I didn't like to pry into their business, but I did ask Joe once if he knew what he was doing. Nearly got my nose busted for my trouble. I knew Joe was no match for Big John. He was well built enough, but John could take a horse shoe and tie knots into it. Most bullies have a weakness, but Big John's was never apparent to me; I don't believe he was afraid of anything. He killed a mountain lion once with a pocket knife and laughed about it.
Well, when Big John got back, 'course one of his cohorts got busy and told him how things stood between Joe and May. I happened to be in the store at the time. Big John dropped his hand to his revolver and I thought by the look on his face he was going to kill everything in sight. But pretty soon his hand sort of relaxed and he buttoned up his holster. He got a queer expression in his eyes, and then he kind of grinned. But the grin was nearly as bad as gunfire. It made my blood run cold.
That night I saw Big John in the saloon. Joe was there too, with a scared look on his face, and May was waiting outside. I could see her shivering. Joe was wearing his gun, but he didn't need it; Big John shot it out of its holster before Joe could even touch it. Then Big John yanked the kid down into one of the chairs at the gaming table.
"Just a friendly game of cards, kid," he jeered. "You put up your gold dust, all of it, and your claim against that Jezebel that's waiting outside. The cards ain't fixed -- much."
It was all over in a few minutes. Joe walked out of the saloon looking strange and dazed and left his winter stake behind him. May was sobbing. She started to run after Joe but John just yanked out his revolver again and shot her in the back. She never murmured once.
Joe kept walking. He didn't even look back. I was sick from the whole thing, but there was nothing I could do. I wasn't even carrying a gun. Somebody carried May's body over to the store.
Joe didn't even show up for the funeral. Not that it was much of a funeral. May was dumped into the frozen ground with about as much ceremony as if she'd been an animal. That's what Big John said she was.
"A treacherous female animal. And I don't want no reading for her out of the Book either," he said. The girl had no friends, and Big John was the law. Nobody challenged him.
At first we all thought Joe had left the country or that he'd frozen or starved to death. The winter was unusually severe. Got so cold we shivered in our cabins with fires going hot as the pot-bellied stoves could stand. Big John, never given to remorse, gloated on more than one occasion over getting rid of Joe, and even offered a small reward for anyone who could find his frozen body, or "what the coyotes left of it," he sneered.
Then along about Christmas-time, a trapper by the name of Sandy McLeod who had a string of traps out on Devil's Crag came to us with the story that he'd seen Joe -- alive.
"I'd never have believed it," he said, "if I'd ne'er seen it with me own eyes. The mon's gotten as balmy as a loon. He was skulkin' around in the trees, lookin' like a mon tryin' to find suthin'. Him with nothin' to find. I tell 'ee it give me the creeps. Follerin' him was a couple a animals, dogs, I guess, tho' they looked more like wolves. They got my scent an' started to go after me but Joe called 'em off."
"How the devil would the man survive?" Big John scoffed. "I own all the food in this country. You've been alone too much, Sandy."
We all wondered the same thing. Why, Joe didn't have a gun. And even if he did, wild game was not plentiful at that time of the year. Besides, the cold was intense. And the dogs, or wolves -- how to account for them?
Yet it wasn't long before we were proven wrong. Along about January, Big John came busting into the store looking like he'd seen a ghost. I never saw the man shaking before, but shaking he was. His face was scratched and bleeding and he was in a terrible rage.
"I seen him alright," he said. "He's turned into a regular devil. The man's crazy and dangerous and we're going' to organize a posse right here and now to get him. I want him dead in twenty-four hours. We got to kill them animals of his, too. They look like a couple of lobo wolves to me. I tried to get Joe but I run out of shells shootin'. The man's clever as a maniac."
Well, we talked it over and more or less concluded Big John was right. We took the trail next morning, all of us heavily armed. Three days later we had to admit defeat. Joe, or Dog Joe as he'd become known, was just too elusive for us. We found his tracks and the tracks of his wild dogs. But we were out-smarted. We never got a glimpse of him. He was fast and strong; he must have been getting enough to eat. He back-tracked, hid in canyons, climbed trees, made us look like silly greenhorns although most of us were pretty experienced woodsmen. The wild dogs must have helped him. We heard them bay once or twice as they got our scent.
Spring came and we all got busy with our mining claims and more or less forgot about Dog Joe. Big John made a rich strike on what had been Joe's claim, and that made him cockier than ever. He sent out and got another woman. She wasn't quite as pretty as May, but she was plenty tough and got along well with him. They were two of a kind.
Things were fairly quiet and peaceable until mid-summer. Big John was working on his claims one day when he looked up to see Joe standing on the ridge above him, watching him. Joe had two new wild dogs with him this time. Big John didn't waste any time. He just started blazing away, but Joe stepped behind a tree and was gone as suddenly as he had apeared. Big John said he looked crazier than ever.
CONTINUED