CHAPTER XIIICORNEREDTen days from the evening Tex Matthews died in the frozen bed of a lonely creek Robin rode again in the Bad Lands, this time alone. No one knew whither he went, nor why. He scarcely knew himself. If he could have embodied his feelings in words he would have said that he could not rest quietly under circumstances that drew about him like the crushing coil of a python, a dread thing which he could neither combat nor fly from. Sometimes a curious fear stirred in his heart, and again—when he thought of Tex—a resentful ache. His world was all askew. There was no faith nor honor nor even justice. Thieves flourished and murder went unchallenged.“Shot to death by some person or persons unknown.”That perfunctory verdict echoed in Robin’s ears like a damnable irony as he pulled up his horse once more in the pines which bounded the corral and cabins he and Tex had discovered. Robin knew those “persons unknown.” But a moral certainty does not establish guilt before the law.He shivered a little, recalling that day and hour. He had lain on the edge of the washout with a dead man below him and he had prayed that the killers would show themselves. But nothing save a few cattle startled by the shots moved in that lonely place. He had lain until his fingers numbed and his body grew stiff with the cold, until the dark shut down. Then he had lashed the Texan’s corpse across his blood-stained saddle and groped his way out of the Bad Lands, rode the long night through leading a tired horse with a ghastly burden that had been a man.Here he was again, urged against all reasoned judgment into the enemy’s territory. Robin was no fool to discount the chances he took. He had no plan. He trusted to luck. He would ride warily as a scalping Indian as long as the food in his saddlebags lasted. If only he could get something definite to go on—or better still if he could drop those two red-handed in their predatory activities. Given a crew of riders and two weeks Robin knew that a round-up of T Bar S cattle would show that their number had trebled in a twelvemonth. Nothing less than positive proof would shake Adam Sutherland’s fatuous belief in the integrity of his range boss.Probably, in the end, Robin thought, he would have to kill Mark Steele—if Mark didn’t beat him to that outcome. Perhaps deep in Robin’s breast lurked the savage desire to stake all on an encounter and so end uncertainty. A man cannot always fathom his own motives. Still, in spite of the indignities Shining Mark had heaped upon him, a festering sore in his mind, and Matthews’ slaying added to the ugly total, Robin was not there for bushwhacking, but to learn if indeed Thatcher and Steele did use that lonely corral and for what purpose.He viewed it now from the concealment of the timber. He had approached the place cautiously riding in a wide circle around it on high ground. A three-inch layer of new snow blanketed the earth. No track led in or out from the place. Robin turned away and bore off toward the river.He made camp in a gulch at dusk. During the next day he jogged in and out of various bottoms, flats in which both with Mayne and Tex he had noted scores of Block S cows with their unbranded calves. The cows were there still. The calves were gone. Robin rode far and looked closely. The clean-up had been made. But where were the calves? Robin stared across the frozen reach of the Missouri and guessed the answer. He marked herd after herd of grazing cattle with never a sign of fresh iron work, nor a single unbranded calf. He would rest his hands on his saddle horn and ponder. Where wouldhedispose of a hundred-odd fresh branded yearlings if he were a cow thief.Psychology to Robin was no more than a term occasionally encountered in his last year of a frontier grammar school, a word lightly taken and soon forgotten. But he knew his people and his time. And he had imagination, that penetrating vision which is at once a curse and a blessing to its possessor. He could put himself in another man’s shoes.So he looked south of the river. In the end he crossed, leading a trembling horse that slipped and slid and once or twice fell on the glaring ice.From far below Boiler Bottom he rode westward on the Judith Basin side, in a region where no man lived. He passed the mouth of Armells, Arrow Creek, other small, nameless streams. He rode in still, wide-floored canyons where cattle grazed, over benches, back to the river flats again, looking, looking. He ate the last of his food. He slept like a wild animal in the lee of a bank or a brush patch, he dozed over little sagewood fires. And he came out at last near the mouth of the Judith River opposite where Birch Creek flowed in from the Bear Paws.He was hungry and weary. The frost had touched his cheeks, for the thermometer at night dropped to twenty below. The range lay hard and wan under a bright moon, and glittered in the midday sun. But Robin was content to endure. He had found much that he desired to find. If he could only establish Mark Steele’s interest in the T Bar S brand he knew he could make good his word and put Mark Steele in the penitentiary.Thus Robin as he looked to the homeward side of the big river. In all the jumbled area behind him no man rode in the dead of winter. The Judith Basin cow outfits had their home ranches far south in a creek and meadow country. The cattle that ranged where he had been would see no riders before the spring round-up. The PN on the Judith a few miles above was the only habitation within a hard day’s ride of where he stood—south of the river. Robin was tempted to ride to the PN to eat warm food, to sleep in a bed once more.But there was also the urge for home. Directly across from him a little way up Birch the Block S had a line camp. Two riders held it down, as much to keep the men occupied as for aught they could do for the Sutherland interest in winter. Robin knew both riders stationed there. He could lie over an hour, get something to eat, reach home by dark. He had not eaten in twenty hours. His mouth watered at the mere thought of hot coffee.The chance of Shining Mark turning up there was remote. Robin knew why Mark and Thatcher kept to the lower end of the Block S range. In any case, as he rode up Birch Creek, he must pass this camp. And he would never again step aside an inch for Mark Steele or any other man. Something of the hardness of the winter frosts seemed to be creeping into Robin’s soul.An hour later he rode through sagebrush that reached to his knees and came to a cabin and a stable in one corner of a small pasture fenced with poles. Smoke wavered from a pipe. Two saddled horses stood before the door. A head thrust out as Robin drew rein.“Hello, cowboy,” Ed Doyle greeted. “You lost, or just goin’ some place?”“Neither,” Robin returned. “Been some place, that’s all.”“Well, get down an’ rest your saddle,” Doyle invited.Robin got stiffly down. Doyle’s red-headed companion took a shrewd look at Robin and his mount.“Better put thatcaballoin the stable so he can eat as well as you,” he said. “You look like you’d been ’round the Horn.”“Mark Steele ain’t floatin’ around by any chance, is he?”A brief glance telegraphed between the two Block S men. Robin could interpret that. They thought he was out for Steele.“Naw,” Bud Cartwright said. “He ain’t been here but once this fall. You’d be more likely to locate him down around Cow Creek from what I hear.”“I sure don’t hanker to locate him right now,” Robin smiled. “I’d rather locate a cup of hot coffee than anything I know.”“Got your order,” Bud grinned. “She’s still steamin’ on the stove. There’s biscuits and a hunk of fried beef. Fly at it, Robin. We’re fed. Got to take a swing over toward Chip Creek. Make yourself at home.”Robin stabled his mount. When he came back to the house the other two were in the saddle.“We’ll be back somewhere between now an’ dark,” Doyle said. “Keep the fire goin’, kid.”“I will if I stay,” Robin agreed. “I ain’t sure I will. Kinda like to get home. See how I feel after I’ve got some grub under my belt.”“Well, the house is yours,” Bud drawled. “So long.”Robin stirred up the fire, ate like a famished wolf. He was weary to the innermost core. For five days he had only taken off his boots to warm his feet for an hour or so by the fire. His bones ached from sleeping on frozen ground. With a full stomach he drew up to the stove, rested his stockinged feet on the hearth, sat there smoking, debating whether he should stay or ride on.The warmth of the room wrapped him like a comfortable garment. His eyelids drooped. His chin sank on his breast.He came out of that doze with a start, with a sensation of having been disturbed, with a strange intuition of a presence in the room besides himself. He became aware of his pistol scabbard empty on his hip. For a breath he tried to recall if he had laid the gun aside. Then, his head turning slowly to verify that warning intuition of personal nearness to something, he saw Mark Steele and Thatcher standing between him and the door.Steele had Robin’s Colt in his hand. He was smiling, with a faint curl of his upper lip. Thatcher grinned with a satisfaction that sent a ripple along Robin’s back.He didn’t speak. He looked at them silently. His tongue was not numbed, nor his brain. But there was nothing to say. They had him cornered, disarmed. What would they do? He canvassed the possibilities in a detached, impersonal fashion.Steele broke the silence at last. He backed up a step, seated himself on the edge of the table, dangled one foot so that the silver spur tinkled. His eyes never left Robin. They were cold and gray, unlighted by any feeling—except it might be a touch of calculation. He laid Robin’s six-shooter beside him.“Well, Mr. Tyler of the Bar M Bar,” said he, “the last time we talked you said you were goin’ to put me in the pen. How about it? You got out a warrant for my arrest yet?”Robin did not answer.“Too scared to talk?” Steele taunted.Robin’s answer was a shrug of his shoulders. A shadow flitted across Steele’s dark face.“I’ll make you talk,” he gritted. “Here, Tommy, you take the horses to the stable,” he ordered. “Unsaddle ’em. Shut the door when you go out, so the cold air won’t bother Mr. Tyler. His feet are chilly now.”Thatcher glanced from Robin to Steele, back to Robin again. His brows crinkled a little. He seemed uncertain. But he went out without a word.“Now, darn your hide,” Mark’s tone was acid. “I hate to mess up a nice clean cabin, but you’ve bothered me long enough.”His fingers closed on the grip of his belt gun.“You’ve bothered me long enough you — — —!” he snarled. “You hear me?”Through Robin’s mind flashed the thought that deadly as Steele was he could not quite cold-bloodedly shoot down a man who sat in a chair and stared dumbly at him. Hence the vile epithets. Mark had to stir him up—or work himself up. Robin faced slowly about on the chair.“I hear you,” he said quietly. “Go ahead, shoot. You’ll be proud of yourself after you’ve put out my light. You’re a powerful brave man, Steele.”Robin said that casually, for all his heart was beating double-quick. Whether he rose to Steele’s taunting or not the man would kill him. Intention, determination, were explicit on Shining Mark’s face, in his stony stare, the slow withdrawal of his gun from its scabbard. Robin was a menace Steele must remove for his own safety. That cold feeling went over Robin again in a wave.But all the time his stockinged toes were pressing harder and harder into the dirt floor, the muscles of his legs were tensing. At least he would not die like a tame sheep, bleating for mercy where there was no mercy.And when the gun leaped clear with a sudden jerk, as if Steele had made up his mind to get the job done, Robin leaped also.Shining Mark had made the mistake of staying too close, of miscalculating the distance an active man could hurl himself with the speed of a winking eyelid, when moved by a desperate resolve. Robin did not strike. He clutched with both hands for that gun, thrust it aside. Mark Steele was a strong and active man himself. For a few seconds they struggled. Robin clamped both hands over the gun, turning it back on Mark, jammed him against the wall. He was the heavier, the stronger of the two, but he could not tear loose the weapon from Steele’s grip. To loose one hand and strike was dangerous. To let go and stoop for his own weapon now fallen to the floor meant that Steele would kill him as he stooped. Any moment Thatcher might enter. Then of a surety he was a dead man. And it was more fitting Robin felt, with a fury that burned him, that Steele or Thatcher, or both, should die if death was to stalk in that camp.Slowly he turned the muzzle back toward Steele. One of his fingers slipped inside the trigger guard. His thumb hooked around the curved hammer. He jabbed Steele suddenly with one knee, and in the momentary relaxation of the man’s grip Robin managed to pull the trigger.The report of the .45 was like a cannon blast in the room. Shining Mark let go, left the gun in Robin’s hand. His fingers fumbled at the base of his throat. Then he sagged and weaved and his knees doubled under him. He became a sprawling figure face to the floor, with strange spasmodic twitching of his outstretched fingers.Robin retrieved his own gun. His rifle stood by the wall. He picked the Winchester up. There was still another snake to scotch. Like a wolf at bay or a tiger in the circle of beaters pure savagery was driving Robin now. Every primitive instinct buried deep in man was on top. He opened the door. For the moment, rifle in hand, with that dark rage upon him, Robin would have faced all the fiends of hell itself—and Thatcher was only a man.The Texan was walking rapidly toward the house. In Robin’s seething brain the thought arose: “They knew I was here. They followed me. He thinks Mark has downed me.”He stepped, scarcely conscious of his stocking feet, out into the snow. As the foresight of his rifle lined on the Texan’s breast, Thatcher stopped dead in his tracks, flung both arms high in the air. Robin held his fire. Ripe to kill as he was he couldn’t shoot. He walked toward the Texan, the anger dying out of him like a receding tide. But for all that he cursed the man, slapped him brutally, raged at him with tears in his voice, disarmed him and drove him into the house. Thatcher grew pale at sight of his confederate stretched on the floor.Then Robin stood still to collect his thoughts. He beheld himself yet between the devil and the deep sea. He had killed the Block S wagon boss as he had publicly declared he would. Adam Sutherland would remember that.“Turn your face to the wall,” he commanded Thatcher.“Kid, for God’s sake!”“You dirty dog!” Robin gritted. “Idon’t murder men from ambush, nor shoot ’em in the back. You do what I say.”Thatcher obeyed. Robin took a piece of clothesline and tied his wrists tightly, backed him up to a bunk nailed to the wall and lashed him securely to a corner of that. Then he put on his boots, his overcoat, took both their guns and shut the cabin door on the prisoner and the dead.He saddled his own horse, turned out the other two, hastened their going with a flicking rope-end. In half an hour he would be on the high benches. Until Bud Cartwright and Ed Doyle returned he was safe from pursuit—probably longer. He knew Doyle and Cartwright. They would not hasten to sound an alarm over any one killing Shining Mark.He mounted and loped away up Birch Creek straight for the Bar M Bar.
Ten days from the evening Tex Matthews died in the frozen bed of a lonely creek Robin rode again in the Bad Lands, this time alone. No one knew whither he went, nor why. He scarcely knew himself. If he could have embodied his feelings in words he would have said that he could not rest quietly under circumstances that drew about him like the crushing coil of a python, a dread thing which he could neither combat nor fly from. Sometimes a curious fear stirred in his heart, and again—when he thought of Tex—a resentful ache. His world was all askew. There was no faith nor honor nor even justice. Thieves flourished and murder went unchallenged.
“Shot to death by some person or persons unknown.”
That perfunctory verdict echoed in Robin’s ears like a damnable irony as he pulled up his horse once more in the pines which bounded the corral and cabins he and Tex had discovered. Robin knew those “persons unknown.” But a moral certainty does not establish guilt before the law.
He shivered a little, recalling that day and hour. He had lain on the edge of the washout with a dead man below him and he had prayed that the killers would show themselves. But nothing save a few cattle startled by the shots moved in that lonely place. He had lain until his fingers numbed and his body grew stiff with the cold, until the dark shut down. Then he had lashed the Texan’s corpse across his blood-stained saddle and groped his way out of the Bad Lands, rode the long night through leading a tired horse with a ghastly burden that had been a man.
Here he was again, urged against all reasoned judgment into the enemy’s territory. Robin was no fool to discount the chances he took. He had no plan. He trusted to luck. He would ride warily as a scalping Indian as long as the food in his saddlebags lasted. If only he could get something definite to go on—or better still if he could drop those two red-handed in their predatory activities. Given a crew of riders and two weeks Robin knew that a round-up of T Bar S cattle would show that their number had trebled in a twelvemonth. Nothing less than positive proof would shake Adam Sutherland’s fatuous belief in the integrity of his range boss.
Probably, in the end, Robin thought, he would have to kill Mark Steele—if Mark didn’t beat him to that outcome. Perhaps deep in Robin’s breast lurked the savage desire to stake all on an encounter and so end uncertainty. A man cannot always fathom his own motives. Still, in spite of the indignities Shining Mark had heaped upon him, a festering sore in his mind, and Matthews’ slaying added to the ugly total, Robin was not there for bushwhacking, but to learn if indeed Thatcher and Steele did use that lonely corral and for what purpose.
He viewed it now from the concealment of the timber. He had approached the place cautiously riding in a wide circle around it on high ground. A three-inch layer of new snow blanketed the earth. No track led in or out from the place. Robin turned away and bore off toward the river.
He made camp in a gulch at dusk. During the next day he jogged in and out of various bottoms, flats in which both with Mayne and Tex he had noted scores of Block S cows with their unbranded calves. The cows were there still. The calves were gone. Robin rode far and looked closely. The clean-up had been made. But where were the calves? Robin stared across the frozen reach of the Missouri and guessed the answer. He marked herd after herd of grazing cattle with never a sign of fresh iron work, nor a single unbranded calf. He would rest his hands on his saddle horn and ponder. Where wouldhedispose of a hundred-odd fresh branded yearlings if he were a cow thief.
Psychology to Robin was no more than a term occasionally encountered in his last year of a frontier grammar school, a word lightly taken and soon forgotten. But he knew his people and his time. And he had imagination, that penetrating vision which is at once a curse and a blessing to its possessor. He could put himself in another man’s shoes.
So he looked south of the river. In the end he crossed, leading a trembling horse that slipped and slid and once or twice fell on the glaring ice.
From far below Boiler Bottom he rode westward on the Judith Basin side, in a region where no man lived. He passed the mouth of Armells, Arrow Creek, other small, nameless streams. He rode in still, wide-floored canyons where cattle grazed, over benches, back to the river flats again, looking, looking. He ate the last of his food. He slept like a wild animal in the lee of a bank or a brush patch, he dozed over little sagewood fires. And he came out at last near the mouth of the Judith River opposite where Birch Creek flowed in from the Bear Paws.
He was hungry and weary. The frost had touched his cheeks, for the thermometer at night dropped to twenty below. The range lay hard and wan under a bright moon, and glittered in the midday sun. But Robin was content to endure. He had found much that he desired to find. If he could only establish Mark Steele’s interest in the T Bar S brand he knew he could make good his word and put Mark Steele in the penitentiary.
Thus Robin as he looked to the homeward side of the big river. In all the jumbled area behind him no man rode in the dead of winter. The Judith Basin cow outfits had their home ranches far south in a creek and meadow country. The cattle that ranged where he had been would see no riders before the spring round-up. The PN on the Judith a few miles above was the only habitation within a hard day’s ride of where he stood—south of the river. Robin was tempted to ride to the PN to eat warm food, to sleep in a bed once more.
But there was also the urge for home. Directly across from him a little way up Birch the Block S had a line camp. Two riders held it down, as much to keep the men occupied as for aught they could do for the Sutherland interest in winter. Robin knew both riders stationed there. He could lie over an hour, get something to eat, reach home by dark. He had not eaten in twenty hours. His mouth watered at the mere thought of hot coffee.
The chance of Shining Mark turning up there was remote. Robin knew why Mark and Thatcher kept to the lower end of the Block S range. In any case, as he rode up Birch Creek, he must pass this camp. And he would never again step aside an inch for Mark Steele or any other man. Something of the hardness of the winter frosts seemed to be creeping into Robin’s soul.
An hour later he rode through sagebrush that reached to his knees and came to a cabin and a stable in one corner of a small pasture fenced with poles. Smoke wavered from a pipe. Two saddled horses stood before the door. A head thrust out as Robin drew rein.
“Hello, cowboy,” Ed Doyle greeted. “You lost, or just goin’ some place?”
“Neither,” Robin returned. “Been some place, that’s all.”
“Well, get down an’ rest your saddle,” Doyle invited.
Robin got stiffly down. Doyle’s red-headed companion took a shrewd look at Robin and his mount.
“Better put thatcaballoin the stable so he can eat as well as you,” he said. “You look like you’d been ’round the Horn.”
“Mark Steele ain’t floatin’ around by any chance, is he?”
A brief glance telegraphed between the two Block S men. Robin could interpret that. They thought he was out for Steele.
“Naw,” Bud Cartwright said. “He ain’t been here but once this fall. You’d be more likely to locate him down around Cow Creek from what I hear.”
“I sure don’t hanker to locate him right now,” Robin smiled. “I’d rather locate a cup of hot coffee than anything I know.”
“Got your order,” Bud grinned. “She’s still steamin’ on the stove. There’s biscuits and a hunk of fried beef. Fly at it, Robin. We’re fed. Got to take a swing over toward Chip Creek. Make yourself at home.”
Robin stabled his mount. When he came back to the house the other two were in the saddle.
“We’ll be back somewhere between now an’ dark,” Doyle said. “Keep the fire goin’, kid.”
“I will if I stay,” Robin agreed. “I ain’t sure I will. Kinda like to get home. See how I feel after I’ve got some grub under my belt.”
“Well, the house is yours,” Bud drawled. “So long.”
Robin stirred up the fire, ate like a famished wolf. He was weary to the innermost core. For five days he had only taken off his boots to warm his feet for an hour or so by the fire. His bones ached from sleeping on frozen ground. With a full stomach he drew up to the stove, rested his stockinged feet on the hearth, sat there smoking, debating whether he should stay or ride on.
The warmth of the room wrapped him like a comfortable garment. His eyelids drooped. His chin sank on his breast.
He came out of that doze with a start, with a sensation of having been disturbed, with a strange intuition of a presence in the room besides himself. He became aware of his pistol scabbard empty on his hip. For a breath he tried to recall if he had laid the gun aside. Then, his head turning slowly to verify that warning intuition of personal nearness to something, he saw Mark Steele and Thatcher standing between him and the door.
Steele had Robin’s Colt in his hand. He was smiling, with a faint curl of his upper lip. Thatcher grinned with a satisfaction that sent a ripple along Robin’s back.
He didn’t speak. He looked at them silently. His tongue was not numbed, nor his brain. But there was nothing to say. They had him cornered, disarmed. What would they do? He canvassed the possibilities in a detached, impersonal fashion.
Steele broke the silence at last. He backed up a step, seated himself on the edge of the table, dangled one foot so that the silver spur tinkled. His eyes never left Robin. They were cold and gray, unlighted by any feeling—except it might be a touch of calculation. He laid Robin’s six-shooter beside him.
“Well, Mr. Tyler of the Bar M Bar,” said he, “the last time we talked you said you were goin’ to put me in the pen. How about it? You got out a warrant for my arrest yet?”
Robin did not answer.
“Too scared to talk?” Steele taunted.
Robin’s answer was a shrug of his shoulders. A shadow flitted across Steele’s dark face.
“I’ll make you talk,” he gritted. “Here, Tommy, you take the horses to the stable,” he ordered. “Unsaddle ’em. Shut the door when you go out, so the cold air won’t bother Mr. Tyler. His feet are chilly now.”
Thatcher glanced from Robin to Steele, back to Robin again. His brows crinkled a little. He seemed uncertain. But he went out without a word.
“Now, darn your hide,” Mark’s tone was acid. “I hate to mess up a nice clean cabin, but you’ve bothered me long enough.”
His fingers closed on the grip of his belt gun.
“You’ve bothered me long enough you — — —!” he snarled. “You hear me?”
Through Robin’s mind flashed the thought that deadly as Steele was he could not quite cold-bloodedly shoot down a man who sat in a chair and stared dumbly at him. Hence the vile epithets. Mark had to stir him up—or work himself up. Robin faced slowly about on the chair.
“I hear you,” he said quietly. “Go ahead, shoot. You’ll be proud of yourself after you’ve put out my light. You’re a powerful brave man, Steele.”
Robin said that casually, for all his heart was beating double-quick. Whether he rose to Steele’s taunting or not the man would kill him. Intention, determination, were explicit on Shining Mark’s face, in his stony stare, the slow withdrawal of his gun from its scabbard. Robin was a menace Steele must remove for his own safety. That cold feeling went over Robin again in a wave.
But all the time his stockinged toes were pressing harder and harder into the dirt floor, the muscles of his legs were tensing. At least he would not die like a tame sheep, bleating for mercy where there was no mercy.
And when the gun leaped clear with a sudden jerk, as if Steele had made up his mind to get the job done, Robin leaped also.
Shining Mark had made the mistake of staying too close, of miscalculating the distance an active man could hurl himself with the speed of a winking eyelid, when moved by a desperate resolve. Robin did not strike. He clutched with both hands for that gun, thrust it aside. Mark Steele was a strong and active man himself. For a few seconds they struggled. Robin clamped both hands over the gun, turning it back on Mark, jammed him against the wall. He was the heavier, the stronger of the two, but he could not tear loose the weapon from Steele’s grip. To loose one hand and strike was dangerous. To let go and stoop for his own weapon now fallen to the floor meant that Steele would kill him as he stooped. Any moment Thatcher might enter. Then of a surety he was a dead man. And it was more fitting Robin felt, with a fury that burned him, that Steele or Thatcher, or both, should die if death was to stalk in that camp.
Slowly he turned the muzzle back toward Steele. One of his fingers slipped inside the trigger guard. His thumb hooked around the curved hammer. He jabbed Steele suddenly with one knee, and in the momentary relaxation of the man’s grip Robin managed to pull the trigger.
The report of the .45 was like a cannon blast in the room. Shining Mark let go, left the gun in Robin’s hand. His fingers fumbled at the base of his throat. Then he sagged and weaved and his knees doubled under him. He became a sprawling figure face to the floor, with strange spasmodic twitching of his outstretched fingers.
Robin retrieved his own gun. His rifle stood by the wall. He picked the Winchester up. There was still another snake to scotch. Like a wolf at bay or a tiger in the circle of beaters pure savagery was driving Robin now. Every primitive instinct buried deep in man was on top. He opened the door. For the moment, rifle in hand, with that dark rage upon him, Robin would have faced all the fiends of hell itself—and Thatcher was only a man.
The Texan was walking rapidly toward the house. In Robin’s seething brain the thought arose: “They knew I was here. They followed me. He thinks Mark has downed me.”
He stepped, scarcely conscious of his stocking feet, out into the snow. As the foresight of his rifle lined on the Texan’s breast, Thatcher stopped dead in his tracks, flung both arms high in the air. Robin held his fire. Ripe to kill as he was he couldn’t shoot. He walked toward the Texan, the anger dying out of him like a receding tide. But for all that he cursed the man, slapped him brutally, raged at him with tears in his voice, disarmed him and drove him into the house. Thatcher grew pale at sight of his confederate stretched on the floor.
Then Robin stood still to collect his thoughts. He beheld himself yet between the devil and the deep sea. He had killed the Block S wagon boss as he had publicly declared he would. Adam Sutherland would remember that.
“Turn your face to the wall,” he commanded Thatcher.
“Kid, for God’s sake!”
“You dirty dog!” Robin gritted. “Idon’t murder men from ambush, nor shoot ’em in the back. You do what I say.”
Thatcher obeyed. Robin took a piece of clothesline and tied his wrists tightly, backed him up to a bunk nailed to the wall and lashed him securely to a corner of that. Then he put on his boots, his overcoat, took both their guns and shut the cabin door on the prisoner and the dead.
He saddled his own horse, turned out the other two, hastened their going with a flicking rope-end. In half an hour he would be on the high benches. Until Bud Cartwright and Ed Doyle returned he was safe from pursuit—probably longer. He knew Doyle and Cartwright. They would not hasten to sound an alarm over any one killing Shining Mark.
He mounted and loped away up Birch Creek straight for the Bar M Bar.