Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 41 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

4 SS a “ That fellow killed the man.” “So I think, but I couldn't prove it.” “T know him,of old!” the Texan cried, hastily, his eyes flashing wildly. ‘‘It was always a common trick of his to carry a derringer in his pocket and fire through the cloth without drawing it; he discharged it with his left hand; he is as good a shot with his left hand as with his right.” ‘The deuce he is!” the Danite exclaimed, in amazement, ‘Well, I never knew that before.” ‘Oh, I know the man so well—almost as well as I know my- self.” 3 ““Why, I understood that you were a stranger in these parte.” ‘‘ And so I am.” ‘* How is it that you know Gold Dan, then?” “T do not know him under that name but under another.” “T never knew that he was called anything else, and I’ve known him—not intimately, but well enough to ‘say that I know him—ever since he first came here, about five years ago.” ‘‘ Five years ago!” exclaimed the Texan, in astonishment. cc Yes,” ** And has he been here that long?’ ** Oh, yes.” **But not all the time?” ** Pretty much so, excepting of course when he has been off as a guide and scout to some train, but never absent over two or three months at the outside.” ‘Impossible! there is some mistake about the matter. I knew the man in California about a year ago, lived in the same town with him for over eight months, and he was never absent a week at a time!” ; The Danite shook his head, ‘Oh, you’ve made some mistake, for just about the time you mention he got into a scrape downin Salt Lake City and was jailed there for nearly five months—jailed long enough for his ie a whom he had cut pretty badly with a knife, to get well. The Texan looked bewildered. “T am either crazy and have lost. my memory, or else there are two Gold Dans!” he exclaimed. “Well, I never heard of but one and he’s enough to hav round loose,” the Danite replied, in his grim way. ‘He killed that man!” the Texan protested, abruptly. “T think so,” and the Danite gathered up the reins of his ‘horse, preparatory to mounting into the saddle. ‘‘What are you going to do about it?” ‘‘Ts that a riddle that you’re giving me?” ‘“You are not going to tamely submit to have one of your brothers killed and the slayer go unpunished?” “*An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ is our motto,” the Danite answered, ‘‘and our elders have a saying, too, that ‘he that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword,’ but it must come all in good time; we can’t carry matters now with the same high hand that we used to. The Gentiles are too strong, and when we smite them now, they smite back. The fellow has had a fair trial, and we couldn’t prove he did the deed. He’sa marked man, though, for all of that; he might as well get his coffin ready; he’ll need it.” ‘Clark, either that man or myself must die; we can’t breathe the same air and live!” cried the Texan, his eyes blazing, and he trembling all over with nervous excitement. “Hallo, hallo!” exclaimed the Danite, surveying the speaker in astonishment; ‘‘ what’s come over you? Have you been drink- ing?” x No, no! it is fire in mhy veins, not liquor!” the Texan replied, quickly. *‘I tell you either this man or I must die, His pres- ence poisons the air for we!” “You mean Gold Dan?” the Mormon asked, unable to under- stand the meaning of this strange excitement, and still inclining to the belief that the Texan had been drinking too freely. “Yes, Gold Dan, as you call him, but I know him under another name—under two other names, and neither one is rightly his own. He has as many names as any horse-thief on the border, and as many lives as a cat, but Ive marked him for my prey, and by Heaven, I'll kill him before he is a week older! “You had better be careful that’ he don’t kill you,” the Danite observed, gravely. ‘‘This man is no greentorn; I’m not in the habit of taking water much, and the time has been when I’ve run this town, but I’m not over-anxious to tackle this fellow single-handed. I’m not on the look-out for a tomb- stone at present. We've terribly underrated this man,” ‘Ts he more than mortal, then, that he cannot die?” the Texan i ntempt. ‘ wk nd but "ia man that makes trouble with him might as well make his will beforehand so as to be prepared for acci- ” reece to me!” persisted the Texan, in his quick, excitable way. ‘I know you Mormons well; the Destroying Angels still exist, and report says that you are their chief. This man has de- fied your laws, tampered with your women and killed one of your brothers; you have decreed his death! I am as sure of it as though I sat in council and heard the sentence. I will take the job off your hands, for I hunger for his blood; his life be- longs to me! I have fled from him, put miles of solid earth between us, leagues of rushing water, and yet still he follows me. I will fly no more! I will turn upon and rend him asthe hunted slave in the jungle turns upon and slays the bloodhound follow- ing without mercy upon his track! — All I ask of youis protection! I mean to kill this man secretly if I can, openly if I must; and then, when red-handed I fly, where can I tind shelter? “Come to my den in the hills,” replied the Danite, prorhptly. “I will keep a horse saddled and bridled always ready for you, day and night. Push right for Salt Lake City. I will attach in- Gold “Dan. © 13 structions for you to the’ flap of the saddle, and make arrange- ments so that you will be provided with fresh horses at the pro- per places. The password will be ‘John Lee,’ and once safe at his ranch, in Southern Utah, not even the United States government could reach you!” ‘Prepare all, at once, for I shall strike the blow at the first opportunity.” And then the Texan glided away. “The fellow is crazy, but there’s method in his madness,” Clark muttered, 7 CHAPTER XVI A SHREWD SCHEME, Tur setting sun was slowly sinking behind the far-off western peaks to its bed in the great Pacific Ocean. Its last red rays fell full upon.a little group seated by the door of the Bear River Fairy’s shanty, that is if two humans can be with correctness termed a group, Seated upon a projecting bowlder, busily engaged in sewing, was the fairy in person, pretty Polly Pickles, while resting upon the sward close by, his arms caressing his legs, with his knees drawn up to meet his chin, was the odd, peculiar old man known far and wide as Old Joe Cripples. For a long time old Joe had lived in the Bear river region; he had seen the town of Corinne grow from a single house into its present metropolitan dimensions. _ We use the word “metropolitan” in its Californian sense, for in that wonderful golden land every thriving mining-camp that promises fair to outstrip its immediate neighbors is termed a metropolis. ' And old Joe. had always looked the same in the memory of the earliest inbabitant. Gaunt in stature and thin in flesh, white-haired and gray- bearded; thehair thin and the beard scrubby; the face a peculiar one, the nose broken and curved like an eagle’s beak, the small gray eyes deep-sunken in the head and half-hid by projecting eyebrows. , ' His right leg, misshapen and deformed, at first sight seemed useless, and this infirmity had given him his nickname of Cripples, which had completely swallowed up his own original name, that is if he had ever had any, a fact, which he bluntly denied when questioned upon the subject. ts ‘‘Cripples is my name,” he was wont to say when questione by some inquisitive stranger in regard to the subject. ‘‘Old Joe Cripples, an’ nothin’ else. Ain’t it good enough, hey? W’at do I want with another name? Ef it don't suit yer, yer ain’t obleeged to usé it; so tote yerself somewhar else!” And all this uttered in a peculiar shrill squeal strangely unlike the usual tones of a human voice. . Cripples was strangely reserved, too, as to where he had come from and how long he had lived in the Bear river valley. As far back as the memory of the oldest Mormons in the neighborhood ' extended, the men who had followed the lead of the prophet, Brigham Young, across the trackless wilderness, after the bloody, business at Nauvoo, to the “promised land” beside the Great Salt Lake, Joe Cripples had existed, . " Then as now an old man crippled and living—no one knew how. But the old man was not half so badly disabled as he pretended to be, When he chose to exert himself he could get over the ground at pretty rapid speed, and keep it up for a considerable distance too; and then, as far as riding was concerned, he was a regular Indian. He owned a sorry little Indian pony, a poor enough beast to look at, and which no sane man would have been willing to give ten dollars for, but like a singed cat the horse was far better than he looked, and was in reality a wonderfully tough little animal And so, thanks to the horse, old Joe Cripples was far from being a stay-at-home. | Most people who were acquainted with the old man believed that he was slightly touched in the upper story; if not really crazy, yet not altogether in his right mind; and then, again, there were a few sage men who would shake their heads wisely whenever old Cripples became the subject of conversation, and intimate with considerable force that they believed the old man to be more knave than fool. , And these men who believed this were chiefly Mormons, who suspected evil in the old man because he had no particular way of gaining a living, and yet managed to exist And how the girl Polly had come to live with the old man was mystery two. . In the old time during the early settlement of the Salt Lake valley, the old fellow had had no companion, but the gir! had appeared during the last ten years, and Cripples, when questioned in regard to her, had bluntly told the questioners to mind their own business; “‘the gal” was “his’n,” and that was enough. But since the advent of the girl, and her growth to woman- | hood, it was noticed that the old chap had a great many more — visitors than in the past. Men—generally young men with an eye for a pretty girl—would go a mile or two out of their way in o.der to pass the solitary cabin by the river, and since Polly had set up for a doctress, thanks to the knowledge of herbs and such like simple remediesimparted to her by the old man, she had no reason to complain of lack of patronage. @ With his little keen eyes the old man had been intently watch- ing the face of the girl as she bent over her sewing. It was plain that unusual thoughts were in his mind. ; __tPally ” ‘cried he, abruptly, in the shrill squeal peculiar, to s Gomicbooks = f 4 al wat