Table of Contents
The silence continued through a breathless moment.
“D’you mean it?” gasped Bud Kent at last.
“Mean what?” said Jack Moon, and his eye was innocent as the eye of a child.
Bud Kent considered his master. The moods of Jack Moon, he knew, were variable as the moods of the west wind. Other members of the crowd strove, from time to time, to find the meanings hidden in that implacable and cunning mind, but Bud Kent, the oldest member of the crew, had ceased striving to find the clue to the riddle. What Moon thought was his own property, and it was dangerous to attempt to read two meanings into his words. But now Bud scanned the face of the master and hungered for knowledge. What was the significance of that short phrase of a moment ago?
“You think,” said Bud at length, very slowly and very cautiously, “that Hugh ain’t got much use for his money?”
“I dunno,” said the leader, as carelessly as ever. “I ain’t asked him about it.”
“It might take a lot of persuading,” said Bud Kent, “and I ain’t much at talk.”
“Sure you ain’t,” said the other. “So you better arrange it so’s there won’t be no need for chatter.”
Bud Kent moistened his Ups, parted them to speak, changed his mind, and finally managed to whisper: “Chief, talk out. I don’t foller you exactly.”
“How to stop talk?” replied the leader casually. “Any fool knows that. What mostly keeps a gent from talking?”
“Being persuaded, I guess.”
“Think you can persuade a man out of thirty thousand dollars?”
Bud swallowed hard.
“I dunno,” he said desperately. “You might stop a gent by gagging him.”
He grinned, so that this last suggestion might pass in lieu of a jest if need be. But Jack Moon kept an entirely sober face. All the time he was watching the effect on Bud Kent. He was as interested as the scientist who watches the insect wriggle under the touch of acid.
“Gagging?” said he. “That’s a fool idea.”
“What is your idea?” asked Bud.
“Look here. I had to promise Dawn his share before I could find out where the gold was, didn’t I? And then I gave him the gold, didn’t I?”
“Sure.”
“But I ain’t his guardian, am I? After giving the stuff to him, I don’t have to stay up all night to guard it, do I?”
“No, no!” breathed Bud, beginning to see the light.
“It sure ought to be clear to you, Bud, that it don’t make me any too happy to see a skunk like Dawn, that’s left the crowd once, get away with all that loot.”
“That’s clear, chief.”
“Then, if a gent was to slip in soft to Hugh’s hut and grab the coin—”
“With three other men sleeping around him?”
“I’ll see that he sleeps alone tonight. They ain’t any need of guarding him. He thinks he’s extra safe with us now!”
“Ah!” murmured Bud.
“What you want is a stake,” went on Jack Moon. “Tonight ain’t the only night for poker. They’ll be another and then another, until the gold is all collected up in the hands of two or three of the boys. Well, Bud, you’re soft moving and silent. If you was to slide in and take the stuff, it wouldn’t make me extra mad. But mind this: They’s no harm to come to Hugh Dawn!”
Bud Kent replied with a broad grin, nodded, and then said suddenly: “But suppose he makes a kick about his money in the morning when he finds it’s gone? Suppose they search for it and find it in my saddlebags?”
“If you’re enough of a fool not to bury it, son, I suppose they would find it in your saddlebags.”
Bud Kent waited to hear no more, but, nodding to his chief with a whispered word of gratitude, he sauntered back to watch the game he had just left.
On and on to midnight the game continued, but by this time the terrific labors of the last two days began to tell. The gold fever was dying out, and, without this stimulant to keep them going, heads began to nod and eyes began to grow filmy. Seymour and Craig by this time were also broke; they joined Bud Kent as a gallery to watch the others. But at length, by mutual consent and almost at the same moment, the games were broken up and the gamblers staggered hollow-eyed toward their shacks. Here Jack Moon, who had been waiting for this moment, assigned them swiftly to their separate lodgings. He kept his promise to Bud, steering the others away from the hut of Dawn. The pretext was easily found—no use waking up a sleeper when there was plenty of room in other huts. One shack for the girl, one for her father, and the other structures afforded room for thrice the whole number of men.
Meanwhile Ronicky waited until the leader was out of sight. Then he glanced about the clearing. Other than himself, every man in the crowd was busy with getting into his blankets—all except the two outposts detailed to keep watch south and north, unfailing precautions which the bandit chief never overlooked. But the clearing itself was the very apotheosis of peace. Not a voice sounded, not a footfall was to be heard. All was dull quiet, and Ronicky turned his back on the scene, entered the hut, and straightened out his own blanket.
One by one the breathing of the men in the hut became more deep and regular. He himself imitated the same sound and lay back, veiling his eyes with the lids and only peering out through the curtain of lashes. The silence grew more and more deep, it seemed to him. The heavier sound of Treat’s breathing sounded above the hushed chorus of the others. Someone was snoring in a nearby hut. But beyond and above was the silence.
It was, indeed, too quiet. It was the quiet of a snare, an illusion, a trap. And one of those impulses, which no man can really explain, came to Ronicky. An hour had passed since he lay down, and still sleep was far from his eyes. At length, with the softness of a guilty man who dreads oversight, he drew back his blanket and sat up. Finally he rose to a crouching position, stole to the door, and looked out onto the clearing.
XXII. TWO AGAINST TWELVE
He saw nothing at first, and he was about to dismiss his foolish fears when something stirred near the hut in which the girl slept. Ronicky Doone was instantly alert. Staring fixedly, he saw the thing again.
It was the form of a man crawling in an almost prone position so that the ground shadows well nigh covered him from the most searching view. Suspicion had been like a searchlight to pick out the figure for Ronicky Doone. Ordinarily, he would never have seen it.
The fellow, whoever he might be, had just crawled out of sight behind the shack of the girl. Ronicky slid back to his blankets, buckled his cartridge
