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

  Until the discovery of gold on Rafter, Ben Stowe had been merely another rustler. Not that anybody else in the Rafter country had dared accuse him, but it was generally known.

  The gold discovery had been his big chance, and he jumped to take it. From the first he had understood the possibilities … some of them. The idea of seizing the mine itself he owed to Ray Hollister.

  Hollister had recognized the power that lay in control of the mines, and he grabbed for it. But in this he overestimated himself and underestimated others. He had looked upon Ben Stowe as a down-at-heel hired man, and he forgot to consider that the fires of ambition might burn just as strongly in another as in himself. And suddenly Ray was out and Ben was in control.

  The end was near. The offers had been made, not only for the Sun Strike, but for the Glory Hole as well, offers large enough to interest them as an escape from a constant drain, yet not large enough to cause them to wonder.

  Ben Stowe stared at the trees and thought of the years ahead. Once the mine was in the possession of himself and his partner, he would cut all his ties with the old life, and cut them with a ruthless hand. The mine would make millions; business in the town would be worked back to normal, not so suddenly as to cause trouble, but with a deft hand. People would soon forget what Ben Stowe had done, or remember it, as the West often did, as the harmless escapades of another time.

  The door from the outer office opened and Ben Stowe felt a swift surge of anger. He was beginning not to like it when someone presumed enough to come bursting into his office. But this was Gib Gentry.

  Suddenly he saw Gentry with new eyes. Gentry and he were old friends, but in the future that Stowe planned, where would Gentry fit? And with sudden, chill awareness he knew he would not fit at all.

  Gentry dropped into a chair and put his boots on Ben’s desk, and Ben Stowe again felt that swift anger. Gib was too damned familiar. But even as he thought that, he was surprised at himself.

  Why the sudden fury? He had always been a man who kept his temper on a leash. It was that coldness and control that had brought him to where he was … why the sudden anger now?

  Gentry bit the end from a cigar. “Hell, Ben, you should’ve been down the street. Who the hell do you think I ran into?”

  “Mike Shevlin?”

  “Now how the hell did you know that?”

  Ben Stowe was pleased with himself. It was a little thing, a simple thing, but long ago he had realized the importance of knowing what was going on around the country, and had taken pains to see that he learned of new arrivals, or of any occurrence that was out of the ordinary. He had several sources of information, one of which was the marshal.

  As a member of the town council, he had directed the marshal in his duties. All he had learned now was that a stranger, a very salty customer, had been up on Boot Hill looking at Eli’s grave, but when he put that together with a few other items he could make a fairly safe guess.

  Gentry pushed his hat back on his head. “Damn it, Ben! Seemed like old times, havin’ Mike around. He looks good, too.”

  Ben Stowe shuffled some papers on his desk and wished Gentry would go. Gib had always been a bit of a damned fool. Always ready to pick up a fast dollar, but carrying a wide streak of sentiment. After all, he and Shevlin had never been all that thick.

  “Look, Gib, you be careful what you say. There was a meeting at the old mill last night … and then another man rode up through the rain. My man thought it was either Hollister or somebody following him. Whoever it was put a bullet in my man.”

  “You can forget that. Mike never had a damn’ bit of use for Ray, and vice versa. Ray’s small change, and Mike always knew it.”

  “I never cottoned to him, anyway,” Ben said irritably. “I know he was a friend of yours, but what does it look like, him riding in just at this time? You know how tight everything is. If we have trouble now it could blow the lid off—or tighten it up so hard it might be years before we could make it pay off.”

  “Hollister’s just a sorehead. He can’t hurt us.”

  Ben Stowe gave him an impatient look. “Gib, you never could see past your nose. There’s one thing you forget—Ray Hollister could go to the governor.”

  Gentry was incredulous. “The governor? Aw, Ben, you’re lettin’ this get on your nerves! What interest would the governor have in this place?”

  “The governor,” Ben Stowe replied, “married Jack Moorman’s daughter, that’s all. And if that isn’t enough, the governor’s father rode in here on a cattle drive as a partner of Jack’s, and after his father died, Jack practically raised him. He was in Washington when old Jack was killed, and if he had been governor then, he’d have raised hell.”

  Gentry shifted uneasily in his chair. All the pleased excitement of Shevlin’s return was gone. He took his feet down from the desk and wished he had never come to see Ben. Things just weren’t the same any more. Ben was impatient all the time; he never took time for a drink with him, never talked it up like in the old days. And now this about the governor. Of course, he remembered it, now that he thought of it. He had forgotten, that was all. Anyway, Jack Moorman had been dead for years—that was all over.

  “Hollister couldn’t prove anything,” he said. “He wasn’t even there.”

  “There are some who were,” Stowe replied sourly, “and when a horse starts swishin’ his tail there’s no telling what burrs he’ll pick up.”

  Gentry was suddenly hot and uncomfortable. He had never forgotten the contempt in old Jack’s eyes as they battered him to his knees. That look had penetrated to the very core of Gentry’s being, and for months he had waked up shaking with fright and bathed in sweat, remembering those eyes.

  The old man never had a chance. Struck down from behind, his gun belt had been cut through, removing any chance of resistance. They had not wanted to use a gun or a knife. There was bad feeling between the miners and the cattlemen, and it was pay day night. They planned for it to look like something done by drunken miners.

  “If you think so much of Shevlin,” Stowe was saying, “you get him out of here. He could make trouble.”

  When the door closed after Gentry, Stowe put his feet on his desk. No need to tell Gentry the word on Shevlin was already out. There was no longer any need to tell Gentry anything. After they moved the gold, something would have to be done about Gib Gentry. He had outlived his usefulness.

  Gentry stood outside under the awning staring down the street. He bit the end from a fresh cigar. The hell with Ben Stowe. The hell with them all.

  He had had more to drink than he had ever had before, but what did it mean, after all? He never had any fun any more, and Stowe had changed. Hardly talked to him any more, and whenever Gentry came around Ben made it seem as if he was talking nonsense, or was acting like a fool.

  Gib Gentry stood there on the street and looked bleakly into a future that held no promise. He wasn’t a kid any more. And he was hitting the bottle too hard. He had known that for some time, but he had never actually allowed it to shape into words before. Uneasily, his thoughts kept returning to Ben Stowe. Ben was a hard man. He had best step very lightly.

  Suddenly he was swept by anger. Step lightly? Who the hell did Ben think he was, anyway? Why the hell should he step lightly for Ben Stowe or any other man?

  Now Ben had told him to get Mike Shevlin out of town. Just how was he to go about that? It had been a long time since Gib had seen Mike or heard more than vague rumors of him, but any man with half an eye could see Mike Shevlin had been riding where the owl hooted and the long winds blew … no mistake about that.

  It was a hell of a situation when a man like Shevlin might be killed—and he would take a lot of killing. Ben Stowe could be almighty dumb sometimes. He should be able to see that the best thing he could do would be to leave Mike Shevlin alone.

  Gib Gentry had always considered himself a hard dangerous man, and he had been all of that, but he was also a man with a love for reliving the old days, sharing a bottle,
and talking of the old times. The truth was that Gib, like many another, had never quite grown up. In reliving the old days and replaying the old games, he avoided a hard look at whatever future might lay ahead of him.

  It was going to rain again; clouds were gathering over the mountains. Gentry’s cigar had gone out. He stared at it, disgusted, and then turned and walked down the street. Yes, Ben had changed. He cared damned little for his old friends. Somewhere in the back of Gib’s brain a tiny bell sounded its warning, but Gib did not hear it. He was thinking about a drink.

  Mike Shevlin followed Burt Parry up the narrow canyon, between occasional trees, clumps of brush, and tumbled boulders or slides of broken rock. When they reached the claim Parry said, “There’s good water at a spring about sixty yards up the canyon, and unless you fancy yourself as a cook, I’ll put the grub together.”

  “By the time I’d eaten my own cooking the second time, I decided against that.”

  He stripped the saddle from his horse, and glanced around, but there was little enough to see. Parry’s claim shanty stood on the bench made by the mine’s dump. It was a simple two-room cabin, hastily but securely put together. About thirty feet from it was a small corral, on one side of which was a lean-to shack used as a tool house. Beyond was the opening of the tunnel.

  Up the canyon, just visible from where they stood, there was another dump, larger than their own. No buildings were visible there.

  “Whose claim is that?” Shevlin asked.

  “It’s abandoned. That was the discovery claim for Sun Strike. The gold was found on the mesa right above there, so they decided to drift into the hill from here, but they gave up when they found the ore body lay on the other side of the hill.”

  When they sat down to eat, darkness was filling the canyon, softening all the harshness of the bleak hills. Shevlin, drinking his second cup of coffee, was listening to the birds in the bottom of the canyon. Suddenly, the sound ceased. Parry was talking, and if he noticed the change he gave no indication of it.

  “Many visitors out here?” Shevlin asked.

  “The vein seems to be widening out, and I believe in about sixty feet … What was that you said?”

  “I asked if you had many visitors?”

  “Here? Why would anybody come out here? They all think I’m crazy to work this claim. I haven’t had two visitors in the past four months.”

  “How far back does this canyon go?”

  Parry shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I never followed it up. About a mile further along it narrows down to just a slash in the mountain. They say you can touch both sides with outstretched arms. Hell of a mess of rock back in there.”

  Mike Shevlin got up and went to the door. He stood there, leaning against the doorjamb. It might have been a roving lion, but he had a hunch the birds had shut up because a man was passing.

  “When you get up in the morning,” Parry said, “you can muck out that rock I shot down on my last shift. I’ll be riding back into town.”

  “It’s a prosperous town,” Shevlin commented.

  “Less you say about that the better. I stay away from town most of the time, and I never talk about anything but my own claim, or whatever news we hear from out of town.”

  At daylight, with Parry gone, Mike Shevlin went into the tunnel and settled down to work. He had always rather liked working with a shovel; it had the advantage of giving a man time to think, and he had a lot of that to do.

  What it shaped up to was that Ray Hollister had been using the cattlemen as a wedge to get back into power, a power he had been aced out of … and somebody was going to get hurt.

  Ben Stowe was no hot-headed, conceited fool like Hollister. He was cold, cruel, and tough in a way Hollister never dreamed of. If Hollister chose to get himself killed, that was his own business, but the way he was headed he would get others killed as well.

  Eve believed in Hollister, and it was likely that she was a little in love with him. Babcock was fiercely loyal to Hollister, as he had always been; but had he any idea what Hollister was planning?

  The town was rich and suspicious and frightened. It was afraid of losing its riches, it was afraid of being exposed, and yet every one of them probably knew the lid was about to blow off.

  Somebody had killed Eli Patterson and Jack Moorman, then had moved in and taken control. Undoubtedly all reports leaving town went from Ben Stowe’s office. The shift bosses would be carefully selected henchmen of his. Everyone in town, in one way or another, had a stake in keeping things as they were.

  There was, of course, Wilson Hoyt.

  If there was one man Shevlin hoped to have on his side it was Hoyt, and so far as he knew, Hoyt was incorruptible. He was a man of simple purpose. His job was to insure peace in the town, and that he intended to do. Hoyt, Shevlin was sure, had no hand in what was going on, although he might be aware of it. He would make no stand unless somehow it affected his work.

  While Mike’s mind was busy with these thoughts, he kept working with his shovel. Now he wheeled his loaded wheelbarrow to the end of the plank runway and dumped it. As he turned around to go back, he saw Eve Bancroft ride her horse up on the dump.

  “You’re wasting your time,” she said. “There’s no high-grade there.”

  “I was beginning to guess as much.” He sensed her dislike, and wondered why she had come.

  Her eyes seemed to tighten a little. “Mike, we want you on our side.”

  He put the wheelbarrow down and straightened up. “You’re choosing up sides? What for?” He pushed his hat back and wiped away the sweat with the back of his hand. “You don’t think shooting a few miners will stop them, do you?”

  She repressed her animosity with difficulty. “When this fight is over this will be cattle country again, and nothing but cattle.”

  “You can’t drive pigs from a trough with a switch.”

  “Ray thinks different.”

  “Hollister always tried taking in too much territory, but he’s not that much of a fool.”

  Her fury flared. “Ray Hollister was a big man here before, and he will be again! Now that he’s back, things will change!”

  “Eve,” Shevlin said patiently, “Hollister will get you hurt. He was never a big man anywhere, and never will be. He just can’t cut the mustard. Years ago, when you were just a child, Ray Hollister had a good ranch that could have kept him comfortable for the rest of his days, but it wasn’t enough for him.

  “He wanted to be top dog. He hung around Jack Moorman, and when Jack spat, Ray spat twice as hard; when Moorman grumbled, Ray swore. Well, he tried to be bigger than he was cut out to be, and they ran him out of the country. This time they’ll bury him.”

  “You’re jealous! You were always afraid of him!”

  “Ask him about the whipping I gave him out at Rock Springs. The truth is, Eve, that nobody was ever afraid of Ray.”

  She wheeled her horse, her features rigid with anger. “I’ve tried for the last time! You leave the country, Mike Shevlin, and leave it fast! You’ve had your chance.”

  Regretfully, he watched her race her horse down the canyon. She was a pretty young woman, but Ray Hollister had convinced her, and she was one of those who could never see the other side of any question… . Ray was not so old, when you came to think of it. He would be about thirty-eight now, and Eve Bancroft was twenty or so. And that much of a spread in ages was not uncommon in the West… . or in other places, for that matter.

  The trouble was that Ray Hollister, driven by a blind fury to realize his ambition, would get somebody killed. All the way along the line Ray had missed the boat, and to a man of his ego that was intolerable. He was striking out frantically now in desperation and bitterness. If he had ever thought of anyone but himself, except those successful people he had formerly idolized, he certainly was thinking of no one else now. Not even of Eve.

  As Shevlin worked at the muck pile in the hot end of the drift, sweat pouring from him, it came to him suddenly that there was a
way to stop all this. If the richness of the mines could be brought into the open, suddenly exposed, then Ben Stowe and his crowd would have nothing to fight for, and it would stop Ray Hollister too.

  The news that the mines were rich would immediately destroy any chance of Stowe or any of his crowd buying the mines. It would bring in a rush of outsiders, and further buying of high-grade would have to be curbed. And the ranchers would realize, no matter what Hollister might say, that the mines were not about to be abandoned.

  But how could he, Mike Shevlin, bring that about? Nobody would accept the word of a drifting cowhand with a bad reputation. He must have evidence, concrete evidence in the shape of high-grade ore. Moreover, he must locate the cache where the high-grade was hidden. If he did not do this, the thieves would certainly take the gold and escape when their thefts were disclosed. And in such case, Laine Tennison would be defrauded.

  By the time Mike had mucked out the drift it was mid-afternoon. Right at the face it was easier, because Burt Parry had gotten a sheet of boiler plate from someone and had placed it on the floor of the drift before firing his shots and bringing down the muck on top of the sheet. This was old practice in the larger mines, but you found little of that sort of thing in such prospect holes as Parry’s.

  Mike lined up various lengths of drill steel near the face; then he came out of the drift and carried water up from the spring for a bath. While he washed he had water getting hot on the stove, and when he had finished he made coffee and a sandwich. He would have a good meal in town, but he knew from long experience that a man was foolish to start out for anywhere without eating something … too many things could happen.

  And when he got to town he was going to see Wilson Hoyt first thing.

  CHAPTER 5

  WILSON HOYT SAT behind his battered roll-top desk, his feet propped up, reading a newspaper. He looked up as Mike Shevlin walked in, and acknowledged his presence with a brief nod and no show of pleasure.