They cantered on down the south trail, with rifles in their hands. They didn’t look toward the saloon, and nobody stuck their head out of a house to tell ’em about me, though somebody must of seen me sneak into town. Evidently the citizens was playing strict neutral, which is wise when two gangs is slaughtering each other—if you can do it.
As soon as the riders was out of town I run back through the saloon and hustled up the hillside, paralleling the trail they’d come down. Who says all this wasn’t none of my business? Beldon had hired me and I’d been a pretty excuse for a man if I’d left him in the lurch.
I hadn’t gone far when I heard men talking—leastways, I heard one man talking. It was Beldon and he was bellering like a bull.
A minute later I come onto a log cabin, plumb surrounded with trees. Five horses was tied outside. The bellering was coming from inside the cabin, and I could hear somebody else talking in a kinda sneery, gloating voice. I snuck up to the rear winder and peered in, well aware that I was risking my life. But the winder was boarded up and I peeked through a crack.
Plenty of light come in through the cracks, though, and I seen Beldon, with blood oozing from a cut in his scalp, setting in a busted chair by a dusty old table, and looking like a trapped grizzly. Four other men was standing acrost the table from him, betwixt him and the door, with their guns leveled at him. One of them was awful tall, and rangy and quick in his motions, like a catamount. He combed his long drooping mustache with one gun muzzle whilst he poked the other’n into Beldon’s ear and screwed it around till Navajo cussed something terrible.
“Huh!” said this gent. “Boss of Piute! Hah! A fine boss you be. First and biggest mistake you made was trustin’ Richards. He was plumb delighted to sell you out. You thought he was with your men on Eagle River, didn’t you? Well, he was with me in the hills east of here all mornin’, whilst we laid our plans to get you.
“He sneaked away from your bunch on Eagle River last night. He brung you that lie about them cattle bein’ stole just so I could get your men out of the way. I knowed you’d send every man you had. You won’t ever see ’em no more. Richards will lead ’em into a trap in Devil’s Gorge where my men done laid an ambush for ’em. Probably they’re sizzlin’ in hell by this time. Them seven fellers I just sent down the trail will join the rest of my men at Devil’s Gorge, and they’ll clean out your outfit on Eagle River. I’m makin’ a clean sweep, Beldon.”
“I’ll get you yet, McBride,” promised Beldon thickly, gnashing his teeth under his heavy mustache.
* * * * *
McBride combed his mustache very superior. I was wondering why they’d taken Beldon alive. He wasn’t even tied up. I seen his fingers clinch and quiver on the table. I knowed he was liable to make a break for it any minute and get shot down, and I was in a stew. I could start shooting through the winder, of course, and snag most of ’em, but one of ’em was bound to get Beldon sure.
I knowed very well that at the first alarm they’d perforate him. I wisht I had a shotgun, because then I mighta got ’em all with one blast—probably including Beldon. But all I had was a couple of .45s and a clear conscience. If I could only let Beldon know that I was on hand, maybe he might get foxy and do something smart to help hisself, instead of busting loose and getting killed like I knowed he was going to do any minute. The veins in his neck swelled and his face got purple and his whiskers bristled.
All at once McBride said, “I’ll let you go, alive, if you’ll tell me where you got your money hid. I know you got several thousand bucks.”
So that was why they taken him alive. I mighta knowed it. But the mention of money reminded me of something and that put a idee into my head. I pulled out the notebook I found and tore out the first page and begun work with a pencil stub I had in my pocket. I didn’t write nothing. What I wanted to do was to slip Beldon a message he could understand, but that wouldn’t mean nothing to McBride, in case he seen it.
I remembered that talk about a Jeopard, when I first met Beldon, so I drawed a picture of a animal like a panther. But I couldn’t remember whether that feller from Santa Fe said a Jeopard had spots or stripes. Seemed like he said stripes, so I put a big un’ down the critter’s back. Beldon would know that pitcher meant that Buckner Jeopardy Grimes was lurking near, ready to help him the first chance I got, and, knowing that, he wouldn’t do nothing reckless.
Whilst I was doing this Beldon was thinking over what McBride had just said to him. He didn’t crave a lead bath no more’n the average man, and he was one of these here trusting critters which believes everybody keeps their word. It’s hard to credit, I know, but it looked like he actually believed McBride would keep his’n, and let him go if he told where he hid his dough.
McBride didn’t fool me none. I knowed very well the instant he told ’em, Beldon would get riddled. I knowed McBride itched to kill him. I seen it in the twist of his thin lips, and the nervous twitch of his hand as he pulled at his mustache. I read the killer’s hunger in his yeller eyes which blazed like a cat’s. But Navajo didn’t seem to recognize them signs. He was awful slow thinking in some ways.
McBride was pulling his mustache and just getting ready to say something, when I took a pebble and throwed it over the shack so it hit the stoop and made a racket. Instantly they all wheeled and covered the door, and I throwed my wadded-up paper through the crack in the winder boards, so it landed on the table right in front of Beldon. But he never seen it.
He’d rose halfway up like he was going to make his break, but quick as a flash McBride wheeled and covered him again, with his lip drawed back so his teeth showed like a wolf’s fang, and his eyes was slits of fire. If it hadn’t been for that dough he wanted, he’d have shot Beldon down right then. I seen his finger quiver on his trigger, and I had him lined over my sights.
But he didn’t shoot. He snapped, “You fools, keep him covered! I’ll see to this!”
The other three turned their guns on Beldon and he sunk back in his chair with a gusty sigh. They was a hard layout—one short, one tall, one with a scarred face. McBride stepped quick to the door and jerked it open and poked his gun out.
“Nothin’ out here,” he snorted. “Must have been a woodpecker.”
I was sweating and shaking like a leaf in my nervousness, waiting for Beldon to see that wad of paper laying right in front of him, but he never noticed it. He hadn’t seen it fall, and a wad of paper didn’t mean nothing to him. He couldn’t think of but one thing at a time. He had nerve and men liked him; that’s the only reason he ever got to be a chief.
McBride turned around and stalked back across the cabin.
“Well,” he said, “are you goin’ to tell me where the dough is?”
“I reckon I gotta,” mumbled Beldon heavily, and I cussed bitterly under my breath. Beldon was a goner. All I could do was start shooting and get as many of ’em as I could. But they was sure to drill him. Then McBride seen that wadded-up paper. He wasn’t like Beldon; he was observant and keen-witted. He remembered that paper hadn’t been there a few minutes before. He grabbed it.
“What’s this?” he demanded, and my heart sunk clean to my boot tops. He wouldn’t know what it meant, but it was gone out of Beldon’s reach for good.
McBride started smoothing it out.
“Why,” says he, “it’s got my name on it, in your handwritin’, Joe.”
“Lemme see,” said the tall feller, getting up and reached toward it. But McBride had straightened the paper all the way out, and all at once his face went livid. For a second you could of heard a pin drop. McBride stood like a froze statue, only his eyes alive and them points of hell fire, whilst the other hombres gaped at him.