Gaston turned and lighted the lamp on the table against the wall, as Hardin closed the door, came in and slumped down into a chair before he spoke. His shoulders spoke eloquently of a mission that had not been accomplished, before Gaston said a word.
From the blackness of the yard there came the faint nicker of a horse. Chaser knew he was home. He was wondering why he had been left there, still saddled and bridled, with his comfortable stall so near.
“I thought—” Gaston expended his breath in a gust, as the lamplight grew from the ignited wick and steadied. “I thought you were never coming. Where is Vandover? Couldn’t you find him?”
“I didn’t bring him, after all,” Hardin said dully.
He slipped deeper down into his chair, his attention seemingly focused on the table and the lighted lamp. He did not look at Gaston as he suddenly began talking and hastily recounted all that had happened, in minute detail, since he and Gaston had parted there at the edge of the desert.
“He shot himself before I could make a move to stop him. I had to bury him there on the desert. I didn’t dare try to bring him back all that distance in the hot sun, with only one horse. It really doesn’t matter, anyway, Doe. I took Scotch back to Hoaley. He wouldn’t accept anything for the use of him. I got Chaser—and here I am. What has been happening around here?”
Gaston huddled in his underwear. “Nothing has had much time to develop, Gage. But I did this—I sent Red Corcoran for Sheriff Shawnessy. When the sheriff got here, I simply told him to go find Mary Silver.”
Hardin nodded, staring at the wall, in blank silence. His mind traveled back to the time when he had first come to Great Lost Valley, eight years before, when Guy Shawnessy had just been elected sheriff of Grant County. Great Lost Valley had then been wild and unsettled country.
Hardin had arrived in it with money enough at hand to buy the acres encompassing most of the rich valley and a great deal of the excellent rangeland to the south and west of it. He had established at that time the Circle Crossbar Ranch.
Within three years other families had moved into the Valley, and ranches had grown up around him to the east and north. Fred Warde had come with his wife and two sons, Gilbert and Lester, to found the Diamond W Ranch. Jefferson Baker, with his wife and three sons, Toby, Ferris and Walt, and his infant daughter Annie, had founded the J Bar B Ranch.
Not long after that, less than a year of time, Hardin had met Doe Gaston in Heppner, and Doe had eventually accepted a place as partner of the Circle Crossbar. A strange and unaccountable loneliness, but a loneliness nevertheless forever manifest, had lingered about Gage Hardin. Doe had never succeeded either in banishing it or sounding it.
The next people to move into the Valley, five years after Hardin’s advent, had been Mary Silver and her elder brother Melvin. Mel was apparently dying on his feet, of a treacherous heart, and he had wanted to die in the mountains.
Brother and sister had purchased a patch of land a few miles up the Valley from the Circle Crossbar, and had settled to make a home. Mel had not died. He had grown strong and secure.
Guy Shawnessy and Gage Hardin had realized in the same week that they both loved Mary Silver. She had had eyes only for Hardin, and she was of too honest fiber to make any pretense otherwise.
Shawnessy, needing but little and showing himself seldom in that territory, had taken his loss with grace—but he had never forgotten that he loved Mary Silver. Neither had Gage Hardin forgotten.
Gage stirred in his chair, bleak gaze intent on Doe Gaston.
“You sent for Guy?”
“I did.” Doe pulled his long-sleeved underwear over his wrists. “I figured that if there was one man besides you who would turn the world over to find Mary he would be Guy Shawnessy. He asked for a posse of picked men. I gave him Red Corcoran, Dutch Sundquist, Tamm Oaks, and Salt River Charley. They left yesterday at sun-up. I waited here for you. I haven’t much of a head for details, Gage. I did what I could.”
“You did all any man could do.” Hardin smiled, and this time it was not a grimace that he achieved. “You shot true, Doe. If Guy can’t find her——” He left the sentence hanging, remembering the coming of Louis Peele to Great Lost Valley.
Peele had first shown himself in the Valley four years ago. He had quietly investigated the Valley, to be certain that he had found Gage Hardin at last, then had bought the last remaining stretch of land in the Valley, the tract lying to the south of the Circle Crossbar, between Hardin’s ranch and the Diamond W.
From that day, Doe Gaston had known that old enmity existed between Gage Hardin and Louis Peele. The fact was blatantly evident in Peele’s mock courtesy whenever he chanced to meet any members of the Circle Crossbar crew. It was quite as evident in Hardin’s thin-lipped silence.
The more Doe had seen of Peele’s outfit, the more uneasy he had become. Doe Gaston never asked questions, but he had done more than one man’s share of wondering.
He had wondered why Hardin, with an inscrutable wry smile on his face, had nicknamed the cowboy inseparables, Corcoran, Sundquist, Oaks and Salt River Charley, the “Four from Hell’s Hill.” He had wondered why Hardin’s ancient enemy should deliberately move into Great Lost Valley and settle next the Circle Crossbar. Doe’s wondering had not decreased as time’s cycles waxed and waned. Peele had grown increasingly nasty and belligerent with every year that passed. Seeing that his nastiness and belligerence did not draw Hardin’s retaliation, Peele had begun to commit numerous depredations, such as cutting fences, stealing a few calves, butchering young beef, gradually growing bolder and more vindictive. And though those acts could never be proved to have been performed by Peele and his men, every hand on the Circle Crossbar knew that the guilt lay at their doors.
Doe’s wondering had come to be almost unbearable. He had wondered why Hardin had sternly forbidden any of his crew to visit the least reprisal on Peele. Such an inactive course under persecution wasn’t reasonable; but it prevailed rigidly under Hardin’s strict orders. Hardin had said just once that he was waiting the day when Peele would break all moorings and commit some overt act, rendering himself irrevocably answerable to the law. Doe had wondered at that, too, but his inarticulate wondering had availed him nothing.
He sat now, huddled in his chair in his underclothing, staring at the returned Hardin, startled to note that that inscrutable wry smile was again on Gage Hardin’s face.
“So.” Hardin roused himself, and drew his big body erect. “So—you sent Guy Shawnessy to find Mary, and for posse you gave him—the Four from Hell’s Hill!”
“Yes.” Doe repressed a shiver; something emanating from Hardin chilled him.
Hardin’s smile softened, relaxing a little. “It’s all right, Doe. You couldn’t have done a better thing. I—you——” The smile faded now. “You don’t know much about me, do you, Doe? I’ve always meant to tell you when the time came. Well, it’s come.” He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed intently on Gaston’s face. “A long way from here, Doe, boy, in the high cattle country around—well, no matter: but a long way from here there is a mountain country that rises to its crown in a high peak. Back there they call that particular peak Hell’s Hill. It is one solid, strange mass of red rock, queer stuff ranging all the way from deep red to bright brick color.
“Fifteen years ago, when I was a youngster of sixteen, there were two families growing up in that ranching country, near the town of Tenville: two families living side by side, the Hardins and the Peeles. There were two boys in each family, two only—Louis Peele and his brother Harry, my brother Bruce and myself. Bruce was nineteen years old then. Louis was twenty, and Harry was twenty-two. We four about lived together; we were with each other so much that the people living there nicknamed us the Four from Hell’s Hill.”
“Oh!” Doe Gaston started.
For a fleeting instant Hardin’s thin smile returned. “Yes, Doe. That’s where it all started. I’ll