With Hoops of Steel Part 12

When he awakened the next morning he found that the others were already up and had prepared breakfast. The blue sky was brilliant with the morning sun, but the little canyon was still damp and cool in the black shadow of its walls and of the beetling mountains that towered beyond. Their camp was at the very head of the canyon. On two sides the walls reached high above them in almost perpendicular cliffs. At the end, the rocky barrier was more broken and was heaped with boulders, through which the clear waters of the streamlet came trickling and gurgling and finally leaped over the wall into a little pool. The floor of the canyon was barely more than two hundred feet across, and twice that distance below the pool the walls drew so near together that they formed a narrow pa.s.s. In this little oval enclosure grew several pine trees of fairly good size, some scrub pines and cedars and other bushes, and the ground was well covered with green gra.s.s and flowers.

Haney was hearty and jovial in his greeting to Wellesly, solicitous about his physical welfare and genial and talkative all through breakfast. Jim grinned at his jokes and stories and ventured some facetious remarks of his own, and Wellesly told a story or two that sent the others into peals of laughter. He searched his pockets and found three cigars, and the three men sat down on the rocks and smoked them in silence. Each side was waiting for the other to make a move.

At last Wellesly said that he would start back across the plain if the others still wished to continue in the same direction. They expostulated and argued with him and reminded him of the probability that he could not find his way alone, and of the dangers from heat and thirst which he would have to face.

Wellesly guessed that they wanted money and were trying to force him into making an offer. He held to his determination and while they talked he saddled and mounted his horse. Then they tried to beat down his resolution by picturing to him the certain death he would meet on the waterless plain. In his heart he was really very much afraid of that scorching, sandy waste, but he let no sign of his fear show in his face as he curtly replied:

"I'm very much obliged to you for all your concern about my welfare, but I'll be still more obliged if you won't worry about me any more.

I'm going back and I'm going to start now, and if you are so sure I'll get lost and die you can come along a week or so later, hunt up my bones and collect the reward that will be offered for news of me."

At that suggestion Jim glanced hastily at Haney and Wellesly saw the Englishman shake his head in reply.

"We don't want to be responsible for your death, Mr. Wellesly," Haney began, but Wellesly cut him off short:

"You won't be. I release you from all responsibility, after I leave you. Good morning, gentlemen." And with a cut of the quirt his horse started. They had been standing near the lower end of the head of the canyon, and as he moved forward the two men sprang in front of him, blocking the narrow pa.s.s which gave the only outlet.

"Will you let me pa.s.s?" demanded Wellesly, his lips white and his voice trembling with anger.

"We're not ready for you to go yet," said Haney, all the joviality gone from his face and voice. His look was that of brutal determination and his voice was harsh and guttural. Jim added an oath and both men drew their guns.

"Then, by G.o.d, we'll shoot it out!" cried Wellesly, whipping his revolver from his pocket. The hammer fell with a flat thud, and with an angry exclamation he clicked the trigger again. With furious haste he went the round of the cylinder. Jim and Haney stood grinning at him, their guns in their hands.

"Something the matter with your pop-gun, I reckon," said Jim.

Wellesly opened it and looked through the empty cylinder. Then he put it carefully in his hip pocket, rested his hands on the pommel of his saddle and looked the two men slowly over, first one and then the other, from head to foot. At last he spoke:

"Well, whenever you are ready to make your proposition I will listen to it."

"We 'aven't any proposition to make," Haney replied. "We're not ready to leave 'ere yet, and we're not willing for you to risk your life alone on the desert. That's all there is about it."

"Oh, very well! I can stay here as long as you can," Wellesly replied, dismounting. He unsaddled his horse, hobbled it and turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pa.s.s. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week's captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set at work the police machinery of a hundred cities, so that, whatever way they might turn, there would be no escape for them. He turned several schemes over in his mind as he watched Haney preparing their noon meal of bread, coffee, beans and bacon. Jim was taking a pebble from the shoe of one of the horses. Wellesly sauntered up and watched the operation, asked some questions about the horses and gradually led Jim into conversation. After a time he broke abruptly into the talk with the question:

"What is the name of these mountains?"

"The Oro Fino," Jim answered promptly. Then he remembered that he and Haney had been insisting that they were the Hermosas ever since the day before and he stammered a little and added:

"That is, that's what the--the Mexicans call them. The Americans call them the Hermosas."

"So you told me last night," Wellesly answered calmly, "but I had forgotten."

He remembered the name and recalled a topographical map of the region which he had looked at one day in Colonel Whittaker's office. He remembered how the three ranges looked on the map--the Hermosas, the first range east of Las Plumas, with the wide Fernandez plain lying beyond, then the Fernandez range, more like high, gra.s.sy hills than mountains, with only their highest summits barren and rocky, and separated from the Oro Fino--the Fine Gold--mountains, by the desert they had crossed the day before. He recalled the descriptions he had heard of these Oro Fino mountains--high, barren, precipitous cliffs, separated by boulder-strewn canyons and cleft by deep gorges and chasms, a wild and almost impa.s.sable region. He remembered, too, that he had been told that these mountains were rich in minerals, that the whole rocky, jumbled, upreared, deep-cleft ma.s.s was streaked and striped and crisscrossed with veins of silver and gold, turquoise, marble, coal and iron, but that it was all practically safe from the hand of man because of the lack of wholesome water. Alkali and mineral springs and streams there were, but of so baneful nature that if a thirsty man were to drink his fill but once he would drink to his death. Recalling these things, Wellesly concluded that this trickling spring of sweet, cool water and the little green canyon must be rare exceptions to the general character of the mountains and that this must have been the objective point of his captors from the start.

Along with the awakened memories came also a sudden recollection of a tale once told him in Denver by a prospector, whom he was grubstaking for the San Juan country, of a lost mine in the Oro Fino mountains of New Mexico. He was able to recall the salient points of the story and it occurred to him that it might be useful in the present emergency.

While they ate dinner Wellesly spoke again of the dangers of the desert and of the risks he knew he would be taking if he should attempt to cross it alone.

"With my deficient sense of direction," he said, "I should probably wander all over it a dozen times before I could find my way out."

"You'd be dead long before that time," said Jim.

"Yes, it's very likely I would," Wellesly calmly a.s.sented.

"Of course," said Haney, "our friend 'ere 'asn't got much grub and if you and me continue to live off 'im it won't last long. 'E knows a way to get through these mountains and go down to El Paso, but of course 'e can't be expected to pilot you down there for nothin'. Now, if you made it worth 'is w'ile, I dare say 'e'd be willin' to stop 'is prospecting long enough to get you safe into the town. Eh, pard?"

"Yes, I can," Jim replied, "if the tenderfoot wants to make it enough worth while. I ain't stuck on the trip and I don't want to fool any more time away around here. You two have got to decide what you're a-going to do mighty quick. I want to get to prospectin', and if I have to tote you-all down to El Paso you'll have to pay big for the favor."

Wellesly did not reply and Haney, who was looking critically at a big boulder on the top of the canyon wall, burst into the conversation with an exclamation:

"My stars! Do you see that 'uge boulder up there, just above the narrow place in the canyon? 'Ow easy it would be, now, wouldn't it, for two men to get up there and pry it loose. It would crash down there and fill up that whole blamed trail, wouldn't it, Mr. Wellesly?"

"Yes, and effectually wall up anybody who might have had the bad luck to be left in here," Wellesly dryly replied. "But speaking of the dangers of crossing the desert," he went on, "I remember a story told me once in Denver by a prospector who had been down in this country.

It was about a lost mine, the Winters mine. Did you ever hear of it?"

"Yes," said Jim, "I have. I've heard about it many a time. It's in these mountains somewhere."

"It was so rich," Wellesly went on, "that d.i.c.k Winters knocked the quartz to pieces with a hammer and selected the chunks that were filled with gold. He said the rock was seamed and spotted with yellow and he brought out in his pocket a dozen bits as big as walnuts that were almost solid gold."

The two men were listening with interested faces. Jim nodded. "Yes, that's just what I've heard about it. But there are so darn many of them lost mines and so many lies told about 'em that you never can believe anything of the sort."

"What became of this chap and 'is mine?" asked Haney.

"I reckon the mine's there yet, just where he left it," Jim answered, "but d.i.c.k went luny, crossin' the desert, and wandered around so long in the heat without water that when he was picked up he was ravin'

crazy and he didn't get his senses back before he died. All anybody knows about his mine is what he said while he was luny, and you can't put much stock in that sort of thing."

"I don't know about that," said Wellesly. "I had the story from the man who took care of him before he died, the prospector I spoke of just now--I think his name was Frank, Bill Frank. He said that the old man was conscious part of the time and told him a good deal about the strike--enough, I should think, to make it possible to find the place again."

Haney and Jim were looking at him with intent faces, their interest thoroughly aroused. Wellesly decided to draw on his imagination for any necessary or interesting details that the prospector had not told him.

"What did he say," Jim demanded, "and why didn't he go after it himself?"

"As I remember it, he said that during his delirium Winters talked constantly of his rich find, that he seemed to be going over the whole thing again. He would exclaim, 'There, just look at that! As big as my fist and solid gold!' 'Look at that seam! There's ten thousand dollars there if there's a cent!' and many other such things. He would jump up in bed and yell in his excitement. If he was really repeating what he had seen and done while he was working his strike, Bill Frank said that he must have taken out a big pile, probably up near a hundred thousand dollars. That he really had found gold was proved by the nuggets in his pockets."

"Did Winters tell him what he'd done with the ore?" Jim demanded. He was evidently becoming very much interested.

"Frank told me that at the very last he seemed to be rational. He realized that he was about to die and tried to tell Frank how to find the gold he had taken out. He said he had hidden it in several places and had tried to conceal the lead in which he had worked. It is likely that the strike, whatever it was, had upset his head a little and made him do queer things before he got lost and heat-crazed on the desert."

"Well, did this man tell you where he'd hid the dust?"

"Do you know where it is?"

"My informant, Bill Frank, said that Winters was very weak when he came to his senses and could only whisper a few disconnected sentences before he died, and part of those," Wellesly went on, smiling at the recollection, "Frank said 'the darn fool wasted on grat.i.tude.' But he gathered that the Winters mine was somewhere in the southern part of the Oro Fino mountains, not far from a canyon where there was good water, and that he had hidden the nuggets and dust and rich rock that he had taken out, in tin cans and kettles and bottles in another canyon not far away."

"Why didn't your chap go and 'unt for it 'imself?" asked Haney.

"He did spend several weeks trying to find it, and nearly died of thirst, and broke his leg falling off a precipice, and had a devil of a time getting out and getting well again. Then he wanted me to grubstake him for another hunt for it, but I think a man is more likely to find a new mine than he is a lost one and so I sent him to the San Juan instead."

"Lots of men have gone into these mountains hunting for the Winters mine," said Jim, "but all I've known anything about have always gone farther north than this."

"Yes," said Wellesly, as easily as if it were not an inspiration of the moment, "Bill Frank told me that when he talked about it he always made people think that Winters had said it was in the northern part of the range, but that it was really in the southern part."