Valley of the Vanishing Men

by Brand, Max

  “Hey, bozo,” said Dolly, “I’m glad to see you. What turned you to stone when you put an eye on me, a minute ago? Did you think I was going to sound the alarm, and whistle for the boys? I got rid of that mug who was in there with me. Now you can tell me what brand of hell-fire you’re handling tonight?”

  “I’m only looking for a doctor,” said Trainor, “and — ”

  “Has somebody sunk lead into you, kid?” asked Dolly. “Are you hurt?”

  She touched him with a swift, anxious hand.

  “Somebody else is hurt and — ”

  “And you hurt ‘em, and then you get soft and come for a doctor — wade right into a rattlesnake cave to get salve for the guy you socked and — ”

  “No, no,” said Trainor, “the hurt man is — ”

  “And the boys in here are carrying a special kind of poison for you, brother,” said Dolly. She put back her head and laughed at him, joyously, her eyes shining, her teeth flashing. “What a man you turned out to be, old-timer! Quiet-looking, too. Well, I always say that the quiet lads are the ones that make the ructions. That was a show you put on last night. I thought you were gone. I thought they’d polish you off, and when that yahoo of a barkeep came with his gun, did you slam him? Oh, you slammed him pretty, all right! But that was nothing; getting Blondy out of the soup was what counted.”

  “Why did you try that dirty trick on Blondy?” Trainor asked. “Why did you start doping him?”

  “Oh, I ain’t the Queen of Sheba,” said the girl. “I gotta do what I’m told to do. When Doc Yates speaks, I gotta jump. But I was sorry for Blondy. I was sorry for the big red-faced ham. He was all right, today. He got out of town this morning, and he got fast. I guess Yates would have kept him here, but Yates was busy somewhere else. Blacky is back in town with a couple of yards of flannel wrapped around his bean. He don’t smile when folks mention your name. He don’t brag about the way he threw you out of the saloon. Look, kid. Being what you are, what made you let Blacky throw you out, that way? What made you kid him along like that? Were you fixing a harder spot to drop him in?”

  Trainor would have been glad to tell her the truth, but he saw that she was not able to believe it. She wanted to create of him a master of the outlaw world, a desperate gunman. That was why she stepped closer to him, now, and laid her hands on his shoulders.

  “You make a hit with me, Trainor,” she said. “That mug of yours is what I call handsome. Open up and be nice, will you? Dolly isn’t such a bad sort of a girl. Not to a fellow she likes.”

  “You’re as game as they come, Dolly,” he told her honestly. “Some day there’ll be time for me to tell you a lot of other things. But go on and give me a hand, now. Tell me where I can get hold of Doctor Wells.”

  “The old souse is pie-eyed,” said Dolly calmly. “He’s up there in the next room, freezing onto a bottle and having a solitary drunk. That’s the only kind he can afford to pay for, just now. He’s blotto. He’s no good for you, brother. I don’t know where you shot the hombre that’s sick now, but Wells wouldn’t do him any good. He’s mean when he’s boiled. You couldn’t do anything with him.”

  “Is he alone in that room?” asked Trainor.

  “No. There’s some others in there.”

  “Can you get him back into the next room, where you were before? That’s empty now, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll try to get him back. I’ll try anything for you, Ben. When you pasted that barkeep on the mug, it was a personal favor you did for me, kid. Wait here till I open the door for you.”

  She left Trainor. A long minute followed, and still not a soul came down the hall. Then there was a tap on the door, and Trainor opened it and stepped through.

  The girl was there, her arms akimbo, facing a great whale of a man with a fat, bloated face and eyes dulled and red-stained with alcohol. His mouth was loose. His whole body seemed loose with the effects of the poison. And yet there was in his face a suggestion of a strength which was still not entirely corrupted.

  “Here, doctor,” said the girl. “Here’s an hombre that wants to see you and wants to see you bad. He’s slammed a hole in the ribs of somebody and now he wants to get the hole patched up.”

  The doctor made a wide, but clumsy gesture of refusal.

  “The whisky’s too damn bad in this hang-out,” he hotly declared. “Whisky ought to make a man steady on his pins, clear his brain, firm his touch. But this stuff is poison. I’ve got to spend some time with it. I’m going to analyze it, Dolly, and then I’m going to put the whole lot of you crooks behind the bars. Understand me? I’m going to put you behind. That’s the job that keeps me here, and I’m not going to leave the place.”

  He kept shaking his head and waving his arm.

  Trainor approached him.

  “Keep away from me!” commanded the doctor. “I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you. I don’t like you. You got a mean face. You got a bad eye. Get away from me. Dolly, where’s that bottle of whisky?”

  He turned toward the door of the next room, and Dolly made to Trainor a gesture of surrender. But Ben Trainor could not be stopped so easily. He saw, now, that he had half a chance of winning the doctor to the purpose he wished, but it would only be through the means of a violent ruse.

  He touched the doctor on the arm to stop him, at the same time asking Dolly to leave the room.

  She went out laughing. “If you get Wells, you could get the King of England. Quick, Ben, or the crowd will find out that you’re here, and then there will be the devil to pay for both of us!”

  The doctor was very angry. He told Trainor to remove his hand at once. He told him that he was a boor and that under no conditions would the doctor do him any medical service.

  Trainor cut that talking short by using the flat of his hand and striking Wells heavily across the face.

  His hope was that the insult might sober the doctor a little. He was not prepared for the sudden and strong effect of the stroke. The doctor looked fixedly at him, lifted his hand, and wiped away a trickle of blood that ran down from his mouth.

  “My friend,” he said, “I’ll have your life for this, one day.”

  “You can pay me back now,” said Trainor, “if it will help to clear your brain at all. There you are, with your hands free.”

  Doctor Wells stepped right in with a hearty, chopping punch that clicked on the point of Trainor’s undefended jaw and sent him reeling. Wells charged after him and was about to hit him again when he took note that the arms of Trainor were still hanging defenselessly at his sides and, therefore, he paused, puffing, raging.

  “I’m going to thrash you, you puppy!” he said. “I’m going to teach you manners! I’m going to teach you that your elders may still be able to take care of themselves!”

  “If you’re sober enough to talk sense, then listen to me,” said Trainor. “If you’re not, go on beating me till your brain is straight again.”

  Doctor Wells looked curiously from his clenched fist to the jaw of Trainor before he muttered words that Trainor could understand. Then he said, wiping his brow:

  “Have I made a fool of myself again? Young man, who are you?”

  “My name is Ben Trainor,” said Ben Trainor.

  “Great Scott!” gasped the doctor, retreating. “You mean that you’re the desperado who — ”

  “My brother’s almost a dying man across the desert,” said Trainor. “He needs a doctor or he will die tomorrow. Fever, and weakness from starvation, and enough trouble to drive him mad. Doctor Wells, will you come away from town with me?”

  However much alcohol was in the body of Wells, there was very little of it in his brain, by this time. He merely said:

  “Trainor, whatever you may be, you’re a brave devil for daring to come back into this town, and I’ll go with you to hell and back, just as you say. I suppose you have your own way of sneaking out of Alkali. I’m going home to get a medical kit. I’ll meet you on the road outside of town in fifteen minutes. The road
toward Baldy.”

  He turned on his heel and went off briskly. Trainor, feeling that he had ended his main difficulty, and that he was on the verge of a complete success, opened the door into the hall just in time to see Blacky, Josh May, and two others come into the hall from the rear. He slammed the door in their faces, and threw the bolt across.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Man Hunters

  THE wits went out of Trainor, in that emergency. The sudden yell that burst from the four scattered his thoughts as a wind scatters dust. A revolver bullet bored through the door and split it down a long panel.

  Still he stood there like one hypnotized by the greatness of the terror.

  He heard a rush of feet. The door, already cracked, burst open violently, with Josh May, who had been the point of the flying wedge, stumbling and then lurching forward on his face across the room. He fell right at Trainor’s feet.

  A bit of straight shooting would have finished off the rest of that charge in short order, but Trainor was still so benumbed in that brain that his hand did not seek the gun he so seldom carried. Instead, he picked up a chair, flung it into the midst of them, and leaped through the next doorway.

  The noise and the gunfire had brought everyone out of the bar and swarming into the other back room, by this time. In the distance Trainor saw the twisted face of the bartender. But what counted was that the instant he appeared, the crowd fell back with a shattering yell of “Trainor!”

  He might have laughed to think of the reputation which he had built up in this town. But he took that single instant of surprise to dodge through the mob, jerk open another door, and slam and lock it behind him. A bullet drilled through that door at the instant. But he had a second to decide which way he was to run — while that lock held behind him and the turmoil was on the farther side of the door.

  To run to the rear was to plunge into certain danger. To go the other way might give him half a chance. So he ran forward, and through an open door into the long barroom.

  As he ran, he heard the ringing, familiar voice of Doc Yates, shouting:

  “A thousand, five thousand for the scalp of Trainor! Get him, boys!”

  Those words threw a sudden blackness over the eyes of Trainor. The last hope went out of him.

  Here was the bar-room, empty for the instant, but with people in every room around it. Out on the street, men had heard the turmoil. Their footfalls beat heavily on the board sidewalk as they ran for the swing doors of the saloon. Escape seemed cut off in every way.

  He vaulted over the bar and, as he dropped behind it, heard men rush into the room from the street, from two rear entrances.

  And the voice of Doc Yates urged on the pack.

  Trainor crept on hands and knees down the length of the bar, then turned into a little room behind it, where the walls were lined with shelves filled with bottles, while several big kegs stood on the floor. The window that gave onto the street was heavily shuttered on the inside and the shutters were padlocked.

  He gripped those shutters, wrenched at them with all his might — and gained nothing. Twice his strength would not avail to tear them down. He needed a pry.

  When he looked back, it seemed to him that the shouting, the thundering of feet had put the entire world in motion. His brain spun in the semi-darkness. He could neither think nor see, clearly, until he spied a heavy hammer lying on a shelf near the door.

  He got to that hammer with a leap. It would serve him to pry open a board of the shutters; at the worst, he could use it to batter the shutters to pieces and so force an exit, if only he had time.

  In the next room, the tremendous voice of Doc Yates was crying:

  “Keep at it, boys! He’s somewhere in this house. No chance for him to get out. He’s lying low, somewhere. Five thousand to the fellow who gets him!”

  That was what Trainor heard the last of as he snatched the hammer from the shelf and, swinging back toward the window, saw the twisted face of the barkeeper appear in the doorway.

  Trainor struck. The weight of the hammer made the blow clumsy. It merely knocked the drawn revolver out of the hand of the barkeeper. The latter, disarmed, dived at Trainor like a football player and rolled him on the floor.

  Still the bartender did not cry out. Perhaps the battle fury, perhaps the joy of finding his enemy here at hand had made the scarred man forget that a single cry would bring fifty men to his assistance. No, when Trainor got a glimpse of the face of the barkeeper, he saw the eyes gleaming with a cold and concentrated and alert malice.

  Trainor could now understand. A yell for help would fill the room instantly with many men. It would also divide the promised reward into many fractions, and the barkeeper wanted the whole sum for himself. He had been disarmed of the revolver, but he had something almost better for hand-to-hand struggling — a bowie knife. Trainor managed to grip the wrist of the man’s knife hand, and desperation froze his hold on it, and stiffened his arm to keep the point from the soft of his throat.

  He could not maintain that resistance long. He was underneath. The weight of the barkeeper’s whole body was bearing down to drive that knife home. Already the arm of Trainor was shuddering under the strain. The grin of triumph broadened horribly on the face of the barkeeper and kept his eyes glimmering.

  There was no chance to help Trainor, then. Both his arms were occupied. Then he noticed that they lay close to the wall. He planted both feet against it and thrust out with all his might, with an impact that kicked them both over and over till their heads crashed against the rounded sides of one of the kegs.

  Blackness jumped over the eyes of Trainor. As the flickering darkness came, he told himself that he was a dead man, with a knife in his throat.

  Then instant sense came back to him.

  The barkeeper was still striving, but the grin was frozen stupidly on his face; the strength was gone from his hand. With a twist, Trainor disarmed him. He heard the breath of the bartender caught, as he prepared to yell, and Trainor banged the rounded butt of the heavy knife against the temple of his man.

  That one blow made the stunned man turn limp.

  Trainor bounded to the shuttered window. There was still a rising tide of confusion thundering through the house. He could hear men upstairs, and in the barroom, and in the back rooms. There were footfalls and voices passing down the cellar stairs beneath.

  And always there was that shout of Doc Yates which rang, trumpet-like, through the building:

  “Five thousand for him, boys. You’ll get him. Take your time, and be thorough. I’ll have him if I have to clear the house and then burn it. Five thousand for the scalp of Ben Trainor!”

  Trainor had fitted the handle of the hammer under the bottom slat of the shutters. He pried. The whole of the shutters trembled, sagged, gave way with a groaning of nail rust against old wood. He laid the hammer aside and with his bare hands wrenched the loosened weight away. There was not even a pane of glass in the window frame. He had before him the dark of the night and the street not five feet below the window sill. One glance he threw over his shoulder, and then he slid through and stood on the ground, in the open air, free!

  He slid in over the window sill half the length of his body, cupped his hands at his lips, and shouted with all his stentorian might:

  “Doc Yates! If you want Trainor, come and get me, here! Come and get me, you blackleg! I’m here, waiting for you!”

  That voice rang and re-rang and echoed through the building. It seemed to stun everyone to motionlessness, for an instant, but after that there was a savage rush of angry men, herding toward the point from which the cry had issued. Even from outside the building, the hunters were rushing back through the entrances, perhaps with some fine picture of a desperado standing his ground, ready to fight it out to the last against great Doc Yates.

  That “desperado,” the instant he had yelled, turned and fled with all his might down the street, and turned at the next corner, and again at the next, until he found himself utterly out of wind,
but safe, among those saplings where Parade was tethered.

  Then, through the darkness, he saw the glimmering eyes of the stallion. He spoke softly, and the great horse whinnied no louder than a whisper.

  At that moment, it seemed to Trainor that there was no wonder that Silver could accomplish miracles, served as he was by even the dumb beasts.

  He swung into the saddle. He rode quietly out into the narrow twisting lane, deep in muffling dust.

  All across the town he heard hoofbeats, shoutings, and once there was a loud cluster of shots. But they would probably be shooting at every shadow, by this time. Men will do strange things for five thousand dollars!

  He let Parade go into a trot.

  Even the trot of the great stallion was smooth and easy, cushioned on the deep, supple play of the fetlock joints. And there was a springing speed to that effortless gait. It was at such a pace that a man should sit out a long pursuit, a long hunt, wearing down lesser creatures and mustangs which at full gallop could hardly match this travel gait of Parade. Yes, it was like being master of a wind which, at will, could be made to blow hard or soft, taking the rider out of the ken of lesser people.

  He came beyond the town to the road to Mount Baldy. Down it he went for a mile, straining his eyes into the darkness. And there was no sight of the doctor!

  Groaning, he stared about him. He should have known, he told himself, that the drunken doctor, half stimulated from his alcoholic state by an appeal to his pride and to his manhood, would quickly relapse as soon as the shock of the situation died down in him. He should have realized that ten minutes after making his promise, the doctor would be seated once more in front of his whisky bottle!

  What could he do now? Return to a town that buzzed with rage and hate like a swarm of hornets? He had offended that great Doc Yates, to be sure, but he had also made a joke of all the grown men in Alkali. He wanted to laugh, as he thought of that, but he knew that the very birds of the air would see him on the darkest nights and cry out his name if he should so much as steal a pace back within the borders of the town.