Ronicky Doone's Reward by Max Brand (ebook offline reader .txt) 📕

It was the bright, hot middle of the morning before Lou came to a sweating halt on the first thing which approached level land at the crest, and Ronicky looked about him with interest. He had heard often of this mountaintop, but it was the first time he had ever seen Solomon Mountain.

It was a rather small, very high plateau, so far as he could make out. Some great outcropping of the rock-fold had thrust up a great prominence here. The top of that table-land had been scored and worn away, not in the symmetrical shape of a single top, but in a hundred small summits, carved in a fantastic manner, with a hundred different patterns drawn freely out of the brain of the carver. Twisting passages ran in every direction. On either hand he could choose half a dozen different courses to run in any way he wished to travel. No wonder, he thought to himself, that men living beyond the law had chosen to live here. For here they could not be cornered by a thousand men. It would take more than that to watch the exits.

Ronicky continued down the first passage that opened before him, shivering a little as he looked around him. The sides went sheer up on either hand to ragged edges above him. Five hundred men could be in hiding among the rocks, within a radius of a hundred feet, and while they watched his every movement, he could not see a thing. A child could have destroyed the greatest giant that ever walked through the pages of fable, in such a place as this pass. It had only to topple a rock loose somewhere above and let it bound down toward the enemy. If the rock missed its mark, it mattered not, for it would also knock loose in its course half a dozen other stones which projected from the slope, and these would volley down with it to crush the stranger.

Here the way widened out into a perfect little amphitheater, with a hundred exits from the pit. Pausing in the very center of the place Ronicky looked around him in amazement; for it was like a gigantic trap, contrived with the labor of a myriad men and during countless years. Suppose that an attacking party should pour into this place, hurrying as they saw the opening before them — they would be lost, condemned to massacre. Ringing those summits in any direction, a few expert marksmen, lying in perfect security for themselves, could demolish hundreds in a few seconds. Or if they tired of bullets and wished to make a quick destruction, there were the rocks here, as everywhere, masses upon masses of rocks which only needed that one be pried loose at the top of a slope in order to send a vast volley of them thundering to the bottom.

So rapt in interest was he by the natural features of the fortifications, that Ronicky Doone allowed himself to be easily surprised by a horseman who wandered into the amphitheater from behind. When Ronicky turned his head he saw a cow-puncher sitting at ease in the saddle, twisted sideways, with one foot out of the stirrup and one hand combing his long mustaches.

Ronicky looked at him with surprise. He was like a man out of a book. This was one of those formidable-appearing punchers who are described so often in books, but whom Ronicky had never seen before in real life.

“How are you, partner?” exclaimed Ronicky.

“Hello,” said the other.

“You sure must have velvet on your hoss,” said Ronicky.

“Oh, I dunno. You was so darned set on seeing everything in here that I guess you didn’t listen particular careful. Wasn’t that it?”

“Maybe. I sure can hear him now, plenty loud.”

For, as the cow pony on which the other was mounted took a few steps into the arena, each footfall beat up long echoes, riding the overlooking slopes.

“Well,” said the stranger, “I dunno what you think about it, but I figure that I was sent up here on a wild-goose chase!”

“You were?” asked Ronicky.

“Yes, sir. I was told that up here the mountain was just plain climbing with outlaws and man-eaters.”

“Did you come up hunting ‘em?” asked Ronicky, amused.

The other chuckled and nodded. His voice and manner by no means bore out his formidable mustaches. The one was as soft as a child’s, and the other was perfectly calm and gentle.

“Anyways,” he said, “if I did come up here hunting for ‘em, it don’t seem no ways likely that I’ll find none — unless you’re one of ‘em?”

And here he looked sharply at Ronicky, though with a smile still lingering in the corners of his eyes, as though he were willing to laugh heartily at his own suggestion, as soon as Ronicky gave him the clew.

“Well,” said Ronicky, “you can’t never tell. I might be. Just my saying no wouldn’t prove nothing, I guess.”

“I dunno,” replied the other, combing his mustaches gravely. “All them that I’ve ever knowed always get tolerable hot under the collar when they’re accused of being crooks.”

“That,” said Ronicky, “is because most of the stick-up gents and yeggs that you meet wandering around these parts are a ratty low gang. But I guess you’re new around here, eh?”

“I’m new, all right,” said the other. “I just come in from away out Denver way. I don’t just exactly fit in, I find. So I ain’t breaking my heart trying to find a job. I’m just spending a little time and money and trying to get used to new ways. “.

“You’ve made a long jump,” said Ronicky, “all the way from Denver to here!”

“I’m used to long jumps,” said the other, and a slight cloud crossed his forehead. “But go on. You was about to tell me that them that hang out up here are not the same lot of yeggs that wander around most places?”

“Sure they ain’t,” said Ronicky. “Want me to tell you why?”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, it’s a long ways to the top of this mountain, ain’t it?”

“Tolerable long.”

“And it takes a lot of muscle and patience to make the trip, don’t it?”

“Reasonable much.”

“Well, partner, all the yaller-livered crooks I’ve ever knowed hate work; and all the downright smart ones know that they got to work, for what they get, just the same as them that are living inside of the law. And all these gents that make headquarters on the top of old Mount Solomon — you can lay to it that they’re a uppish crew!”

“If it takes work either way,” said the man of the whiskers, “why don’t they stay where they won’t have to climb so far? Why don’t they just remain down below and work like the rest of us?”

“Because they like the taking of a chance,” said Ronicky. “Speaking personal, I don’t give much for a gent that won’t take a chance once in a while. And these boys up here — well, they just nacherally figure it out that they can do better by taking this sort of a chance than they can by staying below and playing the game like the rest of us do.”

“H’m,” said the other, and he scratched his chin. “You talk pretty convincing,” he chuckled after a moment. “You make it look so dog-gone different from what I was thinking that I’m half minded to try to find some of them gents and ask how about joining up with ‘em. I wonder how it would be best to go about that, eh?”

“Why,” said Ronicky carelessly, “you wouldn’t have to look at all.”

The other started.

“What?” he asked.

“Sure you wouldn’t,” said Ronicky. “Why, these men up here are pretty wise, ain’t they? They want new men all the time, don’t they? Well, you can lay to it that when a man rides up to the top of Solomon Mountain, he gets a pretty good looking-over!”

“H’m,” said the other. “You don’t say! You sure talk familiar. Maybe you’ve had a pal that joined up?”

“No, I’m just using common sense.”

“Maybe you think that you and me are being spied on?”

“Maybe.”

“They’re sizing us up from behind one of them rocks, maybe?”

“Nope, they wouldn’t do that. All the looking in the world don’t help as much for sizing up a gent as it does to have a couple of words with him and see how he talks. No, sir!”

“What would they do then?”

“Oh, when a man comes up to the top of the mountain, most like they’d send out a man to see him.”

“You don’t say! Just walk a man right out and let him start in talking to you?”

“No, they’d probably put him onto a hoss and let him ride out.”

“What would he say?”

“Oh, they’s a big enough pile of things that he could say, partner. Just anything to start up the conversation. But of course they’d have to pretend to be plumb innocent. Just happened to be riding up on the top of the mountain, you see?”

“Like me, say, or you?”

“That’s right,” said Ronicky. “And to ease the conversation along he’d probably say that he come from some place a long ways off — Denver, maybe.”

The other laughed, but his eye was sober. “Well,” asked Ronicky suddenly, “what have you decided about me, partner? Will I do for a try?”