“What makes you think that?”
“I feel it in my bones,” answered Mantry. “I’ll crack his head for him, and we’ll roll a few rocks over him. He picked this place out for his grave, didn’t he? He wanted a monument on the spot, didn’t he?”
Mantry laughed as he completed his suggestion. And still Phil Bray shook his head.
“Mantry has a hunch, chief. Let him have his own way,” urged Lister.
Bray said: “Not now. We’ll talk it over later on. I wouldn’t want to see this poor fool socked on the head. Not now. We’ll talk it over later on.”
In that casual manner, at the last moment, the life of Wayland was spared. But he knew that death was still in the very air that he breathed.
XIX—THE DOUBLE CROSS
Bray chose the camp, and in an odd place. He selected a hillside slope and a big clearing. Through the clearing ran a swift, shallow stream of snow water. There were a few bushes near by, but the trees all stood back a considerable distance. The exact spot where Bray chose to build the camp fire was where a number of rocks cropped out from the ground.
Joe Mantry took serious exception to the site. He said: “All that a man hunter would need to do would be to lie down on the edge of the trees and snipe at us. We’re all right out here in the open. We’re held up to view. It’s a cinch for anybody that’s after us. Jimmy Lovell, say.”
Bray answered: “Well, they’ll have nothing much to shoot by, considering the distance. Look at the fire.”
It was a small flame, just enough to heat coffee and broil some rabbit meat.
“Look at the shadows,” went on Bray.
In fact, as the flame swayed this way and that, the shadows thrown by the rocks wavered also through the air, and no perceptible light reached the trees.
“Come back, all of you, and take a look from the edge of the trees,” went on Bray.
Accordingly, they all retreated to the verge of the woods. From that viewpoint the camp seemed secure indeed. Even the big bodies of the horses were wavering and obscure in the sweep of the shadows, as though they were objects afloat in the water. The rocks themselves, it was apparent, were perfect breastworks behind which the party could take shelter.
“Besides,” said Bray, “there ain’t much chance that we’ll be sniped at. Suppose that Lovell got on the trail. It ain’t blood that he wants, but the money. He’d try to sneak-thieve the coin again, and that’s all there is to it. And we’ve got a place here where the horses get enough good grazing. We’ve got water at our feet. And with one man on guard, I wanta ask you how anything but a mole or a bird could get at us? Anybody answer up?”
To this there was a silence, and Dave Lister actually bent back his head and looked up into the air, as though expecting that danger might at that moment be coming toward them on the wing.
They went back to the camp, and the cooking started. Lister drew the lot as the first guard, and began to stalk back and forth, on the alert.
Jimmy Lovell, they all admitted, was a clever fellow, but it was considered that the problem of getting at them in such an encampment as this would be totally beyond his powers.
The hopes of Wayland, in the meantime, gradually diminished. Finally they reached zero, for it seemed clear that there was nothing for him to do except pray that his own life might be saved from the trouble in which he stood.
Phil Bray still adopted an attitude of kindness. The hands of Wayland were freed, and, under strict guard, he was permitted to eat his share of the food and drink some coffee. He was even allowed to smoke a cigarette, and while he was smoking it, Joe Mantry opened the conversation again:
“It’s a queer thing that Lovell would pick out Iron Mountain. How come?”
“Yeah, I been thinking about that,” admitted Bray. “It beats me, too!”
He was puffing at a short-stemmed pipe so hard that the glow of the coal kept illumining his face in short pulsations of light.
“It wouldn’t seem nacheral,” said Bray, “for an hombre like Lovell to stay put with his wad of coin. Not after he knew that we were loose and on his trail. Seems more like he would keep drifting and pretty soon break right out of the mountains and clear away. Did you talk to him, Wayland?”
“I talked to him,” said Wayland. “I’ve got an idea why he stays on Iron Mountain.”
“Why?” snapped Mantry.
“Well, he says that he has a friend on Iron Mountain who would take care of him if anything happened.”
“A friend? What, you mean one man?” asked Bray.
“Yes,” said Wayland, and nodded thoughtfully. He was beginning to see a vague hope of a way out for himself.
“One man to guard Lovell against the three of us? Jimmy ain’t such a fool as all of that,” remarked Joe Mantry. “He wouldn’t trust any one man in the world to guard him against all of us. Not even Jim Silver, that Bray is always talking about.”
“Well,” said Wayland, “he has a man that he trusts, just the same. He wasn’t very worried because I got the money away from him. He said that his friend would follow along and get it back from me.”
“What friend?” asked Bray shortly.
Wayland smiled. “Boys,” he said, “you know how it is. I naturally want to do all I can for you. But the rule in business is that you never do something for nothing.”
“You hear that?” asked Mantry, turning his handsome head toward Bray.
“I hear it,” said Bray. “Blame him?”
“I’d cut his throat for him if he didn’t talk out!” observed Mantry.
“A cut throat doesn’t say a lot, either,” answered Bray. “But maybe there’s nothing behind all of this.” He said to Wayland: “You stringing us along, Wayland?”
Wayland shook his head.
“Come out with it, then,” said Bray.
“It’s worth a bargain, what I could tell you,” said Wayland.
“Joe,” ordered Bray, “try a hand at making him talk.”
“I’ll try a hand, all right,” said Joe Mantry.
He got to his feet and brought a gun into his hand. He stepped over to Wayland and put the gun against his head.
“Now, you talk pronto,” he said, “or I’ll blow you into a deep sleep. I’ll be the sandman for you. I’ll close your eyes for you!”
Wayland looked up at the savage face of Mantry. By the tremor of the gun that was pressed against his temple, he could feel the wild desire to kill that was in Mantry. But there was in Wayland, at bottom, a calmly invincible stubbornness of character.
“No,” he said to Mantry calmly.
“You hear that, chief?” snarled Mantry. And by the tightening of his face, Wayland knew that Mantry’s finger was tightening on the trigger, also.
“Wait a minute, Joe,” put in Bray.
“Yeah, I knew that you’d spoil it,” said Mantry, stepping back with a curse. “I was going to soften him up so that he’d take fingerprints, was all. Now you’ve spoiled it.”
“You’d ‘a’ softened him up till he was dead,” said Bray, “and the fact is that even Joe Mantry is old enough to know that dead men can’t talk.”
“All the better,” said Mantry.
“Unless you want to hear what they know,” replied Bray. “And I want to hear what Wayland knows.”
Dave Lister broke in suddenly as he came to a halt in his pacing:
“I want to know, too. That bird has something in his crop.”
“What’s your price?” asked Bray.
“You turn me loose,” said Wayland.
“Not on your life!” answered Mantry.
“I dunno,” said Lister. “Why not? What’s the good of dragging this guy around with us? And if we slam him, we’re marking off our trail with red. And that’s no business, either.”