Ed Brack had found a new interest in life. The great idea had stimulated him. He didn’t drink so much. The world around him assumed fresh color. He was seen to smile and was even heard to laugh with his men. He looked younger and there was a new spring in his step. By fall, the Storms would be finished, run out of the country, driven out by a force which Brack could never have raised on his lonesome. Every time the man thought about it, he had to laugh and slap his thigh with delight. There never had been, he felt assured, a man quite like him. Which perhaps was just as well for the world.
It took longer to find Jake Heller than Andy Grebb had anticipated. Grebb couldn’t go about the search openly out of respect for Brack’s insistence on secrecy. So he had to do the job obliquely with a word here and a word there. It wasn’t easy because Jake was thought to be panning for gold somewhere in the mighty expanse of the mountains and he wasn’t doing anything of the kind. He was finally run to earth in a little settlement in Utah which boasted three houses, two stores and three saloons. He was in one of the saloons on a titanic drunk to drown his sorrow aroused by the fact that he had failed to find gold in a creek where he had been certain of finding his fortune. He had boasted that inside a few months he would be staying at the best hotel in San Francisco fattening on the rich cream that city had to offer. Instead of which he was found lying drunk in a hole sneeringly called Paradise in the wilds of Utah.
When he had been sobered with some difficulty and packed on the back of his mule with even greater difficulty, he was brought back to Grebb’s place. He was in poor shape and, in spite of the hard trip through the mountains, still had the marks of drink on him and shook like the leaves of an aspen. Only the promise of a rich reward had enticed him this far. Even so he was resentful of the interruption to his self-inflicted suffering. He sat in Grebb’s office, smelling to high heaven, dressed in rags, eyes rheumy, and told Grebb: ‘Andy, you took a liberty. You know that? You took a real liberty with me an’ you owe me a pretty convincin’ argument to stop me bein’ real mad at you?’
Grebb gave him a large dose of bad whiskey which he tossed off like so much spring water. Grebb said: ‘I have the best argument of all—gold.’
At the word gold, Heller sat up and took notice. It was an open sesame to his mind and imagination. It was the only thing in life that could bring him to any sort of consciousness and understanding.
‘You found gold?’ he demanded and for a moment it seemed he stopped shaking.
‘No, I didn’t. But I found a man willing to stake you good. You could hunt gold for a coupla years with every damn thing you need.’
‘What do I have to do? Work?’ He said the last word with an underlining of distaste and horror that was touching.
‘You have to talk a good story.’
There had to be a catch in it. Jake looked suspicious.
‘Do I break the law?’
‘You just tell a good story.’
‘Let me hear the rest of it.’
‘That’s all I’m tellin’ you. I’ll fix for you to meet up with the feller financin’ this deal. You stick around here, get yourself in good shape. Eat three square meals a day an’ fool around with the girls a mite. It’s on the house.’
Grebb would tell him no more and Heller knew better than to press the point. The promise of food and women was good enough for him. He was a man who lived from day to day. Grebb sent word to Ed Brack and Brack sent back the details of the way in which he and the gold-hunter should meet. A week after he had reached Grebb’s place and when he had filled out a little on the good food, one fine night, Jake Heller saddled his mule and rode east. He knew this country like the back of his hand, had, in fact, hunted gold in this area before the white man had come in here with his damned cows and when a man hunted gold at the risk of losing his hair to the Ute, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho.
The place set for the meeting was Standing Rock and Jake, having the animal cunning to survive in these hills for a good many years, left his horse a fair distance short of the rendezvous and went to the spot with a show of caution.
The man he met didn’t need to resort to such action. He was in the company of armed men. There were four there all told and they sat around smoking and talking under the massive prominence of the rock and they didn’t trouble to keep their voices down.
From cover, Jake considered the situation, estimated some risk could be taken for the sake of the stake promised him and walked into the open with his rifle in the crook of his arm. Jake was no slouch with that weapon and he reckoned he could get it into action faster than any man could pull a belt-gun from leather. He stopped short of the group by some twenty yards and sang out.
That was the first they saw of him. He thought they were either an incautious crowd or they were confident of their strength.
A man rose from the group and said: ‘Stay right where you’re at.’ This fellow walked toward Jake and the gold-hunter saw that he was a powerful short-legged man.
The man didn’t come up to Jake and stop, but walked on past him, saying: ‘Follow me.’
Jake was instantly on his guard. Suspicious and with his nerves strung taut, he followed the man. He was comforted slightly by the fact that the fellow walked with his back to him. When they were out of sight and sound of the other men, the short-legged man stopped and turned.
‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.
‘Jake Heller.’
‘Who sent you?’
‘My kin—Andy Grebb.’
‘Where’d he find you?’
‘Paradise, Utah.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘I don’t have an idee in Hell. Say, what is this?’
‘This is a business deal. I’m Ed Brack. You heard of me?’
Had Jake ever heard of him? Had he heard of President Lincoln or Kit Carson?
‘Sure I heard of you. Who ain’t? But how do I know you’re Brack?’
‘Ask Grebb. Now I told you my name, Heller. I won’t fool around. Cards on the table, face upwards. You know my name. So you’re in this from this minute. You cross me and you buy yourself all the trouble you ever heard of. Understand? I’m hiring you and when I hire a man, he stays hired or he stays dead.’
This was a little too much for Jake. He had been his own man for too many years. He thought about the stake at the end of this, but his independence forced him to say: ‘I ain’t never been no hired man in all my life. You have to give me a pretty good reason why I should start now.’
Brack said: ‘I’ll give you a good reason. The best there is. One thousand solid dollars’ worth of reason.’
Jake reeled a little, overcome by the magnitude of the sum, estimating at once how long that would support him while he hunted for gold, the kind of outfit he could buy himself. But there must be some snag in this. A man could earn that kind of money after a meeting like this in the moonlight in a lonely spot only by doing something pretty appalling—like killing a man.
‘What do I have to do?’ he asked.
Brack produced several objects from the pocket of his jacket. One, he put into Jake’s hand. It was rough, heavy and some of its many edges were sharply angled. It glinted softly in the moonlight.
Jake would have known it to be a nugget of gold just by touch.
‘Good Godfrey,’ he said, ‘where’d you git this ’un?’
‘No matter.’
Brack now handed Jake two more objects. They were pokes which were soft to the touch as if full of fine sand.
‘Gold?’ he asked and Brack nodded.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘And this is what I want you to do.’
He talked. He talked for some ten minutes without stopping. And Jake listened. He had never listened more carefully in his life. When Brack was through talking, Jake asked: ‘When do I git paid?’
‘I give you two hundred now. Eight hundred when I think you did your job well.’
‘Make it five hunnerd now and the same when I’m done.’
‘I don’t dicker, Heller,’
‘I allus dicker. Brack. Part of my nature.’
‘Change your nature. We won’t go into the alternative right now, it might spoil a good working relationship.’
Jake thought about that. He knew a threat when he saw one. He also knew when a man could carry one out. Brack was a man who didn’t bluff.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
Brack finished: ‘Just bear in mind—I have agents in Denver. You’ll stick with your bargain or you won’t ever leave the city.’
He reached into a pocket again and brought out a bundle of notes.
‘You’ll find two hundred dollars there. You don’t contact me unless there’s a real emergency. You never saw me in your life. Word of this deal gets out and you lose eight hundred dollars and maybe you lose more than that.’
Jake understood.
‘Brack,’ he said, ‘you got yourself a deal. I don’t know why the Hell you’re a-doin’ this, but one thousand dollars sure do drown a man’s curiosity.’
Brack said: ‘I’m glad to hear it. For your sake.’
Jake Heller walked off to his mule, somewhat bemused and hugging himself with a kind of ecstatic delight. All his troubles were over. With this stake, he would find gold and finding gold was the only thing worth living for.