at the sleeping pokes and table and array of old guns, Eutrope turned the sharp beam of his flash on the box across the cave.
“Dat’s it, over dere,” he grunted, keeping close to Hugh. Filled with dark superstitious fears, the ’breed seemed less in dread of the living, just then, than of those men long dead. And for that Hugh was glad. As long as the two of them were in this ghostly place and the métis had need of human company, he was not likely to try any sudden trick.
They moved over to the table, and Hugh lit the candles on it, as Gary had done. The strange shadows and haunted air of the old den, on top of the demoralizing blows of the last two days, had made his own nerves shaky; and the lights helped him keep hold of himself.
As the candles flared up, he saw the skeleton on the floor, and it sent a shudder through him, though Eutrope had told him about it beforehand. The crossed arms, the rusty chains, the grinning skull, resurrected in his mind a host of stories about treasures guarded by dead men and about the doom which would strike down any one who touched a hoard so guarded. Now he himself was violating that taboo and inviting the curse of the dead.
With an oath at his overwrought imaginings, he strode up and kicked the skeleton, to reassure his own self and impress the trembling Eutrope.
“Stop dat you!” the métis blared at him, his teeth chattering. “Ain’ you got more sense’n to keeck a dead man? Now dat feller’ll h’ont you all your life!”
Hugh laughed harshly. “Let him ‘h’ont’! Who cares? Shake yourself together and come on.”
He stepped across to the box and lifted the lid.
Inside the box, nearly half filling it, he saw a mass of dull yellow, and unlike yellow sand and dust and tiny pebbles. A part of the gold had been poured in helter-skelter, like so much yellow grain of a bloody harvesting; but most of the plunder had been stored there in the original pokes, taken from those victims on old Paradise Trail. The canvas pouches were still entire, but the leather ones had dried and cracked under the pressure of their heavy bulging contents; and the gold was trickling out of them.
In one corner of the box he caught the cold blue gleam of a diamond and saw several other odds and ends of jewelry.
At his first glance at the hoard he was terrifically disappointed by its smallness. Eutrope had described it to him, and he had estimated its value roughly; but still he could not quite realize that there lay five hundred thousand dollars.
He reached down and took hold of a poke, a smaller one, no larger than a saucer. Its heaviness startled him, despite his experience with raw gold from the Ludlow mines. It was heavier than a granite boulder several times its size, and he saw he and Eutrope could not lift the box off the floor.
As he hefted the sack, the old leather broke open, a shower of dust and nuggets splashed out, and he was left holding the empty burst pouch.
“Why, hell,” he swore, with a jerky laugh, “that’s our Gary—a busted poke! I’m taking his cache, and he doesn’t even know it. And if I play my cards right, he won’t ever find it out! He won’t live that long!”
For a little time, oblivious of Eutrope, of the black night outside, of all the crime and human tragedy which had gone into the garnering of this plunder, he stared down at the gleaming yellow hoard. He was used to money, to thinking in big sums, but the hard physical actuality of five hundred thousand dollars set his imagination afire. Half a million! His fortune! His own money. To do with as he pleased. Live where he pleased. Let Marl Casper take over the Ludlow mills and mines and limits, now! Let Mona get out of Saghelia and go back to the Riviera, if she wanted to! He’d be getting out of this jerk-water country himself—and he’d go further than the Riviera! And he’d be taking Leda Barton along with him! She’d go, all right. She’d have nothing of Gary but a memory, and that was a weak reed against the luxury half a million could bring her…
Eutrope spoke up. “We’d better be yanking dis gol’ out and caching it in de lake. Moi, I don’ wan’ dat Gary walking in here, by gar! He’d cache us, dat feller would!”
Hugh shook off the spell of the gold. “All right, let’s get busy. Bring the bags, and we’ll ladle this stuff into ’em.” Eying him warily, the ’breed sidled up, glanced into the box, looked thirstily at the dust and nuggets, then raised his eyes to his companion. The peculiar glint in his stare frightened Hugh; and the hair-trigger tautness of the ’breed warned him that the fellow might explode at any instant. Glaringly plain, the big métis was thinking that now, when he had taken the white man to the cache, he stood in imminent danger of getting killed and flung into one of these side caves, along with the other useless gear.
As they stared at each other, the ’breed’s hand unconsciously dropped to his belt, and felt of the ax and loosened the sinister little weapon in its sheath.
Surreptitiously, as he walked over to the table for a tin mug to scoop up the gold, Hugh reached into his slicker pocket, touched the automatic nestling there, shifted it so that it lay ready for a quick grab, and slipped the trigger safety on red.
* * * *
Working swiftly, they poured the gold into the eight double-canvas bags; tied the bags together two by two for easier carrying; and toted them, four at a trip, down the corridor and slippery tunnel, through the overfalls and across the shingle to a thicket of deerbrush.
When all the gold was safely out of the cave, they rested a few minutes; then toted the bags up slope to the lake.
All this took far longer, in the rain and dark, than Hugh had reckoned on; and it was near midnight when he flung the last bag down at the edge of the deep black water.
He was wet to the skin, despite the slicker, and tired from the unaccustomed work; and three solid hours of constant alertness against Eutrope had strained his nerves to the breaking point. But for all that, a wild elation burned in him. He had carried his plan through without a slip; and in a few minutes more the Rusk plunder would be cached once again, in a place even more undiscoverable than where it had lain for nearly four generations.
“And it’s mine now!” he thought, over and over. “It belongs to the person that’s got it, and I’ve got it!”
As he and Eutrope were trussing the bags up with short lengths of rope, a vague but startling idea jigged across his mind. All evening he had been trying to think of some dead-certain way to blot Gary out. Now he believed that he had it—a plan which would keep himself clear of any murder charge and yet obliterate Gary like a rock avalanche.
Suppose that tomorrow he should take these men of his up to the cave, show them where the cache had been, fire them to fever pitch over the half a million—and then tell them that Gary had snatched the fortune away from them and hidden it somewhere else. What would they do?
“Hell,” he thought, imagining their hot-blooded fury, “I wouldn’t have to do anything but stand back and watch! They’d do the rest! They’d slip up to that shack, the bunch of ’em, and overpower him, and try to make him say where that gold is. If he wouldn’t tell, they’d make a memory out of him quickly! And he couldn’t tell! He doesn’t know!”
With his eyes on the glittering knife in Eutrope’s hand as the ’breed slashed the rope, he thought out the plan in a little greater detail. Those two previous attempts—Skunk-Bear’s and the other night—had been wavering and indecisive, but not this scheme. It was a stark and forthright plan, as deadly as a stick of dynamite with short fuse. This time he would not be sending one man against Gary or ordering him brought in alive. Whatever their faults, those men at camp were vicious fighters. Against the pack of them Gary wouldn’t have a chance in a thousand.
But in spite of the deadliness of the scheme and its complete safety to himself, he could not quite make up his mind to launch it. It was a little too stark and explosive. When he told those men about the cache, he would be loosing forces which he could not control afterward.
Using a double strand o
f rope so that they could pull it back up each time, he and Eutrope lowered the heavy canvas sacks one by one into the lake.
The night was pitch-dark, stormy; the rain was falling in a gusty downpour; the wind had risen and was moaning dismally through the pines. Eutrope’s flash, snapped on, was lying upon a near-by rock, lighting up their work; but Hugh had dropped his own flash into his pocket to avoid any unnecessary twinkling. The chances that anybody was abroad in the wild upper valley at this midnight hour were next to nothing; but even so he was taking no risks.
The thought occurred to him, as the last poke sank into the water, that it would be easy, the work of a few minutes, to plug this big ’breed and weigh him with rocks and tumble him into the lake. The temptation clamored at him. No more danger of having to split this fortune, and no danger that Eutrope would go whispering things to Rhodes.
And by charging Eutrope’s death to Gary, he could inflame those men with a personal vengeance and further his own plan!
But he could not quite nerve himself to draw his automatic and shoot. If he failed to kill Eutrope instantly, the métis would brain him with the ax. Besides, it was one thing to order a man killed, and an abysmally different thing to do the job with one’s own hand.
With a suddenness that caught him unawares, the decision was forced upon him. In the space of two seconds all the mistrust of the last several hours, all the mutual suspicion between him and Eutrope, came to its inevitable end.
As the ’breed was pulling up the rope from the last sack, Hugh stepped back and reached into his pocket for his flash, meaning to help smooth out any signs and then get away.
Before he could draw the flash from his pocket, he saw the métis straighten up with a jerk, and heard an animalish snarl from the man. The ’breed’s hand dropped to his belt and whipped out the little ax.
In the split-second as the ’breed’s arm arched back for a swing, Hugh realized that his innocent act of reaching into his pocket had been a spark to the métis fear of him. All evening the man’s suspicion and fears had steadily mounted, till his nerves were shot and now his control had snapped.
“Stop it!” Hugh cried at him. “I wasn’t reaching for a gun—”
He bit the words off short. As the ’breed leaped at him and struck, Hugh flung himself aside, escaping by inches the swishing blow of the ax.
In his maddened lunge and miss, Eutrope stumbled and fell to his knees. Hugh jerked out his automatic; and as Eutrope sprang to his feet again, flashing a long-bladed skinning knife, Hugh whipped his gun up and shot point-blank, pouring a blast of bullets into the métis.
The flashlight, knocked down as Eutrope sprawled forward, fell to the rock and went out. In the storm-torn darkness Hugh heard a choking gasp, the thud of a body falling heavily, and a short convulsive thrashing. Then quiet, with only the funereal moan of wind in the pines, and the whispered lap-lapping of black waters…
Long after he had weighted the body and rolled it into the lake. Hugh sat huddled on the boulder fighting panic, fighting to pull himself together and go back to camp and face those men with his story.
It occurred to him, as he sat there shaky and unnerved, that once again a dead man would guard the hoard of that old bandit pack. The curse which he had thought about in the cave had materialized; and only by a miracle of luck had it missed him and taken Eutrope.
And he saw, in spite of his quaking fears, that now he would have to carry through his plan against Gary, whether he wanted to or not. He had gone too far to draw back or even hesitate. Eutrope’s vanishing would have to be explained, and he himself would have to do that, for the ’breed had left the camp with him. If those men ever suspected the truth about this death or suspected that he knew where the gold was, they would gang him and kill him without qualm or scruple. He could no longer hope to hold back the avalanche of their vengeance and gold lust and ungovernable fury. He would have to shunt that avalanche away from himself and upon the man in the cabin down valley.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
For the hundredth time that day, Leda moved over to the door and looked out at the woods and mountain slope.
“I wish something would happen.” She stamped her foot in distraction. “Anything!”
“You’ll probably get your wish,” Gary prophesied. He was sitting at the table, cleaning their pistol and rifle. “And it’ll be plenty when it does come. Today looks to me like the calm before the storm.” He glanced up at Leda. “Girl, you don’t know when a lead bumblebee might come singing out of those balsams. If you don’t get away from that open door and stay away, I’ll—I’ll—”
“Oh, those men aren’t even around here today. And besides, they don’t want me. You know that.” She came across the table and gazed thoughtfully at the handful of battered rifle bullets which she and Gary had picked out of the cabin logs. “I wish I knew what to make of that shooting last night. Can you figure it, Gary?”
He shook his head in a puzzled way. From dusk last evening till long after midnight, some enemy had skulked in the surrounding woods, shooting at the cabin. A strange perplexing attack. The man had not ventured close, had not even cared much whether he hit the cabin or not, for a lot of his bullets had splaated harmlessly through the trees.
“If I had to guess, Lee,” he said, “I’d say that for some reason or other Hugh wanted to throw a scare into us and make us hug this cabin. If that’s so, and if he expects me to sit around and twiddle my thumbs till he gets his dynamite all laid and ready to touch off—well, he’s got another think coming. As soon as it’s dark enough, I’m fading out of here and ankling down to Saghelia. You and Dad will be safer without me than with me. I’m a lightning drawer.
“Down there in town I’ll tell Rhodes about this whole business, and I’ll get us some help to lift the cache. It’d be plain suicide for you and me to go after that gold ourselves. I’ll get three or four good men like Alec Bergelot, and by tomorrow we’ll have ourselves half a million bucks, Lee!”
Leda’s eyes lighted up at mention of the fortune. “Did we really and truly find that gold, Gary! I just can’t quite believe it. Five hundred thousand dollars, up there waiting for us—it seems like something I dreamed about.”
“I feel sort of that way myself. But gosh, girl, we haven’t had a chance to do any dreaming—with us getting shot at all night. See here, Lee, why don’t you give in and go over there to the bunk and catch some sleep?”
“It wouldn’t be a bit of use trying, Gary.” She took the cleaning rod from his hands and sat down on his lap, leaning her tired head against his shoulder. “We’ve got so many troubles hanging over us I couldn’t sleep one wink.”
Gary smoothed back her auburn hair and closed her eyes with a kiss. “All right, then, just lie quiet and snag a bit of rest.” As she nestled against him, her hand clasping his, he looked down and smiled. “Comfortable?”
“Awf’ly”—a sleepy whisper, without opening her eyes. “But don’t let Dads come in and catch me like this Gary?”
“Okay. I’ll watch.”
Through the open door he looked out at the trail to Saghelia and at the balsam drogue, dark and forbidding in the gloom of late afternoon. The rain had stopped, but the lowering sky and the pall of clouds scudding across the mountains promised another storm that evening, worse than the rain and heavy wind of last night.
“That’ll be all right with me,” he thought, visioning his lonely ten-mile gantlet in to town. “If it’s raining pitchforks and blowing like sixty, I won’t be so apt to meet anybody behind a boulder or a pile of windfall.”
At the far meadow edge old Nat was cutting wood—sawing away listlessly at a dead jackpine and talking to Jinny, who was scratching herself against the saw-horse. Restless and moody, old Higgens had cleared out of the cabin early that morning and had come back in only for a few minutes at noon.
“You know, Lee,” Gary said quietly, “the sooner
Dad is by himself here, the better. Look how he’s stewing around out there. He doesn’t realize what’s wrong, but it’s as plain to me as that biggest freckle on your nose. He’s so used to living alone that he simply can’t stand to have people around. If my trouble with the law ever smooths out, you and I’ll pitch off and hunt our own roost.”
Leda stirred slightly but made no answer.
“Did you notice,” Gary went on, “how completely floored he was yesterday when we told him about finding the cache and showed him the dust in our knapsack? It positively crushed him. That search has been his whole existence for twenty-five years, and he’s pretty old to take up something new. Last evening he said to me. ‘This Chilcote gold was the purtiest thing to hunt fer on the whole Pacific Coast, and now you two have went and sp’iled it!’”
Still no answer from Leda. Gary looked down at the girl in his arms, and a slow smile came to his lips.
“So!” he muttered. “‘It wasn’t a bit of use,’ and you ‘Couldn’t possibly sleep one wink’—and in three shakes you’re dead to the world!”
He waited a few minutes longer, till he felt Leda’s hand slowly relax and heard the quiet even breathing of a person plunged into deep slumber. Then, very gently, he carried her to the bunk, spread a blanket over her.
As he bent down, fixing the pillow more comfortably, he was immensely glad, for Leda’s sake, about that yellow hoard up valley. “You’ll have more pretty clothes, girl,” he whispered, “than you ever dreamed of. Tomorrow you can throw away your moccasins and patched corduroy dresses and old bear-scratched packets, and buy a whole Miranda Shoppe all for your own self! Wouldn’t you like to see the look on Hugh Ludlow’s face, Lee, when he finds out that you and I grabbed off that half a million?”
Back at the table, he finished oiling the rifle and loaded three extra clips, to have them handy.
As he was hanging the gun on its wall peg, he caught a glimpse of a man, in the timber beyond the meadow, striding up the trail toward the cabin.
