The Everlasting Whisper

  _Chapter VI_

  "You are sure you won't be gone more than an hour?" Gloria asked.

  Never, it seemed to her, had she seen a lonelier-looking place than oldColoma drowsing on the fringe of the wilderness. The street into whichthey had ridden was deserted save for a couple of dogs making eachother's acquaintance suspiciously. Why was it more lonesome here than ithad been back there in the mountains? she wondered.

  "Less than an hour," he assured her. "What business I have can be donein fifteen minutes if it can be done at all. But, in the meantime, whatwill you do?"

  "Oh," said Gloria, "I'll just poke around. It will be fun to see whatkind of people live here."

  He put the horses in the stable, watered and fed them himself, and cameback to her outside the front double doors. She had dropped down on abox in the sun; he thought that there was a little droop to hershoulders. And small wonder, he admitted, with a tardy sense of guilt.All these hours in the saddle----

  "Tired much?" he asked solicitously.

  The shoulders straightened like a soldier's; she jumped up and whirledsmilingly.

  "Not a bit tired," she told him brightly.

  "That's good. But I could get a room for you at the hotel; you could liedown and rest a couple of hours----"

  Gloria would not hear to it; if she did want to lie down she'd go outunder one of the trees and rest there. She trudged along with him to thepost-office; she watched as Mark called for and got a registered parcel.Further, she marked that the postmaster appeared curious about thepackage so heavily insured until over Mark's shoulder he caught aglimpse of her, and that thereafter, craning his neck as they went out,he evidenced a greater interest in her than in a bundle insured forthree thousand dollars. She was smiling brightly when Mark King hurriedoff to his meeting with old Loony Honeycutt.

  Honeycutt's shanty, ancient, twisted, warped, and ugly like himself,stood well apart from the flock of houses, as though, like himself evenin this, it were suspicious and meant to keep its own business toitself. Only one other building had approached it in neighbourlyfashion, and this originally had been Honeycutt's barn. Now it had acouple of crazy windows cut crookedly into its sides and a stovepipethrust up, also crookedly, through the shake roof, and was known as theMcQuarry place. Here one might count on finding Swen Brodie at suchtimes as he favoured Coloma with his hulking presence; here foregatheredhis hangers-on. An idle crowd for the most part, save when the devilfound mischief for them to do, they might be expected to be representedby one or two of their number loafing about headquarters, and Kingrealized that his visit to Loony Honeycutt was not likely to passunnoticed. What he had not counted on was finding Swen Brodie himselfbefore him in Honeycutt's shanty.

  King, seeing no one, walked through the weeds to Honeycutt's door. Thedoor was closed, the windows down--dirty windows, every corner of everypane with its dirty cobweb trap and skeletons of flies. As he lifted hisfoot to the first of the three front steps he heard voices. Nor wouldany man who had once listened to the deep, sullen bass of Swen Brodiehave forgotten or have failed now in quick recognition. Brodie's mouth,when he spoke, dripped the vilest of vocabularies that had ever beenknown in these mountains, very much as old Honeycutt's toothless mouth,ever screwed up in rotary chewing and sucking movements, drooled tobaccojuice upon his unclean shirt. Brodie at moments when he desired to beutterly inoffensive could not purge his utterance of oaths; he was oneof those men who could not remark that it was a fine morning withoutfirst damning the thing, qualifying it with an epithet of vileness, andturning it out of his big, loose mouth sullied with syllables which donot get themselves into print.

  What King heard, as though Brodie had held his speech for the moment andhurled it like a challenge to the man he did not know had come, was,when stripped of its cargo of verbal filth:

  "You old fool, you're dying right now. It's for me or Mark King to getit, and it ain't going to be King."

  Honeycutt all the time was whining like a feeble spirit in pain, hisutterances like the final dwindlings of a mean-spirited dog. King hadnever heard him whine like that; Honeycutt was more given to chucklingsand clackings of defiance and derision. Perhaps Brodie as the ultimateargument had manhandled him. King threw open the door.

  There stood old Honeycutt, tremblingly upheld upon his sawed-offbroom-handle. Beyond him, facing the door, was Swen Brodie, his immensebody towering over Honeycutt's spindling one, his bestial face hideousin its contortions as at once he gloated and threatened. In Brodie'shands, which were twice the size of an ordinary man's, was a littlewooden box, to which Honeycutt's rheumy eyes were glued with franticdespair. Evidently the box had only now been taken from its hiding-placeunder a loose board in the floor; the board lay tossed to one side, andBrodie's legs straddled the opening.

  Honeycutt did not know immediately that any one had entered; either hisold ears had not heard, or his excited mind was concentrated soexcludingly on Brodie that he had no thought of aught else. Brodie,however, turned his small, restless eyes, that were like two shinybright-blue buttons, upon the intruder. His great mouth stood openshowing his teeth. On that lower, deformed, undershot jaw of Swen Brodiewere those monstrous teeth which were his pride, a misshapen double rowwhich he kept clean while his body went unwashed, and between which theman could bend a nail.

  Swen Brodie was the biggest man who had ever come to the mountains, mensaid, unless that honour went to one of the Seven who more than ahalf-century ago had perished with Gus Ingle. And even so Brodie keptthe honour in his own blood, boasting that Ingle's giant companion, theworst of a bad lot, was his own father's father. The elder Brodie hadcome from Iceland, had lived with a squaw, had sired the first "Swen"Brodie. And this last scion of a house of outlawry and depravity, theBlue Devil, as many called him, stood six or eight clear inches aboveMark King, who was well above six feet. Whatever pride was in him wentfirst to his teeth, next to his enormous stature; he denied that hisfather had been so big a man; he flew into a towering rage at thesuggestion; he cursed his father's memory as a fabric of lies. His headwas all face, flattening off an inch above the hairless brows; his facewas all enormous, double-toothed mouth.

  Slowly the big mouth closed. The shiny blue eyes narrowed and glinted;the coarse face reddened. Brodie's throat corded, the Adam's apple movedrepeatedly up and down as he swallowed inarticulately. This oldHoneycutt saw. He jerked about and quick lights sprang up in hisdespairing eyes. He began to sputter but Brodie's loud voice had comeback to him and drowned out the old man's shrillings. Brodie ripped outa string of oaths, demanding:

  "Who told _you_ to come in? You--you----"

  "He was aiming to kill me," cried old Honeycutt, dragging and pulling atKing's sleeve. "He was for doin' for me--like that!"

  He pointed to the floor. There lay a heavy iron poker bent double.

  "He done it. Brodie done it. He was for doin' me----"

  "You old fool, I'll do you yet," growled Brodie. "And you, King, whatare you after?"

  Always truculent, to-day Brodie was plainly spoiling for trouble. Kinghad stepped in at a moment when Brodie was in no mood to brook anyinterruption or interference.

  "I came for a word with Honeycutt, not with you," King flashed back athim. "And from the look of things Honeycutt is thanking his stars that Idid come."

  "If you mean anything by that," shouted Brodie threateningly, "put aname to it."

  "If it's a fight you want," said King sharply, "I'm ready to take youon, any time, and without a lot of palaver."

  Old Honeycutt began sidling off toward the back door, neither of his twovisitors noticing him now as their eyes clashed.

  "What I come for I'm going to have," announced Brodie. "It's mine,anyhow, more than any other man's; I could prove it by law if I gave thesnap of a finger for what the law deals out, hit or miss. Was there aKing with Gus Ingle's crowd? Or a Honeycutt? No, but there was a Brodie!And I'm his heir, by thunder. It's mine more'n any man's."

  King laughed at him.

  "Since when ha
ve you been studying law, Brodie? Since you got back thislast trip, figuring you might have a word with the sheriff?"

  "Sheriff? What do you mean, sheriff?"

  "I happened to see you and Andy Parker standing together on the cliffs.I saw Andy go overboard. What is more, I had a talk with him before Iburied him."

  Again Brodie's big mouth dropped open; his little blue eyes rounded, andhe put one hand at his throat nervously.

  "Andy's a liar; always a liar," he said thickly. But he seemed annoyed.Then his face cleared, and he too laughed, derision in his tone."Anyway, he's dead and can't lie no more, and your word against mineain't more'n an even break. So if your nosing sheriff gets gay with meI'll twist his cursed neck for him."

  "Suit yourself. I've told you already I came for a talk with Honeycuttand not with you."

  "Then you'll wait until I'm done with him," roared Brodie, all of hisfirst baffled rage sweeping back through his blood. "And now you'llclear out!"

  King stooped forward just a little, gathering himself and ready as hesaw Brodie crouch for a spring. It was just then that both rememberedold Honeycutt. For the old man, tottering in the opening of the reardoor, was muttering in a wicked sort of glee:

  "Up with them hands of your'n, Swen Brodie. High up an' right quick, orI'll blow your ugly head off'n your shoulders!"

  In his trembling hands was a double-barrelled shotgun, sawed off anddoubtless loaded to the muzzle with buckshot. Though the thing waveredconsiderably, its end was not six feet from Brodie's head, and bothhammers were back, while the ancient nervous fingers were playing aswith palsy about the triggers. King expected the discharge each second.

  Brodie whirled and drew back, his face turning grey.

  "Put it down, you old fool; put it down!" he cried raspingly. "I'll go."

  The old man cackled in his delight.

  "I'll put nothin' down," he announced triumphantly. "You set down thatbox."

  Hastily Brodie put it on the table. He drew further away, backing towardthe front door.

  "Git!" cried old Honeycutt.

  They could hear the air rushing back into Brodie's lungs as he came tothe door and his fear left him.

  "I'll be back, Honeycutt, don't you fear," he growled savagely. "As foryou, King, you and me ain't done. I'll get you where there's no old foolto butt in, and I'll break every bone in your body."

  "I'll be ready, Brodie," said King. He watched the great hulking figureas it went out; two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn there, every ounceof it packed with power and the cunning of brutish battle. If he everfought Swen Brodie, just man to man, with only the weapons nature gavethem, what would the end be?

  But Brodie was gone, his shadow withdrawn from the doorstep, and he hadhis business with Honeycutt. He left the door wide open so that no onemight come suddenly upon them and turned to the old man.

  "Put your gun down, Honeycutt," he said quietly. "I want to talk withyou."

  "I got the big stiff on the run!" mumbled the old man. "He cain't comean' bulldoze me. Not me, he cain't. No, nor if Swen Brodie cain't gitthe best of me, no other man can," he added meaningly, glaring at King.

  "There's that box on the table," said King. "Maybe you'll want to put itaway before he makes you another visit."

  Honeycutt hastily set his gun down, leaning it against the wall withboth hammers still back, and shambled to the table. He caught the box upand hugged it to his thin old breast, breathing hard.

  "If there's money in it----" said King, knowing well that the old miserhad money secreted somewhere.

  "Who said there was money? Who said so?"

  He went to his tumbled bunk in a corner, sat down on it, thrusting thebox out of sight under the untidy heap of dirty bedding.

  "I ain't talkin'," he said. He glanced at his gun. "You _git_, too."

  King felt that he could not have selected a more inopportune moment forhis visit, and already began to fear that he would have no successto-day. But it began to look as though it were a question of now ornever; Brodie would return despite the shotgun, and Brodie might now belooked to for rough-shod methods. So, in face of the bristlinghostility, he was set in his determination to see the thing through toone end or another. To catch an interest which he knew was alwaysreadily awakened, he said:

  "Brodie and Parker were on Lookout Ridge day before yesterday. Brodieshoved Parker over. _At Lookout Ridge_, Honeycutt." He stressed thewords significantly while keenly watching for the gleam of interest inthe faded eyes. It came; Honeycutt jerked his head up.

  "I wish I'd of shot him," he wailed. "I wish to God I'd of blowed hisugly head off."

  "It might have saved trouble," admitted King coolly. "Also, it mighthave been the job to hang you, Honeycutt. Better leave well enoughalone. But listen to me: Brodie told you, and he meant it, that it wasgoing to be Brodie or King who got away with this deal."

  "He lied! Like you lie!" Here was Honeycutt probed in his tenderestspot. "It'll be me! Me, I tell you. I'm the only man that knows, I'm theonly man that's got the right--"

  "Brodie spoke of right. No one has a right more than any other man. It'streasure-trove, Honeycutt; it's the man's who can find it and bring itin."

  "That'll be me. You'll see. Think I'm old, do you?" He spoke jeeringlyand clenched a pair of palsied fists. "I'm feelin' right peart thisspring; by summer I'll be strong as a young feller again."

  "By summer will be too late. Don't I tell you that already Brodie hasgone as far as Lookout Ridge? That means he's getting hot on the trailof it, doesn't it? As hot as I am."

  "Then what are you comin' pesterin' me for? If you know where it is?"

  "I don't know." Honeycutt cackled and rubbed his hands at the admission."But I'm going to find out. So, probably, is Brodie. Now, look here,Honeycutt; I haven't come to browbeat you as Brodie did. I am for makingyou a straight business proposition. If you know anything, I stand readyto buy your knowledge. In cold, hard cash."

  "No man ain't got the money--not enough--not any Morgan orRock'feller----"

  King began opening the parcel he had brought from the post-office. As hecut the heavy cord with his pocket-knife Honeycutt looked on curiously.King stepped to the table, standing so that out of the corners of hiseyes he commanded both doors, and stripped off the wrapping-paper.

  "Look sharp, Honeycutt," he commanded. "Here's money enough to last youas long as you live. All yours if you can tell me what I want to know."

  A golden twenty-dollar coin rolled free, shone with its virgin newnessand lay on the table-top, gleaming its lure into the covetous old eyes.Another followed it and another. King regretted that there were notmore, that the parcel contained banknotes for the most part. He begancounting it out.

  "There's one thousand dollars. Right in that pile," he said. "Onethousand dollars."

  "One thousand dollars. An' some of it gold. New-lookin', ain't it, Mark?Let me have the feel of one of them twenties."

  King tossed it; it fell upon the bedding, and Honeycutt's fingers divedafter it and held it tight. He began rubbing it, caressing it.

  King went on counting.

  "One more thousand in this pile," he said. "That's two thousand,Honeycutt!"

  "Two thousand," repeated Honeycutt, nodding. He was sucking at his lips,his mouth puckered, his cheeks sunken in. He got up and shambled on hiscane close to the table, leaning against it, thrusting his peering eyesdown.

  King counted out the last crisp note.

  "Three thousand dollars." He stepped back a pace.

  "Three thousand dollars! That's a might of money, Mark. Three thousanddollars all on my table." His thin voice was a hushed whisper now. "Inever seen that much money, not all at once and spread out."

  "It's likely that you'll never see that much again. Unless you and I dobusiness."

  Honeycutt did not answer, perhaps had not heard. His emaciated arms wereuplifted; he had let his cane go, supporting himself by leaning hardagainst the table; his arms curved inward, his fingers were like claws,standing apar
t. Slowly the hands descended; the fingers began gatheringthe few gold pieces, stacking them, lingering with each separate one,smoothing at it. Gold spoke directly and eloquently to what stood for asoul in Loony Honeycutt; banknotes had a voice which he understood butwhich could never move him, thrill him, lift him to ecstatic heights, aspure musical, beautiful gold could.

  "It's a sight of money, Mark," he whispered "It's a sight of money."

  King held his silence. His whole argument was on the table.

  * * * * *

  Only now and then did King catch a glimpse of Honeycutt's eyes, for themost part hidden by his lowered lids and bent head. At such times,though he had counted on having to do with cupidity, he was startled bythe look he saw Here was the expression of the one emotion which dwelton in the withered, time-beaten body; here was _love_ in one of its tenthousand forms. Love that is burning desire, that quenches all otherspark of the spirit, that is boundless; love of a hideously grotesqueand deformed sort; love defiled, twisted, misshapen as though Eros hadbecome an ugly, malformed, leering monstrosity. That love which is theexpression of the last degree of selfish greed, since it demands all andgives nothing; that love which is like a rank weed, choking tenderergrowths; or more like a poisonous snake. Now it dominated the old manutterly; the world beyond the rectangular top of the table did notexist; now its elixir poured through his arteries so that for the firsttime in months there came pinkish spots upon the withered cheeks,showing through the scattering soiled grey hairs of his beard.

  ... Suddenly King went to the door, standing in the sunshine, fillinghis lungs with the outside air. The sight of the gloating miser sickenedhim. More than that. It sickened his fancies so that for a minute heasked himself what he and Brodie were doing! The lure of gold. The thinghad hypnotized him; he wished that he were out in the mountains ridingamong the pines and cedars; listening to the voice of the wilderness. Itwas clean out there. Listening to Gloria's happy voice. Living in tunewith the springtime, thinking a man's thoughts, dreaming a man's dreams,doing a man's work. And all for something other than just gold at theend of it.

  But the emotion, like a vertigo, passed as swiftly as it had come. Forhe knew within himself that never had that twisted travesty of lovestirred within him; that though he had travelled on many a golden trailit was clean-heartedly; that it was the game itself that counted everwith him and no such poisonous emotions as grew within the wretchedbreast of Loony Honeycutt. And these golden trails, though inevitablythey brought him trail fellows like Honeycutt, like Swen Brodie, werenone the less paths in which a man's feet might tread without shame andin which the mire might be left to one side.

  He turned back to the room. Honeycutt was near the bunk, groping for hisshotgun. He started guiltily, veiled his eyes, and returned empty-handedto the table.

  "If it was all in gold, now," said Honeycutt hurriedly.

  King made no reference to Honeycutt's murderous intent.

  "That paper is the same thing as gold," he said. "The government backsit up."

  "I know, I know. But what's a gove'ment? They go busted, don't they,sometimes? Same as folks? Gold don't go busted. There ain't nothin' elselike gold. You can tie to it. It won't burn on you an' it won't rust."He shook his head stubbornly. "There ain't nothin' like gold. If thatwas all in twenty-dollar gold pieces, now----"

  "I'll get a car here," said King. "We'll drive down to Auburn and take atrain to San Francisco. And there I'll undertake to get you the wholething in gold. Three thousand dollars. That is one hundred and fiftytwenty-dollar pieces."

  But old Honeycutt, sucking and mouthing, shook his head.

  "I couldn't leave here, an' you know it. I--I got things here," he saidwith a look of great cunning, "I wouldn't go away from. Not if horseswas pullin' me."

  "You can bring those things along----"

  Honeycutt cried out sharply at that.

  "You know I wouldn't durst! With the world full of robbers that wouldbe after me like hounds runnin' down a rabbit. I won't go; you cain'tmake me. No man cain't."

  King's patience deserted him.

  "I am not going to make you do anything. Further, I am not going to putin any more time on you. I have offered to pay you three thousanddollars for what you know--and there is the very strong likelihood thatyou don't know a bit more than I do----"

  "Don't know!" shrieked Honeycutt. "Wasn't I a boy grown when the dyin',delerious man stumbled in on the camp? Didn't I hear him talk an' didn'tI see what he had in his fist? Wasn't I settin' right side by side withGus Ingle when that happened? Wouldn't I of been one to go, if it hadn'tof been that I had a big knife-cut in my side you could of shoved a catin--give to me by a slant-eyed cuss name of Baldy Winch. Didn't I watch'em go, the whole seven of 'em, Baldy Winch, rot him, jeerin' at me an'me swearin' I'd get him yet, him an' Gus Ingle an' Preacher Ellson an'the first Brodie an' Jimmy Kelp an' Manny Howard an' the Italian? Wasn'tI there?" He was almost incoherent.

  "Were you?" said King. "And Baldy Winch, the one who knifed you----?"

  The sucking old mouth emitted a dry chuckle.

  "An' didn't I keep my promise? That very winter after Baldy was the onlyman to git back. With my side just healin' didn't I make my way throughthe snow out to where he was----"

  "His cabin on Lookout?"

  "With an axe I got there! An' him havin' a gun an' pistol an' knife.Phoo! What good did it do him? An' didn't I square with him by takin'what I wanted?"

  "Gold?"

  The old dry cackle answered the question; the bleary eyes were brightwith cunning.

  "If I don't know nothin'," jibed Honeycutt, "what're you askin' me for?"

  King had learned little that he did not already know. He came back tothe table and began gathering up the money.

  "Wait a minute, Mark," pleaded the old man, restless as he understoodthat the glittering coins were to be taken away. "Let's talk a while.You an' me ain't had a good chat like this for a year."

  "I'm going," retorted King. "But I'll make you one last proposition." Hethrust into his pocket everything excepting five twenty-dollar goldpieces. These he left standing in a little pile. "I'll give you justexactly one hundred dollars for a look at what is in that box of yours."

  In sudden alarm the old man shambled back to his bunk, his hands on thebedding over the box.

  "You'd grab it an' run," he clacked. "You'd rob me. You're worse thanBrodie----"

  "You know better than that," King told him sternly. "If I wanted to robyou I'd do it without all this monkey business."

  In his suspicious old heart Honeycutt knew that. He battled withhimself, his toothless old mouth tight clamped.

  "I'll go you!" he said abruptly. "Stand back. An' give me the moneyfirst."

  King gave him the money and drew back some three or four paces.Honeycutt drew out the box, held it lingeringly, fought his battle allover again, and again went down before the hundred dollars. He openedthe box upon a hinged lid; he made a smooth place in the covers; hepoured out the contents.

  What King saw, three articles only, were these: an old leather pouch,bulging, probably with coins; a parcel; and a burnished gold nugget. Thenugget, he estimated roughly, would be worth five hundred dollars wereit all that it looked from a dozen feet away. The parcel, since it wasenwrapped in a piece of cloth, might have been anything. It was shapedlike a flat box, the size of an octavo volume.

  Honeycutt leered.

  "If Swen Brodie had of knowed what he had right in his hands," hegloated, "he'd never of let go! Not even for a shotgun at his head!"

  "Brodie hasn't gone far. He'll come back. You have your last chance totalk business with me, Honeycutt. Brodie will get it next time."

  "Ho! Will he? Not where I'm goin' to hide it, Mark King. I got anotherplace; a better place; a place the old hell-sarpint himself couldn'tfind."

  * * * * *

  King left him gloating and placing his treasures back in his box. In hisheart he knew that Brod
ie would come again. Soon. It began to look asthough Brodie had the bulge on the situation. For that which Mark Kingcould not come at by fair means Brodie meant to have by foul. For he hadlittle faith in the new "hidin'-place."

  But on a near-by knoll, where she sat with her back to a tree, wasGloria. He turned toward her; she waved. He saw that Brodie and two menwith him were looking out of a window of the old Honeycutt barn; heheard one of them laughing. They were looking at Gloria----

  King quickened his step to come to her, his blood ruffled by a new angerwhich he did not stop to reason over. He could imagine the look in SwenBrodie's evil little eyes.