Jackson Gregory - Dark Valley

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Phocion Publishing 2019, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER

DARK VALLEY

By

JACKSON GREGORY

Dark Valley was originally published in 1937 by Grosset & Dunlap, New York.

I

TWICE within forty-eight hours the lone rider, coming up like a whirlwind for dust and speed from somewhere in the farther southwest, had been asked his nameand this was in a country and at a time when it was far from customary to put personal questions to a stranger.

The first occasion had been at the little cow town of Agua Verde. He had tarried there over night. After stabling his horseshe rode into town on a glorious red-bay stallion, the most superb piece of horse flesh Agua Verde had ever seen, and was followed by two led relief horses, likewise high-headed, savage-eyed and clean of linehe ate hungrily at the lunch counter, then repaired to the Green Water saloon. Within twenty minutes he had joined four men playing stud-poker. Within another twenty minutes he had proved himself the hardest player of the lot, and all played hard and hist, with an outer though perhaps deceptive semblance of recklessness. The men with whom he played called one another familiarly Al and Smoky and Gaucho and Temlock. The time came when one of them, quite friendly about it, asked:

An you, Stranger, whatll we call you?

The stranger stared at him with a pair of intensely black eyes which were not in the least friendly. He employed the long fingers of a brown muscular hand to sharpen the already needle-pointed ends of a small mustache that was as black as his eyes, and took so long in answering that it began to seem that he wasnt going to answer at all. But finally he said, in an even, low-toned voice which had spoken only when necessary tonight and never above that hushed monotone:

You can call me Willie, if thatll help any, or even Sitting Bull, or, say, Robinson Crusoe, and you wont even have to smile.

He used gold pieces for countersfives, tens and twentiesand appeared to have an ample stock; an hour or so after midnight when the game broke up he went off to bed with considerably more gold than he had sat in with. He was out of town and away, none knew where, long before day had brought any other in Agua Verde awake.

The next night late he rode into the mountain town of Fiddlers Gulch. At the hotel, so proclaimed in the drunken-looking, malformed letters on a split board over the door, he was handed a pencil and a dirty sheet of paper and requested to register.

The way the stranger looked down along his nose at the hotel keeper was like sighting along a rifle barrel. When he demanded curtly, What the hell? it was with reason. This was worse than asking a man casually what his name was. Here you were required to set it down in black and white, and it might be used against you.

Sheriffs orders, he was told by a disgusted landlord. OP Dan Westcotts a-gittin an ol mans notions, I reckon. Every hotel in Rincon Countys got orders straight from him, an if you know Dan, or ever heard about him, youll likely know hes apt to raise seven kinds o hell with any man that dont do things his way. Me, I tell him things is comin to a purty pass. Its onreasonable in the firs place; it puts a hotel man to a lot of extry trouble; its aimin at a free Americans consti-toot-ion-al rights, an, hell, Stranger, mos folks cant write anyhow. You can, Id say?

The stranger, though he accepted pencil and paper in a way which smacked of reluctance, stood scowling at the two a long while as though hesitating to commit himself in any way; a man might have looked like that if he couldnt remember his name or didnt know how to spell it. Finally he muttered something under his breath, and wrote in a hurrying scrawl that it would take a better man than his host to read:

Bolt Haveril. From Texas.

In his room he lay down with his boots on, smoked and stared frowningly at the cracked ceiling for a couple of hours. He removed his boots only to make his way noiselessly downstairs. No one saw or heard him go.

Later he was seen and talked with by a couple of cowboys on the southern slopes on the Big Bear Mountains when he hailed them to ask a question. It appeared he had ridden out of country familiar to him; he wanted to know how to get to Dark Valley.

They looked him over from the peaked crown of his hat to the spurs on his bootheels; they took full stock of the gallant red-bay stallion he rode, the two scarcely less splendid horses he led, the gun he wore low at his side and the carbine across his saddle, and they told him what he wanted to know. He was still a good fifty-sixty mile from Dark Valley, and hed think it a lot longer before he got there, as the going got tougher all the way; it was up yonder where the mountain tops were mistily purple against the sky. And the younger of the two cowboys added:

They dont welcome strangers much in the Valley. Me, i| I was you, unless I was a friend of Duke Morgans, Id pick me somewhere else to go.

The man who had signed himself Bolt Haveril from Texas, nodded and rode on. The two cowboys continued on their way but now and then turned to look back until he was over the ridge; in Fiddlers Gulch they reported him to Sheriff Dan Westcott. Old Dan asked his questions so shrewdly that by the time they were answered he had a pretty fair daguerreotype of the lone rider. He scratched a leathery jaw, tugged at a snow-white walrus mustache, spat at a horn toad scurrying to cover as though it had read the look in his eye, and admitted complacently:

Im sort of glad hes put most of Rincon County behind him, and Im sort of damn gladder I didnt happen to meet up with him. Pleasant sort of a cuss, wasnt he?

Friendly as a rattlesnake, said the younger cowhand. Then, eager with youth, he asked, He was the feller all right that you was lookin forthat Mex gent they called Don Diablo. Wasnt he, Dan?

Reckon, said Dan, while the older cowboy regarded him curiously, thinking that the sheriff might be aging after all, as some said, seeing how he inclined to garrulousness today. Reckon, repeated Dan. Passed this way yestiddy; stayed here over night nd crept out with nobody telling him adids. Signed himself Bolt Haveril, from Texas. Well, at that he might of signed himself Jeff Davis.

Now what? demanded the young cowboy. Seems like hes headed for Dark Valley, an the lower end of Dark Valleys in Rincon County, aint it, Dan? Goin after him?

Reckon, said Dan Westcott, and looked sly. He was sly, a seasoned old fox, as all who had cause to know him agreed. But, being its late now, I wont start until sun up. Likewise Im oiling up my old bear rifle tonight, being as its the longest-range shooting iron in the county, sos when me and this hombre meet up itll be with plenty room between us. And now, as the feller says, seems like Ive paid you back in full for all the information Ive extracted outn you, and in case theres any more knowledge youre craving, you know the way to Dark Valley.

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