The Cowpuncher (7 page)

Soon side galleries made their appearance, branching off from the main artery at various angles. At the first of these Huck hesitated, then decided to follow the original tunnel to the end and leave investigation of its branching burrows until later.

For nearly a mile the gallery pierced the mountain’s heart, following a comparatively straight line. Then, without warning, it ended in a wide and high chamber which the cowboy decided was a natural formation.

“Here’s where they stored the stuff, chances are,” Lank exclaimed, peering into the gloom beyond the small circle of radiance cast by the lamps.

“There’s somethin’ over there to the left,” said Gaylord. “Let’s see what it is.”

They turned in that direction, and a moment later Lank halted, to stand with outthrust head, staring at what the glow of the lamps revealed. Involuntarily he retreated a step from his gruesome find. Old Tom shuffled nervously. Huck Brannon, stepping ahead of Lank, felt the hairs of his scalp prickle. He advanced closer, the lamp held high.

Row on row they lay, some in distorted attitudes, bony knees drawn up to touch grinning jaws. Some were mere yellowish skeletons held together by some vestiges of sinew. In others a parchment-like
covering of skin was drawn tightly over protruding ribs and eyeless skulls. On the faces of these last, withered, inhuman though they were, it seemed to Huck that there was indelibly stamped the horror and terror and unutterable anguish that preceded death.

Fastened to each shrunken ankle was an iron band from which a heavy chain led to a ring set in the stone wall.

“Good God?” breathed Old Tom. “What are them things?”

Huck Brannon stared at the pitiful remains that were a monument to man’s cruelty and greed. His eyes were hard and cold as he replied:

“The Indian slaves who worked the mine. Left here to starve and die of thirst.”

“But why?” Gaylord asked.

A thought suddenly struck Huck, a disquieting thought.

“Maybe they knew something the Spaniards didn’t want told. Recollect how the old pirates used to kill the men who buried their treasure? ‘Dead men tell no tales!’ Maybe that’s the answer. Well, let’s see what else is in this graveyard.”

They found evidence that the chamber had been used to house the slaves. There were crude stone tables, rusted tools, the remains of cooking utensils. Blackened places showed where fires had been kindled.

That was all. Circling around, they reached the end wall and found the source of the little stream which trickled down the main tunnel.

Water streaked the black and shining surface of
the wall, seeping in minute drops from the stone, the drops gathering at the base to form the stream.

Huck eyed the wall with a dubious eye.

“Must be a lot of water back of there,” he told his companions. “The weight of it is driving it through the rock, and the chances are the rock is mighty thick.”

“The gas is mighty thick here, too,” grumbled Lank. “S’pose we go take a look at some of them galleries. That’s likely where the stuff is, or the veins it was worked. All we need is to find them veins.”

They didn’t find them, although there was plenty of evidence that they had once existed. What they did find were other specimens of the glistening black stone at the end wall of the chamber of death.

Those veins of dark stone interested Huck; but they brought only disgust and depression to his companions. Finally Lank Mason sat down with a bitter curse. They had been prowling the galleries for hours and had covered every foot of the mine.

“Worked out!” he growled. “Worked out, shore as shootin’! No wonder the Spaniards shoved off. They’d cleaned up. They either sent all the stuff to Mexico ahaid of ‘em or were takin’ it with ‘em when the Injuns jumped ‘em. Then of course the Injuns carried it off with
them
—mebbe hid it somewhere.”

“But in that case, why’d the old priest go to the trouble to draw a map that’d tell folks how to get to this place?” Gaylord asked.

“Mebbe he jest wanted to show folks what a rat the feller that bossed the outfit was,” Lank grunted. “Chances are, though, he thought there was still
lots of silver here. A padre wouldn’t know much ‘bout minin’.”

Old Tom nodded. “Reckon yore right,” he admitted dully. “Well, gents, looks like we’ll hafta go back to diggin’ and ropin’ for a livin’. That the way you figger it, Huck?”

Huck Brannon stood up, stretching his long arms. He grinned down at his partners.

“Nope,” he said, “I don’t. Unless I’m making a great big mistake, and I don’t believe I am,
I
figure we got something here worth a lot more than the silver mine ever was!”

Tom Gaylord and Lank stared at Huck as if he had gone insane.

“I knowed he’d hadn’t oughta et them last four jerky sandwiches!” Lank wailed. “Or mebbe it was the coffee!”

“What in blazes you talkin’ ‘bout, son?” demanded Old Tom.

Huck grinned at them. He took a pick and walked briskly to the glistening end-wall of the gallery.

“I suspected it there in the big room,” he said, “and after looking over the rest of these tunnels, I’m certain of it.”

As he spoke he struck sharply with the pick and brought down a shower of fragments from the wall. He rubbed one against the palm of his hand, leaving a black smudge on the flesh.

Old Lank stared at the dark streak, snatched the fragment from Huck’s hand and turned it over in his blunt fingers.

“Good gosh!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Darned if I don’t b’lieve it is—”

He hesitated, and Huck finished the sentence for him: “Yes, it’s coal.”

“Coal in a silver mine!” Old Tom scoffed. “Whoever heerd tell of sich foolishment!”

“It’s not foolishness,” Huck replied. “This is a semi-bituminous coal, verging on anthracite. One of the means anthracite is produced is by the intrusion of molten igneous rocks upon the coal beds. The gangue of silver is most always quartz, an igneous rock.”

“Yeah, you most allus find silver mixed up in quartz,” agreed Lank.

“This silver mine was a sorta freak deposit of native silver. The veins didn’t go deep like in the Comstock and such deposits. It was easy to mine, but soon played out. Looks like old Don Fernando cleaned up ‘fore he pulled out. In the course of his mining he uncovered the coal veins.”

“Sounds reasonable,” admitted Lank, “but what good is the coal to us? We don’t need it to make fires of, and carrying coal fifty miles to town is too much of a chore and wouldn’t pay.”

Old Tom gloomily nodded agreement to Mason’s pessimistic words, but Huck Brannon’s eyes still glowed with enthusiasm.

Huck was thinking of the words of the C. & P. wreck-train foreman, spoken as the long coal drags rumbled past the siding:

“No mines in this district, and you gotta have fuel to keep a railroad goin’. Coal bill for the Mountain
Division is jest ‘bout double, mebbe more, what it costs on any other division.”

Huck repeated the words now to his partners. “Don’t you see?” the cowpuncher went on. “There’s a wide-open market for all the coal we can mine. And we won’t have to pack it to town, either. The railroad will run a spur up here, once we show them what we got. There’s an easy water-level route up the river and the creek. All we got to do is locate our claims and open up our mine.”

“Takes money,” Lank said dubiously.

“I got some,” said Old Tom. “Coupla thousand dollars put ‘way.”

“And I got ‘nother thousand, mebbe a little more,” Lank admitted.

They turned their eyes to Huck, whose brow was furrowed.

“Three thousand dollars,” he mused. “With another five thousand, we could get the machinery we need and start producing. I haven’t got the five thousand, boys, but I believe I can get it, with the security we have to offer. Do you want to risk your three thousand on that chance?”

Old Tom shrugged bony shoulders. “ ‘Pears like our silver ‘spectations has gone up the flume,” he said. “Me, I don’t like to pack a lickin’ this way. I’m willin’ to take a chanct.”

“Me, too,” Lank grunted. “It’s liable to all go in a poker game sooner or later, anyhow. So why not?”

He sniffed speculatively and eyed the pinkish glow inside the lamp gauze. “She’ll be a blazer, though,” he predicted. “Gotta have a good blower
system operatin’ to pull the gas out, onct we start bringin’ down the coal. Gas explosion in a coal mine ain’t no picnic, friends.”

Huck nodded with emphasis. “Let’s fill a sack with samples,” he said. “We’ll try some out on our cookin’ fire and take the rest to town with us.”

A few minutes later they were trudging toward the main gallery. Huck and Lank paused from time to time to examine the walls of the side tunnel and to chart the course of the vein mentally. Old Tom got well ahead of them, reached the main corridor while they were still far behind. But his sudden howl brought them toward him at a gallop.

“It’s one of them damn corpses from the cave!” Old Tom bawled. “I seed him lookin’ ‘round the corner and then he jest dis’peared!”

“Corpse, hell!” growled Brannon, dashing down the corridor.

He caught a glimpse of a denser shadow flitting through the ring of radiance cast by his lamp, and his hand streaked to his gun. There was a
crack,
a spurt of hot fire from the darkness; and Huck’s knees buckled. He sprawled motionless on the rocky floor of the shaft. His lamp clattered on the floor and went out.

Shouting and cursing, Mason and Old Tom ran to him. He groaned and stirred as they knelt beside him, and Lank opened Huck’s shirt to feel for the heartbeat.

“Jest creased, the Lord be praised!” Old Tom muttered, pointing to a welling of blood at the hairline above one bronzed temple.

A moment later Huck opened his eyes, stared dazedly about and shook his head to clear it. The fog lifted from his brain, and he sat up slowly.

“The hellion shot at my lamp,” he said, picking up his fallen cap and showing the jagged tear just below where the lamp hooked to the supporting bracket. “Mighty good shooting, too,” he added, getting to his feet. “Gents, somebody’s taking a powerful interest in what we’re doing. Begins to look like somebody knows about you having that map, Tom.”

“Don’t know who it could be,” said Gaylord, shaking his grizzled head. “I shore never showed it to nobody ‘ceptin’ you fellers.”

“All right, boys,” said Huck clambering to his feet. His strength was returning and he felt less shaken. “Let’s get back to the camp. We want to make sure the varmint hasn’t cleaned us out.”

With alacrity they complied, and with Lank leading the way, holding his lamp high, the three men hurried down the corridor of the main tunnel and emerged from the mine.

A quick survey of their gear revealed that this time no one had tampered with it.

Old Tom dubiously shook his head.

“Can’t say as I like it nohow,” he said. “Mebbe them dead Injuns in there”—he nodded in the direction of the mine—“have set a cuss on the mine to pr’tect their grave.”

“I don’t take much stock in curses, Tom,” Huck said, kneeling to light a match to the fire. “Besides, one certain thing is that the lad who creased me is no ghost. Ghosts don’t leave footprints and shoot guns.” He leaned back. The fire was spreading around the pit.

“Mebbe it warn’t a ghost,” Old Tom persisted, “but yuh know how Injuns like to keep tradition alive. They hand it down from gen’ration to gen’ration, from father to son, an’ it becomes part of their religion. Mebbe this is one of their sacred places.”

“Yeah,” agreed Lank Mason from across the fire, “mebbe it’s like Tom says, Huck. I heard of them things, an’ they’re shore pow’ful when they get loose. If we’re gonna buck one of them taboos, there’s gonna be all hell let loose ‘round here.”

“Let’s not invent trouble,” said Huck, “Indian or any other kind. In the first place, one Indian isn’t a tribe, and a lone brave is no sign there’s a taboo on the mine. In the second place, we don’t know yet if we’re going to be here long.” He took some lumps
of the coal from the sack and held them in his hands. “But we’ll find out soon enough. Then we’ll cross our bridges—if we come to any.” He hunkered thoughtfully down on his haunches and tossed the coals one by one into the fire.

The black, jagged lumps hit the flame with a sizzle and a small shower of sparks spurted upward. Their eyes intent, their bodies unconsciously stiffened and bent slightly forward, the partners gazed with deep concentration on the little rim of fire that held their future in its dancing, brilliant fingers.

For a while, they heard no sound but the crackling of the fire underneath the coals. Then Old Tom gulped noisily and Lank Mason swore under his breath. Huck remained silent.

Finally Old Tom could not longer hold his tongue. “It’s burnin’!” he cried. “It’s burnin’!”

“Yeah!” Lank Mason said vociferously. “It’s burnin’ coal, a’right.”

The black, misshapen lumps, set like diamonds in their ring of fire, were by now themselves enkindled, casting steady intense blue-white flame skyward.

The three men looked at each other and grinned.

“It looks like the real stuff,” Huck said, grinwrinkles quirking the corners of his eyes and mouth. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got something here.”

“Fust thing we gotta do,” cried Mason, practicalminded, “is to hightail it back to town an stake our claim.”

“First thing we gotta do,” Huck said, “is to get some food into our bellies, so we don’t collapse.”

The odor of frying bacon and sausages and fresh coffee steaming rose from the fire, the pans rattling in Lank Mason’s big hands. In ten minutes the food had disappeared.

They stretched back lazily, relaxing and letting their day dreams stray. Lank and Huck got their makings out and began rolling cigarettes as Old Tom spoke his dream.

“I allus figgered,” he said, “that if I ever struck it rich I would like to travel an’ see the world. Ever since I can remember, even when I was a kid, I wanted to see how the other feller works an’ lives.”

Lank Mason blew a whirl of cigarette smoke into the air before he spoke.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he said, “but the thing I allus wanted most, was”—he hesitated and looked cagily at his companions before he continued—“a chicken farm. Yep. I growed up on one an’ I reckon I got poultry-handlin’ in my blood. There ain’t nothing purtier to my mind than a white chicken.” And he chuckled aloud and there came to his eyes, half-hidden in the folds of pink flesh, a soft, dreamy glint.

“An’ what yuh hankerin’ for, Huck?” Tom Gaylord inquired.

“Well,” Huck began slowly, “maybe it’s too early to start sprouting dreams, but I always wanted to have me a place of my own, stocked full of fancybred cattle. My father had it and lost it. I want a good stretch of grassland with plenty of water, ravines and gullies to winter my stock. I want a good hoss under me. And—” His voice drifted away.

“Say, what’s eatin’ yuh?” cried Mason, staring at the puncher.

Huck was leaning on an elbow, staring into the fire. His attention had plainly strayed from the talk to some secret thought of his own. He looked sheepishly up at the question and his easy laughter was half apologetic.

“I’m sorry, fellows,” he said shamefacedly, “I reckon I was wool-gatherin’.”

“Say, what’s come over yuh lately, Huck?” Mason demanded. “ ‘Pears to me yuh got that faraway look on yore face ev’ry time I look at yuh.”

“Nothing,” Huck replied quickly. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothin’, huh?” Old Tom said shrewdly. “Nothin’ my foot.” He winked at Mason. “I bet yuh a barrel of coal, outa that mine of our’n, Huck’s moonin’ over some gal.”

Huck laughed, but the sound was a dead giveaway.

“Ha!” Lank Mason shouted. “So it
is
a gal. Why, yuh onery, double-crossin’, lovesick maverick. Castin’ aside yore pardners for some ol’ gal. Out with it, hombre. Who is this here dream that’s gonna rob us of our side kick?”

With a laugh, Huck confessed there was a girl, but no amount of persuasion could induce him to say any more.

“C’mon, boys,” Huck said after a moment. “We got work ahead of us.”

“I’m still wonderin’,” said Mason as they broke camp and prepared to leave, “where that footprint came from, and who took a shot at Huck?”

Could the partners, making their way back to town, have looked into the back room of a disreputable little saloon in Esmeralda, they would have found the solution of the mystery.

Cale Coleman was there, in his hand the cane he hobbled about on. There also was his shiftyeyed drift-foreman, Jeff Eades.

The third member of an unsavory trio was a swarthy, undersized man, wiry and long of arm. His eyes were dead black, his hair lank and stringy. Yellowish-coppery skin was drawn tightly over high cheekbones and the eyes were set deep in their sockets. His mouth was a thin red line from which frequently protruded the tip of a tongue that flickered like a snake’s as it moistened the too-thin, too-red lips. His voice had the harsh guttural tone and his accents the clipped terseness of the Indian-Latin.

“Well, what the hell’d you find out, Estaban?” Coleman demanded. “What’d the hellions do?”

“Blowed up crick,” grunted the halfbreed.

Coleman let out a roar and his blocky face suffused with red.

“You tryin’ to be funny?” he demanded. “What the blankety-blank-blank you talkin’ ‘bout? ‘Blowed up a crick’!”

“Blowed up crick, make water run down hill, show topside up hole in cliff where waterfall come down, go in hole,” replied the halfbreed.

Coleman showed all the signs of an explosion, but Jeff Eades hastened to interpret.

“You mean they changed the course of the crick
and found a cave back of where the falls come down?”

Estaban nodded. “No cave,” he said. “Mine tunnel.”

“Mine tunnel!” barked Coleman. “What the devil—”

“Tunnel there long time,” grunted Estaban. “Damn old. Somebody cover up with water—long time.”

Coleman’s eyes blazed with excitement. “A lost mine, Jess, shore as anything!” he exclaimed. “Them hellions musta knowed somethin’!”

He whirled to the halfbreed. “What’d they find?” he demanded. “What’d they do?”

“Fill um sack with black rocks,” replied Estaban.

His listeners stared at him. “Black rocks,” repeated Coleman. “Gold—silver?”

Estaban shook his head. “Nope, black rocks—heap shine.”

Coleman swore helplessly. “The damn igner’nt Injun!” he spat.

“What’d they do then, Estaban?” Eades prompted.

“Me no know,” said the halfbreed. “They see, chase. Me shoot one. Come ‘way—damn fast!”

“They see who you was, you blankety-blank clumsy blankety-blank?” demanded Coleman, raising the heavy cane threateningly.

The halfbreed did not change countenance under the menace of the bludgeon, but his beady eyes glowed a little and one sinewy hand crept closer to the heavy gun thrust under his belt.

Coleman saw the gesture and although his eyes remained murderous he lowered the cane.

“No see in the dark,” said Estaban. “They think me one of watchers that sit in dark and look without eyes. Me come ‘way fast.”

That was all they could get out of him.

“I jest hope it was that damn black-haided hellion he plugged, anyway,” growled Coleman. “You keep outa sight in case they did get a glim of you,” he told the halfbreed. “Jeff, you keep yore eyes open for them headin’ back inter town. We gotta find out what they was lookin’ for and what they found, if anythin’. Have one of the boys hang ‘round the assay office. That’s where they’ll head for if they’ve hit onto any ore. Then if we find they found anythin’ interestin’, we’ll move fast.”

Eades stared at him. “You ain’t figgerin’ on any claim jumpin’, are you? There’s things even
you
can’t get by with, Cale, and claim jumpin’ in a minin’ country’s one of ‘em. A killin’ and robbin’ now and then, yeah, and even some hoss stealin’, mebbe, but bust minin’ laws and you’ll have a vig’lance committee waitin’ on you.”

Coleman turned his gaze on his foreman and his eyes were cold and calculating.

“You don’t hafta
jump
a claim filed by dead men,” he said softly.