Stewart Edward White - The Killer

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"He come out right on that point of rocks where you can see the whole
valley," said the driver in answer to many questions, "right where the
heavy grade is and the thick chaparral. We was busy climbing; and he had
us before we could wink. Made us drop off the dust and 'bout face. He
was a big, tall feller; and had a sawed-off Winchester. Once, when we
stopped, he dropped a bullet right behind us. He must have watched us
all the way to camp."

The camp turned out. As the men passed the Lost Dog someone yelled to
the Babes. George, covered with mud, came to the door of the mill.

"Gee!" said he. "Lucky we saved out that three hundred. I'm powerful
sorry for that suffering bank. I'll join you as soon as I can get Jimmy
up out of the shaft." Before the party had gone a mile they were joined
by the brothers boyishly eager over this new excitement.

The men toiled up the road to where the robbery had taken place. Plainly
to be seen were the marks of the man's boots. The tracks of a single
horse, walking, followed the man.

"He packed off the dust, and he had an almighty big horse to carry it,"
pronounced someone.

They followed the trail. It led a half mile to a broad sheet of rock.
There it disappeared. On one side the bank rose twenty or thirty feet.
On the other it fell away nearly a hundred. On the other side of the
sheet of rock stretched the dusty road unbroken by anything more recent
than the wheel-tracks of the day before. It was as though man and horse
had taken unto themselves wings.

Immediately Bright took active charge of the posse.

"Stand here, on this rock," he commanded. "This road's been tracked up
too much already. You, John, and Tibbetts and Simmins, there, come 'long
with me to see what you can make out."

The old mountaineers retraced their steps, examining carefully every
inch of the ground. They returned vastly puzzled.

"No sabe," California John summed up their investigations. "There's the
man's track leadin' his hoss. The hoss had on new shoes, and the robber
did his own shoeing. So we ain't got any blacksmiths to help us."

"How do you know he shod the horse himself?" asked Jimmy Gaynes.

"Shoes just alike on front and back feet. Shows he must just have tacked
on ready-made shoes. A blacksmith shapes 'em different. Those tracks
leads right up to this rock: and here they quit. If you can figger how a
horse, a man, and nigh four hundredweight of gold dust got off this
rock, I'll be obleeged."

The men looked up at the perpendicular cliff to their right; over the
sheer precipice at their left; and upon the untracked deep, white dust
ahead.

"Furthermore," California John went on, impressively, after a moment,
"where did that man and that hoss come from in the beginning? Not from
up this way. They's no fresh tracks comin' down the road no more than
they's fresh tracks goin' up. Not from camp. They's no tracks
whatsomever on the road below, except our'n and the stage outfit's."

"Are you sure of that?" asked Jimmy, his eyes shining with interest.

"Sartin sure," replied California John, positively. "We didn't take no
chances on that."

"Then he must have come into the road from up the mountain or down the
mountain."

"Where?" demanded California John. "A man afoot might scramble down in
one or two places; but not a hoss. They ain't no tracks either side the
muss-up where the express was stopped. And at that p'int the mountain is
straight up and down, like it is here."

They talked it over, and argued it, and reexamined the evidence, but
without avail. The stubborn facts remained: Between the hold-up and the
sheet of rock was one set of tracks going one way; elsewhere, nothing.

CHAPTER II

Nearly a year passed. If it had not been for the very tangible loss of a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the little community at Bright's
Cove might almost have come to doubt the evidence of their senses and
the accuracy of their memories, so fantastic on sober reflection did all
the circumstances become. Even the indisputable four hundred pounds of
gold could not quite avert an unconfessed suspicion of the uncanny.
Miners are superstitious folk. Old Man Bright remembered the parting and
involved curses of his squaw before she went back to her acorns and pine
nuts. To Tibbetts alone he imparted a vague hint of the imaginings into
which he had fallen. But he brooded much, seeking a plausible theory
that would not force him back on the powers of darkness. This he did not
find.

Nor did any other man. It remained a mystery, a single bizarre anomaly
in the life of the camp. For some time thereafter the express went
heavily guarded. The road was patrolled. Jimmy or George Gaynes in
person accompanied each shipment of dust. Their pay streak held out,
increased steadily in value. They would hire no assistance for the
actual mining in the shaft, although they had several hands to work at
the mill. One month they cleaned up twelve thousand dollars.

"You bet I'm going," said Jimmy, "I don't care if it is only a little
compared to what Bright and you fellows are sending. It's a heap sight
to us, and I'm going to see it safe to the city. No more spooks in mine.
I got my fingers crossed. Allah skazallalum! I don't know what a ghost
would want with cash assets, but they seemed to use George's and my
little old five hundred, all right."

Twelve months went by. Two expresses a month toiled up the road. Nothing
happened. Finally Jimmy decided that four good working days a month were
a good deal to pay for apparently useless supervision. Three men
comprised the shot-gun guard. They, with the driver, were considered
ample.

"You'll have to get on without me," said Jimmy to them in farewell. "Be
good boys. We've got the biggest clean-up yet aboard you."

They started on the twenty-fifth trip since the hold-up. After a time,
far up the mountain was heard a single shot. Inside of two hours the
express drew sorrowfully into camp. The driver appeared to be alone. In
the bottom of the wagon were the three guards weak and sick. The gold
sacks were very much absent.

"Done it again," said the driver. "Ain't more than got started afore the
whole outfit's down with the belly-ache. Too much of that cursed salmon.
Told 'em so. I didn't eat none. That road agent hit her lucky this trip
sure. He was all organized for business. Never showed himself at all.
Just opened fire. Sent a bullet through the top of my hat. He's either a
damn good shot or a damn poor one. I hung up both hands and yelled we
was down and out. What could I do? This outfit couldn't a fit a bumble
bee. And I couldn't git away, or git hold of no gun, or see anything to
shoot, if I did. He was behind that big rock."

The men nodded. They were many of them hard hit, but they had lived too
long in the West not to recognize the justice of the driver's implied
contention that he had done his best.

"He told me to throw out them sacks, and to be damn quick about it,"
went on the driver. "Then I drove home."

"What sort of a lookin' fellow was he?" asked someone. "Same one as last
year?"

"I never seen him," said the driver. "He hung behind his rock. He was
organized for shoot, and if the messengers hadn't happened to' a' been
out of it, I believe he could have killed us all."

"What did his hoss look like?" inquired California John.

"He didn't have no horse," stated the driver. "Leastways, not near him.
There was no cover. He might have been around a p'int. And I can sw'ar
to this: there weren't no tracks of no kind from there to camp."

They caught up horses and started out. When they came to the Lost Dog,
they stopped and looked at each other.

"Poor old Babes," said Simmins. "Biggest clean-up yet; and first time
one of 'em didn't go 'long."

"I'm glad they didn't," said Tibbetts. "That agent would have killed 'em
shore!"

They called out the Gaynes brothers and broke the news. For once the
jovial youngsters had no joke to make.

"This is getting serious," said Jimmy, seriously. "We can't afford to
lose that much."

George whistled dolefully, and went into the corral for the mules.

The party toiled up the mountain. Plainly in the dust could be made out
the trail of the express ascending and descending. Plain also were the
signs where the driver had dumped out the gold bags and turned around.
From that point the tracks of a man and a horse led to the sheet of
rock. Beyond that, nothing.

The men stared at each other a little frightened. Somebody swore softly.

"Boys," said Bright in a strained voice, "do you know how much was in
that express? A half million! There's nary earthly hoss can carry over
half a ton! And this one treads as light as a saddler."

They looked at each other blankly. Several even glanced in apprehension
at the sky.

In a perfunctory manner, for the sake of doing something, those skilled
in trail-reading went back over the ground. Nothing was added to the
first experience. At the point of robbery magically had appeared a man
and--if the stage driver's solemn assertion that at the time of the
hold-up no animal was in sight could be believed--subsequently, when
needed, a large horse. Whence had they come? Not along the road in
either direction: the unbroken, deep dust assured that. Not down the
mountain from above, for the cliff rose sheer for at least three hundred
feet. Jimmy Gaynes, following unconsciously the general train of
conjecture, craned his neck over the edge of the road. The broken jagged
rock and shale dropped off an hundred feet to a tangle of manzanita and
snowbrush.

California John looked over, too.

"Couldn't even get sheep up that," said he, "let alone a sixteen-hand
horse."

Old Man Bright was sunk in a superstitious torpor. He had lost hundreds
of thousands where he would have hated to spend pennies; yet the
financial part of the loss hardly touched him. He mumbled fearfully to
himself, and took not the slightest interest in the half-hearted
attempts to read the mystery. When the others moved, he moved with them,
because he was afraid to be left alone.

After the men had assured themselves again and again that the horse and
the man had apparently materialized from thin air exactly at the point
of robbery, they again followed the tracks to the broad sheet of rock.
Whither had the robber gone? Back into the thin air whence he had come.
There was no other solution. No tracks ahead; an absolute and physical
impossibility of anything without wings getting up or down the flanking
precipices--these were the incontestable facts.

After this second robbery a gloom descended on Bright's Cove which
lasted through many months. Old Man Bright hunted out the squaw with
whom he had first discovered the diggings, and set her up in an
establishment with gay curtains, glass danglers and red doileys. Each
month he paid for her provisions and sent to her a sum of money. In this
manner, at least, the phantom road agent had furthered the ends of
justice. The sop to the powers of darkness appeared to be effective in
this respect: no more hold-ups occurred; no more mysterious tracks
appeared in the dust; gradually men's minds swung back to the balanced
and normal, and the life of the camp went forward on its appointed way.

Nevertheless, certain effects remained. Each express went out heavily
guarded, and preceded and followed by men on horseback. Strangely enough
the gamblers left camp. In a little more than a year Old Man Bright fell
into a settled melancholia from which his millions never helped him to
the very day of his death a little more than a year later.

In the meantime, however varied the fortunes of the other mines and
prospects, the Lost Dog continued to work toward a steadily increasing
paying basis. It never reached the proportions of the Clarice, but
turned out an increasing value of dust at each clean-up. The Gaynes boys
two years before had been in debt for their groceries. Now they were
said to have shipped out something like three or four hundred thousand
dollars' worth of gold. Their friends used to wander down for the
regular clean-up, just to rejoice over the youngsters' deserved good
luck. The little five stamp-mill crunched away steadily; the water
flowed; and in the riffles the heavy gold dust accumulated.

"Why don't you-all put up a big mill, throw in a crew of men, and get
busy?" they were asked.

"I'll tell you," replied George, "it's because we know a heap sight more
about mining than we did when we came here. We have just one claim, and
from all indications it's only a pocket. The Clarice is on a genuine
lode; but we're likely to run into a 'horse' or pinch out most any
minute. When we do, it's all over but a few faint cries of fraud. And we
can empty that pocket just as well with a little jerkwater outfit like
this as we could with a big crew and a real mill. It'll take a little
longer; but we're pulling it and quick enough."

"Those Babes have more sense than we gave 'em credit for," commented
California John. "Their heads are level. They're dead right about it's
bein' a pocket. The stuff they run through there is the darndest mixture
_I_ ever see gold in."

Two months after this conversation the Babes drifted into camp to
announce that the expected pinch had come.

"We're going," said Jimmy. "We have a heap plenty dust salted away; and
there's not a colour left in the Lost Dog. The mill machinery is for
sale cheap. Any one can have the Lost Dog who wants it. We're going out
to see what makes the wheels go 'round. You boys have a first claim on
us wherever you find us. You've sure been good to us. If you catch that
spook, send us one of his tail feathers. It would be worth just twelve
thousand five hundred to us."

They sold the stamp-mill for almost nothing; packed eight animals with
heavy things they had accumulated; and departed up the steep white road,
over the rim to the outer world whence came no word of them more. The
camp went on prospering. Old Man Bright died. The heavily guarded
express continued to drag out yellow gold by the hundredweight.

About six weeks after the departure of the Babes, California John
saddled up his best horse, put on his best overalls, strapped about him
his shiny worn Colt's .45 and departed for his semi-annual visit to the
valleys and the towns. A week later he returned. It was about dusk. At
the water trough he dismounted.

"Boys," said he, quietly, "I've been held up." He eyed them quizzically.
"Up by the slide rock," he continued, "and by the spook."

"Who was he?" "What was it?" they cried, starting to their feet.

"It was Jimmy Gaynes," replied California John.

"The Babe?" someone broke the stunned silence at last.

"Precisely."

"Well, I'll be damned!" cried Tibbetts.

"Did he get much off you?" asked a miner after another pause.

"He never took a thing."

And on that, being much besieged, California John sat him down and told
of his experience.

CHAPTER III

California John was discursive and interested and disinclined to be
hurried. He crossed one leg over the other and lit his pipe.

"I was driftin' down the road busy with my own idees--which ain't many,"
he began, "when I was woke up all to once by someone givin' me advice. I
took the advice. Wasn't nothin' else to do. All I could see was a rock
and a gun barrel. That was enough. So I histed my hands as per commands
and waited for the next move." He chuckled. "I wasn't worryin'. Had to
squeeze my dust bag to pay my hotel bill when I left the city."

"'Drop yore gun in the road,' says the agent.

"I done so.

"'Now dismount.'

"I climbed down. And then Jimmy Gaynes rose up from behind that rock and
laughed at me.

"'The joke's on me!' said I, and reached down for my gun.

"'Better leave that!' said Jimmy pretty sharp. I know that tone of
voice, so I straightened up again.

"'Well, Jimmy,' said I, 'she lays if you say so. But where'd you come
from: and what for do you turn road agent and hold up your old friends?'

"'I'm holdin' you up,' Jimmy answered, 'because I want to talk to you
for ten minutes. As for where I come from, that's neither here nor
there.'

"'Of course,' said I, 'I'm one of these exclusive guys that needs a gun
throwed on him before he'll talk with the plain people like you.'

"'Now don't get mad,' says Jimmy. 'But light yore pipe, and set down on
that rock, and you'll see in a minute why I _pre_ferred to corner the
gatling market.'

"Well, I set down and lit up, and Jimmy done likewise, about ten feet
away.

"'I've come back a long ways to talk to one of you boys, and I've shore
hung around this road some few hours waitin' for some of you terrapins
to come along. Ever found out who done those two hold-ups?'

"'Nope,' said I, 'and don't expect to.'

"'Well, I done it,' says he.

"I looked him in the eye mighty severe.

"'You're one of the funniest little jokers ever hit this trail,' I told
him. 'If that's your general line of talkee-talkee I don't wonder you
don't want me to have no gun.'

"'Never_the_less,' he insists, 'I done it. And I'll tell you just how it
was done. Here's yore old express crawlin' up the road. Here I am behind
this little old rock. You know what happened next I reckon--from
experience.'

"'I reckon I know that,' says I, 'but how did you get behind that rock
without leavin' no tracks?'

"I climbed up the cliff out of the canon, and I just walked up the canon
from the Lost Dog through the brush.'

"'Yes,' says I, 'that might be: a man could make out to shinny up. But
how----'

"'One thing to a time. Then I ordered them dust sacks throwed out, and
the driver to 'bout-face and retreat.'

"'Sure,' says I, 'simple as a wart on a kid's nose. There was you with a
half ton of gold to fly off with! Come again.'

"'I then dropped them sacks off the edge of the cliff where they rolled
into the brush. After a while I climbed down after them, and was on hand
when your posse started out. Then I carried them home at leisure.'

"'What did you do with your hoss?' I asked him, mighty sarcastic. 'Seems
to me you overlook a few bets.'

"'I didn't have no hoss,' says he.

"'But the real hold-up----

"'You mean them tracks. Well, just to amuse you fellows, I walked in the
dust up to that flat rock. Then I clamped a big pair of horseshoes on
hind-side before and walked back again.'"

California John's audience had been listening intently. Now it could no
longer contain itself, but broke forth into exclamations indicative of
various emotions.

"That's why them front and back tracks was the same size!" someone
cried.

"Gee, you're bright!" said California John. "That's what I told him. I
also told him he was a wonder, but how did he manage to slip out near a
ton of dust up that road without our knowing it?

"'You did know it,' says he. 'Did you fellows really think there was any
gold-bearing ore in the Lost Dog? We just run that dust through the mill
along with a lot of worthless rock, and shipped it out open and above
board as our own mill run. There never was an ounce of dust come out of
the Lost Dog, and there never will.' Then he give me back my
gun--emptied--we shook hands, and here I be."

After the next burst of astonishment had ebbed, and had been succeeded
by a rather general feeling of admiration, somebody asked California
John if Jimmy had come back solely for the purpose of clearing up the
mystery. California John had evidently been waiting for this question.
He arose and knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Bring a candle," he requested the storekeeper, and led the way to the
abandoned Lost Dog. Into the tunnel he led them, to the very end. There
he paused, holding aloft his light. At his feet was a canvas which,
being removed, was found to cover neatly a number of heavy sacks.

"Here's our dust," said California John, "every ounce of it, he said. He
kept about six hundred thousand or so that belonged to Bright: but he
didn't take none of ours. He come back to tell me so."

The men crowded around for closer inspection.

"I wonder why he done that?" Tibbetts marvelled.

"I asked him that," replied California John, grimly, "He said his
conscience never would rest easy if he robbed us babes."

Tibbetts broke the ensuing silence.

"Was 'babes' the word he used?" he asked, softly.

"'Babes' was the word," said California John.

THE TIDE

A short story, say the writers of text books and the teachers of
sophomores, should deal with but a single episode. That dictum is
probably true; but it admits of wider interpretation than is generally
given it. The teller of tales, anxious to escape from restriction but
not avid of being cast into the outer darkness of the taboo, can in
self-justification become as technical as any lawyer. The phrase "a
single episode" is loosely worded. The rule does not specify an episode
in one man's life; it might be in the life of a family, or a state, or
even of a whole people. In that case the action might cover many lives.
It is a way out for those who have a story to tell, a limit to tell it
within, but who do not wish to embroil themselves too seriously with the
august Makers of the Rules.

CHAPTER I

The time was 1850, the place that long, soft, hot dry stretch of blasted
desolation known as the Humboldt Sink. The sun stared, the heat rose in
waves, the mirage shimmered, the dust devils of choking alkali whirled
aloft or sank in suffocation on the hot earth. Thus it had been since in
remote ages the last drop of the inland sea had risen into a brazen sky.
But this year had brought something new. A track now led across the
desert. It had sunk deep into the alkali, and the soft edges had closed
over it like snow, so that the wheel marks and the hoof marks and the
prints of men's feet looked old. Almost in a straight line it led to the
west. Its perspective, dwindling to nothingness, corrected the deceit of
the clear air. Without it the cool, tall mountains looked very near. But
when the eye followed the trail to its vanishing, then, as though by
magic, the Ranges drew back, and before them denied dreadful forces of
toil, thirst, exhaustion, and despair. For the trail was marked. If the
wheel ruts had been obliterated, it could still have been easily
followed. Abandoned goods, furniture, stores, broken-down wagons,
bloated carcasses of oxen or horses, bones bleached white, rattling
mummies of dried skin, and an almost unbroken line of marked and
unmarked graves--like the rout of an army, like the spent wash of a wave
that had rolled westward--these in double rank defined the road.

The buzzards sailing aloft looked down on the Humboldt Sink as we would
look upon a relief map. Near the centre of the map a tiny cloud of white
dust crawled slowly forward. The buzzards stooped to poise above it.

Two ox wagons plodded along. A squirrel--were such a creature
possible--would have stirred disproportionately the light alkali dust;
the two heavy wagons and the shuffling feet of the beasts raised a
cloud. The fitful furnace draught carried this along at the slow pace of
the caravan, which could be seen only dimly, as through a dense fog.

The oxen were in distress. Evidently weakened by starvation, they were
proceeding only with the greatest difficulty. Their tongues were out,
their legs spread, spasmodically their eyes rolled back to show the
whites, from time to time one or another of them uttered a strangled,
moaning bellow. They were white with the powdery dust, as were their
yokes, the wagons, and the men who plodded doggedly alongside. Finally,
they stopped. The dust eddied by; and the blasting sun fell upon them.

The driver of the leading team motioned to the other. They huddled in
the scanty shade alongside the first wagon. Both men were so powdered
and caked with alkali that their features were indistinguishable. Their
red-rimmed, inflamed eyes looked out as though from masks.

The one who had been bringing up the rear looked despairingly toward the
mountains.

"We'll never get there!" he cried.

"Not the way we are now," replied the other. "But I intend to get
there."

"How?"

"Leave your wagon, Jim; it's the heaviest. Put your team on here."

"But my wagon is all I've got in the world!" cried the other, "and we've
got near a keg of water yet! We can make it! The oxen are pulling all
right!"

His companion turned away with a shrug, then thought better of it and
turned back.

"We've thrown out all we owned except bare necessities," he explained,
patiently. "Your wagon is too heavy. The time to change is while the
beasts can still pull."

"But I refuse!" cried the other. "I won't do it. Go ahead with your
wagon. I'll get mine in, John Gates, you can't bulldoze me."

Gates stared him in the eye.

"Get the pail," he requested, mildly.

He drew water from one of the kegs slung underneath the wagon's body.
The oxen, smelling it, strained weakly, bellowing. Gates slowly and
carefully swabbed out their mouths, permitted them each a few swallows,
rubbed them pityingly between the horns. Then he proceeded to unyoke the
four beasts from the other man's wagon and yoked them to his own. Jim
started to say something. Gates faced him. Nothing was said.

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