Beyond the Law/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
JUSTICE
THE day had come, and Dick Farley was firm and calm in his determination. But the thing which the day was to bring need not come yet. There was no call for haste, while there was an urge deep down in his soul to spend this day alone. He turned his back upon the cabin and went, walking rapidly, down to the quiet shore of the lake.
Until now he had scarcely more than glanced at Johnny Watson's map. The Cup of Gold had seemed the small thing which gold is always when come the great, vital issues of life. But now it was different; now he could see a reason in going on over Johnny's trail, in finding the hillside that was "rotten with gold." This was something which must be done before he looked into Dalton's eyes again—for the last time.
A long, curving line along one side of the brown cigarette paper was marked in painfully small letters, "East Shore." A dotted line marked "Trail" ran along this. "High Cliffs" indicated the spot where Farley had attempted to climb up to the plateau, where he had fallen. The dotted line ran on by this, close to the lake shore, and was marked "2 mile." Then there was a little triangle with the words "Big White Rock." Here the dotted line swerved at right angles—to the east—"200 paces." Here was the word, "Cañon." That was all upon one side of the paper. Upon the other, written lightly was:
"Enter mouth cañon. Go straight about five hundred yards. Climb dead pine-tree leaning against east bank. Straight up to top of ridge. Follow ledge to cliff. Look along bottom of cliff." And that was all.
Farley put the paper again in his pocket and turned north along the lake shore. He had perhaps two miles and a half, maybe three miles, to go, and be was growing anxious to see this mine which his partner had discovered.
It was a simple matter to follow the trail, a natural path at the lake's edge, kept open by the deer and other woodland animals that came down to drink or browse upon the long grass here. And before he had covered more than half of the two miles he saw the "big white rock" which Johnny had marked for him, close to the water, rising straight up from the level floor of the valley.
Here, with a glance at his map to make sure that he was right, he turned eastward, counting his steps. He had stepped off one hundred and twenty-five when he stopped, frowning. For nowhere were the mountains far from the lake, and already he had entered a cañon. And Johnny's map had said two hundred paces.
"Johnny wouldn't make a mistake like that," he told himself.
And, again counting, he moved on and into the cañon until he had counted another seventy-five paces. Then he understood.
Here, cut into the wall of this cañon, was a second, a narrower, steeper-walled ravine, evidently the one Johnny had had in mind when he said, "Enter mouth of cañon." The general trend of this one was north and south. He pushed on into it, estimating roughly the five hundred yards.
And then, with a little quickening of the pulses, he saw the dead pine-tree. It had fallen, and now, with its roots half torn out of the rocky soil, lay sprawled against the eastern bank of the cañon at an angle of about forty-five degrees. The banks here were so steep, rising fifty feet above him, that a man would have had a hard time climbing them. But the fallen tree was at once a pointer to the Cup of Gold and a ladder to reach it.
Up on the top of the bank he found the ridge, and working his way slowly along that he came to the long line of cliffs which standing above made the side of the mountain look like a giant's stairway. And now, his heart beating with the exertion of the struggle upward and with the eagerness of quickened anticipation which comes to the miner at a time like this, no matter what face the day wears, he stopped and let his eyes rove along the bottom of the cliff.
And in a moment he saw what he looked for, and hurried forward. There were the marks of a pick in the crumbling bank, and there
"Poor Johnny!" he muttered. "Poor old Johnny! To feel his pick sink into this, to have it in his hands—and never to really work the greatest mine this country ever saw!"
For here, showing so that a novice must have seen and known and understood the glittering premise of it, was a great vein of gold laid bare against the bottom of the cliff-side, where last year's snows had set the rocks free above; where the side of the cliff had fallen outward disclosing the thing which the mountains had hidden so well and so long.
It was as rich as any pocket the miner had ever seen—richer. And it was not a pocket at all, but a wide, deep vein which ran back into the mountainside; which would make not one man, but hundreds of men, rich, would give them riotous days and wild nights, would bring to the realization of dreams long dreamed. And Johnny Watson, the man who had found this, who had turned back with but a handful of the precious stuff that he might bring his partner with him, was dead and would never take out a nugget.
"All in the cards, Johnny," he mused bitterly. "And the cards are running wrong for you and me."
He sat upon a boulder, his eyes brooding over the yellow promise, his heart heavy with the love for a lost partner and the newer love for a woman who was to be lost as soon as he had found her. The shadows drew back from him, the sun found him out; and still he sat staring at the thing which promised and mocked.
At last, with the short laugh of a tired man. he got to his feet, stood for a little looking at the smooth cuts a pick had made in the rocky bank, and then, with no further spoken word, with no look behind him, moved slowly away and went back along the ridge, down the pine-tree and to the lakeside.
There he sat down upon the big white rock, and with the stub of a lead-pencil wrote a letter upon the bit of oiled paper in which his pipe tobacco was wrapped.
Virginia, dear, if I am never to see you again—and who knows how a day like this is going to end?—this is to say good-by for me. I think that you knew how much I love you before I told you last night. So I do not need to tell you again. I didn't think that love came this way, so swiftly. I am glad, more glad than you can ever understand, that it has come. You will go back to the world. I want you to be very happy. I am enclosing a little present, a farewell gift. I want it to help make you happy, dear. Good-by.
AND folding the paper, he put into it Johnny Watson's map. Then he went back along the lakeside and to the cliffs below the cabin, to wait for James Dalton.
He thought that it must be about ten o'clock when at last Dalton came, walking swiftly from the cabin. Farley got to his feet and waited. Neither man spoke until Dalton came within a dozen paces of him and stopped. Then Farley said quietly—
"Ready?"
"Yes."
The man's face showed no emotion, there was none in his steady voice.
"Your revolver is of a smaller caliber than mine," Farley went on in a slow, matter-of-fact tone. "You can have one of my forty-fives, if you want it."
Dalton looked at him curiously.
"Thanks. I don't want it." And then after a short silence in which the two men eyed each other steadily: "There is no other way?"
"No. There can be no other way. I kill you or—you kill me."
"Then," Dalton answered, as if he had expected this, "if I don't come through it you will find a couple of letters in my pocket. Give them to Virginia."
"I have written a note, too," Farley said by way of reply. "It is for her."
With slow, steady fingers he drew a revolver from his holster. For the instant he lost sight of the man in front of him as his eyes went upward along the cliffs and his thoughts ran ahead of them to the cabin and the girl there. The world was unnaturally silent, the pines about them like carvings in jade, without a tremor, the sunlight falling softly about them. The moment was strangely lacking the thrill of excited nerves he had anticipated.
That he and this man were standing so close together, that each held a revolver in his hand, that death was very near, and the world and life and love drawing very far away, did not impress him as he would have said that such a thing would impress him. The whole thing was too big, meant too much, for him to grasp it.
"Virginia may come," Dalton's deep-toned voice startled him. "We had better—hurry."
"Yes." he answered. "We had better hurry."
So they stood facing each other, a gun in each right hand, the muzzles downward. There was not twenty feet between them.
"We shoot together?" Dalton was asking him.
"Yes. And the signal?"
"Count three. That will do as well as any way. Will you count?"
Farley nodded. And his voice, quiet, low, steady, with regular pauses between the words, said:
"One—two—three!"
The two shots rang out together, like one. And the two men, their faces gone white and tense drawn, stood looking at each other through the slowly lifting smoke. For as he fired, Farley had thrown the muzzle of his gun downward so that the ball plowed through the sand at the feet of Virginia Dalton's father, and Dalton's bullet had winged its way high overhead, seeking the far shore of the lake.
" you!" cried Farley shrilly, a red flood of blood in his face as he understood. "Why did you do that? Do you want to be killed, man?"
The man who could have killed him had spared him, the man who had murdered Johnny Watson had stood up courting death and had made no attempt to save himself. And the knowledge only maddened the man who had chosen to die himself at the hand of the man he could not kill—no, not even to "square things" for a dead partner.
"I have killed two men in fair fight in my life," Dalton told him sternly, his own face flushed hotly. "I am not going to kill a third. And I do not choose to be made to look like a fool French dude in a polite duel! Are you going to kill me?"
Farley laughed evilly.
"In fair fight!" he mocked. "To cut the throat out of a man before he had seen you, to sneak up on him in the dark—and you call that fair fight!"
"I gave him his chance! And he took it—not being a fool!"
"A chance!" scoffed Farley, the rising anger within him making him for the second forget that this was her father, his gun raised. "To drive your knife through a man's throat—to come at him in the dark"
"I used no knife, and I came upon him in broad daylight. And I shot the throat out of him, after I got this!"
He threw back his shirt collar and showed a raw wound at the base of his neck. And Dick Farley, suddenly seeing the light of a great hope, dropped his revolver into the sand as he clutched Dalton's arm.
"Don't lie to me," he said in a harsh whisper. For he had remembered those other tracks he had found, and his whole body was shaking with what it might mean to him. "Where did you find him?"
Dalton looked at him curiously, as if upon a madman.
"Over yonder." His arm swung about until his outstretched forefinger pointed toward the west—not the south. "Where he had left two horses in a little hollow. I followed him back"
"Was he a little man, and stocky?" Farley was crying hoarsely. "Blue-eyed, a little blond mustache?"
"He was a man six feet in his stockings," Dalton retorted, staring. "Black-haired and blacker-hearted. If he was your pardner"
"He wasn't my pardner. Don't you see, man?" It came with sudden conviction, with a great gasp of relieved nerves. "You—you came upon the man who killed Johnny! You killed Johnny Watson's murderer!"
And as Dalton stared after him, like a man stunned, Dick Farley was running across the sandy beach and toward the cliffs. For he had seen the slender figure of a girl coming slowly through the trees, and he had a wonderful message of life and hope and love for her.