Ironheart

Old Jake Prowers looked grimly down upon the Flat Tops from the Notch. He could see the full stretch of the mesa and below it one end of Paradise Valley. The windmill of the Diamond Bar K was shining in the sun, miles away, flinging out heliographic signals that conformed to no man-made code.

“Wonder how Clint is this mo’ning,” he said in a high, squeaky voice that went congruously with the small, twisted figure and the wrinkled, leathery face.

His fidus Achates, Don Black, shifted in the saddle to ease himself and rested his weight on one stirrup. He was a black-bearded, fierce-looking man in blue overalls, faded flannel shirt, and run-down-at-the-heel boots.

“Didn’t know he was sick,” he said, chewing tobacco imperturbably.

“Fellow shot him last night, by jiminy by jinks, an’ set fire to his wheat.”

“Did?” Black shot one startled, questioning look at his employer.

Jake cackled with splenetic laughter. “No, sir. Don’t you look at me thataway, Don. I hadn’t a thing to do with it. If I’d ’a’ done it, it would ’a’ been done right. This fellow was a tramp, they say. He didn’t get any consid’rable amount of the wheat an’ he didn’t get Clint.”

Fate had played a strange trick when it put the unscrupulous and restless soul of a Lucifer in the warped body of Jake Prowers, when it expressed that soul through a thin, cracked voice and pale-blue, washed-out eyes. To the casual observer he seemed one of life’s ineffectives. Those who knew him best found reason to shudder at his mirthless laughter and his mild oaths, at the steady regard of his expressionless gaze. They seemed somehow to stress by contrast the man’s dark and ruthless soul. There were moments when from those cold eyes flamed something sinister and blasting that chilled the blood.

Black had been living for weeks at an out-of-the-way cabin in the hills. He was riding herd on a bunch of Prowers’s cattle feeding on the edge of the Government reservation. Consequently he had been out of the way of hearing the news of the community.

“What had this tramp got against Clint?” he asked, firing accurately with tobacco juice at the face of a flat rock.

“You know how high-headed Clint is. He beat up a bunch of tramps an’ one came back to even up things. Last night he took a whirl at it. The fellow set fire to some wheat-stacks an’ gunned Clint when he showed up, by the jumpin’ Jehosaphat. But Clint’s no invalid. He’d take right smart killing, an’ all he got was one pill in the leg. Trouble with most of these here bad men is they ain’t efficient. When you lay for Clint, Don, I’d advise you to spill about a pint of lead in him.”

The little man grinned with broken-toothed malevolence at his henchman.

“I don’t aim to lay for Clint,” growled Black. He was not a humorist and he never knew when Prowers’s jokes were loaded with dynamite.

Jake cackled. “O’ course not. Clint, he’s a good citizen if he did kick you off’n the Diamond Bar K once. What’s a li’l’ thing like that between friends.”

“I don’t claim him as any friend of mine. If you ask me, he’s too dawg-goned bossy—got to have everything his own way. But that ain’t sayin’ I got any notion of layin’ in the brush for him. Not so any one could notice it. If Clint lives till I bump him off, he’ll sure be a Methuselah,” Black answered sulkily.

“That’s fine,” jeered the cattleman. “I’ll tell Clint to quit worryin’ about you—that you ain’t got a thing against him. Everything’s lovely, even if he did kick you around some.”

The rider flushed darkly. “He ain’t worryin’ none about me, an’ I didn’t say everything was lovely. I like him same as I do a wolf. But all I ask is for him to let me alone. If he does that, we’ll not tangle.”

On the breeze there came to them from far to the left a faint booming. Prowers looked toward the rocky escarpment back of which lay the big dam under construction.

The wrinkled, leathery face told no tales. “Still blasting away on his dinged dam project. That fellow Merrick is either plumb fool or else we are. I got to find out which.”

“I reckon he can’t make water run uphill,” the dark man commented.

“No, Don. But maybe he doesn’t have to do that. Maybe the Government engineers are wrong. I’ll admit that don’t look reasonable to me. They put it down in black and white—three of ’em, one after another—that Elk Creek Cañon is higher at the far end than this dam site of his. They dropped the scheme because it wasn’t feasible. Probably Merrick’s one of these squirts that know it all. Still—” The sentence died out, but the man’s thoughts raced on.

Black desisted from chewing tobacco to hum a fragment of a song he had cherished twenty-five years.

he murmured tunelessly.

“If he should be right, by jiminy by jinks—” Prowers was talking to himself. He let the conditional clause stand alone. Slowly the palm of his hand rasped back and forth over a rough, unshaven chin.

“Did they catch this tramp that shot up Clint?” asked Black.

“Not yet. Daniels is patrolling the railroad. If the fellow hasn’t made his getaway on the night freight, they’ll likely get him. He’s got to stick to the railway.”

“Why has he?” the rider inquired. He was watching a moving object among the rocks below.

“So’s to skip the country. He ain’t acquainted here—knows nothing about these hills. If he wasn’t taken by some rancher and turned over to Daniels, he’d starve to death. Likely he’s lying under cover somewheres along the creek.”

“Likely he ain’t,” differed Black. “Likely he’s ducked for the hills.” His gaze was still on the boulder field below. From its case beside the saddle he drew a rifle.

“Why would he do that?”

“I dunno why, except that a fellow on the dodge can’t always choose the road he’s gonna travel. Any reward for this guy?”

“Ain’t heard of any. Yore conscience joggin’ you to light out and hunt for the man that shot up Clint, Don?” his employer probed derisively.

“I wouldn’t have to hunt far, Jake,” the herder replied, a note of triumph in the drawling voice. For once he had got the better of the boss in a verbal duel. “He’s right down there among the rocks.”

“Down where?”

The barrel of the rifle pointed to a group of large boulders which, in prehistoric days, perhaps, had broken from the ledge above and rolled down.

“Don’t see any one,” Jake said after the pale-blue eyes had watched the spot steadily for several moments.

“He’s seen us, an’ he’s lying hid. You keep him covered while I go down and collect him.”

Prowers gave this consideration and vetoed the suggestion. “No, you stay here, Don, and I’ll go get him.”

“If there’s any reward—”

“Don’t you worry about that. There ain’t gonna be any reward.”

The ranchman swung down from the saddle and descended from the bluff by way of a wooded gulch at the right. Ten minutes later, Black saw him emerge and begin to cross the rock slide toward the big boulders.

Presently Prowers stopped and shouted. “You fellow in the rocks, I wantta talk with you.”

There came no answer.

He moved cautiously a little closer, rifle ready for action. “We got you, fellow. Better come outa there an’ talk turkey. I don’t aim for to turn you over to the sheriff if you’re anyways reasonable,” he explained.

“Wotcha want with me?” a voice called from the rocks.

“Wantta have a pow-wow with you. Maybe you ’n’ me can do business together. No can tell.”

“Who are you?”

“Name’s Jake Prowers. No friend of Clint Reed if that’s what’s eatin’ you?”

After a delay of several seconds, a figure appeared and moved closer. The ranchman saw in the man’s hand the gleam of an automatic revolver.

The fugitive stopped a few yards from Prowers and eyed him suspiciously. “Wotcha want to chew the rag about?” he asked.

Jake sat down on a rock with an air so casually careless that a tenderfoot might not have guessed that he was ready for instant action if need be.

“Fellow, sit down,” he said. “We got all day before us. I don’t reckon you got any engagements you have to keep immediate—not since you had that one at the Diamond Bar K ranch last night.”

“I don’t getcha.”

“Sure you do. No use throwin’ a sandy with me. I tell you, fellow, I’m playin’ my own hand. Me, I don’t like Reed any more’n you do. So, entrey noo, as the frog-eaters say, we’ll take it for granted you were the uninvited guest at Reed’s ranch a few hours since. Yore work wasn’t first-class, if you ask old Jake Prowers. You didn’t burn but a small part of the wheat and you didn’t get Clint anyways adequate.”

“Meaning he wasn’t croaked?” Cig demanded out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’ll say he wasn’t, by jiminy by jinks. But I don’t know as that’ll help you any when his boys catch you.”

“They ain’t gonna catch me,” the New York crook boasted, his brain seething with suspicion of the dried-up little man in front of him.

Jake Prowers weighed this, a skeptical smile on his thin lips. “Interesting, but unreliable,” he decided aloud, in regard to the other’s prediction. “How do you aim to prevent it? The sheriff has got you cut off from the railroad. Food don’t grow on bushes in these hills. You’re done, unless—”

“You gotta ’nother guess coming,” the thug retorted. “Forget that stuff. I ain’t no hobo. Come to a showdown these country boobs’ll find me right there with a gun. I’m a good man to lay off.”

The Westerner laughed, softly and derisively. “Fellow, you talk plumb foolish. This ain’t New York. It’s Colorado. That popgun of yours ain’t worth a billy be damn. Why, I could pick you off right now an’ never take a chance. Or my man could do it from the ledge up there. But say, for the sake of argument, we let you go. Say you ain’t found by any posse or cowpuncher. What’s the end of the trail you’re following? It don’t lead anywhere but round an’ round in a circle. You got nothing to eat and no place to go for food. Maybe you can stick it out a week. Then you’re done.”

“I might get to a town and jump a freight.”

“Not a chance. In a country like this news spreads in all directions. There ain’t a man within fifty miles but has his eyes peeled for you. No, sir, you’re in Dutch.”

Cig felt his helplessness, in spite of the bluff he was putting up. This land of wide spaces, of a thousand hills and valleys, shook his confidence. In New York he would have known what to do, but here he was a child. The shrunken little man finished in brown leather was giving him straight facts and he knew it.

“Nothing to that. Say, old Jonah, do I look like I had a yellow streak?” the New York tough demanded.

“All right. Suits me if it does you.” Jake rose and waved a hand airily into space. “Drift right along, my friend. I’ll not keep you—not for a minute. But when you come to the end of yore trail, you’ll remember that you had one good bet you wouldn’t back because you’re one of these wise guys that know it all.”

The fugitive listened with sullen resentment. He did not want to trust this old man. His instinct told him that, if he did so, Prowers would be for the time at least his master. But he was driven by circumstances which gave him no choice.

“I ain’t said I wouldn’t listen to you, have I?” he growled.

Prowers sat down again on the rock. “If I help you, we’ve got to come to an understanding right now. It’ll be a business deal. I hide you an’ feed you. Some day I’ll need you. When I do, you’ll take orders like a lamb. If that ain’t agreeable to you, why, all you got to do is start on yore travels now.”

“Need me what for?” demanded Cig.

Into the mild, skim-milk eyes of the cattleman there flashed for an instant an expression of cold cruelty scarcely human. As Prowers’s thin lip smile met Cig, the tramp still felt the shock of that ruthless ferocity.

“How the jumpin’ Jehosaphat do I know?” the old man said suavely, almost in a murmur. “For murder, massacre, or mayhem. Not yore business, my friend. All you’ve got to do is jump when I say so. Understand?”

Cig felt a cold sinking of the heart. He belonged to the dregs of humanity, but he knew that this mild old man was his master in villainy. It was as though he were smoking a cigarette with a keg of gunpowder scattered all around him. Jake Prowers was a center of danger almost Olympic in possibilities.

“I dunno about that,” the crook snarled.

Again the wrinkled hand of the ranchman lifted in a gesture that included all space. “The world’s before you,” he said ironically. “The peace of the hills go with you while you hunt for a nice lonesome gulch as a coffin.”

“What do I get out of it if we do business? Or do youse figure on workin’ me for a sucker?”

Jake had won, and he knew it. “Now you’re talkin’ sense, my friend. You’ll find me no tightwad. I pay for what I get, and I pay big.” An ominous flash of warning was in his eyes as he leaned forward and spoke slowly and softly. “But if you throw me down—if there’s a finger crook about you that ain’t on the level with me—better say yore prayers backward and forward. No man ever double-crossed Jake Prowers an’ got away with it. It ain’t being done in this neck of the woods.”

Hardy villain though he was, Cig felt a shiver go down his spine. He was superstitious, as all criminals are. He had the feeling that some one was walking on his grave, that this wrinkled old devil had been appointed by fate to put a period to his evil ways and days.

He shook off the wave of foreboding and slouched forward, slipping the automatic into his coat pocket. “I’ll play square, boss, if you do. See me through an’ I’ll go the limit for you. It’s a bargain.”

Jake shook hands on it.

“Done, by jiminy by jinks,” he said in his high weak voice.

Cig was puzzled and a little annoyed. How had he ever been fooled into thinking that this inoffensive little specimen was dangerous? It was written on him that he would not hurt a fly.