Chapter XXIX
Swen Brodie, whose will had at all times directed, was now absolute dictator. Big and brutal and fearless, drunken with gold, he loomed above his companions, driving them, commanding them, swearing violently that they would do what he told them to do or he’d dash their brains out.
“I led you to it,” he reminded them in a great shouting voice. “But for me never a man of you would of smelled it. There’s enough here to make a thousand men rich, and that’s lucky for you! But we’ve got to hold what we got, and we got to get out of here with it—somehow. That somehow is for me to figure out. And, being as one man’s got to run any job and the rest has got to take orders and take ’em on the jump, you’re doing what I say! If any man jack of you don’t like that, let him open his head right now!”
“There’s no sense scrappin’,” muttered Benny. “An’ we’re all satisfied, I’d say. But there’s no call to start wavin’ a red flag.”
“We’re going down to the lower cave,” said Brodie. “Everything we can pry loose is going down with us. We’ll pitch the loose chunks of gold over the cliff and we’ll stow ’em away somewhere else—where King, if things break some way we don’t look for, won’t find ’em! We start right now, while there’s daylight. What’s more, we move our camp from down the canon to the cave below. Steve Jarrold, you and Tony are elected to that job, and you’d better get a move on. Bring up what grub’s left, and the blankets and stuff. The rest of us will start in firing gold overboard and putting it somewhere more safe—all that’s loose. And at that, think of the great, big, wide, yellow, rotten-soft seam of it down below!”
“Where are you goin’ to put it?” demanded Jarrold.
“Not hiding it from you and Tony, Steve,” cried Brodie sharply. “Put your suspicious ways in your pocket. And, if you’re on the jump, you’ll have our camp truck moved before we’re done. Look alive, will you? A man never knows what’s going to happen.”
“Why not leave it here until we know——?”
“For one thing, because Mark King knows this place. Now, move! Come ahead, you other fellows. You, too, Gratton; we ain’t forgot you.” An uglier note crept into the harsh voice. “You can help. And so can you,” whirling on Gloria. “Woman or no woman, you got hands and feet.”
Night, pitch-black, had come when they had done. Gloria, scarcely able to stand from exhaustion, her body bruised, her hands and arms wounded from many a jagged rock as she had gone back and forth carrying heavy loads, went with the others into the lowest cave in which already the gold had been stowed away. She sank down wearily; she closed her eyes rather than watch the men about their fire, eating noisily, drinking noisily from the bottles which Steve and Tony had brought from their other camp. Trying to remain unnoticed in the shadows was Gratton. Brodie, having commanded that a rude rock wall like King’s be built across the mouth of the cave to shut out the cold, and having laboured with the others at the task, came back to the fire. He took a long pull at a bottle, emptying it and smashing it to tinkling fragments as he hurled it behind him. He caught up a big piece of dried beef and gnawed at it like a dog; though Gloria kept her eyes away from him she could hear the tearing and grinding of the monstrous teeth.
“It’s been a day’s work, at that,” he said with a full mouth. “But we ain’t done. I noticed how no man has said a word about how we split what we found.”
“There’s five of us,” said Benny quickly. “We split it five ways, even, like pardners.”
Brodie turned on him slowly, still rending at his meat, still clutching his rifle and holding it so that no man might forget that he held it.
“Think so, Benny?” he said ponderously. “Being as I’ve worked on this lay a long time, since I let you others in on it, since I led you to it—think that’s the fair way to split it? Now suppose you listen to me. You boys ain’t mentioned a split because it was none of your say and you knew it. Say, in round numbers—but there’s ten times that—that there’s a million dollars tucked away here. Why, there’s mines all through these mountains that never thought of stopping at a million; that was just a fair start! Well, to get going, say there’s an even million. I get just half that; that leaves half a million, don’t it? Now, shut up a minute!” he commanded truculently as more than one man stirred. “Listen to me. That’s five hundred thousand to split between four of you; that’s over a hundred thousand for every man jack of you. And that’s what I call a fair split.”
They growled in their throats at that, but no man took it upon himself to speak out definitely, though they glanced sidewise among themselves. Benny, who always had a thought of his own, said quietly:
“What are you doin’ about Gratton? He’ll claim his share, won’t he? And, if you say him no, he’ll shoot his face off, won’t he?”
“No,” said Brodie. “He won’t.” He paused, swallowed the last of his beef, caught up a bottle from Benny’s side, and drank deeply. Benny, afraid that this bottle, too, still nearly full, would be broken, hastily snatched it back when Brodie had done.
“No,” said Brodie heavily. “Gratton won’t talk.” He grew suddenly quick-spoken—he broke into a volley of accusation; his tongue lent itself to such a rush of vileness that Gloria, shrinking back, covered her ears with her hands. “Gratton stole grub. When grub-stealing was the same as slitting a man’s throat. And what next does he plan? Why, to make trouble; to swear that Benny killed a man; that we was all in it; to get us all hung, if he can, or in the pen; then to grab what’s ours. Look at him. You can see it in his frog eyes! He’s done, that’s what he is!” With a swift gesture his gun was at his shoulder.
Gratton scrambled to his feet with a choking cry. Gloria, too, had sprung up, sick with horror. She looked from Brodie to Gratton, who was not two feet from her. She saw that he was panic-stricken; his fear was choking him, stopping his heart, paralysing his muscles. He wanted to run and could not; he tried to speak but now not even a whisper came from between his writhing lips.
Slowly, an unshaken, senseless piece of machinery, Brodie raised his rifle. Now Gratton’s voice returned to him; a strangling cry broke from his agonized soul. A hand, wildly outthrown, caught at Gloria’s sleeve.
“You, there,” called Brodie, “stand aside. Unless you’re wanting yours too!”
Her own heart was stopping, her feet were leaded. She understood what he said—she knew that it was to her that he spoke—but she wouldn’t believe, couldn’t believe that he meant—that!
Gratton was pressing tight to Gloria, seeking futilely to get behind her. He began to articulate—to beg—to promise——
Brodie fired. A great reverberating roar filled the cavern. Gloria, her brain gone suddenly numb, felt the grip on her arm tighten convulsively. Then it relaxed—slowly. Gratton, his eyes bulging, his mouth wide open, was sinking——
Gloria put her hands over her eyes and screamed. Again and again her scream broke from her. She tried to draw back, to run. But all her strength was gone. She crumpled and settled down almost as Gratton had done, and so close to him that she brushed him with her knee. She felt the body twitch. She leaped to her feet and ran blindly, screaming. She struck against the rock wall and sank down again.
The wonder was that she did not swoon outright. As it was, her soul seemed to float dizzily out of her body and through an utter dark. She thought that she was dying. As though across a vast distance she heard voices.
“Well?” It was the man who had done the shooting, his voice truculent. “Anybody got anything to say? Say it quick, if you have.”
There was a silence. Then a shuffling of feet. Then an answering voice, thin and querulous. It was Benny; he, too, had killed his man.
“He had it coming,” he said eagerly. “Any judge would say so. Stole every bit of grub when stealing grub is the same as cutting a man’s throat, just like you said, Brodie. He had it coming. You done right.”
“You, Jarrold,” demanded Brodie. “Got anything to say?”
Again silence. Then again a voice, Jarrold’s, saying hurriedly:
“No. Benny’s right. He had it coming. Damn fool.”
“And you, Brail? And you, Tony? Got anything to say? Talk lively!”
Brail and Tony, like the others before them, were quick to excuse Brodie’s act. They spoke briefly and relapsed into silence. Then, beginning far away and coming closer with the speed of an onrushing hurricane, Gloria heard heavy feet crunching in the dirt and gravel. A hard hand gripped her shoulder, jerking her to her feet.
“You, friend,” said Brodie. “What have you got to say about it?”
She hung limp in his powerful hand, speechless.
He dragged her closer to the firelight, peering at her with his red-flecked eyes.
“Don’t forget who she is,” another voice was saying. Steve Jarrold’s. “Remember what I told you.”
It was as though he prided himself on the fact that he alone knew her for Gaynor’s daughter, and from it derived a sort of ownership of her; for while the others had never caught a glimpse of her until now, he had filled his eyes with her before. “We got to think this out. She came along with King. Got enough of him and switched to Gratton. That’s like a woman.”
Brodie let her slip down and turned away from her. His mood was not so soon for a woman.
“See she keeps her mouth shut,” he said threateningly. “If she ain’t got sense enough for that she ain’t got sense to go on living.”
Benny stooped and feasted his eyes on her. Then, straightening up, he turned to Jarrold with nodding approval.
“She skins anything I ever saw,” he admitted.
In some strange way it seemed to Gloria that both Benny and Brodie had consigned her to Jarrold as though they admitted his prior claim; as though, among these three, she was looked upon as the property of one. She struggled to her feet.
“Don’t let her go,” said Brodie. “That’s all I got to say about her right now.”
She made an uncertain step toward the mouth of the cave. Jarrold moved at her side. She went faster. He put his hand on her.
“Didn’t you hear what he said?” he asked.
She tried to break away and run. He held her One clear thought and only one formed in her mind. As she had never longed for anything in her life, she yearned for Mark King.
“Mark!” she screamed, “Mark King! Save me.”
Jarrold clapped a big dirty hand over her mouth. He put a wiry arm about her and lifted her and carried her back to the fireside.
“None of that,” he growled in her ear. She shrank away as she felt the tensing of his arm and was conscious of the contact of his rag-clothed body. She grew silent, cowering. She heard a sound of something dragging and could not hide her fascinated eyes. Thus she watched as Brodie gripped the slack of Gratton’s coat shoulders and shoved the body out into the snow. She even marked how the living man spat after the dead.
“Go to the coyotes,” he muttered. “They’re your kind.”
Gloria knew that if she took a step Jarrold would clutch her again. So she stood very still. Brodie came back and threw some wood on the fire and squatted down over the provisions, seeming to be taking stock of them. Perhaps he was but strengthening his heart, digesting the evidence of the case, assuring himself again after the accomplished fact that the deed was just. Still squatting, he drank again, this time from the bottle which had been Gratton’s. As he tilted it up she saw that it was two-thirds full. When he put it down with a long sigh and wiped his wet mouth it was not over half-full. He brooded over the fire, he gave no sign of noticing her.
“Let me go,” she said to Jarrold. “I am sick. I’d die here. Please let me go.”
Jarrold shifted and looked to his companions. Benny shook his head.
“There ain’t no hurry,” he stated judicially. “What sort is she, Steve?”
“She come up to Gaynor’s place along with Gratton,” answered Jarrold as though he knew all about her. “He was crazy gone on her, crazy enough to want to marry her, even. Sent me for the judge. Then Mark King showed up. She fell for him and gave Gratton the go-by. Then she comes into the mountains with King, I guess. Next she gets tired of him and goes back to Gratton.”
“’Frisco woman?” asked Benny.
Jarrold nodded. Benny clacked his tongue. Brodie still brooded at his fire, his eyes sullen upon the fitful flame and red embers.
“Where is King?” asked Brodie.
“Where is King?” repeated Jarrold to Gloria.
“I don’t know,” she answered, speaking with difficulty. “I … Oh, for God’s sake, let me go. I won’t say anything about what I saw; I promise. If you will only let me go.”
“They promise easy and break promises easier,” said Jarrold.
Benny came up and touched Brodie on the shoulder. The squatting man started and scowled. Benny stooped and whispered. Brodie got up heavily and together the two withdrew, going further back in the cave. They talked, but Gloria could not catch the words. She saw the flare of one match after the other as they fell to smoking; the smell of strong tobacco came to her. She looked appealingly to Jarrold. He sidled closer, standing between her and the open.
“I’ll pay you a thousand dollars when I get back to San Francisco,” she whispered eagerly. “Ten thousand! If you’ll let me go now.”
Jarrold pondered, his stupid little eyes steady and unwinking on her.
“A thousand dollars,” he returned slowly, “wouldn’t do me any good if I never got it: as I wouldn’t if none of us got clear of this damn’ snow; neither would ten I And it wouldn’t do me any good if Benny and Brodie shot me full of lead. And it wouldn’t be much, anyhow, if we got away with what we found to-day! Everything being as it is, I ain’t half as strong for a thousand dollars, nor yet ten, right now as I am for you! And you know it, don’t you?”
He tried to ogle her, and her sick dread nearly overwhelmed her.
“And you got sense, too,” went on Jarrold, leering meaningly. “It won’t be bad to have a man stuck on you that’s got all kind of kale, will it, girlie?”
As he poured out his wretched insinuations she was trembling; in her heart she thought that she had spoken truly and would die if they kept her here.
“I am married. To Mr. King,” she said as steadily as she could. “I want to go to him. You have no right to keep me here.”
“But you don’t even know where he is,” Jarrold reminded her slyly.
Brodie and Benny had given over their whispering and came back to the fire, where Brail and the Italian looked up at them sharply. Here was another guarded conference among the four; Gloria, though she could watch them, was unable to hear what they were saying. Jarrold began to grow uneasy, so soon is distrust bred amongst those who have found treasure.
Brodie made a last remark and laughed; the others laughed after him, and the four looked toward Jarrold and Gloria. Brodie, leaning back, caught up a bottle and drank, and thereafter passed the bottle to the man nearest him. Gloria was quick to see that he had set his rifle away somewhere against the rock wall in the shadows. Only Brail still clung to his gun; if he should set it aside—if there should come a moment when she could slip to the cave’s mouth—in the outside dark, despite the deep snow, she would at least have a chance to escape from them. Even though she had nowhere to go, she longed wildly to be away from them. When their eyes roved toward her she thought that she would rather be dead, out in the clean, white snow, than here.
She wondered if these men were as utterly callous as they seemed. Gratton, so newly dead, appeared forgotten. They laughed and drank, they smoked and spat, they soiled her with their eyes and their talk, quite as though they had neither knowledge nor memory of manslaughter done. Benny alone, for a brief period, appeared nervous. She wondered what he was doing; he had rolled back his coat-sleeve; he was jabbing at his bare forearm with something which now and then caught and reflected the firelight. After a long time she heard a long sigh from Benny; he pulled down his coat-sleeve. The others laughed again.
“It’s time we had a little talk,” said Brodie out of a short silence. “Without anybody’s skirt listening in. Leave her back there, further from the front door, Jarrold. Where she can’t get an earful, and where she can’t make a getaway; you come on over here a minute.”
Gloria made no resistance but sank down limply where Jarrold left her and watched him as he slouched over to the fire. She sought to hear their words, to read the looks on their faces. But she caught only a monotonous mutter, unintelligible but evil, and saw only the bottle passing from one to the other. Brodie finished it and hurled it from him so that it broke noisily. A few times she heard them laugh; she could distinguish Brodie’s throaty, bull tone and Benny’s nervous cackle. Jarrold did not appear made for mirth, and him she feared most of all; yes, even more than Brodie, whom she had seen do murder, and Benny who, she knew, had done murder. Brail and the Italian said little; they were men to follow where other men led. She fancied that several times Steve Jarrold’s little eyes left the bottle, the faces of his companions, and even the pile of gold to quest for her face in the dark.
“Come here,” commanded Brodie.
She started. He was calling to her! She got up and moved forward slowly. It was obey or be dragged to him. In the pale light by the fire, standing so that the blaze was between the five men and herself, she stopped. Until now she had been very white; suddenly she knew that her face must be flooded with bright red; she could feel the burn of it. The eyes of the men seemed veritably to disregard her clothes, to make her feel another Lady Godiva.
“Gratton’s, then King’s, then Gratton’s again?” Brodie chuckled. “I don’t care whose before Gratton’s the first time; but whose after Gratton’s the last time, that’s it! Who are you for, Bright-Eyes? Me or Steve?”
“No!” she cried, her hands at her breast. “No! I am not like that! I was not Gratton’s; I am … I am Mark King’s wife!”
“So?” admitted Brodie good-humouredly. “Well, that cuts no ice; it’s open and shut you’d gone back to Gratton. Now, come over here. Closer.”
“I won’t,” she shuddered. “You don’t dare make me! I … Oh, won’t you let me go? You have your gold there; you have gold and whiskey; you don’t want me….”
“Whiskey, gold, and women,” muttered Brodie. “They go together fine. And quit that little schoolgirl dodge; you make me sick. If you wasn’t what you are, you wouldn’t be where you are. Come over here and give us a kiss.” He jerked from his pocket a dull lump, one of the smaller, richer nuggets. “I’m no pincher; come across and I’ll give you a whole handful of gold!” His tone was playful.
But Jarrold cut in less playfully:
“Leave her alone, Brodie,” he advised. “She don’t cotton to you, and, what’s more, whose gold is it, anyhow? We ain’t divided yet. And she…. Well, if she belongs to anybody, she’s mine!”
“So?” Brodie’s monosyllable was expressionless. “Well, I was asking her. And she ain’t answered yet.”
Fast as the girl’s heart beat, her thoughts sought to fly faster. These men were brutes; here she began, and, alas, here she ended. She had never known what brute meant; she had called Mark King that! And now, if only Mark King could hear her call, could come to her…. But that was less thought than prayer. These were brute beasts; their bestiality when they had first come upon her was terrifying; now, as the alcohol burned in their half-starved stomachs and the further intoxication of gold crept into their blood, her terror was boundless. In a moment she would feel upon her either the hands of Brodie or the hands of Jarrold. And she was helpless and hopeless. Until, since life connotes hope, there came a faint flicker of light. And with it came a sudden, compelling, swift longing. If she might set them to quarrelling over her, to send a snarling man at a snarling man’s throat…. Her hands dropped to her sides, and were clenched; she lifted her chin; with all that strength that lay in the innermost soul of Gloria King she strove to drive her great fear out of her eyes, to hide it from their wolfish regard, to summon up in its stead a mocking inscrutability. There was but one thing left to do, but one part to play——Oh, God, if she could play the part! She stood motionless, silent; she battled with herself; she struggled mightily for a calm utterance. And in the end she said in a tone which she managed to make full of challenge:
“Which of you is the better man?”
They stared at her, all of them puzzled by her change of attitude as by her words. Then Brodie, with a noisy explosion of laughter, smote his thigh and, after him, Benny giggled foolishly.
“The better man!” Brodie shouted. “Hear her, Steve, old horse? The better man!” He lunged to his feet; he stood solidly, unswerving though more than ever slow and ponderous. “I’ll go you, Steve. The lady’s right; she goes to the man who’s man enough to get her. That’s big Swen Brodie, the best man in these mountains! I’ll go you for her, Steve. By God, she’s worth it, too.”
But Steve Jarrold sat where he was, glaring.
“She’s sly,” he grunted, cursing before and after. “Can’t you see what she’s up to? She wants us to fight one another; she’d be glad if we both killed one another. You don’t understand women, Brodie; they’re sly like cats.”
“Make a auction out’n it!” was Benny’s mirthful suggestion. “Why just you two guys, anyway? Where do you get that stuff? Free for all, that’s what I say!” He waved his bottle. “Auction her off, that’s what I say! I’ll give a bottle of whiskey for her; hey, Brodie?”
Brodie had laughed when Jarrold spoke; he laughed now. But he looked to Jarrold and not Benny as he spoke; he extended his great hands, the fingers crooked, curving slowly inward, like steel hooks.
“I can eat you alive, and you know it, Steve,” he mocked. “What’s more, she knows it! That’s what she wants; she’s picked me, Steve! That’s just her way of letting you down easy; she don’t aim to hurt your feelings. Will you come on and take a fall for her? Or is the lady mine? What’s the word? Speak up, man!”
Gloria saw that Jarrold, though he sent a black, scowling look at the bigger man, was afraid. And yet they must fight—they must be driven to blows—she must somehow set them at each others’ throats. It was so hard to think at all! Yet she could think forward to one occurrence only that could give her respite and a frail chance for freedom: if they would only fight as, in some dim instinctive way, it was given her to understand that such men would fight once a wrathful blow had been given and taken—if the others would only watch them and not her, if she could come to one of the rifles—or outside——
She turned to Jarrold. She gathered herself for the final supreme effort. She made her eyes grow bright through sheer force of will; she made her lips cease trembling and curve to a smile at the man; she even concealed her loathing and put a ringing note, almost of laughter, into her voice as she said softly:
“I know you are not afraid—and I think—yes, I am sure, that you could whip him!”
Steve Jarrold’s eyes flashed. Then they left hers lingeringly; Brodie was stamping impatiently, calling to him.
“Take her!” snapped Jarrold. “Hell take both of you.”
The laughter and challenge went out of Swen Brodie’s bloodshot eyes; a new red surged all of a sudden into them. He turned and came slowly about the fire, his arms still uplifted, the crooking fingers toward Gloria.