by Grey, Zane
They went outside, and Stone experienced a qualm when Malloy hobbled to his favourite 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?"
"Hell no. 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 mouth-piece 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 began 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 at all. We was stuck, an' you bet I told them.
"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 grey 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 someone 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 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.
"Damn it, 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?"
"Bambridge!" he exclaimed, in cold and ringing speculation. "Boss, you done for 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-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 centre... An', wal, I guess I gotta take it as friendly act on your part, though I seen red fust off."
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, chocked 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 realised that Malloy expected it and certainly would not remain. Tanner had taken no chances.
Pecos would be waiting for him up at the headwaters of the Little Colorado. Stone decided that the sooner he started the better for him. There was a shadow over the yellow cabin built by Malloy, and more than that cast by the bulk of the looming wall. Besides he hardly trusted himself, so long as he remained in propinquity to the remnant of the Hash-Knife.
Upon Stone's return to the cabin, at sunset, he found it deserted. Malloy and his two comrades had departed in a hurry, leaving the interior of the cabin in a state of confusion. He felt no surprise. It had happened before. Still, there might have been good reason for such a departure. Sonora might have returned or anything could have happened. Hastily packing some food supplies and a blanket, Stone made his way under cover of the wall to the corral, His horse was among the several horses left. In a few moments Stone rode down the slope into the darkening forest.
Chapter SEVENTEEN
Three mornings later, in the first rosy flush of sunrise, when the black squirrels were chattering and the blue jays screeching, Jed Stone struck into a blazed trail new to him and which led to a newly graded road. This he concluded was the road lately cut down into Yellow Jacket.
Up out of the canyon country now, on the level of the slowly rising plateau, where forest of pine began to be sprinkled with open patches of desert of cedar and pilion and sage, he relaxed something of vigilance and made much faster time. Because of this he discovered, presently, that he had ridden some distance over fresh horses' tracks before he had observed them.
"That's queer," he soliloquised, halting. "They shore weren't in the road back there a ways."
Riders had come along here that very morning, and they had certainly cut off into the woods somewhere between this point and back where Stone had noticed the clean untracked road.
The fact was disturbing, but after he had reflected a moment he made sure that he would have heard and seen them long before they could have discovered him. For he had been alone, and though relaxed somewhat from strain he still exercised keen eyes and ears. They had turned off not to avoid him, but for reasons of their own.
Stone spurred on and rode at a brisk canter for a while, anxious to get to the Cottonwood country, where again he could take to the deep forest. But when he came to the junction of the new road with the old one he was halted by plain evidences of a hold-up. A vehicle of some sort had come along here headed south and had gone no farther, along either road. Stone found a canvas bag, open and rifled of its contents, and thrown aside. The ground about had been so cut up with hoofs that he could read but little from the tracks. But soon he ascertained that the wheel tracks turned back the way they had come.
"Wal, now, jest what come off heah?" he muttered. He was accustomed to read the signs of the open. These might have meant little, and again they might have meant a great deal. Stone sensed the latter, and he searched the roadside until he found along the wheel tracks a bloody glove that had fallen into the weeds.
"Ahuh. I smelled it--as Croak would say," declared Stone. "I'm jest curious now to catch up with whatever had these wheels."
And in an hour or less he sighted a buckboard with one occupant driving slowly north. Stone kept on. He would have a look at that driver and his vehicle. A strong instinct prompted this, not all curiosity. He did not need to come to close quarters with the driver. This individual wore no hat; he had grey hair; he sagged in his seat, now his head hunched between square shoulders and again with it lifted doggedly. Stone, after the manner of riders of his kind, like hounds on scent, caught the colour of blood on stones along the roadside. Then he spurred his horse into a run.
Before he caught up with the buckboard it stopped, and the man turned, evidently having heard the thudding hoofs behind. As Stone flashed up, to haul his horse to a sliding halt, he caught sight of the dark face of a Mexican lying on the floor behind the back seat. Stone had seen too many dead men not to know this was one.
"Hey, old-timer--" Then he experienced a violent heart-stabbing start. He was staring into the hard convulsed visage of a man he had not seen for twenty years, yet whom he instantly recognised. A wrench tore Stone. "Dog-gone-me if it ain't Jim!"
"Howdy, Jed!" replied the rancher, grimly. "An' what do you want?"
"Me!--Hell, nothin', except to ask what's happened? I run across your tracks a ways back. Looked like a hold-up to me. An' I knew it when I found this glove."
Stone pulled out the stained glove, which he had tucked under the pommel of his saddle.
"Belonged to my driver, Pedro, lyin' there," said Traft, nodding at the dead man. "But, shore, you know what come off."
"I don't. I know nothin'. I've been three days ridin' out of the brakes. I jest run across you."
"Jed Stone, can you expect me to believe thet?" queried Traft, incredulously.
"Reckon I expect it, Jim, 'cause I swear it's true," replied Stone, and gazed straight into the steel-blue eyes bent so piercingly and accusingly, and yet so strangely, upon him. That look bridged the long cruel years back to the dim cowboy days.
"You don't know I've been held up an' robbed by Croak Malloy?" demanded Traft, derisively.
"By God!... You have?... No, Jim, I didn't know."
"Nor thet he killed my driver?"
"I didn't know, Jim," repeated Stone, now with terrible earnestness to be believed by this old
rancher.
"Jed, I reckon I don't see any reason for you lyin' to me. Many years ago you lied to me--an' thet lie ruined you an' saved me. But don't lie now."
"Jim, I'm not lyin'. I swear to God!... I'd quit the Hash-Knife. I left our hole down in the brakes three days ago. My outfit's done. Malloy broke it up. I'm leavin' Arizona for ever--an' this life I've led."
After a protracted study of Stone's face the rancher burst out: "My Gawd! Jed, I'm glad. An' it's shore a queer meetin' for me an' you... But listen. I was goin' down to Yellow Jacket to surprise my nephew Jim. I had his sweetheart, Molly Dunn with me, an' his sister, Gloriana. We slept last night at Miller's sheep-ranch, I reckon some fifteen miles up the road. An' at the turn-off down there we got held up by three men. I didn't know Malloy till one of his pardners called him Croak... Wal, when Pedro drove on, at my order, Malloy rode up an' shot him. An' you bet he'd have done fer me but fer an idea he got. Anyway, they robbed me an' yanked the girls out of the buckboard. They had to hawg-tie Molly. She shore fought. Malloy says, 'Traft, I'll give you three days to come to Tobe's Well with ten thousand dollars. Put the money in the loft of the cabin, next the chimney. We'll see you come, or whoever you send. An' these girls will be set free. Mebbe a little wuss fer love-makin'!'... The little ruffian said jest thet, an' grinned aboot it. I agreed. An' he let me go."
"Jim, if I know Malloy he let you off easy," declared Stone, sharply, and he reined his horse over close to the buck-board. "I struck their tracks down by the new road. An' I know aboot where they cut off into the woods... Jim, I'll trail Malloy, an' go round an' haid him off, or come up on him at Tobe's Well. Mebbe I better make a short cut an' beat him there... But I'll come up on him before dark. An' I'll get the girls."
"Jed Stone, are you aimin' fer thet ten thousand?" demanded Traft.
"I don't want a dollar. I'll do this because, wal, because I liked young Jim, an' because I'd starve before I'd do you another dirty deal. At thet Malloy an' Bambridge rung me into the only one. An' I killed Bambridge fer doin' it."
