Well-mounted and well-armed, Lou Harris and Reb Dolley swore that they would be first and that if gold was to be found on Three Creeks it would be theirs. If others had the best claims before them, they had better look out for their lives. If Jake Heller’s claim was the only one worth having, poor old Jake had seen the last of it. In a situation like this, where a million could be gained by the cocking of a gun, every man had to look out for himself.
Ed Brack’s dream looked like coming true. As the days passed, it looked like becoming even truer. The trickle of men going south increased until it became a steady stream. First a camp-site would be deserted of a dozen men, then a small township stood untenanted except by those who were sick or no longer had the will and the get-up-and-go to hunt further for the elusive metal. Even Denver itself started to notice that the saloons were less crowded. The so-called law of the city took note that a number of men who were known to prey on successful prospectors for their pokes of dust and golden nuggets had left town. They suspected that these men did so out of respect for the law being imposed, but they could not have been wronger. Such men went where the gold was, but they had no intention of raising a sweat in their hunt for it. They went armed and on fast horses, travelling light, for they knew they could gain a living wherever a Colt’s gun could go.
The last to leave Denver and its environs were the men who lived by trade. They too went where the gold was. These were those who didn’t have the capital to establish themselves on Denver land which was weekly becoming more expensive to buy. This time they would be in first and they dreamed that in a year or so they would be lording it over large trading establishments that would lie at the heart of the new city which would spring up in Three Creeks country. Maybe, they thought, it would even outstrip Denver itself in importance. They could see themselves as wealthy and respected citizens, maybe even state senators. Who could tell in the wonderful world of opportunity that was the West?
No one, not a single gold-minded, impatient, single-intentioned, eager one of them, gave a solitary thought for the Storms or for the land they were about to rape.
Chapter Seven
The first to notice that something was afoot around Three Creeks was not any of the Storms, but Andy Grebb. Standing in his bar one night, drinking his own wares and lording it over his customers with a proprietary air, he saw two men enter whom he immediately knew. He shoved his way through his clients with extended hand.
‘Why, Lou Harris by all that’s holy,’ he cried throatily, ‘an’ my old friend Reb. How you been, boys?’
The two men looked just what they were, two men who had ridden fast and far through hard country. They greeted Grebb in a friendly enough manner, but they showed no great enthusiasm. They accepted his offered drinks, demanded food and declared that they would not stop over the night. They were in a hurry. They didn’t say exactly why, but they hinted that they had left Denver on poor terms with the law there. Grebb hugged himself with delight and later went out to see them ride off along the trail that would take them down through Broken Spur into the Three Creeks country.
As they disappeared into the night, hauling their weary pack-horse behind them, the thought hit him that maybe they were indeed on the run from the law and that they were not here for the gold at all. That sobered him a little. The next two days, however, cheered him considerably as traffic along the trail increased. At first, they came in ones and twos, men with their worldly goods on their backs, others mounted. Later, they increased and confirmed his belief in his kinsman, Jake Heller. Old Jake had done the trick. Those goddam Storms were being invaded. A week, a month and they would be wiped out, trampled underfoot by a thousand gold-seekers. He sat at his window, drinking, watching the increasing southward traffic with enormous delight. Who knew—the gold-hunters might overflow from the Three Creeks valley into the other lands peopled by the Storms and their friends. Andy Grebb never missed a chance. When all this died down, Grebb could be in possession.
His mind slid to Ed Brack and it chilled a little. Brack would be wanting Three Creeks for his winter graze again. All in good time. He would think of some way of dealing with Brack.
The first men to stake a claim in the north-west corner of the Three Creeks valley were discovered in what could be called a curious and roundabout way.
It happened like this—
Harvey Dana was a hard and resourceful man, possessing many talents, one of which was to survive under almost any circumstance that life could offer. That was proven by his being alive at the time of his meeting with Kate Storm. To bring him to that moment in time, he had survived a good many saloon brawls, the results of which were determined with a quickly drawn and accurately aimed gun. He had also survived several bank raids in Kansas and Missouri and the stopping of several trains of Union Pacific Rail Road and stages belonging to Overland. During these creditable performances, he had killed a number of men. In his philosophy, there was nothing like a dead man to make other men toe the line. It saved a good deal of unpleasantness in the long run.
If the world regarded him as a bad and dangerous man, he did not think of himself in the same light. He was a Southerner and he made the most of it. He still, he declared, made war on the damned Yankees and he wouldn’t surrender as long as he had breath in his body. That made sense, because all men knew that he would live no longer than it took to raise his hands above his head and come from cover. Any damned Yank with a grain of sense would have shot him on sight.
As for Kate Storm—the effect of the ranch-girl on this man of flight and violence had been profound. It was as though, suddenly in mid brutal career he had been pulled up short. That didn’t mean the violence in him had been stopped for ever. It meant that the man was still while he took in the beauty and the passion of the girl. If she touched some tenderness in him, he did not know, for he was used only to offer such emotion to women who were kin to him, such as his mother and sisters. Kin were everything in his world. Kinship was about the only thing he held sacred. So Kate belonged to the outside world, the world of victims. Now here was such a victim who had gotten through to him in some way. At that time, it touched him physically. He wanted her and so powerfully that he played the wooing of her by instinct knowing that if he moved too fast and too hard she was lost to him. So he courted her at their secret meetings with a gentleness that was born of necessity.
His habit of thieving had nearly been his undoing. If it had not been for that damned hired man ... He had fixed a rendezvous in the hills with some of the boys, brothers, cousins, neighbors from the home state, men he could trust. They would need beef and he had come on three strays. You never knew when you were headed for danger in his profession. And he had been caught, literally, with his pants down. What he found impossible to accept was the fact that while he had the drop on a man, a goddam thirty-and-found cowhand to boot, that same sonovabitch had jumped him and got away with it.
Worse, he was left on foot without boots or horse. Or gun. Being without a gun was like being robbed of an arm. He thought, slept and lived guns. They were the insignia of his manhood. If the boys heard about this, he would never live it down. The great Robin Hood of the plains and hills, the hero of the broken law, the gunman who had been newspaper headlines throughout the whole Union would be laughed at from coast to coast.
All he had was his knife and his wits.
He also had some luck.
This came in the form of a lone Arapaho hunter. A man younger than himself, armed with a muzzle-loader and a bow and some arrows. Now, at this time, the Arapaho were this way and that with regards to whites, so Dana played it safe and made friendly overtures to the young brave. The fellow took the bait hook-line-and-sinker. He didn’t speak much English and Dana didn’t speak any Arapaho, but the white man was able to make it clear that he was in a pretty bad fix, while the Indian made signs that he had food and a horse not far off and he would take Dana to them.
They reached the Indian’s camp and the Arapaho fed the white m
an. They were getting along fine. So fine in fact that it came as a complete surprise to the young Arapaho when, on turning his back briefly to the white man, he received a knife in the back. He was quite unaware that a moment later, that same knife severed his throat from ear to ear.
Dana stayed in that spot for long enough to cover the copper-colored body with heavy rocks, kill the fire, pack the dear-meat on the agitated pony and then to mount it. The little animal gave him plenty of trouble at first. It didn’t like being mounted from the left side and it didn’t take to the smell of white man. Dana overcame these prejudices after a dozen or so pitches and he then set off to follow the tracks of his own horse. On the way, he picked up his rope from where he had been jumped by Pete Has so. He found the black half-a-day later and caught it without much difficulty. After he had sent the Indian pony into the hills, he rode back for his saddle and considered his situation.
He had a muzzle-loader and a bow with a half-dozen arrows. Also a knife, a good horse and some deer-meat. His feet were raw from walking barefoot, there was a girl he found he couldn’t just ride away from and there was a man he wanted to kill.
He rode deeper into the hills, made camp in a good and secure spot where there was excellent grass for the black, cooked some of the deer-meat and thought.
What he didn’t know was that luck was bringing the man he wanted to kill right to his door, as you might say.
Pete Hasso had no sleep that night, but that did not fret him unduly. Cowhands were men who could do without sleep. They had to be. He rode through the night, a much confused man. Till now, life had been pretty simple and straightforward. You were on the right side of the law or the wrong side. You worked or you stole to live. You loved or you hated. Now he had left the lover of the woman he loved afoot in the hills, maybe to die. He cursed those goddam cows that had demanded to be followed, he cursed his own soft-heartedness. He should have blown daylight through that no-account skunk and left him lie.
He picked up the trail of the bootless man without much trouble soon after daylight and rode his tired horse slowly along the faint tracks. This led him inevitably to those of the Indian. He followed on, curious and wary. He was no great expert at tracking and he wasn’t quite sure what he was likely to find or when. But the pony sign in soft dirt was enough even for him. He dismounted and scouted around till he came on the cairn of stones and he didn’t need second sight to know that a dead man lay beneath them. He pulled the stones away until he uncovered the face of the Indian.
That set him back a mite. All Pete knew right then that the man looked like a Ute and he was dead. His throat had been cut. Maybe Dana killed him and maybe he didn’t. But Pete would take even bets that the outlaw had lived up to form. A death was his trademark. That meant that Dana now had a mount and he could be miles off by now. It could also mean that this little old Indian could be missed by his people and they could come looking for him.
Pete didn’t like the thought of that much. It could mean only trouble for the Storms, for every white man in these parts. Sure, there was Denver and some pretty good-sized mining camps right plumb in the middle of the mountains, but that didn’t mean the Utes couldn’t get blood in their eyes and come a-looking for scalps. A death was a death and it had to be paid for. The way things were going, if the Utes came out, some of the Cheyenne and the Arapaho might throw in with them. And there was talk that the Kiowas were peace-talking with those two peoples.
Pete thought hard and it didn’t get him anywhere. He told himself that all he could do was to get him back to Three Creeks and pass the word. Dana had a horse. If he had any sense, he’d ride clear out of the country. But he had a feeling in his water that a man like Dana wouldn’t do anything of the kind. He paid his debts.
The cowhand stepped into the saddle, turned his weary mount and headed for home as fast as voice and quirt could make the animal go. He took, as chance would have it, a shortcut he knew from hunting this way during the winter snows. That would bring him down through the north-western corner of the Three Creeks valley and that would give him an easy run home downhill all the way. This meant a short climb after he had ridden seven or eight miles and by now his horse was bushed. Pete dismounted to lead the animal up the steep and narrow trail.
It was on this trail that it happened. Savagely, shockingly.
He heard the roar of the gun behind him and the impulse to turn in the saddle toward the sound started in him. In that instant the heavy ball struck him in the back.
It seemed that his horse went one way and he another. And, as he went, instinct took his right hand down onto the butt of the gun at his hip. He hit the rocks to the right of the trail clumsily, seemed to break against a large boulder and rolled downhill into some brush. In that first moment of shock, there was no pain, only the terrible realization that he was utterly crippled.
Yet the will to live was strong in him. Like some stricken animal, he dragged himself out of the brush, glaring insanely around, searching for his attacker. Even while he was searching, his head fell forward into the dirt. Some grain of consciousness clung to him and he was aware that he was being hauled over onto his back.
He looked up and the light of the sky was blinding.
A voice said: ‘You owe me a pair of boots, hired man,’ and he knew it was Dana.
Pete made an enormous effort to lift the gun and heave back the hammer. Something hard smashed the weapon from his hand. He was aware that Dana went and picked up the gun. He stayed conscious long enough to feel the man heaving the boots from his feet. He knew, too, that his gun belt was taken and that the man caught up his best night-horse. He was surely fond of that fool horse. And he was very tired. He laid his head on his arms.
He heard Dana say: ‘I’ll leave you to die, cowboy. Just like you left me.’
Then Pete slept.
Chapter Eight
Riley Brack found him mid-afternoon, found him lying on his face with his back torn open, raw to the sky and the flies black on him.
Riley stood motionless for a moment, stilled with horror, thinking his partner dead. It was one of those terrible moments that is a turning point in a man’s life. That single moment was the beginning of a series of such moments of shock for the gently-reared son of the rich cattle-baron.
‘My God,’ he said and fell to his knees beside Pete, waving the flies away from the wound, viewing the torn and bloody flesh in a kind of hopeless despair. And all he could say for a time was ‘My God, my God.’
Then he thought to search for a pulse and his fingertips picked up a faint and uncertain beat. Yet that was enough to give him a little hope. He tried to remember all he knew about wounds, but the size of this one before him was so appalling that he felt he could never stop the blood.
He must. Pete’s life was in his hands. He ran to his horse and fetched his canteen from the saddle horn, then started to rip Pete’s shirt. When he had enough rag, using the water liberally, he did what he could to clean the wound out. The blood seemed to come with fresh energy. He made a thick pad of the remainder of the shirt and bound it in place over the wound with his own and Pete’s neckerchiefs.
Surveying his handiwork, he became aware of the absence of the boots and the gun belt and gun.
He knew there was no time to waste. Somehow he had to get Pete to the house where Martha Storm would know what to do. She always did in this kind of a crisis. He led his horse as near as he could to Pete, but the animal shied away at the smell of blood. Riley swore a bit and fought the reluctant animal. He managed to get it pretty near the wounded man and tied it close. Then came the chore of lifting Pete across the saddle and that wasn’t easy. For a start, Pete was solidly made and Riley was much the slighter man. For a finish, every time Riley was in the act of getting Pete across the saddle, the horse, in spite of its being closely tied, managed to sidle away.
Finally, however, sweating and shaking, he made it. Pete was across the saddle. Riley didn’t think that was the best position for a seriously w
ounded man to be in, but time was of the essence and he had to get his partner home. So he lashed him with his rope to the horse and prepared to mount behind him.
It was then that he saw them.
There were five of them and they were below him and they didn’t have to do one single thing but sit their ponies to tell Riley Brack that he was in the most trouble he’d ever been in before.
They were Indians. He didn’t know what Indians and he didn’t much care right that moment. The fact of the dead brave back there in the rocks added up to one thing in their minds—white man. And Riley Brack belonged in that category. So ...
He jumped around the far side of the horse and heaved his rifle from its boot. That was the moment that the horse reckoned it didn’t like Indians any more than he liked the smell of blood. He jumped away from his rider and scrambled untidily through the rocks at the side of the trail, line trailing and stumbling.
One of the Indians was pointing. Another cried out in a shrill voice.
Riley didn’t talk any kind of Indian. He waved a dismissing arm and bawled: ‘Get the Hell out of it. Go on—get the Hell out of it. Vamoose.’
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