I walked across the street to Judge Blazer’s. He was not only a judge but the coroner as well.
He was a-settin’ up there on the porch of that ho-tel, tipped back in a chair smokin’ a big seegar. He seen me comin’ and squinted his eyes to make me out.
I promise you I didn’t look like Sunday meetin’ time. I’d been all winter up in the mountains, and it was almighty cold up there. I was wearin’ all the clothes I owned, and I’d made a hole in a blanket for a poncho.
“Judge Blazer,” I said, “you buried my pa. I’ve come for his belongin’s.”
He just set there. Then he taken the seegar from his lips. “Now, now, son, you know your pa never had nothing. He was never much account at anything at all, and all he done for the past year was gamble. We done buried him our own selves, and he had just three dollars and six bits on him when he passed on. He had him a gold watch and his six-shooters. One was in his hand, the other was on the bureau.” He hitched himself around in his chair. “You’re welcome to ’em.”
He got up and went through the door ahead of me. He was a big man, and fat, but folks said he was almighty strong, that little of what looked like fat was really fat. I never cottoned to him much, but had he known he’d not have cared. Who was I but a youngster still wet behind the ears?
He
thought.
In his office he waved at a table. There was a rolltop desk, a big iron safe, a brass spittoon, and there was this table. There lay one of pa’s guns in the holster with his gun belt. The other gun lay free on the table. Pa’s old black hat was there, too.
Judge Blazer taken three dollars and six bits from a drawer and put it down along with a gold watch. “There you be, boy. You he’p yourself an’ run along. I got business to attend to.”
Well, I taken up that gun belt an’ strapped her on. She settled down natural-like against my leg. Then I pocketed the watch and the money and swapped my beat-up old hat for pa’s black one. Then I spun the cylinder on that second gun, and it was fully loaded. Pa was always careful with his guns. He kept them first-rate.
She was working and she was ready.
“Judge?” I was holdin’ right to that six-shooter, kind of casual-like, but ready. “Seems to me you’re bein’ forgetful, I guess a man like you, with business and all, could forget.”
He turned around slow and he stared hard at me. He looked from me to the gun, then back at me. Maybe I was only seventeen, but pa an’ me had cut the mustard in a lot of mean places. He didn’t look no different than a lot of others we’d met.
“Forget what?” he asked.
“All that money. Pa had him some winnin’ hands that last night. He won a lot of cash money and he won property, and I don’t see any of it on that table.”
“Now, now, son! You’ve been misinformed. I think—”
“Mister Judge,” I said, keeping my voice quiet-like, “this here gun don’t have so much patience. Could get right hasty, in fact. Now, if you’d like, I can round up twenty, maybe thirty witnesses who saw that game. There’s a lot of strangers in town, Judge, and they ain’t afeered of you, an’ many of them seen what happened last night. The whole town’s talkin’. You hold out one penny on a poor orphant boy who’s just lost his pa an’ I think those boys would be huntin’ theirselves a rope. Now I can guess why ol’ Dingleberry was so upset about me pullin’ my freight. You’d likely told him to keep me busy up yonder until all this sort of blowed over.”
He didn’t like it. No man likes to give up that kind of money to what he figures is a no-account boy. That was probably more money than the judge hisself had seen all to one time, and he was in no mood to let loose of it. On the other hand, there I stood with a six-shooter and maybe I was trigger-happy.
“You pull that trigger, boy, an’ you’ll hang for sure.”
“I don’t know anybody got hung for shootin’ a thief,” I said.
His face flushed up red and angry. His eyes got real mean. “Now, you look here!”
Me, I just tilted that gun a mite. “All you got to do to prove me wrong is hand over that money and those deeds. If you want to go to court about it, we can arrange to hold it yonder in the saloon where pa won the money.”
He didn’t like any part of it, but he didn’t want to hear what a jury of rough-and-ready western men would say, either. They believed in fair play and most of them had seen the game.
Reluctantly he dropped to one knee in front of the safe, and I moved right behind him. Maybe I looked green, but not so green that I didn’t know some folks kept a six-shooter in their safe to watch the money.
Sure enough, I seen one. As he reached his hand for it, I said, “Judge, when your hand comes out of that safe, it better have nothing in it but money. You lay hold of that gun and you still have to turn around to shoot. I don’t.”
He got up, very careful, holding the money in his two hands. He placed it on the table in front of me, and I told him to back off, easy-like.
“Son,” he said, “I wasn’t holdin’ out on you. I meant to take care of this money for you until you come of age. Fact is,” and I’d bet the idea just occurred to him, “I’ve been fixin’ to get myself appointed your guardian by the court.” He smiled like a cat lickin’ cream. “A young boy with all that there money, he needs advice. I figure to send you off to school to get you some eddication.”
“You ain’t my guardian or likely to be,” I said.
“On the contrary.” He was pleased with himself now. “I’ll draw up the papers. Appoint myself your guardian. I’ll take that money an’ invest it for you.”
“Pull in your horns, Judge. You made your play an’ you’ve come up empty. Just give me that deed.”
“Ain’t worth the paper it’s writ on,” Blazer protested.
“Just hand it over,” I insisted, and he done so. He didn’t like it, but he could see my thumb was holdin’ back the hammer, and if I was so much as nudged that gun would tear a hole in him big enough to drive a Conestoga wagon through.
Backing to the door, I stepped into the street, pulled the slipknot on the tie rope, and stepped into the saddle. That roan was tired. He was plumb beat, but he sensed I was in trouble an’ he taken out of there like a scared rabbit.
There was a road into town and there was a road out of town, and it stood to reason I had to take one or the other, so I took neither. I took the trail to my cow camp, which I figured would be the last place they’d look.
First place, nobody rightly knew where it was but me, and there was no need to pass Dingleberry’s place in gettin’ there, so there’d be nobody to report my passing. That cow camp had been home for the roan for some time, so he taken the trail at a good gait. Twice I glanced back. Nobody was in sight.
They’d study on it and Blazer would figure it out, but not until they had wasted time on other trails, and by that time I hoped it would be too late.
Only I’d better hurry. If it came on to snow before I got off the mountain—and there could be heavy snows up yonder—I’d be in trouble.
If a man got snowed in up there at this time of year, he might never get off. It was slide country and all the trails in or out were subject to snowslides.
The year had been an open one with little snow. Cold as it was, the grass was good, cured on the stem, and the cattle had done well. I’d kept alert, ready to move them fast if need be, and there were some valleys close by that offered shelter. In that country a man got out fast or he was stuck. That had been all right for me, as I’d had plenty of grub stashed up there and fuel close to hand. Trouble was that during the winter I’d used up most of the grub and the fuel as well.
The wind blew cold off the peaks and the trickles of melt had stopped flowing, which meant it was freezing on top. The roan, tired as he was, stepped faster. From where the trail topped out, four or five miles shy of the high grass, I turned in my saddle to look back.
Nothing in sight, nothing at all. But I knew they were back there, and I knew they were coming.
How much money I had I didn’t know, but it was aplenty and Blazer figured to have that money. He wouldn’t be coming alone. He’d have however many he figured he needed, no matter what reason he gave them. He was a judge, probably no more than a justice of the peace, I thought. Still, he knew more about the law than me and he might be able to get himself appointed my guardian. He could even appoint himself and make a good story of how I was a wild kid who needed taking care of. Meanwhile he’d have his use of, and the spending of, my money.
When I saw, far ahead, the dark shadow of the cabin, it was already coming on to snow. I pulled up, although the roan wanted to go on in. I sat in my saddle taking a long look at my hole card, and it didn’t shape up to very much.
How did I know nobody knew of that place but me? Wasn’t I taking a lot for granted? That gold money rested heavy in my saddlebags and so did the paper. The gold might be just too much weight, going off the mountain in the deep snow. Besides, if they got me I didn’t want them to profit by it.
It was then I thought of the cache.
Chapter 2
I
T WAS A crack in the rock, that was all, hidden in a niche of the wall. It was a crack not over six inches wide and maybe two feet deep about ten feet off the ground. I’d found it a handy place to cache a bite of lunch, time to time, or some extra ammunition and coffee in case the cabin burned down whilst I was with the cattle.
The cabin was still a good two miles off, although I could see a kind of black blotch where it stood. Swinging the bronc over to the niche, I stood up in my stirrups and put the gold away back in that crack and then the bills and replaced the rock that closed the crack.
Three hundred dollars in paper money I kept. I hid five twenties under the sweatband of my hat, another five in a slit in my belt, and the last five I wadded into a tight ball in the bottom of my holster. That last made my gun ride a little high, but the thong would still slip over it, although a snug fit. I was figuring on using my waist gun if I had to use any.
Then I headed for the cabin, circling a little to come up on the back side through the aspen. Back there about fifty yards from the cabin and down over a little aspen and sprucecovered knoll there was another cabin. This one was built mighty strong of square-cut logs and was warmer than the stable near the cabin. I led the roan into it and dished out some corn I kept there for cold spells.
Then I started for the cabin. There was a side of bacon there, some beans, flour, salt, sugar, and coffee. There was also some dried apples and odds and ends of grub. I had me a feeling I was going to need it.
This here was springtime, but in the high country it wasn’t a dependable thing. I’d seen the spring come with flowers and all, and then off the mountains come a storm and there’d be another ten to fifty days of winter.
The high mountain pasture which we called the plateau was actually no such thing, but rather a series of high mountain valleys above timberline or right at it, where grew the richest of grass. Most winters they were free of snow, and warmer than some lower-down country due to what pa called a local weather pattern—winds off the desert, I guess.
Pa had known about this place and he had gone to Dingleberry with the suggestion that he’d graze a few hundred head of Big D cattle in the high country and I’d see to them, for so much a head and wages for me.
How pa found this place or heard of it I never did know. He had never been given to talk. I was just beginning to realize how little pa had told me about himself, his early life, or his family. I’d not paid it much mind because pa was always there to ask in case I wanted to know, but now he was gone. His death not only left me alone but it cut me off from whatever past there was, and whatever family we might have had somewhere.
When I got to the cabin, all was quiet and I went in. It was ice-cold, so I taken the time to put a fire together. Then with the flames crackling, I went to putting grub into a burlap sack. I worked fast, all the time thinking maybe I should just spend the night where I was instead of heading out across that mountain country in the cold and the dark.
I packed my sack of grub down and tied it behind the saddle, still thinking I should unsaddle and give us both a rest. The roan was tuckered and so was I, but I recalled the mean look in Blazer’s eye and I knowed he’d be comin’ after me, cold or no. Be a long time before he had a chance at that much cash money again.
There was a small paper sack with some .44s in it lyin’ on the floor in the cabin, and I decided I’d better take them with me, so I walked back to the cabin and pushed open the door.
Something loomed in front of me, big as a grizzly, it seemed, and my hand went for my gun, but then I remembered I’d hung the gun belt over the saddle horn and the spare gun with it whilst I was working around.
What hit me was a fist, but it felt like the butt end of an axe. I staggered, and something fetched me a clout from behind, knocking me through the door into the lighted cabin. I sprawled on the floor, my head buzzing, but I wasn’t let lay. A big hand grabbed the scruff of my neck and flung me into a chair.
“Where is it, kid? Where’s the money?”
Dazed, I looked up at Judge Blazer. There were three other men in the cabin. The only one I knew by sight was Tobin Wacker, a teamster who drove freight wagons and was said to be the meanest man anywhere around. He was a brawler and a bully, outweighed me by fifty pounds, and he was three, four inches taller. I don’t know why they had the other two, because with Wacker they surely didn’t need anybody else.