J. Allan Dunn

“ Yet the details imparted to him were explicit enough, holding far more promise than what he imagined Lyman had told Healy, which appeared to be nothing more than the general location of the placer and the glittering wall of quartz. The simile of the old prospector was ever vivid in Stone's imagination, the cliff of milky-white rock stretching away up until it merged with the blackness, the gold shining like stars in the Milky Way until that, too, faded gradually in the murk. ”

“ Every little while their knees would give way and the three of them would slump to the sand. Larkin and Stone would sit panting, looking straight forward until one would rise, on all fours first, and then the other, to take up their burden. Their swollen feet burned intolerably until they merged with their bodies into one great, blistering ache. Healy, in the irony of the situation, had lapsed into a coma that changed him to a pliable automaton, unconscious of pain or thirst or any sensation. ”

“ Healy sat silent and motionless at the faro-table, waiting for his plays, watching the case-keeper until a card had won or lost twice before he slid out his chips. He looked, Stone thought, like a hawk watching a covert. Apparently he was neither winning nor losing.
The gambling rooms were hot, the air stifling, and Stone made for the patio, in no humour to watch others play where he could not. A dance was just ending, the girls leading their partners quickly off the floor, most of them on the outlook for a new prospect, eager to get rid of the old. ”

“ And, like the magic ear of corn that the Indian shamans caused to grow to fruition, the seed of suspicion flourished in the soil of Stone's spirit. Why were Healy and Larkin conspiring at such an hour? It could be no ordinary thing they had to discuss in such a fashion. Lyman had been wise indeed when he had said: "I know what gold does to men." It bred lust, greed, suspicion, hatred, even murder. ”

“ The white men peered in vain into the darkness. The starlight was hazy, the floor of the ravine held ample cover of rock and bush and tree for two hundred foes, skilled in stealthy approach, to gather unseen for one sudden, overwhelming attack. The path to the cave, none too wide for one at a time, evened things somewhat, but to command it they would be forced to expose themselves, and the light from the cunningly laid fires below kept the entrance in a lurid glow. ”

“ But as they went forward to where the milky quartz was piled up on the floor with the gold shining from it thick as herring scales on a seine after a big haul, they forgot all superstition, and all the ghosts of a thousand generations could not have stopped their final rush. The fire was out and scattered by the explosion but they squatted down in front of the shattered matrix and gloated while Stone and Larkin played the beams of the two torches on the treasure-dump. To hold the mining phrase, the quartz was fairly rotten with the gold. ”

“ The big chest laboured, was convulsed, and then quiet.
"He's gone!" said Healy, his voice sharp with greed and anger. "Gone—and he never told us where it was. Wasted his time talking about his fool wife and kid."
"Forget that," said Stone, crisply, himself trembling with excitement. "He was trying to tell us in his own way. Keep the women out of it, Healy. Give me that whisky. Lefty."
The Cockney did so, his eyes still glittering as he watched Stone's efforts to get some liquor between the old prospector's teeth, worn and stained, but stubbornly resisting. ”

“ Stone set down the coil of rope with a sigh of relief. They had left the tools and dynamite in the great cavern. Larkin and Harvey carried the filled canteens. The morning wind blew out of the eye of the rising sun and they gratefully filled their lungs with its sweetness. Behind them, in the bowels of the butte, they had left sufficient gold to pack the burros to full capacity besides the actual necessities they must carry for the trip back to Miami. ”

“ Mining, as war, maketh for strange company, but it was seldom that four men, so varying in age, in temperament, appearance, and experience, chummed together.
"The Foursome," Stone had dubbed the shaft that they were slowly sinking in the stubborn dyke of purple porphyry under which, said Skyfields, ran continuously the rich vein of sylvanite, the discovery of which had caused the rush to Skyfields and changed that jumble of jagged peaks into so many human antheaps of never-flagging industry and never-failing hope. ”

“ Lefty handled the little forge and the resharpening of the drills and kept the shack in shape. It was a peculiar twist of Lefty's make-up that the little cabin was as neat and clean as if some precisian of an old maid had presided over its keeping, rather than a wandering Cockney of low mental and moral calibre.
For the last week Stone had been taking occasional turns at the sledge to relieve Lyman, for the porphyry was hard as cement. Lyman was easily twice his age, with a few years thrown in, and Stone was ashamed of himself for letting an old man do all the hard work. ”

“ They did not know the nature of this descent until Stone switched on his torch and they saw all about them, strewing the floor of the place, the crumbled remnants, dried-up heads that leered at them, broken off from the brittle trunks, bits of brown bone sticking out from what had once been flesh. Stone saw Healy swiftly cross himself while Larkin shuddered and Harvey leaned over and was frankly sick. Stone felt inclined to emulate him. ”

“ There was a howl of Mexican dissent against an American timekeeper as well as referee. Ned Grimm, self installed, but completely master of the ceremonies, compromised.
Healy and Lefty reached Stone together.
"For God's sake," gasped Healy, his low tones lost in the hubbub. "Get out of here! You couldn't have got into a mess with a worse man. Padilla used to be a toreador in Mexico City and, after that, a prize-fighter. He's strong as an ox. They call him 'El Toro.' Even if you got the best of him the mob 'ud knife the lot of us. I've just seen Castro. He won't interfere." ”

“ There was the man who called himself Frank Healy, whose dark eyes were too close together, too small, too shifty, and whose hands suggested that he handled a deck of cards far better than a drill. A soft-fleshed man, with high cheekbones and the nose of a hawk, thin-lipped and sneery, watchful, chary of speech, careful of his liquor. ”

“ He started ahead, as if to go to Harvey and Larkin with his suggestion.
"You stay where you are," said Stone, "or I'll blow your cowardly head off." Healy turned with a snarl. "You will, will you?" he said. "You forget I hold the joker in this deal. With me out of it where are you?"
"If you show your yellow lining at this stage of the game," said Stone, "they'll jump us. Go ahead, if you want to. I won't shoot you. I'll let the Indians handle you. They'll get us anyway if we weaken but I fancy the rest of us will have an easier out than you. They won't get me alive. ”

“ Then, as if by magic, the crescent opening left between the top of their breastwork and the arching brow of the cave was blocked by wild figures leaping in from the path and swinging down by lines from where they had climbed the cliff to ledges above the cave and now, regardless of the fire, pendulumed in like apes. The night was filled with yells, the first swift swish of arrows, the crack-crack of pistols, the deeper bark of rifles, and then clubbed weapons were whirled in desperate defence against spears and axes. ”

“ So long as Healy did not demand assistance it was each for himself, and they had not noted whether he led or followed until he stopped and pointed to the sand with a horrid effort to articulate. But they followed the guidance of his hand and stared, stupidly at first and then with growing wonder and awe at the weird spoor imprinted on the desert floor, slightly blurred by the wind, but not obliterated. ”

“ Then from the dance hall poured a ruck of miners and women. The men who had flattened themselves jumped out to the centre of the room, gazing toward the body in the doorway. Calm and unashamed, the bartender rose from behind his barricade. The sound of running feet clattered on the wooden walk outside the saloon and the marshal of Skyfields, with one quick, shrewd glance at the dead man, stepped across the corpse and entered, alert, questioning, taking in instantly the little group at the far end of the bar where Stone supported Lyman. ”

“ An atheist may not believe in a God but, if he plays cards, he has his pet superstitions.
They got into Calexico at midnight and found the town asleep. But there were certain night-hawks with jitneys ready to cross the line to where clocks were superfluous and day and night served only to mark the watches of the purveyors to the appetites of the throng that fluttered round Joe Castro's Casa Grande until their wings got singed; or until some rare flier, weighted down with gold, fled north as self-appointed publicity agent of this Mexican Monaco. ”

“ Look for gold. Gold belong Indian. Those white man die. Maybe one, two, run very fast, they go back. Suppose you look in water, top this cañon, you see two white men who not go back. Suppose we kill you, hide scalp, let coyotes crack your bones? Suppose we hide your body in cave? How any one know? How any one punish?"
"Try it on and you'll find out," said Stone, steadily.
For a moment the dark eyes of the savage glared into the blue eyes of the white man, hot hatred against cold resistance. Then the Apache indicated the cliffs of the cañon. ”

“ A bullet sent a man toppling backward over his pony's tail while the brute galloped off, trailing its master, whose spurred boot had caught in the stirrup. Larkin shot another horse and the cavalcade halted, palpably disturbed at the excellence of the aim. There was some discussion and then a leader waved a hand and the troop wheeled and galloped off toward a neighbouring butte while Stone and Larkin sped them in their retreat with humming missiles. ”

“ Healy was guarding the goose that was to lay the largest golden egg.
There was a ring around the dancing floor by now. A few men kept the crowd back. The girls had mounted on tables. Everywhere was the glitter of eyes, the stare of faces intent upon sport, the more brutal the better. Someone hustled a startled Chinaman through the ruck. The Oriental was clinging to a great gong that had been pressed into service from his kitchen. He was established, excited, jabbering, his slit-eyes glittering, beside the man chosen for timekeeper. ”

“ Now the fire was charcoal and ashes, Lyman was dust, two men lay in the blue pool at the head of Stone Men Cañon, and the bones of all the rest of them who had tried to reach the treasure^ were scattered graveless.
Then a very wonderful thing happened: From high above them, through a rift that opened to the sky, with ragged edges that proclaimed it a natural window, the moon shot a shaft of light. It struck the matrix high up and invested it with a mystical, shimmering lustre that seemed to give it transparency, to make the gold hang in translucent space. ”

“ Don't you wish you'd come through with the dope when I wanted you to, Stone? Then you could leave me by the wayside when the going gets bad and I'm a nuisance, or chuck me off the cliff like Larkin suggested. Drop me into that pool with the two images. Preserve me till Judgment Day like an egg in waterglass. Why don't you do it, you fellows? It's too late for you to come through with your end of it now. Wouldn't do me any good unless I pull through. Hate me both of you, don't you, but you've got to look after me. Presently you'll have to give up your drinking water to bathe my arm. ”

“ There's nothing romantic about pounding a drill or holding one. Labourer's work, under much less exciting conditions than the Dago has who is tearing up a New York street. Never a smell of gold to cheer you on, only a belief, that grows hopeless at times, that you'll find it after you get through the porphyry.
"When I gamble I like to gamble with the stakes in sight. I've smelled gold on this trip, seen it and heard of it; a wall of white quartz, studded as thick with gold as the sky is with stars along the Milky Way, points of gold on milky quartz, reaching far up into the darkness. ”

“ From there on to the western verge, the soil became more and more thickly set with prickly-pear, towering torch-thistles, hedgehog and whipstock cactus, old-man cactus, growing in thorny mazes, with the tip-tops of the barrel or torch thistles, forty, even fifty feet above a rider's head. ”

“ The sun was lifting fast and its beams already taking toll of what was left to them of endurance. Harvey tightened his belt, stuck a wad of tobacco in his left cheek, and shook hands with Larkin and Stone. Healy lounged against a sand pillow they had made for him, his face vacuous, as Harvey started off at a slow, long stride. ”

“ Stone and Harvey and Larkin let loose at the racing targets and one man fell behind the rest, dismounted, caught a riderless horse that had belonged to one of the dead Mexicans, and tore after his comrades, leaving his first mount dead.
"It's a shyme to hit the 'orses stead of the Greasers," said Larkin. "Hi, they're hafter 'em. Let 'em know we're halive."
They fired again and shouted as the horns blared and a big car appeared the other side of the butte from which the riders had come, and went lunging through the soft soil in pursuit. ”

“ Lefty sucked at a short, charred briar and said nothing but looked his disgust at Healy.
"Because there's just as good a chance at Mexicali," said Healy. "A better chance. Listen to me. Mexicali is the only live town left within easy touch of the United States. It's just across the line from Calexico. Calexico's dry and tame as a Methodist prayer-meeting, but Mexicali is wet and wild and wide-open. It's the only frontier town still in existence. Everything goes. One man owns it and he's a friend of mine, Joe Castro. ”