by Zane Grey
“Wal, take your time tellin’ me,” drawled the leader.
“Come an’ get it,” yelled Madden.
They sat at the rude table, upon which the cook thumped steaming utensils. The keen-eyed Stone remarked that all three men were ravenously hungry, yet only Malloy could eat. That to Stone was most significant. So far as Malloy was concerned, however, it would take a great deal to sicken him.
“A good stiff drink with some hot grub—an’ a fellar’s able to go on,” he said, as he rose. “But I’ll shore sleep most like our pard Lang hangin’ down there on thet cottonwood.”
Stone did not reveal his curiosity; he knew he would soon be enlightened, and if his intuition was not at fault most weighty things had happened. But when Malloy drew a heavy roll of soiled greenbacks from his pocket and tossed it over, Stone could not hide a start.
“Bambridge sent thet money he owed you,” said Malloy. “Like the muddlehaid he is he trusted it to Darnell. … An’ I’m tellin’ you, pard, if it hadn’t been fer me you’d never seen it.”
“I reckon. Thanks—Croak,” replied the outlaw chief, halting. This was one of the surprising attributes of the little gunman. Vicious and crooked as he was, he yet had that quality which forced respect, if not more, from Stone’s reluctant mind.
Malloy laboriously took off his chaps and flapped them into his corner of the cabin. Then a bloody wet spot showed on the leg of his jeans. “Some hot water, Maddy, an’ a clean rag. I’ve a crease on my laig.”
“What’s the fellar got who gave you thet cut, Croak?” queried Stone.
“He got nothin’, wuss luck. I was shore damn near my everlastin’, Jed, an’ don’t you overlook it. … Sam, you better have Madden wash thet bullet hole of yours. He’s pretty handy.”
Stone curiously watched the deft Madden dress the wounds of the injured rustlers.
“Ouch!—What’d you put in it, you idjet? Feels like salt,” shouted Malloy.
“Croak, you’re wuss’n a baby aboot little hurts. What’d you do if you got shot bad?”
“Haw! Haw! Thet’s a good one. I can show more bullet scars than any damn rider in these brakes. An’ I know who made each one. Some of the men are livin’ yet, which speaks pore fer me. I never lived up to my reputation.”
In due time the ministering was ended, after which Malloy asked for another drink. “Reckon I’d better get some of my news off my chest. Then after I hear yours I’ll have a nap of about sixteen hours. … Boss, would you mind comin’ out on the porch where I can set down an’ talk?”
They went outside, and Stone experienced a qualm when Malloy hobbled to his favorite seat. The foot of his injured leg rested upon what he must have thought was a pack, but it happened to be Bambridge’s head under the tarpaulin.
“Jed, you know thet trapper’s cabin down hyar a ways—reckon aboot three hours stiff ridin’?—Thet old one under the wall, where a spring runs out by a big white sycamore?”
“Shore. I know it. Slept there often enough. Full of mice an’ bugs.”
“Wal, it ain’t no more,” said Malloy, with a grim chuckle. “It’s a heap of ashes.”
“Burnt, eh? What you fellars doin’—burnin’ all the cabins around?”
“Hellno. We didn’t do it. That tarnel Slinger Dunn!”
“Ah, I see. … Wal, Slinger is a bad hombre. Too much like an Apache! … Hope you didn’t brush with the Diamond.”
“Jed, your hopes air only born to be dashed. Me an’ you left of the Hash Knife, ’cept Maddy hyar—an’ you can lay it to thet damned slick tracker Dunn an’ the outfit he’s throwed in with. You oughta have killed him long ago.”
“Not so easy to do as to say,” replied Stone, sarcastically.
“Ha—you’re talkin’. Wal, I had a chanct to kill Slinger, but it’d have meant me gettin’ it too.”
“You’re learnin’ sense late—mebbe too late, Croak. … I hope to God, though, you didn’t raid this new stock of Jim Traft’s.”
“No, Jed, we didn’t,” replied Malloy, frankly. “I was sore at you fer talkin’ ag’in’ it, but after I got away an’ seen what a mess Bambridge an’ his card sharper got me into I changed my mind. Not that I wouldn’t of druv the cattle later! But this hyar wasn’t the time. An’ if Bambridge had come to meet me hyar, as he promised, with a new deal on fer this Diamond stock, I’d shore have taken the money, but I wouldn’t have made a single move. Not now.”
“Wal, you puzzle me. Suppose you quit ridin’ round in a circle,” declared Stone, impatiently.
“Fust aboot the money Bambridge sent you by Darnell,” began Malloy. “I seen he was flush at Tanner’s, an’ he was losin’ fer a change. Joe is pretty keen himself with the cairds. I set in till I was broke. We hung round Joe’s ranch fer a week, waitin’, an’ finally I got wind of this backhand game Darnell was playin’. He was the mouthpiece between me an’ Bambridge. But all the time he was hatchin’ a deal on his own hook. An’ this one was to make a raid on Blodgett’s range without lettin’ Bambridge in on it. Joe Tanner never was no smart fellar, an’ shore he was always greedy. So he double-crossed us, too. Wal, it was Sam hyar who put me wise. An’ after figgerin’ some an’ snoopin’ around I seen the deal. Funny I didn’t shoot Darnell. But I jest held him up. Then he swore the big roll he had was fer you from Bambridge. I reckoned thet was the truth. … Wal, a day or so after they druv the lower end of the brakes an’ got some odd thousand head of Diamond stock up on the open range below Tanner’s. I was hoppin’ mad when I found out, but neither Darnell or Joe came back to Tanner’s. Sam’s sweet on the sawmill man’s daughter, an’ thet’s how he come to be out of what followed. He told me, an’ also thet Darnell, Joe, Lang, an’ some riders he didn’t know were comin’ up to get another whack at the Diamond cattle. Then I was a-rarin’ to get at them. I seen it all too late. Bambridge, by playin’ on my hopes, had got me in on his deals. He was aimin’ fer a big stake—then to duck out of Arizona. Now Darnell carried his messages to an’ fro, an’ he seein’ a chanct himself, double-crossed Bambridge an’, as I said, persuaded Joe Tanner to throw in with him.”
Malloy refilled his pipe and called for Madden to fetch him a light. After puffing thoughtfully, his cramped, wrinkled brow expressive of much, he went on:
“I took their trail with Sam. Night before last, jest before sundown we come damn near gettin’ run down by a stampede of cattle. We rustled to thet trapper’s cabin, an’, by Gawd! we hadn’t hardly hid our horses an’ slipped in there when hyar come Joe, Lang, Darnell, an’ his seedy-lookin’ outfit. Some of them had sense enough to ride on. But both Darnell an’ Tanner had been shot an’ found ridin’ hard. I never seen a madder man than Tanner, nor a scareder one than Darnell. We’d jest started to have hell there—with me readin’ it to them, when we found out who an’ what was chasin’ them. … No less than the Diamond outfit, Jed, led by Slinger Dunn an’ thet Prentiss cowpuncher.—Dog-gone, I’d always wanted to run ag’in’ him! … Wal, there they had us, an’ you can bet we didn’t sleep much thet night. When daylight come I took a look out, an’ was surprised when the bullets begun to fly. Them darned punchers all had rifles!—An’ there we was, with only our guns, no shells to spare, little grub, an’ no water atall. We was stuck, an’ you bet I told them. Thet glade is open in front of the cabin, as you can recollect, an’ there them daredevil cowboys dodged along the edge of the timber, like a bunch of Apaches, an’ kept shootin’. We couldn’t do nothin’. Say, wasn’t I hot under the collar? Worried, too, Jed, an’ don’t you overlook thet. … Wal, they was cute enough to guess it, an’ this Prentiss hombre yelled for us to throw out all guns an’ belts, an’ to come after, hands up, an’ line up ag’in’ the cabin wall. … Haw! Haw!”
Malloy laughed in grim recollection of the images or ideas his words called up. Stone could not divine any humor in them. Probably Malloy laughed at the suggestion for him to put up his hands.
“I yelled back,” resumed Malloy, “‘Hey, Prentiss, what’ll you do to us—
in case we surrender?’
“‘Wal, we’ll shore hang you an’ thet caird sharp, anyways,’ called back the cowboy. Orful cheerful he was, an’ sort of cocky. … Gawd! but I wanted to get out there to throw a gun on him. Then I yelled back, ‘Reckon you’ll have to come take us.’
“It wasn’t long after thet when I smelled smoke,” resumed Malloy, after a pause. “Thet damned redskin Dunn had set fire to the cabin roof. It was an old roof of shacks an’ brush, an’ shore dry. Burn? You should have heerd it! We didn’t have a hell of a lot of time. Fire began to drop on us. Lookin’ out, I seen thet the cowboys had bunched over at the edge of the woods, jest out of gunshot. I seen also thet the smoke from the cabin was blowin’ low an’ gettin’ thicker. ‘Men,’ I says, ‘we’ve got one chanct an’ a slim one. Take it or leave it. I’m gonna run out under cover of thet smoke, an’ make a break fer cover. Anyway, it’s better to be shot than burn up or hang. Take your choice. But whoever’s comin’ with me start when I yell.’”
Malloy took another long pull at his pipe, and his wonderful eyes, flaring with lightning, swept down over the wild brakes and along the wandering gray wall of rock.
“I waited till a thick lot of smoke rolled off the roof,” went on Malloy, an’ then I yelled, ‘Let ’er rip!’ An’ I run fer it, a gun in each hand. To do ’em credit, every last man in the cabin charged with me. But what’n hell could they do? … Wal, I got a bullet in the laig fust thing, an’ I went down. But I got up an’ run as best I could. You’d thought an army had busted loose—there was so much shootin’. An’ bullets—say, they was like bees! But we had the smoke with us, or not one man jack of us would have escaped. Shore I was shootin’, but bein’ crippled an’ on the run, I was shootin’ pore. I nailed one of them punchers, though, an’ I seen another one fall. Thet one was daid before he hit the ground. But some one else allowed fer him. … I got to the timber an’ fell in the brush, where you bet I laid low. I reckoned my laig was broke. But I wasn’t even bad shot, an’ when I got it tied up I felt better. The shootin’ an’ yellin’ soon ended. I peeped through the brush … an’ what do you reckon I seen?”
“Some rustler swingin’,” returned Stone, hazarding a guess.
“Nope. It was thet caird sharp, Darnell. But when I seen him fust they hadn’t swung him up. I could hear him beggin’. But thet Diamond bunch was shore silent an’ swift. They jerked him clear, till he kicked above their haids. I seen his tongue stick out … then his face go black. … An’ next went up Lang an’ Joe Tanner. They had their little kick. … I watched, but seen no more rustlers swing. But shore Prentiss an’ Dunn would have nailed some of them on the run. I crawled away farther an’ hid under a spruce thet had branches low on the ground. I lay there all day, till I was shore the cowpunchers had rid away. Then I went into the spruces where me an’ Blacky had hid our horses. His was gone, but mine was there. I sneaked him off into the woods, an’ worked round to the trail. All night! This mawnin’ I run into Blacky, who’d got away without a scratch. An’ Sam, who hadn’t been in the cabin, seen us from his hidin’-place, an’ whistled. … An’ wal, hyar we air.”
“Croak, you might have reckoned on some such mess as thet,” said Stone, gravely.
“Shore I might, but I didn’t. Jed, I’ve had too damn much money lately. Thet gambler het up my blood. I’m sorriest most thet I didn’t plug him. But it was a hell of a lot of satisfaction to see him kick.”
“No wonder. I’d like to have been there. … So the Hash Knife is done!—Croak, what do you aim at now?”
“Lay low an’ wait,” replied the gunman. “We shore can find men to build up the outfit again.”
“Never—if young Traft got killed in thet fight,” retorted Stone, vehemently. “Old Jim would rake the Tonto with guns an’ ropes.”
“Course I don’t know who got shot, outside of the two cowboys I see drop. The one I shot wasn’t young Traft, an’ neither was the other. An’ they wasn’t Slinger Dunn or Prentiss, either. … Boss, have you seen Sonora?”
“No. He hasn’t been in fer days,” replied Stone.
Malloy held his pipe far away from him and sniffed the air.
“Damnit, am I loony, or do I smell blood?”
“I reckon you smell blood all right, Croak, old boy,” returned Stone, jocularly.
“How so? I’m shore washed clean.” Suddenly, with his gaze on Stone, narrowing and shrewd with conjecture, he felt with his foot the pack upon which it had rested. “What the hell?”
Then with a singularly violent action he swept away the tarpaulin, to disclose Bambridge, a ghastly sight for even calloused men; and the pool of blood, only partly dried up; and the gun lying near on the floor.
“Bambridge!” he exclaimed, in cold and ringing speculation. “Boss, you done fer him?”
“I reckon. He throwed a gun on me, Croak,” replied Stone, rising to go to the wall, where he poked a finger in a bullet hole in one of the yellow logs. “Look here.”
“Ahuh. … Wal, you saved me the trouble, mebbe. … Shot yestiddy, I reckon. What’d he have on him?”
“Ask Madden. He searched him.”
“Hyar, Maddy, come out pronto,” he yelled, and when the cook ran out breathless and anxious, he went on. “This was your bad news, eh?”
“Nope, I didn’t reckon thet bad. But he had only aboot five hundred on him, an’ some papers.”
“Huh. Five hundred what?” demanded Malloy.
“Dollars—in gold double-eagles.”
“An’ this two-bit cattle thief reckoned he’d bribe me with thet!” he ejaculated, in disgust. “Wal, Maddy, give me one of them gold birds fer luck, an’ keep the rest. … An’ say, somebody’ll have to plant this stiff. … Blacky, you an’ Madden gotta dig a grave fer our departed guest. Dig it right out hyar alongside the porch, an’ put up a stone or somethin’, so when I see it I’ll be reminded of what a foolish galoot I am.”
“Reckon you’d better search him again, Madden,” added Stone. “Bambridge was the kind of hombre who’d sew bills up inside his clothes.”
The two outlaws, enthusiastic in obedience, lost no time complying. Stone turned away from the gruesome sight. But Malloy watched with a sardonic grin.
“Jed, I don’t notice thet you’ve gone back any on the draw,” he remarked. “You shore hit him plumb center. … An’, wal, I guess I gotta take it as friendly act on your part, though I seen red fust off.”
Malloy had his strong fascination for all men who came in contact with him, and never had Jed Stone felt it more certainly than now. Over all men he exerted a fascination of fear, but this was hardly what influenced the rustler leader here. He still bore the hatred for Malloy, because the gunman had broken up the Hash Knife; nevertheless, his deadly intent began to lose the keenness of its edge. A deep resolve, however, was something so fixed in Stone that to change it, let alone eradicate it, was a slow, painful process. It had its inception at this hour, however, and began its gradual disintegration.
Malloy went to bed and to sleep. His slumber, however, was as strange a thing as any other connected with him. He slept, yet seemed to be awake. The slightest sound would make him wide awake in a second. This was not conscience or fear, for the man possessed neither; it was the defensive instinct of the gunman most highly developed.
That day and the night passed. Stone grew more thoughtful. It did not surprise him to see Sam Tanner saddle a horse and ride away while Malloy lay asleep. These two men would never have gotten along.
Stone walked under the wall, and found his way into the hidden recesses of a wide fissure which opened out into a canyon, choked with green thicket and splintered sections of cliff, where silence and peace reigned. He could not stay longer at the cabin. Any hour that wild Diamond outfit might ride up there. Stone realized that Malloy expected it and certainly would not remain. Tanner had taken no chances. But Stone was reluctant to relinquish his revenge.
He lay on the pine-needle mat of brown, and fought the thing out. Malloy, so
far as was possible for one of his character, had certain virtues worthy of respect, if not regard. He had not approved of the leadership of the Hash Knife and had openly opposed it. On the other hand he was not an enemy of Stone’s. He trusted him. He would not have cheated him. And so Stone beat down the insistent voice that called to him to murder Malloy in cold blood. He would be truer to the old creed of the Hash Knife. Let Malloy go his way, build up another rustler outfit, and meet his inevitable end. That must come soon. These young Arizonians like Dunn and Prentiss were not to be stopped, or if they were, others as resourceful and deadly would arise. Arizona was slow but sure. Jed Stone would disappear and never be heard of again. That idea had its strong attraction. The range rumor would go abroad—the Hash Knife leader gone.
Stone felt an amazing relief at the joint renunciation of his desperate resolve and the sense of his vanishing from the Tonto. As he lay under its spell the pain at giving up these wild lonely canyons and tangled brakes he loved so, seemed to mitigate. There were other places where wilderness survived—where the forest was sweet and insulating.
And from that strange hope it took only a single leap of consciousness to land him on the verge of abandoning forever the crooked trail of the rustler, the outlaw. Almost before he realized it the transformation happened—not to character, for he was too old to change, but to its objective—to the necessity of stealing to live, and of fighting to survive. He had in his possession now more money than he had ever had at one time, enough to start ranching as he had dreamed of it twenty years before. Something had clarified his intelligence. Where were the clamoring fears attendant on the fugitive from justice? Vanished. It was a joke that he might be apprehended for that old crime of which he bore the stigma. And outside of Arizona who would know him or want to pry into his past? Many a successful cattleman or sheepman had gotten his start by questionable means. Stone knew this because he knew such men.
