“Where have you brought me?” he demanded of his jailor.
“You’re awake, eh?” Trevison grinned as he wheeled and looked in at his prisoner. “This,” he waved a hand toward the ledge and its surroundings, “is an Indian pueblo, long deserted. It makes an admirable prison, Judge. It is also a sort of a fort. There is only one vulnerable point—the slope we came up last night. I’ll take you on a tour of examination, if you like. And then you must return here, to stay until you disclose the whereabouts of the original land record.”
The Judge paled, partly from anger, partly from a fear that gripped him.
“This is an outrage, Trevison! This is America!”
“Is it?” The young man smiled imperturbably. “There have been times during the past few weeks when I doubted it, very much. It is America, though, but it is a part of America that the average American sees little of—that he knows little of. As little, let us say, as he knows of the weird application of its laws—as applied by some judges.” He smiled as Lindman winced. “I have given up hoping to secure justice in the regular way, and so we are in the midst of a reversion to first principles—which may lead us to our goal.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I must have the original record, Judge, I mean to have it.”
“I deny—”
“Yes—of course. Deny, if you like. We shan’t argue. Do you want to explore the place? There will be plenty of time for talk.”
He stepped aside as the Judge came out, and grinned broadly as he caught the Judge’s shrinking look at a rifle he took up as he turned. It had been propped against the wall at his side. He swung it to the hollow of his left elbow. “Your knowledge of firearms convinces you that you can’t run as fast as a rifle bullet, doesn’t it, Judge?”
The Judge’s face indicated that he understood.
“Ever make the acquaintance of an Indian pueblo, Judge?”
“No. I came West only a year ago, and I have kept pretty close to my work.”
“Well, you’ll feel pretty intimate with this one by the time you leave it—if you’re obstinate,” laughed Trevison. He stood still and watched the Judge. The latter was staring hard at his surroundings, perhaps with something of the awed reverence that overtakes the tourist when for the first time he views an ancient ruin.
The pueblo seemed to be nothing more than a jumble of adobe boxes piled in an indiscriminate heap on a gigantic stone level surmounting the crest of a hill. A sheer rock wall, perhaps a hundred feet in height, descended to the surrounding slopes; the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the slopes, like a gray ash sprinkled from a giant sifter. Cactus and yucca dotted the slopes, thorny, lancelike, repellent; lava, dull, hinting of volcanic fire, filled crevices and depressions, and huge blocks of stone, detached in the progress of disintegration, were scattered about.
“It has taken ages for this to happen!” the Judge heard himself murmuring.
Trevison laughed lowly. “So it has, Judge. Makes you think of your school days, doesn’t it? You hardly remember it, though. You have a hazy sort of recollection of a print of a pueblo in a geography, or in a geological textbook, but at the time you were more interested in Greek roots, the Alps, Louis Quinze, the heroes of mythology, or something equally foreign, and you forgot that your own country might hold something of interest for you. But the history of these pueblo towns must be pretty interesting, if one could get at it. All that I have heard of it are some pretty weird legends. There can be no doubt, I suppose, that the people who inhabited these communal houses had laws to govern them—and judges to apply the laws. And I presume that then, as now, the judges were swayed by powerful influences in—”
The Judge glared at his tormentor. The latter laughed.
“It is reasonable to presume, too,” he went on, “that in some cases the judges rendered some pretty raw decisions. And carrying the supposition further, we may believe that then, as now, the poor downtrodden proletariat got rather hot under the collar. There are always some hot-tempered fools among all classes and races that do, you know. They simply can’t stand the feel of the iron heel of the oppressor. Can you picture a hot-tempered fool of that tribe abducting a judge of the court of his people and carrying him away to some uninhabited place, there to let him starve until he decided to do the right thing?”
“Starve!” gasped the Judge.
“The chambers and tunnels connecting these communal houses—they look like mud boxes, don’t they, Judge? And there isn’t a soul in any of them—nor a bite to eat! As I was about to remark, the chambers and tunnels and the passages connecting these places are pretty bare and cheerless—if we except scorpions, horned toads, centipedes, tarantulas—and other equally undesirable occupants. Not a pleasant place to sojourn in until—How long can a man live without eating, Judge? You know, of course, that the Indians selected an elevated and isolated site, such as this, because of its strategical advantages? This makes an ideal fort. Nobody can get into it except by negotiating the slope we came up last night. And a rifle in the hands of a man with a yearning to use it would make that approach pretty unsafe, wouldn’t it?”
“My God!” moaned the Judge; “you talk like a man bereft of his senses!”
“Or like a man who is determined not to be robbed of his rights,” added Trevison. “Well, come along. We won’t dwell on such things if they depress you.”
He took the Judge’s arm and escorted him. They circled the broad stone ledge. It ran in wide, irregular sweeps in the general outline of a huge circle, surrounded by the dust-covered slopes melting into the plains, so vast that the eye ached in an effort to comprehend them. Miles away they could see smoke befouling the blue of the sky. The Judge knew the smoke came from Manti, and he wondered if Corrigan were wondering over his disappearance. He mentioned that to Trevison, and the latter grinned faintly at him.
“I forgot to mention that to you. It was all arranged last night. Clay Levins went to Dry Bottom on a night train. He took with him a letter, which he was to mail at Dry Bottom, explaining your absence to Corrigan. Needless to say, your signature was forged. But I did so good a job that Corrigan will not suspect. Corrigan will get the letter by tonight. It says that you are going to take a long rest.”
The Judge gasped and looked quickly at Trevison. The young man’s face was wreathed in a significant grin.
“In the first analysis, this looks like a rather strange proceeding,” said Trevison. “But if you get deeper into it you see its logic. You know where the original record is. I want it. I mean to have it. One life—a dozen lives—won’t stop me. Oh, well, we won’t talk about it if you’re going to shudder that way.”
He led the Judge up a flimsy, rotted ladder to a flat roof, forcing him to look into a chamber where vermin fled at their appearance. Then through numerous passages, low, narrow, reeking with a musty odor that nauseated the Judge; on narrow ledges where they had to hug the walls to keep from falling, and then into an open court with a stone floor, stained dark, in the center a huge oblong block of stone, surmounting a pyramid, appalling in its somber suggestiveness.
“The sacrificial altar,” said Trevison, grimly. “These stains here, are—”
He stopped, for the Judge had turned his back.
Trevison led him away. He had to help him down the ladder each time they descended, and when they reached the chamber from which they had started the Judge was white and shaking.
Trevison pushed him inside and silently took a position at the door. The Judge sank to the floor of the chamber, groaning.
The hours dragged slowly. Trevison changed his position twice. Once he went away, but returned in a few minutes with a canteen, from which he drank, deeply. The Judge had been without food or water since the night before, and thirst tortured him. The gurgle of the water as it came out of the canteen, maddened him.
“I’d like a drink, Trevison.”
&nb
sp; “Of course. Any man would.”
“May I have one?”
“The minute you tell me where that record is.”
The Judge subsided. A moment later Trevison’s voice floated into the chamber, cold and resonant:
“I don’t think you’re in this thing for money, Judge. Corrigan has some sort of a hold on you. What is it?”
The Judge did not answer.
The sun climbed to the zenith. It grew intensely hot in the chamber. Twice during the afternoon the Judge asked for water, and each time he received the answer he had received before. He did not ask for food, for he felt it would not be given him. At sundown his captor entered the chamber and gave him a meager draught from the canteen. Then he withdrew and stood on the ledge in front of the door, looking out into the darkening plains, and watching him, a conviction of the futility of resisting him seized the Judge. He stood framed in the opening of the chamber, the lines of his bold, strong face prominent in the dusk, the rifle held loosely in the crook of his left arm, the right hand caressing the stock, his shoulders squared, his big, lithe, muscular figure suggesting magnificent physical strength, as the light in his eyes, the set of his head and the firm lines of his mouth, brought a conviction of rare courage and determination. The sight of him thrilled the Judge; he made a picture that sent the Judge’s thoughts skittering back to things primitive and heroic. In an earlier day the Judge had dreamed of being like him, and the knowledge that he had fallen far short of realizing his ideal made him shiver with self-aversion. He stifled a moan—or tried to and did not succeed, for it reached Trevison’s ears and he turned quickly.
“Did you call, Judge?”
“Yes, yes!” whispered the Judge, hoarsely. “I want—to tell you everything! I have longed to tell you all along!”
An hour later they were sitting on the edge of the ledge, their feet dangling, the abyss below them, the desert stars twinkling coldly above them; around them the indescribable solitude of a desert night filled with mystery, its vague, haunting, whispering voice burdened with its age-old secrets. Trevison had an arm around the Judge’s shoulder. Their voices mingled—the Judge’s low, quavering; Trevison’s full, deep, sympathetic.
After a while a rider appeared out of the starlit haze of the plains below them. The Judge started. Trevison laughed.
“It’s Clay Levins, Judge. I’ve been watching him for half an hour. He’ll stay here with you while I go after the record. Under the bottom drawer, eh?”
Levins hallooed to them. Trevison answered, and he and the Judge walked forward to meet Levins at the crest of the slope.
“Slicker’n a whistle!” declared Levins, answering the question Trevison put to him. “I mailed the damn letter an’ come back on the train that brought it to him!” He grinned felinely at the Judge. “I reckon you’re a heap dry an’ hungry by this time?”
“The Judge has feasted,” said Trevison. “I’m going after the record. You’re to stay here with the Judge until I return. Then the three of us will ride to Las Vegas, where we will take a train to Santa Fe, to turn the record over to the Circuit Court.”
“Sounds good!” gloated Levins. “But it’s too long around. I’m for somethin’ more direct. Why not take the Judge with you to Manti, get the record, takin’ a bunch of your boys with you—an’ salivate that damned Corrigan an’ his deputies!”
Trevison laughed softly. “I don’t want any violence if I can avoid it. My land won’t run away while we’re in Santa Fe. And the Judge doesn’t want to meet Corrigan just now. I don’t know that I blame him.”
“Where’s the record?”
Trevison told him, and Levins grumbled. “Corrigan’ll have his deputies guardin’ the courthouse, most likely. If you run ag’in ’em, they’ll bore you, sure as hell!”
“I’ll take care of myself—I promise you that!” he laughed, and the Judge shuddered at the sound. He vanished into the darkness of the ledge, returning presently with Blackie, led him down the slope, called a low “So-long” to the two watchers on the ledge, and rode away into the haze of the plains.
Trevison rode fast, filled with a grim elation. He pitied the Judge. An error—a momentary weakening of moral courage—had plunged the jurist into the clutches of Corrigan; he could hardly be held responsible for what had transpired—he was a puppet in the hands of an unscrupulous schemer, with a threat of exposure hanging over him. No wonder he feared Corrigan! Trevison’s thoughts grew bitter as they dwelt upon the big man; the old longing to come into violent physical contact with the other seized him, raged within him, brought a harsh laugh to his lips as he rode. But a greater passion than he felt for the Judge or Corrigan tugged at him as he urged the big black over the plains toward the twinkling lights of Manti—a fierce exultation which centered around Rosalind Benham. She had duped him, betrayed him to his enemy, had played with him—but she had lost!
Yet the thought of his coming victory over her was poignantly unsatisfying. He tried to picture her—did picture her—receiving the news of Corrigan’s defeat, and somehow it left him with a feeling of regret. The vengeful delight that he should have felt was absent—he felt sorry for her. He charged himself with being a fool for yielding to so strange a sentiment, but it lingered persistently. It fed his rage against Corrigan, however, doubled it, for upon him lay the blame.
It was late when he reached the outskirts of Manti. He halted Blackie in the shadow of a shed a hundred yards or so down the track from the courthouse, dismounted and made his way cautiously down the railroad tracks. He was beyond the radius of the lights from various windows that he passed, but he moved stealthily, not knowing whether Corrigan had stationed guards about the courthouse, as Levins had warned. An instant after reaching a point opposite the courthouse he congratulated himself on his discretion, for he caught a glimmer of light at the edge of a window shade in the courthouse, saw several indistinct figures congregated at the side door, outside. He slipped behind a tool shed at the side of the track, and crouching there, watched and listened. A mumbling of voices reached him, but he could distinguish no word. But it was evident that the men outside were awaiting the reappearance of one of their number who had gone into the building.
Trevison watched, impatiently. Then presently the side door opened, letting out a flood of light, which bathed the figures of the waiting men. Trevison scowled, for he recognized them as Corrigan’s deputies. But he was not surprised, for he had half expected them to be hanging around the building. Two figures stepped down from the door as he watched, and he knew them for Corrigan and Gieger. Corrigan’s voice reached him.
“The lock on this door is broken. I had to kick it in this morning. One of you stay inside, here. The rest of you scatter and keep your eyes peeled. There’s trickery afoot. Judge Lindman didn’t go to Dry Bottom—the agent says he’s sure of that because he saw every man that’s got aboard a train here within the last twenty-four hours—and Judge Lindman wasn’t among them! Levins was, though; he left on the one-thirty this morning and got back on the six-o’clock, tonight.” He vanished into the darkness beyond the door, but called back: “I’ll be within call. Don’t be afraid to shoot if you see anything suspicious!”
Trevison saw a man enter the building, and the light was blotted out by the closing of the door. When his eyes were again accustomed to the darkness he observed that the men were standing close together—they seemed to be holding a conference. Then the group split up, three going toward the front of the building; two remaining near the side door, and two others walking around to the rear.
For an instant Trevison regretted that he had not taken Levins’ advice about forming a posse of his own men to take the courthouse by storm, and he debated the thought of postponing action. But there was no telling what might happen during an interval of delay. In his rage over the discovery of the trick that had been played on him Corrigan might tear the interior of the building to pieces. He would be sure to if he suspected the presence of the original record. Trevison did not go
for the help that would have been very welcome. Instead, he spent some time twirling the cylinder of his pistol.
He grew tired of crouching after a time and lay flat on his stomach in the shadow of the tool shed, watching the men as they tramped back and forth, around the building. He knew that sooner or later there would be a minute or two of relaxation, and of this he had determined to take advantage. But it was not until sound in the town had perceptibly decreased in volume that there was any sign of the men relaxing their vigil. And then he noted them congregating at the front of the building.
“Hell,” he heard one of them say; “what’s the use of hittin’ that trail all night! Bill’s inside, an’ we can see the door from here. I’m due for a smoke an’ a palaver!” Matches flared up; the sounds of their voices reached Trevison.
Trevison disappointedly relaxed. Then, filled with a sudden decision, he slipped around the back of the tool shed and stole toward the rear of the courthouse. It projected beyond the rear of the bank building, adjoining it, forming an L, into the shadow of which Trevison slipped. He stood there for an instant, breathing rapidly, undecided. The darkness in the shadow was intense, and he was forced to feel his way along the wall for fear of stumbling. He was leaning heavily on his hands, trusting to them rather than to his footing, when the wall seemed to give way under them and he fell forward, striking on his hands and knees. Fortunately, he had made no sound in falling, and he remained in the kneeling position until he got an idea of what had happened. He had fallen across the threshold of a doorway. The door had been unfastened and the pressure of his hands had forced it inward. It was the rear door of the bank building. He looked inward, wondering at Braman’s carelessness—and stared fixedly straight into a beam of light that shone through a wedge-shaped crevice between two boards in the partition that separated the buildings.
The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Page 81
