Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 518 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

4 5 SORE Saw - Al , : —_ a Gren —— d*ecnk .. . Fi i> ae ~ a aa. _ < ae - . P . ee a a ¥ ’ te a S| Cool Colorado in N ew York, “He is going on the idea that as the mine is supposed to be in the wild country to the north of Red Biuffs, the girl and her captors will naturally be somewhere in that region.” ‘‘ A mighty good guess, too!” Dublin Mike ex- claimed. ‘*And I say, old man, we must be on the lookout, or else these galoots may jump in on us when we least expect it.” ‘Yes, there is danger of that, of course; but I thought the matter over while I was on the road from Red Bluffs, and came to the conclu- sion that in this matter we ought to take the bull by the horns.” . ‘‘ ‘Yes, yes,” and Dublin Mike nodded bis head approvingly. ‘‘I reckon I git your idee. In- stead of our waiting hyer fer Cool Colorado and Sioux Sam to jump on us, you propose to jump on them.” ** That is the game!” Nick Spader replied. ‘Sioux Sam I don’t know much about: he has the reputation of being a good man, and I don’t doubt he is able to hold his own under or dinary circumstances; but this Cool Colorado is a regular fire-eater, and if we give him any chance for his life, he will be apt to make it ex- tremely lively for us.” **You bet!” cried Dublin Mike, in a tone of firm conviction. ‘* Now, our little game is to fix the thing so that all the advantages will be on our side. We must not give these two rustlers any shew at all.” ‘“* You are talking good, solid sense now!” ‘*“We have changed our appearance se much since we left the East that it is dollars to cents that Sioux Sam will not recognize us. ‘‘The programme is for us to take two of our men, leaving one here to guard the girl, and hunt these fellows up in Red | Bluffs, where they are making their headquarters. ‘**T see, 1 see,” Dublin Mike remarked, paying the closest attention to the explanation. - ‘*They are stopping at the Metropolitan Saloon, Tommy Doyle’s place, and some time during the evening will be certain to be in the bar-room, ‘** We must} go in quietly, one by one, have a drink at the bar and note where our men are; then we must get in their neighborhood, and I will manage to provoke a quarrel with them; just as we begin to get hot, Pll say, ‘Oh, well, didn’t come in here to ick a fuss with any- body, so let’s all take a drink.’ That will be the signal for you aud the boys to pull your ‘ s’ and let Cool Colorado and Sioux Sam have the contents as svon as possible, ‘* Mighty nice scheme!” Dublin Mike observed, and then he chuckled and rubbed his hands to- gether. ** And it will work, too—you kin bet your life on it!” ‘Yes, because neither one of the two can pos- sibly get onto the trick until the trap is sprung,” Old Nick observed, shrewdly. ** As smart as this Cool Colorado undoubtedly is, it will not be possible for him to suspect when I begin to quarrel with him and Sam that I have three friends in the crowd ready to pull on bim ata certain signal. ‘**And, in order to still further divert sus- icion, I shall make out that I have been drink- g pretty freely; when some men get too much benzine on board they are apt to be inclined to quarrel, and so my pitching onto these two will not look at all out of the way.” “Tt will work! It will work, you kin bet all our wealth on it!” Dublin Mike exclaimed, en- husiastically. “The chances are big, you know, that when the guns are pulled, and the shooting begins, the crowd will scatter, It isn’t any of their funeral,-and none of them will be apt to want to Temain and risk the chance of stopping a bullet intended for some other man, ‘¢ We must do the work up quick and the mo- ment we have laid out our men, skedaddle for our horses. “* We'll have them tied right outside the door, and the odds are big that if we play the game right, we can plug our men, get on our horses, and be out of the town before the citizens will know what has happened.” ** Oh, it is a bang-up scheme and the thing can’t help going through as slick as a whistle!” “We must set about it this very night!” Nick Spader declared. ; ‘‘ Everything depends upon our getting in our whack at the two before they discover we are in the neighborhood. “If they once get on our track, it will be apt ee t ~ Sections, and then they might be ard agains ise- of this kind.” g any little surprise-party ** That’s so, as sure as you’re born!” And so it was decided that the attempt should be made that very night, The arch plotter reasoned shrewdly, as the reader has seen. The two trackers had jumped directly from New York city to Colorado, and the first halt they had made was in Gunnison, that lively town being the gateway to the Red Bluffs region, and north of Red Bluffs was the wild and desolate country, once the home of that branch of the Ute tribe to which the Snow White Dove belonged. And, somewhere amid this rude and sterile waste, cut up by small water-courses and rough ravines, was the Hidden Mine whose secret had been so jealously guarded by the red-skins for so many years. At Gunnison the trailers made searching in- quiries in regard to the game upon whose. track they were pressing so hotly. And, although both the Ute princess and the cunning white man, who was misleading her, had carefully disguised themselves, yet as all strangers—rfarticularly females—are closely scrutinized in such a town as Gunnison, the searchers after knowledge managed to get on the right track, Tbe clever device of the plotters, though, in procuring horses, instead of going by the stage- coach, threw the pursuers off the track, al- though they were only some twenty-four hours behind them, The delay at Gunnison while Nick Spader or- ganized his road-agent band had enabled the trackers to catch up. But after leaving Gunnison the two pards were completely baffled. No trace of the fugitives could they discover and so they decided to make Red Bluffs their headquarters while they scoured the surrounding country, for they were satisfied that the game they sought was not many miles from the min- ing-camp., As the reader knows they were correct in this supposition, and were in fact very “hot” on the trail. CHAPTER XIII. THE SNARE. THE Metropolitan Saloon, ‘ Tommy Doyle’s Shebang,” as it was pueny called, was the leading hotel of Red Bluffs, It did not differ materially from the usual shanty hotel, common to the mining-camps up in the hills, and so we will spare the reader a de- tailed description. It was a lodging-house, restaurant, and saloon combined—the saloon part being decidedly the largest, and by far the most profitable. The hotel office was in the saloon and the room was the general loafing place of the town, especiany at night when the miners had quit work. On the particular evening of which we write the saloon was well-filled, and the occupants, between drinks, were discussing the gossip of the day. In a corner of the room where the hotel office was situated, Cool Colorado and Sioux Sam, both rigged up in cowboy style, lounged against the counter, chatting with the proprietor of the lace, the popular Tommy Doyle, who was a middle-aged, undersized Irishman of a decidedly jovial disposition, Both Cool Colorado and Sioux Sam were old acquaintances of the landlord, having known him when he kept a saloon in Gunnison, which was before the “ strike’ in Red Bluffs had been made, and that now flourishing mining-camp had neither a local habitation nor a name. The trailers had confined their mission to the landlord, for Tommy Doyle was a man who could be trusted, and they had calculated as he was the owner of the most popular resort in the camp, that he would be the most likely man in the town to hear any news. Doyle, eager to oblige any of his friends. had made cautious inquiries, but was not able to give any information, Strangers were coming and going all the time, but no one of them answered to the description which the trackers had obtained in Gunnison of the man who was in company with the girl whom they believed to be the Ute princess, The two pards were not disco though they hardly expected to strike the trail right at the beginning. Both of our heroes were well mounted and they had put in their time since arriving in the mining-camp in riding around the country, stopping at all the little mining-camps up and down the valley in which Red Bluffs was situ- ated, and in the foot-hills near the town. everywhere they went they pushed their cautious inquiries. But they had not thought of =e a of the along the hillside, on which the ranch outlaws was situated. seen wasn’t any settlers in that neighbor- ector after prospector had explored the hillside without discovering any signs of pre- cious metals, not even hunters, for there wasn’t any game in the neighborhood. ‘**Cheer up, Sam, don’t let your spirits go down,” shouted the landlord, who prided him- self upon his vocal abilities. ‘*Oh, that is all right!” Sioux ‘Sam replied.. ‘*Tam not worrying about the matter, Colorado, and I will strike the trail one of these days, for that is the kind of men we are,” ‘Yes, it is too soon yet to give up,” Cool Colorado ohserved. ‘*There isn’t much doubt that our game is up in this region, somewhere, ‘*Ten miles to the north of Red Bluffs are the Bad Lands, the old Ute stamping-ground, to which the red-skins always fled when they got into a tussle with the whites, and in that wild. region they were always able to evade pursuit, ‘* Now, according to the way I have always heard the yarn told, up in the Bad Lands, some- where, is this secret mine, and as to get at the hidden treasure is undoubtedly the game of the man, or men, who persuaded the Snow White Dove to quit the East, it is as certain as any- thing can be, that the party is in the neighbor- hood of Red Bluffs somewhere.” ‘* Undoubtedly!” exclaimed the landlerd, who was a shrewd fellow and had been following the argument of the scout closely. “Oh, you will be able to put salt on the tails of your birds one cf these days, if you only have patience,” Doyle continue. By this time the saloon was pretty well filled,. and the bar was doing a rushing trade. | Nick Spader and Dublin Mike, rigged out to resemble honest, hard-working miners, and two of their road-agent band had entered the room. They carelessly gathered in a corner of the apartment, lounging there as if they were all strangers to each other, and Nick Spader took occasion to direct the attention of the rest to the. two young men talking to Jolnny Doyle, the landlord. It was hardly possible to make any mistake about the two scouts, for they were the only cow-punchers in the apartment—the only two men dressed in the frontier garb of buckskin. ‘* There’s our men, and as luck will have it, they are away from the crowd,” Old Nick re- marked. ‘* We will be able to get at them without any danger of getting any nody. else mixed up in the fight, which is something we must avoid if we can. “Tommy Doyle is right in the way, though,” Dublin Mike observed. ‘Yes, if he should be in his present position when we open fire, the chances are big that we will plug bim for keeps.” ** We don’t want to do that you know, if we can help it,” Dublin Mike observed. __** Tommy is very popular among the boys, and if we should lay him out, it would be apt to kick up an awful row.” ‘* Yes, yes, that is so; the others are strangers, and it wouldn’t matter so much,” Old Nick re- marked. ‘‘Then they are cow-punchers too, and the average miner don’t go much on these cowboy rustlers,” Nick Spader continued. ‘So if these two have their toes turned up in a skirmish, it would not be apt to raise much of a disturb- ce. “Tl get Tommy Doyle out of the way,” Dub- lin Mike remarked. “Tl call him over toward the bar and ask him if he knows of a good place for a man to. get a job.” “That is a good idea,” Nick Spader com- mented. “‘ And then the moment I let go of him, some- body else will be sure to tickle his ribs, and then: you kin get in your fine work on the pards.” ‘“‘ Allright! Yoy go abead and get Doyle out. from behind that bar.” Dublin Mike nodded, and taking a round-about way slowly approached the landlord. Old Nick seized upon the opportunity to speak a word of warning to the pair of ruffians who- were lounging near, doing it in a cautious way so as not to attract attention. “Now, boys, the fun will begin pretty soon,” he said. j “Get your revolvers ready—have ’em cocked » ——_ -, * = . “ re ~_ 2 +. .