Valley of the Vanishing Men

by Brand, Max

“This isn’t the place!” he exclaimed. “The mine isn’t here. My girl, if you’re playing with us, you’re going to remember tonight!”

  She lifted her tired face to him as he spoke. Weariness takes the place of courage, sometimes, and she was very weary.

  “You don’t quite understand,” she told him. “It may be that Clive has been taken away to safety by his brother. It may be that he’s dead in the desert hours ago. But I’ve had to keep you occupied a little so that he could have a better chance of coming clear.”

  “Do you hear, Yates?” demanded Christian savagely.

  “I hear,” said Yates. “I told you that she was a tough little hombre, didn’t I?”

  “She may be tough, but she’s going to be softened,” answered Christian. “I’m going to soften her myself — and now.”

  He dropped the reins and grabbed the wrist of the girl.

  “Are you going to take us where we want to go, or aren’t you?” he shouted.

  “My father died when that strike was made,” she said to Christian. “Don’t you think that he’d rather see me dead than have me be a guide to a pack of murderers and thieves?”

  The steadiness of this voice made Christian stiffen in his saddle. Then he leaned and struck her across the mouth with the back of his gloved hand.

  Her head jerked far back. One of the men yelled:

  “Don’t do that to the gal, Christian!”

  Christian whirled his horse around with savage spurs and faced the speaker, with one hand on the butt of his revolver.

  “Don’t do it, eh?” cried Christian. “No, I’d rather do it to you, you fool! Are you talking up to me?”

  “I’d rather have you do it to me than to her,” said the fellow sullenly. “Damn it, Christian, she’s a woman, after all.”

  “You’re one of those chivalrous crooks, are you?” demanded Christian, forcing his dancing horse closer. “You’d shed your blood for the lady, would you? Why, if you open your mouth and speak another word, blood will be shed, and now!”

  The other, tense, and bowed a little to be in readiness for action, endured the terrible eye of Christian only for another moment. Then his glance and his head fell a little. Christian made a contemptuous gesture of dismissal.

  “Rats that squeak are not the rats that get the bait out of the trap,” he said.

  He jerked his horse savagely around toward the girl, again.

  “I start now, with her,” he said. “Yates, get off your horse and pull the fool out of the saddle, will you?”

  There was no need to drag her. She dismounted quickly and stood with her hands clasped behind her, facing Christian who, on the back of his tall horse, looked like a giant. The man who had offered the first protest groaned a little, and turned his head away.

  “You’ve brought this on yourself,” said Christian. “You know that?”

  “I know it,” said the girl.

  “I’m going to make you talk straight,” said Christian, “and tear the truth out of you if I have to tear your heart in two at the same time.”

  “You’ve torn my heart in two already,” said the girl.

  “I’ve only scratched it,” answered Christian. “I’m going to have you screaming, inside of ten seconds; screeching so that some of these milk-and-water fools will be pretty sick. I’m giving you your last chance to talk up. Will you do it?”

  She looked straight at him, and then her head tilted back, and she looked far behind him. She said nothing.

  “Hold on!” called an eager voice. It came from the same fellow who had turned away. “Someone’s coming on the pelt. I know him. It’s Perry. He’s signaling. Here’s Perry, and without his gang. What the devil could have happened?”

  “Silver!” muttered another of the men. “They’ve run into Silver, and he’s smashed ‘em flat!”

  “You lie,” said Christian, his voice strained by fear. “It can’t be that Silver has blundered onto them twice in a row. He can’t have that much luck in a row.”

  Perry, swinging up rapidly, called out: “We’ve got Clive Trainor, chief. We’re bringing him along.”

  The cry that came out of the girl’s throat rang thin and high; it stopped in the middle of the note of terror and of grief. For Christian had begun to laugh.

  “All the little chickens come home to rest. You see, Yates? I told you that the bad luck couldn’t continue. Brains have to beat fortune, in the long run, and they’re starting to beat it now! Well done, Perry! Well done, boy! You’ve brought luck back to us! I see ‘em coming in now.”

  For the group which was coming at a walking pace, guarding the litter, was now in view around the corner of the ravine’s wall.

  “We found Doc Wells with him,” said Perry. “Didn’t know what to do with him, and so we brought him along, too.”

  “Why didn’t you tap the drunken fool over the head and leave him there?” demanded Christian. “Nobody would have found him, and if they did, nobody would have cared.”

  “There was Les,” said Perry. “Poor Les needs a doctor right bad, I guess.”

  “The devil with Les!” said Christian. “At a time like this, we can’t afford to look behind us. Les is back at the shack, and he can stay there.”

  He turned to the girl again. “Here’s your man again,” he said. “Now, honey, are you talking with a straight tongue? Are you taking us out to the mine that the dear old father died for? Answer me, you white-faced fool!”

  “I’ll show you the way,” said the girl slowly. “I give up — I give up if you’ll let me have Clive safe!”

  “Have him then,” said Christian. “Get her back on her horse. Lead on, Nell. Be a little sprightly now. Get your horse into a gallop, and go fast. We’ve wasted most of the night, and it looks as though a sand storm may be blowing out of the northeast, yonder, to fill up the rest of our time! Go on! Go on! Right past ‘em. You can see your man later on and mewl over him.”

  She put her horse to a good gallop and, in fact, rode straight past the group of riders, seeing among the horses the litter on which poor Clive Trainor was stretched.

  Perhaps this last promise to her would be broken, as other promises had been broken in the past, but she dared not believe so. Out of the canyon she led the way and then angled off to the side a short distance into the desert.

  Christian shouted to her: “You don’t mean to say that you’re fooling us again? There can’t be a mine out here in the sand! You can’t have made a strike out here!”

  She halted her horse presently, and pointed at a small shadow that appeared in the moonlight, a mere head of dark stone that broke the watery surface of the moonlit sand.

  “There!” she said. “And God forgive me! That’s the strike!”

  Christian leaped from his horse and knelt by the rock. He flashed the ray of a torch over it, but that was not necessary. The light of the moon was strong enough, and he found now, a great shattered place where an explosion had torn the soft, brittle rock apart. The whole face of the gash was glittering with a thin beadwork of gold, like that sample of ore which had come into the assayer’s office in Alkali, not many weeks before.

  Christian stood up, his face working. His eyes considered the men before him, and the others who were approaching from the distance, and he muttered:

  “We’ve found it at last. We’ve found it! We’ve got it here!”

  He laughed breathlessly. He turned to the girl and said: “I don’t know why, but I can almost forgive you for being such a fool about young Trainor. You’ve brought us all to luck, at last. But there’s no telling how far this runs. It may be only a boulder that’s sunk here in the desert!”

  “The blow sand has washed up over most of it,” she answered. “Thirty or fifty yards of it were showing when I was here the last time.”

  “Out here in the desert, like a raft loaded with treasure on the open sea! There’s something silly — there’s something romantic about it! Look it over, boys! Look it over!”

  The litter h
olding Clive Trainor had come up, by this time. Gusts of wind began to blow heavily. The cloud which Doctor Wells had seen in the northeast now covered half the stars, and in the air was an acrid smell of fine desert soil. Certainly the sand storm was growing on them rapidly.

  Around that rock, heedless of the storm, the men of Yates and Christian were dancing, laughing. Some of them had found little shards of broken rock, and they waved these as drunkards might have brandished beakers of wine.

  And then the heavy, sheer weight of the wind struck down on them all and blew the laughter away from their lips.

  “It’s coming!” shouted Christian.

  He heard the girl appealing to the riders to turn back and take poor Clive Trainor into shelter among the ravines; otherwise, in his weakened condition, if he were left there, he would certainly be stifled under the thick blasts of the wind and sand. Even men and horses were sometimes overcome and choked by such a storm. Certainly an invalid would have but little chance.

  “No!” thundered Christian. “I promised the girl that she could have her man. Where else would a man like to be? Put him down by the gold mine, and leave the girl with him. If the wind chokes him — why, that’s too bad!” He laughed as he spoke. Then he added: “Give ‘em a doctor, too. Let old Wells stay by ‘em. He’ll know how to help. Leave ‘em stay here. Take the horses, and let ‘em stay here and enjoy themselves with a gold mine for company! What more can they ask than that?”

  It was done. Doctor Wells, standing, stupefied, looked into the face of the increasing wind until the flying sand began to sting his skin. When he turned, he found himself alone with the two helpless victims, and far away, the troop of riders were retreating into the mouth of a ravine which Doc Yates had said, “had walls so high and tight that not even a fly could crawl out of it, and, therefore, damned little wind would get in.” Then Wells looked down at the girl, who lay weeping beside the litter of Clive Trainor. And only now the sick man commenced to waken.

  CHAPTER XXI

  The Dying Man

  FAR up the long ravine, through the narrows, up the hill of loose sand, Jim Silver and Ben Trainor had come close to the stone house in front of the old Spanish mine. For here, they hoped, they might be able to pick up the lost sign of Barry Christian’s men. Leading the way was Jim Silver’s tame wolf, and when Frosty came to the black, open doorway of the house, he suddenly shrank down and leaped aside. He began to back toward his master with his head down, his legs bent so that he was in a position to leap in any direction.

  The horses had been left at a little distance, and now Silver murmured to Trainor: “There’s a man in that house. Take the back. I’ll take the front. Frosty wouldn’t act that way except for a man and guns.”

  “There may be ten men, for that matter, and the darkness may be only a bait,” said Trainor.

  “No,” answered Silver. “If there were a lot of men, Frosty wouldn’t come back slowly. He’d come on the run. Take the back way; I’ll take the front, and We’ll see what’s inside the place.”

  Trainor, in fact, had barely skirted to the rear of the house when he heard Silver say, from the front and inside:

  “Steady, brother! Don’t move! I see you in spite of the dark.”

  “Move?” answered a groaning voice. “The only place I can move to is hell, and I’m bound there pretty fast.”

  By the time Trainor got in, Silver had already kindled a lantern and with Trainor he looked down into the face of a man who had a great red-stained bandage about his body, which was naked above the hips. A blanket had been thrown on the long table, and that one of Yates’s companions who was called Les was stretched there to die or live, as chance might help him or leave him.

  He was a good-looking fellow in his early twenties, with a growth of pale blond stubble over his face. His brows were puckered with pain that made him turn his head restlessly, continually, from side to side. But when he saw Silver, his head stopped its turning, and his eyes fixed.

  “It’s a funny damn thing,” said Les. “I kind of thought that I’d see you again. And here you are, eh? Well, you got me, Silver, and I guess you got me good. Either of you hombres would kindly please to gimme a slug of water out of the canteen over yonder? I can’t get down off the table to fetch it for myself.”

  Silver brought him the canteen quickly and held it at his lips. Les drank with bulging eyes.

  “That’s better by a whole lot,” he declared, panting. “Luck that brung you two here — luck or that devil of a Frosty, eh?”

  For the wolf had reared and, planting his forefeet on the edge of the table, lolled the long red flag of his tongue and looked with green eyes into the face of the wounded man.

  “Frosty brought us,” said Silver, “and told us that there was someone in here in the dark. Where are the rest of your pals, Les?”

  “Dead, I hope!” said Les. “They go off and leave me here to die! They wouldn’t fetch me a doctor. They wouldn’t leave one man to look after me! Perry wanted to. And Christian he just cussed Perry out. Perry’s a white man, but Christian’s a snake. What does he care if I live or I die? ‘We got no time to pick up the hindmost’ is all he says. And so — ”

  He began to cough. With both hands he grappled the pain in the center of his body. His mouth opened. The coughing stopped, but the convulsion of it remained on his face.

  “Don’t talk any more,” said Silver. “I’m sorry you’re hurt, partner. We’ll fix you a decent bed, before we start. And then — ”

  His voice died out, for a crimson froth came bubbling on the lips of Les, the telltale sign that he had been wounded through the lungs. Les wiped his lips and looked at the froth on the back of his hand. Then his staring eyes gaped at the two.

  “I’m goin’ to die,” he whispered. “Whatcha think of that? I feel right strong, but I’m goin’ to die!”

  “You may not,” said Silver. “Lie still. Be quiet. We’ll — we’ll stay with you — one of us will!”

  “Will you?” muttered Les. “No, don’t you do it. I’m goin’ to go quick — there ain’t much air — I can’t get hold of no air. Don’t stay here with me. Go and get on the trail of Christian and blast the heart out of his body. Go and open him up! I’ll tell you where to look. The girl led ‘em over to Slocum’s Ravine. The one with the walls stickin’ straight up on each side. It’s a gulch that not even a fly could climb out of. She said that that’s where the mine is. You’ll find ‘em there. Find ‘em and shoot to kill. They all oughta die, the skunks! Only Perry is kind of a white man. The rest had oughta die! Go get ‘em, Silver!”

  He lay still, panting, and his eyes rolled rapidly in his head. His mouth opened and shut as he bit at the air.

  Trainor looked with horrified inquiry at Silver and received one quick glance that said, “No!”

  “As long as I had to be bumped off, it was better that a gent like Silver should do the trick,” said the husky whisper of Les. “I sort of wish that I’d been on your side of the fence, Silver, and gone straight. I ain’t been a lazy, crooked hound like a lot of ‘em — more kind of crazy and didn’t care. And now, I’m finished up. They ain’t goin’ to forget me, just because I’m on your list! But if only that bullet had socked into Christian instead of me! It might’ve, just as good! The world would be a lot better off. Wouldn’t it?”

  He twisted again, from side to side.

  “Is the pain bad?” said Silver.

  “Yeah, bad, bad!” gasped Les.

  Silver laid his big, brown hands softly over the bandage. Les suddenly let his own hands drop away.

  “The pain,” he said, “it sort of goes right out — into your hands — like it was running out into them!”

  Like a child, he wondered at Silver.

  “This ain’t so bad,” said Les. “This feels pretty good. If only I could breathe better. Silver, am I goin’ to die?”

  “You’re going to die, Les,” said Silver. “I’m sorry.”

  “Would you be sorry, honest?” aske
d Les.

  “With my whole heart, I’m sorry,” said Silver.

  “You’re a good guy, Silver,” whispered Les. “Yeah, and we all of us know that. Even Yates and Christian know it. We all know that you’re the right sort. Only — we fought against you. I’m sorry for that.”

  Suddenly he went limp. His lips moved. No words came.

  “Silver!” he called out suddenly and sat straight up. Silver caught him in his arms. The head of the dead man fell back against his shoulder.

  Ben Trainor looked not at the dead face, but into the sorrowful eyes of Jim Silver, as the big man lowered the body gently onto the flat of the table, again. He pulled the blanket over the head of Les after he had closed the eyes.

  “That’s that!” he said. “We ride for Slocum’s Ravine now, and try to make up for this mistake of mine, Ben.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  The Storm

  THE unhampered stride of the golden stallion would have brought Silver to the mouth of Slocum’s Ravine in time to interfere with the retreat of Christian and his men as the sand storm blew up, but Parade had to be checked to keep back with the gait of the horse of Ben Trainor. That was why, from the distance, the two riders saw the rout of mounted men pouring into the narrow mouth of the ravine on whose polished sides the moon was still glimmering, though across the desert, rapidly enveloping Silver and Trainor, the sand storm was increasing in strength and in darkness.

  “It’s no good!” shouted Trainor to Silver. “We’ve got to get to some kind of shelter and — ”

  “Look!” said Silver, calling through the bandanna which he had tied across his face to shut out the flying dust. “We’ve got to get to those people and see who they are. Two of ‘em, left out there — why do the fools stay? Do they think that they can get shelter from that bit of rock? Or is it some of Christian’s devilishness? Trainor, those are his men who just went back into the ravine. I’ve half a mind to ride in behind them and — ”

  A sudden, howling blast of the wind cut short these words. The two men went forward to the figures which were now barely distinguishable as they strove to take shelter behind the rock.