Hard Money (25 page)

In each hole he placed his dynamite and rammed it back gently with the drill, careful not to be rough with the fuse caps and the length of fuse. At each hole he did the same; and finished, he threw his drill into the stream and let himself down to the farthermost hole again. This time he held the candle of the lantern in his hand.

Swiftly, then, as swiftly as this water would let him move, he lighted the fuses, making sure first they were not wet, and arranging them so they would not trail into the water. He moved up, lighting each one.

When the last was lighted he looked down the gloom of the gallery, the oily race of the water reflecting the many burning fuses.

Then he put the candle in the lantern and made his way to the winze, his face haggard with weariness. Once up the ladder, clothes dripping, he strapped on his gun and went into the gallery, turning toward the shaft.

He stopped. The car was not there.

For one brief instant he stood high and motionless, his face alert, strained. It was not the dynamite gathering to explode below that he was afraid of. It was the fact that Tober had told him the car would remain there. And now it was gone.

He felt a slow, gathering expectancy flood through him. Then he turned and went down the gallery, his lantern swinging at his knees. He was looking back over his shoulder when the explosion came. It was rumbling, its echo slapping out into the main shaft and up it and into this gallery, so that it was muffled, but the earth rocked beneath him, and rock clattered down from the roof and walls under the slow heaving.

He stood motionless a moment, his eyes still on the gallery end. Why not go back and down the winze to see if the shots had formed the dam he knew they would? But caution told him to go on, to lose himself some way in this labyrinth of galleries before he was discovered.

Slowly, then, he started back to the winze. He had gone only a few steps when he saw the car swing down into the shaft. His motion in extinguishing the lantern was as swift as sight, but he knew he was too late, and he cursed. He stood there for one moment, watching the men boil out of the cage, shouting. A shot ripped and hammered echoes through the gallery, and on its heel a man shouted, “Straight down! I saw his light! He's there!”

It was the voice of Chris Feldhake. Seay turned into a drift and put his lantern down and drew his gun. There were three lanterns among these ten men, and they bobbed furiously, casting jerking shadows against the gallery walls.

Seay shot into the floor, and abruptly the men stopped running. One by one their lights went out. Seay lighted his own then and set it in the drift mouth. He could hear the soft footfalls of the approaching ten.

Suddenly he called out in a loud voice, “No closer, boys. I've still got dynamite enough to take care of you.”

The echo of his voice had already died when Ferd Yates' voice called, “Seay!”

“Yes.”

“Come out of there! You're caught clean!”

Seay laughed softly. “Try again, Ferd.”

There was another long silence. Somebody tried to shoot the lantern out, and the slug nicked the corner of the wall and sang down the gallery. But the lantern was protected by the corner.

“Seay, I say!” Ferd called again. “We've got you! I'll send the boys up to the next gallery, and they'll pass you and come down, and you'll be trapped. Throw out that gun and dynamite!”

“To Feldhake?” Seay answered. “No, I'll take my killin' from the front and with a gun in my hand.”

“What do you want then?” Yates called.

“Send that mob of killers up on top, Yates, before I blow us all up!” Seay answered.

A long pause, and a murmur of voices.

“You surrender if I do?” Yates asked.

“To you, yes. To you alone. To the rest, no, and to hell with you!”

“You can't beat this job, Seay!” Ferd called angrily. “We'll get you if we have to cave the whole gallery on top of you!”

“Send Feldhake up on top,” Seay countered. “If you don't like that talk, let's fight.”

There was an angry murmur of voices down the gallery. “By God, we'll smoke you out,” someone called angrily, and Seay did not answer. Clearly he calculated his chances of escaping. There weren't any. These men knew these drifts and galleries, and they could corner him and soon force his bluff as to the dynamite. All that he had between himself and capture was a belt of shells. But to walk out there and give himself up to Feldhake and Yates was to assure himself a shot in the back. No witnesses that wouldn't lie afterwards, no justice—only death. He would not do it.

He struck a match. They could see that flare and maybe guess what it meant. They did. There was a swift pounding of feet, and he let the match die, laughing softly.

This time Yates's voice came from farther down the gallery. “Seay, you got a chance if you give up. You ain't got a sign of a one if you stay!”

“Who's with you?” Seay asked.

Yates named them over. One was Sales, the Dry Sierras super, another Tim Prince, an honest gambler in Tronah. As for the rest, they were saloon riffraff, corralled by Feldhake. Prince, Sales and Yates were honest men in their way, certainly not murderers.

“Leave Sales and Prince here and send the rest back to town, Yates,” Seay said finally. “I'll surrender to you then. But I'll keep my gun.”

This led to a hot argument, the details of which he could not distinguish. Finally, Yates called, “All right. They're goin'.”

“Wait, Ferd,” Seay said levelly. “I haven't finished. Get Bonal down here. When I can hear him, I'll come out. I'll give myself up to you then.”

This started another furious argument. Somebody shot down the gallery, trying for the lamp again. A cold fury boiled up in Seay, and he sent back a shot in reply. He heard a man curse him in low, vicious tones, and then the argument started again.

It was a full ten minutes before Yates called, “All right. I've sent 'em up. Bonal will be down when we find him.”

“Good,” Seay said. He heard the men tramp down to the car and heard it start its ascent. His hearing strained wire taut now, he listened for the others. There was a murmuring down the way. It could be a trap, he knew. Feldhake could go up one gallery, and come down on his other side, trying to surprise him. What had happened to Tober? Reed would fight. Now the silent was absolute, a warning, drawn-out silence that rang in his ears with every movement of his blood.

Slowly, he backed into the drift, beyond the light of the lantern, and waited. His eyes searched out that flat expanse of gallery wall for any telltale movement. There was none. And time did not pass, stood still, and he waited, the silence riding him with its threat.

It seemed hours until he heard the car return, and the lone footsteps of a man approach. There was some low talk, and then Bonal said “Phil!”

Seay's breath soughed out in a great gust, and he relaxed. He rammed the gun in his belt and picked up the lantern and walked up to Bonal, Yates, Prince and Sales.

Bonal's face held a mixture of anger and relief.

Seay stopped in front of him. “You said to show you,” he said quietly. “I did. That water's shut off. Get Borg to slap a bulkhead in the tunnel now.”

Bonal's jaw slacked open a little. He said, “You—this was what you meant?”

Seay said harshly, “Bonal, maybe I'm not like you. But a man can ride me just so long. Janeece, Feldhake, Mathias rode me just long enough.”

Yates said in a vicious gloating, “Not
quite
enough, Seay. Not after this.”

Neither Bonal nor Seay paid him any attention. Bonal said quietly, “Tober's up there. Dead. Shot in the back.”

Seay stared at him one brief moment, and then his wicked glance swung full on Yates.

Yates nosed up his gun and backed off. “He fought, you fool!” Yates cried. “Feldhake shot him! It was the only way we could get down!”

“Ah,” Seay said quietly. He stood motionless, his fists clenched so that the knuckles showed a blue white, and then he looked away from Yates.

“All right, let's go,” he said in a voice that was quiet, dead, beaten.

Chapter Eighteen

Bonal demanded the preliminary hearing in the morning and got it. It was a halfhearted hearing, motivated by a revenge that could not be adequate, for Borg and his crew had worked the night through to make the bulkhead. It was finished, blocking every drop of water from entering the Bonal Tunnel. Hugh Mathias, and the men back of him, had not even pulled out a crew to clear the gallery after the explosion. The water had been dammed by the shot, and it would take days for it to back up through all the dozen mines to flood a higher gallery. The very act of Seay's violence with its savage daring had beaten them. Bonal had only to wait now for
borrasca
to touch them.

The questions at the hearing were perfunctory. Seay, a trace of a black beard stubble on his face, admitted to everything, and a high bail was set, which Bonal paid promptly, and they were dismissed. The gun which was returned to him Seay stuck in his belt. His face was haggard, overlaid with a weariness that was not relaxed.

Bonal took him into a saloon, and they ordered drinks and took seats, but when their drinks came Bonal found he had nothing to say. His fight was won, clinched by an act of violence that awed him. And remaining was only the victory, and Tober's death, one canceling the other. He felt old and weary and sad, and he pitied the man across from him. For the cold grief in Seay's eyes was a thing that Bonal did not like to watch.

“You better sleep,” Bonal said gently.

“Afterward.”

Bonal was about to ask “After what,” and then it came to him that he might have understood before this. He paid for the score and rose and said, “I can't help, can I?”

When Seay shook his head Bonal left. Seay went out later and tramped into a store and purchased a box of shells. He stood by the counter, a high, straight figure, wearing the same clothes of last night, which had dried in folds and sharp wrinkles. His shirt, torn at the back, was foul with all the dirt of the water. He took five shells from the box he had purchased, loaded his gun, let the hammer fall on the empty chamber and then rammed the gun in the waistband of his trousers.

“You keep the rest for me,” he told the clerk, leaving the rest of the cartridges.

And now he started that old hunt which was so familiar to him in the past and which had been interrupted once before. Feldhake was not at the Melodian.

Swinging out its door, he almost bumped into Vannie Shore, who was on the way to her buggy at the hitch rail. She put out a hand, and Seay stopped, and Vannie said softly, “I heard about it, Phil. It's grand, and it's sad, and no fun winning.”

Seay nodded mutely. Vannie said, “You've got to do it, haven't you, Phil?”

Again he nodded. “Then bless you, finish it,” Vannie told him and left him.

Seay was later to remember that, although it slipped from his mind now, like something trivial and almost unheard. It was as if there were no room in his mind for anything but the quiet indictments which he had arranged in an orderly and understandable fashion. First there was the poker game and then Hardiston and then Jimmy Hamp's murder and then the cave-in and now Tober. Tough, lovable Reed Tober who had died with a slug in his back. A clean way to die, yes, but the wrong way, and thinking of it, the cool merciless fury of memory swept over him.

Feldhake was not at the Union House bar. Shouldering out its door, he saw Charles and Sharon Bonal on their way from the dining room through the lobby. Sharon was wearing a blue dress that crowned all her fragile loveliness, and she stopped and paid no attention to Bonal's murmured words for her to come on. She was in front of Seay, and he paused now and took off his hat. His hair was untidy and matted, and she looked first at his haunted face and then at his hair, and small tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.

“I hope,” Sharon said in a small voice. “I hope—” She did not go on. She laid her hand momentarily on Seay's arm and then bowed her head and went on.

He was to remember this afterward, too, and differently. Patience was easy now. At the Full Mile he could tell by the way the bartender told him Feldhake wasn't here that they knew, that the word was getting around. Soon now, he thought.

At the head of the street he crossed and came down the other side, and he already had his shoulder against the batwing doors of the Miner's Rest, when his glance swung down the street, and he stopped.

A man was coming up the walk, and the way was cleared of people between them now. He swung deliberately on his heel.

It was the shambling gait of the man that made Seay smile faintly, and he walked past the saloon and a saddle shop toward him. Under the wood awnings here it was almost cool. Or was it that?

He stopped in front of the saddle shop. Beyond it, by a tiny weed-grown wedge of land that was stacked with empty beer barrels, Feldhake stopped too. His thick legs were a little spread, and both thumbs were looped in his belt.

Seay's wicked gaze touched his face and then dropped down to his chest and noted the row of cigars in his breast pocket and noted, too, that Feldhake's hands had left his belt and were gripped about the butts of the two guns slung low at his hips.

Seay felt the grip of his own revolver warm and smooth against his palm, and as he raised it he saw Feldhake shoot from one gun and then from the other, savagely, handling them like clubs, with a short chopping stroke.

Carefully, then, he swung up his own gun, his breath stilled, and when his sight lined with the five cigars in the shirt pocket, he fired. Once.

He watched, then, gun slack at his side, while Feldhake shot again into the broadwalk almost at his feet and then fell on his knees and then on his face.

Walking up to him, Seay touched him once with the toe of his boot. The flesh under his boot was soft and relaxed, and then he looked up at the people crowding around him.