the Key-Lock Man (1965) Read Online Free Page B

that gold we'll split up and forget all about him, then he's gone scot-free."
    "A dozen men have died huntin' for this well, and here we are, Johnny-on-the-spot."
    Johnny. . .
    They fell silent, but after a while Short said, "Well, we can always come back to it. We can hang him and then come back." There was an obvious lack of enthusiasm in his tone.
    McAlpin stirred. "You ever heard of anybody who left this place and ever found it again? Not even the ones who hid the gold. This here Mormon Well has always been the joker in the deck."
    "Use your heads!" Chesney was irritable.
    "Who would lead us right to the gold when he could have it all for himself?"
    "I don't know what you're talking about,"
    Neill said. "Is there gold buried somewhere about?"
    Hardin chuckled ironically. "He's going to get clean away. He surely is."
    "What are you?" Chesney demanded angrily.
    "A passel of youngsters who'll go chasin' after any red wagon comes along? We started out to hang a man!"
    "I wish somebody would tell me the story,"
    Neill protested.
    "Bill," Hardin suddenly said to Chesney, "do you remember Gay Cooley?"
    "What about him?"
    "Gay knew this country, and he spent years huntin' the Lost Wagons. He knew this country better than the Navajos did. Now, if this here is Mormon Well, then right over there is Marsh Pass." Hardin drew a rough pattern on the sand with a twig. "If this Key-Lock man is going east or northeast he will head for that pass.
    Otherwise he has to cross the river, and there's only two places he can do that, both of them west of here.
    "Lee's Ferry," he went on, and indicated it on the map, "is away over northwest, and the Crossing of the Fathers is northwest, too, only not so far. My hunch is he's about to double back and make for the Crossing of the Fathers."
    Neill started to interrupt, then held his peace, watching Chesney, who was studying the sand map. Either way, their man was reaching for the wildest kind of country, but he was hemmed in by the canyons of the Colorado and the San Juan.
    "We might head him off," Short suggested.
    "In this country?" Hardin said. "We lose his trail and we've lost him entirely."
    "Maybe not," Neill suggested. "I'm thinking of that comb."
    "Comb?"
    "Sure . .. the one thing he took out of all those supplies he had to leave behind so's he could run.
    The one thing he chose to take was that fancy comb.
    Seems to me that means he's got him a woman somewhere, and that he figures to see her, chased as he is, or not."
    Hardin looked at Neill. "Now, that's a good thought. You're right, Neill."
    Neill was embarrassed, but he was pleased.
    Chesney was staring at the map, but now a new thought was in his mind. Hardin hunched over the map, too.
    "If he has a woman cached up here somewhere, he'll surely go to her. Now, where would a man be likely to have a woman? One who would treasure a fancy comb?"
    "That's any woman, Hardin." Neill had gained courage. "Womenfolks have a liking for fancy things. Some woman set her heart on that comb, you can bet, or else he set his heart on giving it to her."
    "I don't agree," Kimmel said. "No man in his right mind would leave a woman alone in this country. Not if he had to leave her for maybe a week or more."
    "What else could he do?"
    They were thinking now. They knew the problems of a man with a woman on a lonely ranch. They understood his problem, but with them it was different-they had each other. If one of them had to leave the ranch there was always a neighbor to stop by and see that all went well. They were together even when alone, for they shared their dangers, their emergencies. But what of this man?
    Who was there in the country ahead who might stand by in case of need?
    Reluctantly each one of them began to harbor the thought that if this man was alone he was no ordinary man; and if he left his woman alone, she was no ordinary woman, either.
    "When we find him," Hardin suggested, "he may not be alone. Maybe he's leading us right into an ambush. Maybe