Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 06 - Sudden Gold-Seeker(1937)

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  Sudden Gold-Seeker ~ Oliver Strange

  (Book 06 in the Sudden Westerns series)

  Chapter I

  “You meanin’ to call me a liar’?” The voice was high-pitched, immature, but it carried an underlying threat of violence. The speaker, a lanky boy of twenty, dressed in the rough garb of the frontier, stood glowering at the man who had dared to doubt him. This was an older fellow, more than twice his age, with a gnarled face upon which the challenge evoked a disarming grin.

  “Aw, Tim, I got drunk with yore dad the day you was born,” he said, and the roar of laughter which followed the naive confession relieved the tension. “All I’m sayin’ is, if the stuff is there, why are you here?”

  “I’ll tell you, Preedy,” the boy replied. “I come back to get the fixin’s—tools, supplies, an’ help—it ain’t no one-man proposition.”

  “I’ll say it ain’t,” another agreed. “The scum o’ the country’ll be there.”

  “We’ll be sorry to lose you, Dabbs,” the saloonkeeper said gravely. “You did oughta buy a farewell round.” His chuckle started another burst of merriment, in which, after a moment’s hesitation, the victim joined.

  “That’s a good idea,” he grinned. “Set ‘em up, ol’-timer, an’ charge ‘em to me.” The landlord’s cheery face fell—Dabbs was already in debt to him, and the Pioneer Saloon—though the only one in the settlement—was hardly a gold-mine. However, he had brought it on himself, and with dexterous turns of the wrist he sent glasses spinning along the bar, one stopping before each customer. The bottle followed, gyrating dizzily until it reached the end of the line; the thirsty ones poured and passed it. The trick produced the applause the performer expected.

  “Never seen it done so slick,” Preedy commented. “Reg’lar bloomin’ conjurer, of Bixby.”

  “He’ll shore have to be to git the coin outa Dabbs,” his neighbour grinned.

  The founder of the feast heard the remark and joined in the grin. “I’ll pay him when I come back with the other scum from the Black Hills,” he said.

  Some months previously vague rumours of gold discoveries in Dakota had come to Wayside and a few of the more optimistic of the settlers had departed westwards. When no news of them arrived, those who had remained behind nodded knowingly and mentally patted themselves on the back. The reappearance of young Welder, the blacksmith’s son, had revived the excitement and though it was not yet noon, brought every male in the place to the saloon, the common centre for the receipt and distribution of news. Sceptical as some of them might be, the boy’s story had aroused the appetite, dormant in every human, for easily-gotten gains.

  “What do you think o’ this, Welder?” the saloonkeeper asked the blacksmith.

  “I’m stayin’ put,” was the reply. “Tim is gain’ back an’ I’m stakin’ him. He sez it’s good.”

  “Good?” the youth echoed. “It’ll be the ‘49 over again.”

  “Huh! What you know o’ the ‘49? You warn’t pupped then.” The interruption came from a small man whose white hair and beard lent an appearance of age which the black eyes beneath the bushy bleached eyebrows, and the activity of his spare form, belied. His shrill cracked tones contained a jeer which brought a flush to young Welder’s face.

  “Mebbe not, Snowy, but I’ve heard of it,” he replied.

  The little man cackled derisively. “Yeah, from fellas who was never within five hundred miles o’ California,” he sneered. “If you wanta know ‘bout them days, come to me, son; I was there, from start to finish. Gold? the place was lousy with it. Why, you could pull up a tuft o’ grass an’ shake the yeller stuff outa the roots in the pan. One fella I knowed cleaned up fifteen thousand dollars in less’n a fortnight just doin’ that, an’ the men who washed the ground he was too lazy to put a shovel into got five times as much.”

  “That was when you made yore pile, Snowy, eh?” a listener put in slyly.

  The prospector whirled on him. “Pile?” he shrilled. “I made three, an’ spent ‘em—what else is gold for? an’ I’ll make another when I’m good an’ ready.” They laughed at this, for Snowy—regarded as a little mad—was the butt of the settlement. Nothing was known of him, not even his real name. He did no work, and disappeared at intervals for months, but always had money for liquor, of which he consumed an inordinate quantity. He was reputed to possess a secret hoard, but all attempts to trail him on his excursions had proved futile, and a search of the dug-out in which he lived revealed only the sordid poverty of its interior.

  “I heard Deadwood is getting to be a biggish place.“This from a tall, dark man, not yet forty, with a sallow, thin face, aquiline nose, and slumberous eyes, in which lurked a cold passion. His long-skirted black coat, “boiled shirt,” and neatly tied cravat might have been worn by a minister, lawyer, ‘or card-sharp, and the fact that his hands were carefully tended pointed to the latter. So Wayside guessed and missed the mark only by a little, for although Paul Lesurge—thus he named himself—was not a professional gambler in the Western sense of the term, he was an adventurer, willing to take a chance in any enterprise which promised profit, and utterly indifferent as to the means by which that profit was to be obtained.

  Suave, confident, able to cloak his callous nature with a thin veneer of culture, he had already, in the two weeks of his stay, impressed Wayside with a sense of his superiority.

  His remark, in effect a question, was addressed to young Welder, and appeared to embarrass him. He had not visited Deadwood; in fact, he had but penetrated a few miles into Dakota and knew little more about it than his hearers; all the information he had so boastfully retailed respecting the diggings had been obtained from others who claimed to have been there.

  This “slick stranger”—as he inwardly dubbed him —had guessed it.

  “I didn’t get so fur,” he said sulkily. “When I see how things was I hit the home trail pretty lively; no use agoin’ on without tools an’ the rest of it.”

  “Cripes, you don’t want no tools to pull up grass roots,” bantered a boy of about his own age. “I’m bettin’ you never see any gold-dust.” Tim flushed again, hesitated, and then burst out angrily, “Didn’t, eh? What d’you make o’ that?” Thrusting a hand into a pocket he flung something on a nearby table. It proved to be a small doeskin sack which many of them knew to be a miner’s “poke.” Snowy elbowed his way through the jostling crowd and snatched up the bag, hefting it in his hand.

  “Three ounces, near enough,” he decided, and with a grin added, “O’ course, it might be brass filin’s.” The ruse was successful. “Open it,” the owner said savagely. “S’pose you do know gold when you see it?”

  “Boy, I’ve handled more than you’ll ever live to put yore peepers on,” Snowy boasted.

  With trembling fingers he untwisted the thong which closed the mouth of the “poke” and, cupping one palm, tipped out a little of the contents. There it lay, a tiny mound of shining particles, glittering in the sunshine which filtered through the grimy window of the saloon. A feverish excitement burned in the old man’s eyes as he almost caressingly touched the yellow heap.

  “It’s gold, shore as shootin’,” he murmured hoarsely. “The on’y thing that makes life worth livin’.”

  “Waal, it’ll certainly buy most anythin’,” drawled one of the bystanders.

  Snowy looked at him disgustedly. “Who the hell cares what it’ll buy?” he snorted. “It’s just searchin’ for an’ findin’ it. Yes, gents, game-huntin’, woman-huntin’, an’ man-huntin’—I’ve tried ‘em all, but going after gold
has ‘em skinned. You can get tired o’ the others but once catch the gold-fever an’ it’ll never leave you.” He poured the dust back into the bag and passed it to the owner. “I reckon you ain’t tellin’ us where you got it,” he said dryly.

  Welder looked at him suspiciously. Did the hoary-headed old madman divine that he had not even gone as far as the diggings and that his specimen ounces had been won at poker? He decided it was not possible.

  “Would you?” he retorted. “All I’m sayin’ is that there’s plenty more where that came from.” Snowy chuckled. “You think you know it all,” he said. “Wait till the stuff has served you as many dirty tricks as it has me an’ you won’t be so brash.” The chatter continued, incessant, still on the one topic. The sight of that pinch of dust had fired the imagination of the younger men and stirred the memories of the older. Stories of past gold booms were retailed and listened to eagerly.

  The only member of the company who seemed to be unaffected by the excitement was a young, black-haired cowboy, who, leaning lazily against the bar with one high heel negligently hooked in the foot-rail, regarded the scene with amused indifference. He too was a stranger to Wayside, having ridden in on a big black horse, which he called “Nigger” and appeared to value highly, a week earlier; so far, he had neglected to state his business.

  He had not been asked to do so. The tall, lean, but wide-shouldered supple frame, firm jaw, deeply tanned face and level grey-blue eyes did not suggest that liberties might be taken, especially when reinforced by a brace of six-shooters, hung low, the holsters tied with rawhide strips to the leathern chaps. He had given only a name—James Green, and in those days, that meant just nothing at all. Wayside wondered, but in silence. The saloonkeeper spoke to him.

  “Gone loco—the whole bilin’,” he said. “You’d guess they’d never seen a bit o’ gold before, wouldn’t you?” A glint of a smile softened the hard lines of the cowboy’s features. “They certainly seem some flustered—liable to stampede any moment,” he returned, and then, “Why is it that easy money is so much more attractive than coin yu earn?”

  “I pass,” Bixby replied. “But if you think minin’ means easy money you got another guess comin’. Now you tell me this: why is it that a fella can never keep coin he gets easy?”

  “I pass too,” the cowboy smiled, adding reflectively, “That ol’ mosshead is shorely gettin’ this herd on the run; yo’re liable to lose trade.”

  “An’ it’s bad enough a’ready—if it gets wuss I’ll have to pack an’ follow my custom,”

  Bixby grunted, and emboldened by the visitor’s apparent friendliness, “You thinkin’ o’ joinin’ the nugget-hunters?” The question was a flagrant breach of Western etiquette, as the saloonkeeper was well aware, but the other did not resent it.

  “Why, I ain’t made any plans—yet,” he drawled. “Fact is, I’m lookin’ for a coupla fellows an’ Deadwood might be a likely place.”

  “Friends o’ yores, mebbe,” Bixby ventured.

  The cowboy’s expression hardened, and his eyes grew bleak. “I’ll be pleased to see them,” he said, so grimly that the saloonkeeper did not pursue the topic.

  A moment later a tousle-headed youngster flung himself from the bare back of a sweating pony, thrust open the swing-door of the saloon and yelled:

  “Stage is a-comin’—there’s a gal aboard—a pretty gal—an’ ol’ Three-finger Ike is sober.”

  Wayside, lying well south of the main Overland Trail to the West and forty miles from the nearest settlement, was difficult of access. Most of its visitors arrived by freight-wagon or on horseback rather than wait for the stagecoach, which, at intervals of weeks, called there on its way to northern Kansas. The arrival of the vehicle was an event and always a sufficient excuse for the male population to gather at the Pioneer.

  A shrill whoop emptied the bar like magic, even the indifferent young cowboy joining the group outside. From a billowing cloud of dust the unwieldy conveyance, drawn by six scampering mules, emerged, and with a final crack of the long-lashed whip the driver pulled them to a stop, set his brake, looped the reins over the iron hook at his side, and climbed clumsily down from his perch.

  “Howdy, folks,” he boomed, a hen came the customary query and invariable answer which had earned him his nickname. “Waal, Bixby, I don’t mind if I do; just three fingers.” Then, in answer to a question:

  “Yeah, I got a lady passenger—sweet gal too, travellin’ alone, an’ I had to hobble my tongue some. Reckon them mules got notions at first, but that whip o’ mine speaks mighty plain.”

  “Didn’t figure on seem’ you, Ike,” Bixby remarked. “Shore reckoned you’d be streakin’ for the new goldfields.”

  “Plenty is—the Overland is black with ‘em,” the stagedriver replied. “I’m stayin’ with my job; she pays steady wages an’ I like my meals reg’lar.”

  “By all accounts, it’s a rich strike,” Preedy put in.

  “Hell, did you ever hear o’ one that warn’t—at first?” Ike said. “‘Sides, the Black Hills is Injun country—Sioux at that; I ain’t goin’ to resk my scalp.” A cackle of mirth greeted the remark, for most of those present knew that the speaker’s cranium had no more hair than an egg.

  Meanwhile the occupants of the coach had alighted, glad to leave the cramped, uncomfortable conveyance in which they had jolted and bumped over interminable miles of rough trail.

  They presented a curious contrast. The first to emerge was a square, stocky man in the thirties, with enormous shoulders, long arms, and coarse, bloated features upon which a scowl seemed to be the natural expression. A straggling black moustache only accentuated the cruel lines of his mouth. His garb was that of the country, shirt open at the throat, disclosing a hairy chest, trousers stuffed into boot-tops, coat slung over one arm, and a heavy revolver strapped about his middle. Altogether, Wayside summed up, an ugly-looking customer.

  He was followed by a tall, slim cowboy whose plump, youthful face and frank brown eyes were those of one who had nothing to hide. Battered Stetson in hand, he held open the door for the third passenger, whose appearance was greeted with a low hum of admiration.

  “Three-finger may be able to describe mules pretty good but females is out of his class,” one of the older inhabitants remarked disdainfully. “‘Sweet’ don’t begin to tell about her.” And, in truth, stepping down from the drab, clumsy vehicle, the girl—she appeared to be still in her ‘teens—made a charming picture. Her simple black gown set off the slimness of her young body, and beneath the broad brim of a soft felt hat,short curly hair of the palest gold peeped out. The deep blue eyes were wide-spaced, the nose short and straight, the mouth firm.

  At the moment she was evidently weary, and somewhat disturbed by the interest she was creating. Nevertheless, she thanked the cowboy and turned to smile bravely at the onlookers, half of whom immediately became her slaves, eager to serve her. But while they were thinking about it, Paul Lesurge acted. Three quick strides and he was before her, bowing, hat in hand.

  “Let me be the first to welcome you to Wayside, ma’am,” he said. “If I can be of any service to you, please command me. I am Paul Lesurge.” The name, of course, conveyed nothing to her, but his respectful manner and the contrast of his appearance with that of the other citizens produced the effect he intended. Her eyes studied him steadily for a moment, and then she smiled, holding out a slim hand.

  “It is very kind of you, sir,” she said. “My name is Mary Ducane, and my business here—”

  “Must certainly wait until you have washed and rested,” he interposed quickly. “You see, I know what a journey by stage means.”

  “I do feel—grubby,” she confessed.

  “You don’t look it,” he told her, so warmly that she flushed a little. “Now, let me take you to our one hotel; it is rough, but the woman who runs it is clean and capable, and will look after you. Is that your baggage?” He pointed to a leather grip which the tall cowboy was holding, evidently waiting for the conv
ersation to finish. His good-humoured face was now disfigured with a frown which deepened when—the girl having nodded her pretty head—the interfering stranger calmly relieved him of his burden, saying:

  “I’ll take charge of that, my friend.” The impudence of the act proved too much for the cowboy’s control. With a threatening gesture towards the gun on his hip he blurted out:

  “Yu make friends mighty rapid, mister, don’t yu? What right yu got to head in thisaway?”

  The older man surveyed him with cool disdain. “Gentlemen do not quarrel in the presence of a lady,” he chided. “We will discuss the matter later, if you please.” Which grandiloquent reply, as the speaker knew well, only added fuel to the fire of resentment already burning in the young man’s breast. It was the girl who averted the storm.

  “Thank you for your kindness and attention on the journey,” she said, holding out her hand.

  The cowboy’s face became a picture of discomfort. “It ain’t worth mentionin’,” he managed to say, and then, as his big paw engulfed her fingers, “Any time yu need help I’ll come a-runnin’. ” I’m shore obliged,” she smiled, mimicking his own manner of speech. “But you mustn’t be angry with others who wish to aid me.” He watched as they went along the rude board sidewalk, his heart in his eyes, and a curse on his lips as he saw the man who had so neatly cut him out stand aside to let his companion enter Wayside’s one hotel. A jeering, familiar voice brought him back to earth, and he turned to find the third passenger.

  “Well, cowboy, that dame is certainly a fast worker,” the fellow grinned. “We was gettin’ along first-rate till you joined the ‘jerky’ an’ then I got the glass eye. Now it’s yore turn, but she won’t shake Paul that easy.”

  “Yu know that man?” the cowboy asked.

  “Know Paul Lesurge? I’ll say I do,” was the reply. “Why, I’m here to meet him—we’re like brothers, me an’ Paul. He’s a great fella, an’ style?—well, you seen for yoreself.” He laughed evilly. “So you can say good-bye to yore Lulu, cowboy, ‘less yo’re willin’ to take Paul’s leavin’s”