The SHERIFF of
HANGMAN’S
GULCH
MATT RAND
© 1943, Columbia Publications, Inc.
1. Night Attack
JOE HALE, lank, taciturn placer miner, put his heft against the boulder and heaved. It toppled with sudden swiftness, and crashed with a loud swish into the stream. Small geysers caught rainbows from the setting sun.
Wiping the sweat off his forehead, Hale set to work with pick and shovel. In flood season, the boulder had been submerged by the stream, and the top gravel the miner now shoveled aside was still damp.
“How’s it comin’, Joe?” called Bill Clayson, Hale’s curly-haired, stumpy partner, from a dozen feet away at the edge of the stream.
Clayson sat beside a four-foot cradle-shaped trough that stood on two rockers, one a few inches higher than the other, and was rolling it from side to side. With his free hand he scooped water from the stream with a tin dipper and kept pouring it into the open box at the high end of the trough. Sediment sifted out of the lower end.
Hale merely nodded as he swung the pickaxe. He went down to hardpan and then with the shovel, lifted the loosened dirt into a bucket at his feet. He left off and came over to the trough. Clayson watched him empty the bucket into the box at the upper end.
“The hopper needs fixin’, Bill,” Hale said, pointing to a loose corner on the box.
“So does yore disposition, Joe,” cried his partner, working again with the dipper. “So tomorrer night we go to town to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” demanded Hale dubiously.
“Why yuh old skinflint,” cried Clayson with mock seriousness, “didn’t this beautiful, little rocker—” he patted the trough, “—give us six pounds of gold dust this week? And look at them cleats.” He unhinged the hopper, swung it up to a point at the bottom of the rocker, into which traverse riffle cleats had been driven. Fine, dull, yellow flakes clustered around them. He let the hopper fall back into place and looked up, smiling. “We must’ve taken out close to two pounds more today, Joe—and the bar ain’t begun to be worked yet.”
“ ’Bout time,” said Hale, his dour expression brightening. “Took us a year to find it. Wish there was a bank in town we could keep the dust in,” he added.
“Larson offered us the use of his safe,” said Clayson, continuing to dip water and roll the rocker. “Said everyone uses it.”
“Maybe we will go into town tomorrer—and leave our gold with Larson,” said Hale.
“He didn’t worry yuh with his talk of Black Henry and the Hounds—did he?” demanded Clayson.
“Maybe so,” admitted Hale.
“No claim-jumpin’ hyena is goin’ to take this piece of pay dirt away from us,” cried Clayson pugnaciously. Then he laughed. “Heck, Joe,” he said. “Let’s not get to fightin’ shadders. “ ’Sides—” and he tapped the gun holstered at his thigh.
Joe Hale shrugged his bony shoulders and returned to the digging. The two men worked steadily until dusk, then knocked off. Night fell by the time they collected the settlings that had gathered around the cleats in the rocker. These were transferred to a milkpan and dried over a fire. Then the hot sand was blown away, leaving the gold.
Bill Clayson brought out a small pouch made of cowhide and poured the gold from the pan into it. He restored the bag to his shirt.
The two partners, fatigued from a full day’s work, went through a meal of hardtack, jerky and some coffee. They dozed a while around the fire, then rolled into their blankets—blissfully unaware that cruel, rodent eyes watched their every move. Gradually, the fire faded to a ruddy char.
The murderous raid came without warning, and the two partners never had a chance. A half dozen black-clad men charged suddenly into the camp, yelling hideous screams, unloosing a withering blast of gunfire upon the blanket-swathed, sleeping men.
Bill Clayson awoke, clutching his gun. “Black Henry—the Hounds!” he howled, catching sight of the ominous figures etched against the late moon. On his knees, he triggered his Colt as the tide of death swooped down on him.
Then a crushing, ripping blow crashed against Clayson’s brain and the universe seemed to explode in his face. He toppled and lay senseless.
His partner never moved from his blanket; never woke. He died in his sleep. A lucky man, Joe Hale.
The leader of the raiders, a huge, hulking figure in the night, kicked up the embers of the dying fire. Sparks and a dull glow temporarily lighted the damp. He stooped over Clayson’s prone form, rifled his pockets and came out with the cowhide pouch. He grunted with satisfaction.
“Take these two gents downstream, where it’s plenty deep,” he ordered his men. “Tie a heavy rock to their bodies, and throw ’em in.”
Four men moved to obey and soon trundled the dead men out of camp. The fifth spoke to the leader.
“How ’bout their tools, Black Henry?” he asked. “Get rid of ’em?”
“No,” grunted the big man. “This claim’ll be worked tomorrer. Yuh head back to the cabin, Lem. Tell the boys I went to town. Be back later.”
Several miles from the scene of sudden death in a miner’s camp, two men sat. For a time, a brittle silence lay between them; then it splintered in the voice of one.
“Wearin’ them fancy pants and clothes ain’t rubbed the smell of wolf off yuh, Jim.”
“Yuh wore fancy pants once, Matt. Remember?” he asked softly.
A chair scraped against the wall somewhere in the dark. “Don’t remind me of that!” The voice was harsh, bitter, and slightly thickened with drink.
“All right, Matt,” the man called Jim said. “But don’t forget these clothes made me a good and respected citizen of Hangman’s Gulch.” He laughed again.
“But not respectable enough to get yuh Kate Larson—huh, Jim?” he taunted.
Jim’s laugh died in his throat. He banged his fist down on the table. The whiskey glass jumped. Amber-colored liquor spilled over its edge and made a thin, glistening streak on the wood.
“I’ll get her,” he cried, his face glowing curiously in the yellow light.
During the day, Jim Wurt looked like the aggressive, reputable businessman that he appeared to be.
Yet somehow, a darkened room and candlelight brought into relief his dominant features; his hooked nose, his high, pale forehead, his black glittering eyes—and made him somehow sinister-looking. In his unguarded moments, despite the white linen shirt and black frock coat of respectability, Jim Wurt had the look of a man who ran with the wolf pack—at its head—as lobo wolf.
“Yuh ain’t forgettin’ Sam Larson, are yuh, Jim?” drawled Matt.
Jim Wurt’s face mottled. “Blast him,” he cried. “He thinks his daughter’s too good for me.” He laughed harshly. “But honest Sam Larson’s due for a surprise one of these days. And mighty soon, too.” His tone changed and interest ruffled it. “Weren’t yuh soft on her when yuh fresh came here?”
“Changed my mind!” said Matt abruptly. Drink slowed his voice, thickened it. “Don’t forget that Sam Larson’s a powerful man in this here town. Judge Carter’s his best friend; Sheriff Sears; the whole Vigilante Committee—”
“The whole Committee except one, Matt,” replied Wurt, smiling, restored to good humor. “Me—Number Eight.”
“I got to hand it to yuh, Jim,” admitted Matt. “Yuh sure pulled a whizzer on ’em.”
“Make that present and future,” said Wurt, “and yuh’ll be right.”
Matt’s