Shadow Mountain. Coolidge Dane

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СКАЧАТЬ curses Wiley stripped off his puttee and felt of his injured leg. It was wet with blood and two shot-holes in his shin-bone were giving him the most exquisite pain; the rest were just flesh-wounds where the buckshot had pierced his leggings and imbedded themselves in the muscles. He looked them over hastily by the light of a flashing lantern and then he rose up from the ground.

      “Gimme that gun for a crutch!” he demanded of the Widow; and Mrs. Huff, who had been surveying her work with awe, passed over the shotgun in silence. “All right, now,” he went on, turning to Death Valley Charley, who had been patiently holding his lantern, “just show me the trail and I’ll get out of camp before some crazy dastard ups and kills me.”

      “That was Stiff Neck George,” observed Charley mysteriously. “He’s guarding the Paymaster for Blount.”

      “Who–that fellow that was after me?” burst out Wiley in a passion as he hobbled off down the trail. “What the hell was he trying to do? The whole rotten mine isn’t worth stealing from anybody. What’s the matter with you people–are you crazy?”

      “Well, that’s all right!” returned the Widow from the darkness. “You can’t sneak in and jump mymine!”

      “Yourmine, you old tarrier!” yelled Wiley furiously. “You’d better go to town and look it up. The whole danged works is mine–I bought it in for taxes!”

      “You–what?” cried the Widow, brushing Virginia and Charley aside and halting him in the trail. “You bought the Paymaster for taxes!”

      “Yes, for taxes,” answered Wiley, “and got stung at that! Gimme eighty-three dollars and forty-one cents and you can have it back, with costs. But now listen, you old battle-ax; I’ve taken enough off of you. You went up on my property when I was making an inspection of it and made an attempt on my life; and if I hear a peep out of you, from this time on, I’ll go down and swear out a warrant.”

      “I didn’t aim to kill you,” defended the Widow, weakly. “I just tried to shoot you in the leg.”

      “Well, you did it,” returned Wiley, and, pushing; her aside, he limped on down the trail. The Widow followed meekly, talking in low tones with her daughter, and at last Virginia came up beside him.

      “Take him right to our house,” she said to Charley, “and I’ll nurse him until he gets well.”

      “No, you take me to the Holman house!” directed Wiley, obstinately. “I guess we’ve got a house of our own.”

      “Well, suit yourself,” she murmured, and fell back to the rear while Wiley went hobbling on. At every step he jabbed the muzzle of the shotgun vindictively into the ground, but as he reached the flat and met a posse of citizens, he submitted to being carried on a door. The first pain had passed and a deadly numbness seemed to take the place of its bite; but as he moved his stiffened muscles, which were beginning to ache and throb, he realized that he was badly hurt. With a leg like that he could not drive out across the desert, seventy-four long miles to Vegas; nor would he, on the other hand, find the best of accommodations in the deserted house of his father. It had been a great home in its day, but that day was past, and the water connections too, and somebody must be handy to wait on him.

      “Say,” he said, turning to Death Valley Charley, “have you got a house here in town? Well, take me to it and I’ll pay you well, and for anything else that you do.”

      “It won’t cost you nothing,” answered Charley quickly. “I used to know your father.”

      “Well, you knew a good man then,” replied Wiley grimly, but Death Valley did not respond. The Widow Huff was listening behind; and besides, he had his doubts.

      “I’ll run on ahead,” said Charley noncommittally, and when Wiley arrived a canvas cot was waiting for him, fully equipped except for the sheets. Virginia came in later with a pair on her arm, and after a look at Charley’s greasy blankets Wiley allowed her to spread them on the bed. Then, as Death Valley laid a grimy paw on his leg and began to pick out the shot Wiley jerked away and asked Virginia impatiently if she didn’t have a little carbolic.

      “Aw, he’ll be all right,” protested Charley cheerfully, as Virginia pushed him aside; “them buckshot won’t hurt him much, nohow. Jest put on some pine pitch and a chew of tobacco and he’ll fall off to sleep like a child.”

      He stood blinking helplessly as Virginia heated some water and poured in a teaspoonful of carbolic, then as she bathed the wounds and picked out the last shot, Charley placed a disc on his phonograph.

      “Does he want some music?” he inquired of Heine, who was sitting up and begging, but Virginia put down her foot. “No, Charley,” she said with a forbidding frown, “you go ask mother for a needle and thread.”

      “He’s kind of crazy to-night,” she whispered to Wiley, when Death Valley was safely out of sight, “you’d better come over to the house.”

      “Huh, I guess we’re all crazy,” answered Wiley, laughing shortly. “I can stand it–but how does he act?”

      “Oh, he hears things–and gets messages–and talks about Death Valley. He got lost over there, three years ago last August, and the heat kind of cooked his brains. He heard your automobile, when you came back to-night–that’s why mother and all the rest of them went over to the mine to get you. I’m sorry she shot you up.”

      “Well, don’t you care,” he said reassuringly. “But she sure overplayed her hand.”

      “Yes, she did,” acknowledged Virginia, trying not to quarrel with her patient, “but, of course, she didn’t know about that tax sale.”

      “Well, she knows it now,” he answered pointedly, and when Charley came back they were silent. Virginia bandaged up his wound and slipped away and then Wiley lay back and sighed. There had been a time when he and Virginia had been friends, but now the fat was in the fire. It was her fighting mother, of course, and their quarrel about the Paymaster; but behind it all there was the old question between their fathers, and he knew that his father was right. He had not rigged the stock market, he had not cheated Colonel Huff, and he had not tried to get back the mine. That was a scheme of his own, put on foot on his own initiative–and brought to nothing by the Widow. He had hoped to win over Virginia and effect a reconciliation, but that hole in his leg told him all too well that the Widow could never be fooled. And, since she could not be placated, nor bought off, nor bluffed, there was nothing to do but quit. The world was large and there were other Virginias, as well as other Paymasters–only it seemed such a futile waste. He sighed again and then Death Valley Charley burst out into a cackling laugh.

      “I heard you,” he said, “I heard you coming–away up there in the pass. Chuh, chuh, chuh, chud, chud, chud, chud; and I told Virginny you was coming.”

      “Yes, I heard about it,” answered Wiley sourly, “and then you told the Widow.”

      “Oh, no, I didn’t!” exulted Charley. “She’d’ve killed you, sure as shooting. I just told Virginny, that’s all.”

      “Oh!” observed Wiley, and lay so still that Charley regarded him intently. His eyes were blue and staring like a newborn babe’s, but behind their look of childlike innocence there lurked a crafty smile.

      “I told her,” went on Charley, “that you was coming to git her and take her away in your auto. She’s a nice girl, Virginny, and never rode in one of them things–I never thought you’d try to steal her mine.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ