“Shut up, Matt!” snapped Wurt, anger flushing his high forehead.
“Sorry, Jim,” mumbled Matt. “Forgot. Sorry.” But liquor had loosened his tongue, and he rambled on. “Was a good idea, buyin’ this saloon. But it sure gets me how yuh won enough playin’ poker to do it. Yuh was always an easy trim—”
The door across the room suddenly creaked open. For a brief instant, a huge, shapeless hulk of a man stood on the threshold—outlined by a distant dim light of the sleeping town. The newcomer quickly shut the door, strode to the table, lifted the filled whiskey glass and tossed the drink down.
He took a chair and sat down; but kept his face well beyond the flickering range of the candle. Jim Wurt’s nocturnal visitors invariably kept to the shadows. Only the newcomer’s hands, huge and hairy, showed against his black trousers.
“Well?” Wurt was standing expectantly. On his feet, the saloon-owner was not a tall man.
In answer, the man tossed a small, cowhide pouch onto the table. It struck the boards with a heavy thwut.
Avidly, Wurt seized it up, pulled open the drawstring and tilted the bag’s mouth into his hand. A small stream of dull yellow metal flakes, grains and kernels sifted out. Cold glitter burned in his black eyes.
“This is sure gettin’ monotonous.” It was Matt’s drawling, thickened voice from the wall. “Say, Black Henry—how much did that there gold dust cost the state of California?”
The big man—Black Henry—laughed coarsely. “Two prospectors,” he answered.
Disgust crowded Matt’s voice. “Yuh’re a cold-blooded killer—ain’t yuh?”
“Why yuh onery—” began Black Henry, and his chair scraped in the darkness.
“Keep quiet, yuh two!” hissed Wurt, looking up. “Want to wake up the whole town?”
Black Henry eased off. “Some day, friend,” he growled to his tormentor, “yuh’re goin’ to push them jokes too far.”
“It ain’t the jokes I’m waitin’ to push far,” grunted the blear-eyed, stubble-faced man against the wall.
Jim Wurt had gone under the table to fetch a scale and some weights, and was now weighing the gold. Once more he turned to his two henchmen, his black eyebrows bristling.
“Listen,” he grated angrily. “As long as I’m bossin’ the outfit, I don’t want any arguments—understand? Matt—Black Henry?” Both men subsided in the darkness. Wurt went back to the scales; adjusted the weights carefully. “Eight pounds,” he finally announced with satisfaction.
He placed the gold pouch into an inner pocket and extracted a large wad of bills. He counted some out and handed them to Black Henry. “One thousand dollars,” he said. “Fifty percent—accordin’ to our agreement.”
Black Henry handled the bills carefully, his huge hands deft in the shuffling. “Right,” he said, pocketing the money. “Send yore man out to the cabin tomorrer mornin’ and I’ll have one of the boys show him the bar.”
Nodding, Wurt handed Black Henry a folded slip of paper. “Entered today,” he said.
The chair tilted against the wall thudded down softly; and the tall, unsteady form of Matt showed faintly in the dull light.
“Gentlemen,” he said, his tongue rolling, “I’m gettin’ mighty tired of not bein’ a millionaire. How ’bout stakin’ out one of them claims for me?”
“Maybe I’ll do that for yuh soon, pard,” growled Black Henry. “A nice, rich diggin’.”
Matt laughed thickly. “We’ll work that one together, friend.” He turned and made his way out.
“One day I’m goin’ to cut out his heart,” rasped Black Henry.
Wurt considered the black, shapeless form in the shadows, his eyes reflective. “Better go slow,” he said casually. “There’s only one hombre I ever saw faster than Matt on the draw—” his face clouded, “—and that ain’t yuh. ’Sides, he rides herd over my town crew.”
“Why do yuh let him drink so much?” asked the other.
“His wife died some time back,” replied Wurt. “He forgets when he drinks—and it keeps him out of serious trouble. Anyhow I got an idea in back of my head, and Matt’s the hombre to handle it.” His voice fell almost to a whisper, and his eyes showed bright and shiny in the candlelight: “An idea that’ll put Hangman’s Gulch into my back pocket.”
“What’s yore idea, Wurt?” demanded Black Henry, interest thick in his voice.
The glance the saloon owner swung at his henchman was void of expression. “My agreement with yuh,” he said coldly, “covers only the claims—that’s all. Any other, er—enterprises I engage in, are exclusively mine. Sabe?”
“Sure.” The big, hairy hands of Black Henry disappeared as he pushed his chair back and rose. He moved to the door.
“Oh yeah,” said Wurt casually. “I want to make a bet with yuh, Black Henry.”
“Bet?” The floor boards creaked as the big man turned.
“Yeah,” replied Wurt. “A thousand dollars against yore hundred the new sheriff’s still alive in forty-eight hours.”
Black Henry snorted. “It’s a bet.”
The door opened and shut. And the room was empty, save for frock-coated Jim Wurt, respectable saloon owner. For a moment his eyes had a faraway look. Then he fetched the cowhide pouch from his pocket, opened its throat and poured the yellow stream into his hand. A quiet, pleasant smile came to his face as he played with the gold.
2. Hangman’s Gulch
HANGMAN’S GULCH lay somnolent in the tawny light of the morning. And morning’s stillness ran the length of the empty, sun-baked main stem.
Once, the town was a brush-choked, stream-cleft gorge whose brown-earth slopes were covered with pines and oak. That had been a long time ago—as Californians reckoned time. But no more than two years in anyone else’s calendar.
Two fateful years had passed since James Marshall rushed nervously from the mill on the Columa to Sutter’s Fort to tell John Sutter of his great, secret discovery. A secret that was impossible to keep, and soon caught up by a trembling, feverish nation, and flung to the four corners of the earth.
Two years since the first faint trickle of gold-seekers from the Midwest “saw the elephant” on the way across Truckee Pass, high in the icy Sierras; since the first ship from the east, from the European Continent, from Asia—from the seven seas, dumped their human cargoes on San Francisco’s windy, foggy beach.
Clapboard towns sprang up to serve the needs of this horde of miners. Half the buildings were used as gambling houses, saloons and hotels. Merchants and vendors held the rest.
It was inevitable that the nation’s riffraff should follow in the wake of the gold-seekers. Slit-eyed, gun-heeled men, they came separately, or in pairs—and like filings attracted to a magnet, banded together to prey upon miner and merchant alike.
And it was a lucrative field for the development of their peculiar talents. For despite the fact that California early became a state, law and order were merely unconfirmed rumors in many communities.
Tough killers walked the streets; bold robberies went unchecked, and claim-jumping became an everyday occurrence.
To challenge this wave of terror and crime, honest townfolk banded together into Vigilante Committees, held trials and dispensed