Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories

by Beach, Rex Ellingwood

  "I've been thinking it over," the superintendent began, "and you can't do it."

  "Why not?" queried Slevin. "I told his nibs I was sick of the grub."

  "Foremen don't quit good jobs on account of the grub. You've got to stick till fall; then we'll both go. We'll strike the old man for a raise—"

  "Humph! He'll let us go, quick enough, when we do that. Let's strike him now. I'm through."

  "Nothing stirring," Berg firmly declared. "We'll play out the string.

  I'm taking no chances."

  "Hell! Ain't we takin' a chance every day we stay here? I'm getting so I don't sleep. I got enough to do me; I ain't a hog. I got a bully corner all picked out, Jack—best corner in Seattle for a gin-mill."

  "It'll wait. Corners don't get up and move. No, I won't hold the bag for you or for anybody," declared the former speaker. "We'll go through, arm in arm. Once we're away clean you can do what you like. Me for the Argentine and ten thousand acres of long-horns. You better forget that corner. Some night you'll get stewed and spill the beans."

  "Who, me?" Slevin laughed in disdain. "Fat chance!" There was a long silence during which the only sound was the bubbling of a pipe. "I s'pose I'll have to stick, if you say so," Denny agreed finally, "but I'm fed up. I'm getting jumpy. I got a hunch the cache ain't safe; I feel like something was goin' to happen."

  Mr. Slevin's premonition, under the circumstances, was almost uncanny; it gave startling proof of his susceptibility to outside influences.

  "You are rickety," Black Jack told him. "Why, there ain't any danger; nobody goes up there." Laughing Bill held his breath, missing not a word. "If they did we'd pick 'em up with the glasses. It's open country, and we'd get 'em before they got down."

  "I s'pose so. But the nights are getting dark."

  "Nobody's out at night, either, you boob. I ain't losing any slumber over that. And I ain't going to lose any about your quitting ahead of me. That don't trouble me none." Berg yawned and changed the subject. Half an hour later he rose, languidly undressed and rolled into his bed. Slevin followed suit shortly after, and the rapidity with which both men fell asleep spoke volumes for the elasticity of the human conscience.

  Now, Laughing Bill had come prepared to spend the night, but his throat tickled and he had a distressing habit of snoring, therefore he deemed it the part of caution to depart before he dropped off into the land of dreams. He effected the manoeuver noiselessly.

  Bill lingered at the spring hole on the following morning, and lost himself in an attentive study of the surrounding scenery. It was fairly impressive scenery, and he had a keen appreciation of nature's beauty, but Black Jack's words continued to puzzle him. "Nobody goes up there." Up where? The Aurora lay in a valley, therefore most of the country round about was "up"—it was open, too. The ridges were bold and barren, garbed only with shreds and patches of short grass and reindeer moss. "We'd pick 'em up with the glasses—we'd get 'em before they got down." Manifestly the cache was in plain sight, if one only knew where to look for it, but Mr. Hyde's sharp eyes took in ten thousand likely hiding-places, and he reasoned that it would be worse than folly to go exploring blindly without more definite data than he possessed.

  It was clever of the pair to hide the swag where they could oversee it every hour of the day, and they had chosen a safe location, too, for nobody wasted the effort to explore those domes and hogbacks now that they were known to contain no quartz. There was Anvil Mountain, for instance, a bold schist peak crowned with a huge rock in the likeness of a blacksmith's anvil. It guarded the entrance to the valley, rising from the very heart of the best mining section; it was the most prominent landmark hereabouts, but not a dozen men had ever climbed it, and nowadays nobody did.

  As Bill pondered the enigma, out from his bed in the willows came Don Antonio de Chiquito, a meek and lowly burro, the only member of the Aurora's working force which did not outrank in social importance the man-of-all-work. Don Antonio was the pet of the Aurora Borealis, and its scavenger. He ate everything from garbage to rubber boots—he was even suspected of possessing a low appetite for German socks. It was, in fact, this very democratic taste in things edible which caused him to remain the steadiest of Doctor Slayforth's boarders. Wisdom, patience, the sagacity of Solomon, lurked in Don Antonio's eyes, and Laughing Bill consulted him as a friend and an equal.

  "Tony," said he, "you've done a heap of prospecting and you know the business. There's a rich pocket on one of them hills. Which one is it?"

  Don Antonio de Chiquito had ears like sunbonnets; he folded them back, lifted his muzzle toward Anvil rock, and brayed loudly.

  "Mebbe you're right," said the man. He fitted the Chinese yoke to his skinny shoulders, and took up his burden. The load was heavy, the yoke bruised his bones, therefore he was moved to complain: "The idea of me totin' water for the very guys that stole my uncle's money! It's awful—the darned crooks!"

  It was a rainy evening when business next took Black Jack Berg and Denny Slevin to town. Having dined amply, if not well, they donned slickers, saddled a pair of horses, and set out down the creek. Few people were abroad, therefore they felt secure from observation when they swung off the trail where it bends around the foot of Anvil Mountain and bore directly up through the scattered alders. The grass was wet, the rain erased the marks of their horses' feet almost in the passing. Tethering their mounts in the last clump of underbrush the riders labored on afoot up a shallow draw which scarred the steep slope. The murk of twilight obscured them, but even in a good light they would have run small risk of discovery, for slow-moving human figures would have been lost against the dark background.

  The climb was long and arduous; both men were panting when they breasted the last rise and looked down into the valley where lay the Aurora Borealis. This was a desolate spot, great boulders, fallen from the huge rock overhead, lay all about, the earth was weathered by winter snows and summer rains. Ghostly fingers of mist writhed over the peak; darkness was not far distant.

  The robbers remained on the crest perhaps twenty minutes, then they came striding down. They passed within a hundred yards of Laughing Bill Hyde, who lay flat in the wet grass midway of their descent. He watched them mount and ride out of sight, then he continued his painful progress up the hillside.

  Weak lungs are not suited to heavy grades and slippery footing. Bill was sobbing with agony when he conquered the last rise and collapsed upon his face. He feared he was dying, every cough threatened a hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain; brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of a pick and shovel.

  For once in his life Mr. Hyde looked upon these tools with favor, and energetically tackled the business end of a "Number 2." He considered pick-and-shovel work the lowest form of human endeavor; nevertheless he engaged in it willingly enough, and he had not dug deeply before he uncovered the side of a packing-case, labeled "Choice California Canned Fruits." Further rapid explorations showed that the box was fitted with a loose top, and that the interior was well-nigh filled with stout canvas and moose skin bags. Bill counted them; he weighed one, then he sat down weakly and his hard, smoke-blue eyes widened with amazement.

  "Suffering cats!" he whispered. He voiced other expletives, too, even more forcefully indicative of surprise. He was not an imaginative man; it did not occur to him to doubt his sanity or to wonder if he were awake, nevertheless he opened one of the pokes and incredulously examined its contents. "I'm dam' if it ain't!" he said, finally. "I should reckon they was ready to quit. Argentine! Why, Jack'll bust the bottom out of a boat if he takes this with him. He'll drown a lot of innocent people." Mr. Hyde shook his head and smiled pityingly. "It ain'
t safe to trust him with it. It ain't safe—the thievin' devil! There's five hundred pounds if there's an ounce!" He began to figure with his finger on the muddy shovel blade. "A hundred thousand bucks!" he announced, finally. "Them boys is all right!"

  Slowly, reluctantly, he replaced the gold sacks, reburied the box, and placed the tools where he had found them; then he set out for home.

  Don Antonio de Chiquito was contentedly munching an empty oat sack, doubtless impelled thereto by the lingering flavor of its former contents, when on the following morning Bill accosted him.

  "Tony, I got to hand it to you," the man said, admiringly. "You're some pocket miner, and you speak up like a gent when you're spoken to. I got some nice egg-shells saved up for you." Then his voice dropped to a confidential tone. "We're in with a passel of crooks, Tony. Evil associates, I call 'em. They're bound to have a bad influence over us—I feel it a'ready, don't you? Well, s'pose you meet me to-night at the gap in the hedge and we'll take a walk?"

  Don Antonio appeared in every way agreeable to the proposal, but to make certain that he would keep his appointment Bill led him down into the creek bottom and tied him securely, after which he removed a pack-saddle and a bundle of hay from the stable. The saddle he hid in the brush, the hay he spread before his accomplice, with the generous invitation: "Drink hearty; it's on the house!" In explanation he went on: "It's this way, Tony; they left the elevator out of that Anvil skyscraper, and I can't climb stairs on one lung, so you got to be my six-cylinder oat-motor. We got a busy night ahead of us."

  That evening Laughing Bill ascended Anvil Mountain for a second time, but the exertion did not wind him unduly, for he made the ascent at the end of Don Antonio's tail. He was back in camp for breakfast, and despite his lack of sleep he performed his menial duties during the day with more than his usual cheerfulness.

  * * * * *

  "Speed up, can't you?" Slevin paused midway of the steepest slope and spoke impatiently to his partner below.

  "I'm coming," Black Jack panted. Being the heavier and clumsier of the two, the climb was harder for him. "You're so spry, s'pose you just pack this poke!" He unslung a heavy leather sack from his belt and gave it to Denny.

  "We'd ought to 'a' got an early start," the latter complained. "The days are gettin' short and I had a rotten fall going down, last time."

  Relieved of some fifteen pounds of dead, awkward weight—and nothing is more awkward to carry than a sizable gold sack—Berg made better speed, arriving at the cache in time to see Slevin spit on his hands and fall to digging.

  "Every time we open her up I get a shiver," Denny confessed, with a laugh. "I'm scared to look."

  "Humph! Think she's going to get up and walk out on us?" Berg seated himself, lit his pipe, and puffed in silence for a while. "We ain't never been seen," he declared, positively. "She's as safe as the Bank of England as long as you don't get drunk."

  "Me drunk! Ha! Me and the demon rum is divorced forever." Slevin's shovel struck wood and he swiftly uncovered the box, then removed its top. He, stood for a full minute staring into its interior, then he cried, hoarsely, "Jack!"

  Berg was on his feet in an instant; he strode to the excavation and bent over it. After a time he straightened himself and turned blazing eyes upon his confederate. Denny met his gaze with the glare of a man demented.

  "Wha'd I tell you?" the latter chattered. "I told you they'd get it.

  By God! They have!"

  He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. Far below the lights of the valley were beginning to twinkle, in the direction of Nome the cross on the Catholic church gleamed palely against the steel-gray expanse of Behring Sea.

  Berg was a man of violent temper; he choked and gasped; his face was bloated with an apoplectic rage. He began to growl curses deep in his throat. "Who got it?" he demanded. "Who d'you mean by 'they'?"

  "'Sh-h!" Slevin was panic-stricken; he flung out a nervous, jerky hand. "Mebbe they're here—now. Look out!"

  "Who d'you mean by 'they'?" the larger man repeated.

  "I—God! I dunno! But there must 'a' been more'n one. Five hundred pounds! One man couldn't pack it!"

  "You said 'they'!" Berg persisted in an odd tone.

  Slevin's madly roving gaze flew back and settled upon the discolored visage thrust toward him, then his own eyes widened. He recoiled, crying:

  "Look here! You don't think I—?" His words ended in a bark.

  "I ain't said what I think, but I'm thinkin' fast. Nobody knew it but us—"

  "How d'you know?"

  "I know."

  Slowly Slevin settled himself. His muscles ceased jumping, his bullet head drew down between his shoulders. "Well, it wasn't me, so it must 'a' been—you!"

  "Don't stall!" roared the larger man. "It won't win you anything. You can't leave here till you come through."

  "That goes double, Jack. I got my gat, too, and you ain't going to run out on me."

  "You wanted to quit. You weakened."

  "You're a liar!"

  The men stared fixedly at each other, heads forward, bodies tense; as they glared the fury of betrayal grew to madness.

  "Where'd you put it?" Berg ground the words between his teeth.

  "I'm askin' you that very thing," the foreman answered in a thin, menacing voice. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he widened the distance between himself and his accuser. It was not a retreat, he merely drew himself together defensively, holding himself under control with the last supreme effort of his will.

  The tension snapped suddenly.

  With a harsh, wordless cry of fury Black Jack tore his six-shooter from its resting-place. But Slevin's right hand stirred in unison and it moved like light. Owing to the fact that he carried his gun beneath his left armpit he was the first to fire, by the fraction of a second. It was impossible to miss at this distance. Berg went to his knees as if hit by a sledge. But he fired from that position, and his shot caught Slevin as the latter crow-hopped nimbly. Both men were down now. Slevin, however, seemed made of rubber; he was up again almost instantly, and zigzagging toward the shelter of the nearest rocks. Berg emptied his Colt at the running target, then a shout burst from his lips as he saw Denny pitch forward out of sight.

  With shaking, clumsy fingers Black Jack reloaded his hot weapon. With his left hand pressed deep into his side he rose slowly to his feet and lurched forward.

  "You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross me, will yeh?" He heard the sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his tracks and peering into the gloom.

  "Come out!" he ordered. "Come out and own up and I'll let yeh off."

  There was a silence. "I see yeh!" He took unsteady aim at a shadow and fired. "Never mind, I'll get yeh!" After a little while he stumbled onward between the boulders, shouting a challenge to his invisible opponent. He had gone perhaps fifty feet when the darkness was stabbed by the blaze of Slevin's gun. Three times the weapon spoke, at little more than arm's-length, and Black Jack spun on his heels, then rocked forward limply. It was a long time before the sound of his loud, slow breathing ceased. Not until then did Denny Slevin move. With a rattle in his throat the foreman crept out from hiding and went down the mountain-side upon his hands and knees.

  It occasioned considerable speculation at the Aurora Borealis when neither the superintendent nor the foreman appeared for breakfast. Later, a telephone message to Doctor Slayforth having elicited the startling intelligence that neither man had been seen in town during the night, there came a flicker of excitement. This excitement blazed to white heat when Slayforth rode up on a muddy horse, accompanied by the town marshal and the chief of police. Followed more telephoning and some cross-examination. But the men were gone. They had disappeared.

  It was a mystery baffling any attempt at explanation, for there were no ships in the roadstead, and hence it was impossible for the pair to have taken French leave. While a search party was being organized there came word that the missing saddle-horses had been found on the slope
of Anvil Mountain, and by the time Slayforth's party had reached the ground more news awaited them. Up near the head of the draw some one had discovered the body of Denny Slevin. There was a rush thither, and thence on up the trail Slevin had left, to the scene of the twilight duel, to Black Jack Berg and the cache in the slide.

  The story told itself down to the last detail; it was the story of a thieves' quarrel and a double killing. Doctor Slayforth fell upon his bag of gold as a mother falls upon her babe; he voiced loud, hysterical condemnation of the deed; he wept tears of mingled indignation and thanksgiving; he gabbled scriptural quotations about the wages of sin. Then, remembering that the wages of his men were going on, he sent them back to their work, and determined to dock half their morning's pay.

  The story of the tragedy was still the sensation of Nome when, a fortnight later, Laughing Bill Hyde showed up in town with the cheerful announcement that he had been fired. Ponatah was at the cabin when he arrived, and she did not try to conceal her joy at seeing him again.

  "I've been so unhappy," she told him. "You've never been out of my thoughts, Billy."

  "Ain't you got nothing better to think about than me?" he asked, with a smile. "Well, the psalm-shouter let me out—jerked the piller-slip from under me, you might say—and turned me adrift. He's got a high-chested, low-browed Swede in my place. It takes a guy with hair down to his eyebrows to be a buck chamber-maid."

  "The old rascal!" Ponatah's face darkened with anger. "No wonder those men robbed him. I wish they had taken all his gold, and escaped."

  "You're pretty sore on his heavenly nibs, ain't you?" Ponatah clenched her hands and her eyes blazed. "Well, you got this consolation, the Aurora ain't as rich as it was."

  "It would have been rich enough for us."

  "Us?"

  "Yes. You'd marry me if I were rich, wouldn't you?"

  "No, I wouldn't," Bill declared, firmly. "What's the use to kid you?"

  "Why wouldn't you? Are you ashamed of me?"