“Damn them!” commented Pete.
“Well,” said Geraldine, settling into the thread of his narrative, “they knew that once you left the town on this job you wouldn’t come back until you had the Ghost. Then when you started they got together and figured this way. They said you was just a plain man-killer and that you hadn’t any more right to the reward than the man in the moon. So they figured that right after you got back with the Ghost, dead or alive, they’d have the sheriff pay you a little visit and stick you in the coop. They’ve raked up plenty of charges against you, Peter.”
“What?” asked Pete hoarsely.
The Ghost lowered his voice to an insinuating whisper.
“One thing is this. They say that once you went prospecting with a guy called Red Horry. Horace was his right name.”
Silver Pete shifted his eyes and his lips fixed in a sculptured grin.
“They say that you went with him and that you was pals together for months at a time. They say once you were bit by a rattler and Red Horry stuck by you and saved you and hunted water for you and cared for you like a baby. They say you got well and went on prospecting together and finally he struck a mine. It looked rich. Then one day you come back to Truckee and say that Red Horry got caught in a landslide and was killed and you took the mine. And they say that two years later they found a skeleton, and through the skull, right between the eyes, was a little round hole, powerful like a hole made by a .45. They say—”
“They lie!” yelled Silver Pete, rising. “And you lie like the rest of them. I tell you it was—it was—”
“Huh!” said Geraldine, shrugging away the thought with apparent scorn. “Of course they lie. Nobody could look at you and think you’d plug a pal—not for nothing.”
Pete dropped back to his stone.
“Go on,” he said. “What else do they say?”
“I don’t remember it all,” said the Ghost, puckering his brows with the effort of recollection, “but they got it all planned out when you come back with the loot they’ll take it and split it up between them—one-third to Collins, because he made the plan first.
“They even made up a song about you,” went on Geraldine, “and the song makes a joke out of you all the way through, and it winds up like this—you’re supposed to be talking, see?
“I don’t expect no bloomin’ tears;
The only thing I ask
Is something for a monument
In the way of a whisky flask.”
“Who made up the song, Geraldine?” asked Pete.
“I dunno,” answered the Ghost. “I reckon Collins had a hand in it.”
“Collins,” repeated the gun-fighter. “It sounds like him. I’ll get him first!”
“And it was Collins,” went on the Ghost, leaning a little forward across the boulder, while he lowered his voice for secrecy. “It was Collins who got them to send out three men to watch you from a distance. They was to trail you and see that if you ever got to the Ghost you didn’t make off with the loot without showing up in town. Ever see anybody trailing you, Pete?”
The gun-fighter flashed a glance over his shoulder toward the dark and gaping opening of the passage from the cave. Then he turned back to the Ghost.
“I never thought of it,” he whispered. “I didn’t know they was such skunks. But, by God, they won’t ever see the money! I’ll take it and line out for new hunting grounds.”
“And me?” asked the Ghost anxiously.
“You?” said Silver Pete, and the whisper made the words trebly sinister. “I can’t leave you free to track me up, can I? I’ll just tie you up and leave you here.”
“To starve?” asked the Ghost with horror.
“You chose your own house,” said Pete, “an” now I reckon it’s good enough for you to live in it.”
“But what’ll you do if they’re following you up?” suggested the Ghost. “What’ll you do if they’ve tracked you here and the sheriff with them? What if they get you for Red Horry?”
The horse had wandered a few paces away. Now its hoof struck a loose pebble which turned with a crunching sound like a footfall.
“My God!” yelled the Ghost, springing up and pointing toward the entrance passage, “they’ve got you, Pete!”
The gun-fighter whirled to his feet, his weapon poised and his back to the Ghost. Geraldine drew back his arm and lunged forward across the boulder. His fist thudded behind Silver Pete’s ear. The revolver exploded and the bullet clicked against a rock, while Pete collapsed upon his face, with his arms spread out crosswise. The Ghost tied his wrists behind his back with a small piece of rope. Silver Pete groaned and stirred, but before his brain cleared his ankles were bound fast and drawn up to his wrists, so that he lay trussed and helpless. The Ghost turned him upon one side and then, strangely enough, set about clearing up the tinware from the boulder. This he piled back in its niche after he had rinsed it at the runlet of water. A string of oaths announced the awakening of Silver Pete. Geraldine went to him and leaned over his body.
Pete writhed and cursed, but Geraldine kneeled down and brushed the sand out of the gun-fighter’s hair and face. Then he wiped the blood from a small cut on his chin where his face struck a rock when he fell.
“I have to leave you now, Pete,” he said, rising from this work of mercy. “You’ve been good company, Pete, but a little of you goes a long way.”
He turned and caught his horse by the bridle.
“For God’s sake!” groaned Silver Pete, and Geraldine turned. “Don’t leave me here to die by inches. I done some black things, Geraldine, but never nothing as black as this. Take my own gun and pull a bead on me and we’ll call everything even.”
The Ghost smiled on him.
“Think it over, Pete,” he said. “I reckon you got enough to keep your mind busy. So-long!”
He led his horse slowly down the passage, and the shouts and pleadings of Silver Pete died out behind him. At the mouth of the passage his greatest shout rang no louder than the hum of a bee.
Grimly silent was the conclave in Billy Hillier’s saloon. That evening, while the sunset was still red in the west, the Ghost had stopped the stage scarcely a mile from Murrayville, shot the sawed-off shotgun out of the very hands of the only guard who dared to raise a weapon, and had taken a valuable packet of the “dust.” They sent out a posse at once, which rode straight for Hunter’s Cañon, and arrived there just in time to see the fantom horseman disappear in the mouth of the ravine. They had matched speed with that rider before, and they gave up the vain pursuit. That night they convened in Hillier’s, ostensibly to talk over new plans for apprehending the outlaw, but they soon discovered that nothing new could be said. Even Collins was silent, twisting his glass of whisky between his fingers and scowling at his neighbors along the bar. It was small wonder, therefore, if not a man smiled when a singing voice reached them from a horseman who cantered down the street:
“I don’t expect no bloomin’ tears;
The only thing I ask
Is something for a monument/
In the way of a whisky flask.”
The sound of the gallop died out before the saloon, the door opened, and Geraldine staggered into the room, carrying a small but apparently ponderous burden in his arms. He lifted it to the bar which creaked under the weight.
“Step up and liquor!” cried Geraldine in a ringing