CHAPTER XXI
THE FIGHT
NOTHING worth the having is to be had without a striving which not unusually becomes strife; nothing worthy of being held is to be safeguarded without vigilance. Herein, platitudinous though the twin statements may sound, lies a basic reason why life itself is worth while. Grasp manfully and retain … they are commands laid upon him whose blood runs as nature wills it, red and strong. He is perhaps as happy a man as can be found who says, "All that I have is mine because I made it mine and have kept it mine."
At least, as the thickening dusk made its long shadows across the mountains, so Bill Steele was thinking. His be the error, if error there is; his be the blame for the calling up the shades of long laid latitudes. He squatted on his heels and smoked a contemplative pipe at the rim of the Goblet, thinking thoughts which pleased him.
Most of all he thought of Beatrice Corliss, of the girl and not the heiress, of the slim young body of her and the soft grey eyes rather than of the string of figures which might metamorphose themselves into high piled golden discs if she set her name under them, of the Beatrice who had cooked for him and laughed with him, not of her whom they called the Young Queen.
"I've poked fun at her, the Lord forgive me, long enough," he mused. "Plunging Bobbie Carruthers was right, I guess; hiding your love from a girl is rather good sport for a while, but it grows monotonous, and half the fun is telling her, after all!"
With him there was no such room for debate as had perplexed her. He loved her and he asked himself no futile and foolish questions about the matter. He had come perilously close to adoring her that first day when he had teased her unmercifully; he had been coming closer all the time since. In the war he had waged against her he had had the better of her right along, largely, thought Bill Steele, "because I'm a lucky cuss," and she had been in his mind a right good little sport. If there had been no other reason for loving her, that was one. And after she had kept her word, had come to his camp, had immediately thereafter laid her plans for running him out of the country …
"There's only one girl in the world fit to wear your little shoes, Trixie, girl," muttered the platitudinous Bill Steele. (There was a young moon; the summer air was warm, fragrant and seductive; he had found a gold mine today; Beatrice had answered him over the telephone wire: In short, excuses galore were not lacking for a suddenly softened mood.)
To have and to hold … to have that for which he began to yearn with growing passion, to hold that which he had found today. At his side lying conveniently placed was his rifle. He glanced at it with thoughtful eyes, then back at the silver crescent of promise gleaming through the blackening fir tops. He was not a gunman, he did not fancy the time honoured way of settling hot dispute with hotter lead. Neither was he a fool. There were men in camp whom he did not like and who did not like him. Embry, for one; Joe Banks, for two; Flash Truitt, for three. Three men who, upon the surface had little enough to do with one another but whom he distrusted in all that they did and seemed. It was camp talk that Embry and Truitt had never spoken a friendly word between them; it was further report that Embry and Jim Banks had broken off abruptly their former amicable relations. Steele shrugged and believed only what it pleased him to believe. And that was, very largely, that Embry was full of craft and malice.
Nor did Steele fancy that his new secret could remain his a half dozen hours. It did not need Bill Rice's report that his men had been wondering and talking and speculating; nor Turk's further report that in the late afternoon he had seen here and there knots of men discussing "something or other" in quiet eager voices. Given a heap of raw gold in the midst of blood-stirred gold seekers, and what was the answer? A rifle laid handy at Steele's side, a certain grim tightening of the muscles about Steele's jaws and eyes.
He accepted conditions and allowed his acceptance to be unhidden. In other words, he went and squatted over what was his, meaning to hold it. When dusk had passed and night had come, swift and black. Bill Rice relieved his employer and Steele went to eat and stroll through the camp. At the saloon he was not surprised that men's eyes followed him here and there nor that while knots of men and women stood about talking, their voices were not for him. The gaming tables were well nigh deserted; the two men behind the bar were busy. There was no sight to be had of Truitt nor of Embry.
He walked to the end of the long room and swung about, his eyes sweeping back and forth across the many faces which had turned toward him. He had no need to call for silence when he spoke.
"Fellows," he said quietly, "I found it today. You all know or have guessed it. Yes, Gold! Just how big a strike it may take some days to tell. But I imagine it's worth while. It lies out there in the bottom of the Goblet. It's mine. I'm going to keep it. It's not like any other pocket I ever saw or heard about; if you could get in there for an hour you'd make expenses for a year. Just the same sort of thing you could do if you could have a free swing in the mint. But it happens that it's a case of hands off both places."
It was very still in the room when he finished abruptly. Then, going swiftly to the bar, Steele threw down a handful of coins.
"The house drinks on me," he ordered, and went out. "Just the same," he muttered as at last he set his back to Boom Town, "there are at least half a dozen men in that crowd that would tackle the mint if they had a half decent chance. Wonder where Embry is?"
From Boom Town, Steele went swiftly down to the flat where his own cabin stood. Walking back and forth in the cramped quarters was Ed Hurley, his eyes looking restless.
"Well?" he demanded sharply as Steele came in.
"Where's Turk Wilson?" asked Steele.
"Just left; I sent him out to the Goblet; was coming over myself in a few minutes."
Steele stood for a little, silently looking into Hurley's anxious eyes.
"Like your new job, Ed?" he asked lightly.
"No," blurted out Hurley, coming to a stop and frowning soberly. "I don't. I don't mind a scrap any more than the next fellow, I guess; but by Heaven, I do hate just waiting for it to be pulled off."
"So you think it's coming, too?"
"With all that money in plain sight?" grunted Hurley. "With men like Joe Embry and that tin horn Truitt and the ragtag and bobtail that hangs out at the dance …. You know as well as I do, don't you, Bill?"
Steele's reply lay in his stepping to his bunk, tossing back a thin mattress and taking out an automatic forty-five. He glanced at the sun, slipped it into his pocket.
"If you run across Joe Embry in the dark," said Hurley, his hand for a moment on Steele's arm, "you just shoot first, Bill, and ask questions afterwards. After the way you did him up the other … Why, man, he could plug you, swear he did it in self-defence and then drag both Miss Corliss and me into court to testify to your having attacked him once before!"
"I know Joe Embry rather well, Ed," was the quiet rejoiner. "So well that I know that he isn't going to let a chance like tonight's slip by him. As usual he'll keep in the background, of course. It's open and shut that he'll get some poor rummy half drunk and sick him on me and my gold, rounding Banks up, I suppose, to promise to let him skip the country. In that gang back there," and he jerked his head toward the dance hall, "he'd have little trouble scaring up a half dozen fools such as Joe Embry uses."
"I haven't a gun on me," said Hurley.
"I left my rifle at the Goblet. Come on."
Steele was rolling a couple of blankets to take with him, planning on a long night to be made as comfortable as possible, when Hurley remembered to mention that there had been a telephone call.
"From a man at Indian City," he explained. "Name of Carruthers. Wanted you as soon as you came in."
So Plunging Bobbie Carruthers had come. Sylvia and the Twins with him of course. Steele went to his telephone, got Indian City and in a moment had Carruthers at the other end of the line.
Hurley, paying scant attention to the half of the conversation allowed him, turned quickly when he heard his own name mentioned. But Steele gave no explanation. Presently he said good-bye to Carruthers and hung up, his eyes shining as he turned toward his new superintendent.
"I won't need you tonight, Ed," he said bluntly, offering no explanation. "You are to saddle a horse and report immediately at Indian City. To Carruthers."
"What for?" was the sharp demand for particulars. "You're apt to be up against it here and if there should be anything doing I want to be on hand."
"I've got two good men already. The three of us can handle anything that pops here, old man. Besides it's absolutely necessary that I send a man to Carruthers immediately."
"What for?" asked Hurley again, belligerently.
"He'll give you your orders." Steele put out his hand suddenly, gripping Hurley's hard. "Good luck, Eddie. The best of luck!"
"But …" demurred Hurley.
Steele laughed his big, happy laugh, swept up his roll of blankets, pitched his grey hat to Hurley, snatched his friend's inconspicuous black one and went out, crying over his shoulder, "You can ask your questions of Carruthers."
The young moon went its serene, silvery way and was hanging somewhere over the distant expanse of the Pacific; the sky filled with brightening stars which palely lighted the mountain tops and left thick shadows in the canons; Boom Town had long ago grown noisy, and had danced and drunk and gone to sleep. Steele, sitting with his back to a rock, his pipe bowl guarded by his cupped hand, heard Turk's snoring at last joined by Bill Rice's. He had almost begun to believe that he had overestimated Joe Embry's implacability or his nerve, when his taut senses informed him of the near presence of others than himself and companions. Above the rushing sound of the river water through the great flume between him and the Goblet he had heard a man's voice. There was some one just behind him, higher up the bank, and that some one had stumbled awkwardly and cursed thereafter.
"Drunk," muttered Steele, as his hand tightened about his rifle and he rose and turned, still keeping close to the rock against which he had leaned. "Embry has overdone it a little."
But there would be others than the one incautious man, and were they drunk? No; not if Embry were back of this play. Steele, crouching a little so as to be in the thickest of the shadows, moved quietly toward the spot where Turk was sleeping. But before he had taken three paces he guessed what they were up to up there and called out sharply:
"Turk! Bill! Look out!"
With the snap of his words, before either of the two sleeping men could start to his feet, there came a crashing in the brush on the steep bank above them, the sound of a leaping, thudding boulder, and Steele sprang back again, again shouting his warning. And then there were quick muffled cries, the sound of other brush cracking and snapping, the smashing of timbers as a rock which more than one pair of hands must have struggled with to set it in motion tore into the flume, the black blur of another boulder bounding by him, come from the gloom, gone into the gloom … and a great wrathful cry from Turk:
"My leg. They're broke my leg. By Gawd … where's my rifle?"
"Back that way!" shouted Steele. "Can you walk, Turk?"
"Walk, hell!" came Turk's shaking voice. "I can't move … Where's my gun? Where …"
The snap and spurt of Bill Rice's rifle … flame and report from Steele's like an echo … two shots from above. And Turk cursing and seeking his gun in the dark, lying on the ground, his leg broken, an ugly rain of crashing boulders about him …
For Steele to go to Turk was like crossing some violent stream of death. And yet he did go, and went unharmed and found Turk's shoulders just as the groping hands found the rifle on the ground. While Bill Rice stood up and pumped lead into the shadows from which other lead was pumped back at him, Steele dragged Turk Wilson a dozen paces, letting him sink down in the shelter of a protecting boulder. Where Turk promptly fainted.
For a little Steele held his fire. In a moment his frowning eyes found Bill Rice's heavy form close at hand; Rice, too, was reserving his fire now, watching grimly for a definite target. Steele drew him back a couple of paces, saying in his ear:
"Let 'em guess a while. Bill. Back here where Turk is their boulders can't reach us. Then …"
Then there came from the other side of the cañon a spurt of fire, a snarling report which reverberated between the rocky walls, and a bullet flattened against the boulder under which Turk lay.
"Taking us on both sides, eh?" grunted Steele. "If there ever was a play earmarked all over as an Embry product, it's this one. … Save your lead. Bill. Those jaspers are either just trying to scare us out or they are plain fools. You couldn't hit an elephant at this distance tonight."
Rice was on his knees, bending over the prone body of bis old friend.
"Dead," he said, and his voice was strangely quiet, "or fainted. If they got you, Turk, by God I'll get a man or two of them for you."
He got up and went to the flume, careless of the bullets which his action might draw to him, filled his hat and came back, wetting Turk's face and wrists. In a moment Steele heard a little chuckle from him. Turk had stirred and cursed and demanded again to be told where his rifle was. It was promptly slipped into his hand and Rice returned to Steele's side.
"He's all right," he said positively. "Can't kill old Turk that easy. Now, let's give 'em hell, Bill."
Fighting in the dark is uncertain work at best. And when a man attacked does not know who the attacker is or how many there are of him the demand to know just that becomes insistent, imperative. With a poor drunken fool who was also, perhaps, a mere tool, Steele felt that he had no quarrel. If he could only know if this were Joe Embry's work, if perhaps Joe Embry himself held to the background, watching, directing, taking but slim chances and reaping what good might come to him?
"All we got to do," Rice was growling, "is bust the flume back there, turn the water back into the hole an' then go get 'em, Bill!"
"And do the same thing every night as long as they want to take a wallop at us?" returned Steele. "That would be making a concession, Bill, and we'll show them a thing or two first."
For a little the night had been quiet, its serenity unbroken. Now came a shot again from across the cañon. As though it were the signal for renewed activity other boulders came bounding down from the bank above the defenders, other rifles barked and spat flame and lead. And Steele formed a theory.
It was that the man across the ravine was signalling, that he was the one who directed, hence that he was none other than Joe Embry. Joe Embry at the safer distance, watching his tools take his chances for him.
"You'd think they'd hear us up to Boom Town," muttered Rice.
But he realized as he spoke that there was little likelihood of that; situated otherwise this din in the night might have carried twice the distance to Boom Town. But here, with the roar and boom and thunder of the river making a thousand echoes in its rocky gorge, nothing less than a cannon shot could penetrate through the deafening clamour.
"I'd give a half interest in the Royal Flush to catch Joe Embry with the goods on!" Steele was saying thoughtfully.
The rifle across the cañon answered him. Yes, there was just one man over there. He guessed roughly that there were half a dozen on the bank under which he and Rice crouched, under which Turk lay, his gun nestled against his fiery cheek.
Bill Steele with savage hunger in his eyes stared across the black gorge; he wanted to be over there. And yet there was but one man on that side, there were several here, and he was no man to leave Turk and Rice to the heavier odds.
"If I could only get my hands on Joe Embry," were the words beating in his brain. "Joe Embry with the goods on."
"Help me get Turk back toward the head of the flume," he said to Rice, always with Joe Embry in mind. "We can cover the Goblet from there. And, if we have to, then we can knock out a board or two and let enough water into the Goblet to put a stop to their funny business."
The sensible thing to do, agreed Rice. And Turk, though he fairly whimpered with rage because he had had no satisfactory target given him as yet, agreed to be moved. Half dragging, half carrying the wounded man and yet very gentle with him, they slowly covered the hundred paces to the point where Steele decided they were to make their stand.
"Just keep still and you'll keep them guessing," he said quietly. "I don't think their stray bullets can find you here and I don't believe they'll tackle the Goblet until they get the signal from the other side. Which," grimly, "they are not going to get at all."
He put his rifle into the hands of the wondering Bill Rice and was gone in the darkness, slipping down into the emptied bed of the stream.
"He thinks it's Embry over there," Rice muttered in Turk's ear. "Most likely he's goin' to get him. How's the leg, pardner?"
"Fine," growled Turk savagely. "A smashed leg always is. Turn me over a little. Bill, so's I can get a chaw; it's in my tail pocket."
Steele, seeking to move quietly, gripping the rocks with both hands, searching here and there in the pitch dark for toe hold, made his way slowly and painfully down into the river's bed. Save for the rushing of the confined water in the flume now above him all was still again. Not even the lone rifle broke the silence.
Only when he felt underfoot the thin trickle which still marked the old water course did he know that he had come to the bottom, and relax his grip on the sheer bank. He took the automatic from his pocket, thrusting it into his trousers band. Then began the slow climbing up on the other side.
At last, after many a half slip, after many a pause as he unwittingly sent a cascade of noisy stones rattling down behind him, he came to the top of the southern bank, bringing his head up slowly, staring with baffled eyes into the thick shadows before him. He planned to come upon Embry from above, it being his thought that the lone rifleman was still opposite the Goblet. But in utter darkness nothing is certain but uncertainty; Embry might have heard his approach, might have guessed at it, might be not ten steps away now with rifle butt at shoulder.
Well, a man must take his chance when it is offered him, and Bill Steele drew himself up, his gun at last in his hand. For a moment he stood, listening. Then there came to his eager ears the snap of a rifle, the spurt of flame cut through the void of night, and he knew that the man he sought was still keeping his place opposite the Goblet.
Again came the rattle of rifle shots from across the cañon, two stabbing flashes showing him where Turk and Rice were and that they had fired back at the vague targets suggested by those other flashes. Steele hurried on.
Presently, having made a slight detour so as to come upon Embry with sudden unexpectedness from behind, he stopped once more, straining his eyes to make out just what was that darker-than-darkness blur before him. It was a man, a man not ten feet from him, a man shooting as fast as his hand could work the lever of an old 30-30 Winchester … and no longer was he firing across the river bed. Steele heard the whine of a flying bullet, another and another, knew that death rode upon every leaden pellet and sought him desperately, whipped up his own gun in front of him and answered shot for shot. That two men should stand up and fire this way, so short a distance between them, and that either should fire the third and the fourth time seemed incredible. And yet, as he had said before, it was all guess work on a night like this, guess work and chance.
For, after the first shot, the other man had leaped to one side and there was only the flash from his gun barrel to locate him; after his own first shot Steele had moved to the right, stepping softly, and foreseeing that the man he hungered to get his hands upon would be doing the same thing.
"We could whang away like this all night," he muttered to himself, "and nobody get hurt. If the luck ran that way."
But luck ran otherwise. The rifle spoke, the automatic answered it and there came a sharp cry of pain and the sound of the rifle clattering down among the stones. His gun clubbed in his uplifted hand Steele sprang forward.
"Damn you, Embry," he cried out as his body hurtled into that other body and the two went down together, struggling. "I've got you, got you dead to right. Lie still or, so help me, I'll kill you now!"
And, so sure was he that this was Joe Embry, the sharp retort coming from another man angered him and disappointed him so that of the two emotions he did not know which was the keener:
"Embry, hell! I'm Banks, the sheriff, coming to stop this monkey business. And you're got to answer, Bill Steele, for shooting an officer of the law. Get off my arm, can't you?"
Steele rolled free but his hand maintained a relentless grip on Banks' unwounded arm.
"So it's you, Jim Banks, is it?" he grunted. "And you've gone clean bad, have you?"
"Bad?" snapped the sheriff. "I tell you …"
"You do the natural thing and try to lie out of it," cut in Steele coolly. "You are nothing but Joe Embry's yellow dog and I know it."
"I'll run you in for this, Steele," cursed Banks, sitting up and nursing a bleeding arm. "You can do all the guessing you want to to the judge."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," retorted Steele sharply. "You feel like it right now but tomorrow is another day. For one thing, I don't think that Embry'd let you get that raw. He's a trifle too smooth for that sort of a play."
"Embry be damned. I don't take orders off him."
"But you do. Ordinarily. Right now you take them from me. Call to those jaspers over there to run for it while the way is open; will you? They've hurt one of my men and I want to take care of him."
"I just heard the shooting," growled Banks. "And come down here to stop it …"
Steele laughed understandingly.
"Sure you did! Well, stop them now, why don't you?"
And when Jim Banks gave over to cursing again and to binding up the flesh wound in his arm, it was Steele who shouted out mightily:
"Hey, you poor boobs over there! I've got Banks all sewed up and he says you'd better be getting back to bed before we find out just whose beds are empty to-night! Scat!"
And sweeping up Banks' rifle he sent a couple of shots in the wake of his words.
"Rice!" he called then, and when Rice answered:
"Knock out a board after all and let a little water into the Goblet. We're going to get Turk to my cabin and have a doctor on the way before morning."
"Curse the luck," Banks was saying heavily, "can't you see it's a mistake, Steele? Can't you see how it is? I heard the shooting …"
And, cutting into his hesitant speech there came abruptly the unsteady shout from the drunken and incautious member of the gang:
"Is that right, Jim? Has he got you? I'll come over an' beat his ol' head off'n his ol' shoulders … y'know me, Jim, ol' boy …"
His words broke off as abruptly as they had begun; some one had slapped a heavy hand across a foolish mouth.
But they all had heard, Turk and Rice down by the flume, Steele and Jim Banks himself here. Sternly and yet not altogether unkindly, his hand shifting to Banks' shoulder, Steele said:
"And time was when you were a square man, Jim. Don't you know this sort of business won't get you anywhere? You poor damned fool."
And Jim Banks, ridden hard by the emotions which only he knew of, his arm shot through with an agony of pain, allowed to be whipped from his white lips the words he would retract in another moment:
"I can't help myself! Joe's got the strangle hold on me. Some day I'll …"
But, suddenly realizing what he was saying, he shut his mouth savagely and took counsel with himself.