the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) (23 page)

"That outfit can't even get along with themselves," Hopalong said. "Come on back to camp-coffee's hot." As they started back he turned his head. "Feel that quake?"

"Feel it?" Tex said. "Scared the livin' daylights out of me. Caught us right out on the open desert, nothin' close up, but we could see rocks fallin' off the ridges.

That old flat-top mesa south of here lost a corner."

Over coffee Hopalong recounted the experiences of the day and the finding of Laramie's grave. He also commented on the fact that he believed Jacks was alive and teamed up with Bale and Leeman.

"We heard he was alive. Ben Lock cut the sign of that toed-in paint you trailed before the stage robbery. There was three horses in the bunch, all with riders. He followed 'em some distance before he lost 'em. Feller came in the other day said they stopped him on the road. He never said a word about it until Lock told us. The three of them spooked him so bad he was afraid to talk, but he said that they stopped him on the road and made him give them some grub."

"Where do you think he'll head for?" Milligan asked.

"No tellin'. Maybe that claim on Star Peak."

"Doubt it," Montana objected. "Too many people know about it now. Although there's old tunnels around what's left of Star City, and there's shelter there. That might be it."

"If I was him," Tex said, "I'd hit northwest toward the Black Sand. I'd lose myself in those hills over yonder."

"Well"-Hopalong shrugged-"if he gets out of the country I won't follow him. It's time I was movin' on, anyway."

Tex fed a few sticks into the fire and started a long story about running cattle down on the Brazos, and in a few minutes he and Shorty were arguing hotly over respective methods of roping and whether it was better to tie or dally the rope.

Hopalong leaned back and listened with only half his attention. It would be good to see Red Connors now. The last time he had seen Johnny or Mesquite was down on the Gila. They had come along then and butted into a fight just in time to help him.

That had always been the way of the Bar 20 or any of the outfits started by the old crowd: They never hesitated to side each other.

He grinned, remembering the fights Mesquite and he had found themselves getting into at Dodge and Ogallala, but even those towns weren't what they had been. The old cattle drives weren't so big as they used to be, either. It was towns like Tombstone and Deadwood that were getting all the play now. But for sheer murderous toughness there were a half-dozen mining camps in Utah and Nevada that would compare with the old trail towns. The longhorn had taken over from the buffalo and now was giving way to the white-face. Before long there would be plows on the range.

The old West was changing, and there was nothing to do but accept it.

"What now?" Shorty asked suddenly. "You goin' to hunt Jacks?"

"Possibly." Cassidy rolled a smoke and stretched his legs to ease the cramp building in his thighs. "But it could be he's had enough. As for the 3 G, I hope they mind their own affairs. Ronson wants no trouble he can avoid." His eyes twinkled. "And I'm feelin' about the same."

Milligan looked downcast. "Just when it was gettin' to be a good fight, too!"

In 1863, Unionville had been wide open. At that time it had ten stores, six hotels, nine saloons, two express offices, two drugstores, four livery stables, and a brewery.

Everybody had a claim staked out and every claim was potentially the richest ever found. Men without a nickel to their name talked in terms of thousands of dollars, and they exchanged, bought, or sold claims, and veins that sold by the foot. Mining men being what they are, optimism was the normal attitude, and it takes an optimistic man to live in a dugout or brush shelter while grubbing in a mountainside for the rainbow's end; but in a country where a chunk of silver nearly a ton in weight had been found and rich veins were paying off in millions, optimism had some excuse for being.

Within twenty miles of Unionville a half dozen hamlets were born, some to last only a few months, some a few years, and some to move at least once during their lifetimes.

One of these was Star City, a haphazard collection of habitations clustered on a mountainside guarded from view by a lower but neighboring peak.

There had been a rich strike here. It had lasted almost two years, then died. The miners, finding too little to do, had drifted on to Unionville and elsewhere. The shacks remained, and in them a few optimists and a few casual squatters. The optimists stayed on, while the squatters changed from week to week. At last even these drifted on and the town acquired a few desert owls, a pack rat or two, and some migrating bats.

Clarry Jacks was white-faced and half dead when the faithful Duck Bale brought him to the collection of shacks. In one of these that was reasonably intact they found shelter, and Bale, whose experience with gunshot wounds had been wide, worked over the injuries. The scalp had been laid open to the bone and there had been a concussion, but the body wound was the most serious. After a few days, when he could leave the wounded man without danger, Bale made contact with Dud, then returned to the cluster of shacks.

For a week Jacks hovered between Me and death, ministered to by Bale himself and by old Doc Benton, smuggled into the town blindfolded by Dud Leeman. Benton, a former army surgeon now far gone in liquor, still retained ability, and he used it. When he finally was returned to the saloons of Unionville, Jacks was well on the way to recovery. Yet as he recovered, his manner grew increasingly irritable, then vicious.

Moving from Star City, they took shelter in the haft-dozen ramshackle buildings in a deep gash in the mountainside that constituted all that remained of the High Card Mining Company. Thin, white-faced, and mean, Clarry Jacks paced the floor, seething with repressed fury. Duck Bale watched him and worried, and even the phlegmatic Dud Leeman eyed him with misgivings. Whether it was the sharp defeat administered by Hopalong or the concussion was hard to say. The fact remained that the man's character stood starkly revealed now. The cloak of easy laughter was gone, and all that remained was the killer, but now without a single relieving virtue.

Dud Leeman chewed silently on his plug of tobacco and ruminated upon what he knew of his companion. Clarry Jacks had been close to him, but Clarry Jacks in a tight spot had murdered Dakota Jack. Dud had known for a long time that Vasco Graham and Jacks were one. It had been Bale, a friend of Jacks back in his Bald Knob days, who had told him the truth. None of it made Dud any more confident of his future.

"My idea," he ventured once, "would be to pull out. This country's finished as long as Cassidy's here. We can take care of Pony later."

"Forget that!" Jacks whirled on him, his eyes narrowed viciously. "We don't leave this country until both Cassidy and Harper are dead! I want that gold, but that isn't so important to me as gettin' Cassidy!"

"Boss," Leeman protested quietly, "the whole country's against us now. If we stay we haven't got a chance to get out alive. I mean it. We can get away now. They don't know whether you're alive or dead, but believe me, they are gettin' suspicious.

"Cassidy," he continued, "is ridin' the country. So's Ben Lock, and from all I hear, it was Lock who killed Laramie. Yesterday, from the top of the ridge, I watched Lock for two hours with a glass. He was on a trail. Maybe it was yours-I don't know. Anyway, he lost it down in the valley, but every so often he'd look up and see these mountains and study 'em like he figured on scoutin' around.

I tell you, Clarry, Lock isn't quittin'!"

Jacks's eyes were somber with hatred. "What's the matter, Dud?" he sneered. "Gettin' yellow? I wouldn't be surprised if it was Bale here, but you!"

He turned on his heel and walked to the door, but when he looked back he said, low-voiced and tense with emotion: "Nobody leaves me! Get that? Nobody!"

He stalked outside, and they heard his steps receding down the trail. White-faced, Bale glanced at Dud. "He sure has changed."

Leeman nodded worriedly. "There's no sense in stayin', Duck! None at all! I tell you, that Lock is like a bloodhound. He'll never leave that trail! That hombre worries me, stickin' at it the way he does. He's lost weight, he's slept out for days, but he keeps goin'. He'll never quit. As for Hopalong, I'd sooner tackle a catamount in his own cave than that hombre. The only reason Clarry is alive today is because of that quake."

"What you goin' to do?" Bale inquired cautiously.

Dud Leeman said nothing. He got swiftly and silently to his feet and peered outside, then sat down. "Do?" he said loudly. "I'm stickin' with the boss. What else? It's just a matter of how we can get that Cassidy hombre!"

Bale looked at him quickly, then at the window, and nodded. "Yeah," he said, "the first thing is to get him, then that gold from Harper."

Clarry Jacks stalked into the room suddenly and glared sullenly first at one, then at the other. That he had gone down the trail, then dodged back to listen, they both knew. Jacks lighted a cigarette, drew impatiently on it, then stalked again to the door, muttering to himself.

Dud Leeman looked at his broad back, then shot a quick glance at Duck. It was not in him to shoot a man in the back, but at that moment he wondered if it would not be best. It was beginning to look like the only choice they had was to kill or be killed.

Clarry Jacks turned around and stared at them, his eyes malevolent and evil, and behind that there was something else that Dud Leeman glimpsed for the first time and recognized with a chill. Clarry Jacks was insane.

Chapter
12

Furtive Enemy A
week later Hopalong rode into town, accompanied by Tex and Shorty. They had searched the ruins of Star City and found nothing. What might have been the remains of a campfire had been scattered, and it was impossible to tell if the charred sticks found on the spot were a few days or a few months old. Nobody had seen either Dud Leeman or Duck Bale.

Pony Harper was never alone. Rawhide haunted his vicinity; his dark eyes with their yellowish whites were always busy, searching, staring, watching windows, doorways, and alleys. Harper had grown noticeably thin. His jowls, which had been plump, now sagged over his heavy jawbones. He was irritable and seldom in the High-Grade during rush hours.

Ben Lock had returned to town and, despite Katie's objections, had bought supplies and started out again. He had admitted that he was having no luck but was working systematically now, searching each section of country as though hunting strays or prospecting. Rumors got around. Clarry Jacks was alive, somebody who knew somebody else was told by his cousin that Jacks had been seen. Jacks, according to another story, was dead. He had been buried by moonlight in Poker Gap, dying of wounds.

Ben Lock met Hoppy in the livery stable at Seven Pines. Hopalong had just come in and Lock was leaving. "Cut any sign, Ben?"

Lock shrugged. "Not lately. He's alive, though. I got a feelin'."

"Yeah." Hopalong sat down on a bale of hay and struck a match with his thumbnail.

"A man's got to figure this thing with his head. No real trail. You just got to think it out."

"Never was much good at that," Ben said. "I can read trail sign as good as most men, and I can follow a color upstream, but that about lets me out." He looked at Hopalong thoughtfully. "What do you reckon he'll do, Hoppy?"

"Hard to say," Cassidy admitted. "But let's take it for granted that Duck and Leeman are with him. That means three men. They have to have food, water, ammunition, and concealment. Ammunition they probably have without buyin' more. Maybe not, but we'll figure it that way. Now that still means they have to have food, water, and a hideout.

"He's not in Seven Pines-you can bank on that. North of here the country is nearly all Rockin' R, with the only water on our range. We've rebuilt the cabin at Willow Springs and the boys are there every other day or so. Mandalay, Haystack, and the Rabbit hole likewise are visited. Corn Patch was burned to the ground and would be too risky for 'em.

"Clarry has enemies in Unionville, so he'll stay away from there. Poker Gap in the daytime is wide open. What does that leave us?"

"Not much," Ben admitted, scowling. He looked around quickly at the sound of a step and saw Tex Milligan and Shorty Montana. Both were looking at the map sketched in the dirt of the floor.

Shorty dropped to his haunches. "Say, Ben," he asked, "when you were lookin' around Star City, did you go to the High Card Mine?"

"Where's that?"

Shorty indicated on the map. "Deep canyon back in there. If you didn't know she was there, you could sure miss it."

"No," Ben admitted. "I reckon that's one I missed. Water there?"

"Uh-huh. Not very good, but water."

Ben nodded seriously. "Then that could be it. I'm headin' that way." He turned to look at Hopalong. "Want to come along, Cassidy?"

Cassidy shook his head regretfully. "Sorry. I got to get out to the ranch and see Ronson. Anyway," he added, "I've had my trouble with Clarry Jacks. As long as he leaves the R alone, I'll leave him alone, unless he starts something."

Nevertheless, he was worried. Knowing something of the caliber of man Clarry Jacks was, he realized that so long as the man was alive and in the Seven Pines country there would be trouble. It was time he himself moved on. He was restless and wanted to head north for Gibson's spread. There was only a little business with Ronson to hold him now. Yet somehow he hesitated to go, and itching with irritation, he paused on the street and studied it without seeing anything before him.