Bad Man's Gulch (27 page)

Very brutal talk, it seemed. But when he started up the road, on Rob, she followed him wistfully with her eyes. He was gone, taking her worries with
him. For, although reason told her that he was only one man, and that this was a trouble too great for one man to solve, still she could not resist a blind belief that all would be well. As steel is sure, such was his surety. She could not believe that he would fail.

She cooked her own supper and then waited, until a voice called to her loudly through the night: “Melendez is gone, and, if he comes back, you can tell him that he's coming back to trouble!”

She could not see through the blanketing darkness more than a dim form in the roadway, but she thought that she recognized the voice of the man who had worn the hat of her father, and been called Bill. That was Legrain, then. And what did Legrain know? Her very blood went cold.

Another hour went past, and then the sharp ringing of the galloping hoofs of a horse approached down the valley. They paused before the shack, and she heard the low, steady voice of Melendez saying: “No one is on the claim. I got down and looked. Why, even by match light I could see that the stuff is richer than all telling. No wonder your father disappeared, if he showed such stuff around this town. But keep your heart up. This here thing will turn out well.”

He hardly waited for a word of answer, but was gone again. Listening to the strong, steady sound of the galloping as it died away, toward the gulch, her hopes arose and happiness came back to her.

He went first of all straight to old Hans Grimm and found that gentleman not in his gaming house, but outside of it, in his own shack, seated at the doorway, with his long pipe between his teeth, smoking with a calm enjoyment. The tuft of gray hair at either temple made him seem, in the starlit night, like a horned satyr at the mouth of its cave.

“Well, Melendez,” he said, “I'm glad to say that you took my advice.”

“It was luck, after all,” insisted Melendez. “I seen her just as I started out of town . . . just as I was
streaking
out of town, as a matter of fact. I saw her and I stopped and so I'm still here. I've come back to you for a little advice.”

“Thanks,” Hans Grimm said. “Some folks come back to me for coin. But none of them ever come back to me for advice. Now, what do you want?”

“Someone in this town has grabbed old man Berenger. He's disappeared for over a day.”

“I heard that he was gone.”

“And what I want to know is . . . who might have taken him?”

“I dunno that I can tell you that.”

“You might put me on the right road to finding out about it, however.”

“Berenger is gone, eh?” murmured the other, shaking his head. “Why should they have nabbed him?”

“He had a quartz sample so rich that it would have broken your heart to see it. They must have spotted it and got him before he could file his claim.”

“For what are they holding him?” asked Hans Grimm.

“To put him in torment,” Melendez said. “Then they'll get out of him where he made his find. That's simple, isn't it, Hans?”

“Aye, and after he's told him?”

“Then finish him off and put him where he'll tell no tales afterwards. Of course, that's it.”

Hans Grimm stood up from his chair with a grunt of violence. “I understand,” he said. He walked back and forth, his head bowed in thought. “Do you know the man without legs that begs in front of the general store . . . Higgins's General Store?”

“Yes, I've seen him.”

“He has a camera eye. He never forgets faces.
He's
likely to have noticed your man. Can you describe him?”

“His daughter gave me a photograph.”

“Go find that beggar. He's a mean devil, but, if you can make him talk, he might turn the trick for you.”

Melendez turned and hurried up the street. He walked very closely to one edge of the sidewalk, and, as he passed each gap and crossroad, he kept his eyes alert for either side. It was well that he did so, perhaps. A block from the store, two shadows slipped softly up behind him. When he turned, they skulked to either side of him and disappeared in the
rollicking crowd of miners. But he knew that they had had their eyes on him. How many others were waiting for a chance at him, he could only guess. And bullets through the back counted as much as bullets fired face to face.

At Higgins's store there was no sign of the beggar without legs. He went inside to make inquiries. Higgins himself sat on a box at one end of the counter with a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun in his hands—a little red-faced cockney with a determined eye.

Melendez's words brought an impatient scowl to Higgins's face. While the little cockney answered, his eyes wandered over the crowd in his store, reading faces, guessing at danger. His till would never be captured by thieves, unless his body were first salted away with lead.

“You go up first road on the left. Find Jack's shack at the top of it . . . straightway.”

Jack was the beggar, and Melendez waited for no more. He found a little covert, composed of scraps of timbers, canvas, and a mound of dirt. The beggar sat in the doorway of this cave, and Melendez put a dollar in his hand.

The dying embers of the beggar's cook fire threw enough light to let the taller man read the expression of universal bitterness with which the deformed creature looked at him.

“Jack,” he said gently, “have you seen this face?” He laid the photograph before the other.

“Maybe I have and maybe I ain't,” snapped the cripple.

“I'm only asking you,” said Melendez.

The other tilted his face once more. The dust of the street had not been wiped from it. “You're Melendez. You fight your own fights,” he growled.

It was plain to Melendez that the other knew something. So he sat down on his heels and thereby brought his face to a level with Jack's.

“Do you really know me, Jack?” he said.

“I know you enough,” said Jack.

“Then you know that when I talk business, I mean it. That dollar was only a promise. There's more behind it.” He held out a $5 note. To his genuine astonishment, Jack dragged out the dollar that had already been given to him and threw it into the lap of Melendez.

“Now I'm clear of you,” he said. “So get out. I've done enough talking for today!”

“Listen to me,” said Melendez, “the day before yesterday . . . it was probably along in the late afternoon, Berenger . . . this is his photograph . . . came into Slosson's Gulch. He had pay dirt in his pocket. He had a chunk of it. Jack, he's disappeared, and I want to know if you saw him walking with anybody. Did he go by you?”

“The whole town goes by me,” said Jack. “How can I remember everybody?”

“Because you're one man in ten thousand, or more,” Melendez said calmly. “That's why I've come here. You can tell me what nobody else is apt to. Did you see Berenger walking with anyone?”

The lips of Jack parted to something that was almost a smile under this flattery, but they set again at once, and he shook his head. “I've done a day's work,” he said. “And I'm tired. I ain't talking, Melendez. I don't want no part of your game, whatever it is.”

The hand of Melendez darted out like the striking head of a snake and fixed upon one of the bulky wrists of the cripple. His other hand laid the blunt nose of his Colt under the chin of the little
man. “Jack,” he said, “you ain't more than half an inch from Hades. Will you change your mind about talking?”

In all his life—and he had been in strange places and among rough men—he had never seen an expression of such concentrated venom as that which appeared on the face of Jack. A cat, cornered by a dog, spits back at it with just such poisonous and devilish rage.

“They'll run you out of town for this!” he gasped.

“You've heard me,” Melendez said. “Now do you talk?”

Still Jack hesitated, his eyes burning into the face of the other, but at length he snarled: “Get to Judge's shanty. Hun and Sam Myron was with this dude. And I hope you're cursed forever!”

“Where's Judge's shanty?”

“Up Leonard Creek on the left side. The second shanty. I hope that he gets you . . . and he
will
get you, greaser!”

There was so much respect for this bit of deformity in Melendez, that, when he stood up, he backed away from the little man to a distance, then turned and hurried away. As he went, he heard a shrill whistle break behind him, a whistle that was swiftly repeated. Unless he was very generously mistaken, that was a signal from the cripple to friends. When they came to him, they would learn that Judge was apt to fall into trouble quickly, unless help were sent.

So Melendez dropped into the saddle on Rob and sent the good gelding flying out of town and down the valley. He was directed quickly enough to the creek. It wound down out of a rough ravine, joining Slosson's Creek with a white rushing of waters that sounded, at a distance, like a waterfall. So up the
left-hand side of the creek he galloped the horse. He passed the first shanty. The second was removed a little distance between two hills.

Rob, he left in a little grove of poplars in the hollow. Then he went on, on foot, working his way carefully through the shrubbery. When he came nearer, he could see the silhouette of a big man sitting with his back against a tree, twenty yards in front of the shack. Beside this watcher there was the glimmer of steel that made Melendez know that the sentry kept a rifle nearby.

Working still closer, he finally lay behind a rock and stretched out at full length. Then he saw a second man seated at the door of the shanty, taking the cool of the evening, with a pipe between his teeth.

“All right, Judge,” said a voice from inside. “He's come to.”

“You and Bert try your hands with him,” said Judge. “I'm tired of manhandling the old fool!”

This was proof enough to Melendez that he had not followed a false trail. Yonder in the house was old Berenger, beyond any doubt, but how was he to get the man out? Here were two armed men watching outside the house, and two more within it. Fellows engaged in such work as theirs would be sure to fight desperately. He thought of this as he lay behind his rock and he decided at last on a plan that was as simple as it was bold. Here and there across the clearing in front of the shack were fallen logs and standing rocks. He began to work softly around them, creeping from one to the other, until he came silently up beside the door of the lean-to, and the man who sat there.

At the last moment, it seemed that some premonition of evil stirred in Judge. He stood up suddenly and made a step straight toward Melendez, where he lay behind a jagged boulder. It was the very vaguest of instincts that moved in him, however, for when Melendez rose like a shadow from behind the rock, Judge was frozen in his place, unable to lift the rifle that he carried under his arm. He saw the glimmering
revolver in the hand of the stranger and he knew that it was pointed at his heart.

At the same instant, there was a groan from within the house that wrung the heart of Melendez with horror. Melendez beckoned, and Judge stepped still nearer.

“Walk straight ahead,” whispered Melendez. “March for the trees, yonder, and make no noise. And walk soft, Judge!”

Judge, without a word, stepped gently ahead and made for the trees. There, in the heavy shadow, he paused. The nose of a revolver was prodded into the small of his back.

“Have you brought me out here to murder me, stranger?” whined Judge.

“Hand back the butt of that rifle,” said Melendez.

It was done, and Melendez received it with his free hand. He weighed it, sighing with satisfaction. There were fifteen shots in the chamber of this gun, and a rifle is a hundred times better than a revolver for work by a dim light, where a bead must be drawn with care. He shoved the revolver back into the pocket from which he had drawn it. The rifle he carried in the cup of his right arm, with a finger upon the trigger.

So, with the muzzle of that gun still pressed against the back of Judge, he went through his clothes with his other hand. There was a Colt and a long knife. This completed the arms of the miner.

“Now,” said Melendez smoothly, “we can talk business. Turn around.”

Judge turned obediently.

“Ordinarily,” said Melendez, “you'd think that this here was a time to start killing. But it ain't that for me, old son. You need killing terrible bad, the four of you, but I want something out of you. I make
a dicker with you, Judge. You turn old Berenger over to me, and I let you go.”

“Berenger?”

“Most likely you dunno what I mean?” Melendez said sarcastically.

Judge was silent. At length he muttered: “You have the low-down on me, stranger. But I would like to say something. The old fool would never've got himself hurt, if he'd talked up right off, the way that I told him to.”

“He wouldn't squeal?” Melendez asked.

“He looked as soft and as foolish as a woman,” complained Judge, “but when you come to bear down on him, he was like iron. Seems like he'd rather die than talk.”

“All right,” said Melendez, “tonight I ain't saying what you should get for this little job of yours. I'm just saying . . . turn this here Berenger over to me and do it quick.”

“There ain't any way,” Judge said, “without calling in the other boys. And if I do that, there'll be a flock of trouble. The whole three of them is fighting fools.”

“You think of a way,” said Melendez. “By the way, I might tell you that, if the worse comes to the worst, I'd finish you off right here, and then start on the rest of them . . . unless you can work out a scheme for getting him out to me. I ain't soft-hearted, Judge. Not a bit!”