3. Claim-Jumpers
THE LONG-LEGGED black made it up the sharp, rugged scarp and stood blowing and heaving on the patchy crest. The late afternoon sun, still warm, came out of the western fringe of hills to greet the lone rider, and splayed him with flat, yellow sunshine.
Bide Evans flung his hand up against the glare. He blinked as his eyes pierced the faded western distance and found faint smoke curling skyward from vague rooftop shapes. He nodded slightly.
“Reckon that’s Hangman’s Gulch, mister—the last stop down the line.” Evans spoke to his horse, as men do when they ride the range or trail alone. “Six months,” he muttered bitterly. “Six months—and nary a sign.”
The bitterness in his voice lay reflected in the ingrown canker of his deep-set gray eyes. And in the lines of his face that pulled his lips together, tight and thin. Yet his eyes had not always been bitter in his twenty-five years.
It was a strong face, where bitterness and determination sat evenly matched. It was lean of shank, but square of chin—a chin covered with thick, barbed-wire stubble, red in color. As brick red as the tangle of hair that lay thatched underneath his Stetson.
“From Truckee Pass to Frisco,” he muttered grimly. “From Mt. Shasta all the way down here, to Hangman’s Gulch—and nary a trace of him—nary a sign.” He shook his head stubbornly. “He must be in California. He was seen comin’ through the pass.”
He shrugged his wide shoulders, and spoke again to his black: “But we ain’t found him, mister. Reckon that means we’ll be headin’ for home tomorrer.”
Then, for perhaps the hundredth time since he had received it back in San Francisco, he drew a letter from his breast pocket.
He knew the contents as he did the back of his hand. Yet every time he read it, his throat choked him and anger raked him like a fiery brand. He hadn’t shaved since he had received it. The letter was brief and said:
Dear Bide,
Your mother died shortly after you left—of a broken heart. Come back to Texas, son, and the Circle E. I’m getting old and weary, and the spread needs you to ramrod it.
We’re a proud family, Bide—maybe too proud. That’s why I’m asking you to leave off and come home. Your mother would have wanted it that way, too.
Your Father.
Bitterness lay across his face like an open wound. His mother dead, and his father bending under the strain. All because of—
He stuffed the letter back into his pocket. Yes, he thought grimly, they had been a proud family. Proud and stubborn. That’s why he had clung to the trail until now. That’s why he had written back that he would stay it to the end.
But Hangman’s Gulch was the end. It was the last mining town down the line. Only a dogged presistence had kept him going this far. Even to himself he had been unwilling to acknowledge its futility. But he recognized it now. It was all over. Maybe it was best that way? Quien sabe?
At any rate, he had ridden the hot sun from mining camp to mining camp the whole day—as he had these past six months. And he had broken cold camp this morning, therefore the prospect of a hot bath and a good meal at Hangman’s Gulch, was inviting. So the redheaded Texan kneed his mount forward; and the animal went down the slope.
The black had shifted into an easy walk and soon neared stream level. Evans’ ears became filled with the sound of rushing water. That’s why he did not hear the clump of shovel biting into earth and the hoarse growl of low-pitched voices, until his mount sidled around a small tree cluster. Then he pulled to an abrupt halt.
A curious piece of business was going on here. A man was engaged in digging a shallow ditch, about six feet long, while five others stood around and watched—silently, and somehow sinisterly.
These were gun-heeled men dressed alike in black. And it was their horses, evidently, that stood bunched at the other end of the clearing, near a lean-to.
There was an ominous note about the proceedings that caused Evans to slip silently out of leather and glide unnoticed into the shadow of a tree trunk. In the quick glance he looped around the camp, he recognized here a dry diggings. Two buckets stood near fresh-turned earth on the rocky hillside. And down near the clay cut-bank at the stream’s edge was the familiar miner’s device—the rocker. In the center of the clearing, on the upturned roots of a tree stump, a few articles of clothing were hung to dry.
Even in the descending dusk, the deathly pallor of the man digging the trench was obvious. Sweat rolled down his leathery, weather-beaten face. And now he threw off his black felt hat—to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand—and exposed a shock of gray hair.
The leader of the group watching, a big, heavy-set man with a jet black beard, seemed to grow impatient.
“C’mon Farrell,” he rasped. “It’s deep enough—and we ain’t got all day to waste.”
Evans breathed softly and the shadows around his eyes darkened. Slowly, his lean hands reached down to his holsters.
The gray-haired man called Farrell stopped shoveling earth and stepped out of the trench. He fronted the leader, pale but defiant, and shook his fist at him.
“Some day,” he cried hoarsely, “yuh’ll pay for this coldblooded murder.”
“Button yore lip,” snapped the black-beard. “And get back there.” He towered over the lean, wiry miner, gripped his arm, and—
“Not so fast, gents.”
At the sound of the voice that drifted casually to them from across the clearing, the black-clad men whipped around like mongrels with tin-cans tied to their tails. They dove for hardware with practiced speed—then came up abruptly as they caught sight of a figure detach itself from a tree and move forward until he stood beneath the end of a low, leafy branch.
“Who are yuh?” cried the leader fiercely. “And what do yuh want here?” Two fox-eyes sat high up on his broad, pocked face. They tried to pierce the dusk to identify this intruder. The men behind him scowled darkly.
But the stranger’s face was shadowed by hat and branch; and the features blurred. There was, however, no mistaking the identity and menace of the two black guns that jutted from his fists.
“I’m a right close friend of Mister Colt,” drawled Evans. He wiggled the weapons suggestively. “Better tell yore amigos to remain hitched till I ask some questions—”
His right-hand gun bucked suddenly as he laid a shot down across the feet of a lank, scar-faced member of the black-clad band. The latter, on the far end of the shallow ditch, apparently thinking himself unobserved, had reached for his six-shooter. He changed his mind abruptly as the dirt showered his feet; and his hand froze to his side.
“I ain’t foolin’,” observed Evans calmly. A thin coil of blue-white smoke drifted lazily from the gaping black muzzle of his gun. He made a loose, idle shape standing there in the blur of the tree. But there was a grim threat of violence in the subtle undercurrent of his drawling voice, and the unexpectedness of his appearance.
Into the gray-haired miner’s faded blue eyes leaped a sudden gleam of hope.
“Whoever
