The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

  He paused, maybe to let his stark words sink in deep, maybe to take stock of the frozen faces around him, maybe to get his next words lined up.

  “You can’t walk as high, wide and handsome as I’ve walked,” said Warbuck, “without stepping on the tails of a few snakes in the grass. And snakes, maybe you know, like to lift up and bite you in the heel. Well, I’ve got anyhow two of ’em here for you to look at tonight. They’re old lady Grayle and that shrimp with the little chin beard, Doc Henry Sharpe. He’s a stranger to you boys, but well known to me. He’s got his fangs in my left hind leg right now and thinks maybe he can hang on. What do you boys think about it?”

  In the brief silence which followed, Jeff looked them all over. He knew every man of them in one way or another, some merely by name. They were Scad Murphy, Trigger Levine, Dave Humphries, Andy Coppler, Injun Long Knife, Pocopoco Malaga, Ben Williams, Hammy Perkins, Buck Nevers, Bing Barbee and Johnny Smith. Not one of them except Injun Long Knife was over twenty-five years old; Ben Williams was about nineteen or twenty, Johnny Smith perhaps seventeen or eighteen. But any man, looking them over once as Jeff did now, would have conceded that they were pretty tough hombres. The younger, the tougher, sometimes. They were hell-bent and wanted the world to know it.

  Johnny Smith scratched an itching shoulder blade against the rock chimney. Long Knife whistled softly through his teeth—but then, Long Knife was always whistling through his teeth whether sad or happy, whether tense or relaxed. The rest of the Warbuck hands, though one or two shifted their feet, were impassive; there was among them a sort of religion about poker faces.

  “You’re good boys,” said Warbuck. “I knew it when I hired you. I’m like that. Well now. Let’s see. I’ve said already that I’ve got snake bites in my heels. I want a few boys that will trail their luck with me, and let all hell blow wide open. I think I’ve picked the right crowd. If any one of you has got goose-flesh starting in, well he’d better get along somewhere else. Who wants to go?”

  Johnny Smith kept on scratching his shoulder against the chimney and Long Knife kept on whistling through his teeth, more softly now. No one else stirred or changed the look on his face.

  “Thought so,” said Warbuck. “I don’t make such a hell of a lot of mistakes after all. You’re lucky kids, every damn one of you, that hangs on tight. I’ll tell you something! There’s a gold mine coming up, and you boys are going to cut in on it. It’s going to be mine, it’s going to be worth a million dollars—maybe ten million—and you boys are going to get your shares. Me, naturally I want most of it, but I’d say off-hand that every mother’s son of you will get anywhere from ten thousand bucks up to two-three times that. It’s something for you to think about, huh? You’ve never had a hundred dollars at a time. Don’t hold your breaths while you think what you could do with ten thousand or better!”

  They did hold their breaths; they couldn’t help it.

  “But,” Warbuck told them, still being frank, “here’s the joker: You’ve got to stop thinking for yourselves and do just what I say to do. No matter what. If I say you’ve got to slit a couple of throats—” and he let his implacable eyes drift to the shivering old woman and the terrified Doc Sharpe—“then you’ve got to slit a couple of throats. When I pay big money, I get big jobs done. Stick that in your cuds and chew on it a while.”

  To give them ample time to chew, he rolled and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and blew twin streamers of smoke out through his heavy nostrils.

  “Anybody seasick?” he asked. “Anybody want to go home?”

  Johnny Smith, only a kid, stopped scratching his shoulder against the chimney; Injun Long Knife gave over whistling. One or two boots, spurs jingling softly, scraped on the floor. That was all.

  “Thought so,” said Warbuck.

  He was pretty sure of himself and of where he was going. He had always been like that, and that was the reason he had traveled as far along the upgrade of life as he had. He wanted the high places, and he went straight uphill until he got to them. For the first time in his life Jeff began to respect something in the man. The man himself he could not in the least respect, but there were qualities standing out like Rocks of Gibraltar that made one come mighty close to a feeling of awe.

  “It’s Charlie Carter’s gold mine I’m talking about,” said Warbuck. “Yes, he found it after twenty years of looking for it. He’s dead now and nobody knows where the gold is—nobody except me. It’s a bonanza; it’s going to make new mining history; it’s going to make a new flock of millionaires before it ever shuts down. I’d say, talking free, it won’t shut down inside fifty years, it’s that good. And that’s what I’m cutting you boys in on.”

  He spoke now quite as if the old Grayle woman and Doc Sharpe were nowhere near; as though he did not recognize the presence of either Jeff or Arlene. He was talking to a certain small group of men, ignoring all others. It suited him at the moment to ignore Jim Ogden along with the rest.

  “I’m not telling you boys everything I know,” Warbuck continued, “because it’s not my way to gab. I’m telling you what I figure will help, that’s all. I’ve already said that Doc Sharpe and Amanda Grayle stand where they can do me dirt. We’ll keep their mouths shut, one way or another, And I’ll add for full measure that Jim Ogden here, and my daughter and Young Jeff Cody, know more than they ought to know. So far they haven’t started anything. And they won’t either.”

  Never an interruption all this while, never a voice save Warbuck’s disturbing the ancient silence which hovered like a black raven over the old bandit stronghold. When he mentioned as he did, not only Jeff but his own daughter and Jim Ogden, his right hand man and general foreman over all these other men, eyes slashed back and forth but tongues kept still in the mouths imprisoning them.

  Still no one had a word to say. Sharpe and the old woman were stiff with fear, Jim Ogden was grimly silent, Arlene didn’t even know what to think about it all, Jeff held his peace while he did his thinking—and Warbuck’s hirelings, having been asked no questions, were as dumb as the walls of the old house.

  “Every bunch of men,” said Warbuck, “if they want to get anywhere, have got to have a top man, one to give orders and to see that his orders get carried out. Me, when I’m with you, I’m top man. When I’m away, you’ve got to have somebody to take my place.”

  His eyes roved while he hunted them over. Again there was a whispering shuffle of boots, a faint singing jingle of spur chains; he was going to name a lieutenant, and every man of them speculated. He gave them ample time to think about it before he spoke further.

  He had said already, “I’m not telling you boys everything I know.” Now he said, “I’m being wide open tonight; I’m putting most of my cards down, face up. Might as well go on that way. Now, Jim Ogden’s been top hand for me for about five years and that’s because he’s been the sort of man I need. Right now, I don’t trust him all the way, but just the same he’s top man. You do whatever Jim says, unless—” He stopped and thought it over. “Unless,” he went on, “you see him make any move that looks like he was double crossing me, like he was throwing in with Sharpe and old lady Grayle, or even with my daughter or young Cody. If he tries that, burn him down and let Andy Coppler stand up as top man. You all know how good Andy is. Got it, boys?”

  Jeff, watching narrowly, saw Jim Ogden first of all look at Arlene. It was only a glance, lightning swift, yet Jeff saw as plain as big chalk writing on a blackboard what was in Ogden’s eyes: The man’s look was covetous, possessive, predatory. Ogden wanted Arlene and meant to have her. And Jeff was set wondering afresh. Did Jim Ogden love her? There was the little tricky blonde school teacher, Chrystine Ward; Ogden at the dance had given more than an inkling that he was interested in her. Why that look of his, his eyes fairly pouncing on Arlene?

  Warbuck had said, “Got it, boys?” There was an invitation for any one of them to speak if he felt wordy. But they kept s
ilent; it was as though a spell lay over the place and no man’s voice could cleave through the stillness save Bart Warbuck’s.

  Jim Ogden’s gaunt face twisted into a wry grin; he was looking at Warbuck then. He didn’t say anything but his grin said a lot for him.

  Unexpectedly Warbuck clapped a heavy hand friendly-wise on Jim Ogden’s shoulder.

  “I guess we understand each other, don’t we, Jim?” he said.

  “Sure,” said Ogden. “Sure we do. I’ll take charge here.”

  “I’m going now,” said Warbuck. “I’ve got things to do. A couple of you boys come on outside with me. You come, Coppler. You come too, Long Knife. And I guess Buck Nevers had better be with us; come along, Buck.”

  The four went out, Warbuck being followed closely by Andy Coppler, Injun Long Knife and Buck Nevers. The door closed behind them. Jim Ogden laughed softly. He was wearing two guns tonight; no one had taken them away from him; his hard hands were resting on their greasily-black butts.

  “It’s getting late,” he said crisply. “There are blankets outside. Go get ’em, a couple of you boys. You go, Pocopoco; you go along with him, Barbee.” The two men stepped along promptly; they seemed eager to get outside, perhaps to talk things over or even to hope to catch some word Warbuck was saying to Coppler and Long Knife and Nevers. Jim Ogden finished his orders: “We’ll want a fire all night. You two, Ben and Johnny, drag some wood in. Plenty.”

  The two youngsters went out every bit as willingly as Pocopoco Malaga and Bing Barbee had stepped. That left in the room besides Jim Ogden, only the four prisoners and Trigger Levine, Scad Murphy, Dave Humphries, and Hammy Perkins. Young Jeff, looking sleepy on his bench, counted them. Ogden and those four. Five captors altogether, four captives. Of the latter two were women, one was a broken reed named Sharpe—and not one was armed while all Ogden’s men wore their belt guns.

  Jeff looked placid enough—but then so does a volcano which has not yet erupted but is on the verge of doing so. A slow, deep rage burned within him. Warbuck’s high hand had long angered him; now it infuriated him. To see the man handle men—and women, too—the way that Warbuck did, walking so confidently as he strode along rough-shod, was an experience for Young Jeff Cody that irked him more than anything had ever irked him in his life. He kept saying to himself, “Steady, Jeff. Fly off half-cocked now and you’ll get what Bob Vetch and Charlie Carter and Bud King got. But keep your eyes stretched. There’ll come a chance. They’re too damn sure of themselves!”

  There was their one weakness: It happens at times that in a man’s conscious strength his weakness lies. There were a dozen men here guarding four prisoners—two of them women—and all the guards were armed and none of the prisoners was. Jeff took stock of that fact: Why, there wasn’t a madman’s hope of escape, so Jim Ogden and the rest would say. And so—Dammit, he’d show them! His knuckles itched: He saw Arlene standing up so white-faced, so wretched, so sick of life and yet somehow so courageous and indomitable, and the sight of her tightened his muscles and added to the fuel of the smoldering fires within him. Right now he’d rather crash these men, Jim Ogden and those that jumped at his commands, in their jaws than do anything else on earth. If he only had a club in his hands, a good solid club—

  There was a rickety old home-made table; a man might wrench a leg off of it. There was some wood by the smoking fireplace. There was the bench he sat on. He began to feel it with cautious, exploring hands.

  Pocopoco Malaga and Bing Barbee came in with the blankets; they dropped them in the middle of the floor. Then Ben Williams and Johnny Smith brought their armfuls of wood, dead wood broken off old fallen trees. The fire was replenished; the place grew almost as bright as day though there were shadows quivering and crawling everywhere.

  Ogden ordered blankets placed in the corners; he himself picked out the cleanest, freshest looking for Arlene. She gave him small thanks. “Rather than lie down here I—I’d stand up and die on my feet,” she flared out at him. He shrugged and nodded to one of the men to give her a sagging bench, like Jeff’s. She did drop down on that.

  The old woman huddled into her blankets, muttering. Sharpe seemed glad enough to crawl into his, like a man both tired and cold. Jim Ogden glanced at Jeff.

  Jeff said, “My bench’ll do,” and his hands slid along it again, feeling the heft of it, marking how solid it was, like seasoned oak. Maybe he was going to have to make that bench do.

  Ogden looked across the room at Andy Coppler.

  “Where’s Warbuck?” he said.

  “Gone,” said Andy. “Gone on home.”

  Ogden knew and Jeff knew and others knew that maybe Andy spoke the truth and maybe he lied. They knew that Warbuck was playing fox as well as wolf; that he had left a division among his men so that his own interests, as always, were to be safe-guarded. Ogden was boss: Andy Coppler stood next in line. They had never loved each other greatly; right now the air was thick with their distrust. Each was only awaiting the excuse and the safe opportunity to make an end of the other.

  Well, Warbuck would know that, too. But again he had safe-guarded himself; there were the rest of the boys eagle-eyed for the first move made by any one of their entire number. There still rang in their ears Bart Warbuck’s ringing, golden words: “Ten thousand dollars-maybe two-three times ten thousand.” What could they do with all that? What couldn’t they do?

  Jim Ogden walked over to where Arlene sat, her back against the wall.

  “Arlene,” he said, “I’m sorry about this. You don’t blame me, do you?”

  “Don’t talk to me,” she answered wearily. “And don’t ever talk to me again.”

  “You’ve got me wrong,” Ogden said. He had stood still a moment or two, seeming hesitant; Jeff saw him glance about him before he spoke and understood how it was with Jim Ogden who found it pretty hard to have to talk to her with so many listening. So when he said, “You’ve got me wrong,” it was bluntly spoken, with his jaws hard and his teeth set together while only his lips moved. And he added curtly, “I’ve got to talk to you. You’ve got to talk to me. And I don’t want all these rubber-necks listening in. Will you come outside with me a minute? Just outside the door?”

  Jeff Cody’s eyes had already slid away from Ogden and Arlene, going straight to Andy Coppler. Coppler had had his orders—here perhaps was his chance to shoot Jim Ogden in the back and so step along into Ogden’s boots. For here was the thing Warbuck had warned against, any treachery on Ogden’s part though it but manifested itself in too much interest in Ogden’s daughter. Jeff grew very tense where he sat, his hands tight on the bench.

  “No,” said Arlene.

  For a minute she thought—and so did Jeff and all the others think—that Jim Ogden was going to lay hands on her and drag her out with him. The act was certainly in his mind. But he was watching his step tonight, was Jim Ogden, and he looked swiftly to see what the boys were doing, and his eyes clashed with Andy Coppler’s.

  Jim Ogden laughed again.

  “All right, Arlene, all right,” he said easily. “I was just going to try to—But never mind that now.—Andy!” He rapped the word out so that it came like a pistol shot.

  “Well? Here I am, Jim,” said Andy Coppler.

  “Go out and see that the horses are all right. The boys tied ’em in a hurry tonight. I don’t want any of them getting loose.”

  Jeff could have laughed outright at that; in fact one or two of the men grinned faintly. It was the first time in their lives they had ever heard a man suggest that riders like them had maybe forgotten to tie their horses properly. It was like reminding a man to eat or drink or smoke, or put his boots on.

  Andy Coppler wasn’t a quick-thinking man; he wasn’t exactly a man of any remarkable degree of intelligence; yet it remained he wasn’t a fool. Jim Ogden simply wanted to send him out. Why? Obviously, to have him out of the room. But most men get to know that the obvious expl
anation isn’t always the true one. Jim Ogden’s voice was that of a man addressing a dog. He merely gave Andy Coppler an errand to remind Andy that as yet Jim Ogden was, according to Bart Warbuck’s orders, top hand. These thoughts must have trickled slowly through Andy’s head. Sure, he’d step outside and pretend to look at the horses—nobody but himself need know that he’d have his eye on the door, his ear cocked, all the while.

  “Sure, Jim,” said Andy, and went out.

  Jeff thought, “They’re clever, both of them. They’re playing the game for the highest stake there is. Either of them would be glad to knock the other off.” Then he thought, “I might have made a headlong dive at Andy while he stood in the open door—I might have knocked him endwise out into the dark—I might have grabbed his guns—Yes, and I might have got a dozen holes shot through me—or I might not.”

  Anyhow, Andy Coppler had gone on his way and the door had been dragged shut after him. Young Jeff relaxed a notch or two. “Glad I didn’t go off half-cocked,” he thought. “I’d been a gone turkey by now.”

  “You boys,” said Jim Ogden, “can do pretty much as you please. Warbuck wants us all to ride herd on these folks tonight, so we’re doing it. But you can come and go as you like, just so there’s always three or four of you handy.”

  A couple of the men sat down, their backs to the wall, taking things easy. Ben Williams and Johnny Smith went outside: “Let’s go have a smoke,” Ben had said. Jim Ogden said to Arlene, “This is tough on me; I didn’t ask for this sort of a job. I wouldn’t mind only—only I don’t like having to keep you here.”

  “Let me go, Jim! Let me go.”

  Of course he had to shake his head.

  “You heard what your father said. He’s got the right, I guess, to lay down the law for you. If—”