With Hoops of Steel

At that suggestion Jim glanced hastily at Haney and Wellesly saw the Englishman shake his head in reply.

“We don’t want to be responsible for your death, Mr. Wellesly,” Haney began, but Wellesly cut him off short:

“You won’t be. I release you from all responsibility, after I leave you. Good morning, gentlemen.” And with a cut of the quirt his horse started. They had been standing near the lower end of the head of the canyon, and as he moved forward the two men sprang in front of him, blocking the narrow pass which gave the only outlet.

“Will you let me pass?” demanded Wellesly, his lips white and his voice trembling with anger.

“We’re not ready for you to go yet,” said Haney, all the joviality gone from his face and voice. His look was that of brutal determination and his voice was harsh and guttural. Jim added an oath and both men drew their guns.

“Then, by God, we’ll shoot it out!” cried Wellesly, whipping his revolver from his pocket. The hammer fell with a flat thud, and with an angry exclamation he clicked the trigger again. With furious haste he went the round of the cylinder. Jim and Haney stood grinning at him, their guns in their hands.

“Something the matter with your pop-gun, I reckon,” said Jim.

Wellesly opened it and looked through the empty cylinder. Then he put it carefully in his hip pocket, rested his hands on the pommel of his saddle and looked the two men slowly over, first one and then the other, from head to foot. At last he spoke:

“Well, whenever you are ready to make your proposition I will listen to it.”

“We ’aven’t any proposition to make,” Haney replied. “We’re not ready to leave ’ere yet, and we’re not willing for you to risk your life alone on the desert. That’s all there is about it.”

“Oh, very well! I can stay here as long as you can,” Wellesly replied, dismounting. He unsaddled his horse, hobbled it and turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week’s captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set at work the police machinery of a hundred cities, so that, whatever way they might turn, there would be no escape for them. He turned several schemes over in his mind as he watched Haney preparing their noon meal of bread, coffee, beans and bacon. Jim was taking a pebble from the shoe of one of the horses. Wellesly sauntered up and watched the operation, asked some questions about the horses and gradually led Jim into conversation. After a time he broke abruptly into the talk with the question:

“What is the name of these mountains?”

“The Oro Fino,” Jim answered promptly. Then he remembered that he and Haney had been insisting that they were the Hermosas ever since the day before and he stammered a little and added:

“That is, that’s what the – the Mexicans call them. The Americans call them the Hermosas.”

“So you told me last night,” Wellesly answered calmly, “but I had forgotten.”

He remembered the name and recalled a topographical map of the region which he had looked at one day in Colonel Whittaker’s office. He remembered how the three ranges looked on the map – the Hermosas, the first range east of Las Plumas, with the wide Fernandez plain lying beyond, then the Fernandez range, more like high, grassy hills than mountains, with only their highest summits barren and rocky, and separated from the Oro Fino – the Fine Gold – mountains, by the desert they had crossed the day before. He recalled the descriptions he had heard of these Oro Fino mountains – high, barren, precipitous cliffs, separated by boulder-strewn canyons and cleft by deep gorges and chasms, a wild and almost impassable region. He remembered, too, that he had been told that these mountains were rich in minerals, that the whole rocky, jumbled, upreared, deep-cleft mass was streaked and striped and crisscrossed with veins of silver and gold, turquoise, marble, coal and iron, but that it was all practically safe from the hand of man because of the lack of wholesome water. Alkali and mineral springs and streams there were, but of so baneful nature that if a thirsty man were to drink his fill but once he would drink to his death. Recalling these things, Wellesly concluded that this trickling spring of sweet, cool water and the little green canyon must be rare exceptions to the general character of the mountains and that this must have been the objective point of his captors from the start.

Along with the awakened memories came also a sudden recollection of a tale once told him in Denver by a prospector, whom he was grubstaking for the San Juan country, of a lost mine in the Oro Fino mountains of New Mexico. He was able to recall the salient points of the story and it occurred to him that it might be useful in the present emergency. While they ate dinner Wellesly spoke again of the dangers of the desert and of the risks he knew he would be taking if he should attempt to cross it alone.

“With my deficient sense of direction,” he said, “I should probably wander all over it a dozen times before I could find my way out.”

“You’d be dead long before that time,” said Jim.

“Yes, it’s very likely I would,” Wellesly calmly assented.

“Of course,” said Haney, “our friend ’ere ’asn’t got much grub and if you and me continue to live off ’im it won’t last long. ’E knows a way to get through these mountains and go down to El Paso, but of course ’e can’t be expected to pilot you down there for nothin’. Now, if you made it worth ’is w’ile, I dare say ’e’d be willin’ to stop ’is prospecting long enough to get you safe into the town. Eh, pard?”

“Yes, I can,” Jim replied, “if the tenderfoot wants to make it enough worth while. I ain’t stuck on the trip and I don’t want to fool any more time away around here. You two have got to decide what you’re a-going to do mighty quick. I want to get to prospectin’, and if I have to tote you-all down to El Paso you’ll have to pay big for the favor.”

Wellesly did not reply and Haney, who was looking critically at a big boulder on the top of the canyon wall, burst into the conversation with an exclamation:

“My stars! Do you see that ’uge boulder up there, just above the narrow place in the canyon? ’Ow easy it would be, now, wouldn’t it, for two men to get up there and pry it loose. It would crash down there and fill up that whole blamed trail, wouldn’t it, Mr. Wellesly?”

“Yes, and effectually wall up anybody who might have had the bad luck to be left in here,” Wellesly dryly replied. “But speaking of the dangers of crossing the desert,” he went on, “I remember a story told me once in Denver by a prospector who had been down in this country. It was about a lost mine, the Winters mine. Did you ever hear of it?”

“Yes,” said Jim, “I have. I’ve heard about it many a time. It’s in these mountains somewhere.”

“It was so rich,” Wellesly went on, “that Dick Winters knocked the quartz to pieces with a hammer and selected the chunks that were filled with gold. He said the rock was seamed and spotted with yellow and he brought out in his pocket a dozen bits as big as walnuts that were almost solid gold.”

The two men were listening with interested faces. Jim nodded. “Yes, that’s just what I’ve heard about it. But there are so darn many of them lost mines and so many lies told about ’em that you never can believe anything of the sort.”

“What became of this chap and ’is mine?” asked Haney.

“I reckon the mine’s there yet, just where he left it,” Jim answered, “but Dick went luny, crossin’ the desert, and wandered around so long in the heat without water that when he was picked up he was ravin’ crazy and he didn’t get his senses back before he died. All anybody knows about his mine is what he said while he was luny, and you can’t put much stock in that sort of thing.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Wellesly. “I had the story from the man who took care of him before he died, the prospector I spoke of just now – I think his name was Frank, Bill Frank. He said that the old man was conscious part of the time and told him a good deal about the strike – enough, I should think, to make it possible to find the place again.”

Haney and Jim were looking at him with intent faces, their interest thoroughly aroused. Wellesly decided to draw on his imagination for any necessary or interesting details that the prospector had not told him.

“What did he say,” Jim demanded, “and why didn’t he go after it himself?”

“As I remember it, he said that during his delirium Winters talked constantly of his rich find, that he seemed to be going over the whole thing again. He would exclaim, ‘There, just look at that! As big as my fist and solid gold!’ ‘Look at that seam! There’s ten thousand dollars there if there’s a cent!’ and many other such things. He would jump up in bed and yell in his excitement. If he was really repeating what he had seen and done while he was working his strike, Bill Frank said that he must have taken out a big pile, probably up near a hundred thousand dollars. That he really had found gold was proved by the nuggets in his pockets.”

“Did Winters tell him what he’d done with the ore?” Jim demanded. He was evidently becoming very much interested.

“Frank told me that at the very last he seemed to be rational. He realized that he was about to die and tried to tell Frank how to find the gold he had taken out. He said he had hidden it in several places and had tried to conceal the lead in which he had worked. It is likely that the strike, whatever it was, had upset his head a little and made him do queer things before he got lost and heat-crazed on the desert.”

“Well, did this man tell you where he’d hid the dust?”

“Do you know where it is?”

“My informant, Bill Frank, said that Winters was very weak when he came to his senses and could only whisper a few disconnected sentences before he died, and part of those,” Wellesly went on, smiling at the recollection, “Frank said ‘the darn fool wasted on gratitude.’ But he gathered that the Winters mine was somewhere in the southern part of the Oro Fino mountains, not far from a canyon where there was good water, and that he had hidden the nuggets and dust and rich rock that he had taken out, in tin cans and kettles and bottles in another canyon not far away.”

“Why didn’t your chap go and ’unt for it ’imself?” asked Haney.

“He did spend several weeks trying to find it, and nearly died of thirst, and broke his leg falling off a precipice, and had a devil of a time getting out and getting well again. Then he wanted me to grubstake him for another hunt for it, but I think a man is more likely to find a new mine than he is a lost one and so I sent him to the San Juan instead.”

“Lots of men have gone into these mountains hunting for the Winters mine,” said Jim, “but all I’ve known anything about have always gone farther north than this.”

“Yes,” said Wellesly, as easily as if it were not an inspiration of the moment, “Bill Frank told me that when he talked about it he always made people think that Winters had said it was in the northern part of the range, but that it was really in the southern part.”

Jim got up and walked away and presently called Haney. Wellesly lay down and pulled his hat over his face. He fell into a light slumber and awoke himself with a snore. He heard the voices of the two men, and so he kept on snoring, listening intently, meanwhile, to their conversation. He could not hear all that they said, but he soon found that they were talking about the lost mine.

“If this here tenderfoot ain’t lyin’,” said Jim, “the Winters mine ain’t far from here. I know these mountains and I know this here spring is the only sweet water within ten miles, yes, twenty of ’em, unless there may be one up so high among the cliffs that nothing but a goat could find it. If Dick Winters’ mine is in the southern part of the Oro Fino mountains it’s somewhere within two miles of us.”

Then he heard them talk about “finishing up” with him and coming back to look for the mine. Haney suggested that as they had enough provisions to last two or three days longer they might spend a day examining the near-by canyons and “finish up” with Wellesly afterward.

“If we find the stuff,” he heard Haney say, “and this chap don’t conclude to be reasonable, we can leave ’im ’ere. If ’e does come to time, we’ll ’ave so much the more.”

Then they walked farther away and Wellesly heard no more. His scheme was coming out as he wished, for they would of course take him with them, and in their search for the lost mine they might become so interested that their vigilance would relax and he would find an opportunity to slip away unobserved. He thought he could find his way out of the mountains by following the downward course of the canyons. That would be sure to bring him to the desert.

After breakfast the next morning Haney said:

“Well, Mr. Wellesly, do you think you would like to go to El Paso to-morrow?”

Wellesly looked him squarely in the eye and replied: “I have no business in El Paso and do not care to go there.”

An ugly look came into Haney’s face, and Wellesly saw that his captors were ready to throw off all pretense and take extreme measures.

“Well,” said Haney; “this is what we’ve decided to do. We’ll give you till to-morrow morning to make up your mind whether you’ll go to El Paso and give us ten thousand dollars apiece for taking you there. If you don’t want to get away that bad, that big rock will roll down into this canyon and shut up that outlet and you will stay ’ere and starve. We are going to leave you ’ere alone to-day to think the matter over, and we are going to tie you fast to that big tree, so you won’t ’ave anything to distract your attention. We’ll be back to-night and then you can ’ave your supper and I ’ope we’ll find you in a reasonable frame of mind.”

Jim approached with a picket rope, and Wellesly whitened with anger. For a moment, earth and sky turned black before him, and before he realized what he was doing he had hit Jim a smashing blow in the jaw. Jim staggered backward, and then, with a howling oath, whipped out and leveled his revolver. Haney, who had grabbed one of Wellesly’s wrists and was struggling to keep it in his grasp, jumped between them and shouted in a tone of command: “Don’t shoot, Jim, don’t shoot! You’ll spoil the whole game if you kill ’im!”

Jim lowered his revolver sullenly and vented his anger in vile epithets instead of bullets.

“’Ere, stop your swearing and grab that arm,” said Haney. “You can’t blame the man for kicking. You or me would do the same thing in ’is place. Now push ’im up against this pine tree and ’and me the rope. I’m sorry we ’ave to treat you this way, Mr. Wellesly, but if you won’t be reasonable it’s the only thing we can do.”

Wellesly struggled at first, but he soon realized that they were much the stronger and wasted no more strength in useless resistance, though grinding his teeth with rage. They tied his arms to his body, and then, standing him upright, bound him close against the tree. They stepped back and Jim shook his fist at the captive.

“I’ll get even with you yet,” he shouted, “for the way you took me in the jaw! If you ain’t ready to do what we want to-morrow morning you won’t get a chance to starve, you hear me shout! I’ll wait till then, but I won’t wait no longer!”

“Shut up, Jim! Don’t be a fool!” said Haney. “After ’e’s meditated about it all day ’e’ll be reasonable.”

Wellesly did not speak, but the two men read a “never surrender” in his blazing eyes. Haney laughed excitedly and said, replying to his look:

“You’ll feel differently to-night, Mr. Wellesly. That rope’s likely to ’ave a big effect on your state of mind. Jim, we don’t want to leave any knives on ’im.”

They went through his pockets and took out everything they contained, dividing the money between them, while Haney took charge of his papers. Then they made ready for their own trip, saddling their horses and preparing to lead the two others.

“We won’t leave ’im the least possibility of getting away,” said Haney to Jim, “even if ’e should ’appen to get loose.”

“He’ll never get out of that rope till we let him out.”

“If the ’orses ain’t ’ere he won’t ’ave any temptation to try. ’E’d never undertake the desert alone and afoot.”

As they started, Haney called out, as good-naturedly as if they were the best of friends: “Good morning, Mr. Wellesly! I ’ope we’ll find you more reasonable to-night.”

Jim took out his revolver and turned in his saddle toward the captive. Haney grabbed his arm.

“Don’t you worry,” said Jim. “I ain’t a-goin’ to kill him, like I ought to do. I’m just a-goin’ to put my mark on him.”

Wellesly heard the clicking of the trigger and the thought sped through his mind that this was his last moment on earth. He saw the flash and heard the report, and then it seemed many long minutes until the whizzing of the bullet filled his ear and he heard it thump into the bark of the tree beside his head. There was a stinging in the rim of his left ear, where it had nicked out a little rounded segment.

“There!” said Jim, with an ugly laugh, as he put away his gun, “he’s my maverick now, and if anybody else claims him there’ll be war.”

CHAPTER XIII

The next morning after his arrest Nick Ellhorn was released on bail. He came out thoroughly sobered, and when he learned what had been the result of his drunken trick his vocabulary of abusive epithets ran dry in his effort to characterize his conduct.

“How did you happen to get drunk, Nick?” Judge Harlin asked. “I thought you had quit. What did you do it for?”

“Sure, and what did I do it for?” said Nick, and the strong Irish accent in his speech told how deeply he felt his misdeed. For he was always most Irish when most moved. “I reckon,” he went on, and the rolling intonation fell from his tongue like a faint breath from the green isle itself, “I reckon I did it just to show my friends what a measly, coyote, white-livered, tackey, ornery, spavined, colicky, mangy, blitherin’ sort of a beast I am. Sure, now, Judge, I just wanted everybody to know what a gee-whillikined damn fool I can be if I try. And they know, now. Oh, yes, they know. There’s nothin’ more I can tell. Hold on, Judge! Sure, and I’m thinkin’ it all came along of the way I mixed my drinks yesterday when I first struck the Palmleaf. I had beer, and whisky, and some mint juleps, yes, and maybe a cocktail, and I think there was some more beer – yes, there was more beer, and I think likely that I had some brandy up there in that sick man’s room. For I seem to remember that I took a drink of brandy because it was goin’ to kill him if he drank it, and so I took it in his place. Yes, I must have had some brandy, sure, because nothin’ but brandy will set me up that way. Now, just look at that, Judge! Ain’t that a fine lay-out for a man to swallow that knows better? If I’d never been inside a saloon before there’d be some excuse. But me a-mixin’ my drinks like that! It’s plumb ridiculous!”

“Jim Halliday isn’t sorry you did it. He’s as proud as a boy with his first pants over the haul he made yesterday. I hear he’s going to be measured for a brand-new, tailor-made cartridge belt and six-shooter as a memento of the occasion.”

“He’d better hurry up, then, before the occasion turns a back somersault on him. I reckon what he needs most is a new hat that will be about six sizes too big for him a week from now. Jim Halliday’s all right as long as he keeps to his own side of the street, but he’d better not come over here or he’ll be filled so full of bullets that he won’t know himself from a dice box. Say, Judge, what’s become of that John Chiny’s pigtail they say I cut off?”

“I suppose it’s in the hands of the district attorney and will be brought in as part of the evidence when your case is tried.”

“Harry Gillam’s got it, has he? Well, I want it myself. It’s mine, and I want it as a reminder not to mix my drinks. What had I better do about this business, Judge?”

“There’s only one thing you can do, Nick – plead guilty and throw yourself on the mercy of the court, and trust to your confounded Irish luck to get you off easy.”

Nick Ellhorn sent a telegram to Thomson Tuttle to return as quickly as possible and then attended to the shipment of Emerson Mead’s cattle. When he appeared on Main street again in the afternoon he found the town dividing itself into two hostile camps. The Palmleaf and the White Horse saloons were, respectively, the headquarters of the two factions, and men were dropping their work and leaving their shops and offices to join the excited crowds that filled the two saloons and gathered in groups on the sidewalks. On the west side of Main street the general temper was pleased, exultant, and inclined to jeer at the other side whenever a Republican met a Democrat. On the east side, anger and the determination to get even, shone in men’s eyes and sounded in their talk.

In the afternoon news came that the territorial district court had decided in favor of the Democrats a controversy over the sheriff’s office that had been going on ever since the election the previous autumn, when on the face of the returns the Republican candidate, John Daniels, had been declared elected. The Democrats had cried “fraud,” and carried the case into the courts, where it had ever since been crawling slowly along, while Daniels held the office. The election had been so hotly contested that each side had counted more votes than had been registered. But each had felt so confident that it could cover up its own misdeeds and hide behind its execration of those of its enemy that neither had had any doubt about the outcome.

The news of the decision embittered the quarrel which had been opened by the arrest of Emerson Mead. There were threats of armed resistance if the Democrats should attempt to take the office, and both John Daniels and Joe Davis, who had been the Democratic candidate, went about heavily armed and attended by armed friends as bodyguards, lest sudden death at the mouth of a smoking gun should end the dispute.

Toward night the angry talk and the buzzing rumors again centered about Emerson Mead. It began to be said on the west side of the street that this whole controversy over the sheriff’s office had been worked up by Mead and his friends in order that they might get his party into power and, under its protection, harass the cattle company and by arrests and murders ruin their business and take their stock. As the talk whizzed and buzzed along the street men grew more and more reckless and angry in their assertions. They lashed themselves into a state in which they really believed, for the time being, that Mead’s continued existence would be a peril to themselves and a danger to the community. Suggestions of lynching were hazarded and quickly taken up and discussed. There were many who thought this the best thing that could be done, and a little group of these got together in the coolest corner of the White Horse saloon and formed themselves into a secret vigilance committee. News of these things came by way of the back door into Judge Harlin’s office. He took the lead on the Democratic side of the street and organized a party of twelve of their bravest men and best shots to guard the jail during the night and resist any attempt to take out Emerson Mead. He was careful also to see that news of what he was doing was carried to the leaders on the other side. Late in the evening he and Ellhorn and the rest of their party posted themselves in dark corners and convenient hiding-places in the neighborhood of the jail. An hour or more passed and there was no sign that the vigilance committee had survived the fervors of the afternoon. Finally Nick Ellhorn began to suspect what had happened and he called Judge Harlin to account.

“I call it downright mean, Judge,” he complained, “to bring us fellows out here in the hope of havin’ a scrimmage and then send the other side word we’re here, so they’ll be sure not to come! You’ll be runnin’ on their ticket next thing we know! Now that we are out here and all ready for business, and nothin’ to do, we’d better just slam-bang ourselves against that jail over there and get Emerson out.”

Judge Harlin, Ellhorn, Joe Davis and two others were standing in the recess of a deep doorway under a portal. On the top of the portal, stretched at full length, with one ear over the edge, lay a Mexican listening to their talk. He could not hear Harlin’s reply to Nick’s suggestion, but one of the others quickly agreed. The listener did not wait to hear more, and in five minutes the back room of the White Horse saloon was in a bustle of excitement. John Daniels and Jim Halliday called for a posse of citizens to help them defend the jail, and the party set out at once on a quick run up the street.