LITMIR.BIZ

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he cracked out. “You sound like a b’ilin’ teakettle! Untie the critter, Jim, before I get mad an’ shoot the gag out o’ his mouth. Of all the consarned luck I ever did see, this is the worst. Somebody beat us to our gold, by Gawd!”

      Nevada had already pouched his gun and was striding toward Conover when he saw him stiffen suddenly back in his chair as though something had smashed him in the chest. Then he saw something had, for a red stain spread quickly over the old mining man’s white shirt front.

      A sound, scarcely louder than the low hiss of a snake, accompanied the bullet. Before he could do more than spin toward the bedroom door from which he thought the mysterious shot had come, a second slug sliced neatly through the crown of his battered range hat.

      Then Utah McClatchey’s ancient Colt let out a roar that shook the shack. His heavy slug screamed into the bedroom as he yelled: “After ’em, Jim! They’re hidin’ in the bunkroom! Maybe they got our gold in there!”

      He started running, straight-up, for the door, with a reckless disregard for modern guns and gunners. But Nevada had other ideas. In a flying tackle he brought the old renegade down to the floor and rolled with him through the dark doorway just as lead from the hissing guns inside the bedroom sheeted above their prone bodies.

      Nevada Jim found it disconcerting to fight guns that made no sound. He wasn’t used to it, but he was accustomed to fighting in the dark and he had no more mercy in him now than a cougar has for a fawn between its jaws.

      Pale gun-flame stabbed out of the thick blackness from the vicinity of one of the bunks across the room. Nevada snap-shot from the floor, gun swinging up as he triggered to cover the spot of flame. Instantly he heard the thud of a falling body accompanied by a shrill, high-pitched screaming of words in a tongue that was totally unfamiliar to him. The voice gurgled off into the silence of death.

      The whole thing here was more than he could understand. It was bad enough to battle soundless guns, let alone men who spoke a language that only a heathen could comprehend. “But before we get done here, I’ll git me all the answers or git salivated tryin’,” he avowed to himself. “An’ I’ll pay back them scuts for gutshootin’ a helpless man thataway, too. Hell, all we wanted was his gold an’ there ain’t been that much dinero runnin’ around loose since hell froze over!”

      But for a time it didn’t appear that they were going to get anything in this dark room but a dose of lead. There seemed to be at least half a dozen men loose in the darkness.

      Nevada Jim remained on the floor. He shot and rolled over, then shot again at each gun-flash. Lead slapped all about him, but he was used to that. Utah was yelling like a Comanche each time he triggered, and Nevada used his own voice as he emptied one gun and flung it into the face of a shadow looming near him. “Shut up, Utah!” he rapped. “Want every sidewinder here tuh spot you?”

      Somebody stepped on his hand just then. He clutched an ankle and yanked. In the same movement he brought forth his second gun and swung the long barrel down on a skull. Bone crunched sickeningly, followed by a deep sigh.

      “Like breakin’ aiggs into a fryin’ pan!” he chuckled to himself.

      Again he whipped his gun sidewise and took a snap shot at a figure trying to steal through the doorway. That was the end of it, or at least Nevada thought so. But just then both of them heard a sound that brought them swiftly to their feet. It was the coughing roar of an airplane motor coming to life.

      “Two of the skunks got out through the door,” Utah yelped, “whilst I had my hands full with a couple more. But they ain’t got away yet. Come on!”

      “I’m way ahead of you!” Nevada shouted as he hurdled the body of the last man he had triggered. His long legs pumped him swiftly into the living room. He took a glance at Dan Conover and went to him. The mine owner was dying. Blood welling from the wound in his chest now stained his entire shirt and pooled on the floor. He was slipping fast, but on sight of the outlaw, he urged him close.

      Utah came panting up. “Looks like they punched Dan’s ticket sure,” he commented, taking a look at Conover’s bloodless face. “The dirty lowdown scuts—triggerin’ a man that couldn’t nowise defend hisself!”

      “Get goin’ outside!” Nevada bit out. “Wing that sky-buggy afore she gits offen the ground, or we’ll have a hell of a time follerin’ its trail on hoss-back. Watch yore step, Utah. Them jiggers is plumb bad!”

      McClatchey jumped for the door, gray hair flying out like a mane behind his shoulders. Nevada leaped to the side of the old mine owner, and for a rough and ready hellion with no more scruples than a mangy coyote, he was strangely gentle about untying the gag still in Dan Conover’s mouth, and bringing him a big slug of whiskey from a bottle of old Squareface in a corner cupboard. He had sloshed a tin-cup half full, and Dan Conover gulped it down like water.

      Nevada looked at the empty cup. “You might of saved me a swig,” he said morosely. “That’s all there was in the bottle!”

      A ghost of a smile crossed Conover’s face. He looked pleased at seeing the old-time outlaws. At least the three of them spoke the same language.

      Outside, the plane motor was rising into a crescendo of sound that almost drowned the savage barking of Utah McClatchey’s Colt. Then a shadow passed across a lighted window. Nevada didn’t need to hear Utah’s sulphurous curses to know he had failed to halt the plane’s flight. McClatchey did not immediately reappear, and for a few minutes Nevada Jim had his hands too full to wonder where the old lobo had gone.

      For as soon as the plane roar got out of his ears, he became aware that Conover was speaking his name in a halting, gasping voice. “James. Jim, bend closer. I ain’t got long to be here, but while I am, I want to tell you what I can. You’re a pesky outlaw, and yuh come here to rob me, but I’d a sight rather have seen you get my gold than them pesky greasers, and furriners that have got it now. I—I didn’t know they’d come back to the bunkroom or I’d a-warned yuh.”

      Nevada Jim sat down on the arm of Conover’s chair, and propped his head so the blood coming into his throat wouldn’t choke him. But he saw, even as he did so, that Dan Conover had spoken just about his last words. Only a supreme effort brought another mumbling phrase from his lips.

      “El Sierra del Luna, Jim. Tres Cruces, The Mountains of the Moon. Three Crosses.”

      His head fell forward on muscles gone suddenly slack. Gently, Nevada Jim let the old man drop forward across the table. He was not a praying man, was Nevada Jim James, but he prayed right then that the Good Lord would let him line his sights on Dan Conover’s killer.

      Utah McClatchey came stumbling in from outside.

      Nevada looked up. “Where you been?”

      For a moment, Utah McClatchey didn’t answer him. He stared somberly at Dan Conover. When he raised his eyes they were black and hard as obsidian.

      “They’s twelve fresh graves out alongside the bunkhouse,” he said slowly. “Dan’l will fill the thirteenth. Jim, them twelve graves are kinda shaller. Looks like the hombres who dug ’em got tired in a hurry. Mebbe they didn’t give a damn if the coyotes come down from the hills and dug out the corpses, and made a meal off of ’em. Which they done. Every last one of the dozen, Jim, was shot in the back of the head like you’d shoot a steer. From the look of things, they had just about as much chance as a hog of defendin’ themselves. Now there ain’t nobody accused me of bein’ an angel, but I’ll be damned right straight tuh Purgatory if I ever shot a man when he warn’t lookin’ at me!”

      He was silent a moment while he punched spent shells from his two Colts, and thumbed in fresh loads, taken from the well-filled belt about his thin waist. Then he spoke again, while Nevada Jim was still digesting the information already given him.

      “That flyin’ chariot got clean away,” Utah went on gloomily, “and the gold with it, I’ll bet you that. Away as clean as a whistle, and me already havin’ figured out ways and means of spendin’ it. I guess we’ll jest have to hunt ourselves up a bank

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