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Author of "The Cup of Blood," "The Malignant Entity," Etc.
BIG BILL HAWKINS laid the trap with admirable precision. Every little detail had been worked out with the utmost nicety.
The care-free manner of his partner, Seth Ormsby, indicated that he suspected nothing, though he did seem somewhat puzzled by Big Bill's unwonted loquacity and unprecedented joviality. He had shown a strange lack of enthusiasm when, after a summer of unrequited toil, the prospectors had stumbled on the vein that promised to make them both independently wealthy. During the days spent in preliminary work with a view to replenishing their depleted larder, he had been unusually taciturn, even sullen at times.
As they rode abreast along the trail, followed by the two pack-mules, the foremost of which bore in its saddlebags enough gold dust to purchase the entire general store at Red Dog, Big Bill outdid himself in his efforts to be agreeable. At the same time he was thinking, planning.
Big Bill, a dyed-in-the-wool prospector, had first met Ormsby in the Deer Foot Saloon at Red Dog. He had lived up most of his savings and needed a grub-stake. Ormsby, a wandering cowpuncher out of a job, had the necessary money. Under the mellowing influence of liquor they had struck up a partnership.
The country through which they wandered was an open book to Hawkins, and Ormsby, the newcomer, always relied on his burly partner when a choice of directions was to be made. It was Hawkins who, in this instance, had suggested they take this new trail to Red Dog, where papers were to be filed and supplies purchased.
Big Bill felt that he had ample reason to hate Ormsby. For nineteen years he had been prospecting in this region, sometimes with a partner, but more often alone. He had managed to find enough pay-dirt to keep body and soul together and had made occasional moderate strikes rich enough to support him in idleness for several months at a time. The thing that stuck in his craw was the fact that when the big strike came—the strike for which he had been hoping, toiling and struggling for nineteen years—he must share it with this greenhorn: this newcomer who couldn't tell quartz from shale. He had gambled the best years of his life for this stake and felt that fortune had cold-decked him when she finally dealt him one royal flush and Ormsby the other. It meant that they must either split the pot or leave it up for a show-down, and Big Bill had resolved on a show-down dealt from his own stacked deck.
"Seems like we're goin' sorta outa the way to git to Red Dog," remarked Ormsby when they suddenly turned at a fork in the trail.
"Not so much," replied Big Bill with studied indifference. "They's a
water hole down this way and the animals ain't goin' to be none the worse
105
