Whispering Sands: Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert

I Desert Death

Little things count for a good deal in the desert. The man who lives in the desert must observe everything, no matter how small, otherwise he won’t live long.

The desert is the crudest mother a man ever had, and therefore the kindest. Man develops through his sufferings. The pleasures which come in between are the mental bromides which enable us to carry on. Our only real progress is made through overcoming suffering or hardship.

If I hadn’t lived so long in the desert I wouldn’t have investigated the moving speck. We were approaching the end of the road, and my roan was tired. He was still full of spirit and stamina, but he was tired. The moving speck caught my eye and held my attention.

It wasn’t a deer; it wasn’t an antelope, and it wasn’t a man. It looked something like a burro, and yet it seemed to be too high in the back for a burro.

I glimpsed it winding around the base of a butte, then it vanished.

I pulled the roan in and looked around me. Mile on mile of empty space, aching with silence, a weird horizon of sharply serrated mountains that thrust knife-like edges up into the blue vault, a horizon that danced in the sunlight as the heat waves distorted the distant mountains.

I dropped the lead rope from the packhorse, swung one knee over the horn of the saddle, and rolled a cigarette while I scanned the base of the desert butte. The roan had seen the speck too.

Perhaps he knew what it was. His ears were cocked forward and his nostrils slightly dilated as he looked at the place where the speck had disappeared.

I made fire to the cigarette, inhaled an appreciative lungful of smoke and touched the roan lightly with my spur. He knew at once what I wanted, and started a shuffling lope through the white sand.

Distances are deceptive in the dry air of the desert, and at the end of ten minutes we seemed to be no nearer the butte than when we had started. The roan continued his pace-devouring stride, although we were climbing a slope and the footing was soft. We angled around the slope of the butte and came at length to the place where I had seen the moving object.

I looked down in the sand, reading the trail, and knew at once what it was that had gone around the base of that butte.

It was a burro, and a burro that had a pack on his back.

A burro, with a pack, which is loose in the desert, means a desert wayfarer in trouble, and the code of the desert is that one must always aid the wayfarer who is in trouble.

The horse knew as well as I did what I wanted. I left everything to the horse.

He drifted around the shoulder of the butte, went down a pitch on the other side, and I saw the burro nibbling at a bit of sage in a cup-like depression between the buttes. I rode up to him and looked at the pack.

A desert man can tell much from the way a pack is thrown. Men who have worked as forest rangers usually have a certain system. Professional packers throw their ropes in another way; and men who have gone in much for hunting use a distinctive method of balancing the pack and throwing the hitch. There are all kinds, from diamond hitches down to squaw hitches, with various modifications in between.

I concluded this pack had been thrown by an old desert man who had been out from his base of supplies for about two days. There was water in the canteen, a light bed roll, and a pair of alforjas filled with a miscellaneous assortment. The tarp which was thrown over the top was grimed with desert dust and sooted with straggling ashes from countless camp fires. I tossed a rope over the burro’s neck, made a half hitch around the horn of the saddle, and spoke to the roan.

We swung back around the shoulder of the mesa, down a long slope, around a short ridge of hills, through a little valley, and then I saw another speck. This speck was a black blotch which was lying motionless on a sandy slope between two clumps of stunted sage.

The sun was getting a bit toward the west now, and the shadows were lengthening. The shadow which was thrown by this object seemed as black as a pool of ink dropped on the white sand of the desert.

I knew what it was when I was more than a hundred and fifty yards away.

At first I thought perhaps the man might have collapsed with a sprained ankle or because of the heat. But as I rode up and took in the details of the grotesque pose, I knew that he was dead.

I dismounted when I was twenty or thirty yards away. The burro didn’t make any objections, but the roan was side-stepping around a bit and snorting. I knew then that the death had been violent, and the roan was smelling blood.

I moved forward cautiously and, as I walked, I pulled my six-gun from its holster and watched the surrounding country.

Ordinarily we don’t wear six-guns in the desert. The man who has one is usually a tenderfoot or a crook. But this trip was different. I was going into a section which remained wild.

It needed but a glance to tell what had happened. The man had been shot from some distance with a high-powered rifle, used by an expert. There had been but the one shot, and it had gone full into the heart.

The man had never known what hit him.

He was about fifty-five or fifty-six years of age, and had a gray stubble along the angle of his bronzed jaw. He was attired in an old pair of faded overalls, a jumper and a shirt. The hat was an old Stetson which had been soaked in desert dust and sunshine until it showed only as a nondescript gray. Everything about the man indicated an old desert rat who knew the moods of the desert.

Tracks showed that there had been two burros, and I spotted the second burro not over two hundred yards away. This was a saddle burro, and there was a scabbard on the side of the saddle, with a rifle in the scabbard. I went up to this burro and looked the saddle over.

I would have said that the man had been shot from some sort of an ambush. Certainly he never knew that he was in any danger. The rifle was in the scabbard, the reins were caught on the horn of the saddle.

Evidently the man had been riding along when suddenly he received that shot, full through the heart.

I unsaddled both of the burros and turned them loose. I knew that they could shift for themselves in the desert. I couldn’t be bothered carrying them along with me. I went back to the body and examined it once more. There was a six-gun thrust down the front of the man’s belt, and apparently he had made no attempt to reach it. It was stuck snugly in its holster. The left hand held a small glass jar, hermetically sealed, with a screw top. In that jar was a piece of paper.

I took the jar from the dead man’s hand. I could see that the paper had writing on it, but I couldn’t see exactly what that writing consisted of. I slipped the jar into my saddle bag, took the tarp and covered the body with it.

Tracking back the burros and getting the direction in which the man had been traveling, then looking at the path the bullet had taken through his body, I was able to get a general idea of the direction from which the shot had come.

I mounted the roan and started shuffling along in that direction. Pretty quick I came to a place where a body had lain in the sand. It was possible to see prints made by the elbows and by the buttons on the coat, also little holes where the toes of the boots had rested.

There were half a dozen cigarette stubs scattered around in the rocks, the ends of several burnt matches, and a single empty rifle shell. That rifle shell was from a .303 rifle.

I prowled around and found where the man had walked into his place of concealment. He wore high heeled cowboy boots. Backtracking, I found where his horse had been stationed, and figured that the horse was a big, fast cattle horse that had been trained to stand when the reins were dropped over his head.

I didn’t disturb the evidence any, but simply looked it over. Then I went back, picked up my packhorse, and started on.

Behind me stretched the flat desert, across which wound a road of sorts, a road that could have been traveled by automobile.

Ahead of me loomed mountains and the road which wound up the Box Cañon, a grade that was far too steep for any automobile to negotiate. In fact, it could hardly be dignified by being called a road at all. It was merely a wide back trail.

II Desert Mystery

From here on, I left civilization behind. The hands of the clock turned back through two or three decades. I had heard of Greasewood before. In fact, I had been there once or twice in the earlier days. In those days it had been a prosperous mining community and the road had been such that supplies could be freighted in by wagon.

Those were the days of the ten- and sixteen-horse wagons that crawled up through the hot country; horses harnessed in long strings, two abreast, and driven by the “long-line skinner” who sat in a saddle on one of the “wheelers” and controlled the team by jerks on a long line. The leaders had bells attached to their collars so that any one coming along the road from an opposite direction could be apprised of the big freighter that was crawling along the grade.

Then had come the change. The mines on the mesa had closed down, and the town of Greasewood had become a ghost town with only a few desert rats making headquarters in the deserted buildings.

The desert closed in and claimed the once prosperous mining community for its own, engulfed it in vast silence. Then the crash in the stock market started the depression, and the depression had placed a premium upon gold. Once more the yellow metal was king. Greasewood once more became a city.

The outstanding event of the gold boom in Greasewood was the reopening of the Bleaching Skull Mine. A New York concern sent out some laborers who went into the old tunnels and started to burrow into the face of the rock along the line of a drift which had been abandoned years before.

Within the first fifty feet they had struck the rich vein of ore which had faulted out back in 1906. Excitement raced across the desert, fanned to a white-hot, fever heat. Prospectors poured into the city of Greasewood by the score.

The mine was taking out ore that was literally studded with the yellow metal; ore that was known in mining parlance as “jewelry rock.”

My roan plugged steadily up the long, deep grade as the purple shadows filled the valley. Higher and higher we wound up into the land of the distorted peaks. Gaudy-colored rock outcroppings caught the glint of the setting sun and transformed the country into a riot of color.

I turned off of the trail, angled down a slope, and found a little valley in which I could make camp. I wasn’t anxious to camp too close to the trail which led out from Greasewood.

That night the desert talked.

A wind sprang up from nowhere and whisked around the weird peaks with whistling noises, swooped down upon the sandy slopes, picked up little particles of sand, and sent them scurrying along, rattling against sage and cacti, giving the effect of some weird, hissing whisper which filled the darkness.

People who have lived much in the desert are familiar with this desert talk which comes at night.

I lay and listened to the sand talk, watched the stars quietly wheeling across the heavens, and dropped off into dreamless sleep.

I was up with daylight, saddled, packed, and away. By seven o’clock I topped the pass and could look down upon the mesa where the town of Greasewood held forth.

Many of the old houses were so dilapidated as to be unfit for human habitation, and their places had been taken by tents which had been packed in on horseback and flung up here and there, little blobs of white which caught the rays of the morning sun.

The smoke from cooking fires rose straight up for the first hundred feet or so until it struck an area of lighter air and spread out in a blanket of haze which covered the valley.

As I rode closer I could hear the voices of men, the laughter of children, and the lower tones of women. The sides of the hills were scarred with mining dumps, long pack trains were commencing to shuffle out over the road, and men on horseback loped about, starting the business of the day.

I dropped down off of the last slope, and put my horses at a lope as I went along the side street, past the tents, where children came to stare at me curiously.

I rode directly to an unpainted, rather ramshackle building which had stood for more than a quarter of a century without attention. It had been fixed up by such patchwork as was necessary to make it habitable, and over the door was a board upon which had been lettered by an unskilled hand: “THE BLEACHING SKULL MINING COMPANY. GENERAL OFFICES.”

A man came shuffling to the door when he heard the hoofs of my horses on the road, and stared at me with uncordial eyes.

“I’m Bob Zane,” I told him, “and I want to see Frank Atwood.”

The man looked at me for a moment, turned without a word, and vanished into the interior. I swung from the saddle and dropped the reins over my horse’s head, tied the lead rope of the packhorse to a rail.

There were quick steps on the board floor, and a young, well-knit man in khaki and polished puttees came bursting out into the morning, his face wreathed in smiles, his hand extended.

“Welcome to Greasewood, Bob Zane!” he exclaimed, and pumped my hand up and down.

“You’re Atwood?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Frank Atwood, manager of the mine here. They wrote me that you were coming.”

“Where do I stay?” I asked him. “And where can we talk?”

“We can talk right here, and we’d better talk before you pick a place to stay. Let’s come in here. I’ve got a private office where we can go over things.”

He led the way into a private office, ensconced himself importantly at a desk, and indicated a chair.

I dropped into the chair, tilted back against the wall and rolled a smoke, and sized him up.

He wasn’t a desert man. He was city bred, a college-trained mining engineer.

“Before we start talking,” I told him, “I want to get in touch with the sheriff.”

“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular,” I said, “except a dead man on the trail. Somebody had done him in from ambush with a .303 rifle. The fellow who did the job was a good shot.”

Frank Atwood stared at me. “Another murder?” he said.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know about the ‘another’ part of it,” I told him, “but it sure is a murder.”

“You don’t know who the man was?” he asked.

“No. Some fellow who was traveling out of Greasewood with a saddle burro and a single pack.”

“I wonder who it could have been?”

I didn’t make any suggestions, but contented myself with putting the finishing touches on my cigarette and striking a match to the end. Atwood got up and strode to the door. He jerked it open and said in a low voice: “Sproul, will you go and round up the sheriff for me? Get him here right away.”

A voice grumbled an answer.

I filed away in my mind, for future reference, the fact that this man, Sproul, stayed pretty close to the door of Frank Atwood’s private office when there was a conference going on.

Atwood came back and sat down.

“Where was the man shot?” he asked.

“Right through the heart,” I said.

“You couldn’t tell anything about the motive?”

“No.”

“Do you know how long he’d been dead?”

“Sometime around about noon yesterday was when he got his. I came along about three or four o’clock.”

“How near the main road?”

“About four hundred yards, but you couldn’t see it from the road.”

He looked at me and sighed, and then fidgeted uneasily in his chair.

“I understand that the directors sent you in,” he said, “with unlimited authority to take such action as you see fit.”

I puffed on the cigarette and said:

“The directors told me to cooperate with you.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “of course. That’s understood. But I mean that you are to have a free hand in regard to methods.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re generally familiar with conditions here, I take it.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I told him. “I haven’t been here for years.”

“We’re contending with all sorts of lawlessness,” he said. “We haven’t got our transportation facilities opened up yet. We’re getting out a lot of high-grade ore, and we have a payroll which we have to meet. All of that makes for trouble. We’re being troubled with bandits and an element of lawlessness that the sheriff doesn’t seem able to handle.”

“Why can’t he handle it?” I asked.

“He’s a local man,” said Atwood, “and he has local prejudices to figure on.”

Steps sounded in the passage outside. Some one knocked on the door. Atwood opened it.

I gazed into a pair of steel-gray eyes which surveyed me from behind steel-rimmed spectacles, a face that had been bronzed by desert suns, and deeply lined. The hair was iron-gray and it peeped out from beneath the rim of a battered Stetson.

Atwood said: “Bob Zane, shake hands with Bill Hostler, the sheriff here.”

I got up and shook hands.

The sheriff said: “You wanted me, Frank?”

“Zane does,” said Atwood.

The sheriff looked at me, and I told him what I’d found.

“Is that all?” he asked, when I’d finished.

“That’s all,” I said, “except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The man had a glass jar in his hand,” I said, “and in that glass jar was a paper. The glass jar was sealed with a screw top that had been put down tight. I didn’t open the jar, but I figured the paper might be important, so I brought it along.”

“Where is it?” he asked.

I reached in my pocket and took out the round glass container, and set it on the table.

Hostler stared at it curiously. Frank Atwood picked up the glass and turned it around and around.

“Well?” he asked.

“Better open it, I guess,” said the sheriff.

Atwood unscrewed the top and fished out the piece of paper.

It was a piece of brown paper such as had evidently been used at one time as a wrapping paper.

“Good Lord!” said Atwood. “It’s a copy of the agreement that Doug Drake reached with us just before he left for the city!”

“What agreement’s that, Frank?” asked the sheriff.

Atwood got up and crossed the room to a little safe. He got down in front of it and started spinning the combination.

I reached over and picked up the paper. It felt funny in my fingers. I twisted it a bit, and then tried to tear off a corner. The paper was tough and the corner didn’t tear until after I had bent the paper so that wrinkles came in it between my thumb and finger. I looked at Bill Hostler, the sheriff, to see if he saw what had happened. He was staring at the paper too. Then he picked it up and tore a little piece from the other corner.

Atwood was back from the safe by that time, carrying a piece of paper, and he looked at us as we looked at each other, but none of us said anything.

Atwood put a piece of paper down on the desk, and I saw it was a carbon copy of the paper that had been in the glass jar.

“Doug Drake settled his difference with the Bleaching Skull Mining Company day before yesterday,” he said. “He wasn’t going to say anything about it until he had recorded the original. He was on his way down to get it recorded.”

Sheriff Hostler looked over Atwood’s shoulder and read the writing that was on the paper.

“How did it happen the agreement was drawn on this kind of paper?” he asked.

Atwood grinned.

“We made the settlement at his house,” he said, “and I’ve had enough dealings with Doug Drake to know that when he was ready to sign was the time to get him to sign. I had an old piece of carbon paper in my pocket, and he scraped up some brown wrapping paper that had been around a purchase he had made in the city, and we executed the agreement, the original and one copy, right then.”

Hostler said, slowly: “Well, that agreement seems to give the mining company the complete right to go into the property that’s been in dispute.”

“It does,” said Atwood. “Drake got tired of fighting us.”

“What do you do under those circumstances?” I asked. “Bring the body up for an inquest?”

Sheriff Hostler shook his head.

“I have a general understanding with the authorities on those things. We notify the people that are interested and overlook the red tape.”

“Who’s interested in this case?” I asked.

“A daughter,” said Frank Atwood, “named Bessie Drake. I guess you’d better tell her, sheriff.”

Bill Hostler looked over at me and said: “Was the man about fifty-six, with gray hair and light blue eyes, a fellow who weighed about a hundred and fifty, and was about five feet eight inches tall, wearing blue overalls and a patched jumper?”

I nodded and said: “One of the burros was grayish and it was an old 30–30 rifle that was in the saddle scabbard.”

Sheriff Hostler reached for his hat.

“Well,” he said, “I’d better go break the news to Bess.”

When the sheriff had gone I asked Frank Atwood a question:

“This man Drake left here, you say?”

“Yes, he left here two or three days ago.”

“And had the agreement with him?”

“Yes, he was taking the original out to have it recorded. I had the duplicate copy here in the safe.”

“Who’s this Theodore Sproul who is a witness?” I asked.

“That’s Ted Sproul who’s outside here. I’d better get him in.”

He went to the door and called: “Oh, Ted.”

A man came in who had black eyes that were virtually expressionless. His face showed no expression whatever. His mouth was wide and firm. He wore a shirt which was open at the neck, and a handkerchief which was knotted around his neck. He wore overalls, cowboy boots, a vest, and a cartridge belt with a six-gun dangling on his hip.

The black eyes regarded me in steady, questioning appraisal.

“Bob Zane, here,” explained Atwood, “is a man who has been sent in by the directors to sort of assume charge of our campaign here against lawlessness. Sproul, Mr. Zane, is one of our guards here who has shown considerable aptitude for the work.”

Sproul grinned and said: “Thanks.”

“You’ll work under Zane, Sproul,” said Frank Atwood.

The black eyes came to my face again and the face twisted in a slow smile.

“That’ll be a pleasure,” he said. “I’ve heard of Bob Zane.”

“How many other guards have you got?” I asked.

“Two,” said Atwood. “There’s Sam Easton and Phil Stope.”

“What’s been your main trouble?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said. “We’ve lost payrolls and high-grade ore. We’ve been hampered at every turn by vicious lawlessness. For the most part, the inhabitants of the town seem to be fighting us. We’re the big mining company here and every one hates us because we control most of the property.”

“That makes it interesting,” I said.

“Don’t it?” said Ted Sproul, and grinned.

“But you must have some definite idea of who you’re fighting,” I said. “It isn’t just a question of isolated lawlessness. There must be some head to it.”

“There is,” said Atwood slowly, “but we can’t get a line on him.”

Ted Sproul spoke in his slow desert drawl.

“He’s right,” he said, “we can’t seem to get a thing. Stuff disappears, payrolls are held up and stacks of high-grade ore vanish. The man who does it has an uncanny knowledge of just what he’s after. He’s got some kind of a spy system, because he knows just what we’re doing.

“For instance, when we get in a payroll, we start three separate pack trains over the grade, only one of them having the actual cash. This bandit never makes the mistake of getting the wrong pack train. He seems to know right where the money is, and he goes after it.”

“The men are all masked, of course?” I said.

“Oh, yes, sure,” said Sproul, “and they have a sweet habit of shooting from ambush. They kill first and rob afterwards.”

“Suppose this man Drake met up with one of those bandits?” I asked.

“Of course he did,” said Atwood. “You see, he was carrying the cash consideration for the agreement, amounting to over fifteen thousand dollars.”

“How come?” I inquired.

“Well, it was this way,” said Atwood. “As you will see by the agreement itself, there was a cash payment of fifteen thousand dollars which was paid. I made out a check to him, and he didn’t want the check; he wanted cash. We’ve got a little bank here in which we keep a certain amount of money — not too much, but enough to cover our emergency expenses. I got him to endorse the check, took it to the bank, got it cashed, and delivered the cash to him myself.”

“So, evidently,” I said, “somebody knew in advance that he had this fifteen thousand dollars, and arranged to take it by the most efficient method possible.”

“That’s it,” said Atwood; “only the man didn’t need to know very much in advance. Drake was using burros, and this man could have used a horse and gone on past him on the trail.”

“That doesn’t leave us much to work on,” I said.

“Well,” Atwood told me, “never mind that. That’s a problem for the sheriff to handle. That’s the reason we have our own mining guards. The sheriff has to look after the general crime that takes place in the county. We have our own guards to look after those crimes which affect our interests, and Lord knows there are plenty of them!”

“You don’t figure that this crime affects the mining company then?” I said.

“Certainly not,” said Atwood. “We paid the consideration for the agreement and got it executed. It’s binding on Drake’s heirs.”

“Well,” I said after a pause, “I presume that you’ve got something in particular lined up for me to do at the start.”

“There’s one thing,” said Atwood, “that we’d like to have you ready for. And that’s a payroll that’s coming in some time to-morrow. We’re bringing it in considerably in advance of the time that it’s due, and we’re sending it in as provisions. The money is in a shipment of flour, concealed in the flour sacks.”

“This comes in to-morrow?” I asked.

“It starts up the grade some time to-night.”

“Why the night business?” I asked.

“We figure that there’s less chance of an ambush at night. They’ve got to come out with more of a direct attack. The horses can travel at night, and we’re going to run the stuff right on through. It should be in here about half past two or three o’clock in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give that some attention. Is there anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of right now,” he said.

I told them I’d see them later, and went out.

III Night Convoy

I found a place where I could stable my horses and see that they had some feed. Prices were like they were in the Klondike during the gold rush, but everybody seemed happy and prosperous. There was a general merchandise store which seemed to be doing quite a business, and I figured that would be a good place for me to get a line on the various people.

I loitered around looking the people over and picking up an earful here and there. Apparently no one knew who I was, or why I had come to town. I hung around for a couple of hours.

While I was standing there waiting, there was a swirl of motion, and I turned to find myself staring into a pair of very black and very burning eyes.

She was about five feet two inches tall, dressed in a khaki skirt and blouse, with a big Stetson that had seen service. Yet her complexion was smooth and well cared for. It wasn’t the lily-white, peaches-and-cream complexion of the town girl, but was a clear olive tint that showed the contour of her face smoothly and without blemish.

“You’re Bob Zane?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You don’t know me,” she said, “but I want to ask you a question or two.”

I stood there feeling uncomfortable, but not being able to place just exactly where that feeling came from, or what caused it.

“You’re the man who discovered the body of Douglas Drake?” she asked.

I nodded.

There was a slight hint of moisture in the eyes, but no quivering of the mouth.

“I’m his daughter,” she said.

I wondered if perhaps there was going to be a scene of weeping, but after a moment I could see that there wasn’t. She blinked back the moisture from her eyes.

“I’m sorry about him,” I told her.

She nodded her head.

“I’ve heard,” she said, “that he had a paper with him.”

I nodded.

“A paper,” she asked, “by which he conveyed everything to the mining company?”

I nodded again.

“Then,” she said slowly, “I’ve got nothing.”

“There was a cash payment, I believe,” I said. “Do you know whether or not he had that with him?”

She said, “I don’t know anything about it, but there must have been some motive for... for... for killing him.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I wish there was something I could do. Perhaps if you have any suspicions you could tell me.”

“No suspicions,” she said.

I stood, looking down at her, wondering what I could say or what I could do. She was a typical desert girl, strong and self-reliant, vibrant with personality — a daughter of the sun and the sand. Yet her father lay out there in the glittering sunlight of the desert, covered over with a tarp, awaiting the arrival of the official burial party.

Abruptly she turned on her heel, flung a “thank you” over her shoulder, and walked away.

I walked out of the store, went over to the livery stable.

“Horses fed?” I asked the attendant.

He nodded.

“Okay,” I told him, and flung a saddle on the big roan. The attendant watched me as I tightened up the cinch and adjusted the bridle.

“Going to take the pack?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He looked as though he wanted to ask some more questions, but I did not look as though I wanted to answer them, so after a while he went away. I went to the pack and got out my carbine, which I put in a saddle scabbard and tied to the saddle, so that it hung under my leg. Then I put some concentrated food in the saddle bags and climbed into the saddle.

“Where can I find the sheriff?” I asked of the man at the livery stable.

“I think he went up to the mine,” he said.

I nodded and sent the roan up to the mine at a lope.

Frank Atwood came to the door to meet me.

“Where’s the sheriff?” I asked.

“He went out to take a look at Doug Drake’s body,” he said. “He only left a little while ago.”

“Where do I meet the payroll?” I asked him.

“Down at the foot of the grade,” he said. “It’s going to be in to-night — earlier than we expected. I was trying to get in touch with you. Did you get my message?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t get any message. I just got to exploring around.”

“Well,” he said, “you’ll have to start inside of a couple of hours. I’m going to have Ted Sproul go with you if you want.”

“I don’t want,” I told him. “I’m going to play a lone hand.”

He stared at me an instant.

“Any way you want it,” said Frank Atwood, shrugging his shoulders; “but I would suggest that you take at least one man with you, maybe two.”

“No,” I said, “I’m playing a lone hand.”

The smile left his face.

“All right,” he said, “have it your own way,” and then he added, “It’s your own funeral.”

The roan was big and strong and used to the desert. We made time up the trail. I overtook Sheriff Hostler within the first ten miles.

He looked at me with mild surprise. “Going out for something special?” he asked.

“Heard you were going out and thought I’d jog along for a ways.”

He nodded.

We rode along in silence. Most of the way the trail was wide enough for the two of us to ride abreast. I waited for him to say something, but he kept quiet.

We’d reached the summit of the trail and were working down through the colored mountains on the other side when I said to him abruptly: “What are you waiting for, sheriff?”

He turned and looked at me with mild surprise. Then, as he let his eyes lock with mine, the surprise left them, and his face showed a great weariness.

“I’m waiting,” he said, “for somebody to back my play.”

“All right,” I told him, “I’m going to back it.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and I didn’t say anything more.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later I looked back and saw dust on the trail.

“Somebody coming,” I told him. We waited to see who it was. After the horse got closer, I saw that it was a woman riding.

“Probably Doug Drake’s daughter,” I said.

The sheriff squinted his eyes, and I saw his mouth twitch at the corners, then settle into firm lines. After a moment he nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s Bessie Drake.”

She rode up to us and nodded her head as casually as though she had been strolling down Broadway and met a couple of acquaintances.

“I want to go,” she said.

“It isn’t going to be easy, Bess,” the sheriff told her.

“You don’t think I’m a fool, do you?” she asked.

That was all that was said. She swung her horse in alongside of ours, and we went trotting down the trail.

We got to the body along late in the afternoon. Bess knelt beside it and the sheriff and I walked away for five or ten minutes, then Bess came to us, and said: “All right.”

The sheriff had a shovel on his saddle, and I helped him dig the grave. It was hot there in the desert, but the ground was dry and it didn’t take us long.

The girl watched, dry-eyed, as we lowered the body into the grave. She was grim and silent.

After the grave had been filled in she asked me in a calm voice: “Can you show me where the man lay in ambush?”

I piloted her and the sheriff over to the place.

They looked the ground over. Neither one of them said anything. They just prowled around. After a while the sheriff said: “Well, I m going to start back. Are you going with me, Bess?”

She thought for a minute and said: “No, I don’t think I will.”

The sheriff turned to me. “How about you, Zane?”

“No,” I said, “I’m going to wait here for a little while.”

I didn’t want to tell either one of them that I was expecting the pack train to show up for the payroll.

The sheriff turned to the girl and said: “If you want to take your father’s pack in, Bess, there’ll be some packs over the trail. They’re sending some stuff out from the mine, and taking some stuff in all the time, you know.”

“Yes,” she said, tonelessly, “I know.”

The sheriff got on his horse and rode away. I climbed on the roan and went back to the end of the road and sat there watching the shadows get longer, smoking an occasional cigarette, and soaking in the silence of the desert.

After a while I heard the crunch of feet in the sand, and Bess came riding up behind me.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I told her.

She turned, spurred her horse and started up the trail toward Greasewood.

It was about dusk when I heard the tinkle of bells, and a pack train came down from the mesa country. The man in charge came over to me.

“You’re Bob Zane?” he asked.

I nodded.

He said: “We’re from the mine. We came down to get a load of flour. Atwood said you’d know about it.”

“I know about it,” I told him.

He hesitated a moment, and then squatted down on the desert beside me and rolled a cigarette.

“All alone?” I asked him.

“I’ve got my son with me,” he said. “He’ll be over after a while.”

We sat and smoked and then a young lad about nineteen or twenty, with an eager face and alert eyes, came over and joined us.

“The horses all hobbled, Harry?” asked the man.

The boy nodded his head. “All staked out, dad,” he said.

We sat there and waited.

The sun set and shadows came along the desert. After a while we saw the headlights of automobiles coming along the road, jolting and swaying. It was getting dark by the time they pulled up. There was a truck loaded with flour, and a car filled with men. The men were armed.

The man who had charge of the pack train evidently knew the truck driver. They talked together in low tones for a while, and then the sacks of flour came out on the ground. The boy brought up the pack train and I helped them throw the sacks. The man on the truck gave some papers to the packer, and the packer signed a receipt. Then the cars turned and started grinding their way back over the long desert miles.

“All ready,” said the packer to me.

IV Rope Law

We started up the winding trail. By that time it was pitch-dark, save for the grayish illumination which covered the surface of the desert from the steady stars.

After we’d gone a mile or so, I rode up to the head of the pack train and spoke to the packer.

“We’re going to stop here for a minute,” I said.

“What for?” he wanted to know.

“I want to know where the money is,” I said.

“It’s in the flour,” he told me.

“I know that,” I said, “but what sacks?”

“I’ll show you,” he said.

He showed me the packhorse that had the marked flour sack with the money in it.

“All right,” I told him, “I’m taking this money out.”

“No, you’re not,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, “but this money is coming out,” and I took out my knife and ripped open the pack and the flour.

He said: “My orders don’t cover that at all. My orders were to bring the payroll in the flour sack.”

“Your orders were to act under my directions, weren’t they?” I asked him.

He hesitated for a moment, and then said: “Yes, I was told that you’d be in charge.”

“All right,” I told him, “I’m in charge,” and took out the money.

It was in sacks in the flour, the sacks filled with bills of various denomination. The entire payroll was in currency.

I managed to get the payroll in my saddle bags.

“All right,” I told him then, “go ahead with the pack just as though nothing had happened.”

He shrugged his shoulders and spoke to his son.

The pack train got in motion.

I waited on the roan until I could hear the bells of the pack train getting mellow in the distance. Then I started poking along behind. I had a theory and I was going to test it.

I’d been moving up the trail slowly for about an hour when suddenly I saw the pinprick of a ruddy flame against the darkness of the mountains. Then I heard the crash of a shot which echoed from rock to rock. Then there were more flames and more reports. I heard the thud of galloping horses, a hoarse voice shouting a command, and then there was no more firing for a few minutes.

I stopped the roan, eased the carbine from the saddle scabbard, and waited, watching the trail ahead.

After a while I heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and got my roan crowded well over to the side of the trail up in a little draw where the trail cut through a dry wash down the side of a mountain.

Two horses came thundering past. They were pack-horses and had been loaded with flour. The flour sacks had been cut open, and the flour had sprinkled over the sweating sides of the horses until they looked like ghosts.

I held the roan steady while the horses went by, and after a while two more horses came past, then a third and a fourth.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed, then I heard the sound of a trotting horse coming down the trail as though it held a rider.

I waited until a black blotch silhouetted against the stars, and saw where the rider was sitting. Then I nestled the stock of the carbine against my cheek.

“You can either stop there or stop a magazine full of lead,” I said casually.

The voice that answered me sounded almost hysterical.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s Harry!” said the voice, and I recognized the young lad who had been helping his father with the pack train.

I rode out from the shadows and his horse snorted and stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m tied,” he said.

I slipped the carbine into the saddle scabbard, but eased the six-gun from my belt as I rode alongside of him, and reached out an exploring left hand. My right hand held the gun in readiness.

What he said was true. He was bound, his arms tied to his sides, his legs tied to the stirrups.

I got out my knife and cut him loose.

“What happened?” I asked.

“A stick-up,” he said. “They shot first, and killed my father. They tied me on my horse and started cutting open the flour sacks. I managed to get my horse started down the trail. I thought maybe I could find you.”

“That’s all you know?” I asked him.

“That’s all I know,” he said.

I looked at the sky. The moon was just coming up.

“You haven’t any weapons?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “they took those.”

“Any idea who the men were?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “they wore cloth masks and didn’t do much talking.”

“All right,” I told the boy, “we’re going to start.”

He fell in behind me without a word and we started the horses up the trail.

After a few minutes I came to the scene of the holdup. There was no mistaking it because flour had been spilled all over the trail until it looked like snow. Harry’s father lay sprawled in the trail, a hole in his forehead, his face and clothes all covered with flour. We moved the body and covered it. Harry was sobbing softly.

I picked up the trail of one of the men who had ridden in from a place up the slope, and found where he had been waiting. There wasn’t enough moonlight to read track very well, but I could see that he had sat there for some little time. I back tracked around and finally saw something lying on the ground. I walked over to it. It was a Stetson — the same hat that Bess Drake had worn that afternoon.

I sat staring at the hat in the moonlight while the boy watched me.

After a few minutes I walked back to my horse, climbed in the saddle, put spurs to the roan, and we went up the trail. The boy came riding up the trail behind me.

Halfway down the trail on the other side, we slowed abruptly. I didn’t like the way the roan was keeping his ears forward.

“Can you hear anything?” I asked.

He listened and then shook his head.

I started the roan again, but kept my hand close to the six-gun.

We rounded a little shoulder, and on the trail ahead I could see something moving. I stopped the roan and took a good look. It was a lone horseman. As he swung broadside on, in a patch of moonlight, I recognized the horse. It was the one the sheriff was riding.

I put spurs to the roan and we came up on the gallop.

Sheriff Hostler turned to stare at us as we came up.

“What’s happened?” he asked. “You seem all lathered.”

“Have you seen Bess Drake?” I asked the sheriff.

He shook his head, peered past me to the boy, and said: “Hello, Harry, what’s the trouble?”

“There was a stick-up down the trail,” I said. “They killed Harry’s dad. Bess is missing.”

The sheriff looked at me, and as the moonlight touched the side of his face I could see that his jaw was set, and his lips clamped in a thin line.

“Are you coming with me?” I asked him.

He stared steadily for a moment and then said: “Yes, Zane, I’m coming.”

“All right,” I told him, “let’s go.”

He swept his horse into a gallop and we went tearing down the trail, leaning over on the side as our horses careened around the curves.

We hit the flat, galloped through the dark, deserted streets of Greasewood and thundered up to the office of the mining company.

There were lights on.

I climbed from the saddle, untied my saddle bags, threw them over my shoulder, and walked into the office with my six-gun at my belt, the carbine in the crook of my arm.

Frank Atwood was fully dressed in his pegged riding breeches, his puttees all nicely shined and polished. His eyes were sparkling.

“You got in all right?” he asked me.

I flung the saddle bags on the desk.

“There’s the payroll,” I said.

He pawed at the sacks with feverish hands.

“Good work,” he said. “Did you have any trouble?”

I stood the carbine in the corner.

“No trouble,” I told him.

He looked up at me as I came toward him, caught something in the expression of my eyes, and fell back.

I slammed my right fist straight into his jaw and banged him back against the side of the building. He made a dive for the front of his shirt, and I crossed over a left that threw him off balance, twisted his hand away from the shirt, ripped open the shirt and pulled out a six-gun which I dropped on the floor.

He stared at me with panic-stricken eyes, and lips that were white.

“What I want first,” I said, “is to know where the girl is.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“You haven’t got time,” I told him, “to pull all that stuff. Tell me where the girl is!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

I looked over my shoulder at the sheriff. The sheriff was standing very grim and very white, but with eyes that were very steady.

“I guess we’d better get a rope,” I said, “and clean this thing up real desert fashion. You can tie a hangman’s knot, sheriff?”

Atwood stared at me and started to yammer.

“You’re crazy!” he said. “You’ve gone stark, staring crazy! I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you want?”

“Listen,” I told him, “that paper was a forgery; the one that Doug Drake had. You wanted to get possession of his property and you wanted to get some money. So you made a check payable to him for what was supposed to be the purchase price of the property, forged his signature as an endorsement, and cashed the check yourself at the bank. You didn’t have any difficulty doing that because it was a mining company check, and the endorsement was a good forgery anyway.

“You went into the city and had some expert forger forge the agreement selling out to the mining company. You sealed it in a bottle because you were afraid that if you left it loose on Drake’s body it might blow away, or if they didn’t discover the body right away, the decomposition might ruin the writing.

“You came back and waited for Drake to come out, or had one of your gang lying in ambush for him. When Drake showed up the man shot him and put the glass jar with the paper in it, in Drake’s hand. Then you waited for the body to be discovered.”

“You’re crazy!” yelled Atwood. “You can’t prove a word of what you say.”

“No, I’m not crazy,” I told him. “If you’d known the desert a little bit better you’d have known that you were betraying yourself. The paper showed on its face it was a forgery.”

“How do you mean?” he demanded.

I told him: “Paper that’s been in the desert gets so dry it hasn’t any tensile strength at all. You should have been in the desert long enough to know that. You try to put stuff in a paper bag, and at the least jar the paper bag will rip open. You can take paper and tear it easily. Paper that’s been in a moist climate is hard to tear. When you sealed that forged agreement in the glass jar, you didn’t do it in the desert at all, but you did it somewhere out on the coast. The jar was hermetically sealed, and when the paper was taken out, it still retained the moisture that had been in it when it was on the coast.

“Paper crinkles differently in the desert than it does on the coast. The sheriff noticed it, and I noticed it. As soon as I saw the way that paper lay on the table, I knew that there was too much moisture in it for it to have been written in the desert and sealed in a jar here. That paper was written somewhere out on the coast, and sealed in the jar.

“In short, Atwood, you’re the one that’s been the head of this gang of thugs that has been preying on the mine and the payroll shipments. Knowing exactly when they were coming, why you knew exactly how to play your hold-ups. But the game’s up now!”

He pushed back from me, staring with a white face.

“Sheriff,” he said, “the man’s gone crazy! He’s accusing me of crime.”

Sheriff Hostler said, slowly: “He’s right, Atwood. As soon as I felt of that paper, I knew it hadn’t been signed here in the desert.”

Atwood’s eyes held a glint of desperation. Suddenly I saw that glint change into a stare of triumph.

I jumped to one side, and as I jumped, a gun crashed from the corridor of the office building, and a bullet thudded into the wall.

I whirled. There was another shot as I whirled.

Sheriff Hostler staggered and spun half around. Ted Sproul, his lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes glinting with the light of a killer, flung up his gun for a shot at me.

I fired from the hip, and at the shot he was blasted backwards as though he had been jerked by some invisible hand.

I sensed motion behind me and knew that Atwood had made a grab for the revolver I had taken from him.

I swung around and lashed out with the barrel of my six-gun. The blow caught him on the side of the head, just as he had the gun in his hand ready to fire.

He fired, but the bullet went wild.

Two more men came rushing into the corridor, shooting as they came, and I sent bullets down the corridor, firing rapidly.

Sheriff Hostler sat down on the table, blood pouring from a shoulder, but his eyes were steady and calm.

He said to me: “I’m afraid they got me hard. I’ve combed the hill country pretty thoroughly, and I’m satisfied that they bring their stuff here to the mine some place and store it right on the premises. If I pass out be sure and look around.”

Atwood lay on the floor moaning. Ted Sproul was motionless on the floor of the corridor. The other men who had fired at us had stepped back out of sight.

I went over to the corner and picked up the rifle. Then I reached up to the gasoline lantern and turned it down. The flame flickered for a few minutes. Then darkness descended on the office.

“Can you make it out of here?” I asked the sheriff. “I’m afraid they may dynamite the place.”

“I’m going to be all right,” he said. “It was the shock. They got me in the shoulder, and the bone’s pretty well splintered.”

I supported him, and cased him down the passageway.

We had gone about half way when I heard the sound of whispered voices, and men came shuffling into the corridor.

“Stop where you are!” I said.

The motion stopped. Then a voice said: “What’s the trouble?”

I said: “We’ve found the bandits who have been looting the mine. Who are you?”

A voice said: “It’s all right. I’m Harry. I’ve got some of father’s friends. There’s a dead man out here, and another man got on a horse and galloped away as we came in. I think he was wounded.”

Sheriff Hostler said: “It’s all right, now, Zane. You can trust these men,” and suddenly became a dead weight on me.

Back of us in the office somebody moaned, and I could hear the sound of a body crawling along the floor.

“Better get a light,” I said, “and see what’s happening in there.”

Somebody brought up a light from one of the other rooms in the office. I could see a crowd of desert men, hardbitten miners who were the type who wouldn’t stand for funny business.

Then as they raised the light so that they could see into the interior of the office, I saw something else.

Ted Sproul had managed to crawl into the office. He had a knife in his hand, and he had groped his way to Frank Atwood. I looked at what had happened, and my soul felt sick.

Sproul leered at us.

“All right,” he said, “I’m ready to go now. Bring on the rope. He was the one that got me into it.”

I heard the men make restless motions behind me, and knew that my time was short. I pushed my way toward him.

“Where’s the girl, Sproul?” I asked.

His eyes were feverish, and his face was the color of desert sand. His voice was so weak I could hardly hear.

“The old mine had a drift over by the old shaft house,” he said. “It’s abandoned. We used that as a storeroom for the stuff we took. The girl ran on us to-night and tried to avenge her father. We had to take her along. She got one of the men in the leg — a pretty bad wound. We knew she was wise. Some of the men wanted to kill her. I didn’t want to until after we’d seen Atwood. I thought it was time to clean out.”

He swayed drunkenly, sitting there on the floor.

I heard shuffling steps behind me, as of men moving purposefully. I turned and saw a body of miners filing down the corridor. They had a rope, and in the end of the rope was a noose with a hangman’s knot.

Ted Sproul looked past me and saw the men and the rope.

Law had come to Greasewood — the law of the rope!

I camped the next night in a little depression between the mountains, down in the desert country, pretty well down the trail. Bess Drake was with me.

We had ridden until late. The horses were picketed, the packs on the ground, the ashes of the little camp fire on which we had cooked our meal were blowing fitfully in the desert breeze.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” she asked, “that you knew who was the head of the gang?”

“Why didn’t you tell me,” I countered, “that you were going to try and ambush them when they held up the pack train?”

She said simply: “I wasn’t sure that I could trust you then, Bob Zane.”

I said nothing, and we sat for a while in silence, the little circle of golden coals paling and glowing, as the wind swept over it.

“And you knew it all?” she asked, “as soon as you took that paper from the jar?”

“I knew,” I told her, “that the paper had never been sealed in that jar in the desert country. I knew that it had been put in the jar where the air was moist.”

She waited for a few minutes without saying anything. The wind freshened, and the first faint sounds of the sand whispers commenced to come to our ears.

“Bob Zane,” she said, softly, “do you ever feel that the desert is alive? Do you ever feel that there’s something about it that demands justice — something that betrays men who are dishonest?”

I didn’t say anything, because I knew it was a question that didn’t need an answer.

After a moment she went on:

“See what happened in this case. Atwood robbed the people who employed him. He murdered, and he forged a document which he thought would stand inspection anywhere, bolstered up by his perjured testimony, and that of Ted Sproul. The desert came along and stamped that document as a forgery, so that you and Sheriff Hostler would tell it the minute you saw it. It seems as though it wasn’t just chance. It seems as though there must have been something bigger — something omnipotent that betrayed those men to their undoing.”

I started to say something, but then the wind in the desert changed, and the sand started to stir restlessly, making little whispers.

I settled back, and reached for my blankets. I knew that there wasn’t any use of making an answer — the desert was answering for me.