IT was two days later that Doc Lantry put in an appearance, on a jaded horse. His dark features were keen, his movements abrupt, as he unsaddled. Something was on his mind.
There had been little enough to do during his absence. Billy Farragoh, who already had conceived a dislike for his rough tongue, expected a quizzing about the work. But Doc didn’t so much as look in his direction. No sooner had he got a meal under his belt than he and Santee drifted apart. Standing in a corner of the pasture fence they talked for a long time in low tones.
“Wal, Reb; we been waitin’ fer spring,” was the opening Doc rasped out; “but there’s no use holdin’ off any longer. I’ve lined up a job fer us.” There was more cool, unmistakable challenge in the words than Lantry would have been able to convey in an angry shout.
Reb’s normally serene blue eyes became hard. “What is it?” he asked, as business-like as the other.
Doc announced that he had found it possible to get through Crazy Woman Pass, which would give them access to Idaho. He had just come back from Castle Gate, a coal camp in the Wasatch Range, after working out the plans for sticking up the paymaster for the coal mine. “It’s a cinch,” he averred. “We c’n knock off a nice haul an’ be back here on Ghost Creek in three days. What do yuh say?”
There was no confusing the issue here. Doc had chafed for months, now, with a doubt of Reb’s position twisting in his calculating mind. He was bent on deciding the question once and for all. In a flash of insight Reb saw the step to be even more far-reaching than this: it would mark his first major activity outside the law; definitely it would make him a hunted man, with a price on his head.
He scratched the hair under his soiled sombrero as these things passed through his brain. Then, before Lantry could read indecision there, Reb’s eyes squinted in an easy smile as he thought of something else.
“We’ll ride over an’ have a look at it,” he decided. “It sounds good, anyway.”
It had struck him, with a sense of relieved discovery behind the discomfort, where he was to get the five hundred dollars which he had promised to Billy Farragoh.
Unaware that Reb was already decided, Lantry was inclined to argue with his caution. “We can’t lose,” he pointed out. “There’ll be guards with the paymaster, but at this season they won’t be lookin’ fer no trouble. They won’t know the Pass is open till it’s too late, an’ we’ll put out that we’re Idaho cowmen. It’s cast iron, I tell yuh!”
They talked it over from all angles. At length Reb professed his satisfaction with the set-up. Since Doc said the payday for the mine fell on Tuesday next, they would get away early the following day, and be back before anyone in the Basin knew they were gone.
“All except young Farragoh,” Reb reminded, with deep cunning. “He’s got a head on him, Doc.”
“Don’t worry,” Lantry scoffed; “I’ll take care of him.” On the spot he devised an errand which would keep Billy away from the ranch for nearly a week. “I been thinkin’ of buyin’ in a small herd fer looks,” he announced. “Gloomy’s been complainin’ of too much to do, an’ that means he needs more, anyway. Farragoh knows the men in the Basin with stuff they’ll let go. It’ll be natural, sendin’ him to scout out a likely bunch.”
Although Gloomy was sulky and suspicious, aware that something was afoot which he was being left out of, Billy Farragoh evinced gratification at Doc’s decision. He absorbed the latter’s crabbed instructions, unruffled, and the next morning got away with the dawn. Half-an-hour later Reb and Doc swung into the saddle and set off to the west.
Fresh snow had fallen during the night at Crazy Woman Pass, which they reached that afternoon. Doc Lantry expressed satisfaction with the circumstance. “If the same thing happens after we git through, on the way back, we’ll be safe as a church,” he declared.
A solemn hush held all the high country. They spent the night at an abandoned line camp in the hills below the lofty Tetons. In the morning they came across a horse herd that had wintered at a sheltered flat nearby. It gave Santee an idea.
“We’ll switch hosses right here,” he said. “That’ll give us strange brands to ride with, an’ a relay on the way back.”
Doc grunted over his particularity, but acceded to the suggestion. Their own mounts they left in an old corral at the head of the flat. Willow and cottonwood bowered the place. It had not been visited for weeks.
They rode on. It was afternoon again before Doc said they were drawing near to Castle Gate. He was in no agreeable mood, for the horse he had taken from the flat had already fallen lame.
“Take it easy,” Reb advised him, paying no attention to his fuming. “We got till tomorrow—plenty of time to get a nag. I want to look this place over, anyway.”
It was decided that he should go into town alone. Lantry had been there, and had no desire further to fix his identity in curious minds. Reb was content with the arrangement. He was not really inclined to as much caution as he pretended, but he did want to check up on Doc’s judgment.
“Bring back somethin’ to drink,” Lantry told him before he left.
“Okay; gimme the price,” Reb responded. “I ain’t got a cent on me.”
There was unabashed calculation in the way Doc peeled a hundred dollars from the roll he always carried with him. “Yuh c’n pay me back after we do the job,” he said. “An’ don’t forgit, Santee—spot me a good hoss.”
Reb pocketed the money and rode off.
Castle Gate was situated in a high-walled canyon. It consisted of one long street, of stores, saloons and miners’ shacks, extending from the railroad crossing up toward the hills. Across the tracks from the station stood the two-story stone building which housed the office of the coal company.
Reb satisfied himself about these things and others. He looked over the breed of men they would have to deal with, and in the early evening, a hearty meal inside of him, dropped in a saloon at the lower end of the street.
A desultory poker game was in progress between the Salt Lake gamblers who were waiting for the morrow’s harvest. Reb had found no other amusement in the waiting town. He sat in. Always a good poker hand because he smiled in success and adversity alike, tonight he found himself at a loss. The cards were against him consistently. One hundred dollars is not much at such a time. His cheeks were set in lean hardness, but his gaze was as serene as ever when, two hours later, he pushed back from the table.
“That’s all of it, boys,” he said. “I’ll have to punch a few more cows, I reckon.”
The gamblers expressed conventional regrets. Reb waved them off. Moving to the bar, he flapped a hand to the proprietor.
“Few of the boys are camped outside of town,” he explained; “an’ they sent me in fer somethin’ to drink. How about it?”
The proprietor knew an easy-going puncher when he saw one. Reb was genuine from his turned-over heels to his battered hat. He was good for future sessions at the cards, no doubt about it. Half of his present hundred dollars, moreover, would go to the house. The saloonkeeper set out three bottles of Old Crow.
“There yuh are, feller. That ’nough? ... Tell the boys it’s on me.”
Reb delayed. “Yuh don’t get it,” he said mildly. “I’m right willin’ to pay.”
“Okay, cowpoke. Yuh c’n give it to me the next time yuh ride by.”
Reb nodded and walked out, the bottles clinking under his arm. He found Doc huddled over a pine-knot fire a brace of miles out of town.
“Where’s the hoss yuh was goin’ to bring me?” he demanded contentiously, sampling one of the bottles.
“Never mind,” Reb answered him off-handedly. “I’ve spotted a real one for yuh. It needn’t be missin’ till yuh want it.”
“What if it ain’t there then?” Lantry snapped back.
Reb put him aside indifferently. He knew Doc’s nerves were cocked for the job they would do tomorrow.
It was only Lantry who slept badly that night; and he because of impatience. They made leisurely preparations in the morning and rode toward town at an easy gait.
“The train pulls in at eleven,” said Reb. “We’ll be on the side of the tracks toward the stone buildin’ when it comes.”
“An’ that hoss fer me?” Doc growled.
“We’ll pick it up now.”
They reached Castle Gate by ten. Reb led the way toward the lower street, and at a point near the saloon where he had lost Doc’s money, turned in at a vacant lot between tumbledown shanties. A hundred feet in from the board walk he pointed out a long-barreled, rangy roan racer with keen, pointed ears, prancing about a corral in the rear of the saloon, with half-a-dozen lesser animals.
“How’s that suit yuh?”
Doc made no reply, unless the sudden glint of his eyes was one. Getting down, he handed Reb the reins of his useless pony and walked to the corral. A cautious look around revealed no spectators to his actions. With quick movements he let down the corral bars, and walked away. It was not until the ponies in the corral found their way out and began to wander that Lantry put his rope on the sleek roan. He had his saddle on it in a moment, turning the lame pony loose with the others.
“We better be gittin’ on,” he muttered tightly, swinging up.
They circled the station and pulled up in back of a shed beyond the coal company’s office. “Plenty of time,” Reb remarked, taking a look up the street across the tracks. Lantry looked too.
“This ain’t so good,” he said, noting the miners beginning to line up along the buildings. “We’ll have to make our play while the train’s in between.”
They waited. Doc’s tenseness caught him up in a rush when Reb lifted his hand. Back in the mountains the long-drawn scream of the locomotive whistle echoed and re-echoed. Men were gathering on the station platform.
A few minutes later the train pulled up with a grind of brake-shoes and a hiss of escaping steam. The conductor opened doors, calling out. He got down the steps of a car on this side with his little stool; following him came a man with a leather bag in each hand, accompanied by two other men wearing heavy gun belts. One of them bore a badge of some sort.
“Now!” Doc Lantry grated.
“Hold on,” Reb warned him sharply. He had seen the paymaster stop to speak to the conductor. The engineer, leaning out of his cab, was looking back at them. The payroll guards listened.
“Dammit all, that train’ll be pullin’ out jest when we want it there !” Lantry exploded, in a fever of impatience.
“You keep yore shirt on,” Reb told him. He was as cool as ice, still waiting.
By the time the paymaster made a laughing remark over his shoulder and started for the office building, Doc was on tenterhooks. The locomotive bell had begun to clang. The train would pull out in a moment.
“Now we’ll walk our ponies out there, easy like, as if we’d come in by the trail,” said Reb.
Doc cursed under his breath. They started. One of the guards flicked a glance at the two careless punchers, but the paymaster was exchanging remarks with the other. They were all at their ease when Reb and Doc came abreast of them.
“Reach, boys. Make it high,” Santee suggested, his smile prominent. Even as he stepped down he put a gun on them before they got a good look at him. “Okay, Doc,” he said quietly.
Lantry got to the ground with alacrity. Reb took a step forward. No one had as yet noticed that anything was wrong. The locomotive was belching large puffs of smoke, its drive wheels turning. Taking charge of the leather money bags, Lantry fastened them hurriedly to the saddle of the racer.
The train pulled away from the crossing. Reb stood facing his three victims, his gun held low. But the raised hands were a give-away. Sudden disturbance occurred up the street, across the tracks. A man called out. A gun cracked.
Lantry swung into the saddle. “Let’s go,” he snapped to Reb. “We gotta git out of here damn quick!”
Santee said nothing, his freckled face unruffled. Without taking his eyes off the scowling guards, he backed toward his horse, feeling for the bridle. There was a clatter from the building behind him as a clerk ran from the coal company’s office to the head of an outside stairway. He carried a rifle which he brought up quickly and fired. The slug ripped the dust, and Reb’s pony shied in fright.
“Steady, boy,” Reb soothed, backing toward him. “Take it easy.”
“Hurry up, will yuh?” Doc bawled, already half-a-dozen jumps away. More shots came from the street; the miners were running in this direction.
“Shucks,” Reb told his partner coolly, over his shoulder; “them birds can’t shoot fer sour apples.”
He was still feeling for his pony, clucking reassuringly. The clerk fired again; but Santee had a way with horses. When he backed into his pony and laid a hand on its neck, the pony trembled but stood still.
“Watch it, now,” Reb told the guards. In another moment he was mounted, his gun still covering them.
Lantry was swearing luridly, and Reb laughed as he swung toward him. “We’re leavin’ now,” he said. Bullets sang past them as they galloped down the street and out of town, but their luck held.
“Gimme one of them bags,” Reb directed, when they had gone a mile or more. “No use of you carryin’ all the weight.”
Doc flashed him a stare, but complied. They pushed on.
They were pursued, as they knew they would be. A posse set out from town without delay. Telegraph wires hummed, another posse started from below the line in Utah. But no one caught up, and the next morning they pulled in on the little flat under the Tetons.
Making the exchange back to their own horses, they pressed ahead. Lantry regretted the roan, but Reb made him turn it loose. Late in the day they crossed Crazy Woman Pass and rode down into the Basin.
Back in Castle Gate, feeling over the robbery ran high. None was more vociferous than the saloon proprietor whose horse had been taken.
“I spotted both of ’em, soon as I heard,” he declared angrily. “They had us all sized up; they even drifted my hosses so’s the roan wouldn’t be missed right away, dang ’em! An’ not only that, but that nervy white-haired feller tapped me fer some whisky, too. Gad, whut gall!”
But some time during the second night the roan racer returned of its own accord. They found it the next morning, grazing near its home corral. Ten dollars of the payroll money were twisted in a paper tied to the roan’s mane, and on the paper was scrawled simply, “For the three bottles of Old Crow.”
“Cripes!” swore the saloon keeper in amazement. “Whut do yuh know about that!”