THE HARDCASE CALLED Bill finished eating his beans and went out in the snow to wash his plate. Young Tom came out and put snow on his face, rubbing it in, and said, “I don’t feel right, Bill. Holliday’s got a crazy streak in him somewhere. I don’t like the way he looks at people—I don’t like the way he looks at me.”
Bill sat back on the sloping bank and looked across the moon-glistening dunes of snow. “Jack’s a little kill-crazy. Keep out of his way and you’ll be all right. Just don’t irritate him none.”
Young Tom said, “He’s turned meaner than he used to be. I don’t like the smell in this camp lately. Thinkin’ of pullin’ stakes. You want to come with me?”
Bill shook his head. “You go ahead. Don’t look for trouble from me. But get out easy—and do it when Jack and Menendez ain’t around. Don’t try to take any of the gold if you pull out before we all do.”
Bill stood up and batted his hands together against the mountain cold. He was thirty years old, thirteen years bad; he had ridden with Jack Holliday longer than any of them, longer even than the evil Menendez. He said, “You’re still a kid, Tom. Find yourself a girl and settle down and raise a crop of corn and a crop of kids. You ain’t hard enough for this kind of trail.”
Young Tom dragged his fingers through the snow, his face heavy with thought. “I don’t want to leave without my cut.”
“Don’t push your luck, kid.”
Tom stood up. “I don’t know,” he said, and went back to the cabin.
Menendez was sprawled on his cot reading a dime novel by the light of a lamp. The stove put a soporific warmth into the room. Bill came in and broke out a deck of cards and began to lay out a game of solitaire. Tom sat with his chair tipped back against the log wall, chewing on a straw. Menendez put his magazine down and said, “What the hell you lookin’ at?”
“Not at you.”
“Ain’t you got nothin’ to do?”
“No.”
“Quit lookin’ at me,” Menendez said.
“I wasn’t looking at you.”
Bill said irritably, “For Christ’s sake lay off him, Menendez.”
“Jesus,” Menendez said, giving it the Spanish pronunciation. He sat up and rolled a brown-paper cigarette together. He had a flint-steel mechanism which he used to send a spark into a slow-match fuse; he put the red sputtering end of the fuse to his cigarette, got it going, and pinched out the fuse. After this elaborate ceremony he looked at young Tom again and said, “Kid, you watch your Goddamn step.”
“Sure,” Tom said uninterestedly.
Jack Holliday put his head in the door; he had his hat bound down over his ears with a bandanna and his sheepskin coat was buckled up. “I’m goin’ down to Washington Camp. Figure to pick up a few jugs at Maldonado’s. Anybody need anything?”
“Tobacco,” said Menendez.
“All right,” Holliday said, and withdrew. In a little while they heard the tramp of his horse going away.
Menendez batted ashes out of his beard and lay back to read.
In time, with quiet cursing, the three men made ready for sleep. Menendez blew out the lamp. Young Tom lay on top of his blanket, fully clothed except for his boots, and stared upward into the darkness.
He was still like that, wide-awake, hours later when the other two were both snoring. A sudden decision sat him bolt upright. He reached down carefully for his boots and tugged them on; he got up, moving slowly and soundlessly, and took his coat, hat, and gunbelt down from the wall peg.
Outside, he put them on, and went on his toes to the corral. He had a difficult time catching his horse without making noise; finally he tied it up to the rail and put on saddle and bridle. The night was cold enough to stiffen his gloved fingers and make it a difficult job.
He rode down the slope, through heavy timber, to a patch of boulders. Dismounting carefully, he pushed aside a screen of brush and reached under the overhang of a rock. He took the first sack his hand fell on—it weighed around thirty pounds. He poured half the gold-dust into his left-hand saddlebag and put the depleted sack into the other saddlebag, mounted and rode away, after replacing the covering of brush.
He had gold in his saddlebags; he would ride to Benson and sell his horse and saddle, and buy a ticket to Texas.
Preoccupied, he did not notice until too late: Holliday was riding up the trail toward him. Tom lifted his reins, then stayed his hand. Holliday stopped within a few yards. “Where you going, Tom?”
“I’m pullin, out,” said Tom, chilled down his back. “Makes one less to split the loot with.” He scrutinized Holliday’s face and repeated weakly, “I’m ridin’ out.”
Holliday said, “Sure, kid,” and thumbed his hat back. He pulled his horse off the trail and let Tom ride past. Tom gigged his horse and said, “So long, Jack,” and rode on down the trail.
Holliday let him get fifteen yards down the path; Holliday said softly, “So long, kid.” He pulled his gun and shot Tom from the saddle.
The night was dark and oppressive. Phil Mercy saw only one thing to do: get out, find another place and another game. He tramped the hills in torment, and finally set out toward town. He climbed to the hilltop and crept over to the eastern slope and descended quietly to the creek.
“Who’s that—who’s that?”
Mercy pulled up short, catching his breath.
“Who’s that, damn it?”
He recognized the voice of Wheelwright, the blacksmith; he remembered that Wheelwright lived down here in the groves of the bottoms. “Phil Mercy,” he said. “That you, Wheelwright?”
“Yeah,” said the big man, and appeared some distance away in the shadows. “Not a night for wandering. What you doing down here?”
“Looking for formations,” Mercy lied. “It was a wild goose chase.” He asked himself immediately why he hadn’t told the truth.
Wheelwright came closer; Mercy could see the curiosity in his look. “At this time of night?”
“I’ve been out since noon. Been planning to pack up and go east tomorrow—this was a last try. I’ve made no money here, so there’s no reason to stay.”
Wheelwright nodded, accepting it. “Sorry I jumped you,” he said, and trudged away. Mercy shuddered and went on up toward town, his heart racing. He skirted the town proper and went into the stable, climbed into the loft and made a bed in the hay.
In the morning he awakened and kicked the hay off himself. He saw when he came outside that the sun was well up—nine o’clock or after, he guessed. He had breakfast, not hungry, but knowing he had to eat; he drank a pot of strong black coffee and wandered the town. He bought two candles for no reason and put them in his pocket, and just after noon he found himself in the California saloon. He fought down the urge to buy a drink and took instead a cigar; smoking, he braced his elbows on the bar and stared morosely into its polished surface that had no bottom. The afternoon crowd began to swell. Sounds and smells filled his senses—saloon odors, the rataplan of horses outside, conversation and laughter. The bartender drifted down toward him and inquired, “How about a drink, friend?”
Mercy shook his head. Matthew Ruarke came out of his office and walked along the bar. Seeing Mercy, he said, “Good afternoon,” in a tone of exact courtesy. Mercy looked at him blankly. Ruarke showed him a hooded expression and disappeared through the door; it made Mercy remember the fate of Jacob Boone and Stacy Donovan. The bartender came back and wiped glasses with a towel, making conversation: “Hear about the vigilantes?”
Mercy shook his head. The barkeep said, “They’ve organized to run the undesirables out of town. I hear there was some argument at first, one or two of them walked out. But they came around to deciding to clamp down. They figure if they run all the bad ones out, they’re bound to shoo out the payload outlaws in the process.”
“That so?” Mercy said casually; but it chilled him inside. If the vigilantes were out in the open, it meant they must be ready to move. He turned right away from the bar and walked up to Calhoun’s Hilltop saloon. For a moment he thought Calhoun wasn’t in the place, but then he saw the tall man having a beer at the back of the bar, his eyes playing over the crowd. Mercy went to him and said, “Can we get a table, Sam? I want to talk to you.”
“How about my office?”
“Fine—fine.” He followed Calhoun to the office and shut the door. The room was makeshift—all it had was a couple of straight chairs, a small stove, a plank-on-sawhorse table and a few packing-boxes that seemed to serve as filing drawers for receipts and orders.
Calhoun was looking at him expectantly, faintly curious, faintly disturbed. Mercy said, “I hear the vigilantes are going to run all the undesirables out of town.”
“So I understand.”
“You run with that bunch, don’t you?”
“I walked out on them,” Calhoun said. “Maybe that’s what put backbone in them. They made the decision afterward.”
Mercy put a careful glance on him and then said, “Pay attention to this, Sam. The night O’Hara’s stage was held up, I was in the express office. Goodfellow consigned the ore-shipment to the stage line and as soon as he left, one of the stage-line hands went over to the California. A fellow called Thorpe. He talked to Ruarke and Ruarke sent Leroy out of town on a horse. That mean anything to you?”
“It may.”
“Ruarke is the head man. He had some kind of partnership with Stacy Donovan. Jacob Boone was in it too, but he got itchy fingers I think—I heard him complaining to Donovan one night before he was killed. Jack Holliday has a bunch of three or four men in the hills, working for Ruarke—I think Thorpe must be the contact between them. The gold is with Holliday.”
“None of this is new, Phil.”
“You don’t get this,” Mercy said. “You may have guessed something, Sam, but I’m giving you facts.”
“Nothing more substantial than I had before. Why did you come to me with this, Phil?”
Mercy looked down. Misery tautened his face. “Maybe I’m just trying to do penance,” he muttered. “You make it damned hard, Sam. I just thought you might be able to use the information. I’m clearing out of here.”
Goodfellow said, “It was your play from the start, Sam. It took some of them a while to come around, that’s all. When we talked Harry Scott around, the others fell in behind us. We’re ready to move now, and I don’t think there’s any question who’s to handle it. We’re all behind you.”
“All right,” Calhoun said, and added abruptly, “We do it my way or not at all, Price. Understood?”
“Yes,” Goodfellow said flatly.
The two men turned out onto Goodfellow’s porch. Catherine came after them; her hand was lifted and formed into a loose fist. She showed pride, anger, confusion; she stood before Calhoun, her head thrown back, and he saw that she was near the weakness of tears. It was nothing she did; it was just a feeling that moved from her to him. It made him say a strange thing:
“I’ll be back when this is over.”
“Take care,” she said. She wore a fresh dress; it showed her shoulders and arms, it lay round against her breasts. She touched him with her hand, and immediately he remembered a good many things—night camps along the Gila, trekking through the desert.
She came a little nearer; her words were not so certain. “Will this finish it?”
“Nothing ever finishes,” he said.
She was somber and still. Her lips were even, composed; but listening to the run of his voice she seemed to hear those feelings that he could not quite hold in; that hint got the best of her and at last she said, quick and broken, “Sam, why do we have to—”
Her father was watching, baffled. Catherine shook her head and rammed back into the house. Goodfellow went down the steps and turned; Calhoun had not moved. Goodfellow said, “What was that all about?”
Calhoun said, “When I’m sure I’ll let you know.” He smiled slightly. Goodfellow was at the foot of the steps, waiting for him, and they went into town together. Calhoun saw Shelby Long across the street and signaled to him; Long came over and the three of them went abreast into the Palace. Calhoun walked to the bar, thrusting men deliberately out of his path, and put his hands flat on the bar, saying to the bartender, “Where’s Ruarke?”
The bartender became nervous. “I dunno,” he said.
Calhoun walked back to the office door with Shelby Long. Goodfellow hung back a moment; he said to the bartender, “You stick right here. Keep quiet and keep your hands where we can see them.” He leaned over the bar and tapped the man’s wrist. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Sure. Sure, Mr. Goodfellow.” The barkeep nodded vigorously, not understanding all this, but afraid. Goodfellow turned to go back, but Calhoun and Long were returning.
“Not there,” Calhoun said. “We’ll try the California and then the Canyon Paradise and then his house.” But when they got out of the saloon and turned down-gulch, Calhoun thought of an improvement on the plan; he said:
“No. We’ll get Thorpe first. He may tell us where to find Holliday’s hideout.”
Seeing the three men marching abreast, looking determined, a couple of men crossed the street from the café. Both of them had been at the vigilante meeting last night. Without losing stride, Calhoun said, “You two round up Wheelwright and some others, and start scouting for Leroy Hamlin and Matthew Ruarke. Travel in bunches—both of them are tough enough to fight their way out of a box if they see half a chance.”
The two men acknowledged these instructions and fell away, turning up a side avenue. Calhoun went on down toward the express office, trailed by Shelby Long and Goodfellow, who wore a troubled frown.
The Irishman O’Hara, who was head hostler, was out in front of the office. O’Hara grinned broadly at Shelby Long. “Come to horse-trade me out of another wagon, you Goddamn skinflint?”
“We’re on serious business today, O’Hara,” said Long. “Thorpe around?”
“Ought to be pitching hay out back about now. Why?”
“We want him,” said Price Goodfellow.
O’Hara’s eyes widened and he took a quick step backward. The three men walked around the express building and found a tall man with a strangely soft, round face, heaving hay into the loft. Goodfellow stood in the barn door with his head thrown back and Calhoun, going into the barn, said, “Come down, Thorpe.”
Thorpe’s glance traveled from one to another, hardening with slow comprehension. He wore a gun but did not try for it. He put his pitchfork down gently and walked to the ladder, and came down backwards. When he reached the ground he turned slowly on his heels. He said in a smooth and oddly cultivated voice, “What can I do for you?”
Goodfellow said, “It’s up, Thorpe. We know about you. You and Ruarke and Jack Holliday.”
Thorpe’s face showed no surprise. His mask was calm. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t really expect we’d get away with it.”
Shelby Long said to Calhoun, “He’s cool enough. Something wrong here.” Long had his hand on his gun butt. He eased back into the shadows of the barn.
“It’s all right,” Calhoun said to him, and swung his attention back to Thorpe.
Goodfellow was saying, “Why’d you do it then?”
Thorpe said, “I’m a gambler. The stakes were high enough. It’s been an interesting game.”
“While it lasted,” said Shelby Long.
Calhoun said, “We want just one thing from you, Thorpe. Where is Jack Holliday?”
Thorpe shook his head and smiled lightly.
Goodfellow put his hand on his gun; Calhoun stepped forward and lifted Thorpe’s revolver from the holster. Reversing it in his fist, he cocked it and trained it on Thorpe. He said, “You’ll hang anyway.”
“And if I talk?”
“It depends.”
“That’s not good enough,” Thorpe said, maintaining his composure.
“He’s small potatoes,” said Goodfellow. “We can—”
“I’m running this,” Calhoun said, cutting him off. “How about it, Thorpe?”
“I hang if I talk and I hang if I don’t talk. That it?”
“Maybe.”
“Make it definite,” Thorpe said.
“Yes,” Calhoun answered. His eyes were level; a muscle rippled at his jaw.
“Then I’ve no reason to talk,” Thorpe said. He smiled. “If a man lives by crooks he may as well die by them.”
Goodfellow said, “Wait a minute, Sam. He’ll tell us what we want to know. We can afford to let him loose—he’ll never come back into this country.”
“No,” Calhoun said. “Turn him loose and he’ll ride to warn Holliday.”
“Then tie him up until we’ve finished—and let him go afterward.”
Calhoun turned on him. “Price, the man’s a crook. Either we hang the crooks or we don’t. Which is it to be? I’m running this and I want no more argument.”
That was when Wheelwright walked into the stable with half a dozen vigilantes. “No sign of Leroy,” Wheelwright said. “And no sign of Ruarke. News travels fast around here. I wouldn’t doubt they got the word. We going to hang this jasper?”
“That’s it,” Calhoun said.
Wheelwright called over his shoulder, “Somebody get a rope.”
Goodfellow sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said to Calhoun.
Shelby Long came forward from his post in the far shadows; he had his gun out, and only now holstered it. Harry Scott came into the barn with a rope, and Wheelwright took it, giving Scott an odd glance. Two men stepped forward and pinned Thorpe by the arms. Someone tied his hands. Price Goodfellow pointed at Harry Scott. “Harry, get us a horse.”
Wheelwright made a knot in the rope and went up the ladder into the loft; he pitched the end of the rope over a rafter and let its end drop until it hung nine or ten feet above the floor; then he secured the rope around a pillar and climbed back down. As he came he said, “Make that two horses, Harry.”
Thorpe stood without expression, watching the activity. He spoke suddenly, addressing himself to Calhoun. “Ruarke gave it to Donovan and Boone in the back. He’s probably halfway to that gold by now. I don’t see giving him the gold. You go up that big mountain behind Silver Creek. The camp is in a small pocket about two-thirds of the way up the slope. You can see the hollow from the road—cut through the back way or they’ll spot you. You can get there in two hours if you cut off on the old wagon trail in back of Kitchener’s place.”
Shelby Long said challengingly, “What do you think that will buy you, Thorpe?”
“Not a damned thing,” Thorpe replied, looking him in the eye.
Harry Scott came forward with two saddled horses; the crowd parted to let him through. Wheelwright got up on one horse and reached up to pull the hangman’s noose down; it hung taut at about the level of his shoulders. Goodfellow looked on grimly. Wheelwright said, “Come up on the horse, Thorpe.”
Thorpe’s hands were bound behind him. Two men boosted him into the saddle. Shelby Long stepped forward to grasp the reins of Thorpe’s horse. Wheelwright reached across and slipped the noose over Thorpe’s head, fixing the knot just behind the ear. He said, “Got anything to say, Thorpe?”
There was a hot, rash temper in the crowd. Thorpe looked them over. “Well,” he said, “maybe I tolled a few into traps, but I never killed anybody, so I don’t see how I deserve this.” He turned to give Wheelwright an utterly blank and emotionless stare. “Let her go,” he said.
Wheelwright stepped down and walked around in front of Thorpe’s horse. The crowd was silent. Wheelwright slipped the belt out of his trousers and looped it once, and raised it to quirt the horse out from under Thorpe.
Calhoun said, “Hold it. Thorpe, if I point you south to Mexico I want your word you’ll never come back.”
If Thorpe was relieved he didn’t show it. “You’ve got it,” was all he said.
“All right,” Calhoun said. “Cut him down.”