It was just after the hot hour of the afternoon. The shadows from the hills to the west were beginning to drop across the village; people who had kept to their houses during the early afternoon now appeared on their porches. Small boys and girls, returning from school, were beginning to play. Their mothers were at the open doors exchanging shouted pieces of news and greetings, and Andrew picked his way with care along the street. It was a town flung down in the throat of a ravine without care or pattern. There was not even one street, but rather a collection of straggling paths which met about a sort of open square, on the sides of which were the stores and the inevitable saloons and hotel.
But the narrow path along which Andrew rode was a gantlet to him. For all he knew, the placards might be already out, one of the least of those he passed might have recognized him. He noticed that one or two women, in their front door, stopped in the midst of a word to watch him curiously. It seemed to Andrew that a buzz of comment and warning preceded him and closed behind him. He felt sure that the children stood and gaped at him from behind, but he dared not turn in his saddle to look back.
And he kept on, reining in the gelding, and probing every face with one swift, resistless glance that went to the heart. He found himself literally taking the brains andhearts of men into the palm of his hand and weighing them. Yonder old man, so quiet, with the bony fingers clasped around the bowl of his corncob, sitting under the awning by the watering trough—that would be an ill man to cross in a pinch—that hand would be steady as a rock on the barrel of a gun. But the big, square man with the big, square face who talked so loudly on the porch of yonder store—there was a bag of wind that could be punctured by one threat and turned into a figure of tallow by the sight of a gun.
Andrew went on with his lightning summary of the things he passed. But when he came to the main square, the heart of the town, it was quite empty. He went across to the hotel, tied the gelding at the rack, and sat down on the veranda. He wanted with all his might to go inside, to get a room, to be alone and away from this battery of searching eyes. But he dared not. He must mingle with these people and learn what they knew.
He went in and sought the bar. It should be there, if anywhere, the poster with the announcement of Andrew Lanning's outlawry and the picture of him. What picture would they take? The old snapshot of the year before, which Jasper had taken? No doubt that would be the one. But much as he yearned to do so, he dared not search the wall. He stood up to the bar and faced the bartender. The latter favored him with one searching glance, and then pushed across the whisky bottle.
"Do you know me?" asked Andrew with surprise. And then he could have cursed his careless tongue.
"I know you need a drink," said the bartender, looking at Andrew again. Suddenly he grinned. "When a man's been dry that long he gets a hungry look around the eyes that I know. Hit her hard, boy."
Andrew brimmed his glass and tossed off the drink. And to his astonishment there was none of the shocking effectof his first drink of whisky. It was like a drop of water tossed on a huge blotter. To his tired nerves the alcohol was a mere nothing. Besides, he dared not let it affect him. He filled a second glass, pushing across the bar one of the gold pieces of Henry Allister. Then, turning casually, he glanced along the wall. There were other notices up—many written ones—but not a single face looked back at him. All at once he grew weak with relief. But in the meantime he must talk to this fellow.
"What's the news?"
"What kind of news?"
"Any kind. I've been talkin' more to coyotes than to men for a long spell."
Should he have said that? Was not that a suspicious speech? Did it not expose him utterly?
"Nothin' to talk about here much more excitin' than a coyote's yap. Not a damn thing. Which way you come from?"
"South. The last I heard of excitin' news was this stuff about Lanning, the outlaw."
It was out, and he was glad of it. He had taken the bull by the horns.
"Lanning? Lanning? Never heard of him. Oh, yes, the gent that bumped off Bill Dozier. Between you and me, they won't be any sobbin' for that. Bill had it comin'. But they've outlawed Lanning, have they?"
"That's what I hear."
But sweet beyond words had been this speech from the bartender. They had barely heard of Andrew Lanning in this town; they did not even know that he was outlawed. Andrew felt hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat. Now for one long sleep; then he would make the ride across the mountains and into safety.
He went out of the barroom, put the gelding away in thestables behind the hotel, and got a room. In ten minutes, pausing only to tear the boots from his feet, he was sound asleep under the very gates of freedom.
And while he slept the gates were closing and barring the way. If he had wakened even an hour sooner, all would have been well and, though he might have dusted the skirts of danger, they could never have blocked his way. But, with seven days of exhausting travel behind him, he slept like one drugged, the clock around and more. It was morning, mid-morning, when he wakened.
Even then he was too late, but he wasted priceless minutes eating his breakfast, for it was delightful beyond words to have food served to him which he had not cooked with his own hands. And so, sauntering out onto the veranda of the hotel, he saw a compact crowd on the other side of the square and the crowd focused on a man who was tacking up a sign. Andrew, still sauntering, joined the crowd, and looking over their heads, he found his own face staring back at him; and, under the picture of that lean, serious face, in huge black type, five thousand dollars reward for the capture, dead or alive—
The rest of the notice blurred before his eyes.
Some one was speaking. "You made a quick trip, Mr. Dozier, and I expect if you send word up to Hallowell in the mountains they can—"
So Hal Dozier had brought the notices himself.
Andrew, in that moment, became perfectly calm. He went back to the hotel, and, resting one elbow on the desk, he looked calmly into the face of the clerk and the proprietor. Instantly he saw that the men did not suspect—as yet.
"I hear Mr. Dozier's here?" he asked.
"Room seventeen," said the clerk. "Hold on. He's out in the square now."
"'S all right. I'll wait in his room."He went to room seventeen. The door was unlocked. And drawing a chair into the farthest corner, Andrew sat down, rolled a cigarette, drew his revolver, and waited.
He waited an eternity; in actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed a babble of questions as the men struggled for the honor of a word from the great man. Perhaps he was coming to his room to form the posse and issue general instructions for the chase.
The door opened. Dozier entered, jerked his head squarely to one side, and found himself gazing into the muzzle of a revolver. The astonishment and the swift hardening of his face had begun and ended in a fraction of a second.
"It's you, eh?" he said, still holding the door.
"Right," said Andrew. "I'm here for a little chat about this Lanning you're after."
Hal Dozier paused another heartbreaking second, then he saw that caution was the better way. "I'll have to shut you out for a minute or two, boys. Go down to the bar and have a few on me." He turned, laughing and waving to them. Then the door closed, and Dozier turned slowly to face his hunted man. Into Andrew's mind came back the words of the great outlaw, Allister: "There's one man I'd think twice about meeting, and that—"
"Sit down," said Andrew. "And you can take off your belt if you want to. Easy! That's it. Thank you."
The belt and the guns were tossed onto the bed, and HalDozier sat down. He reminded Andrew of a terrier, not heavy, but all compact nerve and fighting force.
"I'll not frisk you for another gun," said Andrew.
"Thanks; I have one, but I'll let it lie."
He made a movement. "If you don't mind," said Andrew, "I'd rather that you don't reach into your pockets. Use my tobacco and papers, if you wish." He tossed them onto the table, and Hal Dozier rolled his smoke in silence. Then he tilted back in his chair a little. His hand with the cigarette was as steady as a vise, and Andrew, shrugging forward his own ponderous shoulders, dropped his elbows on his knees and trained the gun full on his companion.
"I've come to make a bargain, Dozier," he said.
The other made no comment, and the two continued that silent struggle of the eyes that was making Andrew's throat dry and his heart leap.
"Here's the bargain: Drop off this trail. Let the law take its own course through other hands, but you give me your word to keep off the trail. If you'll do that I'll leave this country and stay away. Except for one thing, I'll never come back here. You're a proud man; you've never quit a trail yet before the end of it. But this time I only ask you to let it go with running me out of the country."
"What's the one thing for which you'd come back?"
"I'll come back—once—because of a girl."
He saw the eyes of Dozier widen and then contract again. "You're not exactly what I expected to find," he said. "But go on. If I don't take the bargain you pull that trigger?"
"Exactly."
"H'm! You may have heard the voices of the men who came up the hall with me?"
"Yes."
"The moment a report of a gun is heard they'll swarm up to this room and get you."
"They made too much noise. Barking dogs don't bite.Besides, the moment I've dropped you I go out that window."
"It's a good bluff, Lanning," said the other. "I'll tell you what, if you were what I expected you to be, a hysterical kid, who had a bit of bad luck and good rolled together, I'd take that offer. But you're different—you're a man. All in all, Lanning, I think you're about as much of a man as I've ever crossed before. No, you won't pull that trigger, because there isn't one deliberate murder packed away in your system. It's a good bluff, as I said before, and I admire the way you worked it. But it won't do. I call it. I won't leave your trail, Lanning. Now pull your trigger."
He smiled straight into the eye of the younger man. A flush jumped into the cheeks of Andrew, and, fading, left him by contrast paler than ever. "You were one-quarter of an inch from death, Dozier," he replied.
"Lanning, with men like you—and like myself, I hope—there's no question of distance. It's either a miss or a hit. Here's a better proposition: Let me put my belt on again. Then put your own gun back in the holster. We'll turn and face the wall. And when the clock downstairs strikes ten—that'll be within a few minutes—we'll turn and blaze at the first sound."
He watched his companion eagerly, and he saw the face of Andrew work. "I can't do it, Dozier," said Andrew. "I'd like to. But I can't!"
"Why not?" The voice of Hal Dozier was sharp with a new suspicion. "Get me out of the way, and you're free to get across the mountains, and, once there, your trail will never be found. I know that; every one knows that. That's why I hit up here after you."
"I'll tell you why," said Andrew slowly. "I've got the blood of one man on my hands already, but, so help me God, I'm not going to have another stain. I had to shootonce, because I was hounded into it. And, if this thing keeps on, I'm going to shoot again—and again. But as long as I can I'm fighting to keep clean, you understand?"
His voice became thin and rose as he spoke; his breath was a series of gasps, and Hal Dozier changed color.
"I think," said Andrew, regaining his self-control, "that I'd kill you. I think I'm just a split second surer and faster than you are with a gun. But don't you see, Dozier?"
He cast out his left hand, but his right hand held the revolver like a rock.
"Don't you see? I've got the taint in me. I've killed my man. If I kill another I'll go bad. I know it. Life will mean nothing to me. I can feel it in me."
His voice fell and became deeper.
"Dozier, give me my chance. It's up to you. Stand aside now, and I'll get across those mountains and become a decent man. Keep me here, and I'll be a killer. I know it; you know it. Why are you after me? Because your brother was killed by me. Dozier, think of your brother and then look at me. Was his life worth my life? You're a cool-headed man. You knew him, and you knew what he was worth. His killings were as long as the worst bad man that ever stepped, except that he had the law behind him. When he got on my trail he knew that I was just a scared kid who thought he'd killed a man. Why didn't he let me run until I found out that I hadn't killed Buck Heath? Then he knew, and you know, that I'd have come back. But he wouldn't give me the chance. He ran me into the ground, and I shot him down. And that minute he turned me from a scared kid into an outlaw—a killer. Tell me, man to man, Dozier, if Bill hasn't already done me more wrong than I've done him!"
As he finished that strange appeal he noted that the famous fighter was white about the mouth and shaken. He added with a burst of appeal: "Hal, you know I'mstraight. You know I'm worth a chance."
The older man lifted his head at last. "Andy, I can't leave the trail."
At that sentence every muscle of Andrew's body relaxed, and he sat like one in a state of collapse, except that the right hand and the gun in it were steady as rocks.
"Here's something between you and me that I'd swear I never said if I was called in a court," went on Hal Dozier in a solemn murmur. "I'll tell you that I know Bill was no good. I've known it for years, and I've told him so. It's Bill that bled me, and bled me until I've had to soak a mortgage on the ranch. It's Bill that's spent the money on his cussed booze and gambling. Until now there's a man that can squeeze and ruin me any day, and that's Merchant. He sent me hot along this trail. He sent me, but my pride sent me also. No, son, I wasn't bought altogether. And if I'd known as much about you then as I know now, I'd never have started to hound you. But now I've started. Everybody in the mountains, every puncher on the range knows that Hal Dozier has started on a new trail, and every man of them knows that I've never failed before. Andy, I can't give it up. You see, I've got no shame before you. I tell you the straight of it. I tell you that I'm a bought man. But I can't leave this trail to go back and face the boys. If one of them was to shake his head and say on the side that I'm no longer the man I used to be, I'd shoot him dead as sure as there's a reckoning that I'm bound for. It isn't you, Andy; it's my reputation that makes me go on."
He stopped, and the two men looked sadly at each other.
"Andy, boy," said Hal Dozier, "I've no more bad feeling toward you than if you was my own boy." Then he added with a little ring to his voice: "But I'm going to stay on your trail till I kill you. You write that down in red."
And the outlaw dropped his gun suddenly into the holster. "That ends it, then," he said slowly. "The next time we meet we won't sit down and chin friendly like. We'll let our guns do our talking for us. And, first of all, I'm going to get across these mountains, Hal, in spite of you and your friends."
"You can't do it, Andy. Try it. I've sent the word up. The whole mountains will be alive watchin' for you. Every trail will be alive with guns."
But Andrew stood up, and, using always his left hand while the right arm hung with apparent carelessness at his side, he arranged his hat so that it came forward at a jaunty angle, and then hitched his belt around so that the holster hung a little more to the rear. The position for a gun when one is sitting is quite different from the proper position when one is standing. All these things Uncle Jasper had taught Andrew long and long before. He was remembering them in chunks.
"Give me three minutes to get my saddle on my horse and out of town," said Andrew. "Is that fair?"
"Considering that you could have filled me full of lead here," said Hal Dozier, with a wry smile, "I think that's fair enough."
As Andrew went down the stairs and through the entrance hall he noticed it was filled with armed men. At the door he paused for the least fraction of a second, and during that breathing space he had seen every face in the room. Then he walked carelessly across to the desk and asked for his bill.
Someone, as he crossed the room, whirled to follow himwith a glance. Andy heard, for his ears were sharpened: "I thought for a minute—But it does look like him!"
"Aw, Mike, I seen that gent in the barroom the other day. Besides, he's just a kid."
"So's this Lanning. I'm going out to look at the poster again. You hold this gent here."
"All right. I'll talk to him while you're gone. But be quick. I'll be holdin' a laugh for you, Mike."
Andrew paid his bill, but as he reached the door a short man with legs bowed by a life in the saddle waddled out to him and said: "Just a minute, partner. Are you one of us?"
"One of who?" asked Andrew.
"One of the posse Hal is getting together? Well, come to think of it, I guess you're a stranger around here, ain't you?"
"Me?" asked Andrew. "Why, I've just been talking to Hal."
"About young Lanning?"
"Yes."
"By the way, if you're out of Hal's country, maybe you know Lanning, too?"
"Sure. I've stood as close to him as I am to you."
"You don't say so! What sort of a looking fellow is he?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said Andrew, and he smiled in an embarrassed manner. "They say he's a ringer for me. Not much of a compliment, is it?"
The other gasped, and then laughed heartily. "No, it ain't, at that," he replied. "Say, I got a pal that wants to talk to you. Sort of a job on him, at that."
"I'll tell you what," said Andy calmly. "Take him in to the bar, and I'll come in and have a drink with him and you in about two minutes. S'long."
He was gone through the door while the other half reached a hand toward him. But that was all.
In the stables he had the saddle on the chestnut in twentyseconds, and brought him to the watering trough before the barroom.
He found his short, bow-legged friend in the barroom in the midst of excited talk with a big, blond man. He looked a German, with his parted beard and his imposing front and he had the stern blue eye of a fighter. "Is this your friend?" asked Andrew, and walked straight up to them. He watched the eyes of the big man expand and then narrow; his hand even fumbled at his hip, but then he shook his head. He was too bewildered to act.
At that moment there was an uproar from the upper part of the hotel. With a casual wave of his hand, Andy wandered out of the barroom and then raced for the street. He heard men shouting in the lobby.
A fighting mass jammed its way into the open, and there, in the middle of the square, sat Hal Dozier on his gray stallion. He was giving orders in a voice that rang above the crowd, and made voices hush in whispers as they heard him. Under his direction the crowd split into groups of four and five and six and rode at full speed in three directions out of the town. In the meantime there were two trusted friends of Hal Dozier busy at telephones in the hotel. They were calling little towns among the mountains. The red alarm was spreading like wildfire, and faster than the fastest horse could gallop.
But Andrew, with the chestnut running like a red flash beneath him, had vanished.
Buried away in the mountains, one stiff day's march, was a trapper whom Uncle Jasper had once befriended. That was many a day long since, but Uncle Jasper had saved the man's life, and he had often told Andrew that, sooner or later, he must come to that trapper's cabin to talk of the old times.
He was bound there now. For, if he could get shelter for three days, the hue and cry would subside. When themountaineers were certain that he must have gone past them to other places and slipped through their greedy fingers he could ride on in comparative safety. It was an excellent plan. It gave Andrew such a sense of safety, as he trotted the chestnut up a steep grade, that he did not hear another horse, coming in the opposite direction, until the latter was almost upon him. Then, coming about a sharp shoulder of the hill, he almost ran upon a bare-legged boy, who rode without saddle upon the back of a bay mare. The mare leaped catlike to one side, and her little rider clung like a piece of her hide. "You might holler, comin' around a turn," shrilled the boy. And he brought the mare to a halt by jerking the rope around her neck. He had no other means of guiding her, no sign of a bridle.
But Andrew looked with hungry eyes. He knew something of horses, and this bay fitted into his dreams of an ideal perfectly. She was beautiful, quite heavily built in the body, with a great spread of breast that surely told of an honest heart beneath a glorious head, legs that fairly shouted to Andrew of good blood, and, above all, she had that indescribable thing which is to a horse what personality is to a man. She did not win admiration, she commanded it. And she stood alert at the side of the road, looking at Andrew like a queen. Horse stealing is the cardinal sin in the mountain desert, but Andrew felt the moment he saw her that she must be his. At least he would first try to buy her honorably.
"Son," he said to the urchin, "how much for that horse?"
"Why," said the boy, "anything you'll give."
"Don't laugh at me," said Andrew sternly. "I like her looks and I'll buy her. I'll trade this chestnut—and he's a fine traveler—with a good price to boot. If your father lives up the road and not down, turn back with me and I'll see if I can't make a trade."
"You don't have to see him," said the boy. "I can tell youthat he'll sell her. You throw in the chestnut and you won't have to give any boot." And he grinned.
"But there's the house." He pointed across the ravine at a little green-roofed shack buried in the rocks. "You can come over if you want to."
"Is there something wrong with her?"
"Nothin' much. Pop says she's the best hoss that ever run in these parts. And he knows, I'll tell a man!"
"Son, I've got to have that horse!"
"Mister," said the boy suddenly, "I know how you feel. Lots feel the same way. You want her bad, but she ain't worth her feed. A skunk put a bur under the saddle when she was bein' broke, and since then anybody can ride her bareback, but nothin' in the mountains can sit a saddle on her."
Andrew cast one more long, sad look at the horse. He had never seen a horse that went so straight to his heart, and then he straightened the chestnut up the road and went ahead.
He had to be guided by what Uncle Jasper had often described—a mountain whose crest was split like the crown of a hat divided sharply by a knife, and the twin peaks were like the ears of a mule, except that they came together at the base. By the position of those distant summits he knew that he was in the ravine leading to the cabin of Hank Rainer, the trapper.
Presently the sun flashed on a white cliff, a definite landmark by which Uncle Jasper had directed him, so Andrew turned out of his path on the eastern side of the gully androde across the ravine. The slope was steep on either side, covered with rocks, thick with slides of loose pebbles and sand. His horse, accustomed to a more open country, was continually at fault. He did not like his work, and kept tossing his ugly head and champing the bit as they went down to the river bottom.
It was not a real river, but only an angry creek that went fuming and crashing through the cañon with a voice as loud as some great stream. Andrew had to watch with care for a ford, for though the bed was not deep the water ran like a rifle bullet over smooth places and was torn to a white froth when it struck projecting rocks. He found, at length, a place where it was backed up into a shallow pool, and here he rode across, hardly wetting the belly of the gelding. Then up the far slope he was lost at once in a host of trees. They cut him off from his landmark, the white cliff, but he kept on with a feel for the right direction, until he came to a sudden clearing, and in the clearing was a cabin. It was apparently just a one-room shanty with a shed leaning against it from the rear. No doubt the shed was for the trapper's horse.
He had no time for further thought. In the open door of the cabin appeared a man so huge that he had to bend his head to look out, and Andrew's heart fell. It was not the slender, rawboned youth of whom Uncle Jasper had told him, but a hulking giant. And then he remembered that twenty years had passed since Uncle Jasper rode that way, and in twenty years the gaunt body might have filled out, the shock of bright-red hair of which Jasper spoke might well have been the original of the red flood which now covered the face and throat of the big man.
"Hello!" called the trapper. "Are you one of the boys on the trail? Well, I ain't seen anything. Been about six others here already."
The blood leaped in Andrew, and then ran coldly backto his heart. Could they have outridden the gelding to such an extent as that?
"From Tomo?" he asked.
"Tomo? No. They come down from Gunter City, up yonder, and Twin Falls."
And Andrew understood. Well indeed had Hal Dozier fulfilled his threat of rousing the mountains against this quarry. He glanced westward. It was yet an hour lacking of sundown, but since mid-morning Dozier had been able to send his messages so far and so wide. Andrew set his teeth. What did cunning of head and speed of horse count against the law when the law had electricity for its agent?
"Well," said Andrew, slipping from his saddle, "if he hasn't been by this way I may as well stay over for the night. If they've hunted the woods around here all day, no use in me doing it by night. Can you put me up?"
"Can I put you up? I'll tell a man. Glad to have you, stranger. Gimme your hoss. I'll take care of him. Looks like he was kind of ganted up, don't it? Well, I'll give him a feed of oats that'll thicken his ribs."
Still talking, he led the gelding into his shed. Andrew followed, took off the saddle, and, having led the chestnut out and down to the creek for a drink, he returned and tied him to a manger which the trapper had filled with a liberal supply of hay, to say nothing of a feed box stuffed with oats.
A man who was kind to a horse could not be treacherous to a man, Andrew decided.
"You're Hank Rainer, aren't you?" he asked.
"That's me. And you?"
"I'm the unwelcome guest, I'm afraid," said Andrew. "I'm the nephew of Jasper Lanning. I guess you'll be remembering him?"
"I'll forget my right hand sooner," said the big, red man calmly. But he kept on looking steadily at Andrew.
"Well," said Andrew, encouraged and at the same timerepulsed by this calm silence, "my name is one you've heard. I am—"
The other broke in hastily. "You are Jasper Lanning's nephew. That's all I know. What's a name to me? I don't want to know names!"
It puzzled Andrew, but the big man ran on smoothly enough: "Lanning ain't a popular name around here, you see? Suppose somebody was to come around and say, 'Seen Lanning?' What could I say, if you was here? 'I've got a Lanning here. I dunno but he's the one you want.' But suppose I don't know anything except you're Jasper's nephew? Maybe you're related on the mother's side. Eh?" He winked at Andrew. "You come along and don't talk too much about names."
He led the way into the house and picked up one of the posters, which lay on the floor.
"They've sent those through the mountains already?" asked Andrew gloomily.
"Sure! These come down from Twin Falls. Now, a gent with special fine eyes might find that you looked like the gent on this poster. But my eyes are terrible bad mostly. Besides, I need to quicken up that fire."
He crumpled the poster and inserted it beneath the lid of his iron stove. There was a rush and faint roar of the flame up the chimney as the cardboard burned. "And now," said Hank Rainer, turning with a broad smile, "I guess they ain't any reason why I should recognize you. You're just a plain stranger comin' along and you stop over here for the night. That all?"
Andrew had followed this involved reasoning with a rather bewildered mind, but he smiled faintly in return. He was bothered, in a way, by the extreme mental caution of this fellow. It was as if the keen-eyed trapper were more interested in his own foolish little subterfuge than in preserving Andrew. "Now, tell me, how is Jasper?"
"I've got to tell you one thing first. Dozier has raised the mountains, and I could never cross 'em now."
"Going to turn back into the plains?"
"No. The ranges are wide enough, but they're a prison just the same. I've got to get out of 'em now or stay a prisoner the rest of my life, only to be trailed down in the end. No, I want to stay right here in your cabin until the men are quieted down again and think I've slipped away from 'em. Then I'll sneak over the summit and get away unnoticed."
"Man, man! Stay here? Why, they'll find you right off. I wonder you got the nerve to sit there now with maybe ten men trailin' you to this cabin. But that's up to you."
There was a certain careless calm about this that shook Andrew to his center again. But he countered: "No, they won't look specially in houses. Because they won't figure that any man would toss up that reward. Five thousand is a pile of money."
"It sure is," agreed the other. He parted his red beard and looked up to the ceiling. "Five thousand is a considerable pile, all in hard cash. But mostly they hunt for this Andrew Lanning a dozen at a time. Well, you divide five thousand by ten, and you've got only five hundred left. That ain't enough to tempt a man to give up Lanning—so bad as all that."
"Ah," smiled Andrew, "but you don't understand what a stake you could make out of me. If you were to give information about me being here, and you brought a posse to get me, you'd come in for at least half of the reward. Besides, the five thousand isn't all. There's at least one rich gent that'll contribute maybe that much more. And you'd get a good half of that. You see, Hal Dozier knows all that, and he knows there's hardly a man in the mountains who would be able to keep awayfrom selling me. So that's why he won't search the houses."
"Not you," corrected the trapper sharply. "Andy Lanning is the man Dozier wants."
"Well, Andrew Lanning, then," smiled the guest. "It was just a slip of the tongue."
"Sometimes slips like that break a man's neck," observed the trapper, and he fell into a gloomy meditation.
And after that they talked of other things, until supper was cooked and eaten and the tin dishes washed and put away. Then they lay in their bunks and watched the last color in the west through the open door.
If a member of a posse had come to the door, the first thing his eyes fell upon would have been Andrew Lanning lying on the floor on one side of the room and the red-bearded man on the other. But, though his host suggested this, Andrew refused to move his blankets. And he was right. The hunters were roving the open, and even Hal Dozier was at fault.
"Because," said Andrew, "he doesn't dream that I could have a friend so far from home. Not five thousand dollars' worth of friend, anyway."
And the trapper grunted heavily.
It was a truth long after wondered at, when the story of Andrew Lanning was told and retold, that he had lain in perfect security within a six-hour ride from Tomo, while Hal Dozier himself combed the mountains and hundreds more were out hunting fame and fortune. To be sure, when a stranger approached, Andrew always withdrew into thehorse shed; but, beyond keeping up a steady watch during the day, he had little to do and little to fear.
Indeed, at night he made no pretense toward concealment, but slept quite openly on the floor on the bed of hay and blankets, just as Hank Rainer slept on the farther side of the room. And the great size of the reward was the very thing that kept him safe. For when men passed the cabin, as they often did, they were riding hard to get away from Tomo and into the higher mountains, where the outlaw might be, or else they were coming back to rest up, and their destination in such a case was always Tomo. The cabin of the trapper was just near enough to the town to escape being used as a shelter for the night by stray travelers. If they got that close, they went on to the hotel.
But often they paused long enough to pass a word with Hank, and Andrew, from his place behind the door of the horse shed, could hear it all. He could even look through a crack and see the faces of the strangers. They told how Tomo was wrought to a pitch of frenzied interest by this manhunt. Well-to-do citizens, feeling that the outlaw had insulted the town by so boldly venturing into it, had raised a considerable contribution toward the reward. Other prominent miners and cattlemen of the district had come forward with similar offers, and every day the price on the head of Andrew mounted to a more tempting figure.
It was a careless time for Andrew. After that escape from Tomo he was not apt to be perturbed by his present situation, but the suspense seemed to weigh more and more heavily upon the trapper. Hank Rainer was so troubled, indeed, that Andrew sometimes surprised a half-guilty, half-sly expression in the eyes of his host. He decided that Hank was anxious for the day to come when Andrew would ride off and take his perilous company elsewhere. He even broached the subject to Hank, but the mountaineer flushed and discarded the suggestion with a wave of his hand. "But if a gang of 'em should ever hunt me down, even in your cabin, Hank," said Andrew one day—it was the third day of his stay—"I'll never forget what you've done for me, and one of these days I'll see that Uncle Jasper finds out about it."
The little, pale-blue eyes of the trapper went swiftly to and fro, as if he sought escape from this embarrassing gratitude.
"Well," said he, "I've been thinkin' that the man that gets you, Andy, won't be so sure with his money, after all. He'll have your Uncle Jasper on his trail pronto, and Jasper used to be a killer with a gun in the old days."
"No more," smiled Andrew. "He's still steady as a rock, but he hasn't the speed any more. He's over seventy, you see. His joints sort of creak when he tries to move with a snap."
"Ah," muttered the trapper, and again, as he started through the open door, "Ah!"
Then he added: "Well, son, you don't need Jasper. If half what they say is true, you're a handy lad with the guns. I suppose Jasper showed you his tricks?"
"Yes, and we worked out some new ones together. Uncle Jasper raised me with a gun in my hand, you might say."
"H'm!" said Hank Rainer.
When they were sitting at the door in the semidusk, he reverted to the idea. "You been seein' that squirrel that's been runnin' across the clearin'?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to see you work your gun, Andy. It was a sight to talk about to watch Jasper, and I'm thinkin' you could go him one better. S'pose you stand up there in the door with your back to the clearin'. The next time that squirrel comes scootin' across I'll say, 'Now!' and you try to turn and get your gun on him before he's out of sight. Will you try that?"
"Suppose some one hears it?" "Oh, they're used to me pluggin' away for fun over here. Besides, they ain't anybody lives in hearin'."
And Andrew, falling into the spirit of the contest, stood up in the door, and the old tingle of nerves, which never failed to come over him in the crisis, was thrilling through his body again. Then Hank barked the word, "Now!" and Andrew whirled on his heel. The word had served to alarm the squirrel as well. As he heard it, he twisted about like the snapping lash of a whip and darted back for cover, three yards away. He covered that distance like a little gray streak in the shadow, but before he reached it the gun spoke, and the forty-five-caliber slug struck him in the middle and tore him in two. Andrew, hearing a sharp crackling, looked down at his host and observed that the trapper had bitten clean through the stem of his corncob.
"That," said the red man huskily, "is some shootin'."
But he did not look up, and he did not smile. And it troubled Andrew to hear this rather grudging praise.
In the meantime, three days had put the gelding in very fair condition. He was enough mustang to recuperate swiftly, and that morning he had tried with hungry eagerness to kick the head from Andrew's shoulders. This had decided the outlaw. Besides, in the last day there had been fewer and fewer riders up and down the ravine, and apparently the hunt for Andrew Lanning had journeyed to another part of the mountains. It seemed an excellent time to begin his journey again, and he told the trapper his decision to start on at dusk the next day.
The announcement brought with it a long and thoughtful pause.
"I wisht I could send you on your way with somethin' worthwhile," said Hank Rainer at length. "But I ain't rich. I've lived plain and worked hard, but I ain't rich. So what I can give you, Andy, won't be much."
Andrew protested that the hospitality had been morethan a generous gift, but Hank Rainer, looking straight out the door, continued: "Well, I'm goin' down the road to get you my little gift, Andy. Be back in an hour maybe."
"I'd rather have you here to keep me from being lonely," said Andrew. "I've money enough to buy what I want, but money will never buy me the talk of an honest man, Hank."
The other started. "Honest enough, maybe," he said bitterly. "But honesty don't get you bread or bacon, not in this world!"
And presently he stamped into the shed, saddled his pony, and after a moment was scattering the pebbles on the way down the ravine. The dark and silence gathered over Andrew Lanning. He had little warmth of feeling for Hank Rainer, to be sure, but the hush of the cabin he looked forward to many a long evening and many a long day in a silence like this, with no man near him. For the man who rides outside the law rides alone.
He could have embraced the big man, therefore, when Hank finally came back, and Andrew could hear the pony panting in the shed, a sure sign that it had been ridden hard.
"It ain't much," said Hank, "but it's yours, and I hope you get a chance to use it in a pinch." And he dumped down a case of.45 cartridges.
After all, there could have been no gift more to the point, but it gave Andrew a little chill of distaste, this reminder of the life that lay ahead of him. And in spite of himself he could not break the silence that began to settle over the cabin again. Finally Hank announced that it was bedtime for him, and, preparing himself by the simple expedient of kicking off his boots and then drawing off his trousers, he slipped into his blankets, twisted them tightly around his broad shoulders with a single turn of his body, and was instantly snoring. Andrew followed that example more slowly.Not since he left Martindale, however, had he slept soundly. Take a tame dog into the wilderness and he learns to sleep like a wolf quickly enough; and Andrew, with mind and nerve constantly set for action like a cocked revolver, had learned to sleep like a wild thing in turn. And accordingly, when he wakened in the middle of the night, he was alert on the instant. He had a singular feeling that someone had been looking at him while he slept.