that he achieved. “You shot true, Doe. If Guy can’t find her——” He left the sentence hanging, remembering the coming of Louis Peele to Great Lost Valley.
Peele had first shown himself in the Valley four years ago. He had quietly investigated the Valley, to be certain that he had found Gage Hardin at last, then had bought the last remaining stretch of land in the Valley, the tract lying to the south of the Circle Crossbar, between Hardin’s ranch and the Diamond W.
From that day, Doe Gaston had known that old enmity existed between Gage Hardin and Louis Peele. The fact was blatantly evident in Peele’s mock courtesy whenever he chanced to meet any members of the Circle Crossbar crew. It was quite as evident in Hardin’s thin-lipped silence.
The more Doe had seen of Peele’s outfit, the more uneasy he had become. Doe Gaston never asked questions, but he had done more than one man’s share of wondering.
He had wondered why Hardin, with an inscrutable wry smile on his face, had nicknamed the cowboy inseparables, Corcoran, Sundquist, Oaks and Salt River Charley, the “Four from Hell’s Hill.” He had wondered why Hardin’s ancient enemy should deliberately move into Great Lost Valley and settle next the Circle Crossbar. Doe’s wondering had not decreased as time’s cycles waxed and waned. Peele had grown increasingly nasty and belligerent with every year that passed. Seeing that his nastiness and belligerence did not draw Hardin’s retaliation, Peele had begun to commit numerous depredations, such as cutting fences, stealing a few calves, butchering young beef, gradually growing bolder and more vindictive. And though those acts could never be proved to have been performed by Peele and his men, every hand on the Circle Crossbar knew that the guilt lay at their doors.
Doe’s wondering had come to be almost unbearable. He had wondered why Hardin had sternly forbidden any of his crew to visit the least reprisal on Peele. Such an inactive course under persecution wasn’t reasonable; but it prevailed rigidly under Hardin’s strict orders. Hardin had said just once that he was waiting the day when Peele would break all moorings and commit some overt act, rendering himself irrevocably answerable to the law. Doe had wondered at that, too, but his inarticulate wondering had availed him nothing.
He sat now, huddled in his chair in his underclothing, staring at the returned Hardin, startled to note that that inscrutable wry smile was again on Gage Hardin’s face.
“So.” Hardin roused himself, and drew his big body erect. “So—you sent Guy Shawnessy to find Mary, and for posse you gave him—the Four from Hell’s Hill!”
“Yes.” Doe repressed a shiver; something emanating from Hardin chilled him.
Hardin’s smile softened, relaxing a little. “It’s all right, Doe. You couldn’t have done a better thing. I—you——” The smile faded now. “You don’t know much about me, do you, Doe? I’ve always meant to tell you when the time came. Well, it’s come.” He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed intently on Gaston’s face. “A long way from here, Doe, boy, in the high cattle country around—well, no matter: but a long way from here there is a mountain country that rises to its crown in a high peak. Back there they call that particular peak Hell’s Hill. It is one solid, strange mass of red rock, queer stuff ranging all the way from deep red to bright brick color.
“Fifteen years ago, when I was a youngster of sixteen, there were two families growing up in that ranching country, near the town of Tenville: two families living side by side, the Hardins and the Peeles. There were two boys in each family, two only—Louis Peele and his brother Harry, my brother Bruce and myself. Bruce was nineteen years old then. Louis was twenty, and Harry was twenty-two. We four about lived together; we were with each other so much that the people living there nicknamed us the Four from Hell’s Hill.”
“Oh!” Doe Gaston started.
For a fleeting instant Hardin’s thin smile returned. “Yes, Doe. That’s where it all started. I’ll try to get it said as short as possible. That friendship continued for about two years. Bruce and I were the younger, we were easily influenced.
“We thought Louis and Harry were fine fellows, reckless and full of the devil, but we didn’t realize that they were bad. Not till my father warned Bruce and me. He said Louis and Harry had been getting themselves into some pretty wild scrapes, and if we didn’t stay away from them they were going to get us into trouble. He was alarmed, and he succeeded in alarming us. We began to stay away from the Peeles.
“About that time Mrs. Peele died. Less than a month later my father was gored to death by a range steer. We made his death an excuse to stay at home, to keep quiet and avoid further truck with Louis and Harry. The Four from Hell’s Hill were on the verge of a permanent break, and Louis didn’t like it. I realize now that he wanted to use us, to make us his goats. He began prodding us and jeering at us, trying to force us to join them again. We tried to resist, but he had a smooth tongue.
“Louis pretended to see at last that he and Harry had been bad ones, and they promised to change—to act more like grown, honest folks—provided we two would take up our old ways with them again. Well, what would you expect, Doe? We’d been brought up together. We believed Louis.
“We hadn’t more than begun to run around with them again, when Louis and Harry held up a pack train of mules traveling north with a fortune in cash. The pack train belonged to a couple of old prospectors who had made a fair strike, had carted their ore to town and converted it into cash. They were on the way home with their money, all in one-thousand-dollar bills.
“I never knew how Louis and Henry learned about the pack train and the cash it carried. But they did learn—with a gang, they held up the pack train, killed the two old prospectors, and got away with the money.
“They weren’t very expert about it. They were suspected. They tried to drag Bruce and me into it. We weren’t with Peele that night. I couldn’t prove it, but I succeeded in making the sheriff believe in my innocence. The sheriff had come to our ranch after Bruce and me. After talking with me, he took his posse and went away. Bruce was not home. He hadn’t come home the night before, from Tenville. He didn’t come home that day. None of us ever saw Bruce again—alive.”
“You saw him—dead?”
“I did, Doe. He disappeared. We could find no trace of him. Mother was frail; she was laid low by the shock. Harry Peele had disappeared, too. And Louis, who had done the killing. Louis proved that he hadn’t been near the scene of the holdup. Things like that happen sometimes, Doe. The shock that had prostrated my mother killed her within three weeks. Two days after she was buried, a man came to the house at night, a big fat fellow called Porky Ellerton. I had seen him just once before, with Louis Peele, the day before the holdup.
“When I asked what he wanted of me, he said he knew where Bruce was, that if I would go with him, he would take me to Bruce and Harry. I asked just what was back of his coming to me that way, and he said he would tell me later. I went with him.
“It was a two-day ride we took. He led me to the slope behind Hell’s Hill, so far back into the wilderness, so deep into timber and across canyons, that I wondered how he could find his way. But he knew what he was after, and he went straight to it—a pile of leaves and rocks in a thicket. He got off his horse and tore the leaves and rocks away. You can guess what was there.”
“Bruce?” Doe’s tongue was thick. “And—Harry Peele?”
“Right. Both of them had been shot to pieces. They had been dead for nearly four weeks. I took from Bruce’s little finger the ring my father had given him. It is this ring, Doe.” Hardin held up his right hand. On his little finger was a plain gold seal ring, engraved with
