TOO LATE TO take part, Montana glimpsed the tableau, with no trouble in understanding. In the gloom, Lefty Hoag had mistaken his intended victim, lured by the white hat and its brief change of wearers. If Partridge was not already dead, he was certainly unconscious and would quickly drown.
The killer, satisfied with what he had accomplished, was gone in the night. There was nothing to see when Abbott reached the creek bank. The waters below flowed dark but unbroken. Partridge had gone down, and to find him would be a chancy job, in which luck must play as big a part as effort. There was no time to waste in looking around, either above or below the surface.
Montana hit the water in a clean dive. It closed over him with a chill warning that winter was almost at hand. Leaves on trees and brush were frost twisted, ice filmed the fringes of ponds at higher elevations.
There was no light to serve, nothing to go by except what his hands might find. The first moments of exploration revealed an added hazard.
For years on end, the creek flow had been bitter and turgid, its waters made the receptacle for all the pollution of the camp, by the men who scrambled for gold along its banks. As pressure and population both eased, it was returning almost to a clear flow, so that the sun, sparkling through, glinted on rusted and dented tin cans, broken bottles, wastes ugly and lethal.
At this hour there was neither sun nor moon, only the hazards, natural and man-made, which could trap and hold a helpless or unwary victim. A thin layer of sand and mud had overlain the yielding mass, concealing the mire.
Flailing about, Montana’s hand encountered a bit of cloth, then his fingers closed on an arm. It yielded slightly at his pull, but weight or hold more stubborn than the body alone anchored the other man. Twisting about, Montana planted his feet on the swaying bottom, securing a grip with both hands, and heaved upward. Something came loose, and lifting was easy with the buoyancy of the water, but Abbott’s right foot drove deeper, the muck closing, clinging.
He was upright now, but the water was deep, the surface above his head. He jerked desperately, and one foot loosened, while the other sank deeper.
If he used both hands for swimming, relinquishing his hold on Partridge, he might be able to tear himself free. But holding fast to a dead weight left him anchored, without purchase.
A stubbornness of spirit rebelled. To save his own life by sacrificing another’s would be bitter victory. He tore in a springing double kick, knowing relief as his legs tore loose, the thrust propelling him upward. He drank in air as his head cleared the water, then, holding his limp burden, floundered to shallow water. Staggering and more nearly spent than he cared to think about, he collapsed to his knees, sprawling half on the bank, half in the creek.
Panting like a wind-broke horse at the end of a long run, he rested, then heaved Partridge on to the bank and fell half across him. Fear, murky as the depths of the pool, plagued him.
Then he relaxed as his hand, thrust inside a soggy shirt, detected the throb of a heart. Its beat was faint and uneven; for a second time Lefty Hoag had not quite pulled it off.
In a sense, Hoag had probably defeated his own purpose. The vicious blow of the bung-starter, crashing down, had been intended to kill, but in the long run it might well have saved Partridge’s life. Knocked cold, completely unconscious, he had lain inert, like a dead man.
Anything short of such totality would have meant breathing in water and drowning.
His strength returning with air, Montana worked over him, and presently Partridge showed signs of reviving. The big hat, along with a thick mat of hair, had been cushion enough to prevent a broken skull. Presently he gasped, gagged, then managed to sit erect and blink about uncertainly.
“What happened?” he asked, recognizing Montana. “I was starting back for my room—”
“Somebody sneaked up behind and knocked you over the head and into the creek. I saw you go down, and got you out.”
Raising a hand, Partridge cautiously explored a very tender bump on his cranium.
“Feels about like a boil,” he observed. “But why would anybody do that? If they wanted money, they wouldn’t dump me in the drink. And I’m not important to anybody, dead or alive.”
“My guess is that the fellow mistook you for me, in the dark. Remember how you put on my hat by mistake, just before that? We traded back, but he must have missed that, and being white, it showed up well. The way it works out, you probably saved my life.”
“Well, you saved me,” Partridge acknowledged. “So that makes us even. And I’m certainly grateful. But if you’re right about this, it’s an unhealthy climate for you.”
“I seem to be lucky, like having others to take such strikes for me,” Montana shrugged. He was no stranger to danger, and across the years he had acquired a sort of fatalism. Soldiers in a war, who lived long enough to become veterans, came sooner or later to that attitude, as did old-timers on the frontier. Brushes with death could be shrugged aside. Until a man’s number was up, what had he to fear?
Not quite a fatalist, Montana did not regard peril quite so indifferently. Caution and alertness could spell the necessary difference between life and death, and he tried to exercise them.
On the other hand, there was no profit in worrying about what was past, just as it was foolish to fret as to what the future might hold. Yesterday was past, and tomorrow never came. It was today in which you lived.
Or, perchance, died.
In that event, a man’s worries were over and done with. Abbott got to his feet, assisting Partridge.
“Think you can make it back to your room? The sooner we get out of these wet clothes, the better.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll be fine.” Partridge was shivering. He moved unsteadily, but with Montana’s assistance, reached and recrossed the foot bridge, climbing to the main street. It seemed part of a ghost town.
Back at the Fairweather Inn, Montana made his way through a deserted lobby and up the stairs.
Ham Eggers had breakfasted well. The report which he had received, just short of dropping off to sleep, had put a satisfactory climax to an otherwise unpleasant day. There had been a rapping on the window pane, increasing in tempo and impatience, until Eggers had opened it and received Hoag’s report.
“I’ll take that money you promised me,” Lefty reminded. “And you can sleep easy, so far as Abbott’s concerned. He won’t trouble neither of us no more.”
An ordinary man might have found such news disquieting rather than sleep-inducing. Eggers prided himself that he was not like such lesser breeds. He settled for the moment with a gold eagle, promising the remainder of the fee the following day.
It was as he breakfasted that he became aware that the town hummed and buzzed with speculation. The more or less impromptu and informal caucus of the Democratic members the previous evening was already common knowledge, in particular as regarded the suggestions made by Montana Abbott. Absorbing the details, Eggers had a moment of uncertainty, bordering on regret. Had he, even with the best of intentions, killed a possible egg-laying goose, one with golden possibilities?
The consensus of opinion was that Montana Abbott might be the instrument to move the abortive session off dead-center, to get at least some results.
Then he was reassured. After all, the ideas had been presented, a possible solution which someone else might carry forward. Especially if nudged into action.
Eggers was comfortably complacent in the belief that he knew how to manage. There were other tools to his hand—men of high degree or low, it made no particular difference. His plans, nebulous in part until now, were shaping, clarifying.
The prevailing climate here at the capital appeared favorable. With Montana to manage his end, however unwittingly, it would have been all but perfect. Even without him, this was too good an opportunity to pass up. As he had planned now for weeks, it should spell, if not affluence, at least a comfortable meal-ticket, over a considerable period of time.
Once he’d pulled it off, remaining carefully in the background at all times, he’d have nothing more to fear. It would be more comfortable to operate under the cloak of the law—even in what amounted to highway robbery—than to rob as a highwayman.
The necessary tools were at hand. He was the only man with the idea, and the knowledge of how to use the tools. The bitter stalemate between a governor of one party and a legislature of the opposite persuasion presented the opportunity. Ill-feeling, festering for weeks, was mounting to active hatred.
Also, and important to his plan, there were the fun-loving members of the capital set—the social set, Eggers reflected contemptuously. Friends of Ashley and others with influence.
A part of his plan had come almost readymade as he had scouted the new road across the mountains and the canyons and side gulches along the foot of the pass.
Others had been before him, prospectors and miners, hunting treasure which clearly they had failed to find. Scarcely two miles back from the road, but so hidden among the hills that he had found it by sheerest chance, was precisely what he needed: little more, in common parlance, than a prospect hole.
The miner who had worked so hard there for probably a space of weeks, only to be hopelessly frustrated by an unforeseen hindrance, might well be dead. Even if alive, it was certain that he would never return to so abortive an adventure.
For a time, the pieces had danced in Eggers’ mind like sections of a jigsaw puzzle. Now they were falling into place. With Montana Abbott for an unwitting aid, success would virtually have been assured. But lacking him, Eggers would find a way.
Yet Montana would have been the perfect one to manage, to bring about a compromise and at least a few results. Eggers was suddenly, unreasonably angry with Lefty Hoag. Except for his murderous bent, everything would be set.
That he had hired the gunman for that chore, Eggers chose not to think about.
He was paying his bill when Abbott came into the restaurant, along with some of his newfound legislative friends.
Eggers stared, disbelieving. Then he got himself out and into the open air, sucking in deep breaths, elated with a surging relief. Either Hoag had lied, or he’d been mistaken; it did not much matter which. Montana Abbott was alive, showing no signs of any untoward experience of the night.
That he at least suspected Eggers of being implicated in the attempted robbery at the top of the pass, the bad egg dismissed lightly. A day had passed, and Abbott had taken no action, as indeed he could not, having merely suspicion but no proof.
In the long run, Abbott might be a danger, and that was an account still to be settled. But not until he had collected dividends.
Moving with head down, Eggers checked, almost running against Lefty Hoag.
Not surprisingly, the outlaw was drunk. But again as usual, he seemed to grow more efficient and deadly as his consumption of liquor increased. At the moment he was half-eager, partly aggrieved.
“I’ve been lookin’ for you,” he said. “I want the rest of what I got comin’. You know.”
“Maybe you’ll have a chance to earn more than that,” Eggers returned. “For now, you’ve been paid more than you earned. Dead, is he? Look in the restaurant there. He’s eating his breakfast.”
Hoag blinked as he passed on. Not until he saw Montana emerge from the restaurant and head down the street did Hoag step from the concealment of a convenient alley. His twisting lips mouthed an uncertain doubt; almost he wondered if he might be drinking too much.
“I’ve killed him twice—with a bullet, then a bung-starter, and drowndin’ both times. Deader’n a door nail every time. Damned if he ain’t worse’n a cat with nine lives.”