This last killin' ought to put me, and therefore you, ace-high with Hopkins and his crowd.'
'They're still talking vigilante. I encourage it. It's coming anyway. Murders in the outlying camps are driving men to a frenzy of fear and rage, even though such crimes have ceased in Whapeton. Better to fall in line with the inevitable and twist it to a man's own ends, than to try to oppose it. If you can keep Brent's friends from killing you for a few more weeks, we'll be ready to jump. Look out for Buck Gorman. He's the most dangerous man in the gang. He was Brent's friend, and he has his own friends--all dangerous men. Don't kill him unless you have to.'
'I'll take care of myself,' answered Corcoran somberly. 'I looked for Gorman in the mob, but he wasn't there. Too smart. But he's the man behind the mob. Bissett was just a stupid ox; Gorman planned it--or rather, I reckon he helped you plan it.'
'I'm wondering how you found out about it,' said Middleton. 'You wouldn't have come back unless somebody told you. Who was it?'
'None of your business,' growled Corcoran. It did not occur to him that Glory Bland would be in any danger from Middleton, even if the sheriff knew about her part in the affair, but he did not relish being questioned, and did not feel obliged to answer anybody's queries.
'That new gold strike sure came in mighty handy for you and Gorman,' he said. 'Did you frame that, too?'
Middleton nodded.
'Of course. That was one of my men who poses as a miner. He had a hatful of nuggets from the cache. He served his purpose and joined the men who hide up there in the hills. The mob of miners will be back tomorrow, tired and mad and disgusted, and when they hear about what happened, they'll recognize the handiwork of the Vultures; at least some of them will. But they won't connect me with it in any way. Now we'll ride back to town. Things are breaking our way, in spite of your foolish interference with the mob. But let Gorman alone. You can't afford to make any more enemies in the gang.'
Buck Gorman leaned on the bar in the Golden Eagle and expressed his opinion of Steve Corcoran in no uncertain terms. The crowd listened sympathetically, for, almost to a man, they were the ruffians and riff-raff of the camp.
'The dog pretends to be a deputy!' roared Gorman, whose bloodshot eyes and damp tangled hair attested to the amount of liquor he had drunk. 'But he kills an appointed judge, breaks up a court and drives away the jury-- yes, and releases the prisoner, a man charged with murder!'
It was the day after the fake gold strike, and the disillusioned miners were drowning their chagrin in the saloons. But few honest miners were in the Golden Eagle.
'Colonel Hopkins and other prominent citizens held an investigation,' said someone. 'They declared that evidence showed Corcoran to have been justified--denounced the court as a mob, acquitted Corcoran of killing Bissett, and then went ahead and acquitted McBride for killing Brent, even though he wasn't there.'
Gorman snarled like a cat, and reached for his whisky glass. His hand did not twitch or quiver, his movements were more catlike than ever. The whisky had inflamed his mind, illumined his brain with a white-hot certainty that was akin to insanity, but it had not affected his nerves or any part of his muscular system. He was more deadly drunk than sober.
'I was Brent's best friend!' he roared. 'I was Bissett's friend.'
'They say Bissett was a Vulture,' whispered a voice. Gorman lifted his tawny head and glared about the room as a lion might glare.
'Who says he was a Vulture? Why don't these slanderers accuse a living man? It's always a dead man they accuse! Well, what if he was? He was my friend! Maybe that makes me a Vulture!'
No one laughed or spoke as his flaming gaze swept the room, but each man, as those blazing eyes rested on him in turn, felt the chill breath of Death blowing upon him.
'Bissett a Vulture!' he said, wild enough with drink and fury to commit any folly, as well as any atrocity. He did not heed the eyes fixed on him, some in fear, a few in intense interest. 'Who knows who the Vultures are? Who knows who, or what anybody really is? Who really knows anything about this man Corcoran, for instance? I could tell--'
A light step on the threshold brought him about as Corcoran loomed in the door. Gorman froze, snarling, lips writhed back, a tawny-maned incarnation of hate and menace.
'I heard you was makin' a talk about me down here, Gorman,' said Corcoran. His face was bleak and emotionless as that of a stone image, but his eyes burned with murderous purpose.
Gorman snarled wordlessly.
'I looked for you in the mob,' said Corcoran, tonelessly, his voice as soft and without emphasis as the even strokes of a feather. It seemed almost as if his voice were a thing apart from him; his lips murmuring while all the rest of his being was tense with concentration on the man before him.
'You wasn't there. You sent your coyotes, but you didn't have the guts to come yourself, and--'
The dart of Gorman's hand to his gun was like the blurring stroke of a snake's head, but no eye could follow Corcoran's hand. His gun smashed before anyone knew he had reached for it. Like an echo came the roar of Gorman's shot. But the bullet ploughed splinteringly into the floor, from a hand that was already death-stricken and falling. Gorman pitched over and lay still, the swinging lamp glinting on his upturned spurs and the blue steel of the smoking gun which lay by his hand.
Chapter 8 The Coming of the Vigilantes
Colonel Hopkins looked absently at the liquor in his glass, stirred restlessly, and said abruptly: 'Middleton, I might as well come to the point. My friends and I have organized a vigilante committee, just as we should have done months ago. Now, wait a minute. Don't take this as a criticism of your methods. You've done wonders in the last month, ever since you brought Steve Corcoran in here. Not a holdup in the town, not a killing--that is, not a murder, and only a few shootings among the honest citizens.
'Added to that the ridding of the camp of such scoundrels as Jake Bissett and Buck Gorman. They were both undoubtedly members of the Vultures. I wish Corcoran hadn't killed Gorman just when he did, though. The man was drunk, and about to make some reckless disclosures about the gang. At least that's what a friend of mine thinks, who was in the Golden Eagle that night. But anyway it couldn't be helped.
'No, we're not criticizing you at all. But obviously you can't stop the murders and robberies that are going on up and down the Gulch, all the time. And you can't stop the outlaws from holding up the stage regularly.
'So that's where we come in. We have sifted the camp, carefully, over a period of months, until we have fifty men we can trust absolutely. It's taken a long time, because we've had to be sure of our men. We didn't want to take in a man who might be a spy for the Vultures. But at last we know where we stand. We're not sure just who is a Vulture, but we know who isn't, in as far as our organization is concerned.
'We can work together, John. We have no intention of interfering within your jurisdiction, or trying to take the law out of your hands. We demand a free hand outside the camp; inside the limits of Whapeton we are willing to act under your orders, or at least according to your advice. Of course we will work in absolute secrecy until we have proof enough to strike.'
'You must remember, Colonel,' reminded Middleton, 'that all along I've admitted the impossibility of my breaking up the Vultures with the limited means at my disposal. I've never opposed a vigilante committee. All I've demanded was that when it was formed, it should be composed of honest men, and be free of any element which might seek to twist its purpose into the wrong channels.'
'That's true. I didn't expect any opposition from you, and I can assure you that we'll always work hand-in- hand with you and your deputies.' He hesitated, as if over something unpleasant, and then said: 'John, are you sure of all your deputies?'
Middleton's head jerked up and he shot a startled glance at the Colonel, as if the latter had surprised him by putting into words a thought that had already occurred to him.
'Why do you ask?' he parried.
'Well,' Hopkins was embarrassed, 'I don't know--maybe I'm prejudiced--but--well, damn it, to put it bluntly, I've sometimes wondered about Bill McNab!'
Middleton filled the glasses again before he answered.
'Colonel, I never accuse a man without iron-clad evidence. I'm not always satisfied with McNab's actions, but it may merely be the man's nature. He's a surly brute. But he has his virtues. I'll tell you frankly, the reason I haven't discharged him is that I'm not sure of him. That probably sounds ambiguous.'
