Dorn Of The Mountains (25 page)

Wilson had taken an axe and was vigorously wielding it among the spruces. One by one they fell with swish and soft crash. Then the sliding ring of the axe told how he was slicing off the branches with long sweeps. Presently he appeared in the semidarkness dragging half-trimmed spruces behind him. He made several trips, the last of which was to stagger under a huge burden of spruce boughs. These he spread under a low projecting branch of an aspen. Then he leaned the bushy spruces slantingly against this branch on both sides, quickly improvising a V-shaped shelter with narrow aperture in front. Next, from one of the packs, he took a blanket and threw that inside the shelter.

Then touching the girl on the shoulder, he whispered: “When you’re ready, slip in there…. An’ don’t lose no sleep by worryin’, for I’ll be layin’ right here.”

He made a motion to indicate his length across the front of the narrow aperture.

“Oh, thank you. Maybe you really are a Texan,” she whispered back.

“Mebbe,” was his gloomy reply.

The girl refused to take food proffered her by Riggs, but she ate and drank a little that Wilson brought her, then she disappeared in the spruce lean-to.

What ever loquacity and companionship that had previously existed in Snake Anson’s gang, they were not manifest in this camp. Each man seemed preoccupied, as if pondering the dawn in his mind of an ill omen not clear to him yet and not yet dreamed of by his fellows. They all smoked. Then Moze and Shady played cards a while by the light of the fire, but it was a dull game, in which they seldom spoke. Riggs sought his blanket first, and the fact was significant that he lay down some distance from the spruce shelter that contained Bo Rayner. Presently young Burt went off grumbling to his bed. And not long afterward the card players did likewise.

Snake Anson and Jim Wilson were left brooding in silence beside the dying campfire.

The night was dark with only a few stars showing. A fitful wind moaned unearthily through the spruce. An occasional
thump
of hoof sounded from the dark woods. No cry of wolf or coyote or cat gave reality to the wildness of forestland.

By and by those men who had rolled in their blankets were breathing deeply and slowly in heavy slumber.

“Jim, I take it this hyar Riggs has queered our deal,” said Snake Anson in low voice.

“I reckon,” replied Wilson.

“An’ I’m feared he’s queered this hyar White Mountain country fer us.”

“Shore I ain’t got so far as thet. What d’ye mean, Snake?”

“Damn’ if I savvy,” was the gloomy reply. “I only know what was bad looks growin’ worse. Last fall…an’ winter…an’ now it’s near April. We’ve got no outfit to make a long stand in the woods…. Jim, jest how strong is thet Beasley down in the settlements?”

“I’ve a hunch he ain’t half as strong as he bluffs.”

“Me, too. I got thet idee yesterday. He was scared of the kid…when she fired up an’ sent thet hot shot about her cowboy sweetheart killin’ him.…He’ll do it, Jim. I seen that Carmichael at Magdalena some years ago. Then he was only a youngster. But
whew!
Mebbe he wasn’t bad after toyin’ with a little red liquor.”

“Shore. He was from Texas, she said.”

“Jim, I savvied your feelin’s was hurt…by thet talk about Texas…an’ when she up an’ asked you.”

Wilson had no rejoinder for this remark.

“Wal, Lord knows, I ain’t wonderin’. You wasn’t a hunted outlaw all your life. An’ neither was I.…Jim, I never was keen on this girl deal…now was I?”

“I reckon it’s honest to say no to thet,” replied Wilson. “But it’s done. Beasley’ll get plugged sooner or later. Thet won’t help us any. Chasin’ sheepherders out of the country an’ stealin’ sheep…thet ain’t stealin’ gurls by a damn’ sight.…Beasley’ll blame thet onto us an’ be greaser enough to send some of his men out to hunt us. For Pine an’ Show Down won’t stand thet long. There’s them Mormons. They’ll be hell when they wake up. Suppose Carmichael got thet hunter Dorn an’ them hawkeyed Beemans on our trail?”

“Wal, we’d cash in…damn’ quick,” replied Anson gruffly.

“Then why didn’t you let me take the girl back home?”

“Wal, come to think of thet, Jim, I’m sore, an’ I need money…an’ I knowed you’d never take a dollar from her sister…. An’ I’ve made up my mind to get somethin’ out of her.”

“Snake, you’re no fool. How’ll you do thet same an’ do it quick?”

“Ain’t reckoned it out yet.”

“Wal, you got aboot tomorrow an’ thet’s all,” returned Wilson gloomily.

“Jim, what’s ailin’ you?”

“I’ll let you figger thet out.”

“Wal, damn, somethin’ ails the whole gang,” declared Anson savagely. “With them it’s nothin’ to eat…no whiskey…no money to bet with…no tobacco…. But thet’s not what’s ailin’ you, Jim Wilson, nor me!”

“Wal, what is, then?” queried Wilson.

“With me, it’s a strange feelin’ thet my day’s over on these ranges. I can’t explain, but it jest feels so. Somethin’ in the air. I don’t like them dark shadows out there under the spruces. Savvy? An’ as fer you, Jim, wal, you allus was half decent, an’ my gang’s got too low-down fer you.”

“Snake, did I ever fail you?”

“Damn, no, you never did. You’re the best pard I ever knowed…. In the years we’ve rustled together we never had a contrary word till I let Beasley fill my ears with his promises. Thet’s my fault…. But, Jim, it’s too late.”

“It mightn’t have been too late yesterday.”

“Mebbe not. But it is now, an’ I’ll hang onto the girl or git her worth in gold,” declared the outlaw grimly.

“Snake, I’ve seen stronger gangs than yours come an’ go. Them Big Bend gangs in my country…them rustlers…they were all badmen. You have no likes of them gangs out heah. If they didn’t get wiped out by Rangers or cowboys, why they jest naturally wiped out themselves. Thet’s a law I recognize in relation to gangs like them. An’ as for yours…why, Anson, it wouldn’t hold water against one real gunslinger.”

“Ahuh! Then if we run up ag’in’ Carmichael or some such fellar…would you be suckin’ your finger like a baby?”

“Wal, I wasn’t takin’ count of myself. I was talkin’ generalities.”

“
Aw,
what’n hell are them?” asked Anson disgustedly. “Jim, I know as well as you thet this hyar gang is hard put. We’re goin’ to be trailed an’ chased. We’ve got to hide…be on the go all the time…here and there…all over, in the roughest woods. An’ wait our chance to work south.”

“Shore…. But, Snake, you ain’t takin’ no count of the feelin’s of the men…an’ of mine an’ yours…. I’ll bet you my hoss thet in a day or so this gang will go to pieces.”

“I’m feared you spoke what’s been crowdin’ to git in my mind,” replied Anson. Then he threw up his hands in a strange gesture of resignation. The outlaw was brave, but all men of the wilds recognized a force stronger than themselves. He sat there resembling a brooding snake with basilisk eyes upon the fire. At length he arose, and, without another word to his comrade, he walked wearily to where lay the dark quiet forms of the sleepers.

Jim Wilson remained beside the flickering fire. He was reading something in the red embers, perhaps the past. Shadows were on his face, not all from the fading flames or the towering spruces. Ever and anon he raised his head to listen, not apparently that he expected any unusual sound, but as if involuntarily. Indeed, as Anson had said, there was something nameless in the air. The black forest breathed heavily, in fitful moans of wind. It had its secrets. The glances Wilson threw on all sides betrayed that any hunted man did not love the dark night, although it hid him. Wilson seemed fascinated by the life enclosed there by the black circle of spruce. He might have been reflecting on the strange reaction happening to every man in that group, since a girl had been brought among them. Nothing was clear, however; the forest kept its secret as did the melancholy wind; the outlaws were sleeping like tired beasts, with their dark secrets locked in their hearts.

After a while Wilson put some sticks on the red embers, then pulled the end of a log over them. A blaze sputtered up, changing the dark circle, and showing the sleepers with their set shadowed faces upturned. Wilson gazed on all of them, a sardonic smile on his lips, and then his look fixed upon the sleeper apart from the others—Riggs. It might have been the false light of flame and shadows that created Wilson’s expression of dark and terrible hate. Or it might have been the truth, expressed in that lonely unguarded hour, from the depths of a man born in the South—a man who by his inheritance of race had reverence for all womanhood—by whose strange, wild, outlawed bloody life of a gunfighter he must hate with the deadliest hate this type that aped and mocked his fame.

It was a long gaze Wilson rested upon Riggs—as strange and secretive as the forest wind, moaning down the great aisles—and, when that dark gaze was withdrawn, Wilson stalked away to make his bed with the stride of one in whom spirit had liberated force.

He laid his saddle in front of the spruce shelter where the girl had entered, and his tarpaulin and blankets likewise, and then wearily stretched his long length to rest.

The campfire blazed up, showing the exquisite green and brown-flecked festooning of the spruce branches, so symmetrical and perfect, yet so irregular, and then it burned out and died down, leaving all in the dim gray starlight. The horses were not moving around; the moan of night wind had grown fainter; the low
hum
of insects was dying away; even the
tinkle
of the brook had diminished. And that growth toward absolute silence continued, yet absolute silence was never attained. Life abided in the forest, only it had changed its form for the dark hours.

Anson’s gang did not bestir themselves at the usual early sunrise hour, common to all woodsmen, hunters, or outlaws to whom the break of day was welcome. These companions, Anson and Riggs included, might have hated to see the dawn come. It meant only another meager meal, then the weary packing and the long, long ride to nowhere in particular, and another meager meal—all toiled for without even the necessities of satisfactory living, and assuredly without the thrilling hopes that made their life significant, and certainly with a growing sense of approaching calamity.

The outlaw leader rose, surly and cross-grained. He had to boot Burt to drive him out for the horses. Riggs followed him. Shady Jones did nothing except grumble. Wilson, by common consent, always made the sourdough bread, and he was slow about it this morning. Anson and Moze did the rest of the work, without alacrity. The girl did not appear.

“Is she dead?” growled Anson.

“No, she ain’t,” replied Wilson, looking up. “She’s sleepin’. Let her sleep…. She’d shore be a damn’ sight better off if she was daid.”

“Ahah! So would all of this hyar outfit,” was Anson’s response.

“Wal, Sna-ake, I shore reckon we’ll all be thet there soon,” drawled Wilson in his familiar cool and irritating tone that said so much more than the content of the words.

Anson did not address the Texas member of his party again.

Burt rode bareback into camp driving half the number of the horses; Riggs followed shortly with several more. But three were unused, one of them being Anson’s favorite. He would not have budged without that horse. During breakfast he growled about his lazy men and after the meal tried to urge them off. Riggs went unwillingly. Burt refused to go at all.

“Nix. I footed them hills all I’m a-goin’ to,” he said. “An’ from now on I rustle my own hoss.”

The leader glared his reception of this opposition. Perhaps his sense of fairness actuated him once more, for he ordered Shady and Moze out to do their share.

“Jim, you’re the best tracker in this outfit. Suppose you go,” suggested Anson. “You allus used to be the first one off.”

“Times has changed, Snake,” was the imperturbable reply.

“Wal, won’t you go?” demanded the leader impatiently.

“I shore won’t.”

Wilson did not look or intimate in any way that he would not leave the girl in camp with one or any or all of Anson’s gang, but the truth was as significant as if he had shouted it. The slow-thinking Moze gave Wilson a sinister look.

“Boss, ain’t it funny how a pretty wench…?” began Shady Jones sarcastically.

“Shut up, you fool!” broke in Anson. “Come on, I’ll help rustle them hosses.”

After they had gone, Burt took his rifle and strolled off into the forest. Then the girl appeared. Her hair was down, her face pale, with dark shadows. She asked for water to wash her face. Wilson pointed to the brook, and, as she walked slowly toward it, he took a comb and a clean scarf from his pack, and carried them to her.

Upon her return to the campfire she looked very different with her hair arranged and the red stains in her cheeks.

“Miss, air you hungry?” asked Wilson.

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

He helped her to portions of bread, venison and gravy, and a cup of coffee. Evidently she relished the meat, but she had to force down the rest.

“Where are they all?” she asked.

“Rustlin’ the hosses.”

Probably she divined that he did not want to talk, for the fleeting glance she gave him attested to a thought that his voice or demeanor had changed. Presently she sought a seat under the aspen tree out of the sun, and the smoke continually blowing in her face, and there she stayed, a forlorn little figure, for all the resolute lips and defiant eyes.

The Texan paced to and fro beside the campfire with bent head and hands locked behind him. But for the swinging gun he would have resembled a lanky farmer, coatless and hatless, with his brown vest open, his trousers stuck in the top of the high boots.

And neither he nor the girl changed their positions relatively for a long time. At length, however, after peering into the woods and listening, he remarked to the girl that he would be back in a moment, and then walked off around the spruces.

No sooner had he disappeared, in fact so quickly, that afterward it presupposed design instead of accident, than Riggs came running from the opposite side of the glade. He ran straight to the girl, who sprang to her feet.

“I hid…two of the horses,” he panted, husky with excitement. “I’ll take…two saddles. You grab some grub…. We’ll run for it.”

“No!” she cried, stepping back.

“But it’s not safe…for us…here,” he said hurriedly, glancing all around. “I’ll take you…home. I swear…. Not safe…I tell you…this gang’s after me. Hurry!”

He laid hold of two saddles, one with each hand. The moment had reddened his face, brightened his eyes, made his action strong.

“I’m safer here with this outlaw gang,” she replied.

“You won’t come?” His color began to lighten then and his face to distort. He dropped his hold on the saddles.

“Harve Riggs, I’d rather become a toy and a rag for these ruffians than spend an hour alone with you,” she flashed at him in unquenchable hate.

“By God, I’ll drag you!”

He seized her, but could not hold her. Breaking away she screamed.

“Help!”

That whitened his face, drove him to frenzy. Leaping forward, he struck her a hard blow across the mouth. It staggered her. And tripping on a saddle, she fell. His hands flew to her throat, ready to choke her. But she lay still and held her tongue. Then he dragged her to her feet.