Suddenly he stood up. If voices hailed him, he would say that he was simply there to get a drink. Then he would run.
He gripped the edge of the wooden well cover, and lifted it, rolled it to the side. He dropped flat, reached down inside the well, and found the loose stone at the side, six inches above the level of the water. He pulled that stone out, laid it on the ground beside him, and reached into the cavity that appeared to his touch. The slickness of oiled silk rubbed against the tips of his fingers.
He pulled out the parcel with a sick feeling that it was about to drop from his fingers into the deep waters of the well. Then he dared not lift his head for fear he should see three dark figures standing beside him.
One of them would laugh. That would be Joe Mantry. One of them would grab him by the back of the neck. That would be Phil Bray. He remembered the hands of Phil Bray, and how the fingers were square at the tips, and how the hair grew thick down to the first joints. It was a saying that no man in the world was stronger than Phil Bray in the hands.
Lovell raised the treasure to the ground level. He lifted his head—and there was no one near!
Suddenly a vast confidence came over him.
He got up, walked into his shack, into the dreadful, thick, warm darkness, lighted a lamp, and looked around him with a silent, sneering laugh.
No one else was there. He was in no danger. He felt as though it had been another man who had crawled with those trembling precautions through the cold of the grass like a snake.
That was what the three would call him in their thoughts—a snake! Well, snakes are hard to catch. They know how to go to earth. He would show them some more snaky tricks before he was through with them. And now what should he do?
Well, the mountains were deep and wild.
But the patience of Phil Bray would be more endless than the greatness of the wilderness.
He could flee to a seaport and take ship.
But Phil Bray would probably be waiting for him at the dock!
He could go and surrender the money and get the protection of the law. But how could the law protect him unless it closed him behind thick walls?
Besides, he knew that he would rather die than give up the money. Out there by the well he had suddenly known that with all the might of his soul. He would rather die. He would a lot rather die than give it up.
He sat down on the side of his bunk and took his face in his hands.
“I gotta think!” he whispered. “I gotta think of a smart thing.”
For Bray was smart, and Bray knew all about him. Bray was the brains of the party, and always had been. Joe Mantry and Dave Lister were clever enough, but most of their wits were in their hands. Bray was the one to scheme and plan deeply, more deeply than other men. Above all, Bray knew Jimmy Lovell, despised him profoundly, but understood him.
Bray was the one who always used to say: “You fellows leave off jumping on Jimmy Lovell. Jimmy can do more than any of us—now and then.”
Lovell grinned all over his rat face when he remembered that remark. In the finish he had showed them what he could do.
Bray, in spite of the protection he gave to Jimmy, was the one that Lovell had always specially hated, because j Bray was the one who understood. Lovell, therefore, used | to go to him now and then and say: “You’re the one I buckle to, Phil. You’re the one that I like. I don’t like many people, but I like you. You’ll see in the wind-up.”
Yes, Bray had been able to see in the wind-up!
The other two, Mantry and Dave Lister, they would give up the hunt after a time. It was Bray who would never give it up and who would keep the others to the trail. There must be some shelter against Bray. But the law would not provide protection, and flight would not provide protection eventually.
It was a question of finding fire to fight fire.
Then a wild thought lifted Lovell slowly to his feet and made him stretch out his arms in welcome to it. For he had thought of a fire so great and strong that, compared with it, all the force of Phil Bray was no more than the flicker of an uncertain candle flame.
The rumor was strong in Rusty Gulch that, somewhere in the neighborhood of Iron Mountain, somewhere in the entangled forest, or above timber line among the lonely ravines, great Jim Silver was lurking in the solitudes. A wandering prospector was said to have seen him, and though Jim Silver fled at once from human eyes, the golden sheen of the stallion he rode had betrayed him still more. And the way that horse bounded up a slope and disappeared over the next ridge had proved that he must be Parade. The prospector had seen a gray form go through the brush on the trail of Jim Silver, and perhaps that was his tamed wolf. Frosty.
Suppose that Jimmy Lovell went to Silver and managed to find him? Suppose that Jimmy Lovell begged the great man’s protection?
Well, Silver was the sort of a fool who found it hard to say “No.” And once he extended the mantle of his protection over Lovell, what could even Bray and his two desperate companions accomplish to break through and get at their prey?
Lovell went to the cupboard in which he kept his food. He got a small sack of flour, part of a side of good bacon with plenty of streaks of the lean in it, some sugar, coffee, and a cooking kit. He put in salt and some hard-tack.
He got a Winchester and plenty of ammunition for it. How long he would be in the wilderness he could not tell. A month, two months, or as long as he could manage to cling to the side of the great Jim Silver.
Then he went out to his horse, mounted, and headed out of Rusty Gulch.
In the east the stars were growing dim. Presently the moon pushed up its triangle of fire, rose with a golden rim, rolled its wheel up the shaggy side of a mountain, and then detached itself from the earth and floated up into the open sky.
Silver was like that, thought the hunted man. He was detached from the world, and he moved above the concerns of ordinary mortals. And his light overwhelmed common men.
X—JIM SILVER
LOVELL TOOK the straightest trails for Iron Mountain. By noon, as he crossed the Camber Mountains, he was in sight of the big peak. The head of it was white, but below the snowcap it extended broad, dark shoulders that looked like metal and had given the peak its name. Still farther down, the forest commenced to clothe its sides, but the trees failed at a much lower level than they attained on neighboring mountains, as though the soil of Iron Mountain were hard for them to grapple with their roots.
It was noon when Lovell saw the peak. It was twilight, nevertheless, before he had managed to get to the valley at the base of it. A roar of water kept rushing through the great ravine. He climbed higher up the side of the mountain, through the dense woods, until he found a quieter place for his camp. He reached a little clearing in the woods, with a trickle of water across the center of it and a patch of out-cropping rocks that would be ideal to shelter his fire from the wind.
There he unsaddled his mustang, built his fire, and cooked bacon and coffee, which he ate with hard-tack. There were plenty of pine needles, so he kicked together a quantity of them and laid his blankets over this soft bed. He sat down beside the embers of the fire and smoked cigarettes, brooding.
Fear had followed him all the way from Rusty Gulch, and fear would keep on companioning him. He looked anxiously toward the saddle. Half a million dollars was there. But where else could he leave it?
He was at this point in his thoughts when he felt eyes watching him. He felt them drilling into the small of his back, and, turning suddenly, he had a glimpse of something that faded back behind a bush.
He shrugged his shoulders. There were plenty of wild beasts in the woods, of course, but there were none that would attack a man—certainly not at this time of year, when easier game was all about.