Novel 1965 - The High Graders (v5.0) Read online

  Hayes flushed angrily. “No, I ain’t! And don’t come blamin’ me if he hears of it!” He went out the door and closed it quickly after him.

  For a moment there was silence, and then Pete Hillaby stood up. “You can count me in, Doc. I’ll stand with you.”

  In the end, there were nine men left. Doctor Rupert Clagg glanced from one to another. “All right, boys. From this moment we go armed, and no one of us is to be alone. You’ll get the word from Billy here, and we’ll all meet at his place. In the meantime I’ll have a talk with Wilson Hoyt.”

  When all of them had left, Dr. Clagg turned to Laine. “Well, we’ve made a start, and I believe we’ll carry it off.”

  “With only nine men?” Laine was frightened. “Rupert, we’ve got to get word to Mike Shevlin before anything happens.”

  “He’s a tough man—we could use him,” Clagg agreed. He hesitated. “I’ll ride out and get him.”

  “No,” Laine protested. “You stay here. If you ride out there everyone will know something is happening. I’ll go get him.”

  And at last he agreed, for there was much to do in Rafter, and very little time.

  Laine Tennison rode her dapple-gray mare out of town toward Parry’s claim, following only a few minutes behind Ben Stowe. She rode swiftly, keeping in mind the location of Parry’s claim, for the mining maps of the area that she had studied for hours were clearly fixed in her memory. The trail to the claim was round about, although the actual distance, as the crow flies, was quite short.

  Finally she turned into the narrow canyon. It was not hard to recognize the mountain in which the two mines were located, and she knew at once the mouth of the discovery tunnel when she saw it. Though the tunnel had not been used, it was clearly indicated on her maps.

  As she rode up to the claim, the first thing she saw was Ben Stowe’s horse. Stowe was nowhere in sight, and neither was Burt Parry or Mike Shevlin.

  Laine stood very still and looked across the canyon. There was the dump at the discovery claim. And then she suddenly knew where they were.

  She went to her saddlebag and got her pistol.

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN HE WAS well within the tunnel, Mike Shevlin paused to light his candle, then placed it in the holder on his cap. Although he had worked underground, he had never cared much for it; and he hesitated now, knowing the traps that might lie before him.

  As he went forward, he counted his steps, and when he had gone fifty paces into the tunnel he paused to listen, but there was no sound. He tilted his head back, letting the light play on the rock overhead. It looked solid. The chances were that if this place was in use at all, somebody was barring down to prevent loose rock from falling.

  He walked on a little further, and an ever so slight bend in the drift cut him off from the spot of light that was the mouth of the tunnel. Suddenly he saw the ladder of a manway, and beyond it the end of the drift. The ladder led upward into the darkness.

  Again he listened.

  There was no sound but the slow drip of water near the end of the drift. He turned and started up the ladder.

  Then he thought he heard the sound of a single-jack, somewhere far off, but the sound ceased almost at once and he was not sure about it. He paused again, looking up the ladder, remembering how Laine’s investigator had been caught in just such a place by falling drills. The long steel shafts must have gone clear through him … it was an unpleasant thought.

  Suddenly he saw the opening of a drift on his left. The ladder continued on upward, but he stepped off and stood on the platform at the lip of the manway. He listened, but could hear nothing; then, squatting on his heels, he studied the planks of the platform. The dust was thick, and undisturbed. Obviously this area was unworked, yet the flame of his candle indicated a slight movement of air. Somewhere down that tunnel there was an opening, either from the drift he was in, or from a connecting one.

  He felt nervous and jumpy. This was different from facing a man with a gun in the open air. Here it was dark and still, a place where a man without a light would be helpless. For anyone who had never worked underground it was always a shock to realize the complete absence of light, the utter blackness, deep in a mine or a cave. There is no such thing as the eyes growing accustomed to absolute darkness … there one is completely blind.

  Anyone he might meet down here would have the advantage of knowing the mine—he would know every manway, every cross-cut, raise, or winze. He would know where to go and how to get there. Mike, a stranger to the mine, might find himself in an old stope or a waste-fill from which there was no escape.

  He turned back to the ladder and began climbing, but he paused after only a few steps. He was perspiring profusely, and he knew it was not from heat—it was from fear.

  Mike Shevlin had known fear before: only a man who was a fool could say that he had never been afraid. On that manway Shevlin would be almost helpless if someone decided to do to him what they had done to the other investigator. And nobody could prove it was anything but an accident.

  He had climbed only fifty feet when he heard voices, and far above him he saw a faint glimmer of light. Someone was coming toward him.

  To go back down was impossible in the time he had, but right above him, on his left, another drift opening showed, black and empty. With quick steps he was up the ladder and into the dark opening. He had an instant, no more, in which to see that he stood on a “station” about twenty feet across; opposite him the drift disappeared into the depths of the mountain.

  There was no time to hesitate, for already he could hear feet on the ladder. He took off his cap and pinched out the light. And then, in absolute blackness, he tiptoed across to the tunnel. He missed the opening by a few feet, but he found it and had only just got inside when he saw the glimmer of light nearing the station he had just abandoned.

  Feeling his way along the wall of the drift, he worked his way deeper into the mine, hoping for a cross-cut that would enable him to get out of sight. The men on the ladder might go on down, but if they stopped he was in trouble.

  They stopped.

  Flattened against the wall of the drift, he waited. He could hear the murmur of voices, and in another moment a man came into sight—a stocky, powerful-looking man lighting a pipe. The second man followed. Neither man seemed to be armed with anything but a pick-handle, though that was quite enough in case of a hand-to-hand fight in the mine.

  At first Shevlin could hear only snatches of their conversation. Obviously, they had stopped off on the station to have a smoke … but what would they do when they finished that? Would they come along the drift toward him?

  “… jumpy. I tell you, Al, I don’t like the looks of it. You been down to the Nevada House since? Or the Blue Horn?”

  Shevlin could not distinguish the words of the other man, but the first one spoke again. “Well, I was down there, and there wasn’t nobody around. That’s a bad sign. I tell you, I can smell vigilantes. I seen this happen before. You can raise all the hell you want, rob a man, or even kill one, and nobody says much; but you bother a woman or do one any harm, and folks change.”

  There was another indistinguishable comment, and then: “You may not be worried, but I am. And I ain’t the only one. The boss is worried, too. You watched him lately? He’s jumpy as a cat.”

  Presently they returned to the manway and went on down. Shevlin waited for them to be well away, then he struck a match and lighted his caplamp.

  He walked on along the drift, passing several cross-cuts, and once a bank of four ore chutes, thick with dust and long unused.

  His uneasiness increased with every step. He knew he was walking into trouble, and the last thing he wanted was trouble underground. In such a place it was always risky to use a gun, for the concussion might bring down some rock, especially in a long-worked area.

  It seemed obvious that the two men were guards following a regular patrol, and they might appear again at any time.

  He had never seen a working p
lan of the mine, and had no idea how extensive the workings were. There was now a continual drip of water, and here and there were shallow pools.

  Suddenly he came to a cross-cut. A few feet in, on one side, was a heavy plank door, which he found was locked.

  This could be a powder room, but he had never seen one built with such care. The heavy planks had been set back into the rock on either side and strengthened by huge twelve-by-twelve posts. He took hold of the handle of the door, but it was so solid that it could neither be moved nor shaken. And it was fitted so snugly that it offered no place for a bar or wedge. His guess was that the planks were three-by-twelves—and short of a battering ram or dynamite, such a door could not be forced. Half an hour’s work with a good axe might do the job—but even so, there might be a guard posted somewhere on the other side of the door.

  This then, had to be the opening into the area from which they were mining the high-grade ore.

  The cross-cut beyond the drift on the other side was half filled with waste. The main drift led on into the mountain, and he surmised he was almost halfway through to the side toward Rafter Crossing.

  Thoughtfully, Shevlin studied the rock in which the door was framed, but it appeared to be as solid as the mountain of which it was a part. He stood there a moment, reluctant to give up, and attempted to visualize his present position in terms of the two mine shafts. But a man’s movement underground can be deceptive, and he could not be sure.

  As he hesitated, he felt a growing sense of uneasiness, a disturbing feeling that he was watched. Was there a peekhole, somehow disguised, in the door itself? He shrugged and turned away, his caplamp throwing a feeble glow around him.

  He walked back to the main drift and stopped there, wondering if he dared go deeper into the mine. At the same time, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something that sent a chill through him.

  On top of the piled-up waste rock in the other side of the cross-cut was a rifle muzzle, and he had no doubt at all that somebody lay behind it, ready to shoot if necessary.

  An interesting gleam from the wall of the drift caught his eye, and he stepped over to it, making a pretense of studying the rock. He knocked off a corner with the prospector’s pick he carried in his belt and examined it in the light from his caplamp. As he studied it, he tried to think what it was best to do.

  The obvious thing to do was to turn and walk back down the drift the way he had come. If he did so, his presence might be passed off as a harmless exploring of an old mine-working. Under the circumstances it was highly improbable, but it just might work. On the other hand, would the hidden watcher allow him to go? Might he not shoot at any moment?

  Shevlin started to turn away when he heard, from down the drift, along the way he himself had come, the sound of boots. Someone was coming toward him, someone who could be no great distance away. Quickly, Shevlin turned and went up the drift toward the main working of the mine, and he had gone no more than fifty feet before he came to another row of four ore chutes and a manway.

  There was only time to observe that the dust on the ladder was undisturbed, and then he was climbing, swiftly and silently. Not thirty feet above, he entered a stope where the ore had been mined out and shot down from overhead. Crawling over the heaped-up rock, he crouched down in a small hollow and waited, listening.

  The place where he had chosen to hide was right at the top of an empty chute where his slightest movement might be heard below, but where he himself could hear what went on down there. He heard the distant footsteps, then came a pause. Watching over the rim of the chute, his own light placed on the muck well behind him, he saw the faint movement of the walker’s light, but he heard no voices.

  What of the man behind the gun? Was he equally unknown to whoever had come along the tunnel?

  Suddenly, he heard a faint gasp, and then the rustle of clothing. Someone whose feet and legs he could see, scurried past the chute and stepped into the space between that chute and the next. Shevlin could hear again the rustle of denim against the framework of the chute. And then, very faintly, he heard still other steps.

  This was impossible, and yet it was happening. Three men were now in hiding in the old mine-working all within a few yards of the great plank door!

  The new steps came on, hesitated, then continued on again. They, too, paused when they faced that solidly framed door. Breathing ever so faintly, Shevlin watched over the edge of the chute, watched the reflection of distant light; in a moment whoever it was who held the light came on up the drift that ran past the chutes.

  Suddenly, the man below stirred, and stepped quickly out into the tunnel.

  “Well, now. Fancy seein’ you here!” That was Ben Stowe’s voice. “A mine is no place for a lady. Would you mind tellin’ me what you’re lookin’ for?”

  “Oh! You frightened me. Aren’t you Ben Stowe?” It was Laine Tennison who spoke. “I’ve never been in a mine before—there’s so much I’d like to know, and I don’t believe Dr. Clagg would have the time to show me around. Would you tell me about the mine, Mr. Stowe? For instance, what are these things?”

  She craned her neck and looked up the chute, and there was an instant when Mike Shevlin was sure she had seen him, just an instant before he pulled his head back.

  “That’s an ore chute,” Stowe answered. “The rock is shot down off the walls and roof up there in the stope, and then pulled out of that chute into a car and trammed—pushed—outside.”

  His boots shifted on the rock below. “Ma’am,” he went on, “what are you doing in this mine? What’s your business here?”

  “Business? Oh, I’ve no business here, Mr. Stowe. I just saw the tunnel and thought I’d look in. Do they mine gold here? Or is it silver? I don’t know very much about mining, I’m afraid, but it all looks very exciting.”

  “How do you happen to be out here, anyway?”

  “Here? Oh, you mean in the canyon? I was looking for Mr. Shevlin. Dr. Clagg wanted to see him; and Mrs. Clagg and I … well, we thought we would invite him for supper. He’s very good-looking—don’t you think so, Mr. Stowe?”

  “I never noticed.” Ben Stowe was obviously puzzled, and Shevlin could scarcely restrain a chuckle. She was trying, trying hard, but would it work? Would she appear so much the rattle-brained female that Stowe would let her go?

  “You’re very handsome yourself, Mr. Stowe. Would you like to come to supper? It’s nothing fancy. I mean, well, after all it’s just supper, not a dinner or anything fancy. So you’d have to take potluck, but I do so admire western men, and I don’t know if I’ll find Mr. Shevlin, but even if I do, you’re welcome. In fact, we’d simply adore having you.”

  Stowe started to speak, but she gave him no chance. “Why, just the other day Dottie was saying—Dottie, that’s Mrs. Clagg—that she couldn’t understand why some girl hadn’t set her cap for you. You’re so successful and all.”

  “Ma’am, where’d you get that candle?” was Ben Stowe’s response. “Looks to me like you came fixed for looking at mines.”

  “Oh, this? I found it in that cabin there, Burt Parry’s cabin. I didn’t think he’d mind if I—you don’t think he’d mind do you, Mr. Stowe? I mean, I just borrowed it. I’ll put it right back where I found it.” She paused only a moment.

  “Mr. Stowe … or may I call you Ben? Would you take me back to town? I mean, it must be getting dark outside, and if you would take me home I’d be ever so glad … I mean, it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would it?”

  “No, no trouble,” Stowe answered.

  Mike Shevlin, crouching, his legs cramped and aching, heard their footsteps retreating down the drift. He waited for what he felt was a safe time, and then, with great care to make no sound, he straightened up, took up his cap, and walked to the manway. All was dark and still down below. Softly, he went down the ladder and tiptoed along the drift.

  Far down the tunnel he could see two bobbing lights. After waiting until they disappeared, he crept forward. With gun in hand, he delib
erately looked toward the cross-cut where he had seen the rifle muzzle. It was gone.

  Scrambling up the pile of muck, he peered over behind it. There was a snug nest among the rocky debris that had been pitched into the tunnel, and scattered here and there among the rocks were crumbs and bits of food. Someone had been waiting here for quite some time; perhaps, by the look of the place, for days or even weeks.

  Where had this person gone? Had he slipped away down the drift while Ben Stowe talked to Laine? It seemed to be the only explanation, for if the heavy door had been opened it would surely have made some sound, or some change in the draught of air moving through the mine.

  At the opening of the tunnel, his light snubbed out, Mike Shevlin paused and waited, listening, but he heard no sound.

  He stepped outside, and not until he was beside his horse did he allow himself to take a long, deep breath of the clean, fresh air. It was good to be alive … very good indeed.

  And then he thought of Laine Tennison. Ben Stowe was a sharp customer … how long would he be fooled? Or was he fooled at all?

  Perhaps even now …

  CHAPTER 16

  MIKE SHEVLIN CHECKED his Winchester and shoved it down in the boot. Then he started his horse down the canyon. He was thinking that the man behind that muck pile in the cross-cut must have been Burt Parry. Not a word had passed between him and Ben Stowe … did Stowe know he was there?

  And then Shevlin went on to think of his real problem. How could he get the gold from behind that door? First, he would have to get rid of Burt Parry, somehow; and if Parry had been chosen to guard that gold he must be a more salty customer than he appeared to be.

  With Parry out of the way, the door would have to be blasted open, or cut open with an axe … and then what? A half-million in gold, if that was what there was in there, is not a matter to be handled with ease. Gold is heavy, and a half-million isn’t something you put in your pocket.

  Darkness was upon him now; the stars came out, and a low wind blew from off the sagebrush levels where the cattle grazed. Somewhere ahead of him were Laine Tennison and Ben Stowe.