Chaparejos

Front matter

CHAPAPEJOS

By ANTHONY M. RUD Author of “Smoke”, “Gila Joe”, etc.

It was mocking Fate that decreed that Toi-Yabe Tolman, ex-outlaw but now law-abiding prospector, should come face to face with the one man who could identify him to the sheriff—and that that man should be Haj Maddox, in whose evil brain hate and vengeance were ever ready to seize the slightest opportunity for fresh plotting.

II

OUT in a valley of the Red Chalk Range, Toi-Yabe Tolman frowned down puzzledly at a pair of small shoes and a pair of child's stockings he had found behind a boulder. He looked about him. A kid of some kind! The valley, though, was as silent as a dead desert calm; even his own animals were not grazing on the sparse vegetation jus then. He was sure that no one else could be within miles—and certain also, or nearly so, that these garments had not been behind the boulder the day before. Why, he had sat on that stone to eat his beans and pan biscuit! Yet he might have overlooked them, as he had been thinking almost entirely of Haj Maddox and what that treacherous coyote might be expected to do with his knowledge that the ex-bandit, Toi-Yabe Tolman, still lived.

Toi-Yabe rolled up the shoes and stockings and tossed them back to the place he had found them. Then he looked deep into the crannies of the narrow cave he used as a provision cache, and later devoted a half hour to a climb, reaching a spot which gave him a bird's-eye view of the valley. But beside a pair of far buzzards slowly circling, no living thing was in sight. He returned to his labor with drill, pick and shovel.

Unaware of the net being woven for him, he labored in the shaft he was sinking diagonaly downward at a right-angle to the slanting side of the bare mountain. Float gold was plentiful about the claim he owned. Low grade ore also was present in irregular veins two feet below the surface, separated and broken by white, barren bull quartz. The low grade ore represented a certain, though small, sale value on account of the nearness to Hartnett and the rail head at Lamar; yet Toi-Yabe, always a firm believer in rich float gold as a certain index of the nearness of a mother lode—a theory which has made dozens of prospectors very rich, and thousands destitute—chose to ignore the $250 a ton rock and delve on the gambler's chance.

That evening, crouched with frying-pan and coffee pot before a small blaze of mesquite twigs, Toi-Yabe suddenly heard the click of steel on rock, the sounds of a shod horse approaching! With possible trouble stirred up by Haj Maddox foremost in mind, Toi-Yabe slid quickly from the firelight to the protection of a boulder, hands dropping to his six-guns.

“Howdy!” came a hail in a tired voice. “'Sall right, hombre. It's me—Stone Bellinger.”

Undoubtedly that news would have been reassuring to many; Toi-Yabe was not certain that he welcomed it. He let the sheriff approach and dismount from his lathered roan, however, and then emerged.

“Wasn't sure,” he apologized gruffly.

“Uh-huh,” acknowledged Stone, uncinching. “Got enough water?”

Toi-Yabe merely gestured at the narrow black aperture which housed his water cans and grubstake. Bellinger investigated, poured a panful for the roan and a drink for himself. Then he slouched back to the fire, poured himself a cup of coffee, and accepted the tin plate heaped with beans and bacon, tendered by Toi-Yabe, with a nod of acknowledgement.

Such was desert hospitality given and taken by men almost a match in sternness and taciturnity. Toi-Yabe, realizing that the sheriff simply had chanced upon the claim at the end of a long ride and had grasped the chance to rest his horse, would not have spoken during the moments of smoking that followed except that he remembered the curious find made that day. Reaching back of the boulder, he brought up the small roll of shoes and stockings he had discovered, and tossed them across the fire.

“Ever see any yonkers up thisaway?” he queried. “These was lyin' here when I come back from town.”

The officer unrolled the bundle. Then a frown gathered on his forehead. Why, those things looked about big enough for his own kid—really something like the duds he'd seen on Dickie a few times! But of course there was no possible way Dickie could get out here, he assumed. Besides his own son, however, Stone Bellinger strove in vain to recall any children this size in the region outside of a few Mexican babies down at Tres Casas, and these, of course, wore neither shoes nor stockings.

“Yuh say yuh ain't seen any party up this side of the Red Chalk?” he questioned, glancing keenly up through graying brows. He did not know or ask the name of his host; a shrewd judge of men was Stone Bellinger, a man who cared nothing for names or ready-made reputations.

“Nope.” Toi-Yabe's answer was laconic, final.

Bellinger considered.

“Then I reckon I'll tote 'em along with me, in the mornin',” he concluded. And he went to roll up in his blankets, without further ado.

Next morning he was up in the false dawn's graying, before Toi-Yabe, built a fire, fed and watered the roan, made the coffee, and prepared a simple meal. Seeing that the prospector still slumbered—apparently only; Toi-Yabe was not altogether sure of the sheriff's intentions—Stone ate quickly and in silence, then set the coffee pot on the dying embers, saddled, and rode away toward Golman's Well. Toi-Yabe waited until the clicking of hoofs died away into silence before thrusting back a revolver into its holster and arising. He grinned a trifle wryly; a year before, it would have been courting sudden death for him to have camped a night with any sheriff!

AN HOUR later, with his drilling for a small blasting charge completed, Toi-Yabe affixed a cap and generous length of fuse to the sticks of forty per cent. He lighted the sputtering cord with its heart of black powder, then hastened over to the gully in which the animals were tethered. The burros could be counted on; they knew dynamite; but Cochise, the pinto pony, always snorted and reared, a wild, straining whiteness coming into his eyes. Only when Toi-Yabe was near could he be prevented from going into a nervous frenzy.

Seconds elapsed. Then a satisfying grroommm! announced that the tamping had been effective; that the force of the giant powder had been exerted downward, as well as in the direction of the shaft mouth.

As if that explosion had been an awaited signal, a sudden, faint pop-popping began, borne to Toi-Yabe seemingly from over the low mountain into which he was driving the shaft. He listened, tense, making certain that the gun battle—for the character of that fast shooting was unmistakable—was not in his valley, though probably just beyond the ridge. Then he shrugged. It was none of his affair. He went back to examine the shaft, bending to fan away the poisonous fumes with broad-brimmed Stetson before sliding down.

A cursory glance was rather disappointing. The rock showed no marked change in character, being if anything a trifle more barren in appearance. But suddenly Toi-Yabe became quiet, crouched on one knee. He had heard a most curious sound, one which brought every desert trained faculty into play! A low, rushing murmur came to his ears!

That instant he became aware, too, that a strange coolness was seeping in around his lowered knee and shin. Quickly he bent lower, testing with his ear, sniffing carefully. He heard it more plainly now. Water! He was near a subterranean stream or spring, that almost priceless discovery in this arid range! Water! If cool and sweet, it would allow him uninterrupted search for treasure, and comfort beyond imagining!

At last he found the tiny crevice through which a distinct chill of air rose in a steady current. With his ear to the crack he could hear the murmuring rush of waters even more distinctly. Feverishly then, forgetting for the time all thoughts of gold, he widened the crack, and into it thrust a prepared dynamite cartridge. Lighting the fuse, he scrambled out and away. Such was his haste he did not glimpse a furtive, oddly clad little figure on an abutment of rock just above.

Thoroughly frightened, gasping for breath after his flight and climb to escape the terrible man who had snatched him from his bed before dawn that morning, Dickie Bellinger wanted to climb down and speak to the tall, lean prospector—but had been too much in the grip of terror. One of the safety pins had opened, allowing the top of his rough cut “chaps” to drag behind as he crawled on hands and knees, but he paid it no attention now. He wanted someone, anyone—even Old Torky would have been welcome. So he came closer to that funny hole where the big man had gone.

He was close enough now so he could almost rubberneck over and see the man, when suddenly the latter reappeared, scrambling, running. Toi-Yabe had used only a short length of fuse this time, and he possessed a wholesome respect for dynamite.

Dickie stared, bewildered. What made that funny man run in and out of that hole? Was it the big bang he had heard?

That second, while Toi-Yabe still sprinted for the horse, Dickie's questions were answered decisively. Of a sudden a hideous, jarring roar blasted his ears. The rock upon which he crouched, quaked and leaped, throwing him sidewise, and the shock drove consciousness from him. He saw a swirl of black and green; then he knew no more.

It was as well. Though protected by a foot-high sleeve of rim rock so that none of the upflung débris struck him directly, Dickie had perched on a battered ledge which had been about to slide of its own weight. The second shock was just enough; unostentatiously nine hundred pounds of rock, cracking to fragments, broke away, hesitated, then slumped gently into the prospect shaft, bearing on its top a tattered, unconscious little five-year-old who on this morning alone had lived through enough perils for a lifetime.

Toi-Yabe was delayed a few minutes in spite of his impatience. The pinto, Cochise, just then decided he had quite enough of these rumbling explosions, and acted fractious. So Toi-Yabe saw neither the small avalanche nor the figure of Dickie.

But he came on as soon as possible; and it was while fanning the fumes with his Stetson that he caught sight of something decidedly strange there in the bottom of the shaft. Was that the yellow, curly head of a child, for the love of heaven? He blinked, gasped as sudden, icy dread clutched his heart. His mind raced. The shoes and stockings—the sheriff's pointed question—

Had he killed some little youngster unknowingly?

III

EVEN as these thoughts flashed through his mind he was scrambling down, however. He lit sliding in the loose rock. It was a child, a boy, half buried, but still breathing! Toi-Yabe flung himself to his knees, tearing away the rock with his finger.

“God, I hope he ain't hurt!” he half prayed in the stress of anxiety.

Just then came an odd straining creak from the floor and the rock walls about him; supposedly solid as they were, just then they moved slowly an inch, two2

But Toi-Yabe was lifting out the youngster, noting with increasing bewilderment the queer attire—and the fact that Dickie wore both shoes and stockings. Hurriedly examining the child, Toi-Yabe could discover naught save a multitude of small bruises. Just then Dickie sighed and moved in Toi-Yabe's arms.

“Oh—oh!” he gasped. “Torky! Oh!”

“'Sall right, old-timer. All O. K.” broke in the prospector, vastly relieved. “I'll have yuh fixed up an' goin' strong in jes' a second. I wonder how in hell yuh ever got2”

He rose to his feet, bearing Dickie with one arm and stamping a way over the loose rock toward the upward slant. Right there a black aperture, through which cold air rushed vehemently, separated the floor from the side wall—and inch by inch, to the accompaniment of weird creaks, that crack was widening alarmingly!

Toi-Yabe saw and understood—just too late. A cry ripped from his throat, and he sprang for the slant. But as one boot was upraised to catch a foothold, suddenly and with no further ostentation, a rough circle of foot-thick rock—the thin floor of the shallow shaft—dropped downward into unmeasured blackness!

Toi-Yabe, holding fast to Dickie, pitched forward, an involuntary cry bursting from his set, dry lips, and one arm grabbing widely and seizing—nothing! Tumbling headlong, he went into the black, fathomless pit. In the brief split second of falling he touched nothing; and gave himself up for lost. There was no telling how deep might be this awesome subterranean cavern.

He found out almost instantly. With a ripping splash which reverberated from close-constricting walls, the section of rock ceiling struck the surface of a black, sweeping, almost silent river hastening on its way beneath the rock arches to the flume which gave it back to the daylight in the far, almost inaccessible canyon of the Virgin River.

Toi-Yabe and his companion in misfortune struck the upflung spray in falling; and then his breath was caught from him in a constricted gasp. He clove the surface of an icy stream, was caught by the full force of the deep current, and fought with a reaction of furious energy against the whirling, sucking current, against the bruising outthrusts of the rock wall, and above all against the unbelievable chill of this subterranean river.

The immersion brought a choked outcry of terror from Dickie, coming abruptly to consciousness. With childish instinct he flung both arms about the neck of Toi-Yabe and held on with all his strength. It was, perhaps, the best thing possible, as Toi-Yabe, in the following seconds, could not even spare the use of one arm.

This was no sunken spring of the desert, gradually cooled by its hidden course. In its majestic onsweep could be recognized the force of miles of descent and the pull of a predetermined outlet. In its gripping cold was the taste of far distant snows of the high Sierras.

Hampered as he was by Dickie, by heavy boots, crisscrossed belts with their weights of cartridges and holstered six-guns, Toi-Yabe struggled for every breath he drew. Much of the time, as helpless as a curled piñon chip in a whirlpool, he was drawn beneath the surface, flung sidewise or end-on against slime-smoothed granite, or bruised by obstacles in the curving course.

He scraped his fingernails along a slippery wall, and then without warning was tossed to the far side of the river. There he struck with stunning force against something which held him a moment in spite of the dragging power of the relentless river. Instinctively he clutched and, though his fingers slipped as if trying for a hold on buttered brass, this was a rock formation of such shape that he was allowed to grip one elbow about it, clasping his own bent wrist. Instantly he was swirled about, his boots swinging to the surface as his body skittered as a float of little appreciable weight.

“Hold on, kid!” he gasped.

Only then did he truly come to grips with the immensity of the stream's momentum. For several seconds he held on, breathing in great gasps of the chill air, coughing and choking out the water which had descended to his lungs.

He did not dodge comprehension of the issue. If once he let go of this upright column which, like an I-beam, let the flood roar past on both sides, both of them were finished. He never would have the stamina to struggle again with the sweep of the current. Slowly and with infinite carefulness he drew himself back to a precarious kneeling position against the sloping pedestal base of the I-beam. The fingers of one hand explored upward, but found nothing save added inches of the slippery column.

If he only could see! Little hope stirred in his mind that even at the top of this sliver of granite lay anything promising escape; yet in the very fiber of Toi-Yabe Tolman was that deep-wedged élan of the battler; that flexibility of ready, combative spirit which takes emergencies and perils exactly as they come, and compresses from each the full blood of opportunity,

An opportunity to determine just how bad really was his plight came to mind. He edged closer to the pillar, slipped from the rounded pedestal nearly losing his grip, then slowly won back until he could hold his weight against the current with his left elbow and hand. Then he reached to his right holster. The revolver was gone!

His lips set grimly, yet he did not falter. In the long, careful process of shifting back so that he could reach the other gun he reflected sardonically that if a few million thirsty animals like his own tethered and deserted burros and pinto back there in the arid valley just could get at this river for a while—upstream, of course—he'd be able to wade out of the damned thing!

THE second Colt was there. He lifted it, flirted it sidewise and back to remove as much water as possible, and then pulled the trigger. Click! One cartridge, at least, had been ruined by the immersion. This time his thumb drew back the hammer and released it in one smooth motion. The muzzle shot red-yellow fire into the dripping blackness, and the explosion of the big revolver, caught and thrown back by the cramping ceiling, was deafening.

But Toi-Yabe did not care. He even grinned.

“Hold it, kid!” he cautioned again.

There, only two feet above the level of his head, ran a smooth, yard-wide ledge—probably a high-water mark of some day long past, or perhaps the remnant of a river bed which once existed when this stream held far greater volume!

The problem was ticklish enough. Climbing to the ledge meant mounting to the sloping base of the pillar, straightening upward, securing some sort of hold in a crevice or outcrop on the floor of the ledge. Kneeling, with one arm crooked about the upright rock, he just could reach across and touch the finger-tips of one hand to the sharp edge. Between pillar and wall below the ledge swift water swirled.

Twice he essayed to stand, and both times the impossibility of obtaining a dependable foothold was emphasized by bruising falls against the pillar and back into the water. Once only a quick grab of both arms saved him from being swept away.

Now in spite of his great reserves of strength he felt the dulling of exhaustion. His shoulders ached. The feet in his watersoaked boots had numbed into clods. He still could move them from the knees and ankles, but sensation had departed.

“Freezin'” he muttered. “Hope yo're warmer'n I am, little feller!”

Gaining the kneeling position again by slow, painful degrees, he reached down one hand carefully and unbuckled one of his two crossed cartridge belts, that which held the empty holster of his right-hand gun.

He slipped the fraction of an inch; clutched and froze. Then inch by inch with infinite caution, he encircled the slender pillar with the strap, while holding the buckle clamped between his teeth. A leaning forward—a meeting of the two ends—a quick pull.

He made an inarticulate noise of triumph, one that was chopped into jiggling syllables by his irresponsible teeth. The belt was in place! It hung slantingly in the water with the loop of the cartridges below. Toi-Yabe tested it with one hand, found that it could slip no lower, Then he reached about and loosened the viselike grip about his neck, securing a sound hold of the terrified, speechless child.

That instant he thrust one knee into the loop, drew up the other foot, and stood erect! From that position it was easy enough to cross the narrow gap to the ledge.

Upon hands and knees, little Dickie close beside him, feeling his way upon the down-slope of the ledge, Toi-Yabe started in the direction of the spot where he had dropped from surface of the valley above. Far, far up-stream there would be a hole in the roof of this cavern, and light—if nothing else hopeful. It seemed too much to expect that he could negotiate a way to the point where his mishap had occurred and there manage to climb to the hole. Yet this seemed the greatest chance. Probably it was the only one.

The two made rather rapid progress for a time, Toi-Yabe keeping his left hand upon the outside edge and groping forward and sidewise with his right before going ahead. Always he held Dickie inside. Once the ledge narrowed to little more than two feet of width. Here a wedge of the rock had dropped away, too. By sitting down, letting his boots touch the surface of the stream again, he managed to lift himself and the boy along the broken causeway, however, to the reassuring widening beyond where the ledge rose a trifle. He breathed freer.

Illustration: The two made rapid progress for a time

The relief was short-lived. Three or four yards beyond, Toi-Yabe's left hand found a sharp right-angle in the edge, and his groping right encountered nothingness! He inched forward, lifted out the Colt revolver. A shot blazed into the inky darkness, causing Dickie to cry out and shrink close. During the momentary life of that red-yellow flare Toi-Yabe saw that what he had dreaded most lay before him. This was the end of the ledge! True, ten or twelve yards beyond a six-inch sliver of horizontal rock still clung to the arching tunnel wall, yet all the rest had broken away. Since manifestly it was impossible to cross the stream or breast the current, they could proceed no farther in this direction.

But one alternative remained, and Toi-Yabe, his wide mouth tightened, played it. He turned and slowly made his way with the lad back through the pitch blackness. Time for them did not exist. Since they had fallen into the water he supposed several hours had elapsed; and now, with every prospect of another blind end to his ledge of comparative safety, he was tortured by the picture of the suffering he had brought upon the child—suffering borne uncomplainingly, however.

AT THE break in the ledge where the black, speeding surface curved on two feet below he leaned, cupped his hand, and drank, then offering some to Dickie. The water was hard with mineral, yet it lacked even a trace of alkaline bitterness. This showed clearly that for a long distance upstream, at least, the river did not see the surface and daylight. Though Toi-Yabe never was to ascertain the fact, the stream likewise kept to its subterranean channel until it mingled its substance with that of the stern Virgin, bound for a mating with the great Colorado.

Time unmarked, unguessed, crawled along. When he was tolerably certain that he had passed the pillar which had given him access to the ledge, Toi-Yabe halted and fired, desiring another brief glimpse. There right ahead, a few yards, was the self-same pillar or another exactly like it! Such similarity was not probable. Toi-Yabe grimaced. The progress of the two was like that of a heavy lizard, yet he certainly had believed they must have traversed much more than this distance. He continued the grim, almost hopeless journey, speaking brief words of encouragement to Dickie.

He reached what seemed the end, indeed. A cave-in of the wall had filled the ledge with loose rock. One large, jagged chunk in particular blocked the way. The remaining shots from Toi-Yabe's six-gun revealed that the blockade extended over a width of only four or five feet, though for all he could do in climbing, the burdened ledge itself might as well have given away.

Methodically reloading the weapon, the prospector probed forward with one hand leading his charge. He soon found that the risk of clinging to this jutting as he edged about would be a poor chance, indeed. Loose rock slivers fell away, and more came from the wall. Instead of attempting this, Toi-Yabe dug carefully with his fingers, lifting out pieces of granite and dropping them in the stream. Soon he met the large boulder. Tentatively he wrenched, and then crowded back in quick alarm. With a grinding crash quickly followed by a splash the overbalanced weight of granite fell into the stream!

Toi-Yabe, who had dared hope for no such immediate success, quickly seized Dickie, and edged past the spot upon which more rock might fall at any moment. He found himself upon a broadening, ascending curve of the ledge, where the low, rushing mutter of the onyx waters seemed to die away. Here, though he did not pay it much attention, the stream dived still deeper in a brief arc. Along the breast of this curve sheer centrifugal force threw outward small whitecaps, invisible now.

A dozen yards more, and then Toi-Yabe stopped, quivering—and not from the cold which had left his veins there while he wrestled with the cave-in of rock. Unless hope deceived his eyesight, ahead and high on the same side he traveled, was a faint but discernible streak of gray! It had to be light; and the presence of light in this tunnel could mean nothing save an aperture in the ceiling—possibly just such a break in the floor of the valley as that one through which Toi-Yabe and the lad had come into peril!

It was characteristic of the tall, lean ex-bandit that an unexpected hope, instead of causing him to rush forward in an impulse of tumultuous relief, held him quiet one interminable minute, arm around Dickie, considering. Then he drew the newly loaded six-gun, snapped two spoiled cartridges, and obtained an explosion from the third.

But he saw little during the brief flash, except that a ten-foot ledge inclined upward. He rose to his feet.

“Looks good, little feller,” he said.

“I'm c-cold!” chattered Dickie.

That second, from perhaps fifty yards in front and above him, a shot blazed forth in answer to his own! The leaden slug went pttt upon some part of the rock wall, then whined on in ricochet. Almost the same instant a second flash and report came; where the bullet went Toi-Yabe did not know. He thrust Dickie behind him. His gaze was fastened upon the broad way gently inclining upward in a slow curve; he had caught an ephemeral glimpse of a crouching figure there at the top of the slope.

Toi-Yabe dropped to his elbow, forcing Dickie to lie down.

“Stay right there, рard!” he whispered. Reloading the fired chambers of the .44, he shifted his single remaining belt holster to the rear and began the Indian stalk. The other man had all the advantage, yet Toi-Yabe, obsessed by a gnawing sympathy for the lad whose life had been thrust into his hands, was in no mood to compromise. More than once he had fought to a finish with an opponent in the chaparral; his bandit days were filled with such encounters. Now with the gray light high to the right becoming more and more plain, he was ready to exercise every wile and kill without mercy this unknown man who obstructed the road.

Another might have cried out, attempting parley—and surely failing, as circumstances were ordered. Тoi-Yabe, believing that the skulker above would think him hugging the inside wall, bellied forward on the very brink of the river. Now he saw vaguely the wide flat of a horizontal lie of the ledge, though strive as he might he could distinguish no hint of his unknown opponent.

A third shot blazed. This time Toi-Yabe saw momentarily the man's head and extended arm. Yet Toi-Yabe held his fire. He knew now where the other was waiting, and went for that spot with a minimum of delay. Knowing that he himself was shielded by an impenetrable blackness, Toi-Yabe covered the yards swiftly but noiselessly, keeping to the outside.

The grayness was becoming more pronounced. Toi-Yabe saw that it must come from a ceiling aperture some distance beyond and to the side of his quarry. It did not show up the bed of the ledge, however. So, following a rapid approach of what he estimated to be forty yards, Toi-Yabe assumed his slow crawl again, leaving the outside for the first time. In a hand-to-hand tussle, as this well might prove to be, he preferred the rock wall at his back.

Who could be the man who was ready to dispute with lead any encroachment upon this peculiar subterranean preserve? What was his reason for jealousy? Toi-Yabe, creeping forward, would have liked an answer to both questions.

IV

THE expected gunfight to a decision did not occur. Toi-Yabe had crawled at least far enough, he thought. Still, he heard a sound ahead. It was the aspiration of slow but jerky breathing! Then came a low groan, some muttered unintelligible words.

Toi-Yabe frowned. A futile decoy! He edged toward the sound, however, rose to his feet. His thumb held back the filed hammer of his six-gun. He hoped grimly that it did not misfire again from a water-soaked cartridge when he came to the showdown.

Outside in the big sunlit world a mere handful of nimbus had been over the sun for a space of minutes. Alone in a painfully blue Nevada sky, the cloud held on a while, and then gave up. In another clime it might have been thought the precursor of a storm; here it was something to be looked at and viewed with wonder. Of course no rain was expected.