Dead Man's Gold/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
the end of a chase
THERE were no more shots. The tragic finish to the fight on the summit and the death of Padilla seemed to have disheartened further attempts. As Healy could not lead them personally to the top for a second attack, the Mexicans declined the initiative. Once the horses neighed and Stone went along the side of the ledge that was in shadow and looked down. "No trouble. Wanted some, food, I suppose," he said. "I wish there was some way of getting it to them." After that the three men took short spells at watching, safe in the shadow, as the moon shifted. The fire died down and made for close company. But before it failed entirely Peggy made a discovery.
"Look," she said, "there's another of those queer birds carved just by the side of the entrance."
Stone sprayed the torch ray on it. He found that it could be reached from the outside and, since the stone should not rise more swiftly than it had lowered, it would not be difficult, if the mechanism worked, to close up their treasure-house when they departed.
Through the night the mesa, or all that they could see of it from their perch, remained clear and without alarms. The two girls went to sleep in each other's arms while Harvey brooded over them like a patriarch.
The stars were still bright, though their side of the butte was in blackness with the moon sinking westward, when a sound aroused them all as if it had been the trump of Gabriel. It was the "honk-honk!" of an auto horn blaring across the quiet mesa. Another sounded in a different note. They were far away but the honking continued louder and louder.
"They're scarin' 'Ealy orf," said Larkin. "S'pose they fink we may be hup hagainst it. 'Ell, there they go."
Out of the dark shadow of the neighbouring butte came a bunch of horsemen, flying toward the ravine that led up to the mesa. Stone and Harvey and Larkin let loose at the racing targets and one man fell behind the rest, dismounted, caught a riderless horse that had belonged to one of the dead Mexicans, and tore after his comrades, leaving his first mount dead.
"It's a shyme to hit the 'orses stead of the Greasers," said Larkin. "Hi, they're hafter 'em. Let 'em know we're halive."
They fired again and shouted as the horns blared and a big car appeared the other side of the butte from which the riders had come, and went lunging through the soft soil in pursuit. It was filled with men, and jets of fire prefaced the sharp reports of their rifles. A second car came on toward the treasure-butte as the two girls added their ululating "cooee's" to the shouts of the men.
"Time to put hup the shutters," said Larkin. "W'ot habout the gold, Stone? We forgot to fetch it hup." There had been other things besides gold to think about.
"Leave it," said Stone. "If that door works. We want to get after those skunks out there. They've got the best of the machine."
"Leave me here while you do the chasin'," suggested Harvey. "Thet door may not work from the outside after thet crack you give it. Better take some gold along with us. It might come in handy. I'll get it up. You get down the ladders."
The first machine had struck a patch of soft sand and the fleeing Mexicans gained. One man was far in the lead, better mounted than the others. The car plowed out of its trouble and with a burst of speed began to overhaul the fugitives. One of them fell, the rest faltered and then halted, holding up their arms in token of surrender, all save the man on the fast horse, who disappeared in the ravine.
"I bet that's 'Ealy," said Larkin, bitterly.
They found Doctor Seward in the second car. The sheriff of Yavalai County was in the first, he said, after he had congratulated them.
"I had trouble in getting a posse to cross the county line," said the doctor. "It's a toss-up whether you are in Gila or Coconino right here. But we can fix that. They are not so fussy over county trespass in Arizona and I fancy that some of the rascals the sheriff is rounding up will be acceptable to any of the nearest jailers. Did you make your strike?"
"We did," said Larkin. "And there's a long story as to that. But I'll tell you one fing. You get yore 'orsepittle hendowment and it'll be called the Furniss Sanitarium."
"Well, we'll help sustain your rights until you register them," said Seward. "All reputable citizens in our posse. One mining man with us. He's in the other car. He can tell you whether you'll have to register at Globe or Flagstaff or Williams. It was he who suggested we could drive cars along the mesa and make better time than with horses. Are you ready to go back?"
"Just a minute. Doctor," said Stone. "I'll endow another ward, hospital, or what you like, if you'll take Larkin and myself over to the sheriff's car. They've let one man get away and I rather fancy it's Mr. Healy. Larkin and myself want a little conversation with him. We'll take a couple of those Mexican's horses, since these of ours haven't had any feed, and see if we can overhaul him."
"It isn't my car," said the doctor, but" he turned to the man beside him, "How about it Mr. Simes?"
"Of course."
Larkin and Stone caught up their rifles and jumped into the empty tonneau. The girls waved to them as the owner mounted and threw in the clutch.
"He won't go far," said the sheriff. "White man, name of Healy, they tell me. One of us winged his horse just as he made the ravine. Low in the flank. We'll git him. Of course, if you two gents have got a special hankerin' to round him up I don't mind accommodating you. They's a couple of likely cayuses in thet bunch. I'll jest sw'ar ye in as deputies. Hold up yore right hands. Seein' the circumstances, I might add thet you can bring him or leave him, so long's you finish the job. Them's my instructions. Sabe?"
Stone and Larkin were in the saddle before he had finished. Their mounts seemed in good condition and they did not spare them although they let them wash out their mouths when they reached Tonto Creek. The trail was plain where Healy had put his horse through the stream and turned it west, down cañon. A few spots of blood soon disappeared. Apparently the horse was less hurt than the sheriff had thought.
The tracks led past Stone Men Cañon, past Promontory Butte, under the cliffs of the chalcedony plateau. Then they saw him, his horse labouring gallantly at the head of a steep gulch though not the same one by which they had once descended. Before they could fire he had disappeared. He was making his way toward Miami, a desperate undertaking without forage, food and, possibly, water.
Their own mounts, desert-bred and hardened, scrambled up the acclivity like goats. Larkin was no accomplished horseman but he stuck like a burr to mane and saddle, or to pommel and cantle.
They discovered that, by luck or information, Healy had struck the plateau at its narrowest, where the desert eddied in on the rock. If he knew that they were after him he made no sign but had evidently settled down to getting the most out of his steed, limping now but struggling on.
"He'll die an' dry up in the desert if 'e starts to cross it," gasped Larkin, bobbing in his saddle. "W'ot price dismounting and trying a pot shot or two? Though I'll never git back in this bloody saddle hif I do," he added, with a groan.
"Too quick a death for him," said Stone. "He wants the fear of the noose put into him. Our horses are in better shape than his. We'll get him inside of a mile or so."
They went on in the hot sun, all three at a slow gait that was a travesty of a trot. Once Larkin yelled and Healy looked round. They saw him put his spurs to the horse that lumbered forward and then stopped suddenly, warned by its instinct of something its rider could not see. Healy went over its head and the animal wheeled and snorted and then stood stock still for the others to come up.
But they were staring at a frightful sight, swiftly as it passed. As Healy struck the ground it seemed to rise all about him in a geyser of mud, as a greasy puddle splashes under the passing foot. They heard his shriek, despairing, unearthly, and saw him wallow helplessly before the pit engulfed him. As they reached the edge of the sumidero all that was left of Healy were a few slimy, gaseous bubbles that rose slowly, shone prismatically, and then burst gently with a sucking sound while the mud heaved a little before it levelled down to cake and crack under the sun, ready for its next victim.
•••••••
The only sounds in the amphitheatre at the head-waters of Tonto Creek, some three months later, were the whirring of cicadas, the munch-crunch of a contented burro, and the tap-tap of a prospector's sledge. Up on the mesa the Treasure Butte was yielding up its gold by the most modern methods, the romance of the mine almost ancient history, except to its fortunate owners, of whom, strange to say, the prospector in the cañon was one.
He worked on a jumble of rock formation that filled the gap of the gorge of the placer-creek, now a side-issue of the Mogollon Mining Company. As he pecked away with the perseverance of a woodpecker on insect-infected bark, he hummed and sometimes he talked to himself, as Desert Rats will do, whether they are millionaires in their old age or not.
"This is the most likely place in Arizony to find 'em," he said. "A bunch of mussed-up rock like this. Reglar junk-shop o' mineral. Them's garnets and all this is crystalline schist. A little shot"
He set his stick of dynamite into the socket he had prepared for it. As in the days of his youth, he crimped the cap with his teeth and attached the fuse. Then he walked away after lighting it and watched it sputter, remembering the way the fuses had sputtered in the darkness of the great cavern that now was open to the light of day. There was not much noise for the formation was loose and gave easily.
A little pile of débris rolled down from the gash the explosion had made and he walked over to it and carefully examined it in his horny palm.
A mass of glittering ruby crystals he set aside—garnets. Some duller pebbles of green he nodded at.
"Olivines, peridots, we're gettin' warm. But we've bin that warm afore an' got fooled. Now, then." He turned over and over some gray-looking objects and held them up against the light as if half unbelieving, his seamed face twisting gradually into a smile. Then he flung up his hat and whooped, jumping into the air with his find clutched tightly in his great hand, cracking his heels fairly before he lit.
"I'm the pizened son of a horned toad if I ain't got 'em!" he said. "Three of 'em! They ain't no bigger'n peas but they're di'monds, and I wouldn't swap 'em for all that's left of the mother-of-gold up thar in the butte. No, sirree."
He hefted them ecstatically.
"I'll show 'em," he said. "They's more thar in the gneiss but I'll leave them for later to prove I ain't salted my own di'mond mine. And I'll make 'em swaller their grins and their jokes, gol dern their ornery, pesky hides! I'll shove 'em down their throats."
He looked at them again.
"That 'ud be worse than pearls afore swine," he soliloquized. "I'll have the three of 'em cut, if they trim plumb down to chips, and I'll have 'em mounted in Mogollon gold in three rings—one fer Stone and one fer Larkin and one fer me. Onless the gels want 'em.
"Used to josh me, did they? Wal, the world 'll read of me as Di'mond Dick Harvey, the man who found diamonds in Arizony."
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.