Who, then, could he get?
Wilson Hoyt would be perfect, but Hoyt had been acting strange the past few days, and Ben Stowe hesitated to approach him. Hoyt, he felt, was an honest man, or he seemed to be, but he had always been a man who kept his eyes strictly on the job, and did not worry about anything outside it.
Mike Shevlin.
Ridiculous as the idea was, Ben kept coming back to it, for Mike had the guts to deliver that gold, come hell and high water; and Mike wouldn’t talk. Of all the men he knew, Mike Shevlin was the best man to handle that gold.
The trouble was, Mike was bucking him.
Ben Stowe glanced at the gathering ash on his cigar. Carefully, he assayed all he knew of Mike Shevlin. He had been a tough kid, handy with a gun, and not above driving off a few cows once in a while. He had balked at outright robbery when the rest of them went into x; but that, Ben decided, was mostly because Mike had just wanted to drift–he just wanted to get out and see more country.
Ben had heard a lot of the conflicting stories about Mike Shevlin. He had been mixed up in some cattle wars, in some gunfighting, and he had ridden the side of the law a time or two. That needn’t mean a thing, for Ben knew of several outlaws who had been town marshals, and good ones.
He had never really liked Mike Shevlin, but this was not the time for that. Suppose… just suppose… that he made an offer? Gib’s piece of action, for instance?
There were not many who could turn their backs on a quarter of a million dollars. Of course, Shevlin would never live to collect, no more than Gib Gentry would have.
What fool would give up money of that kind when he could keep it for himself?
But one other thing worried him. Ray Hollister was still out there, and Hollister had to die.
CHAPTER 13
Where was Ray Hollister now? Three men were thinking about that.
Mike Shevlin, riding back to the claim in the canyon, was asking himself that question. Ben Stowe, in his office, was worrying about the same thing; and Wilson Hoyt, turning his mind from his recent words with Shevlin, thought again of Hollister.
Not one of them believed he was through. Mike Shevlin, riding warily, and well off the trail, knew that Ray Hollister would never be able to convince himself he was through in Rafter. The thought of going elsewhere would not occur to him, or if it did, it would be dismissed.
Like many another man, he was committed to the home grounds. He could not bring himself to move, although all the world offered a fresh start–notew ranges, new towns, places where he was unknown, and where his abilities might have made a place for him.
Right now Hollister was sitting beside a fire in a remote spot among the bare hills. He was alone except for Babcock, and Babcock was for the first time looking on his boss with some doubt.
Only a part of his doubt was the result of his conversation with Shevlin in the stable. His loyalties were deep-seated, and he hesitated, feeling uncertain for the first time in years.
“Where the hell is Wink?” Hollister said, looking up.
“He’ll be along.” Winkler had gone down to the Three Sevens to pick up some grub. They had nothing to eat and he knew the cook there. Winkler would have to be careful, for there would be no friendly feeling for them at the Three Sevens. Nor at any of the other ranches, for that matter.
Ray Hollister looked haggard, his face was drawn, his eyes deep sunken. “Bab,” he said, “they’ve got to move the gold. And if they try to move it, we can get it.” Babcock straightened his thin frame and went over to the nearby brush to pick up sticks for the fire.
“If we can get that gold,” Hollister went on, “we’ll have them where the hair’s short.” “How’ll they move it?” asked Babcock.
“Gentry’s freight outfit. That was why he was set up that way.” Babcock had squatted on his heels to pick up the sticks, but now he turned his scrawny neck and looked back at Hollister. “That’s good figurin’. How’d you know that?” “I know plenty.” Babcock came back to the fire and added some of the fuel to it. Then he squatted down beside it.
Ray Hollister had forgotten, for the time being, that Babcock knew nothing of his previous arrangements with Ben Stowe. He was thinking aloud rather than planning; and weariness as well as the defeats of the past days had dulled his senses.
Babcock had room for two loyalties and no more, and he believed them to be one and the same.
He was loyal to Hollister, and he was loyal to the cattle business. He had grown up around cattle, had worked cattle since he was a child, and had never considered anything else. The discovery of gold at Rafter was a personal affront. He disliked the miners, disliked the camp followers, and most of all he disliked the dirty machinery and the pound of the compressor. When the mines began using great quantities of water and returning some of it muddy and filthy, he was deeply angered.
He had known of the firm of Hollister and Evans, but he had believed it to be a land and investment operation. He had largely ignored it, for Ray was always going off on some new scheme, but he always came back when the scheme proved to be a swindle or a fool notion. While Ray Hollister took off on his other activities, Babcock was minding the cattle.
After the water was polluted, it had been necessary to drive the cattle back from the stream where they had always watered, something it was not easy to do. The only other water was too far away for the good of the stock, and the grass there was poor. He could have used Hollister’s help then, for they were short-handed; several of the newer boys had gone off prospecting… as if they knew anything about finding gold!
With the hands that remained Babcock had pushed the cattle back from the water with only a few lost, and there had been a time when he had been up to his ears in work far on the other side of the range.
Anyway, Babcock himself had never been much of a hand for raising hell in town.
Now, Babcock’s mind had not let go of Ray Hollister’s comment on why Gentry had been set up that way. Of course, he thought, it was something a man might guess at, or figure out. He looked across the fire at Hollister, considering him thoughtfully, and remembering what Shevlin had said.
He was a man slow to arrive at any conclusion, and he was taking great care in trying to think this matter out. But as he considered it, little bits and pieces of half-forgotten conversations returned to mind.
“They’ve got to move it!” Hollister exclaimed again suddenly. “They daren’t take a chance on running short of cash, or being caught with the gold.” He looked shrewdly at Babcock. “Bab, we could have a piece of money out of this.” “I’m no thief.” Babcock spoke irritably, for he did not like to have his thinking interrupted. “That money ain’t mine.” “It’s not theirs, either,” Hollister protested, and then added, more slyly, “Without that money those mines won’t operate long.” That made a kind of sense, Babcock agreed. “It would be guarded,” he suggested.
Hollister dismissed that with a wave of the hand. “Of course it would. But we’d have surprise on our side, and that counts for a lot.” He paused.
“We’d need a couple of good men, aside from you and Wink and me.
“There’s Halloran… and John Sande.” Yes, they were good men. Ray Hollister considered the route the gold would be likely to take. Understanding the problem, as probably nobody else did quite so well, he knew the gold must go east. On the west coast the channels of finance were narrow, and there would be too much chance of talk. California was filled with rumors upon rumors, everybody was agog for discoveries, and the slightest suggestion of gold appearing from a new source would set off a rush.
Such an amount of gold as this might be more easily handled if it could be shipped to the East.
One by one he went over the routes in his mind, and one by one he eliminated them until only two were left, and of these one was very doubtful.
Winkler rode in before midnight. He sat down on a rock and listened to Hollister’s plan. “All right,” he said, “count on me.
… What about Halloran and Sande?” “They’ll go,” Babcock said.