Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 186 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

j —_—_ ee —_ PO eg rr rr ee Pee ple et _ —- - -_ — And for the honor of the town, Juanapolis must do the ‘‘ clear white thing ”’ by them. It was two in the morning before the last stragglers got out of the saloons, and walked with unsteady steps to bed, for be it confessed ifthe men of the town were jubilant over the ted good fortune which came so ab- ruptly and without the slightest warning upon their thriving burg, they were, also, the most of them, decidedly under the influeuce of strong or. fact Juanapolis might truthfully be said to have retired to rest that eo the next morning ms Wp oe runk. come out about twelve, a oo pe h he id misty, uncertain moon such as the idiot boy had described and detested for its pranks. ¢ By its light the miners, with peculiar gaits, covering far more ground to the mile than was usual with them, had managed to find their way to their cabins, although some disdainful ak among them the Terror from Taos, indig- nant at the very odd manner in which the earth bobbed up and down under them, bunked _ down right in the open air in the first snug cor- ner that came handy. The misty light enabled the miners to get home in safety; the misty light also gave a chance to the secret assassin who, with blood- thirsty passion, prowled through the silent, ing town. A single short, sharp, quick pistol-bark, not loud enough to wake the sleepers in the neigh- boring cabins, nor even to disturb the drunken slumbers of the reckless souls who were going it alone in the open air, but yet quite loud enough to warn the silver queen of night that mischief was doing—quite loud enough to cause her to vail her bright face behind a cloud, as though she mourned over murder’s foul work—quite jJoud enough to warn the victim that danger was near, but the warning was not in time to save him from the leaden missile that cut a way through yielding bone and flesh through which to let out the life. Down went the man, killed outright on the instant, full in the center of the street, and there he lay until the gray light of the dawn the eastern skies, and rosy morn, rising from her eastern ocean-bed, drove back the dark clouds of the night and ushered in a new day’s life; the murdered man lay in the street, and still; no one came near him until the morning, for not a soul stirred in the street of the mining-camp, unless, after the eastern fash- ion, I credit a vagabond dog with a soul, who came slinking up the street, sniffed at the dead and then, with a mournful howl, went on his way, as if after his own sad fashion he de- plored the evil work which man had done on man. But, with the rising of the sun the town woke up; no matter how late the mining sharp may @rink or gamble he must be up betimes in the amorning—he must emulate the sun. And so, as the great god of day rose majesti- cally from behind the eastern peaks that fringed in Death Valley, out from their cabins «came the miners. Naturally, the dead body stretched out in the middle of the street, attracted instant atten- The cry went up and soon rung through the “Foul play, boys! Bloody murder has been stalking in the dark, and here lies the victim.” The body was recognized at once as that of Tom Kirby—Tom Cod, as generally called, be- eause he was from the East, had been a. fisher- gman on the “Grand Banks” at one time, and was always boasting of his fishing exploits. Tom Cod, to relate the exact and simple truth, was no credit to the town; he was a drunkard and a gambler in the worst sense of the words. To drink and to gamble is no crime in the San Juan region, where almost every other man drinks regularly, and every third man is a confirmed gambler, ready at times to risk Pe bap in the world, even to the shirt mpon his back, to the uncertain chance of cards; - but the man did not solely drink for good-fel- Jowship and good company, as did the rest of the ‘‘ boys,” but he swilled down the liquor be- eause he loved it, and when he had his cargo on board he was apt to be ugly, quarrelsome and dangerous. Then,asa gambler, hedid not play to pass the time away, and risk a few dollars for the sake of making the game interesting, but he gambled to win, and report said that he would always cheat if he got a chance. That such a man should have enemies was no wonder; and that some foe should waylay him was no wonder either, for, upon examination, #t was made apparent that he had been killed ¢ Cool Desmond. ee eee EEE OR Cle ee a a oe ee by some secret foe, for his money was on his ae his weapons were intact, so that rob- ry had not been the motive for the deed. And the manner of the killing, too, was strange. He had been shot in the head on the right side right before and above the ear. A little tiny bole hardly large enough to admit a pea; yet, small as it was, it had let out the life of the desperado. The miners looked and wondered. What did it mean? What angel of death was stalking by night through the streets of the mining-camp? CHAPTER VII. THE MOUNTAIN BAND. THREE miles above Death Valley lies the wildest and most rugged part of the territory of Colorado, ragged rocks and ragged cliffs—a re- gion almost impassable except for the sure-foot- ed mountain goat, or the agile red-skin trained from early childhood to traverse the pathless wilderness and find a way amid the canyons, some of them so deep that even the light of the sun never reaches into their dark recesses, al- though, once in awhile, the great day-god makes a bold attempt to chase away the dark shadows which, like evil spirits, lurk in the deep defiles. Three miles from the town of Juanapolis, due northward, was a canyon so deep and dark and 5 aa that even the adventuring miners shrunk from penetrating into it; there was no likelihood of gold being found there, and the curiosity of the brag npn: was not strong en- ough to induce them to explore the gloomy ra- vine, and so this dark and forbidding canyon, only a few miles from the mining-camp, was really almost totally unknown, although that it existed was no secret, and the rough, rude men of Juanapolis had aptly named it, as many a similar gorge of unearthly aspect has been named in the West, the Devil’s Canyon, and some of the dwellers in the mining-camp who were fond of telling big yarns, calculated to ex- cite a listener’s wonder, would often declare that they had peered into the Devil Canyon when passing by it—the northward trail led right close to its mouth—and that, skipping about on the rocks down in the deep, dank cav- ity they had seen gigantic, frightful forms, which, when they perceived that a human was near, with a demoniac laugh vanished into the darker shadows beyond. Taos’s Terror had heard these tales and had laughed them to scorn. ‘' Nothing but bull- frogs!” he had declared; and he further added that down whar he had come from, in Southern Arizqna, he had seen bull-ftrogs so large that the red bucks used to skin them, sew up their hides and use them for boats to ferry themselves and plunder across the river, a yarn which called forth the remark from an incredulous bystand- er that that was the biggest lie he had ever heard—an insinuation which the Taos man in- stantly challenged by asserting that he could tell a dozen bigger. But, whether the miners believed the canyon to be haunted ground or not, one and all gave the locality a pretty wide berth, particularly after nightfall. True, not one of them would own up to a belief in devils, ghosts and such like uncanny things, yet, there was no telling, and they ‘‘ wouldn’t take any of the canyon in theirs, thank you.” It was near the ‘‘shut of day,” and the gloom of the twilight beginning to gather along the crest and sides of the rocky peaks and to de- scend into the valley, made the dark interior of the canyon almost ink-like in its gloom. But, dark as were the shadows that dwelt within the canyon’s bosom there were sounds there that denoted life. A dark form had left the mountain trail and had glided, specter-like, into the great rift, the dense gloom of which soon swallowed the figure. But along it went, with no uncertain steps, but as if quite sure of the way. A hundred yards from the mouth of the canyon the figure paused, looked carefully behind as if it were afraid of being followed and wished to be sure that it was not, then, picking up a loose rock which lay near at hand, pounded with it upon the wall which formed the side of the cliff on the west. And then, wonderful sound for such a place, the low me-ow of a cat came from the interior! The new-comer answered the challenge, for such it evidently was, with a second me-ow, again casting a careful glance around him to be sure that he was not watched. The scrutiny was apparently a useless one, and the man who made it felt that it was so; \ ’ “ . + —————— TEEN -_-_-_-- et, as he had always been accustomed so to do, y force of habit he did not omit it. But, on this occasion there was need of it; there was a watcher on the trail of the dark figure, although the latter’s eyes were not keen enough to detect it in the gioom which shroud- ed the canyon like a funeral pall. If the man had been in reality the animal] whose voice he had counterfeited, the night-see- ing cat, to whom the darkness is as the light, it would have been a difiicult matter for him to have discovered the trailer, so carefully did the latter, proceed, and so cunningly did he take ad- vantage of every bowlder and every inequality of the ground to conceal himself from observa- tion. The spy was not discovered, his presence not: even suspected, for long security had lulled sus- picion into sleep, and the new-comer, after an- swering the signal, stooped down and crawled into what was apparently a small, hollow de- ression in the wall of the cliff, right on the evel of the ground, but as he advanced the in- terior wall of the cavity seemed to retreat be- fore him, and soon his entire figure disappeared within the hole. In reality, the big rock with- in which barred the passage was so curiousl constructed that it could be rolled to one side and then. replaced after the fashion of a *‘ rock- ing stone,” but so heavy was it, and so solid that, although it yielded quite easily even to the pressure of a single finger when exerted in the proper direction, yet the strength of a dozen men could not have pushed it bodily inward. After the man had passed, the giant rock ‘‘teetered”’ back to its original place, blocking the passage so completely and securely that he would have been a wise man indeed who guessed what lay beyond the st: ne. And what was beyond? The man found himself in a narrow, vault- like apartment, the gloom lit up by a single candle stuck into a niche in the wall, but so in- adequate was the light against the dense gloom that it was as much asone could do to make out the surrounding objects. A man wearing the strange cat disguise sat by the rock—evidently a sentinel posted to guard the entrance, and it was he who had an- swered to the new-comer’s demand for admis- sion. By the side of the sentinel was a cat’s head . and the other garments that went to make up the disguise. ith these the man proceeded to equip himself. ‘* Have they all come?” he asked. ‘Yes, all are within, but one.” ‘*One missing?” ‘“‘-Yes, that is all; but you are late to-day; if is nearly night.” ‘‘T had an idea that I was being followed.” ‘‘Rollowed! Blazes! who would follow you?” “That is the puzzle, but I am sure some one tracked me from the town, although I can’t un- derstand why any one should take the trouble.” ‘*Do you s’pose any one suspects?” ‘How can it be possible? But 1 am sure some one was playing the spy upon me, al- though I cannot for the life of me see why any one should do so, but I doubled and twisted on my track the moment I got in the bills, and soon threw them off. Keep a good look-out, though, and see if any one comes into the can- yon; it means mischief if any one does.” Then the man, having finished dressing, passed from the vault through a narrow winding pas- sage, and in a few steps came to a second vault- ed chamber which was of considerable extent, The floor was of sand, silver white, and the vaulted apartment ran upward in the shape of a sugar loaf, and through the narrow aperture at the top a small ray of light came, proving that there was an entrance to the cave from the mountain above. The outlaws—for such of course the inbabi- tants of the cave were, for honest men had no use for such a strange abode—had provided a means of escape by the roof in case they should be assailed by an overpowering force from the canyon. From the upper region a stout rope descended, until it came within about six feet of the floor. and the rope was knotted at regu-) lar intervals so that it could be used as a ladder and readily climbed by an ordinarily agile man in case of an emergency. Ten men were assembled in the cave, seated on skins spread on big bowlders and some lying out at full length. All were dressed exactly alike and all looked like huge eats. When the new-comer entered the rest all got up and saluted him, he being evidently the chief. The patch of light that came in by the way of the hole in the roof was not strong enough to (E(@) 4 Es GOomirecnoo cS a he