CHAPTER XXIX
WILLIAMS CACHE
Ed Banks had been recalled before daybreak from the middle pass. Twoof the men wanted were now known to have crossed the creek, whichmeant they must work out of the country through Williams Cache.
"If you will take your best two men, Ed," said Whispering Smith,sitting down with Banks at breakfast, "and strike straight forCanadian Pass to help Gene and Bob Johnson, I'll undertake to ride inand talk to Rebstock while Kennedy and Bob Scott watch Deep Creek. Theboy gives a good description, and the two men that did the job hereare Du Sang and Flat Nose. Did I tell you how we picked up the trailyesterday? Magpies. They shot a scrub horse that gave out on them andskinned the brand. It hastened the banquet, but we got there beforethe birds were all seated. Great luck, wasn't it? And it gave us abeautiful trail. One of the party crossed the Goose River at AmericanFork, and Brill Young and Reed followed him. Four came through theMission Mountains; that is a cinch and they are in the Cache--and ifthey get out it is our fault personally, Ed, and not the Lord's."
Williams Cache lies in the form of a great horn, with a narrowentrance at the lower end known as the Door, and a rock fissure at theupper end leading into Canadian Pass; but this fissure is so narrowthat a man with a rifle could withstand a regiment. For a hundredmiles east and west rise the granite walls of the Mission range,broken nowhere save by the formation known as the Cache. Even thisdoes not penetrate the range; it is a pocket, and runs not overhalf-way into it and out again. But no man really knows the Cache; themost that may be said is that the main valley is known, and it isknown as the roughest mountain fissure between the Spanish Sinks andthe Mantrap country. Williams Cache lies between walls two thousandfeet high, and within it is a small labyrinth of canyons. A generationago, when Medicine Bend for one winter was the terminus of theoverland railroad, vigilantes mercilessly cleaned out the town, andthe few outlaws that escaped the shotgun and the noose at MedicineBend found refuge in a far-away and unknown mountain gorge once namedby French trappers the Cache. Years after these outcasts had come toinfest it came one desperado more ferocious than all that had gonebefore. He made a frontier retreat of the Cache, and left to it thelegacy of his evil name, Williams. Since his day it has served, as itserved before, for the haunt of outlawed men. No honest man lives inWilliams Cache, and few men of any sort live there long, since theirlives are lives of violence; neither the law nor a woman crosses DeepCreek. But from the day of Williams to this day the Cache has had itsruler, and when Whispering Smith rode with a little party through theDoor into the Cache the morning after the murder in Mission Valley hesent an envoy to Rebstock, whose success as a cattle-thief had broughtits inevitable penalty. It had made Rebstock a man of consequence andof property and a man subject to the anxieties and annoyances of suchresponsibility.
Sitting once in the Three Horses at Medicine Bend, Rebstock had talkedwith Whispering Smith. "I used to have a good time," he growled. "WhenI was rustling a little bunch of steers, just a small bunch all bymyself, and hadn't a cent in the world, no place to sleep and nothingto eat, I had a good time. Now I have to keep my money in the bank;that ain't pleasant--you know that. Every man that brings a bunch ofcattle across Deep Creek has stole 'em, and expects me to buy 'em orlend him money. I'm busy with inspecters all the time, deviling withbrands, standing off the Stock Association and all kinds of trouble.I've got too many cows, too much money. I'm afraid somebody will shootme if I go to sleep, or poison me if I take a drink. Whispering Smith,I'd like to give you a half-interest in my business. That's on thesquare. You're a young man, and handy; it wouldn't cost you a cent,and you can have half of the whole shooting-match if you'll cross DeepCreek and help me run the gang." Such was Rebstock free from anxietyand in a confidential moment. Under pressure he was, like all men,different.
Whispering Smith had acquaintance even in the Cache, and after alittle careful reconnoitring he found a crippled-up thief, driving amilch cow down the Cache, who was willing to take a message to theboss.
Whispering Smith gave his instructions explicitly, facing themessenger, as the two sat in their saddles, with an importunate eye."Say to Rebstock exactly these words," he insisted. "This is fromWhispering Smith: I want Du Sang. He killed a friend of mine lastnight at Mission Springs. I happened to be near there and know he rodein last night. He can't get out; the Canadian is plugged. I won'tstand for the killing, and it is Du Sang or a clean-up in the Cacheall around, and then I'll get Du Sang anyway. Regards."
Riding circumspectly in and about the entrance to the Cache, theparty waited an hour for an answer. When the answer came, it wasunsatisfactory. Rebstock declined to appear upon so trivial a matter,and Whispering Smith refused to specify a further grievance. Moreparley and stronger messages were necessary to stir the Deep Creekmonarch, but at last he sent word asking Whispering Smith to cometo his cabin accompanied only by Kennedy.
The two railroad men rode up the canyon together. "And now I will showyou a lean and hungry thief grown monstrous and miserly, Farrell,"said Whispering Smith.
At the head of a short pocket between two sheer granite walls they sawRebstock's weather-beaten cabin, and he stood in front of it smoking.He looked moodily at his visitors out of eyes buried between rolls offat. Whispering Smith was a little harsh as the two shook hands, buthe dismounted and followed Rebstock into the house.
"What are you so high and mighty about?" he demanded, throwing his haton the table near which Rebstock had seated himself. "Why don't youcome out when I send a man to you, or send word what you will do? Whathave you got to kick about? Haven't you been treated right?"
Being in no position to complain, but shrewdly aware that muchunpleasantness was in the wind, Rebstock beat about the bush. He hadhad rheumatism; he couldn't ride; he had been in bed three weeks andhadn't seen Du Sang for three months. "You ain't chasing up here afterDu Sang because he killed a man at Mission Springs. I know better thanthat. That ain't the first man he's killed, and it ain't a' goin' tobe the last."
Whispering Smith lifted his finger and for the first time smiled. "Nowthere you err, Rebstock--it is 'a goin' to be' the last. So you thinkI'm after you, do you? Well, if I were, what are you going to do aboutit? Rebstock, do you think, if I wanted _you_, I would send a messagefor you to come out and meet me? Not on your life! When I want youI'll come to your shack and drag you out by the hair of the head. Sitdown!" roared Whispering Smith.
Rebstock, who weighed at least two hundred and seventy-five pounds,had lifted himself up to glare and swear freely. Now he droppedangrily back into his chair. "Well, who do you want?" he bellowed inkind.
A smile softened the asperity of the railroad man's face. "That's afair question and I give you a straight answer. I'm not bluffing: Iwant Du Sang."
Rebstock squirmed. He swore with shortened breath that he knew nothingabout Du Sang; that Du Sang had stolen his cattle; that hanging wastoo good for him; that he would join any _posse_ in searching for him;and that he had not seen him for three months.
"Likely enough," assented Whispering Smith, "but this is wasting time.He rode in here last night after killing old Dan Baggs. Your estimablenephew Barney is with him, and Karg is with him, and I want them; but,in especial and particular, I want Du Sang."
Rebstock denied, protested, wheezed, and stormed, but Whispering Smithwas immovable. He would not stir from the Cache upon any promises.Rebstock offered to surrender any one else in the Cache--hintedstrongly at two different men for whom handsome rewards were out; butevery compromise suggested was met with the same good-natured words:"I want Du Sang."
At last the smile changed on Whispering Smith's face. It lighted hiseyes still, but with a different expression. "See here, Rebstock, youand I have always got along, haven't we? I've no desire to crowd anyman to the wall that is a man. Now I am going to tell you the simpletruth. Du Sang has got you scared to death. That man is a faker,Rebstock. Because he kills men right and left without any provocation,you think he is dangerous. He isn't; there are a dozen
men in theCache just as good with a gun as Du Sang is. Don't shake your head. Iknow what I'm talking about. He is a jay with a gun, and you may tellhim I said so; do you hear? Tell him to come out if he wants me todemonstrate it. He has got everybody, including you, scared to death.Now, I say, don't be silly. I want Du Sang."
Rebstock rose to his feet solemnly and pointed his finger atWhispering Smith. "Whispering Smith, you know me--"
"I know you for a fat rascal."
"That's all right. You know me, and, just as you say, we always getalong because we both got sense."
"You're hiding yours to-day, Rebstock."
"No matter; I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you all thehorseflesh you can kill and all the men you can hire to go after him,and I'll bury your dead myself. You think he can't shoot? I give you atip on the square." Whispering Smith snorted. "He'll shoot the fourbuttons off your coat in four shots." Smith kicked Rebstock's dogcontemptuously. "And do it while you are falling down. I've seen himdo it," persisted Rebstock, moist with perspiration. "I'm not lookingfor a chance to go against a sure thing; I wash my hands of the job."
Whispering Smith rose. "It was no trick to see he had you scared todeath. You are losing your wits, old man. The albino is a faker, and Itell you I am going to run him out of the country." Whispering Smithreached for his hat. "Our treaty ends right here. You promised toharbor no man in your sink that ever went against our road. You knowas well as I do that this man, with four others, held up our trainnight before last at Tower W, shot our engineman to death for meredelight, killed a messenger, took sixty-five thousand dollars out ofthe through safe, and made his good get-away. Now, don't lie; you knowevery word of it, and you thought you could pull it out of me by abluff. I track him to your door. He is inside the Cache this minute.You know every curve and canyon and pocket and washout in it, andevery cut-throat and jail-bird in it, and they pay you blood-money andhush-money every month; and when I ask you not to give up a dozen menthe company is entitled to, but merely to send this pink-eyed lobsterout with his guns to talk with me, you wash your hands of the job, doyou? Now listen. If you don't send Du Sang into the open before noonto-morrow, I'll run every living steer and every living man out ofWilliams Cache before I cross the Crawling Stone again, so help meGod! And I'll send for cowboys within thirty minutes to begin the job.I'll scrape your Deep Creek canyons till the rattlesnakes squeal. I'llmake Williams Cache so wild that a timber-wolf can't follow his owntrail through it. You'll break with me, will you, Rebstock? Then windup your bank account; before I finish with you I'll put you in stripesand feed buzzards off your table."
Rebstock's face was apoplectic. He choked with a torrent of oaths.Whispering Smith, paying no attention, walked out to where Kennedy waswaiting. He swung into the saddle, ignoring Rebstock's abjurations,and with Kennedy rode away.
"It is hard to do anything with a man that is scared to death," saidSmith to his companion. "Then, too, Rebstock's nephew is probably inthis. In any case, when Du Sang has got Rebstock scared, he is adangerous man to be abroad. We have got to smoke him out, Farrell.Lance Dunning insisted the other day he wanted to do me a favor. I'llsee if he'll lend me Stormy Gorman and some of his cowpunchers for around-up. We've got to smoke Du Sang out. A round-up is the thing.But, by Heaven, if that round-up is actually pulled off it will be aclassic when you and I are gone."
Thirty minutes afterward, messengers had taken the Frenchman trail forLance Dunning's cowboys.