Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  “No, I ain’t,” answered Steve, dismounting.

  “I was afeard not,” sighed the old man. “Hard Luck I be to the end — come in — I smell that deer meat a- burnin’.”

  After a supper of venison, sourdough bread and coffee, the two sat on the cabin stoop and watched the stars blink out as they talked. The sound of Steve’s horse, cropping the luxuriant grass, came to them, and a night breeze wafted the spicy scents of the forest.

  “This country is sure different from Texas,” said Steve. “I kinda like these mountains, though. I was figurin’ on campin’ up among ’em tonight, that’s why I took that west trail. She goes on to Rifle Pass, don’t she?”

  “She don’t,” replied the old man. “Rifle Pass is some south of here and this is the trail to that small but thrivin’ metropolis. That trail you was followin’ meanders up in them hills and where she goes, nobody knows.”

  “Why don’t they?”

  “Fer two reasons. The first is, they’s no earthly reason fer a man in his right mind to go up there, and I’ll refer you to yore hat fer the second.”

  “What right has this bird got to bar people from these mountains?”

  “I think it must be a thirty-thirty caliber,” grinned the old man. “That feller you met was Gila Murken, who lays out to own them mountains, like, and the gal was his niece, I reckon, what come from New York.

  “I dunno what Gila’s up to. I’ve knowed him, off and on, fer twenty years, and never knowed nothin’ good. I’m his nearest neighbor, now, but I ain’t got the slightest idee where his cabin is — up there somewhere.” He indicated the gigantic brooding bulk of the Sunset Mountains, black in the starlight.

  “Gila’s got a couple fellers with him, and now this gal. Nobody else ever goes up that hill trail. The men come up here a year ago.”

  Steve mused. “An’ what do you reckon is his idee for discouragin’ visitors?”

  The old man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Son, I’ve wondered myself. He and his pards lives up in them mountains and regular once a week one of ’em rides to Rifle Pass or maybe clean to Stirrup, east. They have nothin’ to do with me or anybody else. I’ve wondered, but, gosh, they ain’t a chance!”

  “Ain’t a chance of what?”

  “Steve,” said Hard Luck, his lean hand indicating the black vastness of the hills, “somewhere up there amongst them canyons and gorges and cliffs, is a fortune! And sometimes I wonder if Gila Murken ain’t found it.

  “It’s forty year ago that me and Bill Hansen come through this country — first white men in it, so far as I know. I was nothin’ but a kid then an’ we was buffalo hunters, kinda strayed from the regular course.

  “We went up into them hills, Sunset Mountains, the Indians call ‘em, and away back somewheres we come into a range of cliffs. Now, it don’t look like it’d be that way, lookin’ from here, but in among the mountains they’s long chains of cliffs, straight up and down, maybe four hundred feet high, clay and rock — mighty treacherous stuff. They’s maybe seventeen sets of these cliffs, Ramparts, we call ‘em, and they look just alike. Trees along the edge, thick timber at the base. The edges is always crumblin’ and startin’ landslides and avalanches.

  “Me and Bill Hansen come to the front of one of these Ramparts and Bill was lookin’ at where the earth of the cliff face had kinda shelved away when he let out a whoop!

  “Gold! Reef gold — the blamedest vein I ever see, just lying there right at the surface ready for somebody to work out the ore and cart it off! We dropped our guns and laid into the cliff with our fingernails, diggin’ the dirt away. And the vein looked like she went clear to China! Get that, son, reef gold and quartz in the open cliff face.

  “ ’Bill,’ says I, ‘we’re milyunaires!’

  “And just as I said it, somethin’ came whistlin’ by my cheek and Bill gave one yell and went down on his face with a steel-pointed arrow through him. And before I could move a rifle cracked and somethin’ that felt like a red hot hammer hit me in the chest and knocked me flat.

  “A war party — they’d stole up on us while we was diggin’. Cheyennes they was, from the north, and they come out and chanted their scalp songs over us. Bill was dead and I lay still, all bloody but conscious, purtendin’ I was a stiff, too.

  “They scalped Bill and they scalped me—”

  Steve gave an exclamation of horror.

  “Oh, yes,” said Hard Luck tranquilly. “It hurt considerable — fact is, I don’t know many things that hurt wuss. But somehow I managed to lie still and not let on like I was alive, though a couple of times I thought I was goin’ to let out a whoop in spite of myself.”

  “Did they scalp you plumb down to the temples?” asked Steve morbidly.

  “Naw — the Cheyennes never scalped that way.” Hard Luck ran his hand contemplatively over his glistening skull. “They just cut a piece out of the top — purty good sized piece, though — and the rest of the ha’r kinda got discouraged and faded away, after a few years.

  “Anyway, they danced and yelled fer awhile an’ then they left an’ I began to take invoice to see if I was still livin’. I was shot through the chest but by some miracle the ball had gone on through without hitting anything important. I thought, though, I was goin’ to bleed to death. But I stuffed the wound with leaves and the webs these large white spiders spin on the low branches of trees. I crawled to a spring which wasn’t far away and lay there like a dead man till night, when I came to and lay there thinkin’ about my dead friend, and my wounds and the gold I’d never enjoy.

  “Then, I got out of my right mind and went crawlin’ away through the forest, not knowin’ why I did it. I was just like a man that’s drunk: I knowed what I was doin’ but I didn’t know why I was doin’ it. I crawled and I crawled and how long I kept on crawlin’ I don’t know fer I passed clean out, finally, and some buffalo hunters found me out in the level country, miles and miles from where I was wounded. I was ravin’ and gibberin’ and nearly dead.

  “They tended to me and after a long time my wounds healed and I come back to my right mind. And when I did, I thought about the gold and got up a prospectin’ party and went back. But seems like I couldn’t remember what all happened just before I got laid out. Everything was vague and I couldn’t remember what way Bill and me had taken to get to the cliff, and I couldn’t remember how it looked. They’d been a lot of landslides, too, and likely everything was changed in looks.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t find the lost mine of Sunset Mountain, and though I been comin’ every so often and explorin’ again, for forty years me nor no other livin’ man has ever laid eyes on that gold ledge. Some landslide done covered it up, I reckon. Or maybe I just ain’t never found the right cliff. I don’t know.

  “I done give it up. I’m gettin’ old. Now I’m runnin’ a few sheep and am purty contented. But you know now why they call me Hard Luck.”

  “And you think that maybe this Murken has found your mine and is workin’ it on the sly?”

  “Naw, really I don’t. T’wouldn’t be like Gila Murken to try to conceal the fact — he’d just come out and claim it and dare me to take it away from him. Anyway,” the old man continued with a touch of vanity, “no dub like Gila Murken could find somethin’ that a old prospector like me has looked fer, fer forty year without findin’, nohow.”

  Silence fell. Steve was aware that the night wind, whispering down from the mountains, carried a strange dim throbbing — a measured, even cadence, haunting and illusive.

  “Drums,” said Hard Luck, as if divining his thought. “Indian drums; tribe’s away back up in the mountains. Nothin’ like them that took my scalp. Navajoes, these is, a low class gang that wandered up from the south. The government give ’em a kind of reservation back in the Sunset Mountains. Friendly, I reckon — trade with the whites a little.

  “Them drums is been goin’ a heap the last few weeks. Still nights you can hear ’em easy; sound travels a long way in this land.”


  His voice trailed off into silence. Steve gazed westward where the monstrous shadowy peaks rose black against the stars. The night breeze whispered a lonely melody through the cedars and pines. The scent of fresh grass and forest trees was in his nostrils. White stars twinkled above the dark mountains and the memory of a pretty, wistful face floated across Steve’s vision. As he grew drowsy, the face seemed nearer and clearer, and always through the mists of his dreams throbbed faintly the Sunset drums.

  * * *

  2. MYSTERY

  STEVE drained his coffee cup and set it down on the rough- hewn table.

  “I reckon,” said he, “for a young fellow you’re a pretty good cook — Hard Luck, I been thinkin’.”

  “Don’t strain yoreself, son. It ain’t a good idee startin’ in on new things, at this time of yore life — what you been thinkin’ about?”

  “That mine of yours. I believe, instead of goin’ on to Rifle Pass like I was thinkin’ of doin’, I’ll lay over a few days and look for that lost gold ledge.”

  “Considerin’ as I spent the best part of my life huntin’ it,” said Hard Luck testily, “it’s very likely you’ll stub yore toes on it the first thing. The Lord knows, I’d like to have you stay here as long as you want. I don’t see many people. But they ain’t one chance in a hundred of you findin’ that mine, and I’m tellin’ you, it ain’t healthy to ramble around in the Sunsets now, with Gila Murken hatchin’ out the Devil only knows what, up there.”

  “Murken owes me a new hat,” said Steve moodily. “And furthermore and besides it’s time somebody showed him he ain’t runnin’ this country. I crave to hunt for that mine. I dreamed about it last night.”

  “You better forgit that mountain-business and work with me here on my ranch,” advised Hard Luck. “I’ll give you a job of herdin’ sheep.”

  “Don’t get insultin’,” said Steve reprovingly. “How far up in them hills can a horse go?”

  “You can navigate most of ’em on yore bronc if you take yore time an’ let him pick his way. But you better not.”

  In spite of Hard Luck’s warning, Steve rode up the first of the great slopes before the sun had risen high enough for him to feel its heat. It was a beautiful morning; the early sunlight glistened on the leaves of the trees and on the dew on the grass. Above and beyond him rose the slopes, dark green, deepening into purple in the distance. Snow glimmered on some of the higher peaks.

  Steve felt a warmth of comfort and good cheer. The fragrance of Hard Luck’s coffee and flapjacks was still on his palate, and the resilience of youth sang through his veins. Somewhere up there in the mysterious tree-clad valleys and ridges adventure awaited him, and as Steve rode, the lost mine of the Sunsets was least in his thoughts.

  No trail led up the way he took, but his horse picked his route between boulders and cedars, climbing steep slopes as nimbly as a mountain goat. The cedars gave way to pines and occasionally Steve looked down into some small valley, heavily grassed and thickly wooded. The sun was slanting toward the west when he finally pulled up his horse on the crest of a steep incline and looked down.

  A wilder and more broken country he had never seen. From his feet the earth sloped steeply down, covered with pines which seemed to cling precariously, to debouch into a sort of plateau. On three sides of this plateau rose the slanting sides of the mountains. The fourth or east side fell away abruptly into cliffs which seemed hundreds of feet high. But what drew Steve’s gaze was the plateau itself.

  Near the eastern cliffs stood two log cabins. Smoke curled from one, and as Steve watched, a man came out of the door. Even at that distance Steve recognized the fellow whom Hard Luck had designated as Gila Murken.

  Steve slipped from the saddle, led his horse back into the pines a short distance and flung the reins over a tree limb. Then he stole back to the crest of the slope. He did not think Murken could see him, hidden as he was among the trees, but he did not care to take any chances. Another man had joined Murken and the two seemed to be engaged in conversation. After awhile they turned and went into the second cabin.

  Time passed but they did not emerge. Suddenly Steve’s heart leaped strangely. A slim girlish form had come from the cabin out of which the men had come, and the sunshine glinted on golden hair. Steve leaned forward eagerly, wondering why the mere sight of a girl should cause his breath to come quicker.

  She walked slowly toward the cliffs and Steve perceived that there was what seemed to be a deep gorge, presumably leading downward. Into this the girl disappeared. Steve now found that the mysterious cabins had lost much of their interest, and presently he went back to his horse, mounted and rode southward, keeping close to the crest of the slopes. At last he attained a position where he could look back at the plateau and get a partial view of the cliffs. He decided that they were some of the Ramparts, spoken of by Hard Luck. They rose steep and bare for four hundred feet, deeply weathered and serrated. Gorges cut deep into them and promontories stood out over the abysses beneath. Great boulders lined the edge of the precipices and the whole face of the cliffs looked unstable and treacherous.

  At the foot, tall forest trees masked a rough and broken country. And as he looked Steve saw the girl, a tiny figure in the distance, come out into a clearing. He watched her until she vanished among the trees, and then turned his steed and rode back in the direction from which he had come, though not following the same route. He took his time, riding leisurely.

  The sun slanted westward as he came to the lower slopes and looked back to see the rim of the Ramparts jutting below the heights he had left. He had made a vast semicircle and now the cliffs were behind and above him, instead of in front and below.

  He went his leisurely way and suddenly he was aware of voices among the cedars in front of him. He slipped from his saddle, dropped the reins to the horse’s feet and stole forward. Hidden among the undergrowth, he looked into a small glade where stood two figures — the girl of the cliffs and a tall lanky man.

  “No! No!” the girl was saying. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Go away and let me alone or I’ll tell my uncle.”

  “Haw! Haw!” The man’s laugh was loud but mirthless. “Yore uncle and me is too close connected in a business way for him to rile me! I’m tellin’ you, this ain’t no place for you and you better let me take you away to whar there’s people and towns and the like.”

  “I don’t trust you,” she answered sullenly.

  “Aw, now don’t you? Come on — admit you done come down here just to meet me!”

  “That’s a lie!” the girl cried, stung. “You know I just went for a stroll; I didn’t know you were here.”

  “These mountains ain’t no place for a ‘stroll.’ ”

  “My uncle won’t let me have a horse and ride, unless he’s with me. He’s afraid I’ll run away.”

  “And wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t anywhere to go. But I’d about as soon die as stay here much longer.”

  “Then let me take you away! I’ll marry you, if you say so. They’s many a gal would jump to take Mark Edwards up on that deal.”

  “Oh, let me alone! I don’t want to marry you, I don’t want to go away with you, I don’t even want to look at you! If you really want to make a hit with me, go somewhere and shoot yourself!”

  Edwards’ brow darkened.

  “Oh ho, so I ain’t good enough for you, my fine lady. Reckon I’ll just take a kiss anyhow.”

  His grimed hands shot and closed on her shoulders. Instantly she clenched a small fist and struck him in the mouth, so that blood trickled from his lips. The blow roused all the slumbering demon in the man.

  “Yore a spit-fire,” he grunted. “But I ‘low I’ll tame you.”

  He pinioned her arms, cursed soulfully as she kicked him on the shins, and crushed her slim form to him. His unshaven lips were seeking hers when Steve impulsively went into action.

  He bounded from his covert, gripped the man’s shoulder with steely f
ingers and swung him around, smashing him in the face with his left hand as he did so. Edwards gaped in astonishment, then roared and rushed in blindly, fingers spread to gouge and tear. Steve was not inclined to clinch rough-and- tumble fashion. He dropped his right fist nearly to his ankle and then brought it up in a long sweeping arc that stopped at Edwards’s chin. That worthy’s head went back as if it were hinged and his body, following the motion, crashed to the leaf-covered earth. He lay as if in slumber, his limbs tossed about in a careless and nonchalant manner. Steve caressed his sore knuckles and glanced at the girl.

  “Is — is — is he dead?” she gasped, wide eyed.

  “Naw, miss, I’m afraid he ain’t,” Steve answered regretfully. “He’s just listenin’ to the cuckoo birds. Shall I tie him up?”

  “What for?” she asked reasonably enough. “No, let’s go before he comes to.”

  And she started away hurriedly. Steve got his horse and followed her, overtaking her within a few rods. He walked beside her, leading his steed, his eyes admiringly taking in the proud, erect carriage of her slim figure, and the faint delicate rose-leaf tint of her complection.

  “I hope you won’t think I’m intrudin’ where I got no business,” said the Texan apologetically. “But I’m a seein’ you to wherever you’re goin’. That bird might follow you or you might meet another one like him.”

  “Thank you,” she answered in a rather subdued voice. “You were very kind to help me, Mr. Harmer.”

  “How’d you know my name?”

  “You told my uncle who you were yesterday, don’t you remember?”

  “Seems like I recollect, now,” replied Steve, experiencing a foolish warm thrill that she should remember his name. “But I don’t recall you saying what your name was.”

  “My name is Joan Farrel. I’m staying here with my uncle, Mr. Murken, the man with whom you saw me yesterday.”