“One!” Epstein called.
Again, the hiss and blast. The man was a fancy performer. All bite, sting, welt, but no tearing and shredding of the flesh; nor that feeling of having one’s ribs collapsed and one’s breath knocked out as though forever, the way the army’s “cat” did the job for a chronic trouble maker.
“Two!” Epstein announced.
What followed perplexed Barlow. A man cried out in pain and bewilderment. “Don’t move!” Epstein commanded. “It is loaded.”
Then the peddler was beside Barlow. A knife flashed, and the haft was thrust into his liberated hand. When he turned about, he understood: Epstein, whip in one hand, and an enormous Smith & Wesson .44 in the other, stood there like a lion tamer. He commanded the close packed crescent of spectators. He had bunched them up with his neat handling of the whip—and he had with his third blow slashed Swift’s gun hand instead of Barlow’s back.
Epstein made the whip ripple like a living snake. The Colt he had torn from Swift’s grip engaged in the lash. Epstein drew the weapon right up to his feet.
“Take it, Pete,” he said. “Two heads are better than one.” Then, to the sod-buster, “Instead of the other thirty-eight lashes, it gives exile instead. We are going to Red Fork, faster than an ox.”
Barlow quickly reached to the ground and scooped up the gun.
CHAPTER VI
Gold for Dead Men
The following day, Epstein parked his cart at a tiny spring far off the emigrant route. “We got no oxen to graze,” he explained, “so it gives a shortcut to Red Fork for a one man covered wagon.”
Barlow, having taken his turn, was ready to drop. Pushing a cart took skill as well as beef. “Be damned!” he muttered, as he helped make camp. “How do you stand up to it?” And then, as they hunkered down to bake sourdough with chunks of bacon in it, he went on, “I hate like snakes to run out this way on Sally.”
“There you are wrong. This gives her time to get good and sore at Mr. Swift. People always get sore at what is closest to them. And when we get to Red Fork first, you and I pick out the best homesteads for you and her. Maybe I even stake one in my own name, even if I won’t work it. A fellow is crazy, killing himself with farming!”
They tramped on, each day’s march covering half as much again as even a well managed ox train. Looking back from a high crest, could see not even the dust of the emigrants.
Toward noon, four dusty riders hailed them. They were leather faced, unshaven, and heavily armed. They had the wary eyes of scouts, which was what they proved to be. They were trailing horse thieves, and they’d get and forthwith hang them, if they had to go all the way to Mexico to do it. Satisfied that neither Barlow nor Epstein had information, they spoke of doings far west, in the Red Fork country.
“Some bad Injuns snuck off the reservation,” the spokesman said. “Raising sand with emigrant trains, freighters, and such like. But now the army’s patrolling the route and probably driving the varmints off this way. You all better watch your hair.”
With that, the four rode on. Ahead, barren ridges loomed up. The way, though clear, became harder. There were stretches of black lava flow. It had thin spots which concealed blowholes big enough to swallow a wagon. More and more, this shortcut became country which demanded a good piece of knowing. Long windrows of tumbled fragments looked as if hundreds of cars of coal had been dumped. The trail wound in and out among these.
“Over there,” Epstein announced, near sundown, “it gives a basin your hat can hide. If you don’t know where it is, you go thirsty for a whole day.”
When they rounded a ridge, they saw that two men had already made camp near a tiny basin which had scarcely a trace of green growth to betray its presence. The pair had burros. Prospecting gear made up most of the packs laid out on the ground. Epstein hailed them, and in a moment, the bearded desert rats were plying the newcomers with questions.
Grover and Phelan they called themselves, and they were gold-drunk. They had to talk. Any audience would do. They showed ore specimens. “Rich as all git out,” they babbled. “From the Muleshoe Mountains, yonder.” Grover handed Barlow a chunk. “Scads of it! A ring-tailed heller of a lode. Free milling ore—”
The threads and flakes of wheat colored metal spoke for themselves. This had not the glitter of fool’s gold; it had the mellowness of the real article. “Looks good, Saul,” Barlow observed, and handed him the specimen. “Too bad it isn’t pushcart country over yonder.”
Phelan cried out, “The devil it ain’t! This canyon here, this draw betwixt the lava, it leads right into the Muleshoe Canyon, and that’s lousy with float.”
Epstein’s hand and voice shook as he surrendered the sample. “It gives a town there before you know it. Eye, wye, wye! I can get a load of bargains in Yuma and come back in time for the first business. Come now, Pete, we got no time to lose!”
The prospectors stared. “Gosh, man, you loco? Figuring on trading when you can stake a claim?”
“We’re running short of grub,” Barlow contended.
Epstein filled the canteens. “It gives another hour of daylight, hurry up, Pete, no time to lose.”
Once they were on their way, Barlow said, “I got your play so strong I could taste it. What was wrong with the outfit?”
“With those fellows, something smells. I been in plenty camps. Some prospecting men don’t talk even to burros, some talk like magpies and drunks. But there ain’t any ore like that in these parts. And that ain’t the only lie they told. Some of the fresh sign is horses. And the burros’ hoofs and the men’s boots don’t look right for the kind of country they say they been working.”
Once darkness fell, they camped in a swale. It was not until after supper that Barlow’s uneasiness came to a point, and he said, abruptly, “Saul, a fake gold strike would be enough to drive sodbusters crazy as coots, particularly with a fellow like Swift. He’d get his crowd to head this way, a far piece from the route the army is watching.”
Epstein let out a long breath. “I been waiting to see if you caught on by yourself. What do we do?”
“I aim to sneak back for a look-see and listen. Find out what those jiggers are really thinking. If there is sure enough dirty work, I’ll risk going back to warn Horace Parker, and take my chances on what I get.”
“What do I do?”
“I’d admire to meet anyone who ever figured out what you are fixing to do!”
“Most of the time I don’t know it myself until I do it,” Epstein admitted. “But better I wait to see how it goes with you.”
Barlow accordingly set out along the back-trail. The silhouette of the lava ridge against the stars guided him. He did not slow down until he could smell the mesquite root fire of the prospectors. Wind whine and the incessant spatter of driven sand made a curtain of sound to mask his approach. The subdued glow of embers warned him that he was within sight of his goal. On working his way closer, he decided that the pair had decamped.
The ash filming the coals suggested that the two had left soon after he and Epstein had moved on. He wondered if they had aimed to bushwhack him and Saul. While this was an uncomfortable thought, he realized that his companion would hardly be caught napping. “Having us go yonder, instead of on our way,” he reasoned, “couldn’t do ’em a bit of good unless they knew we’d meet someone up the draw who’d keep us from coming back.”
The moon’s first glow was reaching into the draw whose general direction was toward the distant Muleshoe Mountains. He worked his way along an earth bottom which before long began to dip from its first steady rise. As he rounded a bend, he smelled horses and tobacco. There were men lounging about a small fire in a sheltered alcove.
The dim light gave him glimpses of hobbled horses. There seemed to be no lookouts. There was no reason for any, in this corner of desolation. Thinking of the four scouts who hunted horse thieves, Barlow asked him
self whether these he now saw were the crowd the quartet had been looking for.
As the fire flared up, he saw many more horses, further up the draw, than the men in sight could possibly need. And then he recognized Horace Parker’s mare. Alezan stood out like a torch light procession among the bangtails and scrubs of the remuda. The man who had bushwhacked Barlow in the pass outside of Kearneyville was now sitting in on a game involving fake prospectors and a fake gold strike. There was far more to this than Barlow could possibly figure for the moment.
One thing however was certain: he had to recapture Alezan. Doing so would not only cancel a debt, but would lend weight to his words when he rejoined the wagon train and outlined his suspicions to Horace Parker.
He considered half a dozen plans which would have a chance if he went back to get Epstein. He ended by rejecting them all. It took only one man to steal a horse. He remained in hiding, shifting at times when moonlight invaded the shadows of the rocks which sheltered him. He watched the strangers spread their blankets. And he kept his eye on Alezan…
* * * *
The approach was infinitely harder than the act. He was shaky, sweating, and dry-mouthed when he left, leading the mare and shouldering saddle gear. He had fed her rock candy and ginger snaps during the week she was stabled in Kearneyville, and she remembered him. She made no disturbance at all on being taken from her companions.
Once Barlow told Epstein what he had done and learned, he muffled Alezan’s hoofs with pieces of blanket. The peddler said, “Don’t worry about me. Lots of times, I have walked by moonlight. And if someone trails you to this camp, they won’t go further after me. Not even Epstein can carry a horse in a pushcart.”
“When’ll I be seeing you?”
“Maybe at Red Fork. Maybe somewhere else. If I knew, wouldn’t I say so?”
When, after hard riding, Barlow finally saw the dust of the emigrant train, it was, as he had feared, far off the guarded route, and making for the shortcut which he and Epstein had taken. He came down from the ridge; which ran parallel to the train’s direction, and rode so as to approach it from the rear. He overtook the caravan when halted for a rest.
Despite the dust which masked him, the men Barlow accosted recognized him, but were too astonished for speech.
“Where’s Parker?” he demanded. “Where’s Swift?”
Mounted as well as armed, Barlow carried more weight than he had as a bullwhacker; and that in a large measure he controlled the fate of all these people added something to his presence. The man he addressed lost countenance, and instead of saying, “Try looking for them!” he answered, “Up toward the head, last time I seen him.”
He wore his gun strapped low. He tested the way it sat in the holster. Whatever happened, they’d not catch him off guard again. When he recognized the captain among a group waiting their turn at a water barrel, he reined in, and deliberately eyed them until one looked up as though he had felt the impact of the stare. Barlow saw the expression of recognition, but ignored the man, and said, “Mr. Parker, I am here to pay a debt. If you can control these knuckleheads of yours, I’ll dismount and give you your horse.
“If you can not keep them in order, I’ll be riding on, while you’re busy tending to some burials you’ll be having on your hands. I’d like to hear your choice, sir.”
Parker whirled. “Pete! Where did you come from? By George, that is Alezan!” He came, forward, hand extended. “If there’s any trouble, the horse is yours for keeps. Get down, I’m glad to see you!”
Voice and handclasp made it plain that Parker spoke from the heart. At least half the others were embarrassed, rather than angry at seeing the man they had intended to flog within an inch of his life. Women were drawing nearer, but holding their distance.
Dismounting, Barlow flashed a glance that sought Sally, but he saw only Laura, whose eyes widened in the shade of her bonnet.
“Sound, and none the worse,” Barlow said, slapping the mare’s shoulder. “But what’s the idea, being so far off the track?”
Parker looked embarrassed, and fingered his beard. “Prospectors with rich ore. We voted to—”
“The hell you voted! You mean Swift’s loud mouth and a handful of hotheads hounded the rest of you into it. I bet you’ve got ore specimens they gave you.”
“Yes,” Parker answered, and sounded nettled. “Here it is.”
One of the men growled, “Gun or no gun, you can’t run—”
Barlow turned on the man. “Reach, or shut up! I remember your loud mouth at my trial.” Then, addressing all: “That gold strike is a fake. Get back on the track quick as you can. The army is patrolling it. Indians and renegades are on the prowl. You’re being baited into a trap, somewhere ahead, where you’ll be easy meat.”
Parker interposed, “Calm down, all of you! Swift is out scouting, beyond the next ridge. Barlow, I’m beholden to you for coming back with my mare, but that does not entitle you to throw the entire party into an uproar. You others, you listen to me—you are not going to bring up the difficulty Barlow had with Frazer. He’s recovered, and that business is at an end. Now go about your own business, all of you.”
Barlow, seeing their expressions as they obeyed, was sure that Parker’s leadership was not strong enough to enforce more than a temporary and partial obedience. “Where’s Sally?” he asked the captain. “If it weren’t for her, and my debt to you, I’d’ve let the whole kit and caboodle of you go to hell and the quicker, the better!”
Parker smiled indulgently. “No, Pete, you would not. Quite aside from the women and children who’d suffer, you would not let your anger keep you from warning us. Sally’s riding in Higgins’ wagon, up toward the head of the train. It’s been wearisome walking. Even the oxen are footsore.”
Unthinking, Barlow led Alezan with him, and Parker let him. It was as though both men sensed that he might need a horse at hand if gold crazed emigrants flared up against his story. Barlow found Sally nested among the household goods in the wagon.
“Oh, Pete!” she cried, as he vaulted over the tailgate and with one swoop caught her in his arms. “Darling, I knew you were all right with Saul, but I was worried—I felt terrible, not going with you, then and there.”
“You hush up, honey. Three couldn’t’ve made it.”
“I was silly, all upset about—well, it didn’t occur to me that maybe you hadn’t been able to do anything about it, the way she came out there, that night.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t kicking and screaming.” And after that honest admission, he told her what he and Epstein had learned, and what they suspected.
When she had heard it all, Sally said, “You’re right. Kirby did all he could to start that gold rush that none of the older heads wanted. Though we’d not learned of Indians on the loose. Kirby threatened to divide the company, and pull out with all his friends. That was what made Mr. Barker give in.”
“This time,” Barlow declared, “the party does divide if it has to, even if only you and me have sense enough to keep off any shortcut to hell.” He cocked his head. “That’s Kirby they’re hailing now. He’s come back from scouting out the pass, I bet.”
Barlow moved over to clear the tail gate. Sally caught him by the arm. “There’ll be trouble for sure, Pete. Wait for things to cool down,” she pleaded. “I know you’re not afraid of him. It’s just that he may be more sensible if he doesn’t have to face you.”
“He’ll know I’m back.”
“But that’s not the same as facing you and getting riled and feeling that he has to show off, then and there.”
Barlow shrugged. “He’ll keep, all right.”
Sally tugged at the edge of the wagon cover, so that they could peep out and toward the head of the halted train. Swift and another who trailed after him rode down the line. The two dismounted to talk to Parker, who had succeeded in getting the others back to their chore of ch
ecking up on the rawhide shoes they had laced about the hoofs of the oxen.
“Good camp over the ridge,” Swift was reporting. “Plenty water and forage.”
And then Swift’s companion came into Barlow’s field of vision. With a quick move, he broke away from Sally. “There’s a man I want to talk to, and right now! What’s he doing here?”
“Oh, that’s one of a posse looking for horse thieves. He joined us about the time prospectors met us.”
“Whatever his go-by is this time,” Barlow told her, “that’s Jed Lathrop, the stinker that tried to have me jailed in Kearneyville.”
He cleared the tailgate, and taking Alezan by the curb chains, he led off for the three who discussed the road ahead.
CHAPTER VII
Epstein Does It With Mirrors
Anger and triumph made Barlow light headed and reckless, so that he spoke, instead of drawing to shoot it out on sight. Lathrop recognized the mare before he did Barlow. His first glimpse of Alezan prodded him to action. He was slapping leather before Barlow had fairly challenged him. His haste, however, made him fumble. Lathrop’s first shot went wild.
Barlow made up for lost time. He did better, though not well enough. His pistol blast came a split second after Lathrop, but instead of drilling him dead center, he raked the man’s forearm for half its length, and knocked dust from his shirt. Lathrop tried to shift the weapon to his left hand, but missed, and it dropped to the ground. Barlow, cheated of his chance to finish the fellow, closed in to pistol-whip him to shreds.
Parker, who had been blocking Swift’s sight of Barlow, leaped clear. Swift reached for his gun and shouted. Barlow whirled, and before the segundo’s weapon could clear leather.
“Hold it!” Barlow warned.
From behind him came a scream. Alezan bolted. A woman flung herself against Barlow, snatching his arm. She hung her weight from him, tangling her legs with his until he staggered off balance and came near lurching to his knees. It was Laura, the red headed trouble maker. She cried; “Don’t you dare, you dirty son! You—”
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