Throughout the day the sun beat into the cañon, its heat relieved by rare breezes of brief duration. What wind did come raised swirls of dust and rustled wilted foliage, for the country had become ash dry.
The cattle, most of them on their fourth waterless day, bawled dismally, a thirsty chorus rising as the day aged. They did not eat; they wandered rapidly about seeking moisture. Those spots of the creek bed which showed damp above and below Cole's fence were tramped to powder by uneasy hoofs and a narrow area outside the fence was cut to fluff by the restless wanderings of the suffering steers.
As afternoon came on they abandoned their futile search for unguarded drink and clung closer to the wire barrier, snuffing loudly as their nostrils drank in the smell of water as greedily as their throats would have swallowed the fluid itself. Their eyes became wider, wilder, and the bawling was without cessation. Flanks pumped the hot air into their bodies in rapid tempo and slaver hung from loose chops. The herd was in desperate condition.
Now and then a big beefer would rush the fence as if to tear his way through but the new wire and solid posts always flung them back. Again, another would push his head tentatively between the strands and attempt entrance by gentler methods, but always they were driven back either by one of the HC riders or by Cole himself.
By the time the sun was half way to the horizon the steers were moving in a compact mass back and forth along the fence, snuffing, crying, sobbing in dry throats, bodies growing more gaunt hourly as frenzy added its toll to physical suffering.
The bawling became a din. Big steers shook their heads and hooked at one another groggily. The first one went down and could not rise alone; the men "tailed" him up and worked him to shade, where he sank to his side again, panting, drooling and silent.
"Damn an outfit like that!" growled Curtis, looking across the bunch to Cole, who stood staring back.
"There's goin' to be hell a-poppin' here," commented one of the men. "They're waitin' for trouble an' you can't prevent 'em havin' it—"
"Look at that!"
A half dozen steers, surging against the fence, put their combined weight on a panel and the post gave with a snap.
Bobby ran forward, brandishing a club, and drove them back as they floundered in the sagging wire, heedless of barbs, eyes protruding with want of the drink that dilated nostrils told them was near.
After he had propped the post up again the nester shook his fist at Curtis and shouted:
"I'll protect my property! You can protect yourn if you will. Th' next critter that breaks my fence gits lead in his carcass!"
He slouched back to the cabin and came out a moment later with a rifle. Seating himself on a stump he crossed his knees and with the weapon across his lap sat waiting.
"We'll bunch 'em so we can make a show at holdin' 'em tonight," Curtis said. "That'll save time in th' mornin' ... an' we'll need all our time."
Forthwith he and the others began gathering the suffering stragglers in a loose bunch.
The Reverend came riding across the flat before this was completed. His face was serious and as he came close to the herd and saw the condition of the cattle he shook his head apprehensively.
"I fear, brother, that by another day there'll be little strength in those bodies to get 'em up to open water," he said to Curtis.
"It'll be the devil's own job for sure! It'll take twenty men to move 'em and if we don't lose half we'll be lucky.
"If that old cuss 'uld let 'em water once it'd be a cinch, but he's a badhombre; he won't. There's something back of this, Reverend."
Beal scratched his chin and blinked and looked across to where Cole sat. One of his Mexicans also was armed and had taken up his position further down the fence.
"So it would appear," he replied. "As Joshua said to Moses, 'There's a noise of war in the camp.'
"I see a relationship between the smiting of my beloved brother and the refusal of this outfit to grant water.
"Oh, another watcher!"
He indicated Pat Webb who evidently had gained the Cole ranch by a circuitous route and had taken up his position within the fence, armed with a rifle.
Night came on with a dry wind in the trees on the heights. Its draft did not reach the Hole but the sound did and that uneasy, distant roar served to intensify the distress of the cattle.
Beds were made on a knoll not far from the bunched steers and the Reverend was the first to rest, while the others, singing, whistling, slapping chaps with quirts rode round and round the herd keeping them away from the fence to give the riflemen no opportunity to shoot. Azariah did not sleep but rolled uneasily on his tarp watching the bright, dry stars, muttering to himself now and then.
Once he got up and fussed about his blankets and Curtis, riding by, stopped.
"No, I can't rest," the Reverend replied to his query. "I believe I have lost one pen....
"By the way, brother, if these were your cattle how many head would you give just to get them to water tonight?"
"I'd give several," Curtis answered bitterly. "Yes, I'd give a good many and look at it as a good investment. Without water we're goin' to make lots of feed for buzzards an' coyotes, tryin' to make up that trail tomorrow!"
"A good many.... A good many," the clergyman muttered as Curtis rode on. "She is for peace, but when she speaks, they are for war," he paraphrased the Psalm.
"'They that war against thee shall be as nothing.'... An investment ... a good investment...."
He sat hunched on his bed for some time, whispering over and over.... "A good investment ... investment...."
Then suddenly he rose and pawed about him for a dried bough of cedar which he had cast aside to make his bed. With trembling fingers he sought a match, struck and applied it.
The flame licked up the tinder and burst into a brilliant torch. The bawling of the cattle cut off sharply. Whites of terrified eyes showed for an instant and then vanished as heads were quickly turned away.
The herd stirred, like a concentrated mass, body crowding body; it swayed forward, a rumbling of hoofs arose. And from the far side came the shrill yipping of horsemen as they broke into a gallop and sought to set the cattle milling.
Futile effort! Driven mad by thirst it would have required a much less conspicuous disturbance than that flare of fire to start the wild rush. With a roll of hoofs, a sickening, overwhelming sound, heads down, crowded together into a knitted body of frightened strength the bunch was in full stampede!
Down the far side rode Curtis, high in his stirrups, his revolver spitting fire into the air. A big white steer charged straight at his horse like a blinded thing and the animal carried his rider to momentary safety with a hand's breath to spare.
On another flank of the herd another rider charged in and shouted and shot and swung off. There was no time; there was no room! It was less than a hundred yards to the fence and to be caught between its stout strands and those charging heads meant terrible death. Curtis' warning cry cut in above the fury of the flight as he doubled back toward safety.
Within the fence were shouts. Figures sprang to outline in the darkness. The first steer's shoulders struck the wire, the fence held, threw him back and then, driven forward again by oncoming numbers the creature went through, torn and raw, through a torn and tangled barrier. There was a creaking strain of wire for rods, a snapping of stout posts and then orange stabs out of the night.... Two ... four ... five, and the sound of rifle shots pricked through the background of heavier sounds.
A steer bawled once, its voice pitched high, and went down. Another dropped beneath mincing hoofs without a sound. From their path ran the riflemen, desperate in their fright, heedless of damage done property or rights. Over, under and through the fence went the cattle, pouring across the cleared land, crowding, snorting, gaining momentum with each stride. On across the flat, on down the steep bank of the creek, on into the water that sloshed about their knees....
And there, as quickly as it had come, their panic departed, for the need of that water dissipated their fright. Noise of the flight subsided and into the night rose the greedy sound of their guzzling as the water which Cole had fenced and sought to hold was gulped down the parched throats of HC cattle.
Curtis rode up at a gallop, drawing his horse to such a quick stop that his hoofs scattered dirt over Azariah.
"What th' hell?" he began.
"I found it!" cried the Reverend in exultation, holding up a fountain pen. "Must have dropped out when I took off my coat—"
"But look what you've done!" cried the other. "They knocked four steers dead as the Populist party!"
Azariah looked up at him, the shrewdness in his face covered by darkness, but his voice was guile itself.
"A small investment, brother, a good investment. Perhaps a parable is writ this night.... A pillar of fire, a smiting of the rock?"
Curtis whistled lowly.
"Reverend, you planned it all out?"
"It is not given to me to plan; I am guided by the spirit of righteousness! Besides, those who lack wisdom are the only ones who divulge their innermost thoughts, brother. I found a way out of Egypt for the cattle, as 't were. Remember, brother, the way of the Lord is strength!"
They had not heard Bobby Cole running through the brush toward them but as the Reverend stopped she stepped between him and Oliver's horse.
"So that's it!" she hissed. "So you're th' one to blame! I'll tell you what I told your boss this mornin', that I'll run you out of the country if it's th' last thing I do, you Bible talkin' rat!
"This ain't th' first thing I've got against you,"—darkly. "I might 've forgot th' other because she was to blame for it, but I've heard what you just said an' I won't forget this! And don't think I'm th' only one who'll keep it in mind!
"Why, you'll be run out of this country like a snake 'uld be chased out of a cabin! Remember that!"
For a moment she stood confronting him in the darkness and though features were not clearly distinguishable they could see by the poise of her figure that those were no idle threats. Then she went as quickly as she had come, leaving the Reverend scratching his chin and Curtis whistling softly to himself.
"A woman possessed of the devil!" said Beal softly.
"Yeah. Or three or four," commented the other.
"Yesterday I sought to save her soul and tomorrow I must seek to save my own skin!"
There was no more shooting because HC cattle were mingled with Cole's. Curtis parlayed with the nester who made whining threats of a suit for damages. When Curtis returned to the beds for the remainder of the night the Reverend was not there.
"Dragged it for the ranch!" he chuckled.
So he thought. The Reverend had dragged it, but not for the HC or any other nearby stopping place. Though Beal did not know all that transpired to bring about the ruin of Jane Hunter he knew enough to realize that he had made one determined enemy that night, that to make one was to make many and that Bobby Cole's inference that he had plunged himself into disfavor with others was no empty warning. Azariah Beal was not a coward but he was discreet. The risk of remaining was not justified by the end he might serve and now he sought sanctuary in distance.
Tom Beck led the riders from the wagon into the Hole at dawn. Gathering and moving the refreshed cattle up the trail was a difficult task but it was accomplished without further loss, a fact which satisfied the men. They reached the ranch on their way back to the round-up camp in late afternoon.
News of the saving stampede had been carried ahead and Jane realized that one difficulty had been surmounted and that the financial ruin which confronted her yesterday was no more. However, removal of that distraction allowed her mind to concentrate on the greater difficulty: the breach which separated her from Tom Beck. Only one way seemed open: to prevail upon the Reverend to explain matters, and that way was closed when a passing cow-boy delivered her a note, written hastily on rough paper. She read:
"The call has come and my feet are turned toward a far country.
"My arm has been lifted for you; though I am no longer in your presence my prayers will continue to be lifted in your behalf.
"Respy.,"A. BEAL."
Azariah had served the HC well. But for his strategy she might even then be suffering from a loss which would doom the ranch. And yet he could have served her infinitely better by staying on, by untangling the snarl which circumstances had made in her affairs.
There was just one remaining course to follow, she told herself. This was to go to Tom and explain everything. Then up rose her pride and made denial. She could not do that! If his love would not bear up under doubt, then she must keep her pride intact, for that was all she possessed. Torn between desire to fling herself upon him and sob out the whole story and to maintain her stand until he should be proven wrong and come to her contrite, she dallied with the decision until the riders had come and gone.
She watched Beck, riding at a trot down the road, looking neither to the right nor left. She could not know that a similar struggle tortured him. "Turn back!" one voice in his heart commanded. "Seek her out and question and question until you know why; if it is the worst, if she has been hiding a secret affection from you, beg her to turn from it, to come to you; offer her your all, your pride, your life if need be. She is all that living holds for you!"
And then that other, sterner self, which said over and over: "That cannot be! If there is that in her heart which must be hidden from you, draw back now and save all that is left to you: your pride!"
So pride held the one in her house and it led the other down Coyote Creek, and each mile, each hour put between them multiplied the difficulties, wore down the chance of reconciliation. For by such simple, basic conflicts are loves ruined!
Night had come upon the round-up camp, fires near the cook wagon were dying. On the rise to the southward the night-hawk sat with an eye on the saddle stock which grazed over a wide area and in their tee-pees the men were sleeping, preparatory to the first day's riding.
Tom Beck sat alone by the glowing remnants of the cook's fire, staring stolidly into the coals, mouth set, struggling with his pride. That quiet, inner voice continued its insistence that he yield a trifle, give Jane Hunter one more chance. "What?" it asked, "will you gain by denying her this? What, indeed, will be left for you if you persist?"
But the voice was weaker than it had been early that day. The alternative it raised in his consciousness less appealing, and a determination to smother it grew steadily. He had been crossed; he had been duped!
Oh, he had been a fool! he told himself. He had thrown to the winds his caution and his reserve; he had taken the biggest chance that life, the trickster, dangles before men. He had taken it blindly, against his better judgment; it left him embittered, with nothing beyond except the position which he held among men. That was a mawkish attainment now; it was so cheap and inconsequential compared to the sense of accomplishment which had been his when Jane Hunter had thrown herself into his arms and begged that he carry her into his life! Deluded though he may have been, that moment had opened to him sensations, vistas, that he had never before imagined existed.
And now! All else that remained was gray and dead. He had been lifted up to see what might be, only to find that it was denied him; more, those moments of glory had taken the zest from the life that had been his before and that now remained.
For long he sat there and gradually the inner voice died entirely, slowly a cold, heartless desire to cling to a dead thing like his standing in the country took its place as his chief interest in life. He had written Jane that such was all that remained to him. He had not realized as he scrawled those words what a pitiful bauble it was but now it was necessary to endow it with values that he could not truly feel. But he forced himself to believe it of consequence, for men like Tom Beck must have some one valuable thing to live for.
The tee-pees were quiet when he arose, dropped his dead cigarette into the expiring embers and sought his bed. But in one tee-pee a man looked out at the faint jingle of spurs. It was Riley who, with others from the lower country, was riding with the HC wagon to help the larger outfit and, in turn, to be helped in his branding. He was bunked with Jimmy Oliver and Oliver said:
"What's he doin'?"
"Turnin' in."
Riley settled back in his blankets and muttered:
"It's funny ... damned funny, Jim."
"He's like a man that'sthrough. Didn't appear to have any real interest in the work today, seems like he don't give a damn. I don't understand it."
"If it wasn't Tom Beck I'd say that they'd got his goat. It's hard to believe of him."
"It can't be that." Oliver was loyal. "It's somethin' else, but it seems like somethin' worse than a man bein' sick of his job. Still, he said twice today that he wouldn't be here long an' the way he saidlongmade me think it'd be a mighty short time."
Silence for a time.
"Mebby," said Riley, "it's her."
"Mebby you're right," the other replied. "Tom didn't used to give a damn whether school kept or not. Then, after she come he changed, got to takin' things seriously and anybody could see he was gone on her. Now....
"Well, he ain't afraid of men. There ain't bad men enough in this country to drive Tom Beck out.... But women.... They'll put a crimp in th' best of us!"
It was the following evening that news of the destruction of Cathedral Tank was brought to Tom Beck. Riley had ridden the far circle himself and had found no cattle at the waterhole which the HC foreman had visited only a few days before. That is, no live cattle. He found four steer carcasses, already ravaged by coyotes and buzzards, found the fresh gash in the rock basin and had ridden back to help those cowboys who were on shorter circles, holding explanation of the fact that he returned empty handed until he could give it first to Beck.
Tom received the news silently.
"I expect you can fix up the basin with some concrete so it'll hold next winter," Riley said.
"It's likely," the other responded, "but next winter's plans for this outfit ain't worryin' me, Riley."
He meant, of course, that there were matters of greater importance just then. The dynamiting had been accomplished after his warning to Webb and Hepburn, which was clear evidence that the war went on as desperately as before and that these other men were not cowed, their determination to run him from the country had not been shaken. A hot rage swept through him. Next winter's plans were remote indeed! Fate had taken his woman from him; these renegades would take away the last hold on life!
But Riley did not construe his meaning as such and when, the following morning, Tom called Jimmy Oliver aside and talked to him the misunderstanding of what went on in his mind was more complicated for he said:
"Jimmy, you're goin' to lead this round-up for a while ... mebby for good."
"So, Tom?"—in surprise, and in hope that an explanation would be forthcoming.
"I'm leavin' here an' mebby I won't be back."
Beck was thinking that he would inspect that tank and track down the men responsible for its destruction and make them pay. He said that he might not be back because he had warned them away from HC property and could expect no leniency if he invaded their stronghold. Invade it he would, for this had gone past the point where he could play a waiting game. So long as it had been his safety which mattered most he could assume and retain the defensive, but now Two-Bits had all but lost his life while executing his orders and HC cattle had been driven by hundreds into high country before he had planned they should come. It was time to counter-attack.
Rapidly the word ran through the camp: Beck was leaving! As it passed from man to man it grew, as rumors all will, and took more definite shape: Beck was quitting.
He ate silently with the others and his very silence was so marked that it quieted the rest, warded off the questions which under other circumstances might have been put to him.
The wrangler brought in the horses and Beck was the first to approach the cavet with rope ready. He selected his big roan, looked the animal over carefully and slinging a canteen over the horn, climbed rather heavily to the saddle.
Other men were catching up their horses. One was pitching and fighting the rope; two others were trying desperately to break out of the cavet. There was running about and confusion, but as Beck rode away to the west-way, head down, so obviously absorbed in himself, men stopped to watch and to wonder.
The HC foreman was not the only individual in that country who, as the sun shoved over the far rim of the world, thought so intensely of his own, wholly personal interests that consciousness of what transpired about him was lost.
Jane Hunter sat suddenly up in her bed, golden hair in a shower about her shoulders, blue eyes that had been waking and painful until dawn, filled with tears. She stared about her as one will who rouses abruptly from a startling dream, lips parted, a hand to her flushed throat, breath quick and irregular. She held so a moment, then sank back into the pillows, calling softly:
"Tom; Tom!"
Her slender body quivered spasmodically and her sobbing became like that of a child. One hand, flung across the cover, clenched feebly and feebly beat the bedding, as though it hammered hopelessly at walls which held her in, making her a prisoner ... as she was, a prisoner to her pride.
And high up on the point which formed the western flank of the Gap to Devil's Hole, Sam McKee dropped down from his gray horse and stood looking far out across the level country beneath him. In the clear air he could see the smoke of the round-up camp fire.
Yesterday he had watched from there, with Hilton's words still in his ears, Hilton's hope in his heart, and had known that Riley rode to the tank. Last night he had talked and walked in the darkness with the Easterner again, had heard Hilton's crafty questioning of Hepburn and Webb which caused them to repeat again and again their belief that Tom Beck would take it upon himself to inspect the damage done by dynamite. He had slept fitfully, in a fever of anticipation.
And yet he had kept secret his achievement in shooting down Two-Bits. There was a time for all things and the time to divulge that minor accomplishment was not yet. For long he had been belittled, and had no standing among his associates; now they were banded in common cause, he had made one step toward triumph and that move had reestablished the confidence that had lain dormant for long. It had enabled Hilton's suggestions to take hold, enabled him to whet his own hate, to work himself into a paroxysm of rage, and today he was to emerge a figure of consequence, for he was to remove the obstacle which was in the path of all.
Webb's battered field glasses were slung over his shoulder and as he picked out the lone dot of moving life, coming slowly in his direction, he unstrapped the case with hands that trembled. It required but one moment to identify that horse for none but Beck's roan swung along with the same distance-eating shack; but McKee stared for a long interval, his body tense, his breath slow and audible, as if tantalizing himself by sight of that isolated rider, teasing his hatred, teasing it....
Then he mounted the gray and swung down the treacherous point, seeking a big wash that made a wrinkle on in the floor of the desert where storm waters had rushed toward the tank for countless decades. In this he could ride unseen and he went forward at a trot, eyes straight ahead, moistening his lips from time to time....
The outcropping which formed Cathedral Tank stood stark and saffron in the lap of the desert under the morning sun, flinging out slow waves of heat even at that early hour, as Sam McKee rode from the wash into the basin and stopped his horse.
Since the mountains themselves were made that group of pinnacles and ledges had jutted up from the seamed desert, a landmark for miles around, catching the flood waters that rushed toward it from far hills.
The name of the tank was result of no far-fetched imaginings for the granite rose in long, slender spires, as though the thirsty desert reached great fingers toward the sky in stiff appeal. Narrow defiles struck back into the granite and sharp crevices cut deeply down between the natural minarets, and at one place a larger opening led backward into the rocks, widened and narrowed again, forming the rough outlines of transept and nave. More, the wind which always blew there often sounded deep notes as of an organ when it wandered through narrow spaces.
On three sides this abrupt, ragged rise of rock shut in the basin and the other was open to the waters that swept down from the south and eastward. When McKee neared this entrance he stopped his horse and reconnoitered. The other rider was not in sight, lost in some of the many depressions of the valley and many miles yonder, for the gray horse had traveled a shorter distance and that at a trot. The roan could not arrive for some time.... So he reasoned....
The man stopped his horse at the edge of the fresh, deep scar which Hepburn's explosive had made. Other tracks were there, made by Riley yesterday. Across the way lay the dead steers and overhead a buzzard wheeled slowly, waiting to return to the feast from which he had been frightened by Sam's approach.
"Bone dry!" the man said aloud, and laughed.
Then he drank from his canteen and wiped his lips with a long sigh, either in satisfaction or anticipation, and then looked about; not absently, but with plan and craft.
To that point Beck would come, there he would stand, and behind was a ledge on the face of the towering rock, higher than a mounted man's head, deep and with enough backward pitch to conceal thoroughly a man's body. It would be a hard scramble, but he could gain it by aid of a tough stub which grew on the wall. Once there he would be protected.
McKee rode close under this ledge and stood in his saddle, lips parted and eyes alight. He could hold off a regiment there; what chance would one unsuspecting man have? As he stood so he unstrapped his gun and lay it with its belt on the shelf.
He dropped down and rode into a nearby, narrow crevice, where his horse could remain concealed, dismounted, and took down his rope, preparatory to tieing the animal.
He believed his growing haste was only anticipation, but perhaps there was a quality of premonition there. He had been unable to follow Beck's progress and remain concealed himself; therefore he had not seen the roan pick up his swinging trot as Tom's concentrated thought reached ferment and he sought relief in speed.
McKee reached for the reins to lead his horse further into the crevice. Then his heart leaped and he went quickly cold as he looked at the animal.
The gray's head was up, ears stiff, eyes alert as a horse will pose on sensing the approach of another animal. Even as Sam's hands flashed out for his nose the nostrils fluttered and had he been an instant later a betraying whinner would have gone echoing through the rocks to warn Beck. He drove his fingers into the soft muzzle and choked back the sound. The gray stepped quickly and shook his head whereat McKee relaxed his grasp somewhat. They then stood quiet, both listening, the horse alert, the man weak and white, breathing in fluttering gasps.
He was trapped! Outside on the ledge where he had planned to wait and shoot Beck down without giving or taking a chance, lay his gun. On either side the walls rose sheer, without so much as a hand-hold for yards above his head; before was a blank wall; outside was Tom Beck. And fear of a degree such as the man had never known shook his body.
It was that fear which is as dangerous to an enemy as the most absurd courage. Discovery would mean catastrophe; he had nothing to gain by shirking now!
Slowly he released his grip on the gray's nostrils, holding ready to clamp down again should the horse attempt to greet the other. He heard hoofs clatter on the rock basin, knew that Beck had stopped. Then the wind soughed through the rocks with its prolonged organ tone and for the moment McKee could only guess what happened out there.
The gray, with head turned, stared toward the opening of the crevice and then as no other sounds came, swung his head back to its normal position and switched rather languidly at flies.
Carefully McKee stole toward the entrance of the crevice where he might see the other man. He went with a hand against the granite, putting down his boots very carefully, hoping against hope that Beck would be far enough away so that he might either recover his gun or devise some means of escape. Perspiration ran from beneath his hat band and his hands were clammy cold. His breath continued in that fluttering gasp.
Beck had dismounted and was squatted beside the scar in the rocks. His roan stood a dozen feet behind him. McKee peered out, measuring the distance quickly. The other's back was to him but there was no chance that he could regain his gun without being detected. Beck's revolver swung from his hip, and McKee had nothing with which to fight but the rope in his hands....
The rope! He stared down at it and drew back behind the boulder of rock. The rope!
An absurd, impotent device, but it had served purposes as desperate as this! Besides ... there was a hope in it and, for McKee, there was no other hope beneath that blue dome of sky....
He looked out again as he built his loop. Beck was on hands and knees, peering down into the crack through which stored waters had trickled away. Sam made the loop quickly, steeled to caution. He moved out from his hiding place a step ... then another. The roan looked up, with a little whiff of breath and Beck, attracted by the movement, the slight noise, turned his head sharply toward the horse.
It was then that the loop swirled and that McKee sped forward a dozen paces as quickly, as quietly as a cat, balanced, sure of himself in that crisis. From the tail of his eye Beck saw the first loop cut the corner of his range of vision and his body made the first lunge toward an erect position as the lithe writhing thing sped through the air....
McKee had never thrown as true. The loop settled about Tom's arms and beneath his knees. It came taut with an angry rip through the hondou even as the snared man made the first move to throw it off. He was pitched violently forward on his face, arms pinned to his sides, legs doubled against his stomach.
The breath went from him in an angry oath of surprise as McKee's breath shot from his lips in another oath ... of triumph. Hand over hand he went down the rope, keeping it taut, yet hastening to reach the doubled body before Beck could wriggle free. He fell upon the other just as one arm worked slack enough to permit the hand to strain for the revolver at his hip.
Snarling, gibbering with a mingling of terror and rage, McKee's one hand fastened on the gun. He clung to the rope with the other, battering Beck, who struggled to rise, back to earth with his knees. His fingers clamped on the grip of the Colt; he pulled free: it flashed in the air as his thumb sought the hammer and then, as he drove the muzzle downward against its living target the man beneath him bowed and writhed and he went over with a cry. A fist struck his wrist, the revolver exploded in the air and fell clattering, a dozen feet away.
Then it was man to man, a fight of bone and muscle ... bone, muscle and rope. Blindly McKee clung to the strand with one hand. It passed about his body as they rolled over. Beck's own weight, struggling to tear from it, tightened its hold. Tom struck savagely at the face beside him with his one free fist but McKee's knees, jamming into his stomach, crushed breath from him.
For one vibrant instant their strength was matched, the one's physical advantage offset by the handicap of the lariat about him. And then the rope told. Slowly Tom's resistance became less, gradually McKee wound the hemp about his own hand and wrist, shutting down its sinuous grasp, drawing Beck's body into a more compact knot. With a desperate shift he was on top, winding the hard-twist about Tom's hands, trussing them tightly behind his back, licking his lips as he made his victim secure.
In that time neither had spoken nor did McKee utter a sound as he rose, wiped the dust and sweat from his eyes and surveyed the figure at his feet. Beck looked back at him, the rage in his eyes giving way to a sane calculation. At the cost of great effort he rolled over and propped himself on one elbow. A scratch on his forehead sent a trickle of blood into one eye and he shook his head to be rid of it, coughing slightly as he did so.
"Now," he said, his panting becoming less noticeable, "what do you think you're goin' to do?"
McKee laughed sharply and looked away. He walked to where the revolver lay in the sharp sunlight, picked it up, broke it, examined the cartridges and closed it again.
"I come out here to kill you, Beck; that's what I'm goin' to do next."
He did not lift his voice but about his manner was a defined swagger, the boasting of the craven who, for once, is beyond fear of retribution. A slow shadow crossed between them as the buzzard wheeled, waiting, lazily impatient....
Beck delayed a brief interval before asking:
"Right here, Sam? You going to kill me right here?"
"Right here, you—!" He spat out the unforgiveable epithet with a curl to his lip. For once he had this man where he wanted him; Beck's life was in his hands ... right in hispalm.... "I'm goin' to kill you like I'd kill a snake! I've took a lot off you; I've stood for a lot from you, but you've gone too fur, you've played your hand too high!"
He began to feel a greater sense of his importance. He was dominating and it was sweet.
"I've waited a long time, Beck; I ain't forgot a thing you've done to me; I've been waitin' for just this chance!
"Now I'm goin' to kill you, you—!"
Again the word, with even great conviction. The man's lips trembled with rage, but as he glared down at the other he saw the level, mocking eyes studying his. He had not yet impressed Tom Beck, had not made him fear! It was disconcerting.
"What you goin' to kill me with, Sam?"
"With your own gun, by God!"—spinning the cylinder.
A moment of silence while Sam looked at the dull barrel, a queer, quick hesitancy coming over him, something he did not understand, something he did not will. When, a moment before, he felt that the situation would take a course exactly as he willed!
"With my own gun!" Beck repeated.
McKee cocked the weapon and looked about.
"When you goin' to do this killing, Sam?"
The level, mocking tone infuriated the other.
"Now!" he cried, shaken by hate. "Now, by God!"
He screamed the curse, threw the gun up to position and glared into Beck's face, moving forward a step, standing poised as though he would shoot and then fling himself upon his victim to vent his festering rage with his fists.
But he had failed to reckon throughout on one fact: The human eye is a stronger weapon than the inventive genius of man has ever devised, and he was meeting the gaze from an eye that was as steady, as fearless, as collected as any he had ever seen. His courage was the courage bred of cowardly impulses and it could not stand before fearlessness....
"Right now, Sam?"
The question was low, gentle, and with another shade of inflection might have been a plea. But it was no plea. It was subtle, stinging mockery which penetrated McKee's understanding and gave full life to that desire to hesitate which had shaken him a moment before.
"You ain't goin' to kill me right off, are you Sam?"
And at that McKee's irresolution became full blown. His body swung backward from its menacing poise, the gun hand dropped just a degree; his gaze, an instant before fixed and red with hate, now wavered.
"No, you ain't going to kill me now, Sam. You ain't got the guts!"
Prostrate, bound, wholly helpless, miles from aid, Beck flung those words from his lips. They pelted on McKee's ears like hard flung stones and he looked back to see the eyes that a moment ago had been amused, blazing righteous wrath.
"You wouldn't kill anybody, McKee," Beck said, after a breathless pause. In that pause McKee's gun hand had gone to his side and as it went down so did the flare of rage in Beck's face. His eyes grew calm and steady again with that covert amusement in them.
"You ain't just that kind of a man. If you'd been goin' to kill me you'd have done it right off. You wouldn't have waited, like you're waitin' now.... You missed out on your intentions, Sam, when you didn't do itpronto."
Across McKee's face swept a wave of helpless rage, humiliation, shame, self revulsion.... He stood there unable to move. He wanted to kill with a lust that men seldom feel, but he could not for he knew that he was a coward, knew that Beck knew, and the assurance that it was within his physical power to take a life without risk to his own mattered not at all. The moral force was lacking.
He tried to meet Beck's gaze and hold it but he could not. That man, even now, did not fear him, and to a man who had been impelled to every strong act by fear, fearlessness is of itself an overwhelming force.
Tom talked on, lowly, confidently. He chided, he made fun of his captor; he belittled himself, discussed his inability to defend himself, but time after time he said with emphasis:
"You're afraid of me, Sam."
Afraid of him! Yes, McKee was fear-filled. He could not kill and yet thought of the retribution that might come for going even this far put him in a panic. There were others who would kill. Webb would have done it, Hepburn might have ... there was one other who would have killed ... Hilton, buthecould not and the others were far off. They would know, they would ridicule him and thought of that, coming so close on that high expectation of triumph that had sent him out onto the desert, made his position hopeless.
He turned and walked slowly toward the ledge which was to have been his assassin's hiding place.
"Goin' to leave me, Sam?" Beck asked.
"You'll see what I'm goin' to do?" McKee raved, wheeling, suddenly articulate. "You'll see what'll happen to you, you—! What's already happened is only a starter. I didn't intend to kill you myself. I only come here to hogtie you. I guess I done that, didn't I?"
"Ain't you just sure, Sam?"
The tone was stinging and where McKee might have raved on he simply grasped the stub on the rock and scrambled up until he could reach his revolver.
Beck asked if that was McKee's arsenal; wanted to know more about Sam's plans; wanted to know who sent him; wanted to know if any one else was coming or if they were going out to meet others.... He talked gently, slowly, tauntingly until McKee fidgetted like an embarrassed school girl.
After a time Beck struggled to a sitting position, back against a rock. The searing sun beat down on his bared head, his wrists were puffing, fingers numb and swollen from the ropes cutting into his flesh. His body ached miserably, but he would not betray that. His throat burned for water and there was water on his saddle, but he would not mention thirst. There yet was danger! He must keep the other impressed with his inferiority....
"That your pet buzzard, Sam?" he asked once, squinting upward at the wheeling scavenger. "Somebody said you kept one ... to pick up after you...."
"You wait! You'll have less to say after a while," McKee growled and stared off toward the heights to the eastward, feigning expectancy.
And then, as McKee paced back and forth, covering his helplessness and his fear to make another move, by the sham of watching for other arrivals, Beck's mind began working on a theory. Two-Bits had been shot down the day he had driven McKee off HC range. He had been shot from behind. McKee was the only one in the country who had a personal quarrel with the homely cowboy.
It was clear enough to him but he feared that an accusation, bringing some demonstration of guilt, might bring other things that he dared not risk. He played a game that was desperate enough. He lived by the grace of McKee's cowardice and that cowardice had permitted this triumph by the scantest possible margin. To provoke the desperation that he knew was latent in Sam's heart would be the rankest folly.
Noon, with blistering heat. McKee drank greedily, water running down his chin and spattering over his boots. It was agony for Beck but he fought against betraying evidence of it, holding his eyes on the other and smiling a trifle and wondering how long he could keep back the groans.
McKee squatted in the shade of a rock for a time. Once he looked at Beck while Tom was staring across the desert and that hate flickered up in his eyes again; then Tom looked back and he got up and walked, licking his lips.
Two o'clock: "I don't guess they're comin' today, Sam. Maybe you misunderstood 'em."
Three: "Sure is too bad to have your plans all go to hell, isn't it, Sam?"
The sensation had entirely gone from hands and lower arms. His biceps and shoulders ached as though they had been mauled; his back was shot with hot stabs of pain.
But at four o'clock he said: "You'd ought to have killed me, Sam. That'd surprised 'em for sure!"
He bit his lips to hold back the moan and for a time things swam. He hoped that he would not lose consciousness ... hoped this rather vaguely, for vaguely he felt that McKee would kill him should he be unable to realize what transpired. He had a confused notion that Jane Hunter was there and this disturbed him. He felt a poorly defined sinking sensation ... Jane ... and this. Why, then this really mattered very little! That his life was in danger, that his body hurt, were inconsequential details compared to the love that had died yesterday, to the hurt of his heart!
A draft of cooler air, sucking through the rocks, roused him and he looked up to find that the tank was entirely in shadows. The rocks were still hot but the air which moved above them was heavier, cooler. McKee paced nervously back and forth. He wore two guns.
"You reckon somebody's goin' to steal me?" Beck asked, forcing his voice to be steady. "I didn't realize I was valuable enough to be close herded by a two-gun man."
With the moderation of temperature Tom's alertness revived.
"I'm goin' to sleep right here, Sam; where are you going to turn in?" he asked. "I sleep pretty well in th' open; how about you?"
He leaned forward slightly and his eye had a brighter glint. Question after question he flung at the other. Now and then McKee growled; twice he cursed Beck, in vile explosions of oaths. At these Beck nodded in assent.
"I sure am an undesirable," he said.
Back and forth, bewildered, McKee walked. He dared not face the future with Beck alive; he dared not take Beck's life. He feared the punishment that might be his for this much he had done; he feared the relentless ridicule of Webb and Hepburn and of Hilton; he feared to go, he feared to stay. And gradually this last fear grew.
"I think you ought to start out an' ride after 'em, Sam," Beck advised. "Do theysabethis country? You better go; they might get strayed. I'll be here. I figure on stayin' quite a time. I.... Honest, Sam, I've had a hell of a good time today...."
McKee wheeled in his walking.
"You'll stay all right!" he screamed. "You damned bet your dirty skin you won't go far! You've been talkin' a lot wiser than you know, you—! You'll stay!"
He dropped to his knees beside Tom and with a wrench pulled off the man's boots.
The movement sent exquisite pains through Tom's body, but he shut his teeth against them. He smiled, demonstrating more of the Spartan by that smile than he had at any time during the day.
"You ain't figuring on walkin' your boots out, are you?" he asked in mock solicitation.
"Never you mind, you—!" McKee snarled.
He brought out his horse, tightened the cinch and led him toward the roan. He tied Tom's boots to his own saddle and then without looking at the man he had come to kill and who he was leaving bound, waterless, without boots or a horse, twenty miles from the first help, he lashed the roan with his quirt, sharply about the head and, when the big creature wheeled in surprise, about the hocks.
Kicking, frightened, stepping on the reins and breaking them off, Beck's horse ran away. Ran scot free, head up, out to the eastward, abused and headed for home. He began to buck, pitching desperately. The saddle worked back and under and down. He kicked it free. Somewhere between the tank and that fallen saddle, Beck knew was his canteen. But McKee did not know. He mounted and stuck into the wash through which he had ridden hours before, lashing the gray to a gallop, putting distance between his menace, his shame....
And back in the tank as night came on a man for whom every move was torment rolled and wriggled from place to place, searching doggedly for a ragged rock, among those that were water-worn and smooth.
The buzzard had ceased his wheeling, the stars came out. Beck talked aloud rather crazily. Everything seemed smooth; even the pain became less harsh; everything was soft and easy ... remarkably so.... Until his cheek felt a ragged, narrow edge of rock, close in against the base of the tallest spire. Moaning feebly he wriggled against it until the ropes touched the edge. Then, with great labor, he began to writhe and twist. It took hours to fray out a single strand, and his arms were bound by many ... hours....
And when finally his arms fell apart, sensations, fiendish, killing sensations, began to stab through them, he laughed lightly and ended shortly. He was free!...
Free?