Doom Canyon

Front matter

A Complete Novel

by Joseph Montague*

“LOBO” SMITH, COLD, CRUEL, RULED DOOM CANYON AND THREE CORNERS WITH A STERN HAND. WHEN JIM GARDNER BUCKED SMITH—HE PAID. BUT, WITH THE INFLUX OF THE CATTLEMEN, CAME OTHERS MORE FORMIDABLE—MORE CAPABLE OF MEETING SMITH'S ATTACK. AMONG THEM WAS STRONG. …

Chapter I

CHAPTER I.

DAWN, coming up beyond the Pecos, shone fairly on the wall of the range, turning the bare stone rosy, tingeing the trees bronze, bathing the plain in a vermillion wash, gilding the silver sage and lacy mesquite, touching the lonely, savage landscape with mystery. But the cleft of Doom Cañon showed dark and forbidding as a dead man's wound, a purple-black gash in the first tier of the cliffs that mounted in a broken mesa high against the sky.

Sheer were the walls of the cañon, seamed and pitted and worn but unscalable from the floor of the gorge where the sun never rested, or from the weather-bitten, eroded rims that leaned toward each other. North and south ran Doom Cañon, with twisting turns here and there, a corridor of grimness, of almost legendary horror.

Here, so runs the story, the fierce Apaches herded the more peaceful mesa dwellers, penning them for slaughter, leaving them scalped and mutilated, to furnish food for the sneaking coyotes and the greedy buzzards. Long years afterward prospectors, seeking gold, ventured into the gloomy recesses, climbing the masses of lava that blocked the entrance so that one seemed to descend into the gorge, and found a rushing, mysterious stream that gushed out of a cavern at the end of the great ravine, boiled along its length and, roaring and white with foam, rushed beneath the lava and disappeared again.

Esqueleto Creek they called it, for its banks were strewn with moldering, scattered teeth-gnawed skeletons. They brought no gold from Doom Cañon—they did not search for any—but emerged on to the plain, glad to be in the light and warmth of day again. Twice a day the sun bathes a part of each great wall, that is stained in fantastic hues with mineral solutions, that drips with oozing water and is patterned with lichens and weird fungus growths that look like cabalistic messages inscribed upon the cliffs. The stars shine down and are sometimes caught in glittering points upon the stream that comes boiling and roaring out of the resounding cavern and hurls itself darkly under the entrance ledges, but its inky, snaky coils never greet the warm kiss of the sun or the colder caress of the moon. It might be the Styx itself, and the cañon the lower court to Hades, or the fabled sacred river of Kublai Khan that ran:

Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea.

No Indian ever entered there or came near the place. Even the reckless Apache, wandering from his reservation with his hand against that of all men, responsible for the massacre that named the gorge as the place of doom, gave it a wide berth.

It was marked for tragedy, a hall of death that Nature herself proclaimed taboo. Towering above Doom Cañon, boldly carved from the main mass of the great mesa by the wind, the rain, the frost and snow, stood Skull Knob, a semidetached bulk of white limestone. There were cavities in it where bushes grew and there was a ledge with stunted piñon and cedar upon it that gave to it eye sockets, nose and grinning jaws, even when the sun flared directly upon it.

And, always over the cañon, where surely few living things must stir or live, the buzzards hovered as if in memory of the great feast that was, perhaps, well within the recollection of those same ill-omened birds that, hour by hour, kept vigil, planing against the air currents in unceasing and apparently, profitless patrol.

Here was a desolate land where as yet the law had not come, a wild land where the renegades of three nations, the red man, the brown and the white, prowled and robbed and harried the hardy pioneers and prospectors who adventured in the half-desert region lying between the Rio Grande and the Pecos, carrying on a lawless traffic across the border. Doom Cañon, and its mesa formed part of the Organ Mountains in the Three Corners where Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico meet. It was a land of mirage and cactus, of yucca, greasewood and sage, of the puma, coyote, wolf and bear, of the tarantula, the Gila monster and the rattlesnake, the buzzard and the crow. It was a land of mirage and underground rivers, of the marvelous Seven Lost Cities of Cibola, of silver and gold, of thirst and torture, of hope and despair and death.

Yet there were grassy plains and fertile places and the rich surface of the land bid against what treasures might lie under it for the favor of the hardy pioneer, the cattleman, the rancher. Out on the plain, that looked so level and yet held valleys, prairies, and gullies, was the settlement of Laguna, twelve miles from Doom Cañon. It was naturally located beside what was almost a miracle—a fresh-water lake fed seemingly by springs, a lake that never failed in this country where the sun would evaporate a six-inch puddle in half that many hours; a deep lake of water that was hard but, compared to most of the alkaline surface basins, was as ginger ale to the Harlem River.

Clear Lake, it was called, and the town Laguna. The Apaches called it, for some reason, the Lake of the Dead. There were trout in it and other fish, and some day, when the railroad came down to parallel the valley of the Rio Grande, the lake would furnish the main incentive for a tourist resort. At present the collection of false-front shacks and adobes, of Mexican jacals, of saloons, dance halls, gambling rooms—the three usually combined in one—one or two general stores, two blacksmiths, sheds and corrals, was the first and last resort of all the scattering population—except the Apaches, not popular and supposed to be on their reservations, of the respectable few and the riffraff many. Ranchers and rustlers, gamblers and smugglers rubbed elbows at bar and game, danced with the same women in rough-and-ready fellowship that was ever hair-triggered.

Men wore guns, not for ornament but for use. The only ones who did not were the bartenders who were considered as neutral necessities under any and all conditions—these and Laguna's one undertaker, whose dead were furnished him.

Such the Three Corners. A place that might well be called the land that God forgot and with the devil's own nook in it—at Doom Cañon.

Men came to live in the cañon. How many none were sure, nor did they know all their names. Nor how they lived. It was not deemed a wise thing even in Three Corners to discuss the men of Doom Cañon. They might come to hear of it, for there were many who curried favor with them, or perhaps were in their pay. And they had harsh ways of settling scores.

Yet every man in Laguna believed that each of that band was not merely lawless but outlawed, that the nucleus had gradually been augmented by desperate men who fled from the results of some wild deed. They were a hard-bitten, swaggering, hard-drinking and swift-shooting lot and, when they came to Laguna, flinging gold on the counters and the layouts as if the pieces were copper cents, the night was theirs. Bullies some of them—cowards none, so far as physical fear was concerned. The girls dreaded their arrival. There were tales of favorites among them being carried off against their will. Tales of women who entered Doom Cañon and did not leave it; yet were no longer living, because they were no longer attractive. They were wild, unauthenticated tales, born in whispers among the girls themselves. Girls came and went in the Three Corners, even as men did, without heralding and without regrets or investigation. Human life was valued lightly where Nature set scores of traps for the taking of it. Love was laughed at.

The leader of the Doom Cañon men was the one the Mexican girls—and some of the men—called “El Lobo,” because of his cloudy, yellow eyes that made them silver when he turned them on them. They were the orbs of a caged wild beast, when the brute is at ease and looks toward but not at you; eyes that show no soul, that can light up under the stress of passion as if they were glass lenses for the devil's own lantern. Then the amber irises would clear and, as the eyes narrowed, you saw a glitter as of gun metal, the suggestion of a flame from hell. And if, said the girls—crossing themselves—he should chance to open them wide and look at you, you could sometimes see down through them as if they were windows of yellow glass, and there was the evil soul of the man mocking you.

Some of the breeds called him “El Halcon,” because of his hawklike, nose that curved out like the beak of a bird of prey—rapacious, gluttonous. Curved out and down a little, over lips that were narrow and cruel—what you could see of them for the mustaches—and the great black beard that served him in place of collar or necktie or neckerchief, laying on his chest in its silkiness, so well groomed it was apparently the man's one personal vanity, mingling with the shaggy hair that masked his chest, as it did his massive arms, and the powerful hands to their very finger nails.

A shirt of blue flannel, open at the breast, that looked as if he could not find one spacious enough for his wide shoulders and his great barrel of a chest. Trousers of dark stuff thrust into boots, belt and cartridge belt of black leather about lean hips, 'black leather holsters tied down low with latigo strips, black-butted guns of blue metal that matched the high lights in his beard and the hair he let grow long. Black somrebro, black temper when crossed and a black heart. He gave the name of Smith—Sam Smith—mockingly, as if to challenge you to say he lied and it was evident very early that he neither feared man nor devil.

He was a man who could hold all his emotions under control while his yellow eyes blazed with the deviltry he repressed until the moment he considered it best to unleash it. Many emotions were doubtless missing in him altogether and his followers were men after his own kidney, of his own stamp—a godless, reckless crowd.

As Three Corners was the land of no man, equally was it the land of no man's business. What one might do another might not inquire into—unless it personally concerned him and his affairs—without breaking the unwritten laws which were the only laws of the strange etiquette of the community. Collectively, Smith and his men ruled the roost. They were united, the rest were not, and therein lay the difference. The fact that they had chosen to live in Doom Cañon enhanced their mastery over the superstitious and uneducated, and most Laguna and of Three Corners consisted of either one or the other.

Every little while El Lobo and his pack would come riding into town to sling their chinking gold pieces free and wide, to insist upon making drunk every one within the cantina they visited or closing its doors to all but themselves. They were a source of revenue to Laguna and what they caused of annoyance was considered well offset by the profits to those who secured them.

There burst one night into the Tent, most popular of the cantinas, a man whose haggard face was stamped with grief and hate in the lines marked where the sweat had trailed down his face powdered with alkali. His staggering pony collapsed as he left the saddle. The man entered the room like a spent runner, his final effort so exhausting him that, as he turned, not to the bar but facing the big room with his back against it, he would have slid, like his pony, to the floor, but for the strong arm of a kindly rancher flung about him, holding him up. The man gabbled, making strange noises, his features distorted.

“Give him a snorter,” said the rancher. “Here, pardner, git this inside of ye an' then spill yore yarn.”

It was clear to all the room that something out of the ordinary had happened. There was that in the man's dramatic entrance, in his appearance, that told them that here was something more exciting even than the faro and poker they were playing. The fiery stuff trickled down the man's throat, the glass held there by the rancher who still supported him. A spasm twisted his face and he stood upright, as if summoning all his powers. Then, for the first time, some of those in the room recognized him as Gardner, a cowman lately settled in the Three Corners, famous in a degree because of the good-looking wife he had brought with him. Women who were both good looking and good were rarities.

“She's gone, boys! They've took her—those devils have took her! An' if there's a man here with the heart an' courage of a louse, he'll come with me to git her back. It—it may not be too late,” he faltered and then his voice mounted again to a harsh cry for vengeance. “If it is—if they've hurt a hair of her, I'll rip their black hearts out. I'll—I'll—ain't none of ye goin' to line up? Ain't none of ye human?” His last words gabbled toward incoherence, and his eyes showed glints of vacancy, grief, and despair. The furious exertions he had evidently been through, seemed to have partially crazed him.

“It was all set,” he muttered, as if to himself, while the nearest crowded him to listen, and some of those farther away turned back to their games, believing the man more or less mad; swerving aside the crowd that pushed in from the dance hall, headed by the curious girls who, swifter of intuition than the men, had already connected up the affair with trouble to Gardner's wife. Some of them, after their kind, secretly rejoiced at the misfortune that had come upon a virtuous woman.

“It was all set,” went on Gardner though it was plain that he no longer saw nor talked to any audience. “We come into town three days ago for some stuff from the store. She sittin' up beside me, pritty an' proud. She said she'd come down here with me. She said she wasn't afraid of a rough country, with me to take care of her. A prime job I did. I might have known when that black-bearded devil set his yeller eyes on her what he was thinkin' of. Follered us into the store, he did, an' kep' his eyes on her. Not thet I noticed it, busy with spendin' my money, but she did an' she told me about it afterward! 'It give me the creeps,' she said, after we got home. She wouldn't tell me until we did, knowin' my temper. 'He almost made me afraid, Jim,' she said, an' me holdin' her close in my arms an' talkin' big—like the pore damn fool I was.

“What happened? A hell of a racket in the middle of last night and me out, with her, plucky like she was, holdin' the lantern fo' me till I find the fence down an' half my stock gone. Cut wire it was. She wouldn't have me go out after them thet night. She wouldn't be left alone an' she couldn't come along. She was afraid an' so I stayed home to comfort her. Cattle didn't count along of her.

“Why she knowed right then an' wouldn't tell me; she was feared of 'Blackbeard' Smith' with them wolf's eyes of his, feared I'd go up agin' 'em for insultin' of her an' she'd be left alone for ever, with me shot. Damn them! Damn them, I say.”

Two of the younger girls broke into sobs, and a young man pushed his way into the front of the listeners, his eyes shining like points of steel, his tanned features set grimly.

“Go on, pardner,” he said. “What happened then?”

The haggard man lifted his eyes and they seemed to focus on the speaker with some faint light of hope.

“What happened then? I went out this mornin' to look fo' the cattle. The sign was plain. They'd been driven fast an' far. I didn't pick 'em up till an hour after noon in a live-oak ravine way beyond Doom Cañon, eatin', contented enough, with water an' grass. No one's driyin' off cattle thet way, pardner, not rustlers, jest to put 'em where they'd sure to be found.”

“I'm ridin' right with you, pardner,” said the younger man. “They wouldn't.”

“It was sundown time I get 'em back. Dark when I reach the house. No light thar. I was feelin' pritty perky, count I'd got the steers back, but thet brought me up all standin'. No light set for me, or in the kitchen where she used to work an' sing. I never come nigh the house but what I heard her singin' like a lark.

“Pardner, I knowed somethin' was wrong. It got me in the stummick, an' like a hand had gripped my heart. Thet's the way it gits ye when you love a woman right,

“She was gone. Plumb gone, pardner!” He spoke now as if he knew of but one listener, the grim-faced young rider. “Thar'd been a struggle. Thar was flour scattered about an' the tins on the flo'. She'd been makin' a cake fo' me—fo' me, pardner—an' they took her. Must have sneaked in on her an' she thought it was me. I used to sneak in sometimes an' put my hands over her eyes, jest to hear her say, 'It's you, Jim. You can't fool me.'

“Heavens, pardner, she ain't ever goin' to fool me again!” He broke off in a hoarse sob, pitiful to hear. Now all the room was quiet again, the click of chips had ceased, the bar stood idle and the musicians had come from their stand. The plain, unvarnished tale of human love and tragedy had gripped them.

“Go on pardner,” said the rider. “You read the sign?”

“It was dark—no moon. Jest the stars an' my lantern. I could see whar some one had carried her to the fence, right by the break I'd mended befo' I left in the mornin'. Then the devils had follered the trail of the steers. All mixed up it was. I never found it again. It ain't to be found. It left no sign on thet malpais but it leads to Doom Cañon. Thet's whar it leads, an' I'm lookin' fo' some men to go thar with me. If not, I'll go alone.”

“You ain't goin' alone, pardner,” said the other. “Not while I got a hawss an' a couple of guns. You eat anything sence breakfast?”

“Eat? What would I want to eat fo'?”

“You killed yore hawss, pardner. You're nigh done up yoreself. You got to eat. I'll loan you my second-string caballo but you want strength to fork it. You eat an' we'll git us a li'le posse together in the meantime.”

Gardner lurched forward, reeled, realizing his weakness. He caught at the other's forearm.

“You'll stay with me, pardner?”

“Of course. I ain't the only one. You go git somethin' in yore belly. You can't make war talk on an empty one.”

Gardner suffered himself to be led to the lunch counter that was a regular feature of the place and sat up on a stool before frijoles and coffee. The other, giving assurance that he was only going to get some men together, walked back through the dance hall to the big room and sensed immediately a neutral, if not a hostile attitude.

Ramon, owner of the Tent, was talking with his pardner, Sprague, who ran the games and provided the funds for the “bank,” a man whose light-blue eyes were so pale as to be almost colorless; cleanly shaven, shrewd of face.

“I didn't get your name, stranger,” he said suavely. “I take it you air a stranger in Laguna?”

“My name's Strong. I got here two days ago from Socorro. Thought thar might be a chance out here fo' a man who had three hawsses an' could ride 'em.”

“And a couple of guns,” said Sprague, glancing at the heavy Colt the other sported. “I reckon you could fit in.” Strong had vouchsafed considerable information for a newcomer to the Three Corners. “Only, you want to get acquainted a bit befo' you throw in too sudden. We're all mighty sorry fo' Gardner. He had a mighty sweet woman. But he ain't got no proof against the Doom Cañon outfit and you want to go easy when you buck them. They ain't rustlers, to begin with. Lobo Smith's got an eye for a pretty woman, so have all the rest of us, but that ain't sayin' we're runnin' off with her.

'This territory's a bit raw yet, I grant you, but there's small sense in trying to pull a half-cocked trigger. What's he got but a notion in his head and him half crazy? Just the same, chargin' a man with runnin' off with yo' wife is a thing a man ain't goin' to always take as a joke. Lobo Smith and his outfit ain't what you'd call easy jesters. If Gardner goes off to Doom Cañon—he can't get in, to begin with—an' making cracks that Lobo stole his wife he'll get into trouble, pronto an' plenty. Also them that goes with him. Gardner's all upset an' he's runnin' off at the head. Most likely it was Apaches. They've been gettin' out of hand of late.”

”If it was Injuns—even if they'd taken her off, which ain't likely—they'd have burned the shack an' they would sure have run off the rest of the stock.”

”Thet don't make it Smith. Use yore judgment, Strong.”

It was good advice, suavely enough delivered, but Strong sensed that the general sentiment backed Sprague's talk. They had been moved by Gardner's tale, more by his manner of telling it, perhaps, than by the story itself. They had listened to it largely as spectators might look and listen to something shown on a stage, without personal or real interest. And, when it came to the mention of the men of Doom Cañon all sympathy had seemed to vanish. Strong was young, halfway between his twenties and his thirties, but he had been reared in a hard school. He saw clearly enough that there was, as yet, no proof, and yet Gardner's tale had rung so true to his ears that he had developed a strenuous hunch it was correct, even to its suspicion concerning the perpetrators.

He had felt also a certain intolerance against Lobo Smith and his men, said to be living in this narrow cañon that was declared in the same breath to be unlivable, its floor largely occupied, even in times of drought, by Esqueleto Creek. The whole damned community, he told himself, cringed before the Doom Cañon gang. Still, there was no proof, so far. When he had aligned himself with Gardner he had expected to hear some more positive evidence. It was worse than foolish to ride up to the cañon at nightfall and try to force a passage which, all agreed, was well nigh impossible on a doubtful charge, a doubtful errand.

He stood there for a moment undecided, feeling that his sympathies had carried him a bit too far and too hastily, vexed at himself for lack of judgment yet secretly riding the hunch that told him that Gardner had spoken truly—and that this smooth-spoken gambler knew it—or suspected it.

Then Gardner came back from the lunch counter, where the beans had turned to ashes in his mouth, though he had swallowed a cup of coffee. That, or the telling of his tale, and the support of Strong, the prospect of more help, had given him a spurt of strength.

”Well,” he demanded, ”who's comin' along with me? What's wrong with 'em, pardner?” he continued to Strong. “Ain't they men? Air they jest a pack of lousy coyotes?”

His eyes glittered. The ultimate source of his energy was beyond doubt the supercharging of his tissues by the passions that had dispossessed his reason, imbued him with the one idea.

“They claim you ain't got no definite proof this Lobo Smith had anything to do with it,” said Strong slowly. ”You couldn't read sign to-night but I reckon we might do somethin' with it by daylight. I'm pritty fair at trailin' myself.”

“Daylight! If the woman you love—yore wife—was taken from you, overnight—would you wait till daylight? I tell you I know who done it. She read it in his eyes—lust an' the will to feed it. The eyes of a beast, she called 'em!”

Back of his high-pitched accusation there came the sound of galloping horses, a small troop coming fast with their hoofs thudding into the soft soil of the street. Then the clatter of men's feet on the wooden sidewalk, the clink of spurs, a loud laugh that provoked others. Gardner stood stock-still, his speech leaving him as he leaned a little forward at the hips, his nostrils spreading like those of a hound that catches the scent, his glittering eyes fixed.

All glances turned towards the door as it was flung open and Lobo Smith strode in with some twenty of his men crowding behind him, jesting and laughing. Smith's amber eyes swept the room, instantly focused on the figure of Gardner, his chin low on his great chest, as he gazed keenly at the shorter man, pressing down the glossy growth of black beard that lay there, catching the high lights from the oil lamps with their reflecting shades. Just for the fraction of a second the tableau held, then dissolved into action.

With a screaming oath Gardner drew his gun and fired as Sprague struck up his arm, chopping at the elbow almost in one motion. Lobo Smith's eyes turned to yellow flame as fire flashed from his six-guns and the roar of the discharge filled the room. From both hands he sent the unerring messengers of death. Gardner went staggering from the shock of successive bullets, spun about and fell like a length of chain with the last one in his back, two others already in his heart and one through his brain. The first had killed him, the rest had been fired too quickly for his lifeless body to fall before they struck it.

The reek of the powder smoke was sharp in their nostrils as they gazed from Smith, who stood with a grin on his lips that showed his white teeth flashing between beard and mustache, and a laugh of deviltry in his eyes, to Gardner, face down on the floor, his gun tossed away from him, blood beginning to trickle out down the slants of the worn planking. The thing that held them most was the diabolical but silent revelry of Smith, as if the taking of life was the rarest jest he could have perpetrated. It was true that he had received provocation, that he was justified on the face of it in sheer self-defense, but there was something inhuman about it, in the concentrated fire from two guns, the satanic mask of his face.

Strong's hands had shot down instinctively to the butts of his own weapons. Self-defense or not, he felt, as he saw Lobo Smith for the first time, that here was a murderer, a potential criminal who was a menace to honest men and decent women. Strong fingers gripped at his elbows long enough for reason to rule over primitive emotion. It was the friendly rancher who had kept Gardner from falling when he first came in, who had bought him the drink. Smith's eyes rested for a moment on Strong, baleful, the mirth erased from his face, leaving it bleak as the back of a blizzard.

“What's the idee of the shootin'?” he asked as his men clustered about him, hostile-eyed, curiously inactive, poised for trouble; while Ramon swiftly crossed himself and silently mumbled a blend of invocations and imprecations. Sprague spoke up. Strong fancied he saw a swift glance of understanding pass between him and Smith.

“Gardner's wife was stolen this evenin', somewheres round dark,” he said. “He got a notion you're responsible fo' the trick. We were tryin' to tell him he was crazy when you came in.”

Smith gave a short laugh.

“Crazy enough, I reckon. Put a hole through my hat. If it hadn't been fo' you, Sprague, I'd be where he is. Stole his woman? I'll say this about it. She was mighty easy to look at. But, if I stole a pritty woman around sundown, I'd be mighty apt to be keepin' her company, not running around town.”

There was a general laugh at this. Strong felt no inclination to join. He had seen sudden death before, many times, but there flashed across his mind the suggestion that if Lobo Smith had done this thing, had let his lust run away with his discretion and realized that he might well have gone too far, even for his overlord control of Three Corners, in the violation of ranch honor, he could have done no cleverer thing than come to town in this fashion, to make the ribald answer he had just pronounced—and to kill the husband.

He spoke up, facing Smith, whose lambent gaze had returned to him. Strong's thumbs were hooked lightly in his belt now, they had never strayed far from his gun butts. He heard the friendly whisper of the rancher but paid no attention to its warning to “stay out of this deal.”