352CHAPTER XXXVIIIINTO THE NORTH
The moon had not yet risen, and in the darkness of Boney Street Smith walked slowly toward his room. The answer to his question had come. The rescue of Seagrue made it clear that Sinclair would not leave the country. He well knew that Sinclair cared no more for Seagrue than for a prairie-dog. It was only that he felt strong enough, with his friends and sympathizers, to defy the railroad force and Whispering Smith, and planned now, probably, to kill off his pursuers or wear them out. There was a second incentive for remaining: nearly all the Tower W money had been hidden at Rebstock’s cabin by Du Sang. That Kennedy had already got hold of it Sinclair could not know, but it was certain that he would not leave the country without an effort to recover the booty from Rebstock.
Whispering Smith turned the key in the door of his room as he revolved the situation in his mind. Within, the dark was cheerless, but he made no effort to light a lamp. Groping his way to the side353of the low bed, he sat down and put his head between his hands to think.
There was no help for it that he could see: he must meet Sinclair. The situation he had dreaded most, from the moment Bucks asked him to come back to the mountains, had come.
He thought of every phase of the outcome. If Sinclair should kill him the difficulties were less. It would be unpleasant, certainly, but something that might happen any time and at any man’s hands. He had cut into the game too long ago and with his eyes too wide open to complain at this time of the possibility of an accident. They might kill each other; but if, escaping himself, he should kill Sinclair–––
He came back in the silence always to that if. It rose dark between him and the woman he loved––whom he had loved since she was a child with school-girl eyes and braided hair. After he had lost her, only to find years afterward that she was hardly less wretched in her life than he in his, he had dreamed of the day when she might again be free and he free to win a love long hoped for.
But to slay this man––her husband––in his inmost heart he felt it would mean the raising of a bar as impalpable as fate, and as undying, to all his dreams. Deserved or not, whatever she should say or not say, what would she feel? How could354her husband’s death in that encounter, if it ever came, be other than a stain that must shock and wound her, no matter how much she should try not to see. Could either of them ever quite forget it?
Kennedy and his men were guarding the Cache. Could they be sent against Sinclair? That would be only a baser sort of murder––the murder of his friends. He himself was leader, and so looked upon; the post of danger was his.
He raised his head. Through the window came a faint light. The moon was rising, and against the inner wall of the room the straight, hard lines of the old wardrobe rose dimly. The rifles were within. He must choose.
He walked to the window and pushed the curtain aside. It was dark everywhere across the upper town, but in the distance one light burned. It was in Marion’s cottage. He had chosen this room because from the window he could see her home. He stood for a few moments with his hands in his pockets, looking. When he turned away he drew the shade closely, lighted a lamp, and unlocked the wardrobe door.
Scott left the barn at half-past ten with a led horse for Whispering Smith. He rode past355Smith’s room in Fort Street, but the room was dark, and he jogged down to the Wickiup square, where he had been told to meet him. After waiting and riding about for an hour, he tied the horses and went up to McCloud’s office. McCloud was at his desk, but knew nothing of Whispering Smith except that he was to come in before he started. “He’s a punctual man,” murmured Bob Scott, who had the low voice of the Indian. “Usually he is ahead of time.”
“Is he in his room, do you think?” asked McCloud.
“I rode around that way about fifteen minutes ago; there was no light.”
“He must be there,” declared McCloud. “Have you the horses below? We will ride over and try the room again.”
Fort Street back of Front is so quiet after eleven o’clock at night that a footfall echoes in it. McCloud dismounted in front of the bank building and, throwing the reins to Bob Scott, walked upstairs and back toward Smith’s room. In the hallway he paused. He heard faint strains of music. They came from within the room––fragments of old airs played on a violin, and subdued by a mute, in the darkness. Instinct stayed McCloud’s hand at the door. He stood until the music ceased and footsteps moved about in the356room; then he knocked, and a light appeared within. Whispering Smith opened the door. He stood in his trousers and shirt, with his cartridge-belt in his hand. “Come in, George. I’m just getting hooked up.”
“Which way are you going to-night, Gordon?” asked McCloud, sitting down on the chair.
“I am going to Oroville. The crowd is celebrating there. It is a défi, you know.”
“Who are you going to take with you?”
“Nobody.”
McCloud moved uneasily. “I don’t like that.”
“There will be nothing doing. Sinclair may be gone by the time I arrive, but I want to see Bob and Gene Johnson, and scare the Williams Cache coyotes, just to keep their tails between their legs.”
“I’d like to kill off half a dozen of that gang.”
Whispering Smith said nothing for a moment. “Did you ever have to kill a man, George?” he asked buckling his cartridge-belt.
“No. Why?”
There was no reply. Smith had taken a rifle from the rack and was examining the firing mechanism. He worked the lever for a moment with lightning-like speed, laid the gun on the bed, and sat down beside it.
“You would hardly believe, George, how I hate to go after Murray Sinclair. I’ve known him all357my life. His folks and mine lived across the street from one another for twenty years. Which is the older? Murray is five years older than I am; he was always a big, strong, good-looking fellow.” Whispering Smith put his hands on the side of the bed. “It is curious how you remember things that happened when you were a boy, isn’t it? I thought of something to-night I hadn’t thought of for twenty years. A little circus came to town. While they were setting up the tent the lines for the gasolene tank got fouled in the block at the top of the centre pole. The head canvasman offered a quarter to any boy that would climb the pole and free the block. One boy after another tried it, but they couldn’t climb half-way up. Then Murray sailed in. I was seven years old and Murray was twelve, and he wore a vest. He gave me the vest to hold while he went up. I felt like a king. There was a lead-pencil in one pocket, beautifully sharpened, and I showed it to the other boys. Did he make good? He always made good,” said Whispering Smith gloomily. “The canvasman gave him the quarter and two tickets, and he gave one of the tickets to me. I got to thinking about that to-night. As boys, Murray and I never had a quarrel.” He stopped. McCloud said nothing, and, after an interval, Smith spoke again:
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“He was an oracle for all the small boys in town, and could advise us on any subject on earth––whether he knew anything about it or nothing about it made no difference. I told him once I wanted to be a California stage-robber, and he replied without an instant’s hesitation that I ought to begin to practise running. I was so upset at his grasp of the subject that I hadn’t the nerve to ask him why I needed to practise running to be a stage-robber. I was ashamed of appearing green and to this day I’ve never understood what he meant. Whether it was to run after the stage or to run away from it I couldn’t figure out. Perhaps my being too proud to ask the question changed my career. He went away for a long time, and we heard he was in the Black Hills. When he came back, my God! what a hero he was.”
Bob Scott knocked at the door and Whispering Smith opened it. “Tired of waiting, Bob? Well, I guess I’m ready. Is the moon up? This is the rifle I’m going to take, Bob. Did Wickwire have a talk with you? He’s all right. Suppose you send him to the mouth of Little Crawling Stone to watch things a day or two. They may try to work north that way or hide in the wash.”
Walking down to the street, Whispering Smith continued his suggestions. “And by the way, Bob, I want you to pass this word for me up and359down Front Street. Sinclair has his friends in town and it’s all right––I know them and expect them to stay by him. I expect Murray’s friends to do what they can for him. I’ve got my friends and expect them to stay by me. But there is one thing that I will not stand for on any man’s part, and that is hiding Sinclair anywhere in Medicine Bend. You keep him out of Medicine Bend, Bob; will you do it? And remember, I will never let up on the man who hides him in town while this fight is on. There are good reasons for drawing the line on that point, and there I draw it hard and fast. Now Bob and Gene Johnson were at Oroville when you left, were they, Bob?” He was fastening his rifle in the scabbard. “Which is deputy sheriff this year, Bob or Gene? Gene––very good.” He swung into the saddle.
“Have you got everything?” murmured Scott.
“I think so. Stop! I’m riding away without my salt-bag. That would be a pretty piece of business, wouldn’t it? Take the key, Bob. It’s hanging between the rifles and the clock. Here’s the wardrobe key, too.”
There was some further talk when Scott came back with the salt, chiefly about horses and directions as to telephoning. Whispering Smith took up a notch again in his belt, pulled down his hat, and bent over the neck of his horse to lay his360hand a moment in McCloud’s. It was one o’clock. Across the foothills the moon was rising, and Whispering Smith straightening up in the saddle wheeled his horse and trotted swiftly up the street into the silent north.
361CHAPTER XXXIXAMONG THE COYOTES
Oroville once marked farthest north for the Peace River gold camps, but with mining long ago abandoned it now marks farthest south for a rustler’s camp, being a favorite resort for the people of the Williams Cache country. Oroville boasts that it has never surrendered and that it has never been cleaned out. It has moved, and been moved, up stream and down, and from bank to bank; it has been burned out and blown away and lived on wheels: but it has never suffered the loss of its identity. Oroville is said to have given to its river the name of Peace River––either wholly in irony or because in Oroville there was for many years no peace save in the river. However, that day, too, is past, and Peace County has its sheriff and a few people who are not habitually “wanted.”
Whispering Smith, well dusted with alkali, rode up to the Johnson ranch, eight miles southwest of Oroville, in the afternoon of the day after he left Medicine Bend. The ranch lies in a valley watered362by the Rainbow, and makes a pretty little oasis of green in a limitless waste of sagebrush. Gene and Bob Johnson were cutting alfalfa when Whispering Smith rode into the field, and, stopping the mowers, the three men talked while the seven horses nibbled the clover.
“I may need a little help, Gene, to get him out of town,” remarked Smith, after he had told his story; “that is, if there are too many Cache men there for me.”
Bob Johnson was stripping a stalk of alfalfa in his fingers. “Them fellows are pretty sore.”
“That comes of half doing a job, Bob. I was in too much of a hurry with the round-up. They haven’t had dose enough yet,” returned Whispering Smith. “If you and Gene will join me sometime when I have a week to spare, we will go in there, clean up the gang and burn the hair off the roots of the chapparal––what? I’ve hinted to Rebstock he could get ready for something like that.”
“Tell us about that fight, Gordon.”
“I will if you will give me something to eat and have this horse taken care of. Then, Bob, I want you to ride into Oroville and reconnoitre. This is mail day and I understand some of the boys are buying postage stamps to put on my coffin.”
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They went to the house, where Whispering Smith talked as he ate. Bob took a horse and rode away, and Gene, with his guest, went back to the alfalfa, where Smith took Bob’s place on the mower. When they saw Bob riding up the valley, Whispering Smith, bringing in the machine, mounted his horse.
“Your man is there all right,” said Bob, as he approached. “He and John Rebstock were in the Blackbird saloon. Seagrue isn’t there, but Barney Rebstock and a lot of others are. I talked a few minutes with John and Murray. Sinclair didn’t say much; only that the railroad gang was trying to run him out of the country, and he wanted to meet a few of them before he went. I just imagined he held up a little before me; maybe not. There’s a dozen Williams Cache men in town.”
“But those fellows are not really dangerous, Bob, though they may be troublesome,” observed Smith reflectively.
“Well, what’s your plan?” blurted Gene Johnson.
“I haven’t any, Gene,” returned Smith, with perfect simplicity. “My only plan is to ride into town and serve my papers, if I can. I’ve got a deputyship––and that I’m going to do right away. If you, Bob, or both of you, will happen in about thirty minutes later you’ll get the news and perhaps364see the fun. Much obliged for your feed, Gene; come down to Medicine Bend any time and I’ll fill you up. I want you both for the elk hunt next fall, remember that. Bucks is coming, and is going to bring Brown and Henson and perhaps Atterbury and Gibbs and some New Yorkers; and McCloud’s brother, the preacher, is coming out and they are all right––all of them.”
The only street in Oroville faces the river, and the buildings string for two or three blocks along modest bluffs. Not a soul was anywhere in sight when Whispering Smith rode into town, save that across the street from where he dismounted and tied his horse three men stood in front of the Blackbird.
They watched the new arrival with languid interest. Smith walked stiffly over toward the saloon to size up the men before he should enter it. The middle man of the group, with a thin red face and very blue eyes, was chewing tobacco in an unpromising way. Before Smith was half-way across the street he saw the hands of the three men falling to their hips. Taking care, however, only to keep the men between him and the saloon door, Smith walked directly toward them. “Boys, have you happened to see Gene or Bob Johnson to-day, any of you?” He threw back the brim of his Stetson as he spoke.
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“Hold your hand right there––right where it is,” said the blue-eyed man sharply.
Whispering Smith smiled, but held his hand rather awkwardly upon his hat-brim.
“No,” continued the spokesman, “we ain’t none of us happened to see Bob or Gene Johnson to-day; but we happen to seen Whispering Smith, and we’ll blow your face off if you move it an inch.”
Smith laughed. “I never quarrel with a man that’s got the drop on me, boys. Now, this is sudden but unexpected. Do I know any of you?” He looked from one face to another before him, with a wide reach in his field of vision for the three hands that were fast on three pistol-butts. “Hold on! I’ve met you somewhere,” he said with easy confidence to the blue-eyed man with the weather-split lip. “Williams Cache, wasn’t it? All right, we’re placed. Now what have you got in for me?”
“I’ve got forty head of steers in for you,” answered the man in the middle, with a splitting oath. “You stole forty head of my steers in that round-up, and I’m going to fill you so full of lead you’ll never run off no more stock for nobody. Don’t look over there to your horse or your rifle. Hold your hands right where they are.”
“Certainly, certainly!”
“When I pull, I shoot!”
“I don’t always do it, but it is business, I acknowledge.366When a man pulls he ought to shoot––very often it’s the only chance he ever gets to shoot. Well, it isn’t every man gets the drop on me that easy, but you boys have got it,” continued Whispering Smith in frank admiration. “Only I want to say you’re after the wrong man. That round-up was all Rebstock’s fault, and Rebstock is bound to make good all loss and damage.”
“You’ll make good my share of it right now and here,” said the man with the wash-blue eyes.
“Why, of course,” assented Whispering Smith, “if I must, I must. I suppose I may light a cigarette, boys, before you turn loose the fireworks?”
“Light it quick!”
Laughing at the humor of the situation, Whispering Smith, his eyes beaming with good-nature, put the finger and thumb of his right hand into his waistcoat pocket, drew out a package of cigarette paper, and, bantering his captors innocently the while, tore out a sheet and put the packet back. Folding the paper in his two hands, he declared he believed his tobacco was in his saddle-pocket, and asked leave to step across the street to get it. The trick was too transparent, and leave was refused with scorn and some hard words. Whispering Smith begged the men in front of him in turn for tobacco. They cursed him and shook their heads.
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For an instant he looked troubled. Still appealing to them with his eyes, he tapped lightly the lower outside pockets of his coat with his fingers, shifting the cigarette paper from hand to hand as he hunted. The outside pockets seemed empty. But as he tapped the inside breast pocket on the left side of the coat––the three men, lynx-eyed, watching––his face brightened. “Stop!” said he, his voice sinking to a relieved whisper as his hand rested lightly on the treasure. “There’s the tobacco. I suppose one of you will give me a match?”
All that the three before him could ever afterward recollect––and for several years afterward they cudgelled their brains pretty thoroughly about that moment––was that Whispering Smith took hold of the left lapel of his coat to take the tobacco out of the breast pocket. An excuse to take that lapel in his left hand was, in fact, all that Whispering Smith needed to put not alone the three men before him but all Oroville at his mercy. The play of his right hand in crossing the corduroy waistcoat to pull his revolver from its scabbard and throw it into their faces was all too quick for better eyes than theirs. They saw only the muzzle of the heavy Colt’s playing like a snake’s tongue under their surprised noses, with the good-natured smile still behind it. “Or will368one of you roll a cigarette?” asked Whispering Smith, without a break between the two questions. “I don’t smoke. Now don’t make faces; go right ahead. Do anything you want to with your hands. I wouldn’t ask a man to keep his hands or feet still on a hot day like this,” he insisted, the revolver playing all the time. “You won’t draw? You won’t fight? Pshaw! Then disengage your hands gently from your guns. You fellows really ought not to attempt to pull a gun in Oroville, and I will tell you why––there’s a reason for it.” He looked confidential as he put his head forward to whisper among the crestfallen faces. “At this altitude it is too fast work. I know you now,” he went on as they continued to wilt. “You are Fatty Filber,” he said to the thin chap. “Don’t work your mouth like that at me; don’t do it. You seem surprised. Really, have you the asthma? Get over it, because you are wanted in Pound County for horse-stealing. Why, hang it, Fatty, you’re good for ten years, and of course, since you have reminded me of it, I’ll see that you get it. And you, Baxter,” said he to the man on the right, “I know I spoke to you once when I was inspector about altering brands; that’s five years, you know. You,” he added, scrutinizing the third man to scare him to death––“I think you were at Tower W. No? No matter; you two boys may go, anyway.369Fatty, you stay; we’ll put some state cow on your ribs. By the way, are you a detective, Fatty? Aren’t you? See here! I can get you into an association. For ten dollars, they give you a German-silver star, and teach the Japanese method of pulling, by correspondence. Or you might get an electric battery to handle your gun with. You can get pocket dynamos from the mail-order houses. Sure! Read the big book!”
When Gene and Bob Johnson rode into town, Whispering Smith was sitting in a chair outside the Blackbird, still chatting with Filber, who stood with his arms around a hitching-post, holding fast a mail-order house catalogue. A modest crowd of hangers-on had gathered.
“Here we are, Gene,” exclaimed Smith to the deputy sheriff. “I was looking for steers, but some calves got into the drive. Take him away.”
While the Johnsons were laughing, Smith walked into the Blackbird. He had lost thirty minutes, and in losing them had lost his quarry. Sinclair had disappeared, and Whispering Smith made a virtue of necessity by taking the upsetting of his plans with an unruffled face. There was but one thing more, indeed, to do, and that was to eat his supper and ride away. The street encounter had made so much talk in Oroville that Smith declined Gene Johnson’s invitation to go back to the370house. It seemed a convenient time to let any other ambitious rustlers make good if they were disposed to try, and Whispering Smith went for his supper to the hotel where the Williams Cache men made their headquarters.
There was a rise in the atmospheric pressure the moment he entered the hotel office door, and when he walked into the dining-room, some minutes later, the silence was oppressive. Smith looked for a seat. The only vacant place chanced to be at a table where nine men from the Cache sat busy with ham and eggs. It was a trifle awkward, but the only thing to do was to take the vacant chair.
The nine men were actively engaged with knives and forks and spoons when Whispering Smith drew out the empty chair at the head of the table; but nine pairs of hands dropped modestly under the table when he sat down. Coughing slightly to hide his embarrassment and to keep his right hand in touch with his necktie, Whispering Smith looked around the table with the restrained air of a man who has bowed his head and resolved to ask the blessing, but wants to make reasonably sure that the family is listening. A movement at the other tables, among the regular boarders of the hostelry, was apparent almost at once. Appetites began to fail all over the dining-room. Whispering Smith gave his order genially to the confused waitress:
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“Bring me two eggs––one fried on one side and one on the other––and coffee.”
There was a general scraping of chairs on the floor as they were pushed back and guests not at the moment interested in the bill of fare started, modestly but firmly, to leave the dining-room. At Whispering Smith’s table there were no second calls for coffee. To stimulate the eating he turned the conversation into channels as reassuring as possible. Unfortunately for his endeavor, the man at the far end of the table reached for a toothpick. It seemed a pleasant way out of the difficulty, and when the run on toothpicks had once begun, all Whispering Smith’s cordiality could not check it. Every man appeared to want a toothpick, and one after another of Whispering Smith’s company deserted him. He was finally left alone with a physician known as “Doc,” a forger and a bigamist from Denver. Smith tried to engage Doc in medical topics. The doctor was not alone frightened but tipsy, and when Smith went so far as to ask him, as a medical man, whether in his opinion the high water in the mountains had any direct connection with the prevalence of falling of the spine among old “residenters” in Williams Cache, the doctor felt of his head as if his brain were turning turtle.
When Whispering Smith raised his knife ostentatiously372to bring out a feature of his theory, the doctor raised his knife higher to admit the force of it; and when Whispering Smith leaned his head forward impressively to drive home a point in his assertion, the doctor stretched his neck till his face grew apoplectic. Releasing him at length from the strain, Whispering Smith begged of the staring maid-servant the recipe for the biscuit. When she came back with it he sat all alone, pouring catsup over his griddle-cakes in an abstracted manner, and it so flurried her that she had to go out again to ask whether the gasolene went into the dough or under it.
He played out the play to the end, but when he rode away in the dusk his face was careworn. John Rebstock had told him why Sinclair dodged: there were others whom Sinclair wanted to meet first; and Whispering Smith was again heading on a long, hard ride, and after a man on a better horse, back to the Crawling Stone and Medicine Bend. “There’s others he wants to see first or you’d have no trouble in talking business to-day. You nor no other man will ever get him alive.” But Whispering Smith knew that.
“See that he doesn’t get you alive, Rebstock,” was his parting retort. “If he finds out Kennedy has got the Tower W money, the first thing he does will be to put the Doxology all over you.”
373CHAPTER XLA SYMPATHETIC EAR
When Whispering Smith rode after Sinclair, Crawling Stone Ranch, in common with the whole countryside, had but one interest in life, and that was to hear of the meeting. Riders across the mountain valleys met with but one question; mail-carriers brought nothing in their pouches of interest equal to the last word concerning Sinclair or his pursuer. It was commonly agreed through the mountains that it would be a difficult matter to overhaul any good man riding Sinclair’s steel-dust horses, but with Sinclair himself in the saddle, unless it pleased him to pull up, the chase was sure to be a stern one. Against this to feed speculation stood one man’s record––that of the man who had ridden alone across Deep Creek and brought Chuck Williams out on a buckboard.
Business in Medicine Bend, meantime, was practically suspended. As the centre of all telephone lines the big railroad town was likewise the centre of all rumors. Officers and soldiers to and374from the Fort, stage-drivers and cowmen, homesteaders and rustlers, discussed the apprehension of Sinclair. Moreover, behind this effort to arrest one man who had savagely defied the law were ranged all of the prejudices, sympathies, and hatreds of the high country, and practically the whole population tributary to Medicine Bend and the Crawling Stone Valley were friends either to Sinclair or to his pursuer. Behind Sinclair were nearly all the cattlemen, not alone because he was on good terms with the rustlers and protected his friends, but because he warred openly on the sheepmen. The big range interests, as a rule, were openly or covertly friendly to Sinclair, while against him were the homesteaders, the railroad men, the common people, and the men who everywhere hate cruelty and outrage and the making of a lie.
Lance Dunning had never concealed his friendliness for Sinclair, even after hard stories about him were known to be true, and it was this confidence of fellowship that made Sinclair, twenty-four hours after he had left Oroville, ride down the hill trail to Crawling Stone ranch-house.
The morning had been cold, with a heavy wind and a dull sky. In the afternoon the clouds lowered over the valley and a misting rain set in. Dicksie had gone into Medicine Bend on the stage375in the morning, and, after a stolen half-hour with McCloud at Marion’s, had ridden home to escape the storm. Not less, but much more, than those about her she was alive to the situation in which Sinclair stood and its danger to those closest to her. In the morning her one prayer to McCloud had been to have a care of himself, and to Marion to have a care of herself; but even when Dicksie left them it seemed as if neither quite felt the peril as she felt it.
In the afternoon the rain, falling steadily, kept her in the house, and she sat in her room sewing until the light failed. She went downstairs. Puss had lighted the grate in the living-room, and Dicksie threw herself into a chair. The sound of hoofs aroused her and she went to a window. To her horror, she saw Sinclair walking with her cousin up to the front door. She ran into the dining-room, and the two men entered the hall and walked into the office. Choking with excitement, Dicksie ran through the kitchen and upstairs to master her agitation.
In the office Sinclair was sitting down before the hot stove with a tumbler of whiskey. “Lance”––he shook his head as he spoke hoarsely––“I want to say my friends have stood by me to a man, but there’s none of them treated me squarer through thick and thin than you have. Well,376I’ve had some bad luck. It can’t be helped. Regards!”
He drank, and shook his wet hair again. Four days of hard riding had left no trace on his iron features. Wet to the bone, his eyes flashed with fire. He held the glassful of whiskey in a hand as steady as a spirit-level and tossed it down a throat as cool as dew.
“I want to say another thing, Lance: I had no more intention than a child of hurting Ed Banks. I warned Ed months ago to keep out of this fight; and I never knew he was in it till it was too late. But I’m hoping he will pull through yet, if they don’t kill him in the hospital to spite me. I never recognized the men at all till it was too late. Why, one of them used to work for me! A man with the whole railroad gang in these mountains after him has got to look out for himself or his life ain’t worth a glass of beer. Thank you, Lance, not any more. I saw two men, with their rifles in their hands, looking for me. I hollered at them; but, Lance, I’m rough and ready, as all my friends know, and I will let no man put a drop on me––that I will never do. Ed, before I ever recognized him, raised his rifle; that’s the only reason I fired. Not so full, Lance, not so full, if you please. Well,” he shook his black hair as he threw back his head, “here’s to better luck in377worse countries!” He paused as he swallowed, and set the tumbler down. “Lance, I’m saying good-by to the mountains.”
“You’re not going away for good, Murray?”
“I’m going away for good. What’s the use? For two years these railroad cutthroats have been trying to put something on me; you know that. They’ve been trying to mix me up with that bridge-burning at Smoky Creek; Sugar Buttes, they had me there; Tower W––nothing would do but I was there, and they’ve got one of the men in jail down there now, Lance, trying to sweat enough perjury out of him to send me up. What show has a poor man got against all the money there is in the country? I wouldn’t be afraid of a jury of my own neighbors––the men that know me, Lance––any time. What show would I have with a packed jury in Medicine Bend? I could explain anything I’ve done to the satisfaction of any reasonable man. I’m human, Lance; that’s all I say. I’ve been mistreated and I don’t forget it. They’ve even turned my wife against me––as fine a woman as ever lived.”
Lance swore sympathetically. “There’s good stuff in you yet, Murray.”
“I’m going to say good-by to the mountains,” Sinclair went on grimly, “but I’m going to Medicine Bend to-night and tell the man that has378hounded me what I think of him before I leave. I’m going to give my wife a chance to do what is right and go with me. She’s been poisoned against me––I know that; but if she does what’s fair and square there’ll be no trouble––no trouble at all. All I want, Lance, is a square deal. What?”
Dicksie with her pulses throbbing at fever-heat heard the words. She stood half-way down the stairs, trembling as she listened. Anger, hatred, the spirit of vengeance, choked in her throat at the sinister words. She longed to stride into the room and confront the murderer and call down retribution on his head. It was no fear of him that restrained her, for the Crawling Stone girl never knew fear. She would have confronted him and denounced him, but prudence checked her angry impulse. She knew what he meant to do––to ride into Medicine Bend under cover of the storm, murder the two he hated, and escape in the night; and she resolved he should never succeed. If she could only get to the telephone! But the telephone was in the room where he sat. He was saying good-by. Her cousin was trying to dissuade him from riding out into the storm, but he was going. The door opened; the men went out on the porch, and it closed. Dicksie, lightly as a shadow, ran into the office and began ringing Medicine Bend on the telephone.
379CHAPTER XLIDICKSIE’S RIDE
When Lance Dunning entered the room ten minutes later, Dicksie stood at the telephone; but the ten minutes of that interval had made quite another creature of his cousin. The wires were down and no one from any quarter gave a response to her frantic ringing. Through the receiver she could hear only the sweep of the rain and the harsh crackle of the wind. Sometimes praying, sometimes fainting, and sometimes despairing, she stood clinging to the instrument, ringing and pounding upon it like one frenzied. Lance looked at her in amazement. “Why, God a’mighty, Dicksie, what’s the matter?”
He called twice to her before she turned, and her words almost stunned him: “Why did you not detain Sinclair here to-night? Why did you not arrest him?”
Lance’s sombrero raked heavily to one side of his face, and one end of his mustache running up much higher on the other did not begin to express380his astonishment. “Arrest him? Arrest Sinclair? Dicksie, are you crazy? Why the devil should I arrest Sinclair? Do you suppose I am going to mix up in a fight like this? Do you thinkIwant to get killed? The level-headed man in this country, just at present, is the man who can keep out of trouble, and the man who succeeds, let me tell you, has got more than plenty to do.”
Lance, getting no answer but a fierce, searching gaze from Dicksie’s wild eyes, laid his hand on a chair, lighted a cigar, and sat down before the fire. Dicksie dropped the telephone receiver, put her hand to her girdle, and looked at him. When she spoke her tone was stinging. “You know that man is going to Medicine Bend to kill his wife!”
Lance took the cigar from his mouth and returned her look. “I know no such thing,” he growled curtly.
“And to kill George McCloud, if he can.”
He stared without reply.
“You heard him say so,” persisted Dicksie vehemently.
Lance crossed his legs and threw back the brim of his hat. “McCloud is nobody’s fool. He will look out for himself.”
“These fiendish wires to Medicine Bend are down. Why hasn’t this line been repaired?” she381cried, wringing her hands. “There is no way to give warning to any one that he is coming, and you have let him go!”
Lance whirled in his chair. “Damnation! Could I keep him from going?”
“You did not want to; you are keeping out of trouble. What do you care whom he kills to-night!”
“You’ve gone crazy, Dicksie. Your imagination has upset your reason. Whether he kills anybody to-night or not, it’s too late now to make a row about it,” exclaimed Lance, throwing his cigar angrily away. “He won’t kill us.”
“And you expect me to sit by and fold my hands while that wretch sheds more blood, do you?”
“It can’t be helped.”
“I say it can be helped! I can help it––I will help it––as you could have done if you had wanted to. I will ride to Medicine Bend to-night and help it.”
Lance jumped to his feet, with a string of oaths. “Well this is the limit!” He pointed his finger at her. “Dicksie Dunning, you won’t stir out of this house to-night.”
Her face hardened. “How dare you speak in that way to me? Who are you, that you order me382what to do, where to stay? Am I your cowboy, to be defiled with your curses?”
He looked at her in amazement. She was only eighteen; he would still face her down. “I’ll tell you who I am. I am master here, and you will do as I tell you. You will ride to Medicine Bend to-night, will you?” He struck the table with his clinched fist. “Do you hear me? I say, by God, not a horse shall leave this ranch in this storm to-night to go anywhere for anybody or with anybody!”
“Then I say to you this ranch is my ranch, and these horses are my horses! From this hour forth I will order them to go and come when and where I please!” She stepped toward him. “Henceforward I am mistress here. Do you hear me? HenceforwardIgive orders in Crawling Stone House, and every one under this roof takes orders from me!”
“Dicksie, what do you mean? For God’s sake, you’re not going to try to ride–––”
She swept from the room. What happened afterward she could never recall. Who got Jim for her or whether she got the horse up herself, what was said to her in low, kindly words of warning by the man at Jim’s neck when she sprang into the saddle, who the man was, she could not have told. All she felt at last was that she was free383and out under the black sky, with the rain beating her burning face and her horse leaping fearfully into the wind.
No man could have kept the trail to the pass that night. The horse took it as if the path flashed in sunshine, and swung into the familiar stride that had carried her so many times over the twenty miles ahead of them. The storm driving into Dicksie’s face cooled her. Every moment she recollected herself better, and before her mind all the aspects of her venture ranged themselves. She had set herself to a race, and against her rode the hardest rider in the mountains. She had set herself to what few men on the range would have dared and what no other woman on the range could do. “Why have I learned to ride,” went the question through her mind, “if not for this––for those I love and for those who love me?” Sinclair had a start, she well knew, but not so much for a night like this night. He would ride to kill those he hated; she would ride to save those she loved. Her horse already was on the Elbow grade; she knew it from his shorter spring––a lithe, creeping spring that had carried her out of deep canyons and up long draws where other horses walked. The wind lessened and the rain drove less angrily in her face. She patted Jim’s neck with her wet glove, and checked him as tenderly384as a lover, to give him courage and breath. She wanted to be part of him as he strove, for the horror of the night began to steal on the edge of her thoughts. A gust drove into her face. They were already at the head of the pass, and the horse, with level ground underfoot, was falling into the long reach; but the wind was colder.
Dicksie lowered her head and gave Jim the rein. She realized how wet she was; her feet and her knees were wet. She had no protection but her skirt, though the meanest rider on all her countless acres would not have braved a mile on such a night without leather and fur. The great lapels of her riding-jacket, reversed, were buttoned tight across her shoulders, and the double fold of fur lay warm and dry against her heart and lungs; but her hands were cold, and her skirt dragged leaden and cold from her waist, and water soaked in upon her chilled feet. She knew she ought to have thought of these things. She planned, as thought swept in a moving picture across her brain, how she would prepare again for such a ride––with her cowboy costume that she had once masqueraded in for Marion, with leggings of buckskin and “chaps” of long white silken wool. It was no masquerade now––she was riding in deadly earnest; and her lips closed to shut away a creepy385feeling that started from her heart and left her shivering.
She became conscious of how fast she was going. Instinct, made keen by thousands of saddle miles, told Dicksie of her terrific pace. She was riding faster than she would have dared go at noonday and without thought or fear of accident. In spite of the sliding and the plunging down the long hill, the storm and the darkness brought no thought of fear for herself; her only fear was for those ahead. In supreme moments a horse, like a man when human efforts become superhuman, puts the lesser dangers out of reckoning, and the faculties, set on a single purpose, though strained to the breaking-point, never break. Low in her saddle, Dicksie tried to reckon how far they had come and how much lay ahead. She could feel her skirt stiffening about her knees, and the rain beating at her face was sharper; she knew the sleet as it stung her cheeks, and knew what next was coming––the snow.
There was no need to urge Jim. He had the rein and Dicksie bent down to speak to him, as she often spoke when they were alone on the road, when Jim, bolting, almost threw her. Recovering instantly, she knew they were no longer alone. She rose alert in her seat. Her straining eyes could see nothing. Was there a sound in the wind?386She held her breath to listen, but before she could apprehend Jim leaped violently ahead. Dicksie screamed in an agony of terror. She knew then that she had passed another rider, and so close she might have touched him.
Fear froze her to the saddle; it lent wings to her horse. The speed became wild. Dicksie knit herself to her dumb companion and a prayer choked in her throat. She crouched lest a bullet tear her from her horse; but through the darkness no bullet came, only the sleet, stinging her face, stiffening her gloves, freezing her hair, chilling her limbs, and weighting her like lead on her struggling horse. She knew not even Sinclair could overtake her now––that no living man could lay a hand on her bridle-rein––and she pulled Jim in down the winding hills to save him for the long flat. When they struck it they had but four miles to go.
Across the flat the wind drove in fury. Reflection, thought, and reason were beginning to leave her. She was crying to herself quietly as she used to cry when she lost herself, a mere child, riding among the hills. She was praying meaningless words. Snow purred softly on her cheeks. The cold was soothing her senses. Unable at last to keep her seat on the horse, she stopped him, slipped stiffly to the ground, and, struggling through the387wind as she held fast to the bridle and the horn, half walked and half ran to start the blood through her benumbed veins. She struggled until she could drag her mired feet no farther, and tried to draw herself back into the saddle. It was almost beyond her. She sobbed and screamed at her helplessness. At last she managed to climb flounderingly back into her seat, and, bending her stiffened arms to Jim’s neck, she moaned and cried to him. When again she could hold her seat no longer, she fell to the horse’s side, dragged herself along in the frozen slush, and, screaming with the pain of her freezing hands, drew herself up into the saddle.
She knew that she dare not venture this again––that if she did so she could never remount. She felt now that she should never live to reach Medicine Bend. She rode on and on and on––would it never end? She begged God to send a painless death to those she rode to save, and when the prayer passed her failing senses a new terror awakened her, for she found herself falling out of the saddle. With excruciating torment she recovered her poise. Reeling from side to side, she fought the torpor away. Her mind grew clearer and her tears had ceased. She prayed for a light. The word caught between her stiffened lips and she mumbled it till she could open them wide and388scream it out. Then came a sound like the beating of great drums in her ears. It was the crash of Jim’s hoofs on the river bridge, and she was in Medicine Bend.
A horse, galloping low and heavily, slued through the snow from Fort Street into Boney, and, where it had so often stopped before, dashed up on the sidewalk in front of the little shop. The shock was too much for its unconscious rider, and, shot headlong from her saddle, Dicksie was flung bruised and senseless against Marion’s door.