Chapter X

They had made their packs--blankets, bacon and beans, coffee, frying pan and coffeepot--and headed up into the mountains, riding the same trails Torrance and Sally Dawn had so recently traveled. They camped that night at the same deserted shack that had sheltered him and the girl on the first leg of their journey, and were up and riding at the first glint of a pale gray daybreak. No snow fell that day; by mid-forenoon tattered streaks of clear sky were like pale-blue banners above the far ridges. And when they came to the old mining camp high above Pocket Valley, the mountains as far as they could see swam in a diaphanous purple mist, and the western horizon was aflame with a red-and-gold sunset.

“Now I’ll tell you boys all I know,” said Torrance, and hooked a leg over the saddle horn while he reached for the makings. “Murdo and somebody else camped here night before last. I could see Murdo through the window; the other man was on a bunk in the corner and I couldn’t see him. And I couldn’t hear what they were talking about. But I could tell that the other man was giving orders and that Murdo was taking them. So it’s a fair bet it was Bordereau.”

“Where’d they go to?” demanded Sam Pepper.

“Down trail toward Pocket. But they swung off where there’s a narrow canyon. Then Murdo went down alone to Pocket, filled his grub bag and went back up the canyon. So it’s my bet that that’s where Bordereau is now, hiding out where nobody’d look for him, the same time he gets well of a bullet hole somewhere in his carcass.”

“Me, I know that canyon like I know my hat,” said Bill Yarbo. “And I know right where we’ll find Bordereau, sure. You see, Torrance, about thirty year ago there was all hell to pay about the mines up here. And Sally Dawn’s old gent, though he was a stock man first, last and all the time, took an interest. He was in the money in them days. He come up here; he bought up some mining properties; and he likewise grabbed off a little valley all his own for a summer range. What’s more, he built him a house, and he’d come up here when he felt like loafing, and go hunting and fishing. That house stands there yet, quite a place, and it’s up that canyon--and you couldn’t find a likelier place for a man to hide out and lick his wounds.”

“And for once he ain’t lying!” said Sam Pepper, in a tone of awe.

“Far from here?” asked Torrance.

Bill Yarbo, having glared at Pepper, said, “Hell, no. If we poke right along we’ll get there before it’s too dark to see the whites of their eyes. Bordereau won’t be all alone, you know.”

“No,” admitted Torrance. “He’d have someone--”

“I know!” exclaimed Sam Pepper. “He’s got anyhow three-four, maybe more men with him! There’s Hen Billings and Varney Slack and that half-breed, Joe Tortillas; that’s three of ’em anyhow! And--let’s see--”

“How would _you_ know?” snorted Bill Yarbo.

“Me, I sort of notice things,” snapped Pepper. “When I go places, I look around. Now since the night Bordereau got hurt I ain’t seen hide nor hair of any one of them three, and they’re always hanging around where Steve Bordereau is! Yep. And-- Say, I ain’t seen Turkey-trot Smith or Andy Pollack, and they was both in Sundown when Bordereau got shot! I’ll bet he’s got the whole gang up there!”

Torrance shrugged.

“There’s just one way to find out,” he said, and unhooked his leg from the saddle horn.

“Hey, wait!” said Sam Pepper, and looked worried. “It’ll be dark--we better camp here overnight, anyhow. And maybe--maybe--”

Bill Yarbo glared at him scornfully, then pretended spontaneous laughter. Sam Pepper went red to the gills.

“I ain’t scared!” he sputtered. “I’m just using my brains. If only three of us go jumping a crowd like Bordereau’s got--”

“There’s only two of us that counts,” said Yarbo. “Come ahead, Jim, let’s get along.”

“There’s something else,” said Pepper hastily. “You can bet your boots that Bordereau’ll be ready for us! Don’t you suppose Murdo got word across to him in a hurry? Them two are playing this game close together.”

“If Murdo or a messenger had passed us--”

“He wouldn’t have to. He could have come up by the Flats. Or he could have sent some sort of signal. Me, I noticed some smoke standing up in the sky back yonder over High Man’s Ridge; I wondered about it, too.”

“You would wonder,” guffawed Lying Bill Yarbo. “Come ahead, Jim. Let the little rooster stick here or run back home to his old woman.” Then he grinned very broadly, his eyes peering tauntingly at Pepper, as he added, “Maybe Murdo and a bunch of cutthroats are following along behind us now, Jim; maybe Mr. Sam Pepper, scooting back home, will run smack-kerdab into them!”

Sam Pepper, from red, turned a pasty white, and his eyeballs rolled. Then, when Torrance pushed on again and Lying Bill Yarbo fell in behind, Sam Pepper knew a moment of dreadful doubt. It was soon going to be dark. A timber wolf, perhaps the same hungry old fellow that Sally Dawn and Jim Torrance had heard, howled after a fashion to make the white solitudes seem ten thousand times more dreary and lonely. It wasn’t that Sam was afraid of the wolf; a man in a haunted house wouldn’t be afraid of the creak of a floor board; such sounds, however, didn’t perk a man up. He shivered and spurred hastily along after Torrance and Yarbo.

* * * * *

The old house that so long ago had been a sort of vacation home and hunting lodge to that great-hearted gentleman, King Cannon, when first glimpsed by Jim Torrance gave him a flick of surprise, despite what Bill Yarbo had hinted of it. There was a small upland valley with a round bit of a lake like a dusky mirror in its center; there was a rushing stream pouring down into the lake; on a narrow bit of bench land stood the building, massive and four-square, honest granite for foundation, no less honest and rugged spruce logs for the rest of it. Candlelight glimmered out through two or three windows.

There came a hushed bleat from Sam Pepper alternately holding back and pressing up close to their heels.

“Listen!” he pleaded. “You damfools listen to me! Ain’t you got any sense? Look how the place is lighted up! Say, there’s apt to be forty men there! If we go running into that mess--well, we might’s well cut us our own throats and save ’em the trouble!”

“Don’t listen to him, Jim,” muttered Bill Yarbo. And then in a confidential tone, yet one raised loud enough to make sure Pepper caught it, he demanded as though in wonder, “Why’d you bring him along anyhow?”

“Funny they’ve got the place lighted up like that,” said Torrance. “If it’s Bordereau, and he’s in hiding, you’d think--”

“Shucks,” said Yarbo. “He ain’t got the faintest idea that there’s anyone on his trail. Up here, why a man might hang out all winter and never have a nose poked in on him. We’ll take him clean by surprise.”

“You’re c-crazy!” stuttered Pepper. “Murdo’s sure warned him.”

“Come ahead, Jim,” said Yarbo.

The two started on again.

Sam Pepper stopped where he was.

“Me, I’ll guard the trail,” he said faintly. “In case anyone’s following us, I’ll head him off.”

Yarbo laughed and Torrance grunted. Sam Pepper watched them ride on, but himself sat where he was in the trail and shivered from head to foot. He saw his two companions draw on closer to the house, then turn off trail into a grove, then emerge on foot, moving on guardedly. He was tempted then to turn and scurry back the way he had come, at least as far as the mining camp, but the thought of being in that lonely place all night--and of perhaps having some most unwelcome callers drop in on him--gave him a fresh set of jitters. He dallied with the thought of going back only as far as the main trail, then down to Pocket Valley. But suppose he should meet Murdo and his gang coming up from Sundown by way of the Flats?

He just shivered and stuck tight where he was.

Yet he’d have given anyhow a good left hand to know what was ahead of Torrance and Yarbo, what they were going to find out and just how things would happen to them.

“Maybe they’ll be dead inside ten minutes,” his dry lips whispered. His spare shoulders twitched as he added: “Me, too, maybe. Why’n thunder did I ever come along with two such crazy fools?”

* * * * *

Again Torrance led the way, watchful for some guard who might well enough be posted outside. It appeared however that Bordereau, as Yarbo had predicted, was confident that no one was likely to look in on him here. For when the two men came stealthily up onto the front porch of the old King Cannon mountain place and looked in at a window, they saw that the men inside had no thought of anything but of their own affair. There was Steve Bordereau on his feet and moving about restlessly, carrying one shoulder stiffly yet beyond that seeming whole and unharmed. With him were five other men.

“What’n hell are they doing?” whispered Lying Bill Yarbo. “Tearing the house down?”

“Who are they?” asked Torrance. “Know them?”

“Sure. That little weasel Sam Pepper guessed it; somehow he’s apt to guess right once in a while. They’re the fellers he said we’d run into. And take it from me, Torrance, they’re tougher’n saddle leather. If it comes along to a scrimmage, you better shoot damn fast and twice as straight--or that little egg-sucking Pepper’ll have the laugh on both of us.”

Bordereau’s men, under his orders, were making a wreck of the big rude-timbered living room. With pick and crowbar and hand ax, they were tearing up floor boards now, and had already demolished a considerable section of one wall in a corner near the fireplace. One man, down on his knees, was prying up stones from the hearth.

“There’s six of ’em altogether, and maybe more hanging around,” said Yarbo. “There’s only two of you and me--”

“Better go back with your little friend Pepper,” said Torrance.

“Why, damn you!” growled Yarbo. “Me, I can handle that crowd alone and single-handed. I was just going to say--”

“Sh! What do they think they’re doing in there? What are they looking for?”

Sam Pepper could have told him, nailing the fact on the head; and Sam would have been in an ecstasy of interest to mark whether they found it or not. When this country had been filled years before with old freelance miners, when King Cannon had come up here and looked around and made him this place, he had grubstaked many a man, he had been a friend to nearly all of them--and a lot of gold, both raw and minted, had passed through his hands. Sam Pepper would have explained: “Why he kept a lot of gold, King Cannon did, and he put it somewhere, didn’t he? Here in this house, wasn’t it? And it’s never been found in all these years. Somehow, Steve Bordereau’s got a hunch at last that he can find it.”

But Sam Pepper, missing all this, wasn’t on hand to explain, and Bill Yarbo didn’t know. He relieved himself of a ponderous, thick-shouldered shrug.

“After all,” he suggested, “we come up here to gather Bordereau in, didn’t we? Me, for a long while, I’ve wanted to see that bull dehorned. Now while he’s busy, no matter what he’s looking for--”

“The door’ll be locked,” said Torrance. “If we start anything through the window, they’ll scatter six ways, douse the glim and have us guessing. Let’s slip around back and see if we can get in.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Yarbo, and they started to withdraw. Just then however they were riveted in their tracks by a mighty uproar exploding in the room on which they had only now turned their backs. There was an excited yell in a high tenor voice, that of Joe Tortillas; there was a triumphant, bellowing shout that came from an exultant Steve Bordereau. And then a half dozen men were shouting like schoolboys.

Torrance and Yarbo whirled and ran back and peered in again. They saw what the excitement was all about. Joe Tortillas was the man who had been ripping up boards near the fireplace; he had come upon a small wooden box, pretty well rotted away, and from it dumped on the floor several rusted old tobacco cans--and thus proved that in old rumors there could be a lot of truth. What gushed forth was gold, some of it dust and knobby nuggets, some in minted coins.

“Looks like a million dollars!” gasped Bill Yarbo.-- And, oh, Sam Pepper, where were you then?

“Looks like Bordereau’d got it for keeps,” snapped Jim Torrance, “unless-- Come ahead, Bill! Now’s our chance! At the back door. They won’t be thinking of anything but that King Cannon gold.”

He leaped down from the porch and ran, breaking through a deep snowdrift at the corner of the house, and after him like a lumbering plow horse came Lying Bill Yarbo.

They found the back door locked. They tried a window; it, too, was fastened. They hunted farther, hoping to enter without any splintering of wood or crash of glass. It was Yarbo who found a narrow door in a corner and got it open. He was aquiver from stem to stern--just as Sam Pepper shook through icy fear, so did Yarbo tremble with rage. He muttered in his throat:

“Damn him, Jim! That belongs to Sally by rights. It might get her in the clear again. And if Bordereau thinks for a split second--”

Again a stone-cold Jim Torrance gave him a soft “Sh!” to bring him back to some degree of caution. It would be like Bill Yarbo to go bounding in like a roaring lion.

“We ought to get the drop on them, Bill, but watch your step. Walk light and have your gun ready.”

They entered directly into what had once been a large kitchen, the sort of place where you’d expect to have the ox roasted whole, the sort of kitchen a man like King Cannon was sure to dream into being. They saw strips of light under two doors, both giving entrance to the living room where Bordereau and his exultant followers were. Jim Torrance jerked his thumb toward one of these doors, then pointed to the other, and Bill Yarbo nodded. They’d burst in simultaneously from two points of vantage upon seven unexpecting, loot-excited men.

Torrance stepped softly, tiptoeing, toward one of the doors. Bill Yarbo went his lumbering way like an old bear toward the other. They had enough light to guide them and to see each other by, due to the two glass panels set over the two doors. Torrance began a slow opening of the door to which he had stepped, drawing it inward toward himself. Bill Yarbo turned a knob, had trouble because of a warped jamb, gave an impatient tug, found that his door opened the other way, shoved at it and--

Then of a sudden, as he remarked later, on regaining consciousness, it seemed like all hell broke loose. Certainly these three things happened simultaneously: The door flew open with a crack and a bang of a heavy panel striking against a wall; the toe of Bill Yarbo’s boot caught on the threshold and Bill plunged headlong, sprawling on all fours into the living room--and from somewhere outside and near by there came the rapid-fire explosions of gunfire. If every energy had been bent toward giving Bordereau full warning that an attack was bearing down on him, the thing couldn’t have been better done.

Bordereau experienced his instant of consternation; so did Torrance and Bill Yarbo; not one of them had the least certainty of what those shots outside meant.

But Sam Pepper knew!

* * * * *

Sam Pepper kept twisting his head this way and that like a little owl sitting on a post; he wanted to watch for happenings at the old house, and at the same time in desperate apprehension he kept watching the trail along which they had ridden. When all of a sudden he saw two men bulking big as they rode toward him, his heart pounded, fluttered, threatened to stop for good and all, and the bones within him seemed to melt. He had been scared many a time in his life but never like this! He knew these oncomers for what they were--killers who’d make no more of Sam Pepper than a cat would make of a mouse at breakfast time.

He wanted to scurry along to the house where Torrance and Yarbo were, but he couldn’t move. He saw the two men closer; there was enough light reflected from the white expanse to show him their bulky forms and, even more clearly, the horses they rode. They were Barty Evans and Butch Vorich, as sure as he was born, and if there were two more merciless brutes within a hundred miles of Sundown, he didn’t know them. He began to wilt and slide down out of his saddle. As he slid he reached automatically for his belt gun, just as it is said that a man will grasp at a straw.

Sam Pepper wore an old Colt forty-four that hadn’t been fired for years; he wasn’t even dead sure that it was loaded! It was a wonder that the thing could still shoot. Scared stiff and rigid as he was, still there were certain uncontrollable, spasmodic jerkings of his spare frame. A voice yelled at him; a gun roared and spat orange-yellow flame; he was sure that he felt a lock of hair cut away.

His hands, despite the cold, were sweaty. That old gun of his got itself into his grip, he never quite knew how. A slippery finger slipped on the trigger. And, a wonder again, the bullet went on its way as from a fresh cartridge. Finally, a thing that cannot altogether be explained, an act of fate if you like--just one of those things--that wild bullet took a man, none other than Barty Evans, square between the small crafty eyes.

And Sam’s slippery finger kept on slipping. His gun, blazing away as of its own accord, emptied itself--and a howl of pain shrilled through the air as the man riding neck and neck with Barty Evans pitched headlong from his saddle into the snow and lay there moaning and writhing and trying to get up and falling back and lying where he fell, a black formless blot on the white of the snow.

The gun slid out of Sam Pepper’s hand. Sam himself balanced drunkenly as though he too had been shot, then melted from the saddle and slowly settled down into a snow bank. He didn’t faint exactly, but for a few moments he didn’t quite know what it was all about or where he was or why. He felt sick.

* * * * *

He was only vaguely conscious of other shots being fired within the house, of wild yells and scurryings. He heard more clearly a man shouting, and recognized Steve Bordereau’s voice: “Get the hell out of here! There’s a mob after us!” He heard a roar from Bill Yarbo, a roar cut short off; he heard pistol shots until the world seemed to rock with them; he heard Steve Bordereau shout again: “The gold, dammit! Get the gold, Joe! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

And here came men rushing toward him on horseback, a hundred men he would have sworn, though there were but half a dozen of them in all. He cowered deeper in the snow and watched them race past; he saw Barty Evans’ body trampled, saw stricken Butch Vorich try to wriggle out of the way, screaming, and saw him too trampled, then lying a still black spot emphasizing the whiteness around him. They were gone, gone with a rush as they had come. And Sam Pepper, feeling more dead than alive, was alone.

After a while he picked himself up and slunk into deeper shadows. His brain began functioning again in its own peculiar way. He began wondering just what had happened there at the house--what about Jim Torrance? And Bill Yarbo? After Yarbo’s shout there hadn’t been a sound from them.

So once again Sam Pepper was torn two ways. He wanted to scramble up on his horse and get out of here on the dead run, get out and stay out for good. Also he did want with all his heart and soul to know what had happened at the house.

He began inching back into the trail.