The Border Legion, Zane Grey [books for 7th graders txt] 📗

to this gold strike. We'll build cabins on the outskirts of the town, and we won't hang together. The gang will be spread out. Most of you must make a bluff at digging gold. Be like other miners. Get in with cliques and clans. Dig, drink, gamble like the rest of them. Beard will start a gambling-place. Red Pearce will find some other kind of work. I'll buy up claims—employ miners to work them. I'll disguise myself and get in with the influential men and have a voice in matters. You'll all be scouts. You'll come to my cabin at night to report. We'll not tackle any little jobs. Miners going out with fifty or a hundred pounds of gold—the wagons—the stage-coach—these we'll have timed to rights, and whoever I detail on the job will hold them up. You must all keep sober, if that's possible. You must all absolutely trust to my judgment. You must all go masked while on a job. You must never speak a word that might direct suspicion to you. In this way we may work all summer without detection. The Border Legion will become mysterious and famous. It will appear to be a large number of men, operating all over. The more secretive we are the more powerful the effect on the diggings. In gold-camps, when there's a strike, all men are mad. They suspect each other. They can't organize. We shall have them helpless.... And in short, if it's as rich a strike as looks due here in these hills, before winter we can pack out all the gold our horses can carry.”

Kells had begun under restraint, but the sound of his voice, the liberation of his great idea, roused him to a passion. The man radiated with passion. This, then, was his dream—the empire he aspired to.

He had a powerful effect upon his listeners, except Gulden; and it was evident to Joan that the keen bandit was conscious of his influence. Gulden, however, showed nothing that he had not already showed. He was always a strange, dominating figure. He contested the relations of things. Kells watched him—the men watched him—and Jim Cleve's piercing eyes glittered in the shadow, fixed upon that massive face. Manifestly Gulden meant to speak, but in his slowness there was no laboring, no pause from emotion. He had an idea and it moved like he moved.

“DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES!” The words boomed deep from his cavernous chest, a mutter that was a rumble, with something almost solemn in its note and certainly menacing, breathing murder. As Kells had propounded his ideas, revealing his power to devise a remarkable scheme and his passion for gold, so Gulden struck out with the driving inhuman blood-lust that must have been the twist, the knot, the clot in his brain. Kells craved notoriety and gold; Gulden craved to kill. In the silence that followed his speech these wild border ruffians judged him, measured him, understood him, and though some of them grew farther aloof from him, more of them sensed the safety that hid in his terrible implication.

But Kells rose against him.

“Gulden, you mean when we steal gold—to leave only dead men behind?” he queried, with a hiss in his voice.

The giant nodded grimly.

“But only fools kill—unless in self-defense,” declared Kells, passionately.

“We'd last longer,” replied Gulden, imperturbably.

“No—no. We'd never last so long. Killings rouse a mining-camp after a while—gold fever or no. That means a vigilante band.”

“We can belong to the vigilantes, just as well as to your Legion,” said Gulden.

The effect of this was to make Gulden appear less of a fool than Kells supposed him. The ruffians nodded to one another. They stirred restlessly. They were animated by a strange and provocative influence. Even Red Pearce and the others caught its subtlety. It was evil predominating in evil hearts. Blood and death loomed like a shadow here. The keen Kells saw the change working toward a transformation and he seemed craftily fighting something within him that opposed this cold ruthlessness of his men.

“Gulden, suppose I don't see it your way?” he asked.

“Then I won't join your Legion.”

“What WILL you do?”

“I'll take the men who stand by me and go clean up that gold-camp.”

From the fleeting expression on Kells's face Joan read that he knew Gulden's project would defeat his own and render both enterprises fatal.

“Gulden, I don't want to lose you,” he said.

“You won't lose me if you see this thing right,” replied Gulden. “You've got the brains to direct us. But, Kells, you're losing your nerve.... It's this girl you've got here!”

Gulden spoke without rancor or fear or feeling of any kind. He merely spoke the truth. And it shook Kells with an almost ungovernable fury.

Joan saw the green glare of his eyes—his gray working face—the flutter of his hand. She had an almost superhuman insight into the workings of his mind. She knew that then—he was fighting whether or not to kill Gulden on the spot. And she recognized that this was the time when Kells must kill Gulden or from that moment see a gradual diminishing of his power on the border. But Kells did not recognize that crucial height of his career. His struggle with his fury and hate showed that the thing uppermost in his mind was the need of conciliating Gulden and thus regaining a hold over the men.

“Gulden, suppose we waive the question till we're on the grounds?” he suggested.

“Waive nothing. It's one or the other with me,” declared Gulden.

“Do you want to be leader of this Border Legion?” went on Kells, deliberately.

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

Gulden appeared at a loss for an instant reply. “I want plenty to do,” he replied, presently. “I want to be in on everything. I want to be free to kill a man when I like.”

“When you like!” retorted Kells, and added a curse. Then as if by magic his dark face cleared and there was infinite depth and craftiness in him. His opposition, and that hint of hate and loathing which detached him from Gulden, faded from his bearing. “Gulden, I'll split the difference between us. I'll leave you free to do as you like. But all the others—every man—must take orders from me.”

Gulden reached out a huge hand. His instant acceptance evidently amazed Kells and the others.

“LET HER RIP!” Gulden exclaimed. He shook Kells's hand and then laboriously wrote his name in the little book.

In that moment Gulden stood out alone in the midst of wild abandoned men. What were Kells and this Legion to him? What was the stealing of more or less gold?

“Free to do as you like except fight my men,” said Kells. “That's understood.”

“If they don't pick a fight with me,” added the giant, and he grinned.

One by one his followers went through with the simple observances that Kells's personality made a serious and binding compact.