Robber's Roost (1989)

by Grey, Zane

  "I had," whispered Jim, feelingly.

  "That accounts."

  "It did not keep me from--"

  Suddenly she stiffened, no doubt at the slight sound that had checked Jim's speech. She put a hand over his lips and stared at him with wide, vague eyes.

  Over her shoulder, Jim's eye was arrested by a glint of starlight upon a bright object on the ground. Above and behind it a shape, darker than the dark background, gradually took the outline of a man on hands and knees. Cold terror assailed Jim Wall, despite his iron nerve. That was Hays crawling upon them with a gun in his hand. A bursting tide of blood through Jim's veins paralleled the lightning flash of his thoughts. Death for both of them was terribly close. His gun was under his pillow. Helen knelt between him and the robber. A move of even the slightest kind would be fatal. Cunning must take precedence of action. He swerved his rigid gaze from the humped black form to Helen's face. It was white as marble in moonlight. Her eyes showed the tremendous strain under which she labored. In that instant she could almost read his very thoughts. Her fingers still crossed his lips and they had begun to tremble.

  "IT'S HAYS," he whispered, scarcely audibly. "FOLLOW ME--NOW."

  Then, exerting all his will to speak naturally, he said aloud:

  "No, Miss Herrick, I'm sorry, but I can't oblige you. I don't approve of Hays' kidnapping you, but it's done. And I'm a member of his band. I would not think of going against him, let alone trying to run off with you."

  There was a tense silence, fraught with much apprehension for Jim.

  Would she be able to play up to him? There was just a chance that Hays had not heard any of their whispers, in which case it was possible to deceive him. Helen comprehended. It was Jim Wall's privilege then to see the reaction of a woman at a perilous moment.

  "I'll give you the ransom money," she said, quite clearly, and certainly most persuasively. "My brother will reward you otherwise."

  "You can't bribe me," he rejoined. "And I wouldn't advise you to try it on Smoky or any of the others."

  "Hays may have had only money in his mind at first, but now--"

  "DON'T MOVE, JIM!" came a low hard voice from the shadow.

  Helen gave a little gasp and sagged on her knees. Jim waited a moment.

  "I won't, Hank," he replied.

  Then Hays' tall form loomed black above the rise of ground. He strode forward. If he had sheathed his gun, Jim would have made short work of that interview. But he held it half leveled, glancing darkly in the starlight.

  The robber chief gazed down upon Jim and Helen. His features were indistinguishable, but the poise of his head was expressive enough.

  Still, Jim sensed that he had been misled.

  "You cat!" he declared, roughly. "If I ketch you again--tryin' to bribe any of my outfit--I'll treat you so you won't want to go back to your baby-faced brother. . . . Now you git to your tent!"

  Helen rose unsteadily and vanished in the gloom.

  "Jim Wall, you ain't been with me long, an' I don't know you, but I'm takin' this deal to heart," Hays said, slowly. "I'm much obliged. I reckon you're the only man in the outfit who could of withstood thet woman."

  "No, you're wrong, Hank. Smoky wouldn't have listened to her. And I'm sure the others would have stood pat."

  "My faith was damn near gone."

  "That's in you, Hank. You've no call to lose it. You've about split your gang over this woman."

  "Wal, I'm not askin' judgments from you or any of the outfit," growled the chief, gloomily. "You'll all be good an' glad to git your share of the ransom."

  "The thing is--boss--will we get it?" queried Jim, significantly.

  Hays made a violent move, like a striking snake. "What you mean by thet?"

  "I'm askin' you."

  "Air you insinuatin' you mightn't git yours?" demanded Hays. And Jim, used for years to sense peril, divined he was not far from death then. He had not moved a hand since Hays' arrival. If he had had his gun within reach he would have ended that argument.

  But the chances were too greatly in Hays' favor. Wit and cunning must see him through. He could feel how intensely the chief wanted to know what Jim knew.

  "No. You might say I was askin' for all of us," replied Jim, curtly.

  "Wal, I'll git the outfit together an' do some askin', myself."

  "It's a good idea. It MIGHT prevent the split--provided you divide the money you stole from Herrick."

  "I'll wring thet white cat's neck," hissed the robber.

  "You're wrong, boss. She didn't tell me. She doesn't know you robbed her brother. Sparrow confessed before he died."

  Hays swore a mighty oath. ". . . An' he squealed?"

  "Yes. To Smoky an' me. We kept it secret until we had to tell.

  They KNEW somethin' was wrong."

  "All the time you knowed!" There was something pathetic in the fallen chieftain's shame and amaze. By this he seemed to realize his crime.

  "You see, Hank, how your outfit has stood by you, even in your guilt."

  "Ahuh! . . . If it ain't too late--I'll make amends," he rejoined, hoarsely, and stalked away in the darkness.

  Jim lay back on his blankets with a weight of oppression removed.

  He had saved himself for the hour, but what would the outcome be?

  After deliberation it seemed he had put Hays in a corner from which there could be no retreat.

  Chapter 13

  Next morning Jim, who slept ill the rest of that night, was building a fire when Happy Jack, who had his bed under the shack, heard him and rolled out with his merry whistle.

  "Thet's downright good of you, Jim," he drawled. "I like cookin', but I shore hate to rustle firewood an' chop. When I was a kid I

  'most cut off my big toe."

  "Happy, you're a card," replied Jim. "How in the hell can you whistle and smile when you know this outfit is primed to blow up?"

  "Wal, Jim, show me the sense of bein' sore an' unhappy, no matter what's comin' off," rejoined Jack, philosophically. "As a feller grows older his mind sets one way or another. Look at Brad.

  Gamblin' got to be breath of life to him an' he lost thet breath.

  Look at Hays. Love of robbin' lost him wife, family, ranch, respect. An' look at you, Jim. Lone wolf, your hand always itchin' wuss to throw your gun."

  "So you figure me that way!" exclaimed Jim, in genuine surprise.

  "Reckon I see through a lot I don't git credit for."

  "You see through me wrong, Jack. I don't ride around looking for trouble. But I can't help being worked on by other men and conditions."

  "Wal, I'm admittin' Hays eased us into a rotten deal."

  Jim had breakfast before the other men were up. It still wanted half an hour till sunrise. This was the beautiful time of day.

  All was balmy, sweet, fresh, fragrant. Mockingbirds were bursting their throats. To Jim their melody was indeed a mockery, not of other birds, but of men and life and nature. The dawn, the air, the sky, the birds, the cliffs--nothing that was there in Jim's sight held any intimation of the hell about to break in Robbers'

  Roost, nor of that captive imperiled woman! Jim hurried away on scout duty before Hays and his accusers had assembled at the camp fire.

  With rifle in hand Jim headed toward the western exit. Not until he was out in the valley did he realize that he carried his rifle.

  The fact surprised him. There was plenty of fresh meat in camp.

  He had no idea of hunting. That act had been instinctive and it puzzled him. But there was a release of a clamped tension within.

  This day would see events, and he felt almost elated.

  Perhaps that had something to do with a singular sense of the mounting beauty of the morning, of the magnified solitude, of the rarefied atmosphere that gave the buttes and mountains a most deceiving nearness. The outside world of Utah seemed to be encroaching upon this wilderness of canyon brakes.

  The sun was still beneath the rim of the escarpments in the east, but its approach was
heralded by a magnificent glory of red and gold, of flushed peaks and rose-shrouded mesas, of burning faces of the zigzag walls along distant ramparts.

  Jim had never before been up high here at such an early hour. Any man would have been struck by the spectacle. He felt that if he were to die that day he would be leaving earth without having fully realized its sublimity, its mystery, its solemn warning, its inscrutable promise. And there ran through his mind a thought of how Miss Herrick would have reveled in this glorious scene.

  "Well, I AM loco," he soliloquized, blankly, suddenly brought up sharply by the absurd reflection. Excitement and emotion had reacted so powerfully upon him that he was not himself. Right then he made the stern decision that when he started back to camp, to face Hays again, he would be a thousand times his old self.

  The sun-shelter he had erected had once before toppled over, and this morning he found it again flat, except one of the poles. Jim gathered up the dry brush and made a seat and back-rest of it. He did not examine into his premonition that the shelter had served its turn. Then he sat down to watch.

  It was as if he had never seen a sunrise. There was no comparing it with any other he could recall. And one magnifying look through the field-glass was more than enough. Nature's exaggeration of color and loveliness and transparency and vastness, was too great even for the normal gaze of man.

  But that superlative grandeur passed, leaving something Jim could accept and gloat over as actual.

  From this lofty perch he gazed with narrowed eyes across the shaded hole below, into which no ray of sun had yet penetrated. The black mouth of the gorge yawned hungrily. Above it on all sides spread the gray and red rock ridges, dotted with dwarf cedars, with white washes between, and on to spotted red ragged hummocks that fringed a green level, yellow with sunflowers, which led to an abrupt break into a canyon. The walls showed brown, rust-colored, hard as iron, with dark lines and shadows, beyond which stood up the pyramids and bluffs of the brakes. Here gloomed suggested depths and corrugated slopes, then the infinitely wild, obscure, stratified space terminating in the Henry Mountains, looming colossal in the lilac light of morning, ghostly, black, unscalable, piercing the pale- blue sky.

  To their left the lifting sun, losing its gold for red, spread a transparent curtain over the line of level escarpments and mesas, finally to dazzle the canyon country under it to blinding rays. To the right shone many leagues of rock ridges and mounds, broken at intervals by pale gleams of washes and alkali flats and banks of gray clay, ending in the dim, wandering White Bluffs.

  Loneliness was paramount. There was no sound--only an immense silence. No life at all! Not a winged creature hovering over that ghastly region! But over this scene of desolation slowly spread the solemn blight of heating, blazing sun, soon to mantle all in illusive copper haze.

  Before that hour arrived, Jim Wall took up the field-glass. Below in the camp the men were lazily stirring to a late breakfast. The door of the cabin was open. A glint of gold crossed the dark aperture. Then the tall form of Hays stalked out. He yawned. He stretched wide his long arms. His ruddy face gleamed in the glass to that sight. Wall's whole being leaped.

  "By God!" his voice rang out, as if to all which had just enchained him. "Hays, that's your last morning's stretch. . . . Before this day's done you'll stretch forever!"

  Let his men have their hour, thought Jim, darkly, but if they did not mete out justice to their chief, the end was nevertheless fixed and unalterable.

  Jim settled back and raised the field-glass more from habit than any semblance of the old watchfulness. There was nothing to see but the stark denudation of the brakes.

  Suddenly into Jim's magnified circle of vision crept dark objects-- a long line of them.

  He was so startled that the glass waved out of line. He moved it to and fro, searching. What could that have been? An error of sight, a line of cedars, a conception of idle mind!

  "There!" he breathed. He had caught it again. Not cedars--not brush, but moving objects! . . . "By heaven!" he muttered. "Am I dotty?"

  Horses! A line of dark horses! His straining eyes blurred. He lowered the glass with shaking hands to wipe the dimness away. "So help me--it looks like riders!"

  A third time Jim caught the objects. He froze the glass on them.

  Horses and riders--horses with packs! A bursting gush of hot blood ran all over him. The expected pursuit, now long neglected, almost forgotten, had materialized. It looked like Heeseman's outfit, at least three miles away, approaching slowly by a route far to the south of that over which Hays had come.

  "About three miles," muttered Jim. "Coming slow. They're lost. . . . But that wash they're in heads into the Hays trail. . . . If they strike that they'll come fast. Not enough rain yet to wash out our tracks. We've not time to pack and ride out. . . . By thunder! they've cornered us! Now, Hank Hays--"

  Jim took one more straining look. No hope! It was a big outfit, and not traveling so slowly, either. The leader bestrode a black horse. Jim remembered that horse. Snatching up his rifle, he slung the field-glass over his shoulder and ran down off the bluff to the slope. It occurred to him to locate Hays' horses. He sighted some--six, seven, eight--the others were not visible. Hays would rage like a madman. Then Jim tore down the slope with giant strides. Reaching the valley floor, he ran along the wash, through the entrance into the oval, and once on the grass he fairly flew the remaining distance to camp.

  To his profound amaze he espied Hays bound hand and foot, with a stick behind him and through his elbows. The robber sat in an uncomfortable posture against the woodpile. Moreover, a second glance acquainted Jim with the fact that Hays was gagged and that his visage appeared scarcely human, so malignantly enraged was it.

  "What the hell!" cried Jim, breaking out of his bewilderment.

  Hays gave vent to an inarticulate sound, but it was expressive.

  Jim wheeled to stalk under the shack, his hand on his gun, as if he half expected Heeseman to have arrived before him. To his further amaze Miss Herrick was sitting at the rude table, eating breakfast.

  A big gun, that Jim recognized as Hays' property, lay conspicuously in front of her. Happy Jack, whistling as usual, was serving her.

  "What does this mean?" demanded Jim.

  "Ask the men," she replied, curtly.

  Outside and below the shack sat Smoky on a rock, with the others standing near. They all had the appearance of having been swayed profoundly.

  "Mawnin', Jim," drawled Smoky, with a grin. "You see we've got a new chief."

  "Who hawg-tied the boss?"

  "Reckon I did--with a little help."

  "What for?"

  "Damn if I know. Our lady prisoner made me do it."

  "Miss Herrick forced you to tie Hays up?" queried Jim, trying to conceal his exultation.

  "I should shiver she did. Stuck Hays' hair-trigger gun--cocked-- right into my belly, an' says: 'Will you tie this villain--an' swear by your honor not to release him or allow any of these other men to do so--or will you have me shoot you?'"

  "How'd she get that gun?"

  "Wal, she snatched it quicker'n lightnin', thet's how. An' when she cocked it with both hands it went off, BANG! The bullet went between Hank's legs. Tickled him. You can see the hole in his pants. Scared? My Gawd! you never see a man so scared. Thet gurl cool as a cucumber cocked the gun again, an' held Hays up--then all of us. We was sittin' at table. She made us all stand, hands high, an' then she performed thet little trick with Hank's gun ag'in' my gizzard. Jim, I'd like to die if I didn't go cold an' stiff. But I promised on my word of honor--as a robber--thet I'd tie Hank up an' make the other fellers play square. It was so funny, too, thet I near bust. Hays, soon as he was helpless, got over his scare, an' then was he mad! I reckon no one on this earth ever saw a madder man. He cussed so terrible thet she made me gag him."

  "Well, I'll be--blowed!" gasped Jim.

  "No wonder. We was wuss. We'd had breakfast, an' Hank was tryin' to face us fellers. I'll say he ca
me clean, Jim. He divided all the money he got from Herrick an' his sister, an' the gold things an' diamonds. 'Fellers,' he said, 'I could lie an' say I meant to give this to you later. But I'm not built thet way. I double- crossed you all--first time in my life. I meant to keep it all, an' the ransom fer the gurl. But now there won't be no ransom, for I'm not goin' to give her up. She's mine, an' I can do as I want, an' if any of you don't like it you can make your kick now.' . . .

  Wal, we was so plumb flabbergasted thet we didn't see the gurl, who came close on the sun side of Happy's shelter. She heard the whole damn show. . . . Jim, I wish you could have seen her when she stepped up to Hank. I don't know what did it--mebbe her eyes--but he shore wilted. It was then she snatched his gun."

  "So that's the deal!" ejaculated Jim. "What are you going to do?"

  "Don't ask me. I gave my word an' I'll keep it. Fer thet matter the rest of our outfit air fer the gurl, ransom or no ransom."

  Suddenly Jim awoke out of his stupefaction to remember the approach of Heeseman.

  "Smoky, I know what you're all going to do, and that's fight," he flashed, curtly. "I was so surprised I forgot. Heeseman's outfit is coming. I sighted them perhaps three miles. Traveling slow, but sure. We've no time to pack an' get away. We've got to find the best place to stand an' fight, an' pack our stuff into it pronto."

  "Heeseman!" cried Smoky, coolly. "So it's come. I reckoned on thet. Git busy, men."

  Jim strode under the shelter to face Miss Herrick. She had heard, for she was white.

  "We're all but surprised by Heeseman's outfit," he said, abruptly.

  "We must fight. You will be worse off if you fall into their hands. I'm sorry I must release Hays. We need him."

  "Too late!" she exclaimed.

  "Pack your things quickly and hurry over to the cave on this side."

  Then Jim picked up Hays' gun from the table and ran out. First he removed the gag, and then in terse terms he stated the situation.

  Next he released the robber from his painful fix, and handed him the gun.

  "Heeseman, huh! Wal, so be it!" Hays said, facing Jim with an air of finality that intimated relief.