The redheaded Texan was a veteran of many gun battles, yet this once they almost caught him off guard. Still his movement was but a heart-tick behind the big man’s. He lunged backward and sideward in the same motion and snapped a shot with either gun. He crashed to his knees, went down on an elbow—then leaped to his feet, leveled guns smoking.
“Freeze, hombres!” The command in his voice nailed their moving arms and shifting legs to the spot. All except the scarred, black-clad man named Lem.
He had fired once, and then two bullets blasted his chest. He cried out in brief torment, and the gun slipped from his twitching hands. His knees buckled, then he sagged suddenly in the middle, caved and pitched forward on his face into the ditch.
“Farrell,” ordered the Texan. “Remove their hoglegs, then take the rifles out of their saddle boots.”
The gray-haired miner did the job with alacrity, despite the glowering, hostile looks cast at him.
“I ain’t never been crossed but once,” cried the heavy, thick-set leader, grimly. “And that hombre wasn’t happy long. I ain’t seen yore face clear, mister, but I heard yore voice—and I’ll be listenin’ for it.”
“Pick up yore amigo and get movin’,” ordered the Texan. “That was a mighty interestin’ story yuh told, hombre. Almost believed yuh. Better go before yuh tell another—maybe that this Matt Evans not only staked this here claim, but also is sheriff of Hangman’s Gulch.”
The gang’s leader, astride his horse by now, looked incredulous a moment, then suddenly threw his head back and roared with laughter. His men joined in as they rode out of the clearing. The body of the dead man, hitched to the saddle of his horse, trailed after them.
For a short time nothing was heard but the receding sound of men laughing. Then it mingled with roil of the river, and faded. The Texan listened, eyes intent, puzzled. Then he shrugged his shoulders and holstered his guns.
“Do yuh know Matt Evans?” he asked Farrell.
“No,” replied the gray-haired man. “Wait—’pears to me I heard the name in Hangman’s Gulch. Matt Evans? He—he ain’t a friend of yores, is he?” he asked hurriedly.
For a moment the Texan was silent, seemed to be turning something over in his mind. Finally he spoke.
“No,” he said softly, almost to himself. “He ain’t a friend of mine—he’s my brother.” The knuckles on his clenched fists were white. And a strange light blazed in his eyes.
“Found him,” he murmured. “Found him.”
4. Election Night
THE SUN had already set and darkness saddled the clearing. Yet distant peaks still shone faintly in memory of the just-faded sun. But the memory was brief and fast-vanishing in face of the avalanche-in-reverse of shadows that swifted up the slopes, to draw the black-purple mantle of night over them.
The wiry placer miner led the way into the lean-to. Bide Evans heard him fumble around in the dark. Then a match flared, and a candle stuck into the throat of a bottle sent its dull, yellow light probing into the shack’s shadows. In another moment, a second bottle joined the first on the table with a lighted candle in its neck.
“If yuh’re headin’ for town,” said Evans briefly, “we can ride in together.”
“Sure,” agreed Farrell. “Say, I don’t know how to thank yuh. Hey pard—yuh’re bleedin’.”
The double-barreled candles threw light on a deepening red patch high up on the Texan’s left arm.
“I reckon I be,” murmured Evans. He had felt a slight stab of pain at the time of the shooting, but had forgotten it in the ensuing scene.
Ed Farrell grabbed up a bucket near the door. “I’ll get some water from the stream.” He turned. “Say, if yuh’re Matt Evans’ brother, yuh must be an Evans, too?”
“Good guess, Farrell,” said the redheaded Texan, smiling faintly. “The handle’s Bide Evans.” He might have added: “Recently sheriff of Holman County, town of Dudley, Texas,” but did not.
Evans took his shirt off. The wound, still bleeding slightly, he saw, was a two-inch gash across the fleshy part of his arm.
Then Ed Farrell came in, visibly excited, slogging water over the top of the bucket.
“I been a dumb fool,” he cried. “That must’ve been Black Henry and the Hounds. I been warned against ’em.”
“Hounds?” said Bide Evans. “Who are they?”
“Heard tell,” replied Farrell, “they was chased out of Sacramento for killin’s, startin’ fires, and robbin’ stores.” He had torn a clean cloth into strips and was washing Evans’ gash.
“And Black Henry?”
“He got the reputation,” answered the oldster, fixing the bandage, “of bein’ the slickest article this side of Truckee Pass.” He frowned. “That’s what worries me.”
“What?” Evans asked, slipping into his shirt, and then vest.
“Maybe Black Henry,” said Farrell slowly, “did enter a claim for yore brother?”
“Don’t yuh fret, Farrell,” Evans said. “If it was entered in Matt’s name, I promise yuh’ll get it back.” A thin smile cracked through the grim look his face held. “Is it worth gettin’ back, Ed?”
In answer, the oldster brought out the little leather pouch Black Henry had thrown him and tossed onto the table. It struck solidly.
“Two days,” he cried, excitement eating through his voice like acid. “And we ain’t begun to take it out yet.” He hesitated a moment. “If it weren’t for yuh, Evans—I was thinkin’ when I went down to the stream—that I’d like yuh to—become our pardner. Ming would sure say yes.”
“Thanks, Ed,” Evans said, shaking his head. “But I didn’t come to California for gold. ’Sides, I expect to pull out of here in a couple of days.”
The oldster’s face fell. “If yuh should change yore mind,” he said earnestly, “the offer remains open. Well, let’s go. I’m gettin’ worried about Ming.”
A big, early moon split the night darkness and polished the earth’s surface with frost-like silver. The two men followed the water-course westward, the oldster up behind Evans.
“Think we’ll meet up with our ‘friends’ in town?” asked Evans.
“ ’Tain’t likely,” replied Farrell. “Sam Larson told me there’s a kind of war goin’ on ’tween the Hounds and the Vigilante Committee—”
“Vigilantes? Ain’t there no law in the Gulch?”
“Yuh mean a sheriff?” demanded the gray-haired man. “Not for the past two weeks. Last one was found hangin’; one before that, shot. By the great horn spoon!” He slapped his thigh. “I clean forgot. There’s an election tonight—for a new sheriff.”
Like a cold gust of wind, a premonition scraped the warmth from Bide Evans’ lean face. The memory of laughing, black-clad men suddenly weighed heavily on him.
“Who’s runnin’?” His voice rustled with the sharpness of stiff paper rubbed together.
“Don’t recollect,” answered Farrell. “Brother expectin’ yuh?” he asked after a pause.
Evans half-twisted in saddle, stiffening.
“No,” he said. But he knew that his tension had escaped through his voice, for Farrell said quickly:
“Sorry, Bide. Didn’t mean to—”
“That’s