by Zane Grey
“Yes, it was—for me—more than you could dream. But this West is strange—this raw camp—these goldmad men—all are strange. And I have been upset by them.”
“Wal, what’d you do it for?”
“I’d never tell you, but for the fact that I must clear myself of something brazen....When I met you on the street with that—that—with the girl called Nugget I was so distressed and shamed that I realized I had not utterly lost faith in you—that in my heart I still cared.... Even you prompting her to speak familiarly to Rand Leavitt—even after he said she was your sweetheart—even then I still fought for you. Oh, it was hard to kill. I had to be sure, so tonight I followed you.”
Into Kalispel’s slow and mounting ecstasy there burnt, at the mention of Leavitt, a passion that held all softer emotions in check.
“So Leavitt told you Nugget was my sweetheart?”
“Yes, he did.”
“An’ that confirmed your suspicions?”
“It told me what a fool I was. Still I had to find out for myself.”
“An’ you believed I put Nugget up to speakin’ intimate to Leavitt?”
“That was how he explained it—and I believed.”
“Wal, for once you were right,” replied Kalispel, coldly. “I did put her up to it.”
“How contemptible of you!” she exclaimed, hotly. “He is a gentleman. He is insulted.”
“Ah-huh. An’ you are perfectly shore Leavitt is too much a gentleman—too far above us poor miners—to have any interest in a girl like Nugget?”
“Yes, I am. More than that—he is too fine and clean to come to me, if he had been with her—as you have done.”
“An’ whatever decent feelin’ you ever had for me is dead an’ gone?”
“Yes, thank God. You are a strange mixture of chivalry and baseness. You don’t know what honor means. You have no morals. You saved me from a ruffian. You make love to me and pull me out of the river when I was drowning. Then you kill an innocent man and become a drunken sot. Lastly you become transformed, apparently. At least your appearance underwent some great change. No more ragged garb or unkempt locks! You win my father. You win the miners to your side. You take up the hardest job of all, to pack meat down to these madmen who would starve before they’d give up gold....And then all the time, no doubt, you were going to—to the room of this Nugget. And worst of all you come to me with her kisses on your lips....”
In her denunciation Kalispel grasped the undercurrent—the betrayal of her jealousy.
“Sydney, how do you know that Nugget is not as good as the very gold she’s named for?”
Sydney gasped. “Do you imagine I am mad, too?” she cried, incredulously.
“Couldn’t a man—couldn’t I go into Nugget’s bedroom without having you think something wrong?”
“No!” she replied, violently.
“Suppose I told you she needed a brother an’ I’d tried to be one? That she’d run off from home when only a kid, an’ drifted into this dance-hall business to earn a livin’? That some one had to save her from ruin—from dyin’ of drink an’ violence—from men like these brutal miners—an’ Borden—an’ Leavitt?”
She laughed in mocking astonishment.
“I’d think you a monumental liar.”
“Wal, the funny thing is—I could prove it.”
“Kalispel, you lack a great deal, and one thing is brains. Can’t you see how—how cheap it is to intimate that Leavitt—Oh, I wouldn’t repeat it!”
“Shore I can see what I lack,” he rejoined, in the might of gathering wrath. “One thing is common sense. Another was to keep on lovin’ a girl who failed in the big things—faith, love. But whatever I had for you, Sydney Blair, is as dead as whatever you had for me. An’ cold as ashes!”
Her passion spent, she backed away from him to the porch rail. He loomed over her, peering down into the white face.
“All the same, I can prove my innocence,” he went on. “I can prove it two ways.”
“How can you?” she whispered, as if she could not hold back the words.
“Wal, I reckon this way suits—me—best,” he replied, hoarsely, and seized her in powerful, relentless arms.
Sydney struggled violently, but in a moment she was in such a vice-like clasp that she was unable to move. He bent to kiss her, but she twisted her face, this way and that, so that his lips swept her cheeks, her closed eyes, her hair.
“How—dare you?” she cried, in fierce anger and dawning fright. “Let me go!...You shall suffer—for this....”
Kalispel reached her lips with his, ending her outcries, her struggles. Suddenly she sank limp on his breast. And he kissed her with all the despairing passion of his innocence, with the agony of renunciation, with mad hunger for what he knew was lost to him.
When he released his hold she sank upon the bench, drooping and spent.
“There!” he said, huskily, “I reckon—that’s my proof. I couldn’t be—villain enough to do that—if I was the—what you called me...An’ I’ll never forgive you, Sydney Blair.”
Kalispel wrestled himself erect, and at that juncture Blair came staggering and panting up the steps.
“Wal, old-timer, I see you’re drunk again,” remarked Kalispel, stepping forward doubtfully.
“That you—Emerson? ... No, I’m not drunk.... Where’s Syd——?”
“Here, Dad,” cried the girl, rising with her hands on the rail. “Oh, you look so white!”
“Blair, where’d the blood come from?” queried Kalispel, sharply, as he put his finger to a dark splotch running down Blair’s face.
“I won all—their gold,” panted Blair, heavily. “Stacks of it!...And I was hurrying home with it all—got beyond the camp—heard steps behind—men—three men—they hit me—ran off with the gold.”
“Ah-huh. Wal, this crack won’t kill you, but maybe it’ll be a lesson. Sydney, better wash an’ tie it up.”
“Dad, I knew it would happen,” faltered Sydney.
“Wal, I reckon some gun-play is just what I need,” said Kalispel, and strode off the porch.
“Come back!” called the girl, poignantly.
Kalispel did not even turn his head, though her voice was like a dragging weight.
“Oh, don’t go!... Kalispel!”
He walked on, his formidable self again, out into the weird moonlight.
CHAPTER
* * *
9
SEPTEMBER came with its frosty mornings and purple-hazed afternoons. Kalispel spent less time hunting game on the heights, though meat brought almost as high a price as gold. It had been inevitable that Jake would retrograde. After he lost hope of finding Sam’s body or some clue of his having left the valley, Jake seemed on the verge of ruining all their chances. Kalispel, finally in desperation, confided in him, and that worked a great change in the despondent miner. He became amenable, and willingly set his hand to the task of accumulating firewood for the winter, no small need when the snow began to fly.
Events had multiplied. Kalispel did not watch for Sydney on her porch any more, and when by accident he happened to see her, he suffered a wrenching pang. Blair had been laid up with his injury, which had induced fever; and Kalispel thought that was a good thing. He sent Jake with meat and firewood to the cabin, and also had his brother do what tasks and errands Sydney would permit.
Miners with mediocre claims were working like beavers to clean up as much as possible and get out before winter locked the valley.
This had been added incentive to the small clique of bandits who were operating in the diggings. Kalispel had been unable to discover Blair’s assailants, and had come to the conclusion that they were under the dominance of a clever and resourceful leader. While Kalispel was not hunting, he haunted the town by day and night, a somber, watchful man who had become marked by the populace.
One morning Kalispel had a call from a miner who brought a request for an interview from Masters, the new sheriff. Kalispel regarded that as s
omething to expect and told the messenger he would see the sheriff.
A little later Masters approached leisurely. Kalispel had never encountered the man at close range. He was tall and lean, in his shirt sleeves, without any star on his vest, and walked with a limp. He wore a huge black sombrero, that at a distance hid the upper part of his sallow face, and he packed one gun prominently where it ought to be. Kalispel’s sharp eyes made sure he had another inside his vest.
“Howdy, youngster,” he drawled, with the accent of a Texan. “Shore am obliged to you for seein’ me.
“Howdy, yourself,” replied Kalispel as he met the other’s deep gray eyes. One glance at them and this man’s lined, quiet face told Kalispel that he did not have to do with another Lowrie. “You sort of surprised me. A sheriff usually don’t ask to call.”
“Wal, I reckon he ought to, if he happens to want to see a youngster like you.”
“Ah-huh. That sounds friendly, Masters.”
“I’d like to be friendly with everybody heahaboots. I didn’t want the job, Kalispel. But since thet rock busted my laig I can’t do hard work. I got a man workin’ my claim on shares. An’ I let the miners elect me. There was some opposition from the big mugs, but thet didn’t keep me from bein’ elected.”
“Good thing for Thunder City, I’d say,” rejoined Kalispel, thoughtfully. He liked the man. “Who were the big mugs?”
“Wal, who’d you say? You’ve been heah longer than me.
“Masters, I’m a pretty blunt-spoken fellow. Borden an’ Leavitt, with their backin’, run this camp. An’ if they didn’t want you elected I don’t see how’n hell you ever got in.”
“Lowrie was their man, as you know, an’ after you drove him out of town they moved to set up Haskell. Do you know him?”
Kalispel grunted an unfavorable affirmative.
“Wal, my friends canvassed the diggin’s an’ got the jump on the opposition. So I was nominated at the meet-in’, an’ elected, as you must have heahed if you were there.”
“No, sorry to say I missed that. I’d kind of enjoyed it.”
“Youngster, why’d you drive Lowrie out of camp?” queried the Texan, deliberately.
“What you want to know for, Sheriff?”
“Wal, I don’t want thet against you.”
Thus importuned, Kalispel told him in full the details of his entire association with Lowrie.
“An’ you’d killed him if he’d hung on heah?”
“I shore would. That job of his, tryin’ to arrest my friend, Dick Sloan, for no reason on earth except that Sloan dragged the girl Nugget out of Borden’s dive—that soured me for good an’ all on Lowrie.”
“What’d you have to do with Sloan’s takin’ up the girl?”
“I had a lot to do with it. They love each other. She’s a good kid. An’ Sloan means to marry her.”
“Wal, thet puts a different light on the matter. I’m glad you told me....Youngster, I don’t mind tellin’ you I like you. I’m from Texas, an’ thet oughta explain. You’re in bad heah with most of the miners an’ thought wal of by the rest. I’m one of the rest. You an’ me ought to pull together.”
“My Gawd!—Me pullin’ with a sheriff. About as funny as death!”
“There are sheriffs an’ sheriffs. I don’t need to tell you thet Lowrie was a four-flush. He couldn’t have lasted a day in Texas. Wal, outside of my likin’ you, there are some good reasons why I’d hate to clash with you.”
“Masters, I can name one myself,” replied Kalispel, heartily. “I just don’t want to clash with you....Suppose you name some of your reasons.”
“Wal, youngster, I’ll tell you one, an’ if you stand for it we’ll shake on it. Then I’ll tell you the others.”
“Shoot, Texas, dog-gone it, I kind of like you!” exclaimed Kalispel, frankly.
“I’ve seen twice the frontier life you have, an’ most of it spent with a harder shootin’ outfit than you ever met up with. When I was your age I rode for McNelly an’ his Texas Rangers. Later I trained with gun-fighters like King Fisher, Wess Hardin’, an’ others of thet Texas ilk....Wal, the point of all this gabbin’ aboot myself, which I ain’t much given to, is thet if you an’ me clashed heah, I’d pretty shore beat you to a gun.”
“How do you know?” queried Kalispel, voicing the old, dark, insatiable curiosity of his kind.
“Wal, it stands to reason. An’ besides, I seen you draw on Selby.”
“Masters, you can bet I’m not askin’ to put it to a test. An’ here’s my hand on that.”
“An’ heah’s mine, youngster,” drawled the Texan, with satisfaction.
“All right. I’m lucky for once. Now give me another reason for not wantin’ to lay me out cold.”
“I don’t like Leavitt.”
Kalispel made one of his swift passionate gestures. “Ha!... Go on. You’re the most interestin’ sheriff I ever met.”
“Wal, another is I don’t like Borden.”
“Ah-huh. I reckon one more will about do me.”
“I don’t like the rumor thet’s spreadin’ heah.”
“What rumor?” flashed Kalispel.
“Thet you’re one of these bandits who are holdin’ up the miners .”
Kalispel leaped up with a curse. “——, Masters! This is the last straw. An’ what’n hell did you tell me for—if you want me to be a law-abidin’ citizen?”
“Set down again, youngster. You shore air hotheaded,” replied the Texan, in his slow, quiet way. “Listen. I made up my mind since I been heah with you thet you have been lied aboot. I had a hunch before I came, but wasn’t sure....Give me the straight of this camp gossip aboot the Emerson claim to Leavitt’s property. On your honor, youngster. This is shore a critical time in yore life. You’re young. You’re no fool. You don’t drink an’ gamble—which shore surprised me. Now come clean an’ straight.”
Whereupon Kalispel, stirred to his depths, related in detail and holding to absolute facts, the discovery of the valley, of the placer gold, of the quartz vein, and the events following, up to Jake’s return and the trial.
The Texan nodded ponderingly, pulling at his long drooping mustache.
“Youngster, I believe you,” he returned, at length. “Leavitt has jumped your claim. But it’s just as possible thet yore brother Sam was gone as it is thet he was heah. You’ve got to admit thet. An’ like as not you’ll never know. But you can never tell.”
“That alone has kept me from drawin’ on Leavitt.”
“Wal, it’s aboot all cleared up in my mind. Thet’s the status of one Kalispel Emerson....How’d you come to fetch Blair an’ his daughter in heah? I heahed talk aboot thet, too—not to yore credit.”
“I happened to meet them in Salmon. Pritchard an’ his outfit had got on the scent. An’ Borden got after the girl. He busted into her room an’ I threw him out. Wal, I got acquainted with the Blairs. They jumped at the idea of goin’ with me to my gold prospect. So I fetched them—an’ fell good an’ deep in love with Sydney—the girl—on the way in. On gettin’ here I was so wild to find a stampede on, an’ Leavitt holdin’ our claim, that I busted loose. Shot Selback an’ got drunk. When I came to, Leavitt had played up to the Blairs an’ ruined my chance of winnin’ back Sydney’s confidence.”
“So thet’s the story? ... Did the girl care for you?”
“Yes, she did. I reckon she might have loved me in time,” replied Kalispel, sadly. “But things have gone from bad to worse. Leavitt has it all his way now. She might be damn fool enough to marry him—unless I—”
“You’ve shore split on Leavitt,” interposed Masters. “Stands to yore credit thet you haven’t bored him.”
“I’ve shore wanted to.”
“Wait, youngster....Heah’s an idee. Suppose we work some slick deal on the town. For a spell you an’ me will become open enemies, apparently, always lookin’ to meet an’ shoot it oot. Only we won’t. I’ll furnish you some bags of gold dust. An’ you start roarin’ around camp, pretendin�
�� to be drunk, thet you struck a big claim. Anythin’ to show the gold an’ brag. Then bandits will trail you up, if they think you’re drunk enough. But you hold them up. An’ thet way we might round up these robbers.”
“Ha! We might round up more’n you gamble on. Masters, I’m your man.”
“Good! I’ll slip up heah after dark tonight....Suppose you point out the Blair cabin. I’ll drop in on them.”
Kalispel did so, and experienced again that blade in his heart, for Sydney was on the porch.
“There’s Sydney now. She’ll see you’ve been here.”
“Wal, I’ll tell her I was makin’ a missionary call on you, but all in vain. Thet you cussed me oot, swore you’d draw on me at sight, thet you are a discouraged boy goin’ to hell.”
“Aw!” groaned Kalispel, flinching.
“Youngster, the way I’ll say it ought to wring tears from thet girl.”
“All right. If you can wring her heart, I’ll die for you....An’ say, Masters, while you’re callin’ on people don’t pass up Dick Sloan an’ Nugget. You’ll love them, by gosh! Inquire down by the bridge, on the other side.”
Next day Kalispel took Jake with him to the big high basin over the south slope and packed down the meat of two elk. A herd of several hundred had come into the basin, which evidently was their winter abode.
“Jake, I got a great idee,” announced Kalispel.
“Idees are great when they are great,” replied Jake, noncommittal.
“Soon as it gets cold enough to freeze meat hard we’ll come up here an’ slaughter a hundred of these elk, drag them over to the rim above the valley, an’ hang them up in that heavy growth of firs. Meatmarket for the winter.”
Jake did not express any rapture over this very creditable plan; however, when Kalispel confided the ruse Masters had suggested as a clever means to identify the bandits and possibly to learn something more, then Jake showed how sparks could be struck from flint.
That afternoon Kalispel strolled down to Sloan’s tent. Before he mounted the steps of the spacious, canvas-topped dwelling he heard Dick’s deep, pleasant voice and Nugget’s silvery laughter. Both rang sweetly in Kalispel’s ears.
