Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories by Rex Beach (ebook smartphone .TXT) 📗

They passed within a hundred yards of Laughing Bill Hyde, who lay flat in the wet grass midway of their descent. He watched them mount and ride out of sight, then he continued his painful progress up the hillside.

Weak lungs are not suited to heavy grades and slippery footing. Bill was sobbing with agony when he conquered the last rise and collapsed upon his face. He feared he was dying, every cough threatened a hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain; brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of a pick and shovel.

For once in his life Mr. Hyde looked upon these tools with favor, and energetically tackled the business end of a "Number 2." He considered pick-and-shovel work the lowest form of human endeavor; nevertheless he engaged in it willingly enough, and he had not dug deeply before he uncovered the side of a packing-case, labeled "Choice California Canned Fruits." Further rapid explorations showed that the box was fitted with a loose top, and that the interior was well-nigh filled with stout canvas and moose skin bags. Bill counted them; he weighed one, then he sat down weakly and his hard, smoke-blue eyes widened with amazement.

"Suffering cats!" he whispered. He voiced other expletives, too, even more forcefully indicative of surprise. He was not an imaginative man; it did not occur to him to doubt his sanity or to wonder if he were awake, nevertheless he opened one of the pokes and incredulously examined its contents. "I'm dam' if it ain't!" he said, finally. "I should reckon they was ready to quit. Argentine! Why, Jack'll bust the bottom out of a boat if he takes this with him. He'll drown a lot of innocent people." Mr. Hyde shook his head and smiled pityingly. "It ain't safe to trust him with it. It ain't safe—the thievin' devil! There's five hundred pounds if there's an ounce!" He began to figure with his finger on the muddy shovel blade. "A hundred thousand bucks!" he announced, finally. "Them boys is all right!"

Slowly, reluctantly, he replaced the gold sacks, reburied the box, and placed the tools where he had found them; then he set out for home.

Don Antonio de Chiquito was contentedly munching an empty oat sack, doubtless impelled thereto by the lingering flavor of its former contents, when on the following morning Bill accosted him.

"Tony, I got to hand it to you," the man said, admiringly. "You're some pocket miner, and you speak up like a gent when you're spoken to. I got some nice egg-shells saved up for you." Then his voice dropped to a confidential tone. "We're in with a passel of crooks, Tony. Evil associates, I call 'em. They're bound to have a bad influence over us—I feel it a'ready, don't you? Well, s'pose you meet me to-night at the gap in the hedge and we'll take a walk?"

Don Antonio appeared in every way agreeable to the proposal, but to make certain that he would keep his appointment Bill led him down into the creek bottom and tied him securely, after which he removed a pack-saddle and a bundle of hay from the stable. The saddle he hid in the brush, the hay he spread before his accomplice, with the generous invitation: "Drink hearty; it's on the house!" In explanation he went on: "It's this way, Tony; they left the elevator out of that Anvil skyscraper, and I can't climb stairs on one lung, so you got to be my six-cylinder oat-motor. We got a busy night ahead of us."

That evening Laughing Bill ascended Anvil Mountain for a second time, but the exertion did not wind him unduly, for he made the ascent at the end of Don Antonio's tail. He was back in camp for breakfast, and despite his lack of sleep he performed his menial duties during the day with more than his usual cheerfulness.

* * * * *

"Speed up, can't you?" Slevin paused midway of the steepest slope and spoke impatiently to his partner below.

"I'm coming," Black Jack panted. Being the heavier and clumsier of the two, the climb was harder for him. "You're so spry, s'pose you just pack this poke!" He unslung a heavy leather sack from his belt and gave it to Denny.

"We'd ought to 'a' got an early start," the latter complained. "The days are gettin' short and I had a rotten fall going down, last time."

Relieved of some fifteen pounds of dead, awkward weight—and nothing is more awkward to carry than a sizable gold sack—Berg made better speed, arriving at the cache in time to see Slevin spit on his hands and fall to digging.

"Every time we open her up I get a shiver," Denny confessed, with a laugh. "I'm scared to look."

"Humph! Think she's going to get up and walk out on us?" Berg seated himself, lit his pipe, and puffed in silence for a while. "We ain't never been seen," he declared, positively. "She's as safe as the Bank of England as long as you don't get drunk."

"Me drunk! Ha! Me and the demon rum is divorced forever." Slevin's shovel struck wood and he swiftly uncovered the box, then removed its top. He, stood for a full minute staring into its interior, then he cried, hoarsely, "Jack!"

Berg was on his feet in an instant; he strode to the excavation and bent over it. After a time he straightened himself and turned blazing eyes upon his confederate. Denny met his gaze with the glare of a man demented.

"Wha'd I tell you?" the latter chattered. "I told you they'd get it.
By God! They have!"

He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. Far below the lights of the valley were beginning to twinkle, in the direction of Nome the cross on the Catholic church gleamed palely against the steel-gray expanse of Behring Sea.

Berg was a man of violent temper; he choked and gasped; his face was bloated with an apoplectic rage. He began to growl curses deep in his throat. "Who got it?" he demanded. "Who d'you mean by 'they'?"

"'Sh-h!" Slevin was panic-stricken; he flung out a nervous, jerky hand. "Mebbe they're here—now. Look out!"

"Who d'you mean by 'they'?" the larger man repeated.

"I—God! I dunno! But there must 'a' been more'n one. Five hundred pounds! One man couldn't pack it!"

"You said 'they'!" Berg persisted in an odd tone.

Slevin's madly roving gaze flew back and settled upon the discolored visage thrust toward him, then his own eyes widened. He recoiled, crying:

"Look here! You don't think I—?" His words ended in a bark.

"I ain't said what I think, but I'm thinkin' fast. Nobody knew it but us—"

"How d'you know?"

"I know."

Slowly Slevin settled himself. His muscles ceased jumping, his bullet head drew down between his shoulders. "Well, it wasn't me, so it must 'a' been—you!"

"Don't stall!" roared the larger man. "It won't win you anything. You can't leave here till you come through."

"That goes double, Jack. I got my gat, too, and you ain't going to run out on me."

"You wanted to quit. You weakened."

"You're a liar!"

The men stared fixedly at each other, heads forward, bodies tense; as they glared the fury of betrayal grew to madness.

"Where'd you put it?" Berg ground the words between his teeth.

"I'm askin' you that very thing," the foreman answered in a thin, menacing voice. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he widened the distance between himself and his accuser. It was not a retreat, he merely drew himself together defensively, holding himself under control with the last supreme effort of his will.

The tension snapped suddenly.

With a harsh, wordless cry of fury Black Jack tore his six-shooter from its resting-place. But Slevin's right hand stirred in unison and it moved like light. Owing to the fact that he carried his gun beneath his left armpit he was the first to fire, by the fraction of a second. It was impossible to miss at this distance. Berg went to his knees as if hit by a sledge. But he fired from that position, and his shot caught Slevin as the latter crow-hopped nimbly. Both men were down now. Slevin, however, seemed made of rubber; he was up again almost instantly, and zigzagging toward the shelter of the nearest rocks. Berg emptied his Colt at the running target, then a shout burst from his lips as he saw Denny pitch forward out of sight.

With shaking, clumsy fingers Black Jack reloaded his hot weapon. With his left hand pressed deep into his side he rose slowly to his feet and lurched forward.

"You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross me, will yeh?" He heard the sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his tracks and peering into the gloom.

"Come out!" he ordered. "Come out and own up and I'll let yeh off."

There was a silence. "I see yeh!" He took unsteady aim at a shadow and fired. "Never mind, I'll get yeh!" After a little while he stumbled onward between the boulders, shouting a challenge to his invisible opponent. He had gone perhaps fifty feet when the darkness was stabbed by the blaze of Slevin's gun. Three times the weapon spoke, at little more than arm's-length, and Black Jack spun on his heels, then rocked forward limply. It was a long time before the sound of his loud, slow breathing ceased. Not until then did Denny Slevin move. With a rattle in his throat the foreman crept out from hiding and went down the mountain-side upon his hands and knees.

It occasioned considerable speculation at the Aurora Borealis when neither the superintendent nor the foreman appeared for breakfast. Later, a telephone message to Doctor Slayforth having elicited the startling intelligence that neither man had been seen in town during the night, there came a flicker of excitement. This excitement blazed to white heat when Slayforth rode up on a muddy horse, accompanied by the town marshal and the chief of police. Followed more telephoning and some cross-examination. But the men were gone. They had disappeared.

It was a mystery baffling any attempt at explanation, for there were no ships in the roadstead, and hence it was impossible for the pair to have taken French leave. While a search party was being organized there came word that the missing saddle-horses had been found on the slope of Anvil Mountain, and by the time Slayforth's party had reached the ground more news awaited them. Up near the head of the draw some one had discovered the body of Denny Slevin. There was a rush thither, and thence on up the trail Slevin had left, to the scene of the twilight duel, to Black Jack Berg and the cache in the slide.

The story told itself down to the last detail; it was the story of a thieves' quarrel and a double killing. Doctor Slayforth fell upon his bag of gold as a mother falls upon her babe; he voiced loud, hysterical condemnation of the deed; he wept tears of mingled indignation and thanksgiving; he gabbled scriptural quotations about the wages of sin. Then, remembering that the wages of his men were going on, he sent them back to their work, and determined to dock half their morning's pay.

The story of the tragedy was still the sensation of Nome when, a fortnight later, Laughing Bill Hyde showed up in town with the cheerful announcement that he had been fired. Ponatah was at the cabin when he arrived, and she did not try to conceal her joy at seeing him again.

"I've been so unhappy," she told him. "You've never been out of my thoughts, Billy."

"Ain't you got nothing better to think about than me?" he asked, with a smile. "Well, the psalm-shouter let me out—jerked the piller-slip from under me, you might say—and turned me adrift. He's got a high-chested, low-browed Swede in my place. It takes a guy with hair down to his eyebrows to be a buck chamber-maid."

"The old rascal!" Ponatah's face darkened with anger. "No wonder those men robbed him. I wish they had taken all