There was no moon and the stars gave a man just enough light to move around so long as he knew the locality well. And all the men who gathered that night at the little leanto knew it well.
Dix gave the orders. They would work in pairs and would preferably use clubs. Finish with the knife if necessary. But absolutely no guns unless a man was really pushed into a corner. They nodded, excited, cramped in the little structure. They were all old hands at the cut-throat business. If anybody could do this quietly and efficiently, they could. Dix paired them off and chose a tough little halfbreed named Camm as his sidekick.
Their first victim was a man named Smith who worked a claim not fifty yards from the cook-shack of Eleanor Tyson. Which reminded Dix that he still had her twenty dollars for the cow-meat in his pocket. That made him smile. He would be riding out of here tonight without paying it over. He regretted leaving the pretty widow. She would surely be something worth shacking up with.
This Smith had a partner who had fallen the day before and broken a leg. And this whittling down of the likely opposition made this first steal doubly attractive. Neither Dix nor Camm were men who liked danger for danger’s sake.
Now, going warily in the starlight, they moved along the lip of the gulch, clubs ready in their hands. If their luck was right, there would be no trouble. Camm had planned this one carefully. He had done his own spying and noted that on a clear night, Smith was a great one for looking at the night of an evening while he smoked a last pipe of tobacco. To do this he stood on a ledge a good thirty yards from his shebang. Here his partner, Wayland, lay immobilized. Smith could be clubbed without Wayland hearing. All that was left then was to use a knife on the injured man till he revealed where the gold was hidden. And all miners hid their gold well. Distrust was king here.
They climbed down from the rimrock and took up a position among some brush right near Smith’s favorite evening spot. Both men were calm. They were old hands at this game.
They waited an hour and still they did not grow impatient.
Smith came, climbing slowly up the steep gulchside, his pipe glowing redly. A stolid, slow-moving man, a leader in the councils of the miners, often appointed a judge by common consent in their disputes. There would be hell to pay when he was discovered come daylight with his skull cracked open. Camm reckoned he had struck the richest vein in the gulch. He had been the first to dig out solid ore, instead of sifting dust from the creek bed. They might lift enough here to make any more attacks that night unnecessary.
They froze, gripping their clubs.
Smith reached the ledge a little puffed and stood legs wide, staring out over the gulch. Took his pipe from his mouth and spat contemplatively.
Camm touched Dix on the arm and squeezed as a signal. Quiet as an Indian, he slipped from cover and advanced half to the digger’s rear. Dix prepared to follow him. Rising to his feet, he saw the halfbreed lift the club.
What followed was so unexpected that he was never quite clear what happened.
He thought he saw the club fall on Smith’s head as the shot rang out, but he must have been mistaken. The halfbreed took a little tripping run forward, barged into Smith, turned slightly and fell off the ledge. He made a noisy and lethal descent down the gulchside. If the bullet hadn’t killed him, the trip down the steep slope did.
Dix dropped his club and reached left-handed for his gun. A bullet chopped viciously through the foliage and he dropped flat. Smith yelled his alarm and dropped down also.
Boots sounded on the gulch rim, a man running in for the kill.
Dix’s mind screamed: McAllister!
He fired at a moving shadow and two shots came back rapidly at him. He panicked then, drove to his feet and fled. As he scrambled recklessly down the gulchside, risking a broken neck rather than face the man above, he heard that same man roaring out his warning to the rest of the camp, as though the shots had not done that already.
As he reached the flat, Dix was questioned by men coming out of their shebangs and he declared that he had been fired on by an unknown. He complained that you couldn’t trust a damned soul around here. He hurried on and heard men standing to their arms all around him. He heard men grumbling that if it wasn’t the damned Sioux it was Goddamned thieves. And claim-jumpers.
As he went on he knew that the smart thing was to go to ground right here in the camp. If he hid up in some shebang, McAllister would never find him. But he was panicked now and knew that the only thing for him was to pull out. After the shooting, every man would gather at the rendezvous as arranged. And they would pull out. Some would oppose him, but he was determined that he would ride. Those that wanted to stay could do so.
It took him an hour to work his way out of the gulch into high timber where the two horse-holders waited with the animals.
More questions from them and from the others who slowly drifted in. One or two were feeling good because they had pulled off their coups. The broken-nose and the beard were in high spirits. They had threatened a digger with a knife till he disclosed his hoard, then cut his throat any road. That really got a laugh.
When they were all there, Dix said: “We’re leaving. Camm’s dead and the law’s here.”
The beard said: “That’s a hell of a note. We ain’t shaken the place down yet.”
Dix said: “You want to stay, you do that. I’m ridin’. An’ anybody with a grain of sense’ll do the same. McAllister’s here and he’s federal law.”
The argument that followed was noisy and it didn’t quieten till Dix demanded to know why the hell they didn’t go down and tell the whole damned camp they were here. After that they argued it back and forth in fierce whispers.
He finished it by saying: “We washed up here. But we ain’t finished. Tell you what. Ned and George stay here like they want. And they get information out to us. Which man is shipping out gold and when. We can take it at the other end just as easy.”
They discussed the suggestion and all reckoned it made sense. There were Indians out there, but six resolute and well-armed men could get through all right. So it was decided. Two stayed and the rest mounted. They wished each other luck and rode out, walking the horses for a half-mile and then lifting them into a brisk trot. The two spies went back the way they had come.