by Zane Grey
“Halt!” ordered Kalispel’s captor, when the procession had approached to within twenty paces of Leavitt’s cabin.
“I’m kinda tired holdin’ my arms up,” complained Kalispel, as he halted, and slowly lowered them.
The five vigilantes in the lead lined up to one side. Kalispel heard the others stop behind. And from far back came the increasing roar of the trailing mob.
“Captain Leavitt,” shouted the spokesman, “we have your man!”
The cabin door stood wide open. A table and chairs on the porch had a business-like look. Presently two miners came out, followed by Leavitt. He was white of face and stern. His flaring gaze leaped upon Kalispel standing motionless in the open square, and then swept over the vigilantes and to the approaching crowd, then back to the prisoner.
“Leavitt, what’s the meanin’ of this outrage?” demanded Kalispel, his voice carrying far. He might as well not have made a sound, for all the attention Leavitt paid to him.
“Let the crowd come close enough to hear the proceedings,” ordered Leavitt.
The trampling of many feet slowed up behind Kalispel and spread in a half-circle, until it was possible for him to see the people on both sides. This swerving of his gaze brought into his line of vision a scaffold newly erected. Kalispel sustained his last shock, for with a realizing shudder that this instrument of frontier justice had been erected for him he become a man of iron. Leavitt would never hang him.
“That’s close enough,” called out Leavitt, and then he appeared to fix his flaring eyes upon some man whose slow steps could be heard. “Masters, that applies to you, too.”
“Wal, I reckon I’m sheriff of Thunder City,” drawled the cool, easy voice of the Texan. It warmed Kalispel’s heart. It meant something for him to grasp.
“Yes, and a damn poor sheriff you are,” retorted Leavitt. “Flaunting your friendship for this desperado in the face of the whole town!”
“Leavitt, I back my actions. Thet’s why I’m heah. We might disagree as to Emerson’s status. An’ if this heah deal is a trial, as I reckon it is, you’ll want it to stand the test of public opinion.”
“Certainly. There’s nothing secret about this trial. Emerson is before the vigilantes of Thunder City.”
“Wal, in thet case somebody must represent him, an’ I’ll make thet my last official duty, after which I’ll resign.”
“Very well. We accept your stand for Emerson, and also your resignation.”
Masters slowly came into the line of Kalispel’s vision. Sight of the cool Texan flooded Kalispel’s grim soul with gratitude. Whatever Masters meant, it seemed unreadable to anyone there, except Kalispel, who grasped the nerve of the man, the intention to befriend. But how he was to do it seemed inscrutable.
The Texan turned to Kalispel with slow, casual steps.
“Am I acceptable to you, Emerson?” he queried.
“Looks like a high-handed procedure to me. But if these vigilantes mean to put you on trial I’m heah to see it’s fair.”
“Thanks, Masters,” returned Kalispel. The Texan’s words were potent, but negligible compared with the wonderful power and meaning of his gray eyes. Kalispel was swift to read that gaze. There could be no question of a fair trial here. Masters’ action was merely a ruse to permit him to come forward, gradually to edge closer and closer to Kalispel, until, when the situation reached its climax, he would be near enough for Kalispel to leap and jerk free Masters’ two big guns and shoot his way to death or freedom. Leavitt in his suppressed deep passion was as good as dead at that very moment.
“Judge, before you make a charge against the prisoner, may I ask what constitutes yore right to this procedure?” queried Masters, deliberately.
“I am captain of these vigilantes,” replied Leavitt, curtly.
“Wal, thet won’t stand before the law. You were not elected. You appointed yoreself.”
“But I was elected judge of this mining-camp,” parried Leavitt, with composure. “If you know the laws of gold-diggings you will agree that I have absolute authority.”
“Wal shore, aboot all claims, arguments, sales an’ exchange, an’ all thet. But hardly to make arrests an’ build scaffolds. That ought to be my job.”
“Masters, we won’t split hairs over that,” declared Leavitt, with cold finality. “Emerson is on trial, and I’m his judge.”
“Air you puttin’ him on trial for gun-play?”
“There is no law on the frontier against even breaks.”
“Wal, then, what’s Emerson’s offense?” demanded the Texan, sharply.
Judge Leavitt seated himself at his table and arranged papers before he replied.
“Emerson is a bandit.”
Masters wheeled to take a long stride toward Kal-ispel.
“You heah thet?” he called.
“I’m not deaf, Masters.”
“Wal, what you got to say about it?”
“Leavitt is a damned liar.”
Again Masters faced the porch. Kalispel felt like a tiger about to leap. The Texan stood a little to the left, a good long jump distant, and his black guns hung in plain sight, as easy to draw as if they had been on Kalispel himself.
“Judge, I’ve heahed yore accusation. An’ I heard Emerson’s denial. I mean no offense when I say thet his word before the court is as good as yores. You’ll have to furnish proof.”
“That is what we propose to do,” rejoined Leavitt, loudly. “Keep quiet there in the crowd. This is a trial....Jones, step forward.”
The smaller of the two men who had come out of the cabin with Leavitt strode forward to face the vigilantes. He looked like any other middle-aged miner.
“State your evidence against this prisoner,” ordered Leavitt.
“He robbed me,” returned Jones, in resonant, frank voice. “It happened at night, two weeks ago come Wednesday, just after six o’clock. I was cornin’ from my claim in the dark. Just off one of them deserted tents down the crick a man stepped out behind me an’ jabbed a gun in my back. He asked for my dust. I had two bags, one dust an’ the other nuggets. I gave them up.”
“Did you recognize Emerson?” asked the Judge.
“No, thet is, not his person. But I shore did his voice. I’d heard thet often.”
Masters turned to take another step in Kalispel’s direction.
“What you say to thet?”
“Sheriff, it’s another rotten lie,” called Kalispel, piercingly. “An’ Jones couldn’t look at me with it, unless he knew I’d never get out of this alive.”
“Matthews, step forward,” ordered the Judge, to the second man, who was tall, pale-visaged, and less convincing. “State your case against the prisoner.”
“Emerson held me up, Jedge,” replied Matthews. “It was last Saturday night, at about half after eight. It was right in town. An’ he stepped out of the shadow of Spence’s store. He had a scarf over his face, but it slipped down a ways when he was friskin’ me. An’ I recognized him easy. He took my gold, watch, an’ guns.”
“Matthews, you say this occurred last Saturday night at half-past eight, and that you recognized Emerson perfectly?” queried the Judge.
“Yes, sir.”
Leavitt waived the witness aside and again attended to the sheriff. “Masters, that seems conclusive to me. There’s no doubt in my mind Emerson is guilty of all these hold-ups, and shootings, too....I’ll put it to a vote.”
“Never mind havin’ yore vigilantes vote yet,” returned Masters, with sarcasm. “The trial ain’t over.”
He faced around to Kalispel, the third time with unobtrusive step.
“Kalispel, you heahed?”
“Yes.”
“An’ I reckon thet’s another lie?”
“It shore is.”
“Wal, it sounded fishy to me,” replied the Texan. “An’ if you can recall shore jest where you was on Saturday night at half-past eight, I’ll take yore word for it.”
“I was—” began Kalispel, readily, when sudd
enly he remembered that on the hour in question Sydney Blair was alone with him in his cabin.
“Wal, speak up, an’ make it plain to this listenin’ crowd,” said Masters, impatiently.
Kalispel let out a hard laugh. It did not make any difference to Leavitt and his vigilantes whether he cleared himself or not. And in another moment he would be leaping for Masters’ guns.
“Sorry, old-timer,” his voice rang out. “I reckon I can’t remember.”
“There,” flashed Leavitt, his hand extended shaking. “Condemned by his own lips!”
The crowd stirred to restless shifting of feet and sibilant whispers. Then Kalispel was transfixed at sight of Sydney Blair running in to face Leavitt.
“Rand Leavitt,” she cried, in her high tones that pierced to every listening ear in the multitude, “Your tool, Matthews, has not condemned Emerson, but himself as a liar—and you as a worse one!”
“What?” hissed Leavitt, leaping up, to lean forward with purpling face. The surprise had penetrated his armor.
“Kalispe! Emerson absolutely could not have robbed Matthews last Saturday night, at half-past eight,” rang Sydney’s voice, vibrant with righteous anger.
“And why not?” shouted Leavitt, furiously.
“Because he was with me—in his cabin!”
It was then that the jealous lover took precedence over the presiding judge.
“In his cabin... alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
“Sydney Blair!—You?... My promised wife!... What—why were you there?”
“I went there to tell him what a villain you are—to tell him I had broken my engagement with you... to beg him to—to forgive me and take me back again!”
The transformation that swift, poignant speech wrought in Leavitt was monstrous to behold. The suave gentleman, the confident mining-boss, the cold, grim judge went into eclipse. And a malignant, mouthing, passion-ridden devil leaped off the porch.
“Look there, woman!” he shouted, strident with hate, as he pointed with quivering finger at the scaffold. “You shall see your lover hanged!”
This seemed to Kalispel to be the moment for him to leap for Masters’ guns, kill the maddened Leavitt, and then turn loose his fire upon his captors. But Sydney stood in the way. There would be other shooting beside his, a wild tumult, pandemonium. He dared not risk harm to her. Masters edged back toward him. There was time. He would wait.
“Men! Seize him,” yelled Leavitt. “By God! he hangs!”
The answer was a woman’s piercing cry, whether Sydney’s or another’s Kalispel never knew. And at the same instant the solid ground shook under his feet.
“Hell’s fire!” shrieked a vigilante, suddenly gone crazy. “The mountain! The mountain!...Run for your lives!”
CHAPTER
* * *
15
EVERY spectator looked. The vast slope was waving like a sea. And on the instant a groaning, straining rumble came from the depths. Far up, a whole bare ridge began to slide.
“Avalanche!”
“A slide—a slide!”
“Thunder Mountain!”
These pregnant cries were drowned in the united yell of the crowd. And this was lost in a terrific thunder that came unmistakably from a mountain mass in movement.
Terror clapped on Kalispel, but when he saw Sydney sway and fall he leaped out of his paralysis to snatch her up in his arms and back away from the awesome spectacle.
The vigilantes were in full flight with the rest off the crowd. Masters passed Kalispel, yelling words that could not be heard. Leavitt had run from the lee of the cabin to look up and see the slow, waving descent of sections of slope, of ridges and mounds. The earth seemed shaken to its core. Thunder that was not thunder filled the air.
Leavitt seemed suddenly bereft of his senses. He dashed a few steps after the crowd only to whirl and dash back. No sense of escape actuated him. He bounded up on the porch and into the cabin.
What had been ramble and thunder died in a crash as if the earth were rent asunder. A great slide piled down on Leavitt’s mill, crushing, shoving, covering the chutes, and at last, as if by magic, obliterating the mill. Out of the thick rolling mass of mud huge balls of dry earth broke to let out puffs of dust.
The mill was gone and with it went the splintering crash. Hoarse shouts of men, sounding far away, pierced Kalispel’s ears. He backed against a boulder, still holding the girl, who appeared to be regaining consciousness. Masters stood by him, holding his arm, shouting Kalispel knew not what. The spectacle fascinated them, and when Leavitt appeared in the door of his cabin, acting like a man bereft of his senses, they were rooted to the spot.
His frenzy, his wringing hands, his voiceless yells were eloquent of something that was gone! gone! gone! Kalispel understood then that not until this tragic moment of catastrophe had Leavitt known of the loss of his gold.
His pale face vanished from the dark doorway. And that instant, with a rumble and a shake the mass of slope let loose in a landslide to move down upon the cabin. The roof caved in, and earth poured down like water into a vessel.
Leavitt appeared at the door and then was felled by a falling rafter. He went down, his head outside the door. And there, wrenching and lunging, like an animal caught by its hind feet in a trap, he raised his body and flung his arms. In each hand he held a bag of gold. His face was a gray blotch, his strained action terrible.
The sliding silt filled the cabin and began to pour out of the door over Leavitt. Still he struggled. Like a waterfall the earth rushed off the roof on each side, leaving a slowly-closing, fan-shaped aperture through which the doomed man could be seen. Then came a sliding roar, a cloud of dust—and the cabin disappeared.
As if in mockery of the littleness of man, nature pealed out the doom which the wise old beaver and the savage chief had foreseen. No sound before had ever equaled that thundering travail of the mountain yielding its might, its bulk, its stability to the stupendous force of gravitation. For ages its foundation had groaned warnings. And now the hour of descent had come.
The slope was a billowy sea on end. Far up the trees were aslant, falling, wagging, piling up and sliding down. The hollows filled, the scant thickets rode the avalanche, the ridges rose like waves and sank in furrows. Majestic and awful, the mile-high face of the mountain moved down. Gradually the movement slowed and as gradually the rumbling thunder diminished. The shouts of men could be heard. Once more the sound of the stream penetrated the valley.
Blair approached Kalispel and Sydney, who had recovered from her faint.
“My God! Kal—isn’t it awful?” gasped Blair, taking hold of Sydney.
“Shore came in the nick of time for me,” replied Kalispel, hoarsely. “Pack an’ rustle, Blair.”
Masters appeared, approaching the edge of the slide, which had moved out some distance on the bench. He stopped for a while to watch it.
Sydney seized Kalispel’s hand.
“Look! The place where—I fell—is covered,” she whispered, with a glance Kalispel would never forget.
Presently Masters held up his hand and bellowed to the watching crowd.
“She’s movin’ three feet a minute....Thunder City is doomed....Run an’ tell everybody. Grab yore gold, some grub, a blanket, an’ rustle out of heah!”
Kalispel ran toward his cabin, every few moments halting to look back at the extraordinary spectacle. It was as great and as strange as had been his deliverance. Every rod that he progressed away from the sliding slope changed its perspective; the farther he got away the more he could see. Three feet a minute! It would not be long until the encroaching landslide must reach the edge of the long, one-streeted town. Miners were running like red-jacketed ants in every direction.
Jake’s gloomy visage lightened at sight of Kalispel.
“About time you got back! Didn’t I tell you I had a hunch?”
“Don’t rub it in....Where’s—Ruth?”
“Poor kid, she’s scared ’most damn near to
death,” replied Jake, indicating that the girl was inside the cabin.
Ruth lay on the couch with her face covered. But Kalispel saw the heaving of her breast.
“Ruth!” he panted as he sat down beside her and tore her hands and scarf from her face. “I’m here.”
She leaped up to clasp him in her arms, and the horror faded from her eyes as she kissed him wildly, unconscious of all save his return.
“Why—kid—don’t take on so!” he said, huskily, but her clinging hands and lips were sweet to him.
“I saw the vigilantes march you up to Leavitt,” she whispered. “Jake held me back. He swore you’d come through....But, oh, I nearly went mad!”
“Closest shave I—ever had,” replied Kalispel, breathing hard. He beckoned for Jake to come in the open door. Then he recounted to them the pregnant events of the last hour.
“Kal, there must be a God,” said Ruth, solemnly, when he had finished.
“I’ll never doubt it again,” replied Kalispel, fervently.
They did not remain longer in the cabin. Outside again, they gazed spellbound at the unparalleled scene. Shacks and tents were riding up-ended at the base of the moving mountain, splintering sounds came clearly across the distance; the sinister inexorable landslide crept toward the town.
But if the spectacle low down was fascinating, that high up on the slope was indescribably so. The movement seemed more visible there and it was monstrous. Over the ridge back of the center of the town hove in sight a moving forest that ordinarily had been hidden from view. With firs and pines uprooted, up-flung, upended, a section of slope slid down with slow and terrible precision. Far at the end of the town, where the valley narrowed in its approach to the canyon, the landslide had made more progress. Borden’s huge dance-hall stood in line for almost instant annihilation.
“Oh, I hope the girls are safe!” cried Ruth.
“Never fear. They’ve had plenty of time. If only they had sense enough to get their clothes an’ grub. It’ll be bad if they don’t.”
“Kal, that landslide will wipe Thunder City out, dam the valley, an’ make a lake where we’re standin’ now,” declared Jake. “Aw no! I never had a hunch—not atall.”
