Steve whirled his steed, dropping off on the far side. His gun was in his hand as he peered cautiously across his saddle in the direction from which the shot had come. Silence hovered over the tree-masked mountain side and no motion among the intertwining branches betrayed the presence of the hidden foe.
At last Steve cautiously stepped from behind his horse. Nothing happened. He sheathed his gun, stepped forward and recovered his hat, swearing as he noted the neat hole through the crown.
"Now did that whiskered galoot stop up there some place and sneak back for a crack at me?" he wondered. "Or did he tell somebody else to—or did that somebody else do it on their own idea? And what is the idea? What's up in them hills that they don't want seen? And was this sharpshooter tryin' to kill me or just warn me?"
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
"Anyway," he meditated as he mounted, "I reckon that south trail is the best road, after all."
* * * * *
THE south branch, he found, led down instead of up, skirting the base of the incline. He sighted several droves of sheep, and as the sun sank westward, he came upon a small cabin built near a running stream of clear water.
"Hi yah! Git down and set!" greeted the man who came to the door.
He was a small, wizened old fellow, remarkably bald, and he seemed delighted at the opportunity for conversation which Steve's coming afforded. But Steve eyed him with a suspicious glance before he dismounted.
"My name is Steve Harmer," said Steve abruptly. "I'm from Texas and I'm just passin' through. If you hone for me to ride on, just say so and they won't be no need for slingin' lead at me."
"Heh, heh!" laughed the old fellow. "Son, I kin read yore brand! You done fell in with my neighbors of the Sunset Mountains!"
"A tough lookin' hombre and a nice lookin' girl," admitted Steve. "And some fellow who didn't give his name, but just ruined my best hat."
"Light!" commanded the old man. "Light and hobble yore bronc. This ain't no hotel, but maybe you can struggle along with the accommodations. My name is ... 'Hard Luck Harper,' and I aim to live up to that handle. You ain't by no chance got no corn juice in them saddle bags?"
"No, I ain't," answered Steve, dismounting.
"I was afeard not," sighed the old man. "Hard Luck I be to the end—come in—I smell that deer meat a- burnin'."
After a supper of venison, sourdough bread and coffee, the two sat on the cabin stoop and watched the stars blink out as they talked. The sound of Steve's horse, cropping the luxuriant grass, came to them, and a night breeze wafted the spicy scents of the forest.
"This country is sure different from Texas," said Steve. "I kinda like these mountains, though. I was figurin' on campin' up among 'em tonight, that's why I took that west trail. She goes on to Rifle Pass, don't she?"
"She don't," replied the old man. "Rifle Pass is some south of here and this is the trail to that small but thrivin' metropolis. That trail you was followin' meanders up in them hills and where she goes, nobody knows."
"Why don't they?"
"Fer two reasons. The first is, they's no earthly reason fer a man in his right mind to go up there, and I'll refer you to yore hat fer the second."
"What right has this bird got to bar people from these mountains?"
"I think it must be a thirty-thirty caliber," grinned the old man. "That feller you met was Gila Murken, who lays out to own them mountains, like, and the gal was his niece, I reckon, what come from New York.
"I dunno what Gila's up to. I've knowed him, off and on, fer twenty years, and never knowed nothin' good. I'm his nearest neighbor, now, but I ain't got the slightest idee where his cabin is—up there somewhere." He indicated the gigantic brooding bulk of the Sunset Mountains, black in the starlight.
"Gila's got a couple fellers with him, and now this gal. Nobody else ever goes up that hill trail. The men come up here a year ago."
Steve mused. "An' what do you reckon is his idee for discouragin' visitors?"
The old man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "Son, I've wondered myself. He and his pards lives up in them mountains and regular once a week one of 'em rides to Rifle Pass or maybe clean to Stirrup, east. They have nothin' to do with me or anybody else. I've wondered, but, gosh, they ain't a chance!"
"Ain't a chance of what?"
"Steve," said Hard Luck, his lean hand indicating the black vastness of the hills, "somewhere up there amongst them canyons and gorges and cliffs, is a fortune! And sometimes I wonder if Gila Murken ain't found it.
"It's forty year ago that me and Bill Hansen come through this country—first white men in it, so far as I know. I was nothin' but a kid then an' we was buffalo hunters, kinda strayed from the regular course.
"We went up into them hills, Sunset Mountains, the Indians call 'em, and away back somewheres we come into a range of cliffs. Now, it don't look like it'd be that way, lookin' from here, but in among the mountains they's long chains of cliffs, straight up and down, maybe four hundred feet high, clay and rock—mighty treacherous stuff. They's maybe seventeen sets of these cliffs, Ramparts, we call 'em, and they look just alike. Trees along the edge, thick timber at the base. The edges is always crumblin' and startin' landslides and avalanches.
"Me and Bill Hansen come to the front of one of these Ramparts and Bill was lookin' at where the earth of the cliff face had kinda shelved away when he let out a whoop!
"Gold! Reef gold—the blamedest vein I ever see, just lying there right at the surface ready for somebody to work out the ore and cart it off! We dropped our guns and laid into the cliff with our fingernails, diggin' the dirt away. And the vein looked like she went clear to China! Get that, son, reef gold and quartz in the open cliff face.
" 'Bill,' says I, 'we're milyunaires!'
"And just as I said it, somethin' came whistlin' by my cheek and Bill gave one yell and went down on his face with a steel-pointed arrow through him. And before I could move a rifle cracked and somethin' that felt like a red hot hammer hit me in the chest and knocked me flat.
"A war party—they'd stole up on us while we was diggin'. Cheyennes they was, from the north, and they come out and chanted their scalp songs over us. Bill was dead and I lay still, all bloody but conscious, purtendin' I was a stiff, too.
"They scalped Bill and they scalped me—"
Steve gave an exclamation of horror.
"Oh, yes," said Hard Luck tranquilly. "It hurt considerable—fact is, I don't know many things that hurt wuss. But somehow I managed to lie still and not let on like I was alive, though a couple of times I thought I was goin' to let out a whoop in spite of myself."
"Did they scalp you plumb down to the temples?" asked Steve morbidly.
"Naw—the Cheyennes never scalped that way." Hard Luck ran his hand contemplatively over his glistening skull. "They just cut a piece out of the top—purty good sized piece, though—and the rest of the ha'r kinda got discouraged and faded away, after a few years.
"Anyway, they danced and yelled fer awhile an' then they left an' I began to take invoice to see if I was still livin'. I was shot through the chest but by some miracle the ball had gone on through without hitting anything important. I thought, though, I was goin' to bleed to death. But I stuffed the wound with leaves and the webs these large white spiders spin on the low branches of trees. I crawled to a spring which wasn't far away and lay there like a dead man till night, when I came to and lay there thinkin' about my dead friend, and my wounds and the gold I'd never enjoy.
"Then, I got out of my right mind and went crawlin' away through the forest, not knowin' why I did it. I was just like a man that's drunk: I knowed what I was doin' but I didn't know why I was doin' it. I crawled and I crawled and how long I kept on crawlin' I don't know fer I passed clean out, finally, and some buffalo hunters found me out in the level country, miles and miles from where I was wounded. I was ravin' and gibberin' and nearly dead.