Robber's Roost (1989) (30 page)

The shots thinned out, and ceased. Hays was turning to the left, his remaining gun lowered. He was aiming down the slope on the other side. He fired again--then no more. Those who were left of Heeseman's outfit had taken to flight. Hays watched them, strode to the side of the big rock, and kept on watching them.

Soon he turned back with an air of finality and, sheathing one gun, took to reloading the other. It was at this moment that Jim relinquished the field-glass to take up his rifle. With naked eyes through the aperture in the brush he could see Hays finish loading his gun. Then the robber examined the top of his shoulder, where evidently he had been shot. His action, as he folded a scarf to thrust up under his shirt, appeared one of indifference.

This moment, to Jim's avid mind, was the one in which to kill the robber. He drew a bead on Hays' breast. But he could not press the trigger. Lowering the hammer, Jim watched Hays stride up among the rocks to disappear. No doubt he meant to have a look at that enemy whom he had so deliberately shot with the rifle.

A storm was imminent. The sky had darkened, and a rumble of thunder came on the sultry air.

Jim leaped up out of the hole to have a better look. Far beyond the red ridge he discerned men running along the white wash. There were three of them, scattered. A fourth appeared from behind a bank, and he was crippled. He waved frantically to the comrades who had left him to fare for himself. They were headed for the cove where the horses still stood. And their precipitate flight attested to the end of that battle and as surely to the last of Heeseman's outfit.

Jim picked up the field-glass, and slinging it in his elbow, he essayed a descent into the cave. On the shelf he hesitated, and sat a moment locked in thought. A second time he started down, only to halt, straddling the notch. The battle had worked out fatefully and fatally. Would he see Smoky again? Yet nothing had changed the issue. The end was not yet. With his blood surging back to his heart, Jim leaped down to meet the robber chief.

Chapter
1
5

Hays was not yet in sight. Thunder was now rolling and booming over the brakes, and gray veils of rain drifted from purple clouds.

The storm, black as ink, centered over the peaks of the Henrys. To the west the sun shone from under a gorgeous pageant of white and gold. And over the canyons hung rainbows of vivid and ethereal loveliness.

Between the intervals of mumbling rumble there was an intense quietness, a sultry suspension of air. Even in that moment the beauty of the scene struck Jim as appalling. It seemed unnatural, because death lay about him, bloody and ghastly; and down the arroyo stalked the relentless robber.

Jim strode out. The chief hove in sight. He walked slowly, with an air of intense preoccupation.

Jim deliberated. A survival of the fittest entered into this deliberation, yet there was in Jim a creed born of the frontier.

It was what Hank Hays had lived by before he threw everything to the winds for the beauty of a woman. Hays had reverted to it, in the hour of his extremity. He had gone out to bear the brunt of Heeseman's attack and he had expected to die. The fortune of war had favored him. Therefore, it was not Jim's confidence that forbade him to kill Hays at long range. Not even for the girl's sake would Jim force himself to such a deed, however justified by Hays' villainy.

The robber chieftain neared the cave.

"Where's Smoky?" called Jim, his lynx eyes on Hays' right hand.

"Cashed in," boomed Hays, fastening great hollow eyes of pale fire upon Jim. "He had cover. He plugged I don't know how many. But Morley's outfit had throwed in with Heeseman. An' when thet gambler, Stud, broke an' run, Smoky had to head him off. They killed each other."

"Who got away? I saw four men, one crippled."

"Morley an' Montana fer two. I didn't recognize the others. They shore run, throwin' rifles away."

"They were making for their horses, tied half a mile back.

Where'll they go, Hays?"

"Fer more men. Morley is most as stubborn as Heeseman. An' once he's seen this roost of ours--he'll want it, an' to wipe out what's left of us."

"Heeseman?"

"Wal, HE didn't run, Jim. Haw! Haw!--His insides air jest now smokin' in the sun."

The chief strode to the mouth of the cave and stared around. Jim remained at the spot he had selected, to one side, between the robber and Helen's covert.

"Jack an' Mac, too?" he ejaculated, in amaze. "How come? No more of thet outfit sneaked down in hyar."

"Mac stuck his noodle too far out of that hole in the cave. And Happy Jack stopped a glancing bullet. See this rock here. Look at those white spots. Every one made by a bullet. Must have been two dozen or more slugs come hummin' off that rock. They'd hit the walls and glance again."

"I'd know who started thet if I hadn't seen him," said Hays, to himself. "Old Black Dragon Canyon days."

"Two of us left, Hays," returned Jim, tentatively. The robber had utterly forgotten such a thing as sworn retribution, or else, now that Slocum was not to be reckoned with, he had no fears.

"The storm's travelin' this way," he said, as thunder boomed and rolled like colossal boulders down the canyons. "Reckon we can hang out hyar one more night."

"Going to bury your dead?" queried Jim, in curt query.

"Wal, we might drag these fellers to the wash thar, an' cave in the bank on them."

"Sand and gravel would wash away."

"What the hell's thet to us? If I do anythin' atall it'll be fer my gurl. Them stiffs ain't a pretty sight."

If Jim Wall needed any galvanizing shock to nerve him to the deed he had resolved upon, that single possessive word was enough.

"I'll bury them later," he said.

"Good. I'm all in. I climbed more 'n a mile to get to them fellers." Hays sat down heavily, and ran his right hand inside his shirt to feel of the bulge on his shoulder. Jim saw him wince.

Blood had soaked through his shirt.

"You got hit, I see."

"Flesh wound. Nothin' to fuss over this minnit. An' I've got a crease on my head. Thet hurts like sixty. Half an inch lower an'--"

"I'd have been left lord of Robbers' Roost?"

"You shore would, Jim. Lousy with money, an' a gurl to look after.

But it jest didn't happen thet way."

"No, it didn't. But it will!"

That cool statement pierced the robber's lethargic mind. Up went his shaggy head and the pale eyes, opaque, like burned-out furnaces, took on a tiny curious gleam. When his hand came slowly down from inside his shirt his fingers were stained red.

"What kind of a crack was thet?" he demanded, puzzled.

"Hays, you forget."

"Oh-ho! Reckon I did. Never thought I'd fergit Smoky's blastin' tongue. May he roast in hell! . . . But, Jim, this wasn't no mix of yours."

"I've made it mine."

"You an' Smoky come to be pards?"

"Yes. But more than that."

"You're sore thet I didn't divvy square?"

"Hays, I take it you double-crossed me same as you did them."

"Uhhuh. Wal, you got me in a corner, I reckon. Thar's only two of us left. I'd be crazy to quarrel. . . . Would a third of my money square me?"

"No."

"It wouldn't? Wal, you air aimin' at a bargain. Say half, then?"

"No."

A tremor ran over the robber's frame. That was a release of swift passion--hot blood that leaped again. But he controlled himself.

"Jim, I don't savvy. What's eatin' you? Half of the money hyar is a fortune fer one man. I did play the hawg. But thet's past."

"I won't make any deals with you."

"Ahuh. Then we've split?"

"Long ago, Hays."

"Air you tryin' to pick a fight with me?"

At this Jim laughed.

"'Cause if you air, I jest won't fight. I'd be senseless. You an' me can git along. I like you. We'll throw together, hide somewhere awhile, then build up another outfit."

"Hays, you're thick-skulled," retorted Jim, sarcastically. "Must I tell you that you can't bamboozle me?"

"Who's tryin' to?" demanded the robber, hotly. "All I'm tryin' is to patch it up."

"It can't be done."

"I'll give you two thirds of the money."

"Hays, I wouldn't take another dollar from you--that you gave willingly."

"No money atall!" ejaculated the chief, bewildered. His mind was groping. Probably his natural keenness had suffered dulling for the hour.

Jim had turned his left side slightly toward Hays, concealing his right hand, which had slipped to his gun butt, with his thumb on the hammer! For Jim then, Hays was as good as dead.

"It'll all be mine, presently," he replied.

"Holdin' me up, huh?" rasped Hays. "Learned to be a shore-enough robber, trainin' with me, huh?"

"Hays, I promised Smoky I'd kill you--which he meant to do if he had lived to come back."

The robber's face grew a dirty white under his thin beard. At last he understood so much, at least. What volumes his stupidity spoke for his absorption! It changed. Jim's posture, his unseen hand, suddenly loomed with tremendous meaning.

"Shore. Thet doesn't surprise me," admitted the robber. "When men's feelin's git raw, as in a time like this, they clash. But I did my share to clear the air. An' if Smoky had come back he'd have seen it different. I could have talked him out of it. . . .

Jim, you're shore smart enough to see thet, an' you oughter be honest enough to admit it."

"I dare say you could have won Smoky back. He had a fool worship for you. . . . But you can't talk me out of anything."

"Why, fer Gawd's sake--when I'm givin' you all the best of the deal?"

"Because I want the girl," thundered Jim.

A great astonishment held Hays stricken. Through it realization filtered.

"THET!--Thet was it--all the time!" he gasped.

"All the time, Hank Hays," replied Jim, steadily, and it was the robber's eyes, pale fires no longer, that he watched for thought and will.

Still he saw the violent muscular quivering which slowly diminished to freeze into rigidity. He had struck the right chord. In whatever way possible, Hank Hays loved this woman. However it had begun, the sordid, brutal thing had ended in Hays' worship of the golden-haired sister of Herrick. Jim read this in the extraordinarily betraying eyes; and read more--that it had been Helen the robber had fought for, not his lost caste with his men, not the honor of thieves. It was this that accounted for the infernal blaze of unquenchable hate, of courage that death itself could scarcely have stilled. All this immediately coalesced into the conscious resolve to act and kill!

As the robber sprang up, Jim's first shot took him somewhere in the breast. It whirled him half round. His gun, spouting flame, tore up the gravel at Jim's feet. A terrible wound with its agony, a consciousness of its mortality, added to the overwhelming ferocity of jealous hate, gave the man superhuman physical activity. He whirled bounding the other way so swiftly that Jim's second shot missed him altogether. Hays' gun was booming, but it was also describing the same curves and jerks as his body. Then as passion gave place to desperate need and the gun aligned itself with Jim, Jim's third shot destroyed aim, force, and consciousness.

Hays' demoniac face set woodenly. The gun, with hammer up, dropped to explode. And the robber lodged against the slant of wall, dead, with the awfulness of his mortal passions stamped upon his features.

It was over. Jim breathed. The hand which held his gun was so wet that he thought his blood was flowing. But it was sweat.

"I wish--Smoky could--know," muttered Jim, over a convulsive jaw.

He shoved Hays off the wall.

Wiping his face, Jim staggered to the rock and sat down. All the sustained excitement, culminating in such passion as Jim had never known, had weakened him. Spent and heaving, he sat there, his will operating on a whirling mind. It was over--the thing that had had to come. All dead! Loyal and faithless robbers alike. What to do now? The girl! Escape from that hell-hole, soon to be besieged again! He must pack that very hour and ride--ride away with her.

His heart swelled. His blood mounted to burn out the cold horrible nausea. To save this woman--this golden-haired, violet-eyed goddess with her wonderful white skin--to ride with her for one day, one hour--Jim Wall would have paid what the robber chief had paid.

"Jim!--Oh, Jim!" came a cry from the back of the cave.

"Helen--it's all--over," he called, hoarsely.

She appeared in the opening. "Gone?" she whispered.

"Yes, gone--and dead."

"I--saw--you. . . . Is HE--dead?"

"You bet your life," burst out Jim, his breast oppressed.

"Oh, help me out!"

He ran to assist her. She came sliding out, to fall on her knees, clasping Jim with fierce arms. Her head fell against him.

Jim's hands plucked at her arms--caught them. Yet they seemed hands of steel binding his knees to her breast.