Valley of the Vanishing Men (3 page)

T
RAINOR
returned to the Wilbur Hotel and went up to his room. His head was aching badly, so he lay down on his cot and closed his eyes and tried to forget the shooting pains that kept stabbing upward from the base of his brain. Presently, as any good cowpuncher will, he fell asleep. When he wakened, the room was filled with the swirling dusk of twilight and there was a heavy knocking at his door. He opened it on the heavy shoulders and the great head of John Mahan.

“Light a lamp,” directed Mahan. “I’ve got some news, and it’s all bad.”

Trainor lighted a lamp on the center table and sat down to smoke a cigarette. The deputy sheriff walked impatiently up and down the room.

“I saw Blacky and I saw him just as he was throwing a leg over a horse, ready to get out of town,” said Mahan. “I made him show me the knife. He swore that he got it from Cleveland’s pawnshop. I made him come with me to the pawnshop. Cleveland is an old gray rat, and nobody can read his mind. When I asked him about the knife, he said it was right — Blacky had seen it in the window and bought it. I asked what the price was, and Blacky answered up out of his turn. He said that he paid only seventy-five cents for that knife, because there was a nick in the pearl. Well, that was straight enough and likely enough, because I could see the nick. Then I asked Cleveland where he got that knife in the first place, but he couldn’t say. All he knew was that he had bought it, one day, along with a lot of other stuff, and he couldn’t remember the looks of the man who had sold it. That closed up that trail — tight.”

Said Trainor, as his head cleared more and more: “Could Blacky have tipped a wink to Cleveland when he came into the shop with you?”

“I think there was something between them,” answered the deputy sheriff. “Not because they looked at each other, but because they
didn’t
look. I never saw their eyes crossing. Now, Trainor, have you any more stuff to tell me?”

“Out of my brother’s canvas coat — he’d left it behind at the hotel — I found a note-book that had some remarks that seemed to tie up a girl and gold.”

“Yeah, lots of girls and gold go together — or the girls don’t go at all,” remarked the other.

Trainor went on steadily: “And in another pocket of the same coat I found a bit of soft black stone. When I broke it open, I could see bits of gold glinting. I took that stone to the assay office. The clerk seemed a bit excited when he saw the specimen. He was so excited that he couldn’t iron all the wrinkles out of his face. After I got out of the office, I saw a red-headed kid from the assayer’s hoofing down the street. I thought it was a little queer that there was a message for the kid to run right out after I’d been in there. I followed and saw him give the letter in at the back door of the Golden Hope saloon. It was taken by a tall, youngish fellow, good-looking, with a pale face, long black coat, and a wide hat.”

“Yates?” exclaimed John Mahan sharply. “You mean Doc Yates?”

“Perhaps that’s his name. I don’t know,” said Trainor.

The deputy sheriff had stopped walking up and down. He stood still, staring out of very wide eyes. There was no doubt that he was a courageous chunk of a man. There was also no doubting that he was very frightened now.

He got out a plug of chewing tobacco, sank his teeth in a gnawed corner of it, and worked out a large bite which he stuck in the center of one cheek. It left a white spot on the outside. Still he rolled his eyes a bit from the window to the door as he began the mastication of that tobacco.

He went to the window, spat into the air, and turned back into the room.

“Listen, hombre,” he said. “When I went to the window, just then, I went into danger. You know why?”

“No,” said Trainor.

“Because there might be one of Yates’s men across the street with a gun. Trainor, I’m here in Alkali trying to do a damned hard job. I’m trimming off the corners and making things hot for a lot of the crooks. But I’ll tell you this: Doc Yates is a bigger man than I am in Alkali. He always has been and he always will be, as long as he wants to own the town. If you’ve got him against you — well, I advise you to roll your pack and get out of here. Get wherever you please, but get!”

“Wait a minute,” pleaded Trainor. “There’s a lot I want to know and — ”

Mahan took him by the arm as he went on:

“The less questions you ask, the more you’re likely to know. Cut me out a regular job, a man-sized job, and I’ll try to do my duty. But don’t ask me to tackle Doc Yates. Not till I’ve got a wiser brain in my head, and more people behind me.”

“Leave Yates out of it, then,” said Trainor. “I told you my brother left this town more than three weeks ago. Is there any way of finding out whether or not Blacky left at the same time?”

“He’s one of Yates’s men. Maybe Yates will tell you,” snapped the deputy sheriff, and left the room suddenly, with a mere wave of the hand by way of farewell.

Trainor washed, shaved, and went down to eat at a lunch counter around the corner. He hardly knew what he put in his mouth, his brain was so troubled, but there was one great and clear certainty. He had come to a place where the law would not follow him with its assistance. Deputy Sheriff Mahan could be counted out of the tangles that might ensue from the stay of Trainor in this town.

He paid his bill, left the smoke of the lunch counter, and stepped onto the street. The Best Bet saloon twinkled its lights at him across the way, and he went into it.

The beer was better here. He was vaguely aware that three men had come in behind him and lined up at the bar, but he paid little heed to them. His mind was too filled with his own problem.

He made a fool of himself from the first. He could see that. In the first place, by taking the ore to the assay office, he had obviously tipped his hand. In the second place, when he recognized the knife of his brother, he had been an idiot to ask direct questions of Blacky. In the third place, by going straight to the deputy sheriff, he had established in the minds of his enemies, whoever they might be, that he was on the trail of his missing brother.

What he had learned was that Doc Yates might be mixed up in this matter somewhere, and that Yates had behind him an organization so powerful that even the appointed officers of the law feared to touch him. All he had gained was the information that Blacky was probably mixed up in the disappearance of Clive Trainor. He could not even be sure of this. The pawnbroker might have told the honest truth about the sale of the knife.

In any case, it was certain that there had been some human agency that had to do with the disappearance of Clive. It was not merely a matter of the devouring desert. Whoever carried that knife to the pawnbroker’s office — if Blacky were telling the truth — was the man that he wanted to see.

Yet Trainor felt certain that the deputy sheriff had given him the best possible advice, which was for him to get out of Alkali as fast as he could, while the getting was still in his power. He played in a game where the cards were stacked against him, where numbers were great odds in favor of the enemy, and where even the law could not assist him.

Yet he knew, as he sipped his beer, that he could not leave the town like a frightened dog. If his brother had been murdered, the same agents would have to put a knife into his own flesh.

He looked up from his reflections as angry voices suddenly began snarling — a typical saloon brawl. Two of the trio who had come in behind him were the trouble makers. One of them was a sad-faced cowpuncher, rather lean and bent of shoulders, the sort of a fellow in whom one could almost see the broken bones of many a fall from bucking horses, with the strength burned from all except his eyes. The other was a magnificent, tall man, a glorious body with a very small head set between the shoulders. He was almost an albino. His hair was silver-white; his brows were the same; his eyes were nearly colorless. It was like looking at the head of a statue. Something human and necessary seemed to be missing from it.

The bartender was reaching across the bar, pleading to the big man:

“Quit it, Josh! Quit it, will you? Dave Cormack didn’t mean anything. He didn’t say anything!”

“You lie!” shouted big Josh. “And he lies!”

“I what?” asked Dave Cormack, drawing back a little from the bar.

There was a sudden trampling and thundering of feet as the dozen other men at the bar rushed back against the opposite wall to get out of the bullet path. But Trainor stood with his beer, stunned, still only half removed from the world of his thoughts.

“Boys, don’t start anything!” yelled the bartender. “Dave, step up here and have a drink on the house. Everybody have a drink. Josh May, have some sense, will you? Dave didn’t mean nothing! He didn’t say nothing!”

“You lie!” said Josh May. There was color in his eyes now. It was the yellow of flame. “Dave Cormack is a dirty sneak and a crooked — ”

“Take this, then!” snarled Cormack softly, and flashed a gun.

There was a weapon in the hand of May, also. But as he pulled it, his flaring eyes found not Cormack, but Trainor in his place a little down the bar. And in the darting of that instant, Trainor understood that this quarrel was only a bluff, a pretense, and out of the roar of the guns would come only one result — the killing of an innocent bystander, whose name would be Benjamin Trainor!

His grip had hardened, at the same time, on the cold round of the beer glass. It was his only weapon. Even if he had a gun, there was not the slightest time for him to make a draw. That flash of May’s eye made him act, and his action was to hurl the beer glass straight into the face of Josh May.

At the same time, his hat jumped off his head. The roar of the Colt thundered in his ears. He saw Josh May go a step backward with a yell of fear, throwing the gun away, clapping both hands to his face.

“Hey!” shouted Cormack. “Who asked strangers into this here man’s fight?”

He swung, as he shouted, straight around toward Trainor. If one of the pair had failed to get the stranger, the other one would do his best. This time, Trainor had nothing but empty hands. He smashed out with all his might and saw the head of Cormack jerk far back. The bullet from his gun drove through the ceiling. The next moment the Colt was in the grasp of Trainor, covering his man.

Josh May, at a little distance, took advantage of the fact that the stranger was not pointing a weapon toward him. He leaped for the rear door of the room, and dived through it into thick obscurity. But Trainor marched Dave Cormack back onto the street while the bartender still loudly begged everybody to be friends, and swore that the house wanted to buy drinks all around.

Out in the street, Trainor pushed Dave Cormack into the black mouth of an alley and against a wall.

“Now, rat-face,” said Trainor, “who was going to pay you for this job?”

“Do I get back the gun if I talk?” asked Cormack.

“Not much.”

“Then you’ll not get anything from me.”

Trainor punched him again on the chin and heard the back of Cormack’s head crack up against the wall. With the palm of his left hand he pushed the gunman back, holding up part of his weight until the wits of Cormack steadied again.

“That’s only a starter,” said Trainor. “There’s nothing that I like better than beating up crooks. It’s the only thing I’m fond of. Are you talking, Cormack? Who was to pay you for this job?”

“I’ll talk, Trainor,” said Cormack, “only give me back that gun afterward. You can unload it and everything. It don’t mean nothing to you — only lemme have it back, will you?”

“I’ve asked you a question,” said Trainor. “Now I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat.”

“All right,” answered Cormack wearily. “I’ll tell you then. Doc Yates was going to pay us.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen hundred bucks.”

“To split three ways?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a lot of money for one man’s killing,” said Trainor. “Why does Doc Yates want me out of the way?”

“I dunno,” said Cormack.

“What marching orders did you get?”

“To bump you off, and then turn your pockets inside out and bring Doc what you’ve got on you.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah, that’s all.”

“I ought to send you down the street to the deputy sheriff’s office, but he’s another rat — afraid to touch Yates. Yates knows it, and you know it. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” agreed Cormack. “I — I wish I’d never seen your mug.”

“Get out of my sight then,” commanded Trainor.

“Wait a minute,” pleaded Cormack desperately. “That old gun doesn’t mean anything to you, brother. I’ve got the price here for you to buy ten better guns. But it’s broke in to my hand. It knows me, and I know it. I know just the amount it shoots crooked. Lemme have that gun, Trainor, will you, like a good fellow?”

Trainor laughed a little.

“If I could, I’d hang you up by the neck,” he said. “The way it is, all I’m going to do is to turn you loose-like the fool I am — and keep your gun.”

Cormack retreated, with a sidling step, to the mouth of the alley. There he turned, and snarled over his shoulder:

“If you have it in the morning, you’ll have it dead!”

Then he vanished.

T
RAINOR
went straight back to the Wilbur Hotel. He only stopped under a ray of light that leaked through a half-opened shutter in order to examine the gun in which Cormack took such an interest. It was a single-shot Colt of an old make. The trigger was gone. The sights were gone. It was to be fired by flicking back the hammer with a touch of the thumb, and the slightest pressure raised that well-oiled, lightly set hammer. No doubt, to Cormack, this weapon represented more than the right hand of his best friend. Without that old instrument of murder, he would feel naked and helpless in this world.

After the examination, Trainor put the weapon into his clothes and went on toward the hotel, stepping lightly, rapidly, turning his head constantly. For he had a feeling that at any moment a form might step out from a doorway with the glimmer of steel in its hand.

When he reached the hotel, the lobby was empty except for Wilbur himself, who rose out of a chair and pointed toward a bundle.

“Trainor,” he said, “there’s no charge for your use of the room. I’ve got to ask you to step on. There’s your bundle made up for you, and everything in it.”

“You’re turning me out of the place?” asked Trainor.

Wilbur shook his head. “It’s no good. I’m sorry, but I can’t keep you,” he declared.

“You, too?” asked Trainor. “You’re afraid of Doc Yates?”

The lips of Wilbur pinched together, but he nodded. Then he said: “Why be a fool, Trainor? You’ve shown plenty of nerve. You’ve made your try, and a large chunk of this town knows about what you’ve done. But why not get out of the place now and try to live out your life? We’re all dead soon enough, anyway.”

Trainor picked up the bundle and slung it over his right shoulder.

“I thought you were a man, Wilbur,” he said, sneering.

“Not that much of a man,” answered the hotel keeper. “In a town like this, there’s only room for one man. You ought to be able to see that by this time.”

Trainor went out to the stable behind the hotel. He went warily to his mustang, saddled and bridled it, fastened the bed roll behind the saddle, as usual. A Mexican or a half-breed was in charge. He had a sick-looking face, without expression in it except a sort of disgust. He merely said to Trainor:

“No bill for you to pay, eh, señor? Eh, and that’s the luck!”

Even the stableman knew that he was picked out for slaughter. But it was apparent that if he chose to ride away from Alkali at this moment, there would be no more trouble. If he stayed there, he was to be dead before morning.

So, as he turned the horse out onto the street, where it broke into a little shamble, trotting meagerly with the forefeet and walking with the hind, he tried to think this thing out to a conclusion. They would start looking for him, before long. As soon as Cormack or Josh May delivered a report, they would begin the search, and then he would be only a few moments from death.

Where would they search for him?

That question drove him straight toward a desperate resolution. They might comb the entire town, but they were not likely to think of searching in the Golden Hope, any more than bees would search for danger in their own hive.

A cold hand gripped his heart when he thought of the peril of entering the place. But, after all, he had to see Doc Yates. He had to try to wring information out of that master mind. And though he told himself that the thing was impossible, and that he was giving himself from the frying pan into the fire, back towards the Golden Hope he turned his horse.

He did not go directly. He found an empty field, and in the field a cluster of little second-growth trees in the center of which he tied his mustang. From that point he turned up the back street, through the alley, and arrived at the rear door of the Golden Hope.

There was not a single light across the broad shoulders of the place, but plenty of light came from the inside. He could distinguish the laughter in the barroom. He could hear the music and the foot shuffling out of the dance hall adjoining, which must by this time be going full blast. To run such a place, Doc Yates must have a score of retainers, in one capacity or another. To break in on that man would be like —

He took hold of the knob of the rear door and pushed it, knowing that it must be locked. Instead, it opened and admitted him readily. He found himself in a narrow hallway, lighted by a smoking lamp that hung from the ceiling and showed the way up a dim twist of stairs.

He followed that twist, he hardly knew why, except that it took him somewhat away from the noise of the crowd. Upstairs, in the hall of the second floor, he was half-way along the ragged matting before he heard voices of men mounting behind him. One fellow laughed, and the laughter went through Trainor. What refuge? Well, there was the first door at hand. He turned the knob of it and stepped through into thick darkness.

He had a queer feeling that there had been light in the room as he started to push the door open, and that it had been extinguished suddenly, but no doubt this sprang from his having come out of the light, however obscure, in the hallway.

In the meantime, he heard the men walking down the hall outside. Sometimes their shoulders struck against the wall on either side and brought out booming, drum-like sounds. He heard their voices go by, diminishing. In another instant he could get out of this hole of darkness.

And that was when a gesture out of the darkness freed a burst of light that showed him a bedroom, a litter of women’s clothes on a chair, and in the corner, in front of a dressing table with a little mirror and a lamp on it, stood a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl in a rose-colored dress. In one hand she held the cloth which she had just snatched from over the lamp. In the other hand was a revolver with its round, empty mouth pointed steadily at Trainor.

“Hello, handsome,” said the girl. “What dragged you in here?”

She was one of the furnishings of the dance hall, no doubt. She had under-shadowed her eyes with a penciling too heavy, and she had made up her lips with wide, heavy strokes of red that blurred and overran at the corners, so that it looked as though she had been drinking wine carelessly, never wiping her mouth. The same carelessness was in her eyes She could sneer or smile with equal ease, and she was sneering now.

“I got into the wrong room,” said Trainor.

“Lemme put you right, brother, will you?” said the girl. “Hoist your hands and turn your face to the wall, you thief, and I’ll start in putting you right! You’re the dirty sneak that gets into the rooms of us girls, are you, and swipes everything you can lay your hands on? Hoist those hands, or I’ll split your wishbone right in two.”

He looked at her curiously. It was strange that he was not afraid, but he had come to this place with the expectation of a danger so much more vast in his mind’s eye, that the sight of a girl could not move him a great deal, no matter how much bright savagery appeared in her eyes, no matter how masterfully she held the gun.

“You hear me?” she said. “You poor dummy, don’t you think that I mean what I say?”

She came a couple of quick little gliding steps toward him, soft steps that would not disturb her aim at any moment.

“I hear you,” said Trainor, almost drowsily. “I suppose you mean what you say.”

“Then get your hands up,” she commanded.

He shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he declared.

And then she squinted at him as she added: “What sort of an hombre are you, anyway? What are you doing in here?”

He could not think of anything except the truth. “There were some men behind me. I had to duck out of the way. This door was the closest, so I came in.”

“Hi!” exclaimed the girl in a whisper. “You’re one of the rummies that have been trimmed in the gambling rooms. Or they rolled you at the bar and cleaned you out. Is that it?”

“No,” said Trainor. He smiled, when he thought of the immensity of difference in gravity between his motive and a mere loss of money.

“Come on, come on,” she commanded patiently. “Wake up and talk, will you?”

“Well, I came here to see Yates,” he said. He cursed the tongue that had spoken. But — well, after all, it made no difference. The girl would screech; in a moment armed men would come running. And then — why, he was so close to the finish that nothing mattered very much.

“Yates? You came sneaking here to see Doc?” she asked. “Wait a minute. You came here to see Doc, right in his own joint?”

“You see,” said Trainor, with the same frankness, “Alkali Valley is the place of vanishing men. My brother was one of the fellows who disappeared. Maybe Doc Yates knows something about it.”

“What do you know about that?” said the girl. “Right in here, where the lions are fed, too! Brother, have you ever been in this dump before?”

“I came into the saloon today,” said Trainor. “That’s all.”

“See anything?”

“A man with my brother’s pocket knife. I asked about it. We had a mix-up. He knocked me silly and threw me into the street.”

“That’s the red lump on the jaw, eh?” asked the girl.

“That’s the one.”

“You tell it straight, too,” said the girl. “I heard the yarn this evening. You don’t put any frills on it. Listen. Are you straight?”

“I don’t know. I’m average, I hope.”

“D’you know that I nearly pulled the trigger a minute ago?”

“I saw your knuckles get whiter,” he agreed.

“Why didn’t you shove up your hands, then?”

“I thought,” said Trainor, “that I was close to the finish, anyway. As soon as you yelped, the men would come on the run, and then — ” He made a wide gesture toward the window. “I wouldn’t have time to get through,” he said, and smiled a little.

A hand knocked on the door, a moment later.

The girl gasped, glanced from the door to Trainor, and then pointed to a quantity of dresses that hung partially revealed behind a curtain that hung from the ceiling. It was the best the room had to offer by way of a closet.

It was folly, Trainor thought, to accept the invitation, but it was better to do that than to stand there and let the unknown walk in on him. He slipped in among crinkling, whispering silks. A wave of sweet lavender filled his nostrils.

“Well?” called the girl, as the knock was repeated.

The door was pushed half open.

“I’m coming in,” said a man’s voice.

“Sure, Doc,” said she. “Come on in, will you?”