Part 7

“I can beat that all holler, if you’ll say the word. I sort o’ like your looks--liked ’em last spring when I chucked yuh in the seat with the li’l’ black-eyed gal. Yuh say yo’re aimin’ to hole up for the winter and work yer claim. S’pose yuh give me a job along with you and yer pardner and lemme go back with yuh? I can hold steel ’r pound it, and han’le powder. More’n that, I can shoot middlin’ straight when I aim to.”

“You mean you’d stand with us if the Neighbors bunch should try to jump our claim?”

“Why, suree! Yuh don’t reckon I’d go back on my bread and meat, do yuh?”

“But these beasts--what’s to be done with them?”

“I was comin’ to that. There’s a li’l’ ranch six-seven mile in the park ahead of us; it’s the place where I was aimin’ to get enough grub to walk out on. Queer old squatter runs it; li’l’ mite cracked in his upper story on religion, they say. He’ll winter the stock for yuh.”

“Still, that isn’t all,” Philip went on desperately. “We have laid in provisions for the winter, my partner and I; all we could afford to buy. The stake is enough for two, but if there are three of us, we’ll go short before spring. Besides, we haven’t enough money left to pay your wages.”

“Ne’m mind about the wages; they can wait. If half o’ what they’re sayin’ about this here strike o’ yourn is so, there’ll be ore enough on the dump, come spring, to pay all the bills--and then some, I reckon. All I’ll ask’ll be a chance to stake a claim somewheres round next to yourn, maybe.”

“You won’t have to ask anybody’s permission to do that,” Philip put in. “But still there is the question of the short grub-stake.”

The big man grinned cheerfully. “Might trust in the Lord a li’l’ bit, mightn’t we? Maybe He’ll send us a short winter. Anyhow, I’ll take my chance o’ starvin’; it won’t be the first time by a long chalk. Whadda yuh say? Is it a go?”

It was far enough from Philip’s normal promptings to decide anything so momentous without due and thoughtful consideration. But the exigencies had suddenly become urgent. In his mind’s eye he could see the Neighbors gang of desperadoes besieging the log cabin, with its scanty garrison of two untrained defenders. One additional loyal pair of eyes and hands might turn the scale. Hasty decisions, headlong initiative, were the very essence of the time, and of the treasure-seekers’ existence. Impulsively he thrust out a bargain-clinching hand.

“It’s a go, if you want to throw in with us, and I’ll promise you you won’t lose anything by it,” he said. “What may I call you?”

“Name’s Garth--‘Big Jim,’ for short.”

“Mine is Philip Trask. We are strangers to each other, but that’s an even stand-off. I’m banking on you for what you did for the little girl on the train. Let’s hurry and find that park ranch you speak of. It’s running in my mind that we can’t get back to the claim any too soon.”

It was after they had mounted and were herding the jacks down the descending trail that Garth said: “What about the li’l’ gal with the sick daddy? Ever see her again?”

“Just once,” Philip returned, “five or six weeks after they reached Denver. The family was living in one of the tent colonies, and from what was said, I judged the father was pretty badly off.”

“Uh-huh,” said Garth. “You hear a heap nowadays about what the dry air’ll do for them lungers, but the health boosters tell only half o’ the story. That same old thin air kills ’em swift if they come too late. It shore do.”

By pushing the animals as fast as the hazardous trail would permit, the ranch in the inter-mountain park was reached in the shank of the afternoon. Philip made a hurried bargain with the ranch owner, a white-haired, white-bearded old man who might have figured as a reincarnation of Elijah the Tishbite; and after a consultation with Garth, refused the old man’s offer of a night’s lodging. Garth’s vote was for an immediate return to the “Little Jean.” The skies were clear and there would be a moon for at least the first half of the night.

“We’ve left a trail in the snow that a blind man could back-track on,” he pointed out. “I’m hep for the night tramp, if so be you are.”

Stiff from the long day in the saddle, Philip would have welcomed a blanket bed before the Tishbite’s hearth fire, but the urgencies were still acutely upon him; also, he was beginning to acquire the pride of the outdoor man. If Garth, who had already tramped miles before the afternoon meeting on the high pass, could stand it to keep on going, surely he could.

“We’ll tackle it,” he said shortly; and presently they were taking the steep mountain trail in reverse, slipping and sliding in the dry snow, but doggedly making their way toward the high, wind-swept pass.

Visioning that long night tramp in the moonlight, afterward, Philip knew it would be an enduring memory after many other experiences had faded and gone. The slippery trail; the black shadows of the trees while they were still in the foresting, and the blacker shadows of great rocks and gulch cliffs after they had climbed above timber line; the keen night wind sweeping over the bleak pass where they paused for a short halt in the lee of a sheltering boulder to eat a few mouthfuls of food before hitting the downward trail; the perilous descent to the headwater gulches of the Roaring Fork, where more than once he owed his escape from a sudden plunge into unknown depths to the quick clutch of the silent giant plodding along tirelessly behind him--no detail of the deadening, soul-harrowing fight for endurance, lapsing finally into a sheer effort of the will to thrust one foot before the other, would ever be forgotten.

The moon had long since disappeared behind the uplifted skyline of the western ranges by the time they were measuring the last of the weary miles in the valley of the lucky strike. At the foot of one of the jutting mountain spurs, Philip broke the slogging monotony to say: “We’re almost there. The next gulch is ours.”

“Good enough,” was the muttered comment from the rear; and then, suddenly: “Hold up--hold your hosses a minute!”

Philip turned and saw Garth stooping with his rifle held in the crook of an arm. He was peering down at the hoof tracks they had been following.

“What is it?” he asked.

Garth pushed his flap-brimmed hat to the back of his head and looked up.

“Thought yuh said a while back that this here was your trail--the one yuh made comin’ out with the cavoyard this mornin’.”

“Well, isn’t it?”

“Not by a jugful--not unless yuh was walking the hull caboodle of ’em back’ards.”

“What’s that?”

“Sure as shootin’. The critters that made this trail was goin’ the same way we are. Get down and take a squint for yerself.”

Philip was about to comply when he saw a spurt of red flame leap out in the up-valley distance, the flash followed quickly by the reverberating echoes of a rifle shot. At the flash and crash Garth leaped afoot with a growled-out imprecation and worked the lever of his repeating rifle to throw a cartridge into the chamber.

“That means business, son! They’ve called the turn on us and got yer pardner in the nine-hole! Limber up that old hoss-pistol o’ yourn and p’int the way to get into your gulch without bustin’ in at the front door. That’s our chance--if we’ve got any. Jump to it!”

VIII

FAIRLY benumbed by the shock of the discovery that a battle for the possession of the “Little Jean” was actually in progress, Philip pointed to the right up a steep ravine.

“We can c-cross at the head of this draw,” he stammered, and it made him furious to find that he could not better control his voice.

“Let’s be moggin’ along, then,” said the man of action, immediately setting a pace up the wooded ravine that left Philip a stumbling straggler at his heels. “They’ve got that pardner o’ yourn holed up somewheres--in yer cabin, most likely. Reckon he’s got sand enough to hang on?”

“Harry?--he--he’ll hang on till they kill him!” Philip panted.

“What-all’s he got for fightin’ tools?”

“Two Winchesters.”

“Good a-plenty. How much furder do we keep to this here draw?”

“Another hundred yards or so; then bear sharp to the left.”

Following directions, the big man presently turned short into the ravine-side forest and began to climb, pulling himself from tree to tree up the steep acclivity with an agility that seemed to take no account of his great size and weight. Breathlessly Philip struggled after him, marvelling at the reserves of energy Garth was able to draw upon after a long day and night of steady tramping and mountain climbing. For himself, he was nearly at the collapsing point when they reached the easier going on the summit of the spur. As they pressed on, the spattering crackle of rifle fire came intermittently from the gulch, and at each fresh outblaze he started nervously and quickened his pace.

“For God’s sake, hurry!” he gasped. “They’ll murder Harry before we get there--if they haven’t already done it!”

But Garth read the story of the ragged firing with shrewder intelligence.

“That there powder-burnin’s a good sign,” he commented calmly. “Hit shows they ain’t got him yet, and ain’t rushin’ him. Keep me steered right. You know the lay o’ the land, and I don’t.”

“To your left again, now,” Philip directed. “There’s a little side gully along here somewhere ... if we can find it in the dark----”

As capably as if the darkness were interposing no obstacle, Garth found the head of the dry arroyo and the descent into the gulch of the mine was begun.

“Right careful, now,” he cautioned; “no slippin’ ’r slidin’ to make a fuss! Got to work Injun medicine on that crowd.”

Silently, the snow serving to deaden their footfalls, they worked their way to the gulch bottom and along its windings until Philip whispered: “Around the next turn ahead ... if there’s light enough, you’ll see our dump and the cabin.”

“Kee-rect,” Garth mumbled. “Stick to the shadders and keep that old hoss-pistol handy. Yuh ain’t no ways back’ard about aimin’ it straight, are yuh?”

“No,” said Philip; but he was promising for the intention rather than for the ability. He was trembling like a leaf in the wind. It was one thing to go into battle on the crest of a wave of berserker rage, and quite another to face the hazards deliberately and in cold blood.

With caution redoubled they turned the last of the jutting promontories obstructing a view of the lower reaches of the gulch. The young moon had long since dropped behind the western ranges, but the reflection of the starlight upon the white mantling of snow made the dump of broken rock and ore marking the tunnel site, and beyond it the larger bulking of the cabin, dimly discernible. Garth thrust a hand backward to signal a halt, and as he did so, a jet of flame shot from a thick graving of young firs on the right-hand slope of the gulch opposite the cabin, and, preceding the jarring report by a fraction of a second, they heard the smack of the bullet as it struck its target.

“Reckon I called the turn,” Garth whispered. “Yer pardner’s holdin’ the cabin ag’in ’em. Ain’t no back door to that shack, is there?”

“No.”

“Well, there ain’t a ghost of a show for us to make a run for the front door; they’ve got that plum’ sewed up. We got to work it some other way. We’d ort to have one o’ them Winchesters o’ youm and a belt o’ ca’tridges. That old hoss-pistol won’t spit far enough to do much good.”

“But if we had the rifle?” Philip queried.

“Then we might work a li’l’ trick that’d be better than breakin’ into the cabin: might make them cusses think the whole U.S. army was after ’em.”

Philip’s heart rose into his throat and threatened to choke him. On the hurried race across the spur his teeth had been chattering, and it was only by the supremest effort that he could keep them from rattling like castanets now. If the extra rifle was to be secured, it was his part to stalk the cabin and get it: Garth couldn’t do it; Bromley wouldn’t surrender the gun to a stranger--if he were still alive it was more than likely that he would mistake Garth for one of the outlaws and kill him if he could find a convenient loophole through which to shoot.

Philip felt a cold sweat starting out all over his body. If he could only summon the flaming rage fit that had possessed him on the night when he had flung himself upon the drink-crazed prospector in the bar-room of the Leadville hotel ... he prayed for its return, but it wouldn’t come. By a curious telepathic prickling he knew that the big man crouching beside him sensed his condition, and his shame was complete.

“You skeered?” queried Garth in a hoarse whisper.

“As scared as hell!” was the gritting reply. “Just the same, I’m going after that extra gun. What shall I do after I get it?”

“First off, you tell yer pardner to hold his hand till he hears the big racket beginnin’, and then to blaze away like sin at anything in sight. Next, you keep right on down the gulch and make a round and get on the hill behind that bunch o’ saplin’s. When you’re all set and ready, blaze away, and I’ll whale at ’em from up here, and yer pardner’ll chip in from the cabin. If that don’t stampede them cusses, nothin’ will.”

Philip tightened his belt. “I’ll probably get killed trying, but here’s f-for it,” he stammered; and in a chilling frenzy of the teeth-chattering he began to worm his way down the gulch toward the dump and the cabin.

How he contrived to drag himself over the short three hundred yards, with every nerve and muscle straining to turn the advance into a shameful retreat, he never knew. Every time another gunshot crashed upon the night silence he fancied he was the target and flattened himself with the blood slowly congealing in his veins. None the less he kept on, hugging the shadows and taking advantage of every inequality of the ground that would afford even the scantiest cover.

At last, after what seemed like an endless eternity of the creeping, dodging progress, he found himself behind the cabin and sheltered by it from the desultory gunfire which still kept up from the opposite slope of the gulch. With his pocket knife he dug the clay chinking from between two of the logs and listened. There was no sound from within, and again his blood ran cold. Had one of the random bullets found its mark and killed Bromley? He remembered, with a tingling shock of terror, that all of the later firing had been on the part of the outlaws; there had been no replies from the cabin.

Hastily enlarging the hole in the chinking, he put an eye to the orifice. The interior was not wholly dark, as he had expected to find it. There was a handful of embers on the hearth, and the glow made a murky twilight in the cabin. Presently he made out the slender figure of the play-boy stretched flat upon the earth floor, face downward, and the blood-chilling shock came again. Then he looked more closely and saw that the prone figure was not that of a dead man. Bromley was alive and alert; he was lying behind a low breastwork built of the provision sacks, and he had one of the rifles at his shoulder with the muzzle thrust through a crack between the logs. Philip gulped and shut his eyes. The sudden revulsion from horrified despair to relief made him blind and dizzy.

Another shot from without steadied him and he called softly through the opening he had made. Bromley heard, and recognized his voice.

“You, Philip? How the mischief ... where are you?”

“At the back--where the chinking is out. Don’t you see?”

“Coming,” said the one-man garrison, and as he crawled slowly across the floor Philip could see that one leg was useless; it was bound with a clumsy handkerchief tourniquet above the knee and was dragging.

“Damn them!” he whispered fiercely. “How badly are you hurt, Harry?”

“Can’t say; haven’t had time to look at it. But the honors are easy, so far: I got one of them to pay for the leg, and got him good--I saw ’em carrying him off. Where the devil did you drop from?--out of the blue?”

“Never mind that part of it now. I want one of the rifles and a belt of ammunition. Hook ’em over here while I dig this hole big enough to take them through!”

The transfer was quickly made, and with the gun in his hands, Philip delayed only long enough to get a briefed story of the attack. Bromley had been routed out of his bunk about an hour earlier by somebody hammering on the door. When he opened in answer to the knocking there was a short and brittle parley. Neighbors had made a blunt demand for a surrender of the mining claim, asserting that it was his discovery, made early in the summer.

“Naturally, I told him to go chase himself,” said the play-boy. “Then the five of ’em started to rush little Harry, and one of them got me in the leg with a pistol shot before I could slam the door and drop the bar. I punched a hole in the chinking, and a few rounds from the Winchester drove ’em back into the woods for cover. They’ve been there--or four of ’em have--ever since, taking pot shots at the cabin. Now tell me what happened to make you turn back.”

“Just a piece of good luck--the story will keep till we’re out of this mess. You’re not fighting alone any more; there are two of us on the outside. Keep down and don’t let them get you through the door. Those slabs won’t stop a rifle bullet.”

“Haven’t I found that out?” said Bromley, with a grim chuckle. “But tell me--what’s the plan of campaign?”

“This: I’m going to try to circle around and get behind that bunch of trees where they’ve taken cover. I’ve picked up a helper--an old prospector and mountain man that I met last spring. He has his own rifle, and when the circus begins, you turn loose through your loophole and pump lead just as fast as you can. In that way we’ll get ’em from three directions at once. Will that hurt leg let you do your part?”

The grim little chuckle came again. “I don’t shoot with my legs. Wave your little baton and I’ll come in on the fortissimo passages.”

“That’s all, then. Take care of yourself, and don’t unbar the door until you are sure we are on the other side of it. I’m gone.”

While he had the shelter afforded by the cabin there was some little sense of security. But as soon as he got beyond this bulwark the shaking fit seized him again. For the first few yards there was little or no cover save a few stumps and a pile of firewood, and behind these he crept, hardly daring to breathe. He had buckled the filled cartridge belt around him, but the rifle was an impediment that could not be disposed of so easily. So long as he must crawl, he had to drag the weapon along as best he could; and remembering that he had heard that even a plug of snow will cause a gun barrel to burst when it is fired, he halted behind the woodpile and stopped the muzzle of the rifle with a rag torn from his handkerchief.

From the woodpile to the nearest forest cover on that side was only a matter of a few rods, but the interval was bare, and he had to have another fight with himself before he could drum up the courage to cross it. Once among the trees, however, he felt safer; and after he had emerged from the mouth of the gulch and could take shelter in the groving of aspens that lined the valley stream, he told himself that the worst was over.

In the fringe of quaking aspens he stumbled upon the horses and jacks of the invaders, the burros still standing with their packs on. It was not until he was fairly among the tethered animals that he remembered the man that Bromley had shot, and reflected that if the outlaw was only wounded, he would be somewhere near the horses. The thought had barely flashed upon him before he saw the wounded man. He was sitting with his back to a tree and mumbling curses. Philip slipped aside cautiously and pushed on, again with cold chills racing up and down his spine. The wounded man was evidently only half conscious.... If he had been fully conscious....

Philip broke into a nervous run, following the stream for possibly an eighth of a mile before he ventured to turn aside to climb the slope which should lead to the outlying position above the thicket in the gulch where the outlaws were in hiding.

Toiling upward breathlessly, it seemed to take him a frightfully long time to gain the proper elevation. Unlike the spur on the western side of the gulch, this one was thinly wooded and was besprent with a scattering of boulders; he was in constant fear of dislodging one of these and thus giving a premature alarm. With the occasional crack of a rifle in the depths below to guide him, he finally reached a height from which he could look down upon the clump of young firs; and squeezing himself between two of the surface boulders he pumped the loading lever of the Winchester and prepared to give the firing signal agreed upon.

It was while he was steadying the rifle over the rock in front of him that he felt something giving way and realized that the slight push of his wedged-in body was tipping the bulwark boulder over to set it in motion down the slope. In a frenzy of excitement at this discovery his only thought was that with the boulder gone he would lose his sheltering breastwork and be naked to rifle fire from below. Dropping the gun, he clung to the tilting rock with both hands and tried to hold it--to drag it back upon its balancing pinnacle. When his puny effort failed, and the great rock turned slowly over to go bounding down the declivity straight for the sapling grove and carrying a small avalanche of lesser stones with it, he lost his head completely, snatching up the rifle and firing it wildly again and again, and with no attempt at taking aim, until he had pumped the last cartridge from its magazine. It was this final shot that did for him. In his mad haste he failed to hold the gunstock firmly against his shoulder, and at the trigger-pulling the kick of the weapon slewed him around with a jerk that snapped his head against the rock behind him. For a brief instant the black bowl of the heavens was illuminated by a burst of fiery stars, and after that he knew nothing more until he opened his aching eyes upon a graying dawn to find Garth kneeling beside him, unbuttoning his shirt to search for the presumptive effacing wound.

At the touch of the big man’s cold hands he sat up, with the buzzing of many bees in his brain.

“It isn’t there,” he said; “it’s the back of my head. The gun kicked me against the rock. How long have I been gone?”

“A hour ’r so. I allowed yuh was scoutin’ round to see what’d come o’ the jumpers; was why I didn’t come a-huntin’ for yuh. Besides, that there game li’l’ pardner o’ yourn was needin’ to have his laig fixed up.”

“What _has_ become of the jumpers?” Philip asked, holding his head in his hands in a vain endeavor to quiet the bees.

Garth sat back on his heels and his wide-mouthed smile made him look like a grinning ogre.

“Skedaddled; gone where the woodbine twineth an’ the whangdoodle mourneth for her fust-borned, I reckon. Cattle o’ that sort ain’t makin’ no stand-up fight, less’n they got the odds _all_ their way. And what with this here mount’in tumblin’ down on ’em, and guns a-poppin’ three ways from the ace, they wasn’t stayin’ to wait for daylight--not any.” Then: “That was a mighty fly li’l’ trick o’ yourn--shovin’ a rock slide down at ’em.”

Philip was honest enough not to take credit for a sheer accident.

“I didn’t,” he denied. “I had jammed myself in between two rocks to get cover, and I was scared stiff when I found the front one rolling away from me; I was even silly enough to grab it and try to hold it back.”