Zane Grey (32 page)

"Yes," replied Jim.

"So much the better. We've got to rustle.... Joan, put on that long
coat of Cleve's. Take off your mask.... Jim, get what gold you have, and
hurry. If we're gone when you come back hurry down the road. I want you
with me."

Cleve stalked out, and Joan ran into her room and put on the long coat.
She had little time to choose what possessions she could take; and that
choice fell upon the little saddle-bag, into which she hurriedly stuffed
comb and brush and soap—all it would hold. Then she returned to the
larger room.

Kells had lifted a plank of the floor, and was now in the act of putting
small buckskin sacks of gold into his pockets. They made his coat bulge
at the sides.

"Joan, stick some meat and biscuits in your pockets," he said. "I'd
never get hungry with my pockets full of gold. But you might."

Joan rummaged around in Bate Wood's rude cupboard.

"These biscuits are as heavy as gold—and harder," she said.

Kells flashed a glance at her that held pride, admiration, and sadness.
"You are the gamest girl I ever knew! I wish I'd—But that's too
late!... Joan, if anything happens to me stick close to Cleve. I believe
you can trust him. Come on now."

Then he strode out of the cabin. Joan had almost to run to keep up
with him. There were no other men now in sight. She knew that Jim would
follow soon, because his gold-dust was hidden in the cavern back of
her room, and he would not need much time to get it. Nevertheless,
she anxiously looked back. She and Kells had gone perhaps a couple of
hundred yards before Jim appeared, and then he came on the run. At a
point about opposite the first tents he joined Kells.

"Jim, how about guns?" asked the bandit.

"I've got two," replied Cleve.

"Good! There's no telling—Jim, I'm afraid of the gang. They're crazy.
What do you think?"

"I don't know. It's a hard proposition."

"We'll get away, all right. Don't worry about that. But the gang will
never come together again." This singular man spoke with melancholy.
"Slow up a little now," he added. "We don't want to attract
attention.... But where is there any one to see us?... Jim, did I have
you figured right about the Creede job?"

"You sure did. I just lost my nerve."

"Well, no matter."

Then Kells appeared to forget that. He stalked on with keen glances
searching everywhere, until suddenly, when he saw round a bend of the
road, he halted with grating teeth. That road was empty all the way to
the other end of camp, but there surged a dark mob of men. Kells stalked
forward again. The Last Nugget appeared like an empty barn. How vacant
and significant the whole center of camp! Kells did not speak another
word.

Joan hurried on between Kells and Cleve. She was trying to fortify
herself to meet what lay at the end of the road. A strange, hoarse roar
of men and an upflinging of arms made her shudder. She kept her eyes
lowered and clung to the arms of her companions.

Finally they halted. She felt the crowd before she saw it. A motley
assemblage with what seemed craned necks and intent backs! They were all
looking forward and upward. But she forced her glance down.

Kells stood still. Jim's grip was hard upon her arm. Presently men
grouped round Kells. She heard whispers. They began to walk slowly, and
she was pushed and led along. More men joined the group. Soon she and
Kells and Jim were hemmed in a circle. Then she saw the huge form
of Gulden, the towering Oliver, and Smith and Blicky, Beard, Jones,
Williams, Budd, and others. The circle they formed appeared to be only
one of many groups, all moving, whispering, facing from her. Suddenly a
sound like the roar of a wave agitated that mass of men. It was harsh,
piercing, unnatural, yet it had a note of wild exultation. Then came the
stamp and surge, and then the upflinging of arms, and then the abrupt
strange silence, broken only by a hiss or an escaping breath, like a
sob. Beyond all Joan's power to resist was a deep, primitive desire to
look.

There over the heads of the mob—from the bench of the slope—rose
grotesque structures of new-hewn lumber. On a platform stood black,
motionless men in awful contrast with a dangling object that doubled up
and curled upon itself in terrible convulsions. It lengthened while it
swayed; it slowed its action while it stretched. It took on the form of
a man. He swung by a rope round his neck. His head hung back. His hands
beat. A long tremor shook the body; then it was still, and swayed to and
fro, a dark, limp thing.

Joan's gaze was riveted in horror. A dim, red haze made her vision
imperfect. There was a sickening riot within her.

There were masked men all around the platform—a solid phalanx of them
on the slope above. They were heavily armed. Other masked men stood on
the platform. They seemed rigid figures—stiff, jerky when they moved.
How different from the two forms swaying below!

The structure was a rude scaffold and the vigilantes had already hanged
two bandits.

Two others with hands bound behind their backs stood farther along the
platform under guard. Before each dangled a noose.

Joan recognized Texas and Frenchy. And on the instant the great crowd
let out a hard breath that ended in silence.

The masked leader of the vigilantes was addressing Texas: "We'll spare
your life if you confess. Who's the head of this Border Legion?"

"Shore it's Red Pearce!... Haw! Haw! Haw!"

"We'll give you one more chance," came the curt reply.

Texas appeared to become serious and somber. "I swear to God it's
Pearce!" he declared.

"A lie won't save you. Come, the truth! We think we know, but we want
proof! Hurry!"

"You can go where it's hot!" responded Texas.

The leader moved his hand and two other masked men stepped forward.

"Have you any message to send any one—anything to say?" he asked.

"Nope."

"Have you any request to make?"

"Hang that Frenchman before me! I want to see him kick."

Nothing more was said. The two men adjusted the noose round the doomed
man's neck. Texas refused the black cap. And he did not wait for the
drop to be sprung. He walked off the platform into space as Joan closed
her eyes.

Again that strange, full, angry, and unnatural roar waved through the
throng of watchers. It was terrible to hear. Joan felt the violent
action of that crowd, although the men close round her were immovable as
stones. She imagined she could never open her eyes to see Texas hanging
there. Yet she did—and something about his form told her that he had
died instantly. He had been brave and loyal even in dishonor. He had
more than once spoken a kind word to her. Who could tell what had made
him an outcast? She breathed a prayer for his soul.

The vigilantes were bolstering up the craven Frenchy. He could not
stand alone. They put the rope round his neck and lifted him off the
platform—then let him down. He screamed in his terror. They cut short
his cries by lifting him again. This time they held him up several
seconds. His face turned black. His eyes bulged. His breast heaved. His
legs worked with the regularity of a jumping-jack. They let him down and
loosened the noose. They were merely torturing him to wring a confession
from him. He had been choked severely and needed a moment to recover.
When he did it was to shrink back in abject terror from that loop of
rope dangling before his eyes.

The vigilante leader shook the noose in his face and pointed to the
swaying forms of the dead bandits.

Frenchy frothed at the mouth as he shrieked out words in his native
tongue, but any miner there could have translated their meaning.

The crowd heaved forward, as if with one step, then stood in a strained
silence.

"Talk English!" ordered the vigilante.

"I'll tell! I'll tell!"

Joan became aware of a singular tremor in Kells's arm, which she still
clasped. Suddenly it jerked. She caught a gleam of blue. Then the bellow
of a gun almost split her ears. Powder burned her cheek. She saw Frenchy
double up and collapse on the platform.

For an instant there was a silence in which every man seemed petrified.
Then burst forth a hoarse uproar and the stamp of many boots. All in
another instant pandemonium broke out. The huge crowd split in every
direction. Joan felt Cleve's strong arm around her—felt herself borne
on a resistless tide of yelling, stamping, wrestling men. She had a
glimpse of Kells's dark face drawing away from her; another of Gulden's
giant form in Herculean action, tossing men aside like ninepins; another
of weapons aloft. Savage, wild-eyed men fought to get into the circle
whence that shot had come. They broke into it, but did not know then
whom to attack or what to do. And the rushing of the frenzied miners all
around soon disintegrated Kells's band and bore its several groups in
every direction. There was not another shot fired.

Joan was dragged and crushed in the melee. Not for rods did her feet
touch the ground. But in the clouds of dust and confusion of struggling
forms she knew Jim still held her, and she clasped him with all her
strength. Presently her feet touched the earth; she was not jostled
and pressed; then she felt free to walk; and with Jim urging her they
climbed a rock-strewn slope till a cabin impeded further progress. But
they had escaped the stream.

Below was a strange sight. A scaffold shrouded in dust-clouds; a band
of bewildered vigilantes with weapons drawn, waiting for they knew not
what; three swinging, ghastly forms and a dead man on the platform; and
all below, a horde of men trying to escape from one another. That shot
of Kells's had precipitated a rush. No miner knew who the vigilantes
were nor the members of the Border Legion. Every man there expected
a bloody battle—distrusted the man next to him—and had given way to
panic. The vigilantes had tried to crowd together for defense and
all the others had tried to escape. It was a wild scene, born of wild
justice and blood at fever-heat, the climax of a disordered time where
gold and violence reigned supreme. It could only happen once, but it
was terrible while it lasted. It showed the craven in men; it proved the
baneful influence of gold; it brought, in its fruition, the destiny of
Alder Creek Camp. For it must have been that the really brave and
honest men in vast majority retraced their steps while the vicious kept
running. So it seemed to Joan.

She huddled against Jim there in the shadow of the cabin wall, and not
for long did either speak. They watched and listened. The streams
of miners turned back toward the space around the scaffold where the
vigilantes stood grouped, and there rose a subdued roar of excited
voices. Many small groups of men conversed together, until the vigilante
leader brought all to attention by addressing the populace in general.
Joan could not hear what he said and had no wish to hear.

"Joan, it all happened so quickly, didn't it?" whispered Jim, shaking
his head as if he was not convinced of reality.

"Wasn't he—terrible!" whispered Joan in reply.

"He! Who?"

"Kells." In her mind the bandit leader dominated all that wild scene.

"Terrible, if you like. But I'd say great!... The nerve of him! In the
face of a hundred vigilantes and thousands of miners! But he knew what
that shot would do!"

"Never! He never thought of that," declared Joan, earnestly. "I felt him
tremble. I had a glimpse of his face.... Oh!... First in his mind was
his downfall, and, second, the treachery of Frenchy. I think that shot
showed Kells as utterly desperate, but weak. He couldn't have helped
it—if that had been the last bullet in his gun."

Jim Cleve looked strangely at Joan, as if her eloquence was both
persuasive and incomprehensible.

"Well, that was a lucky shot for us—and him, too."

"Do you think he got away?" she asked, eagerly.

"Sure. They all got away. Wasn't that about the maddest crowd you ever
saw?"

"No wonder. In a second every man there feared the man next to him would
shoot. That showed the power of Kells's Border Legion. If his men had
been faithful and obedient he never would have fallen."

"Joan! You speak as if you regret it!"

"Oh, I am ashamed," replied Joan. "I don't mean that. I don't know what
I do mean. But still I'm sorry for Kells. I suffered so much.... Those
long, long hours of suspense.... And his fortunes seemed my fortunes—my
very life—and yours, too, Jim."

"I think I understand, dear," said Jim, soberly.

"Jim, what'll we do now? Isn't it strange to feel free?"

"I feel as queer as you. Let me think," replied Jim.

They huddled there in comparative seclusion for a long time after that.
Joan tried to think of plans, but her mind seemed, unproductive. She
felt half dazed. Jim, too, appeared to be laboring under the same kind
of burden. Moreover, responsibility had been added to his.

The afternoon waned till the sun tipped the high range in the west. The
excitement of the mining populace gradually wore away, and toward
sunset strings of men filed up the road and across the open. The masked
vigilantes disappeared, and presently only a quiet and curious crowd
was left round the grim scaffold and its dark swinging forms. Joan's one
glance showed that the vigilantes had swung Frenchy's dead body in the
noose he would have escaped by treachery. They had hanged him dead. What
a horrible proof of the temper of these newborn vigilantes! They had
left the bandits swinging. What sight was so appalling as these limp,
dark, swaying forms? Dead men on the ground had a dignity—at least the
dignity of death. And death sometimes had a majesty. But here both life
and death had been robbed and there was only horror. Joan felt that all
her life she would be haunted.

"Joan, we've got to leave Alder Creek," declared Cleve, finally. He rose
to his feet. The words seemed to have given him decision. "At first I
thought every bandit in the gang would run as far as he could from here.
But—you can't tell what these wild men will do. Gulden, for instance!
Common sense ought to make them hide for a spell. Still, no matter
what's what, we must leave.... Now, how to go?"