Ronicky Doone's Treasure by Max Brand (leveled readers TXT) 📕
"Nothing there," he said to the chief, as he approached.
Ronicky hardly believed his ears, but a moment of thought explained the mystery. It was pitch dark behind that screening wall, and the darkness was rendered doubly thick by Baldy's probable conviction that there must be nothing to see behind the fallen roof section. He had come there prepared to find nothing, and he had found the sum of his expectations and no more.
"Sure there ain't?" and Jack Moon nodded. "Which don't mean that you wasn't a fool to light a fire and give somebody a light to shoot you by in case they was somebody lying around. Now, into the saddle both of you. We got a hard ride ahead."
"Something big on hand?" asked Marty Lang.
"There's a lesson for yaller-liv
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Presently from Corrigan, a big brute of a man, wielding a shovel with steady might, came a dull roar of excitement. The gravel flew up from his blade as the others in the narrow pit stood back. Then, from the three workers in those cramped quarters, came a single-throated wail of excitement. The scraping shovel had cleaned off the top of an iron-bound chest!
The yelling from the bottom of the hole was redoubled by the echoes along the sides of the pit and raised again by the men working at the mouth. They crowded about it as Jack Moon, with a hoarse shout, called to those below to make way for him.
Next instant he was down into the bottom of the pit, he wrenched a pick from the hands of one of the diggers, and, sinking it through the top boards of the chest, he tore one of them up. Below was a quantity of cloth or canvas. One slash of his knife divided it. Then by the light of the lanterns which had been lowered from the surface as far as possible, every eye at once caught the gleam and glitter of yellow — the unmistakable shimmer of gold!
The heart of the girl swelled until she could hardly breathe as she waited for the shouts of rejoicing. But not one came. Men were trembling, wild of eye, but their loudest voice was a husky whisper. Only Jack Moon was speaking aloud, and he was ordering them to pass the stuff up to the surface. It rose from shaking hand to shaking hand, and up on the lip of the pit came a gathering heap of gold spilling at the feet of the girl. She gazed on it, incredulous.
There was power, happiness, freedom in that growing heap of yellow. It was an arm to pursue and a strong hand to support. It could reward and punish. It could actually buy a life. How many, indeed, had already been paid down freely to win this same metal from the earth, to take it again from the rightful owners, and, last of all, to hide it?
Her father, frantic with joy, clambered from the pit, kneeled by the mass, buried his hands in it, and then looked up to her with a maniacal laugh! Others were coming up. The chest had been gutted of its contents. And as fast as they reached the top of the ground, hand after hand, shaking with joy, was buried in the treasure. Then Baldy McNair broke the charm.
“Get down again, boys!” he cried. “This is only the beginning. There’s a ton of gold here. But what’s that? Not seven hundred thousand dollars! There must be more — ten times as much — maybe twenty times as much! Who knows? Come down again and dig!”
But the heavy voice of the leader answered him as Jack Moon climbed up from the pit.
“Hold the lanterns out. Look down yonder,” he commanded.
They obeyed. The chest had been smashed to pieces by Moon and put to one side, and in the clear place below it they saw the wet glimmer of bedrock.
“There’s no more,” explained Moon. “One dollar of gold always makes ten dollars’ worth of talk. And there you are! You’ll find no more treasure. That’s what Cosslett put down under ground, and that’s all he got. The rest is just talk — that I believed like a fool. But ain’t this enough? Over six hundred thousand dollars, boys. Split that by twenty for example — there you have thirty-three thousand dollars apiece. Is it enough?”
They had been promised ten times that much before. But half a million in talk did not equal the actuality of less than a tenth of that in sheer gold. On the damp pile of sand on the edge of the pit they apportioned the loot, with the aid of a pocket scales. There was a share for each of Moon’s twelve men, and for the leader himself three shares. To Ronicky and Dawn went also a share apiece. Seventeen shares, then, were apportioned.
Full darkness came while Moon still weighed and apportioned the gold with his scales. The dust had been hammered into small bars of every conceivable shape for the sake of security in handling, and now the men put their shares away in saddlebags or pieces of the canvas which had been used to cover the treasure in the chest, and some even divided the loot in small pieces and put it in their pockets.
And so at length they started up the hill for their camp, staggering under their burdens, yelling and singing as they walked, for all the world like a procession of wild drunkards. Corrigan helped the leader bear the crushing burden of his own portion.
On the way Moon found an opportunity to drop back to the side of Jerry Dawn.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “I’ll find a means of getting all this into the hands of the gent to whom it belongs — your father!”
“No, no!” whispered the girl, by this time completely misled. “You mustn’t dream of it! They’d do murder before they’d give it up. Besides, we’re amply repaid!”
“Tush!” Jack Moon smiled. “There’s ways of handling these gents. And I know all the ways!”
Hunger, thirst, and food were forgotten in the excitement that followed the division of the gold. Only the cursing and the fierce commands of Jack Moon made his followers build a big fire and prepare a hasty supper. It was eaten by some, uneaten by others. The shouting and singing had no end. And the quick, bright, covetous glances were continually traveling toward the stores of neighbors.
Ronicky Doone found Hugh and his daughter a little removed. He dropped his canvas bag with its precious contents of gold at the feet of Dawn.
“I never would of taken it in the first place,” he said simply, “except to get more for you. There you are and welcome, Hugh; and if I could get more away from ‘em and give it to you, I would. It’s yours by right.”
Hugh Dawn clutched the bag, his eyes glittering.
“Son,” he said, “I’ve always swore by you. But this is just too much, and — “
His daughter drew his hands from the canvas.
“Dad!” she cried in shame. “You’re not going to take it?”
“It’s his,” said Ronicky cheerfully. “It’s his — or else it lies there where it is. I don’t want it!”
“You don’t want it?” echoed the girl, staring up to him.
Money had always been scant and hard earned in her life. She saw this fellow giving her father what was the equivalent of the salary of forty years of school teaching, and her head turned at the mere thought of it.
“I don’t want it,” said Ronicky firmly. “Tell you why. I don’t figure a gent can ever get something for nothing. If you’re going to get money, you got to work for it some way. What work have I done to get this? Nope, I don’t want it.”
“You’ve worked as much as anyone,” said Hugh Dawn, urged on by a glance of his daughter to refuse the money.
“Well,” said Ronicky, “even if I have, I don’t want it. They’s been too many lives lost over the stuff to suit me. You take my share, partner. You couldn’t force the stuff on me. Not for a free gift!”
He leaned over the older man, who sat speechless before such generosity.
“Now’s the time to begin watching, Hugh. Watch every step. And when the pinch comes, get your back against my back!”
He straightened, turned, and was gone.
“Is it possible?” breathed the girl. “Is it possible that he can mean it? Gave all of that to us?”
“Look here!” exclaimed her father gruffly. “You’ve been letting Jack Moon poison you again’ Ronicky. But I tell you straight: wild as Ronicky is, his heart is cleaner than the gold in that sack. A pile cleaner! And his little finger is worth more’n all of Jack Moon. Moon? You think he’ll let me go now, and live up to his word? Wait and see, girl. Wait and see!”
She caught her breath.
“Then let’s go ask him now. Ask him for liberty to start, dad!”
He got to his feet unwillingly.
“It’s no good forcing Jack’s hand,” he said faintly.
“I tell you,” insisted the girl, “he’s a better man than we dreamed. If he hasn’t told me the truth, then there’s no truth in any living man! Dad, he means to do all he can for us!”
“That,” said her father, “is what you said about Ronicky Doone. And now you’ve changed your mind.”
“Ronicky Doone has some purpose,” she insisted. “Jack explained him. He means well enough. He acts on impulse. Just now he has given you gold. In ten minutes he may murder you to get it back again! That’s his character — as unstable as wind!”
Her father merely snorted in answer.
“All right,” he said. “I’m going to walk right up to Jack and tell him I’m ready to start. And you see what happens!”
She followed at a distance of a few paces. And it was her wide, frightened eyes of which Jack Moon was aware, not the strained face of Hugh himself.
“Jack,” said the suppliant, “I’ve come to ask you to live up to the promise you made. I want to know when I can start home to Trainer.”
The answer of the leader was made instantly.
“Any time you want — now, if you say the word!”
It staggered Hugh more than a blunt refusal. He could merely gape at Moon, and the latter was conscious of the flush of happiness which overspread the face of the girl. It was a dangerous game he was playing, and for the sake of bringing that flush into her face it well might be that he was giving her up forever. He went on smoothly enough.
“Blaze away for Trainor this minute if you want, Hugh. They’s two things agin’ it, but neither of them is me and what I want. You’re free as the wind to start, and good luck go with you. But it’s a tolerable bad trip in the night, riding through those mountains, and even if you got easygoing hosses you’re apt to be plumb tired before you hit Trainor tomorrow. But they’s another thing. Hugh” — here his voice lowered and grew gentry confidential — “you’d ought to get more’n one share of this stuff. Try to hang on. I’m going to see what can be done for you.”
The astonishment of Hugh Dawn was as great as though the ground had opened before his feet. He blinked. He tried to speak.
“You mean — ” he began.
“I mean what I say,” said Jack Moon, smiling. “If you’re in doubt, just ask your daughter. I’ve told her everything. Now go back to your shack and go to sleep. Main reason being because you need rest, and I aim to get you on your way before sunup. No use letting the rest of the crowd know that you’ve slipped away. I may decide to tell ‘em that you’ve just given us the slip. But if you want to go now, start — and I’ll see that they ain’t a hand raised to stop you!”
Hugh Dawn hesitated, then nodded. The dominant tone of the outlaw overwhelmed him.
“You’re mostly always right,” he admitted, “though it
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