“Aw, shut up!” Jordon repeated, grinning disagreeably. He knew his man. Old Milt was a mild-mannered sort of person who believed in settling differences without coming to blows or bloodshed. If it had been some scrappy prospector, now—who might at the time have been forced to give in—but who later on would resort to gun play—
There were plenty of such men in the Southwest. Highbrow old Milt Gooding, though, was not one of them. He would tell his story, most likely. Still, it would be the word of only one against that of three. And Jordon would see to it that he and his associates had their notices of location filed with the mining recorder first. That meant possession —and nine points of the law. If some of the folks chose to believe Gooding—well, that was their own business. But, it would not give him the ground.
“Better tie the old geezer up, till we get through puttin’ up our stakes and are ’bout ready to pull out,” Jordon ordered. “He maybe has got some sort of artillery in his pack outfit, down below there in the cañon.”
“This is preposterous!” Milt declared, swinging the pick above his head. “I’ll not be tied up. I’ll fight first.”
Jordon’s gun was out of its holster and pointed at the prospector’s chest, in the split part of a second, while Gaylor and Juan, jumping out of harm’s way, jerked out their own revolvers.
“Drop ’er—or I’ll let you have it!” Jordon snarled out. “Let ’er fall behind you. Quick! ’Cause my trigger finger’s itchin’!”
Old Milt let the pick drop backward from his bony hands behind him. He knew well enough what would happen if he didn’t. They were alone on that great stretch of waste land. It would be easy enough to put him, his outfit, and the burros, out of sight for all time. He must submit to being tied.
Hands and feet bound, he watched Jordon and his partners hustle about, staking off what ground they wanted, which, so Milt found out later, was more than a square half mile of the hilly country. Then they released him, mounted their horses, and with their pack animals on leading ropes, rode away.
Hoping that even yet he might through process of law checkmate the jumpers, old Milt staked off a good-sized piece of ground, posted his location notice at his original discovery hole, hurriedly cooked some supper, and then headed, with his burros packed light, for Gold Palo.
The moon was beginning to top the hills as he left his camp behind. It was noon, next day, when he walked into the recorder’s office—to find that Jordon and his partners had been there hours before. Still, Milt filed his notice, paid the recording fee, and told his story.
He knew that there was law in the land. Yet even though many believed he told the truth, he could not, against the evidence produced in court and the word of three against him, prove that the ground rightfully belonged to him. Hard though it was, he blamed no one but Jordon and his partners—and went back to prospecting again.
Six months later, while in the hills some fifteen miles from where he had made his first big strike, he ran across another prospector who told him that Jordon was now sole owner of the ground, which he had named the Treasure Box.
“Come about this away, near as I kin put ’er together,” the prospector explained. “Liquor—cards—dirty work. Which is ranklin’ Gaylor and Obregon, good and plenty.
“They won’t take it same as you done, Milt. They’re sure to get warlike. The Mex with a knife, maybe. Gaylor with a gun. Jordon ought to know it, too. But as he’s such a low, graspin’ crook, reckon he’s clean overlooked what is likely to happen to him.
“Fur my part I hope he gits slaughtered. It would be a heap better fur the country if he did. Though if he gits his, the ground would go to his nephew. And he’s just as hard and graspin’ as Jordon is.
“The Treasure Box is openin’ up big. If you hadn’t been beat out of the ground, you’d probably have sold it. But Jordon is puttin’ up a little mill there, figgerin’ on workin’ it himself.”
Old Milt learned more about Jordon, how he had double crossed his partners, and how the Treasure Box was being opened up, as he worked his way closer to the ground which he had hoped would be his own. There was an attraction for him in these hills, he had struck it here, once, perhaps he would again.
Jordon had erected a small mill and was turning out gold bullion fast. Besides shipping quite an amount of the highest grade ore, by wagon, to the railroad at Gold Palo, he was doing exceedingly well with his stolen holdings. And both Gaylor and Obregon had dropped completely out of sight.
For several months thereafter old Milt knocked about among the hills within a radius of twenty miles of the Treasure Box—his stoop becoming more pronounced and the gray flecks in Zulu’s slate-colored coat more apparent. They were all certainly getting along.
Then one afternoon about two o’clock, as he walked very slowly up a rocky slope, his eyes searching the ground for mineral or some indication of it, he heard a loud: “Hands up!” from some place on the opposite side of the low hill.
He was then very near the top, and hurrying on up to the brow, he cautiously peeked down at a dusty, twisting cañon road, the west end of which he knew terminated at the Treasure Box. At first he saw only a standing buckboard, with Jim Jordon holding a team of spirited bay horses in check. A moment later two men, whom he immediately recognized as Tom Gaylor and Juan Obregon, six-shooters in their hands, stepped from behind two boulders on opposite sides of the road.
“Stick ’em up, Jim!” Gaylor barked out. “Up with ’em—or we’ll plug you. We want that bullion you’ve got under the seat.”
Jordon must have known that this was to be more than just a holdup. The pals whom he had double crossed, wanted the bullion—two bars, worth around twenty thousand dollars. But they were not going to stop there. They knew that he would talk, if left alive. So, feeling certain that his only chance was in fighting, Jordon held the reins with his left hand and swung his right down for his revolver.
Bang! Bang! Gaylor and Obregon fired almost together, both shots taking effect.
Bang! from Jordon’s gun, as the reins dropped from his hand, and the team jumped forward, frightened by the shots.
Gaylor slumped, shot through the heart.
Bang! from Obregon, and bang! from Jordon—in quick succession. Neither man missed.
The horses, unguided, bounded off the road near the right side boulder, then back onto the road again, themselves clearing the great rock. But not so the buckboard. That struck with a crashing, sidewise swipe. And the maddened horses broke free, then raced away.
Quickly as he could, the interested old observer of the tragedy made his way down the hillside, by a path so rocky that never at any time did he leave an imprint of his shoes. The burros had not followed him to-day, but had remained behind at camp, a quarter of a mile away, grazing on the tender grass that grew beside a sparkling spring.
He reached Obregon first—finding him dead. Next, he went to Jordon, lying against the boulder amid the wreckage of the buckboard. And he, too, was lifeless. Then Milt crossed the road to Gaylor. He, like his pal Obregon, would speak no more.
As the old prospector recrossed to the wrecked buckboard, his eyes lighted on a package wrapped in burlap, lying close to Jordon’s head. Old Milt felt fairly sure of what was in the package, before he bent over and tried its weight. It was bullion. A fortune to him. And it had come out of a mine which, by rights, he ought to be the owner of.
It was then that the idea came to him. He was old. He would like a few years of ease and of doing the things he had always wanted to do, before he died.
Jordon’s nephew had plenty; more now than he could use.
For five minutes old Milt pondered over what was to him the most serious problem of his life. If Jordon and his crooked partners hadn’t deliberately beaten him out of the Treasure Box, he would have been a rich man. As it was, he faced old age and poverty, instead of t
he quiet little place of a few acres for himself and burros that he had always dreamed about. He was an honest man. He had always led an upright life. To his knowledge, he had never harmed any one.
He opened his pocket knife and cut a slash in the burlap. The sight of the dull yellow metal showing through the cut, decided him. After all, he was taking only what belonged to him. And Jordon’s nephew had plenty.
Some one would be along pretty soon, as from the top of the hill he had seen dust rising from the road, off toward Gold Palo. Probably it was one of the freight outfits hauling supplies to the dead man’s mine.
It was settled. And after making sure that he was leaving no tracks, Milt laboriously lifted the bullion on his shoulder and started up the hillside, careful to step on the rocks.
From the top of the ridge he looked off to where he had seen the cloud of dust, a half hour before, and saw that it was now much closer. He was right. A freight wagon was moving slowly along the road toward the bodies. So the old man, feeling the full weight of his heavy load, and forced to make frequent stops, headed for his camp and the burros.
Upon reaching camp, he packed the bullion and his camp outfit on the burros and made for a gray range of mountains, an all-night’s walk to the north.
Meanwhile, the freighter, with a miner friend on the high wagon seat beside him, chatted on various topics as he guided his six-horse team across a dusty flat toward the cañon in. which the shooting had occurred. Scarcely were they in the first break among the hills, when they came upon Jordon’s bays, standing in the middle of the road, their harness still on them.
“This is funny,” said the freighter, looking beyond for some signs of the team’s owner. “Jim must have had a smash-up, and the cayuses got away from him. I’ll tie ’em on behind my outfit, ’cause like enough we’ll run across Jim a piece beyond.”
“Smoking sagebrush!” he exclaimed when, a half hour later, he looked down from his wagon seat at the wrecked buckboard and the three lifeless bodies. “Been a regular battle here.”
Swinging to the ground, the miner and the freighter made sure that the three men were dead. Then the freighter spoke again.
“Tom Gaylor and Juan Obregon got Jim. And Jim must have got them.
“I’m not a whole lot surprised that Jim should git his, this a way, as Gaylor and the Mex wuzn’t the same sort as old Milt Gooding. Jim done ’em dirty—same as he did old Milt. And he’s been fixed fer it. At which I’m not a whole lot sorry. Fer with due respect to the dead, Jim wuz a cuss!
“Reckon as how you or me had better git on one of Jim’s horses and ride to Gold Palo, to tell the sheriff and coroner. The other kin stay here to keep varmints away. By ridin hard, the sheriff ought to be here by sunup. Shall I go, or will you?”
“I’ll go,” the miner returned. “You stay here.”
The sheriff and the coroner were on hand at daybreak. An hour later, as the coroner started back to Gold Palo with the three bodies lying side by side in the bottom of a spring wagon, the sheriff rode horseback to the Treasure Box. Here he learned that Jordon had left with two bars of bullion, worth more than twenty thousand dollars, as it was pretty well refined.
“Hum-m,” he thought to himself. “That bullion is gone. So it looks as if there must have been a third man in with Gaylor and Juan.”
“Yeah, that was high-grade bullion,” Jordon’s mill foreman explained. “Refined so that there wasn’t much base metal left in it. I know that, because I did the refining myself.
“And there was a good-sized slug of the same melt in the boss’ vest pocket—a round piece, worth maybe fifteen dollars. While I was pouring the molten metal from the crucible into the molds, a bit slopped over and hardened into a flattish, round slab about the size of a half dollar. The boss said he wanted it for a pocket piece. So after it was cool, he took it.”
The sheriff had found this piece of gold in Jordon’s vest pocket, and it was now with the dead man’s effects, in the hands of the coroner. Melted gold, the sheriff knew, had its individuality. In the cruder refining of the mills’ melting furnaces, it was rarely that the baser metals combined with the gold were entirely eliminated. In consequence, the pocket piece would prove a fine sample of the two ingots.
The mill foreman had the exact weight of the stolen bullion. The flat, round piece when a little of it was carefully tested, would show its exact content of base metals, as well as of gold itself. Ore and metal-buying agencies, the banks and mints, could be advised to watch out for the missing bullion. In time, perhaps in only a week or two, the man who had made off with the golden ingots would be nabbed.
In the course of the next month, old Milt walked into Gold Palo, loaded his burros with fresh supplies, then went back to the mountains. Later on, he bought more supplies, not all edibles, in another camp, and went back into the mountains once more, this time traveling to the very heart of the range—a wild, rugged section rarely visited by man.
In his visits to town, he had learned that the Treasure Box was netting Jordon’s nephew a small fortune each month—news which in no way displeased him. For he felt more than ever now that the little which he had taken would never be missed, and which before long he hoped to turn into cash.
Two more months passed. And then one afternoon he slowly drove old Zulu and Mercury—their packs flat—down Gold Palo’s main street to the bank, which he shortly after entered. Two heavy, soiled canvas sacks were on his shoulder.
Going straight to the manager’s office, he laid the sacks on the floor as he explained: “I’ve got some gold here that I’d like to have you sell for me if you will, please, Mr. Hornsby. Some that I found way back in the Globe Mountains. It all came from a small freak placer deposit at the head of a little canon. Apparently I got all there was, for even with systematic prospecting I could not find any more.
“Will you handle it for me? Send it to the mint? Or—whatever you do with gold of this character?”
“Yes, certainly, Milt. We’ll take care of it for you. It’s part of our business,” Mr. Hornsby replied agreeably. Yet the while, he thought: “So the Jordon bullion has at last come to light—maybe!”
Old Milt nodded and lifted the weighty canvas sacks from the floor to the manager’s desk.
“Thanks, Mr. Hornsby. Then I’ll leave it with you.”
Ten minutes later, with all selling details attended to, Milt drove his burros on out of town and made camp beside a willow-fringed stream.
At noon, as he prepared his simple midday meal, the sheriff and the bank manager were in close consultation in the latter’s private office, the canvas bags lying open on the desk in front of them.
“It may be the same stuff,” said the sheriff.
“Yes, it may be the same stuff, all right,” the manager agreed thoughtfully. “Still, for old Milt’s sake, I hope that it’s not. And as you say, he may have cut the bars up into little pieces, or in some way melted them so that they are now nothing more than nuggets.”
Running his hand into one of the sacks, the manager took out several ounces of granular pieces of gold, ranging in size from grains of wheat to kernels of corn, and held them out on his open palm.
The sheriff looked at them carefully. Then, selecting the largest specimen, he remarked slowly: “This looks like the real thing. But the test will tell. If this is Jim Jordon’s bullion, it’ll be mighty close to the same as the little chunk found in Jim’s vest pocket.
“Don’t settle with Milt till I have some of this stuff tested by at least three reliable men. One, here in town, one, in Denver; the third, in San Francisco. If their tests check—and correspond with the pocket piece—I’m afraid that I’ll have to grab the old snoozer. But like you, I’m hoping that they don’t check.
“Somehow, too, I feel that they won’t, as I don’t believe old Milt would rob anybody. And I’m sure he never sh
ot Jordon. Juan Obregon and Gaylor did that. Yet if this stuff checks up with the piece found in Jordon’s pocket—well, it’ll look kind of funny to a jury.”
Two weeks went by before the manager notified Milt that the nuggets had been disposed of, and requested him to drop around to the bank for settlement.
Glad enough to have the business wound up, Milt went at once to the bank, finding the sheriff there with the manager.
“How do, Milt!” greeted the sheriff easily. “Nice little clean-up you made. Fine a lot of stuff as I’ve ever seen. Hornsby, here, let me have a look at it when you first brought it in. Going to let your friends in on where you found it?”
“Why, yes, certainly.” To his own immense surprise, old Milt’s kind brown eyes were unwavering. “I ran across one of those freak pockets, way back in the Globo Mountains, as perhaps Mr. Hornsby has already told you.
“I think I cleaned up pretty much all the gold that was there. Still, I may not have done so. So if anybody wants to look for more in that section, I’ll gladly give him a map. Or go along with him myself, though this is not necessary, as it is easy to see where I worked.”
The sheriff grinned. “Thanks, Milt! Maybe, after I lose my job, I’ll ask for that map. But as it would be hard to drag an old prospector like you away from stuff like that you brought in, I’ll take your word for it that you cleaned up all there was in the pocket.
“So now I’ll just hustle along and. leave you to square up with Hornsby. Good luck to you, Milt!”
Still grinning, the sheriff made for the street, and old Milt heard the manager say: “We’ve had returns from your dust. Just over twenty thousand in it. Does that sound all right?”
“Yes, entirely. I thought perhaps it would go about that.”
The manager nodded. “All right, then, Milt. Do you want cash? Or would you rather open an account with us?”
“I’d rather open an account with you. Leave it here on interest. Later on, I’ll want some cash, as I’ve a little place picked out, for a couple of thousand dollars, where the burros and I can take it easy. And as the interest probably won’t keep me going, I’ll sometimes have to draw on the principal.”
The Third Western Megapack Page 63
