Whispering Smith Part 27

"The man with the dough is Whispering Smith every time," was the answer from Smith himself. "You have about seven years to serve, Rockstro, haven't you? Seven, I think. Now what have I ever done to you that you should turn a trick like this on me? I knew you were here, and you knew I knew you were here, and I call this a pretty country; a little smooth right around here, like the people, but pretty. Have I ever bothered you? Now tell me one thing--what did you get for covering this trail? I stand to give you two dollars for every one you got last night for the job, if you'll put us right on the game. Which way did they go?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Get off your horse a minute," suggested Whispering Smith, dismounting, "and step over here toward the creek." The man, afraid to refuse and unwilling to go, walked haltingly after Smith.

"What is it, Rockstro?" asked his tormentor. "Don't you like this country? What do you want to go back to the penitentiary for? Aren't you happy here? Now tell me one thing--will you give up the trail?"

"I don't know the trail."

"I believe you; we shouldn't follow it anyway. Were you paid last night or this morning?"

"I ain't seen a man hereabouts for a week."

"Then you can't tell me whether there were five men or six?"

"You've got one eye as good as mine, and one a whole lot better."

"So it was fixed up for cash a week ago?"

"Everything is cash in this country."

"Well, Rockstro, I'm sorry, but we'll have to take you back with us."

The rancher whipped out a revolver. Whispering Smith caught his wrist.

The struggle lasted only an instant. Rockstro writhed, and the pistol fell to the ground.

"Now, shall I break your arm?" asked Smith, as the man cursed and resisted. "Or will you behave? We are going right back and you'll have to come with us. We'll send some one down to round up your horses and sell them, and you can serve out your time--with allowances, of course, for good conduct, which will cut it down. If I had ever done you a mean turn I would not say a word. If you could name a friend of yours I had ever done a mean turn to I would not say a word. Can you name one? I guess not. I have left you as free as the wind here, making only the rule I make for everybody--to let the railroad alone.

This is my thanks. Now, I'll ask you just one question. I haven't killed you, as I had a perfect right to when you pulled; I haven't broken your arm, as I would have done if there had been a doctor within twenty-five miles; and I haven't started you for the pen--not yet. Now I ask you one fair question only: Did you need the money?"

"Yes, I did need it."

Whispering Smith dropped the man's wrist. "Then I don't say a word. If you needed the money, I'm not going to send you back--not for mine."

"How can a man make a living in this country," asked the rancher, with a bitter oath, "unless he picks up everything that's going?"

"Pick up your gun, man! I'm not saying anything, am I?"

"But I'm d.a.m.ned if I can give a double-cross to any man," added Rockstro, stooping for his revolver.

"I should think less of you, Rockstro, if you did. You don't need money anyway now, but sometime you may need a friend. I'm going to leave you here. You'll hear no more of this, and I'm going to ask you a question: Why did you go against this when you knew you'd have to square yourself with me?"

"They told me you'd be taken care of before it was pulled off."

"They lied to you, didn't they? No matter, you've got their stuff. Now I am going to ask you one question that I don't know the answer to; it's a fair question, too. Was Du Sang in the penitentiary with you at Fort City? Answer fair."

"Yes."

"Thank you. Behave yourself and keep your mouth shut. I say nothing this time. Hereafter leave railroad matters alone, and if the woman should fall sick or you have to have a little money, come and see me."

Smith led the way back to the horses.

"Look here!" muttered Rockstro, following, with his good eye glued on his companion. "I pulled on you too quick, I guess--quicker'n I'd ought to."

"Don't mention it. You didn't pull quick enough; it is humiliating to have a man that's as slow as you are pull on me. People that pull on me usually pull and shoot at the same time. Two distinct movements, Rockstro, should be avoided; they are fatal to success. Come down to the Bend sometime, and I'll get you a decent gun and give you a few lessons."

Whispering Smith drew his handkerchief as the one-eyed man rode away and he rejoined his companions. He was resigned, after a sickly fas.h.i.+on. "I like to play blind-man's-buff," he said, wiping his forehead, "but not so far from good water. They have pulled us half-way to the Grosse Terre Mountains on a beautiful trail, too beautiful to be true, Farrell--too beautiful to be true. They have been having fun with us, and they've doubled back, through the Topah Topahs toward the Mission Mountains and Williams Cache--that is my judgment. And aren't we five able-bodied jays, gentlemen? Five strong-arm suckers? It is an inelegant word; it is an inelegant feeling. No matter, we know a few things. There are five good men and a led horse; we can get out of here by Goose River, find out when we cross the railroad how much they got, and pick them up somewhere around the Saddle peaks, _if_ they've gone north. That's only a guess, and every man's guess is good now. What do you think, all of you?"

"If it's the crowd we think it is, would they go straight home? That doesn't look reasonable, does it?" asked Brill Young.

"If they could put one day between them and pursuit, wouldn't they be safer at home than anywhere else? And haven't they laid out one day's work for us, good and plenty? Farrell, remember one thing: there is sometimes a disadvantage in knowing too much about the men you are after. We'll try Goose River."

It was noon when they struck the railroad. They halted long enough to stop a freight train, send some telegrams, and ask for news. They got orders from Rooney Lee, had an empty box car set behind the engine for a special, and, loading their horses at the chute, made a helter-skelter run for Sleepy Cat. At three o'clock they struck north for the Mission Mountains.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SUNDAY MURDER

Banks's _posse_, leaving Medicine Bend before daybreak, headed northwest. Their instructions were explicit: to scatter after crossing the Frenchman, watch the trails from the Goose River country and through the Mission Mountains, and intercept everybody riding north until the _posse_ from Sleepy Cat or Whispering Smith should communicate with them from the southwest. Nine men rode in the party that crossed the Crawling Stone Sunday morning at sunrise with Ed Banks.

After leaving the river the three white-capped Saddles of the Mission range afford a landmark for more than a hundred miles, and toward these the party pressed steadily all day. The southern pa.s.s of the Missions opens on the north slope of the range into a pretty valley known as Mission Springs Valley, and the springs are the head-waters of Deep Creek. The _posse_ did not quite obey the instructions, and following a natural instinct of safety five of them, after Banks and his three deputies had scattered, bunched again, and at dark crossed Deep Creek at some distance below the springs. It was afterward known that these five men had been seen entering the valley from the east at sundown just as four of the men they wanted rode down South Mission Pa.s.s toward the springs. That they knew they would soon be cut off, or must cut their way through the line which Ed Banks, ahead of them, was posting at every gateway to Williams Cache, was probably clear to them. Four men rode that evening from Tower W through the south pa.s.s; the fifth man had already left the party. The four men were headed for Williams Cache and had reason to believe, until they sighted Banks's men, that their path was open.

They halted to take counsel on the suspicious-looking _posse_ far below them, and while their cruelly exhausted horses rested, Du Sang, always in Sinclair's absence the brains of the gang, planned the escape over Deep Creek at Baggs's crossing. At dusk they divided: two men lurking in the brush along the creek rode as close as they could, un.o.bserved, toward the crossing, while Du Sang and the cowboy Karg, known as Flat Nose, rode down to Baggs's ranch at the foot of the pa.s.s.

At that point Dan Baggs, an old locomotive engineer, had taken a homestead, got together a little bunch of cattle, and was living alone with his son, a boy of ten years. It was a hard country and too close to Williams Cache for comfort, but Dan got on with everybody because the toughest man in the Cache country could get a meal, a feed for his horse, and a place to sleep at Baggs's, without charge, when he needed it.

Ed Banks, by hard riding, got to the crossing at five o'clock, and told Baggs of the hold-up and the shooting of Oliver Sollers. The news stirred the old engineman, and his excitement threw him off his guard.

Banks rode straight on for the middle pa.s.s, leaving word that two of his men would be along within half an hour to watch the pa.s.s and the ranch crossing, and asking Baggs to put up some kind of a fight for the crossing until more of the _posse_ came up--at the least, to make sure that n.o.body got any fresh horses.

The boy was cooking supper in the kitchen, and Baggs had done his milking and gone back to the corral, when two men rode around the corner of the barn and asked if they could get something to eat. Poor Baggs sold his life in six words: "Why, yes; be you Banks's men?"

Du Sang answered: "No; we're from Sheriff c.o.o.n's office at Oroville, looking up a bunch of Duck Bar steers that's been run somewhere up Deep Creek. Can we stay here all night?"

They dismounted and disarmed Baggs's suspicions, though the condition of their horses might have warned him had he had his senses. The unfortunate man had probably fixed it in his mind that a ride from Tower W to Deep Creek in sixteen hours was a physical impossibility.

"Stay here? Sure! I want you to stay," said Baggs bluffly. "Looks to me like I seen you down at Crawling Stone, ain't I?" he asked of Karg.

Karg was lighting a cigarette. "I used to mark at the Dunning ranch,"

he answered, throwing away his match.

"That's. .h.i.t. Good! The boy's cooking supper. Step up to the kitchen and tell him to cut ham for four more."

"Four?"

"Two of Ed Banks's men will be here by six o'clock. Heard about the hold-up? They stopped Number Three at Tower W last night and shot Ollie Sollers, as white a boy as ever pulled a throttle. Boys, a man that'll kill a locomotive engineer is worse'n an Indian; I'd help skin him."

"The h.e.l.l you would!" cried Du Sang. "Well, don't you want to start in on me? I killed Sollers. Look at me; ain't I handsome? What you going to do about it?"