"Go on!" yelled Hard Luck. "Blast you, git on with the gal and dust it outta here!"
"Get on your horse!" Steve whirled to the girl. "Get on and go!"
"I won't!" she cried. "I won't ride off and leave you two here to die! I'll stay and die with you!"
"Oh, my Lord!" said Steve, cursing feminine stubbornness and lack of logic. "Grab her horse, Hard Luck. I'll put her on by main force and—"
"Too late!" said Hard Luck with a bitter laugh. "There they come!"
Far up at the upper end of the defile a horseman was silhouetted against the sky like a bronze statue. A moment he sat his horse motionless and in that moment Hard Luck threw the old buffalo gun to his shoulder. At the reverberating crash the Indian flung his arms wildly and toppled headlong, to tumble down the gorge with a loose flinging of his limbs. Hard Luck laughed as a wolf snarls and the riderless horse was jostled aside by flying steeds as the upper mouth of the defile filled with wild riders.
"Git back to the trees," yelled Hard Luck, leading the race from the cliff's base, reloading as he ran. "Guess we kin make a last stand, anyway!"
Steve, sighting over his pistol barrel as he crouched over the girl, gasped as he saw the Navajoes come plunging down the long gulch. They were racing down- slope with such speed that their horses reeled to their knees again and again, recovering balance in a flying cloud of shale and sand. Rocks dislodged by the flashing hoofs rattled down in a rain. The whole gorge was crowded with racing horsemen. Then—
"I knowed it!" yelled Hard Luck, smiting his thigh with a clenched fist.
High up the gulch a horse had stumbled, hurtling against a great boulder. The concussion had jarred the huge rock loose from its precarious base and now it came rumbling down the slope, sweeping horses and men before it. It struck other boulders and tore them loose; the gorge was full of frantic plunging steeds whose riders sought vainly to escape the avalanche they had started. Horses went down screaming as only dying horses can scream, a wild babble of yells arose, and then the whole earth seemed to rock.
Jarred by the landslide, the overhanging walls reeled and shattered and came thundering down into the gorge, wiping out the insects which struggled there, blocking and closing the defile forever. Boulders and pieces of cliff weighing countless tons shelved off and came sliding down. The awed watchers among the trees rose silently, unspeaking. The air seemed full of flying stones, hurled out by the shattering fall of the great rocks. And one of these stones through some whim of chance came curving down through the trees and struck Hard Luck Harper just over the eye. He dropped like a log.
Steve, still feeling stunned, as if his brain had been numbed by the crash and the roar of the falling cliffs, knelt beside him. Hard Luck's eyes flickered open and he sat up.
"Kids," said he solemnly, "that was a terrible and awesome sight! I've seen a lot of hard things in my day and I ain't no Indian lover, but it got me to see a whole tribe of fighting men git wiped out that way. But I knowed as shore as they started racing down that gulch, it'd happen."
He glanced down idly at the stone which had struck him, started, stooped and took it up in his hand. Steve had turned to the girl, who, the reaction having set in, was sobbing weakly, her face hidden in her hands. The Texan put his arms about her hesitantly.
"Joan," said he, "you ain't never said nothin' and I ain't never said nothin' but I reckon it hasn't took words to show how I love you."
"Steve—" broke in Hard Luck excitedly.
"Shut up!" roared Steve, glaring at him. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Hard Luck shrugged his shoulders and approached the great heap of broken stone and earth, from which loose shale was still spilling in a wide stream down the slight incline at the foot of the cliffs.
"Joan," went Steve, "as I was sayin' when that old buzzard interrupted, I love you, and—and—and if you feel just a little that way towards me, let me take care of you!"
For answer she stretched out her arms to him.
"Joan kid," he murmured, drawing her cheek down on his bosom and stroking her hair with an awkward, gentle hand, "reckon I can't offer you much. I'm just a wanderin' cowhand—"
"You ain't!" an arrogant voice broke in. Steve looked up to see Hard Luck standing over them. The old man held the stone which had knocked him down, while with the other hand he twirled his long drooping mustache. A strange air was evident about him—he seemed struggling to maintain an urbane and casual manner, yet he was apparently about to burst with pride and self-importance.
"You ain't no wanderin' cowboy," he repeated. "You'll never punch another cow as long as you live. Yore one fourth owner of the Sunset Lode Mine, the blamedest vein of ore ever discovered!"
The two stared at him.
"Gaze on this yer dornick!" said Hard Luck. "Note the sparkles in it and the general appearance which sets it plumb apart from the ordinary rock! And now look yonder!"
He pointed dramatically at a portion of the cliff face which had been uncovered by the slide.
"Quartz!" he exulted. "The widest, deepest quartz vein I ever see! Gold you can mighta near work out with yore fingers, by golly! I done figured it out—after I wandered away and got found by them buffalo hunters, a slide come and covered the lode up. That's why I couldn't never find it again. Now this slide comes along, forty year later, and uncovers it, slick as you please!
"Very just and proper, too. Indians euchered me outa my mine the first time and now Indians has give it back to me. I guess I cancel the debt of that lifted ha'r.
"Now listen to me and don't talk back. One fourth of this mine belongs to me by right of discovery. One fourth goes to any relatives of Bill Hansen's which might be living. For the other two fourths, I'm makin' you two equal partners. How's that?"
Steve silently gripped the old man's hand, too full for speech. Hard Luck took the young Texan's arm and laid it about Joan's shoulders.
"Git to yore love makin' and don't interrupt a man what's tryin' to figure out how to spend a million!" said he loftily.
"Joan, girl," said Steve softly, "what are you cryin' about? It's easy to forget horrors when you're young. You're wealthy now, we're goin' to be married just as soon as we can—and the drums of Sunset Mountains will never beat again."
"I guess I'm just happy," she answered, lifting her lips to his.
"He first come in the money, and he spent it just as free!
"He always drank good liquor wherever he might be!"
So sang Hard Luck Harper from the depths of his satisfaction.
Boot-Hill Payoff
Table of Contents
1. THE LARAMIES RIDE
2. OWL-HOOT GHOSTS
3. TRIGGER DEBT
4. SIDEWINDER RAMROD
5. FIRST BLOOD
6. "STRING HIM UP!"
7. BOTTLED UP
8. BOOT-HILL TALK
9. KILLER UNMASKED
1. THE LARAMIES RIDE
Table of Contents
FIVE men were riding down the winding road that led to San Leon, and one was singing, in a toneless monotone:
"Early in the mornin' in the month of May,
Brady came down on the mornin' train.
Brady came down on the Shinin' Star.
And he shot Mr. Duncan in behind the bar!"
"Shut up! Shut up!" It was the youngest of the riders who ripped out like that. A lanky, tow-headed kid, with a touch of pallor under his tan, and a rebellious smolder in his hot eyes.
The biggest man of the five grinned.
"Bucky's nervous," he jeered genially. "You don't want to be no derned bandit, do you, Bucky?"
The youngest glowered at him.
"That welt on yore jaw ought to answer that, Jim," he growled.
"You fit like a catamount," agreed Big Jim placidly. "I thought we'd never git you on yore cayuse and started for San Leon, without knockin' you in the head. 'Bout the only way you show yo're a Laramie, Bucky, is in the handlin' of yore fists."